String these Jay Amateurs. Lutie read the Criticisms, and went into
Nervous Collapse. Her Mother was all Wrought Up, and said somebody ought
to go and kill the Editors. Father bore up grimly.

Before Lutie was Convalescent he had the Difficult Italian Arias carted
out of the house. The 'Cello Player came to call one Day, and he was
given Minutes to get out of the Ward.

By the time Oliver looked in again Lutie was more than ready to pay some
Attention to him. She is now doing a few quiet Vocalizations for her
Friends. When some one who hasn't Heard tells her that she is good
enough for Opera, they have to open the Windows and give her more Air.

MORAL: _When in Doubt, try it on the Box-office_.

_THE_ FABLE _OF THE_ COTILLON LEADER _FROM THE_ HUCKLEBERRY DISTRICT
_WITH THE_ INTERMITTENT MEMORY

A Young Man who had made a Sudden Winning, and was beginning to act as
Shawl-Holder and Emergency Errand-Boy for the Society Queens, seemed to
have a great deal of Trouble with his Memory. If he met Any One who had
started with him a few Years before, and who used to Stake him to a
Meal-Ticket now and then, or let him have a Scarf-Pin when he had to go
out and make a Front, he could not appear to remember the Man's Name or
tell where he had seen him before. When he was in a Loge at the
Play-House with Exclusive Ethel and her Friends, he might look down in
the Parquette and see the Landlady who had carried him through a Hard
Winter and accepted a Graceful Wave of the Hand when she really needed
the Board Money, but he found it impossible to Place her. Even the
People who came from his own Town, and who knew him when he was getting
Five a Week and wearing Celluloid Cuffs, and who could relate the Family
History if they wanted to Knock, they couldn't make him Remember, even
when they stopped him on the Street and recalled such Humiliations as
the Time he used to pick Cherries on the Shares, and how Odd he looked
in his Brother's Made-Over Clothes.

[Illustration: AFFECTIONATE MASSAGE]

This Young Man buried the Dead Past until his Memory was a Blank for the
whole Period up to the Time that the President of the Fidelity National
invited him to Dinner and he got his first Peek at a sure-enough Butler.

He had been a Genuine Aristocrat for about Eighteen Months, when he made
a Mis-step and landed with his Face in the Gravel. The Gigantic
Enterprise which he had been Promoting got into the Public Prints as a
Pipe Dream.