[Illustration:  THE LADY OF THE SEVENTH WARD.]

When we told her that a piece of beef-steak was worth two oysters she uncovered the eye.  It looked as though painted by one of the old masters.

Rather than have anybody think she had been having a row, she explained how it happened.  She was sitting with her husband and little girl in the parlor, and while, the two were reading the little one disappeared.  The mother went to the girl’s room on tiptoe, to see if she was asleep.  She found the girl with all her dolls on the floor having a dolls’ prayer meeting.  She had them all down on their knees and would let them pray one at a time, then sing.  One of the dolls that squeaked when pressed on the stomach was the leader of the singing, and the little girl bossed the job.  There was one old maid doll that the little girl seemed to be disgusted with because the doll talked too much, and she would say: 

“There, Miss, you sit down and let some of the other sisters get in a word edgeways.  Sister Perkins, won’t you relate your experience?”

After listening to this for a few moments the mother heard the girl say: 

“Now, Polly, you pass the collection plate, and no one must put in lozengers, and then we will all go to the dancing school.”

The whole thing was so ridiculous that the mother attempted to rush down stairs three at a time, to have her husband come up to the prayer meeting, when she stubbed herself on a stair rod, and—­well, she got the black eye on the journey down stairs, though what hit her she will probably never know.  But she said when she began to roll down stairs she felt in her innermost soul as though she had broke up that prayer meeting prematurely.

THE DOG LAW.

The dog law is as foolish as the anti-treating law, and if it were not enforced, no harm would be done.  Our legislators have to pass about so many laws anyway, and we should use our judgment about enforcing them.

LUNCH ON THE CARS.

There is nothing that so gives a man away as to open a satchel and take out a lunch.  I have been riding on the cars and have made the acquaintance of people who would listen to my stories, and take in every word as gospel truth.  They would seem to hang on my words with pleasure, and be apparently glad they had become acquainted with one who combined so many graces of mind and person, and they would gather around so as not to miss a single lie that I might tell.  And yet when I took a paper parcel out of my valise and opened up a lunch, consisting of bread and onions, and sausage and sweitzer cheese, they would draw coldly away from me and sit in the farther part of the car, and appear never to have known me.