"No; his father said that."

"Said he'd rather have a thousand apple trees?"

"No, no, no; said he'd rather lose a thousand apple trees than-"

"Said he'd rather George would?"

"No; said he'd rather he would than have him lie."

"Oh, George would rather have his father lie?"

We are patient, and we love children, but if Mrs. Caruthers, of Arch Street, hadn't come and got her prodigy at this critical juncture, we don't believe all Burlington could have pulled us out of that snarl. And as Clarence Fitzherbert Alencon de Marchemont Caruthers patted down the stairs, we heard him telling his ma about a boy who had a father named George, and he told him to cut down an apple tree, and he said he'd rather tell a thousand lies than cut down one apple tree.

In the House of Representatives one day Mr. Springer was finishing an argument and ended by saying, "I am right, I know I am; and I would rather be right than be President." He stood near the late S. S. Cox, who looked mischievously across at him and said as he ended, "Don't worry about that, Springer: you'll never be either."

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

BEHOLD the mansion reared by dedal Jack.

See the malt stored in many a plethoric sack, In the proud cirque of Ivan's bivouac.

Mark how the rat's felonious fangs invade
The golden stores in John's pavilion laid.

Anon with velvet foot and Tarquin strides Subtle grimalkin to his quarry glides— Grimalkin grim that slew the fierce rodent Whose tooth insidious Johann's sackcloth rent.

Lo! now the deep-mouthed canine foe's assault, That vexed the avenger of the stolen malt, Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall That rose complete at Jack's creative call.

Here stalks the impetuous cow with crumpled horn

Whereon the exacerbating hound was torn,
Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew
The rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through
The textile fibers that involved the grain
Which lay in Hans's inviolate domain,

Here walks forlorn the damsel crowned with rue, Lactiferous spoils from vaccine drugs who drew Of that corniculate beast whose tortuous horn Tossed to the clouds in fierce, vindictive scorn The harrowing hound whose braggart bark and stir

Arched the lithe spine and reared the indignant fur

Of puss, that with verminicidal claw

Struck the weird rat in whose insatiate maw

Lay reeking malt that erst in Juan's courts

we saw.

Robed in senescent garb that seems in sooth
Too long a prey to Chronos's iron tooth,
Behold the man whose amorous lips incline,
Full with Eros's osculative sign,

To the lorn maiden whose lactalbic hands

Drew albu-lactic bovine wealth from lacteal glands

Of that immortal bovine, by whose horn

Distort to realm ethereal was borne

The beast catulean, vexed of the sly
Ulysses quadrupedal, who made die
The old mordacious rat that dared devour
Antecedaneous ale in John's domestic bower.

Lo! here, with hirsute honors doffed, succinct
Of saponaceous locks, the priest who linked
In Hymen's golden bands the torn unthrift,
Whose means exiguous stared through many
a rift,

Even as he kissed the virgin all forlorn,
Who milked the cow with implicated horn,
Who in fine wrath the canine torturer skied,
That dared to vex the insidious muricide,
Who let auroral effluence through the pelt
Of the sly rat that robbed the palace Jack had
built.

The loud cantankerous Shanghai comes at last, Whose shouts aroused the shorn ecclesiast. Who sealed the vows of Hymen's sacrament, o him, who, robed in garments indigent, xosculates the damsel lachrymose,

The emulgator of that horned brute morose, That tossed the dog, that worried the cat, that

kilt

The rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

The late Mr. William R. Travers liked Bermuda enormously, but it would seem that he found its comforts not altogether unalloyed. A friend who once visited him there was congratulating him on his improved appearance.

“This is a grand place for change and rest," said his friend. "Just what you needed."

"Yes," replied Mr. Travers, sadly. "Th-ththis is a magn-ni-ni-nif-ficent place f-f-f-for b-b-both. The ni-ni-niggers look out f-f-f-for the ch-ch-ch-change, and the hotel ke-ke-keepers take th-th-the rest."

JOSEPH BERT SMILEY

ST. PETER AT THE GATE

ST. PETER Stood guard at the golden gate
With a solemn mien and an air sedate,
When up to the top of the golden stair
A man and a woman ascending there,
Applied for admission. They came and stood
Before St. Peter, so great and good,
In hopes the City of Peace to win-
And asked St. Peter to let them in.

The woman was tall, and lank, and thin,
With a scraggy beadlet upon her chin,
The man was short, and thick and stout,
His stomach was built so it rounded out,
His face was pleasant, and all the while
He wore a kindly and genial smile.

The choirs in the distance the echoes woke

And the man kept still while the woman spoke:
"Oh, thou who guardest the gate," said she,
"We two come hither beseeching thee

To let us enter the heavenly land,
And play our harps with the angel band.

Of me, St. Peter, there is no doubt

There is nothing from heaven to bar me out;
I have been to meetings three times a week,
And almost always I'd rise and speak.

I've told the sinners about the day
When they'd repent their evil way;