bling through his veins like sparkling champagne:--

Sing a song of sixpence, a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened the birds began to sing;
Wasn't that a dainty dish to set before the king?

One adoring glance at the rosy little king, who sits with open mouth and
spoon poised in air, staring in amazement at such unusual hilarity; one
comprehensive glance at his wife, and the keen knife and fork pierce to
the depth of the dainty dish, and the delicate blackbirds come forth;
but they do not sing. That was poetic license. Perhaps, on the whole, it
was just as well that they did not sing, for it would only have delayed
the dinner, and hungry folks are rather practical, and would much prefer
testing the birds for themselves to hearing from them.

The event of the day is over. Quiet has settled upon the earth and upon
the Poet's household. He leans back in his chair in peaceful revery, and
muses upon the scenes of the day. Slowly, like distant music, come back
to his mind the diamonds of thought that dropped from his lips under the
unwonted excitement, and as he strings them together he jots them down
in his memorandum for future service.

* * * * *

[ILLUSTRATION: The Tempter and the Tempted

_Mephistopheles Butler._ "MR. PRESIDENT, PUT IN ABOUT ST. DOMINGO,
STRONG."]

* * * * *

HIRAM GREEN IN PITTSBURGH.

Owing to the smokey condition of the city, the "Lait Gustise" looses his
identity.

I have just got back from a pertracted jirney, of a weeks durashun, from
the state of Pensilvania.

While pursooin my tower I hove up in Pittsburg, which city is serrounded
by a lot of iron furnases, whose smoky chimleys is enuff to smoke a dog
out of a tan yard. Chicken raisin dont ammount to shucks there.

When they have a spell of cloudy wether, fowls keep rite on roostin, and
don't leave their perches ontil they tumble off, starved to deth.

This is because darkness rains, unless the sun shines.

Pittsburg is an ecommikle place for nigger minstrel shows.

15 minnits walk in the open air bare-hedded, will put a black head onto
'em, which will pars muster before a select committy of Freedman burows,
or pull the wool over the eyes of such Filantropistors as WENDILL
FILLIPS. Bildins are never painted in fancy cullers down there.

When a man wants to look slick, he takes an old blackin brush an