space. It was all down-hill
before him. He started for Australia. Anybody could see that. You
couldn't tell whether he was going for Sydney or Melbourne, but you
knew he was going for Australia in a general way. His leaps, assisted
by the down-hill course, were something to witness. Cocoanut has since
estimated them at forty feet a jump, while Billy says sixty--for both
boys, it is good to say, are still alive--but then Billy was on the
jackass and may have been excited; probably somewhere, say about fifty
feet, would be the correct estimate. Talk about your horrifying comets
with their tails of fire! They were but slight affairs, locally
considered, for terrific explosions accompanied every jump of Julius
Caesar, and comets don't make any noise. It was all swift, but the noise
and awful appearance of Billy and Julius Caesar sufficed in a minute to
startle such of the populace of Honolulu who were already awake, and
there was a wild rush of scores of people in the wake of where Billy and
Julius Caesar went downward to the sea. The extent of the leap of Julius
Caesar when he finally reached the shore has never been fully decided
upon, but it was a great leap. Billy, jackass, and fireworks went down
like a plummet, and very soon thereafter Billy and jackass, but no
fireworks, came to the surface again, and then swam vigorously toward
the shore, for everybody and everything in Hawaii can swim like a duck.
They were received by a brown and wildly applauding crowd of natives,
and a minute or two later by Cocoanut, who had run like a deer to see
the end of the vast performance he had inaugurated.

An hour or two later two boys and a little jackass were all together
upon the hill again, the boys excited and jubilant and saying that
they'd had a Fourth of July, anyhow, and the jackass in a doubtful and
thoughtful mood.

The boys have grown amazingly since. The jackass seems to be about the
same. But about the Fourth of July next at hand the boys won't have the
same trouble they had in 1897.

LOVE AND A LATCH-KEY

This is the story of the circumstances surrounding the invention of
Simpson's Electric Latch-Key, an invention with which everybody is now
familiar, but regarding the origin of which the public has never been
informed. There were reasons, grave ones for a time, why the story
should not be told--in short, there was a love affair mixed with it--but
those reasons no longer exist, and it seems a good thing to r