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Show I A PLANT THAT LAUGHED. "I was reading the other night." said Prof. Twiggs, the schoolmaster, in the midst of an informal session of the Sit and Argue club, "of a peculiar plant that grows in Tasmania, called the laughing plant.' It derives its name from the effect upon the people who eat the seeds. They are dried and reduced re-duced to a powder, and" "The people are?" Interrupted HI Spry, who had an inquiring mind. "Then who laughs the plant or the j! people who don't eat the seeds?" 1 .'JThe seeds are dried and reduced to a J powder. Mr. Spry," gravely replied the 7 first speaker. "A dose -of this powder 1 causes the most staid person to laugh 4 and dance and shout like a maniac for j an hour. After that he falls asleep, and when he awakes he has no recollection recollec-tion of his antics. It" "I sometimes think." put In HI Spry again, "that we have some sort of a giggling plant In this country, chiefly patronized, so to express it, by old maids and young fellers that play the guitar, and so on." "Aur-r-r-rumm!" hawked the Old Codger, who always had to have his say. "When you first started in, pro- J fessor, I thought prob'ly you was goin to say that the laughln' plant was the green cucumber, or some of its relatives rela-tives and that it laughed over thlnkin' what it was goin' to do to the trustln' souls that eat it that's what I kind o s'DOsed you was going to say." |