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He could loft a ball from the top of his watch But he never could win in the tournaments, no straight into his beaver hat.

matter how well he played.

He could tee a ball on the window-sill and pink He'd never a cup on his mantel-piece; in medals the vagrom cat.

He could putt from the top of the oaken stair to a hole on the floor below,

And niblick the sphere from a baby's ear and the baby wouldn't know.

He could brassie some fifteen hundred feet and clip off a daisy's top.

He could jigger the ball o'er a steeple tall as most men would jigger a cop.

He could stand on his head, to his caddie's dread, and dismay of all hard by,

And then with the ease with which I would sneeze lift the ball from a cuppy lie.

He could drive a ball for two hundred yards to the blade of a carver keen,

And cut it in two as easy as you could slice up sod from the green.

was never arrayed

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The bird that flies high up in the skies he'd wing You may be able to do freak things, and play

with his driving cleek,

And I've seen him graze as soft as haze the

down on a damsel's cheek.

past all compare;

But unless you learn the etiquette, you'd better

play solitaire.

HE, SHE, AND THEY.

BY ALBERT LEE.

I.

THEY always dine promptly at seven at the Bentons'-or, rather, as Benton puts it, they are pretty certain to dine promptly according to at least one of the five clocks that tick in the immediate neighborhood of the diningroom, because there is a difference of about half an hour between the time shown by the fastest and that marked by the slowest one. So it is merely a question of knowing which clock to look at when wondering why dinner is not announced. This is an excellent plan, and should be recommended to one's enemies, for there certainly is some satisfaction in having at least one timepiece in the house that will strike seven as you unfold your napkin. Then, if Benton has been grumbling, his wife

looks up archly as she hears the hour strike; or, if he has been obtrusive in his remarks, she says, sweetly,

"I HAVE A SURPRISE."

"Your watch must be a little fast this evening, Arthur dear; the clock is just striking seven."

The clock, indeed! Benton says he hasn't discovered yet which particular one of the five is entitled to that distinction; he thinks that perhaps this honor varies, but he has long since given up all attempts to keep them running along at the same pace. He has come to the conclusion that he cannot be a clock-maker, a picture-hanger, a furniture-mover, a carpetlayer, a brass - polisher, and various other things, and properly attend to the many requirements of his own profession besides. This is trite. Benton admits that. But he enjoys the satisfaction of saying it himself. It is a very simple matter, apparently, to put up curtain-poles; but if you smash your finger with a hammer, so as to incapacitate it from holding a pen for several days thereafter, and if you make your living by your pen-as Benton tries to do-it is cheaper in the end to pay an exorbitant price to a rough fellow with soiled boots to come into your parlor and put up the poles. Everybody knows this; but everybody's wife does not. Benton's wife did not-until one day she begged him, with tears in her eyes, to come down off the stepladder and cease blaspheming. That as the end of Benton's career as Jack-ofthis, he used to be sent Sunday, and on all leg

ades. Previous to a stepladder every lidays. But as soon

as he became profane about it, his wife consented that he should resign, battered and bruised, from the various trades thrust upon him by matrimony; and Benton forthwith vowed he would never again, even secretly, offend the Pole-hangers' Union, or the Brotherhood of Carpet-Layers, or the Piano-movers' Association, by performing the work specifically conceded to their respective trades. And since then, Sunday has been for him a day of rest, in fact as well as in fiction.

But this is digressing. It is seven o'clock. Two of the time pieces have announced the fleeting hour, and the others will surely fleet along with the soup.

"I have a surprise for you this evening," says Ethel, as she squeezes a section of lemon over an oyster, and shoots the juice into her husband's eye. But Benton's eye is quite accustomed to this. Ethel is his wife, and she is a very superior person. At the dinner table the two discuss the affairs of state, likewise those of the household, frequently those of their neighbors, and if Benton allowed such a small matter as a drop of lemon juice to interfere with the flow of conversation, he would justly deserve censure. Therefore, when Ethel announces that she has a surprise, he says, "Indeed?" and blinks rapidly.

"And a surprise that I think you will enjoy," continues Ethel, complacently.

"I hope you have not invited any idiots to come in after dinner?" Benton says.

"No," smiles his wife; "it is not that kind of a surprise. It's something for you--"

"You have not gone and bought me some stupidly expensive present ?" There is a tone of genuine concern in his voice, for Benton hates presents.

"Oh no," returns Ethel. "Don't alarm yourself; this is only a gastronomic surprise."

"Ah," says Benton, with the sigh of relief which escapes every man after he has learned what kind of a "surprise" his wife has in store for him; "ah, yes, that nice fat partridge!"

"How did you know there was to be partridge for dinner?" exclaims his wife, with a tone of disappointment.

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6.

I saw it in the kitchen."

"You saw it in the kitchen! Well, I'd like to know what you were doing in the kitchen?" "I had business there," answers Benton, meekly.

"I can't conceive of any emergency that would require your presence in the kitchen," replies Ethel, with dignity, "except perhaps in the case of a recalcitrant iceman or an obstreperous grocery boy. How many times unst I tell you, Arthur, to keep out of the kitchen? The servants don't like you to go there; and besides, you have no business there."

"Well, I had business there to-day," he as

serts.

"What was it?"

"I was looking for my hat."

"Looking for your hat!" cries Ethel. "In

the kitchen?"

"Exactly."

"Now, Arthur" (pleadingly), "what did you go into the kitchen for?"

"That is exactly what I went into the

WHERE IS MY DERBY?

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"What experience have you had before? You never told me anything about it."

"Perhaps I forgot to tell you, but

A CHOICE OF HATS.

My waste-paper I will tell you
now. I was in a great hurry to get
down to the office one morning about three
weeks ago. I could not find my hat anywhere.
I looked all over, and said all sorts of things
in every known language. I even looked under
the sofa in the parlor, and had a rush of blood
to the head. Then Mary came along, and I
asked her where she had put my hat. And
where do you suppose it was?"

basket. It was on the kitchen table. Mary's idea of humor seems to be to take my wastepaper basket out of my study and keep it away from me for three days. Result: being afraid to scatter paper on the floor, I stuff the waste into my pockets until they fairly bulge. Then, when I go out, I extract the wads in small quantities, and drop them surreptitiously into ash-barrels on my way to the elevated station. Then our neighbors get into trouble, no doubt, for having their ashes and their waste paper mixed."

"Men are such fools!" cries Ethel, in exasperation. "If Mary takes your waste-paper basket away and forgets to bring it back, why don't you ring and ask for it ?"

"I'm sure I can't guess."

"In the only place I had not looked-" "Of course!" triumphantly.

"In your music-stand."

(Now this music-stand is a small mahogany cupboard that rests on four Colonial legs, and it is filled with horizontal shelves each about four inches above the other.)

"I never had any idea before," explains Benton, "how low a Derby hat is, until I saw mine comfortably resting on one of those

"Well," stammers Benton, "I suppose I shelves." might do that."

"I should think you might. Now why did you go into the kitchen for your hat?"

"Because I could not find it anywhere else. I looked everywhere, even in the ice-box; the kitchen was the only place left."

"Did you find it there?"

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"The best thing for you to do," comments Ethel, is to buy another hat. Then there will probably be at least one that you can find when you want to go ont."

"Oh yes, I might buy any number of hats. But it would be cheaper to hire a valet."

"To wear your hats for you, I suppose ?" "Well, possibly; but if I knew where my valet was, I could at least be sure of a hat."

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IT

BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS

T is eminently fitting in these days, when the public mind has been wrought up to a pitch that enables it to contemplate the shedding of blood with more or less complacency, that our writers of fiction should cut their material to fit snugly into that condition. The hour has not arrived, of course, when hairsplitting in fiction has gone out of fashion. It is highly probable that there will always remain in the lump of popular appreciation a sufficient leaven of interest in emotions to warrant our analysts in sticking to their lasts; but certainly there has been a reaction latterly in favor of what may be termed head-splitting, in contradistinction

to hair-splitting. A large number of readers who five years ago found pleasure in an author's speculations as to why a hero walked across the muddy street on the tips of his toes instead of on his heels, and who would have resented in their fiction any dramatic incident involving a greater catastrophe than the dislocation of a hero's shoulder, now rejoice when the same wonderful person really risks his life in behalf of no principle whatsoever. It is possible, indeed, to say more. A large number of readers, who have wearied of minute descriptions of the commonplace, are to-day often found condemning an author who does not keep his hero in imminent danger of death through at least seventy-five per cent. of his pages.

Which is the healthier style of fiction it is not for the writer of these notes to say. It is not impossible for one to enjoy both kinds. When a Howells essays the keenest analysis of a seemingly unimportant mo

tive, the motive appears worth analyzing, if only from the manner of the effort. When a Stevenson takes us through a series of headcrackings and blood-lettings that appall, even a Quaker leg must beat time to the music of his style. Realism and romance both have their champions, and donghty ones, and a watching world, made up of open-minded jurors, must decide that the supremacy of the one over the other can never be established as a settled fact, and that the differences between the two showing the superiority of the one become simply a matter of the art of the individual.

It is in this respect, in the matter of his

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