impered the Devil.

"Who do?" asked Daniel.

"Beelzebub and the rest," said the Devil. "I have been trotting around
doing pious errands so long that I 've lost all my sulphur-and-brimstone
flavor, and now I smell like spikenard and myrrh."

"Pooh!" said Daniel.

"Well, I do," insisted the Devil. "You've humiliated me so that I hain't
got any more ambition. Yes, Daniel, you've worked me shamefully hard!"

"Well," said Daniel, "I have a very distinct suspicion that when,
thirteen years hence, I fall into your hands I shall not enjoy what might
be called a sedentary life."

The Devil plucked up at this suggestion. "Indeed you shall not," he
muttered. "I'll make it hot for you!"

"But come, we waste time," said Daniel. "I am a man of business, and I
cannot fritter away the precious moments parleying with you. I have
important work for you. Tomorrow is Sunday; you are to see that all the
saloons are kept closed."

"I sha'n't--I won't!" yelled the Devil.

"But you must," said Daniel, firmly.

"Do you really expect me to do _that_?" roared the Devil. "Do you fancy
that I am so arrant a fool as to shut off the very feeders whereby my
hungry hell is supplied? That would be suicidal!"

"I don't know anything about that," said Daniel; "I am a business man,
and by this business arrangement of ours it is explicitly stipulated--"

"I don't care what the stipulations are!" shrieked the Devil. "I'm
through with you, and may I be consumed by my own fires if ever again I
have anything to do with a business man!"

The upshot of it all was that the Devil forfeited his bond, and by this
act Daniel was released from every obligation unto the Devil, and one
thousand and one souls were ransomed from the torture of the infernal
fires.

METHUSELAH

The discussion now going on between our clergymen and certain
unbelievers touching the question of Cain and his wife will surely
result beneficially, for it will set everybody to reading his Bible
more diligently. Still, the biography of Cain is one that we could
never become particularly interested in; in short, of all the Old
Testament characters none other interests us so much as does
Methuselah, the man who lived 969 years. Would it be possible to find
in all history another life at once so grand and so pathetic? One can
get a faint idea of the awful magnitude of Methuselah's career by
pausing to recollect that 969 years represent 9.69 centuries, 96
decades,