service system of the village is based upon the principle
that if there is any particular function that a given man is wholly
unfitted to perform he should be chosen to perform it. The result is
that the business of our very small government goes plunging along in
the most surprising manner, with a promise that it will end some day
in chaos and revolution--of course upon a diminutive scale.

A representative man is Mr. Bones, the solitary night-watchman of the
town. One of the duties of Mr. Bones is to light the street-lamps. It
is an operation which does not require any very extraordinary effort
of the intellect; but during a part of the summer the mind of Mr.
Bones did not seem to be equal to the strain placed upon it by this
duty. It was observed that whenever there were bright moonlight nights
Mr. Bones would have all the lamps burning from early in the evening
until dawn, while upon the nights when there was no moon he would not
light them at all, and the streets would be as dark as tar. At last
people began to complain about it, and one day one of the supervisors
called to see Mr. Bones about it. He remarked to him,

"Mr. Bones, people are finding fault because you light up on moonlight
nights and don't light the lamps when it is dark. I'd like you to
manage the thing a little better."

"It struck me as being singular, too, but I can't help it. I've got
instructions to follow the almanac, and I'm going to follow it."

"Did the almanac say there'd be no moon last night?"

"Yes, it did."

"Well, the moon was shining, though, and at its full."

"I know," said Mr. Bones, "and that's what gits me. How in the thunder
the moon kin shine when the almanac says it won't beats me out.
Perhaps there's something the matter with the moon; got shoved off her
course may be."

"I guess not."

"Well, it's changed off somehow, and I've got to have something
regular to go by. I'm going by what the almanac says; and if the
moon's going to shuffle around kinder loose and not foller the
almanac, that's its lookout. If the almanac says no moon, then I'm
bound to light the lamps if there's millions of moons shining in the
sky. Them's my orders, and I'll mind 'em."

"How d'you know the almanac is not wrong?"

"Because I know it ain't. It was always right before."

"Let's look at it."

"There it is. Look there, now. Don't it say full moon on the 20th? and
this yer's only the 9th, and yet it's full moon now."

"That's so;