white arm on each shoulder and sing like a bobolink, and tell him how all-fired glad she was that he was still solid. I couldn't help thinking how small a salary I would be willing to play "Thaddeus" for, but he stood there like a basswood man with Tobias movement, and stuck his arms out like a sore toe, and told her in F that he felt greatly honored by her attention, and hoped some day to be able to retaliate, or words to that effect.
I don't want any trouble with Brignoli, of course, but I am confident I can lick him with one hand tied behind me, and although I seek no quarrel with him, he knows my post office address, and I can mop the North American continent with his remains, and don't you forget it.
After awhile the "Gypsy Queen," who is jealous of "Arline," puts up a job on her to get her arrested, and she is brought up before her father, who is a Justice of the Peace for that precinct, and he gives her $25 and trimmings, or thirty days in the Bastile. By and by, however, he catches sight of her arm, and recognizes her by a large red Goddess of Liberty tattooed on it, and he remits the fine and charges up the costs to the county.
Her father wants her to marry a newspaper man and live in affluence, but "Arline" still hankers for "Thad.," and turns her back on the oriental magnificence of life with a journalist. But "Thaddeus" is poor. All he seems to have is what he can gather from the community after office hours, and the chickens begin to roost high and he is despondent apparently. Just as "Arline" is going to marry the newspaper man, according to the wishes of her pa, "Thaddeus" sails in with an appointment as Notary Public, bearing the Governor's big seal upon it, and "Arline" pitches into the old man and plays it pretty fine on him till he relents and she marries "Thaddeus," and they go to housekeeping over on the West Side, and he makes a bushel of money as Notary Public, and everybody sings, and the band plays, and she is his'n, and he is her'n.
There is a good deal of singing in this opera. Most everybody sings. I like good singing myself.
Emma Abbott certainly warbles first-rate, and her lovemaking takes me back to the halcyon days when I cared more for the forbidding future of my moustache, and less for meal-time than I do now. But Brignoli is no singer according to my aesthetic taste. He sings like a man who hasn't taken out his second papers yet, and his stomach is too large. It gets in the way and "Arline" has to go around it and lean up on his flank when she wants to put her head on his breast.
A SUNNY LITTLE INCIDENT
Thursday evening, in company with a friend, I rode up into the city on the Rock Island train and was agreeably surprised by seeing a Rocky Mountain man, a few seats ahead, sitting with a lady who seemed to be very much in love with him, and he was trying the best he knew to out-gush her. Now the gentleman's wife was at home in Wyoming in blissful ignorance of all this business while he was ostensibly buying his fall and winter stock of goods in Chicago.
The most obtuse observer could see that the companion of this man was not his wife, for she was gentle toward him, and looked lovingly in his eyes. Every one in the car laid aside all other business and watched the performance.
Then I whispered to my friend and said, "That is not the wife of that man. I can tell by the way they look into the depths of each other's eyes and ignore the other passengers. I'll bet ten dollars he has seven children and a wife at home right now. Isn't it scandalous?"
"You can't always tell that way," said my friend. "I've seen people who had been married twenty years who were just as loving and spooney as that."
He was biting a little, so I kept at him till he put up the ten dollars and agreed to leave it with the man himself. It was taking an advantage of my friend, of course, but he had played a miserable joke on me only a few days before; so I covered the $10, and walking up to the man I slapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hullo, George. How do you think you feel?"
He looked around surprised and amazed, as I knew he would be, but he wouldn't let on that he knew me. So I slapped him on the shoulder again, and gurgled a low musical laugh that welled up from the merry depths of my joyous nature, and filled the car full of glad and child-like melody.
My friend came forward and said, "Mr. Van Horn, let me make you acquainted with Mr. Nye, of Wyoming, who lives in a wild country, where every one goes up to every one else and says, hello, George or Jim, no matter whether he is acquainted or not. You musn't pay any attention to it at all; he don't mean anything by it. It is his way."
It was Mr. Van Horn, who had lived in Illinois for thirty-five years and had been married ten years to the lady who sat with him. That evening my friend and I went to Hooley's to see Robson and Crane, in the "Comedy of Errors." The play is supposed to be funny. Several people laughed at the performance at various stages, but I did not, for just as I would get to feeling comfortable the man who sat next to me, and who claimed to be a friend of mine, would lean over, and say:
"Hullo, George; how do you think you feel?" Then he would burst forth into the coarsest and most vulgar laughter. How few people there are in the world who seem to thoroughly understand the eternal fitness of things, and how many there are who laugh gaily on in the presence of those who suffer in silence, and with superhuman strength stifle their corroding woe.
HE REWARDED HER
A noble, generous-hearted man in Cheyenne lost a wallet on Saturday, at the Key City House, and an honest chambermaid found it in his room. The warm heart of the man swelled with gratitude, and seemed to reach out after all mankind, that he might in some way assist them with the $250 which was lost, and was found again. So he fell on the neck of the chambermaid, and while his tears took the starch out of her linen collar, he put his hand in his pocket and found her a counterfeit twenty-five cent scrip. "Take this," he said, between his sobs, "virtue is its own reward. Do not use it unwisely, but put it into Laramie County bonds, where thieves cannot corrupt, nor moths break through and gnaw the corners off."
THE MODERN PARLOR STOVE
In view of the new and apparently complex improvements in heating stoves, and the difficulty of readily operating them successfully, a word or two as to their correct management may not be out of place at this time.
Some time since, having worn out my old stove and thrown it aside, I purchased a new one called the "Fearfully and Wonderfully Maid." It had been highly spoken of by a friend, so I set it up in the parlor, turned on steam, threw the throttle wide open, and waited to see how it would operate. At the first stroke of the piston I saw that something was wrong with the reversible turbine wheel, and I heard a kind of grating sound, no doubt caused by the rubbing of the north-east trunnion on the face plate of the ratchet-slide. Being utterly ignorant of the workings of the stove, I attempted to remedy this trouble without first reversing the boomerang, and in a few moments the gas accumulated so rapidly that the cross-head gave way, and the right ventricle of the buffer-beam was blown higher than Gilroy's kite, carrying with it the saddle-plate, bull-wheel and monkey-wrench. Of course it was very careless to overlook what the merest school-boy ought to know, for not only were all these parts of the stove a total wreck, but the crank-arbor, walking-beam and throat-latch were twisted out of shape, and so mixed up with the feed-cam, tumbling-rod, thumb-screw, dial-plate and colic indicator, that I was obliged to send for a practical engineer at an expense of $150, with board and travelling expenses, to come and fix it up.
Now, there is nothing more simple than the operation of one of these stoves, with the most ordinary common sense. At first, before starting your fire, see that the oblique diaphragm and eccentric shaft are in their true position; then step to the rear of the stove and reverse the guide plate, say three quarters of an inch, force the stretcher bar forward and loosen the gang-plank. After this start your fire, throw open the lemon-squeezer and right oblique hydraulic, see that the tape-worm pinion and Aurora Borealis are well oiled, bring the rotary pitman forward until it corresponds with the maintop mizzen, let go the smoke stack, horizontal duodenum, thorough brace and breech-pin,
