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 grass.” I am like Lady Teazle, in a position to show that “there is not one syllable of truth in what the gentleman has told you.” Drops of dew do not cling, tenacious, to the grass. On the contrary, they vanish, surreptitiously, between the clippers of the lawn-mower, abide briefly in the mechanism thereof, climb unknowably up the handle, percolate with incredible celerity through the human system, and presently emerge, as large as life and twice as significant, upon the human brow. I had not mowed twenty square feet of lawn before I was filled with a vast sense of respect for the prowess of Darius Doane. Nothing could have induced me to drive that Juggernaut another foot.

But if this was the lesson taught me by the lawn-mower, how much greater was the moral imparted by the shoe-brushes and the blacking. I do not remember ever having tested my ability in this direction before. A vague impression of the tactics employed by certain