The other night I took a walk, and called on Jinx, across the block. The home of Jinx was full of boys and girls and forty kinds of noise. Dad Jinx was good, and kind, and straight; he let the children go their gait; he never spoke a sentence cross, he never showed that he was boss, and so his home, as neighbors know, was like the Ringling wild beast show. We tried to talk about the crops; the children raised their fiendish yawps; they hunted up a Thomas cat, and placed it in my stovepipe hat; they jarred me with a carpet tack, and poured ice water down my back; my long coat tails they set afire, and this aroused my slumb'ring ire. I rose, majestic in my wrath, and through those children mowed a path, I smote them sorely, hip and thigh, and piled them in the woodshed nigh; I threw their father in the well, and fired his cottage, with a yell. Some rigid moralists, I hear, have said my course was too severe, but their rebukes can not affright--my conscience tells me I was right. [Illustration: "_A little resting in the shadow, a struggle to the height, a futile search for El Dorado, and then we say good night._"] _The Journey_ A little work, a little sweating, a few brief, flying years; a little joy, a little fretting, some smiles and then some tears; a little resting in the shadow, a struggle to the height, a futile search for El Dorado, and then we say Good Night. Some moiling in the strife and clangor, some years of doubt and debt, some words we spoke in foolish anger that we would fain forget; some cheery words we said unthinking, that made a sad heart light; the banquet, with its feast and drinking--and then we say Good Night. Some questioning of creeds and theories, and judgment of the dead, while God, who never sleeps or wearies, is watching overhead; some little laughing and some sighing, some sorrow, some delight; a little music for the dying, and then we say Good Night. _Times Have Changed_ The maiden lingered in her bower, within her fathers stately tower--it was four hundred years ago--her lover came, o'er cliff and scar, and twanged the strings of his guitar, and sang his love songs, soft and low. He said her breath was like the breeze that wandered over flowery leas, her cheeks were lovely as the rose; her eyes were stars, from heaven torn, and she was guiltless of a corn upon her sweet angelic toes. For hours and hours his songs were sung, until a puncture spoiled a lung, and then of course he had to quit; but Arabella from her room would shoot a smile that lit the gloom, and gave him a conniption fit. Then homeward would the lover hie, as happy as an August fly upon a bald man's shining head; and Arabella's heart would swell with happiness too great to tell; ah me, those good old times are dead! Just let a modern lover scheme to win the damsel of his dream by punching tunes from his guitar! In silver tones she'd jeer and scoff; she'd call to him: "Come off! come off! where is your blooming motor car?"