ze clock upon the mantel struck one.

I sat with drawn breath and glared at it; at the relentless silver
hands; at the fierce, and, as it seemed to me, _living_ face of the Time
on its top, who stooped and swung his scythe at me.

"I would like a very _big_ white potato," said Tip, breaking the solemn
silence.

You may or may not believe me, but it is a fact that that is all which
happened.

* * * * *

I slowly turned my head. I resumed my spoon.

"The kitchen clock is nearly half an hour too slow," observed Alison. "I
told Jane that you would have it fixed this week."

I finished my soup in silence.

It may interest the reader to learn that up to the date of this article
"I still live."

"Little Tommy Tucker."

There were but three persons in the car; a merchant, deep in the income
list of the "Traveller," an old lady with two bandboxes, a man in the
corner with his hat pulled over his eyes.

Tommy opened the door, peeped in, hesitated, looked into another car,
came back, gave his little fiddle a shove on his shoulder, and walked
in.

"Hi! Little Tommy Tucker
Plays for his supper,"

shouted the young exquisite lounging on the platform in tan-colored coat
and lavender kid gloves.

"O Kids, you're there, are you? Well, I'd rather play for it than loaf
for it, _I_ had," said Tommy, stoutly.

The merchant shot a careless glance over the top of his paper, at the
sound of this _petit dialogue_, and the old lady smiled benignly; the
man in the corner neither looked nor smiled.

Nobody would have thought, to look at that man in the corner, that he
was at that very moment deserting a wife and five children. Yet that is
precisely what he was doing.

A villain? O no, that is not the word. A brute? Not by any means. A
man, weak, unfortunate, discouraged, and selfish, as weak, unfortunate,
and discouraged people are apt to be; that was the amount of it. His
panoramas never paid him for the use of his halls. His travelling
tin-type saloon had trundled him into a sheriff's hands. His petroleum
speculations had crashed like a bubble. His black and gold sign, _J.
Harmon, Photographer_, had swung now for nearly a year over the
dentist's rooms, and he had had the patronage of precisely six old women
and three babies. He had drifted to the theatre in the evenings, he did
not care now to remember how many times,--the fellows asked him, and it
made him forget his troubles;