Misses Keys."

"Did ye calculate to paint the old _house_ in the picture?"

They said it was possible they might do so. They wanted to see it,
anyway.

"Waal, I guess you are too late. The _house_ burnt down last night, and
everything in it."

The Bringing of the Rose

BY HARRIET LEWIS BRADLEY

For certain subjects one of the most valuable works of reference in all
Berlin was Miss Olivia Valentine's "Adress-buch," the contents of which
were self-collected, self-tested, and abounded in extensive information
concerning hotels and pensions, apartments and restaurants, families
offering German home life with the language, instructors, and courses of
lectures, doctors, dentists, dressmakers, milliners, the most direct way
to Mendelssohn's grave in the Alte Dreifaltigkeits-Kirchhof, how to find
lodgings in Baireuth during the Wagner festival, where to stay in
Oberammergau, if it happened to be the year of the Passion Play, and so
on, indefinitely.

Miss Valentine herself was a kind-hearted, middle-aged woman, who, as
the result of much sojourning in foreign lands, possessed an intelligent
knowledge of subjects likely to be of use to other sojourners, and who
was cordially ready to share the same, according to the needs of the
season. If it were November, people came asking in what manner they
could take most profitable advantage of a Berlin winter; if it were
approaching spring, they wanted addresses for Paris or Switzerland or
Italy. It was March now and Sunday afternoon. Mr. Morris Davidson sat by
Miss Valentine's table, the famous "Adress-buch" in his hand. "I suppose
you don't undertake starting parties for heaven?" he said, opening the
book. "Ah! here it is--'Himmel und Hoelle.' I might have known it, you
are so thorough."

"If you read a little further," remarked Miss Valentine, "you will see
that 'Himmel und Hoelle' is a German game."

"Oh yes, I remember now; we play it at our pension. It's that game where
you say 'thou' to the you-people, and 'you' to the thou-people, and are
expected to address strange ladies whom you are meeting for the first
time as Klara and Charlotte and Wilhelmine, with most embarrassing
familiarity, and it is very stupid if the game happens to send you to
heaven. I wonder if there really is such a locality? I've been thinking
lately I should like to go there; things don't seem to agree with me
very well here. I've closed my books, walked the Thiergarten threadbare,
sleep t