The Four Million.................................................................................................................................................1

O Henry ....................................................................................................................................................1

Tobin and me, the two of us, went down to Coney one day, for there was four dollars between us, and Tobin

had need of distractions. For there was Katie Mahorner, his sweetheart, of County Sligo, lost since she started

for America three months before with two hundred dollars, her own savings, and one hundred dollars from

the sale of Tobin's inherited estate, a fine cottage and pig on the Bog Shannaugh. And since the letter that

Tobin got saying that she had started to come to him not a bit of news had he heard or seen of Katie

Mahorner. Tobin advertised in the papers, but nothing could be found of the colleen.

So, to Coney me and Tobin went, thinking that a turn at the chutes and the smell of the popcorn might raise

the heart in his bosom. But Tobin was a hardheaded man, and the sadness stuck in his skin. He ground his

teeth at the crying balloons; he cursed the moving pictures; and, though he would drink whenever asked, he

So I gets him down a side way on a board walk where the attractions were some less violent. At a little six by

"'Tis here," says he, "I will be diverted. I'll have the palm of me hand investigated by the wonderful palmist

Tobin was a believer in signs and the unnatural in nature. He possessed illegal convictions in his mind along

the subjects of black cats, lucky numbers, and the weather predictions in the papers.

We went into the enchanted chicken coop, which was fixed mysterious with red cloth and pictures of hands

with lines crossing 'em like a railroad centre. The sign over the door says it is Madame Zozo the Egyptian

Palmist. There was a fat woman inside in a red jumper with pothooks and beasties embroidered upon it.

Tobin gives her ten cents and extends one of his hands. She lifts Tohin's hand, which is own brother to the

hoof of a drayhorse, and examines it to see whether 'tis a stone in the frog or a cast shoe he has come for.

"Tis not me foot at all," says Tobin, interrupting. "Sure, 'tis no beauty, but ye hold the palm of me hand."

"The line shows," says the Madame, "that ye've not arrived at your time of life without bad luck. And there's

more to come. The mound of Venusor is that a stone bruise?shows that ye've been in love. There's been

"'Tis Katie Mahorner she has references with," whispers Tobin to me in a loud voice to one side.

"I see," says the palmist, "a great deal of sorrow and tribulation with one whom ye cannot forget. I see the

"Look out," goes on the palmist, "for a dark man and a light woman; for they'll both bring ye trouble. Ye'll

make a voyage upon the water very soon, and have a financial loss. I see one line that brings good luck.

There's a man coming into your life who will fetch ye good fortune. Ye'll know him when ye see him by his

"Is his name set down?" asks Tobin. "'Twill be convenient in the way of greeting when he backs up to dump

"His name," says the palmist, thoughtful looking, "is not spelled out by the lines, but they indicate 'tis a long

one, and the letter 'o' should be in it. There's no more to tell. Goodevening. Don't block up the door."

As we squeezed through the gates a nigger man sticks his lighted segar against Tobin's ear, and there is

trouble. Tobin hammers his neck, and the women squeal, and by presence of mind I drag the little man out of

the way before the police comes. Tobin is always in an ugly mood when enjoying himself.

On the boat going back, when the man calls "Who wants the good looking waiter?" Tobin tried to plead

guilty, feeling the desire to blow the foam off a crock of suds, but when he felt in his pocket he found himself

discharged for lack of evidence. Somebody had disturbed his change during the commotion. So we sat, dry,

upon the stools, listening to the Dagoes fiddling on deck. If anything, Tobin was lower in spirits and less

On a seat against the railing was a young woman dressed suitable for red automobiles, with hair the colour of

an unsmoked meerschaum. In passing by, Tobin kicks her foot without intentions, and, being polite to ladies

when in drink, he tries to give his hat a twist while apologising. But he knocks it off, and the wind carries it

Tobin came back and sat down, and I began to look out for him, for the man's adversities were becoming

frequent. He was apt, when pushed so close by hard luck, to kick the best dressed man he could see, and try

Presently Tobin grabs my arm and says, excited: "Jawn," says he, "do ye know what we're doing? We're

"Look," says he, "at the light lady upon the bench. And have ye forgotten the nigger man that burned me ear?

I thought he was no more than summing up his catastrophes so as to get violent with good excuse, as men

"Listen," says Tobin. "Ye've no ear for the gift of prophecy or the miracles of the inspired. What did the

palmist lady tell ye out of me hand? 'Tis coming true before your eyes. 'Look out,' says she, 'for a dark man

and a light woman; they'll bring ye trouble.' Have ye forgot the nigger man, though be got some of it back

from me fist? Can ye show me a lighter woman than the blonde lady that was the cause of me hat falling in

the water? And where's the dollar sixty five I had in me vest when we left the shooting gallery?"

The way Tobin put it,it did seem to corroborate the art of prediction, though it looked to me that these

accidents could happen to any one at Coney without the implication of palmistry.

Tobin got up and walked around on deck, looking close at the passengers out of his little red eyes. I asked

him the interpretation of his movements. Ye never know what Tobin has in his mind until he begins to carry

"Ye should know," says he, "I'm working out the salvation promised by the lines in me palm. I'm looking for

the crookednose man that's to bring the good luck. 'Tis all that will save us. Jawn, did ye ever see a

'Twas the ninethirty boat, and we landed and walked uptown through Twentysecond Street, Tobin being

On a street corner, standing under a gaslight and looking over the elevated road at the moon, was a man. A

long man he was, dressed decent, with a segar between his teeth, and I saw that his nose made two twists

from bridge to end, like the wriggle of a snake. Tobin saw it at the same time, and I heard him breathe hard

like a horse when you take the saddle off. He went straight up to the man, and I went with him.

"Goodnight to ye," Tobin says to the man. The man takes out his segar and passes the compliments,

"Would ye hand us your name," asks Tobin, "and let us look at the size of it? It may be our duty to become

"'Tis the right length," says Tobin. "Do you spell it with an 'o' anywhere down the stretch of it?"

"If your conscience," says the man with the nose, "is indisposed toward foreign idioms ye might, to please

"'Tis well," says Tobin. "Ye're in the presence of Jawn Malone and Daniel Tobin."

"Tis highly appreciated," says the man, with a bow. "And now since I cannot conceive that ye would hold a

spelling bee upon the street corner, will ye name some reasonable excuse for being at large?"

"By the two signs," answers Tobin, trying to explain, "which ye display according to the reading of the

Egyptian palmist from the sole of me hand, ye've been nominated to offset with good luck the lines of trouble

leading to the nigger man and the blonde lady with her feet crossed in the boat, besides the financial loss of a

"Have ye any amendments," he asks, "to offer to that statement, or are ye one too? I thought by the looks of

"None," says I to him, "except that as one horseshoe resembles another so are ye the picture of good luck as

predicted by the hand of me friend. If not, then the lines of Danny's hand may have been crossed, I don't

"There's two of ye," says the man with the nose, looking up and down for the sight of a policeman. "I've

With that he shoves his segar in his mouth and moves across the street, stepping fast. But Tobin sticks close

"What!" says he, stopping on the opposite sidewalk and pushing back his hat; "do ye follow me? I tell ye," he

says, very loud, "I'm proud to have met ye. But it is my desire to be rid of ye. I am off to me home."

"Do," says Tobin, leaning against his sleeve. "Do be off to your home. And I will sit at the door of it till ye

come out in the morning. For the dependence is upon ye to obviate the curse of the nigger man and the

"'Tis a strange hallucination," says the man, turning to me as a more reasonable lunatic. "Hadn't ye better get

"Listen, man," says I to him. "Daniel Tobin is as sensible as he ever was. Maybe he is a bit deranged on

account of having drink enough to disturb but not enough to settle his wits, but he is no more than following

out the legitimate path of his superstitions and predicaments, which I will explain to you." With that I relates

the facts about the palmist lady and how the finger of suspicion points to him as an instrument of good

fortune. "Now, understand," I concludes, "my position in this riot. I am the friend of me friend Tobin,

according to me interpretations. 'Tis easy to be a friend to the prosperous, for it pays; 'tis not hard to be a

friend to the poor, for ye get puffed up by gratitude and have your picture printed standing in front of a

tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the art of friendship to be true friend

to a born fool. And that's what I'm doing," says I, "for, in my opinion, there's no fortune to be read from the

palm of me hand that wasn't printed there with the handle of a pick. And, though ye've got the crookedest

nose in New York City, I misdoubt that all the fortunetellers doing business could milk good luck from ye.

But the lines of Danny's hand pointed to ye fair, and I'll assist him to experiment with ye until he's convinced

After that the man turns, sudden, to laughing. He leans against a corner and laughs considerable. Then he

"'Tis my mistake," says he. "How could I be expecting anything so fine and wonderful to be turning the

corner upon me? I came near being found unworthy. Hard by," says he, "is a cafe, snug and suitable for the

entertainment of idiosyncrasies. Let us go there and have drink while we discuss the unavailability of the

So saying, he marched me and Tobin to the back room of a saloon, and ordered the drinks, and laid the

money on the table. He looks at me and Tobin like brothers of his, and we have the segars.

"Ye must know," says the man of destiny, "that me walk in life is one that is called the literary. I wander

abroad be night seeking idiosyncrasies in the masses and truth in the heavens above. When ye came upon me

I was in contemplation of the elevated road in conjunction with the chief luminary of night. The rapid transit

is poetry and art: the moon but a tedious, dry body, moving by rote. But these are private opinions, for, in the

business of literature, the conditions are reversed. 'Tis me hope to be writing a book to explain the strange

"I will not," says the man, "for the covers will not hold ye. Not yet. The best I can do is to enjoy ye meself,

for the time is not ripe for destroying the limitations of print. Ye would look fantastic in type. All alone by

meself must I drink this cup of joy. But, I thank ye, boys; I am truly grateful."

"The talk of ye," says Tobin, blowing through his moustache and pounding the table with his fist, "is an

eyesore to me patience. There was good luck promised out of the crook of your nose, but ye bear fruit like the

bang of a drum. Ye resemble, with your noise of books, the wind blowing through a crack. Sure, now, I

would be thinking the palm of me hand lied but for the coming true of the nigger man and the blonde lady

"Whist!" says the long man; "would ye be led astray by physiognomy? Me nose will do what it can within

bounds. Let us have these glasses filled again, for 'tis good to keep idiosyncrasies well moistened, they being

So, the man of literature makes good, to my notion, for he pays, cheerful, for everything, the capital of me

and Tobin being exhausted by prediction. But Tobin is sore, and drinks quiet, with the red showing in his eye.

By and by we moved out, for 'twas eleven o'clock, and stands a bit upon the sidewalk. And then the man says

he must be going home, and invites me and Tobin to walk that way. We arrives on a side street two blocks

away where there is a stretch of brick houses with high stoops and iron fences. The man stops at one of them

"'Tis me humble dwelling," says he, "and I begin to perceive by the signs that me wife has retired to slumber.

Therefore I will venture a bit in the way of hospitality. 'Tis me wish that ye enter the basement room, where

we dine, and partake of a reasonable refreshment. There will be some fine cold fowl and cheese and a bottle

or two of ale. Ye will be welcome to enter and eat, for I am indebted to ye for diversions."

The appetite and conscience of me and Tobin was congenial to the proposition, though 'twas sticking hard in

Danny's superstitions to think that a few drinks and a cold lunch should represent the good fortune promised

"Step down the steps," says the man with the crooked nose, "and I will enter by the door above and let ye in. I

will ask the new girl we have in the kitchen," says he, "to make ye a pot of coffee to drink before ye go. 'Tis

fine coffee Katie Mahorner makes for a green girl just landed three months. Step in," says the man, "and I'll

One dollar and eightyseven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and

two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with

the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which

instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the

home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on

the lookout for the mendicancy squad. In the vestibule below was a letterbox into which no letter would go,

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

bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a

former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was

shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of

contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and

reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already

Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She stood by the window and looked

out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey backyard. Tomorrow would be Christmas Day, and she

had only $1.87 with which to buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for months, with

this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been greater than she had calculated. They

always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim. Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for

something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling something just a little bit near to being

There was a pierglass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have seen a pierglass in an $8 flat. A

very thin and very agile person may, by observing his reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips,

obtain a fairly accurate conception of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.

Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes were shining brilliantly, but her

face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full

Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which they both took a mighty pride.

One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father's and his grandfather's. The other was Della's hair. Had the

Queen of Sheba lived in the flat across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some

day to dry just to depreciate Her Majesty's jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor, with all his

treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch every time he passed, just to see him

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

below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her. And then she did it up again nervously and quickly.

Once she faltered for a minute and stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.

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

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

Where she stopped the sign read: "Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds." One flight up Della ran, and

collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white, chilly, hardly looked the "Sofronie."

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

Down rippled the brown cascade. "Twenty dollars," said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.

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

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

stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design,

properly proclaiming its value by substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentationas all good things

should do. It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she that it must be Jim's. It was like him.

Quietness and value the description applied to both. Twentyone dollars they took from her for it, and she

hurried home with the 87 cents. With that chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in

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

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

irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is

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

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

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

Island chorus girl. But what could I dooh! what could I do with a dollar and eighty seven cents?"

At 7 o'clock the coffee was made and the fryingpan was on the back of the stove hot and ready to cook the

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

that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the stair away down on the first flight, and she turned

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

The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very serious. Poor fellow, he was only

twentytwoand to be burdened with a family! He needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.

Jim stopped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His eyes were fixed upon Della,

and there was an expression in them that she could not read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise,

nor disapproval, nor horror, nor any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her

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

lived through Christmas without giving you a present. It'll grow out againyou won't mind, will you? I just

had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!' Jim, and let's be happy. You don't know

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

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

"You needn't look for it," said Della. "It's sold, I tell yousold and gone, too. It's Christmas Eve, boy. Be

good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my head were numbered," she went on with sudden

serious sweetness, "but nobody could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"

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

discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a

yearwhat is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought

valuable gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.

"Don't make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don't think there's anything in the way of a haircut or a

shave or a shampoo that could make me like my girl any less. But if you'll unwrap that package you may see

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

quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the

For there lay The Combsthe set of combs, side and back, that Della had worshipped long in a Broadway

window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoise shell, with jewelled rimsjust the shade to wear in the beautiful

vanished hair. They were expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over

them without the least hope of possession. And now, they were hers, but the tresses that should have adorned

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

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

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

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

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

"Dell," said he, "let's put our Christmas presents away and keep 'em a while. They're too nice to use just at

present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."

The magi, as you know, were wise menwonderfully wise menwho brought gifts to the Babe in the

manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones,

possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the

uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest

treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts

these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are

At midnight the cafe was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had escaped the eye of

incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.

And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that since Adam no true citizen

of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travellers

I invoke your consideration of the scenethe marbletopped tables, the range of leatherupholstered wall

seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demistate toilets, speaking in an exquisite visible chorus of

taste, economy, opulence or art; the sedulous and largessloving ~garcons~, the music wisely catering to all

with its raids upon the composers; the ~melange~ of talk and laughterand, if you will, the Wurzburger in

the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its branch to the beak of a robber jay. I

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

He is to establish a new "attraction" there, he informed me, offering kingly diversion. And then his

conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the great, round world in his hand, so to

speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a ~table

d'hote~ grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he

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

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

with the Kanakas at Kealaikahiki. Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas postoak swamp, let you dry

for a moment on the alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes.

Anon he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamila cured it

in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the ~chuchula~ weed. You would have addressed a letter to "E.

Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the Universe," and have mailed it, feeling confident that it

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

discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the mere globetrotter. But his opinions never

fluttered or drooped; he was as impartial to cities, countries and continents as the winds or gravitation. And as

E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great almostcosmopolite who wrote

for the whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he has to say that there is pride and rivalry

between the cities of the earth, and that "the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to

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

remember their native city "most faithful, foolish, fond; making her merebreathed name their bond upon

their bond." And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not

made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would

brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the Moon.

Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third corner to our table.

While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway the orchestra glided into a

medley. The concluding air was "Dixie," and as the exhilarating notes tumbled forth they were almost

It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in numerous cafes in

the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to account for it. Some have

conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to cafes at nightfall. This applause of the

"rebel" air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it is not insolvable. The war with Spain, many years'

generous mint and watermelon crops, a few longshot winners at the New Orleans racetrack, and the

brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society have

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

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

When "Dixie" was being played a darkhaired young man sprang up from somewhere with a Mosby guerrilla

yell and waved frantically his soft brimmed hat. Then he strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant

The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three Wurzburgers to the waiter;

the darkhaired young man acknowledged his inclusion in the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask

"Excuse me," said he, "but that's a question I never like to hear asked. What does it matter where a man is

from? Is it fair to judge a man by his postoffice address? Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey,

Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who

didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift

Yankees, coldblooded Southerners, narrow minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to

stop for an hour on the street to watch a onearmed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man

"Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and when the band

plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who applauds that air with special

violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between

Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of

this gentleman when you interrupted with your ownlarger theory, I must confess."

And now the darkhaired young man spoke to me, and it became evident that his mind also moved along its

"I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of a valley, and sing toorallooralloo."

"I've been around the world twelve times," said he. "I know an Esquimau in Upernavik who sends to

Cincinnati for his neckties, and I saw a goatherder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast

food puzzle competition. I pay rent on a room in Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year around.

I've got slippers waiting for me in a teahouse in Shanghai, and I don't have to tell 'em how to cook my eggs

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

North, or the South, or the old manor house in the dale, or Euclid avenue, Cleveland, or Pike's Peak, or

Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan's Flats or any place? It'll be a better world when we quit being fools about

some mildewed town or ten acres of swampland just because we happened to be born there."

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

"A relic of the stone age," declared Coglan, warmly. "We are all brothersChinamen, Englishmen, Zulus,

Patagonians and the people in the bend of the Kaw River. Some day all this petty pride in one's city or State

or section or country will be wiped out, and we'll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be."

"But while you are wandering in foreign lands," I persisted, "do not your thoughts revert to some sposome

"Nary a spot," interrupted E. R. Coglan, flippantly. "The terrestrial, globular, planetary hunk of matter,

slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode. I've met a good many objectbound

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

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

that monarch, without batting his eyes, the information that his grandaunt on his mother's side was related by

marriage to the Perkinses, of Charleston. I knew a New Yorker who was kidnapped for ransom by some

Afghanistan bandits. His people sent over the money and he came back to Kabul with the agent.

'Afghanistan?' the natives said to him through an interpreter. 'Well, not so slow, do you think?' 'Oh, I don't

know,' says he, and he begins to tell them about a cab driver at Sixth avenue and Broadway. Those ideas don't

suit me. I'm not tied down to anything that isn't 8,000 miles in diameter. Just put me down as E. Rushmore

My cosmopolite made a large adieu and left me, for he thought he saw some one through the chatter and

smoke whom he knew. So I was left with the wouldbe periwinkle, who was reduced to Wurzburger without

further ability to voice his aspirations to perch, melodious, upon the summit of a valley.

I sat reflecting upon my evident cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had managed to miss him. He was

my discovery and I believed in him. How was it? "The men that breed from them they traffic up and down,

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

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

fought between the tables like Titans, and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked

My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters closed in on both

combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them outside, still resisting.

I called McCarthy, one of the French ~garcons~, and asked him the cause of the conflict.

"The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of things said about the

"Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the worlda cosmopolite. He"

"Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, "and he wouldn't stand for no

The May moon shone bright upon the private boardinghouse of Mrs. Murphy. By reference to the almanac a

large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its rays also fell. Spring was in its heydey, with hay

fever soon to follow. The parks were green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade.

Flowers and summerresort agents were blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder;

The windows of Mrs. Murphy's boardinghouse were open. A group of boarders were seated on the high

In one of the secondfloor front windows Mrs. McCaskey awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the

At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth; and he apologised for

disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone between them on which to set his size 9,

As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stovelid or potatomasher for

Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had softened the breast of his spouse.

"I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apollygise to riffraff of the streets for settin'

yer unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye'd walk on the neck of yer wife the length of a clothesline

without so much as a 'Kiss me fut,' and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the

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

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

appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from between the bricks of the foundations of

society. 'Tis no more than exercisin' the acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the dissent of ladies blockin'

the way for steppin' between them. Will ye bring the pig's face of ye out of the windy and see to the food?"

Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her manner that warned Mr.

McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth went down suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a fall of

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

Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On the table was a roast

sirloin of pork, garnished with shamrocks. He retorted with this, and drew the appropriate return of a bread

pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey

below one eye. When she replied with a wellaimed coffeepot full of a hot, black, semifragrant liquid the

But Mr. McCaskey was no 50cent ~table d'hoter~. Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they

would. Let them make that ~faux pas~. He was foxier still. Fingerbowls were not beyond the compass of his

experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy; but their equivalent was at hand. Triumphantly

he sent the granite ware wash basin at the head of his matrimonial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in

time. She reached for a flatiron, with which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to

a close. But a loud, wailing scream downstairs caused both her and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a sort of

On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one ear upturned, listening to

"'Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missis at it again," meditated the policeman. "I wonder shall I go up and stop

the row. I will not. Married folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill not last long. Sure, they'll have

And just then came the loud scream belowstairs, betokening fear or dire extremity. "'Tis probably the cat,"

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

profession, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy, Mike,

was lost. Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphytwo hundred pounds in tears and hysterics,

clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos, truly;

but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, millinery, and their hands came together in sympathy.

The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day about the noise in the halls, inquired

Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. "The little one lost?" he

exclaimed. "I will scour the city." His wife never allowed him out after dark. But now she said: "Go,

Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has

a heart of stone." "Give me some thirty orsixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children sometimes

Old man Denny, hall room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street

lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the

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

"Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, "'twas yisterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno. But it's lost he is, me little

boy Mike. He was playin' on the sidewalk only this mornin'or was it Wednesday? I'm that busy with work,

'tis hard to keep up with dates. But I've looked the house over from top to cellar, and it's gone he is. Oh, for

Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that no

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

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

been wiser. Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient

No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little child. Their feet are so

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

to the servitor. "Haven't seen a bowlegged, dirtyfaced little devil of a sixyear old loot kid around here

Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy's hand on the steps. "Think of that dear little babe," said Miss Purdy, "lost

from his mother's side perhaps already fallen beneath the iron hoofs of galloping steeds oh, isn't it

"Ain't that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say I start out and help look for um!"

"Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But, oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashingso recklesssuppose

Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines.

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

McCaskey was scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his lady was wiping an eye

that the salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry below, and thrust their heads out of the

"'Tis little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey, in a hushed voice, "the beautiful, little, troublemaking angel

"The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey, leaning out of the window. "Why, now, that's bad enough,

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

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

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

"But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our little Phelan run away and

"Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. "'Tis Pat he would be named, after me old father in Cantrim."

"Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth tin dozen bogtrotting McCaskeys.

After him would the bye be named." She leaned over the windowsill and looked down at the hurrying and

"'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say," said her husband, "and hurryup turnips and getamoveonye coffee.

Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough hand in hers.

"Listen at the cryin' of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. "'Tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye to be lost in this

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

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

or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and hard with ye, Judy. Forget

Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling the air with rumours, and

inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth in their midst, like a soft mountain down

"'Tis Missis Murphy's voice," said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. "She says she's after finding little Mike asleep

"That's yer Phelan," he shouted, sardonically. "Divil a bit would a Pat have done that trick. If the bye we

never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him Phelan, and see him hide out under the bed like a

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

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

the McCaskey apartment, where the crash of irons and chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils

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

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

Old man Denny folded his paper and hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for

First Mrs. Parker would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt her description of

their advantages and of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years. Then you would

manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker's manner of

receiving the admission was such that you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your

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

Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second floorback at $8. Convinced by her

secondfloor manner that it was worth the $12 that Mr. Toosenberry always paid for it until he left to take

charge of his brother's orange plantation in Florida near Palm Beach, where Mrs. McIntyre always spent the

winters that had the double front room with private bath, you managed to babble that you wanted something

If you survived Mrs. Parker's scorn, you were taken to look at Mr. Skidder's large hall room on the third floor.

Mr. Skidder's room was not vacant. He wrote plays and smoked cigarettes in it all day long. But every

roomhunter was made to visit his room to admire the lambrequins. After each visit, Mr. Skidder, from the

Thenoh, thenif you still stood on one foot, with your hot hand clutching the three moist dollars in your

pocket, and hoarsely proclaimed your hideous and culpable poverty, nevermore would Mrs. Parker be

cicerone of yours. She would honk loudly the word" Clara," she would show you her back, and march

downstairs. Then Clara, the coloured maid, would escort you up the carpeted ladder that served for the fourth

flight, and show you the Skylight Room. It occupied 7x8 feet of floor space at the middle of the hall. On each

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

upon you like the sides of a coffin. Your hand crept to your throat, you gasped, you looked up as from a

welland breathed once more. Through the glass of the little skylight you saw a square of blue infinity.

"Two dollars, suh," Clara would say in her halfcontemptuous, half Tuskegeenial tones.

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

larger lady. She was a very little girl, with eyes and hair that had kept on growing after she had stopped and

that always looked as if they were saying: "Goodness me ! Why didn't you keep up with us?"

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

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

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

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

"Excuse me, Mr. Skidder," said Mrs. Parker, with her demon's smile at his pale looks. "I didn't know you

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

After they had gone Mr. Skidder got very busy erasing the tall, blackhaired heroine from his latest

(unproduced) play and inserting a small, roguish one with heavy, bright hair and vivacious features.

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

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

seized her, mounted a Stygian stairway, thrust her into a vault with a glimmer of light in its top and muttered

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

made copies with her typewriter. Sometimes she had no work at night, and then she would sit on the steps of

the high stoop with the other roomers. Miss Leeson was not intended for a skylight room when the plans

were drawn for her creation. She was gayhearted and full of tender, whimsical fancies. Once she let Mr.

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

There was rejoicing among the gentlemen roomers whenever Miss Leeson had time to sit on the steps for an

hour or two. But Miss Longnecker, the tall blonde who taught in a public school and said, "Well, really!" to

everything you said, sat on the top step and sniffed. And Miss Dorn, who shot at the moving ducks at Coney

every Sunday and worked in a department store, sat on the bottom step and sniffed. Miss Leeson sat on the

Especially Mr. Skidder, who had cast her in his mind for the star part in a private, romantic (unspoken) drama

in real life. And especially Mr. Hoover, who was fortyfive, fat, flush and foolish. And especially very young

Mr. Evans, who set up a hollow cough to induce her to ask him to leave off cigarettes. The men voted her

"the funniest and jolliest ever," but the sniffs on the top step and the lower step were implacable.

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

of Mr. Hoover. Tune the pipes to the tragedy of tallow, the bane of bulk, the calamity of corpulence. Tried

out, Falstaff might have rendered more romance to the ton than would have Romeo's rickety ribs to the

ounce. A lover may sigh, but he must not puff. To the train of Momus are the fat men remanded. In vain beats

the faithfullest heart above a 52inch belt. Avaunt, Hoover! Hoover, fortyfive, flush and foolish, might

carry off Helen herself; Hoover, fortyfive, flush, foolish and fat is meat for perdition. There was never a

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

All looked upsome at the windows of skyscrapers, some casting about for an airship, Jacksonguided.

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

blue one near it. I can see it every night through my skylight. I named it Billy Jackson."

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

"Oh, yes," said the small star gazer, "I know as much as any of them about the style of sleeves they're going

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

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

"Same here," said Mr. Hoover, loudly breathing defiance to Miss Longnecker. "I think Miss Leeson has just

"I wonder whether it's a shooting star," remarked Miss Dorn. "I hit nine ducks and a rabbit out of ten in the

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

You know you can see stars even in the daytime from the bottom of a well. At night my room is like the shaft

of a coal mine, and it makes Billy Jackson look like the big diamond pin that Night fastens her kimono with."

There came a time after that when Miss Leeson brought no formidable papers home to copy. And when she

went out in the morning, instead of working, she went from office to office and let her heart melt away in the

There came an evening when she wearily climbed Mrs. Parker's stoop at the hour when she always returned

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

fatness hovered above her like an avalanche. She dodged, and caught the balustrade. He tried for her hand,

and she raised it and smote him weakly in the face. Step by step she went up, dragging herself by the railing.

She passed Mr. Skidder's door as he was redinking a stage direction for Myrtle Delorme (Miss Leeson) in

his (unaccepted) comedy, to "pirouette across stage from L to the side of the Count." Up the carpeted ladder

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

hollowing the worn springs. And in that Erebus of the skylight room, she slowly raised her heavy eyelids, and

For Billy Jackson was shining down on her, calm and bright and constant through the skylight. There was no

world about her. She was sunk in a pit of blackness, with but that small square of pallid light framing the star

that she had so whimsically and oh, so ineffectually named. Miss Longnecker must be right; it was Gamma,

of the constellation Cassiopeia, and not Billy Jackson. And yet she could not let it be Gamma.

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

"Goodbye, Billy," she murmured faintly. "You're millions of miles away and you won't even twinkle once.

But you kept where I could see you most of the time up there when there wasn't anything else but darkness to

Clara, the coloured maid, found the door locked at 10 the next day, and they forced it open. Vinegar, and the

slapping of wrists and burnt feathers proving of no avail, some one ran to 'phone for an ambulance.

In due time it backed up to the door with much gongclanging, and the capable young medico, in his white

linen coat, ready, active, confident, with his smooth face half debonair, half grim, danced up the steps.

"Oh, yes, doctor," sniffed Mrs. Parker, as though her trouble that there should be trouble in the house was the

greater. "I can't think what can be the matter with her. Nothing we could do would bring her to. It's a young

"What room?" cried the doctor in a terrible voice, to which Mrs. Parker was a stranger.

Evidently the ambulance doctor was familiar with the location of skylight rooms. He was gone up the stairs,

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

the practised scalpel of his tongue, not loudly. Gradually Mrs. Parker crumpled as a stiff garment that slips

down from a nail. Ever afterward there remained crumples in her mind and body. Sometimes her curious

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

The ambulance physician strode with his burden through the pack of hounds that follow the curiosity chase,

and even they fell back along the sidewalk abashed, for his face was that of one who bears his own dead.

They noticed that he did not lay down upon the bed prepared for it in the ambulance the form that he carried,

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

It recounted the reception into Bellevue Hospital of a young woman who had been removed from No. 49 East

street, suffering from debility induced by starvation. It concluded with these words:

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

That is our premise. This story shall draw a conclusion from it, and show at the same time that the premise is

incorrect. That will be a new thing in logic, and a feat in storytelling somewhat older than the great wall of

Joe Larrabee came out of the postoak flats of the Middle West pulsing with a genius for pictorial art. At six

he drew a picture of the town pump with a prominent citizen passing it hastily. This effort was framed and

hung in the drug store window by the side of the ear of corn with an uneven number of rows. At twenty he

Delia Caruthers did things in six octaves so promisingly in a pine tree village in the South that her relatives

chipped in enough in her chip hat for her to go "North" and "finish." They could not see her f, but that is

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

Wagner, music, Rembrandt's works, pictures, Waldteufel, wall paper, Chopin and Oolong.

Joe and Delia became enamoured one of the other, or each of the other, as you please, and in a short time

were marriedfor (see above), when one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

Mr. and Mrs. Larrabee began housekeeping in a flat. It was a lonesome flatsomething like the A sharp way

down at the lefthand end of the keyboard. And they were happy; for they had their Art, and they had each

other. And my advice to the rich young man would besell all thou hast, and give it to the poorjanitor for

Flatdwellers shall indorse my dictum that theirs is the only true happiness. If a home is happy it cannot fit

too closelet the dresser collapse and become a billiard table; let the mantel turn to a rowing machine, the

escritoire to a spare bedchamber, the washstand to an upright piano; let the four walls come together, if they

will, so you and your Delia are between. But if home be the other kind, let it be wide and longenter you at

the Golden Gate, hang your hat on Hatteras, your cape on Cape Horn and go out by the Labrador.

Joe was painting in the class of the great Magisteryou know his fame. His fees are high; his lessons are

lighthis highlights have brought him renown. Delia was studying under Rosenstockyou know his

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

were very clear and defined. Joe was to become capable very soon of turning out pictures that old gentlemen

with thin sidewhiskers and thick pocketbooks would sandbag one another in his studio for the privilege of

buying. Delia was to become familiar and then contemptuous with Music, so that when she saw the orchestra

seats and boxes unsold she could have sore throat and lobster in a private diningroom and refuse to go on

But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat the ardent, voluble chats after the day's

study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitionsambitions interwoven each

with the other's or else inconsiderablethe mutual help and inspiration; andoverlook my

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

out and nothing coming in, as the vulgarians say. Money was lacking to pay Mr. Magister and Herr

Rosenstock their prices. When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard. So, Delia said she must give

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

"Joe, dear," she said, gleefully, "I've a pupil. And, oh, the loveliest people! GeneralGeneral A. B. Pinkney's

daughteron Seventyfirst street. Such a splendid house, Joeyou ought to see the front door! Byzantine I

think you would call it. And inside! Oh, Joe, I never saw anything like it before.

"My pupil is his daughter Clementina. I dearly love her already. She's a delicate thingdresses always in

white; and the sweetest, simplest manners! Only eighteen years old. I'm to give three lessons a week; and,

just think, Joe! $5 a lesson. I don't mind it a bit; for when I get two or three more pupils I can resume my

lessons with Herr Rosenstock. Now, smooth out that wrinkle between your brows, dear, and let's have a nice

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

about me? Do you think I'm going to let you hustle for wages while I philander in the regions of high art? Not

by the bones of Benvenuto Cellini! I guess I can sell papers or lay cobblestones, and bring in a dollar or two."

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

work at something else. While I teach I learn. I am always with my music. And we can live as happily as

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

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

hang two of them in his window. I may sell one if the right kind of a moneyed idiot sees them."

"I'm sure you will," said Delia, sweetly. "And now let's be thankful for Gen. Pinkney and this veal roast."

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

morningeffect sketches he was doing in Central Park, and Delia packed him off breakfasted, coddled,

praised and kissed at 7 o'clock. Art is an engaging mistress. It was most times 7 o'clock when he returned in

At the end of the week Delia, sweetly proud but languid, triumphantly tossed three fivedollar bills on the

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

to tell her the same things so often. And then she always dresses entirely in white, and that does get

monotonous. But Gen. Pinkney is the dearest old man! I wish you could know him, Joe. He comes in

sometimes when I am with Clementina at the pianohe is a widower, you knowand stands there pulling

his white goatee. 'And how are the semiquavers and the demisemiquavers progressing?' he always asks.

"I wish you could see the wainscoting in that drawingroom, Joe! And those Astrakhan rug portieres. And

Clementina has such a funny little cough. I hope she is stronger than she looks. Oh, I really am getting

attached to her, she is so gentle and high bred. Gen. Pinkney's brother was once Minister to Bolivia."

And then Joe, with the air of a Monte Cristo, drew forth a ten, a five, a two and a oneall legal tender

"Sold that watercolour of the obelisk to a man from Peoria," he announced overwhelmingly.

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

the sketch in Tinkle's window and thought it was a windmill at first, he was game, though, and bought it

anyhow. He ordered anotheran oil sketch of the Lackawanna freight depotto take back with him. Music

"I'm so glad you've kept on," said Delia, heartily. "You're bound to win, dear. Thirtythree dollars! We never

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

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

"How is this?" asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but not very joyously.

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

rabbits at 5 in the afternoon. The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing dish, Joe,

just as if there wasn't a servant in the house. I know Clementina isn't in good health; she is so nervous. In

serving the rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And

the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen. Pinkney!Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed

downstairs and sent somebodythey said the furnace man or somebody in the basementout to a drug

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

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

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

wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?"

"Five o'clock, I think," said Dele, plaintively. "The ironI mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time.

"Sit down here a moment, Dele," said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her

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

vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.

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

place ironing shirts in that big Twentyfourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both

General Pinkney and Clementina, don't you, Joe? And when a girl in the laundry set down a hot iron on my

hand this afternoon I was all the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You're not angry, are

you, Joe? And if I hadn't got the work you mightn't have sold your sketches to that man from Peoria.

"Well, it doesn't matter where he was from. How clever you are, Joe andkiss me, Joeand what made

"I didn't," said Joe, "until tonight. And I wouldn't have then, only I sent up this cotton waste and oil from the

engineroom this afternoon for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothingiron. I've been

"My purchaser from Peoria," said Joe, "and Gen. Pinkney are both creations of the same artbut you

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

Eevery Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall of the Give and Take Athletic

Association on the East Side. In order to attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and

Takeor, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right foot in waltzing, you must work in

Rhinegold's paperbox factory. Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an outsider

to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the paperbox girl that he affected; and few

Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left handed style of footwork in the twostep,

went to the dances with Anna McCarty and her "fellow." Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the

factory, and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take her by Maggie's house

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

was fitted out with muscle making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to

engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious

occupations the Saturday night hop with the paperbox factory girls came as a refining influence and as an

efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went 'round, and if you were among the elect that tiptoed up the dark

back stairway you might see as neat and satisfying a little welter weight affair to a finish as ever happened

On Saturdays Rhinegold's paperbox factory closed at 3 P. M. On one such afternoon Anna and Maggie

walked homeward together. At Maggie's door Anna said, as usual: "Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and

But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks from the nonescorted one there was

to be perceived a high poised head, a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a

"Thanks, Anna," said Maggie; "but you and Jimmy needn't bother to night. I've a gentleman friend that's

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

fellow! Plain, dear, loyal, unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a twostep or a moonlit

"You'll see tonight," said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first grapes she had gathered in Cupid's

vineyard. "He's swell all right. He's two inches taller than Jimmy, and an uptodate dresser. I'll introduce

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

At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her triumphant eye discovered her chum

"Oh, gee!" cried Anna, "Mag ain't made a hitoh, no! Swell fellow? well, I guess! Style? Look at 'um."

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

guys always win out with the push. Don't mind me. He don't squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!"

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

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

companion justified the encomiums of the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give

and Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent

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

did to its prowess, its achievements in handtohand conflicts, and its preservation from the legal duress that

constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind a paperbox maiden to his conquering

chariot scorned to employ Beau Brumme1 airs. They were not considered honourable methods of warfare.

The swelling biceps, the coat straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious conviction of the

supereminence of the male in the cosmogony of creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and

enchanting agents in the gentle tourneys of Cupidthese were the approved arms and ammunition of the

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

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

room, presenting him to each newarriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique

luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a kitten with its first mouse.

"Maggie Toole's got a fellow at last," was the word that went round among the paperbox girls. "Pipe Mag's

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

gratitude whenever a self sacrificing partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and

diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal

But tonight the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry O'Sullivan was a victorious Prince Charming,

and Maggie Toole winged her first butterfly flight. And though our tropes of fairyland be mixed with those of

entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from the rosecrowned melody of Maggie's one perfect

The girls besieged her for introductions to her "fellow." The Clover Leaf young men, after two years of

blindness, suddenly perceived charms in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and

Thus she scored; but to Terry O'Sullivan the honours of the evening fell thick and fast. He shook his curls; he

smiled and went easily through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before an open

window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he introduced manner and style and atmosphere; his

words came trippingly upon his tongue, andhe waltzed twice in succession with the paper box girl that

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

He was one of "Big Mike" O'Sullivan's lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop dared to arrest

him. Whenever be broke a pushcart man's head or shot a member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and

"The Cap'n 'd like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye have time, Dempsey, me boy."

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

tell a funny story, and then Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the sixpound dumbbells. So,

doing a tightrope act on a wire stretched across Niagara was a safe terpsichorean performance compared

with waltzing twice with Dempsey Donovan's paperbox girl. At 10 o'clock the jolly round face of "Big

Mike" O'Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes,

Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. "Big Mike" looked carefully at the dancers,

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

bow, relinquished a pretty girl in blue to her partner and started back to find Maggie. Dempsey intercepted

Some fine instinct that Rome must have bequeathed to us caused nearly every one to turn and look at

themthere was a subtle feeling that two gladiators had met in the arena. Two or three Give and Takes with

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

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

O'Sullivan had breadth with quickness. Dempsey had a glacial eye, a dominating slit of a mouth, an

indestructible jaw, a complexion like a belle's and the coolness of a champion. The visitor showed more fire

in his contempt and less control over his conspicuous sneer. They were enemies by the law written when the

rocks were molten. They were each too splendid, too mighty, too incomparable to divide preeminence. One

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

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

"As a rule," went on Dempsey, huskily sweet, "O'Sullivans in this district know one another. You escorted

one of our lady members here, and we want chance to make good. If you've got a family tree let's see a few

historical O'Sullivan buds come out on it. Or do you want us to dig it out of you by the roots?"

Dempsey's eye brightened. He held up an inspired forefinger as though a brilliant idea had struck him.

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

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

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

door at the rear of the hall. Two other members of the Give and Take Association swiftly joined the little

group. Terry O'Sullivan was now in the hands of the Board of Rules and Social Referees. They spoke to him

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

association hall was a smaller room rented by the club. In this room personal difficulties that arose on the

ballroom floor were settled, man to man, with the weapons of nature, under the supervision of the board. No

lady could say that she had witnessed a fight at a Clover Leaf hop in several years. Its gentlemen members

So easily and smoothly had Dempsey and the board done their preliminary work that many in the hall had not

noticed the checking of the fascinating O'Sullivan's social triumph. Among these was Maggie. She looked

"Smoke up!" said Rose Cassidy. "Wasn't you on? Demps Donovan picked a scrap with your Lizzieboy, and

they've waltzed out to the slaughter room with him. How's my hair look done up this way, Mag?"

"Gone to fight with Dempsey!" she said, breathlessly. "They've got to be stopped. Dempsey Donovan can't

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

into the dark hall and then threw her solid shoulder against the door of the room of single combat. It gave

way, and in the instant that she entered her eye caught the scenethe Board standing about with open

watches; Dempsey Donovan in his shirt sleeves dancing, lightfooted, with the wary grace of the modern

pugilist, within easy reach of his adversary; Terry O'Sullivan standing with arms folded and a murderous look

in his dark eyes. And without slacking the speed of her entrance she leaped forward with a screamleaped

in time to catch and hang upon the arm of O'Sullivan that was suddenly uplifted, and to whisk from it the

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

a thing had never happened before. Every one stood motionless for a minute. Andy Geoghan kicked the

stiletto with the toe of his shoe curiously, like an antiquarian who has come upon some ancient weapon

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

looks. And then Dempsey looked at O'Sullivan without anger, as one looks at a stray dog, and nodded his

"The back stairs, Giuseppi," he said, briefly. "Somebody'11 pitch your hat down after you."

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

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

name's Tony Spinelli. I hurried in when they told me you and him was scrappin'. Them Guineas always

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

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

there'd be nothin' doin' for him if he came as a Dago. I guess I'll resign from the club now."

"Chuck that cheese slicer out of the window," he said, "and tell 'em inside that Mr. O'Sullivan has had a

"Say, Mag," he said, "I'll see you home. And how about next Saturday night? Will you come to the hop with

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

There were two or three things that I wanted to know. I do not care about a mystery. So I began to inquire.

It took me two weeks to find out what women carry in dress suit cases. And then I began to ask why a

mattress is made in two pieces. This serious query was at first received with suspicion because it sounded like

a conundrum. I was at last assured that its double form of construction was designed to make lighter the

burden of woman, who makes up beds. I was so foolish as to persist, begging to know why, then, they were

The third draught that I craved from the fount of knowledge was enlightenment concerning the character

known as A Man About Town. He was more vague in my mind than a type should be. We must have a

concrete idea of anything, even if it be an imaginary idea, before we can comprehend it. Now, I have a mental

picture of John Doe that is as clear as a steel engraving. His eyes are weak blue; he wears a brown vest and a

He stands always in the sunshine chewing something; and he keeps halfshutting his pocket knife and

opening it again with his thumb. And, if the Man Higher Up is ever found, take my assurance for it, he will

be a large, pale man with blue wristlets showing under his cuffs, and he will be sitting to have his shoes

polisbed within sound of a bowling alley, and there will be somewhere about him turquoises.

But the canvas of my imagination, when it came to limning the Man About Town, was blank. I fancied that

he bad a detachable sneer (like the smile of the Cheshire cat) and attached cuffs; and that was all. Whereupon

"Why," said he, "a 'Man About Town' something between a 'rounder' and a 'clubman.' He isn't exactlywell,

he fits in between Mrs. Fish's receptions and private boxing bouts. He doesn'twell, he doesn't belong either

to the Lotos Club or to the Jerry McGeogheghan Galvanised Iron Workers' Apprentices' Left Hook Chowder

Association. I don't exactly know how to describe him to you. You'll see him everywhere there's anything

doing. Yes, I suppose he's a type. Dress clothes every evening; knows the ropes; calls every policeman and

waiter in town by their first names. No; he never travels with the hydrogen derivatives. You generally see

My friend the reporter left me, and I wandered further afield. By this time the 3126 electric lights on the

Rialto were alight. People passed, but they held me not. Paphian eyes rayed upon me, and left me unscathed.

Diners, heimgangers, shopgirls, confidence men, panhandlers, actors, highwaymen, millionaires and

outlanders hurried, skipped, strolled, sneaked, swaggered and scurried by me; but I took no note of them. I

knew them all; I had read their hearts; they had served. I wanted my Man About Town. He was a type, and to

Let us continue with a moral digression. To see a family reading the Sunday paper gratifies. The sections

have been separated. Papa is earnestly scanning the page that pictures the young lady exercising before an

open window, and bendingbut there, there! Mamma is interested in trying to guess the missing letters in

the word N_w Yo_k. The oldest girls are eagerly perusing the financial reports, for a certain young man

remarked last Sunday night that he had taken a flyer in Q., X. Z. Willie, the eighteenyearold son, who

attends the New York public school, is absorbed in the weekly article describing how to make over an old

Grandma is holding to the comic supplement with a twohours' grip; and little Tottie, the baby, is rocking

along the best she can with the real estatc transfers. This view is intended to be reassuring, for it is desirable

I went into a cafe to and while it was being mixed I asked the man who grabs up your hot Scotch spoon as

soon as you lay it down what he undcrstood by the term, epithet, description, designation, characterisation or

"Why," said he, carefully, "it means a fly guy that's wise to the allnight pushsee? It's a hot sport that you

can't bump to the rail anywhere between the Flatironssee? I guess that's about what it means."

On the sidewalk a Salvation lassie shook her contribution receptacle gently against my waistcoat pocket.

"Would you mind telling me," I asked her, "if you ever meet with the character commonly denominated as 'A

"I think I know whom you mean," she answered, with a gentle smile. "We see them in the same places night

after night. They are the devil's body guard, and if the soldiers of any army are as faithful as they are, their

commanders are well served. We go among them, diverting a few pennies from their wickedness to the

In front of a glittering hotel a friend of mine, a critic, was climbing from a cab. He seemed at leisure; and I

"There is a type of 'Man About Town' in New York," he answered. "The term is quite familiar to me, but I

don't think I was ever called upon to define the character before. It would be difficult to point you out an

exact specimen. I would say, offhand, that it is a man who had a hopeless case of the peculiar New York

disease of wanting to see and know. At 6 o'clock each day life begins with him. He follows rigidly the

conventions of dress and manners; but in the business of poking his nose into places where he does not

belong he could give pointers to a civet cat or a jackdaw. He is the man who has chased Bohemia about the

town from rathskeller to roof garden and from Hester street to Harlem until you can't find a place in the city

where they don't cut their spaghetti with a knife. Your 'Man About Town' has done that. He is always on the

scent of something new. He is curiosity, impudence and omnipresence. Hansoms were made for him, and

goldbanded cigars; and the curse of music at dinner. There are not so many of him; but his minority report is

"I'm glad you brought up the subject; I've felt the influence of this nocturnal blight upon our city, but I never

thought to analyse it before. I can see now that your 'Man About Town' should havc been classified long ago.

In his wake spring up wine agents and cloak models; and the orchestra 'p1ays 'Let's All Go Up to Maud's' for

him, by request, instead of Handel. He makes his rounds every evening; while you and I see the elephant

once a week. When the cigar store is raided, he winks at the officer, familiar with his ground, and walks away

immune, while you and I search among the Presidents for names, and among the stars for addresses to give

My friend, the critic, paused to acquire breath for fresh eloquence. I seized my advantage.

"You have classified him," I cried with joy. "You have painted his portrait in the gallery of city types. But I

must meet one face to face. I must study the Man About Town at first hand. Where shall I find him? How

Without seeming to hear me, the critic went on. And his cabdriver was waiting for his fare, too.

"He is the sublimated essence of Buttin; the refined, intrinsic extract of Rubber; the concentrated, purified,

irrefutable, unavoidable spirit of Curiosity and Inquisitiveness. A new sensation is the breath in his nostrils;

when his experience is exhausted he explores new fields with the indefatigability of a"

"Excuse me," I interrupted, "but can you produce one of this type? It is a new thing to me. I must study it. I

will search the town over until I find one. Its habitat must be here on Broadway."

"I am about to dine here," said my friend. "Come inside, and if there is a Man About Town present I will

"I am not dining yet," I said to him. "You will excuse me. I am going to find my Man About Town this night

I left the hotel and walked down Broadway. The pursuit of my type gave a pleasant savour of life and interest

to the air I breathed. I was glad to be in a city so great, so complex and diversified. Leisurely and with

something of an air I strolled along with my heart expanding at the thought that I was a citizen of great

Gotham, a sharer in its magnificence and pleasures, a partaker in its glory and prestige.

I turned to cross the street. I heard something buzz like a bee, and then I took a long, pleasant ride with

When I opened my eyes I remembered a smell of gasoline, and I said aloud: "Hasn't it passed yet?"

A hospital nurse laid a hand that was not particularly soft upon my brow that was not at all fevered. A young

"Want to see how it happened?" he asked cheerily. I read the article. Its headlines began where I heard the

Bellevue Hospital, where it was said that his injuries were not serious. He appeared to be a typica1 Man

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

women without sealskin coats grow kind to their husbands, and when Soapy moves uneasily on his bench in

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

Square, and gives fair warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he hands his pasteboard to the

North Wind, footman of the mansion of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready.

Soapy's mind became cognisant of the fact that the time had come for him to resolve himself into a singular

Committee of Ways and Means to provide against the coming rigour. And therefore he moved uneasily on his

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

Mediterranean cruises, of soporific Southern skies drifting in the Vesuvian Bay. Three months on the Island

was what his soul craved. Three months of assured board and bed and congenial company, safe from Boreas

For years the hospitable Blackwell's had been his winter quarters. Just as his more fortunate fellow New

Yorkers had bought their tickets to Palm Beach and the Riviera each winter, so Soapy had made his humble

arrangements for his annual hegira to the Island. And now the time was come. On the previous night three

Sabbath newspapers, distributed beneath his coat, about his ankles and over his lap, had failed to repulse the

cold as he slept on his bench near the spurting fountain in the ancient square. So the Island loomed big and

timely in Soapy's mind. He scorned the provisions made in the name of charity for the city's dependents. In

Soapy's opinion the Law was more benign than Philanthropy. There was an endless round of institutions,

municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the

simple life. But to one of Soapy's proud spirit the gifts of charity are encumbered. If not in coin you must pay

in humiliation of spirit for every benefit received at the hands of philanthropy. As Caesar had his Brutus,

every bed of charity must have its toll of a bath, every loaf of bread its compensation of a private and

personal inquisition. Wherefore it is better to be a guest of the law, which though conducted by rules, does

Soapy, having decided to go to the Island, at once set about accomplishing his desire. There were many easy

ways of doing this. The pleasantest was to dine luxuriously at some expensive restaurant; and then, after

declaring insolvency, be handed over quietly and without uproar to a policeman. An accommodating

Soapy left his bench and strolled out of the square and across the level sea of asphalt, where Broadway and

Fifth Avenue flow together. Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered

together nightly the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm.

Soapy had confidence in himself from the lowest button of his vest upward. He was shaven, and his coat was

decent and his neat black, readytied fourinhand had been presented to him by a lady missionary on

Thanksgiving Day. If he could reach a table in the restaurant unsuspected success would be his. The portion

of him that would show above the table would raise no doubt in the waiter's mind. A roasted mallard duck,

thought Soapy, would be about the thingwith a bottle of Chablis, and then Camembert, a demitasse and a

cigar. One dollar for the cigar would be enough. The total would not be so high as to call forth any supreme

manifestation of revenge from the cafe management; and yet the meat would leave him filled and happy for

But as Soapy set foot inside the restaurant door the head waiter's eye fell upon his frayed trousers and

decadent shoes. Strong and ready hands turned him about and conveyed him in silence and haste to the

Soapy turned off Broadway. It seemed that his route to the coveted island was not to be an epicurean one.

At a corner of Sixth Avenue electric lights and cunningly displayed wares behind plateglass made a shop

window conspicuous. Soapy took a cobblestone and dashed it through the glass. People came running around

the corner, a policeman in the lead. Soapy stood still, with his hands in his pockets, and smiled at the sight of

"Don't you figure out that I might have had something to do with it?" said Soapy, not without sarcasm, but

The policeman's mind refused to accept Soapy even as a clue. Men who smash windows do not remain to

parley with the law's minions. They take to their heels. The policeman saw a man half way down the block

running to catch a car. With drawn club he joined in the pursuit. Soapy, with disgust in his heart, loafed

On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and

modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took

his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak,

flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter be betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself

"Now, get busy and call a cop," said Soapy. "And don't keep a gentleman waiting."

"No cop for youse," said the waiter, with a voice like butter cakes and an eye like the cherry in a Manhattan

Neatly upon his left ear on the callous pavement two waiters pitched Soapy. He arose, joint by joint, as a

carpenter's rule opens, and beat the dust from his clothes. Arrest seemed but a rosy dream. The Island seemed

very far away. A policeman who stood before a drug store two doors away laughed and walked down the

Five blocks Soapy travelled before his courage permitted him to woo capture again. This time the opportunity

presented what he fatuously termed to himself a "cinch." A young woman of a modest and pleasing guise was

standing before a show window gazing with sprightly interest at its display of shaving mugs and inkstands,

and two yards from the window a large policeman of severe demeanour leaned against a water plug.

It was Soapy's design to assume the role of the despicable and execrated "masher." The refined and elegant

appearance of his victim and the contiguity of the conscientious cop encouraged him to believe that he would

soon feel the pleasant official clutch upon his arm that would insure his winter quarters on the right little,

Soapy straightened the lady missionary's readymade tie, dragged his shrinking cuffs into the open, set his hat

at a killing cant and sidled toward the young woman. He made eyes at her, was taken with sudden coughs and

"hems," smiled, smirked and went brazenly through the impudent and contemptible litany of the "masher."

With half an eye Soapy saw that the policeman was watching him fixedly. The young woman moved away a

few steps, and again bestowed her absorbed attention upon the shaving mugs. Soapy followed, boldly

The policeman was still looking. The persecuted young woman had but to beckon a finger and Soapy would

be practically en route for his insular haven. Already he imagined he could feel the cozy warmth of the

stationhouse. The young woman faced him and, stretching out a hand, caught Soapy's coat sleeve.

Sure, Mike," she said joyfully, "if you'll blow me to a pail of suds. I'd have spoke to you sooner, but the cop

With the young woman playing the clinging ivy to his oak Soapy walked past the policeman overcome with

At the next corner he shook off his companion and ran. He halted in the district where by night are found the

Women in furs and men in greatcoats moved gaily in the wintry air. A sudden fear seized Soapy that some

dreadful enchantment had rendered him immune to arrest. The thought brought a little of panic upon it, and

when he came upon another policeman lounging grandly in front of a transplendent theatre he caught at the

On the sidewalk Soapy began to yell drunken gibberish at the top of his harsh voice. He danced, howled,

The policeman twirled his club, turned his back to Soapy and remarked to a citizen.

"'Tis one of them Yale lads celebratin' the goose egg they give to the Hartford College. Noisy; but no harm.

Disconsolate, Soapy ceased his unavailing racket. Would never a policeman lay hands on him? In his fancy

the Island seemed an unattainable Arcadia. He buttoned his thin coat against the chilling wind.

In a cigar store he saw a welldressed man lighting a cigar at a swinging light. His silk umbrella he had set

by the door on entering. Soapy stepped inside, secured the umbrella and sauntered off with it slowly. The

"Oh, is it?" sneered Soapy, adding insult to petit larceny. "Well, why don't you call a policeman? I took it.

The umbrella owner slowed his steps. Soapy did likewise, with a presentiment that luck would again run

"Of course," said the umbrella man"that iswell, you know how these mistakes occurIif it's your

umbrella I hope you'll excuse meI picked it up this morning in a restaurantIf you recognise it as yours,

The exumbrella man retreated. The policeman hurried to assist a tall blonde in an opera cloak across the

Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements. He hurled the umbrella wrathfully into

an excavation. He muttered against the men who wear helmets and carry clubs. Because he wanted to fall into

At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his

face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.

But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and

gabled. Through one violetstained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over

the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears

sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.

The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in

the eavesfor a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the

organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life

contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.

The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden

and wonderful change in his soul. He viewed with swift horror the pit into which he had tumbled, the

degraded days, unworthy desires, dead hopes, wrecked faculties and base motives that made up his existence.

And also in a moment his heart responded thrillingly to this novel mood. An instantaneous and strong

impulse moved him to battle with his desperate fate. He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a

man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him. There was time; he was

comparatively young yet; he would resurrect his old eager ambitions and pursue them without faltering.

Those solemn but sweet organ notes had set up a revolution in him. Tomorrow he would go into the roaring

downtown district and find work. A fur importer had once offered him a place as driver. He would find him

Soapy felt a hand laid on his arm. He looked quickly around into the broad face of a policeman.

"Three months on the Island," said the Magistrate in the Police Court the next morning.

In an art exhibition the other day I saw a painting that had been sold for $5,000. The painter was a young

scrub out of the West named Kraft, who had a favourite food and a pet theory. His pabulum was an

unquenchable belief in the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature. His theory was fixed around cornedbeef

hash with poached egg. There was a story behind the picture, so I went home and let it drip out of a

Three years ago Kraft, Bill Judkins (a poet), and I took our meals at Cypher's, on Eighth Avenue. I say

"took." When we had money, Cypher got it "off of" us, as he expressed it. We had no credit; we went in,

called for food and ate it. We paid or we did not pay. We had confidence in Cypher's sullenness end

smouldering ferocity. Deep down in his sunless soul he was either a prince, a fool or an artist. He sat at a

wormeaten desk, covered with files of waiters' checks so old that I was sure the bottomest one was for clams

that Hendrik Hudson had eaten and paid for. Cypher had the power, in common with Napoleon III. and the

goggleeyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when

we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter

But the chief thing at Cypher's was Milly. Milly was a waitress. She was a grand example of Kraft's theory of

the artistic adjustment of nature. She belonged, largely, to waiting, as Minerva did to the art of scrapping, or

Venus to the science of serious flirtation. Pedestalled and in bronze she might have stood with the noblest of

her heroic sisters as "LiverandBacon Enlivening the World." She belonged to Cypher's. You expected to

see her colossal figure loom through that reeking blue cloud of smoke from frying fat just as you expect the

Palisades to appear through a drifting Hudson River fog. There amid the steam of vegetables and the vapours

of acres of "ham and," the crash of crockery, the clatter of steel, the screaming of "short orders," the cries of

the hungering and all the horrid tumult of feeding man, surrounded by swarms of the buzzing winged beasts

bequeathed us by Pharaoh, Milly steered her magnificent way like some great liner cleaving among the

Our Goddess of Grub was built on lines so majestic that they could be followed only with awe. Her sleeves

were always rolled above her elbows. She could have taken us three musketeers in her two hands and

dropped us out of the window. She had seen fewer years than any of us, but she was of such superb Evehood

and simplicity that she mothered us from the beginning. Cypher's store of eatables she poured out upon us

with royal indifference to price and quantity, as from a cornucopia that knew no exhaustion. Her voice rang

like a great silver bell; her smile was manytoothed and frequent; she seemed like a yellow sunrise on

mountain tops. I never saw her but I thought of the Yosemite. And yet, somehow, I could never think of her

as existing outside of Cypher's. There nature had placed her, and she had taken root and grown mightily. She

seemed happy, and took her few poor dollars on Saturday nights with the flushed pleasure of a child that

It was Kraft who first voiced the fear that each of us must have held latently. It came up apropos, of course,

of certain questions of art at which we were hammering. One of us compared the harmony existing between a

Haydn symphony and pistache ice cream to the exquisite congruity between Milly and Cypher's.

"There is a certain fate hanging over Milly," said Kraft, "and if it overtakes her she is lost to Cypher's and to

"It is this," said Kraft, punctuating in a puddle of spilled coffee with a stiff forefinger. "Caesar had his

Brutusthe cotton has its boliworm, the chorus girl has her Pittsburger, the summer boarder has his poison

"Speak," I interrupted, much perturbed. "You do not think that Milly will begin to lace?"

"One day," concluded Kraft, solemnly, "there will come to Cypher's for a plate of beans a millionaire

We agreed that the awful fate seemed to menace her. Few things were less improbable. Milly, like some vast

virgin stretch of pine woods, was made to catch the lumberman's eye. And well we knew the habits of the

Badgers, once fortune smiled upon them. Straight to New York they hie, and lay their goods at the feet of the

girl who serves them beans in a beanery. Why, the alphabet itself connives. The Sunday newspaper's

It was our love of the Unerring Artistic Adjustment of Nature that inspired us. We could not give her over to

a lumberman, doubly accursed by wealth and provincialism. We shuddered to think of Milly, with her voice

modulated and her elbows covered, pouring tea in the marble teepee of a tree murderer. No! In Cypher's she

belongedin the bacon smoke, the cabbage perfume, the grand, Wagnerian chorus of hurled ironstone china

Our fears must have been prophetic, for on that same evening the wildwood discharged upon us Milly's

preordained confiscatorour fee to adjustment and order. But Alaska and not Wisconsin bore the burden of

We were at our supper of beef stew and dried apples when he trotted in as if on the heels of a dog team, and

made one of the mess at our table. With the freedom of the camps he assaulted our ears and claimed the

fellowship of men lost in the wilds of a hash house. We embraced him as a specimen, and in three minutes we

He was rugged and bearded and winddried. He had just come off the "trail," he said, at one of the North

River ferries. I fancied I could see the snow dust of Chilcoot yet powdering his shoulders. And then he

strewed the table with the nuggets, stuffed ptarmigans, bead work and seal pelts of the returned Kiondiker,

"Bank drafts for two millions," was his summing up, "and a thousand a day piling up from my claims. And

now I want some beef stew and canned peaches. I never got off the train since I mushed out of Seattle, and

I'm hungry. The stuff the niggers feed you on Pullmans don't count. You gentlemen order what you want."

And then Milly loomed up with a thousand dishes on her bare arm loomed up big and white and pink and

awful as Mount Saint Eliaswith a smile like day breaking in a gulch. And the Kiondiker threw down his

pelts and nuggets as dross, and let his jaw fall halfway, and stared at her. You could almost see the diamond

tiaras on Milly's brow and the handembroidered silk Paris gowns that he meant to buy for her.

At last the bollworm had attacked the cottonthe poison ivy was reaching out its tendrils to entwine the

summer boarderthe millionaire lumberman, thinly disguised as the Alaskan miner, was about to engulf our

Kraft was the first to act. He leaped up and pounded the Klondiker's back. "Come out and drink," he shouted.

"Drink first and eat afterward." Judkins seized one arm and I the other. Gaily, roaringly, irresistibly, in

jollygoodfellow style, we dragged him from the restaurant to a cafe, stuffing his pockets with his

There he rumbled a roughly goodhumoured protest. "That's the girl for my money," he declared. "She can

eat out of my skillet the rest of her life. Why, I never see such a fine girl. I'm going back there and ask her to

marry me. I guess she won't want to sling hash any more when she sees the pile of dust I've got."

"You'll take another whiskey and milk now," Kraft persuaded, with Satan's smile. "I thought you upcountry

Kraft spent his puny store of coin at the bar and then gave Judkins and me such an appealing look that we

Then, when our ammunition was gone and the Klondiker, still somewhat sober, began to babble again of

Milly, Kraft whispered into his ear such a polite, barbed insult relating to people who were miserly with their

funds, that the miner crashed down handful after handful of silver and notes, calling for all the fluids in the

Thus the work was accomplished. With his own guns we drove him from the field. And then we had him

carted to a distant small hotel and put to bed with his nuggets and baby sealskins stuffed around him.

"He will never find Cypher's again," said Kraft. "He will propose to the first white apron he sees in a dairy

And back to Cypher's went we three, and, finding customers scarce, we joined hands and did an Indian dance

This, I say, happened three years ago. And about that time a little luck descended upon us three, and we were

enabled to buy costlier and less wholesome food than Cypher's. Our paths separated, and I saw Kraft no more

But, as I said, I saw a painting the other day that was sold for $5,000. The title was "Boadicea," and the figure

seemed to fill all outofdoors. But of all the picture's admirers who stood before it, I believe I was the only

one who longed for Boadicea to stalk from her frame, bringing me cornedbeef hash with poached egg.

I hurried away to see Kraft. His satanic eyes were the same, his hair was worse tangled, but his clothes had

"We've bought a cottage in the Bronx with the money," said he. "Any evening at 7."

"Then," said I, "when you led us against the lumbermanthe Klondikerit wasn't altogether on account

I don't suppose it will knock any of you people off your perch to read a contribution from an animal. Mr.

Kipling and a good many others have demonstrated the fact that animals can express themselves in

remunerative English, and no magazine goes to press nowadays without an animal story in it, except the

oldstyle monthlies that are still running pictures of Bryan and the Mont Pelee horror.

But you needn't look for any stuckup literature in my piece, such as Bearoo, the bear, and Snakoo, the

snake, and Tammanoo, the tiger, talk in the jungle books. A yellow dog that's spent most of his life in a cheap

New York flat, sleeping in a corner on an old sateen underskirt (the one she spilled port wine on at the Lady

Longshoremen's banquet), mustn't be expcctcd to perform any tricks with the art of speech.

I was born a yellow pup; date, locality, pedigree and weight unknown. The first thing I can recollect, an old

woman had me in a basket at Broadway and Twentythird trying to sell me to a fat lady. Old Mother

PomeranianHambletonianRedIrishCochinChinaStokePogis fox terrier. The fat lady chased a V

around among the samples of gros grain flannelette in her shopping bag till she cornered it, and gave up.

From that moment I was a peta mamma's own wootsey squidlums. Say, gentle reader, did you ever have a

200pound woman breathing a flavour of Camembert cheese and Peau d'Espagne pick you up and wallop her

nose all over you, remarking all the time in an Emma Eames tone of voice: "Oh, oo's um oodlum, doodlum,

>From a pedigreed yellow pup I grew up to be an anonymous yellow cur looking like a cross between an

Angora cat and a box of lemons. But my mistress never tumbled. She thought that the two primeval pups that

Noah chased into the ark were but a collateral branch of my ancestors. It took two policemen to keep her

from entering me at the Madison Square Garden for the Siberian bloodhound prize.

I'll tell you about that flat. The house was the ordinary thing in New York, paved with Parian marble in the

entrance hall and cobblestones above the first floor. Our fiat was threewell, not flightsclimbs up. My

mistress rented it unfurnished, and put in the regular things1903 antique unholstered parlour set, oil

By Sirius! there was a biped I felt sorry for. He was a little man with sandy hair and whiskers a good deal like

mine. Henpecked? well, toucans and flamingoes and pelicans all had their bills in him. He wiped the

dishes and listened to my mistress tell about the cheap, ragged things the lady with the squirrelskin coat on

the second floor hung out on her line to dry. And every evening while she was getting supper she made him

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone they'd never marry. Laura Lean Jibbey, peanut

brittle, a little almond cream on the neck muscles, dishes unwashed, half an hour's talk with the iceman,

reading a package of old letters, a couple of pickles and two bottles of malt extract, one hour peeking through

a hole in the window shade into the flat across the airshaftthat's about all there is to it. Twenty minutes

before time for him to come home from work she straightens up the house, fixes her rat so it won't show, and

I led a dog's life in that flat. 'Most all day I lay there in my corner watching that fat woman kill time. I slept

sometimes and had pipe dreams about being out chasing cats into basements and growling at old ladies with

black mittens, as a dog was intended to do. Then she would pounce upon me with a lot of that drivelling

poodle palaver and kiss me on the nosebut what could I do? A dog can't chew cloves.

I began to feel sorry for Hubby, dog my cats if I didn't. We looked so much alike that people noticed it when

we went out; so we shook the streets that Morgan's cab drives down, and took to climbing the piles of last

One evening when we were thus promenading, and I was trying to look like a prize St. Bernard, and the old

man was trying to look like he wouldn't have murdered the first organgrinder he heard play Mendelssohn's

"What are you looking so sour about, you oakum trimmed lobster? She don't kiss you. You don't have to sit

on her lap and listen to talk that would make the book of a musical comedy sound like the maxims of

Epictetus. You ought to be thankful you're not a dog. Brace up, Benedick, and bid the blues begone."

The matrimonial mishap looked down at me with almost canine intelligence in his face.

"Why, doggie," says he, "good doggie. You almost look like you could speak. What is it, doggieCats?"

But, of course, he couldn't understand. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground

In the flat across the hall from us lived a lady with a blackandtan terrier. Her husband strung it and took it

out every evening, but he always came home cheerful and whistling. One day I touched noses with the

"See, here, WiggleandSkip," I says, "you know that it ain't the nature of a real man to play dry nurse to a

dog in public. I never saw one leashed to a bowwow yet that didn't look like he'd like to lick every other

man that looked at him. But your boss comes in every day as perky and set up as an amateur prestidigitator

"Him?" says the blackandtan. "Why, he uses Nature's Own Remedy. He gets spifflicated. At first when we

go out he's as shy as the man on the steamer who would rather play pedro when they make 'em all jackpots.

By the time we've been in eight saloons he don't care whether the thing on the end of his line is a dog or a

catfish. I've lost two inches of my tail trying to sidestep those swinging doors."

One evening about 6 o'clock my mistress ordered him to get busy and do the ozone act for Lovey. I have

concealed it until now, but that is what she called me. The blackandtan was called "Tweetness." I consider

that I have the bulge on him as far as you could chase a rabbit. Still "Lovey" is something of a nomenclatural

At a quiet place on a safe street I tightened the line of my custodian in front of an attractive, refined saloon. I

made a dead ahead scramble for the doors, whining like a dog in the press despatches that lets the family

"Why, darn my eyes," says the old man, with a grin; "darn my eyes if the saffroncoloured son of a seltzer

lemonade ain't asking me in to take a drink. Lemme seehow long's it been since I saved shoe leather by

I knew I had him. Hot Scotches he took, sitting at a table. For an hour he kept the Campbells coming. I sat by

his side rapping for the waiter with my tail, and eating free lunch such as mamma in her flat never equalled

with her homemade truck bought at a delicatessen store eight minutes before papa comes home.

When the products of Scotland were all exhausted except the rye bread the old man unwound me from the

table leg and played me outside like a fisherman plays a salmon. Out there he took off my collar and threw it

"Poor doggie," says he; "good doggie. She shan't kiss you any more. 'S a darned shame. Good doggie, go

I refused to leave. I leaped and frisked around the old man's legs happy as a pug on a rug.

"You old fleaheaded woodchuckchaser," I said to him"you moon baying, rabbitpointing, eggstealing

old beagle, can't you see that I don't want to leave you? Can't you see that we're both Pups in the Wood and

the missis is the cruel uncle after you with the dish towel and me with the flea liniment and a pink bow to tie

Maybe you'll say he didn't understandmaybe he didn't. But he kind of got a grip on the Hot Scotches, and

"Doggie," says he, finally, "we don't live more than a dozen lives on this earth, and very few of us live to be

more than 300. If I ever see that flat any more I'm a flat, and if you do you're flatter; and that's no flattery. I'm

There was no string, but I frolicked along with my master to the Twentythird street ferry. And the cats on

But what pleased me most was when my old man pulled both of my ears until I howled, and said:

"You common, monkeyheaded, rattailed, sulphurcoloured son of a door mat, do you know what I'm

"I'm going to call you 'Pete,'" says my master; and if I'd had five tails I couldn't have done enough wagging to

The Blue Light Drug Store is downtown, between the Bowery and First Avenue, where the distance between

the two streets is the shortest. The Blue Light does not consider that pharmacy is a thing of brica brac,

scent and icecream soda. If you ask it for painkiller it will not give you a bonbon.

The Blue Light scorns the laboursaving arts of modern pharmacy. It macerates its opium and percolates its

own laudanum and paregoric. To this day pills are made behind its tall prcscription deskpills rolled out on

its own pilltile, divided with a spatula, rolled with the finger and thumb, dusted with calcined magnesia and

delivered in little round pasteboard pillboxes. The store is on a corner about which coveys of

raggedplumed, hilarious children play and become candidates for the cough drops and soothing syrups that

Ikey Schoenstein was the night clerk of the Blue Light and the friend of his customers. Thus it is on the East

Side, where the heart of pharmacy is not g1ace. There, as it should be, the druggist is a counsellor, a

confessor, an adviser, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult

wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. Therefore Ikey's

corniform, bespectacled nose and narrow, knowledgebowed figure was well known in the vicinity of the

Ikey roomed and breakfasted at Mrs. Riddle's two squares away. Mrs. Riddle had a daughter named Rosy.

The circumlocution has been in vainyou must have guessed itIkey adored Rosy. She tinctured all his

thoughts; she was the compound extract of all that was chemically pure and officinalthe dispensatory

contained nothing equal to her. But Ikey was timid, and his hopes remained insoluble in the menstruum of his

backwardness and fears. Behind his counter he was a superior being, calmly conscious of special knowledge

and worth; outside he was a weakkneed, purblind, motormancursed rambler, with illfitting clothes stained

Mr. McGowan was also striving to catch the bright smiles tossed about by Rosy. But he was no outfielder as

Ikey was; he picked them off the bat. At the same time he was Ikey's friend and customer, and often dropped

in at the Blue Light Drug Store to have a bruise painted with iodine or get a cut rubberplastered after a

One afternoon McGowan drifted in in his silent, easy way, and sat, comely, smoothfaced, hard, indomitable,

"Ikey," said he, when his friend had fetched his mortar and sat opposite, grinding gum benzoin to a powder,

Ikey scanned the countenance of Mr. McGowan for the usual evidences of conflict, but found none.

"Take your coat off," he ordered. "I guess already that you have been stuck in the ribs with a knife. I have

Mr. McGowan smiled. "Not them," he said. "Not any Dagoes. But you've located the diagnosis all right

enoughit's under my coat, near the ribs. Say! IkeyRosy and me are goin' to run away and get married

Ikey's left forefinger was doubled over the edge of the mortar, holding it steady. He gave it a wild rap with

the pestle, but felt it not. Meanwhile Mr. McGowan's smile faded to a look of perplexed gloom.

"That is," he continued, "if she keeps in the notion until the time comes. We've been layin' pipes for the

getaway for two weeks. One day she says she will; the same evenin' she says nixy. We've agreed on tonight,

and Rosy's stuck to the affirmative this time for two whole days. But it's five hours yet till the time, and I'm

Mr. McGowan looked ill at ease and harasseda condition opposed to his usual line of demeanour. He made

a patentmedicine almanac into a roll and fitted it with unprofitable carefulness about his finger.

"I wouldn't have this double handicap make a false start tonight for a million," he said. "I've got a little flat

up in Harlem all ready, with chrysanthemums on the table and a kettle ready to boil. And I've engaged a

pulpit pounder to be ready at his house for us at 9.30. It's got to come off. And if Rosy don't change her mind

"I don't see then yet," said Ikey, shortly, "what makes it that you talk of drugs, or what I can be doing about

"Old man Riddle don't like me a little bit," went on the uneasy suitor, bent upon marshalling his arguments.

"For a week he hasn't let Rosy step outside the door with me. If it wasn't for losin' a boarder they'd have

bounced me long ago. I'm makin' $20 a week and she'll never regret flyin' the coop with Chunk McGowan."

"You will excuse me, Chunk," said Ikey. "I must make a prescription that is to be called for soon."

"Say," said McGowan, looking up suddenly, "say, Ikey, ain't there a drug of some kindsome kind of

Ikey's lip beneath his nose curled with the scorn of superior enlightenment; but before he could answer,

"Tim Lacy told me he got some once from a croaker uptown and fed 'em to his girl in soda water. From the

very first dose he was acehigh and everybody else looked like thirty cents to her. They was married in less

Strong and simple was Chunk McGowan. A better reader of men than Ikey was could have seen that his

tough frame was strung upon fine wires. Like a good general who was about to invade the enemy's territory

"I thought," went on Chunk hopefully, "that if I had one of them powders to give Rosy when I see her at

supper tonight it might brace her up and keep her from reneging on the proposition to skip. I guess she don't

need a mule team to drag her away, but women are better at coaching than they are at running bases. If the

"Nine o'clock," said Mr. McGowan. "Supper's at seven. At eight Rosy goes to bed with a headache. At nine

old Parvenzano lets me through to his back yard, where there's a board off Riddle's fence, next door. I go

under her window and help her down the fireescape. We've got to make it early on the preacher's account.

It's all dead easy if Rosy don't balk when the flag drops. Can you fix me one of them powders, Ikey?"

"Chunk," said he, "it is of drugs of that nature that pharmaceutists must have much carefulness. To you alone

of my acquaintance would I intrust a powder like that. But for you I shall make it, and you shall see how it

Ikey went behind the prescription desk. There he crushed to a powder two soluble tablets, each containing a

quarter of a grain of morphia. To them he added a little sugar of milk to increase the bulk, and folded the

mixture neatly in a white paper. Taken by an adult this powder would insure several hours of heavy slumber

without danger to the sleeper. This he handed to Chunk McGowan, telling him to administer it in a liquid if

The subtlety of Ikey's action becomes apparent upon recital of his subsequent move. He sent a messenger for

Mr. Riddle and disclosed the plans of Mr. McGowan for eloping with Rosy. Mr. Riddle was a stout man,

"Much obliged," he said, briefly, to Ikey. "The lazy Irish loafer! My own room's just above Rosy's. I'll just go

up there myself after supper and load the shotgun and wait. If he comes in my back yard he'll go away in a

With Rosy held in the clutches of Morpheus for a manyhours deep slumber, and the bloodthirsty parent

waiting, armed and forewarned, Ikey felt that his rival was close, indeed, upon discomfiture.

All night in the Blue Light Drug Store he waited at his duties for chance news of the tragedy, but none came.

At eight o'clock in the morning the day clerk arrived and Ikey started hurriedly for Mrs. Riddle's to learn the

outcome. And, lo! as he stepped out of the store who but Chunk McGowan sprang from a passing street car

"Pulled it off," said Chunk with Elysium in his grin. "Rosy bit the fireescape on time to a second, and we

was under the wire at the Reverend's at 9.3O 1/4. She's up at the flatshe cooked eggs this mornin' in a blue

kimonoLord! how lucky I am! You must pace up some day, Ikey, and feed with us. I've got a job down

"Oh, that stuff you gave me!" said Chunk, broadening his grin; "well, it was this way. I sat down at the

supper table last night at Riddle's, and I looked at Rosy, and I says to myself, 'Chunk, if you get the girl get

her on the squaredon't try any hocuspocus with a thoroughbred like her.' And I keeps the paper you give

me in my pocket. And then my lamps fall on another party present, who, I says to myself, is failin' in a proper

affection toward his comin' sonin law, so I watches my chance and dumps that powder in old man Riddle's

Old Anthony Rockwall, retired manufacturer and proprietor of Rockwall's Eureka Soap, looked out the

library window of his Fifth Avenue mansion and grinned. His neighbour to the rightthe aristocratic

clubman, G. Van Schuylight SuffolkJonescame out to his waiting motorcar, wrinkling a contumelious

nostril, as usual, at the Italian renaissance sculpture of the soap palace's front elevation.

"Stuckup old statuette of nothing doing!" commented the exSoap King. "The Eden Musee'll get that old

frozen Nesselrode yet if he don't watch out. I'll have this house painted red, white, and blue next summer and

And then Anthony Rockwall, who never cared for bells, went to the door of his library and shouted "Mike!"

in the same voice that had once chipped off pieces of the welkin on the Kansas prairies.

"Tell my son," said Anthony to the answering menial, "to come in here before he leaves the house."

When young Rockwall entered the library the old man laid aside his newspaper, looked at him with a kindly

grimness on his big, smooth, ruddy countenance, rumpled his mop of white hair with one hand and rattled the

Richard, only six months home from college, was startled a little. He had not yet taken the measure of this

"You're a gentleman," said Anthony, decidedly. "I've heard of these young bloods spending $24 a dozen for

soap, and going over the hundred mark for clothes. You've got as much money to waste as any of 'em, and yet

you stick to what's decent and moderate. Now I use the old Eurekanot only for sentiment, but it's the purest

soap made. Whenever you pay more than 10 cents a cake for soap you buy bad perfumes and labels. But 50

cents is doing very well for a young man in your generation, position and condition. As I said, you're a

gentleman. They say it takes three generations to make one. They're off. Money'll do it as slick as soap

grease. It's made you one. By hokey! it's almost made one of me. I'm nearly as impolite and disagreeable and

illmannered as these two old Knickerbocker gents on each side of me that can't sleep of nights because I

"There are some things that money can't accomplish," remarked young Rockwall, rather gloomily.

"Now, don't say that," said old Anthony, shocked. "I bet my money on money every time. I've been through

the encyc1opaedia down to Y looking for something you can't buy with it; and I expect to have to take up the

appendix next week. I'm for money against the field. Tell me something money won't buy."

"For one thing," answered Richard, rankling a little, "it won't buy one into the exclusive circles of society."

"Oho! won't it?" thundered the champion of the root of evil. "You tell me where your exclusive circles would

be if the first Astor hadn't had the money to pay for his steerage passage over?"

"And that's what I was coming to," said the old man, less boisterously. "That's why I asked you to come in.

There's something going wrong with you, boy. I've been noticing it for two weeks. Out with it. I guess I could

lay my hands on eleven millions within twentyfour hours, besides the real estate. If it's your liver, there's the

Rambler down in the bay, coaled, and ready to steam down to the Bahamas in two days."

Richard began to walk up and down the library floor. There was enough comradeship and sympathy in this

"Why don't you ask her?" demanded old Anthony. "She'll jump at you. You've got the money and the looks,

and you're a decent boy. Your hands are clean. You've got no Eureka soap on 'em. You've been to college,

"Make one," said Anthony. "Take her for a walk in the park, or a straw ride, or walk home with her from

"You don't know the social mill, dad. She's part of the stream that turns it. Every hour and minute of her time

is arranged for days in advance. I must have that girl, dad, or this town is a blackjack swamp forevermore.

"Tut!" said the old man. "Do you mean to tell me that with all the money I've got you can't get an hour or two

"I've put it off too late. She's going to sail for Europe at noon day after tomorrow for a two years' stay. I'm to

see her alone tomorrow evening for a few minutes. She's at Larchmont now at her aunt's. I can't go there.

But I'm allowed to meet her with a cab at the Grand Central Station tomorrow evening at the 8.30 train. We

drive down Broadway to Wallack's at a gallop, where her mother and a box party will be waiting for us in the

lobby. Do you think she would listen to a declaration from me during that six or eight minutes under those

circumstances? No. And what chance would I have in the theatre or afterward? None. No, dad, this is one

tangle that your money can't unravel. We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people

would live longer. There's no hope of getting a talk with Miss Lantry before she sails."

"All right, Richard, my boy," said old Anthony, cheerfully. "You may run along down to your club now. I'm

glad it ain't your liver. But don't forget to burn a few punk sticks in the joss house to the great god Mazuma

from time to time. You say money won't buy time? Well, of course, you can't order eternity wrapped up and

delivered at your residence for a price, but I've seen Father Time get pretty bad stone bruises on his heels

That night came Aunt Ellen, gentle, sentimental, wrinkled, sighing, oppressed by wealth, in to Brother

Anthony at his evening paper, and began discourse on the subject of lovers' woes.

"He told me all about it," said brother Anthony, yawning. "I told him my bank account was at his service.

And then he began to knock money. Said money couldn't help. Said the rules of society couldn't be bucked

"Oh, Anthony," sighed Aunt Ellen, "I wish you would not think so much of money. Wealth is nothing where

a true affection is concerned. Love is allpowerful. If he only had spoken earlier! She could not have refused

our Richard. But now I fear it is too late. He will have no opportunity to address her. All your gold cannot

At eight o'clock the next evening Aunt Ellen took a quaint old gold ring from a motheaten case and gave it

"Wear it tonight, nephew," she begged. "Your mother gave it to me. Good luck in love she said it brought.

Young Rockwall took the ring reverently and tried it on his smallest finger. It slipped as far as the second

joint and stopped. He took it off and stuffed it into his vest pocket, after the manner of man. And then he

At the station he captured Miss Lantry out of the gadding mob at eight thirtytwo.

They whirled up Fortysecond to Broadway, and then down the white starred lane that leads from the soft

At Thirtyfourth Street young Richard quickly thrust up the trap and ordered the cabman to stop.

"I've dropped a ring," he apo1ogised, as he climbed out. "It was my mother's, and I'd hate to lose it. I won't

But within that minute a crosstown car had stopped directly in front of the cab. The cabman tried to pass to

the left, but a heavy express wagon cut him off. He tried the right, and had to back away from a furniture van

that had no business to be there. He tried to back out, but dropped his reins and swore dutifully. He was

One of those street blockades had occurred that sometimes tie up commerce and movement quite suddenly in

Richard stood up in the cab and looked around. He saw a congested flood of wagons, trucks, cabs, vans and

street cars filling the vast space where Broadway, Sixth Avenue and Thirlyfourth street cross one another as

a twentysix inch maiden fills her twentytwo inch girdle. And still from all the cross streets they were

hurrying and rattling toward the converging point at full speed, and hurling thcmselves into the struggling

mass, locking wheels and adding their drivers' imprecations to the clamour. The entire traffic of Manhattan

seemed to have jammed itself around them. The oldest New Yorker among the thousands of spectators that

lined the sidewalks had not witnessed a street blockade of the proportions of this one.

"I'm very sorry," said Richard, as he resumed his seat, "but it looks as if we are stuck. They won't get this

jumble loosened up in an hour. It was my fault. If I hadn't dropped the ring we"Let me see the ring," said

Miss Lantry. "Now that it can't be helped, I don't care. I think theatres are stupid, anyway."

"Come in," shouted Anthony, who was in a red dressinggown, reading a book of piratical adventures.

Somebody was Aunt Ellen, looking like a greyhaired angel that had been left on earth by mistake.

"They're engaged, Anthony," she said, softly. "She has promised to marry our Richard. On their way to the

theatre there was a street blockade, and it was two hours before their cab could get out of it.

"And oh, brother Anthony, don't ever boast of the power of money again. A little emblem of true lovea

little ring that symbolised unending and unmercenary affectionwas the cause of our Richard finding his

happiness. He dropped it in the street, and got out to recover it. And before they could continue the blockade

occurred. He spoke to his love and won her there while the cab was hemmed in. Money is dross compared

"All right," said old Anthony. "I'm glad the boy has got what he wanted. I told him I wouldn't spare any

"Sister," said Anthony Rockwall. "I've got my pirate in a devil of a scrape. His ship has just been scuttled,

and he's too good a judge of the value of money to let drown. I wish you would let me go on with this

The story should end here. I wish it would as heartily as you who read it wish it did. But we must go to the

The next day a person with red hands and a blue polkadot necktie, who called himself Kelly, called at

"Well," said Anthony, reaching for his chequebook, "it was a good bilin' of soap. Let's seeyou had $5,000

"I paid out $3OO more of my own," said Kelly. "I had to go a little above the estimate. I got the express

wagons and cabs mostly for $5; but the trucks and twohorse teams mostly raised me to $10. The motormen

wanted $10, and some of the loaded teams $20. The cops struck me hardest$50 I paid two, and the rest $20

and $25. But didn't it work beautiful, Mr. Rockwall? I'm glad William A. Brady wasn't onto that little outdoor

vehicle mob scene. I wouldn't want William to break his heart with jealousy. And never a rehearsal, either!

The boys was on time to the fraction of a second. It was two hours before a snake could get below Greeley's

"Thirteen hundredthere you are, Kelly," said Anthony, tearing off a check. "Your thousand, and the $300

"You didn't notice," said he, "anywhere in the tieup, a kind of a fat boy without any clothes on shooting

"Why, no," said Kelly, mystified. "I didn't. If he was like you say, maybe the cops pinched him before I got

"I thought the little rascal wouldn't be on hand," chuckled Anthony. "Goodby, Kelly."

Never, never begin a story this way when you write one. No opening could possibly be worse. It is

unimaginative, flat, dry and likely to consist of mere wind. But in this instance it is allowable. For the

following paragraph, which should have inaugurated the narrative, is too wildly extravagant and preposterous

To account for this you will be allowed to guess that the lobsters were all out, or that she had sworn

icecream off during Lent, or that she had ordered onions, or that she had just come from a Hackett matinee.

And then, all these theories being wrong, you will please let the story proceed.

The gentleman who announced that the world was an oyster which he with his sword would open made a

larger hit than he deserved. It is not difficult to open an oyster with a sword. But did you ever notice any one

try to open the terrestrial bivalve with a typewriter? Like to wait for a dozen raw opened that way?

Sarah had managed to pry apart the shells with her unhandy weapon far enough to nibble a wee bit at the cold

and clammy world within. She knew no more shorthand than if she had been a graduate in stenography just

let slip upon the world by a business college. So, not being able to stenog, she could not enter that bright

galaxy of office talent. She was a freelance typewriter and canvassed for odd jobs of copying.

The most brilliant and crowning feat of Sarah's battle with the world was the deal she made with

Schulenberg's Home Restaurant. The restaurant was next door to the old red brick in which she ball roomed.

One evening after dining at Schulenberg's 40cent, five course ~table d'hote~ (served as fast as you throw

the five baseballs at the coloured gentleman's head) Sarah took away with her the bill of fare. It was written

in an almost unreadable script neither English nor German, and so arranged that if you were not careful you

began with a toothpick and rice pudding and ended with soup and the day of the week.

The next day Sarah showed Schulenberg a neat card on which the menu was beautifully typewritten with the

viands temptingly marshalled under their right and proper heads from "hors d'oeuvre" to "not responsible for

Schulenberg became a naturalised citizen on the spot. Before Sarah left him she had him willingly committed

to an agreement. She was to furnish typewritten bills of fare for the twentyone tables in the restauranta

new bill for each day's dinner, and new ones for breakfast and lunch as often as changes occurred in the food

In return for this Schulenberg was to send three meals per diem to Sarah's hall room by a waiteran

obsequious one if possibleand furnish her each afternoon with a pencil draft of what Fate had in store for

Mutual satisfaction resulted from the agreement. Schulenberg's patrons now knew what the food they ate was

called even if its nature sometimes puzzled them. And Sarah had food during a cold, dull winter, which was

And then the almanac lied, and said that spring had come. Spring comes when it comes. The frozen snows of

January still lay like adamant in the crosstown streets. The handorgans still played "In the Good Old

Summertime," with their December vivacity and expression. Men began to make thirtyday notes to buy

Easter dresses. Janitors shut off steam. And when these things happen one may know that the city is still in

One afternoon Sarah shivered in her elegant hall bedroom; "house heated; scrupulously clean; conveniences;

seen to be appreciated." She had no work to do except Schulenberg's menu cards. Sarah sat in her squeaky

willow rocker, and looked out the window. The calendar on the wall kept crying to her: "Springtime is here,

Sarah springtime is here, I tell you. Look at me, Sarah, my figures show it. You've got a neat figure

Sarah's room was at the back of the house. Looking out the window she could see the windowless rear brick

wall of the box factory on the next street. But the wall was clearest crystal; and Sarah was looking down a

grassy lane shaded with cherry trees and elms and bordered with raspberry bushes and Cherokee roses.

Spring's real harbingers are too subtle for the eye and ear. Some must have the flowering crocus, the

woodstarring dogwood, the voice of bluebirdeven so gross a reminder as the farewell handshake of the

retiring buckwheat and oyster before they can welcome the Lady in Green to their dull bosoms. But to old

earth's choicest kin there come straight, sweet messages from his newest bride, telling them they shall be no

(In writing your story never hark back thus. It is bad art, and cripples interest. Let it march, march.)

Sarah stayed two weeks at Sunnybrook Farm. There she learned to love old Farmer Franklin's son Walter.

Farmers have been loved and wedded and turned out to grass in less time. But young Walter Franklin was a

modern agriculturist. He had a telephone in his cow house, and he could figure up exactly what effect next

year's Canada wheat crop would have on potatoes planted in the dark of the moon.

It was in this shaded and raspberried lane that Walter had wooed and won her. And together they had sat and

woven a crown of dandelions for her hair. He had immoderately praised the effect of the yellow blossoms

against her brown tresses; and she had left the chaplet there, and walked back to the house swinging her straw

They were to marry in the springat the very first signs of spring, Walter said. And Sarah came back to the

A knock at the door dispelled Sarah's visions of that happy day. A waiter had brought the rough pencil draft

Sarah sat down to her typewriter and slipped a card between the rollers. She was a nimble worker. Generally

Today there were more changes on the bill of fare than usual. The soups were lighter; pork was eliminated

from the entrees, figuring only with Russian turnips among the roasts. The gracious spirit of spring pervaded

the entire menu. Lamb, that lately capered on the greening hillsides, was becoming exploited with the sauce

that commemorated its gambols. The song of the oyster, though not silenced, was ~diminuendo con amore~.

The fryingpan seemed to be held, inactive, behind the beneficent bars of the broiler. The pie list swelled; the

richer puddings had vanished; the sausage, with his drapery wrapped about him, barely lingered in a pleasant

Sarah's fingers danced like midgets above a summer stream. Down through the courses she worked, giving

each item its position according to its length with an accurate eye. Just above the desserts came the list of

vegetables. Carrots and peas, asparagus on toast, the perennial tomatoes and corn and succotash, lima beans,

Sarah was crying over her bill of fare. Tears from the depths of some divine despair rose in her heart and

gathered to her eyes. Down went her head on the little typewriter stand; and the keyboard rattled a dry

For she had received no letter from Walter in two weeks, and the next item on the bill of fare was

dandelionsdandelions with some kind of eggbut bother the egg!dandelions, with whose golden

blooms Walter had crowned her his queen of love and future bridedandelions, the harbingers of spring, her

Madam, I dare you to smile until you suffer this test: Let the Marechal Niel roses that Percy brought you on

the night you gave him your heart be served as a salad with French dressing before your eyes at a

Schulenberg ~table d'hote~. Had Juliet so seen her love tokens dishonoured the sooner would she have sought

But what a witch is Spring! Into the great cold city of stone and iron a message had to be sent. There was

none to convey it but the little hardy courier of the fields with his rough green coat and modest air. He is a

true soldier of fortune, this ~dentdelion~ this lion's tooth, as the French chefs call him. Flowered, he

will assist at lovemaking, wreathed in my lady's nutbrown hair; young and callow and unblossomed, he

By and by Sarah forced back her tears. The cards must be written. But, still in a faint, golden glow from her

dandeleonine dream, she fingered the typewriter keys absently for a little while, with her mind and heart in

the meadow lane with her young farmer. But soon she came swiftly back to the rockbound lanes of

Manhattan, and the typewriter began to rattle and jump like a strikebreaker's motor car.

At 6 o'clock the waiter brought her dinner and carried away the typewritten bill of fare. When Sarah ate she

set aside, with a sigh, the dish of dandelions with its crowning ovarious accompaniment. As this dark mass

had been transformed from a bright and loveindorsed flower to be an ignominious vegetable, so had her

summer hopes wilted and perished. Love may, as Shakespeare said, feed on itself: but Sarah could not bring

herself to eat the dandelions that had graced, as ornaments, the first spiritual banquet of her heart's true

At 7:30 the couple in the next room began to quarrel: the man in the room above sought for A on his flute;

the gas went a little lower; three coal wagons started to unloadthe only sound of which the phonograph is

jealous; cats on the back fences slowly retreated toward Mukden. By these signs Sarah knew that it was time

for her to read. She got out "The Cloister and the Hearth," the best non selling book of the month, settled her

The front door bell rang. The landlady answered it. Sarah left Gerard and Denys treed by a bear and listened.

And then a strong voice was heard in the hall below, and Sarah jumped for her door, leaving the book on the

floor and the first round easily the bear's. You have guessed it. She reached the top of the stairs just as her

farmer came up, three at a jump, and reaped and garnered her, with nothing left for the gleaners.

"New York is a pretty large town," said Walter Franklin. "I came in a week ago to your old address. I found

that you went away on a Thursday. That consoled some; it eliminated the possible Friday bad luck. But it

The young farmer smiled a springtime smile. "I dropped into that Home Restaurant next door this evening,"

said he. "I don't care who knows it; I like a dish of some kind of greens at this time of the year. I ran my eye

down that nice typewritten bill of fare looking for something in that line. When I got below cabbage I turned

"I'd know that cranky capital W 'way above the line that your typewriter makes anywhere in the world," said

Sarah recognised the first card she had typewritten that afternoon. There was still the rayed splotch in the

upper righthand corner where a tear had fallen. But over the spot where one should have read the name of

the meadow plant, the clinging memory of their golden blossoms had allowed her fingers to strike strange

Suppose you should be walking down Broadway after dinner, with ten minutes allotted to the consummation

of your cigar while you are choosing between a diverting tragedy and something serious in the way of

vaudeville. Suddenly a hand is laid upon your arm. You turn to look into the thrilling eyes of a beautiful

woman, wonderful in diamonds and Russian sables. She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot

buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly

ejaculates the one word, "parallelogram!" and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over

That would be pure adventure. Would you accept it? Not you. You would flush with embarrassment; you

would sheepishly drop the roll and continue down Broadway, fumbling feebly for the missing button. This

you would do unless you are one of the blessed few in whom the pure spirit of adventure is not dead.

True adventurers have never been plentiful. They who are set down in print as such have been mostly

business men with newly invented methods. They have been out after the things they wantedgolden

fleeces, holy grails, lady loves, treasure, crowns and fame. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and

uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Sonwhen he started back

Halfadventurersbrave and splendid figureshave been numerous. >From the Crusades to the Palisades

they have enriched the arts of history and fiction and the trade of historical fiction. But each of them had a

prize to win, a goal to kick, an axe to grind, a race to run, a new thrust in tierce to deliver, a name to carve, a

In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers. As we

roam the streets they slyly peep at us and challenge us in twenty different guises. Without knowing why, we

look up suddenly to see in a window a face that seems to belong to our gallery of intimate portraits; in a

sleeping thoroughfare we hear a cry of agony and fear coming from an empty and shuttered house; instead of

at our familiar curb, a cabdriver deposits us before a strange door, which one, with a smile, opens for us and

bids us enter; a slip of paper, written upon, flutters down to our feet from the high lattices of Chance; we

exchange glances of instantaneous hate, affection and fear with hurrying strangers in the passing crowds; a

sudden douse of rainand our umbrella may be sheltering the daughter of the Full Moon and first cousin of

the Sidereal System; at every corner handkerchiefs drop, fingers beckon, eyes besiege, and the lost, the

lonely, the rapturous, the mysterious, the perilous, changing clues of adventure are slipped into our fingers.

But few of us are willing to hold and follow them. We are grown stiff with the ramrod of convention down

our backs. We pass on; and some day we come, at the end of a very dull life, to reflect that our romance has

been a pallid thing of a marriage or two, a satin rosette kept in a safedeposit drawer, and a lifelong feud with

Rudolf Steiner was a true adventurer. Few were the evenings on which he did not go forth from his hall

bedchamber in search of the unexpected and the egregious. The most interesting thing in life seemed to him

to be what might lie just around the next corner. Sometimes his willingness to tempt fate led him into strange

paths. Twice he had spent the night in a stationhouse; again and again he had found himself the dupe of

ingenious and mercenary tricksters; his watch and money had been the price of one flattering allurement. But

with undiminished ardour he picked up every glove cast before him into the merry lists of adventure.

One evening Rudolf was strolling along a crosstown street in the older central part of the city. Two streams of

people filled the sidewalksthe homehurrying, and that restless contingent that abandons home for the

The young adventurer was of pleasing presence, and moved serenely and watchfully. By daylight he was a

salesman in a piano store. He wore his tie drawn through a topaz ring instead of fastened with a stick pin; and

once he had written to the editor of a magazine that "Junie's Love Test" by Miss Libbey, had been the book

During his walk a violent chattering of teeth in a glass case on the sidewalk seemed at first to draw his

attention (with a qualm), to a restaurant before which it was set; but a second glance revealed the electric

letters of a dentist's sign high above the next door. A giant negro, fantastically dressed in a red embroidered

coat, yellow trousers and a military cap, discreetly distributed cards to those of the passing crowd who

This mode of dentistic advertising was a common sight to Rudolf. Usually he passed the dispenser of the

dentist's cards without reducing his store; but tonight the African slipped one into his hand so deftly that he

When he had travelled a few yards further he glanced at the card indifferently. Surprised, he turned it over

and looked again with interest. One side of the card was blank; on the other was written in ink three words,

"The Green Door." And then Rudolf saw, three steps in front of him, a man throw down the card the negro

had given him as he passed. Rudolf picked it up. It was printed with the dentist's name and address and the

usual schedule of "plate work" and "bridge work" and specious promises of "painless" operations.

The adventurous piano salesman halted at the corner and considered. Then he crossed the street, walked

down a block, recrossed and joined the upward current of people again. Without seeming to notice the negro

as he passed the second time, he carelessly took the card that was handed him. Ten steps away he inspected it.

In the same handwriting that appeared on the first card "The Green Door" was inscribed upon it. Three or

four cards were tossed to the pavement by pedestrians both following and leading him. These fell blank side

up. Rudolf turned them over. Every one bore the printed legend of the dental "parlours."

Rarely did the arch sprite Adventure need to beckon twice to Rudolf Steiner, his true follower. But twice it

Rudolf walked slowly back to where the giant negro stood by the case of rattling teeth. This time as he passed

he received no card. In spite of his gaudy and ridiculous garb, the Ethiopian displayed a natural barbaric

dignity as he stood, offering the cards suavely to some, allowing others to pass unmolested. Every half

minute he chanted a harsh, unintelligible phrase akin to the jabber of car conductors and grand opera. And not

only did he withhold a card this time, but it seemed to Rudolf that he received from the shining and massive

The look stung the adventurer. He read in it a silent accusation that he had been found wanting. Whatever the

mysterious written words on the cards might mean, the black had selected him twice from the throng for their

recipient; and now seemed to have condemned him as deficient in the wit and spirit to engage the enigma.

Standing aside from the rush, the young man made a rapid estimate of the building in which he conceived

that his adventure must lie. Five stories high it rose. A small restaurant occupied the basement.

The first floor, now closed, seemed to house millinery or furs. The second floor, by the winking electric

letters, was the dentist's. Above this a polyglot babel of signs struggled to indicate the abodes of palmists,

dressmakers, musicians and doctors. Still higher up draped curtains and milk bottles white on the window

After concluding his survey Rudolf walked briskly up the high flight of stone steps into the house. Up two

flights of the carpeted stairway he continued; and at its top paused. The hallway there was dimly lighted by

two pale jets of gas onefar to his right, the other nearer, to his left. He looked toward the nearer light and

saw, within its wan halo, a green door. For one moment he hesitated; then he seemed to see the contumelious

sneer of the African juggler of cards; and then he walked straight to the green door and knocked against it.

Moments like those that passed before his knock was answered measure the quick breath of true adventure.

What might not be behind those green panels! Gamesters at play; cunning rogues baiting their traps with

subtle skill; beauty in love with courage, and thus planning to be sought by it; danger, death, love,

A faint rustle was heard inside, and the door slowly opened. A girl not yet twenty stood there, whitefaced

and tottering. She loosed the knob and swayed weakly, groping with one hand. Rudolf caught her and laid her

on a faded couch that stood against the wall. He closed the door and took a swift glance around the room by

the light of a flickering gas jet. Neat, but extreme poverty was the story that he read.

The girl lay still, as if in a faint. Rudolf looked around the room excitedly for a barrel. People must be rolled

upon a barrel whono, no; that was for drowned persons. He began to fan her with his hat. That was

successful, for he struck her nose with the brim of his derby and she opened her eyes. And then the young

man saw that hers, indeed, was the one missing face from his heart's gallery of intimate portraits. The frank,

grey eyes, the little nose, turning pertly outward; the chestnut hair, curling like the tendrils of a pea vine,

seemed the right end and reward of all his wonderful adventures. But the face was wofully thin and pale.

"Fainted, didn't I?" she asked, weakly. "Well, who wouldn't? You try going without anything to eat for three

He dashed out the green door and down the stairs. In twenty minutes he was back again, kicking at the door

with his toe for her to open it. With both arms he hugged an array of wares from the grocery and the

restaurant. On the table he laid thembread and butter, cold meats, cakes, pies, pickles, oysters, a roasted

"This is ridiculous," said Rudolf, blusteringly, "to go without eating. You must quit making election bets of

this kind. Supper is ready." He helped her to a chair at the table and asked: "Is there a cup for the tea?" "On

the shelf by the window," she answered. When he turned again with the cup he saw her, with eyes shining

rapturously, beginning upon a huge Dill pickle that she had rooted out from the paper bags with a woman's

unerring instinct. He took it from her, laughingly, and poured the cup full of milk. "Drink that first" he

ordered, "and then you shall have some tea, and then a chicken wing. If you are very good you shall have a

pickle tomorrow. And now, if you'll allow me to be your guest we'll have supper."

He drew up the other chair. The tea brightened the girl's eyes and brought back some of her colour. She began

to eat with a sort of dainty ferocity like some starved wild animal. She seemcd to regard the young man's

presence and the aid he had rendered her as a natural thingnot as though she undervalued the conventions;

but as one whose great stress gave her the right to put aside the artificial for the human. But gradually, with

the return of strength and comfort, came also a sense of the little conventions that belong; and she began to

tell him her little story. It was one of a thousand such as the city yawns at every daythe shop girl's story of

insufficient wages, further reduced by "fines" that go to swell the store's profits; of time lost through illness;

and then of lost positions, lost hope, andthe knock of the adventurer upon the green door.

But to Rudolf the history sounded as big as the Iliad or the crisis in "Junie's Love Test."

"I am glad of that," said the girl, promptly; and somehow it pleased the young man to hear that she approved

Then Rudolf rose and took his hat. "I'll say goodnight. A long night's sleep will be fine for you."

He held out his hand, and she took it and said "goodnight." But her eyes asked a question so eloquently, so

"Oh, I'm coming back tomorrow to see how you are getting along. You can't get rid of me so easily."

Then, at the door, as though the way of his coming had been so much less important than the fact that he had

He looked at her for a moment, remembering the cards, and felt a sudden jealous pain. What if they had fallen

into other hands as adventurous as his? Quickly he decided that she must never know the truth. He would

never let her know that he was aware of the strange expedient to which she had been driven by her great

"One of our piano tuners lives in this house," he said. "I knocked at your door by mistake."

At the head of the stairway he paused and looked curiously about him. And then he went along the hallway to

its other end; and, coming back, ascended to the floor above and continued his puzzled explorations. Every

Wondering, he descended to the sidewalk. The fantastic African was still there. Rudolf confronted him with

In a broad, goodnatured grin the negro exhibited a splendid advertisement of his master's profession.

"Dar it is, boss," he said, pointing down the street. "But I 'spect you is a little late for de fust act."

Looking the way he pointed Rudolf saw above the entrance to a theatre the blazing electric sign of its new

"I'm informed dat it's a fustrate show, sah," said the negro. "De agent what represents it pussented me with a

dollar, sah, to distribute a few of his cards along with de doctah's. May I offer you one of de doctah's cards,

At the corner of the block in which he lived Rudolf stopped for a glass of beer and a cigar. When he had

come out with his lighted weed he buttoned his coat, pushed back his hat and said, stoutly, to the lamp post

"All the same, I believe it was the hand of Fate that doped out the way for me to find her."

Which conclusion, under the circumstances, certainly admits Rudolf Steiner to the ranks of the true followers

The cabby has his point of view. It is more singleminded, perhaps, than that of a follower of any other

calling. From the high, swaying seat of his hansom he looks upon his fellowmen as nomadic particles, of no

account except when possessed of migratory desires. He is Jehu, and you are goods in transit. Be you

President or vagabond, to cabby you are only a Fare, he takes you up, cracks his whip, joggles your vertebrae

When time for payment arrives, if you exhibit a familiarity with legal rates you come to know what contempt

is; if you find that you have left your pocketbook behind you are made to realise the mildness of Dante's

It is not an extravagant theory that the cabby's singleness of purpose and concentrated view of life are the

results of the hansom's peculiar construction. The cockoftheroost sits aloft like Jupiter on an unsharable

seat, holding your fate between two thongs of inconstant leather. Helpless, ridiculous, confined, bobbing like

a toy mandarin, you sit like a rat in a trapyou, before whom butlers cringe on solid landand must squeak

upward through a slit in your peripatetic sarcophagus to make your feeble wishes known.

Then, in a cab, you are not even an occupant; you are contents. You are a cargo at sea, and the "cherub that

One night there were sounds of revelry in the big brick tenement house next door but one to McGary's

Family Cafe. The sounds seemed to emanate from the apartments of the Walsh family. The sidewalk was

obstructed by an assortment of interested neighbours, who opened a lane from time to time for a hurrying

messenger bearing from McGary's goods pertinent to festivity and diversion. The sidewalk contingent was

engaged in comment and discussion from which it made no effort to eliminate the news that Norah Walsh

In the fulness of time there was an eruption of the merrymakers to the sidewalk. The uninvited guests

enveloped and permeated them, and upon the night air rose joyous cries, congratulations, laughter and

Close to the curb stood Jerry O'Donovan's cab. Nighthawk was Jerry called; but no more lustrous or cleaner

hansom than his ever closed its doors upon point lace and November violets. And Jerry's horse! I am within

bounds when I tell you that he was stuffed with oats until one of those old ladies who leave their dishes

unwashed at home and go about having expressmen arrested, would have smiledyes, smiledto have seen

Among the shifting, sonorous, pulsing crowd glimpses could be had of Jerry's high hat, battered by the winds

and rains of many years; of his nose like a carrot, battered by the frolicsome, athletic progeny of millionaires

and by contumacious fares; of his brassbuttoned green coat, admired in the vicinity of McGary's. It was

plain that Jerry had usurped the functions of his cab, and was carrying a "load." Indeed, the figure may be

extended and he be likened to a breadwaggon if we admit the testimony of a youthful spectator, who was

>From somewhere among the throng in the street or else out of the thin stream of pedestrians a young woman

tripped and stood by the cab. The professional hawk's eye of Jerry caught the movement. He made a lurch for

the cab, overturning three or four onlookers and himself no! he caught the cap of a waterplug and kept his

feet. Like a sailor shinning up the ratlins during a squall Jerry mounted to his professional seat. Once he was

there McGary's liquids were baffled. He seesawed on the mizzenmast of his craft as safe as a Steeple Jack

"Step in, lady," said Jerry, gathering his lines. The young woman stepped into the cab; the doors shut with a

bang; Jerry's whip cracked in the air; the crowd in the gutter scattered, and the fine hansom dashed away

When the oatspry horse had hedged a little his first spurt of speed Jerry broke the lid of his cab and called

down through the aperture in the voice of a cracked megaphone, trying to please:

"'Tis drivin' for pleasure she is," thought Jerry. And then he suggested as a matter of course:

The cab headed for Fifth avenue and sped up that perfect street. Jerry bounced and swayed in his seat. The

potent fluids of McGary were disquieted and they sent new fumes to his head. He sang an ancient song of

Inside the cab the fare sat up straight on the cushions, looking to right and left at the lights and houses. Even

When they reached Fiftyninth street Jerry's head was bobbing and his reins were slack. But his horse turned

in through the park gate and began the old familiar nocturnal round. And then the fare leaned back, entranced,

and breathed deep the clean, wholesome odours of grass and leaf and bloom. And the wise beast in the shafts,

knowing his ground, struck into his bythehour gait and kept to the right of the road.

Habit also struggled successfully against Jerry's increasing torpor. He raised the hatch of his stormtossed

"Like shtop at the Cassino, lady? Gezzer r'freshm's, 'n lish'n the music. Ev'body shtops."

They reined up with a plunge at the Casino entrance. The cab doors flew open. The fare stepped directly upon

the floor. At once she was caught in a web of ravishing music and dazzled by a panorama of lights and

colours. Some one slipped a little square card into her hand on which was printed a number34. She looked

around and saw her cab twenty yards away already lining up in its place among the waiting mass of carriages,

cabs and motor cars. And then a man who seemed to be all shirtfront danced backward before her; and next

she was seated at a little table by a railing over which climbed a jessamine vine.

There seemed to be a wordless invitation to purchase; she consulted a collection of small coins in a thin

purse, and received from them license to order a glass of beer. There she sat, inhaling and absorbing it

At fifty tables sat princes and queens clad in all the silks and gems of the world. And now and then one of

them would look curiously at Jerry's fare. They saw a plain figure dressed in a pink silk of the kind that is

tempered by the word "foulard," and a plain face that wore a look of love of life that the queens envied.

Twice the long hands of the clocks went round, Royalties thinned from their ~al fresco~ thrones, and buzzed

or clattered away in their vehicles of state. The music retired into cases of wood and bags of leather and

baize. Waiters removed cloths pointedly near the plain figure sitting almost alone.

"Is there anything coming on the ticket?" she asked. A waiter told her it was her cab check, and that she

should give it to the man at the entrance. This man took it, and called the number. Only three hansoms stood

in line. The driver of one of them went and routed out Jerry asleep in his cab. He swore deeply, climbed to

the captain's bridge and steered his craft to the pier. His fare entered, and the cab whirled into the cool

At the gate a glimmer of reason in the form of sudden suspicion seized upon Jerry's beclouded mind. One or

two things occurred to him. He stopped his horse, raised the trap and dropped his phonographic voice, like a

"I want to see four dollars before goin' any further on th' thrip. Have ye got th' dough?"

"Four dollars!" laughed the fare, softly, "dear me, no. I've only got a few pennies and a dime or two."

Jerry shut down the trap and slashed his oatfed horse. The clatter of hoofs strangled but could not drown the

sound of his profanity. He shouted choking and gurgling curses at the starry heavens; he cut viciously with

his whip at passing vehicles; he scattered fierce and everchanging oaths and imprecations along the streets,

so that a late truck driver, crawling homeward, heard and was abashed. But he knew his recourse, and made

At the house with the green lights beside the steps he pulled up. He flung wide the cab doors and tumbled

His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her

into the police station. A graymoustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the cabby were no

"Sargeant," began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tones of complaint. "I've got a fare here

Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog set up by McGary was beginning to clear

"A fare, sargeant," he continued, with a grin, "that I want to inthroduce to ye. It's me wife that I married at

ould man Walsh's this avening. And a divil of a time we had, �tis thrue. Shake hands wid th' sargeant, Norah,

We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet are mentioned. For, even the

preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst

we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some

There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility

of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both

Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless

fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my themechosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more

I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher criticism that it had to do with the ancient, respectable,

Gabriel had played his trump; and those of us who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination. I

noticed at one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind;

but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles; and they did not appear to be getting any of

A fly copan angel policemanflew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of

Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other

little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per

week. The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody else's account in the ledger kept by G

Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend DoctorWell then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy.

During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week. It would be instructive to know how

she lived on that amount. Don't care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars is

One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hatpin within an eighth of an inch of her ~medulla

oblongata~, she said to her chum, Sadiethe girl that waits on you with her left side:

"You never did!" exclaimed Sadie admiringly. "Well, ain't you the lucky one? Piggy's an awful swell; and he

always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where they have

Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of life'sreal

life'sapproaching dawn. It was Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her last week's wages.

The streets were filled with the rushhour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were

glowingcalling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come

in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by

the old salts in sailors' homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them. Manhattan, the

nightblooming cereus, was beginning to unfold its deadwhite, heavyodoured petals.

Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her fifty cents.

That money was to have been spent otherwisefifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for

lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and five cents was to be squandered for

licorice dropsthe kind that made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice was an

Dulcie lived in a furnished room. There is this difference between a furnished room and a boardinghouse. In a

Dulcie went up to her roomthe third floor back in a West Side brownstonefront. She lit the gas. Scientists

tell us that the diamond is the hardest substance known. Their mistake. Landladies know of a compound

beside which the diamond is as putty. They pack it in the tips of gasburners; and one may stand on a chair

and dig at it in vain until one's fingers are pink and bruised. A hairpin will not remove it; therefore let us call

So Dulcie lit the gas. In its onefourthcandlepower glow we will observe the room.

Couchbed, dresser, table, washstand, chairof this much the landlady was guilty. The rest was Dulcie's. On

the dresser were her treasuresa gilt china vase presented to her by Sadie, a calendar issued by a pickle

works, a book on the divination of dreams, some rice powder in a glass dish, and a cluster of artificial

Against the wrinkly mirror stood pictures of General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the Duchess of

Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. Against one wall was a plaster of Paris plaque of an O'Callahan in a

Roman helmet. Near it was a violent oleograph of a lemoncoloured child assaulting an inflammatory

butterfly. This was Dulcie's final judgment in art; but it had never been upset. Her rest had never been

disturbed by whispers of stolen copes; no critic had elevated his eyebrows at her infantile entomologist.

Piggy was to call for her at seven. While she swiftly makes ready, let us discreetly face the other way and

For the room, Dulcie paid two dollars per week. On weekdays her breakfast cost ten cents; she made coffee

and cooked an egg over the gaslight while she was dressing. On Sunday mornings she feasted royally on veal

chops and pineapple fritters at "Billy's" restaurant, at a cost of twentyfive centsand tipped the waitress ten

cents. New York presents so many temptations for one to run into extravagance. She had her lunches in the

departmentstore restaurant at a cost of sixty cents for the week; dinners were $1.05. The evening

papersshow me a New Yorker going without his daily paper! came to six cents; and two Sunday

papersone for the personal column and the other to readwere ten cents. The total amounts to $4.76.

I give it up. I hear of wonderful bargains in fabrics, and of miracles performed with needle and thread; but I

am in doubt. I hold my pen poised in vain when I would add to Dulcie's life some of those joys that belong to

woman by virtue of all the unwritten, sacred, natural, inactive ordinances of the equity of heaven. Twice she

had been to Coney Island and had ridden the hobbyhorses. 'Tis a weary thing to count your pleasures by

Piggy needs but a word. When the girls named him, an undeserving stigma was cast upon the noble family of

swine. The wordsofthree letters lesson in the old blue spelling book begins with Piggy's biography. He

was fat; he had the soul of a rat, the habits of a bat, and the magnanimity of a cat. . . He wore expensive

clothes; and was a connoisseur in starvation. He could look at a shopgirl and tell you to an hour how long it

had been since she had eaten anything more nourishing than marshmallows and tea. He hung about the

shopping districts, and prowled around in department stores with his invitations to dinner. Men who escort

dogs upon the streets at the end of a string look down upon him. He is a type; I can dwell upon him no

At ten minutes to seven Dulcie was ready. She looked at herself in the wrinkly mirror. The reflection was

satisfactory. The dark blue dress, fitting without a wrinkle, the hat with its jaunty black feather, the

butslightlysoiled glovesall representing self denial, even of food itselfwere vastly becoming.

Dulcie forgot everything else for a moment except that she was beautiful, and that life was about to lift a

corner of its mysterious veil for her to observe its wonders. No gentleman had ever asked her out before. Now

The girls said that Piggy was a "spender." There would be a grand dinner, and music, and splendidly dressed

ladies to look at, and things to eat that strangely twisted the girls' jaws when they tried to tell about them. No

doubt she would be asked out again. There was a blue pongee suit in a window that she knewby saving

twenty cents a week instead of ten, inlet's seeOh, it would run into years! But there was a secondhand

Somebody knocked at the door. Dulcie opened it. The landlady stood there with a spurious smile, sniffing for

By such epithet was Piggy known to unfortunate ones who had to take him seriously.

Dulcie turned to the dresser to get her handkerchief; and then she stopped still, and bit her underlip hard.

While looking in her mirror she had seen fairyland and herself, a princess, just awakening from a long

slumber. She had forgotten one that was watching her with sad, beautiful, stern eyesthe only one there was

to approve or condemn what she did. Straight and slender and tall, with a look of sorrowful reproach on his

handsome, melancholy face, General Kitchener fixed his wonderful eyes on her out of his gilt photograph

"Tell him I can't go," she said dully. "Tell him I'm sick, or something. Tell him I'm not going out."

After the door was closed and locked, Dulcie fell upon her bed, crushing her black tip, and cried for ten

minutes. General Kitchener was her only friend. He was Dulcie's ideal of a gallant knight. He looked as if he

might have a secret sorrow, and his wonderful moustache was a dream, and she was a little afraid of that stern

yet tender look in his eyes. She used to have little fancies that he would call at the house sometime, and ask

for her, with his sword clanking against his high boots. Once, when a boy was rattling a piece of chain against

a lamppost she had opened the window and looked out. But there was no use. She knew that General

Kitchener was away over in Japan, leading his army against the savage Turks; and he would never step out of

his gilt frame for her. Yet one look from him had vanquished Piggy that night. Yes, for that night.

When her cry was over Dulcie got up and took off her best dress, and put on her old blue kimono. She wanted

no dinner. She sang two verses of "Sammy." Then she became intensely interested in a little red speck on the

side of her nose. And after that was attended to, she drew up a chair to the rickety table, and told her fortune

"The horrid, impudent thing!" she said aloud. "And I never gave him a word or a look to make him think it!"

At nine o'clock Dulcie took a tin box of crackers and a little pot of raspberry jam out of her trunk, and had a

feast. She offered General Kitchener some jam on a cracker; but he only looked at her as the sphinx would

"Don't eat it if you don't want to," said Dulcie. "And don't put on so many airs and scold so with your eyes. I

wonder if you'd he so superior and snippy if you had to live on six dollars a week."

It was not a good sign for Dulcie to be rude to General Kitchener. And then she turned Benvenuto Cellini

face downward with a severe gesture. But that was not inexcusable; for she had always thought he was Henry

At halfpast nine Dulcie took a last look at the pictures on the dresser, turned out the light, and skipped into

bed. It's an awful thing to go to bed with a goodnight look at General Kitchener, William Muldoon, the

Duchess of Marlborough, and Benvenuto Cellini. This story really doesn't get anywhere at all. The rest of it

comes latersometime when Piggy asks Dulcie again to dine with him, and she is feeling lonelier than

As I said before, I dreamed that I was standing near a crowd of prosperouslooking angels, and a policeman

"Why," said he, "they are the men who hired workinggirls, and paid 'em five or six dollars a week to live on.

"Not on your immortality," said I. "I'm only the fellow that set fire to an orphan asylum, and murdered a blind

Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, sat on his favourite bench in the park. The coolness of the

September night quickened the life in him like a rare, tonic wine. The benches were not filled; for park

loungers, with their stagnant blood, are prompt to detect and fly home from the crispness of early autumn.

The moon was just clearing the roofs of the range of dwellings that bounded the quadrangle on the east.

Children laughed and played about the fine sprayed fountain. In the shadowed spots fauns and hamadryads

wooed, unconscious of the gaze of mortal eyes. A hand organPhilomel by the grace of our stage carpenter,

Fancyfluted and droned in a side street. Around the enchanted boundaries of the little park street cars spat

and mewed and the stilted trains roared like tigers and lions prowling for a place to enter. And above the trees

shone the great, round, shining face of an illuminated clock in the tower of an antique public building.

Prince Michael's shoes were wrecked far beyond the skill of the carefullest cobbler. The ragman would have

declined any negotiations concerning his clothes. The two weeks' stubble on his face was grey and brown and

red and greenish yellowas if it had been made up from individual contributions from the chorus of a

musical comedy. No man existed who had money enough to wear so bad a hat as his.

Prince Michael sat on his favourite bench and smiled. It was a diverting thought to him that he was wealthy

enough to buy every one of those closeranged, bulky, windowlit mansions that faced him, if he chose. He

could have matched gold, equipages, jewels, art treasures, estates and acres with any Croesus in this proud

city of Manhattan, and scarcely have entered upon the bulk of his holdings. He could have sat at table with

reigning sovereigns. The social world, the world of art, the fellowship of the elect, adulation, imitation, the

homage of the fairest, honours from the highest, praise from the wisest, flattery, esteem, credit, pleasure,

fameall the honey of life was waiting in the comb in the hive of the world for Prince Michael, of the

Electorate of Valleluna, whenever he might choose to take it. But his choice was to sit in rags and dinginess

on a bench in a park. For he had tasted of the fruit of the tree of life, and, finding it bitter in his mouth, had

stepped out of Eden for a time to seek distraction close to the unarmoured, beating heart of the world.

These thoughts strayed dreamily through the mind of Prince Michael, as he smiled under the stubble of his

polychromatic beard. Lounging thus, clad as the poorest of mendicants in the parks, he loved to study

humanity. He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his station and all the grosser sweets of life had

given him. It was his chief solace and satisfaction to alleviate individual distress, to confer favours upon

worthy ones who had need of succour, to dazzle unfortunates by unexpected and bewildering gifts of truly

And as Prince Michael's eye rested upon the glowing face of the great clock in the tower, his smile, altruistic

as it was, became slightly tinged with contempt. Big thoughts were the Prince's; and it was always with a

shake of his head that he considered the subjugation of the world to the arbitrary measures of Time. The

comings and goings of people in hurry and dread, controlled by the little metal moving hands of a clock,

By and by came a young man in evening clothes and sat upon the third bench from the Prince. For half an

hour he smoked cigars with nervous haste, and then he fell to watching the face of the illuminated clock

above the trees. His perturbation was evident, and the Prince noted, in sorrow, that its cause was connected,

"I beg your pardon for addressing you," he said, "but I perceive that you are disturbed in mind. If it may serve

to mitigate the liberty I have taken I will add that I am Prince Michael, heir to the throne of the Electorate of

Valleluna. I appear incognito, of course, as you may gather from my appearance. It is a fancy of mine to

render aid to others whom I think worthy of it. Perhaps the matter that seems to distress you is one that would

The young man looked up brightly at the Prince. Brightly, but the perpendicular line of perplexity between

his brows was not smoothed away. He laughed, and even then it did not. But he accepted the momentary

"Glad to meet you, Prince," he said, good humouredly. "Yes, I'd say you were incog. all right. Thanks for

your offer of assistancebut I don't see where your buttingin would help things any. It's a kind of private

Prince Michael sat at the young man's side. He was often rebuffed but never offensively. His courteous

"Clocks," said the Prince, "are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have observed you looking persistently at

that clock. Its face is that of a tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands are those of a

bunco steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its

humiliating bonds and to cease to order your affairs by that insensate monitor of brass and steel."

"I don't usually," said the young man. "I carry a watch except when I've got my radiant rags on."

"I know human nature as I do the trees and grass," said the Prince, with earnest dignity. "I am a master of

philosophy, a graduate in art, and I hold the purse of a Fortunatus. There are few mortal misfortunes that I

cannot alleviate or overcome. I have read your countenance, and found in it honesty and nobility as well as

distress. I beg of you to accept my advice or aid. Do not belie the intelligence I see in your face by judging

The young man glanced at the clock again and frowned darkly. When his gaze strayed from the glowing

horologue of time it rested intently upon a fourstory red brick house in the row of dwellings opposite to

where he sat. The shades were drawn, and the lights in many rooms shone dimly through them.

"Ten minutes to nine!" exclaimed the young man, with an impatient gesture of despair. He turned his back

"Remain!" commanded Prince Michael, in so potent a voice that the disturbed one wheeled around with a

"I'll give her the ten minutes and then I'm off," he muttered, and then aloud to the Prince: "I'll join you in

"Sit down," said the Prince calmly. "I do not accept your addition. Women are the natural enemies of clocks,

and, therefore, the allies of those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our follies and

limit our pleasures. If you will so far confide in me I would ask you to relate to me your story."

"Your Royal Highness, I will," he said, in tones of mock deference. "Do you see yonder housethe one with

three upper windows lighted? Well, at 6 o'clock I stood in that house with the young lady I am that is, I

wasengaged to. I had been doing wrong, my dear Prince I had been a naughty boy, and she had heard of

it. I wanted to be forgiven, of coursewe are always wanting women to forgive us, aren't we, Prince?"

"'I want time to think it over,' said she. 'There is one thing certain; I will either fully forgive you, or I will

never see your face again. There will be no halfway business. At halfpast eight,' she said, 'at exactly

halfpast eight you may be watching the middle upper window of the top floor. If I decide to forgive I will

hang out of that window a white silk scarf. You will know by that that all is as was before, and you may come

to me. If you see no scarf you may consider that everything between us is ended forever.' That," concluded

the young man bitterly, "is why I have been watching that clock. The time for the signal to appear has passed

twenty three minutes ago. Do you wonder that I am a little disturbed, my Prince of Rags and Whiskers?"

"Let me repeat to you," said Prince Michael, in his even, well modulated tones, "that women are the natural

enemies of clocks. Clocks are an evil, women a blessing. The signal may yet appear."

"Never, on your principality!" exclaimed the young man, hopelessly. "You don't know Marianof course.

She's always on time, to the minute. That was the first thing about her that attracted me. I've got the mitten

instead of the scarf. I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was cooked. I'll go West on the 11.45

tonight with Jack Milburn. The jig's up. I'll try Jack's ranch awhile and top off with the Klondike and

Prince Michael smiled his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile and caught the coat sleeve of the other.

The brilliant light in the Prince's eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy translucence.

"Wait," he said solemnly, "till the clock strikes. I have wealth and power and knowledge above most men, but

when the clock strikes I am afraid. Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the word of

the hereditary Prince of Valleluna. On the day of your marriage I will give you $100,000 and a palace on the

Hudson. But there must be no clocks in that palacethey measure our follies and limit our pleasures. Do you

"Of course," said the young man, cheerfully, "they're a nuisance, anywayalways ticking and striking and

He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three minutes to nine.

"I think," said Prince Michael, "that I will sleep a little. The day has been fatiguing."

He stretched himself upon a bench with the manner of one who had slept thus before.

"You will find me in this park on any evening when the weather is suitable," said the Prince, sleepily. "Come

to me when your marriage day is set and I will give you a cheque for the money."

"Thanks, Your Highness," said the young man, seriously. "It doesn't look as if I would need that palace on the

Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from the bench to the ground. The young man

lifted it, placed it over the frowsy face and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more

comfortable position. "Poor devil!" he said, as he drew the tattered clothes closer about the Prince's breast.

Sonorous and startling came the stroke of 9 from the clock tower. The young man sighed again, turned his

face for one last look at the house of his relinquished hopesand cried aloud profane words of holy rapture.

>From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving, snowy, fluttering, wonderful, divine

By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, homehurrying, unknowing of the delights of waving silken scarfs

"Will you oblige me with the time, sir?" asked the young man; and the citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his

And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made further oration.

"By George! that clock's half an hour fast! First time in ten years I've known it to be off. This watch of mine

But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer, a fast receding black shadow, flying in

And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats they owned. The park was deserted

save for one dilapidated figure that sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it.

"It's Dopy Mike," said one. "He hits the pipe every night. Park bum for twenty years. On his last legs, I

The other policeman stooped and looked at something crumpled and crisp in the hand of the sleeper.

"Gee!" he remarked. "He's doped out a fiftydollar bill, anyway. Wish I knew the brand of hop that he

And then "Rap, rap, rap!" went the club of realism against the shoe soles of Prince Michael, of the Electorate

The Rubberneck Auto was about ready to start. The merry topriders had been assigned to their seats by the

gentlemanly conductor. The sidewalk was blockaded with sightseers who had gathered to stare at sightseers,

justifying the natural law that every creature on earth is preyed upon by some other creature.

The megaphone man raised his instrument of torture; the inside of the great automobile began to thump and

throb like the heart of a coffee drinker. The topriders nervously clung to the seats; the old lady from

Valparaiso, Indiana, shrieked to be put ashore. But, before a wheel turns, listen to a brief preamble through

the cardiaphone, which shall point out to you an object of interest on life's sightseeing tour.

Swift and comprehensive is the recognition of white man for white man in African wilds; instant and sure is

the spiritual greeting between mother and babe; unhesitatingly do master and dog commune across the slight

gulf between animal and man; immeasurably quick and sapient are the brief messages between one and one's

beloved. But all these instances set forth only slow and groping interchange of sympathy and thought beside

one other instance which the Rubberneck coach shall disclose. You shall learn (if you have not learned

already) what two beings of all earth's living inhabitants most quickly look into each other's hearts and souls

The gong whirred, and the GlaringatGotham car moved majestically upon its instructive tour.

On the highest, rear seat was James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri, and his Bride.

Capitalise it, friend typothat last wordword of words in the epiphany of life and love. The scent of the

flowers, the booty of the bee, the primal drip of spring waters, the overture of the lark, the twist of lemon peel

on the cocktail of creationsuch is the bride. Holy is the wife; revered the mother; galliptious is the summer

girlbut the bride is the certified check among the wedding presents that the gods send in when man is

The car glided up the Golden Way. On the bridge of the great cruiser the captain stood, trumpeting the sights

of the big city to his passengers. Widemouthed and openeared, they heard the sights of the metropolis

thundered forth to their eyes. Confused, delirious with excitement and provincial longings, they tried to make

ocular responses to the megaphonic ritual. In the solemn spires of spreading cathedrals they saw the home of

the Vanderbilts; in the busy bulk of the Grand Central depot they viewed, wonderingly, the frugal cot of

Russell Sage. Bidden to observe the highlands of the Hudson, they gaped, unsuspecting, at the upturned

mountains of a new laid sewer. To many the elevated railroad was the Rialto, on the stations of which

uniformed men sat and made chop suey of your tickets. And to this day in the outlying districts many have it

that Chuck Connors, with his hand on his heart, leads reform; and that but for the noble municipal efforts of

one Parkhurst, a district attorney, the notorious "Bishop" Potter gang would have destroyed law and order

But I beg you to observe Mrs. James WilliamsHattie Chalmers that wasonce the belle of Cloverdale.

Paleblue is the bride's, if she will; and this colour she had honoured. Willingly had the moss rosebud loaned

to her cheeks of its pinkand as for the violet!her eyes will do very well as they are, thank you. A useless

strip of white chafoh, no, he was guiding the auto carof white chiffonor perhaps it was grenadine or

tullewas tied beneath her chin, pretending to hold her bonnet in place. But you know as well as I do that

And on Mrs. James Williams's face was recorded a little library of the world's best thoughts in three volumes.

Volume No. 1 contained the belief that James Williams was about the right sort of thing. Volume No. 2 was

an essay on the world, declaring it to be a very excellent place. Volume No. 3 disclosed the belief that in

occupying the highest seat in a Rubberneck auto they were travelling the pace that passes all understanding.

James Williams, you would have guessed, was about twentyfour. It will gratify you to know that your

estimate was so accurate. He was exactly twentythree years, eleven months and twentynine days old. He

was well built, active, strongjawed, goodnatured and rising. He was on his wedding trip.

Dear kind fairy, please cut out those orders for money and 40 H. P. touring cars and fame and a new growth

of hair and the presidency of the boat club. Instead of any of them turn backwardoh, turn backward and

give us just a teenyweeny bit of our wedding trip over again. Just an hour, dear fairy, so we can remember

how the grass and poplar trees looked, and the bow of those bonnet strings tied beneath her chineven if it

was the hatpins that did the work. Can't do it? Very well; hurry up with that touring car and the oil stock,

Just in front of Mrs. James Williams sat a girl in a loose tan jacket and a straw hat adorned with grapes and

roses. Only in dreams and milliners' shops do we, alas! gather grapes and roses at one swipe. This girl gazed

with large blue eyes, credulous, when the megaphone man roared his doctrine that millionaires were things

about which we should be concerned. Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form of

At this girl's right hand sat a young man about twentyfour. He was wellbuilt, active, strongjawed and

goodnatured. But if his description seems to follow that of James Williams, divest it of anything

Cloverdalian. This man belonged to hard streets and sharp corners. He looked keenly about him, seeming to

begrudge the asphalt under the feet of those upon whom he looked down from his perch.

While the megaphone barks at a famous hostelry, let me whisper you through the lowtuned cardiaphone to

sit tight; for now things are about to happen, and the great city will close over them again as over a scrap of

The girl in the tan jacket twisted around to view the pilgrims on the last seat. The other passengers she had

Her eyes met those of Mrs. James Williams. Between two ticks of a watch they exchanged their life's

experiences, histories, hopes and fancies. And all, mind you, with the eye, before two men could have

The bride leaned forward low. She and the girl spoke rapidly together, their tongues moving quickly like

those of two serpents a comparison that is not meant to go further. Two smiles and a dozen nods closed the

And now in the broad, quiet avenue in front of the Rubberneck car a man in dark clothes stood with uplifted

The girl in the fruitful hat quickly seized her companion by the arm and whispered in his ear. That young man

exhibited proof of ability to act promptly. Crouching low, he slid over the edge of the car, hung lightly for an

instant, and then disappeared. Half a dozen of the topriders observed his feat, wonderingly, but made no

comment, deeming it prudent not to express surprise at what might be the conventional manner of alighting in

this bewildering city. The truant passenger dodged a hansom and then floated past, like a leaf on a stream

The girl in the tan jacket turned again, and looked in the eyes of Mrs. James Williams. Then she faced about

and sat still while the Rubberneck auto stopped at the flash of the badge under the coat of the plainclothes

"What's eatin' you?" demanded the megaphonist, abandoning his professional discourse for pure English.

"Keep her at anchor for a minute," ordered the officer. "There's a man on board we wanta Philadelphia

burglar called 'Pinky' McGuire. There he is on the back seat. Look out for the side, Donovan."

"Come down, old sport," he said, pleasantly. "We've got you. Back to Sleepytown for yours. It ain't a bad

James Williams belonged among the level heads. With necessary slowness he picked his way through the

passengers down to the steps at the front of the car. His wife followed, but she first turned her eyes and saw

the escaped tourist glide from behind the furniture van and slip behind a tree on the edge of the little park, not

Descended to the ground, James Williams faced his captors with a smile. He was thinking what a good story

he would have to tell in Cloverdale about having been mistaken for a burglar. The Rubberneck coach

lingered, out of respect for its patrons. What could be a more interesting sight than this?

"My name is James Williams, of Cloverdale, Missouri," he said kindly, so that they would not be too greatly

"You'll come with us, please," announced the plainclothes man. "'Pinky' McGuire's description fits you like

flannel washed in hot suds. A detective saw you on the Rubberneck up at Central Park and 'phoned down to

James Williams's wifehis bride of two weekslooked him in the face with a strange, soft radiance in her

And then as the GlaringatGotham car rolled away she turned and threw a kisshis wife threw a kissat

And then madness descended upon and occupied James Williams. He pushed his hat far upon the back of his

"My wife seems to think I am a burglar," he said, recklessly. "I never heard of her being crazy; therefore I

must be. And if I'm crazy, they can't do anything to me for killing you two fools in my madness."

Whereupon he resisted arrest so cheerfully and industriously that cops had to be whistled for, and afterwards

"McDoodle, the Pink, or Pinky the Brute, I forget which," was James Williams's answer. "But you can bet I'm

a burglar; don't leave that out. And you might add that it took five of 'em to pluck the Pink. I'd especially like

In an hour came Mrs. James Williams, with Uncle Thomas, of Madison Avenue, in a respectcompelling

motor car and proofs of the hero's innocencefor all the world like the third act of a drama backed by an

After the police had sternly reprimanded James Williams for imitating a copyrighted burglar and given him

as honourable a discharge as the department was capable of, Mrs. Williams rearrested him and swept him into

an angle of the stationhouse. James Williams regarded her with one eye. He always said that Donovan

closed the other while somebody was holding his good right hand. Never before had he given her a word of

"Dear," she interrupted, "listen. It was an hour's pain and trial to you. I did it for herI mean the girl who

spoke to me on the coach. I was so happy, Jimso happy with you that I didn't dare to refuse that happiness

to another. Jim, they were married only this morning those two; and I wanted him to get away. While they

were struggling with you I saw him slip from behind his tree and hurry across the park. That's all of it,

Thus does one sister of the plain gold band know another who stands in the enchanted light that shines but

once and briefly for each one. By rice and satin bows does mere man become aware of weddings. But bride

knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language

Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, allowed a look of mild interest and

surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half past nine in

company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy "Goodmorning, Pitcher," Maxwell dashed at his

desk as though he were intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of letters and telegrams

The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly

unstenographic. She forewent the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or lockets.

She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it

fitted her figure with fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the goldgreen wing of a

macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine

Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the

adjoining room, where her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once she moved

The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New York broker, moved by buzzing

"Wellwhat is it? Anything?" asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail lay like a bank of stage snow on his

crowded desk. His keen grey eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.

"Mr. Pitcher," she said to the confidential clerk, did Mr. Maxwell say anything yesterday about engaging

"He did," answered Pitcher. "He told me to get another one. I notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send

over a few samples this morning. It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing

"I will do the work as usual, then," said the young lady, "until some one comes to fill the place." And she

went to her desk at once and hung the black turban hat with the goldgreen macaw wing in its accustomed

He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a rush of business is handicapped

for the profession of anthropology. The poet sings of the "crowded hour of glorious life." The broker's hour is

not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear

And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the

desk telephone had a chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the

railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams.

The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face relaxed into something

On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and glaciers and volcanoes, and those

elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against

the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk

In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became suddenly aware of a highrolled fringe of

golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a string of

beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a selfpossessed young

"Position of stenographer," said Pitcher. "You told me yesterday to call them up and have one sent over this

"You are losing your mind, Pitcher," said Maxwell. "Why should I have given you any such instructions?

Miss Leslie has given perfect satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as long as she

chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher,

The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself independently against the office furniture as it

indignantly departed. Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the "old man" seemed to get

The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor they were pounding half a dozen stocks in

which Maxwell's customers were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as swift as

the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were imperilled, and the man was working like some

highgeared, delicate, strong machinestrung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate, never hesitating,

with the proper word and decision and act ready and prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and

mortgages, margins and securitieshere was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human

Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands full of telegrams and memoranda, with a fountain pen over his

right ear and his hair hanging in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the beloved

janitress Spring had turned on a little warmth through the waking registers of the earth.

And through the window came a wanderingperhaps a lostodoura delicate, sweet odour of lilac that

fixed the broker for a moment immovable. For this odour belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and hers

The odour brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of finance dwindled suddenly to a

"By George, I'll do it now," said Maxwell, half aloud. "I'll ask her now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago."

He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover. He charged upon the desk of the

She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank.

Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was

"Miss Leslie," he began hurriedly, "I have but a moment to spare. I want to say something in that moment.

Will you he my wife? I haven't had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you.

Talk quick, pleasethose fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific."

"Oh, what are you talking about?" exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him,

"Don't you understand?" said Maxwell, restively. "I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted

to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for the 'phone

The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome with amazement; then tears flowed from

her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the

"I know now," she said, softly. "It's this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for the

time. I was frightened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 8 o'clock in the

The policeman on the beat moved up the avenue impressively. The impressiveness was habitual and not for

show, for spectators were few. The time was barely 10 o'clock at night, but chilly gusts of wind with a taste

Trying doors as he went, twirling his club with many intricate and artful movements, turning now and then to

cast his watchful eye adown the pacific thoroughfare, the officer, with his stalwart form and slight swagger,

made a fine picture of a guardian of the peace. The vicinity was one that kept early hours. Now and then you

might see the lights of a cigar store or of an allnight lunch counter; but the majority of the doors belonged to

When about midway of a certain block the policeman suddenly slowed his walk. In the doorway of a

darkened hardware store a man leaned, with an unlighted cigar in his mouth. As the policeman walked up to

"It's all right, officer," he said, reassuringly. "I'm just waiting for a friend. It's an appointment made twenty

years ago. Sounds a little funny to you, doesn't it? Well, I'll explain if you'd like to make certain it's all

straight. About that long ago there used to be a restaurant where this store stands'Big Joe' Brady's

The man in the doorway struck a match and lit his cigar. The light showed a pale, squarejawed face with

keen eyes, and a little white scar near his right eyebrow. His scarfpin was a large diamond, oddly set.

"Twenty years ago tonight," said the man, "I dined here at 'Big Joe' Brady's with Jimmy Wells, my best

chum, and the finest chap in the world. He and I were raised here in New York, just like two brothers,

together. I was eighteen and Jimmy was twenty. The next morning I was to start for the West to make my

fortune. You couldn't have dragged Jimmy out of New York; he thought it was the only place on earth. Well,

we agreed that night that we would meet here again exactly twenty years from that date and time, no matter

what our conditions might be or from what distance we might have to come. We figured that in twenty years

each of us ought to have our destiny worked out and our fortunes made, whatever they were going to be."

"It sounds pretty interesting," said the policeman. "Rather a long time between meets, though, it seems to me.

"Well, yes, for a time we corresponded," said the other. "But after a year or two we lost track of each other.

You see, the West is a pretty big proposition, and I kept hustling around over it pretty lively. But I know

Jimmy will meet me here if he's alive, for he always was the truest, stanchest old chap in the world. He'll

never forget. I came a thousand miles to stand in this door tonight, and it's worth it if my old partner turns

The waiting man pulled out a handsome watch, the lids of it set with small diamonds.

"Three minutes to ten," he announced. "It was exactly ten o'clock when we parted here at the restaurant

"You bet! I hope Jimmy has done half as well. He was a kind of plodder, though, good fellow as he was. I've

had to compete with some of the sharpest wits going to get my pile. A man gets in a groove in New York. It

"I'll be on my way. Hope your friend comes around all right. Going to call time on him sharp?"

"I should say not!" said the other. "I'll give him half an hour at least. If Jimmy is alive on earth he'll be here

"Goodnight, sir," said the policeman, passing on along his beat, trying doors as he went.

There was now a fine, cold drizzle falling, and the wind had risen from its uncertain puffs into a steady blow.

The few foot passengers astir in that quarter hurried dismally and silently along with coat collars turned high

and pocketed hands. And in the door of the hardware store the man who had come a thousand miles to fill an

appointment, uncertain almost to absurdity, with the friend of his youth, smoked his cigar and waited.

About twenty minutes he waited, and then a tall man in a long overcoat, with collar turned up to his ears,

hurried across from the opposite side of the street. He went directly to the waiting man.

"Bless my heart!" exclaimed the new arrival, grasping both the other's hands with his own. "It's Bob, sure as

fate. I was certain I'd find you here if you were still in existence. Well, well, well! twenty years is a long

time. The old gone, Bob; I wish it had lasted, so we could have had another dinner there. How has the West

"Bully; it has given me everything I asked it for. You've changed lots, Jimmy. I never thought you were so

"Moderately. I have a position in one of the city departments. Come on, Bob; we'll go around to a place I

The two men started up the street, arm in arm. The man from the West, his egotism enlarged by success, was

beginning to outline the history of his career. The other, submerged in his overcoat, listened with interest.

At the corner stood a drug store, brilliant with electric lights. When they came into this glare each of them

"You're not Jimmy Wells," he snapped. "Twenty years is a long time, but not long enough to change a man's

"It sometimes changes a good man into a bad one, said the tall man. "You've been under arrest for ten

minutes, 'Silky' Bob. Chicago thinks you may have dropped over our way and wires us she wants to have a

chat with you. Going quietly, are you? That's sensible. Now, before we go on to the station here's a note I was

asked to hand you. You may read it here at the window. It's from Patrolman Wells."

The man from the West unfolded the little piece of paper handed him. His hand was steady when he began to

read, but it trembled a little by the time he had finished. The note was rather short.

~"Bob: I was at the appointed place on time. When you struck the match to light your cigar I saw it was the

face of the man wanted in Chicago. Somehow I couldn't do it myself, so I went around and got a plain clothes

Mr. Towers Chandler was pressing his evening suit in his hall bedroom. One iron was heating on a small gas

stove; the other was being pushed vigorously back and forth to make the desirable crease that would be seen

later on extending in straight lines from Mr. Chandler's patent leather shoes to the edge of his lowcut vest.

So much of the hero's toilet may be intrusted to our confidence. The remainder may be guessed by those

whom genteel poverty has driven to ignoble expedient. Our next view of him shall be as he descends the

steps of his lodginghouse immaculately and correctly clothed; calm, assured, handsomein appearance the

typical New York young clubman setting out, slightly bored, to inaugurate the pleasures of the evening.

Chandler's honorarium was $18 per week. He was employed in the office of an architect. He was twentytwo

years old; he considered architecture to be truly an art; and he honestly believedthough he would not have

dared to admit it in New Yorkthat the Flatiron Building was inferior to design to the great cathedral in

Out of each week's earnings Chandler set aside $1. At the end of each ten weeks with the extra capital thus

accumulated, he purchased one gentleman's evening from the bargain counter of stingy old Father Time. He

arrayed himself in the regalia of millionaires and presidents; he took himself to the quarter where life is

brightest and showiest, and there dined with taste and luxury. With ten dollars a man may, for a few hours,

play the wealthy idler to perfection. The sum is ample for a wellconsidered meal, a bottle bearing a

respectable label, commensurate tips, a smoke, cab fare and the ordinary etceteras.

This one delectable evening culled from each dull seventy was to Chandler a source of renascent bliss. To the

society bud comes but one debut; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened; but to

Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among ~bon

vivants~ under palms in the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the ~habitues~ of such a paradise and to

be looked upon by themwhat is a girl's first dance and shortsleeved tulle compared with this?

Up Broadway Chandler moved with the vespertine dress parade. For this evening he was an exhibit as well as

a gazer. For the next sixtynine evenings he would be dining in cheviot and worsted at dubious ~table

d'hotes~, at whirlwind lunch counters, on sandwiches and beer in his hallbedroom. He was willing to do

that, for he was a true son of the great city of razzledazzle, and to him one evening in the limelight made up

Chandler protracted his walk until the Forties began to intersect the great and glittering primrose way, for the

evening was yet young, and when one is of the ~beau monde~ only one day in seventy, one loves to protract

the pleasure. Eyes bright, sinister, curious, admiring, provocative, alluring were bent upon him, for his garb

At a certain corner he came to a standstill, proposing to himself the question of turning back toward the

showy and fashionable restaurant in which he usually dined on the evenings of his especial luxury. Just then a

girl scuddled lightly around the corner, slipped on a patch of icy snow and fell plump upon the sidewalk.

Chandler assisted her to her feet with instant and solicitous courtesy. The girl hobbled to the wall of the

"Only when I rest my weight upon it. I think I will be able to walk in a minute or two."

"If I can be of any further service," suggested the young man, "I will call a cab, or"

"Thank you," said the girl, softly but heartily. "I am sure you need not trouble yourself any further. It was so

awkward of me. And my shoe heels are horridly commonsense; I can't blame them at all."

Chandler looked at the girl and found her swiftly drawing his interest. She was pretty in a refined way; and

her eye was both merry and kind. She was inexpensively clothed in a plain black dress that suggested a sort

of uniform such as shop girls wear. Her glossy darkbrown hair showed its coils beneath a cheap hat of black

straw whose only ornament was a velvet ribbon and bow. She could have posed as a model for the

A sudden idea came into the head of the young architect. He would ask this girl to dine with him. Here was

the element that his splendid but solitary periodic feasts had lacked. His brief season of elegant luxury would

be doubly enjoyable if he could add to it a lady's society. This girl was a lady, he was sureher manner and

speech settled that. And in spite of her extremely plain attire he felt that he would be pleased to sit at table

These thoughts passed swiftly through his mind, and he decided to ask her. It was a breach of etiquette, of

course, but oftentimes wage earning girls waived formalities in matters of this kind. They were generally

shrewd judges of men; and thought better of their own judgment than they did of useless conventions. His ten

dollars, discreetly expended, would enable the two to dine very well indeed. The dinner would no doubt be a

wonderful experience thrown into the dull routine of the girl's life; and her lively appreciation of it would add

"I think," he said to her, with frank gravity, "that your foot needs a longer rest than you suppose. Now, I am

going to suggest a way in which you can give it that and at the same time do me a favour. I was on my way to

dine all by my lonely self when you came tumbling around the corner. You come with me and we'll have a

cozy dinner and a pleasant talk together, and by that time your game ankle will carry you home very nicely, I

The girl looked quickly up into Chandler's clear, pleasant countenance. Her eyes twinkled once very brightly,

"But we don't know each otherit wouldn't be right, would it?" she said, doubtfully.

"There is nothing wrong about it," said the young man, candidly. "I'll introduce myselfpermit meMr.

Towers Chandler. After our dinner, which I will try to make as pleasant as possible, I will bid you

"But, dear me!" said the girl, with a glance at Chandler's faultless attire. "In this old dress and hat!"

"Never mind that," said Chandler, cheerfully. "I'm sure you look more charming in them than any one we

"My ankle does hurt yet," admitted the girl, attempting a limping step. "I think I will accept your invitation,

"Come then, Miss Marian," said the young architect, gaily, but with perfect courtesy; "you will not have far

to walk. There is a very respectable and good restaurant in the next block. You will have to lean on my

armsoand walk slowly. It is lonely dining all by one's self. I'm just a little bit glad that you slipped on

When the two were established at a wellappointed table, with a promising waiter hovering in attendance,

Chandler began to experience the real joy that his regular outing always brought to him.

The restaurant was not so showy or pretentious as the one further down Broadway, which he always

preferred, but it was nearly so. The tables were well filled with Prosperouslooking diners, there was a good

orchestra, playing softly enough to make conversation a possible pleasure, and the cuisine and service were

beyond criticism. His companion, even in her cheap hat and dress, held herself with an air that added

distinction to the natural beauty of her face and figure. And it is certain that she looked at Chandler, with his

animated but selfpossessed manner and his kindling and frank blue eyes, with something not far from

Then it was that the Madness of Manhattan, the frenzy of Fuss and Feathers, the Bacillus of Brag, the

Provincial Plague of Pose seized upon Towers Chandler. He was on Broadway, surrounded by pomp and

style, and there were eyes to look at him. On the stage of that comedy he had assumed to play the onenight

part of a butterfly of fashion and an idler of means and taste. He was dressed for the part, and all his good

So he began to prate to Miss Marian of clubs, of teas, of golf and riding and kennels and cotillions and tours

abroad and threw out hints of a yacht lying at Larchmont. He could see that she was vastly impressed by this

vague talk, so he endorsed his pose by random insinuations concerning great wealth, and mentioned

familiarly a few names that are handled reverently by the proletariat. It was Chandler's short little day, and he

was wringing from it the best that could be had, as he saw it. And yet once or twice he saw the pure gold of

this girl shine through the mist that his egotism had raised between him and all objects.

"This way of living that you speak of," she said, "sounds so futile and purposeless. Haven't you any work to

"My dear Miss Marian," he exclaimed"work! Think of dressing every day for dinner, of making half a

dozen calls in an afternoonwith a policeman at every corner ready to jump into your auto and take you to

the station, if you get up any greater speed than a donkey cart's gait. We donothings are the hardest workers

The dinner was concluded, the waiter generously fed, and the two walked out to the corner where they had

"Thank you for a nice time," she said, frankly. "I must run home now. I liked the dinner very much, Mr.

He shook hands with her, smiling cordially, and said something about a game of bridge at his club. He

watched her for a moment, walking rather rapidly eastward, and then he found a cab to drive him slowly

In his chilly bedroom Chandler laid away his evening clothes for a sixtynine days' rest. He went about it

"That was a stunning girl," he said to himself. "She's all right, too, I'd be sworn, even if she does have to

work. Perhaps if I'd told her the truth instead of all that razzledazzle we mightbut, confound it! I had to

Thus spoke the brave who was born and reared in the wigwams of the tribe of the Manhattans.

The girl, after leaving her entertainer, sped swiftly crosstown until she arrived at a handsome and sedate

mansion two squares to the east, facing on that avenue which is the highway of Mammon and the auxiliary

gods. Here she entered hurriedly and ascended to a room where a handsome young lady in an elaborate house

"Oh, you madcap!" exclaimed the elder girl, when the other entered. "When will you quit frightening us this

way? It is two hours since you ran out in that rag of an old dress and Marie's hat. Mamma has been so

alarmed. She sent Louis in the auto to try to find you. You are a bad, thoughtless Puss."

"Don't scold, sister. I only ran down to Mme. Theo's to tell her to use mauve insertion instead of pink. My

costume and Marie's hat were just what I needed. Every one thought I was a shopgirl, I am sure."

"I know. I slipped on the sidewalk and turned my ankle. I could not walk, so I hobbled into a restaurant and

The two girls sat in the window seat, looking out at the lights and the stream of hurrying vehicles in the

"We will have to marry some day," she said dreamily" both of us. We have so much money that we will

not be allowed to disappoint the public. Do you want me to tell you the kind of a man I could love, Sis?"

"I could love a man with dark and kind blue eyes, who is gentle and respectful to poor girls, who is handsome

and good and does not try to flirt. But I could love him only if he had an ambition, an object, some work to

do in the world. I would not care how poor he was if I could help him build his way up. But, sister dear, the

kind of man we always meetthe man who lives an idle life between society and his clubsI could not love

a man like that, even if his eyes were blue and he were ever so kind to poor girls whom he met in the street."

It was neither the season nor the hour when the Park had frequenters; and it is likely that the young lady, who

was seated on one of the benches at the side of the walk, had merely obeyed a sudden impulse to sit for a

She rested there, pensive and still. A certain melancholy that touched her countenance must have been of

recent birth, for it had not yet altered the fine and youthful contours of her cheek, nor subdued the arch

A tall young man came striding through the park along the path near which she sat. Behind him tagged a boy

carrying a suitcase. At sight of the young lady, the man's face changed to red and back to pale again. He

watched her countenance as he drew nearer, with hope and anxiety mingled on his own. He passed within a

few yards of her, but he saw no evidence that she was aware of his presence or existence.

Some fifty yards further on he suddenly stopped and sat on a bench at one side. The boy dropped the

suitcase and stared at him with wondering, shrewd eyes. The young man took out his handkerchief and

wiped his brow. It was a good handkerchief, a good brow, and the young man was good to look at. He said to

"I want you to take a message to that young lady on that bench. Tell her I am on my way to the station, to

leave for San Francisco, where I shall join that Alaska moosehunting expedition. Tell her that, since she has

commanded me neither to speak nor to write to her, I take this means of making one last appeal to her sense

of justice, for the sake of what has been. Tell her that to condemn and discard one who has not deserved such

treatment, without giving him her reasons or a chance to explain is contrary to her nature as I believe it to be.

Tell her that I have thus, to a certain degree, disobeyed her injunctions, in the hope that she may yet be

The young man dropped a halfdollar into the boy's hand. The boy looked at him for a moment with bright,

canny eyes out of a dirty, intelligent face, and then set off at a run. He approached the lady on the bench a

little doubtfully, but unembarrassed. He touched the brim of the old plaid bicycle cap perched on the back of

"Lady," he said, "dat gent on de oder bench sent yer a song and dance by me. If yer don't know de guy, and

he's tryin' to do de Johnny act, say de word, and I'll call a cop in t'ree minutes. If yer does know him, and he's

"A song and dance!" she said, in a deliberate sweet voice that seemed to clothe her words in a diaphanous

garment of impalpable irony. "A new ideain the troubadour line, I suppose. Iused to know the

gentleman who sent you, so I think it will hardly be necessary to call the police. You may execute your song

and dance, but do not sing too loudly. It is a little early yet for openair vaudeville, and we might attract

"Awe," said the boy, with a shrug down the length of him, "yer know what I mean, lady. 'Tain't a turn, it's

wind. He told me to tell yer he's got his collars and cuffs in dat grip for a scoot clean out to 'Frisco. Den he's

goin' to shoot snowbirds in de Klondike. He says yer told him not to send 'round no more pink notes nor

come hangin' over de garden gate, and he takes dis means of puttin' yer wise. He says yer refereed him out

like a hasbeen, and never give him no chance to kick at de decision. He says yer swiped him, and never said

The slightly awakened interest in the young lady's eyes did not abate. Perhaps it was caused by either the

originality or the audacity of the snowbird hunter, in thus circumventing her express commands against the

ordinary modes of communication. She fixed her eye on a statue standing disconsolate in the dishevelled

"Tell the gentleman that I need not repeat to him a description of my ideals. He knows what they have been

and what they still are. So far as they touch on this case, absolute loyalty and truth are the ones paramount.

Tell him that I have studied my own heart as well as one can, and I know its weakness as well as I do its

needs. That is why I decline to hear his pleas, whatever they may be. I did not condemn him through hearsay

or doubtful evidence, and that is why I made no charge. But, since he persists in hearing what he already well

"Tell him that I entered the conservatory that evening from the rear, to cut a rose for my mother. Tell him I

saw him and Miss Ashburton beneath the pink oleander. The tableau was pretty, but the pose and

juxtaposition were too eloquent and evident to require explanation. I left the conservatory, and, at the same

time, the rose and my ideal. You may carry that song and dance to your impresario."

"Juxtapositionor you may call it propinquityor, if you like, being rather too near for one maintaining the

The gravel spun from beneath the boy's feet. He stood by the other bench. The man's eyes interrogated him,

"De lady says dat she's on to de fact dat gals is dead easy when a feller comes spielin' ghost stories and tryin'

to make up, and dat's why she won't listen to no softsoap. She says she caught yer dead to rights, huggin' a

bunch o' calico in de hothouse. She side stepped in to pull some posies and yer was squeezin' de oder gal

to beat de band. She says it looked cute, all right all right, but it made her sick. She says yer better git busy,

The young man gave a low whistle and his eyes flashed with a sudden thought. His hand flew to the inside

pocket of his coat, and drew out a handful of letters. Selecting one, he handed it to the boy, following it with

"Give that letter to the lady," he said, "and ask her to read it. Tell her that it should explain the situation. Tell

her that, if she had mingled a little trust with her conception of the ideal, much heartache might have been

avoided. Tell her that the loyalty she prizes so much has never wavered. Tell her I am waiting for an answer."

"De gent says he's had de skibunk put on him widout no cause. He says he's no bum guy; and, lady, yer read

DEAR DR. ARNOLD: I want to thank you for your most kind and opportune aid to my daughter last Friday

evening, when she was overcome by an attack of her old hearttrouble in the conservatory at Mrs. Waldron's

reception. Had you not been near to catch her as she fell and to render proper attention, we might have lost

her. I would be glad if you would call and undertake the treatment of her case. Gratefully yours, Robert

"Tell that guy on the other bench," she said, with a happy, tremulous laugh, "that his girl wants him."

Restless, shifting, fugacious as time itself is a certain vast bulk of the population of the red brick district of

the lower West Side. Homeless, they have a hundred homes. They flit from furnished room to furnished

room, transients forevertransients in abode, transients in heart and mind. They sing "Home, Sweet Home"

in ragtime; they carry their ~lares et penates~ in a bandbox; their vine is entwined about a picture hat; a

Hence the houses of this district, having had a thousand dwellers, should have a thousand tales to tell, mostly

dull ones, no doubt; but it would be strange if there could not be found a ghost or two in the wake of all these

One evening after dark a young man prowled among these crumbling red mansions, ringing their bells. At the

twelfth he rested his lean handbaggage upon the step and wiped the dust from his hatband and forehead. The

To the door of this, the twelfth house whose bell he had rung, came a housekeeper who made him think of an

unwholesome, surfeited worm that had eaten its nut to a hollow shell and now sought to fill the vacancy with

"Come in," said the housekeeper. Her voice came from her throat; her throat seemed lined with fur. "I have

The young man followed her up the stairs. A faint light from no particular source mitigated the shadows of

the halls. They trod noiselessly upon a stair carpet that its own loom would have forsworn. It seemed to have

become vegetable; to have degenerated in that rank, sunless air to lush lichen or spreading moss that grew in

patches to the staircase and was viscid under the foot like organic matter. At each turn of the stairs were

vacant niches in the wall. Perhaps plants had once been set within them. If so they had died in that foul and

tainted air. It may be that statues of the saints had stood there, but it was not difficult to conceive that imps

and devils had dragged them forth in the darkness and down to the unholy depths of some furnished pit

"This is the room," said the housekeeper, from her furry throat. "It's a nice room. It ain't often vacant. I had

some most elegant people in it last summerno trouble at all, and paid in advance to the minute. The water's

at the end of the hall. Sprowls and Mooney kept it three months. They done a vaudeville sketch. Miss B'retta

Sprowlsyou may have heard of herOh, that was just the stage names right there over the dresser is

where the marriage certificate hung, framed. The gas is here, and you see there is plenty of closet room. It's a

"They comes and goes. A good proportion of my lodgers is connected with the theatres. Yes, sir, this is the

theatrical district. Actor people never stays long anywhere. I get my share. Yes, they comes and they goes."

He engaged the room, paying for a week in advance. He was tired, he said, and would take possession at

once. He counted out the money. The room had been made ready, she said, even to towels and water. As the

housekeeper moved away he put, for the thousandth time, the question that he carried at the end of his

"A young girlMiss VashnerMiss Eloise Vashnerdo you remember such a one among your lodgers?

She would be singing on the stage, most likely. A fair girl, of medium height and slender, with reddish, gold

"No, I don't remember the name. Them stage people has names they change as often as their rooms. They

No. Always no. Five months of ceaseless interrogation and the inevitable negative. So much time spent by

day in questioning managers, agents, schools and choruses; by night among the audiences of theatres from

allstar casts down to music halls so low that he dreaded to find what he most hoped for. He who had loved

her best had tried to find her. He was sure that since her disappearance from home this great, watergirt city

held her somewhere, but it was like a monstrous quicksand, shifting its particles constantly, with no

The furnished room received its latest guest with a first glow of pseudohospitality, a hectic, haggard,

perfunctory welcome like the specious smile of a demirep. The sophistical comfort came in reflected gleams

from the decayed furniture, the raggcd brocade upholstery of a couch and two chairs, a footwide cheap pier

glass between the two windows, from one or two gilt picture frames and a brass bedstead in a corner.

The guest reclined, inert, upon a chair, while the room, confused in speech as though it were an apartment in

A polychromatic rug like some brilliantflowered rectangular, tropical islet lay surrounded by a billowy sea

of soiled matting. Upon the gaypapered wall were those pictures that pursue the homeless one from house to

houseThe Huguenot Lovers, The First Quarrel, The Wedding Breakfast, Psyche at the Fountain. The

mantel's chastely severe outline was ingloriously veiled behind some pert drapery drawn rakishly askew like

the sashes of the Amazonian ballet. Upon it was some desolate flotsam cast aside by the room's marooned

when a lucky sail had borne them to a fresh porta trifling vase or two, pictures of actresses, a medicine

One by one, as the characters of a cryptograph become explicit, the little signs left by the furnished room's

procession of guests developed a significance. The threadbare space in the rug in front of the dresser told that

lovely woman had marched in the throng. Tiny finger prints on the wall spoke of little prisoners trying to feel

their way to sun and air. A splattered stain, raying like the shadow of a bursting bomb, witnessed where a

hurled glass or bottle had splintered with its contents against the wall. Across the pier glass had been

scrawled with a diamond in staggering letters the name "Marie." It seemed that the succession of dwellers in

the furnished room had turned in furyperhaps tempted beyond forbearance by its garish coldnessand

wreaked upon it their passions. The furniture was chipped and bruised; the couch, distorted by bursting

springs, seemed a horrible monster that had been slain during the stress of some grotesque convulsion. Some

more potent upheaval had cloven a great slice from the marble mantel. Each plank in the floor owned its

particular cant and shriek as from a separate and individual agony. It seemed incredible that all this malice

and injury had been wrought upon the room by those who had called it for a time their home; and yet it may

have been the cheated home instinct surviving blindly, the resentful rage at false household gods that had

The young tenant in the chair allowed these thoughts to file, soft shod, through his mind, while there drifted

into the room furnished sounds and furnished scents. He heard in one room a tittering and incontinent, slack

laughter; in others the monologue of a scold, the rattling of dice, a lullaby, and one crying dully; above him a

banjo tinkled with spirit. Doors banged somewhere; the elevated trains roared intermittently; a cat yowled

miserably upon a back fence. And he breathed the breath of the housea dank savour rather than a smell

a cold, musty effluvium as from underground vaults mingled with the reeking exhalations of linoleum and

Then, suddenly, as he rested there, the room was filled with the strong, sweet odour of mignonette. It came as

upon a single buffet of wind with such sureness and fragrance and emphasis that it almost seemed a living

visitant. And the man cried aloud: "What, dear?" as if he had been called, and sprang up and faced about. The

rich odour clung to him and wrapped him around. He reached out his arms for it, all his senses for the time

confused and commingled. How could one be peremptorily called by an odour? Surely it must have been a

"She has been in this room," he cried, and he sprang to wrest from it a token, for he knew he would recognize

the smallest thing that had belonged to her or that she had touched. This enveloping scent of mignonette, the

The room had been but carelessly set in order. Scattered upon the flimsy dresser scarf were half a dozen

hairpinsthose discreet, indistinguishable friends of womankind, feminine of gender, infinite of mood and

uncommunicative of tense. These he ignored, conscious of their triumphant lack of identity. Ransacking the

drawers of the dresser he came upon a discarded, tiny, ragged handkerchief. He pressed it to his face. It was

racy and insolent with heliotrope; he hurled it to the floor. In another drawer he found odd buttons, a theatre

programme, a pawnbroker's card, two lost marshmallows, a book on the divination of dreams. In the last was

a woman's black satin hair bow, which halted him, poised between ice and fire. But the black satin hairbow

And then he traversed the room like a hound on the scent, skimming the walls, considering the corners of the

bulging matting on his hands and knees, rummaging mantel and tables, the curtains and hangngs, the drunken

cabinet in the corner, for a visible sign, unable to perceive that she was there beside, around, against, within,

above him, clinging to him, wooing him, calling him so poignantly through the finer senses that even his

grosser ones became cognisant of the call. Once again he answered loudly: "Yes, dear!" and turned,

wildeyed, to gaze on vacancy, for he could not yet discern form and colour and love and outstretched arms

in the odour of mnignonette. Oh, God! whence that odour, and since when have odours had a voice to call?

He burrowed in crevices and corners, and found corks and cigarettes. These he passed in passive contempt.

But once he found in a fold of the matting a halfsmoked cigar, and this he ground beneath his heel with a

green and trenchant oath. He sifted the room from end to end. He found dreary and ignoble small records of

many a peripatetic tenant; but of her whom he sought, and who may have lodged there, and whose spirit

He ran from the haunted room downstairs and to a door that showed a crack of light. She came out to his

"Will you tell me, madam," he besought her, "who occupied the room I have before I came?"

"Yes, sir. I can tell you again. 'Twas Sprowls and Mooney, as I said. Miss B'retta Sprowls it was in the

theatres, but Missis Mooney she was. My house is well known for respectability. The marriage certificate

Why, blackhaired, sir, short, and stout, with a comical face. They left a week ago Tuesday."

"Why, there was a single gentleman connected with the draying business. He left owing me a week. Before

him was Missis Crowder and her two children, that stayed four months; and back of them was old Mr. Doyle,

whose sons paid for him. He kept the room six months. That goes back a year, sir, and further I do not

He thanked her and crept back to his room. The room was dead. The essence that had vivified it was gone.

The perfume of mignonette had departed. In its place was the old, stale odour of mouldy house furniture, of

The ebbing of his hope drained his faith. He sat staring at the yellow, singing gaslight. Soon he walked to the

bed and began to tear the sheets into strips. With the blade of his knife he drove them tightly into every

crevice around windows and door. When all was snug and taut he turned out the light, turned the gas full on

It was Mrs. McCool's night to go with the can for beer. So she fetched it and sat with Mrs. Purdy in one of

those subterranean retreats where housekeepers foregather and the worm dieth seldom.

"I rented out my third floor, back, this evening," said Mrs. Purdy, across a fine circle of foam. "A young man

"Now, did ye, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am?" said Mrs. McCool, with intense admiration. "You do be a wonder for

rentin' rooms of that kind. And did ye tell him, then?" she concluded in a husky whisper, laden with mystery.

"Rooms," said Mrs. Purdy, in her furriest tones, "are furnished for to rent. I did not tell him, Mrs. McCool."

"'Tis right ye are, ma'am; 'tis by renting rooms we kape alive. Ye have the rale sense for business, ma'am.

There be many people will rayjict the rentin' of a room if they be tould a suicide has been after dyin' in the

"Yis, ma'am; 'tis true. 'Tis just one wake ago this day I helped ye lay out the third floor, back. A pretty slip of

a colleen she was to be killin' herself wid the gasa swate little face she had, Mrs. Purdy, ma'am."

"She'd abeen called handsome, as you say," said Mrs. Purdy, assenting but critical, "but for that mole she

If you do not know Bogle's Chop House and Family Restaurant it is your loss. For if you are one of the

fortunate ones who dine expensively you should be interested to know how the other half consumes

provisions. And if you belong to the half to whom waiters' checks are things of moment, you should know

Bogle's is situated in that highway of ~bourgeoisie~, that boulevard of BrownJonesandRobinson, Eighth

Avenue. There are two rows of tables in the room, six in each row. On each table is a caster stand,

containing cruets of condiments and seasons. From the pepper cruet you may shake a cloud of something

tasteless and melancholy, like volcanic dust. From the salt cruet you may expect nothing. Though a man

should extract a sanguinary stream from the pallid turnip, yet wili his prowess be balked when he comes to

wrest salt from Bogle's cruets. Also upon each table stands the counterfeit of that benign sauce made "from

At the cashier's desk sits Bogle, cold, sordid, slow, smouldering, and takes your money. Behind a mountain

of toothpicks he makes your change, files your check, and ejects at you, like a toad, a word about the weather.

Beyond a corroboration of his meteorological statement you would better not venture. You are not Bogle's

friend; you are a fed, transient customer, and you and he may not meet again until the blowing of Gabriel's

dinner horn. So take your change and goto the devil if you like. There you have Bogle's sentiments.

The needs of Bogle's customers were supplied by two waitresses and a Voice. One of the waitresses was

named Aileen. She was tall, beautiful, lively, gracious and learned in persiflage. Her other name? There was

The name of the other waitress was Tildy. Why do you suggest Matilda? Please listen this

timeTildyTildy. Tildy was dumpy, plainfaced, and too anxious to please to please. Repeat the last

clause to yourself once or twice, and make the acquaintance of the duplicate infinite.

The Voice at Bogle's was invisible. It came from the kitchen, and did not shine in the way of originality. It

was a heathen Voice, and contented itself with vain repetitions of exclamations emitted by the waitresses

Will it tire you to be told again that Aileen was beautiful? Had she donned a few hundred dollars' worth of

clothes and joined the Easter parade, and had you seen her, you would have hastened to say so yourself.

The customers at Bogle's were her slaves. Six tables full she could wait upon at once. They who were in a

hurry restrained their impatience for the joy of merely gazing upon her swiftly moving, graceful figure. They

who had finished eating ate more that they might continue in the light of her smiles. Every man thereand

Aileen could successfully exchange repartee against a dozen at once. And every smile that she sent forth

lodged, like pellets from a scattergun, in as many hearts. And all this while she would be performing

astounding feats with orders of pork and beans, pot roasts, hamand, sausageandthewheats, and any

quantity of things on the iron and in the pan and straight up and on the side. With all this feasting and flirting

and merry exchange of wit Bogle's came mighty near being a salon, with Aileen for its Madame Recamier.

If the transients were entranced by the fascinating Aileen, the regulars were her adorers. There was much

rivalry among many of the steady customers. Aileen could have had an engagement every evening. At least

twice a week some one took her to a theatre or to a dance. One stout gentleman whom she and Tildy had

privately christened "The Hog" presented her with a turquoise ring. Another one known as "Fresby," who

rode on the Traction Company's repair wagon, was going to give her a poodle as soon as his brother got the

hauling contract in the Ninth. And the man who always ate spareribs and spinach and said he was a stock

"I don't know where this place is," said Aileen while talking it over with Tildy, "but the weddingring's got to

be on before I put a stitch into a travelling dressain't that right? Well, I guess!"

In steaming, chattering, cabbagescented Bogle's there was almost a heart tragedy. Tildy with the blunt nose,

the haycoloured hair, the freckled skin, the bago'meal figure, had never had an admirer. Not a man

followed her with his eyes when she went to and fro in the restaurant save now and then when they glared

with the beasthunger for food. None of them bantered her gaily to coquettish interchanges of wit. None of

them loudly "jollied" her of mornings as they did Aileen, accusing her, when the eggs were slow in coming,

of late hours in the company of envied swains. No one had ever given her a turquoise ring or invited her upon

Tildy was a good waitress, and the men tolerated her. They who sat at her tables spoke to her briefly. with

quotations from the bill of fare; and then raised their voices in honeyed and otherwiseflavoured accents,

eloquently addressed to the fair Aileen. They writhed in their chairs to gaze around and over the impending

form of Tildy, that Aileen's pulchritude might season and make ambrosia of their bacon and eggs.

And Tildy was content to be the unwooed drudge if Aileen could receive the flattery and the homage. The

blunt nose was loyal to the short Grecian. She was Aileen's friend; and she was glad to see her rule hearts and

wean the attention of men from smoking potpie and lemon meringue. But deep below our freckles and

haycoloured hair the unhandsomest of us dream of a prince or a princess, not vicarious, but coming to us

There was a morning when Aileen tripped in to work with a slightly bruised eye; and Tildy's solicitude was

"Fresh guy," explained Aileen, "last night as I was going home at Twentythird and Sixth. Sashayed up, so

he did, and made a break. I turned him down, cold, and he made a sneak; but followed me down to

Eighteenth, and tried his hot air again. Gee! but I slapped him a good one, side of the face. Then he give me

that eye. Does it look real awful, Til? I should hate that Mr. Nicholson should see it when he comes in for his

Tildy listened to the adventure with breathless admiration. No man had ever tried to follow her. She was safe

abroad at any hour of the twentyfour. What bliss it must have been to have had a man follow one and black

Among the customers at Bogle's was a young man named Seeders, who worked in a laundry office. Mr.

Seeders was thin and had light hair, and appeared to have been recently roughdried and starched. He was

too diffident to aspire to Aileen's notice; so he usually sat at one of Tildy's tables, where he devoted himself

One day when Mr. Seeders came in to dinner he had been drinking beer. There were only two or three

customers in the restaurant. When Mr. Seeders had finished his weakfish he got up, put his arm around

Tildy's waist, kissed her loudly and impudently, walked out upon the street, snapped his fingers in the

direction of the laundry, and hied himself to play pennies in the slot machines at the Amusement Arcade.

For a few moments Tildy stood petrified. Then she was aware of Aileen shaking at her an arch forefinger, and

"Why, Til, you naughty girl! Ain't you getting to be awful, Miss Slyboots! First thing I know you'll be

Another thing dawned upon Tildy's recovering wits. In a moment she had advanced from a hopeless, lowly

admirer to be an Evesister of the potent Aileen. She herself was now a mancharmer, a mark for Cupid, a

Sabine who must be coy when the Romans were at their banquet boards. Man had found her waist achievable

and her lips desirable. The sudden and amatory Seeders had, as it were, performed for her a miraculous piece

of oneday laundry work. He had taken the sackcloth of her uncomeliness, had washed, dried, starched and

ironed it, and returned it to her sheer embroidered lawnthe robe of Venus herself.

The freckles on Tildy's cheeks merged into a rosy flush. Now both Circe and Psyche peeped from her

brightened eyes. Not even Aileen herself had been publicly embraced and kissed in the restaurant.

Tildy could not keep the delightful secret. When trade was slack she went and stood at Bogle's desk. Her eyes

"A gentleman insulted me today," she said. "He hugged me around the waist and kissed me."

"That so?" said Bogle, cracking open his business armour. "After this week you get a dollar a week more."

At the next regular meal when Tildy set food before customers with whom she had acquaintance she said to

"A gentleman insulted me today in the restaurant. He put his arm around my waist and kissed me."

The diners accepted the revelation in various wayssome incredulously, some with congratulations; others

turned upon her the stream of badinage that had hitherto been directed at Aileen alone. And Tildy's heart

swelled in her bosom, for she saw at last the towers of Romance rise above the horizon of the grey plain in

For two days Mr. Seeders came not again. During that time Tildy established herself firmly as a woman to be

wooed. She bought ribbons, and arranged her hair like Aileen's, and tightened her waist two inches. She had a

thrilling but delightful fear that Mr. Seeders would rush in suddenly and shoot her with a pistol. He must have

Even Aileen had not been shot at with a pistol. And then Tildy rather hoped that he would not shoot at her,

for she was always loyal to Aileen; and she did not want to overshadow her friend.

At 4 o'clock on the afternoon of the third day Mr. Seeders came in. There were no customers at the tables. At

the back end of the restaurant Tildy was refilling the mustard pots and Aileen was quartering pies. Mr.

Tildy looked up and saw him, gasped, and pressed the mustard spoon against her heart. A red hairbow was

in her hair; she wore Venus's Eighth Avenue badge, the blue bead necklace with the swinging silver symbolic

Mr. Seeders was flushed and embarrassed. He plunged one hand into his hip pocket and the other into a fresh

"Miss Tildy," said he, "I want to apologise for what I done the other evenin'. Tell you the truth, I was pretty

well tanked up or I wouldn't of done it. I wouldn't do no lady that away when I was sober. So I hope, Miss

Tildy, you'll accept my 'pology, and believe that I wouldn't of done it if I'd known what I was doin' and hadn't

With this handsome plea Mr. Seeders backed away, and departed, feeling that reparation had been made.

But behind the convenient screen Tildy had thrown herself flat upon a table among the butter chips and the

coffee cups, and was sobbing her heart outout and back again to the grey plain wherein travel they with

blunt noses and haycoloured hair. From her knot she had torn the red hairbow and cast it upon the floor.

Seeders she despised utterly; she had but taken his kiss as that of a pioneer and prophetic prince who might

have set the clocks going and the pages to running in fairyland. But the kiss had been maudlin and unmeant;

the court had not stirred at the false alarm; she must forevermore remain the Sleeping Beauty.

Yet not all was lost. Aileen's arm was around her; and Tildy's red hand groped among the butter chips till it

"Don't you fret, Til," said Aileen, who did not understand entirely. "That turnipfaced little clothespin of a

Seeders ain't worth it. He ain't anything of a gentleman or he wouldn't ever of apologised."