t, we lose it. Now I suppose this little girl of twelve
was on her way from some Asiatic port to some American port, and they
stopped on their voyage at Honolulu. Perhaps they dropped anchor there
just before midnight on their February 28, 1808, thinking that the
morrow would be the 29th; but when they were hailed from the shore,
just after midnight, they found out that it was already March 1st."

As the soldier finished, he looked at the mathematician for
confirmation of his explanation.

Thus appealed to, the professor of mathematics smiled and nodded, and
said: "You have hit it. That's just how it was that my grandmother lost
the birthday she ought to have had when she was twelve, and had to go
four years more without one."

"And so she really didn't have a birthday till she was sixteen!" the
artist observed. "Well, all I can say is, your great-grandfather took
too many chances. I don't think he gave the child a fair show. I hope
he made it up to her when she was sixteen--that's all!"

An hour later The Quartet separated. The soldier and the artist walked
away together, but the journalist delayed the mathematician.

"I say," he began, "that yarn about your grandmother was very
interesting. It is an extraordinary combination of coincidences. I
can see it in the Sunday paper with a scare-head--

'SIXTEEN YEARS WITHOUT A BIRTHDAY!'

Do you mind my using it?"

"But it isn't true," said the professor.

"Not true?" echoed the journalist.

"No," replied the mathematician. "I made it up. I hadn't done my share
of the talking, and I didn't want you to think I had nothing to say for
myself."

"Not a single word of truth in it?" the journalist returned.

"Not a single word," was the mathematician's answer.

"Well, what of that?" the journalist declared. "I don't want to file it
in an affidavit--I want to print it in a newspaper."

(1894.)

THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE

I

The telegraph messenger looked again at the address on the envelope in
his hand, and then scanned the house before which he was standing. It
was an old-fashioned building of brick, two stories high, with an attic
above; and it stood in an old-fashioned part of lower New York, not
far from the East River. Over the wide archway there was a small
weather-worn sign, "Ramapo Steel and Iron Works;" and over the smaller
door alongside was a still smaller sign, "Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co."

When the messenger-boy had made out the name, he