a good deal of his old quasi aristocratic flourish, and was gone.

There is this heavenly quality in a deed of even misplaced charity it makes the heart of the doer sit lightly in his bosom. I treated myself handsomely that afternoon at dinner, regarding myself, in the abstract, as a person who ought to dine well, and was worthy of at least half a pint of table claret. I tested the delicacies of Mataran's cuisine as far as my purse would allow; but when I stepped to the desk to pay the reckoning, those two one-dollar bills rather awkwardly turned out to be counterfeits !

Well, I suppose I deserved it.

The frequency with which Governor Dorr's name figured in the local police reports during the ensuing twelve months leads me to infer that he did not depart for New Orleans as soon as he expected.

Time rolled on, and the Saturday Press, being loved by the gods, died early, and one morning in 1861 I found myself at liberty to undertake a long-deferred pilgrimage to Rivermouth.

On arriving at my destination, cramped with a night's ride in the cars, I resolved to get the kinks out of me by walking from the station. Turning into one of the less-frequented streets, in order not to meet too many of my townsfolk, I came abruptly upon a hearse jogging along very pleasantly, and followed at a little distance by a single hack. When all one's friends can be put into a single hack, perhaps it is best that one should be buried expeditiously.

A malign urchin stood at the corner whistling shrilly through his fingers, which he removed from his lips with an injured air long enough to answer my question. "Who's dead? Why, Guvner Dorr's dead. That's 'im," curving a calliopean thumb in the direction of the hearse. The pity of it! The forlornness of the thing touched me, and a feeling of gratitude went out from my bosom towards the two or three hacks which now made their appearance around the corner and joined the funeral train.

Broken down in his prime with careless living, Governor Dorr a few months previously has straggled back to the old place to die; and thus had chance-which sometimes displays a

keen appreciation of dramatic effect-once more, and for the last time, brought me in contact with the friend of my youth. Obeying the impulse, I turned and followed the procession until it came to the head of that long, unbuilt street which, stretching in a curve from the yawning gate of the cemetery into the heart of the town, always seemed to me like a great siphon draining the life from Rivermouth. Here I halted, and watched the black carriages as they crawled down the road, growing smaller and smaller, until they appeared to resolve themselves into one tiny coach, which, lessening in the distance, finally vanished through a gateway that seemed about a foot high.

THE gratest bores in the world are those who are eternally trieing to prove to yu that 2 and 2 allwuss makes 4.

JOSH BILLINGS.

THE CAMEL AND THE ZEBRA.

BY BIERCE.

"WHAT have you there on your back?" said a zebra, jeeringly, to a "ship of the desert" in ballast.

"Only a bale of gridirons," was the meek reply.

THE CAMEL AND THE ZEBRA.

"And what, pray, may you design doing with them?" was the incredulous rejoinder.

"What am I to do with gridirons?" repeated the camel, contemptuously. "Nice question for you, who have evidently just come off one !'

People who wish to throw stones should not live in glass houses; but there ought to be a few in their vicinity.

"SUCCESS WITH SMALL FRUITS."

BY R. J. BURDETTE.

"I just rolled out here from the grocery store," said the little green apple, as it paused on the sidewalk for a moment's chat with the banana peel; "I am waiting here for a boy. Not a small, weak, delicate boy," added the little green apple, proudly, "but a great big boy, a great hulky, strong, leather-lunged, noisy fifteen-year-older, and little as I am, you will see me double up that boy to-night, and make him wail and howl and yell. Oh, I'm small, but I'm good for a ten acre field of boys, and don't you forget it! All the boys in Burlington," the little green apple went on, with just a shade of pitying contempt in its voice, "couldn't fool around me as any one of them fools around a banana." "Boys scems to be your game," drawled

THE STRENGTH OF A BANANA PEEL.

the banana peel, lazily; "well, I suppose they are just about strong enough to afford you a little amusement. For my own part, I like to take somebody of my size. Now, here comes the kind of a man I usually do business with. He is large and strong, it is true, but-"

And just then a South Hill merchant, who weighs about 231 pounds when he feels right good, came along, and the banana

peel just caught him by the foot, lifted him about as high as the awning post, turned him over, banged him down on a potato basket, flattening it out until it looked like a splint door-mat, and the shock jarred everything loose in the show-window. And then, while the fallen merchant, from various quarters of the globe, fished his silk hat from the gutter, his spectacles from the cellar, his handkerchief from the tree-box, his cane from the showwindow, and one of his shoes from the eaves-trough, and a little boy ran for the doctor, the little green apple blushed red and shrank a little back out of sight, covered with awe and mortification.

Ah," it thought, "I wonder if I can ever do that? Alas, how vain I was, and yet how poor and weak and useless I am in this world."

But the banana peel comforted it, and bade it look up and take heart, and do well what it had to do, and labor for the good of the cause in its own useful sphere. "True," said the banana peel, "you cannot lift up a two hundred pound man and break a cellar door with him, but you can give him the cholera morbus, and if you do your part, the world will feel your power and the medical colleges will call you blessed."

And then the little green apple smiled and looked up with grateful blushes on its face, and thanked the banana peel for its encouraging counsel. And that very night, an old father who writes thirteen hours a day, and a patient mother who was almost ready to sink from weariness, and a nurse and a doctor, sat up until nearly morning with a thirteen-year-old boy, who was all twisted up into the shape of a figure 3, while all the neighbors on that block sat up and listened, and pounded their pillows, and tried to sleep, and wished that boy would either die or get well.

And the little green apple was pleased, and its last words were, "At least I have been of some little use in this great wide world!"