mind, the Judge had gone to the wrong corner and carefully anointed himself with a good quality of writing ink. Imagination had done the rest, and the ink had really been of quite as much service to him as the liniment could have been, though of course the marks of the strange treatment remained for some time. Judge Mason was very good natured and always ready to help anybody he saw in trouble. He was also somewhat absentminded, at times. He once observed a lady sitting opposite to him on the cars, with two children and so many packages that she was obliged to put one large package on the seat in front of her. He had not seen her get on, and was perfectly sure that the package in question was too heavy for her to carry. Finally he saw the woman get ready to leave the train, and made up his mind that if the brakeman did not wait on her, he would volunteer his services to lift the package off. The woman, however, forgot the big package altogether, and left the car before the Judge could call her attention to it. But, as the Judge would say of himself, he was a man of readiness in emergencies, and a little thing like that
was not enough to balk his determination to assist a fellow-creature and save trouble and uneasiness. So he jumped across the aisle of the car, seized the bundle as the train began to move, hastily raised the window, and threw the big package out at the woman's feet upon the platform. Then he sank back in his seat, full of the calm consciousness of a duty and a kindness well done. His tranquil state of mind, however, was not destined to last long. A large and testy-looking gentleman appeared in a few moments from the smoking-car ahead and walked to the seat where the big package had been. The moment he noted its ab sence he began to make remarks. The Judge deemed it expedient to plead guilty before any one else in the car got a chance to turn state's evidence. It had been, it appeared, a purely gratuitous and unfounded assumption on his part that the big package belonged to the woman, and his hasty action, instead of being a means of saving trouble to her, caused a good deal to himself, as well as to the testy gentleman, who re ceived his profuse apologies rather ungra ciously, though he finally recovered his package.
