FORTUNE is like a mirror-it don't alter men; it only shows men jest as they am.

ONE good way I know ov to find happiness is not by boring a hole to fit the plugg.

plate and an unpaid tailor's bill. DANDYS are hybrid-a cross between a fashion

DEBT is a trap which a man sets and bates hinself, and then deliberately gets into.

Az the flint kontains the spark, unknown to itself, which the steel alone can make into life, so adversity often reveals to us hidden gems which prosperity or negligence would for ever lay hid.

463

A CAT "TALKING about cats," said Uncle Tim, a regular Yankee, "puts me in mind of a cat I once owned. Let me tell you about her. She was a Maltee, and what that cat didn't know wasn't worth knowing. Here's one thing she did.

"In the spring of '49 I moved into the little old house down on the crooked river. We put our provisions down in the cellar, and the first night we made up our beds on the floor. But we didn't sleep. No sooner had it come dark than we heard a tearin' and a squeakin' in the cellar that was awful. I lit a candle, and went down. Talk about rats! I never saw such a sight in all my born days. Every inch of the cellar-bottom was covered with them. They run up onto me, and they run over

me.

"I jumped back into the room, and called the cat. She came down and looked. I guess she sat there about ten minutes, looking at them rats, and I was waitin' to see what she would do. Byand-by she shook her head, and turned about and went up-stairs. She didn't care to tackle 'em. That night, I tell ye, there wasn't much sleep.

"In the mornin' I called for the cat, and couldn't

find her. She'd gone. I guessed the rats had frightened her, and, to tell the plain truth, I didn't much wonder. Night came on again, and the old cat hadn't shown herself.

"Says Betsy Ann (that's my wife) to me, says

LOG.

she, Tim, if that old cat don't come back, we'll have to leave this place; the rats'll eat us up.'

66

Says I, 'Just you let the old cat be.' I didn't believe she'd left us for good and all.

"Just as Betsy Ann was puttin' the children to bed, we heard a scratchin' and a waulin' at the outside door. I went and opened it, and there stood our old Maltee on the door-step, and behind her a whole army of cats, all paraded as regular as ye ever saw soldiers! I let our old cat in, and the others followed her.

"She went right to the cellar-door, and scratched there.

"I began to understand. Old Maltee had been out for help.

"I opened the way to the cellar, and she marched down, and the other cats tramped after in regular order-and as they went past I counted fifty-six of 'em.

"Oh, my! if there wasn't a row and a rumpus in that 'ere cellar that night, then I'm mistaken!

"The next morning the old cat come up and caught hold of my trousers-leg, and pulled me toward the door. I went down and saw the sight. Talk about yer Bunker Hill and yer Boston Massacres! mercy! I never saw such a sight before nor since. Betsy Ann and me, with my boy Sammy, was all day as hard at work as we could be, clearin' the dead rats out of that 'ere cellar!"

As many ardent swains are about to leave this end of the colony to try their luck at the diamondfields, and request us to give them a little advice how to write love-letters to their fair ones while away, we retail that which was given not by the Chief Justice: "There is no stated rule for writing love-letters. You should write on foolscap paper, as soft as you can procure it, using words of such burning love that they will sizzle on

HERE is a man in town SO

knowing, that people who don't know their own minds come

informa

tion upon the subject.

WHO is the funniest, you

or I?-I, to be sure, because I'm the querist. No dust affects the eye like gold dust, and no glasses like brandy glasses.

WHY is the world like a piano ?-Because it is full of sharps and flats.

DID the horseman who "scoured the plain" use воар?

WHY should potatoes grow better than any other vegetable?-Because they have eyes to see what they are doing.

A FRENCHMAN, wishing to speak of the cream of the English poets, forgot the word, and said, "de butter of poets."

MAXIM BY A MISANTHROPE.-The last place in which I should look for the milk of human kindness is the pale of civilisation.

THE singing of a kettle in one respect resembles the singing of a stage-singer. An attempt to overdo it will be followed by a hiss.

AN editor in Michigan, talking of corn, professes to have a couple of ears fifteen inches long. Some folks are remarkable for the length of their two

ears.

THERE is a man in New York in possession of a powerful memory. He is employed by the Humane Society to "remember the poor."

AN artificial florist lately described himself as "head gardener to the ladies."

"I WAS once taken down with Washington Irving," says the author of "Pencillings by the Way," into the country by a merchant, to dinner. Our friend stopped his carriage at the gate of his park, and asked us if we would walk through his grounds to the house. Irving refused, and held me down by the coat, so that we drove on to the house together, leaving our host to follow on foot. 'I make it a principle,' said Irving, never to walk with a man through his own grounds. I have no idea of praising a thing whether I like it or not. You and I will do them to-morrow morning by ourselves."

A YOUNG man in New York was the victim of misplaced confidence a short time ago. He was particularly sweet on a very young lady, and called one evening, having previously paid her several visits. The girl's parents, thinking both too young to begin keeping company with each other, gave a gentle hint to that effect-first by calling the girl out of the room and sending her to bed; and, secondly, by the lady of the house bringing into the room a huge slice of bread and butter, spread with jam, and saying to the youth, in her kindest long way, and your mother will be anxious." "There, take this, and go home; it is a

manner,

THE eccentric Dr. Byles had at one time a remarkably stupid Irish girl as a domestic. With a look and voice of terror, he said to her in haste, "Go and tell your mistress that Dr. Byles has put an end to himself." The girl flew up-stairs, and voice," Dr. Byles has put an end to himself!" with a face of horror, exclaimed at the top of her The astonished wife and daughters rushed into the parlour, and there was the doctor calmly walking about with part of a cow's tail, that he had picked up in the street, tied to his coat or cassock behind.

But as long as I may

At Bunkley stay,

Be hanged if I go to Burney.

UTE BURNEY stands
Upon two strands,

Between the sea and shore;
Its round redoubt
Might keep foes out,

If it had a better door.

Two harbour lights,

In winter nights,

May tempt a stranger in,

But he'd go, no doubt,

To the right-about,

If he could but see the Inn.

Th' assembly rooms

Are dark as tombs,

But the church is light and gay,

With epitaphs

At which one laughs,

Like the moral of a play.

PIPS.

465

"GENERAL," said an American major, "I always observe that those persons who have a great deal to say about being ready to shed their last drop of blood, are amazin' pertic'lar about the first drop."

THE LAWYER AND THE JEW.-One day, as a solicitor was passing through Lincoln's Inn with his professional bag under his arm, he was accosted by a Jew with "Cloash to shell, old cloash ?" The

lawyer, somewhat nettled at this address, from a supposition that Moses mistook him for an inhabitant of Duke's Place, snatched a bundle of papers from their damask repository, and replied, "No, sir; they are all new suits."

Ir is said that in the town of Marbleheads the girls have made an improvement in ironing, which beats the steam-engine on common roads all hollow. They spread out the clothes on a smooth platform, and fasten hot flat-irons to their feet, and skate over them. This is combining the recreative with the useful and ornamental.

THAT was good advice given by the president of the State Agricultural Society, on presenting a silver cup to a young man who had won the first prize at a ploughing match. "Take this cup, my young friend, and remember always to plough deep and drink shallow."

ONG of the river by Waterloo,

On the road that leadeth to Camberwell,

bus,

Laden with treasures of folks who
dwell

In the northern regions remote
from us,
Rode the smart
driver, Golden
Hugh.

The man from his seat exalted gazed,

And saw in the thronging streets below,

In the light of the setting sun that blazed

As for me,' says he, 'that was black as night,
As glossy black as your off-side 'oss,
I'm goin' reg'lar snow-drift white;
But, to tell you the truth, to make all right,
I'm for having a turn at 'EuosCONOS.'
'A turn at what?' He repeated the word,
The werry rummest as ever I heard.
And then it came out that a friend of his'n,
A chemical gent what lived close by,
Had been and invented a bran-new dye,
And that was the name he chose to christen
What nobody yet had been found to try;

The flash of harness, the horses go Through the crowds that were passing them to and fro.

And the driver he laughed a merry laugh
As another 'bus passed, with exchange of chaff
From its coachman, snug in a sealskin cap
Over a handkerchief's silken wrap;

And he leaned to the man on the box by his side: "See that man, sir, a-drivin'-that rum'un ?" he cried.

So I means to call it 'EvoSCONOS.'

Well, we toddles off to him, Bill and I, And here's the wonderful part to tell: That friend he gives me a jar to smell;

I takes a sniff at it hearty and fair, Only a sniff at the pestilent stuff, To be smelling at which was quite enough, And just that sniff of it saved my hair!"

"A wonderful dye!" the passenger said:

Only a look at it, only a smell!

But didn't it answer with Bill as well?"

With a start, the man on the "Waterloo"
Looked up in the face of Golden Hugh.

'Till he died? Thou chaffest!" he meekly said;
"Never was omnibus drove by the dead!"
"The dead!" cried Hugh, with a smothered roar;
"But I see the story is new to you,

As it well may be, though it's gospel true,
And many and many I've told it to.
It may be a couple o' years or more

When, as Bill and me stood at the "Red Cap" door,
Talking o' this and talking o' that,

I happened to lift my Pannyma hat,

'No, no," he answered; "he went too far;
He wasn't content to nose the jar,
Not contented with smelling the dye,
He must give 'EUOSCONOS a try.
So he rubs in a lot of it over-night,
And only fancy his terrible fright
When he goes in the morning his cap to doff,
And his hair along with his cap comes off!"
This is the story strange and true
Told by the driver, Golden Hugh,

Of how he saved his hair by smell,
As he rode that day over Waterloo,

On the road that leadeth to Camberwell.