ar he'd orto be!

Then others they worked it
Some--more or less,
But finally shirked it,
In grades of distress,--
With an eye out--a jaw or skull busted,
Or some sort o' seriousness.

The _last_ one was plucky--
He wasn't afeerd,
And bragged he was "lucky,"
And said that "he'd heerd
A heep of bluff-talk," and swore awkard
He'd work any claim that he keered!

Don't you strike nary lick
With that pick till I'm through;
This-here feller talked slick
And as peart-like as you!
And he says: "I'll abide here
As long as I please!"
But he didn't.... He died here--
And I'm his disease!

Seeking to Be Identified

CHICAGO, Feb. 20, 1888.

[Illustration]

Financial circles here have been a good deal interested in the discovery
of a cipher which was recently adopted by a depositor and which began to
attract the attention at first of a gentleman employed in the
Clearing-House. He was telling me about it and showing me the vouchers
or duplicates of them.

It was several months ago that he first noticed on the back of a check
passing through the Clearing-House the following cipher, written in a
symmetrical, Gothic hand:

DEAR SIR:--Herewith find payment for last month's butter. It was
hardly up to the average. Why do you blonde your butter? Your
butter last month tried to assume an effeminate air, which
certainly was not consistent with its great vigor. Is it not
possible that this butter is the brother to what we had the month
previous, and that it was exchanged for its sister by mistake? We
have generally liked your butter very much, but we will have to
deal elsewhere if you are going to encourage it in wearing a full
beard.

Yours truly,

W.

Moneyed men all over Chicago and financial cryptogrammers came to read
the curious thing and to try and work out its bearing on trade.
Everybody took a look at it and went away defeated. Even the men who
were engaged in trying to figure out the identity of the Snell murderer,
took a day off and tried their Waterbury thinkers on this problem. In
the midst of it all another check passed through the Clearing-House with
this cipher, in the same hand:

SIR:--Your bill for the past month is too much. You forget the eggs
returned at the end of second week, for which you were to give me