Genre Humor. Page - 17

the spinster aunt--she would enjoy it! But there was no help for it. It must be faced.

Naturally Mr. Pickwick felt uncomfortable, and his first idea was to arrange the matter. This was a sensible course, and he ought at once to have put the matter into the hands of his friend Perker, with full powers to treat. But no. Mr. Pickwick's vanity and indiscretion made him meddle in the business behind his solicitor's back, as it where, and with damaging results to himself--a warning to all such amateurs. It must be said that Dodson and Fogg's behaviour at the extraordinary visit which he paid them was marked by a certain propriety. Mr. Pickwick insisted on knowing what were the grounds of action--that is, the details of the evidence against him--in short, their case. They, very correctly, refused to tell him. "The case may be false or it may be true--it may be credible it may be incredible." But all the same it was a strong case. This was as much as they could tell. Mr. Pickwick could only urge that

sioner at Mammoth Hot Springs.

[Illustration: "So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hatpin and wrote:"--p. 19]

You see, the geysers rattled Maw, there being so many and she loving them all so much. One day when they were camped near the Upper Basin, Maw was looking down in the cone of Old Faithful, just after that Paderewski of the park had ceased playing. She told me she wanted to see where all the suds came from. But all at once she saw beneath her feet a white, shiny expanse of something that looked like chalk. At a sudden impulse she drew a hatpin from her hair and knelt down on the geyser cone--not reflecting how long and slow had been its growth.

For the first time a feeling of identity came to Maw. She never had been anybody all her life, even to herself, before this moment on her vacation. But now she had seen the mountains and the sky, and had oriented herself as one of the owners of this park. So Maw, dear, old, happy, innocent Maw, knelt down with her hat

: "No; if it happened to strike on that train anywhere, itmight spoil one of the folds. I can't risk it." A ring is heard atthe apartment door. They spring to their feet simultaneously.

MRS. ROBERTS: "There's Aunt Mary now!" She calls into thevestibule, "Aunt Mary!"

DR. LAWTON, putting aside the vestibule portiere, with affectedtimidity: "Very sorry. Merely a father."

MRS. ROBERTS: "Oh! Dr. Lawton? I am so glad to see you!" Shegives him her hand: "I thought it was my aunt. We can't understandwhy she hasn't come. Why! where's Miss Lawton?"

LAWTON: "That is precisely what I was going to ask you."

MRS. ROBERTS: "Why, she isn't here."

LAWTON: "So it seems. I left her with the carriage at the door whenI started to walk here. She called after me down the stairs that shewould be ready in three seconds, and begged me to hurry, so that wecould come in together, and not let people know I'd saved half adollar by walking."

MRS. ROBERTS: "SHE'S been detained too!"

ROB

g,oilcloth covered table. The food, wholesome, plain and abundant, wasalready served.

Silently each heaped his plate with the viands before him while SingPete circled the table pouring coffee into the white porcelain cups. TheQuarter Circle KT was famous for the excellence of its grub and theChink was an expert cook.

"Lordy, oh, lordy," Old Heck groaned, "it don't seem possible them womenare coming!"

"Maybe they won't," Parker sympathized. "When they get that telegramthey ought to turn around and go back--"

"Chuck's coming!" Bert Lilly exclaimed at that moment and the sound of ahorse stopping suddenly at the front of the house reached the ears ofthe group at the table.

"Go ask him if he got an answer, somebody, quick!" Old Heck cried.

As Charley Saunders sprang to his feet Chuck yelled, "They got it andsent an answer! I got one--" and rushed excitedly through the house andinto the kitchen waving an envelope, twin to the one Skinny had broughtearlier in the day. "They're on Train

ieces, for the first time in his life, at the age of thirty-two years, Tydvil Jones swore. "No more! No more!" he said aloud, bringing his clenched fist down on the table before him, "I'm damned if I'll stand it any longer!" The trouble was, that Tydvil learned he had been robbed of his youth and the joy of living it. That the robbery was committed with pious intent, was no salve to his feelings. Affection may have misled his mother, but Amy had been an accessory, not for love, but ambition. It was not sweet to realise that he was subject for amused pity among the men he met in business. The worst of it was he felt his case was beyond remedy.

Two incidents occurred about this time that made him resolve on emancipation. In both of these he was an unwilling eavesdropper.

One night, while returning home from a meeting, he entered an empty railway compartment. At the next station, two men, well known to him, took the adjoining compartment. When he recognised their voices, he was prevented from makin

eet lightning), lest his concentrated look (the thunderbolt) should reduce the universe to ashes.... His watery parentage, and the storm-god's relationship with a swan-maiden of the Apsarasas (typifying the mists and clouds), and with Freydis the fire queen, are equally obvious: whereas Niafer is plainly a variant of Nephthys, Lady of the House, whose personality Dr. Budge sums up as 'the goddess of the death which is not eternal,' or Nerthus, the Subterranean Earth, which the warm rainstorm quickens to life and fertility."

All this seems dull enough to be plausible. Yet no less an authority than Charles Garnier has replied, in rather indignant rebuttal: "Qu'ont étè en réalité Manuel et Siegfried, Achille et Rustem? Par quels exploits ont-ils mérité l'éternelle admiration que leur ont vouée les hommes de leur race? Nul ne répondra jamais à ces questions.... Mais Poictesme croit à la réalité de cette figure que se