A moment later the answer came back, brief, but satisfying:

“I am sorry I can not tell you about the cars. I have always reached the Academy by carriage.”

In Gaylord’s drug store at Maguffinsville, the other day, a gentleman who had been connected with establishing the old National line of stage coaches through the West was narrating to some friends how, on one occasion when their own team was broken down, the wagon of a farmer had been appropriated by some of the surveying party, whereat the latter was considerably incensed. The gentleman who was telling the story was then in command of the men, and, returning to the scene of the accident and disturbance, sought to allay the farmer’s indignation, telling him no harm was intended, that the use of the wagon was actually necessary, and would be paid for with pleasure, etc. This put a different face on the matter, completely taking the starch out of the man of agricultural pursuits, who hemmed, and hawed, and asked if the gentleman thought twenty-five cents would be too much. He was rewarded with a shining half dollar, and a silver quarter was bestowed on each of his tow-headed progeny, of whom there were seven or eight standing about. As the gentleman went on with his story a strong-bodied, rough-visaged Teuton, who sat waiting in the window seat for a prescription to be put up, expressed the liveliest interest in the narrative, and seemed to grasp the essence of all the humor there was in it. And when the gentleman concluded by telling how surprised and delighted the whole family was, and said that the half dollar to the old fellow and the quarters to the children came like sunshine in a shady place into their simple lives, the face of cousin German indicated plainly that the tender spot way down in his heart of hearts was touched. The gentleman, perceiving he had entrapped one more auditor than he had counted on, made his acknowledgments, as a matter of courtesy, by turning to Dutch and saying, blandly, “Those were primitive times, you know, primitive times, sir.”

“Yah, dot is so,” responded old mahogany head, “dose railroats ish hell.

Many of my readers are familiar, no doubt, with the story of the sensation created in Syracuse some years ago, by the Star publishing what Jack Selden told its credulous local editor by wire one Sunday night about Barnum, the giraffe, and the Old Number Five hand engine. If there be any who are not, let them seek out that genial telegraphist, fisherman, and philosopher, and get the story from his own lips; no one else could do it the shadow of justice. But there have been other instances in which newspapers have been made the victims of circumstances owing their origin to telegraphic causes. Some years ago a rural reporter for the Associated Press sent to the New York Agency a dispatch, as follows:

“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.”

I can not attempt to explain what the author of that dispatch meant by his concluding words. I remember in earlier years, when an attache of a struggling morning paper, that our editor-in-chief, who had been a minister abroad under President Buchanan, and whose circle of friends was large, occasionally came back to the editorial room under the influence of considerably more champagne than he could conveniently manage. On these occasions he invariably attempted a “leader” on some sublime theme, and not unfrequently he would call one of us to him, and in his dignified and pleasant manner would say: “Read that (pointing to what he had written), and see if it’s all straight.” On being told it was straight enough, but that it ended in the middle of a sentence, he would close one eye in a most comical manner, and remark, confidentially: “That’s it, that’s it, my son; I’ve soared so high I can’t light in my present condition.” In other words, the wine being in, the wit was out, and he hadn’t the requisite clearness of head to bring to an intelligible close what had been so bravely begun. The correspondent alluded to above was, I infer, in a similar predicament from a lack of experience in rounding sentences, or from some other cause, and having got his man into the station house, knew of nothing to add except “thinking of earthly things.”

Without discussing that point further, suffice it that the dispatch came to hand in the form given, and though editors of press telegrams are supposed to be educated in a sort of Gradgrind school, and to