FROM THE LIPS OF ANANIAS.

Confidential Chats Which Show That if Nature Would Permit Things to Happen in the Way Some Narrators Have Described Them, the World Would Be a Much More Interesting Place in Which to Live.

CHANGED BY ARGUMENT.

Two commercial travelers, one from London and one from New York, were discussing the weather in their respective countries.

The Englishman said that English weather had one great fault—its sudden changes.

"A person may take a walk one day," he said, "attired in a light summer suit, and still feel quite warm. Next day he needs an overcoat."

"That's nothing," said the American. "My two friends, Johnston and Jones, were once having an argument. There were eight or nine inches of snow on the ground.

"The argument got heated, and Johnston picked up a snowball and threw it at Jones from a distance of not more than five yards. During the transit of that snowball, believe me or not, as you like, the weather suddenly changed and became hot and summerlike, and Jones, instead of being hit with a snowball, was scalded with hot water!"—Tit-Bits.

PERSUASION BETTER THAN FORCE.

"Talk of opening oysters," said old Hurricane, "why, nothing's easier, if you only know how."

"And how's how?" inquired Starlight.

"Scotch snuff," answered old Hurricane very sententiously. "Scotch snuff. Bring a little of it ever so near their noses and they'll sneeze their lids off."

"I know a genius," observed Meister Karl, "who has a better plan. He spreads the bivalves in a circle, seats himself in the center, and begins spinning a yarn. Sometimes it's an adventure in Mexico—sometimes a legend of his loves—sometimes a marvelous stock operation in Wall Street.

"As he proceeds, the 'natives' get interested—one by one they gape with astonishment at the tremendous and direful whoppers which are poured forth, and as they gape my friend whips them out, peppers 'em, and swallows them."

"That'll do," said Starlight, with a long sigh. "I wish we had a bushel of the bivalves here now, they'd open easy."—Philadelphia Post.

EDUCATED RATS.

By Neal Dow.

In the Congregationalist is a curious story about rats, which seems to indicate that they will not remain where their company is not desired, if politely invited to change their quarters, though everybody knows that they are driven out with difficulty. Here is a perfectly true story which corroborates that one.

My house is supposed to be rat-proof, and was so when quite new, but at one time, more than twenty years ago, we had a large colony of the rodents, greatly to our annoyance, and it was with us a matter of daily wonder where they found a weak spot in our defenses among them. One evening a young lady from a friend's family, living in a large, fine house nearly a mile away, was with us, and the talk turned on rats, as we heard ours scampering up and down the walls.

The young lady said that none had ever been in their house, and she did not think there was any point at which they could enter. My eldest daughter, a great wit, said: "I've heard that, if politely invited to do so in writing, rats will leave any house and go to any other to which they may be directed, and I will tell ours that at your house they will find spacious quarters and an excellent commissariat."

At the moment, before us all, she wrote the most grandiloquent letter to the large family of rats that had so favored us with their presence, pointing out to them that at No. 65 Pearl Street was a large, fine house which had never been favored with the residence of any of their family, where they would find ample quarters and a fat larder. When finished, she read the missive to the company, and we had a great laugh over it. As an old superstition, she then put lard upon it, and carried it into the attic, where it would probably be found by those to whom it was directed.

A few days later the young lady was at our house again, and burst into a laugh, exclaiming: "Our house is overrun with rats!" That recalled to us the fact that we had heard none in our walls. My daughter went to the attic, and the letter was gone. While they were talking and laughing over the curious affair, a friend came in, and, hearing the talk, said that two evenings before, in the bright moonlight, he saw several rats running down Congress Street, which was the straight road to Pearl Street. We have never been troubled with them since, but I have not heard how it has been with the house to which our beneficiaries were directed.

SAGACIOUS DOGS.

The following story is told by the Chinese minister at Washington:

"There was a Chinaman who had three dogs. When he came home one evening he found them asleep on his couch of teakwood and marble. He whipped them and drove them forth.

"The next night, when he came home, the dogs were lying on the floor. But he placed his hand on the couch and found it warm from their bodies. Therefore, he gave them another whipping.

"The third night, returning earlier than usual, he found the dogs sitting before the couch, blowing on it to cool it."—Philadelphia North American.

RESIGNED TO THEIR FATE.

A man out West says he moved so often during one year that whenever covered wagons stopped at the gate his chickens would fall on their backs and hold up their feet in order to be tied and thrown in.—Boston Journal.

SCIENCE WAS FROST-BITTEN.

The cold weather of yesterday morning found its way into Alonzo Murphy's kitchen, at Mount Freedom, New Jersey, and killed a specimen of the vegetable kingdom that for months had been the pride of Mr. Murphy's heart, and with which he expected to revolutionize dairying and strawberry culture.

It has long been a cherished idea of Mr. Murphy's that by a judicious crossing of the milkweed and strawberry it would be possible to produce strawberries and cream from the same plant.

Last fall he grafted several strawberry plants on plants of the milkweed. One grew sturdily, close by Mr. Murphy's kitchen range, and was in full fruitage when it succumbed to the cold that entered the room when the fire in the range by accident went out.

That the experiment was entirely successful is shown by the fact that each strawberry when examined was found to contain a quantity of ice-cream varying from a few drops to a teaspoonful, depending on the size of the berry.

Mr. Murphy is not discouraged by his ill luck, and promises to repeat the experiment next summer.—New York Tribune.

ROASTING FLYING GEESE.

During the great famine in Rome and southern Italy in Nero's time, when the country was filled with the victorious Roman legions who had returned from foreign parts, the people observed countless numbers of wild geese flying about at very high elevations, but they could not be caught until one of the Roman generals, suspecting that the geese, like the people, must be hungry, experimented by shooting arrows baited with worms up among them.

The geese swallowed the bait, arrows and all, with great avidity, thus showing that they would swallow anything; but how to catch them was the question, until one of the wise men of the emperor's household, remembering the stories told by Tacitus of geese being cooked by heat from Mount Vesuvius, consulted Nero's head cook, the great chef Claudius Flavius, and he devised a practical means of having them drawn before cooking by scattering a large quantity of teazels and chestnut burrs on the sides of Vesuvius.

The geese in countless numbers at once gulped these down, and in the course of twenty-four hours their whole internal economy, including crop and gizzard, being absolutely clean, he then had an enormous quantity of Roman chestnuts (same as the Italian nuts of the present time) scattered around the crater of the volcano; and the birds feeding on them and then flying about in the hot air were beautifully roasted while well stuffed with the finest chestnut dressing, so that they could be fed to the famine-stricken people.

And what is still more remarkable, it was found that the livers of the geese were encysted in a sack of fat, producing substantially pâté de foie gras, and when the Gauls who captured Rome in the sixth century returned home they took some of this toothsome food along, and from that day till this it has been prepared in Strassburg and vicinity in large quantities.—Rome Correspondence of New York Sun.