Fiddletown, 7th.—­Mr. James Tretherick, an old resident of this place, died last night of delirium tremens.  Mr. Tretherick was addicted to intemperate habits, said to have been induced by domestic trouble.

Mrs. Tretherick did not start.  She quietly turned over another page of the paper, and glanced at Carry.  The child was absorbed in a book.  Mrs. Tretherick uttered no word, but during the remainder of the evening was unusually silent and cold.  When Carry was undressed and in bed, Mrs. Tretherick suddenly dropped on her knees beside the bed, and, taking Carry’s flaming head between her hands, said: 

“Should you like to have another papa, Carry, darling?”

“No,” said Carry, after a moment’s thought.

“But a papa to help Mamma take care of you, to love you, to give you nice clothes, to make a lady of you when you grow up?”

Carry turned her sleepy eyes toward the questioner.  “Should you, Mamma?”

Mrs. Tretherick suddenly flushed to the roots of her hair.  “Go to sleep,” she said sharply, and turned away.

But at midnight the child felt two white arms close tightly around her, and was drawn down into a bosom that heaved, fluttered, and at last was broken up by sobs.

“Don’t ky, Mamma,” whispered Carry, with a vague retrospect of their recent conversation.  “Don’t ky.  I fink I should like a new papa, if he loved you very much—­very, very much!”

A month afterward, to everybody’s astonishment, Mrs. Tretherick was married.  The happy bridegroom was one Colonel Starbottle, recently elected to represent Calaveras County in the legislative councils of the State.  As I cannot record the event in finer language than that used by the correspondent of the Sacramento globe, I venture to quote some of his graceful periods.  “The relentless shafts of the sly god have been lately busy among our gallant Solons.  We quote ‘one more unfortunate.’  The latest victim is the Hon. C. Starbottle of Calaveras.  The fair enchantress in the case is a beautiful widow, a former votary of Thespis, and lately a fascinating St. Cecilia of one of the most fashionable churches of San Francisco, where she commanded a high salary.”

The Dutch flat intelligencer saw fit, however, to comment upon the fact with that humorous freedom characteristic of an unfettered press.  “The new Democratic war horse from Calaveras has lately advented in the legislature with a little bill to change the name of Tretherick to Starbottle.  They call it a marriage certificate down there.  Mr. Tretherick has been dead just one month; but we presume the gallant colonel is not afraid of ghosts.”  It is but just to Mrs. Tretherick to state that the colonel’s victory was by no means an easy one.  To a natural degree of coyness on the part of the lady was added the impediment of a rival—­a prosperous undertaker from Sacramento, who had first