The Hon. Thomas B. Reed, of Maine, is to be the leader of the Republican minority in Congress this winter.  He is a smart, fat, brilliant, lazy man, with a Shakespearian head and face and clean-cut record.  He is a great improvement on the Hon. J. Warren Keifer, of Ohio, who was the Republican leader (so-called) last winter.  It would be hard to imagine a more imbecile leader than Keifer was, and it would be hard to find an abler leader than Reed will be, provided his natural physical indolence does not get the better of his splendid intellectual vigor.

Marcus A. Hanna has just been elected a delegate to the National Republican Convention in the Tenth Ohio district.  He has also just been appointed to a government position by President Cleveland.  The National Republican Convention ought to determine, immediately upon assembling, whether its platform and its nominations shall be dictated, even remotely, by a beneficiary of a Democratic administration.  Hanna was in 1884 a loudmouthed Blaine follower.  He has a happy faculty of always lighting on his feet—­after the fashion of the singed cat.

  President Cleveland—­Rose, are you sure the window-screens are in
  repair?

  Miss Cleveland—­Quite sure.

  President Cleveland—­And are you using that flypaper according to
  directions?

  Miss Cleveland—­Yes.

  President Cleveland—­And you sprinkle the furniture with insect
  powder every day?

  Miss Cleveland—­Certainly; why do you ask?  Are the mosquitoes
  troubling you?

  President Cleveland—­No, not the mosquitoes; but that Second
  District Congressman from Illinois seems to be just as thick as
  ever.

We’ve come from Indiany, five hundred miles or more,
Supposin’ we wuz goin’ to git the nominashin shore;
For Colonel New assured us (in that noospaper o’ his)
That we cud hev the airth, if we’d only tend to biz. 
But here we’ve been slavin’ more like hosees than like men
To diskiver that the people do not hanker after Ben;
It is for Jeemes G. Blaine an’ not for Harrison they shout
And the gobble-uns ’el git us
Ef we
Don’t
Watch
Out!

“As for me, Daniel, I declined the tickets on the ground that, as President of this great nation, it was beneath my dignity to accept free passes to a show.”  “You did quite right, Grover; I, too, declined the passes in my capacity as a cabinet officer.”  “Good, good!” “But I accepted them in my capacity as editor of the Albany Argus.  I owe it to my profession, Grover, not to surrender any of its rights to a strained sense of the dignity of an employment which is only temporary.”  “Ah, yes; I see.”  “There must be a dividing line between the Honorable Daniel Manning, cabinet minister, and plain Dan Manning, editor.  I draw that line at free show-tickets.”

Another instance of the liberality of