To atone for this obduracy, Josephine had a pleasant little surprise ready in the shape of a basket of silken badges emblematic chiefly of myself, and more remotely of the Presidential candidate and our party principles. She and her daughters, despite my blushes, fastened these one by one to the blue blouses of the members of the Fourth District Reform Cadets after everything to eat and drink in the house had vanished. Not only then, but henceforth until the end of the campaign, it was embarrassing to me to note how subordinate a position every other candidate held in Josephine's regard. One would have supposed that I was the party nominee for the chief magistracy of the nation, instead of the leader of a forlorn contest for a congressional seat in a hopelessly Republican district. On the occasion of the torchlight parade two miles long, whereby the enemy sought to carry the city by storm, and which passed close to our front door, our house was as dark as Erebus. Josephine insisted even that the lights in the front hall and in the basement should be extinguished, and she drew the drawing-room curtains over the window-shades so that we need not seem to furnish our foes with one pale ray of comfort. Induced by curiosity to peep out at the passing show, she limited her strictures to scornful but tranquil denunciation of the campaign rhetoric blazoned on the transparencies, until the Spinney Guards arrived, headed by a magnificent mulatto bearing a delineation of the Reform Candidate submerged in a huge soup-tureen with an appropriate tag beneath. For an instant she stared, then she gasped as though some one had struck her, and she fiercely started to raise the window.

"What are you trying to do, Josephine?"

"Let me go, Fred. I will, I will. How dare they?"

"Pooh, dear! All is fair in politics. It's no worse than the Swamp of Civil Service Reform," I said, as I tore away her vindictive grasp from the window which she had succeeded in opening a foot or two, and shut it hastily.

"How dare they? You had no right to prevent me from hissing, Fred. I should like to fling something at them too. It's an outrage making you look like that, and—and in the soup, too."

Not all the enthusiasm generated by our rival procession, which took place forty-eight hours later, nor indeed the long flattering list of my supporters published by Nick Long in the newspaper for two days prior to election day, sufficed entirely to obliterate from Josephine's soul the bitterness of this insult. As she expressed it, was it not cruel to flaunt such a thing in the faces of children who had been used to think of their father as the most dignified of men, one with whose personality no one would dare to tamper or trifle? It nerved her, however, to more desperate efforts in my behalf. She ventured even on holding up our beloved pastor, the Rev. Bradley Mason, in the street, and capturing his signature to the list of leading citizens who supported me. This ought, she declared, to outweigh sixty soup-tureens.

Before the votes were counted I knew well enough that I had been defeated, but for Josephine's dear sake I allowed her to prepare a victor's banquet, on the assumption that my friends would be pouring in upon me with congratulations. It was she who drove me from my evening paper, to which I was settling down like a philosopher after dinner, to go to my headquarters and ascertain the result. She was sure I was elected. If not (and here her voice melted) the people were not fit to have such a pearl offered to them. I went, and it was half-past ten when I returned. She heard my step, and rushed down to meet me at the front door. I was calm and smiling.

"Defeated by one hundred and fourteen votes, dear. A close fight, wasn't it?"

"Ah, Fred, defeated! You poor, poor boy."

"I can stand it if you can, Josephine," I answered, as with my arm wound around her waist I led her into the dining-room, where the stalled ox and truffled turkey and a glittering array of glass confronted us.

"It was that horrid soup-tureen did it, I am convinced," she murmured, sitting down beside me on the sofa.

"Nonsense, dear. Everyone says I got a wonderful vote against such odds. They are talking about it down town as though I had won a victory. Nick is called a great manager."

"But that Spinney is elected all the same," she said, dejectedly.

"Yes, he is, Josephine. We can't escape from that. I tell you what, I'm going to have a glass of champagne," I said, entering the china closet and taking possession of one of the bottles which had been packed in ice for the refreshment of my friends. I filled a glass for each of us and drained mine to the philosophical toast, "Here's to peace and a quiet life, my dear."

"It would have been very nice to go to Washington," said Josephine, between her sips. "It might have been a stepping-stone to higher things. You know you would be pleased to be sent abroad as a foreign minister. It would have just suited you, Fred."

"It may be that the President, when he hears of the gallant fight I made, will reward me with something in that line," I answered, with a twinkle in my eye. "By the way, what egotists we are! I did not tell you, and you did not inquire, who had been elected President. We have won a glorious victory."

"I'm very glad, I'm sure," said Josephine, in a tone which was scandalously absent-minded considering the importance of the information. After a moment she remarked, coyly: "I should really think, Fred, there might be a chance of his giving you something when he hears."

"Not the slightest, you dear woman. I was only teasing you. I am a very humble figure in the politics of the country, I assure you, and even if the President is aware of my existence when he enters office, it will never occur to him to pick me out for preferment. Besides, I don't wish anything. I am perfectly content to sink back into the obscurity from which I was lured by the call of duty. It would have tickled my pride a little to defeat Spinney, but I am inclined to think I should have found it rather a bore to be only one Congressman among so many."

"Just think of it, one hundred and fifteen more votes would have given you the election. It seems hard to have missed it by so little. You mustn't think me a goose about you, Fred," she added, after a thoughtful pause. "I don't usually praise you to your face and make an undue fuss about you, do I, dear? I think I am disposed to be critical of you rather than otherwise. But you are so much superior to the men they generally put up, that I'm unable to reconcile myself to the idea that you're not to be anything distinguished after all. Of course I didn't really expect that you were going to be very great; and yet in politics one cannot always tell. Men no more remarkable than you have been elected President; though I'm not at all sure that I should have cared to have you in the White House."

"Yet you will not cease to love me now that I am doomed to be only a poor private citizen for the rest of my days?" I asked, fondly, as my arm stole around her waist, which, though no longer wisp-like as of yore, is shapely still. "Poor, too, in every sense," I added, unpleasantly reminded by the pressure of the check-book in my coat-pocket of my sadly diminished bank account.

"I am afraid I should continue to love you, Fred, even if you were bad—a Daniel Spinney or a Nicholas Long, for example," she answered, imprinting a kiss upon my cheek. "But you are an angel, dear."

It was worth being defeated for Congress in order to learn how much my wife appreciated me, and also to learn to appreciate her more thoroughly, philosophical deductions which I whispered in her ear with appropriate circumlocution. "But, Josephine," I added, "why do you include Spinney and Nick Long in the same category of wickedness?"

"Because they are both wicked."

"But Nick is a reformer, my dear."

"Hasn't he nearly ruined you?"

"I had to hand over a great deal of money to him, certainly," I answered, ruefully.

"What did he spend it for?"

"I didn't ask him for the details, but he always said he needed it for printing, dear. You know there was a great deal of printing done," I hastened to add, feeling a little nervous under the stress of cross-examination. "Then there were the uniforms and the torches and the supper for the cadets."

"I know what they cost exactly. Fred, what do you suppose he could have used all that money for?"

"Printing, I have told you, Josephine. There are all sorts of expenses in a campaign of this sort, the details of which one has to leave to one's manager. I have implicit confidence in Nick's good judgment," I continued, a trifle austerely. To tell the truth, I had been wondering myself where all the money had gone to. Josephine was thoughtful for several minutes, then she said: "Do you know, Fred, I have a feeling that if you had managed your own campaign without the aid of a reformer you would have got just as many votes—and—and we should have had money enough left to go to Japan."

If a woman has a prejudice against a man he might be spotless as the Archangel Gabriel, and she would be able to pick a flaw in him.



IX

Six months ago an astonishing piece of news was revealed to me. Astonishing at least to me, though Josephine says that I need not have been astonished had I kept my eyes open, inasmuch as the affair was going on under my very nose, and everybody in town except myself knew how it was likely to end. I refer to my daughter Josie's engagement.

Yesterday I gave her away—a euphemistic way of stating that she was torn from my arms—to a young man of whom I know next to nothing, though I hear on all sides that he is a very nice fellow, which might mean that he is utterly without principle and an easy-going, idle, selfish hound. In appearance he does not seem to me to differ from nine-tenths of the young men who in the course of the last five years have said, "How d'y do?" or "Good-by" to me (rarely more or less) when they have run across me in my own drawing-room. My wife declares that he has a spiritual face, and that he reminds her of me at the same age, which I regard as an ingenious attempt to prepossess me in his favor. She has informed me also that Josie is over head and ears in love with him and he with Josie, a predicament on his part which I am not surprised at; and I suppose that I am bound to admit that my daughter is justified in her infatuation for him, if he resembles me at thirty.

Plainly, I have become an old cynic by reason of the loss of my dear Josie. I realize that I have been like a bear with a sore head ever since the ceremony. As for Josephine, she has been mooning about the house all day in a state of chronic tearfulness. The responsibility of the bride's appearance and the wedding collation kept her nerved until everything was over. Last evening she collapsed and fell asleep in my arms, sobbing like a child.

His name is James Perkins. I have been doing my best for several months to call him "Jim," as everybody else does, instead of "James," or "Perkins," and yesterday I succeeded twice in doing so. I had had three glasses of champagne. He is an architect, and I understand from Josie that he has already made his mark in the erection of a church, two school-houses, and a town-hall in the suburbs, which I have promised her to go and see. It seems that a week before he had the impertinence to offer himself to her he received word that his plans for a vast railroad station in one of the large Western cities had been accepted. But for this untoward circumstance, my dear Josie would still be the light of my house, and I should not be gnawing at my mustache in the throes of misanthropy.

Jim is slight and not very tall, and he does not look especially strong. They tell me that he has worked very hard, and that he has won his way purely by his own energy and talent. He does not smoke, which rather prejudiced me against him, in spite of the fact that I believe we should all be the healthier if we did not use tobacco. This, as Josephine would say, only shows what an inconsistent creature I am. And I a philosopher, too! But I said at the outset that I was not a real philosopher. Josie met James—I beg his pardon, Jim—at her coming-out party, and it seems that he fell in love with her at first sight. If, now, somebody had fallen in love at first sight with my sister-in-law, Julia, how much more satisfactory it would have been all round. But that is the way of the world; Julia was overlooked and my girl taken, to my miserable discomfiture. Jim was one of the youths without fathers and mothers whom you see at every large entertainment. That is to say, my wife had never heard of his father and mother at the time she invited him, though they prove to have been very respectable people. Indeed, we were all of us struck by the dignified appearance which his family as a whole presented at the wedding. Alas! I realize already that when I have got used to the idea that anybody is to have her, I shall be thoroughly happy in the thought that I have given her away to such a decent fellow, a man with self-respect and principles, a man of industry and capacity, and one, too, who is ready to drink his glass of champagne like the rest of the world—although he does not smoke. I have let my grudge have free scope, and all I have been able to rake up against him is that he shakes his head when I offer him a pipe or a cigar. In my secret soul I am egregiously proud of him already, and but for my wounded sensibilities I could dance with joy over the reflection that he is likely to make her perfectly happy. And yet all this talk of marrying and giving in marriage has broken my spirit.

"Since it had to be someone," I said by way of consolation to Josephine when we awoke this morning, "it's extremely fortunate that she did not fall in love with a dashing soldier, who would carry her off to a barracks on the frontier of a Sioux reservation, or a swashing sailor, who would leave her at home while he went on long cruises, or a splendid-looking creature, with a sonorous voice, who would drink himself into his grave or else make her miserable by devoting himself to another woman. Some of the nicest fellows I ever knew have made their wives thoroughly wretched. When you think that there really isn't anything very wonderful to look at about—er—Jim, that is, anything to appeal especially to the romantic side of a girl, I think it's very greatly to Josie's credit that she should have chosen him. Many girls might have overlooked his solid attractions and gone in for a Jim dandy of a chap who wasn't worth his salt."

My wife looked a little blank over this philosophic statement, then she glanced up at me with a roguish smile and said: "You seem to forget, dear, that I accepted you."

"True enough," I answered, merrily. "I dare say I wasn't a trifle less commonplace-looking than son-in-law. Besides we both have spiritual faces."

"You should give me and Josie credit for being able to see below the surface," said my darling, fondly. "A soldier or a sailor, or a splendid-looking creature such as you describe, is delightful at a party; but gold buttons, or even a very handsome mustache, don't go far nowadays toward blinding a sensible girl to the fact that she will have to pass all her days with the man she chooses. You know, dear, that you and I have never believed that marriage is a lottery. We were sure of each other beforehand. So are Josie and Jim."

"Thank God that it is so; and may he, darling, grant them such happiness as he has given us."

"Amen! And, Fred, he—James" (Josephine prefers to call him James; she thinks Jim undignified) "is not really homely. He isn't an Adonis, of course, and doesn't impress one especially at first glance, but anyone who looks at him twice can see that he is very intelligent, and that he has the appearance of a gentleman."

"Right you are, my dear. Perhaps I was unconsciously comparing him with the young man whom I met strolling with your other daughter not many days ago."

"With Winona? When?" she asked with a start.

"About dusk."

"No, no, on what day?"

"Let me see. It must have been a week ago yesterday."

"Who was he? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"He was tall, handsome, and impressive-looking," I replied, with quiet deliberation.

"What do you mean, Fred? How slow you are. Do go on."

"As to telling you before, I thought it best to wait until you had one of your girls off your mind. As to being slow, I have told you all there is to tell already. I met Winona about dusk a week ago yesterday in the company of a tall, handsome, impressive-looking young man whom I had never seen in my life. I don't know where they were going or where they came from or what it meant. I hope to see him again so as to say to him, 'Young man, beware; I have lost one daughter, and I am in no mood to be trifled with.' I dare say," I continued, nonchalantly, "that if you were to keep your eyes open you would be able to see what is evidently going on under your very nose, my dear."

Josephine did not heed this taunt; she was thinking hard.

"I wonder who it could have been," she murmured, presently. "I have noticed lately that Winona has acted as though she had something on her mind; but I had assumed it might be because her patients were falling off, owing to the death of that woman with consumption who could not be persuaded that she had nothing the matter with her. It would be a great relief to my mind to see the dear girl happily married. What did he look like, Fred? Are you certain you have never seen him before? just think: you're sure it wasn't Mr. Dyer or Mr. Benson? One might call either of them tall, handsome, and impressive-looking."

"I have told you everything I know, Josephine," I retorted, fiercely. "I don't know the man from Adam. I should think," I added, with a sepulchral outburst, "that after what happened yesterday, Josephine, you wouldn't be in so much haste to many the only girl we have left."

"Excuse me, Fred," she said, gently. "It was cruel of me to suggest such a thing so soon. And yet I suppose we must be prepared for something of the kind sooner or later. You know you have constantly expressed the hope that neither of them would hang fire like dear Julia."

"Oh, I know it. I'm a selfish brute, Josephine," I answered, beginning to hone my razor with the desperate air of one who would fain cut his own throat as the simplest solution of the problem of living.

And only six months ago the horizon of my domestic happiness looked so clear and comforting. Not even a cloud of the traditional smallness of a man's hand marred its serenity. Little Fred was pegging away at Leggatt & Paine's with commendable steadiness all day, and, though he was apt to dance all night by way of making up for it, I was comforted in my solicitude regarding his health by the recollection that I used to do the same when I was his age, my spiritual countenance to the contrary notwithstanding. Besides, Leggatt has always a good word to say for him, and evidently still keeps an eye on him, notwithstanding that Fred has ceased to kick foot-ball and limps no longer. To be sure, I have been beguiled once or twice by the dear boy's assurance that I would make my fortune, if I would follow his advice, into buying investment securities the market price of which at present is far less than I paid for them. However, the financial misinformation imparted by one's own flesh and blood is more easily forgiven than that which emanates from one's regular broker. Besides, there is the chance that the stocks will come up again some day or other. Fred says they are sure to. Everything considered he was, and indeed he still is, doing remarkably well, and he is such an honest-looking, manly fellow that Josephine says she wonders all the girls do not fall in love with him. His present safety seems to lie in the fact that he is in love with all the girls and not with any particular one, a condition of affairs which I trust will last until he is properly able to support a wife. I remember that before I fell in love with Josephine—well, no matter. I have almost forgotten their names and should have to ask my darling to tell me who they were, and all about it. I have never really loved anybody but her. God bless her.

Then there was David—again I must admit there still is David—whose rapid success in his adopted profession and whose general steadiness of character have been a source of perpetual gladness to us. He still causes his mother some concern by his utter disinclination for the society of young women, but I know of no other fault with which to reproach him. His bacillic pets no longer have a domicile under the paternal roof. He has a laboratory of his own downtown where, doubtless, they thrive and multiply. But his special interest at present is electricity. This has already brought him reputation and money by virtue of an appliance in the storage battery line, the details of which I do not precisely understand. Although Little Fred shook his head gravely at the mention of the word "patent," I was imprudent enough to follow my scientific son's lead to the tune of several thousand dollars, the happy consequence of which seemed to be that Josephine and I would be able to have our jaunt to Japan whenever the spirit moved us. That was before I counted the cost of marrying a daughter.

Thirdly, there was that daughter, a dear, sweet girl, who seemed to me perfectly content in her enjoyment of the social pleasures in which she was so well adapted to shine. I regarded her as still a mere child, and though youths came and went, never for one moment did I suspect that she was meditating the blow which she has since inflicted upon me, until Josephine told me one evening, with a mysterious, agitated air, that Mr. James Perkins wished to see me in the library. He saw me, and all the consolation I derived from our interview was the impression that he considered that he was acting generously in asking my consent to the match, and that custom would have justified him in letting me hear the news of my daughter's engagement elsewhere and in seeing me further, as the phrase is, before he saw me at all. Remembering as I did that I regarded the views of Josephine's father concerning our little matter twenty-five years ago as a matter of mere detail, only think how far I fell short of the temper of a real philosopher in allowing myself to become violently angry, and to pace the library until one o'clock in the morning after my would-be son-in-law had left it! An especially futile proceeding, as Josephine subsequently remarked, inasmuch as, by my own admission, I had behaved like a veritable lamb in his presence and had told him blandly that if he and my daughter were agreed upon the subject I had not a word to say against it.

This was the first break in our peaceful, happy domestic circle. Do you know what the period of an idolized daughter's engagement seems to the disdained and discarded husband and father? He is too shy and dignified to peep at the billing and cooing through the crack of the drawing-room door like the younger members of the family; consequently, the six months which intervene between the making of the match and its consummation, impress him as a Sahara of tedious confabulation between the pair of turtle doves as to whether they have too many salt-cellars for their marital needs, and whether the exchange of a third set of oyster-forks without the knowledge of the donor would be a violation of the highest code of ethics. Presents, presents, nothing but presents, of every kind and degree, from the solid silver tea-set of exquisitely fluted pattern to the excruciatingly ugly bit of bric-a-brac which has captivated the undiscerning eye of some dear friend. After every ring at the door-bell appears the maid with a fresh parcel wrapped in snow-white paper fastened with a dainty ribbon, and on each occasion my dear Josie's eyes sparkle more excitedly as she clutches it and frees it from its caparisons. And ever and anon I am struck by the fact that she is growing thin and pale. I mention it to Josephine, but she tells me that girls always get peaked before their weddings, and that she herself was thin as a rail at the time she married me. I get no sympathy anywhere. My sole connection with the matter is that I am to give the bride away.

I did so yesterday in the presence of our entire social acquaintance and their dressmakers, most of whom I subsequently entertained at a mid-day collation, where I shook hands with a vast array of young people whom I did not know, and tried to keep up my spirits by asking my old friends to take wine with me. It was after the third glass that the spirit moved me to address my new son-in-law as "Jim." An hour later I saw the young rascal carry off my Josie in a carriage with an air as though he owned her, and I could have strangled him. At the same moment I was unpleasantly conscious that a quantity of rice hurled by an enthusiastic miss of nineteen was going down my back. I made a mad rush forward like a bull; I don't know exactly what I had in mind to do, but I was bunted aside by a youth who, I am sure, could never have had a father and mother. He held an old shoe in his hand, which he proceeded to cast with such unerring aim that it landed on the top of the bridal coach, to the infinite delight of everybody except myself. I could see no especial humor in it, but Josephine tells me that we underwent precisely the same experience at our own wedding and thought it amusing. I perceive that it makes considerable difference in this world whose ox is gored, or, to put it more accurately, whether one is carrying off some other man's daughter or is being robbed of his own.

And now to crown all, I am haunted by the vision of Winona and that tall, handsome, impressive-looking young man in whose company I met her the other day about dusk. In saying to Josephine that I had told her all, I did not speak the truth in a certain sense. I did tell her all I knew, but I did not confide to her all that I suspected. I did not reveal to her that at the moment my eye fell upon them my only remaining daughter was gazing up into the face of her male companion with that peculiar look of absorbed attention which has so often wrought the ruin of Platonic friendship. It entered like iron into my parental soul, already quivering with its recent wound, and I murmured to myself, "Oh, my prophetic soul, my second son-in-law!"

Winona too! Two years have passed since I granted her permission to practise Christian Science, and from that time to this she has gone regularly every day to her office to minister to the patients who have applied to her for treatment. I am unable to state whether these have been many or few; to be frank, I have been amazed that she has had any at all. But I am sure that she has had some, and that she claims to have cured several sufferers from chronic disorders whom the regular practitioners had declared incurable. Or, more accurately, I should say that she has demonstrated that there was nothing the matter with them save a superabundance of error in their souls. I have learned, too, that she has experienced some dismal failures, notably in the case of the woman with consumption, referred to by Josephine, who, as Winona explained to us, would have got well had she only been able to realize that she was getting better. There was also a patient suffering from mental derangement who grew crazier and crazier, until she was finally carried off by her friends, whereas, as Winona sweetly explained to us, if they had only allowed her to remain a little longer she would have been completely cured, because in Christian Science, as in nature, darkness is apt to be most signal just before the dawn. This diagnosis of the case struck me as highly reasonable. Indeed, I have constantly said to myself that, provided the dear child managed to escape indictment, I had every reason to be contented that she was living up to her lights to the top of her bent. So altogether you can see that my home was a happy one, and that I desired no change.

My two sons-in-law! I see them in my mind's eye walking on either side of me, the one short and slim with a spiritual countenance; the other tall, handsome, and impressive-looking. Their main object in life seems to be to help me on with my overcoat, and to guide my senile steps over street-crossings, though Dr. Meredith tells me that I am good for twenty years yet, and that I haven't an unsound organ in my body. They disagree with me in politics so politely that I am fool enough to open my best wine when they come to dinner. They dog my footsteps; they silently pass judgment upon me, and I shall never be able to shake them off until I am dead. Why did they come to worry us? We were so happy before we knew of their existence. Out upon them both!

Alas, poor philosopher! Shall I begrudge to my darlings the happiness that I have known in the too swiftly fleeting years of our married life? Love has come to claim my flesh and blood even as it claimed me and Josephine a quarter of a century ago never to loose us from his silken chains. Love the immortal, the transfigurer of souls, the unsealer of eyes which in vain have sought the light which streams from eternity, thou hast come to work anew the old, old story, even though thy coming rends my heart-strings. Down, selfish, stubborn fumes of senile cynicism! I bow to the law of life. Come to my embrace, O sons-in-law; I love you, I bid you welcome to my hearth, even though you regard me as one for whom the grave is yawning! Listen how bravely I call Jim—Jim—Jim, a thousand times Jim. And you, the other one, whose name I do not know, but whose fell purpose I have detected, when your name is divulged to me I will call that too.



X

Said Josephine to me some three months ago: "Fred, we shall have been married twenty-five years on the twenty-first of next November. We ought to celebrate it in some way."

"How better than by having a silver wedding?"

"Because so many people would feel obliged to give us silver," she replied. "I am perfectly willing, Fred, that people, should send me flowers when I'm dead, but I will not have them send silver to my silver wedding."

"The simplest way then would be to tell them not to. Put in the corner of the invitation the letters A. S. W. B. S. B. 'All silver will be sent back.'"

"This is a serious subject, Fred. I should like very much to have our best friends with us on the anniversary, if I could feel sure that they wouldn't regard it as a tax. We all give willingly when people are married, but it does seem rather a grind, as the children used to say, to have to go out and buy something else a quarter of a century later, when you know that the senile old couple will be able to use whatever you get only a few years at the farthest, and that then it will be snapped up or melted up by their children or grandchildren. Mind you, dear, I should often be glad to give silver myself, if I could afford it; but I am looking at the matter from the point of view of the world at large. Do you know," she added, "that isn't at all a bad idea of yours. We could put on the cards 'No silver,' just as they put 'No flowers.' It was quite a brilliant suggestion, Fred."

"There are always fools, though, who will disregard such a notice just from sheer contrariness."

"Oh, if we once gave them warning, and they chose to send notwithstanding, it would be their own fault," exclaimed Josephine, buoyantly. "I should hope there would be a few such people, for I should be very glad to have more silver. It's not that I object to the silver, but because I wish to give a loophole of escape to the people who wouldn't send it unless they felt obliged to. I should expect surely to receive quite a lot in one way or another. And it would be convenient, love, for Winona did not get any too much when she was married. Everything ran to furniture and books, and out of the little silver she received their were seven large salad forks, all of which had her initials on them, so that she couldn't change them."

There are people who refrain from having their wills drawn on the score that they would be likely to die if they did. While I have no sympathy with this superstition, I must confess that a formal celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of your wedding-day has always seemed to me to savor of willingness to have your account with life audited, with a view to being able to sink quietly and becomingly into your grave whenever you were called. In view of the fact that, though each of us has trifling ailments, neither of us is seriously disabled, it seemed a little soon to be taking account of stock and talking of putting up the shutters forever. Yet time's figures are not to be gainsaid, and especially in the Land of Liberty people are not allowed to forget that they are growing old even if they have no tall sons and daughters to attest the fact. What boots it to protest that we feel as young as we ever did? We might be allowed to say so unchallenged, provided we did not try to act on the assumption, but the youths without parents and the newly created species would soon bring us to our senses if we were to assert ourselves in society so as to cause them the slightest inconvenience. The middle-aged are allowed to drive and go to the theatre, and are tolerated at weddings on the ground that they may have given a wedding present, and at garden parties where there is no lack of space, but their room is considered better than their company everywhere else, in spite of the pretty speeches one sometimes hears as to the charm of entertainments where all ages are gathered together, and the glory of growing old gracefully as they do in England. I am not complaining, for between you and me we wouldn't be hired to go to one-tenth of the places to which we ought to be invited, so far as our physical state is concerned; but it would be soothing to be asked occasionally and not to be treated as though we were moribund, and bidden only to Class Day spreads and to church weddings without a card for the reception. Once in a while lately Josephine and I have taken it into our heads to put in an appearance at the Assemblies, where, though we had been respectfully and cordially received, it has been evident to us that we were regarded as social Rip Van Winkles, and that at least half the company were inquiring who in thunder we were, and the remainder, who did know us, were wondering why in time we came.

A remark of Josephine's served to crystallize these reflections. "Do you know, Fred, that I think on the whole we shall have a happier day if we pass it quietly together, and simply have the children to dine. So many of the people of whom we were fond at the time we were married have passed away, that I am sure we should be appalled by the thinness of the ranks when we began to reckon who are left. Besides, I don't think that a notice not to bring silver would really protect the poor wretches who didn't wish to bring any. It would seem too evidently to mean that they needn't bring any unless they chose to, but that it would be acceptable all the same, which would worry dreadfully those who like to do whatever others do. Don't you think so? You see everybody understands that nobody really objects to receiving silver. Besides, it would involve no end of fuss, and we should be so occupied with the arrangements that we should forget to pay any attention to each other, so that it would be a dreary day to look back upon."

"Indeed, Josephine, I agree with you entirely," said I. "Unless such affairs go off just right they are stiff and ghastly. People who are bent on paying us a compliment will have an opportunity to come to our funerals before very long."

"Not together, though. Oh, Fred, wouldn't it be the crowning thing of all, after so much happiness, if we could die at the same time and never know what it was to miss each other!"

Although we are jointly and severally aware that the years have been slipping away, and that our turns to bid farewell to this dear earth may come any day now despite the fact that we feel young as ever, we choose still to regard death as a shy visitor which is likely to prefer others to us. I say to myself that people rarely die of rheumatism, which is Josephine's only cross, and though pneumonia is a fell destroyer, I know that Josephine is firmly convinced that the colds to which I am subject never attack my lungs. Some day one of us will wake up and miss the other, unless my darling's prayer that we be taken away together be granted; but until we do, are we not happier for cherishing the delusion that we are to be overlooked indefinitely?

Was it a delusion, too, which made my darling, as I helped her into our top-buggy on the morning of our twenty-fifth anniversary, seem to me no less beautiful than on the day when we plighted our troth at the altar? Did she not wear the same sweet, trusting smile, the same noble look in her dear eyes? I told her so, and she informed me that I was demented, but I know she knew that I thought she had not changed, which I am sure was enough for her even if Providence has dimmed my eyes. Yet I maintain that I am right. She is a little stouter, of course; I can see a wrinkle and a crow's foot here and there; and her hair is grizzled. But to all intents and purposes she does not look a day older.

It was a glorious morning; one of those mild, mellow days of the late autumn, when unscientific people wag their heads and proclaim that the climate is changing. There was scarcely a breath of wind, and the landscape toward which our steady nag trotted sturdily wore a faint atmosphere of saffron haze, as though the sunlight had been steeped in the lees of the yellow foliage. And the day we were married there was a driving snowstorm! Josephine had predicted so confidently that history would repeat itself on our anniversary, that I think she was rather disappointed when she awoke to find the sun shining and all the elements at rest.

Our Pegasus scarcely needed the guidance of the reins. He knew where we were going, and sped along with our comfortable if old-fashioned top-buggy at a stylish yet self-respecting gait in keeping with the dignity of the occasion. Our first destination was the attractive home of our daughter Winona, who lives eight miles out of town, on a hundred lordly acres. She has an adoring husband—the tall, handsome, impressive-looking youth of my prophetic soul—and an adored infant six months old. Her husband is a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest families in the city, and he has already made his mark in the political field. He has been a Congressman, and his admirers are talking of giving him the next party nomination—not my party (so you see that my partiality does not proceed from political affiliation)—for Governor. He is altogether a delightful young man; and as for the baby—.

Josephine broke in upon my rhapsodies over my grandson to say again, for about the fiftieth time during the last year:

"To think, Fred, that though you saw him face to face, you never realized that your magnificent unknown was merely Harold Bruce, whom you had seen and shaken hands with under our roof time and time again. I laugh whenever I think of it. You gave me a fright that day, when you told me that you had run across Winona in the company of a mysterious stranger, which I haven't fully recovered from yet, in spite of the fact that everything has turned out so well. I dreamed that night that she had married a professional gambler, who cut her throat in the course of the first six months because the dear child refused to aid and abet his nefarious schemes."

I replied, meekly, for the fiftieth time, something as to the agonies I had undergone for several years in trying to distinguish one young man from another when they had presented themselves at my house in stereotyped evening dress and done me the honor of squeezing my hand so hard that it was evidently in mistake for the hand of one of my girls. But though my plea has a sardonic look, the words were spoken on this day of days—even as Josephine's were spoken—with an air of gentle, joyous reminiscence, as though, which was indeed the case, we found delight in reviewing again and again the details of the great happiness which has been granted to us in the marriage of our beautiful daughter to one worthy of her.

We drove up the long avenue of tall, stately pines, and found her sitting with her husband and their little hostage to fortune enjoying the glorious mellow sunshine. The tiny monarch sat in his wagon playing with a handful of autumn leaves which his father, with proud paternal indifference to the immaculate surface of the silken carriage blanket, had bestowed upon him. I now became the rival—the successful rival—of the rustling autumn leaves. At my instigation his mother freed him from his equipage and a little anxiously yet resolutely laid him in my arms. I dandled him, I chirruped to him, I hummed to him, I encouraged him to gnaw my watch and to claw my mustache, and presently I began to toss him up in my hands and let him down again.

"Be careful, Fred," said Josephine, warningly; and I saw a shadow of solicitude cross my daughter's face, though she was plainly doing her best to seem unconcerned.

"Pooh," I answered. "I tossed up all my own babies in this way year in and year out, and not one of them ever got a scratch. I'm not going to begin by letting my precious grandson fall. Am I, little lamb?"

Thereupon, by way of showing what an adept I was in the art of baby tossing, I shot him upward with self-confident impetus. To be sure, my hands never really left him; they followed him as he ascended and as he came down. Still, pride, the traditional precursor of falls, stood me in bad stead, as it has stood others before me. Just as my precious grandson was descending for the third time, one of my wrists seemed to turn or give way, destroying thereby the admirable balance maintained by my hands, and, quick as thought, Master Baby slipped from my grasp and tumbled to the ground.

A horrible wail of mingled pain and fright, which wrung my heart-strings, welled from the lips of the little lamb, as mother, father, and grandmother rushed to raise him, knocking their own heads together in the process. Harold, white as a sheet and with a son-in-law's curse, as I imagined, trembling on his lips, succeeded in picking him up. I could discern that my grandson's bald little head was dabbled with blood. His mother evidently perceived the same, for she cried, with the maternal fierceness akin to that which we are taught to associate with a tigress protecting its young:

"Harold, give baby to me, and run for the doctor."

Why is it that at the most solemn and serious junctures of life thoughts wholly irrelevant to the occasion will arise without our bidding and thrust themselves into disconcerting prominence? I was not positive that I had not maimed my grandson for life, though I agree that his stentorian yell had relieved my solicitude a trifle. Certainly, it was a moment of cruel torture, which should have precluded every other consideration from my brain than concern for the hapless infant and harsh self-reproach. And yet, as Winona finished speaking, I made the imp of a reflection that she was sending for a doctor in spite of Christian Science, and that the scales of hallucination had fallen from her eyes at the wail of her own flesh and blood. I was even tempted for an instant to hazard the suggestion that, as there is no such thing as matter, there could be nothing the matter with baby, but I bit my tongue in the throes of my disgust at my involuntary levity.

Harold had sped down the avenue like an arrow, but scarcely had he disappeared before the gory streak which dabbled my poor little victim's brow, and which had seemed to my heated imagination almost an arterial outburst, yielded to the whisk of a pocket-handkerchief. Although he still yelled as if his heart would break, I was beginning to reflect that, barring the very slight scratch on his forehead, he was more frightened than hurt, when Josephine suggested, like a true grandmother, the possibility of internal injuries.

My heart began to throb violently once more, and my mouth to taste dry, but Winona came to my rescue.

"Mother," she exclaimed, in a tone of stern impressiveness, "it is of the utmost importance for baby's sake that you shouldn't think anything of the kind, for by thinking that he has any internal injuries you might, or I might, or father might cause the darling to think the same. We ought all to think that he has nothing the matter with him, and then he will soon cease to cry. Come, let us all think of other things and take our minds off baby. Don't even look at him."

We hastened to do as we were bid. I began to whistle cheerily, and turning my back on my precious grandson, called Josephine's attention to the beauties of the landscape in a series of philosophic utterances. As for Winona herself, she was Spartan enough to restore the little lad to his baby-carriage, and to busy herself in reflecting whether the spot of blood on her robin's-egg blue morning wrapper would wash out. Within three minutes more Master Baby had ceased to sob, and was playing contentedly again with the rustling autumn leaves, when the regular practitioner who, it seemed, lived close by, arrived with Harold at full trot. Winona rose to receive him with a sweet smile, and said, with her old serenity: "Baby is quite well, Doctor. We all applied Christian Science principles to his condition, and he finds that he was in error to suppose that he was really hurt. Thank you so much for coming."

I was really too much overwhelmed by this speech to think of criticising, but Josephine evidently suspected me of something of the kind, for she pinched unmistakably my arm. As for the poor doctor, he was smiling in a sickly sort of fashion when my son-in-law, who I am glad to see is something of a philosopher himself, broke in with—

"Since there are no bones broken, the least thing you can do for us, Doctor, is to stay to luncheon. I have opened a bottle of Clos Vougeot in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the wedding of my wife's father and mother."

"Yes, do stay, Doctor," said Winona. "And I am very anxious that you should come and vaccinate baby next week."

The doctor stayed and drank our health in a bottle of excellent wine, and not a word was said about science of any kind by anyone. As we drove home I remarked to Josephine that I had made two discoveries: first, that I had lost my grip a little, especially in the matter of babies, and secondly, that Christian Science was evidently a convenient doctrine which could be put on or off like a glove as the occasion demanded. Replying thereto my wife said: "Fred, I consider that you had a marvellous escape with that baby, and that Winona bore it splendidly. As for her silly nonsense, she is evidently in the moulting state, and I prophesy that by the time baby has the measles we shall hear no more of it. Harold seems to understand perfectly how to handle her."

That evening we had our four children and our two sons-in-law to dine with us. It was a state occasion. Josephine was in black velvet, and wore the modest diamond star which I presented to her just before we sat down to table. The girls looked superbly in their best plumage, and it seemed to me, as I glanced to right and left from my patriarchal position, that I had every reason to be proud of the four young men who will control the destinies of the family when I am under the sod. Proud not only of my two dear sons, but of my two dear sons-in-law, who, though one is slight and short, and the other impressive-looking and tall, and though both hold absurd political notions with which I have not the slightest sympathy, have so completely won my heart by their devotion to their wives and generally exemplary behavior, that I cannot choose between them. I was in a jovial mood that evening, I can tell you, and there was nothing excellent and rare in my limited but not wholly featureless cellar which my four brave boys did not have an opportunity to sample in honor of Josephine's and my twenty-fifth anniversary.

Just after the cigars were finished there was a ring at the front door-bell, and Sam Bangs came into the dining-room, rather to my astonishment, for I knew that he had not been invited. "How d'y do, Cousin Josephine; how d'y do, Cousin Fred. Many happy returns of the day."

I observed that Sam spoke with a sort of mysterious blitheness, as though he was under the influence of a joke, and I noticed that he whispered something to my daughter Josie in answer to an inquiring glance from her. Just then there was another ring at the door-bell, and presently through the half-open dining-room doors I caught sight of a host of people gayly trooping into the front hall.

"The Philistines are upon thee, Samson," exclaimed Sam Bangs, as I started to rise in my astonishment. "Cousin Fred and Cousin Josephine, a select party of your friends have taken the liberty of celebrating your silver wedding, and are on the way to the drawing-room, where you are requested to join them."

I was too dazed to speak; indeed, I was conscious of a lump in my throat quite inconsistent with a philosophic temperament. Glancing at my darling, I perceived that she was agitated, and straightway the nightmare, which was at odds with her joy, as to how she was to provide a suitable supper for these delightful visitors, took possession also of my brain.

"Sam," she gasped, "how many are there?"

"All the world and his mother, including the youths without parents," answered her provoking relative with a beaming smile.

But Josie, who it seems was in the secret with Sam, and had managed with him the whole affair, put her arms around her mother's neck and whispered, "Don't believe him. Only people who really care for you are coming. The supper is all provided for, mamma. I entered into a conspiracy with your cook, and you needn't give a thought to anything."

We didn't; and we gave ourselves up to the occasion with a right good will. As our daughter had said, only dear friends whose congratulations were precious to us had been invited, and they, to the number of about fifty, filled out our drawing-room wellnigh to overflowing. Most of them had brought silver—shall I say alas! or happily? Generally some pretty trifle which vouched for the sentiment and taste of the gift horse without seeming to tax the poor animal's resources. For instance, Mrs. Guy Sloane brought a silver butterfly intended for a pen-wiper, and my old friend Sam Bolles a silver paper-knife. Polly Flinders (I never remember her married name), who has babies of her own, gave Josephine a silver whistle, ostensibly intended for my grandson, and Gillespie Gore handed me, with his best bow, an antique silver decanter label marked "Madeira." To be sure, Mrs. Willoughby Walton did bring a splendid Indian silver necklace of exquisite workmanship, which she hung about Josephine's neck with a grand air, informing her that it had once belonged to a princess. As Josephine said to me later, Mrs. Willoughby can afford to be munificent if she chooses, and the necklace will just suit Winona's style of beauty.

Supper was served at half-past ten, and no one would have guessed that my darling had not ordered it. Our healths were drunk, and the healths of our children and grandchild, and I was badgered finally into rising and making a few scattering remarks by way of grateful acknowledgment. An effort of this kind would be trying to the sensibilities of even a real philosopher, and I will confess that, what with stammering and repeating myself, I was uncertain for some moments whether I should be able to make myself intelligible. At last, however, a sudden reflection coming straight from my heart drew me from the slough of renewing thanks and unsealed my lips.

"If," I said, "kind friends, you behold me in my fifty-fifth year a contented man, tolerably well preserved, and with the lustre of true happiness shining from my eyes; if you see around me brave sons and fair daughters, with whose promise of usefulness as men and women you are not ill-pleased; if, indeed, there is any good or any virtue in me or mine, know as the source, the fountain-head, the inspiration of it all, the sweetest woman in the whole wide world, there she stands, my wife Josephine."

As I sat down amid a tumult of approbation, my darling's confused but happy smile shone like a beam from heaven athwart my misty gaze. I see it still as I sit here to-night, with her hand in mine in our silent but joyous home. The mystery of mysteries, life! Why were we born? We do not know. What is to become of us when we go hence? We have no knowledge, but we live in hope. I live in hope. When the last trump sounds, and the graves give up their dead; when the myriads of souls are brought face to face with God to learn the solution of all mysteries, I shall seek only for Josephine. That I may behold her then is all that I ask of eternity. If I do not see her sweet face, it will be not because I am perfect, but because I have sinned too much.

THE END