He didn’t answer me then.  It couldn’t be expected, perhaps; but I am still of the impression that this conundrum is gradually working towards a solution in the brain of the Commander-in-Chief.  I hope it don’t lay heavily there; I wouldn’t do anything to distress him.  If GOLDWIN SMITH were expounding political economy to him in one ear, and HORACE GREELEY talking agriculture in the other, the poor man couldn’t be more bothered than he is.  No, no; far be it from me to add one harrowing burden to his already heavy load; but when a man sees the porter-house steak of Liberty a burning up on the grid-iron of war, why shouldn’t he put forth his “flipper” and save it if he can?  And there’s another conundrum:  but it’s for PUNCHINELLO and his hemisphere of adorers.

DICK TINTO.

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A GOOD BAR-GAIN SUGGESTED.

The suggestion for purifying the New York Bar by classifying its tenders is a good one and should be acted upon.  As it is now, the justice there dispensed is so mixed and doctored that it satisfies only the vitiated taste of the roughs.  The proceedings in the McFARLAND and JACKSON case show that swagger, not study—­bullying, not brains, are in a fair way to become the important qualifications of a counsel.  The lawyers should organize in their own defence and classify themselves.  Mr. PUNCHINELLO suggests the following method as the simplest and probably the most effective in its application to matters of legal digestion.  Let there be two classes made, the one to embrace the well-bred, and the other the GRAHAM bred practitioners.

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THE SPORT AT WASHINGTON.—­Fighting COX.

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THE PLAYS AND SHOWS

“O What a wretched smell of orange-peel and sawdust!” says MARGARET to me, as we enter the gateway of the CIRCUS.  Wretched!  Why of all perfumes, next to that of the clover and the new-mown hay, it is the most delicious.  For it brings back to us the days of our innocent childhood, when we stole unlawful pennies to pay for admission to the charmed circle of equestrian delights, and in youthful purity of soul, and general dirtiness of face and hands, listened to the ingenious witticisms of the clown, while we cracked the peaceful peanut, and shared the social gingerbread.

Childlike innocence is a phrase that must originally have been applied exclusively to girls.  Obviously it is sheer nonsense as applied to boys.  Who ever saw an innocent boy, especially in a place of amusement?  Are they not, one and all, given to untimely hunger, and addicted to undesirable methods of assuaging its pangs?  Are they not prone to perpetual colds in the head, accompanied by loud and labored breathing, and rarely mitigated by the judicious use of pocket-handkerchiefs?  Do they not indulge in a vicious and wholly unpardonable wealth of muddy