SAME OLD THING.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3582, 4 January 1883, Page 4

SAME OLD THING.

An old. granger strolled into a bookstore on (sixth uremic, Detroit, the other clay, and stopped at a table where a lot of cheap novels were displayed. lie picked one of them up and begun to turn its leaves with a curious and amused expression of countenance. A clerk passing by just then, the grander .said : "They keep on writhi , these yallowl'ivcrcd novels yet, I sec." Clerk said they did. " Used to read every blessed one that lmm out when I was a boy. Reckon I've gone through inor'n fourteen baskets on 'em in my day, though I hain't tackled one in about forty years now. Don't s'pose they'd read as they did then. Gittin' married and raisin' a large family sort o' knocks the remantic and pieturisk out of a man, as it were. And with a wife and children look'n at ye for bread what do you care for ' Ogarita, The Forest Queen ; or the Trajerdy of the False Eyebrow,' hey r I used to set up all night readin , the 'Castle o' San Juan del Boot Jack,' or somethin' like that, with my teeth chatterii till I shook the whole house. Couldn't do it now. But I say, do the novels run as they used to !'" " Pretty much the same way," replied the ob i; giug clerk. " You don't say! Does the boss here wine exclaim, " Unhand me, villain, or b me father's great horn spoons, I'll thro , meself from el iff and .seek a peaceful grave beneath the waves that rastlc for a position at its foot!'' " That's about the run of it." " "Well, I declare ! And when the swears she must behis'n though the heavens fall and hell yawns at his feet, .she shrieks the name of Gonraldo and takes the fatal plunge into the .seething waters of the dark abyss. The billows close over her be-a-u----teous form, when, 10, Gonraldo—what does Gonraldo do nowadays, say !" " Gonraldo plunges in—" ''Exactly.'" interrupted the granger, excitedly. "Gonraldo, Avho has been watchin' things from the clutch of the demon waves, crying, "Ha! ha! foiled! foiled !" Oh, it's just the way the ol thing run when I was a boy. Ham' changed it a bit. And the pirate stories Do they skim the bright sea foam in rakisl lookin' skuners (five cents a skuner), hul painted jet black, with a narrer streak o red numin' along the sides r" "Oh yes." You don't tell me. And is the pirate*: bride as good lookin' as she used to be "r ! can see her now, .standin' at the head of th< powder overboard, "Gome; de la. Ilutahaga, hold thy hand? Touel but a hair of that fair youth's head, and ] will blow thee and thy murderous crew tc the weeping stars, and scatter thy prouc bark among the coral rcef.s of the down sweeping sea!" " What a memory you have got." " Oh, I'm a busten Hain't read a pirate .story since I was a boy, but I remember jest how they used to go. And the pirate., : cave, too. Same old care, I s'pose r" "Pretty much the same cave. They light them with electricity now, though." "Well, I s'pose so. Pirates tumble to these new a\ rinklcs quick as anybody. Cook by steam, too, probably. Street ears ruuuin' from the cave to the dock ?" " Yes, and a telephone connecting it -\\lth a signal station." " Well, said the stranger, "we must expect a few changes in forty years. I see that the novel jogs along in about the same old beaten track, though. But an old man like me hain't any use for 'cm any more. Good day.'' And with a lingering though saddened look at the yellow covers that had called up fleeting visions of a past intellectual life, the old man left the store. ■ —American Paper.