Chapter V: Part 5

“Jes’ caught the gang-plank in time, ain’t we?” laughed the captain. “Dodged the yeller-bellies so far.”

Emerging from the grove, they stole across frozen stagnant water, among squalid red clay huts with tiny lattices under the thatching. Four soldiers, singing with locked arms as they passed, kicked a fallen Korean chimney—a tin kerosene can. Not a white-robed philosopher was in sight, but through the huts’ straw fences, they could see long-haired hags huddled over smoky braziers in which bubbled the head of a dog or hoof of a bull. Through low door-ways in the haze of tiny, ill-trimmed lamps, sore-covered children in soiled bright silks rolled on matless earth beside chests clamped with iron.

At last the schoolhouse, white, high-gabled, and awkwardly occidental, faced them. They chained the bear to a rail of the steps, and without knocking entered a long empty room of half a dozen glass windows, its plain boards lit by two big swinging kerosene lamps, and decorated with British and Japanese flags. From the platform at the far end, behind a drawn red cotton curtain strung on a long wire, a spiral stair wound to the loft under the gable overhead. Chairs and benches were piled in the corners.

Karin San tripped down the stair in her best iris kimono and big obi, pausing at intervals as she crossed the floor to bow the glittering comb in her black hair. Her powdered oval face resembled an enamel shell. With half closed eyes and red lips parted, she seemed striving to speak volumes of welcome, and to be intensely amused and overwhelmed by her inability.

“_Kombomoi kombomoi_,”[1] she gasped and the captain responded, his heart beating faster, but his eyes suspicious of the vacant building.

[1] “Good Evening!”

“Very sorry, very sorry, Brewster San,” pleaded the little school mistress. “Tonight, no Uncle Tom. No show.”

Little Eva’s red shawl hung from a nail over the platform, also the gray beard and spectacles of Uncle Tom, while on it rested a couple of buckets filled with ice-cakes. From wondering how that spectacular scene of Eliza’s crossing was to be portrayed—if a samisan could render the proper jumpy music—the captain’s eyes fixed Davy’s in mute wonder.

“Military authority—Major Kumoda—just now order me no show,” Karin apologized, again bowing with a smile in which her visitors, though used to oriental deception, could read no duplicity. “Mebbe soldier come.”

The soft chords in her neck glistened like velvet, but again the captain turned from them to his spy, saying, “Right you were in growlin’ to come here. Better say yer prayers, boy, if you Rooshians is as good at prayin’ as they tell. She’s snared us for the mustard-bellies.”

“You shall not so accuse her!” burst out the spy. “May not her deed be honorable? Did not the soldiers open and read her missive? Having not found us on the hill, they have reason to look here at once.”

But the schoolmistress had crept to a window and was looking out, her snub nose pressed tight against the pane. From outside came the mutter of voices, and crunch of feet on the lingering snow.

“Damn us for fools!” broke out the captain. “And I’ve dragged ye down to death, boy, for they dassent shoot a Yankee. Davy, blame me. I don’t ask yer to forgive,” and his voice weakened. “I told yer I come to bid the girl good-bye. It’s not the first time this cowardly fool heart o’ mine hes ruined me with others. But after all these useless years o’ my life, to find this yeller girl respond to all the stored-up sorrers—” he broke off, gulping.

“Then I am happy to come,” said the Russian with tense slowness, “if for your sake, my captain. It is then not the forgiveness, I owe,” he added bitterly, with set teeth, “but—” and he burst out laughing, shouting—“So there was no place else to hide? As well here as elsewhere might one be taken!”

“Boy, I knew ye had no fear of death,” said the captain, laying a hand on Davy’s shoulder. “An’ how I love her—Karin!”

He walked to the bright little figure tremblingly preoccupied by the window, and extended his arms. The Russian could stand it no longer. With fierce Slavic impulse, he tore off his disguise with one dash of his arm, and, erect with blazing eyes, checked the captain.

“Captain! Fear of death? Never!” he cried. “Because the soldier must think Karin in league with me, a vile spy, I would rather have surrendered myself than come here to hide with her. Yet I go, because you, my friend—dear to me—request, and jealously I think you also love her. You confess, Captain, we have long been esteemed together, and to you I owe more than my life; yet Karin you shall not seize from me, even in the moment of my death. I love her better than my life or your own, or her life. We have long loved. Yet may she love you the more. In this hour, I leave to her to choose between us!”

With a cry, the little schoolmistress threw herself into Davy’s outstretched arms, and was smothered in a long embrace.

The captain bent his head. “Davy, forgive me,” he whispered after a silence. “I never guessed she was yourn a’ready, else I’d not—I do ask yer forgiveness now.”

The spy limped toward the Yankee to press his outstretched hand, and a stone struck the schoolhouse door. “You hear,” laughed Karin, at the window again with woman’s tact, but losing innocence of her lover’s danger. “Major and two soldiers afraid of him. He very brave, but I think soon soldier shoot him. They would come arrest you! You will hide? Go, go upstair! My room!” she cried excitedly, pointing to the spiral.

The captain looked out. “Hold yer ground, Gen’ral,” he called. “This ain’t no picnic bitin’ wood thieves. He’ll hold on to the last, Davy. I seen him nip the major’s sword, and wink at me—By crotch, they’re gaggin’ him!” He turned to the lovers. “Go, Davy, go! Up them stairs with her. It’s yer one chance. I’ll face the monkeys and take my medicine. It’s the least I owe yer,” and a vain thought of his cable message and the American gunboat at Chemulpo a hundred miles away flashed through him.

Karin San seized the spy by the arm, and they vanished up the spiral stairway. Immediately bayonets crashed upon the door, and it burst open. The doll-eyed soldier and his companion of the morning, preceded by the green-capped cavalry officer, hurled themselves into the room. The officer seized the captain by both arms. “Brewster, American, we arrest!” he cried, and turning to the doll-eye, delivered a rapid order to search the house,—so judged the Yankee—for he smiled and bowed at his prisoner, saying, “We find also you friend, Russki spy.”

But the doll-eye and his mate were checked in ascending the stair by Karin San descending with upraised arms and her sweetest smile. The privates paused and bowed. The three at first spoke calmly back and forth. Then the doll-eye began shouting at the schoolmistress, once with what the captain was certain would be an oath in English. But always she replied to them earnestly smiling, never pleadingly, gravely shaking her head, her hand upon her heart; always quiet, determined, arguing with utter self-possession, calmly appealing—to what? wondered the captain, in such fanatics of patriotism.

At length both soldiers turned and saluted the Major, uttered a short sentence, and descended the stair.

The officer turned to Brewster, elevating his long mustachios in a sardonic smile. “You see,” he said, “the love of country of the Japanese. Perhaps you think it is the respect for woman, wherefore my soldier do not search the teacher room. It is not. Boy, man, woman, all labor for the same end, our country. No one would betray; we trust one another absolute. It is so we exist; we fight; we win.

“We think the spy Russki enter here with you. But Karin San, as much myself officer of the Emperor, declare he is not here,” he went on with a self-satisfied smile. “We believe her. He has escape,” and turning to the soldiers he gave them another sharp order—to search the town and the hills about.

Next morning, sitting cross-legged and politely silent with his captor, at a breakfast of sweet chicken hash and cabbage, Captain Brewster sprang to his feet. “_Bzoo-oo-oooo!_” groaned a whistle under the glittering hills along the river. Away dashed his manikin host without word or glance. Between the cedar slats of the captain’s prison—the major’s house by courtesy—the Yankee sighted the long, thin funnel and squat deck of an American gunboat.

Two hours passed. Then the doll-eyed soldier who stood guard on the veranda, slid open the paper house-door. Three tall Yankee tars followed by a young lieutenant with sandy hair and a long upper lip, scraped heavy feet on the major’s mats.

“Brewster, are you responsible for this?” said the officer, handing the captain a pink paper oblong.

“Guess I be,” drawled the prisoner, taking the cable message. He read:

State Department orders unconditional protection for Brewster,
American, Chinnampo.

The telegram was addressed to the commander of the gunboat, dated Tokio, and signed by the United States Minister there.

The captain whistled a moment.

“Say, what’s your state?” he inquired of his countryman.

“Maine,” replied the lieutenant.

“Aroostook County?” demanded the captain.

“No, Skowhegan on the Amonoosuc. Born in Penobsticook myself, but my folks was raised on the Allegash,” grinned the officer.

When the captain had whistled again, he observed, “Like to be back there, wouldn’t you, in a country where they have Christian names you can pronounce?” And the lieutenant embellished his assent gracefully, with expletives.

“These young Napoleons,” he began soon, indicating the little major’s green cap which bobbed in the rear, “are interfering with my orders. They say that you’ve been running a spy ranch. Their chiefs have pulled out for the Yalu, so they want to dicker with Tokio before I take you cruising and talk over the spring fishing back home.”

“Let me give you a tip on that, lieutenant,” said the captain, putting his hand on the officer’s shoulder. Then he whispered awhile into the young man’s ear. At first the lieutenant shook his head seriously; then quite as gravely dug the captain in the ribs. And as the delegation, including the manikin major, withdrew, Brewster called after to his new friend, “Mind the boys use only blank shells. We want a bluff, not an international war.”

And so the little cavalry officer never came back to his prisoner at all. In half an hour, “Boom-boom!” resounded guns from the blue Tai-Dong. The doll-eye thrust his head into the paper door. “You hear? You hear?” he cried pointing to smoke curling about the Stars and Stripes on the river.

“America—Japan—cross—fight—so,” said Brewster, linking his two forefingers. And the doll-eye dashed away.

The captain’s ruse of firing blank shots to force the telegram had worked. When he believed that the coast was clear, he stepped out on the veranda. Only the lieutenant from Maine was walking up the hill.

“I’ve got a Jap servant and his wife that I’d like to take abroad with us,” said the captain to his savior, as they descended into the town, where not even a Jap private was in evidence. “They’re over yonder in that white building,” and he pointed to the schoolhouse. “And wait,” added the captain, while the officer despatched an orderly from the landing, “Could he fetch along my—my—pet Newfoundland dog, as well?”

Remarked the younger man from Maine, as the two watched from the gunboat the clean hills fold over the straw roofs of Chinnampo: “If there’s trouble from all this, that’s for the dudes in Washington to fix. Spies is spies, but them pine trees is pine trees, and valuable, as we ought to know. Too bad about old Kuropatkin, though most orderlies _would_ be afraid of bears—Hello! Look!”

He pointed to the water. Aport, a black oblong rippled the surface of the river—Kuropatkin swimming out to the vessel.

“Hi, Pat! Sic ’em, sic ’em!” shouted the captain.

When the ship had heaved to and started again, the captain’s face was salt and wet against a shaggy brown coat.

Also wet were the faces of a light-haired youth, and a little teacher of English as she is Japped.

_Where the Road Dips_

HENRY FLETCHER HARRIS

Post-Oak and hickory talk in air,
And mutter where the roadway dips;
And tree-toads croak; and darkness drips;
And blackberries trail live fragrance there.

Ragweed and horehound, sage and mint,
And many a nameless herb beside,
Work homely magic—at one stride
The Past returns the way it went!

Chuckle of water greets the ear;
The light wind tries the brake and goes;
Far off the summer lightning shows,
But summer thunder comes not near.

This tender darkness stills the heart
As with old music; and the stars
Drop coolness where the shadow-bars
Of many branches mix and part.

A voice comes on the wind-thrilled night
Long drowned amid the roaring years;
My eyes are stung with blinding tears,
And fear and doubt dissolve in light!

_Westerman, in Ohio State Journal_]

_McCutcheon, in Chicago Tribune_]

_Westerman, in Ohio State Journal_]

_Repeal the Land Laws_

BY HUGH J. HUGHES

There remains something considerably less than 500,000,000 acres of public land open to settlement. From this total amount careful and conservative estimates deduct 300,000,000 acres as not suited to present known methods of agriculture. The remaining 200,000,000 of the public domain is passing into the hands of private individuals at a rate exceeding 17,000,000 acres per year. At the present rate of diminution the valuable public domain will be exhausted within the next decade and a half.

The public domain lies largely in the States and Territories of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, Utah, Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, South and North Dakota and California. In Texas, by virtue of the agreement with the United States at the time of annexation, the title to the public lands rests in the State. Liberal grants to the Western States, of lands for school and institutional purposes, should be added to the public domain in order to arrive at the total land available for future settlement. These State lands are sold at prices somewhat below the price of similar unimproved lands in the same locality, but on long terms, and appeal about equally to the farmers and the speculators. Their gradual disposal is placing in the treasuries of the Eastern States a large school fund. The people are the beneficiaries under the administration of the State land laws. A possible 50,000,000 acres of farming land is available from this source after the National domain is gone. It is well to note in passing that the value of the State lands rises in proportion to that of surrounding lands. It is controlled and disposed of with entirely different motives from those supposed to govern the control and disposal of the lands of the general Government. It is not free land in any sense of the word.

There are many who, remembering how the Western limit of grain raising has crept westward across Kansas, Nebraska and the Dakotas, look for a repetition, or, more properly speaking, a continuation of this phenomenon across the remaining public domain. It is true that we are only on the borderland of plant-breeding possibilities. Spelz, or macaroni wheat, Kaffir corn, and other drought-resistant cereals are making a marvelous change in Western farming conditions, and in the certainty of crop maturity; but as was stated before, under known conditions, only two-fifths of all this Western land is now or will ever be adapted to agriculture. On the remaining three-fifths, grazing, limited in amount, will continue to be profitable. Within this large area lie the giant ridges of the Rocky Mountains. Great gulches channel their slopes. Valleys are strewn with the debris of ages of erosion. Rain fall is scanty. Water supplied from artesian wells has only a limited possibility of use. Irrigation is local in application, and limited not only by stream supply, but also by the topography of the country. We have reached the limits of the immediate adaptation of agriculture to climatic conditions.

The area of the valuable public domain is measurable, but it is as yet not measured. To the eastward of the area named there is some land still open to settlement under the homestead act. What sort of land is it? Land covered with glacial drift, swamps, hills, sandy land—the cast away heritage of three generations of keen-eyed farmers. Greater stress of need will bring some of this under the plow, but the fact remains that it is undesirable land, viewed from the standpoint of the man who desires not only a home, but a competence.

Alaska, with unknown but probably limited agricultural possibilities, is already beginning to attract the attention of the speculative public. Farmers are not greatly interested in the development of agriculture in a region so remote and where the season precludes farming on a broad scale.

This somewhat lengthy statement of present day conditions is necessary in order to understand the danger that menaces us as a people through the alienation of the public domain from its legitimate uses. The land open to settlement is passing, not into the possession of makers of homes, but into the hands of speculators who are enriching themselves in the first instance at the expense of the farmers, but ultimately at that of the people at large.

The vast grants to the transcontinental railroads, by means of which the Government paid private parties royally for building roads that have, since their construction, charged the people for services rendered “all the traffic will bear,” threw open, wide open, the doors to the land speculator.

Railroad lands were bought up at a low figure by companies backed by Eastern capital, just as today similar companies are buying up and exploiting the Canadian Northwest. Settlers were sought for and brought in by the car load. They were located on a quarter section of Government land, and sold as much more of the adjoining speculators’ land as they could be persuaded to buy. Under other firm names these same gentlemen who exploited the public and corporation lands sold horses and farm machinery to the new settler, taking mortgages as partial security on crops not yet grown. The lean years came, and the land companies reaped to the full their harvests.

So passed away from the people millions of acres of land in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas and the bordering States. Today that land is selling back to the people at prices ranging from $10 to $40 an acre—land which I have seen sold under the sheriff’s hammer at less than $1.00 an acre.

These land agencies are, in a thousand ways, busying themselves in the securing of further lands for speculative purposes. The days of wholesale grants having gone by, they are turning their attention to the lands of the individual settler, and under their tutelage clerks, teachers, town men and women, hired laborers, men who do not know wheat from barley or rye from flax, are filing upon the last of the tillable public lands. Under the homestead law, these settlers are allowed six months after entry in which to establish homes on their land. This time is taken full advantage of. Then a board shack is built and the law complied with by the breaking of a few acres of sod. Eight months more of (constructive) continuous residence, and the land becomes the property of the settler upon a cash payment of $1.25 to $2.50 an acre, according to location. The company furnishes the commutation money and “finds” a purchaser for the claim. The shack is boarded up or moved off. The sod grows to weeds. The settler, having made from $800 to $2,500 by a little enterprise and a good deal of perjury, is eliminated from the problem.

This cat’s-paw of organized land plunder is securing for his principals a large, a very large, percentage of all the public lands passing under private ownership. It would be safe to say that one holding out of every four passes into speculative hands. Judged by conditions, past and existing, in the two Dakotas, this estimate might be doubled, and yet fall within the facts. On this point see the report of the Commissioner of the General Land Office for 1905. The land companies immediately list their newly acquired lands, and by an ingenious system of “booms,” carefully nursed and let loose at the proper time, they advance the price of their lands to a point sometimes double or treble the original market value of the raw prairies. This is wholly, or almost wholly, a paper increase in value. Roads, schools, markets remain as before save for the change wrought by the actual settlers.

This is, in essence, the same thing as the watering of railroad or other stocks, and it is done for the same purpose—that the “ins”—the land speculators—may fatten on the “outs”—the farmers. And if the land valuations now obtaining in the fringe of settlement bordering the public domain be from 25 to 75 per cent water, how about its effect on the land values in older sections—say in Iowa, or Ohio, or Illinois?

Obviously the price will be enhanced. And the immediate, discernible effect of that is to render it more difficult for the landless man to become an owner. I have seen land go from $25 an acre to $60 and over, in Iowa and other States in the East. The land utility is the same as in years gone by. It will raise no more—sometimes less than former years. But every dollar added to the price has increased the rental, and decreased the possibilities of a laboring man becoming owner of his own farm.

Someone will say that this is untrue; that the returns from an acre of land are today greater than in former years. What I mean is that an acre of land cropped for ten or fifteen or twenty years is no more valuable today as a producer of grain or live stock than it was then. The added value of the crop is due to better markets, better implements, better knowledge of agriculture. In other words it is a net gain due to labor and intelligence, and as such should go to labor. Instead of that it is consumed in rent. With every advance in the values of Western lands and the consequent narrowing of the opportunities afforded the landless man of the Eastern and Central States, the values, or rather the prices, of these older lands advance.

And if the speculator is able at this time to force the price of land up by leaps and bounds—if he can take raw prairie and, without adding to its value by so much as one furrow of breaking or one bushel of ripened grain, can make it double his money for him, how will it be when the last of the tillable public lands are taken? How will it be when the only desirable vacant lands are held for speculative purposes? How will it be when there is no alternative between paying some farmer for a part of his holding or paying some land company its price, based upon monopolistic values?

Today, in the West, favored by cheap land—$25 to $30 an acre—I am giving $1.30 as rental for every $1.00 I receive as tenant. Here it still is possible for a man to start single handed and win a farm, but the crops remain about the same, the prices are slowly bettering, the cost of the bare necessities of living is lowering, the price of land is rapidly advancing, the rental is going up, and my wages as a tenant are becoming relatively less. I can still say, “Unless you give me a living chance, I will go to the free lands and make my own home.” I still can pay for a home for myself here. But I know that a decade hence conditions will have changed. There will be no ‘farther West’ in the sense in which we know it today. The increased land values will shut out a great body of men from becoming land owners, or they will achieve their aim only at the expense of a life-time of grinding toil. The basis of a landed aristocracy on the one hand, and of a landless tenant class on the other will have been laid. And you do not live so far to the Eastward, nor are you so deeply buried in the great cities that the thrill of that new birth of despotism shall not reach you, and be a portent of danger to your independence as a citizen and as a man.

Repeal the land laws! Let the settlement of the public domain cease until we know its capabilities. Better to deprive a few worthy men and women of the advantage afforded by the laws than to throw away the birthright of unborn millions. We do not know very much as yet about the ability of the West to sustain population, but this we do know, that no general land law can apply to this great semi-arid region and give anything like equal justice. Investigate carefully the areas desired for settlement. Make the unit of the homestead variable, according to the amount needed to support a family. In irrigated sections but a few acres will suffice. In even the drier districts it may well be questioned whether more than 160 acres should be granted any one settler. We cover altogether too much ground. Our Western farming has borne bitter harvestings of the weed called “land hunger.” We need to concentrate.

And whatever laws may be enacted, they should be of such a character as will stop speculation in lands intended for the people. Let the lands be sold, and no title pass until after a reasonably long term of years, and after actual continuous residence and actual valuable improvements have shown beyond question that home making was the primary object of the settler.

But the urgent present need is for repeal of the various laws that permit this land plunder. We can settle details of future administration later on. We cannot later on return to the people their stolen lands.

_Candid_

Mrs. NEWROCKS—If there’s anything I hate it’s writing letters.

NEWROCKS—Do you?

Mrs. NEWROCKS—Yes, indeed. I wish somebody would invent an easy substitute for spelling.

_Proof_

FIRST COMMUTER—This is a one-horse railroad, anyhow.

SECOND COMMUTER—Of course it is. Why, J. P. Morgan never tried to get control of it.

BY CLARENCE S. DARROW.]

It was in 1850 that William Henry came to Chicago. He was then a young man of twenty-five and fresh from his father’s farm. While William was still in his teens it was plain that the slow life of New England would never satisfy his ambitions and desires and so his restless nature turned him to the great, wide West.

William had scarcely landed in the little, muddy, struggling town before he knew that he and the city would grow up together. Even in its early days, Chicago had that wonderful power which clings to it still—that power of inspiring every one who touches it with absolute confidence in its greatness and its strength.

When William Henry came to Chicago it was a little village stuck fast in the swamp and mud that bordered the great lake, while in every other direction stretched the endless prairie with its black soil and its green, waving grass. But William Henry was young and Chicago was young and even then in his imagination he saw before him the endless stone streets and the unnumbered stores and factories and homes that the future years would bring.

He had not long been in Chicago before he caught the spirit of its vigor and they both marched rapidly toward wealth and power. He soon founded a tobacco warehouse and salesroom on Lake Street, and his business steadily increased with the growth of the city until he gained that imposing title of dignity, influence, selfishness and narrowness, “a business man.” As he left the busy years behind, his warehouse grew greater, and he moved from place to place until he occupied a whole building on Lake Street which he had bought and paid for from the incense that a generous people was everlastingly sending up, if not to his glory, still to his profit.

William Henry had come from the farm, and with all his city life and training he kept the inborn love for the soil, for the blue sky, the open air and a piece of land big enough for a cottage, a garden, a barn and a chicken house—such necessities as he had known in his younger days. These simple surroundings of a rural life which seem hard and bare while they are living things, because of the toil and pains that all the necessities of life impose—these simple companions of our youth seem, somehow, to grow into the fiber of our being, and when we look back upon them from our artificial surroundings and our worn out feelings, the mist of the gathering years covers them with a glamor that makes us think that our childhood was lived in a fairyland.

So when business grew prosperous, Henry looked for a piece of land. He did not want a twenty-five foot lot or even an acre, but he wanted a fine, big “patch” on which he “could turn around.” He always kept a horse and buggy, and every Sunday after his week’s work was done, he would drive out into the country to find a “patch.” He drove out beyond the brick stores; out beyond the houses and frame cottages; out beyond the utmost limit of the place; out on the open prairie, covered with water in the spring and rank with high weeds and waving grass in the summer months, and out there in the country he found a “patch” of fifty acres of raw prairie, which, like a herd of wild horses on the plains, had never been subdued by man. His friends and neighbors laughed when he told them of his “farm” clear out beyond the confines of civilization, almost to the red man’s reservation, but he told them to wait and see. In his prophetic brain there rose the scene of a great city, stretching out along the lake, reaching far to the north and south and west—a wondrous conglomeration of all the people of the earth drawn together by the magic name “Chicago.”

In his vision, he could see railroads and street cars, stone pavements and brick houses covering the “patch” with teeming life. Poor Henry, he was not a fool; he was too wise. For there are two men for whom the world never has any use; one is the fool and the other the philosopher. The fool believes that there is nothing but today; the wise man thinks that there is nothing but tomorrow. So the fool toils and the wise man dreams, and the mediocre man reaps the harvest—reaps the harvest born of the poor man’s work and the wise man’s dreams.

When William Henry bought this patch, he had a vision of a time when relieved from business cares, he would build a house like the one his father owned, only on a larger scale. He would have a garden, such as it seemed to him was planted behind his father’s house. He would have a barn with horses, and cows that gave real milk, and a chicken house where real eggs were laid, and then, still further on in the magical future that he knew was in store for the city that he loved, he saw his “patch” cut up into building lots and covered with stores and factories and houses built of brick and stone and standing firm and brave to verify his faith and dreams.

So Sunday after Sunday he drove to his “Farm”, week by week he carried out his neighbors and his friends. He planted trees and he dug a well. He worked and planned and planted and dreamed out on his “patch” beyond the great town ever reaching farther and farther toward the cherished spot.

Well, the dreams and plans of man all go for naught in the presence of the blind forces that control the world, and one day Henry was startled by the cry of fire. In the twinkling of an eye his warehouse was in flames and all of his tobacco at once turned into smoke, without so much as the aid of a single pipe. When Henry awoke from his stupor, all Chicago was a smoldering heap of ashes, and he was a ruined man. The only thing that escaped the flames was the little green patch so far away on the prairies that even the fire scorned to search it out.

Henry no longer had the strength and energy of twenty years before, but he did the best he could. He built a little cigar store in place of the great warehouse that was once his pride. He still went back and forth on Sundays to his patch of ground, and now he dreamed only of a little house out there on the farm where he might keep a cow and some chickens, and return to the simple life that his childhood years had known. But there was one man who found his patch, and this was the tax gatherer. No land was ever yet too far away for him. Year by year, the assessor put a value on his farm, and the little cigar store could not yield the revenue to pay. Of course, he never dreamed of selling the land to some one else; no one does. Deep in the soul of man is planted the old inborn desire to own a portion of the earth.

When Henry had no money to pay the tax, some of the “patch” was sold. With never failing regularity the assessment came, and with almost equal regularity a piece of the “patch” was sold to a buyer of tax-titles. Finally, one Sunday in the early spring, Henry drove down to his little farm. It was the first visit since the fall. Here and there a swale filled with the rain of early spring stood in his path. Now and then the black mud of the rich prairie held his buggy fast, but finally, after much time and trouble, he reached the farm, and there, plain before his eyes, was a high, tight board fence which barred him out. His first impulse was to go back and get a gang of men to tear down the fence; his next was to hire a lawyer. After some search he found a lawyer that he thought would do. The lawyer knew more about the case when it was done than when he started bravely in. Of course, Henry had no money, else the taxes would have been paid, so the lawyer took the case on shares and agreed to pay the costs, and then they started in to get the “patch.”

No one familiar with the courts would expect me to tell the history of this case. It is familiar to even the common lawyer who reads the State reports. It was about the year 1880 that Henry’s lawyer filed the first papers in the court. The lawyer was young and full of hope—full of the hope that is the heritage of all the young; the hope that gives courage to live and fight and endure in the vain belief that it all counts for something; the hope that keeps alive while years and adversity, with their deadening, staggering blows, teach that all strivings are equally vain. But Henry’s lawyer was young. He had the money to commence the suit and he thought that this would be enough. Both Henry and his lawyer could see the fence fall down and the farm platted and sold and their money in the bank, while Henry’s life was in the early autumn and the lawyer’s in the first green of summer time. But the days and weeks and months and years went by.

At first they lost the case, but they were not cast down. There were other courts that were better because they were higher up, and besides all this, the law provided that in a contest for real estate each side had the right to try his case twice, and the right to go each time to the highest court of the State. Had Henry’s life been at stake he could have had but a single chance and no right to go to a higher court, unless the judges graciously granted him permission, and then only on the showing that he was innocent of the crime. But land is one thing and life is another. And this is quite right, for the amount of land upon the earth is fixed, while there is no limit to human life.

Well, in a year or two the Supreme Court reversed the case, and then Henry and his lawyer had another chance. In the meantime two more years were passed in waiting and the case came on again. This time Henry won. It was the turn of the other side to find a higher court. But the Supreme Court found a flaw and sent it back to be tried again. Two or three more years were spent in waiting before the case was reached. At last it came again. Henry had grown old and white and feeble; his clothes, too, were shabby and unkempt. His little cigar store had dwindled until only his old comrades came to loaf and talk of the grand old days “before the fire.” Henry never doubted that he would win. Through it all he had held the same faith in final victory that he had ever cherished about the future of his “patch.” He had lived to see cable cars run past his land, to see crosstown electric cars on each side of the little farm, and to see the elevated road stretching slowly down in anticipation of the sub-division that would one day come.

Henry took the stand and told the story of his “patch,” of his early years when he drove out on the raw prairie and fixed the stakes; of his Sunday pilgrimages with his many friends; of his well, and grove and green hedge; of the high board fence that he found on the spring day so long ago. He looked like a patriarch as he sat bent over in the witness chair, and his voice and story was that of some long-forgotten day.

The jury could not resist the old man’s case and again he won. Once more the other side took it to the higher court, but found no relief. Still, under the rules of the law, they had the right to one more trial, because a piece of real estate was involved. So, of course, they took the last chance that the wisdom of the law held out to them.

In the meantime, Henry’s lawyer had spent $5,000 and waited twelve long years. He was no longer young, and most of the illusions and dreams of early life had passed away. He was fighting now from habit, and because he had learned that there was really not much else in life. He knew that one fights for the sake of fighting, not for the hope of any reward that falls to the victorious cause. Two years more dragged on. Henry, of course, grew older and more shabby year by year; then, too, disease had come with age; poverty and age and disease often travel hand in hand. This is when poverty comes in the latter part of life. When it comes in youth the lucky victim misses age. Henry had an iron will, and then he had a life’s ambition which seemed to defy years and poverty and disease. But time is the only warrior that never knows defeat, and it was plain that age and sickness were to triumph even here.

Finally, one day the long-looked-for trial came. If Henry won, this would be the end. It was now fifteen years since the first paper was filed. The lawyer sent a carriage for Henry on this long-to-be-remembered day. It came back empty to the court. Henry had been taken to the hospital in the morning before the carriage came. He had protested, and asked to go to court, but it was of no avail, so they drove him to the great brick building and carried him slowly to the elevator and took him to the top floor and laid him on the bed. He asked for his lawyer, and was told that he was busy with the case, which he had concluded to try without his client’s presence in the court.

Day after day dragged on; each night Henry asked about his case; each day he was told that he was sure to win. The nurse knew nothing about the case, she saw only the old sick man, as white as the spotless coverlet that she smoothed tenderly above his wasted form. She knew that he might as well spend his last few hours in peace, so she told him that the case was coming along all right and that he was sure to win. Henry’s mind was failing with his strength. The nurse could never tell when he was asleep or awake. Sometimes he seemed to be back on his father’s farm, a little boy. Again, he was driving out over the bare prairie looking for his “patch.” Then he wanted to get out of bed and buy a cow and some chickens for his “farm,” and then he sank to sleep.

In the meantime, the lawyer fought valiantly along. Finally the case was ended, and for the last time the jury gave the land to Henry. The lawyer waited only to hear the verdict read, then rushed to the elevator and down to the street. He took a carriage and told the driver to go with all speed to the hospital. He ran to the wide approach, passed the doorkeeper, went up the stairs two steps at a time and turned down the hall. He stopped at Henry’s door, opened it softly and went in.

The nurse was standing silent near the little iron bed. At the window the setting sun was struggling through the smoke and grime of the great city and painting the sky with a dull red glare. Its last beams struggled through the dim window and fell upon the white coverlet, the worn, sad face and the scattering hair. Henry was as still as the bed on which he lay.

The lawyer looked down at the old, white face, and saw the eyes staring out at the red beams of the setting sun. He could plainly see that they rested on nothing this side of the crimson sky.

BY CHARLES FORT.]

A white corpuscle, of venerable and intellectual appearance, dug a claw into the lining of an artery and paused.

Past him surged millions of his fellows, all intent upon doing what they believed they had been sent into the Man to do, which was to earn a living; tired mother-leucocytes, starting out upon the day’s work dragging small leucocytes after them; young leucocytes, with not a care in the world and never a thought for tomorrow; serious-looking leucocytes, weighed down with responsibilities.

Here and there were some whose individuality would attract attention—that old fellow with the prominent proboscis, forced along in the rush, as others were, but at the head of an association formed by him, so benevolent to himself that he got all the white meat, while the workers divided pickings, of every disease germ captured. There had been battles with an invasion of diphtheria germs, skirmishes with germs of typhoid, small-pox, and scarlet fever. The leucocytes had overcome every enemy, and they were a triumphant, arrogant race.

The venerable corpuscle might have clung where he was, all day, without interfering with traffic, were it not for a peculiarity of the corpuscles. A very hungry white corpuscle, coursing ravenously, noticed the venerable old gentleman, and paused. Stronger than even hunger was his feeling that he should have to learn why the old gentleman was standing on a corner, instead of pouncing, grabbing, and struggling. Small leucocytes, with messages to deliver, paused and gaped; and, because they paused and gaped, such a crowd gathered that a burly corpuscle, with a stout club, came along and growled:

“G’wan, now! don’t be blocking up this artery.”

But the wise old corpuscle had provided himself with a permit.

He began: “Fellow leucocytes——”

“Hooray!” from irresponsible, small leucocytes.

“Fellow leucocytes, I look around and see among you some who may remember me. These may recall that a long time ago I withdrew from the activity and excitement of our affairs, and may wonder where I have been. I have been secluded in the land of gray soil at the upper end of our world. In a remote convolution of this gray matter I have lived and have absorbed something of a strange spirit permeating it—the spirit of intelligence—and I have learned much from it. I feel that I have a mission among you. Let me start it abruptly with a question. Fellow leucocytes, do you know why we are placed here in this Man?”

“To get all we can out of it!” answered a sleek, shiny corpuscle.

The others laughed good-naturedly, agreeing that this was their sole reason for being.

“Out of _it_!” cried the wise old corpuscle. “Why not out of _him_? Then you don’t believe that the Man we inhabit is a living creature? You think that because his life is not like our life, he has no life? And you think that, when you can feel the element of him that we inhabit, pulsate?”

“Oh, that’s only the tide!”

“You have never heard his voice?”

“Nothing but thunder!”

“You think he never moves?”

“Nothing but a manquake, now and then.”

“You doubt that he is kept alive by internal heat, just as we are? For, without heat, there could not be life.”

A studious white corpuscle had become so interested that he permitted a fine plump pneumonia germ to pass him without pouncing upon it. He stepped forward and said, learnedly:

“Yes, there is internal heat in the world we inhabit, but we are taught that the Man was once a ball of fire and is now gradually cooling off. It is ridiculous to say it is alive like us. Look how fine and delicate is our flesh; see the Man made of coarse, rough substance forming banks along every river we navigate. Think of how tremendous its heat is, when it is great enough to keep these teeming millions of us from perishing! Could any living creature produce such heat? You say we can feel it move? It must move very infrequently then, for these manquakes are far apart. And you regard as a pulsating, the coming and going of the tide? Why, our hearts beat thousands of times in the span of one ebb and flow of the tide we are familiar with!”

Said the wise old corpuscle: “I say that not only is this Man alive, but that he, and millions like him, inhabit a world as vast to him as he is to us.”

“Oh, let the old fellow rave!” laughed good-natured leucocytes.

But the financier-corpuscle, with the prominent proboscis, coming along with a germ under each arm, rolling half a dozen others in front of him, muttered, savagely:

“Another of those cursed agitators!”

“This wide Man of ours,” pursued the cursed agitator, “is between five and six feet in length, according to his system of measuring. The world that he inhabits is twenty-five thousand miles in circumference. Telepathy has told me so; I have been able to interpret throbs of his intellect to mine. He calls his world the Earth. I say that he is a white corpuscle to the Earth, as we are to him. He will not accept this belief. He argues as do you. Flesh that he lives upon is so gross that he calls it rock and soil; as rivers and brooks he looks upon arteries and veins. He knows of a tide and sees it pulsate. During one ebb and flow, his own heart beats thousands of times. He says the Moon causes the tide. Perhaps; then the Moon is the Earth’s heart. He feels agitations similar to those we know as manquakes. They are very infrequent. He knows that there is heat in the Earth, but can not conceive that it is a source of life, because of its extreme degree. He has no sense of proportion. He can not conceive that a tremendous creature with an existence of ages must move, breathe, and throb in proportion to bulk and longevity, and be sustained by heat that would consume him.”

“Too deep for me!” cried a group of young leucocytes. “Oh, he’s some kind of a fake! Start in advertising something, in a minute!” Each jumped on a red corpuscle and went sliding down hill.

But the studious white corpuscle again stepped forward.

“Friends,” he said, “let us not deride this old person. Let us, rather, point out his astonishing errors to him. Be tolerant, I say! Be tolerant, by all means, even when we are opposed. Sir, we’ll admit that there are many Men instead of only this one, and that all inhabit some vast creature that they call the Earth. But what for? We are here for pleasure, profit, and to store up germs.”

“Are we? For a long time it has been my theory that we are here solely for the welfare of the Man we inhabit; that our food and our enemies are elements inimical to him; we remove them in his behalf.”

“Vile agitator!” The financier-corpuscle, coursing round again, was so agitated that he nearly dropped a germ.

“Let him speak!” urged the studious corpuscle. “His views differ from mine, but I will be tolerant! I have arguments that will silence him soon. Now, then, my friend, if our reason for being is such as you describe, and you liken men to us, these many men you speak of must occupy a relation to their Earth similar to ours to this Man. Do they pounce upon and destroy every organism malignant to their creature?”

“I have no doubt of it!” cried the old corpuscle. “I believe that, existing with those that are workers, are others, similar to them but idle or weak, or, at any rate, of no value to the Earth. I do not say that these worthless ones are pounced upon and eaten, but I do believe that in some way those of no value are forced out of existence; perhaps, besides weak and idle individuals, there are whole tribes who are being exterminated, unable to survive in the struggle with the fit.”

“What industrious, unselfish beings these Men must be to do so much for their Earth!” sneered a doubter.

“Now, let him speak!” urged the tolerant philosopher. “I have arguments that will destroy his views, in a moment. Let there be freedom of speech, by all means!”

“Industrious and unselfish?” repeated the old corpuscle. “Are we? Industrious, yes; but unselfish, no! For our own existence we are working in this Man’s behalf. We are not philanthropists. For the necessities of life we perform our appointed functions, most of us never dreaming that we are laboring in the interests of the Man we inhabit. So it is, I believe, with them! I can’t quite imagine what their beneficent tasks are, but perhaps they till the soil, as we till the soil of this Man, keeping the Earth’s system in good order, doing everything in the belief that they are working only for themselves.”

“Pursue your analogy!” cried the rival philosopher. “If we populate a living creature, then the creature inhabited by Man must itself be a corpuscle floating in the system of something inconceivably vaster. We are leucocytes to Men; Men are to the Earth; then hordes of Earths are to a Universe? You speak of many Men. Are there hordes of Earths?”

“You have expressed a thought of my own! I believe that there are other creatures like the Earth. Perhaps they are faintly visible to the Earth. Perhaps they revolve and have orbits and course through a system just as we do.”

“There,” cried the old corpuscle’s opponent, “I’ve got you! Be tolerant to him, my friends; I’ll silence him in a moment. My friend, then these vast revolving creatures like the Earth are remote from one another? They float in nothingness, then? But you have called them corpuscles, or tiny parts of a whole. How can they be parts of a solid, when they are widely separated bodies floating in nothingness?”