Arizona republican., 1903-11-24
OVERHEARD CONVERSATIONS
Broken Ends of Talk Most TantaIizins
 to the Passer-by.

Why it is that the legitimate con- versation of our associates, to which we have hardened from the beginning, and which we are predestined to follow slackly to the end, should so often fail to interest us, whereas the interrupted remarks we overhear. and which were never meant for our ears, fill us with the liveliest curiosity and concern |? The breaking off of a serial story is a trial to most mems minds; but we know that another month will bring another number: the inevitable break ing off of a causerie in which we have TO share fills us with a sense of hope less and irremediable loss. I once overheard an old English lady say with slow emphasis to 2 friend, Ut is just the kind of a book you wouldn't want to give to your dressmaker''- and for fifteen years l have speculated in vain as to what that volume was. Apart from the manifest indiscretion of giving any book to ones dress maker, and thus withdrawing her at tention from ones clothes, the only appropriate literature I can think Of is the instructive history of Ananis and Sapphira, and that has ceased to charm.
 A man waiting patiently at the glove counter of a New York department store heard one young shop woman say to another as she handed down box of gloves, Maria told him down. right she'd have nothing more to do with him; and she called him a poison faced adder, he gripped her in the waltz that scandalous."
 This was all Customers clamored for attention, and the confidence ceas- ed at this point But the force and richness of the language, the Iiveiiness Of the allusiOn, captivated the hearers soul. He confessed that, for years af- forwards, when he was waltzing with decorous reluctance under the com polling eye of his hostess, memories otN Maria's partner would assail him. and he would find himself envying the adder in the mysterious nature of his enthusiasm.
 It sometimes happens that fortune favors us beyond our deserts or our desires and the conversation to which we have no right to listen, but which we cannot help hearing, goes on as tranquilly in railway carriage or on a steamer deck, as though we were not in close and helpless proximity. English travellers are particularly in- different to their surroundings. In one hour on the Como boat, I have learned a whole family history, full of pure do- mestic features. How Dan had been sent to school at Lausanne, because he was so troublesome, and the school so cheap; and how Connie Ca sister-in- law, l thinO made the Castle" d most unpleasant place of residence: and how Laura with her three children came to stay a week, just when Granny was dying, which was, to say the least, inconvenient; and how the trouble between Harold and his wife lay entirely in the brining up of the children. At this point the details be- came too intimate for repetition. though there was no question of with holding them from my ears. I felt like a fellow countryman, who once trav- eied from Bordeaux to Paris in the company of young English woman, her sister, nurse and child. "I entered that railway carriage" he said, "an American bachelor I left it capable of running a day nursery. an infant school, or a mothers congress-"