“Black, I should say so,” said the grocery man.  “And his nose seemed to be trying to look into his left ear.  He was at the market buying beefsteak to put on it.”

“O, beefsteak is no account.  I must go and see him and tell him that an oyster is the best thing for a black eye.  Well, I must go.  A boy has a pretty hard time running a house the way it should be run,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery:  “Frowy Butter a Speshulty.”

CHRISTMAS TREES.

There is too much dress parade about Christmas.  Too many Christmas trees where rich children get club skates, and gold napkin rings, and poor children get pop corn strung on a string, and cornucopias full of peppermint candy.

THE BOB-TAILED BADGER.

The last legislature, having nothing else to do, passed a law providing for a change in the coat-of-arms of the State.  There was no change particularly, except to move the plows and shovels around a little, put on a few more bars of pig lead, put a new-fashioned necktie on the sailor who holds the rope, the emblem of lynch law, tuck the miner’s breeches into his boots a little further, and amputate the tail of the badger.  We do not care for the other changes, as they were only intended to give the engraver a job, but when an irresponsible legislature amputates the tail of the badger, the emblem of the Democratic party, that crawls into a hole and pulls the hole in after him, it touches us in our patriotism.

The badger, as nature made him, is a noble bird, and though he resembles a skunk too much to be very proud of, they had no right to cut off his tail and stick it up like a sore thumb.  As it is now the new comer to our Garden of Eden will not know whether our emblem is a Scotch terrier, smelling into the archives of the State for a rat, or a defalcation, or a sic semper Americanus scunch.  We do not complain that the sailor with a Pinafore shirt on, on the new coat-of-arms, is made to resemble Senator Cameron, or that the miner looks like Senator Sawyer.  These things are of minor importance, but the docking of that badger’s tail, and setting it up like a bob-tail horse, is an outrage upon every citizen of the State, and when the Democrats get into power, that tail shall be restored to its normal condition if it takes all the blood and treasure in the State, and this work of the Republican incendiaries shall be undone.  The idea of Wisconsin appearing among the galaxy of States with a bob-tailed badger is repugnant to all our finer feelings.

TERROR IN CHURCH.