hand it down raw to our offspring is a crime against nature. And we should not only guard them against learning anything from us, but we should prevent them from any outside interference. If we can only stop teaching our children, we may then rightfully consider that a great step in our own training has taken place. The child, left alone, will then teach himself. But this is an ideal we may never hope actually to reach.

WHEN YOUR BOY COMES HOME FROM College.

EVEN to those of us who have been tempered, more or less, by the wisdom of experience, the consciousness of our own inferiority is not always present. Absorbed in matters which seem to us of some importance, we forget ourselves, and go on for long periods unmindful of our shortcomings.

It is always well, therefore, that you, sir, should have your boy come home from college occasionally, if only to wake you up and give you that tone of humility that only a supreme event of this kind can inculcate.

More or less dimly, perhaps, you are prepared for the worst. And yet there are always some calamities that never can be fully realized until they are well upon us. You expected, no doubt, that he would evince a certain superiority. With goodnatured condescension you were ready to tolerate his kindly patronage and deal with it as gently as may be. But in a short time you are made to realize, alas! that the tables have been turned upon you. Whatever of kindly consideration, of gentle toleration, there is between you, is all on his side. It is he, after all, who is prepared to make things easier for you. He listens to your remarks with kindly sympathy. He bears with you, and in a very short time you begin to perceive that you are on the defensive.

There are certain axioms of advice which you had thought to thrust upon him. You discover, however, that long ago he has discounted them. These matters have all been disposed of mathematically, scientifically and classically. The Greeks confront you. Numbers disconcert you. Philosophy baffles you. The last word has been said.

Among all the vicissitudes of life, however, there has always been one to whom you could go and glean comfort-one who believes in you, looks up to you, respects you. And you

go to his mother now in the full confidence of long habit.

In a fine flush of resentment you impart to her the truth. Your boy is a prig. It has all been a mistake. If he had gone to work when he was fifteen, why, now he might be something at least bearable.

But his mother, for the first time, stares at you coldly. Her heart is on the other side.

In despair you go off by yourself, in one of those moments in which a man realizes that no one can help him. You shut your study door; you bow your head in secret shame.

And then there is a timid knock. Your boy stands before you. His face is pale. There is a paper in his hands. It is long and formidable, and you suddenly feel your own importance. You tower above him in wrath. His eye quails. And as you gather him once more by the collar in the old familiar way, you exclaim in a voice of thunder:

"Boy! how much do you owe?"

NO CROWD.

We are but lingerers in life's Union Square.
Sleeping and waking, reading, talking rot.
Some rush along, while others bench their care,
And some are on the square and some are not.

ESCULAPIUS UP TO DATE.

WHEN Nature first began to rear up the destructive forces, so

that man would not increase too rapidly upon the face of the earth, she found that, after all her planning, man had gotten the best of her, and would multiply more than was good for him. Doctors were then added, and since this happy thought we have done very well.

It is estimated that nineteen out of every twenty "cases" would recover naturally if left to themselves, but medical science has made such vast strides that only about one case in every twenty has a chance.

There are various different kinds of doctors who prey upon human life, but they are easily classified.

The family doctor is perhaps the best known. His ignorance is not specialized, but extends to all parts of the human anatomy. He comes usually about four or five hours after he is needed, feels of your pulse, looks at your tongue, probes your diaphragm for appendicitis, writes in a mortified language on a printed slip, and goes away, with the remark that you will be all right in a day or so, or that you may possibly live three months, as the case may be. If you are young and ignorant, you are either frightened to death or suffused with a gentle glow of convalescence, in accordance with what you have been told. But if you are an old stager, you roll over in bed, call for a stiff drink of whiskey, throw the prescription out of the window, and sweat it out. A Family Doctor is nothing but a personified habit. You pay him to come and tell you there is no danger, and if he thinks there is, you drop him and move up one. You began at the foot of the class, and now you rush off and consult a specialist.

A Specialist is a man who lives in town, either on the first floor of a smart apartment house, or in a home of his own. When he lives in an apartment house you pay him fifteen dollars to

shake hands with him, but when he lives in his own home you place a first mortgage on all the property in your wife's name. As you enter his office you see a china closet full of glittering instruments, which you immediately begin to feel entering your system at various points. Your eye lights then upon a nickel-plated fountain of running water, which you surmise is to wash away all evidences of the crime. You feel at once that you are in no condition to cope with this array of science. You are all run down anyway, and a brave man would quake. But summoning up what little courage is left, you tell him what the other doctors have. thought was the matter with you, and he shakes his head dubiously. Then he raises his hand warningly, and tells you to desist. He doesn't want to know what the other doctors thought.

Why should anyone with such a fund of ignorance in himself wish to have it encroached upon? You don't make this remark to yourself then, but you do about six months later.

You are requested to disrobe. You do so, feeling pale all over and hoping he may not notice it, and he pounds you gently with a hammer, peeks in between your ribs, listens at the door of your heart for murmurs, and flashes a dark lantern through your alimentary canal. By this time you are frightened to death. You feel that all hope is lost. You see a long funeral procession winding its slow way along. You are playing the leading part in it. You can feel the lavender satin, and that awful stillness, like a reunion of the Metropolitan Club. It is all over. After all, what difference does it make? Suddenly you awake from your vision, and your friend the Specialist taps you on the shoulder and says that if you will stop smoking, drinking, sitting up late nights, leave your business, and come and live in his office for six months or a year and give him all you've got, there is a faint chance that you may get well. And if you don't? Well, there is that three months' limit.

You leave him cordially and tell him you will let him know.

Then you go to some dark corner and figure out on the back of an old envelope just how much it will cost, with the three months. staring you in the face. There is that funeral procession again. Never mind. A short life and a merry one. You resolve to die.

Six months later, as you meet your friend, the Specialist, on the avenue unexpectedly, and bow pleasantly, you feel a secret sense of shame to think that he has caught you alive.

OPERATIONS.

AN operation is a business transaction in which the party of the first part agrees to lay down his life and all his ready cash to enable the party of the second part to keep up his end in the society in which it has pleased God to place him.

The party of the second part is the operator. The party of the first part is the one operated upon, or the victim.

Operations are capital or minor. When minor, a second or even third is necessary; but when capital, the estate passes at once into the hands of the chief surgeon.

In these days those who desire to be operated on should form in line at any hospital door. Those who desire not to be should hasten to the backwoods.

All that is necessary to an operation is a diagnosis, a complete set of instruments and a bank account. A diagnosis is a method of preparing the patient for death sanctioned by law.

An operation is a process in which the patient stands for everything. He pays for the surgeon's mistake either with his life or spot cash, as the case may be.

To be blasé is to achieve all the things that are not worth living for.