t fall a smile. The encroaching beast stopped as if he
had been shot! His rider plied whip, and forced him again forward upon
the track of the equine hag, but with the same result.

The Englishman was now alarmed; he struggled manfully with rein and whip
and shout, amidst the tremendous cheering and inextinguishable laughter
of the crowd, to force his animal past, now on this side, now on that,
but it would not do. Prompted by the fiend in the concavity of her back,
the unthinkable quadruped dropped her grins right and left with such
seasonable accuracy that again and again the competing beast was struck
"all of a heap" just at the moment of seeming success. And, finally,
when by a tremendous spurt his rider endeavored to thrust him by, within
half a dozen lengths of the winning post, the incarnate nightmare turned
squarely about and fixed upon him a portentous stare--delivering at the
same time a grimace of such prodigious ghastliness that the poor
thoroughbred, with an almost human scream of terror, wheeled about, and
tore away to the rear with the speed of the wind, leaving the colonel an
easy winner in twenty minutes and ten seconds.

THE FAILURE OF HOPE & WANDEL

_From Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago, to Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans,
December 2, 1877._

I will not bore you, my dear fellow, with a narrative of my journey from
New Orleans to this polar region. It is cold in Chicago, believe me, and
the Southron who comes here, as I did, without a relay of noses and ears
will have reason to regret his mistaken economy in arranging his outfit.

To business. Lake Michigan is frozen stiff. Fancy, O child of a torrid
clime, a sheet of anybody's ice, three hundred miles long, forty broad,
and six feet thick! It sounds like a lie, Pikey dear, but your partner
in the firm of Hope & Wandel, Wholesale Boots and Shoes, New Orleans, is
never known to fib. My plan is to collar that ice. Wind up the present
business and send on the money at once. I'll put up a warehouse as big
as the Capitol at Washington, store it full and ship to your orders as
the Southern market may require. I can send it in planks for skating
floors, in statuettes for the mantel, in shavings for juleps, or in
solution for ice cream and general purposes. It is a big thing!

I inclose a thin slip as a sample. Did you ever see such charming ice?

_From Mr. Pike Wandel, of New Orleans, to Mr. Jabez Hope, in Chicago,
December 24, 1877._

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