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even quail and snipes grow there to a green old age. Yours truly,

P. S. There has been a report in the San Francisco newspapers that I was killed. Don't believe it. It is an old trick. When the California Legislature in the year '52 put a price on the head of Joaquin Murieta, three heads of said Joaquin were handed in and paid for; and as Joaquin is still alive, it is impossible to form an idea of how many heads he could have furnished since then, if the payment had not been stopped. The old Californians are not so easily killed.

THE MICROSCOPE.

THE microscope is an implement composed of glass and brass. The brass is used in two different preparations,—first, in its purely metallic shape; secondly, in the shape of a brass band, which serves to make microscopical demonstrations more intelligible and prevents conversation with a lady neighbor. Brass was discovered in the age of bronze by a gentleman named Tubalcain. Particulars can be found in the sacred records of the Patent Office at Washington, where his name is mentioned in reference to a new process.

Glass was discovered by a Phoenician Superintendent of Public Streets, who spent considerable time in experiments to find for public improvements a sufficiently destruc

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tible and at the same time expensive s stance. Modern science has provided Superintendents of Streets with a series more pliable, brittle, and costly bodies; still in more sequestered localities traces the pavement may be found that was ch acteristic to the age of brass. The name this Superintendent of Streets was Fla gan Abu Baker ben Snodgrass, who w born at Sodom and Gomorrah, under reign of the Egyptian king, Phara Meyer.

It is a most melancholy fact that the gr man after having discovered glass made too free use of glasses. The police recor of Tyrus, Sidon, Antiocha, and Damasc show his name on every page, and the st tion-house of Jerusalem exhibits still curious and interesting autograph. On stormy night, when he was camping out the station-house of Tyrus, rattlesnakes g in his boots, and when he awoke next mor ing he found he was dead. So this ma shared the fate of all discoverers; he ben

fited humanity, left an immortal name, but died himself.

There is no invention that has had the same influence on spiritual as well as on material welfare of mankind. Before glass came into use no looking-glass ornamented the walls of sleeping apartments. The consequence was that the ladies could not dress, for young ladies cannot dress without seeing their faces; they had to repair in deep undress-in fact, barefoot to a great extent to the next river, lake, brook, or streamlet, by which act they did hurt sorely every morning the feelings of all the old maidens and shocked very much the whole male population, who, by some unaccountable coincidence, collected at the same hour in the same locality.

But glass is also a bulwark of free institutions. Some thirty years ago, when I visited the Continent to barter for an honorable degree at Giessen, I went out on a clear night to study astronomy with the assistance of some glasses obtainable at a

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