The way of the transgressor is well written up.
Gen. O.O. Howard, as is well known, is a man of deep religious principles, and in the course of the war he divided his time pretty equally between fighting and evangelism. Howard's brigade was known all through the army as the Christian brigade, and he was very proud of it.
There was one hardened old sinner in the brigade, however, whose ears were deaf to all exhortation. General Howard was particularly anxious to convert this man, and one day he went down in the teamsters' part of the camp where the man was on duty. He talked with him long and earnestly about religion and finally said:
"I want to see you converted. Won't you come to the mourners' bench at the next service?"
The erring one rubbed his head thoughtfully for a moment and then replied:
"General, I'm plumb willin' to be converted, but if I am, seein' that everyone else has got religion, who in blue blazes is goin' to drive the mules?"
"We've tried a mayor and we've tried a commission."
"Now we're thinking of offering the management of our city to some good magazine."
It had been anything but an easy afternoon for the teacher who took six of her pupils through the Museum of Natural History, but their enthusiastic interest in the stuffed animals and their open-eyed wonder at the prehistoric fossils amply repaid her.
"Well, boys, where have you been all afternoon?" asked the father of two of the party that evening.
The answer came back with joyous promptness: "Oh, pop! Teacher took us to a dead circus."
Two Marylanders, who were visiting the National Museum at Washington, were seen standing in front of an Egyptian mummy, over which hung a placard bearing the inscription. "B.C. 1187."
Both visitors were much mystified thereby. Said one:
"Well," said Bill, "I dunno; but maybe it was the number of the motor-car that killed him."--_Edwin Tarrisse_.
The musical young woman who dropped her peekaboo waist in the piano player and turned out a Beethoven sonata, has her equal in the lady who stood in front of a five-bar fence and sang all the dots on her veil.
A thief broke into a Madison avenue mansion early the other morning and found himself in the music-room. Hearing footsteps approaching, he took refuge behind a screen.