covered with
old tabacker cuds, mud, segar stumps, broken whiskey bottles, and dish
water. Haint you a sweet venerable head of a family? Haint you a saperb
copy bound in calf, of ex-legal jewrisprudence?

"Presented you with a tea sarvice, did they? Oh! yool be the ruination
of this family with your confounded efforts seekin arter fame.
You--you--"

I dident wait to hear no more, but left the house with my feelins in a
hily mixed up state. I have made up my mind to one thing, that if I ever
get up another cerprise, I will hire good moral men, sich as editors,
noosepaper men, and literary folks ginerally, whose conducts is above
suspishon, to conduct the preceedins.

When this you spy,
Remember HI,

Ewers, truly,

HIRAM GREEN, Esq.,

Lait Gustise of the Peece.

* * * * *

[Illustration: BABY'S PHOTOGRAPH.]

* * * * *

[Illustration: SONG OF THE OYSTER.

"PUT ME IN MY LITTLE BED."]

* * * * *

OUR PORTFOLIO.

An Exciting Interview with King William.--"Seeing" Thiers and Going him
Better.--The Influence of Monkeys In Diplomacy.

VERSAILLES, EIGHTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

"I don't believe a word of it," said the King, with an impatient stamp
of the foot and a deprecatory wave of the hand--"not a word of it."

You see, dear PUNCHINELLO, the situation was thus: I had undertaken, not
indeed without grave misgivings, to propitiate his Majesty, after the
failure of the THIERS-BISMARCK negotiations, and, if possible, procure
such terms as would save Parisians from the galling necessity of
immolating the monkeys of the _Jardin des Plantes_ to the popular demand
for something to eat. I thought, as an American citizen and your
correspondent, my propositions _might_ have some chance of being
favorably entertained, especially as I knew that the English Minister's
presents of Stilton cheese and many dozens of BASS' bottled ale to
BISMARCK had failed to prevent the current of the Chancellor's prejudice
from running strongly in favor of Americans. Thus morally armed, and
bearing in my pocket a _passe-partout_ from Prussian Headquarters, I
approached Versailles on the second evening after the departure of M.
THIERS, and found the King occupying the apartment in the central
pavilion of the palace, which had once been the sleeping-chamber of
Louis XVI. and his unhappy spouse MARIE ANTOINETTE. Many alterations had
taken