Your costume is scanty, O Goddess; Your hair is bobbed off like a Fiji; Your ears are as lost as Atlantis; Yet out from that muddle of hair Your lips are the crudest vermilion, While your cheeks have a cochineal tint The paint you apply without stint). Don't think I'm a rabid exhorter Yet I hate to contemplate, my dear, I pray that reform may come quickly, Incompatibility "it worn't nothin' like dat. Yo' jest couldn't MOSES DIGGS, an old Alabama darky, git on with her onless yo' was somewhars had been arrested for having more than one wife, the last woman being the complainant. He happened to be well known locally and considered an orderly character. else." A Memorial Token "How many wives have you had?" de- WHEN his mother returned from a day's manded the examining judge. "Six, yo' Honah," was the reply. "Why couldn't you get on with them?" "Well, suh, de fust two sp'iled de white folks' clo's when dey washed 'em; de thu'd worn't no cook; de fo'th was jest nacherally lazy; an' de fifth-I'll tell yo', jedge, de fifth, she-" "Incompatibility?" "No, yo' Honah," said the negro, slowly, absence she found seven-year-old Gar rett wearing a very mournful air. "My white rat died to-day!" he announced. "Oh, I am sorry, son," she sympathized. "I held a funeral, and buried it in the back yard." He went on, "I put some flowers on its grave, but I knew they would wither, and I was afraid I'd lose the place, so I just left its tail sticking out for a marker.” tion: of the ball field stood up. He was a small, snub-nosed lad, with a plentiful supply of verses with the following note of explana- freckles, but he glanced about him with a "These lines were written sixty years ago by one who has for a long time slept in his grave merely for a pastime." dignified air of controlling the situation. "I'm going to be captain this year," he announced, convincingly, "or else father's old bull is going to be turned into the field." He was elected unanimously. |