id
she, in a tone of voice tremulous with emotion.

"But he was bailed out," said Ike, who had devoured the residue of the
paragraph, and laid the paper in a pan of liquid custard that the dame
was preparing for Thanksgiving, and sat swinging the oven door to and
fro as if to fan the fire that crackled and blazed within.

"Bailed out, was he?" said she; "well, I should think it would have been
cheaper to have pumped him out, for, when our cellar was filled, arter
the city fathers had degraded the street, we had to have it pumped out,
though there wasn't half so much in it as he has swilled down."

She paused and reached up on the high shelves of the closet for her pie
plates, while Ike busied himself in tasting the various preparations.
The dame thought that was the smallest quart of sweet cider she had ever
seen.

SEEKING A COMET

It was with an anxious feeling that Mrs. Partington, having smoked her
specs, directed her gaze toward the western sky, in quest of the
tailless comet of 1850.

"I can't see it," said she; and a shade of vexation was perceptible in
the tone of her voice. "I don't think much of this explanatory system,"
continued she, "that they praise so, where the stars are mixed up so
that _I_ can't tell Jew Peter from Satan, nor the consternation of the
Great Bear from the man in the moon. 'Tis all dark to me. I don't
believe there is any comet at all. Who ever heard of a comet without a
tail, I should like to know? It isn't natural; but the printers will
make a tale for it fast enough, for they are always getting up comical
stories."

With a complaint about the falling dew, and a slight murmur of
disappointment, the dame disappeared behind a deal door like the moon
behind a cloud.

GOING TO CALIFORNIA

"Dear me!" exclaimed Mrs. Partington sorrowfully, "how much a man will
bear, and how far he will go, to get the soddered dross, as Parson
Martin called it when he refused the beggar a sixpence for fear it might
lead him into extravagance! Everybody is going to California and Chagrin
arter gold. Cousin Jones and the three Smiths have gone; and Mr. Chip,
the carpenter, has left his wife and seven children and a blessed old
mother-in-law, to seek his fortin, too. This is the strangest yet, and I
don't see how he could have done it; it looks so ongrateful to treat
Heaven's blessings so lightly. But there, we are told that the love of
money is the root of all evil, and how true it is! for they ar