A Bachelor's Quarters

They hadn't met .since the old college days, teu years before, and of course the beuedict insisted that the bachelor ehould coine home to dinner with him. "Married the year after I left college, " he said, "aud I have the nicest little home aud the flnest lot of youngsters that you ever saw. I want you to come out and see how uicely I'm fixed. I teil you a man doesn't know what life is uutil he's married." "No?" "Well, I shonld say not. " And so it happened that the bachelor went with the benedict and met the latter's wife and played with hia children aud made himself generally useful and popular until they were all seated at the dinner table. It was over the coffee and cigars, after the benedict's wife had left the table, that the benedict finally suggested : "Pretty comfortably fixed, ain't I, old man? Children, why don't you go into the other room?" "Very nicely, indeed," answered the bachelor, replying to the first question and ignoring the second. "Oh, there's nothinglike home life," went on the benedict. "Willie, stop trying to climb on Mr. Brown's knee. He wants to smoke. Do you know, old man, I laugh when I think of my foolish idea that I knew in those old days what happineBs was. Why, a man doesn't begin to live until - Maggie, put that nutpick back on the table. You'll jab it in your eye the first thing you know. Yes, sir. I actually have to laugh when I think of it. Our idea of contentrnent in those days was to get a pipe and a book and a bottlo of Scotch and lock the door and lie down and - Would you naind moving your coffee cup a little farther back on the table, old man? Tommie's trying to reach it, and my wife would raise my scalp if I should let him break one of her very best cups. That's it. Thank you. As I was saying, we didn't know what ease and contentment was in those days. No single man does. A man has to have a big armchair and his slippers all ready for him and everything sort of restful and quiet bef ore - Now, don 't cry, Mabel. If you didn't want to get hurt, why did you grab the end of my cigar? Tommie, take . her in to her mother. ïhere, Willie, I told you you'd stick that nutpick into your hand if you didn't look out. Run into the other room and ask your mother to put a bandage on it. Let's see, where was I, old man? Oh, yes, I remember now. I was about to say that there's nothing homeftie about a bachelors quarters" - "No, " interrupted the bachelor, witb considerable emphasis, "there isn't. " The benedict couldn't quite see the reason for such au emphatic assertion, but he wisely changed the subject, iust the same.