full of compressed air, and a smell of limberger cheese pervaded the premises.  When the smoke cleared off the woman was not to be found.  After voting the machine a success the party started for Milwaukee.  On nearing the city a pair of wooden shoes were seen in the air coming down, and they lit in the the canal by the tannery.  A pair of corsets struck on Plankinton’s packing house, and sections of spinal cord, and one leg of a pair of red drawers came down on the Soldier’s home, and hair was found on the top of the car.  It is thought the engineer loaded the air bouncer too heavy, and that it kicked.  However, Col.  Johnson was not discouraged, and will soon have his patent on all cars.  The husband of the Polack woman wanted Johnson to pay him three dollars, but he said he didn’t want to buy the woman.  All he wanted was to hire her, anyway.  Col.  Johnson is a great inventor.  It was he that invented the stomach pump, and the automatic candle enunciator, for awakening guests in the night to take early trains.  The latter he sold to Mr. Williams, of Prairie du Chien, for a large amount and took his pay in trade.

RAISING ELEPHANTS.

Why not go to raising elephants?  A good elephant will sell for eight thousand dollars.  A pair of elephants can be bought by a community of farmers pooling their issues and getting a start, and in a few years every farm can be a menagerie of it own, and every year we can rake in from eight to twenty-four thousand dollars from the sale of surplus elephants.  It may be said that elephants are hearty feeders, and that they would go through an ordinary farmer in a short time.  Well, they can be turned out into the highway to browse, and earn their own living.  This elephant theory is a good one, and any man that is good on figures can sit down and figure up a profit in a year sufficient to go into bankruptcy.

THE POWER OF ELOQUENCE.

A justice of the peace at Menasha, wanted to kill Pratt, the editor of the Press.  The matter has been compromised, however.  Pratt got the justice cornered up, and delivered one of the speeches to him that he delivered during the campaign last fall, and the justice got on his knees and said, “Pratt, this thing is all right, I surrender.”

A TRYING SITUATION.

It was along in the winter, and the prominent church members were having a business meeting in the basement of the church to devise ways and means to pay for the pulpit furniture.  The question of an oyster sociable had been decided, and they got to talking about oysters, and one old deaconess asked a deacon if he didn’t think raw oysters would go further at a sociable, than stewed oysters.

[Illustration:  THE WANDERING OYSTER.]

He said he thought raw oysters would go further, but they wouldn’t be as satisfying.  And then he went on to tell how far a raw oyster went once with him.  He said he was at a swell dinner party with a lady on each side of him, and he was trying to talk to both of them, or carry on two conversations, on two different subjects at the same time.