t fainting with terror, tear herself loose.

"He's been kissing every one of us," murmured the girl's mother. "There
must be something the matter with him."

The girl's father caught the young man squarely by the shoulders and
faced him about.

"He kissed me at the station--before everybody!" sobbed the girl. "Then
he kissed mama and the maid and Aunt Jane."

"What is the meaning of this?" said the girl's father, sternly. "How
dare you, sir, abuse our hospitality?"

The young man shuddered. His eyes closed. Still in the clutch of his
host, there was a tragic silence. Then he opened them once more and
gazed feebly about him. He passed his hand wearily over his forehead.

"Forgive me!" he whispered. "It is not my fault. I live in bachelor
quarters in town. My friends had all gone away and there was nothing for
me to do but go to the moving picture shows night after night. I have
been doing this for weeks. In the moving pictures the young man hero
kisses everybody he meets. It's the regular thing--nothing but kissing,
kissing, all the time. My mind has been unhinged by it. Forgive me and
take me to some asylum."

Then he burst into tears, threw his arms about the old gentleman--and
kissed him, and they led the poor wretch away.

HISTORICAL

At a military church service during the South African War some recruits
were listening to the chaplain in church saying, "Let them slay the
Boers as Joshua smote the Egyptians," when a recruit whispered to a
companion:

"Say, Bill, the old bloke is a bit off; doesn't he know it was Kitchener
who swiped the Egyptians?"

MEMORIES

An American lady at Stratford-on-Avon showed even more than the usual
American fervor. She had not recovered when she reached the railway
station, for she remarked to a friend as they walked on the platform:
"To think that it was from this very platform the immortal bard would
depart whenever he journeyed to town!"

ECCLESIASTICAL DUES ENFORCED

"I canna get ower it," a Scotch farmer remarked to his wife. "I put a
twa shillin' piece in the plate at the kirk this morning instead o' ma
usual penny."

The beadle had noticed the mistake, and in silence he allowed the farmer
to miss the plate for twenty-three consecutive Sundays.

On the twenty-fourth Sunday the farmer again ignored the plate, but the
old beadle stretched the ladle in froat of him and, in a loud, tragic
whisper, hoarsely said:

"Your time's up noo, Sandy."

STILL COMP