t we are to have a backward season for grain.
Therefore it will be well for the farmer to begin setting out his
corn-stalks and planting his buckwheat cakes in July instead of August.

"Concerning the Pumpkin.--This berry is a favourite with the natives of
the interior of New England, who prefer it to the gooseberry for the
making of fruit-cake, and who likewise give it the preference over the
raspberry for feeding cows, as being more filling and fully as
satisfying. The pumpkin is the only esculent of the orange family that
will thrive in the North, except the gourd and one or two varieties of
the squash. But the custom of planting it in the front yard with the
shrubbery is fast going out of vogue, for it is now generally conceded
that the pumpkin as a shade tree is a failure.

"Now, as the warm weather approaches, and the ganders begin to spawn--"

The excited listener sprang toward me to shake hands, and said:

"There, there--that will do. I know I am all right now, because you have
read it just as I did, word for word. But, stranger, when I first read
it this morning, I said to myself, I never, never believed it before,
notwithstanding my friends kept me under watch so strict, but now I
believe I _am_ crazy; and with that I fetched a howl that you might have
heard two miles, and started out to kill somebody--because, you know, I
knew it would come to that sooner or later, and so I might as well
begin. I read one of them paragraphs over again, so as to be certain,
and then I burned my house down and started. I have crippled several
people, and have got one fellow up a tree, where I can get him if I want
him. But I thought I would call in here as I passed along, and make the
thing perfectly certain; and now it _is_ certain, and I tell you it is
lucky for the chap that is in the tree. I should have killed him, sure,
as I went back. Good-bye, sir, good-bye; you have taken a great load off
my mind. My reason has stood the strain of one of your agricultural
articles, and I know that nothing can ever unseat it now. _Good_-bye."

I felt a little uncomfortable about the cripplings and arsons this
person had been entertaining himself with, for I could not help feeling
remotely accessory to them. But these thoughts were quickly banished,
for the regular editor walked in! (I thought to myself, Now if you had
gone to Egypt, as I recommended you to, I might have had a chance to get
my hand in; but you wouldn't do it, and here