"There," says the shaver; "they're there—somebody's got 'em—hung up 'long your window there."
Lapstone seized a box lid to give the juvenile joker a flip, but he scooted, grinning and ha! ha!-ing in the most provoking strain.
"Selling" a Landlord.
During the great gathering of people in Quakerdom, while the Whigs were dovetailing in Old Zack, an artful dodger, a queer quizzing Boston friend of mine, thought a little side play wouldn't be out of the way, so to work he goes to get up a muss, and I'll tell you how he managed it, nice as wax.
Among the Boston delegates—self-constituted, a la Gen. Commander—was a certain gentleman, remarkable for his probity, decorum, and extreme sensitiveness. Well, A., the wag, and B., the victim, landed together, but selected, in the general overflow and hurly-burly, different lodgings. Next morning, A. finds B. stowed away in ——'s Hotel, fine as a fiddle, snug as a bug, in a good room, and doing about as well as could be expected. A. had had indifferent luck, and the quarters he had lit upon were any thing but comfortable, the inmates of the Hotel being stowed away in tiers, like herrings in a box. A. thought he'd oust his innocent and unsuspecting friend, and crack his joke, if it cost a law suit, just for the sake of variety.
With the address, and partly the dress—a white hat—of a man of the mace, A. steps up to the bar of ——'s Hotel, and after carefully scrutinizing the register, finds the autograph of the victim, then smiles suspiciously, enough to say to the observant bar-keeper—
"Aha! I've found him!" Then leaning cautiously forward towards that person, says A.—
"Is this man here yet? Is he in the house?"
"I b'leave he is, sur,—I know he is, sur," says the Milesian, overlooking the register himself.