A Difficult Problem. Green Anna Katharine

her attention.

      “Have you compared this notice,” I pursued, “with such others as you find every day in the papers?”

      “No,” was her eager answer. “Is it not like them all–”

      “Read,” was my quiet interruption. “‘On this day at the Colonnade—’ On what day? The date is usually given in all the bona-fide notices I have seen.”

      “Is it?” she asked, her eyes moist with un-shed tears, opening widely in her astonishment.

      “Look in the papers on your return home and see. Then the print. Observe that the type is identical on both sides of this make-believe clipping, while in fact there is always a perceptible difference between that used in the obituary column and that to be found in the columns devoted to other matter. Notice also,” I continued, holding up the scrap of paper between her and the light, “that the alignment on one side is not exactly parallel with that on the other; a discrepancy which would not exist if both sides had been printed on a newspaper press. These facts lead me to conclude, first, that the effort to match the type exactly was the mistake of a man who tries to do too much; and secondly, that one of the sides at least, presumably that containing the obituary notice, was printed on a hand-press, on the blank side of a piece of galley proof picked up in some newspaper office.”

      “Let me see.” And stretching out her hand with the utmost eagerness, she took the slip and turned it over. Instantly a change took place in her countenance. She sank back in her seat and a blush of manifest confusion suffused her cheeks. “Oh!” she exclaimed, “what will you think of me! I brought this scrap of print into the house myself