"Bre'kfus', major."

"All right, Rachel. Come, gentlemen!"

When we were all seated, the major leaned back in his chair, toyed with
his knife a moment, and said with an air of great deliberation:--

"Gentlemen, when I was in New York I discovered that the fashionable dish
of the day was a po'ter-house steak. So when I knew you were coming, I
wired my agent in Baltimo' to go to Lexington market and to send me down
on ice the best steak he could buy fo' money. It is now befo' you.

"Jack, shall I cut you a piece of the tenderloin?"




A KNIGHT OF THE LEGION OF HONOR


It was in the smoking-room of a Cunarder two days out. The evening had
been spent in telling stories, the fresh-air passengers crowding the
doorways to listen, the habitual loungers and card-players abandoning
their books and games.

When my turn came,--mine was a story of Venice, a story of the old palace
of the Barbarozzi,--I noticed in one corner of the room a man seated alone
wrapped in a light shawl, who had listened intently as he smoked, but who
took no part in the general talk. He attracted my attention from his