A STUDY OF THE PERIOD,

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 31, 5 February 1910, Page 16

A STUDY OF THE PERIOD,

This is the love story of the typiet and the young author told according to fiction and then according to fact. The sunbeams are dancing on her pretty golden lair as she sits at work with her typewriting ma-chlne in her dingy lodging, and all that. Tap! Tap! Top! go her pretty fingers over the keys, and all that. Presently she stops typing, and for a long time pores over the manuscript on which she Is at work, and all that. Thud! a tear falls on the closely written sheets, and all that. And then the door opens and her heart gives a bang as there enters the young author whom she has longingly awaited, and all that. (The proper, not the fictional, sequel. Girls had better not read any further, really.) Yes, he points .w'th a trembling hand at the manuscript on which she Is engaged all right; and he asks in a thick voice, "Have you done It all right?" That part of it is more or less accord big to sample; but not the rest. The story to which he refers is the story, all right, of an author who proposes to a typist by sending her a tale setting forth such a. method of doing the trick; but she is not such a fool as to take it personally, and she didn't cry over It because she knew it was meant for her. No! She cried over It because the handwriting was so abominable the poor girl couldn't read the beastly thing. And she wasn't longingly awaiting him because she loved him. By no means. She was yearning for lihn because he owed her ninepeuce for tho last thousand words she did for him, and because she thought he had taken off a new Koh-i-noor pencil that was on her desk when he last called. And his hand did not tremble, and his voice was not thick, because of hla love for her. Oh, no! It was because he had been drinking. And though certainly her tones were faltering when she addressed him, this was not because she had tears In her voice, but 'because she had two caramels stuck together In her mouth In one great lump. And they didn't fall Into each, other's arms; and he didn't coll her "my twin eoul"; and the story doesn't end with her saying that all her Ufe she wOll keep the manuscript by which means he proposed to her. Oh, no! Nothing like it. All the falling that was done was when he fell over a chair because he ea.w three instead of one; and all he called her was the slowest typist he'd ever seen; and all she did with his manuscript was to heave it after him when her landlord came up and chucked him •downstairs. Oh, yes, she did I —One of the "Real Stories of Love and Passion," A. S. M. Hutchinson.