rity works, like organizin' debatin' societies in the deaf
and dumb asylums, was tellin' me awhile back of a great scheme of his to
help out the stranger in our fair village. He wants to open public
information bureaus, where a jay might go and find out anything he wanted
to know, from how to locate a New Thought church, to the nearest place
where he could buy a fresh celluloid collar.

"Get the idea?" says he. "A public bureau where strangers in New York
would be given courteous attention, friendly advice, and that sort of
thing."

"What's the use?" says I. "Ain't I here?"

Course, I was just gettin' over a josh. But say, it ain't all a funny
dream, either. Don't a lot of 'em come my way? Maybe it's because I'm so
apt to lay myself open to the confidential tackle. But somehow, when I
see one of these tourist freaks sizin' me up, and lookin' kind of dazed
and lonesome, I can't chuck him back the frosty stare. I've been a stray
in a strange town myself. So I gen'rally tries to seem halfway human, and
if he opens up with some shot on the weather, I let him get in the
follow-up questions and take the chances.

Here the other day, though, I wa'n't lookin' for anything of the kind. I
was just joltin' down my luncheon with a little promenade up the sunny
side of Avenue V, taking in the exhibits--things in the show windows and
folks on the sidewalks--as keen as if I'd paid in my dollar at some
ticket office.

And say, where can you beat it? I see it 'most every day in the year, and
it's always new. There's different flowers in the florists' displays, new
flags hung out on the big hotels, and even the chorus ladies in the
limousines are changed now and then.

I can't figure out just what it was landed me in front of this millinery
window. Gen'rally I hurry by them exhibits with a shudder; for once I got
gay and told Sadie to take her pick, as this one was on me; and it was
months before I got over the shock of payin' that bill. But there I finds
myself, close up to the plate glass, gawpin' at a sample of what can be
done in the hat line when the Bureau of Obstructions has been bought off
and nobody's thought of applyin' the statute of limitations.

It's a heliotrope lid, and the foundation must have used up enough straw
to bed down a circus. It has the dimensions and general outlines of a
summerhouse. The scheme of decoration is simple enough, though. The top
of this heliotrope summerhouse has been caught in a heliotrope