rning yourself. And if you do this in the dark,
the light will shine through your cheek, and if you are a fat child you
will give the impression of a Hallowe'en lantern carved from a pumpkin.
Or you may light the butt of your father's cigar and learn to smoke.
It is one of the cheapest ways. Or you may set fire to the lower edge
of the newspaper which your grandfather is reading in the big armchair
by the window, and I guarantee that you will surprise him. Here is an
interesting play: Light a match, blow it out, and, while the end is
still red hot, touch the cook firmly on the back of the neck. If she
has been reading Swinburne she will imagine that she has been kissed by
a policeman. When she finds out that she hasn't she will be
disappointed, and perhaps you will be disappointed, too. Oh, a match
is a wonderful thing, even the wooden ones that are made on earth! You
may burn a whole city to the ground. And once, I am told, there was a
man who lighted a match and fired a cannon that was heard around the
world.

To play with matches is one thing: to play with the fire that you have
lighted, or helped light, is another. And it was not until I played
with fire that I did any real harm in this world (that I know about).
Playing with fire I singed a moth; I singed a butterfly, and I burnt a
man.

If this was just the story of my own life I wouldn't be so impertinent
as to hope that it would be interesting to anybody. It isn't my story,
and no matter how much I may seem to figure in it, I am neither its
hero, nor, I think, the god who started the machinery.

Thirty-five years ago I took to live with me a middle-aged couple, who
had begun to fear that they were going to die without issue. Though I
say it that shouldn't, I was very good to them. I let them kiss me and
maul me from morning till night. Later, when I knew that it was the
very worst thing in the world for me, I let them spoil me as much as
they wanted to. They even gave me the man's name, without my consent,
and I didn't make a row. But I _did_ lift my head with sufficient
suddenness and violence to cause the Bishop of New York to bite his
tongue, and to utter a word that is not to be found in the prayer book.
I was christened Archibald Mannering Damn.

But I have never used the surname with which the good Bishop so
suddenly and without due authorization provided me. Certain old
friends, acquainted with the story, do not always, however, show m