me--pa, I do wish you'd run for
the school board."

And the handsome Miss Morton added, "My goodness, Emma Morton, if I
didn't have anything to do but draw forty dollars every month for
yanking a lot of little kids around and teaching them the multiplication
tables, I wouldn't say much. Why, we've come through algebra into
geometry and half way through Cicero, while you've been fussing with
that old principal--and Mrs. Herdicker's got a new trimmer, and we girls
down at the shop have to put up with her didoes. Talk of trouble, gee!"

"Martha, you make me weary," said the youngest Miss Morton, eating an
apple. "If you'd had scarlet fever and measles the same year, and your
old dress just turned and your same old hat, you'd have something to
talk about."

"Well," remarked His Honor the Mayor to Henry Fenn and Morty Sands as
they sat in the Amen Corner New Year's eve, looking at the backs of a
shelf of late books and viewing several shelves of standard sets with
highly gilded backs, "it's more'n a year since election--and well,
say--I've got all my election bets paid now and am out of debt again,
and the book store's gradually coming along. By next year this time I
expect to put four more shelves of copyrighted books in and cut down the
paper backs to a stack on the counter. But old Lady Nicotine is still
the patron of the fine arts--say, if it wasn't for the 'baccy little
Georgie would be so far behind with his rent that he would knock off a
year and start over."

Young Mr. Sands rolled a cigarette and lighted it and said: "It's a
whole year--and Pop's gone a long time without a wife; it'll be two
years next March since the last one went over the hill who was brought
out to make a home for little Morty, and I saw Dad peeking out of the
hack window as we were standing waiting for the hearse, and wondered
which one of the old girls present he'd pick on. But," mused Morty, "I
guess it's Anne's eyes. Every time he edges around to the subject of our
need of a mother, Anne turns her eyes on him and he changes the
subject." Morty laughed quietly and added: "When Anne gets out of her
'teens she'll put father in a monastery!"

"Honeymoon's kind of waning--eh, Henry?" asked Judge Van Dorn, who
dropped in for a magazine and heard the conversation about the passing
of the year. He added: "I see you've been coming down here pretty
regularly for three or four months!" Henry looked up sadly and shook his
head. "You can't break th