'What do you mean, Sir?' she de manded, getting very red in the face. 'Leave this house instantly. 'Madam, i- do not wish you to inter

< I want you to leave this house!' she shrieked. . , < Madam, allow me to explain my ' I will call the police!' she screamed making for the door, and he hastily locked his trunk and hurried ont. Goin.? down the street abou'; two blocks lie saw the lady of the house at the parlor window, and instead of climbing the steps ho stood under the window and politely Sal< Madam, I don't wi3h to even hint that any of the bedsteads in your house are inhabited by bedbugs, but ' _ < What! What's that ?' she exclaimed. < I said that I hadn't the remotest idea that any of the bedsteads iv your house ffere infested by bedbugs,' he replied. •Take yourself out of this yard ! she shouted, snatching a tidy off the back of a chair and brandishing it at him. ' Beg pardon, madam, but I should like (Get out!' she screamed; ' get out, or I'll call the gardener !' ' I will get out, madam, but I wish you understood ' ST-a-w-n! J-a-w-n ! she shouted out ot a side window, but the exterminator agent was out of the yard before John could get around tho house.

Ho seemed discouraged as he walked down the street, but he had travelled less than a block when he saw a stout woman sitting on the front steps of a fineresi dence" fanning herself. * Stout women are always goodnatured, lie soliloquized, as he opened the gate. 'Haven't got anything for the grass horpor sufferers!' she called out as he entered. There was an angelic smile on bis face as ho approached the steps, set his trunk down and said: 'My mission, madam, is even nobler tlian acting as agent for a distressed com mnuity. The grasshopper sufferers do not comprise one-hundreth part of the world's population, while my mission is to relievo tho whole world,' j 'I don't want any peppermint essence, she continued as he started to unlock his trunk.

' Great heavens, madam, do I resemble a peddler of cheap essences ?' he ex claimed. *I am not one. I am here in Detroit to enhance the comfort of the night—to produce pleasant dreims. Let me call your attention to my Sunset Bed bug Exterminator, a liquid warranted to-' , . . ' Bod what ?' she screamed, ceasing to fan her fat cheeks. 'My Sunset Bedbug Exterminator. It is to-day in use in the humble negro cabins on the banks of the Arkansaw, as woll as ia the royal palace of her majesty 'You r-r-raskal! you villyun !' she wheezed; ' how daro you insult me

'Insult, madam, it is a pure matter 'Leave! Gife o-w-t!' she screamed, clutching at his hair, and he had to go out in such a hurry that he couldn't lock the trunk until he reached the walk.

He travelled several blocks and turned several corners before he halted again, and, his smile faded away to a melancholy grin. He saw two or three ragged children at a gato and noticed that the house was old and he braced up and entered. 51 vhants no zoap,' said the woman of the house as he stood in the door.

' Soap, madam, soap ! I have no soap, I noticed that you lived in an old house, and as old houses are pretty apt to be in fested——'

' I vhants no bias, no needles to-da !' she shouted.

' Madam, I am not a peddler of Yankee notions,' he replied. 'I am selling .a liquid prepared only by myself, which is warranted to '

' I vhants no baper gollar3 !' she ex claimed, motioning for him to leave.

' Paper collars ! I have often been mis taken for Shakespeare, madam, but never before for a paper collar pedler. Let me unlock my trunk and show ■' ' I vhants no matches, no dobacco, no zigars !' she interrupted; and her husband came around the corner, and after eyeing the agent for a moment remarked : 'If you don't be quick out of here I shall not have any shoking about it!'

At dusk last night the agent was sitting on a salt barrel in front of a commission house, and the shadows of evening were slowly deepening tlio melancholy look on his face. —Detroit' Fkee Pjress.'

i Bsa'c locality for a pirfumer—the scenter of the city. 'Be jabbers!" snys Pat, who was born on \ the last day of the year, 'had I delayed a bit, where would I been ?' Fringes for ladies dresses .ire unusually rich this year, and will be worn very long— Jong enough to reach on the bottom of a man's pocket probably. | An English doctor asked an old sheik on tho borders of the desert: ' What do you do with sick people when they can't sleep ?' The I Arab replied : 'Wo set them to watch the camels.' Hair-Splitting Piety.—The Jersey city barbers have resolved to stop bair-cutfcin« on Suadaya, but will continue to shave their customers as usual. Ths early bird catches a bad cold, fri temperate winds are apt to get high. JLok of houses are better than house lota,

The Widow in The L.

It had been Mrs. Butterkin's doings, let ting the L. Mr. Butterkin had objected to the proceeding, but mildly, as was becom ing in the good-humored husband of a ' whimmy' wife, so prone to tears, that there seemed some foundation for her pet apprehension that her ' blood was turning to water.' G-rieviously tormented by nerves, she longed for womanly sympa thy, and on Mr. Ebbeson's decease, no thing would, do but his widow should sell her farm and occupy the Butterkin L; for had not iiuth and she had been dear friends from girlhood P After due delibera tion, Mrs. Ebberson came, having first secured a life lease of the building.

A busy little woman was Euth Ebbeson, as she had need be, her intemperate, worthless husband having left her barely enough to make both ends meet. If she would lap tbem comfortably, it must bo by her own exertions with the needle. And as she sat cheerily stitching by her invalid mother's couch, Mrs. Butterkin would often run in with beans to pick over or apples to pare, while of rainy days, obedient to his wife's suggestions, Mr. Butterkin did many a neighborly turn in way of carpentry. The two families were almost as one. Indeed, the letting of the L. seemed a providential arrangement for all parties. It was a relief to Mrs. Ebbe son to be rid of her farm ; it was well that her mother should be wiihin easy access of a physician. Especially was it of ad vantage to Mrs. Butterkin to enjoy cheer ful companionship, and whatever was of advantage to Mrs. Butterkin necessarily affected Mr. Butterkin.

Thus years glided on, bringing mental vigor to the nerve-diseased Mrs. Butter kin. She had never seemed in better health than in that fatal spring when she was prostrated by pneumonia, death slrcken from the first.

' The Lord wills it, Ruth, and I don't feel to murmur,' she whispered, with dying grace ; ' but husband '11 miss me, I know. You'll keep an eyo on him, won't you dear, when I am gone, and make him comfortable ?'

Mrs. Ebbeson sobbed a promise; but after Mr. Butterkin's bereavmenfc she found the covenant embarrassing, for in this sublumary world.of ours a widow who ' keeps her eye ' on a widower challenges unpleasant comment, and little Mrs. Ebbe son deprecated the speech of people. Consequently, though she conscientiously ministered to Mr. Butterkin's comfort, it was in unobtrusive ways not suspected by him, and hardly realized by the niece who kept his house. The door between the two sitting-rooms no longer, as formerly, stood invitingly ajar, but was hasped upon the widow's aide, She never passed through it now, save in the gentleman's absence, when she occasionally assisted the inexperienced Esther in compounding his favourite dishes, or surreptitiously possessed hesrelf of his fine mending. With his wife's demise tho old free-and easy life had ended; They were two dis tinct households, growing farther and farther apart, as the weed upon tbe widow er's hat waxed rusty beneath accumulated months of mourning. It could scarcely have been otherwise. The closed door was but a symbol of the barrier which, in the very nature of things, must exist between the bereaved Mr. Butter kin and the similarly bereaved Mrs. Ebbeson. When a right-hand glove has lost its mate, and a left has met with a like calamity, one naturally desires to fit the remaining two two together, if haply they may make a pair, and the widow shrank sensitively at thought of the neighbours thus mentally ly matching herself and Mr. Butterkin. As far as in her lay she tried to make it apparent to them that the twain were two odd ones, which could by no possibility be mated.

But not so the gentleman in question. That people should gossip never entered his head. If in Eoxanna's lifetime, to please her, he had done her dear Euth frequent neighborly favors, all the more would he do them now that Eoxanna lay cold in death. And as day after day went by, and he felt more] closely drawn to the cheerful, bright-eyed widow, the simple man believed this was solely for his departed wife's sake. She had been dead a year and a day, when Mrs. Ebbe son whisked out upon the door-step one warm July morning to shake the table cloth.

' Oh, my stars !' ejaculated she, looking not into the firmament, but straight earthward at her hens darting hither and thither for the breakfast crumbs. In the midst of the flock bristled two Brahma s, with sullen eyes and feathers on end, clucking for chickens that were not. ' Any thing wrong, Mrs. Ebbeson ?' Mr. Butterkin paused on his way from the barn with the milk.

1 Only these Brahmas, Mr. Butterkin. I've broken 'em up and broken 'em up, but they will set.' (Mrs Ebbeson had been reared in a rural part of New England where hens never ' sit.')

' Well, why not let 'era ?' ' In July P Now, Mr. Butterkin !' ' Then supposing you tie red yarn about their feet ?'

'Why, they'd peck my eyes out.' laughed the widow, dextrously folding the table-cloth in its former creases.

She was sorry the moment she had said it, for Mr. Butterkin at once offered to assist in the girdling process. Why should he not ? Yet as he held the hens, first one and then the other, while she bound about the right leg of each the anti-incubating anklet, she was inwardly agitated, and

could not help being thankful it was early morning, and they were not likely to be seen of passers-by. .No such feeling perturbed Mr. Butter kin. He was honestly glad to help Eoxanna's friend—because she had bco-i her friend, he would have said if he k«.u thought about the matter at all; and in the kindness of his heart he presently asked if the chickens' bran was getting low. He was going to the village; should he call at the mill ?

' Or, if you have any errands, I can take you over as well as not,' he added, as an afterthought, and was mildly bewildered at seeing the sudden flush on her face as she hurriedly answered that she had no errands.

Piaking up':the milk pail, in which the froth had perceptibly settled, he walked away with a troubled expression. He hoped Ruth hadn't any hard feeling to ward him. What could have made her color up so ? And then it occurred to him that though he had asked her often, he was sure, she hud not ridden with him for a long while—not since—why, not since Roxanna died ! and his own face flushed under the dawn of a new idea. Ruth was afraid the neighbors might talk. Strange he hadn't thought of it before. Dear! dear ! what a timid little woman she was!

As he jogged lonesoraely along in the great wagon which used to carry two, and seemed dismally empty with one, he could not banish her from his nv.nd, and ho began gradually to realize how constantly she had been in it of late. What had made her manner so distant these months past? Was it fear of village gossip, or did she really dislike him ? He wished ho knew ; vas, he did wish he knew .' and he jerked the reins, unwittingly wounding the feelings of his faithful roan, conscientiously trotting hor best. Turning in at his own gate, a rebellious clamor from Mrs. Ebbeson's hennery greeted his car. Alas for his vain attempt to overcome maternal instinct! Hardly had he left their sight when the clucking Brahams sought their nest, where the little widow found them bill to bill, the scarlet ankle-tics hidden beneath the straw. Sis times sho dislodged them ; six times they reinstated themselves ; and now at noon there they sat brooding over the pile of bricks she had heaped in their nost,winking their small round eyes at her in lazy triumph! It was too much. Was an immortal woman to be outwitted by a couple of finite hens ? The little widow renewed the conflict, but not da.ing to lay hands again upon the belligerent bipeds, sho resorted to the discreet expedient of poking at them through the open window, thus affording to Mr. Butterkin, as he rounded the the corner, a confused vision of agitated calico dancing about a distracted rake handle.

' "What! setting again, Mrs. Ebbsson ?' The small lady, till then unconscious of the gentleman's proximity, hastily withdrew her head from the window, and looked down in some confusion from her perch on an inverted barrel.

' Yes, thy're setting again ; but it's just as well—just exactly as well,' said she, rather iacohercntly, harrowed by the fear lost she were displaying her ankles.

' Now, now,-we must see about this,' responded Mr Butfcerkin, fishing in his pocket for a ball of twine he had bought that day for stringing the tomatoes, and meanwhile glancing over his shoulder, apparently to assure himself that the orchard was where it should be. He would have liked nothing better than to lift the little widow down, but his instinct told him she would prefer to descend by herself, unobserved, and he was a man capable of self-sacrifice. ' We'll tie the hens to the fence,' he added, presently, conscious of a thrill of delight as he pro nounced the ' we.'

He knew himself better than in the early morning, and could not disguise the fact that he felt a personal satisfaction in entering into even the humblest partner ship with Mrs Ebboson—a satisfaction evidently not shared by the Brahmaa, who, resenting his continued interference, tore his coat mercilessly, it was a jagged rent, from pocket io hem, in his Sunday garment, too, which in Eoxanna's time had never gone to the village on a week day; but who was there now to watch over Mr Butterkin's apparel ? Not Mr Butterkin, surely, to whom the distinctions of dress were but sounding brass and a tiknlmg cymbal.

1 What a wicked, wicked shame !' cried Mrs Ebbeson, in distress. ' But I'll darn it just as well as I can.'

'No, no, thank you ; it's of no conse q U e nce replied Mrs Butterkin, with manly indifference. «Bufc Esther can't mend broadcloth.' • Cant ? You don't say so !' Imbued with the masculine superstition that incapacity with the needle betokens idiocy, Mr Butterkin looked aghast. t j\f 0 ; she's young, you know, and not used to sewing. Besides, I'm responsible for this rent. Let me attend to it, please.'

He removed the garment without a word, his face flushing like moose-berries in Autumn. Not at the thought that, since Esther was incapable, he must be indebted to the widow for past favours with the nee dle—indeed, he would have unblush ingly declared that this was the first occasion since Koxanna's decease that garment of his had needed repair—but he felt a reluctance to being dependent upon Euth for a menial service, when it was now the growing desire of his heart that she should lean upoa him.

Seeing him color, Mrs Ebbeson, out of sympathy, colored too, and such a vivid and lasting crimson, that her mother at dinner mildly chided. her for going out without her bonnet.

p:\sy over his coat that afternoon, Ruth naturally thought of Mr Butterkin, while he; weeding the late turnips, recalled her blushes, and clumsily tried to analyze them. On the whole, he couldn't believe she went so far as to dislike him. And so night came, the mended coat hung in its place, and under the fence the undis couraged Brahmas brooded above imaginary eggs. Next morning, they brooded there still, and there, had they beien his own, might they have continued toibrood, forgotten by Mr Butterkin, who, as his late wife often, said, complainingly, neyor charged his mind with hens; but these especial Brahmas possessed peculiar interest as giving him audience with the charming widow. Accordingly, in. the days that followed, he hovered about the luckless bipeds like a bird of prey. He bought the latest treatise on hens, and patiently tried in succession all the experiments therein suggested for subdue ing the wills of obdurate sitters, Mrs Ebbeson assisting, as in common gratitude she must. This without producing the least effect upon the Brahmas. It was the widow that grew restive, conscious of the absurdity of i\Jr Butterkin's sudden and ostentatious regard for fowls. She knew the very moment when his heart turnod toward her, but whether her's inclined similarly toward him wasn't for her to say till he asked ; yet, coy little woman, shagavo him no chance to put the question. And such is human perversity, the more she seemed not to care for him, so much the more was Mr. Butterkin resolved that she should care for him. Before July was ended he had fully made up his mind to propose, inwardly assured that his late wife would sanction the proceeding, not if she were returned to the fiesh, ofcours? —in that cnao he could not ask it—but as a shade she would not wish to stand between him and her beloved Ruth. Of Mr. Ebbeson's shade he scarcely thought, doubting, perhaps, whether a man on earth destitute of moral suta tance could at death attain the dignity of a heavenly shadow. But there is a vast difference between purposing to propose and propos ing. Mr. Butterkin learned this to his chargin after repeated abortive attemps at giving his frequent interviews with Mrs. Ebbeson a sentimental turn. At each advance of his she sped away as shyly as a girl, and in the secure retreat by her mother's couch was as unapproach able as if seated aloft in the chair of Cassiopea. In regard to a written dec laration of love, Mr Butterkin would sooner have attempted an essay on protoplasm. August found him still waiting for an opportunity. He, usually so prompt and unhesitating—the first selectman of tho town! The better he loved the widow, tho more ho despised himself, till one soft twilight, when tho zephyrs were whispering tender thoughts to tho leaves, he rose with desperate resolve, and strode boldly round to the open door of the L. Mrs. Ebbeson sat just within the sitting room, but he was tx> crafty to enter.

'If you'll kindly step this way a moment,' he said,' IVeanother experiment we might try on those hens.' Bat having lured her to him, the next words were wide of the mark :

' I came to ask—that is, I wanted to know —in. fact, I wanted to have a serious talk with you.'

She belivcd in free will, he in foro ordination; but his ' ssrious talk' would i! >':, savor of theology,- she know. She nervously essayed to confine it to poultry. 'lloally, Mr. Butfcerkin, you tako too inuoh trouble about those hens. They—' ' Nothing I do for you, Euth, is a trouble.'

' They're fairly rheumatic from standing in that barrel of water, and, for all that, they're not cured of setting.' ' As I was saying, Euth—' ' Don't say auy more aboafc'em, Mr. Butterkin, I beg.'

' I'm not speaking about hens, Ruth.' Here Mr. Butterkin wiped his brow with his handkerchief —a widower's grimuiy kerchief. ' I came to talk about you. Don't go. ¥our mother didn't call. Why won't you marry me, Euth ?'

She gave him a dozen reasons on the spot; but the fallacy of feminine logic being proverbial, Mr. Butterkin was not the man to heed them. At least this I know ; before the snow came the window Ebbeson had become Mrs. Butterkin, and frosty evenings she and her husband might have been seen carefully sheltering two late broods of chickens, for in the end the Bralimas had their way.—[Hakpbks Bazaar. [

Our Parish Clerk.

BY JOHN BLA.CKMAN

[Concluded from our last.]

Ojst closing the letter of Mr Twister, the old man fainted, and fell heavily on the lloor of the deserted bedroom, with the word ' scoundrel' on his tongue. Hearing tlie noise, Mrs Chinny, who was deeply engaged in her bedroom in arranging her curls, ran forward with her hair partly in paper, and was surprised to see Chinny full length upon the boards, gasping, as though in the last throes of mortal struggle with his snuff running through a hole in bis vest,

' Chinny, dear Chinny,' she exclaimed, ' what is the matter, are you very ill, love ?'

Chinny raade no reply for a time; she ran for water, and bathed his forehead, then applied vinegar, then she gently put her smelling-salts to his blooming nose. Presently he breathed freer, and at length opened his grey eyes, and heaved a long and piteous sigh.

1 Chinny, my Chinny,' said the dis tracted wife; ' tell me, tell me, what has happened,'

'Look!' gasped the prostrate man, 'read that letter, and you will know all.' Mrs Chinny, in her excitement, had not previously observed the epistle of Solomon to her Charles, but when she road, it, she burst into a violent fit of sobbing, and half articulated the words 'undutiful girl' ' impertinent sn:>b,' and fell upon the bed. ' What shall we do ?' said Chinny, *it may not be too late to prevent this terrible catastrophe ; we may yet snatch our child from the clutch of a shoemaker, as a bran from the burning.'

Chinny opened the window and looked over the fields. There was a calmness, and serene beauty resting on the happy landscape, which seemed to rebuke the passion that raged like a troubled sea in Chinny's breast. It was Sunday, as seen only in the outskirts of a coun try village, where sky, and bird, and beast, seem to breathe in harmony with the gentle character of the lay. The birds sang their early anthem in the trees, and the water of the narrow streamlet, hard by, made a noise as of a hidden brook, as it murmured between the mossy stones. The garden was redolant of the breath of roses and honey suckle, and the Sabbath-like features of nature was evidently acting favourably upon the old clerk's feelings, while he was cogitating. Mrs Chinny brought a small drop of brandy, and, with a fond wife's ' do dear,' induced Chinny to drink it, as doubting Eve induced Adam to taste of the forbidden fruit. As soon as he had drank, he turned his eyes from the rose trees oh to the sandy, garden path, and discovered Twister's footprints in the sand, for on that Sunday morning, he omitted to rake out those evidences which he had on previous occasions been careful to obliterate. Chinny's rage, warmed by the brandy, now became intense and furious, and he rushed down stairs while poor Mrs Chinny, in trying to prevent him from committing suicide, tore the lap off his brown coat. Instead however, of going to the musical river for. a final ducking, he went to the Inn yard, and learned from the ostler, Joe Berry, that Twister and Martha had started at four o'clock that morning to the little village of Clewer, within sight of Windsor Castle, and by this time, they were made one bone and one flesh. The old clerk stamped wifck rage until, he was red in the face, and was only restored to partial sanity by a largo pinch of scotch snuff.

' My good man,' said Joe Berry, patting Chinny on the shoulder; your eccentrici ties of temper won't alter things; they are married by this time, and you can't uumarry them ; go home and calm your self, and get a good supper ready to welcome tho happy couple on their return into Surrey, and welcome them with a bravo ' yah-men.'

' Bah, 1 responded the old clerk, and at this moment the bells chimed their in vitations to the village church, but Chinny^s place in the clerk's pew was filled that day by a friend whose ' Amen,' was clear and distinct, and a decided improve ment on tho 'yah-men' of the past. Ohiuny resumed his position on the following Sunday, and filled it with credit until the day of his death.

'The wedding party did not return until the following evening, as Twister deter mined to visit his uncle at Stoke Pones, the little Buckinghamshire village immortalized ie Gray's 'Elegy in a country Church yard,' and where they ate a great dinner in peace with two or three select friends.

On returning to the shoemaker's cottage, which Twister had duly furnished for his partner for life, Martha sent a note to her father, asking his love and forgiveness, but the old man was not so easily reconciled; he returned no answer, and did not forgive her until he was on his dying bed. Mr and Mrs Twister, however, managed to get on very well by thrift and perseve rance, without the old clerk's monetory assistance; they even saved money, and in course of time bought the house which they had previously rented, and three acres of meadow-land. Twister proved himself to be a correct shoemaker and a true husband; and at last, twelve years after the marriage, the old clerk fell ill with the dropsy, and consented to see his daughter, but still hesitated to forgive her natural error, to which he neverwould have consented. The Rev. Ernest Good win, who attended him in hia last hours, with Mrs Chinny, and Martha in tears by his bed, told him chat according to the petition which the master had prepared, and which he repeated daily, he was bound to forgive his daughter, or it would be inconsistent to utter the prayer ' Eor give us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. Tho old may nodded and groaned. ' I forgive the girl, but she must not do it again,' and in proof of his sincerity, he made a codicil to his will, and left a freehold cottage, situated at Lunninghill, to his daughter, Martha Twister, the wife of Solomon Twister, shoemaker, of the parish of Windlesham, in. tho county of Surrey,

Evening Btar Supplement, June 54 9 IQ^G