and depth of tone which
put the finest mahogany to shame. Let me rub it on my sleeve. Now look!

There are no elaborate mummeries about our service in the temple of
Nicotiana. No priest or pastor, no robed muezzin or gowned prelate calls
me to the altar. Neither is there fixed hour or prescribed point of the
compass towards which I must turn. Whenever the mood comes and the
spirit listeth, I make devotion.

There are various methods, numerous brief litanies. Mine is a common and
simple one. I take the cut Indian leaf in the left palm, so, and roll it
gently about with the right, thus. Next I pack it firmly in the censer's
hollow bowl with neither too firm nor too light a pressure. Any fire
will do. The torch need not be blessed. Thanks, I have a match.

Now we are ready. With the surplus breath of life you draw in the
fragrant spirit of the weed. With slow, reluctant outbreathing you loose
it on the quiet air. Behold! That which was but a dead thing, lives.
Perhaps we have released the soul of some brave red warrior who, long
years ago, fell in glorious battle and mingled his dust with the
unforgetting earth. Each puff may give everlasting liberty to some dead
and gone aboriginal. If you listen you may hear his far-off chant.
Through the curling blue wreaths you may catch a glimpse of the happy
hunting grounds to which he has now gone. That is the part of the
service whose losing or gaining depends upon yourself.

The first whiff is the invocation, the last the benediction. When you
knock out the ashes you should feel conscious that you have done a good
deed, that the offering has not been made in vain.

Slave! Still that odious word? Well, have it your own way. Worshipers at
every shrine have been thus persecuted.

HE AND SHE

BY IRONQUILL

When I am dead you'll find it hard,
Said he,
To ever find another man
Like me.

What makes you think, as I suppose
You do,
I'd ever want another man
Like you?

THE NOTARY OF PERIGUEUX

BY HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Do not trust thy body with a physician. He'll make thy foolish
bones go without flesh in a fortnight, and thy soul walk without a
body a sennight after.

SHIRLEY.

You must know, gentlemen, that there lived some years ago, in the city
of Perigueux, an honest notary-public, the descendant of a very ancient
and broken-down family, and the occupant of one of those old