r in a test in arithmetic that I saw there I noted that
in four of the twelve problems set for solution they had permission
to use their table of logarithms. They probably got home earlier for
supper by their use of this table.

I hereby make my humble apologies to Mr. Thomas A. Edison for my
thoughtlessness in not writing to him before this to thank him for
his many acts of kindness to me. I have been exceedingly careless in
the matter. I owe him for the comfort and convenience of this
beautiful electric light, and yet have never mentioned the matter to
him. He has a right to think me an ingrate. I have been so busy
enjoying the gifts he has sent me that I have been negligent of the
giver. As I think of all my debts to scientists, inventors, artists,
poets, and statesmen, and consider how impossible it is for me to pay
all my debts to all these, try as I may, I begin to see how difficult
it was for Diogenes to find a man who paid all his debts in full.
Hence, the lantern.

It seems to me that, of the varieties of late potatoes the Carmen is
the premier. Part of the charm of hoeing potatoes lies in
anticipating the joys of the potato properly baked. Charles Lamb may
write of his roast pig, and the epicures among the ancients may
expatiate upon the glories of a dish of peacock's tongues and their
other rare and costly edibles, but they probably never knew to what
heights one may ascend in the scale of gastronomic joys in the
immediate presence of a baked Carmen. When it is broken open the
steam ascends like incense from an altar, while at the magic touch
the snowy, flaky substance billows forth upon the plate in a drift
that would inspire the pen of a poet. The further preliminaries
amount to a ceremony. There can be, there must be no haste. The
whole summer lies back of this moment. There on the plate are weeks
of golden sunshine, interwoven with the singing of birds and the
fragrance of flowers; and it were sacrilege to become hurried at the
consummation. When the meat has been made fine the salt and pepper
are applied, deliberately, daintily, and then comes the butter, like
the golden glow of sunset upon a bank of flaky clouds. The artist
tries in vain to rival this blending of colors and shades. But the
supreme moment and the climax come when the feast is glorified and
set apart by its baptism of cream. At such a moment the sense of my
indebtedness to the man who developed the Carmen becomes most a