"'What you kum for, lilly Jew?—'

"'What I kum for? you'll find out mighty quick, I tell you—I kum for fite juul—'

"'Huhh! huhh! haw!—t'ink I'm gwyin to fite puttee lilly baby? I want King Sol or Abnah, or a big soljur man—'

"'Hole your jaw—I'll make you laugh tother side, ole grizzle-gruzzle, 'rectly—I'm man enough for biggust jiunt Fillystine.'

"'Go way, poor lilly boy! go home, lilly baby, to your mudder, and git sugar plum—I no want kill puttee lilly boy—'

"'Kum on!—don't be afeerd!—don't go for to run away!—I'll ketch you and lick you—'

"'You leetul raskul—I'll kuss you by all our gods—I'll cut out your sassy tung—I'll break your blackguard jaw—I'll rip you up and give um to the dogs and crows—'

"'Don't cuss so, ole Golly! I 'sposed you wanted to fite juul—so kum on with your old irun-pot hat on—you'll git belly full mighty quick—'

"'You nasty leetle raskul, I'll kum and kill you dead as chopped sassudge.'"

Here the preacher represented the advance of the parties; and gave a florid and wonderfully effective description of the closing act partly by words and partly by pantomime; exhibiting innumerable marches and counter-marches to get to windward, and all the postures, and gestures, and defiances, till at last he personated David putting his hand into a bag for a stone; and then making his cotton handkerchief into a sling, he whirled it with fury half a dozen times around his head, and then let fly with much skill at Goliath; and at the same instant halloing with the frenzy of a madman—"Hurraw for lilly Davy!" At that cry he, with his left hand, struck himself a violent slap on the forehead, to represent the blow of the sling-stone hitting the giant; and then in person of Goliath he dropped quasi dead upon the platform amid the deafening plaudits of the congregation; all of whom, some spiritually, some sympathetically, and some carnally, took up the preacher's triumph shout—

"Hurraw! for lilly Davy!"

How the Rev. Mizraim Ham made his exit from the boards I could not see—perhaps he rolled or crawled off. But he did not suffer decapitation, like "ole Golly": since in ten minutes, his woolly pate suddenly popped up among the other sacred heads that were visible over the front railing of the rostrum, as all kept moving to and fro in the wild tossings of religious frenzy.

Scarcely had Mr. Ham fallen at his post, when a venerable old warrior, with matchless intrepidity, stepped into the vacated spot; and without a sign of fear carried on the contest against the Arch Fiend, whose great ally had been so recently overthrown—i.e., Goliath, (not Mr. Ham). Yet excited, as evidently was this veteran, he still could not forego his usual introduction, stating how old he was; where he was born; where he obtained religion; how long he had been a preacher; how many miles he had traveled in a year; and when he buried his wife—all of which edifying truths were received with the usual applauses of a devout and enlightened assembly. But this introduction over—which did not occupy more than fifteen or twenty minutes—he began his attack in fine style, waxing louder and louder as he proceeded, till he exceeded all the old gentlemen to "holler" I ever heard, and indeed old ladies either.

EXTRACT FROM HIS DISCOURSE

"... Yes, sinners! you'll all have to fall and be knock'd down some time or nuther, like the great giant we've heern tell on, when the Lord's sarvints come and fight agin you! Oho! sinner! sinner!—oh!—I hope you may be knock'd down to-night—now!—this moment—and afore you die and go to judgment! Yes! oho! yes! oh!—I say judgment—for it's appinted once to die and then the judgment—oho! oh! And what a time ther'll be then! You'll see all these here trees—and them 'are stars, and yonder silver moon afire!—and all the alliments a-meltin and runnin down with fervent heat-ah!"—(I have elsewhere stated that the unlearned preachers out there (?) are by the vulgar—(not the poor)—but the vulgar, supposed to be more favored in preaching than man-made preachers; and that the sign of an unlearned preacher's inspiration being in full blast is his inhalations, which puts an ah! to the end of sentences, members, words, and even exclamations, till his breath is all gone, and no more can be sucked in)—"Oho! hoah! fervent heat-ah! and the trumpit a-soundin-ah!—and the dead arisin-ah!—and all on us a-flyin-ah!—to be judged-ah!—O-hoah! sinner—sinner—sinner—sinner-ah! And what do I see away thar'-ah!—down the Mississippi-ah!—thar's a man jist done a-killin-ah another-ah!—and up he goes with his bloody dagger-ah! And what's that I see to the East-ah! where proud folks live clothed in purple-ah! and fine linen-ah!—I see 'em round a table a drinkin a decoction of Indian herb-ah!—and up they go with cups in thar hands-ah! and see—ohoah!—see! in yonder doggery some a dancin-ah! and fiddlin-ah!—and up they go-ah! with cards-ah! and fiddle-ah!" etc., etc.

Here the tempest around drowned the voice of the old hero; although, from the frantic violence of his gestures, the frightful distortion of his features, and the Pythonic foam of his mouth, he was plainly blazing away at the enemy. The uproar, however, so far subsided as to allow my hearing his closing exhortation, which was this:

"... Yes, I say—fall down—fall down all of you, on your knees!—shout!—cry aloud!—spare not!—stamp with the foot!—smite with the hand!—down! down!—that's it—down brethren!—down preachers!—down sisters!—pray away!—take it by storm!—fire away! fire away! not one at a time! not two together-ah!—a single shot the devil will dodge-ah!—give it to him all at once—fire a whole platoon!—at him!!"

And then such platoon firing as followed! If Satan stood that, he can stand much more than the worthy folks thought he could. And, indeed, the effect was wonderful!—more than forty thoughtless sinners that came for fun, and twice as many backsliders were instantly knocked over!—and there all lay, some with violent jerkings and writhings of body, and some uttering the most piercing and dismaying shrieks and groans! The fact is, I was nearly knocked down myself—

"You?—Mr. Carlton!!"

Yes—indeed—but not by the hail of spiritual shot falling so thick around me; it was by a sudden rush towards my station, where I stood mounted on a stump. And this rush was occasioned by a wish to see a stout fellow lying on the straw in the pen, a little to my left, groaning and praying, and yet kicking and pummelling away as if scuffling with a sturdy antagonist. Near him were several men and women at prayer, and one or more whispering into his ear; while on a small stump above stood a person superintending the contest, and so as to insure victory to the right party. Now the prostrate man, who like a spirited tom-cat seemed to fight best on his back, was no other than our celebrated New Purchase bully—Rowdy Bill! And this being reported through the congregation, the rush had taken place by which I was so nearly overturned. I contrived, however, to regain my stand, shared indeed now with several others, we hugging one another and standing on tip-toes and our necks elongated as possible; and thus we managed to have a pretty fair view of matters.

About this time the Superintendent in a very loud voice cried out—"Let him alone, brothers! let him alone sisters! keep on praying!—it's a hard fight—the devil's got a tight grip yet! He don't want to lose poor Bill—but he'll let go soon—Bill's gittin the better on him fast!—Pray away!"

Rowdy Bill, be it known, was famous as a gouger, and so expert was he in his antioptical vocation, that in a few moments he usually bored out an antagonist's eyes, or made him cry peccavi. Indeed, could he, on the present occasion, have laid hold of his unseen foe's head—spiritually we mean—he would—figuratively, of course—soon have caused him to ease off or let go entirely his metaphorical grip. So, however, thought one friend in the assembly—Bill's wife. For Bill was a man after her own heart; and she often said that "with fair play she sentimentally allowed her Bill could lick ary a man in the 'varsal world, and his weight in wild cats to boot." Hence, the kind-hearted creature, hearing that Bill was actually fighting with the evil one, had pressed in from the outskirts to see fair play; but now hearing Bill was in reality down, and apparently undermost, and above all, the words of the Superintendent, declaring that the fiend had a tight grip of the poor fellow, her excitement would no longer be controlled; and, collecting her vocal energies, she screamed out her common exhortation to Bill, and which, when heeded, had heretofore secured him immediate victories—"Gouge him, Billy!—gouge him, Billy!—gouge him!"

This spirited exclamation was instantly shouted by Bill's cronies and partizans—mischievously, maybe, for we have no right to judge of men's motives, in meetings:—but a few—friends, doubtless, of the old fellow—cried out in very irreverent tone—"Bite him! devil—bite him!" Upon which the faithful wife, in a tone of voice that beggars description, reiterated her—"Gouge him," etc.—in which she was again joined by her husband's allies, and that to the alarm of his invisible foe; for Bill now rose to his knees, and on uttering some mystic jargon symptomatic of conversion, he was said to have "got religion";—and then all his new friends and spiritual guides united in fresh prayers and shouts of thanksgiving.

It was now very late at night; and joining a few other citizens of Woodville, we were soon in our saddles and buried in the darkness of the forest. For a long time, however, the uproar of the spiritual elements at the camp continued at intervals to swell and diminish on the hearing; and, often came a yell that rose far above the united din of other screams and outcries. Nay, at the distance of nearly two miles, could be distinguished a remarkable and sonorous oh!—like the faintly heard explosion of a mighty elocutional class, practising under a master. And yet my comrades, who had heard this peculiar cry more than once, all declared that this wonderful oh-ing was performed by the separate voice of our townsman, Eolus Letherlung, Esq.!

CONCLUSION

A camp-meeting of this sort is, all things considered, the very best contrivance for making the largest number of converts in the shortest possible time; and also for enlarging most speedily the bounds of a Church Visible and Militant.



A RHYME FOR CHRISTMAS

BY JOHN CHALLING

Publication delayed by the author's determined but futile attempt to find the rhyme

If Browning only were here, This yule-ish time o' the year— This mule-ish time o' the year,— Stubbornly still refusing To add to the rhymes we've been using Since the first Christmas-glee (One might say) chantingly Rendered by rudest hinds Of the pelt-clad shepherding kinds Who didn't know Song from b- U-double-l's-foot!—Pah!— (Haply the old Egyptian ptah— Though I'd hardly wager a baw- Bee—or a bumble, for that— And that's flat!).... But the thing that I want to get at Is a rhyme for Christmas— Nay! nay! nay! nay! not isthmus— The t- and the h- sounds covertly are Gnawing the nice auracular Senses until one may hear them gnar— And the terminal, too, for mas, is mus, So that will not do for us. Try for it—sigh for it—cry for it—die for it! O but if Browning were here to apply for it, He'd rhyme you Christmas— He'd make a mist pass Over—something o' ruther— Or find you the rhyme's very brother In lovers that kissed fast To baffle the moon,—as he'd lose the t-final In fas-t as it blended with to (mark the spinal Elision—tip-clipt as exquisitely nicely And hyper-exactingly sliced to precisely The extremest technical need): Or he'd twist glass, Or he'd have a kissed lass, Or shake neath our noses some great giant fist-mass— No matter! If Robert were here, he could do it, Though it took us till Christmas next year to see through it.



MY CIGARETTE[1]

BY CHARLES F. LUMMIS

My cigarette! The amulet That charms afar unrest and sorrow; The magic wand that far beyond To-day can conjure up to-morrow. Like love's desire, thy crown of fire So softly with the twilight blending, And ah! meseems, a poet's dreams Are in thy wreaths of smoke ascending.

My cigarette! Can I forget How Kate and I, in sunny weather, Sat in the shade the elm-tree made And rolled the fragrant weed together? I at her side beatified, To hold and guide her fingers willing; She rolling slow the paper's snow, Putting my heart in with the filling.

My cigarette! I see her yet, The white smoke from her red lips curling, Her dreaming eyes, her soft replies, Her gentle sighs, her laughter purling! Ah, dainty roll, whose parting soul Ebbs out in many a snowy billow, I, too, would burn if I might earn Upon her lips so soft a pillow!

Ah, cigarette! The gay coquette Has long forgot the flames she lighted, And you and I unthinking by Alike are thrown, alike are slighted. The darkness gathers fast without, A raindrop on my window plashes; My cigarette and heart are out, And naught is left me but the ashes.

[Footnote 1: By permission of Life Publishing Company.]



IT IS TIME TO BEGIN TO CONCLUDE

BY A.H. LAIDLAW

Ye Parsons, desirous all sinners to save, And to make each a prig or a prude, If two thousand long years have not made us behave, It is time you began to conclude.

Ye Husbands, who wish your sweet mates to grow mum, And whose tongues you have never subdued, If ten years of your reign have not made them grow dumb, It is time to begin to conclude.

Ye Matrons of men whose brown meerschaum still mars The sweet kiss with tobacco bedewed, After pleading nine years, if they still puff cigars, It is time you began to conclude.

Ye Lawyers, who aim to reform all the land, And your statutes forever intrude, If five thousand lost years have not worked as you planned, It is time to begin to conclude.

Ye Lovers, who sigh for the heart of a maid, And forty-four years have pursued, If two scores of young years have not taught you your trade, It is time you began to conclude.

Ye Doctors, who claim to cure every ill, And so much of mock learning exude, If the Comma Bacillus still laughs at your pill, It is time to begin to conclude.

Ye Maidens of Fifty, who lonely abide, Yet who heartily scout solitude, If Jack with his whiskers is not at your side, It is time to begin to conclude.



NOTHIN' DONE[2]

BY SAM S. STINSON

Winter is too cold fer work; Freezin' weather makes me shirk.

Spring comes on an' finds me wishin' I could end my days a-fishin'.

Then in summer, when it's hot, I say work kin go to pot.

Autumn days, so calm an' hazy, Sorter make me kinder lazy.

That's the way the seasons run. Seems I can't git nothin' done.

[Footnote 2: Lippincott's Magazine.]



MARGINS

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE

My dreams so fair that used to be, The promises of youth's bright clime, So changed, alas; come back to me Sweet memories of that hopeful time Before I learned, with doubt oppressed, There are no birds in next year's nest.

The seed I sowed in fragrant spring The summer's sun to vivify With his warm kisses, ripening To golden harvest by and by, Got caught by drought, like all the rest— There are no birds in next year's nest.

The stock I bought at eighty-nine, Broke down next day to twenty-eight; Some squatters jumped my silver mine, My own convention smashed my slate; No more in "futures" I'll invest— There are no birds in next year's nest.



THE DUBIOUS FUTURE

BY BILL NYE

Without wishing to alarm the American people, or create a panic, I desire briefly and seriously to discuss the great question, "Whither are we drifting, and what is to be the condition of the coming man?" We can not shut our eyes to the fact that mankind is passing through a great era of change; even womankind is not built as she was a few brief years ago. And is it not time, fellow citizens, that we pause to consider what is to be the future of the American?

Food itself has been the subject of change both in the matter of material and preparation. This must affect the consumer in such a way as to some day bring about great differences. Take, for instance, the oyster, one of our comparatively modern food and game fishes, and watch the effects of science upon him. At one time the oyster browsed around and ate what he could find in Neptune's back-yard, and we had to eat him as we found him. Now we take a herd of oysters off the trail, all run down, and feed them artificially till they swell up to a fancy size, and bring a fancy price. Where will this all lead at last, I ask as a careful scientist? Instead of eating apples, as Adam did, we work the fruit up into apple-jack and pie, while even the simple oyster is perverted, and instead of being allowed to fatten up in the fall on acorns and ancient mariners, spurious flesh is put on his bones by the artificial osmose and dialysis of our advanced civilization. How can you make an oyster stout or train him down by making him jerk a health lift so many hours every day, or cultivate his body at the expense of his mind, without ultimately not only impairing the future usefulness of the oyster himself, but at the same time affecting the future of the human race who feed upon him?

I only use the oyster as an illustration, and I do not wish to cause alarm, but I say that if we stimulate the oyster artificially and swell him up by scientific means, we not only do so at the expense of his better nature and keep him away from his family, but we are making our mark on the future race of men. Oyster-fattening is now, of course, in its infancy. Only a few years ago an effort was made at St. Louis to fatten cove oysters while in the can, but the system was not well understood, and those who had it in charge only succeeded in making the can itself more plump. But now oysters are kept on ground feed and given nothing to do for a few weeks, and even the older and overworked sway-backed and rickety oysters of the dim and murky past are made to fill out, and many of them have to put a gore in the waistband of their shells. I only speak of the oyster incidentally, as one of the objects toward which science has turned its attention, and I assert with the utmost confidence that the time will come, unless science should get a set-back, when the present hunting-case oyster will give place to the open-face oyster, grafted on the octopus and big enough to feed a hotel. Further than that, the oyster of the future will carry in a hip-pocket a flask of vinegar, half a dozen lemons and two little Japanese bottles, one of which will contain salt and the other pepper, and there will be some way provided by which you can tell which is which. But are we improving the oyster now? That is a question we may well ask ourselves. Is this a healthy fat which we are putting on him, or is it bloat? And what will be the result in the home-life of the oyster? We take him from all domestic influences whatever in order to make a swell of him by our modern methods, but do we improve his condition morally, and what is to be the great final result on man?

The reader will see by the questions I ask that I am a true scientist. Give me an overcoat pocket full of lower-case interrogation marks and a medical report to run to, and I can speak on the matter of science and advancement till Reason totters on her throne.

But food and oysters do not alone affect the great, pregnant future. Our race is being tampered with not only by means of adulterations, political combinations and climatic changes, but even our methods of relaxation are productive of peculiar physical conditions, malformations and some more things of the same kind.

Cigarette smoking produces a flabby and endogenous condition of the optic nerve, and constant listening at a telephone, always with the same ear, decreases the power of the other ear till it finally just stands around drawing its salary, but actually refusing to hear anything. Carrying an eight-pound cane makes a man lopsided, and the muscular and nervous strain that is necessary to retain a single eyeglass in place and keep it out of the soup, year after year, draws the mental stimulus that should go to the thinker itself, until at last the mind wanders away and forgets to come back, or becomes atrophied, and the great mental strain incident to the work of pounding sand or coming in when it rains is more than it is equal to.

Playing billiards, accompanied by the vicious habit of pounding on the floor with the butt of the cue ever and anon, produces at last optical illusions, phantasmagoria and visions of pink spiders with navy-blue abdomens. Baseball is not alone highly injurious to the umpire, but it also induces crooked fingers, bone spavin and hives among habitual players. Jumping the rope induces heart disease. Poker is unduly sedentary in its nature. Bicycling is highly injurious, especially to skittish horses. Boating induces malaria. Lawn tennis can not be played in the house. Archery is apt to be injurious to those who stand around and watch the game, and pugilism is a relaxation that jars heavily on some natures.

Foot-ball produces what may be called the endogenous or ingrowing toenail, stringhalt and mania. Copenhagen induces a melancholy, and the game of bean bag is unduly exciting. Horse racing is too brief and transitory as an outdoor game, requiring weeks and months for preparation and lasting only long enough for a quick person to ejaculate "Scat!" The pitcher's arm is a new disease, the outgrowth of base-ball; the lawn-tennis elbow is another result of a popular open-air amusement, and it begins to look as though the coming American would hear with one overgrown telephonic ear, while the other will be rudimentary only. He will have an abnormal base-ball arm with a lawn-tennis elbow, a powerful foot-ball-kicking leg with the superior toe driven back into the palm of his foot. He will have a highly trained biceps muscle over his eye to retain his glass, and that eye will be trained to shoot a curved glance over a high hat and witness anything on the stage.

Other features grow abnormal, or shrink up from the lack of use, as a result of our customs. For instance, the man whose business it is to get along a crowded street with the utmost speed will have, finally, a hard, sharp horn growing on each elbow, and a pair of spurs growing out of each ankle. These will enable him to climb over a crowd and get there early. Constant exposure to these weapons on the part of the pedestrian will harden the walls of the thorax and abdomen until the coming man will be an impervious man. The citizen who avails himself of all modern methods of conveyance will ride from his door on the horse car to the elevated station, where an elevator will elevate him to the train and a revolving platform will swing him on board, or possibly the street car will be lifted from the surface track to the elevated track, and the passenger will retain his seat all the time. Then a man will simply hang out a red card, like an express card, at his door, and a combination car will call for him, take him to the nearest elevated station, elevate him, car and all, to the track, take him where he wants to go, and call for him at any hour of the night to bring him home. He will do his exercising at home, chiefly taking artificial sea baths, jerking a rowing machine or playing on a health lift till his eyes hang out on his cheeks, and he need not do any walking whatever. In that way the coming man will be over-developed above the legs, and his lower limbs will look like the desolate stems of a frozen geranium. Eccentricities of limb will be handed over like baldness from father to son among the dwellers in the cities, where every advantage in the way of rapid transit is to be had, until a metropolitan will be instantly picked out by his able digestion and rudimentary legs, just as we now detect the gentleman from the interior by his wild endeavors to overtake an elevated train.

In fact, Mr. Edison has now perfected, or announced that he is on the road to the perfection of, a machine which I may be pardoned for calling a storage think-tank. This will enable a brainy man to sit at home, and, with an electric motor and a perfected phonograph, he can think into a tin dipper or funnel, which will, by the aid of electricity and a new style of foil, record and preserve his ideas on a sheet of soft metal, so that when any one says to him, "A penny for your thoughts," he can go to his valise and give him a piece of his mind. Thus the man who has such wild and beautiful thoughts in the night and never can hold on to them long enough to turn on the gas and get his writing materials, can set this thing by the head of his bed, and, when the poetic thought comes to him in the stilly night, he can think into a hopper, and the genius of Franklin and Edison together will enable him to fire it back at his friends in the morning while they eat their pancakes and glucose syrup from Vermont, or he can mail the sheet of tinfoil to absent friends, who may put it into their phonographs and utilize it. In this way the world may harness the gray matter of its best men, and it will be no uncommon thing to see a dozen brainy men tied up in a row in the back office of an intellectual syndicate, dropping pregnant thoughts into little electric coffee mills for a couple of hours a day, after which they can put on their coats, draw their pay, and go home.

All this will reduce the quantity of exercise, both mental and physical. Two men with good brains could do the thinking for 60,000,000 of people and feel perfectly fresh and rested the next day. Take four men, we will say, two to do the day thinking and two more to go on deck at night, and see how much time the rest of the world would have to go fishing. See how politics would become simplified. Conventions, primaries, bargains and sales, campaign bitterness and vituperation—all might be wiped out. A pair of political thinkers could furnish 100,000,000 of people with logical conclusions enough to last them through the campaign and put an unbiased opinion into a man's house each day for less than he now pays for gas. Just before election you could go into your private office, throw in a large dose of campaign whisky, light a campaign cigar, fasten your buttonhole to the wall by an elastic band, so that there would be a gentle pull on it, and turn the electricity on your mechanical thought supply. It would save time and money, and the result would be the same as it is now. This would only be the beginning, of course, and after a while every qualified voter who did not feel like exerting himself so much, need only give his name and proxy to the salaried thinker employed by the National Think Retort and Supply Works. We talk a great deal about the union of church and state, but that is not so dangerous, after all, as the mixture of politics and independent thought. Will the coming voter be an automatic, legless, hairless mollusk with an abnormal ear constantly glued to the tube of a big tank full of symmetrical ideas furnished by a national bureau of brains in the employ of the party in power?



UTAH

BY EUGENE FIELD

Bowed was the old man's snow-white head, A troubled look was on his face, "Why come you, sir," I gently said, "Unto this solemn burial place?"

"I come to weep a while for one Whom in her life I held most dear, Alas, her sands were quickly run, And now she lies a sleeping here."

"Oh, tell me of your precious wife, For she was very dear, I know, It must have been a blissful life You led with her you treasure so?"

"My wife is mouldering in the ground, In yonder house she's spinning now, And lo! this moment may be found A driving home the family cow;

"And see, she's standing at the stile, And leans from out the window wide, And loiters on the sward a while, Her forty babies by her side."

"Old man, you must be mad!" I cried, "Or else you do but jest with me; How is it that your wife has died And yet can here and living be?

"How is it while she drives the cow She's hanging out her window wide, And loiters, as you said just now, With forty babies by her side?"

The old man raised his snowy head, "I have a sainted wife in Heaven; I am a Mormon, sir," he said, "My sainted wife on earth are seven."



TALK

BY JOHN PAUL

It seems to me that talk should be, Like water, sprinkled sparingly; Then ground that late lay dull and dried Smiles up at you revivified, And flowers—of speech—touched by the dew Put forth fresh root and bud anew. But I'm not sure that any flower Would thrive beneath Niagara's shower! So when a friend turns full on me His verbal hose, may I not flee? I know that I am arid ground, But I'm not watered—Gad! I'm drowned!



A WINTER FANCY

(Little Tommy Loq)

BY R.K. MUNKITTRICK

My father piles the snow-drifts Around his rosy face, And covers all his whiskers— The grass that grows apace.

And then he runs the snow-plough Across his smiling lawn, And all the snow-drifts vanish And then the grass is gone.



JACK BALCOMB'S PLEASANT WAYS

BY MEREDITH NICHOLSON

There comes a time in the life of young men when their college fraternity pins lie forgotten in the collar-button box and the spiking of freshmen ceases to be a burning issue. Tippecanoe was one of the few freshwater colleges that barred women; but this was not its only distinction, for its teaching was sound, its campus charming and the town of which it was the chief ornament a quiet place noted from the beginning of things for its cultivated people.

It is no longer so very laudable for a young man to pay his way through college; and Morris Leighton had done this easily and without caring to be praised or martyrized for doing so. He had enjoyed his college days; he had been popular with town and gown; and he had managed to get his share of undergraduate fun while leading his classes. He had helped in the college library; he had twisted the iron letter-press on the president's correspondence late into the night; he had copied briefs for a lawyer after hours; but he had pitched for the nine and hustled for his "frat," and he had led class rushes with ardor and success.

He had now been for several years in the offices of Knight, Kittredge and Carr at Mariona, only an hour's ride from Tippecanoe; and he still kept in touch with the college. Michael Carr fully appreciated a young man who took the law seriously and who could sit down in a court room on call mornings, when need be, and turn off a demurrer without paraphrasing it from a text-book.

Mrs. Carr, too, found Morris Leighton useful, and she liked him, because he always responded unquestioningly to any summons to fill up a blank at her table; and if Mr. Carr was reluctant at the last minute to attend a lecture on "Egyptian Burial Customs," Mrs. Carr could usually summon Morris Leighton by telephone in time to act as her escort. Young men were at a premium in Mariona, as in most other places, and it was something to have one of the species, of an accommodating turn, and very presentable, within telephone range. Mrs. Carr was grateful, and so, it must be said, was her husband, who did not care to spend his evenings digging up Egyptians that had been a long time dead, or listening to comic operas. It was through Mrs. Carr that Leighton came to be well known in Mariona; she told her friends to ask him to call, and there were now many homes besides hers that he visited.

It sometimes occurred to Morris Leighton that he was not getting ahead in the world very fast. He knew that his salary from Carr was more than any other young lawyer of his years earned by independent practice; but it seemed to him that he ought to be doing better. He had not drawn on his mother's small resources since his first year at college; he had made his own way—and a little more—but he experienced moments of restlessness in which the difficulties of establishing himself in his profession loomed large and formidable.

An errand to a law firm in one of the fashionable new buildings that had lately raised the Mariona sky-line led him one afternoon past the office of his college classmate, Jack Balcomb. "J. Arthur Balcomb," was the inscription on the door, "Suite B, Room 1." Leighton had seen little of Balcomb for a year or more, and his friend's name on the ground-glass door arrested his eye.

Two girls were busily employed at typewriters in the anteroom, and one of them extended a blank card to Morris and asked him for his name. The girl disappeared into the inner room and came back instantly followed by Balcomb, who seized Morris's hand, dragged him in and closed the door.

"Well, old man!" Balcomb shouted. "I'm glad to see you. It's downright pleasant to have a fellow come in occasionally and feel no temptation to take his watch. Sink into yonder soft-yielding leather and allow me to offer you one of these plutocratic perfectos. Only the elect get these, I can tell you. In that drawer there I keep a brand made out of car waste and hemp rope, that does very well for ordinary commercial sociability. Got a match? All right; smoke up and tell me what you're doing to make the world a better place to live in, as old Prexy used to say at college."

"I'm digging at the law, at the same old stand. I can't say that I'm flourishing like Jonah's gourd, as you seem to be."

Morris cast his eyes over the room, which was handsomely furnished. There was a good rug on the floor and the desk and table were of heavy oak; an engraving of Thomas Jefferson hung over Balcomb's desk, and on the opposite side of the room was a table covered with financial reference books.

"Well, I tell you, old man," declared Balcomb, "you've got to fool all the people all the time these days to make it go. Those venerable whiskers around town whine about the good old times and how a young man's got to go slow but sure. There's nothing in it; and they wouldn't be in it either, if they had to start in again; no siree!"

"What is your game just now, Jack, if it isn't impertinent? It's hard to keep track of you. I remember very well that you started in to learn the wholesale drug business."

"Oh tush! don't refer to that, an thou lovest me! That is one of the darkest pages of my life. Those people down there in South High Street thought I was a jay, and they sent me out to help the shipping clerk. Wouldn't that jar you! Overalls,—and a hand truck. Wow! I couldn't get out of that fast enough. Then, you know, I went to Chicago and spent a year in a broker's office, and I guess I learned a few up there. Oh, rather! They sent me into the country to sell mining stock and I made a record. They kept the printing presses going overtime to keep me supplied. Say, they got afraid of me; I was too good!"

He stroked his vandyke beard complacently, and flicked the ash from his cigar.

"What's your line now? Real estate, mortgages, lending money to the poor? How do you classify yourself?"

"You do me a cruel wrong, Morris, a cruel wrong. You read my sign on the outer wall? Well, that's a bluff. There's nothing in real estate, per se, as old Doc Bridges used to say at college. And the loan business has all gone to the bad,—people are too rich; farmers are rolling in real money and have it to lend. There was nothing for little Willie in petty brokerages. I'm scheming—promoting—and I take my slice off of everything that passes."

"That certainly sounds well. You've learned fast. You had an ambition to be a poet when you were in college. I think I still have a few pounds of your verses in my traps somewhere."

Balcomb threw up his head and laughed in self-pity.

"I believe I was bitten with the literary tarantula for a while, but I've lived it down, I hope. Prexy used to predict a bright literary future for me in those days. You remember, when I made Phi Beta Kappa, how he took both my hands and wept over me. 'Balcomb,' he says, 'you're an honor to the college.' I suppose he'd weep again, if he knew I'd only forgotten about half the letters of the Greek alphabet,—left them, as one might say, several thousand parasangs to the rear in my mad race for daily sustenance. Well, I may not leave any vestiges on the sands of time, but, please God, I shan't die hungry,—not if I keep my health. Dear old Prexy! He was a nice old chump, though a trifle somnolent in his chapel talks."

"Well, we needn't pull the planks out of the bridge we've crossed on. I got a lot out of college that I'm grateful for. They did their best for us," said Morris.

"Oh, yes; it was well enough, but if I had it to do over, Tippecanoe wouldn't see me; not much! It isn't what you learn in college, it's the friendships you make and all that sort of thing that counts. A western man ought to go east to college and rub up against eastern fellows. The atmosphere at the freshwater colleges is pretty jay. Fred Waters left Tippecanoe and went to Yale and got in with a lot of influential fellows down there,—chaps whose fathers are in big things in New York. Fred has a fine position now, just through his college pull, and first thing you know, he'll pick up an heiress and be fixed for life. Fred's a winner all right."

"He's also an ass," said Leighton. "I remember him of old."

"An ass of the large gray and long-eared species,—I'll grant you that, all right enough; but look here, old man, you've got to overlook the fact that a fellow occasionally lifts his voice and brays. Man does not live by the spirit alone; he needs bread, and bread's getting hard to get."

"I've noticed it," replied Leighton, who had covered all this ground before in talks with Balcomb and did not care to go into it further.

"And then, you remember," Balcomb went on, in enjoyment of his own reminiscences, "I wooed the law for a while. But I guess what I learned wouldn't have embarrassed Chancellor Kent. I really had a client once. I didn't see a chance of getting one any other way, so I hired him. He was a coon. I employed him for two dollars to go to the Grand Opera House and buy a seat in the orchestra when Sir Henry Irving was giving The Merchant of Venice. He went to sleep and snored and they threw him out with rude, insolent, and angry hands after the second act; and I brought suit against the management for damages, basing my claim on the idea that they had spurned my dusky brother on account of his race, color and previous condition of servitude. The last clause was a joke. He had never done any work in his life, except for the state. He was a very sightly coon, too, now that I recall him. The show was, as I said, The Merchant of Venice, and I'll leave it to anybody if my client wasn't at least as pleasing to the eye as Sir Henry in his Shylock togs. I suppose if it had been Othello, race feeling would have run so high that Sir Henry would hardly have escaped lynching. Well, to return. My client got loaded on gin about the time the case came up on demurrer and gave the snap away, and I dropped out of the practice to avoid being disbarred. And it was just as well. My landlord had protested against my using the office at night for poker purposes, so I passed up the law and sought the asphodel fields of promotion. Les affaires font l'homme, as old Professor Garneau used to say at college. So here I am; and I'm glad I shook the law. I'd got tired of eating coffee and rolls at the Berlin bakery three times a day.

"Why, Morris, old man," he went on volubly, "there were days when the loneliness in my office grew positively oppressive. You may remember that room I had in the old Adams and Harper Block? It gave upon a courtyard where the rats from a livery stable came to disport themselves on rainy days. I grew to be a dead shot with the flobert rifle; but lawsy, there's mighty little consideration for true merit in this world! Just because I winged a couple of cheap hack horses one day, when my nerves weren't steady, the livery people made me stop, and one of my fellow tenants in the old rookery threatened to have me arrested for conducting a shooting gallery without a license. He was a dentist, and he said the snap of the rifle worried his victims."

The two typewriting machines outside clicked steadily. Some one knocked at the door.

"Come in!" shouted Balcomb.

One of the typewriter operators entered with a brisk air of business and handed a telegram to Balcomb, who tore it open nonchalantly. As he read it, he tossed the crumpled envelope over his shoulder in an absent-minded way.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, slapping his leg as though the news were important. Then, to the girl, who waited with note-book and pencil in hand: "Never mind; don't wait. I'll dictate the answer later."

"How did it work?" he asked, turning to Leighton, who had been looking over the books on the table.

"How did what work?"

"The fake. It was a fake telegram. That girl's trained to bring in a message every time I have a caller. If the caller stays thirty minutes, it's two messages,—in other words I'm on a fifteen-minute schedule. I tip a boy in the telegraph office to keep me supplied with blanks. It's a great scheme. There's nothing like a telegram to create the impression that your office is a seething caldron of business. Old Prexy was in town the other day. I don't suppose he ever got a dose of electricity in his life unless he had been sorely bereft of a member of his family and was summoned to the funeral baked meats. Say, he must have thought I had a private wire!"

Leighton sat down and fanned himself with his hat.

"You'll be my death yet. You have the cheek of a nice, fresh, new baggage-check, Balcomb."

"Your cigar isn't burning well, Morris. Won't you try another? No? I like my guests to be comfortable."

"I'm comfortable enough. I'm even entertained. Go ahead and let me see the rest of the show."

"Oh, we haven't exactly a course of stunts here. Those are nice girls out there. I've broken them of the chewing-gum habit, and they can answer anxious inquiries at the door now without danger of strangulation."

"They seem speedy on the machine. Your correspondence must be something vast!"

"Um, yes. It has to be. Every cheap skate of a real estate man keeps one stenographer. My distinction is that I keep two. They're easy advertising. Now that little one in the pink shirt-waist that brought in the message from Mars a moment ago is a wonder of intelligence. Do you know what she's doing now?"

"Trying to break the machine I should guess, from the racket."

"Bah! It's the Lord's Prayer."

"You mean it's a sort of prayer machine."

"Not on your life. Maude hasn't any real work to do just now and she's running off the Lord's Prayer. I know by the way it clicks. When she strikes 'our daily bread' the machine always gives a little gasp. See? The rule of the office is that they must have some diddings doing all the time. The big one with red hair is a perfect marvel at the Declaration of Independence. She'll be through addressing circulars in a little while and will run off into 'All men are created equal'—a blooming lie, by the way—without losing a stroke."

"You have passed the poetry stage, beyond a doubt. But I should think the strain of keeping all this going would be wearing on your sensitive poetical nature. And it must cost something."

"Oh, yes!" Balcomb pursed his lips and stroked his fine soft beard. "But it's worth it. I'm not playing for small stakes. I'm looking for Christmas trees. Now they've got their eyes on me. These old Elijahs that have been the bone and sinew of the town for so long that they think they own it, are about done for. You can't sit in a bank here any more and look solemn and turn people down because your corn hurts or because the chinch-bugs have got into the wheat in Dakota or the czar has bought the heir apparent a new toy pistol. You've got to present a smiling countenance to the world and give the glad hand to everybody you're likely to need in your business. I jolly everybody!"

"That comes easy for you; but I didn't know you could make an asset of it."

"It's part of my working capital. Now you'd better cut loose from old man Carr and move up here and get a suite near me. I've got more than I can do,—I'm always needing a lawyer,—organizing companies, legality of bonds, and so on. Dignified work. Lots of out-of-town people come here and I'll put you in touch with them. I threw a good thing to Van Cleve only the other day. Bond foreclosure suit for some fellows in the East that I sell stuff to. They wrote and asked me the name of a good man. I thought of you—old college days and all that—but Van Cleve had just done me a good turn and I had to let him have it. But you'd better come over. You'll never know the world's in motion in that musty old hole of Carr's. You get timid and afraid to go near the water by staying on shore so long. But say, Morris, you seem to be getting along pretty well in the social push. Your name looks well in the society column. How do you work it, anyhow?"

"Don't expect me to give the snap away. The secret's valuable. And I'm not really inside; I am only peering through the pickets!"

"Tush! Get thee hence! I saw you in a box at the theater the other night,—evidently Mrs. Carr's party. There's nothing like mixing business with pleasure. Ah me!"

He yawned and stroked his beard and laughed, with a fine showing of white teeth.

"I don't see what's pricking you with small pins of envy. You were there with about the gayest crowd I ever saw at a theater; and it looked like your own party."

"Don't say a word," implored Balcomb, putting out his hand. "Members of the board of managers of the state penitentiary, their wives, their cousins and their aunts. Say, weren't those beauteous whiskers! My eye! Well, the evening netted me about five hundred plunks, and I got to see the show and to eat a good supper in the bargain. Some reformers were to appear before them that night officially, and my friends wanted to keep them busy. I was called into the game to do something,—hence these tears. Lawsy! I earned my money. Did you see those women?—about two million per cent. pure jay!"

"You ought to cut out that sort of thing; it isn't nice."

"Oh, you needn't be so virtuous. Carr keeps a whole corps of rascals to spread apple-butter on the legislature corn-bread."

"You'd better speak to him about it. He'd probably tell Mrs. Carr to ask you to dinner right away."

"Oh, that will come in time. I don't expect to do everything at once. You may see me up there some time; and when you do, don't shy off like a colt at the choo-choos. By the way, I'd like to be one of the bright particular stars of the Dramatic Club if you can fix it. You remember that amateur theatricals are rather in my line."

"I do. At college you were one of the most persistent Thespians we had, and one of the worst. But let social matters go. You haven't told me how to get rich quick yet. I haven't had the nerve to chuck the law as you have."

"Well," continued Balcomb, expansively, "a fellow has got to take what he can when he can. One swallow doesn't make a summer; one sucker doesn't make a spring; so we must catch the birdling en route or en passant, as our dear professor of modern languages used to try to get us to remark. Say, between us old college friends, I cleared up a couple of thousand last week just too easy for any use. You know Singerly, the popular undertaker,—Egyptian secret of embalming, lady and gentleman attendants, night and day,—always wears a spray of immortelles in his lapel and a dash of tuberose essence on his handkerchief. Well, Singerly and I operated together in the smoothest way you ever saw. Excuse me!" He lay back and howled. "Well, there was an old house up here on High Street just where it begins to get good; very exclusive—old families and all that. It belonged to an estate, and I got an option on it just for fun. I began taking Singerly up there to look at it. We'd measure it, and step it off, and stop and palaver on the sidewalk. In a day or two those people up there began to take notice and to do me the honor to call on me. You see, my boy, an undertaking shop—even a fashionable one—for a neighbor, isn't pleasant; it wouldn't add, as one might say, to the sauce piquante of life; and as a reminder of our mortality—a trifle depressing, as you will admit."

He took the cigar from his mouth and examined the burning end of it thoughtfully.

"I sold the option to one of Singerly's prospective neighbors for the matter of eleven hundred. He's a retired wholesale grocer and didn't need the money."

"Seems to me you're cutting pretty near the dead-line, Jack. That's not a pretty sort of hold-up. You might as well take a sandbag and lie in wait by night."

"Great rhubarb! You make me tired. I'm not robbing the widow and the orphan, but a fat old Dutchman who doesn't ask anything of life but his sauerkraut and beer."

"And you do! You'd better give your ethical sense a good tonic before you butt into the penal code."

"Come off! I've got a better scheme even than the Singerly deal. The school board's trying to locate a few schools in up-town districts. Very undesirable neighbors. I rather think I can make a couple of turns there. This is all strictly inter nos, as Professor Morton used to say in giving me, as a special mark of esteem, a couple of hundred extra lines of Virgil to keep me in o' nights."

He looked at his watch and gave the stem-key a few turns before returning it to his pocket.

"You'll have to excuse me, old man. I've got a date with Adams, over at the Central States Trust Company. He's a right decent chap when you know how to handle him. I want to get them to finance a big apartment house scheme. I've got an idea for a flat that will make the town sit up and gasp."

"Don't linger on my account, Jack. I only stopped in to see whether you kept your good spirits. I feel as though I'd had a shower bath. Come along."

Several men were waiting to see Balcomb in the outer office and he shook hands with all of them and begged them to come again, taking care to mention that he had been called to the Central States Trust Company and had to hurry away.

He called peremptorily to the passing elevator-car to wait, and as he and Leighton squeezed into it, he continued his half of an imaginary conversation in a tone that was audible to every passenger.

"I could have had those bonds, if I had wanted them; but I knew there was a cloud on them—the county was already over its legal limit. I guess those St. Louis fellows will be sorry they were so enterprising—here we are!"

And then in a lower tone to Leighton: "That was for old man Dameron's benefit. Did you see him jammed back in the corner of the car? Queer old party and as tight as a drum. When I can work off some assessable and non-interest bearing bonds on him, it'll be easy to sell Uncle Sam's Treasury a gold brick. They say the old man has a daughter who is finer than gold; yea, than much fine gold. I'm going to look her up, if I ever get time. You'd better come over soon and pick out an office. Verbum sat sapienti, as our loving teacher used to say. So long!"

Leighton walked back to his office in good humor and better contented with his own lot.



THE WICKED ZEBRA[3]

BY FRANK ROE BATCHELDER

The zebra always seems malicious,— He kicks and bites 'most all the time; I fear that he's not only vicious, But guilty of some dreadful crime.

The mere suggestion makes me falter In writing of this wicked brute; Although he has escaped the halter, He wears for life a convict's suit.

[Footnote 3: Lippincott's Magazine.]



THE BRAKEMAN AT CHURCH

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE

One bright winter morning, the twenty-ninth day of December, Anno Domini 1879, I was journeying from Lebanon, Indiana, where I had sojourned Sunday, to Indianapolis. I did not see the famous cedars, and I supposed they had been used up for lead-pencils, and moth-proof chests, and relics, and souvenirs; for Lebanon is right in the heart of the holy land. That part of Indiana was settled by Second Adventists, and they have sprinkled goodly names all over their heritage. As the train clattered along, stopping at every station to trade off some people who were tired of traveling for some other people who were tired of staying at home, I got out my writing-pad, pointed a pencil, and wondered what manner of breakfast I would be able to serve for the ever hungry "Hawkeye" next morning.

I was beginning to think I would have to disguise some "left-overs" under a new name, as the thrifty housekeeper knows how to do, when my colleague, my faithful yoke-fellow, who has many a time found for me a spring of water in the desert place—the Brakeman, came down the aisle of the car. He glanced at the tablet and pencil as I would look at his lantern, put my right hand into a cordial compress that abode with my fingers for ten minutes after he went away, and seating himself easily on the arm of the seat, put the semaphore all right for me by saying:

"Say, I went to church yesterday."

"Good boy," I said, "and what church did you attend?"

"Guess," was his reply.

"Some Union Mission chapel?" I ventured.

"N-no," he said, "I don't care to run on these branch roads very much. I don't get a chance to go to church every Sunday, and when I can go, I like to run on the main line, where your trip is regular, and you make schedule time, and don't have to wait on connections. I don't care to run on a branch. Good enough, I reckon, but I don't like it."

"Episcopal?" I guessed.

"Limited express!" he said, "all parlor cars, vestibuled, and two dollars extra for a seat; fast time, and only stop at the big stations. Elegant line, but too rich for a brakeman. All the trainmen in uniform; conductor's punch and lanterns silver-plated; train-boys fenced up by themselves and not allowed to offer anything but music. Passengers talk back at the conductor. Trips scheduled through the whole year, so when you get aboard you know just where you're going and how long it will take you. Most systematic road in the country and has a mighty nice class of travel. Never hear of a receiver appointed on that line. But I didn't ride in the parlor car yesterday."

"Universalist?" I suggested.

"Broad gauge," the Brakeman chuckled; "does too much complimentary business to be prosperous. Everybody travels on a pass. Conductor doesn't get a cash fare once in fifty miles. Stops at all way-stations and won't run into anything but a union depot. No smoking-car allowed on the train because the company doesn't own enough brimstone to head a match. Train orders are rather vague, though; and I've noticed the trainmen don't get along very well with the passengers. No, I didn't go on the broad gauge, though I have some good friends on that road who are the best people in the world. Been running on it all their lives."

"Presbyterian?" I hinted.

"Narrow gauge, eh?" said the Brakeman; "pretty track; straight as a rule; tunnel right through the heart of a mountain rather than go around it; spirit level grade; strict rules, too; passengers have to show their tickets before they get on the train; cars a little bit narrow for sleepers; have to sit one in a seat and no room in the aisle to dance. No stop-over tickets allowed; passenger must go straight through to the station he's ticketed for, or stay off the car. When the car's full, gates are shut; cars built at the shops to hold just so many, and no more allowed on. That road is run right up to the rules and you don't often hear of an accident on it. Had a head-on collision at Schenectady union station and run over a weak bridge at Cincinnati, not many years ago, but nobody hurt, and no passengers lost. Great road."

"May be you rode with the Agnostics?" I tried.

The Brakeman shook his head emphatically.

"Scrub road," he said, "dirt road-bed and no ballast; no time-card, and no train dispatcher. All trains run wild and every engineer makes his own time, just as he pleases. A sort of 'smoke-if-you-want-to' road. Too many side tracks; every switch wide open all the time, switchman sound asleep and the target-lamp dead out. Get on where you please and get off when you want. Don't have to show your tickets, and the conductor has no authority to collect fare. No, sir; I was offered a pass, but I don't like the line. I don't care to travel over a road that has no terminus.

"Do you know, I asked a division superintendent where his road run to, and he said he hoped to die if he knew. I asked him if the general superintendent could tell me, and he said he didn't believe they had a general superintendent, and if they had, he didn't know any more about the road than the passengers did. I asked him who he reported to, and he said, 'Nobody.' I asked a conductor who he got his orders from, and he said he didn't take no orders from any living man or dead ghost. And when I asked the engineer who gave him orders, he said he'd just like to see any man on this planet try to give him orders, black-and-white or verbal; he said he'd run that train to suit himself or he'd run it into the ditch. Now, you see, I'm not much of a theologian, but I'm a good deal of a railroad man, and I don't want to run on a road that has no schedule, makes no time, has no connections, starts anywhere and runs nowhere, and has neither signal man, train dispatcher or superintendent. Might be all right, but I've railroaded too long to understand it."

"Did you try the Methodist?"

"Now you're shoutin'!" he cried with enthusiasm; "that's the hummer! Fast time and crowds of passengers! Engines carry a power of steam, and don't you forget it. Steam-gauge shows a hundred and enough all the time. Lively train crews, too. When the conductor shouts 'All a-b-o-a-r-d!' you can hear him to the next hallelujah station. Every train lamp shines like a head-light. Stop-over privileges on all tickets; passenger can drop off the train any time he pleases, do the station a couple of days and hop on to the next revival train that comes thundering along with an evangelist at the throttle. Good, whole-souled, companionable conductors; ain't a road on earth that makes the passengers feel more at home. No passes issued on any account; everybody pays full traffic rate for his own ticket. Safe road, too; well equipped; Wesleyanhouse air brakes on every train. It's a road I'm fond of, but I didn't begin this week's run with it."

I began to feel that I was running ashore; I tried one more lead:

"May be you went with the Baptists?"

"Ah, ha!" he shouted, "now you're on the Shore line! River Road, eh? Beautiful curves, lines of grace at every bend and sweep of the river; all steel rail and rock ballast; single track, and not a siding from the round-house to the terminus. Takes a heap of water to run it, though; double tanks at every station, and there isn't an engine in the shops that can run a mile or pull a pound with less than two gauges. Runs through a lovely country—river on one side and the hills on the other; and it's a steady climb, up grade all the way until the run ends where the river begins, at the fountain head. Yes, sir, I'll take the River Road every time for a safe trip, sure connections, good time, and no dust blowing in when you open a window. And yesterday morning, when the conductor came around taking up fares with a little basket punch, I didn't ask him to pass me; I paid my fare like a little Jonah—twenty-five cents for a ninety-minute run, with a concert by the passengers thrown in. I tell you what it is, Pilgrim, never mind your baggage, you just secure your passage on the River Road if you want to go to—"

But just here the long whistle announced a station, and the Brakeman hurried to the door, shouting—

"Zions-VILLE! ZIONS-ville! All out for Zionsville! This train makes no stops between here and Indianapolis!"



HOW MR. TERRAPIN LOST HIS BEARD

BY ANNE VIRGINIA CULBERTSON

The "cook-house" stood at some little distance from the "big house," and every evening after supper it was full of light and noise and laughter. The light came from the fire on the huge hearth, above which hung the crane and the great iron pots which Eliza, the cook, declared were indispensable in the practice of her art. To be sure, there was a cook-stove, but 'Liza was wedded to old ways and maintained there was nothing "stove cooked" that could hope to rival the rich and nutty flavor of ash cake, or greens "b'iled slow an' long over de ha'th, wid a piece er bacon in de pot."

The noise and laughter came from a circle of dusky and admiring friends, for Aunt 'Liza was a great favorite with everybody on the plantation, and though hunchbacked and homely, had, nevertheless, had her pick, as she was fond of boasting, of the likeliest looking men on the place; and though she had been twice wedded and twice widowed, aspirants were not wanting for the position now vacant for a third time. Indeed, not long before, a member of the family, on going to the cook-house to see why dinner was so late, had discovered one Sam, the burly young ox-cart driver, on his knees, pleading very earnestly with the elderly and humpbacked little cook, while dinner simmered on and on, unnoticed and forgotten. When remonstrated with she said that she was "'bleeged ter have co'tin' times ez well ez de res' er folks," and intimated that in affairs of the heart these things were apt to happen at any time or place, and that if a gentleman chose an inopportune moment "'twan't her fault," and no one could, with any show of reason, expect her not to pay attention to him. She ruled everybody, her white folks included, though just how she did it no one could say, unless she was one of those commanding spirits and born leaders who sometimes appear even in the humblest walks of life. It is possible that her uncommonly strong will compelled the affections of her male admirers, but it is also possible that she condescended to flatter, and it is certain that she fed them well.

One night, between supper and bedtime, the children heard the sound of a banjo proceeding from the cook-house. They had never ventured into Aunt 'Liza's domain before, but the plinketty-plunk of the banjo, the sound of patting and the thud of feet keeping time to the music drew them irresistibly. Aunt Nancy was there, in the circle about the embers, as was also her old-time foe, Aunt 'Phrony, and the banjo was in the hands of Tim, a plow-boy, celebrated as being the best picker for miles around. Lastly, there were Aunt 'Liza and her latest conquest, Sam, whose hopes she could not have entirely quenched or he would not have beamed so complacently on the assembled company.

There was a hush as the three little heads appeared in the doorway, but the children begged them to go on, and so Tim picked away for dear life and Sam did a wonderful double-shuffle with the pigeon-wing thrown in. Then Tim sang a plantation song about "Cindy Ann" that ran something like this:

I'se gwine down ter Richmond, I'll tell you w'at hit's for: I'se gwine down ter Richmond, Fer ter try an' end dis war.

Refrain: An'-a you good-by, Cindy, Cindy, Good-by, Cindy Ann; An'-a you good-by, Cindy, Cindy, I'se gwine ter Rappahan.

I oon ma'y a po' gal, I'll tell de reason w'y: Her neck so long an' skinny I'se 'feared she nuver die.

Refrain.

I oon ma'y a rich gal, I'll tell de reason w'y: Bekase she dip so much snuff Her mouf is nuver dry.

Refrain.

I ru'rr ma'y a young gal, A apple in her han', Dan ter ma'y a widdy Wid a house an' a lot er lan'.

Refrain.

At the reference to a "widdy" he winked at the others and looked significantly at Sam and Aunt 'Liza. Then he declared it was the turn of the ladies to amuse the gentlemen. Aunt Nancy and Aunt 'Phrony cried, "Hysh! Go 'way, man! W'at ken we-all do? Done too ol' fer foolishness; leave dat ter de gals!" But 'Liza was not inclined to leave the entertainment of gentlemen to "gals," whom she declared to be, for the most part, "wu'fless trunnel-baid trash."

"Come, come, Sis' 'Phrony, an' you, too, Sis' Nancy," said she, "you knows dar ain' nu'rr pusson on de place kin beat you bofe in der marter uv tellin' tales. I ain' nuver have de knack myse'f, but I knows a good tale w'en I years hit, an' I bin gittin' myse'f fixed fer one uver sence you comed in."

The children added their petitions, seconded by Tim and Sam. Aunt Nancy looked as if she were feeling around in the dusk of half-forgotten things for a dimly remembered story, perceiving which the nimbler-witted Aunt 'Phrony made haste to say that she believed she knew a story which might please the company if they were not too hard to suit. They politely protested that such was far from being the case, whereupon she began the story of how the Terrapin lost his beard.

"Um-umph!" snorted Aunt Nancy, "who uver year tell uv a tarr'pin wid a by'ud!"

"Look-a-yer, ooman," said 'Phrony, "who tellin' dis, me er you? You s'pose I'se talkin' 'bout de li'l ol' no-kyount tarr'pins dey has dese days? Naw, suh! I'se tellin' 'bout de ol' time Tarr'pin whar wuz a gre't chieft an' a big fighter, an' w'ensomuver tu'rr creeturs come roun' an' try ter pay him back, he jes' drord his haid in his shell an' dar he wuz. Dish yer ain' no ol' nigger tale, neener, dish yer a Injun tale whar my daddy done tol' me w'en I wan't no bigger'n Miss Janey. He say dat sidesen de by'ud, Tarr'pin had big wattles hangin' down beneaf his chin, jes' lak de tukkey-gobblers has dese days. Him an' Mistah Wi'yum Wil'-tukkey wuz mighty good fren's dem times, an' Tukkey he thought Tarr'pin wuz a monst'ous good-lookin' man. He useter mek gre't 'miration an' say, 'Mistah Tarry-long Tarr'pin, you sut'n'y is a harnsum man. Dar ain' nu'rr creetur in dese parts got such a by'ud an' wattles ez w'at you is.'

"Den Tarr'pin he'd stroke down de by'ud an' swell out de wattles an' say, 'Sho! sho! Mistah Tukkey, you done praise dese yer heap mo'n w'at dey is wuf,' but all de same he wuz might'ly please', fer dar's nuttin' lak a li'l bit er flatt'ry fer ilin' up de j'ints an' mekin' folks limbersome in der feelin's.

"Tukkey git ter thinkin' so much 'bout de by'ud an' de wattles dat seem ter him ez ef he kain't git long no-hows lessen he have some fer hisse'f, 'kase in dem days de gobblers ain' have none. He study an' he study, but he kain't see whar he kin git 'em, an' de mo' he study de mo' he hone atter 'em. Las' he git so sharp set atter 'em dat he ain' kyare how he git 'em, jes' so he git 'em, an' den he mek up his min' he gwine tek 'em 'way f'um Tarr'pin. So one day w'en he met up wid him in de road he stop him an' bob his haid an' mek his manners mighty p'litely, an' he say, sezee, 'Mawnin', Mistah Tarry-long, mawnin'. How you come on dis day? I ain' hatter ax you, dough, 'kase you done look so sprucy wid yo' by'ud all comb' out an' yo' wattles puff' up. I wish, suh, you lemme putt 'em on fer a minnit, so's't I kin see ef I becomes 'em ez good ez w'at you does.'

"Ol' man Tarr'pin mighty easy-goin' an' commodatin', so he say, 'W'y, sut'n'y, Mistah Tukkey, you kin tek 'em an' welcome fer a w'iles.' So Tukkey he putts 'em on an' moseys down ter de branch ter look at hisse'f in de water. 'Whoo-ee!' sezee ter hisse'f, 'ain' I de caution in dese yer fixin's! I'se saw'y fer de gals now, I sut'n'y is, 'kase w'at wid my shape an' dish yer by'ud an' wattles, dar gwine be some sho'-'nuff heart-smashin' roun' dese diggin's, you year me sesso!'

"Den he go struttin' back, shakin' de by'ud an' swellin' put de wattles an' jes' mo'n steppin' high an' prancin' w'ile he sing:

'Cle'r outen de way fer ol' Dan Tucker, You'se too late ter git yo' supper.'

"Den he say, sezee, 'Mistah Tarr'pin, please, suh, ter lemme keep dese yer? I b'lieve I becomes 'em mo'n w'at you does, 'kase my neck so long an' thin seem lak I needs 'em ter set hit off mo'n w'at you does wid dat shawt li'l neck er yo'n whar you keeps tuck 'way in yo' shell half de time, anyways. Sidesen dat, you is sech a runt dat you g'long draggin' de by'ud on de groun', an' fus' news you know hits 'bleeged ter be wo' out. You bes' lemme have hit, 'kase I kin tek good kyare uv hit.'

"Den Tarr'pin say, sezee, 'I lak ter 'commodate you, Mistah Tukkey, but I ain' see how I kin. I done got so use ter runnin' my fingers thu de by'ud an' spittin' over hit w'en I'se settin' roun' thinkin' er talkin' dat I dunno how I kin do widout hit, an' I kain't git long, no-how, widout swellin' up de wattles w'en I git tetched in my feelin's. Sidesen dat, I kin tek kyare er de by'ud, ef I is a runt; I bin doin' it a good w'ile, an' she ain' wo' out yit. So please, suh, ter han' me over my fixin's.'

"'Not w'iles I got any wind lef' in me fer runnin',' sez de Tukkey, sezee, an' wid dat he went a-scootin', ol' man Tarr'pin atter him, hot-foot. Dey went scrabblin' up de mountains an' down de mountains, an' 'twuz pull Dick, pull devil, fer a w'ile. Dey kain't neener one uv 'em climb up ve'y fas', but w'en dey git ter de top, Tukkey he fly down an' Tarr'pin he jes' natchully turn over an' roll down. But Tukkey git de start an' keep hit. W'en Tarr'pin roll to de bottom uv a mountain den he'd see Tukkey at de top er de nex' one. Dey kep' hit up dis-a-way 'cross fo' ridges, an' las' Tarr'pin he plumb wo' out an' he see he wan't gwine ketch up at dat rate, so he gin up fer dat day. Den he go an' hunt up de cunjerers an' ax 'em fer ter he'p him. He say, 'Y'all know dat by'ud an' wattles er mine? Well, I done loan 'em to Mistah Wi'yum Wil'-tukkey, 'kase he wuz my fren' an' he done ax me to. An' now he turn out ter be no-kyount trash, an' w'at I gwine do? You bin knowin' I is a slow man, an' if I kain't git some he'p, I hatter say good-by by'ud an' wattles.'"

"What are 'cunjerers,' Aunt 'Phrony?" said Ned.

"Well now, honey," said she, "I dunno ez I kin jes' rightly tell you, but deys w'at de Injuns calls 'medincin'-men,' an' dey doctors de sick folks an' he'ps de hunters ter git game an' de gals ter git beaux, an' putts spells on folks an' mek 'em do jes' 'bout w'at dey want 'em to. An' so dese yer cunjerers dey goes off by derse'fs an' has a confab an' den dey come back an' tell Mistah Tarr'pin dat dey reckon dey done fix Mistah Tukkey dis time.

"'W'at you done wid him?' sezee.

"'We ain' ketch 'im,' dey ses, 'we lef' dat fer you, dat ain' ow' bizness, but we done fix him up so't you kin do de ketchin' yo'se'f.'

"'W'at has you done to him, den?' sezee.

"'Son', dey ses, 'we done putt a lot er li'l bones in his laigs, an' dat gwine slow him up might'ly, an' we 'pends on you ter do de res', 'kase we knows dat you is a gre't chieft.'

"Den Tarr'pin amble long 'bout his bizness an' neener stop ner res' ontwel he met up wid Tukkey onct mo'. He ax fer his by'ud an' wattles ag'in, but Tukkey jes' turnt an' stept out f'um dat, Tarr'pin atter him. But seem lak de cunjerers thought Mistah Tarr'pin wuz faster'n w'at he wuz, er dat Mistah Tukkey 'z slower'n w'at he wuz, 'kase Tarr'pin ain' nuver ketch up wid him yit, an' w'ats mo', de tarr'pins is still doin' widout by'uds an' wattles an' de gobblers is still wearin' 'em an' swellin' roun' showin' off ter de gals, steppin' ez high ez ef dem li'l bones w'at de cunjerers putt dar wan't still in der laigs, an' struttin' lak dey wuz sayin' ter ev'y pusson dey meets:

'Cle'r outen de way fer ol' Dan Tucker, You'se too late ter git yo' supper.'"



THE CRITIC

BY WILLIAM J. LAMPTON

Behold The Critic, bold and cold, Who sits in judgment on The twilight and the dawn Of literature, And, eminently sure, Informs his age What printed page Is destined to be great. His word is Fate, And what he writes Is greater far Than all the books He writes of are. His pen Is dipped in boom Or doom; And when He says one book is rot, And that another's not, That ends it. He Is pure infallibility, And any book he judges must Be blessed or cussed By all mankind, Except the blind Who will not see The master's modest mastery. His fiat stands Against the uplifted hands Of thousands who protest And buy the books That they like best; But what of that? He knows where he is at, And they don't. And why Shouldn't he be high Above them as the clouds Are high above the brooks, For God, He made the Critic, And man, he makes the books. See? Gee whiz, What a puissant potentate the Critic is.



THE ASSOCIATED WIDOWS

BY KATHARINE M. ROOF

The confirmed bachelor sat apart, fairly submerged by a sea of Sunday papers; yet a peripheral consciousness of the ladies' presence was revealed in his embryonic smile.

He folded over a voluminous sheet containing an account of the latest murder, and glanced at a half-page picture, labeled, "The Scene of the Crime."

"Was there ever yet a woman that could keep a secret," he demanded, apparently of the newspaper. "Now, if this poor fellow had only kept his little plans to himself—but, of course, he had to go and tell some woman."

"Looks like the man didn't know how to keep his secret that time," returned Mrs. Pendleton with a smile calculated to soften harsh judgments against her sex.

"There are some secrets woman can keep," observed Elsie Howard. Her gaze happened to rest upon Mrs. Pendleton's golden hair.

"For instance," demanded the confirmed bachelor. (His name was Barlow.)

"Oh—her age for one thing." Elsie withdrew her observant short-sighted eyes from Mrs. Pendleton's crowning glory, and a smile barely touched the corners of her expressively inexpressive mouth. Mrs. Pendleton glanced up, faintly suspicious of that last remark.

Mr. Barlow laughed uproariously. In the two years that he had been a "guest" in Mrs. Howard's boarding-house he had come to regard Miss Elsie as a wit, and it was his habit—like the Italians at the opera—to give his applause before the closing phrases were delivered.

"I guess that's right. You hit it that time. That's one secret a woman can keep." He chuckled appreciatively.

Mrs. Pendleton laughed less spontaneously than usual and said, "It certainly was a dangerous subject," that "she had been looking for silver hairs amongst the gold herself lately." And again Elsie's eyes were attracted to the hairs under discussion. For three months now she had questioned that hair. At night it seemed above reproach in its infantile fairness, but in the crude unkind daylight there was a garish insistence about it that troubled the eye.

At that moment the door opened and Mrs. Hilary came in with her bonnet on. She glanced around with frigid greeting.

"So I'm not late to dinner after all. I had thought you would be at table. The tram was so slow I was sorry I had not walked and saved the fare." She spoke with an irrational rising and falling of syllables that at once proclaimed her nationality. She was a short, compact little woman with rosy cheeks, abundant hair and a small tight mouth. Mrs. Hilary was a miniature painter by choice and a wife and mother by accident. She was subject to lapses in which she unquestionably forgot the twins' existence. She recalled them suddenly now.

"Has any one seen Gladys and Gwendolen? Dear, dear, I wonder where they are. They wouldn't go to church with me. Those children are such a responsibility."

"But they are such happy children," said gentle little Mrs. Howard, who had come in at the beginning of this speech. In her heart Mrs. Howard dreaded the long-legged, all-pervasive twins, but she pitied the widowed and impoverished little artist. "So sad," she was wont to say to her intimates in describing her lodger, "a young widow left all alone in a foreign country."

"But one would hardly call America a foreign country to an Englishwoman," one friend had interpolated at this point.

"Yes, I know," Mrs. Howard had acknowledged, "but she seems foreign. Her husband was an American, I believe, and he evidently left her with almost nothing. He must have been very unkind to her, she has such a dislike of Americans. She wasn't able to give the regular price for the rooms, but I couldn't refuse her—I felt so sorry for her."

Mrs. Howard liked to "feel sorry for" people. Yet she was apt to find herself at sea in attempting to sympathize with Mrs. Hilary. She was a sweet-faced, tired-looking little woman with a vague smile and dreamy eyes. About five years ago Mrs. Howard had had "reverses" and had been forced by necessity to live to violate the sanctity of her hearth and home; grossly speaking, she had been obliged to take boarders, no feasible alternative seeming to suggest itself. The old house in Eleventh Street, in which she had embarked upon this cheerless career, had never been a home for her or her daughter. Yet an irrepressible sociability of nature enabled her to find a certain pleasure in the life impossible to her more reserved daughter.

As they all sat around now in the parlor, into which the smell of the Sunday turkey had somehow penetrated, a few more guests wandered in and sat about provisionally on the impracticable parlor furniture, waiting for the dinner signal. Mrs. Howard bravely tried to keep up the simulation of social interchange with which she ever pathetically strove to elevate the boarding-house intercourse into the decency of a chosen association.

Suddenly there came a thump and a crash against the door and the twins burst in, their jackets unbuttoned, their dusty picture hats awry.

"Oh! mater, mater!" they cried tumultuously, dancing about her.

"Such sport, mater. We fed the elephant."

"And the rabbits—"

"And a monkey carried off Gwendolen's gloves—"

"Children," exclaimed Mrs. Hilary impotently, looking from one to the other, "where have you been?" (She pronounced it bean.)

"To the park, mater—"

"To see the animals—"

"Oh, mater, you should see the ducky little baby lion!"

"What is it that they call you?" inquired a perpetually smiling young kindergartner who had just taken possession of a top-floor hall-room.

Mrs. Hilary glanced at her slightingly.

"What is it that they call me? Why, mater, of course."

"Ah, yes," the girl acquiesced pleasantly. "I remember now; it's English, of course."

"Oh, no," returned Mrs. Hilary instructively, "it's not English; it's Latin."

The kindergartner was silent. Mrs. Pendleton suppressed a chuckle that strongly suggested her "mammy." Mr. Barlow grinned and Elsie Howard's mouth twitched.

"They are such picturesque children," Mrs. Howard put in hastily. "I wonder you don't paint them oftener."

"I declare I just wish I could paint," Mrs. Pendleton contributed sweetly, "I think it's such pretty work."

Mrs. Hilary was engrossed in the task of putting the twins to rights.

"I don't know what to do with them, they are quite unmanageable," she sighed. "It's so bad for them—bringing them up in a lodging-house."

Mrs. Howard flushed and Mrs. Pendleton's eyes flashed. The dinner bell rang and Elsie Howard rose with a little laugh.

"An English mother with American children! What do you expect, Mrs. Hilary?"

Mrs. Hilary was busy retying a withered blue ribbon upon the left side of Gladys' brow. She looked up to explain:

"They are only half-American, you know. But their manners are getting quite ruined with these terrible American children."

Then they filed down into the basement dining-room for the noon dinner.

"Horrid, rude little Cockney," Mrs. Pendleton whispered in Elsie Howard's ear.

The girl smiled faintly. "Oh, she doesn't know she is rude. She is just—English."

Mrs. Howard, over the characterless soup, wondered what it was about the little English artist that seemed so "different." Conversation with Mrs. Hilary developed such curious and unexpected difficulties. Mrs. Howard looked compassionately over at the kindergartner who, with the hopefulness of inexperience, started one subject after another with her unresponsive neighbor. What quality was it in Mrs. Hilary that invariably brought both discussion and pleasantry to a standstill? Elsie, upon whom Mrs. Howard depended for clarification of her thought, would only describe it as "English." In her attempts to account for this alien presence in her household, Mrs. Howard inevitably took refuge in the recollection of Mrs. Hilary's widowhood. This moving thought occurring to her now caused her to glance in the direction of Mrs. Pendleton's black dress and her face lightened. Mrs. Pendleton was of another sort. Mrs. Pendleton had proved, as Mrs. Howard always expressed it, "quite an acquisition to our circle." She felt almost an affection for the merry, sociable talkative Southern woman, with her invariable good spirits, her endless fund of appropriate platitude and her ready, superficial sympathy. Mrs. Pendleton had "come" through a cousin of a friend of a friend of Mrs. Howard's, and these vague links furnished unlimited material for conversation between the two women. Mrs. Pendleton was originally from Savannah, and the names which flowed in profusion from her lips were of unimpeachable aristocracy. Pendleton was a very "good name" in the South, Mrs. Howard had remarked to Elsie, and went on to cite instances and associations.

Besides those already mentioned, the household consisted of three old maids, who had been with Mrs. Howard from her first year; a pensive art student with "paintable" hair; a deaf old gentleman whose place at table was marked by a bottle of lithia tablets; a chinless bank clerk, who had jokes with the waitress, and a silent man who spoke only to request food.

Mr. Barlow occupied, and frankly enjoyed the place between Miss Elsie and Mrs. Pendleton. He found the widow's easy witticisms, stock anecdotes and hackneyed quotations of unfailing interest and her obvious coquetry irresistible. Mr. Barlow took life and business in a most un-American spirit of leisure. He never found fault with the food or the heating arrangements, and never precipitated disagreeable arguments at table. All things considered, he was probably the most contented spirit in the house.

The talk at table revolved upon newspaper topics, the weather, the health of the household, and a comparison of opinions about plays and actresses. At election times it was strongly tinged with politics, and on Sundays, popular preachers were introduced, with some expression as to what was and was not good taste in the pulpit. Among the feminine portion a fair amount of time was devoted to a review of the comparative merits of shops.

Mrs. Pendleton's conversation, however, had a somewhat wider range, for she had traveled. Just what topics were favored in those long undertone conversations with Mr. Barlow only Elsie Howard could have told, as the seat on the other side of the pair was occupied by the deaf old gentleman. There were many covert glances and much suppressed laughter, but neither of the two old maids opposite were able to catch the drift of the low-voiced dialogue, so it remained a tantalizing mystery. Mrs. Pendleton, when pleased to be general in her attentions, proved to be, as Mrs. Howard had said, "an acquisition." She spoke most entertainingly of Egypt, of Japan and Hawaii. Yet all these experiences seemed tinged with a certain sadness, as they had evidently been associated with the last days of the late Mr. Pendleton. They had crossed the Pyrenees when "poor Mr. Pendleton was so ill he had to be carried every inch of the way." In Egypt, "sometimes it seemed like he couldn't last another day. But I always did say 'while there is life there is hope,'" she would recall pensively, "and the doctors all said the only hope for his life was in constant travel, and so we were always, as you might say, seeking 'fresh fields and pastures new.'"

Then Mrs. Howard's gentle eyes would fill with sympathy. "Poor Mrs. Pendleton," she would often say to Elsie after one of these distressing allusions. "How terrible it must have been. Think of seeing some one you love dying that way, by inches before your eyes. She must have been very fond of him, too. She always speaks of him with so much feeling."

"Yes," said Elsie with untranslatable intonation. "I wonder what he died of."

"I don't know," returned her mother regretfully. She had no curiosity, but she had a refined and well-bred interest in diseases. "I never heard her mention it and I didn't like to ask."

"Poor Mrs. Howard," Mrs. Pendleton was wont to say with her facile sympathy. "So hard for her to have to take strangers into her home. I believe she was left without anything at her husband's death; mighty hard for a woman at her age."

"How long has her husband been dead?" the other boarder to whom she spoke would sometimes inquire.

Mrs. Pendleton thought he must have been dead some time, although she had never heard them say, exactly. "You never hear Elsie speak of him," she added, "so I reckon she doesn't remember him right well."

As the winter wore on the tendency to tete-a-tete between Mrs. Pendleton and Mr. Barlow became more marked. They lingered nightly in the chilly parlor in the glamour of the red lamp after the other guests had left. It was discovered that they had twice gone to the theater together. The art student had met them coming in late. As a topic of conversation among the boarders the affair was more popular than food complaints. A subtile atmosphere of understanding enveloped the two. It became so marked at last that even Mrs. Hilary perceived it—although Elsie always insisted that Gladys had told her.

One afternoon in the spring, as Mrs. Pendleton was standing on the door-step preparing to fit the latch-key into the lock, the door opened and a man came out uproariously, followed by Gladys and Gwendolen, who, in some inexplicable way, always had the effect of a crowd of children. The man was tall and not ill-looking. Mrs. Pendleton was attired in trailing black velveteen, a white feather boa, and a hat covered with tossing plumes, and the hair underneath was aggressively golden. A potential smile hovered about her lips and her glance lingered in passing. Inside the house she bent a winning smile upon Gwendolen, who was the less sophisticated of the two children.

"Who's your caller, honey?"

"That's the pater," replied Gwendolen with her mouth full of candy. "He brought us some sweets. You may have one if you wish."

"Your—your father," translated Mrs. Pendleton with a gasp. She was obliged to lean against the wall for support.

The twins nodded, their jaws locked with caramel.

"He doesn't come very often," Gladys managed to get out indistinctly. "I wish he would."

"I suppose his business keeps him away," suggested Mrs. Pendleton.

Gladys glanced up from a consideration of the respective attractions of a chocolate cream and caramel.

"He says it is incompatibility of humor," she repeated glibly. Gladys was more than half American.

"Of humor!" Mrs. Pendleton's face broke up into ripples of delight. She flew at once to Mrs. Howard's private sitting room, arriving all out of breath and exploded her bomb immediately.

"My dear, did you know that Mrs. Hilary is not a widow?"

"Not a widow!" repeated Mrs. Howard with dazed eyes.

"I met her husband right now at the door. He was telling the children good-by. He isn't any more dead than I am."

"Not dead!" repeated Mrs. Howard, collapsing upon the nearest chair with all the prostration a news bearer's heart could desire. "And she was always talking about what he used to do and used to think and used to say. Why—why I can't believe it."

"True as preachin'," declared Mrs. Pendleton, adding that you could have knocked her down with a feather when she discovered it.

Elsie Howard came into her mother's room just then and Mrs. Pendleton repeated the exciting news, adding, "Gladys says they don't live together because of incompatibility of humor!"

Elsie smiled and remarked that it certainly was a justifiable ground for separation and unkindly went off, leaving the subject undeveloped.

The next day Mrs. Howard had a caller. It was the friend whose cousin had a friend that had known Mrs. Pendleton. In the process of conversation the caller remarked casually:

"So Mrs. Pendleton has got her divorce at last."

Mrs. Howard smiled vaguely and courteously.

"Some connection of our Mrs. Pendleton? I don't think I have heard her mention it. Dear me, isn't it dreadful how common divorce is getting to be!"

The guest stared.

"You don't mean to say—why, my dear Mrs. Howard—is it possible you don't know? It is your Mrs. Pendleton."

Mrs. Howard remained looking at her friend. Once or twice her lips moved but no words came.

"Her husband is dead," she said at last, faintly.

The caller laughed. "Then he must have died yesterday. Why, didn't you know that was the reason she spent last year in Colorado?"

"For her husband's health," gasped Mrs. Howard, clinging to the last shred of her six months' belief in Mrs. Pendleton's widowhood. "I always had an impression that it was there he died."

The other woman laughed heartlessly. "Did she tell you he was dead?"

Mrs. Howard collected her scattered faculties and tried to think.

"No," she said at last. "Now that you speak of it, I don't believe she ever did. But she certainly gave that impression. She seemed to be always telling of his last illness and his last days. She never actually mentioned the details of his death—but then, how could she—poor thing?"

"She couldn't, of course. That would have been asking too much." Mrs. Howard's guest went off again into peals of unseemly laughter.

When her caller had left, Mrs. Howard climbed up to the chilly skylight room occupied by her daughter and dropped upon the bed, exclaiming:

"Well, I never would have believed it of Mrs. Pendleton!"

Elsie, who was standing before her mirror, regarded her mother in the glass.

"What's up. Has she eloped with Billie Barlow at last?"

Mrs. Howard tried to say it, but became inarticulate with emotion. After five minutes of preamble and exclamation, her daughter was in possession of the fact.

"That explains about her hair," was Elsie's only comment. "I am so relieved to have it settled at last."

"Why didn't she tell me?" wailed Mrs. Howard.

"Oh, people don't always tell those things."

Mrs. Howard was silent.

As they passed the parlor door on their way down to dinner, Mrs. Pendleton's merry laugh rang out and Elsie caught a glimpse of the golden hair under the red lamp and the fugitive glimpse of Mr. Barlow's bald spot.

About two days later, as the girl came in from an afternoon's shopping, and was on her way upstairs, her mother called to her. Something in the sound of it attracted her attention. She hurried down the few steps and into her mother's room. Mrs. Howard was sitting over by the window in the fading light, with a strange look upon her face. An open telegram lay in her lap. Elsie went up to her quickly.

"What is it, mother?"

Mrs. Howard handed her the telegram.

"Your father," she said.

Elsie Howard read the simple announcement in silence. Then she looked up, the last trace of an old bitterness in her faint smile.

"We will miss him," she said.

"Elsie!" cried her mother. It was a tone the girl had never heard from her before. Her eyes fell.

"No, it wasn't nice to say it. I am sorry. But I can't forget what life was with him." She raised her eyes to her mother's. "It was simply hell, mother; you can't have forgotten. You have said it yourself so often. We can not deny that it is a relief to know—"

"Hush, Elsie, never let me hear you say anything like that again."

"Forgive me, mother," said the girl with quick remorse. "I never will. I don't think I have ever felt that death makes such things so different, and I didn't realize how you would—look at it."

"My child, he was your father," said Mrs. Howard in a low voice. Then Elsie saw the tears in her mother's eyes.

* * * * *

"Such a shock to her," Mrs. Pendleton murmured, sympathetically, to Elsie. "I know, Miss Elsie; I can feel for her—" Elsie mechanically thought of the last hours of Mr. Pendleton, then recalled herself with a start. "Death always is a shock," Mrs. Pendleton finished gracefully, "even when one most expects it. You must let me know if there is anything I can do."

Later in the evening she communicated the astonishing news to Mrs. Hilary, who ejaculated freely: "Only fancy!" and "How very extraordinary!"

"Didn't you think he had been dead a hundred years?" exclaimed Mrs. Pendleton.

"One never can tell in the states," responded Mrs. Hilary conservatively. "Divorce is so common over here. It isn't the thing at all in England, you know."

Mrs. Pendleton stared.

"But they were not divorced, only separated. Do you never do that—in England?"

"Divorced people are not received at court, you know," explained Mrs. Hilary.

Mrs. Pendleton's glance lingered upon the Englishwoman's immobile face and a laugh broke into her words.

"But when you are in Rome, you do as the Romans—is that it, Mrs. Hilary?" But the shot glanced off harmlessly from the thick armor of British literalness.

"In Rome divorce doesn't exist at all," she graciously informed her companion. "The Romish church does not permit it, you know."

The American woman looked at the Englishwoman more in sorrow than in anger.

"How," she reflected, "is one to be revenged like a lady upon an Englishwoman?"

It was about a week later that Mrs. Pendleton, finding herself alone with Mrs. Howard and Elsie, made the final announcement.

"I hope you-all will be ready to dance at my wedding next month. It's going to be very quiet, but I couldn't think of being married without you and Miss Elsie—and Mr. Barlow, he feels just like I do about it."



WOMEN AND BARGAINS

BY NINA R. ALLEN

Show me the woman who in her heart of hearts does not delight in a bargain, and I will tell you that she is a dead woman.

I who write this, after having triumphantly passed bargain counters of every description, untempted by ribbons worth twenty-five cents but selling for nineteen, insensible to dimities that had sold for nineteen cents but were offered at six and a fourth cents a yard, and—though I have a weakness for good cooking utensils—blind to the attractions of a copper tea-kettle whose former price was now cut in two, at last fell a victim to a green-and-white wicker chair.

This is how it happened. I asked the price. Eight dollars, replied the shop-keeper. No. It was a ten-dollar chair. But he had said eight. It was a mistake. Nevertheless he would keep his word. I could have it for eight. What heart of woman could resist a bargain like this? Besides, I thought such honesty ought to be encouraged. It is but too uncommon in this wicked world. And—well, I really wanted the chair. How could a woman help wanting it when she found that the salesman had made an error of two dollars? It was a ten-dollar chair, the shop-keeper repeated. I saw the tag marked "Lax, Jxxx Mxx." There could be no doubt of it.

I gazed and gazed, but finally went on, like the seamen of Ulysses, deafening myself to the siren-voice. And though I had hesitated, I might not have been lost; but returning by the same route, I saw a neighboring druggist rush into that store bareheaded, as I now suppose to change a bill. Need I say that I then thought he had come for my chair? Need I say that I then and there bought that chair?

Thus have I brought shame on a judicious parent—not my mother—who has conscientiously labored to teach me that the way of the bargain-hunter is hard.

As well might man attempt to deprive the cat of its mew or the dog of its bark as to eliminate from the female breast the love of bargains. It has been burned in with the centuries. Eve, poor soul, doubtless never knew the happiness of swarming with other women round a big table piled with remnants of rumpled table-linen, mis-mated towels and soiled dresser-scarfs, or the pleasure of carrying off the bolt of last fall's ribbon on which another woman had her eye; nor had she the proud satisfaction of bringing home to her unfortunate partner a shirt with a bosom like a checker-board, that had been marked down to sixty-three cents. But history, since her day, is not lacking in bargains of various kinds, of which woman has had her share, though no doubt Anniversary Sales, Sensational Mill End Sales, and Railroad Wreck Sales are comparatively modern.

A woman's pleasure in a good bargain is akin to the rapture engendered in the feminine bosom by successful smuggling. It is perhaps a purer joy. The satisfaction of acquiring something one does not need, or of buying an article which one may have some use for in the future, simply because it is cheap or because Mrs. X. paid seventeen cents more for the same thing at a bargain-sale, can not be understood by a mere man.

Once in a while some stupid masculine creature endeavors to show his wife that she is losing the use of her money by tying it up in embroideries for decorating cotton which is still in the fields of the South, or laying it out in summer dress-goods when snow-storms can not be far distant. The use of her money forsooth! What is money for except to spend? And if she didn't buy embroideries and dimities, she would purchase something else with it.

So she goes on hunting bargains, or rather profiting by those that come in her way, for generally it is not necessary to search for them. These little snares of the merchant are only too common in this age, when everything from cruisers to clothes-pins and pianos to prunes may often be had at a stupendous sacrifice.

A man usually goes to a shop where he believes that he will run little or no risk of being deceived in the quality of the goods, even though prices be higher there than at some other places. A woman thinks she knows a bargain when she sees it.

She is aware that the store-keeper has craftily spread his web of bargains, hoping that when lured into his shop she will buy other things not bargains. But she determines beforehand that she will not be cajoled into purchasing anything but the particular bargain of her desire,—unless—unless she sees something else which she really wants. And generally, she sees something else which she really wants.

Most women are tolerably good judges of a bargain, and therefore have some ground for their confidence in themselves. I have seen a Christmas bargain-table containing china and small ornaments of various wares, completely honeycombed of its actual bargains by veteran bargain-hunters, who left unpurchased as if by instinct goods from the regular stock, offered at usual prices.