THE DANBURY NEWSMAN {illustration of a man} AND HIS FRIENDS LIFE IN DANBURY: BEING {smaller text} A Brief but Comprehensive Record {gothic script} OF THE {smaller text} DOINGS OF A REMARKABLE PEOPLE, UNDER MORE REMARKABLE CIRCUMSTANCES, AND CHRON- ICLED IN A MOST REMARKABLE MANNER, BY THE AUTHOR, JAMES M. BAILEY, "THE DANBURY NEWS MAN;" {smaller text} AND {smaller text} CAREFULLY COMPILED WITH A PAIR OF EIGHT-DOLLAR SHEARS, BY THE COMPILER. THIRTIETH THOUSAND. BOSTON: SHEPARD AND GILL. 1873. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, BY SHEPARD & GILL, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. RAND, AVERY, & CO., PRINTERS, 3 CORNHILL, BOSTON. Brown Type-Setting Machine Company. WHY I WROTE A BOOK.

TO the friends of The News, who may take up this work, the question may ccome,--Why did he write a book? It is a natural inquiry. It has assailed hundreds before our day; it will afflict hundreds in the years to come. And probably there is no form of interrogation so loaded with subtile torture as this very one, unless it is to be asked for a light in a strange depot by a man you had just selected out of seventeen thousand as the man to be most likely to have a match. Various authors have various reasons for bringing out a book, and this reason may or may not be the reason they give to the world; I know not, and care not. It is not for me to judge the world, unless I am elected.

It is a matter which lies between the author and his own conscience, and I know of no place where it would be less likely to be crowded. But my reason for writing a book is so novel, so different from all others, that the public may be pardoned for feeling an intense desire to know it. Some have written a book for money; I have not. Some for fame; I have not. Some for love; I have not. Some for kindlings; I have not. I have not written a book for any of these reasons, or all of them combined. In fact, gentle borrower, I have not written a book at all--I have merely clipped it.

Yours truly, {right justified} THE CLIPPER. SOMEWHAT INTRODUCTORY.

THIS work is designed to while away a stray hour which the borrower may have at odd times. The matter has been carefully selected with a view to suiting all cases and conditions. Within its covers the banker may find relief--although it is extremely doubtful; and here is something for the farmer, the artizan, the undertaker, the laborer in the mines, the porter, the merchant, the student, the man of leisure, the hackman, etc. The matter was written at odd times, although generally right after pay-day, and is submitted to the borrower with a great deal of timidity, but with the earnest hope that it may be the humble means of making money.

If in its perusal one single (or even married) borrower is made purer and better, and his life made to appear brighter, and his soul lifted up generally, I shall sincerely rejoice to hear it. Address me at Danbury, enclosing a stamp.

{right justified}"THE DANBURY NEWS MAN." LIFE IN DANBURY. SKETCHES. {Illustration of four men putting on their boots.} AN EARLY MARTYR. SKETCHES. AN EARLY MARTYR.

As this account pertains mostly to the rag-wheel of a saw mill, there may be people who will think I ought to know what a rag-wheel is, and be able to throw a good deal of interesting light on its origin and history. Fortunately, I don't know anything about it. A rag-wheel may be some part of the floor of a saw mill, or adapted to its roof, or only something to keep the boys from fooling with the saw. I know nothing about it. I only know that this is a sad account to write, and that I, like the public, would much rather that some one else would do it.

The owner of the saw mill in question was Abner Pierce. He was a man who was fond of hunting foxes, and kept eight men employed about his farm and mill. The rag-wheel becoming impaired and unsafe from age or wear, or both, needed replacing, and he employed a carpenter from a place twenty miles distant to make a new rag-wheel.

The carpenter who came twenty miles to make a rag wheel for Abner Pierce, was a stranger to that gentleman. His name was Zebulon Watts. He brought a man with him to do the work, volunteering to attack the bossing of the job single handed and unaided. Watts was mentally and physically remarkable. He was not a worker, but a designer. He could plan work for any number of men to perform, and stand around handy to see that they did it. He was a man fond of the law, and when a party refused to pay him for work, his delight was almost hysteric. He then sued them, plead his own case, covered everybody with mud, and retired defeated. He couldn't help but think a man was trying to beat him in an underhanded manner if he paid him cash down without equivocation of any kind. Physically, he was not adapted to heavy labor. He was about five feet high and about four feet square. He wore a Shanghai overcoat, which rather impaired the natural outlines of his figure, and a huge cap made from the fur of a horse, with a forepiece that stood straight out like the step to a stage-coach. It may be mentioned, in passing, that Mr. Watts didn't know any more about a rag-wheel than I do, and the information the assistant possessed on the same subject was considerably hampered by limits. But while I am painfully aware of my ignorance, it never for an instant occurred to Mr. Watts that he didn't know anything about the matter.

He took charge of the manufacture of that rag-wheel with all the confidence in the world, and laid his plans, and made his estimates, and set the man to work getting out the stuff, and walked around with his hands in his pockets, and talked about religion and the legislature.

And so day passed into day and time rolled on.

On the evening preceding the close of the job, Pierce, as was his custom, had all his help, including the carpenters, in the large, old-fashioned kitchen. It was a cold November night, and a large and very grateful fire roared and snapped in the yawning fireplace. The men sat there until ten o'clock, talking about fox hunting and public schools, and then retired to their respective couches, each man drawing off his boots and leaving them in front of the fireplace. In a short time the house was as quiet as a pot of paint, and the flicker of the dying fire created fantastic shadows among the eleven pairs of boots.

At two o'clock one of the men was awakened by a glare of light in his eyes, and bounding to the window saw that the mill was on fire. The alarm was at once given. Pierce heard it, and was the first in his clothes. Then he darted for the kitchen to get his boots. He was a man of great nervous susceptibility, and not at any time unpleasantly particular about his language. It was very dark in the kitchen--so dark that but a dim outline of the walls could be seen. But he was in a hurry--there was no time to strike a light. He made a plunge for the first boot he could reach, tried it part way on, discovered it was originally made for another man, flung it across the room, and swooped down on another. No better success. Threw that, and swore. Grabbed another. Swore again. Made several attempts to get his foot into the third boot. Foot kept slipping outside. Threw that, and swore again. Fourth boot had no straps to it. Dropped that at once. Then he tried some more; kept trying them as rapidly as he could find them, and all the time his property was being licked up by the dreadful flames, and the perspiration was rolling into his eyes, and his feet were smarting under the exertions they were forced into. And all the while he kept pouring forth the most ridiculous cursing anybody ever heard, and finally, in a perfect shriek of profanity, he dashed out of the house in his stocking feet, and across a cornfield full of bristling stubble, and shed woolen yarn and blood at every jump.

He had barely got out of the kitchen, when the men came tearing in, crazed by excitement, and looking for their boots.

"Smitten Washington! where is my boots?" shrieked Watts. And then following the example of the others, he dropped down on the floor, and began to feel around for them. Then ensued a scene that beggars all description. Ten men in a dark room, spasmodically and insanely endeavoring to get into a pair of boots belonging to other parties, and each one carefully flinging the wrong boot straight ahead, and snatching for another, and swearing and screaming all the time, and hopping round on one foot, and bumping each other over, like so many unhappy and incurable maniacs. Some two or three secured a boot apiece and started for the mill; others went entirely unprotected; while old Watts, with a presence of mind that was truly remarkable, gathered up an armful of them, and went bounding across that corn lot with the speed of an alligator.

All possible agencies were used to subdue the fire, but it had such headway that the prospect was dubious enough. Mr. Watts carefully deposited his new Shanghai coat on a pile of slabs, and seizing a pint-pail that had been used for drinking cider from, dashed recklessly down the bank to the creek, and in a few minutes returned with the pail half full, and madly dashed the contents over Pierce, and then hurried back for more. But all efforts were of no avail. The fire-fiend marched on without interruption, and in an hour the mill was destroyed. Sorrowfully the party turned and limped home. Mr. Watts went for his coat and was somewhat startled to find that the fire had even attacked the pile of slabs, and in its insatiate fury had completely devoured one tail to the coat.

Then Mr. Watts lifted up his voice and carried on like a pirate.

It is not necessary to state that the rag-wheel went up with the flames. It so went. Mr. Watts returned home with his man, the next day, and in the seclusion and sacredness of the domestic circle made out his bill against Pierce.

Pierce refused to pay it. Watts was delighted. Pierce said the wheel was but a piece of botch-work. Watts said he would make him prove it. And--and he did. The suit went against Watts. He argued, and plead, and perspired, and pranced around, but it was no use--a venial judge decided against him.

Then there was another unfortunate phase to this remarkably painful affair. Not another piece of cloth could be found in town to match that ravaged coat. Unceasingly did Watts parade the stores of his native heath, but in vain was piece after piece of goods compared to the unsinged tail of that coat. Nothing would match. The surviving tail was a peculiar green and the nearest approach to it was a peculiar blue; and so Watts had to get it, because he couldn't afford to lose the coat, and, besides, the one tail was becoming a trifle monotonous to the public.

The new repairs created quite a sensation at first among the neighbors, but it gradually wore off, and whenever he appeared with his rainbow tails, and that coarse fur cap with its threatening forepiece, they merely observed--"Hallo! here comes the Jack of Clubs."

AN UNFORTUNATE FUNERAL.

YEARS ago, Albany boys entertained a strong sectional feeling. I remember that those who lived in the lower part of the city were called "Creeks," to distinguish them from those who lived at the upper end, who were called "Hills." And I remember with striking vividness that an intense enmity existed between those boys. I was a "Creek" in those days, and as all the cemeteries were in the "Hill" country, and as I was very fond of military funerals--one of their best patrons, in fact--I nearly lost the entire use of one eye by constantly revolving it around in search of the unfriendly "Hills." As I had been brought up by Puritan parents, and educated to look upon a liar as the most despisable of earth's creatures, my risks were rather serious; for had I been questioned in regard to my position, I should have frankly avowed I was a "Hill.". But I met with no mishaps and grew so emboldened that I even had the hardihood to patronize some funerals that were not military or public; but as they occurred on the Sabbath, I attended them because being surrounded with Puritanic influence the Sabbath was dreary to me. It was at one of these private funerals where I learned how vain and unsatisfactory is this life. It was during the performance of the last rites, and I was standing a little in the rear of the immediate friends, with an appropriate expression of woe on my face, and about to complete an arrangement to exchange a broken top for a knife that had seen better days, when a pugnacious-looking youth of about my age came up, and kindly inquired--"Are you a Hill or a Creek?" Remembering my mother's teachings, I was just about to admit that I was a "Hill," when I became confused by the peculiar way he doubled his fist, and actually claimed that I was a "Creek." This is about all there was of it, excepting that I was knocked down and stamped on, and lost some of my teeth, and had two or three of my ribs fractured. But I preserved my honesty, and eventually recovered the top. A man may lose home, friends, teeth, and everything that makes life dear, but if he remains truthful, people will respect him--so they say.

MR. STIVER'S HORSE.

THE other morning at breakfast, Mrs. Perkins observed that Mr. Stiver, in whose house we live, had been called away, and wanted to know if I would see to his horse through the day.

I knew that Mr. Stiver owned a horse, because I occasionally saw him drive out of the yard, and I saw the stable every day; but what kind of a horse I didn't know. I never went into the stable for two reasons: in the first place, I had no desire to; and, secondly, I didn't know as the horse cared particularly for company.

I never took care of a horse in my life, and had I been of a less hopeful nature, the charge Mr. Stiver had left with me might have had a very depressing effect; but I told Mrs. Perkins I would do it.

"You know how to take care of a horse, don't you?" said she.

I gave her a reassuring wink. In fact I knew so little about it that I didn't think it safe to converse more fluently than by winks.

After breakfast I seized a toothpick and walked out toward the stable. There was nothing particular to do, as Stiver had given him his breakfast, and I found him eating it; so I looked around. The horse looked around, too, and stared pretty hard at me. There was but little said on either side. I hunted up the location of the feed, and then sat down on a peck measure, and fell to studying the beast. There is a wide difference in horses. Some of them will kick you over and never look around to see what becomes of you. I don't like a disposition like that, and I wondered if Stiver's horse was one of them.

When I came home at noon I went straight to the stable. The animal was there all right. Stiver hadn't told me what to give him for dinner, and I had not given the subject any thought; but I went to the oat box and filled the peck measure, and sallied up to the manger.

When he saw the oats he almost smiled; this pleased and amused him. I emptied them into the trough, and left him above me to admire the way I parted my hair behind. I just got my head up in time to save the whole of it. He had his ears back, his mouth open, and looked as if he were on the point of committing murder. I went out and filled the measure again, and climbed up the side of the stall and emptied it on top of him. He brought his head up so suddenly at this that I immediately got down, letting go of everything to do it. I struck on the sharp edge of a barrel, rolled over a couple of times, and then disappeared under a hay-cutter. The peck measure went down on the other side, and got mysteriously tangled up in that animal's heels, and he went to work at it, and then ensued the most dreadful noise I ever heard in all my life, and I have been married eighteen years.

It did seem as if I never would get out from under that hay-cutter; and all the while I was struggling and wrenching myself and the cutter apart, that awful beast was kicking around in that stall, and making the most appalling sound imaginable.

When I got out I found Mrs. Perkins at the door. She had heard the racket, and had sped out to the stable, her only thought being of me and three stove lids which she had under her arm, and one of which she was about to fire at the beast.

This made me mad.

"Go away, you unfortunate idiot," I shouted; "do you want to knock my brains out?" For I remembered seeing Mrs. Perkins sling a missile once before, and that I nearly lost an eye by the operation, although standing on the other side of the house at the time.

She retired at once. And at the same time the animal quieted down, but there was nothing left of that peck measure, not even the maker's name.

I followed Mrs. Perkins into the house, and had her do me up, and then I sat down in a chair, and fell into a profound strain of meditation. After a while I felt better, and went out to the stable again. The horse was leaning against the stable stall, with eyes half closed, and appeared to be very much engrossed in thought.

"Step off to the left," I said, rubbing his back.

He didn't step. I got the pitchfork and punched him in the leg with the handle. He immediately raised up both hind legs at once, and that fork flew out of my hands, and went rattling up against the timbers above, and came down again in an instant, the end of the handle rapping me with such force on the top of the head that I sat right down on the floor under the impression that I was standing in front of a drug store in the evening. I went back to the house and got some more stuff on me. But I couldn't keep away from that stable. I went out there again. The thought struck me that what the horse wanted was exercise. If that thought had been an empty glycerine can, it would have saved a windfall of luck for me.

But exercise would tone him down, and exercise him I should. I laughed to myself to think how I would trounce him around the yard. I didn't laugh again that afternoon. I got him unhitched, and then wondered how I was to get him out of the stall without carrying him out. I pushed, but he wouldn't budge. I stood looking at him in the face, thinking of something to say, when he suddenly solved the difficulty by veering about and plunging for the door. I followed, as a matter of course, because I had a tight hold on the rope, and hit about every partition stud worth speaking of on that side of the barn. Mrs. Perkins was at the window and saw us come out of the door. She subsequently remarked that we came out skipping like two innocent children. The skipping was entirely unintentional on my part. I felt as if I stood on the verge of eternity. My legs may have skipped, but my mind was filled with awe.

I took the animal out to exercise him. He exercised me before I got through with it. He went around a few times in a circle; then he stopped suddenly, spread out his fore legs and looked at me. Then he leaned forward a little, and hoisted both hind legs, and threw about two coal hods of mud over a line full of clothes Mrs. Perkins had just hung out.

That excellent lady had taken a position at the window, and whenever the evolutions of the awful beast permitted I caught a glance at her features. She appeared to be very much interested in the proceedings; but the instant that the mud flew, she disappeared from the window, and a moment later she appeared on the stoop with a long poker in her hand, and fire enough in her eye to heat it red hot.

Just then Stiver's horse stood up on his hind legs and tried to hug me with the others. This scared me. A horse never shows his strength to {Illustration of a horse rearing up over a man and a woman with a club in one hand and her other arm raised over her head behind them.} MR. STIVER'S HORSE. such advantage as when he is coming down on you like a frantic pile driver. I instantly dodged, and the cold sweat fairly boiled out of me.

It suddenly came over me that I had once figured in a similar position years ago. My grandfather owned a little white horse that would get up from a meal at Delmonico's to kick the President of the United States. He sent me to the lot one day, and unhappily suggested that I often went after that horse, and suffered all kinds of defeat in getting him out of the pasture, but I had never tried to ride him. Heaven knows I never thought of it. I had my usual trouble with him that day. He tried to jump over me, and push me down in a mud hole, and finally got up on his hind legs and came waltzing after me with facilities enough to convert me into hash, but I turned and just made for that fence with all the agony a prospect of instant death could crowd into me. If our candidate for the Presidency had run one-half as well, there would be seventy-five postmasters in Danbury to-day, instead of one.

I got him out finally, and then he was quiet enough, and took him up alongside the fence and got on him. He stopped an instant, one brief instant, and then tore off down the road at a frightful speed. I laid down on him and clasped my hands tightly around his neck, and thought of my home. When we got to the stable I was confident he would stop, but he didn't. He drove straight at the door. It was a low door, just high enough to permit him to go in at lightning speed, but there was no room for me. I saw if I struck that stable the struggle would be a very brief one. I thought this all over in an instant, and then spreading out my arms and legs, emitted a scream, and the next moment I was bounding about in the filth of that stable yard. All this passed through my mind as Stiver's horse went up into the air. It frightened Mrs. Perkins dreadfully.

"Why, you old fool!" she said; "why don't you get rid of him?"

"How can I?" said I, in desperation.

"Why, there are a thousand ways," said she.

This is just like a woman. How different a statesman would have answered.

But I could think of only two ways to dispose of the beast. I could either swallow him where he stood and then sit down on him, or I could crawl inside of him and kick him to death.

But I was saved either of these expedients by his coming toward me so abruptly that I dropped the rope in terror, and then he turned about, and, kicking me full of mud, shot for the gate, ripping the clothes line in two, and went on down the street at a horrible gallop, with two of Mrs. Perkins's garments, which he hastily snatched from the line, floating over his neck in a very picturesque manner.

So I was afterwards told. I was too full of mud myself to see the way into the house.

Stiver got his horse all right, and stays at home to take care of him. Mrs. Perkins has gone to her mother's to recuperate, and I am healing as fast as possible.

THE DANBURY PLUMBER.

There are some disadvantages in living on the second floor. A Danbury housewife thus situated left a bar of soap on the stairs while she exchanged a few words with the first floor tenant, and a plumber who was up stairs mending the pipes came down a moment later with several tongs and wrenches in one hand, and a sheet iron furnace in the other, and when he reached the immediate locality of the soap his legs suddenly spread apart, a look of astonishment stole into his face, and in an instant his head was half way through the front door, and his coat tail on fire, and those tongs and wrenches were up in the air struggling for dear life with that sheet iron furnace. He says now that his father forced him to learn the trade of plumbing, and that it was not his own choice.

OUR PROLETARIATS.

THE Germans are fighting against potatoes, because they say potatoes do not contain so much albums as other articles of vegetation. Potatoes only have about ten cents' worth of albums while beans have twenty-two cents' worth of albums to the square inch. This makes potatoes feel sick. The French won't eat potatoes unless they are fried, on account of the lack of albums. We think it is albums, but if it ain't, we shall regret having started this item anyway. There is another thing about potatoes we never before thought of. A German writer says that its unnourishing qualities is apt to make our proletariats physically and mentally weak. You wouldn't hardly believe it, but there are people that don't care a continental about their proletariats. But we do. We wouldn't have our proletariats run against and bruised for any amount of money. And when we heard that potatoes were things that hurt proletariats we turned our backs on potatoes. We think a good deal of our proletariats, every one of them, and would give five dollars if we knew what a proletariat is

GRATITUDE

ONE of our benevolent old ladies is not satisfied with alone comfortably clothing the objects of her philanthropy, but perseveres in taking an interest in them after that. Wherever she meets them she is ready to make some pertinent and pleasant remark, such as, "Why, what a nice comfortable dress that of Miss Perkins makes you;" or, "Mercy me! how good Uncle Daniel's breeches fit you," or something else of a like friendly and considerate nature, which is always keenly appreciated by the recipient, and sometimes by listeners. Saturday evening a chirk young Miss escorted by her gallant through the crowd on Main Street caught the eye of the old lady, and her delighted voice sounded above the noises of the street as she cried, "Why, gracious goodness, Almira Ann Boardman! poor dead Miss Pinkney's basque sets almost as snug to you as if it had been made for you." And the old lady rubbed her nose very pleasantly, while Miss Boardman turned black with suppressed gratitude.

THE HEN.

THE quintessence of the omnivorous is supposed to be imaged in the hog; but a hog is a Peabody among animals along side of a hen. Hens are by nature monopolists. When the subject of victuals is mentioned they are evidently listening. Throw a handful of corn into a ten-acre lot and every hen in the enclosure will get a dab at it. The last hen on the spot may not secure more than two kernels, but nothing in the hen's appearance will indicate that. It will step around with as much precision and gratitude as any in the flock, and wear the most pensive smile you ever saw. A hen will not eat everything it sees, but it will try to, and there isn't one of them on the face of this earth but that can tell you the taste of everything it has seen within the radius of a half mile of its house. It is only when a man has kicked at a hen and missed it that he begins to understand how thoroughly hollow and deceitful this world is; and it is a marvelous fact in this connection that he will miss the hen if he does kick at it, and misses it if he don't.

MUMBLETY PEG.

THE boys on Liberty Street are rather down on Willie Cliver. They were playing mumblety peg, all of them together, Saturday afternoon. Mumblety peg is a very exciting game if you are a spectator. It got on to a little boy named Mose, first. He got down on his knees and rooted around in the earth to get a hold of that peg, with the wisdom and decorum of a man forty years old. When he came up with the peg in his teeth, his mouth and nose looked like a vacant asparagus bed. Willie enjoyed it hugely, and was fairly insane with delight when three other boys got caught and wore the newness off their noses and the enamel from their teeth in the mighty endeavors to encompass the obstinate peg. Then it got on to Willie, and the boys whose faces were smarting acutely under the pressure of preceeding defeats, drove that peg with a velocity that would have depressed any other boy but Willie; but he had been educated by religious parents, and when the peg was fairly settled, he went into the house to get his Sunday-School lesson--and while he was in there looking pure, and good, and attentive, Mose and the three other little boys put up their shamefully-abused noses and lips and howled and roared around like mad.

ANGER AN ENUMERATION.

A DANBURY man named Reubens, recently saw a statement that counting one hundred when tempted to speak an angry word would save a man a great deal of trouble. This statement sounded a little singular at first, but the more he read it over the more favorably he became impressed with it, and finally concluded to adopt it.

Next door to Reubens lives a man who has made five distinct attempts in the past fortnight to secure a dinner of green peas, by the first of July, and every time has been retarded by Reuben's hens. The next morning after Reubens made his resolution this man found his fifth attempt to have mis-carried. Then he called on Reubens. He said,--

"What in thunder do you mean by letting your hens tear up my garden?"

Reubens was prompted to call him a mad-snoot, a new name just coming into general use, but he remembered his resolution, put down his rage, and meekly observed,--

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight--"

Then the mad neighbor who had been eyeing this answer with a great deal of suspicion, broke in again,--

"Why don't you answer my question, you rascal?"

But still Reubens maintained his equanimity, and went on with the test.

"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen--"

The mad neighbor stared harder than ever.

"Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one--"

"You're a mean skunk," said the mad neighbor, backing toward the fence.

Reubens's face flushed at this charge, but he only said,--

"Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six--"

At this figure the neighbor got up on the fence in some haste, but suddenly thinking of his peas, he opened his mouth,--

"You mean, low-lived rascal; for two cents I could knock your cracked head over a barn, and I would--"

"Twenty-seven, twenty-eight," interrupted Reubens, "twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three--"

Here the neighbor broke for the house, and entering it, violently slammed the door behind him; but Reubens did not dare let up on the enumeration, and so he stood out there alone in his own yard, and kept on counting, while his burning cheeks and flashing eyes eloquently affirmed his judgment. When he got up into the eighties his wife came to the door in some alarm.

"Why, Reubens, man, what is the matter with you?" she said. "Do come into the house."

But he didn't let up. She came out to him, and clung tremblingly to him, but he only looked into her eyes, and said,--

"Ninety-three, ninety-four, ninety-five, ninety-six, ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred--go into the house, old woman, or I'll bust ye."

And she went.

FIRST SUNDAY IN A NEW HOUSE.

THE first Sunday in a new house is a notable day. There is an entire absence of old landmarks, and a strange, weird newness on everything, and you can't find your shaving soap. You start for a scuttle of coal, but you don't see the scuttle. It is in the bottom of a barrel in the garret. You take the dripping pan. When you change your shirt, you look for it first. It is in one of the bureau drawers which are piled one upon another, in the parlor, and you find you have got to lift a half ton of carpets and feather beds before you can get down to the drawers. After you have lifted them down and searched them through, it is remembered by your wife that the desired garment is in one of the barrels--the one in the shed she thinks, although it may be the one in the garret, and yet it would be just like the stupid carman to have carried that barrel down cellar. You think so too. You attack one of those barrels, and are surprised at the result. A bed-quilt comes out first, then a pie-tin, next a piece of cold ham neatly done up in your vest and packed away in the missing scuttle. Below is an assortment of iron ware and a length of stove-pipe, a half loaf of bread, a couple of towels, and a rolling pin. You begin to expect you will eventually come upon a coal mine, and perhaps some dead friends. Then you go down in that barrel again, and come up with a pleasing assortment of stockings and half-emptied medicine bottles. The way you come up this time leads you to consider the barrel itself. It has caught in the back of your vest and made the cloth let go; it took off one-half of one sleeve, and created a sensation on the back of your hand as if a bonfire had raged there. It is quite evident the cooper who built that barrel was called away before he commenced to clinch the nails. You involuntarily grasp the rolling pin and look around as if you half expected to see him. Then you call the girl to repack the barrel, and start up stairs to look after something that is easier to find, but finally change your mind, and pass the balance of the day in digging carpet tacks and worthless wood from the palms of your feet, and concocting lies about the wealth of your uncle; and the moon looks through the window at night, and touches up with a glow of burnished silver, several lengths of stove-pipe, a half dozen odd chairs, a sheet of dingy zinc, and a barrel with bed-quilts foaming over the top.

THE DANBURY HORSE.

THE Danbury horse has a reputation above all other animals of the field. The chief claim of the Danbury horse to public favor and notice is the facility with which he will run away. He is always ready to run away. He will get up in the night from a refreshing sleep to run away. He will leave a meal of cream cakes and quail on toast to run away. He will sacrifice home, happiness, honor, and other people's property to run away. And when he gets started nobody ever thinks of getting in front of him. Once in a while a stranger attempts it, but there is a fund to furnish ice to pack his body with until his friends can come on, so there is no harm done. A Danbury horse is neither a respecter of occasions. He will run away from a post or an agricultural debate, or a funeral, and, in a tight pinch, would run away from a position in the New York custom house.

MORMON ANNIVERSARIES.

BRIGHAM YOUNG is now commencing to realize something tangible from his matrimonial investments. The anniversaries of those marriages are commencing to occur with astounding frequency. First there is a silver wedding, then a wooden wedding, and a tin wedding, and then another silver wedding, and, adjoining, a glass wedding, and then a tin wedding again, and next night still another silver wedding, and then a linen wedding, followed by a wooden wedding, which is succeeded by a glass wedding, and so on through the chapter. The effect on the Mormons--the rank and file of the faithful--can well be imagined, but the brush in a ten-acre lot of marrowfat peas couldn't paint it. The treasury is depleted. The Temple itself is warmed with three mortgages, and even the Revelation bids fair to ascend the spout. It is no uncommon thing to see a healthy Mormon skimming toward headquarters, with a silver pitcher under one arm and a coal-scuttle under the other, and a pleasing assortment of glass and wooden ware concealed about him. Our government has concluded to withdraw its troops.

A DANGEROUS SAFEGUARD.

THERE has been a gun standing behind a cupboard in a Pine-Street residence for the past eight years. It belonged to the occupant's father, and was set up there in a loaded condition. Its presence was always an eye-sore to the occupant's wife, who shared fully with the sex their fear of fire-arms. So the other day, Friday, we think, she induced her husband to take it down and fire it off. He had never fired off a gun that had been loaded eight years; in fact, he never fired off a gun at all; so he poked it out of a window and took aim into the garden, without the faintest shadow of fear. His wife being afraid of firearms, stood behind his back and looked over his shoulder with her eyes shut tightly. He shut his eyes, too, and then he pulled the trigger. What immediately followed, neither appears to have any settled idea. He says he can vaguely remember hearing a noise of some kind, and has an indistinct impression of passing over something which must have been his wife, as she was found between him and the window by the neighbors who drew him out of the fire-place.--The fact that one of his shoulders was set back about two inches, and that three of her teeth were imbedded in his scalp seemed to indicate that in stepping back from the window he had done so abruptly, and this conclusion, we are glad to say, was verified by both on being restored to consciousness.

THE BREAD PUDDING.

ONE of the best cement cellar-floors in this town is that of a Pine-Street resident, and the one who sincerely and even profanely regrets this fact is the man himself. His wife left a plate of bread pudding on the cellar stairs, Saturday, to cool for dinner, and unknown to her he went down there for a pitcher of cider. When he and the pudding met there was a time. His wife heard an awful crash which almost paralyzed her, but before she could move to see what was the matter, he came tearing into the kitchen with one hand on his pistol pocket, and the other swinging mysteriously in the air, and a streak of steaming pudding the whole length of his back, and he was shrieking camphor and profanity at every leap.

AMATEUR TREE-FELLING.

AN Essex-Street man cut down a shade tree which was in the way, Monday. When he got it about ready to fall, he hitched a rope to it, and his wife and wife's mother and father and himself got hold of the rope, and went out on the walk, and commenced to pull it. But the tree didn't budge. Then he told them to keep pulling while he took the axe and started it a little. So they bent all their muscle upon it, and opened their mouths and poked out their eyes as people always do on such an occasion, and he hit the tree a good clip with the axe. But it didn't budge. Then he jumped over the fence and said,--"Gi' me a hold of that rope." And just then, in a very unexpected manner, the tree came over, and not being able to catch themselves in time, the entire family went off the walk, and screaming and kicking into the mud. The old gentleman lost his spectacles, the old lady ruined a three-dollar head-dress, the wife lost her slippers, and the owner of the tree broke his nose in the middle, and knocked pretty much all the hide from one ear. He says Heaven is his home.

ONE OF MAN'S GREAT TRIALS.

THERE was an elderly gentleman wending his way to the barber's shop, Saturday afternoon. Coming from an opposite direction was an unshaven man. The shop lay between them. The unshaven man quickened his step; the elderly man struck into a trot. Then the unshaven stopped to look into a window, and the elderly man came back to a walk. Up started the unshaven man again, and the elderly man resumed his trot. The unshaven man once more slackened up; so did the elderly man. Then the unshaven man quickened his gait, and the elderly man once more struck into a trot, and reached the door panting and puffing, as the unshaven man went by. And yet women are dissatisfied with their sphere.

THE NELSON-STREET DOG.

A NELSON-STREET man is the unenvied owner of a dog that is a terror to the neighbors, purely by its snapping and snarling propensities. He snaps at everybody, and knows a little something of the flavor of everybody up that way. It is estimated that he has cloth enough in him to make a pair of breeches for every buoy on Long Island Sound. The other day a youth on that street loaded up the end of a stick with a mixture compounded of horse-radish and cayenne pepper, and commenced shaking it through the fence at the cur; and the cur flew up and caught the bait savagely, and the boy drew the stick away so sharply, that it left all the contents in the animal's mouth, and the animal chewed away on it in awful exultation for an instant. Then it commenced to stare, and then spit, and howl, and weep, and paw and roll over, and finally ran under the barn, where it remained for two days in religious seclusion. Now, when anybody pokes a stick through the fence, that dog don't step up. It merely looks over that way, as much as to say,--"No seasoning in mine, if you please."

SCIENTIFIC.

IF there is anybody who thinks Professor Winchell has been idle while the other astronomers were at work, he is mistaken. The Professor now comes out with a theory that rather overlaps the others, and coming from such an unexpected source, promises to make a sensation. The Professor has only been in the business a short time, but he has improved his opportunities. He says that the earth is to keep on cooling, and thus absorb the moisture, and after swallowing the several oceans, will make one magnificent gulp and take in the entire atmosphere. The next morning it will commence to whirl through space at a pace that will by comparison reduce the flight of a comet to the speed attained by an oyster on its way to a funeral, and the surface will bake brown, and shrivel up in heaps, and split open, and otherwise tend to obstruct business. In view of this event many people in Danbury have broken up house-keeping and gone to boarding, and one man on North Street has traded off a half-ton horse for a five-barreled telescope.

THE SCIENTISTS.

SCIENTIFIC men are around with trowels, knives, saws, and hammers, experimenting. As long as they dig into the ground or break chunks from boulders there is no particular harm done. But some of them cut off cats' tails to see what they are made of, and lift off the tops of dogs' heads to see their brains beat. This is a very interesting performance, to the scientific chaps, and would probably afford a great deal of wholesome recreation to the cats and dogs were they not unhappily prejudiced. An aged agriculturist from Stony Hill, told us this morning that he saw a dog stumble while running across a field, and that the top of its head flew off, and rolled into a hole and was lost. He went over and examined the animal and found that this piece had been sawed off, and stuck on again in a bungling manner, with the result recorded. The dog died before he could find the piece. Something still more remarkable than this is the saving of a dead man by replacing his brain with one taken from a live man. The man who thus gave up his brain not only refused to take three pairs of gate hinges and a screw driver for his intellect, but obligingly held a candle while the operation was going on. Country people who take scientific men for boarders should enclose their heads with hoop iron before going to bed.

DR. HALL'S CALISTHENICS.

DR. HALL says those people who are troubled with cold feet at bed-time should bend over and smartly slap the calves of their legs for about five minutes. This struck a young man who boards on Essex Street, to be about as sensible a piece of advice as he ever heard. So he put it to the test after disrobing himself on Saturday night. He bent over, and pounded away at himself, and all the time made a noise with his mouth, like the hiss of escaping steam. This noise attracted the attention of one of the boarders, and he told the landlady that there must be a fire in that room, because he could hear it siz, and could hear an alfired snapping and popping going on in there. The landlady didn't pause to argue. She caught up a pail and plunged for the place at once. The boarder followed with a gigantic clothes-brush. Both of them precipitated themselves into the room together. The advent was so sudden that the boarder who was warming himself had no chance to dodge. And there was too much momentum to the landlady and the other boarder to permit them to recover themselves in time. So there was a collision. The landlady saw it coming and instinctively held the pail in front of her. But the disciple of Hall didn't see it, as his back was to the door and his head nearly to the floor, and before he could look up, on hearing the door fly open, the visitors were on him, and the contents of the pail over him, and the three, with pail and clothes-brush, came down in a crash together. How the landlady extricated herself and got out of that room as quick as she did will always remain a mystery to the two men who stood there and glared at each other for some fifteen minutes.

A RECIPE FOR POULTERERS.

The Country Gentleman suggests a way to prevent hens from eating their eggs. It is to fill an egg with a solution of pepper, and put the egg back in the nest. A Danbury man has tried this and says it works like a charm. He put a pretty good dose of pepper in the egg, and placed it in the nest of the criminal. Pretty soon the hen came around, and took hold. It was a brindle animal, with long legs, and somewhat conceited. It dipped in its bill and inhaled the delicacy. Then it came out doors. It didn't gallop out, we don't mean, but it came out--came out to look at the scenery, and see if it was going to rain. Its mouth was wide open, and the feathers on the top of its head stood straight up. Then it commenced to go around the yard like a circus horse. Once in a while it would stop and push out one leg in a tone of astonishment, and then holler "Fire," and start on again. The other hens came out to look on. Soon the hens from the neighbors came over the fence, and took up a position of observation. It was quite evident that the performance was something entirely new and unique to them. There is a good deal of human nature in hens. When they saw this hen dance around and have all the fun to itself, and heard it shout "Fire," and couldn't see the conflagration themselves, they filled up with wrath, and of one accord sprang upon it, and before the Danbury man could interfere, the brindle hen with the long legs was among the things that were. He says the recipe is effectual.

DRIVING A HEN.

WHEN a woman has a hen to drive into the coop, she takes hold of her hoops with both hands, and shakes them quietly toward the delinquent, and says, "Shew, there!" The hen takes one look at the object, to convince herself that it's a woman, and then stalks majestically into the coop, in perfect disgust of the sex. A man don't do that way. He goes out of doors and says, "It is singular nobody in this house can drive a hen but myself." And, picking up a stick of wood, hurls it at the offending biped, and observes, "Get in there, you thief." The hen immediately loses her reason, and dashes to the opposite end of the yard. The man straightway dashes after her. She comes back again with her head down, her wings out, and followed by an assortment of stove-wood, fruit-cans, and coal-clinkers, with a much-puffing and very mad man in the rear. Then she skims up on the stoop, and under the barn, and over a fence or two, and around the house, and back again to the coop, all the while talking as only an excited hen can talk, and all the while followed by things convenient for handling, and by a man whose coat is on the sawbuck, and whose hat is on the ground, and whose perspiration and profanity appear to have no limit. By this time the other hens have come out to take a hand in the debate, and help dodge the missiles--and then the man says every hen on the place shall be sold in the morning, and puts on his things and goes down the street, and the woman dons her hoops, and has every one of those hens housed and contented in two minutes, and the only sound heard on the premises is the hammering by the eldest boy as he mends the broken pickets.

WHAT DID YOU RUN FOR?

A YOUNG man from one of the suburbs appeared from a store on West Street, on Saturday noon, in quest of the family team; but not discerning it, stepped quickly to the corner of Main Street, and looked up that avenue just in time to detect the familiar establishment about turning into White Street on the homeward course. Then he took his hat in his hand and struck out on the chase at a speed that was wonderful. A clerk in a store that he shot by, ran out to see what was the matter, and finding a man fleeing for dear life, he put after him. This created a curiosity in a man who was digging out a gutter, and he forthwith dropped his shovel and joined in with commendable alacrity. And then a milkman, who was getting into his cart, suddenly changed his mind and went legging up the street in rear of the others. Two merchants talking about materialism dropped the subject and picked up their heels in the same direction. Then five boys instinctively took a leg in. These were followed by a number of elderly people; and before the suburban youth reached White Street, he became painfully aware that he was pursued. This led him to redouble his exertions, but the increase communicated itself to the surging mass behind; and when he turned into White Street, his eyes stood out like billiard balls, and his hair pointed heavenward mostly. On this avenue he found himself so sorely pressed that he jumped into the first open hatchway and disappeared in the darkness of the cellar. The panting and eager crowd shot up to the entrance, and almost into it, and after peering into the darkness without seeing anything, commenced to look at each other. Then the silence was broken. "Who was he?" said one. "I don't know," said another. "What had he been doing?" asked the third. "I don't know," said the fourth. Then they stared at each other again, and the first man said: "Don't anybody know who he is?" No answer. And then the first man, who appeared to be burning up with curiosity, added, "What in thunder did you run for then?" "Because I saw the others run. What did you run for?" "Well, that's the reason I run." This seemed to exhaust the topic, and the crowd gravely dispersed.

THE NEW BOOTS.

IT is a little singular how well a pair of boots can be made to fit at the store. You may not be able to get your foot only part way down the leg at the first trial, but that is because your stocking is sweaty, or you haven't started right; and the shoemaker suggests that you start again and stand up to it, and he throws in a little powder from a pepper-box to aid you. And so you stand up, and pound down your foot and partly trip yourself up, and your eyes stick out in an unpleasant manner, and every vein in your body appears to be on the point of bursting, and all the while that dealer stands around and eyes the operation as intently as if the whole affair was perfectly new and novel to him. When your foot has finally struck bottom there is a faint impression on your mind that you have stepped into an open stove; but he removes it by solemnly observing that he never saw a boot fit quite as good as that. You may suggest that your toe presses too hard against the front, or that some of the bones in the side of the foot are too much smashed, but he says that is always the way with a new boot, and that the trouble will entirely disappear in a few days. Then you take the old pair under your arm and start for home as animated as a relic of 1812, all the while feeling that the world will not look bright and happy to you again until you have brained that shoemaker. You limp down town the next day, and smile all the while with your mouth, while your eyes look as if you were walking over an oyster bed barefoot. When no one is looking, you kick against a post or some other obstruction, and show a fondness for stopping and resting against something that will sustain your weight. When you get home at night you go for those old boots with an eagerness that cannot be described, and the remarks you make upon learning that your wife has disposed of them to a widow woman in the suburbs, are calculated to immediately depopulate the earth of women and shoemakers generally.

THE FAMILY HAMMER

THERE is one thing no family pretends to do without,--that is a hammer. And yet there is nothing that goes to make up the equipment of a domestic establishment that causes one-half as much agony and profanity as a hammer. It is always an old hammer, with a handle that is inclined to sliver, and always bound to slip. The face is as round as a full moon and as smooth as glass. When it strikes a nail full and square, which it has been known to do, the act will be found to result from a combination of pure accidents. The family hammer is one of those rare articles we never profit by. When it glides off a nail head, and mashes down a couple of fingers, we unhesitatingly deposit it in the yard, and observe that we will never use it again. But the blood has hardly dried on the rag before we are out doors in search of that hammer, and ready to make another trial. The result rarely varies, but we never profit by it. The awful weapon goes on knocking off our nails, and mashing whole joints, and slipping off the handle to the confusion of mantel ornaments, and breaking the commandments, and cutting up an assortment of astounding and unfortunate antics, without let or hindrance. And yet we put up with it, and put the handle on again, and lay it away where it won't get lost, and do up our mutilated and smarting fingers; and yet, if the outrageous thing should happen to disappear, we kick up a regular hullabooloo until it is found again. Talk about the tyrannizing influence of a bad habit! It is not to be compared to the family hammer.

STREET LIFE IN DANBURY.

OLD Mr. Watson, on Nelson Street, has got a nice little bill to pay. He sent a man down town for a pot of paint and a ladder. The man got the paint, and then went to a lumber yard after a ladder. Then he tied the paint pot on the end of the ladder, and put the ladder on his shoulder. This was a very smart arrangement, and the man himself admired it very much. He started for home this way, and didn't find any trouble in getting along the first block, because people had an impression that a long ladder with a pot of yellow paint dangling on the end of it wasn't exactly the thing to trifle with, so they balanced along on the curb stone, or rubbed up against the buildings. Pretty soon the man saw somebody in a store he knew, and he turned around to speak to him, and drove one end of the ladder into a millinery case and knocked the crown out of an eighteen-dollar bonnet. Then he backed off in affright, and knocked down two sewing-machine agents with the other end. Then he started to turn around, and an old gentleman who was desperately endeavoring to pull his wife out of danger, saw the peril, and shouted out,--"Hi, there!" But it was too late. The pot struck against an awning post, tipped to one side, and the entire contents went over the aged couple. This so startled the man that he {illustration of a man carrying a ladder over his shoulder, a pail of paint is attached to the end of the ladder. A couple standing near him look concerned.} STREET LIFE IN DANBURY whirled completely around, smashing in an entire store front, frightening a milkman's team, and knocking over some thirteen persons who were actively dodging about to get out of the way. Then he dropped the ladder and fled into the country shouting "Murder" and "Fire" at every jump. A regular ordained painter is now engaged on Mr. Watson's house.

RAFTING.

RAFTING is the prevailing popular amusement with juveniles this month. The boy whose parents own the pond, is generally chosen captain of the craft. The raft quite frequently consists of a couple of boards the captain's father has laid away to season. The captain stands at the bow and hollers, and the other officers, whose claim to the berth principally rests on the fact that they have dry pants at home, stand at the stern, and spatter water on outsiders who are on the shore with their hands in their breeches' pockets and guile in their hearts. They thus navigate for hours at a time, and then fight over the distance they have made, and finally go home to see their parents about it, and are dried with a bed cord, and put to bed, where they can feel of their injuries without molestation.

CIRCUS DAY IN DANBURY.

A PRETTY fair index of Mr. Barnum's control over the credulity of an American public, was given on Saturday. The day was unpleasant, to use the mildest type of expression, but the streets were thronged with a mass of people--some of them coming twenty miles over the very bad roads. It was an enthusiasm no rain could dampen--no possible combination of circumstances flatten.

There were three tents--two small and one very large one. The former enclose the menagerie and museum--the latter the arena. I attended the afternoon performance out of curiosity, and the evening entertainment out of revenge. I was a little disappointed in the menagerie, because I had depended on that and the museum for the bulk of my happiness on this occasion. The most noted specimens of the forest and jungle were those which appeared on the bills but not in the cages. Here was a discrepancy I could not reconcile with the proprietor's well-known honesty and enterprise. I cast a few reproachful glances upon the specimens that good living and virtuous precepts had preserved to such a good old age, and passed to the museum. There was a visible improvement in this place. The mind was illuminated by the lady who wrote the autograph with her toes, and the heart made glad by various other articles I cannot recall to mind.

When I got inside the large tent I was surprised. A sea of faces spread out before and around me. The tier seats are crowded, the ring seats are crowded, the gang-ways are crowded. It is a mass of suffocation, fun, and sweat. I don't think I ever saw so large an attendance at a prayer meeting, and I have been to many of them.

I really enjoyed the sight. Here was one of the grandest views to be seen. Myriads of people of every clime--every temper, disposition, mind, and heart. Here, embraced in an area of a few hundred yards, might be observed--

"Why don't that bald-headed reptile set down?" cried a coarse voice behind me. I looked around. A red-faced, illiterate man was glowing down upon me from a tier seat. Passion disturbed his features; the man was really mad. I cast a sorrowful glance upon him and sat down. There were fifty or sixty people between me and the ring. I had not made any calculation for this when I came, and so I didn't appreciate it. Occasionally somebody hollered, "Down in front." Whenever I heard the cry I singled out the author and bestowed a grateful glance upon him. It was the finest oration I ever heard, and my appreciation of it was sharpened, I think, by the remarkably uncomfortable position I had got into. I had an excellent view of the tent, and, once in a while, of the ridge pole of the giant who stood nearly opposite. I knew there was something going on in the ring, but if I had been prostrated on my dying couch I could not have told what it was. But I knew whenever a different act commenced, because the folks in front of me stood up on the seats, and the folks behind me put their children on my head, and their umbrellas down my back, and remarked audibly to each other,--

"Was there ever anything like it?"

And I, staring idiotically into the back of the man in front of me, fervently hoped there was not.

But all things have an end, and the dreary afternoon performance was not an exception. The last act was performed; the clown finally convulsed the audience; the children in the rear were pulled out of my hair, and I was permitted to fall over, roll around, and eventually get on my feet. With the crowd gone I stole back to the tent and took one fond, piercing glance at what I had not yet seen,--the ring.

The oldest inhabitant will never forget the severity of the storm in the evening. The rain descended in torrents, the air was chilly and raw, and the night was one in which all the sores in your heart are made bare to the sight. I knew there would be no attendance upon the show, but I thought I would go over. When I got there I found about one thousand people present, mostly ladies and umbrellas. They flocked into the tent, by wax figures, and up to the arena--the umbrellas shining in the light of the lamps, and a thousand irresponsible rivulets falling swiftly. The huge crowd looked like a party of immigrants on their way to colonize the Atlantic Ocean. The short people labored under a striking disadvantage. The prongs of the surrounding alpaca caught in their bonnet strings, and tried to disengage themselves by washing off those articles. Men who had acquired the filthy habit of profanity held the highest position in the party, and were much sought after. Everybody sincerely regretted he had come, and at the same time renewed his exertions to get close to the ring. Occasionally some one fell down, and his neighbors stepped on him and walked over him, and facetiously enquired, "How was that for high?" Little girls with dazzling patches of fashionable glory on their heads were jammed, jarred, and impartially stirred up. The man who held on to his wife with one hand, five fractious children in the other, and balanced a ten-shilling umbrella on his chin, attracted general attention. The enthusiasm was really sublime during the entire show. What it would have been if the bulk of the audience could have occasionally seen what was going on in the ring, the human mind fails to calculate. But the rain came through the canvas in torrents, although several men were sent on the roof with patches, and the ghastly dreariness of the spectacle became more and more condensed. The giant loomed up through the fog and misery like a wart on a popular man's nose. The clown retired to the recesses of the dressing room and wrung himself out, while the great basso player emptied his instrument over the profane drummer, and the crowd of disgusted and dilapidated people clawed and pushed their way out doors.

THE PARTICULAR MAN.

THE particular man makes more trouble and causes more annoyance and delay than a half dozen careless people. When he is traveling he puts his ticket in a place so remarkably secure that not only dishonest people cannot find it, but he can't find it himself. This tends to make him confused in his search and unreliable in his statements to the conductor, and after working up that worthy to a degree of misery that borders pretty closely on to profanity, he either pays his fare over or is put off the train. After he gets home he puts a piece in the local paper, which speaks of the road as a "grinding monopoly."

THE FIRST DOG.

IT is a little singular, as fond as I am of dogs, that I never enjoyed an undisputed title to one until the other day. I have frequently, to be sure, had a dog in my possession when I was a boy, but the possession was acquired by persuasiveness, and was but temporary, as my parent on my father's side entertained morbid prejudice against dogs, and never missed an opportunity to show his aversion.

The dog I refer to as being strictly my own, was one I bought of a man named Robbins, who lives some distance down town. I gave him two dollars for the dog, on his own representations. He said it was a good animal, but had a little more of life and energy than were proper in a dog where there were hens on the premises. I don't keep hens, so this was no objection in my case.

In the evening, I went down to his place after my purchase. It was a tall dog, with a long body, long legs, a long neck, and a very short tail. The color was a dirty yellow. His body was lank as well as long, which gave the impression that he had missed meals when he did not design to. I was a little disappointed in his general appearance, but there was a good frame, and time with plenty of wholesome food would undoubtedly complete a gratifying metamorphosis.

Robbins gave me a good supply of rope, with which I made my animal fast, and started for home. We jogged along very nicely together. Occasionally I paused to pat him affectionately, adding some remark of a confidential nature. In this way we progressed until we reached the business part of the town. I don't know how to account for it, but he suddenly stopped, in a dogged manner, and commenced to rare back and cut up variously. Perhaps the glare of the lights confused his mind--perhaps he may have got the impression I was a butcher, or something of that sort. Whatever it may have been, he was certainly acting in a strange manner. He pulled back with wonderful vigor, bracing his feet, and vibrating his head swiftly. The skin lopped over his eyes, while the joints in my body seemed to turn completely around in their sockets.

He pulled back like this, until I thought his entire hide would slip over his head, then he abruptly came forward, and I struck the pavement on my back with a velocity that threatened to destroy my further usefulness in this world.

He did this three or four times within the distance of a block, and finally I suggested if he did it again I should feel tempted to kick in some of his ribs as an experiment.

At this time, three boys gave an unexpected variety to the performance by getting in the animal's rear, and enlivening him with a pointed stick.

He very soon got the impression that the boys were not actuated by friendly designs, and he came up nearer to me--and, eventually, went past.

It may be well to remark just here that, when he went past, he carried a portion of my pantaloon leg with him--a circumstance many would not mention, perhaps, but it struck me as being a very singular proceeding, especially as my leg was next to, and in close proximity with the cloth.

He went ahead so fast that it was nearly impossible to restrain him, and went the entire length of the rope, before I succeeded in checking him. As there were quite a number of people on the street at the time, it naturally increased my interest in his movements.

The rope was a bed cord; it was full forty feet long; the dog was about four feet--in all forty-four feet. It was a pretty long line of communication to keep up on a crowded thoroughfare, especially with a mad and hungry dog on the loose end of it. He was straining with all his might, and drawing me along at a rapid but not graceful gait. When I occasionally got my eyes down to a level with the walk, it was to discover him crawling out from under somebody, with various results. Sometimes, as in the case of very heavy people, they did not get fairly on their feet, until I got abreast of them. These people invariably called my attention to the subject, and would have got my fairest views on it, had it been possible to have held up long enough to open my mouth.

I endured these things pleasantly enough; but when a man and woman both came down together, and the rope got mysteriously twisted about three other people, and seesawed them in a wonderfully fearful manner, I lost all desire to own a dog, and let go of my end of the rope.

It immediately transpired that no one was needed there. The people who were seesawing across the walk, and shouting for their friends, were so inconceivably entangled in the rope, that they held the dog as firmly as a piece of meat could have done. The old gentleman and lady were full as mysteriously mixed, both screaming vigorously--although it is but fair to state that the former appeared to take the liveliest interest in the matter, as he was next to the dog, and in a very exposed condition, I regret to add.

It at once resolved itself into such an exclusively private affair, that I didn't have the heart to do anything which would look like interfering, and so I sat down on a box, and rubbed my leg, and looked on to see what the party would eventually do.

As it is reasonable to expect, a crowd gathered, and that dog was stepped on and walked over a number of times, but I can honestly affirm I do not recollect seeing anyone step on him the second time. There was a great deal of confusion, of course, and the two elderly people were four or five minutes, getting up and down, before they fairly reached their feet. And when the old gentleman did get up, good and square, I was surprised and shocked to observe another gentleman who was, I presume, the husband of the old lady, fetch him a clip between the eyes, that sent him on his back with great speed. Of course, he didn't know anything about the dog and the rope, but he ought not to have been so hasty. This is what the people thought, undoubtedly, for they yelled their disapprobation, and crowded up closer, while that wretched dog came back to see what was now restraining him, but not being able to distinguish the present source of trouble, he split the difference and the calf of a new party's leg, and took off a good share of the tail to the irate husband's coat.

The vivacity of that animal is the most remarkable thing of this season. He didn't waste any time on superfluous ceremonies, but rapidly notified all within reach of his intentions, and when he did get loose, and left, I didn't see anybody follow him.

I guess they pretty much shared my opinion of the animal: that the less they had to do with him the more there would be of them for other purposes.

THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE.

IT is said there is a boy in Concord, New Hampshire, who can repeat the multiplication table backwards, and he is only nine years old.

We know that boy. We were never in Concord, but we know him. We lived next door to that boy when we were a boy, and it is not so long ago but that we remember him distinctly. He always went to bed at eight o'clock, and had a slight cough. He brushed his hair back of his ears, and carried a store handkerchief, and when he played marbles it was to win. He always got home from school before we did, and employed the interval in detailing to his mother the "belting" that boy next door was getting. And indeed we were getting it, but there was no special interest in it for other folks. He was the model boy, the boy our parents used to point to, and speak of, in tones of mingled admiration and regret, while unfitting us for sitting on anything harder than a poultice. He never ran away from school, nor stole money, but he used to throw mud on old people, when they weren't looking, and unselfishly throw the credit on us. And then to see that boy come around into our yard with jam on his bread.--That was the last feather--that was the climax to all the sorrows our young heart knew. We could have willingly forgiven everything else, but that jam upset us. It went right down into our heart of hearts, and it rankles there yet. It sent us into the house bawling for jam, and getting it, but not on our bread. We remember that with ghastly distinctness.

THE EFFECTS OF A SNEEZE.

AN old Danburian, whose sneeze is something like a thunder bolt, let off a charge on Balmforth Avenue, Friday afternoon, near to a wagon in which a farmer from Sugar Hollow was sitting counting money. The horses were so startled by the noise that they sprang forward, and started off at a mad speed, leaving their owner floundering in the mud and clutching desperately to a roll of scrip. The old gentleman was amazed at what had happened, but he was completely dumbfounded when the farmer arose from the mud, and climbed a fence, and looked all around. Then he came down and went up a tree. The old gentleman thought he had struck on his head and injured his brain. Pretty soon the farmer came down from the tree, and drew a long breath, and said: "It must have been thunder, but I thought it was a gun."

NIGHTMARE.

DR. HALL says that when a person has got a nightmare he is in danger, and should be awakened at once, without any reference to the agency. In this way doctors, we think, do a good deal of harm. A young man named Mephitus was lying on his back, Sunday afternoon, singing to himself, and with his eyes closed in a sort of ecstasy over his efforts, when his father rushed into the room, and planted a kick in the ribs of the vocalist that sounded all over the house. The entire family were three hours bringing that young man back to consciousness, but the trouble seems as nothing in view of the fact that he might have died had not his father come in as he did.

WALT WHITMAN.

WALT WHITMAN is writing more of his poetry. The last is an ode to America. He intelligently observes:--

{smaller text}

What if that gift of gift thou lack'st? The perfect feminine of thee? The beauty, health, completion fit for thee? The mothers fit for thee?

And here he stops. Not a word of how the battle resulted, but just drops down and leaves the reader to imagine the result. This is the secret of his success. His stops make him popular. The more he stops the more popular he becomes. If he should stop altogether the public would give him a monument, and perhaps a horse.

AN UNPLEASANT DISCOVERY.

DR. TRALL, of Philadelphia, has made a very unpleasant discovery. In about seven years Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune will approach nearer the earth than they have been in eighteen hundred years; and the result will be a pestilence. When Congress has the manliness to make astronomy an indictable offence, then we shall have relief from these things, but not before. It was not a long while since that some one predicted that the earth would be swamped with a deluge, and you couldn't borrow an umbrella or a pair of rubbers from any one. The next idiot said a comet would strike and demolish the earth in a twinkling. Whereupon many excellent people tied their beds and carpets about their premises, and put cotton in their ears, and sat down on the cellar bottom in dreadful expectation of the shock. Hardly had this alarm passed off when another astronomer came around telling people that the Niagara Falls would be dry in less than nineteen thousand years, and nothing would do but that people should hurry right out there for a farewell look, and in less than twenty-four hours there wasn't people enough in Danbury to entertain a Japanese hermit. And now here is Thrall with four planets and no vaccine matter. All the tobacco-chewers are to be killed by these planets, and young ladies who wear stays, and men who bet on the wrong horse. If we understand the old scoundrel correctly the only people saved are those who drink lemonade out of a dipper and play copenhagen with their aunts.

SWEATING A DOG.

ONE of our citizens owns a pet dog which was recently taken very sick. A friend prescribed a sweat, and wrapped the dog up in blankets, and suspended him over an alcohol bath, and sat down to wait for the result. The dog's face was covered up so that it could not be seen, but we can imagine how he laughed to himself when he thought the matter all over. Sweating a dog is a good deal like bringing down a weather vane with a handful of stewed corn, only a trifle harder.

ON HORSE-RADISH.

MR. SWIFT, mail messenger on the Danbury and Norwalk road, is devotedly attached to horse-radish. In fact, it is the only herb he takes to anyway. The other day, in South Norwalk, he picked up a handful of parsnips, and finding the price he bought some. Then he put them in the mail room of the car, and smiled serenely on the world. The dealer learning of Swift's mistake, told the other folks on the car what had happened, and before the train arrived in Danbury, Conductor Pulling slapped himself on the head, as people are apt to do when suddenly reminded of something, and said,--

"There, my folks told me to get some horse radish in the root when I was at Norwalk, and I have forgotten all about it."

"Is that so?" said the accommodating Swift, as a halo of delight illuminated his face. "Well, I have just bought some myself, and you can have part of it just as well as not. Help yourself in the paper there," pointing to his package.

Conductor Pulling gravely removed the wrapper, and picking up one of the roots, said,--

"Why, that ain't horse-radish; that is parsnip."

"Parsnip!" shrieked Swift, as he dove into the package, and nervously took a bite. And the next moment the parsnips were put off the train, and Swift commenced to tell about an uncle of his who had a horse that could open a door with his foot. But the boys couldn't help thinking of that other horse--the radish.

THE ALARM CLOCK.

AN afflicted son sends us the following account of how his father played it on a family of tormentors:

It appears that the old gentleman, who lives in New Fairfield, is troubled by a family in the neighborhood who are the proud possessors of some ten or twelve children. His health is very poor, and for years he has been an invalid. These children persisted in visiting the house and tormenting him to death with questions and noises. As all threats and coaxings had no effect, the old gentleman hit upon a singular device for relief from the trouble. He has a vigorous old alarm clock in the house, that when it goes off makes a noise somewhat like a boiler explosion. This clock he set to go off in about fifteen minutes, and then he called the children in from the yard, where they were successfully imitating a cat fight, and commenced to tell them stories about explosions of gunpowder and glycerine, and of how, after the explosions, valuable parts of members of the community were picked up here and there, sometimes a leg, and then a head, and again an arm, and so on. The children warmed up wonderfully in the subject, and permitted their lower jaws to drop in wrapt amazement. Then he went on to say that if a pound of glycerine was exploded in a clock the entire house would be blown down, and people who happened to be promenading in that direction could fill a flour barrel with livers and legs and heads and shin-bones and arms, and just then the clock sounded the first warning of thir-r-r-r-r-r, and stopped. The children shot an apprehensive glance up at it. And the old gentleman looked up, too, apparently very much scared. Then he cried out "Oh! Oh!" and commenced to lean for the door. And the children started, too, and then the clock went off like a thunder storm, and the old fellow shrieked at the top of his voice,--"Oh! Heaven protect us! Run! run for your lives, the d--d thing will bust."

And under the inspiration of this awfully solemn injunction, the youngsters drove for the open door, uttering a chorus of shrieks, and bucking up against everything in their way in their blind terror. That was a month ago, and they haven't been over since to hear any anecdotes.

AWAKING A BOY.

CALLING a boy up in the morning can hardly be classed under the head of "pastimes," especially if the boy is fond of exercise the day before. And it is a little singular that the next hardest thing to getting a boy out of bed is getting him into it. There is rarely a mother who is a successful at rousing a boy. All mothers know this; so do their boys. And yet the mother seems to go at it in the right way. She opens the stair door and insinuatingly observes: "Johnny." There is no response. "John-ny." Still no response. Then there is a short, sharp "John," followed a moment later by a prolonged and emphatic "John Henry." A grunt from the upper regions signifies that an impression has been made, and the mother is encouraged to add, "You'd better be getting down here to your breakfast, young man, before I come up there, an' give you something you'll feel." This so startles the young man that he immediately goes to sleep again. And the operation has to be repeated several times. A father knows nothing about this trouble. He merely opens his mouth as a soda bottle ejects its cork, and the 'John Henry" that cleaves the air of that stairway, goes into that boy like electricity, and pierces the deepest recesses of his very nature. And he pops out of that bed and into his clothes, and down the stairs, with a promptness that is commendable. It is rarely a boy allows himself to disregard the paternal summons. About once a year is believed to be as often as is consistent with the rules of health. He saves his father a great many steps by his thoughtfulness.

MR. PERKINS HELPS TO MOVE A STOVE.

IT seems a pity that the glory of these bright May days should be marred by the gross materialism of soap and brush, mop and broom; that the fragrant and delicate perfumes of budding nature and atmospherical freshness should be harnessed to the doubtful aroma of an upturned house. But over our broad and beautiful land the terrors of domestic reform hold sway, and the masculine mind is harrowed by spectacles the little happiness we are allotted in this world does not warrant.

Mrs. Perkins has devoted this week to the onerous duty of cleaning house. Since six o'clock Monday morning that estimable lady has been the motive power of many brushes and cloths, and of much water and soap. At various hours when I have made my appearance near the house I have caught sight of her portly form through several windows, a flaring handkerchief concealing her temples, and covering the site of her chignon.

There was an expression of deep redness upon her features that pained me while I beheld, but which at the same time led me to remark to myself that it was not the most favorable time for making a call, and thus looking and apprehending, I would turn sadly away.

Monday morning we had our breakfast in our comfortable dining room. At noon I took my dinner from the lid of the ice chest. It was dreadful cold, and tasted clammy and disagreeable. In the evening I stood back of the stove and took of a slice of bread, (the butter had got mislaid) and drank some of last year's tea from the irregular spout of the milk pitcher. In the morning we ate breakfast in the sink, (there was no fire in the stove, as it was to be kept cold for moving). The victuals had a flavor of great dampness, and tasted as though they had been fished out of the soap barrel. After astonishing my internal structure with the meal, I accepted an invitation from Mrs. Perkins to take down the stove. In justice to myself it may be well to remark that I never took down a stove, nor was present when that intricate performance was going on, and this, in a measure, accounts for the slight misgiving I may have entertained when brought face to face with the tremendous range.

The conversation that ensued was something like this,--

"You want to use great care, Mr. Perkins, and not let the whole thing fall on you, and kill yourself."

This appeared reasonable enough, and I readily promised to use my best endeavors to keep the whole thing from falling upon me.

"And, Mr. Perkins, don't get nervous with the pipe, because Mary Ann has just scrubbed the floor, and that stuff gringes in awfully."

I hadn't the remotest idea of what the stuff could be that gringes in awfully, but I didn't like to show ignorance before Mary Ann, and so I confidently responded,--

"Certainly not."

"And be very careful about your clothes, Mr. Perkins; now won't you?" This appeal was delivered with so much confidence mingled with doubt, that I hardly knew whether to treat it as a compliment, or a suspicion, and concluded it was best to split the difference, and preserve silence.

"We are all ready now, Mr. Perkins. Mary Ann, you come here and steady the pipe while Mr. Perkins gets on the chair and takes it down."

Upon this I mounted a chair and grasped the pipe, but I must not neglect to mention that as I grasped the pipe, Mrs. Perkins grasped my legs.

"Goodness gracious, Cyrus Davidson Perkins! don't you know better than to stand on one of the best chairs in the house, and break right through the canes?"

I had to admit that I didn't know any better, but cheerfully got down and mounted another chair. This time I caught the pipe by its neck, and gave it a gentle pull from the chimney. It didn't move a bit, which encouraged me to believe I could bring a little more muscle into play, and under this impression I gave an extra twist. It came this time, and so much more readily than I had reason to expect, that I stepped down to the floor with it, passing over the top of the stove, and rubbing off an inch or so of skin from Mary Ann's nose.

"O, Moses!" screamed that lady.

"What have you done? O, what have you done?" cried Mrs. Perkins.

Singularly enough, I didn't say anything, but got upon my feet as quick as I could, and rubbed my head, and looked all around but where Mrs. Perkins and her weeping aid were standing.

"It's just like a man. You have made ten times more work than you have helped. Mary Ann, get the floor cloth. And there's a great spot on that floor we can never get off. I'd like to make a fool of myself, I know I should. I knew when you stuck your ungainly carcass on that chair, you would kill somebody. Does it hurt you, Mary Ann. I wouldn't rub it too hard; we'll have to take it up dry and soap it over. You awkward fool, didn't you know what you were doing? Now take the pipe out doors, and don't look any more like a smoked idiot than you can help."

The manner in which this last was uttered left no room to doubt that I was the person referred to, and I picked up the pipe, and sorrowfully propelled it out doors; although I am compelled to admit that six links of pipe varied by two elbows at opposite angles, is not the most desirable thing in the world to escort out doors.

When I came back, Mrs. Perkins had dressed the wound on Mary Ann's face with a strip of brown paper, and told me I might help to carry the stove into the shed, if I was sure of being quite sober.

Upon this invitation I took hold of the range with the two ladies, and by loosening half a dozen joints in my spine, I was finally successful in getting the thing out of the room. But the pleasure of the occasion was irretrievably lost. Mrs. Perkins was ominously silent. Mary Ann's air was one of reproach which, combined with the brown paper, gave her an appearance of unearthly uncertainty.

At dinner that day I ate some cold cabbage and a couple of soda crackers, carefully picking off the flakes of soap that adhered thereto. This morning I ate my breakfast on the stoop, and got my dinner through the milk-room window, eating it from the sill. It consisted of the last slice from yesterday's loaf, and two decrepit herrings.

What we are to have for supper, and whether it will be necessary to go home after it, are questions that depress me this P.M.

{centered}

Yours respectfully,

{right justified}

CYRUS D. PERKINS.

HOW A YOUNG MAN REMOVED A CALF.

A DANBURY young man who was once a clerk, lately went on a farm to work. The first night in his new position he was detailed to remove a calf from the apartment of its parent to another shed, and while engaged, as thousands have been before him, in shoving the contrary beast along, the mother reached under the tails of his coat with her horns, and suddenly lifted him up against the roof of the building with a force that threatened to shatter every bone in his body. The first thing he did on returning to earth was to rub himself, the next thing was to throw up his place. He said he didn't doubt that agriculture was a noble pursuit, and that the farmer needed an assistant in the discharge of the multifarious duties, but he didn't believe the Creator designed him for making skylights in cow sheds.

A VERY FRIENDLY HORSE.

I DON'T really believe a yellow horse is any worse by nature than a bay horse, or a white horse, or a horse of any color or combination of colors; but our judgment of things in this world is often liable to be influenced by our prejudices. For this reason, perhaps, I cannot look upon a yellow horse with any feelings of delight.

A yellow horse was standing at the depot in Washington the time I came down the Shepaug road. Looking at the animal as he felt around casually with his hind foot for his owner's brains, my mind receded back to the home of my childhood.

It seemed so blessed to lean back in the seat, and with partly closed eyes give myself up to reveries to retrospective.

I remember quite distinctly the day my parent brought home a yellow horse; in fact, I can without much difficulty pick out any day of the eight which that animal passed in our society. He was a comely beast, with long limbs, a straight body, and eyes that would rival those of an eagle in looking hungry.

When he came into the yard we all went out to look at him. It was an evening--clear, bright, and beautiful. My parent stood near the well holding the animal by a halter. We had a dog, a black and white, and if there ever was a dog who thought he had a head stowed full of knowledge it was that dog.

How plainly I can see him approach that yellow horse, to smell of his heels. He ought to have got more of a smell than he did, considering that he lost the greater part of one ear in the attempt. It was done so quick that it is possible we would not have known anything about it, had the dog not spoken of it himself.

He never smelt of that yellow horse again. The flavor wasn't what he had been used to, I think.

Three days later when he was turning around, to speak to a flea near his tail, as is customary with dogs, that yellow horse unexpectedly reached down, and took a mouthful of spinal joints out of the dog's back, and the mortification from being thus caught preyed so heavily upon the dog's mind that he died in a minute or two.

That evening mother interested father with an account of Caper's death while he was waiting for her to replace the collar the yellow horse that afternoon had snatched from his best coat.

And thus time passed. But the horse lost none of it. There wasn't a neighbor within a half mile of our house but bore some mark of that animal's friendship. Like death he was no respecter of persons. He never stopped to inquire whether a man was worth a million dollars or ten cents when reaching for him. He may have had some curiosity about it afterwards, but he never showed it.

Finally people came to avoid him when they met him on the street. I don't think they did it purposely, but it seemed to come natural to them to rush through the first doorway or over the most convenient fence when they saw him approach. This inexplicable dread communicated itself to the very dogs on the street, but before they had come fairly to understand him, he had succeeded in reducing the price of a winter-breakfast luxury to almost a mere song.

After that they looked up to him with the respect exacted by a Hindoo god with two changes of underclothes, and no dog within three blocks of us would think of going to sleep at night without first coming over to see if that horse was locked up. It was instinct, probably.

My parent never enjoyed a single day of the eight he was the sole possessor of the animal. He nipped away some portion of him every once in a while. My parent was not a profane man, but he was sorely tempted to be every hour in the day. The man who lived next to us was a profound swearer. He owned a horse that was a model of goodness in every respect--as gentle as a lamb, and as lovable as a girl of sixteen. My father could never understand this. He always spoke of it as one of the inscrutable ways of providence.

There was only one person that had anything to do with the animal who came out of that fiery ordeal unscathed. He was the hired man, and he owed his salvation to a misfortune. He was cross-eyed. He was a great source of misery to that yellow horse. The misformation of his eyes was calculated to deceive even smarter beings. The beast kicked at him a few times when he was evidently looking the other way, but that was just the time he was bearing one eye strongly on him, and he missed; and when he really was not looking was just the time the beast thought he was, and so it went through the entire eight days, both stomach and heels yearning for a morsel of him, but never getting it.

I am sure there never was another such horse to kick and bite. He did it so unexpectedly, too. He would be looking a stranger square in the face, apparently about to communicate some information of value, and then suddenly lift his hind foot, and fetch the unsophisticated man a rap on the head that would make him see seventy-five dollars' worth of fire works in a minute.

He would bite at anything whether he reached it or not; but in kicking, he rarely missed. He could use any leg with facility, but prided himself mainly on the extraordinary play of the left hind leg. With that limb he would break up a political meeting in five minutes and kick over the entire plan of the campaign before the last man got to the door.

The very air about our place was impregnated with camphor and the various new kinds of liniments. The neighbors came around after dark, and howled for the blood of that yellow horse like so many Indians clamoring for a pint of New England potash.

Matters commenced to assume a critical form. The people wanted the animal killed, and cut open so they could get back their things.

And so my parent determined to shoot the beast, but at the last moment his heart failed him. Pity triumphed, and he sold him to a man from a distance, and it was such a great distance that none of us were able to attend his funeral two weeks later, although earnestly invited to do so. He left a wife and three interesting children, and was struck just above the right temple, I believe.

MR. PERKINS AT THE DENTIST'S.

I THINK I must have caught cold by injudiciously sleeping on the floor during the period the house was being rinsed out. I had so much room that I must have become careless in the night, and got to trifling with the draft from a door. As I am a little bald the effect was disastrous. Through the day I felt a little stiff about the shoulders, with a sensation between the eyes as if I had been trying to inhale some putty.

I observed to Maria (Mrs. Perkins's name is Maria), that I had caught a bad cold, and would probably regret it in time. But she treated the matter lightly by remarking that I had "caught my granny." As that estimable lady has been dead thirteen years, the reference to my catching her, with such a start in her favor, was of course a joke. Not a joke to be laughed at, I don't mean, but one to carry around with you, to draw out once in a while to blow on--a sort of intellectual handkerchief.

When I went to bed that night, I apprehended trouble. Along one jaw, the left one, occasionally capered a grumbling sensation. It kept me awake an hour or so trying to determine whether that was all there was of it, or whether there was something to come after which would need my wakeful presence to contend against. Thus pondering I fell asleep, and forgot all about the trouble. I don't know how long I slept, but I fell to dreaming that I had made a match of fifty dollars a side to fight a cross cut saw in a steam mill, and was well to work on the job, when the saw got my head between its teeth. I thought this was a favorable time to wake up, and I did so. It immediately transpired that I might better have stayed where I was, and taken my chances with the saw.

I found myself sitting straight up in bed with one hand spasmodically grasping my jaw, and the other swaying to and fro without any apparently definite purpose.

It was an awful pain. It shot around like a dog which had been cruelly camphened. It bored like lightning through the basement of my jaw, darted across the roof of my mouth, and then ran lengthwise of the teeth. If every flying pang had been a drunken plow chased by a demon across a stump lot, I think the observer would understand my condition. I could no more get hold of the fearful agony that was cavorting around in me, than I could pick up a piece of wet soap when in a hurry.

Suddenly it stopped. It went off all at once giving me a parting kick that fairly made me howl.

"What on earth is the matter with you," said a voice from one corner of the room.

I looked out into the dark astonished.

"Maria, is that you?" said I.

"What there is left of me," was the curt reply, followed by a fumbling about the mantel.

Presently a light was struck and Mrs. Perkins appeared before me. She had on her short-stop clothes. Her hair stuck up in all directions. Her nose was very red, and her eyes were expanded to their fullest capacity.

"Well, I declare, Cyrus Davidson, if this hasn't been a night of it! What in the name of mercy is the matter with you? Are you gone clean crazy, or have you sat on a pin? For one whole hour you have been cavorting around on that bed, groaning like a dead man, and flopping your bony arms in all directions. I was literally knocked out of bed, and here I have been doubled up in a corner, the very life frightened out of me, and wondering whether you were going to set fire to the house, or bust out my brains with a hatchet. If you have got through with your contortions I'll come to bed, and try to get a wink of sleep."

I had got through, there was no doubt of it, and felt, in the relief I experienced, that it would be a comparatively easy matter to forgive Mrs. Perkins the suspicions of her alarm; as for braining her with a hatchet, I never thought of it. We haven't got one.

I thought I was rid of the teeth ache, but a grumbling set in again next morning. It was just like the feeling of the night before, and a still voice said to me, "Look out, Perkins."

I did. I went right away to the dentist who has pulled the teeth of our family and knew our peculiarities. There was an uneasy smell about his office. It was very suggestive of trouble, and as I snuffed it in I experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I looked at him and sickly smiled. He was never, even on a holiday, the handsomest of men, but now his appearance was very, very depressing. He looked like a corpse with a lighted candle inside of it.

I told him what was the matter with me, how that I had been up all night with a four-story pain, how my wife had been thrown out of bed by the violence of my suffering, how--

He asked me if I wouldn't sit down. I sat down on what was once a hogshead but was now cut down and newly carpeted. He held back my head, opened my mouth, and went to fishing around inside with a piece of watch spring.

And while he angled he conversed. Said he,--

"You have caught a cold."

"I have."

"It seems the trouble is with one of the bicuspids," he remarked.

Of course I didn't know what a bicuspid was, but thought it wouldn't look well in the head of a family being stuck with so short a word as that, and so I asked, with some vigor,--

"Which one?"

"The tumorous," he said.

"I am glad it ain't any worse," I replied, throwing in a sigh of relief.

"The frontal bone," he went on to say, "is not seriously affected. The submaxillary gland is somewhat enlarged, but it does not necessarily follow that parotitis will ensue."

"I am proud to hear that," said I, which I certainly was, although if the parotitis had ensued it isn't at all likely I should have minded it much, unless it was something that would spill, and I was dressed up.

He kept on talking and angling.

"The œsophagus isn't loose," he next remarked.

"Ah," said I, winking at him.

"O, no; the ligaments are quite firm. I might say--"

"Murder! fire!" I shouted, in bewilderment.

"Did it hurt you?" he asked, looking as calm and cool as the lid of an ice-cream freezer.

"Hurt me? Great Heavens! did you expect to split me open with a watch spring, and not have it hurt me? What was the matter--did you slip?"

"Certainly not," he said; "I was simply getting hold of the tooth. Just hold your head back an instant, and I will have it out at once."

"I guess I won't try it again," said I, with a shiver. "The toothache is bad enough, but it is heaven alongside of that watch spring. You may come up some time and pull it out when I ain't at home. I think I could endure the operation with necessary calmness if I was off about eight blocks. Come up when you can."

And I left. I hope he will come. I am boiling some pure spring water for him.

{centered}

Yours respectfully,

{right justified}

CYRUS D. PERKINS.

THE OYSTER RING.

The pathway to reform is not strewn withroses.

I am reminded of this by a little incident.

I have always bought my oysters opened. Mrs. Perkins and myself are fond of oysters, and eat a great many of them. It occurred to me one day--last Saturday, to be more direct--that there existed a monopoly in opening oysters that was hurtful to the public purse. Whenever I get hold of a notion of that kind I work it up. I worked this up; I brought home a half bushel of oysters in the shell, Saturday night, and put them in the cellar till morning, when they were to be opened fresh for breakfast. When morning came I went down stairs and brought up the oysters while Mrs. Perkins got ready a knife and pan. I wasn't quite dressed, because I was a little eager to profit by an experiment. Mrs. Perkins shared this earnestness in a measure, and was anxious to have me go to work at once.

It is said that the less a man knows about anything the more willingly he engages to do it.

I knew nothing about opening oysters; I had never opened one in my life. But what I lacked in knowledge I made up in zeal.

When everything was ready, I smiled at Mrs. Perkins and commenced.

I found the most difficulty with the first oyster. I looked some fifteen minutes for the hole in which to put the knife. But I couldn't find it. Mrs. Perkins, who had rather impatiently watched the survey, suggested that it might have fallen out, and would be in the basket. Mrs. Perkins was lightly costumed, and there was no fire in the stove. These things wore on her and made her ironical.

There was no use looking further for a hole in that oyster. I got out my jack-knife, which was sharp, and placing the point at what reasonably appeared to be a crevice, pushed firmly against it. If I had used a little more firmness it is more than likely that both the blade and handle would have passed through my hand. As it was, it was only a part of the blade, and I was enabled to pull it from the same side it entered. This was an unexpected advantage, and I hope I was sufficiently grateful, but it is doubtful.

Mrs. Perkins screamed when the blood flew.

"You're the awkwardest man I ever saw," she observed.

It was an easy remark. Ninety-nine women in every hundred would have said it.

I tied up the wound in silence, and renewed my endeavors to gain an entrance, with zeal materially abated.

Pretty soon I missed part of one thumb and the knife snapped in two. I thought over a few oaths I had heard when a boy while Mrs. Perkins went for another knife.

They don't make knives of the material they used to. I was surprised to see them break as fast as they did before I got that oyster open. Mrs. Perkins was somewhat surprised herself. I think if I had not been bald there would have been considerable variety added to the performance.

I didn't break the last knife. It slipped over the edge of that accursed bivalve, and went across the apex of my knuckles with a ferocity almost human. It next went into the stove.

I went into the yard to think. Mrs. Perkins went up stairs for a cry.

When I came in I was accompanied by the axe.

The balance of those oysters came apart in two minutes.

And monopolies are better endured than cured.

{centered}

Respectfully yours,

{right justified}

CYRUS D. PERKINS.

A WELL-KNOWN CHARACTER.

MR. LUCE was among the first on the circus grounds, Saturday. With him were four young Luces, hand in hand, and Mrs. Luce, carrying the latest arrived Luce. The family immediately attracted my attention. It is representative, and faithfully so. I cannot now remember of once missing the Luces at any circus I may have attended anywhere in the country. They were old friends to me, people who had quietly but irresistibly become familiar, and I involuntarily nodded--a recognition Mr. Luce acknowledged with a smile of moderate hilarity.

Mr. Luce's head and body are inclined slightly forward. This position, taken in connection with his steps, gives Mr. Luce the appearance of making a determined effort with his feet to keep up with his head, and prevent the entire superstructure from toppling over. The observer is also impressed, and quite painfully, with the conviction that if by any miscalculation the feet should fail in the undertaking and the head go down, Mr. Luce might possibly walk into his own mouth and a considerable ways down his own throat, before recovering himself. There is nothing unpleasant about Mr. Luce's features, without it may be found in the creases. His smile is soft and bland, while the canvas itself does not glisten more than the eye he casts hopefully upon it. There is a buoyancy and an uprightness accompanying it in his mien, which cheer and strengthen the beholder. Mr. Luce wears his hair so long that it would hardly pay to attempt any action upon it with a comb. His whiskers are many, and in places cemented together with a tincture of plug. His clothes exhibit a better acquaintance with the cares and vexations of business than with the recuperative influences of the laundry. His very boots partake of the general dilapidation. With his hair they impartially share immunity from the brush, Mr. Luce reasoning, and with unanswerable logic, that if that which he is to wear until the daisies blossom above him needs no brushing, why should he brush that which is but transitory, to be put off and on at pleasure.

Mr. Luce's long experience with the world in all its phases but its very best has given him an appearance of easy familiarity. There is nothing very bad about the man. His nature is sympathetic, and kindly to an extreme. He hears the faintest appeal--if not from a creditor--and he gives his opinion on a multitude of subjects with the utmost freedom and good nature. If you should ever sustain an accident within his province, Mr. Luce would take you in his own arms and carry you to your home. He would be the last to leave your bedside; and when he did withdraw his ministrations, homely, but tender and loving as those of a sister, he would go away with tears in his eyes and something you might value far more than tears--in his pocket. The immense good nature of the man keeps him from thinking wrong, whatever he may do.

He brings his whole family with him to-day. All of his bankable property amounts to two dollars, and he turns it over to the man in the wagon without the faintest semblance to regret in his face. He even says something moderately witty to the ticket collector at the door, and as Mrs. Luce, laughing slyly, crowds by with the five eager Luces, the head of the family nods complacently to the grocer he despairs of ever paying, and remarks feelingly, but without ostentation,--

"Here we ar' agin!"

And thus he disappears from the excitable outside to the impressive inside of the canvas. And here, on the upper seat, amid the glittering humanity, the Luces are poised, patiently and hopefully waiting. Mr. Luce invariably takes the top seat on these occasions. It is a convenient place to expectorate from, besides giving him an opportunity to look out doors and exchange a few friendly words with whomsoever he may chance to recognize out there. Between his friends outside and his family inside, with a choice few alongside whose dress and general appearance may have won his favorable opinion, Mr. Luce manages to pass the time in a genial and profitable manner.

Occasionally the boy who in very warm weather peddles candy, and in very chilly weather, fans, comes around, and invariably attracts Mr. Luce's attention. It is pure sympathy that induces that gentleman to notice the pedler at all, and the lively interest he manifests in the articles and their prices is certainly remarkable in view of the fact that he hasn't a penny to his name,--a fact that, in Mr. Luce's estimation, should not prevent him from encouraging the young merchant by showing him that he is appreciated and understood. And thus his benevolent soul makes glad and is made glad in return, while the exhausted grocer sits on the lowest seat and exercises his faculties in a magnificent but impotent tussle with the credit system.

A QUIET EVENING.

MR. BODWELL, of Nelson Street, sat down for a quiet communion with his family and the newspaper on Thursday evening. All the children but the eldest had eaten supper, and he was industriously engaged at that task. Mr. Bodwell drew up to the lamp, selected an interesting article that would undoubtedly engross his wife, and commenced to reproduce it, while she, patient woman, kept her eyes on the children, as the father was very sensitive to foreign noises when engaged in reading. Bodwell had got down the column some twelve lines, and was just laying himself out on the big words, when one of the girls while taking unusual precaution to step around a scuttle of coal, actually stepped into it, and a bewildering crash followed. "Merciful heaven!" shouted Bodwell, "what was that?" Mrs. Bodwell explained, the other children tittered, and the girl being a wise child, knew her own father, and sagaciously left. Again Bodwell picked up the paper, and giving it a spiteful twist, resumed the article. It was a moment or two before he regained his composure; but the author was a man acquainted with the business, and the skill with which he handled the subject soon conquered Bodwell's mind. He became wholly absorbed in the matter, and at one point he involuntarily brought down his clenched hand with a force that amply expressed his own feelings and very forcibly stirred up those of one of the children, who had caught the full effect of the descending fist.

"Will somebody cut me open?" pleaded the despairing man, as he caught up the shrieking offspring, and fell to rubbing its back, while the mother dashed after the camphor, and the other children, awe struck by the affair, rushed into the hall to laugh. It was full five minutes before the injured one was quieted, and by that time Mrs. Bodwell expressed a desire to hear no more of the article; but Bodwell was determined then to finish it anyway, and he resumed the paper. During the progress of the next reading, a little girl came in to borrow a flat-iron, and the mother got up to give it to her, moving about so quietly that Bodwell was not interrupted. The eldest boy was still at his supper. He was a good boy. Whenever he wanted anything he stood up and reached for it himself, and did it very quietly. Just as the little girl departed with the flat-iron, the heir, who had his father's boots on, stood up to reach over the table for the sixth tart. The mother in returning detected the vacant chair, and fearing some one would fall over it and make another disturbance, she thoughtfully moved it back to the wall, and just got by, as the heir settled back with the coveted tart, and finding nothing but thin air to receive him, made a desperate effort to save himself, but was too late, and came down on the floor with a crash that made every timber in the house speak, and the horrified parent, on looking up, was nearly petrified with amazement to see his own boots clawing madly among the dishes, while the distracted occupant was vainly endeavoring to extricate himself from under the table. That wound up the evening's entertainment. The disgusted Bodwell put on his coat and fled down street, leaving the very sore and mortified heir to suppress the mirth indiscreetly displayed by the other children as he best could with the agencies at hand.

YOUNG EDWARD AND HIS REWARD.

THE following interesting story of a brave boy's work has never before appeared in print, although occurring several years ago.

At the time of the incident a widow woman with her young son Edward, were living in a dilapidated house on the banks of our Still River. It was in the early spring. The winter had been very severe and a heavy body of snow lay upon the earth. Heavy rains were falling, the stream was very much swollen, and already great destruction had been worked upon property on its banks. This was a wild night. The rain fell in torrents, and the roar of the water was distinctly heard in the little cabin occupied by Edward and his mother. Suddenly a startling crash sounded near by, and it hardly ceased when a cry of a human being in distress pierced the air. In an instant the brave boy, his sympathies fully aroused, was on his feet. "It is the bridge, mother," he cried, "and some poor traveler has gone down with it." He seized his latern, and was at once outside of the house running toward the spot. The frightened mother stood in the door and watched the lantern as it moved by the stream, and cast its rays over the maddened water. Edward was right. The bridge had gone down, and with it a horse and its driver. The two were struggling in the water, striving hopelessly to save themselves. The little hero saw the situation at a glance, and setting down his lantern worked manfully for the rescue. The man in the water seeing a prospect of help, renewed his exertions, and in a short time he and his horse were on the firm land. Five minutes later the animal was under an old shed in rear of the widow's cabin, and the owner was drying himself before the fire. The next morning he left, renewing his expressions of thanks, and promising that they should soon hear from him.

Days passed into weeks, and weeks into months. The terrible night was passing from the mind of the boy, but he often spoke of the stranger he had saved, and wondered what his fortunes had been. One day a small box came by express to our village, for young Edward. He hurried to his home with it, nervously tore off the wrappers, looked in, and uttered an exclamation that brought his mother quickly to his side. The poor woman, trembling with an undefined expectation, glanced into the open box, and clasping the boy in her arms, sank on her knees.

The stranger so miraculously saved from the terrible death had remembered them. There, amid the white folds of paper, was--

A brilliant neck-tie. THE MAN WHO CARRIED HIS POINT.

THE following ridiculous story is told of a neighboring committee man. The evening before the day on which he was to pay an official visit to the school, his wife put a new ceiling in his pants, and accidentally left the needle where she did the work.

Arriving at the school he stiffly returned the salutation of the polite teacher, and majestically settled into the "company chair." It didn't seem to the most acute observer that he had but just touched the chair, when he at once began to ascend. A wave of perplexed pain passed over his face, as his hand soothingly parted his coat tails. The look of bland surprise from the teacher drew from him the blushing explanation that he never could sit on a "cane seat." A wooden chair was at once offered him, into which he dropped almost as swiftly as he got out of it again. The instant he struck on his feet, he shook his fist angrily in the face of the astounded tutor, and hoarsely shouting,--"I kin whip the pewserlanermus man what stuck the pin in them cheers," he caught up his hat, and fled home.

"Lor, Eben!" exclaimed his wife as he tore into the house. "What's the matter with you?"

"Matter!" shouted the infuriated man as he snatched off his coat and flung it out of the window, "I have been made the fool of the entire district by that sneakin' teacher," and his Sunday hat flew through another window. "Pins stuck into my cheer as I was asettin down as onsuspishus like as I am asettin down now in my own--"

"Lucretia!" he ominously howled, as he sprung out of that chair, and spasmodically went for the wounded part with both hands, "you're foolin' with your best friend now, and he ain't in the humor to stand the triflin."

In an instant it flashed into the good lady's mind what the trouble really was. In the next instant Eben's nether garment was over her arm, and there--there in the midst of the repairs glistened the source of all the annoyance.

The unfortunate man gave one brief stare at the evil thing, and falteringly remarked as he thought of the future, "I'd agin twenty dollars, Lucretia, if you hadn't found it."

A BAD DOG.

THERE appears to be a disposition on the part of several of our people to interfere with the existence of a dog which habitates the west end of the town. His voice is stronger than store butter, and is ever raised in the behalf of every conceivable object under heaven. He barks right along all the while. He barks at everything he can see, and at a number of things he don't see, but expects to. He barks at the sun, the moon, and the stars; at the back porch, the shingles on the roof, the trees, the frost, almanacs, poor man's plaster, ingrain carpets, lawyers, whitewash, and eye salve. He will bark at things an eagle wouldn't. He keeps it up all night, and comes up to the scratch as lively as ever in the morning. And the yard that beast exercises in is a sight to look upon. There is everything in it you would like to see. There isn't a house around there but has contributed something. Bootjacks, chairbacks, cobble stones, cannon balls, stove legs, boots almost new, crockery of various designs, hammers, sauce pans, stove wood, bottles, chignous, and everything you can think of--things that were tossed over there with a view to diverting his mind into other channels. It shows what a deep interest people will take in such matters when their sympathies are aroused. But it doesn't do any good. He keeps on barking, and always will. There will be no gardening done in that neighborhood this season. No frost will come out of the ground as long as that dog is around. We wouldn't.

A LITTLE GOAT STORY.

A RETIRED clergyman sends us an account of a little affair that happened in his place. It appears that there was a young woman, a fine-spirited girl, engaged at a wash tub, opposite an open door. Just behind her was a young man, as is generally the case, and in the yard was an old buck that was allowed the freedom of the premises, which is not always the case, we are glad to say. Well, this buck came up to the door and looked in, and the young man going close behind the young woman, pointed his finger straight at the buck, and the old fellow recognizing at once the pressing character of this mute invitation put down his head and dashed forward, and the miserable man stepped one side and fled, and the young woman all unconscious of the arrangements received the awful shock without warning, and passed over the tub, and the air for an instant appeared to be full of slippers, and wet clothes, and soap, and hot water, and suds. And the next minute that goat came flying out of that door at a dreadful speed, bald the whole length of his spine, and with a wild look in his eye. And for an hour afterward he stood back of the barn, scratching his chin, and trying to recall all the circumstances in the unfortunate affair.

FOSTERING A BAD PRACTICE.

THERE is a good deal said in censure of the custom of jumping off and on the cars when in motion. It is righteous condemnation, but is not consistent when coming from railroad companies. If they truly desire a reform they must begin at home, for as long as employees will jump on a train when in motion, and persist in doing it as gracefully as they do, an imitative public will be the sufferers. People don't jump on a train before it stops because they are in a hurry, but because they have seen a brakeman or conductor do it, and have a terrible dread of being surpassed. Now, at the station the other day, Conductor Phillips, of the eastern train, after giving the word to start, waited until the last car reached him, and then raising one hand to the rail and one foot gently from the earth, he swung majestically around, and was at once firmly on the car. Mr. Phillips weighs two hundred pounds, but there was such grace and poetry in his motion that he seemed to blend with the car. First there was yellow paint, and then gold leaf, and maroon, and Phillips. There was an elderly person who saw Phillips do this, and his eyes glistened with anticipation. He was going on the western train, and when it came along he waited until a fine rate of speed was gained, and then raising his hand and leg, just as he had seen Phillips do, and looking carelessly away, just as Phillips did, he reached out for the rail, and the next instant was trying to push his head through the platform planks, and fighting the air with his heels, and madly pawing around with his hands, and swearing and praying at an awful rate. They stood him up on his feet, and rubbed his head with some snow, but it was a long while before they could convince him that the locomotive had not exploded.

WHY HE CEASED TO BOARD.

THE following conversation occurred in the post office.

First Lady.--And so, Mrs. Wyman, you have gone to keeping house?

Second Lady.--O, yes. You see Wyman was bound he would board, in spite of all I could say or do to show how much pleasanter it would be to have a floor of our own. He got so set about it, I saw it wasn't any use to say anything more about it, and I gave it up. But the other morning Mrs. Rodney's little girl left a piece of bread and butter on the front stairs, and Wyman in going down didn't see it, and so stepped on it; and the next moment there was the awfulest rattle and smash I ever heard, and my heart jumped up into my mouth, and I ran out into the hall, and there at the bottom of the stairs was Wyman. And such a crazy mad man you never saw. He had sprained his thumb and nearly split his head, and battered his nose, and he was jumping around there, telling about the dreadful things he would do to everybody, and swearing the most awful oaths, and the bread and butter sticking all along his back, and the blood running into his mouth. Oh! I thought I should die, I was so frightened. It seemed as if he must be struck dead for such awful words, and I couldn't bear the dreadful thought of his going into eternity with that bread and butter sticking on his back, and a shirt bosom all spattered with blood. That very afternoon he went off and hunted up a house, and the very next day we moved, and I am so glad.

HOW TO CURE A COLD.

ONE of our citizens who has been troubled with a severe cold on the lungs effected his recovery in the following simple manner. He boiled a little boneset and hoarhound together, and drank freely of the tea before going to bed. The next day he took five pills, put one kind of plaster on his breast, another under his arms, and still another on his back. Under advice from an experienced old lady he took all these off with an oyster knife in the afternoon, and slapped on a mustard paste instead. His mother put some onion drafts on his feet and gave him a lump of tar to swallow. Then he put some hot bricks to his feet, and went to bed. Next morning, another old lady came in with a bottle of goose oil, and gave him a dose of it on a quill, and an aunt arrived about the same time from Bethel, with a bundle of sweet fern which she made into a tea, and gave him every half hour until noon, when he took a big dose of salts. After dinner his wife who had seen a fine old lady of great experience in doctoring, on Franklin Street, gave him two pills of her make, about the size of an English walnut and of a similar shape, and two tablespoonfuls of home made balsam to keep them down. Then he took a half pint of hot rum at the suggestion of an old sea captain in the next house, and steamed his legs with an alcohol bath. At this crisis two of the neighbors arrived, who saw at once that his blood was out of order, and gave him a half gallon of spearmint tea, and a big dose of castor oil. Before going to bed he took eight of a new kind of pills, wrapped about his neck a flannel soaked in hot vinegar and salt, and had feathers burnt on a shovel in his room. He is now thoroughly cured, and full of gratitude. We advise our readers to cut this out and keep it where it can be readily found when danger threatens.

KICKING.

JOSH BILLINGS has much to say in behalf of the mule's kicking propensities. Josh should behold the zebra at the circus building, if he would enjoy himself. It will kick a mule out of countenance inside of three seconds, and even put a blush on a Queen Anne musket. There has never been anything known like it in this section. When it opens business, there is a general rush of outsiders, and by the time it has made a half dozen revolutions, the people in the neighboring houses have their furniture on the sidewalk, and are nailing up their shutters. In ten minutes the vicinity is as bare of life as some of our exchanges. A Dutchman, who mistook the animal for a barber pole, was astonished to see the pole come towards him at the rate of eight miles a minute. Fortunately he was just out of reach. It was a close shave. Its variety is its prime feature. It can kick straight out at the rear, or straight out at the front, to the left or right, over its back, or around a corner, and, in a case of emergency, it can kick down its throat. If it was cross-eyed it could not be more uncertain. When it gets a good fair kick at a man, the spot he occupied looks as if a full oil can had stood there. It does away with all the parade and expense of a funeral.

A SINGULAR FIRE.

ONE of our carmen who stables his horse in an up-town barn, was at the place Sunday, and was observed to go in the barn by the owner. Shortly after he appeared under lively excitement, and ran straight to the well, shouting to the owner to come and help him as the barn was afire. The proprietor thus abjured lost no time in getting to the well, and while the carman climbed into the loft where the fire was he brought water and passed it up to his friend, who dashed it nervously into the hay. "Hurry, for heaven's sake, hurry," he shouted; "everything I have got is being lost!" and the great drops of perspiration and anxiety rolled down his face in profusion. The owner of the barn was none the less anxious. His property also was at stake, and the speed with which he snatched the water out of that well and got it to the barn baffles all description. After he had passed up some dozen pails, and exhausted pretty much all of his breath, and not observing any appearance of fire, he cried out,--"Where is that fire? I don't see it." "Here under the hay," gasped the man in the loft. The owner of the barn climbed up to see what kind of fire it was that had absorbed enough water to intimidate a milkman and still burned. Reaching the side of the carman, he was pointed to a bright glare in the hay below them. He took one look at it, glanced up to an opening in the roof through which the sun was brightly shining, looked down again to the reflection in the hay, and then with a silence more eloquent than words, slid down to the floor below, and retired to the house and the nourishing influences of a bottle of arnica. The helpless carman who had followed the glance of the owner of the barn, suddenly assumed a smile peculiar to a sheep that has miscalculated, and modestly struck out for home.

MUSIC HATH CHARMS.

CINCINNATI is to have a grand musical festival in May, or as soon as the hurry in pork-packing is over, and has sent on to us to know if we have got a society to send on. We are afraid there is no organized outlet to our music, but we have got elements enough to make up a dozen, and we shall see that the town sends them to Cincinnati next spring, or this winter, if necessary. The managers of the festival can depend on us. We don't know but that it would be well for them to be at the depot every day or so, and not be taken unawares. We think we can scare up quite a society by looking around. There is that young chap on New Street, who plays on a bass drum when there isn't a funeral in the next house. Then there is old Watson, on Nelson Street, who plays cymbals at picnics. He is rather giddy, but a couple thousand miles on the cars would tone him down. The Cherry-Street accordionist is a genuine artist, a man whose soul is two-thirds full of music, but he wouldn't go on account of losing his father in the war. He has got more relatives in the grave than any man of his size living. Then there are some thirteen melodeonists who might not be of any use in the festival, but they could be got drunk and left near the canal. None of the above parties belong to any regular organization; they are isolated gems, whose splendor would set an entire common council to sneezing.

A JUVENILE FEATURE.

"CATCHING on behind" is the crowning enjoyment now for boys. Johnny comes home at night surfeited with fun. He has had a good time but he is tired. His nose is split open at the end, and one of his teeth is gone, and he has lumps on the back of his head, but he has had a good time, and he comes home to hear his mother read about Joseph and his brothers, and rub him with liniment. There is huge fun in catching on behind, but it requires a great deal of adroitness and decision. The successful lad is he who is never looking for a ride. He stands with his hands in his pocket, actively devouring the scenery with one eye, while the other is prowling around under cover on the lookout for a chance. And when it comes he pounces down on the cornice of the sleigh in such a manner as to cover the most tender parts of himself in case he has fallen upon a Philistine. The solicitude with which a boy shields his tender parts will bring tears to the eyes of a tax collector. But he always gets on the sleigh, and gets off, too, when urged by a long whip-lash; and when he gets off he rolls himself in a lump; and merely lets go, and the fate that always protects boys sees that he bounds into safety. Wood sleighs, with long, strong stakes to catch hold of, are godsends; but a box sleigh, with a place for two to sit on and make faces at rivals who are breaking down their legs and lungs in a vain attempt to catch up, is not to be despised. Not at all. Heaven bless the farmers who own blue sleighs with floor boards protruding a foot or so beyond the tail board. Family prayer cannot avail much where those boards are sawed off too close.

A RURAL PUBLISHER.

BRIDGEWATER, a humble hamlet on the confines of Brookfield, is the residence of one of the most remarkable men of the times. His name is Thompson, and he is apparently about twenty-four years old. He has, or rather did have, a store in that place, in which he kept an assortment of books, pictures, and various trinkets. To advance the sale of these articles, he printed a small literary paper, setting it up and working it off with his own hands, although we never heard how much he paid for them, or if he paid for them at all. The journal was a remarkable piece of architecture.

It was set up in second-hand type; and as Mr. Thompson and his coadjutors were as ingnorant of the sizes of type as they were of the advantages of early schooling, the effect was somewhat singular. This paper was sent to every family throughout the land which had not taken the precaution to bar its doors, and was advertised in connection with startling premiums in many journals. It is no more than fair to say of Mr. Thompson, that he got the bulk of his advertising for nothing. How he thrived, we do not pretend to know; but there are those who believe he made money from the various peasantry that fastened to his hook.

A short time ago he projected a local newspaper for New Milford, and issued one number with patent outside and inside. The only item in the paper of any local significance was an article descriptive of the habits and customs of the South American ant-eaters. He put this out as a feeler, and then determined to point the paper at home, as everybody, to use an expression of his own, "was kicking him for the paper." It is sincerely to be regretted that the expression was only figurative. He ordered a press from New York, and got it as far as New Milford depot before the owners could recall it. He got another as far as Bridgeport, and had one or more presses on the road pretty much all the time. But his ardor didn't wane any. He sent down to this office for fourteen pounds of pied type and eleven brass rules, being determined to have a paper anyway. But he didn't do it. The project fell through, and nothing remains to remind the traveler through the Housatonic Valley of the New Milford News, except the finished profanity of the Housatonic brakemen.

Some of these men were once ornaments to society; now the most stolid will get down from a borrowed horse to swear at Thompson. The brakemen are people who stop the cars by turning a rod, and keep valuable machinery from being broken in falling by putting their legs under it. A man has got to have legs to be a brakeman. Thompson then went into the show business. His entertainment was of a strictly moral character, and would have performed incalculable benefits without doubt, had not the gentleman who executed a pious jig towards the last of the performance, suddenly vamosed with the entire effects of the concern--a pair of check pants and the drop curtain.

About this time we met Thompson on the cars. He took advantage of a lull in the roar and general rattle, to tell us that he didn't think the New York Herald would stand it much longer, the way it was being conducted.

A REMARKABLE ESCAPE.

A VERY sorrowful as well as a singular affair took place on Montgomery Street. Mr. Treadwell, one of the most efficient friends of our Fair, had just come from New Fairfield, and was on his way to the fair grounds with a large, handsome eagle belonging to David Bigelow, of his place. When he stopped in Montgomery Street to change the bird from a box to more presentable quarters, as is the practice with successful managers of circuses on their entry to a town, quite a number of neighbors gathered around to see Mr. Treadwell bring out the noble bird, and as may be imagined by those who know him, he handled it with as much pride and care as if it had been his own. He held it up so all could see its broad and glistening wings. The people looked admiringly upon the bird and enviously upon its keeper, and even the bird itself stared up with delight at the glare of the sun, and spread its pinions in exultant pride--and, gracious goodness! it was gone. There was a simple, sharp flap, a half-uttered exclamation of alarm, and the broad wings had carried the eagle--Mr. Bigelow's eagle--beyond mortal reach. It is useless to attempt to describe the singular expression that occupied Mr. Treadwell's features, as the bird proceeded to occupy the top of a distant tree. Everybody will readily see that the occasion was too solemn for the utterance of words,--the eagle was a borrowed one,--and Mr. Treadwell is not the gentleman to trifle with saddening influences. He stared at the receding bird and the people stared at him, and the combination made up one of the most harrowing tableaux we have witnessed since the burial of Sir John Moore.

ANNA DICKINSON.

THE exhorting Quakeress is a little woman--not very old in features, but round shouldered. Her forehead is low, surmounted by short, curly hair, and surmounting in turn a pair of large, earnest eyes. A square face, uneven nose, and a mouth trained to disguise its size, complete a cast that is capable of an abundance of expression. As a public speaker, she labors under the disadvantage of a meagre capital. Her voice is a trifle coarse, with a Quakerish inflection on the last word of the sentence, which heretofore has not been considered desirable by anybody outside of the broad-brim fraternity. Her gesture is not graceful. It is just such a motion as a person would undoubtedly acquire who had executed a contract to push fifteen hundred boys down two flights of stairs.

A REMARKABLE REMEDY.

A MAN in a neighboring town having heard that the ague could be cured by crawling head first down stairs when the chill is coming on, tried it Friday. He felt the dreaded approach of the shake, and dropping on his hands and knees started down the front stairs. Just as he started two old ladies came up on the stoop to consult his wife in regard to shipping seven hundred neck-ties to the poor of New York, and it so happened that the moment they opened the door he lost his balance and came down upon them like an avalanche with spokes in it, and before they could even think of saving themselves the enemy was among them, and the next instant a horrible mixture of humanity and cloth went revolving across the sidewalk and into the street, to the unmixed astonishment of the neighbors, and to the unconcealed disgust of the participants. But it cured him.

COONS AS A REVENUE.

THEY place a good deal of dependence upon coon-skins as a revenue, those people up in Litchfield county. We saw an old buffer of an agriculturist bring in a load the other day, and heard him negotiate in winning tones for a raise of a penny on the authorized price. Coon-skins, when the market is right, bring about ten cents apiece. A hundred of them are worth ten dollars. We never heard of anybody having a hundred of them, but they are worth that. Captivating coons is not a very easy task. If a man has been faithful to church, and never sought to prevaricate on a tax list, and has the right kind of gun, he can fetch down an average of three coons a day through the season, and if otherwise smart he can skin them in another day. Allowing for the exigencies of travel, in nine cases out of ten he will reach the market in the neighborhood of four o'clock P.M., of the third day, and will then be entitled to thirty cents. There is not a man on earth but will hope he may get it.

There are various industries, but this killing coons and skinning them appears to be one of the most comforting.

POND LILLIES.

ONE of our most popular merchants took a couple of young ladies to Mountainville pond, Thursday, for pond lillies and a general good time. In this simple fact there is nothing serious; but when it is considered in connection with a visit made to the same place one year ago, it is a little remarkable. You see, at that other visit, he stood on a bog to reach over the water for a beautiful flower, when he lost his balance, and plunged head-long into the slimy flood. They will never be able to decide whether he fell into the water through accident on his part or design on theirs; but it was at once decided that it would be better for them to stroll carelessly through the woods while he stood on the shores and wrung out his clothes. No one, of course, will ever be able to describe his appearance on that occasion, but every active mind can conceive the grotesqueness of a figure clothed with the scanty habiliments of a silk hat and a pair of spectacles, wringing the water and slime from the balance of his wardrobe, and casting furtive glances to the right and left.

A HEN REVENGED.

AN Essex Street man killed a hen that belonged to a neighbor because it flew into his yard. The neighbor made no demonstration. But he went around among the juveniles, and told them that the one among them who could say "Shoes and socks shock Susan" four times running, without mistake, would receive two dollars from the hen killer. So they went up to his house, in the guilelessness of childhood, and filled the hall and the stoop, and crowded the yard, and made up their minds they would earn that two dollars or die. And they sailed in, and the man tried to drive them off, but couldn't, and then he went up stairs, but they followed him. The air resounded with "Shuwack snoozen socker" with hideous variations in the shrillest of voices keyed to the highest of pitches. In vain the victim appealed for mercy with ink bottles, and hot water, and mustard boxes. His arguments were unheeded and his cries were unheard, and he finally scaled a fence and fled, pursued by what he was firmly convinced were a score of demons. The hen was avenged.

THE INTRICACIES OF A WHEELBARROW.

IF you have occasion to use a wheelbarrow, leave it, when you are through with it, in front of the house with the handles toward the door. A wheelbarrow is the most complicated thing to fall over on the face of the earth. A man will fall over one when he would never think of falling over anything else. He never knows when he has got through falling over it, either; for it will tangle his legs and his arms, turn over with him and rear up in front of him, and just as he pauses in his profanity to congratulate himself, it takes a new turn, and scoops more skin off of him, and he commences to evolute anew, and bump himself on fresh places. A man never ceases to fall over a wheelbarrow until it turns completely on its back, or brings up against something it cannot upset. It is the most inoffensive-looking object there is, but it is more dangerous than a locomotive, and no man is secure with one unless he has a tight hold of its handles, and is sitting down on something. A wheelbarrow has its uses, without doubt, but in its leisure moments it is the great blighting curse on true dignity.

HILARITY AND INJURIES.

THE Still-River ice-company have been engaged in the past week securing their crop of ice, and have had a lively time of it. This was especially the case on Saturday, when a cake of ice prematurely slid down the gully and into the legs of Russell White, who was nearly deprived of those useful appendages by the shock. Fortunately no bones were broken. About the same time a cake which was being hauled up let go to spit on its hands or something of that sort, and came down again with such velocity that the gentleman who was standing below watching it, backed away with so much precipitation that he fell over another cake, and rapped the back of his head so sharply as to render him unconscious for a few moments. The third mishap was to one of the helpers on the pond, who would have been drowned had it not been for a buckskin mitten. We didn't learn how the buckskin mitten saved him, but presume he either crawled inside of it and floated to shore, or straddled it near the thumb and signaled to a passing vessel.

BASE BALL.

ONE of the passengers at the depot yesterday attracted the sympathetic attention of every beholder. The fingers on both hands were horribly deformed. One arm was bent backward at the elbow, and part of one ear was gone. His nose showed the scar of having been broken in two or three places; one eye was entirely gone; the right arm had been fractured, and all the upper front teeth were swept away. There were two scars of scalp wounds, and one long one on the right cheek. There was much speculation as to the cause of these misfortunes. Some thought he must have slipped into a raw volcano when a child; others believed he had attempted to part two colliding locomotives; while others still were equally confident that at some time in his life he had been overtaken by a mowing machine. None of these contemplated the true state of the case, as it afterward transpired that the grand cripple was the captain of a champion base-ball club.

A POWDER EXPLOSION.

THERE was a trifling affair of this kind in Branchville, Friday. Philo W. Bates has a quarry about one-quarter of a mile east of the village. He is also the owner of a blacksmith shop near by where he employs two or three men to sharpen the tools used in quarrying the stone for the Shepaug road at Bethel. In accordance with a good old New England custom, the powder used in blasting is kept in the blacksmith shop. There were two kegs partly filled and one unbroken in the shop at the time our story opens. It was a pleasant day. There was no bright sunshine, but the general appearance of things out doors was mellow and comfortable like. One of the men was employed at the anvil hammering the sultry end of a crowbar. A few grains of powder had fallen upon the floor while replenishing the quarry from the open kegs. We came near forgetting to state this, which is a more important matter than at first sight seems probable. The other employees were busily engaged, as the sons of toil are apt to be when hired by the day. A balsamic perfume filled the atmosphere of the shop, slightly modified by the flavor left by the last horse. Suddenly a flake of streaming hot iron shot from the anvil and down among the grains of powder which held their slumbering fires to the floor.

There were a few unnoticed pops and flashes. Then came a hiss, as the flame shot over into the open kegs. The man who held the crowbar mechanically passed out doors. Another son of toil who, with his back to the danger, was looking through a window to observe two neighboring roosters which were waltzing into each other, was suddenly deprived of the sag to his pants, and looking around in time to detect one end of the shop in the act of moving off, followed by a comrade whose shirt had gone up in a flame. The two partly filled kegs had exploded with the customary violence, and the full keg was on fire. At this juncture was displayed an act of heroism seldom exhibited in Fairfield County. Mr. Bates seized the burning keg, and hurled it out into the snow in time to quench the flames, save the balance of his shop, and the lives of himself and men. Two of the men were badly burned, a portion of the shop was wrecked, and the two roosters at once buried all animosities engendered by the fray, and immediately started over the hill for home, at the rapid and graceful gait peculiar to those feathered Mormons.

JUST HOW IT IS DONE.

YOU are generally looking at something very intently when it happens; perhaps you are smiling to yourself. Then your left foot shoots out to one side with a suddenness that creates a sickness in the family. Ice commences to form on your spine and perspiration on your brow, and your scalp lifts up enough to permit a streak of cold air to pass under. The other leg goes out at this juncture; your head snaps violently to the front, and there is a faint impression on your mind that the world is about to come to an end with nobody in charge. Miles of sidewalks spin out from you like lightning. Three-story buildings jump over your head in swift succession. People disappear suddenly and with appalling mystery. Then your eyes close, your consciousness wanes, your soul goes out in one expiring quiver, and--and you arrive. The hard reality of the scene is then forced upon you with unpleasant abruptness. Everything is in its place but your spine. You get up and move off with a sickly attempt at a smile, feeling all the time that the back of your head is laughing from ear to ear, and finding that the hardest thing of all is not the sidewalk, but to keep from rubbing yourself.

A WEATHER REPORT.

THERE is urgent need of the establishment of a conversation bureau. We are frequently reminded of this, but never more forcibly than on last evening. Two well-dressed young people oppositely sexed, met below our window, when the following spirited colloquy ensued: He--Good evening, Henrietta. She--Good evening, William. He--Isn't this a pleasant evening? She--Very pleasant indeed. He--We haven't had very pleasant evenings lately, have we? She--No, indeed; they have been very unpleasant. He--It seems good, don't it, to have it clear again? She(her interest reviving)--I guess it does He (hesitating perceptibly)--How do you like rainy weather? She (thoughtfully)--O, I don't like it at all. Ma says I'm awful when it rains. He (with increased animation)--She does? She (visibly excited)--O, yes. A moment is taken to recuperate, and we avail ourselves of it to withdraw, deeply impressed with the magnitude of the weather as a source of general information.

A BUTTON OFF.

IT is bad enough to see a bachelor sew on a button, but he is the embodiment of grace alongside of a married man. Necessity has compelled experience in the case of the former, but the latter has always depended upon some one else for this service, and fortunately, for the sake of society, it is rarely he is obliged to resort to the needle himself. Sometimes the patient wife scalds her right hand, or runs a sliver under the nail of the index finger of that hand, and it is then the man clutches the needle around the neck, and forgetting to tie a knot in the thread commences to put on the button. It is always in the morning, and from five to twenty minutes after he is expected to be down street. He lays the button exactly on the site of its predecessor, and pushes the needle through one eye, and carefully draws the thread after, leaving about three inches of it sticking up for leeway. He says to himself,--"Well, if women don't have the easiest time I ever see." Then he comes back the other way, and gets the needle through the cloth well enough, and lays himself out to find the eye, but in spite of a great deal of patient jabbing, the needle point persists in bucking against the solid parts of that button, and finally, when he loses patience, his fingers catches the thread, and that three inches he had left to hold the button slips through the eye in a twinkling, and the button rolls leisurely across the floor. He picks it up without a single remark, out of respect to his children, and makes another attempt to fasten it. This time when coming back with the needle he keeps both the thread and button from slipping by covering them with his thumb, and it is out of regard for that part of him that he feels around for the eye in a very careful and judicious manner; but eventually losing his philosophy as the search becomes more and more hopeless, he falls to jabbing about in a loose and savage manner, and it is just then the needle finds the opening, and comes up through the button and part way through his thumb with a celerity that no human ingenuity can guard against. Then he lays down the things, with a few familiar quotations, and presses the injured hand between his knees, and then holds it under the other arm, and finally jams it into his mouth, and all the while he prances about the floor and calls upon heaven and earth to witness that there has never been anything like it since the world was created, and howls, and whistles, and moans, and sobs. After awhile he calms down, and puts on his pants, and fastens them together with a stick, and goes to his business a changed man.

A STRUGGLE WITH A STOVE-PIPE.

PUTTING up a stove is not so difficult in itself. It is the pipe that raises four-fifths of the mischief and all the dust. You may take down a {illustration of man attaching a stove pipe and a young woman helping him.} PUTTING UP A STOVE-PIPE. stove with all the care in the world, and yet that pipe won't come together again as it was before. You find this out when you are standing on a chair with your arms full of pipe and your mouth full of soot. Your wife is standing on the floor in a position that enables her to see you, the pipe, and the chair, and here she gives utterance to those remarks that are calculated to hasten a man into the extremes of insanity. Her dress is pinned over her waist, and her hands rest on her hips. She has got one of your hats on her head, and your linen coat on her back, and a pair of rubbers on her feet. There is about five cents' worth of pot black on her nose, and a lot of flour on her chin, and altogether she is a spectacle that would inspire a dead man with distrust. And while you are up there trying to circumvent the awful contrariness of the pipe, and telling that you know some fool has been mixing it, she stands safely on the floor and bombards you with such domestic mottoes as--"What's the use of swearing so?" "You know no one has touched that pipe." "You ain't got any more patience than a child." "Do be careful of that chair." And then she goes off and reappears with an armful more of pipe, and before you are aware of it she has got that pipe so horribly mixed up that it does seem no two pieces are alike.

You join the ends and work them to and fro, and to and fro again, and then you take them apart and look at them. Then you spread one out and jam the other together, and mount them once more. But it is no go. You begin to think the pieces are inspired with life, and ache to kick them through the window. But she doesn't lose her patience. She goes around with that awful exasperating rigging on, with a length of pipe under each arm and a long-handled broom in her hand, and says she don't see how it is some people never have any trouble putting up a stove. Then you miss the hammer. You don't see it anywhere. You stare into the pipe along the mantel, and down the stove, and off to the floor. Your wife watches you, and is finally thoughtful enough to inquire what you are looking after; and on learning, pulls the article from her pocket. Then you feel as if you could go out doors and swear a hole twelve feet square through a block of brick buildings, but she merely observes, "Why on earth don't you speak when you want anything, and not stare around like a dummy."

When that part of the pipe which goes through the wall is up, she keeps it up with the broom, while you are making the connection, and stares at it with an intensity that is entirely uncalled for. All the while your position is becoming more and more interesting. The pipe don't go together, of course. The soot shakes down into your eyes and mouth, the sweat rolls down your face and tickles your chin as it drops off, and it seems as if your arms were slowly but surely drawing out of their sockets.

Here your wife comes to the rescue by inquiring if you are going to be all day doing nothing, and if you think her arms are made of cast iron; and then the broom slips off the pipe, and in her endeavor to recover her hold she jabs you under the chin with the handle, and the pipe comes down on your head with its load of fried soot, and then the chair tilts forward enough to discharge your feet, and you come down on the wrong end of that chair with a force that would bankrupt a pile driver. Your don't touch that stove again. You leave your wife examining the chair and bemoaning its injuries, and go into the kitchen and wash your skinned and bleeding hands with yellow soap. Then you go down street after a man to do the business, and your wife goes over to the neighbor's with her chair, and tells them about its injuries, and drains the neighborhood dry with its sympathy long before you get home.

CACTUS VS. CAT CUS.

THE handsomest cactus in Danbury was ruined Friday night. It belonged to a River-Street family, and was sitting on a stand in front of the sitting-room window. The head of the house got up Friday night to take some medicine, and while moving through the dark of the room for the matches, stepped on the family cat; and that animal sliding abruptly to one side, the unfortunate gentleman was precipitated headlong into the cactus tub, bringing down that and several other plants, and tipping over a table full of ornaments, lamps, and albums. The horrible noise alarmed the family down stairs, and in the midst of the confusion the cat escaped, going down stairs with its back arched like a rainbow, and its tail as big and as stiff as a rolling-pin. The victim the next morning looked like a sample clerk for a wholesale drug house.

HOOPING A BARREL.

PUTTING a hoop on the family flour barrel is an operation that will hardly bear an encore. The woman generally attempts it before the man comes home to dinner. She sets the hoop up on the end of the staves, takes a deliberate aim with the rolling-pin, and then shutting both eyes brings the pin down with all the force of one arm, while the other instinctively shields her face. Then she makes a dive for the camphor and unbleached muslin, and when the man comes home she is sitting back of the stove, thinking of St. Stephen and the other martyrs, while a burnt dinner and the camphor are struggling heroically for the mastery. He says if she had kept her temper she wouldn't have got hurt. And he visits the barrel himself, and puts the hoop on very carefully, and adjusts it so nicely to the top of every stave that only a few smart knocks apparently are needed to bring it down all right; then he laughs to himself to think what a fuss his wife picked up for a simple matter that only needed a little patience to adjust itself; and then he gets the hammer, and fetches the hoop a sharp rap on one side, and the other side flies up and catches him on the bridge of the nose, filling his soul with wrath and his eyes with tears, and the next instant that barrel is flying across the room, accompanied by the hammer, and another candidate for camphor and rag is enrolled in the great army that is unceasingly marching toward the grave.

{Illustration of man with a hammer trying to put a hoop around a barrel as his wife and child looks on.} THE FAMILY FLOUR BARREL. {center of page}LETTERS. LETTERS. THROUGH ON THE CARS.

A TRIP through the Housatonic Valley is something to be desired in good weather, and when Nature has robed itself with verdure. The bleak faces of the rocks are then either entirely covered or left bare only in spots, to make the glory of the leaves and flowers all the brighter by the contrast.

After passing New Milford, the course of the Housatonic,--a river whose history is indirectly connected with shad,--runs with the road, showing up patches of pleasant scenery which delight the heart as well as the eye. The Naugatuck Valley has much to please the traveler. Its river is narrow and tumultuous; its hills high and steep, and the face of the country wild and rugged. The valley of the Housatonic is broader. There is a wide stretch of meadows and fields, with here and there a bit of country over which Nature has not yet lost its exclusive control.

My last trip through this valley was not on a summer day, but on an early spring night, with a clear sky and bright moon overhead, and an unobstructed country beneath. I settled down in the smoking car, pipe in mouth, and a pair of exquisitely wrought and magnificently tight boots on my feet. I took occasion to remark to Conductor Smith, looking at the boots, that they reminded me very much of the late election, they were so close. There was something delicious about this journey. I could sit back at ease and look out upon the country that the moon was mellowing with a rich light, while homestead and forest, meadow and water, glided swiftly by. It was a panorama which Nature and man had been at work upon for many years, upon which you looked, and smoked without offence,--whose beauty was not in any way marred by the rambling comments of a guide with a cold in his head.

I reached Pittsfield at eleven and one-half o'clock, a half hour before midnight. It was quite evident that I was not expected. The air was chilly. The depot was nearly deserted. Two tired hacks with very much dissatisfied drivers stood by and urged me their way. I went to a neighboring hotel, waked up the clerk, and got to bed. Two sheets of tin and a strip of copper covered the bed. I got to sleep at twelve o'clock, and at three o'clock was called up to take the Boston train for Albany. At half past three we left Pittsfield. The Boston and Albany road is one you very seldom hear of, without you should happen to be kept at some station, and observe its advertisement. Its officers, I imagine, are kept but very little out of bed worrying because something may happen. Their slumber is just as serene as the second story of a castle in the air.

We moved out of Pittsfield in a manner so cautious as to call forth my admiration. The scenery along the road consisted principally of a close-boarded fence. Occasionally there was a change, where a board was off. There were about twenty persons in the car. They had come from Boston, and were tired. The attitudes they had fallen into would have astonished them had they been awake. The conductor took a seat in front of me, fastening his eyes squarely on mine, and commenced to snore. I couldn't explain this, and I couldn't very well endure it. I moved to the other side of the car, and looked out of the window. There was a track running parallel with us. I went over to the conductor and awoke him, and asked him what they did with that other track. He looked out of my window upon it, and then he looked at me and rubbed his eyes, and said he was blamed if that didn't beat him; it must have been laid since he was there before. We resumed our seats again, the conductor resumed his snoring, and I gradually fell into a doze. Suddenly I was brought to my feet by an abrupt halt of the train. The conductor snatched his lantern, and rushed out of the car. Fright took possession of the passengers. One of them got under his seat and said he wanted to be buried by the side of his aunt; another caught me around the neck and shouted like a trumpet in my ear, "O, Maria!" "Get off," said I, "or I will hit you on the head with something," and I pushed him into the stove, and hurried out of the car. I found the conductor and a brakeman at the end of the train. There was a stranger with them, and the two were telling him something. It appears he was standing on the platform, and had caught his coat on a mile post, and instead of jumping off and unfastening himself, he hung to the cars and stopped the entire train. I didn't blame the officials for losing their temper over the occurrence. The conductor told the fellow what he thought of him, so did the brakeman, as also did the baggage master and engineer who just came up for that purpose. I would have told him what I thought of him had I thought of anything appropriate, but I promised to embody my views in an exhaustive article and send it by mail. We then got aboard for another start, and soon after I was in a fitful slumber. We reached Albany as night lost itself in day. The light in the east shot over the city on the hills, and the dome on the State House sent back the rays. We moved majestically over the bridge spanning the Hudson. This substantial work takes a front place in the ranks of American enterprises. It was several years in building, during which time it attracted and received the sneers of old fogyism--people of that class coming twenty miles in springless wagons to swear at the work. But it is done now, and the commerce of the East and the West is reaping the benefits of it. A gentleman at the depot told me, and I have no reason to impeach his veracity, that pork steaks can now be purchased in Albany for thirteen cents a pound, delivered at your very door.

Having a couple of hours to wait in Albany, I took a stroll through the city, admiring the quaintness of the ancient structures, and breathing vengeance upon the man who made my boots. At Columbia Street I paused to admire the immense printing establishment of Weed, Parsons & Co. Twenty-four hours later, the fabric was a mass of smoking ruins, and a prosperous business was reduced next door to beggary, with a gate in the dividing fence. Here, thought I, standing by the ruins the next afternoon, is a poor reward for years of toil of hand and brain. But these men are Americans. They will turn short around and start anew on the old road. Were they Frenchmen they would borrow pistols and blow out their brains. Frenchmen are noted for their surplus of brains.

I got back to the depot feeling hungry. A very fleshy man with an extraordinary red face was shouting something to the passengers on a newly arrived train, and pointing with his thumb to a door at his back. I got to the windward side of him with a view to understanding what he was up to, but not making out I went in at the door and found what I very much desired to see--a refreshment room. I replenished myself, but was somewhat surprised at the prices. The coffee was fifteen cents a cup, sandwich fifteen cents, cake twenty cents, pickle ten cents. The latter being the cheapest I ate them, and topped off with a glass of cider, hard enough for a tombstone. With six pickles and this cider cavorting around in me, I was about as reckless a man as got on the train that presently moved away with us.

I had a seat all to myself. Back of me was an old lady and two bandboxes from Bennington, Vermont. There is not much diversity in the scenery along the Central Road, between Albany and Schenectady. Ridges and plains of sand with an occasional patch of dreary pines made out a very uninviting total. The sun was bright and warm, however, and the beauty of the day was a subject of general remark. When we drew up in the oldest city in the State, the old lady rapped me smartly on the ear with an umbrella handle, and asked me the name of the place.

"Schenectady," I replied.

"Skee--what?"

"Schenectady."

"I never heard of the name before, young man," she said.

"Perhaps not," I responded; "it is the only one I have heard of, and I am an early riser."

We moved out of the city at a Vanderbilt gait, and on through the beautiful valley of the Mohawk. One can never tire of looking upon this country. Its associations reach away back to the log forts and sanguinary scenes of the Indian wars. In the revolution it witnessed to a large extent the devastation of the enemy, and the earth has drunk up the blood of scores of martyrs to the cause of liberty and independence. Looking upon the river it required but little imagination to picture its waters with the canoe of the Indian, and the dug-out of the hardy pioneer. Its fields lie quietly in the rays of an April sun, while the toil that cleared, and the courage that defended them, have passed away from the memory.

At Little Falls my female acquaintance's curiosity revived somewhat. The tremendous collection of rocks, of the most grotesque shape, piled promiscuously and generously in all directions, was a sight well calculated to develop observation. So I moved the ear that was next to her umbrella, and got in shape to impart information.

"Young man," she commenced, "what place is this?"

"Little Falls."

"Why did they call it 'Little Falls,' young man?"

"I am sure I don't know," was my frank reply, "without they may have thought that great falls, under the circumstances, would have proved disastrous."

"It's an awful pile of stun for one place, young man."

"Indeed it is," I added.

"An awful pile of stun," she slowly repeated.

"What's your name, young man?"

"Perkins."

"I know a Perkins in Bennington," she said. "Joseph Perkins, a short man, with a very dark blue eye--"

"And the other eye?" I asked, with breathless interest.

"What about the other eye, young man?" she said with a tinge of severity in her tone.

"The color of it?"

"A dark blue eye, I said, and plain enough for anybody to hear with common sense."

As this allusion was undoubtedly directed to me I felt a little hurt, and sank back in the seat, losing all interest in the Bennington Perkins.

The old lady got off at Utica. I lowered her various bundles to the earth, received a patronizing nod, and felt the goodness evaporating through me one experiences when returning good for evil. Passing out of Utica, I had an excellent view of its crowning glory, the Insane Asylum. It is said that this city once had the offer of the capital or the asylum, and took the asylum because it loved quietness.

Meadow and morass, sloping ridges and the curling Mohawk, divide the country between Utica and its old rival, the new city of Rome. At Rome, I get off the cars, nod pleasantly to the conductor, whose memory is as short as his route is long, and his ticket system is defective, and saunter up its Main Street, where your humble subscriber played when a boy and worked when he couldn't very well avoid it. The general reader frequently hears of Rome. It is celebrated in the pages of the press as the place remarkable for its murders, fatal accidents, and incendiarisms, especially for the last two. Its great iron-rolling mills settled suddenly upon it a few years ago, and since then it has gone forward in seven-league boots. It has caught up to a city government, the height of architectural beauty, and two steam-fire engines. In the van are two wide-awake newspapers, of course, the Sentinel and the Citizen, the former being the handsomest newspaper published in America.

Rome is laid out on the square. Its streets, like those of Philadelphia, cross each other at right angles; the avenues are broad, even, and profusely shaded; the houses of its working classes are neat and comfortable; while those of the wealthy are very handsome.

Its iron mills roar day and night without cessation. Boiling iron is not a business you would get up in the night and light a candle to look after. It is conducted in one-story buildings with open sides. The heat from the furnaces and molten iron is intense. In the night the sight is weird and frightful. The men are but partially clothed. Their faces and bodies are grimed with soot. The bright flame leaps from the blasts. The hot iron flares and hisses; while the reports from the "discharging" bars of red hot material are not unlike the volleying of musketry.

The process is simple enough, but the terror it impresses upon the beholder is quite marked. This comes not only from what you see, but from what you dread. The roar of the immense fan above is sufficient of itself to drown the voice and confuse thought, without the shouts of the workmen, and the sharp explosive noises from the "discharge."

We have seen the new things of Rome; looked upon its old and familiar places; recounted the seven or more hills upon which it securely rests; and once more we are on the train going back to Albany. Home and its pleasant visions have crowded out the old lady from Bennington. Our vacation is over, our pipe is out. {right justified} Respectfully yours, {right justified) CYRUS D. PERKINS. AS SEEN FROM THE CARS. {smaller text}

[NOTE TO THE READER.--The party who reads this letter with a view of being improved and interested, will not be disappointed. It is composed of a few notes compiled on a recent and hasty journey through the Naugatuck Valley, for the benefit of the parents of the author. It was not originally designed for public circulation--but so great, etc., etc., that the writer is compelled, etc., etc.]

I stood in the depot at Bridgeport examining the time table of the Naugatuck, feeling that necessary to proper connections would be the time tables of two other roads, yet thanking heaven they were not in sight. I despised time tables from my early youth. More than that, I think it is wrong to issue them at all. They were never designed for a pure purpose.

I had some idea of where I was going, and what I designed doing before I fell to studying this typographical blunderbuss. I lost this knowledge in a short time; lost an inclination to go anywhere, and stared blankly at a short man who was in haste to reach a point in Vermont, but was jeopardizing his chances in the meshes of a horse-car time table. There was a satisfaction, finally, in going out to the platform and feeling patiently of the Naugatuck train, an evidence of its presence no time table on this earth could dim.

I had the pleasure of riding up the road with Conductor Alfred Beers. All conductors are alike. Here is an exception. He does not wear blue clothes. His countenance was not petrified with a reflection of the next station. A very pleasant gentleman is Mr. Beers.

I took a seat in the baggage car, because the location was cool and dustless, and because the baggage master is a man you can draw information from without the use of a derrick. I always like to hear what they have got to say about matters and things, and then envy the blessed immunity they would enjoy if men were struck dead for veracity.

The road curves with the Housatonic River till we reach Derby. Here the Naugatuck River, a noisy but profitable stream of ever varying width and depth, loses its identity.

Derby is a little village in a town of that name, as are also the villages of Birmingham and Ansonia. Birmingham is located on the bluff at the junction of the two rivers--a quiet place, busy with manufacturing, but socially dead. The same may be said of Derby and Ansonia. The operatives work from six in the morning till six, or later, at night. In mid-day the streets are comparatively deserted, and the faces of the merchants, from long and unceasing watching for custom, have contracted an expression that would divert a dog from a bone, and make him uneasy.

It is said of a representative from Woodbury that, being in Birmington and in liquor one afternoon, he was suddenly seized with a grim facetiousness, and shouted "Murder!" A man tumbled out from a store at hand, rubbed his eyes, and observed--"It is a d--d lie!" That man was the sheriff, and was posted, of course.

The particular thing that attracts the attention of the tourist at Ansonia station is a formidable line of huge cannon. These pieces suggest a train of thought in the mind of the reflective stranger that leads him from the gloomy battle field and the dying soldier up to the statement that the guns do not indicate a branch of industry in Ansonia, but are condemned pieces brought here to be melted up into less frightful forms. Their appearance here in connection with the remarkable soberness of the place, is about as symmetrically consistent as a pauper looking for charity through an opera-glass. There is a brass company in Ansonia that employs six million dollars capital, and would use more if it was to be got. Here the Derby railroad terminates its weary self. The intricate history of this route, if properly placed before a dead man, would make him squirm. If he didn't squirm, it would be on account of ill-health.

The Naugatuck railroad crosses the river at Seymore, and at Beacon Falls the valley turns so suddenly as to almost spill the river. And a precious small loss it would be, apparently. And yet this uneasy, constantly deviating, and in no way attractive stream is lined with manufactories, employing thousands of people, creating millions of dollars of capital, and furnishing comfort, protection, and adornment to people all over the world.

It is wonderful. We saw a man fishing in this stream at Beacon Falls. He was an old man, on whose brow care and time had left startling traces. He evidently fished on principle. There was no levity in the calm but determined eye he kept riveted on the line. His body was as firm and unyielding as the clasp to a sweaty carpet bag. There was a quiver perceptible along the pole as the train moved away. He bent his venerable body forward, and suddenly started back, and in an instant landed high on the bank--beyond the faintest possibility of escape--an almost new rubber boot. It is a wonderful river.

The valley is narrow here. The hills shoot up precipitately from the river on one side, and from the railroad on the other. Their sides are brilliant with the varying green of the foliage, for here there is no cultivation, but all the surface has been given over to nature, subject only to her humors.

There is a tradition that an early settler cleared off a patch on one of those mountains and attempted to plant it with corn, but the kernels rolled out of the holes as fast as he could put them in. He gave up sowing and went to ripping. By-and-by he got hold of an oath that he didn't know the meaning of, and the ladder on which he stood to plant gave way, and he fell a distance of eighty feet and (how are you, Sunday-School biography?) killed an estimable neighbor, aged forty-seven years. Since this unhappy occurrence there have been no attempts made to cultivate these hills.

Naugatuck is a sedate but happy manufacturing place, containing nearly three thousand inhabitants. The principal manufacturing is in rubber goods, such as over-shoes, boots, belting, and the bottom crusts of store pies. Here the valley spreads out, the hills sink gradually down, as if testing an untried chair in a strange house, and the entire country assumes an appearance of farming, thrift, and comfort, that is gratifying and--deceiving.

The next place, Union City, is especially noted for the large amount and superior order of cutlery it manufactures. But there are so many people who have been cruelly swindled in knife speculations that the subject is hardly the right thing to tamper with.

The political barometer of a country is the newspaper. The boy who peddles newspapers on the cars over any considerable section of the land, can tell you the political status of that section. If the road he is on is a through route of any importance, he can give you, to a hair, the political feeling of the entire country. Having demonstrated this to the entire satisfaction of the reader and myself, I should now like to find somebody who can translate the pulse that beats in unison with the New York Herald. What does it indicate where you find the Herald asked for, and the Tribune, World, and Times refused? No particular hurry for the answer. Any time will do.

We reached Waterbury at noon, that magnificent hour to the laboring man. The whistles were sounding the glad tidings, bells and gongs took up the joyful news and slung it--I believe I am not too enthusiastic in the term--fairly slung it through each quivering skull.

Waterbury is prolific with manufactures. The modern woman receives from here many of the artificial adornments that go to make her a source of constant attraction and alarm to the contemplative masculine. We could hardly keep our ladies together were it not for Waterbury. This is sad, but too true.

That very useful article--when inserted in cloth--pins, are made here. There is no limit, apparently, to the number of pins daily turned out at the Waterbury manufactories. It is no common thing for the very poorest of the people to run over to some one of the factories, and order a barrel of pins for dinner. They are making campaign medals now. They are somewhat larger than buttons, and more difficult to swallow, but the children are doing as well as could be expected, some of them succeeding in worrying down three and four of those medals in a single day. Waterbury has twelve or thirteen thousand inhabitants,--all busy--a public brown, the finest library in the State, a handsome city hall, three railroads, a daily paper, and a hot, tedious walk from the depot to the business centre.

The baggage master did not appear to take much of an interest in Waterbury until just as we were sailing out of the place. Then his eye suddenly brightened; he gave his overalls an extra hitch, kicked a small carpet bag to one side, and looked at me like a man who was on the point of conferring a piece of valuable information, and was dreadfully afraid he would fall off before anyone was looking. It gradually transpired that we were passing the site of the mill for the manufacture of percussion powder. It is a deadly dangerous material, and the accidents resulting from its compiling are numerous and awkward. The baggage master gave a graphic description of a "blow-out." He said there was a little puff, then a roar, then a snapping, and cracking, and general cavorting of hemlock timber, new shingles, window-glass, and fingers with warts on. He says it is no common thing after one of these explosions to find fingers in the ruins with three or four warts on them. He said he hoped I would pardon him for mentioning the incident, it looked so much like boasting, but he hoped to be struck blind with crysipelas if a brother of his did not once find a finger that had seven warts upon it. He observed that his brother had since departed--gone to a better land. He didn't say where, but he probably referred to Illinois.

Above Waterbury the valley grows wilder and more rugged. Huge boulders stare out from among a rank growth of young trees and unnamable undergrowth. We approach Plymouth, and think of its rock which is storing up fame that will soon rank with the world-wide reputation of that other Plymouth rock. From the cars we can see the quarries, and catch glimpses through the trees of columns and blocks of the beautiful granite, with here and there pyramidal piles of little square blocks, which will soon go to pave the streets of that modern Sodom, the metropolis of America.

At Thomaston we pass the well-known Seth Thomas clock factory--all windows and paint--and hasten on to Fluteville, a place that is not prosperous, but romantic. Here is the building where the cat-footed flute, and demoniacal fife are made. During the war the business was in a flourishing condition, and enough of those instruments were turned out to give every man, woman, and child in the land an unquenchable longing for heaven.

The soil hereabouts consists mainly of sand and gravel, and is inferior for agricultural purposes, but for removing skin from that portion of the human frame coming in violent contact with it, it is just as good as any mixture of sand and gravel you can find.

Russell Baldwin lives in this neighborhood. The baggage master gave me a very interesting account of the life and public services of this personage. Mr. Baldwin is sixty years old. He was born in this neighborhood, lived nearly all that time in one house, and by trade is a retired teamster. This is better than being a retired naval officer, and dying from unknown causes. The baggage master (how pleasant it is, and how safe, to begin a remarkable statement with that authority,) says Mr. Baldwin owns several hundred acres of land along here on both sides of the road. He sold the railroad company the right-of-way for two miles and a half. He wanted to give it to them, but the legislature wouldn't let him, as that body favored the road, so he sold it to them for twenty-five cents, which was about nineteen cents more than it was actually worth. The land is so poor that it could not afford a bed--for the road--so the company took a part of the river bed. The baggage master told me this, and was as solemn and sincere about it as if he had just sold the remains of his mother for twenty-seven dollars, and had the money in his pocket. The less of this land a man owns the nearer to wealth he approaches. A man with forty acres of it can go comfortably clad the year around, but the owner of two hundred acres is a six-barreled pauper. The very hens turn up their noses at him. At Wolcottville there is a large business done in brass. Wolcottville attracts everybody approaching it. It has several churches and a race course. Its cup of happiness won't stand the least jar.

We hurry by Litchfield station (the village is somewhat back, and will bear another letter), Burrsville, and some other place of less significance--but with its factory nevertheless--and we reach Winsted.

Here the Naugatuck road ends. There is but little of startling interest in and about Winsted. It is a place of between three thousand and four thousand inhabitants, and remarkably active for its size. There are various manufactures here, that of agricultural implements being the chief. Here as elsewhere in the valley the manufactories are controlled by stock companies, and it's only here such institutions are uniformly successful. This is another one of these intricacies the reader is invited to take hold of and chew on at his leisure.

Since the opening of the Connecticut Western railroad, giving Winsted direct communication east and west, the place has spread out into noticeable growth. Several new factory buildings are in course of erection, and a number of dwellings are being built. Winsted will probably double its population within the next ten years. It is a pretty place. The architecture of the dwellings is pretty uniform. The lawns and gardens are tastefully designed and carefully kept. It has a race course, beautiful scenery on the hills and ridges that close up around it, the foundation for a forty-five-thousand-dollar opera house, a good newspaper, several hotels, and John R. Forrester, of Danbury, for head landlord.

Winsted occupies a niche in history as the place where Washington never dined while on his way to--etc.

The next morning I bade good-bye to Winsted, regretting that I had not the time to take an extensive ride through the village and adjacent country. It is such a snug place that the visitor, if any way domestic, cuddles up to it instinctively.

It rained drearily the night before, but this morning the sun appeared with renewed brightness. Great squares and patches of its light glittered on the grass and foliage, making the rain drops stand out like diamonds. The cars were moist with the shower, and were too clean and bright to enjoy themselves.

The change from the floating dust and darting cinders of the day before was grateful to the sense of touch and sight, and I enjoyed this brief ride back to Litchfield station with more zeal than I am in any way entitled to.

At the station we found a comfortable-looking stage to transport the Litchfield-bound passengers up four and a half miles of hill. But there is really nothing cheap about this trip. The stage and its trappings, the horses and their driver, are in keeping with the dignity and history of grand old Litchfield, and in harmony with the gravity of its eternal hills. This is business.

The road partly encircled the base of a hill before commencing the ascent. I had my mind prepared to cultivate the memories of the scene we were entering upon--to hold sweet converse with the notable characters who passed over this road in the flush of health and hope years ago, but who to-day are mouldering in distant graves like the commonest clay; but the contrariety of the cigar distracted my thoughts, and instead of purifying my soul by sacred memories, I fell to inventing terms of reproach for the man who invented the vicious weed.

And so we raised gradually up the smooth road, and by some snug farm-houses, catching occasionally retrospective views of the sloping hills and their gorgeous shiftings of color and light that were magnificent in the extreme.

There was a wonderful quiet along the line, broken only by the sharp thud of the horses' feet on the road, and the mellow creak of the vibrating stage. There was but little cultivation along the road. The fields were given over to pasture and the daisy, that flower whose coloring is as bright as that of the lily, and whose fragrance is next to that of chalk. Once we passed a party of men engaged in national pastime of working out a road-tax. They said nothing to us, but I imagine I detected on their faces the ripple of a smile as the stage caromed on the new-formed clods.

I sat outside with the driver, from the same motive that led me to court the society of the baggage master. There was only one inside passenger. He kept very quiet for one-third of the journey; then he gradually dropped into an easy and desultory conversation with himself, which he kept up until we reached Litchfield. He was a pale, fat young man, and carried a book under his arm. I didn't know whether he was a theologian in the ecstasy of pin-feathering, or the murderer of Captain Colvocoresses, searching for a pinnacle on which to stand and curse his fate and count his plunder.

The driver suggested, sotto voce, that the man might be crazy. As there was nothing between my back and the vagaries of the supposed lunatic but an oiled cloth, the suggestion set afloat visions of eight-bladed knives that added an indescribable charm to the balance of the journey.

But we reached the village without a corpse, coming on it over a ridge that revealed to us a panoramic view of roof, spire, dome, and foliage so beautiful that the passenger beside the driver unconsciously held his breath. Even the abstracted man inside shut his book and said,--"It was getting devilish hot."

We had come up thirteen feet of hill, and were now dipping comfortably down into the valley that lay between us and the romantic ridge that held the homes and history of Litchfield.

Any one who has seen Newtown from the Housatonic railroad, and who may have had, at some time in his life, a glimpse of heaven, can combine the two memories together and save the expense of a trip to Litchfield.

Litchfield and Winsted present the conditions of cause and effect. In Litchfield was the law school; but there is no law school there now. It disappeared, and a mad-house was started in Winsted.

At the Mansion House the stage dropped its passengers. The young man with the book passed in, and I mechanically followed. Then the young man turned round to me and said: "What's your bill, coachee?" I wanted the money badly enough, but I thought of the teachings of a gray-haired mother, and told him to put up his gold. We never met again.

North and South Main Street comprise the chief natural attraction of Litchfield. They are broad avenues, lined with generous shade, and sub-lined with lawns, clean walks, neat hedges, and homelike dwellings. The business street is a broad centre, with two parks. In one the memory of the dead soldiers of the late war is perpetuated with a granite monument; in the other a decayed liberty-pole rears its lofty and necessarily bald head. In a calm day the monument monopolizes the reverence of the people, but when the wind blows the pole inspires the most awe.

A singular feature of Litchfield society is the perfectly straight hind legs of the horses. Any one who has never enjoyed the pleasure of witnessing a gale in Litchfield will hardly be prepared to believe that the wind did it. Litchfield hurricanes are very embarrassing until you get used to them. Sometimes they come up suddenly, laden with two-story houses with modern improvements attached (including a well of cold water on the premises), the finest and most completely equipped barns you ever saw, tax-lists, cider casks (invariably empty), and dead men nearly whole and uninjured. No house is safe on one of those hills--the leading clergyman told me--unless it is heavily mortgaged.

The resort of Litchfield (if a country place is no bigger than the statements in this letter, has its "resort") is Bantam Lake. From the clevation of a street the Beechers have made famous by living on the corner of, the lake can be plainly seen. It is a sheet three miles long, and somewhat in the shape of an oyster without any pepper on it. It nestles down in an agricultural bowl, whose sides slope away to a far-distant horizon, dotted with farm-houses, splotched with forests, and checkered with meadows and cornfields. I could have sat there and looked on that scene until the beautiful valley melted away in the dawn of the resurrection, and the heavens rolled together as a scroll above me, but I did not know when the train left. Had I been in sight of the depot I should have tried it.

They call Litchfield a sub-heaven; I know nothing about that; but I do know that it is as near an approach to heaven as an earthly place can reach with two newspapers.

Late in the afternoon I went down to the depot of the Shepaug railroad. The depot is about ninety-six feet "fall" from the village. "Fall" is the term the people in this section employ in designating distances. They don't use "altitude," because they know there is no place under heaven higher than Litchfield, unless it is a Norwalk clothing store. So when they speak of a location they do not say it is so many miles away, but that it is such a number of feet "fall" north, or south, as the case may be.

There is an unpleasant appearance of newness about the depot, but that is going to wear off. The location is well provided with the appliances of locomotion and its care.

I found Tim Keeler, of Danbury, in charge of the train. Mr. Keeler was glad to see me, but judiciously kept two cars and a part of a locomotive between us, until I assured him there was no truth in the rumor of small-pox in Danbury.

I cheerfully accepted an invitation to ride on the locomotive, but regretted it when I found on starting that we passed out of town over the brow of a hill, and saw the track suddenly dip down out of sight, leaving the perplexed passenger to wonder if the train was about to plunge into an abyss seventeen hundred feet deep, or into one only sixteen hundred feet deep.

We dashed along merrily over the hill, and when we got to the bottom we swung around a curve so sharply, as to induce me to step down from my seat.

There are nine or ten stations on the road, and if the station at Litchfield looks raw, I don't know what to say of the others. It is a wild country--a country prolific in timber, rocks, cascades, and quicksands. The road follows the Shepaug River as near as it can and preserve its balance. The river is a narrow stream that runs and falls, falls and runs, the entire distance, spluttering, mumbling, roaring, and hissing all the time. It is the most sociable stream I ever saw. The valley is for the great part narrow; the hills rise abruptly, and after reaching a great height commence to look down as if they wanted to swear at something, but were afraid it wouldn't hear them.

The valley is a series of winding turns. The road goes down, down. When it isn't going down, it is going around. A piece of straight track is a rarity once seen never to be forgotten.

The road from Litchfield to Hawleyville is thirty-five miles long, and in that stretch there are, we believe, one hundred and ninety-six curves. There are four bridges, and several pile structures on the line. The bridge that crosses the Housatonic River is four hundred and fifty feet long, and high enough to scare a hotel clerk. The "fall" from Litchfield to this bridge is eight hundred and five feet, and as the distance is about thirty miles, mathematical prodigies can ascertain accurately any distance in Litchfield--by due allowances, of course. After crossing the Housatonic, the road commences to crawl upwards, and ascends two hundred feet to reach Hawleyville.

Here the road at this writing ends; but by the time this reaches the intelligent reader a connection will have been made with the Bethel extension, and trains will run through from Litchfield to New York over the Danbury and Norwalk road.

An old gentleman, tottering with the accumulated weight of fourscore years, once told the writer that if he couldn't be an angel he would like to be a stockholder in the Danbury and Norwalk railroad.

{right justified}

CYRUS D. PERKINS.

A SUMMER RESORT IN NOVEMBER.

No one but a newspaper man would think of visiting a summer resort in November. The reason he thinks of it is because the luxury is much cheaper then.

I visited Saybrook for the reason set forth as above. Saybrook is not only a resort, but it has historical associations connected with it. I am very fond of historical associations. I had an uncle who gave up his life for historical associations. He got a shell from the battle-field of Manasses, and put it in the fire to warm it up so he could analyze it and write out a treatise about it. It would have been a very valuable treatise, undoubtedly, but my uncle never lived to complete it; in fact, it may be mentioned incidentally, that he never lived to commence it. They began the funeral obsequies at once, and it was the longest funeral ever seen. They were two years burying him. Whenever they found a piece of him they bore it to its final resting-place. And it was a very annoying and aggravating funeral, too, because there was never enough of him got together at any one time to warrant laying out money and thought on a grand display. Sometimes there would only be a heel or so, and then the general attendance of mourners was light; but when we got half a leg or something like that, everybody turned out and felt bad. It would have done anybody good to have been present and seen my aunt conduct herself. She really, to use a favorite expression of hers, "Humped herself." But when there was a light funeral, it depressed her; but she never lost that urbanity and grace so peculiar to her family. She would fold her hands meekly, and apologetically explain,--"It is the best I have, my friends."

But I will not write any more of this. It makes me sad.

Saybrook is a straggling village of some twelve hundred population. It covers about as much territory as the city of New York. The dwellings indicate substantial wealth and general comfort. They are white, have green blinds, and the roofs slope to the street. Acton, a prominent New York politician, lives here. Also a number of retired seamen, with a sprinkling of naval officers. There is a very large and respectable circle of commodores in Saybrook. I was surprised at their plentyness. If you should throw a dish of water out of the window twelve times in succession, you would find, after a careful inspection, nine very moist commodores; the balance would probably be captains. There is a peculiar sensation in being in Saybrook. It is as if you stood on the deck of nine hundred vessels.

It is an old town--a cozy, comfortable, retired town--and it is full of relics, quaint stories, and quaint people. There is a man there who has named his daughters after certain states. He designed going through the entire union this way, but was blocked out in a very singular and entirely unexpected manner. His daughters gave out.

Then there is a house whose front entrance is blocked up; a large, grand house it is, but immensely gloomy. A former owner died there years and years ago, and directed that after his body passed out, the front door should be forever closed. It is closed to-day, has never been opened since, and is something to be proud of, without doubt.

I had a cousin who was once possessed of a similar conceit. He closed a side door to his home, and directed that nobody should ever be allowed to pass through it. When a stranger knocked at that door the dog generally went round there, and taking a piece of him, carried it to my cousin as a sample; and if my cousin was satisfied, he admitted the rest of him. But one day the dog came across the wrong man, and after that my cousin adorned society with only one ear.

There is a commodore in Saybrook who used to be a very distinguished person in the merchant service, many years ago. He was master of the "Duke of Northumberland," one of the handsomest and staunchest vessels in the line. He was a captain in those days when to be a captain of a vessel was better than to be a god in a heathen town of eight thousand inhabitants. But now his sailing days are over, and he has sunk to the level of a commodore. He has a nice place and a lot of barns. On one of these, a one-story affair, is perched the figure-head of the "Duke of Northumberland," being a colossal figure in wood, of a dead white color, and not the least approach to levity in any of its lineaments. There is a peculiar sensation in watching this incongruous spectacle--a little yellow barn, and a towering piece of sculpture on its summit. There stands the Duke, with his pants in his boots, as was the Greeleyism of a century ago, looking off toward the ocean, and thinking how different things are now from what they were when he was a boy. This is a very painful thought, but very instructive.

It is years since the Duke left the ocean--long, weary years--but if he could speak, if the inanimate wood could only speak, what wondrous stories it would tell of the wharf-airs it has passed through. There is a good deal of strength in this thought.

Saybrook has a light-house that must be a comfort to mariners. I had the pleasure of mounting to its summit, and examining the light. It is the first time I ever took any interest in a lantern. Mr. Ingham, the keeper, was very obliging in showing me the workings of the institution, and I really think that I, even at my age, would like to have a light-house if I could afford it. I don't think any family should be without a light-house.

Beyond the light-house is the beach--a pebbly beach, because there are a number of pebbles upon it. Some of them would weigh about eighteen tons apiece. And near the beach a Hartford gentleman has erected a very handsome hotel, a popular resort in the summer for many city people. Last season was not a very profitable one, but heaven never designed that the keeper of a hotel should enrich himself with violent speed. But the hotel answers the purpose, and by another season may pay expenses with something over. They told me about the mosquitoes, but I didn't see them.

I saw their breeze, however; it was a winter zephyr, that came dancing over the water, and carrying chills, and fever, and influenza at every step. It was a gale. They say it is healthy, and point to the superior sanitary condition of the place in confirmation. But it was powerful. It would blow open an eight-bladed knife inside of a minute. The old citizens carry blank mortgages in their hats, and never think of going out without them. But it is a very healthy wind.

There are two very vivid historical associations connected with Saybrook. One is a platform popularly denominated the "Saybrook Platform." It once occupied a prominent position in the minds of the people at large, but it was taken down a long time ago, and cut up into relics.

Lady Fenwick is another historical relic of Saybrook. She differs from the platform in that she has a habitation here, but the most of her has gone for relics. She's very much diffused about here. She gained fame by dying. Had she lived till now she would not have been known. But she died at the first opening that presented itself, and was the first white woman to ever enter eternity from Connecticut. This was some two hundred and thirty-odd years ago, but Lady Fenwick still holds the palm. Unlike the nurse of the late Washington, there is only one of her; and when we realize how wide a field for distinction is here presented, we are struck with awe--solid awe. Two years ago they dug the Lady up and walked her around to exercise her. A new railroad wanted her resting-place, and the authorities concluded to kill two birds with one stone, and accommodate the railroad, and distinguish themselves. So they dug her up, and sent invitations to a select party of mourners to come on and divide up the grief. They unearthed her one morning in the presence of a number of the populace, and when she was brought up to the sunlight, the more deeply affected of the crowd went for those remains, and in a very brief time had lugged off the most valuable portions of her. These parts were subsequently worked up into breast-pins, tooth-picks and other luxuries. The balance was scientifically adjusted by Dr. J. H. Granniss, the regulator of Saybrook's system, and then deposited in a handsome coffin, and escorted to the principal church with a solemnity that brought tears to the eyes of people eighteen miles away. It was an elegant affair. Dr. Granniss showed how the remains were those of a woman; that she was between thirty and forty years of age, and that she had a curvature of the spine. In those days, a curvature of the female spine was an affliction. The bones were well preserved, and even the hair was in good condition. After the audience had surfeited themselves with grief, and the other refreshments furnished, the remains were taken to the cemetery, and again set out.

{right-aligned}

C.D.P.

ALONG THE SHORE.

THE Shore Line Railway, running from New Haven to New London, is a division of the New York and New Haven Railway, and like that magnificently kept route, is grand in upholstery, smooth in bed, trim in track, rapid in speed, and more than ordinary in scenery. The routes of travel under control of Vanderbilt are particularly noticeable for the vivid contrast between the ordinary coaches and the drawing-room or palace affairs. This contrast is kept up at the little end mostly, the common cars being as devoid of beauty and comfort as the new clothes of a neighbor. The N.Y. & N. H. Co. do things differently. They are not in league with Pullman or Wagner.

At New London the cars are ferried over the Thames River, and on the other shore run on to the track of the New London and Stonington road. The boat thus employed is an immense structure, is in perfect good nature, receives six cars without moving, and charges a dollar for meals. If the proprietor of the eating saloon owned the boat I should be afraid to sail in it.

Those of the passengers who didn't risk their lives in trying to swallow one dollar's worth of victuals, employed the twenty minutes allotted to the sail in examining the furniture and various appliances of the boat, and swearing back at the officers who sought to interfere.

In this manner we passed over the water, formed the proper connection on the other side, and sped away to Stonington, ten miles distant.

My object in coming here was to attend and report the first annual meeting of the Connecticut Baptist Social Union. There is a name copious enough to suit a native of Maine. The organization was holding a business meeting in the Baptist church there on our arrival. This was half past six. It closed before I could get fixed up and get there, and so I employed the interval in looking up the chief charms of the town.

Stonington as a town boasts six or seven thousand inhabitants, but as a borough it is cut down to one-third that number. Stonington was a place of some importance during the Revolution, and enjoyed a battle of a sanguinary nature. Later in life it became noted as a whaling town, and now keeps its place in history as the depository of the "Stonington Line."

It is also a "resort" for city people, and in this connection has a hotel which is not only roomy and handsomely located, but is also clean, and is managed as carefully and cleverly as the best of homes. I refer to the Wadawanuck House, kept by T. M. Mason. The place is popular, and always crowded through the summer season. Its clerk, J. R. Adams, was formerly of the Clarendon House, Green Cove Springs, Florida, and a very gentlemanly clerk he is.

Stonington has its newspaper, of course, a sprightly local, with Jerome S. Anderson as editor. I found Mr. Anderson an invaluable chaperone, [I peeled that name from the cover of a collar box I found on the cars. I don't know what it means, but it looks nice,] and through his kindness and patience I am able to give your readers some information that will make their heads ache.

I know just as well as anybody how bitterly opposed the American people as a class are to receiving knowledge, but I will give them valuable information when they don't know it, and they never will know it, I'll do it so adroitly.

Stonington is in the extreme eastern corner of Connecticut, where it laps on to Rhode Island and the Atlantic Ocean. It is beyond Long Island Sound, and the water that washes its piers and beats mournfully against the breakwater wall is of the genuine Atlantic. This is a bit of intelligence you will receive in Stonington before you have a chance to show your ignorance.

The place has a look about it that is very suggestive of St. Augustine, Florida. The moon-light, the deserted piers, the inactive streets, and the quiet appearance of the business places which are built solidly against the walks and stand there as sombre and expressionless as a row of town officers being photographed, smack strongly of the prominent points of St. Augustine. But the business men are active and shrewd, and show that they didn't fool away any time while dealing with the old salts who once frequented the town, and whose profanity and sweat would confuse the head of a nail keg. One of these merchants struck me as being a very interesting gentleman. He said to me,--"Here, Mr. Perkins, you will see the genuine Atlantic Ocean. The water that laves our shores is the pure ocean." I thanked him and retired.

The breakwater I recently spoke of is a structure built by the government to protect the harbor. It runs out into the water a great number of feet--I forget how many, but about as many feet as any breakwater would require to run that distance--and ends with a light-house. This wall which places its sides against the wilderness of waters, is made of ponderous blocks of granite, and forms on its surface one of the prettiest promenades on the coast. A gentleman to whom I was introduced here, called my attention to the fact that the waves which curled along the wall were from the Atlantic, and all the water I could see on either hand came from the genuine ocean. I thanked him, and got away to the point, and stood there with my hat off, and looked away off to the east where the purple sky and shadowy water seemed to unite, and then in the west where great banks of cloud tried to frown and appear mad, but couldn't succeed for the golden rifts and silver smiles which tossed their blackness into purple billows, and buried it into a tomb all orange and scarlet. Down on the bay the light of the departing day was reflected in many colors. Its surface shone like glass, and the vessels which here and there broke the light were as motionless as the rock on which we stood. To the south is Fisher's Island, but dimly seen now, and back of us is the long point of land which Rhode Island runs into the ocean to accommodate several hotels and hundreds of city people. We were told that that was "Watch Hill," and that in the morning we should be taken over there and made sea sick.

At this point of the conversation I turned to go, casting one lingering glance over the magnificent display of water and sky, and nearly tripped over an old buffer, who had inconsiderately got under my feet. I commenced to apologize, but he politely prevented it by observing,--"It is no matter. Seeing that you are a stranger, I wish to call your attention to the fact that these waters are from the Atlantic. They are of the genuine ocean--there is no discount to that." I wrung his hand in gratitude, and fled.

I had pointed out to me piers where numberless whaling vessels had received their stores and shipped their men for years of cruising. But this was a long time ago--before mature manhood was gifted with a desire to blow down lamp chimneys, and beautiful little girls in woolen dresses acted as fatal incense to obstinate kitchen fires.

Now the piers are quiet, and with the exception of an occasional sealing vessel, no indication of the former glory remains.

There is a sealer fitting out here that is a marvel to seamen. It is not any longer than a city building lot, but it proposes to go to the Shetland Islands for seals. We don't know how many seals it will accommodate with its crew and provisions, but unless the seals will consent to lie close, the trip will be more productive of fame than spondulicks. [This term signifies money, and was very popular in the dark ages.]

I returned to the hotel after a pleasant stroll, and found the members of the Union about to sit down to a supper that looked in every way tempting. The meal passed with due animation, and was followed by brief speeches by several of the members, which were listened to by a pleased and prone-to-applaud auditory.

Mr. Amesbury, of Danbury, and myself, designed going to Providence on the train which is popularly supposed to leave Stonington for Boston upon the arrival of the New York boat.

This event comes off at sometime between one and two o'clock A. M. Having ascertained this much, the porter was notified of our intention, and agreed to take a liberal interest in whatever efforts we should make to keep him awake until that time.

Shortly after midnight I dropped in to see how matters progressed, and found Mr. Amesbury and the porter wide awake. I don't really know what kind of statements my Danbury friend had been making, but the porter, who was a colored man, was sitting bolt upright on a chair, and looking around as lively as if a ghost was about to step in and borrow an umbrella.

Pretty soon he detected the sound of a bell in the direction of the landing, and told us the boat was now about two miles out, and then he disappeared up stairs.

I waited and listened. I didn't hear the boat touch the pier, but presently I could distinguish the fact that a locomotive was doing something down there. There was a puffing, and blowing, and creaking for awhile, followed by what sounded suspiciously like a train of cars moving away in a hurry. But I knew the porter knew his business, and so I didn't feel uneasy. Besides, the train might have become tired of waiting, and was taking a little run into the country just for exercise and to kill time. When the porter returned, he picked up the baggage, and said it was queer that boat didn't come in, and started for the pier followed by us. We got there about fifteen minutes after the train had left. The porter was surprised. "I declare!" said he, and at once returned to the hotel.

We followed after, my companion walking stiffly, and myself thoughtfully, every few minutes describing a circle over the walk with my foot in hopes of coming across a rock large enough to kill a colored man.

He showed us up to bed in silence. As he closed the door he gave us a glance that spoke volumes of regret, and said,--

"You ain't on the Sound now, gentlemen; the waves you hear beating against the wharf is from the Atlantic; it's the genuine ocean. Good night."

We got up early next morning, as we were to take the seven o'clock train. I took a run down to the pier while breakfast was preparing. The sky was densely clouded, a cool breeze was blowing, and the air seemed to put an abundance of inspiration in me.

Out on the end of the pier I saw an object clothed with a tarpaulin, an oil cloth cape, and a pair of dark pants. It was a figure cut out of wood, but painted so naturally that it looked like the rear view of an "old salt." I had heard of such things before, and said to myself, "Now here is a genuine curiosity--a regular figure-head," and as no one appeared to be looking I picked up a rock and heaved at it to see if it was hollow. I am not a bit superstitious, but when that wooden structure suddenly faced about and distinctly enunciated, "D--n my toplights," I felt my hair instinctively lift--also my feet.

After breakfast we went down to the cars, and as I was getting aboard, I ran against an old acquaintance.

"Hello, Perkins," said he, "what are you doing here?"

"Summering," said I.

"Nice place, ain't it?" said he. "The real old Atlantic you find here. Every wave is from the genuine--"

"There, there; that will do," said I, wearily, and the train moved away.

{right justified}

CYRUS D. PERKINS.

WAURAMAUG.

Being a Frugal Account in which the Reader will find some Statements that Will Make him uneasy.

WAURAMAUG LAKE is some eight miles distant from New Milford, and New Milford is liberally patronized by city people seeking rest and enjoyment, and consequently the Lake is a "resort." It receives visitors from New Milford, Washington, Litchfield, Kent, and several other places. Last summer the attendance of people was quite large; but this season, for some reason not understood by me and the man who keeps the hotel and the boy who snares bait, there are not many visitors.

The drive to the Lake from New Milford is through a pleasant if not a profitable country. Man doesn't appear to have extraordinary good luck with the soil, but nature is getting rich from it. Her trees and smart weed and Canada thistle are doing as finely as any I have yet seen.

The road follows the Aspetuck River through a valley that is profuse with verdure. This valley is designed sometime to be the course of a railroad from New Milford to New Preston. A survey has been made and an estimate given, and we believe the company have engaged two brakemen and a water-boy, but nothing farther towards completing and equipping the road has been accomplished. The rate of speed possible to be attained on a road through the Aspetuck valley will never, I hope, be impaired by the misfortune which overtook a western road, where the locomotive was overtaxed through the perverseness of the conductor, who persisted in carrying an eight-bladed knife.

The Aspetuck River is not so long as the noble Mississippi, and it is really not so broad; yet the width of a stream is a very uncertain matter to guess accurately at. Sometimes a very thirsty cow will come along and sop up the whole thing, but they invariably catch the cow and get it back. A little watchfulness like this, with an occasional pail of water through the middle of the day, keeps the river up to high-water mark.

Northville is a quiet hamlet on the way. A small place, however, and when they get its name laid out on a board, they have to stand the board on its end, or stand a law suit from the adjoining town for trespass. This is not pleasant, but it is true, and truth should never be sacrificed for pleasure, unless it is quite dark.

The road ascends but little, and descends in proportion. It dips down into cool gorges and rises softly up little steeps whose summits reveal bits of cool and refreshing scenery.

We pass through Marbledale, a place that has no sign on a board, and needs it not, for from every fence appear clippings from tombstones, and every doorstone is an obelisk in disguise. There are several marble yards in this section, and years ago considerable stone was quarried here, but the business is visibly degenerating. The yards are kept up, however, just for home consumption, my friend with whom I rode told me. It doesn't seem possible, but these Litchfield-County men are men of iron constitution. And it requires nerve to look out of a shop window over several hundred acres where nothing is planted but corn and tobacco, and then fall to work hewing out business cards for people who are employing their leisure in picking up health.

It must be awful to go around among your neighbors smiling upon them, and swearing because your breath isn't a pestilence to strike them dead.

Just before we reach the Lake we see a tall steeple shooting up its whiteness toward heaven from an eminence. The cluster of houses at the base of the hill is the village of Wauramaug. The village has a church, bar-room, blacksmith's shop, and a deserted ore furnace. There is a natural fall of water here that is very pretty. The descent is some ten or fifteen feet, and the water as it goes, roars, dashes, and foams in a really cool and pleasant manner. Enough water goes to waste there every hour to make a milk-man major-general in the camp of wickedness. I would figure this out for you, but I don't believe a man should go into statistics and tangle people when he can avoid it. This furnace I speak of is a square of roughly-lain stone, with a few bricks thrown in to give the whole a pleasant metropolitan appearance. Many years ago the iron in the furnace cooled, and it has remained there since, a mass of hardened ore. It couldn't be taken out, and it wouldn't come out of its own accord, and there it stays to this day, a solemn warning to--to--to--a solemn war--a sol--thunder and lightning! what is that a solemn warning to? But I digress.

Over a rise of ground beyond the fur--(hang that furnace!)--we come upon the Lake, and verging to the left we pass over a smooth road which half encircles the water. It is a pretty sheet, this Wauramaug is. Although five miles in length, it twists about so as to lose two-thirds of its magnitude from any point you may view it, except from the "pinnacle." In shape it is something like a carpenter's "straight edge" that has been left out in the rain through the machinations of a careless apprentice. The reader may now want to know what that looks like, but I hope not. At the lower end of the Lake the shore is crowded to the water by lofty ridges, but farther up the shores slope gradually. The southern ridge is full of dense hedge and impracticable grass. It is here the picnic and camping-out parties gather--and there are several spots where a week may be very comfortably passed. On the northern shore the hand of cultivation has established homes, tilled fields, and turnpikes.

The water is a dull color, and its depth varies from six inches to six rods. There are no sail-boats on its surface, but any quantity of row-boats, and these are popular with a class of people who prize muscle above the New Testament.

The Lake does not boast a hotel. A shanty with boards convenient to lay out people on, who may have unintentionally taken two consecutive drinks at its bar, was the only accommodation up to this writing. Now a temperance man has got hold of the place, and is building an addition to it, and is fixing it up so as to accommodate two hundred guests. If the new proprietor wants to make Wauramaug Lake a howling wilderness he has got to advertise his Temperance House. The most ardent admirer of total abstinence in the land will dodge a temperance house, and feel proud of it.

We stopped here to get some refreshments. Lemon soda that was meat and drink was passed out to us. I drank some of it, picked the ravelings out of my teeth, and passed out of the door a broken-hearted man.

At the foot of the Lake we left our team in the care of a friendly post, and started up the pathway to the "pinnacle." The pinnacle is a point where a sloping ridge that follows the Lake for a mile and a quarter ends in a bluff.

One or two extra exertions, a few scratches, a sort of nervous scrambling with wearied legs, and we come out on a plateau of rock, and stand face to face with a scene that almost succeeds in absorbing our entire breath.

The first sensation is astonishment--not at the great view the distance embraces; not at the wonderful array of hills and ridges, valleys and plains, forests and fields, but at the fact that five miles of water with all its windings among the hills, is just as plain to us from end to end, as if we were in a balloon over its very centre. And we are astonished at this because the "pinnacle" on which we stand does not appear from the shore where we viewed it to be much higher than the bluffs that crook the lake into its romantic turnings. But the amazement soon melts into nothing beneath the grandeur of the sight that meets the eye in whichever way it is turned.

Away to the west are visible the summits of the Catskills; to the north is Litchfield village, fourteen miles away, and yet so plain to the sight that its houses can be counted. Between us and the horizon is a billowy expanse of green hills. There are mountains that appear as pigmies, and ridges that look like the embankments built by children, of sand. We see away off to the end of the world, as it appears, and find it hard to believe that this is but a moiety of the work performed by the living God within a period of six days.

I should like to ask the reader why the Heavenly Father made everything so beautiful in this world if we were not to enjoy it, but I fear to meet the onslaught that would at once come from the theological mind. A man should not talk of the goodness of God outside of his own denomination. This is wisdom.

With one hand tied behind him the occupant of the "pinnacle" can look into fourteen towns. If he cannot see Chicago it is not the fault of the pinnacle, but more the fault of Chicago, I think.

We take off our hats and our coats, and give free access to the stiff breeze that is blowing from the west and distributing to the four corners of the earth the dreams of cool soda and ice cream that accompanied us up the ascent and strengthened with every step.

Down to the cool, glistening surface of the water our gaze lovingly returns, and the interest deepens with the shade on its shores, as we think of the giants in intellect whose feet have pressed its borders, and whose eyes, luminous with the brilliancy of thought, have rested tenderly upon its calm depths.

Here have wandered Webster, Everett, Stevens, Calhoun, Washington, Franklin, Robespierre, Tecumseh, Barnum, Socrates, Bunyan, Bonaparte--(if the reader sees any names here he objects to, he can leave them out; we are not particular to have our own way when entertaining people),--Homer, Pocahontas, and a host of others made illustrious by their country's necessities. They are dead now, but if they could stand with us and look down upon the blue of the waves with their fleshless eyes, and then step down and take a glass of that lemon soda, they would return to the grave feeling as fresh and content as a brannew corpse on a national holiday.

We reluctantly turn our steps downward, skimming on our feet through the dead leaves and wild grass, and on something else over the flat surface of the table rocks. Occasionally a snake starts up and makes across the road at a speed that denotes business of importance, but no accident happens and we reach the team in safety.

Thanking the boy who has held the post and thus prevented it from getting away with the horses, we take up the lines and speed back to New Milford, as pure and happy as if we were the sole possessors of Vesuvius, and had eleven hundred temperance tavern keepers to roast before dark.

{right justified}

CYRUS D. PERKINS.

LOCAL ITEMS. {Illustration of man and child falling down the stairs.} A DOMESTIC CRASH. LOCAL ITEMS. A DOMESTIC CRASH.

WHEN a boy is in haste to go somewhere on his own account is not exactly the time to send him elsewhere on your account. But a fond Danbury mother thought differently. She wanted her boy to carry some things down stairs, when he thought he ought to be out doors tickling the carman's horse. But he took the things. He put a mirror under one arm and a clock under the other. Then he took a chair in each hand, and hung a pail of dishes around his neck, and filled his pockets with tumblers, and started for the stairs. Just as he got to the top to commence the descent, the mirror slipped, and in an endeavor to recover it he lost his balance, and went shooting down to the next floor, accompanied by all those articles, and making an earthquake at every bound. Coming up the stairs at the same time was the carman. He saw the danger, and had sufficient presence of mind to shout,--"Hey, you! go back!" But the boy did not hear him apparently, for he kept right on, and by the carman, leaving that unfortunate man to follow on his head. The cries and crash brought the rest of the family to the rescue, and the disconsolate youth was saturated with arnica and tears, contrary to the advice of the carman, who suggested that he be driven into the earth with a mallet.

INTERESTING PEOPLE.

ONE of the saddest sights in this season of the year is a young man who has waited outside the church of an evening until he is chilled through, only to see a girl walk off with some rascal who has been inside all the time toasting his sinful shins at the stove.

A DANBURY youth who could not sing or play, wanting to serenade his girl, whistled for half an hour under her window, the other evening, and when he got over the fence found about seventy-five dogs waiting to see what he wanted.

THE following note picked up on the street, Monday afternoon, is a manly exposition of what narrowly escaped being a grievous wrong:--

DEAR JANE:--I hope you ain't mad because I didn't laff at you when you lafft at me last evening at the post offis. I ain't prowd, dear Jane, but I have got a bile under my arm, and I can't laff as I used to, as Heaven is my judge.

{right justified}

Yours truly,

{right justified}

HENRY.

A BASHFUL young man wrote an avowal of love to a lady and awaited an answer through the mail. He got the letter next evening, and hurrying to his boarding house with it, was on the point of reading it, when some one came to the door, and he was obliged to shove it into his pocket quickly. He next went to a saloon, and taking a position in a retired corner, was about to open the missive, when the passing to and fro of strangers made him more timid, and he again shoved it into his pocket, and slunk out doors. He tried several places with no better success, and finally returned home, and at once went to bed, where he remained in a state of awful suspense until not a noise was heard in the house, and then being assured that he was entirely free from interruption, he stole quietly out of bed, opened the letter with trembling fingers, and through a mist of tears saw that he was indebted to one of our druggists for five bottles of pomade,--two dollars and seventy-five cents.

A DANBURY young man in the ardor of his affection promised to cherish one of our young ladies with a love that would survive an army overcoat.

ONE of our young men has recently ceased to make calls at a certain house. It appears he went there the other night from an oyster supper, and on her father appearing at the door, he observed, "Hello, old tadpole! where ish the floating gazelle? where ish my love now dreaming?" This seemed to indicate to the old gentleman that something was wanted, and so he placed his hand sadly on the young man's shoulder, and turning him partly around stowed away a large amount of leather under his coat tail, and then retired into the house. The young man doesn't go there any more. He says that small-pox is hereditary in the family.

IT rained the other evening, and there was an entertainment. A young gentleman said to a young lady,--"May I have the pleasure of protecting you with my umbrella?" And said she, with her round, expressive eyes looking full into his,--"Put up your rag." We like to see people sociable.

A NEW shade of silk is colored by a very deadly poison, and in one dress there is enough poison to instantly kill the most distant relative of the young man courting the wearer.

NO one enjoyed Sunday evening, after that splendid rain, any more than our young men. It was a beautiful sight to see them skimming along toward the young ladies' homes. There was no dust to mar the polish on their boots or begrim the pomade on their hair. They moved rapidly and buoyantly, their hearts filled with glad anticipation and their coat-tail pockets with maple sugar.

WHEN a couple of young people strongly devoted to each other commence to eat onions it is safe to pronounce them engaged.

A NORTH-MAIN-STREET man who has a beautiful daughter with an obnoxious suitor, got up in the night recently and kicked him out doors. When his anger lulled he permitted his daughter to explain that he had footed the wrong man. He says now that he was walking in his sleep.

A YOUTHFUL lover who sang and played before his young lady's house for two mortal hours, Friday night, was electrified after a short pause by a cordial "thank you," gracefully pronounced by the "other feller" who appeared at the window

THESE moonlight nights are just the thing for lovers, who sit in the dense shade of trees, and cover the approach of the old man with the open spots.

A LITCHFIELD couple on their way home from a Wolcottville picnic, were deposited on the earth by the breaking of the carriage. The young man went to a neighbor's house for help, and in moving about for the door fell down an open hatchway into the cellar. When he got on his feet he found a huge dog barking at the entrance, and in the brief intervals of the dog's bark could distinctly hear the man of the house heavily charging a double-barreled gun.

WE call the attention of the authorities to the "light and airy nothingness" that is now being brought into the market as a gate hinge. No young woman is safe who trusts her weight to it.

HOW handy some people are in drawing on the resources of heaven for favors to their friends. We overheard a young fellow at an up-town gate the other night observe to something he was holding in his arms, "Heaven bless you, dear Matilda." And to save his miserable life he couldn't raise influence enough to secure a kick from a Queen Anne musket.

THE FLOWING BOWL.

A DANBURIAN has signed the pledge eighty-three times, and wants to know who can beat that.

HARRY CAREY got drunk and noisy on Tuesday, but the justice would not commit Harry Carey--for obvious reasons.

AUGUSTUS thinks "keeping ah dwam shop in Dhanbury just now must be wisky business."

A PARTLY inebriated man offered to bet a half dollar this noon that he could climb up a tree in two minutes; but after sitting down on the sidewalk at the foot of it for ten or twelve times, he suddenly picked himself up and moved away, muttering, that drunk as he was he knew better than to fly in the face of Providence by trying to climb a slippery elm.

A NEW-STREET man while under the influence of liquor, Christmas morning, deliberately kissed his wife's mother.

A DANBURY Good Templar is so saturated with his principles that he will not wear a cocked hat. This seems like carrying a thing a little too far.

A SAD tableau, but not an uncommon one. A small, wretched-looking house. Outside, a miserable apololgy for a man, crazed by drink, assaulting the door, and making the air resound with his curses. Inside, a thin, pale woman with a wan expression of features, pressing one hand tightly over her heart, and with the other heating a poker in the fire.

A HEARSE was standing at the depot on the arrival of the train Saturday. The first passenger to step off was an individual who had evidently looked upon the wine when it was red. Meandering up to the oppressively solemn driver of the sombre establishment, he handed up the checks for his baggage, at the same time observing in a pleasant, off-hand manner, with a sharp look at the vehicle, "Wass'er masser, Shonny? carriage broke?"

FARM-LIFE.

ALANSON CHASE'S hen which laid the monstrous big eggs spoken of in our last issue, expired on Saturday while engaged in an attempt to transcend all preceding efforts. She now lays with her mothers.

FARMERS are waiting for the weather to moderate sufficiently to permit them to hang up their winter suits in the corn-fields.

A LEXINGTON (Mass.,) owner of hens noticed that one of them had an immense crop, and procuring a sharp knife, made an incision, and drew forth a dish-cloth. That's just like a hen. It will eat anything it can swallow, and swallow anything it can get hold of. It would swallow a fence if it was loose, and then step around back of the house to see if dinner was ready. It is with hens as with story papers, everything is in their necks.

A NEW YORK judge has decided that clipping horses is an indictable offence. This does not refer to clipping them over the head with a curry-comb when they step on your foot. That is always commendable

LIFE AND MANNERS IN DANBURY.

THE women are shopping now. Nothing but the top-knot of the average clerk is visible above the towering counter, except when he goes up for another piece of goods, and it is interesting to study the emotions that are at work within by the wrinkles of the scalp. Ah! no one can really understand the mighty thoughts that surge through their brains as they are asked if they "haven't got something a little lighter?" We, who have comfortable homes and kind parents, and baker's bread, rarely think of this.

A BETHEL man lost his vote in a rather singular manner. He searched in all his pockets, and took off his stockings and wrung them out, but couldn't find it, and had to get another.

ADAMS' Express horse becoming depressed by the corruption in Congress and other high places, ran away on Monday and scattered packages along the road. No serious damage done.

THE sudden death of a citizen of Slawson, on Tuesday, made a deep impression upon one of his neighbors. The day he was buried was the day he was going to show this neighbor a good spot for sassafras.

THE all-consuming desire of the American people to make money is fruitful of many evils. One of the saddest illustrations of this is the case of young Ezra Short, who having engaged in the vending of oranges, and succeeding in disposing of a basket of them, was tempted to add a box of sardines and two dozen shoe strings to the stock, and is now going through bankruptcy. "The more haste, the less speed," is an axiom that keeps well.

THERE is a bad place in the road on Osborne Street. Somebody will break a wheel or leg there, and the town authorities will scratch themselves bald trying to devise means to circumvent the plaintiff's lawyers.

TRYING to carry home five pounds of mackerel and his wife's spring bonnet at the same time on Saturday evening, was what prevented a Balmforth-Avenue man from attending church on Sunday.

THERE are enough useless fruit cans and hoop-skirts on Nelson Street to keep five goats a year.

A DANBURY boy of ten winters (not like this one, however), stole a harmonica Friday evening to serenade his girl with, and was sending thunder and lightning through it when overhauled by his father and the owner. He says there are places where a poultice won't take hold worth a cent.

HAD Eve heard any of the peddlers on the New Haven road holler "apples," there would have been no clothing stores in Danbury to-day.

"THE frost has penetrated the ground deeper this winter than it has for thirty years."--Exchange.

For breadth, depth, and general massiveness of appearance, that is the most successful lie we ever heard, and we have been in Washington twice.

A DANBURY man imagined himself a hen, and while under the influence of that conceit, sat down on a dozen eggs, and hatched out an Italian sunset and a circus poster. His wife removed the debris with the bald end of a broom.

A CROWD of quarrelsome people were dispersed from the front of a Munson Street residence in a very singular and sudden manner Saturday night. A stranger visiting the family, slipped into the crowd unperceived, and extending an inverted hat, announced that he would take up a collection. Two minutes later he stood there alone, with not a single member of the turbulent mass to be seen in any direction.

A HAWLEYVILLE subscriber writes that he had concluded to stop his paper on the expiration of the term, but desiring to know when the Shepaug trains arrive he renews. There's nothing like having an object in this life.

A MONSON-STREET man has rigged up a very ingenious combination of pulleys and ropes for drawing up his wife's back hair.

ONE of our residents who recently lost a horse, called at Barnum's drug store, yesterday, to solicit that dealer for a small contribution toward defraying the expense of another horse. Barnum was not in, but the unfortunate citizen so vividly described the extent of his loss, that Al Scott, the clerk, commenced to cry, and finally contributed a quarter of a dollar to the general fund. This so touched the heart of the unfortunate man that, despite his afflictions, he ordered soda water for himself and son, and paid for it out of the quarter. Some men would have gone to another store with their trade.

AN excellent but rather unsophisticated agriculturist made a thorough search of the Danbury stores, Monday, in quest of false hair-pins.

ONE of the Danbury voters was unable to attend the polls, Monday, but sent his vote up by a neighbor's little girl. He was very much surprised to learn that it was not received. He told the little girl that it was quite evident the traditions of our fathers were being forgotten, and that the country was going to the devil with unreasonable velocity.

VERY singular and astonishing are the performances at the breakfast table these mornings. The child becomes blind and stricken with terror, and rolls from the chair, and goes burrowing into the carpet. Scalding tears run down the cheeks of the mother, while the father throws his arms about his head, or presses them down tightly upon it. But horse-radish is healthful, they say.

ANOTHER match broken up. This was between a clerk in a well-known dry goods store and a young lady on Essex Street. It was so warm on Friday evening that she had the parlor window up, and he stood on the lawn, and they were cooing to each other, and he was just reaching up for another kiss, when the sash came down like a flash, and knocked off the peak of his nose and scalped his chin, and he hopped around so madly, and howled so dreadfully, that the old gentleman thought he was drunk, and had him kicked out of the yard with a great deal of ostentation. Monday morning he went West.

IT is unsafe to eat between meals. A horse on White Street, Monday, partook of a buffalo-robe in a neighboring sleigh, and had it suffered one-half the distress of conscience it did of stomach, it would have blown out its brains with a bow and arrow.

IF a new clothing store doesn't soon make its appearance we fear some of our citizens will become naked.

IS TOBACCO INJURIOUS?

A MR. TRASK wants to stop the use of tobacco. He is trying to do it by writing tracts. The experiment is harmless, without doubt, but we can tell Mr. Trask on the start that he may write tracts till doomsday, but without a brave exercise of the will he can accomplish nothing. Let him firmly resolve that he will never touch the vile stuff again, and two-thirds of the cure is made.

THE terrible inroad tobacco is making upon the human system is becoming more and more evident. In a recent article, a most graphic article it was, the writer tells of a young man who commenced to smoke, against the strong opposition of his friends, and in less than two years he was dead. This is sad, but not uncommon. We have noticed many similar instances. It is rarely a man lives three years after acquiring the habit of smoking, unless he should happen to forget when the three years are up. They go suddenly when they do go. We have seen a thousand men drop at once, and never breathe again. Their friends felt terribly about it, as they mostly fell on their cigar pockets, and smashed the contents. Any conductor of a train that includes a smoking car can tell you all about it. He is a good share of the time receiving the last messages of dying men and trying on their boots.

A MAN who applied to one of our citizens for help for his destitute children, being asked what he needed, said he was not particular. "If he couldn't get bread he would take tobacco."

"SIGHTS AND SCENES IN DANBURY."-- "PEARLS."--"CHARACTERISTIC INCIDENTS."

OWEN BURGESS, of Danbury, is in the Bridgeport jail. A nice man, he is. Here Danbury has gone to work at great expense to build a handsome brick jail, with hot and cold water and gas, and put a pinnacle and French roof on it, and done everything possible to furnish it with the comforts of a home, and this Burgess, this man who pretends to be a Danburian and have the interest of his town at heart, goes off twenty miles to patronize a rival institution. That's a brilliant way to encourage home industry, that is!

A BALMFORTH-AVENUE man was observed going up home this morning with a gun that will carry at least an ounce ball. As he lives next door to a young man who is learning to play Rory O'More on a pair of cymbals, we have thought it best to print an extra number of copies of our next issue. Orders left at the news stands or this office will be attended to.

A DEMURE-LOOKING chap hailed a charcoal pedler this morning with the query, "Have you got charcoal in your wagon?" "Yes, sir," said the expectant driver, stopping his horses. "That's right," observed the demure chap with an approving nod; "always tell the truth, and people will respect you." And he hurried on, much to the regret of the pedler, who was getting out of the wagon to look for a brick.

A MAN who slipped in front of the depot this noon, and sat down so heavily as to start his scalp, explained on rising that he could fall harder than that if he had a mind to. But as his breath smelled strongly of liquor, nobody placed any credence in the assertion.

WE don't like to have people copy jokes from the papers and send them to us as their own. A man who will do this, will put cayenne pepper in his grandmother's snuff, did he ever hear of anyone else doing it, and borrow both the pepper and the grandmother to do it with.

ONE of our best students of physiology writes against the practice of doing night work, and claims that the man who works in the morning and devotes the balance of the day to recreation will accomplish more than he who works late into the night, and will do it better. People who have been in the habit of getting in their kindlings after dark, with a leaky lantern and a borrowed axe, will find the experiment worth making.

A DANBURY lady recently visiting Wethersfield, asked one of the attendants why the prisoners received such coarse fare. He told her it was to keep their blood from becoming impure. And when she asked him what they would do if their blood was impure, he readily responded, "Break out."

A GUEST at a River-Street party, Monday evening, lost one of his eyes while playing Copenhagen. It rolled under the bureau, and couldn't be found.

A TRAMP who came out of a house on West Street by the air-line passage, was heard to observe that that was the most satisfactory kick he had received in years. It reminded him of home.

A MAN named Burns, living in the eastern part of the town, narrowly escaped strangulation from a fish bone, which lodged in his throat, Tuesday. He moved into town only a few weeks before, and naturally feels much embarrassed over his awkwardness.

A SHARON man stole a peck of dahlia roots under the impression that they were sweet potatoes. He feels the deception keenly.

A PROMINENT badge of American citizenship appears to be a soiled shirt front with gold studs.

A YOUNG man who went West from Danbury, a few months ago, has sent only one letter home. It came Friday. It said,--"Send me a wig." And his fond parents don't know whether he is scalped or married.

WE are in receipt of a nine-verse poem on a faded rose. What superficial people these poets are. Here is a long mess of stuff commemorating an event that is of daily occurrence and of but precious little consequence. But if a respectable citizen, one whom the community delights to honor, has a tumor taken from his back, or swallows a button with a brass eye to it, or something like that, something that affects everybody, and is of the nature of a tragedy, not a single, solitary poet would trouble himself to write a line about it, he would not breathe out his soul through a single verse. But he can rhapsodize all night over a little decayed vegetation. We are out of all patience with such people.

AN anxious gentleman, bargaining for a rent from old McMasters, Monday, asked him if the house was cold. "Well," said the old gentleman cautiously, "I can't say as to that; it stands out doors."

"I COULD kill you for two cents," said an enraged individual to a neighbor, Friday. "Great Heavens! can it be possible?" cried the neighbor. "I knew you were avaricious, but I could not think that you would stain your hands with blood, and your soul with the awful crime of murder for such a paltry sum. It is terrible." The enraged individual stared quite hard for a minute, and then withdrew, perfectly disgusted.

A RURAL gentleman standing over a register in one of our stores attracted general attention to himself by observing to his wife, "Mariar, I guess I'm goin' to have a fever, I feel such hot streaks a runnin' up my legs."

THE Housatonic train which leaves Bridgeport at five-fifteen, was two and a half hours behind time on arriving at the Junction on Saturday evening, owing to the locomotive slipping an eccentric at Newtown and Hawleyville. There were some seventy or eighty passengers on the train, and as none of them knew what an eccentric was, their suffering can better be imagined than described.

LOOKING over an old ledger we see a long array of names of former subscribers who are indebted to us. Some of them have moved away, and are lost to sight, although to memory dear. Others are carrying the contribution boxes in our most respectable churches, and others again have died, and are now angels in heaven, but they owe us just the same.

AN absent-minded resident of Wooster Street shut down a window Monday and forgot to draw in his head. He was calling for Helen Blazes when discovered.

A LIBERTY-STREET man makes complaint to the police of his wife, who eats dry cake in bed. If the police won't help him, he is going to get a suit of underclothes made of sheet iron and wear them nights.

WE are pained to notice that papers taking our items and appropriating them as their own, seek to palliate the theft by publishing a column of religious miscellany. This may look well enough in the eyes of heaven, but it doesn't satisfy us.

A YOUNG man becoming a little dissatisfied with the coquettish actions of his young lady while she was shopping on Saturday, retired to another part of the store, and resting his elbow on the dummy figure of a woman, gave himself up to gloomy reflection, from which he was rudely aroused by a sharp push, while the dummy received a vigorous slap over the head from an indignant lady's parasol. There is hardly enough of the English language to do justice to the scene that followed.

A SLAWSON man created a temporary corner in life insurance agents on Saturday by falling off his roof upon three of them.

THE authorities contemplating putting up a new lamp post, Mr. Echbert, of West Street, is preparing to move out of town. He says he ain't going to be eaten up by taxes.

A MAN weighing three hundred and twenty-five pounds visited one of our photograph galleries, Monday, to get a shadow picture.

AN Elm-Street boy smoked his first pipe on Saturday and came home very sick. He didn't know what was the matter with him, but his mother did. She gave him two quarts of bone-set tea and put a quarter-yard of plaster on his breast, and some mustard drafts on his feet. Then she put him to bed, and darkened the room, and fed him on a new kind of balsam till Monday morning, when she allowed she had got the best of that typhus attack.

A DANBURY lady describes a blunderer as a man who starts a meat market in Lent.

AN aged and highly-respected citizen on Main Street was very much interested in a picture of what he thought was a new kind of stone bruise, and expatiated to some length on the progress of medical science at this day, before he discovered that the engraving was a draft of a fashionable sleeve trimming for ladies. Then he laid down the book and swore.

A BOSTON man who has been visiting in Danbury, did not enjoy his visit owing to home-sickness. Sunday he was discovered walking around the race course, and appeared to be very happy and animated. "Ah!" said he, "this is something like."

A GENTLEMAN with one leg broken in four places, three fractured ribs, and a hand with no two fingers pointing in one direction, was in Danbury, Friday, making arrangements for organizing a baseball club.

THERE was a terrific thunder-storm last night, and in the mail this noon there were letters from nine different lightning-rod men, inquiring if there was any kind of an opening here for them. We don't doubt but that an opening could be made for them if they were here, as the frost is not deep.

WHEN we were a boy our idea of an employer was a man who sat down while other men did his work. Our idea now is a man who does two days' work in one, and collects the pay for a half dozen eager employees from a hundred or more indifferent employers.

THE sleighing is so poor in this neighborhood that some of the farmers are obliged to use three or four sleighs when one used to do.

THE statesman is he who thinks of the ashes just as he is going to church.

And of blacking his boots after he is dressed.

And of the absent button after he has the shirt on.

And of the cars after they are gone.

And of that little bill after he has paid out his money.

And of his wife after himself.

THE Modocs have made another raid on our people, and murdered them. If ever our government gets hold of these savages, gets them right where they cannot escape, gets them wholly into its clutches, some contractor will make money.

WE see by the papers that one Bernard Lynch, who disappeared from New Haven, some months ago, has been found. He was wandering about the country in a demented condition, and under the impression that some one was "lying in wait" for him. This is probably a mis-print. Lying in weight is what is meant, undoubtedly, and we think that the coal dealers of New Haven should be arrested.

THE School Visitors, Messrs. Hodge and Pond, were at the South-Centre School the other day, examining scholars for the High School. Mr. Pond, who is a remarkably grave and serious-appearing person, had charge of the grammar branch, and gave a bright-looking boy this sentence to correct: "Between you and I this is good butter." The boy shortly returned the slip thus marked: "Incorrect; the lamp-post is omitted."

THE press and the pulpit may say what they please, but a man in dove-colored pants and patent-leather boots is not a fit person to adjust a tub for catching rain water.

A NORTH-STREET woman is happy. Two of her children have jaundice, one is teething, another has about seventy-five feet of tape-worm concealed about him, and her husband has just bought a piece of land in the suburbs that contains nine different kinds of medicinal roots and plants.

WE are inclined to believe that women are going for the polls in dead earnest, from the fact that, of nine married men talking politics in a Danbury grocery, Saturday evening, seven were entirely bald.

A WEST-STREET lady found several choice apples sadly mutilated the other morning. It was evident that a little mouth had run against them, probably in the dark, and she took her little girl to task about it, but the child denied any personal knowledge of the accident. "Perhaps, mamma," said she slowly, "they may have been frost bitten, it was so cold last night." The mother retreated.

A YOUNG lady writes to learn why we do not have a department for "answers to correspondents." The reason is simple. We once announced we would gladly receive questions on various topics and endeavor to answer them satisfactorily. The first inquiry received was in relation to a little amount we owed the writer. We think it was eight dollars. We borrowed the money and returned a satisfactory answer, but it put back our business full a year. The young lady thinks such a department would be very lively. We found it so.

A NELSON-STREET girl is just as accomplished on the piano as her mother is at the wash-tub, but the latter boasts that she can renovate three shirts while the former is going once through Beethoven's immortal symphony.

A MILL-PLAIN woman was prevented from attending the funeral of her sister by the non-arrival on time of a lace handkerchief from New York. The brutality of the express company is severely commented upon by the neighbors.

A LADY living on Spring Street lost a valuable breast pin, Saturday evening, and although she searched actively for it, felt obliged to give it up as lost. But her husband knew it would turn up some time, and was shortly after rewarded for his faith by stepping on it in his stocking feet. The pin itself was bent somewhat in drawing it out, but the ornament was not damaged.

IT didn't look favorable for washing on Monday morning, and the Danbury woman was not disposed to be sociable; but when she went to the pipe and found the water cut off, she danced around as if charged with electricity, and worked her fingers in a way that was unpleasantly suggestive. We didn't see but one water commissioner, Monday, and he was getting out of town at a speed that must have filled him with comfort and confidence.

MR. O'CLARENCE, of North Street, while engaged in darting out of his house in pursuit of a dog and a piece of freshly-boiled corned beef which the dog had mysteriously got fastened to, lost his footing on the stoop, and sat down with awful velocity on the scraper. Then he rolled over on the snow, and kicked his legs out straight, and reached out in the air for a mouthful, and looked as if he wanted to say something, but couldn't think what it was. And there he lay until the neighbors picked him up and carried him into the house. And every few hours he takes an emetic to bring up that scraper, for he knows it is in him somewhere. The next Lent will be more strictly observed by one family on North Street.

A WEST-STREET man says the longest funeral he ever heard of took place a week ago. His hired girl went to it and hasn't got back yet.

THE spring styles of bonnet are certainly superb. The ladies are showing increased excellence of taste, and they are to be commented. The latest bonnet is a trifle higher than freights on our railroad, and as graceful in proportion.

THE worst shocked man we have seen in sometime was a citizen who made the discovery, Friday, that the neighbor from whom he had borrowed a paper for the past four years, had not paid for it. He learned the facts from the agent of the publisher, and he was grieved. He was also indignant. He said to us, "To think that I should have been so imposed upon at my time of life. I tell you, a man don't know who to trust in these times. The world is full of corruption, and deceit, and deviltry--chock full of it."

THE scientific men are trying to find a substitute for vaccination. They would save considerable time and wear of the mental forces by pitching pennies for fifteen minutes in front of a house adorned with a red flag.

IT is proposed to apply the Westing House to George Francis Train, as a final test.

A WISE Providence has so decreed it that only poor papers send their mutilated copies in exchange.

A TELESCOPE has been erected which brings the moon within eighty miles of the earth. The people up in Goshen, who manufacture cheese for a living, are properly alarmed at this, and have called a town meeting.

DESIRABLE first-floor tenements are prominently scarce in Danbury and real estate is held at high prices. There is a general impression that owners occupy their leisure time in rainy weather in adding to the price. We hope it will clear off soon.

ESTHER writes from Lowell, Massachusetts, that there is a gentleman there who wants to borrow a left-handed monkey-wrench. Wouldn't a cross-eyed potato do him?

THEY tell of a man in Michigan who paid all his debts to the utmost farthing, and then went and hung himself. We are inclined to think that there are men in Danbury who, if they paid their debts to the last farthing, would unavoidably suspend. The danger is not imminent, however.

A BOY of tender years, whose parents live on Rabbit Hill, returned Saturday night from a visit to his uncle's in the country, and Sunday morning got an auger and perforated his father's choice peach tree, and set out a pail for the sap. When the old gentleman discovered the preparations for the coming sugar season, he instituted an investigation, and the little boy remembering Washington went up in the garret, and hid behind a barrel. It will be some weeks before he will be able to hide behind a barrel again.

A CONSCIENTIOUS employee in one of our factories refuses to take his back pay, and wishes us to announce his name in The News.

MARRIED PEOPLE.

THE wife of a roofer being asked if she was not afraid to have her husband exposed to such danger, trustfully replied,--"O, he's insured."

ON a tombstone in a neighboring cemetery is the following affecting inscription,--"Sacred to the memory of my dearly beloved wife, Mary," and just below, "Ditto, Jane."

THE dearest object to a married man should be his wife, but it is not unfrequently her clothes.

A MAIN-STREET woman doesn't have any trouble with her husband. When he gets on a tantrum, and she wants to be rid of him so to have the house to herself, she merely observes that there are a few skeins of yarn to hold, and steps out of the room to get them. Long before she returns the frightened victim is fleeing up the street.

A MAN came into the office Saturday to have cards printed for a lady. He said her name was Mrs. Carrol. "What's her other name?" inquired the typo. "She hasn't got any other," explained the agent; "her husband's run away an' left her."

A COUNTRY minister of "limited capacity," recently married for a second wife a lady of some property. Being an ardent servant of Mammon, a former neighbor asked him if he did not do well by the second marriage. "O, yes, indeed," he said with animation. And then, as an expression of reverent awe stole into his face, he added, "And what is very remarkable, the clothes of my wife's first husband just fit me."

A BROOKFIELD man writes for the best way to manage a bull. If our Brookfield friend has got a bull on his premises, and the bull is well, he don't want to manage it. All he has got to do is to get a few things hastily together, mortgage his place and steer straight for the West. He might as well try to ward off a streak of lightning with a fifty-cent paint brush as to manage a bull.

A RUSTY-LOOKING agriculturist came into the office, Friday, and after looking around earnestly enough to elicit an inquiry as to his business, said, "It wasn't nothin' much; but he had left a big cucumber here in the fall for a notice, and thought as how he was in town he might run in and get it, if we was through with it."

A WRITER for an agricultural journal suggests hens in the place of dogs for families. There is not a tramp on the face of the earth but would like to hear a hen bark.

IN taking up fence posts at this time in the year great care should be used not to disturb the earth about the roots. A party of scientific gentlemen intensely engaged in geological investigations in Mill Plain, Saturday, were somewhat disheartened by a passing farmer who ironically observed: "Derned sight of good looking for horse-radish there."

THE boys can always tell a farmer who works according to the books. He always plants his musk melons near the fence.

ELDERLY PECULIARITIES.

IT is announced that there is a mile of railroad in Iowa for every three hundred and seventy inhabitants. We don't know how true this is, but there is an aged lady in this town who has called to see us about it. She has two sons in Iowa, and is consequently very much interested in the matter.

AN old lady says she hears quite frequently of civil engineers, and wonders if there is no one to say a good word for conductors.

A SILK lady owned by an elderly Danbury quilt, is over one hundred years old, and contains two thousand pieces, over one hundred thousand stitches and an innumerable caravan of bed-bugs.

A LANDLADY who rejoiced to find she could rent her upper rooms to a couple without children, writes to learn how long it requires for a middle-aged man to become an accomplished clog dancer.

AN old lady describes a genius as "a man what knows more'n he can find out, and spills vittels on his clothes."

PLAYING games on the aged is not always productive of flattering results. An old gentleman who frequently comes in when we are busy to talk about theology and the planets, made his appearance yesterday, when assuming our blandest smile, we passed him a copy of the last report of the Connecticut Board of Agriculture. He was very much pleased with it. He looked it all over, and then turning to the beginning, commenced to read it, read it aloud, and we hope to be nominated for office, if he didn't go clear through the volume, carefully and intelligently spelling the long words, and sitting between us and the door all the time. It sapped the levity out of us.

AN elderly person from Sherman came into town to get photographed, Saturday. He was a portly gentleman, with a nose that was not unlike a thimble covered with liver. He had on a half dozen coats and two or three tippets, and looked as solemn and depressed as if he was going to be cut open and lined with zinc. The operator wanted him to remove some of the surplus clothing, but he wouldn't do it, and persisted in being reproduced just as he was. The picture he took home with him appeared in the eyes of a casual observer to represent a railroad water tank in a tight overcoat.

AS the four-thirty train from New York reached Stamford, Wednesday, an antique-looking dame thrust her head out of the window opposite the refreshment room door, and briefly shouted, "Sonny!" A bright-looking boy came up to the window. "Little boy," said she, "have you a mother?" "Yes, mam." "Do you love her?" "Yes, mam." "Do you go to school?" "Yes, mam." "And are you faithful to your studies?" "Yes, mam." "Do you say your prayers every night?" "Yes, mam." "Can I trust you to do an errand for me?" "Yes, mam." "I think I can, too," said the lady, looking steadily down on the manly face. "Here is five cents to get me an apple. Remember, God sees you."

SOME vicious scamp interpolated a dozen sugar-coated pills in the confectionary at a party last night. One gentleman, an elderly person, who had been noticeably merry through the evening, accidentally got hold of three of them before discovering the appalling nature of the trick. It destroyed all his elasticity and broke up the party, although several of the neighbors promptly volunteered the use of their fences to lean over.

TWO single ladies of an uncertain age named Hill attended a party New Year's night. During the evening a good-natured individual perpetrated a witticism which created considerable amusement as it had often done before. Whereupon a wretched man in the company unguardedly shouted, "Cheese it, Tompkins, that joke was born before you were. It is older than the hills." The Hills immediately inquired for their things.

OLD BLOSSOM was coming freshly and steadily out of a "tare" the other day, when a kind-hearted lady said to him, "Mr. Blossom, have you no scruples?" "None, mum," said Blossom. "None at all, Mr. Blossom?" she again inquired. "Indeed I hain't," persisted Blossom, with winning confidence. "I am sure you have," she said, "Well, I ain't," replied Blossom sullenly; "if you don't believe it, search me?"

A NELSON-STREET dame ordered a bustle at one of our stores, Saturday. In the evening a clerk was sent to the house with it. Her husband appeared at the door and asked his errand. "I have got an attachment for your wife," said the polite youth. This was all he said that was intelligible. But he is going to learn a trade, now, as clerking is so effeminate.

AN old lady who heard that a young friend had lost a place by misdemeanor, uncharitably observed that "there was allers a woman at the bottom of it."

THE DANBURY MAN.--THE STERNER SEX. WOMEN'S LORDS.

As the early morning train down this morning drew up at the first station, a pleasant-looking gentleman stepped out on the platform, and inhaling the fresh air, enthusiastically observed to the brakeman, "Isn't this invigorating?" "No, sir, it is Bethel," said the conscientious employee. The pleasant-looking gentleman retired.

ONE of the young men belonging to a choir here had his hair cut by a generous barber, Saturday. Sunday he sang for a solo, "Cover my defenceless head," and blushed like a lobster while doing it.

A DISGUSTED Danburian wants to know, if woman was designed to be the equal of man, why it is she can't whistle.

AN old Danbury gentleman used to say that any young man with good health and a poor appetite could save up money.

A DANBURY man's horror at the prospect of being crushed to death by a team of frightened horses, was terribly intensified by the reflection that "he was standing on the very verge of eternity without a dollar in his pocket."

A BETHEL man discovered that a stranger he rescued from a watery grave was not a long-lost brother, but a party he owed three dollars and a half for turnips. The Bethel man retired in disgust.

A WEST-STREET man, attracted by the observations of a cat on the roof of his piazza, Saturday night, stepped quietly out there in the darkness and an under-shirt and levelled a vicious kick at the animal, but missing the aim, lost his equilibrium and passed into the yard, striking the earth with the familiarity of an own brother.

A DANBURY sport wears a ten-cent silver piece on his shirt bosom, and calls it a dime and pin, which it certainly is.

AN unpretentious individual named Morey, attempted to catch a young New Foundland dog in his yard, Sunday evening, but owing to an imperfect knowledge of New Foundland itself, Mr. Morey has been obliged to hang up his Sunday suit under ground.

AN applicant for a pair of boots at one of our shoe stores, was asked what number he wore, and replied, as soon as he could recover from his surprise, "Why, two, of course."

A CORRESPONDENT wants to know why it is "drowning men catch at straws." We don't know that they do. We have seen a number of gentlemen drown, but those of them who had any preference at all seemed to be prejudiced in favor of a plank. We don't remember ever being asked for a straw by a gentleman who was drowning. And it is just as well, perhaps, because we never carry one with us.

YOU are not growing very old when you involuntarily start at a whistle out doors.

A FRANKLIN-STREET man heard a noise in his cellar, Friday night, and getting quietly out of bed, so not to arouse his wife, secured a pistol, and crept cautiously out on the roof, where he closed the hatch after him, and remained there until daylight in comparative safety.

AN aged but rather rural deacon of this town, somewhat astonished his family on returning from a recent visit to Bridgeport, by disclosing in the recesses of his capacious valise two valuable volumes in blue and gold, a prize package containing gold coin, a cake of fig paste, two pictorial papers, and a package of ice-cream candy. He said a boy on the cars gave him these things. He confessed that the boy was an entire stranger, but fervently "hoped heaven would paint him a sky-blue if he ever forgot the kindness."

THE most faithful lover who has a name and being outside of trashy novels, lives in Danbury. The parents of the young lady are opposed to his companionship, but it don't make him proud. Sometimes the old gentleman reaches him with his boot before he can get over the fence, but the young man doesn't lay up ill-feelings on account of that; he only smiles at the despoiler of his pants when he meets him, and calls it "heaping coals of fire on his head." Saturday evening he thought he would get up a surprise for the old chap. He put a paving stone in each of his coat-tail pockets, and started for the fence as usual. The old gentleman let out for him with increased enthusiasm, and caught him--caught him good. Then he laid down on the grass and said,--"I die by the hand of an assassin." But the young man passed on without a word, and smiled the most heavenly smile of forgiveness ever seen on that street.

SUNDAY is beginning to be utilized in Danbury. We saw a man on White Street, Sunday afternoon, with a healthy string of fish in his hand which he had just taken from a neighboring stream. We followed him some distance in hopes to see him fall dead, but he didn't do it.

A GENTLEMAN from the Fourth Ward, who desires his name suppressed on account of respectable connections, was digging worms in a meadow along Mill brook, Sunday forenoon, when he was suddenly shot through the air, and on looking around was gratified to see that there was a stream of water between him and a ferocious bull.

A MILL-PLAIN man came into Danbury this morning with a load of potatoes, for which he desired to obtain fifty cents a bushel, but was not able to get thirty-five cents. There was not a dry eye in the load.

THE DANBURY YOUTH.

ONE of our urchins walked two miles yesterday to pound an adversary, and after hanging around the house for an opportunity nearly two hours, accidentally learned that the victim was prostrated with scarlet fever. The velocity with which he got away from the neighborhood was perfectly appalling.

IT takes years of careful training to convince a boy, who is taken sick on a Saturday, that there is not a screw loose somewhere in the universe.

DOES anybody know who that boy is who drives cows out on the Great Plain road. The boy that comes along about seven o'clock, A. M., preceded by three cows and a yell something like this,--"Oh, OH, OH! yewyah goin' now?"--the latter interrogation apparently addressed to some relative about to take the Shepaug train at Hawleyville. The only motive in referring to the circumstance is to benefit an elderly gentleman named Skoridge, who lives on the Great Plain road. Mr. Skoridge being very nervous is painfully startled every morning by this wonderful cry, and darts out in response to the evident appeal of distress, only to find that cow-boy hurrying along in the exuberance of blessed health. And then Mr. Skoridge returns to his breakfast, and folds his hands, and submissively murmurs,--"I'll bust that goslin' some mornin', Sairy Ann."

A WEST-STREET boy secreted a set of jack stones in his father's boot for safe keeping, and was nearly hoisted into Paradise by that article.

A YOUNG merchant who is trying to struggle along in a falsely economical way, took a class in one of our Sunday Schools last Sabbath. During the progress of the lesson he asked,--"What is solitude?" and was visibly disturbed when a miserable boy promptly answered--"The store that don't advertise!"

DANBURY juveniles are "keeping store" this month. The place of business consists of an overturned box, and from three to eight clerks, while the stock generally embraces two sticks of candy, twenty-five peanuts, and an apple. When the proprietor is suddenly called away by the exigencies of business, he protects himself against bankruptcy by packing the entire contents of the store in his left hand breeches' pockets.

SOME one has got up a new kind of toy pistol that will throw a sharp stick with violence enough to knock an eye out of a person worth one hundred thousand dollars.

A BOY being asked the meaning of the word amateur, said, "It was a man what slipped up, and wasn't jawed for it."

IT occurred to a Danbury scholar, while writing a composition, last week, to make the remarkable statement that "an ox does not taste as good as an oyster, but it can run faster."

A LITTLE Danbury boy thinks that "household gods" are what his pa uses when he puts up curtain fixtures.

A DANBURY boy is fitting himself for a city judgeship. Being asked yesterday why he didn't attend school, he answered, "Because the mud was so deep." "Why, you young scamp," said the aggrieved parent; "there is no mud to be seen." "I know it," assented the impudent youth, "it is too deep for detection."

A SCHOLAR in one of our schools being asked a rather difficult question, hammered at it awhile without any success, and then pettishly inquired, "Am I hot or cold?" A moment later he was quite hot.

A MAIN-STREET boy, who was told he should try to cheer the aged, tried "three times and a tiger, "on his grandmother, Christmas morning, and the old lady was so startled that she spilled a box full of snuff on him. He looks upon the beauties of nature with his left eye now.

TIMES are rather dull in Danbury. It is no unusual thing to see five boys file up to a Peruvian beer fountain, while the oldest calls for a glass of the fluid and drinks it down, amid the subdued silence of the four others, who then patiently follow him out again. Fortunate is the boy who has an invitation to one of these entertainments.

THE snow-balling season has set in. Boys who put stones in snow balls grow up to be bad men, and finally die a miserable death in the New York custom house.

IN room 13, this morning, a scholar in the grammar class parsing the noun suffrage, said it was of the masculine gender, because there was no female suffrage.

A DANBURY boy whose imagination had become diseased by too close devotion to dime novels, started off yesterday to seek fame as a slayer of bears and Indians. He took all his toys, including a hand sled and a snare drum, bade his little brothers and sisters an affectionate farewell, and was gone nearly two hours.

POOR but dishonest young boys fasten wrought nails to the end of strings, and harpoon sweet potatoes and apples from their abiding places in front of the stores. This may be considered sport, but it is the first step in the downward road to Congress.

THERE were nine little ones. Eight of them were sitting on the ground, absently playing in the sand, while the ninth stood by, striving to placidly wear down a stick of candy, and all that the eighth said was, "I ain't mad at you, so I ain't.

A NEW boy at the South-Street school being asked, if they had family prayer at his house, promptly answered, "No, but we have got four bay windows."

A LAD in one of our Sunday Schools being asked, why the places of business were closed on the Sabbath, unexpectedly responded, "So to give the drug stores a chance."

A LITTLE girl appeared at a neighbor's house on Tuesday morning, and said, "Ma says the Bowles Brothers have failed, and would you lend her a cup of saleratus?"

A BOY named Kelly blew off a part of a finger with a pistol, one day last week. A remarkable coincidence is the fact that the pistol and the finger went off together, although not previously acquainted with each other.

THE father of a boy whose veracity is not as marked as his back, asked the teacher why it was his son didn't have a better acquaintance with figures, and was considerably electrified when the teacher tenderly observed, "I really don't know, unless it is because "figures won't lie."

THE reason an urchin gave for being late at school Monday, was, that the boy in the next house was going to have a dressing down with a bed cord, and he waited to hear him howl.

A MISERABLE boy on Rose Hill found a Roman candle in the house, Monday, and chalking it perfectly white succeeded in palming it off on his grandmother as a genuine tallow article. When that excellent lady came to light it, the deception was soon apparent, but by retaining her presence of mind she fell over two chairs without seriously hurting herself. The author of the mischief now sits down with a crutch.

A LITTLE boy who loves to pass his evenings in the stores, and listen to the improving conversation of the elders while helping himself to sugar, was told last night that hereafter he must stay at home. "I wish I was a man," he said. "And what would you do if you were a man?" asked his mother. "I would get married, and then I could go to the stores every evening." A very observant boy.

FEMININE GOSSIP.

A DANBURY girl has married a poet, and carries her own coal.

THE difference in natures was well illustrated at the depot this morning. Two sisters met. "O, my dear sister!" said one, exhaustedly, as they embraced. "You've been eating onions," said the other, calmly and fearlessly.

AN anxious boarding-house keeper writes us to learn "if when a woman has the right to vote, she can be made to pay as much board as a man."

AT the funeral of a woman in this neighborhood, one day recently, a sympathetic and admiring neighbor volunteered the information that "for patient resignation the corpse could dance all around any woman living."

THERE are four hundred and fifty Revolutionary widows left. Here is a chance now for those men who pant for a wife of the good old days.

A VERY finely-dressed lady, on whose face powder and wrinkles were desperately struggling for the mastery, got on the train at Norwalk, Saturday evening. The car being crowded, she was obliged to stand up. Seeing her, a young woman in an adjoining seat rose and offered her the place. "But you will have to stand," said the first lady, edging toward the seat. "O, that's nothing," replied the other; "I am young." The next instant the first lady was at the other end of the car, and didn't intimate to anybody to bring the seat along.

AN applicant for the position of domestic in a Spring-Street family was last evening asked if she understood how to use kerosene. Her reply exceeded the most sanguine expectations. "Use it, is it?" she exclaimed in a tone of reproachful explanation. "Give me a can of kayrosane, and I'd niver ask for the lift of a shavin'." "Merciful Gabriel!" was all the lady remarked as she helped the applicant out of the gate.

A DIVISION-STREET lady stepped on a black cat while going down the cellar stairs, last evening, but didn't allow the interruption to deter her from continuing on into the cellar, and over two boxes and a tub. We are not cognizant of the fate of the cat, but it would be well perhaps for the lovers of sausage to use extra caution for a few days.

A BROOKFIELD woman was completely unmanned by the loss of her husband.

THE mother of a charming Danbury girl would not let her marry a conductor because she didn't want her doors slammed off.

REPLIES TO EDITORS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

THE North Star, published in Red Wing, Minnesota, recommends that the people of Danbury erect a monument to the editor of The News. Words fail to convey the deep gratitude we are under to the North Star for its suggestion, but we don't aspire to a monument. They are nice enough in their way, but we don't want to get into the habit of using them.

WORCESTER (Massachusetts)papers tell of a woman stopping in that city, not yet thirty years old, who is the mother of thirteen children. This is not quite as remarkable as the case of the woman thirteen years old who had thirty children. If any one hears of such a case they will oblige by sending us the name.

THE Fitchburg (Massachusetts) Sentinel, an excellent paper, is going to start a daily. We are glad of it. We started a daily once. We ran it nearly four months, and then paused. Since then we take a lively interest in such enterprises. We have no doubt the Sentinel people will make the daily work, and we are quite positive it will make them work. A man who goes through life without having started a daily paper, misses a rare and valuable experience. Falling down stairs with a cook-stove will hardly compensate him.

WE regret very much that we cannot accept offers to go on large papers. Our highest ambition has been to be the editor-in-chief of a large New York daily, and help do up the mail. But we cannot leave Danbury. There are ties that bind us here. We don't care to say what these ties are, but the town-clerk knows what they are.

A PARENT writes to us that he is annoyed and pained by his son staying out nights, and asks us if we can present a remedy for this rapidly-growing evil. There are several remedies. The boy's spine can be broken with an axe, or he can be nailed to the floor with a red hot railroad spike driven to his abdomen; but the most effectual way is to compel him to wear patched clothing.

HOLBROOK, Massachusetts.--THE editor of this paper does not lecture; he is married.

PUNCH, a journal published in London is The Danbury News of England.

SOCIAL LIFE.

A YOUNG man writes for the best way to gain entrance to our most respectable families. We like to see our young people aim to improve themselves, and in no way can they do this as surely as by good books and the society of the refined. To gain entrance to our best families, the easiest and most direct way would seem to be by the front door, although our young friend might tunnel under the sidewalk and come up through the cellar.

A NEW YORK shoddy lady is proud to boast that her daughter is at "a fashionable boarding school." "A very stylish establishment, my dear, in Connecticut--Danielbury, Connecticut." O, Christopher!

A RATHER prepossessing young lady recently excited the ire of a plain-looking but viciously vain chap, who declared he would "get even" with her. "O, I am not afraid of you," said she. "You are not?" he howled. "O, no," added she with a scraphic smile, "I ain't a crow!" The agitated chap meandered.

A DIVISION-STREET man who has chewed tobacco thirty-eight years, has sworn off, and the change in him is remarkable. He has had his chin sandpapered, and his teeth kalsomined, and his delighted wife says it seems to her as if he had just tumbled out of heaven and through eleven solid miles of the whitest tea biscuit.

THE young man of the period is no more seen pressing to his lips a lock of hair plucked from the tresses of his beloved. He is too afraid of the new kinds of insects, small-pox, and salt-rheum.

PECULIAR LOCAL MATTERS.

SEVERAL months ago a little boy named Seger became interested in the children of the Howard Mission, and determined to do what he could for them. It is not much, apparently, a boy of seven years can accomplish in this direction, but he went to work with a will, saved the pennies given him, ran of errands, and picked up bits of iron and sold them. On Saturday he opened his treasure box, and found therein two dollars and eighty-three cents, with which he bought a broken lock pistol, and has twenty-eight cents left. So much for perseverance.

A GENTLEMAN in Monroe, who is an artist of no mean repute, and indebted to this office for seven dollars, is going to Washington to study.

A GENTLEMAN rebuked a boy Saturday for flinging snow balls at an aged gentleman who was apparently having some trouble in turning his horse, when the boy pleasantly explained,--"Why, that's my grandfather!" Whereupon the amateur Bergh, slightly disappointed, actually urged the youngster to "nail the old rip."

A STRANGER, we believe he was from Arkansas, arrived on the three-fifteen train. As he stepped from the depot into the street, his feet anticipated him, and he struck the walk with sufficient violence to have broken every tooth in his head. "Sacrified Washington!" he screamed. "Is this the boasted civilization of New England?" at four-thirty-five he was started for Arkansas.

A NEAR-SIGHTED gentleman met an acquaintance on Liberty Street, this afternoon, whom he saluted by name. "That ain't my name," protested the other. "That ain't your name?" "Certainly not," said the stranger. "What's the reason it ain't?" demanded the near-sighted gentleman with a very severe look. But not having perpared himself for such a question the abashed stranger slunk away without answering.

A KING-STREET man's name is so long he can knock down apples with it.

A DANBURY agriculturist has put a bundle of straw upon his barn because "straws show which way the wind blows."

SINGULAR INCIDENTS.

A SINGULARLY painful circumstance attends the death of a Monroe gentleman, which occurred last week. Last winter he made an agreement with his wife to the effect that should she kindle the fire mornings for six months, he would do it for the same length of time. She had just completed her part of the contract when he died. It is a very sad affair.

A DANBURY auctioneer writing a letter of advice to a young friend, closed up with the following astonishing information: "The evil that you do through life will come back to plague you on the day of your death, or if stormy, on the first fair day thereafter."

AT a party Friday evening, where questions were asked and facetious if not felicitous answers were expected, a coal dealer asked what legal authority was the favorite with his trade. One answered, "Coke." "Right," said the coal dealer. Another suggested, "Blackstone." "Good, too," said the questioner. Then a little hard-faced man in the corner piped out, "Lyttleton." Whereupon the coal dealer sat down without saying anything.

A TEMPORARY stairway was put up to the platform of the freight house at the White-Street depot, Friday night. For three months there were no steps there, and the station master was obliged to climb up the best he could. It was a beautiful sight to see him strain, and pull, and hawk, and sweat, till he got up. But we shall miss that now.

SHEER NECESSITIES.

THE pen may be mightier than the sword, but if you take two swords and rivet them together near the centre, you will find that in many newspaper offices they are far mightier than the pen, as they have to be to do four-fifths of the work.

THE meat markets are illy supplied with palatable stock. There is but little veal, and the beef is tougher than losing a mother.

A TRAVELER would have been late for the noon train yesterday, had he not stepped on a peach pit at the head of the depot stairs.

TWO men employed at one of our hardware stores were engaged this noon in putting up a stove for a West-Street lady. During a heavy lift one of them told the other to "spit on his hands," when both were nonplussed by the lady hastily exclaiming,--"O, don't do that; here is a spittoon."

THE weakness of the currant worm is said to be discovered. It is tin. Nail two or three narrow strips of tin on the outside of the currant, and the worm will not touch it. Some cultivators fasten the strips with screws as they are more easily removed than nails when the fruit is ready to pick.

A THREE-ARMED man has turned up in the central part of New York State. He is somewhat of a curiosity now, but there will be more of them pretty soon. It is the irresistible result of the march of improvement. Two-armed people were well enough before the advent of hay cutters and buzz-saws, but the increasing executive ability of such machinery demands a corresponding change in the human development.

TOBACCO chewers are now practicing on gentian root for a cure. The remedy is certainly a cheap one. An ounce of this root costs only five cents, and by mixing a little tobacco with it, it will last several weeks.

KATE STANTON in her lecture on "The Loves of Great Men," asserts that the planets revolve around the sun by the influence of love like a child revolves about its parent. When the writer was a boy he used to revolve around his parent a good deal, and may have been incited thereto by love, but to an unprejudiced observer it looked powerfully like a trunk strap.

A HARTFORD subscriber writes that he is just recovering from the small-pox, and will be on in a few days to renew his subscription. We hope he won't mind a little thing like that. We will send the paper, and wait for the money. We will wait cheerfully. We ain't of that avaricious kind of people who will grab for money as if for very life. We despise such things. There's no earthly reason for his coming on; we will wait.

NEWS NEWS.

THE latest new plant has a name an inch and a half long, and a blossom of the shape and hue of an African stone-bruise.

A BETHEL man has become so timid by the many blasting accidents in that place since the advent of the Shepaug road, that he can't hear a bank report without running out doors.

SUPERINTENDENT MEAD, of the Brookfield road has been presented with an English deer hound. We know but little about these animals, but in England they are highly prized in stews.

A DANBURY shoemaker who started for Bridgeport, Saturday, to get work, and missed the train, consoled himself by the reflection that it was a special Providence. Sunday morning he fell off his back stoop with a pan of ashes in his hands, and broke down a young pear tree with his head. He talks of Bridgeport just the same, but he doesn't say anything about special Providences.

A GENTLEMAN from the city who is visiting in Danbury, started out for a slaughter house Monday afternoon, to see them make cheese. He had read of a man in Ohio who had made nearly eight thousand pounds of cheese from sixteen cows, on an average of about five hundred pounds to the cow. He thought that must be doing pretty well. We think so too. We should like to have been out to that slaughter house when he got there.

RESIDENTS of this State, who are in favor of jumping off and on cars when in motion, will soon have a meeting in Hartford to organize a co-operative drug and undertaking establishment. The kerosene kindlers have adopted this plan, and experience considerable satisfaction from it.

THE icy condition of the walks Sunday was the direct cause of many mishaps. It was painful to see men on all-fours, who, had they received the right kind of training when young, might have been senators, and helped to form the laws of the land, instead of pawing madly around for a post.

"MA."

IF there is one word in the English language dearer than all others, it is that of Ma. There is a sweet tenderness about the name of Ma that the pen fails to describe. Wherever we may go, however exalted or depressed the circumstances of life may make us, the influence of that blessed name still remains. It is our Ma who directs the tiny feet in their first struggles; it is our Ma who teaches the prattling tongue to express the childish thought, and it is our Ma who, as we advance on to mature life, through all the stages of youth implants within us the purer thoughts and stronger principles of an honest life. No line of poetry ever written is dearer to the heart of man than that which asks with powerful significance,--

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"What is home without a Ma?

A YOUNG lady in a neighboring town has taken up dentistry for a living. All the gentlemen patronize her. When she puts her arm about the neck of the patient, and caresses his jaw for the offending member, the sensation is about as nice as they make 'em. One young man has become hopelessly infatuated with her. Consequently he hasn't a tooth in his head. She has pulled every blessed one of them, and made him two new sets and pulled them. She is now at work on his father's saw. He holds the saw.

A NEW FAIRFIELD man who failed to get a thirty-cent pineapple for a quarter of a dollar, wanted to know "whether we are breathing the pure air of freedom, or being strangled with the fetid breath of a hellish despotism?" The store keeper said those were the only pineapples he had.

A DANBURY man has become slightly daft on the subject of spring guns. He has invented one of the instruments, and brought it to a state of perfection, by thinning out the cats and dogs of the neighborhood. This morning his wife detected him in an effort to inveigle her mother into opening the fatal door, who, being aged and quite lame in one eye, was unconsciously rushing to an untimely death.

A NEW YORK city lad who is visiting relatives in Danbury, being caught in a misdemeanor, was reproved by his aunt. "Your mother," she thoughtfully observed, "will be pained to hear of your becoming so bad. And where, Johnny, do you suppose bad people go to?" "New Jersey," suggested the sobbing boy. The aunt thinks Johnny's moral perceptions are somewhat blunted by his geography.

OF an elderly lady now visiting relatives in Danbury, the following incident in her childhood is remembered: She had been sent to the pasture to drive home a cow, and while thus engaged fell from a fence she was climbing, and was severely bruised. On returning home, and telling of the accident, she was asked if she cried when she fell. "Why, no, mother," she quickly answered; "there was no one to hear me."

DID you ever notice how natural it is when one member of a family is relating something, for the other members who may be cognizant of the facts to help him out. A short time ago one of our citizens went to a neighboring city to listen to the closing exercises of a school, and bring his son home. On their arrival the family assembled to hear the young student tell his experiences, and enjoyed it very much. He told them how he delivered his address, and spoke with pardonable pride of the silence in the audience during its delivery. "You could have heard a pin drop," he said. "A pin!" shouted the fond father, contemptuously. "By gracious! you could have heard a barrel of them." The livid grotesqueness of the simile struck him at once, and he immediately collapsed.

DO children read the papers? is a question one of our teachers has been for some time pondering. Noticing that an article giving an impressive scene in Norway, where the sun never sets, was circulating quite freely in the papers, she hit upon it as a test case, Saturday. But in the class of eleven boys who were asked, "Where does the sun never set?" only one could give an answer. He said, "on a bench."

A GREAT PLAIN man heard that drinking-water could be kept cold by suspending in a pail in a current of air. So he tried it. He hung up the pail full and opened the front and back doors of his house, and waited for the result. His wife took the youngest child and went over to the neighbors. His wife's mother got up on the dining table, and wrapped the table-spread about her, and an old aunt who stood it as long as she could, finally encased herself with a length of carpet and crawled under the sofa. The experiment proved a complete success, we are glad to say, and the man will not have to buy any ice this winter, and if his wife's mother gets over the brain fever all right, and her aunt ever gets her left leg straight again, he will feel that his labors have not been in vain.

A MASSIVE intellect on Nelson Street did not have to clean the snow from his walk. He pinched his wife until she screamed, and the neighbors trod down the snow.

THE DANBURY NEWS.{varying text sizes} Published Every Wednesday, AT DANBURY, CONN. An Eight-page Journal, devoted to Literary Miscellany, General Gossip, and contain- ing statements almost TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE. MARGERY DEANE, THE FASHION EDITRESS, IS A REGULAR CONTRIBUTOR. TERMS. SIX MONTHS . . . . . . . . . $1.00 ONE YEAR . . . . . . . . . . 2.00 CLUB RATES MADE KNOWN ON APPLICATION. {right justified}BAILEY & DONOVAN, {right justified}Danbury, Conn. {left justified, very small text} Printed by Rand, Avery,& Co.