. He then went to the dwelling of the Fair, when a big
dog attacked him "on purpose," and lacerated his trousers. He wants to
know whether he has any remedy in the courts. His best way is the way
home.

_Rifleman_.--You are right; the rival guns--the Dreyse and the
Chassepot--are also rifle-guns. Both of them are provided with needles,
as you suppose, but, so far as there is any chance of their being put to
the test under present circumstances, in Europe, it rather appears that
both of them will prove Needless.

_Piscator_.--No; the weak-fish is not so called on account of any
supposed feebleness attributable to it. If you take a round of the
markets one of these roaring hot days, your senses will tell you that
the weakfish is sometimes very strong.

* * * * *

THE PLAYS AND SHOWS.

As a good many persons know, LA GISELLE is a ballet whose hundred legs
are nightly displayed on the stage of the GRAND OPERA HOUSE.

The _Twelve Temptations_ have ceased to tempt, and the familiar legs of
LUPE no longer allure. But in their place we have KATHI LANNER, and
BERTHA LIND, and nearly a gross of assorted legs of the very best
quality.

Why do the women clamor for the ballot, when they have almost exclusive
possession of the ballet? The latter is much nicer and more useful than
the former. The average repeater can obtain only a dollar for his
ballot, but the average ballet will find any quantity of enthusiastic
admirers at one dollar and a half a head. Would any man pay KATHI LANNER
a dollar for the privilege of seeing her with a ballot in her hand?

On the other hand, lives there a man with eyes so dead that he would not
cheerfully pay twice that sum to see her in the mazes of the ballet?

But _La Giselle_? Certainly. I am coming to that in a moment. I have
often thought that nature must have intended me for a writer of sermons.
I have such a facility for beginning an article with a series of general
remarks that have nothing whatever to do with the subject.

Though how can any one be rationally expected to stick to anything in
this weather, except, perhaps, the newly varnished surface of his desk?
And how can even the firmest of resolutions be prevented from melting
and vanishing away, with the thermometer at more degrees than one likes
to mention? You remember the old proverb: "Man proposes, but his
mother-in-law finally disposes." The bearing of this observation lies in
its application