Standin in front of the tarvuns of Pennsylvany Avenoo is a lot of miserbul wretches,--black, white and ring-strickid, and freckled-- with long whips in their hands, who frowns upon you like the wulture upon the turtle-dove the minit you dismerge from hotel. They own yonder four-wheeled startlin curiositys, which were used years and years ago by the fust settlers of Virginny to carry live hogs to market in. The best carriage I saw in the entire collection was used by Pockyhontas, sum two hundred years ago, as a goat-pen. Becumin so used up that it couldn't hold goats, that fair and gentle savage put it up at auction. Subsekently it was used as a hospital for sick calves, then as a hencoop, and finally it was put on wheels and is now doin duty as a hack. I called on Secretary Welles, of the Navy. You know he is quite a mariner himself, havin once owned a Raft of logs on the Connethycut river. So I put on saler stile and hollered: "Ahoy, shipmet! Tip us yer grapplin irons!" "Yes, yes!" he sed, nervously, "but mercy on us, don't be so noisy." "Ay, ay, my heart! But let me sing about how Jack Stokes lost his gal:-- 'The reason why he couldn't gain her, Was becoz he's drunken saler!' "That's very good, indeed," said the Secky, "but this is hardly the place to sing songs in, my frend." "Let me write the songs of a nashun," sed I, "and I don't care a cuss who goes to the legislater! But I ax your pardon--how's things?" "Comfortable, I thank you. I have here," he added, "a copy of the Middletown "Weekly Clarion" of February the 15, containin a report that there isn't much Union sentiment in South Caroliny, but I hardly credit it." "Air you well, Mr. Secky," sed I. "Is your liver all right? How's your koff?" "God bless me!" sed the Secky, risin hastily and glarin wildly at me, "what do you mean?" "Oh, nothin partickler. Only it is one of the beauties of a Republican form of gov'ment that a Cabnet offisser can pack up his trunk and go home whenever he's sick. Sure nothin don't ail your liver?" sed I, pokin him putty vilent in the stummick. I called on Abe. He received me kindly. I handed him my umbreller, and told him I'd have a check for it if he pleased. "That," sed he, "puts me in mind of a little story. There was a man, out in our parts who was so mean that he took his wife's coffin out of the back winder for fear he would rub the paint off the doorway. Wall, about this time there was a man in a adjacent town who had a green cotton umbreller." "Did it fit him well? Was it custom made? Was he measured for it?" "Measured for what?" said Abe. "The umbreller?" "Wall, as I was sayin," continnered the President, treatin the interruption with apparent comtempt, "this man sed he'd known that there umbreller ever since it was a pyrasol. Ha, ha, ha!"