I was raised in the country, and I remember a varmint got to visiting our poultry yard and carrying off those roosting nearest the ground, which were generally our improved blooded (society) chickens, and whenever we would get after him, he would run down through a very muddy place, and take refuge in a hole in the bank of a creek.  We rather dreaded the task of following him through all this mud and filth; but, as a last resort, rather than let him have all the poultry, or allow him to continue his depredations at pleasure, we waded through the mud down to his den and dug into his hiding place; and when he was struck on the head with the back of a hoe, he too was terribly shocked.

Now this little animal was not, as may be supposed by some, one of the “common or unclean,” but he was one of the elite, a regular society mink.  He was covered with very fine fur, but had his stomach filled with stolen chickens.  I leave the application to all to whom these presents may come, GREETING. When I want to buy a hat, I never take one unless it fits me.

More or less of the girls participating in the dance are engaged to be married, and great effort is made to keep this a profound secret, so she very naturally has every man for a partner except her intended.  Here is music in the back-ground, if her intended is present, and he is sure to be there if he is in striking distance—­if he is not down with typhoid fever or in prison.

This music is in his heart, in the nature of clamoring for blood, by a legion of different sized devils.  It may be there is not one man in the room that would have his girl under any consideration whatever, but he imagines that they all want her.  The female outfit for the ball consists of girls and a number of young married women, and some a little older, and some old women, forty to fifty years old, with grown children, false teeth, false hair, and bloats to swell out their wrinkled cheeks, and they, too, are dressed in the fashion with red ribbons, and blue and green; these furnish the disgust for the occasion—­and one of them has been known to furnish disgust enough for a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and of the very best quality.  Let us return to the basket containing the young married people, and examine the fruit therein.  Reader, did you ever see the young married woman watching her husband as he glides up and down in the merry dance, with an old sweetheart in his arms? If you never did, the first opportunity you have, take a good look at a cat’s eyes in the dark and in imagination transfer them to the young wife’s head, and you will have a very correct idea of how sweet and amiable she looks.