MRS. SMITH and husband.

Shades of our forefathers!  Ghost of BLUEBEARD!  Spirit of HENRY VIII! can this thing be?  Imagine old LABAN’S daughter starting in business, and hanging out a sign something like this: 

+-------------------------------------------+
|                                           |
|          MRS. JACOB and husband,         |
|    Having large orders from the West,    |
|              SOLICIT CUSTOM.              |
| N.B.--Gentlemen attended to by Mr. JACOB. |
|         The Original Mrs.  JACOB.        |
|                                           |
+-------------------------------------------+

Don’t you suppose that JACOB, if he had found that sign over his doorstep, would have raised a row, and if he had been overcome, don’t you suppose he would have wondered what he served those seven years for?

Oh, young man, sitting by the side of that dainty damsel, looking so spoonily into her deep blue eyes, playing so daintily with her golden curls, sucking honey so frequently from her ruby lips, beware! beware! BEWARE!  Remember, when she wants stamps, you can’t put her off as your pa did your ma.  You can’t say, “Business is awful dull,” because she’ll do the business, and make you her book-keeper or porter or something of that sort

Petticoat government is all very well for those who like it.  Some men go through life playing a sort of insane tag, in which, first their mothers’ petticoats, and then their wives’, are hunk, and they never leave hunk.  As for me, give me trouser government, or give me a first class funeral procession with me for the corpse.

Brethren, listen!  Give me your ears! (the big ones first.) This thing must be stopped now.  Let us form an association for the suppression of women, or a society for the prevention of cruelty to men.  There is but one way to cure this thing.  Far out on the Western prairies dwells the only sensible man on this continent.  In the city ruled by him a man may come home as tired as gin can make him, and his wife opens not her mouth; he may jump over as many counters as he pleases, and none of his wives will desire to go and do likewise.  There she is the weaker vessel, and it takes so many of her to equal one man, that she is kept in a proper state of subjection.  That’s the secret; marry her a good deal.  The old maids are the ones who start the rows.  Let them all be married to some one man of a peaceable, loving, quiet disposition—­say WENDELL PHILLIPS.  Let the President, if necessary, issue his proclamation making the United States one vast Utah, and let us all be Young.

LOT.

* * * * *

RAMBLINGS.

BY MOSE SKINNER.

MR. PUNCHINELLO:  If I should tell you that I particularly excelled in writing verses you’d hardly believe me.  But such is the fact.  I’ve sent poem after poem to all the first-class magazines in the country, which, if they’d been published, would have enabled me to pay my debts, and start new accounts from Maine to Georgia.  But they’ve never been published—­and why?  It’s jealousy.  A child with half an eye can see that.  Those boss poets who get the big salaries, probably see my verses, and pay the publishers a big price not to print ’em.