“Lawzee,” replied Dinah, “this surely am a co-instence.  I was this very minute cogitatin’ that same thought in my own mind—­I want to go, I thank the good Lawd I kin go, and I pity your husband, ma’am, that he can’t go.”

TEMPERANCE

A Boston deacon who was a zealous advocate for the cause of temperance employed a carpenter to make some alterations in his home.  In repairing a corner near the fireplace, it was found necessary to remove the wainscot, when some things were brought to light which greatly astonished the workman.  A brace of decanters, sundry bottles containing “something to take,” a pitcher, and tumblers were cosily reposing in their snug quarters.  The joiner ran to the proprietor with the intelligence.

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed the deacon.  “That is curious, sure enough.  It must be old Captain Bunce that left those things there when he occupied the premises thirty years since.”

“Perhaps he did, returned the discoverer, but, Deacon, that ice in the pitcher must have been well frozen to remain solid.”—­Abbie C. Dixon.

  Here’s to a temperance supper,
    With water in glasses tall,
  And coffee and tea to end with
    And me not there at all.

The best prohibition story of the season comes from Kansas where, it is said, a local candidate stored a lot of printed prohibition literature in his barn, but accidentally left the door open and a herd of milch cows came in and ate all the pamphlets.  As a result every cow in the herd went dry.—­Adrian Times.

A Michigan citizen recently received a letter from a Kentucky whisky house, requesting him to send them the names of a dozen or more persons who would like to get some fine whisky shipped to them at a very low price.  The letter wound up by saying: 

“We will give you a commission on all the orders sent in by parties whose names you send us.”

The Michigan man belonged to a practical joke class, and filled in the names of some of his prohibition friends on the blank spaces left for that purpose.

He had forgotten all about his supposed practical joke when Monday he received another letter from the same house.  He supposed it was a request for some more names, and was just about to throw the communication in the waste basket when it occurred to him to send the name of another old friend to the whisky house.  He accordingly tore open the envelope, and came near collapsing when he found a check for $4.80, representing his commission on the sale of whisky to the parties whose names he had sent in about three weeks before.

Abstinence is as easy to me as temperance would be difficult.—­Samuel Johnson.

TEXAS

The bigness of Texas is evident from a cursory examination of the map.  But its effect upon the people of that state is not generally known.  It is about six hundred miles from Brownsville, at the bottom of the map, to Dallas, which is several hundreds of miles from the top of the map.  Hence the following conversation in Brownsville recently between two of the old-time residents: