seemed to be the forerunner of a happy future, and say
"ta-ta" to me, and go off to dancing school with a telegraph messenger
boy who wears a sleeping car porter uniform, is too much, and my
heart is broken. I will lay for that messenger some night, when he is
delivering a message in our ward, and I will make him think lightning
has struck the wire and run in on his bench. O, you don't know anything
about the woe there is in this world. You never loved many people, did
you?"

The grocery man admitted he never loved very hard, but he knew a little
something about it from-an aunt of his, who got mashed on a Chicago
drummer. "But your father must be having a rest while your whole mind is
occupied with your love affair," said he.

"Yes," says the boy, with a vacant look, "I take no interest in the
pleasure of the chase any more, though I did have a little quiet fun
this morning at the breakfast table. You see Pa is the contrariest man
ever was. If I complain that anything at the table don't taste good, Pa
says it is all right. This morning I took the syrup pitcher and emptied
out the white syrup and put in some cod liver oil that Ma is taking for
her cough. I put some on my pancakes and pretended to taste of it, and
I told Pa the syrup was sour and not fit to eat. Pa was mad in a second,
and he poured out some on his pancakes, and said I was getting too
confounded particular. He said the syrup was good enough for him, and
he sopped his pancakes in it and fired some down his neck. He is a gaul
durned hypocrite, that's what he is. I could see by his face that the
cod liver oil was nearly killing him, but he said that syrup was all
right, and if I didn't eat mine he would break my back, and by gosh, I
had to eat it, and Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite, and
he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut.

"I like to dide, and that is one thing, I think, that makes this
disappointment in love harder to bear. But I felt sorry for Ma. Ma ain't
got a very strong stummick, and when she got some of that cod liver oil
in her mouth she went right up stairs, sicker'n a horse, and Pa had to
help her, and she had noo-ralgia all the morning. I eat pickles to take
the taste out of my mouth, and then I laid for the hired girls. They eat
too much syrup, anyway, and when they got on to that cod liver oil, and
swallowed a lot of it, one of them, a nirish girl, she got up from the
table and put her hand on her corset, and s