"What, Bill Allen, too?" says the victim.

"And Doctor Duncan."

"You don't tell me all them fellows are here?"

"Yes, sir, your friends are all here. Come in and see them; your friends
will be delighted," says the wag, taking Mister Ferguson by the arm, to
lead him in.

"Ha, ha! I'm a--a--ha, ha! _won't_ we have a time? But you just step
in--I a--I'll be in in one moment," but in less than half the time, Mr.
Ferguson mizzled, no one knew whither!

The gentlemen at the table, it is almost needless to say, were no others
than Benton, Allen, Duncan, and some three or four other arbiters of the
fate of our immense and glorious nation, in her councils, and fresh from
the capital.

Ferguson has not been heard of since.

A Severe Spell of Sickness.

It is the easiest thing under heaven to be sick, if you can afford it.
What it costs some rich men for family sickness per annum, would keep
all the children in "a poor neighborhood" in "vittels" and clothes the
year round. When old Cauliflower took sick, once in a long life-time, he
was prevailed upon to send for Dr. Borax, and it was some weeks before
Cauliflower got down stairs again. At the end of the year Dr. Borax sent
in his bill; the amount gave Cauliflower spasms in his pocket-book, and
threatened a whole year's profits with strangulation.

"Doctor," says Cauliflower, "that bill of yours is all-fired steep,
isn't it?"

"No, sir," says Borax; "your case was a dangerous case--I never raised a
man from the grave with such difficulty, in all my practice!"

"But, fifty-three _calls_, doctor, one hundred and six dollars."

"Exactly--two dollars a visit, sir," said the urbane doctor.

"And twenty-seven prescriptions, four plasters, &c.--eighty-one
dollars!"

"One hundred and eighty-seven dollars, sir."

"Well," says Cauliflower, "this may be all very _well_ for people who
can af-_ford_ it, but I can't; there's your money, doctor, but I'll bet
you won't catch me sick as that again--_soon!_"

The Race of the Aldermen.

In 183-, it chanced in the big city of New York, that the aldermen elect
were a sort of _tie_; that is, so many whigs and so many democrats. Such
a thing did not occur often, the democracy usually having the supremacy.
They generally had things pretty much all their own way, and distributed
their favors among their partizans accordingly. The whigs at length
_tied_ them, and the _locos_, beholding with horror and misgivings, the