STORY OF A NEW HAT.

A business man had purchased a new stiff hat, and he went into a saloon with half a dozen friends to fit the hat on his head. They all took beer and passed the hat around so all could see it. One of the meanest men that ever held a county office went to the bartender and had a thin slice of Limburger cheese cut off, and when the party were looking at the frescoed ceiling through their beer glasses. the wicked person slipped the cheese under the sweat-leather of the hat, and the man put it on and walked out. The man who owned the hat is one of your nervous people who is always complaining of being sick, and who feels as though some dreadful disease was going to take possession of him and carry him off. He went back to his place of business, took off his hat and laid it on the table, and proceeded to answer some letters. He thought he detected a smell, and when his partner asked him if he didn't feel sick, he believed he did. He then turned pale, and said he guessed he would go home. He met a man on the sidewalk who said the air was full of miasma, and in the street car a man who sat next to him moved away to the end of the car, and asked him if he had just come from Chicago. The man with the hat said he had not, when the stranger said they were having a great deal of small-pox there and he guessed he would get out and walk, and he pulled the bell and jumped off. The cold perspiration broke out on the forehead of the man with the new hat, and he took it off to wipe his forehead, when the whole piece of cheese seemed to roll over and breathe, and the man got the full benefit of it, and he came near fainting away. He got home, and his wife met and asked him what was the matter. He said he believed mortification had set in, and she took one whiff as he took off his hat, and said that she should think it had. "Where did you get into it?" said she. "Get into it?" said the man. "I have not got into anything, but some deadly disease has got hold of me and I shall not live." She got his clothes off, soaked his feet in mustard water, and he slept. The hat was lying on the centre-table, and the children would come in and get a smell of it and look at each other with reproachful glances,

and go out and play. The man slept and dreamed that a small-pox flag was hung in front of his house, and that he was riding in a butcher's wagon to the pest-house. The woman sent for a doctor, and when the man of pills arrived she told him all about the case. The doctor picked up the patient's new hat, tried it on, and got a sniff. He said the hat was picked before it was ripe. The doctor and the wife held a post mortem examination of the hat and found the slice of Limburger. "Few and short were the prayers they said." They woke the patient, and to prepare his mind for the revelation that was about to be made, the doctor asked him if his worldly affairs were arranged in a satisfactory condition. He gasped and said they were. The doctor asked him if he had made his will. He said that he had not, but he wanted a lawyer sent for at once. The doctor then asked him if he felt as though he was prepared to shuffle off. The man said he had always tried to lead a different life, and tried to be done by the same as he would do it himself, but that he might have made a mistake some way, and that he would like to have a minister sent for to take an account of the stock.

The doctor brought to the bedside the hat, opened up the sweat-leather, and showed the dying man what it was that smelled so, and told him he was as well as any man in the city. The man pinched himself to see if he was alive, and jumped out of bed and called for his revolver, and the doctor couldn't keep up with him on the way down town. The last we saw of the odoriferous citizen he was trying to bribe the bartender to tell him which one of those pelicans it was that put that slice of cheese in his hat lining.

THE OLD MAN GOES TO SCHOOL.-JOHN H. YATES.

I know I'm too old to learn, wife; my lessons and tasks are done;

The dews of life's evenin' glisten in the light of life's settin'

sun.

To the grave by the side of my fathers they'll carry me soon

away;

But I wanted to see how the world had grown, so I hobbled to school to-day.

I couldn't a told 'twas a school-house; it towered up to the skies;

I gazed on the noble structure till dimmer grew these old eyes. My thoughts went back to the log-house-the school-house of long ago,

Where I studied and romped with the merry boys who sleep where the daisies grow.

I was startled out of my dreamin' by the tones of its monstrous bell;

On these ears that are growin' deaf the sweet notes rose and fell.

I entered the massive door, and sat in the proffered chair— An old man, wrinkled and gray, in the midst of the young and the fair.

Like a garden of bloomin' roses, the school-room appeared

to me

The children were all so tidy, their faces so full of glee; They stared at me when I entered, then broke o'er the whisperin' rule,

And said, with a smile, to each other, "The old man's a-comin' to school."

When the country here was new, wife-when I was a scholarlad.

Our readin' and writin' and spellin' were 'bout all the studies we had.

We cleared up the farm through the summer, then traveled through woods and snow

To the log-house in the openin', the school-house of years ago.

Now boys go to school in a palace, and study hard Latin and Greek;

They are taught to write scholarly essays; they are drilled on the stage to speak;

They go into the district hopper, but come out of the college

spout;

And this is the way the schools of our land are grindin' our great men out.

Let 'em grind! let 'em grind, dear wife! the world needs the good and the true;

Let the children out of the old house and trot 'em into the

new.

I'll cheerfully pay my taxes, and say to this age of mine,
All aboard! all aboard! go ahead! if you leave the old man

behind!

Our system of common schools is the nation's glory and

crown;

May the arm be palsied, ever, that is lifted to tear it down,

QQQQQ

If bigots cannot endure the light of our glowin' skies, Let them go to Oppression's shore, where Liberty bleeds and dies.

I'm glad I've been to-day to the new house, large and grand; With pride I think of my toils in this liberty-lovin' land; I've seen a palace arise where the old log school-house stood, And gardens of beauty bloom where the shadow fell in the wood.

To the grave by the side of my fathers they'll carry me soon away,

Then I'll go to a higher school than the one I've seen today;

Where the Master of masters teacheth-where the scholars never grow old

From glory to glory I'll climb to the beautiful college of gold.

THE TALE OF A TRAMP.

Let me sit down a minute;
A stone's got into my shoe.
Don't you commence your cussin'-
I ain't done nuthin' to you.
Yes, I'm a tramp-what of it?
Folks say we ain't no good-
Tramps have got to live, I reckon,

Though people don't think we should.
Once I was young and handsome;
Had plenty of cash and clothes-
That was before I got to tipplin',
And gin got in my nose.
Way down in the Lehigh Valley
Me and my people grew;
I was a blacksmith, Captain,
Yes, and a good one, too.
Me and my wife, and Nellie-
Nellie was just sixteen,

And she was the pootiest cretur
The valley had ever seen.
Beaux! Why, she had a dozen,
Had 'em from near and fur;
But they was mostly farmers-
None of them suited her.
But there was a city chap,
Handsome, young and tall-
Ah! curse him! I wish I had him
To strangle against yonder wall!

He was the man for Nellie-
She didn't know no iil;
Mother, she tried to stop it,
But you know young girls' will.
Well, it's the same old story—
Common enough, you say;
But he was a soft-tongued devil,
And got her to run away.
More than a month, or later,

We heard from the poor young thing-
He had run away and left her

Without any weddin' ring!

Back to her home we brought her,
Back to her mother's side;
Filled with a ragin' fever,

She fell at my feet and died!
Frantic with shame and sorrow,
Her mother began to sink,
And died in less than a fortnight;
That's when I took to drink.
Come, give me a glass now, Colonel,
And I'll be on my way,

And I'll tramp till I catch that scoundrel,
If it takes till the Judgment Day.

BAPTISM DEFENDED.

A minister who does not believe immersion is baptism was holding a protracted meeting, and one night preached on the subject of baptism. In the course of his remarks he said, "Some believe it necessary to go down into the water, and come up out of it, to be baptized." But this he claimed to be fallacy, for the preposition "into" does not mean into, at all times. "Moses," he said, we are told, went up into the mountain, and the Saviour was taken up into a high mountain, &c. Now we do not suppose that either went into a mountain, but unto it. So with going down into the water; it means simply going down close by or near to the water, and being baptized in the ordinary way by sprinkling or pouring."

He carried this idea out fully, and in due season and style closed his discourse, when an invitation was given for any one so disposed to arise and express his thoughts. Quite a number of the brethren arose and said they were glad they