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• 01 - A Change of Treatment

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  A Change of Treatment by WW Jacobs for the 1903 Collection. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Matt Perard.

  A Change of Treatment by WW Jacobs from Many Cargos. Yes, I've sailed under some cute skippers in my time, said the night watchman. Them that go down in big ships see the wonders of the deep, you know, he added with a sudden chuckle. But the one I'm going to tell you about ought never to have been trusted out without Isma.

  A good many of my skippers had vats, but this one was the worst I ever sailed under. It's some years ago now I'd shipped on his bark the John Elliot as slow going an old tub as ever I was aboard of, when I wasn't in quite a fit and proper state to know what I was doing, and I hadn't been in her two days before I found out his obby through overhearing a few remarks made by the second mate who came up from the dinner in a hurry

  to make him. I don't mind saws and knives hung round the cabin, he says to the fussed mate, but when a chap has a yeoman and alongside its plate studying it while folks is at their food, it's more than a Christian man can stand. That's nothing, says the fussed mate, who had sailed with the bark afore.

  He's half crazy on doctoring. We nearly had a mutiny aboard once, owing to his wanton to hold a post mortem on a man what fell from the mast head, wanted to see what the poor feller died of. I call it unwholesome, says the second mate, very savage. He offered me a pill at breakfast the size of a small marble, quite put me off my feet

  it did. Of course the skipper's fad soon got known for it, but I didn't think much about it till one day I see'd old Daniel Dennis sitting on a locker reading. Every now and then he'd shut the book and look up, closing his eyes and moving his lips like a hen drinking, and then look down at the book again.

  Why, Dan, I says, what's up? You ain't learning lessons at your time of life. Yes, I am, says Dan, very soft. You might hear me say it. It's this one about heart disease.

  He hands over the book, which was stuck full of all kinds of diseases and winks at me hard, picked it up on a book stall. Then he shut his eyes and said his piece, wonderful. It may be quite queer to listen to him. That's how I feel, says he, when he finished.

  Just strength enough to get to bed. Lend a handbill and go and fetch the doctor. Then I see his little game, but I wasn't going to run any risks, so I just mentioned. Permiscus lack. as old Dan seemed rather queer and went back and tried to borrow the book, being always

  mauled of reading. Old Dan pretended he was too ill to hear what I was saying, and for I could take it away from him, the skipper comes hurrying down with a bag in his hand. What's the matter, my man, says he, what's the matter? I'm all right, sir, says old Dan, except that I've been swooning away a little.

  Tell me exactly how you feel, says the skipper, feeling his pulse. Then old Dan set his piece over to him, and the skipper shook his head and looked very solemn. How long have you been like this, he says. Four or five years, sir, says Dan.

  It ain't nothing serious, sir, is it? You lie quite still, says the skipper, putting a little trumpet thing to his chest and then listening. Um, there's serious mischief here, I'm afraid. The prognosis is very bad.

  Prog what, sir? says Dan, staring. Prognosis, says the skipper. At least I think that's the word he said. You keep perfectly still, and I'll go and mix you up a draught and tell the cook to get some strong beef tea on.

  Well, the skipper had no sooner gone than coroner Harry, a great big lumbering chap of six feet, too, goes up to old Dan and he says, Give me that book. Go away, says Dan, don't come worrying here. You are the skipper, say how bad my prognosis was.

  You lend me the book, says Harry, catching hold of him, or else I'll bang you first and split to the skipper afterward. I believe I'm a bit consumptive. Anyway, I'm going to see. He dragged the book away from the old man and began to study.

  There were so many complaints in it he was almost tempted to have something else instead of consumption, but he decided on that at last, and he got a cough what worried the foxhole all night long. And the next day, when the skipper came down to see Dan, he could hardly hear himself speak. That's a nasty cough you got, my man, says he, looking at Harry.

  Oh, it's nothing, sir, says Harry, careless like. I've had it for months now, off and on. I think it's perspiring so of a night, does it? What, says the skipper, do you perspire of a night? It's dreadful, says Harry.

  You could wring the clothes out. I suppose it's healthy for me, ain't it, sir? Under your shirt, says the skipper, going over to him and sticking the trumpet again him. Now take a deep breath.

  Don't cough. I can't help it, sir, says Harry. It will come. Seems to tear me to pieces. You get to bed at once, says the skipper, taking away the trumpet and shaking his head.

  It's a fortunate thing for you, my lad, your in-skilled hands. With care, I believe I can pull you round. How does that medicine suit you, Dan? Beautiful, sir, says Dan. It's wonderful, soothing.

  I slept like a newborn babe, artoret. I'll send you to get some more, says the skipper. You're not to get up, mind, either of you. All right, sir, says the two in very faint voices, and the skipper went away, artoret telling us to be careful not to make a noise.

  We all thought it a fine joke at first, but the airs them two chaps give themselves was something sickening. Being in bed all day, they was naturally wakeful of a night, and they used to call across the Folk Castle, inquiring after each other's healths, and waking us other chaps up. They'd swap beef-tea and jellies with each other, and Dan'd try and coax a little port

  wine out of Harry, which he had to make blood with, but Harry'd say he hadn't made enough that day, and he'd drink to the better health of old Dan's prognosis, and smack his lips until it drove us a-most crazy to ear him. After these chaps had been ill two days, the other fellers began to put their heads together, being maddened by the smell of beef-tea and the like, and said they was going to be ill

  too, and both the invalids got into a fearful state of excitement. You'll only spoil it for all of us, says Harry, and you don't know what to have without the book. It's all very well doing your work as well as your own, says one of the men. It's our turn now. It's time you two got well.

  Well, says Harry, well! Why, you silly, ignorant chaps, we shan't never get well. People with our complaints never do. You ought to know that. Well, I shall split, says one of them. You do, says Harry, you do, and I'll put an ed on you that all the port wine and jellies in the world wouldn't cure.

  Sides, don't you think the skipper knows what's the matter with us? Before the other chaps could reply, the skipper himself comes down, accompanied by the fussed mate with a look on his face which made Harry give the deepest and hollowest cough he'd ever done. What they really want, says the skipper, turning to the mate, is careful-nussin'.

  I wish you'd let me nussin', says the fussed mate. Only ten minutes. I'd put them both on their legs and run them for their lives into the bargain in ten minutes. Hold your tongue, sir, says the skipper. What you say is unfeeling, besides being an insult to me. Do you think I studied medicine all these years without knowing when a man's ill? The fussed mate growled something and went on deck, and the skipper started examining

  of them again. He said they was wonderfully patient lying in bed so long, and he had them wrapped up in bedclothes and carried on deck, so as the pure air could have a go at them. We had to do the carrying, and there they sat, breathing the pure air and looking at the fussed mate out of the corners of their eyes. If they wanted anything from below, one of us had to go and fetch it, and by the time they was taken down to bed again, we

  all resolved to be took ill too. Only two of them did it, though, for Harry, who was a powerful, ugly-tempered chap, swore he'd do all sorts of dreadful things to us if we didn't keep well and hearty, and all except these two did. One of them, Mike Rafferty, laid up with a swelling on his ribs, which I knew myself he had had for fifteen years, and the other chap had paralysis. I never saw a man so really happy as the skipper was.

  He was up and down with his medicines and his instruments all day long, and used to make notes of the cases in a big pocket-book and read them to the second mate at meal times. The foot-castle had been turned into hospital about a week, and I was on deck doing some odd job or the other when the cook comes up to me, pulling a face as long as a fiddle. Another invalid, says he, fussed mates gone stark staring mad.

  Mad, says I, yes, says he. He's got a big basin in the galley, and he's laughing like a hyaener and mixing bilge-water and ink and paraffin and butter and soap and all sorts of things up together that smells enough to kill a man I've had to come away. Curious like, I just walked up to the galley and puts my head in, and there was the mate, as the cook said, smiling all over his face and ladling some thick, sticky stuff into

  a stone bottle. How's the poor sufferer, sir? says he, stepping out of the galley just as the skipper was going by. They're very bad, but I hope for the best, says the skipper, looking at him hard. I'm glad to see you're turned a bit more feeling.

  Yes, sir, says the mate. I didn't think so, at fuss, but I can see now them chaps is all very ill. You'll excuse me for saying it, but I don't quite approve of your treatment. I thought the skipper would have bust. My treatment, says he. My treatment! What do you know about it? You're treating them wrong, sir, says the mate. I have here, patting the jar, a remedy

  which would cure them all if you'd only let me try it. Poo, says the skipper. One medicine cure all diseases? The old story. What is it? Where'd you get it from, says he. I brought the ingredients aboard with me, says the mate. It's a wonderful medicine discovered by my grandmother, and if I might only try it, I'd thoroughly cure them poor chaps.

  Rubbish, says the skipper. Very well, sir, says the mate, shrugging his shoulders. Of course, if you won't let me, you won't. Still, I tell you, if you'd let me try, I'd cure them all in two days. That's a fair challenge. Well, they talked and talked and talked until at last the skipper gave way and went down

  below with the mate and told the chaps they was to take the new medicine for two days, just to prove the mate was wrong. Let poor old Dan try it first, says Harry, starting up and sniffing as the mate took the cork out. He's been awful bad since you've been away. Harry's worse than I am, sir, says Dan. It's only his kind heart that makes him say that.

  It don't matter which is fussed, says the mate, filling a tablespoon with it. There's plenty for all. Now, Harry. Take it, says the skipper. Harry took it, and the fuss he made you'd had thought. He was swallowing a football. It stuck all round his mouth, and he carried on so dreadful that the other invalid's was

  half sick, afore it came to them. By the time the other three had had theirs, it was as good as a pantomime, and the mate corked the bottle up and went and sat down on a locker while they tried to rinse their mouths out with the luxuries which had been given them. How do you feel, says the skipper? I'm dying, says Dan.

  So am I, says Harry. I believe the mate's pizing-duss. The skipper looks over at the mate, very stern, and shakes his head slowly. It's all right, says the mate. It's always like that. The first dozen or so doses. Dozen or so doses, says old Dan, in a faraway voice. It has to be taken every twenty minutes, says the mate, pulling out his pipe and lightening,

  and the four men groaned altogether. I can't allow it, says the skipper. I can't allow it. Men's lives mustn't be sacrificed for an experiment. Ten experiment, says the mate, very indignant. It's an old family medicine. Well, they shan't have any more, says the skipper firmly.

  Look here, says the mate. If I kill any one of these men, I'll give you twenty pound. Honor bright, I will. Take it twenty-five, says the skipper, considering. Very good, says the mate. Twenty-five. I can't say no fairer than that, can I? It's about time for another dose now.

  He gave him another tablespoonful all round as the skipper left, and the chaps, what wasn't invalid, nearly bust with joy. He wouldn't let them have anything to take the taste out, cause, he said, it didn't give the medicine a chance. And he told us other chaps to remove the temptation, and you bet we did. After the fifth dose, the invalids began to get desperate, and when they heard they'd

  got to be woke up every twenty minutes through the night to take the stuff, they sort of gave up. Old Dan said he felt a gentle glow stealing over him and strengthening him, and Harry said that it felt like a healing balm to his lungs. All of them agreed it was a wonderful medicine, and after the sixth dose the man with paralysis dashed up on deck and ran up

  the rigging like a cat. He sat there for hours, spitting, and swore he'd brain anybody who interrupted him, and after a little while Mike Rafferty went up and joined him, and if the fuss-mate's ears didn't burn by reason of the things them two poor sufferers said about him, they ought to. They was all doing full work next day, and though, of course, the skipper saw how he'd been done, he didn't allude to it. Not in words, that is. But when

  a man tries to make four chaps do the work of eight and hits them when they don't, it's a easy job to see where the shoe pinches. End of A Change of Treatment by W. W. Jacobs

• 02 - The Elm Tree

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  The Elm Tree by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. The Elm Tree by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. The Elm Tree had his field to himself. He stood alone in a wide and deep expanse of wind-swept grass, which once a year surged round him in foaming billows, crested with a rose of clover, and the whiteness of daisies,

  and the gold of buttercups. The rest of the time the field was green with an even slant of lush grass, or else it was a dun surface, or else a glittering level of snow, but always there stood the tree, with his green branches in the summer, his gold ones in the autumn, his tender gold green ones in the spring, and his branches of naked grace in the winter.

  But always he was superb. There was not in the whole countryside another tree which could compare with him. He was matchless. Never a stranger passed the elm but stopped and stared and said something, or thought something about it.

  Even dull rustics looked and had a momentary lapse from vacuity. The tree was compelling. He insisted upon a recognition of his beauty and grace. Let one try to pass him unheeding and sunken in the contemplation of his own little affairs, and look, he would force himself out of the landscape not only upon the eyes, but the

  very soul, which, turned away from self, would see the tree through its windows, like a revelation and proof of that which is outside and beyond. It became, at such times, to some minds, something akin to testimony of God. Something there was about the superb acres of those great branches, curving skyward and earthward with matchless symmetry of line which seemed to furnish an upward lift for

  thought and imagination. The field in which the tree stood was a great parallelogram. On the left-hand side, across a stone wall, was a house almost as old as the tree. On the other side, across a new painted fence, was a modern house, pretentious and ornate with bracketed cornices, bay windows, a piazza and a coppola.

  This coppola especially disturbed the mind of the dweller in the old house. The name of this dweller was David Ransom. He was quite old, and had a stiff leg which necessitated a gait, wherein one limb described a rigid half-circle before it was brought to the accomplishment of a forward step. He had been incapacitated from work for some years.

  All he had in the world was his poor ancient house and an acre of land in the rear on which he raised vegetables and kept a few hens, which furnished his humble sustenance. Once it had been very different. He had owned the great field on which the elm stood. He had even owned the new house beyond, although in a simpler form.

  He had built it very largely with his own hands, for, though ostensibly a farmer, he had been a jack of all trades, and able to turn his hand to almost any craft with skill. He had lived in the old Ransom house, which had been in the family for four generations, until he was almost an old man and his wife an old woman. Then, with the pitiful savings of a lifetime, he had built the new one.

  He had loved and handled tenderly every nail he had put into it, every fragrant length of pine. He had built it with the utmost that was in him. Then, just as it was finished, he had lost it. The bank in which his savings were stored had failed, and there was nothing to meet

  the payments for the stock. He sold the house and the field at a miserable sacrifice, and used the proceeds to pay the bills, all except a proportion which he was obliged to work out. The old wife died shortly afterward. The disappointment had been too much for her.

  All her life she had planned and dreamed about the new house, which was to stand on the vacant lot. She had thought about it until, in a sense, she had really lived in it, and an actual building had tumbled about her ears. After she died, David lived alone and wound himself up like a caterpillar in a cocoon

  of repining and misanthropy. He seemed bitter to the core. He was, in spirit, a revolutionist and anarchist. The mention of banks sent him into a white heat of rage. He nursed his grievances until they turned upon himself and stung him to his own spiritual

  harm. One of his special bitternesses was the improvements which the new owner had made in his new house. He resented them, as he might have done any pointing out of his own personal defects. When the new owner, whose name was Thomas Savage, set about building the bay window on the blank of the south wall, David barely swelled with indignation and humiliation.

  That morning he went across the road and unbottled his wrath to old Abner Slocum. Old Abner lived with his daughter, who was a dressmaker. It was an unskillful, desultory way of dressmaking at very low prices, and thereby supported in frugal comfort herself and her father, who was very deaf. Old Abner, on pleasant days in warm weather, spent most of his time on the porch, for his

  room was better than his company in the sitting-room, which was also the apartment used for fitting dresses. David Ransom spent many an hour with him, seated on the top step of the porch. Abner had an old kitchen chair tipped back against the house wall. On that morning, when the scaffolding for the new bay window was erected, David went

  across the street, swinging his lame leg around viciously. That was the second spring after the rheumatism had attacked him. It was a hot, moist morning in early May. The trees were beginning to cast leaf shadows, and the air was cloiled with sweet. Old David, on the porch, was in his shirt sleeves, his feet were covered with great

  carpet slippers. He grinned vacuously as David approached. A curtain of a window behind him went down with a snap, shutting out a glimpse of a young woman upon whom his daughter was about to try a new gown. Abner did not hear it, but he felt it, and he smiled slyly at the newcomer.

  Mary strine on a new gown to the Ames' gal, he chuckled. David nodded with impatience scorned. The curtain might as well have been lowered for a shadow as for him. He settled himself laboriously on the porch step in front of Abner. His lame leg was stretched out unbendingly into Maria Slocum's bed of ladies' delights,

  which came up faithfully in their old place every spring. David ground his heel viciously down among the flowers. He scowled at Abner with almost malignity. He jerked a shoulder toward the right. "'See what they are doing over there?' he inquired, roughly.

  Old Abner did not hear him. He had been gazing forth at the glories of the spring morning, and he answered from the fullness of his thought. "'Yes, I guess spring is most here, sure enough,' he said happily. He made a curious nestling motion with his old shoulders in a warm sunbeam which lay

  over them like a caressing arm. He smiled contentedly. Now were come for him the long days of peaceful dozing on the porch, undisturbed by his daughter's dressmaking, the days of plenty of garden greens and vegetables and fruit. Only sensitive to material sweets was old Abner Slocum.

  But David Ransom sniffed with fury. "'Spring!' he cried. Then he shouted, reaching out a knotted hand and clutching the other's lean shank with a fierce grip. He gesticulated violently toward the house on which the workmen were hammering.

  "'See what they are doing over there?' he demanded, biting off every word and syllable shortly, and old Abner heard, or, if he did not hear, grasped the meaning of the pointing hand and the smart grip on his leg. "'Yes,' he answered cheerfully, making improvements, ain't they?' "'Improvements!' shrieked David Ransom.

  "'Improvements! Improvements!' When that house was fit for the president to live in before. Improvements! Good Lord!'

  "'That winter is gone to look real pootie, ain't it?' inquired old Abner innocently. David glared. He rose, dragging his lame leg after him. "'Be you a fool!' he shouted.

  Then he was gone down the path with his stiff strut, while old Abner gazed after him, amiably open-mouthed, like a baby. Presently he began to nod, and finally fell asleep in the moist light, with his head sunken on his breast. But David Ransom sat alone on the doorstep of his old house, and all day long his regard

  never left the carpenters working on the new one across the field. When the bay window and the new piazza were completed, and the tin roofs glittered in the sun, David felt fairly ill. He neither ate nor slept. His eyes looked wild in their jungle of unkempt beard and long, white hair.

  He talked to himself a good deal. He made furious gestures when walking. Children turned to stare after him. Once in a while they ran away when they saw him coming. There began to be talk of taking care of him, sending him somewhere to be looked out for,

  lest he do harm to himself and others. His old house and land might pay his board for the rest of his life, for he seemed feeble. David knew nothing of this. He continued to invade with a rancour, which had the force of malanity at the improvements on the new house.

  And at last the cupola was built. That was the climax. When Maria Slocum saw him coming across the road to talk it over with her father, she hustled the old man into the house. David Ransom is clean out of his head, she said, and I ain't going to have him coming

  over here. I'm afraid of him. So when David reached the Slocum house, he found the door bolted and the window curtain down with cautious gaps for peering at the sides for Maria, her father, and a woman whom she was fitting.

  But David did not see them. He went stiffly home, talking all the way so loudly that they could hear what he said. enough to have it in the first place, then to go and build on it to windows and piazzas and cupolas, as if it weren't good enough for him. Guess what was good enough for Sarah and me was good enough for him.

  Then he finished with a refrain of misery. Windows, piazzas, cupolas, new stun stamps, and a new tin roof. He said the last and a sort of sing-song over and over. That was the burden of his thoughts, the summing up of his grievances. Something had ought to be done about David Ransom, said Maria Slocum to the woman who

  was being fitted, and the woman agreed with her. That night a strange thing happened, one of the catastrophes which served to punctuate and paragraph the monotony of village life. The new house which had been built by David Ransom and purchased and improved by Thomas Savage was burned to the ground.

  At midnight the sky was rosy for miles around, and the air resonant with bells. At dawn there was only a bed of glowing coals and ashes. The city of course suspected David, although there was no proof except his well-known bitterness regarding the improvements. He was under a ban, though he was not arrested.

  It was decided that he was a dangerous character, in spite of his age and feebleness, and ought not to be at such entire liberty to work out his own devices, and that, moreover, he ought, to be given the right to speak, to be cared for comfortably. One afternoon old Abner Slocum, sitting on the front porch with a handkerchief over his face to keep the flies off, and presumably dozing, heard his daughter Maria tell the

  woman whom she was fitting that David was to be carried the next day to Aliser Wise's to board. Aliser and his wife had occasionally taken old people whom no one else wanted to board for a small consideration. The town has took it up, said Maria.

  You don't say so, said the woman, turning sidewise to look at the foot of her bodice. Ain't there a little pouch where the sleeve goes in? That'll be all right when it's stitched. They don't think it's safe for him to be round, and they don't think he has proper fictions.

  For my part, I ain't afraid of him as I used to be before the house was burnt. He don't talk to himself, nor make motions the way he used to. He just sits real kind of still on his doorstep. He come over here to see father the other day, and he seemed real mild and gentle. I ain't a mite afraid of him, nor I ain't afraid he'll set me afire, and I never believed

  he set Thomas Savage afire. Miss Savage was always dreadful careless about fire, used to carry live coals in a shovel all over the house when she wanted to kindle fires in the airtight stoves, and the Savage boy made a bonfire in the barn once. They don't tell of it on account of the insurance, but I heard it real straight, and they ain't

  going to build there again. Going out of town? Guess there's reason enough. I ain't going to believe that David Ransom did such a thing as that, if he didn't used to talk so.

  He's had an awful hard time, and it won't his fault. Suppose he'll take it hard going to Leazer's, said the woman. I'm dreadful afraid he will, and I don't blame him. I know Leazer wise, and his wife too. I know how I'd feel if it was bother going.

  Your father will feel bad to have him go. Yes, I ain't dare say anything about it to father. A little later, Maria, glancing out of the window, after taking in an underarm sin, exclaimed, Why, where's father? Ain't he there?

  asked the woman, scrolling her head around. No, and he was sitting there just a minute ago, sound asleep. Well, maybe the flies plagued him, and he's gone down in the orchard under the trees. Sometimes he does. Old Abner Slocum had just toddled out of sight around the Ransom house opposite to the garden

  where David was picking some corn for his supper. A little later he returned, and his daughter saw him. She came to the door, the woman's dress waist in her hand. Where have you been, father? cried, drawing her thread through.

  Old Abner did not hear, but he knew what she said. Over to David's, he replied quaveringly. His eyes looked watery and his mouth unusually firm. Maria regarded him sharply, then she reflected that he must have been asleep and not able to hear, in any case, what she and the woman had been talking about.

  Well, you'd better sit down and keep cool, father, said she. You look all head up. Then she re-entered the house, and old Abner settled himself in his chair on the porch. Presently, one of the selectmen of the village, who lived a little farther down the road and who was to take David to Alizzer Wise's next morning, rode by in a light express wagon

  in a cloud of dust. Hello, Abner. Hot day, he shouted urbanely. Abner waited until he had passed, then he slowly shook his fist at him. The next morning, Maria Slocum kept the curtain of her front window facing the Ransom house

  down. I don't know as you can see in here, she said to her first customer, but they are going to take David Ransom to board to Alizzer Wise's this morning. They think he ought to be looked after, and I don't want to see it. He's lived there ever since I was born, and father sits a heap by him, and he's had a

  hard time, poor man. I don't see why they can't let him alone. He never set that fire any more than I did, and he wouldn't hurt a baby kitten, never would, for all he used to talk so. If he ain't quite so comfortable where he is, he's enough happier than he'll be to

  lasers. I've heard Alizzer Wise want any too mild, said the other woman. I wouldn't want father to go there, said Maria. There was a sound of wheels outside. Guess Alizzer and John Deget have come for him now, said Maria.

  The woman peeped around the curtain. Yes, they have, said she. It's John's wagon. They're going to try to lift the house and have the rent pay his board, said Maria. See anything of it?

  No, they're just going in the front gate. Now they're knocking. Anybody come to the door? No, they're knocking again. Anybody come?

  No, now they're trying the door. Are they going in? Yes, they're going in. There was a silence. Present, Maria spoke.

  See anything of him? No, can't see a sign of anybody. Ain't it dreadful queer? Seems to me it is. You don't suppose anything has happened, do you?

  I don't know. It's dreadful queer. The woman made an exclamation. What is it? Asked Maria anxiously.

  What do you see, Miss Abbott? Why, they're coming out, replied the woman. He with them? No, he ain't. My land. What is it?

  They're coming over here. Indeed, as she spoke, Aliza Wise and the selectman crossed the road to the Slocum House, and Maria ran trembling to the door. The woman who was being fitted stood back out of sight since she had not her dress on, and listened at the door. She heard Maria reply to a question in her high agitated voice. No, David Ransom ain't here. I ain't set eyes on him to-day.

  You can't find him? You don't say so. What do you suppose has happened to him? Old Abner Slocum sat on the porch, with his handkerchief over his eyes. He had not stirred. Maria shook him violently by the shoulder, as Aliza Wise inquired of him if he had seen David Ransom that day, and his voice was strained to a razor-like sharpness, though it was naturally soft.

  But old Abner did not hear. He gave a sleepy grunt like a disturbed animal, shrugged his shoulder loose from his daughter's grasp, flirted the handkerchief petishly over his face, settled his head back, and gave vent to an ostentatious snorer. Aliza Wise, who was a thin-nosed, pensive-looking man, and the selectman, who was exceedingly tall and bore himself with a dull dignity, went their ways in the latter's light wagon, presumably to search for David Ransom. The horse was whipped to a smart trot.

  Maria called after them to know what they were going to do, but she got no response. She looked hard at her father, who sat quite still, making a loud purring sound. Then she went into the house. The minute she was gone, old Abner slipped the handkerchief from his face and stared with a wonderful keenness of bright old eyes across the road at the beautiful elm tree in the midst of the field in a rosy and green foam of grass and clover. He waved the handkerchief, which he had taken from his face.

  There was a tiny, answering gleam of white from the massy greenness of the elm. Old Abner chuckled softly. Then he muttered to himself, Can't do nothing before dark, and settled for a nap in good faith. It was a very warm night, and dark except for the stars.

  The twilight lingered long, but at last the village lay in deep shadow, and one could not distinguish objects far in advance. Once that night Maria Slocum thought she heard a noise on the porch and got out of bed, and thrust her head out of the open window. Anybody there? She called softly and timidly. There was a dead silence.

  She peered into the darkness, but could see nothing. She went back to bed and thought she must have been mistaken. Once after that she was waken from sleep by a strange sound, and this time she lighted a candle and crossed the little entry to her father's room. She opened the door softly, and a glance showed her the gleam of the white head on the pillow. Must have been rats, she thought, and returned to her own chamber and slept undisturbed the rest of the night.

  The next morning she went into the pantry to cut some slices from a piece of corned beef, and stared incredulously. She looked everywhere, standing on tiptoe to search the upper shelves. Then she hurried into the kitchen, where her father sat waiting for his breakfast. He cast a scared glance at her as she entered. Then he turned his chair around with a grating noise, and stared intently out of the window.

  Well, you've got to go without your breakfast, said Maria. Old Abner, make no sign. Maria raised her voice higher. Can't you hear, father? she cried. You'll have to go without your breakfast.

  There ain't a thing in the house to eat but some bread and butter. The old man rolled one bright eye at her over his shoulder. Then he stared out of the window again. The red flush was evident, mounting his neck to his thin fringe of white hair. All that corned beef is gone. Every mite of it, proclaimed Maria in a voice of tragedy.

  I heard a voice last night. I knew I did. There was a thief in this house last night, father. Old Abner appeared to hear. His shoulders heaved, but he did not look around. A thief came into this house through the pantry window and stole all that corned beef, repeated Maria. It's gone, and it couldn't go without hands.

  Some tramp, I suppose, that was hungry. I paid most fifty cents for that corned beef, but I suppose I ought to be thankful. He might have stolen Miss Venus' black silk dress. You'll have to put up with toasted bread for your breakfast, father. Do you hear, father? You'll have to put up with toasted bread and coffee for your breakfast.

  All right, mumbled the old man. Maria went out of the room, and the sound of the coffee mill in the shed resounded through the house. Then old Abner turned around and noiselessly doubled himself up with merriment. The day was very pleasant and clear, although still warm. Maria toiled at her dressmaking, and old Abner sat peacefully on the porch.

  The selectman and a laser visited the house once and inquired if they had seen anything of David. They also searched again in the old ransom house. In the afternoon, just after the two men had driven away and Maria had the front curtains drawn to keep out the sun, old Abner stole around the house, got a ten-pail from the pantry, drew it full of cold water at the well, and slunk swiftly,

  patting like an old dog in his carpet-slippered feet across the opposite field to the elm tree. He stood underneath, casting wary glasses around. He held the pail, catching a gleam of the western sun from its polished sides until it looked as if on fire. He fumbled away at his handle, then suddenly, as if by some unseen agency, it was drawn up and out of sight into the green umbrage of the great tree.

  Old Abner turned about gleefully after a furtive hiss, a whisper, sent after the ascending pail, and his daughter Maria stood unexpectedly behind him. Slightness and sharpness were family traits. She had been suspicious ever since she had missed the meat in the morning. Old Abner turned quite pale.

  He chuckled feebly to hide his consternation, and he stared helplessly at Maria. What in creation are you doing here, father? she asked sternly. She spoke quite low, but he heard her perfectly. I ain't doing anything, Mary, he replied feebly, shifting in his carpet-slippered feet. You needn't talk that way to me, father. I know better. You're up to something.

  What were you doing with that pail, and how came it to go up in the tree? Maria peered upward and stood transfixed. Out of the great spread of the tree, that majesty of green radiances and violet shadows and highlights as of emeralds, out of this very mottled, as if on fire, this very mottled, as of jewels and shadows and sunbeams, stared the face of old David Ransom.

  And the face was inexpressibly changed. All the bitterness and rancour were gone. It was the face of a man in shelter from the woes and stress of life. He looked forth from the beautiful arms of the great tree, like a child from the arms of its mother. He had fled for shelter to a heart of nature, and it had not failed him. He smiled down at Maria with a peaceful triumph.

  They never thought of looking for me here, he called down. I won't go into lasers. David Ransom, you ain't been up there all this time in that tree, gasped Maria. Why, they've got men hunting in the woods, and they're going to drag the pond. David laughed in a silver strain as swiftly as a child. Never thought of looking for me here, said he. I won't go into lasers.

  How on earth did you ever get up there with your lame leg? I climbed. How? You on up there all night? David nodded, setting the green leaves, nodding. He was comfortably astride a large bough, with another below it, affording him a rest for his feet.

  His back and head were against the trunk of the tree. He rested as comfortably as if in an armchair midway of the tree, entirely concealed from view except to one standing directly beneath him. It beats all, said Maria. I suppose you carried him that corned beef, father. That was where it went to.

  I won't go on to let an old neighbor starve, Meredith, said old Abner, with boldness. Maria stood staring at him. I carried him some bread, too, and a piece of squash pie, said old Abner, defiantly, in his cracked trouble of age. Maria looked up at old David in the tree. Mr. Ransom, you come down here as quick as you can, said she, authoritatively.

  David made an attempt to climb higher. His bow rocked. Come right down here, repeated Maria. You ain't got to go to lasers. I ain't afraid of you. You didn't set that house afire, did you? No, I didn't, called down David. Well, you come down here. You shan't go to lasers. You can board with me.

  I made the money as much as laser-wise. You can have the South Chamber, or you can sleep in your own house if you want to, till it's rented, if you'd feel more to home. I've moved out of my own house, called David. All right, you can have the South Chamber in my house, and you and father can have real good times together. Come down. Can't you get down?

  David began swinging himself downward with painful slowness. Be careful you don't fall and break your bones. David descended. When he was just ready to slide down the shaggy trunk below the spread of large branches, he paused and looked down at Maria with lingering doubt and distrust. You needn't be afraid, said Maria. The tears were running down her cheeks. You shan't go anywheres you don't want to. I'll look out for you, and I'd like to see anybody stop me.

  There was decision in Maria's voice, which compelled confidence. Still, David looked down hesitatingly, like a child afraid to leave its mother. Come right along, said Maria, and look out you don't fall and break your bones. I've got some nice griddle-cakes for supper, and a custard pie. David slid down. After that, the two old men could have been seen all day seated on the porch of the Silcombe house, wrapped in the silence of peaceful memories.

  A family moved into the old Ransom house, and they enjoyed watching the children play about. David took a fancy to one little girl. Sometimes he coaxed her over, and he told her one story of his own childhood, which his father had told him. It was uncouth and pointless, but the child loved it, and the two men hailed its climax always with innocent laughter. The three were children together. Old David was never bitter nor rebellious in those days, but his mind was somewhat affected after a curious and, as some would have it, merciful fashion.

  Maria said openly that it was a blessing that he looked at things the way he did, that she believed that the Lord was sort of telling him stories to keep him going in his hard road of life, the way folks tell stories to children. She discovered it before old David had been domiciled with her twenty-four hours. It was the next morning after he came there. He and her father were talking together on the porch, and she heard David saying this to old Abner. "'You see that house over there?' said he. "'Ain't it handsome? It's the handsomest house in this town, and it's all mine. Nobody else has the right to set foot in it. I had it painted green, and it's higher than the meeting-house. Can't nobody find any fault with that house? Nobody is going to build coupleies, nor baywinders on that. I can tell you it's just right.'" Maria and the woman whom she was fitting stared at each other.

  "'Did you hear that?' asked Maria, pale and trembling. "'He's out of his head!' said the woman. Maria leaned out of the window. "'Where is your house, Mr. Ransom?' she asked in a gentle voice. Old David pointed.

  "'He means the elm tree,' said Maria. End of The Elm Tree by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

• 03 - Morris and The Honorable Tim

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  Morris and the Honourable Tim by Myra Kelly for the 1903 Collection. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Matt Perard.

  Morris and the Honourable Tim by Myra Kelly. On the first day of school, after the Christmas holidays, teacher found herself surrounded by a howling mob of little savages in which she had much difficulty in recognizing her cherished first-reader class. Isidor Belkotovsky's face was so reared in smiles and foreign matter as to be beyond

  identification. Nathan Spitervitz had placed all his trust in a solitary suspender and two unstable buttons. Eva Kydansky had entirely freed herself from restraining hooks and eyes. Isidor Applebaum had discarded shoelaces, and Eby Aschnusky had bartered his only necktie for a yard of shoestring licorice.

  Miss Bailey was greatly disheartened by this reversion to the original type. She delivered daily lectures on nail brushes, hair ribbons, shoe polish, pens, buttons, elastic, and other means to grace. Her talks on soap and water became almost personal in tone, and her insistence on a close union between such garments as were meant to be united led to a lively traffic

  and twisted and disreputable safety pens. And yet the first-reader class, in all other branches of learning so receptive and responsive, made but halting and uncertain progress toward that state of virtue which is next to godliness. Early in January came the report that Gum Choo Tim was on the warpath and might be expected at any time.

  Miss Bailey heard the tidings in calm ignorance until Miss Blake, who ruled over the adjoining kingdom, interpreted the warning. A license to teach in the public schools of New York is good for only one year. Its renewal depends upon the reports of the principal in charge of the school and of the associate superintendent in whose district the school chances to be.

  After through such renewals the license becomes permanent, but Miss Bailey was, as a teacher, barely four months old. The associate superintendent for her vicinity was the Honorable Timothy O'Shea, known and dreaded as Gum Choo Tim, owing to his engaging way of creeping softly up back stairs and appearing all unheralded and unwelcome upon the threshold of his intended victim.

  This, Miss Blake explained, was in defiance of all the rules of etiquette governing such visits of inspection. The proper procedure had been that of Mr. O'Shea's predecessor, who had always given timely notice of his coming and a hint as to the subjects in which he intended to examine the children.

  Some days later he would amble from room to room accompanied by the amiable principal and followed by the gratitude of smiling and unruffled teachers. This kind old gentleman was now retired and had been succeeded by Mr. O'Shea, who, in to his unexpectedness, was adorned by an abominable temper, an overbearing manner, and a sense of cruel humor.

  He had almost finished his examinations at the nearest school where, during a brisk campaign of eight days, he had caused five dismissals, nine cases of nervous exhaustion, and an epidemic of hysteria. Day by day nerves grew more tense, tempers more unsure, sleep and appetite more fugitive. Experienced teachers went stolidly on with the ordinary routine, while beginners devoted

  time and energy to the more spectacular portions of the curriculum. But no one knew the Honorable Timothy's pet subjects, and so no one could specialize to any great extent. Chris Bailey was one of the beginners, and room eighteen was made to shine as the sun. Morris Mogulowski, monitor of the goldfish bowl, wrought busily until his charges glowed

  readily against the water plants in their shining bowl. Creepers crept, plants grew, and ferns waved under the care of Nathan Spiderwitz, monitor of the window boxes. There was such a martial swing and strut in Patrick Brennan's leadership of the line that it inflamed even the timid heart of Isidor Wyshnuski with a warlike glow at his feet

  with a spasmodic but wilment tramp. Sadie Gonorowski and Ava, her cousins, sat close side by side, no longer mad on themselves but with mid-kind feelings. The work of the preceding term was laid in neat and docketed piles upon the low bookcase. The children were enjoined to keep clean and in tire, and Teacher, a nervous and unsmiling

  Teacher, waited dully. A week passed thus, and then the good-hearted and experienced Miss Blake hurried ponderously across the hall to put Teacher on her guard. I've just had a note from one of the grammar teachers," she panted. "'Come shoot Tim. It's up in Miss Green's room. He'll take this floor next. Now see

  here, child. Don't look so frightened. The principal is with Tim. Of course, you're nervous, but try not to show it, and you'll be all right. His lay is discipline and reading. Well, good luck to you." Miss Bailey took heart of grace. The children read surprisingly well, were absolutely good, and the enemy, under convoy of the friendly principal, would be much less terrifying than

  the enemy at large and alone. It was, therefore, with a manner almost serene that she turned to greet the kindly concerned principal and the dreaded gum-shoe Tim. The latter she found less ominous of aspect than she had been led to fear, and the principal's charming little speech of introduction made her flush with quick pleasure, and the anxious eyes of Sadie Goneroski, noting the flush, grew calm as Sadie whispered to Eva, her close cousin.

  "'Say, teacher has a glad. She's red on the face. It could be her papa.' "'No, it's company,' answered Eva sagely. "'It ain't her papa. It's company. The wows' teacher takes him by the hand.'" The children were not in the least disconcerted by the presence of the large man. They always enjoyed visitors, and they liked the heavy gold chain which festooned the white waistcoat

  of this guest. And as they watched him, the associate superintendent began to superintend. He looked at the children all in their clean and smiling rows. He looked at the flowers and the goldfish, at the pictures and the plaster casts. He looked at the work of the last term, and he looked at teacher. As he looked, he swayed gently on his rubber heels and decided that he was going to enjoy the coming quarter of an hour. Teacher pleased

  him from the first. She was neither old nor ill-favored, and she was most evidently nervous. The combination appealed both to his love of power and his peculiar sense of humor. Singing deliberately in the chair of state, he began, "'Can the children sing, Miss Bailey?' "'They could sing very prettily, and they did.'

  "'Very nice, indeed,' said the voice of visiting authority. Very nice. Their music is exceptionally good. And are they drilled? Children, will you march for me?' Again they could, and did. Patrick marshalled his line in time and triumphed up and down the aisles to the evident interest and approval of the company. And then teacher led the class through some very energetic Swedish movements. While arms and bodies were bending and straightening

  at teacher's command and example, the door opened and a breathless boy rushed in. He bore an unfolded note, and as teacher had no hand to spare, the boy placed the paper on the desk under the softening eyes of the Honorable Timothy, who glanced down idly, and then pounced upon the note and read its every word. "'For you, Miss Bailey,' he said in the voice, before which even the school janitor had been

  known to quail, "'Your friend was thoughtful, though a little late.' And poor palpitating Miss Bailey read, "'Watch out! Gum-shoot Tim is in the building. The principal caught him on the back stairs, and they're going round together. He's as cross as a bear, green and dead-faint in the dressing-room. Says he's going to fire her. Watch out for him and send the news on. His lay is reading in discipline.'

  Miss Bailey grew cold with sick and unreasoning fear. As she gazed wide-eyed at the living confirmation of the statement that Gum-shoot Tim was as cross as a bear, the gentle-hearted took the paper from her nerveless grasp. "'It's all right,' he assured her. "'Mr. O'Shea understands that you had no part in this. It's all right. You are not responsible.'

  But Teacher had no ears for his soothing. She could only watch with fascinated eyes as the Honorable Timothy reclaimed the note and wrote across its damning face, "'Miss Green may come too. She is not fired. T. O. S.' "'Here, boy,' he called. "'Take this to your teacher.' The puzzled messenger turned to obey, and the associate superintendent saw that though

  his dignity had suffered, his power had increased. To the list of those whom he might, if so dispose, debower, he had now added the name of the principal, who was quick to understand that an unpleasant investigation lay before him. If Miss Bailey could not be held responsible for this system of inter-classroom communication, it was clear that the principal could.

  Every trace of interest had left Mr. O'Shea's voice as he asked, "'Can they read?' "'Oh, yes, they read,' responded Teacher, but her spirit was crushed and the children reflected her depression. Still, they were marvelously good and that blundering note had said, "'Discipline is his lay.' Well, here he had it. There was one spectator of this drama who, understanding no word nor instant therein,

  yet dismissed no shade of the many emotions which had stirred the light face of his lady. Toward the front of the room sat Morris Mogulowski, with every nerve tuned to teachers and with an appreciation of the situation in which the other children had no share. On the afternoon of one of those dreary days of waiting for the evil which had now come, Teacher had endeavored to explain the nature and possible result of this ordeal to her favorite. It was clear

  to him now that she was troubled and he held the large and unaccustomed presence of the company amid the whiskers responsible. Countless generations of ancestors had followed and fostered the instinct which now led Morris to propitiate an angry power. Luckily, he was prepared with an offering of a suitable nature. He had meant to enjoy it for yet a few days and then to give it to Teacher. She was such a sensible person about presence.

  One might give her one's most cherished possession with a brave and cordial heart, for on each Friday afternoon she returned the gifts she had received during the week, and this with no abatement of gratitude. Morris rose stealthily, crept forward and placed a bright blue bromo-seltard bottle in the fat hand which hung over the back of the chair of state. The hand closed instinctively as, with dawning curiosity, the Honorable Timothy studied the small figure

  at his side. It began in a wealth of loosely curling hair which shaded a delicate face, very pointed as to Chen and monopolized by a pair of dark eyes, sad and deep and beautiful. A faded blue jumper was buttoned tightly across the narrow chest. Frayed trousers were precariously attached to the jumper, and the impossible shoes and stockings supplemented the trousers. Glancing from boy to bottle, the company met to whiskers, asked, What's this for? For you.

  What's in it? A present. Mr. O'Shea removed the cork and proceeded to draw out incredible quantities of absorbent cotton. When there was no more to come, a faint tinkle sounded within the blue depths, and Mr. O'Shea, reversing the bottle, found himself possessed of a trampled and disfigured sleeveling of most palpable brass. It's from gold? Morse assured him. You put in your, excuse me, shirt. Wish you helped

  to wear it? Thank you, said the Honorable Tim, and there was a tiny break in the gloom which had enveloped him, and then, with a quick memory of the note and of his anger, asked Mr. O'Shea. Yes, Bailey, who is this young man? And Teacher, of whose hobbies Morris was one, answered warmly, That is Morris Mogluski,

  the best of boys. He takes care of the golden fish, and does all sorts of things for me. Don't you, dear? Teacher, yes, ma'am? Morris answered. I'm loving much meek you. I gives presents on the company over you. Ain't he rather big to speak such broken English? asked Mr. O'Shea. I hope you remember that

  it is part of your duty to stamp out the dialect. Yes, I know, Miss Bailey answered. But Morris has been in America for so short a time. Nine months, is it not? Teacher, yes, ma'am? I come out of Russia, responded Morris, on the verge of tears, and his face buried in Teacher's dress.

  Now Mr. O'Shea had his prejudices strong and deep. He had been given jurisdiction over that particular district because it was his native heath, and the Board of Education considered that he would be more in sympathy with the inhabitants than a stranger. The truth was absolutely the reverse. Because he had spent his early years in a large old house on East Broadway, because he now saw his birthplace changed to a squalid tenement, and the happy

  hunting grounds of his youth grown ragged and foreign, swarming with strange faces and noisy with strange tongues, Mr. O'Shea bore a sullen grudge against the usurping race. He resented the caressing air with which Teacher held the little hand placed so confidently within her own, and he welcomed the opportunity of gratifying his still ruffled temper and his racial antagonism at the same time. He would take a rise out of this young woman

  about her little Jew. She would be comforted later on. Mr. O'Shea rather fancied himself in the role of comforter when the sufferer was neither old nor ill-favored, and so he said about creating the distress which he would later change to gratitude and joy. Assuredly the Honorable Timothy had a well-developed sense of humor. "'Is English is certainly dreadful,' remarked the voice of authority, and it was not an

  English voice, nor is O'Shea distinctively an English name. Dreadful! And by the way, I hope you are not spoiling these youngsters. You must remember that you are fitting them for the battle of life. Don't coddle your soldiers. Can you reconcile your present attitude with discipline?' "'With Morris? Yes,' Teacher answered. He is gentle and tractable beyond words.'

  "'Well, I hope you're right,' grunted Mr. O'Shea. But don't coddle them.' And so the instant closed. The sleeve-link was tucked before Morris's yearning eyes into the reluctant pocket of the wide white waistcoat, and Morris returned to his place. He found his reader and the proper page, and the lesson went on with brisk serenity, real on the children's part but bravely assumed on teachers. Child after child stood up, read, sat down again,

  and it came to be the duty of Bertha Benderwitz to read the entire page of which the others had each read a line. She began jubilantly, but soon stumbled, hesitated, and wailed. Stands a fierce word. I don't know what it is. And Teacher turned to write the puzzling word upon the blackboard. Morris's heart stopped with a sickening suddenness and then rushed madly on again. He had a new and dreadful

  duty to perform. All his mother's counsel, all his father's precepts told him that it was his duty. Yet fear held him in his little seat behind his little desk while his conscience insisted on this unalterable decree of the social code. So somebody's clothes is wrong, it's polite, you says, excuse, and tells it out. And here was Teacher, whom he dearly loved, whose ideals of personal adornment extended to full sets of buttons and jumpers

  and to laces in both shoes. Here was his immaculate lady fair in urgent need of assistance and advice, and all because she had, on that day, inaugurated a delightfully vigorous exercise for which, architecturally, she was not designed. There was yet room for hope that someone else would see the breach and brave the danger, but no. The visitor sat stolidly in the chair of state, the principal sat serenely beside

  him, the children sat each in his own little place behind his own little desk, keeping his own little eyes on his own little book. No, Morris's soul cried with hamlets. The time is out of joint, oh cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right. Up into the quiet air went his timid hand. Teacher, knowing him in his more garrulous moods, ignored the threatened interruption of Bertha's spirited resume. But the windmill action of the little

  arm attracted the honorable Tim's attention. The best of boys wants you, he suggested, and Teacher, perforce, asked. Well, Morris, what is it? Not until he was on his feet did the monitor of the goldfish bowl appreciate the enormity of the mission he had undertaken. The other children began to understand and watched his

  struggle for words and breath with sympathy or derision, as their natures prompted. But there are no words in which one may politely mention ineffective safety pens to one's class of fashion. Morris's knees trembled queerly, his breathing crew difficult, and Teacher seemed a great way off as she asked again,

  Well, what is it, dear? Morris panted a little, smiled weakly, and then sat down. Teacher was evidently puzzled. The company, alert, the principal uneasy. Now, Morris, Teacher remonstrated, you must tell me what you want. But Morris had deserted his etiquette and his veracity, and murmured only,

  Nothings. Just wanted to be noticed, said the honorable Tim. It is easy to spoil them. And he watched the best of boys rather closely, for a habit of interrupting reading lessons, laudantly and without reason, was a trait in the young of which he disapproved. When this disapprobation manifested itself in Mr. O'Shea's countenance, the loyal heart of Morris interpreted it as

  a new menace to his sovereign. No later than yesterday she had warned them of the vital importance of coherence. Everyone knows, she had said, that only common little boys and girls come apart. No one ever likes them. And the big stranger was even now misjudging her. Again his short arm agitated the quiet air. Again his trembling legs upheld a trembling boy. Again authority urged. Again,

  Teacher asked, Well, Morris, what is it, dear? All this was as before. But not as before was poor, harassed Miss Bailey's swoop down the aisle, her sudden taking, Morris's troubled little face between her soft hands, the quick near meeting with her kind eyes, the note of pleading in her repetition.

  What do you want, Morris? He was beginning to answer when it occurred to him that the truth might make her cry. There was an unsteadiness about her upper lip which seemed to indicate the possibility. He found that he no longer yearned for words in which to tell her of her disjointment, but for something else, anything else, to say. His miserable eyes escaped from hers

  and wandered to the wall in desperate search for a conversation. There was no help in the pictures, no inspiration in the plaster cast. But on the blackboard he read, Tuesday, January 21st, 1902. He made the date, but he must make it serve. With Teacher close beside him, with a hostile eye of the honorable tem upon him, hedged round about by the frightened or admiring

  regard of the first reader class, Morris blinked rapidly, swallowed resolutely, and remarked, Teacher, this year's 1902! And knew that all was over. The caressing clasp of Teacher's hands grew into a grip of anger. The continence of Mr. O'Shea took on the beautiful expression of the prophet who has found honor and verification in his own country. The best of boys has his off days, and this is one of them, he remarked.

  Morris, said Teacher, did you stop a reading lesson to tell me that? Do you think I don't know what the year is? I'm ashamed of you. Never had she spoken thus. If the telling had been difficult to Morris, when she was glad on him, it was impossible now that she was a prey to such evident mad feelings. And yet he must make some explanation. So he murmured, Teacher, I tell you, Skuse, I know you knows what year stands. Only it's polite, I tell

  you something, and I had a friend. And so you bothered your Teacher with that nonsense, said Temp, you're a nice boy. Morris's eyes were hardly more appealing than Teacher's as the two culprits, for so they felt themselves turn to their judge. Morris is a strange boy, Miss Bailey explained. He can't be managed by ordinary methods.

  And extraordinary methods don't seem to work today, Mr. O'Shea interjected. And I think, Teacher continued, that it might be better not to press the point. Oh, if you have no control over him, Mr. O'Shea was beginning pleasantly, when the principal suggested. You'd better let us hear what he has to say, Miss Bailey. Make him understand that you are master here. And Teacher, with a heartsick laugh at the irony of this advice

  in the presence of the associate superintendent, turned to obey. But Morris would utter no words but these, dozens of times repeated, I have a friend. Miss Bailey coaxed, bribed, threatened and controlled, shook him surreptitiously, petted him openly. The result was always the same. It's polite I tell you something out, only I had afraid.

  But Morris dear, of what? cried Teacher. Are you afraid of me? Stop crying now and answer, are you afraid of Miss Bailey? Norman, are you afraid of the principal? Norman, are you afraid? With a slight pause, during which a native hue of honesty was vowely done to death, of the kind gentleman we are also glad to see.

  Norman. Well then, what is the matter with you? Are you sick? Don't you think you would like to go home to your mother? Norman, I ain't sick. I tells you skews. The repeated imitation of a sorrowful goat was too much for the Honorable Tim.

  Bring that boy to me, he commanded. I'll show you how to manage refractory and rebellious children. With much difficulty and many assurances that the gentleman was not going to hurt him, Miss Bailey succeeded in untwining Morris's legs from the supports of the desk and in half carrying, half leading him up to the chair of state.

  An ominous silence had settled over the room. Ava Gonoroski was weeping softly and the redoubtful Isidore Applebaum was stiffened in a frozen calm. Morris began the associate superintendent in his most awful tones. Will you tell me why you raised your hand? Come here, sir. Teacher urged him gently and like dog to heel he went. He halted within a pace or two of

  Mr. O'Shea and lifted a beseeching face toward him. I couldn't to tell nothing out, said he. I tells you skews. I got afraid. The Honorable Tim lunged quickly and caught the terrified boy preparatory to shaking him, but Morris escaped and fled to his haven of safety, his teacher's arms. When Miss Bailey felt the quick clasp of the thin little hands, the heavy beating of the

  overtired heart and the deep convulsive sobs, she turned on the Honorable Tim at the O'Shea and spoke, I must ask you to leave this room at once, she announced. The principal started and then sat back. Teacher's eyes were dangerous and the Honorable Tim might profit by a lesson.

  You frighten the child until he can't breathe. I can do nothing with him while you remain. The examination is ended. You may go. Now Mr. O'Shea saw he had gone a little too far in his effort to create the proper dramatic setting for his clemency. He had not expected the young woman to rise quite so far and high. His deprecating half apology, half eulogy, gave Morris the opportunity he craved.

  Teacher, he panted, I want to whisper, meet you in the ear. With a dexterous movement, he knelt upon her lap and tore out his solitary safety pen. He then clasped her tightly and made his explanation. It began in the softest of whispers, which increased in volume as it did in interest, so that he reached the climax at the full power of his boy soprano voice.

  Teacher, Mrs. Bailey, I know you what gear stands, only it's polite I tell you something. And I had a friend, the while the company meet the whiskers, sets on the rubbers. But teacher, it's like this, your jumper sticking out on you to take my safety pin. He had understood so little of all that had passed that he was beyond being surprised by the result of his communication.

  Miss Bailey had gathered him into her arms and had cried in a queer, hopeless way, and as she cried she had said over and over again, Morris, how could you? Oh, how could you, dear? How could you? The principal and the company meet the whiskers, looked solemnly at one another for a struggling moment, and had then broken into laughter, long and loud, until the visiting authority

  was limp and moist. The children waited in polite uncertainty, but when Miss Bailey, after some indecision, had contributed a wan smile which later grew into a shaky laugh, the first reader class went wild. Then the Honorable Timothy arose to say good-bye. He reiterated his praise of the singing and reading, the blackboard work, and the moral tone. An awkward pause ensued, during which

  the principal engaged the young Gunnerowskis in impromptu conversation. The Honorable Tim crossed over to Miss Bailey's side and steadied himself for a great effort. Teacher, he began meekly, I tell you, scoos, this sort of thing makes a man feel like a bull on a china shop. Do you think the little fellow will shake hands with me? I was really only joking.

  But surely he will, said Miss Bailey, as she glanced down at the tangle of dark curls rusting against her breast. Morris, dear, aren't you going to say good-bye to the gentleman? Morris relaxed one hand from his grasp on his lady and bestowed it on Mr. O'Shea. Good-bye, he said gently. I give you presents, drum-gold presents, the well your friend's

  met teacher. I am loving much with her too. At this moment the principal turned, and Mr. O'Shea, in a desperate attempt to retrieve his dignity, began, as to class management and discipline. But the principal was not to be deceived. Don't you think, Mr. O'Shea, said he, that you and I had better leave the management

  of the little ones to the women? You have noticed, perhaps, that this is nature's method. End of Morris and the Honourable Tim by Myra Kelly

• 04 - Zut

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  Zut by Guy Wetmore Carroll for the 1903 collection. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Matt Perrard.

  Zut by Guy Wetmore Carroll. On the right-hand side, on the Avenue de la Grande Armée, stand the Episcary of the Jean Baptiste Caille and the Salle de Quartier of Hippolyte Sérgeant. And between these two, there is a great gulf fixed,

  the witch has come to be through the acerbity of Alexandrine Caille, according to Esperance Sérgeant, and duplicity of Esperance Sérgeant, according to Alexandre Caille. But the veritable root of all evil is Zut, and Zut sits smiling in Jean Baptiste's doorway

  and cares not for anything in the world, say the sunlight and her midday meal. When Hippolyte found himself in a position to purchase the Salle de Quartier, he gave evidence of Mark Ackerman by uniting himself in the holy and civil bonds of matrimony

  with the retiring patron's daughter, whose daughter ran into the coveted five figures, and whose heart, said Hippolyte, was as good as her face was pretty, which, even by the unprejudiced,

  was acknowledged to be forcible commendation. The installation of the new establishment was a nine-days wonder in the Quartier. It is a busy thoroughfare at its western end, is the Avenue de la Grande Armée, crowded with bicyclists and with a multitude of creatures,

  fearfully and wonderfully clad, who do incomprehensible things in connection with motor-carriages. Also, there are big cafés in Plenty, whose waiters must be smoothly shaven, and, moreover, at the time when Hippolyte came into his own,

  the Porte-Mayotte station of the Métro-Palais-Tain had already pushed its entrée and sortie up through the soil, not a hundred meters from his door, where they stood like atrocious yellow tulips, or, you know, breathing people out and in by thousands.

  There was no lack of possible custom. The problem was to turn possible into probable and probable into permanent, and here the seven wits and the ten thousand francs of Esperance came prominently to the fore. She, it was, who sounded the progressive note,

  which is half the secret of success. Pour atterrir les gens, she said, with her arms akimbo, il faut débord la secette. In her creed, all that was worth doing, at all, was worth doing gloriously.

  So, on her guidance Hippolyte journeyed from shop to shop in the full bargue Saint-Antoine, and spent hours of impassioned argument with carpenters and decorators. In the end, the Salle de Coiffure was glorified by fresh painting, without and within,

  and by the addition of a long mirror in a gilt frame and a complicated apparatus of gleaming nickel-plate, which went by the imposing title of Appareil à des Septiques, and the acquisition of which was duly proclaimed by a special placard that swung at right angles to the door.

  The shop was rechristened too, and the black and white sign across its front, which formerly bore the simple inscription, Qu'il v'est, Qu'il v'est, now blazoned abroad the vastly more impressive legend,

  Salon Malakoff. The window-shelves fairly groaned beneath their burden of soaps, toilet-waters, and perfumery. A string of bright yellow sponges occupied each corner of the window, and through the agency of white enamel letters on the paint itself,

  public attention was drawn to the apparently contradictory facts that English was spoken and shampooing given within. Then Hippolyte engaged two assistants and clapped them in white duck jackets, and his wife fabricated a new blouse of blue silk and seated herself behind the desk with an engaging smile.

  The enterprise was fairly launched, and experience was not slow in proving the theories of Esperance to be well founded. The quartier was a part from its start, and took with enthusiasm the bait held forth. The affairs of the Salon Malakoff prospered prodigiously.

  But there is a serpent in every Eden, and in that of the Serjeant, this role was assumed by Alexandrine Quet. The worthy officier himself was of too torpid a temperament to fall a victim to the gnawing tooth of envy,

  but in the soul of his wife, the launch, and, what was worse, the immediate prosperity of the Salon Malakoff, bred dire resentment. Her own establishment had grown grimy with the passage of time, and the annual profits displayed a constant and disturbing tendency

  toward complete evaporation, since the coming of the big cafés and the resultant subversion of custom to the wholesale dealers. This persistent narrowing of the former appreciable gap between purchase and selling price rankled in Alexandrine's mind,

  but her misguided efforts to maintain the percentage of profit by recourse to inferior qualities only made bad worse. And even as the Serjeants were steering the Salon Malakoff forth upon the waters of prosperity, there were nightly conferences in the household next door

  at which impending ruin presided, and exasperation as sounded the keynote of every sentence. The resplendent façade of Hippolyte's establishment, the tide of custom which poured into and out of his door, the loudly expressed admiration of his ability and thrift

  which greeted her ears on every side, and finally the sight of Esperance, fresh, smiling, and prosperous, behind her little counter. All these were as gall and wormwood to Alexandrine, brooding over her accumulating debts and her decreasing earnings

  among her dusty stacks of jars and boxes. Once she had called upon her neighbour, somewhat for courtesy's sake, but more for curiosities, and since then the agreeable scent of violet and lilac, perfumery, dwelt always in her memory, and mirages of scrupulously polished nickel and glass hung always before her eyes.

  The air of her own shop was heavy with the pungent odours of raw vegetables, cheeses, and dried fish, and no brilliance redeemed the sardine and biscuit boxes which surrounded her. Life became a bitter thing to Alexandrine Cayette, for if nothing is more gratifying than one's own success,

  surely nothing is less so than that of one's neighbour. Moreover, her visit had never been returned, and this again was fuel for her rage. But the sharpest thorn in her flesh, and even in that of her phlegmatic husband,

  was the base desertion to the enemy's camp of Abel Fleek. In the days when Madame Cayette was unmarried, and when her ninety kilos were fifty still, Abel had been youngest coming in the very shop over which she now held sway, and the most devoted suitor in all her terrain.

  Even after his prowess in the black days of seventy-one had won him the attention of the civil authorities, and a grateful municipality had transformed the grosser soldier into a guardian of law and order, he still hung upon the favour of his heart's first love, and only gave up the struggle when Jean Baptiste bore off the prize

  and enthroned her in state as presiding genius of his newly acquired épicéré. Later, an unwittingly kindly prefect had transferred Abel to the seventeenth arrondissement, and so the old friendship was picked up where it had been dropped, and the ruddy-faced agent found it both convenient and agreeable to drop in frequently at Madame Cayette's on his way home,

  and exchange a few words of reminiscence or batter for a box of sardines or a minute package of tea. But with the deterioration of his old friends' wares and the almost simultaneous appearance of the salon Malakoff, his loyalty wavered. Flick sampled the advantages of Hippolyte's establishment,

  and, being won over thereby, returned again and again. His hearty laugh came to be heard almost daily in the Salle de Quartier, and because he was a brave homme and a good customer, who did not stand upon a question of a few sous, but allowed Hippolyte to work his will and trim and curl and perfume him to his heart's content,

  there was always a welcome for him and a smile from Madame Sejour, and, occasionally, a little present of brilliancy or perfumery, for friendship's sake, and because it is well to have the goodwill of the all-powerful police. From her window, Madame Cayette observed the comings and goings of Abel with a resentful eye. It was rarely now that he glanced into the epicerie as he passed,

  and still more rarely that he greeted his former flame with a stiff nod. Once she had hailed him from the doorway, sardines in hand, but he had replied that he was pressed for time and had passed rapidly on. Then, indeed, did Blackness descend upon the soul of Alexandrine, and in her deepest consciousness she vowed to have her revenge.

  Neither the occasion nor the method was at yet clear to her, but she pursed her lips ominously and bided her time. In the existence of Madame Cayette there was one empathetic consolation for all misfortunes. The witch was none other than Zote, a white and gore cat of surpassing beauty and prodigious size. She had come into Alexandrine's possession as a kitten,

  and, what with much eating and an inherent distaste for exercise, had attained her present proportions and her superb air of unincern. It was from the latter that she derived her name, the witch in Parisian, Arcate, that once means everything and nothing, but is chiefly taken to signify complete and magnificent indifference to all things mundane and material, and in the matter of indifference Zote was past mischievous.

  Even for Madame Cayette herself, who fed her with the choicest morsels from her own plate, brushed her fine fur with excessive care, and addressed caressing remarks to her at minute intervals throughout the day. Zote manifested a lack of interest that amounted to contempt. As she basked in the warm sun at the shop door, the round face of her mistress beamed upon her from the little desk, and the voice of her mistress sent fulsome flattery winging toward her on the heavy air.

  Was she beautiful, mon dieu? In effect, all that one could dream of the most beautiful, and her eyes, of a blue like the heaven, were they not wise and calm? Mon dieu, yes! It was a cat among thousands, a Mimi almost divine. Jean Baptiste, appealed to for confirmation of these statements, replied that it was so. There was no denying that this was a magnificent beast, and of a chic, and caressing, which was exaggeration,

  and of an affection, which was doubtful, and courageous, which was wholly untrue. Mazette, yes, a cat of cats. And was the boy to be the whole afternoon in delivering a cheese? he demanded of her, and Madame Cayelet would challenge him to ask her that. But it was a good, great beast all the same, and so buried herself again in her accounts,

  until her attention was once more drawn to Zut, and fresh flattery poured forth. For all of this, Zut cared less than nothing. In the midst of her mistress's sweetest cajolery, she simply closed her sapphire eyes with an inexpressibly eloquent air of weariness, or turned to the intricacies of her toilet, as who should say, continue, I am listening, but it is unimportant.

  But long familiarity with her disdain had deprived it of any stain, so far as Alexandrine was concerned. Passive indifference, she could suffer. It was only when Zut proceeded to an active manifestation of ingratitude that she inflicted an irremediable wound. Returning from her marketing one morning, Madame Cayelet discovered her greaseless favourite

  seated complicitly in the doorway of the Salon Malakoff, and in a paroxysm of indignation, bore down upon her and snatched her to her breast. Unhappy one, she cried, planting herself in full viove, esperance, and while raining the letter of her reproach upon the truant, contriving to apply its spirit wholly to her neighbour.

  What hast thou done? Is it that thou desertest me for strangers who may destroy thee? Name of a name hast thou no heart. They would steal thee from me, and above all, now. Well then, no, one shall see if such things are permitted. Vagabond! And with this porting shot, which passed harmlessly over the head of the offender, and launched itself full at Madame Sejour, the outraged épocérie flunced back into her own domain,

  where, turning, she threatened the empty air with a passionate gesture. Vagabond! she repeated. Good for nothing! It is not enough to have robbed me of my friends that you must steal my child as well. We shall see. Then, suddenly softening, thou art beautiful, and good, and wise, mon Dieu, if I should lose thee, and above all, now.

  Now there existed a market, if unvoiced, community of failing between Esperance and her resentful neighbour, for the farmer's passion for cats was more consuming even than the latter's. She had long cherished the dream of possessing a white angora, and when, that morning, of her own accord, Zot stepped into the salon malakoff, she was received with demonstrations even warmer than those to which she had long since become accustomed.

  And whether it was the novelty of her surroundings, or merely some unwanted instinct, which made her unusually susceptible, her habitual indifference then and there gave place to animation, and her satisfaction was vented in her long appreciative purr, wherewith it was not once a year that she vouchsafed to gladden her owner's heart. Esperance hastened to prepare a saucer of milk, and when this was exhausted,

  added a generous portion of fish, and Zot then made a tour of the shop, rubbing herself against the chair legs and receiving the homage of customers and duck-clad assistants alike. Flick, his ruddy face, screwed into a mere knot of features. A syphilit worked violet hair tonic, and to his brittle locks was moved to satire by the apparition. Tience, it is with the cat as with the clients. All the world for sakes the cat.

  Strangely enough, the wrathful words of Alexandrian, as she snatched her darling from the doorway, awoke in the mind of Esperance her first suspicion of the smoldering resentment. Absorbed in the launching of her husband's affairs, and constantly employed in the making of change, and with the keeping of her simple accounts, she had had no time to bestow upon her neighbours, and even had her attention been free, she could hardly have been expected to deduce the rancour of Madame Kael from the evidence at hand.

  But even if she had been able to ignore the significance of that furious outburst at her very door, its meaning had not been lost upon the others, and her own half-formed conviction was speedily confirmed. What has she? cried Hippolyte, pausing in the final stage of his operations upon the highly perfumed flic. Do I know? replied his wife with a shrug. She thinks I stole her cat. I! Quite simply, she hates you, puts in flic. And why not? She is old and fat, and her business is taking itself off, like that.

  You are young and, with a bow, as he rose, beautiful, and your affairs march to a marvel. She is jealous, said tu. It is a bad character, that. But, mon Dieu! But what does that say to you? Let her go her way, she and her cat. Au revoir, sir, madame. Au revoir, sir, dame. And, raffling a couple of sous into the little urn reserved for tips, the policeman took his departure amid a chorus of Messi, messi. Au revoir, messi. from Hippolyte and his duck-clad aides.

  But what he had said remained behind. All day, Madame Segelle pondered upon the incident of the morning and Abel Flic's comments thereupon, seeking out some more plausible reason for this hitherto unsuspected enmity than the mere contrast between her material conditions and those of Madame Kael seemed to her to afford. For to a natural placidity of temperament, which manifested itself in a reluctance to incur the displeasure of anyone, had been lately added in Esperance, a shrewd commercial instinct which told her that the fortunes of the Salon Malakoff might readily be imperiled by an unfriendly tongue. In the quartier, gossip spread quickly and took deep root. It was quite imaginably within the power of Madame Kaelet.

  To circulate such rumors of Segelle dishonesty, Esche had drawn their lately won custom from them and leave but empty chairs and discontent, where now all was prosperity and satisfaction. Suddenly there came to her the memory of that visit which she had never returned. Mon Dieu! And was not that reason enough? She, the youngest patron in the quartier, to ignore deliberately the friendly call of a neighbour. At least it was not too late to make amends. So when business lagged a little in the late afternoon, Madame Segelle slipped from her desk and, after a further touch to her hair, went in next door to pour oil upon the troubled waters.

  Madame Kaelet, throned at her counter, received her visitor with unexampled fragility. Ah, it is you, she said. You have come to make some purchases, no doubt. Aigus, Madame, answered her visitor, disconcerted, but tactfully accepting the hint. The best quality, or, demanded Alexandrian, with his suggestion, I was near. The best, evidently, Madame. Six, if you please. Spring weather, at last, it would seem.

  To this generality the other made no reply. Descending from her stool, she blew sharply into a small paper bag, thereby distending it into a miniature balloon, and began selecting the eggs from a basket, holding each one to the light and then dusting it with exaggerated care before placing it in the bag. While she was thus employed, Zot advanced from a secluded corner and, stretching her forelegs slowly to their utmost length, greeted her acquaintance of the morning with a yawn.

  Finding in the cad an outlet for her embarrassment, Esperance made another effort to give the interview a friendly turn. He is beautiful, Madame. Yon mato, she said. It is a female, replied Madame Calais, turning abruptly from the basket, and she does not care for strangers. The second snub was not calculated to encourage neighborly overtures, but Madame Sergeau had felt herself to be in the wrong, and was not to be so readily repulsed.

  We do not see Monsieur Calais at the Salon Malakoff, she continued. We should be enchanted. My husband, Chaves, himself, retorted Alexandrine with renewed dignity. But his hair, ventured Esperance. I cut it, thundered her foe. Here Madame Sergeau made a false move. She laughed.

  Then, in confusion, Anne striving too late to retrieve herself. Pardon, Madame, she added, but it seems throat to me. That, after all, tinsel is a sum so small. All the world, unfortunately, broken Madame Calais, has not the wherewithal to buy mirrors and pay itself frescoes and apparelles and to septiques. The eggs are twenty-four sous, but we do not pride ourselves upon our eggs.

  Perhaps you had better seek them elsewhere, for the future. Per seul reply, Madame Sergeau had recourse to her expressive shrug, and then, laying two frunks upon the counter, and gathering up the sous, which Alexandrine rather hurled at, than handed her, she took her way toward the door with all the dignity at her command. But Madame Calais, failing her snub to have been insufficient, could not let her go without a final thrust.

  Perhaps your husband will be so amiable as to shampoo my cat, she shouted. She seems to like your salon. But Esperance, well, for Concord's sake, inclined to tolerate all rudeness to herself, was not prepared to hear a hip leap, insulted. And so, a wheeling at the doorway flung all her resentment into two words. Mais elle est belle!

  Yes! screamed Alexandrine from the desk, and so they parted. Now, even at this stage, an armed truce might still have been preserved, had Zot been content with the evil she had wrought, and not thought it incumbent upon her further to embitter a quarrel that was a very pretty quarrel as it stood. But whether it was that the milk and fish of the Salon Malakoft laid sweeter upon her memory than any of the familiar dainties in the Épicerie Calais, or that, by her unknowable feline instinct, she was irresistibly drawn toward the scent of violet and lilac brilliante.

  Her first visit to the Serjeu was soon repeated, and from this visit other visits grew, until it was almost a daily occurrence for her to saunter slowly into the Salais de Cœuf-Fuir, and there received the food and homage which were rendered as her undisputed due. For, whatever was the bitterness of Esperance toward Madame Calais, no part thereof descended upon Zot. On the contrary, at each visit, her heart was more drawn toward the sleek angora at her desire, but strengthened to possess her pure. But white angoras are a luxury, and an expensive one at that, and, however prosperous the Salon Malakoft might be, its proprietors were not as yet in a position to squander eighty francs upon a whim.

  So, until profits should mount higher, Madame Serjeu was forced to content herself with a voluntary visit of her neighbour's pet. Madame Calais did not yield her rights of sovereignty without a struggle. On the occasion of Zot's third visit, she descended upon the Salon Malakoft, robed in wrath, and found the adored one contentedly feeding on fish in the very bosom of the family Serjeu. That appalling scene ensued. If, she stormed, crimson of countenance and threatening Esperance with her fist, if you must entice my cat from her home, at least I will thank you not to give her food.

  I provide all that is necessary, and, for the rest, how do I know what is in that saucer? And she surveyed the duck-clad assistants and the astounded customers with tremendous scorn. You, others, she added, I ask you, is it just? These people take my cat and feed her. Feed her? With I know not what. It is overwhelming, unheard of, and, above all, now! But here the peaceful Hippolyte played trumps.

  It is the privilege of the vulgar, he cried, advancing razor in hand, when they are at home to insult their neighbors, but here, not. My wife has told me of you and your sayings. Beware, or I shall arrange your affair for you. Go, you and your cat. And by way of emphasis he fairly kicked Zot into her astonished owner's arms. He was magnificent, was Hippolyte. This anecdote, duly elaborated, was poured into the ears of Abel-Flick an hour later, and that evening he paid his first visit in many months to Madame Calais. She greeted him effusively, being willing to pardon all the past for the sake of regaining this powerful friend.

  But the glitter in the agent's eye would have cowed a fiercer spirit than hers. You amuse yourself, he said sternly, looking straight at her over the handful of raisins which she tendered him. By wearing my friends, I counsel you to take care. One does not sell inferior eggs in Paris without hearing of it sooner or later. I know more than I have told, but not more than I can tell, if I choose. Ah, ancient friendship, faltered Alexandrine, touched in a vulnerable spot.

  Preserves you thus far, added Flick, no less unmoved. Beware how you abuse it. And so the calls of Zot were no longer disturbed. But the rover spirit is progressive, and thus short visits became long visits. And finally the Angora spent whole nights in the salon Malakoff, where a box and a bed of carpet were provided for her. And one fateful morning the meaning of Madame Calais' significant words, and above all, now, was made clear.

  The prosperity of Hippolyte's establishment had grown apace, so that, on the morning in question, the three chairs were occupied, and yet other customers awaited their turn. The air was laden with violet and lilac. A stealth chauffeur in a leather suit, thickly coated with dust, was undergoing a shampoo at the hands of one of the duck-clad. And under the skillfully plied razor of the other, the virgin down slid from the lips and chin of a slim and somewhat startled youth, while from a vaporizer Hippolyte played a fine spray of perfumed water upon the ruddy continents of Abel-Flick. It was an eloquent moment, imminently fitted for some dramatic incident, and that dramatic incident zut supplied.

  She advanced slowly, and with an air of conscious dignity from the corner, where was her carpeted box? And in her mouth was a limp something, which, when deposited in the immediate center of the salon Malakoff, resolved itself into an anguera kitten, as white as snow. Epetain, said Flick, mopping his perfumed chin, and so it was. There was an immediate investigation of zut's quarters, which revealed four other kittens. But each of these was marked with black or tan. It was the flower of the flock with which the proud mother had won her public.

  And they are all yours, cried Flick, when the question of ownership arose. Mon Dieu, yes, there was such a case not a month ago, in the 8th arrondissement, a concierge at the Avenue Hosh, who made a contrary claim. But the courts decided against her. They are all yours, Madame Sejour. My felicitations. Now, as we have said, Madame Sejour was of a placid temperament, which sought not strife. But the unprovoked insults of Madame Calais had struck deep, and, after all, she was but human.

  So it was that, seated at her little desk, she composed the following masterpiece of satire. Cher Madame, we send you back your cat and the others, all but one. One kitten was of a pure white, more beautiful even than its mother. As we have long desired a white angora, we keep this one as a souvenir of you. We regret that we do not see the means of accepting the kind offer you were so amiable as to make us.

  We fear that we shall not find time to shampoo your cat, as we shall be so busy taking care of our own. Monsieur Flick will explain the rest. We pray you to accept, Madame, the assurance of our distinguished consideration. Hippolyte and Esperance, Sergeant. It was Abel Flick who conveyed the above epistle and four of Zot's kittens to Alexandrine Calais. And when that wrathful person would have rent him with tooth and nail, it was Abel Flick who laid his finger on his lip and said,

  Concern yourself with the superior kitten, Madame, and I concern myself with the inferior eggs. To which Alexandrine made no reply. After Flick had taken his departure, she remained speechless for five consecutive minutes for the first time in the whole of her waking existence. Gazing at the spot at her feet, worse for all, the white angora surrounded by her mottled offspring. Even when the first shock of her defeat had passed, she simply heaved a deep sigh and uttered two words.

  Ah, Zot! The witch in Parisian argot at once means everything and nothing. End of Zot by Guy Wetmore Carroll

• 05 - Three poems by Rainer M. Rilke, Trans by Jessie Lemont (1918)

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  Three poems by Rainer Maria Rilke for the 1903 collection. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Matt Paul-Rort. Three poems from the Book of Poverty and Death.

  Her mouth is like the mouth of a fine bust, that cannot utter sound, nor breathe, nor kiss, but that had once from life received all this, which shaped its subtle curves, and ever must, from fullness of past knowledge well alone, a thing apart, a parable in stone. Two. Alone thou wanderest through space, profound one, with a hidden face.

  Thou art poverty's great rose, the eternal metamorphos of gold into the light of sun. Thou art the mystic homeless one, into the world thou never came, too mighty thou, too great to name. Voice of the storm, song that the wild wind sings, thou harp that shatters those who play thy strings. Three.

  Where they leap, the crags in their flight, and where at dusk and caverns hollow, they crooned music out the night. Send me far into thy barren land, where the snow clouds the wild wind drives, where monasteries like grey shrouds stand, aghast symbols of unlived lives. Their pilgrims climb slowly, one by one, and behind them a blind man goes.

  With him I will walk, till day is done, up the pathway that no one knows. End of three poems from The Book of Poverty and Death by Rainer Maria Rilke. Translated by Jesse Lamont.

• 06 - The Schoolmarm's Saddle Horse

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  The School Marm's Saddle Horse by Frank Benton From Cowboy Life on the Side Track for the 1903 Collection. One day, while waiting on a side track, Old Truck Wagon got to telling about the new school marm in their neighborhood. He said he reckoned she was as high-educated as anybody ever got.

  He said she didn't say cow-puncher, talk much, but she used some mighty high-sounding words. Why, he said, she called a water-gap a water-yong, a shindig a donce, engines nabarigenes, cowboys cow-servants, and Bill Allen's hired girl, where she boards, a domestic. The first time she came to Bill Allen's, she heard them a-talking about cow-punchers,

  and she asked Old Bill if he wouldn't show her a real live cow-puncher, and there weren't any cow-punchers in Boston, where she came from, and Old Bill said he'd have one over from the nearest cow-ranch next day. The next morning he comes over to my ranch and tells me to rig out and first snaps. Put on my buckskin shirt and big Mexican hat with tassels on it, with red silk handkerchief

  around my neck, and he would take me over and introduce me to the new school marm. So I rigged up all proper, and when we got over to Bill Allen's place, Old Bill told his wife to go to the school marm's room and tell her he had a genuine cow-puncher out there, and for her to come out and see him. She told Mrs. Allen she was busy just then, but tell Mr. Allen to take the cow-puncher

  to the barn and give him some hay, and she would be out directly. Now he'd been wondering ever since, Old Chuck said, what on earth she reckoned a cow-puncher was. Still, she was mighty green about some things, because when they had a little party at Old Bill Allen's, all the girls got to telling about the breed, other saddle horses, and

  some said their horse was a Hamiltonian, and some said their horse was thoroughbred, and some was Black Hawk Morgan. The school marm said she had a gentleman friend in Boston who had a very fine saddle horse of the stallion breed, and when the boys giggled and the gals began to look red, she says, as innocent as a lamb, there is such a breed of horses, ain't they?

  Of course, she says, I know it's a rare breed, and perhaps you folks out here never saw any of that breed. She says, they are great horses to winning, why my friend's horse kept winning it all the time. When she got to describing that horse's habits, of course all us boys begun to back up and

  get out the room. I reckon she was from an Irish family, because she insisted Mrs. Flanagan was right when she called the station a depot. But I reckon she could just knock the hindsides off anybody when it came to singing. I never did know just whether it was a song or not she had sung, because none of us could

  understand it. She said it was Italian, and of course there wasn't any of us understood any Dago talk, but she would just commence away down in a kind of low growl, like a sleeping foxhound when he is dreaming of a bear fight, and keep growling a little louder and a little louder, and directly begin to give some short barks, and then it would sound like a herd of wild

  cattle balling round a dead carcass, then like a lot of hungry coyotes howling of a clear frosty night, and finally wind up like hundreds of wild geese flying high and going south for winter. She said her voice had been cultivated, and I reckon it had. You could tell it had been laid off and mighty even rose, the weeds all pulled out and the

  dirt thrown up close to the hills. But somehow I'd a heap rather hear a little blue-eyed girl I know up in the mountains of Idaho sing the Suwannee River and coming through the La Brea, because I can understand that. I guess them Boston girls are all right at home.

  I reckon they are used to them there.

• 07 - The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin

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  The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin by Beatrix Potter for the 1903 collection. The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin. A Story for Nora by Beatrix Potter. This is a tale about a tale, a tale that belonged to a little red squirrel, and his name was Nutkin.

  He had a brother called Twinkleberry, and a great many cousins. They lived in a wood at the edge of a lake. In the middle of the lake there is an island covered with trees and nut bushes, and amongst those trees stands a hollow oak tree, which is the house of an owl, who is called Old Brown.

  One autumn, when the nuts were ripe and the leaves on the hazel bushes were golden and green, Nutkin and Twinkleberry and all the other little squirrels came out of the wood and down to the edge of the lake. They made little rafts out of twigs, and they paddled away over the water to Owl Island to gather nuts.

  Each squirrel had a little sack and a large oar, and spread out his tail for a sail. They also took with them an offering of three fat mice as a present for Old Brown, and put them down upon his doorstep. Twinkleberry and the other little squirrels each made a low bow and said politely, Old Mr. Brown, will you favor us with permission to gather nuts upon your island?

  But Nutkin was excessively impertinent in his manners. He bobbed up and down like a little red cherry, singing, Rettle me, rattle me, rock-tock-toe, a little wee man in a red-red coat, a staff in his hand, and a stone in his throat. If you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give you a groat.

  Now this riddle is as old as the hills. Mr. Brown paid no attention, whatever, to Nutkin. He shut his eyes obstinately and went to sleep. The squirrels filled their little sacks with nuts and sailed away home in the evening. But next morning they all came back again to Owl Island, and Twinkleberry and the others

  brought a fine fat mole and laid it on the stone in front of Old Brown's doorway and said, Mr. Brown, will you favor us with your gracious permission to gather some more nuts? But Nutkin, who had no respect, began to dance up and down, tickling Old Mr. Brown with a nipple and singing, Old Mr. B, riddle me a re, hitty-pitty within the wall, hitty-pitty without the wall.

  If you touch hitty-pitty, hitty-pitty will bite you. Mr. Brown woke up suddenly and carried the mole into his house. He shut the door in Nutkin's face. Presently, a little thread of blue smoke from a wood fire came up from the top of the tree, and Nutkin peeped through the keyhole and sang, a houseful, a wholeful, and you cannot

  gather a bowlful. The squirrels searched for nuts all over the island and filled their little sacks, but Nutkin gathered oak apples, yellow and scarlet, and sat upon a beach stump playing marbles and watching the door of Old Mr. Brown. On the third day, the squirrels got up very early and went fishing.

  They caught seven fat minnows as a present for Old Brown. They paddled over the lake and landed under a crooked chestnut tree on Owl Island. Twinkleberry and six other little squirrels each carried a fat minnow, but Nutkin, who had no nice manners, brought no present at all. He ran in front, singing.

  The man in the wilderness said to me, how many strawberries grow in the sea? I answered him, as I thought good, as many red herrings as grow in the wood. But Old Mr. Brown took no interest in riddles, not even when the answer was provided for him. On the fourth day, the squirrels brought a present of six fat beetles, which were as

  good as plums in plum pudding for Old Brown. Each beetle was wrapped up carefully in a dockleaf, fastened with a pine needle pen. But Nutkin sang as rudely as ever. Old Mr. B, riddle me re, flower of England, fruit of Spain, met together in a shower of rain, put in a bag tied round with string, if you'll tell me this riddle, I'll give

  you a ring. Which was ridiculous of Nutkin, because he had not got any ring to give to Old Brown. The other squirrels hunted up and down the nut bushes, but Nutkin gathered robin's pin cushions off a briar bush and stuck them full of pine needle pens. On the fifth day, the squirrels brought a present of wild honey.

  It was so sweet and sticky that they licked their fingers as they put it down upon the stone. They had stolen it out of a bumblebee's nest on the tippity top of the hill. But Nutkin skipped up and down, singing, hum-a-bum, buzz, buzz, hum-a-bum, buzz. As I went over tipple-time, I met a flock of bonnie swine, some yellow-nacked, some

  yellow-backed. They were the very bonniest swine. That air went over the tipple-time. Old Mr. Brown turned up his eyes in disgust at the impertinence of Nutkin, but he ate up the honey.

  The squirrels filled their little sacks with nuts, but Nutkin sat upon a big flat rock and played ninepins with a crab-apple and green fur cones. On the sixth day, which was Saturday, the squirrels came again for the last time. They brought a new laid egg and a little brush basket as a last parting present for Old Brown. But Nutkin ran in front, laughing and shouting.

  Humpty-dumpty lies in the beck, with a white counterpane round his neck. Forty doctors and forty rights. Cannot put Humpty-dumpty to rights. Now Old Mr. Brown took an interest in eggs. He opened one eye and shut it again.

  But still he did not speak. Nutkin became more and more impertinent. Old Mr. B, Old Mr. B, Hickamore, Hackamore on the king's kitchen door, all the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn't drive Hickamore, Hackamore off the king's kitchen door.

  Nutkin danced up and down like a sunbeam, but still Old Brown said nothing at all. Nutkin began again. Arthur O'Bower has broken his band. He comes roaring up the land. The King of Scots, with all his power, cannot turn Arthur up the Bower.

  Nutkin made a whirring noise to sound like the wind, and he took a running jump right onto the head of Old Brown. Then all at once there was a flutterment and a scufflement, and a loud squeak. The other squirrels scattered away into the bushes. When they came back, very cautiously peeping round the tree, there was Old Brown sitting

  on his doorstep quite still, with his eyes closed as if nothing had happened. But Nutkin was in his waistcoat pocket. This looks like the end of the story, but it isn't. Old Brown carried Nutkin into his house and held him up by the tail, intending to skin him.

  But Nutkin pulled so very hard that his tail broke in two, and he dashed up the staircase and escaped out of the attic window. And to this day, if you meet Nutkin up a tree and ask him a riddle, he will throw sticks at you and stamp his feet and scold and shout, Cuck, cuck, cuck, crrrr, cuck. End of the tale, a Squirrel Nutkin, by Beatrix Pogger.

• 08 - Two Hearts that Beat As One

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  Two Hearts That Beat Is One by Frank Norris. Which it puts it up as how you ain't never heard about that time that Hardenburg and Stroker, the Anglisher, had a friendly go with bare knuckles, ten rounds it was, all along a female woman. It is a small world, and I had just found out that my friend, Bunt MacBride, horse-rankler, miner, farrow-dealer, and bone-gatherer, whose world was the plains

  and ranges of the great southwest, was known of the three black crows, Hardenburg, Stroker, and Ali-Bazan, and had even foregathered with them on more than one of their ventures for Cyrus Ryder's Exploitation Agency, ventures that had nothing of the desert in them, but that involved the sea and the schooner and the taste of the great lunged Canaris trades. You ain't never crossed the trail of that mournful history.

  I professed my ignorance and said, They fought? Mr. Mann, repurred Bunt soberly, as one broaching a subject not to be trifled with, They sure did, friendly-like, you know, like as how two high-stippin' sassy gents figures out how to settle any little strained relations, friendly-like, but considerable, keen.

  He took a pinch of tobacco from his pouch and a bit of paper, and rolled a cigarette in the twinkling of an eye, using only one hand, in true Mexican style. Now, he said, as he drew the first lung puff to the very bottom of the leathern valves he calls his lungs. Now, I'm a-goin' for to relate that same painful proceeding to you, just so as you can get a line on the consumin' and devourin' foolishness of male humans when they's a woman

  in the wind. Woman, said Bunt, wagglin' his head thoughtfully at the water, woman is a weather breeder. Mr. Dixon, there is three things I'm scared of. The last two I don't just rightly call to mind at this moment, but the first is woman. When I meets up with a female woman on my trail, I shears off some prompt, Mr. Dixon, I shears off. And Hartnberg, he added irrelevantly,

  woulda took and married this woman, so he would. Yes, and Stroker would, too. Was there another man, I asked. No, said Bunt. Then he began to chuckle behind his mustaches. Yes, there was. He smote a thigh. They sure was another man for fair. Well now, Mr. Mann, let me tell you the whole how.

  It began with me being took into a wild-eyed scheme that that maverick, sot rider, had cooked up for the three crows. They was a row-down gordemaller wife. Some gazobby named Palachi, Barretto Palachi, finding times dull, and the boys, some off their feed, ups and says to his self, exercise is what I needs. I will now take an overthrow to blame government. Well, the same Palachi rounds up a bunch of inserectos and

  begins pestering and badgering and hectoring the government, and raring round and bellaring and making a procession of his self till he sure pervades the landscape. And before you knows what, lo and behold, here's a real, live, revolution thing, cah eudolin in the scenery, and the government is plum-bothered. They rounds up the gazobby, at last, at a place on the coast, but he escapes as easy as how do you do. He can't, how some ever, get back to his inserectos.

  The blame government being in possession of all the trails leading into the hinterland. So says he, what for a game would it be for me to hack up to Frisco and get in touch with my financial backers and conspire it to smuggle down a load of arms? Which the same he does, and there's where the three black crows and me begin to take a hand. Sire Ryder gives us the job of taking the schooner down to a certain point on the Gordomalder coast, and they are delivering to the agent of the gazobbo

  3000 stand of 48 Winchesters. When we gets this far into the game, Ryder ups and says, boys, here's where I cashes right in. You sets right to me for the schooner and the cargo, but you goes to Palachi's agent over crossed the bay for instructions and directions. But, says the Englisher, Stroker, this bit in a blind play don't suit our hand. Why not, says he, make right up to Mr. Palachi himself? No, says Ryder, no, boys, you can't. The senor

  is lying as low as a toad in a wheel track these days because of the prying and meddling disposition of the local authorities. No, he says, ye must have your palaver with the agent, which is a woman. And thereon I groans low and despairing. So soon as he mentions female, I knowed trouble was in the atmosphere, and right there is where I sure loses my presence of mind. What I should have done was to say, Mr. Ryder, Hardenburg, and gents, all, you're good boys,

  and you drinks and deals fair, and I loves you all with a love that can never, never die for the terms of your natural lives. And may God have mercy on your souls. But I ain't keepin' case on this here game no longer. Woman and me is mules and music. We ain't never made to ride in the same go-kart. Good-bye. That all is what I should have said. But I didn't. I walked right plum into the slew, like the mudhead that I was, and got mired for fairer, just as I might a knowed I

  would. Well, Ryder gives us a dress over across the bay, and we fair hikes over there all along, oh, as cruel a rain as ever killed crops. We finds the place after a while, a lodge and house, all lorn and loony, set down all by itself in the middle of some real estate extension, like a teepee and a barren, a crazy modern house, all jim-crack and woodwork and frostin', with never another place in so far as you could hear a coyote yelp. Well, we bucks right up and

  asks of the party at the door if the senorita Esperanza, Olivari, that was who Ryder had told us to ask for, might be concealed upon the premises, and we shows Cy Ryder's note. The party that opened the door was a greaser, the worst-looking I ever clapped eyes on, looked like the kind what'd steal the coppers off his dead grandmother's eyes. Anyhow, he says to come in, gruff-like, and to wait, poco tiempo. Well, we waited, mucho tiempo, muy mucho, all

  a-setin' on the edge of the sofa with her hats on her knees, like filly-loo birds on a rail, and a countenance of the patterns in the wallpaper to pass the time along. And Hardenburg, who's got to do the talkin', gets the fidgets by and by, and because he's only restin' the toes of his feet on the floor, his knees begin jiggerin', and along, a-watchin' him, my knees begin to go, and then strokers, and then alibisons. And there we sat, all in a row, and jiggered and jiggered. Great snakes,

  it makes me sick to the stomach to think of the idiots we were. Then, after a long time, we hears a rustle of silk petticoats, and we all grabs hold of one another, and looks scared like, out from under our eyebrows. And then, then, Mr. Mann, they walks into that bunkhouse parlor, the loveliest lookin' young female woman that ever wore hair. She was lovelier than Mary Anderson. She was lovelier than Lotta. She was tall and black-haired, and had a eye, well, I dunno, when she gave you the

  littlest flicker of that same eye, you felt it was about time to take and lie right down and say, I would esteem it, ma'am, a sure smart favor, if you was to take and wipe your boots on my waistcoat. Just so you could hear my heart a-beaten. That's the kind of female woman she was. Well, when Hardenburg had caught his second wind, he begins to talk business. And you ought to take a passenger back with you, says Esperanza after a while. What for a passenger might it be, says Hardenburg? She

  fished out her calling card at bat, and tore it in two, and gave Hardenburg one half. It's the party, she says, that'll come aboard off San Diego on your way down, and who will show up the other half of the card, the half I have here, and which the same I'm going to mail to him, and you be sure the half's bit before you let him come aboard. And when that part comes aboard, she says, he's to take over charge. Very good, says Hardenburg, mincing and silly like a cheesy cat lapping cream. Very good, ma'am,

  your orders shall be obeyed. He sure said it just like that, as if he spoke out of a storybook, and I kicked him under the table for it. Then we plovers a whole lot, and settles the way the thing is to be run. And finally, when we'd got as far as could be that day, the senorita stood up and says, now me good fellows, towards Spanish, she spoke, now me good fellows, you must drink a drink with me. She herds us all up into the dining room and fetches out, not whiskey, mind you, but a great

  fat green and gold bottle of champagne. And when alibazan has fired it off, she fills our glasses, dinky little flat glasses that look like flower vases. Then she stands up there before us, fine and tall, all in black silk, and puts her glass up high and sings out, to the revolution! And we, all solid black, says, to the revolution! And crooks our elbows. When we all comes to, about half an hour later, we're in the street outside, haven't just said good-bye to the

  senorita. We all are some quiet, the first block or so. And then Hardenberg says, stopping dead in his tracks. I'll posit to a remark that when a certain young female party, having black hair and a killing eye, gets good and ready to travel up the centre aisle of a church, I know the gent to show her the way. Which he is six feet one, in his stocking feet, some freckled across the nose, and shoots with both hands. Which the same observations,

  speaks of Stroker, twirling his yeller lady killer, which the same observations, he says, has my hearty endorsement and cooperation, saving in the particular the description of the gent. The gent is five foot eleven high, three feet thick, is the only son of my mother, and has yeller mustaches and a buck tooth. He don't qualify, puts in Hardenberg, first because he's a Englisher, and second because he's up again a American. And besides,

  he has a tooth that's bucked. Buck or no buck, flares out Stroker, what might be the meaning of that remark concerning being an Englisher? The fact that his being English, says Hardenberg, is only half the whole handle, the other half being the fact that the first-name gent is all American. No yank ain't never took no dust from oft a Englisher, whether it were war, walking-matches, or women. But they's a Englisher, sings out Stroker,

  not forty miles from here as can nick the nose of a freckled gank, if so be occasion require. Now ain't that plum foolish like, observed Bunt philosophically, ain't it plum foolish like of them, two gissabes, to go flying up in the air like two he-hens on a hot plate for nothing in the world, but because a neat-looking female woman has looked at them some soft? Well, naturally, we others, Ali Bazzan and me, we others, throws it into them pretty strong about being more kinds

  of blame fools than a pup with a bug. And they simmer down some. But along the way, home, I can see as how they're a-glaring at each other, and a-drawn theirselves up proud, like an presumptuous, and a-gruns again, not loud but deep, as the Good Book says. We has two or three more palavers with the Senorita Esperanza, and stacks the deck to beat the harbor police and the customs people and all, and to nip down the coast with our contraband. And each time we chins with the Senorita,

  there's them two locos steppin' and sidlin' around her, actin' that silly like that me and Ali Bazzan takes and beats our heads again the walls so soon as we're alone just because we're that pisin' mortified. Finally comes the last talky-talk, and we're to sail away next day and maybe snatch the little joker through, or be took and hung by the Costa Gardis. And goodbye, says Hardenburg to Esperanza in a fainting, die-way voice, like a kitten with a cold. And ain't we goin' to meet no

  more? Ah, sure, hopes as much, puts in Stroker, smirkin', so's you'd think he was a he-milliner sellin' a bonnet. Ah, hope, says he, our delightful acquaintance ship. Ain't a goin' for to end, abrupt this away. Oh, you nice big Mr. Men, pipes up the Senorita in English, we will meet down there in Guatemala soon again, yes, because I go down by the vapor carriages to Marm. Unprotected too, says Hardenburg, waggin' his fool head, and so young. Holy Geronimo, I don't know what more fool

  drivelin' they had, but they finally comes away. Alibizan and me rounds them up and conducts them to the boat and puts them to bed like as if they was little or drunk. And the next day, or next night, rather, about one o'clock, we slips the heel ropes and hobbles out the schooner, quiet, as a mountain lion stalkin' a buck and catches the out-tide through the gate of the bay. Lord, we was some keyed up, l'amitalien, and Alibizan and Hardenburg was at the fore end of the boat,

  with their guns ready in case of bein' asked impertinent questions by the patrol boats. Well, how some ever, we nips out with the little jokers. They was writ in the manifest as minin' pumps and starts south. This earpass here, down to Gordomala, is the first time I goes a gallon about on what the three crows calls blue water. And when that schooner hit the bar, I begins to remember that my stomach and inside arrangements ain't made of no chilled steel, nor yet a rawhide.

  First I gets plum sad and shivery, and I feels as mean and poor as a prairie dog which has eat a hornet-toed backerds. I goes to Alibizan and gives it out as how I'm goin' forward to die, and I puts it up that I'm sure sad and depressed like, and don't care much about life know how, and that present surroundings lack that certain undescribable charm. I tells him that I knows the ship is goin' to sink afore we get over the bar. Waves! They was higher in the mass,

  and I rode some fair lively sunfishers in my time, but I ain't never struck anything like the rarin' and buckin' and high and lofty tumblin' that that same boat went through with those first few hours after we had come out. But Alibizan tells me to go downstairs in the boat and lie up quiet, and by and by I too feel better. But next day I can sit up and take solid food again, and then's when I take special notice of the everlasting foolishness of Stroker and Hardenburg. You'd

  have thought each one of them two mush heads was tryin' to act the part of an old cow which has had her calf took. They goes a-moonin' about the boat that mournful it'd make it yell just out of sheer nervousness. First one'd up and hold his head on his hand and lean on the fence rail that ran around the boat, and sigh till he'd raise his pants, clean out of the top of his boots, and then the other'd go off in another part of the boat, and he'd sigh and moon and take on fit to sicken a coyote.

  But by and by, or maybe six days to the good old frisco, by and by, they too gets kinda sassy along each tether, and they has a heart-to-heart talk and puts it up as how either one of them would stand to win so only the tether was out of the game. It's double or nothin', says Hardenburg, who is somethin' o' a cart chart for either you or me. Stroke, and if you're agreeable, I'll play you a round of jacks for the chance at the sanderita. The loser to pull out o' the

  runnin' for good and all. No, Stroker don't come in on no such game, he says. He wins her, he says, as a man, and not as no poker player. No, nor he won't throw no dice for the chance of winnin' Esperanza, nor he won't flip no coin, nor yet rassle. But, says he, all of a sudden, I'll tell you which I'll do. You're a big thick strappin' hulk of a tooth-fisted tray-horse, Hardy, and I ain't no a feet and degenerate run-lunger myself. Here's what I propose, that we all takes and lays

  out a sixteen-foot ring on the quarter-deck, and that the raw-boned yank and the stodgy Englisher strips to the waist and, all friendly-like, settles the question by Queensbury rules, and may the best man win. Hardenburg looks him over. And what might be your weight, says he, I don't figure on hurtin' of you, is so be your below my class.

  I fight at a hundred and seventy, says Stroker. And me, says Hardenburg, at a hundred and seventy-five. We're matched. Is it a go? inquires Stroker. You bet your great grand mammy's tortoise-shelled chesty cat it's a go, says Hardenburg, prompt as a hop-frog catchin' flies. We don't lose no time trying to reason

  with them, for they is sure keen on havin' the go. So we lays out a ring by the rear end of the deck, and runs the schooner in till we're in the lee of the land, and she ridin' steady on her pins. Then, along about four o'clock on a fine still day, we lays the boat to, as they say, and folds up the sail, and havin' scattered resin in the ring, which it ain't no ring, but a square of ropes on posts. We says all is ready.

  Alibazan, he's referee, and me, I'm the timekeeper, which I has to ring the ship's bell every three minutes to let him know to quit, and that the round is over. We gets him into the ring, each in his own corner, squattin' on a bucket, the timekeeper bein' second to Hardenburg, and the referee bein' second to Stroker. And then, after they has shook hands, I climbs up on the chicken-coop, and hollers, Time! and they begins. Mr. Mann, I saw Tim Hennet at his best, and I saw Sairs when he

  was a top notcher, and likewise several other irregular boxin' sharps that were sure tough terriers. Also, I saw two short-horned bulls arguing about a question of leadership, but so helped me Bob. The fight I saw that day made the others look like a young lady's quadrille. Oh, I ain't gonna tell all that mill in detail, nor by rounds. Rounds? After the first five minutes, they won't know rounds. I rung the bling bell till I rung her loose, and Alibazan yells,

  Break away! and Time's up! till he is black in the face. But you could no more separate them, too, than you could put the brakes on a blame earthquake. At about suppertime, we pulled them apart. We could do it by then. They was both so gone, and jammed each one of them down in their corners. I rings my bell good and plenty, and Alibazan stands up on a bucket in the middle of the ring and says, I declare this year's glove contest a draw. And draw it sure was. They fit

  for two hours steady, and never a one got no better than the other. They gave each other lick for lick as fast and as steady as they could stand to it. Rasslin', borin' in', boxin', all was alike. The one was just as good as the other, and both willin' to the very last. When Alibazan calls it a draw, they gets up and wobbles toward each other and shakes hands. And Hardenburg, he says, Stroke, I thanks you a whole lot for as neat a go as ever I mixed in. And Stroker answers up,

  Hardy, I loves you better than ever. You's the first man I've met up with which I couldn't do for, and I've met up with some scraggly propositions in my town, too. Well, they, too, is a sorry-lookin' pair of birds by the time we runs into San Diego harbor next night. They was fine-lookin' objects for fare, all bruises and bumps. You remember now we was to take on a party at San Diego. We was to show to other half of Esperanza's card, and thereafterward to boss the job. Well, we waits

  till nightfall, and then slides in and lays two off a certain pile of stone, and shows two green lights and one white every three and a half minutes for half an hour, this being the signal. They is a moon, and we can see pretty well. After we'd signaled about an hour, maybe, we gets the answer, a one-minute green flare, and thereafterward we makes out a rowboat putting out and coming towards us. There is two people in the boat. One is the Casabe at the oars, and the other a party

  sitting in the hindern end. Alibisana and me, and Stroker and Hardenburg, we's all leaning over the fence a-watchin'. When all to once I ups and groaned some sad, the party in the hindern end of the boat being female. Ain't we never going to get shut of them, says I, but the words ain't no-mornin' off my teeth, when Stroker pipes up. It's she, says he, gasping as though shot hard. What, cries Hardenburg, sort of mystified. Oh, I'm sure a dreamin', he says, just that silly like. And the mugs we got,

  says Stroker, and they both sets to swearing and cussin' to beat all I ever heard. I can't let her see me so bunged up, says Hardenburg, doleful like. Oh, whatever is to be done. And I look like a real genuine blown-in-a-bottle pug, whimpers Stroker. Never mind, says he, we must face the music. We'll tell her these are sure honourable scars. Got, because we fit for her. Well, the boat comes up, and the female party jumps out and comes up the let-down stairway onto

  the deck. Without saying a word, she hands Hardenburg the half of the card, and he fishes out his half and matches the two by the let- oh, a lantern. By this time, the rowboat has gone a little ways off, and then, at last, Hardenburg says, welcome aboard, Zenderita. And Stroker cuts in with, we thought it was to be a man that adjoined us here to take command, but you, he says. And oh, butter wouldn't have melted in his mouth, but you, he says, is always our mistress.

  Very right, bueno, me good fellows, says the Zenderita, but don't you be afraid that there's no man is at the head of this business. And with that, the party chucks off hat and skirts, and I'll be Mexican if it won't a man after all. I'm the Senor Barrito Palachi, gentlemen, says he. The gringo police, who wanted for to arrest me, made the disguise necessary. Gentlemen, I regret to have been obliged to deceive such gallant compadres, but war knows no law.

  Hardenburg and Stroker gives one look at the Senor and another at their own spout faces. Then, come back here with the boat, roars Hardenburg over the side. And with that, upon me word, you'd have thought they two both were moved with the same spring. Over they goes into the water and struck out hands over hands for the boat, as hard as ever they can lay to it. The boat meets him. Lord knows what the party at the oars thought. They climbs in, and the last

  I see of them, they was puttin' for sure, each havin' taken a oar from the boatman, and it sure was makin' that boat hum. Well, we sails away eventually without him. And a year or more afterward I crosses their trail again inside Ryder's office in Frisco. Did you ask them about it all, said I. Mr. Mann, observed Bunt, I'm several kinds of a fool, I know it, but sometimes I'm wise. I wish as for it to live as long as I can and die when I can't

  help it. I does not, neither there nor there afterward, ever make no joke nor yet no illusion about or concerning this senorita Esperanza, Palachi, in the hair and all Hardenburg and Stroker. I've seen, ye remember, both those boys use their fists, and likewise Hardenburg, as he says himself, shoots with both hands. End of Two Hearts That Beat His One by Frank Norris

• 09 - Why Should Hebrew-Christians Unite?

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  Why should Hebrew Christians unite? By the Chairman, Reverend A. R. Koldell, for the 1903 Collection, from minutes of the first Hebrew Christian Conference of the United States, held at Mountain Lake Park, Maryland, July 28-30, 1903. In Christ beloved, it causes me great pleasure to address this large audience tonight on

  the subject, Why Hebrew Christians Should Unite. It is true that in comparison with the multitude of Gentile Christians present, the number of Hebrew Christians in this conference seems quite small, but this little company grows in my mind into a great host when I think of the longings and aspirations of the great body of Hebrew believers in this and other lands, crystallized in this little company

  here present. Brethren, a great multitude of Hebrew believers in this and other lands are praying during these days for God's guidance and Spirit upon our deliberations. They know how much the usefulness of blessedness of a future alliance is conditioned by the kind of a foundation we lay for it at this conference.

  They know the great difficulties in the way. They know the differences between the different evangelical churches through whose instrumentalities we have been brought to Christ. And they know the affection and loyalty with which most of us are clinging to the denominations among whom we have found the Messiah.

  We all know the discouragements we shall have to meet, with both from within and from without, but the fact that so many of our brethren are praying and longing for a closer union between us, and that so many Gentile Christians from different denominations are attending our sessions, and that many others are praying for our success, is an indication that God's time has come and that we must go forward.

  Allow me therefore to point out a few thoughts on the subject. 1. Because of our own need, we cannot afford to forget the rock from which we are hewn. We have indeed given our people's unbelief, but we cannot give up our people. We have joined the Church of the Firstborn, composed of individuals, called out of all

  nations to be a people unto His name, but we have not and dare not give up our nationality. Our nation stands unique in God's plan of the ages. God has not dealt so with any nation. Of all the nations, ours is the only one that owes its birth to a miracle. To them pertaineth the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law,

  and the service of God, and the promises, whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. Romans 9. Israel is the everlasting nation.

  Isaiah 44. It is prefigured by the burning bush which was never consumed. Israel's call and election are not of works or merit, but of grace, and God's calling are without repentance. Salvation is of the Jews.

  They were the seed-sowers at the beginning, and they shall be the sheaf-gatherers at the end of this dispensation. Zachary 8. Isaiah 66. We are Christians indeed, followers of the Lamb, but we live not under the law, but under

  grace. If Israel is ever to claim God's glorious promises, it will have to do so by faith, but He has given us the faith. Do you wonder, then, that Paul, by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, calls the believing Jews the Israel of God?

  Galatians 6.16. We must stand together as the Israel of God. We ought to unite because our nation needs it. The national movements among our people are inaugurated by men who are blind leaders of the blind.

  Whilst God is able to make even the wrath of men to praise Him, yet we know that when the blind leads the blind, both fall into the ditch. As disunited individuals, our influence for good is like an atom lost in the breeze, but united into one living, loving, shining mass, our impact will not fail to make the desired impression on our people.

  Our people needs this union. 3. The church needs it. Unbelieving Israel's sojourn among the Christian nations has ripened many grave problems whose solution has proved quite unpleasant to Jew and Gentile alike.

  There is a curse resting upon our people because of their unbelief. Isaiah 43.27.28. Malachi 2. By God's grace, Israel is a blessing, but despising this grace, it becomes a curse to the nations.

  Zechariah 8.13. Since they cried out at cavalry, his blood be upon us and our children, they have become the tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast. They cause irritation wherever they settle for any length of time. They seem to become distressing to the nations as an unassimilated foreign element in an

  organic body. Policemen and politicians having tried all kinds of nostrums and the church, alas, too frequently taking refuge to guacary, have only aggravated the trouble. False love based upon the denial of the truth as it is in Jesus will as little turn Israel's curse into a blessing as Christless hatred.

  We, the men of Israel, who were once blind, but now see. We who were sick and are now healed. Yea, we who were dead and are now alive, we must point the nation and the church to the fountain of healing and life even for Israel and its troubles. We ourselves have drank from that fountain.

  We have tasted that power and that life. Move together, brethren, from the east and the west, from the north and the south. You need not give up your denominational badges as long as your denominations stand for the living and saving Christ. We do not stand as members of denominations here, but as members of one nation, sick and

  foot sore, wandering and bleeding, Christless and dying. Let us cry with united agony a voice to him, Come, Lord Jesus, come and save thine inheritance and to his blood-bolted church. Come to the rescue of our perishing brethren. They need your sympathy, your prayers, your love, your testimony.

  In blessing them ye shall be blessed. And to our brethren, the Jews, let us cry, Israel, thou destroyest thyself, but in Jesus is thy salvation. Yes, this alliance of redeemed and consecrated Israelites must come to pass. We ourselves need it.

  The Jews need it. The church needs it. And God will bless it. Amen. End of Why Hebrew Christians Should Unite by Rev. A.R. Koldo

• 10 - First Flight

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  A MACHINE THAT FLYS by The Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia. A MACHINE THAT FLYS. A big box kite, driven by six propellers, soars the air at Kitty Hawk, Norfolk, Virginia, December 18. A successful trial of a flying machine was made yesterday near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina,

  by Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton, Ohio. The machine flew for three miles in the face of a wind blowing at the registered velocity of 21 miles an hour, and then gracefully descended to earth at the spot selected by the man in the navigator's car as a suitable landing place. The machine has no balloon attachment, but gets its force from propellers worked by a

  small engine. Preparatory to its flight, the machine was placed upon a platform near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. This platform was built on a high, sand hill, and when all was in readiness, the fastenings to the machine were released, and it started down an incline.

  The navigator, Wilbur Wright, then started a small gasoline engine which worked the propellers. When the end of the incline was reached, the machine gradually arose until it obtained an altitude of 60 feet. In the face of the strong wind blowing it, maintained an even speed of 8 miles an hour. The idea of the box kite has been adhered to in the basic formation of the flying machine.

  A huge framework of light timbers, 33 feet wide, 5 feet deep, and 5 feet across the top, forms the machine proper. This is covered with a tough but light canvas. In the center, and suspended just below the bottom plan, is the small gasoline engine which furnishes the motive power for the propelling and elevating power for the propelling

  and elevating wheels. There are six blade propellers, one arranged just below the center of the frame, so gauged as to exert an upward force when in motion, and the other extends horizontally to the rear from the center of the car, furnishing the forward impetus. Protruding from the center of the car is a huge fan-shaped rudder of canvas, stretched

  upon a frame of wood. This rudder is controlled by the navigator and may be moved to each side, raised or lowered. No test today. Special to the Times-Dispatch, Norfolk, Virginia, December 18. No test was made today of the flying machine invented by Wilbur and Orville Wright of Dayton

  to spend the holidays, and will at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Thursday. The Wright brothers will leave tomorrow for Dayton to spend the holidays and will return to Kitty Hawk after New Year's to perfect their invention. End of A Machine That Flies, by the Times-Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia.