to meet some other bruising lads. The
daily journals print his face some seven columns wide, call him the
glory of the race, the nation's hope and pride. And having thus become
our boast, the wonder of our age, he battles with his larynx most, and
elevates the stage. In fifty years when people speak the savant's name
with pride, the pug's renown you'll vainly seek--it with its owner died.

There may be consolation there for him who bravely tries to solve great
problems in his lair, and make the world more wise; but when the world
is really wise--may that day come eftsoons!--we'll give the men of
learning pies, and give the fighters prunes.

THE POLITICIAN

I will not say that blade is black, nor yet that white is white; for
rash assertions oft come back, and put us in a plight. Some people
hold that black is white, and some that white is black; to me the
neutral course looks right; I take the middle track. If I should say
that black is white, and white is black, today, some one would mix the
two tonight--tomorrow they'd be gray. In politics I wish to thrive,
and swiftly forge ahead, so dare not say that I'm alive, nor swear that
I am dead. You say that fishes climb the trees, that cows on wings do
fly, I can't dispute such facts as these, so patent to the eye; with
any man I will agree, no odds what he defends, if he will only vote for
me, and boom me to his friends.

RANDOM SHOTS

I shot an arrow into the air, it fell in the distance, I knew not
where, till a neighbor said that it killed his calf, and I had to pay
him six and a half ($6.50). I bought some poison to slay some rats,
and a neighbor swore that it killed his cats; and, rather than argue
across the fence, I paid him four dollars and fifty cents ($4.50). One
night I set sailing a toy balloon, and hoped it would soar till it
reached the moon; but the candle fell out, on a farmer's straw, and he
said I must settle or go to law. And that is the way with the random
shot; it never hits in the proper spot; and the joke you spring, that
you think so smart, may leave a wound in some fellow's heart.

LOOK PLEASANT, PLEASE!

"Look pleasant, please!" the photo expert told me, for I had pulled a
long and gloomy face; and then I let a wide, glad smile enfold me and
hold my features in its warm embrace.

"Look pleasant, please!" My friends, we really ought to cut out these
words and put them in a frame; long, long we'd search to find a