where the maiden and four or five other spring bonnets
were intrenched behind the furniture, and says he:

"It's an unnatural thing to have trouble with relations; but I'm just
going up there to capture that big chair."

By this time some of the neighbors had come in, and commenced to urge
the old chap to take vigorous measures. He looked at his son, and says
he:

"Can you do it Tommy?"

The child of his bosom winked twice, and immediately prepared to
perform the feat, only pausing long enough to look in the glass and see
if his necktie sat well. Then, gaining the head of the stairs, he
leaned across a bureau barring the way, and was about to grasp the big
chair, when the Wayward Sister hit him over the head with a broom, and
presently he found himself prostrate at the foot of the stairs, with a
violent pain in his nose.

On witnessing this disaster, all the neighbors shrank with indignation
from the aged father, and said it was all his doings. The poor old chap
scratched his head, and says he:

"I don't see how it's my fault."

"Why," says a neighbor of much fatness, "you're always
interfering,--that's what you are. Now, you'll never get back any of
your furniture."

"Interfering?" says the paternal chap, innocently. "Why, how _could_ I
interfere with Tommy, when I only let him do, in his own way, what he
gave me to understand he was able to?"

Here all the neighbors sighed grievously, and says one:

"Miserable old man, we believe you mean well enough; but the fact is,
you are a species of old idiot. It was your business to have had
_another son_, who would have been this one's brother; so that if one
met with a heart-rending failure on the stairs, the other could
simultaneously have entered that back window by a ladder, and taken the
chair by the rear. But you are always interfering. Take our advice now,
and either give up drinking altogether, or arrange it so that those who
drink with you may be persons not distinguishable from ourselves."

And they all departed, shaking their heads, my boy--they all departed
shaking their heads; leaving the unfortunate old chap to bind up his
offspring's nose, and to reflect upon the great iniquity of interfering
with one son's success, by not having another.

The Government of our distracted country, my boy, is so very much like
this well-meaning but imbecile old chap, that the failure of any one of
its generals is entirely due to its interference in not having anoth