before me
fifty or more you deem most suitable. And from these I shall select with
deliberation and care and wisdom that one that will best be fitted for
my throne-side and the bearing of children." And they went forth into
the kingdom and brought before Solomon women who were strong and women
who were wise and women who were gentle and women who were serious with
the grave problems of life--the pick of the women of all the great
kingdom who best were suited to the king.... Solomon, weighing
studiously the merits of each and pondering the one whom he might most
appropriately take unto him as best fitted for wife and mother, suddenly
caught sight, on the far edge of the crowd, of a little flower girl with
a cunning dimple in her ear....

XLIV

THE SUPERNATURAL

"What is my name?" asked August Kraut of the Ouija board, as his hands
guided the apparatus hither and thither.

"August Kraut," responded the Ouija board.

XLV

CURIOSITY

A young woman, not content with delighting in the exquisite beauty of a
magnolia bloom at a distance, came close to it and, coming close,
touched it to make certain of its reality and, touching it, turned its
fragile white petals to an ugly brown.

A young woman decided to analyze her lover's affections....

XLVI

THE MIRROR

In a great lonely house on a far lonely roadway lived in seclusion among
her waxen flowers and cracking walls and faded relics of a far
yesterday, a hateful and withered and bitter old woman. To the lonely
house on the lonely roadway came one day out of the world to live with
the old woman her young and beautiful and very lovely granddaughter. And
one day--it was not so long afterward--the very lovely girl, rummaging
about the great house, came upon a tall mirror, the mirror that the
withered and bitter old woman had long been wont to use and that for all
these many lonely years had seen and reflected naught but acrimony and
decay and despair and ugliness. And the very lovely girl looked into the
mirror--and suddenly cried out. For what the mirror reflected was not
her very lovely self, but something hateful and withered and bitter....

XLVII

PATRIA

The young man lay dying on the field of battle. "Tell them I am proud to
have died for my glorious country!" he breathed to the comrade who bent
beside him.

They printed the young man's noble last words in all the leading papers
of the country, conspicuously, where all t