terminable bills running up even
while we were away on our holidays.

"Let us," I said hoarsely--"let us go and look at our child; she is all we
have left now."

Moodily we turned to go upstairs. In the hall we stopped dead. Upon the
floor was the wretched paper which my Victorian conscience and my
twentieth-century caution had prevented me from signing.

"He must," said my wife with her usual perspicacity, "have dropped it on
his way out. Let's see who the box was really meant for."

Picking it up I read aloud in cold firm tones _my own name and address_.
The box had been meant for us after all.

* * * * *

We got it in the end. It came one morning, like the flowers in Spring,
quite suddenly, and we spent a whole day telephoning to our friends to tell
them we had a coin-box at last. I also wrote a letter full of gratitude to
the telephone people and got the reply that, "owing to the shortage of
plant, etc.," they regretted that for the time being they could not grant
my request for a telephone.

We did not tell them that we had had one for three months; Heaven knows
what would have happened.

And we are left in peace--now that our visitors have heard that we have a
coin-box.

L.

* * * * *

[Illustration: THE PIONEERS.

SUPPOSED ORIGIN OF UNDERGROUND TACTICS.]

* * * * *

TWO "STEIN"-WAY GRANDS.

BY A PHILISTINE.

EINSTEIN and EPSTEIN were wonderful men,
Bringing new miracles into our ken.
EINSTEIN upset the Newtonian rule;
EPSTEIN demolished the Pheidian School.
EINSTEIN gave fits to the Royal Society;
EPSTEIN delighted in loud notoriety.
EINSTEIN made parallels meet in infinity;
EPSTEIN remodelled the form of Divinity.
Nature exhausted, I hopefully sing,
Can't have more Steins of this sort in her sling.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Mrs. Faulkner_ (_to District Visitor_). "NICELY, THANK YOU,
MISS, EXCEPT FOR A POISONED 'AND. FOR THE REST OF 'EM, FATHER'S IN
HOSPITAL, LITTLE FLORRIE'S SCALDED HERSELF AND BABY'S GOT THE
WHOOPING-COUGH. IT BE A BLESSING THAT TROUBLES DON'T COME SINGLY OR
ELSE THERE'D BE NO END TO IT."]

* * * * *

"Disputing Sergt. Alvan C. York's claim as the world war's greatest
hero, Sergt. Mike Donaldson of New York has challenged the Tennessean
to a debate on who is the greatest war her