re. These
were planned something like curtain-cords, and Solomon John frequently
amused himself by pulling one of the little boys up or letting him down.

Some conversation did again fall upon the old difficulty of questions.
Elizabeth Eliza declared that it was not always necessary to answer;
that many who could did not answer questions,--the conductors of the
railroads, for instance, who probably knew the names of all the stations
on a road, but were seldom able to tell them.

"Yes," said Agamemnon, "one might be a conductor without even knowing
the names of the stations, because you can't understand them when they
do tell them!"

"I never know," said Elizabeth Eliza, "whether it is ignorance in them,
or unwillingness, that prevents them from telling you how soon one
station is coming, or how long you are to stop, even if one asks ever so
many times. It would be useful if they would tell."

Mrs. Peterkin thought this was carried too far in the horse-cars in
Boston. The conductors had always left you as far as possible from the
place where you wanted to stop; but it seemed a little too much to have
the aldermen take it up, and put a notice in the cars, ordering the
conductors "to stop at the farthest crossing."

Mrs. Peterkin was, indeed, recovering her spirits. She had been carrying
on a brisk correspondence with Philadelphia, that she had imparted to no
one, and at last she announced, as its result, that she was ready for a
breakfast on educational principles.

A breakfast indeed, when it appeared! Mrs. Peterkin had mistaken
the alphabetical suggestion, and had grasped the idea that the whole
alphabet must be represented in one breakfast.

This, therefore, was the bill of fare: Apple-sauce, Bread, Butter,
Coffee, Cream, Doughnuts, Eggs, Fish-balls, Griddles, Ham, Ice (on
butter), Jam, Krout (sour), Lamb-chops, Morning Newspapers, Oatmeal,
Pepper, Quince-marmalade, Rolls, Salt, Tea Urn, Veal-pie, Waffles,
Yeast-biscuit.

Mr. Peterkin was proud and astonished. "Excellent!" he cried. "Every
letter represented except Z." Mrs. Peterkin drew from her pocket a
letter from the lady from Philadelphia. "She thought you would call it
X-cellent for X, and she tells us," she read, "that if you come with a
zest, you will bring the Z."

Mr. Peterkin was enchanted. He only felt that he ought to invite the
children in the primary schools to such a breakfast; what a zest,
indeed, it would give to the study of their letters!