).

"'Why, doctor,' says the widder, 'thet--thet is his last smile. It's a
Christian's resignation.'

"'Thet be blowed; don't tell me,' sez he. 'Hell is full of thet kind
of resignation. It's pizon. And I'll--' Why, dern my skin, yes we
are; yes, it's Joliet. Wall, now, who'd hey thought we'd been nigh
onto an hour."

Two or three anxious passengers from their berths: "Say; look yer,
stranger! Old man! What became of--"

But the One Man and the Other Man had vanished.

MORNING ON THE AVENUE

NOTES BY AN EARLY RISER.

I have always been an early riser. The popular legend that "Early to
bed and early to rise," invariably and rhythmically resulted in
healthfulness, opulence, and wisdom, I beg here to solemnly protest
against. As an "unhealthy" man, as an "unwealthy" man, and doubtless
by virtue of this protest an "unwise" man, I am, I think, a glaring
example of the untruth of the proposition.

For instance, it is my misfortune, as an early riser, to live upon a
certain fashionable avenue, where the practice of early rising is
confined exclusively to domestics. Consequently, when I issue forth on
this broad, beautiful thoroughfare at six A. M., I cannot help thinking
that I am, to a certain extent, desecrating its traditional customs.

I have more than once detected the milkman winking at the maid with a
diabolical suggestion that I was returning from a carouse, and
Roundsman 9999 has once or twice followed me a block or two with the
evident impression that I was a burglar returning from a successful
evening out. Nevertheless, these various indiscretions have brought me
into contact with a kind of character and phenomena whose existence I
might otherwise have doubted.

First, let me speak of a large class of working-people whose presence
is, I think, unknown to many of those gentlemen who are in the habit of
legislating or writing about them. A majority of these early risers in
the neighborhood of which I may call my "beat" carry with them
unmistakable evidences of the American type. I have seen so little of
that foreign element that is popularly supposed to be the real working
class of the great metropolis, that I have often been inclined to doubt
statistics. The ground that my morning rambles cover extends from
Twenty-third Street to Washington Park, and laterally from Sixth Avenue
to Broadway. The early rising artisans that I meet here, crossing
three avenues,--the milkmen, the truck-drive