w thas sec--aw thas second floor and rescue fel-cizzen's
propprop'ty from devouring em--from devouring emlement, thas my bizless.
Ai' tham my bizless, Charley? Ai' tham my bizless, Billy? W'y, sure.
Charley, you're goof feller. You too, Billy. You're goof feller, too.
Say. Wur-wur if Miller's is open yet? 'Spose it is? Charley; I dub bes'
I knowed how, di'n't I, now? Affor that Chief come up thas stairway and
say me: 'Come ou' that, ye cussed fool!' Aw say! 'Come ou' that--'Called
me fool, too! Oo-hoo-hoo-oo-oo-oo!"

"Hello, Dan! Hurt yourself any? (That's Dan O'Brien. Fell off the roof.)
Well, sir, I thought sure you'd broken your neck. You don't know your
luck. And let me tell you one thing, my bold bucko: You'll do that just
once too often. Now you mark."

The day before the Weekly Examiner goes to press, Mr. Swope hands the
editor a composition entitled: "A Card of Thanks," signed by John K.
and Amelia M. Swope, and addressed to the firemen and all who showed by
their many acts of kindness, and so forth and so on.

"Kind of help to fill up the paper," says Mr. Swope, covering his
retreat.

"Sure," replies the editor. When Mr. Swope is good and gone, he says:
"Dog my riggin's if I didn't forget all about writing up that fire. Been
so busy here lately. Good thing he come in. Hay, Andy!"

"Watch want?" from the composing-room.

"Got room for about two sticks more?"

"Yes, guess so. If it don't run over that."

A brief silence. Then:

"Hay, Andy?"

"What?"

"Is it 'had have,' or 'had of?"

"What's the connection?"

"Why-ah. 'If the gallant fire-laddies, under the able direction of Chief
Charley Lomax, had of had a sufficiency of water with which to cope with
the devouring element--'etc."

"'Had have,' I guess. I don't know."

"Guess you're right. Run it that way anyhow."

CIRCUS DAY

Only the other day, the man that in all this country knows better than
anybody else how a circus should be advertised, said (with some sadness,
I do believe) that it didn't pay any longer to put up showbills; the
money was better invested in newspaper advertising.

"It doesn't pay." Ah, me! How the commercial spirit of the age plays
whaley with the romance of existence! You shall not look long upon
the showbill now that there is no money to be had from it. "Youth's
sweet-scented manuscript" is about to close, but ere it does, let us
turn back a little to the pages illuminated by the glowing colors of the
c