who had a strangle hold on a Beethoven sonata and was beating the
cadenza out of it.

I made a short prayer and concluded to fall out, but just then one of
my feet rested on something solid, so I put both feet on it and began
to step down.

[Illustration: I made a short prayer and concluded to fall out.]

Alas, however, the moment I put my weight on it my stepping-stone gave
way and I fell overboard with a splash.

"How dare you put your feet on my head?" yelled the man on the ground
floor of my bedroom.

"Excuse me! it felt like something wooden," I whispered, while I dashed
madly for the smoker.

From that day to this I have never been able to look a Pullman car in
the face, and whenever anybody mentions an upper berth to me I lose my
presence of mind and get peevish.

If you have ever been there yourself I know you don't blame me!

Do you?

CHAPTER II

JOHN HENRY ON COOKS

When my wife made the suggestion that we should give a Thanksgiving
dinner to our friends in the neighborhood it almost put me to the ropes.

You know I'm not much on the social gag, and to have to sit up and make
good-natured faces at a lot of strangers gives me intermittent pains in
the neck.

"Why should we give them a dinner?" I asked my wife. "Aren't most of
them getting good wages, and why should we kill the fatted calf for a
lot of home-made prodigals?"

"John, don't be so selfish!" was my wife's get-back. "There's a long
winter ahead of us, and when we give one dinner to seven people that
means seven people to give us seven dinners. Don't you see how our
little plates of soup will draw compound interest if we invite the
right people?"

My wife is a friend of mine, so I refused to quarrel with her.

"All right, my dear," I said, "but you must give the dinner one week
before Thanksgiving."

"One week before Thanksgiving!" my wife re-echoed, "and why, pray?"

"Because this will give our guests a chance to recover from your
cooking before the real day of prayer comes around, and by that time
they will begin to think about you with kindness, perhaps."

My wife stung me with her cruel eyes and went out in the kitchen where
the new cook was breaking a lot of our best dishes which did not appeal
to her.

The name of this new cook was Ollie Olsen.

Ollie was half Swede and the rest of her was deaf.

[Illustration: Ollie was half Swede and the rest of her was deaf.]

When Ollie came to the house to get a job