[Illustration:  MYSTERY OF A WOMAN’S CLOTHES!]

By this time the woman was mad.  She bought a pistol and started for the depot, firmly resolved to kill the first man that molested her.  She did not meet anybody until she arrived at the Junction, and she sat down in the depot to rest before the train came.

Pierce, the hotel man, is one of the most noticin’ persons anywhere, and she hadn’t been seated a York minute before his eye caught the discrepancy in her apparel.

He tried to get the telegraph operator and the expressman to go and tell her about it, but they wouldn’t, so he went and took a seat near her.

“It is a warm day, madame,” said Pierce, looking at the red strip at the bottom of her dress.

She drew her pistol, cocked it, and pointed it at Pierce, who was trembling in every leg, and said: 

“Look-a-here, you young cuss.  I have had half a dozen grown persons down town tell me my petticoat was coming off, and I have stood it because I thought they were old enough to know what they were talking about, but when it comes to boys of your age coming around thinking they know all about women’s clothes it is too much, and the shooting is going to commence.”

Mr. Pierce made one bound and reached the door, and then got behind a white greyhound and waited for her to go away, which she soon did.  As she was stepping on the car the conductor, Jake Sazerowski, said to her: 

“Your apparel, madame, seems to be demoralized,” but she rushed into the car, and was seen no more.

Since then these gentlemen have all learned that the fashion calls for a red strip at the bottom of a dress, and they will make no more mistakes.  But they were all serious enough, and their interference was prompted by pure kindness of heart, and not from any wicked thoughts.

A NEW SPARKING SCHEME.

A number of fathers who have daughters, have formed a society, the object of which is to charge young men who visit the girls, for meals, gas, wear and tear of furniture, etc.  There has been so much sparking going on which did not mean business, that the organization has seemed necessary.

EFFECTS OF MINERAL WATER.

A woman from Milwaukee, stopping at Sparta for the summer, had a serious accident the other day.  She had her dress pinned back so tight that the exclamation point where she was vaccinated on the left arm was plainly visible, and as she stooped over at the artesian well to dip up a cup full of physic, a little dog belonging to a lady from Pilot Knob took hold of her striped stocking and shook it, thinking it was a blue racer.  The lady was overcome with heat and sank down on the damp ground, and the result was congestion of the dog, for when she got up she kicked that dog over the Court house and sprained her stocking.  It is said that beautiful and healthful summer resort