"His audience were satisfied with the argument. So was I, and left."

We never understood the advantage of the credit system till we got the following story from a Wis

cure calmness of mind by a retreat to the country.
The play ends with this triumph of the Benedick,
and a piquant scene of bourgeois placitude, where
the egoist husband revels in negligé, and the young
wife is conquered into a bitter submission to a life
which is without temptations and without victories.consin contributor:
The morale of the piece is detestable; but yet it is
true to the French notions of the sacrifices of mar-
riage.

"In one of the interior villages of this State is a tavern-keeper, and in the same place an honest old German blacksmith, of whom the former relates that he employed him to do some iron work, and WE must have a word for Italy, although near to paid him cash for it at the time, but afterward learnthe end of our paper. The great new Southern na-ing that a neighbor had some similar work done on tionality is on the growth. The forces of the duke- time for a less price, he inquired the reason theredoms, and of the marches of Umbria, and of the fore, and the reply was as follows: gone-by royalty of the Sicilies, gravitate day by day "You zee I 'ave zo much scharge on my book, into the fullness and roundness of a compacted inte- and I zometimes lose um, and zo ven I 'ave a goot gral organism. Spain and Austria, not having yet cash customer I scharge goot price, but ven I puts sloughed off the old sore of Papish-Bourbon inocula-it on my book I do not like to scharge zo much, zo tion, see and recognize no Italian Kingdom as yet; if he never pay um I no lose zo much.'' but on all the high walls the kingly banner is flying, save only Mantua, Verona, Venice, Rome.

"In a city not very remote from here the Fathers And of this latter, Ricasoli says confidently, "The had ordered that a building erected contrary to orquestion of Rome is already solved. Its solution re-dinance should be razed to the ground. At the next quires no further confirmation. It has received the meeting of Board the inquiry was made if the buildsanction of modern civilization. Rome must needs ing had been taken down in pursuance of the order. crown the independence and unity of Italy. Reason Taken down?' replied a member of the Board. 'My and conscience must work out this solution." impression is, Mr. Mayor, that the order was to have it raised.'"

AT Rock Island, Illinois, we have a friend of the Drawer who writes:

Meantime there is no wild imprudence: the mad ones incite Garibaldi in vain; he rests as calm as his own flocks of Caprera. The opposition in the Parliament of Turin is so far moderated as to be almost no opposition at all. The social elements of the Peninsula, so long distinct and almost antagonistic, are blending in the festivities of the gay cap-in ital.

The marchesi from Ancona and the marchese of Naples talk away their jealousies at the balls of the princely Doria of Genoa. Benedettis, and Della Roccas, and Riccabones, who were heads of old factions that have brought down bloody trail from the time of Ugolino starvings, now exchange cards and make up picnics for Como.

How changed all this from the times only two years gone! How changed from the times when even the great Florentine wrote, with pen steeped in bitterness, his malediction on the Genovesi:

"Ahi Genovesi, uomini diversi
D'ogni costume, e pieni d'ogni magagna;
Perchè non siete voi del mondo spersi ?"

Is not humanity on the march when sectional jealousies, that have had a cruel empurpled life of centuries, go down in the glow of a great, golden, national uprising? Fling up your hat for Italy! And fling up your hat-when the time comes-for a Union of all the great States of America!

Editor's Drawer.

N excellent man writes to the Drawer and says:

ΑΝ

"I am one of your clerical readers, and never do I open the Drawer without realizing that

A little wit, both now and then,

Is relished by all clergymen.'

"A short time ago I dropped in at a Quaker meeting-house. The speaker was inveighing vehemently against the sects, and especially against hireling priests, and from them he went at their titles.

What do they mean,' he asked, 'by Doctors of Divinity? Does the Divinity need a Doctor? If it was their own divinity that they physic it might be well, for the Lord knows it needs it badly; but Divinity never needed a doctor, and never will.'

"In company with an old friend, Lawyer K————, I started on a hunting excursion. Rock River lay our route, spanned by a double-track bridge. We of course took the right, and did not perceive (not quite daylight yet) a team approaching from the opposite direction on the same track. 'Halloo there!' shouted my indignant friend. What did you take this track for?'

'And,' was the reply, find fault wid me for? thrack ye did yerself?'

what does yer Honor Didn't I take the same

"That was Irish beyond a doubt, and admitted of no answer."

A CORRESPONDENT in Kentucky says that, some years ago, a stalwart yeoman of that State having a son who was reputed to be only half-witted, took him to the minister's to be prayed for that he might become a useful and successful man. The minister said that he had a son also who was no brighter than he ought to be, and he would have them together and pray for both. He did.

What became of the minister's son our correspondent does not write; but he says that the farmer's boy, from shame or some other motive, brightIened up from that time, took to study, became a lawyer, a politician, and Governor of the State.

Laugh if you like at the good farmer's idea, but he doubtless used the means, and the result was wonderful success.

THE Rev. Mr. Rogers, of this city, tells a good story of a pious sister connected with his church, in New Jersey, where he was stationed two years ago. This good sister had a way of expressing herself in church, when any thing suited her, by shouting to the top of her voice "Glory to God!" "Hallelujah!" etc., etc. Once she attended a Presbyterian church, and the deacon gave her a seat very near the pulpit. The minister commenced, and grew more eloquent as he proceeded. At last he said something that

acter of General Washington-" and again stopped. He essayed a third time, and got no further; when a fellow-member brought him and the House both down by suggesting whether it was in order for a member of the House to be making reflections on the character of General Washington!

made the sister "feel good," and she shouted "Glory menced: "Mr. Speaker, when I reflect on the charto God!" to the great astonishment of the congregation as well as the minister. The deacon approached her, and told her that such action was not allowed there. But she took no notice of him, or what he said, but was all attention to what the "man of God" was proclaiming; and as he proceeded he waxed warmer and warmer, and the sister gave another shout at the top of her voice, "Glory, glory to God!" which disconcerted the minister, and he looked after the deacon, who came and told the sister if she did not stop he would remove her from the house. He took his seat beside her, and the divine continued for a short time, when another "Glory to God! Hallelujah!" from the pious sister started all in their seats. The worthy deacon took hold of her to put her out, but she straightened herself out, and would not budge; so he called the other deacon to his assistance, and they made a chair of their arms, and set the sister thercon, and started for the door. When about half-way up the middle aisle she threw up her arms and shouted "Glory to God!--I am more honored than my Master. He was carried on one ass, while I have two." It is needless to say that the worthy deacons dropped their load, and likewise dropped into their seats.

THE following petition was presented to the Circuit Court at Athens, Tennessee, Hon. Judge Grant presiding. We are indebted to a learned friend, who kindly transmitted it to the Drawer for publi

cation:

"State of Tennesse, I, your umble petishioner to M Minn County, Tenn. your onor before the onorable the seventh dudishial Curcuit Court I, your umble petishioner Absalum Sivels I put this before your onor some time a bout the year 1851 companioun left my house bead and room and all ioutentials that she had and three chil

dren that was with hear without my knowledge or thought of the same remove hear self goods and chattles to Joils Culpeper at that time your umble petishion had no knowledge of the remove your petishioner further states he was at that time helping to kill hogs at Nathon Sullons near Athens at that time a bout twelve miles from your umble

petishioner house your umble petishioner expects to prove a bout the removal from your petishioner house your um ble petishioner companion when required of hear what she ment by so doing the reply was that she never ment to live about my house any more your umble petishioner further states that he was Working at a place to git money or any thing els that he Wanted for the support of the household and family of your umble petishioner further states that he is a ble to prove that he ant a drinking man or a spen thrift and further beleaves in all the religious acts that are goin a poious man your umble petishioner further states he treated his companion as nigh right he node how as fur as he was a ble and she had not not to cut neaver one stick of Wood in the hold time that the companion of your umble petishioner further states to your onor that he is Justly in titled to a devorced as the law directs this is the first applicatioun of the same Ever applyde for buy your umble petishiouner prays your onor to grant him your petishiouner a devorce and your petishiouner ever pray for and so &c.

"This is the 4 day of September 1858

and his companion has not lived together seence eighteen hundred and fifty one yours umble petishioner for the

IN Venango County, Pennsylvania, is a queer fellow by the name of Tom Barton, who drinks and stutters, and stutters and drinks. He has a brother, Jim, who is glib of tongue and was a great liar-we hope he has reformed, for he professed to become a good man, and was baptized in the river. It was a bitter cold day in winter, and the ice had to be cut to make a place for the ceremony. Tom was in attendance, and close by. As Jim came up out of the water Tom said to him, "Is it c-c-c-cold, Jim ?"

"No," replied Jim; "not at all." "D-d-d-dip him again, m-m-minister," cried Tom; "he 1-1-1-lies yet!"

MASSACHUSETTS never had a more worthy magistrate than Chief-Justice Shaw, and he never received a higher compliment than in the coarse, blunt way described by a correspondent of the Drawer:

"During the trial of M'Nulty in Boston, in 1859, for murder, Joyce, a person somewhat noted in sporting circles as an assistant at prize-fights, etc., was a witness. During the examination the Chief-Justice walked to the end of the bench, and in a grave way, peering over his spectacles, asked some questions of the witness. After the examination had concluded, the following conversation took place between Joyce and an officer:

"JOYCE. Did you see that chap that sot with two other coves behind a little fence there in courtI mean the cove called the Chief?'

"OFFICER. 'Oh yes, you mean Judge Shaw.' "JOYCE. "That's him; but what a glorious feller he'd make for a referee!'

"The eminent fairness of the Judge had impressed the mind of the coarse man, and compelled this praise.

"ONE more:

In the Supreme Court-room there are two niches in the wall-one occupied by a bust of the late Judge Wilde, the other to be occupied by some eminent lawyer who shall hereafter go to the court of last resort. During a law argument, when one of the counsel was weakly elaborating some weaker points, the Judge slowly rose, looked at the bust of the late Judge, then at the empty niche, then over and under his spectacles at the counsel; and after glancing back and forth from the counsel to the bust and then to the vacant niche, gravely and sadly shook his head and sat down. The spectators needed no farther exposition of the Chief's opinion of the counsel's argument."

A MAN writes to us asking for assistance, and saying:

"I am quite poor, and have seven little mouths to fill besides two wifes and my own not so little."

If he means that he has two wires, he does not spell them right, and it is more than the law allows; if he means that he has to fill his own mouth and his wife's, he must mind his stops; if he means that he has two wives and his own, that would imply that he is doing more than his duty, provided always that these two wives have husbands of their

own to provide for them. Whatever may be the meaning of the writer, we are disposed to wait until we hear from him more explicitly as to the number of his mouths before we form an estimate of his necessity and our duty.

IN Minnesota an Irishman by the name of O'Connor was killed by one of the same persuasion named Cochran, and on his dead body sat a jury of six men, half a dozen of whom were Irish, who rendered the following verdict, the original copy of which, as a specimen of chirography, orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, never has been beaten even in Minnesota. Here it is, all but the spelling, which we have not types to print:

"That Martin O'Connor, here lying dead, came to his death by shot from a gun, which caused the blood to rush in torrents from his body, so that it was impossible for him to live until we could hold an inquest !"

MRS. E. L————— and her friend, Mrs. W. J. N―, had been intimate, and both of them blazing stars in the firmament of fashion for two or three seasons. By degrees they came very justly under the censure of public opinion, which is usually very indulgent to handsome women who have plenty of money and give grand parties. At last Mrs. Lsays to her gay lady friend, "Well now, my dear Mrs. N, we must part forever, for you have no character left, and I have not enough for two!"

pretends to know any thing about the end of it. It is wonderful how much the spirits know about what nobody else knows; and how little, with all their rappings, they can add to the stock of human knowledge.

QUOTI Giles from the dock to my Lord on the bench,
Who with poaching offenses was twitting him,
"If us poachers do live by the snaring of hares,
Sure you lawyers do live by splittin' 'em."

EPITAPH ON A CAT.

So rare her virtues, it were shabby
Not to lament my faithful tabby;
She lived as pure as any roach,

She died "sans PURR et sans reproche !"

DR. JOHNSON said "the happiest conversation is that of which nothing is distinctly remembered, but a general effect of pleasing impressions."

Dean Locker says, "No one will ever shine in conversation who thinks of saying fine things; to please, one must say many things indifferent, and many very bad.”

We do not agree with the Dean. As another Dean said in preaching, "that's where Paul and I differ."

Now there is our friend Jarvis: if saying things indifferent and even bad would please, Jarvis would be the prince of good fellows. Bad puns, slow jokes, and unintelligible allusions drop from his lips in such Ian incessant stream that they would make a heap of pearls for the Dean if he would be pleased to gather them; but somehow no one seems to fancy his speeches, and the most of people think him borous.

Small wits are great talkers. Empty barrels make the most noise. A sagacious author remarks, "In making a pun and paradox, the smaller the calibre of the mind the greater the bore of a perpetually open mouth."

A WESTERN farmer, too smart by half for his own interest or the good of his soul, drove into town with a load of wheat in bags, to be sold by weight, so many pounds to the bushel. Finding a merchant ready to purchase, the farmer demurred to the proposal to drive upon the scales near the door, as he was afraid he might not be fairly dealt with if weighed in the buyer's scales. "Very well," said the merchant, "if you prefer it, drive on and be weighed out there;" Leigh Hunt devotes forty pages of one of his books pointing to the next platform. On he went, keep--and fails to elucidate the mystery at last. Johning his seat on the load; the merchant opened a little door in the floor, asked the farmer how many bags there were, and being told twenty, pronounced the load to be forty-two bushels. "All right!" said the farmer, who then returned and deposited his wheat at the buyer's store and went off, never finding out that he had been weighed on the platform of a fire cistern, and that he had sold fifty bushels of wheat for forty-two!

BILL WILKINS was a dreadful toper; but he had a taste for good liquor, and cursed the vile drinks that were often imposed upon him. He was taken desperately sick, and when one of his boon companions told him that he would soon be in the world of spirits, he said he hoped it would be pure spirits, for he despaired of ever finding any in this world.

THERE are other spirits than these that hold the body; spirits that the body holds; spirits that some people are fools enough to think they can hear, but can not see. Coleridge was asked by Lady Beaumont if he believed in ghosts; and the poet replied, "Oh no, Madam; I have seen too many to believe in them." He had sense enough to know that what he could see could not be a spirit; but it is hard to get that idea into the head of an idiot without trepanning him.

What has become of the spirit-rappers? Since the war began we have heard nothing from any of them; not one who foretold the war; not one who

son defines wit as "the faculty of associating dissimilar images in an unusual manner." Sydney Smith, in his "Lectures on Moral Philosophy," shows the fallacy of this definition, gives a better, and broaches the startling doctrine that wit, so far from being necessarily a natural gift, might be studied as successfully as mathematics. It is a question if Sheridan was witty when, staggering along, half tipsy, he was eyed by a policeman, and exclaimed, confidentially, "My name is Wilberforce-I am a religious man-don't expose me!"

Talleyrand, when asked by a lady famous for her beauty and stupidity how she should rid herself of some of her troublesome admirers, replied, "You have only to open your mouth, Madame." This, if witty, was also ill-natured.

Lord Chatham rebuked a dishonest Chancellor of the Exchequer by finishing a quotation the latter had commenced. The debate turned upon some grant of money for the encouragement of art, which was opposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who finished his speech against Lord Chatham's motion by saying, "Why was not this ointment sold and the money given to the poor?'" Chatham rose, and said, "Why did not the noble lord complete the quotation, the application being so striking? As he has shrunk from it, I will finish the verse for himThis Judas said, not that he cared for the poor, but because he was a thief, and carried the bag."

Sydney Smith discourses thus on puns: "They are, I believe, what I have denominated them-the

wit of words. They are exactly the same to words | pain, he took a glass of raw whisky. I made him
as wit is to ideas, and consist in the sudden discov- promise to give up his bad food and worse whisky,
ery of relations in language. A pun, to be perfect
in its kind, should contain two distinct meanings;
the one common and obvious, the other more re-
mote; and in the notice which the mind takes of
the relation between these two sets of words, and in
the surprise which that relation excites, the pleas-
ure of a pun consists. Miss Hamilton, in a book on
education, mentions the case of a boy so very ne-
glectful that he could never be brought to read the
word patriarchs; but whenever he met with it, he
always pronounced it partridges. A friend of the
writer observed to her, that it could hardly be con-
sidered as a mere piece of negligence, for it appeared
to him that the boy, in calling them partridges, was
making game of the patriarchs. Now here are two
distinct meanings contained in the same phrase: for
to make game of the patriarchs is to laugh at them;
or to make game of them is, by a very extravagant
and laughable sort of ignorance of words, to rank
them among pheasants, partridges, and other such
delicacies, which the law takes under its protection
and calls game; and the whole pleasure derived from
this pun consists in the discovery that two such
meanings are referable to one form of expression."

and live on broth and sweet milk, and I wrote him
a prescription for some medicine, and said, 'Take
that, and come back in a fortnight, and you will be
well.' He did come back, hearty and hale; no
colic, but a clean tongue, a clear eve, and a happy
face. I was very proud of the wonders my prescrip-
tion had done, and having forgotten what it was, I
| said, 'Let me see what I gave you.'
"Oh,' says he, 'I took it.'

HERE come some little ones so smart their parents would do well to put them on low diet this summer; they are too smart to live, we fear:

"Nelly is a bright little girl, only five years old. Her mother gave her a little book called 'DewDrops,' and Nelly was to learn one verse, or drop, each morning. After a week or so she failed to learn it, and when her mother asked her why, Nelly said, 'If I learn so many dew-drops I shall have dropsy on the brain!'

"JENNIE was only three years old; she lives in Ohio, and had never been to a town where they had big churches. One day Uncle Charlie took her to Kinsman, where they have one with a lofty spire. As they rode by it Jennie looked up wonderingly, and asked, Uncle Charlie, is that the house that Jack built?'

"LAST Sunday we took our first-born, Alonzo, to church for the first time. He is only two years old, but is very smart for his age-very. His mother knows there never was a smarter child, and his mother is a very knowing woman. We took Alonzo to church. He stood up on the seat between his fond mother and myself, his anxious father; and both of us had charged him to be perfectly still, not to say a loud word on any account whatever. The dear boy stood it well for the first five minutes: service had not yet begun. Deacon Wells, a baldheaded man, came in, and Alonzo looked at him curiously. Mr. Ostrom came down the aisle, and he had no hair where the hair ought to grow. Alonzo was fidgety. Squire Jones, as bald as Mont Blanc, walked in, and Alonzo could hold in no longer. In a clear ringing little voice he cried, 'Oh, ma! ma! there comes another man with a skinned head!'"

"ONE day," says Dr. Brown, of Edinburgh, “a laboring man came to me with indigestion. He had a sour and sore stomach, and heart-burn, and the waterbrash, and wind, and wonderful misery of body and mind. I found he was eating bad food, and too much of it; and then, when its indigestion gave him

"Yes,' said I; 'but the prescription ?' "I took it, as you bade me; I swallowed it!' "He had actually eaten the paper! It did him as much good as the medicine would have done, and he had followed the rules of the doctor as to his eat. ing and drinking. He was cured."

THE young ones catch the spirit of the times. Colonel B writes home almost daily, and his letters are read by his wife to the children. Little six-year-old Sam was missing one night at suppertime. The house was searched in vain. The yard was examined, and in one corner he had put up some boards for a shelter; on the ground he was lying, fast asleep, wrapped up in some bed-clothes he had smuggled out. When waked up, he called out, "Leave me alone, will you; I'm Colonel B camped out!"

IN Upper Egypt, Illinois, they have some of the hardest-shell preachers. A friend writes to the Drawer that he dropped in the other day to hear one of them preach. After announcing his text the preacher began:

"My dear brethern and sistern, I solicit your prayerful and undivided attention while I cite your minds to the passedge of Scripter I hev jest read. In which remark I shall try to do you good as doth the upright in heart; provided my text don't throw me.'

A CORRESPONDENT in Wisconsin says he arrived out there from the East just after the suspension of specie payments, and gold and silver were not to be seen, and were known only as curiosities of a former and almost forgotten period. He had one dime left, and when it became known that he had this amount he was waited upon by a committee of citizens, who desired to secure it as a specie basis for a new bank they were about to start.

YEARS ago Lewis Holt kept a railroad refreshment stand at the station at Attica, on the road running west. He had a way which men of his persuasion have, not altogether abandoned, of taking the money of passengers, sweeping it into his drawer, and fumbling after the change till the cars were off, when the passenger would have to run and leave his money. Charlie Dean stepped out of the cars there one day, took a "ginger pop," price six cents, laid down a quarter, which Holt dropped into his till, and went hunting to get out the change. Away went the cars, and Charlie jumped on without his change; but he had time to read the name of LEWIS HOLT over the door, and, making a note of it, rode on.

Postage was high in those days, and was not required in advance. From Buffalo he wrote a letter to Holt-"Sell foam at 25 cents a glass, will you?" Holt paid ten cents on this letter, and ten more on one from Detroit, and twenty-five on another from St. Louis, and for two or three years he kept getting

"THE Rev. Dr. R-, of Albany, in the course of an eloquent sermon gave utterance to a brief com-geant of Company D (Sixteenth Regular Infantry) mentary on a few Bible verses which embodied a fine brought to the tent of the company commander a bit of humor. He had taken for his text, 'This man who had refused to drill. After giving the man's religion is vain.' And in following out the necessary instructions for having a load of wood subject suggested by these general words he alluded placed on his back, and having him walk back and to the Pharisee, who in his prayer at the temple took forth in front of the guard-tent, Lieutenant Koccasion to snub the poor Publican, as one of those inquired of him why he refused to drill. He replied whose religion 'is vain.' And it was just here that that he had been dismissed, and was no longer a the commentary whereof I write ran in these words: soldier. Shortly after the man, whose name was 'This Pharisee, in thanking God that he was not as 'Brady,' had gone, I was startled by a loud laugh other men were, was merely rendering thanks to from Lieutenant K, who seemed to be almost God for his bigoted and intolerant spirit, and there is in convulsions at something good. Inquiring what no doubt but that he had a great deal to be thankful was the matter, he expressed his conviction that he for!" saw the point of a joke.