be men of facts, with no element of sentiment or humor in them, they do sometimes depart from the straight and narrow path in which they generally plod their way. This was a case in which the temptation to let a good thing go intact was yielded to, and so the dispatch got refiled for Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and the West generally, without undergoing a curtailment of its funny part. The “boys” along the line recognized its humorous side, and each had something to say. The operator at Chicago “opened” and made some flippant remark, which New York did not catch, owing to the high adjustment of Cleveland’s repeater. The natural result was that New York asked Cleveland: “What did he say?” To which the latter replied, petulantly. “Oh, go on; he said he would take sugar in his.” New York, with a laconic “i, i,” proceeded, and no more was thought of the matter until the next week, when quite a little disturbance was raised, and an inquiry instituted on the basis of the following, which had appeared in a Pittsburg paper:

“Thomas Barnard was found lying by the roadside near here yesterday, apparently frozen to death. Arrangements were made for his burial, when, to the surprise of the authorities, he revived just as he was being lowered into the grave. To-night he is sitting in the Central Station thinking of earthly things. He says he will take sugar in his.”

During the war of the rebellion I remember a similar occurrence, though hardly as funny. New York was sending an account of a battle, and was saying: “His horse was shot from under him,” when some one “broke” and said “g. a horse.” New York, evidently disgusted with the frequent breaking, did not proceed, and a mischievous chap of my acquaintance, who was reading Dr. Holmes’ “Elsie Venner,” and who was much taken with the narrative in that part where Bernard Langdon shoots Dick Venner’s horse as that worthy attempts to throw the fatal lasso over Bernard’s head, opened his key and went ahead from the book: “And the wild horse of the pampas was buried ’neath the turf by the wayside in the far off New England.” The description of the battle appeared that afternoon in the Fall River News as follows:

“His horse was shot from under him. And the wild horse of the pampas was buried ’neath the turf by the wayside in the far off New England. At least three thousand prisoners,” etc.

Mr. Simonson, of Maguffinsville, had donned his dressing gown and slippers and settled himself in front of a glowing fire one damp evening not long since, when he was aroused by a jerk at the door-bell that made him feel instinctively for his scalp, the Modoc excitement being at its height at the time. It was peculiarly aggravating, as his girl Bridget had trotted out on her ear the day before, and Mrs. Simonson had just got the two youthful scions of the house into the bed, and well converted to Morpheus, and had taken up a position near her lord to listen to the good things contained in the Atlantic. The scions awoke with one accord and a concert was at once inaugurated, as that bell let loose the dogs of war and wagged its tongue in very ecstasy. There was a din in the mansion of the Simonsons, and the head of the family arose in his wrath, and had it not been that the axe was in the cellar, he would probably have taken it along to receive the nocturnal disturber of his peace with. “With iron strides,” as the dime novels say, he reached the door to find himself confronted by a stalwart negress, whom he had engaged through an intelligence office agent to succeed the departed Bridget, but whom he had never met. There she stood grinning from ear to ear, and as he stood there aghast at the black apparition, she wagged her head from side to side, and peered into the hall as if looking for something or somebody in the background. She paid no attention to him until a decided, “Well, what is it?” brought her to the point, and she replied rather indignantly: “I’se here to see Susan Sampson, an’ I doesn’t want nuffin of you.” Susan Sampson was as near to the name as she had been able to get, and she was quickly apprised of her error, and at once installed among the kettles of the kitchen. A neighbor who knew of the episode once said to her, playfully, that he believed her name was Susan Sampson. She gave him one look, and expostulated as follows: “Now, boss, look hyar, it makes me just weak to have that mistake alluded to. I done want to hear no more about it;” and there was a determination in the way she said it, so suggestive of a kettle of suet pudding flying through the air, or a spider skurrying in the direction of his devoted head, that he never mentioned it again. “Discretion,” etc., as Falstaff says, deterred him.

About the 20th instant (March,1873), a vote was taken at No. 145 Broadway, to learn whether or not it was the wish of the majority to adopt the Continental alphabet, or adhere to the much abused but