al!" said Norton. "What good would that do you?"

"Why, I could read everything," said Roswell.

"And what good would _that_ do you?"

"I should like it," said Roswell. "I should have what I like."

"Solomon tried that once," said David, who was taking diligently his
reporter's notes. "It didn't seem to answer then."

"Ah, but there were not so many books in his day," said Roswell.

"The worse for you, I should say. Besides, there are not so many now as
there will be a thousand years hence. How about that, old fellow?"

"I can't read what there'll be a thousand years hence," said Roswell.

"You couldn't read what there are now, if you had them. You could not
live long enough."

"What a musty old fogy he would be, by the time he had gone half
through!" said Judy. "He would have used up his eyes; his spectacles
would have made a ridge on his nose; he would live in an old coat that
was never brushed; and his books would be all coffee stains, because he
would take his breakfast over them. Poor old creature!"

"You'll be old then yourself, Judy," said some one.

"I won t," said the young lady promptly. "I mean to keep young."

"Ben Johnson--go ahead," said Norton. "It's your turn."

"I'd like to go supercargo in the China trade," said Ben; a
lively-looking fellow enough.

"Good," said Norton. "Say why. Love of the sea wouldn't take you to
China, I suppose."

"Not exactly," said Ben, with a confidential gleam in his eyes. "I
should have nothing to do--and smoke seventy cigars a day."

"Seventy cigars!" cried out two or three of the girls. "Horrid!"

"You couldn't do it, old fellow."

"Easy," said Ben. "My cousins, Will Larkins and Dan Boston, did it
every day."

"They must be of a practical turn of mind, I should think," said
Norton. "They meant their voyage should pay--somebody--and so concluded
it should be the tobacconist. Lucy Ellis--?"

"I should like to be very beautiful," said the girl, who had some
pretensions that way already, or she wouldn't have said it in
public,--"and have everybody love me."

"Everybody!" cried Judy. "All the boys, you mean."

"No indeed," said the beauty with a toss of her head. "I mean all the
_men_."

"But people don't love people because they are handsome," said Norton.

"Don't they, though!" said Ben Johnson, who was a beauty in his way; as
indeed so also was Norton. But here arose a furious debate of the
question, in which almost everybody took part excepting D