The writer remembers, as if it were but yesterday, when he edited the Hang Tree Herald.  For six months he devoted his best talent to advocating the construction of a railway between that place and Jayhawk, thirty miles distant.  The route presented every inducement.  There would be no grading required, and not a single curve would be necessary.  As it lay through an uninhabited alkali flat, the right of way could be easily obtained.  As neither terminus had other than pack-mule communication with civilization, the rolling stock and other material must necessarily be constructed at Hang Tree, because the people at the other end didn’t know enough to do it, and hadn’t any blacksmith.  The benefit to our place was indisputable; it constituted the most seductive charm of the scheme.  After six months of conscientious lying, the company was incorporated, and the first shovelful of alkali turned up and preserved in a museum, when suddenly the devil put it into the head of one of the Directors to inquire publicly what the road was designed to carry.  It is needless to say the question was never satisfactorily answered, and the most daring enterprise of the age was knocked perfectly cold.  That very night a deputation of stockholders waited upon the editor of the Herald and prescribed a change of climate.  They afterward said the change did them good.  Mr. Gish Makes a Present.

In the season for making presents my friend Stockdoddle Gish, Esq., thought he would so far waive his superiority to the insignificant portion of mankind outside his own waistcoat as to follow one of its customs.  Mr. Gish has a friend-a delicate female of the shrinking sort-whom he favours with his esteem as a sort of equivalent for the respect she accords him when he browbeats her.  Our hero numbers among the blessings which his merit has extorted from niggardly Nature a gaunt meathound, between whose head and body there exists about the same proportion as between those of a catfish, which he also resembles in the matter of mouth.  As to sides, this precious pup is not dissimilar to a crockery crate loosely covered with a wet sheet.  In appetite he is liberal and cosmopolitan, loving a dried sheepskin as well in proportion to its weight as a kettle of soap.  The village which Mr. Gish honours by his residence has for some years been kept upon the dizzy verge of financial ruin by the maintenance of this animal.

The reader will have already surmised that it was this beast which our hero selected to testify his toleration of his lady friend.  There never was a greater mistake.  Mr. Gish merely presented her a sheaf of assorted angle-worms, neatly bound with a pink ribbon tied into a simple knot.  The dog is an heirloom and will descend to the Gishes of the next generation, in the direct line of inheritance.  A Cow-County Pleasantry.

About the most ludicrous incident that I remember occurred one day in an ordinarily solemn village in the cow-counties.  A worthy matron, who had been absent looking after a vagrom cow, returned home, and pushing against the door found it obstructed by some heavy substance, which, upon examination, proved to be her husband.  He had been slaughtered by some roving joker, who had wrought upon him with a pick-handle.  To one of his ears was pinned a scrap of greasy paper, upon which were scrambled the following sentiments in pencil-tracks: