, she and none other. It might have been somewhere else;
it might have been somebody else. But it wasn't. Wonderful! The miracle
of Life overcame her.

She had arms. Two of them. They were big and round, like herself. One
held a large parcel ("package" for the American edition); the other, an
umbrella. She also had two legs. She stood on them. If they had been
absent, or if they had weakened, she would have collapsed. But they
held her up. Ah, the mysteries of existence! More than ever was she
conscious of her firm, strong underpinning. Maria waved her umbrella and
her parcel and stopped a 'bus. The driver was elderly, wrinkled,
weatherbeaten. Maria got in and rode six furlongs and some yards to
Mooge Road, and then she stopped the 'bus to get out.

If she was conscious of her upper members and their charges, she was
still more conscious of her lower ones. If she had her parcel and her
umbrella to think about, she also had her stockings and petticoats to
consider. The wind blew, the rain drizzled, the driver looked around,
wondering why Maria didn't get out and have done with it.

"If he should see them!" she gasped. (You know what she meant by
"them.") Her round, broad face mutely implored the 'busman to look the
other way.

He wearily closed his eyes. He had been rumbling through the Strand for
thirty years. "Lor', mum," he said, "legs ain't no treat to me!"

Maria collapsed, after all, and took the 4:29 for home that same
afternoon.

A LINE-O'-TYPE OR TWO

_Hew to the Line, let the quips fall where they may._

APRILLY.

Whan that Aprille with hise shoures soote
The droghte of March had perced to the roote,
I druv a motor thro' Aprille's bliz
Somme forty mile, and dam neere lyke to friz.

* * *

Harriet reports the first trustworthy sign of spring: friend husband on
the back porch Sunday morning removing last year's mud from his golf
shoes.

* * *

Old Doc Oldfield of London prescribes dandelion leaves, eggs, lettuce,
milk, and a few other things for people who would live long, and a
Massachusetts centenarian offers, as her formula, "Don't worry and don't
over-eat." But we, whose mission is to enlighten the world, rather than
to ornament it, are more influenced by the experiment of Herbert
Spencer. Persuaded to a vegetarian diet, he stuck at it for six months.
Then reading over what he had written during that time, he thrust the
manuscript into t