e became well known, entitled
"Marguerite." A Paris publisher found it recently in a magazine and
asked M. France to write a preface to it, that it might be issued as a
book. Quoth France: "It would be an excess of literary vanity on my part
to resurrect the story. But my vanity would, perhaps, be greater were I
to try to suppress it."

* * *

Reference books, as is well known, improve like wine with age, and the
efficiency of our proof room is to be accounted for, in part, by the
vintage volumes that line its library shelf. There are sixty of these
rare old tomes, and five of them are useful; these being, we think,
first editions. There is a Who's Who of the last century that is still
in good condition, and the dictionary of biography with which
Lippincotts began business. Bibliophiles would, we believe, enjoy
looking over the shelf.

* * *

JAW JINGLES.

If a Hottentot taught a Hottentot tot
To talk ere the tot could totter,
Ought the Hottentot tot be taught to say "ought,"
Or "naught," or what ought to be taught her?

If to hoot and to toot a Hottentot tot
Be taught by a Hottentot tutor,
Ought the Hottentot tutor get hot if the tot
Hoot and toot at the Hottentot tutor?

G. B.

* * *

"NATURE NEVER DID DECEIVE..."

No sooner had blundering man accomplished the ruin of Halifax than
Mother Nature sent a blizzard with a foot or two of snow. A kindly
dame--as kindly as the old lady of Endor. She has her gentle, her
amorous moods, in which we adore her, and write ballads to her beauty;
but we know, if we are wise, that her beauty is "all in your eye," to
speak in the way of science, not of slang, and that she is savage as a
jungle cat. Like some women and much medicine, she should be well shaken
before taken, and always one must keep an eye upon Nature, or one may
feel her claws in one's back. So we have reflected on a summer's day in
woods; but the forest seemed not less beautiful, nor was our meditation
melancholy. To be saddened by the inescapable is a great mistake.

* * *

NO. 68, COUNTING FROM LEFT TO RIGHT.

[From the Goshen, Ind., Democrat.]

Albert E. Compton, 68, a former well known Elkhart taxi driver, went to
California last summer and told his friends he was going into the
movies. A communication from him yesterday informed them of his
appearance in a mob sce