eneration ago. Even the aphorisms that
were essentially humorous lose value in that degraded spelling.

"When a man starts down hill everything is greased for the occasion,"
could hardly be improved upon by distorted orthography, and here are a
few more gems which have survived that deadly blight.

"Some folks mistake vivacity for wit; whereas the difference between
vivacity and wit is the same as the difference between the lightning-bug
and the lightning."

"Don't take the bull by the horns-take him by the tail; then you can let
go when you want to."

"The difficulty is not that we know so much, but that we know so much
that isn't so."

Josh Billings, Nasby, and Mark Twain were close friends. They had
themselves photographed in a group, and there was always some pleasantry
going on among them. Josh Billings once wrote on "Lekturing," and under
the head of "Rule Seven," which treated of unwisdom of inviting a
lecturer to a private house, he said:

Think of asking Mark Twain home with yu, for instance. Yure good
wife has put her house in apple-pie order for the ockashun;
everything is just in the right place. Yu don't smoke in yure
house, never. Yu don't put yure feet on the center-table, yu don't
skatter the nuzepapers all over the room, in utter confushion: order
and ekonemy governs yure premises. But if yu expeckt Mark Twain to
be happy, or even kumfortable yu hav got to buy a box of cigars
worth at least seventeen dollars and yu hav got to move all the
tender things out ov yure parlor. Yu hav got to skatter all the
latest papers around the room careless, you hav got to hav a pitcher
ov icewater handy, for Mark is a dry humorist. Yu hav got to ketch
and tie all yure yung ones, hed and foot, for Mark luvs babys only
in theory; yu hav got to send yure favorite kat over to the nabors
and hide yure poodle. These are things that hav to be done, or Mark
will pak hiz valise with hiz extry shirt collar and hiz lektur on
the Sandwich Islands, and travel around yure streets, smoking and
reading the sighns over the store doorways untill lektur time
begins.

As we-are not likely to touch upon Mark Twain's lecturing, save only
lightly, hereafter, it may be as well to say something of his method at
this period. At all places visited by lecturers there was a committee,
and it was the place of the chairman to introduce the lecturer, a
privilege which he