You all remember the traveling man who attended the church fair at Kalamazoo, where one of the sisters would give a kiss for ten cents.  He went up and paid his ten cents, and was about to kiss her when he noticed that her mouth was one of those large, open face, cylinder escapement, to be continued mouths.  It commenced at the chin and went about four chains and three links in a northwesterly direction, then around by her ear, across under the nose and back by the other ear to the place of beginning, and containing twelve acres, more or less.

The traveling man said he was only a poor orphan, and had a family to support, and if he never came out alive it would be a great hardship upon those dependent upon him for support, and he asked her as a special favor that she take her hand and take a reef in one side of the mouth so it would be smaller.  She consented, and puckered in a handful of what would have been cheek, had it not been mouth.  He looked at her again and found that the mouth had become a very one-sided affair, and he said he had just one more favor to ask.

[Illustration:  “GET THEE TO A NUNNERY!”]

He was not a man that was counted hard to suit when he was at home in Chicago, but he would always feel as though he had got his money’s worth, and go away with pleasanter recollections of Kalamazoo, if she would kindly take her other hand and draw the other side of her mouth together, and he would be content to take his ten cents’ worth out of what was left unemployed.

This was too much, and she gave him a terrible look, and returned him his ten cents, saying, “Do you think, sir, because you are a Chicago drummer, that for ten cents you can take a kiss right out of the best part of it?  Go!  Get thee to a nunnery,” and he went and bought a lemonade with the money.

We would not advise any lady whose mouth is small to worry about this new fashion, and try to enlarge the one nature has given her.  Large mouths will have their run in a few brief months and will be much sought after by the followers of fashion, but in a short time the little ones that pout, and look cunning, will come to the front and the large ones will be for rent.  The best kind of a mouth to have is a middling sized one, that has a dimple by its sides, which is always in style.

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

Under this heading I can think of nothing that appears more appropriate than the subject of the artificial propagation of fish.  It is a subject that has arrested the attention of many of the ablest minds of the country, and the results of experiments have been thus far so satisfactory that it is almost safe to predict that within the next ten centuries every man, however poor, may pick bull-heads off of his crab apple vines and gather his winter supply of fresh shad from his sweet potato trees at less than fifty cents a pound.  The experiments that have been