If I happen to hang out my tongue and droop my tail, my ears are saluted with “Mad dog!  Let’s kill him!” You need not wonder I sometimes turn round, and snap at my pursuers.  I think you would snap, too, if you were chased through street and lane and alley, till your blood was in a perfect fever, and you hardly knew which way you were running!  I have, on many such occasions, actually run past a beautiful bone that lay handy on the side-walk, and never stopped to smell it.

Oh!  I wish some one would take me prisoner, and continue to own me, and keep me in bondage as long as I lived!  I should only be too happy to give up my liberty, and settle down and be a respectable dog!

* * * * *

A Bute-Iful Idea.

The Marquis of Bute denies that he is going to return to the Protestant fold.  With reference to the rumor, the Pope stated in the Ecumenical Council that “the Bute was on the right leg at last, and that he would launch his thunder against him who should dare that Bute displace.”

* * * * *

WHAT IS IT?

As the shades of night descend (in the neighborhood of Mecklenburg, N.C.,) and harmless domestic animals begin to compose themselves to sleep, suddenly the drowsy world is awakened by a roaring like that of a lion!  It proceeds from the forest, in whose bosky recesses (as the Mecklenburgers suppose) some terrible creature proclaims his hunger and his inclination to appease it with human flesh!  All night long the quaking denizens of that hamlet lie and listen to the roaring, which is an effectual preventive of drowsiness, as the moment any one begins to be seized with it he also begins to fancy he is about to be seized and deglutinated by the horrid monster!  Naturalists are positive it is not the Gyascutis, but admit that a Megatherium may have lately awakened from the magnetic sleep of ages, with the pangs of a mighty hunger tearing his wasted viscera.

If our theory is correct, the good people of Mecklenburg (was it not in Mecklenburg that the agitation for Independence began?) may be assured that deliverance from this unreasonable Dragon is possible.  We think it more than likely that it is simply GEORGE FRANCIS TRAIN practicing for the next invasion of Great Britain.  Nothing could be more harmless.  One Ku-Kluxian youth, armed with a double-barrelled shot-gun, four bowie-knives, and a number of revolvers, could rout him instantly, and even check the flow of his vociferous eloquence so suddenly as to put him in imminent danger of asphyxia.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  RETRIBUTION.

THE BOYS OF SAN FRANCISCO, EXASPERATED AT THE CONVERSION OF THEIR DOGS
INTO PIE, TIE KETTLES TO THE TAILS OF THE CHINAMEN.]

* * * * *

Giving the Cue.

“Is that one of your Chinese belles? asked Mr. PUNCHINELLO of Mr. KOOPMAN-SCHOOP, as one of the newly-imported yallagals passed.