ALTRUISM

WILLIE--"Pa!"

PA--"Yes."

WILLIE--"Teacher says we're here to help others."

PA--"Of course we are."

WILLIE--"Well, what are the others here for?"

There was once a remarkably kind boy who was a great angler. There was a
trout stream in his neighborhood that ran through a rich man's estate.
Permits to fish the stream could now and then be obtained, and the boy
was lucky enough to have a permit.

One day he was fishing with another boy when a gamekeeper suddenly
darted forth from a thicket. The lad with the permit uttered a cry of
fright, dropped his rod, and ran off at top speed. The gamekeeper
pursued.

For about half a mile the gamekeeper was led a swift and difficult
chase. Then, worn out, the boy halted. The man seized him by the arm and
said between pants:

"Have you a permit to fish on this estate?

"Yes to be sure," said the boy, quietly.

"You have? Then show it to me."

The boy drew the permit from his pocket. The man examined it and frowned
in perplexity and anger.

"Why did you run when you had this permit?" he asked.

"To let the other boy get away," was the reply. "He didn't have none!"

AMBITION

Oliver Herford sat next to a soulful poetess at dinner one night, and
that dreamy one turned her sad eyes upon him. "Have you no other
ambition, Mr. Herford," she demanded, "than to force people to degrade
themselves by laughter?"

Yes, Herford had an ambition. A whale of an ambition. Some day he hoped
to gratify it.

The woman rested her elbows on the table and propped her face in her
long, sad hands, and glowed into Mr. Herford's eyes. "Oh, Mr. Herford,"
she said, "Oliver! Tell me about it."

"I want to throw an egg into an electric fan," said Herford, simply.

"Hubby," said the observant wife, "the janitor of these flats is a
bachelor."

"What of it?"

"I really think he is becoming interested in our oldest daughter."

"There you go again with your pipe dreams! Last week it was a duke."

The chief end of a man in New York is dissipation; in Boston,
conversation.

When you are aspiring to the highest place, it is honorable to reach the
second or even the third rank.--_Cicero_.

The man who seeks one thing in life, and but one,
May hope to achieve it before life be done;
But he who seeks all things, wherever he goes,
Only reaps from the hopes which around him he sows
A harvest of barren regrets.

--_Owen Meredith_

AMERICAN