le tour to
Saratogy just two weeks, and by banks of Brandywine, if the expense of
that tour--not including the time _wasted_, vexation, bother,
mortification of feelings, fuss, and rumpus--was but a fraction less
than three hundred dollars! Four times the cost of my anticipated trip,
lessened half the time, with fifty per cent. more humbug about it than I
ever dreamed of!"

Miss Scarlatina agreed with the rest of the company, that it cost Uncle
Joe Blinks more to go to Saratogy than it came to, and they all
concluded--not to go there themselves, just then--any how!

Old Jack Ringbolt

Had been spinning old Mrs. Tartaremetic any quantity of salty yarns; she
was quite surprised at Mr. Ringbolt's ups and downs, trials, travels and
tribulations. Honest Jack (!) had assured the old dame that he had
sailed over many and many cities, all under water, and whose roofs and
chimneys, with the sign-boards on the stores, were still quite visible.
He had seen Lot's wife, or the pillar of salt she finally was frozen
into!

"And did you see that--Lot's wife?" asked the old lady.

"Yes, marm; but 'tain't there now--the cattle got afoul of the pillar of
salt one day, and licked it all up!"

"Good gracious! Mr. Ringbolt!"

"Fact, marm; I see'd 'em at it, and tried to skeer 'em away."

"Well, Mr. Ringbolt, you've seen so much, and been around so, I'd think
you would want to settle down, and take a wife!"

Who Killed Capt. Walker?

Few incidents of the campaign in Mexico seem so mixed up and indefinite
as that relative to the taking of Huamantla, and the death of that noble
and chivalric officer, Capt. Walker. In glancing over the papers of
Major Mammond, of Georgia, which he designates the "Secondary Combats of
the Mexican War," we observe that he has given an account of the
engagement at Huamantla, and the fall of Walker. We believe the Major's
account, compiled as it is from "the documents," to be in the main
correct, but lacking incidental pith, and slightly erroneous in the
grand _denouement_, in which our gallant friend--whose manly countenance
even now stares us in the face, as if in life he "yet lived"--yielded up
the balance of power on earth.

We have taken some pains, and a great deal of interest surely, in coming
at the facts; and no time seems so proper as the present--several of the
chivalric gentlemen of that day and occasion, being now around us--to
give the story its veritable exhibition of tru