ks
besides their beauty and intelligence and order and sweetness of
voice? Picking their feathers gives you an unfailing and never-ceasing
income. On a farm that I know the feathers were sold for $400 in one
year. Think of that! And the ones shipped to the market will bring
in more money than that. Yes, I am for the ducks and the salt breeze
coming over the bay. I think I shall get a Chinaman cook, and with him
and the dog and the sunsets for company I shall do well. No more of
this dull, baking, senseless, roaring city for me."

Miss Ashton looked surprised. North laughed.

"I am going to begin one of my plays tonight," I said, "so I must be
going." And with that I took my departure.

A few days later Miss Ashton telephoned to me, asking me to call at
four in the afternoon.

I did.

"You have been very good to me," she said, hesitatingly, "and I
thought I would tell you. I am going to leave the stage."

"Yes," said I, "I suppose you will. They usually do when there's so
much money."

"There is no money," she said, "or very little. Our money is almost
gone."

"But I am told," said I, "that he has something like two or ten or
thirty millions--I have forgotten which."

"I know what you mean," she said. "I will not pretend that I do not.
I am not going to marry Mr. North."

"Then why are you leaving the stage?" I asked, severely. "What else
can you do to earn a living?"

She came closer to me, and I can see the look in her eyes yet as she
spoke.

"I can pick ducks," she said.

We sold the first year's feathers for $350.

A POOR RULE

I have always maintained, and asserted time to time, that woman is
no mystery; that man can foretell, construe, subdue, comprehend, and
interpret her. That she is a mystery has been foisted by herself
upon credulous mankind. Whether I am right or wrong we shall see. As
"Harper's Drawer" used to say in bygone years: "The following good
story is told of Miss ----, Mr. ----, Mr. ----, and Mr. ----."

We shall have to omit "Bishop X" and "the Rev. ----," for they do not
belong.

In those days Paloma was a new town on the line of the Southern
Pacific. A reporter would have called it a "mushroom" town; but it
was not. Paloma was, first and last, of the toadstool variety.

The train stopped there at noon for the engine to drink and for the
passengers both to drink and to dine. There was a new yellow-pine
hotel, also a wool warehouse, and perhaps three dozen box resid