ines.

Mr. Gladstone's great brain reviewed the situation; he must obey the law,
but he was determined to have the grapes, so he sat down then and there on
the railway station bench and--ate them.

Irving Bacheller, the author of "Eben Holden," went a little farther north
than usual last summer while on his vacation, and penetrated Newfoundland.
He caught a good many fish, but this did not prevent his keeping an eye
on the natives. He was particularly impressed by the men who spent the day
lounging about the village stores.

"What do you fellows do when you sit around the store like this?" he asked
of the crowd arranged in a circle of tilted chairs and empty boxes and
maintaining a profound silence.

"Well," drawled one of the oldest, "sometimes we set and think, and then
again other times we just set."--_Woman's Home Companion._

Marie Corelli's domestic quiet at Stratford-on-Avon seemed likely to be
destroyed not long since by the opening of a girls' school in the house
immediately adjoining her own. The famous novelist found that the
recitations of the pupils greatly interrupted her literary work. She stood
it, however, as long as she could, but finally wrote a letter of protest
to the proprietor of the school. The reply she received from the elderly
school-mistress was prompt, and ran as follows:

"Dear Miss Corelli: Judging from the literary work of yours which it has
been my privilege to see, I should say that it would be just as well if
you were interrupted even more frequently."--_New York Times._

* * * * *

Emerson Hough once wrote a story called "Hasenberg's Cross-Eyed Horse,"
which he sought diligently, but unsuccessfully, to market with the greater
number of the known periodicals of the world. At last the story found a
resting-place in Mr. Hough's desk. Three years ago, feeling a bit let down
physically, he took the advice of a distinguished publisher of New York
and put himself in the hands of an osteopathic physician.

Some doubts as to the beneficial results existed, but no doubt whatever as
to the size of the bill. Mr. Hough pondered long and seriously on the
question of getting even with his doctor. At length he happened to think
of his old story of the cross-eyed horse.

"I'll have the osteopath treat the horse's cross-eyes," said the author to
himself. Whereupon he rewrote the story, sold it promptly at a good
figure, and made it a chapter of his last