Springfield Weekly Republican

How Frank Blair Sunk the Wrong Shirt.—The Blairs were raised in Washington city, and the boys then, as ever since, had enlarged ideas of the consequence of the "Blair family." They were big, strapping fellows, and smaller chaps always avoided them for the wantonness with which they imposed on those too weak to defend themselves. Thirty or thirty-five years ago the canal which now serves Washington city as a sewer was not the mud-hole it has become of late years. It was a favorite bathing place for boys, particularly the smaller ones, who did not venture to go to the river. On one of these occasions, when Frank and one or two other of the Blairs were present, a little fellow in advance of the others picked up a shirt from the pile of clothing and began to dress. As the boy was a very little one, the opportunity to show the power of a Blair was too good to be lost. Frank snatched the shirt from the child and threw it overboard. The outcry at so mean an act he answered with laughter, for his big brothers stood by him. The shirt not sinking as fast as he wished, he threw chunks of mud and stones upon it, until the over-freighted garment went down. Frank laughed loud and long; the little boy cried; whereupon Frank, as a punishment for not accepting as an honor the notice taken of the garment by the Blairs, threw additional weights upon the sunken shirt. By this time all except the Blairs had dressed themselves, and the piles of unclaimed clothes was reduced to those belonging to them, and the lad selected as a victim. The Blairs had enjoyed their pastime, dancing in aboriginal costume, but turned now to their own clothes. One of their shirts was missing. The supposed victim had found his own garment and escaped to a safe distance. Terrible was the profanity and wild the wrath when the truth became apparent that Frank Blair had thrown his own shirt overboard and had sunk it irrecoverably. The little boy whose shirt he sunk in the Washington canal is a delegate to the Tammany convention, and he will at least recall the incident we have related, and laugh at Gen Blair's blundering persistency in sinking the wrong shirt.

Chicago Tribune.