the village till after the train
gets by." "Indeed!" exclaimed the Englishman. "Fact," said the Yankee;
"had to give up bells. Then we tried steam whistles--but they wouldn't
answer either. I was on a locomotive when the whistle was tried. We were
going at a tremendous rate--hurricanes were nowhere, and I had to hold
my hair on. We saw a two-horse wagon crossing the track about five miles
ahead, and the engineer let the whistle on, screeching like a trooper.
It screamed awfully, but it wasn't no use. The next thing I knew, I was
picking myself out of a pond by the roadside, amid the fragments of the
locomotive, dead horses, broken wagon, and dead engineer lying beside
me. Just then the whistle came along, mixed up with some frightful oaths
that I had heard the engineer use when he first saw the horses. Poor
fellow! he was dead before his voice got to him. After that we tried
lights, supposing these would travel faster than the sound. We got some
so powerful that the chickens woke up all along the road when we came
by, supposing it to be morning. But the locomotive kept ahead of it
still, and was in the darkness, with the lights close on behind it. The
inhabitants petitioned against it; they couldn't sleep with so much
light in the night time. Finally, we had to station electric telegraphs
along the road, with signal men to telegraph when the train was in
sight; and I have heard that some of the fast trains beat the lightning
fifteen minutes every forty miles. But I can't say as that is true; the
rest I know to be so."--_New York Tribune._

ANCIENT DESCENT.

NOT long since a certain noble peer in Yorkshire, who is fond of
boasting of his Norman descent, thus addressed one of his tenants, who,
he thought, was not speaking to him with proper respect: "Do you not
know that my ancestors came over with William the Conqueror?" "And,
mayhap," retorted the sturdy Saxon, nothing daunted, "they found mine
here when they comed." The noble lord felt that he had the worst of it.

BAD'S THE BEST.

MR. CANNING was once asked by an English clergyman how he had liked the
sermon he had preached before him.

"Why, it was a short sermon," quoth Canning. "Oh, yes," said the
preacher; "you know I avoid being tedious." "Ah, but," replied Canning,
"you _were_ tedious."

QUEER DUELS.

A CERTAIN man of pleasure, about London, received a challenge from a
young gentleman of his acquaintance; and they met at the appoi