the rose bushes. When the judge came down in the morning, she seemed
to be breathing her last, but she had strength enough left to seize a
newspaper that the judge held in his hand; and when that was down,
she gave three or four kicks and rolled over and expired. It cost the
judge three dollars to have the carcase removed. Since then he has
bought his butter and milk and given up all kinds of live-stock.




CHAPTER X.

_OUR CIVIL SERVICE_.


Some of the public officers of Millburg are interesting in their way.
The civil service system of the village is based upon the principle
that if there is any particular function that a given man is wholly
unfitted to perform he should be chosen to perform it. The result is
that the business of our very small government goes plunging along in
the most surprising manner, with a promise that it will end some day
in chaos and revolution--of course upon a diminutive scale.

A representative man is Mr. Bones, the solitary night-watchman of the
town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is to light the street-lamps. It
is an operation which does not require any very extraordinary effort
of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the mind of Mr.
Bones did not seem to be equal to the strain placed upon it by this
duty. It was observed that whenever there were bright moonlight nights
Mr. Bones would have all the lamps burning from early in the evening