Bruna fia "Bellefonte, Pa., September 17, 1909. MY DUG. The curate thinks you have po soul ; I know that he has none. But you, Dear friend, whose solemn self-control In our four-square, familiar pew, Was pattern to my youth—whose bark Called me in summer dawns (0 rove— Have you come dowa into the dark Where none is welcome, none may love ? 1 will not think those good brown eyes Have spent their light of truth so soon But in some canine Paradise Yaur wraith, I know, rebukes the moon, And quarters every plain and hill, Seeking its master. . . . As for me, This prayer at least the gods fullfil ; That when | pass the flood, and see Old Charon by the Stygian coast. Take tol! of all the shades who land Your little, faithful, barking ghost May leap to lick my phastom hand. Bt. John Lucas, in St, Louis Globe Democrat, “THE BAND.” I think the reason that Philip Barstow and I get on 20 well together is becanse we both crossed the prestidigitator’s bridge at about the same time. Every ope bas seen a prestidigitator’s bridge—is is the plank covered with red baize that the magician uses to cross from the atage to auditorium when be comes down into the audience to force cards on us or take rabbits from our inside pockets or coins from our ears. All of us bachelors who live long enough muss orose the magioian’s bridge one day and take our places in the andience. The lucky man is the one who makes the transition willingly and in good season. That time menally comes about the moment when we begin to meet young women at dinners who look just like their mothers nsed to look twenty years before—twenty years when they married the other man; w we give up tennis for golf and insiss that billiards is splendid exercise; when the bumps of our youth develop into rheu- matic joints and the salety-vaive of our in- ternal machinery is forever sounding a warning to our appetites. It is not easy for some of us uomarried men to make the transition; there are those —a very few—who, after they bave crossed she bridge, go back and take up the fight again—even marry. Bus these are not she true bachelors, the bachelors who were born bachelors, who in their youth carry on most soandalously with every pretty girl in the village, but, way dows in their hearts know thas their finish isa trained nurse and a faithfal body-servant. Barstow and I used to dine at the same olab, but we give thas np some time ago. Now we bave a little side table at Sherry’s or Martin's or even Reotor’s, where the stage is amply filled and the actors are usu- ally well-dressed and often beautiful, and we can watch their listle affairs, and, an- known to them, bave our innocent jokes at their expense. In the other days—the days at the club —we talked of ourselves, but that was before be learned that history was pot fiction, bus fact, and that if ever we did leave this world, the present social structure would go stretching on indefinite: 1y and nos come tumbling about the heads of those who were unfortunate enough to be left behind. There was one thing that worried us a good deal theo, and even now, when there is plenty of time between the lighting of our cigars and the hour for starting for the y, we ocoasionally discuss it mildly. Is a trifling matter of who is going to save our conntry and effect a compromise with she Trus«t Senators jnss before they take our lass dollar. Of course, we admis that some thing is going to save our counotry-—there seems to be a saving factor in our natioual makeup that always