Chapter II: Part 2

She caught a last glimpse of the tall young girl, coming in her direction, still watching her with that same eager look. But what of that? She knew why women stared curiously at her. By the time her station was reached, the occurrence had assumed in her mind a painful significance which emphasized the sordidness of her evening's routine. She made her way along a narrow, dimly lighted street, walking with the aimless gait of one who neither expects nor is expected.

But, loiter as she might, she soon reached a neighborhood where rows of narrow brick tenements brooded over dingy, cluttered basement shops. Here she found it necessary to accelerate her pace to make way for romping children and bareheaded women hurrying from the shops with their suppers in paper bags.

In spite of the wintry chill, the section had an air of activity all its own. Neither did it lack occasional evidences of Christmas cheer. In the window of a little news and fruit shop, against the smeared and partly frosted glass, a holly wreath was hanging, and within stood a rack of gaudy, tinseled Christmas cards. The woman hesitated, as if about to enter the shop, then abruptly passed on. She ascended one of the stoops that were all alike. Standing in a blur of reddish light that filtered through the broken glass above the door, she looked back the way she had come.

For an instant her pulses quickened again as they had done on the avenue down-town. At the corner, a tall girl with a white-plumed velvet hat was smilingly picking her way through the swarming element so foreign, apparently, to one of her class. As the white plume came nearer and nearer, the tremulous little woman regained her self-control. It was but one of the coincidences of the city, she told herself, turning resolutely away. The door slammed shut behind her.

Odd, she thought, as she groped her way through the dimly lighted lower hall, and the complete darkness of the upper, that such a girl should be living in such a neighborhood. Then, with an effort, she dismissed the matter from her mind.

To find a match and light the sputtering gas required but very few steps in her tiny box of a room. When that was accomplished, she could think of nothing more to do. Her little taste of excitement had spoiled her zest for any of the homy rites which at other times formed the biggest events of her day. As she sank down upon the cot without removing her wraps, she was greeted by the usual creaking of rusty springs; her table with its meager array of dishes, its coffee pot and little alcohol burner, sat as ever in its corner, inviting the preparation of her evening meal. But to-night she did not want to eat. She had not visited the bake-shop on her way home. She had not even bought her daily paper at the corner stand where the postcards were--those gay Christmas cards that bring you greetings from friends.

As she slowly removed her turban, her jacket and fur cape and, without getting up, tossed them across a chair against the opposite wall, the dull ache of dissatisfaction in her heart grew slowly to a sharp pain of desire. She wanted to do something, to have something happen that might break the sordid routine of her existence.

Still, habit and environment would continue to force at least a part of this routine upon her. She glanced at her fingers, stained to an oily, bluish grime by the cheap dye of the garments that furnished her daily work. Mechanically she rose to wash.

While her hands were immersed in the lather of rankly perfumed toilet soap, there came a gentle knock at the door.

"Come in," invited the woman, expecting some famine-pressed neighbor for a spoonful of coffee or a drawing of tea.

The door opened slowly, a tentative aperture.

"May I come in?" asked a voice that was sweeter than the breath of violets that preceded the caller into the room.

With the towel clutched in her dripping hands, the woman flung wide open the door, then hastened to unload the chair which held her wraps--her only chair.

"Thank you; don't bother," urged the visitor. "I shall like sitting on the couch."

There was a melody of enthusiasm in this remark, which the complaining of the cot, as the girl dropped easily upon it, could not wholly drown.

The woman, having absently hung her towel on the doorknob, stared dazedly at the visitant. She could hardly credit her eyes. It was--it was indeed the girl with the white ostrich plume and the bouquet of violets in her brown mink fur.

"I feel like an intruder," began the girl, "and, do you know--" her appraising glance directed to the old fur collar on the chair, was guiltily withdrawn as she spoke--"do you know, I've such a silly excuse for coming." She laughed, and the laugh brought added music to her voice.

The woman, now at last recalled from her abstraction, smiled, and the weariness passed from her face. She seated herself at the extreme end of the humpy, complaining cot.

"I'm sure you'll understand," resumed the girl. "At least, I hope you'll not be offended.... I heard ... that is, I noticed you had a rare fur-piece--" her vivid glance returned to the pile of wraps on the chair--"and I want to ask a very great favor of you. I--now _please_ don't be shocked--I've been ransacking the city for something like it, and--" with a determined air of taking the plunge--"I should like to buy it of you!"

"Buy it!" scorned the woman, with a sudden dull red staining her sallow cheeks. "I can't see why anyone would want to pay money for such a thing as that."

"It--it's a rare pattern, you know," groped the girl, her sweet tones assuming an eloquent, persuasive quiver, "and--and you don't know how glad I'd be to have it."

The indignant color faded out of the woman's face. "If you really want the thing--" abruptly she put her bizarre possession into her strange visitor's lap--"If you really want it--but I don't see--" yearning crept into her work-dimmed eyes, a yearning that seemed to struggle with disillusionment. "Tell me," she broke off, "is that all you came here for?"

Apparently oblivious to the question, the young woman rose to her feet. "You'll sell it to me then!" she triumphed, opening her gold-bound purse.

"But, see here," demurred the woman, "I can't--it ain't worth----"

The girl's gloved hands went fumbling into her purse, while the old fur cape hung limply across one velvet arm.

"You leave it to me," she commanded, and smiled, a radiant, winning smile.

Impulsively the woman drew close to her guest. "Excuse me," she faltered, "but, do you know--you look ever-so-much like a little niece of mine back--home?"

"Do I? That's nice." The visitor looked at her watch. A note of abstraction had crept into her beautiful voice, but it still held the caress that invited the woman's confidence.

"Yes, my little niece--excuse me--I haven't seen her for twelve years--most fifteen years, I guess. She'd be growed up, but I thought--when I saw you down-town----"

"Oh, you remember me, then! Forgive me for following--" The girl seized the woman's soap-reddened hands in a sudden fervent clasp. "I understand," she breathed. "You must be lonely.... I'll try to see you again--I surely will.... Good-bye...."

The girl was gone and all at once the room seemed colder and dingier than it ever had before. But the woman was not cold. As she sat huddled on the cot, warmth and vitality glowed within her, kindled by the memory of a recent kindly human touch.

The following evening, after working hours, the shabby woman, wearing a faded scarf about her neck to replace the old fur collar, diffidently accosted a saleslady at the Sixth Avenue department store. She wanted to buy a brown mink collar, just like one worn by a figure in green in the window.

It was unusual to sell expensive furs to such a customer. But people might send what freaks of servants they pleased to do their Christmas shopping, provided they sent the money, too. In this case, the shabby little woman was prepared. She produced three crisp ten-dollar bills--the fabulous sum which the girl had left in her hand at parting--and two dollars more from the savings in her worn little purse. Then, hugging the big flat box against the tight-fitting bosom of her jacket, she triumphantly left the store.

In a sort of tender ecstasy she dallied along until she came to a florist's window. As she paused to gaze at great bunches of carnations and roses, tied with broad and streaming ribbons, the anxious look that attends the doubtful shopper returned to her face. Would it be of any use to go in? Since she must either keep moving or be carried along by the crowd, she edged through the revolving door.

"English violets?--Fifty cents for the small bunches," clipped off the red-cheeked salesgirl, in reply to the woman's groping inquiry.

The perturbed shopper turned reluctantly away, hesitated, and then asked:

"But the roses? A single, half-blown rose--?"

"Twenty-five apiece," replied the girl in the same mechanical tones, while she busied herself in rearranging a basket of flowers.

"I--I'll take the rose."

At the express office, where scores were waiting before her, the woman had ample time to untie her box and slip the rosebud beneath the tissue paper of the inner wrapping. Then, having retied it securely and stuck a "Do-not-open-until-Christmas" tag in a conspicuous place, she took her stand in line. When it finally came her turn at the desk, a stout clerk, who worked like an automaton and breathed like an ox, tore the package from her lingering grasp and dashed across the wrapper the address she gave.

She paid the charges, wadded the receipt into her purse and turned briskly away.

Fresh crullers she took to her room from the bake-shop, having bought them from a dark, greasy woman, whom she wished a "Merry Christmas" in a voice that almost sang. At dusk she had coffee in her room. It was Christmas Eve and she must begin early to get her full share of the season's peculiar indulgences. After she had read her paper for an hour or so by the recklessly flaming gas jet, she bustled about to brew another cup of coffee, and feasted upon crullers for the second time. At last she filled a water-bottle with tepid water from a faucet in the hall, and prepared for bed.

The chill of the bedclothes, upon which the tepid water-bottle had little effect, could not touch the cozy warmth about the woman's heart. Neither were the happy memories of her strange and lovely visitor disturbed by knowledge of an incident that was taking place at that very hour. As she bounced into her cot, humming a little tune, she did not know that at a down-town theater a popular young actress was just responding to an insistent curtain call. Nor could she have recognized the graceful young girl, issuing from the wings in a new character part--an extreme type of eccentric maidenhood--except for the plucked and ragged fur-piece which formed the keynote of the performer's quaint attire.

No knowledge of this episode disturbed the half-drowsy, half-blissful state which supplanted the woman's sleep that night. The incident cast no cloud upon her eager awakening, nor retarded her active leap from bed when the voice of her landlady aroused her with a start on Christmas morning.

"_Eggs_-press, _eggs_-press ... a package for Miss Law-lor-r-r!"

Full-chested and lingering, the call reverberated up three flights of naked stairs, and by the time the woman had donned her skirt and sweater and had emerged into the twilight of the upper hall, frowsy, curious heads protruded from every door.

She carried the bulky Christmas package to her own room, moving deliberately, in shy, half-guilty triumph, and placed it on the cot. Behind her closed door she untied it, removed the cover and smilingly bent down to draw an eager inhalation from the tissue paper folds. Then, with careful fingers, she parted the crisp inner wrappings and unearthed a wilting, half-blown rose from its nest in the brown mink fur.

The Reminder

_By Allan Updegraff_

A little Belgian and an old violin--
A short, dumpy, melancholy little Belgian
And a very fine old violin....

An inconsequential small Belgian
Wearing a discouraged bit of mustache,
American "store" clothes that didn't fit,
Cheap American shoes, shined but shapeless....
(And yet he had often played in high honor
Before great audiences in Belgium;
But that was before Hell's lid was lifted
Somewhere in the North of Germany--
May it be clamped down, hard, before long!)

So this shabby, fat, discouraged oldish Belgian
(Too old and fat for military service),
And his very old beautiful violin,
(Borrowed--he'd lost his better one to his conquerors),
Appeared before a dubious tag-end of an audience
In a music hall built in the woods
Near an American summer resort,
And played a dozen selections for forty-five dollars.

Then we learned why he had often played in high honor
Before great audiences in Belgium;
And why his king and his country
Had given him the honors he still wore,
The riches recently taken away
By his conquerors.

Then we saw what manner of man he was,
How that his soul was finely clad, upright,
Nobly statured, crowned with Apollo's bays.
Then we knew, when he played Tartini's sonata for violin,
That Belgium would own once more
Its little place in the sun.

For the old Italian master might have written that sonata
With the devastated Belgium of these days in mind.
First, streaming from beneath the Belgian's sentient bow,
The music told of peace and common things,
With some bickering, some trivialities,
But much melody and deep harmony underneath.
The third movement, _affetuoso_, awoke to ruin--
To ruin too sudden and complete.

Too bloody and bestial and cruel
And thorough and filthy and Prussian
To be more than wailed over softly.

There was a stabbed child
Lying in the mud beneath a half-burned house,
Beside the naked corpse of its mother,
The mutilated bodies of its old grandfather,
And young sister;
And the child cried faintly, and moaned,
And cried again....
And then was silent.

A while after, from far away,
Rose dull outcries, trampling feet,
Voices indomitable--
Retreating, returning, joined by others, dying, reviving,
Always indomitable.
And still others joined those beaten but unconquered ones,
And the end came in one long, high,
Indomitable cry.
Then we knew, and bowed our heads,
And were ashamed of our poor part,
And prayed God we might bear a nobler part,
In the reply to that most cold-planned,
Murderously carried out,
Unexpurgable horror over there.

"Old Bill"

_By Henry C. Wallace_

We buried Old Bill to-day. As we came back to the house it seemed almost as if we had laid away a member of the family. All afternoon I have been thinking of him, and this evening I want to tell you the story.

Old Bill was a horse, and he was owned by four generations of our family. He was forty-one years old when he died, so you will understand that for many years he was what some might call a "dead-beat boarder." But long ago he had paid in advance for his board as long as he might stay with us. In winter a warm corner of the stable was his as a matter of right, and not a day went by but a lump of sugar, an apple, or some other tidbit found its way to him from the hands of those who loved him. Old Bill was never in the slightest danger of meeting the sad fate of many a faithful old horse in the hands of the huckster or trader.

My grandfather liked a good horse. He loved to draw the lines over a team that trotted up into the bits as if they enjoyed it. He had such a team in a span of eleven-hundred pound mares, full sisters, and well matched both as to appearance and disposition. The old gentleman said they were Morgan bred. Whether they were or not, they had a lot of warm blood in them. He raised several colts from these mares by light horses, but none of them had either the spirit or the quality of their dams. One year a neighbor brought in a Percheron horse, a rangy fellow weighing about seventeen hundred and fifty pounds, clean of limb, and with plenty of life, as were most of the earlier horses of that breed, and grandfather bred these mares to him. The colts foaled the next spring, developed into a fine span, weighing about twelve hundred and fifty each, sound as nuts, willing workers and free movers. Grandfather gave this team to my father the spring he started to farm for himself. They were then three years old, and one of them was Old Bill.

In those days the young farmer's capital was not very large: a team of horses, a cow, two or three pigs, and a few farm implements, the horses being by far the most important part of it. I shall not try to tell of the part these horses played in helping father win out. They were never sick; they were always ready for work. And well do I remember father's grief when Bill's mate slipped on the ice in the barnyard one cold winter day and had to be shot. It was that evening that my father talked of the important part a good horse plays in the life of a farmer, and gave us a little lecture on the treatment of horses and other animals. I was but a lad of ten at that time, but something father said, or the way he said it, made a deep impression on me, and from that time forward I looked upon horses as my friends and treated them as such. What a fine thing it would be if all parents would teach the youngsters at an early age the right way to treat our dumb animals.

Bill was already "Old Bill" when he became mine. He was four years older than I when we started courting together, and my success must have been due in large part to his age and experience. We had but a mile and a half to go, and of a summer evening Bill would trot this off at a pace equal to a much younger horse. When the girl of my affection was snugly seated in the buggy, he would move off briskly for half a mile, after which he dropped to a dignified walk, understanding full well the importance of the business in hand. He knew where it was safe to leave the beaten track and walk quietly along the turf at the side, and he had a positive genius for finding nice shady places where he could browse the overhanging branches, looking back once in a while to see that everything was going along as it should be. I suppose I am old-fashioned, but I don't see how a really first-class job of courting can be done without such a horse as Old Bill. He seemed to take just about as much interest in the matter as I did. One night Jennie brought out a couple of lumps of sugar for him (a hopeful sign to me, by the way), and after that there was no time lost in getting to her house, where Bill very promptly announced our arrival by two or three nickers.

One time I jokingly said to my wife that evidently she married Bill as much as she did me. That remark was a mistake. She admitted it more cheerfully than seemed necessary, and on sundry occasions afterward made free to remind me of it. Sometimes she drew comparisons to my discredit, and if Old Bill could have understood them, he would have enjoyed a real horse laugh. Jennie always said Bill knew more than some real folks.

After the wedding, Old Bill took us on our honeymoon trip--not a very long one, you may be sure--and the three of us settled down to the steady grind of farm life. We asked nothing hard of Old Bill, but he helped chore around, and took Jennie safely where she wanted to go. I felt perfectly at ease when she was driving him. I wish I had a picture of the three of them when she brought out the boy to show to Old Bill. I can close my eyes and see her standing in front of the old horse, with the boy cuddled up in a blanket in her arms. I can see the proud light in her eyes, and I can see Old Bill's sensitive upper lip nuzzling at the blanket. He evidently understood Jennie perfectly, and seemed just as proud as she was.

The youngster learned to ride Old Bill at the age most children are riding broomsticks. Jennie used to put him on Old Bill's back and lead him around, but Old Bill seemed so careful that before a great while she would trust him alone with the boy in the front yard, she sitting on the porch. I remember a scare I had one summer evening. Old Bill did not have much hair left on his withers, but he had a long mane lock just in front of the collar mark, and the youngster held onto this. I was walking up toward the house, where Bill was marching the youngster around in front, Jennie sitting on the porch. Evidently a botfly was bothering Bill's front legs, for he threw his head down quickly, whereupon the youngster, holding tightly to this mane lock, slid down his neck and flopped to the ground. You may be sure I got there in a hurry, almost as quickly as Jennie, who was but a few steps away, calling as I ran: "Did he step on him?" You should have seen the look of scorn Jennie gave me. Such an insult to Old Bill deserved no answer. The old horse seemed as much concerned as we were and Jennie promptly replaced the boy on his back and the ride was resumed, with me relegated to the corner of the porch in disgrace. As if Old Bill would hurt her boy!

Old Bill's later years were full of contentment and happiness, if I know what constitutes horse happiness. In the winter he had the best corner in the stable. In the summer he was the autocrat of the small pasture where we kept the colts. He taught the boy to ride properly and with due respect for his steed. He would give him a gallop now and then, but as a rule he insisted upon a dignified walk, and if the youngster armed himself with a switch and tried to have his way about it, the old fellow would quickly show who was boss by nipping his little legs just hard enough to serve as a warning of what he could do.

Bill had a lot of fun with the mares and colts. We never allowed the colts to follow the mares in the fields, but kept them in the five-acre pasture with Bill for company. At noon, we would lead the mares in after they had cooled off, and let the colts suck, and at night we turned the mares into the pasture with them. Bill had a keen sense of humor. He would fool around until the colts had finished, and then gallop off with all the colts in full tilt after him. Naturally the mares resented this. They followed around in great indignation, but it did them no good. We used to walk over to the pasture fence and watch this little byplay, and I think Bill enjoyed having us there, for he kept up the fun as long as we would watch. He surely was not popular with the mares. They regarded him about as the proud mother regards grandfather when he entices away her darling boy and teaches him tricks of which she does not approve.

Although Bill took delight in teaching the colts mean little tricks during their days of irresponsibility, when they reached the proper age he enjoyed the part he had to play in their training with a grim satisfaction. For more than twenty-five years he was our main reliance in breaking the colts to work. It was amusing to watch a colt the first time he was harnessed and hooked up to the wagon alongside Bill, his halter strap being tied back to the hames on Bill's collar.

Our colts were always handled more or less from infancy, and we had little trouble in harnessing them. When led out to the wagon with Bill, the colt invariably assumed he was out for a good time. But the Bill he found now was not the Bill he had known in the pasture, and he very quickly learned that he was in for real business.

Bill was a very strict disciplinarian; he tolerated no familiarities; with his teeth he promptly suppressed any undue exuberance of spirit; he was kind but firm. As he grew older, he would lose patience now and then with the colts that persisted in their unruly ways. When they lunged forward, he settled back against their plunges with a bored air, as much as to say: "Take it easy, my young friend; you surely don't think you can run away with Old Bill!" When they sulked, he pulled them along for a bit. But if they continued obstreperous he turned upon them with his teeth in an almost savage manner, and the way he would bring them out of the sulky spell was a joy to see.

Finally, when the tired and bewildered colt had settled down to an orderly walk, and had learned to respond to the guiding reins, Bill would reward him with a caress on the neck and other evidences of his esteem.

Old Bill knew the game thoroughly, and was invaluable in this work of training the young ones. But after the first round at the wagon with him, the colts always seemed to feel as if they had lost a boon companion; they kept their friendship for him, but they maintained a very respectful attitude, and never after took liberties unless assured by his manner that they would be tolerated.

I got a collie dog for the youngster when he was about three years old. When he was riding Old Bill, Jack would rush back and forth, in front and behind, barking joyously. Old Bill disliked such frivolity. To him it was a serious occasion. I think he never forgot the time the boy fell off, for nothing could tempt him out of a steady walk until the youngster got to an age when his seat was reasonably secure. When the ride was over, Old Bill would lay back his ears and go after Jack so viciously that the collie would seek refuge under the porch. Except when the boy was about, however, Old Bill and Jack were good friends, and in very cold weather Jack would beg a place in Bill's stall, curling up between his legs, to the apparent satisfaction of both. There was a very real friendship between them, but just as real jealousy for the favors of the little fellow. They were much like human beings in this respect.

Until the last year of his life Bill was a most useful member of the family. Jennie liked a good garden and used to say before we were married that when we had our own home, she would have a garden that was a garden, and that she did not propose to wear herself out with a hoe as her mother had done. She laid out her garden in a long, narrow strip of ground between the pasture and the windbreak, just back of the house, and with Bill's help she had the garden she talked about. Bill plowed the ground and cultivated it, and the care with which he walked the long narrow rows was astonishing. This was another place where he did not want to be bothered with Jack. He was willing Jack should sit at one end and watch the proceedings, but he must keep out of the way.

During the school season Bill's regular job was to take the children to school, a mile away. They rode him, turning him loose to come home alone. He learned to go back for them in the afternoon, and he delivered them at the porch with an air as much as to say: "There are your little folks, safe and sound, thanks to Old Bill." Jennie always met him with an apple or a lump of sugar. She and Old Bill seemed to be in partnership in about everything he could have a part in. They understood each other perfectly, and I don't mind confessing now that once in a great while I felt rather jealous of Old Bill.

Well, as I said in the beginning, we buried Old Bill to-day. He died peacefully, and, as we say of some esteemed citizen, "full of honors." He was buried on the farm he helped pay for; and, foolish as it may seem to some folks, before long a modest stone will mark his last resting place. And sometimes, of a summer afternoon, if I find Jennie sitting with her needlework in the shade of the big oak tree under which Old Bill rests, I will know that tender memories of a faithful servant are being woven into her neat stitches.

The Recruit's Story

_By Frank Luther Mott_

Last Sunday afternoon I wandered into Smith Park and sat down on a bench near the fountain. It was a fine day. The sun shone warmly and I was one of many men who lounged on those benches and luxuriated in the grateful warmth of the early spring sunshine.

Men of many kinds were there. There were a few old men, but many were young, or middle-aged. Unless I am a very poor observer, not a few of them were drifters.

As I sat there I watched the play of the water falling in the fountain. I observed the bronze figures of women sitting in the center, musing over who knows what great world problem; and I saw, surmounting all, the towering figure of a soldier of the Civil War. There he stood in his quiet power--apotheosis of the common soldier in the war for the Union. He wore the great-coat and military cape of the old uniform. He stood at ease, his left foot advanced, and the butt of his gun resting on the ground in front of him, while he held the gun-barrel with his left hand and rested his forearm on the muzzle. He gazed a little past me, steadfastly, toward a corner of the park. On his face was the look of the man who is ready--the man undaunted by any emergency--the man unafraid in the quiet strength of soul and body.

"He it was," I reflected, "who leaped to the colors when Father Abraham called, and by the might of his loyalty and sacrifice saved his country in the hour of her greatest need."

Glancing across the park, I saw a poster glaring from the great window of a salesroom. I could make out three words, printed in giant type:

MEN WANTED NOW!

Again I looked about me at the men lounging, as I was lounging, there on the benches in the sunlight, some of them asleep. I too felt the soporific influence of the May sun, and might soon have lapsed into unconsciousness myself had it not been for a strange thing that happened just then.

I saw the Union soldier turn his head a little and look directly at me.

I am not given to illusions, being generally considered a matter-of-fact young man. But, as I live, I saw that Union soldier turn his head! And more than that, I knew just why he did it.

I had read the papers, and knew my country's need. I had read the flaming posters calling for men to enlist in her armies. I had read President Wilson's classic-to-be concerning America's purpose in our greatest war for liberty. I had not meant to be a slacker; but, some way, I had not been strongly moved. I was letting the other fellow fill up the ranks, intending hazily to rally to the colors myself when the need seemed greater. Even now, I was inclined to argue the matter.

I leaned back in my seat and said, in a conversational tone:

"Now look here, Mr. Union Soldier, the need was greater when you joined the colors. The Union was threatened; the very existence of the nation was at hazard. I too will answer the call if worse comes to worst in this war."

"Young man," replied the soldier, his eyes fixed on mine and his voice deep and calm, "young man, your country's call is your country's call. This time it is no question of union; thank God, the states stand indivisible forever. But this time the crisis is even greater, the need of vision and sacrifice even more vital. This time the liberty, not of the black man alone, but of the world, is in the balance. Are you deaf to the call?"

"But listen," I answered. "This is not our war. Nobody has crossed the sea to strike us."

"Have they not?" he countered. "By spies, by intrigue, by a treacherous diplomacy, by an unscrupulous policy of world subjugation, the enemy has invaded our shores. Yet it is not that alone. As I have stood here, I have heard the cries of the people of ravished Belgium; I have heard the despairing screams of men and women sinking in watery graves; the wails of perishing Armenia assail my ears. Do you say it is not our war? It is! Just as the fate of the black man touched the hearts of us Northerners, just as the misfortune of the traveler to Jericho touched the heart of the Samaritan, just as the suffering Christ on the cross has touched the heart of the world--just so must the woeful cry of a world perishing to-day touch the heart of America.... And yet I look about me here! These men drowsing in the sunshine! Are these Americans? From the field I rushed when Lincoln called, scarcely pausing to bid my mother good-bye; and I braved cold, and heat, and sickness, and privation, and terrors by day and night, and rain of shot and shell, and wounds and suffering and death--all because my country called!"

As he spoke his voice rose to a commanding resonance. He raised his right arm from the muzzle of the gun where it had rested--raised it high in impassioned appeal. At last I was moved; tears ran down my cheeks.

I started--awoke. I had been asleep, and the water from the fountain was blowing in my face. But was it the spray from the fountain alone that made my cheeks wet?

I looked up at the bronze figure surmounting the fountain. There the soldier stood at rest, left foot advanced, arm resting on his gun. His eyes looked steadfastly toward the corner of the park. But did I not see a glow of passion on that bronze face--a passion for the Liberty of the World?

I turned to my neighbor on the bench at my left. His eyes were half shut, drowsily.

"Pardon me, brother," I said. "Can you tell me where the nearest recruiting station is located?"

The Happiest Man in I-o-way

_By Rupert Hughes_

Jes' down the road a piece, 'ith the dust so deep
It teched the bay mare's fetlocks; an' the sun
So b'ilin' hot, the pewees dassn't peep;
Seemed like midsummer 'fore the spring's begun!
An' me plumb beat an' good-fer-nothin'-like
An' awful lonedsome fer a sight o' you ...
I come to that big locus' by the pike,
An' she was all in bloom, an' trembly, too,
With breezes like drug-store perfumery.
I stood up in my stirrups, with my head
So deep in flowers they almost smothered me.
I kind o' liked to think that I was dead ...
An' if I hed 'a' died like that to-day,
I'd 'a' be'n the happiest man in I-o-way.

For whut's the us't o' goin' on like this?
Your pa not 'lowin me around the place ...
Well, fust I knowed, I'd give them blooms a kiss;
They tasted like Good-Night on your white face.
I reached my arms out wide, an' hugged 'em--say,
I dreamp' your little heart was hammerin' me!

I broke this branch off for a love-bo'quet;
'F I'd be'n a giant, I'd 'a' plucked the tree!
The blooms is kind o' dusty from the road,
But you won't mind. And, as the feller said,
"When this you see remember me"--I knowed
Another poem; but I've lost my head
From seein' you! 'Bout all that I kin say
Is--"I'm the happiest man in I-o-way."

Well, comin' 'long the road I seen your ma
Drive by to town--she didn't speak to me!
An' in the farthest field I seen your pa
At his spring-plowin', like I'd ought to be.
But, knowin' you'd be here all by yourself,
I hed to come--for now's our livin' chance.
Take off yer apern, leave things on the shelf--
Our preacher needs what th' feller calls "romance."
Ain't got no red-wheeled buggy; but the mare
Will carry double, like we've trained her to.
Jes' put a locus'-blossom in your hair
An' let's ride straight to heaven--me an' you!
I'll build y' a little house, an' folks'll say:
"There lives the happiest pair in I-o-way."

The Captured Dream

_By Octave Thanet_

Somers rode slowly over the low Iowa hills, fitting an air in his mind to Andrew Lang's dainty verses. Presently, being quite alone on the country road, he began to sing:

"In dreams doth he behold her,
Still fair and kind and young."

The gentle strain of melancholy and baffled desire faded into silence, but the young man's thoughts pursued it. A memory of his own that sometimes stung him, sometimes plaintively caressed him, stirred in his heart. "I am afraid you hit it, Andy," he muttered, "and I should have found it only a dream had I won."

At thirty Somers imagined himself mighty cynical. He consorted with daring critics, and believed the worst both of art and letters. He was making campaign cartoons for a daily journal instead of painting the picture of the future; the panic of '93 had stripped him of his little fortune, and his sweetheart had refused to marry him. Therefore he said incessantly in the language of Job, "I do well to be angry."

The rubber tires revolved more slowly as his eyes turned from the wayside to the smiling hills. The corn ears were sheathed in silvery yellow, but the afternoon sun jewelled the green pastures, fresh as in May, for rain had fallen in the morning, and maples, oaks and elms blended exquisite gradations of color and shade here and there among the open fields. Long rows of poplars recalled France to Somers and he sighed. "These houses are all comfortable and all ugly," thought the artist. "I never saw anything less picturesque. The life hasn't even the dismal interest of poverty and revolt, for they are all beastly prosperous; and one of the farmers has offered me a hundred dollars and my expenses to come here and make a pastel of his wife. And I have taken the offer because I want to pay my board bill and buy a second-hand bicycle. The chances are he is after something like a colored photograph, something slick and smooth, and every hair painted--Oh, Lord! But I have to have the money; and I won't sign the cursed thing. What does he want it for though? I wonder, did he ever know love's dream? Dream? It's all a dream--a mirage of the senses or the fancy. Confound it, why need I be harking back to it? I must be near his house. House near the corner, they said, where the roads cross. Ugh! How it jumps at the eyes."

The house before him was yellow with pea-green blinds; the great barns were Indian red; the yard a riot of color from blooming flowers.

Somers wheeled up to the gate and asked of the old man who was leaning upon the fence where Mr. Gates lived.

"Here," said the old man, not removing his elbows from the fence bar.

"And, may I ask, are you Mr. Gates?" said Somers.

"Yes, sir. But if you're the young man was round selling 'Mother, Home and Heaven,' and going to call again to see if we liked it, we don't want it. My wife can't read and we're taking a Chicago paper now, and ain't got any time."

Somers smiled. "I'm not selling anything but pictures," said he, "and I believe you want me to make one for you."

"Are you Mr. Somers, F. J. S.?" cried the farmer, his face lighting in a surprising manner. "Well, I'm glad to see you, sir. My wife said you'd come this afternoon and I wouldn't believe her. I'm always caught when I don't believe my wife. Come right in. Oh, did you bring your tools with you?"

He guided Somers into the house and into a room so dark that he stumbled.

"There's the sofy; set down," said Gates, who seemed full of hospitable cheer. "I'll get a blind open. Girl's gone to the fair and Mother's setting out on the back piazza, listening to the noises on the road. She's all ready. Make yourself to home. Pastel like them pictures on the wall's what I want. My daughter done them." His tone changed on the last sentence, but Somers did not notice it; he was drinking in the details of the room to describe them afterwards to his sympathizing friends in Chicago.

"What a chamber of horrors," he thought, "and one can see he is proud of it." The carpet was soft to the foot, covered with a jungle of flowers and green leaves--the pattern of carpet which fashion leaves behind for disappointed salesmen to mark lower and lower until it shall be pushed into the ranks of shopworn bargains. The cheap paper on the wall was delicately tinted, but this boon came plainly from the designers, and not the taste of the buyer, since there was a simply terrible chair that swung by machinery, and had four brilliant hues of plush to vex the eye, besides a paroxysm of embroidery and lace to which was still attached the red ticket of the county fair. More embroidery figured on the cabinet organ and two tables, and another red ticket peeped coyly from under the ornate frame of a pastel landscape displaying every natural beauty--forest, mountain, sunlit lake, and meadow--at their bluest and greenest. There were three other pictures in the room, two very large colored photographs of a lad of twelve and of a pretty girl who might be sixteen, in a white gown with a roll of parchment in her hand tied with a blue ribbon; and the photograph of a cross of flowers.

The girl's dark, wistful, timid eyes seemed to follow the young artist as he walked about the room. They appealed to him. "Poor little girl," he thought, "to have to live here." Then he heard a dragging footfall, and there entered the mistress of the house. She was a tall woman who stooped. Her hair was gray and scanty, and so ill-arranged on the top of her head that the mournful tonsure of age showed under the false gray braid. She was thin with the gaunt thinness of years and toil, not the poetic, appealing slenderness of youth. She had attired herself for the picture in a black silken gown, sparkling with jet that tinkled as she moved; the harsh, black, bristling line at the neck defined her withered throat brutally. Yet Somer's sneer was transient. He was struck by two things--the woman was blind, and she had once worn a face like that of the pretty girl. With a sensation of pity he recalled Andrew Lang's verses; inaudibly, while she greeted him he was repeating:

"Who watches day by day
The dust of time that stains her,
The griefs that leave her gray,
The flesh that still enchains her,
Whose grace has passed away."

Her eyes were closed but she came straight toward him, holding out her hand. It was her left hand that was extended; her right closed over the top of a cane, and this added to the impression of decrepitude conveyed by her whole presence. She spoke in a gentle, monotonous, pleasant voice. "I guess this is Mr. Somers, the artist. I feel--we feel very glad to have the honor of meeting you, sir."

No one had ever felt honored to meet Somers before. He thought how much refinement and sadness were in a blind woman's face. In his most deferential manner he proffered her a chair. "I presume I am to paint you, madam?" he said.

She blushed faintly. "Ain't it rediculous?" she apologized. "But Mr. Gates will have it. He has been at me to have somebody paint a picture of me ever since I had my photograph taken. It was a big picture and most folks said it was real good, though not flattering; but he wouldn't hang it. He took it off and I don't know what he did do to it. 'I want a real artist to paint you, Mother,' he said. I guess if Kitty had lived she'd have suited him, though she was all for landscape; never did much figures. You noticed her work in this room, ain't you--on the table and chair and organ--art needlework? Kitty could do anything. She took six prizes at the county fair; two of 'em come in after she was in her last sickness. She was so pleased that she had the picture--that's the picture right above the sofy; it's a pastel--and the tidy, I mean the art needle work--put on her bed, and she looked at them the longest while. Her paw would never let the tickets be took off." She reached forth her hand to the chair near her and felt the ticket, stroking it absently, her chin quivering a little, while her lips smiled. "Mr. Gates was thinking," she said, "that maybe you'd paint a head of me--pastel like that landscape--that's why he likes pastel so. And he was thinking if--if maybe--my eyes was jest like Kitty's when we were married--if you would put in eyes, he would be awful much obliged and be willing to pay extra if necessary. Would it be hard?"

Somers dissembled a great dismay. "Certainly not," said he, rather dryly; and he was ashamed of himself at the sensitive flutter in the old features.

"Of course I know," she said, in a different tone than she had used before, "I understand how comical it must seem to a young man to have to draw an old woman's picture; but it ain't comical to my husband. He wants it very much. He's the kindest man that ever lived, to me, caring for me all the time. He's got me that organ--me that can't play a note, and never could--just because I love to hear music, and sometimes if we have an instrument, the neighbors will come in, especially Hattie Knight, who used to know Kittie, and is a splendid performer; she comes and plays and sings. It is a comfort to me. And though I guess you young folks can't understand it, it will be a comfort to him to have a picture of me. I mistrusted you'd be thinking it comical, and I hurried to come in and speak to you, lest, not meaning anything, you might, just by chance, let fall something might hurt his feelings--like you thought it queer or some sech thing. And he thinks so much of you, and having you here, that I couldn't bear there'd be any mistake."

"Surely it is the most natural thing in the world that he should want a portrait of you," Somers hastily interrupted.

"Yes, it is," she answered in her mild, even tones, "but it mightn't seem so to young folks. Young folks think they know all there is about loving. And it is very sweet and nice to enjoy things together; and you don't hardly seem to be in the world at all when you're courting, your feet and your head and your heart feel so light. But they don't know what it is to need each other? It's when folks suffer together that they find out what loving is. I never knew what I felt towards my husband till I lost my first baby; and I'd wake up in the night and there'd be no cradle there--and he'd comfort me. Do you see that picture under the photograph of the cross?"

"He's a pretty boy," said Somers.

"Yes, sir. He was drownded in the river. A lot of boys in playing, and one got too far, and Eddy, he swum out to help him. And he clumb up on Eddy and the man on shore didn't get there in time. He was a real good boy and liked to play home with me 'most as well as with the boys. Father was proud as he could be of him, though he wouldn't let on. That cross was what his schoolmates sent; and teacher she cried when she told me how hard Eddy was trying to win the prize to please his pa. Father and I went through that together. And we had to change all the things we used to talk of together, because Eddy was always in them; and we had to try not to let each other see how our hearts were breaking, and not shadder Kitty's life by letting her see how we missed him. Only once father broke down; it was when he give Kitty Eddy's colt." She stopped, for she could not go on.

"Don't--don't distress yourself," Somers begged lamely. His cheeks were very hot.

"It don't distress me," she answered, "only for the minnit; I'm always thinking of Eddy and Kitty too. Sometimes I think it was harder for father when his girl went than anything else. And then my blindness and my rheumatism come; and it seemed he was trying to make up to me for the daughter and the son I'd lost, and be all to once to me. He has been, too. And do you think that two old people that have grown old together, like us, and have been through losses like that--do you think they ain't drawed closer and kinder and tenderer to each other, like the Lord to his church? Why, I'm plain, and old and blind and crooked--but he don't know it. Now, do you understand?"

"Yes," said Somers, "I understand."

"And you'll please excuse me for speaking so free; it was only so father's feelings shouldn't get hurt by noticing maybe a look like you wanted to laugh."

"God knows I don't want to laugh," Somers burst in. "But I'm glad you spoke. It--it will be a better picture. Now may I ask you something? I want you to let me dress you--I mean put something about your neck, soft and white; and then I want to make two sketches of you--one, as Mr. Gates wishes, the head alone; the other of you sitting in the rustic chair outside."

"But--" she looked troubled--"it will be so expensive; and I know it will be foolish. If you'd just the same----"

"But I shouldn't; I want to do it. And it will not cost you anything. A hundred dollars will repay me well enough. I wish--I truly wish I could afford to do it all for nothing."

She gasped. "A hundred dollars! Oh, it ain't right. That was why he wouldn't buy the new buggy. And jest for a picture of me." But suddenly she flushed like a girl and smiled.

At this instant the old man, immaculate in his heavy black suit and glossy white shirt, appeared in the doorway bearing a tray.

"Father," said the old wife, "do you mean to tell me you are going to pay a hundred dollars jest for a picture of me?"

"Well, Mother, you know there's no fool like an old fool," he replied, jocosely; but when the old wife turned her sightless face toward the old husband's voice and he looked at her, Somers bowed his head.