At last, when we said positively that Thucydides should come to us no more, and then qualified the prohibition by allowing him to come every Sunday, she answered that she never would hurt the child's feelings by telling him not to come where his mother was; that people who did not love her children did not love her; and that, if Hippy went, she went. We thought it a master-stroke of firmness to rejoin that Hippolyto must go in any event; but I am bound to own that he did not go, and that his mother stayed, and so fed us with every cunning propitiatory dainty, that we must have been Pagans to renew our threat. In fact, we begged Mrs. Johnson to go into the country with us, and she, after long reluctation on Hippy's account, consented, agreeing to send him away to friends during her absence. We made every preparation, and on the eve of our departure Mrs. Johnson went into the city to engage her son's passage to Bangor, while we awaited her return in untroubled security. But she did not appear till midnight, and then responded with but a sad “Well, sah!” to the cheerful “Well, Mrs. Johnson!” that greeted her. “All right, Mrs. Johnson?” Mrs. Johnson made a strange noise, half chuckle and half death-rattle, in her throat. “All wrong, sah. Hippy's off again; and I've been all over the city after him.” “Then you can't go with us in the morning?” “How _can_ I, sah?” Mrs. Johnson went sadly out of the room. Then she came back to the door again, and, opening it, uttered, for the first time in our service, words of apology and regret: “I hope I ha'n't put you out any. I _wanted_ to go with you, but I ought to _knowed_ I couldn't. All is, I loved you too much.” DOORSTEP ACQUAINTANCE Vagabonds the world would no doubt call many of my doorstep acquaintance, and I do not attempt to defend them altogether against the world, which paints but black and white and in general terms. Yet I would fain veil what is only half-truth under another name, for I know that the service of their Gay Science is not one of such disgraceful ease as we associate with ideas of vagrancy, though I must own that they lead the life they do because they love it. They always protest that nothing but their ignorance of our tongue prevents them from practicing some mechanical trade. “What work could be harder,” they ask, “than carrying this organ about all day?” but while I answer with honesty that nothing can be more irksome, I feel that they only pretend a disgust with it, and that they really like organ-grinding, if for no other reason than that they are the children of the summer, and it takes them into the beloved open weather. One of my friends, at least, who in the warmer months is to all appearance a blithesome troubadour, living “A merry life in sun and shade,”