nant keys.

I know not what I was writing,
With that thing so like a pen;
But I struck one word astounding--
Unknown to the speech of men.

It flooded the sense of my verses,
Like the break of a tinker's dam,
And I felt as one feels when the printer
Of your "infinite calm" makes clam.

It mixed up s's and x's
Like an alphabet coming to strife.
It seemed the discordant echo
Of a row between husband and wife.

It brought a perplexed meaning
Into my perfect piece,
And set the machinery creaking
As though it were scant of grease.

I have tried, but I try it vainly,
The one last word to divine
Which came from the keys of my typewriter
And so would pass as mine.

It may be some other typewriter
Will produce that word again,
It may be, but only for others--
_I_ shall write henceforth with a pen.

THE DUTCHMAN WHO HAD THE "SMALL POX"

BY HENRY P. LELAND

Very dry, indeed, is the drive from Blackberry to Squash Point,--dry
even for New Jersey; and when you remember that it's fifty miles between
the two towns, its division into five drinks seems very natural. When
you are packed, three on one narrow seat, in a Jersey stage, it is
necessary.

A Jersey stage! It is not on record, but when Dante winds up his Tenth
"Canter" into the Inferno with--

Each, as his back was laden, came indeed
Or more or less contracted; and it seemed
As he who showed most patience in his look,
Wailing, exclaimed, "I can endure no more!"

the conclusion that he alluded to a crowded Jersey stage-load is
irresistible. A man with long legs, on a back seat, in one of these
vehicles, suffers like a snipe shut up in a snuff-box. For this reason,
the long-legged man should sit on the front seat with the driver; there,
like the hen-turkey who tried to sit on a hundred eggs, he can "spread
himself." The writer sat alongside the driver one morning, just at break
of day, as the stage drove out of Blackberry: he was a through passenger
to Squash Point. It was a very cold morning. In order to break the ice
for a conversation, he praised the fine points of an off horse. The
driver thawed:

"Ya-as; she's a goot hoss, und I knows how to trive him!" It was
evidently a case of mixed breed.

"Where is Wood, who used to drive this stage?"

"He be's lait up mit ter rummatiz sence yesterweek, und I trives f