cause of wit in others.

"No, Jimmy, there isn't anything new," responded Dexter.

"I suppose you didn't hear that the ole man done somethin'
handsome for me in his last will and testyment."

"No, Jemmy, I don't think he has made any provision whatever for
an almshouse."

"Sorry to hear that, Dexter," said Willson, absorbedly chasing a
bit of lemon peel in his glass with the spoon handle, "for there
isn't room for us all up at the town-farm. How's your grandmother?
Finds it tol'rably comfortable?"

They are a primitive, candid people in their hours of unlaced
social intercourse in Stillwater. This delicate _tu quoque_ was
so far from wounding Dexter that he replied carelessly,--

"Well, only so so. The old woman complains of too much
chicken-sallid, and hot-house grapes all the year round."

"Mr. Shackford must have left a large property," observed Mr.
Ward, of the firm of Ward & Lock, glancing up from the columns of the
Stillwater Gazette. The remark was addressed to Lawyer Perkins, who
had just joined the group in the reading-room.

"Fairly large," replied that gentleman crisply.

"Any public bequests?"