The saleslady showed her teeth and answered him in a low, rumbling voice, and the man went away.

Then came an old lady who said, “I bought some organdie dress goods for a shirt-waist last Tuesday and I would like to exchange them for a music box for my daughter’s little boy, Freddie, if you please!”

The saleslady again showed her teeth and the old lady ducked for cover.

After about fifty people had rushed up to the saleslady and then rushed away again, I went over and spoke to her.

“I am looking,” I said, “for a birthday present for my wife.  I want to get something that will give her a great amount of pleasure and which I can use later on as a pipe cleaner or a pair of suspenders!”

The saleslady fainted, so I moved over.

At another counter another young lady said to me, “Have you been waited on?”

“No,” I replied; “I have been stepped on, sat on and walked on, but I have not yet been waited on.”

“What do you wish?” inquired the young woman.

“I am looking for a birthday present for my wife,” I said.  “I want to buy her something that will bring great joy to her heart and which I might use afterwards as a pair of slippers or a shaving mug.”

The young lady caught me with her dreamy eyes and held me up against the wall.

“You,” she screamed; “you complete a total of 23,493 people who have been in this department store to-day without knowing what they are doing here, and I refuse to be a human encyclopaedia for the sake of eight dollars a week.  On your way for yours!”

I began to apologize, but she reached down under the counter and pulled out a club.

“This,” she said, with a wild look in her side lamps; “this is the happy summer season, but, nevertheless, the next guy that leaves his brains at home and tries to make me tell him what is a good birthday present for his wife will get a bitter swipe across the forehead!”

It was up to me, so I went home without a present.

JOHN HENRY ON AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHY

Peaches, my wife, acquired the amateur photography bug last week, and it was really surprising how quickly she laid the foundation of a domestic Rogue’s Gallery.

She bought a camera and went after everybody and everything in the neighborhood.

She took about eight million views of our country home before she discovered that the camera wasn’t loaded properly, which was tough on Peaches but good for the bungalow.

Like everything else in this world picture pinching from still life depends entirely on the point of view.

If your point of view is all right it’s an easy matter to make a four dollar dog-house look like the villa of a Wall Street broker at Newport.

Ten minutes after my wife had brought the camera home she had me set up as a statue all over the lawn, and she was snapping at me like a Spitz doggie at a peddler.