Jest 'fore dinner the edit-her begun to get orful dry ritin a artickel hedded, “Pernisshus Pizen; or, Holesail Slaughter,” caused by the adulterashun of beer with arsernic, so he sent me down to the barroom next door to get him a bottle of beer on thirty days time. I'd jest got back to the sanktum, and was takin' out the cork, wen the Metherdist minnysteer cum in to arrange 'bout a big prohibishun rally wot comes off next week. He looked orful suspishus at the bottle, till the edit-her told me to take that bottel of gasserline, to the forman, and tell him to wash the forms with it, and be sure not to get it neer a lite, cos gasserline was orful 'xplosive. I guess it got 'xploded cos, wen the minnyster was gone, I went out to get it, and I culdn't even find a smell of it, so I had ter go round to the next block for another, cos the edittur's face wasn't good for morean one, in the same place, in one day. Say, Mister Diry, did you ever get a whiff of the smell, throne out by the paste-pot, in an edittur's offis, wot was 'stablished in '49? Cos, if you never did, you can't apreshiate how deliteful the consentrated 'xtract of half a dozen glew factorys would be, in comparyson. This afternoon the edit-her perlitely requested me to consine the contents of ours to their last restin' place in the ash-heep, in our back-yard. Menny a silent teer did I shed over the cold and clammy remanes of hundreds of cockroaches, whose young and usefull lives came to such a sad and untimely end, in there brave efferts to 'xplore the mystear-ious and fathemless depths of the “Buster's” paste-pot. I guess I muster forgot to wash my hands 'fore supper, cos pa's down in the sellar settin' a trap for a polecat, and ma she swares she's goin' to have a carpinter take up the dinin'-room flure tomorrer mornin', and hunt up the rat wot crawled under there and died. CHAPTER III. THE XCHANGE FYEND.--SHEECARGO ALL QUIETT.--THE FYEND GOES ABROAD.--HIS GRATE SPERIT APALLED.--THE BERRIED HOPES OF A RUMATIICK POET.