“The inqulosed boddy is that uv old Burker.  Step litely, stranger, fer yer lize the mortil part uv wat you mus be sum da.  Thers arrest for the weery!  If Burker heddenta wurkt agin me fer Corner I wuddenta bed to sit on him.  Ov setch is the kingum of hevvun!  You don’t want to moov this boddy til ime summuns to hold a ninquest.  Orl flesh are gras!”

The ridiculous part of the story is that the lady did not wait to summon the Coroner, but took charge of the remains herself; and in dragging them toward the bed she exploded into her face a shotgun, which had been cunningly contrived to discharge by a string connected with the body.  Thus was she punished for an infraction of the law.  The next day the particulars were told me by the facetious Coroner himself, whose jury had just rendered a verdict of accidental drowning in both cases.  I don’t know when I have enjoyed a heartier laugh.  The Optimist, and What He Died Of.

One summer evening, while strolling with considerable difficulty over Russian Hill, San Francisco, Mr. Grile espied a man standing upon the extreme summit, with a pensive brow and a suit of clothes which seemed to have been handed down through a long line of ancestors from a remote Jew peddler.  Mr. Grile respectfully saluted; a man who has any clothes at all is to him an object of veneration.  The stranger opened the conversation: 

“My son,” said he, in a tone suggestive of strangulation by the Sheriff, “do you behold this wonderful city, its wharves crowded with the shipping of all nations?”

Mr. Grile beheld with amazement.

“Twenty-one years ago-alas! it used to be but twenty,” and he wiped away a tear—­“you might have bought the whole dern thing for a Mexican ounce.”

Mr. Grile hastened to proffer a paper of tobacco, which disappeared like a wisp of oats drawn into a threshing machine.

“I was one among the first who—­”

Mr. Grile hit him on the head with a paving-stone by way of changing the topic.

“Young man,” continued he, “do you feel this bommy breeze?  There isn’t a climit in the world—­”

This melancholy relic broke down in a fit of coughing.  No sooner had he recovered than he leaped into the air, making a frantic clutch at something, but apparently without success.

“Dern it,” hissed he, “there goes my teeth; blowed out again, by hokey!”

A passing cloud of dust hid him for a moment from view, and when he reappeared he was an altered man; a paroxysm of asthma had doubled him up like a nut-cracker.

“Excuse me,” he wheezed, “I’m subject to this; caught it crossin’ the Isthmus in ‘49.  As I was a-sayin’, there’s no country in the world that offers such inducements to the immygrunt as Californy.  With her fertile soil, her unrivalled climit, her magnificent bay, and the rest of it, there is enough for all.”

This venerable pioneer picked a fragmentary biscuit from the street and devoured it.  Mr. Grile thought this had gone on about long enough.  He twisted the head off that hopeful old party, surrendered himself to the authorities, and was at once discharged.  The Root of Education.