MY FAVORITE STORIES

fu lack Dionnc

Age not guaranteed-Some I have told for 2O Y€ors-Some less.

He Even Knew Which One

You can't get away from the primeval interest of man in woman. Or in a particular woman. These things are unexplainable.

Take the case of the man who had a tragedy in his young married life, and with hatred of all women in his heart, and the desire never to see one of them again, or to allow his only son to grow to fall into their clutches, he carried the baby boy away into the deepest fastnesses of the mountains, and there lived the life of a hermit, and raised the child to manhood without ever permitting him to see or hear of such a thing as a woman. That there was any other sex was utterly unknown to the Youth.

And, as the story goes, thp boy grew to young manhood in this condition. , But one day as he and his father were following a mountain stream, they came suddenly upon a party of qampers gathered around a picnic table, and in the crowd were three young ladies. At them the mountain' bred youth stared in open amazement. But it was only a momentary glimpse, for the father grasped his son and jerked him back into the thicket, and hurried him away from the sex that he had cherished only in his hatred'

And then a change came over the youth. His appetite left him. His spirits, always high before, fell lower and lower. He fairly pined away. In answer to his question, when he was so unceremoniously jerked backward from the sight of the strange camping party, he had been told that those three interesting looking people were "Devils," and was warned never to speak or think of them again. But his condition became so alarming that his father was forced to notice it, and to inquire about it. The boy replied that there was something on his mind that day or night he could not rid himself of, something of which he had been forbidden to speak, which clung to him through all his sleeping and waking hours. Much concerned the father said: "My son, your health and happiness is very dear to me. Speak, I command you, and tell me, what is this spectre that is so tremendously ,upon your mind?"

And the boy answered: "ft's that tallest Devil,'father, that tallest Devil."

For even in that one fleeting glimpse he had had of the three, he had made his selection.