"If you love me as I love you"-- (Ah, sweet those words to lover's ear, 'Twas Lois spake, in accents true, So loving, tender, kind and dear.) "If you love me as I love you"-- (Ah, heaven and earth were wrapped in bliss, The wild rose listened, dissolved in dew; The very zephyrs sought her kiss.) "If you love me as I love you"-- (Ah, strains from Paradise her words!) "And if I do, what then?" I asked; While round us winged the listening birds. "If you love me as I love you--" She raised those fringed eyes of jet, And whispered low in pleading tones: "Just fill the wood box, will you, pet?" One Consolation Breakfast was over and Adam had gone to his daily occupation of pasting the names of the animals on their cages. Eve took the parrot to one side and said: "It was this way. He made a big kick about those biscuits not being good at breakfast." "And what did you say?" asked the parrot. "I told him there was one consolation; he couldn't say his mother ever made any better ones." An Unsuccessful Experiment There is an old colored preacher in Texas who is a great admirer of the Rev. Sam Jones.[1] Last Sunday he determined to drop his old style of exhorting the brethren, and pitch hot shot plump into the middle of their camp, after the manner so successfully followed by the famous Georgia evangelist. After the opening hymn had been sung, and the congregation led in prayer by a worthy deacon, the old preacher laid his spectacles on his Bible, and let out straight from the shoulder. "My dearly belubbed," he said, "I has been preachin' to you fo' mo' dan five years, and de grace ob God hab failed to percolate in yo' obstreperous hearts. I hab nebber seen a more or'nery lot dan dis belubbed congregation. Now dar is Sam Wadkins in de fo'th bench on de left. Kin anybody show me a no'counter, trashier, lowdowner buck nigger in dis community? Whar does the chicken feathers come from what I seen in his back yard dis mawnin'? Kin Brudder Wadkins rise and explain?" Brother Wadkins sat in his pew with his eyes rolling and breathing hard, but was taken by surprise and did not respond. "And dar is Elder Hoskins, on de right. Everybody knows he's er lying, shiftless, beer-drinking bum. His wife supports him takin' in washin'. What good is de blood of de Lamb done for him? Wonder ef he thinks dat he kin keep a lofin' 'round in de kitchen ob de New Jerusalem?" Elder Hoskins, goaded by these charges, rose in his seat, and said: "Dat reminds me ob one thing. I doesn't remember dat I hab ebber worked on de county road fur thirty days down in Bastrop County fur stealin' a bale of cotton."