Were Told Once And Again

   Novelist Dean Howells, in his Ypsilanti lecture, declared that truth should be the basis of fiction. He has the right idea. Now, if some person were close enough in the confidence of Mr.Howells to suggest that he put the idea in practice, his novels might be restrained from further assault and battery on the truth.

   The polite Thompson, of the Dexter Leader, with a graceful bow, remarks: "If our readers will pardon us for introducing a personal matter, we will state that our pocketbook looks as if an elephant had stepped upon it. " Said a Frenchman to his lady companion at a table, "will you be so kind. Madame, as to introduce me to ze lady on ze right " "Why?" replied Madame, "has she got your heart?" "O, no, but she have her chair on my foot."

   Sam Guerin, of Chelsea,  lent a hand to help pull a hog out of the scalding tank. Then Sam and the hog changed conditions. As the hog came out, Sam went in. He is pretty badly cooked, but will survive.

   Miss Cole, a Lima, Washtenaw girl, placed her lips to the faucet of a roadside water tank and drank from it. The faucet contained a nest of spiders which she swallowed and became critically ill. Several days later one of the spiders, still alive, was found between the upper lip and teeth. The young lady is improving, and will probably live to spin a web for some of the pastoral swains of Lima.

   Elisha E. Sayal is a jetty-locked Persian with a shine in his eye like the back of a pinch-bug. He comes from Oroomah to Ann Arbor to study medicine, being a Christian convert and Bible expounder in his native country. The unconverted of his country will assault a preacher, but they stand in awe of a doctor, so Elisha E. Sayad he would become both, and wear the doctor as an armor for the preacher.

   Senator Frye's Philippine expansion advocacy, before the Ann Arbor students last week, was based upon two fundamental principles -- We should take the Philippines for our merchants' sake". We should take them for Christ's sake. our exporters need the trade, and the Filipinos the gospel. Expansion of trade and divine redemption, according to Frye, are in cahoots, in the Philippine policy, expansion getting all the preferred stock.

    Gov. Pingree has just ordered another prison delivery at Jackson, three additional convicts receiving unconditional pardons. It looks as though "the old man" intends running for governor again.

    Two university doctors have taken the contract for furnishing a lady with a silver half jawbone, the condition being that the patient is to keep the other half from wagging during the operation. It is sincerely hoped that the attempt will succeed, though no one doubts the ability of the surgeons to perform their part.

    E. Downer, of Chelsea, shies a ripe tomato of the vintage of 1829, at the ear of a Jackson man who asserts that he introduced tomatoes in the United States in 1829. Downer downs the Jacksonite with the statement that tomatoes grew on his father's farm in 1925.

   Karl Harriman, son of Judge Harriman, of Ann Arbor, has been known as the Kenneth Herford of the Free Press. He will now be known as Ben edict, having recently wedded with Miss Edith Morse Lee, of Detroit, the ceremony being performed by Rev Gardam. Good angels guard 'em. Harriman is one of the few fiction writers who has ever trained truth to execute. a double backward somersault and drop on its feet.

    Sometimes we are at a loss to know whether anything at all is true. A dog got into the circuit court of Washtenaw last week --- that is, vicariously. A lawyer represented the dog. The dog went out to greet two hunters and met  with an accident that resulted in his death. Several witnesses swore they saw one Gauntlett shoot the dog. Then came Albert Holcomb, who swore that he himself alone killed the dog, and that Gauntlett did not shoot ; and the further fact was sworn to that there was only one hole through the dog, which seemed to bear out Holcomb's confession. Where there is such disagreement in direct testimony we wouldn't vote to hang a dog, ou circomstantial evidence.