"Oh, look there! What's that man doing?" Spinning glass."

"How spinning it?"

"I don't know."

"Then how do you know he's spinning it?"

"If you don't hush this very minute I'll spank you when we get home. You trifling little rascal, you annoy me almost to death."

After a short silence.

"Ma, what's annoy?" "Bother."

"What's bother?"

"Are you going to hush?" turning fiercely upon him. "Oh, what's that?"

"The Circassian lady."

"What's the matter with her hair?"

"Nothing, it's natural?"

"How natural?"

"It was always that way."

"When she was a little tiny baby?"

"Gracious alive, no!"

"Then how could it be that way always?"

She then took hold of his ear.

"Ouch, now!"

"Don't you cry here. If you do I'll whip you when we get home."

Why mustn't I cry here?"

'Everybody would laugh at you."

Would the fat woman laugh?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Are you going to hush?"

"Yessum.

What are them men doin'?"

"They are cowboys, showing-"

"What's a cowboy?"

"A man that drives cattle out on the plains."

"If he's a man, how can he be a boy?

"Didn't I tell you that I'd whip you if you didn't hush."

"Yessum. Are there any calf boys?"

"I think not."

After a slight pause.

Mamma, then little children would be calf boys, wouldn't they?"

"If you don't hush this very minute I'll take you home. You shall never go anywhere with me again, never, never so long as you live."

"I couldn't go after I quit livin', could I?” "No."

"I'll be an angel then, wont I?"

"I suppose so.'

"Will I look like a bird?”

"I don't know."

"Like a chicken?"

"Merciful heavens, no!"

"What will I look like?"

"I don't know. Now, hush!" "But I can fly, can't I?"

"Yes.'

"Wont I fall?"

"No."

"I can ketch birds, can't I?”

"I don't know."

"But if I can fly fast I can, can't I?"

"I suppose so.'

"Will I go around and wrestle with people?" "What? You trifling rascal, what do you mean,

say?"

66

Why, you read in the Bible that Jacob wrestled with an angel."

"I'm going to tell your father to whip you just as soon as we get home. You'll see, sir, mind if you don't. You promised to be a good boy, but you have been meaner than you ever were before."

"Please don't tell him."

"Will you be good?"

66

Yessum."

After a few moments of silence.

"Look at that man, got on woman's clothes."

"That's not a man.

It's the bearded lady."

"How bearded?"

"Got whiskers."

"Will you have whiskers?"

"No."
"Why?"

"I don't look here, didn't you tell me that you would be good? You give me the horrors."

"What's the horrors?"

"Come to me."

She seized him, and, as she was hurrying from the house, a man addressed her, saying that the performance bad begun down stairs.

"Ma, what's the performance?"

She jerked him through the door and dragged him

away.

THE AUCTIONEER'S GIFT.*-S. W. Foss.

The auctioneer leaped on a chair, and bold and loud and clear,

He poured his cataract of words,-just like an auctioneer.
An auction sale of furniture, where some hard mortgagee
Was bound to get his money back and pay his lawyer's fee.
A humorist of wide renown, this doughty auctioneer;
His joking raised the loud guffaw, and brought the answer
ing jeer;

He scattered round his jests like rain, on the unjust and the

just;

Sam Sleeman said he laughed so much he thought that he

would bust.

He knocked down bureaus, beds, and stoves, and clocks and

chandeliers,

And a grand piano, which he swore would "last a thousand

years;

He rattled out the crockery, and sold the silverware;

At last they passed him up to sell a little baby's chair.

"How much? how much? come make a bid; is all your

money spent?"

And then a cheap, facetious wag came up and bid, "one cent." Just then a sad-faced woman, who stood in silence there, Broke down and cried, "My baby's chair! My poor, dead baby's chair!"

*From "The Yankee Blade," by permission of the Author.

Here, madam, take your baby's chair," said the softened

auctioneer,

"I know its value all too well; my baby died last year: And if the owner of the chair, our friend, the mortgagee, Objects to this proceeding, let him send the bill to me!"

Gone was the tone of raillery; the humorist auctioneer Turned shame-faced from his audience to brush away a

tear;

The laughing crowd was awed and still, no tearless ere was there

When the weeping woman reached and took her afte baby's chair.

THE HUNCHBACKED SINGER.

"I am Nicholas Tachinardi, hunchbacked, look you, and a fright.

Caliban himself, 'tis likely, was not a more hideous sight! Granted. But I come not, friends, to exhibit form or size. Look not on my shape, good people; lend your ears and not your eyes.

"I'm a singer, not a dancer: spare me for awhile your din. Let me try my voice to-night here; keep your jests till I

begin.

Have the kindness but to listen-this is all I dare to ask. See. I stand before the footlights waiting to begin my task. If I fail to please, why, curse me; but not before you hear Thrust me out from the Odeon. Listen, and I've naught to fear."

But the crowd in pit and boxes jeered the dwarf and mocked his shape,

Called him "monster," "thing abhorrent," crying, "Off, presumptuous ape!

Off, unsightly, baleful creature, off and quit the insulted

stage!

Move aside, repulsive figure, or deplore our gathering rage!"

Bowing low, pale Tachinardi, long accustomed to such threats,

Burst into a grand bravura showering notes like diamond jets,

Sang until the ringing plaudits through the wide Odeon rang, Sang as never soaring tenor ere behind those footlights sang. And the hunchback ever after, like a god, was hailed with

.

cries:

King of minstrels, live forever! Shame on fools who have but eyes!"

THE ELOQUENCE OF O'CONNELL.*

WENDELL PHILLIPS.

I do not think I should exaggerate if I said that God, since he made Demosthenes, never made a man so fit for the great work as he did O'Connell. You may think I am partial to my hero, very naturally. But John Randolph of Roanoke, who hated an Irishman almost as much as he did a Yankee, when he got to London and heard O'Connell, the old slaveholder held up his hands and said: "This is the man; these are the lips, the most eloquent that speak English in my day." And I think he was right.

Webster could address a bench of judges; Everett could charm a college; Choate could delude a jury; Clay could magnetize a Senate; Tom Corwin could hold the mob in his right hand; but no one of them could do more than that one thing. The wonder of O'Connell was that he could out-talk Corwin; he could charm a college better than Everett; delude a jury better than Choate, and leave Clay himself far behind in magnetizing a Senate. I have heard all the grand and majestic orators of America, who are singularly famed on the world's circumference. I know what was the majesty of Webster; I know what it was to melt under the magnetism of Henry Clay; I have seen eloquence in the iron logic of Calhoun; but all three together never surpassed, and no one of them ever equaled, the great Irishman. In the first place, he had,-what is half the power with a popular orator, he had a majestic presence. God put that royal soul into a body as royal.

He had, in early youth, the brow of Jove or Jupiter, and the stature of Apollo; a little O'Connell would have been no O'Connell at all. Sidney Smith said of Lord John Russell's five feet, when he went down to Yorkshire after the Reform Bill had been carried, that the

*Daniel O'Connell, the distinguished Irish patriot, was born in the County Kerry, Ireland, August 9, 1775. He died in Genoa, Italy, May 15, 1847.