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 "Jim." An hour my new son-in-law as 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 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

The dy997 "After every ring at the door-bell appears the maid with a fresh parcel."

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

"He held an old shoe in his hand."

mured 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

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. 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 si lently 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!

Their

Alas, poor philosopher! Shall I be

grudge 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."

I

"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. 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 loop-hole 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 there 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. 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 Lib erty people are not allowed to forget that they are growing old even if they have no tall sons and daughters to at

In

test 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 havę 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 twentyfifth 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.

ceed 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."

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 pro

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