The Booming of Acre Hill And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life

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Ti­tle: The Boom­ing of Acre Hill And Oth­er Rem­inis­cences of Ur­ban and Sub­ur­ban Life

Au­thor: John Kendrick Bangs

Re­lease Date: Febru­ary 26, 2004 [EBook #11309] [Date last up­dat­ed: Novem­ber 19, 2004]

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THE BOOM­ING OF ACRE HILL

AND OTH­ER REM­INIS­CENCES OF UR­BAN AND SUB­UR­BAN LIFE

[Il­lus­tra­tion: “I'll Nev­er, Nev­er, Nev­er, So Long As I Live”]

The Boom­ing of Acre Hill

By

John Kendrick Bangs

Il­lus­tra­tions

By C. Dana Gib­son

Pub­lished 1902 in New York and Lon­don

TO

WILLIAM LIV­ER­MORE KING­MAN

WITH AF­FEC­TION­ATE RE­GARDS

These sto­ries by Mr. Bangs have ap­peared from time to time in _The Ladies Home Jour­nal, The Wom­an's Home Com­pan­ion_, and the var­ious pub­li­ca­tions of Messrs. HARP­ER & BROTH­ERS.

CON­TENTS

THE BOOM­ING OF ACRE HILL

THE STRANGE MIS­AD­VEN­TURES OF AN OR­GAN

THE PLOT THAT FAILED

THE BASE IN­GRAT­ITUDE OF BARKIS, M.D.

THE UTIL­ITAR­IAN MR. CAR­RAWAY

THE BOOK SALES OF MR. PE­TERS

THE VAL­OR OF BRIN­LEY

WILKINS

THE MAY­OR'S LAMPS

THE BAL­ANCE OF POW­ER

JAR­LEY'S EX­PER­IMENT

JAR­LEY'S THANKS­GIV­ING

HAR­RY AND MAUDE AND I--AL­SO JAMES

AN AFFINI­TIVE RO­MANCE: I. MR. AU­GUS­TUS RICHARDS'S IDE­AL II. MISS HEN­DER­SON'S STAN­DARD III. A GLANCE AT MISS FLO­RA HEN­DER­SON HER­SELF IV. A BRIEF GLIMPSE OF MR. AU­GUS­TUS RICHARDS V. CON­CLU­SION

MRS. UP­TON'S DE­VICE: I. THE RE­SOLVE II. A SUC­CESS­FUL CASE III. A SET-​BACK IV. THE DE­VICE

IL­LUS­TRA­TIONS

“I'LL NEV­ER, NEV­ER, NEV­ER, SO LONG AS I LIVE”

DUR­ING THE IN­TER­MEZ­ZO

THE BOOM­ING OF ACRE HILL

Acre Hill ten years ago was as void of hous­es as the primeval for­est. In­deed, in many ways it sug­gest­ed the primeval for­est. Then the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny sprang up in a night, and be­fore the be­wil­dered own­ers of its love­ly soli­tudes and rest­ful glades, who had been pay­ing tax­es on their prop­er­ty for many years, quite grasped the sit­ua­tion they found that they had sold out, and that their old-​time par­adise was as sure­ly lost to them as was Eden to Adam and Eve.

To-​day Acre Hill is gridironed with macadamized streets that are lined with hous­es of an ar­chi­tec­ture of var­ious de­grees of bad­ness. Where birds once sang, and squir­rels gam­bolled, and stray fox­es lurked, the morn­ing hours are made mu­si­cal by the voic­es of milk­men, and the squir­rels have giv­en place to chil­dren and nurse-​maids. Where stur­dy oaks stood like sen­tinels guard­ing the for­est folk from in­tru­sion from the out­side world now stand tall wood­en poles with glar­ing white elec­tric lights stream­ing from their tops. And the sough­ing of the winds in the trees has giv­en place to the clang of the bound­ing trol­ley. All this is the work of the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny.

Yet if, as I have said, the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny sprang up in a night, it passed many sleep­less nights be­fore it re­ceived the re­wards which come to him who de­stroys Na­ture. And when I speak of a cor­po­ra­tion pass­ing sleep­less nights I do so ad­vis­ed­ly, for at the be­gin­ning of its ca­reer the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny con­sist­ed of one man--a mild-​man­nered man who had pre­vi­ous­ly la­bored in sim­ilar en­ter­pris­es, and whose name was called blessed in a thou­sand un­com­fort­able hous­es in un­com­fort­able sub­urbs else­where, that, like Acre Hill, had once been gar­den spots, but had been “im­proved.” Even a pro­fes­sion­al im­prover of land finds sleep dif­fi­cult to woo at the be­gin­ning of such an en­ter­prise. In the first in­stance, when one buys land, giv­ing a mort­gage in full pay­ment there­for, with the land as se­cu­ri­ty, one ap­pears to have as­sumed a mod­er­ate­ly heavy bur­den. Then, when to this one adds the enor­mous ex­pense of cut­ting streets through the most beau­ti­ful of the syl­van glades, the build­ing of sew­ers, and the erec­tion of sam­ple hous­es, to say noth­ing of the strain up­on the in­tel­lect in the se­lec­tion of names for the streets and lanes and cir­cles that spring in­to be­ing, one can­not but won­der how the mas­ter mind be­hind it all man­ages to sur­vive.

But the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny did sur­vive, and Dum­fries Cor­ners watched its progress with much in­ter­est. Re­grets were ex­pressed when some his­toric knoll was lev­elled in or­der to pro­vide a nice flat space for a pub­lic square. Young­sters who had bagged many a par­tridge on Acre Hill felt like weep­ing when one stretch of bush af­ter an­oth­er was cut ruth­less­ly away in or­der that a pre­ten­tious-​look­ing struc­ture, the new home of the Acre Hill Coun­try Club, might be erect­ed. Lovers sighed when cer­tain no­ble old oaks fraught with sen­ti­men­tal as­so­ci­ations fell be­fore the un-​sen­ti­men­tal ax­es of the Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny; and num­ber­less young Wal­tons mut­tered im­pre­ca­tions up­on the cor­po­ra­tion that filled in with stone and ash­es the dear old pond that once gave forth fish in great abun­dance, and through earth­en pipes di­vert­ed the run­ning brook, that hith­er­to had kept it full, in­to a brand-​new sew­er.

These lovers of na­ture could not un­der­stand the great need of our con­stant­ly grow­ing pop­ula­tion for un­com­fort­able hous­es in in­con­ve­nient sub­urbs, and in their fail­ure to com­pre­hend they be­came cav­il­ers. But oth­ers--those who ad­mire the ge­nius which en­ables a man to make un­pro­duc­tive land pro­duc­tive, who hail as bene­fac­tor one who sup­plants a prof­it­less oak of a thou­sand years' stand­ing with a thriv­ing butch­er-​shop--these peo­ple un­der­stood what was be­ing done for Dum­fries Cor­ners, but won­dered how the ven­ture was to be made prof­itable. There were al­ready more va­cant hous­es in Dum­fries Cor­ners than could be rent­ed, more butch­er-​shops than could be sup­port­ed, more clubs than could be run with­out a deficit. But the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny went on, and with­in three years par­adise had be­come earth, and the mild-​man­nered and ex­ceed­ing­ly ami­able gen­tle­man who had re­placed the homes of the birds with some fif­teen or twen­ty hous­es for small fam­ilies could look about him and see greater re­sults than ev­er greet­ed the eyes of Ro­mu­lus in the days of the great Rome Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny.

Most won­der­ful of all, he was still sol­vent! But a city is not a city, nor, in its own de­gree, a sub­urb a sub­urb, with­out in­hab­itants; and while to a mind like that back of the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny it is seem­ing­ly a mod­er­ate­ly easy task to lay out a sub­urb in so far as its ex­te­ri­or ap­point­ments are con­cerned, the rub comes in the get­ting of cit­izens. A Stan­dard Oil mag­nate can build a city if he is will­ing to spend the mon­ey, but all the pow­ers of heav­en and earth com­bined can­not man­ufac­ture off­hand a cit­izen­ship. In an emer­gen­cy of this na­ture most land im­prove­ment com­pa­nies would have is­sued pret­ty lit­tle pam­phlets, got­ten up in exquisite taste, full of beau­ti­ful pic­tures and bub­bling over with en­thu­si­as­tic text, all based up­on pos­si­bil­ities rather than up­on re­al­ities. But the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny was sin­cere and hon­est. It be­lieved in ad­ver­tis­ing what it had; it be­lieved in di­lat­ing some­what on the pos­si­bil­ities, but it was too hon­est to claim for it­self virtues it did not pos­sess.

So it tried dif­fer­ent meth­ods. The Acre Hill Coun­try Club was the first of these, and a good idea it was. It was suc­cess­ful from the start, so­cial­ly. Great num­bers at­tend­ed the en­ter­tain­ments and dances, al­though these were rather poor­ly con­duct­ed. Still, the Coun­try Club was a grand suc­cess. It gave much and re­ceived noth­ing. Dum­fries Cor­ners, re­luc­tant to ap­prove of any­thing, ap­proved of it.

But no lots were sold! The Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny was will­ing to make it­self pop­ular--very will­ing. Didn't mind giv­ing Dum­fries Cor­ners peo­ple free en­ter­tain­ment, but--lots didn't sell. What is the use of pay­ing the ex­pens­es of a club if lots don't sell? This was a new prob­lem for the com­pa­ny to con­sid­er. There were six­teen hous­es ready for oc­cu­pan­cy, and con­sum­ing in­ter­est at a ter­ri­ble rate, but no one came to look at them. Acre Hill was a charm­ing spot, no doubt, but for some un­known rea­son or oth­er it failed to take hold of the pop­ular fan­cy, de­spite the at­trac­tions of the club.

Sud­den­ly the head of the in­sti­tu­tion had an idea. In the great metropo­lis there was an im­pe­cu­nious and pop­ular mem­ber of Up­per­tendom whose name had been ap­pear­ing in the so­ci­ety jour­nals with great fre­quen­cy for years. He for­mer­ly had been pros­per­ous, but now he was down fi­nan­cial­ly; yet so­ci­ety still re­ceived and liked him, for he had many good points and was fun­da­men­tal­ly what the world calls a good fel­low.

“Why not send for Joc­ular Jim­son Jones?” sug­gest­ed the head and lead­ing spir­it of the Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny. “We can of­fer him one of our cot­tages, and pay his debts if he has any, if he will live here and give us the ben­efit of his so­cial pres­tige.”

The sug­ges­tion was re­ceived with en­thu­si­asm. Mr. Jones was sum­moned, came and in­spect­ed the cot­tage, and de­clined. He re­al­ly couldn't, you know. Of course he was down, but not quite down to the lev­el of a cot­tage of that par­tic­ular kind. He still had plen­ty of friends whom he could vis­it and who would be charmed to en­ter­tain him in the style to which he was ac­cus­tomed. Why, there­fore, should he do this thing, and bring him­self down to the lev­el of the or­di­nary com­muter? No, in­deed. Not he! The Di­rec­tors saw the point, and next of­fered him--and this time he ac­cept­ed--the free use of the res­idence of one of the of­fi­cers of the com­pa­ny, a re­al­ly hand­some, pre­ten­tious struc­ture, with a com­mand­ing view, sta­ble, green-​hous­es, grace­ful lawns, and all oth­er ap­pur­te­nances of a well-​ap­point­ed coun­try seat. In ad­di­tion to the fur­nish­ing of the house in prop­er taste, they put coal in the cel­lar and fly-​screens in the win­dows. They filled the res­idence with ser­vants, and in­dorsed the young per­son at the gro­cer's and butch­er's. They bought him a sur­rey and a de­pot wag­on. They bought him hors­es and they stocked him well with fine cigars. They paid his tai­lor's bills, and sundry oth­er press­ing mon­etary af­fairs were fund­ed. In fact, the Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny set Joc­ular Jim­son Jones up and then gave him _carte blanche_ to en­ter­tain; and inas­much as Joc­ular had a ge­nius for en­ter­tain­ing, it is hard­ly nec­es­sary to say that he availed him­self of his op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Dur­ing that first sum­mer at Acre Hill Mr. Jones had the best time of his life. His days were what the vul­gar term “all vel­vet.” His new res­idence was so su­perb that it re­stored his cred­it in the metropo­lis, and city “swells,” to whom he was un­der so­cial obli­ga­tion, went home, af­ter hav­ing been paid in kind, won­der­ing if Joc­ular Jim­son Jones had un­earthed some­where a re­cent­ly de­ceased rich un­cle. He gave sup­pers of most lav­ish sort. He had vaudeville shows at the club-​house, with tal­ent made up of the most ex­clu­sive young men and wom­en of the city. The Am­ateur Thes­pi­ans of the Bor­ough of Man­hat­tan gave a whole se­ries of per­for­mances at the club dur­ing the au­tumn, and by slow de­grees the so­ci­ety pa­pers be­gan to take no­tice. Acre Hill be­gan to be known as “a fa­vorite re­sort of the 400.” Nay, even the sa­cred 150 had pen­etrat­ed to its very core, won­der­ing­ly, how­ev­er, for none knew how Joc­ular Jim­son Jones could do it. Still, they nev­er de­clined an in­vi­ta­tion. As a nat­ural re­sult the mar­ket for Acre Hill lots grew ac­tive. The six­teen cot­tages were sold, and the pur­chasers found them­selves right in the swim. It was the eas­iest thing in the world to get in­to so­ci­ety if you on­ly knew how. Joc­ular Jim­son Jones was a fine, ap­proach­able, neigh­bor­ly per­son, and at the Coun­try Club dances was quite as at­ten­tive to the hith­er­to un­known Mrs. Scrag­gs as he was to Mrs. John Ja­cob Win­ter­green, the ac­knowl­edged lead­er of the 400. Mrs. Win­ter­green, too, was not un­ap­proach­able. She talked pleas­ant­ly dur­ing a mu­si­cale at the club-​house with Mr. Scrag­gs, and said she hoped some day to have the plea­sure of meet­ing Mrs. Scrag­gs; and when Scrag­gs, in re­sponse, said he would go and get her she most ami­ably begged him not to leave her alone.

Months went by, and where six­teen emp­ty hous­es had been, there were now six­ty all oc­cu­pied, and lots were go­ing like hot cakes. Tuxe­do was in the shade. Lenox was dy­ing. New­port was dead. So­ci­ety flocked to Acre Hill and hob­nobbed with Acre Hillians. Acre Hillians be­came some­what proud of them­selves, and rather took to look­ing down up­on Dum­fries Cor­ners peo­ple. Dum­fries Cor­ners peo­ple were nice, and all that, but not par­tic­ular­ly in­ter­est­ing in the sense that “our set,” with Joc­ular Jim­son Jones at the head of it, was in­ter­est­ing.

Then came the Coun­ty Ball. This Joc­ular en­gi­neered him­self, and the names of the la­dy pa­trons were se­lect­ed from the old­est and the newest on the list. Mrs. Win­ter­green's name led, of course, but Mrs. Scrag­gs' name was there too, sand­wiched in be­tween those of Mrs. Van Cort­land­tuyv­el and Mrs. Gar­de­nior, of Gar­de­nior's Is­land, rep­re­sent­ing two fam­ilies which would car­ry so­cial weight ei­ther in Boston or the “oth­er side of Mar­ket Street.” There were four ex­alt­ed names from the city, one from Dum­fries Cor­ners, and sev­en from Acre Hill.

Then more lots sold, and still more, and then, alas, came the end! Joc­ular Jim­son Jones was too suc­cess­ful.

Af­ter two years of glo­ry the so­cial light of Acre Hill went out. The Acre Hill Land Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny re­tired from the busi­ness. All its lots were sold, and, of course, there was no fur­ther need for the ser­vices of Joc­ular Jim­son Jones. His ef­forts were crowned with suc­cess. His mis­sion was ac­com­plished, but he moved away--I think re­gret­ful­ly, for, af­ter all, he had found the Acre Hill peo­ple a most lik­able lot--but it was in­evitable that, there be­ing no more fish to catch, the an­glers need­ed no bait, and Joc­ular Jim­son had to go. Where he has gone to there is no one who knows. He has dis­ap­peared whol­ly, even in the metropo­lis, and, most un­for­tu­nate­ly for Acre Hill, with Joc­ular Jim­son Jones have de­part­ed al­so all its so­cial glo­ries. None of the elect come to its dances any more. The am­ateur thes­pi­ans of the ex­clu­sive set no longer play on the stage of its club-​house, and it was on­ly last week that Mrs. John Ja­cob Win­ter­green passed Mr. Scrag­gs on the street with a cold glare of un­recog­ni­tion.

Pos­si­bly when Acre Hill reads this it will un­der­stand, pos­si­bly not.

Dum­fries Cor­ners peo­ple un­der­stood it right along, but then they al­ways were a most sus­pi­cious lot, and fond of an amus­ing spec­ta­cle that cost them noth­ing.

THE STRANGE MIS­AD­VEN­TURES OF AN OR­GAN

Car­son was a philoso­pher, and on the whole it was a great bless­ing that he was so. No man need­ed to be pos­ses­sor of a philo­soph­ical tem­per­ament more than he, for, in ad­di­tion to be­ing a res­ident of Dum­fries Cor­ners, Car­son had oth­er trou­bles which, to an ex­citable na­ture, would have made life a pro­longed pe­ri­od of mis­ery. He was the sort of a man to whom ir­ri­tat­ing mis­for­tunes of the mosquito or­der have a way of com­ing. To some of us it seemed as if a spite­ful Na­ture took plea­sure in pelt­ing Car­son with pet­ty an­noy­ances, none of them large enough to ex­cite com­pas­sion, many of them of a sort to pro­voke a qui­et smile. Of all the dogs in the neigh­bor­hood it was al­ways his dog that got run in­to the pound, al­though it was equal­ly true that Car­son's dog was one of the few that were prop­er­ly li­censed. If he bought a new horse some­thing would hap­pen to it be­fore a week had elapsed; and how his coach­man once ripped off the top of his de­pot wag­on by driv­ing it un­der a loose tele­phone wire is still one of the sto­ries of the vicin­ity in which he lives. Any­thing out of the way in the shape of trou­ble seemed to choose the Car­son house­hold for ex­per­imen­tal pur­pos­es. He was the medi­um by which new va­ri­eties of ir­ri­ta­tions were in­tro­duced to an un­grate­ful world, but such was his na­ture that, giv­en the com­pan­ion­ship of Her­bert Spencer and a cigar, he could be ab­so­lute­ly count­ed on not to mur­mur.

This dis­po­si­tion to ac­cept the tri­als and tribu­la­tions which came up­on him with­out a pas­sion­ate out­burst was not by any means due to ami­abil­ity. Car­son was of too strong a char­ac­ter to be con­tin­ual­ly ami­able. He mere­ly ex­er­cised his phi­los­ophy in meet­ing trou­ble. He boiled with­in, but pre­sent­ed a calm, un­ruf­fled front to the world, sim­ply be­cause to do oth­er­wise would in­volve an ex­pen­di­ture of ner­vous force which he did not con­sid­er to be worth while.

I can nev­er for­get the sense of ad­mir­ing re­gard which I ex­pe­ri­enced when in Genoa, while he and I were about to en­ter our banker's to­geth­er, he slipped up­on a bit of ba­nana peel­ing, bruis­ing his knee and de­stroy­ing his trous­er leg. I should have in­dulged in pro­fane al­lu­sions to the per­son who had thought­less­ly thrown the peel­ing up­on the ground if by some mis­chance the ac­ci­dent had hap­pened to me. Car­son, how­ev­er, did noth­ing of the sort, but treat­ed me to a forcible ab­stract con­sid­er­ation of the un­think­ing habits of the mass­es.

The un­known in­di­vid­ual who was re­spon­si­ble for the ac­ci­dent did not en­ter in­to the ques­tion; no one was con­signed to ev­er­last­ing tor­ture in the deep­est depths of pur­ga­to­ry; a calm, dis­pas­sion­ate pre­sen­ta­tion of an ab­strac­tion was all that greet­ed my ears. The prac­tice of thought­less­ness was con­demned as a thing en­tire­ly apart from the prac­ti­tion­er, and as a ten­den­cy need­ing cor­rec­tion. In­ward­ly, I know he swore; out­ward­ly, he was as serene as though noth­ing un­to­ward had hap­pened to him. It was then that I came to ad­mire Car­son. Be­fore that he had my af­fec­tion­ate re­gard in fullest mea­sure, but now ad­mi­ra­tion for his deep­er qual­ities set in, and it has in no sense di­min­ished as time has passed. Once, and once on­ly, have I known him to de­part from his philo­soph­ical de­meanor, and that one de­par­ture was, I think, jus­ti­fied by the sit­ua­tion, since it was the cul­mi­nat­ing point of a se­ries of ag­gra­va­tions, to fail to yield to which would have re­quired a more than hu­man strength.

The in­ci­dent to which I re­fer was in con­nec­tion with a fine or­gan, which at large ex­pense Car­son had had built in his house, for, like all philoso­phers, Car­son has a great fond­ness for mu­sic, and is him­self a mu­si­cian of no mean ca­pac­ity. I have known him to sit down un­der a par­lor-​lamp and read over the score of the “Meis­tersinger” just as eas­ily as you or I would pe­ruse one of the lighter nov­els of the day. This was one of his refuges. When his spir­it was sub­ject­ed to an ex­treme ten­sion he re­lieved his soul by fly­ing to the com­posers; to use his own very bad joke, when he was in need of com­po­sure he sought out the “com­po­sures.” As time pro­gressed, how­ev­er, and the pet­ty an­noy­ances grew more nu­mer­ous, the mere­ly in­tel­lec­tu­al plea­sure of the writ­ings of Wag­ner and Han­del and Mozart pos­si­bly failed to suf­fice, and an or­gan was con­tract­ed for.

“I en­joy read­ing the mu­sic,” said he as we sat and talked over his plan, “but some­times--very of­ten, in fact--I feel as if some­thing ought to shriek, and I'm go­ing to have an or­gan of my own to do it for me.”

So, as I have said, the or­gan was con­tract­ed for, was built, and an ad­di­tion­al se­ries of tri­als be­gan. Up­on a very im­por­tant oc­ca­sion the or­gan de­clined to shriek, al­though ev­ery ef­fort to per­suade it to per­form the func­tions for which it was de­signed was made. Forty or fifty very charm­ing peo­ple were gath­ered to­geth­er to be in­tro­duced to the virtues of the new in­stru­ment--for Car­son was not the kind of man to keep to him­self the good things which came in­to his life; he shared all his bless­ings, while keep­ing his woes to him­self; a well-​known vir­tu­oso was re­tained to set forth the pos­si­bil­ities of the ac­qui­si­tion, and all was go­ing as “mer­ry as a mar­riage bell” when sud­den­ly there came a wheeze, and the fin­gers of the well-​known vir­tu­oso were pow­er­less to elic­it the har­mo­nious shrieks which all had come to hear.

It was a sad mo­ment, but Car­son was equal to the oc­ca­sion.

“Some­thing's out of gear,” he said, with a laugh due rather to his philo­soph­ical na­ture than to mirth. “I'm afraid we'll have to fin­ish on the pi­ano.”

* * * * *

And so we did, and a de­light­ful evening we had of it, al­though many of us went home won­der­ing what on earth was the mat­ter with the or­gan.

A few days lat­er I met Car­son on the train and the mys­tery was solved.

“The trou­ble was with the wa­ter-​pipes,” he ex­plained. “They were put in wrong, and the lo­ca­tion of the house is such that ev­ery time Colonel Hawkins, on the oth­er side of the street, takes a bath, all the wa­ter that flows down the hill is di­vert­ed in­to his tub.”

I tried not to laugh.

“You'll have to en­ter in­to an agree­ment with the Colonel,” I said. “Make him promise not to bathe be­tween cer­tain hours.”

“That's a good idea,” said Car­son, smil­ing, “but af­ter all I guess I'd bet­ter change the pipes. Heav­en for­bid that in days like these I should seek to let any per­son­al grat­ifi­ca­tion stand be­tween an­oth­er man and the rare virtue of clean­li­ness.”

Sev­er­al weeks went by, and men were busi­ly em­ployed in see­ing that the wa­ter sup­ply need­ed for a prop­er run­ning of the or­gan came di­rect from the mains, in­stead of com­ing from a pipe of lim­it­ed ca­pac­ity used in com­mon by a half dozen or more res­idents of a neigh­bor­ing side street.

Some­where about the end of the fourth week Car­son in­vit­ed me to din­ner. The or­gan was all right again, he said. The wa­ter sup­ply was suf­fi­cient, and if I cared to I might dine with him, and af­ter­ward spend an evening sit­ting up­on the or­gan bench while Car­son him­self ma­nip­ulat­ed the keys. I nat­ural­ly ac­cept­ed the in­vi­ta­tion, since, in ad­di­tion to his oth­er de­light­ful qual­ities, Car­son is a past grand-​mas­ter in the art of giv­ing din­ners. He is a man with a taste, and a din­ner good enough for him is a thing to arouse the en­vy of the gods. Fur­ther­more, as I have al­ready said, he is a mu­si­cian of no mean or­der, and I know of no greater plea­sure than that of sit­ting by his side while he “pot­ters through a score,” as he puts it. But there was a dis­ap­point­ment in store for us. I called at the ap­point­ed hour and found the house­hold more or less in con­ster­na­tion. The cook had left, and a din­ner of “cold things” con­front­ed us.

“She couldn't stand the or­gan,” ex­plained Car­son. “She said it got on to her nerves--'rum­blin' like.'”

I gazed up­on him in silent sym­pa­thy as we dined on cold roast beef, stuffed olives, and ice cream.

“This is se­ri­ous,” my host ob­served as we sat over our cof­fee and cigars af­ter the repast. “That wom­an was the on­ly de­cent cook we've man­aged to se­cure in sev­en years, and, by Jin­go, the minute she gets on to my taste the or­gan gets on to her nerves and she de­parts!”

“One must eat,” I ob­served.

“That's just it,” said Car­son. “If it comes to a ques­tion of cook or or­gan the or­gan will have to go. She was right about it, though. The or­gan does rum­ble like the dick­ens. Some of the bass notes make the house buzz like an ocean-​steam­er blow­ing off steam.” It was a pic­turesque de­scrip­tion, for I had no­ticed at times that when the or­gan was be­ing made to shriek for­tis­si­mo ev­ery bit of pan­elling in the house seemed to rat­tle, and if a huge boil­er of some sort suf­fer­ing from in­ter­nal dis­tur­bance had been growl­ing down in the cel­lar, the re­sult would have been quite sim­ilar.

“It may work out all right in time,” Car­son said. “The thing is new yet, and you can't ex­pect it to be mel­low all at once. What I'm afraid of, apart from the in­abil­ity of our cook to stand the rack­et, is that this quiv­er­ing will struc­tural­ly weak­en the house. What do you think?”

“Oh, I don't know,” I said. “Some of the wain­scot pan­els rat­tle a bit, but I imag­ine the house will stand it un­less you go in too much for Wag­ner. 'Tannhaeuser' or 'Siegfried' might shake a few beams loose, but lighter mu­sic, I think, can be in­dulged in with im­puni­ty.”

Time did not serve, as Car­son had hoped, to mel­low things. In­deed, the suc­ceed­ing weeks brought more trou­ble, and most of it came through the or­gan. Some of the rat­tling pan­els, in spite of ev­ery ef­fort to make them fast, rat­tled the more. One night when the ser­vants were alone in the house, of its own vo­li­tion the or­gan sent forth, to break the still hours, a blood-​cur­dling bas­so-​pro­fun­do groan that sug­gest­ed ghosts to their su­per­sti­tious minds. The house­maid came to re­gard the in­stru­ment as some­thing un­can­ny, and, even as the cook had done be­fore her, shook the dust of the house of Car­son from her feet.

Then a rat crawled in­to one of the pipes--Car­son was un­able to as­cer­tain which--and died there, with re­sults that baf­fle de­scrip­tion. I doubt if Wag­ner him­self could have ex­pressed the sit­ua­tion in his most in­spired mo­ments. Still Car­son was philo­soph­ical.

“I'll play a re­quiem to the ro­dent,” he said, “that will make him turn over in his grave, wher­ev­er that in­ter­est­ing spot may be.”

This he did, and the ef­fect was su­perb, and no doubt the de­ceased did turn over in his grave, for the im­pro­vi­sa­tion called in­to play ev­ery pipe on the whole in­stru­ment. How­ev­er, I could see that this con­stant pelt­ing at the hands of an un­kind fate through the medi­um of his most cher­ished pos­ses­sion was hav­ing its ef­fect up­on Car­son's hith­er­to im­preg­nable phi­los­ophy. When he spoke of the or­gan it was with a tone of sup­pressed ir­ri­ta­tion which bod­ed ill, and fi­nal­ly I was not sur­prised to hear that he had of­fered to give the or­gan away.

“Af­ter all,” he said, “I made a mis­take--fly­ing so high. A man doesn't want a church-​or­gan in his house any more than he wants an ele­phant for a lap-​dog. I've of­fered it to the Uni­tar­ian Church.”

I felt a lit­tle hurt about this, for my own church was bad­ly in need of an in­stru­ment of that na­ture, but I said noth­ing, and con­sid­er­ing the amount of trou­ble the or­gan had giv­en I got over my re­gret when I re­al­ized that the Uni­tar­ian Church, and not mine, was short­ly to have it. In this, how­ev­er, I was mis­tak­en, for, af­ter due de­lib­er­ation, the Uni­tar­ians de­cid­ed that the or­gan was so very large that they'd have to build a new church to go with it, and so de­clined it with thanks.

Car­son bit his lip and then of­fered it to us. “Don't seem to be able to give it away,” he said. “But I'll try again. You tell your vestry that if they want it they can have it. I'll take it out and put it in the barn up in the hay-​loft. They can take it or leave it. It will cost them cartage and the ex­pense of putting it up.”

I thanked him, and joy­ous­ly re­ferred the mat­ter to the vestry. At first the mem­bers of that body were as pleased as I was, but af­ter a few min­utes of ju­bi­la­tion the Chair­man of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee asked; “How much will it cost to get this thing in­to shape?”

No­body knew, and fi­nal­ly the ac­cep­tance of the gift was re­ferred to a com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of the Chair­man of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, the Chair­man of the Mu­sic Com­mit­tee, and my­self, with full pow­er to act.

In­quiry showed that the cost of ev­ery item in con­nec­tion with the ac­cep­tance of the gift would amount to about a thou­sand dol­lars, and we called up­on Car­son to com­plete the ar­range­ment. He re­ceived us cor­dial­ly. We thanked him for his gen­eros­ity, and were about to ac­cept the gift fi­nal­ly, when the Chair­man of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee said:

“It is very good of you, Mr. Car­son, to give us this or­gan. Heav­en knows we need it, but it will cost us about a thou­sand dol­lars to put it in.”

“So I judged,” said Car­son. “But when it is in you'll have a thir­ty-​five-​hun­dred-​dol­lar or­gan.”

“Splen­did!” ejac­ulat­ed the Chair­man of the Mu­sic Com­mit­tee.

“The great dif­fi­cul­ty that now con­fronts us,” said the fi­nancier, “is as to how we shall raise that mon­ey. The church is very poor.”

“I pre­sume it is a good deal of a prob­lem in these times,” ac­qui­esced Car­son. “Ah--”

“It's a most baf­fling one,” con­tin­ued the fi­nancier. “I sup­pose, Mr. Car­son,” he added, “that if we do put it in and pass around a sub­scrip­tion pa­per, we can count on you for--say two hun­dred and fifty dol­lars?”

I stood aghast, for I saw the thread of Car­son's phi­los­ophy snap.

“What?” he said, with an ef­fort to con­trol him­self.

“I say I sup­pose we can count on you for a sub­scrip­tion of two hun­dred and fifty dol­lars,” re­peat­ed the fi­nancier.

There was a pause that seemed an eter­ni­ty in pass­ing. Car­son's face worked con­vul­sive­ly, and the seem­ing com­pla­cen­cy of the Chair­man of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee gave place to ner­vous ap­pre­hen­sion as he watched the col­or surge through the cheeks and tem­ples of our host.

He thought Car­son was about to have a stroke of apoplexy.

I tried to think of some­thing to say that might re­lieve the strain, but it wouldn't come, and on the whole I rather en­joyed the spec­ta­cle of the strong philoso­pher strug­gling with in­cli­na­tion, and I think the philoso­pher might have con­quered had not the Chair­man of the Mu­sic Com­mit­tee bro­ken in joc­ular­ly with:

“Un­less he choos­es to make it five hun­dred dol­lars, eh?” And he grinned mad­den­ing­ly as he added: “If you'll give five hun­dred dol­lars we'll put a brass plate on it and call it 'The Car­son Memo­ri­al,' eh? Ha--ha--ha.”

Car­son rose from his seat, walked in­to the hall and put on his hat.

“Mr.--ah--Blank,” said he to the fi­nancier, “would you and Mr. Hicks mind walk­ing down to the church with me?”

“Say, he's go­ing to put it in for us!” whis­pered Hicks, the Chair­man of the Mu­sic Com­mit­tee, rub­bing his hands glee­ful­ly.

“Don't you want me, Car­son?” I asked, ris­ing.

“No--you stay here!” he replied, short­ly.

And then the three went out, while I lit a cigar and pot­tered about Car­son's li­brary. In half an hour he re­turned alone. His face was red and his hand trem­bled slight­ly, but oth­er­wise he had re­gained his com­po­sure.

“Well?” said I.

“Well, I'm go­ing to put it up,” said he.

“Now--see here, Car­son,” I re­mon­strat­ed. It seemed so like a rank im­po­si­tion on his gen­eros­ity. To give the or­gan was enough, with­out putting him to the ex­pense of erect­ing it.

“Don't in­ter­rupt,” said he. “I'm not go­ing to put it up in the or­gan-​loft, as you sup­pose, but in a place where it is like­ly to be quite as much ap­pre­ci­at­ed.”

“And that?” I asked.

“In the hay-​loft,” he replied.

“I don't blame you,” said I, af­ter a pause.

“Nei­ther do I,” said he.

“But why did you go down to the church?” I asked.

“Well,” he ex­plained, chuck­ling in spite of him­self. “It was this way. My grand­fa­ther, I have been told, used to be able to ex­press him­self pro­fane­ly with­out us­ing a pro­fane word, but I can't, and there were one or two things I want­ed to say to those men that wouldn't go well with the dec­ora­tions of my house, and which couldn't very well be said to a guest in my house.”

“But, man alive, you didn't go to the church to do your swear­ing?”

“No,” he an­swered. “I did it on the way down; and,” he added, en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, “I did it ex­ceed­ing well.”

“But why the church?” I per­sist­ed.

“I thought af­ter what I had to say to them,” said he, “that they might need a lit­tle re­li­gious con­so­la­tion.”

And with that the sub­ject was dropped.

The or­gan, as Car­son threat­ened, was trans­ferred to the hay-​loft and not to the church, and as for the two Chair­men, they have sev­er­al times ex­pressed them­selves to the ef­fect that Car­son is a very ir­ri­ta­ble, not to say pro­fane, per­son.

But I am still in­clined to think him a philoso­pher. Un­der the provo­ca­tion any man of a less philo­soph­ical tem­per­ament might have for­got­ten the laws of hos­pi­tal­ity and cursed his of­fend­ing guests in his own house.

THE PLOT THAT FAILED

Among the most promis­ing res­idents of Dum­fries Cor­ners some ten years ago was a cer­tain Mr. Richard Part­ing­ton Smithers, whose bril­liant de­but and equal­ly sud­den ex­tin­guish­ment in the field of lit­er­ary en­deav­or have giv­en rise from time to time to no lit­tle dis­cus­sion. He was young, very young, in­deed, at the time of his great lit­er­ary suc­cess, and his friends and neigh­bors proph­esied great things for him. Yet noth­ing has since come from his pen, and many have won­dered why.

Thanks to Mr. Smithers him­self I am en­abled to make pub­lic the sto­ry of his sud­den with­draw­al from the ranks of the im­mor­tals when on the very thresh­old of the tem­ple of fame.

Ten years have changed his point of view ma­te­ri­al­ly, and an ex­pe­ri­ence that once seemed tragedy to him is now in his eyes suf­fi­cient­ly tinged with com­edy, and his own po­si­tion among us is so se­cure that he is will­ing that the sto­ry of his fail­ure should go forth.

Af­ter try­ing many pro­fes­sions Smithers had be­come a man of schemes. He de­vised plans that should en­rich oth­er peo­ple. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, he sold these to oth­er peo­ple on a roy­al­ty ba­sis, and so failed to grow rich him­self. If he had on­ly sold his plans out­right and col­lect­ed on the spot he might some­time have made some­thing; but this he did not do, and as a con­se­quence he rarely made any­thing that was at all con­sid­er­able, and fi­nal­ly, to keep the wolf out of his din­ing-​room, he was forced to take up po­et­ry, that be­ing in his es­ti­ma­tion the last as well as the eas­iest re­source of a well-​or­dered cit­izen.

“I al­ways threat­ened to take up po­et­ry when all else had failed me,” he said to him­self; “there­fore I will now pro­ceed to take up po­et­ry. Writ­ing is pure­ly man­ual la­bor, any­how. Giv­en a pad, a pen­cil, and per­se­ver­ance--three very im­por­tant p's--and I can pro­duce a fourth, a po­em, in short or­der. Sor­ry I didn't get to the end of my oth­er ropes be­fore, now that I think of it.”

And so he sat down and took up po­et­ry.

He put it down again, how­ev­er, very quick­ly.

“Dear me!” he ejac­ulat­ed. "Now, who'd have thought that? Here I have the pen­cil and the pad and the per­se­ver­ance, but I'm hanged if the po­em is quite as easy as I had sup­posed. These lit­tle con­ceits aren't so easy to write, af­ter all, even when they con­tain no ideas. Of course, it isn't hard to say:

"'Sweet month of May, time of the vi­olet wild, The dan­de­lion gold­en, and the mild Ethe­re­al sweet­ness of the blos­som­ing trees, The soft sug­gest­ed calor of the breeze, The ru­by-​breast­ed robin on the lawn, The thrush­es pip­ing sweet­ly at the dawn, The gen­tly splash­ing wa­ters by the weir, The rose- and lilac-​laden at­mo­sphere'--

"be­cause, af­ter all, it's noth­ing but a cat­alogue of the spe­cial­ties of May; but how the dick­ens to wind the thing up is what puz­zles me. It's too beau­ti­ful and tru­ly po­et­ic to be spoiled by a com­plet­ing cou­plet like:

"'And in the dis­tant dam the croak­ing frog Com­pletes, O May, thy won­drous cat­alogue.'

“No­body would take a thing like that--and pay for it; but what else can be said? What do the vi­olets wild, the dan­de­lion, the ru­by-​breast­ed robin, and the lilac-​laden at­mo­sphere and oth­er fea­tures all do, I'd like to know? What one of many verbs--oh, tut! Po­et­ry very ev­ident­ly is not in my line, af­ter all. I'll turn the vials of my vo­cab­ulary up­on es­say-​writ­ing.”

Which Part­ing­ton, as his friends called him, pro­ceed­ed at once to do. He ap­plied him­self close­ly to his desk for one whole morn­ing, and wrote a very long pa­per on “The Ten­den­cy of the Mid­dle Ages To­wards Ar­ti­fi­cial­ism.” Hard­ly one of the fif­teen thou­sand words em­ployed by him in the con­struc­tion of this pa­per held few­er than five syl­la­bles, and one or two of them got up as high as ten, a fact which led Part­ing­ton to think that the ed­itor of the _South Amer­ican Quar­ter­ly Re­view_ ought at least to have the re­fusal of it. Ap­par­ent­ly the ed­itor of the _South Amer­ican Quar­ter­ly Re­view_ was on­ly too ea­ger to have the re­fusal of it, be­cause he re­fused it, or so Part­ing­ton ob­served in con­fi­dence to an ac­quain­tance, in less time than it could pos­si­bly have tak­en him to read it. Af­ter that the es­say be­came emu­lous of men like Stan­ley and Joe Cook. It be­came a great trav­eller, but nev­er failed to get back in safe­ty to its fond par­ent, Richard Part­ing­ton Smithers, as our hero now called him­self. Fi­nal­ly, Part­ing­ton did man­age to re­al­ize some­thing on his es­say--that is to say, in­di­rect­ly--for af­ter “The Ten­den­cy of the Mid­dle Ages To­wards Ar­ti­fi­cial­ism” had gone the rounds of all the re­views, month­lies, dailies, and week­lies in the coun­try, its au­thor pi­geon-​holed it, and, string­ing to­geth­er the print­ed slips it had brought back to him up­on the var­ious oc­ca­sions of its re­turn, he sent these un­der the head of “How Ed­itors Re­ject” to an evening jour­nal in Boston, whose read­ers could know noth­ing of the sub­ject, for rea­sons that are fa­mil­iar to those who are ac­quaint­ed with Amer­ican let­ters. For this he not on­ly re­ceived the ed­itor's thanks, but a six months' sub­scrip­tion to the jour­nal in ques­tion--the lat­ter of which was use­ful, since ev­ery night, ex­clud­ing Sun­days, its columns con­tained much valu­able in­for­ma­tion on such sub­jects as “How to Live on Fifty Dol­lars a Year,” “How to Knit an Afghan with One Nee­dle,” and “How Not to Be­come a Nov­el­ist.”

Dis­cour­aged by the fate of his es­say, Part­ing­ton en­deav­ored to get a po­si­tion on a rail­way some­where as a con­duc­tor or brake­man; but fail­ing in this, he re­turned once more to his writ­ing-​ta­ble and wrote a nov­el. This was the hard­est work he had ev­er at­tempt­ed. It took him quite a week to think his sto­ry out and put it to­geth­er; but when he had it done he was glad he had stuck con­sci­en­tious­ly to it, for the re­sults re­al­ly seemed good to him. The book was charm­ing­ly writ­ten, he thought; so charm­ing, in fact, that he did not think it nec­es­sary to have a type-​writ­ten copy made of it be­fore send­ing it out to the pub­lish­ers. Pos­si­bly this was a mis­take. For a time Part­ing­ton re­al­ly be­lieved it was a mis­take, be­cause the pub­lish­er who saw it first re­turned it with­out com­ment, prej­udiced against it, no doubt, by the fact that it came to him in the au­thor's au­to­graph. The sec­ond pub­lish­er was not so rude. He said he would print it if Part­ing­ton would ad­vance one thou­sand dol­lars to pro­tect him against loss. The third pub­lish­er ev­ident­ly thought bet­ter of the book, for he on­ly de­mand­ed pro­tec­tion to the amount of sev­en hun­dred and fifty dol­lars, which, of course, Part­ing­ton could not pay; and in con­se­quence _False but Fair_ nev­er saw the light of day as a pub­lished book.

“Is it re­ject­ed be­cause of its length, its breadth, or what?” he had asked the last pub­lish­er who had turned his back on the book.

“Well, to tell you the truth, Mr. Smithers,” the pub­lish­er had an­swered, “all that our read­ers had to say about it--and the three who read it agreed unan­imous­ly--was that the book is im­ma­ture. You do not write like an adult.”

“Thanks,” said Part­ing­ton, as he bowed him­self out. “If that's the truth, I'll try writ­ing for ju­ve­niles. I'll sit right down to-​night and knock off a short sto­ry about 'Tom­my and the Huck­le­ber­ry-​tree.' I don't know whether huck­le­ber­ries grow on trees or on huck­les, but that will make the tale all the more in­ter­est­ing. If they don't grow on trees peo­ple will re­gard the sto­ry as ro­mance. If they do grow on trees it will be re­al­ism.”

True to his promise, that night Part­ing­ton did write a sto­ry, and it was, as he had said it should be, about “Tom­my and the Huck­le­ber­ry-​tree”; and so amus­ing did it ap­pear to the ed­itor of that em­inent ju­ve­nile pe­ri­od­ical, _Nurs­ery Days_, be­cause of what he sup­posed was the au­thor's stud­ied ig­no­rance on the sub­ject of huck­le­ber­ries, that it was ac­cept­ed in­stan­ter, and the name of Richard Part­ing­ton Smithers short­ly ap­peared in all the glo­ry of type.

Part­ing­ton walked on air for at least a week af­ter his ef­fu­sion ap­peared in print. He had vi­sions night and day in which he seemed to see him­self the cen­tre of the lit­er­ary cir­cle, and as he prom­enad­ed the av­enue in the af­ter­noons he felt al­most in­clined to stop peo­ple who passed him by to tell them who he was, and thus en­able them to feast their eyes on one whose name would short­ly be­come a house­hold word. All rea­son­able young au­thors feel this way af­ter their first draught at the soul-​sat­is­fy­ing spring of pub­lic­ity. It is on­ly that pre­pos­ter­ous young per­son who was born tired who fails to ex­pe­ri­ence the sen­sa­tions that were Part­ing­ton's that week; and at the end of the week, again like the rea­son­able young au­thor, he be­gan to re­al­ize that im­mor­tal­ity could not be gained by one sto­ry treat­ing of a fic­ti­tious Tom­my and an imag­inary huck­le­ber­ry-​tree, and so he sat him­self down at his desk once more, re­solved this time to clinch him­self, as it were, in the pub­lic mind, with a tale of “Jim­mie and the Straw­ber­ry-​mine.” This sto­ry did not come as eas­ily as the oth­er. In fact, Part­ing­ton found it im­pos­si­ble to write more than a third of the sec­ond tale that night. He couldn't bring his mind down to it ex­act­ly, prob­ably be­cause his mind had been soar­ing so high since the pub­li­ca­tion of his first ef­fu­sion. For di­ver­sion as much as for any­thing else dur­ing a lull in his flow of lan­guage he penned a short let­ter to the ed­itor of _Nurs­ery Days_, and an­nounced his in­ten­tion to send the sto­ry of “Jim­mie and the Straw­ber­ry-​mine” to him short­ly--which was un­for­tu­nate. If he had fin­ished the sto­ry first and then sent it, it might have been good enough to con­vince the ed­itor against his judg­ment that he ought to have it. A con­crete sto­ry can of­ten ac­com­plish more than an ab­stract idea. In this event it could not have ac­com­plished less, any­how, for the ed­itor prompt­ly replied that he did not care for a sec­ond sto­ry of that na­ture. There was no par­tic­ular ev­idence in hand, he said, that the chil­dren liked sto­ries of that kind par­tic­ular­ly, adding that the first was on­ly an ex­per­iment that it was not nec­es­sary to re­peat, and so on; po­lite, but un­mis­tak­ably vale­dic­to­ry.

“No ev­idence in hand that they are liked, eh? Well, how on earth, I won­der,” Part­ing­ton said, an­gri­ly, to him­self, “do they ev­er find ev­idence that things are liked? Do they go about ask­ing sub­scribers, or what?”

And then he picked up the is­sue of _Nurs­ery Days_ that had start­ed him along on his way to im­mor­tal­ity, to con­sole him­self, at all events, with the sight of his pub­lished sto­ry. In turn­ing over the leaves of the pe­ri­od­ical his eye fell up­on a page across the top of which ran a high­ly or­nate cut which in­di­cat­ed that there was print­ed the “Post-​of­fice De­part­ment of _Nurs­ery Days_,” on pe­rus­ing which Part­ing­ton found a num­ber of com­mu­ni­ca­tions and ed­ito­ri­al re­spons­es like these:

I.

"DEAR POST­MAS­TER,--I have been tak­ing _Nurs­ery Days_ since Christ­mas, so I thought I would write you a let­ter. My birth­day came a week ago Thurs­day. I re­ceived a watch and chain, a glove-​but­ton­er, a penknife, and a set of ivory jack­straws. We have a cat at home whose name is Rumpel­stiltzken. He is very sleepy, and sleeps all day. He al­ways picks out the most com­fort­able chair, and then feels very much in­jured if we turn him out. I like Bo­li­var Wig­gins's sto­ry in your last pa­per very much. Are you go­ing to have any more sto­ries by Bo­li­var Wig­gins?

“Your lit­tle friend, ”HE­LEN CHECKER­BY, aged sev­en.

“[We hope soon to have a new sto­ry from Mr. Wig­gins, He­len. We wish we could see your cat. He seems a very sen­si­ble cat.--ED­ITOR _Nurs­ery Days_.]”

II.

"CANA­DA.

I am a lit­tle girl near­ly ten years old, and as I like your pa­per very much I thought you would like a let­ter from me. Here is a cow's head I drew. It is not very good, but I want­ed to see if I would get a prize or not. I have two lit­tle sis­ters; their names are Jen­nie and Fan­ny. I hope I will see my let­ter in print. The sto­ries I like best are Bo­li­var Wig­gins's sto­ry about 'Solemn So­phy' and his oth­er one about 'Bertie's Bal­loon.' Have you any more sto­ries by him? I must close now, so good-​bye.

"LIL­LIAN JAMES.

“[Sev­er­al, Lil­lian. Your cow is beau­ti­ful, and per­haps some day it will ap­pear in this col­umn. Watch care­ful­ly, and maybe you will see it.--ED­ITOR _Nurs­ery Days_.]”

“Ah!” said Part­ing­ton, soft­ly, as he read these ef­fu­sions. “That is why Bo­li­var Wig­gins is per­mit­ted to cov­er so much space, eh? The chil­dren like his sto­ries well enough to write let­ters about him--or per­haps Bo­li­var him­self--ah!”

The sec­ond “ah” ut­tered by Part­ing­ton in­di­cat­ed that a thought had flashed across his mind--a thought not par­tic­ular­ly com­pli­men­ta­ry to Bo­li­var Wig­gins.

“Per­haps,” he said, slow­ly, “Bo­li­var writes these let­ters to the ed­itor him­self--and if Bo­li­var, why not I?”

It was a tempt­ing--alas, too tempt­ing--op­por­tu­ni­ty to sup­ply the ed­itor of _Nurs­ery Days_ with the need­ed ev­idence that sto­ries of the “Tom­my and the Huck­le­ber­ry-​tree” or­der were the most pop­ular lit­er­ary nov­el­ty of the day, and to it, in a mo­ment of weak­ness, Part­ing­ton suc­cumbed. I re­gret to have to record the fact that he passed the bal­ance of the night writ­ing let­ters from fic­ti­tious “Sal­lies, aged six,” “War­ry and Georgie, twins, aged twelve,” and oth­ers dwelling in wide­ly sep­arat­ed sec­tions of the coun­try, to the num­ber of at least two dozen, all of which, be­ing an ex­pert pen­man, Part­ing­ton wrote in a di­ver­si­ty of ju­ve­nile hands that was wor­thy of a bet­ter cause. Here are two sam­ples of the let­ters he wrote that night:

I.

"NOR­WICH, CON­NECTI­CUT.

"I have tak­en the _Nurs­ery Days_ for one year, and think it is a very nice pa­per. For pets I have two cats, named La­dy Tomp­kins and Jimpsey. I have tried to solve the 'Caramel Puz­zle,' but think one an­swer is wrong. I go to school, and there are forty-​four schol­ars in my room. My lit­tle kit­ty Jimpsey sleeps all day long, and at night she is play­ful. She wakes me up in the morn­ing, and then waits till I get up. Who is Mr. Smithers who wrote that beau­ti­ful sto­ry about 'Tom­my and the Huck­le­ber­ry-​tree'? Ev­ery­body of all ages, from ba­by to my grand­moth­er, likes it and hopes you will print more by that au­thor.

“SARAH WIN­KLE­TOP.”

II.

"YONKERS, N. Y.

“Our Un­cle Willie in New York sends us _Nurs­ery Days_ ev­ery week. We like it im­mense­ly, and ev­ery one tries to get the first read­ing of it. ”Tom­my and the Huck­le­ber­ry-​tree" is a splen­did sto­ry. Pa­pa bought six copies of _Nurs­ery Days_ with that in it to send to my lit­tle cousins in Eng­land.

“JIM­MIE CON­WAY RHODES.”

Oth­ers were more lauda­to­ry of Part­ing­ton's sto­ry, some less so, but each de­mand­ed more of his work.

These writ­ten, Part­ing­ton made ar­range­ments to have them post­ed from the var­ious towns where­in they were os­ten­si­bly writ­ten, and then, when they had been post­ed, he chuck­led slight­ly and sat down to await de­vel­op­ments.

It took a tri­fle over one week for de­vel­op­ments to de­vel­op, and then they de­vel­oped rapid­ly. Just eight days af­ter his con­cep­tion of this mag­nif­icent scheme the post­man whis­tled at Part­ing­ton's door and left this note:

“OF­FICE OF NURS­ERY DAYS, ”NEW YORK, _March_ 16, 1889.

"_Richard Part­ing­ton Smithers, Esq_.:

"DEAR SIR,--Can you call up­on me some af­ter­noon this week? Yours tru­ly,

“THOMAS JACK­SON TOR­PY­HUE, ”Ed­itor _Nurs­ery Days_."

“The bait is good, and I'll land the fish at once,” said Part­ing­ton, his face wreath­ing with smiles. “I'll call up­on Mr. Thomas Jack­son Tor­py­hue.”

And call he did. Two hours lat­er he en­tered the sanc­tum of the ed­itor of _Nurs­ery Days_.

“Good-​af­ter­noon,” he said, as he sat down at the ed­itor's side.

“Good-​af­ter­noon, Mr. Smithers,” said Mr. Tor­py­hue. “I'm very glad to see you.”

“I thought you'd be,” be­gan Part­ing­ton, for­get­ting him­self for a mo­ment in his tri­umph. “If that wasn't ev­idence enough that I--ah--oh--er--ah! Ahem! Why, cer­tain­ly,” he con­tin­ued, sud­den­ly re­call­ing the fact that as yet he could prop­er­ly have no knowl­edge of the ev­idence in ques­tion.

The ed­itor threw his head back and laughed, and Part­ing­ton forced him­self to join him, ner­vous­ly with­al.

“You have heard of the ev­idence have you?” asked Mr. Tor­py­hue.

Part­ing­ton gasped faint­ly, and said he thought not.

“Well, it's very strange, Mr. Smithers,” said Mr. Tor­py­hue, “but do you know that you have de­vel­oped in­to one of our most pop­ular au­thors?”

“In­deed?” queried Part­ing­ton, pulling him­self to­geth­er and try­ing to ap­pear grat­ified.

“Yes, sir. Here is a bun­dle of twen­ty-​four let­ters all re­ceived with­in three days. One of the let­ters calls you the best writ­er of short sto­ries of the day. An­oth­er, from Cana­da, writ­ten by a par­ent, says that you have writ­ten one of the most de­light­ful bits of ju­ve­nile hu­mor that he has seen in forty years.”

“How ex­treme­ly flat­ter­ing!” said Part­ing­ton, faint­ly.

“Yes, ex­treme­ly,” as­sent­ed the ed­itor, dry­ly. “And now, Mr. Smithers, I'm go­ing to do for you what this pa­per has nev­er done even to its most pop­ular au­thor in the past.”

“Now, my dear Mr. Tor­py­hue,” be­gan Part­ing­ton, gain­ing courage, “I beg you not to feel called up­on to dis­crim­inate against your old fa­vorites in my fa­vor. Your present rates of pay­ment are en­tire­ly sat­is­fac--”

“You mis­un­der­stand me, Mr. Smithers,” in­ter­rupt­ed Mr. Tor­py­hue. “What I'm go­ing to do to you that I nev­er be­fore have done even to our most pop­ular au­thor is to re­turn to you at once ev­ery one of those high­ly en­ter­tain­ing manuscripts you have fa­vored us with--we re­ceive so many re­al let­ters from re­al chil­dren that, of course, we can­not af­ford to buy from you pure­ly fic­ti­tious ones. These of yours are ex­cel­lent­ly well done, but you see my point. One does not pay for things that can be had gratis. Per­haps lat­er you will try us with some­thing else,” he added, with a grin.

Here Mr. Tor­py­hue paused, and Part­ing­ton tried to think of some­thing to say. It was all so sud­den, how­ev­er, and, in spite of his mis­giv­ings, so ex­treme­ly un­ex­pect­ed, that his breath was tak­en away. He had nei­ther breath nor pres­ence of mind enough left even to de­ny the al­le­ga­tion, and when he did re­cov­er his breath he found him­self walk­ing de­ject­ed­ly down the stairs of the _Nurs­ery Days_ build­ing with his bun­dle of en­co­mia in his hands.

“I won­der how he caught on!” he groaned, as half an hour lat­er he en­tered his room and threw him­self face down­ward on his couch. In­ves­ti­ga­tion af­ter din­ner gave him a clue.

Not one of the let­ters had been mailed from the town in which it had been dat­ed. The en­ve­lope con­tain­ing the Wash­ing­ton let­ter bore the Boston post­mark. The Brook­lyn mis­sive had been sent from Chica­go, that from Nor­wich had been post­ed at Yonkers, and vice ver­sa, and so on through the whole list. Each and ev­ery one had, through some evil chance, start­ed wrong. In ad­di­tion to this, Part­ing­ton found that in a for­get­ful mo­ment he had ap­pend­ed to two of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions an ed­ito­ri­al re­sponse promis­ing more work from Mr. Smithers.

“I must have been mud­dled by my suc­cess with 'Tom­my and the Huck­le­ber­ry-​tree,'” he sighed, as he cast the doc­uments in­to the fire. “If that's the ef­fect lit­er­ary hon­ors have on me I'd bet­ter quit the pro­fes­sion, which leaves on­ly two things to be done. I shall have to com­mit one of two crimes--sui­cide or mat­ri­mo­ny. The ques­tion now is, which?”

He thought deeply for a mo­ment, and then, putting on his hat and over-​coat, he turned off the gas and left the room.

“I'll call on Har­ris, bor­row a cent from him, and let the toss de­cide,” he said, as he passed out in­to the night.

Is it re­al­ly any won­der that Mr. Smithers has giv­en up lit­er­ature?

THE BASE IN­GRAT­ITUDE OF BARKIS, M.D.

The time has ar­rived when it is pos­si­bly prop­er that I should make a note of the base in­grat­itude of Barkis, M.D. I have hes­itat­ed to do this hith­er­to for sev­er­al rea­sons, any one of which would prove a valid ex­cuse for my not do­ing so. To be­gin with, I have known Barkis ev­er since he was a ba­by. I have tossed him in the air, to his own de­light and to the con­ster­na­tion of his moth­er, who feared lest I should fail to catch him on his way down, or that I should un­der­es­ti­mate the dis­tance be­tween the top of his head and the ceil­ing on his way up. Lat­er I have held him on my knee and told him sto­ries of an el­evat­ing na­ture--most­ly of my own com­po­si­tion--and have af­ter­wards put these down up­on pa­per and sold them to syn­di­cates at great prof­it. So that, in a sense, I am be­hold­en to Barkis for some mea­sure of my pros­per­ity. Then, when Barkis grew old­er, I taught him the most ap­proved meth­ods of burn­ing his fin­gers on the Fourth of Ju­ly, and when he went to col­lege I am con­vinced that he gained ma­te­ri­al aid from me in that I loaned him my col­lege scrap-​books, which con­tained, among oth­er things, a large num­ber of ex­am­ina­tion pa­pers which I mar­vel great­ly to-​day that I was ev­er able suc­cess­ful­ly to pass, and which gave to him some hint as to the or­deal he was about to go through. In his younger pro­fes­sion­al days, al­so, I have been Barkis's friend, and have called him up, to min­is­ter to a pain I nev­er had, at four o'clock in the morn­ing, sim­ply be­cause I had rea­son to be­lieve that he need­ed four or five dol­lars to car­ry him through the en­su­ing hours of the day.

Quo­ta­tion books have told us that in love, as well as in war, all is fair, and if this be true Barkis's in­grat­itude, the nar­ra­tion of which can­not now give pain to any one, be­comes, af­ter all, noth­ing more than a ve­nial of­fence. I do not place much re­liance up­on the ethics of quo­ta­tion books gen­er­al­ly, but when I re­mem­ber my own young days, and the things I did to dis­cred­it the oth­er fel­low in that lit­tle af­fair which has brought so much hap­pi­ness in­to my own life, I am in­clined to nail my flag to the mast­head in de­fence of the prin­ci­ple that lovers can do no wrong. It is no or­di­nary stake that a lover plays for, and if he stacks the cards, and in oth­er ways turns his back up­on the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of his life, blame­wor­thy as he may be, I shall not blame him, but shall in­cline rather to­wards ap­plause.

On the oth­er hand, some­thing is due to the young ladies in the case, and as much for their sake as for any oth­er rea­son have I set up­on pa­per this nar­ra­tive of the man's in­grat­itude, sim­ply telling the sto­ry and draw­ing no con­clu­sions what­ev­er.

Barkis was not en­dowed with much in the way of world­ly pos­ses­sions. His fa­ther had died when the lad was very young, and had left the boy and his moth­er to strug­gle on alone. But there was that in both of them which en­abled the moth­er to feel that the boy was worth strug­gling for, and the boy at a very ear­ly age to re­al­ize the dif­fi­cul­ties of the strug­gle, and to like the dif­fi­cul­ties be­cause they af­ford­ed him an op­por­tu­ni­ty to help his moth­er ei­ther by not giv­ing her un­nec­es­sary trou­ble or in bring­ing to her ef­forts in their mu­tu­al be­half aid of a very pos­itive kind.

Boys of this kind--and in say­ing this I cast no re­flec­tions what­so­ev­er up­on that ed­ify­ing race of liv­ing crea­tures whom I ad­mire and re­spect more than any oth­er--are so rare that it did not take the neigh­bors of the Barkis fam­ily many days to dis­cov­er that the lit­tle chap was worth watch­ing, and if need be car­ing for in a way which should prove sub­stan­tial. There are so many ways, too, in which one may help a boy with­out im­pair­ing his self-​re­liance that on the whole it was not very dif­fi­cult to as­sist Barkis. So when one of his neigh­bors em­ployed him in his of­fice at a salary of eight dol­lars a week, when oth­er boys re­ceived on­ly four for sim­ilar ser­vice, the lad, in­stead of feel­ing him­self fa­vored, as­sumed an obli­ga­tion and made him­self worth five times as much as the oth­er boys, so that re­al­ly his em­ploy­er, and not he, be­longed to the debtor class.

Some said it was a pity that lit­tle Barkis wast­ed his tal­ents in a re­al es­tate of­fice, but they were the peo­ple who didn't know him. He ex­pend­ed his ner­vous en­er­gy in the re­al es­tate of­fice, but his mind he man­aged to keep free for the night school, and when it came to the ul­ti­mate it was found that lit­tle Barkis had wast­ed noth­ing. He en­tered col­lege when sev­er­al oth­er boys--who had not served in a re­al es­tate of­fice, who had re­ceived diplo­mas from the high-​school, and who had played while he had stud­ied--failed.

That his col­lege days were a tri­al to his moth­er ev­ery one knew. She wished him to keep his end up, and he did--and with­out spend­ing all that his moth­er sent him, ei­ther. The great trou­ble was that at the end of his col­lege course it was un­der­stood that Barkis in­tend­ed study­ing medicine. When that crept out the neigh­bors sighed. They dep­re­cat­ed the re­solve among them­selves, but ap­plaud­ed the boy's in­ten­tion to his face.

“Good for you, Jack!” said one. “You are just the man for a doc­tor, and I'll give you all my busi­ness.”

This man, of course, was a hu­morist.

An­oth­er said: “Jack, you are per­fect­ly right. Re­al es­tate and coal are not for you. Go in for medicine; when my leg is cut off you shall do the cut­ting.”

To avoid de­tails, how­ev­er, some of which would make a sto­ry in them­selves, Jack Barkis went through col­lege, stud­ied medicine, re­ceived his diplo­ma as a full-​fledged M.D., and set­tled down at Dum­fries Cor­ners for prac­tice. And prac­tice did not come! And in­come was not.

It was plain­ly vis­ible to the com­mu­ni­ty that Barkis was hard up, as the say­ing is, and dai­ly grow­ing more so. To make mat­ters worse, it was now im­pos­si­ble to help him as the boy had been helped. He was no longer a child, but a man; and the pleas­ing lit­tle sub­terfuges, which we had em­ployed to in­duce the boy to think he was mak­ing his way on his own stur­dy lit­tle legs, with the man were out of the ques­tion. His cloth­ing grew thread­bare, and there were sto­ries of in­suf­fi­cient nour­ish­ment. As time went on the out­ward and vis­ible signs of his pover­ty in­creased, yet no one could de­vise any plan to help him.

And then came a so­lu­tion, and inas­much as it was brought about by the S.F.M.E., an as­so­ci­ation of a dozen charm­ing young wom­en in the city form­ing the So­ci­ety for Mu­tu­al En­cour­age­ment, or En­joy­ment, or En­dorse­ment, or some­thing else be­gin­ning with E--I nev­er could as­cer­tain def­inite­ly what the E stood for--it would seem as if the young ladies should have re­ceived greater con­sid­er­ation than they did when pros­per­ity knocked at the Doc­tor's door.

It seems that the Doc­tor at­tend­ed a dance one evening in a dress coat, the qual­ity and lack of quan­ti­ty of which were a fla­grant in­di­ca­tion of a sparse, not to say ex­treme­ly needy, wardrobe. All his charm of man­ner, his grace in the dance, his pop­ular­ity, could not blind oth­ers to the fact that he was ill-​dressed, and the girls de­cid­ed that some­thing must be done, and at once.

“We might give a lawn fete for his ben­efit,” one of them sug­gest­ed.

“He isn't a church or a Sun­day-​school,” Miss Daisy Pe­ters re­tort­ed. “Be­sides, I know Jack Barkis well enough to know that he would nev­er ac­cept char­ity from any one. We've got to help him pro­fes­sion­al­ly.”

“We might boy­cott all the fel­lows at dances,” sug­gest­ed Miss Wilbur, “un­less they will pa­tron­ize the Doc­tor. De­cline to dance with them un­less they present a cer­tifi­cate from Jack prov­ing that they are his pa­tients.”

“Humph!” said Miss Pe­ters. “That wouldn't do any good. They are all healthy, and even if they did go to Jack for a pre­scrip­tion the chances are they wouldn't pay him. They haven't much more mon­ey than he has.”

“I am afraid that is true,” as­sent­ed Miss Wilbur. “In­deed, if they have any at all, I can't say that they have giv­en much sign of it this win­ter. The Bach­elors' Cotil­lon fell through for lack of in­ter­est, they said, but I have my doubts on that score. It's my pri­vate opin­ion they weren't will­ing or able to pay for it.”

“Well, I'm sure I don't know what we can do to help Jack. If he had our com­bined pock­et-​mon­ey he'd still be poor,” sighed Miss Pe­ters.

“He couldn't be in­duced to take it un­less he earned it,” said lit­tle Bet­sy Bar­bett. “You all know that.”

“Hur­rah!” cried Miss Pe­ters, clap­ping her hands ec­stat­ical­ly; “I have it! I have it! I have it! We'll put him in the way of earn­ing it.”

And they all put their heads to­geth­er, and the fol­low­ing was the re­sult:

The next day Jack Barkis's tele­phone rang more of­ten in an hour than it had ev­er done be­fore in a month, and ev­ery ring meant a call.

The first call was from Miss Daisy Pe­ters, and he re­spond­ed.

“I'm so sor­ry to send for you--er--Doc­tor,” she said--she had al­ways called him Jack be­fore, but now he had come pro­fes­sion­al­ly--“for--for--Rover, but the poor dog is aw­ful­ly sick to-​day, and Doc­tor Pruyn was out of town. Do you mind?”

“Cer­tain­ly not, Daisy,” he replied, a shade of dis­ap­point­ment on his face. I am in­clined to be­lieve he had hoped to find old Mr. Pe­ters at death's door. “If the dog is sick I can help him. What are his symp­toms?”

And Miss Pe­ters went on to say that her cher­ished Rover, she thought, had malar­ia. He was tired and lazy, when usu­al­ly he ri­valled the cow that jumped over the moon in ac­tiv­ity. She ne­glect­ed to say that she had with her own fair hands giv­en the poor beast a dose of sulphonal the night be­fore--not enough to hurt him, but suf­fi­cient to make him ap­pear tired and sleepy.

“I must see my pa­tient,” said the Doc­tor, cheer­ful­ly. “Will he come if I whis­tle?”

Miss Pe­ters was dis­in­clined to ac­cede to this de­mand. She was be­gin­ning to grow fear­ful that Jack would see through her lit­tle sub­terfuge, and that the ef­forts of the S.F.M.E. would prove fruit­less.

“Oh,” she de­murred, “is that--er--nec­es­sary? Rover isn't a child, you know. He won't stick out his tongue if you tell him to--and, er--I don't think you could tell much from his pulse--and--”

“I'd bet­ter see him, though,” ob­served Jack, qui­et­ly. “I cer­tain­ly can't pre­scribe un­less I do.”

So Rover was brought out, and it was in­deed true that his old-​time ac­tiv­ity had been su­per­seded by a lethar­gy which made the wag­ging of his tail a pos­itive ef­fort. Still, Doc­tor Barkis was equal to the oc­ca­sion, pre­scribed for the dog, and on his books that night wrote down a mod­est item as against Mr. Billing­ton Pe­ters and to his own fi­nan­cial cred­it. Fur­ther­more, he had promised to call again the next day, which meant more prac­tice.

On his re­turn home he found a hur­ry call await­ing him. Miss Bet­sy Bar­bett had dis­lo­cat­ed her wrist. So to the Bar­bett man­sion sped Doc­tor Barkis, and there, sure enough, was Miss Bar­bett ap­par­ent­ly suf­fer­ing great­ly.

“Oh, I am so glad you have come,” she moaned. “It hurts dread­ful­ly, Jack--I mean Doc­tor.”

“I'll fix that in a sec­ond,” said he, and he did, al­though he thought it odd that there were no signs of any in­flam­ma­tion. He was not aware that one of the most cher­ished and fas­ci­nat­ing ac­com­plish­ments of Miss Bar­bett dur­ing her child­hood had been her abil­ity to throw her wrist out of joint. She could throw any of her joints out of place, but she prop­er­ly chose her wrist up­on this oc­ca­sion as be­ing the bet­ter joint to in­trust to a young physi­cian. If Jack had known that un­til his com­ing her wrist had been all right, and that it had not be­come dis­joint­ed un­til he rang the front door bell of the Bar­bett house, he might not have been so pleased as he en­tered the item against Judge Bar­bett in his book, nor would he have won­dered at the lack of in­flam­ma­tion.

So it went. The Hicks's cook was sud­den­ly tak­en ill--Mol­lie Hicks gave her a dol­lar to do it--and Jack was sum­moned. The Tar­letons' coach­man was kept out on a wet night for two hours by Janette Tar­leton, and very prop­er­ly con­tract­ed a cold, for which the young wom­an made her­self re­spon­si­ble, and Doc­tor Barkis was called in. Then the so­ci­ety it­self dis­cov­ered many a case among the wor­thy poor need­ing im­me­di­ate med­ical treat­ment from Barkis, M.D., and, al­though Jack wished to make no charge, in­sist­ed that he should, and threat­ened to em­ploy some one else if he didn't.

By de­grees a prac­tice re­sult­ed from this con­spir­acy of the S.F.M.E., and then a mu­nic­ipal elec­tion came along, and each can­di­date for the May­oral­ty was giv­en qui­et­ly to un­der­stand by par­ties rep­re­sent­ing the S.F.M.E., that un­less Jack Barkis was made health of­fi­cer of the city he'd bet­ter look out for him­self, and while both can­di­dates vowed they had made no pledges, each had sworn ten days be­fore elec­tion-​day by all that was holy that Barkis should have this eigh­teen-​hun­dred-​dol­lar of­fice--and he got it! Young wom­en may not vote, but they have in­flu­ence in small cities.

At the end of the sec­ond year of the S.F.M.E.'s re­solve that Barkis must be cared for he was in re­ceipt of near­ly twen­ty-​eight hun­dred dol­lars a year, could af­ford a gig, and so com­mand a prac­tice; and hav­ing ob­tained his start, his own abil­ities took care of the rest.

And then what did Jack Barkis, M.D., do? When lux­uries be­gan to man­ifest them­selves in his home--in­deed, when he found him­self able to rent a bet­ter one--whom did he ask to share its joys with him?

Miss Daisy Pe­ters, who had dosed her dog that he might prof­it? No, in­deed!

Miss Bet­sy Bar­bett, who dis­fig­ured her fair wrist in his be­half? Alas, no!

Miss Hicks, who had spent a dol­lar to bribe a cook that he might earn two? No, the un­grate­ful wretch!

Any mem­ber of the S.F.M.E.? I re­gret to say not.

He went and mar­ried a girl from Los An­ge­les, whom he met on one of the sum­mer va­ca­tions the S.F.M.E. had put with­in his reach--a girl from whom no por­tion of his mea­sure of pros­per­ity had come.

Such was the in­grat­itude of Barkis. They have nev­er told me so, but I think the S.F.M.E. feel it keen­ly. Barkis I be­lieve to be un­con­scious of it--but then he is in love with Mrs. Barkis, which is prop­er; and as I have al­ready in­di­cat­ed, when a man is in love there are a great many things he does not see--in fact, there is on­ly one thing he does see, and that is Her Majesty, the Queen. I can't blame Barkis, and even though I was aware of the con­spir­acy to make him pros­per­ous, I did not think of the un­grate­ful phase of it all un­til I spoke to Miss Pe­ters about his _fi­ancee_, who had vis­it­ed Dum­fries Cor­ners.

“She's charm­ing,” said I. “Don't you think so?”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Pe­ters, du­bi­ous­ly. “But I don't see why Jack went to Los An­ge­les for a wife.”

“Ah?” said I. “Maybe it was the on­ly place where he could find one.”

“Thank you!” snapped Miss Pe­ters. “For my part, I think the Dum­fries Cor­ners girls are quite as at­trac­tive--ah--Bet­sy Bar­bett for in­stance--or any oth­er girl in Jack's cir­cle.”

“Like your­self?” I smiled.

“My!” she cried. “How can you say such a thing?”

And re­al­ly I was sor­ry I had said it. It seemed so like twit­ting a per­son on facts, when I came to think about it.

THE UTIL­ITAR­IAN MR. CAR­RAWAY

The Christ­mas sea­son was ap­proach­ing, and Mr. Car­raway, who had late­ly be­come some­thing of a philoso­pher, be­gan to think about gifts for his wife and chil­dren. The more he thought of them, the more firm­ly was he con­vinced that there was some­thing rad­ical­ly wrong with the sys­tem of giv­ing that had pre­vailed in past years. He con­jured up vi­sions of the use­less things he had giv­en and re­ceived on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions, and an in­ven­to­ry of his per­son­al re­ceipts at the four cel­ebra­tions lead­ing up to the present dis­closed the fact that he was long on match-​box­es, cigar-​cas­es, and smok­ing-​jack­ets, the last ev­ery one of them too small, with an ap­palling sup­ply of knit­ted and cro­cheted ob­jects, the gifts of his chil­dren, in re­serve. His boot-​clos­et was a per­fect rev­ela­tion of the mis­di­rect­ed Christ­mas en­er­gies of the young, dis­clos­ing, as it al­ways did up­on oc­ca­sions when he was in a great hur­ry, a half-​dozen pairs of worsted slip­pers, which he had re­ceived at Yule­tide, some of them adorned with stags of beads leap­ing over zephyr walls, and oth­ers made in the im­age of cats of ex­traor­di­nary col­or, with yel­low glass eyes set in di­rect­ly over the toe where­on he kept his fa­vorite corn. I am not sure that it was not the step­ping of an awk­ward vis­itor up­on one of these same glass eyes, while these slip­pers for the first time cov­ered his feet, that set Mr. Car­raway to cog­itat­ing up­on the hol­low­ness of “Christ­mas as She is Cel­ebrat­ed.” In­deed, it is my im­pres­sion that at the very mo­ment when that bit of adorn­ment was pressed down up­on Mr. Car­raway's corn he an­nounced rather forcibly his dis­be­lief in the util­ity of any such in­fer­nal Christ­mas present as that. And as time went on, and that of­fend­ing, star­ing slip­per slipped in­to his hand ev­ery time he searched the clos­et in the dark for a left patent-​leather pump, or some oth­er miss­ing bit of foot-​gear, the con­vic­tion grew up­on him that of the great re­forms of which the world stood in cry­ing need, the ref­or­ma­tion of the Christ­mas gift was pos­si­bly the most im­por­tant.

The idea grew to be a ma­nia with him, and he grad­ual­ly de­vel­oped in­to a util­itar­ian of the most pro­nounced type. Noth­ing in the world so suit­ed him as an ob­ject, home­ly or oth­er­wise, that could be used for some­thing; the things that were used for noth­ing had no at­trac­tions for him. Af­ter this he de­vel­oped fur­ther, and dis­cov­ered new us­es for old ob­jects. Mrs. Car­raway's par­lor vas­es were turned in­to re­cep­ta­cles for match­es, or pa­pers, ac­cord­ing to their size. The huge Sat­suma vase be­came a more or less sat­is­fac­to­ry bill-​file; and the cloi­sonne jar, by virtue of its great dura­bil­ity, Mr. Car­raway used as a re­cep­ta­cle for the fam­ily golf-​balls, much to the trep­ida­tion of his good wife, who con­sid­ered that the vase, like some wom­en, had in its beau­ty a suf­fi­cient cause for ex­is­tence, and who would have pre­ferred go­ing with­out golf for­ev­er to the de­struc­tion of her trea­sured bit of bric-​a-​brac.

Mrs. Car­raway did her best to stay the steady ad­vance in util­itar­ian­ism of her hus­band. She could bide with him in most mat­ters. In fact, un­til it came to the use of the cloi­sonne jar for a golf-​ball reser­voir, she con­sid­ered the idea at least harm­less, and was forced to ad­mit that it in­deed held many good points.

“I think it is per­fect­ly prop­er,” she said, “to con­sid­er all things from the point of view of their util­ity. I do not be­lieve in send­ing a ball-​dress to a poor wom­an who is starv­ing or suf­fer­ing for want of coal, but I must say, John, that you car­ry your the­ory too far when you in­sist on us­ing an ob­ject for some pur­pose for which it was man­ifest­ly nev­er in­tend­ed.”

“But who is to say what a thing is man­ifest­ly made for?” de­mand­ed Car­raway. “You don't know, or at least you can't say pos­itive­ly, what one of many pos­si­ble us­es the de­sign­er and mak­er of any ob­ject had in mind when he de­signed and made that es­pe­cial ob­ject. This par­tic­ular vase was fash­ioned by a hea­then. It is beau­ti­ful and grace­ful, but be­yond pro­duc­ing some­thing beau­ti­ful and grace­ful, how can you say what oth­er no­tion that hea­then had as to its pos­si­ble use­ful­ness? He may have made it to hold flow­ers. He may have in­tend­ed it for a wa­ter-​jug. He may have con­sid­ered it a suit­able re­cep­ta­cle in which its fu­ture fa­vored own­er might keep his to­bac­co, or his opi­um, or any one of the thou­sand and one things that you can put in a vase with a hope of get­ting it out again.”

“Well, we know he didn't in­tend it for golf-​balls, any­how,” said Mrs. Car­raway. “For the very sim­ple rea­son that the hea­then don't play golf.”

“They may play some kind of a game which is a hea­then vari­ation of golf,” ob­served Mr. Car­raway, cold­ly.

“That couldn't be,” per­sist­ed Mrs. Car­raway. “judg­ing from the ef­fect of Sun­day golf-​play­ing on church at­ten­dance, I don't think any­thing more com­plete­ly pa­gan than golf could be found. How­ev­er--”

“But the fact re­mains, my dear,” Car­raway in­ter­rupt­ed, “that while we may sur­mise prop­er­ly enough that the orig­inal mak­er of an ob­ject did not in­tend it to be used for cer­tain pur­pos­es, you can­not say pos­itive­ly, be­cause you don't know that your sur­mise is ab­so­lute­ly cor­rect.”

“But I think you can,” said Mrs. Car­raway. “In fact, _I_ will say pos­itive­ly that the man who made our new fry­ing-​pan made it to fry things in, and not to be used in con­nec­tion with a tack-​ham­mer as a din­ner-​gong. I know that the hard­ware peo­ple who man­ufac­tured our clothes-​boil­er, down in the laun­dry, did not de­sign it as a toy bass-​drum for the chil­dren to bang on on the morn­ing of the Fourth of Ju­ly. I would make a solemn af­fi­davit to the fact that the mak­er of a ba­by-​car­riage nev­er dreamed of its pos­si­ble use as an im­promp­tu to­bog­gan for a cou­ple of small boys to coast down­hill on in mid­sum­mer. Yet these things have been used for these var­ious pur­pos­es in our own house­hold ex­pe­ri­ence. A mega­phone can be used as a bee­hive, and a ham­mock can be turned in­to a fly-​net for a horse, but you nev­er think of do­ing so; and, fur­ther­more, you _can_ say pos­itive­ly that while the things may be used for these pur­pos­es, the orig­inal mak­er nev­er, nev­er, nev­er thought of it.”

“Non­sense,” said Car­raway, wilt­ing a lit­tle. “Non­sense. You ar­gue just like a wom­an--”

“I think that was what I was de­signed for,” laughed Mrs. Car­raway. “Of course I do.”

“Oh! but what I mean is that you take ut­ter­ly ridicu­lous and ex­treme cas­es. The things nev­er could hap­pen. Who'd ev­er dream of mak­ing a bee­hive out of a mega­phone?”

“Oh, I think it might oc­cur to the same in­ge­nious mind that dis­cov­ered that a cloi­sonne vase would hold golf-​balls,” smiled Mrs. Car­raway.

Car­raway laughed. “There you go again,” he said. “I won­der why wom­en can't ar­gue with­out be­com­ing ridicu­lous? It would be mighty poor econ­omy to pay $4 for a mega­phone as a sub­sti­tute for a $2 bee­hive.”

“That is true,” said Mrs. Car­raway. “I nev­er thought of that.”

“Of course you didn't,” re­tort­ed Car­raway, tri­umphant­ly. “Of course you didn't; and that's what I mean when I say you ar­gue like a wom­an. You get hold of what seems on the sur­face to be a reg­ular so­lar-​plexus re­tort, and fail to see how it be­comes a boomerang be­fore you can say Jack Robin­son.”

“I sup­pose if I hadn't been wor­ried about the vase I would have thought of it,” said Mrs. Car­raway, meek­ly. “It wor­ries me to see a $150 vase used for a pur­pose that a fifty-​cent cal­ico bag would serve quite as well.”

Car­raway glanced search­ing­ly at his wife.

“Well--ah--hem!” he said. “Quite right, my dear, quite right. I think, on the whole, you would bet­ter get the cal­ico bag.”

For a few days af­ter this lit­tle dis­cus­sion Car­raway was very ret­icent about his util­itar­ian ideas. The more he thought of his wife's re­tort the less se­cure he felt in his own po­si­tion, and he was very sor­ry he had spo­ken about boomerangs and so­lar-​plexus re­torts. But with time he re­cov­ered his equa­nim­ity, and ear­ly in De­cem­ber re­turned to his old ways.

“I've just been up in the at­tic,” he said to his wife one Sun­day af­ter­noon, when he ap­peared on the scene rather dusty of as­pect. “There's a whole lot of use­ful stuff up there go­ing to waste. I found four old beaver hats, any one of which would make a very good waste-​bas­ket for the spare bed­room if it was suit­ably trimmed; and I don't see why you don't take these straw hats of mine and make work-​bas­kets of them.” Here he held out two relics of by­gone fash­ions to his wife. Mrs. Car­raway took them silent­ly. She was so filled with sup­pressed laugh­ter over her hus­band's sug­ges­tions that she hard­ly dared to speak lest she should give way to her mirth, and a man does not gen­er­al­ly ap­pre­ci­ate mirth at his own ex­pense af­ter he has been rum­mag­ing in an at­tic for an hour or more, fill­ing his lungs and cov­er­ing his clothes and hands with dust.

How­ev­er, af­ter a mo­ment she man­aged to blurt out, “Per­haps I can make one of them dain­ty enough to send to your moth­er for her Christ­mas present.”

“I was about to sug­gest that very same thing,” said Car­raway, brush­ing the dust from his sleeve. “Ei­ther you could send it or Mol­lie”--Mol­lie was Mr. Car­raway's small daugh­ter. “I think Mol­lie's grand­moth­er would be more pleased with a gift of that kind than with one of the use­less lit­tle fal­lals that chil­dren give their grand­par­ents on Christ­mas Day. What did she give her last year?”

The ques­tion was op­por­tune, for it gave Mrs. Car­raway a chance to laugh out­right with some oth­er os­ten­si­ble ob­ject than her hus­band. She availed her­self of the chance, threw her head back, and shook con­vul­sive­ly.

“She sent her a ball of shav­ing-​pa­per,” Mrs. Car­raway said.

A faint smile flit­ted over Car­raway's face. “Well, it might have been worse,” he said. “She can use it for curl­ing-​pa­per.” He paused a mo­ment. Then he said: “I want to say to you, my dear, that--ah--I want Christ­mas cel­ebrat­ed this year af­ter my plan of se­lec­tion. In­stead of squan­der­ing our hard-​earned dol­lars on things no sen­si­ble per­son wants and none can use, we will con­sid­er, first of all, prac­ti­cal util­ity.”

“Very well,” sighed Mrs. Car­raway. “I quite agree as far as you and I are con­cerned--but how about the chil­dren? I don't think Tom­mie would feel very hap­py to wake up on Christ­mas morn­ing and find a pair of sus­penders and a new suit of clothes un­der the tree. He needs both, but he wants tin sol­diers. And as for Mol­lie, she ex­pects a doll.”

“Well, I don't wish to be hard on the chil­dren,” said Mr. Car­raway, “but now is the time to be­gin train­ing them. There may be a tem­po­rary dis­ap­point­ment, but in the end they will be hap­pi­er for it. Of course I don't say to give them ne­ces­si­ties of life for Christ­mas, but in se­lect­ing what we do give them, get some­thing use­ful. Dolls and tin sol­diers and toy bal­loons are well enough in their way, but they are ab­so­lute­ly use­less. There­fore, I say, don't give them such things. Sure­ly Mol­lie would be pleased to re­ceive a nice lit­tle fur tip­pet or a muff, and I'll get Tom­mie a hand­some snow-​shov­el, that he can use when he cleans off the paths. He won't mind; it will be a gift worth hav­ing, and by de­grees he'll come to see that the plan of util­ity is a good one.”

Mrs. Car­raway dis­creet­ly held her tongue, al­though she was far from ap­prov­ing Car­raway's course in so far as it af­fect­ed the chil­dren. She tac­it­ly agreed to the propo­si­tion, but there was the light of an idea in her eye.

The days in­ter­ven­ing be­fore Christ­mas passed rapid­ly away, and Christ­mas eve fi­nal­ly came. Tom­mie and Mol­lie were bub­bling over with sup­pressed ex­cite­ment, and fre­quent­ly went off in­to spasms of gig­gles. There was some­thing very fun­ny in the wind ev­ident­ly. Af­ter din­ner the small fam­ily re­paired to the li­brary, where the chil­dren were in the habit of dis­tribut­ing their gifts for their par­ents on the night be­fore Christ­mas. Mrs. Car­raway was beam­ing, and so was Mr. Car­raway. The chil­dren had been in­formed of what they were to ex­pect, and af­ter an hour or two of re­gret, they had put their lit­tle heads to­geth­er, gig­gled a half-​dozen times, and ac­cept­ed the sit­ua­tion.

“Your moth­er has pre­sent­ed me with a ton of coal, chil­dren,” said Car­raway, smil­ing hap­pi­ly. “Now you may think that a fun­ny sort of gift--”

“Yeth, pa­pa,” said Mol­lie.

“Aw­ful fun­ny,” said Tom­mie, wig­gling with glee.

“Well, it does seem so at first, but, now, how much bet­ter to give me that than to present me with some­thing that I could look at for a few days and then would have no fur­ther use for!”

“That's so, pa,” said Mol­lie.

“I guess you're right,” said Tom­mie. “Wat cher got for ma?”

“I have giv­en her a brand-​new set of chi­na for the din­ing-​room,” said Mr. Car­raway.

“And it was just what I need­ed,” said Mrs. Car­raway, hap­pi­ly. “And now, chil­dren, go up-​stairs, and bring down your presents for your fa­ther.”

The chil­dren sped nois­ily out of the room and up the stairs.

“I hope you im­pressed it on their minds that I want­ed noth­ing use­less?” said Car­raway.

“I did,” said Mrs. Car­raway. “I ex­plained the whole thing to them, and told them what they might ex­pect to re­ceive. Then I gave them each ten dol­lars of the mon­ey they'd saved, and let them go shop­ping on their own ac­count. I don't know what they bought you, but it's some­thing huge.”

Mrs. Car­raway had hard­ly fin­ished when the two gig­gling tots came in­to the room, car­ry­ing with dif­fi­cul­ty a par­cel, which, as Mrs. Car­raway had said, was in­deed huge. Mr. Car­raway eyed it with cu­rios­ity as the string was un­fas­tened and the pack­age burst open.

“There,” cried Tom­mie, breath­less­ly.

“It's all for you, pa, from Mol­lie and me.” The two chil­dren stood to one side. Mrs. Car­raway ap­peared sur­prised in an amused fash­ion, while Car­raway stood ap­palled at what lay be­fore him, as well he might; for the pack­age con­tained a great wax doll with deep star­ing blue eyes, a small doll's house with two floors in it and a front door that opened, chi­na and chairs and ta­ble and bu­reaus in minia­ture to fur­nish the house--in­deed, all the para­pher­na­lia of a well-​or­dered res­idence for a French doll. Be­sides these were two box­es of tin sol­diers, can­non, tents, swords, a ful­ly equipped lead army, a me­chan­ical fish, and a small zinc steam­boat, suit­able for a cruise in a bath-​tub.

Car­raway looked at the chil­dren, and the chil­dren looked at Car­raway.

“Why,” said he, as soon as he could re­cov­er his equa­nim­ity, “there must be some mis­take.”

“No,” said Mol­lie. “We picked 'em out for you our­selves. We thought you'd need 'em.”

Mrs. Car­raway turned away to cough slight­ly.

“Need them?” de­mand­ed Car­raway with a per­plexed frown. “When?”

“Oh--to-​mor­row,” said Tom­mie.

“What for?” de­mand­ed Car­raway.

“_Why, to give to us, of course_” said the chil­dren in cho­rus.

* * * * *

“My dear,” said Car­raway, two hours lat­er, af­ter the chil­dren had re­tired, “I've been think­ing this thing over.”

“Yes?” said Mrs. Car­raway.

“Yes,” said Car­raway; “and I've made up my mind that those chil­dren of ours are born ge­nius­es. I don't be­lieve, af­ter all, they could have se­lect­ed any­thing which would be more sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly use­ful in the present emer­gen­cy.”

“Well,” ob­served Mrs. Car­raway, qui­et­ly, “I don't ei­ther. I thought so at the time when they asked my per­mis­sion to do their shop­ping at the In­ter­na­tion­al Toy Bazar.”

“It's a so­lar-​plexus re­tort, just the same,” said Car­raway, as he shook his head and went to bed. “I think on the 1st of Jan­uary, if you have no ob­jec­tions, Mrs. Car­raway, I will for­swear util­itar­ian­ism--and you may re­move the golf-​balls from the cloi­sonne vase as soon as you choose.”

THE BOOK SALES OF MR. PE­TERS

Like many an­oth­er town which frankly con­fess­es it­self to be a “city of the third class,” Dum­fries Cor­ners is not on­ly well pro­vid­ed but some­what over­bur­dened with im­pe­cu­nious in­sti­tu­tions of a pub­lic and se­mi-​pub­lic na­ture. The large gen­eros­ity of per­sons who nev­er give to, but are of­ten iden­ti­fied with, church­es, hos­pi­tals, as­so­ci­ations of phil­an­thropic in­tent of one kind and an­oth­er, in Dum­fries Cor­ners as else­where, is fre­quent­ly the cause of em­bar­rass­ment to per­sons who do give with­out be­ing lav­ish of the so-​called in­flu­ence of their names. There are quite a dozen in­di­vid­uals out of the forty thou­sand souls who live in that fa­vored town who find it con­ve­nient to give away as much as five hun­dred dol­lars an­nu­al­ly for the main­te­nance of milk dis­pen­saries, hos­pi­tals, and oth­er de­serv­ing en­ter­pris­es of sim­ilar na­ture for the needy. Yet at the close of each fis­cal year those who have giv­en to this ex­tent are in­vari­ably con­front­ed by “re­ports,” is­sued by of­fi­cials of the var­ious in­sti­tu­tions, frankly con­fess­ing fail­ure to make both ends meet, and ev­ery­body won­ders why more in­ter­est has not been tak­en. “Sure­ly, we have loaned our names!” they say. It nev­er oc­curs to any­body that one suc­cess­ful char­ity is bet­ter than six fail­ures. It has nev­er en­tered in­to the minds of the man­agers of these en­ter­pris­es that a man dis­posed to give away five hun­dred dol­lars could make his con­tri­bu­tions to the pub­lic wel­fare more ef­fi­ca­cious by giv­ing the whole to one in­sti­tu­tion in­stead of di­vid­ing it among twen­ty.

How­ev­er, hu­man na­ture is the same ev­ery­where, and un­til the crack of doom sounds mankind will be found un­der­tak­ing more char­ity than it can car­ry through suc­cess­ful­ly, not on­ly in Dum­fries Cor­ners, but ev­ery­where else. It would be dif­fi­cult to fix the re­spon­si­bil­ity for this state of af­fairs, al­though the large gen­eros­ity of those who lend their names and block­ade their pock­ets may con­sid­er it­self a can­di­date for chief hon­ors in this some­what vi­tal mat­ter. It may be, too, that the large gen­eros­ity of peo­ple who re­al­ly are large­ly gen­er­ous with their thou­sands has some­thing to do with it. There is more than one ten-​thou­sand-​dol­lar town in ex­is­tence which has ac­cept­ed a hun­dred-​thou­sand-​dol­lar hos­pi­tal from gen­er­ous­ly dis­posed cit­izens, and the oth­er cit­izens there­of have prop­er­ly hailed their bene­fac­tor's name with loud ac­claim, but the hun­dred-​thou­sand-​dol­lar hos­pi­tal, which might have been a fifty-​thou­sand-​dol­lar hos­pi­tal, with an en­dow­ment of fifty thou­sand more to make it self-​sup­port­ing, has a ten­den­cy to ru­in oth­er char­ities quite as wor­thy, be­cause its main­te­nance pumps dry the pock­ets of those who have to give. It will re­quire a dras­tic course of train­ing, I fear, to open the eyes of the pub­lic to the fact that even gen­eros­ity can be over­done, and I must dis­claim any de­sire to su­per­in­tend the pro­cess of se­cur­ing their awak­en­ing, for it is an un­grate­ful task to crit­icise even a mis­tak­en­ly gen­er­ous per­son; and man be­ing by na­ture prone to thought­less judg­ments, the crit­ic of a phi­lan­thropist who spends a mil­lion of dol­lars to pro­vide tor­toise-​shell combs for bald beg­gars would short­ly find him­self in hot wa­ter. There­fore let us dis­cuss not the caus­es, but some of the re­sults of the sys­tem which has placed up­on sub­ur­ban shoul­ders such seem­ing­ly hope­less phil­an­thropic bur­dens. At Dum­fries Cor­ners the book sales of Mr. Pe­ters, one of the vestry­men, were one of these re­sults.

There were two of these sales. The first, like all book sales for char­ity, con­sist­ed large­ly of the vend­ing of ice-​cream and cake. The sec­ond was dif­fer­ent; but I shall not deal with that un­til I have de­scribed the first.

This had been giv­en at Mr. Pe­ters's house, with the cheer­ful con­sent of Mrs. Pe­ters. The ob­ject was to raise sev­en­ty-​five dol­lars, the sum need­ed to re­pair the roof of Mr. Pe­ters's church. In or­di­nary times the con­gre­ga­tion could have ad­vanced the sev­en­ty-​five dol­lars nec­es­sary to keep the rain from trick­ling through the roof and leak­ing in a steady stream up­on the pew of Mrs. Bump­kin, a la­dy too use­ful in knit­ting sweaters for the hea­then in South Africa to be ig­nored. But in that year of grace, 1897, there had been so many de­mands made up­on ev­ery­body, from the Saint William's Hos­pi­tal for Trol­ley Vic­tims, from the Mistle­toe Inn, a club for work­ing­men which was in its ini­tial stages and most worthi­ly ap­pealed to the pub­lic purse, and for the Uni­ver­si­ty Ex­ten­sion So­ci­ety, whose ten-​cent lec­tures were at­tend­ed by the swellest peo­ple in Dum­fries Cor­ners and their daugh­ters--and so on--that the col­lec­tions of Saint George's had nec­es­sar­ily fall­en off to such an ex­tent that plumbers' bills were al­most as much of a bur­den to the rec­tor as the needs of mis­sion­ar­ies in Bor­neo for dress-​suits and golf-​clubs. In this emer­gen­cy, Mr. Pe­ters, whose ac­count at his bank had been over­drawn by his check which had paid for paint­ing the Sun­day-​school room pink in or­der that the young re­li­gious idea might be taught to shoot un­der more roseate cir­cum­stances than the blue walls would per­mit, and so could not well of­fer to have the roof re­paired at his own ex­pense, sug­gest­ed a book sale.

“We can get a lot of books on sale from pub­lish­ers,” he said, “and I haven't any doubt that Mrs. Pe­ters will be glad to have the af­fair at our house. We can sure­ly raise sev­en­ty-​five dol­lars in this way. Be­sides, it will draw the ladies in the con­gre­ga­tion to­geth­er.”

The of­fer was ac­cept­ed. Mrs. Pe­ters ac­qui­esced. Pe­ters and his co-​work­ers asked fa­vors and got them from friends in the pub­lish­ing world. The day came. The books ar­rived, and the net re­sults to the Roof­ing Fund of Saint George's were grat­ify­ing. The vestry had asked for sev­en­ty-​five dol­lars, and the sale ac­tu­al­ly cleared eighty-​three! To be sure, Mr. Wig­gins spent fifty dol­lars at the sale. And Mrs. Thomp­son spent forty-​nine. And the cake-​ta­ble took in thir­ty-​eight. And the ice-​cream was sold, thanks to the vo­rac­ity of the chil­dren, for nine­teen dol­lars. And some pic­tures which had been do­nat­ed by Mrs. Bump­kin sold for thir­ty-​one dol­lars, and the gam­bling cakes, with rings and gold dol­lars in them, cleared fif­teen. Still, when it was all reck­oned up, eighty-​three dol­lars stood to the cred­it of the roof! In af­fairs of this kind, re­sults, not ex­pens­es, are con­sid­ered.

Sure­ly the ven­ture was a suc­cess. Al­though from the point of view of bring­ing the ladies of the con­gre­ga­tion to­geth­er--well, the less said about that the bet­ter. In any event, parts of Dum­fries Cor­ners were cool­er the fol­low­ing sum­mer than they had ev­er been be­fore.

And then, in the nat­ural se­quence of events, the next year came. The hos­pi­tal, and the inn, and the var­ious oth­er in­sti­tu­tions of the city in­dorsed by promi­nent names, but void of re­sources, as usu­al, left the church so poor that some­thing had to be done to re­pair the cel­lar of Saint George's by out­side ef­fort, wa­ter leak­ing in from the street. The mat­ter was dis­cussed, and the amount need­ed was set­tled up­on. This time Saint George's need­ed nine­ty dol­lars. It didn't re­al­ly need so much, but it was thought well to ask for more than was need­ed, “be­cause then, you know, you're more like­ly to get it.”

The book-​cake-​and-​cream sale of the year be­fore had been so suc­cess­ful that ev­ery­body said: “By all means let us have an­oth­er lit­er­ary af­ter­noon at Mr. Pe­ters's.”

“All right!” said Pe­ters, calm­ly, when the project was sug­gest­ed. “Cer­tain­ly! Of course! Have any­thing you please at my house. Not that I am run­ning a casi­no, but that I re­al­ly en­joy turn­ing my house in­side out in a good cause once in a while,” he added, with a smile which those about him be­lieved to be sin­cere. “On­ly,” said he, “kind­ly make me mas­ter of cer­emonies on this oc­ca­sion.”

“Cer­tain­ly!” replied the vestry. “If this thing is to be in your house you ought to have ev­ery­thing to say about it.”

“I ask for con­trol,” said Pe­ters, “not be­cause I am fond of pow­er, but be­cause ex­pe­ri­ence has taught me that some­body should con­trol af­fairs of this sort.”

“Cer­tain­ly,” was the re­ply again, and Pe­ters was made a com­mit­tee of one, with pow­er to run the sale in his own way, and the vestry set­tled down in that calm and con­tent­ed frame of mind which goes with the con­scious­ness of sol­ven­cy.

Three months elapsed, and noth­ing was done. No cards were is­sued from the home of Pe­ters an­nounc­ing a sale of any kind, cake, cream, or books, and the lit­er­ary af­ter­noon seemed to have sunk in­to obliv­ion. The chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies, how­ev­er, hav­ing gone in­to the cel­lar one morn­ing to in­spect the coal re­serve, found him­self obliged ei­ther to wade knee deep in wa­ter or to ne­glect his du­ty--and, of course, be­ing a sen­si­ble man, he chose the lat­ter course. He knew that in im­pe­cu­nious church­es will­ing can­di­dates for vestry hon­ors were rare, and he, there­fore, prop­er­ly saved him­self for fu­ture use. Wad­ing in wa­ter might have brought on pneu­mo­nia, and he was aware that there re­al­ly isn't any rea­son why a man should die for a cause if there is a rea­son­able ex­cuse for his liv­ing in the same be­half. But he went home an­gry.

“That cel­lar isn't re­paired yet,” he said to his wife. “You'd think from the quan­ti­ty of wa­ter there that ours was a Bap­tist church in­stead of the Church of Eng­land.”

“It's a shame!” ejac­ulat­ed his wife, who, hav­ing that morn­ing fin­ished em­broi­der­ing a cen­tre-​piece for the din­ner-​ta­ble of the mis­sion­ar­ies in Mada­gas­car, was full of con­scious rec­ti­tude. “A per­fect shame; who's to blame, dear?”

“Pe­ters,” replied the chair­man. “Same old sto­ry. He makes all sorts of promis­es, and nev­er car­ries 'em out. He thinks that just be­cause he pays a few bills we haven't any­thing to say. But he'll find out his mis­take. I'll call him down. I'll write him a let­ter he won't for­get in a hur­ry. If he wasn't will­ing to at­tend to the mat­ter he had no busi­ness to ac­cept the re­spon­si­bil­ity. I'll write and tell him so.”

And then, the righ­teous wrath of the chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies hav­ing ex­pend­ed it­self in this ex­plo­sion at his own din­ner-​ta­ble, that good gen­tle­man for­got all about it, did not write the let­ter, and in fact nev­er thought of the mat­ter again un­til the next meet­ing of the vestry, when he suave­ly and jok­ing­ly in­quired if the Com­mit­tee on Leaks and Book Sales had any re­port to make. To his sur­prise Mr. Pe­ters re­spond­ed at once.

“Yes, gen­tle­men,” he said, tak­ing a check out of his pock­et and hand­ing it to the trea­sur­er. “The Com­mit­tee on Leaks, Lit­er­ature, and Lemon­ade re­ports that the leak is still in ex­cel­lent con­di­tion and is pro­gress­ing dai­ly, while the Lit­er­ature and Lemon­ade have pro­duced the very grat­ify­ing sum of one hun­dred and thir­ty-​sev­en dol­lars and six­ty-​three cents, a check for which I have just hand­ed the trea­sur­er.”

Even the rec­tor looked sur­prised.

“Pret­ty good re­sult, eh?” said Pe­ters. “You ask for nine­ty dol­lars and get one hun­dred and thir­ty-​sev­en dol­lars and six­ty-​three cents. You can spend a hun­dred dol­lars now on the leak and make a per­fect leak of it, and have a bal­ance of thir­ty-​sev­en dol­lars and six­ty-​three cents to buy books for the Hot­ten­tots or to in­vest in pic­ture-​books for the Blind Asy­lum li­brary.”

“Ah--Mr. Pe­ters,” said the chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies, “I--ah--I was not aware that you'd had the sale. I--ah--I didn't re­ceive any no­tice.”

“Oh yes--we had it,” said Pe­ters, rub­bing his hands to­geth­er buoy­ant­ly. “We had it last night, and it went off su­perbly.”

“I am sor­ry,” said the chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies. “I should like to have been there.”

“I didn't know of it my­self, Mr. Pe­ters,” said the rec­tor, “but I am glad it was so suc­cess­ful. Were there many present?”

“Well--no,” said Pe­ters. “Not many. Fact is, Mrs. Pe­ters and the trea­sur­er here and I were the on­ly per­sons present, gen­tle­men. But the re­sults sought were more than ac­com­plished.”

“I don't see ex­act­ly how, un­less we are to re­gard this check as a gift,” ob­served the chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies, cold­ly.

“Well, I'll tell you how,” said Pe­ters. “The check isn't a gift at all. Last year you had a book sale at my house, and this year you vot­ed to have an­oth­er. I couldn't very well ob­ject--didn't want to, in fact. Very glad to have it as long as I was al­lowed to con­trol it. But last year we cleared up a bare eighty dol­lars. This year we have cleared up one hun­dred and thir­ty-​sev­en dol­lars and six­ty-​three cents. Last year's book sale cost me one hun­dred and twen­ty-​five dol­lars. The chil­dren who at­tend­ed, aid­ed and abet­ted by my own, spilled so much ice cream on my din­ing-​room rug that Mrs. Pe­ters was forced to send it to the clean­ers. A very charm­ing young wom­an whose name I shall not men­tion placed a choco­late eclair up­on my li­brary so­fa while she in­spect­ed a vol­ume of Gib­son's draw­ings. An­oth­er equal­ly charm­ing young wom­an sat down up­on it, and, what­ev­er it did to her dress, that eclair ef­fec­tu­al­ly ru­ined the cov­er­ing of my so­fa. Then, as you may re­mem­ber, the sale of books took place in my li­brary, and I had the plea­sure of see­ing, too late, one of our sweet­est lit­tle saleswom­en re­plen­ish­ing her stock from my shelves. She had sold out all the books that had been pro­vid­ed, and in a mad mo­ment of en­thu­si­asm for the cause part­ed with a vol­ume I had se­cured af­ter much dif­fi­cul­ty in Lon­don to com­plete a set of some rar­ity for about sev­en dol­lars less than the book had cost.”

“Why did you not ob­ject?” de­mand­ed the chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies.

“My dear sir,” said Mr. Pe­ters, “I nev­er ob­ject to any­thing my guests may do, par­tic­ular­ly if they are charm­ing and en­thu­si­as­tic young wom­en en­gaged in church work. But I learned a les­son, and last night's book sale was the re­sult. If the chair­man of the Com­mit­tee on Sup­plies de­mands it, here is a full ac­count of re­ceipts.”

Mr. Pe­ters hand­ed over a mem­oran­dum which read as fol­lows:

Sav­ing on Floors by not hav­ing Book Sale, $18.00 Sav­ing on Car­pets by not hav­ing Book Sale, 6.50 Sav­ing on Li­brary by not hav­ing Book Sale, 29.00 Sav­ing on Time by not hav­ing Book Sale, 50.00 Sav­ing on Fur­ni­ture by not hav­ing Book Sale 28.27 Sav­ing on In­ci­den­tals by not hav­ing Book Sale 5.86 To­tal $137.63

“With this state­ment, gen­tle­men,” said Mr. Pe­ters, suave­ly, “should the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee re­quire it, I am pre­pared to sub­mit the vouch­ers which show how much wear and tear on a house is re­quired to raise eighty dol­lars for the hea­then.”

“That,” said the chair­man of the Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, “will not be nec­es­sary--though--” and he added this whol­ly joc­ular­ly, “though I don't think Mr. Pe­ters should have charged for his time; fifty dol­lars is a good deal of mon­ey.”

“He didn't charge for his time,” mur­mured the trea­sur­er. “In this state­ment he has paid for it!”

“Still,” said he of Sup­plies, “the so­cial end of it has been wiped out.”

“Of course it has,” re­tort­ed Mr. Pe­ters. “And a very good thing it has been, too. Did you ev­er know of a church func­tion that did not arouse an­imosi­ties among the wom­en, Mr. Squills?”

The gen­tle­man, in the pres­ence of men of truth, had to ad­mit that he nev­er knew of such a thing.

“Then what's the mat­ter with my book sale?” de­mand­ed Pe­ters. “It has raised more mon­ey than last year; has cost me no more--and there won't be any so­cial vol­ca­noes for the vestry to sit over dur­ing the com­ing year.”

A dead si­lence came over all.

“I move,” said Mr. Jones, at whose house the meet­ing was held, “that we go in­to ex­ec­utive ses­sion. Mrs. Jones has pro­vid­ed some cold birds, and a--ah--sal­ad.”

Mr. Jones's mo­tion was car­ried, and be­fore the meet­ing fi­nal­ly ad­journed un­der the ge­nial in­flu­ence of good-​fel­low­ship and pleas­ant con­verse Mr. Pe­ters's sec­ond book sale was vot­ed to have been of the best qual­ity.

THE VAL­OR OF BRIN­LEY

How­ev­er dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed from oth­er sub­ur­ban places Dum­fries Cor­ners may be in most in­stances, in the mat­ter of ob­tain­ing and re­tain­ing ef­fi­cient do­mes­tics the cit­izens of that charm­ing town find it much like all oth­er com­mu­ni­ties of its class. Civ­iliza­tion brings with it ev­ery­where, it would seem, prob­lems dif­fi­cult of so­lu­tion, and con­spic­uous among them may be men­tioned the ser­vant prob­lem. It is prob­able that the on­ly re­al­ly hap­py young cou­ple that ev­er es­caped the an­noy­ance of this par­tic­ular evil were Adam and Eve, and as one re­calls their case it was the in­ter­fer­ence of a third par­ty, in the mat­ter of their di­et, that brought all their trou­bles up­on them, so that even they may not be said to have en­joyed com­plete im­mu­ni­ty from do­mes­tic tri­als. What qual­ity it is in hu­man na­ture that leads a com­pe­tent house­maid or a tru­ly-​tal­ent­ed culi­nary artist to ab­hor the coun­try-​side, and to pre­fer the dark, cel­lar-​like kitchens of the city hous­es it is dif­fi­cult to sur­mise; why the sub­ur­ban house­keep­er finds her choice lim­it­ed ev­ery au­tumn to the maid that the city folks have cho­sen to re­ject is not clear. That these are the con­di­tions which con­front sur­bur­ban res­idents on­ly the ex­cep­tion­al­ly fa­vored rus­tic can de­ny.

In Dum­fries Cor­ners, even were there no rich red up­on the trees, no cal­en­dar up­on the walls, no in­vig­orat­ing ton­ic in the air to in­di­cate the sea­son, all would know when au­tumn had ar­rived by the anx­ious, hunt­ed look up­on the faces of the good wom­en of that place as they ride on the trains to and from the in­tel­li­gence of­fices of the city look­ing for ad­di­tions to their _menage_. Of course in Dum­fries Cor­ners, as else­where, it is pos­si­ble to em­ploy home tal­ent, but to do this re­quires larg­er means than most sub­ur­ban­ites pos­sess, for the very sim­ple rea­son that the home tal­ent is al­ways plen­ti­ful­ly en­dowed with de­pen­dents. These lat­ter, to the num­ber of eight or ten--which ob­ser­va­tion would lead one to be­lieve is the av­er­age of the suc­cess­ful lo­cal cook, for in­stance--in­crease ma­te­ri­al­ly the butch­er's and gro­cer's bills, and, one not in­fre­quent­ly sus­pects, the coal man's as well.

Years ago, when he was young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced, the writ­er of this nar­ra­tive, his sus­pi­cions hav­ing been aroused by the seem­ing so­cial pop­ular­ity of his cook, took oc­ca­sion one Sun­day af­ter­noon to count the num­ber of mys­te­ri­ous pack­ages, of about a pound in weight each, which set forth from his kitchen and were car­ried along his walk in var­ious stages of in­ef­fec­tu­al con­ceal­ment by the la­dy's vis­itors. The re­sult was by no means ap­palling, sev­en be­ing the to­tal. But grant­ing that sev­en was a fair es­ti­mate of the whole week's out­put, and that the stream flowed on Sun­days on­ly, and not steadi­ly through the oth­er six days, the an­nu­al out­put, on a ba­sis of fifty weeks--giv­ing the cook's gen­eros­ity a two weeks' va­ca­tion--three hun­dred and fifty pounds of some­thing were di­vert­ed from his pantry in­to chan­nels for which they were not orig­inal­ly de­signed, and on a val­ua­tion of twen­ty-​five cents apiece his min­imum con­tri­bu­tion to his cook's de­pen­dents be­came there­by very near­ly one hun­dred dol­lars. Add to this the prob­able gifts to sim­ilar­ly for­tu­nate rel­atives of a com­pe­tent lo­cal wait­ress, of an equal­ly gen­er­ous­ly dis­posed laun­dress with cousins, not to men­tion the ge­nial, open-​hand­ed gen­eros­ity of a hired man in the mat­ter of kin­dling-​wood and ed­ibles, and liv­ing be­comes ex­pen­sive with lo­cal tal­ent to help.

It is in recog­ni­tion of this seem­ing­ly cast-​iron rule that lo­cal ser­vice is too ex­pen­sive for per­sons of mod­est in­come, that the mod­ern eco­nom­ical house-​wife prefers to fill her _menage_ with maids from the metropo­lis, even though it hap­pen that she must take those who for one rea­son or an­oth­er have failed to please her city sis­ters. It may be, too, that this is one of the rea­sons for the con­stant changes in most sub­ur­ban hous­es, for it is equal­ly ax­iomat­ic that once an alien be­comes ac­cli­mat­ed she takes on a _clien­tele_ of adopt­ed rel­atives, who in the course of time be­come as much of a drain up­on the trea­sury of the house­hold as the Si­mon-​Pure ar­ti­cle.

The Brin­leys had been through the do­mes­tic mill in its ev­ery phase. They had had cooks, and cooks, and cooks, and maids, and maids, and maids, plus oth­er maids; they had been face to face with ar­son and mur­der; Mrs. Brin­ley had part­ed a laun­dress armed with a flat-​iron from a bel­liger­ent cook armed with an ice-​pick, and twice the min­is­ters of the law had car­ried cer­tain irate wom­en bod­ily forth with the direst of threats lest they should re­turn lat­er and re­move the Brin­ley fam­ily from the list of the liv­ing.

All of which con­tribut­ed to Mrs. Brin­ley's un­hap­pi­ness and rather in­creased than di­min­ished her nat­ural timid­ity. Brin­ley, on the oth­er hand, pro­fessed to know no fear, but ac­cord­ing to his the­ory that ways and means were his care, and that the do­mes­tic af­fairs of his house­hold were his wife's, and be­yond his ju­ris­dic­tion, held him­self aloof and said nev­er a word to the re­cal­ci­trant ser­vant, con­fin­ing what up­braid­ing he did ex­clu­sive­ly to Mrs. Brin­ley.

“Why don't you scold Brid­get?” cried Mrs. Brin­ley one morn­ing, af­ter Brin­ley had made a few re­marks to his wife which were not to her taste, inas­much as she felt that she had done noth­ing to de­serve them. “I didn't burn the steak.”

“That is very true, my dear,” said Brin­ley, “but you are re­spon­si­ble for the cook who did. It would nev­er do for me to in­ter­fere. I have trou­bles enough with my of­fice-​boys. This is your baili­wick, not mine, and un­til I ask you to scold my clerks you mustn't ask me to scold your ser­vants.” With this sage re­mark the valiant Brin­ley at once took his de­par­ture.

Time passed, and it so hap­pened one au­tumn that the once hap­py house­hold found it­self in the throes of a par­tic­ular­ly ag­gra­vat­ed case of cook. She was a six­teen-​dol­lar cook, and had been rec­om­mend­ed as be­ing “splen­did.” In just what re­spect she showed her splen­dor, save in her re­gal lack of man­ners and the mar­vel­lous col­or­ing of her cos­tumes on her Sun­days out, was nev­er per­cep­ti­ble, but one thing that was whol­ly clear at the end of a three-​weeks' ser­vice was her in­de­pen­dence of man­ner.

Meals were nev­er ready on time, and the din­ner-​hour, in­stead of be­ing a fixed time be­neath her sway, seemed to be­come a vari­able point, ac­cord­ing to the la­dy's whim. In the ob­ser­vance of the break­fast-​hour she was equal­ly er­rat­ic, and on sev­er­al try­ing oc­ca­sions Brin­ley was on the verge of the dilem­ma of ei­ther fail­ing to keep an ap­point­ment in town or go­ing with­out his morn­ing meal. Some­times the cof­fee would come to the ta­ble a thin, am­ber flu­id that tast­ed like par­tic­ular­ly bad con­somme. Again it would be served with all the thick­ness of a _puree_. Her bread was sim­ilar­ly vari­able in its un­de­sir­abil­ity. There were bis­cuits that held all the flaky charm of a snow­ball. There were loaves of bread that re­mind­ed one of the sto­ries of hard­tack in Cu­ba dur­ing the late un­pleas­ant­ness. There were En­glish muffins that rest­ed up­on poor Brin­ley's di­ges­tion as the world may fair­ly be pre­sumed to rest up­on the shoul­ders of At­las, and, in­deed, it is a tra­di­tion in the Brin­ley fam­ily that one of this cook's pie-​crusts ri­valled Har­vey­ized steel in its im­pen­etra­bil­ity.

In­deed, Brin­ley, usu­al­ly a silent suf­fer­er, com­ment­ed up­on this co­he­sive qual­ity of Ellen's pas­try on two dif­fer­ent oc­ca­sions. On the first he ad­vised Mrs. Brin­ley to learn the se­cret of Ellen's ma­nip­ula­tion of the in­gre­di­ents of a pie-​crust, and have her­self cap­ital­ized to ri­val the cor­po­ra­tions which pro­vide the gov­ern­ment with ar­mor-​plate. On the sec­ond he made the sage though dis­agree­able re­mark that the “next ap­ple-​pie we have should be served with in­di­vid­ual steam-​drills.” And he one day ac­com­pa­nied Mrs. Brin­ley to a qui­et golf links, and, when he had teed up, that good la­dy ob­served one of Ellen's dough­nuts up­on the lit­tle mound of sand be­fore him in­stead of his fa­vorite ball.

“I cut up the Sil­ver­ton ball so,” he said, as he ad­dressed the tee, “that I'm ashamed of my­self. I may not play any bet­ter with this dough­nut, but it will nev­er show the marks of the irons as a bit of mere gut­ta-​per­cha would.”

“If you feel that way about Ellen,” Mrs. Brin­ley ob­served, just as Brin­ley was about to drive off with a re­al ball, “I don't see why you don't dis­charge her.”

Brin­ley took his eye off the ball to look in­dig­nant­ly up­on his wife, and con­se­quent­ly foo­zled.

“Dis­charge her? Why should I dis­charge her?” he de­mand­ed, his tem­per grow­ing as he ob­served where he had land­ed his ball. “I'm not run­ning the house, my dear. You are. I didn't ask you to tell Miss Flossie Fair­fax that, as she couldn't spell, she was no longer use­ful as a stenog­ra­pher in the of­fice of Brin­ley & Ruther­ford. Why should you ask me to tell a cook that her ser­vices are no longer re­quired in the es­tab­lish­ment of Brin­ley & Brin­ley, of which you are the man­ag­er?”

“It isn't easy to dis­charge a girl,” Mrs. Brin­ley be­gan. “Par­tic­ular­ly a quar­rel­some wom­an like Ellen.”

“Oh, that's it,” said Brin­ley. “You are afraid of her.”

“Not ex­act­ly,” said Mrs. Brin­ley. “But--”

“Of course, if you are afraid of her, I'll get rid of her,” per­sist­ed Brin­ley, valiant­ly. “Just wait un­til we get home. I'll show you a thing or two when it comes to rid­ding one's self of an un­faith­ful ser­vant. The steak this morn­ing looked like a stake that mar­tyrs had been burned at, and I am not afraid to say so.”

And so it was de­cid­ed that Brin­ley, on his re­turn home, should in­ter­view Ellen and in­form her that her ser­vices would not be re­quired af­ter the first of the month. “Now let's play golf,” he said. “I'll set­tle Ellen in a minute. Fore!”

How Brin­ley ful­filled his promise is best shown by his talk with Mrs. Brin­ley the next morn­ing when, some­what red of face, he re­joined her in the din­ing-​room af­ter his in­ter­view with Ellen.

“Well?” said Mrs. Brin­ley.

“It's all right,” Brin­ley replied, with an un­easy glance at his wife. “She's go­ing to stay.”

“Go­ing to stay?” echoed Mrs. Brin­ley, her eyes open­ing wide in a very nat­ural as­ton­ish­ment. “Why, I thought you were go­ing to dis­charge her?”

“Well--I was,” he said, halt­ing­ly. “I was, of course. That's what I went down for--but--er--you know, my dear, that there are two sides to ev­ery ques­tion.”

“Even to Ellen's bis­cuits?” Mrs. Brin­ley laughed.

“Nev­er mind that. She's go­ing to do bet­ter,” said Brin­ley. “You'll find that here­after we've got a cook, and not an in­cen­di­ary nor a forg­er of ar­mor-​plate.”

“And may I ask how this won­der­ful re­form has been worked in the brief space of ten min­utes?” asked Mrs. Brin­ley. “Have you hyp­no­tized her?”

“No,” said Brin­ley. Then he looked rather sheep­ish­ly out of the win­dow. “I've giv­en her an in­cen­tive to do bet­ter. I've in­creased her wages.”

Mrs. Brin­ley gazed at him silent­ly in open-​mouthed won­der for a full half-​minute.

“You did what?” asked Mrs. Brin­ley.

“I told her we'd give her twen­ty dol­lars a month in­stead of six­teen,” said Brin­ley. “You needn't laugh,” he added. “I be­gan very severe­ly. Asked her what she meant by ig­nor­ing our wish­es as to hours. I di­lat­ed force­ful­ly up­on her ap­par­ent fond­ness for burn­ing steaks to a crisp, and send­ing broiled chick­en to the ta­ble look­ing as if some­body had dropped a flat-​iron on them.”

“Good!” ex­claimed Mrs. Brin­ley. “And what did she say? Was she im­per­ti­nent?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Brin­ley “She took it very nice­ly un­til I spoke of the muffins, af­ter which I had in­tend­ed to give her no­tice to quit, but she took the wind com­plete­ly out of my sails by ask­ing me what I ex­pect­ed at six­teen dol­lars a month.”

“Ah!” said Mrs. Brin­ley.

“Ex­act­ly,” said Brin­ley. “That was a point I had not con­sid­ered at all. Af­ter all, she was right. What can you ex­pect for six­teen dol­lars?”

“Well, what next?” asked Mrs. Brin­ley, her eyes a-​twin­kle.

“I asked her if she thought she could do bet­ter on twen­ty dol­lars,” he an­swered. “She thought she could, and that's the way it stands now.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Brin­ley, and then she burst in­to a per­fect ex­plo­sion of laugh­ter, which she soon curbed, how­ev­er, as she no­ticed the ex­pres­sion on poor Brin­ley's face. “I've no doubt you have act­ed with per­fect jus­tice in this mat­ter, my dear George,” she said. “But I think here­after I'll do my own dis­charg­ing. Your way is rather ex­trav­agant--er--don't you re­al­ly think so?”

“Per­haps,” said Brin­ley, and de­part­ed for town.

“The madam is right about that,” he said to him­self lat­er in the day, as he thought over the in­ci­dent. “But ex­trav­agant or not, I couldn't have dis­charged that wom­an if some­body had of­fered me a clear hun­dred. Mrs. B. doesn't know it, but I was in a blue funk from start to fin­ish.”

In which sur­mise Brin­ley was wrong. Mrs. B. did know it, and when two weeks lat­er Ellen be­came ab­so­lute­ly im­pos­si­ble, and de­mand­ed a kitchen-​maid as the perquisite of a twen­ty-​dol­lar cook, Mrs. Brin­ley didn't think of call­ing up­on her hus­band to per­form the func­tion of the ex­ecu­tion­er, but like a brave wom­an ac­tu­al­ly sum­moned the cook in­to her pres­ence and did it her­self. A less coura­geous wom­an would have gone down­stairs in­to the kitchen to do it.

WILKINS

It was a rather re­mark­able af­fair, tak­en al­to­geth­er. Wilkins was not what one would call an at­trac­tive man, and none of the young wom­en of Dum­fries Cor­ners who had met him had ev­er man­ifest­ed any­thing but a pro­nounced aver­sion to his so­ci­ety.

“I'd rather be a wall-​flow­er than dance with Sam Wilkins,” one of these young wom­en had said. “He not on­ly can't dance, but, what is in­finite­ly worse, he doesn't know that he can't dance, and as for his con­ver­sa­tion--well, give me si­lence.”

“You are per­fect­ly right about that,” said an­oth­er. “When­ev­er I see him about to waltz or two-​step, I im­me­di­ate­ly re­move my­self from the scene, and pray for the girl he's danc­ing with. He is a train-​wreck­er, and the fa­vorite rest­ing-​place for his heels is on some one else's foot. I've heard that he steps on his own feet, too, he's so awk­ward, and I hope he does if it hurts him as much as he hurts me when he steps on mine.”

For Wilkins's sake I am very sor­ry to say that this feel­ing to­wards him was in­vari­able. I nev­er cared much for him my­self, but I felt rather sor­ry for him when I per­ceived the per­sis­tent snub­bing with which he was ev­ery­where re­ceived. He nev­er seemed aware of it him­self, hap­pi­ly, how­ev­er, and ac­cept­ed my mere­ly sym­pa­thet­ic at­ten­tions with that su­per­cil­ious­ness which al­ways goes with con­scious rec­ti­tude.

Con­scious rec­ti­tude, I think, was Wilkins's trou­ble. He was good, and he was aware of it, but he was not con­tent with that. He want­ed ev­ery­body else to be good. I re­al­ly be­lieve that Wilkins could have car­ried on a Pla­ton­ic love af­fair with an auburn-​haired girl for ten weeks with­out an ef­fort, he was so ter­ri­bly good, which did not at all con­tribute to his pop­ular­ity. A fel­low who talks about rit­ual­ism while walk­ing in the moon­light with a sen­ti­men­tal wom­an, doesn't count for much, and Wilkins was al­ways do­ing things like that. It was even whis­pered last win­ter when he went sleigh-​rid­ing with that fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle wid­ow, Mrs. Broughton, that he let her do the driv­ing, clasped his own hands in front of him, and talked of noth­ing but the pri­va­tions of the mis­sion­ar­ies in Chi­na, and nev­er men­tioned oys­ters or cold birds and a bot­tle.

“And worst of all,” snapped Mrs. Broughton, “he re­al­ly seemed to en­joy it. I nev­er saw such a man!”

I have men­tioned all these de­tails for the pur­pose of in­di­cat­ing how un­pop­ular Wilkins was and how it was that he had be­come so, for with this knowl­edge the read­er will share the sur­prise which we all felt when Wilkins sud­den­ly blos­somed forth as the most pop­ular man of Dum­fries Cor­ners. It was re­al­ly a knock­down blow to the most of us, for while we may have been jeal­ous on oc­ca­sions of each oth­er, it nev­er oc­curred to any of us to be jeal­ous of the train-​wreck­er.

I didn't like it when Aram­inta smiled up­on Har­ry Burn­ham, but it was not in­ju­ri­ous to my self-​re­spect that she should do it, be­cause Har­ry Burn­ham av­er­ages up as good a fel­low as I am, and then Har­ry and I could drown our dif­fer­ences in the flow­ing bowl lat­er on. On the oth­er hand, if Har­ry's Fi­amet­ta cast side glances at me, of course Har­ry would be wroth, but he could un­der­stand why Fi­amet­ta should be so af­fect­ed by the twin­kle in my eye--an af­fec­tion by the way which has of­ten got me un­con­scious­ly in­to trou­ble--that she should for the mo­ment for­get her­self and re­spond to it.

But when Aram­inta and Fi­amet­ta on a sud­den, just af­ter the leap-​year dance, whol­ly, and, as we thought, base­ly, de­sert­ed us for that em­blem of con­scious rec­ti­tude, Sam Wilkins, a man whose eye couldn't learn to twin­kle in a thou­sand years, a mere hu­man ice­berg, then it was that we were as­tound­ed. Nor was this se­ces­sion lim­it­ed to Aram­inta and Fi­amet­ta. The con­ver­sion of the girls of Dum­fries Cor­ners to Wilkins was as com­plete, as com­pre­hen­sive, as it was startling to the men. Jack Lester, as Bob Jenks ex­pressed it, was “trun down” by Daisy Hawkins, who ap­peared to have eyes for none but Wilkins, while Bob, in turn, when go­ing to make his usu­al Thurs­day evening call up­on Miss Bet­sy Wil­son, dis­cov­ered that Miss Bet­sy had gone to the Uni­ver­si­ty ex­ten­sion lec­ture with the train-​wreck­er, an act un­prece­dent­ed, for it had long been the cus­tom for Bob to spend his Thurs­day evenings at the Wil­son man­sion, and, while noth­ing had as yet been an­nounced, ev­ery­body in town was get­ting his con­grat­ula­tions ready for Bob as soon as that which was un­der­stood be­came a mat­ter of com­mon knowl­edge.

For a week or two we none of us let on that we had ob­served the re­mark­able change that had come o'er the spir­it of our dreams. Har­ry has al­ways been re­mark­able for his abil­ity to con­ceal his feel­ings, and in that re­spect I am a good sec­ond, and ex­cept for the fact that we spent more time at the club play­ing pool no­body would have sus­pect­ed that we cared whether Aram­inta or Fi­amet­ta still loved us or not. Be­sides, we each had a feel­ing that two could play at this Wilkins game, and I had made up my mind that if Aram­inta could so eas­ily find a sub­sti­tute for me I, with my twin­kle, could as speed­ily re­place her. That is to say, I felt that I could cre­ate that im­pres­sion in Aram­inta's mind, and that was all I was af­ter. I didn't re­al­ly in­tend, how­ev­er easy it would be to do so, to cre­ate a flut­ter of a per­ma­nent na­ture in any oth­er wom­an's heart--that is, not un­til I was sure that Aram­inta was lost to me for­ev­er. Af­ter a de­cent pe­ri­od of mourn­ing I might have used my twin­kle for per­ma­nent ef­fect, but at that mo­ment my on­ly idea was to show Aram­inta that if one could be fick­le, two could be twice as fick­le. Har­ry had the same course of treat­ment in store for Fi­amet­ta, and we both made a strong bid for the com­pa­ny of Mary Brown, who, it must be con­fessed, was a charm­ing girl, and stood sec­ond in the af­fec­tions of ev­ery man in Dum­fries Cor­ners.

It was the op­por­tu­ni­ty of Mary Brown's life, for even as Har­ry and I had de­cid­ed, so had all the oth­er jilt­ed swains, but that cu­ri­ous girl ei­ther could not or would not grasp it. She, too, had be­come a Wilkin­site, and would have noth­ing to do with any of us. She de­clined to at­tend the Beldens's mu­si­cale with me, and went bi­cy­cling with the ice­berg. She told Robin­son she hat­ed lec­tures, and went to a stere­op­ti­con show with the train-​wreck­er. All the oth­er men met with a sim­ilar re­buff, and at the last meet­ing of the Chaf­ing Dish Club she capped the cli­max by re­fus­ing my lob­ster a la New­burg and Har­ry's oys­ters poulet, to have a sec­ond help­ing to the sole-​leather welsh rarebit which Wilkins had con­struct­ed; Wilkins, a rank out­sider, who had been asked to come to the meet­ing by ev­ery blessed girl in the club, al­though hereto­fore he had not been con­sid­ered as a pos­si­ble mem­ber, and in fact had been black-​balled by the girls them­selves! And when it came time for the girls to go home, in­stead of each one be­ing es­cort­ed by a sin­gle male mem­ber, Wilkins cor­ralled the whole lot of them in a huge om­nibus which he had hired, and drove off with them, leav­ing us dis­con­so­late. He smiled so broad­ly you could see his teeth in the dark.

This, as I have said, capped the cli­max.

“That set­tles it,” said Burn­ham. “I'm go­ing to New York for a rest. These Dum­fries Cor­ners girls needn't think they're the on­ly wom­en in the world. There are oth­ers.”

“I'm go­ing to stay and stick it out,” said I. “I've got my sis­ter left. She'll nev­er suc­cumb to the Wilkins in­flu­ence.” But alas! I leaned up­on a bro­ken reed. My sis­ter is a sen­si­ble girl, but she is “lit­er­ary.” She had a joke in _Life_ once, and since that time she has ne­glect­ed al­most ev­ery­thing but writ­ing and her broth­er. She doesn't ne­glect me, and al­to­geth­er I'm glad she writes, since it fills her with en­thu­si­asm un­til the ar­ti­cles come back, and up to now she had not writ­ten po­et­ry. But, as I say, I leaned up­on a bro­ken reed, for when, the next day, I asked her what she was writ­ing, she laughed and showed me a son­net.

“Po­et­ry, eh?” I said, dis­ap­prov­ing­ly, as I looked over her manuscript.

“Yes,” she an­swered, mod­est­ly. “A son­net.”

And I read, “To S.W.”

“Who's 'S.W.?'” I asked, with a frown, al­though I lit­tle sus­pect­ed what her an­swer would be.

“Sam Wilkins,” she replied.

I then re­al­ized the full force of Cae­sar's “Et tu, Brute?” and fled.

Mean­while Wilkins was be­com­ing in­suf­fer­able. If Bun­thorne was an ass, he was at least clever, but this Wilkins--he was a whole drove of ass­es, and not a re­deem­ing fea­ture to the lot. He could no more ac­count for his sud­den pop­ular­ity than we could, but he could not help re­al­iz­ing it af­ter a week or two, and then, for the first time in his life, he be­gan to take no­tice. We men all want­ed to thrash him, and I think Burn­ham would have done it if the rest of us hadn't pre­vent­ed him.

“He need­ed a lick­ing be­fore this,” said Har­ry, “but now he's worse than ev­er. It isn't con­scious rec­ti­tude now, it's tri­umphant virtue. He makes me tired. He was telling me the oth­er day that while girls might be cap­ti­vat­ed by flip­pant, su­per­fi­cial, pranc­ing dudes for a while, in the end sol­id worth would win, and then he went on to say that the youth of mod­ern times cul­ti­vat­ed his feet to the ex­clu­sion of his head, and that while he had, of course, learned to dance, he had not de­vot­ed all his time to it, and re­gard­ed it, af­ter all, as a very mi­nor sort of an at­trac­tion as far as wom­en are con­cerned. 'I don't re­ly on my danc­ing, Burn­ham,' he said. 'It's the head, and the heart, my boy, that tri­umphs.' And when I asked him where he learned all this he an­swered, 'from per­son­al ex­pe­ri­ence.'”

I im­me­di­ate­ly let go of Burn­ham. “Go and half-​lick him, Har­ry,” said I. “And when you've done with him pass him over to me, and I'll fin­ish him. The su­per­cil­ious ass.”

That was the way Wilkins af­fect­ed us.

The oth­er men took their dose in dif­fer­ent ways. Jenks be­gan to drink a lit­tle more; Lester drank a lit­tle less. Hicks didn't care much about it one way or the oth­er, and Wil­son swore that if Wilkins came to call on his sis­ter again he'd kick him out of the house.

Six weeks rolled by thus, and fi­nal­ly East­er Sun­day came. No mit­iga­tion of the Wilkins vis­ita­tion had en­tered in­to our lives. As the days wore on the girls be­came more de­vot­ed to him than ev­er, and he be­came cor­re­spond­ing­ly un­bear­able. The con­de­scen­sion with which he would treat his fel­low-​men was some­thing hard­ly to be tol­er­at­ed, and the worst of it was there didn't seem to be any way of bring­ing the girls to terms. There wasn't any­body left for us to flirt with now that Mary Brown had gone over to the en­emy, she who had al­ways been will­ing to flirt with any­body.

“There's on­ly one hope,” said Jenks. “If he'll on­ly mar­ry one of 'em, the oth­ers will come back. He can't mar­ry 'em all, thank Heav­en.”

“Sup­pose it was Fi­amet­ta he mar­ried?” said I.

“Or Aram­inta!” was his pre­pos­ter­ous re­tort.

“He'll nev­er do that,” said Lester. “He's in clover now, and for the first time in his life, and the more of an ass he is the more he'll like clover. He's pay­ing at­ten­tion to the lot. He'll nev­er set­tle down to one. It's all up with us--un­less he bankrupts him­self.”

“He won't,” ob­served Har­ry Burn­ham. “Con­scious rec­ti­tude won't do any­thing like that. I'm go­ing to New York to call on an old flame, and I ad­vise the rest of you to do the same.”

“Well, I don't know but what you are right,” said I, “but Aram­inta shall have one more chance. I'm go­ing to church to-​mor­row. It's East­er Sun­day, and I'll of­fer to es­cort her home. If she says 'yes,' all right. If she doesn't, I'm lost to her for­ev­er.”

“Good scheme,” quoth the oth­ers. “We're with you.”

And that is what we all did. The girls were all there, re­splen­dent in new bon­nets and tog­gery of oth­er sorts, and the smirk­ing Wilkins was there too. He passed the plate af­ter the ser­mon, and his rec­ti­tude shone out oleagi­nous­ly on ev­ery line of his face. It was as much as I could do to keep from trip­ping him up in the aisle, and send­ing him and the con­tri­bu­tion-​plate sprawl­ing. I al­most did it when I imag­ined his feel­ings as the nick­els rat­tled down through the reg­is­ter in­to the fur­nace be­low, but I re­strained my­self--and the killing glances he threw in­to those glass eyes of his, when­ev­er he hap­pened to hold the plate be­fore one of those Dum­fries girls! It was sick­en­ing, and I came near to fly­ing be­fore the close of the ser­vice. The oth­ers had the same sen­sa­tions and temp­ta­tions, and it is a won­der that Wilkins did not meet with some dread­ful hu­mil­ia­tion be­fore he got the col­lec­tion back in­to the chan­cel. It was a ter­ri­ble strain on us, and his hor­rid un­con­scious­ness that he was any­thing but per­fect, and that the rest of us were any­thing more than so many paving stones to be walked on, was ag­gra­vat­ing to a de­gree. Noth­ing un­usu­al hap­pened, how­ev­er, and the ser­vice came to an end, and with it came to us all an­oth­er sur­prise, but this time the sur­prise gave Wilkins a pain, and I had a front seat when the blow was dealt.

It had oc­curred to the im­mac­ulate ri­val of all the man­hood of Dum­fries Cor­ners that he would hon­or Aram­inta with his so­ci­ety on the way home from church, and he and I reached her side af­ter ser­vice at one and the same mo­ment.

“May I have the plea­sure of see­ing you home?” said Wilkins, twirling his mus­tache with a “re­sist me if you can” smile on his lips.

“Don't let me in­ter­fere,” said I, dry­ly, and was about to turn away.

“Thank you, Mr. Wilkins,” replied Aram­inta, “but Mr. Smithers has al­ready asked me.”

It was a beau­ti­ful, love­ly, sweet lie. I hadn't done any­thing of the sort, but I'd meant to, of course, and per­haps Aram­inta had be­come a mind read­er. Wilkins got a lit­tle flushy around his cheek-​bones, and post­ed off to Fi­amet­ta, but she and Burn­ham were al­ready en route and ap­par­ent­ly rec­on­ciled. So it went with all. Wilkins was left. Even my sis­ter, who, lack­ing Wilkins, would have to walk home with the min­is­ter's wife, de­clined, and the fall of the great man was com­plete. Mary Brown was the on­ly one re­main­ing in the field, and when he fled to her she said she wasn't go­ing home.

“Well, then,” said Wilkins, “let me take you to wher­ev­er you are go­ing?”

“Thank you,” re­turned Miss Brown, “I'm not go­ing there ei­ther,” and she joined Aram­inta and my­self, much to our de­light, for we have no se­crets from her. And then it all came out.

The girls had not loved us less, or Wilkins more, but they had re­solved to keep Lent with un­usu­al rig­or this year.

_They had sworn us off and tak­en up Wilkins for penance_.

Hard on Wilkins?

Not a bit of it. He's as con­scious of his rec­ti­tude and as un­con­scious of his un­pop­ular­ity as ev­er.

On­ly he is a lit­tle more out­spo­ken about wom­en than he used to be, and some­how or oth­er he has let it creep out that he “doesn't find them in­ter­est­ing.”

“They can't even learn to dance with­out trip­ping a fel­low up,” says he.

THE MAY­OR'S LAMPS

The ser­pent had crept in­to Eden. The Perkins house­hold for ten years had been lit­tle less than Par­adise to its in­mates, and then in a sin­gle night the rep­tile of po­lit­ical am­bi­tion had dragged his slimy length through those hap­py door-​posts and now sat grin­ning in­de­cent­ly at the in­scrip­tion over the li­brary man­tel, a rib­bon mo­sa­ic bear­ing the sen­ti­ment “Here Dwells Con­tent” let in­to the tiles there­of.

How it ev­er hap­pened no man knoweth, but hap­pen it did. Thad­deus Perkins was snatched from the arms of Peace and plunged head­long in­to the jaws of Po­lit­ical War­fare.

“They want me be­cause they think I'm strong,” he plead­ed, in ex­ten­ua­tion of his ac­cep­tance of the nom­ina­tion for May­or of his town.

“But you ought to know bet­ter,” re­turned Mrs. Perkins, fail­ing to re­al­ize what pos­si­ble mis­con­struc­tion her lord and mas­ter might put up­on the an­swer. “The idea of your med­dling in pol­itics when you've got twice as much work as you can do al­ready! I think it's aw­ful!”

“I didn't seek it,” he said, af­ter hes­itat­ing a mo­ment; “they've--they've thrust it on me.” Then he tried to be fun­ny. “With me, pub­lic of­fice is a pub­lic thrust.”

“Is there any salary?” asked Mrs. Perkins, treat­ing the jest with the con­tempt it mer­it­ed.

“No,” said Thad­deus. “Not a cent; but--”

“Not a cent!” cried Mrs. Perkins. “And you are go­ing to give up all your ca­reer, or at least two years of it, and prob­ably the best two years of your life, for--”

“Glo­ry,” said Thad­deus.

“Glo­ry! Humph,” said Mrs. Perkins, “I am not aware that na­tions are talk­ing of pre­vi­ous May­ors of Dum­fries Cor­ners. Mr. Jig­gers's name is not a house­hold word out­side of this city, is it?”

Mr. Jig­gers was the gen­tle­man, in­to whose shoes Thad­deus was seek­ing to place his feet--the in­cum­bent of the mighty of­fice to which he as­pired.

“Who is the present Lord May­or of Lon­don?” the la­dy con­tin­ued.

“Haven't the slight­est idea,” mur­mured the stan­dard-​bear­er of the Demo­crat­ic par­ty, hope­less­ly.

“Or Berlin, or Peking--or even of Chica­go?” she went on.

“What has that got to do with it?” re­tort­ed the worm, turn­ing a tri­fle.

“You spoke of glo­ry--the glo­ry of be­ing May­or of Dum­fries Cor­ners, a city of 30,000 in­hab­itants. This is go­ing to send your name echo­ing from sea to sea, re­ver­ber­at­ing through Eu­rope, and thun­der­ing down through the ages to come; and yet you ad­mit that the glo­ries of the May­ors of Lon­don with 4,000,000 souls, of Berlin, Chica­go, and Peking, with mil­lions more, are so slight that you can't re­mem­ber their names--or even to have heard them, for that mat­ter. Re­al­ly, Thad­deus, I am sur­prised at you. What you ex­pect to get out of this be­sides ner­vous pros­tra­tion I must con­fess I can­not see.”

“Lamps,” said Thad­deus, clutch­ing like a drown­ing man at the one emol­ument of the cov­et­ed of­fice.

Mrs. Perkins gazed at her hus­band anx­ious­ly. The an­swer was so un­ex­pect­ed and seem­ing­ly so ab­surd that she for a mo­ment feared he had lost his mind. The no­tion that two years' ser­vice in so im­por­tant an of­fice as that of May­or of Dum­fries Cor­ners re­ceived as its sole re­ward noth­ing but lamps was to her mind im­pos­si­ble.

“Is--is there any­thing the mat­ter with you, dear?” she asked, plac­ing her hand on his brow. “You don't seem fever­ish.”

“Fever­ish?” snapped the lead­er of his par­ty. “Who said any­thing about my be­ing fever­ish?”

“No­body, Ted­dy dear; but what you said about lamps made me think--made me think your mind was wan­der­ing a tri­fle.”

“Oh--that!” laughed Perkins. “No, in­deed--it's true. They al­ways give the May­or a pair of lamps. Some of them are very swell, too. You know those wrought-​iron stan­dards that Mr. Berke­ley has in front of his place?”

“The ones at the drive­way en­trance, on the bowlders?”

“Yes.”

“They're beau­ties. I've al­ways ad­mired those lamps very much.”

“Well--they are the re­wards of Mr. Berke­ley's po­lit­ical virtue. I paid for them, and so did all the rest of the tax-​pay­ers. They are his May­or's lamps, and if I'm elect­ed I'll have a pair just like them, if I want them like that.”

“Oh, I do hope you'll get in, Ted­dy,” said the lit­tle wom­an, anx­ious­ly, af­ter a re­flec­tive pause. “They'd look stun­ning on our gate-​posts.”

“I don't think I shall have them there,” said Thad­deus. “Jig­gers has the right idea, seems to me--he's put 'em on the newel-​posts of his front porch steps.”

“I don't sup­pose they'd give us the mon­ey and let us buy one hand­some cloi­sonne lamp from Tiffany's, would they?” Mrs. Perkins asked.

“A cloi­sonne lamp on a gate-​post?” laughed Perkins.

“Of course not,” re­joined the la­dy. “You know I didn't mean any such thing. I saw a per­fect­ly beau­ti­ful lamp in Tiffany's last Wednes­day, and it would go so well in the par­lor--”

“That wouldn't be pos­si­ble, my dear,” said Thad­deus, still smil­ing. “You don't quite catch the idea of those lamps. They're sort of like the red, white, and blue lights in a drug-​store win­dow in in­ten­tion. They are put up to show the pub­lic that that is where a po­lit­ical pre­scrip­tion for the body politic may be com­pound­ed. The pub­lic is re­spon­si­ble for the bills, and the pub­lic ex­pects to use what lit­tle light can be ex­tract­ed from them.”

“Then all this gen­eros­ity on the pub­lic's part is--”

“Mere­ly that of the In­di­an who gives and takes back,” said Thad­deus.

“And they must be out-​of-​doors?” asked Mrs. Perkins. “If I set the cloi­sonne lamp in the win­dow, it wouldn't do?”

“No,” said Thad­deus. “They must be out-​of-​doors.”

“Well, I hope the nasty old pub­lic will stay there too, and not come traips­ing all over my house,” snapped Mrs. Perkins, in­dig­nant­ly.

And then for a lit­tle time the dis­cus­sion of the May­or's lamps stopped.

The cam­paign went on, and Thad­deus night af­ter night was forced to go out to speak here and there and ev­ery­where. One night he trav­elled five miles through mud and rain to ad­dress an or­ga­ni­za­tion of tax-​pay­ers, and found them as­sem­bled be­fore the long ma­hogany counter of a beer-​sa­loon, which was the “Hall” they had se­cured for the re­cep­tion of the idol of their hopes; and among them it is safe to say there was not one who ev­er saw a tax-​bill, and not many who knew more about those lux­uries of life than the de­li­cious flunky, im­mor­tal­ized by Mr. Punch, who says to a broth­er flunky, “I say, Tum­mas, wot is tax­es?” And he told them his prin­ci­ples and promised to do his best for them, and bade them good-​night, and went away leav­ing them parched and dry and down­cast. And then the oth­er fel­low came, and won their hearts and “set them up again.” An­oth­er night he at­tend­ed an­oth­er meet­ing and lost a num­ber of friends be­cause he shone at both ends but not in the mid­dle. If he had tak­en a glit­ter­ing coin or two from his vest-​pock­et on be­half of the no­ble work­ing-​men there as­sem­bled in great num­bers and spir­itu­ous mood, they would have for­giv­en him his wit and patent-​leather shoes--and so it went. Perkins was night­ly hauled hith­er and yon by the man he called his “Ha­gen­beck,” the man­ag­er of the wild an­imal he felt him­self grad­ual­ly de­gen­er­at­ing in­to, and his wife and home and chil­dren saw less of him than of the unim­por­tant float­ing vot­er whose mind was open to con­vic­tion, but could be reached on­ly by way of the throat.

“Two o'clock last night; one o'clock the night be­fore; I sup­pose it'll be three be­fore you are in to-​night?” Mrs. Perkins said, rue­ful­ly.

“I do not know, my dear,” replied Thad­deus. “There are five meet­ings on for to-​night.”

“Well, I think they ought to give you the lamps now,” said Mrs. Perkins. “It seems to me this is when you need them most.”

“True,” said Thad­deus, sad­ly, for in his se­cret soul he was be­gin­ning to be afraid he would be elect­ed; and now that he saw what kind of peo­ple May­ors have to as­so­ciate with, the glo­ry of it did not seem to be worth the cost. “I'm a sort of Night-​May­or just at present, and those lamps would come in handy in the wee sma' hours,” he groaned. And then he sighed and pined for the peace­ful days of yore when he was con­tent to walk his ways with no na­tion up­on his shoul­ders.

“I nev­er en­vied At­las any­how,” he con­fid­ed to him­self lat­er, as he tossed about up­on his bed and called him­self names. “It al­ways seemed to me that this re­volv­ing globe must rub the skin off his neck and back; but now, poor dev­il, with just one mu­nic­ipal­ity hang­ing over me, I can ap­pre­ci­ate more than ev­er the dif­fi­cul­ties of his po­si­tion--ex­cept that he doesn't have to make speech­es to 'tax-​pay­ers.' Humph! Tax­pay­ers! It's tax-​mak­ers. If I'd promised to go in­to all sorts of wilder­ness im­prove­ment for the sole and on­ly pur­pose of putting these 'tax-​pay­ers' on the cor­po­ra­tion at the ex­pense of re­al la­bor­ing-​men, I'd win in a can­ter.”

“What is the mat­ter, Thad­deus?” said Mrs. Perkins, com­ing in from the oth­er room. “Can't you sleep?”

“Don't want to sleep, my dear,” re­turned the can­di­date. “When I go to sleep I dream I'm ad­dress­ing mass-​meet­ings. I can't en­joy my rest un­less I stay awake. Did your moth­er come to-​day?”

“Yes--and, oh, she's so en­thu­si­as­tic, Ted­dy!”

“At last! About me? You don't mean it.”

“No--about the lamps. She says lamps are just what we need to com­plete the en­trance. She thinks Mr. Berke­ley's scheme of putting them on the stone posts is the best. There's more dig­ni­ty about it. Putting them on the pi­az­za steps, she says, looks os­ten­ta­tious, and sug­gests a beer-​sa­loon or a road-​house.”

“Well, my dear, that's about all pol­itics seems to amount to,” said the re­former. “If those lamps are to be a sou­venir of the cam­paign, they ought to sug­gest road-​hous­es and beer-​sa­loons.”

“They will not be sou­venirs of a cam­paign,” replied Mrs. Perkins, proud­ly. “They will be the out­ward and vis­ible sign of my hus­band's mer­it; the em­blem of vic­to­ry.”

“The red badge of tri­umph, eh?” smiled the can­di­date, wan­ly. “Well, my dear, have them where you please, and keep them well filled with al­co­hol, even if they do burn gas. They'll rep­re­sent the tax-​pay­ers when they get that.”

“You musn't get so tired, Thad­deus dear,” said the lit­tle wom­an, smooth­ing his fore­head sooth­ing­ly with her hand. “You seem un­usu­al­ly tired to-​night.”

“I am,” said Thad­deus, short­ly. “The de­bate wore me out.”

“Did you de­bate? I thought you said you wouldn't.”

“Well, I did. Ev­ery­body said I was afraid to meet Cap­tain Hask­ins on the plat­form, so we had it out to-​night over in the Tenth Ward. I talked for six­ty-​eight min­utes, gave 'em my views, and then he got up.”

“What did he say. Could he an­swer you?”

“No--but he won the day. All he said was: 'Well, boys, I'm not much of a talk­er, but I'll say one thing--Perkins, while my ad­ver­sary, is still my friend, and I'm proud of him. Now, if you'll all join me at the bar, we'll drink his health--on me.'” Thad­deus paused, and then he added: “I imag­ine they're cheer­ing yet; at any rate, if I have as much health as they drink--on Hask­ins--I'll dou­ble dis­count old Methuse­lah in the mat­ter of years.”

The next morn­ing at break­fast the pale and ner­vous stan­dard-​bear­er was af­fec­tion­ate­ly greet­ed by his moth­er-​in-​law.

“I've been think­ing about those lamps all night,” she said, af­ter a few min­utes. “The trou­ble about the gate-​posts is that you have three gate-​posts and on­ly two lamps.”

“Maybe they'd let us buy three lamps in­stead of two,” sug­gest­ed Mrs. Perkins.

“Well, we won't, even if they do let us,” ob­served Perkins, with some ir­ri­ta­tion. He had just re­ceived a news­pa­per from a kind friend in Mas­sachusetts with a com­ic bi­og­ra­phy and dis­si­pat­ed wood-​cut of him­self in it. “I'm not start­ing a con­cert-​hall, and I'm not go­ing to put a row of lamps along the front of my place.”

“I quite agree with you,” replied his moth­er-​in-​law. “It oc­curred to me we might put them, like hang­ing lanterns, on each of the chim­neys. It would be odd.”

Thad­deus mut­tered two syl­la­bles to him­self, the lat­ter of which sound­ed like M'dodd, but ex­act­ly what it was he said I can on­ly guess. Then he added: “They won't go there. I can't get a gas-​pipe up through those chim­neys. It's as much as we can do to get the smoke up, much less a gas-​pipe. Even if we got the gas-​pipe through, it wouldn't do. A put­ty-​blow­er would choke up the flues.”

“Well, I don't know,” said the moth­er-​in-​law, placid­ly. “It seems to me--”

A glance from Mrs. Perkins stopped the dear old la­dy. I think Mrs. Perkins's sym­pa­thet­ic dis­po­si­tion taught her that her hus­band was hav­ing a hard time be­ing agree­able, and that fur­ther dis­cus­sion of the lamp ques­tion was like­ly to prove dis­as­trous.

Thad­deus was soon called for by his man­ag­er, and start­ed out to meet the lead­ing lights of the Hun­gar­ian and Ital­ian quar­ters. The Ger­mans had been made sol­id the day be­fore, and as for the Irish, they were sup­posed to be with Perkins on prin­ci­ple, be­cause Perkins was not in ac­cord po­lit­ical­ly with the ex­ist­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“It's too bad he's so ner­vous,” said his moth­er-​in-​law, as he went out. “They say wom­en are ner­vous, but I must say I don't think much of the en­durance of men. How ab­surd he was when he spoke of the gas-​pipe through the chim­ney!”

“Well, I sup­pose, my dear moth­er,” said Mrs. Perkins, sad­ly--“I sup­pose he can't be both­ered with lit­tle de­tails like the lamps now. There are oth­er ques­tions to be con­sid­ered.”

“What is the ex­act is­sue?” asked the moth­er-​in-​law, in­ter­est­ed­ly.

“Well--the tar­iff, and--ah--and tax­es, and--ah--mon­ey, and--ah--ah--I think the sa­loon ques­tion en­ters in some­how. I be­lieve Mr. Hask­ins wants more of them, and Thad­deus says there are too many of them as it is. And now they are both in­ves­ti­gat­ing them, I fan­cy, be­cause Ted­dy was in one the oth­er day.”

“We ought to help him a lit­tle,” said the el­der wom­an. “Let's just re­lieve him of the whole lamp ques­tion; de­cide where to put them, go to New York and pick them out, get es­ti­mates for the lay­ing of the pipes, and sur­prise him by hav­ing them all ready to put up the day af­ter elec­tion.”

“Wouldn't it be fun!” cried Mrs. Perkins, de­light­ed­ly. “He'll be so sur­prised--poor dear boy. I'll do it. I'll send down this morn­ing for Mr. O'Hara to come up here and see how we can make the con­nec­tion and where the trench­es for the pipes can be laid. Mr. O'Hara is the best-​known con­trac­tor in town, and I guess he's the man we want.”

And im­me­di­ate­ly O'Hara was tele­phoned for to come up to Mr. Perkins's, and the fair con­spir­ators were not aware of, and prob­ably will nev­er re­al­ize, the im­por­tance po­lit­ical­ly of that act. Mr. O'Hara re­fused to come, but it was hint­ed about that Perkins had sum­moned him, and there was great joy among the rank and file, and woe among the bet­ter el­ements, for O'Hara was a boss, and a boss whose pow­er was one of the things Thad­deus was try­ing to break, and the co­horts fan­cied that the apos­tle of pu­ri­ty had re­al­ized that with­out O'Hara re­form was fall­en in­to the pit. Fur­ther­more, as cities of the third class, like Dum­fries Cor­ners, live con­ver­sa­tion­al­ly on ru­mors and gos­sip­ings, it was not an hour be­fore al­most all Dum­fries Cor­ners, ex­cept Thad­deus Perkins him­self and his man­ag­er, knew that the idol had bowed be­fore the boss's hat, and that the boss had re­turned the grand mes­sage that he'd see Perkins in the Hud­son Riv­er be­fore he'd go to his damned mug­wump tem­ple; and in two hours they al­so knew it, for they heard in no un­cer­tain terms from the sec­re­tary of the Mu­nic­ipal Club, a re­form or­ga­ni­za­tion, which had been in­stru­men­tal in se­cur­ing Perkins's nom­ina­tion, who de­mand­ed to know in an ex­plic­it yes or no as to whether any such mes­sage had been sent. The de­nial was made, and then the lie was giv­en; and many to this day won­der ex­act­ly where the truth lay. At any rate, votes were lost and few gained, and many a wor­thy friend of good gov­ern­ment lost heart and be­moaned the de­gen­er­ation of the gen­tle­man in­to the politi­cian.

Perkins, worn out, ir­ri­tat­ed by, if not an­gry at, what he termed the un­der­hand­ed ly­ing of the op­po­si­tion, drove home for lun­cheon, and found his wife and her moth­er in a state of high dud­geon. They had been in­sult­ed.

“It was fright­ful the lan­guage that man used, Thad­deus,” said Mrs. Perkins.

“He wouldn't have dared do it ex­cept by tele­phone,” put in the moth­er-​in-​law, whose no­tions were some­what old-​fash­ioned. “I've al­ways hat­ed that ma­chine. Peo­ple can lie to you and you can't look 'em in the eye over it, and they can say things to your face with ab­so­lute op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

The dear old la­dy meant im­puni­ty, but it must be re­mem­bered that she was ex­cit­ed.

“Well, I think he ought to be chas­tised,” said Mrs. Perkins.

“Who? What are you talk­ing about?” de­mand­ed Thad­deus.

“That nasty O'Hara man,” said Mrs. Perkins. “He said 'he'd be damned' over the wire.”

Thad­deus im­me­di­ate­ly be­came en­er­get­ic. “He didn't black­guard you, did he?” he de­mand­ed.

“Yes, he did,” said Mrs. Perkins, the wa­ter in her eyes af­fect­ing her voice so that it be­came mel­liflu­ous in­stead of mere­ly melo­di­ous.

“But how?” per­sist­ed Perkins.

“Well--we--we--rang him up--it was on­ly as a sur­prise, you know, dear--we rang him up--”

“You--you rang up--O'Hara?” cried Perkins, aghast. “It must have been a sur­prise.”

“Yes, Ted­dy. We were go­ing to set­tle the lamp ques­tion; we thought you were both­ered enough with--well, with af­fairs of state--”

The can­di­date drew up proud­ly, but im­me­di­ate­ly be­came limp again as he re­al­ized the sit­ua­tion.

“And,” Mrs. Perkins con­tin­ued, “we thought we'd re­lieve you of the lamp ques­tion; and as Mr. O'Hara is a great con­trac­tor--the most not­ed in all Dum­fries Cor­ners--isn't he?”

“Yes, yes, yes! he is!” said Perkins, fu­ri­ous­ly; “but what of that?”

“Well, that's why we rang him up,” said Mrs. Perkins, with a sigh of re­lief to find that she had se­lect­ed the right man. “We want­ed Mr. O'Hara to dig the trench for the pipes, and lay the pipes--”

“He's a great pipe-​lay­er!” ejac­ulat­ed Perkins.

“Ex­act­ly,” re­joined Mrs. Perkins, solemn­ly. “We'd heard that, and so we asked him to come up.”

“But, my dear,” cried Perkins, dis­mayed, “you didn't tell him you want­ed him to put up my lamps? I'm not elect­ed yet.”

The agony of the mo­ment for Perkins can be bet­ter imag­ined than por­trayed.

“He didn't give us the chance,” said the moth­er-​in-​law. “He mere­ly swore.”

Perkins drew a sigh of re­lief. He un­der­stood it all now, and in spite of the po­si­tion in which he was placed he was glad. “Jove!” he said to him­self, “it was a nar­row es­cape. Sup­pose O'Hara had come! He'd have en­joyed lay­ing pipes for a May­or's lamps for me--two weeks be­fore elec­tion.”

And for the first time in weeks Perkins was faint­ly mirth­ful. The nar­row­ness of his es­cape had made him hys­ter­ical, and he ac­tu­al­ly in­dulged in the lux­ury of a ner­vous laugh.

“That ac­counts for the ru­mor,” he said to him­self, and then his heart grew heavy again. “The ru­mor is true, and--Oh, well, this is what I get for dab­bling in pol­itics. If I ev­er get out of this alive, I vow by all the gods pol­itics shall know me no more.”

“It was all right--my ask­ing O'Hara, Thad­deus?” asked Mrs. Perkins.

“Oh yes, cer­tain­ly, my dear--per­fect­ly right. O'Hara is in­deed, as you thought, the most not­ed, not to say no­to­ri­ous, con­trac­tor in town, on­ly he's not lay­ing pipes just now. He's pulling wires.”

“For tele­phones, I pre­sume?” said the old la­dy, placid­ly.

“Well, in a way,” replied Thad­deus. “There's a great deal of vo­cal­ity about O'Hara's wires. But, Bess,” he added, se­ri­ous­ly, “just drop the lamps un­til we get 'em, and con­fine your tele­phon­ing to your in­ti­mate friends. An Irish­man on a tele­phone in po­lit­ical times is apt to be a tri­fle--er--art­less in his choice of words. If you must talk to one of 'em, re­mem­ber to put in the light­ning plug be­fore you be­gin.”

With which in­junc­tion the can­di­date de­part­ed to ad­dress the Mo­hawks, an in­de­pen­dent po­lit­ical or­ga­ni­za­tion in the Sec­ond Ward, which was made up of think­ing men who nev­er in­dorsed a can­di­date with­out know­ing why, and rarely be­fore three o'clock of the af­ter­noon of elec­tion day at that, by whom he was re­ceived with cheers and back-​slap­ping and but­ton-​hol­ings which con­vinced him that he was the most pop­ular man on earth, though on elec­tion day--but elec­tion day has yet to be de­scribed. It came, and with it there came to Perkins a feel­ing very much like that which the small boy ex­pe­ri­ences on the day be­fore Christ­mas. He has been good for two months, and he knows that to-​mor­row the pe­ri­od of pro­ba­tion will be over and he can be as bad as he pleas­es again for a lit­tle while any­how.

“How­ev­er it turns out, I can tell 'em all to go to the dev­il to-​mor­row,” chuck­led Thad­deus, rub­bing his hands glee­ful­ly.

“I don't think you ought to for­get the lamps, Thad­deus,” ob­served the moth­er-​in-​law at break­fast. “Here it is elec­tion day and you haven't yet de­cid­ed where they shall go. Now I re­al­ly think--”

“Nev­er mind the lamps,” re­turned Thad­deus. “Let's talk of bal­lot-​box­es to-​day. To-​mor­row we can place the lamps.”

“Very well, if you say so,” said the old la­dy; “on­ly I mar­vel at you lat­ter-​day boys. In my young days a small mat­ter like that would have been set­tled long ago.”

“Well, I'll com­pro­mise with you,” said Thad­deus. “We won't wait un­til to-​mor­row. I'll de­cide the ques­tion to-​night--I'm re­al­ly too busy now to think of them.”

“I shall be glad when we don't have to think about 'em at all,” sighed Mrs. Perkins, pour­ing out the can­di­date's cof­fee. “They've re­al­ly been a care to me. I don't like the idea of putting them on the porch, or on the gate-​posts ei­ther. They'll have to be kept clean, and good­ness knows I can't ask the girls to go out in the mid­dle of win­ter to clean them if they are on the gate-​posts.”

“Mike will clean them,” said Thad­deus.

Mrs. Perkins sniffed when Mike's name was men­tioned. “I doubt it,” she said. “He's been lots of good for two weeks.”

“Mike has been lots of good for two weeks,” echoed Thad­deus, en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly. “He's kept all the hired men in line, my dear.”

“I've no doubt he's been of use po­lit­ical­ly, but from a do­mes­tic point of view he's been aw­ful. He's been drunk for the last week.”

“Well, my love,” said the can­di­date, de­spair­ing­ly, “some mem­ber of the fam­ily had to be drunk for the last week, and I'd rather it was Mike than you or any of the chil­dren. Mike's ge­nial­ity has shed a ra­di­ance about me among the hired men of this town that fills me with pride.”

“I don't see, to go back to what I said in the very be­gin­ning, why we can't have the lamps in-​doors,” re­turned Mrs. Perkins.

“I told you why not, my dear,” said Perkins. “They are the perquisite of the May­or, but for the ben­efit of the pub­lic, be­cause the pub­lic pays for them.”

“And hasn't the pub­lic, as you call it, tak­en pos­ses­sion of the in­side of your house?” de­mand­ed the moth­er-​in-​law. “I found sev­en gen­tle­men sit­ting in the white and gold par­lor on­ly last night, and they hadn't wiped their feet ei­ther.”

“You don't un­der­stand,” fal­tered the stan­dard-​bear­er. “That busi­ness isn't per­ma­nent. To-​mor­row I'll tell them to go round to the back door and ask the cook.”

“Humph!” said the moth­er-​in-​law. “I'm sur­prised at you. For a few pal­try votes you--” Just here the front door bell rang, and the busi­ness of the day be­gin­ning stopped the con­ver­sa­tion, which bade fair to be­come un­pleas­ant.

* * * * *

Night came. The votes were be­ing count­ed, and at six o'clock Perkins was in­formed that ev­ery­thing was go­ing his way.

“Get your place ready for a brass band and a ser­enade,” his man­ag­er tele­phoned.

“I sha'n't!” ejac­ulat­ed the can­di­date to him­self, his old-​time in­de­pen­dence as­sert­ing it­self now that the polls were closed--and he was right. He didn't have to. The band did not play in his front yard, for at eight o'clock the tide that had set in strong for Perkins turned. At ten, ac­cord­ing to votes that had been count­ed, things were about even, and the ladies re­tired. At twelve Perkins turned out the gas.

“That set­tles the lamp ques­tion, any­how,” he whis­pered to him­self as he went up-​stairs, and then he went in­to Mrs. Perkins's room.

“Well, Bess,” he said, “it's all over, and I've made up my mind as to where the lamps are to go.”

“Good!” said the lit­tle wom­an. “On the gate-​posts?”

“No, dear. In the par­lor--the cloi­sonne lamps from Tiffany's.”

“Why, I thought you said we couldn't--”

“Well, we can. Our lamps can go in there whether the pub­lic likes it or not. We are eman­ci­pat­ed.”

“But I don't un­der­stand,” be­gan Mrs. Perkins.

“Oh, it's sim­ple,” said Thad­deus, with a sigh of min­gled re­lief and cha­grin. “It's sim­ple enough. The oth­er lamps are to be put--er--on Cap­tain Hask­ins's place.”

THE BAL­ANCE OF POW­ER

It was a pleas­ant night in the spring of 189-.

The res­idents of Dum­fries Cor­ners were en­joy­ing an ear­ly spring, and suf­fer­ing from the de­mor­al­iz­ing in­flu­ences of a mu­nic­ipal elec­tion. In­ci­den­tal­ly Mr. Thad­deus Perkins, can­di­date, was be­gin­ning to feel very much like Moses when he saw the promised land afar. The promised land was now in plain sight; but whether or not the name of Perkins should be in­scribed in one of its high places de­pend­ed up­on the vot­ers who on the mor­row were to let their bal­lots ex­press their choice as to who should pre­side over the in­ter­ests of the city and hold in check the fiery, un­tamed al­der­men of Dum­fries Cor­ners.

The can­di­date was tired, very tired, and was try­ing to gain a few hours' rest be­fore plung­ing again and for the last time in­to the whirlpool of vote-​get­ting; and as he sat en­joy­ing a few mo­ments of bliss­ful ease be­hind the close-​drawn portieres of his li­brary there came the much-​dread­ed sound of heavy feet up­on the porch with­out, and the door-​bell rang.

“No­rah!” cried the can­di­date, in an ag­onized stage-​whis­per, as the maid ap­proached in an­swer to the sum­mons, “tell them I'm out, un­less it's some one of my per­son­al friends.”

“Yis, sorr,” was the an­swer. “Oi will.”

And the door was opened.

“Is Mis­ther Perkins in?” came a deep, un­mis­tak­ably “vot­ing” voice from with­out.

“Oi dun'no'. Are yees a per­son­al friend of Mis­ther Perkins?” was the re­sponse, and the heart of the lis­ten­ing Perkins sought his boots.

“Oi am not, but--” said the deep voice.

“Thin he isn't in,” said No­rah, pos­itive­ly.

“When 'll he be back?” asked the vis­itor, huski­ly.

“Ye say ye niv­er met him?” de­mand­ed No­rah.

“Oi told ye oi hadn't,” said the vis­itor, a tri­fle ir­ri­ta­bly. “But--”

“Thin he'll niv­er be back,” put in the glo­ri­ous No­rah, and she shut the door with con­sid­er­able force and re­tired.

For a mo­ment the can­di­date was over­come; first he paled, but then catch­ing Mrs. Perkins's eye and not­ing a twin­kle of amuse­ment there­in, he yield­ed to his emo­tions and roared with laugh­ter. What if No­rah's man­ner was un­con­ven­tion­al? Had she not car­ried out in­struc­tions?

“My dear,” said the can­di­date to Mrs. Perkins, as the shuf­fling feet on the porch shuf­fled off in­to the night, “what wages do you pay No­rah?”

“Six­teen dol­lars, Thad­deus,” was the an­swer. “Why?”

“Make it twen­ty here­after,” replied the can­di­date. “She is an emer­ald be­yond price. If I had on­ly let her meet the nom­inat­ing com­mit­tee when they en­tered our lit­tle Eden three weeks ago, I should not now be in­volved in this wretched game of pol­itics.”

“Well, I sin­cere­ly wish you had,” Mrs. Perkins ob­served, hearti­ly. “This af­fair has made a very dif­fer­ent man of you, and as for your fam­ily, they hard­ly see you any more. You are ne­glect­ing ev­ery sin­gle house­hold du­ty for your hor­rid old pol­itics.”

“Well, now, my dear--” be­gan the can­di­date.

“The pipes in the laun­dry have been leak­ing for four days now, and yet you won't send for a plumber, or even let me send for one,” con­tin­ued Mrs. Perkins.

“Well, Bessie dear, how can I? The race is aw­ful­ly close. It wouldn't sur­prise me if the ma­jor­ity ei­ther way was less than a hun­dred.”

“There you go again, Thad­deus. What on earth has the leak in the laun­dry pipes to do with the po­lit­ical sit­ua­tion?” asked the puz­zled wom­an.

The can­di­date showed that in spite of his re­cent af­fil­ia­tions he still re­tained some rem­nant of his for­mer self-​re­spect, for he blushed as he thought of the ex­pla­na­tion; but he tried nev­er­the­less to shuf­fle out of it.

“Of course you can't un­der­stand,” he said, with a cow­ard­ly re­solve to shirk the is­sue. “That's be­cause you are a wom­an, Bess. Wom­en don't un­der­stand great po­lit­ical ques­tions. And what I have par­tic­ular­ly liked about you is that you nev­er pre­tend­ed that you did.”

“Well, I'd like to know,” per­sist­ed Mrs. Perkins. “I want to be of as much as­sis­tance to my hus­band in his work as I can, and if pub­lic ques­tions are here­after to be the prob­lems of your life, they must be­come my prob­lems too. Be­sides, my cu­rios­ity is re­al­ly aroused in this es­pe­cial case, and I'd love to know what bear­ing our call­ing a plumber has up­on the tar­iff, or the mon­ey ques­tion, or any oth­er thing in pol­itics.”

The can­di­date hes­itat­ed. He was cor­nered, and he did not ex­act­ly like the prospect.

“Well--” he be­gan. “You see, I'm stand­ing as the rep­re­sen­ta­tive of a great par­ty, and we--we nat­ural­ly wish to win. If I am de­feat­ed, ev­ery one will say that it is a re­buke to the ad­min­is­tra­tion at Wash­ing­ton; and so, you see, we'd bet­ter let those leaks leak un­til day af­ter to-​mor­row, when the vot­ing will all be over.”

Mrs. Perkins looked at her hus­band nar­row­ly.

“I think I'll have to call the doc­tor,” was her com­ment. “Ei­ther for you or for my­self, Ted­dy. One of us is gone--whol­ly gone, men­tal­ly. There's no ques­tion about it, ei­ther you are ram­bling in your speech, or I have en­tire­ly lost all com­pre­hen­sion of the En­glish lan­guage.”

“I don't see--” be­gan Perkins.

“Nei­ther do I,” in­ter­rupt­ed Mrs. Perkins; “and I hard­ly hope to. You've ex­plained and ex­plained, but how a plumber's call­ing here to fix a laun­dry leak is to re­buke the ad­min­is­tra­tion at Wash­ing­ton is still far be­yond me.”

“But the plumbers are said to hold the bal­ance of pow­er!” cried the can­di­date. “There are a hun­dred of them here in Dum­fries Cor­ners, and each one con­trols at least five as­sis­tants, which makes six hun­dred vot­ers in all. If I call in one, he and his five work­ers will vote for me, but the oth­er five hun­dred and nine­ty-​four will vote for Hask­ins; and if they do, the ad­min­is­tra­tion might as well go out of busi­ness. Can't you see? It's the same with the dan­de­lions. These spring elec­tions are per­fect--ah--Gehen­na for a can­di­date if it hap­pens to be an ear­ly spring like this.”

Perkins's voice had the sug­ges­tion of a wail in it as he spoke of the dan­de­lions, and his wife's alarm grew up­on her. She un­der­stood now about the plumber, but his in­ter­jec­tion of the dan­de­lions had brought a fear­ful doubt in­to her heart. Sure­ly he was los­ing his mind.

“Dan­de­lions, Thad­deus?” she echoed, aghast.

“Yes, dan­de­lions,” re­tort­ed the can­di­date, forcibly. “They've queered me as much as any­thing. The neigh­bors say I'm not a good neigh­bor be­cause I don't have them pulled. Mike's been so thor­ough­ly al­co­holic all through the fight, look­ing af­ter my in­ter­ests, that he can't pull them; and if I hire two men to come and do the work, sev­en hun­dred oth­er men will want to know why they didn't get a chance.”

“But why not em­ploy boys?” de­mand­ed Mrs. Perkins.

“And be set down as an ad­vo­cate of cheap child la­bor? Not I!” cried Perkins.

“Then the dan­de­lion-​pullers are an­oth­er bal­ance of pow­er, are they?” asked Mrs. Perkins, be­gin­ning to grow some­what eas­ier in her mind as to her hus­band's san­ity.

“Pre­cise­ly; you have a very re­mark­able gift of in­sight, Bess,” an­swered the can­di­date.

“And how many bal­ances of pow­er are there?” de­mand­ed the la­dy.

“The Lord on­ly knows,” sighed Perkins. “I've made about eighty of 'em sol­id al­ready, but as soon as one bal­ance is fixed a thou­sand oth­ers rise up like Ban­quo's ghost, and will not down. I haven't a doubt that it was a bal­ance of pow­er that No­rah just turned away from the front door. They strike you ev­ery­where. Why, even Bob­bie ru­ined me with one of them in the Eighth Ward the oth­er day--one so­lid­ified bal­ance wiped out in a mo­ment by my in­ter­est­ing son.”

“Bob­bie?” cried Mrs. Perkins. “A six-​year-​old boy?”

“Ex­act­ly--Bob­bie, the six-​year-​old boy. I wish you'd keep the chil­dren in the house un­til this in­fer­nal busi­ness is over. The Eighth Ward would have elect­ed me; but Bob­bie ru­ined that,” said Perkins, rue­ful­ly.

“But how?” cried Mrs. Perkins. “Have our chil­dren been out mak­ing cam­paign speech­es for the oth­er side?”

“They have,” as­sent­ed Perkins. “They have in­deed. You re­mem­ber that man Jor­ri­gan?”

“The strik­er?” queried Mrs. Perkins, call­ing to mind a burly com­bi­na­tion of red hair and bad man­ners who had made him­self very con­spic­uous of late.

“Pre­cise­ly. That's just the point,” re­tort­ed Perkins. “The strik­er. That's what he is, and it's what you call him.”

“But you said he was a strik­er at break­fast last Wednes­day,” said Mrs. Perkins. “We sim­ply take your word for it.”

“I know I did. He's al­so a bal­ance of pow­er, my dear. Jor­ri­gan con­trols the Eighth Ward. That's the on­ly rea­son I've let him in the house,” said Thad­deus.

“You've been very chum­my with him, I must say,” sniffed Mrs. Perkins.

“Well, I've had to be,” said the can­di­date. “That man is a pow­er, and he knows it.”

“What's his busi­ness?” asked Mrs. Perkins.

“In­ter­fer­ence be­tween cap­ital and la­bor,” replied Perkins. “So I've cul­ti­vat­ed him.”

“He nev­er struck me as be­ing a very cul­ti­vat­ed per­son,” smiled Mrs. Perkins. “He has a sug­ges­tion of al­co­hol about him that is very op­pres­sive.”

“I know--he has a very in­tox­icat­ing pres­ence,” said the can­di­date, join­ing in the smile. “But we are rid of his pres­ence now and for­ev­er, thanks to Bob­bie. I got the news last night. He and his fol­low­ers have de­clared for Hask­ins, in spite of all his promis­es to me, and we can at­tribute our per­son­al good for­tune and our po­lit­ical loss to Bob­bie. Bob­bie met him on the street the oth­er day.”

“I know he did,” said Mrs. Perkins. “He told me so, and he said that the hor­rid man want­ed to kiss him.”

“It's true,” said Perkins. “He did, and Bob­bie wouldn't let him.”

“Well, a man isn't go­ing back on you be­cause he can't kiss your whole fam­ily, is he?” asked Mrs. Perkins, ap­pre­hen­sive­ly. “If that's the sit­ua­tion, I shall go to New York to-​mor­row.”

Perkins laughed hearti­ly. “No, my dear,” he said. “You are safe enough from that. But Jor­ri­gan, when Bob­bie re­fused, said, 'Well, young feller, I guess you don't know who I am?' 'Yes, I do,' said Bob­bie. 'You are Mr. Jor­ri­gan,' and Jor­ri­gan was over­joyed; but Bob­bie de­stroyed his good work by adding, 'Jor­ri­gan the strik­er,' and the strik­er's joy van­ished. 'Who told you that?' said he. 'Pop--and he knows,' said Bob­bie. That night,” con­tin­ued Perkins, with a droll ex­pres­sion of min­gled mirth and an­noy­ance, “the amal­ga­mat­ed mor­tar-​mix­ers of the Eighth Ward de­cid­ed that con­sid­er­ation for the coun­try's wel­fare should rise above par­ti­san pol­itics, and that when it came to re­al states­man­ship Hask­ins could give me points. A ward wiped out in a night, and an­oth­er high­ly in­ter­est­ing, very thirsty bal­ance of pow­er gone over to the oth­er side.”

“I should think you'd give up, then,” said Mrs. Perkins, de­spair­ful­ly. She want­ed her hus­band to win--not be­cause she had any am­bi­tion to shine as “La­dy-​May­or,” but be­cause she did not wish Thad­deus to in­cur dis­ap­point­ment or un­der­go the cha­grin of a pub­lic re­buke. “You seem to be los­ing bal­ances of pow­er right and left.”

“Why should I give it up?” queried Perkins. “You don't sup­pose I am hav­ing any bet­ter luck than Mr. Hask­ins, do you?”

“Is he los­ing them too?” asked Mrs. Perkins, hope­ful­ly.

“I judge so from what he tells me,” said Perkins. “We took din­ner to­geth­er at the Cen­tu­ri­on in New York the oth­er night, and he's a prince of good fel­lows, Bess. He has just as much trou­ble as I have, and when I met him on the train the oth­er day he was as blue as I about the fu­ture.”

“You and the cap­tain din­ing to­geth­er?” ejac­ulat­ed Mrs. Perkins.

“Cer­tain­ly,” said Perkins. “Why not? Our ha­tred is mere­ly po­lit­ical, and we can meet on a lev­el of good-​fel­low­ship any­where out­side of Dum­fries Cor­ners.”

Mrs. Perkins laughed out­right. “Isn't it fun­ny!” she said.

“Why, Hask­ins is one of my best friends, gen­er­al­ly,” con­tin­ued Perkins. “I don't see any­thing fun­ny about it. Just be­cause we both hap­pen to be dragged in­to pol­itics on op­po­site sides at the same mo­ment is no rea­son why we should be­gin cut­ting each oth­er's throats, my dear. In fact, with bal­ances of pow­er spring­ing up all over town like mush­rooms, we have be­come com­pan­ions in mis­ery.”

“Well, I don't see why you can't get to­geth­er, then, and tell these bal­ances to go to--to grass,” sug­gest­ed Mrs. Perkins.

“Grass is too mild, my love,” re­marked the can­di­date, smil­ing qui­et­ly. “They wouldn't go there, even if we told them to, so it would be sim­ply a waste of breath. We've got to grin and bear them un­til the polls close, and then we can pitch in and tell 'em what we think of them.”

“Just the same,” con­tin­ued Mrs. Perkins, “an agree­ment be­tween Mr. Hask­ins and you to ig­nore these peo­ple ut­ter­ly, in­stead of tak­ing them in­to your fam­ily, would stop the whole abuse.”

“That's a wom­an's idea,” said Perkins, brave­ly, though in the in­ner­most re­cess­es of his heart he wished he had thought of it be­fore. “It isn't prac­ti­cal pol­itics, my love. You might as well say that two op­pos­ing gen­er­als in a war could save thou­sands of lives by avoid­ing each oth­er's armies and keep­ing out of a fight.”

“Well, I do say that,” replied Mrs. Perkins, pos­itive­ly. “That's ex­act­ly my view of what gen­er­als ought to do.”

“And what would be­come of the war?” queried the can­di­date.

“There wouldn't be any,” said the good lit­tle wom­an.

“Pre­cise­ly,” re­tort­ed Perkins. “Pre­cise­ly. And if Hask­ins and I did what you want us to do, there would be no more pol­itics.”

“Well, what of it?” de­mand­ed Mrs. Perkins. “Are pol­itics the sal­va­tion of the coun­try? It's as bad as war.”

“Humph!” grunt­ed Perkins. “It is dif­fi­cult to please wom­en. You hate war be­cause, to set­tle a ques­tion of right, peo­ple go out in­to the field of bat­tle and mow each oth­er down with guns; you cry for ar­bi­tra­tion. Let all ques­tions, all dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, be set­tled by a re­sort to rea­son, say you--which is beau­ti­ful, and un­doubt­ed­ly prop­er. But when we try to set­tle our dif­fer­ences by a blood­less war­fare, in which the bal­lot is one's am­mu­ni­tion, you cry down with pol­itics. A po­lit­ical con­test is noth­ing but a bit of supreme ar­bi­tra­tion, for which you peace peo­ple are al­ways clam­or­ing, by the court of last re­sort, the peo­ple.” Mrs. Perkins smiled sweet­ly, and tak­ing her hus­band's hand in hers, stroked it soft­ly.

“Ted­dy dear, you mustn't be so politic with me,” she said; “I'm not a cam­paign club. I know that sen­ti­ment you have just ex­pressed is lofty and no­ble, and ought to be true, and I know we used to think it was true--three weeks ago I be­lieved it when you said it; but this is now, dear. This is to-​night, not three weeks ago, and I have changed my mind.”

“Well,” be­gan the can­di­date, hes­itat­ing­ly, “I don't know but that I am weak­en­ing a tri­fle my­self.”

“I know,” in­ter­posed Mrs. Perkins, “you are weak­en­ing. You know as well as I do that the hard work you are do­ing is not in ap­peal­ing to the rea­son of the supreme court of ar­bi­tra­tion, the peo­ple. You are ap­peal­ing, as you have said, your­self, to a large and in­ter­est­ing va­ri­ety of bal­ances of pow­er, that do not want your views or your opin­ions or your ar­gu­ments, but they do want your mon­ey to buy cigars and beer with. They want you to buy their good-​will; and even if you bought it, I doubt if they would con­cede to you a con­trol­ling in­ter­est in it if Mr. Hask­ins should hap­pen to want some of it, and I don't doubt he does.”

“You don't know any­thing--” the can­di­date ven­tured.

“Yes I do, too,” re­turned Mrs. Perkins, with the self-​sat­is­fied nod which the av­er­age new wom­an gives when she thinks she is right, though Mrs. Perkins had no pre­ten­sions in that di­rec­tion, hap­pi­ly for her fam­ily. “I know all that you have told me. I know that when you were to dine at Colonel Buck­ley's on Wednes­day night you wore your evening dress, and that when leav­ing there ear­ly to go to the city and ad­dress the Mo­hawk In­de­pen­dent Club you asked your man­ag­er if you could go dressed as you were, and his an­swer was, 'Not on your life,' and you went home and put on your busi­ness suit. You told me that your­self, and yet you talk about the supreme court of ar­bi­tra­tion, the peo­ple!”

“But, Bess, the Mo­hawks are a pow­er­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion,” plead­ed Perkins. “I couldn't af­ford to of­fend them.”

“No. It was the first bal­ance of pow­er that turned up. I re­mem­ber it well. It was to be con­vinced by ar­gu­ments. You were go­ing down there to dis­cuss prin­ci­ples, but you couldn't ap­peal to their ju­di­cial minds or reach their rea­son un­less you changed your clothes; and when you got there as their guest, and ven­tured to ask for a glass of Vichy be­fore you spoke, do you re­mem­ber what they brought you?” de­mand­ed Mrs. Perkins, warm­ing up to her sub­ject.

The can­di­date smiled faint­ly. “Yes,” he an­swered. “Beer.”

“Ex­act­ly; and when he gave you the beer, that MacHen­ty man whis­pered in your ear, 'Drink that; it'll go bet­ter wid the byes.'”

“He did,” said Thad­deus, meek­ly.

“And yet you talk about this ap­peal to a rea­son­able bal­ance of pow­er! Re­al­ly, Ted­dy, you are be­com­ing de­mor­al­ized. Pol­itics, as I see it, is an ap­peal to thirst, and noth­ing else.”

“'You nev­er miss the vot­er till the keg runs dry,'” sang the can­di­date, with a more or less suc­cess­ful at­tempt at gayety. “But nev­er mind, Bess. I've had enough, and if I'm beat­en this time I'll nev­er do it again. So don't wor­ry; and, af­ter all, this is on­ly a mu­nic­ipal elec­tion. The dif­fer­ence be­tween a grand in­spir­ing mas­sive war for prin­ci­ple and a street ri­ot. The supreme court of ar­bi­tra­tion, the peo­ple, can be re­lied on to do the right thing in the end. They are sane. They are hon­est. They are not all thirsty, and in this as in all con­tests the bla­tant at­tract the most at­ten­tion. The bark­er at the door of the side show to the cir­cus makes more noise than the eight-​head­ed boy that makes the mare go.”

“You're a tri­fle mixed in your metaphors, Ted­dy,” said Mrs. Perkins.

“Well who wouldn't be, af­ter a three weeks' ap­peal to an arid waste of vot­ers?”

“A waste of arid vot­ers,” amend­ed Mrs. Perkins.

“The amend­ment is ac­cept­ed,” laughed Thad­deus. And at that mo­ment a tele­phone call from head­quar­ters sum­moned him abroad.

“Good-​night, Bess,” he said, kiss­ing his wife af­fec­tion­ate­ly. “This is the last night.”

“Good-​night, Ted­dy; I hope it is. And next time when they ask you to run--”

“You shall be the bal­ance of pow­er, and de­cide the ques­tion for me,” said the can­di­date, as, with sor­row in his heart, he left his home to seek out what he called “the branch of­fice of Hades,” po­lit­ical head­quar­ters, where were gath­ered some fifty per­sons, most of whom be­gan life in oth­er coun­tries, un­der dif­fer­ent skies, and to whom the na­tion­al an­them “Amer­ica” meant less and aroused few­er sen­ti­ments worth hav­ing than that at­trac­tive two-​step “St. Patrick's Day in the Morn­ing,” and who were yet suf­fi­cient­ly pow­er­ful with the var­ious “bal­ances” of the town to hold its po­lit­ical des­tinies in their itch­ing palms.

* * * * *

Two months af­ter this dis­cus­sion the late Hon­or­able Thad­deus Perkins, ex-​can­di­date, and May­or of Dum­fries Cor­ners on­ly by cour­tesy of those who hon­or de­feat­ed can­di­dates with ti­tles for which they have striv­en un­suc­cess­ful­ly, was strolling through the coun­try along the line of the Cro­ton Aque­duct, try­ing to dis­en­tan­gle, with the aid of the fresh sweet air of an ear­ly sum­mer af­ter­noon, an idea for a son­net from the mazes of his brain. Stop­ping for a mo­ment to look down up­on the glo­ri­ous Hud­son stretch­ing its shim­mer­ing length like a bimetal­lic ser­pent to the north and south, he sud­den­ly be­came con­scious of a pair of very sharp eyes rest­ing up­on him, which a clos­er in­spec­tion showed be­longed to a la­bor­er of seem­ing­ly diminu­tive stature, who was en­gaged in car­ry­ing earth in a wheel­bar­row from one dirt-​pile to an­oth­er. As Thad­deus caught his eye the la­bor­er as­sumed tow­er­ing pro­por­tions. He rose up quite two feet high­er in the air and bowed.

“How do you do?” said Perkins, re­turn­ing the salu­ta­tion cour­te­ous­ly, won­der­ing the while as to what might be the cause of this sud­den change of height.

“Oi'm well--which is noth­in' new to me,” replied the oth­er. “Ut sheems to me,” he con­tin­ued, “thot youse res­im­bles thot smart young fel­ly Perkins, the May­or of Dum­fries Cor­ners--not!”

Perkins laughed. The sting of de­feat had lost its pow­er to an­noy, and his ex­pe­ri­ence had be­come mere­ly one of a thou­sand oth­er night­mares of the past.

“Do I?” he replied, re­solv­ing not to con­fess his iden­ti­ty, for the mo­ment at least.

“On­ly thin­ner,” chuck­led the la­bor­er, shrink­ing up again; and Perkins now saw that the legs of his new ac­quain­tance were of an ab­nor­mal­ly un­equal length, which forced him ev­ery time he shift­ed his weight from one foot to the oth­er to change his ap­par­ent height to a startling de­gree. “An' a gude dale thin­ner,” he re­peat­ed. “There's noth­in' loike polith­ical ex­er­soize to take off th' flesh, parthic­ular­ly when ye miss ut.”

“I fan­cy you are right,” said Perkins. “I nev­er met Mr. Perkins--that is, face to face--my­self. Do you know him?”

The Irish­man threw his head back and laughed.

“Well,” he said, “oi'm not wan uv his per­shonal fri'nds. But oi know um when oi see um,” and he looked Thad­deus straight in the eye as he grew tall again.

“I'm sure it is Perkins's loss,” re­turned Thad­deus, “that you are not a per­son­al friend of his.”

“It was,” said the Irish­man. “My name is Finn,” he added, with an air which seemed to as­sume that Perkins would be­gin to trem­ble at the dread­ed word; but Perkins did not trem­ble. He mere­ly replied,

“A very good name, Mr. Finn.”

“Oi t'ink so,” as­sent­ed Mr. Finn. “Ut's bet­ter nor Din­nis, me young fri'nd.”

Perkins as­sent­ed to this propo­si­tion as though it was mere­ly gen­er­al, and had no par­tic­ular ap­pli­ca­tion to the af­fairs of the mo­ment. “I sup­pose, Mr. Finn,” he ob­served, short­ly, “that you were one of the earnest work­ers in the late cam­paign for Mr. Perkins?”

“Was he elict­ed?” asked Finn, scorn­ful­ly.

“I be­lieve not,” be­gan Thad­deus. “But--”

“Thot's me an­swer to your quis­tion, sorr,” said Finn, with dig­ni­ty. “He'd 'a' had lamps be­foor his house now, sorr, if he hadn't been gay wid his front dure.”

“Oh--he was gay with his front door, was he?” asked Perkins.

“He was thot, an' not ony too care­ful uv his windy-​shades,” replied Finn.

Perkins looked at him in­quir­ing­ly.

“Givin' me, Mike Finn, song an' dance about not bein' home, wid me fri'nds out­side on the lawn watchin' him troo de windy, laf­fin' loike a hayeny.”

“Ex­cuse me--like a what?” said Thad­deus.

“A hayeny,” re­peat­ed Mr. Finn. “Wan o' thim woild bastes as laffs at noth­in' much. 'Is he home?' sez oi. 'Are yees a per­shonal fri'nd?' says the gurl. 'Oi'm not,' sez oi. 'He ain't home,' says the gurl. 'Whin'll he be back?' says oi. 'Niv­er,' says she, shlam­min' the dure in me face; and Mike Finn wid a cer­ti­fikut uv elec­tion for um in his pock­et!”

“A cer­tifi­cate of elec­tion?” cried Perkins. “And he wouldn't see you?”

“He would not.”

“You were to an ex­tent the bal­ance of pow­er, then?”

“That's what oi was,” said Finn, en­joy­ing what he thought was Perkins's dis­may; for he knew well enough to whom he was talk­ing. “Oi was the rale bony­fi­day bal­ance uv pow­er. Oi've got foive sons, sorr, and ivery wan o' thim byes is con­thrac­thors, or, what's as good, boss­es uv gangs on pub­lic an' proi­vate works. There ain't wan uv thim foive byes as don't con­throl twin­ty-​foive votes, an' there ain't wan uv 'em as don't moind what the ould mon says to um. Not wan, sorr. An' they resints the turnin' down uv their fa­ther.”

“That's as it should be,” said Perkins.

“An' ut's as ut was, me young fri'nd. Whin oi wint home to me per­shonal fri'nds at th' Finn Club, Mis­ther Perkins had losht me. Wan gone. Whin oi tould the Finn Club, wan hun­dred sthrong, he losht thim. Wan hun­dred and wan gone. Whin oi tould th' byes, he losht thim. Wan hun­dred an' six gone. An' whin they tould their twin­ty-​foive apiece, ivery twin­ty-​foive o' thim wint. Wan hun­dred an' six plus wan hun­dred an' twin­ty-​foive makes two hun­dred an' thir­ty-​wan votes losht at the shlam­min' uv the front dure. An' whin two hun­dred an' thir­ty-​wan votes laves wan soide mi­nus an' the oth­er soide plus, th' gin­er­al re­sult is a dif­fer­ence uv twoice two hun­dred an' thir­ty-​wan, or foor hun­dred an' six­ty-​two. D'ye mind thot, sorr?”

“I see,” said Perkins. “And as this--ah--this par­tic­ular can­di­date was beat­en by a bare ma­jor­ity of two or three hun­dred votes--”

“It was _me_ as done it!” put in the bal­ance of pow­er, shak­ing his fin­ger at Perkins im­pres­sive­ly. “Me--Mike Finn!”

“Well, I hope Mr. Perkins hears of it, Mr. Finn,” put in Thad­deus. “I am told that he is won­der­ing yet what hit him, and hav­ing put the af­front up­on you, and through that in­ex­cus­able act lost the elec­tion, he ought to know that you were his Neme­sis.”

“His what?” queried the re­al bal­ance.

“His Neme­sis. Neme­sis is the name of a Greek god­dess,” ex­claimed Perkins.

“Oi'm no Greek, nor no god­dess,” re­tort­ed Finn, “but I give him the throw-​down.”

“That's what I meant,” ex­plained Thad­deus. “The word has be­come part of the En­glish lan­guage. Neme­sis was the God­dess of the Throw-​down, and the word is used to sig­ni­fy that.”

“Oh, oi see,” said Finn, scratch­ing his head re­flec­tive­ly. Perkins took his rev­ela­tion a tri­fle too calm­ly. “You say you don't know this Perkins,” he asked.

“Well, I nev­er met him,” said the ex-​can­di­date, smil­ing. “But I know him.”

Finn laughed again. “Oi'll bet ye do; an' oi guiss ye've seen his fa-​ace long about shavin'-toime in the mornin' in the lukin'-glash--eh?”

“Well, yes,” smiled Perkins. “I con­fess I'm the man, Mr. Finn; but now we are--per­son­al friends--eh? I was fagged out that night, and--you didn't send in your card, you know--and I didn't know it was you.” The bal­ance of pow­er cast down his eyes, and rub­bing his hand on his over­alls as if to clean it, stretched it out. Perkins grasped it, and Finn gave a slight gulp. He wasn't quite hap­py. The prof­fered friend­ship of the man he had helped to de­feat rather up­set him; but he was equal to the oc­ca­sion.

“Niv­er moind, sorr,” he said, when he had quite re­cov­ered. “You're young yit. They've shoved yees out this toime, but wait awhoile. Yees'll be back.”

“No, Mr. Finn,” replied Perkins, hand­ing Finn a cigar. “Thanks to you, I got out of a tight hole, and as our maid said to you that night, I'll 'niv­er be back.' But if you hap­pen down my way again, I'll be glad to see you--at any time. Good-​bye.”

The two part­ed, and Thad­deus walked home, think­ing deeply of the far-​reach­ing ef­fect in this life of lit­tle things; and as for Finn, he bit off half the cigar Perkins had giv­en him, and as he chewed up­on it, sit­ting on the edge of his bar­row, he re­marked forcibly to him­self, “Well, oi'll be daamned!”

JAR­LEY'S EX­PER­IMENT

Jar­ley was an in­ven­tive ge­nius. He in­vent­ed things for the plea­sure of it rather than with any idea of ul­ti­mate­ly prof­it­ing from the re­sults of his in­ge­nu­ity, which may ex­plain why it was that his friends deemed many of his con­trivances a sheer waste of time. Among oth­er things that Jar­ley in­vent­ed was a ten­nis-​rack­et which could be fold­ed up and packed away in a trunk. The fact that any or­di­nary ten­nis-​rack­et could be packed away in any or­di­nary trunk with­out be­ing fold­ed up was to Jar­ley no good rea­son why he should not de­vote his en­er­gies to the pro­duc­tion of the com­pact weapon of sport which he called the Jar­ley Rack­et. He was af­ter nov­el­ty, and util­ity was al­ways a sec­ondary con­sid­er­ation with him. Oth­ers of his in­ven­tions were some­what more startling. “The Jar­ley Ready Writ­ing-​Desk for Night Use,” for in­stance, was a re­al­ly re­mark­able con­cep­tion. Its chief val­ue lay in the sav­ing of gas and mid­night oil to im­pe­cu­nious writ­ers which its use was said to bring about, and when ful­ly equipped con­sist­ed sim­ply of a writ­ing-​ta­ble with all the ap­pli­ances and con­ve­niences there­of treat­ed with phos­pho­rus in such a man­ner that in the black­est of dark­ness they could all be seen read­ily. The ink even was phos­pho­res­cent. The pa­per was lu­mi­nous in the dark. The pen­hold­ers, pens, pen-​wipers, mu­cilage-​bot­tle, ev­ery­thing, in fact, that an au­thor re­al­ly needs for the pro­duc­tion of lit­er­ature, save ideas, were so pre­pared that they could not fail to be vis­ible to the weak­est eye in the dark­est night with­out the aid of oth­er il­lu­mi­na­tion. The chief trou­ble with the in­ven­tion was that in the long-​run it was more ex­pen­sive than gas or oil could pos­si­bly be in the most ex­trav­agant house­hold; but that both­ered Jar­ley not a jot. Nor was he at all up­set when his in­ge­nious Li­brary Fold­ing-​Bed, com­pris­ing a re­al book­case and so­fa-​couch, failed to suit his prac­ti­cal-​mind­ed friends be­cause, when turned down for use as a couch, all the books in the book­case side of it fell out up­on the floor. His ar­range­ment was bet­ter than the or­di­nary fold­ing-​bed, he said, be­cause the book­case side of it was not a sham, but the re­al thing, while that of the fold­ing-​bed of com­merce was a delu­sion and a snare. As a hater of shams he jus­ti­fied his in­ven­tion, though of course it couldn't be put to much prac­ti­cal use un­less the pur­chas­er was will­ing to take his books out of the shelves when he in­tend­ed us­ing the piece of fur­ni­ture for sleep­ing pur­pos­es. If the pur­chas­er was too lazy to do this it was not Jar­ley's fault, so the in­ven­tor rea­soned, nor did he in­tend im­prov­ing his ma­chine in or­der to ac­com­mo­date the lazy man in his pur­suit of a life of in­do­lence.

When Jar­ley mar­ried he turned his at­ten­tion to the de­vis­ing of ap­pa­ra­tus to make do­mes­tic life less try­ing to Mrs. Jar­ley. As a bach­elor he had con­trived quite a num­ber of me­chan­ical ef­fects which made his lone­ly life eas­ier. He had fit­ted up his rooms with de­vices by means of which, while ly­ing in bed on cold morn­ings, he could light his gas-​stove with­out get­ting up; and his cigars, the ends of which he had dipped in sul­phur, so that they could be lit by scratch­ing them on the un­der side of the man­tel-​piece, just as match­es are ig­nit­ed, were the de­light of his life. Now, how­ev­er, he turned his mind to­wards help­ing lit­tle Mrs. Jar­ley on in the do­mes­tic world. He pre­pared a chart by means of which the monotony of mar­ket­ing was done away with en­tire­ly. He al­so ar­ranged for her a charm­ing au­to­mat­ic curl-​pa­per box, and drew up a plan for a patent pair of curl­ing-​tongs, which could be fas­tened to the gas-​fix­ture and kept heat­ed to the de­gree re­quired, so that it might be used at a mo­ment's no­tice. This was pro­vid­ed with a num­ber of mov­able ends, all dif­fer­ent, in or­der that Mrs. Jar­ley could, if she chose, vary the ap­pear­ance of her curls ac­cord­ing to her taste; and al­though the lit­tle la­dy nev­er ap­proved of it suf­fi­cient­ly to have it made, it was un­doubt­ed­ly a valu­able con­trivance.

Then when Jar­ley ju­nior came along to de­light the par­ent soul, self-​rock­ing cra­dles and per­pet­ual reser­voirs for food were de­vised, and some of them put in­to ac­tu­al use, though, as a rule, Mrs. Jar­ley pre­ferred the old-​fash­ioned meth­ods to which she was by her home train­ing more ac­cus­tomed.

The great in­ven­tion of Jar­ley, how­ev­er, was the re­sult of his study of Jar­ley ju­nior as that very charm­ing and ex­ceed­ing­ly ag­ile child de­vel­oped from in­fan­cy in­to boy­hood. The idea came to him one Sun­day af­ter­noon while Mrs. Jar­ley was at church. It was the nurse­maid's af­ter­noon out, and Jar­ley had un­der­tak­en to care for Mas­ter Jar­ley in the ab­sence of his true guardians.

“Well, Jack,” he said to his son, when they had been left in sole pos­ses­sion of the Jar­ley man­sion, “you and I must en­ter­tain each oth­er this af­ter­noon. What shall we do?”

“I'd like to play choo-​choo car with you,” said Jack. “I'll be the en­gine and you be the train.”

“Very well,” said Jar­ley. “Have you got your steam up?”

“Yeth,” lisped Jack. “All aboard!”

Jar­ley hitched him­self on to the en­gine as best he could by grab­bing hold of Jack's lit­tle coat tail, and the train start­ed. It was the most te­dious jour­ney Jar­ley ev­er un­der­took. The train went up and down stairs, out up­on the pi­az­za, and fi­nal­ly land­ed in the kitchen, where the en­gine fired up on such fu­el as gin­ger­bread and cook­ies. In­ci­den­tal­ly the train, as rep­re­sent­ed by Jar­ley, took on a load of freight, con­sist­ing of the same fu­el, and off they start­ed again. At the end of a half-​hour's run Jar­ley was worn out, but the en­gine seemed to gath­er strength and speed the far­ther it trav­elled; and as it let out a fear­ful shriek--pos­si­bly a whis­tle--ev­ery time the rear end of the train sug­gest­ed side-​track­ing and a ces­sa­tion of traf­fic for a month or two, Jar­ley in his in­dul­gence in­vari­ably with­drew the propo­si­tion. The con­se­quence was that when Mrs. Jar­ley re­turned from church Jar­ley was a wreck, and as he hand­ed the en­gine over to the ma­ter­nal care he ob­served with some testi­ness that in a well-​kept house­hold it seemed to him mat­ters should be so ar­ranged that a busy man should not be com­pelled to turn him­self in­to a child's nurse, es­pe­cial­ly on the one day of the week which he could de­vote to rest and re­lax­ation. “If I had that boy's en­er­gy,” he said to him­self as he fled to his li­brary, “what won­ders I would ac­com­plish! What a shame it is, too, that the wast­ed en­er­gy of youth can­not be stored up in some way, so that when there comes the re­al need for it, it can be made avail­able!”

This thought was the germ of his in­ven­tion. As he lay there in the li­brary he thought over the pos­si­bil­ities of life if the ner­vous force of child­hood, the mis­di­rect­ed en­er­gy of play-​time, could on­ly be put by and drawn up­on lat­er just as man puts by the mon­ey he does not need in the present for use in case of fu­ture rainy days. Then, as the sun sank be­low the hills and the twi­light hours with their in­spir­ing soft­ness came on, Jar­ley re­solved that he was the man to whom had come the mis­sion which should make of this ide­al a re­al­ity. Prob­ably in the full glare of day he would not have un­der­tak­en it; but Jar­ley, in com­mon with most men of dreamy na­ture, felt in the qui­et dusk the pow­er to do all things. He had the po­et­ic tem­per­ament which some­times leads on to great things, and the man so gift­ed who does not feel him­self ca­pa­ble, at that hour of the day of rest, of bat­ter­ing down Gibral­tar or of up­build­ing the whole hu­man race, must ac­count him­self a fail­ure.

“I'll do it,” he mur­mured, drowsi­ly, to him­self, and he did. How he did it was Jar­ley's own se­cret, and while he con­fides many things to me, this se­cret he kept, and still keeps. All I know is that he fit­ted up a play-​room for Jack on the at­tic floor, and by means of an ap­pa­ra­tus, the pe­cu­liar­ities of whose con­struc­tion he alone knows, he man­aged af­ter a while to store up the su­per­flu­ous en­er­gy which Jack ex­pend­ed up­on ev­ery­thing that he did. Ev­ery time Jack turned a som­er­sault he con­tribut­ed, un­known to him­self, some­thing to the grow­ing bulk of hoard­ed force in the reser­voir pro­vid­ed for its re­cep­tion. All the strength nec­es­sary for the som­er­sault was de­vot­ed to that op­er­ation. The su­per­fluity went to the reser­voir. So, al­so, when in his play of scal­ing imag­inary rocks af­ter fic­ti­tious wild beasts he en­deav­ored fu­tile­ly to walk up the play-​room wall, the un­avail­ing en­er­gy went to aug­ment the stores from which Jar­ley hoped to ex­tract so much that would prove of val­ue to the world.

When the reser­voir was full the ques­tion that con­front­ed Jar­ley was as to the val­ue of its con­tents, and to as­cer­tain this he re­solved up­on an ex­per­iment up­on him­self. No one else, he be­lieved, would be will­ing to sub­ject him­self to the ex­per­iment, nor did he wish at that time to let oth­ers in­to his se­cret. Even Mrs. Jar­ley was not aware of his ef­forts, and so he made the ex­per­iment. He liq­ue­fied the en­er­gy Jack had wast­ed, and up­on re­tir­ing one night took what he con­sid­ered to be the prop­er dose for the test. The ef­fect was re­mark­able.

When he rose up the next morn­ing he ex­pe­ri­enced a con­scious­ness of pow­er that re­mind­ed him of sundry tales of Sam­son. But there was one draw­back. He did not seem quite able to con­trol him­self. For in­stance, in­stead of dress­ing in the usu­al dig­ni­fied and qui­et way, he found him­self pranc­ing about his room like a young colt, and while he was tak­ing his bath he had a yearn­ing for ob­jects of ju­ve­nile _vir­tu_ which had for many years been strangers to his tub. He was not at all sat­is­fied with his dip plain and un­adorned, and he had de­vel­oped an un­con­quer­able aver­sion for soap. It was all he could do to re­strain his in­cli­na­tion to call vo­cif­er­ous­ly for a num­ber of small tin boats and birch-​bark ca­noes, with­out which Jack nev­er bathed. He did con­quer it, how­ev­er, and at the end of a half-​hour man­aged to reach the end of his bath, though as a rule he had hith­er­to rarely ex­pend­ed more than ten min­utes in his morn­ing ablu­tions. Then came an­oth­er dif­fi­cul­ty. He found him­self ut­ter­ly un­able to stand still while he was putting on his clothes, and fi­nal­ly Mrs. Jar­ley had to be called in to comb his hair for him. Jar­ley him­self could no more have tak­en the time to part it sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly than he could have flown.

“What _is_ the mat­ter with you?” said Mrs. Jar­ley, as she made sev­er­al in­ef­fec­tu­al at­tempts to get his tru­ant locks in­to shape. “Have you caught St. Vi­tus's dance?”

“Noth­ing's the mat­ter with me,” re­turned Jar­ley, stand­ing on one foot and hop­ping up and down there­on. “I feel well, that's all.”

And then he tore out of the room, mount­ed the ban­is­ters, and slid down­stairs in an ut­ter­ly un­be­com­ing fash­ion, con­sid­er­ing that he was a man of thir­ty-​five and the head of the house. He felt a lit­tle ashamed of him­self in the midst of this op­er­ation, par­tic­ular­ly when he ob­served that the wait­ress was stand­ing in the hall be­low-​stairs, look­ing at him with eyes that be­to­kened an as­ton­ish­ment as cred­itable to her as it was dis­grace­ful to him. He tried vain­ly to stop his wild de­scent when he not­ed her pres­ence. He clutched mad­ly at the ban­is­ters, turn­ing his hands and knees in­to brakes in his ef­fort to save his dig­ni­ty; but once start­ed he could not stop, and as a con­se­quence he went down like a flash, slid pre­cip­itate­ly over the newel-​post, and land­ed with a cry of mor­ti­fi­ca­tion on the hall floor. He was not hurt, save in his self-​es­teem, and gath­er­ing him­self to­geth­er, he en­deav­ored to walk with dig­ni­ty in­to the din­ing-​room; but he had hard­ly reached the door, when he was over­come with a mad de­sire to whoop--and whoop he did. As a con­se­quence of the whoop Jack was scold­ed when Mrs. Jar­ley came down. She had no idea that Jar­ley him­self could be so blind to pro­pri­ety as to yell in so in­deco­rous a fash­ion; and when poor lit­tle Jack was up­braid­ed, Jar­ley, de­spite his good in­ten­tion to con­fess him­self the guilty par­ty, dis­cov­ered that the on­ly act he was ca­pa­ble of was gig­gling. Jack of course wept, and the more he wept the more Jar­ley gig­gled, and was tak­en to task for en­cour­ag­ing the boy in his mis­be­hav­ior.

Dur­ing break­fast he was un­usu­al­ly demon­stra­tive. He could not bring him­self to await his turn when the pota­toes were passed, and in his ea­ger­ness to get at them he over­turned his cof­fee, which served to turn the ta­bles a lit­tle, for Jack gig­gled at the mishap, while Jar­ley be­came the cen­tre of Mrs. Jar­ley's dis­plea­sure. What was worse, Jar­ley, try as he might, could not re­sist the temp­ta­tion to kick the legs of the ta­ble, and it was not un­til Mrs. Jar­ley had threat­ened to dis­miss Jack from her pres­ence, sup­pos­ing that he must, of course, be the of­fend­er, that Jar­ley as­sumed the bur­den of his mis­be­hav­ior.

It was not un­til Jar­ley set out to his of­fice, how­ev­er, that he re­al­ized the re­al hor­ror of his con­di­tion. In­stead of rid­ing down-​town on one ca­ble-​car, as was his wont, he found him­self try­ing, boy-​like, to steal a ride by jump­ing on a car plat­form and stand­ing there un­til the con­duc­tor came along, when he would hop off, ride a block or two on the end of a truck, and then try a new car, so beat­ing his way down-​town. Then he ar­rived at his of­fice. I have ne­glect­ed to state that while in­ven­tion was Jar­ley's av­oca­tion, he was by pro­fes­sion a lawyer, be­ing the ju­nior mem­ber of a high­ly suc­cess­ful firm, at the head of which was no less a per­son than the em­inent William J. Bak­er, whose record at the bar is too well known to re­quire any fur­ther words of mine to re­call him to the minds of my read­ers. Jar­ley had not been in the of­fice more than ten min­utes be­fore he re­al­ized that he might bet­ter have re­mained at home while the in­flu­ence of Jack's wast­ed en­er­gy was with­in him. He was in a state of ir­re­press­ibil­ity. No mat­ter how strong­ly he en­deav­ored to hold him­self in check he could not do so, and his day down-​town was like the days of most boys who are per­mit­ted to spend a morn­ing and an af­ter­noon with their par­ent in the work­shop. The first thing he did on reach­ing his desk was to roll back its fold­ing top. This pleased him un­ac­count­ably. He had nev­er be­fore imag­ined that so much fun could be got out of the rolling top of a desk, and for a full quar­ter of an hour he pulled it back­ward and for­ward, and so nois­ily with­al that Mr. Bak­er sent one of the clerks in to see if the of­fice-​boy had not be­come sud­den­ly in­sane.

Re­called to his true self for the mo­ment, Jar­ley en­deav­ored to get down to work, but as he made the en­deav­or he be­came con­scious that a re­volv­ing chair has very pleas­ing qual­ities to one who is fond of twirling. Round and round he twirled, and as he twirled he grabbed up his cane, and in a mo­ment re­al­ized that he was play­ing that he was on a mer­ry-​go-​round, and try­ing to se­cure a re­new­al of his right to ride by catch­ing imag­inary rings on the end of his stick. This op­er­ation con­sumed quite five min­utes more of his time, and was ac­com­pa­nied by such a vast num­ber of “Hoop-​las” that Mr. Bak­er came him­self to see what was the cause of the un­seem­ly rack­et. For­tu­nate­ly for Jar­ley, just as his part­ner reached the door­way, the chair had reached the lim­it of its twirling ca­pac­ity, and hav­ing been un­screwed as far as it could be, top­pled over on to the floor, with Jar­ley un­der­neath. “What in the world does this mean, Jar­ley?” said Mr. Bak­er, severe­ly, as he as­sist­ed his fall­en part­ner to rise.

“My chair has come apart,” laughed Jar­ley, get­ting red in the face.

“That's the great trou­ble with that kind of chair,” said Mr. Bak­er. “You don't seem to mind the mishap very much.”

“Oh no,” said Jar­ley, grit­ting his teeth in his de­ter­mi­na­tion not to fol­low his mad im­pulse to jump on Mr. Bak­er's shoul­ders and clam­or for a picky-​back ride. “No; I don't mind lit­tle things like that much.”

Here he stood on his right leg, as he had done be­fore break­fast, and be­gan to hop.

“Hurt your foot?” queried Mr. Bak­er.

Jar­ley seized at the sug­ges­tion with all the de­spair­ing vig­or of a drown­ing man clutch­ing at a rope.

“Yes; a lit­tle, but not enough to men­tion,” he said; where­upon, much to his re­lief, Mr. Bak­er turned away and went back to his own room.

“This will nev­er do,” Jar­ley moaned to him­self when his part­ner had gone. “If one of my clients should come in--”

Then he stopped and grinned like a mis­chievous lad. He had caught sight of an old wa­ter-​me­ter that had been used as an ex­hib­it in a case he had once tried against the city in be­half of an in­ven­tor, who had been led to be­lieve that the wa­ter board would adopt his patent and com­pel ev­ery house­hold­er to buy one for the reg­is­tra­tion of wa­ter con­sumed. What fun it would be to take that apart, he thought, and think­ing thus was enough to set him about the task. He locked his door, moved the strange-​look­ing con­trivance out in­to the mid­dle of the room, and tried to un­screw the top of it with his eras­er. The del­icate blade of this im­pro­vised screw-​driv­er snapped off in an in­stant, where­upon Jar­ley tried the scis­sors, with sim­ilar re­sults. Af­ter a half-​hour of this he gave up the idea of tak­ing the me­ter apart, but his soul im­me­di­ate­ly be­came pos­sessed of an­oth­er idea, which was to see if it worked. The pur­suit of this brought him the most deliri­ous­ly joy­ful sen­sa­tions; and for an hour he de­vot­ed him­self to fill­ing the ma­chine up with wa­ter drawn from a faucet at one side of his room, and poured in­to the me­ter from a drink­ing-​glass. It was not un­til the hour was up that he ob­served that the wa­ter af­ter pass­ing through the me­ter came out up­on the car­pet, and it is prob­able that even then he would not have no­ticed it had not the ten­ants be­low sent up to in­quire if there was not some­thing wrong with the wa­ter-​pipes over­head.

When Jar­ley re­al­ized what had hap­pened he wise­ly de­ter­mined to give up busi­ness for the day. While the spir­it of Jack was with­in him, the busi­ness he might trans­act was not like­ly to prove of val­ue to him­self or to any one else. So he put on his hat and coat, called a cab, and start­ed for home. His ex­pe­ri­ences in the cab were quite of a kind with the ex­pe­ri­ences of the morn­ing, and at­tend­ed with no lit­tle per­son­al dan­ger. He would lean against the cab door and put his arm out and try to touch horse-​cars as they passed. Once or twice he near­ly had his head knocked off by stick­ing it out of the win­dows; but by some hap­py chance he got in­ter­est­ed in the cab cur­tains and the invit­ing lit­tle strings, which, when pulled, made them fly up with a snap. Ab­sorbed in this oc­cu­pa­tion, he drove on, and gave up all such dan­ger­ous ex­per­iments as play­ing tag with horse-​cars and trucks, and ar­rived at home in time for lun­cheon un­hurt.

Mrs. Jar­ley was some­what alarmed at the un­ex­pect­ed re­turn of Mr. Jar­ley, but was con­tent with his ex­pla­na­tion that while he nev­er felt bet­ter in his life, he deemed it best to re­turn and at­tend to his work in the pri­va­cy of his own home. For the prop­er ac­com­plish­ment of this work he said that he thought he would use Jack's nurs­ery on the at­tic floor, where he could be qui­et, and he asked as an es­pe­cial fa­vor that he might be left alone with Jack for the bal­ance of the day.

He had made up his mind that his ex­per­iment, while a suc­cess in one way, were not what he ex­pect­ed in an­oth­er way. He had found Jack's en­er­gy very en­er­get­ic in­deed, but not suit­ed for adult use, and he even found him­self won­der­ing why he had not thought of that be­fore. How­ev­er, the thing to do now was to get rid of that spir­it as soon as pos­si­ble. If it had be­come per­ma­nent­ly a part of him, he had reached his sec­ond child­hood, which for a man of thir­ty-​five is a dis­turb­ing thought. So dis­turb­ing was it that Jar­ley re­solved up­on a hero­ic mea­sure to cure him­self. _Si­mil­ia sim­ilibus_ struck him as be­ing the on­ly pos­si­ble cure, and so, re­gard­less of the pos­si­ble con­se­quences to his phys­ical be­ing, he “per­mit­ted” Jack to be with him up-​stairs “while he worked,” as he put it to Mrs. Jar­ley, though all oth­ers were for­bid­den to ap­proach.

The re­sult was as he had fore­seen. Jack's en­er­gy in Jack, pure and unadul­ter­at­ed, had very lit­tle trou­ble in wear­ing out the di­lut­ed en­er­gy which his fa­ther had ac­quired from his su­per­flu­ous stores, and night com­ing on found Jar­ley, af­ter a three hours' steady cir­cus with his son, in his nor­mal con­di­tion men­tal­ly. But phys­ical­ly! What a poor wreck of a hu­man sys­tem was his when the last bit of the boy­ish spir­it was con­sumed! Had he worked at brick-​lay­ing for a week with­out rest Jar­ley could not have been more pros­trat­ed phys­ical­ly. But he was hap­py. His tests had proved that he could do cer­tain things, but the re­sults he had ex­pect­ed as to the val­ue of those things were not what he had hoped for. At any rate, his ex­per­iment gave him greater sym­pa­thy with his boy than he had ev­er had be­fore, and they have be­come great chums. The great­est dis­ap­point­ment of the whole af­fair is Jack's, who won­ders why it is that he and his fa­ther have no more af­ter­noon ac­ro­bat­ics such as they had in the play-​room that day, but un­til he is a good many years old­er his fa­ther can­not tell him, for the boy could not in the present stage of his in­tel­lec­tu­al de­vel­op­ment un­der­stand him if he tried.

As for Mr. Bak­er and the peo­ple at the of­fice, they were not at all as­ton­ished to hear the next day that Jar­ley was laid up, and would prob­ably, not ap­pear at the of­fice again for a week, al­though they were a lit­tle sur­prised when they learned that his trou­ble was rheuma­tism, and not soft­en­ing of the brain.

JAR­LEY'S THANKS­GIV­ING

Jar­ley was in a blue mood the night be­fore Thanks­giv­ing. Things hadn't gone quite to suit him dur­ing the year. He had lost two of his most prof­itable clients--men up­on whom for two years pre­vi­ous­ly he had been able to count for a steady in­come. It is true that he had lost them by win­ning their re­spec­tive suits, and had made two strong friends by so do­ing; but, as he once put it to Mrs. Jar­ley, the worst po­si­tion a man could pos­si­bly get him­self in­to was that of one who is long on friends and short on in­come. He did not un­der­es­ti­mate the val­ue of friends, but he didn't want too many of them; be­cause be­yond a cer­tain num­ber they be­came lux­uries rather than ne­ces­si­ties, and his fi­nan­cial con­di­tion was such that he could not af­ford lux­uries.

“I love them all,” he said, “but I haven't mon­ey enough to en­ter­tain a quar­ter of them. The last time Bil­lie Hicks was up here he smoked six­teen In­vin­ci­ble cigars. Now, I am very fond of Bil­lie Hicks, but with cigars at twen­ty cents apiece I can't af­ford him more than one Sun­day in a year. He's get­ting a lit­tle cold be­cause I haven't asked him up since.”

“Why don't you buy cheap­er cigars? At our gro­cery store they have some very nice look­ing ones at two for five cents,” sug­gest­ed Mrs. Jar­ley.

“I don't wish to have to move out of the house,” said Jar­ley.

Mrs. Jar­ley failed to see the con­nec­tion.

“Very like­ly you don't,” said Jar­ley; “but if I smoked one of your two-​and-​a-​half-​cent gro­cery cigars in this house, you'd see the point in a minute. If you will get me a yard of cot­ton cloth, and let me put it in the fur­nace fire, you'll get a fair idea of the kind of at­mo­sphere we'd be breath­ing if I al­lowed a cigar like that to be lit with­in fifty feet of the front door.”

“But you can get a good cigar for ten cents, can't you?” Mrs. Jar­ley asked.

“Yes--very good,” as­sent­ed Jar­ley; “but Bil­lie would prob­ably smoke thir­ty-​two of those, and car­ry three or four away with him in his pock­ets. I'd lose even more that way. It's a sin­gu­lar thing about friends. They have some con­science about In­vin­ci­ble cigars, but they'll take oth­ers by the hand­ful.”

Jar­ley was al­so some­what blue up­on this oc­ca­sion be­cause none of his in­ven­tions--the lit­tle things he thought out in his leisure mo­ments, and out of some of which he had hoped to gain a deal of prof­it--had been suc­cess­ful. The pub­lic had re­fused to place any con­fi­dence what­so­ev­er in his patent re­versible spats, which, when turned in­side out, could be made use­ful as ga­loches; and the beaux of New York ac­tu­al­ly re­ject­ed with scorn the cel­lu­loid chrysan­the­mum, which he had hoped would be­come a pop­ular bou­ton­niere be­cause of its dura­bil­ity and cheap­ness. An im­pe­cu­nious young man with care could make one fif­teen-​cent chrysan­the­mum of the Jar­ley or­der last through a whole sea­son, and it could be col­ored to suit the wear­er's taste with the or­di­nary paint-​box­es that chil­dren so de­light in; but in spite of this the cel­lu­loid chrysan­the­mum was a dis­tinct fail­ure, and Jar­ley had had his trou­ble for his pains, to say noth­ing of the cost of the mod­el. But worst of all the fail­ures, be­cause of the prospec­tive loss­es its fail­ure en­tailed, was the Jar­ley safe­ty light­ning ra­zor. Its fail­ure was not due to any lack of mer­it, for it cer­tain­ly pos­sessed much that was in­ge­nious and com­mend­able. The af­fair was not dif­fer­ent in prin­ci­ple from a lawn-​mow­er. Six lit­tle sharp blades set on a cylin­der would re­volve rapid­ly as the pret­ty ma­chine was pushed up and down the cheek of the per­son shav­ing, and leave the face of that per­son as smooth as a piece of vel­vet; but in an­nounc­ing it to the world its in­ven­tor had made the un­for­tu­nate state­ment that a child could use it with im­puni­ty, and some would-​be smart per­son on a com­ic pa­per took it up and wrote an un­de­ni­ably clever ar­ti­cle on the fu­til­ity of in­vent­ing a ra­zor for chil­dren. The con­se­quence was that the safe­ty ra­zor was laughed out of ex­is­tence, and the ad­di­tions to his res­idence which Jar­ley was go­ing to pay for out of the pro­ceeds had to be aban­doned.

“I don't like a blue funk,” he said, “and gen­er­al­ly I can find some­thing to be thank­ful for at this sea­son; but I'm blest if this year, be­yond the fact that we're all alive, I can see any cause for cel­ebrat­ing my thank­ful­ness. I haven't enough of it to last ten min­utes, much less a day, what with the pos­itive fail­ure of my in­ven­tions, the loss of in­come from what I once con­sid­ered safe in­vest­ments that have gone to the wall, and the re­duc­tion of my pro­fes­sion­al earn­ings, not to men­tion the fact that al­most at the be­gin­ning of my pro­fes­sion­al year I am as tired phys­ical­ly and men­tal­ly as I ought to be at the fin­ish.”

“Oh, well, say you are thank­ful, any­how,” sug­gest­ed Mrs. Jar­ley. “You will con­vince oth­ers that you are, and maybe, if you say it of­ten enough, you will con­vince your­self of the fact.”

“Thanks,” said Jar­ley. “It's pos­si­bly a good sug­ges­tion, but I don't be­lieve in pre­tend­ing to be what I'm not. It might con­vince me that I am thank­ful for some­thing, but I don't want to be con­vinced when I know I'm not.”

Which shows, I think, how very blue Jar­ley was.

“There's one thing,” he added, with a sigh of re­lief at the thought--“I'll have a day of rest to-​mor­row any­how. I've bought Jack a foot­ball, and he can take it out on the ten­nis-​court and play with it all day, with in­ter­vals for meals.”

“Why did you do that?” asked Mrs. Jar­ley, with a ges­ture not so much of in­dig­na­tion as of dis­ap­proval. “I think foot­ball is such a bru­tal game; and if Jack has a foot­ball at his present age, when he's in col­lege he'll want to play. I don't want to have my boy wear­ing his hair like a Co­manche In­di­an, and com­ing home with bro­ken ribs and dis­lo­cat­ed limbs.”

“We'll let the bro­ken ribs of 1904 and the wig of the same pe­ri­od suf­fice for the evils of that year,” re­tort­ed Jar­ley. “It's the present I'm look­ing af­ter, not the fu­ture ten or twelve years re­moved. If Jack hasn't that foot­ball to-​mor­row he'll have me, and I've no de­sire in the present con­di­tion of my phys­ical well-​be­ing to be used by him as a play­thing. De­prived of the leath­ern ball, he might use me as a foot­ball in­stead, and I must rest. That's all there is about it. Be­sides, if he be­comes an as­pi­rant for foot­ball hon­ors now it will be a good thing for him. He'll take care of him­self and try to im­prove his physique if he once gets the no­tion in his head that he wants to go on a uni­ver­si­ty eleven. I want my boy to learn to be a man, and the foot­ball am­bi­tion is like­ly to be a very use­ful aid in that di­rec­tion. He knits reins very well with a spool and a pin now, and I think it's time he grad­uat­ed in that art, un­less the wom­an of the fu­ture, of whom we hear so much, is to take man's place to such an ex­tent that the man will have to take up wom­an's work. If I thought the mas­cu­line ten­den­cy of our present-​day girls was like­ly to go much fur­ther, I might con­sent to the ef­fem­ina­tion of Jack sim­ply to se­cure his com­fort as a mar­ried man of the fu­ture; but I don't think that, and in con­se­quence Jack is go­ing to be brought up as a boy, and not as a girl. The foot­ball goes.”

This re­mark was an­oth­er in­di­ca­tion of Jar­ley's de­pres­sion. He rarely com­bat­ed Mrs. Jar­ley's ideas, and when he did, and with a cer­tain air of ir­ri­ta­tion, it was in­vari­ably a sign of his low men­tal state.

“When you say that the foot­ball goes, do you mean that it stays?” queried Mrs. Jar­ley, who was a lit­tle tired her­self, and could not, there­fore, re­sist the temp­ta­tion to in­dulge in a bit of in­no­cent repar­tee.

“I do,” said Jar­ley, short­ly. “Goes is some­times a syn­onym for stays. When I feel stronger I may in­vent a new lan­guage, which will have few­er ab­sur­di­ties than En­glish as she is spoke.”

And with this Jar­ley went to bed, and slept the sleep of the just man who is tru­ly weary.

If he had fore­seen the re­sult of his foot­ball in­vest­ment it is doubt­ful if his sleep would have been so tran­quil--un­less, per­chance, he were fash­ioned af­ter that rare pat­tern of mankind, Louis XVI. of France, who called for his six or sev­en course din­ner with a mob of howl­ing, blood­thirsty Parisians in his an­techam­ber, and who on the eve of his ex­ecu­tion slept well, de­spite his knowl­edge that with­in fif­teen hours his head would in all prob­abil­ity be lopped off by the guil­lo­tine to grat­ify the lust for blood which was the chief char­ac­ter­is­tic of the pro­mot­ers of the first French Re­pub­lic.

At six on the morn­ing of Thanks­giv­ing Day Jar­ley was sleep­ing peace­ful­ly, but the youth­ful Jack was not. Thanks­giv­ing Day was not a hol­iday in his eyes, but a day set apart for work, thanks to his fa­ther's in­dul­gence in pro­vid­ing him with a foot­ball. He had gone to bed the night be­fore with the ball hugged tight­ly to his breast; and along about ten o'clock, when Jar­ley him­self had gone in­to the nurs­ery to put that trea­sured good-​night kiss up­on the fore­head of his sleep­ing boy, tired as he was and blue as he was, he had dif­fi­cul­ty in re­press­ing the laugh­ter that man­ifest­ed it­self with­in him, for Jack lay prone, face up­ward, with the foot­ball un­der the small of his back, and seem­ing­ly as com­fort­able as though he were rest­ing up­on ei­der-​down.

“That is cer­tain­ly a char­ac­ter­is­tic foot­ball at­ti­tude,” Jar­ley said, when Mrs. Jar­ley had come to see what had caused her hus­band's chuck­le.

“Yes--and so good for the spine!” re­turned Mrs. Jar­ley.

The at­ti­tude was changed, but the ball was left where Jack would see it the first thing on awak­ing in the morn­ing. At six, as I have said, Jar­ley was sleep­ing peace­ful­ly, but Jack was not. He had opened his eyes some min­utes be­fore, and on catch­ing sight of his trea­sured foot­ball he be­gan to grin. The grin grew wider and wider, un­til ap­par­ent­ly it got too wide for the bed, and the boy leaped out of his couch up­on the floor. The first thing he did was to pat the ball gen­tly but firm­ly, very much as a kit­ten man­ifests its in­ter­est in a ball of yarn. Then his at­ten­tions to his new play­thing grew more pro­nounced and vig­or­ous, and with­in fif­teen min­utes it had been chased out of the nurs­ery in­to the parental bed­cham­ber. Still Jar­ley slept. Mrs. Jar­ley was mere­ly half asleep. She tried to tell Jack to be qui­et; but she was not quite wide awake enough to do so as forcibly as was nec­es­sary, and the re­sult was that in­stead of abat­ing his ar­dor, Jack plunged in­to his sport more vig­or­ous­ly than ev­er.

And then Jar­ley was awak­ened--and what an awak­en­ing it was! Not one of those peace­ful com­ings-​to that be­to­ken the tran­quil mind af­ter a good rest, but a re­turn to con­scious­ness with ev­ery war­like ten­den­cy in his be­ing aroused to the high­est pitch. Jack had passed the ball with con­sid­er­able mo­men­tum on to the man­tel-​piece, which sent it back­ward on the re­bound to no less a fea­ture than the nose of the slum­ber­ing Jar­ley.

“What the deuce was that?” cried Jar­ley, sit­ting up straight in bed. He had for­got­ten all about the foot­ball, and to his sud­den­ly re­stored con­scious­ness it seemed as if the ceil­ing must have fall­en. Then he rubbed his nose, which still ached from the force of the im­pact be­tween it­self and the ball.

“It was the ball did it, pa­pa,” said Jack, meek­ly. “'Twasn't me.”

In an in­stant Jar­ley was on the floor; and Jack, scent­ing trou­ble, in­con­ti­nent­ly fled. The par­ent was an­gry from the top of his head to the soles of his feet, but as the soles of his feet touched the floor his anger abat­ed. Af­ter all, Jack hadn't meant to hurt him, and hav­ing wit­nessed sev­er­al games of foot­ball, he knew how in­nate­ly per­verse an oval-​shaped af­fair like the ball it­self could be. Fur­ther­more, there was Mrs. Jar­ley, who had dis­ap­proved of his pur­chase from the out­set. If he wreaked vengeance up­on poor lit­tle Jack for his un­wit­ting of­fence, Jar­ley knew that he would in a mea­sure weak­en his po­si­tion in the ar­gu­ment of the night be­fore. So, in­stead of chastis­ing Jack, as he re­al­ly felt in­clined to do, he picked up the ball, and re­pair­ing to the nurs­ery, sum­moned the boy to him in his sweet­est tones.

“Nev­er mind, old chap,” he said, as Jack ap­peared be­fore him. “I know you didn't mean it; but you must play in here un­til it is time for you to go out. Pa­pa is very sleepy, and you dis­turb him.”

“All right,” said Jack. “I'll play in here. I for­got.”

Then Jar­ley pat­ted Jack on the head, rubbed his nose again du­bi­ous­ly, for it still smart­ed from the ef­fects of the blow it had sus­tained, and re­tired to his bed once more. If he fond­ly hoped to sleep again, he soon found that his hope was based up­on a most shift­ing foun­da­tion, for the whoops and cries and nois­es of all sorts, vo­cal and oth­er­wise, that em­anat­ed from the next room de­stroyed all pos­si­bil­ity of his do­ing any­thing of the sort. At first the very ev­ident en­joy­ment of his son and heir, as Jar­ley lis­tened to his go­ings-​on in the nurs­ery, amused him more or less; but his qui­et smile soon turned to one of blank dis­may when he heard a thun­der­ous roar from Jack, fol­lowed by a crash of glass. Again spring­ing from his bed, Jar­ley rushed in­to the nurs­ery.

“Well, what's hap­pened now?” he asked.

Jack's un­der lip curved in the man­ner which be­to­kens tears ready to be shed.

“Nun-​noth­ing,” he sobbed. “I was just k-​kick­ing a goal, and that pic­ture got in the way.”

Jar­ley looked for the pic­ture that had got in the way, and at once per­ceived that it would nev­er get in the way again, since it was ir­re­triev­ably ru­ined. How­ev­er, he was not over­come by wrath over this in­ci­dent, be­cause the pic­ture was not of any par­tic­ular val­ue. It was on­ly a high­ly col­ored print of three cats in a bas­ket, which had come with a Sun­day news­pa­per, and had been cheap­ly framed and hung up in the nurs­ery be­cause Jack had so willed. On prin­ci­ple Jar­ley had to show a cer­tain amount of dis­plea­sure over the ac­ci­dent, and he did as well as he could un­der the cir­cum­stances, and re­tired.

For a while Jack played qui­et­ly enough, and Jar­ley was just about doz­ing off in­to that de­li­cious forty winks pri­or to get­ting up when shrieks from the sec­ond Jar­ley boy came from the nurs­ery. This time Mrs. Jar­ley, with one or two ex­pres­sions of nat­ural im­pa­tience, deemed it her du­ty to in­ter­fere. Jar­ley, she rea­soned, had a per­fect right to spoil Jack if he pleased, but he had no right to per­mit Jack to do bod­ily in­jury to Tom­my; and as Tom­my was mak­ing the house echo and re-​echo with his wails, she deemed it her du­ty to take a hand. Jar­ley mean­while pre­tend­ed to sleep. He was as wide awake as he ev­er was; but the at­mo­sphere was not full of warmth, and up­on this oc­ca­sion, as well as up­on many oth­ers, his con­science per­mit­ted him to over­look the short­com­ings of his el­der son, and to as­sume a som­no­lence which, while it was not re­al, cer­tain­ly did con­duce to the main­te­nance of his per­son­al com­fort. Mrs. Jar­ley, there­fore, rose up in her wrath. It was mere­ly a moth­er­ly wrath, how­ev­er, and those of us who have had moth­ers will at once re­al­ize what that wrath amount­ed to. She re­paired im­me­di­ate­ly to the nurs­ery, and with­out know­ing any­thing of the tech­ni­cal terms of the no­ble game of foot­ball, in­stinc­tive­ly re­al­ized that Jack and Tom­my were hav­ing a “scrim­mage.” That is to say, she was con­front­ed with a struc­ture made up as fol­lows: base­ment, the ball; first sto­ry, Tom­my, with his small and ten­der stom­ach placed di­rect­ly over the ball; sec­ond sto­ry and roof, Jack, ly­ing stom­ach up­ward and wig­gling, his back ac­cu­rate­ly reg­is­tered on Tom­my's back, to the detri­ment and pain of Tom­my.

“Get _up_, Jack!” Mrs. Jar­ley cried. “What on earth are you try­ing to do to Tom­my? Do you want to kill him?”

“Nome,” Jack replied, in­no­cent­ly. “He want­ed to play foot­ball, and I'm let­ting him. He's Har­vard and I'm Yale.”

A smoth­ered laugh from the ad­join­ing room showed that Jar­ley was not so sound­ly sleep­ing that he could not hear what was go­ing on. Tom­my mean­while con­tin­ued to wail.

“Well, get up,--right away!” cried Mrs. Jar­ley. “I sha'n't have you abus­ing Tom­my this way.”

“Ain't abusin' him,” re­tort­ed Jack, ris­ing. “I was 'com­mo­datin' him. He want­ed to play. When I don't let him play I get scold­ed, and when I do let him I'm scold­ed. 'Pears to me you don't want me to do any­thing.”

Thus Thanks­giv­ing Day be­gan, not al­to­geth­er well, but equa­nim­ity was soon re­stored all around, and ev­ery­thing might have run smooth­ly from that time on had not a cold driz­zling rain set in about break­fast-​time. It was clear­ly to be an in-​door day. And what a day it was!

At ten o'clock the foot­ball came in­to play again.

At eleven the score stood: one clock knocked off the man­tel-​piece in the li­brary; three chan­de­lier globes bro­ken to bits; one plas­ter Barye bear de­stroyed by a low kick from the par­lor floor; Tom­my with his nose very near­ly out of joint, thanks to a fly­ing wedge rep­re­sent­ed by Jack; Mrs. Jar­ley's ami­abil­ity in per­il, and Jar­ley's ir­ri­tabil­ity well de­vel­oped.

At twelve the ball was con­fis­cat­ed, but re­stored at twelve-​five for the sake of peace and qui­et.

At one, din­ner was served and eat­en in moody si­lence, Jack hav­ing in­ad­ver­tent­ly punt­ed the ball through the pantry, graz­ing the chignon of the wait­ress, and land­ing in the may­on­naise. It was not a hap­py din­ner, and Jar­ley be­gan to wish ei­ther that he had nev­er been born or that all foot­balls were in Bal­ly­hack, wher­ev­er that might be.

“If it would on­ly clear off!” he moaned. “That boy needs a play­ground as big as the State of Texas any­how, and here we are cooped up in the house, with a foot­ball added.”

“We'll have to take it away from him,” said Mrs. Jar­ley, “or else you'll have to take Jack up in­to the at­tic and play with him. I can't have ev­ery­thing in the house smashed.”

“We'll com­pro­mise on Jack's go­ing to the at­tic. I have no de­sire to play foot­ball,” re­turned Jar­ley; and this was the plan agreed up­on. It would have been a good plan if Jar­ley had ex­pend­ed some of his in­ven­tive ge­nius up­on some such game as foot­ball soli­taire, and in­struct­ed Jack there­in be­fore­hand; but this he had not done, and the re­sult was that at three o'clock Jar­ley found him­self in the at­tic in­volved in a fu­ri­ous game, in which he rep­re­sent­ed var­ious­ly Har­vard, the goal, the goal-​posts, the ref­er­ee, and act­ing with too great fre­quen­cy as un­der­study for the ball. What he was not, Jack was, and the worst part of it was that there was no tir­ing Jack. The longer he played, the bet­ter he liked it. The of­ten­er Jar­ley's shins re­ceived kicks in­tend­ed for the foot­ball, the loud­er he laughed. When Jar­ley, serv­ing as a goal-​post, stood at one end of the at­tic, Jar­ley ju­nior, stand­ing sev­er­al yards away, of­ten ap­peared to mis­take him for two goal-​posts, and to make an hon­est ef­fort to kick the ball through him. Slow­ly the hours passed, un­til fi­nal­ly six o'clock struck, and Mas­ter Jack's sup­per was an­nounced.

The day was over at last. Weari­ly Jar­ley dragged him­self down the stairs and reck­oned up the day's loss­es. In glass and bric-​a-​brac de­stroyed he was some twen­ty or thir­ty dol­lars out. In may­on­naise dress­ing lost at din­ner through the un­to­ward act of the foot­ball he was out one plea­sur­able sen­sa­tion to his palate, and Jar­ley was one of those, to whom, that is a loss of an ir­repara­ble na­ture. In bod­ily es­tate he was prac­ti­cal­ly a bankrupt. Had he bi­cy­cled all morn­ing and played golf all the af­ter­noon he could not have been half so weary. Had he been thrown from a horse flat up­on an as­phalt pave­ment he could not have been half so bruised; all of which Mrs. Jar­ley con­sid­er­ate­ly not­ed, and with an ef­fort re­cov­ered her ami­abil­ity for her hus­band's sake, so that af­ter eight o'clock, at which hour Jack re­tired to bed, a lit­tle rest was ob­tain­able, and Jar­ley's equa­nim­ity was slow­ly re­stored.

“Well,” said Mrs. Jar­ley, as they went up-​stairs at eleven, “it hasn't been a very peace­ful day, has it, dear?”

“Oh, that all de­pends on how you spell peace. If you spell it p-​i-​e-​c-​e, it's been full of pieces,” re­turned Jar­ley, with a smile; “but I say, my dear, I want to mod­ify my state­ment last night that I had noth­ing to be thank­ful for. I have dis­cov­ered one great bless­ing.”

“What's that--a foot­ball?” queried Mrs. Jar­ley.

“Not by ten thou­sand long shots!” cried Jar­ley. “No, in­deed. It's this: I'm more thank­ful than I can ex­press that Jack is not twins. If he had been, you'd have been a wid­ow this evening.”

HAR­RY AND MAUDE AND I--AL­SO JAMES

We both loved Maude deeply, and Maude loved us. We know that, be­cause Maude told us so. She told Har­ry so one Sun­day evening on the way home from church, and she told me so the fol­low­ing Sat­ur­day af­ter­noon on the way to the mati­nee.

This was the cause of the dis­pute Har­ry and I had in the club cor­ner that Sat­ur­day night. Har­ry and I are con­fi­dants, and nei­ther of us has se­crets that the oth­er does not share, and so, of course, Maude's feel­ing to­wards each of us was ful­ly re­vealed.

We did not quar­rel over it, for Har­ry and I nev­er quar­rel. I want to quar­rel, but it is a pe­cu­liar thing about me that I al­ways want to quar­rel with men named Har­ry, but nev­er can quite do it. Har­ry is a name which, _per se_, arous­es my ire, but which car­ries with it al­so the sooth­ing qual­ities which dis­pel ir­ri­ta­tion.

This is a point for the philoso­pher, I think. Why is it that we can­not quar­rel with some men bear­ing cer­tain names, while with far bet­ter men bear­ing oth­er names we are al­ways at swords' points? Who ev­er quar­relled with a man who had so en­deared him­self to the world, for in­stance, that the world spoke of him as Jack, or Bob, or Willie? And who has not quar­relled with Georges and Ebenez­ers and Ho­races _ad lib_., and been glad to have had the chance?

But this is a thing apart. This time we have set out to tell that oth­er sto­ry which is al­ways men­tioned but nev­er told.

Maude loved us. That was the point up­on which Har­ry and I agreed. We had her au­thor­ity for it; but where we dif­fered was, which of the two did she love the bet­ter?

Har­ry, of course, took his own side in the mat­ter. He is a man of prej­udice, and ar­gues from sen­ti­ment rather than from con­vic­tion.

He said that on her way home from church a girl's thoughts are of ne­ces­si­ty solemn, and her ut­ter­ances are there­fore, the solemn truth. He added that, in a mat­ter of such im­por­tance as love, the con­clu­sion reached af­ter an hour or two of spir­itu­al re­flec­tion and in­struc­tion, such as church in the evening in­spires, is the true con­clu­sion.

On the oth­er hand, I main­tained that hu­man na­ture has some­thing to do with wom­en. Very lit­tle, of course, but still enough to make my point a good one. It is hu­man na­ture for a girl to pre­fer mati­nees to Sun­day evening ser­vices. This is sad, no doubt, but so are some oth­er great truths. Maude, as a true type of girl­hood, would nat­ural­ly think more of the man who was tak­ing her to a mati­nee than of the fel­low who was es­cort­ing her home from church, there­fore she loved me bet­ter than she did Har­ry, and he ought to have the sense to see it and with­draw.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Har­ry is near-​sight­ed in re­spect to ar­gu­ments evolved by the mind of an­oth­er, though in the per­cep­tion of re­fine­ments in his own rea­son­ing he has the eye of the ea­gle. “Love on the way to a mati­nee,” he said, “is one part af­fec­tion and nine parts en­thu­si­asm.”

“And love on the re­turn from church is in all ten parts tem­po­rary aber­ra­tion,” I re­turned. “It is what you might call Sev­enth Day af­fec­tion. Qui­et, and no doubt sin­cere, but it is dis­si­pat­ed by the ris­ing of the Mon­day sun. It is like our good res­olu­tions on New Year's Day, which bare­ly last over a fort­night. Some lit­tle word spo­ken by the rec­tor may have aroused in her breast a spark of love for you, but one spark does not make a con­fla­gra­tion. Prop­er­ly fanned it may de­vel­op in­to one, but in it­self it is noth­ing more than a spark. Who can say that it was not pity that led Maude to speak so to you? Your neck­tie may have been dis­ar­ranged with­out your know­ing it, and at a time when she could not tell you of it. That sort of thing in­spires pity, and you know as well as I do that pity and love are cousins, but cousins who nev­er mar­ry. You are fa­vored, but not to the ex­tent that I am.”

“You ar­gue well,” re­turned Har­ry, “but you ig­nore the moon. In the solemn pres­ence of the great orb of night no wom­an would swear false­ly.”

“You prick your ar­gu­ment with your point,” I an­swered. “There were no ex­tra­ne­ous ar­gu­ments brought to bear on Maude when she con­fessed to me that she loved me. It was done in the cold light of day. There was no moon around to egg her on when she con­fessed her af­fec­tion for me. I know the moon pret­ty well my­self, and I know just what ef­fect it has on truth. I have told false­hoods in the moon­light that I knew were false­hoods, and yet while Lu­na was look­ing on, no crea­ture in the uni­verse could have con­vinced me of their un­truth­ful­ness. The moon's rays have kissed the Blar­ney-​stone, Har­ry. A moon­light truth is a noon­day lie.”

“Doesn't the ge­nial warmth of the sun ev­er lead one from the path of truth?” queried Har­ry, satir­ical of man­ner.

“Yes,” I an­swered. “But not in a horse-​car with peo­ple tread­ing on your feet.”

“What has that to do with it?” Har­ry asked.

“It was on a Broad­way car that Maude con­fessed,” I an­swered.

Har­ry looked blue. His eyes said: “Gad! How she must love you!” But his lips said: “Ho! Non­sense!”

“It is the truth,” said I, see­ing that Har­ry was weak­en­ing. "As we were wait­ing for the car to come along I said to her: 'Maude, I am not the man I ought to be, but I have one re­deem­ing qual­ity: I love you to dis­trac­tion.'

"She was about to re­ply when the car came. We were re­quest­ed to step live­ly. We did so, and the car start­ed. Then as we stood in the crowd­ed aisle of the car we spoke in enig­mas.

"'Did you hear what I said, Maude?' I asked.

"'Yes,' said she, gaz­ing soft­ly out of the win­dow, and a slight touch of red com­ing in­to her cheeks. 'Yes, I heard.'

"'And what is your re­ply?' I whis­pered.

“'So do I,' she an­swered, with a sigh.”

Har­ry laughed, and so ir­ri­tat­ing­ly that had his name been Thomas I should have struck him.

“What is the joke?” I asked.

“You won't think it's fun­ny,” Har­ry an­swered.

“Then it must be a poor joke,” I re­tort­ed, a lit­tle net­tled. “Well, it's on you,” he said. “You have sim­ply shown me that Maude nev­er told you she loved you. That's the joke.”

I was speech­less with wrath, but my eyes spoke. “How have I shown that?” they asked in my be­half.

“You say that you told Maude that _you_ loved _her_ to dis­trac­tion. To which dec­la­ra­tion she replied, 'So do I.' Where there is in that any avow­al that _she_ loves _you_ I fail to see. She sim­ply stat­ed that she too loved her­self to dis­trac­tion, and I breathe again.”

“Hair-​split­ting!” said I, wrath­ful­ly.

“No--side-​split­ting!” re­turned Har­ry, with a roar of laugh­ter. “Now my dec­la­ra­tion was very dif­fer­ent from yours. It was made when Maude and I were walk­ing home from church. It was about nine o'clock, and the streets were bathed in mel­low moon­light. I de­clared my­self be­cause I could not help my­self. I had no in­ten­tion of do­ing so when I start­ed out ear­li­er in the evening, but the up­lift­ing ef­fect of the ser­vice of song at church, com­bined with the most ro­man­tic kind of a moon, forced me in­to it. I told her I was a strug­gler; that I was not yet able to sup­port a wife; and that while I did not wish to ask any pledge from her, I could not re­sist telling her that I loved her with all my heart and soul.”

_I_ be­gan to feel blue. “And what did she say?” I asked, a lit­tle hoarse­ly.

“She said she re­turned my af­fec­tion.”

I braced up. “Ha, ha, ha!” I laughed. “This time the joke is on you.”

“I fail to see it,” he said.

“Of course,” I re­tort­ed. “It is not one of your jokes. But say, Har­ry, when you send a po­em to a mag­azine and the ed­itor doesn't want it, what does he do with it?”

“Re­turns it. Ah!”

The “ah” was a gasp.

“You are the hair-​split­ter this time,” said he, rue­ful­ly.

“I am,” said I. “I could ef­fec­tu­al­ly de­stroy a whole wig of hairs like that. If you are right in your rea­son­ing as to Maude's love for me, I am right as re­gards her love for you. We are both split­ting hairs in most un­prof­itable fash­ion.”

“We are,” said Har­ry, with a sigh. “There is on­ly one way to set­tle the mat­ter.”

“And that?”

“Let's call around there now and ask her.”

“I am agree­able,” said I.

“Of­ten,” said Har­ry, ring­ing for our coats.

In a few mo­ments we were ready to de­part; and as we stepped out in­to the night, whom should we run up against but that de­testable Jim­mie Brown!

“Whith­er away, boys?” he asked; in his usu­al bub­ble­some man­ner.

“We are go­ing to make a call.”

“Ah! Well, wait a minute, won't you? I have some news. I'm in great luck, and I want you fel­lows to join me in a health to the fu­ture Mrs. B.”

“En­gaged at last, eh, Brown?” said Har­ry.

I did not speak, for I felt a sud­den and most de­press­ing sink­ing of the heart.

“Yes,” said Brown; and then he told us to whom.

It is not nec­es­sary to men­tion the la­dy's name. Suf­fice it to say that Har­ry and I both re­turned to our cor­ner in the club, dis­card­ed our over­coats, and talked about two sub­jects.

The first was the weath­er.

The sec­ond, the fick­le­ness of wom­en.

In­ci­den­tal­ly we agreed that there was some­thing ir­ri­tat­ing about cer­tain names, and on this oc­ca­sion James ex­cit­ed our ire some­what more than was nor­mal.

But we did not lick James. We had too much re­gard for some one else to split a hair of his head.

AN AFFINI­TIVE RO­MANCE