GATHERED WAISTS!

Andrews’ Bazar says:  “Gathered waists are very much worn.”  If the men would gather the waists carefully they would not be worn so much.  Some men go to work gathering a waist just as they would go to work washing sheep, or raking and binding.  They ought to gather as though it was eggs done up in a funnel-shaped brown paper at a grocery.

CHURCH KENO.

While the most of our traveling men, our commercial tourists, are nice Christian gentlemen, there is occasionally one that is as full of the old Nick as an egg at this time of year is full of malaria.  There was one of them stopped at a country town a few nights ago where there was a church fair.  He is a blonde, good-natured looking, serious talking chap, and having stopped at that town every month for a dozen years, everybody knows him.  He always chips in towards a collection, a wake or a rooster fight, and the town swears by him.

He attended the fair and a jolly little sister of the church, a married lady, took him by the hand and led him through green fields, where the girls sold him ten-cent chances in saw dust dolls, and beside still waters, where a girl sold him sweetened water with a sour stomach, for lemonade, from Rebecca’s well.  The sister finally stood beside him while the deacon was reading off numbers.  They were drawing a quilt, and as the numbers were drawn all were anxious to know who drew it.  Finally, after several numbers were drawn it was announced by the deacon that number nineteen drew the quilt and the little sister turned to the traveling man and said, “My! that is my number.  I have drawn it.  What shall I do?” “Hold up your ticket and shout keno,” said he.

The little deaconess did not stop to think that there might be guile lurking in the traveling man, but being full of joy at drawing the quilt, and ice cream because the traveling man bought it, she rushed into the crowd towards the deacon, holding her number, and shouted so they could hear it all over the house, “Keno!”

[Illustration:  “KENO!” ]

If a bank had burst in the building there couldn’t have been so much astonishment.  The deacon turned pale and looked at the poor little sister as though she had fallen from grace, and all the church people looked sadly at her, while the worldly minded people snickered.  The little woman saw that she had got her foot into something, and she blushed and backed out, and asked the traveling man what “keno” meant.  He said he didn’t know exactly, but he had always seen people, when they won anything at that game, yell “keno.”  She isn’t exactly clear yet what “keno” is, but she says she has sworn off taking advice from pious looking traveling men.  They call her “Little Keno” now.

THE OLD SWEET SONGS.

A Boston girl sings:  “What is home without a mother,” while the old lady is mending her daughter’s stockings.  There is something sweet about those old songs.