“My mental picture of the months of the year is that January is far to the north. The months follow in a more or less zigzag, easterly movement, until we find that July and August have strayed far south. But the autumn months zigzag back, so that by the time December sweeps coldly by she is twelve months east of January, and then the new January starts on a road of similar direction. You still observe that the current of time sets toward me instead of away from me.” What could I do but observe that it did? I had the inside seat, and Griggs has an insistent way about him, so I generally observe just when he asks me to, and thus avoid friction. Then, too, I always feel flattered when Griggs condescends to talk at me and reveal the wonders of his mind. So I observed heartily, and puffed away at my cigar, while he continued: “The direction of the week-days is rather hazy in my mind--” [Illustration] I begged him not to feel low-spirited about it--that it would probably seem clear to him before long; but I don’t think he heard me, for he went right on: “But it is a somewhat undulatory movement from west to east, Sundays being on the crest of each wave. Coming to the hours, I picture them as running, like the famous mouse, ‘down the clock,’ the early day-light being highest. The minutes and seconds refuse to be marshaled into line, but go ticking on to eternity helter-skelter, yet none the less inevitably.” I rather admired the independence of the minutes and seconds in refusing to be ordered about even by his mind; but, of course, I didn’t tell him so. On the contrary, I congratulated him on the highly poetic way in which he was voicing his sentiments. Just then we came into the station, and an acquaintance of his buttonholed him and lugged him off, for Griggs is quite a favorite, in spite of his mind. I was sorry, for I had wanted to ask him where the moments and instants seem bound for in his brain. I did manage, just as we were leaving the boat at Chambers Street, to tell him that I was going to be in the Augustan part of the city at noon, and would be pleased to take him out to lunch, if he ran across me; but he must have mistaken the month, as I ate my luncheon alone. I dare say he understood me to say January, and wandered all over Harlem looking for me. How unpleasant it must be to have a mind! V THE SIGNALS OF GRIGGS You may remember Griggs as the man who had a mind. At the time that I wrote about that useful member of his make-up he was living out in New Jersey; but he was finally brought to see the error of his ways, and took the top flat in a nine-story house without an elevator, ’way up-town.