Sit down for a moment, we will not detain you long, our story will interest you, we are sure, for it is most commendable, brief, and--singularly true. A poor widow, in the city of...
Some ten years since, an old Dutchman purchased in the vicinity of Brooklyn, a snug little farm for nine thousand dollars. Last week, a lot of land speculators called on him to "bu...
Say what you will, it's no use talking, poverty is more potent and powerful, as a moral engine, than all the "sermons and soda water," law, logic, and prison discipline, ever start...
Did you ever see a real, true, unadulterated specimen of Down East, enter a store, or other place of every-day business, for the purpose of "looking around," or dicker a little? Th...
It is the easiest thing under heaven to be sick, if you can afford it. What it costs some rich men for family sickness per annum, would keep all the children in "a poor neighborhoo...
During the "great excitement" in Boston, relative to the fugitive slave "fizzle," a good-natured country gentleman, by the name of Abner Phipps; an humble artisan in the fashioning...
It is truly astonishing, that the inexhaustible beds--mines of anthracite coal, lying along the Schuylkill river and ridges, valleys and mountains, from old Berks county to the mou...
Shakspeare has written--"let him that's robbed--not wanting what is stolen, not know it, and he's not robbed at all!" Now this fact often becomes very apparent, especially so in th...
Three Irishmen, green as the Isle that per-duced 'em, but full of sin, and fond of the crater, broke into a country store down in Maine, one night last week, and after striking a l...
A great many dogmas have been written, and may continue to be written, on dogs. Confessing, once, to a dogmatical regard for dogs, we "went in" for the canine race, with a zeal we...
It's a highly prized faculty in shop-keeping to sell something when a customer comes in, if you can. A female relative of ours went into a Hanover street fancy store 'tother day, t...
In the village of Washington, Fayette Co., Ohio, there was a transient sort of a personage, a kind of floating farmer, named Hinkle,--Jacob Hinkle,--commonly called Old Jake Hinkle...
A hard-fisted "old hunker," who has made $30,000 in fifty-one years, by saving up rags, old iron, bones, soap-grease, snipping off the edges of halves, quarters, and nine-pences, r...
A keen, genteely dressed, gentlemanly man "put up" at Beltzhoover's Hotel, in Baltimore, one day some years ago, and after dining very sumptuously every day, drinking his Otard, Ma...
Magrundy says, in his work on Grub, that a Frenchman will "frigazee" a pair of old boots and make a respectable soup out of an ancient chapeau; but our friend Perriwinkle affirms t...
Have you ever had the tooth-ache? If not, then blessed is your ignorance, for it is indeed bliss to know nothing about the tooth-ache, as you know nothing, absolutely nothing about...
Printers, from time immemorial--back possibly to the days of Faust--have suffered martyrdom, more or less, at the hands of the people who didn't pay! Many of the long-established n...
We know several folks who have a way of beating round and boxing the compass, from A to Z, and back again, that fairly knocks us into smithereens. One of these characters came to u...
We have been, frequently, much amused with the man[oe]uvring of some folks in trade. It's not your cute folks, who screw, twist and twirl over a smooth fourpence, or skin a flea fo...
It seems to be just as natural for a subordinate in a "grocery" to levy upon the till, for material aid to his own pocket, as for the sparks to fly upwards or water run down hill....
There is no end to the humbug in life. About half we say, and more than half we do, is tinged with humbug. "My Dear Sir," we say, when we address a letter to a fellow we have never...
Few extravaganzas of man or woman lay such a heavy stress upon the pocket-book or purse as meanness. This may seem paradoxical, but it's nothing of the kind. How many thousands to...
We observed a small transaction last Wednesday noon, on Hanover street, that wasn't so coarse for an urchin hardly out of his swaddling clouts. He was a cunning-looking little fell...
Old Gunter was going home t'other night with a very heavy "turkey on"--about a forty-four pounder. Gunter accused the pavements of being icy, and down he came--kerchug! A "young la...
We are astounded at the incredulity of some people. Every now and then you run afoul of somebody who does not believe in spiritual knockers. Enter any of our drinking saloons, take...
Had been spinning old Mrs. Tartaremetic any quantity of salty yarns; she was quite surprised at Mr. Ringbolt's ups and downs, trials, travels and tribulations. Honest Jack (!) had...
A gentleman from "out 'town," came into Redding & Co.'s on Christmas day, and leaning thoughtfully over the counter, says he to Prescott, "Got any Psalms here?" "N-n-no," says Pres...
The philosophy of the present age is peculiarly the philosophy of outsides. Few dive deeper into the human breast than the bosom of the shirt. Who could doubt the heart that beats...
In 1837, after the capture of Santa Anna, by General Samuel Houston and his little Spartan band, which event settled the war, and something like tranquillity being restored to Texa...
Some years ago, I was one of a convivial party, that met in the principal hotel in the town of Columbus, Ohio, the seat of government of the Buckeye State. It was a winter evening...