The first real war any of us remembered was then in progress and the "Illustrated London News" and the London "Graphic" were full of pictures of British warships bombarding Alexandria and of charging Highlanders at Tel-el-Kebir. Though soon supplanted by our own "Life," "Punch," too, was something of a favorite, with its drawings by Du Maurier of tall, wasp-waisted, beautiful ladies with remarkable coiffures and trailing skirts, and of men with Dundreary whiskers, frock coats, top hats and monocles--all engaged in what seemed to us singularly inane conversation. Most of us had "St. Nicholas" at home and of the other American publications "Harper's Young People" easily held first place, with "Harper's Weekly" a close second. The girls were often discovered poring over "Harper's Bazaar"--an inexplicable thing to the masculine mind. That seemed to us a silly paper. In time certain habitués of the reading room became familiar to us--by sight, that is. There was, of course, the nondescript crowd of persons out of employment, or idlers, who came in to get warm or to pass an hour or two. These were the floating population, as it were, and the individuals varied with the seasons. Some of them seemed to be searching the advertising columns of the dailies for a job. Others read strange technical papers--engineering magazines or trade journals. One has often wondered since what perennial hopes, what latent ambitions, what undiscovered geniuses, were concealed amid this rather drab clientele of the reading room. But that some definite purposes animated certain devotees could not be doubted--though what the exact individual motives were was not always apparent. There was, for example, the queer old man--short, stocky, with gray beard and spectacles--whose specialty seemed to be the New York papers and the political and economic magazines. He was generally supposed to be a little "off" and he had Doctor Johnson's habit when walking along the street of tapping with his stick every post and tree he passed. If he abstractedly missed one he would go back and rap it. We often noticed unkind urchins of our own age following him and reminding him of any omissions, for the intense joy of seeing him invariably return and perform this rite. Let us hope that none of us attempted this, though it can not be asserted that the temptation was always resisted, even if no memory of succumbing to it remains.