by her tears,
made it ready for the grave.

BAKED BEANS AND CULTURE

The members of the Boston Commercial Club are charming gentlemen. They
are now the guests of the Chicago Commercial Club, and are being shown
every attention that our market affords. They are a fine-looking lot,
well-dressed and well-mannered, with just enough whiskers to be
impressive without being imposing.

"This is a darned likely village," said Seth Adams last evening.
"Everybody is rushin' 'round an' doin' business as if his life depended
on it. Should think they 'd git all tuckered out 'fore night, but I
'll be darned if there ain't just as many folks on the street after
nightfall as afore. We 're stoppin' at the Palmer tavern; an' my
chamber is up so all-fired high that I can count all your meetin'-house
steeples from the winder."

Last night five or six of these Boston merchants sat around the office
of the hotel, and discussed matters and things. Pretty soon they got
to talking about beans; this was the subject which they dwelt on with
evident pleasure.

"Waal, sir," said Ephraim Taft, a wholesale dealer in maple-sugar and
flavored lozenges, "you kin talk 'bout your new-fashioned dishes an'
high-falutin vittles; but, when you come right down to it, there ain't
no better eatin' than a dish o' baked pork 'n' beans."

"That's so, b'gosh!" chorused the others.

"The truth o' the matter is," continued Mr. Taft, "that beans is good
for everybody,--'t don't make no difference whether he 's well or sick.
Why, I 've known a thousand folks--waal, mebbe not quite a thousand;
but,--waal, now, jest to show, take the case of Bill Holbrook; you
remember Bill, don't ye?"

"Bill Holbrook?" said Mr. Ezra Eastman; "why, of course I do! Used to
live down to Brimfield, next to the Moses Howard farm."

"That 's the man," resumed Mr. Taft. "Waal, Bill fell sick,--kinder
moped round, tired like, for a week or two, an' then tuck to his bed.
His folks sent for Dock Smith,--ol' Dock Smith that used to carry round
a pair o' leather saddlebags,--gosh, they don't have no sech doctors
nowadays! Waal, the dock, he come; an' he looked at Bill's tongue, an'
felt uv his pulse, an' said that Bill had typhus fever. Ol' Dock Smith
was a very careful, conserv'tive man, an' he never said nothin' unless
he knowed he was right.

"Bill began to git wuss, an' he kep' a-gittin' wuss every day. One
mornin' ol' Dock Smith sez, 'Look a-here, Bill, I guess you '