shrivelled up are your hands. You can feel them growing larger
and larger and redder and redder and more prominent and conspicuous
every instant.

The lady begins operations. You are astonished to note how many
tools and implements it takes to manicure a pair of hands properly.
The top of her little table is full of them and she pulls open a
drawer and shows you some more, ranged in rows. There are files
and steel biters and pigeon-toed scissors and scrapers and
polishers and things; and wads of cotton with which to staunch the
blood of the wounded, and bottles of liquid and little medicinal
looking jars full of red paste; and a cut glass crock with soap
suds in it and a whole lot of little orange wood stobbers.

In the interest of truth I have taken the pains to enquire and I
have ascertained that these stobbers are invariably of orange
wood. Say what you will, the orange tree is a hardy growth.
Every February you read in the papers that the Florida orange crop,
for the third consecutive time since Christmas has been entirely
and totally destroyed by frost and yet there is always an adequate
supply on hand of the principal products of the orange-phosphate
for the soda fountains, blossoms for the bride, political
sentiment for the North of Ireland and little sharp stobbers for
the manicure lady. Speaking as an outsider I would say that there
ought to be other varieties of wood that would serve as well and
bring about the desired results as readily--a good thorny variety
of poison ivy ought to fill the bill, I should think. But it
seems that orange wood is absolutely essential. A manicure lady
could no more do a manicure properly without using an orange wood
stobber at certain periods than a cartoonist could draw a picture