lf,
"Oh, dear, I suppose I must look pale to please the boys, but I will,
forsooth, let my life insurance premium lapse to-morrow. This is a
sure tip for me to play Methuselah straight across the board in the
next handicap.'

"I can imagine the tortured feelings of a prisoner in the hands of New
York policemen when an infuriated mob demands that he be turned over to
them for lynching. 'For God's sake, officers,' cries the distracted
wretch, 'have ye hearts of stone, that ye will not let them wrest me
from ye?'

"'Sorry, Jimmy,' says one of the policemen, 'but it won't do. There's
three of us--me and Darrel and the plain-clothes man; and there's only
sivin thousand of the mob. How'd we explain it at the office if they
took ye? Jist chase the infuriated aggregation around the corner,
Darrel, and we'll be movin' along to the station.'"

"Some of our gatherings of excited citizens have not been so harmless,"
said the New Yorker, with a faint note of civic pride.

"I'll admit that," said the tall man. "A cousin of mine who was on a
visit here once had an arm broken and lost an ear in one of them."

"That must have been during the Cooper Union riots," remarked the New
Yorker.

"Not the Cooper Union," explained the tall man--"but it was a union
riot--at the Vanastor wedding."

"You seem to be in favor of lynch law," said the New Yorker, severely.

"No, sir, I am not. No intelligent man is. But, sir, there are
certain cases when people rise in their just majesty and take a
righteous vengeance for crimes that the law is slow in punishing. I am
an advocate of law and order, but I will say to you that less than six
months ago I myself assisted at the lynching of one of that race that
is creating a wide chasm between your section of country and mine, sir."

"It is a deplorable condition," said the New Yorker, "that exists in
the South, but--"

"I am from Indiana, sir," said the tall man, taking another chew; "and
I don't think you will condemn my course when I tell you that the
colored man in question had stolen $9.60 in cash, sir, from my own
brother."

THE SNOW MAN

EDITORIAL NOTE.--_Before the fatal illness of William Sydney Porter
(known through his literary work as "O. Henry") this American master of
short-story writing had begun for Hampton's Magazine the story printed
below. Illness crept upon him rapidly and he was compelled to give up
writing about at the point where the girl enters the story._