In folds of wavy silver round, and clothes
The orb in richer beauty than her own;
Then, passing, leaves her in her light serene.”
—From “Etchings of a Whaling Cruise,” by kind permission of Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York.
THE MAN IN THE SHADOW
By R. W. Child
The late afternoon sunlight slanted down into the busy street through the trees of the Public Garden. It had been the sort of day which whispers of other scenes, old faces, gentle memories and painted possibilities. Now along the street came the ebb-tide of the day’s work swept out from the business part of the city and jostling homeward.
Among the home-goers was a man distinguished a little from the rest by a refined and patient expression. His shoulders sloped as if they had borne much; his eyes were open in a stare as if astounded at the repetition of life’s misfortunes; and his clothes, from his derby hat, shiny from his wife’s endless brushings, to his shoes, flattened by the monotony of his daily life, told of the practice of much respectable economy. Trouble had felt of his throat, one would say, but never had succeeded in throttling him. There was a quiet, reserved strength in the furrows of his forehead and in the solidity of his chin, and the wrinkles at the corner of his blue eyes declared that there was a fund of persistent hope in Carter Clews.
Looking up suddenly he saw four men coming down the steps of a hotel toward an open carriage which had drawn up to the curb. Three were inclined to the stoutness of middle age, and all were laughing prosperously, and chatting vociferously of Commencement dinners and baseball games and class reunions; it was evident that they were four successful men on a holiday and straining to be young again.