"Ha! ha! I knew I'd astonish you; Tom insisted on my keeping perfectly _mum_, until things were in regular working order; he then set the boys to work--we have large cages on top of the building--"

"Come up on top of this building," said the partner, solemnly. "There, do you see that bundle of laths and stuff?"

"Why--why, you don't pretend to say that--"

"I do exactly; a scamp came along here a week ago--talked nothing but Carrier Pigeons--Pigeon Expresses--I thought I'd surprise you, and--"

"Well, well--go on."

"And by thunder I was green enough to give the fellow $200--a horse and wagon--"

"Done! _done!_" roared the other, without waiting for further particulars--"$200 and a horse and wagon--just what Tom and I gave the scamp! ha! ha! ha!"

"Haw! haw! haw!" and the publishers roared under the force of the _joke_.

Whatever became of the pigeon express man is not distinctly known; but he is supposed to have given up the bird business, and gone into the manufacture of woolly horses and cod-liver oil.

Jipson's Great Dinner Party.

"Well, you must do it."

"Do it?"

"Do it, sir," reiterated the lady of Jipson, a man well enough to _do_ in the world, chief clerk of a "sugar baker," and receiving his twenty hundred dollars a year, with no perquisites, however, and--plenty of New Hampshire contingencies, (to quote our beloved man of the million, Theodore Parker,) poor relations.

"But, my dear Betsey, do you _know_, will you consider for once, that to _do_ a thing of the kind--to splurge out like Tannersoil, one must expect--at least I do--to sink a full _quarter_ of my salary, for the current year; yes, a full quarter?"

"Oh! very well, if you are going to live up here" (Jipson had just moved up above "Bleecker street,")--"and bought your carriage, and engaged----"

"Two extra servant girls," chimed in Jipson.

"And a groom, sir," continued Mrs. J.

"And gone into at least six hundred to eight hundred dollars a year extra expenses, to--a----"

"To gratify yourself, and--a----"

"Your--a--a--your vanity, Madam, you should have said, my dear."

"Don't talk that way to me--to me--you brute; you know----"

"I know all about it, my dear."

"_My dear_--bah!" said the lady; "my _dear!_ save that, Mr. Jipson, for some of your--a--a----"

What Mrs. J. might have said, we scarce could judge; but Jipson just then put in a "rejoinder" calculated to prevent the umpullaceous tone of Mrs. J.'s remarks, by saying, in a very humble strain--

"Mrs. Jipson, don't make an a.s.s of yourself: we are too old to act like goslings, and too well acquainted, I hope, with the matters-of-fact of every-day life, to quarrel about things beyond our reach or control."

"If you talk of things beyond your control, Mr. Jipson, I mean beyond your reach, that your income will not permit us to live as other people live----"

"I wouldn't like to," interposed Jipson.

"What?" asked Mrs. Jipson.

"Live like other people--that is, some people, Mrs. Jipson, that I know of."

"You don't suppose _I'm_ going to bury myself and my poor girls in this big house, and have those servants standing about me, their fingers in their mouths, with nothing to do but----"

"But what?"

"But cook, and worry, and slave, and keep shut up for a----"

"For what?"

"For a--a----"

But Mrs. J. was stuck. Jipson saw that; he divined what a _point_ Mrs.

J. was about to, but could not conscientiously make, so he relieved her with--

"My dear Betsey, it's a popular fallacy, an exploded idea, a contemptible humbug, to live merely for your neighbors, the rabble world at large. Thousands do it, my dear, and I've no objection to their doing it; it's their own business, and none of mine. I have moved up town because I thought it would be more pleasant; I bought a modest kind of family carriage because I could afford it, and believed it would add to our recreations and health; the carriage and horses required care; I engaged a man to attend to them, fix up the garden, and be useful generally, and added a girl or two to your domestic departments, in order to lighten your own cares, &c. Now, all this, my dear woman, you ought to know, rests a very important responsibility upon my shoulders, health, life, and--two thousand dollars a year, and if you imagine it compatible with common sense, or consonant with my judgment, to make an a.s.s or fool of myself, by going into the extravagances and tom-fooleries of Tannersoil, our neighbor over the way, who happens for the time to be 'under government,' with a salary of nothing to speak of, but with stealings equal to those of a successful freebooter, you--you--you have placed a--a bad estimate upon my common sense, Madam."

With this flaring burst of eloquence, Jipson seized his hat, gloves and cane, and soon might be seen an elderly, natty, well-shaved, slightly-flushed gentleman taking his seat in a down town bound _bus_, en route for the sugar bakery of the firm of Cutt, Comeagain, & Co. It was evident, however, from the frequency with which Jipson plied his knife and rubber to his "figgers" of the day's accounts, and the tremulousness with which he drove the porcupine quill, that Jipson was thinking of something else!

"Mr. Jipson, I wish you'd square up that account of Look, Sharp, & Co., to-day," said Mr. Cutt, entering the counting room.

"All folly!" said Jipson, scratching out a mistake from his day-book, and not heeding the remark, though he saw the person of his employer.

"Eh?" was the e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n of Cutt.

"All folly!"

"I don't understand you, sir!" said Cutt, in utter astonishment.

"Oh! I beg pardon, sir," said poor Jipson; "I beg pardon, sir. Engrossed in a little affair of my own, I quite overlooked your observation. I will attend to the account of Look, Sharp, & Co., at once, sir;" and while Jipson was at it, his employer went out, wondering what in faith could be the matter with Jipson, a man whose capacity and gentlemanly deportment the firm had tested to their satisfaction for many years previous. The little _incident_ was mentioned to the partner, Comeagain.

The firm first laughed, then wondered what was up to disturb the usual equilibrium of Jipson, and ended by hoping he hadn't taken to drink or nothing!

"Guess I'd better do it," soliloquizes Jipson. "My wife is a good woman enough, but like most women, lets her vanity trip up her common sense, now and then; she feels cut down to know that Tannersoil's folks are plunging out with dinners and evening parties, troops of company, piano going, and bawling away their new fol-de-rol music. Yes, guess I'll do it.

"Mrs. Jipson little calculates the horrors--not only in a pecuniary, but domestic sense--that these dinners, suppers and parties to the rag-tag and bobtail, cost many honest-meaning people, who _ought_ to be ashamed of them.

"But, I'll do it, if it costs me the whole quarter's salary!"

A few days were sufficient to concoct details and arrange the programme.

When Mrs. Jipson discovered, as she vainly supposed, the prevalence of "better sense" on the part of her husband, she was good as cranberry tart, and flew around in the best of humor, to hurry up the event that was to give _eclat_ to the new residence and family of the Jipsons, slightly dim the radiance or mushroom glory of the Tannersoil family, and create a commotion generally--above Bleecker street!