It was an indestructible fiend. Last Monday morning, as a lot of uptowners were waiting on the wharf for the China steamer to get in, old Professor Guffey drove up in his office buggy and solemnly lifted out an apparently heavily-weighted bag, securely tied at the mouth.

What you got there, Professor?" asked a friend.

"A cat fiend," repeated the Professor, gravely.

"A catfish?" replied the crowd. "No, gentlemen; I said a cat fiend," explained Guffey.

That sack contains four cobblestones and a cat that has made my life a burden to me for three years. She steals everything in the house all day, and yells like a pirate walking the plank on the back shed all night. I've made one attempt after another to assassinate that beast, but I've failed every time.

"You know that cats have nine lives, Professor?"

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Nine? Nineteen times have I given that creature poisoned meat; I threw her off the roof twice, and I've shot at her four times-just filled her plumb full of quail shot-and the next day she's round on scheduled time, drinking milk as soon as it's left by the milkman. Last week I borrowed a hundred-dollar bull terrier to eat her up, and she killed him in eleven seconds. Why, I blew her clean into the next street with a dynamite cartridge yesterday, and I hope to die if she wasn't on deck reaching for the canary this morning without a hair singed.'

"Going to fix her this time, eh?"

As

Come, take a drink first, Guffey," said his friend Boggs, and the crowd followed into a saloon on the corner. While the beer was being drawn, Boggs slipped quietly back and untied the bag. soon as the indestructible cat had skipped up the street, Boggs retied the bag and hurried back to the saloon. Pretty soon the crowd emerged and helped Guffey to carry his heavy load to the extreme edge of the wharf, from which it was solemnly dumped.

"I hate to kill even a cat," said the old Professor, sadly: "but the fact is, I haven't had a square night's sleep in two years."

Yesterday Boggs was coming off the ferryboat, when he beheld the Professor coming on, a-top of a four horse load of furniture.

"Why, you're not moving, are you, Guffey?

The Professor moodily descended from his perch, and, drawing Boggs aside, whispered huskily in his ear:

"Yes, I am, Boggs-I'm moving over to Alameda. That d-d cat's come back!"

SAN FRANCISCO OVERLAND MONTHLY.

HOW EDOUIN CAUGHT FISH. AND HOW HIS WIFE LISTENED TO HIS

STORY WITH UNRUFFLED FACE.

The New York Times says: Willie Edouin, the comedian, is very fond of a practical joke, and so, in a quiet way, is his wife, who is known on the stage as Miss Alice Atherton. Edouin is also fond of fishing, and one day three years ago, when Mr. and Mrs. Edouin, several members of the company, and other friends were spending their midsummer vacation in Putney, Vt., Willie and one or two other gentlemen determined to go trout fishing. The ladies of the party, following Mrs. Edouin's lead, teased the fishermen unmercifully before they started with predictions that they would catch no fish and that they would fall in with bears, rattlesnakes and all sorts of disagreeable things.

This only made the actor and his friends

the more determined to catch some fish. But they did not. They fished up and down all the brooks in the vicinity, and into all the historical deep holes and springs which were said to be full of trout, but they did not get a bite. They were rather blue on their way home, for they knew they would get terribly hazed. Half a mile or so from town they met a young native with a beautiful string of trout, and Willie's face brightened.

"It's an old gag, boys," said he, "but it's our only salvation. Let's buy out the

native.'

The native would not sell at first, and was finally persuaded to part with his catch only at a price which would be a month's pay for a farm-hand. Edouin did not mind the cost, for he must have the fish. Then the party marched triumphantly into the hotel, prepared to discomfit the ladies. Mrs. Edouin and her friends were very much surprised at the evidence of good luck, and asked all sorts of questions as to where and how each individual trout was captured. Willie, who was the only one of the party who had the necessary nerve, was obliged to fib and fib again, but finally he managed to give a very circumstantial account of the day's doings, which Mrs. Edouin received with unruffled face and apparent perfect belief, but which caused no little merriment not very well concealed on the part of the other ladies.

Mrs. Edouin did not let out until the next day the fact that the vender of fish had visited the hotel with his catch, and that she had caused him to lie in wait in the path of the unlucky fishermen, and had even prescribed to him the manner of his trading and the price at which he should sell.

A DECEIVED DOG.-An old farmer was out one fine day looking over his broad acres, with an axe on his shoulder and a small dog at his heels. They espied a drove him into a stone-wall, where action woodchuck. The dog gave chase and immediately commenced. The dog would draw the woodchuck partly out from the wall, and the woodchuck would take the dog back. The old gentleman's sympathy getting high on the side of the dog, thought he must help him. So, putting the dog, waited for the extraction of the himself in position, with the axe above woodchuck, when he would cut him down. So an opportunity offered and the old man struck, but the woodchuck gathered up at the same time, took the dog in far enough to receive the blow, and the dog was killed on the spot. For years after, the old always add, "And that dog don't know gentleman, in relating the story, would to this day but what the woodchuck killed

him.'

ABOUT A PAIR OF PANTS.-A Detroit man, who had contributed a bundle of his cast-off clothing for the relief of the victims of the Minnesota fire, received from one of the sufferers the following note: "The committy man giv me amungst other things wat he called a pare of pants, and 'twould make me pant some to ware em. I found your name and where you live on one of the pokits. My wife laffed so when I shode em to her that I thot she wood have a conipshun fit. She wants to no if there lives and brethes a man who has legs no bigger than that. She sed if there was he orter be taken up for vagrinsy for havin' no visible means of support. coldent get em on my oldest boy, so I used em for gun cases. If you hav another pare to spare, my wife would like to get em to hang up by the side ov the fireplace to keep the tongs in.'

I

MRS. PARTINGTON. {BENJAMIN P. SHILLABER, born in New Hampshire, 1814, was a printer at Dover, New Hampshire, in 1830, and in 1835 went to Demerara, Guiana, as a compositor,

and remained there three years. From 1840 to 1847 he was in the printing office of the Boston Post, and after that time for three years was connected with the

same paper editorially. It was at this period that he wrote under the name of "Mrs. Partington," and gained a reputation as a humorist by the quaintness of his style and matter. Between 1850 and 1852 he tried his hand at newspaper proprietorship in the Pathfinder and Carpet-Bag, but returned to the Post 1853-56. From 1856 he was for ten years one of the editors of the Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. He has published Rhymes with Reason and Without; Poems; Life and Sayings of Mrs. Partington; Knitting Work, and other

volumes.]

Mrs. Partington is of the opinion that Mount Vesuvius should take sarsaparilla to cure itself of eruptions.

Mrs. Partington says that she "intended the concert of the Female Cemetery last evening, and some songs were extracted with touching pythagoras." She declares "the whole thing went off like a Pakenham shot, the young angels sung like syrups," and, during the showers of applause, she remembered she had forgot her parasol.

"La me!" said Mrs. Partington, "here I have been suffering the bigamies of death for three mortal weeks. First I was seized with a bleeding phrenology in the left hampshire of the brain, which was exceeded by a stoppage of the left ventilator of the heart. This gave me an inflammation in the borax, and now I'm sick with the chloroform morbus. There's no blessing like that of health, particularly when you're sick!"

"If there is any place where I like to ransack business more than another," said Mrs. Partington, with animation, untying from the corner of her handkerchief a sum of money-"if there is any

There's no dilly-dalliance and beatin' down and botherin' you with a thousand questions, till you don't know whether your heels are up or your head is down; all you have to do is to put your bill on the counter, and they exonerate it at once without a word."

"I'm not very incredible," said Mrs. Partington, looking up from the paper and glancing over her specs at Ike, who sat making a windmill out of the frame of his slate, "and believe as much as any rational person ought to. I have believed all about the Davenport boys, and the other wonderful things, and all that has been said agin 'em; and the story of a man's climbing a pole and pulling it up arter him, and of the actor that held himself out at arm's length, but it is beyond

my belief that a cargo of sugar could change hands.' She passed the paper from her right hand to her left as though it were a hogshead of sugar, and then resumed her reading with a profound idea that the editor, in making the statement, was cheating her.

"He made a few desultory remarks," said the schoolmaster. Mrs. Partington stopped suddenly in the bustle she was making around the table for tea, and gazed over her specs thoughtfully at him. Leaning on a plate edgewise, as if to enforce her views by the support it gave her, "I suppose it was because he was weak," said she, "but Ayer's Pills will cure him. I never knew 'm to fail. They are very solitary in such cases. 'Really, madame," replied he, "I cannot guess your meaning. "You said dysentary, said she, laying down the plate and put ting a spoon in the preserves. "I said desultory," said he, smiling, "quite a different thing." No matter, said she, looking up in time to box Ike's ears, who was putting paper down the chimney of the kerosene lamp; the pills are good for both, I dare for say, they cure almost all the diseases in the cornucopia.'

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"Intemperance," said Mrs. Partington, solemnly, with a rich emotion in her tone, "is like an after-dinner speech; at the same time bringing her hand, containing the snuff she had just brought from the box, down upon her knee, while Lion, with a violent sneeze, walked away to another part of the room. "Intemperance is a monster with a good many heads, and creeps into the bosoms of families like any conda or an alligator, and destroys its peace and happiness forBut, thank Heaven, a new Erie has dawned upon the world, and soon the hydrant-headed monster will be overturned! Isn't it strange that men will put enemies into their mouths to steal away their heads?" "Don't you regard taking snuff as a vice?" we asked innocently."If it is," she replied, with the same old argument, "it's so small a one that Providence won't take no notice of it; and, besides, my oil factories would miss it so!" Ah, kind old heart, it was a drunkard's argument.

ever.

"What is the matter with Mrs. Jenks, doctor?" asked Mrs. Partington, as Dr. Bolus passed her house. She had been watching him for half an hour through a chink in the door, and people who detected the end of a nose thrust out of the chink aforesaid stopped an instant to look at it, strongly inclined to touch it with varicose veins, mem," replied the and see what it was. 'She is troubled old lady; "well, that accounts for her doctor, blandly. "Do tell!" cried the very coarse behavior, then and it isn't any fault o' her'n, arter all, poor woman, has very coarse veins, what can one 'cause what is to be will be, and, if one expect? Ah, we are none of us better than we ought to be!" "Good-morning, mem," said Dr. Bolus, as he turned away, better than we ought to be!" What an and the old lady shut the door. "No mission! The little front entry heard it, original remark, and how candid the adand the broad stair that led to the chamber heard it, and Ike heard it, as he sat in the kitchen daubing up the old lady's Pembroke table with flour and paste, in an attempt to make a kite out of a choicely-saved copy of the Puritan Recorder. We are no better than we ought to be "-generally.

IKE AFTER THE OPERA.

Since the night when Ike went to the opera, he has been, as Mrs. Partington said, crazy, and the kind old dame has been fearful lest he should become " non pompous mentus, through his attempt at imitating the operations." The morning after the opera, at the breakfast table, Ike handed over his cup, and in a soft tongue sang:

"Will you, will you, Mrs. P.,
Help me to a cup of tea?"

The old lady looked at him with surprise, his conduct was so unusual, and for a moment she hesitated. He continued in a far more impassioned strain: