"I'm called the Observer,"

"Oh. What do you observe?" asked the little girl.

"Everything I see," was the reply, in a more surly
tone. Then Pessim drew back with a startled exclamation
and looked at some footprints in the sand. "Why, good
gracious me!" he cried in distress.

"What's the matter now?" asked Cap'n Bill.

"Someone has pushed the earth in! Don't you see it?

"It isn't pushed in far enough to hurt anything," said
Trot, examining the footprints.

"Everything hurts that isn't right," insisted the man.
"If the earth were pushed in a mile, it would be a great
calamity, wouldn't it?"

"I s'pose so," admitted the little girl.

"Well, here it is pushed in a full inch! That's a
twelfth of a foot, or a little more than a millionth part
of a mile. Therefore it is one-millionth part of a
calamity -- Oh, dear! How dreadful!" said Pessim in a
wailing voice.

"Try to forget it, sir," advised Cap'n Bill,
soothingly. "It's beginning to rain. Let's get under your