thin membrane, and is probably lodged in
here," and he reached around the woman with his left hand to where
her apron was tied on. "Now, if they cannot extract the ball the great
danger is from peritonitis--"

At this point the woman observed what was going on, and she was about as
mad as a woman can be. Seizing a codfish that was on the head of a sugar
barrel by the tail she whacked the first old gent, who held the butter
tryer, over the head, and said:

"Peritonitis is beginning to set in, you bald-headed old villain, and
general prostration will be the result. I will teach you to put your arm
around me. I am no manikin. Do you take me for a dissecting room? Put
down that gun, you idiot," said she, as she wafted the codfish toward
the second old man, who still held up the spigot.

The grocery man, who was cutting a cheese, came around the counter with
the cheese knife in his hand, and said he hoped there would be no more
bloodshed, and asked the old man to put down the butter tryer and go
out. The two old men went out on the sidewalk, when the woman told the
grocery man that no woman was safe a moment when those old reprobates
were allowed to run at large, and when she got so low down as to allow
people to practice assassination on her with wooden faucets and butter
tryers she would join a circus. When the two old men got out on the walk
the second one said to the first:

"Didn't you know the woman?"

"Know her? No. I didn't think it was necessary for a formal introduction
in a trying time like this, when we all want all the information we
can get about the great tragedy. There is no accommodation about some
people. But she has gone out now, so let us carry back the spigot and
butter tryer, and may be the grocery man will treat to the cider."

And the two old setters went in and sat down on the barrels and talked
about how they had known people along in 1837 to be shot all to pieces
and recover.

THE INFIDEL AND HIS SILVER MINE.

It is announced in the papers that Colonel Ingersoll, the dollar a
ticket infidel, has struck it rich in a silver mine, and is now worth
a million dollars. Here is another evidence of the goodness of God.
Ingersoll has treated God with the greatest contempt, called Him all
the names he could think of, called Him a liar, a heartless wretch, and
stood on a stump and dared God to knock a chip off his shoulder, and
instead of God's letting him have one below the belt and knocking