Ever played chess when you have been love-making ? M'yes.it is helpful, is it not? Times come over you when you wish the table between you at the bot tom of the sea, hut then there are the re deeming features of an occasional touch of your opponent's fingers. And that sends a thrill through you, doesn't it P

It is a quaint thing how, when you want to talk you can't, isn't it ? Have you ever noticed it ? I had opportuni ties -Oh ! such golden opportunities— of saying all sorts of veiled sweet things to the woman I dared not speak openly to, and yet I never said them, When by myself again, I would wonder why on earth I had not said so-and-so when she had said that-and-the-other. I was not generally considered lacking in the art of small talk. But Sadie, somehow, seemed to make me dumb. Talk about a man forgetting his part on the stage and drying up. No man ever dried up so in continently as I did. . And the worst of it was, I seemed to feel that she wanted me to speak my thoughts, I felt certain of it. She—or I thought so—plainly urged me to do so. The moment I spoke she stopped playing and paid every attention to what I was Baying. But it did not help me, Not a tiny Bcrap. No actor ever rehearsed a part as earnestly as, in the solitude of my chamber, I would reheaise things to say tht following day. And once, when the morrow came, and the chessmen were being placed, I sum moned up courage, and got as far as : " Do you know, Miss Irving, I should like to tell you—" And that was all. Nothing more. She stopped placing the men, rested her el bows on the table and her chin on her hands, and, fixing me with her eyes, Baid: " Yes. Mr. Farr-What ?"

And there I sat the other side of the table, absolutely dried up. I had not a word to say for myself. A more flabber gasted ass never existed. It was painful to me afterwards, to think what an ex hibition of crass idiocy I must have given.
