University of Virginia Library

SUMMER IN DANBURY.

TOMMY MIGGS'S VISION.

LITTLE Tommy Miggs was observed to be very restless in school all of Friday morning. It was quite evident to those who observed him that something of unusual importance was resting upon his mind. He missed the easiest questions, and picked up the wrong books, and once tried to do a sum on his slate with a willow whistle. The boy in the next seat to Tommy was the only one who did not wonder at his uneasiness. Five distinct times Tommy found and availed himself of the opportunity to whisper in a sepulchral tone to this young man that his ma was going to have a strawberry shortcake for dinner, and that he was to hurry home just as soon as school was out. There was every encouraging indication in Tommy's manner of the most flattering speed being made between the school and his house when the time came. None of these opportunities for verbal communication were of sufficient length to permit of more

than a hurried announcement of the fact; but, by a series of diagrams hastily improvised with his hands, little Tommy succeeded in conveying to the mind of his friend an idea of the size of the cake, which was to be, without doubt, a "booster."

The moment Tommy got outside the building, he "lit out" for home. Fully two-thirds of the distance he made on a run, and the balance at a quick walk. As he reached the gate, panting heavily, but full of glad purposes, he met his two little brothers. Very little they were too; but there was enough of them to express enough of any sort of deep emotion to attract attention.

"Halloo!" said Tommy, with a sudden sinking of spirits: "is ma sick, Georgy?"

Georgy merely shook his head, as if afraid to open his lips, and thus disclose what was evidently a more dreadful calamity than that which Tommy's inquiry suggested.

"What is it, Toady?" asked Tommy, looking straight in Toady's extended eyes.

"O Tommy!" ejaculated Toady. And then the little fellow dug his knuckles into his eyes, and began to whimper.

"What is it, I tell ye?" And Tommy shook Toady to conceal his agitation.

"Company's come," sputtered Toady.

"Company?" gasped Tommy, catching hold of the post.

"Yes," volunteered little George: "uncle Richard, and aunt Jane, and aunt Ann. And they are goin' to stay to dinner."

It was just as well Tommy had hold of the gate-post, or he must surely have gone over on his back. Poor child! All through that long, hot fore-noon he had drawn visions of pastry glory, through which ran the rich heart-blood of the loveliest fruit the gods e'er blessed. The last injunction of his mother had been an unbroken song in his soul during the weary hours; and, every time he was prompted to faint, his flagging spirits were stimulated up to a new life by the vision of the short-cake. Poor child! He slipped heavily into the house. There was his uncle Richard with very fat and bearded fingers clasped across a frightful expanse of abdomen, as if to restrain its devouring tendencies till the right moment. There were also aunts Jane and Ann, both fat, and both, apparently, in a disastrous state of good health. In the terrible state of fear he was in, Tommy would have felt much more comfortable, we have no doubt, in the embrace of a boa-constrictor, rather than under the caresses of his relatives. He tried to get a word to his mother; but she was too busy, and too flustered over the appearance of her unexpected company, to notice Tommy. Dinner was speedily announced; and the family sat down, leaving the children to speculate on futurity in the wood-shed.

It was a mournful group. Tommy sat down on the saw-buck; Georgy climbed upon the shaving-barrel; while Toady crouched on the step close to the door leading to the kitchen, where the dinner was going on. The children were directed to play in the yard; but there was no desire for sport with them. Between three relatives from the country and one shortcake there was not space to crowd the least particle of levity, even with the aid of the sharpest knife. They wanted to get as close as they possibly could to the noise of the fray, although every sound went to their hearts with a great shock.

"Have they started it yet, Toady?" whispered Tommy anxiously.

Toady cautiously raised himself to his feet, crept up to the sill, and, standing on the extreme point of his very little toes, was able, through the crack in the door, to take in a view of the table.

"No," he whispered after an instant delay, and sank back again to his place. A moment later, Tommy again asked if they had started it; and again Toady mounted cautiously up to his post. The instant he reached the point of survey, he fell back so suddenly as to startle his waiting brothers.

"They've gone at it!" he gasped, his eyes fairly protruding in the excitement he labored under.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Tommy, dropping his head.

"Gosh!" ejaculated Georgy under his breath;

[Description: Putting Down Carpets -Page 162.]

while an expression of sickening fear crept over his face.

For a full moment there was a silence in the wood-shed. Then Georgy slid down from his barrel, and crept up to the door, and peered through to the table. There was a look of faint expectation on the face he presented to the crack; but it was dimmed somewhat when he turned it about to his brothers.

"I can't see the plate," he said dejectedly, shaking his head; "but they're all a-eatin'. It's darned mean, an' I don't care who knows it!" he added in desperation, as he dropped moodily on the splitting-block.

"Sh!" said Tommy faintly.

"To come in like that!" pursued Georgy, apostrophizing the great grievance from its harshest aspect. "I s'pose they smelt that cake all the way, and hain't had none themselves for a year, an' so come in to take ours." And Georgy smiled with a bitterness that was painful in one so young.

"I wish it would choke 'em!" he shortly added.

Tommy tried to give his brother a reproachful look, but did not succeed well; while the softening about the corners of Toady's mouth might have led a hasty observer to believe that he shared in the wild desire.

The hush that followed was broken by their mother's voice:—

"Do have that other piece, Richard. I know you like it."

The emphasized word no sooner struck the ears of the anxious waiters in the shed than they involuntarily clutched hold of their resting-places for support; while the expression of horror which blanched their faces was pitiful to behold.

"I don't care if I do, Susan, seeing you're so free," came the heavy voice of uncle Richard.

"Oh!" came from Tommy's white lips like a shot; and then he sank back on the saw-horse, and dropped the white face on his knees.

Little Toady abruptly rolled off the step on to the ground, too full of grief to make a sound; while the aggressive George, shutting his teeth tight together, marched around the shed, shaking his clinched fists in a way that implied the most dreadful doom to the unsuspecting relatives from the country.

It was when Tommy was back again in school, bending the little white face over his book, and striving with all his might to still the pain in his heart, that the boy in the seat whispered,—

"How's the cake, Tommy?"

But there was no answer.

"Was it an old booster?" asked the boy, trying to compress his enthusiastic expectations into the most cautious whisper.

There was a short, sharp sob from the white lips,

which startled the boy in the next seat, and attracted the attention of the teacher; while the little head went down on the book, and two little threadbare sleeves coiled around it.

"What is it, Tommy?" said the teacher, coming up.

But Tommy was as noble as he had been sanguine. He would not say that the other boy had been teasing him: he simply drew the patched little sleeves tighter about his head, and gave way to a flood of agonizing tears. She was a sympathetic woman as well as a good teacher. She laid her hand softly on his hair, and tenderly said,—

"Poor Tommy!"

"And so we, without the blessed privilege of stroking the thin white hair, can say too,—

"Poor Tommy!"

ABOUT A FLY.

WHAT becomes of the flies? They go somewhere. They are gone all winter, and come back again in the summer, all grown, and ready for business. Scientific men should solve this problem. Every man, woman, and child is interested in knowing where flies go, so as to be able to avoid going there too. Flies have a system which is governed by the hours. In the morning they find their food; and until noon they will not attend to any thing

else. But in the afternoon they are ready for fun. In the morning, a human being appears to a fly in the light of a lunch-counter. It sweeps down on him, prowls over him, picking up what it can find; but, if persistently interrupted, it will leave for good, and, taking position near by, give him a look, equivalent to saying, "Hang a hog, anyway!" and then put off for another field. A fly, if it would keep out of a pauper's grave, has no time to fool away during business-hours. In the afternoon it has leisure. In the afternoon you may brush away a fly a thousand times; but it will come back again. And, the more you knock at it, the more heartily it enjoys the performance. It is on the same principle a miller flutters about a flame, or a swallow skims around a boy who is trying to split its head open with a lath. There are several ways of getting rid of flies; but knocking at them is not one of them. That only stimulates them to greater exertions both in your behalf as well as their own: for a fly cannot reason as you can; and your maddening flourishes are understood by it to be so many invitations to hop in, and have fun. There is nothing small or mean about a fly. Flies are not seen on moving trains or ocean steamers, and rarely on the third floor of a building. But the most popular way to get rid of flies is to hire a livery team, and drive with all speed across the tops of mountains. A very few of the millions of flies which infest our homes never go away for the winter. After the winter has settled down to work, they retire to an upper corner, and with one eye held shut by a leg, and the other wide open, they lie on their backs, and look up in your face for days at a time.

A GRIEVOUS MISTAKE.

A FEW days ago, a young man who had been sick but a week died. His widow sent word of the mournful event to her brother, who was at work harvesting for a farmer near Croton Falls, N.Y. When he got the intelligence, he made haste to Danbury, some thirty miles; but, owing to delay of several kinds, did not reach here until the friends got back from the burial. The suddenness of the death, and the fact that the man whom he had seen in health but three weeks before was dead and buried, was a severe shock to him. He spoke about it several times in a dazed sort of a way, and would break off, in inquiring the particulars of the last sickness, to comment upon the dreadful suddenness of the affair.

"And now he is buried," he added at the close of the bereaved women's recital, "and we shall never see him again. It don't seem possible that George is gone. Don't cry, Maria. It's hard on you; but it can't be helped. You did every thing

you could to prevent it, you know." He stopped here, and nervously worked his fingers, which were clasped together over his knees. After a moment he added, "It was just three weeks ago last night that he came in with that new black suit. I remember his standing up there by the chair," indicating the spot with his eyes, while his hands still continued to play nervously together, "with 'em on; and how they fitted him! I never see George look so well in all my life as he did that night; and I was speaking to mother about it the next day. And now he is dead and buried. I can't make it seem possible. I"—

"We buried him in that suit of clothes," said she, interrupting, "and"—

"What!"

They were both on their feet now. He stood there with his hands separated and clinched, a ghastly pallor on his face, and his eyes fairly starting from their sockets. Brought to her feet by the strength and suddenness of his exclamation, she stood before him in pallid wonder, with the quiver of a nameless fear on her lips.

"Do you mean ter say," he gasped, "that you chucked a new suit of clothes under ground like that?"

"Tom!" she cried, holding up both hands in a horror of protest.

"Don't Tom me!" he screamed with a bitterness

indescribable. "Don't speak to me at all, you witless woman! I can't bear with you! I hate you! A nice sister you are!" It was fearful, the depth of irony in this expression. "You deserve a brother, you do! Oh, yes! An' him and me the same size too." He clinched his hands tighter than before, and strode up and down the room. "I wonder what keeps me from sinkin' right through this floor," he passionately added. "To grow up with a sister like that, and she a-chuckin good clothes into the ground, with a brother that ain't hardly a decent rag to his back! Forty dollars' worth of clothes for worms to cavort around in!"

And, with a groan of despair, he sank heavily into a seat.

"Tom!" gasped the unhappy woman in a voice of horror, "are you crazy?"

"Crazy!" he shrilly repeated. "If I ain't crazy, is it your fault, you miserable sister! Crazy! It's enough to make the hosts of heaven crazy to see forty dollars' worth of clothes chucked to ten cents' worth of worms."

She buried her white face in her hands, and sobbed outright for shame and agony.

"There's no use crying over spilt milk," he gloomily observed. "You've done it, and that's an end of it, and can now have the consolation of knowin' that you've injured an own brother. Another time I guess you'll be a little more careful how you fire a new suit of clothes into the ground."

And, with this prophecy, he morosely strode out of the house.

MRS. COBLEIGH CALLS HER DOG.

A COW got into Cobleigh's yard Friday morning, and stepped around among a dozen heads of choice late cabbages which that gentleman had cultivated with considerable care and pride. Mr. Cobleigh was not at home; but Mrs. Cobleigh saw the animal, and became very much excited over its presence. It was desirable to get it off the premises as speedily as possible; but Mrs. Cobleigh was painfully limited as to facilities. She was afraid of a cow, and did not dare venture close enough to it to make a clothes-pole serviceable. She had heard that a dog was an efficient agent in the dispersion of a cow; but there was not a dog about. But a bright thought struck the lady. She would pretend there was a dog just back of the house, waiting to rush with terrific ferocity upon the marauding beast. So Mrs. Cobleigh set to work, leading off with an earnest whistle, with the following flattering result:—

"Fvew-w-w, fvew-w-w-w—oh, my! Here, Tiger, here! Fvew-w-w, fv—what shall I do? Here, Ponto! here, Carlo! Fvew-w-w-z-s—oh, my gracious! Fvew-w-w—bite him, Jack! Bite him,

Bull! Fvew-w-w-w—oh, dear! oh, dear! Go way, you nasty thing! Scat, I say!"

Mrs. Cobleigh was terribly excited. The cow looked up, and smiled.

"Go away, you hateful object!" she screamed, "or I'll have you torn to pieces.—Here, Gyp, seize him! Fvew—fvew—fvew! Bite him, Ned! Sick him, Pete! Fvew—fvew-w-w-z-z-s! Oh, gracious goodness!" And the exhausted woman sank down on the door-stone, her face the very essence of despair; while the exertion of her vocal organs in producing the whistle had covered her chin with spray. During the progress of these tactics, seven dogs had gathered in the vicinity, and were now staring through the fence at Mrs. Cobleigh with all-absorbing interest. But the woman, unconscious of their vicinity, continued to breathe heavily, and to look at the cow; while that animal leisurely chewed on the cabbages, and pensively took in the surroundings.

AFTER THE CELEBRATION.

THE 5th of July is so closely associated with the 4th as to be a part of it. We don't care to think of the 5th on the 4th; but on the 5th we wish the 4th hadn't been quite so much to us as it was. The American mouth is equally extended on both

days,—shouting over the one, and yawning on the other. The family which celebrates awakes in a cloud of depression. The threads which were precipitately dropped on the 3rd, and fearfully entangled on the 4th, must be taken up again on the 5th, and brought out of the snarl, and carried forward as before. If we could bear this in mind at the first, we should save much trouble and annoyance. The re-action from the excesses of the day we celebrate depresses us; and then to have to take up duties which were too hastily and gladly put off appears to be a very good substitute for the feather which broke the camel's back. In the realization of an anticipation, we rest content to let the future take care of itself.

"That's all right; I'll attend to it to-morrow;" or, "Never mind, there'll be plenty of time to do it to-morrow,"—are household words on a 4th of July. The 5th of July is a most handy waste-basket. Every hour, from the eve to the close of the "glorious anniversary," we are pitching things into it; and the next day, with tired senses and muscles, we bend over the mass, and sort them out again. It is a dreary task; but it shall never happen again—shall it? We drop duties like hot shot; we sweep aside unperformed cares as so many cobwebs: every thing is thrown recklessly and carelessly down, while we plunge into the excitement of the event. There'll be plenty of time to-

morrow to attend to it all: we are too excited to do any thing now. If the whole world could be swept into eternity as soon as we should finish our celebration, what a grand day the 4th of July would be! We never shall have a perfect 4th until the 5th is exterminated. What a hollow mockery are the burned fire-crackers, and empty Roman candles, and charred pin-wheels, and broken rocket-sticks, the next day! How weak and insignificant look the bunting, and greens, and other decorations! How insipid are the mottoes which excited us the day before! How oppressive are the things to be put to rights, the extra dishes to be washed, the debris to be removed! How repulsive appear the every-day clothes which were thrown here, and kicked there, on the morning of the 4th, as if they were never to be donned again! There is a bitterness of spirit as we crawl back into them, which we cannot entirely conceal.

The family temper is fully alive on the 5th. There is but little in the house for breakfast, and scarcely any disposition on the part of the woman to prepare what there is. We all get out of bed on the wrong side, and are prone to think that our display of patriotism the day before amply compensates for all lack of charity now.

There never was such a hot, close, wretched day as this 5th of July. We judge it from the stand-point of a depressed system. The stomach has

been bombarded all the day before by ice-cream and lemonade, and recoils now from food, and in the recoil appears to have kicked us in the roof of the mouth with a pair of decayed overshoes.

"Thank Heaven, 4th of July comes but once a year!" is the spontaneous outburst from a million of hearth-stones on the morning of the 5th.

COMING OUT OF THE SPREE.

THERE was one man who went to sleep with the 4th of July in his arms, under the impression that it was an angel from heaven; and awoke the next morning to find he was being strangled by a demon. He was not what is called a drinking man; but he loved the glass from convivial motives. He was out all day on the 4th, being one of the fire-men. He didn't intend to drink much, but just enough to feel good. What he despised above ground was to get drunk himself while his cooler friends kept comparatively sober. He was going to look out for this to-day, and guard against injurious excesses. This he determined before he had taken any thing. With the first glass down, a little dissipation lost its harsh aspect. Besides, those with him appeared to think just as he did. They were not the cold-blooded sort of folks, but

believed in having a good time without any reference to the result. They weren't the sort that would get him drunk, and then make fun of it the next day. Their freedom encouraged him to proceed. As the day progressed, he grew less guarded, and more communicative. He met and got acquainted with a number of brother-firemen visiting town, and received each fresh acquaintance with a heartiness that must have been eminently gratifying. His heart expanded like debt as the hours rolled on. He wanted to treat everybody. More than that, he was delighted with everybody, and was particular that everybody should drink. He didn't believe in doing these things on a half-shell; and kindly continued to assure everybody in the company of the fact, although it was evident that talking was becoming painfully difficult to him. He grew more and more affectionate and more and more demonstrative with that excellent trait as the night drew near. Once in a while he came across one who was a veteran in the art of drinking, and who could not be beguiled into promiscuous inundation of self and sweet confidences. These stony faces tended to make him uneasy, and finally to fill him with pain. After a while, the light of intelligence began to flicker in its socket; and, after a few fitful flashes, the flame went out together.

It was the morning of the 5th when he awoke, and quite early in the morning at that; for the inexperienced

drunkard is a light sleeper. There was a confused expression on his mind, as if the broad daylight which struck his eyes had also suddenly pierced to his brain; but the awful fact that he was awake, and not dreaming, came upon him with terrific, flattening force. This was his own room. How came he here? He had no memory of reaching it himself. Was he brought here? Sickening thought! Who brought him? Who has seen him? Any of the neighbors? Any of his friends? What did he do? What awful silliness was he guilty of during that carousal? He would give the world to know every circumstance of his conduct during that fearful day, and yet recoils in horror from the thought. His head throbs, his flesh is feverish, his tongue swollen, and his joints ache. He tries his best to recall every detail of yesterday's debauch. If he can only remember every thing he has done, he is comparatively safe from the innuendoes of those who saw him, as he can prepare for every attack. But he can make no satisfactory survey of the performance. He remembers how he started off; but things grow more and more indistinct in consecutive occurrence; while here and there flash out incidents which cause his heart to sink within him, and his face to burn with shame,—sentiments that he expressed, promises that he gave, invitations that he extended, exhibitions of himself made before sober people; while the darkness of his mind is peopled with a score of horrid absurdities whose nature he cannot fathom, but which he is confident some one saw and remembers. Be tries to hope for the best, and is momentarily buoyed up, only to be cast down farther than before. Then he curses the drink with penitential earnestness, and solemnly swears he will never touch another drop. There is comfort in this resolution; but he no sooner grasps it than it is suddenly wrenched away from him in an overpowering flood of recollections of his folly. Again he becomes desperate, and determines to brave it out, and to show that the debauch is not a new thing to him by going on another in the same company. But remorse comes in, and kicks this prop from under him; and he rolls over, and groans in the agony of his despair. Why was he such an ass? Why was he such an idiot? Would that he had died before he saw the men whom yesterday he hugged, whom at no other time would he have noticed, and whom now he loathes with all the strength of his being! What a head, what a mouth, what a mind, that man carries with him all day of the 5th of July! He shrinks from going out on the street; and yet he dare not stay in all day, lest those who were with him will think that he is completely floored. And so he goes out among his fellow-men, shrinking from their gaze, avoiding those places which he remembers visiting, and wondering with exquisite agony if those he passes were distinguished by his presence, and what phase of his awful idiocy he exhibited there. At every sound and voice he starts, expecting every moment to meet or be overtaken by some one who witnessed his shame and is only too glad to recall the particulars to his attention. He is settled in no purpose but one; and that is, to shut square off on drinking. Never again will another drop of liquor pass his lips, never,—never again. And let no man pull down his vest.

A PREMATURE CELEBRATION.

THE firemen had a parade Saturday. It was a fine affair; but the absence of Mr. O'Clarence was deeply felt, not only by the department, but by the public. His long and faithful services at the business-meetings and festivals, and his splendid bearing on parade, have given Mr. O'Clarence an enviable position in the hearts of his countrymen. We are sorry he was not present Saturday; but an unlooked-for and very painful accident deprived him and us of a great pleasure. The night which preceded the last anniversary of our national independence, he took home twenty-five dollars' worth of fireworks for a splurge on the next night. He calculated he had glory enough in that package to

fill with gratitude, and admiration every tax-payer on North Street; and his wife, after carefully examining the lot, was equally confident that the neighbors would see something that would "make their eyes bung out," as she pensively expressed it. The next morning, O'Clarence took out the bundle to look it over again, and feed on the anticipation. There were these cannon-crackers,—several packs;—and Roman candles, and blue-fire, and pin-wheels, and rockets, and the like; a very creditable assortment for any family. Mr. Wickford's boy, from the next house, was in, and sat on the floor, holding a piece of lighted punk in his hand, and had both his eyes and mouth wide open, enjoying the sight. O'Clarence was sitting on his haunches, holding a pin-wheel in his hand, and explaining to Mrs. O'Clarence how cheaply they could be made in China, and how superior in ingenuity and industry were the Chinese to all other races. None of them know how it happened; but O'Clarence remembers that there were two open packs of cannon-crackers just under him, and thinks Wickford's boy must have in some way dropped the punk in among them, and, in the general interest, forgotten that it was afire. At any rate, there was a sudden siss right under Mr. O'Clarence, followed in the next instant by a tornado of sounds and sparks; and that gentleman at once shot toward the ceiling in a blaze of various- colored lights, while the air became thick with sparks, blue-lights, blazing balls, industrious pin-wheels, insane sky-rockets, and screeching crackers. Mrs. O'Clarence fell over a chair that cost eight dollars when new, and struck the back of her head against the stove-hearth with a violence that added materially to the display of fireworks already going on. Wickford's boy was struck in the mouth with a sky-rocket, and had two-thirds of his hair taken off by a Roman candle, and was knocked through a doorway by a piece of ordnance just introduced this season, and which will undoubtedly become popular when understood better. He was afterward fished out of a rose-bush, and taken home in a table-cloth. O'Clarence remained during the entire exhibition, looking at it from various positions; and, when it was over with, he was put in a sheet by the neighbors, and saturated with oil, and then covered with molasses and flour. We learn that new skin is already forming on parts of him; and, if no unfavorable symptoms set in, he will be out again in a fortnight, although it is not likely he will mingle much in society until his hair and eyebrows commence to grow. He thinks Wickford's boy is dead; and they dare not tell him to the contrary, until he gets stronger. Singularly enough, Mrs. O'Clarence escaped injury by burns: but the blow on her head was so severe, that she cannot bear to have her back-hair drawn up as high as it was before; and missing her church-privileges is a sore trial to her.

MR. COLLINS'S CROQUET SET.

CROQUET, that eminently fascinating game, was introduced on the premises of the Collinses Friday. In the afternoon, Podge's boy brought up the set; and, just before tea, Mrs. Collins arranged the wickets. Collins had learned to play when visiting in Glovershire last summer, and Mrs. Collins acquired an indifferent knowledge of the game from two elderly maiden sisters on Paxton Street; and so, on that delicious Friday afternoon, they took out the mallets and balls, and commenced the game.

"Now, Emmeline," playfully observed Mr. Collins, "don't you begin cheating at the start. If you do, the game will be prostituted to mere gambling, an' we'll injure our moral natures in trying to build up our physical."

"People who are so ready to charge against others need close watching themselves, young man," said she in the same spirit; "and I mean to keep a sharp eye on you."

Then they both laughed.

"But it will be a good thing for you, Emmeline," he said, with a tinge of tenderness in his voice.

"You are kept cooped up in the house so, that you hardly get a breath of fresh air. This will give you exercise, and keep you out doors too."

"You are always thinking of me," said she as her eyes grew moist. "You need the out-door air as much as I do; but you are too unselfish to think of yourself."

And, thus exchanging sentiments which did credit to both their hearts, the game progressed.

After passing through the centre wicket, Mr. Collins used her ball to help himself through the other wickets to the upper stake. Then he left her near the first wicket, and struck for the stake, which, being about eight inches distant, made him over-confident. The ball missed by about an eighth of an inch.

"I declare!" he exclaimed in vexation.

Then she, having watched his rapid progress with a clouded face, now struck for him, and hit him; and a minute later his ball was spinning through the grass to the other end of the ground. She was now in position for her wicket, and passed through it and the others to the stake, but missed it. Then he came up by a well-directed blow to within two inches of the stake. But she went for him again; and, when she got through, she was three wickets beyond the stake, and his ball was at the other end of the ground again, and his brow was finely corrugated. He stepped nervously

toward it. It was quite evident that he was not unruffled. When his turn came again, he drove back to the stake, but struck a wicket, and rebounded so close to her, that she easily hit him, and again introduced him through wickets he was not for, and then sent him flying again. Her success caused her to laugh, and he heard it.

"You think you are pretty smart; but I'll get even with you," he said, without smiling.

"You'll have to play better than you have done," she pertinently suggested.

"I think I know as much about croquet as you do," he said, still with a straight face.

"You don't play as if you did," she retorted.

"If you'd had any fairness about you, you'd let me had that stroke over when I was up to the stake. You knew I slipped, as well as I did," he said, growing red in the face.

"No, I didn't know any thing about it," she replied, taking on a little color.

"I say you did."

"And I say I didn't. But, if you are going to play this game, why don't you go ahead?"

"I'll play when I get ready," he answered, turning white about the mouth.

"If you ain't going to play, you'd better go into the house and shut up," she suggested, raising her voice.

"Don't you talk to me in that way," he cried, "or I'll make you sorry for it, you brazen-faced hussy!"

"Hussy, hussy!" she screamed. "Ain't you ashamed of yourself, John Jacob Collins, to call your wife a hussy? Hussy, am I? you old villain! Hussy is it? you miserable brute! I'm to be called a hussy, am I, after working my knuckles off for you, and slaving for thirty years after your crooked carcass? There!" she cried in a paroxysm, throwing the mallet on the ground, "take your old croquet, and shove it down your lying throat, and choke yourself to death with it, if you want to, you miserable old wretch! And don't you never ask me to play with you again, or I'll tell you something you'll remember the longest day you live, you old devil!"

And then she bounced into the house, leaving him standing out there, and rubbing his head in a benumbed sort of way. But, almost immediately after, she thrust her head out of the window, and snapped out, "You needn't think you are going to get any hot biscuit for your tea in this house this night, young man; and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it just as soon as you are a mind to."

PUTTING DOWN THE WINDOWS.

THIS is the season of the year when a man may expect to be suddenly called at any moment in the night to get up and put down the windows. On

the advent of a thunder-shower, it is rarely that a man wakes first: if he should, he keeps quiet so as not to disturb his wife, and avail himself of the first lull to go to sleep again. How differently a woman acts!—oh, so differently! Just as soon as she wakes up, and hears that it is raining, she seems to lose all judgment at once. She plants both of her feet into her husband's back, at the same time catching him by the hair, and shaking his head, and hysterically screams,—

"Get up! get up quick! It's a-pouring right down in torrents, and all the windows are up!"

He cannot wake up, under such circumstances, with an immediately clear conception of the case: in fact, it frequently happens that he is way out on the floor before his eyes are fairly open, having but one idea really at work, and that as to what he is doing out of bed. The first thing to do is to strike a light; and while he is moving around for the matches, and swearing that some one has broken into the house and moved them from where he laid them on going to bed (which is always plausible enough), she hurls after him the following tonics:—

"Do hurry! Mercy, how that rain is coming right into those windows! We won't have a carpet left if you don't move faster. What on earth are you doing all this time? Can't find the matches! Mercy sake! you ain't going to stumble

round here looking for matches, are you, when the water is drowning us out? Go without a light! What a man you are! I might have better got up in the first place. Well (despairingly), let the things go to ruin, if you are a mind to. I've said all I'm going to, an' I don't care if the whole house goes to smash. You always would have your own way, an' I s'pose you always will; and now you can do as you please: but don't you dare to open your mouth to me about it when the ruin's done. I've talked an' talked till I'm tired to death, and I sha'n't talk any more. We never could keep any thing decent, and we never can; an' so that's the end of it. [A very brief pause.]. John Henry, are you, or are you not, going to shut down those windows?"

Just then he finds the matches, and breaks the discourse by striking a light. He was bound to have that help before he moved out of the room. He has got the lamp lighted now. No sooner does its glare fill the room than he immediately blows it out again for obvious reasons. He had forgotten the windows were open and the brevity of his night-shirt. It almost causes him to shiver when he thinks of his narrow escape. He moves out into the other room with celerity now. He knows pretty well the direction to go; and, when a flash of lightning comes, it shows him on the verge of climbing over a stool or across the centre-table. If there is a rocking-chair in the house, he will strike

it. A rocking-chair is much surer in its aim than a streak of lightning. It never misses, and it never hits a man in but one spot; and that is just at the base of his shin. We have fallen against more than eight hundred rockers of all patterns and prices, and always received the first blow in the one place. We have been with dying people, and have heard them affirm in the solemn hush of that last hour that a rocking-chair always hits a man on the shin first.

And, when a man gets up in the dead of night to shut down windows, he never misses the rocking-chair. It is the rear end of one of the rockers which catches him. It is a dreadful agony. But he rarely cries out: he knows his audience too well. A woman never falls over a rocking-chair; and she never will understand why a man does, But she can tell whether he has, by the way he puts down the windows when he finally reaches them. A rocking-chair window (if we may be allowed the term) can be heard three times as far as any other.

AN INEXPENSIVE CELEBRATION.

ONE of the most painful of the accidents happening on Independence Day occurred to a family living on Osborne Street. Two of the young sons had improvised a cannon from an old gun-barrel.

The father gave them a pound of powder, and took a lively interest in the firing. It was not an ornamental piece; but it made a most astonishing noise, which is of more importance.

"Ram her down tight this time," suggested the exultant father, a little impatient to increase the sound.

"But what will the neighbors think?" mildly protested his wife. "You'll jar their heads off."

"Fudge on their heads! This is the glorious Fourth, and it don't come but once a year.—Ram her down, boys, an' make her sing."

They did. They worked like veterans, and put in a lot of grass, and hammered away at the wadding like a pair of pile-drivers. Then they fixed it for touching off. The father was sitting on the fence, weaving to and fro, and smiling with all his might. The match was applied. There was a siss, a flash, and then a discharge which seemed to shake the very centre of the earth. At the same instant, the patriotic father left the fence backwards, and went crashing end over end into the next lot, his eyes and mouth driven full of dirt and sand. The piece had exploded; and a portion of the barrel, weighing nearly two pounds, flew across the yard with such force as to completely rend the seats from two pairs of new overalls hanging on a line, and then ploughed into the earth just in front of the owner of the garments, knocking him over,

as stated. When he got on his feet, and his eyes and senses sufficiently cleared to learn what had happened, he unhesitatingly said,—

"Come, now, there's been enough of this cussed foolishness for one day."