doing justice to society to give up the body of a notorious drunkard, after we had paid twenty dollars for the corpse.  If there was any hopes that he would reform and try and lead a different life, it would be different, and I said to the boys, ’gentlemen, we must do our duty.  Doc, you dismember that leg, and I will attend to the stomach and the upper part of body.  He will be dead before we are done with him.  We must remember that society has some claim on us, and not let our better natures be worked upon by the post mortem promises of a dead drunkard.’  Then I took my icicle and began fumbling around the abdomen portion of Pa’s remains, and my chum took a rough piece of ice and began to saw his leg off, while the other boy took hold of the leg and said he would catch it when it dropped off.  Well, Pa kicked like a steer.  He said he wanted to make one more appeal to us, and we acted sort of impatent but we let up to hear what he had to say.  He said if we would turn him loose he would give us ten dollars more than we paid for his body, and that he would never drink another drop as long as he lived.  Then we whispered some more and then told him we thought favorably of his last proposition, but he must swear, with his hand on the leg of a corpse we were then dissecting that he would never drink again, and then he must be blindfolded and be conducted several blocks away from the dissecting room, before we could turn him loose.  He said that was all right, and so we blindfolded him, and made him take a bloody oath, with his hand on a piece of ice that we told him was a piece of another corpse, and then we took him out of the house and walked him around the block four times, and left him on a corner, after he had promised to send the money to an address that I gave him.  We told him to stand still five minutes after we left him, then remove the blindfold, and go home.  We watched him, from behind a board fence, and he took off the handkerchief, looked at the name on a street lamp, and found he was not far from home.  He started off saying ‘That’s a pretty narrow escape old man.  No more whisky for you.’  I did not see him again until this morning, and when I asked him where he was last night he shuddered and said ’none of your darn business.  But I never drink any more, you remember that.’  Ma was tickled and she told me I was worth my weight in gold.  Well, good day.  That cheese is musty.”  And the boy went and caught on a passing sleigh.

COL.  INGERSOLL PRAYING.

Bob.  Ingersoll is taking a rest from his persecutions of the Creator, and is traveling in the Yo Semite region of California.  Bob does not believe there is a God, but if he was riding a kicking mule, down the precipice near the big trees, and the saddle should turn over with him, and his foot should be caught in the stirrup, after the mule had kicked him a few times in the judgement seat, which is the bowels, in his case, he would be very apt to bellow like a calf, and say “O, Lord, please unbuckle that cussed strap.”  We should like to hear Bob had met with some such accident, just so he would recognize the foreign government of the Lord, which at present he totally ignores.  Not that we have anything against Ingersoll.