so she egged Macbeth on to hasten his demise, and possess the throne. An opportunity soon offered. The king one night having remained down town until the street cars had stopped running, was forced to stay over night at the Macbeth residence. Mrs. Macbeth showed him every attention. She gave him the spare bed-room off from the parlor; had a fire built in the parlor stove; hot water for him to wash in, etc., etc. When the good king had retired, Macbeth and his wife consulted together as to the best plan for removing him from a world of trouble. It was at length arranged that she should get his servants drunk on "apple-jack," while he probed the bosom of the aged Duncan. She would have done it herself, she said, had he not resembled Macbeth's father-in-law, as he slept.

Macbeth steals on tip-toe to the king's bed-chamber, and shortly returns with a dagger in each hand, stained with shokeberry juice. The deed is executed and stamped, and only requires to be registered. He was very pale and trembled violently, being seized with that remorse of conscience which every villain feels after committing crime until he is satisfied that he isn't going to be caught at it.

He is troubled about the shokeberry juice on his hands, and wants to know if there is water enough outside of temperance organizations to wash it off. She tells him that a little turpentine will easily fix that. He starts at every sound and seems to hear a voice which says, "Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep," adding something to the effect that Mrs. Winslow's soothing syrup would be unavailing in the future to insure to him a quiet nap. Disgusted with his timidity, she snatches the daggers from his hands, and, bearing them to the front parlor, places them by the sides of the king's servants, who are how-come-you-so, under the piano. This is for the purpose of fastening suspicion upon them as the guilty parties, it being the well-known custom of murderers to lie down and go to sleep immediately after butchering a gentleman, with the gory implements of their profession in their hands.

Just before daybreak the door-bell rings; McDuff, a Scotch nobleman of Irish extraction, who had been up all night at a Fenian ball, had stopped to see if the king was stirring yet, not knowing that the king wouldn't stir any more. Macbeth directs him to the best bedroom where the king lies. He He goes there, but quickly returns with the startling announcement that the king has been murdered.

Macbeth takes on terribly about it, of course; Mrs. Macbeth comes in in her cambric muslin and is carried out in a swoon; the neighbors are aroused, and a messenger is dispatched at once for the coroner. Macbeth stabs the King's servants, and tells the jury at the inquest that he couldn't help it when he saw what they had done - he never was so mortified in all his life.

The king's sons leave the country, fearful that the malady that had carried off their father might run in the family, when Macbeth starts a rumor that they were implicated in the assassination, and appoints himself king. Henceforth his career is one of blood, ably supported by Mrs. Macbeth, who, like the devoted wife that she was, did all she could to promote her husband's prosperity.

They killed Banquo, one of King Duncan's generals, but his ghost persisted in sitting at their feasts, which didn't improve their appetites particularly, and was very uncivil in the ghost. They carried on a general slaughtering business for some time, but at length McDuff raised a regiment of Fenians, and after vanquishing the "Queen's Own," put all that the king owned to flight, when Macbeth was killed in a hand-to-hand prize fight with McDuff. His last words were, "Lay on, McDuff, and snuff him out who first cries out, Scotch snuff!" and McDuff laid on with such effect that Macbeth was soon knocked out of time.

Mrs. Macbeth fled to America. The last that was heard of her she was stumping Kansas, under an assumed name, in favor of female suffrage.

MILITARY JOKES AND WIT.

ANECDOTES AND INCIDENTS.

Bravery of Tim McGowan.

Tim McGowan lost one arm by a steamboat accident before he got to Mexico. Of course Tim did nothing but hospital duty in Mexico, but his brother Dennis was always boasting of Tim's exploits.

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Och, murder," says he, "you ought to see Tim at RyeSack a dollare Pole me (meaning Reseca de la Palma). He caught two Mexican blackguards by the cuffs of their necks and kilt them both as dead as herrin's by knockin' their heads together."

"How could that be," said the listener, "when your brother had but one arm?"

"Bless your sowl," answered Dennis, "one arm had he? That's true enough for ye, but then, ye see, Tim forgot all about that when he got into a fight."

**

*

"Did you kill many rebels during the battle, George?" asked a fond father of his boy after he returned from Bull Run. "Well, father, I killed as many of them as they did of me. -Eli Perkins.

The Wrong Boy in the Army.

Alex Sweet.

A German nobleman had two sons, who were reported to be rather fast boys. One of them was a clerk in a bank and the other was an officer in the army.

"How are your sons coming on?" asked a friend.

"Bad enough! The one in the bank, who ought to be drawing drafts, spends all his time out shooting; and the one in the army, who ought to be busy shooting, is always drawing drafts on me for money."

Eli Perkins' Big Cannon.

Eli Perkins was telling about a large cannon they were making in at the West Point foundry:

"It is almost as large," he said, "as a cannon I saw in Europe."

"How large was that?" asked Bill Nye.

"Well, sir, it weighed 27 tons. The ball weighed 36 tons, and

"Did they ever shoot it off?" asked Bill.

"Yes; they shot it off one day, and the ball was so heavy that it stood right still and the cannon went 12 miles."

**
*

"Well, Pat, my good fellow, an what did you do at the storming of Stevastopol?" was asked of a Crimean hero.

"Do! your honor! Why, I walked up bowldly to one of the inimy and cut off his feet."

"Cut off his feet! and why didn't you cut off his head?" "Ah, by my faith, that was off already!”

General Lee and the Newspaper Generals.

"We made a great mistake," said Gen. Lee to Mr. Hill, "in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake."

"What mistake is that, General?"

"Why, sir, in the beginning we appointed all our worst generals to command the armies, and all our best generals to edit newspapers. As you know I have planned some campaigns, and quite a number of battles. I have given the work

all the care and thought I could, and sometimes, when my plans were completed, as far as I could see, they seemed to be perfect. But when I have fought them through, I have diɛ covered defects in advance. When it was all over, I found, by reading a newspaper, that these best editor-generals saw all the defects plainly from the start. Unfortunately, they did not communicate their knowledge to me until it was too late.” Then, after a pause, he added: "I have no ambition but to serve the Confederacy; I do all I can to win our independence. I am willing to serve in any capacity to which the authorities. may assign me. I have done the best I could in the field, but I am willing to yield my place to these best generals, and I will do my best for the cause editing a newspaper."

**
*

Probably the most remarkable sense of humor ever known was that of a German soldier who laughed uproariously all the time he was being flogged, and when the officer, at the end, inquired the cause of his mirth, broke out into a fresh fit of laughter, and cried:

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Why, I'm the wrong man!"

Distinguished South Carolinians.

Eli Perkins.

This morning a well-known Boston man sat down by Senator Robertson, an old and proud resident of South Carolina, on the balcony of The States, and commenced ingratiating himself into the Southerner's. feelings.

"I tell you, sir, South Carolina is a great State, sir,” remarked Senator Robertson, enthusiastically.

"Yes," said the stranger from Boston, "she is. I knew a good many people down there myself and splendid people they were, too-as brave and high-toned as the Huguenots." "You did, sir?"

"Oh! yes, sir. I knew some of the greatest men your State ever saw. sir-knew 'em intimately, sir," continued the Boston