a can of pumpkin, and then the canning establishment
fails. It must be that some raw pumpkin has soured on the hands of the
Boston firm, or may be, and now we think we are on the right track to
ferret out the failure, it may be that the canning of Boston baked beans
is what caused the stoppage.

We had read of Boston baked beans since school days, and had never seen
any till four years ago, when we went to a picnic and bought a can
to take along. We new how baked beans ought to be cooked from years'
experience, but supposed the Boston bean must hold over every other
bean, so when the can was opened and we found that every bean was
separate from every other bean, and seemed to be out on its own
recognizance, and that they were as hard as a flint, we gave them to
the children to play marbles with, and soured on Boston baked beans.
Probably it was canning Boston beans that broke up the canning
establishment.

*****

The Decoration Day exercises at Appleton were somewhat marred by a
discussion as to whether the graves of Confederate soldiers should be
decorated, and one man--Prof. Sawyer--a soldier who lost a leg in the
army, said that if anybody should attempt to decorate a rebel soldier's
grave in his vicinity, it would have to be done over his--Sawyer's--dead
body.

Notwithstanding this heartrending recital, the graves of rebel soldiers
in many places in this state and throughout the north, were decorated by
Union soldiers. What hurt does it do to throw a few flowers on the clay
that covers one who was once your enemy? Nobody thinks less of the Union
soldier for it, and it would make the southern mother or sister of the
dead boy feel so much better to know that kind hands at the north had
done a noble act.

Suppose this Professor Sawyer had been killed and buried down south,
and the Confederate people should be decorating the graves of their
own dead, and they should throw a few flowers on his grave, and some
hot-headed vindictive rebel should get on his ear and say that the man
who laid that bouquet on the Yankee's grave would have to take it off
or fight. The professor, if he laid there and heard it, would feel like
getting out of the grave, and taking a crutch and mauling the liver out
of the bigoted rebel.

It is not the rebel's cause that we decorate, but we put a few flowers
above his remains to show the people who loved him at home, that there
is nothing so confounded mean about us after all, and that