eenth ought to be, but where I
had put the ninth, took that out and hooked it on to the eighth and then
put the fourteenth back in its place, all of which was done in an
incredibly small space of time.

Again I separated him, mixing the joints up promiscuously and hooking them
together, having some difficulty in hooking the tail joint on to the head
part, as the hook and eye did not get very well.

Letting the snake loose, in one hundred and fifteen seconds he was again
properly jointed and I let him go.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean._

OFF THE FARM.

"Yes, sir," said the Dakota man, as a crowd of agriculturists seated
themselves around a little table, "yes, sir; we do things on rather a
sizable scale. I've seen a man start out in the spring and plow a furrow
until fall. Then he turned around and harvested back. We have some big
farms up there, gentlemen. A friend of mine owned one on which he had to
give a mortgage, and the mortgage was due on one end before they could get
it recorded on the other. You see it was laid off in counties."

There was a murmur of astonishment, and the Dakota man continued:

"I got a letter from a man who lives in my orchard just before I left
home, and it had been three weeks getting to the dwelling house, although
it had traveled day and night."

"Distances are pretty wide up there, ain't they?" inquired one.

"Reasonably, reasonably," replied the Dakota man. "And the worst of it is,
it breaks up families so. Two years ago I saw a whole family prostrated
with grief. Women yelling, children howling, and dogs barking. One of my
men had his camp truck packed on seven four-mule teams, and he was going
around bidding everybody good-by."

"Where was he going?" asked a Gravesend man.

"He was agoing half-way across the farm to feed the pigs," replied the
Dakota man.

"And did he ever get back to his family again?"

"It isn't time for him yet," replied the Dakota man.--_Detroit Free
Press._

A SHELL'S STRANGE EXPLOIT.

The late Major Merrill, of Lawrence, was well known in military circles
all over the country. When the G.A.R. encampment was held in Kansas City,
some years ago, the soldiers of the East and those of the West vied with
each other in telling stories of the war. After listening to some pretty
tough yarns, Major Merrill related the following, and carried off the
honors:

"You know, boys, that I served throughout the war in a Massachusetts light
battery. During the fighti