witless appears
When he's lived among Yankees a good fifty years--
If the fowl really flies that his corn-bread would miss
For a wooden-legged, broken-backed puppet like this!
Come, choose a few nubbins to roast on the spot,
While I pepper his crown with a capful of shot."

Now the farmer that morning was tilling his soil,
Flushed, ragged, and sunbrowned, and grimy with toil,
When pausing a moment, as all farmers will,
He spied our two friends coming over the hill.
"Good land!" quoth the rustic, "a nice thing it is
Fer two city fellers to ketch me like this!"
Then, dropping his hoe, he exclaims with a grin,
"Young chaps, I'll be blessed ef I don't take you in!"

So, urging his slow wits to cope with the case,
He jerks his old hat down to cover his face,
Stretches limb like a windmill that spreads to the breeze,
Draws his fists up like turtles and stiffens his knees;
Yet a tremor of fun through the homespun appears
As the sound of that parley floats back to his ears,
And the honest ears burn as it calls up the words
Which declare that in plumes is the making of birds!

One moment the huntsman his target surveys,
While his laughing companion is gleaning the maize,
When that fetich of bumpkins, that burlesque in bran,
Starts, twitches, grows limber, shouts, moves--is a man;
"Git enough fer a roast, while ye're gittin'," drawls he.
"Ef I ain't quite the blockhead you tuk me to be.
W'y, it's nater sence Adam to run arter clo'es,
But _I'd go sort o' slow as to corn-bread an' crows_!"

HOW REDDY GAINED HIS COMMISSION.

BY CAPTAIN CHARLES A. CURTIS, U.S.A.

Part II.

When Reddy found himself in the water, he realized the impossibility of
swimming to the shore, and began to struggle in an effort to reach the
jam. This jam had its origin in a group of sandstone bowlders in the
centre of the river, on the edge of the rapids. The river debris had
collected and compacted about them into several square yards of solid
surface. To the corporal and his fellow soldiers, now gathered on the
shore and watching the swimmer, it seemed that the boy must be carried
past to certain death.

They were about giving him up for lost when they saw him snatch at a
branch attached to the edge of the jam and swing himself about, then
reach a protruding log and climb out. Instantly he ran to the outer end
of the log and reached his floating oar. With the oar he caught the