Well, I was so flabbergasted that my skin stiffened up on me, and it stayed stiff for the rest of that day. I never said a word, but I turned away from there a sad man with a broken heart in my bosom. And I quit bein' an artist. I didn't have the sperrit to be in a show any more. And through all the years since then I been a saddened man. But as time went by there come a kind of sweetness into that sadness, too. It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, like the poet says. I was one of the saddest men in the world, but I sort o' enjoyed it, after a few years. And all them memories sort o' kept me a better man. I orter stuck to that kind of sweet sadness. I orter knowed that if I went back on all them beautiful memories of them girls something bitter would come to me. But I didn't, gentlemen. I went back on all that sentiment and that tenderness. I betrayed all them beautiful memories. Five days ago, I went and married. Yes, sir, I abandoned all that sweet recollection. And I been livin' in hell ever since. I been reproachin' myself day and night for not provin' true and trustworthy to all that romantic sadness I had all them years. It was a sweet sadness, and I wasn't faithful to it. And so long as I live now I will have this here bitter sadness. The stranger got up and sighed and stretched himself. He took a fresh chew of tobacco, and began to crank his flivver. “Well,” said Ben Grevis, “that is a sad story. But I don't know as you're sadder, at that, than the Widder Watson is.” The stranger spat colourfully into the road, and again the faint semblance of a smile, a bitter smile, wreathed itself about his mouth. “Yes, I be!” he said, “I be a sadder person than the Widder Watson. It was her I married!” DOGS AND BOYS (As told by the dog) If you are a dog of any sense, you will pick you out a pretty good sort of a boy and stick to him. These dogs that are always adopting one boy after another get a bad name among the humans in the end. And you'd better keep in with the humans, especially the grown-up ones. Getting your scraps off a plate at the back door two or three times a day beats hunting rabbits and ground-squirrels for a living. What a dog wants is a boy anywhere from about nine to about sixteen years old. A boy under nine hasn't enough sense, as a rule, to be any company for an intelligent dog. And along about sixteen they begin to dress up and try to run with the girls, and carry on in a 'way to make a dog tired. There are exceptions of course--one of the worst mistakes some dogs make is to suppose that all boys are alike. That isn't true; you'll find just as much individuality among boys as there is among us dogs, if you're patient enough to look for it and have a knack for making friends with animals. But you must remember to be kind to a boy if you're going to teach him anything; and you must be careful not to frighten him.