So it happened that one sultry morning, late in the month of August,
there was the usual flutter of excitement and confusion on the platform
and in the waiting-room of the station. The habitués were there in
force. Conspicuous among them were four gaily dressed young men,
smoking cigarettes and gazing with lack-luster eyes upon the animated
scene, which evidently bored them. All the same, they invariably
appeared at the depot to witness this event, stirring to others no
doubt, but incapable of arousing the interest of these life-weary
youths. They comprised the Slaughter-house Quartette, and were the
most familiar and notorious characters in all the town.

_The Daily News_ reporter, in a well-creased, light gray suit and tan
shoes, and with eye-glasses scientifically balanced on his aquiline
nose, was making pointed inquiries into the private plans of the
travelers. _The Daily News_ reporters in Mount Mark always wear
well-creased, light gray suits and tan shoes, and always have
eye-glasses scientifically balanced on aquiline noses. The uninitiated
can not understand how it is managed, but there lies the fact. Perhaps
_The News_ includes these details in its requirements of applicants.
Possibly it furnishes the gray suits and the tan shoes, and even the
eye-glasses. Of course, the reporters can practise balancing them
scientifically,--but how does it happen that they always have aquiline
noses? At any rate, that is the Mount Mark type. It never varies.

The young woman going to Burlington to spend the week-end was
surrounded with about fifteen other young women who had come to "see
her off." She had relatives in Burlington and went there very often,
and she used to say she was glad she didn't have to exchange Christmas
presents with all the "friends" who witnessed her arrivals and
departures at the station. Mount Mark is a very respectable town, be