She thought no v'ice hed sech a swing My! when he made Ole Hunderd ring, An' she'd blush scarlet, right in prayer, Thet night, I tell ye, she looked some! She heered a foot, and knowed it tu, All ways to once her feelins flew, He kin' o' l'itered on the mat An' yit she gin her cheer a jerk Ez though she wished him furder, An' on her apples kep' to work, Parin' away like murder. "You want to see my Pa, I s'pose?" "Wal. . . . no.... I come dasigning" ". "To see my Ma? She's sprinklin' clo’es Agin to-morrer's i'nin'." For she was jes' the quiet kind Like streams that keep a summer mind The blood clost roun' her heart felt glued Tell mother see how metters stood, Then her red come back like the tide An' all I know is they was cried Fortune sumtimes shows us the way, but it iz energy that achieves suckcess. The richest man in the world is the one who dispizes riches the most. Trusting to luck is only another name for trusting to`lazyness. Fortune never takes enny boddy by the hand, but she often allows them to take her by the hand. JOSH BILLINGS. Artemus Ward. THE SHOWMAN'S COURTSHIP. THARE was many affectin ties which made me hanker arter Betsy Jane. Her father's farm jined our'n; their cows and our'n squencht their thurst at the same spring; our old mares both had stars in their forrerds; the measles broke out in both famerlies at nearly the same period; our parients (Betsy's and mine) slept reglarly every Sunday in the same meetin-house, and the nabers used to obsarve, "How thick the Wards and Peasleys air!" was a surblime site, in the Spring of the year, to see our sevral mothers (Betsy's and mine) with their gowns pin'd up so thay couldn't sile 'em, affecshunitly bilin sope together & aboozin the nabers. Altho I hankerd intensly arter the objeck of my affecshuns, I darsunt tell her of the fires which was rajin in my manly buzzum. I'd try to do it, but my tung would kerwollup up agin the roof of my mowth & stick thar, like deth to a deseast Afrikan or a country postmaster to his offiss, while my hart whanged agin my ribs like a old fashioned wheat flale agin a barn door. 'Twas a carm still nite in Joon. All nater was husht and nary zeffer disturbed the sereen silens. I sot with Betsy Jane on the fense of her farther's pastur. We'd been rompin threw the woods, kullin flours & drivin the woodchuck from his Nativ Lair (so to speak) with long sticks. Wall, we sot thar on the fense, a swingin our feet two and fro, blushin as red as the Baldinsville skool house when it was fust painted, and lookin very simple, I make no doubt. My left arm was ockepied in ballunsin myself on the fense, while my rite was woundid luvinly round her waste. I cleared my throat and tremblinly sed, "Betsy, you're a Gazelle." I thought that air was putty fine. I waitid to see what effeck it would have upon her. It evidently didn't fetch her, for she up and sed "You're a sheep!" Sez I, "Betsy, I think very muchly of you." K "I don't b'leeve a word you say so there now, cum!" with which obsarvashun she hitched away from me. "I wish thar was winders to my Sole," sed I," so that you could see some of my feelins. There's fire enuff in here," sed I, strikin my buzzum with my fist, "to bile all the corn beef and turnips in the naberhood. Versoovius and the Critter ain't a circumstans!" She bowd her hed down and commenst chawin the strings to her sun bonnet. "Ar could you know the sleeplis nites I worry threw with on your account, how vittles has seized to be attractiv to me & how my lims has shrunk up, you wouldn't dowt me. Gaze on this wastin form and these 'ere sunken cheeks I should have continnered on in this strane probly for sum time, but unfortnitly I lost my ballunse and fell over into the pastur ker smash, tearin my close and seveerly damagin myself ginerally. Betsy Jane sprung to my assistance in dubble quick time and dragged me 4th. Then, drawin herself up to her full hite, she sed: "I won't listen to your noncents no longer. Jes say rite strate out what you're drivin at. If you mean gettin hitched, I'M IN!" I considered that air enuff for all practical purpusses, and we proceeded immejitly to the parson's & was made 1 that very nite. * * * I've parst threw many tryin ordeels sins then, but Betsy Jane has bin troo as steel. By attendin strickly to bizniss I've amarsed a handsum Pittance. No man on this foot-stool can rise & git up & say I ever knowinly injered no man or wimmin folks, while all agree that my Show is ekalled by few and exceld by none, embracin as it does a wonderful colleckshun of livin wild Beests of Pray, snaix in grate profushun, a endliss variety of life-size wax figgers, & the only traned kangaroo in Ameriky-the most amoozin little cuss ever introjuced to a discriminatin public. Mark Twain. THE JUMPING FROG OF CALAVERAS COUNTY. In compliance with the request of a friend of mine, who wrote me from the East, I called on good-natured, garrulous old Simon Wheeler, and inquired after my friend's friend, Leonidas W. Smiley, as requested to do, and I hereunto append the result. I have a lurking suspicion that Leonidas W. Smiley is a myth; that my friend never knew such a personage; and that he only conjectured that, if I asked old Wheeler about him, it would remind him of his infamous Jim Smiley, and he would go to work and bore me nearly to death with some infernal reminiscence of him as long and tedious as it should be useless to me. If that was the design, it certainly succeeded. I found Simon Wheeler dozing comfortably by the bar-room stove of the old, dilapidated tavern in the ancient mining camp of Angel's, and I noticed that he was fat, and bald-headed, and had an expression of winning gentleness and simplicity upon his tranquil countenance. He roused up and gave me good-day. I told him a friend of mine had commissioned me to make some enquiries about a cherished companion of his boyhood, named Leonidas W. Smiley-Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, a young minister of the gospel, who he had heard was at one time a resident of Angel's Camp. I added that, if Mr. Wheeler could tell me anything about this Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley, I would feel under many obligations to him. Simon Wheeler backed me into a corner, and blockaded me there with his chair, and then sat me down and reeled off the monotonous narrative which follows this paragraph. He never smiled, he never frowned, he never changed his voice from the gentle-flowing key to which he tuned the initial sentence, he never betrayed the slightest suspicion of enthusiasm; but all through the interminable narrative there ran a vein of impressive earnestness and sincerity, which showed me plainly that, so far from his imagining that there was anything ridiculous or funny about his |