"Friends in Council."—­HELPS.

“Mr. Drew and Mr. Fisk were closeted together for more than an hour yesterday.”

"A Tale of Two Cities."—­DICKENS.

“The census will show that our city has a population of at least 500,000.”—­Chicago paper.

“St Louis has undoubtedly a population of 400,000.”—­St. Louis paper.

“Chicago, 300,000; St. Louis, 190,000.”—­Census returns.

"Stern Necessity."—­F.W.  ROBINSON.

“It is stated that a well-known yacht failed to win the prize in the late race, because her rudder slipped out of her fastenings and was lost.”

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ITEMS FROM OUR RURAL REPORTERS.

A German farmer, living not one hundred miles from Cincinnati, is raising trichinated pork for the supply of the French army.

The artist who drew the Newfoundland dog (out of the water,) at Newport, R.I., has received a medal from the Royal Humane Society of England, on condition that he will not Meddle with dogs any more.

Near Ashland, in Virginia, a spring has been discovered that runs chicken soup.  So great was the commotion in culinary arrangements, when the discovery was made public, that “the dish ran after the spoon.”

The curious crustacean known as the “fiddler crab” is unusually numerous in the marshes of Long Island, this summer.  It differs from impecunious persons inasmuch as it is a burrowing, not a borrowing, creature.  It differs from ordinary fiddlers by two letters, in that it bores the earth, but not the ear.

It is an established fact that persona who sleep on mattresses stuffed with pigeon’s feathers never die.  Near Salem, Mass., there is now a woman nearly two hundred years old, who has been bed-ridden and confined to a pigeon-feather bed for one hundred and fifty years.  One of her descendants a shrewd man-has discovered that the pigeon feathers are growing musty, and proposes to replace them with the plumage of geese.

There is a wild man at large in the woods of Sullivan County, N.Y.  He was once a fast man of New York City, and is so fast, still, that nobody can catch him.

A gentleman residing in the vicinity of Glen Cove had a Newfoundland dog that was very expert at catching lobsters.  The faithful animal has been missing for some time, but a clue to its fate was yesterday obtained by its owner, who found the brass collar of the dog inside a large lobster with which he was about to construct a salad.

An English nobleman has taken up his residence in the centre of the Dismal Swamp, Va.  Blighted affections are supposed to be the cause of his trouble, as he always wears at the top buttonhole of his coat a chignon made of red hair.

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“That’s what’s the Matter.”

Among the lectures announced for the coming season is Mrs. CECILIA BURLEIGH’S “Woman’s right to be a Woman.”  We quite agree with Mrs. BURLEIGH’S remark.  Woman is right to be a woman, but the matter just now is that woman wants to be a man.