Dad is never still long enough for the birds to build nests in his goatee and set three weeks. If he slackens up you notice a visible reduction in your pancake pile. The Lord didn’t make the suns far enough apart for dad or some other people. I worked for a farmer one time that used to start out with a handmade sun about two-thirty A. M. and never ceased till ten P. M. The meals always bothered me; I couldn’t tell if it was breakfast the next morning or two suppers. If God’s sunshine meets man’s sunshine and the two mix properly, you’ve got an individual that is a continual pleasure, one whose existence is exhilarating. He whistles and sings and smiles and laughs and gets out of life everything that is good, and everybody likes and knows him. I was never so ashamed in my life as I was one time when I had encased in my left cheek a quid of tobacco the size of a hen’s egg. I was carrying on nonchalantly a conversation with a depot master, and the saliva was gathering so rapidly, it wasn’t long before I could only grunt. I always disliked to ruin a floor with expectoration and was also embarrassed by the presence of the agent’s boy, a little fellow of four years, but my mouth was so full and my cheeks so inflated that leakage was starting and I was forced to eject it or swallow it. I chose the former and let it go. It sounded like the distant booming of guns and the space required to contain it on the floor was unbelievable. If its dimensions didn’t cover a foot square outside of the innumerable rivulets in every direction, I’ll buy my wife a twelve dollar Easter bonnet for a Christmas present. The little boy looked at it and said, “My, that’s a big one!” I sneaked out crestfallen, abashed and ashamed, but didn’t have the sense to quit for some years afterwards, when the preacher said something about the ashes to ashes and dust to dust. TEMPERANCE. The cause of temperance is one that has been close to my heart for twenty years. Taken from the logical standpoint of protection to the home, sound saneness, improvement in morals, an enhancement of citizenship, it is the second paramount issue of the age. Take away liquor, stop the traffic entirely, and you reduce seventy-five per cent of crime. The empty whisky-bottle is the greatest curse that ever existed. When it is standing filled in front of some bar-room mirror, it is harmless, but when it is empty it signifies that it has been drank by somebody and has been the direct cause for all that has followed.