CONTENTS The Sorrows of the Unemployed and the Danger of Changing Harold from Bill to Sorrowful Bill and the Sour Grapes and Sympathetic Sep What the College Incubator Did for One Modest Lambkin The Subordinate Who Saw a Great Light Rugged Hiram and Hiram s Giddy Page 1 10 21 31 Wife 34 The Lecture Tickets That Were Bought but Never Used The Escape of Arthur and the Salvation of Herbert v 44 54 CONTENTS The Up-to-Date Atlas Who Carried the Page World on His Shoulders 64 Hazel s Two Husbands and What Be came of Them 74 The Galley Slave Who Was Just About To but Never Did 84 The Willing Collegian Who Was Hunt ing for a Foothold 93 The Town Lover or, How the Lady- Killer Blew Up in the Stretch 104 The Attempt to Spruce Up the Family and Give It a Standing The Unhappy Financier and the Discon 114 tented Rube 123 The Thoughtful Wife Who Tried to Give Henry a Restful Vacation 135 The Coming-Out Girl and a Few of Her Keen Guesses 146 vi CONTENTS Page The Soft Thing, and Some of the Things That Were Done to Him 156 The Cub Lover, the Superior Dad, and the Lady Who Told the Truth 166 The Honest Effort to Go the Distance and Then the Melancholy Fluke 176 The Unsympathetic Parent Who Turned Down Three Different Varieties 186 The Ninety-Pound Knight-Errant and His Lady Fair The Fearsome Feud Between the First Families 193 197 The Sorrows of the Unemployed and the Danger of Changing from Bill to Harold. IN a certain Western Town that started out with the Expectation of hurting Chicago, there was an Early Settler who tried to build a Fence around the Corporation. He cabbaged all the Corner Lots and nailed the Main Street Frontage and then held on like a Summer Cold. He was a grisly old Badger who wore one Suit theYear round, with a Pair of box-toed Boots, a woollen Hat, and a Moss-A gate Col lar-Button. While he was doing Business at per cent, a Month, and holding out on the Assessor and bilking the Grangers for Rail way franchises, he was regarded as a Wolf. After he changed his address to Over There, the Heirs erected something that look ed like the Bunker Hill Monument, and then they had him done in Oil by a Celebrated Artist. The Artist fixed his Hair for Him and gave him a neat Stand-Up Collar such as no one could have put on to the Old Man with