" 'Oh, how I love Jesus, for Jesus died for me.' "And Dr. Talmage exclaimed, 'Come, dear Lord, O come!' I came. I walked down the center aisle, expecting that a mighty shout of joy would shake the vaulted roof of Heaven and be echoed back by the angels. I supposed that Dr. Talmage would advance and embrace me. But no; the men stared their disapproval; the women drew back their perfumed skirts of glistening silk, and Dr. Talmage thundered, 'Sirrah! who are you?' I raised my hand and exclaimed in a loud voice: " 'Jesus Christ!' " The editor started up from his siesta and rubbed his eyes-- the foreman of the Baptist Standard had "pied a form." BRADLEY-MARTIN BAL-MASQUE. "APRES MOI LE DELUGE!" Mrs. Bradley-Martin's sartorial kings and pseudo-queens, her dukes and DuBarrys, princes and Pompadours, have strutted their brief hour upon the mimic stage, disappearing at daybreak like foul night-birds or an unclean dream--have come and gone like the rank eructation of some crapulous Sodom, a malodor from the cloacae of ancient capitals, a breath blown from the festering lips of half-forgotten harlots, a stench from the sepulcher of centuries devoid of shame. Uncle Sam may now proceed to fumigate himself after his enforced association with royal bummers and brazen bawds; may comb the Bradley-Martin itch bacteria out of his beard, and consider, for the ten-thousandth time, the probable result of his strange commingling of royalty- worshiping millionaire and sansculottic mendicant--how best to put a ring in the nose of the golden calf ere it become a Phalaris bull and relegate him to its belly. Countless columns have been written, printed, possibly read, anent the Bradley-Martin ball--all the preachers and teachers, editors and other able idiots pouring forth voluminous opinions. A tidal wave of printer's ink has swept across the continent, churned to atrous foam by hurricanes of lawless gibberish and wild gusts of resounding gab. The empyrean has been ripped and the tympana of the too patient gods ravished with fulsome commendation and foolish curse, showers of Parthian arrows and wholesale consignments of soft-soap darkening the sun as they hurtled hither and yon through the shrinking atmosphere. A man dropping suddenly in from Mars with a Nicaraguan canal scheme for the consideration of Uncle Sam would have supposed this simian hubbub and anserine to-do meant nothing less than a new epocha for the universe, it being undecided whether it should be auriferous or argentiferous--an age of gold or a cycle of silver. Now that the costly "function" has funked itself into howling farce, an uncomfortable failure, and the infuscated revellers recovered somewhat from royal katzenjammer, we find that the majestic earth has not moved an inch out of its accustomed orbit, that the grass still grows and the cows yet calve that the law of gravitation remains unrepealed, and Omnipotence continues to bring