134 



THE AMERICAN BEE-KEEPER. 



May 



"The Eowner's Mill affair I don't 

 know how you got hold of, but it was 

 not obtained fairly. But I will not say 

 anything about that. Stand by rue, and 

 I will make your fortune and your ever- 

 lasting fame. Is it a bargain?" 



To accept such a proposal never en- 

 tered my mind for one moment. My 

 only thought was to get this dreadful 

 creature out of my house, whetJjer what 

 he said waa true or not. How was I to 

 do it? 



Just then my servant knock«id at the 

 door and ejjtered. 



"Here is a gentleman wishes to bq8 

 you, sir." 



"Say you are engaged," said Rogers, 

 rising from his chair and grasping me by 

 the arm. 



But the new arrival had already en- 

 tered the room. 



"Excuse me, sir," he said. "I have 

 come for our good friend, Mr. Rogers. 

 He lives with us at X . " 



X I knew to be the place where a 



certain county lunatic asylum stands. I 

 saw everything in a flash. He handed 

 Rogers over to the care of another man 

 in the hall, and the poor fellow went as 

 meekly as a lamb. Then the attendant 

 came back to me. 



"I hope he has not alarmed you, sir. 

 He escaped two days ago. " 



"Well, he gave me an unpleasant half 

 hour. The man seems to be steeped in 

 crime. " 



"He's all right except on that point. 

 He fancies that he is every criminal that 

 he reads about in the story books. We 

 traced him to your house, and I expect 

 he has been pitching a lively yarn about 

 some of his doings. Ah ! I thought so. 

 But, bless your heart, sir, the poor fel- 

 low wouldn't hurt a fly." 



Nevertheless, he had knocked me off 

 my work for that day. — Loudon Tit- 

 Bits. 



How James Otis Was Killed. 



James Otis was killed by a stroke of 

 lightning in Audover, Mass., at the old 

 Isaac Osgood farm. May, 1783. Mr. 

 Otis wanted a mug of cider. The hired 

 man went into the cellar to draw the, 

 cider, leaving the cellar door open. Mr. 

 Otis was standing in the doorway at the 

 side of the house looking ft Wie clouds, 

 remarking that a heavy shower was 



coming up. Scarcely had the words been 

 spoken when the bolt came down, struck 

 Mr. Otis and killed him instantly, then 

 passed into a large beam in the cellar- 

 way, going the length of the beam to 

 the cellar, where it went off into the 

 ground. The hole in the beam was large 

 enough to thrust one's arm down, as 

 the writer has done when visiting the 

 Osgood farm — Boston Transcript. 



The Man and the Clothes. 



There was a Methodist minister who 

 dressed so well that a friend felt hoi'- 

 rified and offered to give him a suit of 

 clothes and pay for them provided he 

 could have them made according to his 

 ideas. The offer was accepted, and the 

 tailor was ordered to make a suit in the 

 plainest possible fashion. The order was 

 filled, and the suit was tried on. The 

 giver of it was amazed. So magnificent 

 was tlie form with which nature had en- 

 dowed the minister that that plain 

 Methodist suit upon him looked as if it 

 had just been received from Paris. — 

 Christian Advocate. 



Oysters. 



"When I was a boy, " said the mid- 

 dle aged man, "nobody ever used to 

 think of stewing oysters in milk, though 

 I believe that barbaric practice did be- 

 gin just before the war, but now almost 

 everybody eats them that way, and they 

 cook them that way in restaurants. It 

 seems a pity. The oyster is not the least 

 of the blessings vouchsafed to us, and 

 why anybody should want to disguise 

 its gamy and at the same time delicious 

 flavor with milk I do not see. 



"To stew oysters in milk is even 

 worse than to dip them in batter before 

 broiling or frying them, when but a 

 thin coat of cracker dust is all that is 

 required, and even this is likely to ho, 

 dispensed with on broiled oysters by one 

 who has eaten oysters broiled just as 

 they come from the shell. 



"But it should not be understood 

 from this that batter can reasonably bear 

 no relation whatever to the oyster ; far 

 from it. There is, for instance, the oyster 

 fritter, certainly a very pleasant subject 

 to dwell upon. But in this case the 

 blessing has been added to the common- 

 place, not the commonplace to the bless- 

 ing." — Nev; York Sun. 



