glass there. Yet in this, only third year of its present management,
it was the place where those who knew best always put up.

Around the waiting-room fire this evening sat a goodly semicircle of
men,--commercial travellers. Some of them were quite dry and
comfortable, and wore an air of superior fortune over others whose
shoes and lower garments sent out more or less steam and odor toward
the open fireplace. Several were smoking. One who neither smoked nor
steamed stood with his back to the fire and the skirts of his coat
lifted forward on his wrists. He was a rather short, slight, nervy
man, about thirty years of age, with a wide pink baldness running so
far back from his prominent temples and forehead that when he tipped
his face toward the blue joists overhead, enjoying the fatigue of a
well-filled day, his polished skull sent back the firelight
brilliantly. There was a light skirmish of conversation going on, in
which he took no part. No one seemed really acquainted with another.
Presently a man sitting next on the left of him put away a quill
toothpick in his watch-pocket, looked up into the face of the standing
man, and said, with a faint smile:

"That job's done!"

With friendly gravity the other looked down and replied, "I never use
a quill toothpick."

"Yes," said the one who sat, "it's bad. Still I do it."

"Nothing," continued the other,--"nothing harder than a sharpened
white-pine match should ever go between the teeth. Brush thoroughly
but not violently once or twice daily with a moderately stiff brush
dipped in soft water into which has been dropped a few drops of the
tincture of myrrh. A brush of badger's hair is best. If tartar
accumulates, have it removed by a dentist. Do not bite thread or crack
nuts with the teeth, or use the teeth for other purposes than those
for which nature designed them." He bent toward his hearer with a
smile of irresistible sweetness, drew his lips away from his gums,
snapped his teeth together loudly twice or thrice, and smiled again,
modestly. The other man sought defence in buoyancy of manner.

"Right you are!" he chirruped. He reached up to his adviser's blue and
crimson neck-scarf, and laid his finger and thumb upon a large,
solitary pear-shaped pearl. "You're like me; you believe in the real
thing."

"I do," said the pearl's owner; "and I like people that like the real
thing. A pearl of the first water _is_ real. There's no sham there; no
deception--except the