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Miss Livingstone was calling on the Fifth Avenue
Woffingtons yesterday afternoon. As she stepped out
of her bottle-green laudaulet to walk up the Woffington
brown-stone portico, a swarm of sparrows from Union
Square chirped and twittered over her head and up
along the eaves. The sparrows were dodging about
after flies and worms — something substantial — while
Miss Livingstone's mind never got beyond her lace
overskirt and the artificials on her Paris hat.

“It's perfectly drefful, Edward!” she observed to
the bell-boy as she shook out her skirts in the hall—
“howible!” Then flopping herself into a blue satin
chair she exclaimed: “I do hate those noisy spaw'ows,
Mrs. Woffington. They'r beastly—perfectly atwocious!”

“But you know they destroy the worms, Miss Livingstone;
they kill millions of 'em—just live on 'em.
Now, wouldn't you rather have the sparrows than the
worms, Miss Livingstone? Wouldn't you?”

“No, I wouldn't, Mrs. Woffington. Just look at my
new brown silk—the nasty, noisy things! I—”

“But worms eat trees and foliage and fruit, Miss
Livingstone. They destroy—”

“They don't eat silk dresses, Mrs. Woffington, and
they don't roost on nine dollar ostrich feathers and

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thirty dollar hats, do they? I'm for the worms, I tell
you, and I don't care who knows it! I hate spaw'ows!”

“Well, I hate worms, I do. I hate—”

Just then Miss Livingstone's brother—a swell member
of the Knickerbocker club — Eugene Augustus
Livingstone, entered, interrupting the sentence, when
both ladies turned on him and exclaimed:

“Oh, Mr. Livingstone, we were discussing sparrows
and worms, and we refer the question to you. Now
answer, which had you rather have — sparrows or
worms?”

“Well, weally I kont say, ladies. Weally, 'pon m'
honor I kont, yeu kneuw—yeu kneuw. I never
had—”

“But which do you think you'd rather have, Mr.
Livingstone? Which—”

“I weally kont say, ladies, for I never had the
spawows—at least, not since I can remember; but the
worms—”

“Oh, Mr. Livingstone!” and then poor Eugene Augustus
had to open the window and sprinkle ice-water
all over two fainting Worth dresses, which looked as
if some careless milliner had let them drop—a woman
sinker in each holding it to the carpet.

p627-039

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