pattern for my
new camouflage bathing-suit.'"

"Thank goodness," cried the miserable Weather Man: "I have another map
like that down at the Bourse, and the brokers really give it some
intelligent attention."

We went on our way sadly, thinking how many sorrows there are in the
world. It is grievous to think of the poor Weather Man, lurking with
beating pulses in the neighbourhood of Ninth and Chestnut in the hope
of finding someone who understands his painstaking display. The next
time you are standing in front of his booth do say something about the
Oceanic High in the South Atlantic or the dangerous Aleutian Low or the
anticyclonic condition prevailing in the Alleghenies. He might overhear
you, and it would do his mournful heart good.

* * * * *

[Illustration]

It was eight o'clock, a cool drizzling night. Chestnut Street was gray
with a dull, pearly, opaque twilight. In the little portico east of
Independence Hall the gas lamp under the ceiling cast a soft pink glow
on the brick columns.

Independence Square was a sea of tremulous, dripping boughs. The quaint
heptahedral lamps threw splashed shimmers of topaz colour across the
laky pavement. "Golden lamps in a green night," as Marvell says,
twinkled through the stir and moisture of the evening.

ON GOING TO BED

One of the characters in "The Moon and Sixpence" remarked that he had
faithfully lived up to the old precept about doing every day two things
you heartily dislike; for, said he, every day he had got up and he had
gone to bed.

It is a sad thing that as soon as the hands of the clock have turned ten
the shadow of going to bed begins to creep over the evening. We have
never heard bedtime spoken of with any enthusiasm. One after another we
have seen a gathering disperse, each person saying (with an air of
solemn resignation): "Well, I guess I'll go to bed." But there was no
hilarity about it. It is really rather touching how they cling to the
departing skirts of the day that is vanishing under the spinning shadow
of night.

This is odd, we repeat, for sleep is highly popular among human beings.
The reluctance to go to one's couch is not at all a reluctance to
slumber, for almost all of us will doze happily in an armchair or on a
sofa, or even festooned on the floor with a couple of cushions. But the
actual and formal yielding to sheets and blankets is to be postponed to
the last possible moment.

The devil