Games/Humor Books

CHAPTER V. MR. MCLAUGHLIN AND FRIEND. JOHN BUMSTEAD, on his way home along the unsteady turnpike—upon which he is sure there will be a dreadful accident some day, for want of railings—is suddenly brought to an unsettled pause in his career by the spectacle of Old Mortarity leaning against the low fence of the pauper burial-ground, with a shapeless boy throwing stones at him in the moonlight. The... more...

His name, PUNCHINELLO hopes, will not be found a difficult one to articulate. He flatters himself that it has a smack of grape-juice and olives about it. It rhymes with "mellow," which naturally brings us to "good fellow.". On occasions PUNCHINELLO can "bellow," cut a "tremendous swell," O, and he never throws away a chance of pocketing the "yellow." He would... more...

A CONSISTENT LEAGUE. Immediately upon McFarland's acquittal, the Union League of Philadelphia determined to give a grand ball. And they did it. And, what is more, they intend to do it every time the majesty of any kind of Union is vindicated. Except, of course, the union of the "Iron interest" and the public good. One of the most valuable and instructive features of this ball was, the... more...

THE GREAT CANAL ENTERPRISE. [FROM OUR SPECIAL BOSTON CORRESPONDENT.] BOSTON, May 8th, 1870. We Bostonians are greatly surprised that your valuable journal has as yet taken no notice of the great undertaking of the century—the Cape Cod Canal. However, you New-Yorkers are quite out of the world, and unless you read the Boston Transcript regularly, can not be expected to know much about the enterprises... more...

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XV. "SPOTTED." When the bell of St. Cow's began ringing for Ritualistic morning-service, with a sound as of some incontinently rambling dun spinster of the lacteal herd—now near at hand in cracked dissonance, as the wind blows hither; now afar, in tinkling distance, as the wind blows... more...

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XII—(Continued.) The pauper burial-ground toward which they now progress in a rather high-stepping manner, or—to vary the phrase—toward which their steps are now very much bent, is not a favorite resort of the more cheerful village people after nightfall. Ask any resident of Bumsteadville if... more...

The MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XIV. CLOVES FOR THREE. Christmas Eve in Bumsteadville. Christmas Eve all over the world, but especially where the English language is spoken. No sooner does the first facetious star wink upon this Eve, than all the English-speaking millions of this Boston-crowned earth begin casting off their hatreds, meannesses, uncharities, and... more...

FOR THE BEST. Miss CAROWTHERS'S educational hotbed of female innocence was about to undergo desolation by the temporary dispersal of its intellectual buds and blossoms to their native soils, therefrom to fill home-atmospheres with the mental fragrance of "all the branches." Holiday Week drew near, when, as Miss CAROWTHERS Ritually expressed it, "all who were true believers of the... more...

MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION, BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XII. A NIGHT OF IT WITH MCLAUGHLIN. Judge SWEENEY, with a certain supercilious consciousness that he is figuring in a novel, and that it will not do for him to thwart the eccentricities of mysterious fiction by any commonplace deference to the mere meteorological weaknesses of ordinary human nature, does not allow the fact that late... more...

THE MYSTERY OF MR. E. DROOD. AN ADAPTATION. BY ORPHEUS C. KERR. CHAPTER XVII. INSURANCE AND ASSURANCE. Six months had come and gone and done it; the weather was as inordinately hot as it had before been intolerably cold; and the Reverend OCTAVIUS SIMPSON stood waiting, in the gorgeous Office of the Boreal Life Insurance Company, New York, for the appearance of Mr. MELANCTHON SCHENCK. Having been... more...