Cooley's Conundrum

From the San Francisco uali. Cooley's raemory is exceedingly treacherous, and it often gets him into trouble. The other night he was at a tea-party at Sinith's, aud while the company sat around the supper-table, Cooley suddenly concluded he would ejoct a conundrum he had heard somewhere, and so, in an interval of silence, he said : " I've got a pretty good conuudrura I'd like you to guêss. Can anybody teil me why a druggist who keeps his bottles down-stairs is like a certain kind of malician ? Everybody at once began to guess the answer, and Cooley aat there for a moment smiling. Presently, however, he thought he would get the answor ready in order to give it, and to his intense alarm found that he had forgotton it. He began to feel warm. He thought the object over with all his might, and he nearly had the answer several times, but it always eluded him. Then he becarae warmer, and the perspiration began to stand out upon his forehead. The company gave it up one after another, and, as'they did bo, each one asked Cooley what the answer was. Cooley smiled a ghastly kind of a smile, as if he was keeping it back to torment them, but the singular redness of his face and his pe culiar behavior attracted the attention of everybody, and the more they looked at him the redder he got, and the more profuse becaine his perapiration. " Come Mr. Cooley," said the host, "we are all waiting for the answer." "Out with it Cooley," said auother. "Cooley, we can't be happy until we have the answer to that conundrum," remarked a third. Cooley would have given millions at that moment to have bidden in the bowels of the Mammoth Cave, out of sight. At last he exclaimed : "The- ah- the- ah- fact is, that- ah -the affair - that is, the conundrum - the whole thing, your honor, is a joke. There is no auswer to it, your honor." Then everybody said they didn't see anything very amusing about jokes of such a character, and Smith frowned ; while Cooley heard the next man say to his neighbor that tte man (Cooley) -must be drunk. Then Cooley rose suddenly from the table and bolted through thu front door. About two hours afterward, while in bed, he all at once recuembered the answer, and he instantly aróse and went round to Smith 's. After ringing he door-bell for half an hour, old Smith ut his head out of the bedroom window. " I know it now,1' shouted Cooley ; " I cnow it. It's because he has a vial-inellar!" "Go to thunder !" ejaculated Smith, and ie shut the window with a slam and went o bed. And now the Cooleysdontspeak o the Smiths, and old Cooley carries the answers to his couundrums written on his hirt-cuffs when he goes into company, so as to be certain that he will have them when they are wanted.