was to clean the kerosene lamps. in an indolent way whether the whether it was the boss.

I had often wondered

barbers did that, or

About this time I was amusing myself trying to guess where he would be most likely to cut me this time, but he got ahead of me, and sliced me on the end of the chin before I had got my mind made up. He immediately sharpened his razor-he might have done it before. I do not like a close shave, and would not let him go over me a second time. I tried to get him to put up his razor, dreading that he would make for the side of my chin, my pet tender spot, a place which a razor cannot touch twice without making trouble; but he said he only wanted to just smooth off one little roughness, and in that same moment he slipped his razor along the forbidden ground, and the dreaded pimple-signs of a close shave rose up smarting and answered to the call. Now he soaked his towel in bay rum, and my face nastily; slapped it over as ever yet washed his face in that way. by slapping with the dry part of the towel, as if a human being ever dried his face in such a fashion; but a barber seldom rubs you like a Christian. Next he poked bay rum into the cut place with his towel, then choked the wound with powdered starch, then soaked it with bay rum again, and would have gone on soaking and powdering it for evermore, no doubt, if I had not rebelled and begged off. He powdered my whole face now, straightened me up, and began to plough my hair thoughtfully with his hands and examine his fingers critically. Then he suggested a shampoo, and said my

slapped it all over if a human being Then he dried it

hair needed it badly, very badly. I observed that I shampooed it myself very thoroughly in the bath yesterday. I"had him" again. He next recommended some of "Smith's Hair Glorifier," and offered to sell me a bottle. I declined. He praised the new perfume, "Jones's Delight of the Toilet," and proposed to sell me some of that. I declined again. He tendered me a tooth-wash atrocity of his own invention, and when I declined offered to trade knives with me.

He returned to business after the miscarriage of this last enterprise, sprinkled me all over, legs and all, greased my hair in defiance of my protests against it, rubbed and scrubbed a good deal of it out by the roots, and combed and brushed the rest, parting it behind and plastering the eternal inverted arch of hair down on my forehead, and then, while combing my scant eyebrows and defiling them with pomade, strung out an account of the achievements of a six-ounce black and tan terrier of his till I heard the whistles blow for noon, and knew I was five minutes too late for the train. Then he snatched away the towel, brushed it lightly about my face, passed his comb through my eyebrows once more, and gaily sang out "Next!"

This barber fell down and died of apoplexy two hours later. I am waiting over a day for my revenge-I am going to attend his funeral.

HUMAN NATURE.

THERE are some natures which never grow large enough to speak out, and say a bad act is a bad act, until they have inquired into the politics or the nationality of the man who did it. And they are not really scarce, either. Cain is branded a murderer so heartily and unanimously in America only because he was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. The Feejee Islander's abuse of Cain ceased very suddenly when the white man mentioned casually that Cain was a Feejee Islander.

The next remark of the savage, after an awkward pause, was, "Well, what did Abel come fooling around there for?"

JOHNNY GREER'S WAY.

"THE church was densely crowded that lovely summer Sabbath," said the Sunday-school superintendent, "and all, as their eyes rested upon the small coffin, seemed impressed by the poor black boy's fate. Above the stillness the pastor's voice rose, and chained the interest of every year as he told, with many an envied compliment, how that the brave, noble, daring little Johnny Greer, when he saw the drowned body sweeping down toward the deep part of the river whence the agonised parents never could have recovered it in this world, gallantly sprang into the stream, and at the risk of his life towed the corpse to shore, and held it fast till help came and secured it. Johnny Greer was sitting just in front of me. A ragged street boy, with eager eye, turned upon him instantly, and

said in a hoarse whisper :

"No, but did you though?'

"'Yes.'

"Towed the carkiss ashore and saved it yo'self?' "'Yes.'

'Cracky! What did they give you?'

""Nothing.'

"W-h-a-t! [with intense disgust.] D'you know what I'd a done? I'd a anchored him out in the stream, and said, Five dollars, gents, or you carn't have yo' nigger."

BREAKING IT GENTLY.

"YES, I remember that anecdote," the Sunday school superintendent said, with the old pathos in his voice, and the old sad look in his eyes. "It was about a simple creature named Higgins, that used to haul rock for old Maltby. When the lamented Judge Bagley tripped and fell down the court-house stairs and broke his neck, it was a great question how to break the news to poor Mrs. Bagley. But finally the body was put into Higgins's waggon, and he was instructed to take it to Mrs. B., but to be very guarded and discreet in his language, and not break the news to her at once, but do it gradually and gently. When Higgins got there with his sad freight, he shouted till Mrs. Bagley came to the door.

Then he said, "Does the widder Bagley live here ?"

"The widow Bagley? No, sir!"

"I'll bet she does. But have it your own way. Well, does Judge Bagley live here ?"

"Yes, Judge Bagley lives here."

"I'll bet he don't.

But never mind, it ain't for me to

contradict. Is the Judge in ?"

"No, not at present."

E