ina voice, but she's been so long away helping Stub Wilson
to make Milwaukee famous that nowadays her top notes sound like a cuckoo
clock after it's been up all night.

I suppose it's wrong for me to pull this about our own flesh and blood,
but when a married woman with six fine children, one of them at Yale,
walks sideways up to a piano and begins to squeak, "Good bye, summer!
Good bye, summer!" just as if she were calling the dachshund in to
dinner, I think it's time she declined the nomination.

Then Bud Hawley, after figuring it all out that there was no chance of
his getting arrested, sat down on the piano stool and made a few sad
statements, which in their original state form the basis of a Scotch
ballad called "Loch Lomond."

Bud's system of speaking the English language is to say with his voice
as much of a word as he can remember and then finish the rest of it with
his hands.

Imagine what Bud would do to a song with an oat-meal foundation like
"Loch Lomond."

When Bud barked out the first few bars, which say, "By yon bonnie bank
and by yon bonnie brae," everybody within hearing would have cried with
joy if the piano had fallen over on him and flattened his equator.

And when he reached the plot of the piece, where it says, "You take the
high road and I'll take the low road," Uncle Peter took a drink, Phil
Merton took the same, Stub took an oath, and I took a walk.

And all the while Bud's wife sat there, with the glad and winning smile
of a swordfish on her face, listening with a heart full of pride while
her crime-laden husband chased that helpless song all over the parlor,
and finally left it unconscious under the sofa.

At this point Hep Hardy got up and volunteered to tell some funny
stories and this gave us all a good excuse to put on our overshoes and
say "Good night" to our hostess without offending anybody.

Hep Hardy and his funny stories are always used to close the show.

"John," said Peaches after we got home; "I want to give a _musicale_,
may I?"

"Certainly, old girl," I answered. "We'll give one in the nearest moving
picture theater. If we don't like the show all we have to do is to close
our eyes and thank our lucky stars there's nothing to listen to."

"Oh! aren't you hateful!" she pouted.

Maybe I am at that.

* * * * *

A LIST of BOOKS
By
HUGH McHUGH
(GEORGE V. HOBART)

This famous author of the well-known "John Henry" books numbers his
sal