nd Ma,
she wanted to come in, and she put in a thousand dollars that she had
laid up to buy some diamond ear-rings, and the man gave Pa a lot of
stock to sell to other members of the church. They all went into it,
even the minister. He drew his salary ahead, and all of the deacons they
come in, and the man went back to Colorado with about thirty thousand
dollars of good, pious money. Yesterday Pa got a paper from Colorado,
giving the whole snap away, and the pious man has been spending the
money in Denver, and whooping it up. Pa suspected something was wrong
two weeks ago, when he heard that the pious man had been on a toot in
Chicago, and he wrote to a man in Denver, who used to get full with Pa
years ago when they were both on the turf; and Pa's friend said the man
that sold the stock was a fraud, and that he didn't own no mine, and
that he borrowed the samples of ore and silver bricks from a pawnbroker
in Denver. I guess it will break Pa up for a while, though he is well
enough fixed with mortgages and things; but it hurts him to be took in.
He lays it all to Ma--he says if she hadn't let that exhorter for the
silver mine go home with her this would not have occurred, and Ma says
she believes Pa was in partnership with the man to beat her out of her
thousand dollars that she was going to buy a pair of diamond ear-rings
with. O, it is a terror over to the house now. Both the hired girls put
in all the money they had, and took stock, and they threaten to sue Pa
for arson, and they are going to leave to-night, and Ma will have to do
the work. Don't you never try to get rich quick," said the boy as he
peeled a herring, and took a couple of crackers.

"Never you mind me," said the grocery man, "they don't catch me on any
of their silver mines; but I hope this will have some influence on you,
and teach you to respect your Pa's feelings, and not play jokes on him
while he is feeling so bad over his being swindled."

"O, I don't know about that, I think when a man is in trouble, if he has
a good little boy to take his mind from his troubles and get him mad
at something else, it rests him. Last night we had hot maple syrup and
biscuit for supper, and Pa had a saucer full in front of him, just a
steaming. I could see he was thinking too much about his mining stock,
and I thought if there was anything I could do to take his mind off
of it and place it on something else, I would be doing a kindness that
would be appreciated. I