d they drove off, laughing.

"Look at 'em," said Travers, morosely. "_They_ don't think the wheels
are going around, do they? _They_ think it is just the earth revolving
with them on top of it, and nobody else. We don't have to say 'please'
to no one, not much! We can do just what we jolly well please, and
dine when we please and wherever we please. You say to me, Travers,
let's go to Pastor's to-night, and I say, I won't, and you say I won't
go to the Casino, because I don't want to, and there you are, and all
we have to do is to agree to go somewhere else."

"I wonder," said Van Bibber, dreamily, as he watched the carriage
disappear down the avenue, "what brings a man to the proposing point?"

"Some other man," said Travers, promptly. "Some man he thinks has
more to do for the girl than he likes."

"Who," persisted Van Bibber, innocently, "do you think was the man in
that case?"

"How should I know?" exclaimed Travers, impatiently, waving away such
unprofitable discussion with a sweep of his stick, and coming down to
the serious affairs of life. "What I want to know is to what theatre
we are going--that's what I want to know."

A RECRUIT AT CHRISTMAS

Young Lieutenant Claflin left the Brooklyn Navy-yard at an early hour,
and arrived at the recruiting-office at ten o'clock. It was the day
before Christmas, and even the Bowery, "the thieves' highway," had
taken on the emblems and spirit of the season, and the young officer
smiled grimly as he saw a hard-faced proprietor of a saloon directing
the hanging of wreaths and crosses over the door of his palace and
telling the assistant barkeeper to make the red holly berries "show
up" better.

The cheap lodging-houses had trailed the green over their illuminated
transoms, and even on Mott Street the Chinamen had hung up strings of
evergreen over the doors of the joss-house and the gambling-house next
door. And the tramps and good-for-nothings, just back from the Island,
had an animated, expectant look, as though something certainly was
going to happen.

Lieutenant Claflin nodded to Corporal Goddard at the door of the
recruiting-office, and startled that veteran's rigidity, and kept his
cotton-gloved hand at his visor longer than the Regulations required,
by saying, "Wish you merry Christmas," as he jumped up the stairs.

The recruiting-office was a dull, blank-looking place, the view from
the windows was not inspiring, and the sight of the plump and
black-