train he'll take
care to find out where it stops."

The conductor smiled, but a humane, understanding smile. "I try to
be fair with 'em," he said.

"I think you were a wonder," we said.

By the time we reached North Philadelphia the soothing hand of Time
had exerted some of its consolation. The stout man wore a faintly
sheepish smile as he rose to escape. The brakeman was in the
vestibule. He, younger than the conductor, was no less kind, but we
would hazard that he is not quite as resigned to mortal error and
distress. He spoke genially, but there was a note of honest rebuke
in his farewell.

"The next time you get on a train," he said, "watch your stop."

[Illustration]

OUR TRICOLOUR TIE

We went up to the composing room just now to consult our privy
counsellor, Peter Augsberger, the make-up man, and after Peter had
told us about his corn----

It is really astonishing, by the way, how many gardeners there are
in a newspaper office. We once worked in a place where a
horticultural magazine and a beautiful journal of rustic life were
published, and the delightful people who edited those magazines were
really men about town; but here in the teeming city and in the very
node of urban affairs, to wit, the composing room, one hears nought
but merry gossip about gardens, and the great and good men by whom
we are surrounded begin their day by gazing tenderly upon jars full
of white iris. And has not our friend Charley Sawyer of the dramatic
department given us a lot of vegetable marrow seeds from his own
garden and greatly embarrassed us by so doing, for he has put them
in two packets marked "Male" and "Female," and to tell the truth we
had no idea that the matter of sex extended even as far as the
apparently placid and unperturbed vegetable marrow. Mr. Sawyer
explained carefully to us just how the seeds ought to be planted,
the males and females in properly wedded couples, we think he said;
but we are not quite sure, and we are too modest to ask him to
explain again; but if we should make a mistake in planting those
seeds, if we were to---- Come, we are getting away from our topic.
Peter had told us about his corn, in his garden, that is, out in
Nutley (and that reminds us of the difficulties of reading poetry
aloud. Mr. Chesterton tells somewhere a story about a poem of
Browning's that he heard read aloud when he was a child, and
understood the poem to say "John scorns ale."

Now Mr. Chesterton--