tter day nurseries into a big
corn-popper and see if I couldn't evolve something sweeter and more
wholesome out of the hard, round, compact little kernels of their
present individuality. I would utterly do away with children's parties
and "butterfly balls" and kirmess dissipations. There should be a new
deal of bread and milk all around. Every boy in the land should go to
bed at sundown, and every girl should wear a sunbonnet. There should
be no carrying of canes, or eating of candy, or wearing of jewelry, or
talking of beaux, and I would dig up from the grave of the long ago the
quaint old custom of courtesying to strangers, of keeping silent until
spoken to, and of universal respect for the aged. This world would
brighten up like a rose garden after a shower with the presence of so
many modest little girls and bashful boys of the good old-fashioned
sort.

XXIII.

A BEWITCHED VIOLIN.

I went to the Auditorium the other night to hear somebody play on the
violin. But that was not a violin which the slender, dark eyed
performer used, and the music that so charmed me was not drawn from
strings and flashed forth by any ordinary bow. The heavenly notes to
which I listened were like those that young leaves give forth when May
winds find them, or that ripples make, drawn softly over pebbly
beaches. And when they died away and floated like a whisper through
the hushed house, it was no longer music; it was a great
golden-jacketed bee settling sleepily into the heart of a rose; it was
the chime of a vesper-bell broken in mellow cadences between vine-clad
hills; it was a something that had no form nor shape, nor semblance to
any earthly thing, yet floated midway between the earth and sky, light
as the frailest flower of snow the north wind ever cradled,
substanceless as smoke or wind-followed mist.

XXIV.

A HAT PIN PROBLEM.

I overheard the following conversation the other day in a popular
refectory:

"Do your children mind you?"

"I guess not; they never pay any more attention to me than if I was a
dummy. It takes their father to bring them to terms every time!"

"I am so glad to hear it. I like to know that somebody else besides me
has a hard time with their children. I declare the only way I can get
baby to mind already is to jab him with a hat-pin!"

I waited to hear no more. With sad precipitation I gathered up my
check and fled. Had I waited another minute I should have said to that
m