We are all queer, only some of us are queerer than the rest of us. The Quakeress said, "All are queer save John and me and John he's just a wee bit queer.'

There never was a locality yet but what had its quaint characters and Lake Stevens was no exception. Character study would be interesting if we had time to stop for it but we live so fast that the habit of observing carefully the dispositions of our fellow creatures is a rare one. Every town has its people who feel that they have acquired their full character and that they have nothing further to do in life but to carry it to their graves without losing or adding one iota to it -Holmes writes in "The Professor at the Breakfast Table," "We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for

them, or use anything but dictionary-words are admirable subjects for biographies. But we don't care most for those flat pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium."

Any good sailing weather day at Lake Stevens you will see the old sea captain out sailing in his boat. Sailing for many years on the oceans he could not bear to end his days away from the sound of the water. He was like the rhyme in "St. Nicholas:"

66

There was an old woman named Moore
Who was so used to the roar near the shore
That she could not sleep

Unless some one would keep apounding away

on the door."

So he had bought this place on Lake Stevens, cleared the land and built a house as near like a ship as he could make it. I saw the clearing being made and supposed of course there was a woman there, so I rowed over one day to welcome her. A good dock had already been built so we ran up alongside and tied. "Ahoy there!" we cried and a stentorian “Aye, aye" came from within the house.

After walking around the premises and admiring the many shrubs and ornamental trees, which had already been put out, and the evergreen trees left in their natural state, our host suddenly appeared at the bulkhead of the cabin, a human bulkhead of startling solidity, an extremely salt-looking man indeed. Boyd drew nearer to me and whispered, "The Ancient Mar

iner."-The glittering eye was there all right but bloodshot and gleaming out from white, shaggy eyebrows and the tanned, weather beaten face,-they had the appearance of small suns trying to shine through a Puget Sound fog. His face had the look of an overripe peach or plum that hangs too late unpicked. The skin is so lined and wrinkled it has the appearance of waves on an ocean when the wind is stilled, and the expression was a far-away one as if he saw a distant sail upon the horizon. There seemed no near-vision. His marine blue suit flapped around his body as if he were treading the deck with a stiff northwester blowing. His large white shirt collar was waving around his ears like a foretop gallant sail. His shaggy hair seemed to be seeking all the points of the compass at once. At sight of me, a woman, not the ghost of a smile or a welcome broke the stolid taciturnity of his visage. It might have been a large Gargoyle set as the figure head on a ship as far as any change of expression went. His brushy eyebrows came down so heavily near his rubicund nose that it was like a thunder-cloud settling on a mountain peak. I learned afterwards that of all things in the world he hated it was a woman, owing to an unfortunate love affair in his youth; but as usual it was my little boy that proved to be my salvation. For catching sight of the lad his face cleared like a murky morning giving way to a sunny noon, his eyebrows resumed their normal place and straightened out. His foggy eyes cleared and a four-cornered smile ap