satility and genius.

When all her talents as an artiste and politician palled upon his old
rum-soaked and emaciated brain, and ennui, like a mighty canker, ate
away large corners of his moth-eaten soul, she would sit in the gloaming
and sing to him, "Hard Times, Hard Times, Come Again No More," meantime
accompanying herself on the harpsichord or the sackbut or whatever they
played in those days. Then she instituted theatricals, giving, through
the aid of the nobility, a very good version of "Peck's Bad Boy" and
"Lend Me Five Centimes."

She finally lost her influence over Looey the XV, and as he got to be an
old man the thought suddenly occurred to him to reform, and so he had
Mme. Pompadour beheaded at the age of forty-two years. This little story
should teach us that no matter how gifted we are, or how high we may
wear our hair, our ambitions must be tempered by honor and integrity;
also that pride goeth before destruction and a haughty spirit before a
plunk.

A SCAMPER THROUGH THE PARK

XIX

Last week Colonel Bill Root, formerly Duke of Council Bluffs, paid me a
visit, and as I desired to show him Central Park, I took him to
Fifty-Eighth street and hired a carriage, my own team being at my
country place. I also engaged the services of a dark-eyed historical
student, who is said to know more about Central Park than any other man
in New York, having driven through it, as he has, for years. He was a
plain, sad man, with a mustache which was mostly whiskers. He dressed
carelessly in a neglige suit of neutral-tinted clothes, including a pair
of trousers which seemed to fit him in that shy and reluctant manner
which characterized the fit of the late lamented Jumbo's clothes after
he had been indifferently taxidermed.

Colonel Root and I called him "Governor," and thereby secured knowledge
which could not be obtained from books. Colonel Root is himself no
kindergarten savant, being the author and discoverer of a method of
breaking up a sitting-hen by first calling her away from her deep-seated
passion, tying a red-flannel rag around her leg, and then still further
turning her attention from her wild yearning to hatch out a flock of
suburban villas by sitting on a white front-door knob. This he does by
deftly inserting the hen into a joint of stove-pipe and then cementing
both ends of the same. Colonel Root is also the discoverer of a cipher
which shows that Julius Caesar's dying words were: "Et tu Brute. Ver