ils your finger? _Tommy bit it?_ Drat the little fool! Didn't ye
know enough to keep your finger out of his mouth? _Was trying to jerk
his cheek off, hey?_ Won't you never learn to quit foolin' 'round a
boy's mouth with yer fingers? You're bound to disgrace us all by such
wretched behaviour. You're determined never to be nobody. Did you
ever hear of Isaac Watts--that wrote, "Let dogs delight to bark and
bite"--sticking his fingers in a boy's mouth to get 'em bit, like a
fool? I'm clean discouraged with ye. Why didn't ye go for his nose,
the way Jonathan Edwards, and George Washington, and Daniel Webster
used to do, when they was boys? _Couldn't 'cause he had ye down?_
That's a purty story to tell me. It does beat all that you can't learn
how Socrates and William Penn used to gouge when they was under, after
the hours and hours I've spent in telling you about those great
men! It seems to me sometimes as if I should have to give you up in
despair. It's an awful trial to me to have a boy that don't pay any
attention to good example, nor to what I say. What! _You pulled out
three or four handfuls of his hair?_ H'm! Did he squirm any? Now if
you'd a give him one or two in the eye--but as I've told ye many
a time, fighting is poor business. Won't you--for your _father's_
sake--_won't you_ promise to try and remember that? H'm! Johnny, how
did it--ahem--which licked?"

"'_You licked him?_ Sho! Really? Well, now, I hadn't any idea you
could lick that Tommy Kelly! I don't believe John Bunyan, at ten years
old, could have done it. Johnny, my boy, you can't think how I hate to
have you fighting every day or two. I wouldn't have had him lick _you_
for five, no, not for ten dollars! Now, sonny, go right in and wash
up, and tell your mother to put a rag on your finger. And, Johnny,
don't let me hear of your fighting again!'"

"I never see anybody so down on fighting as the old man, was, but
somehow he never could break me from it."

THE OLD MAN IN THE STYLISH CHURCH.

JOHN H. YATES.

Additional effect may be given to this piece by any one who
can impersonate the old man.

Well, wife, I've been to church to-day--been to a stylish one--
And, seein' you can't go from home, I'll tell you what was done;
You would have been surprised to see what I saw there to-day;
The sisters were fixed up so fine they hardly bowed to pray.
I had on these coarse clothes of mine, not much the worse for wear,
But then the