him weltering in dried apples, put on her the Supreme Court, Judge Hall, of North bonnet and left the house. Mrs. Smith, on the same evening, found four of the mysterious red hairs on her husband's coat, but she refrained from violence, and merely telling him that she would not believe in his innocence if he was to swear till he was black in the face, called loudly for her sainted mother, and was about to faint when Mrs. Brown burst into the room. Mr. Smith, like a wise man, fled from the scene, and the two ladies soon confided their wrongs to one an other. When Mr. Brown and Mr. Smith met the next day, the former confessed to the latter that he was in a terrible scrape. Confidence begat confidence, and they soon became convinced that they were the victims of a frightful conspiracy to which some unknown wearer of red backhair was a party. Their distress was increased early in the afternoon by the appearance of their respective wives, who walked up and down the opposite side of the street for hours, each carrying a conspicuous rawhide, and evidently lying in wait for the imaginary red-haired woman. Messrs. Smith and Brown felt that they were ruined men, and that a tremendous scandal was about to overwhelm them. They even wished that they were dead. About 4 o'clock P. M. Mrs. Smith clutched her companion's arm and bade her listen to a small-boy who was relating one of his recent crimes to a youthful companion. "I just picked up that there hair," remarked the wicked youth, "and put some of it on old Smith's and old Brown's coats; I kep' a puttin' of it on every day, and you just bet they ketched it from their old women when they went home; Smith, he's as solemns a nowl, and old Brown looks as if he was goin' to be hung." The remains of the boy were removed by the constable, and the Smith and Brown families are once more united and happy. W. L. ALDEN. A GOOD STORY OF A JUDGE. On one of the many official excursions made by boat to Fortress Monroe and Chesapeake Bay, Chief Justice Waite, of Carolina, and other dignitaries of the bench were participants. When the government steamer had fairly got out of the Potomac and into the Atlantic the sea was very rough and the vessel pitched fearfully. Judge Hall was taken violently with sea-sickness. As he was retching over the side of the vessel and moaning aloud in his agony the Chief Justice stepped gently to his side and, laying a soothing hand on his shoulder, said: "My dear Hall, can I do anything for you? Just suggest what you wish." "I wish," said the sea-sick Judge, your honor would overrule this motion!" 66 TO MY NOSE. [OLIVIER BASSELIN, "le père joyeux du Vaudeville," was born at Vire in Normandy. He flourished in the fifteenth century, but the date of his birth and that of his death are equally unknown. He was proprietor of a fulling mill in the neighboring valleys, the laur de Vire; and gave this name to his convivial songs. The mill in which he worked is still standing, and bears upon its front a little sign-board with his name. Mr. Musgrave, in his "Ramble through Normandy," gives this description of the scene: "The valleys that surround Vire (the Vaux de Vire, as they are called) constitute its greatest charms, and, like most other scenery composed of a long continuing ravine between abrupt and rocky crags and thickly planted declivities descending into a river stream, afford hour after hour of enjoyment to those who, 'Hid in the hollow of two neighboring hills,' delight in wood and water, rills and rocks. "In the course of my evening stroll, I reached the old house with a water mill attached to it, on a branch of the river (which is little else than a sinuous brook hereabouts), once occupied by Olivier Basselin, the originator of that peculiar species of ballad or song which eventually gave a name to the little musical pieces played to this day on the French stage, under the well-known denomination of Vaudevilles. "Basselin, a native of Vire, was a cleaner of cloth, or Scourer in the middle of the fifteenth century, and occupied this very mill at the period of the final expulsion of the English from France. He not only was a calender of credit and renown, but 'A train-band captain eke was he,' of the town of Vire, and served under the Count de Clermont, at Formigny, in the battle which recovered Normandy from our countrymen. The blended duties of the fulling mill and garrison did not however, interfere with his musical taste, which exercised itself prin cipally in the composition of certain rural ballads and drinking choruses, lauding the hill and valley, wine and cider, by turns; and infusing a relish of vocal harmony among the inhabitants of the valleys which filled those pleasant places with song, and, in the course of a brief period of time, created a celebrity for those merry strains from the Vaux de Vire, the Valleys of the Vire, (corrupted, eventually and with great absurdity, into Ville,) which led to their more extensive use throughout entire France. Nearly two centuries had elapsed since Basselin's day of fame, before the musical dramatic writers of this country began to appropriate the light cheerful measure of the ballads of Vire to the comédiettes in one or two acts, whose business (to use a stage phrase) is carried on from the rise to the fall of the curtain, through frequently recurring little songs, thrown off in a manner peculiar, in its pleasing sprightliness, to the French; and serving on many an occasion, to reconcile the most critical of audiences to a large amount of flimsy and frivolous FAIR Nose! whose rubies red have cost me many a barrel Of claret wine and white, APOLOGY FOR CIDER. Oxenford, "Book of French Songs." THOUGH Frenchmen at our drink may laugh, And think their taste is wondrous fine, The Norman cider, which we quaff, Is quite the equal of his wine,- Whene'er a potent draught I take, I find I never lose my wits, To raise a tempest in the house; To strive for riches is all stuff, Just take the good the gods have sent: If with his own he is content; In truth that was a hearty bout; Why, not a drop is left,-not one; Who wearest in thy rich and sumptuous ap- I feel I've put my thirst to rout; parel Such red and purple light! Great Nose! who looks at thee through some huge glass at revel, More of thy beauty thinks: For thou resemblest not the nose of some poor devil Who only water drinks. The turkey-cock doth wear, resembling thee, his wattles, How many rich men now Have not so rich a nose! To paint thee, many bottles And much time I allow. The glass my pencil is for thine illumination; My color is the wine, With which I've painted thee more red than the carnation, By drinking of the fine. The stubborn foe at last is gone. So down, down, down the cider goes, And charms the palate as it flows. BASSELIN. CHICKEN CONUNDRUMS. Why is a hen immortal? Her son never sets. Why have chickens no hope in the future? They have their next world (necks twirled) in this. Why is a hen on a fence like a cent? Head on one side, tail on the other. Why don't hens lay at night? they are roosters. Then the mainmast of a ship? A little forward Why is the first chicken of a brood like of the main hatch. A chicken just hatched like a cow's 'Tis said it hurts the eyes; but shall they be tail? Never seen before. the masters ? Wine is the cure for all; Better the windows both should suffer some disasters, Than have the whole house fall. Why should not a chicken cross the road? It would be a fowl proceeding. To conclude, a hen is a poor economist, because for every grain she takes she gives a peck. 20 IT BROKE UP THE PARTY. never drinks spirituous liquors, always confining his libations to beer) looked dumbfounded at the gyrations of his friends. The whisky was "cherry, old AN EXCITING SCENE IN A VIRGINIA SENA- stock," sent him by a valued friend in TOR'S ROOM. A Washington correspondent relates the following: Senator Mahone has had considerable trouble with his whisky. It has mysteriously disappeared from his rooms at his hotel. A week or so ago he directed his servant to keep a sharp lookout and try and discover the reason for the rapid consumption of his liquor. The servant was successful. A bell boy was caught in the act of helping himself to some of the Senator's best sour mash. Since then Mr. Mahone's servants have been particularly vigilant. How vigilant is shown in the following incident which took place a few evenings ago. A card party gathered in the Senator's rooms. About 12 o'clock a gentleman suggested that a little whisky would not be out of order. It would serve to settle the salad and sandwiches they had partaken of. A messenger was sent to the bar, but he brought back the startling information that the bar was closed. The Virginia statesman thought that he had some whisky upstairs and would go after it. He soon returned with a bottle of "Overholz, distilled in 1860." The production of the "old rye" interrupted the game instanter, and four of the distinguished party got up, helped themselves and touched their glasses, each of which was supplied with the regulation quantity known as a "snorter," and drank to the health and happiness of all present. They were hardly warm in their seats again, when they suddenly stared at each other with a painful inquisitive look, as if each was waiting for the other to speak. A sickly pallor spread over their features, and with simultaneous expedition they rose and rushed to the corner of the room, where their heads bumped together over the window-sill. Each was afflicted with deathly illness for five minutes, accompanied by writhings, groans, and contortions of the victims." "What is the matter with the whisky?" was the first exclamation. "It has made us fearful sick." Pennsylvania. He immediately had his servant, John, who has charge of the Senator's apartments, hunted up. As he entered the room, the Senator remarked: "John, what in the name of great Cæsar is the matter with my whisky? I brought a bottle from my room, and these gentlemen after taking a drink of it were suddenly taken violently sick." Yo' whisky made 'em sick?" uttered John, apparently not fully comprehending the situation. Make us sick! I should say so. And this room resembles a ward in a cholera hospital," remarked one of the victims. Observing a private mark on the label his eyes enlarged and protruded like the moon passing from behind a dark cloud as he exclaimed: "Fo' God! Massa Mahone, dat am de bottle of liquor I put them ibbegags in to sicken de nigger what had bin toten off the whisky from yo' room." Suddenly her back was arched, and with one superb bound she was on the perch, when the parrot screamed out, Have your breakfast, Jack?" Pussy was almost frightened out of her wits. She cast one anxious glance at her master, leaped down and hid under the bed, from which no threat or caress could bring her out for the day.-Dumb Animals. CLIMBED HIM AT LAST. My and, slightly scorching my skin as it passed, cut the last precious suspender clean in two. There I stood in the presence of many thousands of men. emotions cannot be described. You, Mr. Commissioner, can imagine them. I am certainly entitled to a pension for the wounds given to my feelings on that occasion. Possibly you may not decide that a large pension should be given me, but, at least, I ought to have enough to keep me in strong, reliable suspenders all my life." FLUSH TIMES IN ALABAMA. [Nearly forty years ago, 1850, a series of humorous articles under the above title appeared in the Southern Livingston, Alabama.] MAJOR WORMLY. "Ever in Californy?" asked a long, lank, lean, lantern-jawed tramp of a man on Centre street the other day. "No." "Wa'n't in the boom o' '49, eh?" "No." Literary Messenger, and were subsequently collected in "Never war in the mines of Colorado or book form and published by D. Appleton & Co. with the New Mexico, eh?" "No." "Don't know author's name on the Title Page, Joseph G. Baldwin, of nuthin' 'bout minin' a tall?" "No." 'Wall, I be darned!" said the tramp. "Never was in the war, was ye? "Never." "Knock every button off my pants, if this don't beat all! Ain't a "I am not a member of the melish?" member of the melish." "Well, blast my hat, if you ain't the hardest man to work for a drink I ever struck. Say, pard, ain't yer never been in the penitentiary?" "Never have." "Well, try me for a hoss thief if I ever see the like. Yer the fust man I ever struck, that hadn't done suthin' mean or been to Californy, or in the war, one or t'other. Say, pard, what's yer business?" "I am a bank cashier from New Jersey." "Jewhillikens! I knowd I'd climb yer yit. An ye've never been in quad? Well, by jinks, yer orter set 'em up!" And he did. My memory, however, fixes itself on the good. one, the noblest of the noble, the best of Old Major Willis Wormley had come in long before the new era. He belonged to the old school of Virginians. Nothing could have torn_him from the Virginia he loved, as Jacopi Foscari, Venice, but the marrying of his eldest daughter, Mary, to a gentleman of Alabama. made out of equal parts, of Uncle Toby The Major was something between, or and Mr. Pickwick, with a slight flavor of Mr. Micawber. He was the soul of kindness, disinterestedness and hospitality. Love to everything that had life in it, burned like a flame in his large and benignant soul; it flowed over in his countenance, and glowed through every feature, and moved every muscle in the frame it animated. The Major lived freely, was rather corpulent, and had not a lean thing on his plantations; the negroes; Among the numerous applications for the dogs; the horses; the cattle; the very pensions received by the commissioners chickens, wore an air of corpulent comof pensions is one sent the other day by placency, and bustled about with a goodan ex-soldier, who has discovered an en- humored rotundity. There was tirely new ground for relief. He stated laughing, singing and whistling at "Holthat he had no wounds and was not dis-lywood," than would have set up a dozen abled by disease, but while fighting in Irish fairs. The Major's wife had, from the Union ranks, at the battle of Antie- a long life of affection, and the practice tam, he lost his coat, vest, and one suspender. "The other suspender," he wrote, was my only stay and support. Imagine my dismay, when a bullet came along, AN AGONIZING SUSPENSE. more of the same pursuits, and the indulgence of the same feelings and tastes, got so much like him, that she seemed a feminine and modest edition of himself. Four for the fortunate death of a few Aunts, after whom the girls were named, who, paying their several debts of nature, left the Major the means to pay his less serious, but still weighty obligations. The Major-for a wonder, being a Virginian-had no partisan politics. He could not have. His heart could not hold any thing that implied a warfare upon the thoughts or feelings of others. He voted all the time for his friend, that is, the candidate living nearest to him, regretting, generally, that he did not have another vote for the other man. It would have done a Camanche Indian's heart good to see all the family to winter evening, with a guest or two, to excite sociability a little-not company enough to embarrass the manifestations of affection. Such a concordance-as if all hearts were attuned to the same feeling-the old lady knitting in the corner -the old man smoking his pipe opposite both of their fine faces radiating in the pauses of the laugh, the jest, or the caress, the infinite satisfaction within. daughters were all that remained in the family two had been married off and they had no son. The girls ranged from sixteen to twenty-two, fine, hearty, wholesouled, wholesome, cheerful lasses, with constitutions to last, and a flow of spirits like mountain springs-not beauties, but good housewife girls, whose open countenances, and neat figures, and rosy cheeks, and laughing eyes, and frank and cordial manners, made them, at home, abroad, on horseback or on foot, at the piano or discoursing on the old English books, or Washington Irving's Sketch Book, a favorite in the family ever since it was written, as entertaining and as well calculated to fix solid impressions on the heart, as gether-grand-children and all-of a any four girls in the country. The only difficulty was, they were so much alike, that you were put to fault which to fall in love with. They were all good housewives, or women, rather. But Mrs. Wormley, or Aunt Wormley, as we called her, was as far ahead of any other woman in that way, as could be found this side of the Virginia border. If there was any thing good in the culinary line that she couldn't make, I should like to know it. The Major lived on the main stage road, and if any decently dressed man ever passed the house after sundown, he escaped by sheer accident. The house was greatly visited. The Major knew every body and everybody near him knew the Major. The stage coach couldn't stop long, but in the hot summer days, about noon, as the driver tooted his horn at the top of the red hill, two negro boys stood opposite the door, with trays of the finest fruit, and a pitcher of cider for the refreshment of the wayfarers. The Major himself being on the look-out, with his hands over his eyes bowing--as he only could bow-vaguely into the coach, and looking wistfully to find among the passengers an acquaintance whom he could prevail upon to get out and stay a week with him. "There wasn't a poor neighbor to whom the Major had not been as good as an insurer, without premium, for his stock, or for his crop; and from the way he rendered the service, you would think he was the party obliged-as he was." This is not, in any country I have ever been in, a moneymaking business; and the Major, though he always made good crops, must have broke at it long ago, but It was enough to convert an abolitionist, to see the old Major when he came home from a long journey of two days to the country town; the negroes running in a string to the buggy; this one to hold the horse, that one to help the old man out, and the others to inquire how he was; and to observe the benignity with which-the kissing of the girls and the old lady hardly over-he distributed a piece of calico here, a plug of tobacco there, or a card of town ginger-bread to the little snow-balls that grinned around him; what was given being but a small part of the gift, divested of the kind, cheerful, rollicking way the old fellow had of giving it. The Major had given out his autograph (as had almost every body else) as endorser on three several bills of exchange, of even tenor and date, and all maturing at or about the same time. His friend's friend failed to pay as he or his firm agreed, the friend himself did no better, and the Major, before he knew any thing at all of his danger, found a writ served upon him, and was told by his friend that he was dead broke, and all he could give him was his sympathy; the which, the Major as gratefully received as if it was a legal tender and would pay the debt. |