Chapter IV (1)

We will now suppose a period of three years to have passed. Luella had been sent to visit her friends in southern Iowa, partly to assuage her grief, and partly to save expenses, for she was a hearty eater. Here she met a young man named Rufus G. Hopper, who fell in love with her, about the first hard work he did, and when, metaphorically speaking, he laid his 40-acre homestead, with its wealth of grasshopper eggs, at her feet, she capitulated, and became his'n, and he became her'n.

Thus these two erstwhile lovers of the long ago had become separated, and the fair Queen of the Skimmilk Ranche had taken a change of venue with her affections. Still all seemed to be well to the casual observer, although at times her eyes had that far-away look of those who are crossed in love, or whose livers are out of order. Was it the fleeing vision of the absent lover, or had she eaten something that didn't agree with her?

Ah! who shall say that at times there did not flash across her mind the fact that she had sacrificed herself on the altar of Mammon, and given her rich love in exchange for forty acres of Government land? But the time drew nigh for the celebration of the nuptials, and still no tidings of the absent lover. Nearer and nearer came the 4th of July, the day set apart for the wedding, and still in the dark mysterious bosom of the unknown, lurked the absent swain.

*****

These stars indicate the number of days which we must now suppose to have passed, and the glad day of the Nation's rejoicing is at hand. The loud mouthed cannon, proclaims, for the one hundredth time, that in the little Revolutionary scrimmage of 1776, our forefathers got away with the persimmons. Flags wave, bands play, and crackers explode, and scare the teams from the country. Fair rustic maids are seen on every hand with their good clothes on, and farmers' sons walk up and down the street, asking the price of watermelons and soda water. Bye and bye the band comes down street playing "Old Zip Coon," with variations. The procession begins to form and point toward the grand stand, where the Declaration of Independence will be read to the admiring audience, and lemonade retailed at five cents a glass.

But who are the couple who sit on the front seat near the speaker's stand, listening with rapt attention to the new and blood-curdling romance, entitled the "Declaration of Independence?" It is Luella and her bran new husband. The casual observer can discover that, by the way he smokes a cheap cigar in her face, and allows the fragrant smoke from the five cent Havana to drift into her sorrel eyes. All at once the band strikes up the operatic strain of "Captain Jinks," and as the sad melody dies away in the distance, a young man steps proudly forth, at the conclusion of the president's introductory speech, and in a low, musical voice, begins to set forth the wrongs visited on the Pilgrim Fathers, and to dish up the bones of G. Washington and T. Jefferson, in various styles.

What is it about the classic mouth, with its charming _naivete_, and the amber tinge lurking about its roguish outlines, which awakes the old thrill in Luella's heart, and causes the vital current to recede from its accustomed channels, and leave her face like marble, save where here and there a large freckle stands out in bold relief? It is the mouth of Pigeon toed Pete. Those same Gothic features stand out before her, and she knows him in a moment. It is true he had colored his mustache, and he wore a stand-up collar; but it was the same form, the same low, musical, squeaky voice, and the same large, intellectual ears, which she remembered so well.

It appeared that he had been to the Gunnison country, and having manifested considerable originality and genius as a bull whacker, had secured steady employment and large wages, being a man with a ready command of choice and elegant profanity, and an irresistable way of appealing to the wants of a sluggish animal. Taking his spare change, he had invested it in hand made sour mash corn juice, which he retailed at from 25 to 50 cents per glass. Rain water being plenty, the margin was large, and his profits highly satisfactory. In this way he had managed to get together some cash, and was at once looked upon as a leading capitalist, and a man on whom rested the future prosperity of the country. He wore moss-agate sleeve buttons, and carried a stem-winding watch. He looked indeed like a thing of life, and as he closed with some stirring quotation from Martin F. Tupper amid the crash of applause, and the band struck up the oratorio of "Whoop'em up'Liza Jane," and the audience dispersed to witness a game of base-ball. Luella took her husband's arm, climbed into the lumber wagon, and rode home, with a great grief in her heart. Had she deferred her wedding for only a few short hours, the course of her whole life would have been entirely changed, and, instead of plodding her weary way through the long, tedious years as Mrs. Hopper, making rag-carpets during the winter, and smashing the voracious potato bug during the summer, she might have been interested in a carbonate 'Bonanza, worn checked stockings, and low-necked shoes.

There are two large, limpid tears standing in her sorrel eyes, as the curtain falls on this story, and her lips move involuntarily as she murmurs that little couplet from Milton:--

```"I feel kind of sad and bilious, because

``My heart keeps sighing, 'It couldn't was.'"=

SPEECH OF SPARTACTUS.

ADAPTED FROM THE ORIGINAL ESPECIALLY FOR THIS WORK.

|It had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus returning with victorious eagles, had aroused the populace with the sports of the amphitheatre, to an extent hitherto unknown even in that luxurious city. A large number of people from the rural districts had been in town to watch the conflict in the arena, and to listen with awe and veneration to the infirm and decrepit ring jokes.

The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from the free-lunch counter, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The moon piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the dark waters of the Tiber rith a wavy tremulous light. The dark-browed Roman soldier moved on his homeward way, the sidewalk occasionally flying up and hitting him in the back.

No sound was heard save the low sob of some retiring wave, as it told its story to the smooth pebbles of the beach, or the unrelenting boot-jack struck the high board fence in the back yard, just missing the Roman Tom cat in its mad flight, and then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the Roman snore would steal in upon the deathly silence, and then die away like the sough of a summer breeze. In the green room of the amphitheater a Jittle band of gladiators were assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hung upon their brows, and the large knobs on their classic profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with them.

There was an embarassing silence of about five minutes, When Spartacus, borrowing a chew of tobacco from Trioforatum Aurelius, stepped forth and thus addressed them: "Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen: Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met in the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet has never lowered his arm. I do not say this to brag, however, but simply to show that I am the star thumper of the entire outfit.

"If there be one among you who can say that ever in public fight or private brawl my actions did belie my words, let him stand forth and say it, and I will spread him around over the arena till the Coroner will have to gather him up with a blotting paper. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come, and I will construct upon their physiognomy such cupolas, and royal cornices, and Corinthian capitols, and entablatures, that their own mothers would pass them by in the broad light of high noon, unrecognized.

"And yet I was not always thus--a hired butcher--the savage chief of still more savage men.

"My ancestors came from old Sparta, the county seat of Marcus Aurelius county, and settled among the vine-clad hills and cotton groves of Syrsilla. My early life ran quiet as the clear brook by which I sported. Aside from the gentle patter of the maternal slipper on my overalls, everything moved along with me like the silent oleaginous flow of the ordinary goose grease. My boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We stole the Roman muskmelon, and put split sticks on the tail of the Roman dog, and life was one continuous hallelujah.

"When at noon I led the sheep beneath the shade and played the Sweet Bye-and-Bye on my shepherd's flute, there was another Spartan youth, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime. We led our flocks to the same pasture, and together picked the large red ants out of our indestructible sandwiches.

"One evening, after the sheep had been driven into the corral and we were all seated beneath the persimmon tree that shaded our humble cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra and George Francis Train and Dr. Mary Walker and other great men, and how a little band of Spartans, under Sitting Bull, had withstood the entire regular army. I did not then know what war was, but my cheek burned, I knew not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it would be to leave the reservation and go on the warpath. But my mother kissed my throbbing temples and bade me go soak my head and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans landed on our coasts. They pillaged the whole country, burned the agency buildings, demolished the ranche, rode off the stock, tore down the smoke-house, and rode their war horses over the cucumber vines.

"To-day I killed a man in the arena, and when I broke his helmet-clasps and looked upon him, behold! he was my friend. The same sweet smile was on his face that I had known when in adventurous boyhood we bathed in the glassy lake by our Spartan home and he had tied my shirt into 1,752 dangerous and difficult knots.

"He knew me, smiled some more, said 'Ta, ta,' and ascended the golden stair. I begged of the Prætor that I might be allowed to bear away the body and have it packed in ice and shipped to his friends near Syrsilla, but he couldn't see it.

"Ay, upon my bended knees, amidst the dust and blood of the anna, I begged this poor boon, and the Prætor answered: 'Let the carrion rot. There are no noble men but Romans and Ohio men. Let the show go on. Bring in the bobtail lion from Abyssinia.' And the assembled maids and mations and the rabble shouted in derision and told me to 'brace up' and 'have some style about my clothes' and 'to give it to us easy,' with other Roman flings which I do not now call to mind.

"And so must you, fellow gladiators, and so must I, die like dogs.

"To-morrow we are billed to appear at the Coliseum at Rome, and reserved seats are being sold at the corner of Third and Corse streets for our moral and instructive performance while I am speaking to you.

"Ye stand here like giants as ye are, but to-morrow some Roman Adonis with a sealskin cap will pat your red brawn and bet his sesturces upon your blood.

"O Rome! Rome! Thou hast been indeed a tender nurse to me. Thou hast given to that gentle, timid shepherd lad who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note, muscles of iron, and a heart like the adamantine lemon pie of the railroad lunch-room. Thou hast taught him to drive his sword through plated mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the palpitating gizzard of his foe, and to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of the fierce Numidian lion even as the smooth-cheeked Roman Senator looks into the laughing eyes of the girls in the treasury department.

"And he shall pay thee back till thy rushing Tiber is red as frothing wine; and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled. You doubtless hear the gentle murmur of my bazoo.

"Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? 'Tis three days since he tasted flesh, but to-morrow he will have gladiator on toast, and don't you forget it; and he will fling your vertebrae about his cage like the tar pitcher of a champion nine.

"If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting for the butcher's knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me. Strike down the warden and the turnkey, overpower the police, and cut for the tall timber. We will break through the city gate, capture the war-horse of the drunken Roman, flee away to the lava beds, and there do bloody work, as did our sires at old Thermopylae, scalp the western-bound emigrant, and make the hen-roosts around Capua look sick.

"O, comrades! warriors! gladiators!!

"If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, and by the still waters, and be buried according to Gunter, instead of having our shin bones polished off by Numidian lions, amid the groans and hisses of a snide Roman populace."

CORRESPONDENCE.

Dalles of the St. Croix, September 8, 1880.

|Yesterday we steamed up this beautiful river from Stillwater, and as I write, our boat is moored at the head of navigation, with the mighty, perpendicular walls of the St. Croix, shutting in the grassy waters below, while a hundred yards above us the foaming torrent is dashing against the invincible fortress of smooth, moss-grown rocks, with here and there a somber pine or graceful spruce clinging to a jutting shelf midway between the clear, calm sky above and the roaring, angry flood beneath.

Most every one has heard of the wonderful Dalles of the St. Croix. They are not, however, the sole feature of the locality entitled to notice. I consider the entire picture between Stillwater and the Falls one of surpassing loveliness. At this season of the year, the high, gray walls on either side of the lake and river are clad in garments of green and gold, which mock the pen of the poet, and strike the beholder dumb, as he stands in the royal presence of autumn.

The deep green of the stately pine, stands side by side with the golden glory of the poplar, and here and there the brazen billows and royal coloring of maple and oak, the hectic flush upon the features of the dving year, are spread out between the silent sky and the sandy beach; while softly mirrored in the glassy waters, the whole broad picture colored by a mighty, master hand, and with the myriad dyes from Nature's inexhaustible laboratory lies repeated, the echo of a thrilling vision.

There are two rival steamers plying on the Upper St. Croix. I do not remember their names, because they charged me full fare both ways. I can see that my memory is failing a little every day, and I am getting more and more prone to forget those who do not recognize my innate and spontaneous greatness at a glance, and extend the usual courtesies.

When we came down we towed a wheat barge loaded with 21,000 bushels of wheat, and it was pretty difficult most of the way.

The opposition boat went up the night before, and had taken up the water with a blotting-paper, so that every little while I had to roll up my pants about nine feet, and go out into the channel, and luff up on the starboard watch of the barge with a jenny pole and bring her to, so that she could find moisture.

Then I had a good deal of fun going ashore after ferns when the boat was aground. While the crew went aft and close-reefed the smoke-stack and hauled abaft the top-gallant, or side-tracked the wheat barge, my wife would send me ashore to gather maiden-hair ferns, and soft, velvety mosses, and sad, yearnful wood-ticks. O how I love to crawl around through the underbrush, and tear my clothes, and wilt my collar, and gather samples of lichens, and ferns and baled hay and caterpillars to decorate my Western home.

At first I thought I would not mention the little domestic cloud that has shot athwart my sky, but I cannot smother it in my own breast any longer.

St. Croix Falls is on the Wisconsin side of the river and Taylor's Falls on the Minnesota side. They are connected by a toll-bridge which charges you one and a half cents each, way for passage. One can stand halfway across this bridge and see up and down the river, with the Devil's Arm Chair at his right and the Dalles at his left. After supper I took a couple of friends down to the bridge and without Jetting them know the treat that I had in store for them, I went up to the gate-keeper and paid for all three of us both ways. Then I told them to enjoy themselves. It was a novel treat perhaps to throw open a toll-bridge to the enjoyment of one's friends, but I did it with that utter disregard of expense which has characterized my mining developments in the Rocky Mountains.

Then I took the boys over across the river and gave them the freedom of St. Croix Falls.

Jutting out into the river south of Osceola, is a high, rocky promontory called Cedar Point. Lonely and proud like a sentinel of the forgotten past, there stands a tall cedar tree on this natural battlement, devoid of foliage for some distance up the trunk.

This tree was the old mark that stood upon the dividing line between the Chippewa and Sioux territory. Below it, in the water-worn rock, is a large semi-circle, made by the action of the river, and this it was stated had been the footprint of the horse upon which the Great Spirit had ridden across the stream when he drew the line between these two mighty nations, and set the tree upon it to show his children the boundary between their respective territories. This was the Indian Mason and Dixon's line.

What a wild, weird suggestion of the crude legislation and amateur statesmanship of these two nations rises up before me as I write, and how I yearn to go into the details and try to enter the free-for-all contest and match a bob-tail Caucasian lie against these moss-grown prevarications of the red-man.

At Stillwater, my first wild impulse was to visit the State Penitentiary.

When I go into a new place I register my name at the most expensive hotel, and after visiting the newspaper offices I hunt up the penitentiary, if there be one, and if not, I go to the cooler. I do not go there under duress, as the facetious reader might suggest, but I go there voluntarily to see how the criminal business of the place is looking.

We went to the warden's office, and talked with him a little while, showed him that we were not loaded with giant powder and cross-cut saws, and then we were placed in charge of an usher, and sent through the building to view the mighty manufacturing interests that are carried on inside, where the striped criminals silently and doggedly are moving about at their varied occupations.

After awhile I got gloomy and began to whistle one of my tearful refrains in G. The usher told me to please put up my whistle, and I did so, partly to gratify him and partly because he had a temporary advantage over me. Most every one who has heard me whistle seems glad that his lines have fallen in such pleasant places; but this man, as I afterward learned, did not know the first principle of music. He groped along through life without knowing the difference between a symphony in B, and the low, sad song of the twilight cat.

Pretty soon we came to three men whose faces attracted my attention.

They were the Younger brothers. Their faces were easy of identification from the resemblance to wood cuts published at the time of their capture. I stood silently looking at them for some time.

Their countenances are a study for the reader of human character. Sullen, grim and depraved, they impress the beholder with their utter scorn for the laws and usages of the land. I asked the usher if I guessed right; but he turned away and told me it was against the rules of the institution to point out any one to visitors, or identify the convicts in any way. Then I knew that I was right, because he was so reserved.

I gave one of the men my card and entered into a conversation with him. It wasn't much of a conversation, however, because the usher broke in on me, and shut me off, as it were.

The description that I have given of the Younger brothers in this letter is not over full, owing partly to the fact that the usher wouldn't let me be as sociable with them as I wanted to be; and partly because I afterward discovered, casually, that they were not the Younger brothers.

Speaking of convicts reminds me of my experience with a poor, ignorant man at Laramie--the creature of circumstances--who was sentenced to three years in the Territorial penitentiary, for stealing a pair of flea-bitten bronchos. He was convicted mainly on the testimony of a man, who was afterward sent up for the same offence, and it was the general belief that the first-named man was entirely innocent. He was trusted about the penitentiary at all times, and allowed to go outside the walls without guard, but never betrayed the trust reposed in him.

I went to him and talked with him. His spirits and health were broken, and he told me, with tears in his eyes, that he hoped only for a merciful death to end his sufferings. While acting as guard to a party of convicts outside one day, they fell upon him and nearly killed him with a huge stone, and then leaving him bleeding and insensible.

He could not tell of his sufferings without crying. I undertook to enlist sympathy for him, and when I told his tale of misfortune to the governor and authorities in that thrilling way of mine, I had no difficulty in securing his pardon.

He came to my office and sobbed out his gratitude till I told him it was of no consequence, and begged him not to mention it, although it was the proudest moment of my life. He went to work for a citizen of Laramie, with the old, industrious, patient air, and I pointed him out with pride to my friends as a man whom I had rescued and brought back to a useful life.

One morning, however, before the pale dawn had streaked the eastern sky he took his employer's team and what money there was in the house and struck out for the Gunnison country. He did not know anything about mining, but he had such implicit confidence in himself that he started out alone and without letters of introduction to leading men in that country. It was a good thing that he did have perfect confidence in himself, for no one else had much confidence in him after that.

During that day a good many of my friends came around to see me. I didn't know I had so many friends. They all seemed to be in first-rate spirits. They seemed glad to see me, and laughed a good deal. Sometimes I couldn't see what they were laughing at, for my horizon was shrouded in gloom. It don't take much to make some people laugh.

I have never felt perfectly at ease with Governor Thayer since that. I know that he regards me as a confederate with that man, and he thinks that I got part of the money realized from the sale of that team, but I didn't. If it were the last statement I should make on earth I would still say?

As Heaven is my witness, that I have never realized a single dollar from the sale of that team.

HE WENT OUT WEST FOR HIS HEALTH.

|In my capacity of justice of the peace and general wholesale and retail dealer in fresh, new-laid equity and evenhanded justice, I often meet with those who have seen better days, and who, through the ever-changing fortunes of the west, have fallen lower and lower in the social scale, until they stand up and are assessed as "common drunks," or "vags," or "assault and batteries," with that natural and easy grace which comes only to those who have been before the public in that capacity, so numerously, that it has ceased to indicate itself by the usual embarrassment of the amateur.

Perhaps no surging sentiments of pity have stirred my very soul during my official career, like those that throbbed wildly athwart my system a few days ago.

It was a case of the most bitter disappointment of a young life. A youth from Chicago, came to me, near the close of day. I was just about to lock up the judicial scales for the evening, and secure the doors of the archives, preparatory to going out and "shaking" the mayor for the lemonade, after which I intended to breathe in a little fresh atmosphere and go home to dinner.

It had been a hard day in the temple of justice that day, and the court was weary.

It had dealt out even-handed justice at regular rates, since early morning, at so much per deal, till fatigue was beginning to show itself in the lines upon the broad, white brow.

Therefore, when a halting step was heard on the stair, there was a low murmur on the part of the court, and a half-surprised moan that sounded like the tail end of an affidavit.

The young man who entered the hallowed presence of eternal justice, and the all-pervading and dazzling beauty of the court in its shirt-sleeves, was of about medium stature, with shoes cut decollette, and Roman-striped socks clocked with brocaded straw-colored silk.

He wore an ecru colored straw hat, with navy-blue brocaded band, and necktie of old gold, with polka dots of humberta and cardinal, interspersed with embroidered horseshoe and stirrup in coucherde soleil and ultramarine.

His hair was dark and oleaginous, and his shirt was cream colored ground, with narrow baby-blue stripes, cutaway collar, and cuffs that extended out into space.

He also had some other clothes on.

But over all, and pervading the entire man, was the look of hopelessness and corroding grief. With all his good clothes on, he was a hollow mockery, for his eyes were heavy with woe.

The nose also was heavy with woe.

This feature in fact was more appropriately draped in token of its sadness than any of the rest. Few noses are so expressive of a general and incurable gloom as this one was. It had evidently at one time been a glad, joyous, and buoyant nose, but now it was despondent and low spirited.

There was a look of goneness and utter desolation about it that would stir the better impulses of the most heartless.

The feature had evidently tried to centralize itself, but had failed. Here and there narrow strips of court-plaster had gone out after it and tried to win it back, but they had not succeeded.

I said, "Mister, there seems to be a panic among your nose. It's none of my business, of course, but couldn't you get a brass band and call it together? Then you could hold a meeting and decide whether it had better resume or not."

The gentleman from Chicago went through the motions of wiping the wide waste and howling desolation where his once joyous nose had been, and then, putting away the plum-colored silk handkerchief with the orange border, he said "'Squire, I have been grossly deceived. You see in me the victim of a base misrepresentation. In Chicago this season of the year is extremely unhealthy. The intense hot weather carries away the innocent and the good, and I feared that my turn would come soon.

"I heard of the salubrious clime of your mountain city, where the days are filled with gladness and the burning heat of the mighty city by the inland sea never comes.

"I came here two brief days ago, and you can see with the naked eye what the result has been.

"It is not gratifying. The climate may in the abstract be all right, but there are certain sudden and wonderful atmospheric changes that I cannot account for, and they are very disastrous.

"I was sitting in a Second Street saloon to-day, talking about matters and things, when the conversation turned on physical strength. One thing led to another, and finally I made a little humorous remark to a young man there, which remark I have made in Chicago many times without disastrous results, but the air clouded up all of a sudden, and in the darkness I could see Roman candles going off and pin-wheels and high-priced rockets and blue-lights, etc.

"Shortly after that I gathered up what fragments of my face I could find and went down to the doctor's office.

"He held an inquest on my nose, and I paid for it.

"I shall go back to Chicago to-morrow. I shall not be as handsome as I was, but I have gained a good deal of information about the broad and beautiful west which is priceless in value to me.

"All I wished to say was this; if you see fit to mention this matter to the public, tone it down as much as possible, and say that for a bilious, nervous temperament, perhaps the air here is too bracing."

I have considered his sensitive feelings, and have tried to give the above account in fair and impartial terms.

A QUIET LITTLE WEDDING WITHOUT ANY FRILLS

|Another class of those who frequent the temple of justice includes those who are in search of matrimony at reduced rates.

I remember one unostentatious little wedding which took place at the general headquarters of municipal jurisprudence, over which I preside, and during the earlier history of my reign.

It was quite a success in a small way.

I had just moved into the office, and had been engaged that morning in putting up a stove. The stove had seemed reluctant, and as my assistant was sociably drunk, I had not succeeded very well.

The pipe didn't seem to be harmonious, and the effort to bring about a union between the discordant elements, had not, up to the time of which I speak, produced any very gratifying results.

I had reached down into the elbow of the pipe several times, to see how it felt down there, and after satisfying my morbid curiosity in that respect, I had yielded to a wild and uncontrollable desire to scratch my nose with the same hand.

This had given me an air of intense sadness, and opaque gloom.

I stood on the top of a step-ladder trying to make the end of a six-inch joint of pipe go into the end of a five-inch joint, when the groom entered. He wanted to know if he could see the general manager, and I told him he could if he had a piece of smoked glass, and a $5 promissory note executed by old man Spinner.

Then he told me how he was fixed. He desired a small package of connubial bliss, and without delay.

The necessary preliminaries were arranged; the groom made an extempore effort to spit in the mosaic cuspidore, but was only partially successful, put on his hat and went out in search of Juliet.

She was very unique in her style, and entirely free from any effort to appear to the best advantage.

She wore her hair plain, _a la_ Sitting Bull. It had been banged, but not with any great degree of system or accuracy. Probably it had been done with the pinking-iron or a pair of ice-tongs by an amateur banger.

She looked some like Mrs. Bender, only younger and more queenly, perhaps.

She swept into the arena with the symmetrical movement and careless grace of a hired man--only her steps were longer and less methodical.

Both bride and groom had come through with a band of emigrants from Kansas, and, therefore, they were out of swallow-tail coats and orange blossoms.

There was no airy tulle and shimmering satin, or broadcloth and spike-tail coat in the procession; at least there was none visible to the court.

The groom was bronzed and bearded like a pard, whatever that is, and wore a pair of brown-duck overalls, caught back with copper rivets and held in place by a lonely suspender. He also wore a hickory shirt with stripes running vertically. His hair looked like burnished gold, only he hadn't burnished it much since he left Kansas.

The entire emigrant train dropped in one by one to witness the ceremony, and seemed impressed with the overshadowing and awe-inspiring nature of the surroundings.

One by one they filed in, and, making their little contribution to the mosaic cuspidore, they leaned themselves up against the wall and wrapped themselves in thought.

I bandaged my finger, which I had skinned some in putting the stove together, wiped off what soot and ashes I had about my person and thought I would not need, and boldly solidified these two young hearts.

The ceremony was not very impressive, but it did the required amount of damage. That was all that was necessary.

The applicants seemed to miss the wedding-march and some other little preparatory arrangements, which I had overlooked, but I apologized to them afterward, and told them that when times picked up a little, and I got established, and the new fee-bill went into operation, I would attend to these things.

The wedding presents were not numerous, but they were useful, and showed the good sense of the donors.

The bride's mother gave her one of the splint-bottom chairs that one always sees tied to the rear of every well regulated emigrant wagon, and her father gave her a cream-colored dog, with one eye knocked out.

With his overflowing wealth of flea-bitten dogs, he might have done much better by her than he did, but he said he would wait a few years and if she were poor enough to need more dogs, he would not be parsimonious.

The young couple went up on Coyote Creek and went to housekeeping, and years have gone by since without word from them.

In the turmoil and hurry of life, I had almost forgotten them until Cole's circus was in town the other day.

That brought them to light.

They had done well in the dog business, and had succeeded in promoting the growth of a new kind of meek and lowly dog, with sore places on him for homeless and orphan flies.

They also had several children with reddish hair and large, wilted ears.

The youngest one was quite young, and cried when the calliope burst into a wild rhapsody of Nancy Lee.

When I saw the family, the mother was eagerly watching the parade, and at the same time trying to broil the baby's nose in the sun. It was almost done, when I was called away by other business, so I cannot say positively whether the child was taken home rare or well-done.

THOUGHTS ON SPRING

|Spring is the most joyful season of the year. The little brooklets are released from their icy fetters and go laughing and rippling along their winding way. The birds begin to sing in the budding branches, and the soft South wind calls forth the green grass.

The husbandman then goes forth to dig the horseradish for his frugal meal. He also jabs his finger into the rosebud mouth of the wild-eyed calf, and proceeds to wean him from the gentle cow. The cow-boy goes forth humming a jocund lay. So does the hen. Boys should not go near the hen while she is occupied with her tuneful lay. She might seize them by the off ear, and bear them away to her den, and feed them to her young. The hen rises early in the morning so as to catch the swift-footed angleworm as he flits from flower to flower. The angleworm cannot bite.

In the spring the young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love. Love is a good thing.

The picnic plant will soon lift its little head to the sunshine, and the picnic manager will go out and survey the country, to find where the most God-forsaken places are, and then he will get up an excursion to some of these picturesque mud-holes and sand-piles; and the man who swore last year that he would never go to another picnic, will pack up some mustard, and bay rum, and pickles, and glycerine, and a lap-robe, and some camphor, and a spyglass, and some court-plaster; and he will heave a sigh and go out to the glens and rural retreats, and fill his skin full of Tolu, Rock and Rye, and hatred toward all mankind and womankind; and he will skin his hands, and try to rub the downy fluff and bloom from a cactus by sitting down on it.

I have attended picnics regularly for nearly ten years now, and I am a man of a good deal of firmness, too, but I cannot hold a cactus down on the ground with my entire weight, any better than when I first began; and I feel that I am getting farther and farther from redeeming grace.

With the approach of spring the correspondence between myself and Mr. Le Duc begins to get more brisk also. He writes me under date of March 20, saying that he is preparing for amore vigorous campaign this summer than ever before. He thinks the clip from his Cotswold hydraulic rams will exceed that of any previous year. He will also experiment in a scientific manner to perfect the laying of fancy Easter porcelain and decorated China eggs by Cochin China fowls. If they cannot manage it he will try some experiments on the egg plant. Mr. Le Duc is a man who is not easily discouraged by small obstacles. He will watch the habits of the grasshopper and curculio and bed-bug, also with great assiduity. I have begged him to transfer the bed-bug to the Indian Department. He always regards my suggestions very favorably, because, as he says, I am "so practical."

We are going to devote a part of the summer to grafting the saddle-rock oyster on the vegetable oyster-plant, and will spare no pains to secure an inland oyster that will stand this dry air and high, rigorous climate.

THE SAME OLD THING.

|Recently I have had the pleasure of acting as chief mourner at a mountain picnic. This subject has been pretty well represented in romance and song already; but I venture to give my experience as being a little out of the ordinary.

The joy which is experienced in the glad, free life of the picnicker is always before the picnic. On the evening before he makes the excursion, he is too full of sacred pleasure and lavender-colored tranquillity for anything.

He glides about the house, softly warbling to himself the fragment of some tender love song, while he packs the corkscrews and matches, and other vegetables for the morrow.

I was placed in command of a party of ladies who had everything arranged so that all I needed to do would be to get into the buggy and drive to the mountains, eat my lunch, and drive back again.

I like to go with a party of ladies, because they never make suggestions about the route, or how to drive.

They are just as full of gentle trust and child-like confidence and questions as they can be.

They get the lunch ready and get into the buggy, and keep thinking of things they have forgotten, till they get 400 miles from home, and they sing little pieces of old songs, and won't let the great, horrid man in charge of the excursion have any lunch when he gets hungry, because they are hunting for a romantic spot beneath the boughs of a magnificent elm, while every sane man in the Territory knows that there isn't an elm big or little, within 1,4321 1/2 miles.

We went up in the mountains, because we wanted to go where it would be cool. As a search for a cool resort, this picnic of ours was the most brilliant success. We kept going up at an angle of forty-five degrees from the time we left home until we had to get out and walk to keep warm. We got into one of the upper strata of clouds; and a cold mist mixed with fragments of ice-cream, and large chunks of hail and misery, about the size of a burglar-proof safe came gathering over us. Then we camped in the midst of the mountain storm, and the various ladies sat down on their feet, and put the lap-robes over them, and looked reproachfully at me. We hovered around under the buggy, and two or three little half-grown parasols, and watched the storm. It was a glorious spectacle to the thinking mind.

They began to abuse me because I did not make a circus of myself, and thus drive away the despair and misery of the occasion. They had brought me along, it seemed, because I was such an amusing little cuss. It made me a good deal sadder than I would have been otherwise. Here in the midst of a wild and bitter mountain storm, so thick that you couldn't see twenty yards away, with nothing to eat but some marble cake soaked in vinegar, and a piece of cold tongue with a red ant on it, I was expected to make a hippodrome and negro minstrel show of myself. I burst into tears, and tried to sit on my feet as the ladies did. I couldn't do it, so simultaneously and so extemporaneously, as it were, as they could. I had to take them by sections and sit on them. My feet are not large, but at the same time I cannot hover over them both at the same time.

Dear reader, did you ever sit amidst the silence and solitude of the mountains and feel the hailstones rolling down your back, melting and soothing you, and filling your heart with great surging thoughts of the sweet bye-and-bye, and death, and the grave, and other mirth-provoking topics? We had now been about two hundred years without food, it seemed to me, and I mildly suggested that I would like something to eat rather than die of starvation in the midst of plenty; but the ladies wouldn't give me so much as a ham handwich to preserve my life. They told me to smoke if I felt that I must have nourishment, and coldly refused to let me sample the pickled spiders and cold-pressed flies.

So in the midst of all this prepared food I had to go out into the sagebrush and eat raw grasshoppers and grease-wood.

Bye and bye, when we concluded that we had seen about all the mountain storm we needed in our business, and didn't pine for any more hail-stones and dampness, we hitched up again and started home. Then we got lost. The ladies felt indignant, but I was delighted. I never was so lost in all my life. When I was asked where I thought I was, I could cheerfully reply that I didn't know, and that would stop the conversation for as much as two minutes.

The beauty of being lost is that you are all the time seeing new objects. There is a charm of novelty about being lost that one does not fully understand until he has been there, so to speak.

When I would say that I didn't know where the road led to that we were traveling, one of the party would suggest with mingled bitterness and regret, that we had better turn back. Then I would turn back. I turned back seventeen times at the request of various members of the party for whom I had, and still have, the most unbounded respect.

Finally we got so accustomed to the various objects along this line of travel, that we pined for a change. Then we drove ahead a little farther and found the road. It had been there all the time. It is there yet.

I never had so much fun in all my life. It don't take much to please me, however. I'm of a cheerful disposition, anyhow.

Some of the ladies brought home columbines that had been drowned; others brought home beautiful green mosses with red bugs in them; and others brought home lichens and ferns and neuralgia.

I didn't bring anything home. I was glad to get home myself, and know that I was all there.

I took the lunch basket and examined it. It looked sick and unhappy. At first I thought I would pick the red ants out of the lunch; then I thought it would save time to pick the lunch out of the red ants; but finally I thought I would compromise, by throwing the whole thing into the alley.

I am now preparing a work to be called the "Pick Nicker's Guide; or Starvation Made Easy and Even Desirable!" It will supply a want long felt, and will be within the reach of all.

THE VETERAN WHO DIED WHILE GETTING HIS PENSION.

|Many years ago, when business in my office was not very rushing, and time hung heavy on my hands, before I had attempted journalism, and no dream of my present dazzling literary success had entered my mind, I rashly offered to assist applicants for pensions in attracting the attention of the general government, at so much per head.

One hot day in July while I sat in my office killing flies with an elastic band and wondering if my mines would ever be quoted in the market, a middle-aged man came in and, spitting calmly into the porcelain cuspidore, began to tell me about his service as a soldier, and how he was wounded, and wished to secure a pension.

He said that several attorneys had already tried to procure one for him, but had failed to do so, giving up in despair. I examined the wound, which consisted of a large hole in the skull, caused by a gun-shot wound. He was almost entirely prevented by this wound from obtaining a livelihood, because he was liable at any moment to fall insensible to the ground, as the result of exercise or work. I told him that I would snatch a few moments from my arduous duties and proceed to do as he requested me.

Then I began a very brisk correspondence with the Interior Department. I would write to the Commissioner of Pensions in my vivacious but firm manner and he would send me back a humorous little circular showing me that I had been too hasty and premature. I never got mad or forgot myself but began a little farther back in the history of the world, and gradually led up to the war of the rebellion.

In reply the Commissioner would write back to me that my chronological table was at fault and I would cheerfully correct the error and proceed.

At this time, however, my client became a little despondent, several years having elapsed since we began our task. So to my other labors I had to add that of cheering up the applicant.

Time dragged its slow length along. Months succeeded months and the years sped on.

The Interior Department never forgot me. Every little while I would get a printed circular boiling over with mirth and filled with the most delightful conundrums relative to the late unpleasantness. These conundrums I would have my client answer and swear to every time, although I could see that he was failing mentally and physically. He would come into my office almost every day, and silently raise his right hand and with uncovered head stand there in a reverent attitude for me to swear him to something. Sometimes I had nothing for him to swear to, and then I would make him take the oath of allegiance and send him away. I wanted to keep him loyal if I could, whether he got his pension or not.

The last work had been nearly completed, and the claim had been turned over to the Surgeon-General's office, when the applicant yielded to the crumbling effect of relentless time, and took to his bed.

It was a sad moment for me. I could not keep back the silent tears when I saw the old man lying there so still and so helpless, and remembered how rosy, and strong, and happy he looked years and years ago, when he first asked me to apply for his pension.

I wrote the Department that if the claims could be passed upon soon, I would keep my client up on stimulants a short time, but that he was failing fast. Then I went to the bedside of the old man, and watched him tenderly.

When he saw me come into his room, although he could not talk any more, he would feebly raise his right hand, and I would swear him to support the Constitution of the United States, and then he would be easier. It seemed to me like a ghastly joke for the old man to swear he would support the Constitution of the United States, when he couldn't begin to support his own constitution; but I never mentioned it to him.

At last the blow fell. The Surgeon-General wrote me that owing to the lack of clerical aid in that office, and a failure of Congress to make any appropriation for that purpose, he was behind hand, and could not possibly reach the claim referred to before the close of the following year.

Then the old man passed into the great untried realm of the hereafter. But he was prepared.

With the aid of the government, I had given him an idea of Eternity and its vastness, which could not fail to be of priceless benefit to him.

After the government had used this pension money as long as it needed it, and was, so to speak, once more on its feet, the money was sent, and the old man's great-grand-children got it, and purchased a lawn-mower, a Mexican hairless dog, and some other necessaries of life with it.

I am now out of the pension business. It is a good thing, for I find that I am too impatient to attend to it. I am too anxious for tangible results in the near future. My desire to accomplish anything speedily is too violent and too previous.

GINGERBREAD POEMS AND COLD PICKLED FACTS.

|In an old number of _Harper's Magazine_, will be found a little poem upon the subject of Joseph, the chief of the Nez Perces. There is a kind of mellow and subdued heroic light cast over the final defeat of this great North American horse thief, which is in perfectly pleasing harniony with the New England idea of the noble unlettered relic of a defunct race. This soft-voiced poet, who probably knows about as much of the true occidental pig-stealer, as the latter does about the Electoral College, starts out this little brass-mounted epic in the following elegant style of prevarication:=

```From the northern desolation,

```Comes the cry of exultation,

``It has ended--he has yielded, and the stubborn fight won.

```Let the nation in its glory,

```Bow with shame before the story

``Of the hero it has ruined, and the evil it has done.=