The commercial travelers are the spiders of enterprise, spinning and weaving without distaff or loom, swinging from town to town, from city to city, from continent to continent; and they are weaving the golden web of commerce around the world, drawing the nations closer together in the warp and woof of universal love and the universal brotherhood of man. THE GATE IN THE GROUND. BY ROBERT LOVEMAN. At the end of the lane of joy and pain, We come to the little gate, The king and the clown, and the court go down, Through its portals soon or late; The peasant, the peer, the sage and the seer, Depart when the hour comes round, With a kiss and a sigh, and a last good-bye, Through the little lone gate in the ground. ’Tis fixed by fate, we must pass through the gate, The dear little gate in the ground, At the end of our ways of nights and days, It is marked by a grassy mound; We bend o’er the bier, with a sob and a tear, From the still lips comes no sound,— We never can know, where God’s gardens grow, ’Till we pass through the gate in the ground. [Illustration] Lyrical and Satirical CONDUCTED BY VERMOUTH. THE RURAL SHEET. The rural paper is a peach without a single doubt, It is patent on the inside, patent medicine without; Yet it giveth information both select and wide of reach From a card of thanks for kindness to a double column preach; It tells about the infant at the home of Bill and wife, And it gives a thrilling storiette replete with love and strife; It says the roads are passable though slightly out of shape, An obituary notice names survivors wearing crepe; It has a bristling column full of legislative news, And when you have the cold or croup it tells you what to use; Its special news to farmers is both choice and up-to-date And it recommends the tablets that will keep your liver straight; It is warmly Democratic and agin the robber class, And although it hates the railroads it will sometimes use a pass; The editor’s a pungent cuss and calls a spade a spade, And he takes subscriptions right along in any kind of trade; The paper is a weekly, but be careful how you spell, And “drop around to see us when you’ve anything to sell.” JIU-JITSU. If newspaper stories relative to this strange and recently introduced Japanese science are to be credited, Munchausen is henceforth the standard Sunday school literature and the Arabian Nights prosy historical narrative.