The song to which the little creature gave utterance again and again in our full view was as sweet and varied as the warbling of any bird. It most resembled that of the canary, but the melody of the nightingale was occasionally introduced. Every note was as clear and distinct, but withal so soft, so gentle, tender and pianissimo, that I can only compare it to the voice of a bird muffled by being heard through a down pillow. In the room was a canary, whose cage was suspended in one of the windows. He had settled himself to roost, and his head was under his wing, but at the sound of “Nicodemus’” serenade he awoke, and, listening attentively, and fantastically leaning alternately to right and left, peeped curiously down to the floor. I learned that the mouse and bird were intimately acquainted with each other, and that the former frequently visited his feather friend and stayed to supper. Accordingly, while we looked on with pleasure, “Nicodemus” climbed up the drawn curtains, entered the bird’s cage, and partook of the seed–the canary showing no symptom of disapprobation or disturbance, but merely from his perch peeping down on his visitor in a ludicrously quaint and odd manner. During his supper time, “Nicodemus” obliged us from the cage with several repetitions from his song, “The Chirper,” down below on the carpet, occasionally coming in with a monotonous contralto accompaniment, and sometimes emitting a sound like the squeaking of a corkscrew through a cork. The two little songsters, having done their best to please us, were rewarded with all that mice could wish for as components of a feast, and after selecting the portions they severally preferred, gracefully retired.–Popular Science Monthly.

On Wednesday evening a wager was laid between William Laduke, of Vergennes, and Messrs. Forton & La Bombord, as follows: Laduke was to eat in ten hours two pounds of pork-steak, four large potatoes, one-half of a pie, two slices of wheat bread, each one and one-quarter inches thick, one-quarter pound of butter, half a bushel of apples, and to drink two cups of tea. At seven o’clock on Thursday morning the gourmand began his task by eating five apples. He then ate one pound of pork-steak, two large potatoes, one slice of bread, one-quarter of a pie, one-eighth of a pound of butter, and drank one cup of tea. The remainder of the forenoon he spent walking about and eating apples, of which he had devoured twenty-three at twelve o’clock. At noon he ate one pound of pork-steak, two large potatoes, one quarter of a pie, one slice of bread, one-eighth pound of butter, and drank two cups of tea. He was then weighed, and found to have gained seven and one-half pounds. For the next three hours he averaged about two apples per hour. At 5:30 p. m. he ate the the last apple and won the bet with half an hour to spare. His weight when he began was 145 pounds, and at the close 153 pounds, showing a gain of eight pounds in nine and one-half hours. Seven and one-half pounds of this he acquired in the first five hours, the last five hours adding only one-half pound to his weight. The half-bushel of apples was “heaping” measure, and numbered just sixty-five apples. Laduke is twenty-six years old, five feet seven inches in height, and has never experienced a sick day in his life. He is a thin, spare man, and has always worked out for his living, usually among the farmers. He experienced no unusual difficulty from his square meal, and offered to bet five dollars that he could eat another peck of apples the same evening.–Vergennes (Vt.) Cor. N. Y. Sun.

An American recently solved a mystery which had confused and amazed a wedding party in Rome. The bride was the daughter of one of the most noble Marquises of old or modern Rome, and the groom was the scion of another noble house. When the wedding contract had been signed, the groom took the hand of his young wife in his own and kissed its fingers. She smiled at this, and allowed her hand to rest where he had placed it. But in a moment, to the dismay of the company, a voice was heard, as from her lips, saying: “Impertinent! how dare you touch my hand? Be off, fool.” Still she smiled as before, and her lover gazed upon her face in dismay. Suddenly she seemed to laugh, and it was a dry and ironical laugh that startled people more than the words they had heard before. “Has the girl gone mad?” some one asked. She fainted, and her friends gathered closely around the sofa on which she had fallen. At this moment a young American, described as “of great learning, but generally very taciturn and almost timid in manner,” offered to examine into the cause of the strange occurrences, and approached the sofa. Casting his eyes on and around the sofa, and then about the room, he proceeded to crawl along the floor on his hands and knees until he came to a large ottoman. Behind this he found a young servant who had been dismissed from the house that morning, and went away declaring that she would be revenged. By some means she had found her way into the parlor and concealed herself behind the ottoman. Being a ventriloquist, she was able there to speak in a tone of voice which was naturally attributed to the bride.–N.Y. Tribune.

The public has had its sense of the wondrous very much blunted during the past year or two by the rapid introduction of telephones and agraphones¹, microphones, [phonographs][] and the like, so that if the announcement were to be made that Professor Somebody had devised a plan by which a person could make a trip between Philadelphia and Liverpool² in twenty-four hours the public would only be surprised, not astonished. It certainly seems marvelous enough to say that there has been discovered a way in which persons may sit in their own homes and listen to sermons, converts or lectures going on in churches or halls miles distant, and but a brief time ago such a statement would have been regarded with incredulity; to-day it simply evokes the remark, “I thought they’d get up something like that.”

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