side, pocket of his coat, evidently for a razor,
when the pop corn man started for the door, his eyes sticking out two
inches. Every person he passed took a paper of pop corn, one man grabbed
his coat and tore one tail off, another took his basket away and as
he rushed out on the platform the basket was thrown at his head, and a
female voice said, "I will be ready when the carriage calls at 8."

As the old gentleman struck the platform and began to arrange his toilet
he met Fitzgerald, the conductor, who asked him what was the matter.
He said Pierce told him that crowd was going to the legislature, "but,"
says he, as he picked some pieces of paper collar out of the back of
his neck, "if those people are not delegates to a democratic convention,
then I have been peddling pop corn on this road ten years for nothing,
and don't know my business." Fitz told him they were patients going to
the Insane Asylum.

The old man thought it over a moment, and then he picked up a coupling
pin and went looking for Pierce. He says he will kill him. Pierce has
not been out of the house since. This Pierce is the same man that lent
us a runaway horse once.

HOW SHARPER THAN A HOUND'S TOOTH.

Years ago we swore on a stack of red chips that we would never own
another dog. Six promising pups that had been presented to us, blooded
setters and pointers, had gone the way of all dog flesh, with the
distemper and dog buttons, and by falling in the cistern, and we had
been bereaved _via_ dog misfortunes as often as John R. Bennett, of
Janesville, has been bereaved on the nomination for attorney general.
We could not look a pup in the face but it would get sick, and so we
concluded never again to own a dog.

The vow has been religiously kept since. Men have promised us thousands
of pups, but we have never taken them. One conductor has promised us at
least seventy-five pups, but he has always failed to get us to take one.
Dog lovers have set up nights to devise a way to induce us to accept
a dog. We held out firmly until last week. One day we met Pierce, the
Watertown Junction hotel man, and he told us he had a greyhound pup that
was the finest bread dog--we think he said bread dog, though it might
have been a sausage dog he said--anyway he told us it was blooded, and
that when it grew up to be a man--that is, figuratively speaking--when
it grew up to be a dog full size, it would be the handsomest canine in
the Northwest.

We kicked on it