without further ceremony, and the captain fishing his four cents out of his pocket surmounted them with the borrowed one, pushed the column forward, and said, briskly, “Jim, give me a beer.”

While he leisurely drank it the bartender watched him narrowly, and as De Costa sat the glass down the former dropped into the till the five cents which he had, meantime, held mechanically in his hand, and ejaculated: “Well, Sandy, that is pretty good, too. Have one with me.” And he had one. It must have been three months after this that De Costa made his reappearance as a member of the regular night force at No. 145 Broadway. He had been receiving from some rapid sender in Washington all the evening, and about ten o’clock a number of the operators gathered about him and were admiring his beautiful copy. One of them who had been timing the sending finally said: “Good work; forty-three words a minute for the last five minutes.” At this the captain opened his key for the first time that night, and feelingly said: “There is no merit in being a good telegrapher. It is born in some men just as poetry is, or sweetness in a woman. But I’ll tell you what does require brains; to get three beers and a ride home on a street car for nine cents. I did that, fellow circuit busters,” and then he told us how, as herein related.

In one of the delightful sketches penned by Major Winthrop, author of “Canoe and Saddle,” “Cecil Dreme” and other charming books, it is narrated that as one of the early regiments was about leaving New York for the seat of war, the equanimity of the officers in command was considerably disturbed by the turbulance of a high private in the rear rank, a regular Bowery production, who carried a small, ugly canine in his arms. His remarks were addressed to the crowd of spectators, and were confined to this one inquiry: “I say, bully, will some ere feller take this ere dawg.” Although this episode is wholly irrevelant to what I am about to tell, it is suggested by a local incident, probably because both have a “dawg” foundation. There resides in Maguffinsville a youth of tender years, whose consuming ambition for a long time has been to possess a canine. I am not advised as to whether he preferred poodle, mastiff, or spaniel, or the “yallar dog” which Dr. Holmes makes figure so prominently in “Elsie Venner,” but it was a dog at all events. Unfortunately for our youthful hero, his parents did not consider a dog requisite to the happiness of their chubby offspring, and so the matter rested until the other day, when our little friend, like William Nye, renowned in song, took matters into his own hands. On his way to the paternal domicile, he encountered the defunct body of somebody’s whilom favorite, frozen as stiff as a patent poker. Manfully he took the deceased in his arms and tugged him home. The load was heavy, but the little fellow was armed with a motive, and the word “fail” was erased from his vocabulary. In course of time he reached the ancestral shades of his father’s residence, and greeted his astonished mother with the information that he had got a dog at last. He knew he was frozen, but he purposed to thaw him out and have him for his own. Narratives of how snakes are roused from the lethargy produced by cold, when heat is applied, had probably given him a hypothesis for his theory, but though he was sanguine of success, and deserved it for his pains, it is quite needless to add that the spirit of that doggy still soars in infinite space.

There could be no better illustrations of the progressiveness of the age than are afforded every day in the routine of a telegraphist’s duty. Time was, and I remember it sadly, when your provincial novice did not plume himself on his familiarity with the ways of city men. Content was he to have a bumy tig entering his meager business and in relaxing his mind ever and again by such enjoyment as the work of replenishing his local battery afforded. But that was far back in the azure tinted past, when bucolic he and pastoral she, if they essayed to master the mysteries of the art at all, took their business by a register like Christian people, made no harassing remarks, and were polite to that degree that they always said, “O. D., thank you,” whenever you sent them a message. Those were halcyon days, truly, but the world moves in more ways than one, and the methods of men and women change correspondingly. How often, alas! in the degenerate present, are we awed into that indescribable frame of mind, by the fantastic behavior of the modern beginner, which causes the fountains of speech to dry up precipitately and plunges us into that peculiar agony which overcomes us, only, when we are forced to leave the observations of another unresponded to. It is a phase in life’s fitful fever involving the same principle which enters into the story about the man who was driving up a long and steep hill with a load of potatoes. As he neared the summit the tail board of the cart came out and away went the thirty bushels of esculents in thirty different directions. “Did you swear?” inquired a sympathizer to whom had been related the details of the mishap. “Swear?” repeated the victim, “swear! why, I knew on the start I couldn’t do the