__________

            A prominent citizen, on entering the parlor of his residence, yesterday, found lying on the center-table a beautiful bouquet, pinned to which was a card bearing his name. Looking about cautiously to assure himself that no person was in hearing, he pressed the flowers to his Roman nose and exclaimed :

            "Who has sent me them beautiful flowers? "

            " That's just what I'd like to know," said his wife, as she crawled out from under the sofa, " and I'd pull every hair out of her head by the roots, if I did -- the hussy ! "

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 177

            The neighbor woman, who came in and rubbed his head with arnica, said, as she went out :

            " Oh, no, of course not ! How could you ever think of such a thing? I ain't one of them women what goes around telling everything I hear; you may be sure I won't mention it to a living soul."

            But, somehow or other, by last night the entire neighborhood knew all about it.

__________

            A teamster was driving a ten-mule team, hauling a load of wood, up Main Street to-day, when the leaders started at a passing wagon and swayed around toward the sidewalk. Instead of cracking his blacksnake and using profane language to his animals, as most teamsters would do under similar circumstances, the driver merely remonstrated with them. Taking the nigh mule by the bridle, he led it around so as to straighten the team, and whispered in its ear : " ----- ----- your ----- ----- soul to ----- nation, if you ever do that again I'll shoot you right here in the street." The threat seemed to have an effect on the mule, and it made no attempt to repeat the performance for the next three blocks.

__________

            At the ball last night the floor was quite sticky, owing to its having been newly waxed and the wax not being evenly spread over and worked into the boards. A prominent citizen who was present suffered considerable inconvenience from this circumstance, and had half determined to refrain from dancing during the remainder of the night, when he was struck with a happy thought. Approaching his wife, he asked her to waltz with him. Surprised at such an unusual condescension from her husband, who generally when he attends a ball dances with every lady present except his wife, the lady asked him the cause of such unexpected gallantry as he displayed to her on this occasion. "Oh," said he, looking down at her feet, " I want you to waltz with me so as to spread this grease over the floor." She didn't dance with him.

__________

            The setting of the sun last evening presented a truly magnificent sight. The western sky was o'erspread with waving, billowy clouds, rendered transcendently beautiful by the glow of color from the reflection of the retiring god of day. Here, a faint blush of rose tint ; there, a gorgeous purple ; beyond, a cloud fringed with a glitter of golden color, or enriched with the subdued hue of amber. It was a sight to move the soul of a

178 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

painter to its innermost depths ; and to the poetic mind it brought the thought that even then, far down in the peaceful valley, the reflection of the dying day might be casting a halo of glorious light about the head of a red-headed girl milking a brindle cow, and that in the vast and varied economy of nature, even a red-headed girl may have her uses.

__________

            We were accosted on the street by a small boy last evening, who thus

addressed us :

            " Say, mister, will you put somethin in the paper ? "

            " What is it you wish inserted in that family journal, the REVEILLE, my son ? " we said in reply.

            " Well," he said, " some of the boys up to the public school is a-cuttin' the other fellers out of their gals."

            Poor little boy ! In the freshness of his innocent youth he little knows that getting cut out of a "gal" by another "feller" is a sorrow not confined to school-boys alone. He does not dream that boys of a larger growth know the deep poignancy of sitting on the fence and seeing another "feller" escorting their heart's idol home from church. That boy has more to learn than is taught in schools.

__________

            An Austin young lady, who " follows the fashions," read in one of the fashion magazines that the "classical" outline of feminine attire is produced by the following process : " A strong elastic is attached to one garter, just above the knee, carried over and fastened to the other garter; thus the length of the steps taken by the wearer is regulated, and the classical folds of the costume remain undisturbed." Not to be "behind the age," our young lady rigged the elastic as directed; and an old lady acquaintance, whose house she passed while her limbs were thus fettered, remarked to her daughter :

            "Wal, I declare! I've knowed Mirandy sence she was an infant, and I never knowed afore that she was pigeon-toed."

__________

            Passing down Main Street, this morning, we overheard the following colloquy between two little boys, neither over four years of age :

            First Little Boy (anxious to display his knowledge of Mother Goose) -- " Little Tommy Horner, sittin' in a corner, eatin a piece of Chris---- "

            Second Little Boy" Oh, shore, I know that."

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 179

            First Little Boy " But I seen him a-eatin' it."

            Second Little Boy " That ain't nuffin' ; I seen him stuck in his fum."

            First Little Boy " Le's play tag."

            Both those boys will be eligible as members of the Sazerac Lying Club when they grow to be men.

__________

            He had some six bits worth of gold dust in a small glass vial, and he said it was some he had taken out of the Black Hills twelve years ago.

            " Why didn't you stay there and get more ? "

            " Oh, the Injuns druv us out, but thar's slathers of gold in that country, you bet."

            "Going back there?"

            " No, thar's too much of the yaller thar. Ye see, thar's goin to be a stampede, and they'll rush in thar and take out so much gold that the demand won't be ekal to the supply, and the discount on gold will be so big that it won't pay a man to prospect fur it. As a business fur steddy follerin' , both gold and silver minin's gettin to be stale, flat, and unprofiterble. Whisky-straight, ef yer please."

__________

            We have heard a number of people complain that this has been a dull day ; but we have failed to see it. A freight team arrived ; several loads of wood passed up Main Street ; seventeen dogs were all barking at once at a cow, on Court Street ; a woman stubbed her toe against a plank, on Union Street ; a man dropped a four-bit piece through a crack in the sidewalk, on Cedar Street ; a clothes-line full of clean linen was blown down, on South Street ; a cat had fits, on Overland Street ; two little boys had a fight, on Sixth Street ; a cow ate up a whole garden, on Pine Street ; and there was a whirlwind on Virginia Street. If the day was dull with all these stirring events, we would like to see what some folks call a lively one. But some men would say times were dull if their grandmother was to fall three thousand feet down a mining shaft.

__________

            A four-year-old hero related to us the details of a desperate encounter which a party of boys and girls had with a lizard on the hillside this morning. It is so thrilling that, in order to keep the printers in copy till the telegraph news comes in, we give it to our readers :

180 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            " I seed the lizard first, and all the girls was afraid. I frowed a great big stick at him, and he wun up on a wock and laid down dead. Then a little girl hit him with a wock, and didn't hit him, and I went up and poked him with a stick, and he got alive again and wun away, and we all wun'd

after him and he wun in a hole, and I fell down and skinned my nose, and one of the girls she lost her shoe and her mother spanked her when she got home, and we're all goin' up this afternoon to kill that lizard."

__________

            One of the most beautiful sunsets on which it has ever been our lot to gaze decked the western sky last evening. It appeared as an open sea viewed from the shore, the fleecy cloudlets which flecked the surface seeming like the white caps of old ocean. So remarkably brilliant was the scene that it attracted general notice, and Main Street was filled with people, who gazed enraptured on the glorious sight, one lady becoming so enthusiastic as to declare that she would give seven dollars and five bits for a dress as gay-colored as that. How true it is that the beauties of nature stir within our breasts the noblest and most exalted thoughts and aspirations !

__________

            Last night was truly a glorious night. The sky was cloudless, and the round-faced moon shed its refulgent rays o'er mountain and valley, while bright Venus stared down on the Citizens Mill like the headlight of a celestial locomotive. The air was still as death, but cold enough to freeze the nose off the statute of the Greek Slave ; all nature was hushed, and no sound disturbed the stillness save the rattle of the stamps of the Manhattan Mill, and the cooing of three or four dozen gentle tomcats. It was a night to awaken all the finer feelings of the human breast, and to cause the reflective mind to ponder on the infinite mysteries of nature and the cost of a livery team for a moonlight ride.

__________

            A young gentleman of this city called on a lady friend last evening. At the time of his visit she was engaged in darning stockings, having an egg in one of them to keep the hole in shape, or for some similar purpose. When the caller made his appearance, she hurriedly dropped her work on a chair and invited him to be seated ; and, although he does not cover a great deal of surface when he is seated, he managed to sit down on the stocking and the egg and the darning needle all at once. Then he got up and darned the stocking and the egg and the needle ; and when the pain

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 181

had subsided a little and he got the egg wiped off his pants, he said it was one of the richest and at the same time most pointed experiences he had ever met with in the whole course of his long and eventful career.

__________

            An individual of the genus " tramp " accosted a brother last evening on Main Street with, " Say, Jimmy, let's take a walk."

            "Walk! what do I want to walk for?" asked the other.

            " For exercise, to give yer an appertite."

            " Appertite ! Appertite ! Well, that's good ! Why, consarn it, I've got appertite to throw at the birds ; I waste more appertite on the desert air every day than would surfice for all the bloated millionaires in town for a week. If yer can walk me up to a squar meal then I'll walk, but otherwise I prefer standin on this yere corner and watchin the chances for a drink."

__________

            A cruel parent in this city placed some spikes, point upwards, in the gate in the fence fronting his residence. He forgot to tell his daughter about it, and she never noticed the spikes till the young man who comes around to inquire how her mother liked the sermon at church last Sunday intimated that somebody had done a darned mean trick. Then she took in the situation ; but the breach in his clothes was too wide to be bridged over by mere words, and he will accept of no explanations till he can find some cloth to match the pattern of the pieces he left on the spikes. Thus were two loving hearts and one pair of pants sundered by the act of this hard-hearted father.

__________

            An upper Austin man refuses to allow his daughter to attend church any more. A few Sundays ago the preacher said in one of his sermons, " Love thy neighbor" ; and the daughter followed the injunction and fell in love with a young man who lives in the house adjoining her father's, who only earns sixty dollars a month and board as engineer of a wheel barrow in a livery stable, and sits up till three o'clock in the morning playing pedro. The father says if the preachers can't preach any better doctrine than for the girls to love every scrub who happens to live in the next house, he would rather his daughters would grow up without the consolations of religion.

182 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            A well-known Austinite, while on a recent visit to San Francisco, went into a barber-shop to be shaved. The workmen in the shop were all colored men, and when one of them had shaved him and was about to commence dressing his hair, the Austinite pointed to the few straggling hairs on the top of his head, which just save him from positive baldness, and told the barber to distribute them around on his head to the best advantage.

            " Yes," said the man and brother, stepping off a step, and cocking his eye on the lonesome looking hairs, " we is got to be ecomnomical wid dat air ha'r."

__________

            A young lady walking along Court Street, this morning, was caught in the center of one of those whirlwinds which spring up so suddenly, and which are now so prevalent. She braced her feet firmly to the ground, and the whirlwind toyed with her store clothes, the effect being very pretty, and resembling two candles surmounted by the American flag, being spun around at the rate of seventeen hundred revolutions a minute. When the dust had cleared away, she commenced ejecting the granite from her mouth, and said it was only to be expected that when a whirlwind wanted to tackle anybody it would go for a poor, weak woman ; it was the way of the world (wind).

__________

            Marriage works many changes in men. Before marriage he would lift her across the muddy places for fear she would get her little tootsey- footseys wet, and would insist on carrying her fan home from the ball, for fear it might tire her to carry it herself. After marriage he looks on with supreme indifference when she steps into a mud-hole, and tells her he thought her feet were big enough to bridge across it, and wants to know if she thinks a man is a Chinaman that she asks him to carry bundles through the streets. She is big enough and ugly enough to carry them herself. This state of things does not prevail in Austin, however.

__________

            The magnificent appearance of the sky was a common subject of remark last night. Not a cloud marred the clear blue of the heavens, the stars shone with unusual brilliance, and the beauteous moon shed its soft light upon the earth, gilding the pile of bricks in the brickyard like refined gold, and casting a halo of glory about the head of a red-headed girl as she whispered the parting good-night to the idol of her heart up

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 183

in Upper Austin, besides effecting a great saving of candles in the residence of a prominent citizen, who has nine marriageable daughters and who has just been sold out on stocks.

__________

            She had just returned from a visit to a married couple, and as she threw her hat on the sofa, she turned up her nose, put on a look of disgust, and said : " If there is anything on this earth that is hateful, it is to see married people kissing and hugging and gushing before folks." Her little brother crawled out from under the sofa, where he had been hunting a stray marble, and, addressing his sister, said : " You and George is all the time kissing each other before me ; but you isn't married yet, and then I s'pose I'm too small to be folks." That little boy told another little boy next morning that it wasn't always a sign when your ear burned that somebody was talking about you.

__________

            A man who believes that this is an era of conciliation and a year of compromises was out on Main Street this morning, trying to borrow fifteen dollars. One man told him times were too hard; another said that all his money was in stocks ; another wanted to know if he was popularly supposed to be a member of the Rothschild family, and still another said he wouldn't loan fifteen dollars to a bonanza king. The would-be borrower, as he turned sadly away from the last "refuse," said there must be some mistake ; the era of good feeling had not yet arrived, and the lamb had better keep its usual distance from the lion for a year or two longer.

__________

            An Austin man, who was visiting in one of the adjacent valleys recently, tells the following. He stopped for the night at a ranch, and while sitting in front of the house with the rancher's daughter, the planet Mars rose up over a high peak, looking for a time like a fire on the mountain. The Austinite contemplated the sight in silence for a few moments, and then broke into a rhapsody on its magnificence, when the girl interrupted him by saying :

            "Stranger, that thar ain't nothin but a star; we see it round here frequently. You town folks ought to come out and live on a ranch, and you can see more stars than you can shake a stick at."

184 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            There was a mining accident yesterday, which, while it was not attended with any loss of life, was disastrous, from the fact that an entire mine was demolished and obliterated at one fell swoop. The miners had sunk an incline in the hill in the rear of the court-house, and had commenced drifting from the bottom of the incline, to follow the ledge up to the Indian carnp, when suddenly, and without warning, incline and drift caved in, burying the unfortunate miners out of sight. They scratched out with their hands, and immediately located and commenced to open another mine. Age of the superintendent, six years. The other miners are still of spankable age.

_________

            Early this morning, the hills surrounding Austin were hid from view by a dense pogonip, but as the sun struggled through the mist over the summit of Lander Hill, the wall of cloud that enveloped Mount Prometheus rolled up like a huge drop-curtain, revealing the upper slope of the mountain clad in a mantle of snow. It is such a sight as this that brings the human heart in close communion with nature, and instills into the soul the consciousness that there is another and a better land beyond the vail of cloud and mist and fog that shuts from view the roads to Belmont and Eureka.

__________

            A predatory cow made a raid on a clothes-line in Upper Austin last evening, and before she was detected had succeeded in eating two frilled skirts, three lace-trimmed chemiwhatyoucallems, and several pairs of striped stockings. As the cow stumbled down over an embankment, an angry woman could have been seen at its top, waving a broom in the air, and with an expression on hercountenance which said, in language as plain as words could express it :

            " What wouldn't I give if I could cuss like a man ! "

__________

            The story is told of an old lady who asked one of our physicians how a certain patient of his was getting along, and when the Doctor informed her that the person in question was convalescent, she said :

            " That's rough. Back yander, in the States, I knowed two wimmin and a crippled boy to die of convalescent. On one of the wimmin it broke out all over her in a rash, and it struck in and she died afore you could bat your eye. But she made a beautiful corpse. They make nice corpses when they die of that, don't they, Doc ? "

            The Doctor said he believed so.

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 185

            It's " strange, but true," that the industries of a locality exercise a marked influence on the dreams of the inhabitants. To illustrate : Mr. Happytite ate a can of lobster, half a ham, and two loaves of bread, just before going to bed, the other evening, and he dreamed that he was falling down a shaft seven thousand feet in depth, that the cable had parted, and the cage was coming down after him at the rate of three thousand miles a minute. Now, if that man had lived in Cincinnati, he would undoubtedly have dreamed that he was a hog, and was being salted down for use in the navy.

__________

            They were lovers, but trouble had arisen between them, and he was about to bid her farewell, never, never again to speak to her while life lasted. He had but a few words to say at parting, but in these were included a request to return the presents he had given her in happier days, the most valuable of which was a gold chain and cross. " Not much ! " said the maiden, as he preferred the request for the return of the trinket ; and pointing to an embroidered motto which hung in a frame on the wall, and read, " Simply to thy cross I cling," she observed, " them's my sentiments exactly." And she clung.

__________

            A woman went into a Main Street store this morning, and purchased a pick-handle. No question was asked her by the polite clerk, and he did not even intimate a desire to know if she was going prospecting. But she volunteered the information that she intended to make her husband and that carroty-headed old cat understand that she was not dead yet, even if she did have a consumptive cough, a weeping eye, false teeth, a big bunion, and symptoms of the hip complaint. There is one man in this town who will hear the tocsin of war sound pretty soon.

__________

            Business is dull with the doctors as well as with other people. A prominent physician sat for several hours on a rock to-day, intently watching a house on the opposite side of the street. When an acquaintance parsed and asked : " What are you camped there for, Doc ? " his only reply was : " The man who lives in that house got a present of a box of green cucumbers from a friend in California, this morning," and he resumed his gaze at the door, with an evident determination to be on hand at the first indication of family suffering.

186 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            The following touching lines were written by a little girl in the Austin public school, only eleven years old, and with warts on her hands and deaf in one ear. For touching pathos and deep sentiment they are equal to anything ever written by Byron or Captain Jack Crawford :

Oh, the flies, the flies, the horrible flies,

Creep o'er your nose and tickle your eyes,

Glide up your neck and crawl on your head,

The flies, oh, the flies, I wish they were dead !

__________

            A few days ago, a stranger at one of our restaurants asked for a napkin at dinner. The landlord refused to give him one.

            "But," said the guest, "that man at the other table has one."

            " That man is a regular boarder, and has just got back from San Francisco, and I have to pander to him for a day or so ; but it won't be long before he will be wiping his mouth on the table-cloth, and cleaning his nails with a fork, like the other gentlemen. No, stranger, we don't allow any style here as a regular thing, but we can't help ourselves sometimes."

__________

            Paradise Valley is a farming section of Humboldt County, reached from Winnemucca over a stretch of desert and sagebrush. A traveler visiting the valley a short time since stopped at a farm-house, and his host, pointing out the country, said :

            " This is Paradise, and the next valley beyond here is Eden."

            " Yes," returned the traveler, " and it's hell between here and "Winnemucca."

            It is by such remarks as this that Nevada gets its reputation for profanity.

__________

            A sure cure for a boy's toothache is to start with him to the dentist's office. The tooth will cease to ache when he gets in sight of the dentist's sign. We witnessed a case in point this morning. The boy said he hoped he might never die if his tooth ached one teeny little bit ; but his mother insisted that the tooth was as decayed as a frozen potato as though the boy didn't know about his own tooth. A wild shriek of agony that rent the air in the vicinity of the dentist's office, a few moments afterward, testified that the fearful forceps had done their awful work.

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 187

            A prominent citizen of Upper Austin was advised to take a " rum- sweat " for a severe cold with which he was suffering. The directions were to seat himself on a cane-bottom chair, incase his form in blankets, and let his wife place a vessel containing rum under the chair, she to light the spirit, and he to remain on the chair and let the fumes which should arise play about his manly form. The experiment was tried a few evenings since ; but the citizen did not remain on the chair more than two seconds after the match was applied to the rum, and now he is unable to sit on a cane-bottom or any other kind of a chair, even with his clothes on.

__________

            A New York advertising agency sends the REVEILLE an offer of ten shares of the capital stock of a certain gold and silver reduction company, and two cases of gin, in exchange for $136 worth of advertising. We now hold more corporate shares than we can pay assessments on ; and as for gin, there is a spring on a mountain near here that flows pure Holland gin at the rate of forty-two gallons a minute. If the agency will offer us a yellow dog and a dozen bottles of hair restorative in exchange for advertising, it may perhaps be able to make terms with us.

__________

            He was being questioned by the assessor as to his personal property.

            " Got any jewelry?" said the official.

            " No. "

            " No watches, chains, or silver plate ? "

            " No."

            " No diamond studs?"

            " No, nor mares either."

            The assessor thought he saw a man running up the street to pay his poll-tax, and he went to meet him.

__________

            "Are them Mormon eggs, Mister?" asked a woman, in a Main Street grocery-store this morning.

            "No, ma am," said the polite store-keeper; " since the exposure of the dreadful Atrocities at the Mountain Meadows, and the revelations of the cruelties practiced by the Mormons, we have, as a matter of principle, quit importing eggs from Utah."

            "I don't care nothing about that," she replied; " but lately them Salt Lake eggs has been running about eight bad to the dozen."

188 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            An Austin young lady said good night to her beau, at the front door, last night, and went into a room where her sister sat reading Mark Twain's book, "Tom Sawyer."

            " What are you reading, sister? " she asked.

            " Tom Sawyer."

            " I don't care a cent if he did ; I guess I've got a right to kiss Jim if I want to, and Tom better mind his own business."

            It was a new revelation to " Sister."

__________

            The season for hauling wood and charcoal being about to set in, a saloon-keeper, who is up to the times, has invented a new drink, which he calls " Coalburner's Ecstacy and Teamster's Rejuvenator." One drink of it makes a man forget all his earthly troubles ; two drinks make him think he's a smarter man than Brigham Young ; the third causes him to fancy himself General Crook on the war-path against the Sioux ; and the fourth is calculated to land him in the august presence of Justice Logan, with the danger of thirty dollars worth of "painful duty" staring him in the face.

__________

            An Austin young gentleman, who has been an intimate friend of a family in this town for several years past, was forbidden the house by one of the young ladies of the family, had the dog set on him by the old woman, and got struck in the back of the neck with a dead cat thrown by the youngest boy, simply because he asked the young lady whether this was her fourth or fifth eighteenth birthday. The young lady had previous to his question joyfully remarked to him:

            " I'm eighteen to-day; just think of it ! "

__________

            " I believe you're  traveling the straight road to hell," said a pious church member to his wife, in the presence of witnesses, last night. " Finery and furbelows are vanities of the spirit as well as of the flesh ; besides, stocks are down, and I lost six dollars and six bits playing pedro for the drinks night afore last, and you'll have to wait till next fall before you can get that spring bonnet, unless you can find some other dog-goned fool to pay for it." She said she would go home to her mother if she only had money enough to pay her fare to the interior of York State.

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 189

            A poor man applied to a citizen for relief to-day, and was referred to the woodpile. The unfortunate individual declined to tackle the saw and ax, on the ground that Friday is an unlucky day, and that he would rather starve to death than take chances of spoiling his luck. He said he had a rich aunt back in the States, and would cut off his finger-nails or wash his face before he would risk losing her fortune at her death by commencing an industrial enterprise on an unlucky day.

__________

            A little boy was noticed standing on the sidewalk on Main Street this morning, and crying bitterly.

            " What's the matter, sonny ? " asked a gentleman who was passing.

            " Matter ! Matter enough, I should say ! Dad's got busted on stocks, mother's got the neuraljy so bad she couldn't cook breakfast, sister's run off with a bullwhacker, baby's swallowed my top, and I've got a short bit so far down this here crack in the sidewalk that a feller with sixteen eyes in his head couldn't see one edge of it. That's what's the matter! "

__________

            An Austin gentleman, who served through the war of the rebellion, told his wife that the 30th of this month will be Decoration Day.

            " I hope, then, " she said, " you will decorate me with a new bonnet."

            "My dear," he replied, " this is a year of compromises ; I'll compromise on ten yards of calico."

            The spirit in which this offer was met has convinced him that the era of good feeling has not yet arrived, and he thinks he will adopt a policy of conciliation.

__________

            A correspondent asks us if it is in violation of the rules of the Orders of Good Templars or Red Cross to eat mince-pie. We don't know ; but we saw a young man resting himself on the curb on Main Street the other, evening, who said he had been eating mince-pie, and it didn't agree with him. We have seen exactly the same effect produced by whisky ; but this young man assured us that he belonged to the Red Cross. We never knew before that mince-pie could make a fellow so tired.

__________

            A gentleman walking along Main Street in company with his wife, last evening, was lost in admiration of the beauty of the sky, and was uttering such exclamations as: " How beautiful !" "Ain't she perfectly

190 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

gorgeous ! " " What a grand and magnificent sight ! " " How beautiful are thy works, O Nature ! " when his rapture was interrupted by his better half ejaculating: "Oh, dry up, and come in here and plank out three and a half for a pair of shoes for Johnny."

__________

            An Austin young lady was complaining to a gentleman friend that some work which she was compelled to do was very tiresome, from the fact that she had no assistance in it and it took nearly all her time.

            " You ought to have a change of shifts," said the gentleman.

            He is now wondering what made her mad, and she has ceased thinking that he wandered from the subject, since she has learned the signification of the word shift, in mining parlance.

__________

            Two little boys on Main Street :

            " Say, Johnny, is yer goin to church to-night ? "

            "No; are you?"

            " Bet yer life I is; there's a whole lot of folks goin to be confined, and I want to see what it's like."

            We suppose the little boy had reference to the fact that a number of ladies and gentlemen were to be "confirmed."

__________

            How man's boasted superiority fades before the reflection that the howling of one little, insignificant dog can upset the nerves of all the old maids within sound of its voice, and cause stern-visaged men, who would face an empty cannon without blanching, to kick off the covers, and sit upright in bed, and curse and swear till the air of the room is one sheet of blue flame ! There was that kind of a dog in the Pound last night, and it kept up its doleful wail for seven hours without stopping to take breath.

__________

            " My husband is my idol," observed Mrs. Rubyrock to Mrs. Batterystamp, at a recent hen convention in this city.

            " Well," returned Mrs. B., " if he's any more idle than my old man I'd just like to see the shape of him. Why, my husband is that lazy that if he saw a twenty-dollar piece a-laying in the big road, he'd lay down alongside of it and go to sleep till I came along to pick it up for him."

            The other woman said that was not her ideal of what a man should be.

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 191

            The stars shone brightly, last night, and the pale light of the moon shed a luster on their humble cottage, as, leaning on her husband's arm, she stood in the open door, and casting her eyes heavenward said :

            "Dearest, how beautiful the heavens look ; oh, how I love to gaze up into the blue vault and watch the tiny, twinkling stars, which shine like so many jewels in Oh ! you nasty, careless brute ! "

            He had pulled the door to, and her thumb was in the crack.

__________

            A little boy, chasing grasshoppers on Main Street this morning, pounced on and picked up a bee by mistake for a hopper. The boy let go before the bee did, but as the bee soared away heavenward, the boy commenced to cry, and when asked what ailed him, he whined out between his sobs:

            " I picked up a hot grasshopper, and it burns wuss'n bein spanked with an old slipper with fourteen holes in the sole of it."

__________

            In a Main Street saloon, last evening, we overheard a miner telling one of his friends that his wages had an ornament on them.

            " How's that ? " asked his friend.

            " Well, you see," replied the miner, " a fellow I owed a little money to, put a garnishment on my wages, and I looked in the dictionary and found that the definition of garnishment is an ornament, or ornamentation."

__________

            A charcoal teamster stopped his team in front of a popular Main Street saloon this morning, and went into the saloon to get a drink. The bar-keeper happened to be playing a game of billiards at the rear end of the saloon, and there was nobody behind the bar ; and when the teamster saw his own image reflected in the big mirror on the wall back of the bar, he turned away, and said he wished he might be blowed if he was going to drink in any saloon where they had a nigger for a bar-keeper.

__________

            We overheard the following dialogue between two small boys, on Main Street, this forenoon :

            "Johnny, you's on the roll of honor this time, isn't yer ? "

192 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            " Bet yer life.

            "It's the fust time since you've bin goin to school, isn't it? "

            " Yes, but yer better bet yer boots, I went through like a dose of salts this time."

__________

            We received this morning from a Philadelphia publishing house a printed list of questions about Austin, with a polite request that we would write answers to the questions and return the list to the parties sending it. One of the questions was : " What are the manufactures of Austin ? " The only reply we could truthfully make to this question was : " Silver bricks and children. "

__________

            A cynical young man, who has been taking items on clothes-lines, declares that the reason the ladies put lace and embroidery on their under- fixin's is that they may hang them on the line as an evidence to the woman in the next house, or across the street, that they can afford just as good clothes as anybody, and are not so poor as to be obliged to wear under clothes made of 000 canvas, like some folks they know of.

__________

            There is no living creature so helpless as is man. We were led into this train of thought by seeing a colt scratch its nose with its off hind-foot to-day ; and the chapter thus opened in nature's book led us along the thread of reflection till we thought how man, with all his boasted power and superior intelligence, cannot scratch his own back, or see for himself whether a boil on the back of his neck is coming to a head.

__________

            She was obliged to lift her dress as she crossed Main Street, as the street was muddy and she had on striped stockings. They were yellow stripes and green, and looked like a lot of crawling snakes ; and a prominent citizen gazed on them in horror as he remarked, " Jehosaphat, I never had 'em that bad before," and right there he registered a vow that he would join the Murphy movement at its next meeting.

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 193

            A German gentleman residing in this city has received a letter from his aged father in Germany, stating that the American potato bugs, which are visiting that country, are already able to converse fluently in the German language. The visitors are thought so much of in the German empire, that the government has had their pictures taken, and distributed in every household in the rural districts.

__________

            "What's flour to-day?" she asked in a Main Street grocery store. "Eight dollars, ma am," replied the polite store-keeper. "Flour's riz, ain't it ? " she asked. " Yes, ma am, flour's gone up." " What makes flour raise?" she questioned. "Yeast, ma am," he replied. She went out, and going to another store ordered a sack of flour, and told the store-keeper that that man over to the other store was too smart to live long.

__________

            Two little boys were quarreling in front of the court-house this morn ing, when one said to the other :

            " Your father ain't got no wood contract, like mine has/

            " I don't care if he hain't," replied the other ; " your mother ain't got no carbuncle on her neck, neither ; and mine has."

            This was a clincher.

__________

            A prominent citizen remarked, in a Main Street saloon, this morning, that this town is so distressingly quiet that it must be an immense labor for the reporter of the REVEILLE to think up lies to put in the paper. While we repel with scorn the insinuation that we would give publication to a lie in the columns of the REVEILLE, we admit that facts on which to base local items are as scarce as preachers at a horse-race.

__________

            The earlier birds of the season, such as caterpillars, stink-bugs, mosquito-hawks, and grasshoppers, have given way to large brown beetles, which are now quite numerous. When one of these insects lights on the back of a young lady's neck, the neighbors all say :

            "The presumption of that hussy! The idea of her trying to sing Italian opera!" 

__________

194 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            Last evening was a beautiful one ; the sky was clear, the stars twinkled brightly, and the crescent-shaped moon, as it rose over the hill-tops, cast a mellow light on the Indian wickiups, reflecting the profiles of the beautiful squaws against the star-lit sky, and giving them the appearance of ghostly forms arisen from the dead to taunt mortality with the fickleness of earthly life. It was a poor evening for stage-robbers and cats.

__________

            A wee little bit of feminine humanity was taken to a certain church in this town, last Sunday. It was her first visit, and she kept as still as a mice, but took in all the surroundings with wide-eyed wonder. When she got home, somebody asked her what she had seen at church, to which she replied : " I seed a man wiz his night-gown on ; but he didn't go to sleep."

__________

            A single lady, whose sands of life are beginning to run low, while recounting to a friend one of the sorrows of her early life the loss of the only lover she was ever blessed with was told by the friend :

            " Never mind, there are as good fish in the sea as ever were caught." " Yes," replied the disconsolate one, " but it takes fresher bait than I am to catch them."

__________

            The young gentleman that called on a young lady the other evening, and was invited into the kitchen, asserts that he had no intention of stealing the chair he was sitting on. He says he didn't know the varnish wasn't dry, and he thinks it's trifling with a man's noblest feelings, .and making a direct attack on his heart-strings, to allow him to ruin a pair of eight-dollar store pants in such a manner.

__________

            A Boston lady, who had recently arrived in Austin, told a young man who works in the mines that she could indulge in the ecstacy of osculation with an adult male of the genus homo with feelings of gratification analogical to quaffing the nectar of the gods ; and after he had consulted the authorities he was mad at himself because he had not kissed her.

__________

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 195

            She was a young lady from Reese River Valley, and her beau treated her to ice cream in one of the restaurants. She tried to eat the cream with a knife and fork, and because she did not succeed, said it was the most " unsatisfyin' truck" she "ever seed," and asked the waiter if he wouldn't please warm it up a little.

__________

            A young lady who went on an excursion to the country, yesterday, had both her pleasure and a beautiful pull-back dress ruined, just because a little boy hollered " snakes ! " And then the little boy went home and told his mother that " that 'air gal's" legs were painted. The poor little innocent had seen striped stockings for the first time in his young life.

__________

            A lady passed down Main Street this morning, tied back so tightly that she could only step about three inches at a step. A man of horsey mien and air, who was standing on the sidewalk, eyed her intently for a few moments, and then turned to a bystander and asked " if that critter was hobbled ? "

__________

            A prominent citizen, who had just eaten three dozen Eastern transplanted oysters, which cost $1.50 per dozen, told his wife he had been eating silver. She said that "back thar in Missoury, where she came from," anybody, to smell his breath, would suppose he had been eating whisky. "

__________

            A man who found a chicken in one of the eggs set before him in a Main Street restaurant, this morning, called the waiter's attention to that fact, when the waiter grumbled out that some people are never satisfied ; they growl when you board them for eight dollars a week and throw in poultry for breakfast.

__________

            Two dogs had an argument over a bone on Main Street this forenoon, and all the other dogs thought there was an alarm of fire. In three minutes from the time the first yelp sounded, Main Street was a raging sea of dogs, through which teams were unable to force their way. Traffic on the street was suspended while the blockade lasted.

__________

 

196 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            Two little boys were playing in front of the REVEILLE office this morning, and one said to the other : " My mother's got a guitar, and yours ain't ! " " The blazes she ain't ! " replied the other ; " my mother's had the catarrh for three years, and it makes her snort like a wind-broken horse going up hill."

__________

            A man on one of the back streets, last night, who saw a red-headed girl running for the doctor, mistook her for a shooting-star, and wished seventeen wishes before she was out of sight. The mistake was a natural one, as shooting-stars are very plentiful these nights.

__________

            A prominent citizen, who had been taking spring medicine, reading that there was a general movement of the Russians, remarked that he could sympathize with them, as he knew how it was himself.

__________

            A little boy was talking to another little boy about cats, on Main Street this morning. Said he :

            " Cats is got nine lives, and you ve got to kill 'em nine times afore they's dead. You can't pizen em, cause they like pizen, and the only way my dad says you can pizen a cat is to chop his head off, and throw him down a shaft, and pile rocks atop of him so he can't climb out."

__________

            A floating newspaper paragraph says that Mrs. Denison, the authoress, has made enough money out of "That Husband of Mine" to purchase a Washington residence. There is a woman in this town who has made enough money out of that husband of hers to purchase a set of furs on the installment plan. She did it by going through his pockets while he was asleep.

__________

            " Boys, let's all take a drink," said a man in a Main Street saloon this morning, and immediately there was an overturning of chairs in the vicinity of the stove, and a scurrying toward the bar ; but when the stranger

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 197

put the finishing touch on his oration by uttering the words, " of water," the " boys " returned sadly to their seats, and resumed their discussion on the evils of Chinese cheap labor.

__________

            An Upper Austin woman, who heard that a Cedar Ravine woman had been talking about her, told all her acquaintances that she intended to spit in that hussy's eye the first time she caught sight of her, and when they met, she walked right up to her, put her mouth close up to the " hussy's," and kissed her right on the lips, and said :

            " Oh, my dear, I'm so glad to see you ; and how's all the children, and has baby got through teething yet ? "

__________

            An Austin man who deals in stocks through a San Francisco broker, received a note from the broker the other day, which read : " Stick to your Julia ; she will do to tie to." Of course, his wife found the note in his pocket ; and now the man is putting in regular ten-hour shifts in explaining that Julia is the name of a mining stock. But she will be satisfied with nothing short of documentary evidence, and he has had to send to San Francisco for the stock certificates.

__________

            A young gentleman of this town called upon an Upper Austin young lady, a few evenings since, and requested the loan of one of her old shoes, saying he had invited a party of ladies to go sleigh-riding, and was unable to procure a sleigh. By the time he recovers from his -injuries a genial sun will have melted the snow from the hill-tops, the grass will be springing fresh and green, and he will be preparing to negotiate the purchase of a straw hat and linen duster. But the doctor says his wounds are not necessarily fatal.

__________

            Charles Napier, an English scientist, prescribes a vegetable diet as a cure for intemperance. He says that if the lovers of strong drink will eschew all meat, and masticate cabbages and turnips for the space of six months, all desire for alcoholic stimulants will depart from them. That this will work has been demonstrated in Austin. A resident of this city,

198 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

having read Mr. Napier's suggestion, confined himself to a diet of cabbages and turnips for six months, and at the end of that time he had no further desire for strong drink. He had a splendid funeral, and the doctors said he died of cholera.

__________

            A prominent citizen went into a store on Main Street this morning, and purchased a broom. The clerk asked him if he should send the article home in the store's delivery wagon.

            " No," he replied, " I might as well pack it home myself ; but don't you know, whenever my wife sends me to the store to buy a broom it always reminds me of the time when I was a boy going to school ? "

            " How is that ? " asked the clerk.

            " Well, you see, when I was going to school and I used to cut up any didoes, the teacher used to give me his jack-knife and send me out to cut birch switches for him to whale me with. See the point ? "

            The clerk said he thought he saw it.

__________

            The occasions when silver bullion is shipped from the Express Office in this city open a social problem which commends itself to the consideration of the scientist and the attention of the student of human nature. Prominent citizens will congregate on the sidewalk where the bullion is piled, awaiting loading on the stage, and will pick up and " heft " the heavy bars, with scarce any apparent exertion. And yet when the wife of any one of those same prominent citizens tells him to " bring in an armful of wood, you lazy brute," he swears, by all the gods above, that stooping and lifting give him a crick in the " spine of his back."

__________

            The extraordinary weather of this morning is dangerous to our institutions. It threatens to introduce the umbrella in our midst. The last man who ventured on our streets with an umbrella was promptly shot, but his corpse was not mutilated, like that of his predecessor. Since the completion of the Central Pacific Railroad the manners and customs of an effete Eastern civilization have one by one encroached upon our isolation, driving the old pioneers further and further back into the fastnesses of the mountains; and now that showers in March threaten to foist the deadly umbrella on an unwilling people, men look into each other's faces and ask: "What is this consarned country coming to, anyway?"

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 199

            One of the most glorious mornings that ever dawned upon the Toiyabe Range was that which ushered in this day. The air was as soft as the young man who thinks that all the girls in town are stuck after his moustache, and as mild as boarding-house coffee ; the skies were as clear as that a year's desertion constitutes good grounds for divorce in this State, and the sun shone as brightly as the spick-span new twenty-dollar piece that a man hates to change in paying for a two-bit plug of tobacco. It was one of those mornings when all Nature smiles, and the responsive heart of the bar-keeper gives down its milk of human kindness, so that Nature is not the only thing that smiles.

__________

            A certain gentleman of this city had for a considerable length of time been " keeping company " with a young lady, and on the occasion of her birthday, recently, sent her as a present a beautiful album. The lady was not at all satisfied with the gift, as she had expected something which would be significant of matrimonial intentions on the part of the gentleman -- an engagement ring, or something in that line. She confided her dissatisfaction to her bosom friend, and said she thought her beau might have sent her " something binding." This remark the bosom friend communicated to the gentleman in the case, who was equal to the emergency, and immediately sent the dissatisfied lady a present of seven pounds of cheese

__________

            " Is it a crime to shoot cats?" asked a prominent citizen of an eminent jurist, in the International Restaurant, this morning. The lawyer said he could not answer till he had searched the statutes and ascertained what bearing the common law had on the subject. Though not a lawyer, we think we can satisfactorily answer the citizen's question. In our opinion it is not a crime to shoot cats, providing you hit them square between the eyes, and stun them so that they will lie still till you can get to them and chop them into small bits with an ax. We do not hold that walking into a sitting-room, and turning the contents of a six-shooter into a cat as it peacefully slumbers in an old maid's lap would be strictly within the law ; but we contend that the murder of a cat that is attending a musical rehearsal in the still watches of the night under your bedroom window is within the pale of the Constitution.

200 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            There is a Boston lady in this town who is a great stickler for refined language, and who has a perfect horror of vulgarisms, in which she includes many familiar terms. Recently a successful chlorider, who resides in Upper Austin, gave a swell dinner, to which this lady was invited. After disposing of a couple of pounds of roast turkey she passed her plate to the host.

            "Some more turkey?" queried he.

            " No, thank you," she returned, " but please be so kind as to introduce a spoon into the interior recesses of the frame of the turkey, and extract for me therefrom some of the insertion."

            "Some of the what?" gasped the unfortunate man.

            " Why, some of the stuffing she means, you illiterate old fool," suggested his wife.

            " Oh ! " And then he fainted and was borne on a shutter to his chamber, where he now lies in all the dreadful delirium of brain fever.

__________

            In a large city there are industries and modes of obtaining a livelihood which in smaller places are impracticable. An instance of this came under our observation during our recent visit to San Francisco. Walking along Kearny Street one day, in company with a city friend, we noticed a remarkably and extraordinarily ugly woman, and called our friend's atten tion to her.

            "Yes, she is frightfully ugly," he replied; "but she makes it pay makes big money at it."

            "Makes it pay! Makes big money at it! How?" we asked in surprise.

            " Well, you see," was the reply, " the town's chock full of garroters ; and wealthy men hire this woman to walk home with them nights, to frighten away the garroters and hoodlums."

            Such an industry were not possible in Austin, on account of lack of material no garroters and no homely women.

__________

            The most surprising and at the same time exasperating accident that can befall a young lady is to have a sled shoot out from under her while she is coasting down hill, and leave her sitting in the snow in solitary contemplation of the heavenly bodies. It is at such a moment as this that her soul is filled with bitterness and her mind with the contemplation that this is a cold, cruel, and heartless world particularly the cold part ; when romance or sentiment find no place in her thoughts, and she takes nothing on trust. A young lady who was one of a coasting party met with an ac-

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 201

cident of this nature last night, and when her companions, on their return up the hill, found her sitting in the snow, and sympathizingly inquired if she was hurt, she replied :

            " I have not investigated as to that as yet ; but that I am mad, and disgusted with coasting, is the cold bottom fact of the business."

__________

            A rancher brought his family into town for a holiday a few days since, and leaving them at a hotel, went out and took a bath, purchased and put on a new suit of clothes, and otherwise improved his personal appearance. When he returned to his family's apartments at the hotel, he was a transformed man in appearance. His children failed to recognize him, and when he attempted to kiss his wife she threw a wash-pitcher at him, and told him she would scream if he did not leave the room "this minute," and would tell her husband when he came home, anyhow. He was obliged to go out and get a friend, to go with him to his wife and identify him ; and when she finally became convinced that he was really her husband, she said that if she had known his true complexion before her marriage to him she would never have married him in the world. She thought he was dark, and here, after taking a good, square wash, he had turned out to be light. She was a blonde herself, and believed in contrasts in marriage.

__________

            An aged man, with the snows of many winters upon his venerable head, and his body bent under the accumulated weight of years, was hit plump in the eye with a snow-ball yesterday afternoon on Main Street. There was something of the fire of his youth in his uninjured eye, and tears and redness in the other, as in his virtuous indignation his form towered erect and he shook his fist at the retreating bad small boy, and exclaimed :

            "I wish I may be ---------- into ------- in a minute if I wouldn't make you think an earthquake had landed athwart your ear, if I had you within reach of this good right hand, you young cub of the devil ! "

            But when the gamin derisively placed his thumb to his nose, and spread his fingers like a fan, it was more than human nature could bear ; and the poor old man, whose sands of life were running so low, went into the nearest saloon, and in tearful accents requested the bar-keeper to fix him a hot Scotch, and " be sure to put lots of sour in it."

202 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            According to some medical authorities, more quarrels arise between husband and wife from their sleeping together than from any other cause. It is held that the eliminative nervous force of one person is absorbed by sleeping with a person of absorbent nervous force, and that the absorber will sleep, while the eliminator will be restless, nervous, and sleepless. The electrical qualifications of the cerebro-magnetic concatenations, the one being a positive and the other a negative pole, so disturb the nervo-vitality of the eliminative functions, that two persons possessing these attributes in an opposite degree are uncongenial in magnetic equilibrium ; and thus quarrels in bed between husband and wife are the inevitable result. We have frequently noticed this phenomenon in our own experience, and the only remedy we can suggest is for husband and wife to each sleep with somebody else.

__________

            Several years ago, in this city, a gentleman prominent in bull-punching circles was arrested for some slight infraction of the laws, and taken before a justice of the peace, by whom he was found guilty and sentenced to pay a fine. The ox-steerer was very indignant at the result of his case, and very bitter against the judge for the severity of the sentence, which he claimed was greater than the circumstances justified. Revenge ran kled in his heart, and he determined to get even on the judge, and this is how he did it. He named the off leader of his team after the judge, and whenever he was driving the team past his enemy's office he would run up to the off leader and sock the goad viciously into the poor animal, and cry :

            " Git up, you Judge Blank, you ------- ------- son of a -------, ------- ------- your ------- ------- heart into ------ation."

            When the judge would go to the door of his office and gaze down street and see that man's ox-team coming up, he would retire to the privacy of his back room and stuff his ears with cotton.

__________

            The Austin Post-office has been doing a rushing business to-day in the distribution of valentines, of which a very large number have passed through the mail. The scene at the Post-office during the day has been exciting in the extreme. The varied expressions of hope, despair, joy, or chagrin on the faces of the applicants for letters was enough to move the stoutest heart. The most touching incident of the day was when a young man who had applied the fifty-fourth time at the window for- "a volumtime for me," at last received the coveted missive. It was enclosed in a richly-embossed and perfumed envelope, and as he broke the seal his hand

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 203

trembled and his eye shone in joyful expectation. He unfolded the valentine. Alas for bright hope ! It was a picture of a man with a small head and exaggerated feet, and the words "Brainless Fop" printed in large capitals, under the picture, seared his brain like letters of living fire. The bystanders thought he would fain't, but he didn't. He only raised his hand on high, and said :

            "I'll bet forty-five to fifteen I can lick the stuffin' out of the dog-goned, ornery, consarued critter what sent me this volumtime."

            We draw the curtain on this painful scene.

__________

            Tramps abound in Austin at present. They are depredatory, larcenous, and burglarious ;. and it would be well for owners of portable property, such as hot stoves and steam-hoisting works, to keep a lookout on their goods, wares, and merchandise. A few evenings since, some of these pedestrians entered a saloon and broke open the till in the bar-counter, and the same evening a robe and overcoat were stolen from a livery stable. When the tramps come around residences, pretending hunger and asking charity, invite them to an interview with the wood-pile. If they accept the invitation, it shows that they are willing to work for a living ; and after they have sawed and split eight or ten cords of wood into stove size, it would be as well to offer them something to eat- If they refuse to tackle the wood-pile, then they are the tramp, in all his native cussedness. In this case set. the dog on him, or stand him up against the fence and pour hot water down his back, or get a six-shooter and make a true fissure lead ledge in his carcass. This last is the most effectual method of dealing with him ; and if you lodge three or four bullets in his brain, or increase the weight of his heart by the addition of a couple of pounds of slugs and horse-shoe nails inserted therein, he will not be liable to trouble you again. The best protection of all, however, is to keep your doors locked.

__________

            A stranger passing through Churchill County recently, had the misfortune to lose his team of mules, they having become alkalied by the water of that section. The mules died within a few miles of Stillwater, the county seat, and one of the solid men of that place went over to where the stranger was camped, to sympathize with him. He drove over a span of mouse-colored mules, of about the dimensions of jack-rabbits, and, in order to help the unfortunate traveler out of his plight, offered to sell them to him at about twice their value. The man examined the mules, inspected

204 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

their teeth, and twisted their tails to test their kicking powers. Then he said to the Churchillian :

            " Can these mules draw well ? "

            " Draw ! " exclaimed the man of the desert. " Draw ! Stranger, you ain't much of a judge of hoss-flesh. I use these here mules for plowin , and I'm 'bleeged to hitch 'em to two plows. If I only used one plow they'd yank it through the land so fast that the friction would burn up the face of the yearth so's that wouldn't nothin' grow on it. I should say they could draw."

            The stranger said he guessed he wouldn't buy the mules, as they were too energetic for his purpose, because he wanted to travel slow, so as to view the scenery.

__________

            " Put some perfumery on my moustache," said a young man to the barber, who was putting on the finishing touches, in a popular Austin barber shop, yesterday afternoon.

            "Must be going to make a call," said the polite tonsorial artist.

            " Yes, going to drop around to see some folks," was the reply.

            " Going to see some of your many young lady friends, of course," insinuated the knight of the razor.

            Then the young man rose up out of that barber chair, and said :

            " See here, my friend, do you suppose I put perfumery on my moustache because I'm going to see a man, or a boy, or an old woman, or a baby in arms? Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?"

            The barber said grapes were out of season, and figs were dear in this country on account of the freight ; but long observation in his profession had convinced him that perfumery on a moustache possessed a certain significance in most cases; but there were instances where the man who wanted the hair on his upper lip strongly scented knew to a certainty that the girl he was going to see that night was in the habit of eating onions for dinner. And the customer laid down a quarter to pay for his shave, and said that the barber business must afford a magnificent field for the study of human nature.

__________

Initial Conversation.

            In the play of " The Mighty Dollar," the Hon. Bardwell Slote economizes his conversation by using only the initial letters of certain words, and when the play was introduced in San Francisco, the populace caught up Mr. Slote's plan, and initial conversation became a common thing in that city, as a species of slang. Like all other fashions, sayings, and doings, which reach Austin after they are played out everywhere else, this prac-

LIFE IN A MINING TOWN. 205

tice has got here. An Austin store-keeper, who visited San Francisco some time ago, has got it on the brain, and inflicts it on his friends and customers at every opportunity.

            Yesterday, an old lady from the country walked into his store to make a purchase, and he, observing her from the office, called out to a clerk :

            " Here, Augustus, S. A. lively and wait on this lady."

            " Gustus S-A d to wait on me last time I come in, and kept me waiting about two hours," remarked the lady.

            " That's just it, ma am, and that's why I told him to S. A. lively (stand around lively). T. is M. (time is money) just as much with us as with you, ma am."

            " I don't want no tea of no kind, but I want two pounds of your best coffee at your lowest cash rates."

            " That's it, ma am, C. T. in this establishment."

            " I told you I didn't want to C. no tea, but coffee."

            " Oh, I mean C. T. -- coin talks -- in this establishment."

            " It does, does it ? Well, then, I'll just G-O-P-H across the street, where I can get all the credit I want to." "

            And as she went out, the storekeeper muttered :

            " G-O-P-H -- let's see, yes, that means goph (go off) and she's S. U. (slid out), and I'm a D. O. G. (danged old galoot) for L. A. K. (losing a customer)."

__________

Caring for a Baby.

            A woman from the country came into town the other day on a shopping expedition, bringing her baby along with her. She carried the infant into a store at which she is in the habit of trading, and setting it in a chair asked one of the clerks, who happened to be the only person in the store at the time, to look out for it for a minute, while she ran up to the drug store to buy a few articles. Without giving the clerk time to frame a speech in acceptance of the trust thus reposed in him, she bolted out of the store, and he, a lone, lorn bachelor of the most correct habits and principles, was alone with that infant. The sense of responsibility he felt crushed him as if the fat woman in the circus had sat down on him ; he gazed on the babe, as it lay placidly sleeping in the chair, and the thought came over him, what if just then the child let out a yell that went rippling and cavorting through the store as if the rumbling of an impending volcano was shaking up the hams and sides of bacon and boxes of lard and candles and canned fruit.

            " Oh, oo ittle pootsey tootsey," said the alarmed clerk, " don't oo ky, oo muzzer will be back in a minute."

206 THE SAZERAC LYING CLUB.

            This only caused the cherub to increase the vehemence of its yells, and to grow black in the face with the intensity of its emotions.

            " Shut up, you consarned, ornery, squalling, nasty little brat. Do you want people on the street to think I'm trying to murder you ? "

            But the baby refused to listen to argument, and opened up a fresh series of yells, with variations.

            " Look on this manly breast, thou sweet cherub ; tell me if you see there any outcroppings of the consolation thou most desirest. I am powerless to help thee. Thy mother will return ere long. Still, I pray thee, still thy lamentations."

            Another howl, louder and more prolonged than any that had preceded it, was all the answer that mite of humanity vouchsafed.

            " Dod rot and dog-gone a baby anyhow ! Shut up, or I'll be the death of you ! "

            And in the agony of his despair the clerk sat down on the lovely babe. He sat there on that infant three hours before the mother returned; and when, looking through the window, he saw her coming down the street, he got up and went to his desk and commenced to post his books. As the mother entered the office she apologized for her long absence ; but said she had got into an argument with another woman as to whether polonaises would be cut bias and gored, or whether they would be knife-pleated and scalloped, and had forgotten all about the child.

            " But how had baby behaved itself, anyhow?"

            " Quietest baby I ever saw in my life," replied the clerk ; and then he excused himself and went out. The woman picked up her baby, which was mashed flat, and she had to take it to a blacksmith shop and hold its mouth to the nozzle of the bellows, and have some more breath pumped into it ; and she says if her husband don't buy a shotgun and kill that clerk she will sue for a divorce and go home to her mother. But the clerk has not yet returned. The latest news concerning his fate is that he was footing it across Death Valley, and striking out at his best pace for Mexico, with whick country there is no extradition treaty for sitting down on babies.

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