I got mad and resolved to insure the house and burn it down. One evening I felt sad and worn, and was trying to solace myself by trilling a few snatches from Mendelssohn's "Wail," written in the key of G for a baritone voice. A neighbor came along and stopped to lean over the gate, and drink in the flood of melody which I was spilling out on the evening air. When I got through and stopped to tune my guitar anew, and scratch a warm place on my arm, he asked if I were not afraid that those swallows would bring bed bugs to the house. I had heard that before, but I thought it was a campaign lie. I acted on the suggestion, however, and taking a long pole from behind the door, where I keep it for pictorial Bible men, I knocked down a 'dobe cottage, and proceeded to examine it. It was level full of imported Merino and Cotswold and Southdown and Early Rose and Duchess of Oldenburg and twenty-ounce Pippins and Seek-no-further bed bugs. There were bed bugs in modest gray ulsters and bed bugs in dregs of wine and old gold, bed bugs in ashes of roses and beg bugs in elephants' breath, bed bugs with their night clothes on and in morning wrappers, bed bugs that were just going on the night shift, and bed bugs that had been at work all day and were just going to bed. I killed all I could and then drove the rest into a pan of coal oil. When one undertook to get out of the pan I shot him. This conflict lasted several days. I neglected my other business and omitted morning prayers until there was a great calm and the swift-winged swallows homeward flew. When these feathered songsters come around my humble cot another spring they will meet with a cold, unwelcome reception. I shall not even ask them to take off their things. I have formed the idea somehow from watching the eccentric nervous flight of the swallow, that when he makes one of those swift flank movements with the speed of chain lightning he must be acting from the impulse of a large, earnest, triangular bed bug of the boarding house variety. I may be wrong, but I have given this matter a good deal of attention, and whether this theory be correct or not I do not care. It is good enough for me. LAUGHING SAM. |During the past week I have experienced the pleasure of an acquaintance with Laughing Sam, a character well known throughout the West. Samuel Thompson was introduced to me on Tuesday last, and, although he has a look of subdued pain and half concealed anguish, I soon found that he was capable of exhibiting the most wild and ungovernable mirth. [Illustration: 9280] Laughing Sam is employed by Surveyor Downey, and the latter has often told me how he wished that I could employ Sam by the month to laugh at what I might write, so that I could be encouraged.