In the year 1860 or thereabouts, when a great patent case was being tried in Chicago, and champagne and oysters were the favorite viands served nightly to Counsel and Jurors after the adjournment of Court, it happened that one Ed. D------n, a young patent lawyer from New York, was present on one of those occasions. Now, Ned is terribly afflicted with a determination of words to the mouth, and managed to monopolize the whole conversation. Ned had a speech to make upon everything, and kept buzzing around like a musquito, dipping his bill into everything animate or inanimate, no matter which. At last he began to officiate at serving out the oysters, and with ladle in hand, said in his usual stilted style, "I wonder whether this bivalve, this seemingly obtuse oyster, is endowed with any degree of intelligence." Uncle Abe looked at the puppy, who, by the way, had prevented him cracking a single one of his favorite jokes for the entire evening, and quaintly remarked, that "he was satisfied that an oyster knew when to shut up, and that was more than some New York lawyers knew." Ned has never propounded the query as to the intellect of oysters since. An Egyptian Snake Story The last county made in Illinois--I don't mean by the Legislature, but by Nature, and where dirt was so short that it lies under water part of the year--is called Alexander, and used to boast two rival towns, both thoroughly Egyptian in their nomenclative association--Cairo and Thebes. Twenty years ago Thebes was the "seat of justice;" but Cairo was then beginning to entertain magnificent expectations, and her citizens wanted to have the Court House removed to their town. The contest waxed warm. The Thebans contended that Cairo was only a "daub of mud on the tail of the State," while Thebes was destined to hold the same relation to Alexander, that its ancient namesake did to Egypt in the time of Menes. [See Herodotus.] But to settle the dispute, the Legislature must be appealed to, and that involved the choice of a man favorable to the change. This narrowed the fight right down to a hot county canvass between the Theban and Cairoine interests. A Cairo man conceived a scheme that was ahead of anything yet achieved by Uncle Abe's brigadiers in the way of "strategy." He wrapped a boulder in a green hide, making a perfectly round mass, to which he attached a mule; then night after night he drew the stone through sand and mud. By going on a straight line, the mule's tracks were concealed, and the track left, resembled that made by a huge serpent. [Illustration: 0041]