The boy who stole my coal shovel last spring and went out into the grave-yard and dug into a grave to find Easter eggs, is the picture of health. He ought to live a long time yet, for he is in very poor shape to be ushered in before the bar of judgment. When I was a child I was different from other boys in many respects. I was always looking about to see what good I could do. I am that way yet. If my little brother wanted to go in swimming contrary to orders, I was not strong enough to prevent him, but I would go in with him and save him from a watery grave. I went in the water thousands of times that way, and as a result he is alive to-day. But he is ungrateful. He hardly ever mentions it now, but he remembers the gordian knots that I tied in his shirts. He speaks of them frequently. This shows the ingratitude and natural depravity of the human heart. Ah, what recompense have wealth and position for the unalloyed joys of childhood, and how gladly to-day as I sit in the midst of my oriental splendor and costly magnificence, and thoughtfully run my fingers through my infrequent bangs, would I give it all, wealth, position and fame, for one balmy, breezy day gathered from the mellow haze of the long ago when I stood full knee-deep in the luke-warm pool near my suburban home in the quiet dell, and allowed the yielding and soothing mud and meek-eyed pollywogs to squirt up between my dimpled toes. THE NEW ADJUSTABLE CAMPAIGN SONG. |I beg leave at this time to present to the public a melodious gem of song which I am positive cannot fail to give satisfaction. It will withstand the rigors of our mountain clime as well as the heat and moisture of a lower altitude. It is purely unpartisan, although it may be easily changed to any shade of political opinion. It is cheap, portable and durable, and filled with little pathetic passages that will add greatly to the enthusiasm of presidential contests. It is true that some harsh criticism has been called down upon this little chunk of crystallized melody, as I may be pardoned for calling it, and it has been suggested that it is too much fraught with a gentle, soothing sense of vacuity, and that there is nothing in it particularly one way or the other. This I admit to be in a measure true. There is nothing in it as a poem, but it must be borne in mind that this is not a poem. It is a campaign song. Campaign songs never have anything in them. They don't have to. Editorials and speeches have to express human ideas and little suggestions of original horse sense, but the campaign song is generally distinguished by a wild, tumultuous torrent of attenuated space. They are like the sons of great men--we do not expect any show of herculean intellectual acumen from them. Directions.--Set up the song with the feed bar down and pitman reversed. Then turn the thumbscrew that holds the asterisks in place, take them out and lay them away in the upper case, and in proper compartment.