a--" gasped Tapehorn.

"Well, pa, ma and I had them all dug up and cooked, and they were the
meanest tasting things we ever knew, and we gave them all to the pigs!"

Tapehorn looked like a man in the last stages of disgust, and jamming
his fists down into his pockets, he walked into the house, muttering:

"Tut, tut, tut!--thirty-two dollars and the finest lot of dahlias in the
world--_gone to the pigs!_"

The Two Johns at the Tremont.

It is somewhat curious that more embarrassments, and queer _contre
temps_ do not take place in the routine of human affairs, when we find
so _many_ persons floating about of one and the same name. It must be
shocking to be named John Brown, troublesome to be called John Thompson,
but who can begin to conceive the horrors of that man's situation, who
has at the baptismal font received the title of _John Smith_?

Now it only wants a slight accident, the most trivial occurrence of
fate--the meeting of two or three persons of the same name, or of great
similarity of name, to create the most singular and even ludicrous
circumstances and tableaux. One of these affairs came off at the Tremont
House, some time since. One Thomas Johns, a blue-nose Nova-Scotian--a
man of "some pumpkins" and "persimmons" at home, doubtless, put up for a
few days at the Tremont, and about the same time one John Thomas, a
genuine son of John Bull, just over in one of the steamers, took up his
quarters at the same respectable and worthy establishment.

Thomas Johns was a linen draper, sold silks, satinets, linen, and
dimities, at his establishment in the Provinces, and was also a
politician, and "went on" for the part of magistrate, occasionally. John
Thomas was a retired wine-merchant, and, having netted a bulky fortune,
he took it into his head to _travel_, and as naturally as he despised,
and as contemptuously as he looked upon this poor, wild, unsophisticated
country of ours, he nevertheless condescended to come and look at us.

Well, there they were, Thomas Johns, and John Thomas; one was "roomed"
in the north wing, the other in the south wing. Thomas Johns went out
and began reconnoitering among the Yankee shop-keepers. John Thomas,
having a fortnight's pair of sea legs on, and full of bile and beer,
laid up at his lodgings, and passed the first three days in "hazing
around" the servants, and blaspheming American manners and customs.

Old John was quietly snoring off his bottle after a sumptuous T