“Why, just go over to the Half-way House, and tell ANN I can’t come.  Tell her I’ve got the small-pox, or broke my leg, or my old man’s dying—­or anything, so that she understands I can’t come.”

“You’d better give me a letter,” said ARCHIBALD, “and I’ll slip it under her door and run off.  I never could remember all that, I should be so flustered, you know.”

“No,” replied JEFFRY, “I shan’t give you any letter.  I ain’t fool enough to commit myself to any woman in black and white.”

“Well,” replied ARCHIBALD drearily, “just as you say.  Oh, what a knowing man the Hon. MICHAEL is!  He said you’d make me pay that debt of saving your life, sooner or later, and it’s turned out sooner.  But I’ll go, JEFFRY, if I can get away from BELINDA.  She tags me round everywhere, and wants to court me all the time.  Ain’t it dreadful?  What time shall I go?”

“Three o’clock,” answered JEFFRY.  “Tell her I’d come if I could but I can’t anyhow.  Be sure and tell her that, and anything else you’ve a mind to.”

(To be continued.)

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PIGEON ENGLISH.

Certainly newspaper writers are given to making very remarkable statements.  In describing General CHANGARNIER, a newspaper lately informed us that “he stoops his head, which is sprinkled over with a few gray hairs when walking.”  Now, if the general’s head be sprinkled when walking, we may fairly infer that the gray hairs, unless brushed off, remain upon it when it stands still.  We are additionally mystified by the further statement—­still with reference to the same officer—­that “he enjoys the personal demeanor of the French people to a remarkable degree.”  This we are very much delighted to hear, although we have not the slightest idea what it means.

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Corroborative.

A late item of war news states that “the Prussians have advanced to Dole,” while from several other sources we learn that the Prussians have come to Grief.

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PUNCHINELLO CORRESPONDENCE

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Ambergris.—­Can you give me the motto of the City of Strasbourg?

Answer.—­We cannot at this moment recall the Flemish version of it, but it means, in English, “We make our own Pies.”

Katrina Shwachenzittern.  We have had some difficulty in deciphering your manuscript.  Your grievance, however, seems to be that one of your boarders, an Alsatian, keeps a ten-pound brass cannon in his bedroom, and fires a grand salvo with it whenever a French victory is announced.  This, of course, is very foolish.  The best way of putting a stop to it would be for your German boarders to keep guns of even larger calibre in their rooms, and fire the Frenchman down.  You will then have a perfect right to charge all your boarders for extra fires.