Year: 1876

| down on the table.
Il don't think that confoandei cal


has much of an appetite, y lie replied


feeling his nose to see if il was bro
ken.


Have you been fighting?' she in
quired, with alarm, looking at IN
torn and dirty clothes. his skinned
nose and generally banged up appear
ance


''Fighting!-no. I've been feeding
the calf" he answered pulling the hay
out of his hair.


why you look as if you had been
rolling in the barn yard" she said, as
she stuck piece of the plaster on his
nose.


He did not reply, but went up to his
room, washed patch of dirt off his
cheek, combed the cobwebs and hay
seed out of his hair, brushed his clothes
sewed on a button or two, and sat
down and pondered over the whole af-
fair till the dinner bell rang.


81 guess what the calf requires is to
be taken out in the open dir, suggested
Mrs, Griggs, at dinner, after sympa-
tizing with Mopps on his sears and
bruises.


Mopps thought to himself that what
the brute most required was a fifteen
inch cannon, loaded with solid shot,
placed within two feet of his head, and
a man to fire it off; but he said, as if
he had been revolving in his mind the
same idea as her:


Exactly, that's just it"


''Weil, if l only dare ask you to lead
him out for little while this afternoon.
l know it would do him good" she
said, appealingly.


Mopps felt convinced that he knew
of n club receipt, that would have
done the beast twice as much good,
but he smiled hypocritically and said,
as if it was the happiest thought that
ever emanated from a woman's fertile
brain:


'1'lI do it with pleasure.


After dinner he lit a cigar and went
back to the barn, punished the calf
over into a corner with the rake han
die, united the rope, and dragged him
out into the garden, where the obsti-
Fate animal positively declined to
promenade, and hung back with a
force that would have required team
of oxen, harnessed to him, to have led
him about with any degree of satisfac-
ton.


''Well, you're a pleasant pet, you
brute!" exclaimed Mopps, hauling on
the rope till he was red in the face and
his hands blistered.


The calf started at last with a rush
that nearly tore his arms out of socket,
drove his false teeth through his tongue
and lifted his feet clear off the ground
for minute and a half. The calf
once going, cantered gaily away, while
Mopps at the other end of a twenty
feet rope, which he had taken the pre-
caution to wind around his wrist. gal
loped madly in his rear, touching the
ground occasionally with his toes, as if
it was a matter of form, and by no
means necessary.


At the second turn around the gar
den, n dog crawled under the fence,
and joined in the race, and the speed
became something frightful. A hen,
with Il dozen young chicks, crossed
their path; she will have to grow a
new tail, and only have to provide
worms for the three survivors of her
brood.


Mrs. Griggs, who had been watching
him, with alarm, from a window, came
running out to his relief, and tried to
head off the calf by shaking her apron
at him, but the brute SHE'D off, made
n circuit, wound the rope affectionately
around her feet, and tilted her head
first over wheelbarrow. Just then,
Mopps, came skipping along, turned
somersault over the wheelbarrow, and
for the next few minutes there was n
surging, Hopping, fioundering, and
badly mixed mass of wheelbarrow, pro-
family, striped stockings, feminine
shrieks, pantaloons, rope, back hair,
bootlegs, bushes and bruises.


When they did succeed in extricating
themselves and crawled out from un-
der the barrow, they returned to the
house, and devoted the rest of the day
to cumming adhesive plaster over
themselves, and thinking what a mis-
cradle world this would be TO live in
without arnica-


A man was hired to put the calf in
the bal Ii, and feed him until the own
er's return. Mrs. Griggs is still slightly
lame, and Mopps wears bandage on
his head.