have a good deal of fun. Most any one can have fun
with me. We would go mostly for relaxation and to build up our systems.
My system is pretty well built up, but it would be a pleasure to me to
watch you build yours up. What I need is a private secretary to go with
me and take down little thinklets that I may have thought. You would
have nothing to carry but the canoe, a small tent, my gun and a
type-writer. I would carry the field glass. I always carry the field
glass because something might happen to it. One time an amanuensis who
went with me insisted on carrying the field glass, and the second day he
lost the cork out of it, so we had to come back and make a new
observation before we could start.

You would be welcome, S. Q. G.; welcome here in the fastness of the
forest; welcome where the resinous air of the spruce and the tamarack
would kiss your wan cheek; welcome to the rocky shores of the grand old
fresh water monarch, the champion heavyweight of all the great lakes;
welcome to the hazy, lazy days of our long voluptuous autumn, the
twilight of the closing year; welcome to the shade of the elms, where
the sunshine sneaks in on tiptoe and frolics with the dew and the
daisies; welcome to the sombre depths of the ever regretful and
repentant pines, whose venerable heads are first to greet the day, and
whose heaving bosoms hold the night.

Come over, S. Q. G. Be my stenographer and I will show you where a
friend of mine has concealed a watermelon patch in the very heart of his
corn-field. Come over and we will show him how concealment, like a worm,
may feed upon his damaged fruit. Till then, S. Q. G., ta-ta.

BILL NYE PREPARING A POLITICAL SPEECH IN ADVANCE FOR A TIME OF NEED.

Sept. 1.--I have just been preparing a speech for to-morrow evening at
our convention. It is a good speech and will take well. It is also
sincere.

I will give the outlines of the speech here, so that in case I should
die or slip up on a stenographer the basis of my remarks may not perish:

Fellow-Citizens: You have seen fit to renominate me for the office which
I have held one term already--viz.: member of congress from this
district.

As you are aware, I am a self-made man. I have carved out my own career
from the ground up, as I may say, till to-day I am your nominee for the
second time.

What we want these days is not so much men of marked ability as
candidates but available, careful and judicious men. We are too apt to