few minutes ago and now she looks cold as an iceberg."

   "I have only just arrived," the other man said. "She is my wife."

   The breakfaster in the cheap restaurant tried to make conversation with the man beside him at the counter.

   "Awful rainy spell—like the flood."

   "The flood?" The tone was polite, but inquiring.

   "

    The

   flood—Noah, the Ark, Mount Ararat."

   The other bit off half a slice of bread, shook his head, and mumbled thickly:

   "Hain't read to-day's paper yit."

   Gilbert wrote a couplet concerning—

   Such suggestion is all very well in a humorous ballad, but we do not look for anything of the sort in a serious romance of real life. Nevertheless, a Welsh newspaper of recent date carried the following paragraph:

   "At —— Church, on Monday last, a very interesting wedding was solemnized, the contracting parties being Mr. Richard ——, eldest son of Mr. and Mrs. ——, and a bouquet of pink carnations."

   The old gentleman was lost in a London fog, so thick that he could hardly see his hand before his face. He became seriously alarmed when he found himself in a slimy alley. Then he heard footsteps approaching through the obscurity, and sighed with relief.

   "Where am I going to?" he cried anxiously.

   A voice replied weirdly from the darkness beyond:

   "Into the river—I've just come out!"

   A wise old Quaker woman once said that men were guilty of three most astonishing follies. The first was the climbing of trees to shake down the fruit, when if they would but wait, the fruit would fall of itself. The 

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