"Full length?"
"No; full-length portraits are for soldiers, that we may see their spurs. But the other end of the man is the principal thing with authors," said Thackeray.—London Tit-Bits.
Mr. Gladstone was once guilty of deliberately evading an international regulation at the Franco-Italian frontier. He was carrying for his refreshment a basket of fine grapes, which stringent regulations at the time forbade being taken from one country to the other, on account of phylloxera, an insect that attacks the roots and leaves of the grapevines.
Mr. Gladstone's great brain reviewed the situation; he must obey the law, but he was determined to have the grapes, so he sat down then and there on the railway station bench and—ate them.
Irving Bacheller, the author of "Eben Holden," went a little farther north than usual last summer while on his vacation, and penetrated Newfoundland. He caught a good many fish, but this did not prevent his keeping an eye on the natives. He was particularly impressed by the men who spent the day lounging about the village stores.
"What do you fellows do when you sit around the store like this?" he asked of the crowd arranged in a circle of tilted chairs and empty boxes and maintaining a profound silence.
"Well," drawled one of the oldest, "sometimes we set and think, and then again other times we just set."—Woman's Home Companion.