► 
Johnnie’s criticism, 1 will allude to two or 
three seutonoea, which till exhibit a common 
fault, namely, the same or similar words occur¬ 
ring too close together. For example If 
there is ohj/t/itnf/1 do admire more than avy- 
thing else," &c. "I have read all of Irving's 
works, and T think of all books,” are. “ In vino 
ranks first among all writers in the English lan¬ 
guage, for the purity of his stylo of U'rfffrifl is 
unsurpassed.” The first sentence would have 
been hotter thus:—" What 1 admire more than 
anything olse. Is a good conversationalist, and 
the girls! think excel the hoys in that respect.” 
In the next quotation beside the two "alii" 
“works" follows rather closely upon “histori¬ 
cal works" In the sentence preceding. You 
might have said “The writings of Irving, all 
of which 1 have read, have more interest for 
mo than any other books,—especially hla Al¬ 
hambra.'' I n the third sentence quoted, you 
have only to draw your pen through " all," and 
“ of writing,” and it will read v*ry well Indeed. 
You are mi the right road to Improvement, 
dear cousin ; let me hoar from you often. 
About Cousin Johnnie'* Picture. 
Pet requests OotTBIN JOHNNIE to have her 
picture put In the Rural! Why, my dear boy, 
that would never do in the world ! The Rural, 
you know, numbers its readers by thousands 
and thousands. In every part of the country; 
and just think of having my race sown broad¬ 
cast over this entire land! I could never en¬ 
dure it—but l feel grateful to yon, PET, fur lov¬ 
ing mo well enough to want my “counterfeit 
presentment,“ and If you will send rao yours, 
I may, possibly, send you mine in return. But 
I warn you beforehand, l am far from being as 
beautiful as Dew Drop, and my nose Is big, 
bigger, biookkt I 
[According to our visual organs that remark 
about the big nose is a—mistake, and we so 
advise PET. Cousin Johnnie has not. an ex¬ 
travagant “ nasal protuberance,” and she knows 
forgot how the gleam of the sunshine played 
upon It when sho was above the clouds. Alas 1 
so many young married people have begun llfo 
In that same region—that remote and mystical 
cloud land-and have at last, come down Into 
the work-day world of duty and grimy toil, 
only to be unhappy I Sometime* the revulsion 
has soured them for life, ? ml they have been 
ihenceforth but crabbed and unlovely speei- 
m n-- if the fruit of the matrimonial tree. The 
trouble ami misery which “balloon weddings," 
metaphorically speaking, have entailed upon 
the futures of the couples who have Indulged 
In them is Incalculable. Many unreasonable 
brides, who have been for a time elevated high 
above the turmoil of mirth and the hard work 
of existence, have never forgiven their hus¬ 
bands for being compelled to descend. The 
bridegrooms, too, have so longed for the sun¬ 
shine of the upper regions, after they have 
once enjoyed it, that they have become unfit 
for struggle In the sphere whore they belong. 
Perhaps It would have been hotter for both had 
they never momentarily left thetr humble 
station.— JV. Y, Timex. 
SCHOOL “ CALLED 
GATHERING ROSES IN THE RAIN 
Don’t you hear the children coming, 
Cuming Into school ? 
Don’t you hear the master drumming 
On the window with his rule? 
Master drumming, children coming 
Into school. 
Tip-toed figures reach the catch. 
Tiny Sngera click the lutch; 
Curly-headed gins throng in, 
t.lly-froe from toll and sin ; 
Breezy boys holt in together. 
Bringing breaths of Indian weather, 
Bringing baskets Iodlau-eueeked, 
Dinners in them wily wrecked. 
Ruddy-handed, mittens off, 
Soldiers rush from the Mnlalcoff— 
Built of snow aud marble white. 
Bastions shining in tho light. 
Marked with many a dint and dot 
Of the loo-cold cannon shot! 
Hear tho Inst assaulting shout! 
See the gunners rally out— 
Charge upon tho bnttcrnd door— 
8chool is called, and batflo o’er! 
I had a dream Inst, night, 
So sweet, so sweet, so bright. 
It filled tay spirit brimming with delight. 
Beside a tower tall, 
A white paling on a wall. 
And a w eight of trailing verdure over all 
Roses, roses here and there— 
Roses, roses everywhere, 
And au odor faint of lilacs In the air, 
And the rain drops in the sun 
Were like diamond* finely spun— 
Dripping, dropping on the flowers, one by one. 
And I picked the blossoms bright 
Till I filled my apron quite— 
In the fragrance and the shower aud the light, 
Only a foolish thing, 
1 grant you, ’Ms to *ing, 
And yet its echoes thro’ my being ring 
WEDDING ANNIVERSARIES 
For, like a glad refrain. 
Did my child-heart come again. 
While I was gathering roses in the rain 
A contributor to the Chicago Evening Jour¬ 
nal says:—May I, as an okl-timo patron, ask a 
place in your paper for a fow lines on wedding 
anniversaries? The marriage anniversary cele¬ 
brations are given as follows : 
First anniversary Iron. • 
Fifth anniversary—Wooden. 
Tenth anniversary—Tin. 
Fifteenth anniversary—Crystal. 
Twentieth anniversary—China. 
Twenty-fifth anniversary—Silver. 
Thirtieth anniversary—Cotton. 
Thirty-fifth anniversary—Linen. 
Fortieth anniversary- Woolen. 
Forty-fifth anniversary—Silk. 
Fiftieth anniversary Holden. 
Seventy-fifth anniversary Diamond. 
In this connection, says the Journal, our cor¬ 
respondent will not. object to our giving the 
following “ fresh list of wedding anniversa¬ 
ries," which we find in the New York Commer¬ 
cial Advertiser: 
A fresh list of weddings is called for, so how 
are these fur hy-moneai ? 
Sugar wedding—A marriage with an attend¬ 
ant suite. 
Wooden wedding—Marrying a lumberman. 
Tin wedding—One that “ pans out " well. 
Crystal wedding Marrying one addicted to 
tho glass. 
Silver wedding—Marrying a gray beard. 
Golden wedding When the groom Is a minor 
and the bride a little vain. 
Diamond wedding—When the “washings” 
are large. 
And here are some others : ^ 
Sugar wedding Marrying a “ candid man." 
Wooden wedding—Marrying a “perfect stick.” 
Tin wedding fine amid the pansies. 
Crystal wedding—The Glasgow ceremony. 
Silver wedding—An end of “spooning." 
Golden wedding One of the species we like. 
Diamond wedding—Jem's marriage. 
LETTERS TO YOUNG RURALISTS.-No. 28 
A CONCEIT 
FROM COUSIN JOHNNIE 
O touch that rosebud! It will bloom— 
My lady fair! 
A passionate red In dim green gloom, 
A joy, a splendor, a perfnme 
That sleep in air. 
Yon touched my heart: it gave a thrill 
Just like a rose 
That, opens at il lady’s will: 
Its bloom 1* always yours, until 
You bid it close. 
[Mortimer Collins. 
An Answer to Sampson’s Letter. 
Mr Dear Sampson:—You Invito me to “give 
you fits,"—having in remembrance, 1 suppose, 
those bestowed uponDicw Drop, Young Bach, 
Wit.n Boy and Young Mustache, Do you take 
me for a relative of the old quack doctor, who 
used to make Jltx a specialty V W honovor he was 
called to a ease, no matter what might be the 
disease, Ida first object, always was to throw l.llb 
patient Into fits I “ If I kin only gtt ’em Into 
fits," ho used to say, “I’m nil right; for I'm 
death on liUl " 1 am afraid you think, that 1, 
too, Sampson, feel obliged to give ail the Young 
Rllrallsts u ftt9“ beforo I can hope to benefit 
them. Desperate eases, to he sure, require des¬ 
pond! remedies—hence my treatment of !>. D„ 
W. B., Y. B. and Y. M.; but I don’t think yours 
conifB under that category. 1 have no fault to 
find with anything you say to me personally; 
but the following remark strikes me us rather 
egotistical, coming from a " Farmer-Boy “A 
farmer-boy Is the noblest work of Gon !" The 
Wise Man says, “ Let another man praise thee, 
and not thine own mouth ; a stranger, and not 
thine own lips.” 
Now as to the accusation you bring against 
me, that I doubted your ago. I do not see how 
that can be, cousin. You did not tell us your 
age; and trying to figure it out by algebra, 1 
failed, as you will soo by a reference to Letter 
No. S3, in Hurat. of April 4th. I made the 
statement, you say, that it was eight years since 
you wore lost. Looking at. your letter of Feb. 
14th, I found that I had indeed made a mistake. 
In subtracting, I said, “ 18(50 from 1874 leaves 8 
forgetting that you were not lost until Christ¬ 
mas, 1860. I should have said it was seven 
years, three months and eleven days since that 
event; but even then I hardly see that I could 
have arrived ut your age, not knowing, as 1 now 
do, that you were but six yearn old when ycu 
drove a horse eight miles, all alone, on a dark 
night. 
You speak rather sneeringly of “ ever-fearing 
city hoys." If you were able to go through 
your early childhood without knowing any¬ 
thing about such a feeling you were a happy 
boy. For my own part I have the greatest sym¬ 
pathy with the fears of children, whether living 
in city or city or country. I suppose some one 
must have frightened me when very young, for 
as far hack as l can recollect I was dreadfully 
afraid of tho dark. I well remember how 1 used 
to lie awake in rny little trundle bed shivering 
with fear, and straining my eyes nearly out of 
their sockets peering Into the awful dark space 
under my mother’s old-fashioned, hlgh-post 
bedstead. There was always a tiny wax taper 
kept burning In a cup of oil, which cast a faint, 
ghostly light about the room and “ made visi¬ 
ble" the darknoss under the bed. I would lie 
there quaking till I could not endure the tor¬ 
ture another moment, and then get up and 
creep stealthily Into my mother's bed—crawl¬ 
ing close up against the wall and scarcely daring 
to breathe lest she should awukcu and consign 
me once more to my trundle bed. She thought 
It very silly for me to be afraid when there was 
nothing to fear, and considered It her duty to 
try and make me overcomes the feeling. Some¬ 
times, however, I think, though awake, she 
used to pretend not to hear me, so as not to be 
obliged to send me back. As I grew older and 
began to realize how foolish my fears were, I 
determined to fight against them, and therefore 
made tt a point to feel my way all over the house 
at night, without a lamp. And y«t, Sampson, 
even now, so lasting are early Impressions, 
whenever I am a little more uervous than usual 
I find myself as I got Into bed drawing up the 
last foot very quickly, for fear of being seized 
by the dreadful, Indefinable xomethtng in the 
dark! So you see, ray dear cousin, fear Is not 
confined to "city boys;” and since it causes so 
much iwil suffering is not to be sneered at, even 
by “ the noblest work of creation I" 
Criticism* on Young Student's Letter. 
I like Young Student’s letter exceedingly. 
It la not only Interesting, but, in the main, well 
expressed. However, as he roquests Cousin 
A BALLOON WEDDING, 
If that eminently veracious historian, M. 
Jules Verne, had been In tho City of Cincin¬ 
nati, Ohio, at 6 o’clock on the afternoon of 
Oct. 19,1K74, he might, have obtained materials 
for a new and thrilling romance. Ho would 
have found himself In a throng of fifty thousand 
persons, each of whom was intently guzlng 
skyward at a receding balloon, which bore 
within Us basket a bridegroom and bride, who 
proposed to bo wedded above the clouds. 
These eccentric people had doubtless ranged 
in Imagination over all tho fields of previous 
queer and unusual wedding-trips. They had 
probably heard or the strange couple who 
scaled tho Right, there to seal their vows of 
affection, and of that, adventurous pair who 
dauntleBaly ascended the mightiest of the 
Pyramids, and there, with Heaven knows how 
many conturlea looking down, and with my¬ 
riads of ArabB looking up and howling for 
“backshish ” bound themselves In holy bands. 
It Is also probable that they were familiar with 
the history of that amiable bride who was 
united to her future lord at sunrise, on the 
roof of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, and who, 
while saluting the dawning with champagne, 
fell over the parapet, to the pavement, and was, 
of course, quite dead when picked up. Per¬ 
haps, too, the balloon-bewitched bride had 
heard that horrible tale of the Frenchman who, 
having lured his wife Into a balloon car under 
the pretext of accompanying her on a brief 
ascension, suddenly cut. the ropes, and let her 
soar into the clouds, while ho fell upon Ids 
knees to pray that she might, never come 
down. 
Nothing would, however, stay this balloon- 
loving bride. Up wont the merry couple, with 
the parson making his opening address as they 
darted Into the clouds. Ten minutes after the 
balloon had ascended a mile from the earth, 
and a parachuto was thrown out. It, indicated 
that the riog had been put on, that the twain 
wore made one flesh, and that the first balloon 
wedding on record was an accomplished fact. 
These courageous voyagers in the realm of 
air were no high-born children of fashion; no 
haughty aristocrats who disdained the dullness 
and dirt of our humble planet, and must there¬ 
fore wed 
“ Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot 
Which men call Earth.' 
But they were artists—In the circus line. The 
bride has sometimes flashed like a meteor be¬ 
fore the eyes of admiring audienoes at the 
Hippodrome, on a mllk-whlto steed; and the 
bridegroom is not unfamiliar with the .smell of 
saw-dust and tho garish gas-llght3 beneath the 
canvas dome. But the bride wore a lovely 
pearl-colored silk, with bias folds and heavy 
trimmings of fringe and puffing In the back, 
and her hat was a graceful “ Brigand," with a 
rakish white feather. Happy, happy circus 
roan! Had he been classical he mignt have 
Imagined, as he descended to earth, with the 
shouts of the fifty thousand people below 
drifting up to meet him, that he had been to 
Olympus to take a goddess to wife, and was 
bringing her down to rule over the nations, and 
to found a new’ race of hero demigods. 
But may we not imaglue that., when once the 
feet of bride aud bridegroom were again set 
upon the solid ground, there was a revulsion of 
feeling, and consequently—might we venture 
to sugrest—just a suspicion of disappointment? 
Possibly not; yet It Is fair to suppose that the 
peart-colored silk will never again seem quite 
fair In the eyes of the hrlde, because she cannot 
A Little Roy’b Goon Work.-G eorge Boyle, 
aged thirteen years, residing on Short Sixth 
Street, mine barefooted and collarless, hesita¬ 
tingly Into the Times Office recently- and re¬ 
quested tho announcement of the organization 
of a now society In UniTlmea, George modestly 
said that he with twelve other lads, all residing 
down town, met Saturday evening and organ¬ 
ized tho “ Young Americans No. I," the mem¬ 
bers of which all pledged themselves “not to 
curse." The little fellows range from nine to 
thirteen years and deserve encouragement.— 
Troy Timex. 
Would it not lie well for the seniors, as well 
us boys, to take a similar pledge—not only In 
Troy, but elsewhere? 
PROBLEM. No. 15 
A t.lowing the earth to be 7,930 miles In diam¬ 
eter, when the hypothonuso of a right-angled 
triangle described on Its surface by the arcs of 
great Circles is 5,000 miles in length, and when 
the area of the triangle at the same time is 
5,000,000 square ndles, what will be the length 
of the base and perpendicular of the triangle ? 
MYRTLE WREATHS 
Modern fashionable society, which decrees 
that none but betrothed brides shall wear the 
myrtle, is not aware, perhaps, that tho custom 
dates back to the days of the Greeks and the 
Romans. 
“ The lover with the myrtle sprays 
Adorns his crisped tresses." 
Old legends tell us that the blessed Virgin, 
upon the occasion of her marriage to Joseph, 
wore a crown of myrtle. Still It was not ex¬ 
clusively monopolized by brides, for among the 
Athenians it was customary t.o crown the dead 
with a garland of myrtle. It was also the sym¬ 
bol of authority, and as such was worn by mag¬ 
istrates. 
The mvords of Harmodlua and Arlstogriton 
were wreathed with sprays of myrtle when they 
went forth to deliver their count,rymon from 
the tyranny of the Pisistratld®, as vve learn 
from an Athenian drinking song by Calllstratus. 
This plant receives Its name from Myrslne, an 
Athenian maiden, the favorite of Minerva, and 
who was metamorphosed into this flower. It 
was sacred to Vonus, one of whose numerous 
appellations was Myrtla. 
The area of the triangle ABC»=5, 000,000 si 
miles. The angle BAC*=90”; the arc BO=»5,Ol 
miles, or 72° 20' 35H\ 
Oneida Castle, N. Y. B. F. BURLESON. 
Answer in two weeks. 
TEN POINTS OF A GOOD WIFE 
MISCELLANEOUS ENIGMA.—No. 9 
Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, speaking 
of the qualities of a good wife, divided them 
into ten parts. Four parts he gave to “good 
temper,” two to “ good seose," one to “ wit," 
one to ” beauty," (such as a sweet, face, eloquent 
eyes, a fine person, a graceful carriage;, and the 
remaining two parts he divided among other 
qualities belonging to or attending on a wife, 
such as fortune, connections, education or ac¬ 
complishments, fatntly, and so on; but, he 
said, “ divide those two parts as you please, 
remember that all these minor proportions 
must be expressed by fractions, for there la not 
any one of them that Is entitled to the dignity 
of au Integer.” 
I am composed of 8 letters: 
My 8, 4, S, 5, 4 and 2 is a girl’s name. 
My 1, 6, 3 and 2 Is identical. 
My 4 and 1 i* an irregular verb. 
My 0,5, 5 and 0 Is a girl’s name. 
My 3,8,3 and 0 is a girl’s name. 
My 5, 2, 6 and 7 Is not remote. 
My 3, 0, 4 and 5 Is force. 
My 3, 0 and 8 is the name of a month 
M.V whole Is a place of learning. 
Answer in two weeks. h 
ANAGRAM. No. 5 
EnT shaenve celerda hte yrlgo fo ogd, nad 
hte fmimranet wsethoh silt iduahkowr. 
Answer In two weeks. B. E. 
There is nothing In this world which Is so 
venerable as the character of parents, nothing 
so intlmaie and endearing as the relation of 
husband and wife, nothing so tender as that 
of children, and nothing so lovely as that of 
brothers and sisters. The little cirolo is made 
one by a single interest and a single union of 
affections. 
PUZZLER ANSWERS. Oct. 24 
Cross-word Enigma No. 7.—Rural New- 
Yorker. 
MisokllaneousEnigma No. 6.—“ A lie which 
is all a lie may he met and fought with out¬ 
right ; but a lie which Is part a truth is a harder 
matter to light." 
