e it hurts me a bit here."]

Perry winked sagely at this and cackled. He rocked violently to and
fro on his feet, from heel to toe and toe to heel.

"Yet it ain't a bit onreasonable," he went on. "The artist thinks he
is amusin' others, when, as a matter of fact, he is gettin' about
ninety per cent. of the fun himself. We allus enjoys our own singin'
best. I see that now. I thought it up as I was comin' down the road
and I concided that the next time I seen a likely lookin' Mrs. Perry
Thomas, she could do the singin' and the fiddlin' and the elocution,
and I'd set by and look on and say, 'Ain't it lovely?'"

"You bear your disappointments bravely," said I.

"Not at all," Perry responded. "I'm used to 'em. Why, I don't know
what I'd do if I wasn't disappointed. Some day a girl will happen
along who won't disappoint me, and then I'll be so set back, I allow I
won't have courage to get outen the walley. Had I knowd yesterday how
as all the courtin' I've done since the first of last June was to come
tumblin' down on my head to-night like ceilin' plaster, not a wink of
sleep would I 'a' had. Now I know it. Does I look like I was goin' to
jump down the well? No, sir. 'Perry,' I says, 'you've had a nice time
settin' a-dreamin' of her; you've sung love-songs to her as you
followed the plough; you've pictured her at your side as you've strayed
th'oo fields of daisies and looked at the moon. Now in the natural
course of events she's goin' to marry another. When she's gettin'
peekit like trying to keep the house goin' and at the same time prevent
her seven little ones from steppin' into the cistern or fallin' down
the hay-hole, you can make up another pretty pickter with one of the
nine hundred million other weemen on this globe as the central figger!'"

At the conclusion of this philosophic speech my visitor adjusted his
thumbs in his waistcoat pockets, brought himself to rest with a click
of his heels and smiled his defiance.

"But I congratulate you truly, heartily," he added.

"Thank you, Perry," I answered. "In spite of your trifling way of
regarding women, I hope that some day you may find another as good as
Mary Warden."

"The same to you, Mark," said he.

"The same to me?" I cried, with a touch of resentment.

"Of course," he replied. "I says to myself to-night, 'I hope Mark is
as fortunate,' I says, when I saw them two a----"

"What two?" I exclaimed, lifting myself half out of my chair in my