that would have been splendid if Wilhelmj or Ole Bull had played it, but the colored brother couldn’t get within a mile of the tune.  He rasped his old violin for twenty minutes and tried to look grand, and closed his eyes and seemed to soar away to heaven,—­and the audience wished to heaven he had, and when he became exhausted and squeezed the last note out, and the audience saw that he was in a profuse perspiration, they let him go and did not call him back.  If he had come out and sat on the back of a chair and sawed off “The Devil’s Dream,” or “The Arkansaw Traveler,” that crowd would have cheered him till he thought he was a bigger man than Grant.

But he didn’t have any sense.

MATTIE MASHES MINNESOTA.

Mrs. Mattie A. Bridge is meeting with great success in Minnesota.  In some places she is retained until she lectures four times.  She says the heart of Minnesota is warm towards her.  We shall feel inclined to put a head on Minnesota, if it don’t quit allowing its heart to get warm.

WHY THE FEVER DIDN’T SPREAD.

Portage City has had a sensation which, though at one time it looked serious, turned out to be a farce.  A girl was taken sick, and a physician was called who pronounced it a case of yellow fever, and he made out a prescription for that disease.  Mr. Brannan, editor of the Portage Register, who lives near, got the news, and imparted it to all whom he met, and they in turn told it to others, and a stampede was looked for.  Fox turned the Fox House over to Bunker, and had his trunks checked for the Hot Springs.  Corning and Jack Turner hired a wagon to take them to Briggsville.  Haertel, the brewery man, offered to sell out his brewery and all his property for eight hundred dollars, and he bought a ticket for Germany.  Bunker left the Fox House to run itself, and went to Devil’s Lake.  Sam.  Branuan, telegraphed to George Clinton, at Denver, not to come home, as the yellow fever was raging, and people were dying off like rotton sheep.  And Sam got vaccinated and went to Beaver Dam.  The excitement was intense.  Men became perfectly wild, and were going to rush off and leave the women and children to the mercies of the dead plague.  Chicago and Milwaukee bummers could be seen at the hotels, kneeling beside their sample cases trying to pray, but they couldn’t.  Just before the train started that was to carry away the frightened populace, the doctor came up town and said that the girl with the yellow fever was better, and that she was the mother of a fine nine pound boy.  The authorities took every precaution to prevent the spread of the yellow fever, by arresting the brakemen whom the girl said was the cause of all the trouble.  All is quiet on the Wisconse now.

[Illustration:  DRUMMERS TRYING TO PRAY.]

TOO PARTICULAR BY HALF.