was the bird had been carrying, he went to the
spot where he saw it fall and found one of the tin-handled knives, which
the crow had been carrying to a safe hiding-place. He picked it up and
when he returned home that night asked one of his boys if he could lend
him a knife.

"No," said his son. "Our knives are all lost. The crows took them."

"I knew that," said the doctor sweetly, "and so, when I met Zip uptown
just now, I asked her to lend me one, and she did. Here it is."

He pulled out the knife and handed it to the boy and, when the latter
expressed doubt and wonder, insisted that the crow had loaned it to him;
a joke which ended in his always asking one of the children to run and
ask Zip if she would lend him a knife, whenever he chanced to need one.

Although a sad man at times, as I understood, the doctor was not a
pessimist, and in many ways, both by practical jokes and the humoring of
odd characters, sought relief from the intense emotional strain which
the large practice of his profession put upon him. One of his greatest
reliefs was the carrying out of these little practical jokes, and he had
been known to go to much trouble at times to work up a good laugh.

One of the, to him, richest jokes, and one which he always enjoyed
telling, related to a country singing school which was located in the
neighborhood of Pierceton, in which reading (the alphabet, at least),
spelling, geography, arithmetic, rules of grammar, and so forth, were
still taught by a process of singing. The method adopted in this form of
education was to have the scholar memorize all knowledge by singing it.
Thus in the case of geography the students would sing the name of the
country, then its mountains, then the highest peaks, cities, rivers,
principal points of interest, and so on, until all information about
that particular country had been duly memorized in song or rhyme.
Occasionally they would have a school-day on which the local dignitaries
would be invited, and on a number of these occasions the doctor was, for
amusement's sake merely, a grave and reverent listener. On one occasion,
however, he was merely passing the school, when hearing "Africa-a,
Africa-a, mountains of the moo-oo-oon" drawled out of the windows, he
decided to stop in and listen a while. Having tethered his horse outside
he knocked at the door and was received by the little English singing
teacher who, after showing him to a seat, immediately called upon the
cl