o the police station, just as
Usher and Littlejohn and Knutson, and all the policeman entered. It is
said that all stood on the corner over by Kevin's watching the
arrest. The hat was a sight to behold, as it laid in state on the safe,
and all the boys making comments on it. It looked like a six-inch stove
pipe elbow that a profane man had been attempting to fit to a five-inch
stove pipe. It looked like some old dripping pan that had been thrown out
in the street, and had been run over by wagons. It looked like the very
dickens. And yet we have no doubt Hatch will say this is a lie, because he
now wears a good hat, but we know the hat he now wears he got by trading a
flannel shirt to a grasshopper sufferer, and it no more resembles the
beautiful new hat he won on election than nothing. After Hatch went out of
the office, Usher let the man "escape," and he is five dollars ahead, and
Ike has got even with Hatch.

[Illustration: IT LOOKED LIKE AN OLD DRIPPING PAN.]

THE THIRSTY GOPHER.

A Minnesota town got a fire steamer on trial, and tested it by trying to
drown out a gopher. After working it six hours, the gopher came out to get
a drink. He would have died of thirst if they had kept the hole closed
much longer.

COLORED CONCERT TROUPES.

Sometimes it seems as though the colored people ought to have a guardian
appointed over them. Now, you take a colored concert troupe, and though
they may have splendid voices, they do not know enough to take advantage
of their opportunities. People go to hear them because they are colored
people, and they want to hear old-fashioned negro melodies, and yet these
mokes will tackle Italian opera and high toned music that they don't know
how to sing.

They will sing these fancy operas and people will not pay any attention.
Along toward the end of the programme they will sing some old nigger song,
and the house fairly goes wild and calls them out half a dozen times. And
yet they do not know enough to make up a programme of such music as they
can sing, and such as the audience want.

They get too big, these colored people do, and can't strike their level.
People who have heard Kellogg, and Marie Rose, and Gerster, are sick when
a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces
the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a
selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech,
and catch her breath and come again, and wheel