Sixes and Sevens ..................................................................................................................................................1

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

I THE LAST OF THE TROUBADOURS ...............................................................................................1

II THE SLEUTHS ....................................................................................................................................8

III WITCHES' LOAVES.......................................................................................................................12

IV THE PRIDE OF THE CITIES ..........................................................................................................14

V HOLDING UP A TRAIN..................................................................................................................17

VI ULYSSES AND THE DOGMAN ....................................................................................................23

VII THE CHAMPION OF THE WEATHER.......................................................................................27

VIII MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN ..........................................................................................30

IX AT ARMS WITH MORPHEUS......................................................................................................33

X A GHOST OF A CHANCE ...............................................................................................................36

XI JIMMY HAYES AND MURIEL.....................................................................................................41

XII THE DOOR OF UNREST..............................................................................................................44

XIII THE DUPLICITY OF HARGRAVES..........................................................................................50

XIV LET ME FEEL YOUR PULSE .....................................................................................................58

XV OCTOBER AND JUNE ..................................................................................................................66

XVI THE CHURCH WITH AN OVERSHOTWHEEL.....................................................................68

XVII NEW YORK BY CAMP FIRE LIGHT.......................................................................................74

XVIII THE ADVENTURES OF SHAMROCK JOLNES....................................................................77

XIX THE LADY HIGHER UP.............................................................................................................81

XX THE GREATER CONEY ...............................................................................................................83

XXI LAW AND ORDER......................................................................................................................85

XXII TRANSFORMATION OF MARTIN BURNEY .........................................................................94

XXIII THE CALIPH AND THE CAD ..................................................................................................97

XXIV THE DIAMOND OF KALI ........................................................................................................99

XXV THE DAY WE CELEBRATE...................................................................................................103

Inexorably Sam Galloway saddled his pony. He was going away from the Rancho Altito at the end of a

threemonths' visit. It is not to be expected that a guest should put up with wheat coffee and biscuits

yellowstreaked with saleratus for longer than that. Nick Napoleon, the big Negro man cook, had never been

able to make good biscuits: Once before, when Nick was cooking at the Willow Ranch, Sam had been forced

On Sam's face was an expression of sorrow, deepened with regret and slightly tempered by the patient

forgiveness of a connoisseur who cannot be understood. But very firmly and inexorably he buckled his

saddlecinches, looped his stakerope and hung it to his saddlehorn, tied his slicker and coat on the cantle,

and looped his quirt on his right wrist. The Merrydews (householders of the Rancho Altito), men, women,

children, and servants, vassals, visitors, employes, dogs, and casual callers were grouped in the "gallery" of

the ranch house, all with faces set to the tune of melancholy and grief. For, as the coming of Sam Galloway to

any ranch, camp, or cabin between the rivers Frio or Bravo del Norte aroused joy, so his departure caused

And then, during absolute silence, except for the bumping of a hind elbow of a hound dog as he pursued a

wicked flea, Sam tenderly and carefully tied his guitar across his saddle on top of his slicker and coat. The

guitar was in a green duck bag; and if you catch the significance of it, it explains Sam.

Sam Galloway was the Last of the Troubadours. Of course you know about the troubadours. The

encyclopaedia says they flourished between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries. What they flourished

doesn't seem clear you may be pretty sure it wasn't a sword: maybe it was a fiddlebow, or a forkful of

Sam put on a martyred expression as he mounted his pony. But the expression on his face was hilarious

compared with the one on his pony's. You see, a pony gets to know his rider mighty well, and it is not

unlikely that cow ponies in pastures and at hitching racks had often guyed Sam's pony for being ridden by a

guitar player instead of by a rollicking, cussing, allwool cowboy. No man is a hero to his saddlehorse. And

even an escalator in a department store might be excused for tripping up a troubadour.

Oh, I know I'm one; and so are you. You remember the stories you memorize and the card tricks you study

and that little piece on the piano how does it go? titumtetumtitum those little Arabian Ten

Minute Entertainments that you furnish when you go up to call on your rich Aunt Jane. You should know that

_omnae personae in tres partes divisae sunt_. Namely: Brons, Troubadours, and Workers. Barons have no

inclination to read such folderol as this; and Workers have no time: so I know you must be a Troubadour, and

that you will understand Sam Galloway. Whether we sing, act, dance, write, lecture, or paint, we are only

The pony with the Dante Alighieri face, guided by the pressure of Sam's knees, bore that wandering minstrel

sixteen miles southeastward. Nature was in her most benignant mood. League after league of delicate, sweet

flowerets made fragrant the 'gently undulating prairie. The east wind tempered the spring warmth;

woolwhite clouds flying in from the Mexican Gull hindered the direct rays of the April sun. Sam sang songs

as he rode. Under his pony's bridle he had tucked some sprigs of chaparral to keep away the deer flies. Thus

crowned, the longfaced quadruped looked more Dantesque than before, and, judging by his countenance,

Straight as topography permitted, Sam rode to, the sheep ranch of old man Ellison. A visit to a sheep ranch

seemed to him desirable just then. There had been too many people, too much noise, argument, competition,

confusion, at Rancho Altito. He had never conferred upon old man Ellison the favour of sojourning at his

ranch; but he knew he would be welcome. The troubadour is his own passport everywhere. The Workers in

the castle let down the drawbridge to him, and the Baron sets him at his left hand at table in the banquet hall.

There ladies smile upon him and applaud his songs and stories, while the Workers bring boars' heads and

flagons. If the Baron nods once or twice in his carved oaken chair, he does not do it maliciously.

Old man Ellison welcomed the troubadour flatteringly. He had often heard praises of Sam Galloway from

other ranchmen who had been complimented by his visits, but had never aspired to such an honour for his

own humble barony. I say barony because old man Ellison was the Last of the Barons. Of course, Mr.

BulwerLytton lived too early to know him, or he wouldn't have conferred that sobriquet upon Warwick. In

life it is the duty and the function of the Baron to provide work for the Workers and lodging and shelter for

Old man Ellison was a shrunken old man, with a short, yellowwhite beard and a face lined and seamed by

pastandgone smiles. His ranch was a little tworoom box house in a grove of hackberry trees in the

lonesomest part of the sheep country. His household consisted of a Kiowa Indian man cook, four hounds, a

pet sheep, and a halftamed coyote chained to a fencepost. He owned 3,000 sheep, which he ran on two

sections of leased land and many thousands of acres neither leased nor owned. Three or four times a year

some one who spoke his language would ride up to his gate and exchange a few bald ideas with him. Those

were redletter days to old man Ellison. Then in what illuminated, embossed, and gorgeously decorated

capitals must have been written the day on which a troubadour a troubadour who, according to the

encyclopaedia, should have flourished between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries drew rein at the

Old man Ellison's smiles came back and filled his wrinkles when he saw Sam. He hurried out of the house in

"Hello, Mr. Ellison," called Sam cheerfully. "Thought I'd drop over and see you a while. Notice you've had

fine rains on your range. They ought to make good grazing for your spring lambs."

"Well, well, well," said old man Ellison. "I'm mighty glad to see you, Sam. I never thought you'd take the

trouble to ride over to as outoftheway an old ranch as this. But you're mighty welcome. 'Light. I've got a

"Oats for him?" said Sam, derisively. "No, siree. He's as fat as a pig now on grass. He don't get rode enough

to keep him in condition. I'll just turn him in the horse pasture with a drag rope on if you don't mind."

I am positive that never during the eleventh and thirteenth centuries did Baron, Troubadour, and Worker

amalgamate as harmoniously as their parallels did that evening at old man Ellison's sheep ranch. The Kiowa's

biscuits were light and tasty and his coffee strong. Ineradicable hospitality and appreciation glowed on old

man Ellison's weathertanned face. As for the troubadour, he said to himself that he had stumbled upon

pleasant places indeed. A wellcooked, abundant meal, a host whom his lightest attempt to entertain seemed

to delight far beyond the merits of the exertion, and the reposeful atmosphere that his sensitive soul at that

time craved united to confer upon him a satisfaction and luxurious ease that he had seldom found on his tours

After the delectable supper, Sam untied the green duck bag and took out his guitar. Not by way of payment,

mind you neither Sam Galloway nor any other of the true troubadours are lineal descendants of the late

Tommy Tucker. You have read of Tommy Tucker in the works of the esteemed but often obscure Mother

Goose. Tommy Tucker sang for his supper. No true troubadour would do that. He would have his supper, and

Sam Galloway's repertoire comprised about fifty funny stories and between thirty and forty songs. He by no

means stopped there. He could talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And he never

sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit. I am strongly disposed to linger with him,

for I am drawing a portrait as well as a blunt pencil and a tattered thesaurus will allow.

I wish you could have seen him: he was small and tough and inactive beyond the power of imagination to

conceive. He wore an ultramarineblue woollen shirt laced down the front with a pearlgray, exaggerated

sort of shoestring, indestructible brown duck clothes, inevitable highheeled boots with Mexican spurs, and a

That evening Sam and old man Ellison dragged their chairs out under the hackberry trees. They lighted

cigarettes; and the troubadour gaily touched his guitar. Many of the songs he sang were the weird,

melancholy, minorkeyed _canciones_ that he had learned from the Mexican sheep herders and _vaqueros_.

One, in particular, charmed and soothed the soul of the lonely baron. It was a favourite song of the sheep

herders, beginning: "_Huile, huile, palomita_," which being translated means, "Fly, fly, little dove." Sam sang

The troubadour stayed on at the old man's ranch. There was peace and quiet and appreciation there, such as

he had not found in the noisy camps of the cattle kings. No audience in the world could have crowned the

work of poet, musician, or artist with more worshipful and unflagging approval than that bestowed upon his

efforts by old man Ellison. No visit by a royal personage to a humble woodchopper or peasant could have

On a cool, canvascovered cot in the shade of the hackberry trees Sam Galloway passed the greater part of

his time. There he rolled his brown paper cigarettes, read such tedious literature as the ranch afforded, and

added to his repertoire of improvisations that he played so expertly on his guitar. To him, as a slave

ministering to a great lord, the Kiowa brought cool water from the red jar hanging under the brush shelter,

and food when he called for it. The prairie zephyrs fanned him mildly; mockingbirds at morn and eve

competed with but scarce equalled the sweet melodies of his lyre; a perfumed stillness seemed to fill all his

world. While old man Ellison was pottering among his flocks of sheep on his mileanhour pony, and while

the Kiowa took his siesta in the burning sunshine at the end of the kitchen, Sam would lie on his cot thinking

what a happy world he lived in, and how kind it is to the ones whose mission in life it is to give entertainment

and pleasure. Here he had food and lodging as good as he had ever longed for; absolute immunity from care

or exertion or strife; an endless welcome, and a host whose delight at the sixteenth repetition of a song or a

story was as keen as at its initial giving. Was there ever a troubadour of old who struck upon as royal a castle

in his wanderings? While he lay thus, meditating upon his blessings, little brown cottontails would shyly

'frolic through the yard; a covey of whitetopknotted blue quail would run past, in single file, twenty yards

away; a _paisano_ bird, out hunting for tarantulas, would hop upon the fence and salute him with sweeping

flourishes of its' long tail. In the eightyacre horse pasture the pony with the Dantesque face grew fat and

Old man Ellison was his own _vaciero_. That means that he supplied his sheep camps with wood, water, and

rations by his own labours instead of hiring a _vaciero_. On small ranches it is often done.

One morning he started for the camp of Incarnacion Felipe de la Cruz y Monte Piedras (one of his sheep

herders) with the week's usual rations of brown beans, coffee, meal, and sugar. Two miles away on the trail

from old Fort Ewing he met, face to face, a terrible being called King James, mounted on a fiery, prancing,

King James's real name was James King; but people reversed it because it seemed to fit him better, and also

because it seemed to please his majesty. King James was the biggest cattleman between the Alamo plaza in

San Antone and Bill Hopper's saloon in Brownsville. Also he was the loudest and most offensive bully and

braggart and bad man in southwest Texas. And he always made good whenever he bragged; and the more

noise he made the more dangerous he was. In the story papers it is always the quiet, mildmannered man

with light blue eyes and a low voice who turns out to be really dangerous; but in real life and in this story

such is not the case. Give me my choice between assaulting a large, loudmouthed roughhouser and an

inoffensive stranger with blue eyes sitting quietly in a corner, and you will see something doing in the corner

King James, as I intended to say earlier, was a fierce, twohundredpound sunburned, blond man, as pink as

an October strawberry, and with two horizontal slits under shaggy red eyebrows for eyes. On that day he

wore a flannel shirt that was tancoloured, with the exception of certain large areas which were darkened by

transudations due to the summer sun. There seemed to be other clothing and garnishings about him, such as

brown duck trousers stuffed into immense boots, and red handkerchiefs and revolvers; and a shotgun laid

across his saddle and a leather belt with millions of cartridges shining in it but your mind skidded off such

accessories; what held your gaze was just the two little horizontal slits that he used for eyes.

This was the man that old man Ellison met on the trail; and when you count up in the baron's favour that he

was sixtyfive and weighed ninetyeight pounds and had heard of King James's record and that he (the

baron) had a hankering for the _vita simplex_ and had no gun with him and wouldn't have' used it if he had,

you can't censure him if I tell you that the smiles with which the troubadour had filled his wrinkles went out

of them and left them plain wrinkles again. But he was not the kind of baron that flies from danger. He reined

King James expressed himself with royal directness. "You're that old snoozer that's running sheep on this

range, ain't you?" said he. "What right have you got to do it? Do you own any land, or lease any?"

"Not by no means you haven't," said King James. "Your lease expired yesterday; and I had a man at the land

office on the minute to take it up. You don't control a foot of grass in Texas. You sheep men have got to git.

Your time's up. It's a cattle country, and there ain't any room in it for snoozers. This range you've got your

sheep on is mine. I'm putting up a wire fence, forty by sixty miles; and if there's a sheep inside of it when it's

done it'll be a dead one. I'll give you a week to move yours away. If they ain't gone by then, I'll send six men

over here with Winchesters to make mutton out of the whole lot. And if I find you here at the same time this

Old man Ellison rode on to the camp of Incarnacion. He sighed many times, and the wrinkles in his face grew

deeper. Rumours that the old order was about to change had reached him before. The end of Free Grass was

in sight. Other troubles, too, had been accumulating upon his shoulders. His flocks were decreasing instead of

growing; the price of wool was declining at every clip; even Bradshaw, the storekeeper at Frio City, at whose

store he bought his ranch supplies, was dunning him for his last six months' bill and threatening to cut him

off. And so this last greatest calamity suddenly dealt out to him by the terrible King James was a crusher.

When the old man got back to the ranch at sunset he found Sam Galloway lying on his cot, propped against a

"Hello, Uncle Ben," the troubadour called, cheerfully. "You rolled in early this evening. I been trying a new

twist on the Spanish Fandango today. I just about got it. Here's how she goes listen."

"That's fine, that's mighty fine," said old man Ellison, sitting on the kitchen step and rubbing his white,

Scotchterrier whiskers. "I reckon you've got all the musicians beat east and west, Sam, as far as the roads

"Oh, I don't know," said Sam, reflectively. "But I certainly do get there on variations. I guess I can handle

anything in five flats about as well as any of 'em. But you look kind of fagged out, Uncle Ben ain't you

"Little tired; that's all, Sam. If you ain't played yourself out, let's have that Mexican piece that starts off with:

'_Huile, huile, palomita_.' It seems that that song always kind of soothes and comforts me after I've been

"Why, _seguramente_, _senor_," said Sam. "I'll hit her up for you as often as you like. And before I forget

about it, Uncle Ben, you want to jerk Bradshaw up about them last hams he sent us. They're just a little bit

A man sixtyfive years old, living on a sheep ranch and beset by a complication of disasters, cannot

successfully and continuously dissemble. Moreover, a troubadour has eyes quick to see unhappiness in others

around him because it disturbs his own ease. So, on the next day, Sam again questioned the old man about

his air of sadness and abstraction. Then old man Ellison told him the story of King James's threats and orders

and that pale melancholy and red ruin appeared to have marked him for their own. The troubadour took the

On the third day of the seven days of grace allowed him by the autocrat of the range, old man Ellison drove

his buckboard to Frio City to fetch some necessary supplies for the ranch. Bradshaw was hard but not

implacable. He divided the old man's order by two, and let him have a little more time. One article secured

Five miles out of Frio City on his way home the old man met King James riding into town. His majesty could

never look anything but fierce and menacing, but today his slits of eyes appeared to be a little wider than

"Good day," said the king, gruffly. "I've been wanting to see you. I hear it said by a cowman from Sandy

yesterday that you was from Jackson County, Mississippi, originally. I want to know if that's a fact."

"This man says," went on King James, "that he thinks you was related to the Jackson County Reeveses. Was

"She was my aunt," said King James. "I run away from home when I was sixteen. Now, let's retalk over

some things that we discussed a few days ago. They call me a bad man; and they're only half right. There's

plenty of room in my pasture for your bunch of sheep and their increase for a long time to come. Aunt

Caroline used to cut out sheep in cake dough and bake 'em for me. You keep your sheep where they are, and

The old man related his woes in detail, dignifiedly, with restraint and candour.

"She used to smuggle extra grub into my school basket I'm speaking of Aunt Caroline," said King James.

"I'm going over to Frio City today, and I'll ride back by your ranch tomorrow. I'll draw $2,000 out of the

bank there and bring it over to you; and I'll tell Bradshaw to let you have everything you want on credit. You

are bound to have heard the old saying at home, that the Jackson County Reeveses and Kings would stick

closer by each other than chestnut burrs. Well, I'm a King yet whenever I run a cross a Reeves. So you look

out for me along about sundown tomorrow, and don't worry about nothing. Shouldn't wonder if the dry spell

Old man Ellison drove happily ranchward. Once more the smiles filled out his wrinkles. Very suddenly, by

the magic of kinship and the good that lies somewhere in all hearts, his troubles had been removed.

On reaching the ranch he found that Sam Galloway was not there. His guitar hung by its buckskin string to a

"Sam, he catch pony," said he, "and say he ride to Frio City. What for no can damn sabe. Say he come back

As the first stars came out the troubadour rode back to his haven. He pastured his pony and went into the

Old man Ellison sat at the kitchen table, having a tin cup of beforesupper coffee. He looked contented and

"Hello, Sam," said he. "I'm darned glad to see ye back. I don't know how I managed to get along on this

ranch, anyhow, before ye dropped in to cheer things up. I'll bet ye've been skylarking around with some of

And then old man Ellison took another look at Sam's face and saw that the minstrel had changed the man of

And while Sam is unbuckling from his waist old man Ellison's sixshooter, that the latter had left behind

when he drove to town, we may well pause to remark that anywhere and whenever a troubadour lays down

the guitar and takes up the sword trouble is sure to follow. It is not the expert thrust of Athos nor the cold

skill of Aramis nor the iron wrist of Porthos that we have to fear it is the Gascon's fury the wild and

"I done it," said Sam. "I went over to Frio City to do it. I couldn't let him put the skibunk on you, Uncle Ben.

I met him in Summers's saloon. I knowed what to do. I said a few things to him that nobody else heard. He

reached for his gun first half a dozen fellows saw him do it but I got mine unlimbered first. Three

doses I gave him right around the lungs, and a saucer could have covered up all of 'em. He won't bother

"This is King James you speak of?" asked old man Ellison, while he sipped his coffee.

"You bet it was. And they took me before the county judge; and the witnesses what saw him draw his gun

first was all there. Well, of course, they put me under $300 bond to appear before the court, but there was

four or five boys on the spot ready to sign the bail. He won't bother you no more, Uncle Ben. You ought to

have seen how close them bullet holes was together. I reckon playing a guitar as much as I do must kind of

Then there was a little silence in the castle except for the spluttering of a venison steak that the Kiowa was

"Sam," said old man Ellison, stroking his white whiskers with a tremulous hand, "would you mind getting the

guitar and playing that '_Huile, huile, palomita_' piece once or twice? It always seems to be kind of soothing

There is no more to be said, except that the title of the story is wrong. It should have been called "The Last of

the Barons." There never will be an end to the troubadours; and now and then it does seem that the jingle of

their guitars will drown the sound of the muffled blows of the pickaxes and trip hammers of all the Workers

In The Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is

blown out. All the agencies of inquisition the hounds of the trail, the sleuths of the city's labyrinths, the

closet detectives of theory and induction will be invoked to the search. Most often the man's face will be

seen no more. Sometimes he will reappear in Sheboygan or in the wilds of Terre Haute, calling himself one

of the synonyms of "Smith," and without memory of events up to a certain time, including his grocer's bill.

Sometimes it will be found, after dragging the rivers, and polling the restaurants to see if he may be waiting

This snuffing out of a human being like the erasure of a chalk man from a blackboard is one of the most

A man of middle age, of the name of Meeks, came from the West to New York to find his sister, Mrs. Mary

Snyder, a widow, aged fiftytwo, who had been living for a year in a tenement house in a crowded

At her address he was told that Mary Snyder had moved away longer than a month before. No one could tell

On coming out Mr. Meeks addressed a policeman who was standing on the corner, and explained his

"My sister is very poor," he said, "and I am anxious to find her. I have recently made quite a lot of money in a

lead mine, and I want her to share my prosperity. There is no use in advertising her, because she cannot read."

The policeman pulled his moustache and looked so thoughtful and mighty that Meeks could almost feel the

"You go down in the Canal Street neighbourhood," said the policeman, "and get a job drivin' the biggest dray

you can find. There's old women always gettin' knocked over by drays down there. You might see 'er among

'em. If you don't want to do that you better go 'round to headquarters and get 'em to put a fly cop onto the

At police headquarters, Meeks received ready assistance. A general alarm was sent out, and copies of a

photograph of Mary Snyder that her brother had were distributed among the stations. In Mulberry Street the

"This is not a very difficult case to unravel. Shave off your whiskers, fill your pockets with good cigars, and

Meeks obeyed. He found Mullins there. They had a bottle of wine, while the detective asked questions

"Now," said Mullins, "New York is a big city, but we've got the detective business systematized. There are

two ways we can go about finding your sister. We will try one of 'em first. You say she's fiftytwo?"

The detective conducted the Westerner to a branch advertising office of one of the largest dailies. There he

"Wanted, at once one hundred attractive chorus girls for a new musical comedy. Apply all day at No.

"My sister," said he, "is a poor, hardworking, elderly woman. I do not see what aid an advertisement of this

"All right," said the detective. "I guess you don't know New York. But if you've got a grouch against this

The sleuth led him back to the Waldorf. "Engage a couple of bedrooms and a parlour," he advised, "and let's

This was done, and the two were shown to a superb suite on the fourth floor. Meeks looked puzzled. The

"I forgot to suggest, old man," he said, "that you should have taken the rooms by the month. They wouldn't

"Oh, it'll take time to work the game this way. I told you it would cost you more. We'll have to wait till

spring. There'll be a new city directory out then. Very likely your sister's name and address will be in it."

Meeks rid himself of the city detective at once. On the next day some one advised him to consult Shamrock

Jolnes, New York's famous private detective, who demanded fabulous fees, but performed miracles in the

After waiting for two hours in the anteroom of the great detective's apartment, Meeks was shown into his

presence. Jolnes sat in a purple dressinggown at an inlaid ivory chess table, with a magazine before him,

trying to solve the mystery of "They." The famous sleuth's thin, intellectual face, piercing eyes, and rate per

Meeks set forth his errand. "My fee, if successful, will be $500," said Shamrock Jolnes.

"I will undertake your case, Mr. Meeks," said Jolnes, finally. "The disappearance of people in this city has

always been an interesting problem to me. I remember a case that I brought to a successful outcome a year

ago. A family bearing the name of Clark disappeared suddenly from a small flat in which they were living. I

watched the flat building for two months for a clue. One day it struck me that a certain milkman and a

grocer's boy always walked backward when they carried their wares upstairs. Following out by induction the

idea that this observation gave me, I at once located the missing family. They had moved into the flat across

Shamrock Jolnes and his client went to the tenement house where Mary Snyder had lived, and the detective

demanded to be shown the room in which she had lived. It had been occupied by no tenant since her

The room was small, dingy, and poorly furnished. Meeks seated himself dejectedly on a broken chair, while

the great detective searched the walls and floor and the few sticks of old, rickety furniture for a clue.

At the end of half an hour Jolnes had collected a few seemingly unintelligible articles a cheap black hat

pin, a piece torn off a theatre programme, and the end of a small torn card on which was the word "left" and

Shamrock Jolnes leaned against the mantel for ten minutes, with his head resting upon his hand, and an

absorbed look upon his intellectual face. At the end of that time he exclaimed, with animation:

"Come, Mr. Meeks; the problem is solved. I can take you directly to the house where your sister is living.

And you may have no fears concerning her welfare, for she is amply provided with funds for the present

Perhaps Jolnes's only weakness was a professional pride in his wonderful achievements in induction. He was

"By elimination," said Jolnes, spreading his clues upon a little table, "I got rid of certain parts of the city to

which Mrs. Snyder might have removed. You see this hatpin? That eliminates Brooklyn. No woman attempts

to board a car at the Brooklyn Bridge without being sure that she carries a hatpin with which to fight her way

into a seat. And now I will demonstrate to you that she could not have gone to Harlem. Behind this door are

two hooks in the wall. Upon one of these Mrs. Snyder has hung her bonnet, and upon the other her shawl.

You will observe that the bottom of the hanging shawl has gradually made a soiled streak against the

plastered wall. The mark is cleancut, proving that there is no fringe on the shawl. Now, was there ever a

case where a middleaged woman, wearing a shawl, boarded a Harlem train without there being a fringe on

the shawl to catch in the gate and delay the passengers behind her? So we eliminate Harlem.

"Therefore I conclude that Mrs. Snyder has not moved very far away. On this torn piece of card you see the

word "Left," the letter "C," and the number "12." Now, I happen to know that No. 12 Avenue C is a

firstclass boarding house, far beyond your sister's means as we suppose. But then I find this piece of a

theatre programme, crumpled into an odd shape. What meaning does it convey. None to you, very likely, Mr.

Meeks; but it is eloquent to one whose habits and training take cognizance of the small est things.

"You have told me that your sister was a scrub woman. She scrubbed the floors of offices and hallways. Let

us assume that she procured such work to perform in a theatre. Where is valuable jewellery lost the oftenest,

Mr. Meeks? In the theatres, of course. Look at that piece of programme, Mr. Meeks. Observe the round

impression in it. It has been wrapped around a ring perhaps a ring of great value. Mrs. Snyder found the

ring while at work in the theatre. She hastily tore off a piece of a programme, wrapped the ring carefully, and

thrust it into her bosom. The next day she disposed of it, and, with her increased means, looked about her for

a more comfortable place in which to live. When I reach thus far in the chain I see nothing impossible about

Shamrock Jolnes concluded his convincing speech with the smile of a successful artist. Meeks's admiration

was too great for words. Together they went to No. 12 Avenue C. It was an oldfashioned brownstone house

They rang the bell, and on inquiring were told that no Mrs. Snyder was known there, and that not within six

When they reached the sidewalk again, Meeks examined the clues which he had brought away from his

"I am no detective," he remarked to Jolnes as he raised the piece of theatre programme to his nose, "but it

seems to me that instead of a ring having been wrapped in this paper it was one of those round peppermint

drops. And this piece with the address on it looks to me like the end of a seat coupon No. 12, row C, left

"He is the leader," said Jolnes, "of a new modern school of detectives. Their methods are different from ours,

but it is said that Juggins has solved some extremely puzzling cases. I will take you to him."

They found the greater Juggins in his office. He was a small man with light hair, deeply absorbed in reading

The two great detectives of different schools shook hands with ceremony, and Meeks was introduced.

"Do I understand that your sister is fiftytwo years of age, with a large mole on the side of her nose, and that

she is a very poor widow, making a scanty living by scrubbing, and with a very homely face and figure?"

"In fifteen minutes," he said, "I will return, bringing you her present address."

Within the specified time Juggins returned and consulted a little slip of paper held in his hand.

"Your sister, Mary Snyder," he announced calmly, "will be found at No. 162 Chilton street. She is living in

the back hall bedroom, five flights up. The house is only four blocks from here," he continued, addressing

Meeks. "Suppose you go and verify the statement and then return here. Mr. Jolnes will await you, I dare say."

When Meeks had settled his bill and departed, Shamrock Jolnes stood with his hat in his hand before Juggins.

"If it would not be asking too much," he stammered "if you would favour me so far would you object

"Certainly not," said Juggins pleasantly. "I will tell you how I did it. You remember the description of Mrs.

Snyder? Did you ever know a woman like that who wasn't paying weekly instalments on an enlarged crayon

portrait of herself? The biggest factory of that kind in the country is just around the corner. I went there and

Miss Martha Meacham kept the little bakery on the corner (the one where you go up three steps, and the bell

Miss Martha was forty, her bankbook showed a credit of two thousand dollars, and she possessed two false

teeth and a sympathetic heart. Many people have married whose chances to do so were much inferior to Miss

Two or three times a week a customer came in in whom she began to take an interest. He was a middleaged

He spoke English with a strong German accent. His clothes were worn and darned in places, and wrinkled

He always bought two loaves of stale bread. Fresh bread was five cents a loaf. Stale ones were two for five.

Once Miss Martha saw a red and brown stain on his fingers. She was sure then that he was an artist and very

poor. No doubt he lived in a garret, where he painted pictures and ate stale bread and thought of the good

Often when Miss Martha sat down to her chops and light rolls and jam and tea she would sigh, and wish that

the gentlemannered artist might share her tasty meal instead of eating his dry crust in that draughty attic.

In order to test her theory as to his occupation, she brought from her room one day a painting that she had

It was a Venetian scene. A splendid marble palazzio (so it said on the picture) stood in the foreground or

rather forewater. For the rest there were gondolas (with the lady trailing her hand in the water), clouds, sky,

"You haf here a fine bicture, madame," he said while she was wrapping up the bread.

"Yes?" says Miss Martha, reveling in her own cunning. "I do so admire art and" (no, it would not do to say

"artists" thus early) "and paintings," she substituted. "You think it is a good picture?"

"Der balance," said the customer, is not in good drawing. Der bairspective of it is not true. Goot morning,

How gentle and kindly his eyes shone behind his spectacles! What a broad brow he had! To be able to judge

perspective at a glance and to live on stale bread! But genius often has to struggle before it is recognized.

What a thing it would be for art and perspective if genius were backed by two thousand dollars in bank, a

Often now when he came he would chat for a while across the showcase. He seemed to crave Miss Martha's

He kept on buying stale bread. Never a cake, never a pie, never one of her delicious Sally Lunns.

She thought he began to look thinner and discouraged. Her heart ached to add something good to eat to his

meagre purchase, but her courage failed at the act. She did not dare affront him. She knew the pride of artists.

Miss Martha took to wearing her bluedotted silk waist behind the counter. In the back room she cooked a

mysterious compound of quince seeds and borax. Ever so many people use it for the complexion.

One day the customer came in as usual, laid his nickel on the showcase, and called for his stale loaves. While

Miss Martha was reaching for them there was a great tooting and clanging, and a fireengine came lumbering

The customer hurried to the door to look, as any one will. Suddenly inspired, Miss Martha seized the

On the bottom shelf behind the counter was a pound of fresh butter that the dairyman had left ten minutes

before. With a bread knife Miss Martha made a deep slash in each of the stale loaves, inserted a generous

When he had gone, after an unusually pleasant little chat, Miss Martha smiled to herself, but not without a

Had she been too bold? Would he take offense? But surely not. There was no language of edibles. Butter was

For a long time that day her mind dwelt on the subject. She imagined the scene when he should discover her

He would lay down his brushes and palette. There would stand his easel with the picture he was painting in

He would prepare for his luncheon of dry bread and water. He would slice into a loaf ah!

Miss Martha blushed. Would he think of the hand that placed it there as he ate? Would he

The front door bell jangled viciously. Somebody was coming in, making a great deal of noise.

Miss Martha hurried to the front. Two men were there. One was a young man smoking a pipe a man she

His face was very red, his hat was on the back of his head, his hair was wildly rumpled. He clinched his two

"_Dummkopf_!" he shouted with extreme loudness; and then "_Tausendonfer_!" or something like it in

"You haf shpoilt me," he cried, his blue eyes blazing behind his spectacles. "I vill tell you. You vas von

Miss Martha leaned weakly against the shelves and laid one hand on her bluedotted silk waist. The young

"Come on," he said, "you've said enough." He dragged the angry one out at the door to the sidewalk, and then

"Guess you ought to be told, ma'am," he said, "what the row is about. That's Blumberger. He's an

"He's been working hard for three months drawing a plan for a new city hall. It was a prize competition. He

finished inking the lines yesterday. You know, a draftsman always makes his drawing in pencil first. When

it's done he rubs out the pencil lines with handfuls of stale bread crumbs. That's better than India rubber.

"Blumberger's been buying the bread here. Well, today well, you know, ma'am, that butter isn't well,

Blumberger's plan isn't good for anything now except to cut up into railroad sandwiches."

Miss Martha went into the back room. She took off the bluedotted silk waist and put on the old brown serge

she used to wear. Then she poured the quince seed and borax mixture out of the window into the ash can.

Said Mr. Kipling, "The cities are full of pride, challenging each to each." Even so.

New York was empty. Two hundred thousand of its people were away for the summer. Three million eight

hundred thousand remained as caretakers and to pay the bills of the absentees. But the two hundred thousand

The New Yorker sat at a roofgarden table, ingesting solace through a straw. His panama lay upon a chair.

The July audience was scattered among vacant seats as widely as outfielders when the champion batter steps

to the plate. Vaudeville happened at intervals. The breeze was cool from the bay; around and above

everywhere except on the stage were stars. Glimpses were to be had of waiters, always disappearing, like

startled chamois. Prudent visitors who had ordered refreshments by 'phone in the morning were now being

served. The New Yorker was aware of certain drawbacks to his comfort, but content beamed softly from his

rimless eyeglasses. His family was out of town. The drinks were warm; the ballet was suffering from lack of

Then up into the garden stumbled the man from Topaz City, Nevada. The gloom of the solitary sightseer

enwrapped him. Bereft of joy through loneliness, he stalked with a widower's face through the halls of

pleasure. Thirst for human companionship possessed him as he panted in the metropolitan draught. Straight

The New Yorker, disarmed and made reckless by the lawless atmosphere of a roof garden, decided upon utter

abandonment of his life's traditions. He resolved to shatter with one rash, daredevil, impulsive, hairbrained

act the conventions that had hitherto been woven into his existence. Carrying out this radical and precipitous

The next moment found the man from Topaz City in the list of the New Yorker's closest friends. He took a

chair at the table, he gathered two others for his feet, he tossed his broadbrimmed hat upon a fourth, and told

The New Yorker warmed a little, as an apartmenthouse furnace warms when the strawberry season begins.

A waiter who came within hail in an unguarded moment was captured and paroled on an errand to the Doctor

Wiley experimental station. The ballet was now in the midst of a musical vagary, and danced upon the stage

programmed as Bolivian peasants, clothed in some portions of its anatomy as Norwegian fisher maidens, in

others as ladiesinwaiting of Marie Antoinette, historically denuded in other portions so as to represent sea

nymphs, and presenting the tout ensemble of a social club of Central Park West housemaids at a fish fry.

"Been in the city long?" inquired the New Yorker, getting ready the exact tip against the waiter's coming with

"I!" said the New Yorker. "I was never farther west than Eighth Avenue. I had a brother who died on Ninth,

but I met the cortege at Eighth. There was a bunch of violets on the hearse, and the undertaker mentioned the

"Topaz City," said the man who occupied four chairs, "is one of the finest towns in the world."

"I presume that you have seen the sights of the metropolis," said the New Yorker, "Four days is not a

sufficient length of time in which to view even our most salient points of interest, but one can possibly form a

general impression. Our architectural supremacy is what generally strikes visitors to our city most forcibly.

"Saw it," said the man from Topaz City. "But you ought to come out our way. It's mountainous, you know,

"Excuse me," said the New Yorker, "but that isn't exactly the point. New York must be a wonderful

"Say," said the man from Topaz City, "that reminds me there were sixteen stage robbers shot last year

"I was speaking of hotels," said the New Yorker. "We lead Europe in that respect. And as far as our leisure

"Oh, I don't know," interrupted the man from Topaz City. "There were twelve tramps in our jail when I left

"Beg pardon, you seem to misapprehend the idea. Of course, you visited the Stock Exchange and Wall Street,

"Oh, yes," said the man from Topaz City, as he lighted a Pennsylvania stogie, "and I want to tell you chat

we've got the finest town marshal west of the Rockies. Bill Rainer he took in five pickpockets out of the

crowd when Red Nose Thompson laid the cornerstone of his new saloon. Topaz City don't allow "

"Have another Rhine wine and seltzer," suggested the New Yorker. "I've never been West, as I said; but there

can't be any place out there to compare with New York. As to the claims of Chicago I "

"One man," said the Topazite "one man only has been murdered and robbed in Topaz City in the last three

"Oh, I know what Chicago is," interposed the New Yorker. "Have you been up Fifth Avenue to see the

"Seen 'em all. You ought to know Reub Stegall, the assessor of Topaz. When old man Tilbury, that owns the

only twostory house in town, tried to swear his taxes from $6,000 down to $450.75, Reub buckled on his

"Yes, yes, but speaking of our great city one of its greatest features is our superb police department. There

"That waiter gets around like a Langley flying machine," remarked the man from Topaz City, thirstily.

"We've got men in our town, too, worth $400,000. There's old Bill Withers and Colonel Metcalf and "

"Have you seen Broadway at night?" asked the New Yorker, courteously. "There are few streets in the world

that can compare with it. When the electrics are shining and the pavements are alive with two hurrying

streams of elegantly clothed men and beautiful women attired in the costliest costumes that wind in and out in

"Never knew but one case in Topaz City," said the man from the West. "Jim Bailey, our mayor, had his watch

"That's another matter," said the New Yorker. "While you are in our city you should avail yourself of every

"If you was out in Topaz," broke in the man from there, "I could show you a whole cemetery full of people

that got killed accidentally. Talking about mangling folks up! why, when Berry Rogers turned loose that old

"Here, waiter!" called the New Yorker. "Two more of the same. It is acknowledged by every one that our city

is the centre of art, and literature, and learning. Take, for instance, our afterdinner speakers. Where else in

the country would you find such wit and eloquence as emanate from Depew and Ford, and "

"If you take the papers," interrupted the Westerner, "you must have read of Pete Webster's daughter. The

Websters live two blocks north of the courthouse in Topaz City. Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days

"Pass the matches, please," said the New Yorker. "Have you observed the expedition with which new

buildings are being run up in New York? Improved inventions in steel framework and "

"I noticed," said the Nevadian, "that the statistics of Topaz City showed only one carpenter crushed by falling

"They abuse our sky line," continued the New Yorker, "and it is likely that we are not yet artistic in the

construction of our buildings. But I can safely assert that we lead in pictorial and decorative art. In some of

our houses can be found masterpieces in the way of paintings and sculpture. One who has the entree to our

"Back up," exclaimed the man from Topaz City. "There was a game last month in our town in which $90,000

"Taromttara!" went the orchestra. The stage curtain, blushing pink at the name "Asbestos" inscribed upon

it, came down with a slow midsummer movement. The audience trickled leisurely down the elevator and

On the sidewalk below, the New Yorker and the man from Topaz City shook hands with alcoholic gravity.

The elevated crashed raucously, surface cars hummed and clanged, cabmen swore, newsboys shrieked,

wheels clattered earpiercingly. The New Yorker conceived a happy thought, with which he aspired to clinch

"You must admit," said he, "that in the way of noise New York is far ahead of any other "

"Back to the everglades!" said the man from Topaz City. "In 1900, when Sousa's band and the repeating

[Note. The man who told me these things was for several years an outlaw in the Southwest and a follower of

the pursuit he so frankly describes. His description of the _modus_ _operandi_ should prove interesting, his

counsel of value to the potential passenger in some future "holdup," while his estimate of the pleasures of

train robbing will hardly induce any one to adopt it as a profession. I give the story in almost exactly his own

Most people would say, if their opinion was asked for, that holding up a train would be a hard job. Well, it

isn't; it's easy. I have contributed some to the uneasiness of railroads and the insomnia of express companies,

and the most trouble I ever had about a holdup was in being swindled by unscrupulous people while

spending the money I got. The danger wasn't anything to speak of, and we didn't mind the trouble.

One man has come pretty near robbing a train by himself; two have succeeded a few times; three can do it if

they are hustlers, but five is about the right number. The time to do it and the place depend upon several

The first "stickup" I was ever in happened in 1890. Maybe the way I got into it will explain how most train

robbers start in the business. Five out of six Western outlaws are just cowboys out of a job and gone wrong.

The sixth is a tough from the East who dresses up like a bad man and plays some lowdown trick that gives

the boys a bad name. Wire fences and "nesters" made five of them; a bad heart made the sixth. Jim S and I

were working on the 101 Ranch in Colorado. The nesters had the cowman on t he go. They had taken up the

land and elected officers who were hard to get along with. Jim and I rode into La Junta one day, going south

from a roundup. We were having a little fun without malice toward anybody when a farmer administration

cut in and tried to harvest us. Jim shot a deputy marshal, and I kind of corroborated his side of the argument.

We skirmished up and down the main street, the boomers having bad luck all the time. After a while we

leaned forward and shoved for the ranch down on the Ceriso. We were riding a couple of horses that couldn't

A few days after that, a gang of the La Junta boomers came to the ranch and wanted us to go back with them.

Naturally, we declined. We had the house on them, and before we were done refusing, that old 'dobe was

plumb full of lead. When dark came we fagged 'em a batch of bullets and shoved out the back door for the

rocks. They sure smoked us as we went. We had to drift, which we did, and rounded up down in Oklahoma.

Well, there wasn't anything we could get there, and, being mighty hard up, we decided to transact a little

business with the railroads. Jim and I joined forces with Tom and Ike Moore two brothers who had plenty

of sand they were willing to convert into dust. I can call their names, for both of them are dead. Tom was shot

while robbing a bank in Arkansas; Ike was killed during the more dangerous pastime of attending a dance in

We selected a place on the Santa Fe where there was a bridge across a deep creek surrounded by heavy

timber. All passenger trains took water at the tank close to one end of the bridge. It was a quiet place, the

nearest house being five miles away. The day before it happened, we rested our horses and "made medicine"

as to how we should get about it. Our plans were not at all elaborate, as none of us had ever engaged in a

The Santa Fe flyer was due at the tank at 11.15 P. M. At eleven, Tom and I lay down on one side of the track,

and Jim and Ike took the other. As the train rolled up, the headlight flashing far down the track and the steam

hissing from the engine, I turned weak all over, I would have worked a whole year on the ranch for nothing to

have been out of that affair right then. Some of the nerviest men in the business have told me that they felt the

The engine had hardly stopped when I jumped on the runningboard on one side, while Jim mounted the

other. As soon as the engineer and fireman saw our guns they threw up their hands without being told, and

"Hit the ground," I ordered, and they both jumped off. We drove them before us down the side of the train.

While this was happening, Tom and Ike had been blazing away, one on each side of the train, yelling like

Apaches, so as to keep the passengers herded in the cars. Some fellow stuck a little twentytwo calibre out

one of the coach windows and fired it straight up in the air. I let drive and smashed the glass just over his

By this time all my nervousness was gone. I felt a kind of pleasant excitement as if I were at a dance or a

frolic of some sort. The lights were all out in the coaches, and, as Tom and Ike gradually quit firing and

yelling, it got to be almost as still as a graveyard. I remember hearing a little bird chirping in a bush at the

I made the fireman get a lantern, and then I went to the express car and yelled to the messenger to open up or

get perforated. He slid the door back and stood in it with his hands up. "Jump overboard, son," I said, and he

hit the dirt like a lump of lead. There were two safes in the car a big one and a little one. By the way, I

first located the messenger's arsenal a doublebarrelled shotgun with buckshot cartridges and a

thirtyeight in a drawer. I drew the cartridges from the shotgun, pocketed the pistol, and called the

messenger inside. I shoved my gun against his nose and put him to work. He couldn't open the big safe, but

he did the little one. There was only nine hundred dollars in it. That was mighty small winnings for our

trouble, so we decided to go through the passengers. We took our prisoners to the smokingcar, and from

there sent the engineer through the train to light up the coaches. Beginning with the first one, we placed a

man at each door and ordered the passengers to stand between the seats with their hands up.

If you want to find out what cowards the majority of men are, all you have to do is rob a passenger train. I

don't mean because they don't resist I'll tell you later on why they can't do that but it makes a man feel

sorry for them the way they lose their heads. Big, burly drummers and farmers and exsoldiers and

highcollared dudes and sports that, a few moments before, were filling the car with noise and bragging, get

There were very few people in the day coaches at that time of night, so we made a slim haul until we got to

the sleeper. The Pullman conductor met me at one door while Jim was going round to the other one. He very

politely informed me that I could not go into that car, as it did not belong to the railroad company, and,

besides, the passengers had already been greatly disturbed by the shouting and firing. Never in all my life

have I met with a finer instance of official dignity and reliance upon the power of Mr. Pullman's great name.

I jabbed my sixshooter so hard against Mr. Conductor's front that I afterward found one of his vest buttons

so firmly wedged in the end of the barrel that I had to shoot it out. He just shut up like a weakspringed knife

I opened the door of the sleeper and stepped inside. A big, fat old man came wabbling up to me, puffing and

blowing. He had one coatsleeve on and was trying to put his vest on over that. I don't know who he thought

"Young man, young man," says he, "you must keep cool and not get excited. Above everything, keep cool."

"I can't," says I. "Excitement's just eating me up." And then I let out a yell and turned loose my fortyfive

That old man tried to dive into one of the lower berths, but a screech came out of it and a bare foot that took

him in the breadbasket and landed him on the floor. I saw Jim coming in the other door, and I hollered for

They commenced to scramble down, and for a while we had a threeringed circus. The men looked as

frightened and tame as a lot of rabbits in a deep snow. They had on, on an average, about a quarter of a suit of

clothes and one shoe apiece. One chap was sitting on the floor of the aisle, looking as if he were working a

hard sum in arithmetic. He was trying, very solemn, to pull a lady's number two shoe on his number nine

The ladies didn't stop to dress. They were so curious to see a real, live train robber, bless 'em, that they just

wrapped blankets and sheets around themselves and came out, squeaky and fidgety looking. They always

We got them all lined up and pretty quiet, and I went through the bunch. I found very little on them I

mean in the way of valuables. One man in the line was a sight. He was one of those big, overgrown, solemn

snoozers that sit on the platform at lectures and look wise. Before crawling out he had managed to put on his

long, frocktailed coat and his high silk hat. The rest of him was nothing but pajamas and bunions. When I

dug into that Prince Albert, I expected to drag out at least a block of gold mine stock or an armful of

Government bonds, but all I found was a little boy's French harp about four inches long. What it was there

for, I don't know. I felt a little mad because he had fooled me so. I stuck the harp up against his mouth.

"Then learn right off quick," says I, letting him smell the end of my gunbarrel.

He caught hold of the harp, turned red as a beet, and commenced to blow. He blew a dinky little tune I

I made him keep on playing it all the time we were in the car. Now and then he'd get weak and off the key,

and I'd turn my gun on him and ask what was the matter with that little gal, and whether he had any intention

of going back on her, which would make him start up again like sixty. I think that old boy standing there in

his silk hat and bare feet, playing his little French harp, was the funniest sight I ever saw. One little

redheaded woman in the line broke out laughing at him. You could have heard her in the next car.

Then Jim held them steady while I searched the berths. I grappled around in those beds and filled a

pillowcase with the strangest assortment of stuff you ever saw. Now and then I'd come across a little

popgun pistol, just about right for plugging teeth with, which I'd throw out the window. When I finished

with the collection, I dumped the pillowcase load in the middle of the aisle. There were a good many

watches, bracelets, rings, and pocketbooks, with a sprinkling of false teeth, whiskey flasks, fa cepowder

boxes, chocolate caramels, and heads of hair of various colours and lengths. There were also about a dozen

ladies' stockings into which jewellery, watches, and rolls of bills had been stuffed and then wadded up tight

and stuck under the mattresses. I offered to return what I called the "scalps," saying that we were not Indians

on the warpath, but none of the ladies seemed to know to whom the hair belonged.

One of the women and a goodlooker she was wrapped in a striped blanket, saw me pick up one of the

Now, as this was our first holdup, we hadn't agreed upon any code of ethics, so I hardly knew what to

answer. But, anyway, I replied: "Well, not as a specialty. If this contains your personal property you can have

"You'll excuse my taking a look at the contents," I said, holding the stocking up by the toe. Out dumped a big

gent's gold watch, worth two hundred, a gent's leather pocketbook that we afterward found to contain six

hundred dollars, a 32calibre revolver; and the only thing of the lot that could have been a lady's personal

I said: "Madame, here's your property," and handed her the bracelet. "Now," I went on, "how can you expect

us to act square with you when you try to deceive us in this manner? I'm surprised at such conduct."

The young woman flushed up as if she had been caught doing something dishonest. Some other woman down

the line called out: "The mean thing!" I never knew whether she meant the other lady or me.

When we finished our job we ordered everybody back to bed, told 'em good night very politely at the door,

and left. We rode forty miles before daylight and then divided the stuff. Each one of us got $1,752.85 in

That was my first train robbery, and it was about as easily done as any of the ones that followed. But that was

the last and only time I ever went through the passengers. I don't like that part of the business. Afterward I

stuck strictly to the express car. During the next eight years I handled a good deal of money.

The best haul I made was just seven years after the first one. We found out about a train that was going to

bring out a lot of money to pay off the soldiers at a Government post. We stuck that train up in broad

daylight. Five of us lay in the sand hills near a little station. Ten soldiers were guarding the money on the

train, but they might just as well have been at home on a furlough. We didn't even allow them to stick their

heads out the windows to see the fun. We had no trouble at all in getting the money, which was all in gold. Of

course, a big howl was raised at the time about the robbery. It was Government stuff, and the Government got

sarcastic and wanted to know what the convoy of soldiers went along for. The only excuse given was that

nobody was expecting an attack among those bare sand hills in daytime. I don't know what the Government

thought about the excuse, but I know that it was a good one. The surprise that is the keynote of the

trainrobbing business. The papers published all k inds of stories about the loss, finally agreeing that it was

between nine thousand and ten thousand dollars. The Government sawed wood. Here are the correct figures,

printed for the first time fortyeight thousand dollars. If anybody will take the trouble to look over Uncle

Sam's private accounts for that little debit to profit and loss, he will find that I am right to a cent.

By that time we were expert enough to know what to do. We rode due west twenty miles, making a trail that

a Broadway policeman could have followed, and then we doubled back, hiding our tracks. On the second

night after the holdup, while posses were scouring the country in every direction, Jim and I were eating

supper in the second story of a friend's house in the town where the alarm started from. Our friend pointed

out to us, in an office across the street, a printing press at work striking off handbills offering a reward for our

I have been asked what we do with the money we get. Well, I never could account for a tenth part of it after it

was spent. It goes fast and freely. An outlaw has to have a good many friends. A highly respected citizen

may, and often does, get along with very few, but a man on the dodge has got to have "sidekickers." With

angry posses and rewardhungry officers cutting out a hot trail for him, he must have a few places scattered

about the country where he can stop and feed himself and his horse and get a few hours' sleep without having

to keep both eyes open. When he makes a haul he feels like dropping some of the coin with these friends, and

he does it liberally. Sometimes I have, at the end of a hasty visit at one of these havens of refuge, flung a

handful of gold and bills into the laps of the kids playing on the floor, without knowing whether my

When oldtimers make a big haul they generally go far away to one of the big cities to spend their money.

Green hands, however successful a holdup they make, nearly always give themselves away by showing too

I was in a job in '94 where we got twenty thousand dollars. We followed our favourite plan for a getaway

that is, doubled on our trail and laid low for a time near the scene of the train's bad luck. One morning

I picked up a newspaper and read an article with big headlines stating that the marshal, with eight deputies

and a posse of thirty armed citizens, had the train robbers surrounded in a mesquite thicket on the Cimarron,

and that it was a question of only a few hours when they would be dead men or prisoners. While I was

reading that article I was sitting at breakfast in one of the most elegant private residences in Washington City,

with a flunky in knee pants standing behind my chair. Jim was sitting across the table talking to his

halfuncle, a retired naval officer, whose name you have often seen in the accounts of doings in the capital.

We had gone there and bought rattling outfits of good clothes, and were resting from our labours among the

nabobs. We must have been killed in that mesquite thicket, for I can make an affidavit that we didn't

Now I propose to tell why it is easy to hold up a train, and, then, why no one should ever do it.

In the first place, the attacking party has all the advantage. That is, of course, supposing that they are

oldtimers with the necessary experience and courage. They have the outside and are protected by the

darkness, while the others are in the light, hemmed into a small space, and exposed, the moment they show a

head at a window or door, to the aim of a man who is a dead shot and who won't hesitate to shoot.

But, in my opinion, the main condition that makes train robbing easy is the element of surprise in connection

with the imagination of the passengers. If you have ever seen a horse that has eaten loco weed you will

understand what I mean when I say that the passengers get locoed. That horse gets the awfullest imagination

on him in the world. You can't coax him to cross a little branch stream two feet wide. It looks as big to him as

the Mississippi River. That's just the way with the passenger. He thinks there are a hundred men yelling and

shooting outside, when maybe there are only two or three. And the muzzle of a fortyfive looks like the

entrance to a tunnel. The passenger is all right, although he may do mean little tricks, like hiding a wad of

money in his shoe and forgetting to digup until you jostle his ribs some with the end of your sixshooter;

As to the train crew, we never had any more trouble with them than if they had been so many sheep. I don't

mean that they are cowards; I mean that they have got sense. They know they're not up against a bluff. It's the

same way with the officers. I've seen secret service men, marshals, and railroad detectives fork over their

change as meek as Moses. I saw one of the bravest marshals I ever knew hide his gun under his seat and dig

up along with the rest while I was taking toll. He wasn't afraid; he simply knew that we had the drop on the

whole outfit. Besides, many of those officers have families and they feel that they oughtn't to take chances;

whereas death has no terrors for the man who holds up a train. He expects to get killed some day, and he

generally does. My advice to you, if you should ever be in a holdup, is to line up with the cowards and save

your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you. Another reason why officers are

backward about mixing things with a train robber is a financial one. Every time there is a scrimmage and

somebody gets killed, the officers lose money. If the train robber gets away they swear out a warrant against

John Doe et al. and travel hundreds of miles and sign vouchers for thousands on the trail of the fugitives, and

the Government foots the bills. So, with them, it is a question of mileage rather than courage.

I will give one instance to support my statement that the surprise is the best card in playing for a holdup.

Along in '92 the Daltons were cutting out a hot trail for the officers down in the Cherokee Nation, Those were

their lucky days, and they got so reckless and sandy, that they used to announce before hand what job they

were going to undertake. Once they gave it out that they were going to hold up the M. K. T. flyer on a certain

That night the railroad company got fifteen deputy marshals in Muscogee and put them on the train. Beside

When the Katy Flyer pulled in not a Dalton showed up. The next station was Adair, six miles away. When the

train reached there, and the deputies were having a good time explaining what they would have done to the

Dalton gang if they had turned up, all at once it sounded like an army firing outside. The conductor and

Some of those deputies lit out of the door, hit the ground, and kept on running. Some of them hid their

It took the Daltons just ten minutes to capture the train and whip the escort. In twenty minutes more they

robbed the express car of twentyseven thousand dollars and made a clean getaway.

My opinion is that those deputies would have put up a stiff fight at Pryor Creek, where they were expecting

trouble, but they were taken by surprise and "locoed" at Adair, just as the Daltons, who knew their business,

I don't think I ought to close without giving some deductions from my experience of eight years "on the

dodge." It doesn't pay to rob trains. Leaving out the question of right and morals, which I don't think I ought

to tackle, there is very little to envy in the life of an outlaw. After a while money ceases to have any value in

his eyes. He gets to looking upon the railroads and express companies as his bankers, and his sixshooter as a

cheque book good for any amount. He throws away money right and left. Most of the time he is on the jump,

riding day and night, and he lives so hard between times that he doesn't enjoy the taste of high life when he

gets it. He knows that his time is bound to come to lose his life or liberty, and that the accuracy of his aim,

the speed of his horse, and the fidelity of his "sider," are all that postpone the inevitable.

It isn't that he loses any sleep over danger from the officers of the law. In all my experience I never knew

officers to attack a band of outlaws unless they outnumbered them at least three to one.

But the outlaw carries one thought constantly in his mind and that is what makes him so sore against life,

more than anything else he knows where the marshals get their recruits of deputies. He knows that the

majority of these upholders of the law were once lawbreakers, horse thieves, rustlers, highwaymen, and

outlaws like himself, and that they gamed their positions and immunity by turning state's evidence, by turning

traitor and delivering up their comrades to imprisonment and death. He knows that some day unless he is

shot first his Judas will set to work, the trap will be laid, and he will be the surprised instead of a surpriser

That is why the man who holds up trains picks his company with a thousand times the care with which a

careful girl chooses a sweetheart. That is why he raises himself from his blanket of nights and listens to the

tread of every horse's hoofs on the distant road. That is why he broods suspiciously for days upon a jesting

remark or an unusual movement of a tried comrade, or the broken mutterings of his closest friend, sleeping

And it is one of the reasons why the trainrobbing profession is not so pleasant a one as either of its collateral

When the forefinger of twilight begins to smudge the cleardrawn lines of the Big City there is inaugurated

Out from the towering flat crags and apartment peaks of the cliff dwellers of New York steals an army of

beings that were once men, Even yet they go upright upon two limbs and retain human form and speech; but

you will observe that they are behind animals in progress. Each of these beings follows a dog, to which he is

These men are all victims to Circe. Not willingly do they become flunkeys to Fido, bell boys to bull terriers,

and toddlers after Towzer. Modern Circe, instead of turning them into animals, has kindly left the difference

of a sixfoot leash between them. Every one of those dogmen has been either cajoled, bribed, or commanded

By their faces and manner you can tell that the dogmen are bound in a hopeless enchantment. Never will

The faces of some are stonily set. They are past the commiseration, the curiosity, or the jeers of their

fellowbeings. Years of matrimony, of continuous compulsory canine constitutionals, have made them

callous. They unwind their beasts from lamp posts, or the ensnared legs of profane pedestrians, with the

Others, more recently reduced to the ranks of Rover's retinue, take their medicine sulkily and fiercely. They

play the dog on the end of their line with the pleasure felt by the girl out fishing when she catches a searobin

on her hook. They glare at you threateningly if you look at them, as if it would be their delight to let slip the

dogs of war. These are halfmutinous dogmen, not quite Circeized, and you will do well not to kick their

Others of the tribe do not seem to feel so keenly. They are mostly unfresh youths, with gold caps and

drooping cigarettes, who do not harmonize with their dogs. The animals they attend wear satin bows in their

collars; and the young men steer them so assiduously that you are tempted to the theory that some personal

advantage, contingent upon satisfactory service, waits upon the execution of their duties.

The dogs thus personally conducted are of many varieties; but they are one in fatness, in pampered, diseased

vileness of temper, in insolent, snarling capriciousness of behaviour. They tug at the leash fractiously, they

make leisurely nasal inventory of every door step, railing, and post. They sit down to rest when they choose;

they wheeze like the winner of a Third Avenue beefsteakeating contest; they blunder clumsily into open

These unfortunate dry nurses of dogdom, the cur cuddlers, mongrel managers, Spitz stalkers, poodle pullers,

Skye scrapers, dachshund dandlers, terrier trailers and Pomeranian pushers of the cliffdwelling Circes

follow their charges meekly. The doggies neither fear nor respect them. Masters of the house these men

whom they hold in leash may be, but they are not masters of them. From cosey corner to fire escape, from

divan to dumbwaiter, doggy's snarl easily drives this twolegged being who is commissioned to walk at the

One twilight the dogmen came forth as usual at their Circes' pleading, guerdon, or crack of the whip. One

among them was a strong man, apparently of too solid virtues for this airy vocation. His expression was

melancholic, his manner depressed. He was leashed to a vile white dog, loathsomely fat, fiendishly

At a corner nearest to his apartment house the dogman turned down a side street, hoping for fewer witnesses

to his ignominy. The surfeited beast waddled before him, panting with spleen and the labour of motion.

Suddenly the dog stopped. A tall, brown, longcoated, widebrimmed man stood like a Colossus blocking

"Sam Telfair," cried WideBrim again, "you dingbasted old willywalloo, give us your hoof!"

Their hands clasped in the brief, tight greeting of the West that is death to the handshake microbe.

"You old fat rascal!" continued WideBrim, with a wrinkled brown smile; "it's been five years since I seen

you. I been in this town a week, but you can't find nobody in such a place. Well, you dinged old married man,

Something mushy and heavily soft like raised dough leaned against Jim's leg and chewed his trousers with a

"Get to work," said Jim, "and explain this yardwide hydrophobia yearling you've throwed your lasso over.

"I need a drink," said the dogman, dejected at the reminder of his old dog of the sea. "Come on."

They sat at a table, and the bloated monster yelped and scrambled at the end of his leash to get at the cafe cat.

"You're fatter," said Jim, "and you look subjugated. I don't know about the East agreeing with you. All the

boys asked me to hunt you up when I started, Sandy King, he went to the Klondike. Watson Burrel, he

married the oldest Peters girl. I made some money buying beeves, and I bought a lot of wild land up on the

Little Powder. Going to fence next fall. Bill Rawlins, he's gone to farming. You remember Bill, of course

he was courting Marcella excuse me, Sam I mean the lady you married, while she was teaching school

"She's well," he continued, after his chaser. "She refused to live anywhere but in New York, where she came

from. We live in a flat. Every evening at six I take that dog out for a walk. It's Marcella's pet. There never

were two animals on earth, Jim, that hated one another like me and that dog does. His name's Lovekins.

Marcella dresses for dinner while we're out. We eat tabble dote. Ever try one of them, Jim?"

"No, I never," said Jim. "I seen the signs, but I thought they said 'table de hole.' I thought it was French for

"No, siree. I'm starting for home this evening on the 7.25. Like to stay longer, but I can't."

The dog had bound a leg each of Jim and the chair together, and had sunk into a comatose slumber. Jim

stumbled, and the leash was slightly wrenched. The shrieks of the awakened beast rang for a block around.

"If that's your dog," said Jim, when they were on the street again, "what's to hinder you from running that

habeas corpus you've got around his neck over a limb and walking off and forgetting him?"

"I'd never dare to," said the dogman, awed at the bold proposition. "He sleeps in the bed, I sleep on a lounge.

He runs howling to Marcella if I look at him. Some night, Jim, I'm going to get even with that dog. I've made

up my mind to do it. I'm going to creep over with a knife and cut a hole in his mosquito bar so they can get in

"You ain't yourself, Sam Telfair. You ain't what you was once. I don't know about these cities and flats over

here. With my own eyes I seen you stand off both the Tillotson boys in Prairie View with the brass faucet out

of a molasses barrel. And I seen you rope and tie the wildest steer on Little Powder in 39 12."

"I did, didn't I?" said the other, with a temporary gleam in his eye. "But that was before I was dogmatized."

"I thought about you," said Jim, "when I bought that wild land. I wished you was out there to help me with

"Last Tuesday," said the dogman, "he bit me on the ankle because I asked for cream in my coffee. He always

"You'd like Prairie View now," said Jim. "The boys from the roundups for fifty miles around ride in there.

One corner of my pasture is in sixteen miles of the town. There's a straight forty miles of wire on one side of

"You pass through the kitchen to get to the bedroom," said the dogman, "and you pass through the parlour to

get to the bath room, and you back out through the diningroom to get into the bedroom so you can turn

around and leave by the kitchen. And he snores and barks in his sleep, and I have to smoke in the park on

"Come on, there, you mangy, turtlebacked, snakeheaded, benchlegged tonandahalf of soapgrease!"

shouted the dogman, with a new note in his voice and a new hand on the leash. The dog scrambled after

At the foot of Twentythird Street the dogman led the way through swinging doors.

"I don't know," said the ranchman, "where I'll find the man I want to take charge of the Little Powder outfit. I

want somebody I know something about. Finest stretch of prairie and timber you ever squinted your eye over,

"Speaking of hydrophobia," said the dogman, "the other night he chewed a piece out of my leg because I

knocked a fly off of Marcella's arm. 'It ought to be cauterized,' says Marcella, and I was thinking so myself. I

telephones for the doctor, and when he comes Marcella says to me: 'Help me hold the poor dear while the

doctor fixes his mouth. Oh, I hope he got no virus on any of his toofies when he bit you.' Now what do you

Suddenly the swift landing of three or four heavy kicks was heard, the air. was rent by piercing canine

shrieks, and a pained, outraged, lubberly, bowlegged pudding of a dog ran frenziedly up the street alone.

If you should speak of the Kiowa Reservation to the average New Yorker he probably wouldn't know

whether you were referring to a new political dodge at Albany or a leitmotif from "Parsifal." But out in the

Kiowa Reservation advices have been received concerning the existence of New York.

A party of us were on a hunting trip in the Reservation. Bud Kingsbury, our guide, philosopher, and friend,

was broiling antelope steaks in camp one night. One of the party, a pinkishhaired young man in a correct

hunting costume, sauntered over to the fire to light a cigarette, and remarked carelessly to Bud:

"Why, yes," said Bud, "as nice as any night could be that ain't received the Broadway stamp of approval."

Now, the young man was from New York, but the rest of us wondered how Bud guessed it. So, when the

steaks were done, we besought him to lay bare his system of ratiocination. And as Bud was something of a

"How did I know he was from New York? Well, I figured it out as soon as he sprung them two words on me.

I was in New York myself a couple of years ago, and I noticed some of the earmarks and hoof tracks of the

"Found New York rather different from the Panhandle, didn't you, Bud?" asked one of the hunters.

"Can't say that I did," answered Bud; "anyways, not more than some. The main trail in that town which they

call Broadway is plenty travelled, but they're about the same brand of bipeds that tramp around in Cheyenne

and Amarillo, At first I was sort of rattled by the crowds, but I soon says to myself, 'Here, now, Bud; they're

just plain folks like you and Geronimo and Grover Cleveland and the Watson boys, so don't get all flustered

up with consternation under your saddle blanket,' and then I feels calm and peaceful, like I was back in the

"I'd been saving up for a year to give this New York a whirl. I knew a man named Summers that lived there,

but I couldn't find him; so I played a lone hand at enjoying the intoxicating pleasures of the cornfed

"For a while I was so frivolous and locoed by the electric lights and the noises of the phonographs and the

secondstory railroads that I forgot one of the crying needs of my Western system of natural requirements. I

never was no hand to deny myself the pleasures of sociable vocal intercourse with friends and strangers. Out

in the Territories when I meet a man I never saw before, inside of nine minutes I know his income, religion,

size of collar, and his wife's temper, and how much he pays for clothes, al imony, and chewing tobacco. It's a

"But this here New York was inaugurated on the idea of abstemiousness in regard to the parts of speech. At

the end of three weeks nobody in the city had fired even a blank syllable in my direction except the waiter in

the grub emporium where I fed. And as his outpourings of syntax wasn't nothing but plagiarisms from the bill

of fare, he never satisfied my yearnings, which was to have somebody hit. If I stood next to a man at a bar

he'd edge off and give a BaldwinZiegler look as if he suspected me of having the North Pole concealed on

my person. I began to wish that I'd gone to Abilene or Waco for my _paseado_; for the mayor of them places

will drink with you, and the first citizen you meet will tell you his middle name and ask' you to take a chance

"Well, one day when I was particular hankering for to be gregarious with something more loquacious than a

"He was a kind of a manager of the place, and I reckon he'd seen me in there a good many times. He had a

face like a fish and an eye like Judas, but I got up and put one arm around his neck.

"'Pardner,' I says, 'sure it's a nice day. You're the first gentleman in all New York to observe that the

intricacies of human speech might not be altogether wasted on William Kingsbury. But don't you think,' says

I, 'that 'twas a little cool early in the morning; and ain't there a feeling of rain in the air tonight? But along

about noon it sure was gallupsious weather. How's all up to the house? You doing right well with the caffy,

"Well, sir, that galoot just turns his back and walks off stiff, without a word, after all my trying to be

agreeable! I didn't know what to make of it. That night I finds a note from Summers, who'd been away from

town, giving the address of his camp. I goes up to his house and has a good, oldtime talk with his folks. And

I tells Summers about the actions of this coyote in the caffy, and desires interpretation.

"'Oh,' says Summers, 'he wasn't intending to strike up a conversation with you. That's just the New York

style. He'd seen you was a regular customer and he spoke a word or two just to show you he appreciated your

custom. You oughtn't to have followed it up. That's about as far as we care to go with a stranger. A word or

so about the weather may be ventured, but we don't generally make it the basis of an acquaintance. '

"'Billy,' says I, 'the weather and its ramifications is a solemn subject with me. Meteorology is one of my sore

points. No man can open up the question of temperature or humidity or the glad sunshine with me, and then

turn tail on it without its leading to a falling barometer. I'm going down to see that man again and give him a

lesson in the art of continuous conversation. You say New York etiquette allows him two words and no

answer. Well, he's going to turn himself into a weather bureau and finish what he begun with me, besides

"Summers talked agin it, but I was irritated some and I went on the street car back to that caffy.

"The same fellow was there yet, walking round in a sort of back corral where there was tables and chairs. A

"I called that man to one side and herded him into a corner. I unbuttoned enough to show him a thirtyeight I

"'Pardner,' I says, 'a brief space ago I was in here and you seized the opportunity to say it was a nice day.

When I attempted to corroborate your weather signal, you turned your back and walked off. Now,' says I,

'you froghearted, languageshy, stiffnecked cross between a Spitzbergen sea cook and a muzzled oyster,

"The fellow looks at me and tries to grin, but he sees I don't and he comes around serious.

"'Well,' says he, eyeing the handle of my gun, 'it was rather a nice day; some warmish, though.'

"'Particulars, you mealymouthed snoozer,' I says 'let's have the specifications expatiate fill in the

outlines. When you start anything with me in shorthand it's bound to turn out a storm signal.'

"'Looked like rain yesterday,' says the man, 'but it cleared off fine in the forenoon. I hear the farmers are

"'That's the kind of a canter,' says I. 'Shake the New York dust off your hoofs and be a real agreeable kind of

a centaur. You broke the ice, you know, and we're getting better acquainted every minute. Seems to me I

"'Now you're coming it,' I says. 'This cold reserve is breaking up at last. That little touch about the piano

"'I feel like I'd known you always,' says I. 'Now there was just one more are you doing right well with the

"'Glad to hear it,' says I. 'Now go back to your work and get civilized. Keep your hands off the weather unless

you're ready to follow it up in a personal manner, It's a subject that naturally belongs to sociability and the

forming of new ties, and I hate to see it handed out in small change in a town like this.'

"So the next day I rolls up my blankets and hits the trail away from New York City."

For many minutes after Bud ceased talking we lingered around the fire, and then all hands began to disperse

As I was unrolling my bedding I heard the pinkishhaired young man saying to Bud, with something like

"As I say, Mr. Kingsbury, there is something really beautiful about this night. The delightful breeze and the

The burglar stepped inside the window quickly, and then he took his time. A burglar who respects his art

The house was a private residence. By its boarded front door and untrimmed Boston ivy the burglar knew that

the mistress of it was sitting on some oceanside piazza telling a sympathetic man in a yachting cap that no

one had ever understood her sensitive, lonely heart. He knew by the light in the thirdstory front windows,

and by the lateness of the season, that the master of the house had come home, and would soon extinguish his

light and retire. For it was September of the year and of the soul, in which season the house's good man

comes to consider roof gardens and stenographers as vanities, and to desire the return of his mate and the

The burglar lighted a cigarette. The guarded glow of the match illuminated his salient points for a moment.

This third type has not yet been recognized and accepted. The police have made us familiar with the first and

When a burglar is caught who does not wear a collar he is described as a degenerate of the lowest type,

singularly vicious and depraved, and is suspected of being the desperate criminal who stole the handcuffs out

The other wellknown type is the burglar who wears a collar. He is always referred to as a Raffles in real life.

He is invariably a gentleman by daylight, breakfasting in a dress suit, and posing as a paperhanger, while

after dark he plies his nefarious occupation of burglary. His mother is an extremely wealthy and respected

resident of Ocean Grove, and when he is conducted to his cell he asks at once for a nail file and the Police

Gazette. He always has a wife in every State in the Union and fiancees in all the Territories, and the

newspapers print his matrimonial gallery out of their stock of cuts of the ladies who were cured by only one

bottle after having been given up by five doctors, experiencing great relief after the first dose.

The burglar wore a blue sweater. He was neither a Raffles nor one of the chefs from Hell's Kitchen. The

police would have been baffled had they attempted to classify him. They have not yet heard of the

This burglar of the third class began to prowl. He wore no masks, dark lanterns, or gum shoes. He carried a

The furniture of the house was swathed in its summer dust protectors. The silver was far away in

safedeposit vaults. The burglar expected no remarkable "haul." His objective point was that dimly lighted

room where the master of the house should be sleeping heavily after whatever solace he had sought to lighten

the burden of his loneliness. A "touch" might be made there to the extent of legitimate, fair professional

profits loose money, a watch, a jewelled stickpin nothing exorbitant or beyond rea son. He had seen

The burglar softly opened the door of the lighted room. The gas was turned low. A man lay in the bed asleep.

On the dresser lay many things in confusion a crumpled roll of bills, a watch, keys, three poker chips,

crushed cigars, a pink silk hair bow, and an unopened bottle of bromoseltzer for a bulwark in the morning.

The burglar took three steps toward the dresser. The man in the bed suddenly uttered a squeaky groan and

"Lay still," said the burglar in conversational tone. Burglars of the third type do not hiss. The citizen in the

The citizen had a little, pointed, brownandgray beard, like that of a painless dentist. He looked solid,

esteemed, irritable, and disgusted. He sat up in bed and raised his right hand above his head.

"Up with the other one," ordered the burglar. "You might be amphibious and shoot with your left. You can

"Can't raise the other one," said the citizen, with a contortion of his lineaments.

"Was. The inflammation has gone down." The burglar stood for a moment or two, holding his gun on the

afflicted one. He glanced at the plunder on the dresser and then, with a halfembarrassed air, back at the man

"Don't stand there making faces," snapped the citizen, badhumouredly. "If you've come to burgle why don't

"'Scuse me," said the burglar, with a grin; "but it just socked me one, too. It's good for you that rheumatism

and me happens to be old pals. I got it in my left arm, too. Most anybody but me would have popped you

"Four years. I guess that ain't all. Once you've got it, it's you for a rheumatic life that's my judgment."

"Gallons," said the burglar. "If all the snakes I've used the oil of was strung out in a row they'd reach eight

times as far as Saturn, and the rattles could be heard at Valparaiso, Indiana, and back."

"Fudge!" said the burglar. "Took 'em five months. No good. I had some relief the year I tried Finkelham's

Extract, Balm of Gilead poultices and Potts's Pain Pulverizer; but I think it was the buckeye I carried in my

"Night," said the burglar; "just when I'm busiest. Say, take down that arm of yours I guess you won't

The burglar sat down on the foot of the bed and rested his gun on his crossed knee.

"It jumps," said he. "It strikes me when I ain't looking for it. I had to give up secondstory work because I got

stuck sometimes halfway up. Tell you what I don't believe the bloomin' doctors know what is good for

"Same here. I've spent a thousand dollars without getting any relief. Yours swell any?"

"Me, too," said the citizen. "I can tell when a streak of humidity the size of a tablecloth starts from Florida

on its way to New York. And if I pass a theatre where there's an 'East Lynne' matinee going on, the moisture

The burglar looked down at his pistol and thrust it into his pocket with an awkward attempt at ease.

"Sure," concurred the burglar. "It's a salve suitable for little Minnie when the kitty scratches her finger. I'll tell

you what! We're up against it. I only find one thing that eases her up. Hey? Little old sanitary, ameliorating,

lestweforget Booze. Say this job's off 'scuse me get on your clothes and let's go out and have

"For a week," said the citizen. "I haven't been able to dress myself without help. I'm afraid Thomas is in bed,

The conventional returned as a tidal wave and flooded the citizen. He stroked his brownandgray beard.

"Here's your shirt," said the burglar, "fall out. I knew a man who said Omberry's Ointment fixed him in two

"Come on," he said bluffly. "I ask you. Leave it alone. I've got the price. Ever try witch hazel and oil of

I never could quite understand how Tom Hopkins came to make that blunder, for he had been through a

whole term at a medical college before he inherited his aunt's fortune and had been considered strong

We had been making a call together that evening, and afterward Tom ran up to my rooms for a pipe and a

chat before going on to his own luxurious apartments. I had stepped into the other room for a moment when I

"Oh, Billy, I'm going to take about four grains of quinine, if you don't mind I'm feeling all blue and

"All right," I called back. "The bottle is on the second shelf. Take it in a spoonful of that elixir of eucalyptus.

After I came back we sat by the fire and got our briars going. In about eight minutes Tom sank back into a

"You unmitigated hayseed!" I growled. "See what money will do for a man's brains!"

I routed out another young M.D. who roomed on the floor above, and sent him for old Doctor Gales, two

squares away. Tom Hopkins has too much money to be attended by rising young practitioners alone.

When Gales came we put Tom through as expensive a course of treatment as the resources of the profession

permit. After the more drastic remedies we gave him citrate of caffeine in frequent doses and strong coffee,

and walked him up and down the floor between two of us. Old Gales pinched him and slapped his face and

worked hard for the big check he could see in the distance. The young M.D. from the next floor gave Tom a

"Couldn't help it," he said. "I never kicked a millionaire before in my life. I may never have another

"Now," said Doctor Gales, after a couple of hours, "he'll do. But keep him awake for another hour. You can

do that by talking to him and shaking him up occasionally. When his pulse and respiration are normal then let

I was left alone with Tom, whom we had laid on a couch. He lay very still, and his eyes were half closed. I

"Well, old man," I said, "you've had a narrow squeak, but we've pulled you through. When you were

attending lectures, Tom, didn't any of the professors ever casually remark that morphia never spells

'quinia,' especially in fourgrain doses? But I won't pile it up on you until you get on your feet. But you ought

to have been a druggist, Tom; you're splendidly qualified to fill prescriptions."

"B'ly," he murmured, "I feel jus' like a hum'n bird flyin' around a jolly lot of most 'shpensive roses. Don'

"Now, Tom," I said, severely, "this won't do. The big doctor said you must stay awake for at least an hour.

Tom Hopkins weighs one hundred and ninetyeight. He gave me another somnolent grin, and fell into deeper

slumber. I would have made him move about, but I might as well have tried to make Cleopatra's needle waltz

around the room with me. Tom's breathing became stertorous, and that, in connection with morphia

Then I began to think. I could not rouse his body; I must strive to excite his mind. "Make him angry," was an

idea that suggested itself. "Good!" I thought; but how? There was not a joint in Tom's armour. Dear old

fellow! He was good nature itself, and a gallant gentleman, fine and true and clean as sunlight. He came from

somewhere down South, where they still have ideals and a code. New York had charmed, but had not spoiled,

him. He had that oldfashioned chivalrous reverence for women, that Eur eka! there was my idea! I

worked the thing up for a minute or two in my imagination. I chuckled to myself at the thought of springing a

thing like that on old Tom Hopkins. Then I took him by the shoulder and shook him till his ears flopped. He

opened his eyes lazily. I assumed an expression of scorn and contempt, and pointed my finger within two

"Listen to me, Hopkins," I said, in cutting and distinct tones, "you and I have been good friends, but I want

you to understand that in the future my doors are closed against any man who acts as much like a scoundrel

"What's the matter, Billy?" he muttered, composedly. "Don't your clothes fit you?"

"If I were in your place," I went on, "which, thank God, I am not, I think I would be afraid to close my eyes.

How about that girl you left waiting for you down among those lonesome Southern pines the girl that

you've forgotten since you came into your confounded money? Oh, I know what I'm talking about. While you

were a poor medical student she was good enough for you. But now, since you are a millionaire, it's different.

I wonder what she thinks of the performances of that peculiar class of people which she has been taught to

worship the Southern gentlemen? I'm sorry, Hopkins, that I was forced to speak about these matters, but

you've covered it up so well and played your part so nicely that I would have sworn you were above such

Poor Tom. I could scarcely keep from laughing outright to see him struggling against the effects of the opiate.

He was distinctly angry, and I didn't blame him. Tom had a Southern temper. His eyes were open now, and

they showed a gleam or two of fire. But the drug still clouded his mind and bound his tongue.

He tried to rise from the couch. With all his size he was very weak now. I thrust him back with one arm. He

"That will hold you for a while, you old loony," I said to myself. I got up and lit my pipe, for I was needing a

I heard a snore. I looked around. Tom was asleep again. I walked over and punched him on the jaw. He

looked at me as pleasant and ungrudging as an idiot. I chewed my pipe and gave it to him hard.

"I want you to recover yourself and get out of my rooms as soon as you can," I said, insultingly. "I've told

you what I think of you. If you have any honour or honesty left you will think twice before you attempt again

to associate with gentlemen. She's a poor girl, isn't she?" I sneered. "Somewhat too plain and unfashionable

for us since we got our money. Be ashamed to walk on Fifth Avenue with her, wouldn't you? Hopkins, you're

fortyseven times worse than a cad. Who cares for your money? I don't. I'll bet that girl don't. Perhaps if you

didn't have it you'd be more of a man. As it is you've made a cur of yourself, and" I thought that quite

dramatic "perhaps broken a faithful heart." (Old Tom Hopkins breaking a faithful heart!) "Let me be rid of

I turned my back on Tom, and winked at myself in a mirror. I heard him moving, and I turned again quickly.

I didn't want a hundred and ninetyeight pounds falling on me from the rear. But Tom had only turned partly

over, and laid one arm across his face. He spoke a few words rather more distinctly than before.

"I couldn't have talked this way to you, Billy, even if I'd heard people lyin' 'bout you. But jus'

I did feel a little ashamed then. But it was to save Tom. In the morning, when I explained it, we would have a

In about twenty minutes Tom dropped into a sound, easy slumber. I felt his pulse, listened to his respiration,

and let him sleep. Everything was normal, and Tom was safe. I went into the other room and tumbled into

I found Tom up and dressed when I awoke the next morning. He was entirely himself again with the

"What an idiot I was," he said, thoughtfully. "I remember thinking that quinine bottle looked queer while I

I told him no. His memory seemed bad about the entire affair. I concluded that he had no recollection of my

efforts to keep him awake, and decided not to enlighten him. Some other time, I thought, when he was feeling

"Much obliged, old fellow," he said, quietly, "for taking so much trouble with me and for what you said.

Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore arched a sympathetic eyebrow. Thus she expressed condolence and a generous

"Fancy her telling everywhere," recapitulated Mrs. Kinsolving, "that she saw a ghost in the apartment she

occupied here our choicest guestroom a ghost, carrying a hod on its shoulder the ghost of an old

man in overalls, smoking a pipe and carrying a hod! The very absurdity of the thing shows her malicious

intent. There never was a Kinsolving that carried a hod. Every one knows that Mr. Kinsolving's father

accumulated his money by large building contracts, but he never worked a day with his own hands. He had

this house built from his own plans; but oh, a hod! Why need she have been so cruel and malicious?"

"It is really too bad," murmured Mrs. Bellmore, with an approving glance of her fine eyes about the vast

chamber done in lilac and old gold. "And it was in this room she saw it! Oh, no, I'm not afraid of ghosts.

Don't have the least fear on my account. I'm glad you put me in here. I think family ghosts so interesting! But,

really, the story does sound a little inconsistent. I should have expected something better from Mrs.

FischerSuympkins. Don't they carry bricks in hods? Why should a ghost bring bricks into a villa built of

marble and stone? I'm so sorry, but it makes me think that age is beginning to tell upon Mrs.

"This house," continued Mrs. Kinsolving, "was built upon the site of an old one used by the family during the

Revolution. There wouldn't be anything strange in its having a ghost. And there was a Captain Kinsolving

who fought in General Greene's army, though we've never been able to secure any papers to vouch for it. If

there is to be a family ghost, why couldn't it have been his, instead of a bricklayer's?"

"The ghost of a Revolutionary ancestor wouldn't be a bad idea," agreed Mrs. Bellmore; "but you know how

arbitrary and inconsiderate ghosts can be. Maybe, like love, they are 'engendered in the eye.' One advantage

of those who see ghosts is that their stories can't be disproved. By a spiteful eye, a Revolutionary knapsack

might easily be construed to be a hod. Dear Mrs. Kinsolving, think no more of it. I am sure it was a

"But she told everybody!" mourned Mrs. Kinsolving, inconsolable. "She insisted upon the details. There is

"Shan't get into them," said Mrs. Bellmore, with a prettily suppressed yawn; "too stiff and wrinkly. Is that

you, Felice? Prepare my bath, please. Do you dine at seven at Clifftop, Mrs. Kinsolving? So kind of you to

run in for a chat before dinner! I love those little touches of informality with a guest. They give such a home

flavour to a visit. So sorry; I must be dressing. I am so indolent I always postpone it until the last moment."

Mrs. FischerSuympkins had been the first large plum that the Kinsolvings had drawn from the social pie.

For a long time, the pie itself had been out of reach on a top shelf. But the purse and the pursuit had at last

lowered it. Mrs. FischerSuympkins was the heliograph of the smart society parading corps. The glitter of

her wit and actions passed along the line, transmitting whatever was latest and most daring in the game of

peepshow. Formerly, her fame and leadership had been secure enough not to need the support of such

artifices as handing around live frogs for favours at a cotillon. But, now, these things were necessary to the

holding of her throne. Beside, middle age had come to preside, incongruous, at her capers. The sensational

papers had cut her space from a page to two columns. Her wit developed a sting; her manners became more

rough and inconsiderate, as if she felt the royal necessity of establishing her autocracy by scorning the

To some pressure at the command of the Kinsolvings, she had yielded so far as to honour their house by her

presence, for an evening and night. She had her revenge upon her hostess by relating, with grim enjoyment

and sarcastic humour, her story of the vision carrying the hod. To that lady, in raptures at having penetrated

thus far toward the coveted inner circle, the result came as a crushing disappointment. Everybody either

sympathized or laughed, and there was little to choose between the two modes of expression.

But, later on, Mrs. Kinsolving's hopes and spirits were revived by the capture of a second and greater prize.

Mrs. Bellamy Bellmore had accepted an invitation to visit at Clifftop, and would remain for three days. Mrs.

Bellmore was one of the younger matrons, whose beauty, descent, and wealth gave her a reserved seat in the

holy of holies that required no strenuous bolstering. She was generous enough thus to give Mrs. Kinsolving

the accolade that was so poignantly desired; and, at the same time, she thought how much it would please

Terence was Mrs. Kinsolving's son, aged twentynine, quite goodlooking enough, and with two or three

attractive and mysterious traits. For one, he was very devoted to his mother, and that was sufficiently odd to

deserve notice. For others, he talked so little that it was irritating, and he seemed either very shy or very deep.

Terence interested Mrs. Bellmore, because she was not sure which it was. She intended to study him a little

longer, unless she forgot the matter. If he was only shy, she would abandon him, for shyness is a bore. If he

On the afternoon of the third day of her visit, Terence hunted up Mrs. Bellmore, and found her in a nook

"It's so good of you," said he, "to come down here and retrieve the day for us. I suppose you have heard that

Mrs. FischerSuympkins scuttled the ship before she left. She knocked a whole plank out of the bottom with

a hod. My mother is grieving herself ill about it. Can't you manage to see a ghost for us while you are here,

Mrs. Bellmore a bangup, swell ghost, with a coronet on his head and a cheque book under his arm?"

"That was a naughty old lady, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, "to tell such stories. Perhaps you gave her too

"I think she does," answered Terence. "One would think every brick in the hod had dropped on her. It's a

good mammy, and I don't like to see her worried. It's to be hoped that the ghost belongs to the hodcarriers'

union, and will go out on a strike. If he doesn't, there will be no peace in this family."

"I'm sleeping in the ghostchamber," said Mrs. Bellmore, pensively. "But it's so nice I wouldn't change it,

even if I were afraid, which I'm not. It wouldn't do for me to submit a counter story of a desirable, aristocratic

shade, would it? I would do so, with pleasure, but it seems to me it would be too obviously an antidote for the

"True," said Terence, running two fingers thoughtfully into his crisp, brown hair; "that would never do. How

would it work to see the same ghost again, minus the overalls, and have gold bricks in the hod? That would

elevate the spectre from degrading toil to a financial plane. Don't you think that would be respectable

"There was an ancestor who fought against the Britishers, wasn't there? Your mother said something to that

"I believe so; one of those old chaps in raglan vests and golf trousers. I don't care a continental for a

Continental, myself. But the mother has set her heart on pomp and heraldry and pyrotechnics, and I want her

"You are a good boy, Terence," said Mrs. Bellmore, sweeping her silks close to one side of her, "not to beat

your mother. Sit here by me, and let's look at the album, just as people used to do twenty years ago. Now, tell

me about every one of them. Who is this tall, dignified gentleman leaning against the horizon, with one arm

"That old chap with the big feet?" inquired Terence, craning his neck. "That's greatuncle O'Brannigan. He

"I asked you to sit down, Terence. If you are not going to amuse, or obey, me, I shall report in the morning

that I saw a ghost wearing an apron and carrying schooners of beer. Now, that is better. To be shy, at your

At breakfast on the last morning of her visit, Mrs. Bellmore startled and entranced every one present by

"Did it have a a a ?" Mrs. Kinsolving, in her suspense and agitation, could not bring out the word.

There was a chorus of questions from others at the table. "Were n't you frightened?" "What did it do?" "How

"I'll try to answer everything at once," said Mrs. Bellmore, heroically, "although I'm frightfully hungry.

Something awakened me I'm not sure whether it was a noise or a touch and there stood the phantom. I

never burn a light at night, so the room was quite dark, but I saw it plainly. I wasn't dreaming. It was a tall

man, all misty white from head to foot. It wore the full dress of the old Colonial days powdered hair,

baggy coat skirts, lace ruffles, and a sword. It looked intangible and luminous in the dark, and moved without

a sound. Yes, I was a little frightened at first or startled, I should say. It was the first ghost I had ever seen.

No, it didn't say anything. I didn't scream. I raised up on my elbow, and then it glided silently away, and

Mrs. Kinsolving was in the seventh heaven. "The description is that of Captain Kinsolving, of General

Greene's army, one of our ancestors," she said, in a voice that trembled with pride and relief. "I really think I

must apologize for our ghostly relative, Mrs. Bellmore. I am afraid he must have badly disturbed your rest."

Terence sent a smile of pleased congratulation toward his mother. Attainment was Mrs. Kinsolving's, at last,

"I suppose I ought to be ashamed to confess," said Mrs. Bellmore, who was now enjoying her breakfast, "that

I wasn't very much disturbed. I presume it would have been the customary thing to scream and faint, and

have all of you running about in picturesque costumes. But, after the first alarm was over, I really couldn't

work myself up to a panic. The ghost retired from the stage quietly and peacefully, after doing its little turn,

Nearly all listened, politely accepted Mrs. Bellmore s story as a madeup affair, charitably offered as an

offset to the unkind vision seen by Mrs. FischerSuympkins. But one or two present perceived that her

assertions bore the genuine stamp of her own convictions. Truth and candour seemed to attend upon every

word. Even a scoffer at ghosts if he were very observant would have been forced to admit that she had,

Soon Mrs. Bellmore's maid was packing. In two hours the auto would come to convey her to the station. As

Terence was strolling upon the east piazza, Mrs. Bellmore came up to him, with a confidential sparkle in her

"I didn't wish to tell the others all of it," she said, "but I will tell you. In a way, I think you should be held

"Rattled chains," suggested Terence, after some thought, "or groaned? They usually do one or the other."

"Do you happen to know," continued Mrs. Bellmore, with sudden irrelevancy, "if I resemble any one of the

"Don't think so," said Terence, with an extremely puzzled air. "Never heard of any of them being noted

"Then, why," said Mrs. Bellmore, looking the young man gravely in the eye, "should that ghost have kissed

"Heavens!" exclaimed Terence, in wideeyed amazement; "you don't mean that, Mrs. Bellmore! Did he

"I said _it_," corrected Mrs. Bellmore. "I hope the impersonal pronoun is correctly used."

"I see. 'Unto the third and fourth generation. 'But, seriously, did he did it how do you ?"

"Know? How does any one know? I was asleep, and that is what awakened me, I'm almost certain."

"Well, I awoke just as oh, can't you understand what I mean? When anything arouses you suddenly, you

are not positive whether you dreamed, or and yet you know that Dear me, Terence, must I dissect the

most elementary sensations in order to accommodate your extremely practical intelligence?"

"But, about kissing ghosts, you know," said Terence, humbly, "I require the most primary instruction. I never

"The sensation," said Mrs. Bellmore, with deliberate, but slightly smiling, emphasis, "since you are seeking

"Of course," said Terence, suddenly growing serious, "it was a dream or some kind of an hallucination.

Nobody believes in spirits, these days. If you told the tale out of kindness of heart, Mrs. Bellmore, I can't

express how grateful I am to you. It has made my mother supremely happy. That Revolutionary ancestor was

Mrs. Bellmore sighed. "The usual fate of ghostseers is mine," she said, resignedly. "My privileged

encounter with a spirit is attributed to lobster salad or mendacity. Well, I have, at least, one memory left from

the wreck a kiss from the unseen world. Was Captain Kinsolving a very brave man, do you know,

"He was licked at Yorktown, I believe," said Terence, reflecting. "They say he skedaddled with his company,

"I thought he must have been timid," said Mrs. Bellmore, absently. "He might have had another."

"What else could I mean? I must go and get ready now; the auto will be here in an hour. I've enjoyed Clifftop

On her way to the station, Mrs. Bellmore took from her bag a silk handkerchief, and looked at it with a little

peculiar smile. Then she tied it in several very hard knots, and threw it, at a convenient moment, over the

In his room, Terence was giving some directions to his man, Brooks. "Have this stuff done up in a parcel," he

The card was that of a New York costumer. The "stuff" was a gentleman's costume of the days of '76, made

of white satin, with silver buckles, white silk stockings, and white kid shoes. A powdered wig and a sword

"And look about, Brooks," added Terence, a little anxiously, "for a silk handkerchief with my initials in one

It was a month later when Mrs. Bellmore and one or two others of the smart crowd were making up a list of

names for a coaching trip through the Catskills. Mrs. Bellmore looked over the list for a final censoring. The

name of Terence Kinsolving was there. Mrs. Bellmore ran her prohibitive pencil lightly through the name.

Supper was over, and there had fallen upon the camp the silence that accompanies the rolling of cornhusk

cigarettes. The water hole shone from the dark earth like a patch of fallen sky. Coyotes yelped. Dull thumps

indicated the rockinghorse movements of the hobbled ponies as they moved to fresh grass. A halftroop of

A wellknown sound the fluttering and scraping of chaparral against wooden stirrups came from the

thick brush above the camp. The rangers listened cautiously. They heard a loud and cheerful voice call out

"Brace up, Muriel, old girl, we're 'most there now! Been a long ride for ye, ain't it, ye old antediluvian

handful of animated carpettacks? Hey, now, quit a tryin' to kiss me! Don't hold on to my neck so tight

this here paint hoss ain't any too shorefooted, let me tell ye. He's liable to dump us both off if we don't

Two minutes of waiting brought a tired "paint" pony singlefooting into camp. A gangling youth of twenty

lolled in the saddle. Of the "Muriel" whom he had been addressing, nothing was to be seen.

"Hi, fellows!" shouted the rider cheerfully. "This here's a letter fer Lieutenant Manning."

He dismounted, unsaddled, dropped the coils of his stakerope, and got his hobbles from the saddlehorn.

While Lieutenant Manning, in command, was reading the letter, the newcomer, rubbed solicitously at some

dried mud in the loops of the hobbles, showing a consideration for the forelegs of his mount.

"Boys," said the lieutenant, waving his hand to the rangers, "this is Mr. James Hayes. He's a new member of

the company. Captain McLean sends him down from El Paso. The boys will see that you have some supper,

The recruit was received cordially by the rangers. Still, they observed him shrewdly and with suspended

judgment. Picking a comrade on the border is done with ten times the care and discretion with which a girl

chooses a sweetheart. On your "sidekicker's" nerve, loyalty, aim, and coolness your own life may depend

After a hearty supper Hayes joined the smokers about the fire. His appearance did not settle all the questions

in the minds of his brother rangers. They saw simply a loose, lank youth with towcoloured, sunburned hair

"Fellows," said the new ranger, "I'm goin' to interduce to you a lady friend of mine. Ain't ever heard anybody

call her a beauty, but you'll all admit she's got some fine points about her. Come along, Muriel!"

He held open the front of his blue flannel shirt. Out of it crawled a horned frog. A bright red ribbon was tied

jauntily around its spiky neck. It crawled to its owner's knee and sat there, motionless.

"This here Muriel," said Hayes, with an oratorical wave of his hand, "has got qualities. She never talks back,

she always stays at home, and she's satisfied with one red dress for every day and Sunday, too."

"Look at that blame insect!" said one of the rangers with a grin. "I've seen plenty of them horny frogs, but I

never knew anybody to have one for a sidepartner. Does the blame thing know you from anybody else?"

The stumpy little lizard known as the horned frog is harmless. He has the hideousness of the prehistoric

The ranger took Muriel from Hayes's knee and went back to his seat on a roll of blankets. The captive twisted

and clawed and struggled vigorously in his hand. After holding it for a moment or two, the ranger set it upon

the ground. Awkwardly, but swiftly the frog worked its four oddly moving legs until it stopped close by

"Well, dang my hide!" said the other ranger. "The little cuss knows you. Never thought them insects had that

Jimmy Hayes became a favourite in the ranger camp. He had an endless store of goodnature, and a mild,

perennial quality of humour that is well adapted to camp life. He was never without his horned frog. In the

bosom of his shirt during rides, on h is knee or shoulder in camp, under his blankets at night, the ugly little

Jimmy was a humourist of a type that prevails in the rural South and West. Unskilled in originating methods

of amusing or in witty conceptions, he had hit upon a comical idea and clung to it reverently. It had seemed to

Jimmy a very funny thing to have about his person, with which to amuse his friends, a tame horned frog with

The sentiments existing between Jimmy and the frog cannot be exactly determined. The capability of the

horned frog for lasting affection is a subject upon which we have had no symposiums. It is easier to guess

Jimmy's feelings. Muriel was his chef _d'oeuvre_ of wit, and as such he cherished her. He caught flies for

her, and shielded her from sudden northers. Yet his care was half selfish, and when the time came she repaid

him a thousand fold. Other Muriels have thus overbalanced the light attentions of other Jimmies.

Not at once did Jimmy Hayes attain full brotherhood with his comrades. They loved him for his simplicity

and drollness, but there hung above him a great sword of suspended judgment. To make merry in camp is not

all of a ranger's life. There are horsethieves to trail, desperate criminals to run down, bravos to battle with,

bandits to rout out of the chaparral, peace and order to be compelled at the muzzle of a sixshooter. Jimmy

had been "'most generally a cowpuncher," he said; he was inexperienced in ranger methods of warfare.

Therefore the rangers speculated apart and solemnly as to how he would stand fire. For, let it be known, the

honour and pride of each ranger company is the individual bravery of its members.

For two months the border was quiet. The rangers lolled, listless, in camp. And then bringing joy to the

rusting guardians of the frontier Sebastiano Saldar, an eminent Mexican desperado and cattlethief,

crossed the Rio Grande with his gang and began to lay waste the Texas side. There were indications that

Jimmy Hayes would soon have the opportunity to show his mettle. The rangers patrolled with alacrity, but

One evening, about sundown, the rangers halted for supper after a long ride. Their horses stood panting, with

their saddles on. The men were frying bacon and boiling coffee. Suddenly, out of the brush, Sebastiano

Saldar and his gang dashed upon them with blazing sixshooters and highvoiced yells. It was a neat

surprise. The rangers swore in annoyed tones, and got their Winchesters busy; but the attack was only a

spectacular dash of the purest Mexican type. After the florid demonstration the raiders galloped away,

yelling, down the river. The rangers mounted and pursued; but in less than two miles the fagged ponies

laboured so that Lieutenant Manning gave the word to abandon the chase and return to the camp.

Then it was discovered that Jimmy Hayes was missing. Some one remembered having seen him run for his

pony when the attack began, but no one had set eyes on him since. Morning came, but no Jimmy. They

searched the country around, on the theory that he had been killed or wounded, but without success. Then

they followed after Saldar's gang, but it seemed to have disappeared. Manning concluded that the wily

Mexican had recrossed the river after his theatric farewell. And, indeed, no further depredations f rom him

This gave the rangers time to nurse a soreness they had. As has been said, the pride and honour of the

company is the individual bravery of its members. And now they believed that Jimmy Hayes had turned

coward at the whiz of Mexican bullets. There was no other deduction. Buck Davis pointed out that not a shot

was fired by Saldar's gang after Jimmy was seen running for his horse. There was no way for him to have

been shot. No, he had fled from his first fight, and afterward he would not return, aware that the scorn of his

So Manning's detachment of McLean's company, Frontier Battalion, was gloomy. It was the first blot on its

escutcheon. Never before in the history of the service had a ranger shown the white feather. All of them had

Days, weeks, and months went by, and still that little cloud of unforgotten cowardice hung above the camp.

Nearly a year afterward after many camping grounds and many hundreds of miles guarded and defended

Lieutenant Manning, with almost the same detachment of men, was sent to a point only a few miles below

their old camp on the river to look after some smuggling there. One afternoon, while they were riding through

a dense mesquite flat, they came upon a patch of open hogwallow prairie. There they rode upon the scene of

In a big hogwallow lay the skeletons of three Mexicans. Their clothing alone served to identify them. The

largest of the figures had once been Sebastiano Saldar. His great, costly sombrero, heavy with gold

ornamentation a hat famous all along the Rio Grande lay there pierced by three bullets. Along the

ridge of the hogwallow rested the rusting Winchesters of the Mexicans all pointing in the same direction.

The rangers rode in that direction for fifty yards. There, in a little depression of the ground, with his rifle still

bearing upon the three, lay another skeleton. It had been a battle of extermination. There was nothing to

identify the solitary defender. His clothing such as the elements had left distinguishable seemed to be

"Some cowpuncher," said Manning, "that they caught out alone. Good boy! He put up a dandy scrap before

And then, from beneath the weatherbeaten rags of the dead man, there wriggled out a horned frog with a

faded red ribbon around its neck, and sat upon the shoulder of its long quiet master. Mutely it told the story of

the untried youth and the swift "paint" pony how they had outstripped all their comrades that day in the

pursuit of the Mexican raiders, and how the boy had gone down upholding the honour of the company.

The ranger troop herded close, and a simultaneous wild yell arose from their lips. The outburst was at once a

dirge, an apology, an epitaph, and a paean of triumph. A strange requiem, you may say, over the body of a

fallen, comrade; but if Jimmy Hayes could have heard it he would have understood.

I sat an hour by sun, in the editor's room of the Montopolis _Weekly Bugle_. I was the editor.

The saffron rays of the declining sunlight filtered through the cornstalks in Micajah Widdup's gardenpatch,

and cast an amber glory upon my pastepot. I sat at the editorial desk in my nonrotary revolving chair, and

prepared my editorial against the oligarchies. The room, with its one window, was already a prey to the

twilight. One by one, with my trenchant sentences, I lopped off the heads of the political hydra, while I

listened, full of kindly peace, to the homecoming cowbells and wondered what Mrs. Flanagan was going

Then in from the dusky, quiet street there drifted and perched himself upon a corner of my desk old Father

Time's younger brother. His face was beardless and as gnarled as an English walnut. I never saw clothes such

as he wore. They would have reduced Joseph's coat to a monochrome. But the colours were not the dyer's.

Stains and patches and the work of sun and rust were responsible for the diversity. On his coarse shoes was

the dust, conceivably, of a thousand leagues. I can describe him no further, except to say that he was little and

weird and old old I began to estimate in centuries when I saw him. Yes, and I remember that there was an

odour, a faint odour like aloes, or possibly like myrrh or leather; and I thought of museums.

And then I reached for a pad and pencil, for business is business, and visits of the oldest inhabitants are

"I am glad to see you, sir," I said. "I would offer you a chair, but you see, sir," I went on, "I have lived in

Montopolis only three weeks, and I have not met many of our citizens." I turned a doubtful eye upon his

duststained shoes, and concluded with a newspaper phrase, "I suppose that you reside in our midst?"

My visitor fumbled in his raiment, drew forth a soiled card, and handed it to me. Upon it was written, in plain

"I am glad you called, Mr. Ader," I said. "As one of our older citizens, you must view with pride the recent

growth and enterprise of Montopolis. Among other improvements, I think I can promise that the town will

Again he visited the depths of his ancient vestments. This time he brought out a torn leaf of some book or

journal, brown and flimsy with age. The heading of the page was the _Turkish Spy_ in oldstyle type; the

"There is a man come to Paris in this year 1643 who pretends to have lived these sixteen hundred years. He

says of himself that he was a shoemaker in Jerusalem at the time of the Crucifixion; that his name is Michob

Ader; and that when Jesus, the Christian Messias, was condemned by Pontius Pilate, the Roman president, he

paused to rest while bearing his cross to the place of crucifixion before the door of Michob Ader. The

shoemaker struck Jesus with his fist, saying: 'Go; why tarriest thou?' The Messias a nswered him: 'I indeed

am going; but thou shalt tarry until I come'; thereby condemning him to live until the day of judgment. He

lives forever, but at the end of every hundred years he falls into a fit or trance, on recovering from which he

finds himself in the same state of youth in which he was when Jesus suffered, being then about thirty years of

"Such is the story of the Wandering Jew, as told by Michob Ader, who relates " Here the printing ended.

I must have muttered aloud something to myself about the Wandering Jew, for the old man spake up, bitterly

"'Tis a lie," said he, "like nine tenths of what ye call history. 'Tis a Gentile I am, and no Jew. I am after

footing it out of Jerusalem, my son; but if that makes me a Jew, then everything that comes out of a bottle is

babies' milk. Ye have my name on the card ye hold; and ye have read the bit of paper they call the _Turkish

Spy_ that printed the news when I stepped into their office on the 12th day of June, in the year 1643, just as I

I laid down my pencil and pad. Clearly it would not do. Here was an item for the local column of the _Bugle_

that but it would not do. Still, fragments of the impossible "personal" began to flit through my

conventionalized brain. "Uncle Michob is as spry on his legs as a young chap of only a thousand or so." "Our

venerable caller relates with' pride that George Wash no, Ptolemy the Great once dandled him on his

knee at his father's house." "Uncle Michob says that our wet spring was nothing in comparison with the

dampness that ruined the crops around Mount Ararat when he was a boy " But no, no it would not do.

I was trying to think of some conversational subject with which to interest my visitor, and was hesitating

between walking matches and the Pliocene age, when the old man suddenly began to weep poignantly and

"Cheer up, Mr. Ader," I said, a little awkwardly; "this matter may blow over in a few hundred years more.

There has already been a decided reaction in favour of Judas Iscariot and Colonel Burr and the celebrated

violinist, Signor Nero. This is the age of whitewash. You must not allow yourself to become downhearted."

Unknowingly, I had struck a chord. The old man blinked belligerently through his senile tears.

"'Tis time," he said, "that the liars be doin' justice to somebody. Yer historians are no more than a pack of old

women gabblin' at a wake. A finer man than the Imperor Nero niver wore sandals. Man, I was at the burnin'

of Rome. I knowed the Imperor well, for in them days I was a wellknown character. In thim days they had

"But 'twas of the Imperor Nero I was goin' to tell ye. I struck into Rome, up the Appian Way, on the night of

July the 16th, the year 64. I had just stepped down by way of Siberia and Afghanistan; and one foot of me

had a frostbite, and the other a blister burned by the sand of the desert; and I was feelin' a bit blue from doin'

patrol duty from the North Pole down to the Last Chance corner in Patagonia, and bein' miscalled a Jew in

the bargain. Well, I'm tellin' ye I was passin' the Circus Maximus, and it was dark as pitch over the way, and

"Over ag'inst the wall, hid out amongst a pile of barrels and old drygoods boxes, was the Imperor Nero wid

"'None of the weeds for me,' says I 'nayther pipe nor segar. What's the use,' says I, 'of smokin' when ye've

"'True for ye, Michob Ader, my perpetual Jew,' says the Imperor; 'ye're not always wandering. Sure, 'tis

"'And for what,' says I, 'do ye smoke be night in dark places widout even a cinturion in plain clothes to attend

"'I've had the cousin of it,' says I. 'I've been on the trot with pedestrianism for many a year, and more to come,

"'The longer word,' says me friend Nero, 'is the tachin' of this new sect of people they call the Christians. 'Tis

them that's raysponsible for me smokin' be night in holes and corners of the dark.'

"And then I sets down and takes off a shoe and rubs me foot that is frosted, and the Imperor tells me about it.

It seems that since I passed that way before, the Imperor had mandamused the Impress wid a divorce suit, and

Misses Poppaea, a cilibrated lady, was ingaged, widout riferences, as housekeeper at the palace. 'All in one

day,' says the Imperor, 'she puts up new lace windycurtains in the palace and joins the antitobacco society,

and whin I feels the need of a smoke I must be after sneakin' out to these piles of lumber in the dark.' So there

in the dark me and the Imperor sat, and I told him of me travels. And when they say the Imperor was an

incindiary, they lie. 'Twas that night the fire started that burnt the city. 'Tis my opinion that it began from a

stump of segar that he threw down among the boxes. And 'tis a lie that he fiddled. He did all he could for six

And now I detected a new flavour to Mr. Michob Ader. It had not been myrrh or balm or hyssop that I had

smelled. The emanation was the odour of bad whiskey and, worse still, of low comedy the sort that

small humorists manufacture by clothing the grave and reverend things of legend and history in the vulgar,

topical frippery that passes for a certain kind of wit. Michob Ader as an impostor, claiming nineteen hundred

years, and playing his part with the decency of respectable lunacy, I could endure; but as a tedious wag,

cheapening his egregious story with songbook levity, his importance as an entertainer grew less.

"You'll excuse me, sir," he whined, "but sometimes I get a little mixed in my head. I am a very old man; and

I knew that he was right, and that I should not try to reconcile him with Roman history; so I asked for news

Above my desk hung an engraving of Raphael's cherubs. You could yet make out their forms, though the dust

"Ye calls them 'cherrubs'," cackled the old man. "Babes, ye fancy they are, with wings. And there's one wid

greatgreatgreatgrandfather of thim all was a billygoat. Bein' an editor, sir, do ye happen to know where

"'Tis not in history nor in the Bible where it was. But I saw it, meself. The first pictures of cherrubs and

cupids was sculptured upon thim walls and pillars. Two of the biggest, sir, stood in the adytum to form the

baldachin over the Ark. But the wings of thim sculptures was intindid for horns. And the faces was the faces

of goats. Ten thousand goats there was in and about the temple. And your cherrubs was billygoats in the

"And I knew Tamerlane, the lame Timour, sir, very well. I saw him at Keghut and at Zaranj. He was a little

man no larger than yerself, with hair the colour of an amber pipe stem. They buried him at Samarkand I was

at the wake, sir. Oh, he was a finebuilt man in his coffin, six feet long, with black whiskers to his face. And

I see 'em throw turnips at the Imperor Vispacian in Africa. All over the world I have tramped, sir, without the

body of me findin' any rest. 'Twas so commanded I saw Jerusalem destroyed, and Pompeii go up in the

fireworks; and I was at the coronation of Charlemagne and the lynchin' of Joan of Arc. And everywhere I go

there comes storms and revolutions and plagues and fires. 'Twas so commanded. Ye have heard of the

Wandering Jew. 'Tis all so, except that divil a bit am I a Jew. But history lies, as I have told ye. Are ye quite

sure, sir, that ye haven't a drop of whiskey convenient? Ye well know that I have many miles of walking

I pushed my chair back creakingly. This ancient landlubber was becoming as great an affliction as any

crossbowed mariner. He shook a musty effluvium from his piebald clothes, overturned my inkstand, and

"I wouldn't mind it so much," he complained, "if it wasn't for the work I must do on Good Fridays. Ye know

about Pontius Pilate, sir, of course. His body, whin he killed himself, was pitched into a lake on the Alps

mountains. Now, listen to the job that 'tis mine to perform on the night of ivery Good Friday. The ould divil

goes down in the pool and drags up Pontius, and the water is bilin' and spewin' like a wash pot. And the ould

divil sets the body on top of a throne on the rocks, and thin comes me share of the job. Oh, sir, ye would pity

me thin ye would pray for the poor Wandering Jew that niver was a Jew if ye could see the horror of the

thing that I must do. 'Tis I that must fetch a bowl of water and kneel down before it till it washes its hands. I

declare to ye that Pontius Pilate, a man dead two hundred years, dragged up with the lake slime coverin' him

and fishes wrigglin' inside of him widout eyes, and in the discomposition of the body, sits there, sir, and

washes his hands in the bowl I hold for him on Good Fridays. 'Twas so commanded."

Clearly, the matter had progressed far beyond the scope of the _Bugle's_ local column. There might have

been employment here for the alienist or for those who circulate the pledge; but I had had enough of it. I got

At this he seized my coat, grovelled upon my desk, and burst again into distressful weeping. Whatever it was

His hallucination seemed beyond all reasonable answer; yet the effect of it upon him scarcely merited

disrespect. But I knew nothing that might assuage it; and I told him once more that both of us should be

Obedient at last, he raised himself from my dishevelled desk, and permitted me to half lift him to the floor.

The gale of his grief had blown away his words; his freshet of tears had soaked away the crust of his grief.

"'Twas me that did it," he muttered, as I led him toward the door "me, the shoemaker of Jerusalem."

I got him to the sidewalk, and in the augmented light I saw that his face was seared and lined and warped by a

And then high up in the firmamental darkness we heard the clamant cries of some great, passing birds. My

"They follow me everywhere," he said. "'Twas so commanded. What ye hear is the souls of the seven Jews

that helped with the Crucifixion. Sometimes they're plovers and sometimes geese, but ye'll find them always

I stood, uncertain how to take my leave. I looked down the street, shuffled my feet, looked back again and

And then my capillaries relaxed, for I dimly saw him footing it away through the darkness. But he walked so

swiftly and silently and contrary to the gait promised by his age that my composure was not all restored,

That night I was foolish enough to take down some dustcovered volumes from my modest shelves. I

searched "Hermippus Redivvus" and "Salathiel" and the "Pepys Collection" in vain. And then in a book

called "The Citizen of the World," and in one two centuries old, I came upon what I desired. Michob Ader

had indeed come to Paris in the year 1643, and related to the _Turkish Spy_ an extraordinary story. He

Judge Hoover was the _Bugle's_ candidate for congress. Having to confer with him, I sought his home early

the next morning; and we walked together down town through a little street with which I was unfamiliar.

"Why, yes," said the judge. "And that reminds me of my shoes he has for mending. Here is his shop now."

Judge Hoover stepped into a dingy, small shop. I looked up at the sign, and saw "Mike O'Bader, Boot and

Shoe Maker," on it. Some wild geese passed above, honking clearly. I scratched my ear and frowned, and

There sat my Wandering Jew on his shoemaker's bench, trimming a halfsole. He was drabbled with dew,

grassstained, unkempt, and miserable; and on his face was still the unexplained wretchedness, the

problematic sorrow, the esoteric woe, that had been written there by nothing less, it seemed, than the stylus of

Judge Hoover inquired kindly concerning his shoes. The old shoemaker looked up, and spoke sanely enough.

He had been ill, he said, for a few days. The next day the shoes would be ready. He looked at me, and I could

"Old Mike," remarked the candidate, "has been on one of his sprees. He gets crazy drunk regularly once a

I was silent, but I did not accept the explanation. And so, when I had the chance, I asked old man Sellers, who

"Mike O'Bader," said he, "was makin' shoes in Montopolis when I come here goin' on fifteen year ago. I

guess whiskey's his trouble. Once a month he gets off the track, and stays so a week. He's got a rigmarole

somethin' about his bein' a Jew pedler that he tells ev'rybody. Nobody won't listen to him any more. When

he's sober he ain't sich a fool he's got a sight of books in the back room of his shop that he reads. I guess

But again I would not. Not yet was my Wandering Jew rightly construed for me. I trust that women may not

be allowed a title to all the curiosity in the world. So when Montopolis's oldest inhabitant (some ninety score

years younger than Michob Ader) dropped in to acquire promulgation in print, I siphoned his perpetual trickle

"O'Bader," he quavered, "come here in '69. He was the first shoemaker in the place. Folks generally considers

him crazy at times now. But he don't harm nobody. I s'pose drinkin' upset his mind yes, drinkin' very

likely done it. It's a powerful bad thing, drinkin'. I'm an old, old man, sir, and I never see no good in drinkin'."

I felt disappointment. I was willing to admit drink in the case of my shoemaker, but I preferred it as a

recourse instead of a cause. Why had he pitched upon his perpetual, strange note of the Wandering Jew? Why

his unutterable grief during his aberration? I could not yet accept whiskey as an explanation.

"Lemme see! About thirty year ago there was somethin' of the kind, I recollect. Montopolis, sir, in them days

"Well, Mike O'Bader had a daughter then a right pretty girl. She was too gay a sort for Montopolis so one

day she slips off to another town and runs away with a circus. It was two years before she comes back, all

fixed up in fine clothes and rings and jewellery, to see Mike. He wouldn't have nothin' to do with her, so she

stays around town awhile, anyway. I reckon the men folks wouldn't have raised no objections, but the women

egged 'em on to order her to leave town. But she had plenty of spunk, and told 'em to mind their own

"So one night they decided to run her away. A crowd of men and women drove her out of her house, and

chased her with sticks and stones. She run to her father's door, callin' for help. Mike opens it, and when he

sees who it is he hits her with his fist and knocks her down and shuts the door.

"And then the crowd kept on chunkin' her till she run clear out of town. And the next day they finds her

drowned dead in Hunter's mill pond. I mind it all now. That was thirty year ago."

I leaned back in my nonrotary revolving chair and nodded gently, like a mandarin, at my pastepot.

"When old Mike has a spell," went on Uncle Abner, tepidly garrulous, "he thinks he's the Wanderin' Jew."

And Uncle Abner cackled insinuatingly at the editor's remark, for he was expecting at least a "stickful" in the

When Major Pendleton Talbot, of Mobile, sir, and his daughter, Miss Lydia Talbot, came to Washington to

reside, they selected for a boarding place a house that stood fifty yards back from one of the quietest avenues.

It was an oldfashioned brick building, with a portico upheld by tall white pillars. The yard was shaded by

stately locusts and elms, and a catalpa tree in season rained its pink and white blossoms upon the grass. Rows

of high box bushes lined the fence and walks. It was the Southern style and aspect of the place that pleased

In this pleasant, private boarding house they engaged rooms, including a study for Major Talbot, who was

adding the finishing chapters to his book, "Anecdotes and Reminiscences of the Alabama Army, Bench, and

Major Talbot was of the old, old South. The present day had little interest or excellence in his eyes. His mind

lived in that period before the Civil War, when the Talbots owned thousands of acres of fine cotton land and

the slaves to till them; when the family mansion was the scene of princely hospitality, and drew its guests

from the aristocracy of the South. Out of that period he had brought all its old pride and scruples of honour,

Such clothes were surely never made within fifty years. The major was tall, but whenever he made that

wonderful, archaic genuflexion he called a bow, the corners of his frock coat swept the floor. That garment

was a surprise even to Washington, which has long ago ceased to shy at the frocks and broadbrimmed hats of

Southern congressmen. One of the boarders christened it a "Father Hubbard," and it certainly was high in the

But the major, with all his queer clothes, his immense area of plaited, ravelling shirt bosom, and the little

black string tie with the bow always slipping on one side, both was smiled at and liked in Mrs. Vardeman' s

select boarding house. Some of the young department clerks would often "string him," as they called it,

getting him started upon the subject dearest to him the traditions and history of his beloved Southland.

During his talks he would quote freely from the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences." But they were very careful

not to let him see their designs, for in spite of his sixtyeight years, he could make the boldest of them

Miss Lydia was a plump, little old maid of thirtyfive, with smoothly drawn, tightly twisted hair that made

her look still older. Old fashioned, too, she was; but antebellum glory did not radiate from her as it did from

the major. She possessed a thrifty common sense; and it was she who handled the finances of the family, and

met all comers when there were bills to pay. The major regarded board bills and wash bills as contemptible

nuisances. They kept coming in so persistently and so often. Why, the major wanted to know, could they not

be filed and paid in a lump sum at some convenient period say when the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences"

had been published and paid for? Miss Lydia would calmly go on with her sewing and say, "We'll pay as we

Most of Mrs. Vardeman's boarders were away during the day, being nearly all department clerks and business

men; but there was one of them who was about the house a great deal from morning to night. This was a

young man named Henry Hopkins Hargraves every one in the house addressed him by his full name

who was engaged at one of the popular vaudeville theatres. Vaudeville has risen to such a respectable plane

in the last few years, and Mr. Hargraves was such a modest and wellmannered person, that Mrs. Vardeman

At the theatre Hargraves was known as an allround dialect comedian, having a large repertoire of German,

Irish, Swede, and blackface specialties. But Mr. Hargraves was ambitious, and often spoke of his great

This young man appeared to conceive a strong fancy for Major Talbot. Whenever that gentleman would

begin his Southern reminiscences, or repeat some of the liveliest of the anecdotes, Hargraves could always be

For a time the major showed an inclination to discourage the advances of the "play actor," as he privately

termed him; but soon the young man's agreeable manner and indubitable appreciation of the old gentleman's

It was not long before the two were like old chums. The major set apart each afternoon to read to him the

manuscript of his book. During the anecdotes Hargraves never failed to laugh at exactly the right point. The

major was moved to declare to Miss Lydia one day that young Hargraves possessed remarkable perception

and a gratifying respect for the old regime. And when it came to talking of those old days if Major Talbot

Like almost all old people who talk of the past, the major loved to linger over details. In describing the

splendid, almost royal, days of the old planters, he would hesitate until he had recalled the name of the Negro

who held his horse, or the exact date of certain minor happenings, or the number of bales of cotton raised in

such a year; but Hargraves never grew impatient or lost interest. On the contrary, he would advance questions

on a variety of subjects connected with the life of that time, and he n ever failed to extract ready replies.

The fox hunts, the 'possum suppers, the hoe downs and jubilees in the Negro quarters, the banquets in the

plantationhouse hall, when invitations went for fifty miles around; the occasional feuds with the

neighbouring gentry; the major's duel with Rathbone Culbertson about Kitty Chalmers, who afterward

married a Thwaite of South Carolina; and private yacht races for fabulous sums on Mobile Bay; the quaint

beliefs, improvident habits, and loyal virtues of the old slaves all these were subjects that held both the

Sometimes, at night, when the young man would be coming upstairs to his room after his turn at the theatre

was over, the major would appear at the door of his study and beckon archly to him. Going in, Hargraves

would find a little table set with a decanter, sugar bowl, fruit, and a big bunch of fresh green mint.

"It occurred to me," the major would begin he was always ceremonious "that perhaps you might have

found your duties at the at your place of occupation sufficiently arduous to enable you, Mr. Hargraves,

to appreciate what the poet might well have had in his mind when he wrote, 'tired Nature's sweet restorer,'

It was a fascination to Hargraves to watch him make it. He took rank among artists when he began, and he

never varied the process. With what delicacy he bruised the mint; with what exquisite nicety he estimated the

ingredients; with what solicitous care he capped the compound with the scarlet fruit glowing against the dark

green fringe! And then the hospitality and grace with which he offered it, after the selected oat straws had

After about four months in Washington, Miss Lydia discovered one morning that they were almost without

money. The "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" was completed, but publishers had not jumped at the collected

gems of Alabama sense and wit. The rental of a small house which they still owned in Mobile was two

months in arrears. Their board money for the month would be due in three days. Miss Lydia called her father

"No money?" said he with a surprised look. "It is quite annoying to be called on so frequently for these petty

The major searched his pockets. He found only a twodollar bill, which he returned to his vest pocket.

"I must attend to this at once, Lydia," he said. "Kindly get me my umbrella and I will go down town

immediately. The congressman from our district, General Fulghum, assured me some days ago that he would

use his influence to get my book published at an early date. I will go to his hotel at once and see what

With a sad little smile Miss Lydia watched him button his "Father Hubbard" and depart, pausing at the door,

That evening, at dark, he returned. It seemed that Congressman Fulghum had seen the publisher who had the

major's manuscript for reading. That person had said that if the anecdotes, etc., were carefully pruned down

about one half, in order to eliminate the sectional and class prejudice with which the book was dyed from end

The major was in a white heat of anger, but regained his equanimity, according to his code of manners, as

"We must have money," said Miss Lydia, with a little wrinkle above her nose. "Give me the two dollars, and

The major drew a small envelope from his upper vest pocket and tossed it on the table.

"Perhaps it was injudicious," he said mildly, "but the sum was so merely nominal that I bought tickets to the

theatre tonight. It's a new war drama, Lydia. I thought you would be pleased to witness its first production in

Washington. I am told that the South has very fair treatment in the play. I confess I should like to see the

Still, as the tickets were bought, they might as well be used. So that evening, as they sat in the theatre

listening to the lively overture, even Miss Lydia was minded to relegate their troubles, for the hour, to second

place. The major, in spotless linen, with his extraordinary coat showing only where it was closely buttoned,

and his white hair smoothly roached, looked really fine and distinguished. The curtain went up on the first act

of "A Magnolia Flower," revealing a typical Southern plantation scen e. Major Talbot betrayed some interest.

"Oh, see!" exclaimed Miss Lydia, nudging his arm, and pointing to her programme.

The major put on his glasses and read the line in the cast of characters that her finger indicated.

"It's our Mr. Hargraves," said Miss Lydia. "It must be his first appearance in what he calls 'the legitimate.' I'm

Not until the second act did Col. Webster Calhoun appear upon the stage. When he made his entry Major

Talbot gave an audible sniff, glared at him, and seemed to freeze solid. Miss Lydia uttered a little, ambiguous

squeak and crumpled her programme in her hand. For Colonel Calhoun was made up as nearly resembling

Major Talbot as one pea does another. The long, thin white hair, curly at the ends, the aristocratic beak of a

nose, the crumpled, wide, ravelling shirt front, the string tie, with the bow nearly under one ear, were almost

exactly duplicated. And then, to clinch the imitation, he wore the twin to the major's supposed to be

unparalleled coat. Highcollared, baggy, empirewaisted, ampleskirted, hanging a foot lower in front than

behind, the garment could have been designed from no other pattern. From then on, the major and Miss Lydia

sat bewitched, and saw the counterfeit presentment of a haughty Talbot "dragged," as the major afterward

Mr. Hargraves had used his opportunities well. He had caught the major's little idiosyncrasies of speech,

accent, and intonation and his pompous courtliness to perfection exaggerating all to the purposes of the

stage. When he performed that marvellous bow that the major fondly imagined to be the pink of all

Miss Lydia sat immovable, not daring to glance toward her father. Sometimes her hand next to him would be

laid against her cheek, as if to conceal the smile which, in spite of her disapproval, she could not entirely

The culmination of Hargraves's audacious imitation took place in the third act. The scene is where Colonel

Standing at a table in the centre of the stage, with his friends grouped about him, he delivers that inimitable,

rambling, character monologue so famous in "A Magnolia Flower," at the same time that he deftly makes

Major Talbot, sitting quietly, but white with indignation, heard his best stories retold, his pet theories and

hobbies advanced and expanded, and the dream of the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" served, exaggerated

and garbled. His favourite narrative that of his duel with Rathbone Culbertson was not omitted, and it

was delivered with more fire, egotism, and gusto than the major himself put into it.

The monologue concluded with a quaint, delicious, witty little lecture on the art of concocting a julep,

illustrated by the act. Here Major Talbot's delicate but showy science was reproduced to a hair's breadth

from his dainty handling of the fragrant weed "the onethousandth part of a grain too much pressure,

gentlemen, and you extract the bitterness, instead of the aroma, of this heavenbestowed plant" to his

At the close of the scene the audience raised a tumultuous roar of appreciation. The portrayal of the type was

so exact, so sure and thorough, that the leading characters in the play were forgotten. After repeated calls,

Hargraves came before the curtain and bowed, his rather boyish face bright and flushed with the knowledge

At last Miss Lydia turned and looked at the major. His thin nostrils were working like the gills of a fish. He

Before he could rise, she pulled him back into his seat. "We will stay it out," she declared. "Do you want to

advertise the copy by exhibiting the original coat?" So they remained to the end.

Hargraves's success must have kept him up late that night, for neither at the breakfast nor at the dinner table

About three in the afternoon he tapped at the door of Major Talbot's study. The major opened it, and

Hargraves walked in with his hands full of the morning papers too full of his triumph to notice anything

"I put it all over 'em last night, major," he began exultantly. "I had my inning, and, I think, scored. Here's

His conception and portrayal of the oldtime Southern colonel, with his absurd grandiloquence, his eccentric

garb, his quaint idioms and phrases, his motheaten pride of family, and his really kind heart, fastidious sense

of honour, and lovable simplicity, is the best delineation of a character role on the boards today. The coat

worn by Colonel Calhoun is itself nothing less than an evolution of genius. Mr. Hargraves has captured his

"I had the honour" the major's voice sounded ominously frigid "of witnessing your very remarkable

"You were there? I didn't know you ever I didn't know you cared for the theatre. Oh, I say, Major Talbot,"

he exclaimed frankly, "don't you be offended. I admit I did get a lot of pointers from you that helped me out

wonderfully in the part. But it's a type, you know not individual. The way the audience caught on shows

"Mr. Hargraves," said the major, who had remained standing, "you have put upon me an unpardonable insult.

You have burlesqued my person, grossly betrayed my confidence, and misused my hospitality. If I thought

you possessed the faintest conception of what is the sign manual of a gentleman, or what is due one, I would

The actor appeared to be slightly bewildered, and seemed hardly to take in the full meaning of the old

"I am truly sorry you took offence," he said regretfully. "Up here we don't look at things just as you people

do. I know men who would buy out half the house to have their personality put on the stage so the public

"Perhaps not. I have a pretty good memory, major; let me quote a few lines from your book. In response to a

toast at a banquet given in Milledgeville, I believe you uttered, and intend to have printed, these

The Northern man is utterly without sentiment or warmth except in so far as the feelings may be turned to his

own commercial profit. He will suffer without resentment any imputation cast upon the honour of himself or

his loved ones that does not bear with it the consequence of pecuniary loss. In his charity, he gives with a

"Do you think that picture is fairer than the one you saw of Colonel Calhoun last night?"

"The description," said the major frowning, "is not without grounds. Some exag latitude must be

"That is not the point," persisted the major, unrelenting. "It was a personal caricature. I positively decline to

"Major Talbot," said Hargraves, with a winning smile, "I wish you would understand me. I want you to know

that I never dreamed of insulting you. In my profession, all life belongs to me. I take what I want, and what I

can, and return it over the footlights. Now, if you will, let's let it go at that. I came in to see you about

something else. We've been pretty good friends for some months, and I'm going to take the risk of offending

you again. I know you are hard up for money never mind how I found out; a boarding house is no place to

keep such matters secret and I want you to let me help you out of the pinch. I've been there often enough

myself. I've been getting a fair salary all the season, and I've saved some money. You're welcome to a couple

"Stop!" commanded the major, with his arm outstretched. "It seems that my book didn't lie, after all. You

think your money salve will heal all the hurts of honour. Under no circumstances would I accept a loan from

a casual acquaintance; and as to you, sir, I would starve before I would consider your insulting offer of a

financial adjustment of the circumstances we have discussed. I beg to repeat my request relative to your

Hargraves took his departure without another word. He also left the house the same day, moving, as Mrs.

Vardeman explained at the supper table, nearer the vicinity of the downtown theatre, where "A Magnolia

Critical was the situation with Major Talbot and Miss Lydia. There was no one in Washington to whom the

major's scruples allowed him to apply for a loan. Miss Lydia wrote a letter to Uncle Ralph, but it was

doubtful whether that relative's constricted affairs would permit him to furnish help. The major was forced to

make an apologetic address to Mrs. Vardeman regarding the delayed payment for board, referring to

Late one afternoon the door maid came up and announced an old coloured man who wanted to see Major

Talbot. The major asked that he be sent up to his study. Soon an old darkey appeared in the doorway, with his

hat in hand, bowing, and scraping with one clumsy foot. He was quite decently dressed in a baggy suit of

black. His big, coarse shoes shone with a metallic lustre suggestive of stove polish. His bushy wool was gray

almost white. After middle life, it is difficult to estimate the age of a Negro . This one might have seen as

The major rose and came forward at the old, familiar style of address. It was one of the old plantation darkeys

without a doubt; but they had been widely scattered, and he could not recall the voice or face.

"Don't you 'member Cindy's Mose, Mars' Pendleton, what 'migrated 'mediately after de war?"

"Wait a moment," said the major, rubbing his forehead with the tips of his fingers. He loved to recall

everything connected with those beloved days. "Cindy's Mose," he reflected. "You worked among the horses

breaking the colts. Yes, I remember now. After the surrender, you took the name of don't prompt me

"Yassir, yassir," the old man's face stretched with a delighted grin "dat's him, dat's it. Newbraska. Dat's

me Mose Mitchell. Old Uncle Mose Mitchell, dey calls me now. Old mars', your pa, gimme a pah of dem

mule colts when I lef' fur to staht me goin' with. You 'member dem colts, Mars' Pendleton?"

"I don't seem to recall the colts," said the major. "You know I was married the first year of the war and living

at the old Follinsbee place. But sit down, sit down, Uncle Mose. I'm glad to see you. I hope you have

"Yassir; of late I done mouty famous. When I first got to Newbraska, dey folks come all roun' me to see dem

mule colts. Dey ain't see no mules like dem in Newbraska. I sold dem mules for three hundred dollars. Yassir

"Den I open a blacksmith shop, suh, and made some money and bought some lan'. Me and my old 'oman

done raised up seb'm chillun, and all doin' well 'cept two of 'em what died. Fo' year ago a railroad come along

and staht a town slam ag'inst my lan', and, suh, Mars' Pendleton, Uncle Mose am worth leb'm thousand

"And dat little baby of yo'n, Mars' Pendleton one what you name Miss Lyddy I be bound dat little tad

"Dar, now! What'd I tell you? I knowed dat baby done be plum growed up. You don't 'member Uncle Mose,

"This is Aunt Cindy's Mose, Lydia," explained the major. "He left Sunnymead for the West when you were

"Well," said Miss Lydia, "I can hardly be expected to remember you, Uncle Mose, at that age. And, as you

say, I'm 'plum growed up,' and was a blessed long time ago. But I'm glad to see you, even if I can't remember

And she was. And so was the major. Something alive and tangible had come to link them with the happy

past. The three sat and talked over the olden times, the major and Uncle Mose correcting or prompting each

"Uncle Mose am a delicate," he explained, "to de grand Baptis' convention in dis city. I never preached none,

but bein' a residin' elder in de church, and able fur to pay my own expenses, dey sent me along."

"Dey's a cullud man works in de hotel whar I stops, what comes from Mobile. He told me he seen Mars'

"What I come fur," continued Uncle Mose, reaching into his pocket "besides de sight of home folks

"Yassir three hundred dollars." He handed the major a roll of bills. "When I lef' old mars' says: 'Take dem

mule colts, Mose, and, if it be so you gits able, pay fur 'em'. Yassir dem was his words. De war had done

lef' old mars' po' hisself. Old mars' bein' 'long ago dead, de debt descends to Mars' Pendleton. Three hundred

dollars. Uncle Mose is plenty able to pay now. When dat railroad buy my lan' I laid off to pay fur dem mules.

Tears were in Major Talbot's eyes. He took Uncle Mose's hand and laid his other upon his shoulder.

"Dear, faithful, old servitor," he said in an unsteady voice, "I don't mind saying to you that 'Mars' Pendleton'

spent his last dollar in the world a week ago. We will accept this money, Uncle Mose, since, in a way, it is a

sort of payment, as well as a token of the loyalty and devotion of the old regime. Lydia, my dear, take the

After Uncle Mose had gone, Miss Lydia had a good cry for joy; and the major turned his face to a corner,

The succeeding days saw the Talbots restored to peace and ease. Miss Lydia's face lost its worried look. The

major appeared in a new frock coat, in which he looked like a wax figure personifying the memory of his

golden age. Another publisher who read the manuscript of the "Anecdotes and Reminiscences" thought that,

with a little retouching and toning down of the high lights, he could make a really bright and salable volume

of it. Altogether, the situation was comfortable, and not without the touch of hope that is often sweeter than

One day, about a week after their piece of good luck, a maid brought a letter for Miss Lydia to her room. The

postmark showed that it was from New York. Not knowing any one there, Miss Lydia, in a mild flutter of

wonder, sat down by her table and opened the letter with her scissors. This was what she read:

I thought you might be glad to learn of my good fortune. I have received and accepted an offer of two

hundred dollars per week by a New York stock company to play Colonel Calhoun in "A Magnolia Flower."

There is something else I wanted you to know. I guess you'd better not tell Major Talbot. I was anxious to

make him some amends for the great help he was to me in studying the part, and for the bad humour he was

in about it. He refused to let me, so I did it anyhow. I could easily spare the three hundred.

"The _Mobile Chronicle_ came," she said promptly. "It's on the table in your study."

He was a young doctor, somewhere between twenty and forty. He wore heliotrope socks, but he looked like

"Now," said he, "I am going to show you the effect of alcohol upon your circulation." I think it was

He bared my left arm to the elbow, brought out a bottle of whiskey, and gave me a drink. He began to look

Then he put a tight compress on my upper arm, stopped my pulse with his fingers, and squeezed a rubber

bulb connected with an apparatus on a stand that looked like a thermometer. The mercury jumped up and

down without seeming to stop anywhere; but the doctor said it registered two hundred and thirtyseven or

"It's marvellous," said I, "but do you think it a sufficient test? Have one on me, and let's try the other arm."

Then he grasped my hand. I thought I was doomed and he was saying goodbye. But all he wanted to do was

to jab a needle into the end of a finger and compare the red drop with a lot of fiftycent poker chips that he

"Well," said I, "I know it should be blue; but this is a country of mixups. Some of my ancestors were

The doctor then pounded me severely in the region of the chest. When he did that I don't know whether he

reminded me most of Napoleon or Battling or Lord Nelson. Then he looked grave and mentioned a string of

grievances that the flesh is heir to mostly ending in "itis." I immediately paid him fifteen dollars on

"Is or are it or some or any of them necessarily fatal?" I asked. I thought my connection with the matter

"All of them," he answered cheerfully. "But their progress may be arrested. With care and proper continuous

I began to think of the doctor's bill. "Eightyfive would be sufficient, I am sure," was my comment. I paid

"The first thing to do," he said, with renewed animation, "is to find a sanitarium where you will get a

complete rest for a while, and allow your nerves to get into a better condition. I myself will go with you and

So he took me to a madhouse in the Catskills. It was on a bare mountain frequented only by infrequent

frequenters. You could see nothing but stones and boulders, some patches of snow, and scattered pine trees.

The young physician in charge was most agreeable. He gave me a stimulant without applying a compress to

the arm. It was luncheon time, and we were invited to partake. There were about twenty inmates at little

tables in the dining room. The young physician in charge came to our table and said: "It is a custom with our

guests not to regard themselves as patients, hut merely as tired ladies and gentlemen taking a rest. Whatever

My doctor called loudly to a waitress to bring some phosphoglycerate of lime hash, dogbread,

bromoseltzer pancakes, and nux vomica tea for my repast. Then a sound arose like a sudden wind storm

among pine trees. It was produced by every guest in the room whispering loudly, "Neurasthenia!" except

one man with a nose, whom I distinctly heard say, "Chronic alcoholism." I hope to meet him again. The

An hour or so after luncheon he conducted us to the workshop say fifty yards from the house. Thither the

guests had been conducted by the physician in charge's understudy and spongeholder a man with feet

and a blue sweater. He was so tall that I was not sure he had a face; hut the Armour Packing Company would

"Here," said the physician in charge, "our guests find relaxation from past mental worries by devoting

There were turninglathes, carpenters' outfits, claymodelling tools, spinningwheels, weavingframes,

treadmills, bass drums, enlargedcrayonportrait apparatuses, blacksmith forges, and everything, seemingly,

"The lady making mud pies in the corner," whispered the physician in charge, "is no other than Lula

Lulington, the authoress of the novel entitled 'Why Love Loves.' What she is doing now is simply to rest her

I had seen the book. "Why doesn't she do it by writing another one instead?" I asked.

"The gentleman pouring water through the funnel," continued the physician in charge, "is a Wall Street

Others he pointed out were architects playing with Noah's arks, ministers reading Darwin's "Theory of

Evolution," lawyers sawing wood, tiredout society ladies talking Ibsen to the bluesweatered

spongeholder, a neurotic millionaire lying asleep on the floor, and a prominent artist drawing a little red

"You look pretty strong," said the physician in charge to me. "I think the best mental relaxation for you

would be throwing small boulders over the mountainside and then bringing them up again."

"The matter is," said I, "that there are no aeroplanes handy. So I am going to merrily and hastily jog the

footpathway to yon station and catch the first unlimitedsoftcoal express back to town."

"Well," said the doctor, "perhaps you are right. This seems hardly the suitable place for you. But what you

That night I went to a hotel in the city, and said to the clerk: "What I need is absolute rest and exercise. Can

you give me a room with one of those tall folding beds in it, and a relay of bellboys to work it up and down

The clerk rubbed a speck off one of his finger nails and glanced sidewise at a tall man in a white hat sitting in

the lobby. That man came over and asked me politely if I had seen the shrubbery at the west entrance. I had

"I thought you had 'em," he said, not unkindly, "but I guess you're all right. You'd better go see a doctor, old

A week afterward my doctor tested my blood pressure again without the preliminary stimulant. He looked to

me a little less like Napoleon. And his socks were of a shade, of tan that did not appeal to me.

"I myself," he said, "will take you to the Hotel Bonair off the coast of Long Island and see that you get in

The Hotel Bonair proved to be a ninehundredroom fashionable hostelry on an island off the main shore.

Everybody who did not dress for dinner was shoved into a side diningroom and given only a terrapin and

champagne table d'hote. The bay was a great stamping ground for wealthy yachtsmen. The Corsair anchored

there the day we arrived. I saw Mr. Morgan standing on deck eating a cheese sandwich and gazing longingly

at the hotel. Still, it was a very inexpensive place. Nobody could afford to pay their p rices. When you went

away you simply left your baggage, stole a skiff, and beat it for the mainland in the night.

When I had been there one day I got a pad of monogrammed telegraph blanks at the clerk's desk and began to

wire to all my friends for getaway money. My doctor and I played one game of croquet on the golf links and

When we got back to town a thought seemed to occur to him suddenly. "By the way," he asked, "how do you

Now a consulting physician is different. He isn't exactly sure whether he is to be paid or not, and this

uncertainty insures you either the most careful or the most careless attention. My doctor took me to see a

consulting physician. He made a poor guess and gave me careful attention. I liked him immensely. He put me

"Shut your eyes," he ordered, "put your feet close together, and jump backward as far as you can."

I always was a good backward jumper with my eyes shut, so I obeyed. My head struck the edge of the

bathroom door, which had been left open and was only three feet away. The doctor was very sorry. He had

"Oh, excuse me," said he. He reopened the bathroom door, and I took my finger out of the crack of it.

"I do not wish to deceive you as to symptoms, Doctor; I really have something like a pain in the back of my

I gave the best imitation I could of a disqualified Percheron being led out of Madison Square Garden. Then,

The consulting physician held up his forefinger within three inches of my nose. "Look at my finger," he

"Now look across the bay. At my finger. Across the bay. At my finger. At my finger. Across the bay. Across

He explained that this was a test of the action of the brain. It seemed easy to me. I never once mistook his

finger for the bay. I'll bet that if he had used the phrases: "Gaze, as it were, unpreoccupied, outward or

rather laterally in the direction of the horizon, underlaid, so to speak, with the adjacent fluid inlet," and

"Now, returning or rather, in a manner, withdrawing your attention, bestow it upon my upraised digit"

After asking me if I had ever had a grand uncle with curvature of the spine or a cousin with swelled ankles,

the two doctors retired to the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath tub for their consultation. I ate an

The doctors came out looking grave. More: they looked tombstones and Tennesseepaperspleasecopy.

They wrote out a diet list to which I was to be restricted. It had everything that I had ever heard of to eat on it,

except snails. And I never eat a snail unless it overtakes me and bites me first.

"Of next importance," they went on, "is outdoor air and exercise. And here is a prescription that will be of

I made a hole in the prescription, ran the cord through it, tied it around my neck, and tucked it inside. All of

Of course there was nothing the matter with me, but I was very ill. I couldn't work, sleep, eat, or bowl. The

only way I could get any sympathy was to go without shaving for four days. Even then somebody would say:

"Old man, you look as hardy as a pine knot. Been up for a jaunt in the Maine woods, eh?"

Then, suddenly, I remembered that I must have outdoor air and exercise. So I went down South to John's.

John is an approximate relative by verdict of a preacher standing with a little book in his hands in a bower of

chrysanthemums while a hundred thousand people looked on. John has a country house seven miles from

Pineville. It is at an altitude and on the Blue Ridge Mountains in a state too dignified to be dragged into this

He met me at Pineville, and we took the trolley car to his home. It is a big, neighbourless cottage on a hill

surrounded by a hundred mountains. We got off at his little private station, where John's family and

A rabbit came bounding across the hill between us and the house. I threw down my suitcase and pursued it

hotfoot. After I had run twenty yards and seen it disappear, I sat down on the grass and wept disconsolately.

"I can't catch a rabbit any more," I sobbed. "I'm of no further use in the world. I may as well be dead."

"Nerves a little unstrung," said John, in his calm way. "Don't worry. Get up, you rabbitchaser, and come on

to the house before the biscuits get cold." It was about twilight, and the mountains came up nobly to Miss

Soon after dinner I announced that I believed I could sleep for a year or two, including legal holidays. So I

was shown to a room as big and cool as a flower garden, where there was a bed as broad as a lawn. Soon

afterward the remainder of the household retired, and then there fell upon the land a silence.

I had not heard a silence before in years. It was absolute. I raised myself on my elbow and listened to it.

Sleep! I thought that if I only could hear a star twinkle or a blade of grass sharpen itself I could compose

myself to rest. I thought once that I heard a sound like the sail of a catboat flapping as it veered about in a

breeze, but I decided that it was probably only a tack in the carpet. Still I listened.

Suddenly some belated little bird alighted upon the windowsill, and, in what he no doubt considered sleepy

"Oh, nothing," I answered, "except that I accidentally bumped my head against the ceiling."

The next morning I went out on the porch and looked at the mountains. There were fortyseven of them in

sight. I shuddered, went into the big hall sitting room of the house, selected "Pancoast's Family Practice of

Medicine" from a bookcase, and began to read. John came in, took the book away from me, and led me

outside. He has a farm of three hundred acres furnished with the usual complement of barns, mules,

peasantry, and harrows with three front teeth broken off. I had seen such things in my childhood, and my

Then John spoke of alfalfa, and I brightened at once. "Oh, yes," said I, "wasn't she in the chorus of let's

"Green, you know," said John, "and tender, and you plow it under after the first season."

"I know something of some farmers," said I, "and a sure scythe will mow them down some day."

On the way back to the house a beautiful and inexplicable creature walked across our path. I stopped

irresistibly fascinated, gazing at it. John waited patiently, smoking his cigarette. He is a modern farmer. After

ten minutes he said: "Are you going to stand there looking at that chicken all day? Breakfast is nearly ready."

"A White Orpington hen?" I repeated, with intense interest. The fowl walked slowly away with graceful

dignity, and I followed like a child after the Pied Piper. Five minutes more were allowed me by John, and

After I had been there a week I began to grow alarmed. I was sleeping and eating well and actually beginning

to enjoy life. For a man in my desperate condition that would never do. So I sneaked down to the trolleycar

station, took the car for Pineville, and went to see one of the best physicians in town. By this time I knew

exactly what to do when I needed medical treatment. I hung my hat on the back of a chair, and said rapidly:

"Doctor, I have cirrhosis of the heart, indurated arteries, neurasthenia, neuritis, acute indigestion, and

convalescence. I am going to live on a strict diet. I shall also take a tepid bath at night and a cold one in the

morning. I shall endeavour to be cheerful, and fix my mind on pleasant subjects. In the way of drugs I intend

to take a phosphorous pill three times a day, preferably after meals, and a tonic composed of the tinctures of

gentian, cinchona, calisaya, and cardamom compound. Into each teaspoonful of this I shall mix tincture of

nux vomica, beginning with one drop and increasing it a drop each day until the maximum dose is reached. I

shall drop this with a medicinedropper, which can be procured at a trifling cost at any pharmacy. Good

I took my hat and walked out. After I had closed the door I remembered something that I had forgotten to say.

I opened it again. The doctor had not moved from where he had been sitting, but he gave a slightly nervous

"I forgot to mention," said I, "that I shall also take absolute rest and exercise.

After this consultation I felt much better. The reestablishing in my mind of the fact that I was hopelessly ill

gave me so much satisfaction that I almost became gloomy again. There is nothing more alarming to a

John looked after me carefully. After I had evinced so much interest in his White Orpington chicken he tried

his best to divert my mind, and was particular to lock his hen house of nights. Gradually the tonic mountain

air, the wholesome food, and the daily walks among the hills so alleviated my malady that I became utterly

wretched and despondent. I heard of a country doctor who lived in the mountains nearby. I went to see him

and told him the whole story. He was a graybearded man with clear, blue, wr inkled eyes, in a homemade

In order to save time I diagnosed my case, touched my nose with my right forefinger, struck myself below the

knee to make my foot kick, sounded my chest, stuck out my tongue, and asked him the price of cemetery lots

He lit his pipe and looked at me for about three minutes. "Brother," he said, after a while, "you are in a

mighty bad way. There's a chance for you to pull through, but it's a mighty slim one."

"What can it be?" I asked eagerly. "I have taken arsenic and gold, phosphorus, exercise, nux vomica,

hydrotherapeutic baths, rest, excitement, codein, and aromatic spirits of ammonia. Is there anything left in the

"Somewhere in these mountains," said the doctor, "there's a plant growing a flowering plant that'll cure

you, and it's about the only thing that will. It's of a kind that's as old as the world; but of late it's powerful

scarce and hard to find. You and I will have to hunt it up. I'm not engaged in active practice now: I'm getting

along in years; but I'll take your case. You'll have to come every day in the afternoon and help me hunt for

this plant till we find it. The city doctors may know a lot about new scientific things, but they don't know

So every day the old doctor and I hunted the cureall plant among the mountains and valleys of the Blue

Ridge. Together we toiled up steep heights so slippery with fallen autumn leaves that we had to catch every

sapling and branch within our reach to save us from falling. We waded through gorges and chasms,

breastdeep with laurel and ferns; we followed the banks of mountain streams for miles; we wound our way

like Indians through brakes of pine road side, hill side, river side, mountain side we explored in our search

As the old doctor said, it must have grown scarce and hard to find. But we followed our quest. Day by day we

plumbed the valleys, scaled the heights, and tramped the plateaus in search of the miraculous plant.

Mountainbred, he never seemed to tire. I often reached home too fatigued to do anything except fall into bed

One evening after I had returned from a sixmile tramp with the old doctor, Amaryllis and I took a little walk

under the trees near the road. We looked at the mountains drawing their royalpurple robes around them for

"I'm glad you're well again," she said. "When you first came you frightened me. I thought you were really

"Well again!" I almost shrieked. "Do you know that I have only one chance in a thousand to live?"

Amaryllis looked at me in surprise. "Why," said she, "you are as strong as one of the ploughmules, you

sleep ten or twelve hours every night, and you are eating us out of house and home. What more do you

"I tell you," said I, "that unless we find the magic that is, the plant we are looking for in time, nothing

"Doctor Tatum the old doctor who lives halfway up Black Oak Mountain. Do you know him?"

"I have known him since I was able to talk. And is that where you go every day is it he who takes you on

these long walks and climbs that have brought back your health and strength? God bless the old doctor."

Just then the old doctor himself drove slowly down the road in his rickety old buggy. I waved my hand at him

and shouted that I would be on hand the next day at the usual time. He stopped his horse and called to

Amaryllis to come out to him. They talked for five minutes while I waited. Then the old doctor drove on.

When we got to the house Amaryllis lugged out an encyclopaedia and sought a word in it. "The doctor said,"

she told me, "that you needn't call any more as a patient, but he'd be glad to see you any time as a friend. And

then he told me to look up my name in the encyclopaedia and tell you what it means. It seems to be the name

of a genus of flowering plants, and also the name of a country girl in Theocritus and Virgil. What do you

A word to a brother who may have come under the spell of the unquiet Lady Neurasthenia.

The formula was true. Even though gropingly at times, the physicians of the walled cities had put their

And so for the exercise one is referred to good Doctor Tatum on Black Oak Mountain take the road to

What rest more remedial than to sit with Amaryllis in the shade, and, with a sixth sense, read the wordless

Theocritan idyl of the goldbannered blue mountains marching orderly into the dormitories of the night?

The Captain gazed gloomily at his sword that hung upon the wall. In the closet near by was stored his faded

uniform, stained and worn by weather and service. What a long, long time it seemed since those old days of

And now, veteran that he was of his country's strenuous times, he had been reduced to abject surrender by a

woman's soft eyes and smiling lips. As he sat in his quiet room he held in his hand the letter he had just

received from her the letter that had caused him to wear that look of gloom. He reread the fatal

In declining the honour you have done me in asking me to be your wife, I feel that I ought to speak frankly.

The reason I have for so doing is the great difference between our ages. I like you very, very much, but I am

sure that our marriage would not be a happy one. I am sorry to have to refer to this, but I believe that you will

The Captain sighed, and leaned his head upon his hand. Yes, there were many years between their ages. But

he was strong and rugged, he had position and wealth. Would not his love, his tender care, and the advantages

he could bestow upon her make her forget the question of age? Besides, he was almost sure that she cared for

The Captain was a man of prompt action. In the field he had been distinguished for his decisiveness and

energy. He would see her and plead his cause again in person. Age! what was it to come between him and

In two hours he stood ready, in light marching order, for his greatest battle. He took the train for the old

Theodora Deming was on the steps of the handsome, porticoed old mansion, enjoying the summer twilight,

when the Captain entered the gate and came up the gravelled walk. She met him with a smile that was free

from embarrassment. As the Captain stood on the step below her, the difference in their ages did not appear

so great. He was tall and straight and cleareyed and browned. She was in the bloom of lovely womanhood.

"I wasn't expecting you," said Theodora; "but now that you've come you may sit on the step. Didn't you get

"I did," said the Captain; "and that's why I came. I say, now, Theo, reconsider your answer, won't you?"

Theodora smiled softly upon him. He carried his years well. She was really fond of his strength, his

"No, no," she said, shaking her head, positively; "it's out of the question. I like you a whole lot, but marrying

won't do. My age and yours are but don't make me say it again I told you in my letter."

The Captain flushed a little through the bronze on his face. He was silent for a while, gazing sadly into the

twilight. Beyond a line of woods that he could see was a field where the boys in blue had once bivouacked on

their march toward the sea. How long ago it seemed now! Truly, Fate and Father Time had tricked him

Theodora's hand crept down and rested in the clasp of his firm, brown one. She felt, at least, that sentiment

"Don't take it so hard, please," she said, gently. "It's all for the best. I've reasoned it out very wisely all by

myself. Some day you'll be glad I didn't marry you. It would be very nice and lovely for a while but, just

think! In only a few short years what different tastes we would have! One of us would want to sit by the

fireside and read, and maybe nurse neuralgia or rheumatism of evenings, while the other would be crazy for

balls and theatres and late suppers. No, my dear friend. While it isn 't exactly January and May, it's a clear

"No, you wouldn't. You think now that you would, but you wouldn't. Please don't ask me any more."

The Captain had lost his battle. But he was a gallant warrior, and when he rose to make his final adieu his

He took the train for the North that night. On the next evening he was back in his room, where his sword was

hanging against the wall. He was dressing for dinner, tying his white tie into a very careful bow. And at the

"'Pon my honour, I believe Theo was right, after all. Nobody can deny that she's a peach, but she must be

For you see, the Captain was only nineteen, and his sword had never been drawn except on the parade ground

Lakelands is not to be found in the catalogues of fashionable summer resorts. It lies on a low spur of the

Cumberland range of mountains on a little tributary of the Clinch River. Lakelands proper is a contented

village of two dozen houses situated on a forlorn, narrowgauge railroad line. You wonder whether the

railroad lost itself in the pine woods and ran into Lakelands from fright and loneliness, or whether Lakelands

got lost and huddled itself along the railroad to wait for the ears to carry it home.

You wonder again why it was named Lakelands. There are no lakes, and the lands about are too poor to be

Half a mile from the village stands the Eagle House, a big, roomy old mansion run by Josiah Rankin for the

accommodation of visitors who desire the mountain air at inexpensive rates. The Eagle House is delightfully

mismanaged. It is full of ancient instead of modern improvements, and it is altogether as comfortably

neglected and pleasingly disarranged as your own home. But you are furnished with clean rooms and good

and abundant fare: yourself and the piny woods must do the rest. Nature has provided a mineral spring,

grapevine swings, and croquet even the wickets are wooden. You have Art to thank only for the

The patrons of the Eagle House are those who seek recreation as a necessity, as well as a pleasure. They are

busy people, who may be likened to clocks that need a fortnight's winding to insure a year's running of their

wheels. You will find students there from the lower towns, now and then an artist, or a geologist absorbed in

construing the ancient strata of the hills. A few quiet families spend the summers there; and often one or two

A quarter of a mile from the Eagle House was what would have been described to its guests as "an object of

interest" in the catalogue, had the Eagle House issued a catalogue. This was an old, old mill that was no

longer a mill. In the words of Josiah Rankin, it was "the only church in the United States, sah, with an

overshotwheel; and the only mill in the world, sah, with pews and a pipe organ." The guests of the Eagle

House attended the old mill church each Sabbath, and heard the preacher liken the purified Christian to bolted

Every year about the beginning of autumn there came to the Eagle House one Abram Strong, who remained

for a time an honoured and beloved guest. In Lakelands he was called "Father Abram," because his hair was

so white, his face so strong and kind and florid, his laugh so merry, and his black clothes and broad hat so

priestly in appearance. Even new guests after three or four days' acquaintance gave him this familiar title.

Father Abram came a long way to Lakelands. He lived in a big, roaring town in the Northwest where he

owned mills, not little mills with pews and an organ in them, but great, ugly, mountainlike mills that the

freight trains crawled around all day like ants around an antheap. And now you must be told about Father

In the days when the church was a mill, Mr. Strong was the miller. There was no jollier, dustier, busier,

happier miller in all the land than he. He lived in a little cottage across the road from the mill. His hand was

heavy, but his toll was light, and the mountaineers brought their grain to him across many weary miles of

The delight of the miller's life was his little daughter, Aglaia. That was a brave name, truly, for a

flaxenhaired toddler; but the mountaineers love sonorous and stately names. The mother had encountered it

somewhere in a book, and the deed was done. In her babyhood Aglaia herself repudiated the name, as far as

common use went, and persisted in calling herself "Dums." The miller and his wife often tried to coax from

Aglaia the source of this mysterious name, but without results. At last they arrived at a theory. In the little

garden behind the cottage was a bed of rhododendrons in which the child took a peculiar delight and interest.

It may have been that she perceived in "Dums" a kinship to the formidable name of her favourite flowers.

When Aglaia was four years old she and her father used to go through a little performance in the mill every

afternoon, that never failed to come off, the weather permitting. When supper was ready her mother would

brush her hair and put on a clean apron and send her across to the mill to bring her father home. When the

miller saw her coming in the mill door he would come forward, all white with the flour dust, and wave his

hand and sing an old miller's song that was familiar in those parts and ran something like this:

"The wheel goes round, The grist is ground, The dusty miller's merry. He sings all day, His work is play,

"Dada, come take Dums home;" and the miller would swing her to his shoulder and march over to supper,

One day, only a week after her fourth birthday, Aglaia disappeared. When last seen she was plucking wild

flowers by the side of the road in front of the cottage. A little while later her mother went out to see that she

Of course every effort was made to find her. The neighbours gathered and searched the woods and the

mountains for miles around. They dragged every foot of the mill race and the creek for a long distance below

the dam. Never a trace of her did they find. A night or two before there had been a family of wanderers

camped in a grove near by. It was conjectured that they might have stolen the child; but when their wagon

The miller remained at the mill for nearly two years; and then his hope of finding her died out. He and his

wife moved to the Northwest. In a few years he was the owner of a modern mill in one of the important

milling cities in that region. Mrs. Strong never recovered from the shock caused by the loss of Aglaia, and

When Abram Strong became prosperous he paid a visit to Lakelands and the old mill. The scene was a sad

one for him, but he was a strong man, and always appeared cheery and kindly. It was then that he was

inspired to convert the old mill into a church. Lakelands was too poor to build one; and the still poorer

mountaineers could not assist. There was no place of worship nearer than twenty miles.

The miller altered the appearance of the mill as little as possible. The big overshotwheel was left in its

place. The young people who came to the church used to cut their initials in its soft and slowly decaying

wood. The dam was partly destroyed, and the clear mountain stream rippled unchecked down its rocky bed.

Inside the mill the changes were greater. The shafts and millstones and belts and pulleys were, of course, all

removed. There were two rows of benches with aisles between, and a little raised platform and pulpit at one

end. On three sides overhead was a gallery containing seats, and reached by a stairway inside. There was also

an organ a real pipe organ in the gallery, that was the pride of the congregation of the Old Mill

Church. Miss Phoebe Summers was the organist. The Lakelands boys proudly took turns at pumping it for

her at each Sunday's service. The Rev. Mr. Banbridge was the preacher, and rode down from Squirrel Gap on

his old white horse without ever missing a service. And Abram Strong paid for everything. He paid the

Thus, in memory of Aglaia, the old mill was converted into a blessing for the community in which she had

once lived. It seemed that the brief life of the child had brought about more good than the three score years

Out from his mills in the Northwest came the "Aglaia" flour, made from the hardest and finest wheat that

could be raised. The country soon found out that the "Aglaia" flour had two prices. One was the highest

Wherever there happened a calamity that left people destitute a fire, a flood, a tornado, a strike, or a

famine, there would go hurrying a generous consignment of the "Aglaia" at its "nothing" price. It was given

away cautiously and judiciously, but it was freely given, and not a penny could the hungry ones pay for it.

There got to be a saying that whenever there was a disastrous fire in the poor districts of a city the fire chief's

buggy reached the scene first, next the "Aglaia" flour wagon, and then the fire engines.

So this was Abram Strong's other monument to Aglaia. Perhaps to a poet the theme may seem too utilitarian

for beauty; but to some the fancy will seem sweet and fine that the pure, white, virgin flour, flying on its

mission of love and charity, might be likened to the spirit of the lost child whose memory it signalized.

There came a year that brought hard times to the Cumberlands. Grain crops everywhere were light, and there

were no local crops at all. Mountain floods had done much damage to property. Even game in the woods was

so scarce that the hunters brought hardly enough home to keep their folk alive. Especially about Lakelands

As soon as Abram Strong heard of this his messages flew; and the little narrowgauge cars began to unload

"Aglaia" flour there. The miller's orders were to store the flour in the gallery of the Old Mill Church; and that

Two weeks after that Abram Strong came for his yearly visit to the Eagle House, and became "Father Abram"

That season the Eagle House had fewer guests than usual. Among them was Rose Chester. Miss Chester

came to Lakelands from Atlanta, where she worked in a department store. This was the first vacation outing

of her life. The wife of the store manager had once spent a summer at the Eagle House. She had taken a fancy

to Rose, and had persuaded her to go there for her three weeks' holiday. The manager's wife gave her a letter

Miss Chester was not very strong. She was about twenty, and pale and delicate from an indoor life. But one

week of Lakelands gave her a brightness and spirit that changed her wonderfully. The time was early

September when the Cumberlands are at their greatest beauty. The mountain foliage was growing brilliant

with autumnal colours; one breathed aerial champagne, the nights were deliciously cool, causing one to

Father Abram and Miss Chester became great friends. The old miller learned her story from Mrs. Rankin, and

his interest went out quickly to the slender lonely girl who was making her own way in the world.

The mountain country was new to Miss Chester. She had lived many years in the warm, flat town of Atlanta;

and the grandeur and variety of the Cumberlands delighted her. She was determined to enjoy every moment

of her stay. Her little hoard of savings had been estimated so carefully in connection with her expenses that

she knew almost to a penny what her very small surplus would be when she returned to work.

Miss Chester was fortunate in gaining Father Abram for a friend and companion. He knew every road and

peak and slope of the mountains near Lakelands. Through him she became acquainted with the solemn

delight of the shadowy, tilted aisles of the pine forests, the dignity of the bare crags, the crystal, tonic

mornings, the dreamy, golden afternoons full of mysterious sadness. So her health improved, and her spirits

grew light. She had a laugh as genial and hearty in its feminine way as the famous laugh of Father Abram.

Both of them were natural optimists; and both knew how to present a serene and cheerful face to the world.

One day Miss Chester learned from one of the guests the history of Father Abram's lost child. Quickly she

hurried away and found the miller seated on his favourite rustic bench near the chalybeate spring. He was

surprised when his little friend slipped her hand into his, and looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"Oh, Father Abram," she said, "I'm so sorry! I didn't know until today about your little daughter. You will

"Thank you, Miss Rose," he said, in his usual cheery tones. "But I do not expect to find Aglaia. For a few

years I hoped that she had been stolen by vagrants, and that she still lived; but I have lost that hope. I believe

"I can understand," said Miss Chester, "how the doubt must have made it so hard to bear. And yet you are so

"Good Miss Rose!" mimicked the miller, smiling. "Who thinks of others more than you do?"

"Oh, Father Abram," she cried, "wouldn't it be grand if I should prove to be your daughter? Wouldn't it be

"Indeed, I would," said the miller, heartily. "If Aglaia had lived I could wish for nothing better than for her to

have grown up to be just such a little woman as you are. Maybe you are Aglaia," he continued, falling in with

Miss Chester fell swiftly into serious meditation. Her large eyes were fixed vaguely upon something in the

distance. Father Abram was amused at her quick return to seriousness. She sat thus for a long time before she

"No," she said at length, with a long sigh, "I can't remember anything at all about a mill. I don't think that I

ever saw a flour mill in my life until I saw your funny little church. And if I were your little girl I would

"So am I," said Father Abram, humouring her. "But if you cannot remember that you are my little girl, Miss

Rose, surely you can recollect being some one else's. You remember your own parents, of course."

"Oh, yes; I remember them very well especially my father. He wasn't a bit like you, Father Abram. Oh, I

was only making believe: Come, now, you've rested long enough. You promised to show me the pool where

Late one afternoon Father Abram set out for the old mill alone. He often went to sit and think of the old days

when he lived in the cottage across the road. Time had smoothed away the sharpness of his grief until he no

longer found the memory of those times painful. But whenever Abram Strong sat in the melancholy

September afternoons on the spot where "Dums" used to run in every day with her yellow curls flying, the

The miller made his way slowly up the winding, steep road. The trees crowded so close to the edge of it that

he walked in their shade, with his hat in his hand. Squirrels ran playfully upon the old rail fence at his right.

Quails were calling to their young broods in the wheat stubble. The low sun sent a torrent of pale gold up the

ravine that opened to the west. Early September! it was within a few days only of the anniversary of

The old overshotwheel, half covered with mountain ivy, caught patches of the warm sunlight filtering

through the trees. The cottage across the road was still standing, but it would doubtless go down before the

next winter's mountain blasts. It was overrun with morning glory and wild gourd vines, and the door hung by

Father Abram pushed open the mill door, and entered softly. And then he stood still, wondering. He heard the

sound of some one within, weeping inconsolably. He looked, and saw Miss Chester sitting in a dim pew, with

Father Abram went to her, and laid one of his strong hands firmly upon hers. She looked up, breathed his

"Not yet, Miss Rose," said the miller, kindly. "Don't try to talk yet. There's nothing as good for you as a nice,

It seemed that the old miller, who had known so much sorrow himself, was a magician in driving it away

from others. Miss Chester's sobs grew easier. Presently she took her little plainbordered handkerchief and

wiped away a drop or two that had fallen from her eyes upon Father Abram's big hand. Then she looked up

and smiled through her tears. Miss Chester could always smile before her tears had dried, just as Father

Abram could smile through his own grief. In that way the two were very much alike.

The miller asked her no questions; but by and by Miss Chester began to tell him.

It was the old story that always seems so big and important to the young, and that brings reminiscent smiles

to their elders. Love was the theme, as may be supposed. There was a young man in Atlanta, full of all

goodness and the graces, who had discovered that Miss Chester also possessed these qualities above all other

people in Atlanta or anywhere else from Greenland to Patagonia. She showed Father Abram the letter over

which she had been weeping. It was a manly, tender letter, a little superlative and urgent, after the style of

love letters written by young men full of goodness and the graces. He proposed for Miss Chester's hand in

marriage at once. Life, he said, since her departure for a threeweeks' visit, was not to be endured. He begged

for an immediate answer; and if it were favourable he promised to fly, ignoring the narrowgauge railroad, at

"And now where does the trouble come in?" asked the miller when he had read the letter.

"Come, Miss Rose," said the miller; "you can give me your confidence. I do not question you, but I think you

"I do trust you," said the girl. "I will tell you why I must refuse Ralph. I am nobody; I haven't even a name;

the name I call myself is a lie. Ralph is a noble man. I love him with all my heart, but I can never be his."

"What talk is this?" said Father Abram. "You said that you remember your parents. Why do you say you have

"I do remember them," said Miss Chester. "I remember them too well. My first recollections are of our life

somewhere in the far South. We moved many times to different towns and states. I have picked cotton, and

worked in factories, and have often gone without enough food and clothes. My mother was sometimes good

to me; my father was always cruel, and beat me. I think they were both idle and unsettled.

"One night when we were living in a little town on a river near Atlanta they had a great quarrel. It was while

they were abusing and taunting each other that I learned oh, Father Abram, I learned that I didn't even

have the right to be don't you understand? I had no right even to a name; I was nobody.

"I ran away that night. I walked to Atlanta and found work. I gave myself the name of Rose Chester, and have

earned my own living ever since. Now you know why I cannot marry Ralph and, oh, I can never tell him

Better than any sympathy, more helpful than pity, was Father Abram's depreciation of her woes.

"Why, dear, dear! is that all?" he said. "Fie, fie! I thought something was in the way. If this perfect young

man is a man at all he will not care a pinch of bran for your family tree. Dear Miss Rose, take my word for it,

it is yourself he cares for. Tell him frankly, just as you have told me, and I'll warrant that he will laugh at your

"I shall never tell him," said Miss Chester, sadly. "And I shall never marry him nor any one else. I have not

But they saw a long shadow come bobbing up the sunlit road. And then came a shorter one bobbing by its

side; and presently two strange figures approached the church. The long shadow was made by Miss Phoebe

Summers, the organist, come to practise. Tommy Teague, aged twelve, was responsible for the shorter

shadow. It was Tommy's day to pump the organ for Miss Phoebe, and his bare toes proudly spurned the dust

Miss Phoebe, in her lilacspray chintz dress, with her accurate little curls hanging over each ear, courtesied

low to Father Abram, and shook her curls ceremoniously at Miss Chester. Then she and her assistant climbed

In the gathering shadows below, Father Abram and Miss Chester lingered. They were silent; and it is likely

that they were busy with their memories. Miss Chester sat, leaning her head on her hand, with her eyes fixed

far away. Father Abram stood in the next pew, looking thoughtfully out of the door at the road and the ruined

Suddenly the scene was transformed for him back almost a score of years into the past. For, as Tommy

pumped away, Miss Phoebe struck a low bass note on the organ and held it to test the volume of air that it

contained. The church ceased to exist, so far as Father Abram was concerned. The deep, booming vibration

that shook the little frame building was no note from an organ, but the humming of the mill machinery. He

felt sure that the old overshot wheel was turning; that he was back again, a dusty, merry miller in the old

mountain mill. And now evening was come, and soon would come Aglaia with flying colours, toddling

across the road to take him home to supper. Father Abram's eyes were fixed upon the broken door of the

And then came another wonder. In the gallery overhead the sacks of flour were stacked in long rows. Perhaps

a mouse had been at one of them; anyway the jar of the deep organ note shook down between the cracks of

the gallery floor a stream of flour, covering Father Abram from head to foot with the white dust. And then the

old miller stepped into the aisle, and waved his arms and began to sing the miller's song:

and then the rest of the miracle happened. Miss Chester was leaning forward from her pew, as pale as the

flour itself, her wideopen eyes staring at Father Abram like one in a waking dream. When he began the song

she stretched out her arms to him; her lips moved; she called to him in dreamy tones: "Dada, come take

Miss Phoebe released the low key of the organ. But her work had been well done. The note that she struck

had beaten down the doors of a closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his arms.

When you visit Lakelands they will tell you more of this story. They will tell you how the lines of it were

afterward traced, and the history of the miller's daughter revealed after the gipsy wanderers had stolen her on

that September day, attracted by her childish beauty. But you should wait until you sit comfortably on the

shaded porch of the Eagle House, and then you can have the story at your ease. It seems best that our part of

it should close while Miss Phoebe's deep bass note was yet reverberating softly.

And yet, to my mind, the finest thing of it all happened while Father Abram and his daughter were walking

"Father," she said, somewhat timidly and doubtfully, "have you a great deal of money?"

"A great deal?" said the miller. "Well, that depends. There is plenty unless you want to buy the moon or

"Would it cost very, very much," asked Aglaia, who had always counted her dimes so carefully, "to send a

"Ah," said Father Abram, with a little sigh, "I see. You want to ask Ralph to come."

"I want to ask him to wait," she said. "I have just found my father, and I want it to be just we two for a while.

We were on a hunting trip, and were camped one night on the bank of a little stream. Bud Kingsbury was our

skilled hunter and guide, and it was from his lips that we had explanations of Manhattan and the queer folks

that inhabit it. Bud had once spent a month in the metropolis, and a week or two at other times, and he was

Fifty yards away from our camp was pitched the teepee of a wandering family of Indians that had come up

and settled there for the night. An old, old Indian woman was trying to build a fire under an iron pot hung

Bud went over to her assistance, and soon had her fire going. When he came back we complimented him

"Oh," said Bud, "don't mention it. It's a way I have. Whenever I see a lady trying to cook things in a pot and

having trouble I always go to the rescue. I done the same thing once in a hightoned house in. New York

City. Heap big society teepee on Fifth Avenue. That Injun lady kind of recalled it to my mind. Yes, I

"I was manager of the Triangle B Ranch in the Panhandle," said Bud. "It was owned at that time by old man

Sterling, of New York. He wanted to sell out, and he wrote for me to come on to New York and explain the

ranch to the syndicate that wanted to buy. So I sends to Fort Worth and has a forty dollar suit of clothes

"Well, when I got there, old man Sterling and his outfit certainly laid themselves out to be agreeable. We had

business and pleasure so mixed up that you couldn't tell whether it was a treat or a trade half the time. We had

"Sure," said Bud. "Didn't you never attend 'em? You walk around and try to look at the tops of the

skyscrapers. Well, we sold the ranch, and old man Sterling asks me 'round to his house to take grub on the

night before I started back. It wasn't any highcollared affair just me and the old man and his wife and

daughter. But they was a finehaired outfit all right, and the lilies of the field wasn't in it. They made my Fort

Worth clothes carpenter look like a dealer in horse blankets and gee strings. And then the table was all

pompous with flowers, and there was a whole kit of tools laid out beside everybody's plate. You'd have

thought you was fixed out to burglarize a restaurant before you could get your grub. But I'd been in New

York over a week then, and I was getting on to stylish ways. I kind of trailed behind and watched the others

use the hardware supplies, and then I tackled the chuck with the same weapons. It ain't much trouble to travel

with the highflyers after you find out their gait. I got along fine. I was feeling cool and agreeable, and pretty

soon I was talking away fluent as you please, all about the ranch and the West, and telling 'em how the

Indians eat grasshopper stew and snakes, and you never saw people so interested.

"But the real joy of that feast was that Miss Sterling. Just a little trick she was, not bigger than two bits worth

of chewing plug; but she had a way about her that seemed to say she was the people, and you believed it. And

yet, she never put on any airs, and she smiled at me the same as if I was a millionaire while I was telling

"By and by, after we had eat oysters and some watery soup and truck that never was in my repertory, a

Methodist preacher brings in a kind of camp stove arrangement, all silver, on long legs, with a lamp under it.

"Miss Sterling lights up and begins to do some cooking right on the supper table. I wondered why old man

Sterling didn't hire a cook, with all the money he had. Pretty soon she dished out some cheesy tasting truck

that she said was rabbit, but I swear there had never been a Molly cotton tail in a mile of it.

"The last thing on the programme was lemonade. It was brought around in little flat glass bowls and set by

your plate. I was pretty thirsty, and I picked up mine and took a big swig of it. Right there was where the little

lady had made a mistake. She had put in the lemon all right, but she'd forgot the sugar. The best housekeepers

slip up sometimes. I thought maybe Miss Sterling was just learning to keep house and cook that rabbit

would surely make you think so and I says to myself, 'Little lady, sugar or no sugar I'll stand by you,' and

I raises up my bowl again and drinks the last drop of the lemonade. And then all the balance of 'em picks up

their bowls and does the same. And then I gives Miss Sterling the laugh proper, just to carry it off like a joke,

"After we all went into the sitting room she sat down and talked to me quite awhile.

"'It was so kind of you, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, to bring my blunder off so nicely. It was so stupid of me to

"'Never you mind,' says I, 'some lucky man will throw his rope over a mighty elegant little housekeeper some

"'If you mean me, Mr. Kingsbury,' says she, laughing out loud, 'I hope he will be as lenient with my poor

Bud ceased his reminiscences. And then some one asked him what he considered the most striking and

"The most visible and peculiar trait of New York folks, answered Bud, "is New York. Most of 'em has New

York on the brain. They have heard of other places, such as Waco, and Paris, and Hot Springs, and London;

but they don't believe in 'em. They think that town is all Merino. Now to show you how much they care for

their village I'll tell you about one of 'em that strayed out as far as the Triangle B while I was working there.

"This New Yorker come out there looking for a job on the ranch. He said he was a good horseback rider, and

"Well, for a while they put him to keeping books in the ranch store, for he was a devil at figures. But he got

tired of that, and asked for something more in the line of activity. The boys on the ranch liked him all right,

but he made us tired shouting New York all the time. Every night he'd tell us about East River and J. P.

Morgan and the Eden Musee and Hetty Green and Central Park till we used to throw tin plates and branding

"One day this chap gets on a pitching pony, and the pony kind of sidled up his back and went to eating grass

"He come down on his head on a chunk of mesquit wood, and he didn't show any designs toward getting up

again. We laid him out in a tent, and he begun to look pretty dead. So Gideon Pease saddles up and burns the

"'Boys,' says he, 'you might as well go to playing sevenup for his saddle and clothes, for his head's fractured

"Of course we didn't gamble for the poor rooster's saddle that was one of Doc's jokes. But we stood

around feeling solemn, and all of us forgive him for having talked us to death about New York.

"I never saw anybody about to hand in his checks act more peaceful than this fellow. His eyes were fixed

'way up in the air, and he was using rambling words to himself all about sweet music and beautiful streets and

"'He's about gone now,' said Doc. 'Whenever they begin to think they see heaven it's all off. '

"Blamed if that New York man didn't sit right up when he heard the Doc say that.

"'Say,' says he, kind of disappointed, 'was that heaven? Confound it all, I thought it was Broadway. Some of

"And I'll be blamed," concluded Bud, "if he wasn't on the train with a ticket for New York in his pocket four

I am so fortunate as to count Shamrock Jolnes, the great New York detective, among my muster of friends.

Jolnes is what is called the "inside man" of the city detective force. He is an expert in the use of the

typewriter, and it is his duty, whenever there is a "murder mystery" to be solved, to sit at a desk telephone at

headquarters and take down the messages of "cranks" who 'phone in their confessions to having committed

But on certain "off" days when confessions are coming in slowly and three or four newspapers have run to

earth as many different guilty persons, Jolnes will knock about the town with me, exhibiting, to my great

The other day I dropped in at Headquarters and found the great detective gazing thoughtfully at a string that

"Good morning, Whatsup," he said, without turning his head. "I'm glad to notice that you've had your house

"Will you please tell me," I said, in surprise, "how you knew that? I am sure that I never mentioned the fact to

"Nothing easier," said Jolnes, genially. "As you came in I caught the odour of the cigar you are smoking. I

know an expensive cigar; and I know that not more than three men in New York can afford to smoke cigars

and pay gas bills too at the present time. That was an easy one. But I am working just now on a little problem

"That's the problem," said Jolnes. "My wife tied that on this morning to remind me of something I was to

The distinguished detective went to a wall telephone, and stood with the receiver to his ear for probably ten

"Were you listening to a confession?" I asked, when he had returned to his chair.

"Perhaps," said Jolnes, with a smile, "it might be called something of the sort. To be frank with you,

Whatsup, I've cut out the dope. I've been increasing the quantity for so long that morphine doesn't have much

effect on me any more. I've got to have something more powerful. That telephone I just went to is connected

with a room in the Waldorf where there's an author's reading in progress. Now, to get at the solution of this

After five minutes of silent pondering, Jolnes looked at me, with a smile, and nodded his head.

"It is quite simple," he said, holding up his finger. "You see that knot? That is to prevent my forgetting. It is,

therefore, a forgetmeknot. A forgetmenot is a flower. It was a sack of flour that I was to send home!"

"There is only one case of importance on hand just now. Old man McCarty, one hundred and four years old,

died from eating too many bananas. The evidence points so strongly to the Mafia that the police have

surrounded the Second Avenue Katzenjammer Gambrinus Club No. 2, and the capture of the assassin is only

the matter of a few hours. The detective force has not yet been called on for assistance."

Jolnes and I went out and up the street toward the corner, where we were to catch a surface car.

Halfway up the block we met Rheingelder, an acquaintance of ours, who held a City Hall position.

"Nice breakfast that was you had this morning." Always on the lookout for the detective's remarkable feats of

deduction, I saw Jolnes's eye flash for an instant upon a long yellow splash on the shirt bosom and a smaller

"Oh, dot is some of your detectiveness," said Rheingelder, shaking all over with a smile. "Vell, I pet you

Rheingelder admitted the correctness of the surmise and paid the bet. When we had proceeded on our way I

"I did," said Jolnes. "That is where I began my deduction. Rheingelder is a very economical, saving man.

Yesterday eggs dropped in the market to twentyeight cents per dozen. Today they are quoted at fortytwo.

Rheingelder ate eggs yesterday, and today he went back to his usual fare. A little thing like this isn't

When we boarded the street car we found the seats all occupied principally by ladies. Jolnes and I stood

About the middle of the car there sat an elderly man with a short, gray beard, who looked to be the typical,

welldressed New Yorker. At successive corners other ladies climbed aboard, and soon three or four of them

were standing over the man, clinging to straps and glaring meaningly at the man who occupied the coveted

"We New Yorkers," I remarked to Jolnes, "have about lost our manners, as far as the exercise of them in

"Perhaps so," said Jolnes, lightly; "but the man you evidently refer to happens to be a very chivalrous and

courteous gentleman from Old Virginia. He is spending a few days in New York with his wife and two

"I never saw him before we stepped on the car," declared the detective, smilingly.

"By the gold tooth of the Witch of Endor!" I cried, "if you can construe all that from his appearance you are

"The habit of observation nothing more," said Jolnes. "If the old gentleman gets off the car before we do, I

Three blocks farther along the gentleman rose to leave the car. Jolnes addressed him at the door: "Pardon me,

"No, suh," was the extremely courteous answer. "My name, suh, is Ellison Major Winfield R. Ellison,

from Fairfax County, in the same state. I know a good many people, suh, in Norfolk the Goodriches, the

Tollivers, and the Crabtrees, suh, but I never had the pleasure of meeting yo' friend, Colonel Hunter. I am

happy to say, suh, that I am going back to Virginia tonight, after having spent a week in yo' city with my

wife and three daughters. I shall be in Norfolk in about ten days, and if you will give me yo' name, suh, I will

take pleasure in looking up Colonel Hunter and telling him that you inquired after him, suh."

"Thank you," said Jolnes; "tell him that Reynolds sent his regards, if you will be so kind."

I glanced at the great New York detective and saw that a look of intense chagrin had come upon his clearcut

"Yes, suh, my three daughters, all as fine girls as there are in Fairfax County," was the answer.

"One moment, sir," he begged, in an urbane voice in which I alone detected the anxiety "am I not right in

"You are, suh," admitted the major, from the ground, "but how the devil you knew it, suh, is mo' than I can

Jolnes was restored to his calm, observant serenity by having wrested victory from his apparent failure; so

after we got off the car he invited me into a cafe, promising to reveal the process of his latest wonderful feat.

"In the first place," he began after we were comfortably seated, "I knew the gentleman was no New Yorker

because he was flushed and uneasy and restless on account of the ladies that were standing, although he did

not rise and give them his seat. I decided from his appearance that he was a Southerner rather than a

"Next I began to figure out his reason for not relinquishing his seat to a lady when he evidently felt strongly,

but not overpoweringly, impelled to do so. I very quickly decided upon that. I noticed that one of his eyes had

received a severe jab in one corner, which was red and inflamed, and that all over his face were tiny round

marks about the size of the end of an uncut lead pencil. Also upon both of his patent leather shoes were a

"Now, there is only one district in New York City where a man is bound to receive scars and wounds and

indentations of that sort and that is along the sidewalks of Twentythird Street and a portion of Sixth

Avenue south of there. I knew from the imprints of trampling French heels on his feet and the marks of

countless jabs in the face from umbrellas and parasols carried by women in the shopping district that he had

been in conflict with the amazonian troops. And as he was a man of intelligent appearance, I knew he would

not have braved such dangers unless he had been dragged thither by his own women folk. Therefore, when he

got on the car his anger at the treatment he had received was sufficient to make him keep his seat in spite of

"That is all very well," I said, "but why did you insist upon daughters and especially two daughters? Why

"There had to be daughters," said Jolnes, calmly. "If he had only a wife, and she near his own age, he could

have bluffed her into going alone. If he had a young wife she would prefer to go alone. So there you are."

"I'll admit that," I said; "but, now, why two daughters? And how, in the name of all the prophets, did you

"Don't say guess," said Jolnes, with a touch of pride in his air; "there is no such word in the lexicon of

ratiocination. In Major Ellison's buttonhole there was a carnation and a rosebud backed by a geranium leaf.

No woman ever combined a carnation and a rosebud into a boutonniere. Close your eyes, Whatsup, and give

the logic of your imagination a chance. Cannot you see the lovely Adele fastening the carnation to the lapel

so that papa may be gay upon the street? And then the romping Edith May dancing up with sisterly jealousy

"And then," I cried, beginning to feel enthusiasm, "when he declared that he had three daughters"

"I could see," said Jolnes, "one in the background who added no flower; and I knew that she must be "

"Adopted!" I broke in. "I give you every credit; but how did you know he was leaving for the South

"In his breast pocket," said the great detective, "something large and oval made a protuberance. Good liquor

"Again, I must bow to you," I said. "And tell me this, so that my last shred of doubt will be cleared away;

"It was very faint, I admit," answered Shamrock Jolnes, "but no trained observer could have failed to detect

New York City, they said, was deserted; and that accounted, doubtless, for the sounds carrying so far in the

tranquil summer air. The breeze was southbysouthwest; the hour was midnight; the theme was a bit of

feminine gossip by wireless mythology. Three hundred and sixtyfive feet above the heated asphalt the

tiptoeing symbolic deity on Manhattan pointed her vacillating arrow straight, for the time, in the direction of

her exalted sister on Liberty Island. The lights of the great Garden were out; the b enches in the Square were

filled with sleepers in postures so strange that beside them the writhing figures in Dore's illustrations of the

Inferno would have straightened into tailor's dummies. The statue of Diana on the tower of the Garden its

constancy shown by its weathercock ways, its innocence by the coating of gold that it has acquired, its

devotion to style by its single, graceful flying scarf, its candour and artlessness by its habit of ever drawing

the long bow, its metropolitanism by its posture of swift flight to catch a Harlem train remained poised

with its arrow pointed across the upper bay. Had that arrow sped truly and horizontally it would have passed

fifty feet above the head of the heroic matron whose duty it is to offer a castironical welcome to the

Seaward this lady gazed, and the furrows between steamship lines began to cut steerage rates. The translators,

too, have put an extra burden upon her. "Liberty Lighting the World" (as her creator christened her) would

have had a no more responsible duty, except for the size of it, than that of an electrician or a Standard Oil

magnate. But to "enlighten" the world (as our learned civic guardians "Englished" it) requires abler qualities.

And so poor Liberty, instead of having a sinecure as a mere illuminator, must be converted into a Chautauqua

schoolma'am, with the oceans for her field instead of the placid, classic lake. With a fireless torch and an

"Ah, there, Mrs. Liberty!" called a clear, rollicking soprano voice through the still, midnight air.

"Is that you, Miss Diana? Excuse my not turning my head. I'm not as flighty and whirlywhirly as some. And

'tis so hoarse I am I can hardly talk on account of the peanuthulls left on the stairs in me throat by that last

boatload of tourists from Marietta, Ohio. 'Tis after being a fine evening, miss."

"If you don't mind my asking," came the belllike tones of the golden statue, "I'd like to know where you got

"If ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications ye'd not need to ask," replied the offshore statue.

"If ye wasn't so lightheaded and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to the American

people on behalf of the French Government for the purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city

of New York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was erected. Ye must know, Miss Diana, that 'tis

with statues the same as with people 'tis not their makers nor the purposes for which they were created

that influence the operations of their tongues at all it's the associations with which they become

"You're dead right," agreed Diana. "I notice it on myself. If any of the old guys from Olympus were to come

along and hand me any hot air in the ancient Greek I couldn't tell it from a conversation between a Coney

"I'm right glad ye've made up your mind to be sociable, Miss Diana," said Mrs. Liberty. "'Tis a lonesome life

"Oh, la, la, la! no," said Diana. "Notice that 'la, la, la,' Aunt Liberty? Got that from 'Paris by Night' on the

roof garden under me. You'll hear that 'la, la, la' at the Cafe McCann now, along with 'garsong.' The

bohemian crowd there have become tired of 'garsong' since O'Rafferty, the head waiter, punched three of

them for calling him it. Oh, no; the town's strickly on the bum these nights. Everybody's away. Saw a

downtown merchant on a roof garden this evening with his stenographer. Show was so dull he went to sleep.

A waiter biting on a dime tip to see if it was good half woke him up. He looks around and sees his little

pothooks perpetrator. 'H'm!' says he, 'will you take a letter, Miss De St. Montmorency?' 'Sure, in a minute,'

"That was the best thing happened on the roof. So you see how dull it is. La, la, la!"

"'Tis fine ye have it up there in society, Miss Diana. Ye have the cat show and the horse show and the

military tournaments where the privates look grand as generals and the generals try to look grand as

floorwalkers. And ye have the Sportsmen's Show, where the girl that measures 36 19, 45 cooks breakfast

food in a birchbark wigwam on the banks of the Grand Canal of Venice conducted by one of the

Vanderbilts, Bernard McFadden, and the Reverends Dowie and Duss. And ye have the French ball, where the

original Cohens and the Robert EmmetSangerbund Society dance the Highland fling one with another. And

ye have the grand O'Ryan ball, which is the most beautiful pageant in the world, where the French students

vie with the Tyrolean warblers in doin' the cake walk. Ye have the best job for a statue in the whole town,

"'Tis weary work," sighed the island statue, "disseminatin' the science of liberty in New York Bay.

Sometimes when I take a peep down at Ellis Island and see the gang of immigrants I'm supposed to light up,

'tis tempted I am to blow out the gas and let the coroner write out their naturalization papers."

"Say, it's a shame, ain't it, to give you the worst end of it?" came the sympathetic antiphony of the

steeplechase goddess. "It must be awfully lonesome down there with so much water around you. I don't see

how you ever keep your hair in curl. And that Mother Hubbard you are wearing went out ten years ago. I

think those sculptor guys ought to be held for damages for putting iron or marble clothes on a lady. That's

where Mr. St. Gaudens was wise. I'm always e little ahead of the styles; but they're coming my way pretty

fast. Excuse my back a moment I caught a puff of wind from the north shouldn't wonder if things had

loosened up in Esopus. There, now! it's in the West I should think that gold plank would have calmed the

"A fine chat I've had with ye, Miss Diana, ma'am, but I see one of them European steamers asailin' up the

Narrows, and I must be attendin' to me duties. 'Tis me job to extend aloft the torch of Liberty to welcome all

them that survive the kicks that the steerage stewards give 'em while landin.' Sure 'tis a great country ye can

come to for $8.50, and the doctor waitin' to send ye back home free if he sees yer eyes red from cryin' for it."

The golden statue veered in the changing breeze, menacing many points on the horizon with its aureate

"So long, Aunt Liberty," sweetly called Diana of the Tower. "Some night, when the wind's right. I'll call you

up again. But say! you haven't got such a fierce kick coming about your job. I've kept a pretty good watch

on the island of Manhattan since I've been up here. That's a pretty sicklooking bunch of liberty chasers they

dump down at your end of it; but they don't all stay that way. Every little while up here I see guys signing

checks and voting the right ticket, and encouraging the arts and t aking a bath every morning, that was shoved

ashore by a dock labourer born in the United States who never earned over forty dollars a month. Don't run

"Next Sunday," said Dennis Carnahan, "I'll be after going down to see the new Coney Island that's risen like a

phoenix bird from the ashes of the old resort. I'm going with Norah Flynn, and we'll fall victims to all the dry

goods deceptions, from the redflannel eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the pink silk ribbons on the

"Was I there before? I was. I was there last Tuesday. Did I see the sights? I did not.

"Last Monday I amalgamated myself with the Bricklayers' Union, and in accordance with the rules I was

ordered to quit work the same day on account of a sympathy strike with the Lady Salmon Canners' Lodge

"'Twas disturbed I was in mind and proclivities by losing me job, bein' already harassed in me soul on

account of havin' quarrelled with Norah Flynn a week before by reason of hard words spoken at the

Dairymen and StreetSprinkler Drivers' semiannual ball, caused by jealousy and prickly heat and that divil,

"So, I says, it will be Coney for Tuesday; and if the chutes and the short change and the greencorn silk

between the teeth don't create diversions and get me feeling better, then I don't know at all.

"Ye will have heard that Coney has received moral reconstruction. The old Bowery, where they used to take

your tintype by force and give ye knockout drops before having your palm read, is now called the Wall Street

of the island. The wienerwurst stands are required by law to keep a news ticker in 'em; and the doughnuts are

examined every four years by a retired steamboat inspector. The nigger man's head that was used by the old

patrons to throw baseballs at is now illegal; and, by order of the Police Commissioner the image of a man

drivin' an automobile has been substituted. I hear that the old immoral amusements have been suppressed.

People who used to go down from New York to sit in the sand and dabble in the surf now give up their

quarters to squeeze through turnstiles and see imitations of city fires and floods painted on canvas. The

reprehensible and degradin' resorts that disgraced old Coney are said to be wiped out. The wipin'out process

consists of raisin' the price from 10 cents to 25 cents, and hirin' a blonde named Maudie to sell tickets instead

"But to Coney I goes aTuesday. I gets off the 'L' and starts for the glitterin' show. 'Twas a fine sight. The

Babylonian towers and the Hindoo roof gardens was blazin' with thousands of electric lights, and the streets

was thick with people. 'Tis a true thing they say that Coney levels all rank. I see millionaires eatin' popcorn

and trampin' along with the crowd; and I see eightdollaraweek clothin'store clerks in red automobiles

"'I made a mistake,' I says to myself. 'Twas not Coney I needed. When a man's sad 'tis not scenes of hilarity

he wants. 'Twould be far better for him to meditate in a graveyard or to attend services at the Paradise Roof

Gardens. 'Tis no consolation when a man's lost his sweetheart to order hot corn and have the waiter bring him

the powdered sugar cruet instead of salt and then conceal himself, or to have Zozookum, the gipsy palmist,

tell him that he has three children and to look out for another serious calamity; price twentyfive cents.

"I walked far away down on the beach, to the ruins of an old pavilion near one corner of this new private

park, Dreamland. A year ago that old pavilion was standin' up straight and the oldstyle waiters was slammin'

a week's supply of clam chowder down in front of you for a nickel and callin' you 'cully' friendly, and vice

was rampant, and you got back to New York with enough change to take a car at the bridge. Now they tell me

that they serve Welsh rabbits on Surf Avenue, and you get the right change back in the movin'picture joints.

"I sat down at one side of the old pavilion and looked at the surf spreadin' itself on the beach, and thought

about the time me and Norah Flynn sat on that spot last summer. 'Twas before reform struck the island; and

we was happy. We had tintypes and chowder in the ribald dives, and the Egyptian Sorceress of the Nile told

Norah out of her hand, while I was waitin' in the door, that 'twould be the luck of her to marry a redheaded

gossoon with two crooked legs, and I was overrunnin' with joy on account of the allusion. And 'twas there

that Norah Flynn put her two hands in mine a year before and we talked of flats and the things she could cook

and the love business that goes with such episodes. And that was Coney as we loved it, and as the hand of

Satan was upon it, friendly and noisy and your money's worth, with no fence around the ocean and not too

many electric lights to show the sleeve of a black serge coat against a white shirtwaist.

"I sat with my back to the parks where they had the moon and the dreams and the steeples corralled, and

longed for the old Coney. There wasn't many people on the beach. Lots of them was feedin' pennies into the

slot machines to see the 'Interrupted Courtship' in the movin' pictures; and a good many was takin' the sea air

in the Canals of Venice and some was breathin' the smoke of the sea battle by actual warships in a tank filled

with real water. A few was down on the sands enjoyin' the moonlight and the water. And the heart of me was

heavy for the new morals of the old island, while the bands behind me played and the sea pounded on the

"And directly I got up and walked along the old pavilion, and there on the other side of, half in the dark, was

a slip of a girl sittin' on the tumbledown timbers, and unless I'm a liar she was cryin' by herself there, all

"'Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,' says I; 'and what's to be done about it?'

"' 'Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,' says she, sittin' up straight. And it was the voice of no

"'Then it's not,' says I, 'and we're after having a pleasant evening, Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this

"'I have,' says she. 'Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting beyond. 'Tis an elegant evening I've had. I've

"'Right ye are,' says I to Norah; and I don't know when I've been that amused. After disportin' meself among

the most laughable moral improvements of the revised shell games I took meself to the shore for the benefit

"'I did,' says she, reflectin'; 'but 'tis not safe, I'm thinkin', to ride down them slantin' things into the water.'

"'True, then, I'm afraid of guns,' says Norah. 'They make such noise in my ears. But Uncle Tim, he shot them,

"'I'm glad you've enjoyed yerself,' I says. 'I suppose you've had a roarin' fine time seein' the sights. And how

"'I I wasn't hungry,' says Norah, faint. 'But mother ate a quantity of all of 'em. I'm that pleased with the

fine things in the new Coney Island,' says she, 'that it's the happiest day I've seen in a long time, at all.'

"'We did,' says she. 'She was a beauty. She was all dressed in red, she was, with '

"' 'Tis a storyteller ye are, Norah Flynn', says I. 'Ye've seen no more of the greater Coney Island than I have

meself. Come, now, tell the truth ye came to sit by the old pavilion by the waves where you sat last

"'I despise it, Denny,' she says, half cryin'. 'Mother and Uncle Tim went to see the shows, but I came down

here to think of you. I couldn't bear the lights and the crowd. Are you forgivin' me, Denny, for the words we

"' 'Twas me fault,' says I. 'I came here for the same reason meself. Look at the lights, Norah,' I says, turning

"'They are,' says Norah, with her eyes shinin'; 'and do ye hear the bands playin'? Oh, Denny, I think I'd like to

"'The old Coney is gone, darlin',' I says to her. 'Everything moves. When a man's glad it's not scenes of

sadness he wants. 'Tis a greater Coney we have here, but we couldn't see it till we got in the humour for it.

I found myself in Texas recently, revisiting old places and vistas. At a sheep ranch where I had sojourned

many years ago, I stopped for a week. And, as all visitors do, I heartily plunged into the business at hand,

Now, this process is so different from ordinary human baptism that it deserves a word of itself. A vast iron

cauldron with half the fires of Avernus beneath it is partly filled with water that soon boils furiously. Into that

is cast concentrated lye, lime, and sulphur, which is allowed to stew and fume until the witches' broth is

Then this concentrated brew is mixed in a long, deep vat with cubic gallons of hot water, and the sheep are

caught by their hind legs and flung into the compound. After being thoroughly ducked by means of a forked

pole in the hands of a gentleman detailed for that purpose, they are allowed to clamber up an incline into a

corral and dry or die, as the state of their constitutions may decree. If you ever caught an ablebodied,

twoyearold mutton by the hind legs and felt the 750 volts of kicking that he can send though your arm

seventeen times before you can hurl him into the vat, you will, of course, hope that he may die instead of dry.

But this is merely to explain why Bud Oakley and I gladly stretched ourselves on the bank of the nearby

_charco_ after the dipping, glad for the welcome inanition and pure contact with the earth after our

muscleracking labours. The flock was a small one, and we finished at three in the afternoon; so Bud brought

from the _morral_ on his saddle horn, coffee and a coffeepot and a big hunk of bread and some side bacon.

Mr. Mills, the ranch owner and my old friend, rode away to the ranch with his force of Mexican

While the bacon was frizzling nicely, there was the sound of horses' hoofs behind us. Bud's sixshooter lay in

its scabbard ten feet away from his hand. He paid not the slightest heed to the approaching horseman. This

attitude of a Texas ranchman was so different from the oldtime custom that I marvelled. Instinctively I

turned to inspect the possible foe that menaced us in the rear. I saw a horseman dressed in black, who might

have been a lawyer or a parson or an undertaker, trotting peaceably along the road by the _arroyo_.

"You've been away too long," said he. "You don't need to look around any more when anybody gallops up

behind you in this state, unless something hits you in the back; and even then it's liable to be only a bunch of

tracts or a petition to sign against the trusts. I never looked at that _hombre_ that rode by; but I'll bet a quart

of sheep dip that he's some doubledyed son of a popgun out rounding up prohibition votes."

"Times have changed, Bud," said I, oracularly. "Law and order is the rule now in the South and the

"Of course you don't," said Bud warmly. "You know better. You've lived here before. Law and order, you

say? Twenty years ago we had 'em here. We only had two or three laws, such as against murder before

witnesses, and being caught stealing horses, and voting the Republican ticket. But how is it now? All we get

is orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but

make laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I re ckon they was afraid some

man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make

laws to repeal aforesaid laws. Me, I'm for the old days when law and order meant what they said. A law was a

"I was going on," continued Bud, "while this coffee is boiling, to describe to you a case of genuine law and

order that I knew of once in the times when cases was decided in the chambers of a sixshooter instead of a

"You've heard of old Ben Kirkman, the cattle king? His ranch run from the Nueces to the Rio Grande. In

them days, as you know, there was cattle barons and cattle kings. The difference was this: when a cattleman

went to San Antone and bought beer for the newspaper reporters and only give them the number of cattle he

actually owned, they wrote him up for a baron. When he bought 'em champagne wine and added in the

"Luke Summers was one of his range bosses. And down to the king's ranch comes one day a bunch of these

Oriental people from New York or Kansas City or thereabouts. Luke was detailed with a squad to ride about

with 'em, and see that the rattlesnakes got fair warning when they was coming, and drive the deer out of their

way. Among the bunch was a blackeyed girl that wore a number two shoe. That's all I noticed about her.

But Luke must have seen more, for he married her one day before the _caballard_ started back, and went over

on Canada Verde and set up a ranch of his own. I'm skipping over the sentimental stuff on purpose, because I

never saw or wanted to see any of it. And Luke takes me along with him because we was old friends and I

"I'm skipping over much what followed, because I never saw or wanted to see any of it but three years

afterward there was a boy kid stumbling and blubbering around the galleries and floors of Luke's ranch. I

never had no use for kids; but it seems they did. And I'm skipping over much what followed until one day out

to the ranch drives in hacks and buckboards a lot of Mrs. Summers's friends from the East a sister or so

and two or three men. One looked like an uncle to somebody; and one looked like nothing; and the other one

had on corkscrew pants and spoke in a tone of voice. I never liked a man who spoke in a tone of voice.

"I'm skipping over much what followed; but one afternoon when I rides up to the ranch house to get some

orders about a drove of beeves that was to be shipped, I hears something like a popgun go off. I waits at the

hitching rack, not wishing to intrude on private affairs. In a little while Luke comes out and gives some orders

to some of his Mexican hands, and they go and hitch up sundry and divers vehicles; and mighty soon out

comes one of the sisters or so and some of the two or three men. But two of the two or thee men carries

between 'em the corkscrew man who spoke in a tone of voice, and lays him flat down in one of the wagons.

"'Bud,' says Luke to me, 'I want you to fix up a little and go up to San Antone with me.'

"One of the sisters or so seems to have stayed at the ranch with Mrs. Summers and the kid. We rides to

Encinal and catches the International, and hits San Antone in the morning. After breakfast Luke steers me

straight to the office of a lawyer. They go in a room and talk and then come out.

"'Oh, there won't be any trouble, Mr. Summers,' says the lawyer. 'I'll acquaint Judge Simmons with the facts

today; and the matter will be put through as promptly as possible. Law and order reigns in this state as swift

"'Tut, tut,' says the lawyer man. 'Law must take its course. Come back day after tomorrow at halfpast nine.'

"At that time me and Luke shows up, and the lawyer hands him a folded document. And Luke writes him out

"On the sidewalk Luke holds up the paper to me and puts a finger the size of a kitchen door latch on it and

"'Skipping over much what has happened of which I know nothing,' says I, 'it looks to me like a split.

"'Bud,' says he, in a pained style, 'that child is the one thing I have to live for. She may go; but the boy is

"'All right,' says I. 'If it's the law, let's abide by it. But I think,' says I, 'that Judge Simmons might have used

"You see, I wasn't inveigled much into the desirableness of having infants around a ranch, except the kind

that feed themselves and sell for so much on the hoof when they grow up. But Luke was struck with that sort

of parental foolishness that I never could understand. All the way riding from the station back to the ranch, he

kept pulling that decree out of his pocket and laying his finger on the back of it and reading off to me the sum

and substance of it. 'Custody of the child, Bud,' says he. 'Don't forget it custody of the child.'

"But when we hits the ranch we finds our decree of court obviated, _nolle_ _prossed_, and remanded for trial.

Mrs. Summers and the kid was gone. They tell us that an hour after me and Luke had started for San Antone

she had a team hitched and lit out for the nearest station with her trunks and the youngster.

"'It ain't possible, Bud,' says he, 'for this to be. It's contrary to law and order. It's wrote as plain as day here

"'There is what you might call a human leaning,' says I, 'toward smashing 'em both not to mention the

"'Judge Simmons,' goes on Luke, 'is a incorporated officer of the law. She can't take the boy away. He

"'And he's removed from the jurisdiction of mundane mandamuses,' says I, 'by the unearthly statutes of

female partiality. Let us praise the Lord and be thankful for whatever small mercies ' I begins; but I see

Luke don't listen to me. Tired as he was, he calls for a fresh horse and starts back again for the station.

"'We can't get the trail,' says he; 'but we've done all the telegraphing that the wires'll stand, and we've got

these city rangers they call detectives on the lookout. In the meantime, Bud,' says he, 'we'll round up them

"Skipping over much what happened in the next twelve years, Luke was made sheriff of Mojada County. He

made me his office deputy. Now, don't get in your mind no wrong apparitions of a office deputy doing sums

in a book or mashing letters in a cider press. In them days his job was to watch the back windows so nobody

didn't plug the sheriff in the rear while he was adding up mileage at his desk in front. And in them days I had

qualifications for the job. And there was law and order in Mojada County, and schoolbooks, and all the

whiskey you wanted, and the Government built its own battleships instead of collecting nickels from the

school children to do it with. And, as I say, there was law and order instead of enactments and restrictions

such as disfigure our umpire state today. We had our office at Bildad, the county seat, from which we

emerged forth on necessary occasions to soothe whatever fracases and unrest that might occur in our

"Skipping over much what happened while me and Luke was sheriff, I want to give you an idea of how the

law was respected in them days. Luke was what you would call one of the most conscious men in the world.

He never knew much book law, but he had the inner emoluments of justice and mercy inculcated into his

system. If a respectable citizen shot a Mexican or held up a train and cleaned out the safe in the express car,

and Luke ever got hold of him, he'd give the guilty party such a reprimand and a cussin' out that he'd probable

never do it again. But once let somebody steal a horse (unless it was a Spanish pony), or cut a wire fence, or

otherwise impair the peace and indignity of Mojada County, Luke and me would be on 'em with habeas

corpuses and smokeless powder and all the modern inventions of equity and etiquette.

"We certainly had our county on a basis of lawfulness. I've known persons of Eastern classification with little

spotted caps and buttonedup shoes to get off the train at Bildad and eat sandwiches at the railroad station

"Luke had his own ideas of legality and justice. He was kind of training me to succeed him when he went out

of office. He was always looking ahead to the time when he'd quit sheriffing. What he wanted to do was to

build a yellow house with latticework under the porch and have hens scratching in the yard. The one main

"'Bud,' he says to me, 'by instinct and sentiment I'm a contractor. I want to be a contractor. That's what I'll be

"'What kind of a contractor?' says I. 'It sounds like a kind of a business to me. You ain't going to haul cement

"'You don't understand,' says Luke. 'I'm tired of space and horizons and territory and distances and things like

that. What I want is reasonable contraction. I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out and set

"That's the kind of a man he was. He was homelike, although he'd had bad luck in such investments. But he

never talked about them times on the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it. I wondered how, with his

ideas of yards and chickens and notions of latticework, he'd seemed to have got out of his mind that kid of

his that had been taken away from him, unlawful, in spite of his decree of court. But he wasn't a man you

"I reckon he'd put all his emotions and ideas into being sheriff. I've read in books about men that was

disappointed in these poetic and finehaired and highcollared affairs with ladies renouncing truck of that

kind and wrapping themselves up into some occupation like painting pictures, or herding sheep, or science, or

teaching school something to make 'em forget. Well, I guess that was the way with Luke. But, as he

couldn't paint pictures, he took it out in rounding up horse thieves and in making Mojada County a safe place

"One day there passes through Bildad a bunch of these money investors from the East, and they stopped off

there, Bildad being the dinner station on the I. G. N. They was just coming back from Mexico looking after

mines and such. There was five of 'em four solid parties, with gold watch chains, that would grade up over

"This youngster had on one of them cowboy suits such as tenderfoots bring West with 'em; and you could see

he was aching to wing a couple of Indians or bag a grizzly or two with the little pearlhandled gun he had

"I walked down to the depot to keep an eye on the outfit and see that they didn't locate any land or scare the

cow ponies hitched in front of Murchison's store or act otherwise unseemly. Luke was away after a gang of

cattle thieves down on the Frio, and I always looked after the law and order when he wasn't there.

"After dinner this boy comes out of the diningroom while the train was waiting, and prances up and down

the platform ready to shoot all antelope, lions, or private citizens that might endeavour to molest or come too

near him. He was a goodlooking kid; only he was like all them tenderfoots he didn't know a

"By and by along comes Pedro Johnson, the proprietor of the Crystal Palace _chiliconcarne_ stand in

Bildad. Pedro was a man who liked to amuse himself; so he kind of herd rides this youngster, laughing at

him, tickled to death. I was too far away to hear, but the kid seems to mention some remarks to Pedro, and

Pedro goes up and slaps him about nine feet away, and laughs harder than ever. And then the boy gets up

quicker than he fell and jerks out his little pearlhandle, and bing! bing! bing! Pedro gets it three times in

special and treasured portions of his carcass. I saw the dust fly off his clothes every time the bullets hit.

"The engine bell was ringing, and the train starting off slow. I goes up to the kid and places him under arrest,

and takes away his gun. But the first thing I knew that _caballard_ of capitalists makes a break for the train.

One of 'em hesitates in front of me for a second, and kind of smiles and shoves his hand up against my chin,

and I sort of laid down on the platform and took a nap. I never was afraid of guns; but I don't want any person

except a barber to take liberties like that with my face again . When I woke up, the whole outfit train, boy,

and all was gone. I asked about Pedro, and they told me the doctor said he would recover provided his

"When Luke got back three days later, and I told him about it, he was mad all over.

"'Why'n't you telegraph to San Antone,' he asks, 'and have the bunch arrested there?'

"'Oh, well,' says I, 'I always did admire telegraphy; but astronomy was what I had took up just then.' That

"Luke got madder and madder. He investigates and finds in the depot a card one of the men had dropped that

"'Bud,' says Luke, 'I'm going after that bunch. I'm going there and get the man or boy, as you say he was, and

bring him back. I'm sheriff of Mojada County, and I shall keep law and order in its precincts while I'm able to

draw a gun. And I want you to go with me. No Eastern Yankee can shoot up a respectable and wellknown

citizen of Bildad, 'specially with a thirtytwo calibre, and escape the law. Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, 'is one

of our most prominent citizens and business men. I'll appoint Sam Bel l acting sheriff with penitentiary

powers while I'm away, and you and me will take the six fortyfive northbound tomorrow evening and

"'I'm your company,' says I. 'I never see this New York, but I'd like to. But, Luke,' says I, 'don't you have to

have a dispensation or a habeas corpus or something from the state, when you reach out that far for rich men

"'Did I have a requisition,' says Luke, 'when I went over into the Brazos bottoms and brought back Bill

Grimes and two more for holding up the International? Did me and you have a search warrant or a posse

comitatus when we rounded up them six Mexican cow thieves down in Hidalgo? It's my business to keep

"'And it's my business as office deputy,' says I, 'to see that business is carried on according to law. Between

"So, the next day, Luke packs a blanket and some collars and his mileage book in a haversack, and him and

me hits the breeze for New York. It was a powerful long ride. The seats in the cars was too short for

sixfooters like us to sleep comfortable on; and the conductor had to keep us from getting off at every town

that had fivestory houses in it. But we got there finally; and we seemed to see right away that he was right

"'Luke,' says I, 'as office deputy and from a law standpoint, it don't look to me like this place is properly and

"'From the standpoint of order,' says he, 'it's amenable to answer for its sins to the properly appointed

"'Amen,' says I. 'But let's turn our trick sudden, and ride. I don't like the looks of this place.'

"'Think of Pedro Johnson,' says Luke, 'a friend of mine and yours shot down by one of these gilded

"'It was at the door of the freight depot,' says I. 'But the law will not be balked at a quibble like that.'

"We put up at one of them big hotels on Broadway. The next morning I goes down about two miles of

stairsteps to the bottom and hunts for Luke. It ain't no use. It looks like San Jacinto day in San Antone.

There's a thousand folks milling around in a kind of a roofedover plaza with marble pavements and trees

growing right out of 'em, and I see no more chance of finding Luke than if we was hunting each other in the

big pear flat down below Old Fort Ewell. But soon Luke and me runs together in one of the turns of them

"'It ain't no use, Bud,' says he. 'I can't find no place to eat at. I've been looking for restaurant signs and

smelling for ham all over the camp. But I'm used to going hungry when I have to. Now,' says he, 'I'm going

out and get a hack and ride down to the address on this Scudder card. You stay here and try to hustle some

grub. But I doubt if you'll find it. I wish we'd brought along some cornmeal and bacon and beans. I'll be back

"So I starts foraging for breakfast. For the honour of old Mojada County I didn't want to seem green to them

abolitionists, so every time I turned a corner in them marble halls I went up to the first desk or counter I see

and looks around for grub. If I didn't see what I wanted I asked for something else. In about half an hour I had

a dozen cigars, five story magazines, and seven or eight railroad timetables in my pockets, and never a smell

"Once a lady sitting at a table and playing a game kind of like pushpin told me to go into a closet that she

called Number 3. I went in and shut the door, and the blamed thing lit itself up. I set down on a stool before a

shelf and waited. Thinks I, 'This is a private diningroom.' But no waiter never came. When I got to sweating

"By and by I thinks I'll shed etiquette; and I picks up one of them boys with blue clothes and yellow buttons

in front, and he leads me to what he calls the caffay breakfast room. And the first thing I lays my eyes on

when I go in is that boy that had shot Pedro Johnson. He was setting all alone at a little table, hitting a egg

"I takes the chair across the table from him; and he looks insulted and makes a move like he was going to get

"'Keep still, son,' says I. 'You're apprehended, arrested, and in charge of the Texas authorities. Go on and

hammer that egg some more if it's the inside of it you want. Now, what did you shoot Mr. Johnson, of Bildad,

"'I suppose you're on,' says this kid, without batting his eyes. 'But what are you eating? Here, waiter!' he calls

"'A beefsteak,' says I, 'and some fried eggs and a can of peaches and a quart of coffee will about suffice.'

"'What are you going to do about that shooting? I had a right to shoot that man,' says he. 'He called me names

that I couldn't overlook, and then he struck me. He carried a gun, too. What else could I do?'

"'I'd like to go back,' says the boy, with a kind of a grin 'if it wasn't on an occasion of this kind. It's the life

I like. I've always wanted to ride and shoot and live in the open air ever since I can remember. '

"'My stepfather,' says he, 'and some business partners of his in some Mexican mining and land schemes.'

"'I saw you shoot Pedro Johnson,' says I, 'and I took that little popgun away from you that you did it with.

And when I did so I noticed three or four little scars in a row over your right eyebrow. You've been in rookus

"'I've had these scars ever since I can remember,' says he. 'I don't know how they came there. '

"'Not that I remember of,' says he. 'But I thought I had when we struck the prairie country. But I guess I

"Skipping over the most of what followed when Luke came back I turned the kid over to him. He had

seen Scudder and told him what he wanted; and it seems that Scudder got active with one of these telephones

as soon as he left. For in about an hour afterward there comes to our hotel some of these city rangers in

everyday clothes that they call detectives, and marches the whole outfit of us to what they call a magistrate's

court. They accuse Luke of attempted kidnapping, and ask him what he has to say.

"'This snipe,' says Luke to the judge, 'shot and wilfully punctured with malice and forethought one of the

most respected and prominent citizens of the town of Bildad, Texas, Your Honor. And in so doing laid

himself liable to the penitence of law and order. And I hereby make claim and demand restitution of the State

"'Have you the usual and necessary requisition papers from the governor of your state?' asks the judge.

"'My usual papers,' says Luke, 'was taken away from me at the hotel by these gentlemen who represent law

and order in your city. They was two Colt's .45's that I've packed for nine years; and if I don't get 'em back,

there'll be more trouble. You can ask anybody in Mojada County about Luke Summers. I don't usually need

"'Your Honor, the aforesaid defendant, Mr. Luke Summers, sheriff of Mojada County, Texas, is as fine a man

as ever threw a rope or upheld the statutes and codicils of the greatest state in the Union. But he '

"Bud Oakley,' says I. 'Office deputy of the sheriff's office of Mojada County, Texas. Representing,' says I,

'the Law. Luke Summers,' I goes on, 'represents Order. And if Your Honor will give me about ten minutes in

private talk, I'll explain the whole thing to you, and show you the equitable and legal requisition papers which

"The judge kind of half smiles and says he will talk with me in his private room. In there I put the whole

thing up to him in such language as I had, and when we goes outside, he announces the verdict that the young

man is delivered into the hands of the Texas authorities; and calls the next case.

"Skipping over much of what happened on the way back, I'll tell you how the thing wound up in Bildad.

"'You, remember that kid of yours that twoyear old that they stole away from you when the bustup

"Luke looks black and angry. He'd never let anybody talk to him about that business, and he never mentioned

"'Toe the mark,' says I. 'Do you remember when he was toddling around on the porch and fell down on a pair

of Mexican spurs and cut four little holes over his right eye? Look at the prisoner,' says I, 'look at his nose

and the shape of his head and why, you old fool, don't you know your own son? I knew him,' says I,

"'Bud,' says he. 'I've never had that boy out of my mind one day or one night since he was took away. But I

never let on. But can we hold him? Can we make him stay? I'll make the best man of him that ever put

his foot in a stirrup. Wait a minute,' says he, all excited and out of his mind 'I've got something here in

my desk I reckon it'll hold legal yet I've looked at it a thousand times " Custody of the child,"

says Luke "Custody of the child." We can hold him on that, can't we? Le'me see if I can find that

"'Hold on,' says I. 'You are Order and I'm Law. You needn't look for that paper, Luke. It ain't a decree any

more. It's requisition papers. It's on file in that Magistrate's office in New York. I took it along when we went,

"'Wait a minute,' says I. 'We've got to have law and order. You and me have got to preserve 'em both in

Mojada County according to our oath and conscience. The kid shot Pedro Johnson, one of Bildad's most

"'Oh, hell!' says Luke. 'That don't amount to anything. That fellow was half Mexican, anyhow.'"

In behalf of Sir Walter's soothing plant let us look into the case of Martin Burney.

They were constructing the Speedway along the west bank of the Harlem River. The grubboat of Dennis

Corrigan, subcontractor, was moored to a tree on the bank. Twentytwo men belonging to the little green

island toiled there at the sinewcracking labour. One among them, who wrought in the kitchen of the

grubboat was of the race of the Goths. Over them all stood the exorbitant Corrigan, harrying them like the

captain of a galley crew. He paid them so little that most of the gang, work as they might, e arned little more

than food and tobacco; many of them were in debt to him. Corrigan boarded them all in the grubboat, and

Martin Burney was furthest behind of all. He was a little man, all muscles and hands and feet, with a

grayred, stubbly beard. He was too light for the work, which would have glutted the capacity of a steam

The work was hard. Besides that, the banks of the river were humming with mosquitoes. As a child in a dark

room fixes his regard on the pale light of a comforting window, these toilers watched the sun that brought

around the one hour of the day that tasted less bitter. After the sundown supper they would huddle together

on the river bank, and send the mosquitoes whining and eddying back from the malignant puffs of

twentythree reeking pipes. Thus socially banded against the foe, they wrenched out of the hour a few

Each week Burney grew deeper in debt. Corrigan kept a small stock of goods on the boat, which he sold to

the men at prices that brought him no loss. Burney was a good customer at the tobacco counter. One sack

when he went to work in the morning and one when he came in at night, so much was his account swelled

daily. Burney was something of a smoker. Yet it was not true that he ate his meals with a pipe in his mouth,

which had been said of him. The little man was not discontented. He had plenty to eat, plenty of tobacco, and

One morning as he was starting with the others for work he stopped at the pine counter for his usual sack of

"There's no more for ye," said Corrigan. "Your account's closed. Ye are a losing investment. No, not even

tobaccy, my son. No more tobaccy on account. If ye want to work on and eat, do so, but the smoke of ye has

"I have no tobaccy to smoke in my pipe this day, Mr. Corrigan," said Burney, not quite understanding that

Burney stayed on. He knew of no other job. At first he did not realize that tobacco had got to be his father and

For three days he managed to fill his pipe from the other men's sacks, and then they shut him off, one and all.

They told him, rough but friendly, that of all things in the world tobacco must be quickest forthcoming to a

fellowman desiring it, but that beyond the immediate temporary need requisition upon the store of a

Then the blackness of the pit arose and filled the heart of Burney. Sucking the corpse of his deceased

dudheen, he staggered through his duties with his barrowful of stones and dirt, feeling for the first time that

the curse of Adam was upon him. Other men bereft of a pleasure might have recourse to other delights, but

Burney had only two comforts in life. One was his pipe, the other was an ecstatic hope that there would be no

At meal times he would let the other men go first into the grubboat, and then he would go down on his

hands and knees, grovelling fiercely upon the ground where they had been sitting, trying to find some stray

crumbs of tobacco. Once he sneaked down the river bank and filled his pipe with dead willow leaves. At the

first whiff of the smoke he spat in the direction of the boat and put the finest curse he knew on Corrigan

one that began with the first Corrigans born on earth and ended with the Corrigans that shall hear the trumpet

of Gabriel blow. He began to hate Corrigan with all his shaking nerves and soul. Even murder occurred to

him in a vague sort of way. Five days he went without the taste of tobacco he who had smoked all day and

thought the night misspent in which he had not awakened for a pipeful or two under the bedclothes.

One day a man stopped at the boat to say that there was work to be had in the Bronx Park, where a large

After dinner Burney walked thirty yards down the river bank away from the maddening smell of the others'

pipes. He sat down upon a stone. He was thinking he would set out for the Bronx. At least he could earn

tobacco there. What if the books did say he owed Corrigan? Any man's work was worth his keep. But then he

hated to go without getting even with the hardhearted screw who had put his pipe out. Was there any way to

Softly stepping among the clods came Tony, he of the race of Goths, who worked in the kitchen. He grinned

at Burney's elbow, and that unhappy man, full of race animosity and holding urbanity in contempt, growled at

Tony also contained a grievance and a plot. He, too, was a Corrigan hater, and had been primed to see it in

"To hell with 'm," he said. "May his liver turn to water, and the bones of him crack in the cold of his heart.

May dog fennel grow upon his ancestors' graves, and the grandsons of his children be born without eyes. May

whiskey turn to clabber in his mouth, and every time he sneezes may he blister the soles of his feet. And the

smoke of his pipe may it make his eyes water, and the drops fall on the grass that his cows eat and poison

Though Tony remained a stranger to the beauties of this imagery, he gathered from it the conviction that it

was sufficiently antiCorrigan in its tendency. So, with the confidence of a fellowconspirator, he sat by

It was very simple in design. Every day after dinner it was Corrigan's habit to sleep for an hour in his bunk.

At such times it was the duty of the cook and his helper, Tony, to leave the boat so that no noise might

disturb the autocrat. The cook always spent this hour in walking exercise. Tony's plan was this: After

Corrigan should be asleep he (Tony) and Burney would cut the mooring ropes that held the boat to the shore.

Tony lacked the nerve to do the deed alone. Then the awkward boat would swing out into a swift current and

"Come on and do it," said Burney. "If the back of ye aches from the lick he gave ye as the pit of me stomach

"All aright," said Tony. "But better wait 'bouta ten minute more. Givea Corrigan plenty time get gooda

They waited, sitting upon the stone. The rest of the men were at work out of sight around a bend in the road.

Everything would have gone well except, perhaps, with Corrigan, had not Tony been moved to decorate

the plot with its conventional accompaniment. He was of dramatic blood, and perhaps he intuitively divined

the appendage to villainous machinations as prescribed by the stage. He pulled from his shirt bosom a long,

Burney clutched it and snapped off the end as a terrier bites at a rat. He laid it to his lips like a longlost

sweetheart. When the smoke began to draw he gave a long, deep sigh, and the bristles of his grayred

moustache curled down over the cigar like the talons of an eagle. Slowly the red faded from the whites of his

eyes. He fixed his gaze dreamily upon the hills across the river. The minutes came and went.

"'Bout time to go now," said Tony. "That damna Corrigan he be in the reever very quick."

Burney started out of his trance with a grunt. He turned his head and gazed with a surprised and pained

severity at his accomplice. He took the cigar partly from his mouth, but sucked it back again immediately,

chewed it lovingly once or twice, and spoke, in virulent puffs, from the corner of his mouth:

"What is it, ye yaller haythen? Would ye lay contrivances against the enlightened races of the earth, ye

instigator of illegal crimes? Would ye seek to persuade Martin Burney into the dirty tricks of an indecent

Dago? Would ye be for murderin' your benefactor, the good man that gives ye food and work? Take that, ye

The torrent of Burney's indignation carried with it bodily assault. The toe of his shoe sent the wouldbe cutter

Tony arose and fled. His vendetta he again relegated to the files of things that might have been. Beyond the

Burney, with expanded chest, watched his late coplotter disappear. Then he, too, departed, setting his face in

In his wake was a rank and pernicious trail of noisome smoke that brought peace to his heart and drove the

Surely there is no pastime more diverting than that of mingling, incognito, with persons of wealth and station.

Where else but in those circles can one see life in its primitive, crude state unhampered by the conventions

There was a certain Caliph of Bagdad who was accustomed to go down among the poor and lowly for the

solace obtained from the relation of their tales and histories. Is it not strange that the humble and

povertystricken have not availed themselves of the pleasure they might glean by donning diamonds and

There was one who saw the possibilities of thus turning the tables on Haroun al Raschid. His name was

Corny Brannigan, and he was a truck driver for a Canal Street importing firm. And if you read further you

will learn how he turned upper Broadway into Bagdad and learned something about himself that he did not

Many people would have called Corny a snob preferably by means of a telephone. His chief interest in

life, his chosen amusement, and his sole diversion after working hours, was to place himself in juxtaposition

Every evening after Corny had put up his team and dined at a lunchcounter that made immediateness a

specialty, he would clothe himself in evening raiment as correct as any you will see in the palm rooms. Then

he would betake himself to that ravishing, radiant roadway devoted to Thespis, Thais, and Bacchus.

For a time he would stroll about the lobbies of the best hotels, his soul steeped in blissful content. Beautiful

women, cooing like doves, but feathered like birds of Paradise, flicked him with their robes as they passed.

Courtly gentlemen attended them, gallant and assiduous. And Corny's heart within him swelled like Sir

Lancelot's, for the mirror spoke to him as he passed and said: "Corny, lad, there's not a guy among 'em that

looks a bit the sweller than yerself. And you drivin' of a truck and them swearin' off their taxes and playin' the

And the mirrors spake the truth. Mr. Corny Brannigan had acquired the outward polish, if nothing more.

Long and keen observation of polite society had gained for him its manner, its genteel air, and most

Now and then in the hotels Corny had managed conversation and temporary acquaintance with substantial, if

not distinguished, guests. With many of these he had exchanged cards, and the ones he received he carefully

treasured for his own use later. Leaving the hotel lobbies, Corny would stroll leisurely about, lingering at the

theatre entrance, dropping into the fashionable restaurants as if seeking some friend. He rarely patronized any

of these places; he was no bee come to suck honey, but a butterfly flashing his wings among the flowers

whose calyces held no sweets for him. His wages were not large enough to furnish him with more than the

outside garb of the gentleman. To have been one of the beings he so cunningly imitated, Corny Brannigan

One night Corny had an adventure. After absorbing the delights of an hour's lounging in the principal hotels

along Broadway, he passed up into the stronghold of Thespis. Cab drivers hailed him as a likely fare, to his

prideful content. Languishing eyes were turned upon him as a hopeful source of lobsters and the delectable,

ascendant globules of effervescence. These overtures and unconscious compliments Corny swallowed as

manna, and hoped Bill, the off horse, would be less lame in the left forefoot in the morning.

Beneath a cluster of milky globes of electric light Corny paused to admire the sheen of his lowcut patent

leather shoes. The building occupying the angle was a pretentious _cafe_. Out of this came a couple, a lady in

a white, cobwebby evening gown, with a lace wrap like a wreath of mist thrown over it, and a man, tall,

faultless, assured too assured. They moved to the edge of the sidewalk and halted. Corny's eye, ever alert

A familiar note in the lady's voice drew a more especial attention from Corny. It was pitched in a key well

known to him. The soft electric shone upon her face. Sisters of sorrow have no quarters fixed for them. In the

index to the book of breaking hearts you will find that Broadway follows very soon after the Bowery. This

lady's face was sad, and her voice was attuned with it. They waited, as if for the carriage. Corny waited too,

for it was out of doors, and he was never tired of accumulating and profiting by knowledge of gentlemanly

"Jack," said the lady, "don't be angry. I've done everything I could to please you this evening. Why do you act

"Oh, you're an angel," said the man. "Depend upon woman to throw the blame upon a man."

Corny took out his card case and looked over his collection. He selected one that read: "Mr. R. Lionel

WhyteMelville, Bloomsbury Square, London." This card he had inveigled from a tourist at the King Edward

Hotel. Corny stepped up to the man and presented it with a correctly formal air.

Now, Mr. Corny Brannigan had a very wise habit of saying little during his imitations of the Caliph of

Bagdad. The advice of Lord Chesterfield: "Wear a black coat and hold your tongue," he believed in without

"No gent," said Corny, "would talk to a lady like you done. Fie upon you, Willie! Even if she happens to be

your wife you ought to have more respect for your clothes than to chin her back that way. Maybe it ain't my

The lady's escort indulged in more elegantly expressed but fetching repartee. Corny, eschewing his truck

driver's vocabulary, retorted as nearly as he could in polite phrases. Then diplomatic relations were severed;

there was a brief but lively setto with other than oral weapons, from which Corny came forth easily victor.

"Will you kindly open the door for me?" asked the lady. Corny assisted her to enter, and took off his hat. The

"He's no man of mine," said the lady. "Perhaps he but there's no chance of his being now. Drive home,

Three red roses were thrust out through the carriage window into Corny's hand. He took them, and the hand

His late opponent was yet a little dazed by the hard knocks he had received. Corny led him carefully into a

"You're a queer feller," said the lady's late escort "lick a man and then want to set 'em up.

"You're my best friend," said Corny exultantly. "You don't understand? Well, listen. You just put me wise to

somethin'. I been playin' gent a long time, thinkin' it was just the glad rags I had and nothin' else. Say

you're a swell, ain't you? Well, you trot in that class, I guess. I don't; but I found out one thing I'm a

The original news item concerning the diamond of the goddess Kali was handed in to the city editor. He

smiled and held it for a moment above the wastebasket. Then he laid it back on his desk and said: "Try the

The Sunday editor glanced the item over and said: "H'm!" Afterward he sent for a reporter and expanded his

"You might see General Ludlow," he said, "and make a story out of this if you can. Diamond stories are a

drug; but this one is big enough to be found by a scrubwoman wrapped up in a piece of newspaper and tucked

under the corner of the hall linoleum. Find out first if the General has a daughter who intends to go on the

stage. If not, you can go ahead with the story. Run cuts of the Kohinoor and J. P. Morgan's collection, and

work in pictures of the Kimberley mines and Barney Barnato. Fill in with a tabulated comparison of the

values of diamonds, radium, and veal cutlets since the meat strike; and let it run to a half page."

On the following day the reporter turned in his story. The Sunday editor let his eye sprint along its lines.

"H'm!" he said again. This time the copy went into the wastebasket with scarcely a flutter.

The reporter stiffened a little around the lips; but he was whistling softly and contentedly between his teeth

"I don't blame the 'old man'," said he, magnanimously, "for cutting it out. It did sound like funny business;

but it happened exactly as I wrote it. Say, why don't you fish that story out of the w.b. and use it? Seems to

I accepted the tip, and if you read further you will learn the facts about the diamond of the goddess Kali as

Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow lives in one of those decaying but venerated old redbrick mansions in the West

Twenties. The General is a member of an old New York family that does not advertise. He is a globetrotter

by birth, a gentleman by predilection, a millionaire by the mercy of Heaven, and a connoisseur of precious

The reporter was admitted promptly when he made himself known at the General's residence at about eight

thirty on the evening that he received the assignment. In the magnificent library he was greeted by the

distinguished traveller and connoisseur, a tall, erect gentleman in the early fifties, with a nearly white

moustache, and a bearing so soldierly that one perceived in him scarcely a trace of the National Guardsman.

His weatherbeaten countenance lit up with a charming smile of interest when the reporter made known his

"Ah, you have heard of my latest find. I shall be glad to show you what I conceive to be one of the six most

The General opened a small safe in a corner of the library and brought forth a plushcovered box. Opening

this, he exposed to the reporter's bewildered gaze a huge and brilliant diamond nearly as large as a

"This stone," said the General, "is something more than a mere jewel. It once formed the central eye of the

threeeyed goddess Kali, who is worshipped by one of the fiercest and most fanatical tribes of India. If you

will arrange yourself comfortably I will give you a brief history of it for your paper.

General Ludlow brought a decanter of whiskey and glasses from a cabinet, and set a comfortable armchair for

"The Phansigars, or Thugs, of India," began the General, "are the most dangerous and dreaded of the tribes of

North India. They are extremists in religion, and worship the horrid goddess Kali in the form of images. Their

rites are interesting and bloody. The robbing and murdering of travellers are taught as a worthy and

obligatory deed by their strange religious code. Their worship of the threeeyed goddess Kali is conducted so

secretly that no traveller has ever heretofore had the honour of witnessing the ceremonies. That distinction

"While at Sakaranpur, between Delhi and Khelat, I used to explore the jungle in every direction in the hope

"One evening at twilight I was making my way through a teakwood forest, when I came upon a deep circular

depression in an open space, in the centre of which was a rude stone temple. I was sure that this was one of

"When the moon rose the depression in the clearing was suddenly filled with hundreds of shadowy, swiftly

gliding forms. Then a door opened in the temple, exposing a brightly illuminated image of the goddess Kali,

before which a whiterobed priest began a barbarous incantation, while the tribe of worshippers prostrated

"But what interested me most was the central eye of the huge wooden idol. I could see by its flashing

"After the rites were concluded the Thugs slipped away into the forest as silently as they had come. The priest

stood for a few minutes in the door of the temple enjoying the cool of the night before closing his rather

warm quarters. Suddenly a dark, lithe shadow slipped down into the hollow, leaped upon the priest; and

struck him down with a glittering knife. Then the murderer sprang at the image of the goddess like a cat and

pried out the glowing central eye of Kali with his weapon. Straight toward me he ran with his royal prize.

When he was within two paces I rose to my feet and struck him with all my force between the eyes. He rolled

over senseless and the magnificent jewel fell from his hand. That is the splendid blue diamond you have just

"That's a corking story," said the reporter. "That decanter is exactly like the one that John W. Gates always

"Pardon me," said General Ludlow, "for forgetting hospitality in the excitement of my narrative. Help

"What I am afraid of now," said the General, lowering his voice, "is that I may be robbed of the diamond. The

jewel that formed an eye of their goddess is their most sacred symbol. Somehow the tribe suspected me of

having it; and members of the band have followed me half around the earth. They are the most cunning and

cruel fanatics in the world, and their religious vows would compel them to assassinate the unbeliever who has

"Once in Lucknow three of their agents, disguised as servants in a hotel, endeavoured to strangle me with a

twisted cloth. Again, in London, two Thugs, made up as street musicians, climbed into my window at night

and attacked me. They have even tracked me to this country. My life is never safe. A month ago, while I was

at a hotel in the Berkshires, three of them sprang upon me from the roadside weeds. I saved myself then by

"There was a cow grazing near by," said General Ludlow, "a gentle Jersey cow. I ran to her side and stood.

The three Thugs ceased their attack, knelt and struck the ground thrice with their foreheads. Then, after many

"No; the cow is a sacred animal to the Phansigars. Next to their goddess they worship the cow. They have

never been known to commit any deed of violence in the presence of the animal they reverence."

"If I were you," advised the reporter, "I'd take that sparkler to Texas. Get on a cow ranch there, and the

"Oh, yes; the fancy guys would run up against a long horn every time they made a break."

"The spies of the tribe have found me out in New York," he said, straightening his tall figure. "I'm familiar

with the East Indian cast of countenance, and I know that my every movement is watched. They will

"Here?" exclaimed the reporter, seizing the decanter and pouring out a liberal amount of its contents.

"At any moment," said the General. "But as a soldier and a connoisseur I shall sell my life and my diamond

At this point of the reporter's story there is a certain vagueness, but it can be gathered that there was a loud

crashing noise at the rear of the house they were in. General Ludlow buttoned his coat closely and sprang for

the door. But the reporter clutched him firmly with one hand, while he held the decanter with the other.

"Tell me before we fly," he urged, in a voice thick with some inward turmoil, "do any of your daughters

"I have no daughters fly for your life the Phansigars are upon us!" cried the General.

The hour was late. As their feet struck the sidewalk strange men of dark and forbidding appearance seemed

to rise up out of the earth and encompass them. One with Asiatic features pressed close to the General and

Another, darkwhiskered and sinister, sped lithely to his side and began in a whining voice:

They hurried on, but only into the arms of a blackeyed, duskybrowed being, who held out his hat under

their noses, while a confederate of Oriental hue turned the handle of a street organ near by.

Twenty steps farther on General Ludlow and the reporter found themselves in the midst of half a dozen

villainouslooking men with highturned coat collars and faces bristling with unshaven beards.

"Run for it!" hissed the General. "They have discovered the possessor of the diamond of the goddess Kali."

"Oh, Lordy!" groaned the reporter, "there isn't a cow this side of Brooklyn. We're lost!"

When near the corner they both fell over an iron object that rose from the sidewalk close to the gutter.

"If I only had a cow!" moaned the reporter "or another nip from that decanter, General!"

As soon as the pursuers observed where their victims had found refuge they suddenly fell back and retreated

"They are waiting for reinforcements in order to attack us," said General Ludlow.

But the reporter emitted a ringing laugh, and hurled his hat triumphantly into the air.

"Guess again," he shouted, and leaned heavily upon the iron object. "Your old fancy guys or thugs, whatever

you call 'em, are up to date. Dear General, this is a pump we've stranded upon same as a cow in New York

(hic!) see? Thas'h why the 'nfuriated smoked guys don't attack us see? Sacred an'mal, the pump in N'

But further down in the shadows of Twentyeighth Street the marauders were holding a parley.

"Come on, Reddy," said one. "Let's go frisk the old 'un. He's been shown' a sparkler as big as a hen egg all

"Not on your silhouette," decided Reddy. "You see 'em rallyin' round The Pump? They're friends of Bill's.

Bill won't stand for nothin' of this kind in his district since he got that bid to Esopus."

This exhausts the facts concerning the Kali diamond. But it is deemed not inconsequent to close with the

"It is rumored that a niece of Gen. Marcellus B. Ludlow, of New York City, will appear on the stage next

"In the tropics" ("Hopalong" Bibb, the bird fancier, was saying to me) "the seasons, months, fortnights,

weekends, holidays, dogdays, Sundays, and yesterdays get so jumbled together in the shuffle that you

"Hopalong" Bibb kept his bird store on lower Fourth Avenue. He was an exseaman and beachcomber who

made regular voyages to southern ports and imported personally conducted invoices of talking parrots and

dialectic paroquets. He had a stiff knee, neck, and nerve. I had gone to him to buy a parrot to present, at

"This one," said I, disregarding his homily on the subdivisions of time "this one that seems all red, white,

and blue to what genus of beasts does he belong? He appeals at once to my patriotism and to my love of

"That's a cockatoo from Ecuador," said Bibb. "All he has been taught to say is "Merry Christmas." A

seasonable bird. He's only seven dollars; and I'll bet many a human has stuck you for more money by making

"That bird," he explained, "reminds me. He's got his dates mixed. He ought to be saying '_E pluri bus unum_,'

to match his feathers, instead of trying to work the Santa Claus graft. It reminds me of the time me and

Liverpool Sam got our ideas of things tangled up on the coast of Costa Rica on account of the weather and

"We were, as it were, stranded on that section of the Spanish main with no money to speak of and no friends

that should be talked about either. We had stoked and secondcooked ourselves down there on a fruit steamer

from New Orleans to try our luck, which was discharged, after we got there, for lack of evidence. There was

no work suitable to our instincts; so me and Liverpool began to subsist on the red rum of the country and

such fruit as we could reap where we had not sown. It was an alluvial town, called Soledad, where there was

no harbour or future or recourse. Between steamers the town slept and drank rum. It only woke up when there

were bananas to ship. It was like a man sleeping through dinner until the dessert.

"When me and Liverpool got so low down that the American consul wouldn't speak to us we knew we'd

"We boarded with a snuffbrown lady named Chica, who kept a rumshop and a ladies' and gents' restaurant

in a street called the _calle de los_ Fortyseven Inconsolable Saints. When our credit played out there,

Liverpool, whose stomach overshadowed his sensations of _noblesse oblige_, married Chica. This kept us in

rice and fried plantain for a month; and then Chica pounded Liverpool one morning sadly and earnestly for

fifteen minutes with a casserole handed down from the stone age, and we knew that we had outwelcomed

our liver. That night we signed an engagement with Don Jaime McSpinosa, a hybrid banana fancier of the

place, to work on his fruit preserves nine miles out of town. We had to do it or be reduced to sea water and

"Now, speaking of Liverpool Sam, I don't malign or inexculpate him to you any more than I would to his

face. But in my opinion, when an Englishman gets as low as he can he's got to dodge so that the dregs of

other nations don't drop ballast on him out of their balloons. And if he's a Liverpool Englishman, why,

firedamp is what he's got to look out for. Being a natural American, that's my personal view. But Liverpool

and me had much in common. We were without decorous clothes or ways and means of exist ence; and, as

"Our job on old McSpinosa's plantation was chopping down banana stalks and loading the bunches of fruit on

the backs of horses. Then a native dressed up in an alligator hide belt, a machete, and a pair of AA sheeting

"You ever been in a banana grove? It's as solemn as a rathskeller at seven A. M. It's like being lost behind the

scenes at one of these mushroom musical shows. You can't see the sky for the foliage above you; and the

ground is knee deep in rotten leaves; and it's so still that you can hear the stalks growing again after you chop

"At night me and Liverpool herded in a lot of grass huts on the edge of a lagoon with the red, yellow, and

black employes of Don Jaime. There we lay fighting mosquitoes and listening to the monkeys squalling and

the alligators grunting and splashing in the lagoon until daylight with only snatches of sleep between times.

"We soon lost all idea of what time of the year it was. It's just about eighty degrees there in December and

June and on Fridays and at midnight and election day and any other old time. Sometimes it rains more than at

others, and that's all the difference you notice. A man is liable to live along there without noticing any

fugiting of tempus until some day the undertaker calls in for him just when he's beginning to think about

"I don't know how long we worked for Don Jaime; but it was through two or thee rainy spells, eight or ten

hair cuts, and the life of thee pairs of sailcloth trousers. All the money we earned went for rum and tobacco;

"All of a sudden one day me and Liverpool find the trade of committing surgical operations on banana stalks

turning to aloes and quinine in our mouths. It's a seizure that often comes upon white men in Latin and

geographical countries. We wanted to be addressed again in language and see the smoke of a steamer and

read the real estate transfers and gents' outfitting ads in an old newspaper. Even Soledad seemed like a centre

of civilization to us, so that evening we put our thumbs on our nose at Don Jaime's fruit stand and shook his

"It was only twelve miles to Soledad, but it took me and Liverpool two days to get there. It was banana grove

nearly all the way; and we got twisted time and again. It was like paging the palm room of a New York hotel

"When we saw the houses of Soledad between the trees all my disinclination toward this Liverpool Sam rose

up in me. I stood him while we were two white men against the banana brindles; but now, when there were

prospects of my exchanging even cuss words with an American citizen, I put him back in his proper place.

And he was a sight, too, with his rumpainted nose and his red whiskers and elephant feet with leather

"'It looks to me,' says I, 'like Great Britain ought to be made to keep such ginswilling, scurvy, unbecoming

mud larks as you at home instead of sending 'em over here to degrade and taint foreign lands. We kicked you

"'Oh, you go to 'ell,' says Liverpool, which was about all the repartee he ever had.

"Well, Soledad, looked fine to me after Don Jaime 's plantation. Liverpool and me walked into it side by side,

from force of habit, past the calabosa and the Hotel Grande, down across the plaza toward Chica's hut, where

we hoped that Liverpool, being a husband of hers, might work his luck for a meal.

"As we passed the twostory little frame house occupied by the American Club, we noticed that the balcony

had been decorated all around with wreaths of evergreens and flowers, and the flag was flying from the pole

on the roof. Stanzey, the consul, and Arkright, a goldmine owner, were smoking on the balcony. Me and

Liverpool waved our dirty hands toward 'em and smiled real society smiles; but they turned their backs to us

and went on talking. And we had played whist once with the two of 'em up to the ti me when Liverpool held

all thirteen trumps for four hands in succession. It was some holiday, we knew; but we didn't know the day

"A little further along we saw a reverend man named Pendergast, who had come to Soledad to build a church,

standing under a cocoanut palm with his little black alpaca coat and green umbrella.

"'Boys, boys!' says he, through his blue spectacles, 'is it as bad as this? Are you so far reduced?'

"'It is indeed sad,' says Pendergast, 'to see my countrymen in such circumstances.'

"'Cut 'arf of that out, old party,' says Liverpool. 'Cawn't you tell a member of the British upper classes when

"'Shut up,' I told Liverpool. 'You're on foreign soil now, or that portion of it that's not on you.'

"'And on this day, too!' goes on Pendergast, grievous 'on this most glorious day of the year when we

should all be celebrating the dawn of Christian civilization and the downfall of the wicked.'

"'I did notice bunting and bouquets decorating the town, reverend,' says I, 'but I didn't know what it was for.

We've been so long out of touch with calendars that we didn't know whether it was summer time or Saturday

"'Here is two dollars,' says Pendergast digging up two Chili silver wheels and handing 'em to me. 'Go, my

"'Oh, 'ell!' says Liverpool. 'What's money for?' "'Very well, then,' I says, 'since you insist upon it, we'll drink.'

"So we pull up in a rum shop and get a quart of it and go down on the beach under a cocoanut tree and

"Not having eaten anything but oranges in two days, the rum has immediate effect; and once more I conjure

"'Stand up here,' I says to Liverpool, 'you scum of a despot limited monarchy, and have another dose of

Bunker Hill. That good man, Mr. Pendergast,' says I, 'said we were to observe the day in a befitting manner,

"'Oh, you go to 'ell!' says Liverpool, and I started in with a fine lefthander on his right eye.

"Liverpool had been a fighter once, but dissipation and bad company had taken the nerve out of him. In ten

"Liverpool got up and followed behind me because it was his habit, wiping the red off his face and nose. I led

"'Look at this, sir,' says I 'look at this thing that was once a proud Britisher. You gave us two dollars and

told us to celebrate the day. The starspangled banner still waves. Hurrah for the stars and eagles!'

"'Dear me,' says Pendergast, holding up his hands. 'Fighting on this day of all days! On Christmas day, when

"Take him for six dollars," said Hopalong Bibb. "He's got his dates and colours mixed."