put out one of his eyes to save the trouble of winkin' when out a gunnin'."

66

"But," says the general, "this must not be. It will disgrace my neighborhood. Try him a while longer, can't you?" Can't; too late-coffin cost $1.25. Must go on now." About this time the procession came up and halted, when the general proposed, if they would let Job out, he would send over a bag of corn. On this announcement the lid of the coffin opened, and Job languidly sat up. The cents dropped from his eyes as he asked:

"Is the corn shelled, general?"

"Then," said Job, as he lazily lay down, "go on with the funeral."

Aristippus the Greek Politician.

Aristippus came to Athens from Cyrenean to study with Socrates. Eschines says Aristippus studied sophistry to fit him to be a politician. It is certain that he todied to the Emperor Dionysius and made a good deal of money out of him, even though Dionysius often called him his dog. Aristippus was so politic that he would never get mad at any indignity heaped upon him by Dionysius. Once the Emperor even spit in his face, and when the attendants laughed Aristippus said: "O laugh. It pays me to be spit upon."

"How so?" asked Plato.

"Why, don't the sea spit salt on you when you catch a sturgeon?"

"Yes."

"Well, Dionysius spits pure wine on me while I am catching gold fish."

The logic of Aristippus pleased Plato and Socrates and even Dionysius laughed at it when he heard of it.

Diogenes, who wore old rags and ate cheap vegetables, hated Aristippus who dressed finely and ate with the king. One

day when Diogenes was washing potatoes, Aristippus made fun of him.

"If you had learned to live on plain vegetables like potatoes and cabbage," said Diogenes, "you would not have to be spit upon and cuffed around by Dionysius."

"Yes, and if you tramps had learned how to be polite to the king you might be drinking wine in the palace instead of washing vegetables in the market."-Translated from the Greek by Eli Perkins.

Tom Marshall's Wit.

One time Gen. Tom Marshall was speaking to a large gath ering in Buffalo, when some one present, every few moments, kept shouting, "Louder! louder!"

Tom stood this for a while, but at last, turning gravely to the presiding officer, he said: "Mr. Chairman. At the last day, when the angel shall, with his golden trumpet, proclaim that time shall be no longer; when the quick and dead shall appear before the Mercy Seat to be judged, I doubt not, sir, that the solemnity of that solemn and awful scene will be interrupted by some drunken fool from Buffalo, shouting, "Louder, Lord! louder!"

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"I rise for information," said a member of a legislative body. "I am very glad to hear it," said a bystander, "for no man needs it more.

Breaking Up a Speaker.

It's a common joke, writes Eli Perkins from Saratoga, when one fellow wants to get another fellow away from a girl, to go up and whisper :

'My friend, I am sorry to tell you, but your coat is sadly ripped up the back." This of course sends the devoted talker up to his room for a change of clothing, and leaves the miser able joker in possession of the lady.

The same dodge is often resorted to with public speakers, and it will always break the oldest ones up.

"I was once opening a speech from the stump," said General Logan, "and was just beginning to warm with my subject, when a remarkable clear and deliberate voice spoke out behind me, saying:

"Reckon he wouldn't talk quite so hifalutin if he knew that his trowsers was bust clean out behind "

"From that moment, said the General, I couldn't get on. The people in front began to laugh, and there was a loud roar behind me, and I dared not reverse my position for fear of having a new audience for my condition."

Tom Marshall, that grand old Kentucky lawyer and campaigner, once broke up General Perkins with a witty rejoinder: General Perkins and Tom Marshall were canvassing the State in a hotly-contested election. The general was a roaring democrat, and by way of catching the laboring men was fond of boasting that his father was a cooper by trade in an obscure part of the state. The great failing of the general was his fondness for old whisky, but the more he drank the more of a Democrat he became, and the prouder of being the son of a cooper. Of this fact he had been making the most, when Marshall, in replying to his speech, looked at him with great contempt, and said:

"Fellow-citizens, his father may have been a very good cooper-I don't deny that; but I do say, gentlemen, he put a mighty poor head into that whisky barrel!"

He Hated Pennsylvania.

As we

I was riding in the cars the other day with an old Granger who lives just over the Pennsylvania line in Ohio. rode along, I looked out of the car window and whistled one my favorite tunes.

of

The old Granger got up and came over to me and iemarked:

"You would be a good whistler, my friend, if they hadn't invented tunes to bother you."

"I'm not a whistler," I said, "I'm a lecturer. My name is Perkins; I'm "

"What! Eli Perkins?"

"Yes, sir."

"The man who lectures?"

"Yes, sir; I'm going to Marietta now."

"Going to marry who?"

"I say I'm going to Mari-etta."

"Yes, I heard you say so. Nice girl-rich, I 'spect, too,

ain't she?"

"No, sir; you don't understand me. I'm going to lecture at Marietta.

I'm-"

"Then you really do lecture, do you?" continued the Granger.

"Why, of course I do."

"Been lecturing much in Ohio?"

"Yes—a good many nights.”

"Well, now, Mr. Perkins," said the Granger, as he dropped his voice to a confidential whisper, "why don't you lecture over in Pennsylvania? We just hate Pennsylvania, we do!”

Official Information.

When Amos Kendall was Postmaster General, he wrote to a postmaster in Georgia asking for some geographical inform ation. This was the Postmaster General's letter:

"Sir: This Department desires to know how far the Tombigbee River runs up. Respectfully yours," etc.

By return mail came : up at all; it runs down.

"Sir: The Tombigbee does not run Very respectfully yours," etc. Kendall, not appreciating his subordinate's humor, wrote again:

"Sir: Your appointment as postmaster is revoked; you