* * * * *

Agamemnon has lost his new silk umbrella.  Yet the case was marked with his name in full, and the street address and the town.  Of course he left the case at home, going out in the rain.  He might have carried it with the address in his pocket, yet this would not have helped after losing the umbrella.  Why not have a pocket for the case in the umbrella?

* * * * *

In shaking the dust from a dress, walk slowly backwards.  This prevents the dust from falling directly on the dress again.

* * * * *

On Carving Duck.—­It is singular that I can never get so much off the breast as other people do.

Perhaps I have it set on wrong side up.

* * * * *

I wonder why they never have catalogues for libraries arranged from the last letter of the name instead of the first.

There is our Italian teacher whose name ends with a “j,” which I should remember much easier than the first letter, being so odd.

* * * * *

I cannot understand why a man should want to marry his wife’s deceased sister.  If she is dead, indeed, how can he?  And if he has a wife, how wrong!  I am very glad there is a law against it.

* * * * *

It is well, in prosperity, to be brought up as though you were living in adversity; then, if you have to go back to adversity, it is all the same.

On the other hand, it might be as well, in adversity, to act as though you were living in prosperity; otherwise, you would seem to lose the prosperity either way.

* * * * *

Solomon John has invented a new extinguisher.  It is to represent a Turk smoking a pipe, which is to be hollow, and lets the smoke out.  A very pretty idea!

* * * * *

A bee came stumbling into my room this morning, as it has done every spring since we moved here,—­perhaps not the same bee.  I think there must have been a family bee-line across this place before ever a house was built here, and the bees are trying for it every year.

Perhaps we ought to cut a window opposite.

There’s room enough in the world for me and thee; go thou and trouble some one else,—­as the man said when he put the fly out of the window.

* * * * *

Ann Maria thinks it would be better to fix upon a subject first; but then she has never yet written a paper herself, so she does not realize that you have to have some thoughts before you can write them.  She should think, she says, that I would write about something that I see.  But of what use is it for me to write about what everybody is seeing, as long as they can see it as well as I do?

* * * * *

The paper about emergencies read last week was one of the best I ever heard; but, of course, it would not be worth while for me to write the same, even if I knew enough.