“Jess you keep out o’ yer!” yelled Israel to the intruder, seeing it wasn’t the doctor.  “We’s got der small-pox, and am a-killing de gemmens—­”

“Pen!” cried a man’s voice through the smoke—­a deep, melodious voice.

“What!” exclaimed Aunt Pen, starting up, and then pausing as if she fancied the horrid fumes might have befogged her brain.

“Pen!” the voice cried again.

“Chauncey!  Chauncey Read!” she shrieked.  “Where do you come from?  Am I dreaming?”

“From the North Pacific,” answered the voice; and we dimly discerned its owner groping his way forward.  “From the five years’ whaling voyage into which I was gagged and dragged—­shanghaied, they call it.  O, Pen, I didn’t dare to hope I should find—­”

“Oh, Chauncey, is it you?” she cried, and fell fainting at his feet.

The draught from the open door after him was blowing away the smoke, and we saw what a great, sunburned, handsome fellow it was that had caught her in his arms, and was bearing her out to the back balcony and the fresh air there, used in the course of his whaling voyage, perhaps, to odors no more belonging to Araby the Blest than those of burning brimstone do; and, seeing the movement, we divined that he knew as much about the resources of the house as we did, and so we discreetly withdrew, Israel’s head being twisted behind him as he went to such extent that you might have supposed he had had his neck wrung.

Well, we put the white silk and the tulle on Aunt Pen after all; yellow as it was, she would have no other—­only fresh, natural orange blossoms in place of the false wreath.  And if we had not so often had her word for it in past times, we never should have taken her for any thing but the gayest bride, the most alive and happy woman in the world.  They returned to the old house from their wedding journey, and we all live together in great peace and pleasantness.  But though three years are passed and gone since Chauncey Read came home and brought a new atmosphere with him into our lives, Aunt Pen has never had a sick day yet; and we find that any allusion to her funeral gives her such a superstitious trembling that we are pleased to believe it indefinitely postponed, and by tacit and mutual consent we never say any thing about it.—­Harper’s Magazine, June, 1872.

SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS.

("MARK TWAIN.”)

(BORN, 1835.)

* * * * *

THE CELEBRATED JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY.

In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend’s friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result.  I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless for me.  If that was the design, it certainly succeeded.