As everybody stood staring at the wonderful sight, a fly lit on the boy's cheek. He could not reach it himself, for his arms would not reach a tenth part of the way to his chin; so he asked one of the bystanders to kill the troublesome insect. The boy's voice was so smothered by the egg-shell that it was long before he could make himself understood; but at last the man got an idea of what was wanted, and aimed a severe blow at the fly. The insect flew away unharmed, but the boy started so suddenly that he bit the egg-shell in two, and his head collapsed to its natural size. So there was a little boy in the middle of the place, holding on by a post, and a crowd of people looking at him from a distance. "What a disappointment!" said the boy's mother. "He was fast becoming remarkable! But then, what a sum his hats would have cost! After all, it is best as it is." "And besides," added a neighbor, "how could you have got at him to punish him?" "To be sure!" answered the mother. * * * * * "This is better than the first, because it is shorter," said the king; and the man with a crooked nose began the story of THE CROOKED-NOSED PHILOSOPHER. "There was once a man," he said, "with a nose so long that it reached half way round his head, and thus the point was continually behind him. This not unnaturally caused him a great deal of trouble, but in the end was the means of his good fortune, as you shall hear. For once, as he sat reading, he felt something on the end of his nose, and turning round his head he saw a fly sitting on the point of it." "Saw a fly on the point!" interrupted King Jollimon. "What do you take me for, that you thus try to impose such stories on me? Can a man see what is behind him?" "Certainly, if he turns round," answered the traveler, quite unmoved. "If he turns round!" repeated the king, in a rage, "can one see the back of his head? I have turned round, but I never could see my back." "That is because your majesty always looks away from it," replied the other. "If you would turn round and look toward the back of your head, you would undoubtedly see it." "Do you presume to dispute with me?" screamed his majesty, getting very red in the face. He felt sure he was right, but he could not answer the traveler's argument. "Do you presume to dispute with me?" he repeated. "Get out of my sight, and if one of you three vagabonds, with your trumpery stories, is found in all the kingdom of Jolliland by sunset to-morrow, I'll have every man of you beheaded three times over. A man see his back, indeed!" And thus it happened that the tale of "The Crooked-Nosed Philosopher" was never concluded, which was the greater pity, since, if the end was like the beginning, it must have been a very marvelous tale. SOMETHING IN THE OLD CLOTHES LINE. BY PAUL FORT.