SELLING CLAMS.

At the concert Wednesday night, the last piece sung was a trio, by Marie Rose, Brignoli, and Carleton.  The men stood on each side of the girl and began to jaw at her.  It was in some other language, and we could only understand by the motion of their mouths and their actions.  It seemed as though the men were trying to sell clams to her.  First Brignoli began to whoop it up, and describe the clams he had to sell, and tried to get her to invest.  He yelled at her, and seemed really put out, and she was as spunky as any girl we ever saw.  When Brignoli got out of breath, Carleton began to tell her that Brig had been lying to her, that his clams were made of India rubber, and that she could never digest them in the wide world, and he wound up by telling her that she could have his clams at ten per cent discount for cash.  By this time she was about as mad as she could be, and she pitched into both of them, looking cross, and sung like blazes, went away up the musical ladder to zero, and wound up by telling them both, to their face, that she would see them in Chicago before she would buy a condemned clam.  And then they all went off the stage as though they had been having a regular fight, and Brignoli acted as though he would like to eat her raw.  That’s the way it seemed to us, but we are no musician.

PECK’S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA GOES SKATING.

“What is that stuff on your shirt bosom, that looks like soap grease?” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the grocery the morning after Christmas.

The boy looked at his shirt front, put his finger on the stuff and smelled of his fingers, and then said, “O, that is nothing but a little of the turkey dressing and gravy.  You see after Pa and I got back from the roller skating rink yesterday, Pa was all broke up and he couldn’t carve the turkey, and I had to do it, and Pa sat in a stuffed chair with his head tied up, and a pillow amongst his legs, and he kept complaining that I didn’t do it right.  Gol darn a turkey any way.  I should think they would make a turkey flat on the back, so he would lay on a greasy platter without skating all around the table.  It looks easy to see Pa carve a turkey, but when I speared into the bosom of that turkey, and began to saw on it, the turkey rolled around as though it was on castors, and it was all I could do to keep it out of Ma’s lap.  But I rasseled with it till I got off enough white meat for Pa and Ma and dark meat enough for me, and I dug out the dressing, but most of it flew into my shirt bosom, cause the string that tied up the place where the dressing was concealed about the person of the turkey, broke prematurely, and one oyster hit Pa in the eye, and he said I was as awkward as a cross-eyed girl trying to kiss a man with a hair lip.  If I ever get to be the head of a family I shall carve turkeys with a corn sheller.