With suspicion now I spread The cow’s rich offering on my bread That weird butter still I dread,— Oleomargarine! Dainties now I must forego, Pies and cakes and puddings, Oh! Can I trust them? no! no!! no!!! Oleomargarine! DINING UNDER DIFFICULTIES. Taking dinner to-day in a restaurant, I was in danger of being carried off by cockroaches. If I was inclined to draw comparisons, I would say that in size the cockroaches I encountered in this place would compare favorably with cupboard door buttons. I had seen these troublesome insects on former occasions when I thought they were numerous—when they were as thick around the bread-plate as bees around their hive in June. But I had never been present when they turned out in sufficient numbers to take and hold possession of everything upon the table, even to the mustard-pot. To-day I witnessed such a spectacle. I counted until I tired; their skelping to and fro made the task painfully difficult, and the effort was abandoned. They had evidently been lying in ambush in the cruet stand from the moment I sat down and gave my order, for the ring of the plate as it struck the board seemed to be the signal for a general advance. They appeared in military ranks, moving towards the dish in a semicircle, like a line of Fenian skirmishers advancing heroically upon a turnip patch. There were no frost-nipped fellows, with drooping horns and dragging limbs, among those legions either. All were active, square-shouldered customers, real thoroughbreds, wide across the hips, and boasting a depth of chest capable of enduring any amount of running; while their long, formidable-looking feelers stood out at right angles from their heads, like the horns on a Mexican steer. [Illustration: BUMMERS ON THE RAID.] “During your natural life,” I commenced, addressing a waiter who stood near by, evidently enjoying my surprise, “whether while officiating as head steward on board of a floating palace on the Mississippi, or serving as second cook on a grain scow on the San Joaquin, did you ever run across a place where the cockroaches were one-ninetieth part as numerous as they are in this restaurant?” “Numerous?” he answered; “you should be here a warm, sunshiny day, if you want to see cockroaches, for then all the invalids are out—those fellows who have had their movements across the table accelerated by a snapping finger, or such as have only tasted the poison scattered around for their benefit, or those who have taken an overdose and throwed it up again. These lie in cracks and cupboards, with stiffened joints and weak stomachs, when the weather is cold and cloudy; but when a warm day comes, they are all abroad and busy.”