"You've got one too!" screamed Joe, perfectly delighted. "Oh, Lucy, do look and see!"
"Have I?" cried Lucy, poking up one corner of the old handkerchief to see. "Oh, Joe, I have, I have!"
"And here is my part of the Fourth-of-July pie," cried Aunt Nancy, rattling down on them a goodly shower of silver quarters. "There! and there! and there!"
"The Fourth of July forever!" sang Joe, jumping up on the table, and swinging his arms. "Three cheers for the Encyclopædia of Events I'll get!"
"That's no better than the Histories I'll have!" crowed Lucy, triumphantly.
"And I," said a dismal voice under the table, "shall begin now for next year. Yes, I will."
MR MARTIN'S SCALP.
BY JIMMY BROWN.
After that game of mumble-te-peg that me and Mr. Martin played, he did not come to our house for two weeks. Mr. Travers said perhaps the earth he had to gnaw while he was drawing the peg had struck to his insides and made him sick, but I knew it couldn't be that. I've drawn pegs that were drove into every kind of earth, and it never hurt me. Earth is healthy, unless it is lime; and don't you ever let anybody drive a peg into lime. If you were to swallow the least bit of lime, and then drink some water, it would burn a hole through you just as quick as anything. There was once a boy who found some lime in the closet, and thought it was sugar, and of course he didn't like the taste of it. So he drank some water to take the taste out of his mouth, and pretty soon his mother said: "I smell something burning goodness gracious! the house is on fire." But the boy he gave a dreadful scream, and said, "Ma, it's me!" and the smoke curled up out of his pockets and around his neck, and he burned up and died. I know this is true, because Tom McGinnis went to school with him, and told me about it.