When this you spy,
Remember HI,

Ewers, truly,

HIRAM GREEN, Esq.,

Lait Gustise of the Peece.

* * * * *

[Illustration:  BABY’S PHOTOGRAPH.]

* * * * *

[Illustration:  SONG OF THE OYSTER.

“PUT ME IN MY LITTLE BED.”]

* * * * *

OUR PORTFOLIO.

An Exciting Interview with King William.—­“Seeing” Thiers and Going him
Better.—­The Influence of Monkeys In Diplomacy.

VERSAILLES, EIGHTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said the King, with an impatient stamp of the foot and a deprecatory wave of the hand—­“not a word of it.”

You see, dear PUNCHINELLO, the situation was thus:  I had undertaken, not indeed without grave misgivings, to propitiate his Majesty, after the failure of the THIERS-BISMARCK negotiations, and, if possible, procure such terms as would save Parisians from the galling necessity of immolating the monkeys of the Jardin des Plantes to the popular demand for something to eat.  I thought, as an American citizen and your correspondent, my propositions might have some chance of being favorably entertained, especially as I knew that the English Minister’s presents of Stilton cheese and many dozens of BASS’ bottled ale to BISMARCK had failed to prevent the current of the Chancellor’s prejudice from running strongly in favor of Americans.  Thus morally armed, and bearing in my pocket a passe-partout from Prussian Headquarters, I approached Versailles on the second evening after the departure of M. THIERS, and found the King occupying the apartment in the central pavilion of the palace, which had once been the sleeping-chamber of Louis XVI. and his unhappy spouse MARIE ANTOINETTE.  Many alterations had taken place since I was last there and saw the wretched Queen from the balcony endeavoring to assuage the fierce mob that surged beneath.  The room was not like the room in which I once helped Louis to pull off his boots, and the delicate perfume that usually pervades the apartments of French royalty had succumbed to the amalgamated odors of Schweitzer Kase and Saur Kraut.

“It is apparent, sire,” said I to WILLIAM, who was sitting there “that Count BISMARCK has wholly misunderstood the situation in Paris.”

“Not a bit of it,” said the King; “don’t I know well enough they’ve got down to two ounces a day for each man, and horse meat at that?

“You forget, sire, their vast supply of asses.”

“Do I, indeed? when they’ve done nothing but develop an unlimited number of them ever since the war began.”