er day I read the list of marriages in my morning paper. Day
after day I saw people after people getting married. Finally the thing
got into my blood, and although I was married at the time, I felt that I
simply had to be married again. Then, no sooner would I become settled
in my new home, than the constant incitement to further matrimonial
ventures would come through the columns of the daily press. I fell, it
is true, but if there is any justice in this land, it will be the
newspapers and not I who will suffer."

XXX

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS

As a pretty tribute to that element of our population which is under
twenty-two years of age, these are called "the Holidays."

This is the only chance that the janitors of the schools and colleges
have to soak the floors of the recitation halls with oil to catch the
dust of the next semester, and while this is being done there is nothing
to do with the students but to send them home for a week or two. Thus it
happened that the term "holidays" is applied to that period of the year
when everybody else is working just twice as hard and twice as long
during the week to make up for that precious day which must be lost to
the Sales Campaign or the Record Output on Christmas Day.

For those who are home from school and college it is called, in the
catalogues of their institutions, a "recess" or "vacation," and the
general impression is allowed to get abroad among the parents that it is
to be a period of rest and recuperation. Arthur and Alice have been
working so hard at school or college that two weeks of good quiet
home-life and home cooking will put them right on their feet again,
ready to pitch into that chemistry course in which, owing to an
incompetent instructor, they did not do very well last term.

That the theory of rest during vacation is fallacious can be proved by
hiding in the coat closet of the home of any college or school youth
home for Christmas recess. Admission to the coat closet may be forced by
making yourself out to be a government official or an inspector of gas
meters. Once hidden among the overshoes, you will overhear the following
little earnest drama, entitled "Home for the Holidays."

There was a banging of the front door, and Edgar has arrived. A round of
kisses, an exchange of health reports, and Edgar is bounding upstairs.

"Dinner in half an hour," says Mother.

"Sorry," shouts Edgar from the bath-tub, "but I've got to go out to the
Whor