this cause. I was again invited out; this time to a lunch party,
specially to meet the friend of a friend of mine. The very morning of
the day it was to take place I received a telegram stating that my
great-aunt had died suddenly in California. Now people don't usually
care much about their great-aunts. They can bear to be chastened in this
direction very comfortably; but I did care about mine. She had been very
kind to me, and though the width of a continent had separated us for the
last ten years her memory was still dear to me.

I sat down immediately to write a note excusing myself from my friend's
lunch party, when, just as I took the paper, it occurred to me that it
was rather a selfish thing to do. My friend's guests were invited, and
her arrangements all made; and as the visit of her friend was to be very
short the opportunity of our meeting would probably be lost. So I wrote
instead a note to the daughter of my great aunt, and when the time came
I went to the lunch party with a heavy heart. I had no opportunity of
telling my friend of the sad news I had received that morning, and I
suppose I may have been quiet; perhaps I even seemed indifferent, though
I tried not to be. I could not have been very successful, however, for I
was just going up-stairs to put on my "things" to go home, when I heard
this little conversation in the dressing-room:

"It's too bad she wasn't more interesting to-day, but you never can tell
how it will be. She will do as she likes, and that's the end of it."

"Yes," said another voice, "I think she is rather a moody person anyway;
she won't say a word if she doesn't feel like it."

"'Sh--'sh--here she comes," said another, with the tone and look that
told me it was I of whom they were talking.

And so I adjure all youthful and hopeful persons, who have a tendency to
be funny, to keep it a profound secret from the world. Indulge in your
propensities to any extent in your family circle; keep your immediate
relatives, if you like, in convulsions of inextinguishable laughter all
the time; but when you mingle in society guard your secret with your
life. Never make a joke, and, if necessary, never take one; and by so
doing you shall peradventure escape that wrath to come to which I have
fallen an innocent victim, and which I doubt not will bring me to an
untimely end.--_The Independent._

* * * * *

And a few pages from Miss Murfree, who has shown such rar