grammatic advice? "Avoid giving invitations to
bores--they will come without."

Some of our later literary women prefer the epigrammatic form in
sentences, crisp and laconic; short sayings full of pith, of which I
have made a collection.

Gail Hamilton's books fairly bristle with epigrams in condensed style,
and Kate Field has many a good thought in this shape, as: "Judge no one
by his relations, whatever criticism you pass upon his companions.
Relations, like features, are thrust upon us; companions, like clothes,
are more or less our own selection."

Miss Jewett's style is less epigrammatic, but just as full of humor.
Speaking of a person who was always complaining, she says: "Nothing ever
suits her. She ain't had no more troubles to bear than the rest of us;
but you never see her that she didn't have a chapter to lay before ye.
I've got 's much feelin' as the next one, but when folks drives in their
spiggits and wants to draw a bucketful o' compassion every day right
straight along, there does come times when it seems as if the bar'l was
getting low."

"The captain, whose eyes were not much better than his ears, always
refused to go forth after nightfall without his lantern. The old couple
steered slowly down the uneven sidewalk toward their cousin's house. The
captain walked with a solemn, rolling gait, learned in his many long
years at sea, and his wife, who was also short and stout, had caught
the habit from him. If they kept step all went well; but on this
occasion, as sometimes happened, they did not take the first step out
into the world together, so they swayed apart, and then bumped against
each other as they went along. To see the lantern coming through the
mist you might have thought it the light of a small craft at sea in
heavy weather."

"Deaf people hear more things that are worth listening to than people
with better ears; one likes to have something worth telling in talking
to a person who misses most of the world's talk."

"Emory Ann," a creation of Mrs. Whitney's, often spoke in epigrams, as:
"Good looks are a snare; especially to them that haven't got 'em." While
Mrs. Walker's creed, "I believe in the total depravity of inanimate
things," is more than an epigram--it is an inspiration.

Charlotte Fiske Bates, who compiled the "Cambridge Book of Poetry," and
has given us a charming volume of her own verses, which no one runs any
"Risk" in buying, in spite of the title of the book, has done a go