"I do exactly; a scamp came along here a week ago--talked nothing but Carrier Pigeons--Pigeon Expresses--I thought I'd surprise you, and--" "Well, well--go on." "And by thunder I was green enough to give the fellow $200--a horse and wagon--" "Done! _done!_" roared the other, without waiting for further particulars--"$200 and a horse and wagon--just what Tom and I gave the scamp! ha! ha! ha!" "Haw! haw! haw!" and the publishers roared under the force of the _joke_. Whatever became of the pigeon express man is not distinctly known; but he is supposed to have given up the bird business, and gone into the manufacture of woolly horses and cod-liver oil. Jipson's Great Dinner Party. "Well, you must do it." "Do it?" "Do it, sir," reiterated the lady of Jipson, a man well enough to _do_ in the world, chief clerk of a "sugar baker," and receiving his twenty hundred dollars a year, with no perquisites, however, and--plenty of New Hampshire contingencies, (to quote our beloved man of the million, Theodore Parker,) poor relations. "But, my dear Betsey, do you _know_, will you consider for once, that to _do_ a thing of the kind--to splurge out like Tannersoil, one must expect--at least I do--to sink a full _quarter_ of my salary, for the current year; yes, a full quarter?" "Oh! very well, if you are going to live up here" (Jipson had just moved up above "Bleecker street,")--"and bought your carriage, and engaged----" "Two extra servant girls," chimed in Jipson. "And a groom, sir," continued Mrs. J. "And gone into at least six hundred to eight hundred dollars a year extra expenses, to--a----" "To gratify yourself, and--a----" "Your--a--a--your vanity, Madam, you should have said, my dear." "Don't talk that way to me--to me--you brute; you know----" "I know all about it, my dear." "_My dear_--bah!" said the lady; "my _dear!_ save that, Mr. Jipson, for some of your--a--a----" What Mrs. J. might have said, we scarce could judge; but Jipson just then put in a "rejoinder" calculated to prevent the umpullaceous tone of Mrs. J.'s remarks, by saying, in a very humble strain-- "Mrs. Jipson, don't make an ass of yourself: we are too old to act like goslings, and too well acquainted, I hope, with the matters-of-fact of every-day life, to quarrel about things beyond our reach or control." "If you talk of things beyond your control, Mr. Jipson, I mean beyond your reach, that your income will not permit us to live as other people live----" "I wouldn't like to," interposed Jipson. "What?" asked Mrs. Jipson. "Live like other people--that is, some people, Mrs. Jipson, that I know of." "You don't suppose _I'm_ going to bury myself and my poor girls in this big house, and have those servants standing about me, their fingers in their mouths, with nothing to do but----" "But what?" "But cook, and worry, and slave, and keep shut up for a----" "For what?" "For a--a----"