We have the latest funeral equipment--black broadcloth-covered supports, a coffin carriage for up-and-down the aisles, natural palms to order, and the pulleys to "Let them down slow"; and yet our individual funeral capacity has been such that we can tell what every woman who has died in Friendship for years has "done without": Mis' Grocer Stew, her of all folks, has done without new-style flat-irons; Mis' Worth had used the bread pan to wash dishes in; Mis' Jeweler Sprague--the first Mis' Sprague--had had only six bread and butter knives, her, that could get wholesale, too ... and we have little maid-servants who answer our bells in caps and trays, so to say; but this savour of jestership is authentic, for any one of them is likely to do as of late did Mis' Holcomb--that was Mame Bliss's maid--answer at dinner-with-guests, that there were no more mashed potatoes, "or else, there won't be any left to warm up for your breakfast."... And though we have our daily newspaper, receiving Associated Press service, yet, as Mis' Amandy Toplady observed, it is "only very lately that they have mentioned in the Daily the birth of a child, or any thing that had anything of a tang to it." We put new wine in old bottles, but also we use new bottles to hold our old wine. For, consider the name of our main street: is this Main or Clark or Cook or Grand Street, according to the register of the main streets of town? Instead, for its half-mile of village life, the Plank Road, macadamized and arc-lighted, is called Daphne Street. Daphne Street! I love to wonder why. Did our dear Doctor June's father name it when he set the five hundred elms and oaks which glorify us? Or did Daphne herself take this way on the day of her flight, so that when they came to draught the town, they recognized that it was Daphne Street, and so were spared the trouble of naming it? Or did the Future anonymously toss us back the suggestion, thinking of some day of her own when she might remember us and say, "Daphne Street!" Already some of us smile with a secret nod at something when we direct a stranger, "You will find the Telegraph and Cable Office two blocks down, on Daphne Street." "The Commercial Travelers' House, the Abigail Arnold Home Bakery, the Post Office and Armory are in the same block on Daphne Street." Or, "The Electric Light Office is at the corner of Dunn and Daphne." It is not wonderful that Daphne herself, at seeing these things, did not stay, but lifted her laurels somewhat nearer Tempe--although there are those of us who like to fancy that she is here all the time in our Daphne-Street magic: the fire bell, the tulip beds, and the twilight bonfires. For how else, in all reason, has the name persisted? Of late a new doctor has appeared--one may say, has abounded: a surgeon who, such is his zeal, will almost perform an operation over the telephone and, we have come somewhat cynically to believe, would prefer doing so to not operating at all.