The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X)

by Unknown

Ye Sentimental Law Student

Eds. Enterprise—I found the following letter, or Valentine, or whatever it is, lying on the summit, where it had been dropped unintentionally, I think. It was written on a sheet of legal cap, and each line was duly commenced within the red mark which traversed the sheet from top to bottom. Solon appeared to have had some trouble getting his effusion started to suit him. He had begun it, "Know all men by these presents," and scratched it out again; he had substituted, "Now at this day comes the plaintiff, by his attorney," and scratched that out also; he had tried other sentences of like character, and gone on obliterating them, until, through much sorrow and tribulation, he achieved the dedication which stands at the head of his letter, and to his entire satisfaction, I do cheerfully hope. But what a villain a man must be to blend together the beautiful language of love and the infernal phraseology of the law in one and the same sentence! I know but one of God's creatures who would be guilty of such depravity as this: I refer to the Unreliable. I believe the Unreliable to be the very lawyer's-cub who sat upon the solitary peak, all soaked in beer and sentiment, and concocted the insipid literary hash I am talking about. The handwriting closely resembles his semi-Chinese tarantula tracks.

Sugar Loaf Peak, February 14, 1863.

To the loveliness to whom these presents shall come, greeting:—This is a lovely day, my own Mary; its unencumbered sunshine reminds me of your happy face, and in the imagination the same doth now appear before me. Such sights and scenes as this ever remind me, the party of the second part, of you, my Mary, the peerless party of the first part. The view from the lonely and segregated mountain peak, of this portion of what is called and known as Creation, with all and singular the hereditaments and appurtenances thereunto appertaining and belonging, is inexpressively grand and inspiring; and I gaze, and gaze, while my soul is filled with holy delight, and my heart expands to receive thy spirit-presence, as aforesaid. Above me is the glory of the sun; around him float the messenger clouds, ready alike to bless the earth with gentle rain, or visit it with lightning, and thunder, and destruction; far below the said sun and the messenger clouds aforesaid, lying prone upon the earth in the verge of the distant horizon, like the burnished shield of a giant, mine eyes behold a lake, which is described and set forth in maps as the Sink of Carson; nearer, in the great plain, I see the Desert, spread abroad like the mantle of a Colossus, glowing by turns, with the warm light of the sun, hereinbefore mentioned, or darkly shaded by the messenger clouds aforesaid; flowing at right angles with said Desert, and adjacent thereto, I see the silver and sinuous thread of the river, commonly called Carson, which winds its tortuous course through the softly tinted valley, and disappears amid the gorges of the bleak and snowy mountains—a simile of man!—leaving the pleasant valley of Peace and Virtue to wander among the dark defiles of Sin, beyond the jurisdiction of the kindly beaming sun aforesaid! And about said sun, and the said clouds, and around the said mountains, and over the plain and the river aforesaid, there floats a purple glory—a yellow mist—as airy and beautiful as the bridal veil of a princess, about to be wedded according to the rites and ceremonies pertaining to, and established by, the laws or edicts of the kingdom or principality wherein she doth reside, and whereof she hath been and doth continue to be, a lawful sovereign or subject. Ah! my Mary, it is sublime! it is lovely! I have declared and made known, and by these presents do declare and make known unto you, that the view from Sugar Loaf Peak, as hereinbefore described and set forth, is the loveliest picture with which the hand of the Creator has adorned the earth, according to the best of my knowledge and belief, so help me God.

Given under my hand, and in the spirit-presence of the bright being whose love has restored the light of hope to a soul once groping in the darkness of despair, on the day and year first above written.

(Signed)

Solon Lycurgus.

Law Student, and Notary Public in and for the said County of Storey, and Territory of Nevada.

To Miss Mary Links, Virginia (and may the laws have her in their holy keeping).

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SETTIN' BY THE FIRE

BY FRANK L. STANTON

Never much on stirrin' roun'
(Sich warn't his desire),
Allers certain to be foun'
Settin' by the fire.
When the frost wuz comin' down—
Col' win' creepin' nigher,
Spent each day jest thataway—
Settin' by the fire.
When the dancin' shook the groun'—
Raised the ol' roof higher,
Never swung the gals eroun'—
Sot thar' by the fire.
Same ol' corner night an' day—
Never 'peared to tire;
Not a blessed word to say!
Jest sot by the fire.
When he died, by slow degrees,
Folks said: "He's gone higher;"
But it's my opinion he's
Settin' by the fire.

---

THE WHISPERER

BY IRONQUILL

He never tried to make a speech;
A speech was far beyond his reach.
He didn't even dare to try;
He did his work upon the sly.
He took the voter to the rear
And gently whispered in his ear.
He never wrote; he could not write;
He never tried that style of fight.
No argument of his was seen
In daily press or magazine.
He only tried to get up near
And whisper in the voter's ear.
It worked so well that he became
A person of abundant fame.
He couldn't write; he couldn't speak,
But still pursued his course unique.
He had a glorious career—
He whispered in the voter's ear.

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DER OAK UND DER VINE

BY CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS

I don'd vas preaching voman's righdts,
Or anyding like dot,
Und I likes to see all beoples
Shust gondented mit dheir lot;
Budt I vants to gondradict dot shap
Dot made dis leedle shoke:
"A voman vas der glinging vine,
Und man, der shturdy oak."
Berhaps, somedimes, dot may be drue;
Budt, den dimes oudt off nine,
I find me oudt dot man himself
Vas peen der glinging vine;
Und ven hees friendts dhey all vas gone,
Und he vas shust "tead proke,"
Dot's ven der voman shteps righdt in,
Und peen der shturdy oak.
Shust go oup to der paseball groundts
Und see dhose "shturdy oaks"
All planted roundt ubon der seats—
Shust hear dheir laughs und shokes!
Dhen see dhose vomens at der tubs,
Mit glothes oudt on der lines;
Vhich vas der shturdy oaks, mine friendts,
Und vhich der glinging vines?
Vhen sickness in der householdt comes,
Und veeks und veeks he shtays,
Who vas id fighdts him mitoudt resdt,
Dhose veary nighdts und days?
Who beace und gomfort alvays prings,
Und cools dot fefered prow?
More like id vas der tender vine
Dot oak he glings to, now.
"Man vants budt leedle here below,"
Der boet von time said;
Dhere's leedle dot man he don'd vant,
I dink id means, inshted;
Und ven der years keep rolling on,
Dheir cares und droubles pringing,
He vants to pe der shturdy oak,
Und, also, do der glinging.
Maype, vhen oaks dhey gling some more,
Und don'd so shturdy peen,
Der glinging vines dhey haf some shance
To helb run Life's masheen.
In helt und sickness, shoy und pain,
In calm or shtormy veddher,
'T was beddher dot dhose oaks und vines
Should alvays gling togeddher.

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ARAMINTA AND THE AUTOMOBILE

BY CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS

Some persons spend their surplus on works of art; some spend it on Italian gardens and pergolas; there are those who sink it in golf, and I have heard of those who expended it on charity.

None of these forms of getting away with money appeal to Araminta and myself. As soon as it was ascertained that the automobile was practicable and would not cost a king's ransom, I determined to devote my savings to the purchase of one.

Araminta and I lived in a suburban town; she because she loves Nature and I because I love Araminta. We have been married for five years.

I am a bank clerk in New York, and morning and night I go through the monotony of railway travel, and for one who is forbidden to use his eyes on the train and who does not play cards it is monotony, for in the morning my friends are either playing cards or else reading their papers, and one does not like to urge the claims of conversation on one who is deep in politics or the next play of his antagonist; so my getting to business and coming back are in the nature of purgatory. I therefore hailed the automobile as a Heaven-sent means of swift motion with an agreeable companion, and with no danger of encountering either newspapers or cards. I have seen neither reading nor card-playing going on in any automobile.

The community in which I live is not progressive, and when I said that I expected to buy an automobile as soon as my ship came in I was frowned upon by my neighbors. Several of them have horses, and all, or nearly all, have feet. The horsemen were not more opposed to my proposed ownership than the footmen—I should say pedestrians. They all thought automobiles dangerous and a menace to public peace, but of course I pooh-poohed their fears and, being a person of a good deal of stability of purpose, I went on saving my money, and in course of time I bought an automobile of the electric sort.

Araminta is plucky, and I am perfectly fearless. When the automobile was brought home and housed in the little barn that is on our property, the man who had backed it in told me that he had orders to stay and show me how it worked, but I laughed at him—good-naturedly yet firmly. I said, "Young man, experience teaches more in half an hour than books or precepts do in a year. A would-be newspaper man does not go to a school of journalism if he is wise; he gets a position on a newspaper and learns for himself, and through his mistakes. I know that one of these levers is to steer by, that another lets loose the power, and that there is a foot-brake. I also know that the machine is charged, and I need to know no more. Good day."

Thus did I speak to the young man, and he saw that I was a person of force and discretion, and he withdrew to the train and I never saw him again.

Araminta had been to Passaic shopping, but she came back while I was out in the barn looking at my new purchase, and she joined me there. I looked at her lovingly, and she returned the look. Our joint ambition was realized; we were the owners of an automobile, and we were going out that afternoon.

Why is it that cheap barns are so flimsily built? I know that our barn is cheap because the rent for house and barn is less than what many a clerk, city pent, pays for a cramped flat, but again I ask, why are they flimsily built? I have no complaint to make. If my barn had been built of good stout oak I might to-day be in a hospital.

It happened this way. Araminta said, "Let me get in, and we will take just a little ride to see how it goes," and I out of my love for her said, "Wait just a few minutes, dearest, until I get the hang of the thing. I want to see how much go she has and just how she works."

Araminta has learned to obey my slightest word, knowing that love is at the bottom of all my commands, and she stepped to one side while I entered the gayly-painted vehicle and tried to move out of the barn. I moved out. But I backed. Oh, blessed, cheaply built barn. My way was not restricted to any appreciable extent. I shot gayly through the barn into the hen yard, and the sound of the ripping clapboards frightened the silly hens who were enjoying a dust-bath, and they fled in more directions than there were fowls.

I had not intended entering the hen yard, and I did not wish to stay there, so I kept on out, the wire netting not being what an automobile would call an obstruction. I never lose my head, and when I heard Araminta screaming in the barn, I called out cheerily to her, "I'll be back in a minute, dear, but I'm coming another way."

And I did come another way. I came all sorts of ways. I really don't know what got into the machine, but she now turned to the left and made for the road, and then she ran along on her two left wheels for a moment, and then seemed about to turn a somersault, but changed her mind, and, still veering to the left, kept on up the road, passing my house at a furious speed, and making for the open country. With as much calmness as I could summon I steered her, but I think I steered her a little too much, for she turned toward my house.

I reached one end of the front piazza at the same time that Araminta reached the other end of it. I had the right of way, and she deferred to me just in time. I removed the vestibule storm door. It was late in March, and I did not think we should have any more use for it that season. And we didn't.

I had ordered a strongly-built machine, and I was now glad of it, because a light and weak affair that was merely meant to run along on a level and unobstructed road would not have stood the assault on my piazza. Why, my piazza did not stand it. It caved in, and made work for an already overworked local carpenter who was behind-hand with his orders. After I had passed through the vestibule, I applied the brake, and it worked. The path is not a cinder one, as I think them untidy, so I was not more than muddied. I was up in an instant, and looked at the still enthusiastic machine with admiration.

"Have you got the hang of it?" said Araminta.

Now that's one thing I like about Araminta. She does not waste words over non-essentials. The point was not that I had damaged the piazza. I needed a new one, anyway. The main thing was that I was trying to get the hang of the machine, and she recognized that fact instantly.

I told her that I thought I had, and that if I had pushed the lever in the right way at first, I should have come out of the barn in a more conventional way.

She again asked me to let her ride, and as I now felt that I could better cope with the curves of the machine I allowed her to get in.

"Don't lose your head," said I.

"I hope I shan't," said she dryly.

"Well, if you have occasion to leave me, drop over the back. Never jump ahead. That is a fundamental rule in runaways of all kinds."

Then we started, and I ran the motor along for upward of half a mile after I had reached the highway, which I did by a short cut through a field at the side of our house. There is only a slight rail fence surrounding it, and my machine made little of that. It really seemed to delight in what some people would have called danger.

"Araminta, are you glad that I saved up for this?"

"I am mad with joy," said the dear thing, her face flushed with excitement mixed with expectancy. Nor were her expectations to be disappointed. We still had a good deal to do before we should have ended our first ride.

So far I had damaged property to a certain extent, but I had no one but myself to reckon with, and I was providing work for people. I always have claimed that he who makes work for two men where there was only work for one before, is a public benefactor, and that day I was the friend of carpenters and other mechanics.

Along the highway we flew, our hearts beating high, but never in our mouths, and at last we saw a team approaching us. By "a team" I mean a horse and buggy. I was raised in Connecticut, where a team is anything you choose to call one.

The teamster saw us. Well, perhaps I should not call him a teamster (although he was one logically): he was our doctor, and, as I say, he saw us.

Now I think it would have been friendly in him, seeing that I was more or less of a novice at the art of automobiling, to have turned to the left when he saw that I was inadvertently turning to the left, but the practice of forty years added to a certain native obstinacy made him turn to the right, and he met me at the same time that I met him.

The horse was not hurt, for which I am truly glad, and the doctor joined us, and continued with us for a season, but his buggy was demolished.

Of course I am always prepared to pay for my pleasure, and though it was not, strictly speaking, my pleasure to deprive my physician of his turn-out, yet if he had turned out it wouldn't have happened—and, as I say, I was prepared to get him a new vehicle. But he was very unreasonable; so much so that, as he was crowding us—for the seat was not built for more than two, and he is stout—I at last told him that I intended to turn around and carry him home, as we were out for pleasure, and he was giving us pain.

I will confess that the events of the last few minutes had rattled me somewhat, and I did not feel like turning just then, as the road was narrow. I knew that the road turned of its own accord a half-mile farther on, and so I determined to wait.

"I want to get out," said the doctor tartly, and just as he said so Araminta stepped on the brake, accidentally. The doctor got out—in front. With great presence of mind I reversed, and so we did not run over him. But he was furious and sulphurous, and that is why I have changed to homeopathy. He was the only allopathic doctor in Brantford.

I suppose that if I had stopped and apologized, he would have made up with me, and I would not have got angry with him, but I couldn't stop. The machine was now going as she had done when I left the barn, and we were backing into town.

Through it all I did not lose my coolness. I said: "Araminta, look out behind, which is ahead of us, and if you have occasion to jump now, do it in front, which is behind," and Araminta understood me.

She sat sideways, so that she could see what was going on, but that might have been seen from any point of view, for we were the only things going on—or backing.

Pretty soon we passed the wreck of the buggy, and then we saw the horse grazing on dead grass by the roadside, and at last we came on a few of our townfolk who had seen us start, and were now come out to welcome us home. But I did not go home just then. I should have done so if the machine had minded me and turned in at our driveway, but it did not.

Across the way from us there is a fine lawn leading up to a beautiful greenhouse full of rare orchids and other plants. It is the pride of my very good neighbor, Jacob Rawlinson.

The machine, as if moved by malice prépense, turned just as we came to the lawn, and began to back at railroad speed.

I told Araminta that if she was tired of riding, now was the best time to stop; that she ought not to overdo it, and that I was going to get out myself as soon as I had seen her off.

I saw her off.

Then after one ineffectual jab at the brake, I left the machine hurriedly, and as I sat down on the sposhy lawn I heard a tremendous but not unmusical sound of falling glass——

I tell Araminta that it isn't the running of an automobile that is expensive. It is the stopping of it.

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THE HEIGHT OF THE RIDICULOUS

BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES

I wrote some lines once on a time
In wondrous merry mood,
And thought, as usual, men would say
They were exceeding good.
They were so queer, so very queer,
I laughed as I would die;
Albeit, in the general way,
A sober man am I.
I called my servant, and he came;
How kind it was of him
To mind a slender man like me,
He of the mighty limb!
"These to the printer," I exclaimed,
And, in my humorous way,
I added, (as a trifling jest,)
"There'll be the devil to pay."
He took the paper, and I watched,
And saw him peep within;
At the first line he read, his face
Was all upon the grin.
He read the next; the grin grew broad,
And shot from ear to ear;
He read the third; a chuckling noise
I now began to hear.
The fourth; he broke into a roar;
The fifth; his waistband split;
The sixth; he burst five buttons off,
And tumbled in a fit.
Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
I watched that wretched man,
And since, I never dare to write
As funny as I can.

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WHEN LOVELY WOMAN

BY PHŒBE CARY

When lovely woman wants a favor,
And finds, too late, that man won't bend,
What earthly circumstance can save her
From disappointment in the end?
The only way to bring him over,
The last experiment to try,
Whether a husband or a lover,
If he have feeling is—to cry.

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UNSATISFIED YEARNING

BY R. K. MUNKITTRICK

Down in the silent hallway
Scampers the dog about,
And whines, and barks, and scratches,
In order to get out.
Once in the glittering starlight,
He straightway doth begin
To set up a doleful howling
In order to get in.

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THE INVISIBLE PRINCE[2]

BY HENRY HARLAND

At a masked ball given by the Countess Wohenhoffen, in Vienna, during carnival week, a year ago, a man draped in the embroidered silks of a Chinese mandarin, his features entirely concealed by an enormous Chinese head in cardboard, was standing in the Wintergarten, the big, dimly-lighted conservatory, near the door of one of the gilt-and-white reception-rooms, rather a stolid-seeming witness of the multi-coloured romp within, when a voice behind him said, "How do you do, Mr. Field?"—a woman's voice, an English voice.

The mandarin turned round.

From a black mask, a pair of blue-gray eyes looked into his broad, bland Chinese face; and a black domino dropped him an extravagant little curtsey.

"How do you do?" he responded. "I'm afraid I'm not Mr. Field; but I'll gladly pretend I am, if you'll stop and talk with me. I was dying for a little human conversation."

"Oh you're afraid you're not Mr. Field, are you?" the mask replied derisively. "Then why did you turn when I called his name?"

"You mustn't hope to disconcert me with questions like that," said he. "I turned because I liked your voice."

He might quite reasonably have liked her voice, a delicate, clear, soft voice, somewhat high in register, with an accent, crisp, chiselled, concise, that suggested wit as well as distinction. She was rather tall, for a woman; one could divine her slender and graceful, under the voluminous folds of her domino.

She moved a little away from the door, deeper into the conservatory. The mandarin kept beside her. There, amongst the palms, a fontaine lumineuse was playing, rhythmically changing colour. Now it was a shower of rubies; now of emeralds or amethysts, of sapphires, topazes, or opals.

"How pretty," she said, "and how frightfully ingenious. I am wondering whether this wouldn't be a good place to sit down. What do you think?" And she pointed with a fan to a rustic bench.

So they sat down on the rustic bench, by the fontaine lumineuse.

"In view of your fear that you're not Mr. Field, it's rather a coincidence that at a masked ball in Vienna you should just happen to be English, isn't it?" she asked.

"Oh, everybody's more or less English, in these days, you know," said he.

"There's some truth in that," she admitted, with a laugh. "What a diverting piece of artifice this Wintergarten is, to be sure. Fancy arranging the electric lights to shine through a dome of purple glass, and look like stars. They do look like stars, don't they? Slightly overdressed, showy stars, indeed; stars in the German taste; but stars, all the same. Then, by day, you know, the purple glass is removed, and you get the sun—the real sun. Do you notice the delicious fragrance of lilac? If one hadn't too exacting an imagination, one might almost persuade oneself that one was in a proper open-air garden, on a night in May—Yes, everybody is more or less English, in these days. That's precisely the sort of thing I should have expected Victor Field to say."

"By-the-bye," questioned the mandarin, "if you don't mind increasing my stores of knowledge, who is this fellow Field?"

"This fellow Field? Ah, who indeed?" said she. "That's just what I wish you'd tell me."

"I'll tell you with pleasure, after you've supplied me with the necessary data," he promised cheerfully.

"Well, by some accounts, he's a little literary man in London," she remarked.

"Oh, come! You never imagined that I was a little literary man in London," protested he.

"You might be worse," she retorted. "However, if the phrase offends you, I'll say a rising young literary man, instead. He writes things, you know."

"Poor chap, does he? But then, that's a way they have, sizing up literary persons?" His tone was interrogative.

"Doubtless," she agreed. "Poems and stories and things. And book reviews, I suspect. And even, perhaps, leading articles in the newspapers."

"Toute la lyre enfin? What they call a penny-a-liner?"

"I'm sure I don't know what he's paid. I should think he'd get rather more than a penny. He's fairly successful. The things he does aren't bad," she said.

"I must look 'em up," said he. "But meantime, will you tell me how you came to mistake me for him? Has he the Chinese type? Besides, what on earth should a little London literary man be doing at the Countess Wohenhoffen's?"

"He was standing near the door, over there," she told him, sweetly, "dying for a little human conversation, till I took pity on him. No, he hasn't exactly the Chinese type, but he's wearing a Chinese costume, and I should suppose he'd feel uncommonly hot in that exasperatingly placid Chinese head. I'm nearly suffocated, and I'm only wearing a loup. For the rest, why shouldn't he be here?"

"If your loup bothers you, pray take it off. Don't mind me," he urged gallantly.

"You're extremely good," she responded. "But if I should take off my loup, you'd be sorry. Of course, manlike, you're hoping that I'm young and pretty."

"Well, and aren't you?"

"I'm a perfect fright. I'm an old maid."

"Thank you. Manlike, I confess I was hoping you'd be young and pretty. Now my hope has received the strongest confirmation. I'm sure you are," he declared triumphantly.

"Your argument, with a meretricious air of subtlety, is facile and superficial. Don't pin your faith to it. Why shouldn't Victor Field be here?" she persisted.

"The Countess only receives tremendous swells. It's the most exclusive house in Europe."

"Are you a tremendous swell?" she wondered.

"Rather!" he asseverated. "Aren't you?"

She laughed a little, and stroked her fan, a big fan, a big fan of fluffy black feathers.

"That's very jolly," said he.

"What?" said she.

"That thing in your lap."

"My fan?"

"I expect you'd call it a fan."

"For goodness' sake, what would you call it?" cried she.

"I should call it a fan."

She gave another little laugh. "You have a nice instinct for the mot juste," she informed him.

"Oh, no," he disclaimed, modestly. "But I can call a fan a fan, when I think it won't shock the sensibilities of my hearer."

"If the Countess only receives tremendous swells," said she, "you must remember that Victor Field belongs to the Aristocracy of Talent."

"Oh, quant à ça, so, from the Wohenhoffens' point of view, do the barber and the horse-leech. In this house, the Aristocracy of Talent dines with the butler."

"Is the Countess such a snob?" she asked.

"No; she's an Austrian. They draw the line so absurdly tight in Austria."

"Well, then, you leave me no alternative," she argued, "but to conclude that Victor Field is a tremendous swell. Didn't you notice, I bobbed him a curtsey?"

"I took the curtsey as a tribute to my Oriental magnificence," he confessed. "Field doesn't sound like an especially patrician name. I'd give anything to discover who you are. Can't you be induced to tell me? I'll bribe, entreat, threaten—I'll do anything you think might persuade you."

"I'll tell you at once, if you'll own up that you're Victor Field," said she.

"Oh, I'll own up that I'm Queen Elizabeth if you'll tell me who you are. The end justifies the means."

"Then you are Victor Field?" she pursued him eagerly.

"If you don't mind suborning perjury, why should I mind committing it?" he reflected. "Yes. And now, who are you?"

"No; I must have an unequivocal avowal," she stipulated. "Are you or are you not Victor Field?"

"Let us put it at this," he proposed, "that I'm a good serviceable imitation; an excellent substitute when the genuine article is not procurable."

"Of course, your real name isn't anything like Victor Field," she declared, pensively.

"I never said it was. But I admire the way in which you give with one hand and take back with the other."

"Your real name—" she began. "Wait a moment—Yes, now I have it. Your real name—It's rather long. You don't think it will bore you?"

"Oh, if it's really my real name, I daresay I'm hardened to it," said he.

"Your real name is Louis Charles Ferdinand Stanislas John Joseph Emmanuel Maria Anna."

"Mercy upon me," he cried, "what a name! You ought to have broken it to me in instalments. And it's all Christian name at that. Can't you spare me just a little rag of a surname, for decency's sake?" he pleaded.

"The surnames of royalties don't matter, Monseigneur," she said, with a flourish.

"Royalties? What? Dear me, here's rapid promotion! I am royal now! And a moment ago I was a little penny-a-liner in London."

"L'un n'empêche pas l'autre. Have you never heard the story of the Invisible Prince?" she asked.

"I adore irrelevancy," said he. "I seem to have read something about an invisible prince, when I was young. A fairy tale, wasn't it?"

"The irrelevancy is only apparent. The story I mean is a story of real life. Have you ever heard of the Duke of Zeln?"

"Zeln? Zeln?" he repeated, reflectively. "No, I don't think so."

She clapped her hands. "Really, you do it admirably. If I weren't perfectly sure of my facts, I believe I should be taken in. Zeln, as any history would tell you, as any old atlas would show you, was a little independent duchy in the center of Germany."

"Poor dear thing! Like Jonah in the center of the whale," he murmured, sympathetically.

"Hush. Don't interrupt. Zeln was a little independent German duchy, and the Duke of Zeln was its sovereign. After the war with France it was absorbed by Prussia. But the ducal family still rank as royal highness. Of course, you've heard of the Leczinskis?"

"Lecz—what?" said he.

"Leczinski," she repeated.

"How do you spell it?"

"L-e-c-z-i-n-s-k-i."

"Good. Capital. You have a real gift for spelling," he exclaimed.

"Will you be quiet," she said, severely, "and answer my question? Are you familiar with the name?"

"I should never venture to be familiar with a name I didn't know," he asserted.

"Ah, you don't know it? You have never heard of Stanislas Leczinska, who was king of Poland? Of Marie Leczinska, who married Louis VI?"

"Oh, to be sure. I remember. The lady whose portrait one sees at Versailles."

"Quite so. Very well," she continued, "the last representative of the Leczinskis, in the elder line, was the Princess Anna Leczinska, who, in 1858, married the Duke of Zeln. She was the daughter of John Leczinski, Duke of Grodnia and Governor of Galicia, and of the Archduchess Henrietta d'Este, a cousin of the Emperor of Austria. She was also a great heiress, and an extremely handsome woman. But the Duke of Zeln was a bad lot, a viveur, a gambler, a spendthrift. His wife, like a fool, made her entire fortune over to him, and he proceeded to play ducks and drakes with it. By the time their son was born he'd got rid of the last farthing. Their son wasn't born till '63, five years after their marriage. Well, and then, what do you suppose the Duke did?"

"Reformed, of course. The wicked husband always reforms when a child is born, and there's no more money," he generalized.

"You know perfectly well what he did," said she. "He petitioned the German Diet to annul the marriage. You see, having exhausted the dowry of the Princess Anna, it occurred to him that if she could only be got out of the way, he might marry another heiress, and have the spending of another fortune."

"Clever dodge," he observed. "Did it come off?"

"It came off, all too well. He based his petition on the ground that the marriage had never been—I forget what the technical term is. Anyhow, he pretended that the princess had never been his wife except in name, and that the child couldn't possibly be his. The Emperor of Austria stood by his connection, like the royal gentleman he is; used every scrap of influence he possessed to help her. But the duke, who was a Protestant (the princess was of course a Catholic), the duke persuaded all the Protestant States in the Diet to vote in his favour. The Emperor of Austria was powerless, the Pope was powerless. And the Diet annulled the marriage."

"Ah," said the mandarin.

"Yes," she went on. "The marriage was annulled, and the child declared illegitimate. Ernest Augustus, as the duke was somewhat inconsequently named, married again, and had other children, the eldest of whom is the present bearer of the title—the same Duke of Zeln one hears of, quarreling with the croupiers at Monte Carlo. The Princess Anna, with her baby, came to Austria. The Emperor gave her a pension, and lent her one of his country houses to live in—Schloss Sanct—Andreas. Our hostess, by-the-by, the Countess Wohenhoffen, was her intimate friend and her première dame d'honneur."

"Ah," said the mandarin.

"But the poor princess had suffered more than she could bear. She died when her child was four years old. The Countess Wohenhoffen took the infant, by the Emperor's desire, and brought him up with her own son Peter. He was called Prince Louis Leczinski. Of course, in all moral right, he was the Hereditary Prince of Zeln. His legitimacy, for the rest, and his mother's innocence, are perfectly well established, in every sense but a legal sense, by the fact that he has all the physical characteristics of the Zeln stock. He has the Zeln nose and the Zeln chin, which are as distinctive as the Hapsburg lip."

"I hope, for the poor young man's sake, though, that they're not so unbecoming?" questioned the mandarin.

"They're not exactly pretty," answered the mask. "The nose is a thought too long, the chin is a trifle too short. However, I daresay the poor young man is satisfied. As I was about to tell you, the Countess Wohenhoffen brought him up, and the Emperor destined him for the Church. He even went to Rome and entered the Austrian College. He'd have been on the high road to a cardinalate by this time if he'd stuck to the priesthood, for he had strong interest. But, lo and behold, when he was about twenty, he chucked the whole thing up."

"Ah? Histoire de femme?"

"Very likely," she assented, "though I've never heard any one say so. At all events, he left Rome, and started upon his travels. He had no money of his own, but the Emperor made him an allowance. He started upon his travels, and he went to India, and he went to America, and he went to South Africa, and then, finally, in '87 or '88, he went—no one knows where. He totally disappeared, vanished into space. He's not been heard of since. Some people think he's dead. But the greater number suppose that he tired of his false position in the world, and one fine day determined to escape from it, by sinking his identity, changing his name, and going in for a new life under new conditions. They call him the Invisible Prince. His position was rather an ambiguous one, wasn't it? You see, he was neither one thing nor the other. He has no état-civil. In the eyes of the law he was a bastard, yet he knew himself to be the legitimate son of the Duke of Zeln. He was a citizen of no country, yet he was the rightful heir to a throne. He was the last descendant of Stanislas Leczinski, yet it was without authority that he bore his name. And then, of course, the rights and wrongs of the matter were only known to a few. The majority of people simply remembered that there had been a scandal. And (as a wag once said of him) wherever he went, he left his mother's reputation behind him. No wonder he found the situation irksome. Well, there is the story of the Invisible Prince."

"And a very exciting, melodramatic little story, too. For my part, I suspect your Prince met a boojum. I love to listen to stories. Won't you tell me another? Do, please," he pressed her.

"No, he didn't meet a boojum," she returned. "He went to England, and set up for an author. The Invisible Prince and Victor Field are one and the same person."

"Oh, I say! Not really!" he exclaimed.

"Yes, really."

"What makes you think so?" he wondered.

"I'm sure of it," said she. "To begin with, I must confide to you that Victor Field is a man I've never met."

"Never met—?" he gasped. "But, by the blithe way in which you were laying his sins at my door, a little while ago, I supposed you were sworn confederates."

"What's the good of masked balls, if you can't talk to people you've never met?" she submitted. "I've never met him, but I'm one of his admirers. I like his little poems. And I'm the happy possessor of a portrait of him. It's a print after a photograph. I cut it from an illustrated paper."

"I really almost wish I was Victor Field," he sighed. "I should feel such a glow of gratified vanity."

"And the Countess Wohenhoffen," she added, "has at least twenty portraits of the Invisible Prince—photographs, miniatures, life-size paintings, taken from the time he was born, almost, to the time of his disappearance. Victor Field and Louis Leczinski have countenances as like each other as two halfpence."

"An accidental resemblance, doubtless."

"No, it isn't an accidental resemblance," she affirmed.

"Oh, then you think it's intentional?" he quizzed.

"Don't be absurd. I might have thought it accidental, except for one or two odd little circumstances. Primo, Victor Field is a guest at the Wohenhoffens' ball."

"Oh, he is a guest here?"

"Yes, he is," she said. "You are wondering how I know. Nothing simpler. The same costumier who made my domino, supplied his Chinese dress. I noticed it at his shop. It struck me as rather nice, and I asked whom it was for. The costumier said, for an Englishman at the Hôtel de Bade. Then he looked in his book, and told me the Englishman's name. It was Victor Field. So, when I saw the same Chinese dress here to-night, I knew it covered the person of one of my favorite authors. But I own, like you, I was a good deal surprised. What on earth should a little London literary man be doing at the Countess Wohenhoffen's? And then I remembered the astonishing resemblance between Victor Field and Louis Leczinski; and I remembered that to Louis Leczinski the Countess Wohenhoffen had been a second mother; and I reflected that though he chose to be as one dead and buried for the rest of the world, Louis Leczinski might very probably keep up private relations with the Countess. He might very probably come to her ball, incognito, and safely masked. I observed also that the Countess's rooms were decorated throughout with white lilac. But the white lilac is the emblematic flower of the Leczinskis; green and white are their family colours. Wasn't the choice of white lilac on this occasion perhaps designed as a secret compliment to the Prince? I was taught in the schoolroom that two and two make four."

"Oh, one can see that you've enjoyed a liberal education," he apprised her. "But where were you taught to jump to conclusions? You do it with a grace, an assurance. I too have heard that two and two make four; but first you must catch your two and two. Really, as if there couldn't be more than one Chinese costume knocking about Vienna, during carnival week! Dear, good, sweet lady, it's of all disguises the disguise they're driving hardest, this particular season. And then to build up an elaborate theory of identities upon the mere chance resemblance of a pair of photographs! Photographs indeed! Photographs don't give the complexion. Say that your Invisible Prince is dark, what's to prevent your literary man from being fair or sandy? Or vice versâ? And then, how is a little German Polish princeling to write poems and things in English? No, no, no; your reasoning hasn't a leg to stand on."

"Oh, I don't mind its not having legs," she laughed, "so long as it convinces me. As for writing poems and things in English, you yourself said that everybody is more or less English, in these days. German princes are especially so. They all learn English, as a second mother-tongue. You see, like Circassian beauties, they are mostly bred up for the marriage market; and nothing is a greater help towards a good sound remunerative English marriage, than a knowledge of the language. However, don't be frightened. I must take it for granted that Victor Field would prefer not to let the world know who he is. I happen to have discovered his secret. He may trust to my discretion."

"You still persist in imagining that I'm Victor Field?" he murmured sadly.

"I should have to be extremely simple-minded," she announced, "to imagine anything else. You wouldn't be a male human being if you had sat here for half an hour patiently talking about another man."

"Your argument," said he, "with a meretricious air of subtlety, is facile and superficial. I thank you for teaching me that word. I'd sit here till doomsday talking about my worst enemy, for the pleasure of talking with you."

"Perhaps we have been talking of your worst enemy. Whom do the moralists pretend a man's worst enemy is wont to be?" she asked.

"I wish you would tell me the name of the person the moralists would consider your worst enemy," he replied.

"I'll tell you directly, as I said before, if you'll own up," she offered.

"Your price is prohibitive. I've nothing to own up to."

"Well then—good night," she said.

Lightly, swiftly, she fled from the conservatory, and was soon irrecoverable in the crowd.

The next morning Victor Field left Vienna for London; but before he left he wrote a letter to Peter Wohenhoffen. In the course of it he said: "There was an Englishwoman at your ball last night with the reasoning powers of a detective in a novel. By divers processes of elimination and induction, she had formed all sorts of theories about no end of things. Among others, for instance, she was willing to bet her halidome that a certain Prince Louis Leczinski, who seems to have gone on the spree some years ago, and never to have come home again—she was willing to bet anything you like that Leczinski and I—moi qui vous parle—were to all intents and purposes the same. Who was she, please? Rather a tall woman, in a black domino, with gray eyes, or grayish-blue, and a nice voice."

In the answer which he received from Peter Wohenhoffen towards the end of the week, Peter said: "There were nineteen Englishwomen at my mother's party, all of them rather tall, with nice voices, and gray or blue-gray eyes. I don't know what colours their dominoes were. Here is a list of them."

The names that followed were names of people whom Victor Field almost certainly would never meet. The people Victor knew in London were the sort of people a little literary man might be expected to know. Most of them were respectable; some of them even deemed themselves rather smart, and patronized him right Britishly. But the nineteen names in Peter Wohenhoffen's list ("Oh, me! Oh, my!" cried Victor) were names to make you gasp.

All the same, he went a good deal to Hyde Park during the season, and watched the driving.

"Which of all those haughty high-born beauties is she?" he wondered futilely.

And then the season passed, and then the year; and little by little, of course, he ceased to think about her.

---

One afternoon last May, a man, habited in accordance with the fashion of the period, stopped before a hairdresser's shop in Knightsbridge somewhere, and, raising his hat, bowed to the three waxen ladies who simpered from the window.

"Oh! It's Mr. Field!" a voice behind him cried. "What are those cryptic rites that you're performing? What on earth are you bowing into a hairdresser's window for?"—a smooth, melodious voice, tinged by an inflection that was half ironical, half bewildered.

"I was saluting the type of English beauty," he answered, turning. "Fortunately, there are divergencies from it," he added, as he met the puzzled smile of his interlocutrice; a puzzled smile, indeed, but, like the voice, by no means without its touch of irony.

She gave a little laugh; and then, examining the models critically, "Oh?" she questioned. "Would you call that the type? You place the type high. Their features are quite faultless, and who ever saw such complexions?"

"It's the type, all the same," said he. "Just as the imitation marionette is the type of English breeding."

"The imitation marionette? I'm afraid I don't follow," she confessed.

"The imitation marionettes. You've seen them at little theatres in Italy. They're actors who imitate puppets. Men and women who try to behave as if they weren't human, as if they were made of starch and whalebone, instead of flesh and blood."

"Ah, yes," she assented, with another little laugh. "That would be rather typical of our insular methods. But do you know what an engaging, what a reviving spectacle you presented, as you stood there flourishing your hat? What do you imagine people thought? And what would have happened to you if I had just chanced to be a policeman instead of a friend?"

"Would you have clapped your handcuffs on me?" he inquired. "I suppose my conduct did seem rather suspicious. I was in the deepest depths of dejection. One must give some expression to one's sorrow."

"Are you going towards Kensington?" she asked, preparing to move on.

"Before I commit myself, I should like to be sure whether you are," he replied.

"You can easily discover with a little perseverance."

He placed himself beside her, and together they walked towards Kensington.

She was rather taller than the usual woman, and slender. She was exceedingly well-dressed; smartly, becomingly; a jaunty little hat of strangely twisted straw, with an aigrette springing defiantly from it; a jacket covered with mazes and labyrinths of embroidery; at her throat a big knot of white lace, the ends of which fell winding in a creamy cascade to her waist (do they call the thing a jabot?); and then.... But what can a man trust himself to write of these esoteric matters? She carried herself extremely well, too: with grace, with distinction, her head held high, even thrown back a little, superciliously. She had an immense quantity of very lovely hair. Red hair? Yellow hair? Red hair with yellow lights burning in it? Yellow hair with red fires shimmering through it? In a single loose, full billow it swept away from her forehead, and then flowed into a half-a-thousand rippling, crinkling, capricious undulations. And her skin had the sensitive colouring, the fineness of texture, that are apt to accompany red hair when it's yellow, yellow hair when it's red. Her face, with its pensive, quizzical eyes, its tip-tilted nose, its rather large mouth, and the little mocking quirks and curves the lips took, with an alert, arch, witty face; a delicate high-bred face; and withal a somewhat sensuous, emotional face; the face of a woman with a vast deal of humour in her soul; a vast deal of mischief; of a woman who would love to tease you, and mystify you, and lead you on, and put you off; and yet who, in her own way, at her own time, would know supremely well how to be kind.

But it was mischief rather than kindness that glimmered in her eyes at present, as she asked, "You were in the deepest depths of dejection? Poor man! Why?"

"I can't precisely determine," said he, "whether the sympathy that seems to vibrate in your voice is genuine or counterfeit."

"Perhaps it's half and half," she suggested. "But my curiosity is unmixed. Tell me your troubles."

"The catalogue is long. I've sixteen hundred million. The weather, for example. The shameless beauty of this radiant spring day. It's enough to stir all manner of wild pangs and longings in the heart of an octogenarian. But, anyhow, when one's life is passed in a dungeon, one can't perpetually be singing and dancing from mere exuberance of joy, can one?"

"Is your life passed in a dungeon?" she exclaimed.

"Indeed, indeed, it is. Isn't yours?"

"It had never occurred to me that it was."

"You're lucky. Mine is passed in the dungeons of Castle Ennui," he said.

"Oh, Castle Ennui. Ah, yes. You mean you're bored?"

"At this particular moment I'm savouring the most exquisite excitement," he professed. "But in general, when I am not working or sleeping, I'm bored to extermination—incomparably bored. If only one could work and sleep alternately, twenty-four hours a day, the year round! There's no use trying to play in London. It's so hard to find a playmate. The English people take their pleasures without salt."

"The dungeons of Castle Ennui," she repeated meditatively. "Yes, we are fellow-prisoners. I'm bored to extermination too. Still," she added, "one is allowed out on parole, now and again. And sometimes one has really quite delightful little experiences."

"It would ill become me, in the present circumstances, to dispute that," he answered, bowing.

"But the castle waits to reclaim us afterwards, doesn't it?" she mused. "That's rather a happy image, Castle Ennui."

"I'm extremely glad you approve of it. Castle Ennui is the bastile of modern life. It is built of prunes and prisms; it has its outer court of convention, and its inner court of propriety; it is moated round by respectability, and the shackles its inmates wear are forged of dull little duties and arbitrary little rules. You can only escape from it at the risk of breaking your social neck, or remaining a fugitive from social justice to the end of your days. Yes, it is a fairly decent little image."

"A bit out of something you're preparing for the press?" she hinted.

"Oh, how unkind of you!" he cried. "It was absolutely extemporaneous."

"One can never tell, with vous autres gens-de-lettres," she laughed.

"It would be friendlier to say nous autres gens d'esprit," he submitted.

"Aren't we proving to what degree nous autres gens d'esprit sont bêtes," she remarked, "by continuing to walk along this narrow pavement, when we can get into Kensington Gardens by merely crossing the street. Would it take you out of your way?"

"I have no way. I was sauntering for pleasure, if you can believe me. I wish I could hope that you have no way either. Then we could stop here, and crack little jokes together the livelong afternoon," he said, as they entered the Gardens.

"Alas, my way leads straight back to the Castle. I've promised to call on an old woman in Campden Hill," said she.

"Disappoint her. It's good for old women to be disappointed. It whips up their circulation."

"I shouldn't much regret disappointing the old woman," she admitted, "and I should rather like an hour or two of stolen freedom. I don't mind owning that I've generally found you, as men go, a moderately interesting man to talk with. But the deuce of it is—You permit the expression?"

"I'm devoted to the expression."

"The deuce of it is, I'm supposed to be driving," she explained.

"Oh, that doesn't matter. So many suppositions in this world are baseless," he reminded her.

"But there's the prison van," she said. "It's one of the tiresome rules in the female wing of Castle Ennui that you're always supposed, more or less, to be driving. And though you may cheat the authorities by slipping out of the prison van directly it's turned the corner, and sending it on ahead, there it remains, a factor that can't be eliminated. The prison van will relentlessly await my arrival in the old woman's street."

"That only adds to the sport. Let it wait. When a factor can't be eliminated, it should be haughtily ignored. Besides, there are higher considerations. If you leave me, what shall I do with the rest of this weary day?"

"You can go to your club."

He threw up his hand. "Merciful lady! What sin have I committed? I never go to my club, except when I've been wicked, as a penance. If you will permit me to employ a metaphor—oh, but a tried and trusty metaphor—when one ship on the sea meets another in distress, it stops and comforts it, and forgets all about its previous engagements and the prison van and everything. Shall we cross to the north, and see whether the Serpentine is in its place? Or would you prefer to inspect the eastern front of the Palace? Or may I offer you a penny chair?"

"I think a penny chair would be the maddest of the three dissipations," she decided.

And they sat down in penny chairs.

"It's rather jolly here, isn't it?" said he. "The trees, with their black trunks, and their leaves, and things. Have you ever seen such sumptuous foliage? And the greensward, and the shadows, and the sunlight, and the atmosphere, and the mistiness—isn't it like pearl-dust and gold-dust floating in the air? It's all got up to imitate the background of a Watteau. We must do our best to be frivolous and ribald, and supply a proper foreground. How big and fleecy and white the clouds are. Do you think they're made of cotton-wood? And what do you suppose they paint the sky with? There never was such a brilliant, breath-taking blue. It's much too nice to be natural. And they've sprinkled the whole place with scent, haven't they? You notice how fresh and sweet it smells. If only one could get rid of the sparrows—the cynical little beasts! hear how they're chortling—and the people, and the nursemaids and children. I have never been able to understand why they admit the public to the parks."

"Go on," she encouraged him. "You're succeeding admirably in your effort to be ribald."

"But that last remark wasn't ribald in the least—it was desperately sincere. I do think it's inconsiderate of them to admit the public to the parks. They ought to exclude all the lower classes, the people, at one fell swoop, and then to discriminate tremendously amongst the others."

"Mercy, what undemocratic sentiments!" she cried. "The People, the poor dear People—what have they done?"

"Everything. What haven't they done? One could forgive their being dirty and stupid and noisy and rude; one could forgive their ugliness, the ineffable banality of their faces, their goggle-eyes, their protruding teeth, their ungainly motions; but the trait one can't forgive is their venality. They're so mercenary. They're always thinking how much they can get out of you—everlastingly touching their hats and expecting you to put your hand in your pocket. Oh, no, believe me, there's no health in the People. Ground down under the iron heel of despotism, reduced to a condition of hopeless serfdom, I don't say that they might not develop redeeming virtues. But free, but sovereign, as they are in these days, they're everything that is squalid and sordid and offensive. Besides, they read such abominably bad literature."

"In that particular they're curiously like the aristocracy, aren't they?" said she. "By-the-bye, when are you going to publish another book of poems?"

"Apropos of bad literature?"

"Not altogether bad. I rather like your poems."

"So do I," said he. "It's useless to pretend that we haven't tastes in common."

They were both silent for a bit. She looked at him oddly, an inscrutable little light flickering in her eyes. All at once she broke out with a merry trill of laughter.

"What are you laughing at?" he demanded.

"I'm hugely amused," she answered.

"I wasn't I aware that I'd said anything especially good."

"You're building better than you know. But if I am amused, you look ripe for tears. What is the matter?"

"Every heart knows its own bitterness," he answered. "Don't pay the least attention to me. You mustn't let moodiness of mine cast a blight upon your high spirits."

"No fear," she assured him. "There are pleasures that nothing can rob of their sweetness. Life is not all dust and ashes. There are bright spots."

"Yes, I've no doubt there are," he said.

"And thrilling little adventures—no?" she questioned.

"For the bold, I dare say."

"None but the bold deserve them. Sometimes it's one thing, and sometimes it's another."

"That's very certain," he agreed.

"Sometimes, for instance," she went on, "one meets a man one knows, and speaks to him. And he answers with a glibness! And then, almost directly, what do you suppose one discovers?"

"What?" he asked.

"One discovers that the wretch hasn't a ghost of a notion who one is—that he's totally and absolutely forgotten one!"

"Oh, I say! Really?" he exclaimed.

"Yes, really. You can't deny that that's an exhilarating little adventure."

"I should think it might be. One could enjoy the man's embarrassment," he reflected.

"Or his lack of embarrassment. Some men are of an assurance, of a sang froid! They'll place themselves beside you, and walk with you, and talk with you, and even propose that you should pass the livelong afternoon cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never breathe a hint of their perplexity. They'll brazen it out."

"That's distinctly heroic, Spartan, of them, don't you think?" he said. "Intentionally, poor dears, they're very likely suffering agonies of discomfiture."

"We'll hope they are. Could they decently do less?" said she.

"And fancy the mental struggles that must be going on in their brains," he urged. "If I were a man in such a situation I'd throw myself upon the woman's mercy. I'd say, 'Beautiful, sweet lady! I know I know you. Your name, your entirely charming and appropriate name, is trembling on the tip of my tongue. But, for some unaccountable reason, my brute of a memory chooses to play the fool. If you've a spark of Christian kindness in your soul, you'll come to my rescue with a little clue."

"If the woman had a Christian sense of the ridiculous in her soul, I fear you'd throw yourself on her mercy in vain," she warned.

"What is the good of tantalizing people?"

"Besides," she continued, "the woman might reasonably feel slightly humiliated to find herself forgotten in that bare-faced manner."

"The humiliation would be surely all the man's. Have you heard from the Wohenhoffens lately?"

"The—what? The—who?" She raised her eyebrows.

"The Wohenhoffens," he repeated.

"What are the Wohenhoffens? Are they persons? Are they things?"

"Oh, nothing. My inquiry was merely dictated by a thirst for knowledge. It occurred to me that you might have won a black domino at the masked ball they gave, the Wohenhoffens. Are you sure you didn't?"

"I've a great mind to punish your forgetfulness by pretending that I did," she teased.

"She was rather tall, like you, and she had gray eyes, and a nice voice, and a laugh that was sweeter than the singing of nightingales. She was monstrously clever, too, with a flow of language that would have made her a leader in any sphere. She was also a perfect fiend. I have always been anxious to meet her again, in order that I might ask her to marry me. I'm strongly disposed to believe that she was you. Was she?" he pleaded.

"If I say yes, will you at once proceed to ask me to marry you?" she asked.

"Try it and see."

"Ce n'est pas la peine. It occasionally happens that a woman's already got a husband."

"She said she was an old maid."

"Do you dare to insinuate that I look like an old maid?" she cried.

"Yes."

"Upon my word!"

"Would you wish me to insinuate that you look like anything so insipid as a young girl? Were you the woman of the black domino?" he persisted.

"I should need further information, before being able to make up my mind. Are the—what's their name?—Wohenheimer?—are the Wohenheimers people one can safely confess to knowing? Oh, you're a man, and don't count. But a woman? It sounds a trifle Jewish, Wohenheimer. But of course there are Jews and Jews."

"You're playing with me like the cat in the adage," he sighed. "It's too cruel. No one is responsible for his memory."

"And to think that this man took me down to dinner not two months ago!" she murmured in her veil.

"You're as hard as nails. In whose house? Or—stay. Prompt me a little. Tell me the first syllable of your name. Then the rest will come with a rush."

"My name is Matilda Muggins."

"I've a great mind to punish your untruthfulness by pretending to believe you," said he. "Have you really got a husband?"

"Why do you doubt it?" said she.

"I don't doubt it. Have you?"

"I don't know what to answer."

"Don't you know whether you've got a husband?" he protested.

"I don't know what I'd better let you believe. Yes, on the whole, I think you may as well assume that I've got a husband," she concluded.

"And a lover, too?" he asked.

"Really! I like your impertinence!" she bridled.

"I only asked to show a polite interest. I knew the answer would be an indignant negative. You're an Englishwoman, and you're nice. Oh, one can see with half an eye that you're nice. But that a nice Englishwoman should have a lover is as inconceivable as that she should have side-whiskers. It's only the reg'lar bad-uns in England who have lovers. There's nothing between the family pew and the divorce court. One nice Englishwoman is a match for the whole Eleven Thousand Virgins of Cologne."

"To hear you talk, one might fancy you were not English yourself. For a man of the name of Field, you're uncommonly foreign. You look rather foreign, too, you know, by-the-bye. You haven't at all an English cast of countenance," she considered.

"I've enjoyed the advantages of a foreign education. I was brought up abroad," he explained.

"Where your features unconsciously assimilated themselves to a foreign type? Where you learned a hundred thousand strange little foreign things, no doubt? And imbibed a hundred thousand unprincipled little foreign notions? And all the ingenuous little foreign prejudices and misconceptions concerning England?" she questioned.

"Most of them," he assented.

"Perfide Albion? English hypocrisy?" she pursued.

"Oh, yes, the English are consummate hypocrites. But there's only one objection to their hypocrisy—it so rarely covers any wickedness. It's such a disappointment to see a creature stalking toward you, laboriously draped in sheep's clothing, and then to discover that it's only a sheep. You, for instance, as I took the liberty of intimating a moment ago, in spite of your perfectly respectable appearance, are a perfectly respectable woman. If you weren't, wouldn't I be making furious love to you, though!"

"As I am, I can see no reason why you shouldn't make furious love to me, if it would amuse you. There's no harm in firing your pistol at a person who's bullet-proof," she laughed.

"No; it's merely a wanton waste of powder and shot," said he. "However, I shouldn't stick at that. The deuce of it is—You permit the expression?"

"I'm devoted to the expression."

"The deuce of it is, you profess to be married."

"Do you mean to say that you, with your unprincipled foreign notions, would be restrained by any such consideration as that?" she wondered.

"I shouldn't be for an instant—if I weren't in love with you."

"Comment donc? Déjà?" she cried with a laugh.

"Oh, déjà! Why not? Consider the weather—consider the scene. Is the air soft, is it fragrant? Look at the sky—good heavens!—and the clouds, and the shadows on the grass, and the sunshine between the trees. The world is made of light to-day, of light and color, and perfume and music. Tutt 'intorno canta amor, amor, amor! What would you have? One recognises one's affinity. One doesn't need a lifetime. You began the business at the Wohenhoffens' ball. To-day you've merely put on the finishing touches."

"Oh, then I am the woman you met at the masked ball?" she cried.

"Look me in the eye, and tell me you're not," he defied her.

"I haven't the faintest interest in telling you I'm not. On the contrary, it rather pleases me to let you imagine that I am."

"She owed me a grudge, you know. I hoodwinked her like everything," he confided.

"Oh, did you? Then, as a sister woman, I should be glad to serve as her instrument of vengeance. Do you happen to have such a thing as a watch about you?" she inquired.

"Yes," he said.

"Will you be good enough to tell me what o'clock it is?"

"What are your motives for asking?"

"I'm expected at home at five."

"Where do you live?"

"What are the motives for asking?"

"I want to call upon you."

"You might wait till you're invited."

"Well, invite me—quick!"

"Never."

"Never?"

"Never, never, never," she asseverated. "A man who's forgotten me as you have!"

"But if I've only met you once at a masked ball—"

"Can't you be brought to realise that every time you mistake me for that woman of the masked ball you turn the dagger in the wound?" she demanded.

"But if you won't invite me to call upon you, how and when am I to see you again?"

"I haven't an idea," she answered, cheerfully. "I must go now. Good-by." She rose.

"One moment," he interposed. "Before you go will you allow me to look at the palm of your left hand?"

"What for?"

"I can tell fortunes. I'm extremely good at it," he boasted. "I'll tell you yours."

"Oh, very well," she assented, sitting down again: and guilelessly she pulled off her glove.

He took her hand, a beautifully slender, nervous hand, warm and soft, with rosy, tapering fingers.

"Oho! you are an old maid after all," he cried. "There's no wedding ring."

"You villain!" she gasped, snatching the hand away.

"I promised to tell your fortune. Haven't I told it correctly?"

"You needn't rub it in, though. Eccentric old maids don't like to be reminded of their condition."

"Will you marry me?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Partly for curiosity. Partly because it's the only way I can think of, to make sure of seeing you again. And then, I like your hair. Will you?"

"I can't," she said.

"Why not?"

"The stars forbid. And I'm ambitious. In my horoscope it is written that I shall either never marry at all, or—marry royalty."

"Oh, bother ambition! Cheat your horoscope. Marry me. Will you?"

"If you care to follow me," she said, rising again, "you can come and help me to commit a little theft."

He followed her to an obscure and sheltered corner of a flowery path, where she stopped before a bush of white lilac.

"There are no keepers in sight, are there? she questioned.

"I don't see any," he said.

"Then allow me to make you a receiver of stolen goods," said she, breaking off a spray, and handing it to him.

"Thank you. But I'd rather have an answer to my question."

"Isn't that an answer?"

"Is it?"

"White lilac—to the Invisible Prince?"

"The Invisible Prince—Then you are the black domino!" he exclaimed.

"Oh, I suppose so," she consented.

"And you will marry me?"

"I'll tell the aunt I live with to ask you to dinner."

"But will you marry me?"

"I thought you wished me to cheat my horoscope?"

"How could you find a better means of doing so?"

"What! if I should marry Louis Leczinski—?"

"Oh, to be sure. You will have it that I was Louis Leczinski. But, on that subject, I must warn you seriously—"

"One instant," she interrupted. "People must look other people straight in the face when they're giving serious warnings. Look straight into my eyes, and continue your serious warning."

"I must really warn you seriously," said he, biting his lip, "that if you persist in that preposterous delusion about my being Louis Leczinski, you'll be most awfully sold. I have nothing on earth to do with Louis Leczinski. Your ingenious little theories, as I tried to convince you at the time, were absolute romance."

Her eyebrows raised a little, she kept her eyes fixed steadily on his—oh, in the drollest fashion, with a gaze that seemed to say "How admirably you do it! I wonder whether you imagine I believe you. Oh, you fibber! Aren't you ashamed to tell me such abominable fibs—?"

They stood still, eyeing each other thus, for something like twenty seconds, and then they both laughed and walked on.

---

WHY WAIT FOR DEATH AND TIME?

BY BERT LESTON TAYLOR

I hold it truth with him who weekly sings
Brave songs of hope,—the music of "The Sphere,"—
That deathless tomes the living present brings:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Books of the mighty dead, whom men revere,
Remind me I can make my books sublime.
But, prithee, bay my brow while I am here:
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?
Shakespeare, great spirit, beat his mighty wings,
As I beat mine, for the occasion near.
He knew, as I, the worth of present things:
Great literature is with us year on year.
Methinks I meet across the gulf his clear
And tranquil eye; his calm reflections chime
With mine: "Why do we at the present fleer?
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?"
The reading world with acclamation rings
For my last book. It led the list at Weir,
Altoona, Rahway, Painted Post, Hot Springs:
Great literature is with us year on year.
"The Bookman" gives me a vociferous cheer.
Howells approves. I can no higher climb.
Bring, then, the laurel: crown my bright career—
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?
Critics, who pastward, ever pastward peer,
Great literature is with us year on year.
Trumpet my fame while I am in my prime:
Why do we ever wait for Death and Time?

---

WINTER JOYS

BY EUGENE FIELD

A man stood on the bathroom floor,
While raged the storm without,
One hand was on the water valve,
The other on the spout.
He fiercely tried to turn the plug,
But all in vain he tried,
"I see it all, I am betrayed,
The water's froze," he cried.
Down to the kitchen then he rushed,
And in the basement dove,
Long strived he for to turn the plugs,
But all in vain he strove.
"The hydrant may be running yet,"
He cried in hopeful tone,
Alas, the hydrant too, was froze,
As stiff as any stone.
There came a burst, the water pipes
And plugs, oh, where were they?
Ask of the soulless plumber man
Who called around next day.

---

THE DEMON OF THE STUDY

BY JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

The Brownie sits in the Scotchman's room,
And eats his meat and drinks his ale,
And beats the maid with her unused broom,
And the lazy lout with his idle flail;
But he sweeps the floor and threshes the corn,
And hies him away ere the break of dawn.
The shade of Denmark fled from the sun,
And the Cocklane ghost from the barn-loft cheer,
The fiend of Faust was a faithful one,
Agrippa's demon wrought in fear,
And the devil of Martin Luther sat
By the stout monk's side in social chat.
The Old Man of the Sea, on the neck of him
Who seven times crossed the deep,
Twined closely each lean and withered limb,
Like the nightmare in one's sleep.
But he drank of the wine, and Sindbad cast
The evil weight from his back at last.
But the demon that cometh day by day
To my quiet room and fireside nook,
Where the casement light falls dim and gray
On faded painting and ancient book,
Is a sorrier one than any whose names
Are chronicled well by good King James.
No bearer of burdens like Caliban,
No runner of errands like Ariel,
He comes in the shape of a fat old man,
Without rap of knuckle or pull of bell;
And whence he comes, or whither he goes,
I know as I do of the wind which blows.
A stout old man with a greasy hat
Slouched heavily down to his dark, red nose,
And two gray eyes enveloped in fat,
Looking through glasses with iron bows.
Read ye, and heed ye, and ye who can,
Guard well your doors from that old man!
He comes with a careless "How d'ye do?"
And seats himself in my elbow-chair;
And my morning paper and pamphlet new
Fall forthwith under his special care,
And he wipes his glasses and clears his throat,
And, button by button, unfolds his coat.
And then he reads from paper and book,
In a low and husky asthmatic tone,
With the stolid sameness of posture and look
Of one who reads to himself alone;
And hour after hour on my senses come
That husky wheeze and that dolorous hum.
The price of stocks, the auction sales,
The poet's song and the lover's glee,
The horrible murders, the sea-board gales,
The marriage list, and the jeu d'esprit,
All reach my ear in the self-same tone,—
I shudder at each, but the fiend reads on!
Oh, sweet as the lapse of water at noon
O'er the mossy roots of some forest tree,
The sigh of the wind in the woods of June,
Or sound of flutes o'er a moonlight sea,
Or the low soft music, perchance, which seems
To float through the slumbering singer's dreams.
So sweet, so dear is the silvery tone,
Of her in whose features I sometimes look,
As I sit at eve by her side alone,
And we read by turns, from the self-same book,
Some tale perhaps of the olden time,
Some lover's romance or quaint old rhyme.
Then when the story is one of woe,—
Some prisoner's plaint through his dungeon-bar,
Her blue eye glistens with tears, and low,
Her voice sinks down like a moan afar;
And I seem to hear that prisoner's wail,
And his face looks on me worn and pale.
And when she reads some merrier song,
Her voice is glad as an April bird's,
And when the tale is of war and wrong,
A trumpet's summons is in her words,
And the rush of the hosts I seem to hear,
And see the tossing of plume and spear!
Oh, pity me then, when, day by day,
The stout fiend darkens my parlor door;
And reads me perchance the self-same lay
Which melted in music, the night before,
From lips as the lips of Hylas sweet,
And moved like twin roses which zephyrs meet!
I cross my floor with a nervous tread,
I whistle and laugh and sing and shout,
I flourish my cane above his head,
And stir up the fire to roast him out;
I topple the chairs, and drum on the pane,
And press my hands on my ears, in vain!
I've studied Glanville and James the wise.
And wizard black-letter tomes which treat
Of demons of every name and size
Which a Christian man is presumed to meet,
But never a hint and never a line
Can I find of a reading fiend like mine.
I've crossed the Psalter with Brady and Tate,
And laid the Primer above them all,
I've nailed a horseshoe over the grate,
And hung a wig to my parlor wall
Once worn by a learned Judge, they say,
At Salem court in the witchcraft day!
"Conjuro te, sceleratissime,
Abire ad tuum locum!"—still
Like a visible nightmare he sits by me,—
The exorcism has lost its skill;
And I hear again in my haunted room
The husky wheeze and the dolorous hum!
Ah! commend me to Mary Magdalen
With her sevenfold plagues, to the wandering Jew,
To the terrors which haunted Orestes when
The furies his midnight curtains drew,
But charm him off, ye who charm him can,
That reading demon, that fat old man!

---

UNCLE BENTLEY AND THE ROOSTERS

BY HAYDEN CARRUTH

The burden of Uncle Bentley has always rested heavily on our town. Having not a shadow of business to attend to he has made other people's business his own, and looked after it in season and out—especially out. If there is a thing which nobody wants done, to this Uncle Bentley applies his busy hand.

One warm summer Sunday we were all at church. Our pastor had taken the passage on turning the other cheek, or one akin to it, for his text, and was preaching on peace and quiet and non-resistance. He soon had us in a devout mood which must have been beautiful to see and encouraging to the good man.

Of course, Uncle Bentley was there—he always was, and forever in a front pew, with his neck craned up looking backward to see if there was anything that didn't need doing which he could do. He always tinkered with the fires in the winter and fussed with the windows in the summer, and did his worst with each. His strongest church point was ushering. Not content to usher the stranger within our gates, he would usher all of us, and always thrust us into pews with just the people we didn't want to sit with. If you failed to follow him when he took you in tow, he would stop and look back reproachfully, describing mighty indrawing curves with his arm; and if you pretended not to see him, he would give a low whistle to attract your attention, the arm working right along, like a Holland windmill.

On this particular warm summer Sunday Uncle Bentley was in place wearing his long, full-skirted coat, a queer, dark, bottle-green, purplish blue. He had ushered to his own exceeding joy, and got two men in one pew, and given them a single hymn-book, who wouldn't on week-days speak to each other. I ought to mention that we had long before made a verb of Uncle Bentley. To unclebentley was to do the wrong thing. It was a regular verb, unclebentley, unclebentleyed, unclebentleying. Those two rampant enemies in the same pew had been unclebentleyed.

The minister was floating along smoothly on the subject of peace when Uncle Bentley was observed to throw up his head. He had heard a sound outside. It was really nothing but one of Deacon Plummer's young roosters crowing. The Deacon lived near, and vocal offerings from his poultry were frequent and had ceased to interest any one except Uncle Bentley. Then in the pauses between the preacher's periods we heard the flapping of wings, with sudden stoppings and startings. Those unregenerate fowls, unable to understand the good man's words, were fighting. Even this didn't interest us—we were committed to peace. But Uncle Bentley shot up like a jack-in-a-box and cantered down the aisle. Of course, his notion was that the roosters were disturbing the services, and that it was his duty to go out and stop them. We heard vigorous "Shoos!" and "Take thats!" and "Consairn yous!" and then Uncle Bentley came back looking very important, and as he stalked up the aisle he glanced around and nodded his head, saying as clearly as words, "There, where would you be without me?" Another defiant crow floated in at the window.

The next moment the rushing and beating of wings began again, and down the aisle went Uncle Bentley, the long tails of that coat fairly floating like a cloud behind him. There was further uproar outside, and Uncle Bentley was back in his place, this time turning around and whispering hoarsely, "I fixed 'em!" But such was not the case, for twice more the very same thing was repeated. The last time Uncle Bentley came back he wore a calm, snug expression, as who should say, "Now I have fixed 'em!" We should have liked it better if the roosters had fixed Uncle Bentley. But nobody paid much attention except Deacon Plummer. The thought occurred to him that perhaps Uncle Bentley had killed the fowls. But he hadn't.

However, there was no more disturbance without, and after a time the sermon closed. There was some sort of a special collection to be taken up. Of course, Uncle Bentley always insisted on taking up all the collections. He hopped up on this occasion and seized the plate with more than usual vigor. His struggles with the roosters had evidently stimulated him. He soon made the rounds and approached the table in front of the pulpit to deposit his harvest. As he did so we saw to our horror that the long tails of that ridiculous coat were violently agitated. A sickening suspicion came over us. The next moment one of those belligerent young roosters thrust a head out of either of those coat-tail pockets. One uttered a raucous crow, the other made a vicious dab. Uncle Bentley dropped the plate with a scattering of coin, seized a coat skirt in each hand, and drew it front. This dumped both fowls out on the floor, where they went at it hammer and tongs. What happened after this is a blur in most of our memories. All that is certain is that there was an uproar in the congregation, especially the younger portion; that the Deacon began making unsuccessful dives for his poultry; that the organist struck up "Onward, Christian Soldiers," and that the minister waved us away without a benediction amid loud shouts of, "Shoo!" "I swanny!" and, "Drat the pesky critters!" from your Uncle Bentley.

Did it serve to subdue Uncle Bentley? Not in the least; he survived to do worse things.

---

A SHINING MARK

BY IRONQUILL

A man came here from Idaho,
With lots of mining stock.
He brought along as specimens
A lot of mining rock.
The stock was worth a cent a pound
If stacked up in a pile.
The rock was worth a dollar and
A half per cubic mile.
We planted him at eventide,
'Mid shadows dim and dark;
We fixed him up an epitaph,—
"Death loves a mining shark."

---

A BOOKWORM'S PLAINT[3]

BY CLINTON SCOLLARD

To-day, when I had dined my fill
Upon a Caxton,—you know Will,—
I crawled forth o'er the colophon
To bask awhile within the sun;
And having coiled my sated length,
I felt anon my whilom strength
Slip from me gradually, till deep
I dropped away in dreamful sleep,
Wherein I walked an endless maze,
And dined on Caxtons all my days.
Then I woke suddenly. Alas!
What in my sleep had come to pass?
That priceless first edition row,—
Squat quarto and tall folio,—
Had, in my slumber, vanished quite;
Instead, on my astonished sight
The newest novels burst,—a gay
And most unpalatable array!
I, that have battened on the best,
Why should I thus be dispossessed
And with starvation, or the worst
Of diets, cruelly be curst?

---

A POE-'EM OF PASSION

BY CHARLES F. LUMMIS

It was many and many a year ago,
On an island near the sea,
That a maiden lived whom you mightn't know
By the name of Cannibalee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than a passionate fondness for me.
I was a child, and she was a child—
Tho' her tastes were adult Feejee—
But she loved with a love that was more than love,
My yearning Cannibalee;
With a love that could take me roast or fried
Or raw, as the case might be.
And that is the reason that long ago,
In that island near the sea,
I had to turn the tables and eat
My ardent Cannibalee—
Not really because I was fond of her,
But to check her fondness for me.
But the stars never rise but I think of the size
Of my hot-potted Cannibalee,
And the moon never stares but it brings me nightmares
Of my spare-rib Cannibalee;
And all the night-tide she is restless inside,
Is my still indigestible dinner-belle bride,
In her pallid tomb, which is Me,
In her solemn sepulcher, Me.

---

THE REAL DIARY OF A REAL BOY

BY HENRY A. SHUTE

Mar. 11, 186——Went to church in the morning. the fernace was all write. Mister Lennard preeched about loving our ennymies, and told every one if he had any angry feelings towards ennyone to go to him and shake hands and see how much better you wood feel. i know how it is becaus when me and Beany are mad we dont have eny fun and when we make up the one who is to blam always wants to treet. why when Beany was mad with me becaus i went home from Gil Steels surprise party with Lizzie Towle, Ed Towles sister, he woodent speak to me for 2 days, and when we made up he treated me to ice cream with 2 spoons and he let me dip twice to his once. he took pretty big dips to make up. Beany is mad if enny of the fellers go with Lizzie Towle. she likes Beany better than she does enny of the fellers and Beany ought to be satisfied, but sometimes he acks mad when i go down there to fite roosters with Ed. i gess he needent worry much, no feller isnt going to leave of fiting roosters to go with no girls. well i most forgot that i was going to say, but after church i went up to Micky Gould who was going to fite me behind the school house, and said Micky lets be friends and Micky said, huh old Skinny, i can lick you in 2 minits and i said you aint man enuf and he called me a nockneed puke, and i called him a wall eyed lummix and he give me a paist in the eye and i gave him a good one in the mouth, and then we rassled and Micky threw me and i turned him, and he got hold of my new false bosom and i got hold of his hair, and the fellers all hollered hit him Micky, paist him Skinny, and Mister Purington, Pewts father pulled us apart and i had Mickys paper collar and necktie and some of his hair and he had my false bosom and when i got home father made me go to bed and stay there all the afternoon for fiting, but i guess he didnt like my losing my false bosom. ennyway he asked me how many times i hit Micky and which licked. he let me get up at supper time. next time i try to love my ennymy i am a going to lick him first.

Went to a sunday school concert in the evening. Keene and Cele sung now i lay me down to sleep. they was a lot of people sung together and Mister Gale beat time. Charlie Gerish played the violin and Miss Packard sung. i was scart when Keene and Cele sung for i was afraid they would break down, but they dident, and people said they sung like night harks. i gess if they knowed how night harks sung they woodent say much. father felt pretty big and to hear him talk you wood think he did the singing. he give them ten cents apeace. i dident get none. you gest wait, old man till i git my cornet.

Went to a corcus last night. me and Beany were in the hall in the afternoon helping Bob Carter sprinkle the floor and put on the sordust. the floor was all shiny with wax and aufully slipery. so Bob got us to put on some water to take off the shiny wax. well write in front of the platform there is a low platform where they get up to put in their votes and then step down and Beany said, dont put any water there only jest dry sordust. so i dident. well that night we went erly to see the fun. Gim Luverin got up and said there was one man which was the oldest voter in town and he ought to vote the first, the name of this destinkuished sitizen was John Quincy Ann Pollard. then old mister Pollard got up and put in his vote and when he stepped down his heels flew up and he went down whak on the back of his head and 2 men lifted him up and lugged him to a seat, and then Ed Derborn, him that rings the town bell, stepped up pretty lively and went flat and swort terrible, and me and Beany nearly died we laffed so. well it kept on, people dident know what made them fall, and Gim Odlin sat write down in his new umbrella and then they sent me down stairs for a pail of wet sordust and when i was coming up i heard an awful whang, and when i got up in the hall they were lugging old mister Stickney off to die and they put water on his head and lugged him home in a hack. me and Beany dont know what to do. if we dont tell, Bob will lose his place and if we do we will get licked.

Mar. 31. April fool day tomorrow. i am laying for Beany. old Francis licked 5 fellers today becaus they sung rong when we was singing speek kindly it is better for to rule by luv than feer.

June 14. Rashe Belnap and Horris Cobbs go in swimming every morning at six o'clock. i got a licking today that beat the one Beany got. last summer me and Tomtit Tomson and Cawcaw Harding and Whack and Poz and Boog Chadwick went in swimming in May and all thru the summer until October. one day i went in 10 times. well i dident say anything about it to father so as not to scare him. well today he dident go to Boston and he said i am going to teech you to swim. when i was as old as you i cood swim said he, and you must lern, i said i have been wanting to lern to swim, for all the other boys can swim. so we went down to the gravil and i peeled off my close and got ready, now said he, you jest wade in up to your waste and squat down and duck your head under. i said the water will get in my nose. he said no it wont jest squat rite down. i cood see him laffin when he thought i wood snort and sputter.

so i waded out a little ways and then div in and swam under water most across, and when i came up i looked to see if father was surprised. gosh you aught to have seen him. he had pulled off his coat and vest and there he stood up to his waste in the water with his eyes jest bugging rite out as big as hens eggs, and he was jest a going to dive for my dead body. then i turned over on my back and waved my hand at him. he dident say anything for a minute, only he drawed in a long breth. then he began to look foolish, and then mad, and then he turned and started to slosh back to the bank where he slipped and went in all over. When he got to the bank he was pretty mad and yelled for me to come out. when i came out he cut a stick and whaled me, and as soon as i got home he sent me to bed for lying, but i gess he was mad becaus i about scart the life out of him. but that nite i heard him telling mother about it and he said that he div 3 times for me in about thirty feet of water. but he braged about my swimming and said i cood swim like a striped frog. i shall never forget how his boots went kerslosh kerslosh kerslosh when we were skinning home thru croslots. i shall never forget how that old stick hurt either. ennyhow he dident say ennything about not going in again, so i gess i am all rite.

June 15, 186——Johnny Heeld, a student, came to me and wanted me to carry some tickets to a dance round to the girls in the town. there was about 1 hundred of them. he read the names over to me and i said i knew them all. so after school me and Beany started out and walked all over town and give out the tickets. i had a long string of names and every time i wood leave one i wood mark out the name. i dident give the Head girls any because they told father about some things that me and Beany and Pewt did and the Parmer girls and the Cilley girls lived way up on the plains and i dident want to walk up there, so when i went over to Hemlock side to give one, i went over to the factory boarding house and give some to them. they was auful glad to get them too and said they would go to the dance. some people was not at home and so i gave their tickets to the next house. it took me till 8 o'clock and i got 1 dollar for it. i dont believe those girls that dident get their tickets will care much about going ennyway. i gess the Head girls wont want to tell on me another time.

June 23. there is a dead rat in the wall in my room. it smells auful.

---

A MOTHERS' MEETING[4]

BY MADELINE BRIDGES

"Where's the maternal parent of
This boy that stands in need of beating,
And of this babe that pines for love?"
"Oh, she is at a Mothers' Meeting!"
"Fair daughter, why these young tears shed,
For passion's tale, too sweet and fleeting,
Lonely and mute, uncomforted?"
"My mother's at a Mothers' Meeting."
"Man, whom misfortunes jeer and taunt,
Whom frauds forsake, and hope is cheating,
Fly to your mother's arms." "I can't—
You see, she's at a Mothers' Meeting."
Alas, what next will woman do?
Love, duty, children, home, maltreating,
The while she, smiling, rallies to
The roll-call of a Mothers' Meeting!

---

MISTER RABBIT'S LOVE AFFAIR

BY FRANK L. STANTON

One day w'en Mister Rabbit wuz a-settin' in de grass
He see Miss Mary comin', en he wouldn't let her pass,
Kaze he know she lookin' purty in de river lookin'glass,
O Mister Rabbit, in de mawnin'!
But de Mockin'bird wuz singin' in de blossom en de dew,
En he know 'bout Mister Rabbit, en he watchin' er 'im,
too;
En Miss Mary heah his music, en she tell 'im "Howdy-do!"
O Mister Rabbit, in de mawnin'!
Mister Rabbit 'low he beat 'im, en he say he'll l'arn ter sing,
En he tried it all de winter, en he kep' it up in spring;
But he wuzn't buil' fer singin', kaze he lack de voice en wing,—
Good-by, Mister Rabbit, in de mawnin'!

---

OUR HIRED GIRL

BY JAMES WHITCOMB RILEY

Our hired girl, she's 'Lizabuth Ann;
An' she can cook best things to eat!
She ist puts dough in our pie-pan,
An' pours in somepin' 'at's good and sweet,
An' nen she salts it all on top
With cinnamon; an' nen she'll stop
An' stoop an' slide it, ist as slow,
In th' old cook-stove, so's 'twon't slop
An' git all spilled; nen bakes it, so
It's custard pie, first thing you know!
An' nen she'll say:
"Clear out o' my way!
They's time fer work, an' time fer play!—
Take yer dough, an' run, Child; run!
Er I cain't git no cookin' done!"
When our hired girl 'tends like she's mad,
An' says folks got to walk the chalk
When she's around, er wisht they had,
I play out on our porch an' talk
To th' Raggedy Man 'at mows our lawn;
An' he says "Whew!" an' nen leans on
His old crook-scythe, and blinks his eyes
An' sniffs all round an' says,—"I swawn!
Ef my old nose don't tell me lies,
It 'pears like I smell custard-pies!"
An' nen he'll say,—
"'Clear out o' my way!
They's time fer work an' time fer play!
Take yer dough, an' run, Child; run!
Er she cain't git no cookin' done!'"
Wunst our hired girl, one time when she
Got the supper, an' we all et,
An' it was night, an' Ma an' me
An' Pa went wher' the "Social" met,—
An' nen when we come home, an' see
A light in the kitchen-door, an' we
Heerd a maccordeum, Pa says "Lan'-
O'-Gracious! who can her beau be?"
An' I marched in, an' 'Lizabuth Ann
Wuz parchin' corn fer the Raggedy Man!
Better say
"Clear out o' the way!
They's time fer work, an' time fer play!
Take the hint, an' run, Child; run!
Er we cain't git no courtin' done!"

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THE REASON

BY IRONQUILL

Says John last night:
"William, by grab! I'm beat
To know why stolen kisses
Taste so sweet."
Says William: "Sho!
That's easily explained—
It's 'cause they're syrup-
titiously obtained."

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O cruel thought!
O words of cruel might!
The coroner
He sat on John that night.

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ONCL' ANTOINE ON 'CHANGE

BY WALLACE BRUCE AMSBARY

(Antoine Boisvert, Raconteur.)

I've jus' com' from Chicago town,
A seein' all de sights
From stockyard to de ballet gairl,
All drass' in spangled tights.
But all de worstes' nonsens'
T'roo vich I got to wade,
I t'ink de t'ing dat gats de cake
Ees place called Board of Trade.
I heard moch talk about dem chap
Dey call de Bull an' Bear,
Dat play aroun' with price of stock
An' get you unaware.
Who'll tell you w'at your wheat
Will bring in Fevuary nex',
In jus' so smood an' quiet vay
De curé read his tex'.
An' dere dey vere out on de floor,
De mans who mak' de price
Of all de country produce,
A lookin' smood an' nice.
But dey had vink opon dere eye
Dat look you t'roo an' t'roo,
Like tricky bunko steerer ven
He's hunting after you.
Dey got de ball to roll ver' swif'
An' firs' fall from de dock
Vas bottom off on July pork;
An' heem dat held de stock
Commence to hiss an' wriggle
Lak' a yellow rattlesnake;
De res' buzz jus' lak' bumblebee
Stirred op vit hayin' rake.
Dis bottom off on July pork
Is strike me kin' of queer,
I's t'ink dat hogs is good for eat
Mos' all of de 'hole year.
Dose feller on Chicago town
Is mak' such fonny phrase
Dat—entre nous—I sometimes t'ink
Dat som' of dem ees craz'.
Den dere ees somet'ing happen
Dat mak' 'em more excite',
W'en news ees com' overe de vires
Dat Boer an' Britain fight,
I nevere saw such meex-op yet,
In days since I be born,
Dey scowl an' call wan nodder names,
Dere faces show moch scorn.
Wan man grow wild an' mos'ly craz',
De tears stream off his eyes,
Dere's nodder man dat's laf an' shout,
It's mak' me mos' surprise.
I guess it mak' som' differance
Vich side you're on de fence,
But in dis Bear an' Bull meex-op
I see not ver' moch sense.

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HEZEKIAH BEDOTT'S OPINION

BY FRANCES M. WHICHER

He was a wonderful hand to moralize, husband was, 'specially after he begun to enjoy poor health. He made an observation once when he was in one of his poor turns, that I never shall forget the longest day I live. He says to me one winter evenin' as we was a settin' by the fire,—I was a knittin' (I was always a wonderful great knitter) and he was a smokin' (he was a master hand to smoke, though the doctor used to tell him he'd be better off to let tobacker alone; when he was well he used to take his pipe and smoke a spell after he'd got the chores done up, and when he wa'n't well, used to smoke the biggest part of the time). Well, he took his pipe out of his mouth and turned toward me, and I knowed something was comin', for he had a pertikkeler way of lookin' round when he was gwine to say anything oncommon. Well, he says to me, says he, "Silly" (my name was Prissilly naterally, but he ginerally called me "Silly," cause 'twas handier, you know). Well, he says to me, says he, "Silly," and he looked pretty sollem, I tell you—he had a sollem countenance naterally—and after he got to be deacon 'twas more so, but since he'd lost his health he looked sollemer than ever, and certainly you wouldent wonder at it if you knowed how much he underwent. He was troubled with a wonderful pain in his chest, and amazin' weakness in the spine of his back, besides the pleurissy in the side, and having the ager a considerable part of the time, and bein' broke of his rest o' nights 'cause he was so put to 't for breath when he laid down. Why it's an onaccountable fact that when that man died he hadent seen a well day in fifteen year, though when he was married and for five or six years after I shouldent desire to see a ruggeder man that he was. But the time I'm speakin' of he'd been out o' health nigh upon ten year, and O dear sakes! how he had altered since the first time I ever see him! That was to a quiltin' to Squire Smith's a spell afore Sally was married. I'd no idee then that Sal Smith was a gwine to be married to Sam Pendergrass. She'd ben keepin' company with Mose Hewlitt, for better'n a year, and everybody said that was a settled thing, and lo and behold! all of a sudding she up and took Sam Pendergrass. Well, that was the first time I ever see my husband, and if anybody'd a told me then that I should ever marry him, I should a said—but lawful sakes! I most forgot, I was gwine to tell you what he said to me that evenin', and when a body begins to tell a thing I believe in finishin' on't some time or other. Some folks have a way of talkin' round and round and round forevermore, and never come to the pint. Now there's Miss Jinkins, she that was Poll Bingham afore she was married, she is the tejusest individooal to tell a story that ever I see in all my born days. But I was a gwine to tell you what husband said. He says to me, says he, "Silly"; says I, "What?" I dident say, "What, Hezekier?" for I dident like his name. The first time I ever heard it I near killed myself a laffin. "Hezekier Bedott," says I, "well, I would give up if I had sich a name," but then you know I had no more idee o' marryin' the feller than you had this minnit o' marryin' the governor. I s'pose you think it's curus we should a named our oldest son Hezekiah. Well, we done it to please father and mother Bedott; it's father Bedott's name, and he and mother Bedott both used to think that names had ought to go down from gineration to gineration. But we always called him Kier, you know. Speakin' o' Kier, he is a blessin', ain't he? and I ain't the only one that thinks so, I guess. Now don't you never tell nobody that I said so, but between you and me I rather guess that if Kezier Winkle thinks she is a gwine to ketch Kier Bedott she is a leetle out of her reckonin'. But I was going to tell what husband said. He says to me, says he, "Silly"; I says, says I, "What?" If I dident say "what" when he said "Silly" he'd a kept on saying "Silly," from time to eternity. He always did, because you know, he wanted me to pay pertikkeler attention, and I ginerally did; no woman was ever more attentive to her husband than what I was. Well, he says to me, says he, "Silly." Says I, "What?" though I'd no idee what he was gwine to say, dident know but what 'twas something about his sufferings, though he wa'n't apt to complain, but he frequently used to remark that he wouldent wish his worst enemy to suffer one minnit as he did all the time; but that can't be called grumblin'—think it can? Why I've seen him in sitivation when you'd a thought no mortal could a helped grumblin'; but he dident. He and me went once in the dead of winter in a one-hoss shay out to Boonville to see a sister o' hisen. You know the snow is amazin' deep in that section o' the kentry. Well, the hoss got stuck in one o' them are flambergasted snow-banks, and there we sot, onable to stir, and to cap all, while we was a sittin' there, husband was took with a dretful crik in his back. Now that was what I call a perdickerment, don't you? Most men would a swore, but husband dident. He only said, says he, "Consarn it." How did we get out, did you ask? Why we might a benn sittin' there to this day fur as I know, if there hadent a happened to come along a mess o' men in a double team, and they hysted us out. But I was gwine to tell you that observation of hisen. Says he to me, says he, "Silly" (I could see by the light o' the fire, there dident happen to be no candle burnin', if I don't disremember, though my memory is sometimes ruther forgitful, but I know we wa'n't apt to burn candles exceptin' when we had company)—I could see by the light of the fire that his mind was oncommon solemnized. Says he to me, says he. "Silly." I says to him, says I, "What?" He says to me, "We're all poor critters!"

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WHAT LACK WE YET?

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE

When Washington was president
He was a mortal icicle;
He never on a railroad went,
And never rode a bicycle.
He read by no electric lamp,
Ne'er heard about the Yellowstone;
He never licked a postage stamp,
And never saw a telephone.
His trousers ended at his knees;
By wire he could not snatch dispatch;
He filled his lamp with whale-oil grease,
And never had a match to scratch.
But in these days it's come to pass,
All work is with such dashing done,
We've all these things, but then, alas—
We seem to have no Washington!

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JACOB

BY PHŒBE CARY

He dwelt among "Apartments let,"
About five stories high;
A man, I thought, that none would get,
And very few would try.
A boulder, by a larger stone
Half hidden in the mud,
Fair as a man when only one
Is in the neighborhood.
He lived unknown, and few could tell
When Jacob was not free;
But he has got a wife—and O!
The difference to me!

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TO BARY JADE

BY CHARLES FOLLEN ADAMS

The bood is beabig brighdly, love;
The sdars are shidig too;
While I ab gazig dreabily,
Add thigkig, love, of you.
You caddot, oh! you caddot kdow,
By darlig, how I biss you—
(Oh, whadt a fearful cold I've got!—
Ck-tish-u! Ck-ck-tish-u!)
I'b sittig id the arbor, love,
Where you sat by by side,
Whed od that calb, autubdal dight
You said you'd be by bride.
Oh! for wud bobedt to caress
Add tederly to kiss you;
Budt do! we're beddy biles apart—
(Ho-rash-o! Ck-ck-tish-u!)
This charbig evedig brigs to bide
The tibe whed first we bet:
It seebs budt odly yesterday;
I thigk I see you yet.
Oh! tell be, ab I sdill your owd?
By hopes—oh, do dot dash theb!
(Codfoud by cold, 'tis gettig worse—
Ck-tish-u! Ch-ck-thrash-eb!)
Good-by, by darlig Bary Jade!
The bid-dight hour is dear;
Add it is hardly wise, by love,
For be to ligger here.
The heavy dews are fallig fast:
A fod good-dight I wish you.
(Ho-rash-o!—there it is agaid—
Ck-thrash-ub! Ck-ck-tish-u!)

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HIS GRANDMOTHER'S WAY

BY FRANK L. STANTON

Tell you, gran'mother's a queer one, shore—
Makes your heart go pitty-pat!
If the wind just happens to open a door,
She'll say there's "a sign" in that!
An' if no one ain't in a rockin'-chair
An' it rocks itself, she'll say: "Oh, dear!
Oh, dear! Oh, my!
I'm afeared 'at somebody is goin' to die!"
An' she makes me cry—
She makes me cry!
Once wuz a owl 'at happened to light
On our tall chimney-top,
An' screamed an' screamed in the dead o' night,
An' nuthin' could make it stop!
An' gran'ma—she uncovered her head
An' almos' frightened me out of the bed;
"Oh, dear; Oh, my!
I'm certain 'at some one is goin' to die!"
An' she made me cry—
She made me cry!
Just let a cow lean over the gate
An' bellow, an' gran'ma—she
Will say her prayers, if it's soon or late,
An' shake her finger at me!
An' then, an' then you'll hear her say:
"It's a sign w'en the cattle act that way!
Oh, dear! Oh, my!
I'm certain 'at somebody's goin' to die!"
Oh, she makes me cry—
She makes me cry!
Skeeriest person you ever seen!
Always a-huntin' fer "signs";
Says it's "spirits" 'at's good, or mean,
If the wind jest shakes the vines!
I always feel skeery w'en gran'ma's aroun'—
An' think 'at I see things, an' jump at each soun':
"Oh, dear! Oh, my!
I'm certain 'at somebody's goin' to die!"
Oh, she makes me cry—
She makes me cry!

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The Only True and Reliable Account of