o.... And we have little maid-servants who answer our bells
in caps and trays, so to say; but this savour of jestership is
authentic, for any one of them is likely to do as of late did Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss's maid,--answer, at dinner-with-guests, that
there were no more mashed potatoes, "_or else_, there won't be any left
to warm up for your breakfasts." ... And though we have our daily
newspaper, receiving Associated Press service, yet, as Mis' Amanda
Toplady observed, it is "only _very_ lately that they have mentioned in
the _Daily_ the birth of a child, or anything that had anything of a
_tang_ to it."

We put new wine in old bottles, but also we use new bottles to hold our
old wine. For, consider the name of our main street: is this Main or
Clark or Cook or Grand Street, according to the register of the main
streets of towns? Instead, for its half-mile of village life, the Plank
Road, macadamized and arc-lighted, is called Daphne Street. Daphne
Street! I love to wonder why. Did our dear Doctor June's father name it
when he set the five hundred elms and oaks which glorify us? Or did
Daphne herself take this way on the day of her flight, so that when they
came to draught the town, they recognized that it _was_ Daphne Street,
and so were spared the trouble of naming it? Or did the Future
anonymously toss us back the suggestion, thrifty of some day of her own
when she might remember us and say, "_Daphne Street!_" Already some of
us smile with a secret nod at something when we direct a stranger, "You
will find the Telegraph and Cable Office two blocks down, on Daphne
Street." "The Commercial Travellers' House, the Abigail Arnold Home
Bakery, the Post-office and Armoury are in the same block on Daphne
Street." Or, "The Electric Light Office is at the corner of Dunn and
Daphne." It is not wonderful that Daphne herself, foreseeing these
things, did not stay, but lifted her laurels somewhat nearer
Tempe,--although there are those of us who like to fancy that she is
here all the time in our Daphne-street magic: the fire bell, the tulip
beds, and the twilight bonfires. For how else, in all reason, has the
name persisted?

Of late a new doctor has appeared--one may say, has abounded: a surgeon
who, such is his zeal, will almost perform an operation over the
telephone and, we have come somewhat cynically to believe, would prefer
doing so to not operating at all. As Calliope Marsh puts it:--

"He is great on operati