hang gentlemen down our way. Jedge
Kerfoot vehy properly charged the coroner's jury that it was a matter
of self-defense, and Colonel Talcott was not detained mo' than haalf an
hour."

The colonel stopped, unlocked a closet in the sideboard, and produced a
black bottle labeled in ink, "Old Cherry Bounce, 1848."

"You must excuse me, gentlemen, but the discussion of these topics has
quite unnerved me. Allow me to share with you a thimbleful."

Fitz drained the glass, cast his eyes upward, and said solemnly, "To the
repose of the postmaster's soul."

LOVE SONNETS OF AN OFFICE BOY

BY S.E. KISER

I

Oh, if you only knowed how much I like
To stand here, when the "old man" ain't around,
And watch your soft, white fingers while you pound
Away at them there keys! Each time you strike
It almost seems to me as though you'd found
So me way, while writin' letters, how to play
Sweet music on that thing, because the sound
Is something I could listen to all day.

You're twenty-five or six, and I'm fourteen,
And you don't hardly ever notice me--
But when you do, you call me Willie! Gee,
I wisht I'd bundles of the old long green
And could be twenty-eight or nine or so,
And something happened to your other beau.

VI

When you're typewritin' and that long-legged clerk
Tips back there on his chair and smiles at you,
And you look up and get to smilin', too,
I'd like to go and give his chair a jerk
And send him flyin' till his head went through
The door that goes out to the hall, and when
They picked him up he'd be all black and blue
And you'd be nearly busted laughin' then.

But if I done it, maybe you would run
And hold his head and smooth his hair and say
It made you sad that he got dumped that way,
And I'd get h'isted out for what I done--
I wish that he'd get fired and you'd stay
And suddenly I'd be a man some day.

VIII

This morning when that homely, long-legged clerk
Come in he had a rose he got somewhere;
He went and kind of leaned against her chair,
Instead of goin' on about his work,
And stood around and talked to her a while,
Because the boss was out,--and both took care
To watch the door; and when he left her there
He dropped the flower with a sickish smile.

I snuck it from the glass of water she