gument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One
publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a
dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it.

THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets
tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For
many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and
fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering
she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender
figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair.

FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught
"to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--especially the
fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word.

The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would
have worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and
been something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly
dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as "what
song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself
among women." He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his
breakfast and whose dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker
is the next person. A great city like this is the only geography for
such a character. He would be impossible in a small country town, where
everybody knows everybody and what everybody has for lunch.

I HAVE been seeking, thus far in vain, for the proprietor of the saying
that "Economy is second or third cousin to Avarice." I went rather
confidently to Rochefoucauld, but it is not among that gentleman's light
luggage of cynical maxims.

THERE is a popular vague impression that butchers are not allowed to
serve as jurors on murder trials. This is not really the case, but it
logically might be. To a man daily familiar with the lurid incidents of
the _abattoir_, the summary extinction of a fellow creature (whether the
victim or the criminal) can scarcely seem a circumstance of so serious
moment as to another man engaged in less strenuous pursuits. WE do not,
and cannot, read many of the novels that most delighted our ancestors.
Some of our popular fiction is doubtless as poor, but poor with a
difference. There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In
every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite.
There is ragtime literature as well as