good, but don't exaggerate."

"How?" was all the answer that I got in the choicest nasal twang, and
the girl continued to make faces as before.

I was contemplating a second attempt, when Templeton, the limelight man,
who had heard me speak to her, touched me gently on the shoulder.

"Beg pardon, miss, she don't mean it. She's only _chewing gum_!"

One of my earliest friends among literary folk was Mr. Charles
Dodgson--or Lewis Carroll--or "Alice in Wonderland." Ah, _that_ conveys
something to you! I can't remember when I didn't know him. I think he
must have seen Kate act as a child, and having given _her_ "Alice"--he
always gave his young friends "Alice" at once by way of establishing
pleasant relations--he made a progress as the years went on through the
whole family. Finally he gave "Alice" to my children.

He was a splendid theater-goer, and took the keenest interest in all
the Lyceum productions, frequently writing to me to point out slips in
the dramatist's logic which only he would ever have noticed! He did not
even spare Shakespeare. I think he wrote these letters for fun, as some
people make puzzles, anagrams, or Limericks!

"Now I'm going to put before you a 'Hero-ic' puzzle of mine, but
please remember I do not ask for your solution of it, as you will
persist in believing, if I ask your help in a Shakespeare
difficulty, that I am only jesting! However, if you won't attack it
yourself, perhaps you would ask Mr. Irving some day how _he_
explains it?

"My difficulty is this:--Why in the world did not Hero (or at any
rate Beatrice on her behalf) prove an 'alibi' in answer to the
charge? It seems certain that she did _not_ sleep in her room that
night; for how could Margaret venture to open the window and talk
from it, with her mistress asleep in the room? It would be sure to
wake her. Besides Borachio says, after promising that Margaret
shall speak with him out of Hero's chamber window, 'I will so
fashion the matter that Hero shall be absent.' (_How_ he could
possibly manage any such thing is another difficulty, but I pass
over that.) Well then, granting that Hero slept in some other room
that night, why didn't she say so? When Claudio asks her: 'What man
was he talked with yesternight out at your window betwixt twelve
and one?' why doesn't she reply: 'I talked with no man at that
hour, my lord. Nor was I i