SARAH'S" answers to these harrowing
questions, but it seemed to me as if she were trying to throttle her
timid friend into a perfect sense of security. Whatever she did had the
desired effect, and I heard no more from the "back seat."

It was nightfall ere the several members of our little colony composed
themselves to await in such tranquillity as they could command, the
ordeal of sleeping, sitting bolt upright in a French _diligence,_ upon a
dark, tempestuous night, and surrounded on all sides by the dreadful
presence of "red-handed war." The last thing I remember ere the drowsy
god "MURPHY" sent his fairies to weave their cobwebs about my eyelids,
was "OLD CONNECTICUT." She didn't look like the battering-ram that she
was. She had taken that chignon for a pillow, and fastened it to the
back of the seat. Her head was thrown back; her chin had fallen, and at
the extreme tip of her thin red nose a solitary tear glistened like a
dew-drop on a beet. Once, about midnight, she awoke me by her snoring,
but I gave the old gal's chignon a hitch, and it was all right again.

Yours, somniferously,

DICK TINTO.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THOSE COUNTRY COUSINS AGAIN.

_Celia (just arrived from the country)._ "JUST THINK, JANE, COUSIN JOHN
IS TO BE MY ESCORT TO THE FRENCH BAZAAR AND THE NILSSON CONCERTS, AND
BOOTH'S AND WALLACE'S, AND THE OPERA BOUFFE, AND LOTS OF OTHER
FIRST-CLASS SHOWS!"]

* * * * *

FACTS ABOUT THE ENGLISH MISSION.

It is not true that I ever accepted the English Mission; and if any man
says I did, I now deliberately brand him as a Liar and Villain.

I am not going to deny that the place was offered me, but I do
unhesitatingly, say that I never absolutely consented to take it.

Gen. GRANT may have construed my note on the subject as an unqualified
acceptance, but that was owing entirely to his devouring desire to get
the thing off his hands, and not to any ambiguity in my language.

"No, Mr. PRESIDENT," I said in the note, "far be it from me to stand
between my friend, Mr. GREELEY, and the gratification of his noble
desire to wear military things at receptions abroad. Moreover your
Excellency, I would not for the world deprive our cousins and other
relations in England of an opportunity to cultivate the grand old art of
swearing under the instruction of so eminent a professor as HORACE."

This is the sort of language I used, and I don't