pt the
situation without fretting, and by maintaining composure, you will often
be able to set them right again.

Mina K. asks whether it is proper to allow a friend whom she happens to
meet in a public conveyance to pay her car fare and ferriage. As a rule
it is not proper. The meeting is an incident, and does not affect the
relative positions of either friend. Each should pay for herself,
precisely as if she had not met the other. Of course, this rule is
equally and perhaps more imperative when a girl happens to meet a man
whom she knows, her friend or her brother's chum. He should not offer to
pay for her, nor should she accept the offer if he make it. The only
exceptions to this rule are such as commonsense indicate. A girl will
not make a fuss nor quarrel about a matter of five cents with an elderly
acquaintance, who might easily be her father or mother. Generally
speaking, however, each person pays her own way, except when in company
with others by invitation, and where she is the guest of her
entertainer, who does not permit her to be at expense when sight-seeing
or jaunting about.

[Illustration: Signature]

GREAT STATE PAPERS.

OUR LAWS AND PROCLAMATIONS.

BY HENRY CLEMENT HOLMES.

"Father," said my fourteen-year-old son, "Ted Nichols declared to-day
that he had the Wilson tariff bill in his pocket. He said Mr. Wilson
gave it to him to take to Ted's father, who is also from West Virginia,
you know, to read, and say what he thought of it."

My son's tone had in it both incredulity and interest, and so I replied:

"I thought you had lived long enough in Washington not to be surprised
at anything. Did not Senator Maybee read his speech to us the other
evening, before he had delivered it in the Senate? And did we not, in
the corridor of the State Department, recently meet the original
Constitution of the United States coming down the granite staircase
three steps at a bound? You and I helped pick up the bits of glass from
the broken frame, which our friend Cochrane had dropped, greatly to his
alarm, in carrying it from a closet to the library.

"It would be quite possible for Ted Nichols, or any other lad, to have
the Wilson tariff bill in his pocket, provided he took it at the right
time. If Mr. Wilson should give it to you to carry to your father for
examination, while your father's opinion was wanted regarding a proposed
change, you could readily carry it in your empty lunch-basket. But if he