And that is looking at it from its brightest “angle” (as the motion-picture intellectuals say). As a matter of fact, judging from the agonizing sensation of the human leg (or arm) when rudely awakened from dreamless slumber, the process of transmutation from senseless stone to pulsating flesh must be a very painful one indeed. However pleasing the countenance of the living Galatea might be under normal conditions its expression of mingled bewilderment, rage and physical anguish must have been disconcerting, not to say terrifying, to the sensitive soul of the sculptor, and anything but consoling for the loss of his hard-won and cherished handiwork. I can picture Pygmalion fleeing madly from his studio, not even waiting for the elevator and vowing by all the gods, then administrating human affairs, never again to make a wish without touching wood or at least crossing his fingers. [Illustration] THE LOW COST OF CABBING In the last ten years or so all the necessaries and most of the luxuries of life have more than doubled in cost—all but one—the Cab—or to be more accurate, the Taxi-cab. Perhaps it is because a cab is quite as often a necessity as it is a luxury and so falls between two schools, the Stoic and Epicurean, that it is an exception to the rule of rising cost. Did I say rising cost? If I am not very much mistaken the cost of cabbing, so far from not rising _has actually fallen_ in the last ten years, and that brings me to my great invention. It is a scheme for saving money, a Thrift scheme. It is like this—Every time you take a street-car (what with the dislocated service and the abolition of transfers) you are paying nearly twice what you used to pay, and soon you will be paying even more. On the other hand, a trip that in a hackney cab, fifteen years ago, cost you a dollar-fifty, today in a taxicab costs you only seventy-five cents. Now make a swift calculation— If you take six cars a day you lose thirty cents. A loss of thirty cents a day doesn’t seem very much, but in a year, it amounts to a loss of $109.50 which is not to be treated lightly. Now if you take six Taxis at an average cost of, say two dollars per trip, you are saving (let me see, six times two) twelve dollars a day and twelve dollars a day is four thousand three hundred and eighty dollars a year, which added to the $109.50 you have saved by not riding in street-cars makes a grand total of $4489.50! And this is only what you save by taking six cabs a day. If you took twice as many cabs _you would save twice that amount_, and if you increased your cabbage to one hundred per diem (a day) your savings for the first year would amount to $448,950.50—nearly half a million dollars! Go over my figures carefully with your wife when she returns from business this evening—It is a live proposition—Think it over! [Illustration] THE GREAT MATCH-BOX MYSTERY PART ONE