The Widow's Mite.]

The train had stopped at Reno for a few minutes; it was just at dusk and
as the night was warm we got out and were walking up and down the
platform. There was a billboard at the end of the station and the bill
poster was pasting up some paper advertising the coming of "The Widow's
Mite" Company. An old chap came along, stopped and looked at it, but,
owing to the poor light could not quite make out what it was; so he said
to the bill poster,

"What show is it, Bill?"

"The Widow's Mite."

The old fellow pondered on it for a moment, then as he turned away he
said, half to himself,

"Might? They _do_."

* * * * *

One night in San Francisco, Bonnie Thornton woke up, heard a suspicious
noise in the next room, and nudged Jim, her husband.

"What's the matter?" inquired Jim.

"There is a burglar in the other room," said Bonnie.

"How do you know?"

"I can hear him."

There was a pause, then she whispered excitedly,

"_Jim, he is under the bed._"

"No, he isn't," said Jim.

"How do you know he isn't?"

"Because I am under there."

* * * * *

Jack Wilson went into an auto supply store in New York and wanted to buy
a pedometer for his car.

"A speedometer you mean, don't you?" said the clerk, smiling.

"No; I want a pedometer," said Jack.

"But," persisted the clerk, "a pedometer is for registering how far you
have walked. You don't want that on your car."

"Humph," said Jack, "you don't know my car."

* * * * *

A Critic had criticized me rather severely, and then, not satisfied with
that, had come around to see me and tell wherein I was wrong.

"See here," I said, "how is it that you, a newspaper man here in a small
town; a man that never wrote a play; never produced a play; and never
played a part in your life; how is it that you feel competent to give
lessons to me, who have made a life's study of this line of work?"

"Well," he said slowly, "it is true that I never wrote, produced or took
part in a play. Neither have I ever laid an egg. But I consider myself a
better judge of an omelette than any hen that ever lived."

There was a kind of a R.S.V.P. in his tone but I did not have any answer
to make right at the time.

* * * * *

[Illustration: Far from Home and Kindred.]

It was at a little station way out on the plains of Nebraska. There wer