surprising to see with what passionate cordiality everybody helped him
off. Mr. BUMSTEAD frenziedly crammed his hat upon his beaming head, and,
with one eager blow on the top, drove it far down over his ears; FLORA
POTTS and MAGNOLIA thrust each a buckskin glove far up either sleeve;
Miss CAROWTHERS frantically stuck one of his overshoes under each arm;
Mr. DROOD wildly dragged his coat over his form, without troubling him
at all about the sleeves, and breathlessly buttoned it to the neck; and
the Reverend OCTAVIUS and MONTGOMERY hurried him forth by the shoulders,
as though the house were on fire and he the very last to be snatched
from the falling beams.

These latter two then almost ran with him to the livery stable where he
was to obtain a hack for the ferry; leaving him in charge of the livery
man--who, by the way, he at once frightened into a Boreal Policy, by a
few felicitous remarks (while the hack was preparing) upon the curious
recent fatality of Heart-Disease amongst middle-aged podgy men with
bulbous noses.

(_To be Continued._)

* * * * *

THE FEROCITY OF FAILURE.

It is not, everybody knows, pleasant to fail; and of all failures, it is
the most aggravating to an editor to have the juvenile newspaper of his
own begetting expire at an early age. Such has been the melancholy fate
of _The Hancock_ (Ky.) _Messenger_. "Ah!" says the wretched editor in
his farewell address, "if I could but write the obituary of several of
the miserable skinflints of this town." Such being his passionate