g cash? It won't do for you say that you can use it to
better purpose in furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in
supporting tract societies, because you know yourself that you people who
have no petty vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you
stint yourselves so in the matter of food that you are always feeble and
hungry. And you never dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor
wretch, seeing you in a good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you;
and in church you are always down on your knees, with your eyes buried in
the cushion, when the contribution-box comes around; and you never give
the revenue officer: full statement of your income. Now you know these
things yourself, don't you? Very well, then what is the use of your
stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered old age? What
is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless to you? In
a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be always trying
to seduce people into becoming as "ornery" and unlovable as you are
yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"? Now I don't approve
of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it, either; but I haven't a
particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty vices, and so
I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the very same
man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice of
smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your
reprehensible fireproof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor
stove.

"YOUNG AUTHOR."--Yes, Agassiz does recommend authors to eat fish, because
the phosphorus in it makes brain. So far you are correct. But I cannot
help you to a decision about the amount you need to eat--at least, not
with certainty. If the specimen composition you send is about your fair
usual average, I should judge that perhaps a couple of whales would be
all you would want for the present. Not the largest kind, but simply
good, middling-sized whales.

"SIMON WHEELER," Sonora.--The following simple and touching remarks and
accompanying poem have just come to hand from the rich gold-mining region
of Sonora:

To Mr. Mark Twain: The within parson, which I have set to poetry
under the name and style of "He Done His Level Best," was one among
the whitest men I ever see, and it ain't every man that knowed him
that can find it in his heart to say he's glad the poor cuss is