d of retorts and bottles. When he entered the laboratory again
after having trimmed off the scorched fringe of his whiskers, he found
a big card nailed over his place, with the following inscription:
"Smoking and being in love in this laboratory is strictly forbidden."
The prohibition in regard to smoking was in print; the rest was
interpolated with a paint-brush. Grover looked around wrathfully upon
the twenty or thirty backs which reared themselves against shelves of
many-colored bottles; they bore all an expression of unconscious
innocence.

The hour was approaching when he might without impropriety call upon
his _fiancee_. His toilet, however, needed some attention, after his
recent experiment with explosives; and he hastened to his rooms to
make himself presentable. On the table he found a letter, addressed in
the usual high-shouldered characters of American girls. It read as
follows:

MY DEAR MR. GROVER: Our engagement for mutual convenience
being no longer convenient, I grant your request and hereby
break it. I would have done so when you first asked me, only
I enjoyed your embarrassment, and had, moreover, a desire to
punish you for the liberty you took with a lady whom you had
not seen until that moment. I trust we shall remain good
friends. If you desire a scene of some sort, in order to
advertise our changed relations to the household, you may
call upon me this afternoon at three. You will understand
that I do this only to save explanations. A quarrel, you
know, ends everything; is so intelligible and satisfactory;
precludes questions and discourages curiosity. Accordingly,
my dear sir, I will quarrel with you at 3:15 P.M., promptly,
and remain,

Sincerely your friend,
LOUISE JONES.

LEIPSIC, March 12, 187-.

Grover read this enigmatical epistle eleven times without deriving the
slightest clue to its meaning. He read it aloud and he read it in
silence, he analyzed, scrutinized and apostrophized it, but without
avail. That feminine caprice could reach such alarming dimensions he
had never dreamed. That she should want to break with him the morning
after she had become really engaged to him could be accounted for by a
variety of reasons. But that she should write him a cool and
semi-humorous letter, showing no more agitation than one of Bret
Harte's heroes who is about to be hange