ces of its
powerful suction. It sucked a milch cow absolutely dry, pulled all the
water out of his cistern, and then went around to the waste-water pipe
that led from the bath-room and drew a 2-year-old child, who was taking
a bath at the time, clear down through the two-inch waste-pipe, a
distance of 150 feet. He had two inches of the pipe with him and a lock
of hair from the child's head.

It is such circumstances as these, coming to us from the mouths of
eye-witnesses, that leads us to exclaim: How prolific is nature and how
wonderful are all her works--including poor, weak man! Man, who comes
into the world clothed in a little brief authority, perhaps, and nothing
else to speak of. He rises up in the morning, prevaricates, and dies.
Where are our best liars to-day? Look for them where you will and you
will find that they are passing away. Go into the cemetery and there you
will find them mingling with the dust, but striving still to perpetuate
their business by marking their tombs with a gentle prevarication,
chiseled in enduring stone.

I have heard it intimated by people who seemed to know what they were
talking about that truth is mighty and will prevail, but I do not see
much show for her till the cyclone season is over.

THE EARTH.

The earth is that body in the solar system which most of my readers now
reside upon, and which some of them, I regret to say, modestly desire to
own and control, forgetting that the earth is the Lord's, and the
fullness thereof. Some men do not care who owns the earth so long as
they get the fullness.

The earth is 500,000,000 years of age, according to Prof. Proctor, but
she doesn't look it to me. The Duke of Argyll maintains that she is
10,000,000 years old last August, but what does an ordinary duke know
about these things? So far as I am concerned I will put Proctor's memory
against that of any low-priced duke that I have ever seen.

Newton claimed that the earth would gradually dry up and become porous,
and that water would at last become a curiosity. Many believe this and
are rapidly preparing their systems by a rigid course of treatment, so
that they can live for years without the use of water internally or
externally.

Other scientists who have sat up nights to monkey with the solar system,
and thereby shattered their nervous systems, claim that the earth is
getting top-heavy at the north pole, and that one of these days while we
are thinking of something el