Conservative. BARBED WIRE. He says it should be pronounced Rosy-velt and it is thought best to let the impetuous young gentleman have Ills own way about it. Sir Tom spent $462,000 this year en deavoring to secure that ugly and elusive bit of silver for a watch charm. This does not include bouquets. A worried Englishman wishes he knew what is going on down the King's throat. If our information is at all correct , principally champagne. The American republic is like the American dollar. About seventy mil lions of people are busy saving it , when they might be better employed. Some men are so constituted that the absolute knowledge that they are poor doesn't hurt them nearly so badly as does a mere suspicion that some other fellow is rich. We note that when a political ma chine is smashed the smashers always gather up a few stray levers , cogs , belts and pulleys' , and organize a re construction bureau. After all , when you consider the matter seriously , the little boy who informed his teacher that America was discovered by the Spanish in 1898 was not so very far off the track. All the way from Manila comes the information that an octopus lias ten tentacles. Good deal ' like the "quartette consisting of six young ladies' ' which we read about now and then. So far the inquiry has established the fact that the Spanish ships were sunk , burned and run ashore. Be patient , whatever else may have been done to them will probably develop later on. Now that Herr Most has fully proven that his famous "Murder Against Murder' ' editorial was published more than fifteen years ago , it is a certain Peerless one who stands convicted of plagairism. Since the discovery that the Minnesota foot ball team goes into battle armor-plated , the late rise in steel stocks can be explained in a legitimate way , and the trusts can establish an alibi. The Chicago Tribune informs us that snails are employed as window-wash ers in Philadelphia. Even if the Quaker City is as slow as the envious Chicagoans would have us believe , this fresh insult is uncalled for. You may refer to anarchy as a can cer on the body of civilization if you wish to , but just make a careful diagnosis of the recent star anarch ist's name , and see if it doesn't strike you as being more like "Pole-evil. " Like the old lady who would rather beg her bread from door to door than subsist on charity , and not unlike the Irishman who was going to have peace if ho had to fight for it , Porter re fuses to disgorge , because that would bo a confession of dishonesty. A patriotic and generous contribu tion to help save the republic , and a filthy corruption fund are about the same thing , the difference resting not so much in the way you look at a matter of that sort as it does in where you stand when you do the looking. The only thing proven by the Schloy inquiry is that mnemonics should be added to the course of study at the naval training school. Wo make this suggestion not so much on account of its intrinsic worth , but because it gives us a chance to ring in a big word. J. M. Gray , of Sutton , Nebr. , taught a trick dog to eat paper. It was a great trick , but the poor dear doggy suffered the penalty of great ness when he playfully devoured a twenty dollar bill , and the can vassing board decided to go behind the returns. Our minister wants to now what what's-'is-name's passed through - - brain when he took his seat in that fatal chair. Not wishing to keep anything back from him , the prison officials come square out and make a clean breast of it by asserting that it- was about 1700 volts. I once listened to a lecturer of the Carry Chipmunk Scat brand , who for two long bitter hours lambasted the existing parties on account of their many inconsistencies , closing with an unmeasured denunciation of the cor ruption funds which the horrid men raise by subscription for the pur pose of strengthening their party or ganizations. After the close of the lecture the man behind the green baize corn popper was called upon to per form his sacred duty "for the good of the cause. ' ' Which only proves that inconsistency doesn't always wear trousers. That "noted scientist" who insists that he will soon be sending messages to Mars , by telephoning along a ray of light , describes the transmitter and receiver in detail , but persistently refuses to make public the name of the man who is to shinny up that ray of light and fasten on the receiver. Apropos of scientists , a professor of the Kansas University wont the kerosene route the other day. He was deeply versed in chemistry , but had failed to study up how to make a smoldering fire assimilate a quart of coal oil without adopting the policy of expansion. Is it not queer how many strong men there are who will burst hundreds of breeching straps , and never strain a trace ? . When a horse does that , we say that he is a balky , ill tempered brute ; when a man does that he is called a statesman by other men who have collar-galls .all over their own shoulders. Even the kidnapping fad , though ordinarily innocent enough , can be run to extremes. One Burke , of Sharon , Pa. , kidnapped his mother- in-law. What he intended doing with her is a matter of some doubt , as he was captured before his policy had developed , but a married man's sup position is that lie thought to in timidate her other sons-in-law by threatening that incase they failed to leave $8,000,000 behind a certain stump , in a certain grove , on a certain night , he would bring her back. 'Tis thus that this fiend in human form teaches Pat Crowe that he doesn't know the rudiments of the game. As an instance of the lofty senti ments which lead men on to fame , we quote the candidate for sheriff in a Nebraska county , who accused his op ponent of having thrown his own tlead father's body into the riverbeing too stingy to give him a decent burial. Although dozens of indignant friends rushed to his defense , and the brethren of his lodge produced the records of the order which proved that the departed was buried with all the honors of war , the right prevailed , and the genius who invented the story gets a comfort able working majority , and two more years of a full dinner pail. And this is described as ' ' another victory for free silver. ' ' A potent , grave and reverend educator delves deep in his hidden store of knowledge ( and when wo say hidden we speak advisedly ) and deftly fishes forth a criticism on the editorial fraternity. Claims wo are too prone to abbreviate , eliminate unimportant words , and trim the waste off our sentences. The dear man fails to catch our straight balls , doubtless expecting curves. He is informed by these presents that if paper and ink are not precious , the readers' time is , and that the average person knows whom you refer to when you write of the "Peerless" quite as well as though you had introduced him as the peerless orator , peerless statesman , peerless soldier , etc. , and you wouldu' t make the case any stronger if you kept on peerlessing till you ran out of lower-case " e" s. As to the abbrevia tions , any man should know without being told that the boy orator of the Platte and the boy orator of the platitudes are one and the same person , and , in a case like that , a particularization is a superfluity.