Hop O' My Thumb was somewhat startled at Barclay's first words, and a nervous movement of the legs placed him some distance from the Interviewer. He had forgotten to remove the seven-league boots. Another nervous twitch, however, brought him back to Barclay's side in time to hear his last words. Barclay wondered at this sudden disappearance and equally sudden reappearance of his host, but he was too well bred to express any surprise. He merely made a mental note of it for the treatise on the Eccentricities of Genius, which he was preparing for a future number of the "Pacific Monthly."

"We want to hear about this Ogre business, you know-and-" here Barclay faltered ever so slightly. He was a Bostonian, and he was proud of it, but he did not want to appear too proud. With much effort he finished his sentence, how

ever. "And how you were befriended by

the the beans." Barclay blushed.

Hop O' My Thumb looked at him silently and then laughed. He was amused at the Interviewer's embarrassment, and made no effort to conceal it.

"All right," he said; "where do you want me to begin?"

Might begin with your poor but honest parents," suggested Barclay, elevating his eyebrows.

A smile betrayed that Hop O' My Thumb possessed a sense of humor. He had read the life of his neighbor John the Slayer of Ogres, in the preceding number of the "Decade," and he appreciated Barclay's satirical allusion to the opening chapters of his rival's life.

"Well," he replied sadly, "I had 'em." "Seventeen children, all girls except the boys, I suppose," Barclay cut in.

"Yes, seventeen, and all girls except the boys," repeated Hop O' My Thumb, accepting Barclay's flippant query as fact. It was not fact, but then Hop O' thought that if Barclay was satisfied he ought to be; and then, too, Barclay knew just what the readers of the "Decade" wanted, while he did not.

66

'Hop O' My Thumb," wrote Barclay, "was the son of poor but honest parents. There were seventeen children in the family, all of whom were girls except by the way, how many brothers had you?" he asked, laying down his pen.

"Seventeen, I think you said," replied Hop O' My Thumb, throwing his left leg across his right knee.

Oh, come now!" ejaculated Barclay, a little out of patience. He did not like to be balked so early in the interview, and he could not help feeling that perhaps

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Hop O' My Thumb was making game of him. "You just said they were all girls except the boys."

"Well," replied Hop O' My Thumb, "so they were. But we were all excep

tions in my family. It was an exceptional family, you know."

"Very well," returned Barclay, with a comical look of resignation in his face. "Go on and tell me all about it. You were the biggest of the lot, I presume," he added sarcastically.

"I think, Mr. Williams," replied Hop O' with a quiet dignity, "that if you intend to make this a satirical article you would do better to leave me out of it."

"Oh no," said the Interviewer, unabashed; "a biography of Hop O' My Thumb with you left out would be like Boston deprived of the east wind."

"Hop O' My Thumb," wrote Barclay, was so diminutive in stature that his progenitors conferred upon him the appellation by which he is now so generally and popularly known. But Nature, as if regretting the exigencies which had com