"Art h.e.l.l!" they said.

x.x.xIX

OFFSPRING

Egotism and Carnality married and gave birth to a child.

They named it Love.

XL

V. C.

The child, entering the dark room at night, hummed a tune to hide his fear and frightened a mouse who was playing in a far corner. The mouse ran blindly under the child's foot and the child, believing the mouse was his grandmother's ball of wool, gave it a vigorous kick and killed it.

XLI

BUT--

"But----" interposed the young woman.

A gleam came into the eyes of the man who coveted and who had long and vainly laid subtle siege against her.

He appreciated now that it was merely a matter of time.

XLII

CONJECTURE

The pretty girl looked up at the stars, wondering....

The stars looked down at the pretty girl, wondering....

XLIII

THE JUDGMENT OF SOLOMON

To his court spake Solomon: "I seek another woman for wife. But I have at length learned wisdom in these matters. So go you bring before me fifty or more you deem most suitable. And from these I shall select with deliberation and care and wisdom that one that will best be fitted for my throne-side and the bearing of children." And they went forth into the kingdom and brought before Solomon women who were strong and women who were wise and women who were gentle and women who were serious with the grave problems of life--the pick of the women of all the great kingdom who best were suited to the king.... Solomon, weighing studiously the merits of each and pondering the one whom he might most appropriately take unto him as best fitted for wife and mother, suddenly caught sight, on the far edge of the crowd, of a little flower girl with a cunning dimple in her ear....

XLIV

THE SUPERNATURAL

"What is my name?" asked August Kraut of the Ouija board, as his hands guided the apparatus. .h.i.ther and thither.

"August Kraut," responded the Ouija board.

XLV

CURIOSITY

A young woman, not content with delighting in the exquisite beauty of a magnolia bloom at a distance, came close to it and, coming close, touched it to make certain of its reality and, touching it, turned its fragile white petals to an ugly brown.

A young woman decided to a.n.a.lyze her lover's affections....

XLVI

THE MIRROR

In a great lonely house on a far lonely roadway lived in seclusion among her waxen flowers and cracking walls and faded relics of a far yesterday, a hateful and withered and bitter old woman. To the lonely house on the lonely roadway came one day out of the world to live with the old woman her young and beautiful and very lovely granddaughter. And one day--it was not so long afterward--the very lovely girl, rummaging about the great house, came upon a tall mirror, the mirror that the withered and bitter old woman had long been wont to use and that for all these many lonely years had seen and reflected naught but acrimony and decay and despair and ugliness. And the very lovely girl looked into the mirror--and suddenly cried out. For what the mirror reflected was not her very lovely self, but something hateful and withered and bitter....

XLVII

PATRIA