d young man, who seemed to feel his superiority a
great deal. Very soon the car got jammed full, and an old lady, poorly
dressed, but a mighty good, motherly old woman, I'll bet a hundred
dollars, got in. Her husband asked the good young man if he would kindly
give his wife a seat. He did not apparently hear at all, but got all
wrapped up in his paper, just as every man in a car does when he is
ashamed of himself. But the inebriated young man heard, and so he said:

"Here, mister, take my seat for the old lady; any seat is good enough
for me." Whereupon he sat down in the lap of the good young man, and so
remained till he got to his station.

This is a good town to study human nature in, Henry, and you would do
well to come here before your vacation is over, just to see what kind of
people the Lord allows to encumber the earth. It will show you how many
human brutes there are loose in the world who don't try any longer to
appear decent when they think their identity is swallowed up in the
multitude of a great city. There are just as selfish folks in the
smaller towns, but they are afraid to give themselves up to it, because
somebody in the crowd would be sure to recognize them. Here a man has
the advantage of a perpetual _nom de plume_, and he is tempted to see
how pusillanimous he can be even when he is just here on a visit. I'm
going home next week, before I completely wreck my immortal soul.

I left your mother pretty comfortable at home, but I haven't heard from
her since I left.

Your father,

BILL NYE.

THE AUTOMATIC BELL BOY

XXVIII

Little did B. Franklin wot when he baited his pin hook with a good
conductor and tapped the low browed and bellowing storm nimbus with his
buoyant kite, thus crudely acquiring a pickle jar of electricity, that
the little start he then made would be the egg from which inventors and
scientists would hatch out the system which now not only encircles the
globe with messages swifter than the flight of Phoebus, but that anon
the light of day would be filtered through a cloud of cables loaded with
destruction sufficient for a whole army, and the air be filled with
death-dealing, dangling wires.

Little did he know that he was bottling an agent which has since pulled
out the stopper with its teeth and grown till it overspreads the sky,
planting its bare, bleak telegraph poles along