These two were distantly related to each other—seventh cousins, or something of that sort. While still babies they became orphans, and were adopted by the Brants, a childless couple, wh...

FROM COMIC AND WITTY STORIES. I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almo...

Night before last I had a singular dream. I seemed to be sitting on a doorstep (in no particular city perhaps) ruminating, and the time of night appeared to be about twelve or one o’clo...

“You confess it—you actually confess it—you told a lie!” The family consisted of four persons: Margaret Lester, widow, aged thirty six; Helen Lester, her daughter, aged sixteen; Mrs. Le...

I visited St. Louis lately, and on my way West, after changing cars at Terre Haute, Indiana, a mild, benevolent-looking gentleman of about forty-five, or maybe fifty, came in at one of ...

I was feeling blithe, almost jocund. I put a match to my cigar, and just then the morning’s mail was handed in. The first superscription I glanced at was in a handwriting that sent a th...

Now, to show how really hard it is to foist a moral or a truth upon an unsuspecting public through a burlesque without entirely and absurdly missing one’s mark, I will here set down two...

These annual bills! these annual b… How many a song their discord tril… Of 'truck’ consumed, enjoyed, forg… Since I was skinned by last year’… Those joyous beans are passed away…

One of the best men in Washington—or elsewhere—is RILEY, correspondent of one of the great San Francisco dailies. Riley is full of humor, and has an unfailing vein of irony, which makes...

Thirty-five years ago I was out prospecting on the Stanislaus, tramping all day long with pick and pan and horn, and washing a hatful of dirt here and there, always expecting to make a ...

Once upon a time an artist who had painted a small and very beautiful picture placed it so that he could see it in the mirror. He said, “This doubles the distance and softens it, and it...

I was a very smart child at the age of thirteen—an unusually smart child, I thought at the time. It was then that I did my first newspaper scribbling, and most unexpectedly to me it sti...

Our esteemed friend, Mr. John William Bloke, of Virginia City, walked into the office where we are sub-editor at a late hour last night, with an expression of profound and heartfelt suf...

All infants appear to have an impertinent and disagreeable fashion nowadays of saying “smart” things on most occasions that offer, and especially on occasions when they ought not to be ...