“Then, sir, I can tell you of an article that will make her think of you in that position all the time, from the moment she gets up in the morning till she retires.”

“Is there any attachment to it that will make her dream of me all night?” asked the boy.

“No, sir!  Don’t be a hog,” said the bad man.

“Then what is it?”

The old man said one word, “Corset!”

The young man was delighted, and he went to a store to buy a nice corset.

“What size do you want?” asked the girl who waited on him.

That was a puzzler.  He didn’t know they came in sizes.  He was about to tell her to pick out the smallest size, when he happened to think of something.

“Take a tape measure and measure my arm; that will just fit.”

The girl looked wise as though she had been there herself, found that it was a twenty-two inch corset the boy wanted, and he went home and wrote a note and sent it with the corset to the girl.  He didn’t hear anything about it till the following Sunday, when he called on her.  She received him coldly, and handed him the corset, saying, with a tear in her eye, that she had never expected to be insulted by him.  He told her he had no intention of insulting her; that he could think of nothing that would cause her to think of the gentle pressure of his arm around her waist but a corset, but if she felt insulted he would take his leave, give the corset to some poor family, and go drown himself.

He was about to go away, when she burst out crying, and sobbed out the following words, wet with salt brine.

“It was v-v-v-very thoughtful of y-y-you, but I couldn’t feel it!  It is f-f-four sizes too b-b-big!  Why didn’t you get number eight?  You are silent, you cannot answer, enough?”

[Illustration:  “IT IS F-F-FOUR SIZES TOO B-B-BIG.”]

They instinctively found their way to the sofa; mutual explanation followed; he measured her waist again; saw where he had made a mistake by his fingers lapping over on the first turn, and he vowed, by the beard of the prophet, he would change it for another, if she had not worn it and got it soiled.  They are better now.

THE BOY AND THE GOAT.

A man on King Street gave a boy a goat the other day, and he tied a rope around its neck to lead it home.  The boy wanted to go through the gate, but as the goat concluded to jump over the fence and pull the boy through between the pickets, he let the goat have its own way.  The boy got through the fence in instalments, leaving his shirt collar and one pants leg on the pickets, the goat dragged him out into the middle of the street, and then there occurred a sanguinary encounter to see whether the boy or the goat should boss the moving.  At one time the spectators thought the goat would take the boy home.  The animal used the boy for a cultivator, and they tore up the street like hands working on the road, till the goat slipped the rope over his head, and then the boy gathered himself up by the armful, and went and told his mother that he got his rope back anyway.  She combed him with a piece of barrel.