th eyes, and cuffed him
on the ear and punched him in the stomach, and lammed him in the mouth and
made his teeth bleed, and then he gave him a side winder in both eyes, and
Pa pulled off his boxing gloves and grabbed a chair, and we adjourned and
went down stairs as though there was a panic. I haven't seen Pa since. Was
his eye very black?"

"Black, I should say so," said the grocery man. "And his nose seemed to be
trying to look into his left ear. He was at the market buying
beefsteak to put on it."

"O, beefsteak is no account. I must go and see him and tell him that an
oyster is the best thing for a black eye. Well, I must go. A boy has a
pretty hard time running a house the way it should be run," and the boy
went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: "_Frowy Butter a
Speshulty_."

CHRISTMAS TREES.

There is too much dress parade about Christmas. Too many Christmas trees
where rich children get club skates, and gold napkin rings, and poor
children get pop corn strung on a string, and cornucopias full of
peppermint candy.

THE BOB-TAILED BADGER.

The last legislature, having nothing else to do, passed a law providing
for a change in the coat-of-arms of the State. There was no change
particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on
a few more bars of pig lead, put a new-fashioned necktie on the sailor who
holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner's breeches into
his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger. We do not
care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the
engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail
of the badger, the emblem of the Democratic party, that crawls into a hole
and pulls the hole in after him, it touches us in our patriotism.

The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, and though he resembles a
skunk too much to be very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tail
and stick it up like a sore thumb. As it is now the new comer to our
Garden of Eden will not know whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier,
smelling into the archives of the State for a rat, or a defalcation, or a
_sic semper Americanus scunch_. We do not complain that the sailor with a
Pinafore shirt on, on the new coat-of-arms, is made to resemble Senator
Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator Sawyer. These things are of
minor importance, but the docking of that badger's tail, and setting it up