RUNNING FOR OFFICE.

Oamaru Mail, Volume I, Issue 322, 4 May 1877, Page 4

RUNNING FOR OFFICE.

Johnson was looking for a wife, and having met Miss Davis, of Wherewelive, last summer at Saratoga, and bein7 rather pleased with her, came out from_ Boston, Saturday night on the 7.30 train, with the intention of Temaining over the Sabbath. . " Can you tell me where Mr. Davis lives V' asked Johnson of a boy who was walking about the platform with his hands in his pockets smoking a cheroot, as he alighted from the cari. " Which Davis ! ' enquired the boy, " Eph, Jim, or Hen 1 __ There's lots of 'cm here." " I don't know his Christian name, replied Johnson, ''but he's quite tall, and will weigh 175 or 200 pounds, I should say." " And got a hair lip ?" added the boy. " I think not." said Johnson, " although I never saw him near to ; he has a full, round face, .and wears side whiskers and a moustache."

" Uli. I know now, it's Jim ; he was out in tiie arm\ r , wasn't lie ! Got to be captain ; showed the white feather once ; came lioiua on a furlough ; brought some of t!ie soldiers' money home for t:ieir wives and mothers, but never paid over a cent, of it; poisoned his father witu lat exterminator to get his property ; kicked his mother down stairs, when sae was eighty years old, and broke her back; stole any quantity of liens when he was a boy, and broke into a bank when he was only eighteen, didn't he V' " I couldn't say about that," responded Johnson, in amuzament. " He's about forty years old, I should judge, and good looking." '• Same feller. Took old Briggs' horse one night and drove him niore'n fifty miles, and then cut his throat because he couldn't go no farther; got drunk one day and threw a bob-tailed monkey through the church window when the minister was baptising a woman, and tore the minister's face awfully ; set a load of hay on fire that a man was driving to Lynn, and threw his little boy out of the window on'to a pile of bean poles when it was thundering, didn't he ?" "I never heard that he did," said the astonished Johnson. '' Has he a daughter about eighteen V' " Yes, Susan, and two wives, but only one of them is here though ; the other is out West somewhere. He ran away and left her, and then married this woman ; it's the same man who strangled his first mother-in-law with a string of sausages wound rennd her neck, and then cut her up with a hoe and packed her into a tripe barrel and buried it uurler the fl' >or in the barn; used to preach once; stole the hymn-books and lamps and pawned them for rum ; throws his shoulders back when he walks, don't he V " Yes," responded Johnson, biting his finger nails, and wondering what time the next train went back to Boston.

" Then the man you're after thinks he knows more'n the dictionary ; calls everybody who don't ayree with him a fool; eats raw eggs ; owes his grocer more'n ninety dollars; shot old Mrs. Bugby's rooster last summer, and wouldn't pay her for it; swears every second word; beats his adopted daughter with a rake ; won't let her have anything to eat, and makes her sleep in the wood-shed." "It seems to me," said Joimson, "that you must lie mistaken. "Is this Mr. Davis in the lumber business V "Yes, he was in that business, but he had failed for more'n 150,000<101., and only paid eight cents on a dollar, made more'n 100,000dol. out of the scrape, and wouldn't even pay off his help ; used to be a butcher, and now he won't speak to his relations when he meets them in the because they are poor; puts on strefc-, than a fighting-cock—that's more airs _that lions j there, with where he lives-

the biff window, see - , Johnson said'that he did and trw jart on the point of the boy if he thought it would be safe for h«n to remain under his roof over night, when a train came rnshing into tne depot, anci, liearin" the conductor . shout out-, All aboard° for Boston," he jumped into the smoking car, and was soon being rapidly borne °back to the great metropolis. Johnson could never imagine how such a man as Mr. Davis ha,d been represented to bim to be, could have so handsome, refined, and accomplished a daughter, till a few days later he took up a paper and savv under the column headed ' 1 Out of Town, that he was running for office, when it suddenly all became plain to him. Johnson will be down again to see the fair Susan. —Danbury N&ius.