either. You've already succeeded in waking every boarder in the house
with that guitar, and you want to make amends now by letting them go
to sleep again!"

"But my dear fellow," said Bert, with forced calmness, "you're the
fellow that's making all the noise--and--"

"Why, you howling dervish!" interrupted John, with a feigned air of
pleased surprise and admiration. "But let's drop controversy. Throw
the fragments of your guitar in the wood-box there, and proceed with
the opening proposition."

"What I was going to say was this," said Bert, with a half-desperate
enunciation; "I'm getting tired of this way of living--clean,
dead-tired, and fagged out, and sick of the whole artificial
business!"

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed John, with a towering disdain, "you needn't go
any further! I know just what malady is throttling you. It's
reform--reform! You're going to 'turn over a new leaf,' and all that,
and sign the pledge, and quit cigars, and go to work, and pay your
debts, and gravitate back into Sunday-School, where you can make love
to the preacher's daughter under the guise of religion, and desecrate
the sanctity of the innermost pale of the church by confessions at
Class of your 'thorough conversion!' Oh, you're going to--"

"No, but I'm going to do nothing of the sort," interrupted Bert,
resentfully. "What I mean--if you'll let me finish--is, I'm getting
too old to be eternally undignifying myself with this 'singing of
midnight strains under Bonnybell's window panes,' and too old to be