"Paint it as like an Eagle as you could, I suppose."

"No," said MARK. "That wouldn't do for me, Sir. I should want to draw it like a Bat, for its short-sightedness; like a Bantam, for its bragging; like a Magpie, for its honesty; like a Peacock, for its vanity; like an Ostrich, for its putting its head in the sand, and thinking nobody sees it"

"And like a Phoenix, for its power of springing from the ashes of its faults and vices, and soaring up anew into the sky!" said MARTIN. Martin Chuzzlewit.

BROTHER JONATHAN loquitur:

He was prejudiced, that Mark, a Europian, in the dark,
Concernin' of our Glorious Institutions.

He paint our Bird o' Freedom? Lots have tried, but we don't

heed 'em;

And revolvin' years bring curus retributions.

We don't care a brass farden! DICKENS had to beg our pardon,
And that MAX O'RELL will eat his words one day, Sir!

The real Yankee Eagle is as strong-winged as a Sea-gull,
With a beak as sharp as any Sheffield razor.

Still, he's been a trifle pippy, and has looked a little chippy-
By the mighty Mississippi yes, Sir !-lately.

Kinder moulty as to feathers, as though blizzards and bad weathers
Of every blamed big sort had tried him greatly.
Good Jee-rusulum! No wonder! for great snakes and buttered thunder!
Our blasts have been fair busters for his pinions.
In the words of Mister Chollop, all creation he can wallop,-
But tornaders have been sweepin' his dominions!

As to that Mark Tapley's twaddle, why the Peacock ain't the model,
Nor the Bantam, nor the Ostrich, I'd be pickin'

For the finest fowl in Natur. Better dub him Alligator,
A Whangdoodle, or a Cincinnatti Chicken!

Like the Phoenix he's immortal, and he soars to the Sun's portal,
But-the Phoenix has sick spells, like lesser poultry.
Wants fresh fixing up, I reckon, then the dawn once more he'll beckon,
And sprint-from Memnon's statue to Fort Moultrie.
BULL ain't an Eagle builder, but he makes a bully gilder,
And I reckon, guess, and calc'late I'll jest try him.
If I git from the old fellow a good coat of British Yellow-
A sort o' paint J. B. keeps always by him-

My Bird o' Freedom soaring, where the blizzards are a roaring,
And the cloud-bursts are out-pouring, will jest flicker
Real rollicking and regal, like a genu-ine Golden Eagle.
Wal!-you've fixed him real smart, JOHN! Let us liquor!

TRANCEMOGRIFICATION.

Now that hypnotism is in the air, our conversation-books will have to be remodelled, as thus:

Good morning, have you hibernated well?

Yes, I have had a most successful trance this winter. Have you laid up at all?

Only for a few days at Christmas, just to escape the bills. I ha a delightfully unconscious Boxing Day.

Well, you take my advice old man, and rent a private catacomb on the three-years' system. It comes much cheaper in the end, and you save all your coal and gas, to say nothing of clothes.

We've started a Nirvana Club in our neighbourhood on the tontine principle. The last person who wakes gets the prize, unless the first who comes to makes off with it.

trouble of sight-seeing. You are just packed up and forwarded from It is capital, anyway, when you are taking a tour. Saves all the place to place, with an automatic Kodak which records everything you visited. Try it!

Will, some day. By Jove, I must be off! I've got to attend an anesthetic concert, absolutely painless.

And I've got a mesmeric dinner-party on to-night. All the bores will be put in glass-cases, and fed mechanically. Good-bye, then. Sleep well!

This eminent individual, born in the early forties, comes of a numerous family, and was originally destined by his parents for the career of a nightwatchman. Not feeling, however, any vocation in this direction, he tried many other professions, and many other professions tried him. At last, in the year 1864, he entered the service of the Twiddlesex Water Company, where, by strict attention to the quality of his liquor, and his unfailing perception of the right time to be sober, he has risen to his present conspicuous and responsible position.

OF THE ART OF TOBOGGANING.

Canton des Grisons, Feb. 10. FOR the neighbourhood it is a sultry day; glass up to 5° Fahrenheit and a taint of scirocco, or föhn, as the facetious native calls this wind. My toboggan lies idle by stress of drifting snow. "No chance," I say, of doing a record this afternoon!" This is what I say openly and pompously to my fellows. With my own dear heart I commune otherwise, saying how heaven should be praised for this one blessed day's recess from broken scalp. If I have asked myself once (as is proper with an enigma) I have asked myself a thousand times, "Why did I come out here, to this resort of invalids and polar athletes ?" My right lung is flawless : my left is very perfect. On the other hand I do not show well on ice; my legs are ill-shaped for bandy; curling I find to be but poor sport after skittles; and I have met one wayfarer only, and that a fool, who did not laugh upon my figure-skating.

In a climate where one must either do or suffer something to justify one's existence, there remained this sole thing-to toboggan. I said, "I will surely toboggan!"

"Good!" they said; "but on an instrument of what sort ? Swiss' for women and children; ordinary 'Americas' for men; 'Skeleton Americas' for heroes."

"I will choose the last," I said; for if I do anything at all I like to do it passing well, and with the best of tools.

position of your head to save the delicate machinery of the toboggan from brutalization. It may be that by inadvertence you have attained an impetus so terrific that you overtake a walking horse in possession of the path. Once again your headpiece will protect the instrument from the fiery choler of the beast's hind hoof. After some two miles of fortuitous descent, diversified by such checks as I have here shadowed forth, you will be rounding the final corner at a pointed angle of 45°, travelling perhaps several miles per hour, when a large beer-cart with an upward tendency will dispute the road. Then the banked snow shall be your pall, and your requiescat shall be rendered by the local teamster in German of a bastard order.

Nor is this all. To the beetling edge of the descent you will first have been conveyed by an impetuous zwei-spänner, thoughtlessly gay with bells and feathers. Twenty-five candidates having urged their claims for the five seats, some will have need to be content to trail behind on their toboggans. As one wanting in experience, you will have the last place assigned to you, or else the last but one, with a casual riderless machine at the tail-end to give you an unholy spasm as it swings off the track round the corners. At intervals, while your pensive mind is absorbed upon the maintenance of a happy equilibrium, rendered strangely-difficult by the ruthless speed of the sleigh, some two or perhaps three of the tailing-party will fall off in front. The sharp contact of several raked boots with your open countenance draws your attention to the altered condition of things. Over the mangled bodies of friend and foe you are carried forward. The sleigh is tardily arrested, and your innocent head becomes the recipient of fearless abuse.

Or again, from some mountain-hut upon the route issues forth a gross and even elephantine dog, born of unhallowed union between a wolf-hound and an evilly-bred St. Bernard. Foiled in his attack upon the head of the caravan he revenges himself upon the outstretched leg of the hindmost. The lacerated calf will be your own. This is well enough in open daylight, and when you are swathed in buskins from heel to hip, and your rakes are good for retaliation. But in doubtful moonlight with the air at 15° below zero, as you toboggan back to your hostelry in the valley from a fancy dress ball, where you have simulated Hamlet in black silk tights and pumps, the humour lies purely on the side of the dog.

But apart from the lower animal nature, in this barbaric sport you are never confident of your dearest friends. Thus, we had been a pleasant and hilarious party at the international bal masqué; the ardour of the stirrup-cup was still upon us as we attained the brow of the decline. By a happy inspiration I had proposed that my friend Mr. STARK MUNRO, being a heavy-weight and disguised as a Völsunga Saga, should proceed in the van to clear any incidental drift or desultory avalanche. He disappeared headlong down the and a Tonsured Benedictine. All the costumes gained in picturesquepine-forest track followed by the Ace of Clubs, a Sardinian Brigand, ness from the Arctic background.

The New Woman of the party, attired as Good Queen BESS, begged me to precede her, arguing that I should go faster on my Skeleton than she on her Swiss. I engaged to do so on the understanding that she should allow me seven minutes' start in case of eventualities, the course being usually done in some 5 minutes under happy conditions. She was to be succeeded by Antigone, the Spirit of the Engadine and the Mother of the Gracchi.

I do not greatly care to linger over the details of my descent. I had started gaily humming those Elizabethan lines, "Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall,"-out of pure gallantry to Good Queen BESS who had given me a dainty little cow-bell as a favour at the cotillon; and I had been travelling cautiously for 8 minutes, with my nose, no fewer than six fingers, and all the toes on each foot frostbitten, and a half-moon piece already gone out of my calf at the spot where it had attracted the notice of the St. Bernard wolf-hound, when, even as I was navigating a rotten bridge at a sharp turn, Í heard a rushing sound out of the night behind me, and "Achtung! (the terrible warning-note of the tobogganer) rang in my stricken ear. I had barely time to throw a backward glance of horror and deprecation, when the projecting feet of Good Queen BESs, her toboggan and her spiked steering-pegs were upon me.

The bridge had never been strong in point of bulwarks; the torrent which it spans is rapid and fed from icy heights; its banks do not lend themselves to debarkation.

When I recovered consciousness by force of exquisitely painful restoratives applied by the Völsunga Saga, the Mother of the Gracchi and Good Queen BESS (herself unscratched, though the intoning, "World without end: Achtung!" with all the conviction plush of her toboggan was tarnished with my gore), I was solemnly of a cathedral tenor. I am going home the day after to-morrow.