"SHE NEVER THINKS"

 This table was a very large old mahogany affair of bygone fashion
with two deep mahogany leaves which had folding props to support
them. In time these props had worked loose in the joints and become
unreliable; so it was only used as a side table for the dessert, and the
leaves kept folded down.
 Now, the table had both its leaves fully opened and on it were
the cedar tubs of hot water and piles of soft towels, and lots of fine
things.
 I was a big healthy fidget, and in the excitement of the story I
must have twisted and turned from one to another as I read and so
churned loose the weak props when, CRASH! down came table,
china, hot water and my bewildered self.
 When my mother returned she was really sorry.
 The beautiful olc china and fine English cut-glass had been brought
over to Virginia by my great-grandmother and had generations of feel-
ing and family association to make of them what no money could ever
replace.
 I was awfully sorry to have grieved my mother. My father had
just left for Washington, as we were in St. Louis for that winter. He
would have accepted my grief as enough lesson ;" but relations"
-that cold family judgment seat- thought I should be "made to
remember" this calamity.
 Did you ever have a pet dog who had to be punished for killing
chickens by tying the dead thing around his neck? do you remember
his sadness, his shame ?
 So I felt, when I was condemned to eat from partly broken plates
and drink from cups without handles until meals became depressing
and unbearable.
 It may have been for only a short time but it seemed forever, to
me, and I certainly never forgot it.
 Jessie Benton Fremont.