verdancy and his awkwardness, he
stuttered most distressingly. The singing began on the bank of the
stream; and he left his sweetheart in the buggy, in the shade of a tree
near by, and wandered alone in the crowd. Standing unconsciously among
those who were to be baptized, the old parson mistook him for one of the
converts, and seized him by the arm and marched him into the water. He
began to protest: "ho-ho-hold on p-p-p-parson, y-y-y-you're ma-ma-makin'
a mi-mi-mistake!!!" "Don't be alarmed my son, come right in," said the
parson. And he led him to the middle of the stream. The poor fellow made
one final desperate effort to explain--"p-p-p-p-parson, l-l-l-l-let me
explain!" But the parson coldly said: "Close your mouth and eyes, my
son!" And he soused him under the water. After he was thoroughly
baptized the old parson led him to the bank, the muddy water trickling
down his face. He was "diked" in his new seersucker suit, and when the
sun struck it, it began to draw up. The legs of his pants drew up to his
knees; his sleeves drew up to his elbows; his little sack coat yanked up
under his arms. And as he stood there trembling and shivering, a good
old sister approached him, and taking him by the hand said: "God bless
you, my son, how do you feel?" Looking, in his agony, at his blushing
sweetheart behind her fan, he replied in his anguish: "I fe-fe-fe-feel
l-l-l-l-like a d-d-d-d-durned f-f-f-f-fool!"

[Illustration: THE SEERSUCKER YOUTH AT THE BAPTIZING.]

If I were called upon to drink a toast to life's happiest period,
I would hold up the sparkling wine, and say: "Here is to youth, that
sweet, Seidlitz powder period, when two souls with scarcely a single
thought, meet and blend in one; when a voice, half gosling, half
calliope, rasps the first sickly confession of puppy love into the
ear of a blue-sashed maiden at the picnic in the grove!" But when she
returns his little greasy photograph, accompanied by a little perfumed
note, expressing the hope that he will think of her only as a sister,
his paradise is wrecked, and his puppy love is swept into the limbo
of things that were, the school boy's tale, the wonder of an hour.

But wait till the shadows have a little longer grown. Wait till the
young lawyer comes home from college, spouting Blackstone, and Kent, and
Ram on facts. Wait till the young doctor returns from the university,
with his whiskers and his diploma, to tread the paths of glory, "that
lead but to the