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 a troop of riders swept down the road and roared into town; nor the bellow of Waco Johnson's shotgun as he pulled up short at sight of the hounds rushing their fallen victim, nor the cry of despair that rose, sharp as a woman's wail, when Jo Shelby's veteran and the others emptied their miscellaneous guns.

"He's dead!" Waco said, his voice catching with the sound of a sob. "He wouldn't be layin' there if he wasn't dead—all hell couldn't stop him if he wasn't dead! Some of you men carry him to the wagon, and the rest of you come with me."

One of the cowboys on top of the cattle car, unable to keep the code of neutrality at sight of this dramatic sweep of vengeance against the gang that did its fighting like a pack of coyotes, pointed to the upstairs window, and at Simpson, leaving the rest to Waco. It was as plain as words to Waco, who backed his horse off a little way and called an order to the unmentionable-pedigreed scoundrel within to show his head. As there was no head presented, nor even the breath of anybody at the curtains, Waco fired two charges of buckshot into the window and then rode up to the saloon door.

Waco called on them to come out and fight if they had the courage to turn a key. He was so engrossed in his defiance, so set in his vengeance, so determined to make that nest too hot to hold them, as he declared, that he did not see the streak of bay horse flash by, its rider leaning like a jockey in the last lap of a mighty race. Waco was so somberly set on avenging his fallen friend that he did not even turn his head when the cowboys on the car gave the girl a cheer as she flung herself from the

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 saddle where two men were lifting Tom Simpson from the sidewalk in front of the hardware store.

But the men in the saloon would not come out, although somebody was so unwise as to take a blind shot at Waco through the door. It almost grazed him, and gave him clinching evidence, if any had been wanting in his mind, that Tom Simpson's murderers were hiding there. Waco flung his long leg over the saddle and led his horse to the hitching-rack across the street; he called three men to him and gave an order in quick, firm words. He did not look toward the Railroad Restaurant, into which they were carrying Tom Simpson; if he had any thought of Eudora Ellison it was that she was safe at home with her mother, and spared the heartbreak of that melancholy scene.

Two men ran across the tracks to a freight car on the siding, opened the journal boxes and pulled out handfuls of oil-dripping packing. They came back with this, another running over from the livery stable with wire that had been cut from baled hay.

Some of the men who had pursued such of the mob as had been able to run after that devastating volley, reported that the survivors had run into the back door of the hotel. Waco stormed around there, to find that entrance barred. He gave it a kick and jumped aside, getting the immediate response that he expected. They must have pegged a dozen shots through the thin pine door.

Whether through economy, or through a modest desire to shield the doings from people on the outside, the roadside wall of the hotel dining-room-dance-hall was a solid blank. From that quarter Waco Johnson's force

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 was safe. But there were two windows in the bar on that side, set in the wall a little above the height of a man to insure the safety of patrons against such hilarious or malicious shots as their shining mark might provoke. A man on horseback might hit the middle of the floor by riding close to these windows, but those on the inside could not even see riders as they passed.

Now somebody, either overly secure in his retreat or rash beyond common sense, pulled a table or some high piece of furniture near one of these windows and began to fire on the men before the door. Fortunately the shooter's field of vision was not large, and nobody was directly in it, but this act of insolence instantly won over some of the homesteaders who had dissented to Waco Johnson's proposed scheme of action to empty that nest of villainy and retreat of vice. They said go ahead. But Waco would give them another chance. He went to the front door and summoned Kane by name.

Kane was in a rage. He was obscenely defiant, apparently drunk and past any sensible consideration of his situation. This thing never had happened before in Drumwell; he did not appear to be able to understand that it had happened now. But somebody was arguing with him; a woman, her voice terrified and pleading. His wife, Waco believed. He stepped aside to give her time.

Kane's passion arose with her appeal to open the door and turn the gun-slingers out. He replied to her pleading with a mocking laugh. There was further talk, and a scuffle, as if she clung to him; a rough answer, a curse, the sound of a blow. Waco Johnson turned back to his men.

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 "Go ahead, gentlemen," he said.

Some of the men rolled chunks of railroad ballast in the oily packing, to which they attached lengths of baling wire. Then they fired the waste, and Waco Johnson, saying he was assuming entire responsibility, took the torches one by one, swung them as a boy whirls a sling, and threw them to the hotel roof.

That was not a demonstrative crowd. Almost to a man they had been through the fire of battle, the perils of Indian warfare, the adventures of the Santa Fé Trail. Talk was such a cheap commodity they disdained it when there was serious work to be done. One had ridden the border with Quantrill—of which he said nothing to certain of his neighbors, to be sure—one had been with Custer in the Pawnee campaign; the veteran of Appomattox was there, and the man of Jo Shelby's brigade. He had seen the walls of Chapultepec and the golden beard of Maximilian, whose fate might have been less unhappy if he had accepted the unconquered Shelby's proffered help.

One and all thought of the impositions, humiliations, insults, they and theirs had suffered in that sneering, obscene, evil town, which they had shunned even to the point of hardship rather than face its ribaldry. This was the day of righteous vengeance. Within the law or beyond it, they were going to apply the remedy of purgation.

They stood by, as a man stands by a tree where a squirrel is hiding, guns ready for somebody to make a break. Within five minutes the roof of Eddie Kane's place was blazing high, and there was a sound of running in

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 the upstairs rooms, and of women's screams as they snatched their possessions to flee.

Kane was raving and cursing, drunk with liquor and fury. He could be heard struggling, his defiance breaking down in a drunken blubber when somebody threw open the front door.

Mrs. Kane came out, carrying a baby and a little bundle of something done up in a white shawl. Her face was strained with fright and suffering, her big hollow eyes were full of terror. She paused a moment, in attitude of fearful questioning. Waco Johnson took her arm kindly, and led her to the road. There she threw one terrified look behind and ran, heading directly for the little restaurant before which Tom Simpson had hitched his team.

A dealer came out, carrying a little satchel. He walked sullenly defiant between the double file of men with guns in their hands who made a passage before the door, bending his unhurried steps toward the bank. Four women followed, their cheap finery stuffed hastily into handbags, ends of apparel showing through the gaping jaws, bundles under their arms. They were frowsy, dishevelled, crying. Nobody inside was gallant enough to give them a hand.

The rafters began to burn through, the roof to fall. Waco Johnson and his men drew back for safety. Frantic in the first realization that his place was burning, Kane rushed out yelling wildly for help.

"Put it out!" be implored, his avid wide mouth dribbling, tears streaming from his red eyes, head over on his shoulder in such a grotesque posture of villainy justly

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 punished that nobody ever had been heard to express pity for his affliction.

"Git water! Put it out!" he yelped, sobered up considerably at sight of the destruction. "I've got a two-thousand-dollar stock in there! Put it out—put it out!"

Nobody spared him much attention, seeing he was unarmed, in his shirt sleeves, his vest unbuttoned, his big watch chain dangling. The collarless band of his stiffbosomed white shirt was fastened tight around his muscular, corded neck; there were dribblings of his late potations down its front. He went running circles around the cheap, flimsy building, and the public of Drumwell, guilty and not guilty, came out of its holes to witness the spectacle and laugh at a plea which was the last anybody ever expected to hear from the booze-lapping mouth of Eddie Kane.

"Git water, git water!" he yelled. "For God's sake, men, git water!"

A man came to the door waving a white handkerchief, and Waco Johnson said come out, cuss you, and say it. They had a wounded man in there, the man said; they asked permission to carry him out, and for everybody to follow, peacefully. Come on, said Waco, and come with your hands above your heads, all that were not carrying the wounded man.

Four came out carrying the lumber dealer on a table. He had a mess of buckshot in his back and looked as if he was not long for this world. Waco Johnson checked him off. The others followed, fourteen in all, some of them innocent cowboys who had not been permitted by the

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 guilty ones to leave. Waco Johnson checked them off, also. He told them to run along. There were others that he marched to the railroad, beyond the heat of the burning building, and searched with portentous eye.

Waco called a council of war over their case, and considered what to do. It wouldn't be right to shoot all of them summarily, for there must be some who had borne no active hand in the cowardly business against Simpson. They could not expect the innocent to proclaim the guilty, in fear of future vengeance, so they debated the matter gravely, not knowing just what to do. At that point in the deliberations Wallace Ramsey returned from what all thought to be the last services Tom Simpson ever would require of his friends. To inquiries, Wallace replied:

"No, he ain't exac'ly dead, but they broke his arm, and they shot him through the side, and they creased him just over the ear. The doctor says they ain't any bullets in him. They went clean through."

The doctor wouldn't say what his chances were. If the bullet that creased him hadn't busted his skull bone, he might live. Anyhow, it had pressed the bone down agin his brains and he didn't know a thing. He was down there in the back room of that little eatin' house; Eudora, she was with him.

"The hell she is!" said Waco, brightening up so greatly he might have had assurance that Tom Simpson was through the rapids, and coming safely to land.

Well, considering it all, Waco said, he guessed they'd collected enough toll.

"If he's alive, he'll go on livin'," he declared. "That

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 girl won't let him die. She wouldn't let nobody die, not even me."

Seeing there was a doubt who deserved to be shot and who should go free, Waco said, and considering that it was better to allow five guilty ones to escape what was coming to them than to go wrong on one innocent man, they'd call it a day and let it end there.

"Scatter to hell out o' here! Hunt your holes!" he said.

They went, and the guns they had left behind them in Kane's bar began to pop in the fire, and the corked bottles of liquor began to explode and, as the heat grew around them, even the beer kegs raised a head of steam and burst their thick staves with fire-muffled roar.

The building burned like a box, its construction being of the cheapest and poorest, the last thing to go being the row of thick posts which had braced the ceiling of the dining-room. These stood awhile in the swirl of fire like columns in a ruin. In the bar end of the building Kane's stock of ardent spirits tinged the fire with blue.

Waco Johnson and his companions were patrolling the fire to keep it from spreading, the nearest building being not more than a hundred feet away, the corral which Kane maintained for his customers between. They kept the planks and roof of the building, which was no other than the hardware store, from going like its neighbor, a labor in which the townsmen lent a hearty hand.

Waco was standing by when the fire had burned down to safety, thinking of going to see how Tom Simpson was pulling along, when Mrs. Kane returned. She was wear-

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 in a low sepulchral voice, she pronounced the following words:

Breathless with fear, I listened while she repeated my own expressions. The apparition seated herself opposite to me at the foot of the bed, and was silent. Her eyes were fixed earnestly upon mine: they seemed endowed with the property of the rattlesnake's, for I strove in vain to look off her. My eyes were fascinated, and I had not the power of withdrawing them from the spectre's.

In this attitude she remained for a whole long hour without speaking or moving; nor was I able to do either. At length the clock struck two. The apparition rose from her seat, and approached the side of the bed. She grasped with her icy fingers


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 ing the white shawl over her head, holding it under her chin like an old woman, although she was far from old, and not uncomely in her way. She stood looking intently at the ruins of her home, with what emotion her sad eyes did not betray to Waco Johnson. Presently, she turned to him, a deep, long-drawn sigh sounding from her parted lips.

"Thank God! it's gone!" she said.

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Waco Johnson was right about it: Eudora Ellison would not let Tom Simpson die. Mrs. Ellison arrived in Drumwell while the alcoholic bottled goods were still burning blue in the ruins of Eddie Kane's bar, having hitched a team of wild young horses to the buckboard when Eudora failed to return home, making the drive in six hours.

By that feat Mrs. Ellison won Waco's unspeakable admiration. He was utterly unable to express himself. All he could do was make a hissing noise through his teeth, like a gander, and stare at the wild team with a great amount of white showing in his eyes.

In the rooms back of Mrs. Meehan's restaurant, where she lodged certain respectable trade, being a stickler for morality outside her traffic with the jug, the two women set up their camp to raise the siege that death had laid against Tom Simpson's life. He lay unconscious four days, from a blood clot formed by the concussion of the bullet that had "creased" his temple. When his senses slowly cleared as the clot was absorbed, the doctor said he was over the hill.

The coroner, attended by Sheriff Treadwell, came to Drumwell and held inquest in due form over the Indian who had fallen before Simpson's gun at the corner of the hotel, and three others who went down in the volley that

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 JUNE 15.

Horses (hunted up).

JUNE 16.

Garden etc.

JUNE 17.

Same work.

JUNE 18.

Sunday. "Mystery" arrived.

JUNE 19.

Went to Mt. Welcome with L - p.m. for stores.

JUNE 20.

Went down to "Mystery" with Dr Bompas to find out what time the "Mystery" would return

JUNE 21.

Returned, had to went for Mr. McLeod for stores, as he was ill, & did not come to appointment, "Mystery" left.

JUNE 22.

Came home.

JUNE 23.

Work as usual.

JUNE 24.

Same. Shoeing horses, & garden. Harry came down from out station, & reports three lambs killed by wild dogs.

JUNE 25.

Sunday, Went up river to show Mr McLeod the road, &


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 Waco and his friends slammed into the mob. As the coroner brought jurymen from the county seat, the verdict was foregone. Simpson and the others were not alone absolved from all blame, but highly commended for their service to the public. And there the matter ended.

The city marshal of Drumwell was not among the coroner's cases, nor anywhere around that town. Some said he was seen to cut a horse loose when Waco and his party appeared, and ride furiously southward. He never was seen in Drumwell, or that part of the country, again.

Kane hung around a few days, moping and sullen over his loss, threatening legal proceedings against Waco and the others for burning his property. But he had lost face with the county attorney, who saw that the old order in Drumwell was overthrown for good. Kane was told he had no legal recourse, having been engaged in an outlawed business. There was no protection under the law for a saloon keeper's property, as many another one learned years later when Carry Nation and her disciples went smashing and destroying liquor joints up and down the state.

Kane had money enough stacked away in other banks than that at Drumwell, which his business sagacity did not permit him to trust unduly, to start life over again without much worry. But his way was not a straight one, give him all the rope he wanted. He took his sad-eyed wife and baby girl away from Drumwell within a week after his fiery cleaning up, to follow the railroad camps in New Mexico.

Contrary to the expectations of everybody but himself, the lumberman made a slow recovery against odds that

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 would have overwhelmed a snake. They were a hardy breed in Drumwell; the seat of their intelligence was confined to a very small area, but their vitality spread to the utmost fiber of their bodies.

But, as Waco Johnson said he hoped, if the lumber dealer wasn't killed he was cured of his crooked ways. While it would not have been advisable to leave one's beside the track in Drumwell after his recovery, any more than it would be the wisest way to dispose of that repository of treasure at the present day, it was entirely safe to leave bones.

At a great price, with little to gain but the vindication of his manhood and the upholding of a principle, Tom Simpson had brought order and respect for the security of others to that border terminus of the Cherokee trails. He had only hastened the process of time, as most men do who correct injustices and oppressions which flourish in their day. Wisely or unwisely he had stood against the stream of popular inclination there and turned it back upon itself, and now he was suffering the pangs which are too frequently the only reward of principle upheld against the contumely of men.

Mrs. Meehan, mother of Eddie Kane's wife, was no strong partisan of her son-in-law. Eddie was too free with his fists when in his cups; she had carried many a piece of beefsteak under her eye to repair the discoloration of his blows. For that she could have forgiven him, as she had gone through a long training with Meehan and accepted such usage as a male prerogative as long as he had even a remote connection with the family. A man on the outside trying such a method of emphasis would have

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 found a butcher-knife pinned between his shoulders.

So Mrs. Meehan could and would have borne these occasional taps under the eyes as a matter of family fellowship, but she could not forgive Eddie for bringing her daughter down to association with unspeakable women that he enforced upon her. "Blisters" she called them, in the railroad designation of ladies who pursued that ancient way of moral weakness and mental deficiency. They waited on the tables, danced with the cowboys, and took a commission on the drinks they were instrumental in selling, treating Mrs. Kane as one no better than themselves, her authority in that establishment being limited to watching the stairs for outgoing guests who might overlook the score.

Mrs. Meehan rejoiced, therefore, in the downfall of Eddie Kane and the fiery purgation of his house. She gave expression of her feelings with uncurbed tongue, and was kind to Tom Simpson for his indirect part in her daughter's deliverance. She made Mrs. Ellison and Eudora welcome, putting a room at their disposal, in addition to the one occupied by their patient, which was no small concession in view of the sharp increase in her business after Kane's establishment came down to ashes.

With all their nursing it was three weeks before Tom was mended enough to bear the journey home. His wounded arm had given them the greatest concern after it was found no serious result would come from the searing track of the bullet along the side of the head. The doctor believed the arm would have to come off, but he tinkered along day after day, at last declaring it would heal.

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 But it never would be an arm for quick work with a gun again, the doctor said. It would be shortened a little, very likely with a permanent crook, but for riding or driving, or even holding the handle of a plow, it would be as good an arm as any man could want. The wound in Simpson's side was not serious. A bullet had nicked his ribs and gone on. It was the shattered arm that brought on the fever and made his mending slow.

They took him out to the Block E ranch in the liveryman's spring wagon, on a bed of fresh, jolt-breaking hay, starting early in the morning, taking the whole day for it. He came through stronger than he started, cheered and invigorated by the bright sun and blue distances of that untramelled land in which he never had expected to stretch his eyes again.

During the days of Tom's convalescence Waco Johnson had been doing a lively business in bones, getting off no less volume than two carloads a week. Waco had taken the bits of the business in his teeth and was showing himself to be a competent trader, even though he had made such a late beginning in life. He hired a man to drive the extra wagon, and stimulated the homesteaders to greater efforts. He was becoming such a figure in the business world that even the station agent called him Mr. Johnson.

It was after the Christmas holidays before Tom was able to mount a wagon again and bear his part in this merry adventure among the bones. The winter was favorable to their operations, dry, clear and frosty, with occasional wild outbursts of storm and snow which blocked all vehicular operations. But these blizzards were of few days' duration, and with clearing weather the bone men

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 were on the road, eager to drive the trade to the limit of their resources before spring rains made the prairie roads impassable.

Tom Simpson's arm hung as the doctor had predicted, at an angle from the elbow of about forty degrees. This gave him the appearance of always keeping his hand hovering over his gun, although he never buckled one on again after the historic cleanup of Drumwell that day.

In Drumwell there was an air of quiescence, of stagnation, those winter days. Nobody attempted to establish a saloon and profit by the economic slack Eddie Kane's exit had brought in certain phases of the town's life. There was not a great movement of cattle in winter, very few coming to the pens for shipment, and those lean ones, feeders forced on the market by the financial pinch some drover felt.

Cowboys did not make the long rides in winter that were pleasure jaunts when the weather was soft and fair; even in Kane's prosperous days there were two winter months when the wheels stood still. Now there was nothing in Drumwell but a change of fare to tempt the most frost-proof cowpuncher out of his winter hole.

Other great changes were pending for Drumwell, in addition to the drouth of ardent spirits which had overtaken it. A bill opening the Cherokee Nation, or Strip, as it was known, to settlement, had passed congress. A few years before, Oklahoma, bordering the Strip on the south, had been similarly opened. This opening of the new country might make Drumwell or might break it, snuffing it out like a cinder under the foot. The railroad, at any event, was going on down into the Cherokee country ahead of

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 the opening, which would await the proclamation of the president, and might not come for several months.

Already the graders were gathering again at Drumwell in those late winter days, waiting the word of the engineers to go. There was a little acceleration of business with the establishment of the graders' camp, making it seem as of old, when Eddie Kane had his baby-board in front of the stretched canvas, and the jug from which his fortunes had enlarged beneath the goods box that did him for a counter.

There was some bootlegging—the term had its origin from liquor peddlers among the Indians, who smuggled half-pint bottles into the forbidden territory in their bootlegs—going on among the graders, as always. There were sordid cutting scrapes, the graders being no men for guns, and a good deal of moral depravity in general, graders being the scum of railroad life, take them where found.

But there was no great revival of hilarity in Drumwell. It seemed as if its life had been put out with the lights of Eddie Kane's hotel and bar. Mrs. Meehan had revived the jug trade of her railroading days, but that was such an unsatisfactory way of firing up as to carry little appeal to riders of the lonely places, to whom the greatest attraction was the sociability and lights, and strange phases of life attendant upon their far-spaced days of refreshment. Nobody but a soak could enjoy whisky passed out to him in a tin cup, with suspicions and misgivings.

So the days were slack in Drumwell, where the sharp lonesome yelping of lit-up cowboys was heard no more. Those who rode in now came to buy gloves and overalls, tobacco and boots. It is true that much more of their

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 money was spent for useful things than went into the channels of respectable trade when Kane's games and bar were there, but even so there were some merchants who cursed the day that shooting Englishman brought trouble to town with his load of bones.

Drumwell was safe and respectable, and business was good, but it was dead as a doughnut.

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The pardners were returning from their last trip to Drumwell with bones. They had cleared up the wreckage of the great winter kill on the Block E ranch; the homesteaders had scoured the neighboring territory, picking up the last bleached rib. So far as the partnership was concerned, that business was closed.

It had turned out a profitable venture for all involved, in spite of its painful beginning. They had made a handsome profit on the bones bought and shipped, winning wide confidence and friendship through their promptness and inflexible honesty. There never had been any hedging, once their word was passed, a thing so remarkable in those lean homesteaders' experience as to cause them to remember the bone firm with deep gratitude.

Waco and Tom, homeward bound from completing the last car they were to undertake, had made camp for the night in their most favored spot, the wooded bank of a little stream about fifteen miles from Drumwell. It was a soft warm evening late in March; the frost had been out of the ground for two weeks or more, drawing out so gradually as to leave the roads in good condition, the fields mellow to the plow. Frogs were trying out their voices for the first time since frost drove them deep into the mud; the quickening influence of springtime was in the air.

The friends were smoking by their little fire, supper

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 eaten, the dishes licked, Tom Simpson, unarmed like any farmer, never having borne the weight of a gun since rising from the painful bed where his adventures with guns had stretched him. He had no fear that avenging riders would come up the Cherokee trails to seek him; the last vicious nest of them was empty, the straws of it blown to the winds. Waco had not given up his gun, although he confessed he had no more need of it than a cow had of wings. It was strapped around him now in due and ancient form, ready for the emergency which, much as he enjoyed a little fight now and then, he knew in his heart never would rise on that border again.

Waco was thinking of that as he sat looking across the fire at his friend. How would things have been around there if the quiet man, a stranger from a far-off land, had not come when he did and cleaned up Wade Harrison's gang? How would it have been with Drumwell, insolent and oppressive to everybody who did not come there to spend in a wastrel's way, if Tom Simpson had let them throw their bluff on him? Wide open and a hummin', very likely; a little more to his personal liking than its present respectable business state, but far worse for young fellows with their lives before them and mothers at home. Great changes had come in his brief time there; greater changes were coming, all owing to the boost Tom Simpson had given them to start them on their way.

"Hell!" said Waco, breaking out in wide irrelevance to what had been running in his mind; "I've got over six hundred dollars in the bank!"

"Rich old devil!" said Tom, the inflection of affectionate admiration in his voice.

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 "It'd 'a' took me five years to work and save that much."

"Work and save?" Tom repeated, feigning astonishment. "Don't you call this life work?"

"No, I don't call ridin' around in a wagon on a soft spring seat, behind a double span of good colts work. It's recreation, as the widder woman said when she changed from worshin' to cookin'. I can see now why I never started to git rich before. I always worked so hard at work I never had no time to make money."

"Since you've got the secret, keep it up, old feller."

"I aim to," Waco said, serenely confident.

"You'll make it go," Tom said heartily. "You've made this go—we never would have got anywhere if you hadn't taken hold with both hands while I was down and out. Lucky for the company I was down and out—I never would 'a' plunged into it the way you did and made it pay from the jump."

"Oh, you go on now!" said Waco, modestly embarrassed by the praise. "What I done wasn't out of enterprise, as the feller said. It was done out of revenge on that dang lumber yard man, more than anything else. When I heard he wasn't goin' to die I laid myself out to bust up his bone business. That's why I went into it tooth and toenail."

"Oh, very well," said Tom, with his old-time, wordtossing nonchalance, so expressive of disdain for the lame deceit that Waco laughed.

"Well, it was the makin' of me," Waco said. "I never would 'a' known I had sense enough in me to start up business if I hadn't been crowded to it that way."

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 "So you'll go right on? Now, that's the ticket!"

"Yeah, if I can ship a couple of cars a month it'll beat workin' for somebody. I guess I can do that, anyhow. They'll be rakin' up bones on this prairie for a long time to come, and down in the Strip, when they open it, they'll find plenty more. Then dam' Indians they don't pick up no bones to speak of, but the boomers they'll grab 'em in a hurry when they go in. Bones is goin' to be bacon and corn-bread to some of them fellers before they make a crop, if the openin's set for September, like they say it is."

"They're pushin' the railroad down there in a hurry," Tom said. "A cowboy from down that way was tellin' me today the graders are nearly across the Strip—sixty or seventy miles from Drumwell—already, the tracklayers tight on their heels."

"Drumwell's goin' to take a boom, too, when they begin runnin' trains down into Oklahoma," Waco asserted, rather than predicted. "Them cattlemen in the Strip they'll all have to clear out of there this summer, and where in the hell they're goin' to I can't figger. It's a cinch they can't find any range in Kansas. I hate to see all that good country busted up, but I guess when I start in buyin' wheat"

"No-o-o?" said Tom in a long, wondering, delighted question.

"I aim to put me in a pair of platform scales right away, and build a little warehouse by fall. These homesteaders they're goin' to have a purty good sprinkle of wheat to sell this fall, and maybe by the time you're ready to ship what you're goin' to raise on the Block E I'll have a grain elevator of my own. Who in the hell knows?"

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 "You're a man with a vision, Waco," Tom said soberly, meaning every word. "I'm only a man with a scheme."

"You've got men breakin' up that sod, and them fields old man Ellison used to have corn in, ain't you? You're makin' a start on your scheme, ain't you?"

"But I don't know how far it will go. Even Mrs. Ellison thinks I've got a leak somewhere when I talk of a thousand, five thousand, acres of wheat. Well, I'll do fine if I get a hundred in this fall, I expect, but the big time's coming, boys; the big time's coming. You'll see this country all one wheatfield before ten years have come and gone."

"Yes, it's the right lookin' kind of ground."

"Mrs. Ellison said, when I talked of buying her ranch, you know, and she put the ice on me so hard I'm cold yet"

"Froze you stiffer 'n a corncob," Waco chuckled at the recollection. "Said no man'd ever git his hands on that land unless he married it—biddin' for me to step up and ask her. But I ain't no marryin' man at my age; not any more, Tom."

Both laughed at this, and at the memory of the widow's indignation at the proposal to sell the land she had held to through privation and lean years, going without dresses to pay the taxes sometimes. And all because Ellison had said the day was coming when the land would be worth fifteen dollars an acre. The day came when it was worth ten times that, and before there were many more gray hairs on the widow's head.

"I always suspected you was one of them lord-dukes,"

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 Waco said; "and when you spoke of buyin' out that ranch I knew it."

"Not at all," Tom disclaimed, laughing shortly at his friend's effort to establish him among the striped and ringstreaked of his native land. "As I've told you, I'm nothing less than the son of a tanner, but he's got the change to buy up two or three lord-dukes, Waco, if he took the notion to do it. Lord-dukes!" Tom repeated, chuckling deeply.

"Or whalin' princes, or something," said Waco.

"Just so. He told me when I got through roving, found something I wanted and believed I could make a go of it, he'd stake me to the price. Simple enough, what?"

"Sure," said Waco, enlightened, but not convinced that Tom was not at least a duke with a college education.

"So, as I liked the Block E ranch, I wanted to buy it. And I got sat down on so hard I'm still a bit flat."

"Runnin' it on shares ain't so bad, Tom."

"Not half bad, old chap."

Waco smoked a while, meditatively. Tom was sitting in a Turkish posture, shins crossed before the fire, hat pushed back from his forehead, chin up, his eyes on the stars, as the eyes of Kansans, native and adopted, have been fixed always in their aims of achievement, great and small.

"You know the boomers are beginnin' to come to Drumwell already, Tom?"

"Boomers? You mean people who expect to take up land in the Strip when it's thrown open?"

"Four or five fam'lies of 'em tentin' along the crick.

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 They've got a long wait ahead of 'em till fall, and if they ain't got something to live on—and no boomer I ever run into never had nothin'—they'll be in a mighty poor fix to face the winter on their claims. I reckon they'll scratch around somehow, railroad a little and cut hay, and manage to pull through. You can't kill a boomer."

"If starvation could have done it they'd have been pretty thin in Oklahoma the first year, from what I've been told. I look for a better class to come down for the opening of the Strip than rushed Oklahoma—farmers who have sold out in other places on the hunt for new land. They're always on the jump after new land out here in the west; they haven't learned how to make it last more than fifteen or twenty years."

"Land 'd last always if they'd use it out here for what it was intended," Waco said. "This prairie country wasn't made for farmin', the ground's too thin, but you could raise cattle on it a million years and leave it as good as it was when you started. I ain't knockin' farmin', but it sure gits my gizzards to see all this good country fenced off and plowed up, Tom."

"I know, old chap."

"But if I don't make a go of my business I'll bust over with the rush and grab me off a claim in the Strip. I'm out of the cattle business for good—worked at it twenty years and never owned a calf. All I had to show for that lifetime of ridin' the range from Texas to Montany when Sid Colburn fired me was three old crowbaits and a sixty-dollar saddle. Wel-l-l-l," a long, regretful sigh—"I had a good time while it lasted, anyhow."

"Yes, there were times and experiences in our cow-

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 punchin' days we'll remember happily when we're millionaires," Tom said.

"You started young, Tom."

"No, not so young. I was twenty-two when I came over."

"Wel-l-l," Waco sighed, "I'd like to line up with my navel agin the bar just once more to-night, old feller, and drink a round to the old days that's gone and the old life we're leavin'. But as we can't do it, we'll pass 'em up without regrets and say here's luck for the new."

Waco put out his hand; Tom's met it over' the fire.

"Here's luck for the new," Tom repeated the sentiment, solemnly as a rite.

"I'll have to round up my colts in the morning when we git home and rack right back to town. I've got my scales to put in and build me a little office and put my advertisement in the paper."

"We'll be sorry to see you go," Tom said.

"Oh well, I ain't jumpin' off. I'll be out now and then to see how you're makin' it."

"Of course," Tom said. He looked up quickly, the firelight glancing in his eyes like that old trick of a glimmering smile. "Do you remember the time you thought—you remarked, you know, old chap—I was married into the family, what?"

"Sure I do," Waco replied heartily. "It was a poor guess, but it was well meant."

"Just so," said Tom. "Next time you come out, old feller, it will be that way."

"The-hell-you-say!" said Waco, his delight beyond confines.

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 That called for another handshake, and an expression of regret from Waco that there was no bar to line up along and drink a round to such agreeable news. He could not have been much happier if the important change had been impending in his own state. He had much to say in praise of Eudora Ellison, his highest encomium being that she was the kind of a girl that just naturally wouldn't let a man die. There were two living examples of her determination beside that fire, he said, and he wound up his talk, complimentary and advisory, with these words, solemnly delivered as if drawn from the treasure house of a vast experience:

"Take 'em one at a time, and fur apart, Tom. That's my advice to you."

They were on the road before sunrise next morning, and at the ranch a little after noon. Eudora was at the gate to meet them, and Waco, driving in the lead, stopped his wagon between the gateposts to lean down and shake hands with her as if he had not seen her in a long, long time. There was the warmth of sincere wishes, the tenderness of sincere friendship, in Waco's eyes as he held her hand a little while, bending down from his high perch, his foot on the brake.

"Hello, Eudory,"—his voice, his tender touch, his broad-spreading red grin telling her that he knew it all: "How you likes to be a w'ale?"

Ten years and prosperity had made little change in Waco Johnson. He still wore a queer outfit half way between cowboy and country banker, although he seldom straddled a horse. Distance between his enterprises was

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 too great for that ancient method of travel, although he kept a high-stepping team and a red-wheeled buggy for town driving and short excursions in the country from his headquarters at Indian Rock, the county seat.

A railroad had been built through that country, a great trunk-line reaching out to El Paso and on to the Pacific coast. There was a station, around which a little town was growing, on Tom Simpson's ranch, and there Waco was building a tall, poured-concrete grain elevator, the walls of which were already up. It was number nine in his chain of elevators stretching across' the rich wheat belt of Southern Kansas.

On this sunny day in late June the harvest was tingeing yellow; in a week the binders would be at work, and soon the red stream of hard winter wheat would be pouring into Waco Johnson's bins. Waco was driving out with a big buyer from Kansas City, who was abroad making crop estimates and contracts. They had stopped at the margin of what seemed a sea of wheat, its distant shores invisible to the eye.

"So this is the famous Simpson ranch?" said the buyer, speaking with the satisfaction of one who had fulfilled a long desire.

"Eleven thousand acres of wheat in one patch," Waco said, nodding. "I remember when he put in a hundred and forty, and people thought he was crazy. He's the man that started the ball rollin' down here in this country—I reckon they'd been rangin' cattle over here yet, lettin' this good wheat land go to waste, if it hadn't been for that far-seein' Englishman. He made all of us down here in

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 this country. All we had to do was trail him and git rich. Couldn't help it; wasn't nothing to our credit."

"I've seen a lot in the papers about Simpson," the wheat buyer said; "pictures of his steam gang-plows throwing a furrow ten feet wide, a disc harrow hitched on behind, turning out a finished job at once."

"All ready for the drill," Waco said. "Eleven thousand acres, all in one patch. And Simpson harvests around twenty bushels to the acre where a lot of wheat farmers don't average more than fifteen. You can figger it up for yourself, and wheat at eighty-seven cents, July delivery. Some money for a farmer to slip in his sock—tell me!"

"Is that his house down there among the trees?"

"He calls it a cottage—it's only got twenty-four rooms! Yeah, that's Tom Simpson's house. His wife's a fine woman—I've knowed her since she was knee-high—well, maybe she was a little higher—but it's been a good long time."

Waco touched the mettled horses absently with the whip, treatment which they seemed to resent from the way they started off, keeping their driver's attention fixed to the muting of his ready tongue. Presently they fell to a swinging trot, and Waco relaxed, turning to his customer with a big red grin.

"Yes sir, Tom Simpson and me made our start together, right here on this ranch, haulin' and shippin' bones. Dang his old hide! named one of his boys after me. Waco. Yeah—Waco Johnson Simpson. Mean trick to play on a innocent child. Take him a long, long time to live it down."

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text: Cherokee Trails

title: Cherokee Trails


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 1

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 1


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 2

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 2


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 3

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 3


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 4

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 4


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 5

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 5


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 6

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 6


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 7

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 7


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 8

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 8


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 9

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 9


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 10

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 10


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 11

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 11


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 12

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 12


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 13

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 13


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 14

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 14


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 15

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 15


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 16

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 16


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 17

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 17


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 18

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 18


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 19

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 19


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 20

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 20


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 21

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 21


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 22

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 22


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 23

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 23


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 24

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 24


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 25

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 25


text: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 26

title: Cherokee Trails/Chapter 26


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Variants Notes


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Notes


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 Notes


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 looking after his lost sheep on way home.

JUNE 27.

Marked all sheep & lambs; & went out with Tucker & found a beautiful safe, & in every way suitable place, to move them to.

JUNE 28.

Moved flock & traps out sixteen miles to Darling Peak, & returned to Taylor's.

JUNE 29.

Could not find horses till near noon, when we returned home. The flock with all lambs, rams &c now amount to 823, three of which are not docked. - I think more jumped out of the yard than I counted, C said they did.

JUNE 30.

Two men raising stone. A brought in 39 head of cattle. Self looking after Saucy.

JULY 1.

Two men clearing well ; & repairing roof. A with cattle, after others. Self looking after Saucy, other horses, &c to the Doctor for advice.

JULY 2.

Sunday. came home.

JULY 3.

Two men raising stone, self horse hunting, A looking for


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 cattle, 43 head in.

JULY 4.

2 lads after stray cattle, & self, & Tucker putting stores in order; & other odd work,

JULY 5.

Tucker & self making nose boards, lads as above. Self taken very ill p.m.

JULY 6.

T repairing stock yard. L with cattle A - to Dr for me.

JULY 7.

T at odd jobs - A after cattle.

JULY 8.

The same

JULY 9.

Sunday.

JULY 10.

Sent T to Doctor as I was nearly out of medecine; & little better. A at odd work with bullocks &c

JULY 11.

Tucker cutting wood for garden gates. A to sheep station with provisions & told to remain there the day.

JULY 12.

T making gates.

JULY 13.

The same. A did not return, as he lent Mr. McLeod his horse & went in search of McL's.


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 Notes


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HEN I published a squib recently in which I said I was going to edit an Agricultural Department in this magazine, I certainly did not desire to deceive anybody. I had not the remotest desire to play upon any one's confidence with a practical joke, for he is a pitiful creature indeed who will degrade the dignity of his humanity to the contriving of the witless inventions that go by that name. I purposely wrote the thing as absurdly and as extravagantly as it could be written, in order to be sure and not mislead hurried or heedless readers: for I spoke of launching a triumphal barge upon a desert, and planting a tree of prosperity in a mine—a tree whose fragrance should slake the thirst of the naked, and whose branches should spread abroad till they washed the shores of, etc., etc. I thought


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 that manifest lunacy like that would protect the reader. But to make assurance absolute, and show that I did not and could not seriously mean to attempt an Agricultural Department, I stated distinctly in my postscript that I did not know anything about Agriculture. But alas! right there is where I made my worst mistake—for that remark seems to have recommended my proposed Agriculture more than anything else. It lets a little light in on me, and I fancy I perceive that the farmers feel a little bored, sometimes, by the oracular profundity of agricultural editors who “know it all.” In fact, one of my correspondents suggests this (for that unhappy squib has deluged me with letters about potatoes, and cabbages, and hominy, and vermicelli, and maccaroni, and all the other fruits, cereals, and vegetables that ever grew on earth; and if I get done answering questions about the best way of raising these things before I go raving crazy, I shall be thankful, and shall never write obscurely for fun any more).


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 Shall I tell the real reason why I have unintentionally succeeded in fooling so many people? It is because some of them only read a little of the squib I wrote and jumped to the conclusion that it was serious, and the rest did not read it at all, but heard of my agricultural venture at second-hand. Those cases I could not guard against, of course. To write a burlesque so wild that its pretended facts will not be accepted in perfect good faith by somebody, is very nearly an impossible thing to do. It is because, in some instances, the reader is a person who never tries to deceive anybody himself, and therefore is not expecting any one to wantonly practise a deception upon him; and in this case the only person dishonoured is the man who wrote the burlesque. In other instances the “nub” or moral of the burlesque—if its object be to enforce a truth—escapes notice in the superior glare of something in the body of the burlesque itself. And very often this “moral” is tagged on at the bottom, and the reader, not knowing that it is the key of the


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 whole thing and the only important paragraph in the article, tranquilly turns up his nose at it and leaves it unread. One can deliver a satire with telling force through the insidious medium of a travesty, if he is careful not to overwhelm the satire with the extraneous interest of the travesty, and so bury it from the reader’s sight and leave him a joked and defrauded victim, when the honest intent was to add to either his knowledge or his wisdom. I have had a deal of experience in burlesques and their unfortunate aptness to deceive the public, and this is why I tried hard to make that agricultural one so broad and so perfectly palpable that even a one-eyed potato could see it; and yet, as I speak the solemn truth, it fooled one of the ablest agricultural editors in America!


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NE of the saddest things that ever came under my notice (said the banker’s clerk) was there in Corning, during the war. Dan Murphy enlisted as a private, and fought very bravely. The boys all liked him, and when a wound by and by weakened him down till carrying a musket was too heavy work for him, they clubbed together and fixed him up as a sutler. He made money then, and sent it always to his wife to bank for him. She was a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to keep money when she got it. She didn’t waste a penny. On the contrary, she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a dollar in the world, and she had


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 a haunting dread of suffering so again. Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband, and so she telegraphed “Yes.” It was at the “wake” that the bill for embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild, sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: “Sivinty-foive dollars for stoofhn’ Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin’ to stairt a Museim, that I’d be dalin’ in such expinsive curiassities!”

The banker’s clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.


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ATELY there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the customary universal round of the press:

"A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional site of the Garden of Eden.

As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:

Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages."

It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating away about the practical concerns of the world’s daily life in the heart and home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of that happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our ances-


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Rh tors, the “tournament,” coming out of its grave to flaunt its tinsel trumpery and perform its “chivalrous” absurdities in the high noon of the nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great, broad-awake city and an advanced civilisation.

A “tournament” in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension of the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such a spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his powers. Brooklyn is part and parcel of the city of New York, and there is hardly romance enough in the entire metropolis to re-supply a Virginia “knight” with “chivalry,” in case he happened to run out of it. Let the reader calmly and dispassionately picture to himself “lists”—in Brooklyn; heralds, pursuivants, pages, garter king-at-arms—in Brooklyn; the marshalling of the fantastic hosts of “chivalry” in slashed doublets, velvet trunks, ruffles, and plumes—in Brooklyn; mounted on omnibus and livery-stable patriarchs, promoted, and referred to in cold blood


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 as “steeds,” “destriers,” and “chargers,” and divested of their friendly, humble names—these meek old “Jims” and “Bobs” and “Charleys,” and renamed “Mohammed,” “Bucephalus,” and “Saladin”—in Brooklyn; mounted thus, and armed with swords and shields and wooden lances, and cased in paste board hauberks, morions, greaves, and gauntlets, and addressed as “Sir” Smith, and “Sir” Jones, and bearing such titled grandeurs as “The Disinherited Knight,” the “Knight of Shenandoah,” the “Knight of the Blue Ridge,” the “Knight of Maryland,” and the “Knight of the Secret Sorrow”—in Brooklyn; and at the toot of the horn charging fiercely upon a helpless ring hung on a post, and prodding at it intrepidly with their wooden sticks, and by and by skewering it and cavorting back to the judges’ stand covered with glory—this in Brooklyn; and each noble success like this duly and promptly announced by an applauding toot from the herald’s horn, and “the band playing three bars of an old circus tune”—all


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Rh in Brooklyn, in broad daylight. And let the reader remember, and also add to his picture, as follows, to wit: when the show was all over, the party who had shed the most blood and overturned and hacked to pieces the most knights, or at least had prodded the most muffin-rings, was accorded the ancient privilege of naming and crowning the Queen of Love and Beauty—which naming had in reality been done for him by the “cut-and-dried” process, and long in advance, by a committee of ladies, but the crowning he did in person, though suffering from loss of blood, and then was taken to the county hospital on a shutter to have his wounds dressed—these curious things all occurring in Brooklyn, and no longer ago than one or two yesterdays. It seems impossible, and yet it is true.

This was doubtless the first appearance of the “tournament” up here among the rolling-mills and factories, and will probably be the last. It will be well to let it retire permanently to the rural districts of Virginia, where, it is


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 said, the fine mailed and plumed, noble-natured, maiden-rescuing, wrong-redressing, adventure-seeking knight of romance is accepted and believed in by the peasantry with pleasing simplicity, while they reject with scorn the plain, unpolished verdict whereby history exposes him as a braggart, a ruffian, a fantastic vagabond; and an ignoramus.

All romance aside, what shape would our admiration of the heroes of Ashby de la Zouch be likely to take, in this practical age, if those worthies were to rise up and come here and perform again the chivalrous deeds of that famous passage of arms? Nothing but a New York jury and the insanity plea could save them from hanging, from the amiable Bois-Guilbert and the pleasant Front-de-Boeuf clear down to the nameless ruffians that entered the riot with unpictured shields and did their first murder and acquired their first claim to respect that day. The doings of the so-called “chivalry” of the Middle Ages were absurd enough, even when they were brutally and


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 bloodily in earnest, and when their surroundings of castles and donjons, savage landscapes and half-savage peoples, were in keeping; but those doings gravely reproduced with tinsel decorations and mock pageantry, by bucolic gentlemen with broomstick lances, and with muffin-rings to represent the foe, and all in the midst of the refinement and dignity of a carefully-developed modern civilisation, is absurdity gone crazy.

Now, for next exhibition, let us have a fine representation of one of those chivalrous wholesale butcheries and burnings of Jewish women and children, which the crusading heroes of romance used to indulge in in their European homes, just before starting to the Holy Land, to seize and take to their protection the Sepulchre and defend it from “pollution.”


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Rh for supply, though it were in a wilderness, and not to disquiet themselves with anxious thoughts about it Note, Though Christ's disciples be brought into wants and straits through their own carelessness and incogitancy, yet he encourages them to trust in him for relief. We must not therefore use this as an excuse for our want of charity to those who are really poor, that they should have minded their own affairs better, and then they would not have been in need. It may be so, but they must not therefore be left to starve when they are in need.

(2.) He is displeased at their solicitude in this matter. The weakness and shiftlessness of good people in their worldly affairs, is that for which men are apt to condemn them; but it is not such an offence to Christ as their inordinate care and anxiety about those things. We must endeavour to keep the mean between the extremes of carelessness and carefulness; but of the two, the excess of thoughtfulness about the world worst becomes Christ's disciples. "O ye of little faith, why are ye disquieted for want of bread?" Note, To distrust Christ, and to disturb ourselves when we are in straits and difficulties, is an evidence of the weakness of our faith, which, if it were in exercise as it should be, would ease us of the burden of care, by casting it on the Lord, who careth for us.

(3.) The aggravation of their distrust was, the experience they had so lately had of the power and goodness of Christ in providing for them, v. 9, 10. Though they had no bread with them, they had him with them, who could provide bread for them. If they had not the cistern, they had the Fountain. Do ye not yet understand, neither remember? Note, Christ's disciples are often to be blamed for the shallowness of their understandings, and the slipperiness of their memories. "Have ye forgot those repeated instances of merciful and miraculous supplies; five thousand fed with five loaves, and four thousand with seven loaves, and yet they had enough and to spare? Remember how many baskets ye took up." These baskets were intended for memorials, by which to keep the mercy in remembrance, as the pot of manna which was preserved in the ark, Exod. 16. 32. The fragments of those meals would be a feast now; and he that could furnish them with such an overplus then, surely could furnish them with what was necessary now. That meat for their bodies was intended to be meat for their faith, (Ps. 74. 14.) which therefore they should have lived upon, now that they had forgotten to take bread. Note, We are therefore perplexed with present cares and distrusts, because we do not duly remember our former experiences of divine power and goodness.

2. He reproves their misunderstanding of the caution he gave them ; (v. 11.) How is it that you do not understand? Note, Christ's disciples may well be ashamed of the slowness and dulness of their apprehensions in divine things; especially when they have long enjoyed the means of grace; I spake it not unto you concerning bread. He took it ill, (1.) That they should think him as thoughtful about bread as they were; whereas his meat and drink were to do his Father's will. (2.) That they should be so little acquainted with his way of preaching, as to take that literally which he spake by way of parable; and should thus make themselves like the multitude, who, when Christ spake to them in parables, seeing, saw not, and hearing, heard not, ch. 13. 13.

IV. The rectifying of the mistake by this reproof; (v. 12.) Then understood they what he meant. Note, Christ therefore shows us our folly and weakness, that we may stir up ourselves to take things right. He did not tell them expressly what he meant, but repeated what he had said, that they should beware of the leaven; and so obliged them, by comparing this with his other discourses, to arrive at the sense of it in their own thoughts. Thus Christ teaches by the Spirit of wisdom in the heart, opening the understanding to the Spirit of revelation in the word. And those truths are most precious, which we have thus digged for, and have found out after some mistakes. Though Christ did not tell them plainly, yet now they were aware that by the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he meant their doctrine and way, which were corrupt and vicious, but, as they managed them, very apt to insinuate themselves into the minds of men like leaven, and to eat like a canker. They were leading men, and were had in reputation, which made the danger of infection by their errors the greater. In our age, we may reckon atheism and deism to be the leaven of the Sadducees, and popery to be the leaven of the Pharisees, against both which it concerns all christians to stand upon their guard.

13. When Jesus came into the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am? 14. And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15. He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 16. And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. 17. And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18. And I say also unto thee, that thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 20. Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

We have here a private conference which Christ had with his disciples concerning himself. It was in the coasts of Cesarea Philippi, the utmost borders of the land of Canaan northward; there in that remote corner, perhaps, there was less flocking after him than in other places, which gave him leisure for this private conversation with his disciples. Note, When ministers are abridged in their public work, they should endeavour to do the more in their own families.

Christ is here catechising his disciples.

I. He inquires what the opinions of others were concerning him; Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?

1. He calls himself the Son of man; which may be taken either, (1.) As a title common to him with others. He was called, and justly, the Son of God, for so he was; (Luke 1. 35.) but he called himself the Son of man; for he is really and truly "Man, made of a woman." In courts of honour, it is a role to distinguish men by their highest titles; but Christ, having now emptied himself, though he was the Son of God, will be known by the style and title of the Son of man. Ezekiel was often called so to keep him humble: Christ called himself so, to show that he was humble. Or, (2.) As a title peculiar to him as


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 “For sale, for the benefit of the Fund for the Relief of the Widows and Orphans of Deceased Firemen, a Curious Ancient Bedouin Pipe, procured at the city of Endor in Palestine, and believed to have once belonged to the justly-renowned Witch of Endor. Parties desiring to examine this singular relic with a view to purchasing, can do so by calling upon Daniel S., 119 and 121 William street, New York.” S per advertisement in the “Herald.” A curious old relic indeed, as I had a good personal right to know. In a single instant of time, a long drawn panorama of sights and scenes in the Holy Land flashed through my memory—town and grove, desert, camp, and caravan clattering after each other and disappearing, leaving me with a little of the surprised and dizzy feeling which I have experienced at sundry times when a long express train has overtaken me at some quiet curve and gone whizzing,


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 car by car, around the corner and out of sight. In that prolific instant I saw again all the country from the Sea of Galilee and Nazareth clear to Jerusalem, and thence over the hills of Judea and through the Vale of Sharon to Joppa, down by the ocean. Leaving out unimportant stretches of country and details of incident, I saw and experienced the following described matters and things. Immediately three years fell away from my age, and a vanished time was restored to me—September, 1867. It was a flaming Oriental day—this one that had come up out of the past and brought along its actors, its stage-properties, and scenic effects—and our party had just ridden through the squalid hive of human vermin which still holds the ancient Biblical name of Endor; I was bringing up the rear on my grave four-dollar steed, who was about beginning to compose himself for his usual noon nap. My! only fifteen minutes before how the black, mangy, nine-tenths naked, ten-tenths filthy, ignorant, bigoted, besotted, hungry, lazy, malignant,


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 screeching, crowding, struggling, wailing, begging, cursing, hateful spawn of the original Witch had swarmed out of the caves in the rocks and the holes and crevices in the earth, and blocked our horses’ way, besieged us, threw themselves in the animals’ path, clung to their manes, saddle-furniture, and tails, asking, beseeching, demanding “bucksheesh! bucksheesh! ” We had rained small copper Turkish coins among them, as fugitives fling coats and hats to pursuing wolves, and then had spurred our way through as they stopped to scramble for the largess. I was fervently thankful when we had gotten well up on the desolate hillside and outstripped them and left them jawing and gesticulating in the rear. What a tempest had seemingly gone roaring and crashing by me and left its dull thunders pulsing in my ears!

I was in the rear, as I was saying. Our pack-mules and Arabs were far ahead, and Dan, Jack, Moult, Davis, Denny, Church, and Birch (these names will do as well as any to


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 represent the boys) were following close after them. As my horse nodded to rest, I heard a sort of panting behind me, and turned and saw that a tawny youth from the village had overtaken me—a true remnant and representative of his ancestress the Witch—a galvanised scurvy, wrought into the human shape and garnished with ophthalmia and leprous scars—an airy creature with an invisible shirt-front that reached below the pit of his stomach, and no other clothing to speak of except a tobacco-pouch, an ammunition-pocket, and a venerable gun, which was long enough to club any game with that came within shooting distance, but far from efficient as an article of dress.

I thought to myself, “Now this disease with a human heart in it is going to shoot me.” I smiled in derision at the idea of a Bedouin daring to touch off his great-grandfather's rusty gun and getting his head blown off for his pains. But then it occurred to me, in simple school-boy language, “Suppose he should take deliberate aim and 'haul off' and fetch me with


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 the butt-end of it?” There was wisdom in that view of it, and I stopped to parley. I found he was only a friendly villain who wanted a trifle of bucksheesh, and after begging what he could get in that way, was perfectly willing to trade off everything he had for more. I believe he would have parted with his last shirt for bucksheesh if he had had one. He was smoking the “humbliest” pipe I ever saw—a dingy, funnel-shaped, red-clay thing, streaked and grimed with oil and tears of tobacco, and with all the different kinds of dirt there are, and thirty per cent. of them peculiar and indigenous to Endor and perdition. And rank? I never smelt anything like it. It withered a cactus that stood lifting its prickly hands aloft beside the trail. It even woke up my horse. I said I would take that. It cost me a franc, a Russian kopek, a brass button, and a slate pencil; and my spendthrift lavishness so won upon the son of the desert that he passed over his pouch of most unspeakably villainous tobacco to me as a free gift. What a pipe it was, to be sure! It had a


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 rude brass-wire cover to it, and a little coarse iron chain suspended from the bowl, with an iron splinter attached to loosen up the tobacco and pick your teeth with. The stem looked like the half of a slender walking-stick with the bark on.

I felt that this pipe had belonged to the original Witch of Endor as soon as I saw it; and as soon as I smelt it, I knew it. Moreover, I asked the Arab cub in good English if it was not so, and he answered in good Arabic that it was. I woke up my horse and went my way, smoking. And presently I said to myself reflectively, “If there is anything that could make a man deliberately assault a dying cripple, I reckon may be an unexpected whiff from this pipe would do it.” I smoked along till I found I was beginning to lie, and project murder, and steal my own things out of one pocket and hide them in another; and then I put up my treasure, took off my spurs and put them under my horse's tail, and shortly came tearing through our caravan like a hurricane.


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From that time forward, going to Jerusalem, the Dead Sea, and the Jordan, Bethany, Bethlehem, and everywhere, I loafed contentedly in the rear and enjoyed my infamous pipe and revelled in imaginary villany. But at the end of two weeks we turned our faces toward the sea and journeyed over the Judean hills, and through rocky defiles, and among the scenes that Samson knew in his youth, and by and by we touched level ground just at night, and trotted off cheerily over the plain of Sharon. It was perfectly jolly for three hours, and we whites crowded along together, close after the chief Arab muleteer (all the pack-animals and the other Arabs were miles in the rear), and we laughed, and chatted, and argued hotly about Samson, and whether suicide was a sin or not, since Paul speaks of Samson distinctly as being saved and in heaven. But by and by the night air, and the duskiness, and the weariness of eight hours in the saddle, began to tell, and conversation flagged and finally died out utterly. The squeak-squeaking of the saddles


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 grew very distinct; occasionally somebody sighed, or started to hum a tune and gave it up; now and then a horse sneezed. These things only emphasised the solemnity and the stillness. Everybody got so listless that for once I and my dreamer found ourselves in the lead. It was a glad, new sensation, and I longed to keep the place forevermore. Every little stir in the dingy cavalcade behind made me nervous. Davis and I were riding side by side, right after the Arab. About 11 o'clock it had become really chilly, and the dozing boys roused up and began to inquire how far it was to Ramlah yet, and to demand that the Arab hurry along faster. I gave it up then, and my heart sank within me, because of course they would come up to scold the Arab. I knew I had to take the rear again. In my sorrow I unconsciously took to my pipe, my only comfort. As I touched the match to it the whole company came lumbering up and crowding my horse's rump and flanks. A whiff of smoke drifted back over my shoulder, and—


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“The suffering Moses!”

“Whew!”

“By George, who opened that graveyard?”

“Boys, that Arab's been swallowing something dead!”

Right away there was a gap behind us. Whiff after whiff sailed airily back, and each one widened the breach. Within fifteen seconds the barking, and gasping, and sneezing, and coughing of the boys, and their angry abuse of the Arab guide, had dwindled to a murmur, and Davis and I were alone with the leader. Davis did not know what the matter was, and don't to this day. Occasionally he caught a faint film of the smoke and fell to scolding at the Arab and wondering how long he had been decaying in that way. Our boys kept on dropping back further and further, till at last they were only in hearing, not in sight. And every time they started gingerly forward to reconnoitre—or shoot the Arab, as they proposed to do—I let them get within good fair range of my relic (she would carry seventy


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 yards with wonderful precision), and then wafted a whiff among them that sent them gasping and strangling to the rear again. I kept my gun well charged and ready, and twice within the hour I decoyed the boys right up to my horse's tail, and then with one malarious blast emptied the saddles, almost. I never heard an Arab abused so in my life. He really owed his preservation to me, because for one entire hour I stood between him and certain death. The boys would have killed him if they could have got by me.

By and by, when the company were far in the rear, I put away my pipe—I was getting fearfully dry and crisp about the gills and rather blown with good diligent work—and spurred my animated trance up alongside the Arab and stopped him and asked for water. He unslung his little gourd-shaped earthenware jug, and I put it under my moustache and took a long, glorious, satisfying draught. I was going to scour the mouth of the jug a little, but I saw that I had brought the whole


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52 train together once more by my delay, and that they were all anxious to drink too—and would have been long ago if the Arab had not pretended that he was out of water. So I hastened to pass the vessel to Davis. He took a mouthful, and never said a word, but climbed off his horse and lay down calmly in the road. I felt sorry for Davis. It was too late now, though, and Dan was drinking. Dan got down too, and hunted for a soft place. I thought I heard Dan say, “That Arab's friends ought to keep him in alcohol or else take him out and bury him somewhere.” All the boys took a drink and climbed down. It is not well to go into further particulars. Let us draw the curtain upon this act.

Well, now, to think that after three changing years I should hear from that curious old relic again, and see Dan advertising it for sale for the benefit of a benevolent object. Dan is not treating that present right. I gave that pipe to him for a keepsake. However, he


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 probably finds that it keeps away custom and interferes with business. It is the most convincing inanimate object in all this part of the world, perhaps. Dan and I were room-mates in all that long “Quaker City” voyage, and whenever I desired to have a little season of privacy I used to fire up on that pipe and persuade Dan to go out; and he seldom waited to change his clothes, either. In about a quarter, or from that to three-quarters of a minute, he would be propping up the smoke-stack on the upper deck and cursing. I wonder how the faithful old relic is going to sell?


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ow that corpse [said the undertaker, patting the folded hands of the deceased approvingly] was a brick—every way you took him he was a brick. He was so real accommodating, and so modest-like and simple in his last moments. Friends wanted metallic burial case—nothing else would do. I couldn't get it. There warn't going to be time—anybody could see that. Corpse said never mind, shake him up some kind of a box he could stretch out in comfortable, he warn't particular 'bout the general style of it. Said he went more on room than style, any way, in the last final container. Friends wanted a silver door-plate on the coffin, signifying who he was and wher' he was from. Now you know a fellow couldn't roust out such a gaily thing as that in a little country


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 town like this. What did corpse say? Corpse said, whitewash his old canoe and dob his address and general destination onto it with a blacking brush and a stencil plate, long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and p'int him for the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him skip along. He warn't distressed any more than you be—on the contrary just as carm and collected as a hearse-horse; said he judged that wher' he was going to, a body would find it considerable better to attract attention by a picturesque moral character than a natty burial case with a swell doorplate on it. Splendid man, he was. I'd druther do for a corpse like that 'n any I've tackled in seven year. There's some satisfaction in buryin' a man like that. You feel that what you're doing is appreciated. Lord bless you, so's he got planted before he sp'iled, he was perfectly satisfied; said his relations meant well, perfectly well, but all them preparations was bound to delay the thing more or less, and he didn't wish to be kept layin' round. You


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 never see such a clear head as what he had—and so carm and so cool. Just a hunk of brains—that is what he was. Perfectly awful. It was a ripping distance from one end of that man's head to t'other. Often and over again he's had brain fever a-raging in one place, and the rest of the pile didn't know anything about it—didn't affect it any more than an Injun insurrection in Arizona affects the Atlantic States. Well, the relations they wanted a big funeral, but corpse said he was down on flummery—didn't want any procession—fill the hearse full of mourners, and get out a stern line and tow him behind. He was the most down on style of any remains I ever struck. A beautiful, simple-minded creature—it was what he was, you can depend on that. He was just set on having things the way he wanted them, and he took a solid comfort in laying his little plans. He had me measure him and take a whole raft of directions; then he had a minister stand up behind a long box with a tablecloth over it and read his funeral sermon, saying


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 ‘Angcore, angcore!’ at the good places, and making him scratch out every bit of brag about him, and all the hifalutin; and then he made them trot out the choir so’s he could help them pick out the tunes for the occasion, and he got them to sing ‘Pop Goes the Weasel,’ because he'd always liked that tune when he was downhearted, and solemn music made him sad; and when they sung that with tears in their eyes (because they all loved him), and his relations grieving around, he just laid there as happy as a bug, and trying to beat time and showing all over how much he enjoyed it; and presently he got worked up and excited; and tried to join in, for mind you he was pretty proud of his abilities in the singing line; but the first time he opened his mouth and was just going to spread himself, his breath took a walk. I never see a man snuffed out so sudden. Ah, it was a great loss—it was a powerful loss to this poor little one-horse town. Well, well, well, I hain’t got time to be palavering along here—got to nail on the lid and mosey along with him; and if


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 you’ll just give me a lift we’ll skeet him into the hearse and meander along. Relations bound to have it so—don’t pay no attention to dying injunctions, minute a corpse’s gone; but if I had my way, if I didn’t respect his last wishes and tow him behind the hearse, I'll be cuss’d. I consider that whatever a corpse wants done for his comfort is a little enough matter, and a man hain’t got no right to deceive him or take advantage of him—and whatever a corpse trusts me to do I’m a-going to do, you know, even if it’s to stuff him and paint him yaller and keep him for a keepsake—you hear me!”

He cracked his whip and went lumbering away with his ancient ruin of a hearse, and I continued my walk with a valuable lesson learned—that a healthy and wholesome cheerfulness is not necessarily impossible to any occupation. The lesson is likely to be lasting, for it will take many months to obliterate the memory of the remarks and circumstances that impressed it.


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The latest report about the Spanish crown is, that it will now be offered to Prince Alfonso, the second son of the King of Portugal, who is but five years of age. The Spaniards have hunted through all the nations of Europe for a King. They tried to get a Portuguese in the person of Dom-Luis, who is an old ex-monarch; they tried to get an Italian, in the person of Victor Emanuel’s young son, the Duke of Genoa; they tried to get a Spaniard, in the person of Espartero, who is an octogenarian. Some of them desired a French Bourbon, Montpensier; some of them a Spanish Bourbon, the Prince of Asturias; some of them an English prince, one of the sons of Queen Victoria. They have just tried to get the German Prince Leopold; but they have thought it better to give him up than take a war along with him. It is a long time since we first suggested to them to try an American ruler. We can offer them a large number of able and experienced sovereigns to pick from men skilled in statesmanship, versed in the science of government, and adepts in all the arts of administration—men who could wear the crown with dignity and rule the kingdom at a reasonable expense.


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There is not the least danger of Napoleon threatening them if they take an American sovereign; in fact, we have no doubt he would be pleased to support such a candidature. We are unwilling to mention names—though we have a man in our eye whom we wish they had in theirs.—New York Tribune.

T would be but an ostentation of modesty to permit such a pointed reference to myself to pass unnoticed. This is the second time that The Tribune (no doubt sincerely looking to the best interests of Spain and the world at large) has done me the great and unusual honour to propose me as a fit person to fill the Spanish throne. Why The Tribune should single me out in this way from the midst of a dozen Americans of higher political prominence, is a problem which I cannot solve. Beyond a somewhat intimate knowledge of Spanish history and a profound veneration for its great names and illustrious deeds, I feel that I possess no merit that should peculiarly recommend me to this royal distinction. I cannot deny that Spanish history has


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 always been mother's milk to me. I am proud of every Spanish achievement, from Hernando Cortes's victory at Thermopylae down to Vasco Nunez de Balboa's discovery of the Atlantic ocean; and of every splendid Spanish name, from Don Quixote and the Duke of Wellington down to Don Caesar de Bazan. However, these little graces of erudition are of small consequence, being more showy than serviceable.

In case the Spanish sceptre is pressed upon me—and the indications unquestionably are that it will be—I shall feel it necessary to have certain things set down and distinctly understood beforehand. For instance: My salary must be paid quarterly in advance. In these unsettled times it will not do to trust. If Isabella had adopted this plan, she would be roosting on her ancestral throne to-day, for the simple reason that her subjects never could have raised three months of a royal salary in advance, and of course they could not have discharged her until they had squared up with her. My salary must be paid in gold; when greenbacks


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 are fresh in a country, they are too fluctuating. My salary has got to be put at the ruling market rate; I am not going to cut under on the trade, and they are not going to trail me a long way from home and then practise on my ignorance and play me for a royal North Adams Chinaman, by any means. As I understand it, imported kings generally get five millions a year and house-rent free. Young George of Greece gets that. As the revenues only yield two millions, he has to take the national note for considerable; but even with things in that sort of shape he is better fixed than he was in Denmark, where he had to eternally stand up because he had no throne to sit on, and had to give bail for his board, because a royal apprentice gets no salary there while he is learning his trade. England is the place for that. Fifty thousand dollars a year Great Britain pays on each royal child that is born, and this is increased from year to year as the child becomes more and more indispensable to his country. Look at Prince Arthur.


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 At first he only got the usual birth-bounty; but now that he has got so that he can dance, there is simply no telling what wages he gets.

I should have to stipulate that the Spanish people wash more and endeavour to get along with less quarantine. Do you know, Spain keeps her ports fast locked against foreign traffic three-fourths of each year, because one day she is scared about the cholera, and the next about the plague, and next the measles, next the hooping cough, the hives, and the rash? but she does not mind leonine leprosy and elephantiasis any more than a great and enlightened civilisation minds freckles. Soap would soon remove her anxious distress about foreign distempers. The reason arable land is so scarce in Spain is because the people squander so much of it on their persons, and then when they die it is improvidently buried with them.

I should feel obliged to stipulate that Marshal Serrano be reduced to the rank of constable, or even roundsman. He is no longer fit


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 to be City Marshal. A man who refused to be king because he was too old and feeble, is ill qualified to help sick people to the station-house when they are armed and their form of delirium tremens is of the exuberant and demonstrative kind.

I should also require that a force be sent to chase the late Queen Isabella out of France. Her presence there can work no advantage to Spain, and she ought to be made to move at once; though, poor thing, she has been chaste enough heretofore—for a Spanish woman.

I should also require that—

I am at this moment authoritatively informed that “The Tribune” did not mean me, after all. Very well, I do not care two cents.


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NE calamity to which the death of Mr. Dickens dooms this country has not awakened the concern to which its gravity entitles it. We refer to the fact that the nation is to be lectured to death and read to death all next winter, by Tom, Dick, and Harry, with poor lamented Dickens for a pretext. All the vagabonds who can spell will afflict the people with “readings” from Pickwick and Copperfield, and all the insignificants who have been ennobled by the notice of the great novelist or transfigured by his smile will make a marketable commodity of it now, and turn the sacred reminiscence to the practical use of procuring bread and butter. The lecture rostrums will fairly swarm with these fortunates. Already the signs of it are perceptible. Behold how the unclean creatures are wending toward the dead lion and gathering to the feast:


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“Reminiscences of Dickens.” A lecture. By John Smith, who heard him read eight times.

“Remembrances of Charles Dickens.” A lecture. By John Jones, who saw him once in a street car and twice in a barber shop.

“Recollections of Mr. Dickens.” A lecture. By John Brown, who gained a wide fame by writing deliriously appreciative critiques and rhapsodies upon the great author's public readings; and who shook hands with the great author upon various occasions, and held converse with him several times.

“Readings from Dickens.” By John White, who has the great delineator's style and manner perfectly, having attended all his readings in this country and made these things a study, always practising each reading before retiring, and while it was hot from the great delineator's lips. Upon this occasion Mr. W. will exhibit the remains of a cigar which he saw Mr. Dickens smoke. This Relic is kept in a solid silver box made purposely for it.


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“Sights and Sounds of the Great Novelist.” A popular lecture. By John Gray, who waited on his table all the time he was at the Grand Hotel, New York, and still has in his possession and will exhibit to the audience a fragment of the Last Piece of Bread which the lamented author tasted in this country.

“Heart Treasures of Precious Moments with Literature's Departed Monarch.” A lecture. By Miss Serena Amelia Tryphenia McSpadden, who still wears, and will always wear, a glove upon the hand made sacred by the clasp of Dickens. Only Death shall remove it.

“Readings from Dickens.” By Mrs. J. O'Hooligan Murphy, who washed for him.

“Familiar Talks with the Great Author.” A narrative lecture. By John Thomas, for two weeks his valet in America.

And so forth, and so on. This isn't half the list. The man who has a “Toothpick once used by Charles Dickens” will have to have a hearing; and the man who “once rode in an omnibus with Charles Dickens;” and the lady to whom


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 Charles Dickens “granted the hospitalities of his umbrella during a storm;” and the person who “possesses a hole which once belonged in a handkerchief owned by Charles Dickens.” Be patient and long-suffering, good people, for even this does not fill up the measure of what you must endure next winter. There is no creature in all this land who has had any personal relations with the late Mr. Dickens, however slight or trivial, but will shoulder his way to the rostrum and inflict his testimony upon his helpless countrymen. To some people it is fatal to be noticed by greatness.


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HEN I get old and ponderously respectable, only one thing will be able to make me truly happy, and that will be to be put on the Venerable Tone-Imparting committee of the city of New York, and have nothing to do but sit on the platform, solemn and imposing, along with Peter Cooper, Horace Greeley, etc., etc., and shed momentary fame at second hand on obscure lecturers, draw public attention to lectures which would otherwise clack eloquently to sounding emptiness, and subdue audiences into respectful hearing of all sorts of unpopular and outlandish dogmas and isms. That is what I desire for the cheer and gratification of my gray hairs. Let me but sit up there with those fine relics of the Old Red Sandstone Period and give Tone to


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 an intellectual entertainment twice a week, and be so reported, and my happiness will be complete. Those men have been my envy for a long, long time. And no memories of my life are so pleasant as my reminiscence of their long and honorable career in the Tone-imparting service. I can recollect that first time I ever saw them on the platforms just as well as I can remember the events of yesterday. Horace Greeley sat on the right, Peter Cooper on the left, and Thomas Jefferson, Red Jacket, Benjamin Franklin, and John Hancock sat between them. This was on the 22d of December, 1799, on the occasion of the state' funeral of George Washington in New York. It was a great day, that—a great day, and a very, very sad one. I remember that Broadway was one mass of black crape from Castle Garden nearly up to where the City Hall now stands. The next time I saw these gentlemen officiate was at a ball given for the purpose of procuring money and medicines for the sick and wounded soldiers and sailors. Horace


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 Greeley occupied one side of the platform on which the musicians were exalted, and Peter Cooper the other. There were other Tone-imparters attendant upon the two chiefs, but I have forgotten their names now. Horace Greeley, gray-haired and beaming, was in sailor costume—white duck pants, blue shirt, open at the breast, large neckerchief, loose as an ox-bow, and tied with a jaunty sailor knot, broad turnover collar with star in the corner, shiny black little tarpaulin hat roosting daintily far back on head, and flying two gallant long ribbons. Slippers on ample feet, round spectacles on benignant nose, and pitchfork in hand, completed Mr. Greeley, and made him, in my boyish admiration, every inch a sailor, and worthy to be the honored great-grandfather of the Neptune he was so ingeniously representing. I shall never forget him. Mr. Cooper was dressed as a general of militia, and was dismally and oppressively warlike. I neglected to remark, in the proper place, that the soldiers and sailors in whose aid the ball was