d the beautiful,
we must carry it with us or we find it not.

--_Ralph Waldo Emerson._

_IN GOOD HUMOR_

_He is twice blessed who has a sense of humor; he
is saved from taking too seriously the shortcomings
of his fellows; and he makes glad the hearts of his
friends. For it has been wisely said that humor is
the measure of a gentleman, even as its possession
distinguishes civilized from savage man._

[Illustration: THE STAGECOACH

(_See opposite page_)]

THE STAGECOACH

BY MARK TWAIN

Before the days of the railroad, the lumbering,
horse-drawn stagecoach was the general vehicle used
for cross-country passenger travel. Following the
Civil War, the brother of Mark Twain (Samuel L.
Clemens) was appointed Territorial Secretary of
Nevada. Samuel accompanied his brother as private
secretary. The journey was made largely in a
stagecoach, the inconveniences of which are
whimsically set forth in the following extract from
Twain's _Roughing It_.

As the sun went down and the evening chill came on,
we made preparation for bed. We stirred up the
hard leather letter sacks, and the knotty canvas bags of
printed matter (knotty and uneven because of projecting
ends and corners of magazines, boxes, and books). We 5
stirred them up and redisposed them in such a way as to
make our bed as level as possible. And we did improve
it, too, though after all our work it had an upheaved
and billowy look about it, like a little piece of a stormy
sea. Next we hunted up our boots from odd nooks among 10
the mail bags where they had settled, and put them on.

Then we got down our coats, vests, pantaloons, and heavy
woolen shirts, from the arm loops where they had been
swinging all day, and clothed ourselves in them--for,
there being no ladies either at the stations or in the coach, 15
and the weather being hot, we had looked to our comfort
by stripping to our underclothing at nine o'clock in the
morning. All things being now ready, we stowed the uneasy
Dictionary where it would lie as quiet as possible and
placed the water canteen and pistols where we could find 20
them in the dark. Then we smoked a final pipe and
swapped a final yarn;