pensed these precious bits of information deepened to a guffaw; the smile broadened to a wide grin; the titter swelled to a peal of laughter.

Lovely Peg began to cultivate her aunt's acquaintance; for what child-nature could be proof against such a merry, rollicking aunty?

As the summer wore away the tyro waded out into deeper waters.

She grasped the fact that a night-key is like the full moon, because there's a b in 'both. She told, with all the cleverness of a raconteur, the story of the man who, when they cabled oversea to him, "Your motherin-law is dead. Shall we embalm, cremate, or bury?" replied, "Embalm, cremate, and bury; take no chances." And she gleefully described the man with the hat who was like George Washington because he had his hatchet. One evening, as I was coming home, she ran out to the gate to ask me what the difference was between a man who lived at a hotel and had occasional twinges of rheumatism, and a man who was perfectly well, but who lived at home. I gave it up, and she said: "One is well some days and has rheumatism others, and the other is well every day and has a room at his mother's, too." I took pleasure in bringing home books of a humorous character, and within twentyfour hours after their arrival they might have been found on Aunt Molly's readingtable. Foxe's "Book of Martyrs" and volumes of a kindred nature were replaced by the works of Edward Lear and "Mr. Dooley." And these books were read by our aunt with shrieks and roars of merriment.

I remember the night I brought home Eugene Field's "Tribune Primer.'

Aunt Millarkey took it from me, and stood under the hall gas-light to look at it a minute, and we could n't get her to come out to dinner. She stood there reading, and rocking herself from side to side with silent laughter, which presently broke into shouts of hilarity.

When we spoke to her, she looked at us unheeding, read another bit from the Primer, and then paced up and down the hall, her gasps for breath alternating with fresh peals of laughter, until we fairly feared for her reason. She laughed until her glasses fell off, her lace collar became awry, hair-pins shot from their places, and the tears rolled down her red and puffed-out cheeks.

It was shortly after this that Aunt Molly began to add to or improve upon the jokes she heard or read.

Her first achievement in this direction was when I asked her which was greater, a locomotive or Queen Elizabeth, and as she could n't guess, I told her that a locomotive was a wonder, but Queen Elizabeth was a Tudor.

"Yes," said she; "but to the locomotive you must add the tender."

This quick comprehension and the dawning of an inventive genius amazed me, and I hastened to tell Gladys of our aunt's remarkable progress.

"It's wonderful," said my wife. “I never saw anything like it. Her sense of humor is growing so fast that even now she can't wear her last month's jokes."

One evening I read this joke aloud from my paper: "What made the fly fly? Because the spider spied her.'"

"Pooh!" said Aunt Molly, "it's easy to say things like that. What made the quail quail? For fear the woodpecker would peck her. What made the tart tart? Because she did n't want to let the baker bake her. What made-"

"Stop, Aunt Molly!" I cried. "Where did you read those things?"

"Nowhere," said she. "I made them up. They 're as good as the one you read."

And so they were, and from that time forward Aunt Molly received no further instructions from us.

Rather, she appropriated the rôle of preceptress herself, and her jests and whimsies, both quoted and original, kept us in an uproar of fun.

And she was no respecter of persons or of occasions. When a dear friend was ill with appendicitis, and in speaking of it we disagreed as to the pronunciation, I consulted the dictionary, but the word was not there.

"I suppose this dictionary was printed before appendicitis was invented," I said.

"Look in the appendix," suggested Aunt Molly, promptly; "where else could you expect to find it?"

And sure enough, there it was.

Again, when we heard of the business failure of a prominent merchant of our town, and heard, too, that his own interests had been carefully if not very honorably guarded, Aunt Molly exclaimed:

"When that man failed to make money, he failed to make money!"

The subtlety of this word-play quite stupefied me, and I wondered to what heights of cleverness Aunt Molly would finally attain. But we had little time to wonder.

She whirled us along in the gales of a jocularity that was uncontrollable and irresistible.

We rose in the morning to be thrown into convulsions of irrepressible mirth; we retired at night exhausted from innumerable and unconquerable fits of laughter.

To be in Aunt Millarkey's presence meant to be in a constant state of giggling, with frequent spasms and paroxysms of insane mirth.

I realized that we had overreached our aim, and that Aunt Molly's sense of humor was abnormally developed-so much so, indeed, that she now had no sense of gravity. I endeavored to explain this to her, but she was so funny about it that I laughed till I cried.

Then I endeavored tactfully to lead her mentality into some other channel.

I offered to take up with her the study of folk-lore, but she said she preferred jokelore!

She told Lovely Peg such funny stories and made her laugh so heartily and continuously that we feared the child would become a driveling idiot. And when callers came in the evening, they immediately grew so uproarious over Aunt Molly's fun that Peggy was awakened and insisted on coming downstairs to see aunty. Then, imbued with the spirit of the hour, she laughed until she fell asleep from sheer exhaustion, only to be wakened again by fresh snickers and shrieks. The little dinners for which Gladys was justly famous degenerated into side-splitting affairs at which no one could eat, so screamingly funny were Aunt Molly's continuous witty speeches.

When our specially grave and dignified minister came to call, he had n't been in the house five minutes before he had burst two buttons off his clerical waistcoat; and when he finally went out of the door, it was with a tottering, uncertain step, as of one who had passed through a strong emotional upheaval.

The wedding of a friend was spoiled, from an artistic point of view, because, during the ceremony, Aunt Molly leaned over and whispered to the bride's mother. That good lady vainly endeavored to repress her mirth, and the result was something between a snort and a cackle that set everybody laughing.

Gladys and I were at our wits' end (and we heartily wished Aunt Molly might arrive at hers).

Like Frankenstein, we had voluntarily created a monster that now threatened

catastrophe to the peace and dignity of our household and the disposition of our child.

Something must be done, and that quickly, for Aunt Molly was steadily becoming more and more comical, and more incapable of repressing her drollery when occasion required.

And though Gladys and I realized that we were responsible for this awful state of things, yet we felt that we could not endure the consequences, and must avert them, if possible, for the sake of Lovely Peg, as well as for ourselves.

But the solution of our difficulty arrived from a most unexpected source. One evening Aunt Millarkey announced that she had something funny to tell us. This was by no means an unusual or improbable statement, and though we knew it was our duty to discountenance these over-hilarious proceedings, yet such was the fascination of Aunt Molly's fun that it dominated our sense of duty, and we weakly surrendered, saying, "What is it?" and settled back in our chairs in anticipation of mirth exquisite even to the verge of pain.

But, instead of a new conundrum or a comical story, Aunt Molly remarked, in an impressive whisper:

"I'm going to marry the minister."

The grave and even awe-struck expression in her eyes left no room for any doubt of the sincerity of her words, and as the situation dawned upon Gladys and me, we broke into half-horrified laughter.

It was indeed funny to think of Aunt Molly unequally yoked together with an austere and dignified clergyman-and especially with Dr. Plunkett, who was the very apotheosis of clerical dignity and solemnity, and who, since the death of his wife many years ago, had renounced all social claims save those imposed on him by his pastoral duties.

"I told you it was funny," said Aunt Millarkey, still with that half-scared look on her face, and this convulsed us afresh.

"Is he willing?" asked Gladys, at last, wiping her eyes.

"Yes," said Aunt Millarkey. "He thinks, as I do, that we shall have a good effect on each other. He thinks I have a wonderful fund of gaiety."

"He is right," said Gladys, earnestly.

"And he thinks that I can share that with him, and, goodness knows, I've got enough for two."

"Enough for twenty," I thought, but I said nothing.

"It's a fine thing," said I. "I congratulate you both heartily"; and I spoke sincerely, though aware of an undercurrent of selfcongratulation that we were to be so gracefully relieved of my aunt's presence in our home.

After the wedding of this contrariant couple, which function, by the way, presented a far more hilarious than clerical aspect, there returned to our household the calm and delightful atmosphere of earlier days. One evening, after we had sent Lovely Peg to bed, and without the sense of futility which for so long had accompanied that proceeding, Gladys and I had a long talk about my aunt and her probable effect on her husband's life and work.

"It's a fearful thing," said Gladys, "to introduce an element like Aunt Molly into the ministry-even indirectly."

"My dear," said I, "it 's an interesting psychological problem. We, intentionally, but with no foreknowledge of the awful consequences, instilled in Aunt Millarkey a sense

of humor killed or crowded out from her nature all sense of gravity. Now, may it not be that Dr. Plunkett, not so scientifically as we did, but still effectually, may instil in Aunt Molly a sense of decorum and piety which will grow and thrive until it counteracts the fun, and Aunt Molly Plunkett will become a normal and well-balanced woman?"

"It may be," said Gladys, after a moment's deep thought; "but as Aunt Molly's nature seems to be such extraordinarily fertile soil for the implanting of traits or characteristics of any kind, I am more inclined to think that the decorum and piety germ will grow and develop so luxuriantly that it will choke up and root out the humor, and Aunt Molly will become an exaggerated type of a rigid, old-fashioned Puritan, a regular St. Cecilia in a strait-jacket."

"Good gracious, Gladys," I exclaimed, "what a picture! But you may be right. Time alone can tell. However, I'm convinced that it's a dangerous thing to tamper with other people's mentalities, and hereafter I prefer to watch these interesting scientific experiments from a distance, and not conduct them under my own roof."

[OGAN tells me that wan iv th' first kill his neighborin' animals, an' make a meal iv wan part iv thim an' a vest iv another, was to begin to mannyfacther lithrachoor, an' it's been goin' on up to th' prisint day. Thim was times that th' Lord niver heerd about, but is as well known to manny a la-ad in th' univarsity iv southren Injyanny as if th' histhry iv thim was printed on a poster. Hogan says a pro-fissor with a shovel an' a bad bringin'-up can go out annywhere along

he'll show ye th' earth as though 't was a dhrawin' iv a flat-buildin', an' p'int out how 't was accumylated. First 't was a mere squdge in which ne'er a livin' thing c'u'd be found.

This peryod lasted a few million years, an' thin the mush caked an' become buildin'-materyal, an' threes grew out iv th' buildin'-materyal an' fell down an' become coal. Thin th' wather come-but where it come fr'm I don't know, f'r they was no God at th' time-an' covered th' earth, an' thin th' wather evaporated an' left little p'ints iv land shtickin' up with ready-made men an' women occypyin' thim, an' at that moment th' Bible begun. Ye might say we 're livin' on th' roof iv a flat, with all th' apartmints beneath us occypied be th' bones iv submarine monsthers an' other tinants.

R

Lasteways, that 's what Hogan tells me, but I don't believe a wurrud he says. Most iv th' people iv this wurruld is a come-on f'r science, but I'm not. Ye can't con-vince me, me boy, that a man who 's so near-sighted he can't read th' sign on a cable-car knows anny more about th' formation iv th' earth thin Father Kelly. I believe th' wurruld is flat, not round; that th' sun moves an' is about th' size iv a pie-plate in th' mornin' an' a carwheel at noon; an' it 's no proof to me that because a pro-fissor who 's peekin' through a chube all night says th' stars ar-re millions iv miles away, an' each is bigger thin this wurruld, that they 're bigger thin they look, or much higher thin th' top iv th' shottower. I've been up tin thousand feet on a mountain, an' they seemed so near that I kept whiskin' thim off me nose as I lay there on me back, but they was n't anny larger thin they were on th' sthreetlevel. I believe what I see an' some iv th' things I 'm told, if they 've been told often, an' thim facts iv science has not been hung long enough to be digistible. But, annyhow, they say that man first begun writin' whin he had to hammer out his novels an' pomes on a piece iv rock, an' th' hammer has been th' imblim iv lithrachoor VOL. LXIV.-11.

iver since. Thin he painted it on skins, hince th' publisher; thin he played it an' danced it an' croshayed it till 't was discovered that ink an' pa-aper w'u'd projooce wurruds, an' thin th' printin'press was invinted. Gunpowdher was invinted th' same time, an' 't is a question I've often. heerd discussed which has done more to ilivate th' humanrace. Ajoke.

Malache

Th' longer th' wurruld lasts th' more books does be comin' out. Day be day I r-read in th' pa-apers announcemints iv new publications that look like th' dilinquent tax-list. They 's a publisher in iv'ry block, an' in thousan's iv happy homes some wan is pluggin' away at th' romantic novel or whalin' out a pome on th' type-writer up-stairs. A fam'ly without an author is as contimptible as wan without a priest. Is Malachi nearsighted, peevish, averse to th' suds, an' can't tell whether th' three in th' front yard is blue or green? Make an author iv him! Does Miranda presint no atthractions to th' young men iv th' neighborhood, does her overskirt dhrag, an' is she poor with th'