"No, he is not authorized to receive the money, and he won't. You must climb out. There's no other way. I tell you, the railway management is about the only thoroughly European thing here--continentally European I mean, not English. It's the continental business in perfection; down fine. Oh, yes, even to the peanut-commerce of weighing baggage."

The train slowed up at his place. As he stepped out he said:

"Yes, you'll like Maryborough. Plenty of intelligence there. It's a charming place--with a hell of a hotel."

Then he was gone. I turned to the other gentleman:

"Is your friend in the ministry?"

The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds.

--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

It was Junior England all the way to Christchurch--in fact, just a garden. And Christchurch is an English town, with an English-park annex, and a winding English brook just like the Avon--and named the Avon; but from a man, not from Shakespeare's river. Its grassy banks are bordered by the stateliest and most impressive weeping willows to be found in the world, I suppose. They continue the line of a great ancestor; they were grown from sprouts of the willow that sheltered Napoleon's grave in St. Helena. It is a settled old community, with all the serenities, the graces, the conveniences, and the comforts of the ideal home-life. If it had an established Church and social inequality it would be England over again with hardly a lack.