Librivox's Short Story Collection Vol. 012 — Free Audiobook

1 Evolution 9:22

Evolution by John Galsworthy. Read by Adrian Pretzelis.

Coming out of the theatre, we found it Utterly impossible to get a taxicab, and although it was raining slightly, walked through Leicester Square in the hope of picking one up as it returned down Piccadilly. Numbers of handsomes and four-wheelers passed, or stood by the curb, hailing us feebly, or not even attempting to attract our attention, but every taxi seemed to have its load. At Piccadilly Circus, losing patience, we beckoned to a four-wheeler and resigned ourselves to a long, slow journey. A sou'westerly air blew through the open windows, and there was in it the scent of change, that wet sense, which visits even the hearts of towns and inspires the watcher of their myriad activities with the thought of the restless force that forever cries on, on!

But gradually the steady patter of the horses' hoofs, the rattling of the windows, the slow thudding of the wheels pressed on us so drowsily that when at last we reached home we were more than half asleep. The fare was two shillings, and standing in the lamplight to make sure the coin was half a crown, before handing it to the driver, we happened to look up. This cabman appeared to be a man of about sixty, with a long, thin face, whose chin and drooping gray moustaches seemed in permanent repose on the upturned collar of his blue overcoat. But the remarkable features of his face were the two furrows down his cheeks, so deep and hollow that it seemed as though the face were a collection of bones without coherent flesh, among which the eyes were sunk back so far that they had lost their lustre.

He sat quite motionless, gazing at the tail of his horse, and, almost unconsciously, one added the rest of one's silver to that half-crown. He took the coins without speaking, but as we were turning to the garden gate, we heard him say, "'Thank you. You saved my life.' Not knowing either of us what to reply to such a curious speech, we closed the gate again and came back to the cab. "'Are things very bad?' "'They are,' replied the cabman. "'It's done with, is this job. We're not wanted now.' And, taking up his whip, he prepared to drive away. "'How long have they been as bad as this?' The cabman dropped his hand again, as though glad to rest it, and answered incoherently. "'Thirty-five year I've been driving a cab,' and sunk again into contemplation of his horse's tail.

He could only be roused by many questions to express himself, having, as it seemed, no knowledge of the habit. "'I don't blame the taxis. I don't blame nobody. It's come on us.' That's what it has. I left the wife this morning with nothing in the house. She was saying to me only yesterday, what have you brought home the last four months? Put it at six shillin a week, I said. No, she said, seven. Well, that's right. She enters it all down in her book. Are you really going short of food? The cabman smiled, and that smile between those two deep hollows was surely as strange as ever shone on a human face. "'You may say that,' he said, "'but what does it amount to? Before I picked you up I had one eighteen-penny fare to-day, and yesterday I took in five shillings.

And I've got seven bob a day to pay for the cab, and that's low, too. There's many and many a proprietor that's broke and gone, every bit as bad as us.' They let us down as easy as ever they can. You can't get blood from a stone, can you? Once again he smiled. I'm sorry for them, too, and I'm sorry for the horses, though they come out the best of the three of us, I do believe. One of us muttered something about the public. The cabman turned his face and stared down through the darkness. The public, he said, and his voice had a faint surprise. Well, they all want taxis. It's natural. They get about faster in them, and time's money. I was seven hours before I picked you up, and then you was looking for a taxi.

They must take us because they can't get better. They're not in a good temper, as a rule. There's a few old ladies that's frightened of the motors, but old ladies ain't never very free with their money. Can't afford to be the most of them, I spec. Everybody's sorry for you. No one would have thought that—he interrupted quietly. Sorra died by bread. I never had nobody asked me about things before. And slowly, moving his long face from side to side, he added, Besides, what could people do? They can't be expected to support you, and if they started asking you questions, they'd feel it very awkward. They know that, I suspect. Of course, There's such a lot of us. The hansoms are pretty nigh off as bad as we are.

Well, we're getting fewer every day. That's one thing. Not knowing whether or not to manifest sympathy with this extinction, we approached the horse. It was a horse that stood over a good deal at the knee, and in the darkness seemed to have innumerable ribs. And suddenly one of us said, Many people want to see our nothing but taxes on the street, if only for the sake of the horses. The cabman nodded. This old fellow, he said, never carried a deal of flesh. His grub don't put spirit into him nowadays. It's not up to much in quality, but he gets enough of it. And you don't? The cabman again took up his whip. Oh, I don't suppose, he said without emotion, anyone could ever find another job for me now.

I've been at this too long. It will be the workhouse. It was not the other thing. And hearing us mutter that it seemed cruel, he smiled for the third time. "'Yas,' he said slowly, "'it's a bit hard on us, because we've done nothing to deserve it. But things are like that, so far as I can see. One thing comes pushing out another, and so you go on. I've thought about it. You get to thinking and worrying about the rights of things sitting up here all day.' No, I don't see anything for it. It'll soon be the end for us now. Can't last much longer, and I don't know that I'd be sorry to have done with it. It's pretty well broke my spirit. There was a fund got up. Yes, and it helped a few of us learn the motor driving.

What's the good of that to me at my time of life? Sixty. That's my age. I'm not the only one. There's hundreds like me. We're not fit for it. That's the fact. We haven't got the nerve now. It'll want a mint of money to help us. And what you say's the truth. People want to see the end of us. They want taxes. Our day's over. I'm not complaining. You asked me about it yourself. And for the third time he raised his whip. Tell me, what would you have done if you had been given your fare in just sixpence over? The cabman stared downwards. as though puzzled by that question. Done? Why, nothing. What could I have done? But you said it had saved your life. Yes, I said that, he answered slowly. I was feeling a bit low.

You can't help it sometimes. It's the thing coming on you and no way out of it. That's what gets over you. We try not to think about it as a rule. And this time, with a thank you kindly, He touched his horse's flank with the whip. Like a thing aroused from sleep, the forgotten creature started and began to draw the cabman away from us. Very slowly they traveled down the road, among the shadows of the trees broken by lamplight. Above us, white ships of cloud were sailing rapidly across the dark river of sky on the wind, which smelled of change. And after the cab was lost to sight, That wind still brought to us the dying sound of the slow wheels.

End of Evolution by John Galsworthy

2 The Gifts of Asti 41:06

The Gifts of Asti by Andre Norton.

Even here, on the black terrace before the forgotten mountain retreat of Asti, it was possible to smell the dank stench of burning Memphir, to imagine that the dawn wind bore upward from the pillaged city the faint tortured cries of those whom the barbarians of Clem hunted to their prolonged death. Indeed, it was time to leave. Varta, last of the virgin maidens of Asti, shivered. The scaled and waddled creature who crouched beside her thigh turned his reptilian head so that golden eyes met the aquamarine ones set slantily at a faintly provocative angle in her smooth ivory face. "'We go?' She nodded in answer to that unvoiced question Lur had sent into her brain, and turned toward the dark cavern which was the mouth of Asti's last dwelling-place.

Once, more than a thousand years before, when the walls of Memphir were young, Asti had lived among men below. But in the richness and softness which was trading Memphir, empire of empires, Asti found no place. So he, and those who served him, had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last, to bow knee at Asti's shrine, and raise her voice in the dawn hymn. For Lur, as were all his race, was mute. Even the lute of Memphir would not sate the shaggy-headed warriors who had stormed her gates this day. The stairway to Asti's temple was plain enough to see, and there would be those to essay the steep climb, hoping to find a treasure which did not exist. For Asti was an austere god, delighting in plain walls and bare altars.

His last priests had lain in the grave niches these three years, and there would be no one to hold that gate against intruders. Varta passed between tall, uncarved pillars, Lhr padding beside her, his spine-mane erect, the talons on his forefeet clicking on the stone in steady rhythm. So they came to the innermost shrine of Asti. And there Varta made graceful obeisance to the great cowled and robed figure which sat enthroned, its hidden eyes focused upon its own outstretched hand. And above the flattened palm of that wide hand hung suspended in space the round, orange-red sun-ball, which was twin to the sun that lighted herb. Around the miniature sun swung in their orbits the four worlds of the system, each obeying the laws of space, Even as did the planets they represented.

Memphir has fallen. Varta's voice sounded rusty in her own ears. She had spoken so seldom during the last lonely months. Evil has risen to overwhelm our world, even as it was prophesied in your revelations, O ruler of worlds and maker of destiny. Therefore, obeying the order given of old, I would depart from this, thy house. Suffer me now to fulfill the law. Three times she prostrated her slim body on the stones at the foot of Asti's judgment chair. Then she arose, and with the confidence of a child in its father, she laid her hand palm upward upon the outstretched hand of Asti. Beneath her flesh the stone was not cold and hard, but seemed to have an inner heat, Even as might be a human hand.

For a long moment she stood so, and then she raised her hand slowly, carefully, as if within its slight hollow she cupped something precious.

And as she drew her hand away from the grasp of Asti, the tiny sun and its planets followed, spinning now above her palm as they had above the statue's. But out of the cowled figure some virtue had departed with the going of the miniature solar system. It was now but a carving of stone. And Varta did not look at it again as she passed behind its bulk to seek a certain place in the temple wall, known to her from much reading of the old records. Having found the stone she sought, She moved her hand in a certain pattern before it, so that the faint, radiant streaming from the tiny sun gleamed on the grayness of the wall. There was a grating, as from metal long unused, and a block fell back, opening a narrow door to them.

Before she stepped within, the priestess lifted her hand above her head, and when she withdrew it, the sun and planets remained, to form a diadem just above the intricate braiding of her dull red hair. As she moved into the secret way, the five orbs swung with her, and in the darkness there the sun glowed richly, sending out a light to guide their feet.

They were at the top of a stairway, and the hollow clang of the stone as it moved back into place behind them echoed through a gulf which seemed endless. But that, too, was as the Chronicles had said, and Varta knew no fear.

How long they journeyed down into the maw of the mountain, and beyond that into the womb of Erb itself, Varta never knew. But when feet were weary, and she knew the bite of real hunger, they came into a passageway which ended in a room hollowed of solid rock. And there— Preserved in the chest in which men born in the youth of Memphir had laid them, Varta found that which would keep her safe on the path she must take. She put aside the fine silks, the jewelled cincture which had been the badge of Asti's service, and drew on over her naked body a suit of scaled skin, gemmed and glistening in the rays of the small sun. There was a hood to cover the entire head, Taloned gloves for the hands, webbed, clawed coverings for the feet, as if the skin of a giant, manlike lizard had been tanned and fashioned into this suit.

And Varta suspected that that might be so. The world of Erb had not always been held by the human kind alone. There were supplies here, too, lying untouched in ageless containers within a lizard-skin pouch. Varta touched her tongue without fear to a powdered restorative, sharing it with Ler, whose own mailed skin would protect him through the dangers to come. She folded the regalia she had stripped off, and laid it in the chest, smoothing it regretfully before she dropped the lid upon its shimmering color. Never again would Asti's servant wear the soft stuff of his livery. But she was resolute enough when she picked up the food-pouch and strode forward, passing out of the robing chamber into a narrow way which was a natural fault in the rock unsmoothed by the tools of man.

But when this rocky road ended upon the lip of a gorge, Varta hesitated, plucking at the throat-latch of her hood-like helmet. Through the unclouded crystal of its eye-holes, she could see the sprouts of yellow vapor, which puffed from crannies in the rock wall down which she must climb. If the records of the temple spoke true, these curls of gas were death to all lunged creatures of the upper world. She could only trust that the cunning of the scaled hood would not fail her.

The long talons fitted to the finger-tips of the gloves, the claws of the webbed foot-coverings clamped fast to every hand and foothold. But the way down was long, and she caught a message of weariness from Lurr before they reached the piled rocks at the foot of the cliff. The puffs of steamy gas had become a fog through which they groped their way slowly, following a trace of path along the base of the cliff.

Time did not exist in the underworld of Erb. Varta did not know whether it was still to-day, or whether she had passed into tomorrow when they came to a crossroads. She felt Lur press against her, forcing her back against a rock. "'There is a thing coming.' His message was clear. And in a moment she, too, saw a dark hulk nosing through the vapor. It moved slowly, seeming to balance at each step, as if travel was a painful act. But it bore steadily to the meeting of the two paths. It is no enemy. But she did not need that reassurance from Lur. Unearthly as the thing looked, it had no menace. With a last twist of its ungainly body, the creature squatted on a rock and clawed the clumsy covering it wore about its bone-thin shoulders and domed skull-head.

The visage it revealed was long and grey, with dark pits for eyes and a gaping, fang-studded, lipless mouth. "'Who are you to dare to tread the forgotten ways and rouse from slumber the guardian of the chasms?' The question was a shrill whine in her brain. Her hands half arose to cover her ears. "'I am Varta, maiden of Asti.' Memphir has fallen to the barbarians of the outer lands, and now I go, as Asti once ordered.

The guardian considered her answer gravely. In one skeleton claw it fumbled a rod, and with this it now traced certain symbols in the dust before Varta's webbed feet. When it had done, the girl stooped, and altered two of the lines with a swift stroke from one of her talons. The creature of the chasm nodded its misshapen head. "'Hasty does not rule here. But long and long and long ago there was a pact made with us in his name. Pass free from us, woman of the light. There are two paths before you.' The guardian paused for so long that Varta dared to prompt it. Where do they lead, guardian of the dark? This will take you down into my country. It jerked the rod to the right. And that way is death for creatures from the surface world.

The other, in our old legends it is said, to bring a traveller out into the upper world. Of the truth of that I have no proof. But that one I must take. She made a slight obeisance to the huddle of bones and dank cloak on the rock, and it inclined its head in grave courtesy. With Lur pushing a little ahead, she took the robe which ran straight into the flume-veiled darkness. Nor did she turn to look again at the thing from the chasm-world. They began to climb again, across slimed rock, where there were evil trails of other things which lived in this haunted darkness. But the sun of Asti lighted their way, and perhaps some virtue in the rays from it kept away the makers of such trails. When they pulled themselves up onto a wide ledge, the talons on Varda's gloves were worn to splintered stubs, and there was a bright girdle of pain about her aching body.

Lur lay panting beside her, His red-forked tongue protruding from his foam-ringed mouth. "'We walk again the ways of men.' Lurr was the first to note the tool-marks on the stone where they lay. "'By the will of Asti, we may win out of this maze after all.' Since there were no signs of the deadly steam, Varta dared to push off her hood, and share with her companion the sustaining powder she carried in her pouch. There was a freshness to the air they breathed, damp and cold though it was, which hinted of the upper world. The ledge sloped upwards, at a steep angle at first, and then more gently. Lur slipped past her and thrust head and shoulders through a break in the rock. Grasping his neck-spines, she allowed him to pull her through that narrow slit into the soft blackness of a surface night.

They tumbled down together, Varta's head pillowed on Lerr's smooth side, and so slept as the sun and worlds of Asti whirled protectingly above them.

A whir of wings in the air above her head awakened Varta. One of the small, jewel-bright flying lizard creatures of the deep jungle poised and dipped to investigate more closely the worlds of Asti. But at Varta's upflung arm, it uttered a rasping cry, and planed down into the mass of vegetation below. By the glint of sunlight on the stone around them, the day was already well advanced. Varta tugged at Ler's mane until he roused. There was a regularity to the rocks piled about their sleeping-place, which hinted that they had lain among ruins left by man. But of this side of the mountain both were ignorant, for Memphir's rule had not run here. Many dead things in times past. Lure scarlet nostril pits were extended to their widest.

But that was long ago. This land is no longer held by men. Varta laughed cheerfully. If here there are no men, then there will rise no barbarian hordes to dispute our rule. Asti has led us to safety. Let us see more of the land he gives us.

There was a road leading down from the ruins, a road still to be followed, in spite of the lash of a landslip, and the crack of time. And it brought them into a cup of green fertility, where the lavishness of Asti's sowing was unchecked by man. Varta seized eagerly upon globes of blood-red fruit, which she recognized as delicacies which had been cultivated in the temple gardens, while Lur went hunting into the fringes of the jungle, where dining on prey so easily caught as to be judged devoid of fear. The jungle-choked highway curved, and they were suddenly fronted by a desert of sere desolation, a desert floored by glassy slag, which sent back the sunbeams in a furnace glare. Varta shaded her eyes and tried to see the end of this, but if there was a distant rim of green beyond, the heat distortions in the air concealed it.

Lur put out a front paw to test the slag, but withdrew it instantly. It cooks the flesh. We cannot walk here, was his verdict. Varta pointed with her chin to the left, where, some distance away, the mountain wall paralleled their course. Then let us keep to the jungle over there, and see if it does not bring around to the far side. But what made this? She leaned out over the glassy stuff, not daring to touch the slick surface. War. Ler's tongue shot out to impale a questing beetle. These forgotten people fought with fearsome weapons. But what weapon could do this? Memphir knew not such. Memphir was old, but mayhap there were those who razed city on Erb before the first hut of Memphir squatted on tidal mud.

Men forget knowledge in time. Even in Memphir, the lords of the last days forgot the wisdom of their earlier sages. They fell before the barbarians easily enough. If ever men had wisdom to produce this, it was not Avastis giving. She edged away from the glare. Let us go. But now they had to fight their way through jungle, and it was hard. Until they reached a ridge of rock running out from the mountain as a tongue thrust into the blasted valley. And along this they picked their slow way. "'There is water near.' Lur's thought answered the girl's desire. She licked dry lips longingly. "'This way.' Her companion's sudden turn was to the left, and Varta was quick to follow him down a slide of rock.

Lerr's instinct was right, as it ever was. There was water before them, a small lake of it. But even as he dipped his fanged muzzle toward the inviting surface, Lerr's spined head jerked erect again. Varta snatched back the hand she had put out, staring at Lerr's strange actions. His nostrils expanded to their widest, his long neck outstretched, He was swinging his head back and forth across the limpid shallows. What is it? This is no water such as we know, the scaled one answered flatly. It has life within it. Vartal laughed. Fish, water, snakes, your own distant kin, Lur. It is the scent of them which you catch. No, it is the water itself which lives. And yet does not live. His thought trailed away from her as he struggled with some problem.

No human brain could follow his unless he willed it so.

Varda squatted back on her heels and began to look at the water, and then at the banks with more care. For the first time she noted the odd patches of brilliant color which floated just below the surface of the liquid. Blue, green, yellow, crimson. They drifted slowly with the tiny waves which lapped the shore. But they were not alive. She was almost sure of that. They appeared more a part of the water itself. Watching the voyage of one patch of green, she caught sight of the branch. It was a drooping shoot of the turby, the same tree-vine which produced the fruit she had relished less than an hour before. Above the water dangled a cluster of the fruit, dead-ripe, with the sweet pulp stretching its skin.

But below the surface of the water— Varta's breath hissed between her teeth, and Lerr's head snapped around as he caught her thought. The branch below the water bore a perfect circle of green flowers close to its tip, The flowers which the turby had borne naturally seven months before, and which should long ago have turned into just such sweetness as hung above. With Lur at her heels, the girl edged around to pull cautiously at the branch. It yielded at once to her touch, swinging its tip out of the lake. She sniffed. There was a languid perfume in the air, the perfume of the blooming turby. She examined the flowers closely. To all appearances, they were perfect and natural. It preserves—Lurr settled back on his haunches and waved one front paw at the quiet water—what goes into it remains as it was just at the moment of entrance.

But if this is seven months old—It may be seven years old, corrected Lurr. How can you tell when the branch first dipped into the lake? Yet the flowers do not fade, even when withdrawn from the water. This is indeed a mystery." Of which I would know more. Varta dropped the turby, and started on around the edge of the lake. Twice more they found similar evidence of preservation in flower or leaf, wherever it was covered by the opaline water. The lake itself was a long and narrow slash, with one end cutting into the desert of glass, while the other wet the foot of the mountain. And it was there, on the slope of the mountain, where they found the greatest wonder of all, Lur scenting it before they sighted the remains among the stones.

Man-made, he cautioned, but very, very old.

And truly, the wreckage they came upon must have been old, perhaps even older than Memphir. For the part which rested above the water was almost gone, rusty red stains on the rocks outlining where it had lain. But under water was a smooth silver hull, shining and untouched by the ears. Varta laid her hand upon a ruddy scrap between two rocks, And it became a drift of powdery dust. And yet, there, a few feet below, was strong metal. Lur padded along the scrap of shore, surveying the thing.

It was a machine in which men traveled, his thoughts arose to her. But they were not as the men of Memphir. Perhaps not even as the sons of Urb. Not as the sons of Urb? Her astonishment broke into open speech. Lur's neck twisted as he looked up at her. Did the men of Erb, even in the old chronicles, fight with weapons such as would make a desert of glass? There are other worlds than Erb. Mayhap this strange thing was a skyship from such a world. All things are possible by the will of Asti. Varta nodded. All things are possible by the will of Asti," she repeated. "'But Lur,' her eyes were round with wonder, "'perhaps it is Asti's will which brought us here to find this marvel. Perhaps he has some use for us and it.' "'At least we may discover what lies within it.' Lur had his own share of curiosity.

"'How?' The two of us cannot draw that out of the water. No, but we can enter into it. Varta fingered the folds of the hood on her shoulders. She knew what Lur meant. The suit which had protected her in the underworld was impervious to everything outside its surface, or to every substance its makers knew, just as Lur's own hide made his flesh impenetrable. But the fashioners of her suit had probably never known of the living lake, and what if she had no defense against the strange properties of the water? She leaned back against a rock. Overhead, the worlds and son of Asti still traveled their appointed paths. The worlds of Asti! If it was his will which had brought them here, then Asti's power would wrap her round with safety.

By his will she had come out of Memphire over ways no human of Erp had ever trod before. Could she doubt that his protection was with her now? It took only a moment to make secure the webbed shoes, to pull on and fasten the hood, to tighten the buckles of her gloves. Then she crept forward, shuddering as the water rose about her ankles. But Lur pushed on before her, his head disappearing fearlessly under the surface as he crawled through the jagged opening in the ship below. Smashed engines, which had no meaning in her eyes, occupied most of the broken section of the wreck. None of the metal showed any deterioration beyond that which had occurred at the time of the crash. Under her exploring hands, it was firm and whole.

Lur was pulling at a small door, half hidden by a mass of twisted wires and plates, and, just as Varta crawled around this obstacle to join him, the barrier gave way, allowing them to squeeze through into what had once been the living quarters of the ship. Varta recognized seats, a table, and other bits of strictly utilitarian furniture. But of those who had once been at home here, there remained no trace. Lur, having given one glance to the furnishings, was prowling about the far end of the cabin uncertainly, and now he voiced his uneasiness. "'There is something beyond, something which once had life.' Varta crowded up to him. To her eyes, the wall seemed without line of an opening, and yet Lur was running his broad front paws over it carefully, now and then throwing his weight against the smooth surface.

"'There is no door,' she pointed out doubtfully. "'No door. Ah, here.' Lur unsheathed formidable fighting-claws to their full length for perhaps the first time in his temple's sheltered life, and endeavored to work them into a small crevice. The muscles of his forelegs and quarters stood out in sharp relief under his scales. His fangs were bare as his lips snapped back with effort. Something gave. A thin black line appeared to mark the edges of a door. Then time, or Ler's strength, broke the ancient locking mechanism. The door gave so suddenly that they were both sent hurtling backward, And Lerr's breath burst from him in a huge bubble. The sealed compartment was hardly more than a cupboard, but it was full.

Spread-eagled against the wall was a four-limbed creature whose form was so smothered in a bulky suit that Varda could only guess that it was akin in shape to her own. Hoops of metal locked it firmly to the wall, but the head had fallen forward so that the faceplate in the helmet was hidden. Slowly the girl breasted the water which filled the cabin, and reached her hands toward the bowed helmet of the prisoner. Gingerly, her blunted talons scraping across metal, she pulled it up to her eye level. The eyes of that which stood within the suit were closed, as if in sleep, but there was a warm, healthy tint to the bronze skin, so different in shade to her own pallid coloring. For the rest, the prisoner had the two eyes, the centered nose, the properly shaped mouth which were common to the men of Erb.

Hair grew on his head, black and thick, and there was a faint shadow of beard on his jaw-line. This is a man. Her thought reached Lur. Why not? Did you expect a serpent? It is a pity he is dead. Varte felt a rich, warm tide rising in her throat to answer that teasing half-question. There were times when Ler's thought-reading was annoying. He had risen to his hind legs so that he, too, could look into the shell which held their find. "'Yes, a pity,' he repeated. "'But—' A vision of the turby-flower swept through her mind. Had Lur suggested it, or had that wild thought been hers alone? Only this ship was so old, so very old. Lur's red tongue flicked. "'It can do no harm to try,' he suggested slyly, and set his claws into the hoop holding the captive's right wrist, testing its strength.

But the metal on the shore—it crumpled into powder at my touch," she protested. What if we carry him out only to have—to have—her mind shuddered away from the picture that followed. Did the turby blossom fade when pulled out? countered Lur. There is a secret to these fastenings. He pulled and pried impatiently. Varta tried to help. But even their united strength was useless against the force which held the loops in place. Breathless, the girl slumped back against the wall of the cabin, while Lurr settled down on his haunches. One of the odd patches of color drifted by, its vivid scarlet like a jewel spiraling lazily upward. Varta's eyes followed its drift, and so were guided to what she had forgotten, the worlds of Asti.

Asti! Lur was looking up, too. The power of Asti! Varta's hand went up, rested for a long moment under the sun, and then drew it down, carefully, slowly, as she had in Memphir's temple. Then she stepped towards the captive. Within her hood, a beaded line of moisture outlined her lips. A pulse thundered on her temple. This was a fearsome thing to try. She held the sun on a line with one of the wrist bonds. She must avoid the flesh it imprisoned, for Asti's power could kill. From the sun, there shot an orange-red beam to strike full upon the metal. A thin line of red crept across the smooth hoop, crept and widened. Varta raised her hand, sending the sun spinning up, and Lerr's claws pulled on the metal.

It broke like rotten wood in his grasp. The girl gave a little gasp of half-terrified delight. Then the old legends were true. As Asti's priestess, she controlled powers too great to guess. Swiftly she loosed the other hoops, and restored the sun and worlds to their place over her head as the captive slumped across the threshold of his cell. Tugging and straining, they brought him out of the broken ship into the sunlight of Erb. Varta threw back her hood, and breathed deeply of the air, which was not manufactured by the wizardry of the lizard-skin, and Lur sat panting, his nostril-flaps open. It was he who spied the spring on the mountain-side above, a spring of water uncontaminated by the strange life of the lake.

They both dragged themselves there to drink deeply. Varta returned to the lake shore reluctantly. Within her heart, she believed that the man that they had brought from the ship was truly dead. Lur might hold out the promise of the flowers, but this was a man, and he had lain in the water for countless ages. So she went with lagging steps to find Lur busy. He had solved the mystery of the space suit, and had stripped it from the unknown. Now his clawed paw rested lightly on the bared chest, and he turned to Varta eagerly. "'There is life!' Hardly daring to believe that, she dropped down beside Lur and touched their prize. Lur was right. The flesh was warm, and she had caught the faint rhythm of shallow breath.

Half remembering old tales, she put her hands on the arch of the lower ribs and began to aid that rhythm. The breaths were deeper. Then the man half turned, his arm moved. Varta and Lur drew back. For the first time, the girl probed gently the sleeping mind before her, even as she had read the minds of those few of Memphir who had ascended to the temple precincts in the last days. Much of what she read now was confused, or so alien to Erb that it had no meaning for her. But she saw a great city, plunged into flaming death in an instant, and felt the horror and remorse of the man at her feet because of his own part in that act—the horror and remorse which had led him to open rebellion, and so to his imprisonment.

There was a last dark and frightening memory of a door closing on light and hope. The spaceman moaned softly, and hunched his shoulders as if he struggled vainly to tear loose from bonds. "'He thinks that he is still prisoner,' observed Lur. "'For him life begins at the very point it ended, even as it did for the Turby flowers. See, now he awakens.' The eyelids rose slowly, as if the man hated to see what he must look upon. Then, as he sighted Varta and Lur, his eyes went wide. He pulled himself up and looked dazedly around, striking out wildly with his fists. Catching sight of the clumsy suit Lur had taken from him, he pulled at it, looking at the two before him as if he feared some attack. Varta turned to Lur for help.

She might read minds and use the wordless speech of Lur. But his people knew of the art of such communication long before the first priest of Asti had stumbled upon their secret. Let Lur now quiet this outlander. Delicately, Lur sought a way into the other's mind, twisting down paths of thought strange to him. Even Varta could not follow the subtle waves sent forth in the quick examination and reconnoitering, Nor could she understand all of the conversation which resulted. For the man from the ancient ship answered in speech aloud, sharp, harsh sounds of no meaning. It was only after repeated instruction from Lur that he began to frame his messages in his mind, clumsily and disconnectedly. Pictures of another world.

Another solar system began to grow more clear as the spaceman became more at home in the new way of communication. He was one of a race who had come to herb from beyond the stars, and discovered it a world without human life. So they had established colonies and built great cities, far different from Memphir, and had lived in peace for centuries of their own time. Then, on the far-away planet of their birth, there had begun a great war, a war which brought flaming death to all that world. The survivors of a last battle in outer space had fled to the colonies on Erb, but among this handful were men driven mad by the death of their world, and these had blasted the cities of Erb, saying that their kind must be wiped out.

The man they had rescued had turned against one such maddened leader, and had been imprisoned just before an attack upon the largest of the colony's cities. After that, he remembered nothing. Varta stopped trying to follow the conversation. Lur was only explaining now how they had found the spaceman and brought him out of the wrecked ship. No human on Erb, this one had said, and yet— Were there not her own people, the ones who had built Memphir? And what of the barbarians, who, ruthless and cruel as they seemed by the standards of Memphir, were indeed men? Whence had they come, then, the men of Memphir and the ancestors of the barbarian hordes? Her hands touched the scaled skin of the suit she still wore, and then rubbed across her own smooth flesh.

Could one have come from the other? Was she of the blood and heritage of Lur? Not so. Lur's mind, as quick as his flickering tongue, had caught that panic-borne thought. You are of the blood of this space-wanderer. Men from the river colonies must have escaped to safety. Look at this man. Is he not like the men of Memphire, as they were in the olden days of the city's greatness?

The stranger was tall, taller than the men of Memphir, and there was a certain hardness about him which those city-dwellers in ease had never displayed. But Lur must be right. This was a man of her race. She smiled in sudden relief, and he answered that smile. Lur's soft laughter rang in both their heads.

Asti, in his infinite wisdom, can see through centuries. Memphir has fallen because of its softness, and the evil-doing of its people, and the barbarians will now have their way with the lands of the north. But to me, it appears that Asti is not yet done with the pattern he was weaving there. To each of you he granted a second life. Do not disdain the gifts of Asti, daughter of Erb.

Again, Varta felt the warm tide of blood rise in her cheeks. But she no longer smiled. Instead, she regarded the outlander speculatively. Not even a maiden of the temple could withstand the commands of the All-Highest. Gifts from the hand of Asti dared not be thrown away. Above the puzzlement of the stranger, she heard the chuckling of Lur.

The end of the Gifts of Asti by Andre Norton.

3 The Inconsiderate Waiter 42:12

The Inconsiderate Waiter by James Matthew Berry.

Read by Deborah Lynn in Northern Lower Michigan, March 2007.

Frequently I have to ask myself in the street for the name of the man I bowed to just now, and then, before I can answer, the wind of the first corner blows him from my memory. I have a theory, however, that those puzzling faces which pass before I can see who cut the coat all belong to club-waiters. Until William forced his affairs upon me, that was all I did know of the private life of waiters, though I have been in the club for twenty years. I was even unaware whether they slept downstairs or had their own homes, nor had I the interest to inquire of other members, nor they the knowledge to inform me. I hold that this sort of people should be fed and clothed and given airing in wives and children, and I subscribe yearly, I believe, for these purposes.

But to come into closer relation with waiters is bad form. They are club fittings, and William should have kept his distress to himself, or taken it away and patched it up, like a rent in one of the chairs. His inconsiderateness has been a pair of spectacles to me for months.

It is not correct taste to know the name of a club waiter, so that I must apologize for knowing William's, and still more for not forgetting it. If, again, to speak of a waiter is bad form, to speak bitterly is the comic degree of it. But William has disappointed me sorely. There were years when I would defer dining several minutes that he might wait on me. His pains to reserve the window-seat for me were perfectly satisfactory. I allowed him privileges as to suggest dishes, and would give him information, as that someone had startled me in the reading-room by slamming a door. I have shown him how I cut my finger with a piece of string. Obviously he was gratified by these attentions, usually recommending a liqueur, and I fancy he must have understood my sufferings For he often looked ill himself.

Probably he was rheumatic, but I cannot say for certain, as I never thought of asking, and he had the sense to see that the knowledge would be offensive to me. In the smoking-room we have a waiter so independent that once, when he brought me a yellow chartreuse, and I said I had ordered green, he replied, No, sir, you said yellow. William could never have been guilty of such effrontery. In appearance, of course, he is mean, but I can no more describe him than a milkmaid could draw cows. I suppose we distinguish one waiter from another, much as we pick our hat from the rack. We could have plotted a murder safely before William. He never presumed to have opinions of his own. When such was my mood, he remained silent, and if I announced that something diverting had happened to me, he laughed before I told him what it was.

He turned the twinkle in his eye, off or on, at my bidding, as readily as if it was the gas. To my, sure to be wet to-morrow, he would reply, yes, sir. And to Trelawney's, it doesn't look like rain, two minutes afterward, he would reply, no, sir. It was one member who said Lightning Rod would win the derby, and another who said Lightning Rod had no chance, but it was William who agreed with both. He was like a cheroot, which may be smoked from either end. So used was I to him, that had he died, or got another situation, or whatever it is such persons do when they disappear from the club, I should probably have told the head-waiter to bring him back, as I disliked changes.

It would not become me to know precisely when I began to think William an ingrate, but I date his lapse from the evening when he brought me oysters. I detest oysters, and no one knew it better than William. He has agreed with me that he could not understand any gentleman's liking them. Between me and a certain member who smacks his lips twelve times to a dozen of them, William knew I liked a screen to be placed until we had reached the soup, and yet he gave me the oysters and the other man my sardine. Both the other member and I called quickly for Brandy and the head-waiter. To do William justice, he shook, but never can I forget his audacious explanation. Beg pardon, sir, but I was thinking of something else.

In these words, William had flung off the mask, and now I knew him for what he was. I must not be accused of bad form for looking at William on the following evening. What prompted me to do so was not personal interest in him, but a desire to see whether I dare let him wait on me again. So, recalling that a castor was off a chair yesterday, one is entitled to make sure that it is on to-day before sitting down. If the expression is not too strong, I may say that I was taken aback by William's manner. Even when crossing the room to take my orders, he let his one hand play nervously with the other. I had to repeat, Sardine on toast, Twice, and instead of answering, Yes, sir, as if my selection of sardine on toast was a personal gratification to him, which is the manner one expects of a waiter, he glanced at the clock, then out at the window, and starting, asked, Did you say sardine on toast, sir?

It was the height of summer, when London smells like a chemist's shop, and he who has the dinner-table at the window needs no candles to show him his knife and fork. I lay back at intervals, now watching a starved-looking woman asleep on a doorstep, and again complaining of the club bananas. By and by I saw a little girl of the commonest kind, ill-clad and dirty, as all these Arabs are. Their parents should be compelled to feed and clothe them comfortably, or at least to keep them indoors where they cannot offend our eyes. Such children are for pushing aside with one's umbrella. But this girl I noticed because she was gazing at the club windows. She had stood thus for perhaps ten minutes, when I became aware that some one was leaning over me to look out at the window.

I turned round, conceived my indignation on seeing that the rude person was William. "'How dare you, William!' I said sternly. He seemed not to hear me. Let me tell, in the measured words of one describing a past incident, what then took place. To get nearer the window, he pressed heavily on my shoulder. "'William, you forget yourself,' I said, meaning, as I see now, that he had forgotten me. I heard him gulp, but not to my reprimand. He was scanning the street, his hands chattered on my shoulders, and pushing him from me I saw that his mouth was agape. "'What are you looking for?' I asked. He stared at me, and then, like one who had at last heard the echo of my question, seemed to be brought back to the club.

He turned his face from me for an instant, and answered shakily, "'I beg your pardon, sir. I—I shouldn't have done it. Are the bananas too ripe, sir?' He recommended the nuts, and awaited my verdict so anxiously while I ate one that I was about to speak graciously, when I again saw his eyes drag him to the window. "'William,' I said, my patience giving way at last, "'I dislike being waited on by a melancholy waiter.' "'Yes, sir,' he replied, trying to smile, and then broke out passionately. "'For God's sake, sir, tell me, have you seen a little girl looking in at the club windows?' He had been a good waiter once, and his distracted visage was spoiling my dinner. "'There,' I said, pointing to the girl, and no doubt would have added that he must bring me coffee immediately, had he continued to listen.

But already he was beckoning to the child.' I had not the least interest in her. Indeed, it had never struck me that waiters had private affairs, and I still think it a pity that they should have. But as I happened to be looking out at the window, I could not avoid seeing what occurred. As soon as the girl saw William, she ran into the middle of the street, regardless of vehicles, and nodded three times to him. Then she disappeared. I have said that she was quite a common child, without attraction of any sort. And yet it was amazing the difference she made in William. He gasped relief, like one who has broken through the anxiety that checks breathing, and into his face there came a silly laugh of happiness.

I had dined well, on the whole, so I said, "'I'm glad to see you cheerful again, William.' I meant that I approved his cheerfulness because it helped my digestion, but he must needs think I was sympathizing with him." "'Thank you, sir,' he answered. "'Oh, sir!' when she nodded and I saw it was all right, I could have gone down on my knees to God. I was as much horrified as if he had dropped a plate on my toes. Even William, disgracefully emotional as he was at the moment, flung out his arms to recall the shameful words. "'Coffee, William,' I said sharply. I sipped my coffee indignantly, for it was plain to me that William had something on his mind. "'You are not vexed with me, sir?' he had the hardihood to whisper.

"'It was a liberty,' I said. "'I know, sir, but I was beside myself. That was a liberty also.' He hesitated, and then blurted out, "'It is my wife, sir, she—' I stopped him with my hand. "'William, whom I had favoured in so many ways, was a married man.' I might have guessed as much years before, had I ever reflected about Waiters, for I knew vaguely that his class did this sort of thing. His confession was distasteful to me, and I said warningly, "'Remember where you are, William?' "'Yes, sir. But you see, she is so delicate—' "'Delicate? I forbid your speaking to me on unpleasant topics.' "'Yes, sir. Begging your pardon.' It was characteristic of William to beg my pardon, and withdraw his wife like some unsuccessful dish, as if its taste would not remain in the mouth.

I shall be chided for questioning him further about his wife, but, though doubtless an unusual step, it was only bad form superficially, for my motive was irreproachable. I inquired for his wife, not because I was interested in her welfare, but in the hope of allaying my irritation. So I am entitled to invite the wayfarer who has bespattered me with mud to scrape it off. I desired to be told by William that the girl's signals meant his wife's recovery to health. He should have seen that such was my wish, and answered accordingly. But, with the brutal inconsiderateness of his class, he said, "'She has had a good day, but the doctor is afeard she is dying.'" Already I repented my question. William and his wife seemed in league against me when they might so easily have chosen some other member.

Poo, the doctor, I said. Yes, sir, he answered. Have you been married long, William? Eight years, sir. Eight years ago she was—I—I—mind her when—and now the doctor says—the fellow gaped at me. More coffee, sir, he asked. What is her ailment? She was always one of the delicate kind, but full of spirit, and you see she has had a baby lately. William! And she—I—the doctor has afeared she's not picking up. I feel sure she will pick up. Yes, sir? It must have been the wine I had drunk that made me tell him. I was once married, William. My wife—it was just such a case as yours. She did not get better, sir? No. After a pause, he said, Thank you, sir, meaning for the sympathy that made me tell him that.

But it must have been the wine. That little girl comes here with a message from your wife? Yes. If she nods three times, it means my wife is a little better. She nodded thrice to-day. But she is told to do that to relieve me, and maybe those nods don't tell the truth. "'Is she your girl?' "'No, we have none but the baby. She is a neighbor's. She comes twice a day. It is heartless of her parents not to send her every hour.' "'But she is six years old,' he said, "'and has a house and two sisters to look after in the daytime, and a dinner to cook. Gentlefolk don't understand.' "'I suppose you live in some low part, William.' "'Off Drury Lane,' he answered, flushing. But it isn't low. You see, we were never used to anything better, and I mind, when I let her see the house before we were married, she has sort of cried because she was so proud of it.

That was eight years ago, and now she's afeard she'll die when I'm away at my work. Did she tell you that? Never. She always says she is feeling a little stronger. Then how can you know she is afraid of that?

I don't know how I know, sir, but when I am leaving the house in the morning, I look at her from the door, and she looks at me, and then—I—I know. A green chartreuse, William.

I tried to forget William's vulgar story in billiards, but he had spoiled my game. My opponent, to whom I can give twenty, ran out when I was sixty-seven, and I put aside my cue pettishly. That, in itself, was bad form. But what would they have thought had they known that a waiter's impertinence caused it? I grew angrier with William as the night wore on, and next day I punished him by giving my orders through another waiter. As I had my window-seat, I could not but see that the girl was late again. Somehow I dawdled over my coffee. I had an evening paper before me, but there was so little in it that my eyes found more of interest in the street. It did not matter to me whether William's wife died, but when that girl had promised to come, why did she not come?

These lower classes only give their word to break it. The coffee was undrinkable. At last I saw her. William was at another window, pretending to do something with the curtains. I stood up, pressing closer to the window. The coffee had been so bad that I felt shaky. She nodded three times and smiled. She is a little better," William whispered to me, almost gaily. Whom are you speaking of? I asked coldly, and immediately retired to the billiard-room, where I played a capital game. The coffee was much better there than in the dining-room. Several days passed, and I took care to show William that I had forgotten his maunderings. I chanced to see the little girl, though I never looked for her. Every evening, and she always nodded three times, save once, when she shook her head, and then William's face grew white as a napkin.

I remember this incident because that night I could not get into a pocket. So badly did I play that the thought of it kept me awake in bed, and that, again, made me wonder how William's wife was. Next day I went to the club early, which was not my custom, to see the new books. Being in the club at any rate, I looked into the dining-room to ask William if I had left my gloves there, and the sight of him reminded me of his wife, so I asked for her. He shook his head mournfully, and I went off in a rage. So accustomed am I to the club that when I dine elsewhere I feel uncomfortable next morning, as if I had missed a dinner. William knew this, yet here he was, hounding me out of the club. That evening I dined, as the saying is, at a restaurant, where no sauce was served with the asparagus.

Furthermore, as if that were not triumph enough for William, his doleful face came between me and every dish, and I seemed to see his wife dying to annoy me. I dined next day at the club for self-preservation, taking, however, a table in the middle of the room, and engaging a waiter who had once nearly poisoned me by not interfering when I put two lumps of sugar into my coffee instead of one, which is my allowance. But no William came to me to acknowledge his humiliation, and by and by I became aware that he was not in the room. Suddenly the thought struck me that his wife must be dead, and I—I It was the worst cooked and the worst served dinner I ever had in the club. I tried the smoking-room.

Usually the talk there is entertaining, but on that occasion it was so frivolous that I did not remain five minutes. In the card-room a member told me excitedly that a policeman had spoken rudely to him, and my strange comment was, After all, it is a small matter. In the library, where I had not been for years, I found two members asleep, and, to my surprise, William on a ladder, dusting books. "'You have not heard, sir,' he said, in answer to my raised eyebrows. Descending the ladder, he whispered tragically, "'It was last evening, sir. I lost my head, and I swore at a member.' I stepped back from William and glanced apprehensively at the two members. They still slept. "'I hardly knew,' William went on, "'what I was doing all day yesterday, "'for I had left my wife so weakly that I stamped my foot.

"'I beg your pardon for speaking of her,' he had the grace to say, "'but I couldn't help slipping to the window often yesterday "'to look for Jenny, and when she did come "'and I saw she was crying, it sort of confused me, "'and I didn't know right, sir, what I was doing.' I hit against a member, Mr. Middleton Finch, and he jumped and swore at me. Well, sir, I had just touched him after all, and I was so miserable it a kind of stung me to be treated like that, and me a man as well as him, and I lost my senses, and I swore back. William's shamed head sank on his chest. But I even let pass his insolence in likening himself to a member of the club. So afraid was I of the sleeper's waking and detecting me in talk with the waiter.

"'For the love of God,' William cried, with coarse emotion, "'don't let them dismiss me.' "'Speak lower,' I said. "'Who sent you here?' I was turned out of the dining-room at once, and told to attend to the library until they had decided what to do with me. "'Oh, sir, I'll lose my place.' He was blubbering, as if a change of waiter's was a matter of importance. "'This is very bad, William,' I said. "'I fear I can do nothing for you.' "'Have mercy on a distracted man,' he entreated. "'I'll go on my knees to Mr. Middleton Finch. How could I but despise a fellow who would be thus abject for a pound a week?' "'I dare not tell her,' he continued, "'that I have lost my place. She would just fall back and die.' "'I forbade your speaking of your wife,' I said sharply, "'unless you can speak pleasantly of her.' "'But she may be worse now, sir, and I cannot even see Jenny from here.

The library windows look to the back.' "'If she dies,' I said, "'it will be a warning to you to marry a stronger woman next time.' "'Now everyone knows that there is little real affection among the lower orders. As soon as they have lost one mate, they take another.' Yet William, forgetting our relative positions, drew himself up and raised his fist, and if I had not stepped back I swear he would have struck me. The highly improper words William used I will omit out of consideration for him. Even while he was apologizing for them, I retired to the smoking-room, where I found the cigarettes so badly rolled that they would not keep a light. After a little, I remembered that I wanted to see Middleton Finch about an improved saddle, of which a friend of his has the patent.

He was in the newsroom, and having questioned him about the saddle, I said, "'By the way, what is the story about your swearing at one of the waiters?' "'You mean about his swearing at me?' Middleton Finch replied, reddening. "'I am glad that was it,' I said, "'for I could not believe you guilty of such bad form.' "'If I did swear,' he was beginning, but I went on, "'the version which reached me was that you swore at him, and he repeated the word. I heard he was to be dismissed, and you reprimanded.' "'Who told you that?' asked Middleton Finch, who was a timid man. "'I forget. It is club talk,' I replied lightly. "'But, of course, the committee will take your word. The waiter, whichever one he is, richly deserves his dismissal for insulting you without provocation.' Then our talk returned to the saddle, but Middleton Finch was abstracted, and presently he said, "'Do you know, I fancy I was wrong in thinking that waiter swore at me, and I'll withdraw my charge to-morrow.' Middleton Finch then left me, and sitting alone I realized that I had been doing William a service.

To some slight extent I may have intentionally helped him to retain his place in the club, and I now see the reason, which was that he alone knows precisely to what extent I like my claret heated. For a mere second I remembered William's remark that he should not be able to see the girl Jenny from the library windows. Then this recollection drove from my head that I had only dined in the sense that my dinner bill was paid. Returning to the dining-room, I happened to take my chair at the window, and while I was eating a deviled kidney, I saw in the street the girl whose nods had such an absurd effect on William. The children of the poor are as thoughtless as their parents, and this Jenny did not sign to the windows in the hope that William might see her, though she could not see him.

Her face, which was disgracefully dirty, bore doubt and dismay on it, but whether she brought good news it would not tell. Somehow I had expected her to signal when she saw me. And though her message could not interest me, I was in the mood in which one is irritated at that not taking place which he is awaiting. Ultimately, she seemed to be making up her mind to go away. A boy was passing with the evening papers, and I hurried out to get one. Rather thoughtlessly, for we have all the papers in the club. Unfortunately, I misunderstood the direction the boy had taken. But round the first corner, out of sight of the club windows, I saw the girl Jenny, and so I asked her how William's wife was. "'Did he send you to me?' she replied, impertinently taking me for a waiter.

"'My,' she added, after a second's scrutiny, "'I believe you're one of them. His missus is a bit better, and I was to tell him as she took all the tapioca.' "'How could you tell him?' I asked. "'I was to do like this,' she replied, and went through the supping of something out of a plate in dumb show. "'That would not show she ate all the tapioca,' I said. "'But I was to end like this,' she answered, licking an imaginary plate with her tongue. I gave her a shilling, to get rid of her, and returned to the club disgusted. Later in the evening I had to go to the club library for a book, and while William was looking in vain for it—I had forgotten the title—I said to him, "'By the way, William, Mr.

Middleton Finch is to tell the committee that he was mistaken in the charge he brought against you, so you will doubtless be restored to the dining-room to-morrow.' The two members were still in their chairs, probably sleeping lightly, yet he had the effrontery to thank me. "'Don't thank me!' I said, blushing at the imputation. Remember your place, William. But Mr. Middleton Finch knew I swore, he insisted. A gentleman, I replied stiffly, cannot remember for twenty-four hours what a waiter has said to him. No, sir, but to stop him I had to say, and, ah, William, your wife is a little better. She has eaten the tapioca. All of it. How can you know, sir? By an accident. Jenny signed to the window.

No. Then you saw her, and went out, and—nonsense! Oh, sir, to do that for me, may God—William! Forgive me, sir, but when I tell my missus, she will say it was thought of your own wife as made you do it. He wrung my hand. I dared not withdraw it, lest we should waken the sleepers. William returned to the dining-room, and I had to show him that, if he did not cease looking gratefully at me, I must change my waiter. I also ordered him to stop telling me nightly how his wife was, but I continued to know, as I could not help seeing the girl Jenny from the window. Twice in a week I learned from this objectionable child that the ailing woman had again eaten all the tapioca. Then I became suspicious of William.

I will tell why.

It began with the remark of Captain Upjohn's. We had been speaking of the inconvenience of not being able to get a hot dish served after 1 a.m., and he said, "'It is because these lazy waiters would strike. If the beggars had a love of their work, they would not rush away from the club the moment 1 o'clock strikes. That glum fellow, who often waits on you, takes to his heels the moment he is clear of the club's steps.' He ran into me the other night at the top of the street, and was off without apologizing. "'You mean the foot of the street up, John,' I said, for such is the way to Drury Lane. "'No, I mean the top. The man was running west.' "'East.' "'West!' I smiled, which so annoyed him that he bet me two to one in sovereigns.

The bet could have been decided most quickly by asking William a question, but I thought—' Foolishly doubtless, that it might hurt his feelings, so I watched him leave the club. The possibility of Upjohn's winning the bet had seemed remote to me. Conceived my surprise, therefore, when William went westward.

Amazed, I pursued him along two streets without realizing that I was doing so. Then curiosity put me into a hansom. We followed William, and it proved to be a three-shilling fare, for running when he was in breath, and walking when he was out of it, he took me to West Kensington. I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William's incomprehensible behavior. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen's houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a light showed. So far as I could see, some one pulled up the blind, and for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked, for the window was not opened, and I felt that had William spoken through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him too.

Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home. Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love affair of William's? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence. So far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the club till three. I was miserable next day, and blamed the deviled kidneys for it. Whether William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had two plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his club. The one, that as he had made me lose a bet, I would punish him.

The other, that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes. Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that—well, I seemed to see his dying wife in it—that I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club. Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced to see the girl Jenny coming, and—no, let me tell the truth, though the whole club read. I was waiting for her. "'How was William's wife to-day?' I asked. "'She told me to nod three times,' the little slattern replied. "'But she looked like nothing but a dead one till she got the brandy.' "'Hush, child,' I said, shocked. "'You don't know how the dead look.' "'Bless yer,' she answered.

"'Don't I just—' "'Why, I've helped to lay him out. I'm going on seven.' "'Is William good to his wife?' "'Course he is. Ain't she his missus?' "'Why should that make him good to her?' I asked, cynically, out of my knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never had my opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers, fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and, looking up wonderingly, said, "'Ain't you green just?' "'When does William reach home at night?' "'Tain't night. It's morning.' When I wakes up at half-dark and half-light, and hears a door shutting, I know as it's either Father going off to his work, or Mr. Hicking coming home from his. Who is Mr.

Hicking? Him as we've been speaking on. William. We calls him Mister, because he's a toff. Father's just doing jobs in Covent Garden, but Mr. Hicking, he's a waiter, and a clean shirt every day. The old woman would like father to be a waiter, but he hain't got the aristocratic look. What old woman? Go long. That's my mother. Is it true there's a waiter in the club, just for to open the door? Yes, but—and another just for to lick the stamps? My! William leaves the club at one o'clock? I said, interrogatively. She nodded. My mother, she said, is one to talk, and she says to Mr. Hicking as he should get away at twelve, cause his missus needs him more'n the gentlemen need him. The old woman do talk.

And what does William answer to that? He says as the gentlemen can't be kept waiting for their cheese. But William does not go straight home when he leaves the club? That's the kid. "'Kid?' I echoed, scarcely understanding, for knowing how little the poor loved their children, I had asked William no questions about the baby. "'Didn't you know his missus had a kid?' "'Yes, but that is no excuse for William's staying away from his sick wife,' I answered sharply. "'A baby in such a home as William's,' I reflected, "'must be trying. But still. Besides, his class can sleep through any din.' "'The kid ain't in our court,' the girl explained. "'He's in W. He is. And I've never been out of W.C., leastwise not as I knows on.' "'This is W.

I suppose you mean that the child is at West Kensington.' "'Well, no doubt it was better for William's wife to get rid of the child.' "'Better?' interposed the girl. "'Tain't better for her not to have the kid.' "'Ain't her not having him what she's always thinking on when she looks like a dead one?' "'How could you know that?' "'Cause,' answered the girl, illustrating her words with a gesture, "'I watch as her, and I see as her arms going this way, just like as she wanted to hug her kid.' "'Possibly you are right,' I said, frowning. "'But William has put the child out to nurse because it disturbed his night's rest. A man who has his work to do—' "'You are green.' "'Then why have the mother and child been separated?' "'Along of that there measles.

Near all the young'uns in our court has em bad. Have you had them?' "'I said the young'uns.' "'And William sent the baby to West Kensington to escape infection?' "'Took him, he did.' "'Against his wife's wishes?' "'Now!' "'You said she was dying for want of the child.' Wouldn't she rather die than have the kid die? Don't speak so heartlessly, child. Why does William not go straight home from the club? Does he go to West Kensington to see it? Tain't a hit? It's an E. Course he do. Then he should not. His wife has the first claim on him. Ain't you green? It's his missus as wants him to go. Do you think she could sleep till she knowed how the kid was? But he does not go into the house at West Kensington?

Is he soft? Course he don't go in. Fear of taking the infection to the kid. They just holds the kid up at the window to him, so as he can have a good look. Then he comes home and tells his missus. He sits foot of the bed and tells. And that takes place every night. He can't have much to tell. He has just. He can only say whether the child is well or ill. My, he tells what a difference there is in the kid since he seed him last. There can be no difference. Go long. Ain't a kid always growing? Haven't Mr. Hicking to tell how the hair is getting darker and heaps of things beside? Such as what? Like whether he larfed, and if he has her nose, and how has he knowed him. He tells her them things more'n once.

And all this time he is sitting at the foot of the bed? Cept when he holds her hand. But when does he get to bed himself? He don't get much. He tells her as he has asleep at the club. He cannot say that. Hain't I heard him? But he do go to his bed a bit, and then they both lies quiet, her pretending she is sleeping so as he can sleep, and him feared to sleep, case he shouldn't wake up to give her the bottle stuff. What does the doctor say about her? He's a good one, the doctor. Sometimes he says she would get better if she could see the kid through the window. Nonsense! And if she was took to the country— Then why does not William take her? My, you are green, and if she drank port wines— Doesn't she?

No, but William, he tells her about the gentlemen drinking them. On the tenth day, after my conversation with this unattractive child, I was in my brougham, with the windows up, and I sat back, a paper before my face, lest anyone should look in. Naturally, I was afraid of being seen in company of William's wife and Jenny, for men about town are uncharitable, and despite the explanation I had ready, might have charged me with pitying William. As a matter of fact, William was sending his wife into Surrey to stay with an old nurse of mine, and I was driving her down because my horses needed an outing. Besides, I was going that way, at any rate. I had arranged that the girl, Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me at the club.

William joined us in the suburbs, bringing the baby with him, as I had foreseen they would all be occupied with it, and to save me the trouble of conversing with them. Mrs. Hicking I found too pale and fragile for a workingman's wife, and I formed a mean opinion of her intelligence from her pride in the baby, which was a very ordinary one. She created quite a vulgar scene when it was brought to her, though she had given me her word not to do so. What irritated me even more than her tears being her ill-bred apology that she had been feared Baby wouldn't know her again. I would have told her they didn't know anyone for years, had I not been afraid of the girl Jenny, who dandled the infant on her knees and talked to it as if it understood.

She kept me on tenterhooks by asking it offensive questions such as, "'Uno, who gave me that bonnet?' And answering them herself, "'It was the pretty gentleman there!' And several times I had to affect sleep, because she announced, "'Kitty wants to kiss the pretty gentleman!' Irksome as all this necessarily was to a man of taste, I suffered even more when we reached our destination. As we drove through the village, the girl Jenny uttered shrieks of delight at the sight of flowers growing up the cottage walls, and declared they were just like music all without the drink license. As my horses required a rest, I was forced to abandon my intention of dropping these persons at their lodgings and returning to town at once, and I could not go to the inn lest I should meet inquisitive acquaintances.

Disagreeable circumstances, therefore, compelled me to take tea with the waiters' family. Close to a window, too, through which I could see the girl Jenny talking excitedly to villagers, and telling them I felt certain that I had been good to William. I had a desire to go out and put myself right with those people.

William's long connection with the club should have given him some manners, but apparently his class cannot take them on. For though he knew I regarded his thanks as an insult, he looked them when he was not speaking them, and hardly had he sat down by my orders that he remembered that I was a member of the club and jumped up. Nothing is in worse form than whispering. Yet again and again, when he thought I was not listening, he whispered to Mrs. Hicking, "'You don't feel faint?' or, "'How are you now?' He was also in extravagant glee because she ate two cakes. It takes so little to put these people in good spirits. And when she said she felt like another being already, the fellow's face charged me with the change.

I could not but conclude, from the way Mrs. Hicking let the baby pound her, that she was stronger than she had pretended. I remained longer than was necessary, because I had something to say to William, which I knew he would misunderstand, and so I put off saying it. But when he announced that it was time for him to return to London, at which his wife suddenly paled, so that he had assigned her not to break down, I delivered the message. "'William,' I said, "'the head-waiter asked me to say that you could take a fortnight's holiday just now. Your wages will be paid as usual.' "'Confound them! William had me by the hand, and his wife was in tears before I could reach the door.' "'Is it your doing again, sir?' William cried.

"'William!' I said fiercely. "'We owe everything to you,' he insisted. "'The port wine, because I had no room for it in my cellar. "'The money for the nurse in London, because I objected to being waited on by a man who got no sleep. "'These lodgings, because I wanted to do something for my old nurse. "'And now, sir, a fortnight's holiday.' "'Good-bye, William,' I said in a fury. But before I could get away, Mrs. Hicking signed to William to leave the room, and then she kissed my hand. She said something to me. It was about my wife. Somehow I—' "'What business had William to tell her about my wife?' "'They are all back in Drury Lane now, and William tells me that his wife sings at her work, just as she did eight years ago.' I have no interest in this, and try to check his talk of it, but such people have no sense of propriety.

And he even speaks of the girl, Jenny, who sent me lately a gaudy pair of worsted gloves, worked by her own hand. The meanest advantage they took of my weakness, however, was in calling their baby after me. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, too, that William has given the other waiters his version of the affair. But I feel safe so long as it does not reach the committee.

End of The Inconsiderate Waiter by James Matthew Berry

4 Morella 17:35

Morella by N. Geralan Poh.

Morella.

Itself by itself, solely, one everlasting and single.

Plato Sympos.

With a feeling of deep, yet most singular affection I regarded my friend Morella.

Thrown by accident into her society many years ago, my soul, for my first meeting, burned with fires it had never before known.

But the fires were not of eros, and bitter and tormenting to my spirit was a gradual conviction that I could in no manner define their unusual meaning or regulate their vague intensity.

Yet we met, and fate bound us together at the altar, and I never spoke of passion nor thought of love. She, however, shunned society, and attaching herself to me alone, rendered me happy.

It is a happiness to wander.

It is a happiness to dream.

Morella's Her erudition was profound. As I hoped to live, her talents were of no common order. Her powers of mind were gigantic. I felt this, and in many matters became her pupil. I soon, however, found that, perhaps on account of her presburg education, She placed before me a number of those mystical writings which are usually considered the mere dross of the early German literature. These, for what reason I could not imagine, were her favorite in constant study, and that in process of time they became my own, should be attributed to the simple but effectual influence of habit and example.

In all this If I were not, my reason had little to do. My convictions, or I forget myself, were in no manner acted upon by the ideal. Nor was any tincture of the mysticism which I read to be discovered, unless I am greatly mistaken, either in my deeds or in my thoughts. Persuaded of this, I abandoned myself implicitly to the guidance of my wife, and entered with an unflinching heart into the intricacies of her studies. And then, then, when pouring over forbidden pages, I felt a forbidden spirit in kindling within me. Would Morella place her cold hand upon my own, and rake up from the ashes of a dead philosophy some low, singular words whose strange meaning burrow themselves in upon my memory?

And then, hour after hour, would I linger by her side and dwell upon the music of her voice, until at length its melody was tainted with terror. There fell a shadow upon my soul, and I grew pale and shuddered inwardly at those two unearthly tones. And thus, joy suddenly faded into horror, and the most beautiful became the most hideous. As Hinnon became Jehenna.

It is unnecessary to state the exact character of those discretions which, growing out of the volumes I have mentioned, formed for so long a time almost the sole conversation of Morella and myself. By the learned in what might be termed theological morality, they will be readily conceived, and by the unlearned they would At all events, be little understood. The wild pantheism of Fitcht, the modified Palagenedia the Pythagoreans, and above all, the doctrines of identity, as urged by Schelling, were generally the points of discussion presenting the most of beauty to the imaginative morella.

That identity which is termed personal, Mr. Locke, I think, truly defines to consist in the sadness of rational being.

And since by person we understand an intelligent essence having reason, and since there is a consciousness which only the common is thinking, it is this which makes us all to be that which we call ourselves, thereby distinguishing us from other beings that think, and giving us our personal identity.

But the principium Individuatunis, the notion of that identity which at death is or is not lost forever, was to me at all times a consideration of intense interest.

Not more from the perplexing and exciting nature of its consequences, than from the marked and agitated manner in which Morella mentioned them. But indeed, the time had now arrived when the mystery of my wife's manner oppressed me as a spell. I could no longer bear the touch of her want fingers, nor the low tone of her musical language, nor the lustre of her melancholy eyes. And she knew all this, but did not upbraid. She seemed conscious of my weakness, or my folly, and smiling, called it fate. She seemed also conscious of a cause, to me unknown, for the gradual alienation of my regard. But she gave me no hint or token of its nature. It was she woman, and pined away daily. In time the crimson spots settled steadily upon the cheek, and the blue veins upon the pale forehead became prominent.

And one instant my nature melted into pity. But next I made the glance of her meaning eyes, and then my soul seckoned and became with the giddiness of one who gazed downward into some dreary and unfathomable abyss.

Shall I then say that I longed with an earnest and consuming desire for the moment of morelless disease? I did. But the fragile spirit clung to its tenement of clay for many days. For many weeks and irks a month, until my tortured nerves obtained the mastery over my mind, and I grew furious through delay, and with the heart of a fiend, cursed the days in the house in the bitter moments which seemed to lengthen and lengthen, as her gentle life declined like shadows in the dying of the day.

But one autumnal evening, when the winds lay still in heaven, Morella called me to her bedside.

There was a dim mist over all the earth, and a warm glow upon the waters. And amid the rich October leaves of the forest, a rainbow from the Firmament had surely fallen.

It is a day of days, she said, as I approached. A day of all days, either to live or die. "'Tis a fair day for the sons of earth and life. Ah, more fair for the daughters of heaven and death.' I kissed her forehead, and she continued.

"'I am dying, yet shall I live.' Morella!

"'The days have never been, whom thou couldst love me. But her whom in life thou didst abhor, in death thou shalt adore.' Morella! I repeat, I am dying. But within me is a pledge of that affection, ah! How little! Which thou didst feel for me, Morella! And when my spirit departs, shall the child live, thy child and mine, Morella's. But thy days shall be days of sorrow. Sorrow, which is the most lasting of impressions, as the cypress is the most enduring of dreams. For all the hours of thy happiness are over, and joy is not gathered twice in life, as the roses of Pestum twice in a year.

Thou shalt no longer then play the tea and with time, but, being ignorant of the myrtle and the vine, Thou shalt bear about with thee thy shroud on the earth, as do the moslemin at Mecca.

Morella cried, Morella! How knowest thou this? But she turned away her face upon the pillow, and a slight tremor coming over her limbs. She thus died, and I heard her voice no more.

Yet as she had foretold, a child to which, in dying, she had given birth, Which breathed not until the mother breathed no more. A child, a daughter, lived. And she grew strangely in stature and intellect, and was a perfect resemblance of her who had departed. And I loved her with a love more fervent than I had believed it possible to feel for any denizen of earth.

But ere long the heaven of this pure affection became darkened, And gloom and horror and grief swept over it in clouds. I said the child grew strangely in stature and intelligence. Strange, indeed, was her rapid increase in bodily size. But terrible, oh, terrible were the tumultuous thoughts which crowded upon me while watching the development of her mental being. Could it be otherwise? When I daily discovered in the conceptions of the child the adult powers and faculties of the woman, when the lessons of experience fell from the lips of infancy, and when the wisdom of the passions of maturity are found hourly gleaming from its full and speculative eye, when I say all this became evident to my poor senses, when I could no longer hide it from a soul, Nor throw it off from those perceptions which trembled to receive it.

Is it to be wondered that suspicions of a nature fearful and exciting crept in upon my spirit, or that my thoughts fell back aghast upon the wild tales and thrilling theories of the entombed Morella? A snatch from the scrutiny of the world, the being whom destiny compelled me to adore, and in the rigorous seclusion of my home, Watched with an agonizing anxiety over all which concerned the beloved. And as years rolled away, and I gazed day after day upon her holy and mild and eloquent face, and pored over her maturing form, day after day did I discover new points of resemblance in the child to her mother, the melancholy and the dead. And now it grew darker, these shadows of similitude, And more full, and more definite, and more perplexing, and more hideously terrible in their aspect.

For that her smile was like her mother's eye could bear, but then I shuddered at its too perfect identity. That her eyes were like Morella's eye could endure, but then they, too, often looked out into the depths of my soul with Morella's own intense and bewildering meaning.

And in the contour of the high forehead, and in the ringlets of the silken hair, and in the wound fingers which bury themselves therein, and in the sad musical tones of her speech, and above all, oh, above all, in the phrases and expressions of the dead, on the lips of the loving and the living. I found food for consuming thought and horror, For a worm that would not die.

Thus passed away two lustre of life, and as yet my daughter remained nameless upon the earth. My child and my love, with the designations usually prompted by your father's affection, and the rigid seclusion of her days, precluded all other intercourse. Morella's name died with her at her death.

Of the mother I had never spoken to the daughter. It was impossible to speak. Indeed, during the brief period of her existence, the latter had received no impressions from the outward world, save such as might have been afforded by the narrow limits of her privacy. But at length the ceremony of baptism presented to my mind, in its unnerved and agitation condition, a present deliverance from the terrors of my destiny. And at the baptism of font I hesitated for a name, and many titles of the wise and beautiful, of old and modern times, of my own and foreign lands, came thronging to my lips with many, many fair titles of the gentle and the happy and the good.

What prompted me, then, to disturb the memory of the buried dead? What demon urged me to breathe that sound which This very recollection was one to make ebb the purple blood in torrents from the temples to the hut. What fiends spoke from the recesses of my soul, when amid those dim aisles and in the silence of the night I whispered within the ears of the holy man the syllables. Morella.

What more than fiend conversed the fiends. The features of my child, and overspread them with hues of death, astutting at that scarcely audible sound, she turned her glassy eyes from the earth to heaven, and, falling prostrate on the black slabs of our ancestral vault, responded, I am here.

Distinct, coldly, calmly distinct, One of those few simple sounds within my ear, and thence like molten lead rolled hissingly into my brain.

Years, years may pass away, but the memory of that epoch never.

Nor was I indeed ignorant of the flowers and the vine. But the hemlock and the cypress overshadowed me night and day, And I kept no reckoning of time or place, and the stars of my fate faded from heaven. And therefore the earth grew dark, and its figures passed by me like fleeting shadows. And among them all I beheld only Morella.

The winds of the firmament breathed but one sound. Within my ears, and the ripples upon the sea murmured evermore, Morelle.

But she died, and with my own hands I bore her to the tomb. And I laughed with a long and bitter laugh, as I found no traces of the first in the channel where I laid the second.

Morella.

5 The Oval Portrait 11:14

The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe.

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Read by Maria Tafidis The oval portrait.

The chateau into which my valley had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Apennines, not less, in fact, than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe.

To all appearance, It had been temporarily and very lately abandoned. We established ourselves in one of the smallest and least sumptuously furnished apartments. It lay in a remote turret at a building. Its decorations were rich, yet tattered and antique. Its walls were hung with tapestry and bedecked with manifold and multiform memorial trophies. Together with an unusually great number of very spirited modern paintings in frames of rich golden arabesque. In these paintings, which depended from the walls, not only in the main surfaces, but in very many nooks which the bizarre architecture of the chateau rendered necessary, in these paintings my incipient delirium, perhaps, had It caused me to take deep interest, so that I bade Pedro to close the heavy shutters of the room, since it was already night, to light the tongues of a tall candelabrum which stood by the head of my bed, and to throw open, far and wide, the fringed curtains of black velvet which enveloped the bed itself.

I wished all this done, that I might resign myself If not to sleep, at least alternately to the contemplation of these pictures, and the perusal of a small volume which had been found upon the pillow, and which purported to criticize and describe them.

Long, long I read, and devoutly, devotedly I gazed. Rapidly and gloriously the hours flew by, and a deep midnight came. The position of the candelabrum displeased me, and outreaching my hand with difficulty, rather than disturb my slumbering valley, I placed it so as to throw its rays more fully upon the book.

But the action produced an effect altogether unanticipated. The rays of the numerous candles, for they were many, now fell Within a niche of a room which had hitherto been thrown into deep shade by one of the bed-posts, I thus saw in vivid light a picture all unnoticed before.

It was the portrait of a young girl just ripening into womanhood. I glanced at the painting hurriedly, and then closed my eyes. Why I did this, was not at first apparent even to my own perception. But while my lids remained thus shut, I ran over in my mind my reason for so shutting them. It was an impulsive movement to gain time for thought, to make sure that my vision had not deceived me, to calm and subdue my fancy for a more sober and more certain gaze. In a very few moments I again looked fixedly at the painting.

That I now saw aright I could not and would not doubt, for the first flashing of the candles upon the canvas had seemed to dissipate the dream stupor which was stealing over my senses and to startle me at once into waking life.

The portrait, I have already said, was that of a young girl. It was a mere head and shoulders, done in what is technically termed a vignette manner, much in the style of the favorite heads of Sully. The arms, the bosom, and even the ends of the radiant hair melted imperceptibly into the vague yet deep shadow which formed the background of the whole. The frame was oval, Richly gilded and filigreed immoresque. As a thing of art, nothing could be more admirable than the painting itself. But it could have been neither the execution of the work, nor the immortal beauty of the countenance, which had so suddenly and so vehemently moved me. Least of all could it have been that my fancy, shaken from its half slumber, had mistaken the head for that of a living person.

I saw at once that the peculiarities of the design, of the vignetting, and of the frame, must have instantly dispelled such idea, must have prevented even its momentary entertainment. Thinking earnestly upon these points, I remained, for an hour, perhaps, half-sitting, Half reclining, with my vision riveted upon the portrait. At length, satisfied with the true secret of its effect, I fell back within the bed. I had found the spell of the picture in an absolute life-likeliness of expression which, at first startling, finally confounded, subdued, and appalled me.

With deep and reverent awe, I replaced the candelabra in its former position. The cause of my deep agitation being thus shut from view, I sought eagerly the volume which discussed the paintings and the histories. Turning to the number which designated the oval portrait, I there read the vague and quaint words which follow.

She was a maiden of rarest beauty, and not more lovely than full of glee.

And the evil was the hour when she saw and loved and wedded the painter. He, passionate, studious, austere, and having already a bride in his art, she a maiden of rarest beauty, And not more lovely than full of glee. All light and smiles, and frolicsome are the young folk, loving and cherishing all things, hating only the art which was her rival, dreading only the palette and brushes and other untoward instruments which deprived her of the countenance of a lover. It was thus a terrible thing for this lady. To hear the painter speak of his desire to portray even his young bride. But she was humble and obedient, and sat meekly for many weeks in the dark, high-toward chamber, where the light dripped upon the pale canvas only from overhead.

But he, the painter, took glory in his work, which went on from hour to hour and from day to day. And he was a passionate, and wild, and moody man, who became lost in reverie. So that he would not see that the light which fell so ghastly in that lone turret withered the health and spirit of his bride, who pined visibly to all but him, that she smiled on and still on, uncomplainingly, because she saw That the painter, who had high renown, took a fervid and burning pleasure in his task, and wrote day and night to depict her who so loved him, yet who grew daily more dispirited and weak. And in sooth some who beheld the portrait spoke of its resemblance in low words, as of a mighty marvel, and a proof not less of the power of the painter than of his deep love for her, whom he depicted so surpassingly well.

But at length, as the labour drew nearer to its conclusion, there were admitted none into the turret, for the painter had grown wild with the ardour of his work, and turned his eyes from canvas merely even to regard the countenance of his wife.

And he would not see The tints which he spread upon the canvas were drawn from the cheeks of hoe sat beside him. And when many weeks had passed, then bad little remained to do, save one brush upon the mouth and one tint upon the eye. The spirit of the lady again flickered up as a flame within the socket of the lamp. And then the brush was given, and then the tint was placed. And for one moment—the painter stood entranced before the work which he had wrote. But in the next, while he yet gazed, he grew tremulous and very pallid, yet aghast and crying with a loud voice, "'This is indeed life itself!' turned suddenly to regard his beloved. She was dead.

End of the other portrait by Edgar Allan Poe.

6 Rollo Learning To Play 17:16

Rallo Learning to Play by Robert J. Burdett Early in the afternoon of the same day, Mr. Holliday came home, bearing a large package in his arms. Not only seldom, but rarely did anything come into the Holliday homestead that did not afford the head of the family a text for sermonic instruction, if not indeed rational discourse. Depositing the package upon a hall table, he called to his son in a mandatory manner, "'Rollo, come to me!' Rollo approached, but started with reluctant steps. He became reminiscently aware, as he hastily reviewed the events of the day, that in carrying out one or two measures for the good of the house, he had laid himself open to an investigation by a strictly partisan committee, and the possibility of such an inquiry, with its subsequent report, grieved him.

However, he hoped for the worst, so that in any event he would not be disagreeably disappointed, and came running to his father, calling, "'Yes, sir,' in his cheeriest tones. "'This is the correct form in which to meet any possible adversity which is not yet in sight, because, if it should not meet you, you are happy anyhow, and if it should meet you, you have been happy before the collision. See?' Now, Rollo—' said his father. You are too large and strong to be spending your leisure time playing baby games with your little brother, Fanny. It is time for you to begin to be athletic. What is athletic? asked Rallo. Well, replied his father, who was an alumnus, pronounced a-lum-nus himself, In a general way, it means to wear a pair of pantaloons, either eighteen inches too short or six inches too long for you, and stand around and yell while other men do your playing for you.

The reputation for being an athlete may also be acquired by wearing a golf suit to church or carrying a tennis racket to your meals. However, as I was about to say, I do not wish you to work all the time, like a woman, or even a small part of the time, like a hired man. I wish you to adopt for your recreation games of sport and pastime. Rollo interrupted his father, to say that indeed he preferred games of that description to games of toil and labor. But as he concluded, little Thanny, who was sitting on the porch step with his book, suddenly read aloud, in a staccato measure, "'I believe you, my boy,' replied the man heartily. Read to yourself, Thanny, said his father kindly, and do not speak your syllables in that jerky manner.

Thanny subsided into silence after making two or three strange gurgling noises in his throat, which Rollo, after several efforts, succeeded in imitating quite well. Being older than Thanny, Rollo, of course, could not invent so many new noises every day as his little brother, but he could take Thanny's noises, they being unprotected by copyright, and not only reproduce them, but even improve upon them. This shows the advantage of the higher education. A little learning is a dangerous thing. It is well for every boy to learn that dynamite is an explosive of great power, after which it is still better for him to learn of how great power. Then he will not hit a cartridge with a hammer in order to find out, and when he dines in good society he can still lift his pie gracefully in his hand, and will not be compelled to harpoon it with an iron hook at the end of his forearm.

Rollo's father looked at the two boys attentively as they swallowed their noises, and then said— Now, Rollo, there is no sense in learning to play a man's game with a toy outfit. Here are the implements of a game which is called baseball, and which I am going to teach you to play. So saying, he opened the package, and handed Rollo a bat, a wagon-tongued terror that would knock the leather off a planet, and Rollo's eyes danced as he balanced it, and pronounced it a lala. It is a bat, his father said sternly, a baseball bat. "'Is that a baseball bat?' exclaimed Rollo innocently. "'Yes, my son,' replied his father, "'and here is a protector for the hand.' Rollo took the large leather pillow and said, "'That's an infielder.' "'It is a mitt,' his father said, "'and here is the ball.' As Rollo took the ball in his hands, he danced with glee.

"'That's a peach!' he cried. "'It is a baseball,' his father said. "'That is what you play baseball with.' "'Is it?' exclaimed Rallo, inquiringly. "'Now,' said Mr. Holliday, as they went into the backyard, followed by Fanny, I will go to bat first, and I will let you pitch, so that I may teach you how. I will stand here at the end of the barn. Then, when you miss my bat with the ball, as you may sometimes do, for you do not yet know how to pitch accurately, the barn will prevent the ball from going too far." "'That's the backstop,' said Rallo. "'Do not try to be funny, my son,' replied his father. "'In this great republic, only a president of the United States is permitted to coin phrases which nobody can understand.

Now observe me. When you are at bat, you stand in this manner.' And Mr. Holliday assumed the attitude of a timid man who has just stepped on the tail of a strange and irascible dog, and is holding his legs so that the animal, if he can pull his tail out, can escape without biting either of them. He then held the bat up before his face as though he was carrying a banner. "'Now, Rollo, you must pitch the ball directly toward the end of my bat. Do not pitch too hard at first, or you will tire yourself out before we begin.' Rollo held the ball in his hands, and gazed at it thoughtfully for a moment. He turned and looked at the kitchen windows, as though he had half a mind to break one of them. Then, wheeling suddenly, he sent the ball whizzing through the air like a bullet.

It passed so close to Mr. Holliday's face that he dropped the bat and his grammar in his nervousness, and shouted, "'What are you throwing at? There's no way to pitch a ball. Pitch it as though you were playing a gentleman's game, not as though you were trying to kill a cat.' Now pitch it right here, right at this place, on my bat, and pitch more gently. First thing you know, you'll sprain your wrist and have to go to bed. Now try again. This time, Rallo kneaded the ball gently, as though he suspected that it had been pulled before it was ripe. He made an offer as though he would throw it to Fanny. Thanny made a rush back to an imaginary first, and Rollo, turning quickly, fired the ball in the general direction of Mr.

Holliday. It passed about ten feet to his right, but, none the less, he made what Thanny called a swipe at it that turned him around three times before he could steady himself. It then hit the end of the barn with a resounding crash that made Cotton Mather, the horse, snort with terror in his lonely stall. Fanny called out, in nasal singsong tone, "'Strike one!' "'Fanny,' said his father severely, "'do not let me hear a repetition of such language from you. If you wish to join our game, you may do so, if you will play in a gentlemanly manner. But I will not permit the use of slang about this house.' "'Now, Rollo, that was better, much better.' But you must aim more accurately, and pitch less violently.

You will never learn anything until you acquire it, unless you pay attention while giving your mind to it. Now play ball, as we say. This time Rollo stooped and rubbed the ball in the dirt, until his father sharply reprimanded him, saying, You untidy boy! That ball will not be fit to play with. Then Rollo looked about him over the surrounding country as though admiring the pleasant view, and with the same startling abruptness as before faced his father and shot the ball in so swiftly that Thanny said he could see it smoke. It passed about six feet to the left of the batsman, but Mr. Holliday, judging that it was coming dead for him, dodged, and the ball struck his high silk hat with a boom like a drum, carrying it on to the backstop in its wild career.

"'Take your base!' shouted Thanny, but suddenly checked himself, remembering the new rules on the subject of his umpiring. "'Rollo!' exclaimed his father. "'Why do you not follow my instructions more carefully? That was a little better, but still the ball was badly aimed. You must not stare around all over creation when you are playing ball. How can you throw straight when you look at everything in the world except at the bat you are trying to hit? You must aim right at the bat.' Try to hit it. That's what the pitcher does. And, Thanny, let me say to you, and for the last time, that I will not permit the slang of the slums to be used about this house. Now, Rallo, try again, and be more careful and more deliberate."

"'Father,' said Rallo, "'did you ever play baseball when you were a young man?' "'Did I play baseball?' repeated his father. "'Did I play ball?' "'Well, say, I belonged to the Sacred Nine out in old Peoria, and I was a holy terror on third, now I tell you. One day—'but just at this point in the history it occurred to Rollo to send the ball over the plate. Mr. Holliday saw it coming. He shut both eyes and dodged for his life, but the ball hit the bat and went spinning straight up in the air. Then he shouted, "'Foul,' ran under it, reached up, took it out of the atmosphere, and cried, "'Out!' "'Thanny,' said his father sternly, "'another word, and you shall go straight to bed. If you do not improve in your habit of language, I will send you to the reform school.' "'Now, Rollo,' he continued kindly, "'that was a great deal better, very much better.

I hit that ball with almost no difficulty. You are learning, but you will learn more rapidly if you do not expend so much unnecessary strength in throwing the ball. Once more now, and gently. I do not wish you to injure your arm.' Rollo leaned forward and tossed the ball toward his father very gently indeed, much as his sister Mary would have done, only, of course, in a more direct line. Mr. Holliday's eyes lit up with their old fire as he saw the oncoming sphere. He swept his bat around his head in a fierce semicircle, caught the ball fair on the end of it, and sent it over Rollo's head, crashing into the kitchen window amid a jingle of glass and a crash of crockery, wild shrieks from the invisible maid-servant, and delighted howls from Rollo and Thanny of, "'Good boy!

You own the town! All the way round!' Mr. Holliday was a man whose nervous organism was so sensitive that he could not endure the lightest shock of excitement. The confusion and general uproar distracted him. "'Fanny!' he shouted. "'Go into the house! Go into the house and go right to bed!' "'Fanny,' said Rollo, in a low tone, "'you're suspended. That's what you get for jollying the umpire.' "'Rollo,' said his father, "'I will not have you quarrelling with Fanny. I can correct him without your interference.' And, besides, you have wrought enough mischief for one day. Just see what you have done with your careless throwing. You have broken the window, and I do not know how many things on the kitchen table.

You careless, inattentive boy! I would do right if I should make you pay for all this damage out of your own pocket money. And I would, if you had any. I may do so, nevertheless. And there is Jane, bathing her eye at the pump. You have probably put it out by your wild pitching. If she dies, I will make you wash the dishes until she returns. I thought all boys could throw straight naturally without any training. You discourage me. Now come here and take this bat, and I will show you how to pitch a ball without breaking all the glass in the township, and see if you can learn to bat any better than you can pitch."

Rallo took the bat, poised himself lightly, and kept up a gentle oscillation of the stick while he waited. Hold it still! yelled his father, whose nerves were sorely shaken. How can I pitch a ball to you when you keep flourishing that club like an anarchist in procession? Hold it still, I tell you. Rollo dropped the bat to an easy slant over his shoulder and looked attentively at his father. The ball came in. Rollo caught it right on the nose of the bat and set it whizzing directly at the pitcher. Mr. Holliday held his hands straight out before him and spread his fingers. "'I've got her!' he shouted. And then the ball hit his hands, scattered them, and passed on against his chest with a jolt that shook his system to its foundations.

A melancholy howl rent the air as he doubled up and tried to rub his chest and knead all his fingers on both hands at the same time. "'Rollo!' he gasped. "'You go to bed, too!' "'Go to bed and stay there six weeks. And when you get up, put on one of your sister's dresses and play golf. You'll never learn to play ball if you practice a thousand years. I never saw such a boy. You have probably broken my lung, and I do not suppose I shall ever use my hands again. You can't play Tiddledy-Winks. Oh, dear! Oh, dear!' Rollo sadly laid away the bat and the ball and went to bed, where he and Thanny sparred with pillows until tea-time, when they were bailed out of prison by their mother. Mr. Holliday had recovered his good-humour.

His fingers were multifariously bandaged, and he smelled of arnica like a drug-store, but he was reminiscent and animated. He talked of the old times and the old days, and of Peoria and Hinmans, as was his wont, oft as he felt boyish. And Town Ball, he said. Good old Town Ball. There was no limit to the number on a side. The ring was anywhere from three hundred feet to a mile in circumference, according to whether we played on a vacant Pindry lot or out on the open prairie. We tossed up a bat, wet or dry, for first choice, and then chose the whole school on the sides. The bat was a board, about the general shape of a Roman galley oar, and not quite so wide as a barn door. The ball was of solid India rubber.

A little fellow could hit it a hundred yards, and a big boy with a hickory club could send it clear over the bluffs or across the lake. We broke all the windows in the schoolhouse the first day, and finished up every pane of glass in the neighborhood before the season closed. The side that got its innings first kept them until school was out or the last boy died. Fun? Good game? Oh, boy of these golden days, paying fifty cents an hour for the privilege of watching a lot of hired men do your playing for you. It beat too old cat.

Spell and Define Instruction Instantaneity Liniment Miscalculation Pastime Contusion Paralysis Hastie Supererogation.

Can a boy learn anything without a teacher? Does the pupil ever know more than the instructor, and why not? How long does it require one to learn to speak and write the Spanish language correctly in six easy lessons at home without a master? And in how many lessons can one be taught to walk Spanish? What is meant by a rooter? What is the difference between a rooter and a fan? Parse hoodoo. What is the philology of crank? Describe a closely contested game of one old cat with diagrams. What is meant by a rank decision? Translate into colloquial English the phrase, Good eye, Bill. Put into bleaching-board Latin, rotten umpire. Why is he so called?

End of Rallo Learning to Play

7 Rollo Learning To Read 10:40

Burdett.

When Rollo was five years young, his father said to him one evening, "'Rollo, put away your roller-skates and bicycle, carry that rowing-machine out into the hall, and come to me. It is time for you to learn to read.' Then Rollo's father opened the book, which he had sent home on a truck, and talked to the little boy about it. It was Bancroft's History of the United States, half complete in twenty-three volumes. Rollo's father explained to Rollo and Mary his system of education, with special reference to Rollo's learning to read. His plan was that Mary should teach Rollo fifteen hours a day for ten years, and by that time Rollo would be half through the beginning of the first volume and would like it very much indeed.

Rollo was delighted at the prospect. He cried aloud, "'Oh, Papa, thank you very much. When I read this book clear through all the way to the end of the last volume, may I have another little book to read?' "'No,' replied his father, "'that may not be, because you will never get to the last volume of this one. For as fast as you read one volume, the author of this history, or his heirs, executors, administrators, or assigns, will write another as an appendix. So even though you should live to be a very old man like the boy preacher, this history will always be twenty-three volumes ahead of you. Now, Mary and Rollo, this will be a hard task, pronounced Tosk, for both of you, and Mary must remember that Rollo is a very little boy and must be very patient and gentle.

The next morning, after the one preceding it, Mary began the first lesson. In the beginning, she was so gentle and patient that her mother went away and cried, because she feared her dear little daughter was becoming too good for this sinful world, and might soon spread her wings and fly away and be an angel.

But in the space of a short time, the novelty of the expedition wore off, and Mary resumed running her temper, which was of the old-fashioned, low-pressure kind, just forward of the fire-box, on its old schedule. When she pointed to A for the seventh time, and Rollo said W, she tore the page out by the roots, hit her little brother such a whack over the head with the big book that it set his birthday back six weeks, slapped him twice, and was just going to bite him when her mother came in. Mary told her that Rollo had fallen downstairs and torn his book and raised that dreadful lump on his head. This time, Mary's mother restrained her emotion, and Mary cried. But it was not because she feared her mother was pining away.

Oh, no! It was her mother's rugged health and virile strength that grieved Mary as long as the seance lasted, which was during the entire performance. That evening, Rollo's father taught Rollo his lesson, and made Mary sit by and observe his methods, because, he said, that would be normal instruction for her. He said, "'Mary, you must learn to control your temper and curb your impatience if you want to wear low-neck dresses and teach school. You must be sweet and patient, or you will never succeed as a teacher.' "'Now, Rollo, what is this letter?' "'I dunno,' said Rollo, resolutely. "'That is A,' said his father sweetly. "'Huh,' replied Rollo. "'I knowed that.' Then, why did you not say so? replied his father, so sweetly that Jonas the hired boy sitting in the corner licked his chops.

Rollo's father went on with the lesson. "'What is this, Rollo?' "'I dunno,' said Rollo, hesitatingly. "'Sure,' asked his father. "'You do not know what it is?' "'Nuck,' said Rollo. "'It is a,' said his father. "'A what?' asked Rollo. "'Ain't nothing,' replied his father. "'It is just A.' "'Now, what is it?' "'Just A,' said Rallo. "'Do not be flit, my son,' said Mr. Holliday, "'but attend to your lesson. What letter is this?' "'I don't know,' said Rallo. "'Don't fib to me,' said his father gently. "'You said a minute ago that you knew—that is N.' "'Yes, sir,' replied Rallo meekly. Rollo, although he was a little boy, was no slouch, if he did wear bibs. He knew where he lived without looking at the door-plate.

When it came time to be meek, there was no boy this side of the planet Mars who could be meeker on shorter notice. So he said, "'Yes, sir,' with that subdued and well-pleased alacrity of a boy who has just been asked to guess the answer to the conundrum, "'Will you have another piece of pie?' "'Well,' said his father, rather suddenly, "'what is it?' M, said Rollo confidently. N, yelled his father in three-line gothic. N, echoed Rollo in lower case nonpareil. B-A-N, said his father. What does that spell? Cat? suggested Rollo, a trifle uncertainly. Cat? snapped his father with a sarcastic inflection. B-A-N. Cat? Where were you raised? "'B-A-N, Band. Say it. Say it, or I'll get at you with a skate-strap.' "'B-A-N, Band,' said Rollo, who was beginning to wish that he had a rain-check and could come back and see the remaining innings some other day.

"'B-A-N,' shouted his father. "'B-A-N, Band, Band, Band. Now say Band.' "'Ban,' said Rollo, with a little gasp. "'That's right,' his father said, in an encouraging tone. "'You will learn to read one of these years, if you give your mind to it. All he needs, you see, Mary, is a teacher who doesn't lose patience with him the first time he makes a mistake. Now, Rallo, how do you spell B-A-N, ban?' Rallo started out timidly on C-A, then changed to D-O, and finally compromised on H-E-N. Mr. Holliday made a pass at him with volume I, but Rollo saw it coming and got out of the way. "'B-A-N!' his father shouted. "'B-A-N! Ban! Ban! Ban! Ban! Ban!' Now go on, if you think you know how to spell that. What comes next?

"'Oh, you're enough to tire the patience of Job. I've a good mind to make you learn by the Pollard system and begin where you leave off. Go ahead, why don't you? What are you waiting for? Read on. What comes next?' Why, Croft, of course. Anybody ought to know that. C-R-O-F-T. Croft. Bancroft. What does that apostrophe mean? I mean, what does that punctuation mark between T and S stand for? You don't know? Take that, then. Whack!

What comes after Bancroft? Spell it. Spell it, I tell you, and don't be all night about it. Can't, eh? Well, read it, then. If you can't spell it, read it. H-I-S-T-O-R-Y-R-E. History. Bancroft's History of the United States. Now, what does that spell? I mean, spell that. Spell it. Oh, go away. Go to bed. Stupid, stupid child, he added as the little boy went weeping out of the room. He'll never learn anything so long as he lives. I declare he has tired me all out, and I used to teach school in Trivilly Township, too. "'Taut One Hall Winter in District No. 3 when Nick Worthington was County Superintendent, and had my salary—' "'Look here, Mary. What do you find in that English grammar to giggle about?' "'You go to bed, too.

And listen to me. If Rollo can't read that whole book clear through without making a mistake, tomorrow night you'll wish you had been born without a back. That's all.' The following morning, when Rollo's father drove away to business, he paused a moment as Rollo stood at the gate for a final good-bye kiss, for Rollo's daily good-bys began at the door, and lasted as long as his father was in sight. Mr. Holliday said, "'Some day, Rollo, you will thank me for teaching you to read.' "'Yes, sir,' replied Rollo respectfully, and then added, "'But not this day.' Rollo's head, though it had here and there transient—' Bumps, consequent upon football practice, was not naturally or permanently hilly. On the contrary, it was quite level.

Spell and Define. Tact. Exasperation. Lamb. Inperturbability. Red Hot. Philosopher. Ebullition. Nout. Terrier. Which end of a rattan hurts the more? Why does reading make a full man?

Is an occasional whipping good for a boy? At precisely what age does corporal punishment cease to be effective, and why? State, in exact terms, how much better are grown-up people without the rod than little people with it, and why.

When would a series of good sound whippings have been of the greatest benefit to Solomon, when he was a godly young man, or an idolatrous old one? In order to reform this world thoroughly, then, whom should we thrash, the children or the grown-up people, and why?

If, then, the whipping-post should be abolished in Delaware, why should it be retained in the nursery and the schoolroom?

Write on the board in large letters the following sentence. If a boy ten years old should be whipped for breaking a window, what should be done to a man thirty-five years old for breaking the third commandment?

End of Rollo Learning to Read

8 A Sea of Troubles 32:51

A Sea of Troubles by P. G. Woodhouse.

Mr. Meggs's mind was made up. He was going to commit suicide. There had been moments In the interval which had elapsed between the first inception of the idea and his present state of fixed determination, when he had wavered. In these moments he had debated, with Hamlet, the question whether it was nobler in the mind to suffer, or to take up arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them. But all that was over now. He was resolved. Mr. Meggs's point, the main plank, as it were, in his suicidal platform, was that with him it was beside the question whether or not it was nobler to suffer in the mind. The mind hardly entered into it at all. What he had to decide was whether it was worthwhile putting up any longer with the perfectly infernal pain in his stomach.

For Mr. Meggs was a martyr to indigestion. As he was also devoted to the pleasures of the table, life had become for him one long battle, in which, whatever happened, he always got the worst of it. He was sick of it. He looked back down the vista of the years, and found therein no hope for the future. One after the other, all the patent medicines in creation had failed him. Smith's supreme digestive pellets. He had given them a more than fair trial. Blenkinsop's liquid life-giver. He had drunk enough of it to float a ship. Perkins's premier pain-preventer, strongly recommended by the sword-swallowing lady at Barnum and Bailey's. He had wallowed in it. And so on down the list. His interior organism had simply sneered at the lot of them.

Death, where is thy sting? thought Mr. Meggs, and forthwith began to make his preparations. Those who have studied the matter say that the tendency to commit suicide is greatest among those who have passed their fifty-fifth year, And that rate is twice as great for unoccupied males as for occupied males. Unhappy Mr. Meggs, accordingly, got it, so to speak, with both barrels. He was fifty-six, and he was perhaps the most unoccupied adult to be found in the length and breadth of the United Kingdom. He toiled not, neither did he spin. Twenty years before, an unexpected legacy had placed him in a position to indulge a natural taste for idleness to the utmost. He was at that time, as regards his professional life, a clerk in a rather obscure shipping firm.

Out of office hours, he had a mild fondness for letters, which took the form of meaning to read right through the hundred best books one day, but actually contenting himself with a daily paper and an occasional magazine. Such was Mr. Meggs, at thirty-six. The necessity for working for a living, and a salary too small to permit of self-indulgence among the more expensive and deleterious dishes on the bill of fare, had up to that time kept his digestion within reasonable bounds. Sometimes he had twinges, More often he had none. Then came the legacy, and with it Mr. Meigs let himself go. He left London, and retired to his native village, where, with a French cook and a series of secretaries, to whom he dictated at long intervals occasional paragraphs of a book on British butterflies, on which he imagined himself to be at work, he passed the next twenty years.

He could afford to do himself well, and he did himself extremely well. Nobody urged him to take exercise, so he took no exercise. Nobody warned him of the perils of lobster and Welsh rabbits to a man of sedentary habits, for it was nobody's business to warn him. On the contrary, people rather encouraged the lobster side of his character For he was a hospitable soul, and liked to have his friends dine with him. The result was that nature, as is her wont, laid for him and got him. It seemed to Mr. Meggs that he woke one morning to find himself a chronic dyspeptic. That was one of the hardships of his position, to his mind. The thing seemed to hit him suddenly out of a blue sky. One moment, All appeared to be peace and joy.

The next, a lively and irritable wildcat with red-hot claws, seemed somehow to have introduced itself into his interior. So Mr. Meigs decided to end it. In this crisis of his life, the old methodical habits of his youth returned to him. A man cannot be a clerk in even an obscure firm of shippers for a great length of time without acquiring system. And Mr. Meggs made his preparations calmly and with a forethought worthy of a better cause. And so we find him, one glorious June morning, seated at his desk, ready for the end. Outside, the sun beat down upon the orderly streets of the village. Dogs dozed in the warm dust. Men who had to work went about their toil moistly, their minds far away in shady public-houses.

But Mr. Meggs, in his study, was cool both in mind and body. Before him, on the desk, lay six little slips of paper. They were bank-notes, and they represented, with the exception of a few pounds, his entire worldly wealth. Beside them were six letters, six envelopes, and six postage stamps. Mr. Meggs surveyed them calmly.

He would not have admitted it, but he had had a lot of fun writing those letters. The deliberation as to who should be his heirs had occupied him pleasantly for several days, and indeed had taken his mind off his internal pains at times so thoroughly that he had frequently surprised himself in an almost cheerful mood. Yes, he would have denied it, but it had been great sport sitting in his armchair, thinking whom he should pick out from England's teeming millions to make happy with his money. All sorts of schemes had passed through his mind. He had a sense of power which the mere possession of the money had never given him. He began to understand why millionaires make freak wills. At one time he had toyed with the idea of selecting someone at random from the London directory, and bestowing on him all he had to bequeath.

He had only abandoned the scheme when it occurred to him that he himself would not be in a position to witness the recipient's stunned delight. And what was the good of starting a thing like that if you were not to be in it at the finish? Sentiment succeeded whimsicality. His old friends of the office—those were the men to benefit. What good fellows they had been! Some were dead, but he still kept intermittently in touch with half a dozen of them, and—an important point—he knew their present addresses. This point was important, because Mr. Meigs had decided not to leave a will, But to send the money direct to the beneficiaries. He knew what wills were. Even in quite straightforward circumstances, they often made trouble.

There had been some slight complication about his own legacy twenty years ago. Somebody had contested the will, and before the thing was satisfactorily settled, the lawyers had got away with about twenty per cent of the whole. No, no wills. If he made one, and then killed himself, it might be upset on a plea of insanity. He knew of no relative who might consider himself entitled to the money, but there was the chance that some remote cousin existed, and then the comrades of his youth might fail to collect after all. He declined to run the risk. Quietly, and by degrees, he had sold out the stocks and shares in which his fortune was invested, and deposited the money in his London bank. Six piles of large notes, dividing the total into six equal parts.

Six letters, couched in a strain of reminiscent pathos and manly resignation. Six envelopes, legibly addressed. Six postage stamps, And that part of his preparations was complete. He licked the stamps and placed them on the envelopes, took the notes and inserted them in the letters, folded the letters and thrust them into the envelopes, sealed the envelopes, and, unlocking the drawer of his desk, produced a small, black, ugly-looking bottle. He opened the bottle and poured the contents into a medicine glass. It had not been without considerable thought that Mr. Meigs had decided upon the method of his suicide. The knife, the pistol, the rope—they all presented their charms to him. He had further examined the merits of drowning, and of leaping to destruction from a height.

There were flaws in each. Either they were painful, or else they were messy. Mr. Meggs had a tidy soul, and he revolted from the thought of spoiling his figure, as he would most certainly do if he drowned himself, or the carpet, as he would if he used the pistol, or the pavement, and possibly some innocent pedestrian, as must infallibly occur should he leap off the monument. The knife was out of the question. Instinct told him that it would hurt like the very Dickens. No, poison was the thing. Easy to take, quick to work, and on the whole rather agreeable than otherwise. Mr. Meggs hid the glass behind the inkpot and rang the bell. "'Has Miss Pillinger arrived?' he inquired of the servant. "'She has just come, sir.

Tell her that I am waiting for her here.' Jane Pillinger was an institution. Her official position was that of private secretary and typist to Mr. Meggs. That is to say, on the rare occasions when Mr. Meggs's conscience overcame his indolence to the extent of forcing him to resume work on his British butterflies, it was to Miss Pillinger that he addressed the few rambling and incoherent remarks which constituted his idea of a regular, hard, slogging spell of literary composition. When he sank back in his chair, speechless and exhausted, like a marathon runner who has started his sprint a mile or two too soon, it was Miss Pillinger's task to unscramble her shorthand notes Type them neatly, and place them in their special drawer in the desk.

Miss Pillinger was a wary spinster of austere views, uncertain age, and a deep-rooted suspicion of men. A suspicion which, to do an abused sex justice, they had done nothing to foster. Men had always been almost coldly correct in their dealings with Miss Pillinger. In her twenty years of experience as a typist and secretary, she had never had to refuse with scorn and indignation so much as a box of chocolates from any of her employers. Nevertheless, she continued to be icily on her guard. The clenched fist of her dignity was always drawn back, ready to swing on the first male who dared to step beyond the bounds of professional civility. Such was Miss Pillinger. She was the last of a long line of unprotected English girlhood which had been compelled by straitened circumstances to listen for hire to the appallingly dreary nonsense which Mr.

Meigs had to impart on the subject of British butterflies. Girls had come, and girls had gone. Blondes, ex-blondes, brunettes, ex-brunettes, Near Blondes, near Brunettes. They had come, buoyant, full of hope and life, tempted by the lavish salary which Mr. Meigs had found himself after a while compelled to pay, and they dropped off, one after another, like exhausted bivalves, unable to endure the crushing boredom of life in the village which had given Mr. Meigs to the world. For Mr. Megg's home town was no city of pleasure. Remove the vicar's magic lantern and the try-your-weight machine opposite the post office, and you practically eliminated the temptations to tread the primrose path. The only young men in the place were silent, gaping youths, at whom lunacy commissioners looked sharply and suspiciously when they met.

The tango was unknown, and the one step. The only form of dance extant, and that only at the rarest intervals, was a sort of polka, not unlike the movements of a slightly inebriated boxing kangaroo. Mr. Meggs's secretary's antipis gave the town one startled, horrified glance, and stampeded for London like frightened ponies. Not so, Miss Pillinger. She remained. She was a businesswoman. and it was enough for her that she received a good salary. For five pounds a week, she would have undertaken a post as secretary and typist to a polar expedition. For six years she had been with Mr. Meggs, and doubtless she looked forward to being with him at least six years more. Perhaps it was the pathos of his thought which touched Mr.

Meggs, as she sailed, notebook in hand, through the doorway of his study. Here, he told himself, was a confiding girl, all unconscious of impending doom, relying on him as a daughter relies on her father. He was glad he had not forgotten Miss Pillinger when he was making his preparations. He had certainly not forgotten Miss Pillinger. On the desk beside the letters lay a little pile of notes, amounting in all to five hundred pounds. Her legacy. Miss Pillinger was always businesslike. She sat down in her chair, opened her notebook, moistened her pencil, and waited expectantly for Mr. Meigs to clear his throat and begin work on the butterflies. She was surprised when, instead of frowning, as was his invariable practice when bracing himself for composition, he bestowed upon her a sweet, slow smile.

All that was maidenly and defensive in Miss Pillinger leaped to arms under that smile. It ran in and out among her nerve centers. It had been long in arriving, this moment of crisis, but here it undoubtedly was at last. After twenty years, an employer was going to court disaster by trying to flirt with her. Mr. Meigs went on smiling. You cannot classify smiles. Nothing lends itself so much to a variety of interpretations as a smile. Mr. Meggs thought he was smiling the sad, tender smile of a man who, knowing himself to be on the brink of the tomb, bids farewell to a faithful employee. Miss Pillinger's view was that he was smiling like an abandoned old rep who ought to have been ashamed of himself.

"'No, Miss Pillinger,' said Mr. Meggs, "'I shall not work this morning. I shall want you, if you will be so good, to post these six letters for me.' Miss Pillinger took the letters. Mr. Meggs surveyed her tenderly. "'Miss Pillinger, you have been with me a long time now. Six years, is it not? Six years. Well, well.' I don't think I have ever made you a little present, have I?" "'You give me a good salary.' "'Yes. But I want to give you something more. Six years is a long time. I have come to regard you with a different feeling from that which the ordinary employer feels for his secretary. You and I have worked together for six long years.' Surely I may be permitted to give you some token of my appreciation of your fidelity."

He took the pile of notes. "'These are for you, Miss Pillinger.' He rose and handed them to her. He eyed her for a moment with all the sentimentality of a man whose digestion has been out of order for over two decades. The pathos of the situation swept him away. He bent over Miss Pillinger, and kissed her on the forehead. Smiles excepted, there is nothing so hard to classify as a kiss. Mr. Meggs's notion was that he kissed Miss Pillinger much as some great general, wounded unto death, might have kissed his mother, his sister, or some particularly sympathetic aunt. Miss Pillinger's view, Differing substantially from this, may be outlined in her own words.

"'Ah!' she cried as, dealing Mr. Meggs's conveniently placed jaw a blow, which had it landed an inch lower down, might have knocked him out, she sprang to her feet. "'How dare you! I've been waiting for this, Mr. Meggs. I have seen it in your eye.' I have expected it. Let me tell you that I am not at all the sort of girl with whom it is safe to behave like that. I can protect myself. I am only a working girl." Mr. Meigs, who had fallen back against the desk as a stricken pugilist falls on the ropes, pulled himself together to protest. "'Miss Billinger!' He cried, aghast. You misunderstand me. I had no intention. Misunderstand you? Bah! I am only a working girl. Nothing was farther from my mind.

Indeed, nothing was farther from your mind. You give me money, you shower your vile kisses on me, but nothing was farther from your mind. than the obvious interpretation of such behaviour. Before coming to Mr. Meggs, Miss Pillinger had been secretary to an Indiana novelist. She had learned style from the master. "'Now that you have gone too far, you are frightened at what you have done. You well may be, Mr. Meggs. I am only a working girl.' "'Miss Pillinger, I implore you—' Silence! "'I am only a working girl.' A wave of mad fury swept over Mr. Meggs. The shock of the blow, and still more of the frightful ingratitude of this horrible woman, nearly made him foam at the mouth. "'Don't go on saying you're only a working girl,' he bellowed.

"'You'll drive me mad. Go. Go away from me. Get out.' Go anywhere, but leave me alone." Miss Pillinger was not entirely sorry to obey the request. Mr. Meggs's sudden fury had startled and frightened her. So long as she could end the scene victorious, she was anxious to withdraw. "'Yes, I will go,' she said with dignity as she opened the door. Now that you have revealed yourself in your true colours, Mr. Meggs, this house is no fit place for a wort—she caught her employer's eye, and vanished hastily. Mr. Meggs paced the room in a ferment. He had been shaken to his core by the scene. He boiled with indignation. That his kind thought should have been so misinterpreted, it was too much. Of all ungrateful worlds, this world was the most.

He stopped suddenly in his stride, partly because his shin had struck a chair, partly because an idea had struck his mind. Hopping madly, he added one more parallel between himself and Hamlet, by soliloquizing aloud. "'I'll be hanged if I commit suicide,' he yelled. And as he spoke the words, a curious peace fell on him, as on a man who was awakened from a nightmare. He sat down at the desk. What an idiot he had been ever to contemplate self-destruction! What could have induced him to do it? By his own hand to remove himself, Merely in order that a pack of ungrateful brutes might wallow in his money, it was the scheme of a perfect fool. He wouldn't commit suicide, not if he knew it. He would stick on and laugh at them.

And if he did have an occasional pain inside, what of that? Napoleon had them, and look at him. He would be blowed if he committed suicide. With the fire of a new resolve lighting up his eyes, he turned to seize the six letters and rifle them of their contents. They were gone. It took Mr. Meigs perhaps thirty seconds to recollect where they had gone to, and then it all came back to him. He had given them to the demon pillager, and if he did not overtake her and get them back, she would mail them. Of all the mixed thoughts which seethed in Mr. Meggs's mind at that moment, easily the most prominent was the reflection that from his front door to the post office was a walk of less than five minutes.

Miss Pillinger walked down the sleepy street in the June sunshine, boiling, as Mr. Meggs had done, with indignation. She, too, had been shaken to the core. It was her intention to fulfill her duty by posting the letters which had been entrusted to her, and then to quit forever the service of one who, for six years, a model employer, had at last forgotten himself and showed his true nature. Her meditations were interrupted by a hoarse shout in her rear, and, turning, she perceived the model employer running rapidly towards her, His face was scarlet, his eyes were wild, and he wore no hat. Miss Spillinger's mind worked swiftly. She took in the situation in a flash. Unrequited guilty love had sapped Mr.

Meggs's reason, and she was to be the victim of his fury. She had read of scores of similar cases in the newspapers. How little she had ever imagined that she would be the heroine of one of these dramas of passion. She looked for one brief instant up and down the street. Nobody was in sight. With a loud cry, she began to run. Stop! It was the fierce voice of her pursuer. Miss Pillinger increased to third speed. As she did so, she had a vision of headlines. Stop! roared Mr. Meggs.

Unrequited passion made this man murderer, thought Miss Pillinger. Stop! Crazed with love, he slays beautiful blonde, flashed out in letters of crimson on the back of Miss Pillinger's mind. Stop! Spurned, he stabs her thrice. To touch the ground at intervals of twenty yards or so, that was the ideal she strove for. She addressed herself to it with all the strength of her powerful mind. In London, New York, Paris, and other cities where life is brisk, the spectacle of a hatless gentleman with a purple face pursuing his secretary through the streets at a rapid gallop would, of course, have excited little, if any, remark. But in Mr. Meggs's home town, events were of rarer occurrence. The last milestone in the history of his native place had been the visit, two years before, of Bingley Stupendous Circus, which had paraded along the main street on its way to the next town, while zealous members of its staff visited the back premises of the houses and removed all the washing from the lines.

Since then, deep peace had reigned. Gradually, therefore, as the chaise warmed up, citizens of all shapes and sizes began to assemble. Miss Pillinger's screams, and the general appearance of Mr. Meggs gave food for thought. Having brooded over the situation, they decided at length to take a hand, with the result that, as Mr. Meggs's grasp fell upon Miss Pillinger, the grasp of several of his fellow-townsmen fell upon him. Save me," said Miss Pillinger. Mr. Meggs pointed speechlessly to the letters, which she still grasped in her right hand. He had taken practically no exercise for twenty years, and the pace had told upon him. Constable Gooch, guardian of the town's welfare, tightened his hold on Mr.

Meggs's arm and desired explanations. He was going to murder me," said Miss Pillinger. "'Kill him,' advised an austere bystander. "'What do you mean you are going to murder the lady?' inquired Constable Gooch. Mr. Meigs found speech. "'I—I—I—I only wanted those letters.' "'What for?' "'They're mine.' "'You charge her with stealing em?' "'He gave them me to post with his own hands,' cried Miss Pillinger. "'I know I did, but I want them back.' By this time the constable, though age had to some extent dimmed his sight, had recognised, beneath the perspiration, features which, though they were distorted, were nevertheless those of one whom he respected as a leading citizen. "'Why, Mr. Meigs,' he said.

This identification by one in authority calmed, if it a little disappointed, the crowd. What it was they did not know. But it was apparently not a murder, and they began to drift off. "'Why don't you give Mr. Meigs his letters when he asks you, ma'am?' said the constable. Miss Pillinger drew herself up haughtily. Here are your letters, Mr. Meggs. I hope we shall never meet again. Mr. Meggs nodded. That was his view, too.

All things work together for good. The following morning Mr. Meggs awoke from a dreamless sleep with a feeling that some curious change had taken place in him. He was abominably stiff, and to move his limbs was pain, but down in the centre of his being there was a novel sensation of lightness. He could have declared that he was happy. Wincing, he dragged himself out of bed and limped to the window. He threw it open. It was a perfect morning. A cool breeze smote his face, bringing with it Pleasant scents and the soothing sound of God's creatures beginning a new day. An astounding thought struck him. "'Why, I feel... well!' Then another. "'It must have been the exercise I took yesterday. By George, I'll do it regularly.' He drank in the air luxuriously.

Inside him, the wildcat gave him a sudden claw. But it was a half-hearted effort, the effort of one who knows that he is beaten. Mr. Meggs was so absorbed in his thoughts that he did not even notice it. London, he was saying to himself, one of these physical culture places. Comparatively young men, put myself in their hands. Mild regular exercise. He limped to the bathroom.

End of A Sea of Troubles by P. G. Woothouse.

9 Settling on the Land 16:43

Settling on the Land.

Settling on the Land by Henry Lawson The worst bore in Australia just now is the man who raves about getting the people on the land, and buttonholes you in the street with a little scheme of his own. He generally does not know what he is talking about. There is in Sydney a man named Tom Hopkins who settled on the land once, and sometimes you can get him to talk about it. He did very well at his trade in the city years ago, until he began to think that he could do better up-country. Then he arranged with his sweetheart to be true to him and wait whilst he went west and made a home. She drops out of the story at this point. He selected on a run at Dry Hole Creek, and for months awaited the arrival of the government surveyors to fix his boundaries, but they didn't come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and started farming operations.

Does the reader know what grubbing means? Tom does. He found the biggest, ugliest, And most useless trees on his particular piece of ground, also the greatest number of adamantine stumps. He started without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice from men who knew less about farming than he did. He found a soft place between two roots on one side of the first tree, made a narrow, irregular hole. and burrowed down till he reached a level where the taproot was somewhat less than four feet in diameter, and not quite as hard as flicked. Then he found he hadn't room to swing the axe. So he heaved out another ton or two of earth, and rested. Next day he sunk a shaft on the other side of the gun, and after tea, over a pipe, it struck him.

that it would be a good idea to burn the tree out, and so use up the logs and light a rubbish lying round. So he widened the excavation, rolled in some logs, and set fire to them, with no better result than to scorch the roots. Tom persevered. He put the trace harness on his horse, drew in all the logs within half a mile, and piled them on the windward side of that gun, and during the night the fire found a soft place, and the tree burnt off about six feet above the surface, falling on a squatter's boundary fence, and leaving the ugliest kind of stump to occupy the selector's attention, which it did, for a week. He waited till the hole cooled, And then he went to work with pick, shovel, and axe.

And even now he gets interested in drawings of machinery, such as are published in the Agricultural Weeklies, for getting out stumps without graft. He thought he would be able to get some posts and rails out of that tree, but found reason to think that a cast-iron column would split sooner and straighter. He traced some of the surface routes to the other side of the selection, and broke most of his trace chains trying to get them out by horse power, for they had other routes going down from underneath. He cleared a patch in the course of time, and for several seasons he broke more plowshares than he could pay for. Meanwhile the squatter was not idle. Tom's tent was robbed several times, and his hunt burnt down twice.

Then he was charged with killing some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his own use, but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion between the squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics and religion. Tom ploughed and sowed wheat. But nothing came up to speak of. The ground was too poor. So he carted stable manure six miles from the nearest town, manured the land, sowed another crop, and prayed for rain. It came. It raised a flood which washed the crop clean off the selection, together with several acres of manure, and a considerable portion of the original surface soil, and the water brought down enough sand to make a beach, and spread it over the field to a depth of six inches.

The flood also took half a mile of fencing from along the creek bank, and landed it in a bend three miles down, on a dummy selection, where it was confiscated. Tom didn't give up. He was energetic. He cleared another piece of ground on the siding, and sowed more wheat. It had the rust in it, or the smut, and averaged three shillings per bushel. Then he sowed lucerne and oats, and bought a few cows. He had an idea of starting a dairy. First, the cow's eyes got bad, and he sought the advice of a German cocky. and acted upon it. He blew powdered alum through paper tubes into the bad eyes, and got some of it snorted and butted back into his own. He cured the cow's eyes, and got the sandy blight in his own, and for a week or so he couldn't tell one end of a cow from the other, but sat in a dark corner of the hut and groaned, and soaked his glued eyelashes in warm water.

Germany stuck to him and nursed him, and saw him through. Then the milkers got bad udders, and Tom took his life in his hands whenever he milked them. He got them all right presently, and butter fell to fourpence a pound. He and the aforesaid cocky made arrangements to send their butter to a better market. And then the cows contracted a disease which was known in those parts as pleuropramonia, but generally referred to as the pleura. Again Tom sought advice, acting upon which he slipped the cows' ears, cut their tails half off to bleed them, and poured pints of pain-killer into them through their nostrils. But they wouldn't make an effort. Except, perhaps, to rise and poke the selector when he tried to tempt their appetites with slices of immature pumpkin.

They died peacefully and persistently, until all were gone save a certain dangerous, barren, slab-sided, loony bovine with white eyes and much agility in jumping fences, who was known locally as Queen Elizabeth. Tom shot Queen Elizabeth and turned his attention to agriculture again. Then his plough horses took bad with something the Teuton called de Strangels. He submitted them to a course of treatment in accordance with Jacob's advice, and they died. Even then Tom didn't give in. There was grit in that man. He borrowed a broken-down dray horse in return for its keep, coupled it with his own old riding-hack, and started to finish ploughing. The team wasn't a success. Whenever the draught horse's knees gave way and he stumbled forward, he jerked the lighter horse back into the plough, and something would break.

Then Tom would blaspheme till he was refreshed. Mend up things with wire and bits of clothesline. Fill his pockets with stones to throw at the team, and start again. Finally, he hired a dummy's child to drive the horses. The brat did his best. He tugged at the head of the team, prodded it behind, heaved rocks at it, cut a sapling, got up his enthusiasm, and wildly whacked the light horse whenever the others showed signs of moving, but he never succeeded in starting both horses at one and the same time. Moreover, the youth was cheeky, and the selector's temper had been soured. He cursed the boy along with the horses, the plough, the selection, the squatter, and Australia. Yes, he cursed Australia.

The boy cursed back, was chastised, and immediately went home and brought his father. Then the dummy's dog tackled the selector's dog, and this precipitated things. The dummy would have gone under had his wife not arrived on the scene with the eldest son and the rest of the family. They all fell foul of Tom. The woman was the worst. The selector's dog Chawed the other, and came to his master's rescue just in time, or Tom Hopkins would never have lived to become their inmate of a lunatic asylum. Next year there happened to be good grass on Tom's selection, and nowhere else, and he thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to get a few poor sheep and fatten them up for market. Sheep were selling for about seven and sixpence a dozen at that time.

Tom got a hundred or two, but the squatter had a man stationed at one side of the selection with dogs. To set on the sheep directly, they put their noses through the fence. Tom's was not a sheep fence. The dogs chased the sheep across the selection and into the run again on the other side. where another man waited ready to pound them. Tom's dog did his best, but he fell sick while chewing up the fourth capitalistic conine, and subsequently died. The dummies had robbed that cur with poison before starting it across. That was the only way they could get at Tom's dog. Tom thought the two might play at the game, and he tried, But his nephew, who happened to be up from the city on a visit, was arrested at the instigation of the squatter for alleged sheep-stealing, and sentenced to two years, hard, during which time the selector himself got six months for assaulting the squatter with intent to do him grievous bodily harm, which, indeed, he more than attempted.

If a broken nose, a fractured jaw, and the loss of most of the squatter's teeth amounted to anything. The squatter by this time had made peace with the other local justice, and had become his father-in-law. When Tom came out there was little left for him to live for, but he took a job of fencing, got a few pounds together, and prepared to settle on the land some more. He got a missus and a few cows during the next year. The missus robbed him and ran away with the dummy, and the cows died in the drought or were impounded by the squatter while on their way to water. Then Tom rented an orchard up the creek, and a hailstorm destroyed all the fruit. Germany happened to be represented at the time. Jacob having sought shelter at Tom's, but on his way home from town, Tom stood leaning against the door-post, with the hail beating on him through it all.

His eyes were very bright and very dry, and every breath was a choking sob. Jacob let him stand there, and sat inside with a dreamy expression on his hard face. Thinking of childhood and fatherland, perhaps. When it was over, he led Tom to a stool and said, "'You waits there, Tom. I must go home for some dings. You sits there still and waits twenty minutes.' Then he got on his horse and rode off muttering to himself, "'Dot man must cry. Dot man must cry.' He was back inside of twenty minutes. Tom was with a bottle of wine and a cornet under his overcoat. He poured the wine into two pint pots, made Tom drink, drank himself, and then took his cornet, stood up at the door, and played a German march into the rain after the retreating storm.

The hail had passed over his vineyard, and he was a ruined man too. Tom did cry, and was all right. He was a bit disheartened, but he did another job of fencing, and was just beginning to think about putting in a few vines and fruit trees when the government surveyors, whom he'd forgotten all about, had a resurrection and came and surveyed, and found that the real selection was located amongst some barren ridges across the creek. Tom reckoned it was lucky he didn't plant the orchard, and he set about shifting his home and fences to the new site. But the squatter interfered at this point, entered into possession of the farm and all on it, and took action against the selector for trespass, laying the damages at twenty-five pounds.

Tom was admitted to the Lunatic Asylum at Parramatta next year, and the squatter was sent there the following summer, having been ruined by the drought, the rabbits, the banks, and a wool ring. The two became very friendly, and had many a sociable argument about the feasibility, or otherwise, of blowing open the floodgates of heaven in a dry season with dynamite. Tom was discharged a few years since. He knocks about certain suburbs a great deal. He is seen in daylight seldom, and at night mostly in connection with a dray and a lantern. He says his one great regret is that he wasn't found to be of unsound mind before he went up country.

End of Settling on the Land by Henry Lawson.

10 The Sorrows of a Summer Guest 22:55

The Sorrows of a Summer Guest, from Frenzied Fiction, by Stephen Leacock.

Let me admit, as I start to write, that the whole thing is my own fault. I should never have come. I knew better. I have known better for years. I have known that it is sheer madness to go and pay visits in other people's houses. Yet, in a moment of insanity, I have let myself in for it, and here I am. There is no hope, no outlet now, till the first of September, when my visit is to terminate. Either that or death. I do not greatly care which. I write this, where no human eye can see me, down by the pond, they call it the lake, at the foot of Beverly Jones's estate. It is six o'clock in the morning. No one is up. For a brief hour or so there is peace, but presently Miss Larkspur, the jolly English girl who arrived last week, will throw open her casement window and call across the lawn, "'Hullo, everybody!

What a ripping morning!' And young Poppleson will call back in a Swiss yodel from somewhere in the shrubbery, and Beverly Jones will appear on the piazza with big towels round his neck and shout, "'Who's coming for an early dip?' And so the day's fun and jollity, Heaven help me, will begin again." Presently they will all come trooping in to breakfast, in coloured blazers and fancy blouses, laughing and grabbing at the food with mimic rudeness and bursts of hilarity. And to think that I might have been breakfasting at my club with the morning paper propped against the coffee-pot in a silent room in the quiet of the city. I repeat that it is my own fault that I am here. For many years it had been a principle of my life to visit nobody.

I had long since learned that visiting only brings misery. If I got a card or telegram that said, Won't you run up to the Adirondacks and spend the weekend with us? I sent back word, No, not unless the Adirondacks can run faster than I can. Or words to that effect. If the owner of a country house wrote to me, Our man will meet you with a trap any afternoon that you care to name, I answered, in spirit at least, No, he won't, not unless he has a bear-trap, or one of those traps in which they catch wild antelope. If any fashionable lady friend wrote to me in the peculiar jargon that they use, Can you give us from July the twelfth at half after three till the fourteenth at four? I replied, Madam, take the whole month, take a year, but leave me in peace.

Such, at least, was the spirit of my answers to invitations. In practice, I used to find it sufficient to send a telegram that read, crushed with work impossible to get away, and then stroll back into the reading-room of the club and fall asleep again. But my coming here was my own fault. It resulted from one of those unhappy moments of expansiveness such as occur, I imagine, to everybody. Moments when one appears to be something quite different from what one really is. When one feels oneself a thorough good fellow, sociable, merry, appreciative, and finds the people around one the same. Such moods are known to all of us. Some people say that it is the super-self asserting itself. Others say it is from drinking.

But let it pass. That, at any rate, was the kind of mood that I was in when I met Beverley Jones and when he asked me here.

It was in the afternoon, at the club. As I recall it, we were drinking cocktails, and I was thinking what a bright, genial fellow Beverley Jones was, and how completely I had mistaken him. For myself, I admit it, I am a brighter, better man after drinking two cocktails than at any other time. Quicker, kindlier, more genial, and higher morally. I had been telling stories in that inimitable way that one has after two cocktails. In reality, I only know four stories, and a fifth that I don't quite remember, but in moments of expansiveness they feel like a fund or flow.

It was under such circumstances that I sat with Beverley Jones, and it was in shaking hands at leaving that he said, "'I do wish, old chap, that you could run up to our summer-place and give us the whole of August.' And I answered, as I shook him warmly by the hand, "'My dear fellow, I'd simply love to.' "'By, gad, then it's a go,' he said. "'You must come up for August and wake us all up.' Wake them up! Ye gods, me, wake them up! One hour later I was repenting of my folly, and wishing, when I thought of the two cocktails, that the prohibition wave could be hurried up so as to leave us all high and dry, bone-dry, silent and unsociable.

Then I clung to the hope that Beverly Jones would forget, but no. In due time his wife wrote to me. They were looking forward so much, she said to my visit. They felt, she repeated her husband's ominous phrase, that I should wake them all up. What sort of alarm clock did they take me for, anyway? Ah, well, they know better now. It was only yesterday afternoon that Beverly Jones found me standing here in the gloom of some cedar trees beside the edge of the pond, and took me back so quietly to the house That I realized he thought I meant to drown myself. So I did.

I could have stood it better—my coming here, I mean—if they hadn't come down to the station in a body to meet me, and one of those long vehicles with seats down the sides—silly-looking men in colored blazers and girls with no hats, all making a hullabaloo of welcome. "'We are quite a small party,' Mrs. Beverley-Jones had written. "'Small?' Great heavens! What would they call a large one? And even those at the station turned out to be only half of them. There were just as many more, all lined up on the piazza of the house as we drove up, all waving a full welcome with tennis-rackets and golf clubs. Small party, indeed. Why, after six days there are still some of the idiots whose names I haven't got straight.

That fool with the fluffy mustache, which is he? And that jackass that made the salad at the picnic yesterday? Is he the brother of the woman with the guitar, or who?

But what I mean is there is something in that sort of noisy welcome that puts me to the bad at the start. It always does. A group of strangers, all laughing together and with a set of catchwords and jokes all their own, always throws me into a fit of sadness deeper than words. I had thought, when Mrs. Beverley Jones said a small party she really meant small. I had had a mental picture of a few sad people greeting me very quietly and gently, and of myself, quiet too but cheerful, somehow lifting them up with no great effort by my mere presence. Somehow, from the very first, I could feel that Beverly Jones was disappointed in me. He said nothing, but I knew it. On that first afternoon, between my arrival and dinner, he took me about his place to show it to me.

I wish that at some proper time I had learned just what it is that you say when a man shows you about his place. I never knew before how deficient I am in it. I am all right to be shown an iron and steel plant, or a soda-water factory, or anything really wonderful, but being shown a house and grounds and trees, things that I have seen all my life, leaves me absolutely silent. These big gates! said Beverly Jones. We only put them up this year. Oh," I said, that was all. Why shouldn't they put them up this year? I didn't care if they had put them up this year or a thousand years ago. We had quite a struggle, he continued, before we finally decided on sandstone. You did, eh? I said. There seemed nothing more to say.

I didn't know what sort of struggle he meant. Or who fought who? And personally, sandstone or soapstone or any other stone is all the same to me. "'This lawn,' said Beverly Jones, "'we laid down the first year we were here.' I answered, "'Nothing.' He looked me right in the face as he said it, and I looked straight back at him, but I saw no reason to challenge his statement. "'The geraniums along the border,' he went on, "'are rather an experiment. They're Dutch.' I looked fixedly at the geraniums, but never said a word. They were Dutch. All right, why not? They were an experiment. Very good. Let them be so. I know nothing in particular to say about a Dutch experiment.

I could feel that Beverly Jones grew depressed as he showed me round. I was sorry for him, but unable to help. I realized that there were certain sections of my education that had been neglected. How to be shown things and make appropriate comments seems to be an art in itself. I don't possess it. It is not likely now, as I look at this pond, that I ever shall. Yet how simple a thing it seems when done by others! I saw the difference at once the very next day, the second day of my visit, when Beverly Jones took round young Poppleton, the man that I mentioned above, who will presently give a Swiss yodel from a clump of laurel bushes to indicate that the day's fun has begun. Poppleton I had known before, slightly.

I used to see him at the club. In club surroundings he always struck me as an ineffable young ass. Loud and talkative, and perpetually breaking the silence rules. Yet I have to admit that in his summer flannels, and with a straw hat on, he can do things that I can't. These big gates, began Beverly Jones, as he showed Poppleton round the place, with me trailing beside them. We only put up this year. Poppleton, who has a summer place of his own, looked at the gates very critically. "'Now, do you know what I'd have done with those gates if they were mine?' he said. "'No,' said Beverly Jones. "'I'd have set them two feet wider apart. "'They're too narrow, old chap, too narrow.' Poppleton shook his head sadly at the gates.

"'We had quite a struggle,' said Beverly Jones, "'before we finally decided on sandstone.' I realized that he had one and the same line of talk that he always used. I resented it. No wonder it was easy for him. "'Great mistake,' said Poppleton. "'Too soft. Look at this. Here he picked up a big stone and began pounding at the gate-post. See how easily it chips? Smashes right off. Look at that. The whole corner knocks right off. See?' Beverly Jones entered no protest. I began to see that there is a sort of understanding, a kind of freemasonry among men who have summer places. One shows his things, the other runs them down and smashes them. This makes the whole thing easy at once. Beverly Jones showed his lawn.

Your turf is all wrong, old boy, said Poppleton. Look, it has no body to it. See, I can kick holes in it with my heel. Look at that, and that. If I had on stronger boots, I could kick this lawn all to pieces. "'These geraniums along the border,' said Beverley Jones, "'are rather an experiment. They're Dutch.' "'But, my dear fellow,' said Poppleton, "'you've got them set in wrongly. They ought to slope from the sun, you know, never to it. Wait a bit.' Here he picked up a spade that was lying where a gardener had been working. I'll throw a few out. Notice how easily they come up. Ah, that fellow broke. They're apt to—there, I won't bother to reset them—but tell your man to slope them over from the sun.

That's the idea. Beverly Jones showed his new boathouse next, and Poppleton knocked a hole in the side with a hammer to show that the lumber was too thin. "'If that were my boathouse,' he said, "'I'd rip the outside clean off it and use shingle and stucco.' It was, I noticed, Poppleton's plan, first to imagine Beverly Jones's things his own, and then to smash them, and then give them back smashed to Beverly Jones. This seemed to please them both. Apparently, it is a well-understood method of entertaining a guest and being entertained. Beverly Jones and Poppleton, after an hour or so of it, were delighted with one another. Yet, somehow, when I tried it myself, it failed to work. "'Do you know what I would do with that cedar summer-house if it was mine?' I asked my host the next day.

"'No,' he said. "'I'd knock the thing down and burn it,' I answered. But I think I must have said it too fiercely. Beverly Jones looked hurt, and said nothing. "'Not that these people are not doing all they can for me. I know that. I admit it.' If I should meet my end here, and if, to put the thing straight out, my lifeless body is found floating on the surface of this pond, I should like there to be documentary evidence of that much. They are trying their best. "'This is Liberty Hall,' Mrs. Beverley-Jones said to me on the first day of my visit. "'We want you to feel that you are to do absolutely as you like.' "'Absolutely as I like. How little they know me.' I should like to have answered, Madam, I have now reached a time of life when human society at breakfast is impossible to me, when any conversation prior to eleven a.m.

must be considered out of the question, when I prefer to eat my meals in quiet, or with such mild hilarity as can be got from a comic paper. When I can no longer wear nankeen pants and colored blazer without a sense of personal indignity. When I can no longer leap and play in the water like a young fish. When I do not yodel, cannot sing, and, to my regret, dance even worse than I did when young. And when the mood of mirth and hilarity comes to me only as a rare visitant, shall we say, at a burlesque performance, and never as a daily part of my existence. Madam, I am unfit to be a summer guest. If this is Liberty Hall, indeed, let me—oh, let me go! Such is the speech that I would make, if it were possible.

As it is, I could only rehearse it to myself. Indeed, the more I analyze it, the more impossible it seems, for a man of my temperament at any rate, to be a summer guest. These people, and I imagine all other summer people, seem to be trying to live in a perpetual joke. Everything, all day, has to be taken in a mood of uproarious fun. However, I can speak of it all now, in quiet retrospect and without bitterness. It will soon be over now. Indeed, the reason why I have come down at this early hour to this quiet water is that things have reached a crisis. The situation has become extreme, and I must end it. It happened last night. Beverly Jones took me aside while the others were dancing the fox-trot to the Victrola on the piazza.

"'We're planning to have some rather good fun to-morrow night,' he said. "'Something that will be a good deal more in your line than a lot of it, I'm afraid, has been up here. In fact, my wife says that this will be the very thing for you.' "'Oh?' I said. "'We're going to get all the people from the other houses over, and the girls,' this term Beverly Jones uses to mean his wife and her friends, We're going to get up a sort of entertainment with charades and things, all impromptu, more or less, of course. Oh, I said. I saw already what was coming. And they want you to act as a sort of master of ceremonies, to make up the gags and introduce the different stunts and all that. I was telling the girls about that afternoon at the club when you were simply killing us all with those funny stories of yours, and they're all wild over it.

Wild? I repeated. Yes, quite wild over it. They say it will be the hit of the summer. Beverly Jones shook hands with great warmth as we parted for the night. I knew that he was thinking that my character was about to be triumphantly vindicated, and that he was glad for my sake. Last night I did not sleep. I remained awake all night, thinking of the entertainment. In my whole life I have done nothing in public except once, when I presented a walking-stick to the vice-president of our club on the occasion of his taking a trip to Europe. Even for that, I used to rehearse to myself far into the night sentences that began, This walking-stick, gentlemen, means far more than a mere walking-stick. And now they expect me to come out as a merry master of ceremonies before an assembled crowd of summer guests.

But never mind. It is nearly over now. I have come down to this quiet water in the early morning to throw myself in. They will find me floating here among the lilies. Some few will understand. I can see it written, as it will be in the newspapers. What makes the sad fatality doubly poignant is that the unhappy victim had just entered upon a holiday visit that was to have been prolonged throughout the whole month. Needless to say, he was regarded as the life and soul of the pleasant party of holiday-makers that had gathered at the delightful country home of Mr. and Mrs. Beverley Jones. Indeed, on the very day of the tragedy, he was to have taken a leading part in staging a merry performance of charades and parlour entertainments, a thing for which his genial talents and overflowing high spirits rendered him specially fit.

When they read that, those who know me best will understand how and why I died. He had still over three weeks to stay there, they will say. He was to act as the stage manager of charades. They will shake their heads. They will understand. But what is this? I raise my eyes from the paper, and I see Beverly Jones hurriedly approaching from the house. He is hastily dressed, with flannel trousers and a dressing-gown. His face looks grave. Something has happened. Thank God something has happened. Some accident. Some tragedy. Something to prevent the charades. I write these few lines on a fast train that is carrying me back to New York, a cool, comfortable train, with a deserted club car where I can sit in a leather armchair with my feet up on another, smoking, silent, and at peace.

Villages, farms, and summer places are flying by. Let them fly. I, too, am flying, back to the rest and quiet of the city. Old man. Beverly Jones said, as he laid his hand on mine very kindly. He is a decent fellow, after all, is Jones. They're calling you by long distance from New York. What is it? I asked, or tried to gasp. It's bad news, old chap. Fire in your office last evening. "'I'm afraid a lot of your private papers were burned. Robinson—that's your senior clerk, isn't it?—seems to have been on the spot, trying to save things. He's badly singed about the face and hands. I'm afraid you must go at once.' "'Yes, yes,' I said, at once. "'I know. I've told the man to get the trap ready right away.

You've just time to catch the 7-10. Come along.' "'Right,' I said. I kept my face as well as I could, trying to hide my exultation. The office burnt! Fine! Robinson singed! Glorious! I hurriedly packed my things and whispered to Beverly Jones farewell messages for the sleeping household. I never felt so jolly and facetious in my life. I could feel that Beverly Jones was admiring the spirit and pluck with which I took my misfortune. Later on he would tell them all about it. The trap Ready. Hurrah! Good-bye, old man. Hurrah! All right, I'll telegraph. Right you are. Good-bye. Hip, hip, hurrah. Here we are. Train right on time. Just these two bags, porter, and there's a dollar for you. What merry, merry fellows these darky porters are anyway.

And so, here I am in the train, safe bound for home in the summer quiet of my club. Well done for Robinson. I was afraid that it had missed fire, or that my message to him had gone wrong. It was on the second day of my visit that I sent word to him to invent an accident—something, anything to call me back. I thought the message had failed. I had lost hope. But it is all right now, though he certainly pitched the note pretty high. Of course, I can't let the Beverly Joneses know that it was a put-up job. I must set fire to the office as soon as I get back. But it's worth it, and I'll have to singe Robinson about the face and hands, but it's worth that, too.

11 Wanted--A Cook 42:01

Wanted, a cook by Alan Dale. There was a ring at the front doorbell. Letitia, wrought up, nervously clutched my arm. For a moment a sort of paralysis seized me. Then, alertly as a young calf, I bounded toward the door, hope aroused, and expectation keen. It was rather dark in the outside hall, and I could not quite perceive the nature of our visitor, but I soon gladly realized that it was something feminine, and as I held a door open, a thin, small, soiled wisp of a woman glided in and smiled at me. Talar ni svensk? she asked, but I had no idea what she meant. She may have been impertinent, or even rude, or perhaps improper, but she looked as though she might be a domestic, and I led her gently, reverently, to Letitia in the drawing-room.

I smiled back at her, in a wild endeavor to be sympathetic. I would have anointed her, or bathed her feet, or plied her with figs and dates, or have done anything that any nationality craves as a welcome. As the front door closed, I heaved a sigh of relief. Here was probably the quintessence of five advertisements. Out of the mountain crept a mouse, and quite a little mouse, too. Tala ni svensk? Proved to be nothing more outrageous than do you speak Swedish. My astute little wife discovered this intuitively. I left them together, my mental excuse being that women understand each other, and that a man is unnecessary under the circumstances. I had some misgivings on the subject of Letitia and Svensk, but the universal language of femininity is not without its uses.

I devoutly hoped that Letitia would be able to come to terms, as the mere idea of a cook who couldn't excoriate us in English was, at that moment, delightful. At the end of a quarter of an hour, I strolled back to the drawing-room. Letitia was smiling, and the handmaiden sat grim and uninspired. "'I've engaged her, Archie,' said Letitia. "'She knows nothing, as she has told me, in the few words of English that she has picked up.' But you remember what Aunt Julia said about a clean slate? I gazed at the maiden, and reflected that while the term slate might be perfectly correct, the adjective seemed a bit over-enthusiastic. She was decidedly soiled, this quintessence of a quintet of advertisements.

I said nothing, anxious not to dampen Letitia's elation. She has no references," continued my wife, as she has never been out before. She is just a simple little stock-home girl. I like her face immensely, Archie, immensely. She is willing to begin at once, which shows that she is eager and consequently likely to suit us. Wait for me, Archie, while I take her to the kitchen. Come, Gerda. Exactly why Letitia couldn't say, Come, Gerda, seemed strange. She probably thought that calm must be Swedish, and that it sounded well. She certainly invented calm on the spur of the Scandinavian moment, and I learned afterward that it was correct. I inspired Letitia. Still, in spite of all, my opinion is that Come Goethe would have done just as well.

"'Isn't it delightful?' cried Letitia, when she joined me later. "'I am really enthusiastic at the idea of a Swedish girl. I adore Scandinavia, Archie. It always makes me think of Ibsen. Perhaps Gerda Lyberg—that's her name—will be as interesting as Hedda Gabler and Mrs. Alving and Nora and all those lovely, complex Ibsen creatures.' "'They were Norwegians, dear,' I said gently, anxious not to shatter illusions. "'The Ibsen play deals with Christiania, not with Stockholm.' "'But they are so near,' declared Letitia, amiable and seraphic once more. "'Somehow or other I invariably mix up Norway and Sweden and Denmark. I know I shall always look upon Gerda as an Ibsen girl who has come here to live her life, or work out her inheritance.' Perhaps, dear, she has some interesting internal disease, or a maggoty brain.

Don't you think, Archie, that the Ibsen inheritances are always most fascinating? A bit morbid, but surely fascinating. "'I prefer a healthy cook, Letitia,' I said meditatively. "'Somebody willing to interest herself in our inheritance rather than in her own.' "'I don't mind what you say now,' she pouted. "'I am not to be put down by clamour. We really have a cook at last, and I feel more lenient toward you, Archie. Of course, I was only joking when I suggested the Ibsen diseases. Gerda Lyberg may have inherited from her ancestors something quite nice and attractive.' "'Then you mustn't look upon her as Ibsen, Letitia,' I protested. "'The Ibsen people never inherit nice things. Their ancestors are Always bequeath nasty ones.

That is where their consistency comes in. They are receptacles for horrors. Personally, if you'll excuse my flippancy, I prefer Norwegian anchovies to Norwegian heroines. It is a mere matter of opinion. "'I'm ashamed of you,' retorted Letitia defiantly. "'You talk like some of the wretchedly frivolous criticisms, so called, that men like Acton Davies and Allen Dale inflict upon the long-suffering public. "'They never amuse me. Ibsen may make his heroines the recipients of ugly legacies, but he has never yet cursed them with the odious incubus known as a sense of humour.' The people with a sense of humor have something in their brains worse than maggots. We'll drop the subject, Archie. I'm going to learn Swedish.

Before Gerda Lyberg has been with us a month, I intend to be able to talk fluently. It will be most useful. Next time we go to Europe, we'll take in Sweden, and I'll do the piloting. I am going to buy some Swedish books and study. Won't it be jolly? And just think how melancholy we were this morning, you and I. Looking out of that window and trying to materialize cooks. Wasn't it funny, Archie? What amusing experiences we shall be able to chronicle later on.

Letitia babbled on like half a dozen brooks, and thinking up a gentle parody in the shape of, "'Cooks may come, and men may go,' I decided to leave my household gods for the bread-earning contest downtown. I could not feel quite as sanguine as Letitia, who seemed to have forgotten the dismal results of the advertisement. Just one little puny Swedish result. I should have preferred to make a choice. Letitia was as pleased with Gerda Lieberg as though she had been a selection instead of a that or nothing.

If somebody had dramatized Gerda Lieberg's initial dinner, it would probably have been considered exceedingly droll. As a serious episode, however, its humor, to my mind, lacked spontaneity. Letitia had asked her to cook us a little Swedish meal, so that we could get some idea of Stockholm life, in which, for some reason or other, we were supposed to be deeply interested. Unfortunately, I was extremely hungry, and had carefully avoided luncheon in order to give my appetite a chance. We sat down to a huge bowl of cold, greasy soup, in which enormous lumps of meat swam, as though for their life, awaiting rescue at the prongs of a fork. In addition to this epicurean dish was a teeming plate of water-soaked potatoes, delicately boiled.

That was all. Letitia said that it was Swedish, and the most annoying part of the entertainment was that I was alone in my critical disapprobation. Letitia was so engrossed with the little Swedish conversation book that she brought to table that she forgot the more material question of food, forgot everything but the horrible jargon she was studying, and the soiled, wisp-like maiden who looked more unlike a clean slate than ever. "'What shall I say to her, Archie?' asked Letitia, turning over the pages of her book, as I tried to rescue a block of meat from the cold fat in which it lurked. Here is a chapter on dinner. I am very hungry. Jog er michel hungrig. Rather pretty, isn't it? Hark at this.

Kyper gif mig mat sed eln och vin list ang. That means, waiter, give me the bill of fare and the list of wines. Don't, I cried, don't. This woman doesn't know what dining means. Look out a chapter on feeding. Letitia was perfectly unruffled. She paid no attention to me whatsoever. She was fascinated with the slovenly girl who stood around and gaped at her Swedish. Gerda, said Letitia, with her eyes on the book, gif mir apvins en apoc negra potater. And then, as Miss Lyburgh dived for the drowned potatoes, Letitia exclaimed in an ecstasy of joy, "'She understands, Archie. She understands. I feel I am going to be a great success. Jog takar, Gerda.' That means I thank you. Jog takar. See if you can say it, Archie.

Just try, dear, to oblige me. Jog takar. Now that's a good boy. Jog takar. "'I won't.' I declared spitefully. No jag-tackering for a parody like this. Letitia, you don't seem to realize that I'm hungry. Honestly, I prefer a delicatessen dinner to this.

Pray give me a piece of venison, read Letitia, absolutely disregarding my mood. Vergadok gif mig et stikey vilt. It is almost intelligible, isn't it, dear? Neat uric. You do not eat.

I can't, I asserted mournfully, anxious to gain Letitia's sympathy.

It was not forthcoming. Letitia's eyes were fastened on Gerda, and I could not help noting on the woman's face an expression of scorn. I felt certain of it. She appeared to regard my wife as a sort of irresponsible freak, and I was vexed to think that Letitia should make such an exhibition of herself and countenance the alleged meal that was set before us. "'I have really dined very well,' she continued joyously. "'Jog harvick lide jen at it, maik it brah.' "'If you are quite sure that she doesn't understand English, Letitia,' I said viciously, "'I'll say to you that this is a kind of joke I don't appreciate. I won't keep such a woman in the house. Let us put on our things and go out and have dinner.

Better late than never.' Letitia was turning over the pages of her book, quite lost to her surroundings. As I concluded my remarks, she looked up and exclaimed, How very funny, Archie. Just as you said, Better late than never, I came across that very phrase in the list of Swedish Proverbs. It must be telepathy, dear. Better late than never. Bat-ray sent ain'aldrig. What were you saying on the subject, dear? Will you repeat it? And do try it in Swedish. Say, Bat-ray sent ain'aldrig. Letitia, I shot forth in a fury. I am not in the humour for this sort of thing. I think this dinner and this woman are rotten. See if you can find the word rotten in Swedish. "'I am surprised at you,' Letitia declared glacially, roused from her book by my heroic, though unparliamentary language.

"'Your expressions are neither English nor Swedish. Please, don't use such gutter words before a servant. To say nothing of your own wife.' But she doesn't understand," I protested, glancing at Miss Lyberg. I could have sworn that I detected a gleam in the woman's eyes, and that the sphinx-like attitude of dull incomprehensibility suggested a strenuous effort. She doesn't understand anything. She doesn't want to understand. "'In a week from now,' said Letitia, "'she will understand everything perfectly, for I shall be able to talk with her.' Oh, Archie, do be agreeable. Can't you see that I am having great fun? Don't be such a greedy boy. If you could only enter into the spirit of the thing, you wouldn't be so oppressed by the food question.

Oh, dear, how important it does seem to be to men, Gerda. Her gamel air knee? The maiden sullenly left the room, and I felt convinced that Letitia had sweetishly asked her to do so. I was wrong. Her gamel air knee? Letitia explained, simply meant, "'How old are you?' "'She evidently didn't want to tell me,' was my wife's comment as we went to the drawing-room. "'I imagine, dear, that she doesn't quite like the idea of my ferreting out Swedish so persistently. But I intend to persevere. The worst of conversation books is that one acquires a language in such a parody way.' Now, in my book, the only answer to the question, How old are you? is, I was born on the 10th of August, 1852. For the life of me, I couldn't vary that.

And it would be most embarrassing. It would make me fifty-two. If anyone asked me in Swedish how old I was, I should have to be fifty-two.

When I think of my five advertisements, I said lugubriously, as I threw myself into an armchair, fatigued at my efforts to discover dinner, When I remember our expectation, and the pleasant anticipations of to-day, I feel very bitter, Letitia. Just to think that from it all nothing has resulted but that beastly mummy, that atrocious, ossified thing— Archie! Archie! said my wife, warningly. Please be calm. Perhaps I was too engrossed with my studies to note the deficiencies of dinner, but do remember that I pleaded with her for a Swedish meal. The poor thing did what I asked her to do. Our dinner was evidently sweetish. It was not her fault that I asked for it. To-morrow, dear, it shall be different.

We had better stick to the American regime. It is more satisfactory to you. At any rate, we have somebody in the house, and if our five advertisements had brought forth five hundred applicants, we should only have kept one. So don't torture yourself, Archie. Try and imagine that we had five hundred applicants, and that we selected Gerda Lyberg. "'I can't,' Letitia," I said sulkily, and heaved a heavy sigh. "'Come,' she said soothingly. "'Come and study Swedish with me. It will be most useful for your lives of great men. You can read up the Swedes in the original. I'll entertain you with this book, and you'll forget all about Mrs. Potts—I mean, Gerda Lyberg. By the by, Archie, she doesn't remind me so much of Hedda Gabler.

I don't fancy that she is very subtle.' "'You,' Letitia,' I retorted, "'remind me of Mrs. Nickleby. You ramble on so.' Letitia looked offended. She always declared that Dickens got on her nerves. She was one of the new-fashioned readers who have learned to despise Dickens. Personally, I regretted only his nauseating sense of humor. Letitia placed a cushion behind my head, smoothed my forehead, kissed me, made her peace, and settled down by my side. Lack of nourishment made me drowsy, and Letitia's babblings sounded vague and muffled.

"'It is a most inclusive little book,' she said, "'and if I can succeed in memorizing it all, I shall be quite at home with the language. In fact, dear, I think I shall always keep Swedish cooks. Hark at this.' If the wind be favourable, we shall be at Gothenburg in forty hours. I think it is sweetly pretty. You are sea-sick. Stuart, bring me a glass of brandy and water. We are now entering the harbour. We are now anchoring. Your passports, gentlemen? A comfortable lethargy was stealing over me. Letitia took a pencil and paper, and made notes as she plied the book. A chapter on seeing a town is most interesting, Archie. Of course it must be a Swedish town. Do you know the two private galleries of Mr.

Smith the merchant and Mr. Muller the chancellor? Tomorrow morning I wish to see all the public buildings and statues. Statierna is Swedish for statues, Archie. Are you listening, dear? We will visit the Church of the Holy Ghost at two, then we will make an excursion on Lake Meilen and see the Fortress of Waxholm. It is a charming little book. Don't you think that it is a great improvement on the old Ahlendorf system? I don't find nonsensical sentences like, The hat of my aunt's sister is blue, but the nose of my brother-in-law's sister-in-law is red.

I rose and stretched myself. Letitia was still plunged in the irritating guide to Sweden, where I vowed I would never go. Nothing on earth should ever induce me to visit Sweden. If it came to a choice between Hoboken and Stockholm, I mentally determined to select the former. As I paced the room, I heard a curious splashing noise in the kitchen. Letitia's studies must have dulled her ears. She was evidently too deeply engrossed. I strolled nonchalantly into the hall and proceeded deliberately toward the kitchen. The thick carpet deadened my footsteps. The splashing noise grew louder. The kitchen door was closed. I gently opened it. As I did so, a wild scream rent the air. "'There stood Gerda Lieberg in—in—' My pen declines to write it—a simple, unsophisticated birthday dress taking an ingenuous, reluctant bath in the stationary tubs, with the plates and dishes and dinner-things grouped artistically around her.

The instant she saw me, she modestly seized a dish-towel and shouted at the top of her voice. The kitchen was filled with the steam from the hot water. Venus arising looked nebulous and mystic. I beat a hasty retreat, aghast at the revelation, and almost fell against Letitia, who, dropping her conversation-book, came to see what had happened. "'She's bathing!' I gasped. "'In the kitchen! Among the plates! Near the soup!' "'Never!' cried Letitia. Then, melodramatically, "'let me pass. Stand aside, Archie. I'll go and see. Perhaps—' "'Perhaps you had better come with me.' "'Letitia!' I gurgled. I'm shocked! She has nothing on but a dish towel.

Letitia paused irresolutely for a second, and going into the kitchen, shut the door. The splashing noise ceased. I heard the sound of voices—or rather, of a voice—letitia's. Evidently, she had forgotten Swedish, and such remarks as, if the wind be favorable, we shall be at Gothenburg in forty hours. I listened attentively, and could not even hear her say, "'We will visit the Church of the Holy Ghost at two.' It is strange how the stress of circumstances alters the complexion of a conversation-book. All the evening she had studied Swedish, and yet suddenly confronted by a Swedish lady bathing in our kitchen, dish-toweled but unashamed, all she could find to say was, "'How disgusting! and how disgraceful!' in English.

"'You see,' said Letitia, when she emerged, "'she is just a simple peasant girl, and only needs to be told. It is very horrid, of course.' "'And unappetizing,' I chimed in. "'Of course, certainly unappetizing. I couldn't think of anything Swedish to say, but I said several things in English. She was dreadfully sorry that you had seen her, and never contemplated such a possibility. After all, Archie, bathing is not a crime.' "'And we were hunting for a clean slate,' I suggested satirically. "'Do you think, Letitia, that she also takes a cold bath in the morning among the bacon and eggs and things?' "'That is enough,' said Letitia sternly. "'The episode need not serve as an excuse for indelicacy.'" It was with the advent of Gerda Lyberg that we became absolutely certain, beyond the peradventure of any doubt, that there was such a thing as the servant question.

The knowledge had been gradually wafted in upon us, but it was not until the lady from Stockholm had definitively planted herself in our midst that we admitted to ourselves, openly, unblushingly, that the problem existed. Gerda blazoned forth the enigma in all its force and defiance. The remarkable thing about our latest acquisition was the singularly blank state of her gastronomic mind. There was nothing that she knew. Most women, and a great many men, intuitively recognize the physical fact that water, at a certain temperature, boils. Miss Lyburgh, apparently seeking to earn her living in the kitchen, had no certain views as to when the boiling-point was reached. Rumors seemed vaguely to have reached her that things called eggs dropped into water would, in the course of time, any time, and generally less than a week, become eatable.

Letitia bought a little egg-boiler for her, one of those antique arrangements in which the sands of time play to the soft-boiled egg. The maiden promptly boiled it with the eggs, and undoubtedly thought that the hen, in a moment of perturbation or aberration, had laid it. I say thought, because it is the only term I can use. It is, perhaps, inappropriate, in connection with Gerda.

Potatoes, subjected to the action of hot water, Grow soft. She was certain of that. Whether she tested them with the poker, or with her hands or feet, we never knew. I inclined to the last suggestion. The situation was quite marvelous. Here was an alleged worker, in a particular field, asking the wages of skilled labor, and densely ignorant of every detail connected with her task. It seemed unique. Carpenters, plumbers, bricklayers, seamstresses, dressmakers, laundresses, all the sowers and reapers in the little garden of our daily needs were forced, by the inexorable law of competition, to possess some inkling of the significance of their undertakings. With the cook it was different. She could step jubilantly into any kitchen without the slightest idea of what she was expected to do there.

If she knew that water was wet and that fire was hot, she felt amply primed to demand a salary.

Impelled by her craving for Swedish literature, Letitia struggled with Miss Lieberg. Compared with the Swede, my exquisitely ignorant wife was a culinary queen. She was an Epicurean caterer. Letitia's slate-pencil coffee was ambrosia for the gods, sweetest nectar by the side of the dishwater that Cook prepared. I began to feel quite proud of her. She grew to be an adept in the art of boiling water. If we could have lived on that fluid, everything would have moved clockworkily. "'I've discovered one thing,' said Letitia, on the evening of the third day. "'The girl is just a peasant, probably a worker in the fields. That is why she is so ignorant.' "'I thought this reasoning foolish.' "'Even peasants eat, my dear,' I muttered.

"'She must have seen somebody cook something. Field-workers have good appetites. If this woman ever ate, what did she eat, and why can't we have the same?' "'We have asked her for no luxuries. We have arrived at the stage, my poor girl, when all we need is, prosaically, to fill up. You have given her opportunities to offer us samples of peasant food. The result has been nil.' "'It is odd,' Letitia declared, a wrinkle of perplexity appearing in the smooth surface of her forehead. "'Of course she says she doesn't understand me, and yet, Archie—' I have talked to her in pure Swedish.' "'I suppose you said, pray give me a piece of venison from the conversation book.' "'Don't be ridiculous, Archie.

I know the Swedish for cauliflower, green peas, spinach, a leg of mutton, mustard, roast meat, soup, and—' "'If the wind be favourable, we shall be at Gothenburg in forty hours,' I interrupted. She was silent, and I went on. "'It seems a pity to end your studies in Swedish, Letitia. But, fascinating though they be, they do not really necessitate our keeping this barbarian. You can always pursue them, and exercise on me. I don't mind. Even with an American cook, if such a being exists, you could still continue to ask for venison steak and Swedish, and to look forward to arriving at Gothenburg in forty hours. Letitia declined to argue. My mood was that known as cranky. We were in the drawing-room, after what we were compelled to call dinner.

It had consisted of steak burned to cinders, potatoes soaked to a pulp, and a rice pudding that looked like a poultice the morning after, and possibly tasted like one.

Letitia had been shopping, and was therefore unable to supervise. Our delicate repast was capped by black coffee of an indefinite straw color, and with globules of grease on the surface. People who can feel elated with the joy of living after a dinner of this description are assuredly both mentally and morally lacking. Men and women there are who will say, Oh, give me anything. I'm not particular, so long as it is plain and wholesome. I've met many of these people. My experience of them is that they are the greatest gluttons on earth, with veritably voracious appetites, and that the best isn't good enough for them. To be sure, at a pinch they will demolish a score of potatoes, if there be nothing else, but offer them caviar, canvas-backed duck, quail, and nestle-road pudding, and they will look askance at food that is plain and wholesome.

The plain and wholesome liver is a snare and a delusion, like the bluff and genial visitor whose geniality veils all sorts of satire and merciless comment. Letitia and I both felt weak and miserable. We had made up our minds not to dine out. We were resolved to keep the home up even if, in return, the home kept us down. Give in we wouldn't. Our fighting blood was up. We firmly determined not to degenerate into that clammy American institution, the boarding-house feeder and the restaurant diner. We knew the type. In the feminine, it sits at table with its bonnet on and a sullen, gnawing expression of animal hunger. In the masculine, it puts its own knife in the butter and uses a toothpick. No cook, no lack of cook, should drive us to these abysmal depths.

Letitia made no feint at Ovid. I simply declined to breathe the breath of the lives of great men. She read a sweet little classic called The Table, How to Buy Food, How to Cook It, and How to Serve It, by Alessandro Filippini. A delightful table-de-hotey name. I lay back in my chair and frowned, waiting until Letitia chose to break the silence. As she was a most chattily inclined person on all occasions, I reasoned that I should not have to wait long. I was right. Archie, said she, according to this book, there is no place in the civilized world that contains so large a number of so-called high livers as New York City, which was educated... by the famous Delmonico and his able lieutenants. "'Great heaven!' I exclaimed with a groan.

"'Why rub it in, Letitia? I should also say that no city in the world contained so large a number of low-livers. "'Westward the course of empire sways,' she read. And the great glory of the past has departed from those centers where the culinary art at one time defied all rivals. The scepter of supremacy has passed into the hands of the metropolis of the new world. What sickening cant! I cried. What fiendishly exaggerated restaurant talk! There are perhaps fifty fine restaurants in New York. In Paris there are five hundred finer. Here we have places to eat in. There they have artistic resorts to dine in. One can dine anywhere in Paris. In New York, save for those fifty fine restaurants, one feeds.

Don't read any more of your cookbook to me, my girl. It is written to catch the American trade with the subtle pen of flattery." "'Try and be patriotic, dear,' she said soothingly. "'Of course I know you wouldn't allow a Frenchman to say all that, and that you are just talking cussedly with your own wife.'" A ring at the bell caused a diversion. We hailed it. We were in the humour to hail anything. The domestic hearth was most trying. We were bored to death. I sprang up and ran to the door, a little pastime to which I was growing accustomed. Three tittering young women, each wearing a hat, in which roses, violets, poppies, cornflowers, forget-me-nots, feathers, and ribbons ran riot, confronted me.

"'Miss Gerda Lyberg,' said the foremost, who wore a bright red gown, and from whose hat six spiteful poppies lurched forward and almost hit me in the face. For a moment, dazed from the cookbook, I was nonplussed. All I could say was, no, meaning that I wasn't, Miss Gerda Lyberg. I felt so sure that I wasn't that I was about to close the door. "'She lives here,' I believe," asserted the damsel, again shooting forth the poppies. I came to myself with an effort. "'She is the—the cook,' I muttered weakly. "'We are her friends,' quoth the damsel, in indignant inflection in her voice. "'Kindly let us in. We've come to the Thursday sociable.' The three bedizened ladies entered without further parley, and went toward the kitchen, instinctively recognizing its direction.

I was amazed. I heard a noisy greeting, a peal of laughter, a confusion of tongues, and then I groped my way back to Letitia. "'They've come to the Thursday sociable,' I cried. "'Who?' she asked in astonishment, and I imparted to her the full extent of my knowledge. Letitia took it very nicely. She had always heard, she said. In fact, Mrs. Archer had told her that Thursday nights were festival occasions with the Swedes. She thought it rather a pleasant and convivial notion. Servants must enjoy themselves after all. Better a happy gathering of girls than a rowdy collection of men. Letitia thought the idea felicitous. She had no objections to giving privileges to a cook. Nor had I, for the matter of that.

I ventured to remark, however, that Gerda didn't seem to be a cook. Then let us call her a girl," said Letitia. "'Gurda is a girl only because she isn't a boy,' I remarked tauntingly. "'If by girl you even mean servant, then Gurda isn't a girl. Goodness knows what she is. Hello! Another ring!' This time Miss Lyburgh herself went to the door, and we listened. More arrivals for the sociable. Four Swedish guests, All equally gaily attired in flower hats. Some of them wore bangles, the noise of which in the hall sounded like an infuriation of sleigh-bells. They were Christina and Sophie and Sadie and Alexandra, as we soon learned. It was wonderful how welcome Gerda made them, and how quickly they were at home.

They rustled through the halls, chatting and laughing and humming. Such merry girls, such light-hearted little charmers. Letitia stood looking at them through the crack of the drawing-room door. Perhaps it was just as well that somebody should have a good time in our house. "'Just the same, Letitia,' I observed, galled. "'I think I should say to-morrow that this invasion is most impertinent, most uncalled for.' "'Yes,' Archie," said Letitia demurely. "'You think you should say it, but please don't think I shall, for I assure you that I shan't.' I suppose that we must discharge her. She can't do anything, and she doesn't want to learn. I don't blame her. She can always get the wages she asks by doing nothing.

You would pursue a similar policy, Archie, if it were possible. Everybody would. But all other laborers must know how to labor. I was glad to hear Letitia echoing my sentiments. She was quite unconsciously plagiarizing. Once again she took up the cookbook. The sound of merrymaking in the kitchen drifted in upon us. From what we could gather, Gerda seemed to be dressing up for the delectation of her guests. Shrieks of laughter and a clapping of hands made us wince. My nerves were on edge. Had anyone at that moment dared to suggest that there was even a suspicion of humour in these proceedings, I should have slain him without compunction. Letitia was less irate, and tried to comfort me.

Letitia sighed and shut up the cookbook. Eggs a la range seemed as difficult as trigonometry, or conic sections, or differential calculus, and much more expensive. Certainly the eight giggling cooks in the kitchen, now at the very height of their exhilaration, worried themselves little about such concoctions. My nerves again began to play pranks. The devilish pandemonium infuriated me. Letitia was tired and wanted to go to bed. I was tired and hungry and disillusioned. It was close upon midnight, and the Swedish Thursday was about over. I thought it unwise to allow them even an initial minute of Friday. When the clock struck twelve, I marched majestically to the kitchen, threw open the door, revealed the octet and the enjoyment of a mound of ice-cream and a mountain of cake that in my famished condition made my mouth water, and announced, in a severe yet subdued tone, that the revel must cease.

"'You must go at once,' I said. "'I am going to shut up the house.' Then I withdrew and waited. There was a delay, during which a babble of tongues was let loose, and then Miss Lyburgh's seven guests were heard noisily leaving the house. Two minutes later there was a knock at our door, and Miss Lyburgh appeared, her eyes blazing, her face flushed, and the expression of the hunted antelope defiantly asserting that it would never be brought to bay on her perspiring features. "'You've insulted my guests,' she cried. "'In English as good as my own.' I've had to turn them out of the house, and I've had about enough of this place. Letitia's face was a psychological study. Amazement, consternation, humiliation, all seemed determined to possess her.

Here was the obtuse Swede, for whose dear sake she had dallied with the intricacies of the language of Stockholm, furiously familiar with admirable English. The dense, dumb Scandinavian, the lady of the me no understand, rejoinder, apparently had the gift of tongues. Letitia trembled. Rarely have I seen her so thoroughly perturbed. Yet, seemingly, she was unwilling to credit the testimony of her own ears, for with sudden energy she confronted Miss Lyburgh, and exclaimed imperiously, in Swedish that was either pure or impure, Tig! Godinvig! Ah, come off! cried the handmaiden insolently. "'I understand English. I haven't been in this country fifteen years for nothing. It's just on account of folks like you that poor hard-working girls, who ain't allowed to take no baths or entertain no lady friends, have to protect themselves.

Pretend not to understand them,' says I. "'I found it worked before this.' "'If they think you don't understand them, they'll let you alone and stop worrying. It's like you're—' Impotence to turn my lady friends out of this flat. It's like your impotence. I'll— Letitia's crestfallen look, following upon her perturbation, completely upset me. A wave of indignation swamped me. I advanced, and in another minute Miss Gerda Lyburgh would have found herself in the hall, impelled there by a persuasive hand on her shoulder. However, it was not to be.

"'You just lay a hand on me,' she said, with cold deliberation and a smile, "'and I'll have you arrested for assault. Oh, I know the law. I haven't been in this country fifteen years for nothing. The law looks after poor weak Swedish girls. Just push me out. It's all I ask. Just you push me out.' She edged up to me defiantly. My blood boiled. I would have mortgaged the prospects of my lives of great men—not that they were worth mortgaging—' For the exquisite satisfaction of confounding this abominable woman. Then I saw the peril of the situation. I thought of horrid headliners in the papers. Author charged with abusing servant girl, or arrest of Archibald Fairfax on serious charge, and my mood changed.

"'I understood you all the time,' continued Miss Lyburgh, insultingly. "'I listened to you. I knew what you thought of me. Now I'm telling you what I think of you. The idea of turning out my lady friends, on a Thursday night, too, and me a slaving for them, and a bathing for them, and a treating them to ice-cream and cake, and in me own kitchen. You ain't no lady. As for you—' I seem to be her particular pet. When I sees a man around the house all the time, a mollycoddling and a fussing, I says to myself he ain't much good if he can't trust the womenfolk alone. We stood there like dummies, listening to the tirade. What could we do? To be sure, there were two of us, and we were in our own house.

The antagonist, however, was a servant. Not in her own house. The situation, for reasons that it is impossible to define, was hers. She knew it, too. We allowed her full sway because we couldn't help it. The sympathy of the public, in case of violent measures, would not have been on our side. The poor domestic, oppressed and enslaved, would have appealed to any jury of married men living luxuriously in cheap boarding-houses. When she left us, As she did, when she was completely ready to do so, Letitia began to cry. The sight of her tears unnerved me, and I checked the most unfeeling remark that I intended to make, to the effect that, if the wind be favourable, we shall be at Gothenburg in forty hours.

"'It's not that I mind her insolence,' she sobbed. "'We were going to send her off anyway, weren't we? But it's so humiliating to be done—' "'We've been done.' Here have I been working hard at Swedish, writing exercises, learning verbs, studying proverbs, just to talk to a woman who speaks English as well as I do. It's—it's so—so—more—mortifying. Never mind, dear," I said, drying her eyes for her. The Swedish will come in handy some day. No, she declared vehemently. Don't say that you'll take me to Sweden. "'I wouldn't go to the hateful country. It's a hideous language anyway, isn't it, Archie? It has a nasty, laconic, ugly tongue. You heard me say tig to her just now. Tig means be silent. Could anything sound more repulsive?

Tig! Tig! Ugh!' Letitia stamped her foot. She was exceeding wroth.

queue_music Chapters 11