orm and began to arrange his toilet
he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter. He
said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, "but," says
he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of his neck,
"if those people are not delegates to a Democratic convention, then I have
been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing, and don't know
my business." Fitz told him they were patients going to the Insane Asylum.

The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling pin
and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has not been
out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent us a runaway
horse once.

CATS ON THE FENCE.

Some idiot has invented a "cat teaser" to put on fences to keep cats from
sitting there and singing. It consists of a three-cornered piece of tin,
nailed on the top of the fence. We hope none of our friends will invest in
the patent, for statistics show that while cats very often sit on fences
to meditate, yet when they get it all mediated and get ready to sing a
duet, they get down off the fence and get under a currant bush. We
challenge any cat scientist to disprove the assertion.

HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND'S TOOTH.

Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own another
dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded setters and
pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the distemper and dog
buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had been bereaved _via_ dog
misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of Janesville, has been bereaved
on the nomination for attorney general. We could not look a pup in the
face but it would get sick, and so we concluded never again to own a dog.

The vow has been religiously kept since. Men have promised us thousands of
pups, but we have never taken them. One conductor has promised us at least
seventy-five pups, but he has always failed to get us to take one. Dog
lovers have set up nights to devise a way to induce us to accept a dog. We
held out firmly till last week. One day we met Pierce, the Watertown
Junction hotel man, and he told us that he had a greyhound pup that was
the finest bread dog--we think he said bread dog, though it might have
been sausage dog he said--anyway he told us it was blooded, and that when
it grew up to be a man--that is, figuratively speaking--when it grew up to
be a dog full siz