But what would it profit a burglar to gain the whole contents and wear out his soles.  If he got in that safe, he would find a package of bills that we tried for a year to collect, and we would give him the bills if he asked for them, and he could save his powder.  He would find one bill of sixteen dollars, with an indorsement that one dollar is paid, after thirteen dollars worth of shoe leather had been worn out.  And yet the burglar would have a soft thing on cigars with that bill, for every time he visited the doctor he would tell him when to come again, and give him a cigar.  Another thing the burglar would find would be a protested draft from a great Philadelphia patent medicine advertiser.  The burglar could take a tie pass that is in the safe, and walk to Philadelphia, and trade out the twenty-five dollar draft by taking buchu on account.

But no burglar that has any respect for himself, we feel sure, will ever do us the injury to scrape the paint off of that safe.

A FASHION ITEM.

A fashion item says, “The drawers this year are made very short, and some have lace ruffles.”  Some fashion reporter has evidently been looking over our back fence at the clothes line.  But they got awfully fooled.  The shortness of those drawers was caused by the flannel shrinking and the “lace ruffles” the reporter noticed is where a calf chewed them when they were hanging out to dry last fall on Black Hawk Island, when a gun kicked us out of a boat.  Some of these fashion reporters think they are smart.

A LECTURER SHOULD KNOW WHAT HE TALKS ABOUT.

A man down east is lecturing on “Hell, Ingersoll, and Whisky.”  If the lecturer is at all familiar with his subjects, we wouldn’t believe him under oath.

PECK’S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

HIS PA GOES CALLING.

“Say, you are getting too alfired smart,” said the grocery man to the bad boy as he pushed him into a corner by the molasses barrel, and took him by the neck and choked him so his eyes stuck out.  “You have driven away several of my best customers, and now, confound you, I am going to have your life,” and he took up a cheese knife and began to sharpen it on his boot.

“What’s the—­gurgle—­matter?” asked the choking boy, as the grocery man’s finger let up on his throat a little, so he could speak.  “I haint done nothing.”

“Didn’t you hang up that gray torn cat by the heels, in front of my store, with the rabbits I had for sale?  I didn’t notice it until the minister called me out in front of the store, and pointing to the rabbits, asked what good fat cats were selling for.  By crimus, this thing has got to stop.  You have got to move out of this ward or I will.”

The boy got his breath and said it wasn’t him that put the cat up there.  He said it was the policeman, and he and his chum saw him do it, and he just come in to tell the grocery man about it, and before he could speak he had his neck nearly pulled off.  The boy began to cry, and the grocery man said he was only joking, and gave him a box of sardines, and they made up.  Then he asked the boy how his Pa put in his New Years, and the boy sighed and said: