er on one side.

HUSBAND: Yes it does, and wha'd'yer think of _that_?

[Illustration: "If you weren't asleep what were you doing with your eyes
closed?"]

WIFE: Go on and read your newspaper. That's just about your mental
speed.

HUSBAND: I'm perfectly willing to read books in this set if you'd pick
any decent ones.

WIFE: Yes, you are.

HUSBAND: Wha'd'yer mean "Yes you are"?

WIFE: Just what I said.

(_This goes on for ten minutes and then husband draws a revolver and
kills his wife_.)

XXVI

WHEN NOT IN ROME, WHY DO AS THE ROMANS DID?

There is a growing sentiment among sign painters that when a sign or
notice is to be put up in a public place it should be written in
characters that are at least legible, so that, to quote "The Manchester
Guardian" (as every one seems to do) "He who runs may read."

This does not strike one as being an unseemly pandering to popular
favor. The supposition is that the sign is put there to be read,
otherwise it would have been turned over to an inmate of the Odd Fellows
Home to be engraved on the head of a pin. And what could be a more fair
requirement than that it should be readable?

Advertising, with its billboard message of rustless screens and
co-educational turkish-baths, has done much to further the good cause,
and a glance through the files of newspapers of seventy-five years ago,
when the big news story of the day was played up in diamond type easily
deciphered in a strong light with the naked eye, shows that news
printing has not, to use a slang phrase, stood still.

But in the midst of this uniform progress we find a stagnant spot.
Surrounded by legends that are patent and easy to read and understand,
we find the stone-cutter and the architect still putting up tablets and
cornerstones, monuments and cornices, with dates disguised in Roman
numerals. It is as if it were a game, in which they were saying, "The
number we are thinking of is even; it begins with M; it has five digits
and when they are spread out, end to end, they occupy three feet of
space. You have until we count to one hundred to guess what it is."

Roman numerals are all right for a rainy Sunday afternoon or to take a
convalescent's mind from his illness, but to put them in a public place,
where the reader stands a good chance of being run over by a dray if he
spends more than fifty seconds in their perusal, is not in keeping with
the efficiency of the age. If for no other reason than t