The Breakfast Table Umpire

Trouble all arose over one breakfast. It may be that they knew he hated baseball, or it may be that their talk resulted from the fact that every man, woman and child in the boarding house, with the exception of the lank pessimist, had been to the game the day before. At any rate, when the landlady took the coffee pot in one hand and the cream pitcher in the other and began pouring from both at the same time, he was moved to ask, without a suspicion of danger, what she was doing. 'Making a double play unassisted,' was her prompt response. He looked pained, but said nothing. A moment later, when a codfish ball was gallantly declined by the dude, who insisted on passing it to his fair neighbor, the dry goods clerk on the other side of the table called out: 'Passed ball!' The pessimist fingered his knife nervously as he glared at the clerk, and had hardly recovered his composure when the waitress kicked the cat through the doorway and the pretty typewriter lisped: 'Out!' And the young lawyer added: 'He's hit!' He hardly had time to shift his reproachful glance from the pretty typewriter to the young lawyer when the old maid began telling what a brute the man next door was, and the real estate agent sang out: 'Score one!' For sympathy he turned to the landlady’s pretty daughter, who sat next to him, and who had so far said nothing. But as he declined the last muffin on the plate and she took it, she looked him straight in the eye and with her most captivating smile, said: 'A sacrifice!' Then he got up and stalked out, and there is a room to rent in that boarding house.