NOVEMBER 12.
THE BRAKEMAN AT CHURCH.
After asking the Brakeman if he had been to each of the leading churches, the querist finally suggested the Baptists. "Ah, ha!" he shouted. "Now you're on the Shore Line! River Road, eh? Beautiful curves, lines of grace at every bend and sweep of the river; all steel rail and rock ballast; single track, and not a siding from the round-house to the terminus. Takes a heap of water to run it through; double tanks at every station, and there isn't an engine in the shops that can run a mile or pull a pound with less than two gauges. ∗ ∗ ∗ And yesterday morning, when the conductor came around taking up fares with a little basket punch, I didn't ask him to pass me; I paid my fare like a little Jonah—twenty-five cents for a ninety-minute run, with a concert by the passengers thrown in."
ROBERT J. BURDETTE,
Pastor Emeritus Temple Baptist Church, Los Angeles.
NOVEMBER 13.
Directly opposite sat a Chinese dignitary richly apparrelled, serene, bland, bearing with courteous equanimity flirtatious overtures of an unattached blonde woman at his left, and the pert coquetry of a young girl at the other side. The mother of the girl ventured meek, unheeded remonstrances between mouthfuls of crab salad. ∗ ∗ ∗
"But you have not answered my question," he reminded her. "Do you believe in affinities?"
"I think that I do," hesitatingly.
"You are not certain?"