Mark Twain's Honeymoon

In opening kis entertainment in Buffalo tho other evoning, Mark Twain eaid:- "I notico many changes sicce I was a citizen of BuffaLo fourteen or fifteon years ago. I miss the face3 of manv of m3: oíd friends. Xhey hae gone to tlie tomb- to the gallows ■ to tho Whito IIouso. Thus f ar the rest of us have escaped, but be suro our own tmn is coming. Ovor us, with awful certainty, hang? ono or another of these fates. Therefore, that we bo secure against orrors, the wise arnong us will preparo for theni all. This word of admonition may bo suflicient: let us pass to cheerf ulier things. "I remember one circumstance of bygono times with great vividness. I arrived here after dark on a February evening in 1870 with my wife and a largo company of frieDds, when I had been a husband but twenty-four hours, and they put us two in a covered sleigh. anddrovo usup and down and every which way, through all the back streets in Buffalo, until I got ashamed, and said: 'I asked Mr. Slee to get me a cheap boarding house. But I didn't mean that he should stretch economy to the going outside the stato to lind it. ' The f act was tlif.ru was a practical joke to the fore which I didn't know anything about, and all this fooling around was to givo it time to mature. My father-in-law, the late Jarvis Langdon, whom many of you will rememoer, had boen clandestinely spending a fair fortuns upon a house and furnituro in Delawaro Avonne for us, and had kept his secret so well that 1 was the only person thia sido of Niágara falls that hadn't found it out. We reached the house at last, about 10 o'clock and were introduccd to a Mrs. Johnson, tho ostensible landlady. I took a glance around and then my opinión of Mr. Sleo's judgment as a provider of cheap boarding houses for mon who had to work for thöir living dropped to aero. I told Mrs. Johnson there had been an unfortunato mistake. Mr. S!ee had evidently Eupposed I had money, whereas I only had talent,, and so, by her leavo we would abide with her a week, and then she could keep my trunk and we would hunt anotlior place. Xhen the battalion of ambushed friends and relatives burst in on us, out of closets and f rom behineleurtains; tho proporty was delivered over to U3 and the joke revoaled, accompanied with much hilarity. Such jokes as these aro all too scarco in a person's life. That was a really admirable joke, for that house was so coicpletely equipped in every detail - oven to house sorvants and coachman- that there was nothing to do but just sit down and livo in it. Well, the house isn'L ours, now, but (vo've got the coachman yet. All these fifteen years he has been a living aud constant romindor of that pleasant jest. He was a spruce young stripling thon, with his future all before him. He showed himself worthy of high good fortune and it has fallen richly to his lot, bevond his most distempored dreams; ho's got a wife and nine children now. I would not discrimínate. l would not show partiality; I wish you all tho same luck.