write it all to Babette--Babette who would laugh so merrily
when she read it!

AN ASTRAL ONION

WHEN Tig Braddock came to Nora Finnegan he was red-headed and freckled,
and, truth to tell, he remained with these features to the end of his
life--a life prolonged by a lucky, if somewhat improbable, incident, as
you shall hear.

Tig had shuffled off his parents as saurians, of some sorts, do their
skins. During the temporary absence from home of his mother, who was at
the bridewell, and the more extended vacation of his father, who, like
Villon, loved the open road and the life of it, Tig, who was not a
well-domesticated animal, wandered away. The humane society never heard
of him, the neighbors did not miss him, and the law took no cognizance
of this detached citizen--this lost pleiad. Tig would have sunk into
that melancholy which is attendant upon hunger,--the only form of
despair which babyhood knows,--if he had not wandered across the path of
Nora Finnegan. Now Nora shone with steady brightness in her orbit,
and no sooner had Tig entered her atmosphere, than he was warmed and
comforted. Hunger could not live where Nora was. The basement room where
she kept house was redolent with savory smells; and in the stove in her
front room--which was also her bedroom--there was a bright fire glowing
when fire was needed.

Nora went out washing for a living. But she was not a poor washerwoman.
Not at all. She was a washerwoman triumphant. She had perfect health, an
enormous frame, an abounding enthusiasm for life, and a rich abundance
of professional pride. She believed herself to be the best washer of
white clothes she had ever had the pleasure of knowing, and the value
placed upon her services, and her long connection with certain families
with large weekly washings, bore out this estimate of herself--an
estimate which she never endeavored to conceal.

Nora had buried two husbands without being unduly depressed by the
fact. The first husband had been a disappointment, and Nora winked at
Providence when an accident in a tunnel carried him off--that is to
say, carried the husband off. The second husband was not so much of a
disappointment as a surprise. He developed ability of a literary order,
and wrote songs which sold and made him a small fortune. Then he ran
away with another woman. The woman spent his fortune, drove him to
dissipation, and when he was dying he came back to Nora, who received
him cordially, atte