e
too is like that of a boy, with wrinkles.

And his talk now has grown to be always reminiscent. He is perpetually
telling long stories of amusing times that he has had with different
people that he names.

He says for example--

"I remember a rather queer thing that happened to me in a train one
day----"

And if you say--"When was that Juggins?"--he looks at you in a vague way
as if calculating and says,--"in 1875, or 1876, I think, as near as I
recall it--"

I notice, too, that his reminiscences are going further and further
back. He used to base his stories on his recollections as a young man,
now they are further back.

The other day he told me a story about himself and two people that he
called the Harper brothers,--Ned and Joe. Ned, he said was a
tremendously powerful fellow.

I asked how old Ned was and Juggins said that he was three. He added
that there was another brother not so old, but a very clever fellow
about,--here Juggins paused and calculated--about eighteen months.

So then I realised where Juggins retroactive existence is carrying him
to. He has passed back through childhood into infancy, and presently,
just as his annuity runs to a point and vanishes, he will back up clear
through the Curtain of Existence and die,--or be born, I don't know
which to call it.

Meantime he remains to me as one of the most illuminating allegories I
have met.

[Illustration: Meanwhile he had become a quaint-looking elderly man.]

_MAKING A MAGAZINE_

(_The Dream of a Contributor_)

_Making a Magazine_

I DREAMT one night not long ago that I was the editor of a great
illustrated magazine. I offer no apology for this: I have often dreamt
even worse of myself than that.

In any case I didn't do it on purpose: very often, I admit, I try to
dream that I am President Wilson, or Mr. Bryan, or the Ritz-Carlton
Hotel, or a share of stock in the Standard Oil Co. for the sheer luxury
and cheapness of it. But this was an accident. I had been sitting up
late at night writing personal reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln. I was
writing against time. The presidential election was drawing nearer every
day and the market for reminiscences of Lincoln was extremely brisk,
but, of course, might collapse any moment. Writers of my class have to
consider this sort of thing. For instance, in the middle of Lent, I find
that I can do fairly well with "Recent Lights on the Scriptures." Then,
of course, when the hot