keman on the Dry Creek Branch, just promoted to
be conductor on the main line, and so full of vainglory in his exalted
position that he wears his brass buttons on freight trains. Bill's wife
signs his pay-check and doles out his cigar money, a quarter at a time,
and when he asks for a dollar, she looks at him as if she suspected him
of leading a double life. It is her ambition to live in Topeka, for
"there are so many conductors in Topeka," she says, "that society is not
so mixed"--as it is in our town, where she complains that the switchmen
and the firemen and the student-brakemen dominate society. Once a cigar
salesman from Kansas City got on Bill's train and offered a lead dollar
for fare.

"I can't take this," protested Bill, emphasising the "I," because his
job was new.

"Well, then, you might just turn that one over to the company,"
responded the drummer.

And when the head-brakeman told it in the yards, Bill had to fuss with
his wife for two days to get money for a box of cigars to stop the
trouble.

As these lines were being written, Miss Littleton came into the office
with a notice for the Missionary Society. She has been teaching school
in town for thirty years and is not so cheerful as she was once. For a
long time the board has considered dismissing her; but it continues to
change her around from building to building and from room to room, and
to keep her out of sheer pity; and she knows it. There is tragedy enough
in her story to fill a book. Yet she looks as humdrum as you please, and
smiles so gaily as she puts down her notice, that one thinks perhaps she
is trying to dispel the impression that she is cross and impatient with
children.

On the other side of the street, upstairs in his dusty real estate
office, with tin placards of insurance companies on the wall, and gaudy
calendars tacked everywhere, Silas Buckner stands at the window counting
the liars and scoundrels, and double-dealers and villains, and thieves
and swindlers who pass. Since Silas was defeated for Register of Deeds
he has become a pessimist. He has soured on the town, and when he sees a
man, Silas thinks only of the evil that man has done. Silas knows all
men's weaknesses, forgets their strength, and looking down from the
window hates his fellow-creatures for the wrong they have done him, or
the wickedness that he knows of them. He has never given our reporters a
kindly item of news since he was turned down, but if there is a
dis