“Good! Now, that lamp is hung too high. Can I have a big coach candle fixed up just at the head of my bed, so that I can read comfortably?” “Yes, sah, you kin; I'll fix her up myself, an' I'll fix her so she'll burn all night. Yes, sah; an' you can jes' call for anything you want, and dish yer whole railroad'll be turned wrong end up an' inside out for to get it for you. Dat's so.” And he disappeared. Well, I tilted my head back, hooked my thumbs in my armholes, smiled a smile on my companion, and said, gently: “Well, what do you say now?” My companion was not in the humor to respond, and didn't. The next moment that smiling black face was thrust in at the crack of the door, and this speech followed: “Laws bless you, sah, I knowed you in a minute. I told de conductah so. Laws! I knowed you de minute I sot eyes on you.” “Is that so, my boy?” (Handing him a quadruple fee.) “Who am I?” “Jenuel McClellan,” and he disappeared again. My companion said, vinegarishly, “Well, well! what do you say now?” Right there comes in the marvellous coincidence I mentioned a while ago—viz., I was speechless, and that is my condition now. Perceive it? CATS AND CANDY The following address was delivered at a social meeting of literary men in New York in 1874: When I was fourteen I was living with my parents, who were very poor—and correspondently honest. We had a youth living with us by the name of Jim Wolfe. He was an excellent fellow, seventeen years old, and very diffident. He and I slept together—virtuously; and one bitter winter's night a cousin Mary—she's married now and gone—gave what they call a candy-pulling in those days in the West, and they took the saucers of hot candy outside of the house into the snow, under a sort of old bower that came from the eaves—it was a sort of an ell then, all covered with vines—to cool this hot candy in the snow, and they were all sitting there. In the mean time we were gone to bed. We were not invited to attend this party; we were too young. The young ladies and gentlemen were assembled there, and Jim and I were in bed. There was about four inches of snow on the roof of this ell, and our windows looked out on it; and it was frozen hard. A couple of tom-cats—it is possible one might have been of the opposite sex—were assembled on the chimney in the middle of this ell, and they were growling at a fearful rate, and switching their tails about and going on, and we couldn't sleep at all. Finally Jim said, “For two cents I'd go out and snake them cats off that chimney.” So I said, “Of course you would.” He said, “Well, I would; I have a mighty good notion to do it.” Says I, “Of course you have; certainly you have, you have a great notion to do it.” I hoped he might try it, but I was afraid he wouldn't.