calculated to touch the
most rugged nature to watch them together, she smoothing his hair, and
calling him her "Tootsy-pootsy," or reading poetry to him, stopping
between each verse to cast languishing glances at him, and he bearing it
all with that haggard, imbecile look peculiar to an over-courted man.
And as their wedding-day approaches is it any wonder that poor ARCHIBALD
looks forward to it as a condemned criminal to the scaffold, and watches
day by day the setting of the sun with the same air of grim despair.
Once he tried to run away, but BELINDA, in ambush, flanked him and led
him home. Then she sent for his trunk, and made him board there. And so
he is floating along in a hopeless sort of daze, a wretched victim of
diabolical circumstances.

JEFFRY MAULBOY is visiting his brother JUDAS, at Terre Haute. He has
signed articles of agreement for the great Prize Fight with SANDY
MCCORMICK, known for his prowess in the Ring as the "nasty masher." The
fight will take place some time during the winter, and JEFFRY will go
into training early in September. And the papers are full of
biographical sketches of the two combatants, together with comments on
their weight, general appearance, and a list of fights heretofore
participated in, with vague speculations as to the number of eyes,
fragments of ears, &c., each one is supposed to possess, preserved in
alcohol as trophies. And when JEFFRY appears in public the masses regard
him with respectful admiration, and _gamins_ applaud. And when he gets
home he finds a brigade of those literary drummers, known as reporters,
sitting on his doorsteps, from beneath whose classic foreheads there
glares a wild and hungry eye, to be pacified only by a satisfactory
interview. The last exploit of the "Champion Nine" sinks into
insignificance beside this great, this momentous event, and the man who
walked a hundred miles in twenty-four hours is nowhere. He realizes the
cruel fact that Fame is fickle, and he makes one desperate effort to
grasp it, by offering determinedly to walk around the world in ninety
days, stopping for his gruel only at Hong Kong.

(To be concluded.)

* * * * *

NUISANCE ABATED.

G.F.T.--the apostle of Highfalutin, the most egregious nuisance of
modern times--has come to grief. We have the pleasure of announcing that
(for the present at least) we are relieved from our very natural anxiety
lest TRAIN should re-appear on the American