And it is so amusing. Gad, how we laughed! There was the story of the man on the Underground, a friend of ours. Someone trod on his false foot in the crowded train and, scrambling out in a hurry at a station, he found himself footless on the platform, while the train slid away with the other fellow still standing on his foot. Ha, ha! how we laughed. But most of us are “above the knee,” and that provides the best joke of all. You see it all depends on the length of your stump (or “stoomp”). If you have five inches left you get an eighty per cent pension; if you have more you get less--even if it is only five and a quarter. That quarter of an inch makes all the difference, financially, though practically it isn’t a great deal of use. How much have _you_ got? Ah, you’re unlucky. I’m four and three-quarters--a near thing, eh? Peals of laughter. “You go back and have another inch off. Ho, ho, ho!” We roll about in our chairs. Well, well, it’s a queer world; but the party was a great success after all. Reading Without Tears I am teaching my daughter to read. It is very difficult. I cannot imagine how I learned to read myself. And when I look at the classic called _Reading Without Tears_, which was, I understand, the foundation of my learning, I am yet more puzzled. The author of the book seems to believe strongly in original sin. In the Preface I read: “Tears must be shed by sinful little creatures subject to waywardness and deserving so many reproofs and corrections”; but reading need not be such an occasion; and again, “Observe their minutest actions; shut not your eyes to their sinful nature; nor believe them _incapable_ of injustice or unkindness, of deceit of covetousness.” Perhaps this attitude explains the book. The author’s great idea is _pictures_. A is like a hut with a window upstairs. B, on the other hand, is like a house with two windows; and little b is like a child with a wide frock coming to you. When I look at the pictures opposite I see what the author means, but when I look at A and B and little b dispassionately by themselves they suggest nothing at all to me. I simply cannot imagine the hut or the house or the child with the wide frock. [Illustration: A is like a hut with a window upstairs B is like a house with two windows C is like an open mouth “Did we really...?”] But let us look at some more. D is like an old man leaning on a stick; E is like a carriage with a little seat for the driver; G is like a monkey eating a cake. These are no better. Try as I may, I cannot see the little seat for the driver; or if I do, I see it just as vividly in F. But F is like a tree with a seat for a child. So I know that I am wrong.