After two years of glory the social light of Acre Hill went out.  The Acre Hill Land Improvement Company retired from the business.  All its lots were sold, and, of course, there was no further need for the services of Jocular Jimson Jones.  His efforts were crowned with success.  His mission was accomplished, but he moved away—­I think regretfully, for, after all, he had found the Acre Hill people a most likable lot—­but it was inevitable that, there being no more fish to catch, the anglers needed no bait, and Jocular Jimson had to go.  Where he has gone to there is no one who knows.  He has disappeared wholly, even in the metropolis, and, most unfortunately for Acre Hill, with Jocular Jimson Jones have departed also all its social glories.  None of the elect come to its dances any more.  The amateur thespians of the exclusive set no longer play on the stage of its club-house, and it was only last week that Mrs. John Jacob Wintergreen passed Mr. Scraggs on the street with a cold glare of unrecognition.

Possibly when Acre Hill reads this it will understand, possibly not.

Dumfries Corners people understood it right along, but then they always were a most suspicious lot, and fond of an amusing spectacle that cost them nothing.

THE STRANGE MISADVENTURES OF AN ORGAN

Carson was a philosopher, and on the whole it was a great blessing that he was so.  No man needed to be possessor of a philosophical temperament more than he, for, in addition to being a resident of Dumfries Corners, Carson had other troubles which, to an excitable nature, would have made life a prolonged period of misery.  He was the sort of a man to whom irritating misfortunes of the mosquito order have a way of coming.  To some of us it seemed as if a spiteful Nature took pleasure in pelting Carson with petty annoyances, none of them large enough to excite compassion, many of them of a sort to provoke a quiet smile.  Of all the dogs in the neighborhood it was always his dog that got run into the pound, although it was equally true that Carson’s dog was one of the few that were properly licensed.  If he bought a new horse something would happen to it before a week had elapsed; and how his coachman once ripped off the top of his depot wagon by driving it under a loose telephone wire is still one of the stories of the vicinity in which he lives.  Anything out of the way in the shape of trouble seemed to choose the Carson household for experimental purposes.  He was the medium by which new varieties of irritations were introduced to an ungrateful world, but such was his nature that, given the companionship of Herbert Spencer and a cigar, he could be absolutely counted on not to murmur.

This disposition to accept the trials and tribulations which came upon him without a passionate outburst was not by any means due to amiability.  Carson was of too strong a character to be continually amiable.  He merely exercised his philosophy in meeting trouble.  He boiled within, but presented a calm, unruffled front to the world, simply because to do otherwise would involve an expenditure of nervous force which he did not consider to be worth while.