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Show ONE OF THE MYSTERIES. Something About Sound That Cannot Be rtnderetood. "I am an old man," he said slowly to a Memphis Appeal-Avalanche reporter, "and I ve lived a long time longer than most men who have lived as long as I have, for there's mighty little in this world that I oughtn't to know that I don't know; but there is one thing I don't know, and I've been trying to learn it for fifty years, more or less." "What's that?" Interrupted Gamaliel, who is but a beginner. "Well, my son, it's this: I don't know, and I don't believe I ever shall, why it is that when a man gets home at 3 o'clock in the morning and he finds he hasn't his night key in his pocket he can ring the bell and thump the door and throw pebbles up against the windows and disturb the whole neighborhood, and keep on doing it for three-quarters of an hour or more, before he wakes anybody in the house; but if he gets there at the same time and has his night key in his pqeket, and slips it into the lock as still 'as a mouse, and turns it without a creak, and shuts the door as softly as the dew falls, and creeps upstairs In his sock feet as stealthily as a cat, and gets into his room as noise-1 noise-1 y a", the stars go to their rest, he not only wakes up his wife, but the next morning everybody In the house is asking hhn what he means by coming in at that hour of the night, and if he mii-t come in then, why doesn't he make less racket and not disturb the whole country." The old man In an excess of emotion gasped once or twice and began to mop his brow. : "That's what I don't know, young man," he went on, "and I'd like to live until you have lived as long as I have, to see if you can find out, but I don't really believe you ever will." "I'll try," briefly remarked Gamaliel, and those who know Gamaliel have a sublime confidence that he has made a noble beoinnintr. |