Front matter (continued 3)

Putting the Stars with the Bars

By Verne Marshall

Midnight beneath a low-hanging strip of amber-hued moon. Smoke in one's eyes and sulphur in his nostrils; the pounding of cannon in his ears and a hatred of war and its sponsors in his soul. A supply wagon piled high with dead men on one side of the road and a little ambulance waiting for its bruised load to emerge from the mouth of the communicating trench near by. Sharp tongues of fire darting into the night on every side as the guns of the French barked their challenge at the Crown Prince on the other bank of the Meuse. A lurid glare over there to the left where the smoke hung thickest under drifting yellow illuminating bombs and red and blue signal bombs that added their touch to the weird fantasy that wasn't a fantasy at all, but a hill in whose spelling men had changed one letter and turned it into hell.

It was Dead Man's Hill at Verdun—Le Cote Mort Homme. And Dead Man's Hill it truly was, for among the barbed wire entanglements and in some of the shell craters in No Man's Land there still lay the skeletons of Frenchmen and Germans who had been killed there months before and whose bodies it had been impossible to recover because the trenches had not changed positions and to venture out between them was to shake hands with Death.

Dead Man's Hill at Verdun—where ten thousand men have fought for a few feet of blood-soaked ground in vain effort to satiate the battle-thirst of a monarch and his son! The countryside for miles around is laid waste. Villages lie in tumbled masses, trees are uprooted or broken off, demolished wagons and motors litter the roads and fields, and dead horses, legs stiff in the air, dot the jagged landscape. Not a moving object is seen there by day except the crows that flutter above the uptorn ground and the aeroplanes that soar thousands of feet above. But, with the coming of night, long columns of men wind along the treacherous roads on their way to or from the trenches, hundreds of supply wagons lumber across the shell holes to the stations near the line, ammunition trains travel up to the lines and back and the ambulances ply their routes to dressing stations. Everything must be done under night's partially protecting cloak, for the German gunners seldom miss when daylight aids their vision.

A tiny American ambulance—a jitney—threads its way down from the Dead Man to ——, carrying a boy through whose breast a dum-dum bullet had torn its beastly way. Three hours before, the driver of that ambulance had talked with the boy who now lay behind him on a stretcher. Then the young Frenchman had been looking forward to the wondrous day when the war would end. He had planned to come to America to live, just as soon as he could get back to Paris and say good-bye to the mother from whom he had received a letter that very day.

"I will be lucky!" he had exclaimed to the American. "I will not be killed. I will not even be wounded. Ah, but won't I be glad when the war is over!"

But his life was slipping away, faster than the Red Cross car could carry him to aid. The checking station reached, two orderlies pulled the stretcher from the ambulance. There was a choking sound in the wounded soldier's throat and the driver, thinking to ease his breathing, lifted his head. The closed eyes fluttered open, the indescribable smile of the dying lighted his face and with his last faint breath he murmured those words that always still war momentarily—

"Ah, mere! Ma mere!"

"Oh, mother! My mother!"—and he was dead.

Just one little incident of war, just a single glimpse at the accomplishments of monarchial militarism.

That French boy has not come to America, but America has gone to him. He died for a flag that is red, white and blue—for the tricolor of France. And we have gone across the sea to place the stars of our flag with the bars of his. His fight was our fight and our fight is his. Together we fight against those who menace civilization in both old world and new. We fight against the army that outraged Belgium and devastated France, against the militaristic clique that sanctioned the slaughtering and crippling of little children, the maiming of women, against that order of militarists who decorated the commander of the submarine that sank the Lusitania with her babies and their mothers.

We are at war and we are Americans…. Enough.

Verne Marshall was the driver of that ambulance. Three months of his service were spent at Verdun.

The Kings of Saranazett

By Lewis Worthington Smith

A Scene From the First Act

A drama of the awakening of the nearer Orient. In this scene Nasrulla appears as the royal lover of the fig merchant's daughter, Nourmahal. She has learned something of the ways of the West, where even kings have but one acknowledged consort, and she is not willing to be merely one of a number of queens.

Before the wall and gate enclosing Nourmahal's Garden. It is early morning, just before dawn. Above the gleaming white of the wall's sun-baked clay there is the deep green of the trees—the plane, the poplar, the acacia, and, beyond the garden, mountains are visible through the purple mist of the hour that waits for dawn, slowly turning to rose as the rising sun warms their snowy heights. At the left the wall extends out of sight behind a clump of trees, but at the right it ends in a tower topped by a turret with a rounded dome passing into a point. The space under the dome is open, except for a railing, and is large enough for one or more persons. It may be entered from the broad top of the wall through a break in the railing. At the left, out from the trees and in front of the wall, there is a well marked out with roughly piled stones.

At the right, out of sight behind the trees that come almost to the tower at the corner of the wall, a man's voice is heard singing Shelley's "Indian Serenade."

During the singing Nourmahal has come slowly out from the left, walking along the broad top of the wall until, coming to the tower, she drops down on the floor by the railing of the turret and listens, her veil falling from before her face. When the song has ended, Nasrulla comes forward and approaches the little tower. He leads a horse, a white horse with its tail dyed red in the Persian fashion.

Nourmahal. You turn the gray of the poplars in the darkness into the silver of running water.

King Nasrulla. The dawn is waiting under your veil. I see now only the morning star.

Nourmahal. I am but the moon, and I must not be seen when My Lord the Sun comes.

King Nasrulla. The Lord of the Sky rises to look on the gardens where the nightingales have been singing.

Nourmahal. But when he finds that the nightingales are silent, he passes to other gardens.

King Nasrulla. Following the song, as I follow the lisp of spring in your voice, the flutter of the wings of birds in the branches when buds are swelling.

Nourmahal. It is the flutter of wings and the song that you care for; it is not the bird.

King Nasrulla. It is the song of the bird that tells me where I shall find the bird herself. It is the oasis lifted up into the sky that guides the thirsty traveler across the desert.

Nourmahal (rising in agitation). When I am your queen, will you follow the voices of other nightingales?

King Nasrulla. You will be my first queen.

Nourmahal. I must be your only queen.

King Nasrulla. Always my first queen, and in your garden the fountains shall murmur day and night with a fuller flow of water than any others. The flowers there shall be more beautiful than anywhere else in all the world, and a hundred maidens shall serve you.

Nourmahal. And I shall not be your only queen?

King Nasrulla. It is not the way of the world.

Nourmahal. I have heard stories of places where the king has only one queen.

King Nasrulla. It has never been so in Saranazett.

Nourmahal. It has not been so in Saranazett, but does nothing change?

King Nasrulla. I must be king in the way of my ancestors.

Nourmahal (dropping down by the railing again). And we must live in the way of our ancestors, over and over again, sunrise and noon-glare and star-shine, as it was before our stars rose in the heavens, as it always will be?

King Nasrulla. Our ancestors have taught us that a king should not live too meanly.

Nourmahal. We cannot appeal to our ancestors. We cannot appeal to anything, and nothing can be undone. As the Persian poet says, "The moving finger writes," and what is written must be.

King Nasrulla. And if what is written is beautiful, and if you are to be a king's throne-mate, if all the treasures of all the world are to be sought out for you——

Nourmahal. It is nothing, nothing, if you must have another wife, if you must have two other wives, three.

King Nasrulla. My prime minister will choose the others. I choose you.

Nourmahal (passionately). But what shall we ever choose again—and get what we choose? Have not the hours been counted out for us from the beginning of the world? Can we stop the grains of sand in the hour-glass?

King Nasrulla. Each one will make a new pleasure as it falls.

Nourmahal. Yes, but it falls. We do not gather it up. It falls out of the heavens as the rain comes. We cannot make it rain.

King Nasrulla. But the drops are always pleasant.

Nourmahal. Yes, like a cup of water to a prisoner who dies of thirst and cannot know when his jailer comes. If we could bring the clouds up over the sun when the hot dust is flying, it would be really pleasant, but

You are my sky, and the old poet is right, if you must have four wives because your father had four wives, and his father.

King Nasrulla. They are but symbols of kingliness, and they shall bow in the dust before you, whom my heart chooses, as weeds by the roadside bow when you pass in your tahktiravan and the air follows its flying curtains.

Nourmahal. Why should anyone bow to me? Why should I care for bowing? It would make me a slave to the custom of bowing. Are you a king and must you be a slave too? Impotence is the name of such kingship, and why should I care to be a queen when my king cannot make me queenly?

King Nasrulla (advancing to the tower and leaving his horse standing). Come! The stars are paling, and there is only the light of your eyes to lift me out of the dust. Come!

In the side of the wall by the tower a sloping series of stout pegs has been driven, descending to the ground at short intervals. Nourmahal comes out of the tower, puts her foot on the highest of these pegs, takes Nasrulla's hand, and, with his help, comes slowly down the pegs, as if they were a flight of stairs, to the ground.

Nourmahal. How I love a horse! It is Samarcand and Delhi and Bokhara and Paris, even Paris.

King Nasrulla. Paris! What is Paris?

Nourmahal (standing in front of the horse and caressing its head). I don't know. I have never been there, but a horse makes me think of Paris. I don't know London, but a horse makes me think of London too. A horse could take me there. I could ride and ride, and every day there would be something new and something wonderful. There are cities beyond the water, too, marvelous cities, full of things more than we dream of here. A horse is swift, and the tapping of his feet on the stones is distance. When he lifts his head, when he curves his neck, already in his heart he is going on and on.

King Nasrulla. And these are the stories that you have heard, stories about Paris and London and the cities across the water?

Nourmahal. Stories? Perhaps not stories. Dreams, I think, imaginings dropped from the wings of falcons flying out of the west.

King Nasrulla. You shall sit on the horse, and you can seem to be riding. Then as your dreams come true, you can tell them to me. Let the horse be Paris in my fancies too, and London and the cities across the water.

The horse is still standing where he stopped when Nasrulla led him out from behind the trees with him. He faces toward the left, and Nasrulla is back of him. Nourmahal puts her foot into Nasrulla's hand, and he lifts her into the saddle. When she is comfortably seated, he stands beside her and in front of her, back of the horse, leaning against the horse's neck and caressing his shoulder.

King Nasrulla. Now we are on the road, and all the world is moving across the horizon. If it is all a dream, let me be in the dream.

Nourmahal (looking out and away from him and pausing a moment). Stories! Dreams!—What I have heard is only a whisper, but it seems so true and so beautiful. Somewhere a man loves one woman always and no other. Somewhere a king is not a manikin stalking through ceremonies. Somewhere he lives humanly as other men. Somewhere to-day is not like yesterday, and man has learned to break the cycle of what has been forever, of what seems dead and yet out of death comes back again and again. I have not seen it, but I know it. Somewhere you and I could be happy without being king or queen. Somewhere a woman thinks her own thoughts, and not the thoughts of her lord only. Somewhere men are not bound to a king, and somewhere kings are not bound to the words of their fathers' fathers.

King Nasrulla (slowly, after a pause). It is the way of the world, Nourmahal. What the world is, it is, and that is forever and ever, unless it should be the will of God to make a new world.

Nourmahal. A new world! (She pauses dreamily.) Yes, that is what I want, a new world. That is what men are making somewhere, I know it. That is what is in my heart, and the same thing must be in the hearts of other men and women. A new world! What would it be to wake up every morning with a fresh wonder, not knowing what the day would bring? What would it be every morning to take the saddle and follow a new road ahead of the sun?

King Nasrulla. If I could go with you——

Nourmahal. You have horses.

King Nasrulla. It is not so decreed. My place is here.

Nourmahal. Your place is here, and it is your place to have three or four queens as your ministers decide for you. One queen is to keep peace with the King of the South, another is to keep peace with the King of the West, and the third is to keep peace with the King of the East. The fourth queen you may choose for yourself from your own people—if you choose before some other king offers a daughter. You may make slaves of your queens so that your neighbor kings may make a slave of you.

King Nasrulla. Yes, if I would be king—and you would be queen.

Nourmahal. Queen!—in a world where the flowers that bloom to-day died centuries ago! Queen—in a world where queens may look out of grated windows and never walk the streets! Queen—in a world where My Lord the King may not come to my door too often lest the daughter of the King of the South put poison in the nectar that her slaves offer him to-morrow!

King Nasrulla. The world is the world, and its enduring is forever and ever. We are but shadows that change and break on the surface of running water. We may stand for a moment in the sun, but we cannot stop the rain that fills the stream. We cannot fix our images for a moment on the drops that are rushing out to the sea.

Nourmahal (looking away from him dreamily). "Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things Entire, Would we not shatter it to bits—and then Remould it nearer to the Heart's desire?"

He looks at her steadily, but she does not turn her head, and, while they are so silent a woman comes from the left with a water jar, fills it from the well, puts it on her head, and passes off again. The sun is now warming the tops of the mountains to a soft pink.

King Nasrulla. We must find the water where it flows—or go thirsty.

Nourmahal (more passionately). But somewhere the women do not carry water. The poet only thought of doing what somewhere men have done. Here a thousand years are but as yesterday and ten thousand as a watch in the night. I am not I, but an echo of the mad desires of dead men whose dust has been blown across the desert for countless centuries. Why should I not think of my own desires before my dust, too, flies forgotten before the passing caravans?

King Nasrulla. But you are to be my queen. Nothing more can anyone give you in Saranazett.

Nourmahal. And to-morrow or next week your ambassador to the King of the East comes back with letters and pledges of friendship. Perhaps he brings with him the King's daughter.

King Nasrulla. But she is only the official seal of a bond, only a hostage. She is not the rose that I pin over my heart. She is not the nightingale that I love to hear singing in my garden. She is not the face behind the lattice that draws my eager feet. She is not the fountain that will make me drink and drink again.

Nourmahal. But I shall not ride with you into the distance and leave the kings' daughters behind?

King Nasrulla. The King of the East——

Nourmahal. I know. The King of the East has a great army. I must stay in my garden, or I shall have to spend my life talking about the things he likes or dislikes, his angers and his fondnesses, with the women of his harem.

She puts her foot out for his hand, ready to be taken down from the horse.

King Nasrulla. Nourmahal!

Nourmahal. Yes, I must keep my veil before my face and stay within my garden.

He helps her down, and she turns the horse's head back to the right in the direction from which they came.

King Nasrulla. I shall take you, Nourmahal, and make you queen.

Nourmahal. Take me! Take the others and let them be queens. They will be happy enough, after the way of their mothers, but you cannot take the wind.

King Nasrulla. Being your lover is not ceasing to be king. May not the king ask of his subjects what he will? What is it to be king?

Nourmahal (turning as she is passing toward the gate). Sometimes it is making a fresher and happier world for those who come to kneel before the throne. Kings are not often so wise.

King Nasrulla. And when they are not so wise they think of their own happiness. They let love come into the palace, and the favorite queen has the riches of the earth heaped in jewels before her. The tenderness of the moon shines in the clasp of her girdle, and the splendor of the sun glitters in a circlet for her forehead.

Nourmahal. And sometimes, seeking their own pleasure, kings make the killing of those who are not kings their joy. They teach all men to be soldiers and all soldiers to be ruthless. Their women learn to delight in the echoes of battle, and the man who is not scarred by the marks of many fights they pity and despise. So women forget to be gentle, and the lords and masters of earth no longer watch over them and care for them, no longer shelter the weak and the defenseless, no longer think of right and justice, because they carry in their hands the javelins of might and they have learned to fling them far.

King Nasrulla. But I shall watch over you as the cloud watches over the garden where the roses are waiting for the rain.

Nourmahal. No, I shall not have a king to watch over me. Somewhere they have no kings. A queen dies daily with loneliness, or lives hourly in the burning hate of all her sister queens. To breathe the air where there are no queens would be an ecstasy. I will not be a king's first queen or his last queen or his concubine or any other creature whom he may cast aside for a new fancy whenever the fancy comes.

A messenger enters from the right, preceded by two attendants carrying each one of the long, melon-shaped lanterns that accompany royalty. The messenger bows before Nasrulla, dropping on one knee.

Messenger. Your Royal Highness, I am sent to beg that you will hear me.

King Nasrulla. It is my pleasure to listen to your message. Speak!

Messenger. It is not I speaking, Your Majesty, but your minister, Huseyn.

King Nasrulla. I listen to the words of Huseyn.

Messenger. Know, O Mighty Lord of the Great Center of Earth—the ambassador to the King of the East is reported returning by the long highway.

Nourmahal's father, Mehrab, comes out from the gate in the wall and stands listening.

King Nasrulla. Say to Huseyn that I will see him and make arrangements for his reception before nightfall.

Messenger. He brings very important tidings, Your Majesty. Pardon me, O Lord of the Lives of Your Servants. I speak but the words of Huseyn.

King Nasrulla. I hear the words of Huseyn.

Messenger. The ambassador should be received a early as may be, is the word of Huseyn. He knows the will of the King of the East, and the King of the East would know your will, O Mightiest of the Mighty.

Nourmahal (bowing to her knees before him). Let me beg of you also, King Nasrulla, that you give audience at once to the ambassador who comes with word from the King of the East.

King Nasrulla. I listen to the words of Nourmahal with the words of Huseyn.

Messenger. And I shall say to the Prime Minister Huseyn that His Majesty, the Lord of Everlasting Effulgence, will graciously consent to speak with him before the sun looks in at his image in the water jars.

Nourmahal. O King Nasrulla, for the sake of the rule that is thine from thy fathers, for the maintaining of peace in all thy borders, for the security of thy people, who harvest their hopes in fear, permit the approach of the ambassador who returns from the King of the East.

King Nasrulla. The wish of Nourmahal is a command. I go to make ready for the ambassador who comes with word from the King of the East.

Nourmahal. And for the daughter of the King of the East, give thanks, O King Nasrulla. It is said that she is very beautiful, and many wooers have sought her vainly. She has been kept for the joy and the splendor and the growing greatness of My Lord the King.

King Nasrulla. Announce my coming to my Prime Minister, Huseyn.

Messenger (rising). Your Noble Majesty is most gracious. I fly with your words to Huseyn.

King Nasrulla. As a king I go, but my thoughts are not a king's thoughts, and they stay here. It may be I shall look for them again, as one looks for love in his friend's heart at the home-returning. Farewell!

Nourmahal. I shall keep your thoughts forever, My Lord Nasrulla, but for the King and the ways of the King—farewell!

The two lantern carriers who have come with the messenger turn to the right to light the way for the King, and, as they pass off, he follows them. Nourmahal watches them until they are gone, while Mehrab, Nourmahal's father, comes forward slowly.

Mehrab. He threatened you, did he?

Nourmahal. Threaten! No, father, he did not threaten me.

Mehrab. Does he not mean to make you queen whether you wish to be or not?

Nourmahal. He will not dare.

Mehrab. I am only a merchant, only a dealer in figs and olives. I am not to be feared or considered by him or by those that are about him. It is the way of his kind to think that you are to be taken as he would take a pomegranate from the garden of one of his satraps.

Nourmahal. He will not take me.

Mehrab. They despise me because I go with the caravans, but I have learned something. I know the world. My camels have tracked the sands hundreds of miles from Saranazett, and there are places where the words of Nasrulla the King mean less than the words of Mehrab the merchant.

Nourmahal. They will have horses to follow us. Horses are swifter than camels.

Mehrab. We shall have horses too, and ours shall be the fleetest. The riders of the King's horses will put out their palms for my silver. They will know how to make their whips fall lightly.

Nourmahal (eagerly). Let us go to-morrow. Let us go before the daughter of the King of the East is carried in her palanquin to the palace. I want to see all the places where you have been. I want to know something of the strange things that you have seen.

Mehrab. The women of Saranazett have never traveled.

Nourmahal. But I will not be a woman of Saranazett. There are other worlds and other ways for me than the ways of Saranazett.

Mehrab. You shall not be queen one day and someone else queen in your place the next. I was not born to live in the world's high places, but also I was not born to bend the knee. You shall not suffer because you are not a king's daughter, and because those that are kings' daughters smile at you behind their curtains.

Nourmahal (more dreamily reluctant). If we could make Saranazett over into a new world.

Mehrab. A new world somewhere else, Nourmahal. The packs are being made ready for the camels. Have your women tie up your clothes as if they were bundles of figs. Day after to-morrow or the next day or the next, we shall take horse and follow. We shall go to a world that is an old, old world, wiser than our world, a world where men's thoughts are free and their women's eyes look wherever they will.

Nourmahal (passing to the gate). The women shall make ready.

Mehrab. At once, and tell Zuleika she goes with you.

Nourmahal. Zuleika shall make ready.

She passes out through the gate into the garden. Mehrab turns and sees the spikes driven into the wall by the tower. For a moment he looks at them in astonishment, observing that they pass down to the ground slopingly, and then, one by one, he pulls them out and flings them down on the ground violently.

The Old Cane Mill

By Nellie Gregg Tomlinson

The Queer Little Thing

By Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd

Bonita Allen was a queer little thing. Everyone in the school, from Miss Ryder down to the chambermaid, had made remarks to that effect before the child had spent forty-eight hours in the house, yet no one seemed able to give a convincing reason for the general impression.

The new pupil was quiet, docile, moderately well dressed, fairly good looking. She did nothing extraordinary. In fact, she effaced herself as far as possible; yet from the first she caused a ripple in the placid current of the school, and her personality was distinctly felt.

"I think it's her eyes," hazarded Belinda, as she and Miss Barnes discussed the new-comer in the Youngest Teacher's room. "They aren't girl eyes at all."

"Fine eyes," asserted the teacher of mathematics with her usual curtness.

Belinda nodded emphatic assent. "Yes, of course; beautiful, but so big and pathetic and dumb. I feel ridiculously apologetic every time the child looks at me, and as for punishing her—I'd as soon shoot a deer at six paces. It's all wrong. A twelve-year-old girl hasn't any right to eyes like those. If the youngster is unhappy she ought to cry twenty-five handkerchiefs full of tears, as Evangeline Marie did when she came, and then get over it. And if she's happy she ought to smile with her eyes as well as with her lips. I can't stand self-repression in children."

"She'll be all right when she has been here longer and begins to feel at home," said Miss Barnes. But Belinda shook her head doubtfully as she went down to superintend study hour.

Seated at her desk in the big schoolroom she looked idly along the rows of girlish heads until she came to one bent stoically over a book. The new pupil was not fidgeting like her comrades. Apparently her every thought was concentrated upon the book before her. Her elbows were on her desk, and one lean little brown hand supported the head, whose masses of straight black hair were parted in an unerring white line and fell in two heavy braids. The face framed in the smooth shining hair was lean as the hand, yet held no suggestion of ill-health. It was clean cut, almost to sharpness, brown with the brownness that comes from wind and sun, oddly firm about chin and lips, high of cheekbones, straight of nose.

As Belinda looked two dark eyes were raised from the book and met her own—sombre eyes with a hurt in them—and an uncomfortable lump rose in the Youngest Teacher's throat. She smiled at the sad little face, but the smile was not a merry one. In some unaccountable way it spoke of the sympathetic lump in her throat, and the Queer Little Thing seemed to read the message, for the ghost of an answering smile flickered in the brown depths before the lids dropped over them.

When study hour was over the Youngest Teacher moved hastily to the door, with some vague idea of following up the successful smile, and establishing diplomatic relations with the new girl; but she was not quick enough. Bonita had slipped into the hall and hurried up the stair toward the shelter of her own room.

Shrugging her shoulders, Belinda turned toward the door of Miss Ryder's study and knocked.

"Come in."

The voice was not encouraging. Miss Lucilla objected to interruptions in the late evening hours, when she relaxed from immaculately fitted black silk to the undignified folds of a violet dressing gown.

When she recognized the intruder she thawed perceptibly.

"Oh, Miss Carewe! Come in. Nothing wrong, is there?"

Belinda dropped into a chair with a whimsical sigh.

"Nothing wrong except my curiosity. Miss Ryder, do tell me something about that Allen child."

Miss Lucilla eyed her subordinate questioningly.

"What has she been doing?"

"Nothing at all. I wish she would do something. It's what she doesn't do, and looks capable of doing, that bothers me. There's simply no getting at her. She's from Texas, isn't she?"

The principal regarded attentively one of the grapes she was eating, and there was an interval of silence.

"She is a queer little thing," Miss Lucilla admitted at last. "Yes, she's from Texas, but that's no reason why she should be odd. We've had a number of young ladies from Texas, and they were quite like other school girls only more so. Just between you and me, Miss Carewe, I think it must be the child's Indian blood that makes her seem different."

"Indian?" Belinda sat up, sniffing romance in the air.

"Yes, her father mentioned the strain quite casually when he wrote. It's rather far back in the family, but he seemed to think it might account for the girl's intense love for nature and dislike of conventions. Mrs. Allen died when the baby was born, and the father has brought the child up on a ranch. He's completely wrapped up in her, but he finally realized that she needed to be with women. He's worth several millions and he wants to educate her so that she'll enjoy the money—'be a fine lady,' as he puts it. I confess his description of the girl disturbed me at first, but he was so liberal in regard to terms that——"

Miss Lucilla left the sentence in the air and meditatively ate another bunch of grapes.

"Did her father come up with her?" Belinda asked.

"No, he sent her with friends who happened to be coming—highly respectable couple, but breezy, very breezy. They told me that Bonita could ride any broncho on the ranch and could shoot a jack-rabbit on the run. They seemed to think she would be a great addition to our school circle on that account. Personally I'm much relieved to find her so tractable and quiet, but I've noticed something—well—unusual about her."

As Belinda went up to bed she met a slim little figure in a barbaric red and yellow dressing gown crossing the hall. There was a shy challenge in the serious child face, although the little feet, clad in soft beaded moccasins, quickened their steps; and Belinda answered the furtive friendliness by slipping an arm around the girl's waist and drawing her into the tiny hall bedroom.

"You haven't been to see me. It's one of the rules that every girl shall have a cup of cocoa with me before she has been here three evenings," she said laughingly.

The Queer Little Thing accepted the overture soberly and, curled up in the one big chair, watched the teacher in silence.

The cocoa was soon under way. Then the hostess turned and smiled frankly at her guest. Belinda's smile is a reassuring thing.

"Homesick business, isn't it?" she said abruptly, with a warm note of comradeship in her voice.

The tense little figure in the big chair leaned forward with sudden, swift confidence.

"I'm going home," announced Bonita in a tone that made no reservations.

Belinda received the news without the quiver of an eyelash or a sign of incredulity.

"When?" she asked with interest warm enough to invite confession and not emphatic enough to rouse distrust.

"I don't know just when, but I have to go. I can't stand it and I've written to Daddy. He'll understand. Nobody here knows. They're all used to it. They've always lived in houses like this, with little back yards that have high walls around them, and sidewalks and streets right outside the front windows, and crowds of strange people going by all the time, and just rules, rules, rules, everywhere. Everybody has so many manners, and they talk about things I don't know anything about, and nobody would understand if I talked about the real things."

"Perhaps I'll understand a little bit," murmured Belinda. The Queer Little Thing put out one hand and touched the Youngest Teacher's knee gently in a shy, caressing fashion.

"No, you wouldn't understand, because you don't know; but you could learn. The others couldn't. The prairie wouldn't talk to them and they'd be lonesome—the way I am here. Dick says you have got to learn the language when you are little, or else have a gift for such languages, but that when you've once learned it you don't care to hear any other."

"Who's Dick?" Belinda asked.

"Dick? Oh he's just Dick. He taught me to ride and to shoot, and he used to read poetry to me, and he told me stories about everything. He used to go to a big school called Harvard, but he was lonesome there—the way I am here."

"The way I am here" dropped into the talk like a persistent refrain, and there was heartache in it.

"I want to go home," the child went on. Now that the dam of silence was down the pent-up feeling rushed out tumultuously. "I want to see Daddy and the boys and the horses and the cattle, and I want to watch the sun go down over the edge of the world, not just tumble down among the dirty houses, and I want to gallop over the prairie where there aren't any roads, and smell the grass and watch the birds and the sky. You ought to see the sky down there at night, Miss Carewe. It's so big and black and soft and full of bright stars, and you can see clear to where it touches the ground all around you, and there's a night breeze that's cool as cool, and the boys all play their banjos and guitars and sing, and Daddy and I sit over on our veranda and listen. There's only a little narrow strip of sky with two or three stars in it out of my window here, and it's so noisy and cluttered out in the back yards—and I hate walking in a procession on the ugly old streets, and doing things when bells ring. I hate it. I hate it."

Her voice hadn't risen at all, had only grown more and more vibrant with passionate rebellion. The sharp little face was drawn and pale, but there were no tears in the big tragic eyes.

Belinda had consoled many homesick little girls, but this was a different problem.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "Don't you think It will be easier after a while?"

The small girl with the old face shook her head.

"No, it won't. It isn't in me to like all this. I'm so sorry, because Daddy wants me to be a lady. He said it was as hard for him to send me as it was for me to come, but that I couldn't learn to be a lady with lots of money to spend down there with only boys and him. There wasn't any lady there on the ranch at all, except Mammy Lou, the cook, and she didn't have lots of money to spend, so she wasn't the kind he meant. I thought I'd come and try, but I didn't know it would be like this. I don't want to be a lady, Miss Carewe. I don't believe they can be very happy. I've seen them in carriages and they don't look very happy. You're nice. I like you, and I'm most sure Daddy and Dick and the boys would like you, but then you haven't got lots of money, have you? And you were born up here and you don't know any better anyway. I'm going home."

The burst of confidence ended where it had begun. She was going home, and she was so firm in the faith that Belinda, listening, believed her.

"But if your father says no?"

The dark little face was quiet again, all but the great eyes.

"I'll have to go," the Queer Little Thing slowly said.

Four days later Miss Lucilla Ryder called the Youngest Teacher into the study.

"Miss Carewe, I'm puzzled about this little Miss Allen. I had a letter from her father this morning. He says that she has written that she is very homesick and unhappy and doesn't want to stay. He feels badly about it, of course, but he very wisely leaves the matter in our hands—says he realizes she'll have to be homesick and he'll have to be lonesome if she's to be a lady. But he wants us to do all we can to make her contented. He very generously sends a check for five hundred dollars, which we are to use for any extra expense incurred in entertaining her and making her happy. Now, I thought you might take her to the theater and the art museum, and the—a—the aquarium, and introduce her to the pleasures and advantages of city life. She'll soon be all right."

With sinking heart Belinda went in search of the girl. She found her practicing five-finger exercises drearily in one of the music-rooms. As Belinda entered the child looked up and met the friendly, sympathetic eyes. A mute appeal sprang into her own eyes, and Belinda understood. The thing was too bad to be talked about, and the Youngest Teacher said no word about the homesickness or the expected letter. In this way she clinched her friendship with the Queer Little Thing.

But, following the principal's orders, she endeavored to demonstrate to Bonita the joy and blessedness of life in New York. The child went, quietly wherever she was taken—a mute, pathetic little figure to whom the aquarium fish and the Old Masters and the latest matinee idol were all one—and unimportant. The other girls envied her her privileges and her pocket-money, but they did not understand. No one understood save Belinda, and she did her cheerful best to blot out old loves with new impressions; but from the first she felt in her heart that she was elected to failure. The child was fond of her, always respectful, always docile, always grave. Nothing brought a light into her eyes or a spontaneous smile to her lips. Anyone save Belinda would have grown impatient, angry. She only grew more tender—and more troubled. Day by day she watched the sad little face grow thinner. It was pale now, instead of brown, and the high cheek bones were strikingly prominent. The lips pressed closely together drooped plaintively at the corners and the big eyes were more full of shadow than ever; but the child made no protest or plea, and by tacit consent she and Belinda ignored their first conversation and never mentioned Texas.

Often Belinda made up her mind to put aside the restraint and talk freely as she would to any other girl, but there was something about the little Texan that forbade liberties, warned off intruders, and the Youngest Teacher feared losing what little ground she had gained.

Finally she went in despair to Miss Ryder.

"The Indian character is too much for me," she confessed with a groan half humorous, half earnest. "I give it up."

"What's the matter?" asked Miss Ryder.

"Well, I've dragged poor Bonita Allen all over the borough of Manhattan and the Bronx and spent many ducats in the process. She has been very polite about it, but just as sad over Sherry's tea hour as over Grant's tomb, and just as cheerful over the Cesnola collection as over the monkey cages at the Zoo. The poor little thing is so unhappy and miserable that she looks like a wild animal in a trap, and I think the best we can do with her is to send her home.

"Nonsense," said Miss Lucilla. "Her father is paying eighteen hundred dollars a year."

Belinda was defiant.

"I don't care. He ought to take her home."

"Miss Carewe, you are sentimentalizing. One would think you had never seen a homesick girl before."

"She's different from other girls."

"I'll talk with her myself," said Miss Lucilla sternly.

She did, but the situation remained unchanged, and when she next mentioned the Texan problem to Belinda, Miss Lucilla was less positive in her views.

"She's a very strange child, but we must do what we can to carry out her father's wishes."

"I'd send her home," said Belinda.

It was shortly after this that Katherine Holland, who sat beside Bonita at the table, confided to Belinda that that funny little Allen girl didn't eat a thing. The waitress came to Belinda with the same tale, and the Youngest Teacher sought out Bonita and reasoned with her.

"You really must eat, my dear," she urged.

"Why?"

"You'll be ill if you don't."

"How soon?"

Belinda looked dazed.

"I'm afraid I don't understand."

"How soon will I be sick?"

"Very soon, I'm afraid," the puzzled teacher answered.

"That's good. I don't feel as if I could wait much longer."

Belinda gasped.

"Do you mean to say you want to be ill?"

"If I get very sick Daddy will come for me."

The teacher looked helplessly at the quiet, great-eyed child, then launched into expostulation, argument, entreaty.

Bonita listened politely and was profoundly unimpressed.

"It's wicked, dear child. It would make your father wretchedly unhappy."

"He'd be awfully unhappy if he understood, anyway. He thinks I'm not really unhappy and that it's his duty to keep me here and make a lady of me, no matter how lonely he is without me. He wrote me so—but I know he'd be terribly glad if he had a real excuse for taking me home."

Belinda exhausted her own resources and appealed to Miss Lucilla, who stared incredulously over her nose-glasses and sent for Bonita.

After the interview she called for the Youngest Teacher, and the two failures looked at each other helplessly.

"It's an extraordinary thing," said Miss Lucilla in her most magisterial tone—"a most extraordinary thing. In all my experience I've seen nothing like it. Nothing seems to make the slightest impression upon the child. She's positively crazy."

"You will tell her father to send for her, won't you?"

Miss Lucilla shook her head stubbornly.

"Not at all. It would be the ruination of the child to give in to her whims and bad temper now. If she won't listen to reason she must be allowed to pay for her foolishness. When she gets hungry enough she will eat. It's a shame to talk about a child of twelve having the stoicism to starve herself into an illness just because she is homesick at boarding-school."

Belinda came back to her thread-worn argument.

"But Bonita is different, Miss Ryder."

"She's a very stubborn, selfish child," said Miss Ryder resentfully, and turning to her desk she changed the conversation.

Despite discipline, despite pleadings, despite cajolery, Bonita stood firm. Eat she would not, and when, on her way to class one morning the scrap of humanity with the set lips and the purple shadows round her eyes fainted quietly, Belinda felt that a masterly inactivity had ceased to be a virtue.

James, the house man, carried the girl upstairs, and the Youngest Teacher put her to bed, where she opened her eyes to look unseeingly at Belinda and then closed them wearily and lay quite still, a limp little creature whose pale face looked pitifully thin and lifeless against the white pillow. The Queer Little Thing's wish had been fulfilled and illness had come without long delay.

For a moment Belinda looked down at the girl. Then she turned and went swiftly to Miss Ryder's study, her eyes blazing, her mouth so stern that Amelia Bowers, who met her on the stairs, hurried to spread the news that Miss Carewe "was perfectly hopping mad about something."

Once in the presence of the August One the little teacher lost no time in parley.

"Miss Ryder," she said crisply—and at the tone her employer looked up in amazement—"I've told you about Bonita Allen. I've been to you again and again about her. You knew that she was fretting her heart out and half sick, and then you knew that for several days she hasn't been eating a thing. I tried to make you understand that the matter was serious and that something radical needed to be done, but you insisted that the child would come around all right and that we mustn't give in to her. I begged you to send for her father and you said it wasn't necessary. I'm here to take your orders, Miss Ryder, but I can't stand this sort of thing. I know the girl better than any of the rest of you do, and I know it isn't badness that makes her act so. Now she is ill—really ill. I've just put her to bed, and honestly, Miss Ryder, if we don't send for her father we'll have a tragedy on our hands. It sounds foolish, but it is true. If nobody else telegraphs to Mr. Allen I am going to do it."

When the doctor came there were bright red spots on the Queer Little Thing's cheeks, and she was babbling incoherently about prairie flowers and horses and Dick and Daddy.

Meanwhile a telegram had gone to Daddy and the messenger who delivered it heard a volume of picturesque comment that was startling even on a Texas ranch.

"Am coming," ran the answering dispatch received by Miss Ryder that night; but it was not until morning that Bonita was able to understand the news.

"He's scared, but I know he's glad," she said and she swallowed without a murmur the broth against which even in her delirium she had fought.

One evening, three days later, a hansom dashed up to the school and out jumped a tall, square-shouldered man in a wide-brimmed hat, and clothes that bore only a family resemblance to the clothing of the New York millionaires, though they were good clothes in their own free-and-easy way.

A loud, hearty voice inquiring for "My baby" made itself heard even in the sickroom, and a sudden light flashed into the little patient's eyes—a light that was an illumination and a revelation.

"Daddy," she said wearily, and the word was a heart-throb.

Mr. Allen wasted no time in a polite interview with Miss Ryder. Hypnotized by his masterfulness, the servant led him directly up to the sick-room and opened the door.

The man filled the room; a high breeze seemed to come with him, and vitality flowed from him in tangible waves. Belinda smiled, but there were tears in her eyes, for the big man's heart was in his face.

"Baby!"

"Daddy!"

Belinda remembered an errand downstairs.

When she returned the big Texan was sitting on the side of the bed with both the lean little hands in one of his big brawny ones, while his other hand awkwardly smoothed the straight black hair.

"When will you take me home, Daddy?" said the child with the shining eyes.

"As soon as you're strong enough, Honey. The boys wanted me to let them charge New York in a bunch and get you. It's been mighty lonesome on that ranch. I wish to heaven I'd never been fool enough to let you come away."

He turned to Belinda with a quizzical smile sitting oddly on his anxious face.

"I reckon she might as well go, miss. I sent her to a finishing school, and by thunder, she's just about finished."

There was a certain hint of pride in his voice as he added reflectively:

"I might have known if she said she'd have to come home she meant it. Harder to change her mind than to bust any broncho I ever tackled. Queer Little Thing, Baby is."

Copyrighted by Doubleday, Page & Co.

An American Wake

By Rose A. Crow

This was the last night in the old home, which had sheltered the family for five generations. The day had been full of excitement, as by a merciful ordinance last days usually are. The final packing had been done, the chests and boxes securely fastened and carefully labeled. This was all looked after by Margaret, herself, amidst interruptions by her brood of young children. Visits from friends and relatives, living at a distance, occupied much of the day; attending to countless minor things kept them all busy until nightfall. Even then there was no time allowed to visit the shrine.

Margaret had a fairy shrine, to which she carried the cares of the day and the hopes of the morrow. This charmed place was a stile over the ivy-clad walls of the garden. There she brought her childish joys and sorrows, and in the quiet received consolation. She had fought the fiercest battles of her womanhood with her head resting against the ivy-covered pillar. To-night, when she was parting from her country and friends, there was no time to commune with her silent friend.

Shortly after dusk, in accordance with local etiquette, very stringent on such momentous occasions, the relatives, friends and neighbors of a lifetime began to drop in by twos and threes until every inch of wall space was filled.

Who of all this gathering was more welcome than "John, the Fiddler"? He was a great favorite with young and old. The sight of him carrying his fiddle caused a feeling of emotion in the hearts of the older people. It recalled the tragic story of John's father who years before left for America intending to send for his wife and crippled son. A fever contracted on shipboard deprived them of a husband and father. It was then that John Doyle became "John, the Fiddler."

John was beckoned into the "room," where with Father O'Connell and a few trusty friends, he was treated to a small measure of potheen. Dan Monahan had donated a very small jug for this special occasion. To be given the first shot from Dan's still was no small favor, as those present knew. Before taking his seat at the end of the room, John drank Margaret's health, wishing herself and family a safe voyage across the water, and a happy home on the prairies of Iowa.

Each guest realized the strain of parting and generously made an effort to conceal the gloom with a brave semblance of mirth. There was dancing, singing of songs, and elaborate drinking of healths. With persistent calls for Margaret's brother James, the dancing stopped. The floor was cleared, and he was borne in on the shoulders of the leaders, who had found him leaning against the ivy-covered wall, gazing at the moon, floating over his old home which, alas! he would never see again.

James MacNevin was a magnificent specimen of Irish manhood and a charming singer. He was about twenty-three years old, tall and broad-shouldered, with a fine head of curly auburn hair. His clear blue eyes reflected the sadness of the group around him, while his white teeth flashed a smile. In one hand he crushed his handkerchief, while with the other he nervously twirled a sprig of ivy. A few measures of "Good Night and Joy Be with You All" came from the violin. For an instant he wavered, then throwing back his head he sang the song, not with full volume, but with intense feeling, emphasis and a clear ringing tone. The song seemed to voice his own feelings as his chest rose and fell. He was no longer just James MacNevin, but a pilgrim traveling to a strange country. His whole soul was filled with the sentiment, and there was such pathos in its heart-throb that the whole company was moved to tears. The last verse ended, he stood a moment with gaze transfixed—then rousing himself, bowed, smiled and with one hand in his sister Margaret's, the other clutching the sprig of ivy, he passed out of the home forever.

Rochester, Minn.

(With apologies to the Mayos)

By Marie G. Stapp

God's Back Yard

By Jessie Welborn Smith

An Episode from Act Three

Place, Tim Murphy's saloon. Time, evening.

Men are crowding about the bar, drinking and laughing coarsely. The wives are huddled together on a long bench at one side of the room. The children keep close to their mothers, but stretch their little necks to watch the dancing in the back of the room, where a group of painted women are tangoing to the wheezy accompaniment of an old accordion. Over in the corner a man sprawls drunkenly across a broken-down faro table.

Dick Long (hammering the bar with his mug and singing). Oh, I'm goin' to hell, and I don't give a damn. I'm goin' to hell. I'm goin' to—hell.

Murphy (knocking a board from the crate that holds the new nickel-in-the-slot gramaphone). You're going a damn sight faster than that, Dickie Bird, but you'll have to speed up a bit to get in on the concert. The program begins at eight o'clock sharp, like it says on the card in the window, and everybody gets an invite, but Caruso don't sing this time.

First Painted Lady (stopping the dance and coming down beside Murphy). Let 'er go, Murph. Give us "Too Much Mustard." The piano player down at the Gulch plays that just fine, and a piece about a girl that didn't want to love him, but he made her do it. That machine was long on personal history, Murph. I heard them all through three times. Let 'er go. We're all here.

First Wife (leaning over and speaking eagerly). Mrs. Long won't be able to come, Murphy, and Old Moll is settin' up with her to-night. I met Doc as I came across. The young-un died. I don't see no use in waitin' when we're all here.

Rosie Phelan (reaching over and pulling Long's sleeve). Did you hear that, Dick? Your kid is dead. Your kid is—d-e-a-d. Do you get me?

Man at the Bar. Aw, break it to him gentle. He don't know he is a father yet. Have a heart.

Rosie Phelan (disgustedly). "Have a heart." Well, what do you think of that? For a man who guzzles all day you are mighty strong on the heart-throb slush. "Speak kindly to the erring." Didn't know you had got religion. Was it you got the revivalist to come up from the Gulch?

Nell (shifting her wad of gum). Well, he was sitting over at Benton's rather lonesome-like as I came along. I allus follow the crowd.

Murphy (hotly). And that is what that preacher will have to do if he makes any converts up here at the mine. I reckon that, with that music machine, I'm equipped to compete with any preacher that comes larking around here until kingdom come. He said he'd save me, if he had to chase me to hell and back, did he? Well, that guy should worry. That pale chicken-liver chase me to—Pour out the drinks, Bob. It's my treat.

Bob slops a little whiskey into every glass and mug on the bar and passes it round. As it comes to the wives they smile, but shake their heads. Murphy lifts his glass.

Murphy. Won't you women drink the minister's health. How about you females, Bett? Nell? Rosie? Mollie? You girls never turn down free liquor, do you? Ready? To hell with the minister.

Barkeeper. To hell with every denatured female that comes round here praying for our souls' salvation. I reckon a feller can do what he damn pleases with his own soul.

First Lounger (lazily boastful). I told my old woman that if I ketched her or the kids hanging round listening to that mollycoddle letting off steam, I'd——

First Wife (spitefully). Us women ain't got no call to get religion. We're too meek already. My man knows that he'll have a wildcat at his head when he comes in with that O'Grady woman, but it don't do no good. He ain't afeared o' nothin' short o' the devil. You don't ketch me joinin' while my old man is alive. You gotta have some protection. Safety first, I say.

Second Wife (meekly). They say the "Blue Ridge Mountains" is a mighty tuneful piece. My sister heard it over at Smarty's las' Thanksgiving. Can you tell whether your pianoler plays that, Murphy?

Second Painted Lady (patronizingly). How would you expect Murphy to know what is stored in that machine? You pays your money and your choice is whatever it happens to grind out. If you place your money on a "Harem" and draws an "Apple Blossom Time in Normandy," you got to take your medicine. What you waiting for, Murph? My gentleman friend is coming over from the Pass this evening, and I can't hang around here all night.

Rosie (excitedly, turning from the window that looks upon the street). The light is out at Benton's. The minister is coming over here. Remember and give him hell. Let him turn the other cheek.

Murphy. No prayer meeting virgin is going to interfere with my business.

The door opens and the minister steps inside. Murphy goes over and greets him with mock politeness.

Murphy. Rosie, you are chief usher to-night. Will you find the minister a seat? Sit over, Nell. There's room enough between you and Bett for any sky pilot that ever hit the trail. Bob, give the preacher a drink. He looks sort of fagged. It's hard work saving sinners in God's Back Yard. I hope this little concert ain't going to interfere with your meeting, parson.

Minister (standing at the bar, whiskey glass in hand). Not at all, friend. What is the bill of fare?

Rosie (coming forward in her low-cut red gown and swinging her full skirts from side to side). For Gawd's sake, why didn't you tell me it was going to be religious? I'd forgot it was prayer-meetin' night, Murph. (She carefully tucks her handkerchief over her bosom in pretense of modesty.) I'd dressed up more, if I'd remembered.

Nell (holding out a string of glittering beads). Here, take these, Rosie. These'll cover up some. I ain't takin' an active part, so I don't mind.

Rosie (lifting her arms to fasten the beads). Not takin' an active part? You don't know what you're sayin'. I heard of a minister once who could make hell look so darned nice you wanted to fall for it right away. Couldn't such a fellah give the heavenly gates a jar? (She turns to the minister.) Where d'you want to sit? Up there by Mollie? Take your choice.

Old Moll's Daughter (jumping down from her perch at one end of the bar and walking over brazenly to drop the first nickel in the slot). Clear the way, can't you? I'm praying for the "Bunny Hug" and the minister is backing me. For Gawd's sake, can't you clear the floor? Do you want the music to be half done before you find your partners? I'll be obliged to you, parson, if you'll save this dance for me. (She pauses a moment, nickel in hand.)

First Card Player. I'll stake you ten to one it'll be "The Pullman Porters on Parade."

Second Player (doggedly). They always play "A Great Big Blue-Eyed Baby."

Rosie (shaking her head and singing, hands on hips). "My harem, my harem, my roly, poly harem."

Nell (with mock sentiment). "For it's Apple Blossom Time in Normandy, in Normandy, in Normandy."

The nickel jangles in the slot. The disk begins to revolve. It grates and begins its introductory mechanical clinkety-clinkety clink. A small child wails dismally as the music shivers through the room.

Rosie's hands drop from her hips as the song begins. The dancing impulse passes from her limbs. Even the muscles of her face harden convulsively.

Rosie (hysterically). Oh, I can't stand that, Murphy. For Gawd's sake, can't you stop it?

She starts over toward the machine impulsively. Then something catches her, she pauses and is held a moment while a superstitious awe makes her eyes again the big roundness of childhood's wonder. She draws the back of her hand across her forehead in an endeavor to bring herself out of the daze.

Rosie (falling sobbing beside the bench). "O, receive my soul at last." Why did you leave your little Rosie? Mother, Oh, mother. I ain't fit to come to you no more, mother—I ain't fit, I ain't fit.

One of the mothers reaches over and strokes her hair.

Old Moll's Daughter (opening the door and stepping out into the lonely street as she laughs madly). Old Murphy in cahoots with the minister. Oh, hell!

The door slams shut. The glasses on the bar jangle harshly. A snatch of song boldly defiant rings in from the street: "Don't tell me that you've lost your dog." Murphy walks over and stands looking at the music box. It is still grinding out the music.

The wives are all crying quietly. Rosie and Bett are sobbing with the wild abandon that such natures know. Tears are falling upon the idle hands at the card table. The men at the bar are strangely quiet.

Man at the Faro Table (lifting himself up on his elbow). I ushe shing—I ushe shing zhat—I ushe shing Jeshus—Jeshus—I ushe shing—(He drops his head over on the table and weeps drunkenly.)

Little Child (pulling at her mother's shoulders and whining peevishly). Who is Jesus, mamma? Do we know Jesus? (Happily.) Will he cover my head with a pretty birdie's wing? (The mother shakes with sobs and the child speaks more caressingly.) Don't cry, mother. I like my hat with the posies on it. You can have the feathers, nice, good mamma. Don't cry.

Murphy (absently, looking at the minister). They sang that at the funeral. Sally didn't have no call to hide anything. She was that white and pure. I always felt her slippin'—slippin' away. She worried so them last days because of the little kid. "Take him back home, Murph," she kept sayin'. "A little child has got to have some raisin'. A kid has got to go to Sunday school, Tim, dear, and there ain't never no meetin's in God's Back Yard."

Man at the Bar (dejectedly, going over to the door). It's all right for the young-uns, but when a man has got a thirst and is down on his luck, I don't allow that God is going to help much. You got to get 'em young, parson, and keep 'em headed straight. It's hell turning back. I tried it, and I couldn't make it go.

Minister (gently, as if speaking to someone very near). Oh, Jesus, lover of all these misguided souls, come down to this little room to-night, for it is dark here, and, Oh, so cold and dreary. Speak to them, Jesus, as you did to me. Let them see the glory of Thy face. Will someone pray?

Murphy (looking across at the loafers and speaking half as an invitation, half as a command). Are you staying, boys?

One of the Men (doggedly, as they look at one another sheepishly and no one moves to go). Ain't we always stayin' till closin' time?

Murphy (warmly). You sure do, boys. (He buries his head in his crossed arms over the music-box.) It's your lead, parson.

The Wild Crab Apple

By Julia Ellen Rogers

The wild, sweet-scented crab apple! The bare mention of its name is enough to make the heart leap up, though spring be months away, and barriers of brick hem us in. In the corner of the back pasture stands a clump of these trees, huddled together like cattle. Their flat, matted tops reach out sidewise until the stubby limbs of neighboring trees meet. It would not occur to anyone to call them handsome trees. But wait! The twigs silver over with young foliage, then coral buds appear, thickly sprinkling the green leaves. Now all their asperity is softened, and a great burst of rose-colored bloom overspreads the treetops and fills the air with perfume. It is not mere sweetness, but an exquisite, spicy, stimulating fragrance that belongs only to wild crab-apple flowers. Linnæus probably never saw more than a dried specimen, but he named this tree most worthily, coronaria, "fit for crowns and garlands."

Break off an armful of these blossoming twigs and take them home. They will never be missed. Be thankful that your friends in distant parts of the country may share your pleasure, for though this particular species does not cover the whole United States, yet there is a wild crab apple for each region.

In the fall the tree is covered with hard little yellow apples. They have a delightful fragrance, but they are neither sweet nor mellow. Take a few home and make them into jelly. Then you will understand why the early settlers gathered them for winter use. The jelly has a wild tang in it, an indescribable piquancy of flavor as different from common apple jelly as the flowers are in their way more charming than ordinary appleblossoms. It is the rare gamy taste of a primitive apple.

Well-meaning horticulturists have tried what they could do toward domesticating this Malus coronaria. The effort has not been a success. The fruit remains acerb and hard; the tree declines to be "ameliorated" for the good of mankind. Isn't it, after all, a gratuitous office? Do we not need our wild crab apple just as it is, as much as we need more kinds of orchard trees? How spirited and fine is its resistance! It seems as if this wayward beauty of our woodside thickets considered that the best way to serve mankind was to keep inviolate those charms that set it apart from other trees and make its remotest haunt the Mecca of eager pilgrims every spring.

The wild crab apple is not a tree to plant by itself in park or garden. Plant it in companies on the edge of woods, or in obscure and ugly fence corners, where there is a background, or where, at least, each tree can lose its individuality in the mass. Now, go away and let them alone. They do not need mulching nor pruning. Let them gang their ain gait, and in a few years you will have a crab-apple thicket. You will also have succeeded in bringing home with these trees something of the spirit of the wild woods where you found them.

—From The Tree Book.

A Ballad of the Corn

By S. H. M. Byers

The Children's Blessing

By Virginia Roderick

On the slope of a hill, beneath silvery olives, a group was gathered about the young stranger. He had entered the village only that morning, seeking the companionship of such Nazarenes as might be there. And they had brought him out here in the open to receive his message. But though he carried them greetings, and news from the distant groups of the Christ's followers, it was plain that he had not been sent to them on a mission.

They waited until he should be ready to explain his quest.

"You did not see Him, then?"

Into the young man's eyes there came a great, yearning sadness. "No," he answered. "But you," he asked eagerly, "did none of you see Him?"

They shook their heads, all of them.

"We were too far away," one murmured.

"But I had for spiritual father one who had seen Him," the traveler offered, his face lighting. "You know how He blessed a company of little children? How He put His hands upon them?" He paused and they nodded silently. "My teacher was one of those children," he said, his dark eyes aglow with reverent pride.

A quick glance flashed about the group; but no one spoke and the traveler went on, the radiance of his face blotted out again in sadness. "It is because he is gone that I am a wanderer now. I was always with him, and we went about together, preaching the Kingdom. It was all so clear to my teacher because he had seen Him. He told me of His wonderful look."

They fell silent, brooding and thoughtful.

Then one asked: "What was it like—the blessing He gave your teacher? Did he gain goods and store?"

The young traveler's eyes opened in amazement. "Why no! How could that be? My teacher was like Him," he explained simply.

Again the quick look passed about the circle. At last one spoke, slowly: "There is a man here in the village who was also blessed with the children."

The young traveler started up joyously. "Take me to him," he entreated. "Let me talk with him; that is what I have come here seeking—another teacher."

"Nay, friend—" began one; but another hurriedly whispered: "Let us not tell him. Perhaps he can help." And so the first speaker finished: "I fear you will not find him like your teacher, but you shall go; it is only a step."

And they guided him, all but impatient, to a mean hovel just within the town. There they left him.

It was a man with a dark, bitter face that answered his knock. "May I speak with Nemuel?" the stranger asked courteously.

"I am Nemuel," growled the man curtly.

"But I mean Nemuel who was one of the children that Jesus blessed," persisted the young traveler, his face softly alight as the name passed his lips.

"Come in; I am the man." He straightened proudly. "I was a child seven years old when I saw Him——"

He stopped, for the young stranger, pale and gasping, broke in: "You saw Him! He touched you! You have seen His face, and yet your own—forgive me, friend. But my master was also one of the children blessed by the Christ, and he was … different." He hesitated, still looking at the somber face in puzzled distress.

The man caught the young stranger's arm. "You knew another of those He blessed? Tell me, did he have great wealth, palaces, honors? Did he wait long? Did the blessing tarry so long in the fulfilment as with me?"

The young stranger shook his head in deep bewilderment. "I do not understand. No, he had no wealth, no palaces, no honors. He followed the Christ. He was blessed by His spirit. Why, how could one want goods and honors when one had seen His wonderful smile, when His arms—" He broke off, gazing at his host in appalled incomprehension.

Nemuel's dark face grew darker, more bitter. "Then there is no blessing, after all," he said slowly. "I have waited, believing, trusting. I have kept my life clean. I have kept myself holy—away from those He had not touched—" The stranger drew a quick breath and his eyes softened with pity. "I have never forgotten that I was blessed above others. And now there is no blessing." And he covered his face with his hands.

There was a silence and then the young stranger spoke very gently: "The blessing my master taught me, was for all children—for all childlike faith and trust and purity. It was a sanctification of the child spirit."

Nemuel had lifted his head and was listening, his eyes fastened wonderingly on the stranger's face.

"And it was not a blessing to be wrapped up in a napkin. It was not one to bring you good fortune, as if it had been a sorcerer's charm. It was a blessing for you to take and to make—to use it—to give it to others. Through you He blessed all children…. And yet—" the stranger's voice deepened—"yet there was something special too."

"What was it?" Nemuel breathed.

The stranger bent on him a gaze full of yearning. "Have you not remembered His face?" he asked. "His wonderful look—just for you?" There was a pleading note of reproach in his voice as he leaned toward Nemuel, but his face was all love and tenderness.

Nemuel began to shake his head slowly, still fixing the stranger with his gaze.

"No," he confessed. "I haven't been able to remember—not for years. At first I did. Afterward I knew His face was wonderful, but I could not see it. But now—now I begin to remember——"

The young stranger waited for the halting words, his face lighting softly with a holy hope and joy.

"Why, your face—" Nemuel still hesitated, groping, and then suddenly his voice rang out in triumph, and memory dawned clearly in his eyes—"why, your face—is—like—His! Oh, I do remember!—and—I begin to understand."

Kitchener's Mob

From The Atlantic Monthly

By James Norman Hall

Trench-mortaring was more to our liking. That is an infantryman's game, and while extremely hazardous, the men in the trenches have a sporting chance. Everyone forgot breakfast when word was passed down the line that we were going to "mortarfy" Fritzie. Our projectiles were immense balls of hollow steel, filled with high explosive. Eagerly, expectantly, the boys gathered in the first-line trenches to watch the fun. First a dull boom from the reserve trench in rear where the mortar was operated.

"There she is!" "See 'er?" "Goin' true as a die!" All the boys would be shouting at once.

Up it goes, turning over and over, rising to a height of several hundred feet. Then, if well aimed, it reaches the end of its upward journey directly over the enemy's line, and falls straight into his trench. There is a moment of silence, followed by a terrific explosion which throws dirt and débris high in the air. By this time, the Tommies all along the line are standing on the firing benches, head and shoulders above the parapet, forgetting their danger in their excitement, and shouting at the top of their voices:

"'Ow's that one, Fritzie boy?"

"Guten morgen, you Proosian sausage wallopers!"

"Tyke a bit o' that there 'ome to yer missus!"

But Fritzie kept up his end of the game, always. He gave us just as good as we sent, and often he added something for good measure. His surprise packages were sausage-shaped missiles which came wobbling toward us, slowly, almost awkwardly; but they dropped with lightning speed. The explosion was terrible, and alas for any Tommy who misjudged the place of its fall! However, everyone had a chance. Trench-mortar projectiles are so large, and they describe so leisurely an arc before they fall, that men have time to run.

I've always admired Tommy Atkins for his sense of fair play. He loved giving Fritz "a little bit of all right," but he never resented it when Fritz had his own fun at our expense. I used to believe, in the far-off days of peace, that men had lost their old primal love for dangerous sport, their native ignorance of fear. But on those trench-mortaring days, when I watched boys playing with death with right good zest, heard them shouting and laughing as they tumbled over one another in their eagerness to escape being killed, I was convinced that I was wrong. Daily I saw men going through the test of fire triumphantly, and at the last, what a fearful test it was, and how splendidly they met it! During six months, continuously in the firing line, I met less than a dozen natural-born cowards; and my experience was largely among clerks, barbers, plumbers, shopkeepers, men who had no fighting tradition to back them up, to make them heroic in spite of themselves.

The better I knew Tommy, the better I liked him. He hasn't a shred of sentimentality in his make-up. There is plenty of sentiment, sincere feeling, but it is very well concealed. I had been a soldier of the King for many months before I realized that the men with whom I was living, sharing rations and hardships, were anything other than the healthy animals they looked. They seemed to live for their food. They talked of it, anticipated it with the zest of men who were experiencing for the first time the joy of being genuinely hungry. They watched their muscles harden with the satisfaction known to every normal man when he is becoming physically fit for the first time. But they said nothing about patriotism, or the duty of Englishmen in wartime. And if I tried to start a conversation on that line, they walked right over me with their boots on.

This was a great disappointment at first. I would never have known, from anything that was said, that a man of them was stirred at the thought of fighting for old England. England was all right, but, "I ain't a-goin' balmy about the old flag and all that stuff." Many of them insisted that they were in the army for personal and selfish reasons alone. They went out of their way to ridicule any and every indication of sentiment.

There was the matter of talk about mothers, for example. I can't imagine this being the case in a volunteer army of American boys; but never, during sixteen months of British army life, did I hear a discussion of mothers. When the weekly parcels post from England arrived, and the boys were sharing their cake and chocolate and tobacco, one of them would say, "Good old mum. She ain't a bad sort," to be answered with reluctant, mouth-filled grunts, or grudging nods of approval. As for fathers, I often thought to myself, "This is certainly a tremendous army of posthumous sons!" Months before I should have been astonished at this reticence. But I had learned to understand Tommy. His silences were as eloquent as any splendid outbursts or glowing tributes could have been. It was a matter of constant wonder to me that men living in the daily and hourly presence of death could so control and conceal their feelings. Their talk was of anything but home; and yet I knew that they thought of little else.

One of our boys was killed, and there was a letter to be written to his parents. Three Tommies who knew him best were to attempt this. They made innumerable beginnings. Each of them was afraid of blundering, of causing unnecessary pain by an indelicate revelation of the facts. There was a feminine fineness about their concern which was beautiful to see. The final draft of the letter was a masterpiece, not of English, but of insight; such a letter as any one of us would have liked his own parents to receive under similar circumstances. Nothing was forgotten which could make the news in the slightest degree more endurable. Every trifling personal belonging was carefully saved up and packed in a little box to follow the letter. All this was done amid much boisterous jesting; and there was hilarious singing to the wheezing accompaniment of an old mouth-organ. But of reference to home, or mothers, or comradeship, not a word.

Rarely a night passed without its burial parties. "Digging in the garden," Tommy calls the grave-making. The bodies, wrapped in blankets or water-proof ground-sheets, are lifted over the parados and carried back a convenient twenty yards or more. The desolation of that garden was indescribable. It was strewn with wreckage, gaping with shell-holes, billowing with numberless nameless graves, a waste land speechlessly pathetic. The poplars and willow hedges had been blasted and splintered by shell-fire. Tommy calls these "Kaiser Bill's flowers." Coming from England, he feels more deeply than he would care to admit the crimes done to trees in the name of war.

Our chaplain was a devout man, but prudent to a fault. He never visited us in the trenches; therefore our burial parties proceeded without the rites of the church. This arrangement was highly satisfactory to Tommy. He liked to "get the planting done" with the least possible delay or fuss. His whispered conversations, while the graves were being scooped, were, to say the least, quite out of the spirit of the occasion. Once we were burying two boys with whom we had been having a supper a few hours before. There was an artillery duel in progress, the shells whistling high over our heads and bursting in great splotches of white fire, far in rear of the opposing lines of trenches. The grave-making went speedily on while the diggers argued in whispers as to the calibre of the guns. Some said they were six-inch, while others thought nine-inch. Discussion was momentarily suspended when trench-rockets went soaring up from the enemy's line. We crouched motionless until the welcome darkness spread again. And then, in loud whispers—

"'Ere! If they was nine-inch they would 'ave more screech."

And one of different opinion would reply:

"Don't talk so bloomin' silly! Ain't I a-tellin' you you can't always size 'em by the screech?"

Not a prayer. Not a word either of censure or praise for the boys who had gone. Not an expression of opinion as to the meaning of the great change which had come to them and which might come as suddenly to any or all of us. And yet I knew that every man was thinking of these things.

There were days when the front was really quiet. The thin trickle of rifle-fire only accentuated the stillness of an early summer morning. Far down the line many a Tommy could be heard singing to himself as he sat in the door of his dug-out, cleaning his rifle. There would be the pleasant crackle of burning pine sticks, the sizzle of frying bacon, the lazy buzzing of swarms of bluebottle flies. Occasionally, across a pool of noonday silence, we heard the birds singing; for they didn't desert us. When we gave them a hearing, they did their cheery little best to assure us that everything would come right in the end. Once we heard a skylark, an English skylark, and for a while it made the world beautiful again. It was a fine thing to watch the faces of those English lads as they listened. I was deeply touched when one of them said, "Ain't 'e a plucky little chap, singin' right in front of Fritzie's trenches fer us English blokes?"

It was a sincere and beautiful tribute.

The Professor

By Calista Halsey Patchin

The professor had been dead two months. He had left the world very quietly, at that precise hour of the early evening when he was accustomed to say that his "spirit friends" came to him. The hospital nurse had noticed that there was always a time at twilight when the patient had a good hour; when pain and restlessness seemed to be charmed away, and he did not mind being left alone, and did not care whether or not there was a light in the room. Then it was that those who had gone came back to him with quiet, friendly ways and loving touch. He said nothing of this to the nurse. It was an old friend who told me that this had been his belief and solace for years.

When the professor had first come to town he had spoken of the wife who would follow him shortly, from the East. He did not display her picture, he did not talk about her enough so that the town, though it made an honest effort, ever really visualized her. She would come—without a doubt she would come—but not just yet. It was only that the East still held her. Gradually, he spoke of her less and less often, with a dignified reserve that brooked no inquiry, and finally not at all.

The town forgot. It was only when his illness became so serious that all felt someone should be written to, that it was discovered there was no one. The professor, when he was appealed to, said so. Then also, the hospital nurse noticed that at the twilight hour, when he talked quietly to his unseen friends, there was always One who stayed longer than the rest.

But he had been dead two months now, and the undertaker was pressing his bill, and there were other expenses which had been cheerfully borne by friends at the time, and indeed if there had been no other reason, it remains that something must become of the personal possessions of a man who leaves neither will nor known heirs. So the professor's effects were appraised, and a brief local appeared in the daily paper until it had made a dent in the memory of the public, apprising them that his personal property would be offered at public auction at two p.m. of a Thursday, in his rooms on the third floor of the Eureka Block.

It was the merest thread of curiosity that drew me to this sale. I did not want to buy anything. It was a sort of posthumous curiosity, and it concerned itself solely with the individuality of the dead man. Not having had the opportunity of knowing him well in life, and never having known until I read his obituary what I had missed, I took this last chance of trying to evolve the man from his belongings. All I did know was that he was a teacher of music of the past generation in a Western town which grew so fast that it made a man seem older than he was. More than this, he was a composer, a music master, who took crude young voices, shrill with the tension of the Western winds and the electric air, and tamed and trained them till they fell in love with harmony. When he heard a voice he knew it. One of his contraltos is singing now in grand opera across the sea. A tenor that he discovered has charmed the world with an "upper note."

All the same, the professor had grown old—a new generation had arisen which knew not Joseph; he failed to advertise, and every young girl who "gave lessons" crowded him closer to the wall. Now and then there would appear in the daily paper—not the next morning, but a few days after the presentation of some opera—a column of musical criticism, keen, delicate, reminiscent—fragrant with the rosemary that is for remembrance. When "Elijah" was given by home talent with soloists imported from Chicago, it was the professor who kindly wrote, beforehand this time, luminous articles full of sympathetic interpretation of the great masters. And at rare intervals there would appear a communication from him on the beauty of the woods and the fields, the suburbs of the town and the country, as though he were some simple prophet of nature who stood by the wayside. And this was no affectation. Long, solitary walks were his recreation.