NINETY-NINE IN THE SHADE. A. MIDSUMMER ODE. Oh for a lodge in a garden of cucumbers! Oh for an iceberg or two at control! Oh for a vale which at midday the dew cumbers! Oh for a pleasure-trip up to the Pole! Oh for a little one-story thermometer, With nothing but Zeros all ranged in a row! Oh for a big, double-barrelled hygrometer, To measure this moisture that rolls from my brow! Oh that this cold world were twenty times colder! (That's irony red hot it seemeth to me.) Oh for a turn of its dreaded cold shoulder! Oh what a comfort an ague would be! Oh for a grotto to typify heaven, Scooped in the rock under cataract vast! Oh for a winter of discontent even! Oh for wet blankets judiciously cast! Oh for a soda-fount spouting up boldly From every hot lamp-post against the hot sky! Oh for proud maiden to look on me coldly, Freezing my soul with a glance of her eye! Then oh for a draught from a cup of "cold pizen!" And oh for a resting-place in the cold grave! With a bath in the Styx, where the thick shadow lies on And deepens the chill of its dark-running wave! * * * * * BOW-WOW! One may discern a new argument for the removal of the National Capital to St. Louis, in the Capital style of doing things in that accomplished city. Supposing you have a business, we naturally admire you as a business man, in proportion to your ingenuity in developing that business, and your energy in prosecuting it. Now this genius for business seems to characterize all grades of society in St. Louis,--even so far down as to the "City Dog-Killer." This talented functionary so developed his art, that he is able to kill the same dog a great many times--at an average profit of twenty-five cents each execution. He has a way of stunning the beast so that for all purposes of a canine nature it is apparently quite dead. By the next day, however, the late defunct has revived sufficiently to be susceptible of another killing, which is accordingly administered, and so on, we suppose, all through the season. The inferiority of the East, in matters of this kind, may be justly and satisfactorily inferred from the fact that in Philadelphia, lately, they attempted to execute their dogs with carbonic acid gas. When the box or tub was opened, the irrepressible spirits of the animals confined therein were perceived to be at the topmost heights of jollity, and the police were obliged to go back to first principles and shoot the exhilarated curs. * * * * * DRAINAGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES.