the stove, where, for the moment, she cannot paw him. Every now and
then, with a little luck, I shall pull off just such a scurry into
temporary immortality. It may come by reading Dickens or by seeing a
sunset, or by lunching with friends, or by forgetting to wind the alarm
clock, or by contemplating the rosy little pate of my daughter, who is
still only a nine days' wonder--so young that she doesn't even know what
you are doing to her. But you are not going to have the laugh on me by
luring me into resolutions. I know my weaknesses. I know that I shall
probably continue to annoy newsdealers by reading the magazines on the
stalls instead of buying them; that I shall put off having my hair cut;
drop tobacco cinders on my waistcoat; feel bored at the idea of having
to shave and get dressed; be nervous when the gas burner pops when
turned off; buy more Liberty Bonds than I can afford and have to hock
them at a grievous loss. I shall continue to be pleasant to insurance
agents, from sheer lack of manhood; and to keep library books out over
the date and so incur a fine. My only hope, you see, is resolutely to
determine to persist in these failings. Then, by sheer perversity, I may
grow out of them.

[Illustration]

What avail, indeed, for any of us to make good resolutions when one
contemplates the grand pageant of human frailty? Observe what I noticed
the other day in the Lost and Found column of the New York _Times_:

LOST--Hotel Imperial lavatory, set of teeth. Call or communicate
Flint, 134 East 43d street. Reward.

Surely, if Mr. Flint could not remember to keep his teeth in his mouth,
or if any one else was so basely whimsical as to juggle them away from