syllable of commentary; and thereupon (being act three in the
tragedy) he of the horny hand, having realized the situation in its
terrible entirety, pulled up his line, shovelled back the particles of
ice into the hole and betook himself upon his shambling way without one
word. Not a word, mark you. There was a real philosopher, if you like,
a thorough-going, square-trotting philosopher. The only alternative was
child-murder or silence, and my pot-hunter chose the simplest form of the
dilemma. "I thought the fish would like it," said little Fred, when
interrogated upon the subject.

And yet, despite my occasional inability to practice what I preach,
Josephine is correct in her diagnosis that my cast of mind is becoming
more philosophic as the years roll on. The consciousness that I am the
author of four children (two strapping sons and two tall daughters),
anyone of whom may constitute me a grandfather before I am fifty, renders
me conservative and disposed, metaphorically speaking, to draw in my
horns a little. I am beginning to go to church again, for instance. You
may have taken it for granted that I have been regular in my attendance
at the sanctuary. Certainly I have never been a scoffer; but, on the
other hand, I must confess that somehow it has come to pass since
Josephine and I plighted our troth that our pew has stood empty on the
Lord's day oftener than the orthodox consider fitting. And the worst of
it is I used to attend service about every other Sabbath before I became
a benedict, and Josephine taught a Sunday-school class up to within six
months of our wedding ceremony. She, dear girl, has harbored ever since
the belief that she continues to go to church almost every Sunday either
in the morning or the afternoon, a harmless delusion which for some time
I took no pains to dispel, knowing as I did that she meant to go every
Sunday. Yet I knew also that pitiless, unemotional statistics would
reveal an average attendance on her part of rather less than ten times in
the course of each year. I was brute enough finally to call attention to
a tally-sheet, covering a period of three calendar months, which I had
kept for my private edification, and I was punished by seeing her sweet
eyes fill with tears before she proceeded to plead to the indictment.

"You know, Fred, perfectly well that I have to stay at home with the
children every other Sunday morning in order to allow Lucille to go to
church."

"B