pulled the bladder out of my pants, and Ma and the doc. laughed awful.  When Pa got back from church and asked for me, Ma said that I had gone down town.  She said the doctor found my spine was only uncoupled and he coupled it together, and I was all right.  Pa was nervous all the afternoon, and Ma thinks he suspects that we played it on him.  Say, you don’t think there is any harm in playing it on an old man a little for a good cause, do you?”

The grocery man said he supposed, in the interest of reform it was all right, but if it was his boy that played such tricks he would take an ax to him, and the boy went out, apparently encouraged, saying he hadn’t seen the old man since the day before, and he was almost afraid to meet him.

A MUSICAL CRITIQUE.

[Illustration:  The rotund Urso.]

The second lecture of the Library Association course was delivered on Tuesday evening by a female lecturer named Camilla Urso, on a fiddle.  The lecturer was supported by a female singer, two male clamsellers, and a piano masher, all of them decidedly talented in their particular lines.  The lecture on the fiddle gave the most unbounded satisfaction, and the Association in taking this new departure, has struck a popular chord.  Scarcely a person in the vast audience but would prefer such an entertainment to a dry lecture by some dictionary sharp.  Of the performance, it is unnecessary to go into details, as all our readers were there, with few exceptions.  The fat female, Urso, more than carved the fiddle.  She dug sweet morsels of music out of it, all the way from the wish-bone to the part that goes over the fence last.  She made it talk Norwegian, and squeezed little notes out of it not bigger than a cambric needle, and as smooth as a book agent.  The female singer was fair, though nothing to brag on, while the male grasshopper sufferers sang as well as was necessary.  But the most agile flea-catcher that has been here since Anna Dickinson’s time, was sixteen-fingered Jack, the sandhill crane that had the disturbance with the piano.  We never knew what the row was about, but when he walked up to the piano smiling, and shied his castor into the ring, everybody could see there was going to be trouble.  He spit on his hands, sparred a little, and suddenly landed a stunning blow right on the ivory, which staggered the piano, and caused an exclamation of agony.  First knock down for Jack.  He paused a moment and then began putting in blows right and left, in such a cruel manner that the spectators came near breaking into the ring.  Whenever a key showed its head he mauled it.  We never saw a piano stand so much punishment, and live, and Jack never got a scratch.  The whole concert was a success, and the troupe can always get a good house here.

A DEAD SURE THING.