got married I forgot to buy a
card-receiver, and I guess we would have frozen to death before we could
have purchased one, but friends were more thoughtful, and there were
nine of them among the gifts. If you decide that it would not be proper
for you to receive presents, you may return the card receiver to me, or
put it in the cellar-way till I come over there this fall.

_B. N._

[Illustration]

NO DOUBT AS TO HIS CONDITION.

Harry--I hear that you have lost your father. Allow me to express my
sympathy.

Jack (with a sigh)--Thank you. Yes, he has gone; but the event was
expected for a long time, and the blow was consequently less severe than
if it had not been looked for.

H.--His property was large?

J.--Yes; something like a quarter of a million.

H.--I heard that his intellect, owing to his illness, was somewhat
feeble during his latter years. Is there any probability of the will
being contested?

J.--No; father was quite sane when he made his will. He left everything
to me.

CYCLONES.

We were riding along on the bounding train yesterday, and some one spoke
of the free and democratic way that people in this country got
acquainted with each other while traveling. Then we got to talking about
railway sociability and railway etiquette, when a young man from East
Jasper, who had wildly jumped and grabbed his valise every time the
train hesitated, said that it was queer what railway travel would do in
the way of throwing people together. He said that in Nebraska once he
and a large, corpulent gentleman, both total strangers, were thrown
together while trying to jump a washout, and an intimacy sprang up
between them that had ripened into open hostility.

From that we got to talking about natural phenomena and storms. I spoke
of the cyclone with some feeling and a little bitterness, perhaps,
briefly telling my own experience, and making the storm as loud and wet
and violent as possible.

Then a gentleman from Kansas, named George L. Murdock, an old cattleman,
was telling of a cyclone that came across his range two years ago last
September. The sky was clear to begin with, and then all at once, as Mr.
Murdock states, a little cloud no larger than a man's hand might have
been seen. It moved toward the southwest gently, with its hands in its
pockets for a few moments, and then Mr. Murdock discovered that it was
of a pale-green color, about sixteen hands high, with dark-blue mane and
ta