twelve-thirty and closing time it is full of busy eaters, mostly the
night shift from the Chestnut Street newspaper offices and printing and
engraving firms in the neighbourhood. Ham and eggs blossom merrily. The
white-coated waiters move in swift, stern circuit. Griddle cakes bake
with amazing swiftness toward the stroke of one. Little dishes of baked
beans stand hot and ready in the steam-chest. The waiter punches your
check as he brings your frankfurters and coffee. He adds another
perforation when you get your ice cream. Then he comes back and punches
it again.

"Here," you cry, "let it alone and stop bullying it!"

"Sorry, brother," he says. "I forgot that peach cream was fifteen
cents."

One o'clock. They lock the door and turn out the little gas jet where
smokers light up. As the tables empty the chairs are stacked up on top.
And if it is a clear warm evening the customers smoke a final weed along
the Chestnut Street doorsteps, talking together in a cheery undertone.

* * * * *

No man has ever started upon a new cheque-book without a few sourly
solemn thoughts.

In the humble waters of finance wherein we paddle we find that a book of
fifty cheques lasts us about four months, allowing for two or three duds
when we start to make out a foil payable to bearer (self) and decide to
renounce that worthy ambition and make it out to the gas company
instead.

It occurs to us that if Bunyan had been writing "Pilgrim's Progress"
nowadays instead of making Christian encounter lions in the path he
would have substituted gas meters, particularly the quarter-in-the-slot
kind that one finds in a seaside cottage. However----

Four months is quite a long time. It may be weak of us, but we can never
resist wondering as we survey that flock of empty cheques just what
adventures our bank account is going to undergo during that period, and
whether our customary technique of being aloof with the receiving teller
and genial and commentary with the paying ditto is the right one. We
always believe in keeping a paying teller in a cheerful frame of mind.
We would never admit to him that we think it is going to rain. We say,
rather, "Well, it may blow over," and try not to surmise how many
hundreds there are in the pile at his elbow. Probably we think the
explanation for the really bizarre architecture of our bank is to keep
depositors' attention from the money. Unquestionably Walt Whitman's tomb
ov