cried. Wait till you see it, the father said, as he chuckled over the fun to come. Then the performance went on, the toy man turned his somerset, but there was nothing unusual about it. Something is wrong, the father said, let us try it again. It was tried again with the same result. There was no squeak! Then our friend awoke to the fact that the squeak must have originated in the mouth of the talented salesman on Broadway. The joke was too good to be told and the father could only explain by saying there was something wrong. As he passed up Broadway again a few evenings after, behold, there was the old performance and the veritable squeak. Hundreds of fathers had been taken in by that ventriloquism. But they said nothing when they came back. The sales were proceeding briskly and purchasers saw the joke, when they reached home. There are tricks in every trade. That talented sidewalk merchant, you may depend upon it, was a queer stick.

How else could he have sold his stock?

There was a man on our streets not many months ago who was suffering from a terrible uncured wound in one of his limbs. He was conveyed here and there by a very devoted companion. The limb was largely bandaged. Some gave to the sufferer when they heard his story, and looked upon his face with anguish so deeply written upon it. To the incredulous the wound was slightly uncovered, and they at once deposited their alms and turned away in haste. One day a very sympathetic friend caught sight of the wound. Indeed it ought to be dressed! A physician was passing and a drug store was at hand. Just then the patient was suffering great torment. He refused to be moved. His anxious nurse also opposed the movement with all the force of argument and remonstrance. It was in vain. The poor man might die unless the wound was dressed. So to the drug store they went perforce, in the hands of ardent sympathizers of suffering. The examination disclosed a pound of fresh beef, well bandaged, and a perfect limb underneath; and the wounded man

dodged out of the crowd and escaped. He was a queer stick indeed to lie there day after day, preying upon the sympathies of his fellows. But it paid him well! He ought to have been well paid for his deception in more ways than one.

These men were smart as well as queer. But the other variety is the largest. Real queer sticks are not apt to know it. They mean no deception. They practice none. They are innocently queer. It is rather born in them, or it has come upon them by neglect, and they all unconscious. Poor fellows, they think they are having a good time of it and do not know that every body is laughing in their sleeves when they pass. It is well they do not know it, for it would make them feel terribly unhappy. But so it is. Their wives and their children never tell them of it, they are used to it, and perhaps do not dwell upon the fact much. Friends hesitate to touch so delicate a point and only speak of it to others. But society, Mrs. Grundy they call her, constantly says, Oh, what queer sticks!

This comic peculiarity takes manifold shapes. There is our neighbor Snyder. What a queer way of talking he has. He never says anything precisely as any one else would say it. He is death on grammar. His rhetoric would throw Dr. Blair into conniptions. And as for his logic it would make Whately's bones rattle, if they could hear it. John Stuart Mill would race around the corner and utter another argument for woman's rights, could he listen to Snyder's talk a minute. For Snyder gets adjectives and pronouns and verbs all mixed up, heads and tails together, like cattle in a freight car. He always begins at the wrong end of everything and tells the moral of the point first, and enters into details afterward. You ought to hear Snyder tell his favorite story about the man who fell from the housetop and was hurt only by the stopping; or that other one about the Irishman and the persimmon tree. It is actually killing. Everybody laughs immoderately. But the laugh is at Snyder

and not at the story. His way of telling it is unique as Noah's shirt collar; but in itself the story is as flat as the buffalo hunt. Snyder always gets things mixed. He tells you about putting the horse before the cart, about killing two stones with one bird, and has a very solemn admonition concerning the "foundy sandation," on which some men build. He is most ridiculous when he would be most solemn. I remember him telling with tearful eyes about his "female sister" who had lately passed away and left several "orphanless" children. He didn't mean it. He knows better. But his tongue by some mistake got the wrong end down his throat and the thick end loose. He is the "queerest man in New York," or any other place.

Then there is Higgins; he is terribly queer, too. But his singularity is in his face. It is the best joke of the season just to look at that man. His countenance is a perpetual conundrum, and you can't help guessing at it. People may look at Higgins. Then they laugh-then comes a stitch in their sides. He would cure half the poor wretches in the hospital, if they could only see him once. They would either die or get well, at sight. They could not help themselves. And as for the mutes, it would pay to rent him out to the asylums, for if he couldn't make them say something with a yell, their cases might be deemed forever hopeless. Well, what is the matter with Higgins' face? It is not homely, what we Americans call ugly. Nor can it be called pretty. It is just Higgins, and then you laugh. The eyes are not crooked, and the nose is not large. The mouth does not seem to be hungrily making for the chin, and the cheeks have nothing peculiar about them. It is just the general make-up of the thing. It looks like an old-fashioned bed-quilt, composed of scraps. One part does not belong to another. A phrenologist would think that face made up on purpose by some wild scamps from the medical college, just to puzzle him. The brow expresses profound thought. The eyes belong to a circus clown.

There is your grandfather's smile on the lips, and a maiden's disappointment on the cheeks. It is a conglomeration of sorrow and humor, of tickling and torture; dancing and dying in the same picture. And so, as a funny sobriety is the funniest thing going, Higgins is half Falstaff and half Macbeth, while it is always doubtful which part he is to play. But you may be sure that no matter which part he attempts, he will be sure to do the other. And Higgins is mighty queer! Then there is Perkins. His name was originally Porcupine, but it became corrupted by mischance. Other Perkinses are rightly named. But. that there is a mistake here, everybody sees. His originality consists in his personal carriage. His locomotion is a comedy in fifty acts. He don't need to make a joke. He is a standing column of wit and humor-rather a walking column. If he stands still, he is so unutterably awkward as to remind you of the Laocoon, and you involuntarily look around for the big snake. Nobody dares mention Apollo when he is about. He ought to be bought up for a dancing-master's sign, or taken as a model for Powers' next

statue. The way Powers would have to work it would be, to look at Perkins and then make his model exactly different in every respect. Or if Rogers wants a new group, here is Perkins. He is a group of half a dozen all in himself. Look at that neck, and that back, and those arms and bodily supporters, and the expression of those feet. Ah me! he looks like a skeleton all unrobed of flesh, a mummy trying to stand up in his Sunday clothes. Don't laugh at him! But we can not help it. It isn't his fault and it isn't ours. the fellow laughs from tip to toe. There he goes a walking. Dear friends who look at him, please look the other way.

But

For his feet are going to sling themselves around promiscuously in every direction and tangle up his walking sticks, and these have as many and as loose joints as a jumping-jack. Step out of the way! His arms are cradling oats, and his body thinks itself

a shipmast in a stiff breeze, and that head rolls like a ball on a Japanese cane. Did you ever see a bear on the top of a menagerie wagon when going at a full trot? Well, that's Perkins. He is always careering about, totally unconscious of the havoc he is making among the proprieties of men and the stiff promenades of the weaker sex. When he comes swinging down the sidewalk, the effect is the same as that of a runaway horse in the street, only his gait is lofty, majestic and solemn. But he doesn't know that he is a ceaseless sensation, and that he stirs laughter to its utmost depths, and kills the blues for his fellow-citizens.

There is just one more queer stick, and that is Samuels. He does everything in a mode of exquisite originality. If he goes to sit down, you think he is falling over; or if to arise, that somebody has hit him in the back. He never goes around the corner if he can go through it. He always prefers to walk in the mud. When he writes, you think he is going to begin at the bottom of the page and strike for the left upper corner. He holds pen as if it were hot, and dips into the ink with two or three little jerks up and down, as if a drop too much or too little would be a crime. No man can describe the way he holds a book, especially when he stands up to sing in meeting. The book evidently holds him.

his

His hat goes on like the cover of a dish, and you verily expect for a moment to see it disappear under the hair. That coat was made at a firstclass establishment, and it would fit well enough, only he thinks that he must make it fit by throwing his shoulders well up and back, and holding his head like a horse at the blacksmith's, tied so as not to kick. He is always bettering things. He can tell you how to do everything " a different way. He is not only left-handed, but left-footed and left-eyed, and the left corner of his mouth has a quirk of its own. When Samuels calls on you, you think he has come to force you out politely for back rent. when he mounts his horse at the door,

And

for he takes pride in horseback exercise, he is like a man going up the pyramids with an Arab before him. He sits cross-legged in the omnibus. He steps on your wife's dress, and knocks your hat off, and drops his cane, and runs over several small dogs, all in the space of half a minute, and then he isn't sorry, for it was everybody else's fault. He

goes around you as if he were a cat and wasn't quite sure that you were not a mouse in disguise. And he is as fussy as a hen with ducks, only he is sure to splash if there is any water around. The worst of it all is, that he thinks himself the pink of gentility and a model of grace. You can see it in his face. "I am doing it, look at me." That's what he says. But it will not do to contradict him. It would spoil him. He would be disappointed and disheartened; and if he had to act like other people it would be like living in jail. We haven't said anything about people with hobbies. That will do to keep. We haven't meant to make light of anybody or of their natural (shall we call it?) originality of method. We have merely sought to write it down as all our eyes have seen it. Is it any harm to say it?

But, oh! one fearful thought haunts us at the close. Queer people are so very unconscious of any marked peculiarity setting them off from their fellows. Then it may be you, reader, or the writer, who is thus affording mirth to stir the sober depths of social existence. Then so let it be. They may laugh at us. But let them do it not in malice. Oh! laughers, get behind our backs and then enjoy us all you can. But as for us queer sticks, we are better than physicians. Ours is a life of benevolence. We help to dissipate care, and stimulate fresh thought, and awake the sleepy, and heal the sick, and make men smile, whenever they see us. And for that we make no charge. This is infinitely better than to cause sorrow, or complaining; to stir up strife and fill the world with frowns. And then as for all our queerness it is as much yours