and joy does not make you feel
better than to listen to a discussion in the gospel car, as to whether
the children of Israel went through the Red Sea with life-preservers, or
wore rubber hunting boots.

Take your gospel-car half dollar and buy a vegetable ivory rattle of the
train boy, and give it to the sick emigrant mother's pale baby, and
you make four persons happy--the baby, the mother, the train boy and
yourself.

We know a man who gave a dollar to a prisoner on the way to State
prison, to buy tobacco with, who has enjoyed more good square religion
over it than he could get out of all the chin music and saw-filing
singing he could hear in a gospel car in ten years. The prisoner was a
bad man from Oshkosh, who was in a caboose in charge of the sheriff,
on the way to Waupun. The attention of the citizen was called to
the prisoner by his repulsive appearance, and his general
don't-care-a-damative appearance. The citizen asked the prisoner how he
was fixed for money to buy tobacco in prison. He said he hadn't a cent,
and he knew it would be the worst punishment he could have to go without
tobacco. The citizen gave him the dollar and said:

"Now, every time you take a chew of tobacco in prison, just make up your
mind to be square when you get out."

The prisoner reached out his hand-cuffed hands to take the dollar, the
hands trembling so that the chains rattled, and a great tear as big as
a shirt-button appeared in one eye--the other eye had been gouged out
while "having some fun with the boys" at Oshkosh--and his lips trembled
as he said:

"So help me God, I will!"

That man has been boss of a gang of hands in the pinery for two winters,
and has a farm paid for on the Central Railroad, and is "squar."

That is the kind of practical religion a worldly man can occasionally
practice without having a gospel car.

INCIDENTS AT THE NEWHALL HOUSE FIRE.

There were a great many ludicrous scenes about the Newhall House during
the fire of last Saturday morning. When people were notified that there
was a fire in the house, but that the danger was not great, though it
was thought best to give them all plenty of time to prepare for the
worst, many jumped right out of bed and started down stairs.

When we arrived on the scene, our first inquiry was for the safety of
the lady members of the Rice Surprise Party, the young women who had
been cutting up on the stage all the week with so little apparel. We did
not ex