A Misstatement

1895

Mrs. Spiffins had answered the doorbell of her suburban residence in person. There was a man at the threshold who politely touched the brim of a hat of the vintage of 1892 and began:

"Madam, I represent" —

He did not proceed. Mrs. Spiffins had recognized him instantly, and she interrupted his remarks:

"No, you don't represent! You misrepresent. You were here a year ago and represented that some seed you sold me were those of a celebrated flowering shrub from China, whose blossoms would give me joy the long summer through. When they grew up, I found you had palmed off pumpkin seeds on me. Now, if you don't git this instant, I'll break a broomstick over your back."

He got. — Pittsburg Chronicle-Telegraph.


Trees

I have written many verses, but the best poems that I have produced are the trees that I have planted on the hillside which overlooks the broad meadows scalloped and rounded at their edges by loops of the sinuous Housatonic. Nature finds rhymes for them in the recurring measures of the seasons. Winter strips them of their ornaments and gives them, as it were, in prose translation, and summer reclothes them in all the splendid phrases of their leafy language. — Oliver Wendell Holmes.


The Giant of the Bat Family

The king of the family Vespertilonidae is the gigantic fox bat of the Philippine islands. Specimens of this winged mammal procured for the Minnesota State University museum by the Menage expedition in 1892 are believed to be the largest examples of this species yet obtained by the naturalists, several individuals measuring more than 5 feet from tip to tip of their leathery wings and having heads and bodies as large as the American red fox. This creature has been fully described in "Notes For the Curious" under the heading of "A Flying Fox." — St. Louis Republic.


Not Necessary Now

"Well, Bessie," said her confidential friend, "you've been engaged now for three weeks. Does it seem as you expected it would?"
"Y-yes," replied Bessie, turning her engagement ring round and round on her finger, "only Herbert doesn't bring me any candy now." — Chicago Tribune.