ss with some dignity.

"Ah," said Mr. Potter, "THAT is another question. You see, the picture
has a special value to me, as I once saw an old-fashioned garden like
that in England. But that chap there,--I beg your pardon, I mean that
figure,--I fancy, is your own creation, entirely. However, I'll think
over your proposition, and if you will allow me I'll call and see you
about it."

Mr. Potter did call--not once, but many times--and showed quite a
remarkable interest in Miss Forrest's art. The question of the sale of
the picture, however, remained in abeyance. A few weeks later, after a
longer call than usual, Mr. Potter said:--

"Don't you think the best thing we can do is to make a kind of
compromise, and let us own the picture together?"

And they did.

A ROMANCE OF THE LINE

As the train moved slowly out of the station, the Writer of Stories
looked up wearily from the illustrated pages of the magazines and
weeklies on his lap to the illustrated advertisements on the walls of
the station sliding past his carriage windows. It was getting to be
monotonous. For a while he had been hopefully interested in the bustle
of the departing trains, and looked up from his comfortable and early
invested position to the later comers with that sense of superiority
common to travelers; had watched the conventional leave-takings--always
feebly prolonged to the uneasiness of both parties--and contrasted it
with the impassive business promptitude of the railway officials; but
it was the old experience repeated. Falling back on the illustrated
advertisements again, he wondered if their perpetual recurrence at every
station would not at last bring to the tired traveler the loathing of
satiety; whether the passenger in railway carriages, continually offered
Somebody's oats, inks, washing blue, candles, and soap, apparently as
a necessary equipment for a few hours' journey, would not there and
thereafter forever ignore the use of these articles, or recoil from that
particular quality. Or, as an unbiased observer, he wondered if, on
the other hand, impressible passengers, after passing three or four
stations, had ever leaped from the train and refused to proceed further
until they were supplied with one or more of those articles. Had he ever
known any one who confided to him in a moment of expansiveness that he
had dated his use of Somebody's soap to an advertisement persistently
borne upon him through the medium of a railway