hours by running
tensely dramatic films of breakfast, dinner, and supper at the Gashwiler
home. It seemed that you didn't fall asleep so quickly when you had
eaten nothing since early morning. Never had he achieved such perfect
photography as now of the Gashwiler corned-beef hash and light biscuits,
the Gashwiler hot cakes and sausage, and never had Gashwiler so
impressively carved the Saturday night four-rib roast of tender beef.
Gashwiler achieved a sensational triumph in the scene, being accorded
all the close--ups that the most exacting of screen actors could wish.
His knife-work was perfect. He held his audience enthralled by his
technique.

Mrs. Gashwiler, too, had a small but telling part in the drama to-night;
only a character bit, but one of those poignant bits that stand out in
the memory. The subtitle was, "Merton, won't you let me give you another
piece of the mince pie?" That was all, and yet, as screen artists say,
it got over. There came very near to being not a dry eye in the
house when the simple words were flashed beside an insert of thick,
flaky-topped mince pies with quarters cut from them to reveal their
noble interiors

Sleep came at last while he was regretting that lawless orgy of the
morning. He needn't have cleaned up those beans in that silly way.
He could have left a good half of them. He ran what might have been
considered a split-reel comedy of the stew-pan's bottom still covered
with perfectly edible beans lightly protected with Nature's own
pastel-tinted shroud for perishing vegetable matter and diversified here
and there with casual small deposits of ashes.

In the morning something good really did happen. As he folded his
blankets in the gray light a hard object rattled along the floor from
them. He picked this up before he recognized it as a mutilated fragment
from the stale half--loaf of bread he had salvaged. He wondered how he
could have forgotten it, even in the plenitude of his banquet. There it
was, a mere nubbin of crust and so hard it might almost have been taken
for a petrified specimen of prehistoric bread. Yet it proved to be
rarely palatable. It's flavour was exquisite. It melted in the mouth.

Somewhat refreshed by this modest cheer, he climbed from the window of
the Crystal Palace with his mind busy on two tracks. While the letter to
Gashwiler composed itself, with especially clear directions about where
the return money should be sent, he was also warning himself to