were crazy.

If we have done wrong in talking with a total stranger, who took us for
a lady friend, we are willing to die. We couldn't help it. For an hour
we would not answer the constant ringing of the bell, but finally the
bell fluttered as though a tiny bird had lit upon the wire and was
shaking its plumage. It was not a ring, but it was a tune, as though an
angel, about eighteen years old, a blonde angel, was handling the other
end of the transmitter, and we felt as though it was wrong for us to sit
and keep her in suspense, when she was evidently dying to pour into our
auricular appendage remarks that we ought to hear.

And still the bell did flut. We went to the cornucopia, put our ear to
the toddy stick and said, "What ailest thou darling, why dost thy hand
tremble? Whisper all thou feelest to thine old baldy." Then there
came over the wire and into our mansard by a side window the following
touching remarks: "Matter enough. I have been ringing here till I have
blistered my hands. We have got to have ten car loads of hogs by day
after to-morrow or shut down." Then there was a stuttering, and then
another voice said, "Go over to Loomis' pawn shop. A man shot in"--and
another voice broke in, singing, "The sweet by and by, we shall meet
on that beautiful"--and another voice said--"girl I ever saw. She was
riding with a duffer, and wiped her nose as I drove by in the street
car, and I think she is struck after me."

It was evident that the telephone was drunk, and we went out in the hall
and wrote on a barrel all the afternoon, and gave it full possession of
the office.

*****

Mr. Peck was recently extended an invitation to be present at a meeting
of the Iowa Commercial Travelers' Association, at Des Moines, and
respond to the toast: "Our Wives and Sweethearts, and Little Ones at
Home." He couldn't be present, but he responded all the same, in the
following manner:

"That is the sweetest toast that man was ever called upon to respond to.
Very few traveling men who have good wives, loving sweethearts, and dear
little children at home, sending loving messages to them, often ever
stray very far from the straight and narrow path. There is no class of
men on earth that has greater temptations and better opportunities to be
'cusses on wheels' than the traveling men of the Northwest; and when I
say that they stand up under it a confounded sight better than the same
number of ministers or editors would, I don't