it occurred to somebody to sell it to him.  He was a truly good man, and did not believe there were any bad men in the world, who would kanoodle him with a stone crusher.  A committee was appointed to sell it to him.  The committee was composed of men who had traded horses, sold lightning rods, and been insurance agents, and when they told the poor man that the city had noticed that he was a deserving man, that they had decided to help him along, and would sell him that stone crusher, and he could pay for it in crushed stone, and the city would pay him in cash half a dollar more than the stone was worth, he said he would take it.  They got it on to him by buying crushed stone of him and paying cash for it.

We have never heard whether the man lived or not, and have never heard whether the city bought any stone of him, but the city got rid of it, and then had a celebration.  Why, they figured it up, and the thing could crush enough stone in twenty-four hours to pave the streets a foot thick all over town and thirteen miles in the country.  To run it a week would bankrupt the State of Wisconsin, It could go up to the stone quarry and tunnel a hole right through the hill.  It was the biggest elephant that ever a city drew in a legalized lottery.  Milwaukee will make money if she does not buy a stone crusher, not as long as it can buy stone in the rough, and have it crushed by tramps, at nothing a day.

MERRIE CHRISTMAS.

What proportion of the people who wish each other merry Christmas, do you suppose think of the reason that the day is a holiday?  Not one in a thousand.  Do the young fellows who put on a clean shirt and go down town and play pool all day, and drink yellow stuff out of a shaving cup, and get chalk on their fingers, and eat liver sausage, think that Christ died to save them?  No!  All they think of is the prospect of sticking some other fellow for the game.  Do the hundreds of thousands of people who get up a big feed, and gormandize, think of Christ, or the poor all about them who have little to eat to-day, and little prospect of more to eat to-morrow?  Many of them do not think of the poor, or of anything else except to prospect upon how much they will hold and not get sick.

THE DIFFERENCE IN HORSES.

There has been a great change in livery horses within the last twenty years.  Years ago, if a young fellow wanted to take his girl out riding, and expected to enjoy himself, he had to hire an old horse, the worst in the livery stable, that would drive itself, or he never could get his arm around his girl to save him.  If he took a decent looking team, to put on style, he had to hang on to the lines with both hands, and if he even took his eyes off the team to look at the suffering girl beside him, with his mouth, the chances were that the team would jump over a ditch, or run away, at the concussion.  Riding out with girls was shorn of much of its pleasure in those days.