Evening on the Bowery. New Fork, Aug. 20.-In the late afternoon the shop-keepers along the Bowery and their wives put t chairs out front near the door or at the curb for a brief respite. Away uptown tea carts are being wheeled into drawing-rooms. But the Bowery folk do not spoil their appetite for dinner with indigestible cakes and hot brews. It is the Bowery's hour of re­laxation. Most of the shop-keepers live over their shops, and they do not close until midnight. All the wives seem to be fat on the Bowery and the children scrawny. It is the widest thoroughfare in town, but it is marred by the unsightly elevated spun in the clouds on either side. The sun rarely shines there. Yet it is a colorful street. Sailors with their girls on the way to the cheap dance-halls. Human wrecks who stand about seemingly won­dering just where to go. Ten-cent lodging- houses whose dark offices are filled with tired faces. Shout­ing venders. Old women with packs who constantly mutter to them­selves. Aristocratic-looking men in shiny clothes who are a part of the Bowery bathos. Those who fail in New York and stay here invariably land on the Bowery. There are no social bar­riers. Conversation is easy, but {everyone is suspicious. The rcon- j firmed Boweryite is never inquisi- jtive. It is taken for granted that [there is a skeleton lurking in the (background of every life. AH are inured to tragedy. If a wayfarer falls from drink he regains, there until the ambulance arrives. The Bowery is too con- ' cerned with its own troubles to go afield for more. The afternoon gos­sip concerns new converts at the rescue missions, the birth or death in the neighborhood, the latest movie thriller and the like. There is a brooding atmosphere hanging over the street. The stranger feels it. Unless he has be­come a part of the Bowery hum­drum life he is not cordially re­ceived. The Bowery despises pity. Deep rooted in its domestic and civic i ! life is a pride that wretchedness and i ugly squalor cannot kill. Now that the Washington city post office building has been cleaned, it is much easier to read the inscrip­tions that are cut in great letters above the doors facing on Massa­chusetts avenue. Although tourists are wont to stand and gaze up at the inscrip­tions, and even to jot them down, perhaps very few people who habi­tually pass the post office ever notice those inscriptions.' And they are well worth reading. They epitomize the mission of the letter, and tell of the work off the postal service in succinct phrase. Above the door to the west the in­scription reads: "Messenger of sympathy and love. Servant of parted friends. "Consoler of the lonely. "Bond of the scattered family. 'Enlarger of the common life." Above the door to the east the in­scription runs: "Carrier of news and knowledge. "Instrument of trade and industry. Promoter of mutual acquaintance. 1 Of peace and of good will among j men and nations." is: By REV. THOMAS B. GREGORY A BRIGHT young woman write's me I will name the "25 best novels." "I cannot do it. All that I can do is to name the 25 that seem to me to be the best. Another would select quite a different list. Here, then, is the list according to my way of thinking: "Don Quixote"-Cervantes "Les Miserables"-Victor Huso "Tristram Shandy"-Sterne "The Vicar of Warkefield" - Goldsmith "Pilgrim's Progress - Bunyan. "Robinson Crusoe''-Defoe The Wandering Jew"-Sue "Guliver's Travels"-Swift "Gil Blas"-Le Sage. "Paul and Virginia"-St. Pierre "Pride and Prejudice"-Austin "Old Mortality"-Scott. "Ivanhoe"-Scott "David Copperfleld"-Dickens. "Jane Eyre" - Charlotte Bronte. "Daniel Deronda" - George Eliot. "Vanity Fair" - Thackeray. "On the Heights" - Auerbach. "War and Peace"-Tolstoi. "Last Days of Pompeii" -Bulwer. "Le Pere Goriat" -Bulwer. "The Scarlet Letter" - Hawthorne. "Ben Hur"-Wallace . "The Leopard's Spots"-Dixon.