five
years by catching cold in taking my hat off to her in elevators, and
getting killed by automobiles in helping her off the cars, where I've
given her my seat."

"But you must allow that if her shoes are too tight, her skirts are
not so tight as they were. Or have you begun sighing for the good old
hobble-skirts, now they're gone?"

"The hobble-skirts were prettier than I thought they were when they
were with us, but the 'tempestuous petticoat' has its charm, which I
find I'd been missing."

"Well, at least it's a change," the younger sage allowed, "and I
haven't found the other changes in our dear old New York which I look
for when I come back in the fall."

The sages were enjoying together the soft weather which lingered with
us a whole month from the middle of October onward, and the afternoon
of their meeting in the Park was now softly reddening to the dim
sunset over the westward trees.

"Yes," the elder assented. "I miss the new sky-scrapers which used to
welcome me back up and down the Avenue. But there are more automobiles
than ever, and the game of saving your life from them when you cross
the street is madder and merrier than I have known it before."

"The war seems to have stopped building because people can't afford
it," the other suggested, "but it has only increased automobiling."

"Well, people can't afford that, either. Nine-tenths of them are
traveling the road to ruin, I'm told, and apparently they can't get
over the ground too fast. Just look!" and the sages joined in the
amused and mournful contemplation of the different types of motors
innumerably whirring up and down the drive before them, while they
choked in the fumes of the gasolene.

The motors were not the costliest types, except in a few instances,
and in most instances they were the cheaper types, such as those who
could not afford them could at least afford best. The sages had found
a bench beside the walk where the statue of Daniel Webster looks down
on the confluence of two driveways, and the stream of motors, going
and coming, is like a seething torrent either way.

"The mystery is," the elder continued, "why they should want to do it
in the way they do it. Are they merely going somewhere and must get
there in the shortest time possible, or are they arriving on a wager?
If they are taking a pleasure drive, what a droll idea of pleasure
they must have! Maybe they are trying to escape Black Care, but they
must know he sits