He waited for queries, but his friends knew him, and he was forced to
continue unurged:

"The vines growed so fast that they wore out the melons draggin' 'em
'round. However, the second year my two little boys made up their minds
to get a taste of one anyhow, so they took turns, carryin' one along
with the vine and--"

But his companions had already started toward the barroom door.

News comes from Southern Kansas that a boy climbed a cornstalk to see
how the sky and clouds looked and now the stalk is growing faster than
the boy can climb down. The boy is clear out of sight. Three men have
taken the contract for cutting down the stalk with axes to save the boy
a horrible death by starving, but the stalk grows so rapidly that they
can't hit twice in the same place. The boy is living on green corn alone
and has already thrown down over four bushels of cobs. Even if the corn
holds out there is still danger that the boy will reach a height where
he will be frozen to death. There is some talk of attempting his rescue
with a balloon.--_Topeka Capital_.

HYPOCRISY

Hypocrisy is all right if we can pass it off as politeness.

TEACHER-"Now, Tommy, what is a hypocrite?"

TOMMY-"A boy that comes to school with a smile on his face."--_Graham
Charteris_.

IDEALS

The fact that his two pet bantam hens laid very small eggs troubled
little Johnny. At last he was seized with an inspiration. Johnny's
father, upon going to the fowl-run one morning, was surprised at seeing
an ostrich egg tied to one of the beams, with this injunction chalked
above it:

"Keep your eye on this and do your best."

ILLUSIONS AND HALLUCINATIONS

A doctor came up to a patient in an insane asylum, slapped him on the
back, and said: "Well, old man, you're all right. You can run along and
write your folks that you'll be back home in two weeks as good as new."

The patient went off gayly to write his letter. He had it finished and
sealed, but when he was licking the stamp it slipped through his fingers
to the floor, lighted on the back of a cockroach that was passing, and
stuck. The patient hadn't seen the cockroach--what he did see was his
escaped postage stamp zig-zagging aimlessly across the floor to the
baseboard, wavering up over the baseboard, and following a crooked track
up the wall and across the ceiling. In depressed silence he tore up the
letter he had just written and dropped the pieces on the floor.

"Two