bottle with a rubber nozzle, and a toothing ring, and she made quite a fuss; but the woman who was weaning her baby and wanted the nursing bottle, she got the comb and brush and some blue pills, and she never made any fuss at all.  It makes a good deal of difference, I notice, whether a person gets a better thing than they order or not.  But the drug business is too lively for me.  I have got to have a quiet place, and I guess I will be a cash boy in a store.  Pa says he thinks I was cut out for a bunko steerer, and I may look for that kind of a job.  Pa he is a terror since he got to drinking again.  He came home the other day, when the minister was calling on Ma, and just cause the minister was sitting on the sofa with Ma, and had his hand on her shoulder, where she said the pain was when the rheumatiz came on, Pa was mad and told the minister he would kick his liver clear around on the other side if he caught him there again, and Ma felt awful about it.  After the minister had gone away, Ma told Pa he had got no feeling at all, and Pa said he had got enough feeling for one family, and he didn’t want no sky-sharp to help him.  He said he could cure all the rheumatiz there was around the house, and then he went down town and didn’t get home till most breakfast time.  Ma says she thinks I am responsible for Pa’s falling into bad ways again, and now I am going to cure him.  You watch me, and see if I don’t have Pa in the church in less than a week, praying and singing, and going home with the choir singers, just as pious as ever.  I am going to get a boy that writes a woman’s hand to write to Pa, and—­but I must not give it away.  But you just watch Pa, that’s all.  Well, I must go and saw some wood.  It is coming down a good deal, from a drug clerk to sawing wood, but I will get on top yet, and don’t you forget it.”

GIVE US WAR!

We are in receipt of a circular from the American peace society, requesting us to leave a sum of money, in our will, to the society to be applied to the interest of peace.  We are opposed to peace, on such terms.  Give us war, every time.

THE FIRE NEW YEAR’S DAY.

If there is anything the young men of Rescue Hose Company pride themselves upon, it is in getting themselves up, regardless of expense, on New Year’s day, and calling upon their lady friends.  On Monday last these young men arrayed themselves in their best clothes and sat around in stores and waited for the time to go calling.  Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these firemen.

[Illustration:  Swallow-tails on the climb.]