a washer and ironer, and knew enough by hard experience to
keep money when she got it. She didn't waste a penny. On the contrary,
she began to get miserly as her bank account grew. She grieved to part
with a cent, poor creature, for twice in her hard-working life she had
known what it was to be hungry, cold, friendless, sick, and without a
dollar in the world, and she had a haunting dread of suffering so again.
Well, at last Dan died; and the boys, in testimony of their esteem and
respect for him, telegraphed to Mrs. Murphy to know if she would like to
have him embalmed and sent home, when you know the usual custom was
to dump a poor devil like him into a shallow hole, and then inform his
friends what had become of him. Mrs. Murphy jumped to the conclusion
that it would only cost two or three dollars to embalm her dead husband,
and so she telegraphed "Yes." It was at the "wake" that the bill for
embalming arrived and was presented to the widow. She uttered a wild,
sad wail, that pierced every heart, and said: "Sivinty-foive dollars for
stoofhn' Dan, blister their sowls! Did thim divils suppose I was goin'
to stairt a Museim, that I'd be dalin' in such expinsive curiassities!"

The banker's clerk said there was not a dry eye in the house.

THE "TOURNAMENT" IN A. D. 1870

Lately there appeared an item to this effect, and the same went the
customary universal round of the press:

A telegraph station has just been established upon the traditional
site of the Garden of Eden.

As a companion to that, nothing fits so aptly and so perfectly as this:

Brooklyn has revived the knightly tournament of the Middle Ages.

It is hard to tell which is the most startling, the idea of that highest
achievement of human genius and intelligence, the telegraph, prating
away about the practical concerns of the world's daily life in the heart
and home of ancient indolence, ignorance, and savagery, or the idea of
that happiest expression of the brag, vanity, and mock-heroics of our
ancestors, the "tournament," coming out of its grave to flaunt its
tinsel trumpery and perform its "chivalrous" absurdities in the high
noon of the nineteenth century, and under the patronage of a great,
broad-awake city and an advanced civilisation.

A "tournament" in Lynchburg is a thing easily within the comprehension
of the average mind; but no commonly gifted person can conceive of such
a spectacle in Brooklyn without straining his