Chapter I: HAVE owned quite a number of dogs in my life, but they are all dead

now. Last evening I visited my dog cemetery—just between the gloaming and the shank of the evening. On the biscuit-box cover that stands at the head of a little mound fringed with golden rod and pickle bottles, the idler may still read these lines, etched in red chalk by a trembling hand—

LITTLE KOSCIUSKO,
.........NOT DEAD.........
BUT JERKED HENCE
BY REQUEST.
S. Y. L.
(SEE YOU LATER.)

I do not know why he was called Kosciusko. I do not care. I only know that his little grave stands out there while the gloaming gloams and the soughing winds are soughing.

Do you ask why I am alone here and dogless in this weary world?

I will tell you, anyhow. It will not take long, and it may do me good: Kosciusko came to me one night in winter, with no baggage, and unidentified.

When I opened the door he came in as though he had left something in there by mistake and had returned for it.

He stayed with us two years as a watch-dog. In a desultory way, he was a good watch-dog. If he had watched other people with the same unrelenting scrutiny with which he watched me, I might have felt his death more keenly than I do now.

The second year that little Kosciusko was with us, I shaved off a full beard one day while down town, put on a clean collar and otherwise disguised myself, intending to surprise my wife.

Kosciusko sat on the front porch when I returned. He looked at me as a cashier of a bank does when a newspaper man goes in to get a suspiciously large cheque cashed. He did not know me. I said, “Kosciusko, have you forgotten your master’s voice?”

He smiled sarcastically, showing his glorious wealth of mouth, but still sat there as though he had stuck his tail into the door-steps and couldn’t get it out.

So I waived the formality of going in at the front door, and went around to the portcullis, on the off side of the house, but Kosciusko was there when I arrived. The cook, seeing a stranger lurking around the manor-house, encouraged Kosciusko to come and gorge himself with a part of my leg, which he did. Acting on this hint I went to the barn.

I do not know why I went to the barn, but somehow there was nothing in the house that I wanted. When a man wants to be by himself there is no place like a good, quiet barn for thought. So I went into the barn, about three feet prior to Kosciusko.

Noticing the stairway, I ascended it in an aimless kind of way, about four steps at a time. What happened when we got into the haymow I do not now recall, only that Kosciusko and I frolicked around there in the hay for some time. Occasionally I would be on the top, and then he would have all the delegates, until finally I got hold of a pitchfork, and freedom shrieked when Kosciusko fell. I wrapped myself up in an old horse-net and went into the house. Some of my clothes were afterwards found in the hay, and the doctor pried a part of my person out of Kosciusko’s jaws, but not enough to do me any good.

I have owned, in all, eleven dogs, and they all died violent deaths, and went out of the world totally unprepared to die.

_Bill Nye._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_KNEE-DEEP IN JUNE._

I.

TELL you what I like the best—
’Long about knee-deep in June,
’Bout the time strawberries melts
On the vines—some afternoon
Like to jes’ git out and rest,
And not work at nothin’ else!

II.

Orchard’s where I’d ruther be—
Needn’t fence it in fer me!
Jes’ the whole sky overhead,
And the whole airth underneath—
Sorto’ so’s a man kin breathe
Like he ort, and kindo’ has
Elbow-room to keerlessly
Sprawl out len’thways on the grass,
Where the shadders thick and soft
As the kivvers on the bed
Mother fixes in the loft
Allus, when they’s company!

III.

Jes’ a sorto’ lazein’ there—
S’ lazy, ’at you peek and peer
Through the wavin’ leaves above,
Like a feller ’ats in love
And don’t know it, ner don’t keer.
Ever’thing you hear and see
Got some sort o’ interest—
Maybe find a bluebird’s nest
Tucked up there conveenently
Fer the boys ’ats apt to be
Up some other apple tree!
Watch the swallers skootin’ past
’bout as peert as you could ast;
Er the Bobwhite raise and whiz
Where some other’s whistle is.

IV.

Ketch a shadder down below,
And look up to find the crow;
Er a hawk away up there,
’Pearantly froze in the air!—
Hear the old hen squawk, and squat
Over every chick she’s got,
Suddent-like!—And she knows where
That air hawk is, well as you!—
You jes’ bet yer life she do!—
Eyes a-glittering like glass
Waitin’ till he makes a pass!

V.

Pee-wees’ singin’, to express
My opinion, ’s second class,
Yit you’ll hear ’em more er less;
Sapsucks gettin’ down to biz,
Weedin’ out the lonesomeness;
Mr. Bluejay, full o’ sass,
In those base-ball clothes o’ his,
Sportin’ ’round the orchard jes’
Like he owned the premises!
Sun out in the field kin sizz,
But flat on yer back, I guess,
In the shade’s where glory is!
That’s jes’ what I’d like to do
Stiddy fer a year er two!

VI.

Plague! ef they aint sompin’ in
Work ’at kindo’ goes agin
My convictions!—’long about
Here in June especially!—
Under some old apple tree
Jes’ a-restin’ through and through,
I could git along without
Nothin’ else at all to do
Only jes’ a-wishin’ you
Was a-gettin’ there like me,
And June was eternity!

VII.

Lay out there and try to see
Jes’ how lazy you kin be!—
Tumble round and souse yer head
In the clover-bloom, er pull
Yer straw hat acrost yer eyes,
And peek through it at the skies,
Thinkin’ of old chums ’ats dead,
Maybe, smilin’ back at you
In betwixt the beautiful
Clouds o’ gold and white and blue!—
Month a man kin railly love—
June, you know, I’m talkin’ of!

VIII.

March ain’t never nothin’ new!—
Aprile’s altogether too
Brash fer me! and May—I jes’
’Bominate its promises,—
Little hints o’ sunshine and
Green around the timber-land—
A few blossoms, and a few
Chip-birds, and a sprout er two—
Drap asleep, and it turns in
’Fore daylight and snows agin!—
But when June comes—Clear my throat
With wild honey! Rench my hair
In the dew! and hold my coat!
Whoop out loud! and throw my hat!—
June wants me and I’m to spare!
Spread them shadders anywhere,
I’ll git down and waller there,
And obleeged to you at that!

_James Whitcomb Riley._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_BAKED BEANS AND CULTURE_.

THE members of the Boston Commercial Club are charming gentlemen. They are now the guests of the Chicago Commercial Club, and are being shown every attention that our market affords. They are a fine-looking lot, well-dressed and well-mannered, with just enough whiskers to be impressive without being imposing.

“This is a darned likely village,” said Seth Adams last evening. “Everybody is rushin’ ’round an’ doin’ business as if his life depended on it. Should think they’d git all tuckered out ’fore night, but I’ll be darned if there ain’t just as many folks on the street after nightfall as afore. We’re stoppin’ at the Palmer tavern; an’ my chamber is up so all-fired high, that I can count all your meetin’-house steeples from the winder.”

Last night five or six of these Boston merchants sat around the office of the hotel, and discussed matters and things. Pretty soon they got to talking about beans: this was the subject which they dwelt on with evident pleasure.

“Waal, sir,” said Ephraim Taft, a wholesale dealer in maple-sugar and flavoured lozenges, “you kin talk ’bout your new-fashioned dishes an’ high-falutin’ vittles; but, when you come right down to it, there ain’t no better eatin’ than a dish o’ baked pork ’n’ beans.”

“That’s so, b’ gosh!” chorussed the others.

“The truth o’ the matter is,” continued Mr. Taft, “that beans is good for everybody,—’t don’t make no difference whether he’s well or sick. Why, I’ve known a thousand folks—waal, mebbe not quite a thousand; but,—waal, now, jest to show, take the case of Bill Holbrook: you remember Bill, don’t ye?”

“Bill Holbrook?” said Mr. Ezra Eastman; “why, of course I do! Used to live down to Brimfield, next to the Moses Howard farm.”

“That’s the man,” resumed Mr. Taft. “Waal, Bill fell sick,—kinder moped round, tired like, for a week or two, an’ then tuck to his bed. His folks sent for Dock Smith,—ol’ Dock Smith that used to carry round a pair o’ leather saddlebags,—gosh, they don’t have no sech doctors nowadays! Waal, the dock, he come; an’ he looked at Bill’s tongue, an’ felt uv his pulse, an’ said that Bill had typhus fever. Ol’ Dock Smith was a very careful, conserv’tive man, an’ he never said nothin’ unless he knowed he was right.

“Bill began to git wuss, an’ he kep’ a-gittin’ wuss every day. One mornin’ ol’ Dock Smith sez, ‘Look a-here, Bill, I guess you’re a goner: as I figger it, you can’t hol’ out till nightfall.’

“Bill’s mother insisted on a con-sul-tation bein’ held; so ol’ Dock Smith sent over for young Dock Brainerd. I calc’late that, next _to_ ol’ Dock Smith, young Dock Brainerd was the smartest doctor that ever lived.

“Waal, pretty soon along come Dock Brainerd; an’ he an’ Dock Smith went all over Bill, an’ looked at his tongue, an’ felt uv his pulse, an’ told him it was a gone case, an’ that he had got to die. Then they went off into the spare chamber to hold their con-sul-tation.

“Wall, Bill he lay there in the front room a-pantin’ an’ a-gaspin’, an’ a wond’rin’ whether it wuz true. As he wuz thinkin’, up comes the girl to git a clean tablecloth out of the clothes-press, an’ she left the door ajar as she come in. Bill he gave a sniff, an’ his eyes grew more natural like: he gathered together all the strength he had, and he raised himself up on one elbow, and sniffed again.

“‘Sary,’ says he, ‘wot’s that a-cookin’?’

“‘Beans,’ says she; ‘beans for dinner.’

“‘Sary,’ says the dyin’ man, ‘I must hev a plate uv them beans!’

“‘Sakes alive, Mr. Holbrook!’ says she; ‘if you wuz to eat any o’ them beans, it’d kill ye!’

“‘If I’ve got to die,’ says he, ‘I’m goin’ to die happy: fetch me a plate uv them beans.’

“Wall, Sary she pikes off to the doctors.

“‘Look a-here,’ says she; ‘Mr. Holbrook smelt the beans cookin’, an’ he says he’s got to have a plate uv ’em. Now, what shall I do about it?’

“‘Waal, doctor,’ says Dock Smith, ‘what do you think ’bout it?’

“‘He’s got to die anyhow,’ says Dock Brainerd; ‘an’ I don’t suppose the beans’ll make any diff’rence.’

“‘That’s the way I figger it,’ says Dock Smith; ‘in all my practice I never knew of beans hurtin’ anybody.’

“So Sary went down to the kitchen, an’ brought up a plateful of hot baked beans. Dock Smith raised Bill up in bed, an’ Dock Brainerd put a piller under the small of Bill’s back. Then Sary sat down by the bed, an’ fed them beans into Bill until Bill couldn’t hold any more.

“‘How air you feelin’ now?’ asked Dock Smith.

“Bill didn’t say nuthin’: he jest smiled sort uv peaceful like, an’ closed his eyes.

“‘The end hez come,’ said Dock Brainerd sof’ly; ‘Bill is dyin’.’

“Then Bill murmured kind o’ far-away like (as if he was dreamin’), ‘I ain’t dyin’: I’m dead an’ in heaven.’

“Next mornin’ Bill got out uv bed, an’ done a big day’s work on the farm, an’ he hain’t hed a sick spell since. Them beans cured him! I tell you, sir, that beans is,” etc.

_Eugene Field._

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_THE NICE PEOPLE._

“THEY certainly are nice people,” I assented to my wife’s observation, using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was anything but “nice” English, “and I’ll bet that their three children are better brought up than most of——”

“_Two_ children,” corrected my wife.

“Three, he told me.”

“My dear, she said there were _two_.”

“He said three.”

“You’ve simply forgotten. I’m _sure_ she told me they had only two—a boy and a girl.”

“Well, I didn’t enter into particulars.”

“No dear, and you couldn’t have understood him. Two children.”

“All right,” I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a near-sighted man learns by enforced observation to recognise persons at a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the man with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen carefully and report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that he had three children, at present left in the care of his mother-in-law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their summer vacation.

“Two children,” repeated my wife; “and they are staying with his aunt Jenny.”

“He told me with his mother-in-law,” I put in. My wife looked at me with a serious expression. Men may not remember much of what they are told about children; but any man knows the difference between an aunt and a mother-in-law.

“But don’t you think they’re nice people?” asked my wife.

“Oh, certainly,” I replied; “only they seem to be a little mixed up about their children.”

“That isn’t a nice thing to say,” returned my wife.

I could not deny it.

* * * * *

And yet the next morning, when the Bredes came down and seated themselves opposite us at table, beaming and smiling in their natural, pleasant, well-bred fashion, I knew, to a social certainty, that they _were_ “nice” people. He was a fine-looking fellow in his neat tennis-flannels, slim, graceful, twenty-eight or thirty years old, with a Frenchy-pointed beard. She was “nice” in all her pretty clothes, and she herself was pretty with that type of prettiness which out-wears most other types—the prettiness that lies in a rounded figure, a dusky skin, plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth, and black eyes. She might have been twenty-five; you guessed that she was prettier than she was at twenty, and that she would be prettier still at forty.

And nice people were all we wanted to make us happy in Mr. Jacobus’s summer boarding-house on the top of Orange Mountain. For a week we had come down to breakfast each morning, wondering why we wasted the precious days of idleness with the company gathered around the Jacobus board. What joy of human companionship was to be had out of Mrs. Tabb and Miss Hoogencamp, the two middle-aged gossips from Scranton, Pa.,—out of Mr. and Mrs. Biggle, an indurated head-bookkeeper and his prim and censorious wife,—out of old Major Halkit, a retired business man, who, having once sold a few shares on commission, wrote for circulars of every stock company that was started, and tried to induce every one to invest who would listen to him? We looked around at those dull faces, the truthful indices of mean and barren minds, and decided that we would leave that morning. Then we ate Mrs. Jacobus’s biscuits, light as Aurora’s cloudlets, drank her honest coffee, inhaled the perfume of the late azaleas with which she decked her table, and decided to postpone our departure one more day. And then we wandered out to take our morning glance at what we called “our view”; and it seemed to us as if Tabb and Hoogencamp, and Halkit and the Biggles could not drive us away in a year.

I was not surprised when, after breakfast, my wife invited the Bredes to walk with us to “our view.” The Hoogencamp-Biggle-Tabb-Halkit contingent never stirred off Jacobus’s verandah; but we both felt that the Bredes would not profane that sacred scene. We strolled slowly across the fields, passed through the little belt of wood, and as I heard Mrs. Brede’s little cry of startled rapture, I motioned to Brede to look up.

“By Jove!” he cried; “heavenly!”

We looked off from the brow of the mountain over fifteen miles of billowing green, to where, far across a far stretch of pale blue, lay a dim purple line that we knew was Staten Island. Towns and villages lay before us and under us; there were ridges and hills, uplands and lowlands, woods and plains, all massed and mingled in that great silent sea of sunlit green. For silent it was to us, standing in the silence of a high place—silent with a Sunday stillness that made us listen, without taking thought, for the sound of bells coming up from the spires that rose above the tree-tops—the tree-tops that lay as far beneath us as the light clouds were above us that dropped great shadows upon our heads and faint specks of shade upon the broad sweep of land at the mountain’s foot.

“And so that is _your_ view?” asked Mrs. Brede, after a moment; “you are very generous to make it ours too.”

Then we lay down on the grass, and Brede began to talk in a gentle voice, as if he felt the influence of the place. He had paddled a canoe, in his earlier days, he said, and he knew every river and creek in that vast stretch of landscape. He found his landmarks, and pointed out to us where the Passaic and the Hackensack flowed, invisible to us, hidden behind great ridges that in our sight were but combings of the green waves upon which we looked down, and yet on the further side of those broad ridges and rises were scores of villages—a little world of country life, lying unseen under our eyes.

“A good deal like looking at humanity,” he said; “there is such a thing as getting so far above our fellow-men that we see only one side of them.”

Ah, how much better was this sort of talk than the chatter and gossip of the Tabb and the Hoogencamp—than the Major’s dissertations upon his everlasting circulars! My wife and I exchanged glances.

“Now, when I went up the Matterhorn,” Mr. Brede began.

“Why, dear,” interrupted his wife; “I didn’t know you ever went up the Matterhorn.”

“It—it was five years ago,” said Mr. Brede hurriedly; “I—I didn’t tell you—when I was on the other side, you know—it was rather dangerous—well, as I was saying—it looked—oh, it didn’t look at all like this.”

A cloud floated overhead, throwing its great shadow over the field where we lay. The shadow passed over the mountain’s brow, and reappeared far below, a rapidly decreasing blot; flying eastward over the golden green. My wife and I exchanged glances once more.

Somehow the shadow lingered over us all. As we went home, the Bredes went side by side along the narrow path, and my wife and I walked together.

“_Should you think_,” she asked me, “that a man would climb the Matterhorn the very first year he was married?”

“I don’t know, my dear,” I answered evasively; “this isn’t the first year I have been married, not by a good many, and I wouldn’t climb it—for a farm.”

“You know what I mean?” she said.

I did.

* * * * *

When we reached the boarding-house, Mr. Jacobus took me aside.

“You know,” he began his discourse, “my wife, she used to live in N’ York!”

I didn’t know; but I said, “Yes.”

“She says the numbers on the streets runs criss-cross like. Thirty-four’s on one side o’ the street, an’ thirty-five’s on t’other. How’s that?”

“That is the invariable rule, I believe.”

“Then—I say—these here new folk that you ’n’ your wife seems so mighty taken up with—d’ye know anything about ’em?”

“I know nothing about the character of your boarders, Mr. Jacobus,” I replied, conscious of some irritability. “If I choose to associate with any of them——”

“Jess so—jess so!” broke in Jacobus. “I hain’t nothin’ to say ag’inst yer sosherbil’ty. But do ye _know_ them?”

“Why, certainly not,” I replied.

“Well—that was all I wuz askin’ ye. Ye see, when _he_ come here to take the rooms—you wasn’t here then—he told my wife that he lived at number thirty-four in his street. An’ yistiddy _she_ told her that they lived at number thirty-five. He said he lived in an apartment-house. Now, there can’t be no apartment-house on two sides of the same street, kin they?”

“What street was it?” I inquired wearily.

“Hunderd’n’ twenty-first street.”

“Maybe,” I replied, still more wearily. “That’s Harlem. Nobody knows what people will do in Harlem.”

I went up to my wife’s room.

“Don’t you think it queer?” she asked me.

“I think I’ll have a talk with that young man to-night,” I said, “and see if he can give some account of himself.”

“But, my dear,” my wife said gravely, “_she_ doesn’t know whether they’ve had the measles or not.”

“Why, Great Scott!” I exclaimed, “they must have had them when they were children.”

“Please don’t be stupid,” said my wife. “I meant _their_ children.”

* * * * *

After dinner that night—or rather after supper, for we had dinner in the middle of the day at Jacobus’s—I walked down the long verandah to ask Brede, who was placidly smoking at the other end, to accompany me on a twilight stroll. Half-way down I met Major Halkit.

“That friend of yours,” he said, indicating the unconscious figure at the further end of the house, “seems to be a queer sort of a Dick. He told me that he was out of business, and just looking round for a chance to invest his capital. And I’ve been telling him what an everlasting big show he had to take stock in the Capitoline Trust Company—starts next month—four million capital; I told you all about it. ‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘let’s wait and think about it.’ ‘Wait!’ says I; ‘the Capitoline Trust Company won’t wait for _you_, my boy. This is letting you in on the ground floor,’ says I; ‘and it’s now or never.’ ‘Oh, let it wait,’ says he. I don’t know what’s in-_to_ the man.”

“I don’t know how well he knows his own business, Major,” I said as I started again for Brede’s end of the verandah. But I was troubled none the less. The Major could not have influenced the sale of one share of stock in the Capitoline Company. But that stock was a great investment; a rare chance for a purchaser with a few thousand dollars. Perhaps it was no more remarkable that Brede should not invest than that I should not; and yet it seemed to add one circumstance more to the other suspicious circumstances.

* * * * *

When I went upstairs that evening, I found my wife putting her hair to bed—I don’t know how I can better describe an operation familiar to every married man. I waited until the last tress was coiled up, and then I spoke.

“I’ve talked with Brede,” I said, “and I didn’t have to catechise him. He seemed to feel that some sort of explanation was looked for, and he was very outspoken. You were right about the children—that is, I must have misunderstood him. There are only two; but the Matterhorn episode was simple enough. He didn’t realise how dangerous it was until he had got so far into it that he couldn’t back out; and he didn’t tell her, because he’d left her here, you see; and under the circumstances——”

“Left her here!” cried my wife. “I’ve been sitting with her the whole afternoon, sewing, and she told me that he left her at Geneva, and came back and took her to Basle, and the baby was born there. Now I’m sure, dear, because I asked her.”

“Perhaps I was mistaken when I thought he said she was on this side of the water,” I suggested with bitter, biting irony.

“You poor dear, did I abuse you?” said my wife. “But do you know Mrs. Tabb said that _she_ didn’t know how many lumps of sugar he took in his coffee. Now that seems queer, doesn’t it?”

It did. It was a small thing; but it looked queer, very queer.

* * * * *

The next morning it was clear that war was declared against the Bredes. They came down to breakfast somewhat late, and as soon as they arrived the Biggles swooped up the last fragments that remained on their plates, and made a stately march out of the dining-room. Then Miss Hoogencamp arose and departed, leaving a whole fish-ball on her plate. Even as Atalanta might have dropped an apple behind her to tempt her pursuer to check his speed, so Miss Hoogencamp left that fish-ball behind her, and between her maiden self and Contamination.

We had finished our breakfast, my wife and I, before the Bredes appeared. We talked it over, and agreed that we were glad that we had not been obliged to take sides upon such insufficient testimony.

After breakfast it was the custom of the male half of the Jacobus household to go around the corner of the building and smoke their pipes and cigars, where they would not annoy the ladies. We sat under a trellis covered with a grape vine that had borne no grapes in the memory of man. This vine, however, bore leaves, and these, on that pleasant summer morning, shielded from us two persons who were in earnest conversation in the straggling, half-dead flower-garden at the side of the house.

“I don’t want,” we heard Mr. Jacobus say, “to enter in no man’s _pry_-vacy; but I do want to know who it may be, like, that I hev in my house. Now what I ask of _you_—and I don’t want you to take it as in no ways _personal_—is, hev you your merridge-licence with you?”

“No,” we heard the voice of Mr. Brede reply. “Have you yours?”

I think it was a chance shot, but it told all the same. The Major (he was a widower), and Mr. Biggle and I looked at each other; and Mr. Jacobus, on the other side of the grape-trellis, looked at—I don’t know what—and was as silent as we were.

Where is _your_ marriage-licence, married reader? Do you know? Four men, not including Mr. Brede, stood or sat on one side or the other of that grape-trellis, and not one of them knew where his marriage-licence was. Each of us had had one—the Major had had three. But where were they? Where is _yours_? Tucked in your best-man’s pocket; deposited in his desk, or washed to a pulp in his white waistcoat (if white waistcoats be the fashion of the hour), washed out of existence—can you tell where it is? Can you—unless you are one of those people who frame that interesting document and hang it upon their drawing-room walls?

Mr. Brede’s voice arose, after an awful stillness of what seemed like five minutes, and was, probably, thirty seconds—

“Mr. Jacobus, will you make out your bill at once, and let me pay it? I shall leave by the six o’clock train. And will you also send the waggon for my trunks?”

“I hain’t said I wanted to hev ye leave——” began Mr. Jacobus; but Brede cut him short.

“Bring me your bill.”

“But,” remonstrated Jacobus, “ef ye ain’t——”

“Bring me your bill!” said Mr. Brede.

* * * * *

My wife and I went out for our morning’s walk. But it seemed to us, when we looked at “our view,” as if we could only see those invisible villages of which Brede had told us—that other side of the ridges and rises of which we catch no glimpse from lofty hills or from the heights of human self-esteem. We meant to stay out until the Bredes had taken their departure; but we returned just in time to see Pete, the Jacobus darkey, the blacker of boots, the brusher of coats, the general handy-man of the house, loading the Bredes’ trunks on the Jacobus waggon.

And, as we stepped upon the verandah, down came Mrs. Brede, leaning on Mr. Brede’s arm as though she were ill; and it was clear that she had been crying—there were heavy rings about her pretty black eyes.

My wife took a step towards her.

“Look at that dress, dear,” she whispered; “she never thought anything like this was going to happen when she put _that_ on.”

It was a pretty, delicate, dainty dress, a graceful, narrow-striped affair. Her hat was trimmed with a narrow-striped silk of the same colour—maroon and white; and in her hand she held a parasol that matched her dress.

“She’s had a new dress on twice a day,” said my wife; “but that’s the prettiest yet. Oh, somehow—I’m _awfully_ sorry they’re going!”

But going they were. They moved towards the steps. Mrs. Brede looked towards my wife, and my wife moved towards Mrs. Brede. But the ostracised woman, as though she felt the deep humiliation of her position, turned sharply away, and opened her parasol to shield her eyes from the sun. A shower of rice—a half-pound shower of rice—fell down over her pretty hat and her pretty dress, and fell in a splattering circle on the floor, outlining her skirts, and there it lay in a broad, uneven band, and bright in the morning sun.

Mrs. Brede was in my wife’s arms, sobbing as if her young heart would break.

“Oh, you poor, dear, silly children!” my wife cried, as Mrs. Brede sobbed on her shoulder; “why _didn’t_ you tell us?”

“W-w-we didn’t want to be t-t-taken for a b-b-b-b-bridal couple,” sobbed Mrs. Brede; “and we d-d-didn’t _dream_ what awful lies we’d have to tell, and all the aw-aw-ful mixed-up mess of it. Oh, dear, dear, dear!”

* * * * *

“Pete!” commanded Mr. Jacobus, “put back them trunks. These folks stays here’s long’s they wants ter. Mr. Brede”—he held out a large, hard hand—“I’d orter ’ve known better,” he said; and my last doubt of Mr. Brede vanished as he shook that grimy hand in manly fashion.

The two women were walking off toward “our view,” each with an arm about the other’s waist—touched by a sudden sisterhood of sympathy.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Brede, addressing Jacobus, Biggle, the Major, and me, “there is a hostelry down the street where they sell honest New Jersey beer. I recognise the obligations of the situation.”

We five men filed down the street, and the two women went toward the pleasant slope where the sunlight gilded the forehead of the great hill. On Mr. Jacobus’s verandah lay a spattered circle of shining grains of rice. Two of Mr. Jacobus’s pigeons flew down and picked up the shining grains, making grateful noises far down in their throats.

_H. C. Bunner._

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_THE EUREKY RAT-TRAP._

HE boarded the boat at a landing about a hundred miles above Vicksburg, having two dilapidated but bulky-looking satchels as luggage. He said he was bound to “Orleans,” and when the clerk told him what the fare would be he uttered a long whistle of amazement, and inquired—

“Isn’t that pooty steep?”

“Regular figure, sir,” replied the clerk.

“Seems like a big price for just riding on a boat,” continued the stranger.

“Come, I’m in a hurry,” said the clerk.

“That’s the lowest figure, eh?” inquired the stranger.

“Yes—that’s the regular fare.”

“No discount to a regular traveller?”

“We make no discount from that figure.”

“Ye wouldn’t take half of it in trade?”

“I want your fare at once, or we will have to land you!”

“Don’t want a nice rat-trap, do ye, stranger?” inquired the passenger. “One which sets herself, works on scientific principles, allus ready, painted a nice green, wanted by every family, warranted to knock the socks off’n any other trap ever invented by mortal man?”

“No, sir; I want the money!” replied the clerk in emphatic tones.

“Oh, wall, I’ll pay; of course I will,” said the rat-trap man; “but that’s an awful figger for a ride to Orleans, and cash is cash these days.”

He counted out the fare in ragged shin-plasters, wound a shoe-string around his wallet and replaced it, and then unlocked one of the satchels and took out a wire rat-trap. Proceeding to the cabin, he looked the ground over, and then waltzing up to a young lady who sat on a sofa reading, he began—

“I take great pleasure in presenting to your attention the Eureky rat-trap, the best trap ever invented. It sets——”

“Sir!” she exclaimed, rising to her feet.

“Name’s Harrington Baker,” he went on, turning the trap around on his outstretched hand, “and I guarantee this trap to do more square killing among rats than——”

She gave him a look of scorn and contempt, and swept grandly away; and without being the least put out he walked over to a bald-headed man who had tilted his chair back and fallen asleep.

“Fellow-mortal, awakest and gaze upon the Eureky rat-trap,” said the stranger, as he laid his hand on the shiny pate of the sleeper.

“Wh—who—what!” exclaimed the Bald-head, opening his eyes and flinging his arms around.

“I take this opportunity to call your attention to my Eureky rat-trap,” continued the new passenger; “the noblest Roman of them all. Try one, and you will use no other. It is constructed on——”

“Who in thunder do you take me for?” exclaimed the bald-headed man at this point. “What in blazes do I want of your rat-trap?”

“To ketch rats!” humbly replied the stranger; “to clear yer premises of one of the most obnoxious pests known to man. I believe I am safe in saying that this ’ere——”

“Go away, sir—go away; or I’ll knock your blamed head off!” roared the Bald-head. “When I want a rat-trap I shan’t patronise travelling vagabonds! Your audacity in daring to put your hand on my head and wake me up deserves a caning!”

“Then you don’t want a rat-trap?”

“No, SIR!” yelled Bald-head.

“I’ll make you one mighty cheap.”

“I’ll knock you down, sir!” roared Bald-head, looking around for his cane.

“Oh, wall, I ain’t a starvin’, and it won’t make much difference if I don’t sell to you!” remarked the stranger, and he backed off and left the cabin for the promenade deck.

An old maid sat in the shadow of the Texas, embroidering a slipper, and the rat-trap man drew a stool up beside her and remarked—

“Madam, my name is Baker, and I am the inventor of the Eureky rat-trap, a sample copy of which I hold here on my left hand, and I think I can safely say that——”

“Sir, this is unpardonable!” she exclaimed, pushing back.

“I didn’t have an introduction to ye, of course,” he replied, holding the trap up higher: “but business is business, you know. Let me sell you a Eureky trap, and make ye happy for life; I warrant this trap to——”

“Sir, I shall call the captain!” she interrupted, turning pale with rage.

“Does _he_ want a trap?” eagerly inquired the man.

“Such impudence deserves the horsewhip!” screamed the old maid, backing away.

The rat-trap man went forward and found a northern invalid, who was so far gone that he could hardly speak above a whisper.

“Ailing, eh?” queried the trapper.

The invalid nodded.

“Wall, I won’t say that my Eureky rat-trap will cure ye,” continued the man; “but this much I do say, and will swear to on a million Bibles, that it climbs the ridge-pole over any immortal vermin-booster ever yet set before——”

The captain came up at this juncture, and informed the inventor that he must quit annoying passengers.

“But some of ’em may want one o’ my Eureky traps,” protested the man.

“Can’t help it; this is no place to sell traps.”

“But this is no scrub trap—none o’ your humbugs, got up to swindle the hair right off of an innocent and confiding public.”

“You hear me—put that trap up!”

“I’ll put it up, of course; but then I’ll leave it to yerself if it isn’t rather Shylocky in a steamboat to charge me the reg’lar figger to Orleans, and then stop me from passing my Eureky rat-trap out to the hankerin’ public?”

_C. B. Lewis_ (“_M. Quad._”)

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_THE SCHOOL EXAMINATION._

THE bell tapped, and they came forth to battle. There was the line, there was the leader. The great juncture of the day was on him. Was not here the State’s official eye? Did not victory hover overhead? His reserve, the darling regiment, the flower of his army, was dressing for the final charge. There was Claude. Next him, Sidonie!—and Étienne, and Madelaine, Henri and Marcelline,—all waiting for the word—the words—of eight syllables! Supreme moment! Would any betray? Banish the thought! Would any fail?

He waited an instant while two or three mothers bore out great armfuls of slumbering or fretting infancy, and a number of young men sank down into the vacated chairs. Then he stepped down from the platform, drew back four or five yards from the class, opened the spelling-book, scanned the first word, closed the book with his finger at the place, lifted it high above his head, and cried—

“Claude! Claude, my brave scholar, always perfect, ah you ready?” He gave the little book a half whirl round, and dashed forward towards the chosen scholar, crying as he came—

“In-e-rad-i-ca-bility!”

Claude’s face suddenly set in a stony vacancy, and with his eyes staring straight before him he responded—

“I-n, in-, e, inerad-, r-a-d, rad-, inerad-, ineraddy-, ineradica-, c-a, ca, ineradica-, ineradicabili-, b-i-elly- billy, ineradicabili-, ineradicabili-, t-y, ty, ineradicability.”

“Right! Claude, my boy! my always good scholar, right!” The master drew back to his starting-place as he spoke, re-opened the book, shut it again, lifted it high in the air, cried, “Madelaine, my dear chile, prepare!” whirled the book and rushed upon her with—

“In-de-fat-i-ga-bil-ly-ty!”

Madelaine turned to stone, and began—

“I-n, een, d-e, de-, inde-, indefat-, indefat—fat—f-a-t, fat, indefat, indefatty, i, ty, indefati-, indefatiga-, g-a, ga, indefatiga-, indefatigabilly, b-i-elly, billy, indefatigabili-, t-y, ty, indefatigability.”

“O, Madelaine, my chile, you make yo’ teacher proud! prah-ood, my chile!” Bonaventure’s hand rested a moment tenderly on her head as he looked first towards the audience and then towards the stranger. Then he drew off for the third word. He looked at it twice before he called it. Then—

“Sidonie! ah! Sidonie, be ready! be prepared! fail not yo’ humble school-teacher! In-com——” He looked at the word a third time, and then swept down upon her; “In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-_bility_!”

Sidonie flinched not nor looked upon him, as he hung over her with the spelling-book at arm’s reach above them; yet the pause that followed seemed to speak dismay, and throughout the class there was a silent recoil from something undiscovered by the master. But an instant later Sidonie had chosen between the two horns of her agonising dilemma, and began—

“I-n, een, c-o-m, cawm, eencawm, eencawmpre, p-r-e, pre, eencawmpre, eencawmprehen, prehen, haich-e-n, hen, hen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, bil——”

“Ah! Sidonie! stop! _Arretez!_ Si-do-nie-e-e-e! Oh! listen—_écoutez_—Sidonie, my dear!” The master threw his arms up and down in distraction, then suddenly faced the visitor. “Sir, it was my blame! I spoke the word without adequate distinction! Sidonie—_maintenant_—now!” But a voice in the audience interrupted with—

“_Assoiez-vous la_, Chat-oué! seet down yondeh!” And at the potent voice of Maximian Roussel the offender was pushed silently into the seat he had risen from, and Bonaventure gave the word again.

“In-com-pre-hen-si-ca-bil-i-ty!” And Sidonie, blushing like fire, returned to the task.

“I-n, een——” She bit her lips and trembled.

“Right! _Right!_ Tremble not, my Sidonie! fear naught! yo’ loving school-teacher is at thy side!” But she trembled like a red leaf as she spelled on—“Haich-e-n, hen, eencawmprehen, eencawmprehensi, s-i, si, eencawmprehensi-, eencawmprehensi-billy-t-y, ty, incomprehensibility!”

The master dropped his hands and lifted his eyes in speechless despair. As they fell again upon Sidonie her own met them. She moaned, covered her face with her hands, burst into tears, ran to her desk, and threw her hands and face upon it, shaking with noiseless sobs and burning red to the nape of her perfect neck. All Grande Pointe rose to its feet.

“Lost!” cried Bonaventure in a heart-broken voice. “Every thing lost! Farewell, chil’run!” He opened his arms towards them, and with one dash all the lesser ones filled them. They wept. Tears welled from Bonaventure’s eyes; and the mothers of Grande Pointe dropped again into their seats and silently added theirs.

The next moment all eyes were on Maximian. His strong figure was mounted on a chair, and he was making a gentle, commanding gesture with one hand as he called: “Seet down! Seet down, all han’!” and all sank down, Bonaventure in a mass of weeping and clinging children. ’Mian too resumed his seat, at the same time waving to the stranger to speak.

“My friends,” said the visitor, rising with alacrity, “I say when a man makes a bargain, he ought to stick to it!” He paused for them—as many as could—to take in the meaning of his English speech, and, it may be, expecting some demonstration of approval; but dead silence reigned, all eyes on him save Bonaventure’s and Sidonie’s. He began again: “A bargain’s a bargain!” And Chat-oué nodded approvingly and began to say audibly, “Yass;” but ’Mian thundered out—

“_Taise toi_, Chat-oué! Shot op!” And the silence was again complete, while the stranger resumed—

“There was a plain bargain made.” He moved a step forward and laid the matter off on the palm of his hand. “There was to be an examination! The school was not to know; but if one scholar should make one mistake the schoolhouse was to be closed and the schoolmaster sent away. Well, there’s been a mistake made, and I say a bargain’s a bargain.” Dead silence still. The speaker looked at ’Mian. “Do you think they understand me?”

“Dey meck out,” said ’Mian, and shut his firm jaws.

“My friends,” said the stranger once more, “some people think education’s a big thing, and some think it ain’t. Well, sometimes it is, and sometimes it ain’t. Now, here’s this man”—he pointed down to where Bonaventure’s dishevelled crown was drooping to his knees—“claims to have taught over thirty of your children to read. Well, what of it? A man can know how to read, and be just as no account as he was before. He brags that he’s taught them to talk English. Well, what does that prove? A man _might_ speak English and starve to death. He claims, I am told, to have taught some of them to write. But I know a man in the penitentiary that can write; he wrote too much.”

Bonaventure had lifted his head, and was sitting with his eyes upon the speaker in close attention. At this last word he said—

“Ah! sir! too true, too true ah yo’ words; nevertheless, their cooelty! ’Tis not what is print’ _in_ the books, but what you learn _through_ the books!”

“Yes; and so you hadn’t never ought to have made the bargain you made; but, my friends, a bargain’s a bargain, and the teacher’s——” He paused invitingly, and an answer came from the audience. It was Catou who rose and said—

“Naw, sah. Naw; he don’t got to go!” But again ’Mian thundered—

“_Taise toi_, Catou. Shot op!”

“I say,” continued the stranger, “the mistake’s been made. _Three_ mistakes have been made!”

“Yass!” roared Chat-oué, leaping to his feet and turning upon the assemblage a face fierce with triumph. Suspense and suspicions were past now; he was to see his desire on his enemy. But instantly a dozen men were on their feet—St. Pierre, Catou, Bonaventure himself, with a countenance full of pleading deprecation, and even Claude, flushed with anger.

“Naw, sah! Naw, sah! Waun meesteck?”

“Seet down, all han’!” yelled ’Mian; “all han’ seet dahoon!” Only Chat-oué took his seat, glancing upon the rest with the exultant look of one who can afford to yield ground.

“The first mistake,” resumed the stranger, addressing himself especially to the risen men still standing, and pointing to Catou, “the first mistake was in the kind of bargain you made.” He ceased, and passed his eyes around from one to another until they rested for an instant on the bewildered countenance of Chat-oué. Then he turned again upon the people, who had sat down, and began to speak with the exultation of a man that feels his subject lifting him above himself.

“I came out here to show up that man as a fraud. But what do I find?—A poor, unpaid, half-starved man that loves his thankless work better than his life, teaching what not one school-master in a thousand can teach: teaching his whole school four better things than were ever printed in any school-book—how to study, how to think, how to value knowledge, and to love one another and mankind. What you’d ought to have done was to agree that such a school should keep open, and such a teacher should stay, if jest one, one lone child should answer one single book-question right! But, as I said before, a bargain’s a bargain——Hold on, there! Sit down! You shan’t interrupt me again!” Men were standing up on every side; there was a confusion and a loud buzz of voices. “The second mistake,” the stranger made haste to cry, “was thinking the teacher gave out that last word right. He gave it wrong! And the third mistake,” he shouted against the rising commotion, “was thinking it was spelt wrong. _She spelt it right!_ And a bargain’s a bargain!—the school-master stays!”

He could say no more; the rumble of voices suddenly burst into a cheer. The women and children laughed and clapped their hands,—Toutou his feet also,—and Bonaventure, flirting the leaves of a spelling-book till he found the place, looked, cried “In-com-pre-hen-_sibility_!” wheeled and dashed upon Sidonie, seizing her hands in his as she turned to fly, and gazed speechlessly upon her, with the tears running down his face. Feeling a large hand upon his shoulder, he glanced around and saw ’Mian pointing him to his platform and desk. Thither he went. The stranger had partly restored order. Every one was in his place. But what a change! What a gay flutter throughout the old shed! Bonaventure seemed to have bathed in the fountain of youth. Sidonie, once more the school’s queen-flower, sat calm, with just a trace of tears adding a subtle something to her beauty.

“Chil’run, beloved chil’run,” said Bonaventure, standing once more by his desk, “yo’ school-teacher has the blame of the sole mistake; and, sir, gladly, oh, gladly, sir, would he always have the blame rather than any of his beloved school-chil’run!”

_George Washington Cable._

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“_WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO KNOW?_”

A MADRIGAL.