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VOLUME VL “MOTHER'S FOOL.” •• ’Tin plain to me,” said the farmer's wife, uThese boys will make their mark iu life; They never were made to handle a hoe, And at once to college they ought to go. Yes, Join, and Henry ’tis clear to me, Great men iu this world are sure to be; But Tom, lie’s little above a fool So John and Henry must go to school.” “Now. really, wife,” quoth Farmer Brown, As lie sets his mug of cider dowr, i< Tom does more work in a day for mo Than both of his brothers do in three. Book learniu’ will never plant beans or com, Nor hoe potatoes, sure as you’re born— Nor mend u roil of broken fence; For my part, give me common sense.” But his wife the roost was bound to rule, And so the ‘ ‘boys” were sent to school; While Tom, of course, was left behind, For his mother said he had no mind. Five years at school the students spent, Then each one into business wt nt. John learned to play the flute and fiddle, And parted his hair, of eouise, iu the middle; Though his brother looked rather higher than ho And Lung out his shingle—“lL Brown, M. D.” Meanwhile, nt home, their brother Tom Had taken a “notion” into his head, Though he said not a word, but trimmed bis trees, And hoed his corn and sowed his peas; But somehow, either by “hook or crook,” lie managed to read lull many a book. Well, the war broke out, and “Captain Tom,” To battle a hundred soldiers led; And when the enemy’s flag went down. Came marching home as “General Brown.” But he went to work on the farm again, Planted his corn and sowed his grain, Repaired the house and broken fence. Ami people said be had “common sense,” Now common sense was rather rare, And the State House needed a portion there; So our “family dunce ” moved into town, Aud the people called him “Governor Brown And bis brothers, that went to the city to school, Game home to live with mother’s fool.” ... . i nilnriim• ■imnuiiT—Mwi ttljc Mm i man THE WEDDING GIFT. fFiom the French of Jacques Porohat.] In the village of Mont Cheri, where all the women are pretty, not one was to ba compared to Rosdbine; and though she was the poorest, all the young men sought her in marriage. Her companions were also very impa ir nt that she should make a choice; for while Rosalbine remained unmar ried, ihey were neglected, and no wedding could take place in the vil lage. Bosal bine’s father, finding himself pressed to select a son-in-law from among his many young neignbors, none ol whom he wished to disoblige promised that he would bestow his daughter on him who would find and bring to her this wedding gift: ‘‘That w'*ich on earth is the most ancient, the least durable, the most admired, and the worst treated; which speaks without a voice, and is useful after its death.’ When the father had thus spoken, all the suitors pondered awhile over the riddle, and then went in difierent directions to seek what had been re* quired of them. Some retired into deep solitude, to meditate on this great mystery; others went from place to place, asking all whom they met it they could tell them what ‘on earth was the most ancient, the least dura, ble, the most admired and the worst treated; which speaks without a voice, and only useful after its death ? ’ The passer-by laughed in their faces, and went their way; and those who h and banished themselves to soli tude were equally fir from unraveling the mystery. They ml bed their fore heads, pulled their hair, and beat their heads; but they could not make the desired truth come forth. Some con sulted the fortune tellers, who found themselves as embarrassed as the in quirers, Who was in deep sorrow while the young men made diligent search?. It was the beautiful Rosalbine. She trembled lest the secret should be discovered by someone other than Masael, whom she loved, and who loved her. If she had known what it was her father required, she would not have hesitated to impart it to her lover; but she was ignorant as the others of the secret on which depend'' cd her fate. As one can indeed imag ine, Masael passionately wished to discover the treasure; but he did not shut himself m solitary retreat; nor did he waste his time in questioning the pass* r-by or in consulting the mas gieiaris or fortune-tellers. lie was a good and honest boy, the son of a poor widow, and he did not cease to work a single day for the support of his mother; but at the same time lie sought silent'y to divine the happy secret. Rosalbine’s father received frequent visits from his young neighbors, wh<> came, with an air of triumph, to offer what they imagined to be the wedding gift. The pretty one trembled and waited, with her eyes fixed on her father, for the fatal word, and only | breathed freely after hearing the in variable reply — ‘lt is not that! ’ And the lovers, after a mosi hum ble obeisance to the ungrateful Rosal bine, would retire with tbeir gifts, and with sad faces. One day, while Masael working in the field, a magnificent butterfly align t led uear him and attracted his atten tion. This butterfly was unlike any Ihe had ever seen. It was of extraor- Idiuary size, and had blue, heart-shaped I wings, bordered with red. On its I head was a kind of crest, which one ■ might have mistaken for a cluster of Idiajnonds, After giving the young man time to ■admire it leisurely, it took flight and L rcled four times around his head, as if to salute him. The young villager (having bat one thought in his mind, (addressed the wonderful creature, and ■said : ‘Beautiful butterfly! art thou a kmd (fairy who takes pity on my trouble, EASTMAN, GEORGIA, THURSDAY, MAROT 7, IS7S. and comes to tell me what I so long to know? If I have guessed rightly, come, I pray thee, and alight on my hand, and b‘* assun and thy confidence will not be abused/ He had scarcely ceased talking and hardly reached out Lis right hand be fore the butterfly rested upon it It moved its brilliant wings, and looked steadily at the young man, who ex claimed: ‘Thou hast understood me, beautilul butterfly! Canst thou end my troubles ?’ The butterfly made an affirmative sign with its pretty head and blending body. ‘Wilt thou be my guide?’ said Masael quickly, already full of hope. ‘I will follow thee till I have found the treasure for which Rosalbine’s father asks/ When had ceased to speak, the but terfly flew away slowly, in order that Masael might follow, towards the meadow, where it alighted on the first flower. ‘Patience / said the son of the wid ow to himself. *A butterfly cannot give up its habits. I will wait and folbw when it changes its place/ But the butterfly did not move, and Masael repeated his prayer. Then his guide fluttered about the flower and suddenly flew toward heaven, circling like a lark, and came down like an arrow to the flower it had just left ‘What / cried Masael, ‘are we not to leave here? Amiable fairy, I be seech thee, let us hurry on our way. Show me what there is on earth the most ancient, the least durable, the f While uttering these words he had a sudden inspiration; he smote his forehead and cried out: ‘I have found it! It is even this/ ,Ad running to the flower, which the butterfly had left, as if giving it up to him, he plucked it and pressed it to his heart. The butterfly having alight ed on a neighboring flower, Masael gathered that also. In a few moments they had been over the mcadow r , and the young man noticed that his guide, never alighting twice on the same sort of blossom, bad arranged for him, with perfect, a bouquet of field flow ers, the most beautiful ever 3eeu. Arriving at the eod of the meadow, the butterfly flew four times around his protege’s head, and circling up wards in the air, disappeaied in the sky. Full of joyous h pc, Masael ran to the house of Rosalbine’s father, and presented the bouquet to the young daughter. To the fatner, who was already smiling he said: ‘The flowers preceded the fruits on the earth; nothing is more ancient than flowers— nothing is less durable; one admires them above all things, and one treats them cruelly; the hand tears them from their stems; the scythe cuts them without mercy; they speak without a voice, for they have for the lover a mute language. Finally, in order that they may be useful, the hand of the botanist, the teeth of the cattle, and the steel of the mower, must take their life!’ Rosa!bine's father said to Masael: ‘Be thou my son-in-law; tor thou bringest to my daughter the wedding gift I have asked for her/ —[Wonder World. A Country Editor’s Way. The sayings and doings of the coun try editor are not so notable now-a days as in the old times when rural papers were rarely conducted on a cash basis, and the plaints of the worried fellow on the tripod, who ac cepted cordwood or dried pumpkins, or almost anything eatable or saleable, lor subscriptions, were frequent and painful and free. Men in desperate straits are afflicted with strange whimsies, and the expressions of those disgusted literary lights were often strikingly original and exceedingly grotesque. Now, however, things are different, and rarely does the coun try editor excel in his old specialty. A reccDt case over in Kentucky, where an editor “spoke right out/' is therefore exceptionably notable. He was walking upon the street, enjoying the balmy spring atmosphere, and wondering whether, in the year to corne, his paper would be established upon a, paying basis, when he became aware of a sudden giggling and tit tering behind him. He turned and saw the source of the merriment. Two well-dressed ladies, prominent in the town, were in his rear, and laugh ing heartily. Much to the poor edi tor’s surprise, their attention seemed especially directed to some peculiarity about his exterior. Then he divined, with a thrill of mortification, the cause of their amusement. twisting and writhing, while grinding out mental productions, seated in a hard-bottomed chair, had told upon the frail texture of his pantaloons, and the cloth I.ad finally yielded. The ed- wife—good, thrifty woman—had repaired the damage as best she could; but, because new cloth matches poor ly with the old, the evidences of her handiwork were all too plainly visible. Hence the crnel laughter of the ladies behind the country editor. The poor man fled to his office in shame. Then his manhood asserted itself, and he sat down upon the patch and wrote some thing for the paper. His next issue contained this paragraph: ‘As we walked past a couple of la dies on the street the other day, one of them observed a large patch on our pants, and made merry over the discovery. Well, we do wear old clothes, it is true; but we might aflord to treat ourselves to better ones if the husband of the woman we refer to would come to the office and pay us $lB, which he has been owing for a long time for subscription and job work/ ‘Doubtless, 4 said a logical old Eng lish clergyman, ‘God might have made a belter berry than the strawberry, but doubtless, God never did/ Doubt less s ime country editor might make a point more neatly, but doubtless none ever did. If that little bill of $lB was not settled up within a week af ter the appearance of Lis paper, then there is no virtue in pungency. And the occurrence is a recent and literal one. True Hospitality. True hospitality is a thing that touches the heart and never goes be yond the circle of generous impulses. Entertainment with the truly hopita ble man means more than the mere feeding of the body; it meins an in terchange of soul gifts. Still it should have its laws, a* all tilings good must have laws to govern them. The obligation to be hospitable is a sacred one, emphasized by every mor al code known to the world, and a practical outcome of the second great commandment. There should never be a guest in the house whose presence requires any considerable change in the domestic economy. However much the circumstances of business or mutual interests may de mand in entertaining a stranger, he should never be taken into the family circle unless he is known to bo wholly worthy of a place in that sanctum sanctorum of social life; but when once a man is admitted to the home fireside he should oe treated as if the place had been his always. The fact of an invitation gives neith er host nor guest the right to be mas ter of the other’s time, and does not require even a temp nary sacrifice of one’s entire individuality or pursuits. A man should never be so much himself as when he entertains a friend. To stay at a friend's house beyond the time for which one is invited is to perpetrate a social robbery. To abide uninvited in a friend's house is as much a misdemeanor as borrowing his coat without his per mission. It is debasing the coin of friendship to mere dross when a man attempts to make it pay his hotel bills. The fiwet of tAvo men having the same occupation and interests in life gives to neither a social right to the other‘s bed and board. A traveling minister has no more right to go un invited to a fellow-preael)er‘s house than a traveling shop-keeper or shoe maker has to go uninvited to the house of his fellow craftsman. Men are or dained to the ministry as preachers, teachers, and pastors, and not as pri vate hotel-keepers. They who go into the country in summer as uninvited guests of their farmer friends should be rated as so cial brigands, and treated accordingly. These few social maxims are by no means to be considered as a complete code of laws. Others quite as impor tant will spring up out of the person al experience of every reader of this article, and the justice and equity of all may be tested by that infallible standard of society—the golden rule. There can be no true hospitality that in practice is a violation of this rule; and you may safely rest assured that you have given the fullest and most perfect measure Of entertainment to your neighbor if you have done ex actly as yon would be done by. A Terrible Liar. “He was the crfullest liar I ever seen,’’ said Cooley O’Leary, as we returned from his friend’s funeral. “W.y, he told me that he lived on a small island in the Pacific ocean on which there was a volcano. And he said there was an active demand out in that region for watermelons, so he went into the business of raising them. And lie said one year his whole crop failed except one melon, and that kept on growing at such a fearful rate that it crowded him oil" the Lowland and up the side of the volcano, which gen erated steam and caused an explosion which blew up the whole concern to atoms, and shot him four hundred miles out to sea, where he was picked up by a whaler. He used to tell that one great mistake of his life was that he didn’t drive a plug in the crater of the volcano so as to make it water tight, and then slice ojen the water melon, and come sailing home on the half-shell. He would lie. He said that once he was cast away on an ice-berg, with no baggage but a pair of skates and a fishing-pole. But he skated aiound until he came across a dead whale, frozen into the ice. S> he took off his shirt—it was night for six months that year up there—tore it into strips for a wick, run the strips through a bamboo fishing rod, stuck the rod into the fat of the wale, and l*t other end. He said it burned splen didly, and the iceberg reflected the light so strongly that it was bright as day for forty miles around, and one vessel ran into the iceberg, thinking it was a light-house. He said be sda the iceberg to the captain for $15,000, and the captain split it up and took it home and made 200 per cent, profit disposing of it to ice companies. Lie ? well, sir, he beat any man I ever came across. He told me that once, out in Nevada, a mountain lion attacked him, with his mouth wide open. He had presence of mind enough to grab it by the tongue and pull. The lion roared with pain, but lie did his level best pulling, and pretty soon the tongue began to give and the tail to shorten, and directly out they came, the tail and the tongue in one contin uous string. He said he had ’em at home, and he showed ’em to me; but my be’ief is they were only three or four cow-hides and a bull’s tail dove tailed together. lie was astonishing os a truth crusher. lie said he served on a gun boat during the Avar Avhich was very small and light, while the mortar on deck was very large and heavy, and he said the first time they tried to fire a fifteen-inch shell, the shell remained stationary, while the recoil Avas so great that it fired the gunboat for miles up the strem and landed it in a j tree. He Avas a liar, but he’s dead; I reckon he’ll catch it ” There was do doubt about it; Mr. O’Leary was very successful as a con structor of energetic works of fiction. Gravity is no more evidence of wis dom than a paper collar is of & shirt. ♦*♦> . A fool seeketh to pick a fly from a mule's leg. A wise man lettetli out the job to the lowest bidder. Those who have tried it say kissing is like a sewing machine, because it seems good. — "W hen a young lady hems a hand kerchief for a rich bachelor, she prob ably sews that she may reap. * A kind w'ord spoken to a husband go farther than a broomstick or a flir tation, 1 says a woman of experience. Old minds are like old horses; you must exercise them if you wish to keep them in working order. If the man who writes anonymous letters has never stolen sheep, it is probably the fault of the sheep. This engine won't work, said a fire man to the chief of a fire department. No, sir, replied the chief, it was made to play. - ~♦ An editor, referring to air-tight cof fins, says: ‘No person having once tried one of these coffins will ever use any other.* Gians, where do you live ?' 'Across de river mit de turnpike by der school as you go up mit der right hand on de odder side/ In Virginia, when a young lady de clines an offer to convey her home, the lover asks permission to sit on a fence and see her go by. Mrs. Partington says she may bo old now, but she has seen the time when she was just as young as ever she was. Give a man brains and riches and he is a king. Give a man brains without riches and he is a slave. Give a man riches without brains aud he is a fool. A Frenchman writing a letter to a friend, found on looking in the diction ary that the word preserve meant to pickle, wrote, “May you and your family be pickled to all eternity P . . Josh Billings says: 'The mewl is a larger burd than a goose or turkey. It has two legs to walk with, and two more to kick with, and wears its wings on the side of its head. 1 An old, rough clergyman ones took for his text that passage of the Psalm*, ‘I said in my haste, all men are liars. 4 Looking, apparently, as i£ he saw the Psalmist standing before him, be said: ‘You sai lit in your haste, David. If you had been hero, you might have said it after mature deliberation. ‘ A colored man who was lately re suscitated from what seemed death, but was only cataplepsy, was enters taining bis friends with the sights he beheld iu the other world. colored brethren in lleav> en, I spec, Tom/ 'Ob, yes !' said Tom. 'Aud how about hell—any down there V 'Ob, yes, plenty ob deal dar too/ 'Any white folks, Tom ?' Lord save us, dar ain't no end on 'em; but gosh, ebery white man done g ;t a nigger holdiu' between him and de tire.' so. 10.