been twenty raps at the door, and we got sick. My wife said she
would not stay in that house for a million dollars. So we started for
Milwaukee.

[Illustration: AN INTRUSIVE NIGGER.]

"I tried to get a little sleep on the cars, but every little while a
conductor would wake me up and roll me over in the seat to look at my
ticket, and brakemen would run against my legs in the aisle of the car,
and shout the names of stations till I was sorry I ever left home. Now, I
want to have rest and quietude. Can I have it here?"

The manager told him to go to his room, and if he wanted any coal or ice
water to ring for it, and if anybody knocked at his door without being
sent for, to begin shooting bullets through the door. That settled it, and
when the parties returned to Iowa they said this country was a mighty
sight different from Dubuque.

A PLEA FOR THE BULL HEAD.

The late meeting of the State Fish Commissioners at Milwaukee was an
important event, and the discussions the wise men indulged in will be
valuable additions to the literature of the country, and future readers of
profane history will rise up and call them blessed. It seems that the
action of the Milwaukee common council in withdrawing the use of the water
works from the commissioners, will put a stop to the hatching of
whitefish. This is as it should be. The white fish is an aristocratic
bird, that will not bite a hook, and the propagation of this species of
fish is wholly in the interest of wealthy owners of fishing tugs, who have
nets. By strict attention to business they can catch all the whitefish out
of the lake a little faster than the State machine can put them in. Poor
people cannot get a smell of whitefish. The same may be said of brook
trout. While they will bite a hook, it requires more machinery to catch
them than ordinary people can possess without mortgaging a house. A man
has got to have a morocco book of expensive flies, a fifteen dollar bamboo
jointed rod, a three dollar trout basket with a hole mortised in the top,
a corduroy suit made in the latest style, top boots of the Wellington
pattern, with red tassels in the straps, and a flask of Otard brandy in a
side pocket. Unless a man is got up in that style, a speckled trout will
see him in Chicago, first, and then it won't bite. The brook trout is even
more aristocratic than the whitefish, and should not be propagated at
public expense.

But there are fish that should be propagated in the in