nce has long since taught
her. Alice is the happiest of women, mother of many fine children, the
wife of a man poverty could not corrupt, if public opinion forced him to
mask the means that gave him bread. Rhapsody is no longer a politician,
or office-holder, but engaged in lucrative pursuits that yield comfort
and position in society. To relate the trials, courtship and marriage of
"Jones, the boot-maker," is one of our friend Rhapsody's standing jokes,
to friends at the fireside and dinner table; but that such a safe and
happy tableau would again befall parties so circumstanced, is a very
material question; and the moral of our story, being rather complex,
though very definite, we leave to society, and you, reader, to
determine.

A Distinction with a Difference.

A gentleman from "out 'town," came into Redding & Co.'s on Christmas
day, and leaning thoughtfully over the counter, says he to Prescott,
"Got any Psalms here?"

"N-n-no," says Prescott, reflectingly, "but," he continued, after a
moment's pause, and handing down a copy of Hood, "here's plenty of old
Joe's!"

The out-of-town gentleman gave a glance at _the pictures_, and with a
countenance indicative of having been tasting a crab-apple--left!

Pills and Persimmons.

I remember an old "Joke" told me by my father, of an old, and rather
addle-headed gentleman, who some fifty years ago did business in New
Castle, Delaware, and having occasion to send out to England for
hardware, wrote his order, and as he was about to despatch it to the
captain of the ship, lying in the stream, ready for sea, a neighbor got
him to add an order for some kegs of nails, and in the hurry, the old
man dashed off his _P. S._, but upon attempting to read the whole order
over, he couldn't make head or tail of it.

"Well," says he, in a flurry, "I'll send it, just as it is; they are
better scholars in England than I am--_they'll make it out_."

Strange enough to say, when the hardware came over, among the rest of
the stuff were the so many kegs of nails, but upon opening one of these
kegs, it was full, or nearly so, of American quarter dollars. The old
man roared out in a [word missing].

"Haw! haw! haw! Well, blast me," says he, "if _they_ ain't scholars,
fust-rate scholars, in England; _it's worth while sending 'em bad
manuscript_."

A still more comical mistake is related to us, of a commercial
transaction that actually took place within a year or two, betwe