nigger, almost
equally terrified by this shriek from the abyss, he executed a
precipitate movement which only the breaking of his neck prevented from
being a double back-somersault, and lay dead in the weeds with his
tongue out and his face the color of a cometic spectrum. We laid them in
the same grave, poor fellows, and on many a still summer evening
afterward I strayed to the lonely little church-yard to listen to the
smothered requiem chanted by the frogs that we had neglected to remove
from the pockets of the lamented astronomer.

"And, now," added William, taking his heels from the window, "as you can
not immediately resume your spectroscopic observations on that
red-haired chamber-maid in the dormer-window, who pulled down the blind
when I made a mouth at her, I move that we adjourn."

A PROVIDENTIAL INTIMATION

Mr. Algernon Jarvis, of San Francisco, got up cross. The world of Mr.
Jarvis had gone wrong with him overnight, as one's world is likely to do
when one sits up till morning with jovial friends, to watch it, and he
was prone to resentment. No sooner, therefore, had he got himself into a
neat, fashionable suit of clothing than he selected his morning
walking-stick and sallied out upon the town with a vague general
determination to attack something. His first victim would naturally have
been his breakfast; but singularly enough, he fell upon this with so
feeble an energy that he was himself beaten--to the grieved astonishment
of the worthy _rotisseur_, who had to record his hitherto puissant
patron's maiden defeat. Three or four cups of _cafe noir_ were the only
captives that graced Mr. Jarvis' gastric chariot-wheels that morning.

He lit a long cigar and sauntered moodily down the street, so occupied
with schemes of universal retaliation that his feet had it all their own
way; in consequence of which, their owner soon found himself in the
billiard-room of the Occidental Hotel. Nobody was there, but Mr. Jarvis
was a privileged person; so, going to the marker's desk, he took out a
little box of ivory balls, spilled them carelessly over a table and
languidly assailed them with a long stick.

Presently, by the merest chance, he executed a marvelous stroke. Waiting
till the astonished balls had resumed their composure, he gathered them
up, replacing them in their former position. He tried the stroke again,
and, naturally, did not make it. Again he placed the balls, and again he
badly failed. With a