to be
done but to call a church meeting, which was done, and the elder and the
girl were acquitted of any wrong doing. This was right. If men are to
be deposed from the ministry for sitting down on a log and consoling a
female parishioner, what is to become of the world?

We don't believe the elder had any wrong motive, or that a thought
entered his head that might not have entered any man's head under the
circumstances. And yet it was unfortunate, it is so confounded hard to
explain what they walked a mile for to get into the woods where there
was a log.

THE HARMFUL HAMMOCK.

Geo. W. Peck, of Peck's _Sun_, knows more about the harmful hammock,
both by experience and observation, than any other man in America. His
testimony runs as follows:

A young couple who were sitting in a hammock at one of the watering
places in this State were severely injured by tipping over backwards
and striking on the cheek of a head waiter. There is something about
a hammock that is indescribable, and there is no rule that can be made
that will insure safety while sitting in one of the queer things. There
are people who believe that a hammock understands what is going on, and
occasionally indulges in a joke.

It is certain that an old person with a lame back can swing in a hammock
half the day and it will never kick up. Servant girls and children can
get in a hammock as thick as three in a bed and there is no danger, but
let a spoony young couple sit down in a hammock ever so carefully and it
seems as though the confounded thing was alive, and had taken a contract
to spill them out on the ground in all sorts of embarrassing shapes.
What it is that causes the commotion will, perhaps, never be known,
without an investigation by some middle aged person, and if the season
was not so near over we would investigate the blasted thing ourself,
in the interest of our young readers who are in the full blush of
hammockhood.

There can be nothing much more annoying to a young couple than to be
sitting side by side or facing each other in a hammock, looking into
each other's eyes, and allowing the love they dare not speak to show
itself in those orbs, and just as they are feeling as though they
couldn't live a minute unless they clasped each other to each other's
heaving bosoms, or at least one heaving bosom and one boiled shirt, and
then have the hammock turn bottom side up and land them on the back of
their necks, on the ground, with le