[Illustration:  He was further aided by the breaks of the game.]

Before an enthusiastic and notable gathering, young Lester J. Dimmik, age three, put to rout his younger brother, Carl Withney Dimmik, Jr., age two, in their matutinal contest to see which can dispose of his Wheatena first.  In the early stages of the match, it began to look as if the bantamweight would win in a walk, owing to his trick of throwing spoonfuls of the breakfast food over his shoulder and under the tray of his high-chair.  The referees soon put a stop to this, however, and specified that the Wheatena must be placed in the mouth.  This cramped Dimmick Junior’s form and it soon became impossible for him to locate his mouth at all.  At this point, young Lester took the lead, which he maintained until he crossed the line an easy winner.  As a reward he was relieved of the necessity of eating another dish of Wheatena.

* * * * *

Stephen L. Agnew was the lucky guest in the home of Orrin F. McNeal this week-end, beating out Lee Stable for first chance at the bath-tub on Sunday morning.  Both contestants came out of their bed rooms at the same time, but Agnew’s room being nearer the bath-room, he made the distance down the hall in two seconds quicker time than his somewhat heavier opponent, and was further aided by the breaks of the game when Stable dropped his sponge half-way down the straightaway.  Agnew’s time in the bath-room was 1 hr. and 25 minutes.

XV

READING THE FUNNIES ALOUD

One of the minor enjoyable features of having children is the necessity of reading aloud to them the colored comic sections in the Sunday papers.

And no matter how good your intentions may have been at first to keep the things out of the house (the comic sections, not the children) sooner or later there comes a Sunday when you find that your little boy has, in some underground fashion, learned of the raucous existence of Simon Simp or the Breakback Babies, and is demanding the current installment with a fervor which will not be denied.

Sunday morning in our house has now become a time for low subterfuge on the part of Doris and me in our attempts to be somewhere else when Junior appears dragging the “funnies” (a loathsome term in itself) to be read to him.  I make believe that the furnace looks as if it might fall apart at any minute if it is not watched closely, and Doris calls from upstairs that she may be some time over the weekly accounts.

But sooner or later Junior ferrets one of us out and presents himself beaming. “Now will you read me the ’funnies’?” is the dread sentence which opens the siege.  It then becomes a rather ill-natured contest between Doris and me to see which can pick the more bearable pages to read, leaving the interminable ones, containing great balloons pregnant with words, for the other.