(The husband is reading his evening newspaper.  The wife appears, bringing a volume from the Five Foot Shelf.  Tonight it is Darwin’s “Origin of Species.”)

WIFE:  Hurry up and finish that paper.  We’ll never get along in this Darwin if we don’t begin earlier than we did last night.

HUSBAND:  Well, suppose we didn’t get along in it.  That would suit me all right.

WIFE:  If you don’t want me to read it to you, just say so ... (after-thought) if it’s so far over your head, just say so.

HUSBAND:  It’s not over my head at all.  It’s just dull.  Why don’t you read some more out of that Italian novel?

WIFE:  Ugh!  I hate that.  I suppose you’d rather have me read “The Sheik.”

HUSBAND (nastily):  No-I-wouldn’t-rather-have-you-read-"The Sheik.”  Go on ahead with your Darwin.  I’m listening.

WIFE:  It’s not my Darwin.  I simply want to know a little something, that’s all.  Of course, you know everything, so you don’t have to read anything more.

HUSBAND:  Go on, go on.

WIFE:  That last book we read was so far over—­

HUSBAND:  Go on, go on.

WIFE:  (reads in an injured tone one and a half pages on the selective processes of pigeons):  You’re asleep!

HUSBAND:  I am not.  The last words you read were “to this conclusion.”

WIFE:  Yes, well, what were the words before that?

HUSBAND:  How should I know?  I’m not learning the thing to recite somewhere, am I?

WIFE:  Well, it’s very funny that you didn’t notice when I read the last sentence backwards.  And if you weren’t asleep what were you doing with your eyes closed?

HUSBAND:  I got smoke in them and was resting them for a minute.  Haven’t I got a right to rest my eyes a minute?

WIFE:  I suppose it rests your eyes to breathe through your mouth and hold your head way over on one side.

HUSBAND:  Yes it does, and wha’d’yer think of that?

[Illustration:  “If you weren’t asleep what were you doing with your eyes closed?”]

WIFE:  Go on and read your newspaper.  That’s just about your mental speed.

HUSBAND:  I’m perfectly willing to read books in this set if you’d pick any decent ones.

WIFE:  Yes, you are.

HUSBAND:  Wha’d’yer mean “Yes you are”?

WIFE:  Just what I said.

(This goes on for ten minutes and then husband draws a revolver and kills his wife.)

XXVI

WHEN NOT IN ROME, WHY DO AS THE ROMANS DID?

There is a growing sentiment among sign painters that when a sign or notice is to be put up in a public place it should be written in characters that are at least legible, so that, to quote “The Manchester Guardian” (as every one seems to do) “He who runs may read.”

This does not strike one as being an unseemly pandering to popular favor.  The supposition is that the sign is put there to be read, otherwise it would have been turned over to an inmate of the Odd Fellows Home to be engraved on the head of a pin.  And what could be a more fair requirement than that it should be readable?