"And you will continue to visit upon them the horrible suffering of being burned to death?" "If the occasion demands it." "Well, then, gentlemen, since you are so determined, I want to sell you a few gross of the cheapest matches you ever laid your eyes upon. Step out to the wagon and see them. Warranted not to go out in a strong wind, and to strike on anything, wood, bricks, glass, bloomers, boot soles and iron. How many boxes will you take, gentlemen?" The Good Boy (Mostly in Words of One Syllable) James was a good boy. He w'ould not tease his cat or his dog. He went to school. One day as he went home he saw a lady cross the street, and some rude boys tried to guy her. James took the lady by the hand and led her to a safe place. "Oh, fie!" he said to the boys. "For shame, to talk so to the nice lady. A good, kind boy will be mild and love to help the old." At this the boys did rail and laugh. "Oh, boys," said James, "do not be rude and speak so harsh. At home, I have a dear old grandma, and this kind lady may be one, too." The lady took James by the ear and said: "You contemptible little rapscallion. I've a good mind to spank you until you can't navigate. Grandmother, indeed! I'm only twenty-nine my last birthday, and I don't feel a day over eighteen. Now, you clear out, or I'll slap you good." The Colonel's Romance They were sitting around a stove and the tobacco was passed around. They began to grow introspective. The talk turned upon their old homes and the changes that the cycling years bring about. They had lived in Houston for many years, but only one was a native Texan. The colonel hailed from Alabama, the judge was born in the swamps of Mississippi, the grocer first saw the light in a frozen town of Maine, and the major proudly claimed Tennessee as his birthplace. "Have any of you fellows been back home since you left there?" asked the colonel. The judge had been back twice in twenty years, the major once, the grocer never. "It's a curious feeling," said the colonel, "to go back to the old home where you were raised, after an absence of fifteen years. It is like seeing ghosts to be among people whom you have not seen in so long a time. Now I went back to Crosstree, Alabama, just fifteen years after I left there. The impression made upon me was one that never will be obliterated. "There was a girl in Crosstree once that I loved better than anything in the world. One day I slipped away from everybody and went down to the little grove where I used to walk with her. I walked along the paths we used to tread. The oaks along the side had scarcely changed; the little blue flowers on either hand might have been the same ones she used to twine in her hair when she came to meet me.