"You've come down in Deacon Peck's north medder lot."

   There was a haunted house down South which was carefully avoided by all the superstitious negroes. But a new arrival in the community, named Sam, bragged of his bravery as too superior to be shaken by any ghosts, and declared that, for the small sum of two dollars cash in hand paid, he would pass the night alone in the haunted house. A score of other darkies contributed, and the required amount was raised. It was not, however, to be delivered to the courageous Sam until

   his reappearance after the vigil. With this understanding the boaster betook himself to the haunted house for the night.

   When a select committee sought for Sam next morning, no trace of him was found. Careful search for three days failed to discover the missing negro.

   But on the fourth day Sam entered the village street, covered with mud and evidently worn with fatigue.

   "Hi, dar, nigger!" one of the bystanders shouted. "Whar you-all been de las' foh days?"

   And Sam answered simply:

   "Ah's been comin' back."

   The little boy was found by his mother with pencil and paper, making a sketch. When asked what he was doing, he answered promptly, and with considerable pride:

   "I'm drawing a picture of God."

   "But," gasped the shocked mother, "you cannot do that. No one has seen God. No one knows how God looks."

   "Well," the little boy replied, complacently, "when I get through they will."

   The clergyman was calling, when the youthful son and heir approached his mother proudly, and exhibited a dead rat. As she shrank in repugnance, he attempted to reassure her:

   "Oh, it's dead all right, mama. We beat it and beat it and beat it, and it's deader 'n dead."

   His eyes fell on the clergyman, and he felt that something more was due to that reverend presence. So he continued in a tone of solemnity:

   "Yes, we beat it and beat it until—until God called it home!"

   The eminent English 

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