Effects Of A Joke

Aleck Stephens has got so he can sit up again, and though not able to sit in Congress, he can tell a good story. He explained the other night apropos of the " woinan's temperance war " - how the war started. When the Georgia delegation was on its way to the Cincinnati Convention in 1856, they carne by the way of Washington, and Toombs gave them a dinner. Among those present were Howell Cobb, Gen. Gardner, of Port Hudson farae, and Stephen A. Douglas. After the flowing bowl had been passed about frequently and liberally, and the three or four prominent Presidential candidates in the party had got well warmed up, Gen. Garduer proposed a toast : " Here's hoping you may all live to be Presidenta of the United States." AU rose, and as he raised the glass to his lips Douglas turnod to Cobb and said : " üur triend wishes you a very long life, Mr. Cobb." Cobb sat his glass down on the table, glared at the Little Giant an instant, and then joined in the drink and laugh that went round at his expense. " But," said Aleck, tenderly lifting his bad leg over ais leg that is not quite so bad, " Cobb never forgot or forgave that bon mot. He treasured it up all through Buchanan's adininistratiou, and it was often the cause of insidious advice from the Cabinet officer to the President prejucicial to the groat Senator. And it rankled in Cobb's bosoui when he planned the tactics that proven tod Douglaa getting the Charleston nomination by breaking up the convention. It did more than any other personal thing to split the Democratie party, to elect Lincoln, to precipitate the war, and to stand us whore we are." ' - ui - ii A Pcoria naturalist, in attempting to warm the ears of a frozen wasp over a gas jet, discovered that the tail of the insect thawed out first, and worked with a rapidity that was as astonishing as tho hidoous profanity of tho naturalist, who held the insect by the tail while thus oxperimenting. A man in South Horo, Vt, who had a gun which scattered shot badly, saw an advertisement in a paper offering to send information of a method of preventing such scattering for flfty cents. He forwarded the money and reeoived instruction " to put in only ouo shot." An Ohio mathematician has dissovored that one man dies from the use of alcohol every seven minutes, and that those who have diedfrom its effeots duving tho last flfty years would bridge the Amerioan continent from ocean to octan, ollowing three feet to each body. ,