at we came
out here in the woods for, anyhow?"

"If you are going--" She was speaking calmly.

"Going where?" I replied, picking up the seed catalogues to make room
for myself on the couch. "_Please_ look at this pumpkin! Think of
what a jack-o'-lantern it would make for the boys! I am going to
plant--"

"You 'll be cold," she said, rising and drawing a steamer rug up over
me; then laying the open magazine across my shoulders while giving the
pillow a motherly pull, she added, with a sigh of contentment:--

"Perhaps, if it had n't been for me, you might have been a great
success with pumpkins or pigs--I don't know."

[Illustration: The Dustless-Duster]

V

THE DUSTLESS-DUSTER

There are beaters, brooms and Bissell's Sweepers; there are dry-mops,
turkey-wings, whisks, and vacuum-cleaners; there are--but no matter.
Whatever other things there are, and however many of them in the
closet, the whole dust-raising kit is incomplete without the
Dustless-Duster.

For the Dustless-Duster is final, absolute. What can be added to, or
taken away from, a Dustless-Duster? A broom is only a broom, even a
new broom. Its sphere is limited; its work is partial. Dampened and
held persistently down by the most expert of sweepers, the broom still
leaves something for the Dustless-Duster to do. But the
Dustless-Duster leaves nothing for anything to do. The dusting is done.

Because there are many who dust, and because they have searched in vain
for a dustless-duster, I should like to say that the Dustless-Duster
can be bought at department stores, at those that have a full line of
departments--at any department store, in fact; for the Dustless-Duster
department is the largest of all the departments, whatever the store.
Ask for it of your jeweler, grocer, milliner. Ask for "The Ideal,"
"The Universal," "The Indispensable," of any man with anything to sell
or preach or teach, and you shall have it--the perfect thing which you
have spent life looking for; which you have thought so often to have,
but found as often that you had not. You shall have it. I have it.
One hangs, rather, in the kitchen on the clothes-dryer.

And one (more than one) hangs in the kitchen closet, and in the cellar,
and in the attic. I have often brought it home, for my search has been
diligent since a certain day, years ago,--a "Commencement Day" at the
Institute.

I had never attended a Commencement exercise before; I had never been
in