PUNCHINELLO

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD,

As an Adaptation of the Original English version, was concluded in the last Number. The remaining portion will be continued as Original.

By ORPHEUS C. KERR,

Commencing with Number 30.

See 15th page for Extra Premiums.

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD.

AN ADAPTATION.

BY ORPHEUS C. KERR.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE SKELETON IS MCLAUGHLIN'S CLOSET.

Night, spotted with stars, like a black leopard, crouched once more upon Bumsteadville, and her one eye to be seen in profile, the moon, glared upon the helpless place with something of a cat's nocturnal stare of glassy vision for a stupefied mouse. Midnight had come with its twelve tinkling drops more of opiate, to deepen the stupor of all things almost unto death, and still the light shone luridly through the window-curtains of Mr. BUMSTEAD'S room, and still the lonely musician sat stiffly at a dinner-table spread for three, whereof only a goblet, a curious antique black bottle, a bowl of sugar, a saucer of lemon-slices, a decanter of water, and a saucer of cloves appeared to have been used by the solitary diner.

Unconscious that, through the door ajar at his back, a pair of vigilant human orbs were upon him, the ritualistic organist, who was in very low spirits, drew an emaciated and rather unsteady hand repeatedly across his perspiring brow, and talked in deep bass to himself.

"He came in, af'r' bein' brisgly walked up'n-down the turnpike by PENDRAGON, and slammed himself down-'n-that-chair," ran the soliloquy, with a ghostly nod towards an opposite chair, drawn back from the table. "'Inebrious boy!' says I, sternly, 'how-are-y'-now?' He said 'Poorawell;' 'n' wen' down on-er-floor fas'hleep! I w's scan'l'ized.—Whowoonbe?—I took m' umbrella 'n' thrashed 'm with it, remarking 'F'shame! waygup! mis'able boy! 's poorysight-f'r-'nuncle-t' see-'s-nephew-'n-this-p'litical-c'ndit'n.'—H'slep on; 'n' 't last I picked up him, 'n' umbrella, 'n' took 'm out t' some cool place t'shleep't off. Where'd' I take him? Thashwazmarrer—where'd' I leave'm?"

Repeating this question to himself, with an almost frenzied intensity, the gloomy victim of a treacherous memory threw an unearthly stare of bloodshot questioning all over the room, and, after a swaying motion or two of the upper half of his body, pitched forward, with his forehead crashing upon the table. Instantly recovering himself, and starting to rub his head, he as suddenly checked that palliative process by a wild run to his feet and a hideous bellow.

"I r'memb'r, now!" he ejaculated, walking excitedly at a series of obtuse angles all over the apartment. "Got-'t-knockedinto-m'-head-'t-last. Pauper bur'l ground—J. M'GLAUGHLIN. Down'n cellar—cool placefa' man's tight—lef' m' umbrella there by m'stake—go'n' get't thishmin't—"

Managing, after several inaccurate aims at the doorway, to plunge into the adjacent bedroom, he presently reappeared from thence, veering hard-aport, with a lighted lantern in his right hand. Then, circuitously approaching the neglected dining-table, he grasped with his disengaged digits at the antique black bottle, missed it, went all the way around the board before he could stop himself, clutched and missed again, went clear around once more, and finally effected the capture. "Th 'peared t' be two," he muttered, placing the prize in one of his pockets; and, with a triumphant stride, made for the half-open hall-door through which the eyes had been watching him.

The owner of those eyes, and of a surprising head of florid hair, had barely time to draw back into the shadow of the corridor and notice an approaching face like that of one walking in his sleep, when the clove-eater swung disjointedly by him, with jingling lantern, and went fiercely bumping down the stairway. Closely, without sound, followed the watcher, and the two, like man and shadow, went out from the house into the quarry of the moon-eyed black leopard.

Fully bound now in the sinister spell of the spice of the Molucca islands, Mr. BUMSTEAD had regained that condition of his duplex existence to which belonged the disposition he had made of his lethargic nephew and alpaca umbrella on that confused Christmas night; and with such realization of a distinct duality came back to him at least a partial recollection of where he had put the cherished two. Finding Mr. E. DROOD rather overcome by the more festive features of the meal,—notwithstanding his walk at midnight with Mr. PENDRAGON,—he had allowed his avuncular displeasure thereat to betray itself in a threshing administered with the umbrella. Observing that the young man still slept beside the chair from which he fell, he had ultimately, and with the umbrella still under his arm raised the dishevelled nephew head-downward in his arms, and impatiently conveyed him from the heated room and house to the coolest retreat he could think of. There depositing him, and, in his hurry, the umbrella also, to sleep off, under reviving atmospheric influences, the unseemly effect of the evening's banquet, he had gone back on both sides of the road to his boarding-house, and, with his boots upon the pillow, sunk into an instantaneous sleep of unfathomable depth. Dreaming, towards morning, that he was engaging a large boa-constrictor in single combat, and struggling energetically to restrain the ferocious reptile from getting into his boots, he had suddenly awakened, with a crash, upon the floor—to miss his umbrella and nephew, to forget where he had put them, and to fly to Gospeler's Gulch with incoherent charges of larceny and manslaughter. All this he could now vaguely recall, his present psychological condition, or trance-state, being the same as then; and was going entrancedly back to the hiding-place where, with the best of motives, he had forgetfully left the two objects dearest to him in life.

On, then, proceeded the Ritualistic organist in the tawny light of the black leopard's eye: his stealthy follower trailing closely after in the shade of the roadside trees where the star-spotted leopard's black paws were plunged deepest. On he went, in zig-zag profusion of steps and occasional high skips over incidental shadows of branches which he for snakes, until the Pauper Burial Ground was reached, and MCLAUGHLIN'S hidden subterranean retreat therein attained. It was the same weird spot to which he had been brought by Old MORTARITY on the wintry night of their unholy exploring party; and, without appearing to be surprised that the entrance to the excavation was open, he eagerly descended by the rickety step-ladder, and held himself steady by the latter while throwing the light of his lantern around the mouldy walls.

His immediate hiccup, provoked by the dampness of the situation, was answered by a groan, which, instead of being solid, was very hollow; and, as he peered vivaciously forward behind his extended lantern, there advanced from a far corner—O, woeful man! O, thrice unhappy uncle!—the spectral figure of the missing EDWIN DROOD!

After a moment's inspection of the apparition, which paused terribly before him with hand hidden in breast, Mr. BUMSTEAD placed his lantern upon a step of the ladder, drew and profoundly labiated his antique black bottle, thoughtfully crunched a couple of cloves from another pocket—staring stonily all the while—and then addressed the youthful shade:—

"Where's th' umbrella?"

"Monster of forgetfulness! murderer of memory!" spoke the spirit, sternly. "In this, the last rough resting place of the impecunious dead, do you dare to discuss commonplace topics with one of the departed? Look at me, uncle, clove-befogged, and shrink appalled from the dread sight, and pray for mercy."

"Ishthis prop'r language t' address-t'-y'r-relative?" inquired Mr. BUMSTEAD, in a severely reproachful manner.

"Relative!" repeated the apparition, sepulchrally. "What sort of relative is he, who, when his sister's orphaned son is sleeping at his feet, conveys the unconscious orphan, head downward, through a midnight tempest, to a place like this, and leaves him here, and then forgets where he has put him?"

"I give't up," said the organist, after a moment's consideration.

"The answer is: he's a dead-beat." continued the young ghost, losing his temper. "And what, JOHN BUMSTEAD, did you do with my oroide watch and other jewels?"

"Musht've spilt'm on the road here," returned the musing uncle, faintly remembering that they had been found upon the turnpike, shortly after Christmas, by Gospeler SIMPSON. "Are you dead, EDWIN?"

"Did you not bury me here alive, and close the opening to my tomb, and go away and charge everybody with my murder?" asked the spectre, bitterly. "O, uncle, hard of head and paralyzed in recollection! is it any good excuse for sacrificing my poor life, that, in your cloven state, you put me down a cellar, like a pan of milk, and then could not remember where you'd put me? And was it noble, then, to go to her whom you supposed had been my chosen bride, and offer wedlock to her on your own account?"

"I was acting as y'r-executor, EDWIN," explained the uncle. "I did ev'thing forth' besht."

"And does the sight of me fill you with no terror, no remorse, unfeeling man?" groaned the ghost.

"Yeshir," answered Mr. BUMSTEAD, with sudden energy. "Yeshir. I'm r'morseful on 'count of th' umbrella. Who-d'-y'-lend-'t-to?"

It is an intellectual characteristic of the more advanced degrees of the clove-trance, that, while the tranced individual can perceive objects, even to occasional duplexity, and hear remarks more or less distinctly, neither objects nor remarks are positively associated by him with any perspicuous idea. Thus, while the Ritualistic organist had a blurred perception of his nephew's conversational remains, and was dimly conscious that the tone of the supernatural remarks addressed to himself was not wholly congratulatory, he still presented a physical and moral aspect of dense insensibility.

Momentarily nonplussed by such unheard-of calmness under a ghostly visitation, the apparition, without changing position, allowed itself to roll one inquiring eye towards the opening above the step-ladder, where the moonlight revealed an attentive head of red hair. Catching the glance, the head allowed a hand belonging to it to appear at the opening and motion downward.

"Look there, then," said the intelligent ghost to its uncle, pointing to the ground near its feet.

Mr. BUMSTEAD, rousing from a brief doze, glanced indifferently towards the spot indicated; but, in another instant, was on his knees beside the undefined object he there beheld. A keen, breathless scrutiny, a frenzied clutch with both hands, and then he was upon his feet again, holding close to the lantern the thing he had found.

The barred light shone on a musty skeleton, to which still clung a few mouldy shreds left by the rats; and only the celebrated bone handle identified it as what had once been the maddened finder's idolized Alpaca Umbrella.

"Aha!" twitted the apparition, "then you have some heart left, JOHN BUMSTEAD?"

"Heart!" moaned the distracted organist, fairly kissing the dear remains, and restored to perfect speech and comprehension by the awful shock. "I had one, but it is broken now!—Allie, my long-lost Allie!" he continued, tenderly apostrophizing the skeleton, "do we meet thus at last again?—

Where is thine old familiar alpaca dress, my Allie? Where is the canopy that has so often sheltered thy poor master's head from the storm? Gone! gone! and through my own forgetfulness!"

"And have you no thought for your nephew?" asked the persevering apparition, hoarsely.

"Not under the present circumstances," retorted the mourner; he and the ghost both coughing with the colds which they had taken from standing still so long in such a damp place—"not under the present circumstances," he repeated, wildly, making a fierce pass at the spectre with the skeleton, and then dropping the latter to the ground in nerveless despair. "To a single man, his umbrella is wife, mother, sister, venerable maiden aunt from the country—all in one. In losing mine, I've lost my whole family, and want to hear no more about relatives. Good night, sir."

"Here! hold on! Can't you leave the lantern for a moment?" cried the ghost. But the heart-stricken Ritualist had swarmed up the ladder and was gone.

Then, going up too, the spectre appeared also unto two other men, who crawled from behind pauper headstones at his summons; the face of the one being that of J. MCLAUGHLIN, that of the other Mr. TRACY CLEWS. And the spectre walked between these two, carrying Mr. BUMSTEAD'S skeleton in its hand.^[1]

[1]      The cut accompanying the above chapter is from the illustrated title-page of the English monthly numbers of "The Mystery of Edwin Drood;"—in which it is the last of a series of border-vignettes;—and plainly shows that it was the author's intention to bring back his hero a living man before the conclusion of the story.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS.

Bibo.—Is there a champagne wine having the flavor of gun-flints?
Answer.—The wine made at Pierry, in the Champagne country, is said by connoisseurs to be so flavored. There is much alarm now among the wine-growers, however, lest the next vintage may have a flavor of percussion-caps instead, owing to the war and the modern weapons.

Plantagenet de Vere.—Would you believe a person named JONES on his oath?
Answer.—We would not.

Smike. We read of houses being "gutted" by the Prussian soldiers; have houses entrails, then?
Answer.—All occupied houses have livers, and most houses have lights.

M. T. Head.—We cannot pay strangers in advance for contributions that have not been sent in by them.

Icarus.—What do the balloon scouts of Paris use for ballast?
Answer.—Bundles of newspapers, chiefly. Immense bales of the unsold copies of the New York Free Press are now exported for the purpose. They are preferred to any other papers because, when placed anywhere in the balloon, they Lie so, and, having already fallen from grace, falling from a balloon is nothing to them.

Taxidermist.—What is the best material for stuffing ballot-boxes with?
Answer.—Greenbacks.

Leatherhead.—Is it true that most of the prominent men of England—"TOM BROWN" HUGHES, for instance—are proficient pugilists?
Answer.—We have never seen "TOM BROWN" spar, but we have often seen JOHN STUART Mill.

Abby Gansevoort.—No, my dear, your name does not occur in any of SHAKESPEARE'S plays.

Figdrum.—Born to the drudgery of commerce, I aspire to literature: what am I to do to see my name in print?
Answer.—Put it in the City Directory.

Voice-in-the-Fog.—Why is it that all the queer isms of the day, such as socialism, are more cultivated by Red Republicans than by any other political sect?
Answer.—Red, as artists well know, is the complementary or opposite color to green. The social phenomenon to which you refer, then, may be accounted for on the principle that extremes meet.

Clericus.—Is it proper for me, as a clergyman, to wear moustaches?
Answer.—Quite so, unless they are red, in which case they might interfere with your published sermons.

Astrolabe.—What is the exact distance between the Dog Star and Roxbury, Mass.?
Answer.—We do not know. PUNCHINELLO is not a Sirius journal.

Juniper Byles.—My rent has just been raised, and I have had a curtain-lecture from my wife for swearing about it. Would not you swear if your rent was raised?
Answer.—Certainly not—at least not if it was raised by benevolent subscription.

AN ACQUAINTANCE.

Tom.—"I say, JACK, what a beautiful complexion Miss SMITH has. Do you know her?"

Jack.—"No, but I know a girl who buys her complexion at the same store at which Miss SMITH buys hers."

"CUM GRANO SALIS."—Musk-melon.

A HORSE-CAR CONTINGENCY.

Gallant Tar (To horrified lady of uncertain age), "BELAY THERE, OLD WOMAN! TAKE THIS SEAT."

OUR PORTFOLIO.

PARIS, FOURTH WEEK OF THE REPUBLIC, 1870.

Dear Punchinello: You may not have heard that BISMARCK has been here, had an interview with FAVRE, and is off again. I didn't suppose you would know it, so I hasten to give you and your army of readers a brief synopsis of what took place, as nearly as I can in the exact language used by the distinguished diplomats upon the occasion.

The scene of the consultation was one of the Imperial wine-cellars under that pavilion of the Tuileries palace which overlooks the Seine at the southwestern extremity of the Place du Carrousel. The spot was selected for two reasons: it was far removed from the noise and hubbub of the city, and it furnished facilities for "liquoring up" in case of necessity. I was there and left, as you will see, under circumstances calculated to give me a lasting impression of the event. We all three of us sat around a pine table, upon which faintly flickered a tallow candle in a soda-water bottle, that shed around a sickly glare (that is to say, the candle did). BISMARCK looked a little the worse for wear, I thought, and, as he unbuttoned his vest with a grunt of relief, he struck me likewise as being rather short in his wind.

FAVRE was loose and frisky as a four weeks old kitten, and spoke with a quick, decided tone that reminded me of HORACE GREELEY. He never once swore, however, during the whole interview. Your readers will observe that even if this momentous meeting was not marked by the usual diplomatic usages, the language is strictly according to the usual diplomatic idiom. It is important to note this fact, as everything hinges on the "idiom."

BISMARCK was the first to break silence:

"The difficulties which embarrass the questions under discussion stand first in the order of elimination."

FAVRE assented, and BISMARCK continued: "We must remove the peritoneum to get at the viscera of the issues (I was much struck with the force and originality of this method of putting it), and evict those impressions which are purely matters of national sensibility."

I snuffed the candle and waited for FAVRE.

FAVRE: "Your Excellency abounds in subtle diagnoses."

BISMARCK: "It is not a question of noses."

FAVRE: "Your Excellency mistakes me. I meant to say that, like the 'Heathen Chinee,' your ways are dark."

I moved the light closer to the Count. FAVRE only smiled.

BISMARCK: "Touching 'rectification,' then, Germany sticks to her position."

I regarded this as an insinuation that somebody was "stuck."

FAVRE: "France adheres unalterably to her previous resolution. National traditions, deeply interwoven with the fine fibre of individual natures, forbid the relaxation of tissues logically irresistible."

A smile of triumph flitted faintly o'er the features of the Frenchman. He evidently thought he had made a "ten strike." I whispered approvingly, "Tres bien, Monsieur, tres bien!"

BISMARCK: "Does the German heart yearn for the Rhine? Does it yearn for Strasbourg? Does it yearn for Metz? and if not, what does it yearn for?"

He was looking straight at me when he said this, and so I answered "Bier."

A dark scowl flitted frantically over the features of the German, but he went right on: "Are all the longings of all these years, dating from the birth of CHARLEMAGNE and extending through GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS to FREDERICK the Great and WILLIAM the First, by his father on his maternal grandmother's side, who lies in the iron coffin of the domkirche at Potsdam, whence we derive the consolidated grandeur of HOHENZOLLERN mingling its rich ancestral dyes with the dark woof of fate to dispel the expanding dream of German aspiration?"

I had not time to witness the effect upon FAVRE, but, gasping for breath, I started from my seat and uttered these words, which I remembered to have read in a German-English libretto of MARIE STUART: "Mein Gott, ich kenne eures Eifers reinen Trieb, Weiss, dass gediegne Weissheit aus Euch redet!"

It did not matter to me that FAVRE lay swooning on the floor. That the Count glared at me savagely and crunched his jaws with maniacal energy. My knowledge of German was up. It had caught the fierce impulse, the majestic sweep of his ponderous linguosity. I remembered another sentence, and hurled it wildly at him: "Bei Gott, Du wirst, ich hoff's, noch viele Jahre auf ihrem Grabe wandeln, ohne dass du selber sie hinabzustürzen brauchtest!"

Again I looked at the Count. His jaw had ceased working, and the expression of his eye had changed. His arm moved furtively beneath the table. What could he be doing? Horrible moment of uncertainty. Still the arm worked, as if tugging at something. I could stand it no longer. Seizing the soda-water bottle, I stooped to cast the rays of the sixpenny dip beneath the table. As I did so, a boot-heel flashed in the air, the Count's arm descended with a terrific detonation, and I saw no more.

(Interval of twenty-four hours.)

The result of the interview will be communicated to the American public by a Tribune special, as soon as a carrier-pigeon can reach SMALLEY at London. I am still suffering from a sensation of having been recently hit,

DICK TINTO.

ASPIRATION.

Of all sorts of people in the world, the Cockney has the queerest notions about vegetable nature. Show him the first letter of the alphabet, for instance, and he pronounces it "hay."

APPARENTLY ANOMALOUS.

Should the Prussians ever succeed in entering Paris, it is hardly possible that they can be well received by the citizens, whether they find FAVRE there or not.

OUR PRIVATE GALLERIES.

The Belmont Collection.

This admirable gallery includes among its treasures many of the old masters and-when open for exhibition—a bewildering collection of young nurses. The latter are frequently inaccurate in anatomical details, but in point of brilliancy of color they far outshine the best efforts of RUBENS and TITIAN. The flesh tints produced by many of our Fifth Avenue belles infinitely surpass the obsolete tints upon which the great Venetians used to pride themselves.

In Mr. BELMONT'S gallery there are so many original RAPHAELS and MURILLOS, painted by the very best European artists of the present day, that it would occupy far too much of our limited space were we to notice them in detail. We will therefore pass them by, and simply call attention to some of the more noteworthy pictures, executed by contemporary painters, which hang side by side with the more smoky but hardly less valuable works of antiquity. Prominent among these is a modest little "Fruit and Flower" piece, by that promising young artist, Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY. It deserves especial praise for its accurate copying of nature, the varied beauty of its coloring, and the deep longing of the heart—the hunger of the soul—which must have inspired the fair artist. We give a faithful sketch of this charming picture, though, of course, the glories of its rainbow hues cannot be represented here.

FRUIT AND FLOWER PIECE.

A beautiful work, and one evidently inspired by the sound of battle, is the noble historical painting entitled "On Picket," by Mr. C.A. DANA, Associate Artist National Academy of Velocipedestrianism. The artist has produced a picture that must inspire us all with the absolute truth of the story it so dramatically tells, while he has filled our hearts with deep sympathy and lofty admiration for the lovely and heroic combatant depicted on his canvas. Our army officers—Col. FISK for example—who are ignorant of the sword exercise may derive a hint from this spirited work, as to the importance of obtaining a thorough mastery of the fence.

Claude's renowned landscape of the "Ruined Mill" is familiar to all who are acquainted with it, and has been greatly admired by those who did not feel impelled to condemn its many faults. But CLAUDE is now known to have been no artist, but a mere pretender. There is reason to believe that he had never read RUSKIN, and was hence necessarily ignorant of the aim and method of landscape painting. Our young friend BROWN, the spirituel and fascinating assistant Rector of a fashionable uptown church, has in this gallery a rendering of a similar subject. How manifest is his superiority to CLAUDE! With what truth and fidelity to nature; with what holy calm, and child-like faith, and lofty aspiration has BROWN filled his glowing canvas! And withal, he does not lead us back to the dead faith and traditions of the past, save to urge us onward in the pathway of—in the pathway—in short, to urge us on more or less. To those envious minds who affect to regard BROWN as a mere amateur, an undertaker of more than he has the ability to execute, we would deign but one reply, and that would be, "Look at his trees in the picture called the 'Ruins of the Mill,' and then cower back into your native insignificance."

RUINS OF A MILL.

There are many other pictures which we would like to notice in this article, but want of space will forbid us to do so this week. We have merely room to mention, with warm approbation, the exceedingly dramatic little genre picture entitled "Shoo-fly," by the veteran Minstrel, Mr. DANIEL BRYANT, whose recent translation of HOMER has given him so high a rank among the best German scholars of the day.

SHOE FLY!

RULES AND MAXIMS.

How they change! ESCULAPIUS now gives to us and our children, as medicine, what he denounced to the last generation as "pizen." The heresy of yesterday is the orthodoxy of to-day.

Thus the philosophy of those who are under the turf is refuted by those who are on the turf. It used to be said in regard to horses:—

But the advent of DEXTER has changed the sinister rhyme to:—

RIGHT TO THE SPOT.

Additional spots on the disk of the sun are reported. An ingenious writer, who candidly states that he is not an astronomer, accounts for them by suggesting that they are caused by stray shots from the Prussian sharpshooters who tried to bring down GAMBETTA'S balloon.

A QUERY FOR STEEPLE-CHASERS.

We hear a great deal about "featherweights" in connection with racing. If there are such things as feather weights, why on earth don't the managers of Jerome Park races stuff the steeple-chase jockeys with them, to prevent them from being injured by such accidents as happened there on the opening day of the Autumn meeting?

POEMS OF THE CRADLE.

CANTO VIII.

JACK SPRAT was a near neighbor to the Poet. He was a remarkably delicate man, cadaverous and thin. A dyspeptic, always ailing, he was a subject of pity for his friends, and of wonder to his acquaintances. But behold the eternal fitness of things. Providence blessed him with a wife, his opposite in every respect. When extremes meet, a perfect whole is the result; and in this case it was a perfect marriage, fit to be sung by poets and embalmed in verse.

When JACK SPRAT met SALLY STUBBS, at a husking party, she took his eye, and kept it. She filled his heart completely. A rosy-cheeked, buxom lass, healthy and hearty, dimples and dumplings combined, she captivated and carried, by sheer force of weight, the delicate soul of poor JACK.

It was a case of latitude against longitude; strength against weakness, smiles against tears, laughter against groans. And so the poor fellow, feeling an unacknowledged desire to find some one able to support and protect him, yielded to the advice of his friends and his own inclinations, and laid his attenuated hand, with his poor little heart in it, at the fat feet of fair SALLY STUBBS.

He was smiled upon, broad-grinned upon, and accepted; and thereby rendered for the nonce the happiest of men. Tradition has it that the next day he actually ate a hearty dinner, and did not complain of his digestion immediately after. But this is considered doubtful by many.

Fair SALLY, overflowing with the milk of human kindness, and yearning in her soul to bestow her attentions and corporosity upon JACK'S attenuosity, urged matters onward, and the wedding day was fixed, the ring bought, and delicate Mr. SPRAT was led to the altar like a sheep to the slaughter.

Tremblingly he advanced up the aisle of the village church, leading his blushing and waddling bride, and took his place, looking like an exclamation point alongside a parenthesis, before the black-robed Priest, who speedily put an end to Miss STUBBS, and presented JACK with a female SPRAT.

Mrs. SPRAT blushed like a full-blown peony as JACK manfully and courageously saluted her upon one rosy cheek, in the presence of the assembled guests, and then, to cover her confusion, she giggled and shook hands energetically with the company, telling JACK to "hold up his head and do the same, for it was com eel fut, and he must try to be fashionable at his own wedding."

The Bride carried off the honors manfully, and after the first few moments recovered from her embarrassment, and appeared as much at ease as if getting married was an every-day affair, not worth minding. JACK couldn't get over it so readily, and his teeth chattered till late in the night. But they stopped after a while; so I am told.

We pass over the first few days devoted to honey-mooning, and look in upon them as they sit at dinner. He with his greyhound and she with her cat, both animals attentively watching each morsel that disappears from their longing gaze into the capacious mouth of master or mistress. Notice with what dexterity and generosity Mr. SPRAT selects the fattest parts and skilfully conveys them to Madam's plate, reserving the lean for himself; occasionally throwing a bone to his dog, while the lady now and then bestows a fat bit upon Puss, who slowly licks her lips and winks for more. It is a cozy scene of quiet domestic bliss, and so continues till the platter is empty; when, both feeling satisfied for the time, they lean back in their respective chairs, and gaze complacently upon their pets, each other, and the empty dishes.

Their wonderful congeniality and quiet happiness became the subject of wonder to their friends, and of comment and speculation to the village gossips. Her oleaginous and feather-bed-like disposition compelled peace, as oil upon the waves, and shed trouble as a duck sheds water. JACK and his complainings never troubled her; she merely laughed when he groaned, and offered to rub his back. But he, fearing the ponderosity of her hand, rarely submitted; his spinal column being delicate, he dared not risk it.

Village gossips tell many little incidents connected with the married life of the twain, which would be invidious to mention here. Suffice it to say that they were considered fit subjects for the ever-ready pen of the Poet to seize upon and perpetuate in never-dying verse, for the benefit of posterity. That the Poet was right in his surmises, we have only to look around and ascertain how many learned people of all grades have treasured up in their memory, from infancy, the history of JACK SPRAT and his wife.

AN OBVIOUS ILLUSTRATION

Scene. A Lunch Counter.

Customer. "Waiter, do you call this a milk toast?—why, there's no milk to be seen."

Waiter. "Milk all gone into the toast, sir."

Customer. "But there's no toast to speak of."

Waiter. "Toast all gone into the milk, sir."

Customer. "Ah, ha!—there's an idea in that, by Jove. I'll go straight home and write a pamphlet upon the new theory of mutual absorption."

Waiter. "Yes, sir. Don't forget to mention the Kilkenny Cats, sir!"

ENCOURAGING HOME MANUFACTURES.

Young Patriot. "GIMME THREE CENTS WORTH O' CHESTNUTS."

Female Broker. "D' YER WANT EYETALIAN ONES?"

Y. P. "NO, DARN YER—GIMME AMERICAN ONES."

COUNT BISMARCK'S ACCOUNT.

BISMARCK'S insolence is really becoming dangerous. He can deny and contradict the statements made by other Counts, Ambassadors, Kings, or by himself, without its becoming a matter of sufficient importance to interest us. Such giving and taking the lie is a part of the business of persons of this kidney. But he has actually had the audacity to deny the truthfulness of the report by RUSSELL to the Times of a conversation held between them. If this thing is not checked in the bud, he will next be denying—his conversation! with the Tribune "special," as reported by that ubiquitous observer. What will there be for the world to believe, if it loses faith in the truthfulness of the papers?

A Con. for the Vatican.

Why is VICTOR EMMANUEL like a tomahawk? Because he is now said to be "a tool in the hands of the Reds."

THE "LOUDEST" OF SUNDAYS "SWELLS." The Swell of the Church organ.

THE PRIZE CALF "S. L. WOODFORD," FATTENED UP BY MESSRS. GREELY AND CURTIS FOR THE SPECIAL PURPOSE OF BEING CUT UP ON TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 8TH.

"DOST KNOW ME?"

Composed by our Special Dangerous Lunatic in one of his Lucid Intervals.

THE END.

"WELL SAID, OLD MOLE!"

In a newspaper description of Mr. GREELEY, published some years since, it was stated that he was born with a mole upon his left arm. This may or may not be the case; but, judging from the persistence with which the great agriculturist advocates sub-soil ploughing, there can be no doubt whatever that he has mole on the brain.

BLOOD AND THUNDER!

PUNCHINELLO learns, without the least surprise, that Mr. YOUNGBLOOD has retired in disgust from the management of the New York Free Press. It is further announced that the estimable publication referred to will henceforth be under the charge of Mr. OLDBLOOD, a blood relative of all the BADBLOODS belonging to the JOHN REAL Democracy.

"FALL" WEATHER.

The subject of bringing down rain by the firing of artillery has again been revived, owing to the long droughts that have lately prevailed. What gives a color of feasibility to it, at present, is the fact that the Reign of LOUIS NAPOLEON has lately been brought down by Prussian guns.

A SIGHT TOO BAD!

Struggling Cuba. "YOU MUST BE AWFULLY NEAR-SIGHTED, MR. PRESIDENT, NOT TO RECOGNIZE ME."

U. S. G. "NO: I AM FAR-SIGHTED; FOR I CAN RECOGNIZE FRANCE."

HIRAM GREEN'S POLITICAL SENTIMENTS.

His Reason for Leaving his Party.—A Catechism for Candidates.

I hain't gilty of any stated polertix, as Ime aware of.

For an old man, Ime helthy and sound as a nut on all public questions. I use to be an old line Whig, and was a pooty active thimble-rigger as long as it paid. But when that party refoosed to renominate me for the offis of Gustese of the Peece, like a thurar bred polertician, I shook 'em. Said I, standin' ontop a sugar hogshead, at a primary meetin, which was bein held in SIMMINSES grocery store:—

"Feller sitizens of the Whig party, Refoose to renominate good men for offisses, and you can pack your duds and git your carpet bags checkt for the next steamer goin up Salt River.

Leave my name off'n your ticket for another term of offis, and there won't be enuff left in your old politikle carciss to grease a flap-jack griddle with. In the words of Mister—Mister—Somebody, "A word to the wise is—is—enuff to make a—hoss laff."

And here I say it, Mister PUNCHINELLO, I wasent nominated.

Dident I smash things? Gess not! I norgarated a bolt which spread like pourin keroseen ile over a marble floor, and the next fall, SCOTT & GRAHAM was nockt hire'n the Himmely mountins, while the old Whig party shoveled off its mortil quarrel.

Thus, as HORRIS GREELY, in his remarks on politikle Economy, says: "Vengents, like a 2 tined pitchfork in the hands of Old Nick, will bust up any party which goes back onto its trusted leaders. 'Vengents is mine,' says the disappinted offis seeker, and on Election day he peddles split tickets ontil the poles close."

Standin as I do on nootral ground, I wish like JOHN BULL I could make my nootrality pay as well as J. B. does, by sellin stores to the Prooshians and the French.

In castin my suferage this fall, I shall go Principals not men. A principal which is good for its little 7 per cent. intrest payable semi-annually, is what ales me.

I have prepared a serious of questions, which I propose to ask candydates who come sneakin around for my sufferage.

Skedyule of Interogertories.

What's your principals, and is the interest payable in gold or greenbax?

If elected to offis, will you squander all your salary and retire poorer than a church mouse? or will you give such strict attention to your dooties as will enable you to salt down $100,000.00 per yeer from the enormous salary of $1500.00 ($ fifteen hundred)?

Do you think, takin an iron clad oath has got anything to do with a sertin commandment which says, "Thou shalt not steel"?

Are you a beleiver in E. CADY STANTON'S revoolushinary idees, that woman is the "coming man," and if so, how do you like it as fur as yoo've got?

Do you think THEODORE TILTON, ED STUDWELL, STEVE GRISWOLD, FRED DUGLIS, and SOOSAN B. ANTHONY would make as good Presidents of the U.S. as a man would?

Is your wife one of them strong-minded critters, who believes that husbands had orter stay home and nuss the baby while she goes out and plays baseball?

Will you fall onto a voter's sholders, who eats garlix and onions, and shed tears as freely the day arter eleckshun as you will the nite before?

Could you sing the "Battle-cry of freedom" so luvly, if it wasent for Unkle Sam's Notes?

Would you have any objections, if our National and Common Counsels, like that of Rome, should organize Economikle Counsels?

In the war on tother side of the pond, is your sympathies for Lager or Pea soup?

If you want the German vote, don't you think it would be your politikle bier to get at lager-heads with the Prushians?

Did you ever think before, that yourself and family, way back 15 or 20 generations in the grave, were such a lot of low-lived villyians as the opposition papers say you be? and haint it a mistery to you that you are allowed to go unhung?

Did you commit the NATHAN murder? if so, why dident you call off your "dorg"?

Do you know as much about farmin as HORRIS GREELY does? if so, who told you?

Are you a Fenian, Know-nothin, Mason, Anti-mason, Labor Reformer, Anti-labor Reformer, a Chineese cooler, Anti-Chineese cooler, and the "wickedest man in N.Y."? Are you in favor of free trade, high tariff, free whiskey, whiskey tax, JIM FISK, MARETZEK, Tammany, the Young Democracy, Grand Army of the Republicans, GEO. F. TRAIN, MRS. CUNNINGHAM, and the D—l?

In fact, like JOSEFF, have you got a cote of many cullers?

Any candydate who can give affirmative ansers to the foregoin Catekism, and is willin to show his principals by bleedin freely, can get my vote, sure popp.

Ewers trooly, & I haint afrade To jine the bread & butter brigade.

HIRAM GREEN, Esq.,

Lait Gustise of the Peese.

LAST WORDS OF EMINENT MEN.

Selected by Sarsfield Young.

A FREE TRADER.

When you go to the theater, it is pleasant to have the little boy of a rustic couple persist in feeding you with gingerbread and orange-peel, and, if you request the little wretch to keep still, to be told by his parents that you are "putting on airs."

THE MEDICAL CONFIDENCE GAME.

Mr. Punchinello has lately received a medical publication, in which there are some editorial remarks concerning the relations between physicians and their patients. The latter are exhorted to place all confidence in their medical advisers, for, otherwise, there can be no harmonious action between them. This is all very well, and Mr. PUNCHINELLO thinks that if anything in this world should be the subject of sacred confidences, it should be the revelations of the sick-room. But, after reading the reports of the various cases which are detailed in this publication, his faith in the advisability of confiding in one's doctor was somewhat shaken. For instance, when he read that "Miss ANNA P-----, aged 25, of blonde complexion and apparent good health, residing near Jefferson avenue and Sixty-eighth street, had been subject for years to convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres, and had been obliged at various times to submit to partial amputations of horn-like excrescences on the divisions of her manual extremities," Mr. PUNCHINELLO was of opinion that this young lady, who could be easily recognized from the hints (?) of her name and residence, might possibly object to the announcement, to all her friends and acquaintances, that she had cerebral hemispheres, and still more to the fact that they were convoluted. But this dreadful truth is published, under the merest film of concealment of her identity, to the whole world, and her physical condition and subsequent surgical treatment may be town-talk for the rest of her life. Where is the "sacred confidence" here?

There are dozens of similar cases in the publication referred to, and medical journals are, in general, full of them.

Will it therefore be wondered at if we don't want all the world to know, every time we call in a doctor, that we may have a "parenchyma of the lung," or a "sub-conjunctival cellular tissue," that we will begin some day to insist as much upon medical honor as medical ability? Mr. PUNCHINELLO thinks not.

"FIAT LUX."

We learn that our Third Assistant Postmaster-General has been indisposed for some days, owing to his excessive labor in breaking envelope contracts. Why does the Postmaster-General allow his subordinates thus to overwork themselves? We wish he would shed a REAY of light on the subject.

SCIENCE AND ENDURANCE.

When people undertake any thing in the cause of Science, or indeed in any other cause, they might as well do their best while they have a chance. This is an axiom of social economy which is presented, gratis, to the world.

Now, the three scientific men who intend passing the winter on the top of Mount Washington, might certainly find some other manner of spending the cold months in the interests of science which would be much more difficult and disagreeable. They expect to be snowed up at the Tip-top House, from December until March, and will spend their time in a room lined with felt, where they will burn twenty tons of coal during their sojourn.

Almost any one could do all this. If the scientific gentlemen in question desire to undergo some really notable hardships there are plenty of deep lakes in New York, at the bottom of which they might spend the winter in a diving-bell. They would probably be frozen in until March, and they would find it much more difficult to use their instruments, and everything far more disagreeable, generally, than in a large room in the Tip-top House. Still if they would prefer something still more arduous, let them ride day and night, from December until March, in the Third Avenue cars of this city. If they were to do this, and confine their scientific labors to observations of the decidedly mean altitude of the Sun, they would probably suffer more, in a given time, than any previous party of learned men, and thus accomplish their object much better than by deliberately allowing themselves to be snowed up on Mount Washington.

A SURPRISING PROPHECY.

Years ago Mr. PUNCHINELLO had a very old grandfather, and he well remembers that on the inside of the lid of a certain horse-hair trunk, the property of that estimable old man, was pasted a bit of poetical prophecy, the words of which embedded themselves, like the hot letters of a branding-iron, on the tender skin of Mr. PUNCHINELLO'S mind. The following is the prophecy:

Now this is certainly a very astounding prophecy. If the numbers mentioned at the beginning of the oracular ditty be added together without using the ace, they make the year 1776. Now the value of an ace in Seven-up (and seven is the uppermost word in the line in which our ace occurs) is four. So four, added to the former sum, makes the year 1780. But even the first NAPOLEON had not made his appearance in this year, and so it would seem there must be a mistake somewhere. But such is not the case. If, after the manner of the regular prophecy-makers, we treat this sum according to the rule of probabilities, we shall see that, if "seventeen-eighty" will not work prophecy, we must reverse the year and call it "eighteen-seventy." This hits the mark exactly, and makes us tremble at the prophetic power of some of those old delvers in the mines of dark prediction.

For now we see plainly that not only the Pope and the ex-Emperor of France will probably disappear this year from the scenes of their glory, but that the Sun, over which a certain dirty mistiness has been stealing for some time past, will be entirely shrouded in the blackness of ruin. The lines

doubtless refer to DANA the less, who, when his sheet is utterly overwhelmed in its self-made oblivion, will deserve, and probably obtain, all the brightness and warmth to which the verse refers.

Placing this astounding prediction by the side of the amazing events of the present year, it is impossible for Mr. PUNCHINELLO to repress his feelings of wonder and awe!

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

here is an old conundrum song that begins—"Why do summer roses fade?" The late ARTEMUS WARD thought they did it as a matter of business. Why do the "Two Roses" bloom? That is WALLACK'S business. Also just now it happens to be mine.

The modern English comedy is divided into two kinds. Everybody will consider this statement a conundrum, and answer,—"Bad and good." Wrong, my little dears. All your lexicographers agree that "kind" means a "race," which is absurd, because a horse-race, for instance, is anything but kind. But they explain by saying that it means a genus. Good plays are not a genus. They are freaks of nature, like the woolly horse and the sacred cow; only, when they are produced, so many people will not pay money to see them as to see the w.h. and the s.c.

The division of modern plays, as JONATHAN EDWARDS said wittily, in his sparkling treatise on "The Will," is into the tame and the wild. For the latter the recipe is simple. Take some black false beads, hatchets, pistols, a "dog"—not a quadruped, but the article which was left in Mr. NATHAN'S hall—a woman in black hair and a white garment, suggestive of repose, strolling at midnight by the banks of the prattling East River, foot of Grand Street, and set a house afire at the end of the third act. That is the BOUCICAULT style, and as the flippant EDWARDS goes on to observe, it draws like a factory chimney in the Bowery and at NIBLO's.

But this sort of thing will not do at all at WALLACK'S. Of course not. STODDART is permitted to swear there, to be sure; but I understand that he does it for fear people should call WALLACK'S the hall of the Old Men's Christian Association. With that exception there is, as somebody said about something, absolutely nothing to offend the most fastidious. Any person who exhibits excitement upon the stage is discharged at the end of the week with a pension. Miss MOORE is permitted to weep, but she does it so quietly and nicely that it does not disturb anybody. And the ushers have received strict orders to eject anybody in the audience who manifests any marked interest in the performance. A friend of mine from Peoria once went to WALLACK'S, and took no pains whatever to conceal his admiration of the acting. On the contrary, at a particularly nice point, he actually clapped his hands together twice. Of course he was arrested for breach of the peace, and locked up over night. But the management declined, to prosecute when it was represented to them that the man had lately seen McKEAN BUCHANAN at the Peoria Academy of Music, and that he could not help testifying his gratification that LESTER WALLACK behaved so differently, and he was discharged. He went back to Peoria, and told his neighbors that there was a place in New York where they got up a yawning match (this coarse person called it a "gaping bee") every night between the stage and the audience, and the stage always won.

Now we know, that is those of us who are in good society, that what this uncouth rustic mistook for indifference is the air of society. TALLEYRAND said, or somebody said he said, that the use of language was to conceal thought. Go to WALLACK'S and you will see that the art of acting is to suppress emotions. Everything is below concert-pitch, except perhaps the orchestra, which insists upon playing lively and popular music, instead of doing the Dead March in Saul for a funeral procession while the audience files out dreamily to drink, and empties some dull opiate to the drains. The entire audience are making heroic efforts all through the play to prevent each other from seeing that they know they are listening to the most finished acting to be seen anywhere, and looking at the prettiest stage pictures ever set. All the actors are all the while trying to conceal the fact that they are doing any good acting. The whole theatre is in a condition of sweet repose, like the placid bosom of a mill-pond on a summer afternoon, when STODDART shoots the Dam.

Well, when you have society theatres, where they do this sort of thing, you must have society plays. The recipe for these is different from the gallon of gore and the ton of thunder which make up the other sort. You must have your actors representing people who are always bored to death, if you wish to maintain the respect and patronage of a society audience, whose ambition is to seem to be always bored to death in real life. You must have what the sweet but-not exemplary SWINBURNE calls "the lilies and languors of virtue" at WALLACK'S, to balance "the raptures and roses of vice" which you get at the sensational shops. People may fall in love, in a mild way, as they do in society, but they must not undergo the ravages of that passion, as it is exhibited out of society. They are, so to speak, vaccinated for love, and they are safe from the virulent confluent or even the varioloid type of the original malady. They may also transact business, of a high-toned sort, and sometimes they get out of temper. But their main employment is to wander about and yawn, or to sit down and sneer.

There is a laborious lunatic who makes ice at the fair of the American Institute, with the thermometer at 80° or so in the shade. (Note to Editor.—I don't know the man from ADAM, and have received no consideration from him whatever for this allusion,) I believe his ice costs this ingenious individual about four dollars per pound to make—but no matter. Well, this is exactly the trick by which you make society plays. ROBERTSON does it to perfection. He is the patent refrigerator. And the man who did "The Two Roses" has plagiarized his process and reproduced his results. I don't know whether the idea is to interest people in what is uninteresting, or to uninterest people in what is interesting. But he does both.

Perhaps, however, some absurd person would like to know something about this play. There is a commercial traveller in it, who is taken, by-the-by, bodily and even to his checked trousers, out of one of ROBERTSON'S plays. The only addition that has been made is that this one swears. But then STODDART personates him. This commercial traveller has a wife. To whom, by-the-by, did it ever occur, before the author of this play, that commercial travellers could have wives? The wife of this itinerant commercial person is a stationary commercial person, who keeps a boarding-house which the youths, the heroes of the play, have the misery to inhabit. All this is undeniably low for WALLACK'S, and the sales-ladies in the audience express their sense of that fact by intimating that EFFIE GERMON'S jewels are not real, and the sales-gentlemen by confiding to one another at the bar, whither they wend after the second act to quaff the maddening sarsaparilla, that WALLACK'S is running down.

As I have abused several revered institutions in these few lines. I will, in terror of public opinion and private wrath, execute a small variation on my usual and familiar autograph, and sign myself

PICADOR.

VORACIOUS VEGETATION.

It appears that our ever-active Park Commissioners are making vigorous efforts to establish a Zoological Garden in Central Park. It has been generally supposed that gardens were either horticultural or agricultural; but if the Commissioners can get up anything of the kind which shall be zoological, Mr. PUNCHINELLO has not the least objection in the world. He supposes that in such a garden the principal plants will be Tiger-lilies, Cock's-combs, Larkspurs, Ragged Robins, Coltsfoots, Horse-chestnuts, Goose-berries, Dandelions, Foxgloves, and Dog-wood. If full crops are desired, a good many pigeons and chickens should be kept on the grounds, and that portion of the gardens devoted to leg-uminous products will probably be occupied by storks and giraffes.

Q.

Is it likely that a set of Chinese gardeners would be able to mind, at the same time, both their Peas and their Queues?

"ENGLISH GRAMMAR INCLUDED."

1st Young Gentleman. "I TELL YOU WHAT, IT'S AWFUL HARD TO GET ANYTHING TO DO, JUST NOW."

2d ditto. "THAT'S SO. I SEEN AN ADVERTISEMENT YESTERDAY FOR A TUTOR IN A FAMILY, AND I'VE JUST BIN AND WROTE AN ANSWER."

THE QUEUE-RIOUS FUTURE.

Of all the queues which any man or any nation ever gave to another, the Chinese have supplied us with the most queue-rious. The arrived man from that celestial part of the world, who is now so industriously engaged washing for us in New Jersey, and again, making our shoes in Massachusetts, and who proposes to be our dairymaid, our chambermaid, our barmaid, and, if BARNUM will go into the humbug business again, our mermaid, brought the queue on the back of his head when he crossed the Pacific Ocean, and landed on the coast of California. Thence he conveyed it across the Plains, and now our mothers are going back to two queues such as those they wore when the roses which bloomed upon their cheeks were not produced by rouge, and to comprehend the lessons in the school-books which they carried was the severest trial which they knew, except, indeed, the restrained desire to get married. And our fathers will wear one tail, as did their ancestors, who curled those appendages gracefully around the limbs of the trees while they played base-ball with cocoanuts, or visited in that nimble manner in which none other than monkeys are capable of moving about. Our great American agriculturist, too, who has ploughed so deeply in the Tribune office, is going to look like a Chinese; and she, who has given us our Caudle lectures now for many years past, will exhibit ANNA DICKINSON as a convert to two tails. Next, he who serves up for us our religion every once a week in the form of sanctimonious speeches on the subject of political economy, will let his congregation go behind Plymouth Pulpit for the purpose of getting their queues for the next Sunday love-feast by observing his. The "long" and the "short" of the new vanity, however, will be found in fullest perfection among the bully-bears in Wall street, who, of all other honest men, are best able to teach the rising generation the significance of "heads I win, tails you lose." Then, again, in the far future perhaps some industrious antiquary will exhume an awful tail of the present generation that was invented by Mrs. H.B. STOWE, when she looked across the Atlantic Ocean, and interviewed the ghost of BYRON. The future is going to be glorious and queue-rious for all who wish to up-braid, and when our fathers pass us, and we see their heads, we will be convinced that thereby hangs a tail; also, when our mothers' heads go by, that thereby hang two tails.

AN ODE-IOUS SUGGESTION.

Swinburne has written an ode to the French Republic. This lofty rhyme is built up of strophes, anti-strophes, and an epode. In its construction, and grandiloquence are thrown about with the careless disregard for innocent passers-by which characterizes that poet's freedom of style. Most probably no sane English-speaking person has read it through and preserved his sanity. The poet's idea in writing it was to get the French engaged in trying to understand it, and the Germans to engage in translating it, and thus stop the war by pure exhaustion of the combatants. The idea was good, but hardly practical.

SOCIAL SCIENCE BY TELEGRAPH.

The right of an independent Briton to beat his wife without being liable to impertinent foreign interference is well known to be one of the most precious privileges inherited from Magna Charta. The national use of this privilege is now generally considered, by social philosophers, to be the foundation of the love of "fair play," so universally characteristic of the English. It is only upon this ground that we can account for the following item recently telegraphed from London as a special to the N. Y. Times.

"It is curious to see that, while the married men of the city are against interference, all military and naval men are loud in expressions of indignation because no effort is made by England to save France from ruin."

As we see it, this is not curious at all. To the comprehensive English mind, the war in Europe is a mere family quarrel, on a large scale. But what is really curious the special does not tell us. What position do the military and naval men take who happen to be married?

A GROWL FROM A BRITON.

Mr. Punchinello:—One of the balloon reporters from Paris says:

"Great care is taken to save food from waste. There is much horse-flesh eaten."

For a Frenchman in a state of siege horse-flesh is all right—the French eat frogs, you know, and horses have frogs in their feet. What I like about the thing in Paris, though, is that they call it horse-flesh, and don't try to jerk it on a fellow for beef. Jerked beef is bad enough, but only think of jerked horse, by Jove, you know!

Now I want to say that here in New York, not being in a state of siege, we are eating a lot more horse-flesh than we know of, all the same—but they call it beef.

Look here, now.

I take my grub, sometimes (only for the sake of seeing life, you know), at a decent sort of a place enough, to which butchers resort. There is a man always to be seen there at grub time, a cockish-looking fellow, somewhat, with a horse-shoe pin in his scarf, and he is as thick as thieves with the butchers. Yesterday, for the first time, I got an inkling of who and what he is. I saw him performing an operation upon a horse, in the yard of a livery stable. He is a VETERINARY SURGEON! He consorts with BUTCHERS! Put that and that together, Mr. PUNCHINELLO, and see what you can make of it. And the duffer always eats mutton, too, or fish. I never yet heard him call for beef. He knows all about nag, and likes it alive, but he is not to be nagged into eating it. Neigh! neigh!

Yours, irascibly,

YORKSHIRE-PUDDINGHEAD.

DEAD BEATS. Muffled drums.

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