Chapter III: Part 3

He then breathed a sigh that shook the foliage of the speckled geranium near by, and killed an artificial caterpillar that hung on its branches.

"Matrimony is all right," said he, "if properly brought about. It breaks my heart, though, to notice how Washington is used as a matrimonial market. It seems to me almost as if these here young ladies were brought here like slaves and exposed for sale." I had noticed that they were somewhat exposed, but I did not know that they were for sale.

I asked him if the waists of party dresses had always been so sadly in the minority, and he said they had.

I danced with a beautiful young lady whose trail had evidently caught in a doorway. She hadn't noticed it till she had walked out partially through her costume. I do not think a lady ought to give too much thought to her apparel, neither should she feel too much above her clothes. I say this in the kindest spirit, because I believe that man should be a friend to woman. No family circle is complete without a woman. She is like a glad landscape to the weary eye. Individually and collectively, woman is a great adjunct of civilization and progress. The electric light is a good thing, but how pale and feeble it looks by the light of a good woman's eyes. The telephone is a great invention. It is a good thing to talk at and murmur into and deposit profanity in, but to take up a conversation and keep it up and follow a man out through the front door with it, the telephone has still much to learn from woman.

It is said that our government officials are not sufficiently paid, and I presume that is the case, so it became necessary to economize in every way, but, why should wives concentrate all their economy on the waist of a dress? When chest protectors are so cheap as they now are, I hate to see people suffer, and there is more real suffering, more privation and more destitution, pervading the Washington scapula and clavicle this winter than I ever saw before.

But I do not hope to change this custom, though I spoke to several ladies about it, and asked them to think it over. I do not think they will. It seems almost wicked to cut off the best part of a dress and put it at the other end of the skirt, to be trodden under feet of men, as I may say. They smiled good humoredly at me as I tried to impress my views upon them, but should I go there again next season and mingle in the mad whirl of Washington, where these fair women are also mingling in said mad whirl, I presume that I will find them clothed in the same gaslight waist, with trimmings of real vertebræ down the back.

Still, what does a man know about the proper costume for woman? He knows nothing whatever. He is in many ways a little inconsistent. Why does a man frown on a certain costume for his wife and admire it on the first woman he meets? Why does he fight shy of religion and Christianity and talk very freely about the church, but get mad if his wife is an infidel?

Crops around Washington are looking well. Winter wheat, crocusses and indefinite postponements were never in a more thrifty condition. Quite a number of people are here who are waiting to be confirmed. Judging from their habits, they are lingering around here in order to become confirmed drunkards.

I leave here to-morrow with a large, wet towel in my plug hat. Perhaps I should have said nothing on this dress reform question while my hat is fitting me so immediately. It is seldom that I step aside from the beaten path of rectitude, but last evening, on the way home, it seemed to me that I didn't do much else but step aside. At these parties no charge is made for punch. It is perfectly free. I asked a colored man who stood near the punch bowl, and who replenished it ever and anon, what the damage was, and he drew himself up to his full height.

Possibly I did wrong, but I hate to be a burden on any one. It seemed odd to me to go to a first-class dance and find the supper and the band and the rum all paid for. It must cost a good deal of money to run this government.

A GREAT BENEFACTOR

|IT WAS not generally known at the time, but about a year ago a gentleman from Jays-burg, named Alanson G-. Meltz, opened a law office in Chicago, intending to give that city a style of clear-cut counseling, soliciting, conveyancing, prosecuting and defending, such as she had never witnessed before. He was young, but he was full of confidence, and as he pulled the nails out of the dry goods boxes, in which he had brought his revised statutes and replevin appliances, he felt ready and willing to furnish advice at living rates to all who would come and examine his stock.

But time kept on in his remorseless flight, bringing in at the casement of Mr. Meltz the roar and hum of traffic, and the nut-brown flavor of the Chicago river, but that was all. He was there, ready and almost eager to advise one and all, but one and all, without exception, evaded him. No matter how gayly he lettered his window with the announcement that he would procure a divorce for any one without pain, married people continued to suffer on or go elsewhere. Even though he had put up a transparency:

DIVORCES PREPARED

WHILE YOU WAIT!

No one called at his office, No. 61 Water street, to get one. Day after day innumerable people went by him in the mad rush and hurry of life, married but not mated, forgetting that Mr. Meltz could relieve them without publicity.

Remorseless time had rolled on in this way for three months, now and then picking out a fragment of the cornice on the new court-house and braining a pedestrian with it, when one day Mr. Meltz was solicited by the proprietor of a new remedy for indigestion and brain-fever to try his medicine. He also told Mr. Meltz that in case of cure or beneficial effects he desired to use his endorsement, and as the remedy was new he proposed to issue an edition of 1,000,000 circulars containing the endorsement of prominent professional people of Chicago.

Alanson G. Meltz bought a bottle and began using it. In three weeks the following endorsement entered over a million and a half families in the United States at the expense of the man who owned the remedy:

Chicago, Dec. 13, 1883.

Dr. J. Burdock Wells.--

Sir: I am a lawyer of this city, and for the past year have been seriously and dangerously afflicted with sharp, darting pains up and down the spinal column, dimness of sight, acidity of the tonsils and in-growing spleen. I suffered the agonies of the d------d.

I take this method of informing the world, especially those who may be suffering as I did, that less than a month ago I was in a pitiful state. I have a large practice, especially as an attorney, in procuring noiseless divorces. My office is at No. 6 5/8 South Water Street, and for years I have been engaged in this line, procuring divorces for thousands everywhere, orders filled by mail, etc., by a new system of my own, by which applicants throughout the union may be treated at a distance as well as in my office.

This had so taken up my time and engrossed my attention that, before I knew it, my health had become impaired materially, and I did not know at any time but that the next succeeding moment might be my subsequent one. With clients calling on me and pressing me by mail for their services, with persistent people hurrying and urging me for divorces, so that they could marry some one else without unnecessary delay, I was stricken down with ingrowing spleen and gastric yearning of the most violent character. My physicians gave me up. They said I could never recover. I was in despair.

At that moment, like a clap of thunder from a clear sky, came Dr. J. Burdock Wells, with a bottle of his unerring Bile Renovator and Gastric Rectifier. I took one bottle and called for another. In a little while I began to hope.

When I arose in the morning my mouth did not taste like that of a total stranger any more. In one week my eye had recovered its old brilliancy, and in ten days I was back in my office again at No. 6 5/8 South Water Street, rapidly catching up with my large business and answering all calls made upon me from all quarters. I have not only regained my health, but I have been the humble means, since my recovery, of bringing peace to many an aching heart. One man from Kansas writes me: "Your recovery was indeed a great boon to me. You have saved my life. Whenever I want a divorce again I shall surely go to you. God bless you and prolong your life for many years that you may go on spreading joy and hope again throughout our broad land, furnishing your automatic and delightful divorces to those who suffer." I can most heartily endorse Dr. J. Burdock Wells' remedy and would cheerfully recommend it to those who have tried everything else without success. I would be glad to have any or all who suffer call at my office, No. 6 5/8 South Water street, if they doubt my recovery, when they will find me removing superfluous husbands or wives absolutely without pain.

Alanson G. Meltz.

Attorney and counselor-at-law, solicitor in chancery.

Practices in all the courts. Divorces sent C. O. D. at a moment's notice. Try our home treatment for divorce.

A man who visited Mr. Meltz' office last week says that his business is simply enormous, and that he has added to his former office the gorgeous room at No. 7 1/8 People are now coming from all quarters of the globe to get Mr. Meltz to administer his divorces to them.

THE COUPON LETTER OF INTRODUCTION

|THE interchange of letters of introduction between old friends, by which valuable acquaintances are added to the list, is a great blessing, and in good hands these letters have, no doubt, been the beginning of many a warm friendship; but, like all other blessings, it has been greatly abused. I have been the recipient of letters, presented by tourists, which, it was easy to see, had been wrung from some sandbagged friend of mine--letters with sobs between the lines, letters punctuated with invisible signals, calling upon me to remember that the bearer had looked over the writer's shoulder as each sentence grew into a polite prevarication.

To those who are in the habit of giving hearty letters of introduction and endorsement to casual acquaintances, I desire to say that I am perfecting a system by which the drugged and kidnapped writer of a style of assumed sincerity and bogus hilarity will be thoroughly protected.

Let me explain briefly and then illustrate my method.

A casual acquaintance, who has met you, say four or five times, and who feels thoroughly intimate with you, calling you by the name that no one uses but your wife, approaches you with an air of confidence that betrays his utter ignorance of himself, and asks for a letter of introduction (in the same serious vein in which one asks for a match). You are already provided with my numbered Introductory Letter Pad. You write the letter of introduction on a sheet numbered to correspond with a letter of advice mailed simultaneously to the person who is to submit to the letter of introduction.

For instance, a young man, inclined to be fresh, enters your office or library and states that he is going abroad. He has learned that you are intimate with Dom Pedro, of Brazil. Perhaps you have conveyed that idea unintentionally while in the young man's presence at some time. So now he asks the trifling favor of a letter of introduction to the Emperor. He is going to see the President and Cabinet and the members of the Supreme Court before he leaves this country, and when he goes to South America he naturally wants to meet Dom Pedro.

So you fill out the right-hand end or coupon of the sheet as follows:

[International Introductory Letter System, Form Z 23.]

No. B 135,986.

New York, Dec. 25,1886.

Sir: You will please honor this letter of introduction in accordance with the terms of a certain letter of advice numbered as above, and bearing even date herewith, mailed to you this day, and oblige, Yours, etc.,

A. B.

The young man goes abroad with this letter inclosed in a maroon alligator-skin pocket-book, and when he arrives in Brazil he finds that the way has been paved for him by the following letter of advice:

[International Introductory Letter System, Form Z 23,] New York, Dec. 25, 1886.

No. B 135,986.

Sir: Mr. W------, a young man with great assurance and a maroon-colored alligator-skin pocket-book, bearing a letter of introduction to you numbered as above, is now at large. He will visit Europe for a few weeks, after which he will tour about South America. He will make a specialty of volcanoes and monarchs.

He will offer to exchange photographs with you, but you must use your own judgment about complying with this request. Do not allow this letter to influence you in the matter.

You will readily recognize him by the wonderful confidence which he has in himself, and which is not shared by those who know him here.

He is a fluent conversationalist, and can talk for hours without fatigue to himself.

You will find it very difficult to wound his feelings, but there would be no harm in trying.

Should you get this letter in time, you might do as you thought best in the matter of quarantine. Some foreign powers are doing that way.

Mr. W------has met a great many prominent people in this country. What this country needs is more free trade on the high seas and better protection for its prominent people.

I have tried to be conservative in what I have said here, and if I have given you a better opinion of the young man than his conduct on fuller acquaintance will warrant, I assure you that I have not done so intentionally.

You will notice at once that he is a self-made man, so your admiration for the works of nature need not be in any way diminished. With due respect, your most obedient servant,

A. B.

To his Imperial Highness D. Pedro, Esq.,

Brazil, S. A.

No. Z 30,805.

Sir: This letter of advice will probably precede a tall youth named Brindley. Mr. Brindley is a young man who, by a strange combination of circumstances, is the eldest son of a perfect gentleman, who now has, and will ever continue to have, my highest esteem and my promissory note for $250.

Will you kindly bear this in mind while you peruse my pleading letter of introduction, which will accompany Mr. Brindley, Jr.?

All through his stormy and tempestuous career in the capacity of son to his father, he has never done anything that the grand jury could get hold of. Treat him as well as you can consistently, and if you can get him a position in a bank, I am sure his father would appreciate it. A place in a bank, where he would not have anything to do but look pretty and declare dividends in a shrill falsetto voice, would please him very much. He is a very good declaimer. He is not accustomed to manual toil, but he has always yearned to do literary work. If he could do the editorial work connected with the sight-draft department, or write humorous indorsements on the backs of checks, over a _nom deplume_, it would tickle the boy almost to death. Anything you could do toward getting him a position in a large bank that is nailed down securely, would be thoroughly appreciated by me, and I should be glad to retaliate at any time.

Yours candidly,

Wyman Dayton.

To Mr. K. O. Peck, London.

A beautiful feature of this invaluable system is the understanding to which everybody is committed, that the original letter is entirely worthless on its presentation unless the letter of advice has been already received.

HOW TO TEACH JOURNALISM

|I AM GLAD to know Cornell University is to I establish a department of journalism next September. I have always claimed that journalism could be taught in universities and colleges just as successfully as any other athletic exercise. Of course you cannot teach a boy how to jerk a giant journal from the clutches of decay and make of it a robust and rip snorting shaper and trimmer of public opinion, in whose counting-room people will walk all over each other in their mad efforts to insert advertisements. You cannot teach this in a school any more than you can teach a boy how to discover the open Polar Sea, but you can teach him the rudiments and save him a good deal of time experimenting with himself.

Boys spend small fortunes and the best years of their lives learning the simplest truths in relation to journalism. We grope on blindly, learning this year perhaps how to distinguish an italic shooting-stick when we see it, or how to eradicate type lice from a standing galley, learning next year how to sustain life on an annual pass and a sample early-rose potato weighing four pounds and measuring eleven inches in circumference. This is a slow and tedious way to obtain journalistic training. If this can be avoided or abbreviated it will be a great boon.

As I understand it, the department in Cornell University will not deal so much with actual newspaper experience as it will with construction and style in writing. This is certainly a good move, for we must admit that we can improve very greatly our style and the purity of our English. For instance, I select an exchange at random, and on the telegraphic page I find the details of a horrible crime. It seems that an old lady, who lived by herself almost, and who had amassed between $16 and $17, was awakened by an assassin, dragged from her bed and cruelly murdered. The large telegraph headline reads: "Drug from her bed and murdered!" This is incorrect in orthography, syntax and prosody, bad in form and inelegant in style. Carefully parsing the word drug as it appears here, I find that it does not agree with anything in number, gender or person. I do not like to criticise the style of others when I know that my own is so faulty, but I am sure that the word drug should not be used in this way.

Take the following, also, from the Kansas correspondence of the Statesville (N.C.) _Landmark_:

"There were several bad accidents in and around Clear Water during my absence from home. The saddest one was the shooting of one Peter Peterson by his father. They were out rabbit-hunting in the snow. A rabbit got up and started to run. The son was in a swag of a place and the father was taking aim at the rabbit. The son at the same time was trying to get a shot at it and, not knowing that his father was shooting, ran between the rabbit and his father and was killed dead, falling on the snow with his gun grasped in his hands and never moved. He still carried that pleasant smile which he had on, in expectation of shooting that jack rabbit, when put in the grave. Wheat is selling at about 60 cents; corn, 40 to 50 cents; fat hogs, gross, 44 to 41; fat steers, 41; butcher's stock, 2 cents."

It is hard to say just exactly wherein this is faulty, but something is the matter with it. I would like to get an expression of opinion from those who take an interest in such things, as to whether the fault is in orthoepy, orthography, anatomy, obituary or price current, or whether it consists in writing several features too closely in the same paragraph.

It would also be a good idea to establish a chair for advertisers in some practical college, in order that they might run in for a few hours and learn how to write an advertisement so that it would express in the most direct way what they desired to state. Here is an advertisement, for instance, which is given exactly as written and punctuated:

Mrs. Dr. Edwards,

THE GREAT WESTERN CLAIRVOYANT,

Has arrived, and-will remain only a short time. Call at once at HOTEL WINDSOR, 119, 121 and 123 East State street, Room 19, third floor. Please take elevator.

The greatest and most natural born, and highly celebrated, and well-known all over the country, Clairvoyant, now traveling on the road, and Wonder from the Pacific coast.

Seventh Daughter of the Seventh Daughter; born with veil and second sight; every mystery revealed; if one you love is true or false; removes trouble; settles lovers' quarrels; causes a speedy marriage with one you Jove; valuable information to gentlemen on all business transactions; how to make profitable investments for speedy riches; lucky numbers; Egyptian talisman for the un lucky; cures mysterious and chronic diseases. All who are sick or in trouble from any cause are invited to call without delay.

I have always claimed that clairvoyance could be made a success if we could find some one who was sufficiently natural born to grapple with it. Now, Mrs. Edwards seems to know what is required. She was born utterly without affectation. When she was born she just seemed to say to those who happened to be present at the time, "Fellow citizens, you will have to take me just as you find me. I cannot dissemble or appear to be otherwise than what I am. I am the most natural born and highly celebrated all over the country clairvoyant now traveling on the road, and Wonder from the Pacific coast." She then let off a whoop that ripped open the sable robes of night, after which she took a light lunch and retired to her dressing-room.

Ex-Mayor Henry C. Robinson, of Hartford, Conn., if I am not mistaken, suggested a school of journalism at least twelve years ago, but it did not meet with immediate and practical indorsement. Now Cornell comes forward and seems to be in earnest, and I am glad of it. The letters received from day to day by editors, and written to them by men engaged in other pursuits, practically admit and prove that there is not now in existence an editor who knows enough to carry liver to a bear.

That is the reason why every means should be used to pull this profession out of the mire of dense ignorance and place it upon the high, dry soil which leads to genius and consanguinity.

The above paragraph I quote from a treatise on journalism which I wrote just before I knew anything about it.

The life of the journalist is a hard one, and, although it is not so trying as the life of the newspaper man, it is full of trials and perplexities. If newspaper men and journalists did not stand by each other I do not know what joy they would have. Kindness for each other, gentleness and generosity, even in their rivalry, characterize the conduct of a large number of them.

I shall never forget my first opportunity to do a kind act for a fellow newspaper man, nor with what pleasure I availed myself of it, though he was my rival, especially in the publication of large and spirited equestrian handbills and posters. He also printed a rival paper and assailed me most bitterly from time to time. His name was Lorenzo Dow Pease, and we had carried on an acrimonious warfare for two years. He had said that I was a reformed Prohibitionist and that I had left a neglected wife in every State in the Union. I had stated that he would give better satisfaction if he would wear his brains breaded. Then he had said something else that was personal and it had gone on so for some time. We devoted fifteen minutes each day to the management of our respective papers, and the balance of the day to doing each other up in a way to please our subscribers.

One evening Lorenzo Dow Pease came into my office and said he wanted to see me personally. I said that would suit me exactly and that if he had asked to see me in any other way I did not know how I could have arranged it. He said he meant that he would like to see me by myself. I therefore discharged the force, turned out the dog and we had the office to ourselves. I could see that he was in trouble, for every little while he would brush away a tear in an underhanded kind of way and swallow a large, imaginary mass of something. I asked Lorenzo why he felt so depressed, and he said: "William, I have came here for a favor." He always said "I have came," for he was a self-made man and hadn't done a very good job either. "I have came here for a favor. I wrote a reply to your venomous attack of to-day and I expected to publish it to-morrow in my paper, but, to tell you the truth, we are out of paper. At least, we have a few bundles at the freight office, but they have taken to sending it C. O. D., and I haven't the means just at hand to take it out. Now, as a brother in the great and glorious order of journalism, would it be too much for you to loan me a couple of bundles of paper to do me till I get my pay for some equestrian bills struck off Friday and just as good as the wheat?"

"How long would a couple of bundles last you?" I asked as I looked out at the window and wondered if he would reveal his circulation.

"Five issues and a little over," he said, filling his pipe from a small box on the desk.

"But you could cut off your exchanges and then it would last longer," I remarked.

"Yes, but only for one additional issue. I am very anxious to appear to-morrow, because my subscribers will be looking for a reply to what you said about me this morning. You stated that I was 'a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect,' and while I did not come here to get you to retract, I would like it as a favor if you would loan me enough white paper to set myself straight before my subscribers."

"Well, why don't you go and tell them about it? It wouldn't take long," I said in a jocund way, slapping Lorenzo on the back. But he did not laugh. I then told him that we only had paper enough to last us till our next bill came, and so I could not possibly loan any, but that if he would write a caustic reply to my editorial I would print it for him. He caught me in his arms and then for a moment his head was pillowed on my breast. Then he sat down and wrote the following card:

Editor of the Boomerang:

Will you allow me through your columns to state that in your issue of yesterday you did me a great injustice by referring to me as a journalistic bacteria looking for something to infect; also, as a lop eared germ of contagion, and warning people to vaccinate in order to prevent my spread? I denounce the whole article as a malicious falsehood, and state that if you will only give me a chance I will fight you on sight. All I ask is that you will wait till I can overtake you, and I am able and willing to knock great chunks off the universe with you. I do not ask any favors of an editor who misleads his subscribers and intentionally misunderstands his correspondents; a man who advises an anxious inquirer who wants to know "how to get a cheap baby buggy" to leave the child at a cheap hotel; a man who assumes to wear brains, but who really thinks with a fungus growth; a man the bleak and barren exterior of whose head is only equalled by its bald and echoing interior.

Lorenzo Dow Pease.

I looked it over, and as there didn't seem to be anything personal in it, I told him I would print it for him with pleasure. He then asked that I would, as a further favor, refrain from putting any advertising marks on it and that I would make it follow pure reading matter, which I did. I leaded the card and printed it with a simple word of introduction, in which I said that I took pleasure in printing it, inasmuch as Mr. Pease could not get his paper out of the express office for a few days. It was a kindness to him and did not hurt my paper in the end.

There are many reasons why the establishment of a department of journalism at Cornell will be a good move, and I believe that while it will not take the place of actual experience, it will serve to shorten the apprenticeship of a young newspaper man and the fatigue of starting the amateur in journalism will be divided between the managing editor and the tutor. It will also give the aspiring sons of wealthy parents a chance to toy with journalism without interfering with those who are actually engaged in it.

HIS GARDEN

|I ALWAYS enjoy a vegetable garden, and through the winter I look forward to the spring days when I will take my cob pipe and hoe and go joyously afield. I like to toy with the moist earth and the common squash bug of the work-a-day world. It is a pleasure also to irrigate the garden, watering the sauer kraut plant and the timid tomato vine as though they were children asking for a drink. I am never happier than when I am engaged in irrigating my tropical garden or climbing my neighbor with a hoe when he shuts off my water supply by sticking an old pair of pantaloons in the canal that leads to my squash conservatory.

One day a man shut off my irrigation that way and dammed the water up to such a degree that I shut off his air supply, and I was about to say dammed him up also. We had quite a scuffle. Up to that time we had never exchanged a harsh word. That morning I noticed that my early climbing horse-radish and my dwarf army worms were looking a little au revoir, and I wondered what was the matter. I had been absent several days and was grieved to notice that my garden had a kind of blase air, as though it needed rest and change of scene.

The Poland China egg-plant looked up sadly at me and seemed to say: "Pardner, don't you think it's a long time between drinks?" The watermelon seemed to have a dark brown taste in its mouth, and there was an air of gloom all over the garden.

At that moment I discovered my next-door neighbor at the ditch on the corner. He was singing softly to himself:

O, yes, I'll meet you;

I'll meet you when the sun goes down.

He was also jamming an old pair of Rembrandt pants into the canal, where they would shut off my supply. He stood with his back towards me, and just as he said he would "meet me when the sun went down," I smote him across the back of the neck with my hoe handle, and before he could recover from the first dumb surprise and wonder, I pulled the dripping pantaloons out of the ditch and tied them in a true-lover's knot around his neck. He began to look black in the face, and his struggles soon ceased altogether. At that moment his wife came out and shrieked two pure womanly shrieks, and hissed in my ear: "You have killed me husband!"

I said, possibly I had. If so, would she please send in the bill and I would adjust it at an early day. I said this in a bantering tone of voice, and raising my hat to her in that polished way of mine, started to go, when something fell with a thud on the greensward!

It was the author of these lines. I did not know till two days afterward that my neighbor's wife wore a moire antique rolling-pin under her apron that morning. I did not suspect it till it was too late. The affair was kind of hushed up on account of the respectability of the parties.

By the time I had recovered the garden seemed to melt away into thin air. My neighbor had it all his own way, and while his proud hollyhocks and Johnny-jump-ups reared their heads to drink the mountain water at the twilight hour, my little, low-necked, summer squashes curled up and died.

Most every year yet I made a garden. I pay a man $3 to plow it. Then I pay $7.50 for garden seeds and in July I hire the same man at $3 to summer-fallow the whole thing while I go and buy my vegetables of a Chinaman named Wun Lung. I've done this now for eight years, and I owe my robust health and rich olive complexion to the fact that I've got a garden and do just as little in it as possible. Parties desiring a dozen or more of my Shanghai egg-plants to set under an ordinary domestic hen can procure the same by writing to me and enclosing lock of hair and $10.

WRITTEN TO THE BOY

Asheville, N. C., Feb. 10,1887.

|MY DEAR HENRY: Your last issue of the _Retina_, your new thought vehicle, published at New Belony, this state, was received yesterday. I like this number, I think, better than I did the first. While the news in it seems fresher, the editorial assertions are not so fresh. You do not state that you "have come to stay" this week, but I infer that you occupy the same position you did last week with inference to that.

I was more especially interested in your piece about how to rear children and the care of parents. I read it to your mother last night while she was setting her bread. Nothing tickles me very often at my time of life, and when I laugh a loud peal of laughter at anything nowadays it's got to be a pretty blamed good thing, I can tell you that. But your piece about bringing up children made me laugh real hard. I enjoy a piece like that from the pen of a juicy young brain like yours. It almost made me young again to read the words of my journalistic gosling son.

You also say that "teething is the most trying time for parents." Do you mean that parents are more fretful when they are teething than any other time? Your mother and me reckoned that you must mean that. If so, it shows your great research. How a mere child hardly out of knee-panties, a young shoot like you, who was never a parent for a moment in his life, can enter into and understand the woes that beset parents is more than I can understand. If you had been through what I have while teething I could see how you might understand and write about it, but at present I do not see through it. The first teeth I cut as a parent made me very restless. I was sick two years ago with a new disease that was just out and the doctor gave me something for it that made my teeth fall like the leaves of autumn. In six weeks after I began to convalesce my mouth was perfectly bald-headed. For days I didn't bite into a Ben Davis apple that I didn't leave a fang into it.

Well, after that I saw an advertisement in the _Rural Rustler_--a paper I used to take then--of a place where you could get a set of teeth for $6.

I didn't want to buy a high-priced and gaudy set of teeth at the tail end of such a life as I had led, and I knew that teeth, no matter how expensive they might be, would be of little avail to coming generations, so I went over to the place named in the paper and got an impression of my mouth taken.

There is really nothing in this life that will take the stiff-necked pride out of a man like viewing a plaster cast of his tottering mouth. The dentist fed me with a large ladle full of putty or plaster of paris, I reckon, and told me to hold it in my mouth till it set.

I don't remember a time in all my life when the earth and transitory things ever looked so undesirable and so trifling as they did while I sat there in that big red barber-chair with my mouth full of cold putty. I felt just as a man might when he is being taxidermied.

After awhile the dentist took out the cast. It was a cloudy day and so it didn't look much like me after all. If it had I would have sent you one. After I'd set again two or three times, we got a pretty fair likeness, he said, and I went home, having paid $6 and left my address.

Three weeks after that a small boy came with my new teeth.

They were nice, white, shiny teeth, and did not look very ghastly after I had become used to them. I wished at first that the gums had been a duller red and that the teeth had not looked so new. I put them in my mouth, but they felt cold and distant. I took them out and warmed them in the sunlight. People going by no doubt thought that I did it to show that I was able to have new teeth, but that was not the case.

I wore them all that forenoon while I butchered. There were times during the forenoon when I wanted to take them out, but when a man is butchering he hates to take his teeth out just because they hurt.

Neighbors told me that after my mouth got hardened on the inside it would feel better.

But, oh, how it relieved me at night to take those teeth out and put them on the top of a cool bureau, where the wind could blow through their whiskers! How I hated to resume them in the morning and start in on another long day, when the roof of my mouth felt like a big, red bunion and my gums like a pale red stone-bruise.

A year ago, Henry, about two-thirty in the afternoon I think it was, I left that set of teeth in the rare flank of a barbecue I was to in our town.

Since then I have not been so pretty, perhaps, but I have no more unicorns on the rafters of my mouth and my note is just as good at thirty days as ever it was.

You are right, Henry, when you go on to state in your paper that teething is the most trying time for parents.

Ta, ta, as the feller says.

Your father.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS

George E. Beath, Areola, Ill.,-writes to know "the value of a silver dollar of 1878 with eight feathers in the eagle's tail."

It is worth what you can get for it, Mr. Beath. Perhaps the better way would be to forward it to me and I will do the best I can with it. There being but eight feathers in the eagle's tail would be no drawback. Send it to me at once and I will work it off for you, Mr. Beath.

"Tutor," Tucson, Ariz., asks "What do you regard as the best method of teaching the alphabet to children?"

Very likely my method would hardly receive your indorsement, but with my own children I succeed by using an alphabet with the names attached, which I give below. I find that by connecting the alphabet with certain easy and interesting subjects the child rapidly acquires knowledge of the letter, and it becomes firmly fixed in the mind. I use the following list of alphabetical names in the order given below:

A is for Antediluvian, Anarchistic and Agamemnon.

B is for Bucephalus, Burgundy and Bull-head. C is for Cantharides, Confucius and Casabianca. D is for Deuteronomy, Delphi and Dishabille.

E is for Euripedes, European and Effervescent. F is for Fumigate, Farinaceous and Fundamental.

G is for Garrulous, Gastric and Gangrene.

H is for Hamestrap, Honeysuckle and Hoyle.

I is for Idiosyncrasy, Idiomatic and Iodine.

J is for Jaundice, Jamaica and Jeu-d'esprit.

K is for Kandilphi, Kindergarten and KuKlux. L is for Lop-sided, Lazarus and Llano Estacado. M is for Menengitis, Mardi Gras and Mesopotamia.

N is for Narragansett, Neapolitan and Nix-comarous.

Q is for Oleander, Oleaginous and Oleomargarine.

P is for Phlebotomy, Phthisic and Parabola.

Q is for Query, Quasi and Quits.

R is for Rejuvenate, Regina and Requiescat.

S is for Simultaneous, Sigauche and Saleratus.

T is for Tubercular, Themistocles and Thereabouts.

U is for Ultramarine, Uninitiated and Utopian.

V is for Voluminous, Voltaire and Vivisection. W is for Witherspoon, Woodcraft and Washerwoman.

X is for Xenophon, Xerxes and Xmas.

Y is for Ysdle, Yahoo and Yellowjacket.

Z is for Zoological, Zanzibar and Zacatecas.

In this way the eye of the child is first appealed to. He becomes familiar with the words which begin with a certain letter, and before he knows it the letter itself has impressed itself upon his memory.

Sometimes, however, where my children were slow to remember a word and hence its corresponding letter, I have drawn the object on a blackboard or on the side of the barn. For instance, we will suppose that D is hard to fix in the mind of the pupil and the words to which it belongs as an initial do not readily cling to memory. I have only to draw upon the board a Deuteronomy, a Delphi, or a Dishabille, and he will never forget it. No matter how he may struggle to do so, it will still continue to haunt his brain forever. The same with Z, which is a very difficult letter to remember. I assist the memory by stimulating the eye, drawing rapidly, and crudely perhaps, a Zoological, a Zanzibar or a Zacatecas.

The great difficulty in teaching children the letters is that there is really nothing in the naked alphabet itself to win a child's love. We must dress it in attractive colors and gaudy plumage so that he will be involuntarily drawn to it.

Those who have used my method say that after mastering the alphabet, the binomial theorum and the rule in Shelly's case seemed like child's play. This goes to show what method and discipline will accomplish in the mind of the young.

"Fond Mother," Braley's Fork, asks: "What shall I name my little girl baby?"

That will depend upon yourself very largely, "Fond Mother." Very likely if your little girl is very rugged and grows up to be the fat woman in a museum, she will wear the name of Lily. When a girl is named Lily, she at once manifests a strong desire to grow up with a complexion like Othello and the same fatal yearning for some one to strangle. This is not always thus, but girls are obstinate, and it is better not to put a name on a girl baby that she will not live up to.

Again, "Fond Mother," let me urge you to refrain from naming your little daughter a soft, flabby name like Irma, Geraldine, Bandoline, Lilelia, Potassa, Valerian, Rosetta or Castoria. These names belong to the inflammatory pages of the American novelette. Do not put such a name on your innocent child. Imagine this inscription on a marble slab:

TRIFOLIATA,

BELOVED DAUGHTER OF

GERALD AND VASELINE TUBBS,

DIED MARCH 27,1888.

SHE CAUGHT COLD IN HER FRONT NAME.

I have seen a young lady try faithfully for years to live down one of these flimsy, cheesecloth names, but the harsh world would not have it. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and while I can imagine your little girl in future years as a white-haired and lovely grandmother, wearing the name of Mary or Ruth, with a double chin that seems to ever beckon the old gentleman to come and chuck his fat forefinger under it, I cannot, in my mind's eye, see her as a household deity, wearing a white cap and the name of Rosette or Penumbra, or Sogodontia, or Catalpa, or Voxliumania.

THE FARMER AND THE TARIFF.

|ON BOARD a western train the other day I held in my bosom for over seventy-five miles the elbow of a large man whose name I do not know. He was not a railroad hog or I would have resented it. He was built wide and he couldn't help it, so I forgave him.

He had a large, gentle, kindly eye, and when he desired to spit he went to the car door, opened it and decorated the entire outside of the train, forgetting that our speed would help to give scope to his remarks.

Naturally, as he sat there by my side, holding on tightly to his ticket and evidently afraid the conductor would forget to come and get it, I began to figure out in my mind what might be his business. He had pounded one thumb so that the nail was black where the blood had settled under it. This might happen to a shoemaker, a carpenter, a blacksmith, or almost any one else. So it didn't help me out much, though it looked to me as though it might have been done by trying to drive a fence-nail through a leather hinge with the back of an ax, and nobody but a farmer would try to do that. Following up the clew, I discovered that he had milk on his boots, and then I knew I was right. The man who milks before daylight in a dark barn when the thermometer is 28° below zero, and who hits his boots by reason of the uncertain light and prudishness of the cow, is a marked man. He cannot conceal the fact that he is a farmer unless he removes that badge. So I started out on that theory, and remarked that this would pass for a pretty hard winter on stock. The thought was not original with me, for I have heard it expressed by others either in this country or Europe. He said it would.

"My cattle has gone through a mowful o' hay sence October and eleven ton o' brand. Hay don't seem to have the goodness to it thet it hed last year, and with their new process griss mills they jerk all the juice out o' brand, so's you might as well feed cows with excelsior and upholster your horses with hemlock bark as to buy brand."

"Well, why do you run so much to stock? Why don't you try diversified farming and rotation of crops?"

"Well, prob'ly you got that idee in the papers. A man that earns big wages writing 'Farm Hints' for agricultural papers can make more money with a soft lead-pencil and two or three season-cracked idees like that 'n I can carrying of 'em out on the farm. We used to have a feller in the drug-store in our town that wrote such good pieces for the _Rural Vermonter_, and made up such a good condition powder out of his own head that two years ago we asked him to write a nessay for the annual meeting of the Buckwheat Trust, and to use his own judgment about choice of subject. And what do you s'pose he had selected for a nessey that took the whole forenoon to read?"

"What subject, you mean?"

"Yes."

"Give it up!"

"Well, he'd wrote out that whole blamed intellectual wad on the subject of 'The Inhumanity of Dehorning Hydraulic Rams.' How's that?"

"That's pretty fair."

"Well, farmin' is like runnin' a paper in regard to some things. Every feller in the world will take and turn in and tell you how to do it, even if he don't know a blame thing about it. There ain't a man in the United States to-day that don't secretly think he could run airy one if his other business busted on him, whether he knows the difference between a new milch cow or a horse hayrake or not. We had one of these embroidered nightshirt farmers come from town better'n three years ago. Been a toilet-soap man and done well, and so he came out and bought a farm that had nothing to it but a fancy house and barn, a lot of medder in the front yard, and a Southern aspect. The farm was no good. You couldn't raise a disturbance on it. Well, what does he do? Goes and gits a passle of slim-tailed yeller cows from New Jersey and aims to handle cream and diversified farming. Last year the cuss sent a load of cream over and tried to sell it at the new crematory while the funeral and hollercost was goin' on. I may be a sort of a chump myself, but I read my paper and don't get left like that."

"What are the prospects for farmers in your State?"

"Well, they are pore. Never was so pore, in fact, sence I've ben there. Folks wonder why boys leaves the farm. My boys left so as to get protected, they said, and so they went into a clothing store, one of 'em, and one went into hardware, and one is talkin' protection in the Legislature this winter. They said that farmin' was gettin' to be like fishin' and huntin', well enough for a man that has means and leisure, but they couldn't make a livin' at it, they said. Another boy is in a drug store, and the man that hires him says he is a royal feller."

"Kind of a castor royal feller," I said, with a shriek of laughter.

He waited until I had laughed all I wanted to, and then he said:

"I've always hollered for high tariff in order to hyst the public debt, but now that we've got the National debt coopered I wish they'd take a little hack at mine. I've put in fifty years farmin'. I never drank licker in any form. I've worked from ten to eighteen hours a day; been economical in cloz and never went to a show more'n a dozen times in my life; raised a family and learned upwards of two hundred calves to drink out of a tin pail without blowing their vittles up my sleeve. My wife worked alongside o' me sewin' new seats on the boys' pants, skim-min' milk, and even helpin' me load hay. For forty years we toiled along together and hardly got time to look into each other's faces or dared to stop and get acquainted with each other. Then her health failed. Ketched cold in the springhouse, prob'ly skimmin' milk, and wash-in' pans, and scaldin' pails, and spankin' butter. Anyhow, she took in a long breath one day while the doctor and me was watchin' her, and she says to me, 'Henry,' says she, 'I've got a chance to rest,' and she put one tired, wore-out hand on top of the other tired, wore-out hand, and I knew she'd gone where they don't work all day and do chores all night.

"I took time to kiss her then. I'd been too busy for a good while previous to do that, and then I called in the boys. After the funeral it was too much for them to stay around and eat the kind of cookin' we had to put up with, and nobody spoke up around the house as we used to. The boys quit whistlin' around the barn, and talked kind of low to themselves about goin' to town and getting a job.

"They're all gone now, and the snow is four feet deep up there on mother's grave in the old berryin'-ground."

Then both of us looked out of the car-window quite a long while without saying anything.