"_Pigeons!_"

"You don't pretend to say that--"

"Yes, sir, all arranged--luckiest fellows alive, we are--"

"Well, but--"

"Oh, don't be uneasy--I fixed it."

"Well, I'm hanged if this isn't rich!" muttered his partner, sticking
his digits into his trowserloons--biting his lips and stamping around.

"Rich! _elegant!_ In two weeks we'll be flying our birds and--"

"Flying! Why, do you--"

"Ha! ha! I knew I'd astonish you; Tom insisted on my keeping perfectly
_mum_, until things were in regular working order; he then set the boys
to work--we have large cages on top of the building--"

"Come up on top of this building," said the partner, solemnly. "There,
do you see that bundle of laths and stuff?"

"Why--why, you don't pretend to say that--"

"I do exactly; a scamp came along here a week ago--talked nothing but
Carrier Pigeons--Pigeon Expresses--I thought I'd surprise you, and--"

"Well, well--go on."

"And by thunder I was green enough to give the fellow $200--a horse and
wagon--"

"Done! _done!_" roared the other, without waiting for further
particulars--"$200 and a horse and wagon--just what Tom and I gave the
scamp! ha! ha! ha!"

"Haw! haw! haw!" and the publishers roared under the force of the
_joke_.

Whatever became of the pigeon express man is not distinctly known; but
he is supposed to have given up the bird business, and gone into the
manufacture of woolly horses and cod-liver oil.

Jipson's Great Dinner Party.

"Well, you must do it."

"Do it?"

"Do it, sir," reiterated the lady of Jipson, a man well enough to _do_
in the world, chief clerk of a "sugar baker," and receiving his twenty
hundred dollars a year, with no perquisites, however, and--plenty of New
Hampshire contingencies, (to quote our beloved man of the million,
Theodore Parker,) poor relations.

"But, my dear Betsey, do you _know_, will you consider for once, that to
_do_ a thing of the kind--to splurge out like Tannersoil, one must
expect--at least I do--to sink a full _quarter_ of my salary, for the
current year; yes, a full quarter?"

"Oh! very well, if you are going to live up here" (Jipson had just moved
up above "Bleecker street,")--"and bought your carriage, and
engaged----"

"Two extra servant girls," chimed in Jipson.

"And a groom, sir," continued Mrs. J.

"And gone into at least six hundred to eight hundred dollars a year
extra expenses, to--a----"

"To gratify yourself, and--a----"

"Your--a