Retype them and convert them to word document: Short stories from 100 Selected Stories, by O Henry → The Gift of the Magi → A Cosmopolite in a Café →Between Rounds → The Skylight Room → A Service of Love → The Coming-Out of Maggie → The Cop and the Anthem

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Home >Business & Finance homework help >Retype them and convert them to word document: Short stories from 100 Selected Stories, by O Henry → The Gift of the Magi → A Cosmopolite in a Café →Between Rounds → The Skylight Room → A Service of Love → The Coming-Out of Maggie → The Cop and the Anthem

Short stories from 100 Selected Stories, by O Henry

→ The Gift of the Magi

→ A Cosmopolite in a Café

→Between Rounds

→ The Skylight Room

→ A Service of Love

→ The Coming-Out of Maggie

→ The Cop and the Anthem

→Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

→The Love-Philtre of Ikey Shoenstein

→The Furnished Room

> The Last Leaf

→ The Poet and the Peasant

→ A Ramble in Aphasia

→ A Municipal Report

→ Proof of the Pudding

Contents The Gift of the Magi ................................................................................................................................... 2

II. A Cosmopolite in a Café ........................................................................................................................ 9

III Between Rounds .................................................................................................................................. 15

IV The Skylight Room .............................................................................................................................. 22

V. A Service of Love ................................................................................................................................ 29

VI The Coming-out of Maggi ................................................................................................................... 37

VII The Cop and the Anthem .................................................................................................................... 46

VIII Memoirs of a Yellow Dog ................................................................................................................. 54

IX The Love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstei .................................................................................................... 60

XVII The Brief Debut of Tildy ................................................................................................................. 74

XXXIII The Last Leaf ................................................................................................................................... 76

XLVII The Poet and the Peasant ............................................................................................................... 84

XLVIII The Thing's the Play .................................................................................................................... 93

XL1X A Ramble in Aphasia ..................................................................................................................... 94

L A Municipal Report ............................................................................................................................. 106

LI Compliments of the Season ................................................................................................................ 125

Proof of the Pudding ............................................................................................................................... 127

Past One at Rooney's .............................................................................................................................. 140

The Gift of the Magi

ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. And sixty cents of it was

in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man

and the butcher until one's cheek burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close

dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next

day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and

smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second,

take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but

it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy squad.

In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric

button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card

bearing the name 'Mr. James Dillingham Young.'

The 'Dillingham' had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when

its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters

of 'Dillingham' looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest

and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat

above he was called 'Jim' and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already

introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Delia finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the

window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. To-morrow

would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been

saving every penny she could for months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far.

Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present

for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him.

Something fine and rare and sterling - something just a little bit near to being worthy of the

honour of being owned by Jim.

There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pier-

glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid

sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being

slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining

brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her

hair and let it fall to its full length.

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both

took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's.

The other was Della's hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della

would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's

jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his treasures piled up in the

basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his

beard from envy.

So now Della's beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade of brown

waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it

up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two

splashed on the worn red carpet.

On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts and with

the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out of the door and down the stairs to the street.

Where she stopped the sign read: 'Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.' One flight

up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the

'Sofronie.'

'Will you buy my hair?' asked Della.

'I buy hair,' said Madame. 'Take yer hat off and let's have a sight at the looks of it.'

Down rippled the brown cascade.

'Twenty dollars,' said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

'Give it to me quick,' said Della.

Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed metaphor. She

was ransacking the stores for Jim's present.

She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was no other

like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain

simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by

meretricious ornamentation - as all good things should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As

soon as she saw it she knew that it must be Jim's. It was like him. Quietness and value - the

description applied to both. Twenty-one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home

with the 87 cents.

With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any

company. Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old

leather strap that he used in place of a chain.

When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and reason. She

got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by

generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task, dear friends - a mammoth task.

Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, closelying curls that made her look

wonderfully like a truant schoolboy.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror long, carefully, and critically.

'If Jim doesn't kill me,' she said to herself, 'before he takes a second look at me, he'll say I

look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do - oh! what could I do with a dollar and

eighty-seven cents?'

At seven o'clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the stove,

hot and ready to cook the chops.

Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the corner of the

table near the door that he always entered.

Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white

for just a moment. She had a habit of saying little silent prayers about the simplest everyday

things, and now she whispered: 'Please God, make him think I am still pretty.'

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor

fellow, he was only twenty-two - and to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat

and he was without gloves.

Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were

fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified

her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she

had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly with that peculiar expression on his face.

Della wriggled off the table and went for him.

'Jim, darling,' she cried, 'don't look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and sold it

because I couldn't have lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out

again - you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say "Merry

Christmas!" Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know what a nice - what a beautiful, nice gift I've

got for you.'

'You've cut off your hair?' asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at that patent

fact yet even after the hardest mental labour.

'Cut it off and sold it,' said Della. 'Don't you like me just as well, anyhow? I'm me without

my hair, ain't I?'

Jim looked about the room curiously.

'You say your hair is gone?' he said with an air almost of idiocy.

'You needn't look for it,' said Della. 'It's sold, I tell you - sold and gone, too. It's Christmas

Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered,' she

went on with a sudden serious sweetness, 'but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I

put the chops on, Jim?'

Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten seconds let

us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars

a week or a million a year - what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the

wrong answer. The magi brought valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark

assertion will be illuminated later on.

Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.

'Don't make any mistake, Dell,' he said, 'about me. I don't think there's anything in the

way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll

unwrap that package you may see why you had me going awhile at first.'

White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy;

and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate

employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of the flat.

For there lay The Combs - the set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped for

long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoiseshell, with jewelled rims - just the

shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her

heart had simply craved and yearned over them without the least hope of possession. And now

they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.

But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with dim eyes

and a smile and say: 'My hair grows so fast, Jim!'

And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, 'Oh, oh!'

Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon her open

palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright and ardent spirit.

'Isn't it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town to find it. You'll have to look at the time a

hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on it.'

Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the back of

his head and smiled.

'Dell,' said he, 'let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em awhile. They're too

nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now

suppose you put the chops on.'

The magi, as you know, were wise men - wonderfully wise men - who brought gifts to

the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their

gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat

who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last

word to the wise of these days, let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest.

Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are

the mag.

II. A Cosmopolite in a Café

AT MIDNIGHT THE CAFÉ was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat

had escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal

hospitality to the influx of patrons. And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad,

for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and

we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers instead of cosmopolites.

I invoke your consideration of the scene - the marble-topped tables, the range of leather-

upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state toilets, speaking in an

exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art, the sedulous and largess-loving

garçons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk

and laughter - and, if you will, the Würzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a

ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch

Chunk that the scene was truly Parisian.

My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next

summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new 'attraction' there, he informed me, offering

kingly diversion. And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He

took the great, round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed

no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table-d'hôte grape fruit. He spoke

disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he

mopped up the high seas with his napkin. With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain

bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would have you on skis in Lapland. Zip! Now you rode the

breakers with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas postoak

swamp, let you dry for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into

the society of Viennese archdukes. Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a

Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the

chuchula weed. You would have addressed the letter to 'E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth,

Solar System, the Universe,' and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to

him.

I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened to

his world-wide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globe-

trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and

continents as the winds or gravitation. And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I

thought with glee of a great almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the whole world and dedicated

himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of

the earth, and that 'the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their

cities' hem as a child to the mother's gown.' And whenever they walk 'by roaring streets

unknown' they remember their native city 'most faithful, foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed

name their bond upon their bond.' And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling

napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of

birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would brag of his whole round globe against

the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon.

Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third

corner to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian

Railway the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was 'Dixie,' and as the

exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost overpowered by a great clapping of hands

from almost every table. It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be

witnessed every evening in numerous cafés in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been

consumed over theories to account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in

town hie themselves to cafés at nightfall. This applause of the 'rebel' air in a Northern city does

puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years' generous mint and water-

melon crops, a few long-shot winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets

given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society, have made

the South rather a 'fad' in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger

reminds her so much of a gentleman's in Richmond, Va. Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to

work now - the war, you know.

When 'Dixie' was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere with

a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the

smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out cigarettes. The evening was at

the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Würzburgers to the waiter; the

dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened

to ask him a question because I wanted to try out a theory I had. 'Would you mind telling me,' I

began, 'whether you are from - ' The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was

jarred into silence. 'Excuse me,' said he, 'but that's a question I never like to hear asked. What

does it matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why,

I've seen Kentuckians who hated whisky, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas,

Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver

dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded

Southerners, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an

hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man

be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section.'

'Pardon me,' I said, 'but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South,

and when the band plays "Dixie" I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who

applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of

either Secaucus,

N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was

about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you interrupted with

your own - larger theory, I must confess.' And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and

it became evident that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves. 'I should like to be a

periwinkle,' said he, mysteriously, 'on the top of a valley, and sing too-ralloo-ralloo.' This was

clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan. 'I've been around the world twelve times,' said

he. 'I know an Esquimau in Upernavik who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goat-

herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast-food puzzle competition. I pay

rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year round. I've got slippers

waiting for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell 'em how to cook my eggs in

Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It's a mighty little old world. What's the use of bragging about being

from the North, or the South, or the old manor-house in the dale, or Euclid Avenue, Cleveland,

or Pike's Peak, or Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better world

when we quit being fools about some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just because we

happened to be born there.'

'You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite,' I said admiringly. 'But it also seems that you

would decry patriotism.' 'A relic of the stone age,' declared Coglan warmly. 'We are all brothers -

Chinamen, Englishmen, Zulus, Patagonians, and the people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some

day all this petty pride in one's city or state or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all

be citizens of the world, as we ought to be.' 'But while you are wandering in foreign lands,' I

persisted, 'do not your thoughts revert to some spot - some dear and - ' 'Nary a spot,' interrupted

E. R. Coglan flippantly. 'The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter, slightly flattened at

the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many object-bound citizens of

this country abroad. I've seen men from Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night

and brag about their drainage canal. I've seen a Southerner on being introduced to the King of

England hand that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his grandaunt on his

mother's side was related by marriage to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who

was kidnapped for ransom by some Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he

came back to Kabul with the agent. "Afghanistan?" the natives said to him through an interpreter.

"Well, not so slow, do you think?" "Oh, I don't know," says he, and he begins to tell them about

a cab-driver at Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't suit me. I'm not tied down to

anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of

the terrestrial sphere.'

My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought that he saw someone

through the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the would-be periwinkle, who

was reduced to Würzburger without further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious,

upon the summit of a valley. I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how

the poet had managed to miss him. He was my discovery and I believed in him. How was it?

'The men that breed from them they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities' hem as a child

to the mother's gown.' Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his - My

meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of the café. I saw

above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rushmore Coglan and a stranger to me engaged in

terrific battle. They fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught

their hats up and were knocked down, and a brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing

'Teasing.' My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters

closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside,

still resisting. I called McCarthy, one of the French garçons, and asked him the cause of the

conflict. 'The man with the red tie' (that was my cosmopolite), said he, 'got hot on account of

things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he come from by the other

guy.' 'Why,' said I, bewildered, 'that man is a citizen of the world - a cosmopolite. He - '

'Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said,' continued McCarthy, 'and he wouldn't stand for

no knockin' the place.'

III Between Rounds

Here's the text broken down into paragraphs:

---

THE MAY MOON SHONE BRIGHT upon the private boarding-house of Mrs. Murphy.

By reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays

also fell. Spring was in its heyday, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new

leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and summer-resort agents were

blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and

pinochle were playing everywhere.

The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boarding-house were open. A group of boarders were

seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pancakes. In one of the second-floor

front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its heat

went into Mrs. McCaskey. At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his

pipe in his teeth; and he apologized for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots

of stone between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds.

As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-lid or

potato-masher for him to dodge, came only words. Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May

moon had softened the breast of his spouse. 'I heard ye,' came the oral substitutes for

kitchenware. 'Ye can apollygize to riff-raff of the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails

of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much

as a "Kiss me fut," and I'm sure, it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals

cold such as there's money to buy after drinkin' up yer wages at Gallegher's every Saturday

evenin', and the gas man here twice to-day for his.'

'Woman!' said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, 'the noise of ye is an

insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks

of the foundations of society. 'Tis no more than exercisin' the acrimony of a gentleman when ye

ask the dissent of ladies blockin' the way for steppin' between them. Will ye bring the pig's face

of ye out of the windy and see to the food?' Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove.

There was something in her manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth

went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of crockery and tinware.

'Pig's face, is it?' said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips at

her lord. Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On

the table was a roast sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew

the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately

thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye. When she replied with a well-

aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant liquid the battle, according to courses, should

have ended. But Mr. McCaskey was no 50 cent table d'hôter. Let cheap Bohemians consider

coffee the end, if they would. Let them make that faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls

were not beyond the compass of his experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy;

but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash-basin at the head of

his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flat-iron, with

which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a loud,

wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of involuntary

armistice.

On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear

upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils. ' 'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missus at it

again,' meditated the policeman. 'I wonder shall I go up and stop the row. I will not. Married

folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure, they'll have to borrow

more dishes to keep it up with.' And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening fear

or dire extremity. ' 'Tis probably the cat,' said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the other

direction.

The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth and

an investigator by profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that

Mrs. Murphy's little boy Mike was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy -

two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of

thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of

Miss Purdy, milliner, and their hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Misses

Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody

had looked behind the clock. Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and

buttoned his coat. 'The little one lost?' he exclaimed. 'I will scour the city.' His wife never

allowed him out after dark. But now she said: 'Go, Ludovic!' in a baritone voice. 'Whoever can

look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone.' 'Give me some

thirty or - sixty cents, my love,' said the Major. 'Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need

car-fares.' Old man Denny, hall-room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to

read a paper by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters'

strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: 'Oh, ar-r-Mike, f'r Gawd's sake, where is me little bit

av a boy?'

'When'd ye see him last?' asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the

Building Trades League. 'Oh,' wailed Mrs. Murphy,.' 'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago! I

dunno. But it's lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin' on the sidewalk only this mornin' -

or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with work 'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the

house over from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for the love av Hiven - '

Silent, grim, colossal, the big city

has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no pulse of pity

beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath

the hard crust of the lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a different simile

would have been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster

without good and sufficient claws. No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as

does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and

strange.

Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy's place. 'Gimme a

rye-high,' he said to the servitor. 'Haven't seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-

old lost kid around here anywhere, have you?' Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the

steps. 'Think of that dear little babe,' said Miss Purdy, 'lost from his mother's side - perhaps

already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds - oh, isn't it dreadful?' 'Ain't that right?'

agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. 'Say I start out and help look for um!' 'Perhaps,' said

Miss Purdy, 'you should. But oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing - so reckless - suppose in your

enthusiasm some accident should befall you, then what - ' Old man Denny read on about the

arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines.

In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to recover their

second wind. Mr. McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and

his lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry

below, and thrust their heads out of the window. ' 'Tis little Mike is lost,' said Mrs. McCaskey in

a hushed voice, 'the beautiful, little, trouble-making angel of a gossoon!' 'The bit of a boy

mislaid?' said Mr. McCaskey leaning out of the window. 'Why, now, that's bad enough, entirely.

The childer, they be different. If 'twas a woman I'd be willin', for they leave peace behind 'em

when they go.' Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband's arm. 'Jawn,' she

said sentimentally, 'Missis Murphy's little bye is lost. 'Tis a great city for losing little boys. Six

years old he was. Jawn, 'tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had had one six

years ago.' 'We never did,' said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact. 'But if we had, Jawn,

think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and stolen in

the city nowheres at all.' 'Ye talk foolishness,' said Mr. McCaskey. ' 'Tis Pat he would be named,

after me old father in Cantrim.' 'Ye lie!' said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. 'Me brother was

worth tin dozen bog-trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named.' She leaned over

the window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below. 'Jawn,' said Mrs. McCaskey

softly, 'I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye.' ' 'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say,' said her husband, 'and

hurryup turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. 'Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right,

and tell no lie.' Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough hand in

hers. 'Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy,' she said. ' 'Tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye to

be lost in this great big city. If 'twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I'd be breakin' me heart.' Awkwardly

Mr. McCaskey withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulders of his wife. ' 'Tis

foolishness, of course,' said he, roughly, 'but I'd be cut up some meself, if our little - Pat was

kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and

hard with ye, Judy. Forget it.' They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being

acted below. Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling

the air with rumours and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth in their

midst, like a soft mountain down which plunged an audible cataract of tears. Couriers came and

went. Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house. 'What's up

now, Judy?' asked Mr. McCaskey. ' 'Tis Missis Murphy's voice,' said Mrs. McCaskey, harking.

'She says she's after finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her

room.' Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly. 'That's yer Phelan,' he shouted sardonically 'Divil a bit

would a Pat have done that trick if the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call

him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup.' Mrs. McCaskey arose

heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her mouth drawn down. Policeman

Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he upturned an ear

toward the McCaskey apartment where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled

kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman Cleary took out his timepiece. 'By the

deported snakes!' he exclaimed, 'Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been fightin' for an hour and

a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty pounds weight. Strength to his arm.'

Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner. Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried

up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.

IV The Skylight Room

FIRST MRS . PARKER would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to

interrupt her description of their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had

occupied them for eight years. Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you

were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of receiving the admission was such

that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had

neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker's parlours.

Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second floor back at $8.

Convinced by her second-floor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always

paid for it until he left to take charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm

Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the winters that had the double front room with

private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something still cheaper.

If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder's large hall-

room on the third floor. Mr. Skidder's room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked

cigarettes in it all day long. But every room-hunter was made to visit his room to admire the

lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the fright caused by possible eviction, would

pay something on his rent.

Then - oh, then - if you still stood on one foot with your hot hand clutching the three

moist dollars in your pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty,

nevermore would Mrs. Parker be cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word 'Clara,' she

would show you her back, and march downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort

you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It

occupied 7 by 8 feet of floorspace at the middle of the hall. On each side of it was a dark lumber

closet or store-room.

In it was an iron cot, a washstand and a chair. A shelf was the dresser. Its four bare walls

seemed to close in upon you like the sides of a coin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped,

you looked up as from a well - and breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight

you saw a square of blue infinity.

'Two dollars, suh,' Clara would say in her half-contemptuous, half-Tuskegeenial tones.

One day Miss Leeson came hunting for a room. She carried a typewriter made to be

lugged around by a much larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that kept on

growing after she had stopped and that always looked as if they were saying: 'Goodness me.

Why didn't you keep up with us?'

Mrs. Parker showed her the double parlours. 'In this closet,' she said, 'one could keep a

skeleton or anaesthetic or coal - '

'But I am neither a doctor nor a dentist,' said Miss Leeson with a shiver.

Mrs. Parker gave her the incredulous, pitying, sneering, icy stare that she kept for those

who failed to qualify as doctors or dentists, and led the way to the second floor back.

'Eight dollars?' said Miss Leeson. 'Dear me! I'm not Hetty if I do look green. I'm just a

poor little working girl. Show me something higher and lower.'

Mr. Skidder jumped and strewed the floor with cigarette stubs at the rap on his door.

'Excuse me, Mr. Skidder,' said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at his pale looks. 'I

didn't know you were in. I asked the lady to have a look at your lambrequins.'

'They're too lovely for anything,' said Miss Leeson, smiling in exactly the way the angels

do.

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, black-haired heroine from

his latest (unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and

vivacious features.

'Anna Held'll jump at it,' said Mr. Skidder to himself, putting his feet up against the

lambrequins and disappearing in a cloud of smoke like an aerial cuttlefish.

Presently the tocsin call of 'Clara!' sounded to the world the state of Miss Leeson's purse.

A dark goblin seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of

light in its top and muttered the menacing and cabalistic words 'Two dollars!'

'I'll take it!' sighed Miss Leeson, sinking down upon the squeaky iron bed.

Every day Miss Leeson went out to work. At night she brought home papers with

handwriting on them and made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night,

and then she would sit on the steps of the high stoop with the other roomers.

Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans were drawn for her

creation. She was gay-hearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr. Skidder

read to her three acts of his great (unpublished) comedy, 'It's No Kid; or, The Heir of the

Subway.'

There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit

on the steps for an hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public

school and said 'Well, really!' to everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss

Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney every Sunday and worked in a department store,

sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the middle step, and the men would

quickly group around her.

Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private,

romantic (unspoken) drama in real life. And especially Mr. Hoover, who was forty-five, fat,

flushed and foolish. And especially very young Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce

her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her 'the funniest and jolliest ever,' but the

sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.

I pray you let the drama halt while Chorus stalks to the footlights and drops an epicedian

tear upon the fatness of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the

calamity of corpulence. Tried out, Falstaff might have rendered more romance to the ton than

would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the

train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats the faithfullest heart above a 52-inch

belt. Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, forty-five, flush and foolish, might carry off Helen herself;

Hoover, fortyfive, flush, foolish and fat, is meat for perdition. There was never a chance for you,

Hoover.

As Mrs. Parker's roomers sat thus one summer's evening, Miss Leeson looked up into the

firmament and cried with her little gay laugh: 'Why, there's Billy Jackson! I can see him from

down here, too.'

All looked up - some at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship,

Jackson-guided.

'It's that star,' explained Miss Leeson, pointing with a tiny finger. 'Not the big one that

twinkles - the steady blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it

Billy Jackson.'

'Well, really!' said Miss Longnecker. 'I didn't know you were an astronomer, Miss

Leeson.'

'Oh, yes,' said the small star-gazer, 'I know as much as any of them about the style of

sleeves they're going to wear next fall in Mars.'

'Well, really!' said Miss Longnecker. 'The star you refer to is Gamma, of the constellation

Cassiopeia. It is nearly of the second magnitude, and its meridian passage is - '

'Oh,' said the very young Mr. Evans, 'I think Billy Jackson is a much better name for it.

'Same here,' said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. 'I think

Miss Leeson has just as much right to name stars as any of those old astrologers had.'

'Well, really!' said Miss Longnecker.

'I wonder whether it's a shooting star,' remarked Miss Dorn. 'I hit nine ducks and a rabbit

out of ten in the gallery at Coney Sunday.'

'He doesn't show up very well from down here,' said Miss Leeson.

"He doesn't show up very well from down here," said Miss Leeson. "You ought to see

him from my room. You know you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well.

At night my room is like the shaft of a coal-mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big

diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with." There came a time after that when Miss

Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she went in the morning, instead

of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the drip of cold refusals

transmitted through insolent office boys. This went on. There came an evening when she wearily

climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop at the hour when she always returned from her dinner at the

restaurant. But she had had no dinner.

As she stepped into the hall Mr. Hoover met her and seized his chance. He asked her to

marry him, and his fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the

balustrade. He tried for her hand, and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by

step she went up, dragging herself by the railing. She passed Mr. Skidder's door as he was red-

inking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in his (unaccepted) comedy, to

'pirouette across stage from L to the side of the Count.' Up the carpeted ladder she crawled at last

and opened the door of the skylight room.

She was too weak to light the lamp or to undress. She fell upon the iron cot, her fragile

body scarcely hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of a room she slowly raised her

heavy eyelids, and smiled.

For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the

skylight. There was no world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small

square of pallid light framing the star that she had so whimsically, and oh, so ineffectually,

named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma, of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not

Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma.

As she lay on her back she tried twice to raise her arm. The third time she got two thin

fingers to her lips and blew a kiss out of the black pit to Billy Jackson. Her arm fell back limply.

"Good-bye, Billy," she murmured faintly. "You're millions of miles away and you won't even

twinkle once. But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn't

anything else but darkness to look at, didn't you? . . . Millions of miles... . Good-bye, Billy

Jackson."

Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at ten the next day, and they forced it

open. Vinegar, and the slapping of wrists and even burnt feathers, proving of no avail, someone

ran to 'phone for an ambulance. In due time it backed up to the door with much gong-clanging,

and the capable young medico, in his white linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth

face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps. "Ambulance call to 49," he said briefly.

"What's the trouble?" "Oh yes, doctor," sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there

should be trouble in the house was the greater. "I can't think what can be the matter with her.

Nothing we could do would bring her to. It's a young woman, a Miss Elsie - yes, a Miss Elsie

Leeson. Never before in my house - " "What room?" cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which

Mrs. Parker was a stranger.

"The skylight room. It - " Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location

of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs, four at a time. Mrs. Parker followed slowly, as her

dignity demanded.

On the first landing she met him coming back bearing the astronomer in his arms. He

stopped and let loose the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker

crumpled as a stiff garment that slips down from a nail. Ever afterwards there remained crumples

in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious roomers would ask her what the doctor said to her.

"Let that be," she would answer. "If I can get forgiveness for having heard it I will be

satisfied." The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that

follow the curiosity chase, and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was

that of one who bears his own dead. They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared

for it in the ambulance the form that he carried, and all that he said was: "Drive like h - l,

Wilson," to the driver.

That is all. Is it a story? In the next morning's paper I saw a little news item, and the last

sentence of it may help you (as it helped me) to weld the incidents together.

It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been

removed from No. 49 East - Street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded

with these words:

"Dr. William Jackson, the ambulance physician who attended the case, says the patient

will recover."

V. A Service of Love

When one loves one's art, no service seems too hard. That is our premise. This story shall

draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is incorrect. That will be a

new thing in logic, and a feat in storytelling somewhat older than the Great Wall of China.

Joe Larrabee came out of the post-oak flats of the Middle West pulsing with a genius for

pictorial art. At six he drew a picture of the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it

hastily. This effort was framed and hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn

with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he left for New York with a flowing necktie and a

capital tied up somewhat closer.

Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine-tree village in the

South that her relatives chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go 'North' and 'finish.' They

could not see her off, but that is our story.

Joe and Delia met in an atelier where a number of art and music students had gathered to

discuss chiaroscuro, Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wallpaper,

Chopin, and Oolong.

Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other or each of the other, as you please, and

in a short time were married - for (see above), when one loves one's art no service seems too

hard.

Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flat - something

like the A sharp way down at the left-hand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they

had their art and they had each other. And my advice to the rich young man would be - sell all

thou hast, and give it to the poor - janitor for the privilege of living in a flat with your art and

your Delia.

Flat-dwellers shall endorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is

happy it cannot fit too close - let the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel

turn to a rowing machine, the escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright

piano; let the four walls come together, if they will, so you and your Delia are between. But if

home be the other kind, let it be wide and long - enter you at the Golden Gate, hang your hat on

Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn, and go out by Labrador.

Joe was painting in the class of the great Magister - you know his fame. His fees are high;

his lessons are light - his highlights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under

Rosenstock - you know his repute as a disturber of the piano keys.

They were mighty happy as long as their money lasted. So is every - but I will not be

cynical. Their aims were very clear and defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning

out pictures that old gentlemen with thin side-whiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag

one another in his studio for the privilege of buying. Delia was to become familiar and then

contemptuous with music, so that when she saw the orchestra seats and boxes unsold she could

have a sore throat and lobster in a private dining-room and refuse to go on the stage.

But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat - the ardent, voluble chats

after the day's study; the cosy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions -

ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable - the mutual help and

inspiration; and - overlook my artlessness - stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m.

But after a while, art flagged. It sometimes does, even if some switchman doesn't flag it.

Everything going out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay

Mr. Magister and Herr Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's art no service seems too

hard. So, Delia said she must give music lessons to keep the chafing dish bubbling.

For two or three days she went out canvassing for pupils. One evening she came home

elated.

"Joe, dear," she said gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! General -

General A. B. Pinkney's daughter - on Seventy-first Street. Such a splendid house, Joe - you

ought to see the front door! Byzantine I think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw

anything like it before.

"My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a delicate thing -

dresses always in white; and the sweetest, simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give

three lessons a week; and, just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two or

three more pupils I can resume my lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle

between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice supper."

"That's all right for you, Dele," said Joe, attacking a can of peas with a carving knife and

a hatchet, "but how about me? Do you think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I

philander in the regions of high art? Not by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell

papers or lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two." Delia came and hung about his neck.

"Joe, dear, you are silly. You must keep on at your studies. It is not as if I had quit my

music and gone to work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music.

And we can live as happily as millionaires on $15 a week. You mustn't think of leaving Mr.

Magister."

"All right," said Joe, reaching for the blue scalloped vegetable dish. "But I hate for you to

be giving lessons. It isn't art. But you're a trump and a dear to do it."

"When one loves one's art no service seems too hard," said Delia.

"Magister praised the sky in that sketch I made in the park," said Joe. "And Tinkle gave

me permission to hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed

idiot sees them."

"I'm sure you will," said Delia sweetly. "And now let's be thankful for General Pinkney

and this veal roast."

During all of the next week, the Larrabees had an early breakfast. Joe was enthusiastic

about some morning-effect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off

breakfasted, coddled, praised, and kissed at seven o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was

most times seven o'clock when he returned in the evening.

At the end of the week, Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three five-

dollar bills on the 8 by 10 (inches) centre table of the 8 by 10 (feet) flat parlour.

"Sometimes," she said, a little wearily, "Clementina tries me. I'm afraid she doesn't

practise enough, and I have to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses

entirely in white, and that does get monotonous. But General Pinkney is the dearest old man! I

wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in sometimes when I am with Clementina at the piano

- he is a widower, you know - and stands there pulling his white goatee. 'And how are the

semiquavers and the demi-semiquavers progressing?' he always asks.

"I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawing-room, Joe! And those Astrakhan

rug portières. And Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she

looks. Oh, I really am getting attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. General Pinkney's

brother was once Minister to Bolivia."

And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two, and a one -

all legal tender notes - and laid them beside Delia's earnings.

"Sold that water-colour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he announced

overwhelmingly.

"Don't joke with me," said Delia - "not from Peoria!"

"All the way. I wish you could see him, Dele. Fat man with a woollen muffler and a quill

toothpick. He saw the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first. He was

game, though, and bought it anyhow. He ordered another - an oil sketch of the Lackawanna

freight depot - to take back with him. Music lessons! Oh, I guess art is still in it."

"I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia heartily. "You're bound to win, dear. Thirty-three

dollars! We never had so much to spend before. We'll have oysters tonight."

"And filet mignon with champignons," said Joe. "Where is the olive fork?"

On the next Saturday evening, Joe reached home first. He spread his $18 on the parlour

table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark paint from his hands.

Half an hour later, Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless bundle of wraps

and bandages.

"How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greetings.

Delia laughed, but not very joyously.

"Clementina," she explained, "insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her lesson. She is such a

queer girl. Welsh rabbits at five in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen

him run for the chafing dish, Joe, just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know

Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of

it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But

General Pinkney! - Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs and sent

somebody - they said the furnace man or somebody in the basement - out to a drug store for

some oil and things to bind it up with. It doesn't hurt so much now."

"What's this?" asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some white strands

beneath the bandages.

"It's something soft," said Delia, "that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?"

She had seen the money on the table.

"Did I?" said Joe. "Just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot today, and he isn't sure

but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon

did you burn your hand, Dele?"

"Five o'clock, I think," said Dele plaintively. "The iron - I mean the rabbit came off the

fire about that time. You ought to have seen General Pinkney, Joe, when - "

"Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat down beside her

and put his arm across her shoulders. "What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?"

he asked.

She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and

murmured a phrase or two vaguely of General Pinkney; but at length down went her head and

out came the truth and tears.

"I couldn't get any pupils," she confessed. "And I couldn't bear to have you give up your

lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth Street laundry. And I think I

did very well to make up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl

in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up

that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry are you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you

mightn't have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria."

"He wasn't from Peoria," said Joe slowly.

"Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe - and - kiss me, Joe -

and what made you ever suspect that I wasn't giving music lessons to Clementina?"

"I didn't," said Joe, " Until tonight. And I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton

waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned

with a smoothing-iron. I've been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.

'And then you didn't - '

'My purchaser from Peoria,' said Joe, 'and General Pinkney are both creations of the same

art - but you wouldn't call it either painting or music.'

And then they both laughed, and Joe began: 'When one loves one's Art no service seems -

But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. 'No,' she said - 'just "When one loves." '

VI The Coming-out of Maggi

EVERY SATURDAY NIGHT the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the

Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you

must be a member of the Give and Take - or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the

right foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold's paper-box factory. Still, any Clover Leaf

was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give

and Take brought the paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers could boast of having

shaken a foot at the regular hops.

Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed style of

footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her 'fellow.' Anna and

Maggie worked side by side in the factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always

made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie's house every Saturday night so that her friend could go

to the dance with them.

The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association

in Orchard Street was fitted out with muscle-making inventions. With the fibers thus builded up

the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organizations in joyous

combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hops with the paper-box

factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went

'round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as

neat and satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever happened inside the ropes.

On Saturdays Rhinegold's paper-box factory closed at 3 p.m. On one such afternoon

Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie's door Anna said, as usual: 'Be ready at

seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and me'll come by for you.'

But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the non-

escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a

broad mouth, and almost a sparkle in a dull brown eye.

'Thanks, Anna,' said Maggie; 'but you and Jimmy needn't bother to-night. I've a

gentleman friend that's coming 'round to escort me to the hop.'

The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and beseeched her. Maggie

Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for

a two-step or a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who was it?

'You'll see to-night,' said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had

gathered in Cupid's vineyard. 'He's swell all right. He's two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-

to-date dresser. I'll introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall.'

Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that evening. Anna's eyes

were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to catch the first glimpse of her friend's 'catch.'

At 8.30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye

discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful Jimmy.

'Oh, gee!' cried Anna, 'Mag ain't made a hit - oh, no! Swell fellow? Well, I guess! Style?

Look at 'um.'

'Go as far as you like,' said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. 'Cop him out if you want

him. These new guys always win out with the push. Don't mind me. He don't squeeze all the

limes, I guess. Huh!'

'Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I'm glad for Mag. First fellow she ever had. Oh,

here they come.'

Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a stately cruiser. And

truly, her companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller

than the average Give and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed

whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles.

The young men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as

much as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation

from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind

a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were

not considered honorable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its

buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the super-eminence of the male in the

cosmogony of creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting agents in

the gentle tourneys of Cupid - these were the approved arms and ammunition of the Clover Leaf

gallants. They viewed, then, the genuflexions and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at

a new angle.

'A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O'Sullivan,' was Maggie's formula of introduction. She led

him around the room, presenting him to each new-arriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty

now, with the unique luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten

with its first mouse.

'Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last,' was the word that went round among the paper-box

girls. 'Pipe Mag's floor-walker' - thus the Give and Takes expressed their indifferent contempt.

Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her back. She felt

and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing partner invited her to dance that his

pleasure was cheapened and diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the

reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum to walk over his feet

through a two-step.

But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan was a

victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged her first butterfly flight. And though our

tropes of fairyland be mixed with those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia

from the rose-crowned melody of Maggie's one perfect night.

The girls besieged her for introductions to her 'fellow.' The Clover Leaf young men, after

two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling

muscles before her and bespoke her for the dance.

Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honors of the evening fell thick and fast. He

shook his curls; he smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your

own room before an open window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he introduced

manner and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly upon his tongue, and - he waltzed

twice in succession with the paper-box girl that Dempsey Donovan brought.

Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and could chin the bar

twice with one hand. He was one of 'Big Mike' O

'Sullivan's lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest him.

Whenever he broke a push-cart man's head or shot a member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing

and Literary Association in the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say:

'The Cap'n'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye have time,

Dempsey, me boy.'

But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains and black cigars;

and somebody would tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back and work half an hour

with the six-pound dumb-bells. So, doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was

a safe terpsichorean performance compared with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paper-

box girl.

At ten o'clock the jolly round face of 'Big Mike' O'Sullivan shone at the door for five

minutes upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the girls and handed out

real perfectos to the delighted boys.

Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly.

'Big Mike' looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed.

The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls. Terry O'Sullivan,

with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner and started back to find

Maggie. Dempsey intercepted him in the middle of the floor.

Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly everyone to turn

and look at them - there was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in the arena. Two or

three Give and Takes with tight coat-sleeves drew nearer.

'One moment, Mr. O'Sullivan,' said Dempsey. 'I hope you're enjoying yourself. Where

did you say you lived?

The two gladiators were well matched. Dempsey had, perhaps, ten pounds of weight to

give away. The O'Sullivan had breadth with quickness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating

slit of a mouth, an indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's and the coolness of a champion.

The visitor showed more fire in his contempt and less control over his conspicuous sneer. They

were enemies by the law written when the rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too

mighty, too incomparable to divide preeminence. One only must survive.

'I live on Grand,' said O'Sullivan insolently; 'and no trouble to find me at home. Where do

you live?'

Dempsey ignored the question.

'You say your name's O'Sullivan,' he went on. 'Well, "Big Mike" says he never saw you

before.'

'Lots of things he never saw,' said the favorite of the hop.

'As a rule,' went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, 'O'Sullivans in this district know one

another. You escorted one of our lady members here, and we want a chance to make good. If

you've got a family tree let's see a few historical O'Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want

us to dig it out of you by the roots?'

'Suppose you mind your own business,' suggested O'Sullivan blandly.

Dempsey's eyes brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a brilliant idea

had struck him.

'I've got it now,' he said cordially. 'It was just a little mistake. You ain't no O'Sullivan.

You are a ring-tailed monkey. Excuse us for not recognizing you at first.'

O'Sullivan's eye flashed. He made a quick movement, but Andy Geoghan was ready and

caught his arm.

Dempsey nodded at Andy and William McMahan, the secretary of the club, and walked

rapidly toward a door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the Give and Take

Association swiftly joined the little group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board

of Rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him briefly and softly, and conducted him out

through the same door at the rear.

This movement on the part of the Clover Leaf members requires a word of elucidation.

Back of the association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room personal

difficulties that arose on the ballroom floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of

nature, under the supervision of the Board. No lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at a

Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members guaranteed that.

So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the Board done their preliminary work that

many in the hall had not noticed the checking of the fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph.

Among these was Maggie. She looked about for her escort.

'Smoke up!' said Rose Cassidy. 'Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan picked a scrap with

your Lizzie-boy, and they've waltzed out to the slaughter-room with him. How's my hair look

done up this way, Mag?'

Maggie laid a hand on the bosom of her cheesecloth waist.

'Gone to fight with Dempsey!' she said breathlessly. 'They've got to be stopped. Dempsey

Donovan can't fight him. Why, he'll - he'll kill him!'

'Ah, what do you care?' said Rosa. 'Don't some of 'em fight every hop?'

But Maggie was off, darting her zigzag way through the maze of dancers. She burst

through the rear door into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the

room of single combat. It gave way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scene -

the Board standing about with open watches; Dempsey Donovan in his shirt-sleeves dancing,

light-footed, with the wary grace of the modern pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary;

Terry O'Sullivan standing with arm folded and a murderous look in his dark eyes. And without

slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a scream - leaped in time to catch and

hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the long, bright

stiletto that he had drawn from his bosom.

The knife fell and rang upon the floor. Cold steel drawn in the rooms of the Give and

Take Association! Such a thing had never happened before. Everyone stood motionless for a

minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian

who has come upon some ancient weapon unknown to his learning.

And then O'Sullivan hissed something unintelligible between his teeth. Dempsey and the

Board exchanged looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without anger as one looks at a

stray dog, and nodded his head in the direction of the door.

'The back stairs, Giuseppi,' he said briefly. 'Somebody'll pitch your hat down after you.'

Maggie walked up to Dempsey Donovan. There was a brilliant spot of red in her cheeks,

down which slow tears were running. But she looked him bravely in the eye.

'I knew it, Dempsey,' she said, as her eyes grew dull even in their tears. 'I knew he was a

Guinea. His name's Tony Spinelli.

I hurried in when they told me you and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always carries

knives. But you don't understand, Dempsey. I never had a fellow in my life. I got tired of comin'

with Anna and Jimmy every night, so I fixed it with him to call himself O'Sullivan, and brought

him along. I knew there'd be nothin' doin' for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll resign from

the club now.'

Dempsey turned to Andy Geoghan.

'Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window,' he said, 'and tell 'em inside that Mr.

O'Sullivan has had a telephone message to go down to Tammany Hall.'

And then he turned back to Maggie.

'Say, Mag,' he said, 'I'll see you home. And how about next Saturday night? Will you

come to the hop with me if I call around for you?'

It was remarkable how quickly Maggie's eyes could change from dull to a shining brown.

'With you, Dempsey?' she stammered. 'Say - will a duck swim?'

VII The Cop and the Anthem

On his bench in Madison Square, Soapy moved uneasily. When wild geese honk high of

nights, and when women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy

moves uneasily on his bench in the park, you may know that winter is near at hand.

A dead leaf fell in Soapy's lap. That was Jack Frost's card. Jack is kind to the regular

denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four

streets, he hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so

that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.

Soapy's mind became cognizant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve

himself into a singular Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigour. And

therefore he moved uneasily on his bench.

The hibernatorial ambitions of Soapy were not of the highest. In them were no

considerations of Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies, or drifting in the Vesuvian

Bay. Three months on the Island was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and

bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas and bluecoats, seemed to Soapy the essence of

things desirable.

For years, the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more

fortunate fellow New Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each

winter, so Soapy had made his humble arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now

the time was come. On the previous night, three Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his

coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the cold as he slept on his bench near

the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed large and timely in Soapy's

mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents.

In Soapy's opinion, the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless

round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive

lodging and food accordant with the simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of

charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay in humiliation of spirit for every benefit

received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus, every bed of charity must have

its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and personal inquisition.

Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which, though conducted by rules, does not

meddle unduly with a gentleman's private affairs.

Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire.

There were many easy ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some

expensive restaurant; and then, after declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without

uproar to a policeman. An accommodating magistrate would do the rest.

Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt,

where Broadway and Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a

glittering café, where are gathered together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the

silkworm and the protoplasm.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was

shaven, and his coat was decent, and his neat black, ready-tied four-in-hand had been presented

to him by a lady missionary on Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant

unsuspected, success would be his. The portion of him that would show above the table would

raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck, thought Soapy, would be about the

thing - with a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demi-tasse and a cigar. One dollar for the

cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme manifestation

of revenge from the café management; and yet the meal would leave him filled and happy for the

journey to his winter refuge.

But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door, the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed

trousers and decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in

silence and haste to the sidewalk and averted the ignoble fate of the menaced mallard.

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted Island was not to be

an epicurean one. Some other way of entering limbo must be thought of.

At a corner of Sixth Avenue, electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plate-

glass made a shop window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the

glass. People came running round the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his

hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of brass buttons.

'Where's the man that done that?' inquired the officer excitedly. 'Don't you figure out that

I might have had something to do with it?' said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but friendly, as one

greets good fortune.

The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows

do not remain to parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a

man halfway down the block running to catch a car. With drawn club, he joined in the pursuit.

Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed along, twice unsuccessful.

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to

large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery

thin. Into this place, Soapy took his accusive shoes and tell-tale trousers without challenge. At a

table, he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter, he

betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers.

'Now, get busy and call a cop,' said Soapy. 'And don't keep a gentleman waiting.'

'No cop for youse,' said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the

cherry in a Manhattan cocktail. 'Hey, Con!'

Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose,

joint by joint, as a carpenter's rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a

rosy dream. The Island seemed very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two

doors away laughed and walked down the street.

Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This

time, the opportunity presented what he fatuously termed to himself a 'cinch.' A young woman of

a modest and pleasing guise was standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at

its display of shaving mugs and inkstands, and two yards from the window a large policeman of

severe demeanour leaned against a water-plug.

It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated 'masher.' The

refined and elegant appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop

encouraged him to believe that he would soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that

would ensure his winter quarters on the right little, tight little isle.

Soapy straightened the lady missionary's ready-made tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into

the open, set his hat at a killing cant, and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her,

was taken with sudden coughs and 'hems,' smiled, smirked, and went brazenly through the

impudent and contemptible litany of the 'masher.' With half an eye, Soapy saw that the

policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a few steps, and again

bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly stepping to her

side, raised his hat and said:

'Ah there, Bedelia! Don't you want to come and play in my yard?'

The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a

finger and Soapy would be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he

could feel the cosy warmth of the station-house. The young woman faced him and, stretching out

a hand, caught Soapy's coat-sleeve.

'Sure, Mike,' she said joyfully, 'if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you

sooner, but the cop was watching.'

With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the

policeman, overcome with gloom. He seemed doomed to liberty.

At the next corner, he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by

night are found the lightest streets, hearts, vows, and librettos. Women in furs and men in

greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some dreadful

enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it,

and when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre

he caught at the immediate straw of 'disorderly conduct.'

On the sidewalk, Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He

danced, howled, raved, and otherwise disturbed the welkin.

The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy, and remarked to a citizen:

' 'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goose egg they give to the Hartford College.

Noisy; but no harm. We've instructions to lave them be.'

Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on

him? In his fancy, the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against

the chilling wind.

In a cigar store, he saw a well-dressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk

umbrella he had set by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella, and

sauntered off with it slowly. The man at the cigar light followed hastily.

'My umbrella,' he said sternly.

'Oh, is it?' sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. 'Well, why don't you call a

policeman? I took it. Your umbrella! Why don't you call a cop? There stands one at the corner.'

The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck

would again run against him. The policeman looked at the two curiously.

'Of course,' said the umbrella man - 'that is - well, you know how these mistakes occur - I

- if it's your umbrella I hope you'll excuse me - I picked it up this morning in a restaurant - If you

recognize it as yours, why - I hope you'll - '

'Of course it's mine,' said Soapy viciously.

The ex-umbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera

cloak across the street in front of a streetcar that was approaching two blocks away.

Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the

umbrella wrathfully into an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and

carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into their clutches, they seemed to regard him as a king

who could do no wrong.

At length, Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was

but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives

even when the home is a park bench.

But on an unusually quiet corner, Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church,

quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window, a soft light glowed, where,

no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath

anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed

against the convolutions of the iron fence.

The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows

twittered sleepily in the eaves - for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard.

And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it

well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and

friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.

The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old

church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit

into which he had tumbled, the degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties,

and base motives that made up his existence.

And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An

instantaneous and strong impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull

himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that

had taken possession of him. There was time; he was comparatively young yet; he would

resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering. Those solemn but sweet

organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would go into the roaring downtown

district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as a driver. He would find

him tomorrow and ask for the position. He would be somebody in the world. He would -

Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a

policeman.

'What are you doin' here?' asked the officer.

'Nothin',' said Soapy.

'Then come along,' said the policeman.

'Three months on the Island,' said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

VIII Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

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I DON'T SUPPOSE it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution

from an animal. Mr. Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can

express themselves in remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an

animal story in it, except the old-style monthlies that are still running pictures of Bryan and the

Mont Pelée horror.

But you needn't look for any stuck-up literature in my piece, such as Bearoo, the bear,

and Snakoo, the snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger, talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's

spent most of his life in a cheap New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt

(the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expected to

perform any tricks with the art of speech.

I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown. The first thing I

can recollect, an old woman had me in a basket at Broadway and Twenty-third trying to sell me

to a fat lady. Old Mother Hubbard was boosting me to beat the band as a genuine Pomeranian-

Hambletonian-Red-Irish-Cochin-China-Stoke-Pogis fox terrier. The fat lady chased a V around

among the samples of gros grain flannelette in her shopping-bag till she cornered it, and gave up.

From that moment I was a pet - a mamma's own wootsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you

ever have a 200-pound woman breathing a flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne

pick you up and wallop her nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of

voice: 'Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum, woodlum, toodlum, bitsy-witsy skoodlums?'

From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a

cross between an Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought

that the two primeval pups that Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my

ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for

the Siberian bloodhound prize.

I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with

Parian marble in the entrance hall and cobblestones above the first floor. Our flat was three fl -

well, not flights - climbs up. My mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things -

1903 antique upholstered parlour set, oil chromo of geishas in a Harlem tea-house, rubber plant

and husband.

By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and

whiskers a good deal like mine. Hen-pecked? - well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had

their bills in him. He wiped the dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged

things the lady with the squirrel-skin coat on the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And

every evening while she was getting supper she made him take me out on the end of a string for a

walk.

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd never marry. Laura

Lean Jibbey, peanut brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an

hour's talk with the iceman, reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles

of malt extract, one hour peeking through a hole in the window shade into the flat across the

airshaft - that's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes before time for him to come home from

work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and gets out a lot of sewing for

a ten-minute bluff.

I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my corner watching the fat woman

kill time. I slept sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and

growling at old ladies with black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce

upon me with a lot of that drivelling poodle palaver and kiss me on the nose - but what could I

do? A dog can't chew cloves.

I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked so much alike that

people noticed it when we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and

took to climbing the piles of last December's snow on the streets where cheap people live.

One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St.

Bernard, and the old man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the. first organ-

grinder he heard play Mendelssohn's wedding-march, I looked up at him and said, in my way:

'What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't

have to sit on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like

the maxims of Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid

the blues begone.'

The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face.

'Why, doggie,' says he, 'good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggie -

Cats?' Cats! Could speak! But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the

speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can

get together is in fiction.

In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a black-and-tan terrier. Her husband

strung it and took it out every evening, but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One

day I touched noses with the black-and-tan in the hall, and I struck him for an elucidation. 'See,

here, Wiggle-and-Skip,' I says, 'you know that it ain't the nature of a real man to play dry-nurse

to a dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bow-wow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick

every other man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an

amateur prestidigitator doing the egg trick. How does he do it? Don't tell me he likes it.'

'Him?' says the black-and-tan. 'Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated.

At first when we go out he's as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when

they make 'em all jackpots. By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care whether the

thing on the end of his line is a dog or a catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep

those swinging doors.'

The pointer I got from that terrier - vaudeville

please copy - set me to thinking. One evening about six o'clock my mistress ordered him

to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have concealed it until now, but that is what she

called me. The black-and-tan was called 'Tweetness.' I consider that I have the bulge on him as

far as you could chase a rabbit. Still 'Lovey' is something of a nomenclatural tin-can on the tail of

one's self-respect.

At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an

attractive, refined saloon. I made a dead-ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the

press despatches that lets the family know that little Alice is bogged while gathering lilies in the

brook. 'Why, darn my eyes,' says the old man, with a grin; 'darn my eyes if the saffron-coloured

son of a seltzer lemonade ain't asking me in to take a drink. Lemme see - how long's it been since

I saved shoe leather by keeping one foot on the footrest? I believe I'll - '

I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the

Campbells coming. I sat by his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch

such as mamma in her flat never equalled with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen

store eight minutes before papa comes home. When the products of Scotland were all exhausted

except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the table leg and played me outside like a

fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it into the street.

'Poor doggie,' says he; 'good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. ' S a darned shame.

Good doggie, go away and get run over by a street car and be happy.' I refused to leave. I leaped

and frisked around the old man's legs happy as a pug on a rug. 'You old flea-headed woodchuck-

chaser,' I said to him - 'you moon-baying, rabbit-pointing, egg-stealing old beagle, can't you see

that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and the missis is

the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie

on my tail. Why not cut that all out and be pards for evermore?'

Maybe you'll say he didn't understand - maybe he didn't. But he kind of got a grip on the

Hot Scotches, and stood still for a minute, thinking. 'Doggie,' says he finally, 'we don't live more

than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be more than 300. If I ever see that flat

any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and that's no flattery. I'm offering 60 to 1 that

Westward Ho wins out by the length of a dachshund.'

There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twenty-third Street

ferry. And the cats on the route saw reason to give thanks that prehensile claws had been given

them. On the Jersey side my master said to a stranger who stood eating a currant bun: 'Me and

my doggie, we are bound for the Rocky Mountains.' But what pleased me most was when my old

man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said: 'You common, monkey-headed, rat-tailed,

sulphur-coloured son of a door-mat, do you know what I'm going to call you?' I thought of

'Lovey,' and I whined dolefully. 'I'm going to call you "Pete," ' says my master; and if I'd had five

tails I couldn't have done enough wagging to do justice to the occasion.

IX The Love-philtre of Ikey Schoenstei

THE BLUE LIGHT DRUG STORE is down-town, between the Bowery and First

Avenue, where the distance between the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not

consider that pharmacy is a thing of bric-a-brac, scent and ice-cream soda. If you ask it for a

pain-killer it will not give you a bonbon.

The Blue Light scorns the labour-saving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium

and percolates its own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall

prescription desk - pills rolled out on its own pill-tile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the

finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and delivered in little round, pasteboard pill-

boxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of ragged-plumed, hilarious children play

and become candidates for the cough-drops and soothing syrups that wait for them inside.

Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers.

Thus it is on the East Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not glacé. There, as it should be, the

druggist is a counsellor, a confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor

whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often

poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey's corniform, bespectacled nose and narrow,

knowledge-bowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the Blue Light, and his advice and

notice were much desired.

Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's, two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a

daughter named Rosy. The circumlocution has been in vain - you must have guessed it - Ikey

adored Rosy. She tinctured all his thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was

chemically pure and officinal - the dispensatory contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was

timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his backwardness and fears. Behind

his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge and worth; outside,

he was a weak-kneed, purblind, motorman-cursed rambler, with ill-fitting clothes stained with

chemicals and smelling of socotrine aloes and valerianate of ammonia.

The fly in Ikey's ointment (thrice welcome, pat trope!) was Chunk McGowan. Mr.

McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no out-

fielder as Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and

customer, and often dropped in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine

or get a cut rubber-plastered after a pleasant evening spent along the Bowery.

One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smoothed-

faced, hard, indomitable, good-natured, upon a stool. 'Ikey,' said he, when his friend had fetched

his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder, 'get busy with your ear. It's drugs

for me if you've got the line I need.'

Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but

found none. 'Take your coat off,' he ordered. 'I guess already that you have been stuck in the ribs

with a knife. I have many times told you those Dagoes would do you up.'

Mr. McGowan smiled. 'Not them,' he said. 'Not any Dagoes. But you've located the

diagnosis all right enough - it's under my coat, near the ribs. Say! Ikey - Rosy and me are goin' to

run away and get married to-night.'

Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave

it a wild rap with the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of

perplexed gloom. 'That is,' he continued, 'if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We've

been layin' pipes for the gateway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evenin' she

says nixy. We've agreed on to-night, and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole

days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm afraid she'll stand me up when it comes to the

scratch.'

'You said you wanted drugs,' remarked Ikey. Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and

harassed - a condition opposed to his usual line of demeanour. He made a patent-medicine

almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger. 'I wouldn't have

this double handicap make a false start to-night for a million,' he said. 'I've got a little flat up in

Harlem all ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged

a pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30. It's got to come off. And if Rosy don't

change her mind again!' - Mr. McGowan ceased, a prey to his doubts.

'I don't see then yet,' said Ikey shortly, 'what makes it that you talk of drugs, or what I can

be doing about it.' 'Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit,' went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon

marshalling his arguments. 'For a week he hasn't let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it

wasn't for losin' a boarder they'd have bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll

never regret flyin' the coop with Chunk McGowan.'

'You will excuse me, Chunk,' said Ikey. 'I must make a prescription that is to be called for

soon.' 'Say,' said McGowan, looking up suddenly, 'say, Ikey, ain't there a drug of some kind -

some kind of powders that'll make a girl like you better if you give 'em to her?' Ikey's lip beneath

his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer, McGowan

continued: 'Tim Lacy told me once that he got some from a croaker uptown and fed 'em to his

girl in soda water. From the very first dose he was ace-high and everybody else looked like thirty

cents to her. They was married in less than two weeks.'

Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could

have seen that his tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to

invade the enemy's territory he was seeking to guard every point against possible failure.

'I thought,' went on Chunk hopefully, 'that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy

when I see her at supper to-night it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the

proposition to skip. I guess she don't need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at

coaching than they are at running bases. If the stuff'll work just for a couple of hours it'll do the

trick.'

'When is this foolishness of running away to be happening?' asked Ikey. 'Nine o'clock,'

said Mr. McGowan. 'Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine old

Parvenzano lets me through to his backyard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I

go under her window and help her down the fire-escape. We've got to make it early on the

preacher's account. It's all dead easy if Rosy don't balk when the flag drops. Can you fix me one

of them powders, Ikey?'

Ikey Schoenstein rubbed his nose slowly. 'Chunk,' said he, 'it is of drugs of that nature

that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To you alone of my acquaintance would I

entrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it makes Rosy to

think of you.'

Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets,

each containing a quarter of a grain of morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to

increase the bulk, and folded the mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder

would ensure several hours of heavy slumber without danger to the sleeper. This he handed to

Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid, if possible, and received the hearty

thanks of the backyard Lochinvar.

The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He

sent a messenger for Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr.

Riddle was a stout man, brick-dusty of complexion and sudden in action. 'Much obliged,' he said

briefly to Ikey. 'The lazy Irish loafer! My own room's just above Rosy's, I'll just go up there

myself after supper and load the shot-gun and wait. If he comes in my backyard he'll go away in

an ambulance instead of a bridal chaise.'

With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a manyhours' deep slumber, and the

bloodthirsty parent waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed,

upon discomfiture.

All night in the Blue Light Store he waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy,

but none came.

At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey started hurriedly for Mrs.

Riddle's to learn the outcome. And, lo! as he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan

sprang from a passing street-car and grasped his hand - Chunk McGowan with a victor's smile

and flushed with joy. 'Pulled it off,' said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. 'Rosy hit the fire-escape

on time to a second and we was under the wire at the Reverend's at 9.30. She's up at the flat - she

cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue kimono - Lord! how lucky I am! You must pace up some day,

Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down near the bridge, and that's where I'm heading for

now.' 'The - the powder?' stammered Ikey. 'Oh, that stuff you gave me!' said Chunk broadening

his grin; 'well, it was this way. I sat down at the supper table last night at Riddle's, and I looked

at Rosy, and I says to myself, "Chunk, if you get the girl get her on the square - don't try any

hocus-pocus with a thoroughbred like her." And I keeps the paper you give me in my pocket.

And then my lamps falls on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin' in a proper

affection toward his comin' son-in-law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old

man Riddle's coffee - see?'

The moment was immovable. For this odor belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and

hers only. The odor brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of finance

dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next room - twenty steps away.

"By George, I'll do it now," said Maxwell, half aloud. "I'll ask her now. I wonder I didn't

do it long ago." He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a shot trying to cover. He

charged upon the desk of the stenographer.

She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were

kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with

both hands and the pen was above his ear.

"Miss Leslie," he began hurriedly, "I have but a moment to spare. I want to say

something in that moment. Will you be my wife? I haven't had time to make love to you in the

ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk quick, please - those fellows are clubbing the

stuffing out of Union Pacific."

"Oh, what are you talking about?" exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and

gazed upon him, round-eyed.

"Don't you understand?" said Maxwell restively. "I want you to marry me. I love you,

Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit.

They're calling me for the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, Miss

Leslie?"

The stenographer acted very queerly. At first, she seemed overcome with amazement;

then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them, and one

of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck.

"I know now," she said softly. "It's this old business that has driven everything else out of

your head for the time. I was frightened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married

last evening at eight o'clock in the Little Church Around the Corner."

XVI The Furnished Room

RESTLESS, SHIFTING, FUGACIOUS as time itself, is a certain vast bulk of the

population of the redbrick district of the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes.

They flit from furnished room to furnished room, transients forever - transients in abode,

transients in heart and mind. They sing 'Home Sweet Home' in ragtime; they carry their lares et

penates in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a rubber plant is their fig tree.

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to

tell, mostly dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two

in the wake of all these vagrant ghosts.

One evening after dark, a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions,

ringing their bells. At the twelfth, he rested his lean hand-baggage upon the step and wiped the

dust from his hat-band and forehead. The bell sounded faint and far away in some remote,

hollow depths.

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who

made him think of an unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and

now sought to fill the vacancy with edible lodgers.

He asked if there was a room to let.

'Come in,' said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined

with fur. 'I have the third floor back, vacant since a week back. Should you wish to look at it?'

The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source

mitigated the shadows of the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom

would have forsworn. It seemed to have become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank,

sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in patches to the staircase and was viscid

under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were vacant niches in the wall.

Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and tainted air. It

may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps and

devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished

pit below.

'This is the room,' said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. 'It's a nice room. It ain't

often vacant. I had some most elegant people in it last summer - no trouble at all, and paid in

advance to the minute. The water's at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney-kept it three

months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta Sprowls - you may have heard of her - Oh,

that was just the stage names - right there over the dresser is where the marriage certificate hung,

framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It's a room everybody likes. It

never stays idle long.'

'Do you have many theatrical people rooming here?' asked the young man.

'They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers are connected with the theatres.

Yes, sir, this is the theatrical district. Actor people never stay long anywhere. I get my share.

Yes, they come and they go.'

He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would

take possession at once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said,

even to towels and water. As the housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the

question that he carried at the end of his tongue.

'A young girl - Miss Vashner - Miss Eloise Vashner - do you remember such a one

among your lodgers? She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium

height and slender, with reddish gold hair and a dark mole near her left eyebrow.'

'No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people have names they change as often as

their rooms. They come and they go. No, I don't call that one to mind.'

No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So

much time spent by day in questioning managers, agents, schools, and choruses; by night among

the audiences of theaters from all-star casts down to music-halls so low that he dreaded to find

what he most hoped for. He who had loved her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since

her disappearance from home this great water-girt city held her somewhere, but it was like a

monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no foundation, its upper granules of

today buried tomorrow in ooze and slime.

The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudo-hospitality, a

hectic, haggard, perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical

comfort came in reflected gleams from the decayed furniture, the ragged brocade upholstery of a

couch and two chairs, a foot-wide cheap pier glass between the two windows, from one or two

gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner.

The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it

were an apartment in Babel, tried to discourse to him of its diverse tenantry.

A polychromatic rug like some brilliant-flowered, rectangular, tropical islet lay

surrounded by a billowy sea of soiled matting. Upon the gay-papered wall were those pictures

that pursue the homeless one from house to house - The Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel,

The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The mantel's chastely severe outline was

ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like the sashes of the

Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned when a

lucky sail had borne them to a fresh port - a trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine

bottle, some stray cards out of a deck.

One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the

furnished room's procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug

in front of the dresser told that lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny finger-prints on

the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying

like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a hurled glass or bottle had splintered with

its contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been scrawled with a diamond in

staggering letters the name 'Marie.' It seemed that the succession of dwellers in the furnished

room had turned in fury - perhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldness - and

wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by

bursting springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some

grotesque convulsion. Some more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble

mantel. Each plank in the floor owned its particular cant and shriek as from a separate and

individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice and injury had been wrought upon the

room by those who had called it for a time their home; and yet it may have been the cheated

home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had kindled their

wrath. A hut that is our own we can sweep and adorn and cherish.

The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft-shod, through his mind,

while there drifted into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a

tittering and incontinent, slack laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a

lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere;

the elevated trains roared intermittently; a cat yowled miserably upon a back fence. And he

breathed the breath of the house - a dank savour rather than a smell - a cold, musty effluvium as

from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and mildewed and

rotten woodwork.

Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odor of

mignonette. It came as upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and

emphasis that it almost seemed a living visitant. And the man cried aloud, 'What, dear?' as if he

had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The rich odor clung to him and wrapped him

about. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time confused and commingled. How

could one be peremptorily called by an odor? Surely it must have been a sound. But, was it not

the sound that had touched, that had caressed him?

'She has been in this room,' he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew

he would recognize the smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched. This

enveloping scent of mignonette, the odor that she had loved and made her own - whence came it?

The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf

were half a dozen hairpins - those discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of

gender, infinite of mood and uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their

triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the drawers of the dresser, he came upon a discarded,

tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was racy and insolent with heliotrope; he

hurled it to the floor. In another drawer, he found odd buttons, a theater program, a pawnbroker's

card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was a woman's

black satin hair-bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hair-bow

also is femininity's demure, impersonal, common ornament, and tells no tales.

And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls,

considering the corners of the bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and

tables, the curtains and hangings, the drunken cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign unable to

perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within, above him, clinging to him, wooing

him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his grosser ones became

cognizant of the call. Once again he answered loudly, 'Yes, dear!' and turned, wild-eyed, to gaze

on vacancy, for he could not yet discern form and color and love and outstretched arms in the

odor of mignonette. Oh, God! whence that odor, and since when have odors had a voice to call?

Thus he groped.

He burrowed in crevices and corners and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed in

passive contempt. But once he found in a fold of the matting a half-smoked cigar, and this he

ground beneath his heel with a green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He

found dreary and ignoble small records of many a peripatetic tenant; but of her whom he sought,

and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit seemed to hover there, he found no trace.

And then he thought of the housekeeper.

He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She

came out to his knock. He smothered his excitement as best he could.

'Will you tell me, madam,' he besought her, 'who occupied the room I have before I

came?'

'Yes, sir. I can tell you again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B'retta Sprowls

it was in the theaters, but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability.

The marriage certificate hung, framed, on a nail over - '

'What kind of a lady was Miss Sprowls - in looks, I mean?'

'Why, black-haired, sir, short and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago

Tuesday.'

'And before they occupied it?'

'Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing

me a week. Before him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months; and

back of them was old Mr. Doyle, whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That

goes back a year, sir, and further I do not remember.'

He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had

vivified it was gone. The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odor

of moldy house furniture, of atmosphere in storage.

The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight.

Soon he walked to the bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he

drove them tightly into every crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he

turned out the light, turned the gas full on again and laid himself gratefully upon the bed.

• • • • •

It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with

Mrs. Purdy in one of those subterranean retreats where housekeepers foregather and the worm

dieth seldom.

'I rented out my third floor back, this evening,' said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of

foam. 'A young man took it. He went up to bed two hours ago.

'Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?' said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. 'You do

be a wonder for rentin' rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then?' she concluded in a husky

whisper, laden with mystery.

'Rooms,' said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, 'are furnished for to rent. I did not tell

him, Mrs. McCool.'

' 'Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for

business, ma'am. There be many people will rayjict the rentin' of a room if they be tould a

suicide has been after dyin' in the bed of it.'

'As you say, we has our living to be making,' remarked Mrs. Purdy.

'Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor

back. A pretty slip of a colleen she was to be killin' herself wid the gas a swate little face she had,

Mrs. Purdy, ma'am.'

'She'd a-been called handsome, as you say,' said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, 'but

for that mole she had a-growin' by her left eyebrow. Do fill up your glass again, Mrs. McCool.'

XVII The Brief Debut of Tildy

IF YOU DO NOT KNOW Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your loss. For

if you are one of the fortunate ones who dine expensively you should be interested to know how

the other half consumes provisions. And if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are

things of moment, you should know Bogle's, for there you get your money's worth - in quantity,

at least.

Bogle's is situated in that highway of bourgeoisie, that boulevard of Brown-Jones-and-

Robinson, Eighth Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each

table is a castor-stand, containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you

may shake a cloud of something tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet

you may

'A very sad one,' says he, laying the points of his manicured fingers together. 'An utterly

incorrigible girl. I am Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned to

me. The girl murdered her fiancé and committed suicide. She had no defence. My report to the

court relates the facts in detail, all of which are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of

sin is death. Praise the Lord.'

The court officer opened the door and stepped out.

'Poor girl,' said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones, with a tear in his eye. 'It

was one of the saddest cases that I ever met with. Of course she was - '

'Discharged,' said the court officer. 'Come here, Jonesy. First thing you know you'll be

switched to the pot-pie squad. How would you like to be on the missionary force in the South

Sea Islands - hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'll be transferred - see? The

guilty party you've got to look for in this case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by

the window reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play in the streets. Get a move on

you.'

Now, wasn't that a silly dream?

XXXIII The Last Leaf IN A LITTLE DISTRICT west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and

broken themselves into small strips called 'places.' These 'places' make strange angles and

curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in

this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this

route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!

So, to quaint old Greenwich Village the art people soon came prowling, hunting for north

windows and eighteenth-century gables and Dutch attics and low rents. Then they imported some

pewter mugs and a chafing dish or two from Sixth Avenue, and became a 'colony.'

At the top of a squatty, three-story brick Sue and Johnsy had their studio. 'Johnsy' was

familiar for Joanna. One was from Maine, the other from California. They had met at the table

d'hôte of an Eighth Street 'Delmonico's,' and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop

sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted.

That was in May. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called

Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy finger. Over on

the East Side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly

through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown 'places.'

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little

woman with blood thinned by Californian zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-

breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote; and she lay, scarcely moving, on her painted iron

bedstead, looking through the small Dutch window-panes at the blank side of the next brick

house.

One morning the busy doctor invited Sue into the hallway with a shaggy, grey eyebrow.

'She has one chance in - let us say, ten,' he said, as he shook down the mercury in his

clinical thermometer. 'And that chance is for her to want to live. This way people have of lining-

up on the side of the undertaker makes the entire pharmacopœia look silly. Your little lady has

made up her mind that she's not going to get well. Has she anything on her mind?'

'She - she wanted to paint the Bay of Naples some day,' said Sue.

'Paint? - bosh! Has she anything on her mind worth thinking about twice - a man, for

instance?'

'A man?' said Sue, with a jews'-harp twang in her voice. 'Is a man worth - but, no, doctor;

there is nothing of the kind.'

'Well, it is the weakness, then,' said the doctor. 'I will do all that science, so far as it may

filter through my efforts, can accomplish. But whenever my patient begins to count the carriages

in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines. If you will

get her to ask one question about the new winter styles in cloak sleeves I will promise you a one-

in-five chance for her, instead of one in ten.'

After the doctor had gone, Sue went into the workroom and cried a Japanese napkin to a

pulp. Then she swaggered into Johnsy's room with her drawing-board, whistling ragtime.

Johnsy lay, scarcely making a ripple under the bedclothes, with her face toward the

window. Sue stopped whistling, thinking she was asleep.

She arranged her board and began a pen-and-ink drawing to illustrate a magazine story.

Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young

authors write to pave their way to Literature.

As Sue was sketching a pair of elegant horseshow riding trousers and a monocle on the

figure of the hero, an Idaho cowboy, she heard a low sound, several times repeated. She went

quickly to the bedside.

Johnsy's eyes were open wide. She was looking out the window and counting - counting

backward.

'Twelve,' she said, and a little later, 'eleven'; and then 'ten,' and 'nine'; and then 'eight' and

'seven,' almost together.

Sue looked solicitously out the window. What was there to count? There was only a bare,

dreary yard to be seen, and the blank side of the brick house twenty feet away. An old, old ivy

vine, gnarled and decayed at the roots, climbed half-way up the brick wall. The cold breath of

autumn had stricken its leaves from the vine until its skeleton branches clung, almost bare, to the

crumbling bricks.

'What is it, dear?' asked Sue.

'Six,' said Johnsy, in almost a whisper. 'They're falling faster now. Three days ago there

were almost a hundred. It made my head ache to count them. But now it's easy. There goes

another one. There are only five left now.'

'Five what, dear? Tell your Sudie.'

'Leaves. On the ivy vine. When the last one falls I must go too. I've known that for three

days. Didn't the doctor tell you?'

'Oh, I never heard of such nonsense,' complained Sue, with magnificent scorn. 'What

have old ivy leaves to do with your getting well? And you used to love that vine so, you naughty

girl. Don't be a goosey. Why, the doctor told me this morning that your chances for getting well

real soon were - let's see exactly what he said - he said the chances were ten to one! Why, that's

almost as good a chance as we have in New York when we ride on the street-cars or walk past a

new building. Try to take some broth now, and let Sudie go back to her drawing, so she can sell

the editor man with it, and buy port wine for her sick child, and porkchops for her greedy self.'

'You needn't get any more wine,' said Johnsy, keeping her eyes fixed out the window.

'There goes another. No, I don't want any broth. That leaves just four. I want to see the

last one fall before it gets dark. Then I'll go too.'

'Johnsy, dear,' said Sue, bending over her, 'will you promise me to keep your eyes closed,

and not look out of the window until I am done working? I must hand those drawings in by to-

morrow. I need the light or I would draw the shade down.'

'Couldn't you draw in the other room?' asked Johnsy coldly.

'I'd rather be here by you,' said Sue. 'Besides, I don't want you to keep looking at those

silly ivy leaves.'

'Tell me as soon as you have finished,' said Johnsy, closing her eyes, and lying white and

still as a fallen statue, 'because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of

thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of

those poor, tired leaves.'

'Try to sleep,' said Sue. 'I must call Behrman up to be my model for the old hermit miner.

I'll not be gone a minute. Don't try to move till I come back.'

Old Behrman was a painter who lived on the ground floor beneath them. He was past

sixty and had a Michael Angelo's Moses beard curling down from the head of a satyr along the

body of an imp. Behrman was a failure in art. Forty years he had wielded the brush without

getting near enough to touch the hem of his Mistress's robe. He had been always about to paint a

masterpiece, but had never yet begun it. For several years he had painted nothing except now and

then a daub in the line of commerce or advertising. He earned a little by serving as a model to

those young artists in the colony who could not pay the price of a professional. He drank gin to

excess, and still talked of his coming masterpiece. For the rest he was a fierce little old man, who

scoffed terribly at softness in anyone, and who regarded himself as especial mastiff-in-waiting to

protect the two young artists in the studio above.

Sue found Behrman smelling strongly of juniper berries in his dimly-lighted den below.

In one corner was a blank canvas on an easel that had been waiting there for twenty-five years to

receive the first line of the masterpiece. She told him of Johnsy's fancy, and how she feared she

would, indeed, light and fragile as a leaf herself, float away when her slight hold upon the world

grew weaker.

Old Behrman, with his red eyes plainly streaming, shouted his contempt and derision for

such idiotic imaginings.

'Vass!' he cried. 'Is dere people in de world mit der foolishness to die because leafs dey

drop off from a confounded vine? I haf not heard of such a thing. No, I vill not bose as a model

for your fool hermit-dunderhead. Vy do you allow dot silly pusiness to come in der prain of her?

Ach, dot poor little Miss Yohnsy.'

'She is very ill arid weak,' said Sue, 'and the fever has left her mind morbid and full of

strange fancies. Very well, Mr. Behrman, if you do not care to pose for me, you needn't. But I

think you are a horrid old - old flibberti-gibbet.'

'You are just like a woman!' yelled Behrman. 'Who said I vill not bose? Go on. I come

mit you. For half an hour I haf peen trying to say dot I am ready to bose. Gott! dis is not any

blace in which one so goot as Miss Yohnsy shall lie sick. Some day I vill baint a masterpiece,

and ve shall all go avay. Gott! yes.'

Johnsy was sleeping when they went upstairs. Sue pulled the shade down to the window-

sill and motioned Behrman into the other room. In there they peered out the window fearfully at

the ivy vine. Then they looked at each other for a moment without speaking. A persistent, cold

rain was falling, mingled with snow. Behrman, in his old blue shirt, took his seat as the hermit-

miner on an upturned kettle for a rock.

When Sue awoke from an hour's sleep the next morning she found Johnsy with dull,

wide-open eyes staring at the drawn green shade.

'Pull it up! I want to see,' she ordered, in a whisper.

Wearily Sue obeyed.

But, lo! after the beating rain and fierce gusts of wind that had endured through the

livelong night, there yet stood out against the brick wall one ivy leaf. It was the last on the vine.

Still dark green near its stem, but with its serrated edges tinted with the yellow of dissolution and

decay, it hung bravely from a branch some twenty feet above the ground.

'It is the last one,' said Johnsy. 'I thought it would surely fall during the night. I heard the

wind. It will fall to-day, and I shall die at the same time.'

'Dear, dear!' said Sue, leaning her worn face down to the pillow; 'think of me, if you

won't think of yourself. What would I do?'

But Johnsy did not answer. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is

making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey. The fancy seemed to possess her more

strongly as one by one the ties that bound her to friendship and to earth were loosed.

The day wore away, and even through the twilight they could see the lone ivy leaf

clinging to its stem against the wall. And then, with the coming of the night the north wind was

again loosed, while the rain still beat against the windows and pattered down from the low Dutch

eaves.

When it was light enough Johnsy, the merciless, commanded that the shade be raised.

The ivy leaf was still there.

Johnsy lay for a long time looking at it. And then she called to Sue, who was stirring her

chicken broth over the gas stove.

'I've been a bad girl, Sudie,' said Johnsy. 'Something has made that last leaf stay there to

show me how wicked I was. It is a sin to want to die. You may bring me a little broth now, and

some milk with a little port in it, and - no; bring me a hand-mirror first; and then pack some

pillows about me, and I will sit up and watch you cook.'

An hour later she said -'Sudie, some day I hope to paint the Bay of Naples.'

The doctor came in the afternoon, and Sue had an excuse to go into the hallway as he left.

'Even chances,' said the doctor, talking Sue's thin, shaking hand in his. 'With good

nursing you'll win. And now I must see another case I have downstairs. Behrman, his name is --

some kind of an artist, I believe. Pneumonia, too. He is an old, weak man, and the attack is acute.

There is no hope for him; but he goes to the hospital to-day to be made more comfortable.'

The next day the doctor said to Sue: 'She's out of danger. You've won. Nutrition and care

now - that's all.'

And that afternoon Sue came to the bed where Johnsy lay, contentedly knitting a very

blue and very useless woollen shoulder scarf, and put one arm around her, pillows and all.

'I have something to tell you, white mouse,' she said. 'Mr. Behrman died of pneumonia

today in hospital. He was ill only two days. The janitor found him on the morning of the first day

in his room downstairs helpless with pain. His shoes and clothing were wet through and icy cold.

They couldn't imagine where he had been on such a dreadful night. And then they found a

lantern, still lighted, and a ladder that had been dragged from its place, and some scattered

brushes, and a palette with green and yellow colours mixed on it, and - look out the window,

dear, at the last ivy leaf on the wall. Didn't you wonder why it never fluttered or moved when the

wind blew?

"Ah, darling, it's Behrman's masterpiece - he painted it there the night that the last leaf

fell," murmured the woman with a touch of reverence in her voice. Presently, Thomas shifted

uneasily in his seat, feeling the abrasions on his knees and elbows, lost in his thoughts. "Say,

Annie," he began, leaning in confidentially, "maybe it's one of the last dreams of the booze, but

I've a kind of a recollection of riding in an automobile with a swell guy that took me to a house

full of eagles and arc lights. He fed me on biscuits and hot air, and then kicked me down the

front steps. If it was the d t's, why am I so sore?" Annie's patience wore thin, her retort curt:

"Shut up, you fool." Thomas, undeterred, persisted, "If I could find that funny guy's house," he

declared with resolve, "I'd go up there some day and punch his nose for him."

XLVII The Poet and the Peasant

The other day, a poet friend of mine, who has lived in close communication with nature

all his life, wrote a poem and took it to an editor. It was a living pastoral, full of the genuine

breath of the fields, the song of birds, and the pleasant chatter of trickling streams. When the poet

called again to see about it, with hopes of a beefsteak dinner in his heart, it was handed back to

him with the comment: "Too artificial." Several of us met over spaghetti and Dutchess County

chianti, and swallowed indignation with the slippery forkfuls. And there we dug a pit for the

editor.

With us was Conant, a well-arrived writer of fiction - a man who had trod on asphalt all

his life, and who had never looked upon bucolic scenes except with sensations of disgust from

the windows of express trains. Conant wrote a poem and called it 'The Doe and the Brook.' It

was a fine specimen of the kind of work you would expect from a poet who had strayed with

Amaryllis only as far as the florist's windows, and whose sole ornithological discussion had been

carried on with a waiter. Conant signed this poem, and we sent it to the same editor.

But this has very little to do with the story. Just as the editor was reading the first line of

the poem, on the next morning, a being stumbled off the West Shore ferryboat, and loped slowly

up Forty-second Street. The invader was a young man with light blue eyes, a hanging lip, and

hair the exact colour of the little orphan's (afterward discovered to be the earl's daughter) in one

of Mr. Blaney's plays. His trousers were corduroy, his coat short-sleeved, with buttons in the

middle of his back. One bootleg was outside the corduroys. You looked expectantly, though in

vain, at his straw hat for ear-holes, its shape inaugurating the suspicion that it had been ravaged

from a former equine possessor. In his hand was a valise - description of it is an impossible task;

a Boston man would not have carried his lunch and law books to his office in it. And above one

ear, in his hair, was a wisp of hay - the rustic's letter of credit, his badge of innocence, the last

clinging touch of the Garden of Eden lingering to shame the goldbrick men.

Knowingly, smilingly, the city crowds passed him by. They saw the raw stranger stand in

the gutter and stretch his neck at the tall buildings. At this they ceased to smile, and even to look

at him. It had been done so often. A few glanced at the antique valise to see what Coney

'attraction' or brand of chewing-gum he might be thus dinning into his memory. But for the most

part he was ignored. Even the newsboys looked bored when he scampered like a circus clown

out of the way of cabs and street-cars.

At Eighth Avenue stood 'Bunco Harry,' with his dyed moustache and shiny, good-natured

eyes. Harry was too good an artist not to be pained at the sight of an actor overdoing his part. He

edged up to the countryman, who had stopped to open his mouth at a jewellery store window,

and shook his head. 'Too thick, pal,' he said critically - 'too thick by a couple of inches. I don't

know what your lay is; but you've got the properties on too thick. That hay, now - why, they

don't even allow that on Proctor's circuit any more.'

'I don't understand you, mister,' said the green one. 'I'm not lookin' for any circus. I've just

run down from Ulster County to look at the town, bein' that the hayin's over with. Gosh! but it's a

whopper. I thought Poughkeepsie was some punkins; but this here town is five times as big.'

'Oh, well,' said 'Bunco Harry,' raising his eyebrows, 'I didn't mean to butt in. You don't

have to tell. I thought you ought to tone down a little, so I tried to put you wise. Wish you

success at your graft, whatever it is. Come and have a drink, anyhow.'

'I wouldn't mind having a glass of lager beer,' acknowledged the other. They went to a

café frequented by men with smooth faces and shifty eyes, and sat at their drinks.

'I'm glad I come across you, mister,' said Haylocks. 'How'd you like to play a game or

two of seven-up? I've got the keerds.' He fished them out of Noah's valise - a rare, inimitable

deck, greasy with bacon suppers and grimy with the soil of cornfields.

'Bunco Harry' laughed loud and briefly. 'Not for me, sport,' he said firmly. 'I don't go

against that make-up of yours for a cent. But I still say you've overdone it. The Reubs haven't

dressed like that since '79. I doubt if you could work Brooklyn for a key-winding watch with that

lay-out.'

'Oh, you needn't think I ain't got the money,' boasted Haylocks. He drew forth a tightly

rolled mass or bills as large as a teacup, and laid it on the table. 'Got that for my share of

grandmother's farm,' he announced. 'There's $950 in that roll. Thought I'd come into the city and

look around for a likely business to go into.'

'Bunco Harry' took up the roll of money and looked at it with almost respect in his

smiling eyes. 'I've seen worse,' he said critically. 'But you'll never do it in them clothes. You

want to get light tan shoes and a black suit and a straw hat with a coloured band, and talk a good

deal about Pittsburg and freight differentials, and drink sherry for breakfast in order to work off

phony stuff like that.'

'What's his line?' asked two or three shifty-eyed men of 'Bunco Harry' after Haylocks had

gathered up his impugned money and departed. 'The queer, I guess,' said Harry. 'Or else he's one

of Jerome's men. Or some guy with a new graft. He's too much hayseed. Maybe that his - I

wonder now - oh no, it couldn't have been real money.'

Haylocks wandered on. Thirst probably assailed him again, for he dived into a dark

groggery on a side-street and bought beer. Several sinister fellows hung upon one end of the bar.

At first sight of him their eyes brightened; but when his insistent and exaggerated rusticity

became apparent their expressions changed to wary suspicion.

Haylocks swung his valise across the bar. 'Keep that awhile for me, mister,' he said,

chewing at the end of a virulent claybank cigar. 'I'll be back after I knock around a spell. And

keep your eye on it, for there's $950 inside of it, though maybe you wouldn't think so to look at

me.'

Somewhere outside a phonograph struck up a band piece

, and Haylocks was off for it, his coat-tail buttons flopping in the middle of his back.

'Divvy? Mike,' said the men hanging upon the bar, winking openly at one another.

'Honest, now,' said the bartender, kicking the valise to one side. 'You don't think I'd fall to

that, do you? Anybody can see he ain't no jay. One of McAdoo's come-on squad, I guess. He's a

shine if he made himself up. There ain't no parts of the country now where they dress like that

since they run rural free delivery to Providence, Rhode Island. If he's got nine-fifty in that valise

it's a ninety-eight-cent Waterbury that's stopped at ten minutes to ten.'

When Haylocks had exhausted the resources of Mr. Edison to amuse he returned for his

valise. And then down Broadway he gallivanted, culling the sights with his eager blue eyes. But

still and evermore Broadway rejected him with curt glances and sardonic smiles. He was the

oldest of the 'gags' that the city must endure. He was so flagrantly impossible, so ultra-rustic, so

exaggerated beyond the most freakish products of the barnyard, the hayfield and the vaudeville

stage, that he excited only weariness and suspicion. And the wisp of hay in his hair was so

genuine, so fresh and redolent of the meadows, so clamorously rural, that even a shellgame man

would have put up his peas and folded his table at the sight of it.

Haylocks seated himself upon a flight of stone steps and once more exhumed his roll of

yellow-backs from the valise. The outer one, a twenty, he shucked off and beckoned to a

newsboy. 'Son,' said he, 'run somewhere and get this changed for me. I'm mighty nigh out of

chicken feed; I guess you'll get a nickel if you'll hurry up.'

A hurt look appeared through the dirt on the newsy's face. 'Aw, watchert'ink! G'wan and

get yer funny bill changed yerself. Dey ain't no farm clothes yer got on. G'wan wit yer stage

money.'

On a corner lounged a keen-eyed steerer for a gamblinghouse. He saw Haylocks, and his

expression suddenly grew cold and virtuous. 'Mister,' said the rural one. 'I've heard of places in

this here town where a fellow could have a good game of old sledge or peg a card at keno. I got

$950 in this valise, and I come down from old Ulster to see the sights. Know where a fellow

could get action on about $9 or $10? I'm goin' to have some sport, and then maybe I'll buy out a

business of some kind.'

The steerer looked pained, and investigated a white speck on his left forefinger nail.

'Cheese it, old man,' he murmured reproachfully. 'The Central Office must be bughouse to send

you out looking like such a gillie. You couldn't get within two blocks of a sidewalk crap game in

them Tony Pastor props. The recent Mr. Scotty from Death Valley has got you beat a crosstown

block in the way of Elizabethan scenery and mechanical accessories. Let it be skiddoo for yours.

Nay, I know of no gilded halls where one may bet a patrol wagon on the ace.'

Rebuffed again by the great city that is so swift to detect artificialities, Haylocks sat upon

the kerb and presented his thoughts to hold a conference. 'It's my clothes,' said he; 'durned if it

ain't. They think I'm a hayseed and won't have nothin' to do with me. Nobody never made fun of

this hat in Ulster County. I guess if you want folks to notice you in New York you must dress up

like they do.'

So Haylocks went shopping in the bazaars where men spake through their noses and

rubbed their hands and ran the tape line ecstatically over the bulge in his inside pocket where

reposed a red nubbin of corn with an even number of rows. And messengers bearing parcels and

boxes streamed to his hotel on Broadway within the lights of Long Acre.

At nine o'clock in the evening one descended to the sidewalk whom Ulster County would

have forsworn. Bright tan were his shoes; his hat the latest block. His light grey trousers were

deeply creased; a gay blue silk handkerchief flapped from the breast pocket of his elegant

English walking-coat. His collar might have graced a laundry window; his blond hair was

trimmed close; the wisp of hay was gone.

For an instant he stood, resplendent, with the leisurely air of a boulevardier concocting in

his mind the route for his evening pleasures. And then he turned down the gay, bright street with

the easy and graceful tread of a millionaire.

But in the instant that he had paused the wisest and keenest eyes in the city had

enveloped him in their field of vision. A stout man with grey eyes picked two of his friends with

a lift of his eyebrows from the row of loungers in front of the hotel. 'The juiciest jay I've seen in

six months,' said the man with grey eyes. 'Come along.'

It was half-past eleven when a man galloped into the West Forty-seventh Street police-

station with the story of his wrongs. 'Nine hundred and fifty dollars,' he gasped, 'all my share of

grandmother's farm.' The desk sergeant wrung from him the name Jabez Bulltongue, of Locust

Valley Farm, Ulster County, and then began to take descriptions of the strong-arm gentlemen.

When Conant went to see the editor about the fate of his poem, he was received over the

head of the office boy into the inner office that is decorated with the statuettes by Rodin and J. G.

Brown. 'When I read the first line of "The Doe and the Brook," ' said the editor, 'I knew it to be

the work of one whose life has been heart to heart with nature. The finished art of the line did not

blind me to that fact. To use a somewhat homely comparison, it was as if a wild, free child of the

woods and fields were to don the garb of fashion and walk down Broadway. Beneath the apparel

the man would show.' 'Thanks,' said Conant. 'I suppose the cheque will be round on Thursday, as

usual.'

The morals of this story have somehow gotten mixed. You can take your choice of 'Stay

on the Farm' or 'Don't write Poetry.'

XLVIII The Thing's the Play

Being acquainted with a newspaper reporter who had a couple of free passes, I got to see

the performance a few nights ago at one of the popular vaudeville houses. One of the numbers

was a violin solo by a striking-looking man not much past forty, but with very grey, thick hair.

Not being afflicted with a taste for music, I let the system of noises drift past my ears while I

regarded the man.

"There was a story about that chap a month or two ago," said the reporter. "They gave me

the assignment. It was to run a column and was to be on the extremely light and joking order.

The old man seems to like the funny touch I give to local happenings. Oh yes, I'm working on a

farce comedy now. Well, I went down to the house and got all the details; but I certainly fell

down on that job. I went back and turned in a comic write-up of an east side funeral instead.

Why? Oh, I couldn't seem to get hold of it with my funny hooks, somehow. Maybe you could

make a one-act tragedy out of it for a curtain-raiser. I'll give you the details."

After the performance, my friend, the reporter, recited to me the facts over the

Würzburger. Racking, petitionary music of a violin. The hag, music, bewitches some of the

noblest. The daws may peck upon one's sleeve without injury, but whoever wears his heart upon

his tympanum gets it not far from the neck.

This music and the musician called her, and at her side honour and the old love held her

back.

"Forgive me," he pleaded.

"Twenty years is a long time to remain away from the one you say you love," she

declared, with a purgatorial touch.

"How could I tell?" he begged. "I will conceal nothing from you. That night when he left

I followed him. I was mad with jealousy. On a dark street I struck him down. He did not rise. I

examined him. His head had struck a stone. I did not intend to kill him. I was mad with love and

jealousy. I hid nearby and saw an ambulance take him away. Although you married him, Helen -

"Who are you?" cried the woman, with wide-open eyes, snatching her hand away.

"Don't you remember me, Helen - the one who has always loved you the best? I am John

Delaney. If you can forgive - "

But she was gone, leaping, stumbling, hurrying, flying up the stairs toward the music and

him who had forgotten, but who had known her for his in each of his two existences, and as she

climbed up she sobbed, cried, and sang: "Frank! Frank! Frank!"

Three mortals thus juggling with years as though they were billiard balls, and my friend,

the reporter, couldn't see anything funny in it!

XL1X A Ramble in Aphasia

My wife and I parted on that morning in precisely our usual manner. She left her second

cup of tea to follow me to the front door. There she plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of

lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership) and bade me take care of my cold. I had

no cold. Next came her kiss of parting - the level kiss of domesticity flavoured with Young

Hyson. There was no fear of the extemporaneous, of variety spicing her infinite custom. With the

deft touch of long malpractice, she dabbed awry my well-set scarf-pin; and then, as I closed the

door, I heard her morning slippers pattering back to her cooling tea.

When I set out I had no thought or premonition of what was to occur. The attack came

suddenly. For many weeks I had been toiling, almost night and day, at a famous railroad law case

that I won triumphantly but a few days previously. In fact, I had been digging away at the law

almost without cessation for many years. Once or twice good Doctor Volney, my friend and

physician, had warned me.

'If you don't slacken up, Bellford,' he said, 'you'll go suddenly to pieces. Either your

nerves or your brain will give way. Tell me, does a week pass in which you do not read in the

papers of a case of aphasia - of some man lost, wandering nameless, with his past and his identity

blotted out - and all from that little brain-clot made by overwork or worry?' 'I always thought,'

said I, 'that the clot in those instances was really to be found on the brains of the newspaper

reporters.' Dr. Volney shook his head. 'The disease exists,' he said. 'You need a change or a rest.

Court-room, office and home - there is the only route you travel. For recreation you - read law

books. Better take warning in time.'

'On Thursday nights,' I said defensively, 'my wife and I play cribbage. On Sundays she

reads to me the weekly letter from her mother. That law books are not a recreation remains yet to

be established.' That morning as I walked I was thinking of Doctor Volney's words. I was feeling

as well as I usually did - possibly in better spirits than usual.

I awoke with stiff and cramped muscles from having slept long on the incommodious seat

of a day coach. I leaned my head against the seat and tried to think. After a long time I said to

myself: 'I must have a name of some sort.' I searched my pockets. Not a card; not a letter; not a

paper or monogram could I find. But I found in my coat pocket nearly $3,000 in bills of large

denomination. 'I must be someone, of course,' I repeated to myself, and began again to consider.

The car was well crowded with men, among whom I told myself, there must have been

some common interest, for they intermingled freely, and seemed in the best good-humour and

spirits. One of them - a stout, spectacled gentleman enveloped in a decided odour of cinnamon

and aloes - took the vacant half of my seat with a friendly nod, and unfolded a newspaper. In the

intervals between his periods of reading, we conversed, as travellers will, on current affairs. I

found myself able to sustain the conversation on such subjects with credit, at least to my

memory. By and by my companion said:

'You are one of us, of course. Fine lot of men the West sends in this time. I'm glad they

held the convention in New York; I've never been East before. My name's R. P. Bolder - Bolder

& Son, of Hickory Grove, Missouri.' Though unprepared, I rose to the emergency, as men will

when put to it. Now must I hold a christening, and be at once babe, parson and parent. My senses

came to the rescue of my slower brain. The insistent odour of drugs from my companion

supplied one idea; a glance at his newspaper, where my eye met a conspicuous advertisement,

assisted me further.

'My name,' said I glibly, 'is Edward Pinkhammer. I am a druggist, and my home is in

Cornopolis, Kansas.' 'I knew you were a druggist,' said my fellow-traveller affably. 'I saw the

callous spot on your right forefinger where the handle of the pestle rubs. Of course, you are a

delegate to our National Convention.'

'Are all these men druggists?' I asked wonderingly. 'They are. This car came through

from the West. And they're your old-time druggists, too - none of your patent tablet-and-granule

pharmashootists that use slot machines instead of a prescription desk. We percolate our own

paregoric and roll our own pills, and we ain't above handling a few garden seeds in the spring,

and carrying a sideline of confectionery and shoes. I tell you, Hampinker, I've got an idea to

spring on this convention - new ideas is what they want. Now, you know the shelf bottles of

tartar emetic and Rochelle salt Ant. et Pot. Tart. and Sod. et Pot. Tart. - one's poison, you know,

and the other's harmless. It's easy to mistake one label for the other. Where do druggists mostly

keep 'em? Why, as far apart as possible, on different shelves. That's wrong. I say keep 'em side

by side so when you want one you can always compare it with the other and avoid mistakes. Do

you catch the idea?'

'It seems to me a very good one,' I said. 'All right! When I spring it on the convention you

back it up. We'll make some of these Eastern orange-phosphate-and-massage-cream professors

that think they're the only lozenges in the market look like hypodermic tablets.' 'If I can be of any

aid,' I said, warming, 'the two bottles of - er - ' 'Tartrate of antimony and potash, and tartrate of

soda and potash.' 'Shall henceforth sit side by side,' I concluded firmly.

'Now, there's another thing,' said Mr. Bolder. 'For an excipient in manipulating a pill mass

which do you prefer - the magnesia carbonate or the pulverized glycerrhiza radix?' 'The - er -

magnesia,' I said. It was easier to say than the other word. Mr. Bolder glanced at me distrustfully

through his spectacles. 'Give me the glycerrhiza,' said he. 'Magnesia cakes.'

'Here's another one of these fake aphasia cases,' he said, presently, handing me his

newspaper, and laying his finger upon an article. 'I don't believe in 'em. I put nine out of ten of

'em down as frauds. A man gets sick of his business and his folks and wants to have a good

time. He skips out somewhere, and when they find him he pretends to have lost his memory -

don't know his own name, and won't even recognize the strawberry mark on his wife's left

shoulder. Aphasia! Tut! Why can't they stay at home and forget?'

I took the paper and read, after the pungent headlines, the following: 'DENVER, June 12.

- Elwyn C. Bellford, a prominent lawyer, is mysteriously missing from his home since three days

ago, and all efforts to locate him have been in vain. Mr. Bellford is a well-known citizen of the

highest standing, and has enjoyed a large and lucrative law practice. He is married and owns a

fine home and the most extensive private library in the State. On the day of his disappearance, he

drew quite a large sum of money from his bank. No one can be found who saw him after he left

the bank. Mr. Bellford was a man of singularly quiet and domestic tastes, and seemed to find his

happiness in his home and profession. If any clue at all exists to his strange disappearance, it

may be found in the fact that for some months he had been deeply absorbed in an important law

case in connection with the Q. Y. and Z. Railroad Company. It is feared that overwork may have

affected his mind. Every effort is being made to discover the whereabouts of the missing man.'

'It seems to me you are not altogether uncynical Mr. Bolder,' I said, after I had read the

despatch. 'This has the sound, to me, of a genuine case. Why should this man, prosperous,

happily married and respected, choose suddenly to abandon everything? I know that these lapses

of memory do occur, and that men do find themselves adrift without a name, a history or a

home.' 'Oh, gammon and jalap!' said Mr. Bolder. 'It's larks they're after. There's too much

education nowadays. Men know about aphasia, and they use it for an excuse. The women are

wise, too. When it's all over they look you in the eye, as scientific as you please, and say: "He

hypnotized me." '

'Mr. Bolder diverted, but did not aid me with his comments and philosophy. We arrived

in New York about ten at night. I rode in a cab to a hotel, and I wrote my name 'Edward

Pinkhammer' in the register. As I did so I felt pervade me a splendid, wild, intoxicating buoyancy

- a sense of unlimited freedom, of newly attained possibilities. I was just born into the world. The

old fetters - whatever they had been - were stricken from my hands and feet. The future lay

before me a clear road such as an infant enters, and I could set out upon it equipped with a man's

learning and experience. I thought the hotel clerk looked at me five seconds too long. I had no

baggage. 'The Druggists' Convention,' I said. 'My trunk has somehow failed to arrive.' I drew out

a roll of money. 'Ah!' said he, showing an auriferous tooth, 'we have quite a number of the

Western delegates stopping here.' He struck a bell for the boy. I endeavored to give color to my

role. 'There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners,' I said, 'in regard to a

recommendation to the convention that the bottles containing the tartrate of antimony and potash,

and the tartrate of sodium and potash, be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf.' 'Gentleman

to three-fourteen,' said the clerk hastily. I was whisked away to my room.

The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live the life of Edward

Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavors to solve problems of the past. It was a

piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held up to my lips. I drank of it gratefully.

The keys of Manhattan belong to him who is able to bear them. You must be either the city's

guest or its victim. The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet

counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having come upon so diverting a

world full-fledged and unrestrained.

I sat entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof-gardens, that

transported one into strange and delightful lands full of frolicsome music, pretty girls and

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grotesque, drolly extravagant parodies upon humankind. I went here and there at my own dear

will, bound by no limits of space, time or comportment. I dined in weird cabarets, at weirder

tables d'hôte to the sound of Hungarian music and the wild shouts of mercurial artists and

sculptors. Or, again, where the night life quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic picture,

and the millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones whom they adorn, and the men who

make all three possible are met for good cheer and the spectacular effect. And among all these

scenes that I have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before. And that is that the

key to liberty is not in the hands of Licence, but Convention holds it.

Comity has a toll-gate at which you must pay, or you may not enter the land of Freedom.

In all the glitter, the seeming disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet

like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey these unwritten laws, and then you will

be freest of the free. If you decline to be bound by them, you put on shackles. Sometimes, as my

mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly murmuring palm-rooms, redolent with high-born

life and delicate restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in steamers

packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked, love-making clerks and shop-girls to their crude

pleasures on the island shores. And there was always Broadway - glistening, opulent, wily,

varying, desirable Broadway - growing upon one like an opium habit.

One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a black mustache

blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed around him, he greeted me with

offensive familiarity. 'Hallo, Bellford!' he cried loudly. 'What the deuce are you doing in New

York? Didn't know anything could drag you away from that old book den of yours. Is Mrs. B.

along or is this a little business run alone, eh?' 'You have made a mistake, sir,' I said coldly,

releasing my hand from his grasp. 'My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me.' The man

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dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the clerk's desk I heard him call to a

bell-boy and say something about telegraph blanks. 'You will give me my bill,' I said to the clerk,

'and have my baggage brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am annoyed

by confidence men.'

I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned one on lower Fifth

Avenue. There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could be served almost

alfresco in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet and luxury and a perfect service made it an

ideal place in which to take luncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there picking my way

to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught. 'Mr. Bellford!' exclaimed an amazingly

sweet voice. I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone - a lady of about thirty, with exceedingly

handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been her very dear friend. 'You were about to

pass me,' she said accusingly. 'Don't tell me you did not know me. Why should we not shake

hands - at least once in fifteen years?'

I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at the table. I summoned with

my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a crème

de menthe. Her hair was reddish bronze. You could not look at it, because you could not look

away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it as you are conscious of sunset while you look

into the profundities of a wood at twilight. 'Are you sure you know me?' I asked. 'No,' she said,

smiling, 'I was never sure of that.' 'What would you think,' I said, a little anxiously, 'if I were to

tell you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis, Kansas.' 'What would I think?'

she repeated, with a merry glance. 'Why, that you had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York

with you, of course. I do wish you had. I would have liked to see Marian.' Her voice lowered

slightly - 'You haven't changed much, Elwyn.'

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I felt her wonderful eyes searching mine and my face more closely. 'Yes, you have,' she

amended, and there was a soft, exultant note in her latest tones; 'I see it now. You haven't

forgotten. You haven't forgotten for a year or a day or an hour. I told you you never could.' I

poked my straw anxiously in the crème de menthe. 'I'm sure I beg your pardon,' I said, a little

uneasy at her gaze. 'But that is just the trouble. I have forgotten. I've forgotten everything.' She

flouted my denial. She laughed deliciously at something she seemed to see in my face. 'I've heard

of you at times,' she went on. 'You're quite a big lawyer out West - Denver, isn't it, or Los

Angeles? Marian must be very proud of you. You knew, I suppose, that I married six months

after you did. You may have seen it in the papers. The flowers alone cost two thousand dollars.'

She had mentioned fifteen years. Fifteen years is a long time. 'Would it be too late,' I

asked somewhat timorously, 'to offer you congratulations?' 'Not if you dare do it,' she answered,

with such fine intrepidity that I was silent, and began to crease patterns on the cloth with my

thumb-nail. 'Tell me one thing,' she said, leaning toward me rather eagerly - 'a thing I have

wanted to know for many years - just from a woman's curiosity, of course - have you ever dared

since that night to touch, smell or look at white roses - at white roses wet with rain and dew?' I

took a sip of crème de menthe. 'It would be useless, I suppose,' I said, with a sigh, 'for me to

repeat that I have no recollection at all about these things. My memory is completely at fault. I

need not say how much I regret it.'

The lady rested her arms upon the table, and again her eyes disdained my words and went

travelling by their own route direct to my soul. She laughed softly, with a strange quality in the

sound - it was a laugh of happiness yes, and of content - and of misery. I tried to look away from

her. 'You lie, Elwyn Bellford,' she breathed blissfully. 'Oh, I know you lie!' I gazed dully into the

ferns. 'My name is Edward Pinkhammer,' I said. 'I came with the delegates to the Druggists'

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National Convention. There is a movement on foot for arranging a new position for the bottles of

tartrate of antimony and tartrate of potash, in which, very likely, you would take little interest.'

A shining landau stopped before the entrance. The lady rose. I took her hand, and bowed.

'I am deeply sorry,' I said to her, 'that I cannot remember. I could explain, but fear you would not

understand. You will not concede Pinkhammer; and I really cannot at all conceive of the - the

roses and other things.' 'Good-bye, Mr. Bellford,' she said, with her happy, sorrowful smile, as

she stepped into her carriage. I attended the theatre that night. When I returned to my hotel, a

quiet man in dark clothes, who seemed interested in rubbing his finger-nails with a silk

handkerchief, appeared, magically, at my side.

'Mr. Pinkhammer,' he said casually, giving the bulk of his attention to his forefinger, 'may

I request you to step aside with me for a little conversation? There is a room here.' 'Certainly,' I

answered. He conducted me into a small, private parlour. A lady and a gentleman were there.

The lady, I surmised, would have been unusually good-looking had her features not been clouded

by an expression of keen worry and fatigue. She was of a style of figure and possessed colouring

and features that were agreeable to my fancy. She was in a travelling-dress; she fixed upon me an

earnest look of extreme anxiety, and pressed an unsteady hand to her bosom. I think she would

have started forward, but the gentleman arrested her movement with an authoritative motion of

his hand.

He then came, himself, to meet me. He was a man of forty, a little grey about the temples,

and with a strong, thoughtful face. 'Bellford, old man,' he said cordially, 'I'm glad to see you

again. Of course we know everything is all right. I warned you, you know, that you were

overdoing it. Now, you'll go back with us, and be yourself again in no time.' I smiled ironically.

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'I have been "Bellforded" so often,' I said, 'that it has lost its edge. Still, in the end, it may grow

wearisome. Would you be willing at all to entertain the hypothesis that my name is Edward

Pinkhammer, and that I never saw you before in my life?' Before the man could reply a wailing

cry came from the woman.

She sprang past his detaining arm. 'Elwyn!' she sobbed, and cast herself upon me, and

clung tight. 'Elwyn,' she cried again, 'don't break my heart. I am your wife - call my name once -

just once! I could see you dead rather than this way.' I unwound her arms respectfully, but

firmly. 'Madam,' I said severely, 'pardon me if I suggest that you accept a resemblance too

precipitately. It is a pity,' I went on, with an amused laugh, as the thought occurred to me, 'that

this Bellford and I could not be kept side by side upon the same shelf like tartrates of sodium and

antimony for purposes of identification.

In order to understand the allusion,' I concluded airily, 'it may be necessary for you to

keep an eye on the proceedings of the Druggists' National Convention.' The lady turned to her

companion, and grasped his arm. 'What is it, Doctor Volney? Oh, what is it?' she moaned. He led

her to the door. 'Go to your room for awhile,' I heard him say. 'I will remain and talk with him.

His mind? No, I think not - only a portion of the brain. Yes, I am sure he will recover. Go to your

room and leave me with him.'

The lady disappeared. The man in dark clothes also went outside, still manicuring himself

in a thoughtful way. I think he waited in the hall. 'I would like to talk with you a while, Mr.

Pinkhammer, if I may,' said the gentleman who remained. 'Very well, if you care to,' I replied,

'and will excuse me if I take it comfortably; I am rather tired.' I stretched myself upon a couch by

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a window and lit a cigar. He drew a chair near by. 'Let us speak to the point,' he said soothingly.

'Your name is not Pinkhammer.'

'I know that as well as you do,' I said coolly. 'But a man must have a name of some sort. I

can assure you that I do not extravagantly admire the name of Pinkhammer. But when one

christens one's self, suddenly the fine names do not seem to suggest themselves. But suppose it

had been Scheringhausen or Scroggins! I think I did very well with Pinkhammer.' 'Your name,'

said the other man seriously, 'is Elwyn C. Bellford. You are one of the first lawyers in Denver.

You are suffering from an attack of aphasia, which has caused you to forget your identity.

The cause of it was over-application to your profession, and, perhaps, a life too bare of

natural recreation and pleasures. The lady who has just left the room is your wife.

'She is what I would call a fine-looking woman,' I said, after a judicial pause. 'I

particularly admire the shade of brown in her hair.'

'She is a wife to be proud of. Since your disappearance, nearly two weeks ago, she has

scarcely closed her eyes. We learned that you were in New York through a telegram sent by

Isidore Newman, a travelling man from Denver. He said that he had met you in an hotel here,

and that you did not recognize him.'

'I think I remember the occasion,' I said. 'The fellow called me "Bellford," if I am not

mistaken. But don't you think it about time, now, for you to introduce yourself?'

'I am Robert Volney - Doctor Volney. I have been your close friend for twenty years, and

your physician for fifteen. I came with Mrs. Bellford to trace you as soon as we got the telegram.

Try, Elwyn, old man - try to remember!'

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'What's the use to try!' I asked, with a little frown. 'You say you are a physician. Is

aphasia curable? When a man loses his memory, does it return slowly, or suddenly?'

'Sometimes gradually and imperfectly; sometimes as suddenly as it went.'

'Will you undertake the treatment of my case, Doctor Volney?' I asked.

'Old friend,' said he, 'I'll do everything in my power, and will have done everything that

science can do to cure you.'

'Very well,' said I. 'Then you will consider that I am your patient. Everything is in

confidence now - professional confidence.'

'Of course,' said Doctor Volney.

I got up from the couch. Someone had set a vase of white roses on the centre table - a

cluster of white roses freshly sprinkled and fragrant. I threw them far out of the window, and

then I laid myself upon the couch again.

'It will be best, Bobby,' I said, 'to have this cure happen suddenly. I'm rather tired of it all,

anyway. You may go now and bring Marian in. But, oh, Doc,' I said, with a sigh, as I kicked him

on the shin - 'good old Doc - it was glorious!'

L A Municipal Report

The cities are full of pride, challenging each to each - This from her mountainside, That

from her burthened beach. R. KIPLING.

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Fancy a novel about Chicago or Buffalo, let us say, or Nashville, Tennessee! There are

just three big cities in the United States that are 'story cities' - New York, of course, New

Orleans, and, best of the lot, San Francisco. - FRANK NORRIS.

EAST IS EAST, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a

race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State. They are the Southerners of the West.

Now, Chicagoans are no less loyal to their city; but when you ask them why, they stammer and

speak of lake fish and the new Odd Fellows Building. But Californians go into detail.

Of course they have, in the climate, an argument that is good for half an hour while you

are thinking of your coal bills and heavy underwear. But as soon as they come to mistake your

silence for conviction, madness comes upon them, and they picture the city of the Golden Gate

as the Bagdad of the New World. So far, as a matter of opinion, no refutation is necessary. But,

dear cousins all (from Adam and Eve descended), it is a rash one who will lay his finger on the

map and say: 'In this town there can be no romance - what could happen here?' Yes, it is a bold

and a rash deed to challenge in one sentence history, romance, and Rand and McNally.

NASHVILLE. - A city, port of delivery, and the capital of the State of Tennessee, is on

the Cumberland River and on the N.C. & St. L. and the L. & N. railroads. This city is regarded as

the most important educational centre in the South.

I stepped off the train at 8 p.m. Having searched the thesaurus in vain for adjectives, I

must, as a substitution, hie me to comparison in the form of a recipe. Take of London fog 30

parts; malaria 10 parts; gas leaks 20 parts; dewdrops, gathered in a brickyard at sunrise, 25 parts;

odour of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a

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Nashville drizzle. It is not so fragrant as a moth-ball nor as thick as pea-soup; but 'tis enough -

'twill serve.

I went to an hotel in a tumbril. It required strong self-suppression for me to keep from

climbing to the top of it and giving an imitation of Sidney Carton. The vehicle was drawn by

beasts of a bygone era and driven by something dark and emancipated. I was sleepy and tired, so

when I got to the hotel I hurriedly paid it the fifty cents it demanded (with approximate

lagniappe, I assure you). I knew its habits; and I did not want to hear it prate about its old

'marster' or anything that happened 'befo' de wah.'

The hotel was one of the kind described as 'renovated.' That means $20,000 worth of new

marble pillars, tiling, electric lights and brass cuspidors in the lobby, and a new L. & N. time

table and a lithograph of Lookout Mountain in each one of the great rooms above. The

management was without reproach, the attention full of exquisite Southern courtesy, the service

as slow as the progress of a snail and as good-humoured as Rip Van Winkle. The food was worth

travelling a thousand miles for. There is no other hotel in the world where you can get such

chicken livers en brochette.

At dinner I asked a negro waiter if there was anything doing in town. He pondered

gravely for a minute, and then replied: 'Well, boss, I don't really reckon there's anything at all

doin' after sundown.' Sundown had been accomplished; it had been drowned in the drizzle long

before. So that spectacle was denied me. But I went forth upon the streets in the drizzle to see

what might be there. It is built on undulating grounds; and the streets are lighted by electricity at

a cost of $32,470 per annum.

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As I left the hotel, there was a race riot. Down upon me charged a company of freedmen,

or Arabs, or Zulus, armed with - no, I saw with relief that they were not rifles, but whips. And I

saw dimly a caravan of black, clumsy vehicles; and at the reassuring shouts, 'Kyar you anywhere

in the town, boss, fuh fifty cents,' I reasoned that I was merely a 'fare' instead of a victim.

I walked through long streets, all leading uphill. I wondered how those streets ever came

down again. Perhaps they didn't until they were 'graded.' On a few of the 'main streets' I saw

lights in stores here and there; saw street-cars go by conveying worthy burghers hither and yon;

saw people pass engaged in the art of conversation, and heard a burst of semi-lively laughter

issuing from a soda-water and ice-cream parlour. The streets other than 'main' seemed to have

enticed upon their borders houses consecrated to peace and domesticity. In many of them lights

shone behind discreetly drawn window shades; in a few pianos tinkled orderly and

irreproachable music. There was, indeed, little 'doing.' I wished I had come before sundown. So I

returned to my hotel.

In November, 1864, the Confederate General Hood advanced against Nashville, where he

shut up a National force under General Thomas. The latter then sallied forth and defeated the

confederates in a terrible conflict. All my life I have heard of, admired, and witnessed the fine

marksmanship of the South in its peaceful conflicts in the tobacco-chewing regions. But in my

hotel a surprise awaited me. There were twelve bright, new, imposing, capacious brass cuspidors

in the great lobby, tall enough to be called urns and so wide-mouthed that the crack pitcher of a

lady baseball team should have been able to throw a ball into one of them at five paces distant.

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But, although a terrible battle had raged and was still raging, the enemy had not suffered. Bright,

new, imposing, capacious, untouched, they stood. But shades of Jefferson Brick! the tile floor -

the beautiful tile floor! I could not avoid thinking of the battle of Nashville, and trying to draw,

as is my foolish habit, some deductions about hereditary marksmanship.

Here I first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a

type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My

old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well said almost everything: 'Prophet, curse me the

blabbing lip, And curse me the British vermin, the rat.' Let us regard the word 'British' as

interchangeable ad lib. A rat is a rat. This man was hunting about the hotel lobby like a starved

dog that had forgotten where he had buried a bone. He had a face of great acreage, red, pulpy,

and with a kind of sleepy massiveness like that of Buddha. He possessed one single virtue - he

was very smoothly shaven. The mark of the beast is not indelible upon a man until he goes about

with a stubble. I think that if he had not used his razor that day I would have repulsed his

advances, and the criminal calendar of the world would have been spared the addition of one

murder.

I happened to be standing within five feet of a cuspidor when Major Caswell opened fire

upon it. I had been observant enough to perceive that the attacking force was using Gatlings

instead of squirrel rifles; so I side-stepped so promptly that the major seized the opportunity to

apologize to a non-combatant. He had the blabbing lip. In four minutes he had become my friend

and had dragged me to the bar. I desire to interpolate here that I am a Southerner. But I am not

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one by profession or trade. I eschew the string tie, the slouch hat, the Prince Albert, the number

of bales of cotton destroyed by Sherman, and plug chewing. When the orchestra plays Dixie I do

not cheer. I slide a little lower on the leather-cornered seat and, well, order another Würzburger

and wish that Longstreet had - but what's the use? Major Caswell banged the bar with his fist,

and the first gun at Fort Sumter re-echoed. When he fired the last one at Appomattox I began to

hope. But then he began on family trees, and demonstrated that Adam was only a third cousin of

a collateral branch of the Caswell family. Genealogy disposed of, he took up, to my distaste, his

private family matters. He spoke of his wife, traced her descent back to Eve, and profanely

denied any possible rumour that she may have had relations in the land of Nod.

By this time, I began to suspect that he was trying to obscure by noise the fact that he had

ordered the drinks, on the chance that I would be bewildered into paying for them. But when

they were down he crashed a silver dollar loudly upon the bar. Then, of course, another serving

was obligatory. And when I had paid for that I took leave of him brusquely; for I wanted no more

of him. But before I had obtained my release he had prated loudly of an income that his wife

received, and showed a handful of silver money.

When I got my key at the desk, the clerk said to me courteously: 'If that man Caswell has

annoyed you, and if you would like to make a complaint, we will have him ejected. He is a

nuisance, a loafer, and without any known means of support, although he seems to have some

money most the time. But we don't seem to be able to hit upon any means of throwing him out

legally.'

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'Why, no,' said I, after some reflection; 'I don't see my way clear to making a complaint.

But I would like to place myself on record as asserting that I do not care for his company. Your

town,' I continued, 'seems to be a quiet one. What manner of entertainment, adventure, or

excitement have you to offer to the stranger within your gates?'

'Well, sir,' said the clerk, 'there will be a show here next Thursday. It is - I'll look it up

and have the announcement sent up to your room with the ice water. Good night.'

After I went up to my room I looked out of the window. It was only about ten o'clock, but

I looked upon a silent town. The drizzle continued, spangled with dim lights, as far apart as

currants in a cake sold at the Ladies' Exchange.

'A quiet place,' I said to myself, as my first shoe struck the ceiling of the occupant of the

room beneath mine. 'Nothing of the life here that gives colour and variety to the cities in the East

and West. Just a good, ordinary, humdrum business town.'

Nashville occupies a foremost place among the manufacturing centres of the country. It is

the fifth boot and shoe market in the United States, the largest candy and cracker manufacturing

city in the South, and does an enormous wholesale dry goods, grocery and drug business.

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I must tell you how I came to be in Nashville, and assure you the digression brings as

much tedium to me as it does to you. I was travelling elsewhere on my own business, but I had a

commission from a Northern literary magazine to stop over there and establish a personal

connection between the publication and one of its contributors, Azalea Adair.

Adair (there was no clue to the personality except the handwriting) had sent in some

essays (lost art!) and poems that had made the editors swear approvingly over their one o'clock

luncheon. So they had commissioned me to round up said Adair and corner by contract his or her

output at two cents a word before some other publisher offered her ten or twenty.

At nine o'clock the next morning, after my chicken livers en brochette (try them if you

can find that hotel), I strayed out into the drizzle, which was still on for an unlimited run. At the

first corner, I came upon Uncle Cæsar. He was a stalwart negro, older than the pyramids, with

grey wool and a face that reminded me of Brutus, and a second afterwards of the late King

Cetewayo.

He wore the most remarkable coat that I ever had seen or expect to see. It reached to his

ankles and had once been a Confederate grey in colours. But rain and sun and age had so

variegated it that Joseph's coat, beside it, would have faded to a pale monochrome. I must linger

with that coat for it has to do with the story - the story that is so long in coming, because you can

hardly expect anything to happen in Nashville.

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Once it must have been the military coat of an officer. The cape of it had vanished, but all

adown its front it had been frogged and tasselled magnificently. But now the frogs and tassels

were gone. In their stead had been patiently stitched (I surmised by some surviving 'black

mammy') new frogs made of cunningly twisted common hempen twine. This twine was frayed

and dishevelled. It must have been added to the coat as a substitute for vanished splendours, with

tasteless but painstaking devotion, for it followed faithfully the curves of the long-missing frogs.

And, to complete the comedy and pathos of the garment, all its buttons were gone save one. The

second button from the top alone remained. The coat was fastened by other twine strings tied

through the buttonholes and other holes rudely pierced in the opposite side. There was never

such a weird garment so fantastically bedecked and of so many mottled hues. The lone button

was the size of a half-dollar, made of yellow horn and sewed on with coarse twine.

This negro stood by a carriage so old that Ham himself might have started a hack line

with it after he left the ark with the two animals hitched to it. As I approached he threw open the

door, drew out a leather duster, waved it, without using it, and said in deep, rumbling tones: 'Step

right in, suh; ain't a speck of dust in it - jus' back from a funeral, suh.'

I inferred that on such gala occasions carriages were given an extra cleaning. I looked up

and down the street and perceived that there was little choice among the vehicles for hire that

lined the kerb. I looked in my memorandum book for the address of Azalea Adair.

'I want to go to 861 Jessamine Street,' I said, and was about to step into the hack. But for

an instant the thick, long, gorilla-like arm of the old negro barred me. On his massive and

saturnine face a look of sudden suspicion and enmity flashed for a moment. Then, with quickly

returning conviction, he asked blandishingly: 'What are you gwine there for, boss?'

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'What is that to you?' I asked a little sharply.

'Nothin', suh, jus' nothin'. Only it's a lonesome kind of part of town and few folks ever

has business out there. Step right in. The seats is clean - jes' got back from a funeral, suh.'

A mile and a half it must have been to our journey's end. I could hear nothing but the

fearful rattle of the ancient hack over the uneven brick paving; I could smell nothing but the

drizzle, now further flavoured with coal smoke and something like a mixture of tar and oleander

blossoms. All I could see through the streaming windows were two rows of dim houses.

The city has an area of 10 square miles; 181 miles of streets, of which 137 miles are

paved; a system of waterworks that cost $2,000,000, with 77 miles of mains.

Eight-sixty-one Jessamine Street was a decayed mansion. Thirty yards back from the

street it stood, outmerged in a splendid grove of trees and untrimmed shrubbery. A row of box

bushes overflowed and almost hid the paling fence from sight; the gate was kept closed by a rope

noose that encircled the gate-post and the first paling of the gate. But when you got inside you

saw that 861 was a shell, a shadow, a ghost of former grandeur and excellence. But in the story, I

have not yet got inside. When the hack had ceased from rattling and the weary quadrupeds came

to a rest I handed my jehu his fifty cents with an additional quarter, feeling a glow of conscious

generosity as I did so. He refused it. 'It's two dollars, suh,' he said. 'How's that?' I asked. 'I plainly

heard you call out at the hotel: "Fifty cents to any part of the town." ' 'It's two dollars, suh,' he

repeated obstinately. 'It's a long ways from the hotel.' 'It is within the city limits and well within

them,' I argued. 'Don't think that you have picked up a greenhorn Yankee. Do you see those hills

over there?' I went on, pointing toward the east (I could not see them, myself, for the drizzle);

'well, I was born and raised on their other side. You old fool nigger, can't you tell people from

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other people when you see em?' The grim face of King Cetewayo softened. 'Is you from the

South, suh? I reckon it was them shoes of yourn fooled me. There is somethin' sharp in the toes

for a Southern gen'l'man to wear.' 'Then the charge is fifty cents, I suppose?' said I inexorably.

His former expression, a mingling of cupidity and hostility, returned, remained ten minutes, and

vanished. 'Boss,' he said, 'fifty cents is right; but I needs two dollars, suh; I'm obleeged to have

two dollars. I ain't demandin' it now, suh; after I knows whar you's from; I'm jus' sayin' that I has

to have two dollars to-night, and business is mighty po'.'

Peace and confidence settled upon his heavy features. He had been luckier than he had

hoped. Instead of having picked up a greenhorn, ignorant of rates, he had come upon an

inheritance. 'You confounded old rascal,' I said, reaching down into my pocket, 'you ought to be

turned over to the police.' For the first time I saw him smile. He knew; he knew; HE KNEW. I

gave him two one-dollar bills. As I handed them over I noticed that one of them had seen parlous

times. Its upper right-hand corner was missing, and it had been torn through in the middle but

joined again. A strip of blue tissue-paper, pasted over the split, preserved its negotiability.

Enough of the African bandit for the present: I left him happy, lifted the rope and opened the

creaky gate. The house, as I said, was a shell. A paint-brush had not touched it in twenty years. I

could not see why a strong wind should not have bowled it over like a house of cards until I

looked again at the trees that hugged it close - the trees that saw the battle of Nashville and still

drew their protecting branches around it against storm and enemy and cold. Azalea Adair, fifty

years old, white-haired, a descendant of the cavaliers, as thin and frail as the house she lived in,

robed in the cheapest and cleanest dress I ever saw, with an air as simple as a queen's, received

me. The reception-room seemed a mile square, because there was nothing in it except some rows

of books, on unpainted, white-pine bookshelves, a cracked, marble-top table, a rag rug, a hairless

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horsehair sofa and two or three chairs. Yes, there was a picture on the wall, a coloured crayon

drawing of a cluster of pansies. I looked around for the portrait of Andrew Jackson and the pine-

cone hanging basket, but they were not there. Azalea Adair and I had conversation, a little of

which will be repeated to you. She was a product of the old South, gently nurtured in the

sheltered life. Her learning was not broad, but was deep and of splendid originality in its

somewhat narrow scope. She had been educated at home, and her knowledge of the world was

derived from inference and by inspiration. Of such is the precious, small group of essayists

made. While she talked to me, I kept brushing my fingers, trying, unconsciously, to rid them

guiltily of the absent dust from the half-calf backs of Lamb, Chaucer, Hazlitt, Marcus Aurelius,

Montaigne and Hood. She was exquisite, she was a valuable discovery. Nearly everybody

nowadays knows too much - oh, so much too much - of real life. I could perceive clearly that

Azalea Adair was very poor. A house and a dress she had, not much else, I fancied. So, divided

between my duty to the magazine and my loyalty to the poets and essayists who fought Thomas

in the valley of the Cumberland, I listened to her voice, which was like a harpsichord's, and

found that I could not speak of contracts. In the presence of the Nine Muses and the Three

Graces one hesitated to lower the topic to two cents. There would have to be another colloquy

after I had regained my commercialism. But I spoke of my mission, and three o'clock of the next

afternoon was set for the discussion of the business proposition. 'Your town,' I said, as I began to

make ready to depart (which is the time for smooth generalities), 'seems to be a quiet, sedate

place. A home town, I should say, where few things out of the ordinary ever happen.' It carries

on an extensive trade in stoves and hollow ware with the West and South, and its flouring mills

have a daily capacity of more than 2,000 barrels. Azalea Adair seemed to reflect. 'I have never

thought of it that way,' she said, with a kind of sincere intensity that seemed to belong to her.

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'Isn't it in the still, quiet places that things do happen? I fancy that when God began to create the

earth on the first Monday morning one could have leaned out one's windows and heard the drop

of mud splashing from His trowel as He built up the everlasting hills. What did the noisiest

project in the world - I mean the building of the tower of Babel - result in finally? A page and a

half of Esperanto in the North American Review.' 'Of course,' said I platitudinously, 'human

nature is the same everywhere; but there is more colour - er - more drama and movement and - er

- romance in some cities than in others.' 'On the surface,' said Azalea Adair. 'I have travelled

many times around the world in a golden airship wafted on two wings - print and dreams. I have

seen (on one of my imaginary tours) the Sultan of Turkey bow-string with his own hands

one of his wives who had uncovered her face in public. I have seen a man in Nashville tear up

his theatre tickets because his wife was going out with her face covered - with rice powder. In

San Francisco's Chinatown I saw the slave girl Sing Yee dipped slowly, inch by inch, in boiling

almond oil to make her swear she would never see her American lover again. She gave in when

the boiling oil had reached three inches above her knee. At a euchre party in East Nashville the

other night I saw Kitty Morgan cut dead by seven of her schoolmates and lifelong friends

because she had married a house painter. The boiling oil was sizzling as high as her heart; but I

wish you could have seen the fine little smile that she carried from table to table. Oh yes, it is a

humdrum town. Just a few miles of redbrick houses and mud and stores and lumber yards.'

Someone knocked hollowly at the back of the house. Azalea Adair breathed a soft apology and

went to investigate the sound. She came back in three minutes with brightened eyes, a faint flush

on her cheeks, and ten years lifted from her shoulders. 'You must have a cup of tea before you

go,' she said, 'and a sugar cake.' She reached and shook a little iron bell. In shuffled a small negro

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girl about twelve, bare-foot, not very tidy, glowering at me with thumb in mouth and bulging

eyes. Azalea Adair opened a tiny, worn purse and drew out a dollar bill, a dollar bill with the

upper right-hand corner missing, torn in two pieces and pasted together again with a strip of blue

tissue-paper. It was one of the bills I had given the piratical negro - there was no doubt of it. 'Go

up to Mr. Baker's store on the corner, Impy,' she said, handing the girl the dollar bill, 'and get a

quarter of a pound of tea - the kind he always sends me - and ten cents worth of sugar cakes.

Now, hurry. The supply of tea in the house happens to be exhausted,' she explained to me. Impy

left by the back way. Before the scrape of her hard, bare feet had died away on the back porch, a

wild shriek - I was sure it was hers - filled the hollow house. Then the deep, gruff tones of an

angry man's voice mingled with the girl's further squeals and unintelligible words. Azalea Adair

rose without surprise or emotion and disappeared. For two minutes I heard the hoarse rumble of

the man's voice; then something like an oath and a light scuffle, and she returned calmly to her

chair. 'This is a roomy house,' she said, 'and I have a tenant for part of it. I am sorry to have to

rescind my invitation to tea. It was impossible to get the kind I always use at the store. Perhaps

to-morrow Mr. Baker will be able to supply me.' I was sure that Impy had not had time to leave

the house. I inquired concerning street-car lines and took my leave.

After I was well on my way I remembered that I had not learned Azalea Adair's name.

But to-morrow would do. That same day I started in on the course of iniquity that this uneventful

city forced upon me. I was in the town only two days, but in that time I managed to lie

shamelessly by telegraph, and to be an accomplice - after the fact, if that is the correct legal term

- to a murder. As I rounded the corner nearest my hotel the Afrite coachman of the

polychromatic, nonpareil coat seized me, swung open the dungeony door of his peripatetic

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sarcophagus, flirted his feather duster and began his ritual: 'Step right in, boss. Carriage is clean -

jus' got back from a funeral. Fifty cents to any - ' And then he knew me and grinned broadly. '

'Scuse me, boss; you is de gen'l'man what rid out with me dis mawnin'. Thank you

kindly, suh.' 'I am going out to 861 again to-morrow afternoon at three,' said I, 'and if you will be

here, I'll let you drive me. So you know Miss Adair?' I concluded, thinking of my dollar bill. 'I

belonged to her father, Judge Adair, suh,' he replied. 'I judge that she is pretty poor,' I said. 'She

hasn't much money to speak of, has she?' For an instant I looked again at the fierce countenance

of King Cetewayo, and then he changed back to an extortionate old negro hack-driver. 'She a'n't

gwine to starve, suh,' he said slowly. 'She has reso'ces, suh; she has reso'ces.' 'I shall pay you fifty

cents for the trip,' said I. 'Dat is puffeckly correct, suh,' he answered humbly; 'I jus' had to have

dat two dollars dis mawnin, boss.' I went to the hotel and lied by electricity. I wired the

magazine: 'A. Adair holds out for eight cents a word.' The answer that came back was: 'Give it to

her quick, you duffer.' Just before dinner 'Major' Wentworth Caswell bore down upon me with

the greetings of a long-lost friend. I have seen few men whom I have so instantaneously hated,

and of whom it was so difficult to be rid. I was standing at the bar when he invaded me; therefore

I could not wave the white ribbon in his face. I would have paid gladly for the drinks, hoping

thereby to escape another, but he was one of those despicable, roaring, advertising bibbers who

must have brass bands and fireworks attend upon every cent that they waste in their follies. With

an air of producing millions he drew two one-dollar bills from a pocket and dashed one of them

upon the bar. I looked once more at the dollar bill with the upper right-hand corner missing, torn

through the middle, and patched with a strip of blue tissue-paper. It was my dollar bill again. It

could have been no other. I went up to my room. The drizzle and the monotony of a dreary,

eventless Southern town had made me tired and listless. I remember that just before I went to bed

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I mentally disposed of the mysterious dollar bill (which might have formed the clue to a

tremendously fine detective story of San Francisco) by saying to myself sleepily: 'Seems as if a

lot of people here own stock in the Hack-Driver's Trust. Pays dividends promptly, too. Wonder if

- ' Then I fell asleep. King Cetewayo was at his post the next day, and rattled my bones over the

stones out to 861. He was to wait and rattle me back again when I was ready. Azalea Adair

looked paler and cleaner and frailer than she had looked on the day before. After she had signed

the contract at eight cents per word she grew still paler and began to slip out of her chair.

Without much trouble I managed to get her up on the antediluvian horsehair sofa and

then I ran out to the sidewalk and yelled to the coffee-coloured Pirate to bring a doctor. With a

wisdom that I had not suspected in him, he abandoned his team and struck off up the street afoot,

realizing the value of speed. In ten minutes he returned with a grave, grey-haired and capable

man of medicine. In a few words (worth much less than eight cents each) I explained to him my

presence in the hollow house of mystery. He bowed with stately understanding, and turned to the

old negro.

'Uncle Cæsar,' he said calmly, 'run up to my house and ask Miss Lucy to give you a

cream pitcher full of fresh milk and half a tumbler of port wine. And hurry back. Don't drive -

run. I want you to get back some time this week.'

It occurred to me that Dr. Merriman also felt a distrust as to the speeding powers of the

landpirate's steeds. After Uncle Cæsar was gone, lumberingly, but swiftly, up the street, the

doctor looked me over with great politeness and as much careful calculation until he had decided

that I might do.

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'It is only a case of insufficient nutrition,' he said. 'In other words, the result of poverty,

pride, and starvation. Mrs. Caswell has many devoted friends who would be glad to aid her, but

she will accept nothing except from that old negro, Uncle Cæsar, who was once owned by her

family.'

'Mrs. Caswell!' said I, in surprise. And then I looked at the contract and saw that she had

signed it 'Azalea Adair Caswell.'

'I thought she was Miss Adair,' I said.

'Married to a drunken, worthless loafer, sir,' said the doctor. 'It is said that he robs her

even of the small sums that her old servant contributes toward her support.'

When the milk and wine had been brought, the doctor soon revived Azalea Adair. She sat

up and talked of the beauty of the autumn leaves that were then in season, and their height of

colour. She referred lightly to her fainting seizure as the outcome of an old palpitation of the

heart. Impy fanned her as she lay on the sofa. The doctor was due elsewhere, and I followed him

to the door. I told him that it was within my power and intentions to make a reasonable advance

of money to Azalea Adair on future contributions to the magazine, and he seemed pleased.

'By the way,' he said, 'perhaps you would like to know that you have had royalty for a

coachman. Old Cæsar's grandfather was a king in Congo. Cæsar himself has royal ways, as you

may have observed.'

As the doctor was moving off I heard Uncle Cæsar's voice inside: 'Did he git bofe of dem

two dollars from you, Mis' Zalea?'

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'Yes, Cæsar,' I heard Azalea Adair answer weakly. And then I went in and concluded

business negotiations with our contributor. I assumed the responsibility of advancing fifty

dollars, putting it as a necessary formality in binding our bargain. And then Uncle Cæsar drove

me back to the hotel.

Here ends all the story as far as I can testify as a witness. The rest must be only bare

statements of facts.

At about six o'clock I went out for a stroll. Uncle Cæsar was at his corner. He threw open

the door of his carriage, flourished his duster and began his depressing formula: 'Step right in,

suh. Fifty cents to anywhere in the city - hack's puffickly clean, suh - jus' got back from a funeral

- '

And then he recognized me. I think his eyesight was getting bad. His coat had taken on a

few more faded shades of colour, the twine strings were more frayed and ragged, the last

remaining button - the button of yellow horn - was gone. A motley descendant of kings was

Uncle Caesar.

About two hours later I saw an excited crowd besieging the front of a drug store. In a

desert where nothing happens this was manna; so I edged my way inside. On an extemporized

couch of empty boxes and chairs was stretched the mortal corporeality of Major Wentworth

Caswell. A doctor was testing him for the immortal ingredient. His decision was that it was

conspicuous by its absence.

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The erstwhile Major had been found dead on a dark street and brought by curious and

ennuied citizens to the drug store. The late human being had been engaged in terrific battle - the

details showed that. Loafer and reprobate though he had been, he had been also a warrior. But he

had lost. His hands were yet clenched so tightly that his fingers would not be opened. The gentle

citizens who had known him stood about and searched their vocabularies to find some good

words, if it were possible, to speak of him.

One kind-looking man said, after much thought: 'When "Cas" was about fo'teen he was

one of the best spellers in school.'

While I stood there the fingers of the right hand of 'the man that was,' which hung down

the side of a white pine box, relaxed, and dropped something at my feet. I covered it with one

foot quietly, and a little later on I picked it up and pocketed it. I reasoned that in his last struggle

his hand must have seized that object unwittingly and held it in a death-grip.

At the hotel that night the main topic of conversation, with the possible exceptions of

politics and prohibition, was the demise of Major Caswell. I heard one man say to a group of

listeners:

'In my opinion, gentlemen, Caswell was murdered by some of these no-account niggers

for his money. He had fifty dollars this afternoon which he showed to several gentlemen in the

hotel. When he was found the money was not on his person.'

I left the city the next morning at nine, and as the train was crossing the bridge over the

Cumberland River I took out of my pocket a yellow, horn, overcoat button the size of a fifty-cent

piece, with frayed ends of coarse twine hanging from it, and cast it out of the window into the

slow, muddy waters below.

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I wonder what's doing in Buffalo!

LI Compliments of the Season

THERE ARE NO MORE Christmas stories to write. Fiction is exhausted; and newspaper

items the next best, are manufactured by clever young Journalists who have married early and

have an engagingly pessimistic view of life. Therefore, for seasonable diversion, we are reduced

to two very questionable sources – facts and philosophy. We will begin with - whichever you

choose to call it.

Children are pestilential little animals with which we have to cope under a bewildering

variety of conditions. Especially when childish sorrows overwhelm them are we put to our wits'

end. We exhaust our paltry store of consolation; and then beat them, sobbing, to sleep. Then we

grovel in the dust of a million years, and ask God why. Thus we call out of the rat-trap. As for

the children, no one understands them except old maids, hunchbacks, and shepherd dogs.

Now come the facts in the case of the Rag-Doll, the Tatterdemalion, and the Twenty-fifth

of December.

On the tenth of that month the Child of the Millionaire lost her rag-doll. There were many

servants in the Millionaire's palace on the Hudson, and these ransacked the house and grounds,

but without finding the lost treasure. The Child was a girl of five, and one of those perverse little

beasts that often wound the sensibilities of wealthy parents by fixing their affections upon some

vulgar,

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'P-pardon, lady,' he said, 'but couldn't leave without exchangin'

comp'ments sheason with lady th' house. ' 'Gainst princ'ples

gen'leman do sho.'

And then he began the ancient salutation that was a tradition in

the House when men wore lace ruffles and powder.

'The blessings of another year - ' Fuzzy's memory failed him. The Lady prompted:

'- Be upon this hearth.'

'- The guest - ' stammered Fuzzy.

'- And upon her who - ' continued the Lady, with a leading smile.

'Oh, cut it out,' said Fuzzy ill-manneredly. 'I can't remember.

Drink hearty.'

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Fuzzy had shot his arrow. They drank. The Lady smiled again the smile of her caste.

James enveloped Fuzzy and re-conducted him toward the front door. The harp music still softly

drifted through the house.

Outside, Black Riley breathed on his cold hands and hugged the gate.

'I wonder,' said the Lady to herself, musing 'who - but therewere so many who came. I

wonder whether memory is a curse or ablessing to them after they have fallen so low.' Fuzzy and

his escort were nearly at the door. The Lady called: 'James!'

James stalked back obsequiously, leaving Fuzzy waiting unsteadily, with his brief spark

of the divine fire gone. Outside, Black Riley stamped his cold feet and got a firmer grip on his

section of gas-pipe.

'You will conduct this gentleman,' said the Lady, 'downstairs. Then tell Louis to get out

the Mercedes and take him to whatever place he wishes to go.'

LII Proof of the Pudding

TO SPRING WINKED a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook, of the Minerva Magazine,

and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favourite corner of a Broadway hotel,

and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette.

Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the

spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of budding Madison

Square.

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The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a pastoral; the colour

motif was green - the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation. The callow grass

between the walks was the colour of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of

derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting

tree-buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish

course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that hallroom poets

rhyme with 'true' and 'Sue' and 'coo.' The one natural and frank colour visible was the ostensible

green of the newly painted benches - a shade between the colour of a pickled cucumber and that

of a last year's fast-back cravenette raincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the

landscape appeared a masterpiece.

And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle concourse that fears to

tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor's mind. Editor Westbrook's spirit was

contented and serene. The April number of the Minerva had sold its entire edition before the

tenth day of the month - a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies

more if he had had 'em. The owners of the magazine had raised his (the editor's) salary; he had

just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and

the morning papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers' banquet. Also

there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young

wife had sung to him before he left his uptown apartment that morning. She was taking

enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practising early and diligently. When he had

complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged him for joy at his

praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly

adown the wards of the convalescent city.

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While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between rows of park benches (already filling

with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held.

Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw

that his captor was - Dawe - Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteel scarcely

visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby.

While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight biography of Dawe is

offered. He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook's old acquaintances. At one time they

might have called each other old friends. Dawe had some money in those days, and lived in a

decent apartment-house near Westbrook's. The two families often went to theatres and dinners

together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became 'dearest' friends. Then one day a little tentacle

of the octopus, just to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe's capital, and he moved to the Gramercy

Park neighbourhood, where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one's trunk under

eightbranched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble mantels and watch the mice play upon

the floor. Dawe thought to live by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted

many to Westbrook. The Minerva printed one or two of them; the rest were returned. Westbrook

sent a careful and conscientious personal letter with each rejected manuscript, pointing out in

detail his reasons for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clear conception

of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe was mainly concerned about the

constituents of the scanty dishes of food that she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had

been spouting to her about the excellences of certain French writers. At dinner they sat down to a

dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp. Dawe commented.

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'It's Maupassant hash,' said Mrs. Dawe. 'It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a

five course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I'm hungry.'

As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor Westbrook's

sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Dawe in several months.

'Why, Shack, is this you?' said Westbrook somewhat awkwardly, for the form of this

phrase seemed to touch upon the other's changed appearance.

'Sit down for a minute,' said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. 'This is my office. I can't come

to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down - you won't be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the

other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber. They won't know you are only an editor.'

'Smoke, Shack?' said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the virulent green

bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield.

Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a

chocolate cream.

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'I have just - ' began the editor.

'Oh, I know; don't finish,' said Dawe. 'Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to

spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes

now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn't read the "Keep off the Grass" signs.'

'How goes the writing?' asked the editor.

'Look at me,' said Dawe, 'for your answer. Now don't put on that embarrassed, friendly-

but-honest look and ask me why I don't get a job as a wine agent or a cab-driver. I'm in the fight

to a finish. I know I can write good fiction and I'll force you fellows to admit it yet. I'll make you

change the spelling of "regrets" to "c-h-e-q-u-e" before I'm done with you.'

Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient,

sympathetic, sceptical expression - the copyrighted expression of the editor beleaguered by the

unavailable contributor.

'Have you read the last story I sent you - "The Alarum of the Soul"?' asked Dawe.

'Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had some good points. I was

writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret - '

'Never mind the regrets,' said Dawe grimly. '

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There's neither salve nor sting in 'em any more. What I want to know is why. Come, now;

out with the good points first.'

'The story,' said Westbrook deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, 'is written around an

almost original plot. Characterization - the best you have done. Construction - almost as good,

except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a

good story, except - '

'I can write English, can't I?' interrupted Dawe.

'I have always told you,' said the editor, 'that you had a style.'

'Then the trouble is the - '

'Same old thing,' said Editor Westbrook. 'You work up to your climax like an artist. And

then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don't know what form of obstinate madness

possesses you, Shack, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract

the comparison with the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of its impossible

perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every denouement by

those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you

would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic scenes, and paint them in the high colours

that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes at your door.'

'Oh, fiddles and footlights!' cried Dawe derisively. 'You've got that old sawmill drama

kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black moustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie

you are bound to have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: "May high

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heaven witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless villain that has stolen me

child feels the weight of a mother's vengeance!" '

Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.

'I think,' said he, 'that in real life the woman would express herself in those words or in

very similar ones.'

'Not in a six hundred nights' run anywhere but on the stage,' said Dawe hotly. 'I'll tell you

what she'd say in real life. She'd say: "What! Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It's

one trouble after another! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station. Why

wasn't somebody looking after her, I'd like to know? For God's sake, get out of my way or I'll

never get ready. Not that hat - the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy;

she's usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I'm upset!"

'That's the way she'd talk,' continued Dawe. 'People in real life don't fly into heroics and

blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can't do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they

draw from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas a

little more, that's all.'

'Shack,' said Editor Westbrook impressively, 'did you ever pick up the mangled and

lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street-car, and carry it in your arms and lay it

down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and

despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?'

'I never did,' said Dawe. 'Did you?'

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'Well, no,' said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. 'But I can well imagine what she

would say.'

'So can I,' said Dawe.

And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the oracle and silence

his opinionated contributor. It was not for an unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by

the heroes and heroines of the Minerva Magazine, contrary to the theories of the editor thereof.

'My dear Shack,' said he, 'if I know anything of life I know that every sudden, deep and

tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an apposite, concordant, conformable, and

proportionate expression of feeling? How much of this inevitable accord between expression and

feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art, it would be difficult

to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is

dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances

of Lear are above the level of his senile vapourings. But it is also true that all men and women

have what may be called a subconscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep

and powerful emotion - a sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts

them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance and histrionic value.'

'And in the name of seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius, where did the stage and

literature get the stunt?' asked Dawe.

'From life,' answered the editor triumphantly.

The story-writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but dumbly. He was

beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his dissent.

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On a bench near by a frowsy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that his moral

support was due to a down-trodden brother.

'Punch him one, Jack,' he called hoarsely to Dawe. 'Wat's he come makin' a noise like a

penny arcade for amongst gen'lemen that comes in the Square to set and think?'

Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure.

'Tell me,' asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, 'what especial faults in "The Alarum of the

Soul" caused you to throw it down.'

'When Gabriel Murray,' said Westbrook, 'goes to his telephone and is told that his fiancée

has been shot by a burglar, he says - I do not recall the exact words, but - '

'I do,' said Dawe. 'He says: "Damn Central; she always cuts me off." (And then to his

friend): "Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a big hole? It's kind of hard luck, ain't it?

Could you get me a drink from the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side." '

'And again,' continued the editor, without pausing for argument, 'when Berenice opens

the letter from her husband informing her that he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are -

let me see - '

'She says,' interposed the author: ' "Well, what do you think of that!" '

'Absurdly inappropriate words,' said Westbrook, 'presenting an anti-climax - plunging the

story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; they mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered

banal colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy.'

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'Wrong,' said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. 'I say no man or woman ever

spouts highfalutin talk when they go up against a real climax. They talk naturally, and a little

worse.'

The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside information.

'Say, Westbrook,' said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, 'would you have accepted "The

Alarum of the Soul" if you had believed that the actions and words of the characters were true to

life in the parts of the story that we discussed?'

'It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way,' said the editor. 'But I have explained

to you that I do not.'

'If I could prove to you that I am right?'

'I'm sorry, Shack, but I'm afraid I haven't time to argue any further just now.'

'I don't want to argue,' said Dawe. 'I want to demonstrate to you from life itself that my

view is the correct one.'

'How could you do that?' asked Westbrook in a surprised tone.

'Listen,' said the writer seriously. 'I have thought of a way. It is important to me that my

theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as correct by the magazines. I've fought for it for three

years, and I'm down to my last dollar, with two months' rent due.'

'I have applied the opposite of your theory,' said the editor, 'in selecting the fiction for the

Minerva Magazine. The circulation has gone up from ninety thousand to - '

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'Four hundred thousand,' said Dawe. 'Whereas it should have been boosted to a million.'

'You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory.'

'I will. If you'll give me about half an hour of your time, I'll prove to you that I am right.

I'll prove it by Louise.'

'Your wife!' exclaimed Westbrook. 'How?'

'Well, not exactly by her, but with her,' said Dawe. 'Now, you know how devoted and

loving Louise has always been. She thinks I'm the only genuine preparation on the market that

bears the old doctor's signature. She's been fonder and more faithful than ever since I've been

cast for the neglected genius part.'

'Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion,' agreed the editor. 'I remember

what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to

have such wives. You must bring Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we'll have one of those

informal chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much.'

'Later,' said Dawe. 'When I get another shirt. And now I'll tell you my scheme. When I

was about to leave home after breakfast - if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast - Louise told

me she was going to visit her aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return home at

three o'clock. She is always on time to a minute. It is now - '

Dawe glanced toward the editor's watch pocket.

'Twenty-seven minutes to three,' said Westbrook, scanning his timepiece.

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'We have just enough time,' said Dawe. 'We will go to my flat at once. I will write a note,

address it to her, and leave it on the table where she will see it as she enters the door. You and I

will be in the dining-room concealed by the portieres. In that note, I'll say that I have fled from

her forever with an affinity who understands the needs of my artistic soul as she never did. When

she reads it, we will observe her actions and hear her words. Then we will know which theory is

the correct one - yours or mine.'

'Oh, never!' exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. 'That would be inexcusably cruel. I

could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe's feelings played upon in such a manner.'

'Brace up,' said the writer. 'I guess I think as much of her as you do. It's for her benefit as

well as mine. I've got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won't hurt Louise. She's

healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It'll last for only a

minute, and then I'll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to me to give me the chance,

Westbrook.'

Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him that

consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us.

Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity 'tis that there are not

enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to go around.

The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward and then to the south

until they arrived in the Gramercy neighbourhood. Within its high iron railings, the little park

had put on its smart coat of vernal green and was admiring itself in its fountain minor. Outside

the railings, the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in

ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. Sic transit gloria urbis. A block

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or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short

distance, into a lofty but narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated façade. To the

fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door of one of the front

flats. When the door opened, Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and

meagrely the rooms were furnished.

'Get a chair, if you can find one,' said Dawe, 'while I hunt up pen and ink. Hallo, what's

this? Here's a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning.'

He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open. He began to read

the letter that he drew out of it, and once having begun it aloud, he so read it through to the end.

These are the words that Editor Westbrook heard:

DEAR SHACKLEFORD, -

'By the time you get this, I will be about a hundred miles away and still a-going. I've got a

place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera Co., and we start on the road today at twelve o'clock.

I didn't want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own living. I'm not coming back.

Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She said she was tired of living with a combination

phonograph, iceberg, and dictionary, and she's not coming back, either. We've been practising

the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful, and get along

all right. Good-bye.

'LOUISE.'

Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and cried out in a

deep vibrating voice:

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'My God, why hast Thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, then let Thy

Heaven's fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting bywords of traitors and friends!'

Editor Westbrook's glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand fumbled with a

button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips:

'Say, Shack, ain't that a hell of a note? Wouldn't that knock you off your perch, Shack?

Ain't it hell, now, Shack - ain't it?'

LIII Past One at Rooney's

ONLY ON THE LOWER East Side of New York do the Houses of Capulet and

Montague survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb

at an upholder of your opposing house you have work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you

may drag your man along a dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch; but in

the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutios you must observe the niceties of deportment

to the wink of an eyelash and to an inch of elbowroom at the bar when its patrons include foes of

your house and kin.

So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted into Dutch

Mike's for a stein of beer, and came upon a bunch of Montagues making merry with the suds, he

began to observe the strictest parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with

his thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the mirror supplied the

cognizance of the enemy's movements that his indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; experience

whispered to him that the finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering steins at Dutch

Mike's that night.

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Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio, companion of his perambulations.

Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry Hill Gang and two of the Dry Dock Gang minding their

P's and Q's so solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other on an

open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek safety whenever the ominous

politeness of the rival associations congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel.

But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry Docks. We must

to Rooney's, where, on the most blighted dead branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall

bloom.

Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first overstepped the bounds

of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a

Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his