Robert W. Sneddon.
THE LAUGHING DUCHESS
The optimist, safely outside our own environs, prescribes the old formulas: “Look Around You and Write; Look Within the Human Heart—”
“But, dear sir, where is the story?” Usually it is a “Sir,” and this time it was Felmer Prince. “Look Around You!”
I mocked: “I defy you to find anything more stirring than old Sam Peters, driving a moth-eaten mule to the mill.”
“And you and I,” supplemented Felmer. “The human heart—”
But I retreated behind the gate and barred it upon the “human heart,” retorting that if the organ disturbed me as it did some people I should confine my conversation to “Yes” and “No.”
“You are sufficiently expert in the use of the negative,” said Felmer, switching at a dead brier, and I proceeded: “As for ‘looking within,’ when Martha and I reach the homicidal point I take a walk.”
“How many subscriptions have you gotten for that confounded thing, Enid?” he asked, abruptly. I temporized.
“One can live on very little after the habit is formed.”