the rarest of gifts. I have never met more than four or five persons
possessing it. The small boy who defined memory as "the thing you forget
with" described the faculty as it exists and works in the majority of
men and women.

THE survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong
argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man. One
publisher no sooner brings out a new style of book-cover than half a
dozen other publishers fall to duplicating it.

THE cavalry sabre hung over the chimney-place with a knot of violets
tied to the dinted guard, there being no known grave to decorate. For
many a year, on each Decoration Day, a sorrowful woman had come and
fastened these flowers there. The first time she brought her offering
she was a slender girl, as fresh as her own violets. It is a slender
figure still, but there are threads of silver in the black hair.

FORTUNATE was Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, who in early youth was taught
"to abstain from rhetoric, and poetry, and fine writing"--especially the
fine writing. Simplicity is art's last word.

The man is clearly an adventurer. In the seventeenth century he would
have worn huge flintlock pistols stuck into a wide leather belt, and
been something in the seafaring line. The fellow is always smartly
dressed, but where he lives and how he lives are as unknown as "what
song the Sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself
among women." He is a man who apparently has no appointment with his
breakfast and whose dinner is a chance acquaintance. His probable banker
is the next person. A great city like this is the only geography for
such a character. He would be impossible in a small country town, where