THE HUMBLING OF ABE WHYDELL.

"WANT to know about Abe Whydell, hey?" said the Old Settler. "Then you've come to the right shop. Kuowed Abe Whydell fer ten years. Knowed him throo and throo. Knowed him all around. Abe Whydell was the fightin'est man that ever lived in these parts-that's what he was."

“Wasn't afraid of anything, I suppose," suggested the visitor.

"Afraid? Abe Whydell afraid? Now look here; do you want to know about Abe Why dell? Do you want to have his character made clear to you? Do you want to feel that you've knowed him yourself, and 'sociated with him, and had business relations with him, and lived with him, and felt towards him like a brother?"

"I-I think so."

"Then see here: Abe Whydell would fight a rattlesnake and give the snake the first bite. He fit because he loved it. His heart was in it. He throwed his whole soul into it. Says a Boston man that seen him clean out a sheriff's posse that had been posseing after him two days says the Boston chap to me, 'That feller ain't no billytantee; he's a perfessionalthat's what he is.' Which is what I say, too. "Not that Abe Whydell was a quarrelsome man-fur from it. I think I may say deliber'tly, hefting each word as I use it, that Abe Whydell was the peaceablest man I ever knowed. That's what he fit fer-peace. Where there was trouble, there you would find Abe Whydell putting up his dukes for peace. That was his watchword-peace. Many's the time I've saw him, when there was a fight, suatch up a wooden-bottomed chair, and as he waded in yell out, Gentlemen, wot I want is peace, and durned little of that!

"Well, things run on, and finally Abe Whydell had licked everybody in town. Natur❜ly this had a bad effect on him. He begun to get proud and stuck up. This wasn't to be wondered at—it's reg'lar human nat're, and Abe did have human nat're about him. He was head and shoulders and some back above his feller-men, but he were human, after all. So he begun to get haughty and overbearing, and when you asked him to have a drink, mebby he'd do it, and mebby he'd say he wasn't thirsty. Think of it, wasn't thirsty-couldn't make up a reasonable excuse and let the man down easy, but must rip out the most insulting and impossible thing he could-wasn't thirsty-just as if a man says to you, 'How balmy the air is this morning,' and you should snap back at him, 'I don't know; I ain't breathing this morning.'

"Well, as I said, Abe kept wearing his nose higher and higher, just like Napoleon Bunnyparte, and we seen that fer his own good he'd got to be took down. We held a public meeting and talked it over, and the best we could see was to send right to New York and get an A1 prize-fighter to come on and whale the con

ceit out of him. I was the committee app'inted to graft the letter. It went like this:

"Post-master, New York:

666

"DEAR COLONEL,-We've got a bad man in this town. For a private citizen we jedge him the worst man that ever looked through a shirt collar. He has walloped us all. He finished the last man two weeks ago, and has begun to go round again. Now what we want is the best fighter in your town to come out here and pound this man. We want a thorough job done, and are willing to pay the market price. We've got the money, because the City Free Library Association has disbanded, after voting to use the funds on hand fer this purpose. We would prefer a man from around Five Points somewheres, as we hear that they are intelligent, reliable citizens, and understand the upper cut. Don't send no man that has ever been convicted of any crime, nor a furriner. We believe in America fer the Amer

icans. No Irish need apply. The Chinese Yours truly,

must go.

"The stage he arrove on got in at nine o'clock in the evening. We looked him over, and found him about Abe's size and general build. We'd been hoping he would be bigger. Some said he couldn't do it, and that Abe would just do him up as he had the rest of us. But the man said we could depend on his science, and we hoped we could. We decided to app'int a committee to wait on Abe and lay the matter before him. Nobody seemed anxious to serve on this, so we writ a letter and sent it by a stranger who happened to be in town, telling him it was a propersition to tender Abe a reception and give him a gold-headed cane. That stranger wa'n't in no fit shape to make an intelligent report when he got back, but after the doctor finished working over him, as near as we could make out, Abe accepted the challenge. You see, he had got out of bed and fell on the stranger 'cause he was proposing to stir up strife with his letter. Always fer peace, Abe was.

SHE. "

HIE. "Yes, dear."

sot down on a box at one side, wrapped in a hoss-blanket, and soon Abe come along. The seconds was arranged fer, and Abe took off his coat, and the two of 'em stepped into the ring. The next minute we was the sickest crowd in the Territory. There never was no fight in that ring," and the old gentleman paused sadly. "That is, none o' the kind that we was particularly auxious to haud down to posterity as showin' our prowess as warriors."

"Why?" asked the visitor.

"It was this way," the old gentleman continued, with a melancholy shake of his head, which caused the visitor some regret that he had asked the question: "they stepped into the ring just like this. Then they looked at each other like this. Then says the man, 'Heavings, is it possible that's Abe! It are, Jim, it are!' says Abe. Then they rushes up and throws their arms round each other, like this, and burrows their heads down in each other's necks, and just reg'larly bust out crying. Long lost brothers, you see. Twin brothers, too. Hadn't seen each other fer fifteen years. And there they stood and cried and moaned and sobbed and took on, with the tears a-running down on the ground and making it so slippery that they couldn't of fit if they'd wanted to without spikes in their shoes. Then the rest

of us canght it, seeing them two strong men standing there braced, weeping and wailing and blubbering 'bout the old home, and their sainted mother, and their angel sister, and their brother that was hung, and all such; and you may snatch me baldheaded if there was a dry eye at the ring-side. And as we all stood there wringing each other's hands and boohooing, and trying to find somebody in the crowd that had a handkerchief, suddenly the two men stopped, and sort of mopped off their tears, and turned round, and said Abe, Jim, let's wade in together and lick the crowd-every one of 'em-not leave no sound man stall.' 'All right, Abe,' says Jim. And I never seen such a scattering. Every last man there, except me, run like a cat in a dog show; and them two fellers didn't catch me; I run as fast as was really necessary."

And the old settler lapsed into a musing silence. HAYDEN CARRUTH.

CONSISTENT.

So democratic was he, having penned
A novel that the millions much did please,
He made no money on it in the end,
For he'd have naught to do with royalties.
CARLYLE SMITH.

AN IMPORTANT DEBATE.

"THESE here two fellers, old Waldo and Jarley McCracken, would always argue," said Mr. Milo Bush one day while in Shanks's grocerystore. 'Argue about anything. Took contrary sides on every question. Why, if old Waldo said that Injuns was pizen, Jarley McCracken would up and dispute it, just as if the whole world don't know that Injuns are pizen, and ought to be exterminated off the face of the yearth.

"One day Jarley McCracken was speaking of whiskey, and happened to mention, keerless like, its food value, and what did old Waldo do but up and dispute it. Said whiskey as a beverage to supply the necessary liquid for the proper asswimulation of the solid food was all OK, but he denied its value as a food per ᎦᎵ - them was his furren words, just like that per se. It was the general view that if he couldn't make out his case without dragging in French, that he'd better keep

still.

"Another time they got arguing about great men. Old Waldo said that Napoleon was a greater man than Daniel Webster. Jarley

McCracken of course said it was no such stuff. Shanks was just closing up, so we all went up to the school-house and organized a regular meeting, and let 'em debate percisely 's if they'd been in Congress, with Doc Ballister for the referee, just like the Senate.

"Old Waldo led off on the Napoleon side. First, says he, let us make a inquiry into what constitoots troo greatness. Is it words, or is it acts? Is it talk, or is it get-up-and-get? The idee of the present speaker is that it is acts. Here we find the difference between the two men -Napoleon done things, but the alleged fame of Daniel Webster rests wholly on words. Consider the familiar motto of Napoleon [here Mr. Bush consulted a well-worn note-book], Honey soyt qui mall why pense,' which, for the benefit of those present who do not understand Greek, if any there be, I may translate, ‘If you are going to do a thing, do it.' Of course Daniel Webster's Dictionary was a great book. Present speaker had heard it said that it weighs ten pounds. But Napoleon fired cannon-balls which weighed a hundred pounds. A copy of Webster's Dictionary would scarcely have made wadding for one of Napoleon's cannons. Napoleon was a great mau, take him as you will. See how he spiked the enemy's fire-engines before he applied the torch to Moscow! Even in defeat Napoleon Bonaparte was great. Beaten back by overwhelming numbers at Waterloo, did he throw up the sponge? Hardly! When his charger was shot from under him, leaving him in the air hanging to the limb of a tree with one hand, he cried, 'My kingdom for a hoss-lay on McDuff! Napoleon Bonaparte faced the enemy to the last. When they came they had to saw off the limb to get him down, like a hornets' nest. That's what Napoleon was -a hornets' nest on two

legs. Then old Waldo sat down, and Jarley McCracken got up.

.

"First, he said he reckoned that if Napoleon had been what he is cracked up to be, that he'd have had an extra hoss along for his a-dekamp to lead under him. However, it was not necessary to belittle Napoleon in order to enlarge Daniel Webster. As the great Henry Clay had said of Webster, There he standslook at him! The present speaker denied that Daniel Webster did nothing but compile the great dictionary which bears his name. He was a statesman as well as a leximographer. Who stood on the top of Bunker Hill Monument and uttered these words, 'Gentlemen, give me liberty or give me death'? And if they'd shot the monument from under him, he'd have hung to a star-a star, I say, and still put up a stiff fight for blessed liberty. The dictionary was a side issue, compiled on rainy days when he couldn't work. When he thought of a new word he wrote it down on his cuff or somewhere, and when he got home socked it into his dictionary. So it grew. Did Napoleon do any such thing? No! Napoleon simply set about straddle of a hoss about four sizes too big for him, and had his picture took. He was better at facing the muzzle of the camera than he was the muzzle of the cannon. If Daniel Webster's legs had been no more than eighteen inches long, he'd have known enough to have kept off big draught-hosses.

"Right here old Waldo couldn't stand it no longer to hear Napoleon abused. He hopped up, grabbed the big school globe, and banged Jarley McCracken with it. His head crashed through the South Pacific Ocean, and his nose busted out in the northern part of England. It made Jarley McCracken pretty mad, and he bunted old Waldo, his head still in the bowels of the yearth. The coast of Norway caught old Waldo on the chin, and they both went down in a heap. The yearth all busted to flinders, and chunks of the arctic regions and North America went flying through the air. Doc Ballister jumped in and parted them, and we went home; so the question about which was the heftier man, Napoleon or Webster, was never settled."

WHAT'S IN A NAME?

FROM Kansas City she wrote to her English cousins as follows: "Of course it is a great change to us; but George likes the place, the people, the climate, and the work; and we will remain all winter in Missouri (Providence permitting). Note the address." And they did!

More or less familiar with the occasional eccentricities of local nomenclature in the New World, "Yuba Dam," "Dead Man's Gulch," "Poker Flats," "Hell fer Sartin Creek," and the like, the reply from Notting Hill came in due season, in an envelope bearing this inscription: MR. GEORGE STEBBINS, Providence Permitting.

Missouri, America.