d his spinal ornamentations as an
instrumentalist taps the stops of an organ; and she chanted a familiar
counting game of childhood:

"Rich man--poor man--beggar man--thief--doctor--loiryer----"

"Sure, he said he was a loiryer." It was Mr. Cassidy breaking in. "And
he said his name was Algernon. Well, I believe the Algernon part--the
big A. P. A."

"Oh, you Algy!"

"Algernon, does your mother know you're out?"

"T'ree cheers for Algy, the walkin' comic valentine!"

"Algy, Algy--Oh, you cutey Algy!" These jolly Greenwich Villagers were
going to make a song of his name. They did make a song of it, and it was
a frolicsome song and pitched to a rollicksome key. Congenial newcomers
arrived, pelting down from upstairs whence they had been drawn by the
happy rocketing clamour; and they caught spirit and step and tune with
the rest and helped manfully to sing it. As one poet hath said, "And now
reigned high carnival." And as another has so aptly phrased it, "There
was sound of revelry by night." And, as the second poet once put it, or
might have put it so if so be he didn't, "And all went merry as a
marriage bell." But when we, adapting the line to our own descriptive
usages, now say all went merry we should save out one exception--one
whose form alternately was racked by hot flushes of a terrific
self-consciousness and by humid gusts of an equally terrific sneezing
fit.

VI

"Here, here, here! Cut out the yellin'! D'you want the whole block up
out of their beds?" The voice of the personified law, gruff and
authoritative, broke in upon the clamour, and the majesty of the law,
typified in bulk, with galoshes, ear muffs and woollen gloves on, not to
mention the customary uniform of blue and brass, ploughed a path toward
the centre of the group.

"'S all right, Switzer," gaily replied a hoydenish lassie; she, the
same who had begged Mr. Leary for a sea-pearl souvenir. "But just see
wot Morrie Cassidy went and found here on the street!"

Patrolman Switzer looked then where she pointed, and could scarce
believe his eyes. In his case gleefulness took on a rumbling thunderous
form, which shook his being as with an ague and made him to beat himself
violently upon his ribs.

"D'ye blame us for carryin' on, Switzer, when we seen it ourselves?"

"I don't--and that's a fact," Switzer confessed between gurgles. "I
wouldn't a blamed you much if you'd fell down and had a fit." And then
he rocked on his heels, filled with jo