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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Short Stories of 1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Best Short Stories of 1920
+       and the Yearbook of the American Short Story
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Edward J. O'Brien
+
+Release Date: July 17, 2007 [EBook #22091]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+BEST SHORT STORIES
+OF 1920
+
+AND THE
+
+YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN
+SHORT STORY
+
+EDITED BY
+EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
+
+EDITOR OF "THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1916"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1919"
+"THE GREAT MODERN ENGLISH STORIES," ETC.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON
+SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons, The Pictorial Review
+Company, The Curtis Publishing Company, and Harper & Brothers.
+
+Copyright, 1920, by The Boston Transcript Company.
+
+Copyright, 1920, by Margaret C, Anderson, Harper & Brothers, The Dial
+Publishing Company, Inc., The Metropolitan Magazine Company, John T.
+Frederick, P. F. Collier & Son, Inc., Charles Scribner's Sons, The
+International Magazine Company, and The Pictorial Review Company.
+
+Copyright, 1921, by Sherwood Anderson, Edwina Stanton Babcock, Konrad
+Bercovici, Edna Clare Bryner, Charles Wadsworth Camp, Helen Coale Crew,
+Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Lee Foster Hartman, Rupert Hughes, Grace
+Sartwell Mason, James Oppenheim, Arthur Somers Roche, Rose Sidney, Fleta
+Campbell Springer, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Ethel Dodd Thomas, John T.
+Wheelwright, Stephen French Whitman, Ben Ames Williams, and Frances
+Gilchrist Wood.
+
+Copyright, 1921, by Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+SHERWOOD ANDERSON
+
+
+
+
+BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories and other
+material in this volume is made to the following authors, editors, and
+publishers:
+
+To Miss Margaret C. Anderson, the Editor of _Harper's Magazine_, the
+Editor of _The Dial_, the Editor of _The Metropolitan_, Mr. John T.
+Frederick, the Editor of _Scribner's Magazine_, the Editor of _Collier's
+Weekly_, the Editor of _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_, the Editor of _The
+Pictorial Review_, the _Curtis Publishing Company_, Mr. Sherwood
+Anderson, Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock, Mr. Konrad Bercovici, Miss Edna
+Clare Bryner, Mr. Wadsworth Camp, Mrs. Helen Coale Crew, Mrs. Katharine
+Fullerton Gerould, Mr. Lee Foster Hartman, Major Rupert Hughes, Mrs.
+Grace Sartwell Mason, Mr. James Oppenheim, Mr. Arthur Somers Roche, Mrs.
+Rose Sidney, Mrs. Fleta Campbell Springer, Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele,
+Mrs. A. E. Thomas, Mr. John T. Wheelwright, Mr. Stephen French Whitman,
+Mr. Ben Ames Williams, and Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood.
+
+Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_ for
+permission to reprint the large body of material previously published in
+its pages.
+
+I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections, and particularly for
+suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume. In
+particular, I shall welcome the receipt, from authors, editors, and
+publishers, of stories printed during the period between October, 1920
+and September, 1921 inclusive, which have qualities of distinction, and
+yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice. Such
+communications may be addressed to me at _Forest Hill, Oxfordshire,
+England_.
+
+E. J. O.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS[1]
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+#Introduction.# By the Editor                                  xiii
+
+#The Other Woman.# By Sherwood Anderson                           3
+(From _The Little Review_)
+
+#Gargoyle.# By Edwina Stanton Babcock                            12
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#Ghitza.# By Konrad Bercovici                                    36
+(From _The Dial_)
+
+#The Life of Five Points.# By Edna Clare Bryner                  49
+(From _The Dial_)
+
+#The Signal Tower.# By Wadsworth Camp                            66
+(From _The Metropolitan_)
+
+#The Parting Genius.# By Helen Coale Crew                        83
+(From _The Midland_)
+
+#Habakkuk.# By Katharine Fullerton Gerould                       90
+(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
+
+#The Judgment of Vulcan.# By Lee Foster Hartman                 116
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#The Stick-in-the-Muds.# By Rupert Hughes                       148
+(From _Collier's Weekly_)
+
+#His Job.# By Grace Sartwell Mason                              169
+(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
+
+#The Rending.# By James Oppenheim                               187
+(From _The Dial_)
+
+#The Dummy-Chucker.# By Arthur Somers Roche                     198
+(From _The Cosmopolitan_)
+
+#Butterflies.# By Rose Sidney                                   214
+(From _The Pictorial Review_)
+
+#The Rotter.# By Fleta Campbell Springer                        236
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#Out of Exile.# By Wilbur Daniel Steele                         266
+(From _The Pictorial Review_)
+
+#The Three Telegrams.# By Ethel Storm                           293
+(From _The Ladies' Home Journal_)
+
+#The Roman Bath.# By John T. Wheelwright                        312
+(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
+
+#Amazement.# By Stephen French Whitman                          320
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#Sheener.# By Ben Ames Williams                                 348
+(From _Collier's Weekly_)
+
+#Turkey Red.# By Frances Gilchrist Wood                         359
+(From _The Pictorial Review_)
+
+#The Yearbook of the American Short Story,
+October, 1919, To September, 1920#                              375
+
+Addresses of American Magazines Publishing
+Short Stories                                                   377
+
+The Bibliographical Roll of Honor of American
+Short Stories                                                   379
+
+The Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in
+American Magazines                                              390
+
+The Best Books of Short Stories of 1920: A
+Critical Summary                                                392
+
+Volumes of Short Stories Published, October,
+1919, to September, 1920: A Index                               414
+
+Articles on the Short Stories: An Index                         421
+
+Index of Short Stories in Books, November,
+1918, to September, 1920                                        434
+
+Index of Short Stories Published in American
+Magazines, October, 1919, to September, 1920                    456
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not
+intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
+arrangement is alphabetical by authors.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+I suppose there is no one of us who can honestly deny that he is
+interested in one way or another in the American short story. Indeed, it
+is hard to find a man anywhere who does not enjoy telling a good story.
+But there are some people born with the gift of telling a good story
+better than others, and of telling it in such a way that a great many
+people can enjoy its flavor. Most of you are acquainted with some one
+who is a gifted story-teller, provided that he has an audience of not
+more than one or two people. And if you chance to live in the same house
+with such a man, I think you will find that, no matter how good his
+story may have been when you first heard it, it tends to lose its savor
+after he has become thoroughly accustomed to telling it and has added it
+to his private repertory.
+
+A writer of good stories is really a man who risks telling the same
+story to many thousand people. Did you ever take such a risk? Did you
+ever start to tell a story to a stranger, and try to make your point
+without knowing what sort of a man he was? If you did, what was your
+experience? You decided, didn't you, that story-telling was an art, and
+you wondered perhaps if you were ever going to learn it.
+
+The American story-teller in the magazines is in very much the same
+position, except that we have much more patience with him. Usually he is
+a man who has told his story a good many times before. The first time he
+told it we clapped him on the back, as he deserved perhaps, and said
+that he was a good fellow. His publishers said so too. And it _was_ a
+good story that he told. The trouble was that we wanted to hear it
+again, and we paid him too well to repeat it. But just as your story
+became rather less interesting the twenty-third time you told it, so
+the stories I have been reading more often than not have made a similar
+impression upon me. I find myself begging the author to think up another
+story.
+
+Of course, you have not felt obliged to read so many stories, and I
+cannot advise you to do so. But it has made it possible for me to see in
+some sort of perspective, just where the American short story is going
+as well as what it has already achieved. It has made me see how American
+writers are weakening their substance by too frequent repetition, and it
+has helped me to fix the blame where it really lies.
+
+Now this is a matter of considerable importance. One of the things we
+should be most anxious to learn is the psychology of the American
+reader. We want to know how he reacts to what he reads in the magazine,
+whether it is a short story, an article, or an advertisement. We want to
+know, for example, what holds the interest of a reader of the _Atlantic
+Monthly_, and what holds the interest of the reader of the _Ladies' Home
+Journal_.
+
+It is my belief that the difference between these various types of
+readers is pretty largely an artificial difference, in so far as it
+affects the quality of entertainment and imaginative interest that the
+short story has to offer. Of course, there are exceptional cases, and I
+have some of these in mind, but for the most part I can perceive no
+essential difference between the best stories in the _Saturday Evening
+Post_ and the best stories in _Harper's Magazine_ for example. The
+difference that every one feels, and that exists, is one of emphasis
+rather than of type. It is a difference which is shown by averages
+rather than one which affects the best stories in either magazine. Human
+nature is the same everywhere, and when an artist interprets it
+sympathetically, the reader will respond to his feeling wherever he
+finds it.
+
+It has been my experience that the reader is likely to find this warmly
+sympathetic interpretation of human nature, its pleasures and its
+sorrows, its humor and its tragedy, most often in the American magazines
+that talk least about their own merit. We are all familiar with the
+sort of magazine that contents itself with saying day in and day out
+ceaselessly and noisily: "The _Planet Magazine_ is the greatest magazine
+in the universe. The greatest literary artists and the world's greatest
+illustrators contribute to our pages." And it stops there. It has
+repeated this claim so often that it has come to believe it. Such a
+magazine is the great literary ostrich. It hides by burying its eyes in
+the sand.
+
+It is an axiom of human nature that the greatest men do not find it
+necessary or possible to talk about their own greatness. They are so
+busy that they have never had much time to think about it. And so it is
+with the best magazines, and with the best short stories. The man who
+wrote what I regard as the best short story published in 1915 was the
+most surprised man in Brooklyn when I told him so.
+
+The truth of the matter is that we are changing very rapidly, and that a
+new national sense in literature is accompanying that change. There was
+a time, and in fact it is only now drawing to a close, when the short
+story was exploited by interested moneymakers who made such a loud noise
+that you could hear nothing else without great difficulty. The most
+successful of these noisemakers are still shouting, but their heart is
+in it no longer. The editor of one of the largest magazines in the
+country said to me not long ago that he found the greatest difficulty
+now in procuring short stories by writers for whom his magazine had
+trained the public to clamor. The immediate reason which he ascribed for
+this state of affairs was that the commercial rewards offered to these
+writers by the moving picture companies were so great, and the
+difference in time and labor between writing scenarios and developing
+finished stories was so marked, that authors were choosing the more
+attractive method of earning money. The excessive commercialisation of
+literature in the past decade is now turned against the very magazines
+which fostered it. The magazines which bought and sold fiction like soap
+are beginning to repent of it all. They have killed the goose that laid
+the golden eggs.
+
+This fight for sincerity in the short story is a fight that is worth
+making. It is at the heart of all that for which I am striving. The
+quiet sincere man who has something to tell you should not be talked
+down by the noisemakers. He should have his hearing. He is real. And we
+need him.
+
+That is why I have set myself the annual task of reading so many short
+stories. I am looking for the man and woman with something to say,--who
+cares very much indeed about how he says it. I am looking for the man
+and woman with some sort of a dream, the man or woman who sees just a
+little bit more in the pedlar he passes on the street than you or I do,
+and who wishes to devote his life to telling us about it. I want to be
+told my own story too, so that I can see myself as other people see me.
+And I want to feel that the storyteller who talks to me about these
+things is as much in earnest as a sincere clergyman, an unselfish
+physician, or an idealistic lawyer. I want to feel that he belongs to a
+profession that is a sort of priesthood, and not that he is holding down
+a job or running a bucket shop.
+
+I have found this writer with a message in almost every magazine I have
+studied during the year. He is just as much in earnest in _Collier's
+Weekly_ as he is in _Scribner's Magazine_. I do not find him often, but
+he is there somewhere. And he is the only man for whom it is worth our
+while to watch. I feel that it is none of my business whether I like and
+agree with what he has to say or not. All that I am looking for is to
+see whether he means what he says and makes it as real as he can to me.
+I accept his substance at his own valuation, but I want to know what he
+makes of it.
+
+Each race that forms part of the substance in our great melting pot is
+bringing the richest of its traditions to add to our children's
+heritage. That is a wonderful thing to think about. Here, for example,
+is a young Jewish writer, telling in obscurity the stories of his people
+with all the art of the great Russian masters. And Irishmen are bringing
+to us the best of their heritage, and men and women of many other races
+contribute to form the first national literature the world has ever seen
+which is not based on a single racial feeling. Why are we not more
+curious about the ragman's story and that of the bootblack and the man
+who keeps the fruit store? Don't you suppose life is doing things to the
+boy in the coat-room as interesting as anything in all the romances?
+Isn't life changing us in the most extraordinary ways, and do we not
+wish to know in what manner we are to meet and adapt ourselves to these
+changes? There is a humble writer in an attic up there who knows all
+about it, if you care to listen to him. The trouble is that he is so
+much interested in talking about life that he forgets to talk about
+himself, and we are too lazy to listen to any one who forgets to blow
+his own trumpet. But the magazines are beginning to look for him, and,
+wonderful to say, they are beginning to find him, and to discover that
+he is more interesting and humanly popular than the professional chef
+who may be always depended upon to cook his single dish in the same old
+way, but who has never had time to learn anything else.
+
+Now what is the essential point of all that I have been trying to say?
+It is simply this. If we are going to do anything as a nation, we must
+be honest with ourselves and with everybody else. If we are story
+writers or story readers, and practically every one is either one or the
+other in these days, we must come to grips with life in the fiction we
+write or read. Sloppy sentimentality and slapstick farce ought to bore
+us frightfully, especially if we have any sense of humor. Life is too
+real to go to sleep over it.
+
+To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the
+benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and
+principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the
+task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary
+fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists,
+may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in
+formulæ, and organised criticism at its best would be nothing more than
+dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
+What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh,
+living current which flows through the best of our work, and the
+psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred
+upon it.
+
+No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
+substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
+beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair
+to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination
+than we display at present.
+
+The present record covers the period from October, 1919, to September,
+1920, inclusive. During this period, I have sought to select from the
+stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life
+imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is
+something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than
+something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a
+story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist's power of
+compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth.
+The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis
+is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected
+facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of
+substance.
+
+But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other
+stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into
+the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and
+arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing
+presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.
+
+The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous
+years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists
+of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test
+of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the
+yearbook without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
+consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive
+either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories
+may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more
+frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to
+which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories
+included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by a single
+asterisk prefixed to the title.
+
+The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater
+distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a
+second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test
+of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are
+indicated in the yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.
+
+Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which
+possess, I believe, an even finer distinction--the distinction of
+uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern
+with such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in
+our literature. If all of these stories by American authors were
+republished, they would not occupy more space than five novels of
+average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief
+that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would
+be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have
+found the equivalent of five volumes worthy of republication among all
+the stories published during the period under consideration. These
+stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed
+to the title, and are listed in the special "Roll of Honor." In
+compiling these lists, I have permitted no personal preference or
+prejudice to consciously influence my judgment. To the titles of certain
+stories, however, in the "Rolls of Honor," an asterisk is prefixed, and
+this asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal
+preference, for which, perhaps, I may be indulged. It is from this final
+short list that the stories reprinted in this volume have been selected.
+
+It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story,
+nor a translation from a foreign author. I have also made it a rule not
+to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume.
+The general and particular results of my study will be found explained
+and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.
+
+As in past years it has been my pleasure and honor to associate this
+annual with the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews Hallet,
+Wilbur Daniel Steele, Arthur Johnson, and Anzia Yezierska, so it is my
+wish to dedicate this year the best that I have found in the American
+magazines as the fruit of my labors to Sherwood Anderson, whose stories,
+"The Door of the Trap," "I Want to Know Why," "The Other Woman," and
+"The Triumph of the Egg" seem to me to be among the finest imaginative
+contributions to the short story made by an American artist during the
+past year.
+
+#Edward J. O'Brien.#
+
+#Forest Hill, Oxon, England,#
+November 8, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920
+
+
+#Note.#--The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not
+intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
+arrangement is alphabetical by authors.
+
+
+
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN[2]
+
+BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON
+
+From _The Little Review_
+
+
+"I am in love with my wife," he said--a superfluous remark, as I had not
+questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten
+minutes and then he said it again. I turned to look at him. He began to
+talk and told me the tale I am now about to set down.
+
+The thing he had on his mind happened during what must have been the
+most eventful week of his life. He was to be married on Friday
+afternoon. On Friday of the week before he got a telegram announcing his
+appointment to a government position. Something else happened that made
+him very proud and glad. In secret he was in the habit of writing verses
+and during the year before several of them had been printed in poetry
+magazines. One of the societies that give prizes for what they think the
+best poems published during the year put his name at the head of their
+list. The story of his triumph was printed in the newspapers of his home
+city, and one of them also printed his picture.
+
+As might have been expected, he was excited and in a rather highly
+strung nervous state all during that week. Almost every evening he went
+to call on his fiancée, the daughter of a judge. When he got there the
+house was filled with people and many letters, telegrams and packages
+were being received. He stood a little to one side and men and women
+kept coming to speak with him. They congratulated him upon his success
+in getting the government position and on his achievement as a poet.
+Everyone seemed to be praising him, and when he went home to bed he
+could not sleep. On Wednesday evening he went to the theatre and it
+seemed to him that people all over the house recognized him. Everyone
+nodded and smiled. After the first act five or six men and two women
+left their seats to gather about him. A little group was formed.
+Strangers sitting along the same row of seats stretched their necks and
+looked. He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever
+of expectancy took possession of him.
+
+As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an
+altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got
+into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise
+his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of
+people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people
+of his city were centered on himself. The most absurd fancies took
+possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the
+streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the
+doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the
+words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with
+people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you
+are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes
+seemed to be saying.
+
+My friend could not explain whether the excitement of the people was due
+to the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new
+government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment
+where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a
+cliff far out at the edge of the city and from his bedroom window he
+could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not
+sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him
+more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.
+
+As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
+thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
+unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine.
+There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his
+wife, think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect
+his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the
+sort.
+
+At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
+and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
+active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
+buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat
+man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She
+was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a
+very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for
+some reason he could not explain being in her presence stirred him
+profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the
+only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When
+he wanted so much to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her.
+Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the
+notion of having a love affair with the woman.
+
+"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
+"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I
+thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of
+thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
+terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
+found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
+thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me
+and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my
+position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other
+woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all
+sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and
+there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home
+because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying
+impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco
+shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs
+with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body
+pressed against the wall of the building and then I thought of the two
+of them up there, no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.
+
+"Then I grew more furious at myself. I went home and got into bed shaken
+with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings
+that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table
+by my bed.
+
+"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not
+hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my
+consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had
+also become something far away, something with which I for the moment
+seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It
+was a miserable experience.
+
+"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman alone.
+I think she knew how I felt. Perhaps she had been thinking of me as I
+had been thinking of her. A doubtful hesitating smile played about the
+corners of her mouth. She had on a dress made of cheap cloth, and there
+was a tear on the shoulder. She must have been ten years older than
+myself. When I tried to put my pennies on the glass counter behind which
+she stood my hand trembled so that the pennies made a sharp rattling
+noise. When I spoke the voice that came out of my throat did not sound
+like anything that had ever belonged to me. It barely arose above a
+thick whisper. 'I want you,' I said. 'I want you very much. Can't you
+run away from your husband? Come to me at my apartment at seven
+to-night.'
+
+"The woman did come to my apartment at seven. That morning she did not
+say anything at all. For a minute perhaps we stood looking at each
+other. I had forgotten everything in the world but just her. Then she
+nodded her head and I went away. Now that I think of it I cannot
+remember a word I ever heard her say. She came to my apartment at seven
+and it was dark. You must understand this was in the month of October. I
+had not lighted a light and I had sent my servant away.
+
+"During that day I was no good at all. Several men came to see me at my
+office, but I got all muddled up in trying to talk with them. They
+attributed my rattle-headedness to my approaching marriage and went away
+laughing.
+
+"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a
+long and very beautiful letter from my fiancée. During the night before
+she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the
+letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she
+herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It
+seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies,
+and I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road
+before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you
+will understand what I mean?
+
+"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out her
+heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She lay,
+I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been
+doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her
+life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all. Then
+she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper. She told
+me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women she had
+heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and fine. 'For
+a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a man and
+woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember that I am
+ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me and be very
+patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time you have
+taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will love you
+tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me, or I would
+not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am so
+glad our marriage time is near at hand.'
+
+"Now you see clearly enough into what a mess I had got. In my office,
+after I read my fiancée's letter, I became at once very resolute and
+strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud of
+the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right away I
+felt concerning her as I had been feeling, about myself before I found
+out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong resolution that
+I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned to run in to see
+my fiancée. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The beauty of her
+character has saved me from myself. I will go home now and send the
+other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to my servant and
+told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment that evening and
+I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at home.
+
+"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I
+told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming to my place
+on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the telephone
+down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of the apartment
+it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the woman. I cannot
+be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an explanation,' I said
+to myself.
+
+"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
+her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had
+any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but
+she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that
+everything she did that evening was soft and quiet but very determined
+and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just
+within the door, where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour.
+My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her
+eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in
+the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
+into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
+trembled. I felt very happy and strong.
+
+"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you what
+the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
+woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
+your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
+started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
+inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
+tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of
+her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to me
+at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.
+
+"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
+me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman
+who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is
+not true. On that evening I went to my fiancée at nine, as she had asked
+me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the other
+woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been thinking
+that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's wife I would
+not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one thing or the
+other with me,' I had said to myself.
+
+"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
+with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
+muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
+woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in
+fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own
+desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that
+clear to you? When I got to my fiancée's house there was a crowd of
+people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had not
+seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My face
+must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her letter
+had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and ran to
+meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who turned
+and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her mind.
+'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be two
+human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'
+
+"As you may suppose, everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears
+came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you
+understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my
+fiancée had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear
+little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her
+house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I
+said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of
+ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell you
+the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other woman
+did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my fiancée
+close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so affected
+at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had they known
+the truth about me God only knows!
+
+"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the
+other woman at all. That is partially true but sometimes in the evening
+when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are walking
+now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come to-night,
+the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After that one
+meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married and I have
+never gone back into her street. Often however as I am walking along as
+I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes possession of me. It
+is as though I were a seed in the ground and the warm rains of the
+spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but a tree.
+
+"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage
+is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is
+not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute
+truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind
+of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why
+I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I am
+not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your
+understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a
+little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman.
+That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife
+sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There
+will be a moon to-night, and when there is a moon long streaks of light
+fall on her bed. I shall awake at midnight to-night. She will be lying
+asleep with one arm thrown over her head.
+
+"What is that I am talking about? A man does not speak of his wife lying
+in bed. What I am trying to say is that, because of this talk, I shall
+think of the other woman to-night. My thoughts will not take the form
+they did the week before I was married. I will wonder what has become of
+the woman. For a moment I will again feel myself holding her close. I
+will think that for an hour I was closer to her than I have ever been to
+anyone else. Then I will think of the time when I will be as close as
+that to my wife. She is still, you see, an awakening woman. For a moment
+I will close my eyes and the quick, shrewd, determined eyes of that
+other woman will look into mine. My head will swim and then I will
+quickly open my eyes and see again the dear woman with whom I have
+undertaken to live out my life. Then I will sleep and when I awake in
+the morning it will be as it was that evening when I walked out of my
+dark apartment after having had the most notable experience of my life.
+What I mean to say, you understand, is that, for me, when I awake, the
+other woman will be utterly gone."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] Copyright, 1920, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1921, by
+Sherwood Anderson.
+
+
+
+
+GARGOYLE[3]
+
+By EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+Gargoyle stole up the piazza steps. His arms were full of field flowers.
+He stood there staring over his burden.
+
+A hush fell upon tea- and card-tables. The younger women on the Strang
+veranda glanced at one another. The girl at the piano hesitated in her
+light stringing of musical sentences.
+
+John Strang rose. "Not now, Gargoyle, old man." Taking the flowers from
+the thin hands, he laid them on the rug at his wife's feet, then gently
+motioned the intruder away. Gargoyle flitted contentedly down the broad
+steps to the smooth drive, and was soon hidden by masses of rhododendron
+on the quadrangle.
+
+Only one guest raised questioning eyebrows as Strang resumed his seat.
+This girl glanced over his shoulder at the aimless child straying off
+into the trees.
+
+"I should think an uncanny little person like that would get on Mrs.
+Strang's nerves; he gives me the creeps!"
+
+"Yes? Mrs. Strang is hardly as sensitive as you might suppose. What do
+you say of a lady who enjoys putting the worms on her shrinking
+husband's hook? Not only that, but who banters the worms, telling them
+it's all for their own good?"
+
+The mistress of Heartholm, looking over at the two, shook a deprecating
+head. But Strang seemed to derive amusement from the guest's
+disapproval.
+
+Mockwood, where the Strangs lived, had its impressiveness partly
+accounted for by the practical American name of "residential park."
+This habitat, covering many thousands of acres, gave evidence of the
+usual New World compromise between fantastic wealth and over-reached
+restraint. Polished automobiles gliding noiselessly through massed
+purple and silver shrubberies, receded into bland glooms of
+well-thought-out boscage. The architecture, a judicious mixture of
+haughty roofs and opulent chimneys, preened itself behind exclusive
+screens of wall and vine, and the entire frontage of Mockwood presented
+a polished elegance which did not entirely conceal a silent plausibility
+of expense.
+
+At Heartholm, the Strangs' place, alone, had the purely conventional
+been smitten in its smooth face. The banker's country home was built on
+the lines of his own physical height and mental breadth. Strang had
+flung open his living-rooms to vistas of tree branches splashing against
+the morning blue. His back stairs were as aspiring as the Apostles'
+Creed, and his front stairs as soaring as the Canticle to the Sun. As he
+had laid out his seven-mile drive on a deer track leading to a forest
+spring, so had he spoken for his flowers the word, which, though it
+freed them from the prunes and prisms of a landscape gardener, held
+them, glorified vassals, to their original masters, sun and rain.
+
+Strang and his love for untrammeled nature were hard pills for
+Mockwooders to swallow. Here was a man who, while he kept one on the
+alert, was to be deplored; who homesteaded squirrels, gave rabbits their
+own licentious ways, was whimsically tolerant of lichens, mushrooms, and
+vagabond vines. This was also the man who, when his gardener's wife gave
+birth to a deaf and dumb baby, encouraged his own wife to make a pet of
+the unfortunate youngster, and when he could walk gave him his freedom
+of the Heartholm acres.
+
+It was this sort of thing, Mockwooders agreed, that "explained" the
+Strangs. It was the desultory gossip of fashionable breakfast tables how
+Evelyn Strang was frequently seen at the gardener's cottage, talking to
+the poor mother about her youngest. The gardener's wife had other
+children, all strong and hearty. These went to school, survived the
+rigors of "regents" examinations, and were beginning to talk of
+"accepting" positions. There would never be any position for little
+Gargoyle, as John Strang called him, to "accept."
+
+"Let the child run about," the village doctors had advised. "Let him run
+about in the sun and make himself useful."
+
+But people who "run about in the sun" are seldom inclined to make
+themselves useful, and no one could make Gargoyle so. It would have been
+as well to try to train woodbine to draw water or to educate cattails to
+write Greek. The little boy spent all of the day idling; it was a
+curious, Oriental sort of idling. Callers at Heartholm grew
+disapprovingly accustomed to the sight of the grotesque face and figure
+peering through the shrubberies; they shrugged their shoulders
+impatiently, coming upon the recumbent child dreamily gazing at his own
+reflection in the lily-pond, looking necromantically out from the molten
+purple of a wind-blown beech, or standing at gaze in a clump of iris.
+
+Strang with his amused laugh fended off all protest and neighborly
+advice.
+
+"That's Gargoyle's special variety of hashish. He lives in a
+flower-harem--in a five-year-old Solomon's Song. I've often seen the
+irises kowtowing to him, and his attitude toward them is distinctly
+personal and lover-like. If that little chap could only talk there would
+be some fun, but what Gargoyle thinks would hardly fit itself to
+words--besides, then"--Strang twinkled at the idea--"none of us would
+fancy having him around with those natural eyes--that undressed little
+mind."
+
+It was in good-humored explanations like this that the Strangs managed
+to conceal their real interest in Gargoyle. They did not remind people
+of their only child, the brave boy of seven, who died before they came
+to Mockwood. Under the common sense that set the two instantly to work
+building a new home, creating new associations, lay the everlasting pain
+of an old life, when, as parents of a son, they had seemed to tread
+springier soil, to breathe keener, more vital air. And, though the
+Strangs adhered patiently to the recognized technicalities of Mockwood
+existence, they never lost sight of a hope, of which, against the
+increasing evidence of worldly logic, their human hearts still made
+ceaseless frantic attestation.
+
+Very slowly, but very constructively, it had become a fierce though
+governed passion with both--to learn something of the spiritual life
+coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably
+had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held
+some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere,
+that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent
+rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and his wife
+stood to Mockwooders for no special cult or fad; it was only between
+themselves that their quest had become a slowly developing motive.
+
+"Gargoyle was under the rose-arbor this morning." It was according to
+custom that Evelyn Strang would relate the child's latest phase. "He sat
+there without stirring such a long time that I was fascinated. I noticed
+that he never picked a rose, never smelled one. The early sun fell
+slanting through their petals till they glowed like thin little wheels
+of fire. John dear, it was that scalloped fire which Gargoyle was
+staring at. The flowers seemed to lean toward him, vibrating color and
+perfumes too delicate for me to hear. _I_ only saw and smelled the
+flowers; Gargoyle looked as if he _felt_ them! Don't laugh; you know we
+look at flowers because when we were little, people always said, 'See
+the pretty flower, smell the pretty flower,' but no one said, 'Listen
+and see if you can hear the flower grow; be still and see if you can
+catch the flower speaking.'"
+
+Strang never did laugh, never brushed away these fantastic ideas.
+Settling back in his piazza chair, his big hands locked together, he
+would listen, amusing himself with his pet theory of Gargoyle's
+"undressed mind."
+
+"By the way," he said once, "that reminds me, have you ever seen our
+young Solomon of the flower-harem smile?"
+
+"Of course I haven't; neither have you." Young Mrs. Strang averred it
+confidently. "He never has smiled, poor baby, nor cried--his mother
+told me that long ago."
+
+The banker kept his eyes on the treetops; he had his finger-tips nicely
+balanced before he remarked, with seeming irrelevance:
+
+"You know that nest in the tree we call the Siegfried tree?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"The other day a bird fell out of it, one of the young ones, pushed out
+by a housecleaning mother, I suppose. It killed the poor little
+feathered gawk. I saw Gargoyle run, quick as a flash, and pick it up. He
+pushed open the closing eyes, tried to place the bird on a hollyhock
+stalk, to spread its wings, in every way to give it motion. When, after
+each attempt, he saw it fall to the ground, he stood still, looking at
+it very hard. Suddenly, to my surprise, he seemed to understand
+something, to _comprehend_ it fully and delightedly. He laughed." Strang
+stopped, looking intently at his wife.
+
+"I can imagine that laugh," she mused.
+
+Strang shook his head. "I don't think you can. It--it wasn't pleasant.
+It was as uncanny as the rest of the little chap--a long, rattling,
+eerie sound, as if a tree should groan or a butterfly curse; but
+wait--there's more." In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding, "Then
+Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the
+air all around him. It was as if--" Here Strang, the normal, healthy man
+of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who
+had died who admitted in low tones: "You would have said--At least even
+_I_ could imagine that Gargoyle--well--that he _saw_ something like a
+released principle of life fly happily back to its main source--as if a
+little mote like a sunbeam should detach itself from a clod and,
+disembodied, dart back to its law of motion."
+
+For a long time they were silent, listening to the call of an oven-bird
+far back in the spring trees. At last Strang got up, filled his pipe,
+and puffed at it savagely before he said, "Of course the whole thing's
+damned nonsense." He repeated that a little brutally to his wife's
+silence before in softened voice he added, "Only, perhaps you're right,
+Evelyn; perhaps we, too, should be seeing that kind of thing,
+understanding what, God knows, we long to understand, if we had
+'undressed minds,' if we hadn't from earliest infancy been smeared all
+over with the plaster-of-Paris of 'normal thinking.'"
+
+Time flew swiftly by. The years at Heartholm were tranquil and happy
+until Strang, taken by one of the swift maladies which often come to men
+of his type, was mortally stricken. His wife at first seemed to feel
+only the strange ecstasy that sometimes comes to those who have beheld
+death lay its hand on a beloved body. She went coldly, rigidly, through
+every detail of the final laying away of the man who had loved her to
+the utmost power of his man's heart. Friends waited helplessly, dreading
+the furious after-crash of this unnatural mental and bodily endurance.
+Doctor Milton, Strang's life-long friend, who had fought for the
+banker's life, watched her carefully, but there was no catalepsy, no
+tranced woman held in a vise of endurance. Nothing Evelyn Strang did was
+odd or unnatural, only she seemed, particularly before the burial, to be
+waiting intently for some revelation, toward which her desire burned
+consumingly, like a powerful flame.
+
+Just before the funeral Strang's sister came to Doctor Milton.
+
+"Evelyn!" in whispered response to his concerned look. "Oh, doctor, I
+cannot think that this calmness is _right_ for her----" The poor,
+red-eyed woman, fighting hard for her own composure, motioned to the
+room where, with the cool lattices drawn, and a wave of flowers breaking
+on his everlasting sleep, the master of Heartholm lay. "She has gone in
+there with that little deaf-and-dumb child. I saw her standing with him,
+staring all about her. Somehow it seemed to me that Gargoyle was
+smiling--that he _saw_ something----!"
+
+For long weeks Doctor Milton stayed on at Heartholm, caring for Mrs.
+Strang. From time to time the physician also studied and questioned
+Gargoyle. Questioned in verity, for the practised hand could feel rigid
+muscles and undeveloped glands that answered more truthfully than
+words. Whatever conclusions Milton arrived at, he divulged to no one but
+Mrs. Strang. What he had to say roused the desolate woman as nothing
+else could have done. To the rest of the world little or nothing was
+explained. But, after the consent of the mother at the gardener's
+cottage had been gained, Doctor Milton left Heartholm, taking Gargoyle
+with him.
+
+In the office of Dr. Pauli Mach, the professional tongue was freed.
+Milton, with the half-quizzical earnestness habitual to him, told his
+story, which was followed by the exchange of much interesting data.
+
+The two fell back on the discussion of various schools where Gargoyle
+might be put under observation. At last, feeling in the gravely polite
+attention of the more eminent man a waning lack of interest, Milton
+reluctantly concluded the interview.
+
+"I'll write to Mrs. Strang and tell her your conclusions; she won't
+accept them--her own husband humored her in the thing. What John Strang
+himself believed I never really knew, but I think he had wisdom in his
+generation."
+
+Milton stood there, hesitating; he looked abstractedly at the apathetic
+little figure of Gargoyle sitting in the chair.
+
+"We talk of inherent human nature," said the doctor, slowly, "as if we
+had all knowledge concerning the _possibilities_ of that nature's best
+and worst. Yet I have sometimes wondered if what we call mentally askew
+people are not those that possess attributes which society is not wise
+enough to help them use wisely--mightn't such people be like
+fine-blooded animals who sniff land and water where no one else suspects
+any? Given a certain kink in a human brain, and there might result
+capacity we ought to consider, even if we can't, in our admittably
+systematized civilization, utilize it."
+
+The Swiss doctor nodded, magnetic eyes and mouth smiling.
+
+"Meanwhile"--in his slow, careful speech--"meanwhile we do what we can
+to preserve the type which from long experience we know _wears_ best."
+
+Milton nodded. He moved to go, one hand on Gargoyle's unresponsive
+shoulder, when the office door swung open.
+
+"Now this is real trouble," laughed a woman's fresh, deep-chested voice.
+"Doctor Mach, it means using one of your tall measuring-glasses or
+permitting these lovely things to wilt; some one has inundated us with
+flowers. I've already filled one bath-tub; I've even used the buckets in
+the operating-room."
+
+The head nurse stood there, white-frocked, smiling, her stout arms full
+of rosy gladioli and the lavender and white of Japanese iris. The two
+doctors started to help her with the fragrant burden, but not before
+Gargoyle sprang out of his chair. With a start, as if shocked into
+galvanic motion, the boy sat upright. With a throttled cry he leaped at
+the surprised woman. He bore down upon her flowers as if they had been a
+life-preserver, snatching at them as if to prevent himself from being
+sucked under by some strange mental undertow. The softly-colored bloom
+might have had some vital magnetizing force for the child's blood, to
+which his whole feeble nature responded. Tearing the colored mass from
+the surprised nurse's arms, Gargoyle sank to the floor. He sat there
+caressing the flowers, smiling, making uncouth efforts to speak. The
+arms that raised him were gentle enough. They made no attempt to take
+from him his treasures. They sat him on the table, watching the little
+thin hands move ardently, yet with a curious deftness and delicacy, amid
+the sheaf of color. As the visionary eyes peered first into one
+golden-hearted lily, then into another, Milton felt stir, in spite of
+himself, Strang's old conviction of the "undressed mind." He said
+nothing, but stole a glance at the face of his superior. Doctor Mach was
+absorbed. He stood the boy on the table before him. The nurse stripped
+Gargoyle, then swiftly authoritative fingers traveled up and down the
+small, thin frame.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Life at Heartholm went on very much the same. The tender-hearted
+observer might have noted that the gardens held the same flowers year
+after year, all the perennials and hardy blooms John Strang had loved.
+No matter what had been his widow's courageous acceptance of modern
+stoicism, the prevailing idea that incurable grief is merely "morbid,"
+yet, in their own apartments where their own love had been lived, was
+every mute image and eloquent trifle belonging to its broken arc. Here,
+with Strang's books on occult science, with other books of her own
+choosing, the wife lived secretly, unknown of any other human being, the
+long vigil of waiting for some sign or word from the spirit of one who
+by every token of religion and faith she could not believe dead--only to
+her wistful earthly gaze, hidden. She also hid in her heart one
+strangely persistent hope--namely, Gargoyle! Letters from Doctor Milton
+had been full of significance. The last letter triumphantly concluded:
+
+     Your young John Strang Berber, alias Gargoyle, can talk now, with
+     only one drawback: as yet he doesn't know any words!
+
+The rapidly aging mother at the gardener's cottage took worldly pride in
+what was happening to her youngest.
+
+"I allus knowed he was smart," the woman insisted. "My Johnny! To think
+of him speaking his mind out like any one else! I allus took his part--I
+could ha' told 'em he had his own notions!"
+
+There was no doubt as to Gargoyle's having the "notions." As the slow
+process of speech was taught and the miracle of fitting words to things
+was given unto John Berber, alias Gargoyle, it was hard for those
+watching over him to keep the riotous perceptions from retarding the
+growing mechanistics. Close-mouthed the boy was, and, they said, always
+would be; but watchful eyes and keen intuitions penetrated to the silent
+orgies going on within him. So plainly did the fever of his education
+begin to wear on his physical frame that wary Doctor Mach shook his
+head. "Here I find too many streams of thought coursing through one
+field," said the careful Swiss. "The field thus grows stony and bears
+nothing. Give this field only one stream that shall be nourishing."
+
+For other supernormal developments that "one stream" might have been
+music or sports. For Gargoyle it happened to be flowers. The botanist
+with whom he was sent afield not only knew his science, but guessed at
+more than his science. His were the beatitudes of the blue sky; water,
+rocks, and trees his only living testament. Under his tutelage, with the
+eyes of Doctor Mach ever on his growing body, and with his own special
+gifts of concentration and perception, at last came to Gargoyle the
+sudden whisper of academic sanction--namely, "genius."
+
+He himself seemed never to hear this whisper. What things--superimposed
+on the new teeming world of material actualities--he _did_ hear, he
+never told. Few could reach Berber; among fellow-students he was gay,
+amiable, up to a certain point even frivolous; then, as each companion
+in turn complained, a curtain seemed to drop, a colorless wrap of
+unintelligibility enveloped him like a chameleon's changing skin; the
+youth, as if he lived another life on another plane, walked apart.
+
+Doctor Milton, dropping into the smoking-room of a popular confrère, got
+a whiff of the prevailing gossip about his protégé.
+
+"I'll be hanged if I can associate psychics with a biceps like Berber's;
+somehow those things seem the special prerogative of anemic women in
+white cheese-cloth fooling with 'planchette' and 'currents.'"
+
+"You've got another guess," a growling neurologist volunteered. "Why
+shouldn't psychic freaks have biceps? We keep forgetting that we've
+dragged our fifty-year-old carcasses into an entirely new age--a
+wireless, horseless, man-flying, star-chasing age. Why, after shock upon
+shock of scientific discovery, shouldn't the human brain, like a
+sensitive plate, be thinned down to keener, more sensitive,
+perceptions?"
+
+Some one remarked that in the case of Berber, born of a simple country
+woman and her uneducated husband, this was impossible.
+
+Another man laughed. "Berber may be a Martian, or perhaps he was
+originally destined to be the first man on Jupiter. He took the wrong
+car and landed on this globe. Why not? How do we know what agency
+carries pollen of human life from planet to planet?"
+
+Milton, smiling at it all, withdrew. He sat down and wrote a
+long-deferred letter to Mrs. Strang.
+
+     I have asked John Berber if he would care to revisit his old home.
+     It seemed never to have occurred to him that he _had_ a home! When
+     I suggested the thing he followed it up eagerly, as he does every
+     new idea, asking me many keen questions as to his relatives, who
+     had paid for his education, etc. Of the actual facts of his cure he
+     knows little except that there was special functioning out of gear,
+     and that now the wheels have been greased. Doctor Mach is
+     desperately proud of him, especially of the way in which he
+     responds to _normal diversion-environments_ and _friendships_. You
+     must instruct his mother very carefully as to references to his
+     former condition. It is best that he should not dwell upon the
+     former condition. Your young friend, Gargoyle, sees no more spooks.
+     He is rapidly developing into a very remarkable and unconceited
+     horticulturist!
+
+The first few days at Mockwood were spent at the little gardener's
+cottage, from which the other youngsters had flown. Berber, quietly
+moving about the tiny rooms, sitting buried in a scientific book or
+taking long trips afield, was the recipient of much maternal flattery.
+He accepted it all very gently; the young culturist had an air of quiet
+consideration for every one and absolutely no consciousness of himself.
+He presumed upon no special prerogatives, but set immediately to work to
+make himself useful. It was while he was weeding the box borders leading
+to the herb-gardens of Heartholm that Mrs. Strang first came upon him.
+Her eyes, suddenly confronted with his as he got to his feet, dropped
+almost guiltily, but when they sought his face a second time, Evelyn
+Strang experienced a disappointment that was half relief. The sunburnt
+youth, in khaki trousers and brown-flannel shirt, who knelt by the
+border before her was John Strang Berber, Doctor Mach's human
+masterpiece; this was not "Gargoyle."
+
+"That is hardly suitable work for a distinguished horticulturist," the
+mistress of Heartholm smiled at the wilting piles of pusley and sorrel.
+
+White teeth flashed, deep eyes kindled. Berber rose and, going to a
+garden seat, took up some bits of glass and a folded paper. He showed
+her fragments of weed pressed upon glass plates, envelopes of seeds
+preserved for special analyzation. "There's still a great undiscovered
+country in weed chemistry," he eagerly explained, "perhaps an anodyne
+for every pain and disease."
+
+"Yes, and deadly poisons, too, for every failure and grief." The
+mistress of Heartholm said it lightly as she took the garden seat,
+thinking how pleasant it was to watch the resolute movements and
+splendid physical development of the once weazened Gargoyle. She began
+sorting out her embroidery silks as Berber, the bits of glass still in
+his hand, stood before her. He was smiling.
+
+"Yes, deadly poisons, too," agreeing with a sort of exultation, so
+blithely, indeed, that the calmly moving fingers of the mistress of
+Heartholm were suddenly arrested. A feeling as powerful and associative
+as the scent of a strong perfume stole over Evelyn Strang.
+
+Before she could speak Berber had resumed his weeding. "It's good to get
+dictatorship over all this fight of growing," looking up for her
+sympathy with hesitance, which, seen in the light of his acknowledged
+genius, was the more significant. "You don't mind my taking Michael's
+place? He was very busy this morning. I have no credentials, but my
+mother seems to think I am a born gardener."
+
+This lack of conceit, this unassuming practicality, the sort of thing
+with which Gargoyle's mind had been carefully inoculated for a long
+time, baffled, while it reassured Mrs. Strang. Also the sense of sacred
+trust placed in her hands made her refrain from any psychic probing.
+
+For a long while she found it easy to exert this self-control. The
+lonely woman, impressed by the marvelous "cure" of John Berber,
+magnetized by his youth and sunny enthusiasms back to the old dreaming
+pleasure in the Heartholm gardens, might in the absorbed days to come
+have forgotten--only there was a man's photograph in her bedroom, placed
+where her eyes always rested on it, her hand could bring it to her lips;
+the face looking out at her seemed to say but one thing:
+
+"_You knew me--I knew you. What we knew and were to each other had not
+only to do with our bodies. Men call me 'dead' but you know that I am
+not. Why do you not study and work and pray to learn what I am become,
+that you may turn to me, that I may reach to you?_"
+
+Mockwooders, dropping in at Heartholm for afternoon tea, began to
+accustom themselves to finding Mrs. Strang sitting near some flower-bed
+where John Berber worked, or going with him over his great books of
+specimens. The smirk the fashionable world reserves for anything not
+usual in its experience was less marked in this case than it might have
+been in others. Even those who live in "residential parks" are sometimes
+forced (albeit with a curious sense of personal injury) to accept the
+idea that they who have greatly suffered find relief in "queer" ways.
+Mockwooders, assisting at the Heartholm tea-hour, and noting Berber
+among other casual guests, merely felt aggrieved and connoted
+"queerness."
+
+For almost a year, with the talking over of plans for John Strang's
+long-cherished idea of a forest garden at Heartholm, there had been no
+allusion between mistress and gardener to that far-off fantasy, the life
+of little Gargoyle. During the autumn the two drew plans together for
+those spots which next spring were to blossom in the beech glade. They
+sent to far-off countries for bulbs, experimented in the Heartholm
+greenhouses with special soils and fertilizers, and differences of heat
+and light; they transplanted, grafted, and redeveloped this and that
+woodland native. Unconsciously all formal strangeness wore away,
+unconsciously the old bond between Gargoyle and his mistress was
+renewed.
+
+Thus it was, without the slightest realization as to what it might lead,
+that Evelyn Strang one afternoon made some trifling allusion to Berber's
+association with the famous Doctor Mach. As soon as she had done so,
+fearing from habit for some possible disastrous result, she tried
+immediately to draw away from the subject. But the forbidden spring had
+been touched--a door that had long been closed between them swung open.
+Young Berber, sorting dahlia bulbs into numbered boxes, looked up; he
+met her eyes unsuspiciously.
+
+"I suppose," thoughtfully, "that that is the man to whom I should feel
+more grateful than to any other human being."
+
+The mistress of Heartholm did not reply. In spite of her tranquil air,
+Evelyn Strang was gripped with a sudden apprehension. How much, how
+little, did Berber know? She glanced swiftly at him, then bent her head
+over her embroidery. The colored stream of Indian summer flowed around
+them. A late bird poured out his little cup of song.
+
+"My mother will not answer my questions." Young Berber, examining two
+curiously formed bulbs, shook the earth from them; he stuffed them into
+his trousers pocket. "But Michael got talking yesterday and told me--Did
+you know, Mrs. Strang? I was thought to be an idiot until I was twelve
+years old--born deaf and dumb?"
+
+It was asked so naturally, with a scientific interest as impersonal as
+if he were speaking of one of the malformed bulbs in his pocket, that at
+first his mistress felt no confusion. Her eyes and hands busying
+themselves with the vivid silks, she answered.
+
+"I remember you as a little pale boy who loved flowers and did such odd,
+interesting things with them. Mr. Strang and I were attracted to your
+mysterious plays.... No, you never spoke, but we were not sure you could
+not hear--and"--drawing a swift little breath--"we were always
+interested in what--in what--you seemed--to _see_!"
+
+There was a pause. He knelt there, busily sorting the bulbs. Suddenly
+to the woman sitting on the garden bench the sun-bathed October gardens
+seemed alive with the myriad questioning faces of the fall flowers;
+wheels and disks like aureoled heads leaned toward her, mystical fire in
+their eyes, the colored flames of their being blown by passionate desire
+of revelation. "This is your moment," the flowers seemed to say to her.
+"Ask him _now_."
+
+But that she might not yet speak out her heart to John Berber his
+mistress was sure. She was reminded of what Strang had so often said,
+referring to their lonely quest--that actual existence was like a
+forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave
+buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked
+bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what
+radiant coasts or awful headlands might lie beyond the enveloping mists.
+Soon, the wistful woman knew, she would be making some casual
+observations about the garden, the condition of the soil. Yet, if ever
+the moment had come to question him who had once been "Gargoyle," that
+moment was come now!
+
+Berber lifted on high a mass of thickly welded bulbs clinging to a
+single dahlia stalk. He met her gaze triumphantly.
+
+"Michael says he planted only a few of this variety, the soft,
+gold-hearted lavender. See what increase." The youth plunged supple
+fingers into the balmy-scented loam, among the swelling tuber forms. "A
+beautiful kind of ugliness," he mused. "I remember I used to think----"
+The young gardener, as if he felt that the eyes fixed upon him were
+grown suddenly too eager, broke abruptly off.
+
+"Go on, John Berber. What you have to say is always interesting."
+
+It was said calmly, with almost maternal encouragement, but the fingers
+absorbed in the bright silks fumbled and erred. "Used to think"--words
+such as these filtered like sunlight to the hope lying deep in Evelyn
+Strang's heart.
+
+But young Berber leaned upon his garden fork, looking past her. Over the
+youth's face crept a curious expression of wrapt contemplation, of
+super-occupation, whether induced by her words or not she could not
+tell. Furtively Mrs. Strang studied him.... How soon would he drop that
+mystical look and turn to her with the casual "educated" expression she
+had come to know so well?
+
+Suddenly, nervousness impelling her, she broke in upon his revery:
+
+"How wonderful, with such dreams as you must have had, to be educated!
+How very grateful you must be to Doctor Mach."
+
+She heard her own words helplessly, as if in a dream, and, if the
+unwisdom of this kind of conversation had impressed the mistress of
+Heartholm before, now she could have bitten off her tongue with that
+needless speech on it. Young Berber, however, seemed hardly to have
+heard her; he stood there, the "Gargoyle" look still in his eyes, gazing
+past his mistress into some surrounding mystery of air element. It was
+to her, watching him, as if those brooding, dilated pupils might behold,
+besides infinitesimal mystery of chemical atoms, other mysteries--colorless
+pools of air where swam, like sea anemones, radiant forms of released
+spirit; invisible life-trees trembling with luminous fruit of occult being!
+
+When Berber turned this look, naked as a sword, back to Evelyn Strang,
+she involuntarily shivered. But the boy's face was unconscious. His
+expression changed only to the old casual regard as he said, very
+simply:
+
+"You see, I wish they had not educated me!"
+
+The confession came with inevitable shock. If she received it with
+apparent lightness, it was that she might, with all the powers a woman
+understands, rise to meet what she felt was coming. The barrier down, it
+was comparatively easy to stand in the breach, making her soft note of
+deprecation, acknowledging playfully that the stress of so-called
+"normal" life must indeed seem a burden to one who had hitherto talked
+with flowers, played with shadows. Berber, however, seemed hardly to
+hear her; there was no tenseness in the youth's bearing; he merely
+gazed thoughtfully past her efforts, repeating:
+
+"No--I wish they had not taught me. I have not really gained _knowledge_
+by being taught."
+
+Mrs. Strang was genuinely puzzled. Yet she understood; it was merely
+_theories about life_ that he had gained. Again she called to mind a
+sentence in Doctor Milton's letter: "I know that you have followed the
+case in such a way as to understand what would be your responsibility
+toward this _newly made_ human soul." Was it right to question Berber?
+Could it be actually harmful to him to go on? And yet was it not her
+only chance, after years of faithful waiting?
+
+Trying to keep her voice steady, she reproached him:
+
+"No? With all that being educated means, all the gift for humanity?"
+
+The young fellow seemed not to get her meaning. He picked up the garden
+fork. Thoughtfully scraping the damp earth from its prongs, he repeated,
+"All that it means for humanity?"
+
+"Why not"--urging the thing a little glibly--"why not? You can do your
+part now; you will help toward the solving of age-long mysteries. You
+must be steward of--of"--Mrs. Strang hesitated, then continued,
+lamely--"of your special insight. Why--already you have begun--Think of
+the weed chemistry." Had he noticed it? There was in her voice a curious
+note, almost of pleading, though she tried to speak with authority.
+
+John Berber, once called "Gargoyle," listened. The youth stood there,
+his foot resting upon the fork but not driving it into the ground. He
+caught her note of anxiety, laughing in light, spontaneous reassurance,
+taking her point with ease.
+
+"Oh--I know," shrugging his shoulders in true collegian's style. "I
+understand my lesson." Berber met her look. "I had the gift of mental
+_unrestraint_, if you choose to call it that," he summed up, "and was of
+no use in the world. Now I have the curse of _mental restraint_ and can
+participate with others in their curse." Suddenly aware of her helpless
+dismay and pain, the boy laughed again, but this time with a slight
+nervousness she had never before seen in him. "Why, we are not in
+earnest, dear Mrs. Strang." It was with coaxing, manly respect that he
+reminded her of that. "We are only joking, playing with an idea.... I
+think you can trust me," added John Berber, quietly.
+
+The surprised woman felt that she could indeed "trust" him; that Berber
+was absolutely captain of the self which education had given him; but
+that from time to time he had been conscious of another self he had been
+unwise enough to let her see. She silently struggled with her own
+nature, knowing that were she judicious she would take that moment to
+rise and leave him. Such action, however, seemed impossible now. Here
+was, perhaps, revelation, discovery! All the convictions of her lonely,
+brooding life were on her. Temptation again seized her. With her longing
+to have some clue to that spirit world she and her husband had believed
+in, it seemed forewritten, imperative, inevitable, that she remain.
+Trying to control herself, she fumbled desperately on:
+
+"When you were little, Mr. Strang and I used to notice--we grew to
+think--that because you had been shut away from contact with other
+minds, because you had never been told _what_ to see, as children are
+told, 'Look at the fire,' 'See the water,' and so forever regard those
+things in just that way, not seeing--other things--Oh, we thought that
+perhaps--perhaps----"
+
+It was futile, incoherent; her tongue seemed to dry in her mouth.
+Besides, the abashed woman needs must pause before a silence that to her
+strained sense seemed rebuking. She glanced furtively up at the youth
+standing there. It troubled the mistress of Heartholm to realize that
+her protégé was staring gravely at her, as if she had proposed some
+guilty and shameful thing.
+
+At last Berber, with a boyish sigh, seemed to shake the whole matter
+off. He turned to his bulbs; half at random he caught up a
+pruning-knife, cutting vindictively into one of them. For the moment
+there was silence, then the young gardener called his mistress's
+attention to the severed root in his hand.
+
+"A winy-looking thing, isn't it? See those red fibers? Why shouldn't
+such roots, and nuts like those great, burnished horse-chestnuts
+there--yes, and cattails, and poke-berries, and skunk cabbages, give
+forth an entirely new outfit of fruits and vegetables?" Berber smiled
+his young ruminating smile; then, with inevitable courtesy, he seemed to
+remember that he had not answered her question. "I am not surprised that
+you and Mr. Strang thought such things about me. I wonder that you have
+not questioned me before--only you see _now_--I can't answer!" The boy
+gave her his slow, serious smile, reminding her.
+
+"You must remember that I am like a foreigner--only worse off, for
+foreigners pick up a few words for their most vital needs, and I have no
+words at all--for what--for what vital things I used to know--so that
+perhaps in time I shall come to forget that I ever knew anything
+different from--other persons' knowledge." Berber paused, regarding his
+mistress intently, as if wistfully trying to see what she made of all
+this. Then he continued:
+
+"One of our professors at college died, and the men of his class were
+gloomy; some even cried, others could not trust themselves to speak of
+him.... I noticed that they all called him 'poor' Landworth.... I could
+see that they felt something the way I do when I miss out on a chemical
+experiment, or spoil a valuable specimen--only more so--a great deal
+more." The boy knit his brows, puzzling it all out. "Well, it's queer. I
+liked that professor, too; he was very kind to me--but when I saw him
+dead I felt glad--glad! Why"--Berber looked at her searchingly--"I grew
+to be afraid some one would find out _how_ glad!"
+
+The young fellow, still anxiously searching her face, dropped his voice.
+"You are the only person I dare tell this to--for I understand the
+world--" She noted that he spoke as if "the world" were a kind of plant
+whose needs he had fathomed. "But after that," concluded Berber,
+speaking as if quite to himself--"after that I somehow came to see that
+I had been--well, educated _backward_."
+
+She moved impatiently; the youth, seeing the question in her face,
+answered the demand of its trembling eagerness, explaining:
+
+"Do you not see--I have--sometimes _known_, not 'guessed' nor
+'believed,' but _known_ that death was a wonderful, happy thing--a
+fulfilment, a satisfaction to him who dies--but I have been educated
+backward into a life where people cannot seem to help regarding it as a
+sad thing. And----"
+
+"Yes?--Yes?" breathed the eager woman. "Tell me--tell me----"
+
+But he had come suddenly to a full stop. As if appalled to find only
+empty words, or no words at all, for some astounding knowledge he would
+communicate to her, he stammered painfully; then, as if he saw himself
+caught in guilt, colored furiously. Evelyn Strang could see the
+inevitable limitations of his world training creep slowly over him like
+cement hardening around the searching roots of his mind. She marveled.
+She remembered Strang's pet phrase, "the plaster of Paris of so-called
+'normal thinking.'" Then the youth's helpless appeal came to her:
+
+"Do you not think that I am doing wrong to speak of these things?"
+Berber asked, with dignity.
+
+The mistress of Heartholm was silent. Recklessly she put by all Doctor
+Mach's prophecies. She could not stop here; her whole soul demanded that
+she go further. There were old intuitions--the belief that she and
+Strang had shared together, that, under rationalized schemes of thought,
+knowledge of inestimable hope was being hidden from the world. Here was
+this boy of the infinite vision, of the "_backward educated_" mind,
+ready to tell miraculous things of a hidden universe. Could she strike
+him dumb? It would be as if Lazarus had come forth from the open grave
+and men were to bandage again his ecstatic lips!
+
+Suddenly, as if in answer to her struggle, Berber spoke. She was aware
+that he looked at her curiously with a sort of patient disdain.
+
+"The world is so sure, so contented, isn't it?" the youth demanded of
+her, whether in innocence or irony she could not tell. "People are
+trained, or they train themselves, by the millions, to think of things
+in exactly one way." He who had once been "Gargoyle" looked piercingly
+into the eyes of this one being to whom at least he was not afraid to
+speak.
+
+"Anything you or I might guess outside of what other people might
+accept," the boy reminded her, austerely, "could be called by just one
+unpleasant name." He regarded the face turned to his, recognizing the
+hunger in it, with a mature and pitying candor, concluding: "After
+to-day we must never speak of these things. I shall never dare, you must
+never dare--and so--" He who had once been "Gargoyle" suddenly dropped
+his head forward on his breast, muttering--"and so, that is all."
+
+Evelyn Strang rose. She stood tall and imperious in the waning afternoon
+light. She was bereaved mother, anguished wife; she was a dreamer driven
+out of the temple of the dream, and what she had to do was desperate.
+Her voice came hard and resolute.
+
+"It is _not_ all," the woman doggedly insisted. The voiceless woe of one
+who had lost a comrade by death was on her. In her eyes was fever let
+loose, a sob, like one of a flock of imprisoned wild birds fluttered out
+from the cage of years. "Oh no--no!" the woman pleaded, more as if to
+some hidden power of negation than to the boy before her--"Oh no--no,
+this _cannot_ be all, not for me! The world must never be told--it could
+not understand; but _I_ must know, I _must_ know." She took desperate
+steps back and forth.
+
+"John Berber, if there is anything in your memory, your knowledge; even
+if it is only that you have _imagined_ things--if they are so beautiful
+or so terrible that you can never speak of them--for fear--for fear no
+one would understand, you might, you might, even then, tell me--Do you
+not hear? You might tell _me_. I authorize it, I command it."
+
+The woman standing in the autumn gardens clenched her hands. She looked
+round her into the clear air at the dense green and gold sunshine
+filtering through the colored trees, the softly spread patens of the
+cosmos, the vivid oriflammes of the chrysanthemums. Her voice was
+anguished, as if they two stood at a secret door of which Berber alone
+had the key, which for some reason he refused to use.
+
+"I--of all the world," her whisper insisted. "If you might never speak
+again--I should understand."
+
+Berber, his face grown now quite ashen, looked at her. Something in her
+expression seemed to transfix and bind him. Suddenly shutting his teeth
+together, he stood up, his arms folded on his broad chest. The afternoon
+shadows spread pools of darkness around their feet, the flowers seemed
+frozen in shapes of colored ice, as his dark, controlled eyes fixed
+hers.
+
+"You--you dare?" the youth breathed, thickly.
+
+She faced him in her silent daring. Then it seemed to her as if the sky
+must roll up like a scroll and the earth collapse into a handful of dust
+falling through space, for she knew that little Gargoyle of the
+"undressed mind"--little Gargoyle, looking out of John Berber's trained
+eyes as out of windows of ground glass, was flitting like a shadow
+across her own intelligence, trying to tell her what things he had
+always known about life and death, and the myriads of worlds spinning
+back in their great circles to the Power which had set them spinning.
+
+Not until after the first halting, insufficient words, in which the boy
+sought to give his secret to the woman standing there, did she
+comprehend anything of the struggle that went on within him. But when
+suddenly Berber's arms dropped to his sides and she saw how he shivered,
+as if at some unearthly touch on his temples, she was alert. Color was
+surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the
+instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be
+swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language
+and he could helplessly stammer:
+
+"I cannot--It--it will not come--It is as I told you--I have been taught
+no _words_--I _cannot_ say _what I know_."
+
+His powerful frame stood placed among the garden surroundings like that
+of a breathing statue, and his amazed companion witnessed this miracle
+of physical being chained by the limitations of one environment, while
+the soul of that being, clairaudient, clairvoyant, held correspondence
+with another environment. She saw Berber smile as if with some exquisite
+sense of beauty and rapture that he understood, but could not
+communicate, then helplessly motion with his hands. But even while she
+held her breath, gazing at him, a change came over the radiant features.
+He looked at her again, his face worked; at last John Berber with a
+muffled groan burst into terrible human tears.
+
+She stood there helpless, dumfounded at his agony.
+
+"You--you cannot speak?" she faltered.
+
+For answer he dropped his face into his strong hands. He stood there,
+his tall body quivering. And she knew that her dream was over.
+
+She was forced to understand. John Berber's long and perfect world
+training held him in a vise. His lips were closed upon his secret, and
+she knew that they would be closed for evermore.
+
+They remained, silently questioning each other, reading at last in each
+other's speechlessness some comfort in this strange common knowledge,
+for which, indeed, there were no human words, which must be forever
+borne dumbly between them. Then slowly, with solemn tenderness, the
+obligation of that unspoken knowledge came into Evelyn Strang's face.
+She saw the youth standing there with grief older than the grief of the
+world stabbing his heart, drowning his eyes. She laid a quiet hand on
+his shoulder.
+
+"I understand." With all the mother, all the woman in her, she tried to
+say it clearly and calmly. "I understand; you need never fear me--and we
+have the whole world of flowers to speak for us." She gazed pitifully
+into the dark, storming eyes where for that one fleeting instant the
+old look of "Gargoyle" had risen, regarding her, until forced back by
+the trained intelligence Of "John Berber," which had always dominated,
+and at last, she knew, had killed it. "We will make the flowers
+speak--for us." Again she tried to speak lightly, comfortingly, but
+something within the woman snapped shut like a door. Slowly she returned
+to the garden seat. For a moment she faltered, holding convulsively to
+it, then her eyes, blinded from within, closed.
+
+Yet, later, when the mistress of Heartholm went back through the
+autumnal garden to the room where were the books and treasures of John
+Strang, she carried something in her hand. It was a lily bulb from which
+she and Berber hoped to bring into being a new and lovely flower. She
+took it into that room where for so many years the pictured eyes of her
+husband had met hers in mute questioning, and stood there for a moment,
+looking wistfully about her. Outside a light breeze sprang up, a single
+dried leaf rustled against the window-pane. Smiling wistfully upon the
+little flower-pot, Mrs. Strang set it carefully away in the dark.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Edwina
+Stanton Babcock.
+
+
+
+
+GHITZA[4]
+
+#By# KONRAD BERCOVICI
+
+From _The Dial_
+
+
+That winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The Danube froze
+solid a week before Christmas and remained tight for five months. It was
+as if the blue waters were suddenly turned into steel. From across the
+river, from the Dobrudja, on sleds pulled by long-horned oxen, the
+Tartars brought barrels of frozen honey, quarters of killed lambs,
+poultry and game, and returned heavily laden with bags of flour and
+rolls of sole leather. The whole day long the crack of whips and the
+curses of the drivers rent the icy atmosphere. Whatever their
+destination, the carters were in a hurry to reach human habitation
+before nightfall--before the dreaded time when packs of wolves came out
+to prey for food.
+
+In cold, clear nights, when even the wind was frozen still, the
+lugubrious howling of the wolf permitted no sleep. The indoor people
+spent the night praying for the lives and souls of the travellers.
+
+All through the winter there was not one morning but some man or animal
+was found torn or eaten in our neighbourhood. The people of the village
+at first built fires on the shores to scare the beasts away, but they
+had to give it up because the thatched roofs of the huts in the village
+were set on fire in windy nights by flying sparks. The cold cowed the
+fiercest dogs. The wolves, crazed by hunger, grew more daring from day
+to day. They showed their heads even in daylight. When Baba Hana, the
+old gypsy fortune-teller, ran into the school-house one morning and
+cried, "Wolf, wolf in the yard," the teacher was inclined to attribute
+her scare to a long drink the night before. But that very night, Stan,
+the horseshoer, who had returned late from the inn and had evidently not
+closed the door as he entered the smithy, was eaten up by the beasts.
+And the smithy stood in the centre of the village! A stone's throw from
+the inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church! He
+must have put up a hard fight, Stan. Three huge dark brown beasts, as
+big as cows' yearlings, were found brained. The body of big Stan had
+disappeared in the stomachs of the rest of the pack. The high leather
+boots and the hand that still gripped the handle of the sledgehammer
+were the only remains of the man. There was no blood, either. It had
+been lapped dry. That stirred the village. Not even enough to bury
+him--and he had been a good Christian! But the priest ordered that the
+slight remains of Stan be buried, Christian-like. The empty coffin was
+brought to the church and all the rites were carried out as if the body
+of Stan were there rather than in the stomachs of wild beasts.
+
+But after Stan's death the weather began to clear as if it had been
+God's will that such a price be paid for His clemency. The cold
+diminished daily and in a few days reports were brought from everywhere
+on the shore that the bridge of ice was giving way. Two weeks before
+Easter Sunday it was warm enough to give the cows an airing. The air
+cleared and the rays of the sun warmed man and beast. Traffic on the
+frozen river had ceased. Suddenly one morning a whip cracked, and from
+the bushes on the opposite shore of the Danube there appeared following
+one another six tent wagons, such as used by travelling gypsies, each
+wagon drawn by four horses harnessed side by side.
+
+The people on our side of the Danube called to warn the travellers that
+the ice was not thick enough to hold them. In a few minutes the whole
+village was near the river, yelling and cursing like mad. But after they
+realized that the intention was to cross the Danube at any cost, the
+people settled down to watch what was going to happen. In front of the
+first wagon walked a tall, grey-bearded man trying the solidity of the
+ice with a heavy stick. Flanking the last wagon, in open lines, walked
+the male population of the tribe. Behind them came the women and
+children. No one said a word. The eyes of the whole village were on the
+travellers, for every one felt that they were tempting Providence. Yet
+each one knew that Murdo, the chief of the tribe, who was well known to
+all, in fact to the whole Dobrudja, would not take such risks with his
+people without good reason.
+
+They had crossed to the middle of the frozen river in steady fashion,
+when Murdo shouted one word and the feet of every man and beast stopped
+short. The crossing of the river had been planned to the slightest
+detail. The people on the shore were excited. The women began to cry and
+the children to yell. They were driven inland by the men, who remained
+to watch what was going on. No assistance was possible.
+
+The tall chief of the gypsies walked to the left and chose another path
+on the ice. The movement continued. Slowly, slowly, in silence the
+gypsies approached the shore. Again they halted. Murdo was probing the
+ice with his stick. We could see that the feet of the horses were
+wrapped in bags, and instead of being shod each hoof was in a cushion
+made of straw. As Murdo felt his way, a noise at first as of the tearing
+of paper, but more distinct with every moment, came from somewhere in
+the distance.
+
+"Whoa, whoa, Murdo, the ice is breaking!" every one began to shout
+excitedly. The noise grew louder and louder as it approached. One could
+hear it coming steadily and gauge how much nearer it was. The ice was
+splitting lengthwise in numberless sheets which broke up in smaller
+parts and submerged gaily in the water, rising afterwards and climbing
+one on top of the other, as in a merry embrace.
+
+"Whoa, whoa, Murdo ..." but there was no time to give warning. With one
+gesture Murdo had given his orders. The wagons spread as for a frontal
+attack; the men seized the children and with the women at their heels
+they ran as fast as their legs could take them. On the shore every one
+fell to his knees in prayer. The strongest men closed their eyes, too
+horrified to watch the outcome. The noise of the cracking of the ice
+increased. A loud report, as of a dozen cannon, and the Danube was a
+river again--and all, all the gypsies had saved themselves.
+
+It was a gay afternoon, that afternoon, and a gay night also for the
+whole village. It drank the inn out of everything. The gypsies had a
+royal welcome. To all questions of why he had dared Providence, Murdo
+answered, "There was no food for my people and horses. The Tartars have
+none to sell."
+
+Murdo and his tribe became the guests of the village. His people were
+all lean. The men hardly carried themselves on their legs. Each one of
+them had something to nurse. The village doctor amputated toes and
+fingers; several women had to be treated for gangrene. The children of
+the tribe were the only ones that had not suffered much. It was Murdo's
+rule: "Children first, the horses next." The animals were stabled and
+taken charge of by the peasants. The gypsies went to live in the huts of
+the people in order to warm themselves back to life. Father liked Murdo,
+and so the old chief came to live with us. The nights were long. After
+supper we all sat in a semicircle around the large fireplace in which a
+big log of seasoned oak was always burning.
+
+I had received some books from a friend of the family who lived in the
+capital of the country, Bucharest. Among them was Carlyle's Heroes and
+Hero-Worship, translated into French. I was reading it when Murdo
+approached the table and said, "What a small Bible my son is reading."
+
+"It is not a Bible, it is a book of stories, Murdo."
+
+"Stories! Well, that's another thing."
+
+He looked over my shoulders into the book. As I turned the page he
+asked:
+
+"Is everything written in a book? I mean, is it written what the hero
+said and what she answered and how they said it? Is it written all
+about him and the villain? I mean are there signs, letters for
+everything; for laughter, cries, love gestures? Tell me."
+
+I explained as best I could and he marvelled. I had to give an example,
+so I read a full page from a storybook.
+
+"And is all that written in the book, my son? It is better than I
+thought possible, but not so good as when one tells a story.... It is
+like cloth woven by a machine, nice and straight, but it is not like the
+kind our women weave on the loom--but it is good; it is better than I
+thought possible. What are the stories in the book you are reading? Of
+love or of sorrow?"
+
+"Of neither, Murdo. Only about all the great heroes that have lived in
+this world of cowards."
+
+"About every one of them?" he asked again. "That's good. It is good to
+tell the stories of the heroes."
+
+He returned to the fireplace to light his pipe; then he came to me
+again.
+
+"If it is written in this book about all the great heroes, then there
+must also be the record of Ghitza--the great Ghitza, our hero. The
+greatest that ever lived. See, son, what is there said about him?"
+
+I turned the pages one by one to the end of the book and then reported,
+"Nothing, Murdo. Not even his name is mentioned."
+
+"Then this book is not a good book. The man who wrote it did not know
+every hero ... because not Alexander of Macedon and not even Napoleon
+was greater than Ghitza...."
+
+I sat near him at the fireplace and watched his wrinkled face while
+Murdo told me the story of Ghitza as it should be written in the book of
+heroes where the first place should be given to the greatest of them
+all....
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+About the birth of people, I, Murdo, the chief of the gypsy tribe which
+was ruled by the forefathers of my great-grandfather (who each ruled
+close to a hundred years)--about the birth of people, I, Murdo, can say
+this: That the seed of an oak gives birth to an oak, and that of a pine
+to a pine. No matter where the seed be carried by the winds, if it is
+the seed of an oak, an oak will grow; if it is the seed of a pine, a
+pine. So though it never was known who was the father of Ghitza, we knew
+him through his son. Ghitza's mother died because she bore him, the son
+of a white man--she, the daughter of the chief of our tribe. It was
+Lupu's rule to punish those who bore a child begotten from outside the
+tribe. But the child was so charming that he was brought up in the tent
+of one of our people. When Ghitza was ten years old, he worked alongside
+the men; and there was none better to try a horse before a customer than
+Ghitza. The oldest and slowest gathered all the strength it had and
+galloped and ran when it felt the bare boy on its back. Old mares
+frisked about like yearlings when he approached to mount them.
+
+In his fifteenth summer he was a man, tall, broad, straight and lissom
+as a locust tree. His face was like rich milk and his eyes as black as
+the night. When he laughed or sang--and he laughed and sang all the
+time--his mouth was like a rose in the morning, when the dewdrops hang
+on its outer petals. And he was strong and good. If it happened that a
+heavy cart was stuck in the mud of the road and the oxen could not budge
+it, Ghitza would crawl under the cart, get on all fours, and lift the
+cart clear of the mud. Never giving time to the driver to thank him, his
+work done, he walked quickly away, whistling a song through a trembling
+leaf between his lips. And he was loved by everybody; and the women died
+just for the looks of him. The whole tribe became younger and happier
+because of Ghitza. We travelled very much those days. Dobrudja belonged
+yet to the Turks and was inhabited mostly by Tartars. The villages were
+far apart and very small, so we could not stay long in any place.
+
+When Ghitza was twenty, our tribe, which was then ruled by my mighty
+grandfather, Lupu, happened to winter near Cerna Voda, a village on the
+other side of the Danube. We sold many horses to the peasants that
+winter. They had had a fine year. So our people had to be about the inn
+a good deal. Ghitza, who was one of the best traders, was in the inn the
+whole day. He knew every one. He knew the major and his wife and the two
+daughters and chummed with his son. And they all loved Ghitza, because
+he was so strong, so beautiful, and so wise. They never called him
+"tzigan" because he was fairer than they were. And there was quite a
+friendship between him and Maria, the smith's daughter. She was glad to
+talk to him and to listen to his stories when he came to the smithy. She
+helped her father in his work. She blew the bellows and prepared the
+shoes for the anvil. Her hair was as red as the fire and her arms round
+and strong. She was a sweet maid to speak to, and even the old priest
+liked to pinch her arms when she kissed his hand.
+
+Then came spring and the first Sunday dance in front of the inn. The
+innkeeper had brought a special band of musicians. They were seated on a
+large table between two trees, and all around them the village maidens
+and the young men, locked arm in arm in one long chain of youth, danced
+the Hora, turning round and round.
+
+Ghitza had been away to town, trading. When he came to the inn, the
+dance was already on. He was dressed in his best, wearing his new broad,
+red silken belt with his snow-white pantaloons and new footgear with
+silver bells on the ankles and tips. His shirt was as white and thin as
+air. On it the deftest fingers of our tribe had embroidered figures and
+flowers. On his head Ghitza wore a high black cap made of finest
+Astrakhan fur. And he had on his large ear-rings of white gold. Ghitza
+watched the dance for a while. Maria's right arm was locked with the arm
+of the smith's helper, and her left with the powerful arm of the mayor's
+son. Twice the long chain of dancing youths had gone around, and twice
+Ghitza had seen her neck and bare arms, and his blood boiled. When she
+passed him the third time, he jumped in, broke the hold between Maria
+and the smith's helper, and locked his arm in hers.
+
+Death could not have stopped the dance more suddenly. The musicians
+stopped playing. The feet stopped dancing. The arms freed themselves and
+hung limply.
+
+The smith's helper faced Ghitza with his arm uplifted.
+
+"You cursed tzigan! You low-born gypsy! How dare you break into our
+dance? Our dance!" Other voices said the same.
+
+Everybody expected blows, then knives and blood. But Ghitza just laughed
+aloud and they were all calmed. He pinned the smith's helper's arm and
+laughed. Then he spoke to the people as follows:
+
+"You can see on my face that I am fairer than any of you. I love Maria,
+but I will not renounce the people I am with. I love them. The smith's
+helper knows that I could kill him with one blow. But I shall not do it.
+I could fight a dozen of you together. You know I can. But I shall not
+do it. Instead I shall outdance all of you. Dance each man and woman of
+the village until she or he falls tired on the ground. And if I do this
+I am as you are, and Maria marries me without word of shame from you."
+
+And as he finished speaking he grasped the smith's helper around the
+waist and called to the musicians:
+
+"Play, play."
+
+For a full hour he danced around and around with the man while the
+village watched them and called to the white man to hold out. But the
+smith's helper was no match for Ghitza. He dragged his feet and fell.
+Ghitza, still fresh and vigorous, grasped another man and called to the
+musicians to play an even faster dance than before. When that one had
+fallen exhausted to the ground, Ghitza took on a third and a fourth.
+Then he began to dance with the maidens. The fiddler's string broke and
+the guitar player's fingers were numb. The sun went to rest behind the
+mountains and the moon rose in the sky to watch over her little
+children, the stars.
+
+But Ghitza was still dancing. There was no trace of fatigue on his face
+and no signs of weariness in his steps. The more he danced, the fresher
+he became. When he had danced half of the village tired, and they were
+all lying on the ground, drinking wine from earthen urns to refresh
+themselves, the last string of the fiddle snapped and the musician
+reeled from his chair. Only the flute and the guitar kept on.
+
+"Play on, play on, you children of sweet angels, and I shall give to
+each of you a young lamb in the morning," Ghitza urged them. But soon
+the breath of the flutist gave way. His lips swelled and blood spurted
+from his nose. The guitar player's fingers were so numb he could no
+longer move them. Then some of the people beat the rhythm of the dance
+with their open palms. Ghitza was still dancing on. They broke all the
+glasses of the inn and all the bottles beating time to his dance.
+
+The night wore away. The cock crew. Early dogs arose and the sun woke
+and started to climb from behind the eastern range of mountains. Ghitza
+laughed aloud as he saw all the dancers lying on the ground. Even Maria
+was asleep near her mother. He entered the inn and woke the innkeeper,
+who had fallen asleep behind the counter.
+
+"Whoa, whoa, you old swindler! Wake up! Day is come and I am thirsty."
+
+After a long drink, he went to his tent to play with the dogs, as he did
+early every morning.
+
+A little later, toward noon, he walked over to the smith's shop, shook
+hands with Maria's father and kissed the girl on the mouth even as the
+helper looked on.
+
+"She shall be your wife, son," the smith said. "She will be waiting for
+you when your tribe comes to winter here. And no man shall ever say my
+daughter married an unworthy one."
+
+The fame of our tribe spread rapidly. The tale of Ghitza's feat spread
+among all the villages and our tribe was respected everywhere. People no
+longer insulted us, and many another of our tribe now danced on Sundays
+at the inn--yea, our girls and our boys danced with the other people of
+the villages. Our trade doubled and tripled. We bartered more horses in
+a month than we had at other times in a year. Ghitza's word was law
+everywhere. He was so strong his honesty was not doubted. And he was
+honest. An honest horse-trader! He travelled far and wide. But if Cerna
+Voda was within a day's distance, Ghitza was sure to be there on Sunday
+to see Maria.
+
+To brighten such days, wrestling matches were arranged and bets were
+made as to how long the strongest of them could stay with Ghitza. And
+every time Ghitza threw the other man. Once in the vise of his two arms,
+a man went down like a log.
+
+And so it lasted the whole summer. But in whatever village our tribe
+happened to be, the women were running after the boy. Lupu, the chief of
+the tribe, warned him; told him that life is like a burning candle and
+that one must not burn it from both ends at the same time. But Ghitza
+only laughed and made merry.
+
+"Lupu, old chief, didst thou not once say that I was an oak? Why dost
+thou speak of candles now?"
+
+And he carried on as before. And ever so good, and ever so merry, and
+ever such a good trader.
+
+Our tribe returned to Cerna Voda early that fall. We had many horses and
+we felt that Cerna was the best place for them. Most of them were of the
+little Tartar kind, so we thought it well for them to winter in the
+Danube's valley.
+
+Every Sunday, at the inn, there were wrestling matches. Young men, the
+strongest, came from far-away villages. And they all, each one of them,
+hit the ground when Ghitza let go his vise.
+
+One Sunday, when the leaves had fallen from the trees and the harvest
+was in, there came a Tartar horse-trading tribe to Cerna Voda.
+
+And in their midst they had a big, strong man. Lupu, our chief, met
+their chief at the inn. They talked and drank and praised each their
+horses and men. Thus it happened that the Tartar chief spoke about his
+strong man. The peasants crowded nearer to hear the Tartar's story. Then
+they talked of Ghitza and his strength. The Tartar chief did not believe
+it.
+
+"I bet three of my horses that my man can down him," the Tartar chief
+called.
+
+"I take the bet against a hundred ducats in gold," the innkeeper
+answered.
+
+"It's a bet," the Tartar said.
+
+"Any more horses to bet?" others called out.
+
+The Tartar paled but he was a proud chief and soon all his horses and
+all his ducats were pledged in bets to the peasants. That whole day and
+the rest of the week to Sunday, nothing else was spoken about. The
+people of our tribe pledged everything they possessed. The women gave
+even their ear-rings. The Tartars were rich and proud and took every bet
+that was offered. The match was to be on Sunday afternoon in front of
+the inn. Ghitza was not in the village at all the whole week. He was in
+Constantza, on the shores of the Black Sea, finishing some trade. When
+he arrived home on Sunday morning he found the people of the village,
+our people, the Tartars, and a hundred carriages that had brought people
+from the surrounding villages camped in front of the inn. He jumped down
+from his horse and looked about wondering from where and why so many
+people at once! The men and the women were in their best clothes and the
+horses all decorated as for a fair. The people gave him a rousing
+welcome. Lupu called Ghitza aside and told him why the people had
+gathered. Ghitza was taken aback but laughed instantly and slapped the
+chief on the shoulders.
+
+"It will be as you know, and the Tartars shall depart poor and
+dishonoured, while we will remain the kings of the horse trade in the
+Dobrudja honoured and beloved by all."
+
+Oak that he was! Thus he spoke, and he had not even seen the other man,
+the man he was to wrestle. He only knew he had to maintain the honour of
+his tribe. At the appointed hour he came to the inn. The whole tribe was
+about and around. He had stripped to the waist. He was good to look at.
+On the ground were bundles of rich skins near rolls of cloth that our
+men and women had bet against the Tartars. Heaps of gold, rings,
+watches, ear-rings, and ducats were spread on the tables. Tartar horses
+and oxen of our men and the people of the village were trooped
+together, the necks tied to one long rope held on one side by one of our
+men or a villager and at the other end by a Tartar boy. If Ghitza were
+thrown, one of ours had just to let his end of the rope go and all
+belonged to the other one. The smithy had pledged all he had, even his
+daughter, to the winner; and many another daughter, too, was pledged.
+
+Ghitza looked about and saw what was at stake: the wealth and honour of
+his tribe and the wealth and honour of the village and the surrounding
+villages.
+
+Then the Tartar came. He was tall and square. His trunk rested on short,
+stocky legs, and his face was black, ugly, and pock-marked. All shouting
+ceased. The men formed a wide ring around the two wrestlers. It was so
+quiet one could hear the slightest noise. Then the mayor spoke to the
+Tartars and pointed to the Danube; the inn was right on its shore.
+
+"If your man is thrown, this very night you leave our shore, for the
+other side."
+
+Ghitza kissed Maria and Lupu, the chief. Then the fight began.
+
+A mighty man was Ghitza and powerful were his arms and legs. But it was
+seen from the very first grip that he had burned the candle at both ends
+at the same time. He had wasted himself in carouses. The two men closed
+one another in their vises and each tried to crush the other's ribs.
+Ghitza broke the Tartar's hold and got a grip on his head and twisted it
+with all his might. But the neck of the devil was of steel. It did not
+yield. Maria began to call to her lover:
+
+"Twist his neck, Ghitza. My father has pledged me to him if he wins."
+And many another girl begged Ghitza to save her from marrying a black
+devil.
+
+The Tartars, from another side, kept giving advice to their man.
+Everybody shrieked like mad, and even the dogs howled. From Ghitza's
+body the sweat flowed as freely as a river. But the Tartar's neck
+yielded not and his feet were like pillars of steel embedded in rocks.
+
+"Don't let his head go, don't let him go," our people cried, when it was
+plain that all his strength had gone out of his arms. Achmed's
+pear-shaped head slipped from between his arms as the Tartar wound his
+legs about Ghitza's body and began to crush him. Ghitza held on with all
+his strength. His face was blue black. His nose bled, and from his mouth
+he spat blood. Our people cried and begged him to hold on. The eyes of
+the Tartars shot fire, their white teeth showed from under their thick
+lips and they called on Achmed to crush the Giaour. Oh! it seemed that
+all was lost. All our wealth, the honour and respect Ghitza had won for
+us; the village's wealth and all. And all the maidens were to be taken
+away as slaves to the Tartars. One man said aloud so that Ghitza should
+hear:
+
+"There will not be a pair of oxen in the whole village to plough with;
+not a horse to harrow with, and our maidens are pledged to the black
+sons of the devil."
+
+Ghitza was being downed. But, wait ... what happened! With the last of
+his strength he broke the hold. A shout rose to rend the skies.
+Bewildered Achmed lay stupefied and looked on. Tottering on his feet, in
+three jumps Ghitza was on the high point of the shore--a splash--and
+there was no more Ghitza. He was swallowed by the Danube. No Tartar had
+downed him!
+
+And so our people had back their wealth, and the people of the village
+theirs. No honour was lost and the maidens remained in the village--only
+Maria did not. She followed her lover even as the people looked on. No
+one even attempted to stop her. It was her right. Where was she to find
+one such as he? She, too, was from the seed of an oak.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+"And now, son, I ask thee--if the book before thee speaks of all the
+great heroes, why is it that Ghitza has not been given the place of
+honour?"
+
+The log was burning in the fireplace, but I said good night to Murdo. I
+wanted to dream of the mighty Ghitza and his Maria. And ever since I
+have been dreaming of ... her.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright,
+1921, by Konrad Bercovici.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF FIVE POINTS[5]
+
+#By# EDNA CLARE BRYNER
+
+From _The Dial_
+
+
+A life went on in the town of Five Points. Five Points, the town was
+called, because it was laid out in the form of a star with five points
+and these points picked it out and circumscribed it. The Life that was
+lived there was in this wise. Over the centre of the town it hung thick
+and heavy, a great mass of tangled strands of all the colours that were
+ever seen, but stained and murky-looking from something that oozed out
+no one could tell from which of the entangling cords. In five directions
+heavy strands came in to the great knot in the centre and from it there
+floated out, now this way, now that, loose threads like tentacles,
+seeking to fasten themselves on whatever came within their grasp. All
+over the town thin threads criss-crossed back and forth in and out among
+the heavy strands making little snarls wherever several souls lived or
+were gathered together. One could see, by looking intently, that the
+tangling knotted strands and threads were woven into the rough pattern
+of a star.
+
+Life, trembling through the mass in the centre, streamed back and forth
+over the incoming strands, irregularly and in ever-changing volume,
+pulling at the smaller knots here and there in constant disturbance. It
+swayed the loosely woven mass above the schoolhouse, shaking out glints
+of colour from the thin bright cords, golden yellows and deep blues,
+vivid reds and greens. It twisted and untwisted the small black knot
+above the town hotel. It arose in murky vapour from the large knots
+above each of the churches. All over the town it quivered through the
+fine entangling threads, making the pattern change in colour, loosening
+and tightening the weaving. In this fashion Life came forth from the
+body which it inhabited.
+
+This is the way the town lay underneath it. From a large round of
+foot-tramped earth five wide streets radiated out in as many directions
+for a length of eight or ten houses and yards. Then the wide dirt street
+became a narrow road, the narrow board walks flanking it on either side
+stopped suddenly and faintly worn paths carried out their line for a
+space of three minutes' walk when all at once up rose the wall of the
+forest, the road plunged through and was immediately swallowed up. This
+is the way it was in all five directions from Five Points.
+
+Round about the town forests lay thick and dark like the dark heavens
+around the cities of the sky, and held it off secure from every other
+life-containing place. The roads that pierced the wall of the forest led
+in deeper and deeper, cutting their way around shaggy foothills down to
+swift streams and on and up again to heights, in and out of obscure
+notches. They must finally have sprung out again through another wall of
+forest to other towns. But as far as Five Points was concerned, they led
+simply to lumber mills sitting like chained ravening creatures at safe
+distances from one another eating slowly away at the thick woods as if
+trying to remove the screen that held the town off to itself.
+
+In the beginning there was no town at all, but miles and miles of virgin
+forest clothing the earth that humped itself into rough-bosomed hills
+and hummocks. Then the forest was its own. Birds nested in its dense
+leafage, fish multiplied in the clear running streams, wild creatures
+ranged its fastnesses in security. The trees, touched by no harsher hand
+than that which turns the rhythmically changing seasons, added year by
+year ring upon ring to their girths.
+
+Suddenly human masters appeared. They looked at the girth of the trees,
+appraised the wealth that lay hidden there, marked the plan of its
+taking out. They brought in workers, cleared a space for head-quarters
+in the midst of their great tracts, cut roads out through the forest,
+and wherever swift streams crossed they set mills. The cleared space
+they laid out symmetrically in a tree-fringed centre of common ground
+encircled by a main street for stores and offices, with streets for
+houses leading out to the edge of the clearing. In the south-east corner
+of the town they set aside a large square of land against the forest for
+a school-house.
+
+Thus Five Points was made as nearly in the centre of the great uncut
+region as it could well be and still be on the narrow-gauge railroad
+already passing through to make junction with larger roads. In short
+order there was a regular town with a station halfway down the street
+where the railroad cut through and near it a town hotel with a bar; a
+post office, several stores, a candy shop and a dentist's office
+fronting the round of earth in the centre; five churches set each on its
+own street and as far from the centre of the town as possible; and a
+six-room school-house with a flagpole. One mile, two miles, five and six
+miles distant in the forest, saw-mills buzzed away, strangely noisy amid
+their silent clumsy lumbermen and mill folk.
+
+One after another, all those diverse persons necessary for carrying on
+the work of a small community drifted in. They cut themselves loose from
+other communities and hastened hither to help make this new one, each
+moved by his own particular reason, each bringing to the making of a
+Life the threads of his own deep desire. The threads interlaced with
+other threads, twisted into strands, knotted with other strands and the
+Life formed itself and hung trembling, thick and powerful, over the
+town.
+
+The mill owners and managers came first, bringing strong warp threads
+for the Life. They had to have the town to take out their products and
+bring in supplies. They wanted to make money as fast as possible. "Let
+the town go to hell!" they said. They cared little how the Life went so
+that it did go. Most of them lived alternately as heads of families at
+home two hundred miles away and as bachelors at their mills and extract
+works.
+
+Mr. Stillman, owner of hundreds of acres of forest, was different. He
+wanted to be near at hand to watch his timber being taken out slowly and
+carefully and meanwhile to bring up his two small sons, healthy and
+virtuous, far away from city influences. He made a small farm up in the
+high south-west segment of the town against the woods, with orchards and
+sheep pasture and beehives and a big white farm-house, solidly built. He
+became a deacon in the Presbyterian church and one of the corner-stones
+of the town.
+
+Mr. Goff, owner of mills six miles out, kept up a comfortable place in
+town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a
+city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance
+as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it
+gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back
+and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in
+those of his workers who had families.
+
+Mill Manager Henderson snapped at the chance to run the Company store as
+well as to manage several mills. He saw in it something besides food and
+clothing for his large family of red-haired girls. Although he lived
+down at one of the mills he was counted as a townsman. He was a pillar
+in the Methodist church and his eldest daughter played the piano there.
+
+George Brainerd, pudgy chief clerk of the Company store, was hand in
+glove with Henderson. He loved giving all his energies, undistracted by
+family or other ties, to the task of making the Company's workers come
+out at the end of the season in the Company's debt instead of having
+cleared a few hundred dollars as they were made to believe, on the day
+they were hired, would be the case. The percentage he received for his
+cleverness was nothing to him in comparison with the satisfaction he
+felt in his ability to manipulate.
+
+Lanky Jim Dunn, the station agent, thirty-three and unmarried, satisfied
+his hunger for new places by coming to Five Points. He hated old settled
+lines of conduct. As station agent, he had a hand in everything and on
+every one that came in and went out of the town. He held a sort of gauge
+on the Life of the town. He chaffed all the girls who came down to see
+the evening train come in and tipped off the young men as to what was
+doing at the town hotel.
+
+Dr. Smelter, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, elegant in manner and in dress,
+left his former practice without regret. He opened his office in Five
+Points hoping that in a new community obscure diseases did not flourish.
+He was certain that lack of skill would not be as apparent there as in a
+well-established village.
+
+Rev. Trotman had been lured hither by the anticipation of a virgin field
+for saving souls; Rev. Little, because he dared not let any of his own
+fold be exposed to the pitfalls of an opposing creed.
+
+Dave Fellows left off setting chain pumps in Gurnersville and renewed
+his teaching experience by coming to Five Points to be principal of the
+school. Dick Shelton's wife dragged her large brood of little girls and
+her drunken husband along after Fellows in order to be sure of some one
+to bring Dick home from the saloon before he drank up the last penny. It
+made little difference to her where she earned the family living by
+washing.
+
+So they came, one after another, and filled up the town--Abe Cohen, the
+Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr.
+Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the
+saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy
+Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy,
+school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these
+various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village
+than they come, one by one, until the town is complete. So it happened
+in Five Points until there came to be somewhat fewer than a thousand
+souls. There the town stood.
+
+Stores and offices completely took up the circle of Main Street and
+straggled a little down the residence streets. Under the fringe of trees
+business hummed where side by side flourished Grimes' meat shop, the
+drug store with the dentist's office above, Henderson's General Store,
+as the Company store was called, Brinker's grocery store, the Clothing
+Emporium, McGilroy's barber shop, Backus' hardware, and the post office.
+The Five Points _Argus_ issued weekly its two pages from the dingy
+office behind the drug store. Graham's Livery did a big business down
+near the station.
+
+Each church had gathered its own rightful members within its round of
+Sunday and mid-week services, its special observances on Christmas, and
+Easter, and Children's Day. In the spring of each year a one-ring circus
+encamped for a day on the common ground in the centre of the town and
+drew all the people in orderly array under its tent. On the Fourth of
+July the whole town again came together in the centre common, in fashion
+less orderly, irrespective of creed or money worth, celebrating the
+deeds of their ancestors by drinking lemonade and setting off
+firecrackers.
+
+After a while no one could remember when it had been any different.
+Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing
+no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told
+them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town
+broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the
+passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable
+only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a
+thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened
+itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the strand
+was thick and strong and woven in securely among the old scaly ones.
+
+The folk who lived at the mills had hardly anything to do with the Life
+of Five Points. They were merely the dynamo that kept the Life alive.
+They were busied down in the woods making the money for the men who made
+the town. They came to town only on Saturday nights. They bought a
+flannel shirt and provisions at the Company store, a bag of candy at
+Andy's for the hotel and then went back to have their weekly orgy in
+their own familiar surroundings. They had little effect on the Life of
+the town. That was contained almost entirely within the five points
+where the road met the forest.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+The Life of Five Points had one fearful enemy. Its home was in the black
+forest. Without any warning it was likely to break out upon the town,
+its long red tongues leaping out, striving to lick everything into its
+red gullet. It was a thirsty animal. If one gave it enough water, it
+went back into its lair. Five Points had only drilled wells in back
+yards. The nearest big stream was a mile away.
+
+Twice already during the existence of the Life the enemy had started
+forth from its lair. The first time was not long after the town had
+started and the pattern of Life was hardly more than indicated in the
+loosely woven threads.
+
+Down in the forest the people saw a long red tongue leaping. With brooms
+and staves they ran to meet it far from their dwellings, beating it with
+fury. As they felt the heat of its breath in their faces, they thought
+of ministers' words in past sermons. Young desires and aspirations long
+dormant began to throb into being. They prayed for safety. They promised
+to give up their sins. They determined to be hard on themselves in the
+performance of daily duties. The Life suspended above them untwisted its
+loosely gathered in strands, the strands shone with a golden light and
+entwined again in soft forms.
+
+With death-dealing blows they laid the enemy black and broken about
+Grant's Mills, a mile away, and then went back to their homes telling
+each other how brave they had been. Pride swelled up their hearts. They
+boasted that they could take care of themselves. Old habits slipped back
+upon their aspirations and crushed them again into hidden corners. Life
+gathered up its loose-woven pattern of dull threads and hung trembling
+over the town.
+
+Worsting the enemy brought the people more closely together. Suddenly
+they seemed to know each other for the first time. They made changes,
+entered into bonds, drew lines, and settled into their ways. Life grew
+quickly with its strands woven tightly together into a weaving that
+would be hard to unloose.
+
+The mill managers made money. They saw to it that their mills buzzed
+away continually. They visited their homes regularly. Mr. Stillman's
+farm flourished. His apple trees were bearing. The school children
+understood that they could always have apples for the asking. The
+Stillman boys did not go to school. They had a tutor. Their father
+whipped them soundly when they disobeyed him by going to play in the
+streets of the town with the other children.
+
+Dave Fellows had finally persuaded Dick Shelton to take a Cure. Dick
+Shelton sober, it was discovered, was a man of culture and knew, into
+the bargain, all the points of the law. So he was made Justice of the
+Peace. His wife stopped taking in washing and spent her days trying to
+keep the children out of the front room where Dick tried his cases.
+
+Dave Fellows himself gave up the principalship of the school, finding
+its meagre return insufficient to meet the needs of an increasing
+family. Yielding to the persuasion of Henderson, he became contractor
+for taking out timber at Trout Creek Mill. He counted on his two oldest
+sons to do men's work during the summer when school was not in session.
+Fellows moved his family into the very house in which Henderson had
+lived. Henderson explained that he had to live in town to be near a
+doctor for his ailing wife and sickly girls. The millmen told Dave
+Fellows that Henderson was afraid of them because they had threatened
+him if he kept on overcharging them at the Company store.
+
+Abe Cohen did a thriving business in clothing. He had a long list of
+customers heavily in debt to him through the promise that they could pay
+whenever they got ready. He dunned them openly on the street so that
+they made a wide detour in order to avoid going past his store.
+
+Dr. Barton had established a reputation for kindness of heart as well as
+skill in practice that threatened his rival's good will. Helen Barton,
+the doctor's young daughter, perversely kept company with her father's
+rival. Every one felt sorry for the father but secretly admired Dr.
+Smelter's diabolic tactics.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Long-forgotten was the enemy when it came the second time. On a dark
+night when Five Points lay heavy in its slumbers, it bore down upon the
+north side of the town. Some sensitive sleeper, troubled in his dreams,
+awoke to see the dreadful red tongues cutting across the darkness like
+crimson banners. His cries aroused the town. All the fathers rushed out
+against the enemy. The mothers dressed their children and packed best
+things in valises ready to flee when there was no longer any hope.
+
+For three days and three nights the enemy raged, leaping in to eat up
+one house, two houses, beaten back and back, creeping up in another
+place, beaten back again. The school boys took beaters and screamed at
+the enemy as they beat.
+
+The older ones remembered the first coming of the enemy. They said, "It
+was a warning!" They prayed while fear shook their aching arms. The Life
+of the town writhed and gleams of colour came out of its writhings and a
+whiteness as if the red tongues were cleansing away impurities.
+
+The mill managers brought their men to fight the enemy. "We mustn't let
+it go," they said. Mr. Stillman had his two sons helping him. He talked
+to them while they fought the enemy together. He spoke of punishment for
+sin. His sons listened while the lust of fighting held their bodies.
+
+Helen Barton knelt at her father's feet where he was fighting the enemy
+and swore she would never see Dr. Smelter again. She knew he was a bad
+man and could never bring her happiness.
+
+Lyda, eldest daughter in the Shelton family, gathered her little sisters
+about her, quieting their clamours while her mother wrung her hands and
+said over and over again, "To happen when your papa was getting on so
+nicely!" Lyda resolved that she would put all thoughts of marrying out
+of her head. She would have to stop keeping company with Ned Backus,
+the hardware man's son. It was not fair to keep company with a man you
+did not intend to marry. She would stay for ever with her mother and
+help care for the children so that her father would have a peaceful home
+life and not be tempted.
+
+All about, wherever they were, people prayed. They prayed until there
+was nothing left in their hearts but prayer as there was nothing left in
+their bodies but a great tiredness.
+
+Then a heavy rain came and the red tongues drank greedily until they
+were slaked and became little short red flickers of light on a soaked
+black ground. The enemy was conquered. One street of the town was gone.
+
+People ran to the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness
+brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack.
+Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The
+ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words.
+"Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People
+vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the hymns in their
+church song-books. The strands of Life leapt and contorted themselves
+but they could not pull themselves apart.
+
+The revival ended. Building began. In a few months a street of houses
+sprang up defiant in yellow newness. In and out of a pattern little
+changed from its old accustomed aspect Life pulsated in great waves over
+the heavy strands. In and out, up and down, it rushed, drawing threads
+tightly together, knotting them in fantastic knots that only the
+judgment day could undo.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Mr. Stillman's sons were now young men. The younger was dying of heart
+trouble in a hospital in the city. The father had locked the elder in
+his room for two weeks on bread and water until he found out exactly
+what had happened between his son and the Barringers' hired girl. Guy
+Stillman, full-blooded, dark, and handsome, with high cheek bones like
+an Indian, declared vehemently that he would never marry the girl.
+
+Dave Fellows had taken his sons out of school to help him the year
+round in the woods. Sixteen-year-old Lawrence had left home and gone to
+work in the town barber shop late afternoons and evenings in order to
+keep on at his work in the high school grades just established. He vowed
+he would never return home to be made into a lumber-jack. Dave's wife
+was trying to persuade him to leave Five Points and go to the city where
+her family lived. There the children could continue their schooling and
+Dave could get work more suited to his ability than lumbering seemed to
+be. Dave, too proud to admit that he had not the capacity for carrying
+on this work successfully, refused to entertain any thought of leaving
+the place. "If my family would stick by me, everything would come out
+all right," he always said.
+
+Lyda Shelton still kept company with Ned Backus. When he begged her to
+marry him, she put him off another year until the children were a little
+better able to care for themselves. Her next youngest sister had married
+a dentist from another town and had not asked her mother to the wedding.
+Lyda was trying to make it up to her mother in double devotion.
+
+Helen Barton met Dr. Smelter once too often and her father made her
+marry him. She had a child born dead. Now she was holding clandestine
+meetings with Mr. Daly, a traveling salesman, home on one of his
+quarterly visits to his family. He had promised to take Helen away with
+him on his next trip and make a home for her in the city.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was a sweltering hot Saturday in the first part of June. Every now
+and then the wind blew in from the east picking up the dust in eddies.
+Abe Cohen's store was closed. His children wandered up and down the
+street, celebrating their sabbath in best clothes and chastened
+behaviour. Jim Dunn was watching a large consignment of goods for the
+Company store being unloaded. He was telling Earl Henderson, the
+manager's nephew, how much it would cost him to get in with the poker
+crowd.
+
+George Brainerd had finished fixing up the Company's accounts. He
+whistled as he worked. Dave Fellows was in debt three hundred dollars to
+the Company. That would keep him another year. He was a good workman but
+a poor manager. Sam Kent was in debt one hundred dollars. He would have
+to stay, too. John Simpson had come out even. He could go if he wanted
+to. He was a trouble-maker anyway....
+
+Helen Barton sat talking with Daly in the thick woods up back of the
+Presbyterian church. They were planning how to get away undetected on
+the evening train.... "If she was good enough for you then, she's good
+enough now," Mr. Stillman was saying to his defiant son. "You're not fit
+for a better woman. You'll take care of her and that's the end of
+it...."
+
+Widow Stokes' half-witted son rode up from the Extract Works on an old
+bony horse. He brought word that the enemy was at the Kibbard Mill, two
+miles beyond the Works. People were throwing their furniture into the
+mill pond, he said. Every one laughed. Mottie Stokes was always telling
+big stories. The boy, puzzled, went round and round the town, stopping
+every one he met, telling his tale. Sweat poured down his pale face.
+
+At last he rode down to Trout Creek Mill and told Dave Fellows. Dave got
+on the old grey mule and came up to town to find out further news. The
+townsfolk, loafing under the trees around Main Street and going about on
+little errands, shouted when they saw Dave come in on his mule beside
+Mottie on the bony horse. "Two of a kind," was passed round the circle
+of business and gossip, and sniggering went with it. Dave suggested that
+some one go down to see just what had happened. Jeers answered him.
+"Believe a fool? Not quite that cracked yet!" Dave went about uneasily
+if he had business to attend to, but keeping an eye searching out in the
+direction of the Works.
+
+In an hour or so another rider came panting into town. Back of him
+straggled families from the mills and works with whatever belongings
+they could bring on their backs. Fear came into the hearts of the
+citizens of Five Points. They shouted in anger to drive away their fear.
+"Why didn't you stay and fight it? What'd you come up here for?"
+
+"Too big, too big," cried the lumber folk, gesturing back over their
+shoulders.
+
+Far off a haze was gathering and in the haze a redness appeared, growing
+slowly more and more distinct. The townsfolk stared in the direction of
+the Works, unwilling to believe. Some one shouted, "Better be ready!"
+Shortly every pump in the town had its hand and everything that could
+hold water was being filled for the oncoming thirsty beast.
+
+Dave Fellows galloped down the long hills, around curves, across the
+bridge at the mill and up again to his home, told his family of the
+approach of the enemy, directed them to pack up all the easily moved
+furniture, harness the two mules and be ready to flee out through the
+forest past Goff's Mills to the next station thirty miles further down
+the railroad. No one could tell where the enemy would spread. He would
+come back the minute that all hope was lost. The boys must stay at home
+and take care of the place. "Bring Lawrence back with you," his wife
+called after him, and he turned and waved his hand.
+
+When he got back into town thousands of red tongues were bearing down
+upon the station street. The enemy belched forth great hot breaths that
+swept the sky ahead of it like giant firecrackers and falling upon the
+houses to the east of the town ran from one to another eating its way up
+the station street towards the centre of the town. Family after family
+left their homes, carrying valuables, dragging their small children, and
+scattered to the north and south of the advancing enemy. The town hotel
+emptied itself quickly of its temporary family. Jim Dunn left the
+station carrying the cash box and a bundle of papers.
+
+From building to building the enemy leaped. Before it fled group after
+group of persons from stores and homes. Methodically it went round the
+circle of shops, the most rapacious customer the town had ever seen.
+Quarters of beeves in the meat shop, bottles of liquids and powders on
+the drug-store shelves, barrels and boxes of food in the grocery store,
+suits of clothing in Abe Cohen's, the leather whips and carriage robes
+in the hardware store, all went down its gullet with the most amazing
+ease.
+
+Swelled with its indiscriminate meal, it started hesitantly on its way
+up the street that led to the Presbyterian Church. Now people lost their
+heads and ran hither and thither, screaming and praying incoherently,
+dragging their crying children about from one place to another, pumping
+water frantically to offer it, an impotent libation to an insatiable
+god. They knew that neither the beating of brooms nor the water from
+their wells could quench the enemy that was upon them. Red Judgment Day
+was at hand.
+
+Meanwhile a peculiar thing happened. The Life that was hanging above the
+town lifted itself up, high up, entire in its pattern, beyond the reach
+of red tongues, of gusts from hot gullets--and there it stayed while the
+enemy raged below.
+
+Dave Fellows harangued the men who were beating away vainly, pouring
+buckets of water on unquenchable tongues. He pointed to the forest up
+the street back of the Presbyterian Church. He was telling them that the
+only thing to do was to call forth another enemy to come down and do
+battle with this one before it reached the church. "Yes, yes," they
+chorused eagerly.
+
+Craftily they edged around south of the enemy, scorching their faces
+against its streaming flank, and ran swiftly far up the line of forest
+past the church. There it was even at that moment that Helen Barton was
+begging Daly to remember his promise and take her with him on the
+evening train....
+
+The men scooped up leaves and small twigs and bending over invoked their
+champion to come forth and do battle for them. Presently it came forth,
+shooting out little eager red tongues that danced and leaped, glad to be
+coming forth, growing larger in leaps and bounds. Dave Fellows watched
+anxiously the direction in which the hissing tongues sprang. "The wind
+will take it," he said at last. Fitfully the breeze pressed up against
+the back of the newly born, pushing more and more strongly as the
+tongues sprang higher and higher, until finally it swept the full-grown
+monster down the track towards where the other monster was gorging.
+
+"For God's sake, Henry, take me with you, this evening, as you
+promised," Helen was imploring Daly. "I can't stay here any longer. My
+father--I wish now I had listened to him in the first place, long ago."
+Daly did not hear her. He had risen to his feet and holding his head
+back was drawing in great acrid breaths. His florid face went white.
+"What is that?" he said hoarsely. Through the thick forest red tongues
+broke out, sweeping towards them. Helen clutched Daly's arm, screaming.
+He shook her off and turned to flee out by the church. There, too, red
+tongues were leaping, curling back on themselves in long derisive
+snarls. Daly turned upon her. "You ..."
+
+The two enemies met at the church, red tongue leaping against red
+tongue, crackling jaws breaking on crackling jaws, sizzling gullet
+straining against sizzling gullet. A great noise like the rending of a
+thousand fibres, a clap of red thunder, as the body of beast met the
+body of beast, and both lay crumpled upon the ground together, their
+long bodies writhing, bruised, red jaws snapping, red tongue eating red
+tongue.
+
+Upon them leaped the band of men spreading out the whole length of the
+bodies and beat, beat, incessantly, desperately, tongue after tongue,
+hour after hour, beat, beat. Lingeringly the enemy died, a hard death.
+Three days it was dying and it had watchers in plenty. Whenever a red
+tongue leaped into life, some one was there to lay it low. In the
+night-time the men watched, and in the day the women and girls. The men
+talked. "We will build it up again in brick," they said. "That is safer
+and it looks better, too." The women talked, too. "I hope Abe will get
+in some of those new lace curtains," they said.
+
+Meanwhile families gathered themselves together. Those whose homes were
+gone encamped picnic fashion in the schoolhouse or were taken in by
+those whose houses were still standing. Two persons were missing when
+the muster of the town was finally taken. They were Helen Barton and Mr.
+Daly. Jim Dunn said he wasn't sure but he thought Daly left on the
+morning train. Daly's wife said he told her he was not going until
+evening.
+
+They searched for Helen far and wide. No trace of her was ever found.
+Her father stood in front of the Sunday School on the Sunday following
+the death of the enemy and made an eloquent appeal for better life in
+the town. "The wages of sin is death," he declared, "death of the soul
+always, death of the body sometimes." The people thought him inspired.
+Widow Stokes whispered to her neighbour, "It's his daughter he's
+thinking of."
+
+Dave Fellows was the only person who left the town. He went back to his
+wife when he saw that the town was saved and said, "We might as well
+move now that we're packed up. The town is cursed." Two days later they
+took the train north from a pile of blackened timbers where the old
+station had stood. Lawrence went with them.
+
+The enemy had eaten up all the records in the Company store, and had
+tried to eat up George Brainerd while he was attempting to save them.
+The Company had to accept the workers' own accounts. George was going
+about with his arm tied up, planning to keep a duplicate set of records
+in a place unassailable by the enemy.
+
+Abe Cohen wailed so about his losses and his little children that Mr.
+Stillman set him up in a brand new stock of clothing. Abe was telling
+every one, "Buy now. Pay when you like." And customers came as of old.
+
+Guy Stillman married the Barringers' hired girl. His father established
+them in a little home out at the edge of the town. The nearest neighbour
+reported that Guy beat his wife.
+
+Lyda married Ned Backus. "Suppose you had died," she told Ned. "I would
+never have forgiven myself. You can work in papa's new grocery store.
+He's going to start one as soon as we can get the building done. Mama
+will have a son to help take care of her."
+
+Life, its strands blackened by the strong breath of the enemy, settled
+down once more over the town and hung there, secure in its pattern,
+thick and powerful. Under it brick stores and buildings rose up and
+people stood about talking, complacently planning their days. "It won't
+come again for a long time," they said.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright,
+1921, by Edna Clare Bryner.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIGNAL TOWER[6]
+
+#By# WADSWORTH CAMP
+
+From _The Metropolitan_
+
+
+"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
+
+The big man, Tolliver, patted his wife's head. His coarse laughter was
+meant to reassure, but, as he glanced about the living-room of his
+remote and cheerless house, his eyes were uneasy. The little boy, just
+six years old, crouched by the cook-stove, whimpering over the remains
+of his supper.
+
+"What are you afraid of?" Tolliver scoffed.
+
+The stagnant loneliness, the perpetual drudgery, had not yet conquered
+his wife's beauty, dark and desirable. She motioned towards the boy.
+
+"He's afraid, too, when the sun goes down."
+
+For a time Tolliver listened to the wind, which assaulted the frame
+house with the furious voices of witches demanding admittance.
+
+"It's that----" he commenced.
+
+She cut him short, almost angrily.
+
+"It isn't that with me," she whispered.
+
+He lifted the tin pail that contained a small bottle of coffee and some
+sandwiches. He started for the door, but she ran after him, dragging at
+his arm.
+
+"Don't go! I'm afraid!"
+
+The child was quiet now, staring at them with round, reflective eyes.
+
+"Joe," Tolliver said gently, "will be sore if I don't relieve him on
+time."
+
+She pressed her head against his coat and clung tighter. He closed his
+eyes.
+
+"You're afraid of Joe," he said wearily.
+
+Without looking up, she nodded. Her voice was muffled.
+
+"He came last night after you relieved him at the tower. He knocked, and
+I wouldn't let him in. It made him mad. He swore. He threatened. He said
+he'd come back. He said he'd show us we couldn't kick him out of the
+house just because he couldn't help liking me. We never ought to have
+let him board here at all."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+"I was afraid you'd be fighting each other in the tower; and it didn't
+seem so bad until dark came on. Why didn't you complain to the railroad
+when--when he tried to kiss me the other night?"
+
+"I thought that was finished," Tolliver answered slowly, "when I kicked
+him out, when I told him I'd punish him if he bothered you again. And
+I--I was a little ashamed to complain to the superintendent about that.
+Don't you worry about Joe, Sally, I'll talk to him now, before I let him
+out of the tower. He's due to relieve me again at midnight, and I'll be
+home then."
+
+He put on his great coat. He pulled his cap over his ears. The child
+spoke in a high, apprehensive voice.
+
+"Don't go away, papa."
+
+He stared at the child, considering.
+
+"Put his things on, Sally," he directed at last.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I'll send him back from the tower with something that will make you
+feel easier."
+
+Her eyes brightened.
+
+"Isn't that against the rules?"
+
+"Guess I can afford to break one for a change," he said. "I'm not likely
+to need it myself to-night. Come, Sonny."
+
+The child shrank in the corner, his pudgy hands raised defensively.
+
+"It's only a little ways, and Sonny can run home fast," his mother
+coaxed.
+
+Against his ineffective reluctance she put on his coat and hat. Tolliver
+took the child by the hand and led him, sobbing unevenly, into the
+wind-haunted darkness. The father chatted encouragingly, pointing to two
+or three lights, scattered, barely visible; beacons that marked
+unprofitable farms.
+
+It was, in fact, only a short distance to the single track railroad and
+the signal tower, near one end of a long siding. In the heavy,
+boisterous night the yellow glow from the upper windows, and the red and
+green of the switch lamps, close to the ground, had a festive
+appearance. The child's sobs drifted away. His father swung him in his
+arms, entered the tower, and climbed the stairs. Above, feet stirred
+restlessly. A surly voice came down.
+
+"Here at last, eh?"
+
+When Tolliver's head was above the level of the flooring he could see
+the switch levers, and the table, gleaming with the telegraph
+instruments, and dull with untidy clips of yellow paper; but the detail
+that held him was the gross, expectant face of Joe.
+
+Joe was as large as Tolliver, and younger. From that commanding
+position, he appeared gigantic.
+
+"Cutting it pretty fine," he grumbled.
+
+Tolliver came on up, set the child down, and took off his overcoat.
+
+"Fact is," he drawled, "I got held back a minute--sort of unexpected."
+
+His eyes fixed the impatient man.
+
+"What you planning to do, Joe, between now and relieving me at
+midnight?"
+
+Joe shifted his feet.
+
+"Don't know," he said uncomfortably. "What you bring the kid for? Want
+me to drop him at the house?"
+
+Tolliver shook his head. He placed his hands on his hips.
+
+"That's one thing I want to say to you, Joe. Just you keep away from the
+house. Thought you understood that when you got fresh with Sally the
+other night."
+
+Joe's face flushed angrily.
+
+"Guess I was a fool to say I was sorry about that. Guess I got to teach
+you I got a right to go where I please."
+
+Tolliver shook his head.
+
+"Not to our house, if we don't want you."
+
+The other leered.
+
+"You so darned sure Sally don't want me?"
+
+Impulsively Tolliver stepped forward, closing his fists.
+
+"You drop that sort of talk, or----"
+
+Joe interrupted, laughing.
+
+"One thing's sure, Tolliver. If it came to a fight between me and you
+I'd be almost ashamed to hit you."
+
+Through his passion Tolliver recognized the justice of that appraisal.
+Physically he was no match for the younger man.
+
+"Things," he said softly, "are getting so we can't work here together."
+
+"Then," Joe flung back, as he went down the stairs, "you'd better be
+looking for another job."
+
+Tolliver sighed, turning to the table. The boy played there, fumbling
+with the yellow forms. Tolliver glanced at the top one. He called out
+quickly to the departing man.
+
+"What's this special, Joe?"
+
+The other's feet stumped on the stairs again.
+
+"Forgot," he said as his head came through the trap. "Some big-wigs
+coming through on a special train along about midnight. Division
+headquarters got nothing definite yet, but figure we'll have to get her
+past thirty-three somewheres on this stretch. So keep awake."
+
+Tolliver with an increasing anxiety continued to examine the yellow
+slips.
+
+"And thirty-three's late, and still losing."
+
+Joe nodded.
+
+"Makes it sort of uncertain."
+
+"Seems to me," Tolliver said, "you might have mentioned it."
+
+"Maybe," Joe sneered, "you'd like me to stay and do your job."
+
+He went down the stairs and slammed the lower door.
+
+Tolliver studied the slips, his ears alert for the rattling of the
+telegraph sounder. After a time he replaced the file on the table and
+looked up. The boy, quite contented now in the warm, interesting room,
+stretched his fingers towards the sending key, with the air of a culprit
+dazzled into attempting an incredible crime.
+
+"Hands off, Sonny!" Tolliver said kindly. "You must run back to mother
+now."
+
+He opened a drawer beneath the table and drew out a polished
+six-shooter--railroad property, designed for the defense of the tower
+against tramps or bandits. The boy reached his hand eagerly for it. His
+father shook his head.
+
+"Not to play with, Sonny. That's for business. If you promise not to
+touch it 'till you get home and hand it to mama, to-morrow I'll give you
+a nickel."
+
+The child nodded. Tolliver placed the revolver in the side pocket of the
+little overcoat, and, the boy following him, went down stairs.
+
+"You run home fast as you can," Tolliver directed. "Don't you be afraid.
+I'll stand right here in the door 'till you get there. Nothing shall
+hurt you."
+
+The child glanced back at the festive lights with an anguished
+hesitation. Tolliver had to thrust him away from the tower.
+
+"A nickel in the morning----" he bribed.
+
+The child commenced to run. Long after he had disappeared the troubled
+man heard the sound of tiny feet scuffling with panic along the road to
+home.
+
+When the sound had died away Tolliver slammed the door and climbed the
+stairs. He studied the yellow slips again, striving to fix in his mind
+this problem, involving the safety of numerous human beings, that would
+probably become his. He had a fear of abnormal changes in the schedule.
+It had been impressed upon every signalman that thirty-three was the
+road's most precious responsibility. It was the only solid Pullman train
+that passed over the division. This time of year it ran crowded and was
+erratic; more often than not, late. That fact created few difficulties
+on an ordinary night; but, combined with such uncertainty of schedule,
+it worried the entire division, undoubtedly, to have running, also on an
+uncertain schedule, and in the opposite direction on that single track,
+an eager special carrying important men. The superintendent, of course,
+would want to get those flashy trains past each other without delay to
+either. That was why these lonely towers, without receiving definite
+instructions yet, had been warned to increase watchfulness.
+
+Tolliver's restlessness grew. He hoped the meeting would take place
+after Joe had relieved him, or else to the north or south.
+
+It was difficult, moreover, for him to fix his mind to-night on his
+professional responsibility. His duty towards his family was so much
+more compelling. While he sat here, listening to every word beaten out
+by the sounder, he pictured his wife and son, alone in the little house
+nearly a half a mile away. And he wondered, while he, their only
+protector, was imprisoned, what Joe was up to.
+
+Joe must have been drunk when he tried to get in the house last night.
+Had he been drinking to-night?
+
+The sounder jarred rapidly.
+
+"LR. LR. LR."
+
+That was for the tower to the north. It was hard to tell from Joe's
+manner. Perhaps that would account for his not having called attention
+to the approaching presence of the special on the division.
+
+Pound. Pound. Pound. The hard striking of the metal had the effect of a
+trip-hammer on his brain.
+
+"Allen reports special left Oldtown at 9.45."
+
+Joe had certainly been drinking that night last week when he had got
+fresh with Sally.
+
+"Thirty-three still losing south of Anderson."
+
+He jotted the words down and sent his O.K.'s while his head, it seemed
+to him, recoiled physically from each rapid stroke of the little brass
+bar.
+
+Sonny, sent by his mother, had come to tell him that night, panting up
+the stairs, his eyes wide and excited. Tolliver had looked from the
+window towards his home, his face flushed, his fists clenched, his heart
+almost choking him. Then he had seen Joe, loafing along the road in the
+moonlight, and he had relaxed, scarcely aware of the abominable choice
+he had faced.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+His own call. Tolliver shrank from the sharp blows. He forced himself to
+a minute attention. It was division headquarters.
+
+"Holding twenty-one here until thirty-three and the special have
+cleared."
+
+Twenty-one was a freight. It was a relief to have that off the road for
+the emergency. He lay back when the striking at his head had ceased.
+
+It was unfortunate that Joe and he alone should be employed at the
+tower. Relieving each other at regular intervals, they had never been at
+the house together. Either Tolliver had been there alone with his wife
+and his son--or Joe had been. The two men had seen each other too
+little, only momentarily in this busy room. They didn't really know each
+other.
+
+"LR. LR. LR."
+
+Tolliver shook his head savagely. It had been a mistake letting Joe
+board with them at all. Any man would fall in love with Sally. Yet
+Tolliver had thought after that definite quarrel Joe would have known
+his place; the danger would have ended.
+
+It was probably this drinking at the country inn where Joe lived now
+that had made the man brood. The inn was too small and removed to
+attract the revenue officers, and the liquid manufactured and sold there
+was designed to make a man daring, irrational, deadly.
+
+Tolliver shrank from the assaults of the sounder.
+
+Where was Joe now? At the inn, drinking; or----
+
+He jotted down the outpourings of the voluble key. More and more it
+became clear that the special and thirty-three would meet near his
+tower, but it would almost certainly be after midnight when Joe would
+have relieved him. He watched the clock, often pressing his fingers
+against his temples in an attempt to make bearable the hammering at his
+brain, unequal and persistent.
+
+While the hands crawled towards midnight the wind increased, shrieking
+around the tower as if the pounding angered it.
+
+Above the shaking of the windows Tolliver caught another sound, gentle
+and disturbing, as if countless fingers tapped softly, simultaneously
+against the panes.
+
+He arose and raised one of the sashes. The wind tore triumphantly in,
+bearing a quantity of snowflakes that fluttered to the floor, expiring.
+Under his breath Tolliver swore. He leaned out, peering through the
+storm. The red and green signal lamps were blurred. He shrugged his
+shoulders. Anyway, Joe would relieve him before the final orders came,
+before either train was in the section.
+
+Tolliver clenched his hands. If Joe didn't come!
+
+He shrank from the force of his imagination.
+
+He was glad Sally had the revolver.
+
+He glanced at his watch, half believing that the clock had stopped.
+
+There at last it was, both hands pointing straight up--midnight! And
+Tolliver heard only the storm and the unbearable strokes of the
+telegraph sounder. It was fairly definite now. Both trains were roaring
+through the storm, destined almost certainly to slip by each other at
+this siding within the next hour.
+
+Where was Joe? And Sally and the boy alone at the house!
+
+Quarter past twelve.
+
+What vast interest could have made Joe forget his relief at the probable
+loss of his job?
+
+Tolliver glanced from the rear window towards his home, smothered in the
+night and the storm. If he might only run there quickly to make sure
+that Sally was all right!
+
+The sounder jarred furiously. Tolliver half raised his hand, as if to
+destroy it.
+
+It was the division superintendent himself at the key.
+
+"NT. NT. NT. Is it storming bad with you?"
+
+"Pretty thick."
+
+"Then keep the fuses burning. For God's sake, don't let the first in
+over-run his switch. And clear the line like lightning. Those fellows
+are driving faster than hell."
+
+Tolliver's mouth opened, but no sound came. His face assumed the
+expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive
+barbarity.
+
+"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
+
+He visualized his wife, beautiful, dark, and desirable, urging him not
+to go to the tower.
+
+A gust of wind sprang through the trap door. The yellow slips fluttered.
+He ran to the trap. He heard the lower door bang shut. Someone was on
+the stairs, climbing with difficulty, breathing hard. A hat, crusted
+with snow, appeared. There came slowly into the light Joe's face, ugly
+and inflamed; the eyes restless with a grave indecision.
+
+Tolliver's first elation died in new uncertainty.
+
+"Where you been?" he demanded fiercely.
+
+Joe struggled higher until he sat on the flooring, his legs dangling
+through the trap. He laughed in an ugly and unnatural note; and Tolliver
+saw that there was more than drink, more than sleeplessness, recorded in
+his scarlet face. Hatred was there. It escaped, too, from the streaked
+eyes that looked at Tolliver as if through a veil. He spoke thickly.
+
+"Don't you wish you knew?"
+
+Tolliver stooped, grasping the man's shoulders. In each fist he clenched
+bunches of wet cloth. In a sort of desperation he commenced to shake the
+bundled figure.
+
+"You tell me where you been----"
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+Joe leered.
+
+"Joe! You got to tell me where you been."
+
+The pounding took Tolliver's strength. He crouched lower in an effort to
+avoid it, but each blow struck as hard as before, forcing into his brain
+word after word that he passionately resented. Places, hours,
+minutes--the details of this vital passage of two trains in the
+unfriendly night.
+
+"Switch whichever arrives first, and hold until the other is through."
+
+It was difficult to understand clearly, because Joe's laughter
+persisted, crashing against Tolliver's brain as brutally as the sounder.
+
+"You got to tell me if you been bothering Sally."
+
+The hatred and the cunning of the mottled face grew.
+
+"Why don't you ask Sally?"
+
+Slowly Tolliver let the damp cloth slip from his fingers. He
+straightened, facing more definitely that abominable choice. He glanced
+at his cap and overcoat. The lazy clock hands reminded him that he had
+remained in the tower nearly half an hour beyond his time. Joe was
+right. It was clear he could satisfy himself only by going home and
+asking Sally.
+
+"Get up," he directed. "I guess you got sense enough to know you're on
+duty."
+
+Joe struggled to his feet and lurched to the table. Tolliver wondered at
+the indecision in the other's eyes, which was more apparent. Joe fumbled
+aimlessly with the yellow slips. Tolliver's fingers, outstretched toward
+his coat, hesitated, as if groping for an object that must necessarily
+elude them.
+
+"Special!" Joe mumbled. "And--Hell! Ain't thirty-three through yet?"
+
+He swayed, snatching at the edge of the table.
+
+Tolliver lowered his hands. The division superintendent had pounded out
+something about fuses. What had it been exactly? "Keep fuses burning."
+
+With angry gestures he took his coat and cap down, and put them on while
+he repeated all the instructions that had been forced into his brain
+with the effect of a physical violence. At the table Joe continued to
+fumble aimlessly.
+
+"Ain't you listening?" Tolliver blurted out.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Why don't you light a fuse?"
+
+It was quite obvious that Joe had heard nothing.
+
+"Fuse!" Joe repeated.
+
+He stooped to a box beneath the table. He appeared to lose his balance.
+He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his head drooping.
+
+"What about fuse?" he murmured.
+
+His eyes closed.
+
+Tolliver pressed the backs of his hands against his face. If only his
+suspense might force refreshing tears as Sonny cried away his infant
+agonies!
+
+Numerous people asleep in that long Pullman train, and the special
+thundering down! Sally and Sonny a half mile away in the lonely house!
+And that drink-inspired creature on the floor--what was he capable of in
+relation to those unknown, helpless travelers? But what was he capable
+of; what had he, perhaps, been capable of towards those two known ones
+that Tolliver loved better than all the world?
+
+Tolliver shuddered. As long as Joe was here Sally and Sonny would not be
+troubled. But where had Joe been just now? How had Sally and Sonny fared
+while Tolliver had waited for that stumbling step on the stairs? He had
+to know that, yet how could he? For he couldn't leave Joe to care for
+all those lives on the special and thirty-three.
+
+He removed his coat and cap, and replaced them on the hook. He took a
+fuse from the box and lighted it. He raised the window and threw the
+fuse to the track beneath. It sputtered and burst into a flame, ruddy,
+gorgeous, immense. It etched from the night distant fences and trees. It
+bent the sparkling rails until they seemed to touch at the terminals of
+crimson vistas. If in the storm the locomotive drivers should miss the
+switch lamps, set against them, they couldn't neglect this bland banner
+of danger, flung across the night.
+
+When Tolliver closed the window he noticed that the ruddy glow filled
+the room, rendering sickly and powerless the yellow lamp wicks. And
+Tolliver clutched the table edge, for in this singular and penetrating
+illumination he saw that Joe imitated the details of sleep; that beneath
+half-closed lids, lurked a fanatical wakefulness, and final resolution
+where, on entering the tower, he had exposed only indecision.
+
+While Tolliver stared Joe abandoned his masquerade. Wide-eyed, he got
+lightly to his feet and started for the trap.
+
+Instinctively, Tolliver's hand started for the drawer where customarily
+the revolver was kept. Then he remembered, and was sorry he had sent the
+revolver to Sally. For it was clear that the poison in Joe's brain was
+sending him to the house while Tolliver was chained to the tower. He
+would have shot, he would have killed, to have kept the man here. He
+would do what he could with his hands.
+
+"Where you going?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+Joe laughed happily.
+
+"To keep Sally company while you look after the special and
+thirty-three."
+
+Tolliver advanced cautiously, watching for a chance. When he spoke his
+voice had the appealing quality of a child's.
+
+"It's my time off. If I do your work you got to stay at least."
+
+Joe laughed again.
+
+"No. It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed."
+
+Tolliver sprang then, but Joe avoided the heavier, clumsier man. He
+grasped a chair, swinging it over his head.
+
+"I'll teach you," he grunted, "to kick me out like dirt. I'll teach you
+and Sally."
+
+With violent strength he brought the chair down. Tolliver got his hands
+up, but the light chair crashed them aside and splintered on his head.
+He fell to his knees, reaching out blindly. He swayed lower until he lay
+stretched on the floor, dimly aware of Joe's descending steps, of the
+slamming of the lower door, at last of a vicious pounding at his bruised
+brain.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+He struggled to his knees, his hands at his head.
+
+"No, by God! I won't listen to you."
+
+"Thirty-three cleared LR at 12:47."
+
+One tower north! Thirty-three was coming down on him, but he was only
+glad that the pounding had ceased. It commenced again.
+
+"NT. NT. NT. Special cleared JV at 12:48."
+
+Each rushing towards each other with only a minute's difference in
+schedule! That was close--too close. But what was it he had in his mind?
+
+Suddenly he screamed. He lurched to his feet and leant against the wall.
+He knew now. Joe, with those infused and criminal eyes, had gone to
+Sally and Sonny--to get even. There could be nothing in the world as
+important as that. He must get after Joe. He must stop him in time.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+There was something in his brain about stopping a train in time.
+
+"It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed."
+
+Somebody had told him that. What did it mean? What had altered here in
+the tower all at once?
+
+There was no longer any red.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+"I won't answer."
+
+Where had he put his cap and coat. He needed them. He could go without.
+He could kill a beast without. His foot trembled on the first step.
+
+"NT. NT. NT. Why don't you answer? What's wrong. No O. K. Are you
+burning fuses? Wake up. Send an O. K."
+
+The sounder crashed frantically. It conquered him.
+
+He lurched to the table, touched the key, and stuttered out:
+
+"O. K. NT."
+
+He laughed a little. They were in his block, rushing at each other, and
+Joe was alone at the house with Sally and the child. O. K.!
+
+He lighted another fuse, flung it from the window, and started with
+automatic movements for the trap.
+
+Let them crash. Let them splinter, and burn, and die. What was the lot
+of them compared with Sally and Sonny?
+
+The red glare from the fuse sprang into the room. Tolliver paused,
+bathed in blood.
+
+He closed his eyes to shut out the heavy waves of it. He saw women like
+Sally and children like Sonny asleep in a train. It gave him an
+impression that Sally and Sonny were, indeed, on the train. To keep them
+safe it would be necessary to retard the special until thirty-three
+should be on the siding and he could throw that lever that would close
+the switch and make the line safe. He wavered, taking short steps
+between the table and the trap. Where were Sally and Sonny? He had to
+get that clear in his mind.
+
+A bitter cold sprang up the trap. He heard the sobbing of a child.
+
+"Sonny!"
+
+It was becoming clear enough now.
+
+The child crawled up the steps on his hands and knees. Tolliver took him
+in his arms, straining at him passionately.
+
+"What is it, Sonny? Where's mama?"
+
+"Papa, come quick. Come quick."
+
+He kept gasping it out until Tolliver stopped him.
+
+"Joe! Did Joe come?"
+
+The child nodded. He caught his breath.
+
+"Joe broke down the door," he said.
+
+"But mama had the gun," Tolliver said hoarsely.
+
+The boy shook his head.
+
+"Mama wouldn't let Sonny play with it. She locked it up in the cupboard.
+Joe grabbed mama, and she screamed, and said to run and make you come."
+
+In the tower, partially smothered by the storm, vibrated a shrill cry.
+For a moment Tolliver thought his wife's martyrdom had been projected to
+him by some subtle means. Then he knew it was the anxious voice of
+thirty-three--the pleading of all those unconscious men and women and
+little ones. He flung up his arms, releasing the child, and ran to the
+table where he lighted another fuse, and threw it to the track. He
+peered from the window, aware of the sobbing refrain of his son.
+
+"Come quick! Come quick! Come quick!"
+
+From far to the south drifted a fainter sibilation, like an echo of
+thirty-three's whistle. To the north a glow increased. The snowflakes
+there glistened like descending jewels. It was cutting it too close. It
+was vicious to crush all that responsibility on the shoulders of one
+ignorant man, such a man as himself, or Joe. What good would it do him
+to kill Joe now? What was there left for him to do?
+
+He jotted down thirty-three's orders.
+
+The glow to the north intensified, swung slightly to the left as
+thirty-three took the siding. But she had to hurry. The special was
+whistling closer--too close. Thirty-three's locomotive grumbled abreast
+of him. Something tugged at his coat.
+
+"Papa! Won't you come quick to mama?"
+
+The dark, heavy cars slipped by. The red glow of the fuse was overcome
+by the white light from the south. The last black Pullman of
+thirty-three cleared the points. With a gasping breath Tolliver threw
+the switch lever.
+
+"It's too late now, Sonny," he said to the importunate child.
+
+The tower shook. A hot, white eye flashed by, and a blurred streak of
+cars. Snow pelted in the window, stinging Tolliver's face. Tolliver
+closed the window and picked up thirty-three's orders. If he had kept
+the revolver here he could have prevented Joe's leaving the tower. Why
+had Sally locked it in the cupboard? At least it was there now. Tolliver
+found himself thinking of the revolver as an exhausted man forecasts
+sleep.
+
+Someone ran swiftly up the stairs. It was the engineer of thirty-three,
+surprised and impatient.
+
+"Where are my orders, Tolliver? I don't want to lie over here all
+night."
+
+He paused. His tone became curious.
+
+"What ails you, Tolliver?"
+
+Tolliver handed him the orders, trembling.
+
+"I guess maybe my wife at the house is dead, or--You'll go see."
+
+The engineer shook his head.
+
+"You brace up, Tolliver. I'm sorry if anything's happened to your wife,
+but we couldn't hold thirty-three, even for a murder."
+
+Tolliver's trembling grew. He mumbled incoherently:
+
+"But I didn't murder all those people----"
+
+"Report to division headquarters," the engineer advised. "They'll send
+you help to-morrow."
+
+He hurried down the stairs. After a moment the long train pulled out,
+filled with warm, comfortable people. The child, his sobbing at an end,
+watched it curiously. Tolliver tried to stop his shaking.
+
+There was someone else on the stairs now, climbing with an extreme
+slowness. A bare arm reached through the trap, wavering for a moment
+uncertainly. Ugly bruises showed on the white flesh. Tolliver managed to
+reach the trap. He grasped the arm and drew into the light the dark hair
+and the chalky face of his wife. Her wide eyes stared at him strangely.
+
+"Don't touch me," she whispered. "What am I going to do?"
+
+"Joe?"
+
+"Why do you tremble so?" she asked in her colorless voice, without
+resonance. "Why didn't you come?"
+
+"Joe?" he repeated hysterically.
+
+She drew away from him.
+
+"You won't want to touch me again."
+
+He pointed to the repellant bruises. She shook her head.
+
+"He didn't hurt me much," she whispered, "because I--I killed him."
+
+She drew her other hand from the folds of her wrapper. The revolver
+dangled from her fingers. It slipped and fell to the floor. The child
+stared at it with round eyes, as if he longed to pick it up.
+
+She covered her face and shrank against the wall.
+
+"I've killed a man----"
+
+Through her fingers she looked at her husband fearfully. After a time
+she whispered:
+
+"Why don't you say something?"
+
+His trembling had ceased. His lips were twisted in a grin. He, too,
+wondered why he didn't say something. Because there were no words for
+what was in his heart.
+
+In a corner he arranged his overcoat as a sort of a bed for the boy.
+
+"Won't you speak to me?" she sobbed. "I didn't mean to, but I had to.
+You got to understand. I had to."
+
+He went to the table and commenced to tap vigorously on the key. She ran
+across and grasped at his arm.
+
+"What you telling them?" she demanded wildly.
+
+"Why, Sally!" he said. "What's the matter with you?--To send another man
+now Joe is gone."
+
+Truths emerged from his measureless relief, lending themselves to words.
+He trembled again for a moment.
+
+"If I hadn't stayed! If I'd let them smash! When all along it only
+needed Joe to keep all those people from getting killed."
+
+He sat down, caught her in his arms, drew her to his knee, and held her
+close.
+
+"You ain't going to scold?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+He shook his head. He couldn't say any more just then; but when his
+tears touched her face she seemed to understand and to be content.
+
+So, while the boy slept, they waited together for someone to take Joe's
+place.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Copyright, 1920, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright,
+1921, by Charles Wadsworth Camp.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARTING GENIUS[7]
+
+#By# HELEN COALE CREW
+
+From _The Midland_
+
+
+"_The parting genius is with sighing sent._"
+
+#Milton's# _Hymn on the Nativity._
+
+It was high noon, blue and hot. The little town upon the southern slope
+of the hills that shut in the great plain glared white in the intense
+sunlight. The beds of the brooks in the valleys that cut their way
+through the hill-clefts were dry and dusty; and the sole shade visible
+lay upon the orchard floors, where the thick branches above cast
+blue-black shadows upon the golden tangle of grasses at their feet. A
+soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from
+earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in
+the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows. The
+poppies that flecked the yellow wheat fields drooped heavily, spilling
+the wine of summer from their cups. Nature stood at drowsy-footed pause,
+reluctant to take up again the vital whirr of living.
+
+At the edge of the orchard, near the dusty highway, under a huge
+misshapen olive tree sat a boy, still as a carven Buddha save that his
+eyes stood wide, full of dreams. His was a sensitive face, thoughtful
+beyond his childish years, full of weariness when from time to time he
+closed his eyes, full of dark brooding when the lids lifted again.
+Presently he rose to his feet, and his two hands clenched tightly into
+fists.
+
+"I hate it!" he muttered vehemently.
+
+At his side the grasses stirred and a portion of the blue shadow of the
+tree detached itself and became the shadow of a man.
+
+"Hate?" questioned a golden, care-free voice at his side. "Thou'rt
+overyoung to hate. What is it thou dost hate?"
+
+A young man had thrown himself down in the grass at the boy's side.
+Shaggy locks hung about his brown cheeks; his broad, supple chest and
+shoulders were bare; his eyes were full of sleepy laughter; and his
+indolent face was now beautiful, now grotesque, at the color of his
+thoughts. From a leathern thong about his neck hung a reed pipe, deftly
+fashioned, and a bowl of wood carved about with grape-bunches dangled
+from the twisted vine which girdled his waist. In one hand he held a
+honey-comb, into which he bit with sharp white teeth, and on one arm he
+carried branches torn from fig and almond trees, clustered with green
+figs and with nuts. The two looked long at each other, the boy gravely,
+the man smiling.
+
+"Thou wilt know me another time," said the man with a throaty laugh.
+"And I shall know thee. I have been watching thee a long time--I know
+not why. But what is it thou dost hate? For me, I hate nothing. Hate is
+wearisome."
+
+The boy's gaze fixed itself upon the bright, insouciant face of the man
+with a fascination he endeavored to throw off but could not. Presently
+he spoke, and his voice was low and clear and deliberate.
+
+"Hate is evil," he said.
+
+"I know not what evil may be," said the man, a puzzled frown furrowing
+the smooth brow for a swift moment. "Hunger, now, or lust, or sleep--"
+
+"Hate is the thing that comes up in my throat and chokes me when I think
+of tyranny," interrupted the boy, his eyes darkening.
+
+"Why trouble to hate?" asked the man. He lifted his pipe to his lips and
+blew a joyous succession of swift, unhesitant notes, as throbbing as the
+heat, as vivid as the sunshine. His lithe throat bubbled and strained
+with his effort, and his warm vitality poured through the mouthpiece of
+the pipe and issued melodiously at the farther end. Noon deepened
+through many shades of hot and slumberous splendor, the very silence
+intensified by the brilliant pageant of sound. A great hawk at sail
+overhead hung suddenly motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in
+the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire
+flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw
+down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves of
+sound.
+
+"Why trouble to hate?" he asked again, and sank his shoulder deeper into
+the warm grass. His voice was as sleepy as the drone of distant bees,
+and his dream-filmed eyes looked out through drooping lids. "I hate
+nothing. It takes effort. It is easier to feel friendly with all
+things--creatures, and men, and gods."
+
+"I hate with a purpose," said the child, his eyes fixed, and brooding
+upon an inward vision. The man rose upon his elbow and gazed curiously
+at the boy, but the latter, unheeding, went on with his thoughts. "Some
+day I shall be a man, and then I shall kill tyranny. Aye, kill! It is
+tyranny that I hate. And hatred I hate; and oppression. But how I shall
+go about to kill them, that I do not yet know. I think and think, but I
+have not yet thought of a way."
+
+"If," said the man, "thou could'st love as royally as thou could'st
+hate, what a lover thou would'st become! For me, I love but lightly, and
+hate not at all, yet have I been a man for aeons. How near art thou to
+manhood?"
+
+"I have lived nearly twelve years."
+
+Like a flash the man leaped to his feet and turned his face westward
+towards the sea with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter
+yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his
+face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice
+trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I
+have been a wanderer, shorn of my strength and my glory! Look you, boy,
+at the line of hills yonder. Behind those hills lie the blue sea-ridges,
+and still beyond, lies the land where I dwelt. Ye gods, the happy
+country!" Like a great child he stood, and his breast broke into sobs,
+but his eyes glowed with splendid visions. "Apollo's golden shafts
+could scarce penetrate the shadowy groves, and Diana's silver arrows
+pierced only the tossing treetops. And underfoot the crocus flamed, and
+the hyacinth. Flocks and herds fed in pastures rosy with blossoms, and
+there were white altars warm with flame in every thicket. There were
+dances, and mad revels, and love and laughter"--he paused, and the
+splendor died from his face. "And then one starry night--still and clear
+it was, and white with frost--fear stalked into the happy haunts, and an
+ontreading mystery, benign yet dreadful. And something, I know not what,
+drove me forth. _Aie! Aie!_ There is but the moaning of doves when the
+glad hymns sounded, and cold ashes and dead drifted leaves on the once
+warm altars!"
+
+A sharp pull at his tunic brought his thoughts back to the present. The
+child drew him urgently down into the long grass, and laid a finger upon
+his lip; and at the touch of the small finger the man trembled through
+all his length of limbs, and lay still. Up the road rose a cloud of dust
+and the sound of determined feet, and presently a martial figure came in
+sight, clad in bronze and leather helmet and cuirass, and carrying an
+oblong shield and a short, broad-bladed sword of double edge. Short yet
+agile, a soldier every inch, he looked neither to the right nor to the
+left, but marched steadily and purposefully upon his business. His
+splendid muscles, shining with sweat, gleamed satinwise in the hot sun.
+A single unit, he was yet a worthy symbol of a world-wide efficiency.
+
+The man and boy beneath the tree crouched low. "Art afraid?" whispered
+the man. And the boy whispered back, "It is he that I hate, and all his
+kind." His child-heart beat violently against his side, great beads
+stood out upon his forehead, and his hands trembled. "If you but knew
+the sorrow in the villages! Aye, in the whole country--because of him!
+He takes the bread from the mouths of the pitiful poor--and we are all
+so poor! The women and babes starve, but the taxes must be paid. Upon
+the aged and the crippled, even, fall heavy burdens. And all because of
+him and his kind!"
+
+The man looked at the flushed face and trembling limbs of the boy, and
+his own face glowed in a golden smile that was full of a sudden and
+unaccustomed tenderness. "Why, see now," he whispered, "that is easily
+overcome. Look! I will show thee the way." Lifting himself cautiously,
+he crouched on all fours in the grass, slipping and sliding forward so
+hiddenly that the keen ear and eagle eye of the approaching soldier took
+note of no least ripple in the quiet grass by the roadside. It was the
+sinuous, silent motion of a snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his
+lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge
+of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved
+and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and
+were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him
+along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination,
+rooted to the spot in terror.
+
+With the quickness of a flash it all happened--the martial traveller
+taken unaware, the broad-bladed sword wrenched from his hand by
+seemingly superhuman strength, a sudden hideous grip at his throat,
+blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting
+breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ...
+silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was
+no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had
+not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face
+no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed.
+And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he
+leaped out upon the murderer and beat and beat and beat upon him with
+helpless, puny child-fists, and all a child's splendid and ineffectual
+rage. And at that the man turned and thrust the child from him in utter
+astonishment, and the boy fell heavily back upon the road, the second
+quiet figure lying there. And again the man's face changed, became
+vacant, bewildered, troubled; and stooping, he lifted the boy in his
+arms, and ran with him westward along the road, through the fields of
+dead-ripe wheat, across the stubble of the garnered barley, fleet-footed
+as a deer, till he could run no more.
+
+In a little glen of hickory and oak, through whose misty-mellow depths a
+small stream trickled, he paused at last and laid the boy upon a soft
+and matted bed of thick green myrtle, and brought water in his two hands
+to bathe the bruised head, whimpering the while. Then he chafed the
+small bare feet and warmed them in his own warm breast; and gathering
+handfuls of pungent mint and the sweet-scented henna, he crushed them
+and held them to the boy's nostrils. And these devices failing, he sat
+disconsolate, the curves of his mobile face falling into unwonted lines
+of half-weary, half-sorrowful dejection. "I know not how it may be," he
+said to himself, smiling whimsically, "but I seem to have caught upon my
+lips the bitter human savor of repentance."
+
+Utter silence held the little glen. The child lay unconscious, and the
+man sat with his head in his hands, as one brooding. When the sun at
+last neared the place of his setting, the boy's eyes opened. His gaze
+fell upon his companion, and crowded and confused thoughts surged
+through him. For some time he lay still, finding his bearings. And at
+length the hatred that had all day, and for many days, filled his young
+breast, melted away in a divine pity and tenderness, and the tears of
+that warm melting rolled down his cheeks. The man near him, who had
+watched in silence, gently put a questioning finger upon the wet cheeks.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Repentance," said the boy.
+
+"I pity thee. Repentance is bitter of taste."
+
+"No," said the boy. "It is warm and sweet. It moves my heart and my
+understanding."
+
+"What has become of thy hatred?"
+
+"I shall never hate again."
+
+"What wilt thou do, then?"
+
+"I shall love," said the boy. "_Love_," he repeated softly. "_How came I
+never to think of that before?_"
+
+"Wilt thou love tyranny and forbear to kill the tyrant?"
+
+The boy rose to his feet, and his young slenderness was full of strength
+and dignity, and his face, cleared of its sombre brooding, was full of a
+bright, untroubled decision. The cypresses upon the hilltops stood no
+more resolutely erect, the hills themselves were no more steadfast.
+"Nay," he said, laughing a little, boyishly, in pure pleasure at the
+crystal fixity of his purpose. "Rather will I love the tyrant, and the
+tyranny will die of itself. Oh, it is the way! It is the way! And I
+could not think of it till now! Not till I saw thee killing and him
+bleeding. Then I knew." Then, more gravely, he added, "I will begin by
+loving thee."
+
+"Thou hast the appearance of a young god," said the man slowly, "but if
+thou wert a god, thou would'st crush thine enemies, not love them." He
+sighed, and his face strengthened into a semblance of power. "I was a
+god once myself," he added after some hesitation.
+
+"What is thy name?" asked the boy.
+
+"They called me once the Great God Pan. And thou?"
+
+"My father is Joseph the carpenter. My mother calls me Jesus."
+
+"_Ah_ ..." said Pan, "... _is it Thou?_"
+
+Quietly they looked into each other's eyes; quietly clasped hands. And
+with no more words the man turned westward into the depths of the glen,
+drawing the sun's rays with him as he moved, so that the world seemed
+the darker for his going. And as he went he blew upon his pipe a
+tremulous and hesitating melody, piercing sweet and piercing sorrowful,
+so that whosoever should hear it should clutch his throat with tears at
+the wild pity of it, and the strange and haunting beauty. And the boy
+stood still, watching, until the man was lost upon the edge of night.
+Then he turned his face eastward, whence the new day comes, carrying
+forever in his heart the echoes of a dying song.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[7] Copyright, 1920, by John T. Frederick. Copyright, 1921, by Helen
+Coale Crew.
+
+
+
+
+HABAKKUK[8]
+
+#By# KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD
+
+From _Scribner's Magazine_
+
+
+When they carried Kathleen Somers up into the hills to die where her
+ancestors had had the habit of dying--they didn't gad about, those early
+Somerses; they dropped in their tracks, and the long grass that they had
+mowed and stacked and trodden under their living feet flourished
+mightily over their graves--it was held to be only a question of time. I
+say "to die," not because her case was absolutely hopeless, but because
+no one saw how, with her spent vitality, she could survive her exile.
+Everything had come at once, and she had gone under. She had lost her
+kin, she had lost her money, she had lost her health. Even the people
+who make their meat of tragedy--and there are a great many of them in
+all enlightened centres of thought--shook their heads and were sorry.
+They thought she couldn't live; and they also thought it much, much
+better that she shouldn't. For there was nothing left in life for that
+sophisticated creature but a narrow cottage in a stony field, with
+Nature to look at.
+
+Does it sound neurotic and silly? It wasn't. Conceive her if you
+can--Kathleen Somers, whom probably you never knew. From childhood she
+had nourished short hopes and straightened thoughts. At least: hopes
+that depend on the æsthetic passion are short; and the long perspectives
+of civilized history are very narrow. Kathleen Somers had been fed with
+the Old World: that is to say, her adolescent feet had exercised
+themselves in picture-galleries and cathedrals and palaces; she had
+seen all the right views, all the right ceremonies, and all the
+censored picturesqueness. Don't get any Cook's tourist idea, please,
+about Miss Somers. Her mother had died young, and her gifted father had
+taken her to a hundred places that the school-teacher on a holiday never
+gets to and thinks of only in connection with geography lessons. She had
+followed the Great Wall of China, she had stood before the tomb of
+Tamburlaine, she had shaded her eyes from the glare of Kaïrouan the
+Holy, she had chaffered in Tiflis and in Trebizond. All this before she
+was twenty-five. At that time her father's health broke, and they
+proceeded to live permanently in New York. Her wandering life had
+steeped her in delights, but kept her innocent of love-affairs. When you
+have fed on historic beauty, on the great plots of the past, the best
+tenor voices in the world, it is pretty hard to find a man who doesn't
+in his own person, leave out something essential to romance. She had
+herself no particular beauty, and therefore the male sex could get on
+without her. A few fell in love with her, but she was too enchanted and
+amused with the world in general to set to work at the painful process
+of making a hero out of any one of them. She was a sweet-tempered
+creature; her mental snobbishness was not a pose, but perfectly
+inevitable; she had a great many friends. As she had a quick wit and the
+historic imagination, you can imagine--remembering her bringing up--that
+she was an entertaining person when she entered upon middle age: when,
+that is, she was proceeding from the earlier to the later thirties.
+
+It was natural that Kathleen Somers and her father--who was a bit
+precious and pompous, in spite of his ironies--should gather about them
+a homogeneous group. The house was pleasant and comfortable--they were
+too sophisticated to be "periodic"--and there was always good talk
+going, if you happened to be the kind that could stand good talk. Of
+course you had to pass an examination first. You had at least to show
+that you "caught on." They were high-brow enough to permit themselves
+sudden enthusiasms that would have damned a low-brow. You mustn't like
+"Peter Pan," but you might go three nights running to see some really
+perfect clog-dancing at a vaudeville theatre. Do you see what I mean?
+They were eclectic with a vengeance. It wouldn't do for you to cultivate
+the clog-dancer _and_ like "Peter Pan," because in that case you
+probably liked the clog-dancer for the wrong reason--for something other
+than that sublimated skill which is art. Of course this is only a wildly
+chosen example. I never heard either of them mention "Peter Pan." And
+the proper hatreds were ever more difficult than the proper devotions.
+You might let Shakespeare get on your nerves, provided you really
+enjoyed Milton. I wonder if you do see what I mean? It must be perfect
+of its kind, its kind being anything under heaven; and it must never,
+never, never be sentimental. It must have art, and _parti pris_, and
+point of view, and individuality stamped over it. No, I can't explain.
+If you have known people like that, you've known them. If you haven't,
+you can scarcely conceive them.
+
+By this time you are probably hating the Somerses, father and daughter,
+and I can't help it--or rather, I've probably brought it about. But when
+I tell you that I'm not that sore myself, and that I loved them both
+dearly and liked immensely to be with them, you'll reconsider a little,
+I hope. They were sweet and straight and generous, both of them, and
+they knew all about the grand manner. The grand manner is the most
+comfortable thing to live with that I know. I used to go there a good
+deal, and Arnold Withrow went even more than I did, though he wasn't
+even hanging on to Art by the eyelids as I do. (I refer, of course, to
+my little habit of writing for the best magazines, whose public
+considers me intellectual. So I seem to myself, in the magazines ...
+"but out in pantry, good Lord!" Anyhow, I generally knew at least what
+the Somerses were talking about--the dears!) Withrow was a stock-broker,
+and always spent his vacations in the veritable wilds, camping in virgin
+forests, or on the edge of glaciers, or in the dust of American deserts.
+He had never been to Europe, but he had been to Buenos Aires. You can
+imagine what Kathleen Somers and her father felt about that: they
+thought him too quaint and barbaric for words; but still not barbaric
+enough to be really interesting.
+
+I was just beginning to suspect that Withrow was in love with Kathleen
+Somers in the good old middle-class way, with no drama in it but no end
+of devotion, when the crash came. Mr. Somers died, and within a month of
+his death the railroad the bonds of which had constituted his long-since
+diminished fortune went into the hands of a receiver. There were a
+pitiful hundreds a year left, besides the ancestral cottage--which had
+never even been worth selling. His daughter had an operation, and the
+shock of that, _plus_ the shock of his death, _plus_ the shock of her
+impoverishment, brought the curtain down with a tremendous rush that
+terrified the house. It may make my metaphor clearer if I put it that it
+was the asbestos curtain which fell suddenly and violently; not the
+great crimson drop that swings gracefully down at the end of a play. It
+did not mark the end; it marked a catastrophe in the wings to which the
+plot must give place.
+
+Then they carried Kathleen Somers to the hills.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was Mildred Thurston who told me about it first. Withrow would have
+rushed to the hills, I think, but he was in British Columbia on an
+extended trip. He had fought for three months and got them, and he
+started just before Kathleen Somers had her sudden operation. Mildred
+Thurston (Withrow's cousin, by the way) threw herself nobly into the
+breach. I am not going into the question of Mildred Thurston here.
+Perhaps if Withrow had been at home, she wouldn't have gone. I don't
+know. Anyhow, when she rushed to Kathleen Somers's desolate retreat she
+did it, apparently, from pure kindness. She was sure, like every one
+else, that Kathleen would die; and that belief purged her, for the time
+being, of selfishness and commonness and cheap gayety. I wouldn't take
+Mildred Thurston's word about a state of soul; but she was a good
+dictograph. She came back filled with pity; filled, at least, with the
+means of inspiring pity for the exile in others.
+
+After I had satisfied myself that Kathleen Somers was physically on the
+mend, eating and sleeping fairly, and sitting up a certain amount, I
+proceeded to more interesting questions.
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"It's dreadful."
+
+"How dreadful?"
+
+Mildred's large blue eyes popped at me with sincere sorrow.
+
+"Well, there's no plumbing, and no furnace."
+
+"Is it in a village?"
+
+"It isn't 'in' anything. It's a mile and a half from a station called
+Hebron. You have to change three times to get there. It's half-way up a
+hill--the house is--and there are mountains all about, and the barn is
+connected with the house by a series of rickety woodsheds, and there are
+places where the water comes through the roof. They put pails under to
+catch it. There are queer little contraptions they call Franklin stoves
+in most of the rooms and a brick oven in the kitchen. When they want
+anything from the village, Joel Blake gets it, if he doesn't forget.
+Ditto wood, ditto everything except meat. Some other hick brings that
+along when he has 'killed.' They can only see one house from the front
+yard, and that is precisely a mile away by the road. Joel Blake lives
+nearer, but you can't see his house. You can't see anything--except the
+woods and the 'crick' and the mountains. You can see the farmers when
+they are haying, but that doesn't last long."
+
+"Is it a beautiful view?"
+
+"My dear man, don't ask me what a beautiful view is. My education was
+neglected."
+
+"Does Kathleen Somers think it beautiful?"
+
+"She never looks at it, I believe. The place is all run down, and she
+sits and wonders when the wall-paper will drop off. At least, that is
+what she talks about, when she talks at all. That, and whether Joel
+Blake will remember to bring the groceries. The two women never speak to
+each other. Kathleen's awfully polite, but--well, you can't blame her.
+And I was there in the spring. What it will be in the winter!--But
+Kathleen can hardly last so long, I should think."
+
+"Who is the other woman?"
+
+"An heirloom. Melora Meigs. _Miss_ Meigs, if you please. You know Mr.
+Somers's aunt lived to an extreme old age in the place. Miss Meigs 'did'
+for her. And since then she has been living on there. No one wanted the
+house--the poor Somerses!--and she was used to it. She's an old thing
+herself, and of course she hasn't the nerves of a sloth. Now she 'does'
+for Kathleen. Of course later there'll have to be a nurse again.
+Kathleen mustn't die with only Melora Meigs. I'm not sure, either, that
+Melora will last. She all crooked over with rheumatism."
+
+That was the gist of what I got out of Mildred Thurston. Letters to Miss
+Somers elicited no real response--only a line to say that she wasn't
+strong enough to write. None of her other female friends could get any
+encouragement to visit her. It was perhaps due to Miss Thurston's
+mimicry of Melora Meigs--she made quite a "stunt" of it--that none of
+them pushed the matter beyond the first rebuff.
+
+By summer-time I began to get worried myself. Perhaps I was a little
+worried, vicariously, for Withrow. Remember that I thought he cared for
+her. Miss Thurston's pity for Kathleen Somers was the kind that shuts
+the door on the pitied person. If she had thought Kathleen Somers had a
+future, she wouldn't have been so kind. I may give it to you as my
+private opinion that Mildred Thurston wanted Withrow herself. I can't
+swear to it, even now; but I suspected it sufficiently to feel that some
+one, for Withrow's sake had better see Kathleen besides his exuberant
+and slangy cousin. She danced a little too much on Kathleen Somers's
+grave. I determined to go myself, and not to take the trouble of asking
+vainly for an invitation. I left New York at the end of June.
+
+With my perfectly ordinary notions of comfort in traveling, I found that
+it would take me two days to get to Hebron. It was beyond all the
+resorts that people flock to: beyond, and "cross country" at that. I
+must have journeyed on at least three small, one-track railroads after
+leaving the Pullman at some junction or other.
+
+It was late afternoon when I reached Hebron; and nearly an hour later
+before I could get myself deposited at Kathleen Somers's door. There was
+no garden, no porch; only a long, weed-grown walk up to a stiff front
+door. An orchard of rheumatic apple-trees was cowering stiffly to the
+wind in a far corner of the roughly fenced-in lot; there was a windbreak
+of perishing pines.
+
+In the living-room Kathleen Somers lay on a cheap wicker chaise-longue,
+staring at a Hindu idol that she held in her thin hands. She did not
+stir to greet me; only transferred her stare from the gilded idol to
+dusty and ungilded me. She spoke, of course; the first time in my life,
+too, that I had ever heard her speak ungently.
+
+"My good man, you had better go away. I can't put you up."
+
+That was her greeting. Melora Meigs was snuffling in the hallway
+outside--listening, I suppose.
+
+"Oh, yes, you can. If you can't I'm sure Joel Blake will. I've come to
+stay a while, Miss Somers."
+
+"Can you eat porridge and salt pork for supper?"
+
+"I can eat tenpenny nails, if necessary. Also I can sleep in the barn."
+
+"Melora!" The old woman entered, crooked and grudging of aspect. "This
+friend of my father's and mine has come to see me. Can he sleep in the
+barn?"
+
+I cannot describe the hostility with which Melora Meigs regarded me. It
+was not a pointed and passionate hatred. That, one could have examined
+and dealt with. It was, rather, a vast disgust that happened to include
+me.
+
+"There's nothing to sleep on. Barn's empty."
+
+"He could move the nurse's cot out there, if he really wants to. And I
+think there's an extra washstand in the woodshed. You'll hardly need
+more than one chair, just for a night," she finished, turning to me.
+
+"Not for any number of nights, of course," I agreed suavely. I was angry
+with Kathleen Somers, I didn't know quite why. I think it was the Hindu
+idol. Nor had she any right to address me with insolence, unless she
+were mad, and she was not that. Her eyes snapped very sanely. I don't
+think Kathleen Somers could have made her voice snap.
+
+Melora Meigs grunted and left the room. The grunt was neither assent nor
+dissent; it was only the most inclusive disapproval: the snarl of an
+animal, proceeding from the topmost of many layers of dislike.
+
+"I'll move the things before dark, I think." I was determined to be
+cheerful, even if I had to seem impertinent; though the notion of her
+sticking me out in the barn enraged me.
+
+"You won't mind Melora's locking the door between, of course. We always
+do. I'm such a cockney, I'm timid; and Melora's very sweet about it."
+
+It was almost too much, but I stuck it out. Presently, indeed, I got my
+way; and moved--yes, actually lugged and lifted and dragged--the cot,
+the chair, and the stand out through the dusty, half-rotted corridors
+and sheds to the barn. I drew water at the tap in the yard and washed my
+perspiring face and neck. Then I had supper with Miss Somers and Melora
+Meigs.
+
+After supper my hostess lighted a candle. "We go to bed very early," she
+informed me. "I know you'll be willing to smoke out-of-doors, it's so
+warm. I doubt if Melora could bear tobacco in the house. And you won't
+mind her locking up early. You can get into the barn from the yard any
+time, of course. Men are never timid, I believe; but there's a horn
+somewhere, if you'd like it. We have breakfast at six-thirty.
+Good-night."
+
+Yes, it was Kathleen Somers's own voice, saying these things to me. I
+was still enraged, but I must bide my time. I refused the horn, and went
+out into the rheumatic orchard to smoke in dappled moonlight. The pure
+air soothed me; the great silence restored my familiar scheme of things.
+Before I went to bed in the barn, I could see the humor of this sour
+adventure. Oh, I would be up at six-thirty!
+
+Of course I wasn't. I overslept; and by the time I approached the house
+(the woodshed door was still locked) their breakfast was long over. I
+fully expected to fast until the midday meal, but Kathleen Somers
+relented. With her own hands she made me coffee over a little alcohol
+lamp. Bread and butter had been austerely left on the table. Miss Somers
+fetched me eggs, which I ate raw. Then I went out into the orchard to
+smoke.
+
+When I came back, I found Miss Somers as she had been the day before,
+crouched listlessly in her long chair fondling her idol. I drew up a
+horsehair rocking-chair and plunged in.
+
+"Why do you play with that silly thing?"
+
+"This?" She stroked the idol. "It is rather lovely, Father got it in
+Benares. The carving is very cunningly done. Look at the nose and mouth.
+The rank Hinduism of the thing amuses me. Perhaps it was cruel to bring
+it up here where there are no other gods for it to play with. But it's
+all I've got. They had to sell everything, you know. When I get
+stronger, I'll send it back to New York and sell it too."
+
+"Why did you keep it out of all the things you had?"
+
+"I don't know. I think it was the first thing we ever bought in India.
+And I remember Benares with so much pleasure. Wasn't it a pity we
+couldn't have been there when everything happened?"
+
+"Much better not, I should think. You needed surgeons."
+
+"Just what I didn't need! I should have liked to die in a country that
+had something to say for itself. I don't feel as though this place had
+ever existed, except in some hideous dream."
+
+"It's not hideous. It's even very beautiful--so wild and untouched; such
+lovely contours to the mountains."
+
+"Yes, it's very untouched." She spoke of it with just the same scorn I
+had in old days heard her use for certain novelists. "Scarcely worth the
+trouble of touching I should think--shouldn't you?"
+
+"The beauty of it last night and this morning has knocked me over," I
+replied hardily.
+
+"Oh, really! How very interesting!" By which she meant that she was not
+interested at all.
+
+"You mean that you would like it landscape-gardened?" Really, she was
+perverse. She had turned her back to the view--which was ripping, out of
+her northern window. I could tell that she habitually turned her back on
+it.
+
+"Oh, landscape-gardened? Well, it would improve it, no doubt. But it
+would take generations to do it. The generations that have been here
+already don't seem to have accomplished much. Humanly speaking, they
+have hardly existed at all."
+
+Kathleen Somers was no snob in the ordinary sense. She was an angel to
+peasants. I knew perfectly what she meant by "humanly." She meant there
+was no castle on the next hill.
+
+"Are you incapable of caring for nature--just scenery?"
+
+"Quite." She closed her eyes, and stopped her gentle, even stroking of
+the idol.
+
+"Of course you never did see America first," I laughed.
+
+Kathleen Somers opened her eyes and spoke vehemently. "I've seen all
+there is of it to see, in transit to better places. Seeing America
+first! That can be borne. It's seeing America last that kills me. Seeing
+nothing else forever, till I die."
+
+"You don't care for just beauty, regardless," I mused.
+
+"Not a bit. Not unless it has meant something to man. I'm a humanist,
+I'm afraid."
+
+Whether she was gradually developing remorse for my night in the
+cobwebby barn, I do not know. But anyhow she grew more gentle, from this
+point on. She really condescended to expound.
+
+"I've never loved nature--she's a brute, and crawly besides. It's what
+man has done with nature that counts; it's nature with a human past.
+Peaks that have been fought for, and fought on, crossed by the feet of
+men, stared at by poets and saints. Most of these peaks aren't even
+named. Did you know that? Nature! What is Nature good for, I should
+like to know, except to kill us all in the end? Don't Ruskinize to me,
+my dear man."
+
+"I won't. I couldn't. But, all the same, beauty is beauty, wherever and
+whatever. And, look where you will here, your eyes can't go wrong."
+
+"I never look. I looked when I first came, and the stupidity, the
+emptiness, the mere wood and dirt and rock of it seemed like a personal
+insult. I should prefer the worst huddle of a Chinese city, I verily
+believe."
+
+"You've not precisely the spirit of the pioneer, I can see."
+
+"I should hope not. 'But, God if a God there be, is the substance of
+men, which is man.' I have to stay in the man-made ruts. They're sacred
+to me. I'll look with pleasure at the Alps, if only for the sake of
+Hannibal and Goethe; but I never could look with pleasure at your
+untutored Rockies. They're so unintentional, you know. Nature is nothing
+until history has touched her. And as for this geological display
+outside my windows--you'll kindly permit me to turn my back on it. It's
+not peevishness." She lifted her hand protestingly. "Only, for weeks, I
+stared myself blind to see the beauty you talk of. I can't see it.
+That's honest. I've tried. But there is none that I can see. I am very
+conventional, you know, very self-distrustful. I have to wait for a
+Byron to show it to me. American mountains--poor hulking things--have
+never had a poet to look at them. At least, Poe never wasted his time
+that way. I don't imagine that Poe would have been much happier here
+than I am. I haven't even the thrill of the explorer, for I'm not the
+first one to see them. A few thin generations of people have stared at
+these hills--and much the hills have done for them! Melora Meigs is the
+child of these mountains; and Melora's sense of beauty is amply
+expressed in the Orthodox church in Hebron. This landscape, I assure
+you"--she smiled--"hasn't made good. So much for the view. It's no use
+to me, absolutely no use. I give you full and free leave to take it away
+with you if you want it. And I don't think the house is much better. But
+I'm afraid I shall have to keep that for Melora Meigs and me to live
+in." It was her old smile. The bitterness was all in the words. No, it
+was not bitterness, precisely, for it was fundamentally as impersonal as
+criticism can be. You would have thought that the mountains were
+low-brows. I forebore to mention her ancestors who had lived here: it
+would have seemed like quibbling. They had created the situation; but
+they had only in the most literal sense created her.
+
+"Why don't you get out?"
+
+"I simply haven't money enough to live anywhere else. Not money enough
+for a hall bedroom. This place belongs to me. The taxes are nothing. The
+good farming land that went with it was sold long since. And I'm afraid
+I haven't the strength to go out and work for a living. I'm very
+ineffectual, besides. What could I do even if health returned to me?
+I've decided it's more decent to stay here and die on three dollars a
+year than to sink my capital in learning stenography."
+
+"You could, I suppose, be a companion." Of course I did not mean it, but
+she took it up very seriously.
+
+"The people who want companions wouldn't want me. And the one thing this
+place gives me is freedom--freedom to hate it, to see it intelligently
+for what it is. I couldn't afford my blessed hatreds if I were a
+companion. And there's no money in it, so that I couldn't even plan for
+release. It simply wouldn't do."
+
+Well, of course it wouldn't do. I had never thought it would. I tried
+another opening.
+
+"When is Withrow coming back?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't heard from him." She might have been telling a
+squirrel that she didn't know where the other squirrel's nuts were.
+
+"He has been far beyond civilization, I know. But I dare say he'll be
+back soon. I hope you won't put him in the barn. I don't mind, of
+course, but his feelings might be hurt."
+
+"I shall certainly not let him come," she retorted. "He would have the
+grace to ask first, you know."
+
+"I shall make a point of telling him you want him." But even that could
+strike no spark from her. She was too completely at odds with life to
+care. I realized, too, after an hour's talk with her, that I had better
+go--take back my fine proposition about making a long visit. She reacted
+to nothing I could offer. I talked of books and plays, visiting
+virtuosos and picture exhibitions. Her comments were what they would
+always have been, except that she was already groping for the cue. She
+had been out of it for months; she had given up the fight. The best
+things she said sounded a little stale and precious. Her wit perished in
+the face of Nature's stare. Nature was a lady she didn't recognize: a
+country cousin she'd never met. She couldn't even "sit and play with
+similes." If she lived, she would be an old lady with a clever past: an
+intolerable bore. But there was no need to look so far ahead. Kathleen
+Somers would die.
+
+Before dinner I clambered up or down (I don't remember which) to a brook
+and gathered a bunch of wild iris for her. She had loved flowers of old;
+and how deftly she could place a spray among her treasures! She
+shuddered. "Take those things away! How dare you bring It inside the
+house?" By "It" I knew she meant the wild natural world. Obediently I
+took the flowers out and flung them over the fence. I knew that Kathleen
+Somers was capable of getting far more pleasure from their inimitable
+hue than I; but even that inimitable hue was poisoned for her because it
+came from the world that was torturing her--the world that beat upon her
+windows, so that she turned her back to the day; that stormed her ears,
+so that she closed them even to its silence; that surrounded her, so
+that she locked every gate of her mind.
+
+I left, that afternoon, very desolate and sorry. Certainly I could do
+nothing for her. I had tried to shock her, stir her, into another
+attitude, but in vain. She had been transplanted to a soil her tender
+roots could not strike into. She would wither for a little under the
+sky, and then perish. "If she could only have fallen in love!" I
+thought, as I left her, huddled in her wicker chair. If I had been a
+woman, I would have fled from Melora Meigs even into the arms of a
+bearded farmer; I would have listened to the most nasal male the hills
+had bred. I would have milked cows, to get away from Melora. But I am a
+crass creature. Besides, what son of the soil would want her:
+unexuberant, delicate, pleasant in strange ways, and foreign to all
+familiar things? She wouldn't even fall in love with Arnold Withrow, who
+was her only chance. For I saw that Arnold, if he ever came, would,
+fatally, love the place. She might have put up with the stock-broking,
+but she never could have borne his liking the view. Yes, I was very
+unhappy as I drove into Hebron; and when I finally achieved the Pullman
+at the Junction, I was unhappier still. For I felt towards that Pullman
+as the lost child feels toward its nurse; and I knew that Kathleen
+Somers, ill, poor, middle-aged, and a woman, was a thousand times more
+the child of the Pullman than I.
+
+I have told this in detail, because I hate giving things at second-hand.
+Yet there my connection with Kathleen Somers ceased, and her tragedy
+deepened before other witnesses. She stayed on in her hills; too proud
+to visit her friends, too sane to spend her money on a flying trip to
+town, too bruised and faint to fight her fate. The only thing she tried
+for was apathy. I think she hoped--when she hoped anything--that her
+mind would go, a little: not so much that she would have to be "put
+away"; but just enough so that she could see things in a mist--so that
+the hated hills might, for all she knew, be Alps, the rocks turn into
+castles, the stony fields into vineyards, and Joel Blake into a Tuscan.
+Just enough so that she could re-create her world from her blessed
+memories, without any sharp corrective senses to interfere. That, I am
+sure, was what she fixed her mind upon through the prolonged autumn;
+bending all her frail strength to turn her brain ever so little from its
+rigid attitude to fact. "Pretending" was no good: it maddened. If her
+mind would only pretend without her help! That would be heaven, until
+heaven really came.... You can't sympathize with her, probably, you
+people who have been bred up on every kind of Nature cult. I can hear
+you talking about the everlasting hills. Don't you see, that was the
+trouble? Her carefully trained imagination was her religion, and in her
+own way she was a ritualist. The mountains she faced were unbaptized:
+the Holy Ghost had never descended upon them. She was as narrow as a
+nun; but she could not help it. And remember, you practical people who
+love woodchucks, that she had nothing but the view to make life
+tolerable. The view was no mere accessory to a normal existence. She
+lived, half-ill, in an ugly, not too comfortable cottage, as far as the
+moon from any world she understood, in a solitude acidulated by Melora
+Meigs. No pictures, no music, no plays, no talk--and this, the whole
+year round. Would you like it yourselves, you would-be savages with
+Adirondack guides? Books? Well: that was one of life's little
+stupidities. She couldn't buy them, and no one knew what to send her.
+Besides, books deferred the day when her mind should, ever so little, go
+back on her. She didn't encourage gifts of literature. She was no
+philosopher; and an abstraction was of no use to her unless she could
+turn it to a larger concreteness, somehow enhancing, let us say, a
+sunset from the Acropolis. I never loved Kathleen Somers, as men love
+women, but many a time that year I would have taken her burden on
+myself, changed lives with her, if that had been possible. It never
+could have been so bad for any of us as for her. Mildred Thurston would
+have gone to the church sociables and flirted as grossly as Hebron
+conventions permitted; I, at least, could have chopped wood. But to what
+account could Kathleen Somers turn her martyrdom?
+
+Withrow felt it, too--not as I could feel it, for, as I foretold, he
+thought the place glorious. He went up in the autumn when everything was
+crimson and purple and gold. Yet more, in a sense, than I could feel it,
+for he did love her as men love women. It shows you how far gone she was
+that she turned him down. Many women, in her case, would have jumped at
+Withrow for the sake of getting away. But she was so steeped in her type
+that she couldn't. She wouldn't have married him before; and she wasn't
+going to marry him for the sake of living in New York. She would have
+been ashamed to. A few of us who knew blamed her. I didn't, really,
+though I had always suspected that she cared for him personally.
+Kathleen Somers's love, when it came, would be a very complicated thing.
+She had seen sex in too many countries, watched its brazen play on too
+many stages, within theatres and without, to have any mawkish illusions.
+But passion would have to bring a large retinue to be accepted where she
+was sovereign. Little as I knew her, I knew that. Yet I always thought
+she might have taken him, in that flaming October, if he hadn't so
+flagrantly, tactlessly liked the place. He drank the autumn like wine;
+he was tipsy with it; and his loving her didn't tend to sober him. The
+consequence was that she drew away--as if he had been getting drunk on
+some foul African brew that was good only to befuddle woolly heads with;
+as if, in other words, he had not been getting drunk like a
+gentleman.... Anyhow, Arnold came back with a bad headache. She had
+found a gentle brutality to fit his case. He would have been wise, I
+believe, to bring her away, even if he had had to chloroform her to do
+it. But Withrow couldn't have been wise in that way. Except for his
+incurable weakness for Nature, he was the most delicate soul alive.
+
+He didn't talk much to me about it, beyond telling me that she had
+refused him. I made out the rest from his incoherences. He had not slept
+in the barn, for they could hardly have let a cat sleep in the barn on
+such cold nights; but Melora Meigs had apparently treated him even worse
+than she had treated me. Kathleen Somers had named some of the unnamed
+mountains after the minor prophets; as grimly as if she had been one of
+the people they cursed. I thought that a good sign, but Withrow said he
+wished she hadn't: she ground the names out so between her teeth. Some
+of her state of mind came out through her talk--not much. It was from
+one or two casually seen letters that I became aware of her desire to go
+a little--just a little--mad.
+
+In the spring Kathleen Somers had a relapse. It was no wonder. In spite
+of the Franklin stoves, her frail body must have been chilled to the
+bone for many months. Relief settled on several faces, when we heard--I
+am afraid it may have settled on mine. She had been more dead than
+alive, I judged, for a year; and yet she had not been able to cure her
+sanity. That was chronic. Death would have been the kindest friend that
+could arrive to her across those detested hills. We--the "we" is a
+little vague, but several of us scurried about--sent up a trained nurse,
+delaying somewhat for the sake of getting the woman who had been there
+before; for she had the advantage of having experienced Melora Meigs
+without resultant bloodshed. She was a nice woman, and sent faithful
+bulletins; but the bulletins were bad. Miss Somers seemed to have so
+little resistance: there was no interest there, she said, no willingness
+to fight. "The will was slack." Ah, she little knew Kathleen Somers's
+will! None of us knew, for that matter.
+
+The spring came late that year, and in those northern hills there were
+weeks of melting snow and raw, deep slush--the ugliest season we have to
+face south of the Arctic circle. The nurse did not want any of her
+friends to come; she wrote privately, to those of us who champed at the
+bit, that Miss Somers was fading away, but not peacefully; she was
+better unvisited, unseen. Miss Somers did not wish any one to come, and
+the nurse thought it wiser not to force her. Several women were held
+back by that, and turned with relief to Lenten opera. The opera,
+however, said little to Withrow at the best of times, and he was crazed
+by the notion of not seeing her before she achieved extinction. I
+thought him unwise, for many reasons: for one, I did not think that
+Arnold Withrow would bring her peace. She usually knew what she
+wanted--wasn't that, indeed, the whole trouble with her?--and she had
+said explicitly to the nurse that she didn't want Arnold Withrow. But by
+the end of May Withrow was neither to hold nor to bind: he went. I
+contented myself with begging him at least not to poison her last hours
+by admiring the landscape. I had expected my earnest request to shock
+him; but, to my surprise, he nodded understandingly. "I shall curse the
+whole thing out like a trooper, if she gives me the chance." And he got
+into his daycoach--the Pullmans wouldn't go on until much later--a
+mistaken and passionate knight.
+
+Withrow could not see her the first evening, and he talked long and
+deeply with the nurse. She had no hope to give him: she was mystified.
+It was her opinion that Kathleen Somers's lack of will was killing her,
+speedily and surely. "Is there anything for her to die of?" he asked.
+"There's nothing, you might say, for her to _live_ of," was her reply.
+The nurse disapproved of his coming, but promised to break the news of
+his presence to her patient in the morning.
+
+Spring had by this time touched the hills. It was that divine first
+moment when the whole of earth seems to take a leap in the night; when
+things are literally new every morning. Arnold walked abroad late,
+filling his lungs and nostrils and subduing his pulses. He was always
+faunishly wild in the spring; and for years he hadn't had a chance to
+seek the season in her haunts. But he turned in before midnight, because
+he dreaded the next day supremely. He didn't want to meet that face to
+face until he had to. Melora Meigs lowered like a thunderstorm, but she
+was held in check by the nurse. I suppose Melora couldn't give notice:
+there would be nothing but the poor-farm for her if she did. But she
+whined and grumbled and behaved in general like an electrical
+disturbance. Luckily, she couldn't curdle the milk.
+
+Withrow waked into a world of beauty. He walked for an hour before
+breakfast, through woods all blurred with buds, down vistas brushed with
+faint color. But he would have given the spring and all springs to come
+for Kathleen Somers, and the bitter kernel of it was that he knew it. He
+was sharp-faced and sad (I know how he looked) when he came back, with a
+bunch of hepaticas, to breakfast.
+
+The nurse was visibly trembling. You see, Kathleen Somers's heart had
+never been absolutely right. It was a terrible responsibility to let her
+patient face Withrow. Still, neither she nor any other woman could have
+held Withrow off. Besides, as she had truly said, there was nothing
+explicitly for Kathleen Somers to die of. It was that low vitality, that
+whispering pulse, that listlessness; then, a draught, a shock, a bit of
+over-exertion and something real and organic could speedily be upon her.
+No wonder the woman was troubled. In point of fact, though she had taken
+up Miss Somers's breakfast, she hadn't dared tell her the news. And
+finally, after breakfast, she broke down. "I can't do it, Mr. Withrow,"
+she wailed. "Either you go away or I do."
+
+Withrow knew at first only one thing: that he wouldn't be the one to go.
+Then he realized that the woman had been under a long strain, what with
+the spring thaws, and a delicate patient who wouldn't mend--and Melora
+to fight with, on behalf of all human decency, every day.
+
+"You go, then," he said finally. "I'll take care of her."
+
+The nurse stared at him. Then she thought, presumably, of Kathleen
+Somers's ineffable delicacy, and burst out laughing. Hysteria might, in
+all the circumstances, be forgiven her.
+
+Then they came back to the imminent question.
+
+"I'll tell her when I do up her room," she faltered.
+
+"All right. I'll give you all the time in the world. But she must be
+told I'm here--unless you wish me to tell her myself." Withrow went out
+to smoke. But he did not wish to succumb again to the intoxication
+Kathleen Somers so disdained, and eventually he went into the barn, to
+shut himself away from temptation. It was easier to prepare his
+vilifying phrases there.
+
+To his consternation, he heard through the gloom the sound of sobbing.
+The nurse, he saw, after much peering, sat on a dusty chopping-block,
+crying unhealthily. He went up to her and seized her arm. "Have you told
+her?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"My good woman, you'd better leave this afternoon."
+
+"Not"--the tone itself was firm, through the shaky sobs--"until there is
+some one to take my place."
+
+"I'll telegraph for some one. You shan't see her again. But I will see
+her at once."
+
+Then the woman's training asserted itself. She pulled herself together,
+with a little shake of self-disgust. "You'll do nothing of the sort.
+I'll attend to her until I go. It has been a long strain, and, contrary
+to custom, I've had no time off. I'll telegraph to the Registry myself.
+And if I can't manage until then, I'll resign my profession." She spoke
+with sturdy shame.
+
+"That's better." Withrow approved her. "I'm awfully obliged. But
+honestly, she has got to know. I can't stand it, skulking round, much
+longer. And no matter what happens to the whole boiling, I'm not going
+to leave without seeing her."
+
+"I'll tell her." The nurse rose and walked to the barn-door like a
+heroine. "But you must stay here until I come for you."
+
+"I promise. Only you must come. I give you half an hour."
+
+"I don't need half an hour, thank you." She had recovered her
+professional crispness. In the wide door she stopped. "It's a pity," she
+said irrelevantly, "that she can't see how lovely this is." Then she
+started for the house.
+
+"I believe you," muttered Withrow under his breath.
+
+In five minutes the nurse came back, breathless, half-running. Arnold
+got up from the chopping-block, startled. He believed for an instant (as
+he has since told me) that it was "all over." With her hand on her
+beating heart the woman panted out her words:
+
+"She has come downstairs in a wrapper. She hasn't been down for weeks.
+And she has found your hepaticas."
+
+"Oh, hell!" Withrow was honestly disgusted. He had never meant to insult
+Kathleen Somers with hepaticas. "Is it safe to leave her alone with
+them?" He hardly knew what he was saying. But it shows to what a pass
+Kathleen Somers had come that he could be frightened at the notion of
+her being left alone with a bunch of hepaticas.
+
+"She's all right, I think. She seemed to like them."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" Withrow's brain was spinning. "Here, I'll go. If she can
+stand those beastly flowers, she can stand me."
+
+"No, she can't." The nurse had recovered her breath now. "I'll go back
+and tell her, very quietly. If she could get down-stairs, she can stand
+it, I think. But I'll be very careful. You come in ten minutes. If she
+isn't fit, I'll have got her back to bed by that time."
+
+She disappeared, and Withrow, his back to the view, counted out the
+minutes. When the large hand of his watch had quite accomplished its
+journey, he turned and walked out through the yard to the side door of
+the house. Melora Meigs was clattering dish-pans somewhere beyond, and
+the noise she made covered his entrance to the living-room. He drew a
+deep breath: they were not there. He listened at the stairs: no sound up
+there--no sound, at least, to rise above Melora's dish-pans, now a
+little less audible. But this time he was not going to wait--for
+anything. He already had one foot on the stairs when he heard voices and
+stopped. For just one second he paused, then walked cat-like in the
+direction of the sounds. The front door was open. On the step stood
+Kathleen Somers, her back to him, facing the horizon. A light shawl hung
+on her shoulders, and the nurse's arm was very firmly round her waist.
+They did not hear him, breathing heavily there in the hall behind them.
+
+He saw Kathleen Somers raise her arm slowly--with difficulty, it seemed.
+She pointed at the noble shoulder of a mountain.
+
+"That is Habakkuk," said her sweet voice. "I named them all, you know.
+But I think Habakkuk is my favorite; though of course he's not so
+stunning as Isaiah. Then they run down to Obadiah and Malachi. Joel is
+just peeping over Habakkuk's left shoulder. That long bleak range is
+Jeremiah." She laughed, very faintly. "You know, Miss Willis, they are
+really very beautiful. Isn't it strange, I couldn't see it? For I
+honestly couldn't. I've been lying there, thinking. And I found I could
+remember all their outlines, under snow ... and this morning it seemed
+to me I must see how Habakkuk looked in the spring." She sat down
+suddenly on the top step; and Miss Willis sat down too, her arm still
+about her patient.
+
+"It's very strange"--Withrow, strain though he did, could hardly make
+out the words, they fell so softly--"that I just couldn't see it before.
+It's only these last days.... And now I feel as if I wanted to see every
+leaf on every tree. It wasn't so last year. They say something to me
+now. I don't think I should want to talk with them forever, but you've
+no idea--you've no idea--how strange and welcome it is for my eyes to
+find them beautiful." She seemed almost to murmur to herself. Then she
+braced herself slightly against the nurse's shoulder, and went on, in
+her light, sweet, ironic voice. "They probably never told you--but I
+didn't care for Nature, exactly. I don't think I care for it now, as
+some people do, but I can see that this is beautiful. Of course you
+don't know what it means to me. It has simply changed the world." She
+waved her hand again. "They never got by, before. I always knew that
+line was line, and color was color, wherever or whoever. But my eyes
+went back on me. My father would have despised me. He wouldn't have
+preferred Habakkuk, but he would have done Habakkuk justice from the
+beginning. Yes, it makes a great deal of difference to me to see it
+once, fair and clear. Why"--she drew herself up as well as she could, so
+firmly held--"it is a very lovely place. I should tire of it some time,
+but I shall not tire of it soon. For a little while, I shall be up to
+it. And I know that no one thinks it will be long."
+
+Just then, Withrow's absurd fate caught him. Breathless, more
+passionately interested than he had ever been in his life, he sneezed.
+He had just time, while the two women were turning, to wonder if he had
+ruined it all--if she would faint, or shriek, or relapse into apathy.
+
+She did none of these things. She faced him and flushed, standing
+unsteadily. "How long have you been cheating me?" she asked coldly. But
+she held out her hand before she went upstairs with the nurse's arm
+still round her.
+
+Later he caught at Miss Willis excitedly. "Is she better? Is she worse?
+Is she well? Or is she going to die?"
+
+"She's shaken. She must rest. But she's got the hepaticas in water
+beside her bed. And she told me to pull the shade up so that she could
+look out. She has a touch of temperature--but she often has that. The
+exertion and the shock would be enough to give it to her. I found her
+leaning against the door-jamb. I hadn't a chance to tell her you were
+here. I can tell you later whether you'd better go or stay."
+
+"I'm going to stay. It's you who are going."
+
+"You needn't telegraph just yet," the nurse replied dryly. She looked
+another woman from the nervous, sobbing creature on the chopping-block.
+
+The end was that Miss Willis stayed and Arnold Withrow went. Late that
+afternoon he left Kathleen Somers staring passionately at the sunset. It
+was not his moment, and he had the grace to know it. But he had not had
+to tell her that the view was beastly; and, much as he loved her, I
+think that was a relief to him.
+
+None of us will ever know the whole of Kathleen Somers's miracle, of
+course. I believe she told as much of it as she could when she said that
+she had lain thinking of the outlines of the mountains until she felt
+that she must go out and face them: stand once more outside, free of
+walls, and stare about at the whole chain of the earth-lords. Perhaps
+the spring, which had broken up the ice-bound streams, had melted other
+things besides. Unwittingly--by unconscious cerebration--by the long
+inevitable storing of disdained impressions--she had arrived at vision.
+That which had been, for her, alternate gibberish and silence, had
+become an intelligible tongue. The blank features had stirred and
+shifted into a countenance; she saw a face, where she had seen only odds
+and ends of modelling grotesquely flung abroad. With no stupid pantheism
+to befuddle her, she yet felt the earth a living thing. Wood and stone,
+which had not even been an idol for her, now shaped themselves to hold a
+sacrament. Put it as you please; for I can find no way to express it to
+my satisfaction. Kathleen Somers had, for the first time, envisaged the
+cosmic, had seen something less passionate, but more vital, than
+history. Most of us are more fortunate than she: we take it for granted
+that no loom can rival the petal of a flower. But to some creatures the
+primitive is a cipher, hard to learn; and blood is spent in the
+struggle. You have perhaps seen (and not simply in the old legend)
+passion come to a statue. Rare, oh, rare is the necessity for such a
+miracle. But Kathleen Somers was in need of one; and I believe it came
+to her.
+
+The will was slack, the nurse had said; yet it sufficed to take her from
+her bed, down the stairs, in pursuit of the voice--straight out into the
+newly articulate world. She moved, frail and undismayed, to the source
+of revelation. She did not cower back and demand that the oracle be
+served up to her by a messenger. A will like that is not slack.
+
+Now I will shuffle back into my own skin and tell you the rest of it
+very briefly and from the rank outsider's point of view. Even had I
+possessed the whole of Arnold Withrow's confidence, I could not deal
+with the delicate gradations of a lover's mood. He passed the word about
+that Kathleen Somers was not going to die--though I believe he did it
+with his heart in his mouth, not really assured she wouldn't. It took
+some of us a long time to shift our ground and be thankful. Withrow,
+with a wisdom beyond his habit, did not go near her until autumn.
+Reports were that she was gaining all the time, and that she lived
+out-of-doors staring at Habakkuk and his brethren, gathering wild
+flowers and pressing them between her palms. She seemed determined to
+face another winter there alone with Melora, Miss Willis wrote. Withrow
+set his jaw when that news came. It was hard on him to stay away, but
+she had made it very clear that she wanted her convalescent summer to
+herself. When she had to let Miss Willis go--and Miss Willis had already
+taken a huge slice of Kathleen's capital--he might come and see her
+through the transition. So Withrow sweltered in New York all summer,
+and waited for permission.
+
+Then Melora Meigs was gracious for once. With no preliminary illness,
+with just a little gasp as the sun rose over the long range of Jeremiah,
+she died. Withrow, hearing this, was off like a sprinter who hears the
+signal. He found laughter and wit abiding happily in Kathleen's
+recovered body. Together they watched the autumn deepen over the
+prophets. Habakkuk, all insults forgiven, was their familiar.
+
+So they brought Kathleen Somers back from the hills to live. It was
+impossible for her to remain on her mountainside without a Melora Meigs;
+and Melora, unlike most tortures, was unreplaceable. Kathleen's world
+welcomed her as warmly as if her exile had been one long suspense: a
+gentle hyprocrisy we all forgave each other. Some one went abroad and
+left an apartment for her use. All sorts of delicate little events
+occurred, half accidentally, in her interest. Soon some of us began to
+gather, as of old. Marvel of marvels, Withrow had not spoken in that
+crimson week of autumn. Without jealousy he had apparently left her to
+Habakkuk. It was a brief winter--for Kathleen Somers's body, a kind of
+spring. You could see her grow, from week to week: plump out and bloom
+more vividly. Then, in April, without a word, she left us--disappeared
+one morning, with no explicit word to servants.
+
+Withrow once more--poor Withrow--shot forth, not like a runner, but like
+a hound on a fresh scent. He needed no time-tables. He leaped from the
+telephone to the train.
+
+He found her there, he told me afterward, sitting on the step, the door
+unlocked behind her but shut.
+
+Indeed, she never entered the house again; for Withrow bore her away
+from the threshold. I do not think she minded, for she had made her
+point: she had seen Habakkuk once more, and Habakkuk had not gone back
+on her. That was all she needed to know. They meant to go up in the
+autumn after their marriage, but the cottage burned to the ground before
+they got back from Europe. I do not know that they have ever been, or
+whether they ever will go, now. There are still a few exotic places that
+Kathleen Withrow has not seen, and Habakkuk can wait. After all, the
+years are very brief in Habakkuk's sight. Even if she never needs him
+again, I do not think he will mind.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[8] Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by
+Katharine Fullerton Gerould.
+
+
+
+
+THE JUDGMENT OF VULCAN[9]
+
+#By# LEE FOSTER HARTMAN
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+To dine on the veranda of the Marine Hotel is the one delightful
+surprise which Port Charlotte affords the adventurer who has broken from
+the customary paths of travel in the South Seas. On an eminence above
+the town, solitary and aloof like a monastery, and nestling deep in its
+garden of lemon-trees, it commands a wide prospect of sea and sky. By
+day, the Pacific is a vast stretch of blue, flat like a floor, with a
+blur of distant islands on the horizon--chief among them Muloa, with its
+single volcanic cone tapering off into the sky. At night, this smithy of
+Vulcan becomes a glow of red, throbbing faintly against the darkness, a
+capricious and sullen beacon immeasurably removed from the path of men.
+Viewed from the veranda of the Marine Hotel, its vast flare on the
+horizon seems hardly more than an insignificant spark, like the glowing
+cigar-end of some guest strolling in the garden after dinner.
+
+It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor
+Stanleigh to where I was sitting in the shadows. Her uncle, Major
+Stanleigh, had left me a few minutes before, and I was glad of the
+respite from the queer business he had involved me in. The two of us had
+returned that afternoon from Muloa, where I had taken him in my
+schooner, the _Sylph_, to seek out Leavitt and make some inquiries--very
+important inquiries, it seemed, in Miss Stanleigh's behalf.
+
+Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated
+mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent
+questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses--all this,
+as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's
+niece--had made me frankly curious about the girl.
+
+I had seen her only once, and then at a distance across the veranda, one
+night when I had been dining there with a friend; but that single vision
+of her remained vivid and unforgettable--a tall girl of a slender
+shapeliness, crowned by a mass of reddish-gold hair that smoldered above
+the clear olive pallor of her skin. With that flawless and brilliant
+coloring she was marked for observation--had doubtless been schooled to
+a perfect indifference to it, for the slow, almost indolent, grace of
+her movements was that of a woman coldly unmindful of the gazes
+lingering upon her. She could not have been more than twenty-six or
+-seven, but I got an unmistakable impression of weariness or balked
+purpose emanating from her in spite of her youth and glorious physique.
+I looked up to see her crossing the veranda to join her uncle and
+aunt--correct, well-to-do English people that one placed instantly--and
+my stare was only one of many that followed her as she took her seat and
+threw aside the light scarf that swathed her bare and gleaming
+shoulders.
+
+My companion, who happened to be the editor of the local paper, promptly
+informed me regarding her name and previous residence--the gist of some
+"social item" which he had already put into print; but these meant
+nothing, and I could only wonder what had brought her to such an
+out-of-the-way part of the world as Port Charlotte. She did not seem
+like a girl who was traveling with her uncle and aunt; one got rather
+the impression that she was bent on a mission of her own and was
+dragging her relatives along because the conventions demanded it. I
+hazarded to my companion the notion that a woman like Miss Stanleigh
+could have but one of two purposes in this lonely part of the world--she
+was fleeing from a lover or seeking one.
+
+"In that case," rejoined my friend, with the cynical shrug of the
+newspaper man, "she has very promptly succeeded. It's whispered that she
+is going to marry Joyce--of Malduna Island, you know. Only met him a
+fortnight ago. Quite a romance, I'm told."
+
+I lifted my eyebrows at that, and looked again at Miss Stanleigh. Just
+at that instant she happened to look up. It was a wholly indifferent
+gaze; I am confident that she was no more aware of me than if I had been
+one of the veranda posts which her eyes had chanced to encounter. But in
+the indescribable sensation of that moment I felt that here was a woman
+who bore a secret burden, although, as my informing host put it, her
+heart had romantically found its haven only two weeks ago.
+
+She was endeavoring to get trace of a man named Farquharson, as I was
+permitted to learn a few days later. Ostensibly, it was Major Stanleigh
+who was bent on locating this young Englishman--Miss Stanleigh's
+interest in the quest was guardedly withheld--and the trail had led him
+a pretty chase around the world until some clue, which I never clearly
+understood, brought them to Port Charlotte. The major's immediate
+objective was an eccentric chap named Leavitt who had marooned himself
+in Muloa. The island offered an ideal retreat for one bent on shunning
+his own kind, if he did not object to the close proximity of a restive
+volcano. Clearly, Leavitt did not. He had a scientific interest in the
+phenomena exhibited by volcanic regions and was versed in geological
+lore, but the rumors about Leavitt--practically no one ever visited
+Muloa--did not stop at that. And, as Major Stanleigh and I were to
+discover, the fellow seemed to have developed a genuine affection for
+Lakalatcha, as the smoking cone was called by the natives of the
+adjoining islands. From long association he had come to know its whims
+and moods as one comes to know those of a petulant woman one lives with.
+It was a bizarre and preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt seemed to
+find a wholly acceptable substitute for human society, and there was
+something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names
+for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old
+Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and
+irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The
+Single-breasted Virgin"--these last, however, always in the musical
+Malay equivalent. He had no end of names--romantic, splenetic, of
+opprobrium, or outright endearment--to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's
+varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me--they were of conflicting
+genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's
+loose-frayed imagination the mountain that beguiled his days and
+disturbed his nights were hermaphroditic.
+
+Leavitt as a source of information regarding the missing Farquharson
+seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the world
+he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue was right,
+for he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known Farquharson well
+and who was voluminous about him--quite willingly so. With the _Sylph_
+at anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and Leavitt gave us our
+fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable digressions about volcanoes,
+neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what not. There was no keeping Leavitt
+to a coherent narrative about the missing Farquharson. He was incapable
+of it, and Major Stanleigh and myself had simply to wait in patience
+while Leavitt, delighted to have an audience, dumped out for us the
+fantastic contents of his mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all.
+He was always getting away from Farquharson, but, then, he was
+unfailingly bound to come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the
+solid grains that now and then fell in the winnowing of that unending
+stream of chaff. It was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had
+its compensations. At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as
+he was dull and boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become
+a little demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous
+fumes exhaled by the smoking crater above his head. His mind smoked,
+flickered, and flared like an unsteady lamp, blown upon by choking
+gases, in which the oil had run low.
+
+But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority,
+for he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa--a
+period of about six months, it seemed--and there Farquharson had
+contracted a tropic fever and died.
+
+"Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed with
+satisfaction when the _Sylph_ was heading back to Port Charlotte. Muloa,
+lying astern, we were no longer watching. Leavitt, at the water's edge,
+had waved us a last good-by and had then abruptly turned back into the
+forest, very likely to go clambering like a demented goat up the flanks
+of his beloved volcano and to resume poking about in its steaming
+fissures--an occupation of which he never tired.
+
+"The evidence is conclusive, don't you think?--the grave, Farquharson's
+personal effects, those pages of the poor devil's diary."
+
+I nodded assent. In my capacity as owner of the _Sylph_ I had merely
+undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back,
+but the events of the last three days had made me a party to the many
+conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy with the
+rather stiff and pompous English gentleman. How far I was from sharing
+his real confidence I was to discover later when Eleanor Stanleigh gave
+me hers.
+
+"My wife and niece will be much relieved to hear all this--a family
+matter, you understand, Mr. Barnaby," he had said to me when we landed.
+"I should like to present you to them before we leave Port Charlotte for
+home."
+
+But, as it turned out, it was Eleanor Stanleigh who presented herself,
+coming upon me quite unexpectedly that night after our return while I
+sat smoking in the shadowy garden of the Marine Hotel. I had dined with
+the major, after he had explained that the ladies were worn out by the
+heat and general developments of the day and had begged to be excused.
+And I was frankly glad not to have to endure another discussion of the
+deceased Farquharson, of which I was heartily tired after hearing little
+else for the last three days. I could not help wondering how the verbose
+and pompous major had paraphrased and condensed that inchoate mass of
+biography and reminiscence into an orderly account for his wife and
+niece. He had doubtless devoted the whole afternoon to it. Sitting under
+the cool green of the lemon-trees, beneath a sky powdered with stars, I
+reflected that I, at least, was done with Farquharson forever. But I was
+not, for just then Eleanor Stanleigh appeared before me.
+
+I was startled to hear her addressing me by name, and then calmly
+begging me to resume my seat on the bench under the arbor. She sat down
+also, her flame-colored hair and bare shoulders gleaming in the
+darkness. She was the soul of directness and candor, and after a
+thoughtful, searching look into my face she came to the point at once.
+She wanted to hear about Farquharson--from me.
+
+"Of course, my uncle has given me a very full account of what he learned
+from Mr. Leavitt, and yet many things puzzle me--this Mr. Leavitt most
+of all."
+
+"A queer chap," I epitomized him. "Frankly, I don't quite make him out,
+Miss Stanleigh--marooning himself on that infernal island and seemingly
+content to spend his days there."
+
+"Is he so old?" she caught me up quickly.
+
+"No, he isn't," I reflected. "Of course, it's difficult to judge ages
+out here. The climate, you know. Leavitt's well under forty, I should
+say. But that's a most unhealthy spot he has chosen to live in."
+
+"Why does he stay there?"
+
+I explained about the volcano. "You can have no idea what an obsession
+it is with him. There isn't a square foot of its steaming, treacherous
+surface that he hasn't been over, mapping new fissures, poking into old
+lava-beds, delving into the crater itself on favorable days----"
+
+"Isn't it dangerous?"
+
+"In a way, yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes
+unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to
+obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to
+spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides--just tamely
+subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But
+Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, half
+strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes off his
+feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and eyebrows--a
+narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at any word of
+caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a scientific curiosity to
+that extreme."
+
+"Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?" mused Miss Stanleigh.
+
+Something in her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to
+mine--almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candor, her warm
+beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit
+darkness--all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt
+impelled to a sudden burst of confidence.
+
+"At times I wonder. I've caught a look in his eyes, when he's been down
+on his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole--a look
+that is--well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels of the
+earth for something quite outside the conceptions of science. You might
+think that volcano had worked some spell over him, turned his mind. He
+prattles to it or storms at it as if it were a living creature. Queer,
+yes; and he's impressive, too, with a sort of magnetic personality that
+attracts and repels you violently at the same time. He's like a cake of
+ice dipped in alcohol and set aflame. I can't describe him. When he
+talks----"
+
+"Does he talk about himself?"
+
+I had to confess that he had told us practically not a word. He had
+discussed everything under heaven in his brilliant, erratic way, with a
+fleer of cynicism toward it all, but he had left himself out completely.
+He had given us Farquharson with relish, and in infinite detail, from
+the time the poor fellow first turned up in Muloa, put ashore by a
+native craft. Talking about Farquharson was second only to his delight
+in talking about volcanoes. And the result for me had been innumerable
+vivid but confused impressions of the young Englishman who had by chance
+invaded Leavitt's solitude and had lingered there, held by some
+attraction, until he sickened and died. It was like a jumbled mosaic
+put together again by inexpert hands.
+
+"Did you get the impression that the two men had very much in common?"
+
+"Quite the contrary," I answered. "But Major Stanleigh should know----"
+
+"My uncle never met Mr. Farquharson."
+
+I was fairly taken aback at that, and a silence fell between us. It was
+impossible to divine the drift of her questions. It was as if some
+profound mistrust weighed upon her and she was not so much seeking to
+interrogate me as she was groping blindly for some chance word of mine
+that might illuminate her doubts.
+
+I looked at the girl in silent wonder, yes, and in admiration of her
+bronze and ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth--and I
+thought of Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love
+simply but passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It
+was only another demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle,
+which love is. Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have
+touched the spring in this girl's heart which no other man could reach,
+and by the rarest of chances--her coming out to this remote corner of
+the world. Lucky Joyce! I knew him slightly--a straightforward young
+fellow, very simple and whole-souled, enthusiastically absorbed in
+developing his rubber lands in Malduna.
+
+Miss Stanleigh remained lost in thought while her fingers toyed with the
+pendant of the chain that she wore. In the darkness I caught the glitter
+of a small gold cross.
+
+"Mr. Barnaby," she finally broke the silence, and paused. "I have
+decided to tell you something. This Mr. Farquharson was my husband."
+
+Again a silence fell, heavy and prolonged, in which I sat as if drugged
+by the night air that hung soft and perfumed about us. It seemed
+incredible that in that fleeting instant she had spoken at all.
+
+"I was young--and very foolish, I suppose."
+
+With that confession, spoken with simple dignity, she broke off again.
+Clearly, some knowledge of the past she deemed it necessary to impart to
+me. If she halted over her words, it was rather to dismiss what was
+irrelevant to the matter in hand, in which she sought my counsel.
+
+"I did not see him for four years--did not wish to.... And he vanished
+completely.... Four years!--just a welcome blank!"
+
+Her shoulders lifted and a little shiver went over her.
+
+"But even a blank like that can become unendurable. To be always
+dragging at a chain, and not knowing where it leads to...." Her hand
+slipped from the gold cross on her breast and fell to the other in her
+lap, which it clutched tightly. "Four years.... I tried to make myself
+believe that he was gone forever--was dead. It was wicked of me."
+
+My murmur of polite dissent led her to repeat her words.
+
+"Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have actually
+prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it."
+
+I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce, I
+reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the ardor of
+their first meeting and instant love.
+
+"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have it
+all definitely settled at last."
+
+"If I could only feel that it was!"
+
+I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her hands
+still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the distant
+horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous breathing flamed
+and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if timed to the throbbing of
+that distant flare.
+
+"I want you to take me to that island--to-morrow."
+
+"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any
+reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty--he may have
+embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's
+books and things--the material evidence of his having lived there----"
+
+"And having died there?"
+
+"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked with
+him----"
+
+"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me
+short. "I want only to go and see--if he _is_ Mr. Leavitt."
+
+"If he _is_ Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in a
+sudden flash I understood. "But that's preposterous--impossible!"
+
+I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a rôle, tried to imagine
+the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh
+and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious
+detail to trick us into a belief in his own death. It would indeed have
+argued a warped mind, guided by some unfathomable purpose.
+
+"I devoutly hope you are right," Miss Stanleigh was saying, with
+deliberation. "But it is not preposterous, and it is not impossible--if
+you had known Mr. Farquharson as I have."
+
+It was a discreet confession. She wished me to understand--without the
+necessity of words. My surmise was that she had met and married
+Farquharson, whoever he was, under the spell of some momentary
+infatuation, and that he had proved himself to be an unspeakable brute
+whom she had speedily abandoned.
+
+"I am determined to go to Muloa, Mr. Barnaby," she announced, with
+decision. "I want you to make the arrangements, and with as much secrecy
+as possible. I shall ask my aunt to go with me."
+
+I assured Miss Stanleigh that the _Sylph_ was at her service.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Mrs. Stanleigh was a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to
+making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical
+discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that
+surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I
+have never been able to imagine. The accommodations aboard the schooner
+were cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror
+of volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a
+century or more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least. She
+was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the _Sylph_ got
+within range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over
+the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at
+frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the
+pernicious effects of the tropic sun. But once having been induced to
+make the voyage, I must admit she stuck manfully by her decision,
+ensconcing herself on deck with books and cushions and numerous other
+necessities to her comfort, and making the best of the sleeping quarters
+below. As the captain of the _Sylph_, she wanted me to understand that
+she had intrusted her soul to my charge, declaring that she would not
+draw an easy breath until we were safe again in Port Charlotte.
+
+"This dreadful business of Eleanor's," was the way she referred to our
+mission, and she got round quite naturally to telling me of Farquharson
+while acquainting me with her fears about volcanoes. Some years before,
+Pompeii and Herculaneum had had a most unsettling effect upon her
+nerves. Vesuvius was slightly in eruption at the time. She confessed to
+never having had an easy moment while in Naples. And it was in Naples
+that her niece and Farquharson had met. It had been, as I surmised, a
+swift, romantic courtship, in which Farquharson, quite irreproachable in
+antecedents and manners, had played the part of an impetuous lover.
+Italian skies had done the rest. There was an immediate marriage, in
+spite of Mrs. Stanleigh's protests, and the young couple were off on a
+honeymoon trip by themselves. But when Mrs. Stanleigh rejoined her
+husband at Nice, and together they returned to their home in Sussex, a
+surprise was in store for them. Eleanor was already there--alone,
+crushed, and with lips absolutely sealed. She had divested herself of
+everything that linked her to Farquharson; she refused to adopt her
+married name.
+
+"I shall bless every saint in heaven when we have quite done with this
+dreadful business of Eleanor's," Mrs. Stanleigh confided to me from her
+deck-chair. "This trip that she insists on making herself seems quite
+uncalled for. But you needn't think, Captain Barnaby, that I'm going to
+set foot on that dreadful island--not even for the satisfaction of
+seeing Mr. Farquharson's grave--and I'm shameless enough to say that it
+_would_ be a satisfaction. If you could imagine the tenth part of what I
+have had to put up with, all these months we've been traveling about
+trying to locate the wretch! No, indeed--I shall stay right here on this
+boat and intrust Eleanor to your care while ashore. And I should not
+think it ought to take long, now should it?"
+
+I confessed aloud that I did not see how it could. If by any chance the
+girl's secret conjecture about Leavitt's identity was right, it would be
+verified in the mere act of coming face to face with him, and in that
+event it would be just as well to spare the unsuspecting aunt the shock
+of that discovery.
+
+We reached Muloa just before nightfall, letting go the anchor in placid
+water under the lee of the shore while the _Sylph_ swung to and the
+sails fluttered and fell. A vast hush lay over the world. From the shore
+the dark green of the forest confronted us with no sound or sign of
+life. Above, and at this close distance blotting out half the sky over
+our heads, towered the huge cone of Lakalatcha with scarred and
+blackened flanks. It was in one of its querulous moods. The feathery
+white plume of steam, woven by the wind into soft, fantastic shapes, no
+longer capped the crater; its place had been usurped by thick, dark
+fumes of smoke swirling sullenly about. In the fading light I marked the
+red, malignant glow of a fissure newly broken out in the side of the
+ragged cone, from which came a thin, white trickle of lava.
+
+There was no sign of Leavitt, although the _Sylph_ must have been
+visible to him for several hours, obviously making for the island. I
+fancied that he must have been unusually absorbed in the vagaries of his
+beloved volcano. Otherwise he would have wondered what was bringing us
+back again and his tall figure in shabby white drill would have greeted
+us from the shore. Instead, there confronted us only the belt of dark,
+matted green girdling the huge bulk of Lakalatcha which soared skyward,
+sinister, mysterious, eternal.
+
+In the brief twilight the shore vanished into dim obscurity. Miss
+Stanleigh, who for the last hour had been standing by the rail, silently
+watching the island, at last spoke to me over her shoulder:
+
+"Is it far inland--the place? Will it be difficult to find in the dark?"
+
+Her question staggered me, for she was clearly bent on seeking out
+Leavitt at once. A strange calmness overlay her. She paid no heed to
+Lakalatcha's gigantic, smoke-belching cone, but, with fingers gripping
+the rail, scanned the forbidding and inscrutable forest, behind which
+lay the answer to her torturing doubt.
+
+I acceded to her wish without protest. Leavitt's bungalow lay a quarter
+of a mile distant. There would be no difficulty in following the path. I
+would have a boat put over at once, I announced in a casual way which
+belied my real feelings, for I was beginning to share some of her secret
+tension at this night invasion of Leavitt's haunts.
+
+This feeling deepened within me as we drew near the shore. Leavitt's
+failure to appear seemed sinister and enigmatic. I began to evolve a
+fantastic image of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny
+tricks of speech. It was as if we were seeking out the presiding deity
+of the island, who had assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly
+sway over its unnatural processes.
+
+With Williams, the boatswain, carrying a lantern, we pushed into the
+brush, following the choked trail that led to Leavitt's abode. But the
+bungalow, when we had reached the clearing and could discern the
+outlines of the building against the masses of the forest, was dark and
+deserted. As we mounted the veranda, the loose boards creaked hollowly
+under our tread; the doorway, from which depended a tattered curtain of
+coarse burlap, gaped black and empty.
+
+The lantern, lifted high in the boatswain's hand, cleft at a stroke the
+darkness within. On the writing-table, cluttered with papers and bits of
+volcanic rock, stood a bottle and half-empty glass. Things lay about in
+lugubrious disorder, as if the place had been hurriedly ransacked by a
+thief. Some of the geological specimens had tumbled from the table to
+the floor, and stray sheets of Leavitt's manuscripts lay under his
+chair. Leavitt's books, ranged on shelving against the wall, alone
+seemed undisturbed. Upon the top of the shelving stood two enormous
+stuffed birds, moldering and decrepit, regarding the sudden illumination
+with unblinking, bead-like eyes. Between them a small dancing faun in
+greenish bronze tripped a Bacchic measure with head thrown back in a
+transport of derisive laughter.
+
+For a long moment the three of us faced the silent, disordered room, in
+which the little bronze faun alone seemed alive, convulsed with
+diabolical mirth at our entrance. Somehow it recalled to me Leavitt's
+own cynical laugh. Suddenly Miss Stanleigh made toward the photographs
+above the bookshelves.
+
+"This is he," she said, taking up one of the faded prints.
+
+"Yes--Leavitt," I answered.
+
+"_Leavitt_?" Her fingers tightened upon the photograph. Then, abruptly,
+it fell to the floor. "Yes, yes--of course." Her eyes closed very
+slowly, as if an extreme weakness had seized her.
+
+In the shock of that moment I reached out to support her, but she
+checked my hand. Her gray eyes opened again. A shudder visibly went over
+her, as if the night air had suddenly become chill. From the shelf the
+two stuffed birds regarded us dolefully, while the dancing faun, with
+head thrown back in an attitude of immortal art, laughed derisively.
+
+"Where is he? I must speak to him," said Miss Stanleigh.
+
+"One might think he were deliberately hiding," I muttered, for I was at
+a loss to account for Leavitt's absence.
+
+"Then find him," the girl commanded.
+
+I cut short my speculations to direct Williams to search the hut in the
+rear of the bungalow, where, behind bamboo palings, Leavitt's Malay
+servant maintained an aloof and mysterious existence. I sat down beside
+Miss Stanleigh on the veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the
+touch of the boards. A fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the
+air and now to my ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore
+a faint humming sound.
+
+"Do you hear that?" I whispered. It was like the far-off murmur of a
+gigantic caldron, softly a-boil--a dull vibration that seemed to reach
+us through the ground as well as through the air.
+
+The girl listened a moment, and then started up. "I hear
+voices--somewhere."
+
+"Voices?" I strained my ears for sounds other than the insistent ferment
+of the great cone above our heads. "Perhaps Leavitt----"
+
+"Why do you still call him Leavitt?"
+
+"Then you're quite certain----" I began, but an involuntary exclamation
+from her cut me short.
+
+The light of Williams's lantern, emerging from behind the bamboo
+palings, disclosed the burly form of the boatswain with a shrinking
+Malay in tow. He was jabbering in his native tongue, with much
+gesticulation of his thin arms, and going into contortions at every
+dozen paces in a sort of pantomime to emphasize his words. Williams
+urged him along unceremoniously to the steps of the veranda.
+
+"Perhaps you can get the straight of this, Mr. Barnaby," said the
+boatswain. "He swears that the flame-devil in the volcano has swallowed
+his master alive."
+
+The poor fellow seemed indeed in a state of complete funk. With his thin
+legs quaking under him, he poured forth in Malay a crazed, distorted
+tale. According to Wadakimba, Leavitt--or Farquharson, to give him his
+real name--had awakened the high displeasure of the flame-devil within
+the mountain. Had we not observed that the cone was smoking furiously?
+And the dust and heavy taint of sulphur in the air? Surely we could
+feel the very tremor of the ground under our feet. All that day the
+enraged monster had been spouting mud and lava down upon the white
+_tuan_, who had remained in the bungalow, drinking heavily and bawling
+out maledictions upon his enemy. At length, in spite of Wadakimba's
+efforts to dissuade him, he had set out to climb to the crater, vowing
+to show the flame-devil who was master. He had compelled the terrified
+Wadakimba to go with him a part of the way. The white _tuan_--was he
+really a god, as he declared himself to be?--had gone alone up the
+tortuous, fissured slopes, at times lost to sight in yellowish clouds of
+gas and steam, while his screams of vengeance came back to Wadakimba's
+ears. Overhead, Lakalatcha continued to rumble and quiver and clear his
+throat with great showers of mud and stones.
+
+Farquharson must have indeed parted with his reason to have attempted
+that grotesque sally. Listening to Wadakimba's tale, I pictured the
+crazed man, scorched to tatters, heedless of bruises and burns,
+scrambling up that difficult and perilous ascent, and hurling his
+ridiculous blasphemy into the flares of smoke and steam that issued from
+that vast caldron lit by subterranean fires. At its simmering the whole
+island trembled. A mere whiff of the monster's breath and he would have
+been snuffed out, annihilated in an instant. According to Wadakimba, the
+end had indeed come in that fashion. It was as if the mountain had
+suddenly given a deep sigh. The blast had carried away solid rock. A
+sheet of flame had licked the spot where Farquharson had been hurled
+headlong, and he was not.
+
+Wadakimba, viewing all this from afar, had scuttled off to his hut.
+Later he had ventured back to the scene of the tragedy. He had picked up
+Farquharson's scorched helmet, which had been blown off to some
+distance, and he also exhibited a pair of binoculars washed down by the
+tide of lava, scarred and twisted by the heat, from which the lenses had
+melted away.
+
+I translated for Miss Stanleigh briefly, while she stood turning over in
+her hands the twisted and blackened binoculars, which were still warm.
+She heard me through without question or comment, and when I proposed
+that we get back to the _Sylph_ at once, mindful of her aunt's
+distressed nerves, she assented with a nod. She seemed to have lost the
+power of speech. In a daze she followed as I led the way back through
+the forest.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Major Stanleigh and his wife deferred their departure for England until
+their niece should be properly married to Joyce. At Eleanor's wish, it
+was a very simple affair, and as Joyce's bride she was as eager to be
+off to his rubber-plantation in Malduna as he was to set her up there as
+mistress of his household. I had agreed to give them passage on the
+_Sylph_, since the next sailing of the mail-boat would have necessitated
+a further fortnight's delay.
+
+Mrs. Stanleigh, with visions of seeing England again, and profoundly
+grateful to a benevolent Providence that had not only brought "this
+dreadful business of Eleanor's" to a happy termination, but had averted
+Lakalatcha's baptism of fire from descending upon her own head, thanked
+me profusely and a little tearfully. It was during the general chorus of
+farewells at the last moment before the _Sylph_ cast off. Her last
+appeal, cried after us from the wharf where she stood frantically waving
+a wet handkerchief, was that I should give Muloa a wide berth.
+
+It brought a laugh from Joyce. He had discovered the good lady's extreme
+perturbation in regard to Lakalatcha, and had promptly declared for
+spending a day there with his bride. It was an exceptional opportunity
+to witness the volcano in its active mood. Each time that Joyce had
+essayed this teasing pleasantry, which never failed to draw Mrs.
+Stanleigh's protests, I observed that his wife remained silent. I
+assumed that she had decided to keep her own counsel in regard to the
+trip she had made there.
+
+"I'm trusting you not to take Eleanor near that dreadful island, Mr.
+Barnaby," was the admonition shouted across the widening gap of water.
+
+It was a quite unnecessary appeal, for Joyce, who was presently sitting
+with his wife in a sheltered quarter of the deck, had not the slightest
+interest in the smoking cone which was as yet a mere smudge upon the
+horizon. Eleanor, with one hand in Joyce's possession, at times watched
+it with a seemingly vast apathy until some ardent word from Joyce would
+draw her eyes back to his and she would lift to him a smile that was
+like a caress. The look of weariness and balked purpose that had once
+marked her expression had vanished. In the week since she had married
+Joyce she seemed to have grown younger and to be again standing on the
+very threshold of life with girlish eagerness. She hung on Joyce's every
+word, communing with him hour after hour, utterly content, indifferent
+to all the world about her.
+
+In the cabin that evening at dinner, when the two of them deigned to
+take polite cognizance of my existence, I announced to Joyce that I
+proposed to hug the island pretty close during the night. It would save
+considerable time.
+
+"Just as you like, Captain," Joyce replied, indifferently.
+
+"We may get a shower of ashes by doing so, if the wind should shift." I
+looked across the table at Mrs. Joyce.
+
+"But we shall reach Malduna that much sooner?" she queried.
+
+I nodded. "However, if you feel any uneasiness, I'll give the island a
+wide berth." I didn't like the idea of dragging her--the bride of a
+week--past that place with its unspeakable memories, if it should really
+distress her.
+
+Her eyes thanked me silently across the table. "It's very kind of you,
+but"--she chose her words with significant deliberation--"I haven't a
+fear in the world, Mr. Barnaby."
+
+Evening had fallen when we came up on deck. Joyce bethought himself of
+some cigars in his state-room and went back. For the moment I was alone
+with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through
+the darkening sky. The _Sylph_ was running smoothly, with the wind
+almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of
+a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like
+a benediction upon the sea.
+
+"You may think it unfeeling of me," she began, quite abruptly, "but all
+this past trouble of mine, now that it is ended, I have completely
+dismissed. Already it begins to seem like a horrid dream. And as for
+that island"--her eyes looked off toward Muloa now impending upon us and
+lighting up the heavens with its sudden flare--"it seems incredible that
+I ever set foot upon it.
+
+"Perhaps you understand," she went on, after a pause, "that I have not
+told my husband. But I have not deceived him. He knows that I was once
+married, and that the man is no longer living. He does not wish to know
+more. Of course he is aware that Uncle Geoffrey came out here to--to see
+a Mr. Leavitt, a matter which he has no idea concerned me. He thanks the
+stars for whatever it was that did bring us out here, for otherwise he
+would not have met me."
+
+"It has turned out most happily," I murmured.
+
+"It was almost disaster. After meeting Mr. Joyce--and I was weak enough
+to let myself become engaged--to have discovered that I was still
+chained to a living creature like that.... I should have killed myself."
+
+"But surely the courts----"
+
+She shook her head with decision. "My church does not recognize that
+sort of freedom."
+
+We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa. The mountain was breathing
+slowly and heavily--a vast flare that lifted fanlike in the skies and
+died away. Lightning played fitfully through the dense mass of smoke and
+choking gases that hung like a pall over the great cone. It was like the
+night sky that overhangs a city of gigantic blast-furnaces, only
+infinitely multiplied. The sails of the _Sylph_ caught the ruddy tinge
+like a phantom craft gliding through the black night, its canvas still
+dyed with the sunset glow. The faces of the crew, turned to watch the
+spectacle, curiously fixed and inhuman, were picked out of the gloom by
+the same fantastic light. It was as if the schooner, with masts and
+riggings, etched black against the lurid sky, sailed on into the Day of
+Judgment.
+
+
+It was after midnight. The _Sylph_ came about, with sails trembling, and
+lost headway. Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with a soft
+grating sound that was unmistakable came to rest. We were aground in
+what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa
+lying close off to port.
+
+The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as
+the wheel revolved useless in his hands. We had shelved with scarcely a
+jar sufficient to disturb those sleeping below, but in a twinkling
+Jackson, the mate, appeared on deck in his pajamas, and after a swift
+glance toward the familiar shore turned to me with the same dumfounded
+look that had frozen upon the face of the steersman.
+
+"What do you make of this?" he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.
+
+"Be quiet about it," I said to the hands that had started into movement.
+"Look sharp now, and make no noise." Then I turned to the mate, who was
+perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other and measuring with
+his eye our distance from the shore. The _Sylph_ should have turned the
+point of the island without a mishap, as she had done scores of times.
+
+"It's the volcano we have to thank for this," was my conjecture. "Its
+recent activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom."
+
+Jackson's head went back in sudden comprehension. "It's a miracle you
+didn't plow into it under full sail."
+
+We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As
+matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float
+clear with the tide."
+
+The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close above
+our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an angry glare
+of light. "If she should begin spitting up a little livelier ..." he
+speculated with a shrug, and presently took himself off to his bunk
+after an inspection below had shown that none of the schooner's seams
+had started. There was nothing to do but to wait for the tide to make
+and lift the vessel clear. It would be a matter of three or four hours.
+I dismissed the helmsman; and the watch forward, taking advantage of the
+respite from duty, were soon recumbent in attitudes of heavy sleep.
+
+The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water. It was as
+if the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid and
+inanimate. The _Sylph_ lay with a slight list, her spars looking
+inexpressibly helpless against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged, a
+fine volcanic ash, like some mortal pestilence exhaled by the monster
+cone, settled down upon the deck, where, forward in the shadow, the
+watch curled like dead men.
+
+Alone, I paced back and forth--countless soft-footed miles, it seemed,
+through interminable hours, until at length some obscure impulse
+prompted me to pause before the open skylight over the cabin and thrust
+my head down. A lamp above the dining-table, left to burn through the
+night, feebly illuminated the room. A faint snore issued at regular
+intervals from the half-open door of the mate's state-room. The door of
+Joyce's state-room opposite was also upon the hook for the sake of air.
+
+Suddenly a soft thump against the side of the schooner, followed by a
+scrambling noise, made me turn round. The dripping, bedraggled figure of
+a man in a sleeping-suit mounted the rope ladder that hung over the
+side, and paused, grasping the rail. I had withdrawn my gaze so suddenly
+from the glow of the light in the cabin that for several moments the
+intruder from out of the sea was only a blurred form with one leg swung
+over the rail, where he hung as if spent by his exertions.
+
+Just then the sooty vapors above the ragged maw of the volcano were rent
+by a flare of crimson, and in the fleeting instant of unnatural daylight
+I beheld Farquharson barefooted, and dripping with sea-water,
+confronting me with a sardonic, triumphant smile. The light faded in a
+twinkling, but in the darkness he swung his other leg over the rail and
+sat perched there, as if challenging the testimony of my senses.
+
+"Farquharson!" I breathed aloud, utterly dumfounded.
+
+"Did you think I was a ghost?" I could hear him softly laughing to
+himself in the interval that followed. "You should have witnessed
+Wadakimba's fright at my coming back from the dead. Well, I'll admit I
+almost was done for."
+
+Again the volcano breathed in torment. It was like the sudden opening of
+a gigantic blast-furnace, and in that instant I saw him vividly--his
+thin, saturnine face, his damp black hair pushed sleekly back, his lips
+twisted to a cruel smile, his eyes craftily alert, as if to some
+ambushed danger continually at hand. He was watching me with a sort of
+malicious relish in the shock he had given me.
+
+"It was not your intention to stop at Muloa," he observed, dryly, for
+the plight of the schooner was obvious.
+
+"We'll float clear with the tide," I muttered.
+
+"But in the meantime"--there was something almost menacing in his
+deliberate pause--"I have the pleasure of this little call upon you."
+
+A head lifted from among the inert figures and sleepily regarded us
+before it dropped back into the shadows. The stranded ship, the
+recumbent men, the mountain flaming overhead--it was like a phantom
+world into which had been suddenly thrust this ghastly and incredible
+reality.
+
+"Whatever possessed you to swim out here in the middle of the night?" I
+demanded, in a harsh whisper.
+
+He chose to ignore the question, while I waited in a chill of suspense.
+It was inconceivable that he could be aware of the truth of the
+situation and deliberately bent on forcing it to its unspeakable, tragic
+issue.
+
+"Of late, Captain Barnaby, we seem to have taken to visiting each other
+rather frequently, don't you think?"
+
+It was lightly tossed off, but not without its evil implication; and I
+felt his eyes intently fixed upon me as he sat hunched up on the rail in
+his sodden sleeping-suit, like some huge, ill-omened bird of prey.
+
+To get rid of him, to obliterate the horrible fact that he still existed
+in the flesh, was the instinctive impulse of my staggered brain. But
+the peril of discovery, the chance that those sleeping below might
+awaken and hear us, held me in a vise of indecision.
+
+"If I could bring myself to reproach you, Captain," he went on,
+ironically polite, "I might protest that your last visit to this island
+savored to a too-inquisitive intrusion. You'll pardon my frankness. I
+had convinced you and Major Stanleigh that Farquharson was dead. To the
+world at large that should have sufficed. That I choose to remain alive
+is my own affair. Your sudden return to Muloa--with a lady--would have
+upset everything, if Fate and that inspired fool of a Malay had not
+happily intervened. But now, surely, there can be no doubt that I am
+dead?"
+
+I nodded assent in a dumb, helpless way.
+
+"And I have a notion that even you, Captain Barnaby, will never dispute
+that fact."
+
+He threw back his head suddenly--for all the world like the dancing
+faun--and laughed silently at the stars.
+
+My tongue was dry in my mouth as I tried to make some rejoinder. He
+baffled me completely, and meanwhile I was in a tingle of fear lest the
+mate should come up on deck to see what progress the tide had made, or
+lest the sound of our voices might waken the girl in Joyce's state-room.
+
+"I can promise you that," I attempted to assure him in weak, sepulchral
+tones. "And now, if you like, I'll put you ashore in the small boat. You
+must be getting chilly in that wet sleeping-suit."
+
+"As a matter of fact I am, and I was wondering if you would not offer me
+something to drink."
+
+"You shall have a bottle to take along," I promised, with alacrity, but
+he demurred.
+
+"There is no sociability in that. And you seem very lonesome here--stuck
+for two more hours at least. Come, Captain, fetch your bottle and we
+will share it together."
+
+He got down from the rail, stretched his arms lazily above his head, and
+dropped into one of the deck chairs that had been placed aft for the
+convenience of my two passengers.
+
+"And cigars, too, Captain," he suggested, with a politeness that was
+almost impertinence. "We'll have a cozy hour or two out of this tedious
+wait for the tide to lift you off."
+
+I contemplated him helplessly. There was no alternative but to fall in
+with whatever mad caprice might seize his brain. If I opposed him, it
+would lead to high and querulous words; and the hideous fact of his
+presence there--of his mere existence--I was bound to conceal at all
+hazards.
+
+"I must ask you to keep quiet," I said, stiffly.
+
+"As a tomb," he agreed, and his eyes twinkled disagreeably in the
+darkness. "You forget that I am supposed to be in one."
+
+I went stealthily down into the cabin, where I secured a box of cigars
+and the first couple of bottles that my hands laid hold of in the
+locker. They proved to contain an old Tokay wine which I had treasured
+for several years to no particular purpose. The ancient bottles clinked
+heavily in my grasp as I mounted again to the deck.
+
+"Now this is something like," he purred, watching like a cat my every
+motion as I set the glasses forth and guardedly drew the cork. He
+saluted me with a flourish and drank.
+
+To an onlooker that pantomime in the darkness would have seemed utterly
+grotesque. I tasted the fragrant, heavy wine and waited--waited in an
+agony of suspense--my ears strained desperately to catch the least sound
+from below. But a profound silence enveloped the schooner, broken only
+by the occasional rhythmic snore of the mate.
+
+"You seem rather ill at ease," Farquharson observed from the depths of
+the deck chair when he had his cigar comfortably aglow. "I trust it
+isn't this little impromptu call of mine that's disturbing you. After
+all, life has its unusual moments, and this, I think, is one of them."
+He sniffed the bouquet of his wine and drank. "It is rare moments like
+this--bizarre, incredible, what you like--that compensate for the tedium
+of years."
+
+His disengaged hand had fallen to the side of the chair, and I now
+observed in dismay that a scarf belonging to Joyce's wife had been left
+lying in the chair, and that his fingers were absently twisting the
+silken fringe.
+
+"I wonder that you stick it out, as you do, on this island," I forced
+myself to observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while my eyes, as
+if fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends of the scarf. I
+was forced to accept the innuendo beneath his enigmatic utterances. His
+utter baseness and depravity, born perhaps of a diseased mind, I could
+understand. I had led him to bait a trap with the fiction of his own
+death, but he could not know that it had been already sprung upon his
+unsuspecting victims.
+
+He seemed to regard me with contemptuous pity. "Naturally, you wonder. A
+mere skipper like yourself fails to understand--many things. What can
+you know of life cooped up in this schooner? You touch only the surface
+of things just as this confounded boat of yours skims only the top of
+the water. Once in a lifetime you may come to real grips with
+life--strike bottom, eh?--as your schooner has done now. Then you're
+aground and quite helpless. What a pity!"
+
+He lifted his glass and drank it off, then thrust it out to be refilled.
+"Life as the world lives it--bah!" he dismissed it with the scorn of one
+who counts himself divested of all illusions. "Life would be an infernal
+bore if it were not for its paradoxes. Now you, Captain Barnaby, would
+never dream that in becoming dead to the world--in other people's
+belief--I have become intensely alive. There are opened up infinite
+possibilities----"
+
+He drank again and eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained
+way, "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in
+duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes
+about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, Captain
+Barnaby. You have your secrets--hidden from me, from all the
+world--which, if they could be dragged out of you----"
+
+His deep-set eyes bored through the darkness upon me. Hunched up in the
+deck chair, with his legs crossed under him, he was like an animated
+Buddha venting a dark philosophy and seeking to undermine my mental
+balance with his sophistry.
+
+"I'm a plain man of the sea," I rejoined, bluntly. "I take life as it
+comes."
+
+He smiled derisively, drained his glass, and held it out again. "But you
+have your secrets, rather clumsily guarded, to be sure----"
+
+"What secrets?" I cried out, goaded almost beyond endurance.
+
+He seemed to deprecate the vigor of my retort and lifted a cautioning
+hand. "Do you want every one on board to hear this conversation?"
+
+At that moment the smoke-wrapped cone of Lakalatcha was cleft by a sheet
+of flame, and we confronted each other in a sort of blood-red dawn.
+
+"There is no reason why we should quarrel," he went on, after darkness
+had enveloped us again. "But there are times which call for plain
+speaking. Major Stanleigh is probably hardly aware of just what he said
+to me under a little artful questioning. It seems that a lady who--shall
+we say, whom we both have the honor of knowing?--is in love. Love, mark
+you. It is always interesting to see that flower bud twice from the same
+stalk. However, one naturally defers to a lady, especially when one is
+very much in her way. _Place aux dames_, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You
+must admit that his was an altruistic soul. Well, she has her
+freedom--if only to barter it for a new bondage. Shall we drink to the
+happy future of that romance?"
+
+He lifted to me his glass with ironical invitation, while I sat aghast
+and speechless, my heart pounding against my ribs. This intolerable
+colloquy could not last forever. I deliberated what I should do if we
+were surprised. At the sound of a footfall or the soft creak of a plank
+I felt that I might lose all control and leap up and brain him with the
+heavy bottle in my grasp. I had an insane desire to spring at his throat
+and throttle his infamous bravado, tumble him overboard and annihilate
+the last vestige of his existence.
+
+"Come, Captain," he urged, "you, too, have shared in smoothing the path
+for these lovers. Shall we not drink to their happy union?"
+
+A feeling of utter loathing went over me. I set my glass down. "It would
+be a more serviceable compliment to the lady in question if I strangled
+you on the spot," I muttered, boldly.
+
+"But you are forgetting that I am already dead." He threw his head back
+as if vastly amused, then lurched forward and held out his glass a
+little unsteadily to be refilled.
+
+He gave me a quick, evil look. "Besides, the noise might disturb your
+passengers."
+
+I could feel a cold perspiration suddenly breaking out upon my body.
+Either the fellow had obtained an inkling of the truth in some
+incredible way, or was blindly on the track of it, guided by some
+diabolical scent. Under the spell of his eyes I could not manage the
+outright lie which stuck in my throat.
+
+"What makes you think I have passengers?" I parried, weakly.
+
+With intent or not, he was again fingering the fringe of the scarf that
+hung over the arm of the chair.
+
+"It is not your usual practice, but you have been carrying them lately."
+
+He drained his glass and sat staring into it, his head drooping a little
+forward. The heavy wine was beginning to have its effect upon him, but
+whether it would provoke him to some outright violence or drag him down
+into a stupor, I could not predict. Suddenly the glass slipped from his
+fingers and shivered to pieces on the deck. I started violently at the
+sound, and in the silence that followed I thought I heard a footfall in
+the cabin below.
+
+He looked up at length from his absorbed contemplation of the bits of
+broken glass. "We were talking about love, were we not?" he demanded,
+heavily.
+
+I did not answer. I was straining to catch a repetition of the sound
+from below. Time was slipping rapidly away, and to sit on meant
+inevitable discovery. The watch might waken or the mate appear to
+surprise me in converse with my nocturnal visitor. It would be folly to
+attempt to conceal his presence and I despaired of getting him back to
+the shore while his present mood held, although I remembered that the
+small boat, which had been lowered after we went aground, was still
+moored to the rail amidships.
+
+Refilling my own glass, I offered it to him. He lurched forward to take
+it, but the fumes of the wine suddenly drifted clear of his brain. "You
+seem very much distressed," he observed, with ironic concern. "One might
+think you were actually sheltering these precious love-birds."
+
+Perspiration broke out anew upon my face and neck. "I don't know what
+you are talking about," I bluntly tried to fend off his implications. I
+felt as if I were helplessly strapped down and that he was about to
+probe me mercilessly with some sharp instrument. I strove to turn the
+direction of his thoughts by saying, "I understand that the Stanleighs
+are returning to England."
+
+"The Stanleighs--quite so," he nodded agreement, and fixed me with a
+maudlin stare. Something prompted me to fill his glass again. He drank
+it off mechanically. Again I poured, and he obediently drank. With an
+effort he tried to pick up the thread of our conversation:
+
+"What did you say? Oh, the Stanleighs ... yes, yes, of course." He
+slowly nodded his head and fell silent. "I was about to say ..." He
+broke off again and seemed to ruminate profoundly.... "Love-birds----" I
+caught the word feebly from his lips, spoken as if in a daze. The glass
+hung dripping in his relaxed grasp.
+
+It was a crucial moment in which his purpose seemed to waver and die in
+his clouded brain. A great hope sprang up in my heart, which was
+hammering furiously. If I could divert his fuddled thoughts and get him
+back to shore while the wine lulled him to forgetfulness.
+
+I leaned forward to take the glass which was all but slipping from his
+hand when Lakalatcha flamed with redoubled fury. It was as if the
+mountain had suddenly bared its fiery heart to the heavens, and a
+muffled detonation reached my ears.
+
+Farquharson straightened up with a jerk and scanned the smoking peak,
+from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a
+threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and
+began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties
+seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the
+mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child.
+When I ventured to urge him back to shore he made no protest, but
+followed me into the boat. As I pushed off and took up the oars he had
+eyes for nothing but the flaming cone, as if its leaping fires held for
+him an Apocalyptic vision.
+
+I strained at the oars as if in a race, with all eternity at stake,
+blindly urging the boat ahead through water that flashed crimson at
+every stroke. The mountain now flamed like a beacon, and I rowed for
+dear life over a sea of blood.
+
+Farquharson sat entranced before the spectacle, chanting to himself a
+kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance
+before his god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to
+some hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the
+boat crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern
+and pointed to the pharos that flamed in the heavens.
+
+"The fire upon the altar is lit," he addressed me, oracularly, while the
+fanatic light of a devotee burned in his eyes. "Shall we ascend and
+prepare the sacrifice?"
+
+I leaned over the oars, panting from my exertions, indifferent to his
+rhapsody.
+
+"If you'll take my advice, you'll get back at once to your bungalow and
+strip off that wet sleeping-suit," I bluntly counseled him, but I might
+as well have argued with a man in a trance.
+
+He leaped over the gunwale and strode up the beach. Again he struck his
+priestlike attitude and invoked me to follow.
+
+"The fire upon the altar waits," he repeated, solemnly. Suddenly he
+broke into a shrill laugh and ran like a deer in the direction of the
+forest that stretched up the slopes of the mountain.
+
+The mate's face, thrust over the rail as I drew alongside the schooner,
+plainly bespoke his utter bewilderment. He must have though me bereft of
+my senses to be paddling about at that hour of the night. The tide had
+made, and the _Sylph_, righting her listed masts, was standing clear of
+the shoal. The deck was astir, and when the command was given to hoist
+the sails it was obeyed with an uneasy alacrity. The men worked
+frantically in a bright, unnatural day, for Lakalatcha was now
+continuously aflame and tossing up red-hot rocks to the accompaniment of
+dull sounds of explosion.
+
+My first glance about the deck had been one of relief to note that Joyce
+and his wife were not there, although the commotion of getting under
+sail must have awakened them. A breeze had sprung up which would prove a
+fair wind as soon as the _Sylph_ stood clear of the point. The mate gave
+a grunt of satisfaction when at length the schooner began to dip her bow
+and lay over to her task. Leaving him in charge, I started to go below,
+when suddenly Mrs. Joyce, fully dressed, confronted me. She seemed to
+have materialized out of the air like a ghost. Her hair glowed like
+burnished copper in the unnatural illumination which bathed the deck,
+but her face was ashen, and the challenge of her eyes made my heart stop
+short.
+
+"You have been awake long?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"Too long," she answered, significantly, with her face turned away,
+looking down into the water. She had taken my arm and drawn me toward
+the rail. Now I felt her fingers tighten convulsively. In the droop of
+her head and the tense curve of her neck I sensed her mad impulse which
+the dark water suggested.
+
+"Mrs. Joyce!" I remonstrated, sharply.
+
+She seemed to go limp all over at the words. I drew her along the deck
+for a faltering step or two, while her eyes continued to brood upon the
+water rushing past. Suddenly she spoke:
+
+"What other way out is there?"
+
+"Never that," I said, shortly. I urged her forward again. "Is your
+husband asleep?"
+
+"Thank God, yes!"
+
+"Then you have been awake----"
+
+"For over an hour," she confessed, and I detected the shudder that went
+over her body.
+
+"The man is mad----"
+
+"But I am married to him." She stopped and caught at the rail like a
+prisoner gripping at the bars that confine him. "I cannot--cannot endure
+it! Where are you taking me? Where _can_ you take me? Don't you see that
+there is no escape--from this?"
+
+The _Sylph_ rose and sank to the first long roll of the open sea.
+
+"When we reach Malduna----" I began, but the words were only torture.
+
+"I cannot--cannot go on. Take me back!--to that island. Let me live
+abandoned--or rather die----"
+
+"Mrs. Joyce, I beg of you...."
+
+The schooner rose and dipped again.
+
+For what seemed an interminable time we paced the deck together while
+Lakalatcha flamed farther and farther astern. Her words came in fitful
+snatches as if spoken in a delirium, and at times she would pause and
+grip the rail to stare back, wild-eyed, at the receding island.
+
+Suddenly she started, and in a sort of blinding, noonday blaze I saw her
+face blanch with horror. It was as if at that moment the heavens had
+cracked asunder and the night had fallen away in chaos. Turning, I saw
+the cone of the mountain lifting skyward in fragments--and saw no more,
+for the blinding vision remained seared upon the retina of my eyes.
+Across the water, slower paced, came the dread concussion of sound.
+
+"Good God! It's carried away the whole island!" I heard the mate's voice
+bellowing above the cries of the men. The _Sylph_ scudded before the
+approaching storm of fire redescending from the sky....
+
+The first gray of the dawn disclosed Mrs. Joyce still standing by the
+rail, her hand nestling within the arm of her husband, indifferent to
+the heavy grayish dust that fell in benediction upon her like a silent
+shower of snow.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+The island of Muloa remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the
+blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate
+surface devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass
+of Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke
+still issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked
+its fire before abandoning it.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[9] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Lee
+Foster Hartman.
+
+
+
+
+THE STICK-IN-THE-MUDS[10]
+
+#By# RUPERT HUGHES
+
+From _Collier's Weekly_
+
+
+A skiff went prowling along the Avon River in the unhurried English
+twilight that releases the sunset with reluctance and defers luxuriously
+the roll call of the stars.
+
+The skiff floated low, for the man alone in it was heavy and he was in
+no greater haste than the northern night. Which was against the
+traditions, for he was an American, an American business man.
+
+He was making his way through the sky-hued water stealthily lest he
+disturb the leisure of the swans, drowsy above their own images; lest he
+discourage the nightingale trying a few low flute notes in the cathedral
+tower of shadow that was a tree above the tomb of Shakespeare.
+
+The American had never heard a nightingale and it was his first
+pilgrimage to the shrine of the actor-manager whose productions
+Americans curiously couple with the Bible as sacred lore.
+
+During the day Joel Wixon had seen the sights of Stratford with the
+others from his country and from England and the Continent. But now he
+wanted to get close to Shakespeare. So he hired the skiff and declined
+the services of the old boat lender.
+
+And now he was stealing up into the rich gloom the church spread across
+the river. He was pushing the stern of the boat foremost so that he
+could feast his eyes. He was making so little speed that the only sounds
+were the choked sob of the water where the boat cleaved it gently and
+the tinkle of the drops that fell from the lazy oars with something of
+the delicate music of the uncertain nightingale.
+
+Being a successful business man, Wixon was a suffocated poet. The
+imagination and the passion and the orderliness that brought him money
+were the same energies that would have made him a success in verse. But
+lines were not his line, and he was inarticulate and incoherent when
+beauty overwhelmed him, as it did in nearly every form.
+
+He shivered now before the immediate majesty of the scene, and the
+historic meanings that enriched it as with an embroidered arras. Yet he
+gave out no more words than an Æolian harp shuddering with ecstasy in a
+wind too gentle to make it audible.
+
+In such moods he hunted solitude, for he was ashamed to be seen, afraid
+to be observed in the raptures that did not belong in the vocabulary of
+a business man.
+
+He had talked at noon about the fact that he and Shakespeare's father
+were in wool, and he had annoyed a few modest Americans by comparing the
+petty amount of the elder Shakespeare's trade with the vast total
+pouring from his own innumerable looms driven with the electricity that
+the Shakespeares had never dreamed of.
+
+He had redeemed himself for his pretended brag by a meek admission:
+
+"But I'm afraid my boy will never write another 'Hamlet.'"
+
+Yet what could he know of his own son? How little Will Shakespeare's
+father or his scandalized neighbors could have fancied that the
+scapegrace good-for-naught who left the town for the town's good would
+make it immortal; and, coming back to die and lie down forever beside
+the Avon, would bring a world of pilgrims to a new Mecca, the shrine of
+the supreme unique poet of all human time?
+
+A young boy even now was sauntering the path along the other shore, so
+lazily tossing pebbles into the stream that the swans hardly protested.
+It came upon Wixon with a kind of silent lightning that Shakespeare had
+once been such another boy skipping pebbles across the narrow river and
+peering up into the trees to find out where the nightingale lurked.
+
+Perhaps three hundred years from now some other shrine would claim the
+pilgrims, the home perhaps of some American boy now groping through the
+amber mists of adolescence or some man as little revered by his own
+neighbors and rivals as the man Shakespeare was when he went back to
+Avon to send back to London his two plays a year to the theatres.
+
+Being a practical man, which is a man who strives to make his visions
+palpable, Wixon thought of his own home town and the colony of boys that
+prospered there in the Middle West.
+
+He knew that no one would seek the town because of his birth there, for
+he was but a buyer of fleeces, a carder of wools, a spinner of threads,
+and a weaver of fabrics to keep folks' bodies warm. His weaves wore
+well, but they wore out.
+
+The weavers of words were the ones whose fabrics lasted beyond the power
+of time and mocked the moths. Was there any such spinner in Carthage to
+give the town eternal blazon to ears of flesh and blood? There was one
+who might have been the man if----
+
+Suddenly he felt himself again in Carthage. There was a river there too;
+not a little bolt of chatoyant silk like the Avon, which they would have
+called a "crick" back there. Before Carthage ran the incomprehensible
+floods of old Mississippi himself, Father of Waters, deep and vast and
+swift. They had lately swung a weir across it to make it work--a
+concrete wall a mile wide and more, and its tumbling cascades spun no
+little mill wheels, but swirled thundering turbines that lighted cities
+and ran street cars a hundred miles away.
+
+And yet it had no Shakespeare.
+
+And yet again it might have had if----
+
+The twilight was so deep now that he shipped his oars in the gloom and
+gave himself back to the past.
+
+He was in another twilight, only it was the counter twilight between
+star quench and sun blaze.
+
+Two small boys, himself one of them; his sworn chum, Luke Mellows, the
+other, meeting in the silent street just as the day tide seeped in from
+the east and submerged the stars.
+
+Joel had tied a string to his big toe and hung it from his window. Luke
+had done the same. They were not permitted to explode alarm clocks and
+ruin the last sweets of sleep in either home. So they had agreed that
+the first to wake should rise and dress with stealth, slip down the dark
+stairs of his house, into the starlit street and over to the other's
+home and pull the toe cord.
+
+On this morning Luke had been the earlier out, and his triumphant yanks
+had dragged Joel feet first from sleep, and from the bed and almost
+through the window. Joel had howled protests in shrill whispers down
+into the gloom, and then, untying his outraged toe, had limped into his
+clothes and so to the yard.
+
+The two children, in the huge world disputed still by the night, had
+felt an awe of the sky and the mysteries going on there. The envied man
+who ran up the streets of evenings lighting the gas street lamps was
+abroad again already with his little ladder and his quick insect-like
+motions; only, now he was turning out the lights, just as a similar but
+invisible being was apparently running around heaven and putting out the
+stars.
+
+Joel remembered saying: "I wonder if they're turnin' off the stars up
+there to save gas too."
+
+Luke did not like the joke. He said, using the word "funny" solemnly:
+"It's funny to see light putting out light. The stars will be there all
+day, but we won't be able to see 'em for the sun."
+
+(Wixon thought of this now, and of how Shakespeare's fame had drowned
+out so many stars. A man had told him that there were hundreds of great
+writers in Shakespeare's time that most people never heard of.)
+
+As the boys paused, the air quivered with a hoarse _moo_! as of a
+gigantic cow bellowing for her lost calf. It was really a steamboat
+whistling for the bridge to open the draw and let her through to the
+south with her raft of logs.
+
+Both of the boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the
+Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the
+river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong.
+
+Often as Joel had come out upon the edge of that bluff on his
+innumerable journeys to the river for fishing, swimming, skating, or
+just staring, it always smote him with the thrill Balboa must have felt
+coming suddenly upon the Pacific.
+
+On this morning there was an unwonted grandeur: the whole vault of the
+sky was curdled with the dawn, a reef of solid black in the west turning
+to purple and to amber and finally in the east to scarlet, with a few
+late planets caught in the meshes of the sunlight and trembling like dew
+on a spider's web.
+
+And the battle in the sky was repeated in the sea-like river with all of
+the added magic of the current and the eddies and the wimpling rushes of
+the dawn winds.
+
+On the great slopes were houses and farmsteads throwing off the night
+and in the river the Bessie May Brown, her red light and her green light
+trailing scarfs of color on the river, as she chuffed and clanged her
+bell, and smote the water with her stern wheel. In the little steeple of
+the pilot house a priest guided her and her unwieldy acre of logs
+between the piers of the bridge whose lanterns were still belatedly
+aglow on the girders and again in echo in the flood.
+
+Joel filled his little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no
+better words for his rhapsody than: "Gee, but ain't it great?"
+
+To his amazement, Luke, who had always been more sensitive than he,
+shook his head and turned away.
+
+"Gosh, what do you want for ten cents?" Joel demanded, feeling called
+upon to defend the worthiness of the dawn.
+
+Luke began to cry. He dropped down on his own bare legs in the weeds and
+twisted his face and his fists in a vain struggle to fight off unmanly
+grief.
+
+Joel squatted at his side and insisted on sharing the secret; and
+finally Luke forgot the sense of family honor long enough to yield to
+the yearning for company in his misery.
+
+"I was up here at midnight last night, and I don't like this place any
+more."
+
+"You didn't come all by yourself? Gee!"
+
+"No, Momma was here too."
+
+"What she bring you out here at a time like that for?"
+
+"She didn't know I was here."
+
+"Didn't know--What she doin' out here, then?"
+
+"She and Poppa had a turble quar'l. I couldn't hear what started it, but
+finely it woke me up and I listened, and Momma was cryin' and Poppa was
+swearin'. And at last Momma said: 'Oh, I might as well go and throw
+myself in the river,' and Poppa said: 'Good riddance of bad rubbish!'
+and Momma stopped cryin' and she says: 'All right!' in an awful kind of
+a voice, and I heard the front door open and shut."
+
+"Gee!"
+
+"Well, I jumped into my shirt and pants and slid down the rain pipe and
+ran along the street, and there sure enough was Momma walkin' as fast as
+she could.
+
+"I was afraid to go near her. I don't know why, but I was. So I just
+sneaked along after her. The street was black as pitch 'cep' for the
+street lamps, and as she passed ever' one I could see she was still
+cryin' and stumblin' along like she was blind.
+
+"It was so late we didn't meet anybody at tall, and there wasn't a light
+in a single house except Joneses, where somebody was sick, I guess. But
+they didn't pay any attention, and at last she came to the bluff here.
+And I follered. When she got where she could see the river she stopped
+and stood there, and held her arms out like she was goin' to jump off or
+fly, or somethin'. The moon was up, and the river was so bright you
+could hardly look at it, and Momma stood there with her arms 'way out
+like she was on the Cross, or something.
+
+"I was so scared and so cold I shook like I had a chill. I was afraid
+she could hear my teeth chatterin', so I dropped down in the weeds and
+thistles to keep her from seein' me. It was just along about here too.
+
+"By and by Momma kind of broke like somebody had hit her, then she began
+to cry again and to walk up and down wringin' her hands. Once or twice
+she started to run down the bluff and I started to foller; but she
+stopped like somebody held her back, and I sunk down again.
+
+"Then, after a long time, she shook her head like she couldn't, and
+turned back. She walked right by me and didn't see me. I heard her
+whisperin': 'I can't, I can't. My pore children!'
+
+"Then she went back down the street and me after her wishin' I could go
+up and help her. But I was afraid she wouldn't want me to know, and I
+just couldn't go near her."
+
+Luke wept helplessly at the memory of his poltroonery, and Joel tried
+roughly to comfort him with questions.
+
+"Gee! I don't blame you. I don't guess I could have either. But what was
+it all about, d'you s'pose?"
+
+"I don't know. Momma went to the front door, and it was locked, and she
+stood a long, long while before she could bring herself to knock. Then
+she tapped on it soft like. And by and by Poppa opened the door and
+said: 'Oh, you're back, are you?" Then he turned and walked away, and
+she went in.
+
+"I could have killed him with a rock, if she hadn't shut the door. But
+all I could do was to climb back up the rain pipe. I was so tired and
+discouraged I nearly fell and broke my neck. And I wisht I had have. But
+there wasn't any more quar'l, only Momma kind of whimpered once or
+twice, and Poppa said: 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up and lea' me sleep. I
+got to open the store in the mornin', ain't I?' I didn't do much
+sleepin', and I guess that's why I woke up first."
+
+That was all of the story that Joel could learn. The two boys were shut
+out by the wall of grown-up life. Luke crouched in bitter moodiness,
+throwing clods of dirt at early grasshoppers and reconquering his lost
+dignity. At last he said: "If you ever let on to anybody what I told
+you----"
+
+"Aw, say!" was Joel's protest. His knighthood as a sworn chum was put in
+question and he was cruelly hurt.
+
+Luke took assurance from his dismay and said in a burst of fury: "Aw, I
+just said that! I know you won't tell. But just you wait till I can earn
+a pile of money. I'll take Momma away from that old scoundrel so fast
+it'll make his head swim!" Then he slumped again. "But it takes so
+doggone long to grow up, and I don't know how to earn anything."
+
+Then the morning of the world caught into its irresistible vivacity the
+two boys in the morning of their youth, and before long they had
+forgotten the irremediable woes of their elders, as their elders also
+forgot the problems of national woes and cosmic despair.
+
+The boys descended the sidelong path at a jog, brushing the dew and
+grasshoppers and the birds from the hazel bushes and the papaw shrubs,
+and scaring many a dewy rabbit from cover.
+
+At the bottom of the bluff the railroad track was the only road along
+the river, and they began the tormenting passage over the uneven ties
+with cinders everywhere for their bare feet. They postponed as long as
+they could the delight of breakfast, and then, sitting on a pile of
+ties, made a feast of such hard-boiled eggs, cookies, cheese, and
+crackers as they had been able to wheedle from their kitchens the night
+before.
+
+Their talk that morning was earnest, as boys' talk is apt to be. They
+debated their futures as boys are apt to do. Being American boys, two
+things characterized their plans: one, that the sky itself was the only
+limit to their ambitions; the other, that they must not follow their
+fathers' businesses.
+
+Joel's father was an editor; Luke's kept a hardware store.
+
+So Joel wanted to go into trade and Luke wanted to be a writer.
+
+The boys wrangled with the shrill intensity of youth. A stranger passing
+might have thought them about to come to blows. But they were simply
+noisy with earnestness. Their argument was as unlike one of the debates
+in Vergil's Eclogues as possible. It was an antistrophe of twang and
+drawl:
+
+"Gee, you durned fool, watcha want gointa business for?"
+
+"Durned fool your own self! Watcha wanta be a writer for?"
+
+Then they laughed wildly, struck at each other in mock hostility, and
+went on with their all-day walk, returning at night too weary for books
+or even a game of authors or checkers.
+
+Both liked to read, and they were just emerging from the stratum of Old
+Cap Collier, Nick Carter, the Kid-Glove Miner, and the Steam Man into
+"Ivanhoe," "Scottish Chiefs," and "Cudjo's Cave." They had passed out of
+the Oliver Optic, Harry Castlemon, James Otis era.
+
+Joel Wixon read for excitement; Luke Mellows for information as to the
+machinery of authorship.
+
+Young as they were, they went to the theatre--to the op'ra house, which
+never housed opera.
+
+Joel went often and without price, since his father, being an editor,
+had the glorious prerogative of "comps." Perhaps that was why Luke
+wanted to be a writer.
+
+Mr. Mellows, as hard as his own ware, did not believe in the theatre and
+could not be bullied or wept into paying for tickets. But Luke became a
+program boy and got in free, a precious privilege he kept secret as long
+as possible, and lost as soon as his father noticed his absences from
+home on play nights. Then he was whipped for wickedness and ordered to
+give up the theatre forever.
+
+Perhaps Luke would never suffer again so fiercely as he suffered from
+that denial. It meant a free education and a free revel in the frequent
+performances of Shakespeare, and of repertory companies that gave such
+triumphs as "East Lynne" and "Camille," not to mention the road
+companies that played the uproarious "Peck's Bad Boy," "Over the Garden
+Wall," "Skipped by the Light of the Moon," and the Charles Hoyt
+screamers.
+
+The theatre had been a cloud-veiled Olympus of mystic exultations, of
+divine terrors, and of ambrosial laughter. But it was a bad influence.
+Mr. Mellows's theories of right and wrong were as simple and sharp as
+his own knives: whatever was delightful and beautiful and laughterful
+was manifestly wicked, God having plainly devised the pretty things as
+baits for the devil's fishhooks.
+
+Joel used to tell Luke about the plays he saw, and the exile's heart
+ached with envy. They took long walks up the river or across the bridge
+into the wonderlands that were overflowed in high-water times. And they
+talked always of their futures. Boyhood was a torment, a slavery. Heaven
+was just over the twenty-first birthday.
+
+Joel got his future, all but the girl he planned to take with him up the
+grand stairway of the palace he foresaw. Luke missed his future, and his
+girl and all of his dreams.
+
+Between the boys and their manhood stood, as usual, the fathers, strange
+monsters, ogres, who seemed to have forgotten, at the top of the
+beanstalk, that they had once been boys themselves down below.
+
+After the early and unceasing misunderstandings as to motives and
+standards of honor and dignity came the civil war over education.
+
+Wouldn't you just know that each boy would get the wrong dad? Joel's
+father was proud of Luke and not of Joel. He had printed some of Luke's
+poems in the paper and called him a "precocious" native genius. Joel's
+father wished that his boy could have had his neighbor's boy's gift. It
+was his sorrow that Joel had none of the artistic leanings that are
+called "gifts." He regretfully gave him up as one who would not carry on
+the torch his father had set out with. He could not force his child to
+be a genius, but he insisted that Joel should have an education. The
+editor had found himself handicapped by a lack of the mysterious
+enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind.
+He was determined to provide it for his boy, though Joel felt that every
+moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay in
+arriving at gladiatorial eminence.
+
+Luke's father had had even less education than Editor Wixon, but he was
+proud of it. He had never gone far in the world, but he was one of those
+men who are automatically proud of everything they do and derive even
+from failure or humiliation a savage conceit.
+
+He made Luke work in his store or out of it as a delivery boy during
+vacations from such school terms as the law required. He saw the value
+of education enough to make out bills and write dunning letters. "Books"
+to him meant the doleful books that bookkeepers keep.
+
+As for any further learning, he thought it a waste of time, a kind of
+wantonness.
+
+He felt that Providence had intentionally selected a cross for him in
+the son who was wicked and foolish enough to want to read stories and
+see plays and go to school for years instead of going right into
+business.
+
+The thought of sending his boy through a preparatory academy and college
+and wasting his youth on nonsense was outrageous. It maddened him to
+have the boy plead for such folly. He tried in vain to whip it out of
+him.
+
+Joel's ideas of education were exactly those of Mr. Mellows, but he did
+not like Mr. Mellows because of the anguish inflicted on Luke. Joel used
+to beg Luke to run away from home. But that was impracticable for two
+reasons: Luke was not of the runaway sort, but meek, and shy, and
+obedient to a fault.
+
+Besides, while a boy can run away from school, he cannot easily run away
+to school. If he did, he would be sent back, and if he were not sent
+back, how was he to pay for his "tooition" and his board and books and
+clo'es?
+
+It was Luke's influence that sent Joel away to boardin' school. He so
+longed to go himself that Joel felt it foolish to deny himself the
+godlike opportunity. So Luke went to school vicariously in Joel, as he
+got his other experiences vicariously in books.
+
+At school Joel found so much to do outside of his classes that he grew
+content to go all the way. There was a glee club to manage, also an
+athletic club; a paper to solicit ads and subscriptions for; class
+officers to be elected, with all the delights of political
+maneuvering--a world in little to run with all the solemnity and
+competition of the adult cosmos. So Joel was happy and lucky and
+successful in spite of himself.
+
+The day after Joel took train up the river to his academy Luke took the
+position his father secured for him and entered the little back room
+where the Butterly Bottling Works kept its bookkeepers on high stools.
+
+The Butterly soda pop, ginger ales, and other soft drinks were triumphs
+of insipidity, and their birch beer sickened the thirstiest child. But
+the making and the marketing and even the drinking of them were matters
+of high emprise compared to the keeping of the books.
+
+One of the saddest, sweetest, greatest stories ever written is Ellis'
+Pigsispigs Butler's fable of the contented little donkey that went round
+and round in the mill and thought he was traveling far. But that donkey
+was blind and had no dreams denied.
+
+Luke Mellows was a boy, a boy that still felt his life in every limb, a
+boy devoured with fantastic ambitions. He had a genius within that
+smothered and struggled till it all but perished unexpressed. It lived
+only enough to be an anguish. It hurt him like a hidden, unmentioned
+ingrowing toe nail that cuts and bleeds and excruciates the fleet member
+it is meant to protect.
+
+When Joel came home for his first vacation, with the rush of a young
+colt that has had a good time in the corral but rejoices in the old
+pastures, his first cry was for Luke. When he learned where he was, he
+hurried to the Bottling Works. He was turned away with the curt remark
+that employees could not be seen in business hours. In those days there
+were no machines to simplify and verify the bookkeeper's treadmill task,
+and business hours were never over.
+
+Joel left word at Luke's home for Luke to call for him the minute he was
+free. He did not come that evening, nor the next. Joel was hurt more
+than he dared admit.
+
+It was Sunday afternoon before Luke came round, a different Luke, a
+lean, wan, worn-out shred of a youth. His welcome was sickly.
+
+"Gee-min-_ent_-ly!" Joel roared. "I thought you was mad at me about
+something. You never came near."
+
+"I wanted to come," Luke croaked, "but nights, I'm too tired to walk
+anywheres, and besides, I usually have to go back to the offus."
+
+"Gee, that's damn tough," said Joel, who had grown from darn to damn.
+
+Thinking to light Luke up with a congenial theme, Joel heroically
+forbore to describe the marvels of academy life, and asked: "What you
+been readin' lately? A little bit of everything, I guess, hey?"
+
+"A whole lot of nothin'," Luke sighed. "I got no strength for readin' by
+the time I shut my ledgers. I got to save my eyes, you know. The light's
+bad in that back room."
+
+"What you been writin', then?"
+
+"Miles of figures and entries about one gross bottles lemon, two gross
+sassaprilla, one gross empties returned."
+
+"No more poetry?"
+
+"No more nothin'."
+
+Joel was obstinately cheerful. "Well, you been makin' money, anyways;
+that's something."
+
+"Yeh. I buy my own shoes and clo'es now and pay my board and lodgin' at
+home. And paw puts the two dollars that's left into the savings bank. I
+got nearly thirty dollars there now. I'll soon have enough for a winter
+soot and overcoat."
+
+"Gee, can't you go buggy ridin' even with Kit?"
+
+"I could if I had the time and the price, and if her maw wasn't so
+poorly that Kitty can't get away. I go over there Sunday afternoons
+sometimes, but her maw always hollers for her to come in. She's afraid
+to be alone. Kit's had to give up the high school account of her maw."
+
+"How about her goin' away to be a great singer?"
+
+Luke grinned at the insanity of such childish plans. "Oh, that's all
+off. Kit can't even practice any more. It makes her mother nervous. And
+Kit had to give up the church choir too. You'd hardly know her. She
+cries a lot about lookin' so scrawny. O' course I tell her she's pirtier
+than ever, but that only makes her mad. She can't go to sociables or
+dances or picnics, and if she could she's got no clo'es. We don't have
+much fun together; just sit and mope, and then I say: 'Well, guess I
+better mosey on home,' and she says: 'All right; see you again next
+Sunday, I s'pose. G'by.'"
+
+The nightingale annoyed the owl and was hushed, and the poet rimed sums
+in a daybook.
+
+The world waited for them and needed them without knowing it; it would
+have rewarded them with thrilled attention and wealth and fame. But
+silence was their portion, silence and the dark and an ache that had no
+voice.
+
+Joel listened to Luke's elegy and groaned: "Gee!"
+
+But he had an optimism like a powerful spring, and it struck back now
+with a whirr: "I'll tell you what, Luke. Just you wait till I'm rich,
+then I'll give you a job as vice president, and you can marry Kitty and
+live on Broadway, in Noo York."
+
+"I've got over believin' in Sandy Claus," said Luke.
+
+Joel saw little of him during this vacation and less during the next.
+Being by nature a hater of despair, he avoided Luke. He had fits of
+remorse for this, and once he dared to make a personal appeal to old Mr.
+Mellows to send Luke away to school. He was received with scant
+courtesy, and only tolerated because he gave the father a chance to void
+some of his bile at the worthlessness of Luke.
+
+"He's no good; that's what's the matter of him. And willful too--he just
+mopes around because he wants to show me I'm wrong. But he's only
+cuttin' off his own nose to spite his face. I'll learn him who's got the
+most will power."
+
+Joel was bold enough to suggest: "Maybe Luke would be differ'nt if you'd
+let him go to college. You know, Mr. Mellows, if you'll 'scuse my saying
+it, there's some natures that are differ'nt from others. You hitch a
+race horse up to a plow and you spoil a good horse and your field both.
+Seems to me as if, if Luke got a chance to be a writer or a professor or
+something, he might turn out to be a wonder. You can't teach a canary
+bird to be a hen, you know, and----"
+
+Mr. Mellows locked himself in that ridiculous citadel of ancient folly.
+"When you're as old as I am, Joel, you'll know more. The first thing
+anybody's got to learn in this world is to respect their parents."
+
+Joel wanted to say: "I should think that depended on the parents."
+
+But, of course, he kept silent, as the young usually do when they hear
+the old maundering, and he gave up as he heard the stupid dolt returning
+to his old refrain: "I left school when I was twelve years old. Ain't
+had a day sence, and I can't say as I've been exactly a failure. Best
+hardware store in Carthage and holdin' my own in spite of bad business."
+
+Joel slunk away, unconvinced but baffled. One summer he brought all his
+pressure to bear on Luke to persuade him to run away from his job and
+strike out for the big city where the big opportunities grew.
+
+But Luke shook his head. He lacked initiative. Perhaps that was where
+his talent was not genius. It blistered him, but it made no steam.
+
+Shakespeare had known enough to leave Stratford. He had had to hold
+horses outside the theatre, and even then he had organized a little
+business group of horse holders called "Shakespeare's boys." He had the
+business sense, and he forced his way into the theatre and became a
+stockholder. Shakespeare was always an adventurer. He had to work in a
+butcher's shop, but before he was nineteen he was already married to a
+woman of twenty-six, and none too soon for the first child's sake.
+
+Luke Mellows had not the courage or the recklessness to marry Kitty,
+though he had as good a job as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare would not let
+a premature family keep him from his ambition.
+
+He was twenty-one when he went to London, but he went.
+
+London was a boom town then, about the size of Trenton, or Grand Rapids,
+or Spokane, and growing fast. Boys were running away from the farms and
+villages as they always have done. Other boys went to London from
+Stratford. John Sadler became a big wholesale grocer and Richard Field
+a publisher. They had as various reasons then as now.
+
+But the main thing was that they left home. That might mean a noble or a
+selfish ambition, but it took action.
+
+Luke Mellows would not go. He dreaded to abandon his mother to the
+father who bullied them both. He could not bear to leave Kitty alone
+with the wretched mother who ruled her with tears.
+
+Other boys ran or walked away from Carthage, some of them to become
+failures, and some half successes, and some of them to acquire riches
+and power. And other boys stayed at home.
+
+Girls, too, had won obscurity by inertia or had swung into fame. Some of
+the girls had stayed at home and gone wrong there. Some had gone away in
+disgrace, and redeemed or damned themselves in larger parishes. There
+were Aspasias and Joans of Arc in miniature, minor Florence Nightingales
+and Melbas and Rosa Bonheurs. But they had all had to leap from the nest
+and try their wings. Of those that did not take the plunge, none made
+the flight.
+
+Cowardice held some back, but the purest self-sacrifice others. Joel
+felt that there ought to be a heaven for these latter, yet he hoped that
+there was no hell for the former. For who can save himself from his own
+timidity, and who can protect himself from his own courage?
+
+Given that little spur of initiative, that little armor of selfish
+indifference to the clinging hands at home, and how many a soul might
+not have reached the stars? Look at the women who were crowding the
+rolls of fame of late just because all womankind had broken free of the
+apron strings of alleged respectability.
+
+Joel had no proof that Luke Mellows would have amounted to much.
+Perhaps, if he had ventured over the nest's edge, he would have perished
+on the ground, trampled into dust by the fameward mob, or devoured by
+the critics that pounce upon every fledgling and suck the heart out of
+all that cannot fling them off.
+
+But Joel could not surrender his childhood faith that Luke Mellows had
+been meant for another Shakespeare. Yet Mellows had never written a
+play or an act of a play. But, for that matter, neither had Shakespeare
+before he went to London. He was only a poet at first, and some of his
+poems were pretty poor stuff--if you took Shakespeare's name off it. And
+his first poems had to be published by his fellow townsman Field.
+
+There were the childish poems by Luke Mellows that Joel's father had
+published in the Carthage "Clarion." Joel had forgotten them utterly,
+and they were probably meritorious of oblivion. But there was one poem
+Luke had written that Joel memorized.
+
+It appeared in the "Clarion" years after Joel was a success in wool. His
+father still sent him the paper, and in one number Joel was rejoiced to
+read these lines:
+
+THE ANONYMOUS
+
+#By Luke Mellows#
+
+Sometimes at night within a wooded park
+  Like an ocean cavern, fathoms deep in bloom,
+  Sweet scents, like hymns, from hidden flowers fume,
+And make the wanderer happy, though the dark
+  Obscures their tint, their name, their shapely bloom.
+
+So, in the thick-set chronicles of fame,
+  There hover deathless feats of souls unknown.
+  They linger like the fragrant smoke wreaths blown
+From liberal sacrifice. Gone face and name;
+  The deeds, like homeless ghosts, live on alone.
+
+Wixon, seated in the boat on Avon and lost in such dusk that he could
+hardly see his hand upon the idle oar, recited the poem softly to
+himself, intoning it in the deep voice one saves for poetry. It sounded
+wonderful to him in the luxury of hearing his own voice upon the water
+and indulging his own memory. The somber mood was perfect, in accord
+with the realm of shadow and silence where everything beautiful and
+living was cloaked in the general blur.
+
+After he had heard his voice chanting the last long oh's of the final
+verse, he was ashamed of his solemnity, and terrified lest some one
+might have heard him and accounted him insane. He laughed at himself
+for a sentimental fool.
+
+He laughed too as he remembered what a letter of praise he had dictated
+to his astonished stenographer and fired off at Luke Mellows; and at the
+flippant letter he had in return.
+
+Lay readers who send incandescent epistles to poets are apt to receive
+answers in sardonic prose. The poet lies a little, perhaps, in a very
+sane suspicion of his own transcendencies.
+
+Luke Mellows had written:
+
+     "#Dear Old Joel#:
+
+     "I sure am much obliged for your mighty handsome letter. Coming to
+     one of the least successful wool-gatherers in the world from one of
+     the most successful wool distributors, it deserves to be highly
+     prized. And is. I will have it framed and handed down to my heirs,
+     of which there are more than there will ever be looms.
+
+     "You ask me to tell you all about myself. It won't take long. When
+     the Butterly Bottlery went bust, I had no job at all for six
+     months, so I got married to spite my father. And to please Kit,
+     whose poor mother ceased to suffer about the same time.
+
+     "The poor girl was so used to taking care of a poor old woman who
+     couldn't be left alone that I became her patient just to keep all
+     her talents from going to waste.
+
+     "The steady flow of children seems to upset the law of supply and
+     demand, for there is certainly no demand for more of my progeny and
+     there is no supply for them. But somehow they thrive.
+
+     "I am now running my father's store, as the old gentleman had a
+     stroke and then another. The business is going to pot as rapidly as
+     you would expect, but I haven't been able to kill it off quite yet.
+
+     "Thanks for advising me to go on writing immortal poetry. If I were
+     immortal, I might, but that fool thing was the result of about ten
+     years' hard labor. I tried to make a sonnet of it, but I gave up at
+     the end of the decade and called it whatever it is.
+
+     "Your father's paper published it free of charge, and so my income
+     from my poetry has been one-tenth of nothing per annum. Please
+     don't urge me to do any more. I really can't afford it.
+
+     "The poem was suggested to me by an ancient fit of blues over the
+     fact that Kit's once-so-beautiful voice would never be heard in
+     song, and by the fact that her infinite goodnesses will never meet
+     any recompense or even acknowledgment.
+
+     "I was bitter the first five years, but the last five years I began
+     to feel how rich this dark old world is in good, brave, sweet,
+     lovable, heartbreakingly beautiful deeds that simply cast a little
+     fragrance on the dark and are gone. They perfume the night and the
+     busy daylight dispels them like the morning mists that we used to
+     watch steaming and vanishing above the old river. The Mississippi
+     is still here, still rolling along its eternal multitudes of snows
+     and flowers and fruits and fish and snakes and dead men and boats
+     and trees.
+
+     "They go where they came from, I guess--in and out of nothing and
+     back again.
+
+     "It is a matter of glory to all of us that you are doing so nobly.
+     Keep it up and give us something to brag about in our obscurity.
+     Don't worry. We are happy enough in the dark. We have our batlike
+     sports and our owllike prides, and the full sun would blind us and
+     lose us our way.
+
+     "Kit sends you her love--and blushes as she says it. That is a very
+     daring word for such shy moles as we are, but I will echo it.
+
+     "Yours for old sake's sake. #Luke.#"
+
+Vaguely remembering this letter now Joel inhaled a bit of the merciful
+chloroform that deadens the pain of thwarted ambition.
+
+The world was full of men and women like Luke and Kit. Some had given up
+great hopes because they were too good to tread others down in their
+quest. Some had quenched great talents because they were too fearsome or
+too weak or too lazy to feed their lamps with oil and keep them trimmed
+and alight. Some had stumbled through life darkly with no gifts of
+talent, without even appreciation of the talents of others or of the
+flowerlike beauties that star the meadows.
+
+Those were the people he had known. And then there were the people he
+had not known, the innumerable caravan that had passed across the earth
+while he lived, the inconceivable hosts that had gone before, tribe
+after tribe, generation upon generation, nation at the heels of nation,
+cycle on era on age, and the backward perpetuity from everlasting unto
+everlasting. People, people, peoples--poor souls, until the thronged
+stars that make a dust of the Milky Way were a lesser mob.
+
+Here in this graveyard at Stratford lay men who might have overtopped
+Shakespeare's glory if they had but "had a mind to." Some of them had
+been held in higher esteem in their town. But they were forgotten, their
+names leveled with the surface of their fallen tombstones.
+
+Had he not cried out in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a
+nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
+have bad dreams--which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very
+substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream--and I hold
+ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's
+shadow."
+
+After all, the greatest of men were granted but a lesser oblivion than
+the least. And in that overpowering thought there was a strange comfort,
+the comfort of misery finding itself in an infinite company.
+
+The night was thick upon Avon. The swans had gone somewhere. The lights
+in the houses had a sleepy look. It was time to go to bed.
+
+Joel yawned with the luxury of having wearied his heart with emotion. He
+had thought himself out for once. It was good to be tired. He put his
+oars into the stream and, dipping up reflected stars, sent them swirling
+in a doomsday chaos after him with the defiant revenge of a proud soul
+who scorns the universe that grinds him to dust.
+
+The old boatman was surly with waiting. He did not thank the foreigner
+for his liberal largeness, and did not answer his good night.
+
+As Wixon left the river and took the road for his hotel, the nightingale
+(that forever anonymous nightingale, only one among the millions of
+forgotten or throttled songsters) revolted for a moment or two against
+the stifling doom and shattered it with a wordless sonnet of fierce and
+beautiful protest--"The tawny-throated! What triumph! hark!--what pain!"
+
+It was as if Luke Mellows had suddenly found expression in something
+better than words, something that any ear could understand, an ache that
+rang.
+
+Wixon stopped, transfixed as by flaming arrows. He could not understand
+what the bird meant or what he meant, nor could the bird. But as there
+is no laughter that eases the heart like unpacking it of its woes in
+something beyond wording, so there is nothing that brightens the eyes
+like tears gushing without shame or restraint.
+
+Joel Wixon felt that it was a good, sad, mad world, and that he had been
+very close to Shakespeare--so close that he heard things nobody had ever
+found the phrases for--things that cannot be said but only felt, and
+transmitted rather by experience than by expression from one proud worm
+in the mud to another.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] Copyright, 1920, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc. Copyright, 1921, by
+Rupert Hughes.
+
+
+
+
+HIS JOB[11]
+
+#By# GRACE SARTWELL MASON
+
+From _Scribner's Magazine_
+
+
+Against an autumn sunset the steel skeleton of a twenty-story office
+building in process of construction stood out black and bizarre. It
+flung up its beams and girders like stern and yet airy music, orderly,
+miraculously strong, and delicately powerful. From the lower stories,
+where masons made their music of trowel and hammer, to the top, where
+steam-riveters rapped out their chorus like giant locusts in a summer
+field, the great building lived and breathed as if all those human
+energies that went to its making flowed warm through its steel veins.
+
+In the west window of a womans' club next door one of the members stood
+looking out at this building. Behind her at a tea-table three other
+women sat talking. For some moments their conversation had had a
+plaintive if not an actually rebellious tone. They were discussing the
+relative advantages of a man's work and a woman's, and they had arrived
+at the conclusion that a man has much the best of it when it comes to a
+matter of the day's work.
+
+"Take a man's work," said Mrs. Van Vechten, pouring herself a second cup
+of tea. "He chooses it; then he is allowed to go at it with absolute
+freedom. He isn't hampered by the dull, petty details of life that
+hamper us. He----"
+
+"Details! My dear, there you are right," broke in Mrs. Bullen. Two men,
+first Mrs. Bullen's father and then her husband, had seen to it that
+neither the biting wind of adversity nor the bracing air of experience
+should ever touch her. "Details! Sometimes I feel as if I were
+smothered by them. Servants, and the house, and now these relief
+societies----"
+
+She was in her turn interrupted by Cornelia Blair. Cornelia was a
+spinster with more freedom than most human beings ever attain, her
+father having worked himself to death to leave her well provided for.
+"The whole fault is the social system," she declared. "Because of it men
+have been able to take the really interesting work of the world for
+themselves. They've pushed the dull jobs off onto us."
+
+"You're right, Cornelia," cried Mrs. Bullen. She really had nothing to
+say, but she hated not saying it. "I've always thought," she went on
+pensively, "that it would be so much easier just to go to an office in
+the morning and have nothing but business to think of. Don't you feel
+that way sometimes, Mrs. Trask?"
+
+The woman in the west window turned. There was a quizzical gleam in her
+eyes as she looked at the other three. "The trouble with us women is
+we're blind and deaf," she said slowly. "We talk a lot about men's work
+and how they have the best of things in power and freedom, but does it
+occur to one of us that a man _pays_ for power and freedom? Sometimes I
+think that not one of the women of our comfortable class would be
+willing to pay what our men pay for the power and freedom they get."
+
+"What do they pay?" asked Mrs. Van Vechten, her lip curling.
+
+Mrs. Trask turned back to the window. "There's something rather
+wonderful going on out here," she called. "I wish you'd all come and
+look."
+
+Just outside the club window the steel-workers pursued their dangerous
+task with leisurely and indifferent competence, while over their head a
+great derrick served their needs with uncanny intelligence. It dropped
+its chain and picked a girder from the floor. As it rose into space two
+figures sprang astride either end of it. The long arm swung up and out;
+the two "bronco-busters of the sky" were black against the flame of the
+sunset. Some one shouted; the signalman pulled at his rope; the
+derrick-arm swung in a little with the girder teetering at the end of
+the chain. The most interesting moment of the steel-man's job had come,
+when a girder was to be jockeyed into place. The iron arm swung the
+girder above two upright columns, lowered it, and the girder began to
+groove into place. It wedged a little. One of the men inched along,
+leaned against space, and wielded his bar. The women stared, for the
+moment taken out of themselves. Then, as the girder settled into place
+and the two men slid down the column to the floor, the spectators turned
+back to their tea-table.
+
+"Very interesting," murmured Mrs. Van Vechten; "but I hardly see how it
+concerns us."
+
+A flame leaped in Mary Trask's face. "It's what we've just been talking
+about, one of men's jobs. I tell you, men are working miracles all the
+time that women never see. We envy them their power and freedom, but we
+seldom open our eyes to see what they pay for them. Look here, I'd like
+to tell you about an ordinary man and one of his jobs." She stopped and
+looked from Mrs. Bullen's perplexity to Cornelia Blair's superior smile,
+and her eyes came last to Sally Van Vechten's rebellious frown. "I'm
+going to bore you, maybe," she laughed grimly. "But it will do you good
+to listen once in a while to something _real_."
+
+She sat down and leaned her elbows on the table. "I said that he is an
+ordinary man," she began; "what I meant is that he started in like the
+average, without any great amount of special training, without money,
+and without pull of any kind. He had good health, good stock back of
+him, an attractive personality, and two years at a technical
+school--those were his total assets. He was twenty when he came to New
+York to make a place for himself, and he had already got himself engaged
+to a girl back home. He had enough money to keep him for about three
+weeks, if he lived very economically. But that didn't prevent his
+feeling a heady exhilaration that day when he walked up Fifth Avenue for
+the first time and looked over his battle-field. He has told me often,
+with a chuckle at the audacity of it, how he picked out his employer.
+All day he walked about with his eyes open for contractors' signs.
+Whenever he came upon a building in the process of construction he
+looked it over critically, and if he liked the look of the job he made a
+note of the contractor's name and address in a little green book. For he
+was to be a builder--of big buildings, of course! And that night, when
+he turned out of the avenue to go to the cheap boarding-house where he
+had sent his trunk, he told himself that he'd give himself five years to
+set up an office of his own within a block of Fifth Avenue.
+
+"Next day he walked into the offices of Weil & Street--the first that
+headed the list in the little green book--asked to see Mr. Weil, and,
+strangely enough, got him, too. Even in those raw days Robert had a
+cheerful assurance tempered with rather a nice deference that often got
+him what he wanted from older men. When he left the offices of Weil &
+Street he had been given a job in the estimating-room, at a salary that
+would just keep him from starving. He grew lean and lost his country
+color that winter, but he was learning, learning all the time, not only
+in the office of Weil & Street, but at night school, where he studied
+architecture. When he decided he had got all he could get out of the
+estimating and drawing rooms he asked to be transferred to one of the
+jobs. They gave him the position of timekeeper on one of the contracts,
+at a slight advance in salary.
+
+"A man can get as much or as little out of being timekeeper as he
+chooses. Robert got a lot out of it. He formulated that summer a working
+theory of the length of time it should take to finish every detail of a
+building. He talked with bricklayers, he timed them and watched them,
+until he knew how many bricks could be laid in an hour; and it was the
+same way with carpenters, fireproofers, painters, plasterers. He soaked
+in a thousand practical details of building: he picked out the best
+workman in each gang, watched him, talked with him, learned all he could
+of that man's particular trick; and it all went down in the little green
+book. For at the back of his head was always the thought of the time
+when he should use all this knowledge in his own business. Then one day
+when he had learned all he could learn from being timekeeper, he walked
+into Weil's office again and proposed that they make him one of the
+firm's superintendents of construction.
+
+"Old Weil fairly stuttered with the surprise of this audacious
+proposition. He demanded to know what qualifications the young man could
+show for so important a position, and Robert told him about the year he
+had had with the country builder and the three summer vacations with the
+country surveyor--which made no impression whatever on Mr. Weil until
+Robert produced the little green book. Mr. Weil glanced at some of the
+figures in the book, snorted, looked hard at his ambitious timekeeper,
+who looked back at him with his keen young eyes and waited. When he left
+the office he had been promised a tryout on a small job near the
+offices, where, as old Weil said, they could keep an eye on him. That
+night he wrote to the girl back home that she must get ready to marry
+him at a moment's notice."
+
+Mrs. Trask leaned back in her chair and smiled with a touch of sadness.
+"The wonder of youth! I can see him writing that letter, exuberant,
+ambitious, his brain full of dreams and plans--and a very inadequate
+supper in his stomach. The place where he lived--he pointed it out to me
+once--was awful. No girl of Rob's class--back home his folks were
+'nice'--would have stood that lodging-house for a night, would have
+eaten the food he did, or gone without the pleasures of life as he had
+gone without them for two years. But there, right at the beginning, is
+the difference between what a boy is willing to go through to get what
+he wants and what a girl would or could put up with. And along with a
+better position came a man's responsibility, which he shouldered alone.
+
+"'I was horribly afraid I'd fall down on the job,' he told me long
+afterward. 'And there wasn't a living soul I could turn to for help. The
+thing was up to me alone!'"
+
+Mrs. Trask looked from Mrs. Bullen to Mrs. Van Vechten. "Mostly they
+fight alone," she said, as if she thought aloud. "That's one thing about
+men we don't always grasp--the business of existence is up to the
+average man alone. If he fails or gets into a tight place he has no one
+to fall back on, as a woman almost always has. Our men have a prejudice
+against taking their business difficulties home with them. I've a
+suspicion it's because we're so ignorant they'd have to do too much
+explaining! So in most cases they haven't even a sympathetic
+understanding to help them over the bad places. It was so with Robert
+even after he had married the girl back home and brought her to the
+city. His idea was to keep her from all worry and anxiety, and so, when
+he came home at night and she asked him if he had had a good day, or if
+the work had gone well, he always replied cheerfully that things had
+gone about the same as usual, even though the day had been a
+particularly bad one. This was only at first, however. The girl happened
+to be the kind that likes to know things. One night, when she wakened to
+find him staring sleepless at the ceiling, the thought struck her that,
+after all, she knew nothing of his particular problems, and if they were
+partners in the business of living why shouldn't she be an intelligent
+member of the firm, even if only a silent one?
+
+"So she began to read everything she could lay her hands on about the
+business of building construction, and very soon when she asked a
+question it was a fairly intelligent one, because it had some knowledge
+back of it. She didn't make the mistake of pestering him with questions
+before she had any groundwork of technical knowledge to build on, and
+I'm not sure that he ever guessed what she was up to, but I do know that
+gradually, as he found that he did not, for instance, have to draw a
+diagram and explain laboriously what a caisson was because she already
+knew a good deal about caissons, he fell into the habit of talking out
+to her a great many of the situations he would have to meet next day.
+Not that she offered her advice nor that he wanted it, but what helped
+was the fact of her sympathy--I should say her intelligent sympathy, for
+that is the only kind that can really help.
+
+"So when his big chance came along she was ready to meet it with him. If
+he succeeded she would be all the better able to appreciate his success;
+and if he failed she would never blame him from ignorance. You must
+understand that his advance was no meteoric thing. He somehow, by dint
+of sitting up nights poring over blueprints and text-books and by day
+using his wits and his eyes and his native shrewdness, managed to pull
+off with fair success his first job as superintendent; was given other
+contracts to oversee; and gradually, through three years of hard work,
+learning, learning all the time, worked up to superintending some of the
+firm's important jobs. Then he struck out for himself."
+
+Mrs. Trask turned to look out of the west window. "It sounds so easy,"
+she mused. "'Struck out for himself.' But I think only a man can quite
+appreciate how much courage that takes. Probably, if the girl had not
+understood where he was trying to get to, he would have hesitated longer
+to give up his good, safe salary; but they talked it over, she
+understood the hazards of the game, and she was willing to take a
+chance. They had saved a tiny capital, and only a little over five years
+from the day he had come to New York he opened an office within a block
+of Fifth Avenue.
+
+"I won't bore you with the details of the next two years, when he was
+getting together his organization, teaching himself the details of
+office work, stalking architects and owners for contracts. He acquired a
+slight stoop to his shoulders in those two years and there were days
+when there was nothing left of his boyishness but the inextinguishable
+twinkle in his hazel eyes. There were times when it seemed to him as if
+he had put to sea in a rowboat; as if he could never make port; but
+after a while small contracts began to come in, and then came along the
+big opportunity. Up in a New England city a large bank building was to
+be built; one of the directors was a friend of Rob's father, and Rob was
+given a chance to put in an estimate. It meant so much to him that he
+would not let himself count on getting the contract; he did not even
+tell the partner at home that he had been asked to put in an estimate
+until one day he came tearing in to tell her that he had been given the
+job. It seemed too wonderful to be true. The future looked so dazzling
+that they were almost afraid to contemplate it. Only something wildly
+extravagant would express their emotion, so they chartered a hansom cab
+and went gayly sailing up-town on the late afternoon tide of Fifth
+Avenue; and as they passed the building on which Robert had got his job
+as timekeeper he took off his hat to it, and she blew a kiss to it, and
+a dreary old clubman in a window next door brightened visibly!"
+
+Mrs. Trask turned her face toward the steel skeleton springing up across
+the way like the magic beanstalk in the fairy-tale. "The things men have
+taught themselves to do!" she cried. "The endurance and skill, the
+inventiveness, the precision of science, the daring of human wits, the
+poetry and fire that go into the making of great buildings! We women
+walk in and out of them day after day, blindly--and this indifference is
+symbolical, I think, of the way we walk in and out of our men's
+lives.... I wish I could make you see that job of young Robert's so that
+you would feel in it what I do--the patience of men, the strain of the
+responsibility they carry night and day, the things life puts up to
+them, which they have to meet alone, the dogged endurance of them...."
+
+Mrs. Trask leaned forward and traced a complicated diagram on the
+table-cloth with the point of a fork. "It was his first big job, you
+understand, and he had got it in competition with several older
+builders. From the first they were all watching him, and he knew it,
+which put a fine edge to his determination to put the job through with
+credit. To be sure, he was handicapped by lack of capital, but his past
+record had established his credit, and when the foundation work was
+begun it was a very hopeful young man that watched the first shovelful
+of earth taken out. But when they had gone down about twelve feet, with
+a trench for a retaining-wall, they discovered that the owners' boring
+plan was not a trustworthy representation of conditions; the job was
+going to be a soft-ground proposition. Where, according to the owners'
+preliminary borings, he should have found firm sand with a normal amount
+of moisture, Rob discovered sand that was like saturated oatmeal, and
+beyond that quicksand and water. Water! Why, it was like a subterranean
+lake fed by a young river! With the pulsometer pumps working night and
+day they couldn't keep the water out of the test pier he had sunk. It
+bubbled in as cheerfully as if it had eternal springs behind it, and
+drove the men out of the pier in spite of every effort. Rob knew then
+what he was up against. But he still hoped that he could sink the
+foundations without compressed air, which would be an immense expense he
+had not figured on in his estimate, of course. So he devised a certain
+kind of concrete crib, the first one was driven--and when they got it
+down beneath quicksand and water about twenty-five feet, it hung up on a
+boulder! You see, below the stratum of sand like saturated oatmeal,
+below the water and quicksand, they had come upon something like a New
+England pasture, as thick with big boulders as a bun with currants! If
+he had spent weeks hunting for trouble he couldn't have found more than
+was offered him right there. It was at this point that he went out and
+wired a big New York engineer, who happened to be a friend of his, to
+come up. In a day or two the engineer arrived, took a look at the job,
+and then advised Rob to quit.
+
+"'It's a nasty job,' he told him. 'It will swallow every penny of your
+profits and probably set you back a few thousands. It's one of the worst
+soft-ground propositions I ever looked over.'
+
+"Well that night young Robert went home with a sleep-walking expression
+in his eyes. He and the partner at home had moved up to Rockford to be
+near the job while the foundation work was going on, so the girl saw
+exactly what he was up against and what he had to decide between.
+
+"'I could quit,' he said that night, after the engineer had taken his
+train back to New York, 'throw up the job, and the owners couldn't hold
+me because of their defective boring plans. But if I quit there'll be
+twenty competitors to say I've bit off more than I can chew. And if I
+go on I lose money; probably go into the hole so deep I'll be a long
+time getting out.'
+
+"You see, where his estimates had covered only the expense of normal
+foundation work he now found himself up against the most difficult
+conditions a builder can face. When the girl asked him if the owners
+would not make up the additional cost he grinned ruefully. The owners
+were going to hold him to his original estimate; they knew that with his
+name to make he would hate to give up; and they were inclined to be
+almost as nasty as the job.
+
+"'Then you'll have all this work and difficulty for nothing?' the girl
+asked. 'You may actually lose money on the job?'
+
+"'Looks that way,' he admitted.
+
+"'Then why do you go on?' she cried.
+
+"His answer taught the girl a lot about the way a man looks at his job.
+'If I take up the cards I can't be a quitter,' he said. 'It would hurt
+my record. And my record is the equivalent of credit and capital. I
+can't afford to have any weak spots in it. I'll take the gaff rather
+than have it said about me that I've lain down on a job. I'm going on
+with this thing to the end.'"
+
+Little shrewd, reminiscent lines gathered about Mrs. Trask's eyes.
+"There's something exhilarating about a good fight. I've always thought
+that if I couldn't be a gunner I could get a lot of thrills out of just
+handing up the ammunition.... Well, Rob went on with the contract. With
+the first crib hung up on a boulder and the water coming in so fast they
+couldn't pump it out fast enough to dynamite, he was driven to use
+compressed air, and that meant the hiring of a compressor, locks,
+shafting--a terribly costly business--as well as bringing up to the job
+a gang of the high-priced labor that works under air. But this was done,
+and the first crib for the foundation piers went down slowly, with the
+sand-hogs--men that work in the caissons--drilling and blasting their
+way week after week through that underground New England pasture. Then,
+below this boulder-strewn stratum, instead of the ledge they expected
+they struck four feet of rotten rock, so porous that when air was put on
+it to force the water back great air bubbles blew up all through the
+lot, forcing the men out of the other caissons and trenches. But this
+was a mere dull detail, to be met by care and ingenuity like the others.
+And at last, forty feet below street level, they reached bed-rock.
+Forty-six piers had to be driven to this ledge.
+
+"Rob knew now exactly what kind of a job was cut out for him. He knew he
+had not only the natural difficulties to overcome, but he was going to
+have to fight the owners for additional compensation. So one day he went
+into Boston and interviewed a famous old lawyer.
+
+"'Would you object,' he asked the lawyer, 'to taking a case against
+personal friends of yours, the owners of the Rockford bank building?'
+
+"'Not at all--and if you're right, I'll lick 'em! What's your case?'
+
+"Rob told him the whole story. When he finished the famous man refused
+to commit himself one way or the other; but he said that he would be in
+Rockford in a few days, and perhaps he'd look at Robert's little job. So
+one day, unannounced, the lawyer appeared. The compressor plant was hard
+at work forcing the water back in the caissons, the pulsometer pumps
+were sucking up streams of water that flowed without ceasing into the
+settling tank and off into the city sewers, the men in the caissons were
+sending up buckets full of silt-like gruel. The lawyer watched
+operations for a few minutes, then he asked for the owners' boring plan.
+When he had examined this he grunted twice, twitched his lower lip
+humorously, and said: 'I'll put you out of this. If the owners wanted a
+deep-water lighthouse they should have specified one--not a bank
+building.'
+
+"So the battle of legal wits began. Before the building was done Joshua
+Kent had succeeded in making the owners meet part of the additional cost
+of the foundation, and Robert had developed an acumen that stood by him
+the rest of his life. But there was something for him in this job bigger
+than financial gain or loss. Week after week, as he overcame one
+difficulty after another, he was learning, learning, just as he had done
+at Weil & Street's. His hazel eyes grew keener, his face thinner. For
+the job began to develop every freak and whimsy possible to a growing
+building. The owner of the department store next door refused to permit
+access through his basement, and that added many hundred dollars to the
+cost of building the party wall; the fire and telephone companies were
+continually fussing around and demanding indemnity because their poles
+and hydrants got knocked out of plumb; the thousands of gallons of dirty
+water pumped from the job into the city sewers clogged them up, and the
+city sued for several thousand dollars' damages; one day the car-tracks
+in front of the lot settled and valuable time was lost while the men
+shored them up; now and then the pulsometer engines broke down; the
+sand-hogs all got drunk and lost much time; an untimely frost spoiled a
+thousand dollars' worth of concrete one night. But the detail that
+required the most handling was the psychological effect on Rob's
+subcontractors. These men, observing the expensive preliminary
+operations, and knowing that Rob was losing money every day the
+foundation work lasted, began to ask one another if the young boss would
+be able to put the job through. If he failed, of course they who had
+signed up with him for various stages of the work would lose heavily.
+Panic began to spread among all the little army that goes to the making
+of a big building. The terra-cotta-floor men, the steel men,
+electricians and painters began to hang about the job with gloom in
+their eyes; they wore a path to the architect's door, and he, never
+having quite approved of so young a man being given the contract, did
+little to allay their apprehensions. Rob knew that if this kept up
+they'd hurt his credit, so he promptly served notice on the architect
+that if his credit was impaired by false rumors he'd hold him
+responsible; and he gave each subcontractor five minutes in which to
+make up his mind whether he wanted to quit or look cheerful. To a man
+they chose to stick by the job; so that detail was disposed of. In the
+meantime the sinking of piers for one of the retaining-walls was giving
+trouble. One morning at daylight Rob's superintendent telephoned him to
+announce that the street was caving in and the buildings across the way
+were cracking. When Rob got there he found the men standing about scared
+and helpless, while the plate-glass windows of the store opposite were
+cracking like pistols and the building settled. It appeared that when
+the trench for the south wall had gone down a certain distance water
+began to rush in under the sheeting as if from an underground river,
+and, of course, undermined the street and the store opposite. The pumps
+were started like mad, two gangs were put at work, with the
+superintendent swearing, threatening, and pleading to make them dig
+faster, and at last concrete was poured and the water stopped. That day
+Rob and his superintendent had neither breakfast nor lunch; but they had
+scarcely finished shoring up the threatened store when the owner of the
+store notified Rob that he would sue for damages, and the secretary of
+the Y. W. C. A. next door attempted to have the superintendent arrested
+for profanity. Rob said that when this happened he and his
+superintendent solemnly debated whether they should go and get drunk or
+start a fight with the sand-hogs; it did seem as if they were entitled
+to some emotional outlet, all the circumstances considered!
+
+"So after months of difficulties the foundation work was at last
+finished. I've forgotten to mention that there was some little
+difficulty with the eccentricities of the sub-basement floor. The wet
+clay ruined the first concrete poured, and little springs had a way of
+gushing up in the boiler-room. Also, one night a concrete shell for the
+elevator pit completely disappeared--sank out of sight in the soft
+bottom. But by digging the trench again and jacking down the bottom and
+putting hay under the concrete, the floor was finished; and that detail
+was settled.
+
+"The remainder of the job was by comparison uneventful. The things that
+happened were all more or less in the day's work, such as a carload of
+stone for the fourth story arriving when what the masons desperately
+needed was the carload for the second, and the carload for the third
+getting lost and being discovered after three days' search among the
+cripples in a Buffalo freight-yard. And there was a strike of
+structural-steel work workers which snarled up everything for a while;
+and always, of course, there were the small obstacles and differences
+owners and architects are in the habit of hatching up to keep a builder
+from getting indifferent. But these things were what every builder
+encounters and expects. What Rob's wife could not reconcile herself to
+was the fact that all those days of hard work, all those days and nights
+of strain and responsibility, were all for nothing. Profits had long
+since been drowned in the foundation work; Robert would actually have to
+pay several thousand dollars for the privilege of putting up that
+building! When the girl could not keep back one wail over this detail
+her husband looked at her in genuine surprise.
+
+"'Why, it's been worth the money to me, what I've learned,' he said.
+'I've got an education out of that old hoodoo that some men go through
+Tech and work twenty years without getting; I've learned a new wrinkle
+in every one of the building trades; I've learned men and I've learned
+law, and I've delivered the goods. It's been hell, but I wouldn't have
+missed it!'"
+
+Mrs. Trask looked eagerly and a little wistfully at the three faces in
+front of her. Her own face was alight. "Don't you see--that's the way a
+real man looks at his work; but that man's wife would never have
+understood it if she hadn't been interested enough to watch his job. She
+saw him grow older and harder under that job; she saw him often haggard
+from the strain and sleepless because of a dozen intricate problems; but
+she never heard him complain and she never saw him any way but
+courageous and often boyishly gay when he'd got the best of some
+difficulty. And furthermore, she knew that if she had been the kind of a
+woman who is not interested in her husband's work he would have kept it
+to himself, as most American husbands do. If he had, she would have
+missed a chance to learn a lot of things that winter, and she probably
+wouldn't have known anything about the final chapter in the history of
+the job that the two of them had fallen into the habit of referring to
+as the White Elephant. They had moved back to New York then, and the
+Rockford bank building was within two weeks of its completion, when at
+seven o'clock one morning their telephone rang. Rob answered it and his
+wife heard him say sharply: 'Well, what are you doing about it?' And
+then: 'Keep it up. I'll catch the next train.'
+
+"'What is it?' she asked, as he turned away from the telephone and she
+saw his face.
+
+"'The department store next to the Elephant is burning,' he told her.
+'Fireproof? Well, I'm supposed to have built a fireproof building--but
+you never can tell.'
+
+"His wife's next thought was of insurance, for she knew that Robert had
+to insure the building himself up to the time he turned it over to the
+owners. 'The insurance is all right?' she asked him.
+
+"But she knew by the way he turned away from her that the worst of all
+their bad luck with the Elephant had happened, and she made him tell
+her. The insurance had lapsed about a week before. Rob had not renewed
+the policy because its renewal would have meant adding several hundreds
+to his already serious deficit, and, as he put it, it seemed to him that
+everything that could happen to that job had already happened. But now
+the last stupendous, malicious catastrophe threatened him. Both of them
+knew when he said good-by that morning and hurried out to catch his
+train that he was facing ruin. His wife begged him to let her go with
+him; at least she would be some one to talk to on that interminable
+journey; but he said that was absurd; and, anyway, he had a lot of
+thinking to do. So he started off alone.
+
+"At the station before he left he tried to get the Rockford bank
+building on the telephone. He got Rockford and tried for five minutes to
+make a connection with his superintendent's telephone in the bank
+building, until the operator's voice came to him over the wire: 'I tell
+you, you can't get that building, mister. It's burning down!'
+
+"'How do you know?' he besought her.
+
+"'I just went past there and I seen it,' her voice came back at him.
+
+"He got on the train. At first he felt nothing but a queer dizzy vacuum
+where his brain should have been; the landscape outside the windows
+jumbled together like a nightmare landscape thrown up on a
+moving-picture screen. For fifty miles he merely sat rigidly still, but
+in reality he was plunging down like a drowning man to the very bottom
+of despair. And then, like the drowning man, he began to come up to the
+surface again. The instinct for self-preservation stirred in him and
+broke the grip of that hypnotizing despair. At first slowly and
+painfully, but at last with quickening facility, he began to think, to
+plan. Stations went past; a man he knew spoke to him and then walked on,
+staring; but he was deaf and blind. He was planning for the future.
+Already he had plumbed, measured, and put behind him the fact of the
+fire; what he occupied himself with now was what he could save from the
+ashes to make a new start with. And he told me afterwards that actually,
+at the end of two hours of the liveliest thinking he had ever done in
+his life, he began to enjoy himself! His fighting blood began to tingle;
+his head steadied and grew cool; his mind reached out and examined every
+aspect of his stupendous failure, not to indulge himself in the weakness
+of regret, but to find out the surest and quickest way to get on his
+feet again. Figuring on the margins of timetables, going over the
+contracts he had in hand, weighing every asset he possessed in the
+world, he worked out in minute detail a plan to save his credit and his
+future. When he got off the train at Boston he was a man that had
+already begun life over again; he was a general that was about to make
+the first move in a long campaign, every move and counter-move of which
+he carried in his brain. Even as he crossed the station he was
+rehearsing the speech he was going to make at the meeting of his
+creditors he intended to hold that afternoon. Then, as he hastened
+toward a telephone-booth, he ran into a newsboy. A headline caught his
+eye. He snatched at the paper, read the headlines, standing there in the
+middle of the room. And then he suddenly sat down on the nearest bench,
+weak and shaking.
+
+"On the front page of the paper was a half-page picture of the Rockford
+bank building with the flames curling up against its west wall, and
+underneath it a caption that he read over and over before he could grasp
+what it meant to him. The White Elephant had not burned; in fact, at the
+last it had turned into a good elephant, for it had not only not burned
+but it had stopped the progress of what threatened to be a very
+disastrous conflagration, according to a jubilant despatch from
+Rockford. And Robert, reading these lines over and over, felt an amazing
+sort of indignant disappointment to think that now he would not have a
+chance to put to the test those plans he had so minutely worked out. He
+was in the position of a man that has gone through the painful process
+of readjusting his whole life; who has mentally met and conquered a
+catastrophe that fails to come off. He felt quite angry and cheated for
+a few minutes, until he regained his mental balance and saw how absurd
+he was, and then, feeling rather foolish and more than a little shaky,
+he caught a train and went up to Rockford.
+
+"There he found out that the report had been right; beyond a few cracked
+wire-glass windows--for which, as one last painful detail, he had to
+pay--and a blackened side wall, the Elephant was unharmed. The men
+putting the finishing touches to the inside had not lost an hour's work.
+All that dreadful journey up from New York had been merely one last turn
+of the screw.
+
+"Two weeks later he turned the Elephant over to the owners, finished, a
+good, workmanlike job from roof to foundation-piers. He had lost money
+on it; for months he had worked overtime his courage, his ingenuity, his
+nerve, and his strength. But that did not matter. He had delivered the
+goods. I believe he treated himself to an afternoon off and went to a
+ball-game; but that was all, for by this time other jobs were under way,
+a whole batch of new problems were waiting to be solved; in a week the
+Elephant was forgotten."
+
+Mrs. Trask pushed back her chair and walked to the west window. A
+strange quiet had fallen upon the sky-scraper now; the workmen had gone
+down the ladders, the steam-riveters had ceased their tapping. Mrs.
+Trask opened the window and leaned out a little.
+
+Behind her the three women at the tea-table gathered up their furs in
+silence. Cornelia Blair looked relieved and prepared to go on to dinner
+at another club, Mrs. Bullen avoided Mrs. Van Vechten's eye. In her rosy
+face faint lines had traced themselves, as if vaguely some new
+perceptiveness troubled her. She looked at her wristwatch and rose from
+the table hastily.
+
+"I must run along," she said. "I like to get home before John does. You
+going my way, Sally?"
+
+Mrs. Van Vechten shook her head absently. There was a frown between her
+dark brows; but as she stood fastening her furs her eyes went to the
+west window, with an expression in them that was almost wistful. For an
+instant she looked as if she were going over to the window beside Mary
+Trask; then she gathered up her gloves and muff and went out without a
+word.
+
+Mary Trask was unaware of her going. She had forgotten the room behind
+her and her friends at the tea-table, as well as the other women
+drifting in from the adjoining room. She was contemplating, with her
+little, absent-minded smile, her husband's name on the builder's sign
+halfway up the unfinished sky-scraper opposite.
+
+"Good work, old Rob," she murmured. Then her hand went up in a quaint
+gesture that was like a salute. "To all good jobs and the men behind
+them!" she added.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by
+Grace Sartwell Mason.
+
+
+
+
+THE RENDING[12]
+
+#By# JAMES OPPENHEIM
+
+From _The Dial_
+
+
+There is a bitter moment in youth, and this moment had come to Paul. He
+had passed his mother's door without entering or even calling out to
+her, and had climbed on doggedly to the top floor. Now he was shut in
+his sanctuary, his room, sitting at his table. His head rested on a
+hand, his dark eyes had an expression of confused anguish, a look of
+guilt and sternness mingled.... He could no more have visited his
+mother, he told himself, than he could voluntarily have chopped off his
+hand. And yet he was amazed at the cruelty in himself, a hard cold
+cruelty which prompted the thought: "Even if this means her death or my
+death, I shall go through with this."
+
+It was because of such a feeling that he couldn't talk to his mother.
+Paul was one of those sensitive youths who are delivered over to their
+emotions--swept now and then by exaltation, now by despair, now by
+anguish or rage, always excessive, never fully under control. He was
+moody, and always seemed unable to say the right thing or do the right
+thing. Suddenly the emotion used him as a mere instrument and came forth
+in a shameful nakedness. But the present situation was by all odds the
+most terrible he had faced: for against the cold cruelty, there
+throbbed, warm and unutterably sweet, like a bird in a nest of iron, an
+intense childish longing and love....
+
+You see, Paul was nineteen, the eldest son in a family of four, and his
+mother was a widow. She was not poor; they lived in this large
+comfortable house on a side street east of Central Park. But neither
+was she well off, and Paul was very magnanimous; he had given up college
+and gone to work as a clerk. Perhaps it wasn't only magnanimity, but
+also pride. He was proud to be the oldest son, to play father, to advise
+with his mother about the children, to be the man of the house. Yet he
+was always a mere child, living, as his two sisters and his brother
+lived, in delicate response to his mother's feelings and wishes. And he
+wanted to be a good son: he thought nothing was more wonderful than a
+child who was good to his mother. She had given all for her children,
+they in return must give all to her. But against this spirit of
+sacrifice there arose a crude, ugly, healthy, monstrous force, a
+terrible thing that kept whispering to him: "You can't live your
+mother's life: you must live your own life."
+
+Once, when he had said something conceited, his mother had flashed out
+at him: "You're utterly selfish." This stung and humiliated him. Yet
+this terrible monster in himself seemed concerned about nothing but
+self. It seemed a sort of devil always tempting him to eat of forbidden
+fruit. Lovely fruit, too. There was Agnes, for instance: Agnes, a mere
+girl, with a pigtail down her back, daughter of the fishman on Third
+Avenue.
+
+His mother held Agnes in horror. That her son should be in love with a
+fishman's daughter! And all the child in Paul, responding so sensitively
+to his mother's feelings, agreed to this. He had contempt for himself,
+he struggled against the romantic Thousand and One Nights glamour, which
+turned Third Avenue into a Lovers' Lane of sparkling lights. He
+struggled, vainly. Poetry was his passion: and he steeped himself in
+Romeo and Juliet, and in Keats's St. Agnes' Eve and The Pot of Basil....
+It was then the great struggle with his mother began, and the large
+house became a gloomy vault, something dank, damp, sombre, something out
+of Poe, where a secret duel to the death was being fought, mostly in
+undertones and sometimes with sharp cries and stabbing words.
+
+Now, this evening, with his head in his hand, he knew that the end had
+already been reached. To pass his mother's door without a greeting,
+especially since he was well aware that she was ill, was so
+unprecedented, so violent an act, that it seemed to have the finality of
+something criminal. His mother had said two days ago: "This can't go on.
+It is killing me."
+
+"All right," he flashed. "It sha'n't. I'll get out."
+
+"I suppose you'll marry," she said, "on fifteen a week."
+
+He spoke bitterly:
+
+"I'll get out of New York altogether. I'll work my way through
+college...."
+
+She almost sneered at the suggestion. And this sneer rankled. He
+telegraphed his friend, at a little freshwater college, and Samuel
+telegraphed back: "Come." That day he drew his money from the bank, and
+got his tickets for the midnight sleeper. And he did all this with
+perfect cruelty....
+
+But now the time had come to go, and things were different. An autumn
+wind was blowing out of the park, doubtless carrying seeds and dead
+leaves, and gusting down the street, blowing about the sparkling lamps,
+eddying in the area-ways, rapping in passing on the loose windows....
+The lights in the houses were all warm, because you saw only the glowing
+yellow shades: Third Avenue was lit up and down with shop-windows, and
+people were doing late marketing. It was a night when nothing seemed so
+sweet, or sane, or comfortable, as a soft-lighted room, and a family
+sitting together. Soft voices, familiarity, warm intimacy, the feeling
+of security and ease, the unspoken welling of love and understanding:
+these belonged to such a night, when the whole world seemed dying and
+there was only man to keep the fires burning against death.
+
+And so, out of its tomb, the little child in Paul stepped out again,
+beautiful and sweet with love and longing. And this little child said to
+him: "Sacrifice--surrender--let the hard heart melt with pity.... There
+is no freedom except in love, which gives all." For a moment Paul's
+vivid imagination, which presented everything to him like works of
+dramatic art, pictured himself going down the steps, as once he had
+done, creeping to his mother's bed, flinging himself down, sobbing and
+moaning, "Forgive me. Forgive me."
+
+But just then he heard the stairs creak and thought that his eldest
+sister was coming up to question him. His heart began a frightened
+throbbing: he shook with a guilty fear, and at once he saved himself
+with a bitter resurgence of cruel anger. He hated his sister, he told
+himself, with a livid hatred. She always sided with his mother. She was
+bossy and smart and high and mighty. He knew what he would do. He jumped
+up, went to the door, and locked it. So--she could beat her head on the
+door, for all he cared!
+
+He packed. He got out his valise, and filled it with his necessaries. He
+would let the rest go: the books, the old clothes. He was going to start
+life all over again He was going to wipe out the past....
+
+When he was finished, he anxiously opened his pocket-book to see if the
+tickets were safe. He looked at them. It was now ten o'clock. Two
+hours--and then the long train would pull out, and he would be gone....
+To-morrow morning they'd come downstairs. His sister probably would sit
+at the foot of the table, instead of himself. The table would seem small
+with himself gone. Perhaps the house would seem a little empty.
+Automatically they would wait for the click of his key in the front door
+lock at seven in the evening. He would not come home at all....
+
+His mother might die. She had told him this was killing her.... It was
+so easy for him to go, so hard for her to stay.... She had invested most
+of her capital of hopes and dreams and love in him: he was the son; he
+was the first man. And now he was shattering the very structure of her
+life....
+
+Easy for him to go! He slumped into the chair again, at the table....
+The wind blew strongly, and he knew just how the grey street looked with
+its spots of yellow sparkling lamplight; its shadows, its glowing
+windows.... He knew the smell of the fish-shop, the strange raw
+sea-smell, the sight of glittering iridescent scales, the beauty of lean
+curved fishes, the red of broiled lobsters, the pink-cheeked swarthy
+fishman, the dark loveliness of Agnes.... He had written to Agnes. His
+mother didn't know of it, but he was done with Agnes. Agnes meant
+nothing to him. She had only been a way out, something to cling to,
+something to fight for in this fight for his life....
+
+Fight for his life! Had he not read of this in books, how the young must
+slay the old in order that life might go on, just as the earth must die
+in autumn so that the seeds of spring may be planted? Had he not read
+Ibsen's Master Builder, where the aging hero hears the dread doom which
+youth brings, "the younger generation knocking at the door"? He was the
+younger generation, he was the young hero. And now, at once, a vivid
+dramatization took place in his brain: it unwound clear as
+hallucination. He forgot everything else, he sat there as a writer sits,
+living his fiction, making strange gestures with face and hands,
+muttering words under his breath....
+
+In this phantasy, he saw himself rising, appearing a little older, a
+little stronger, and on his face a look of divine compassion and
+understanding, yet a firmness inexorable as fate. He repeated Hamlet's
+words: "For I am cruel only to be kind." Blame life, fate, the gods who
+decree that a man must live his own life: don't blame me.
+
+He unlocked the door, crossed the big hall, stepped down the stairs. His
+mother's door was shut. The younger generation must knock at it. He
+knocked. A low, sad voice said: "Come." He opened the door.
+
+This was the way it always was: a pin-point of light by the western
+window, a newspaper pinned to the glass globe of the gas-jet to shield
+his mother's eyes, the wide range of warm shadow, and in the shadow the
+two beds. But his sister was not in one of them. His mother was
+alone....
+
+He went to the bedside....
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Paul!"
+
+He took her hand.
+
+"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
+
+"A little more quiet, Paul...."
+
+"I am very glad...."
+
+Now there was silence.... Then he spoke quietly, honestly, candidly. It
+was the only way. Why can't human beings be simple with one another, be
+sweetly reasonable? Isn't a little understanding worth more than pride
+and anger? To understand is to forgive. Surely any one must know that.
+
+Starting to speak, he sat down on the chair beside the bed, still
+holding her hand....
+
+"Mother, come let's talk to one another. You think perhaps I have
+stopped loving you. It isn't true. I love you deeply. All this is
+breaking my heart. But how can I help it? Can't you see that I am young,
+and my life all before me? The best of your life is behind you. You have
+lived, I haven't. You have tasted the sweet mysteries of love, the
+agonies of death and birth, the terrors of lonely struggle. And I must
+have these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't help myself. I am like a
+leaf in the wind, like a rain-drop in the storm.... How can you keep me
+here? If you compel me, I'll become a shadow, all twisted and broken. I
+won't be a man, but a helpless child. Perhaps I shall go out of my mind.
+And what good will that do you? You will suffer more if I stay, than if
+I go. Oh, understand me, mother, understand me!"
+
+His mother began to cry. She spoke at first as she always spoke, and
+then more like a mother in a poem.
+
+"Understand? What do you understand? You know nothing about life. Oh, I
+only wish you had children and your children turned against you! That's
+the only way that you will ever learn.... I worked for you so hard. I
+gave up everything for my children. And your father died, and I went on
+alone, a woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I had?
+Sacrifice, toil, tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year
+after year, for five, six years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught
+you at my knees. I have known the bitterness of child-bearing, and the
+bitter cry of children.... I have fought alone for my little ones....
+And you, Paul! You who were the darling of my heart, my little man, you
+who said you would take your father's place and take care of me and of
+your sisters and brother! You who were to repay me for everything; to
+give me a future, to comfort my old age, the staff I leaned on, my
+comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up: so proud to see your
+pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that you would have
+fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest mother in the
+world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one who cares for
+nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a flitter
+from place to place, and I--I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to
+wither in bitterness.... I gave everything to you--and you--you give
+back despair, loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and
+destroy me for the gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand
+it--the piercing anguish, the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I
+feel the chill of death creeping over me...."
+
+The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He pressed her hand now with both
+of his.
+
+"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I have understood always, I have tried
+so hard to help you. I have tried so hard to be a good son. But this is
+something greater than I. We are in the hands of God, mother, and it is
+the law that the young must leave the old. Why do parents expect the
+impossible of their children? Does not the Bible say, 'You must leave
+father and mother, and cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother and
+grandpa, to go to your husband? Can't you remember when you were young,
+and your whole soul carried you away to your own life and your own
+future? Mother, let us part with understanding, let us part with love."
+
+"But when are you going, Paul?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+His mother flung her arms about him desperately and clung to him....
+
+"I can't let you go, Paul," she moaned.
+
+"Oh, mother," he sobbed. "This is breaking my heart...."
+
+"It is Agnes you are going to," she whispered.
+
+"No, mother," he cried. "It is not Agnes. I am going to college. I shall
+never marry. I shall still take care of you. Think--every vacation I
+will be back here...."
+
+She relaxed, lay back, and his inventions failed. He had a confused
+sense of soothing her, of gentleness and reconciliation, of a last
+good-bye....
+
+And now he sat, head on hand, slowly realizing again the little gas-lit
+room, the shaking window, the autumn wind. A throb of fear pulsed
+through his heart. He had passed his mother's door without greeting her.
+And there was his valise, and here his tickets. And the time? It was
+nearly eleven.... A great heaviness of futility and despair weighed him
+down. He felt incapable of action. He felt that he had done some
+terrible deed--like striking his mother in the face--something
+unforgivable, unreversible, struck through and through with finality....
+He felt more and more cold and brutal, with the sullenness of the
+criminal who can't undo his crime and won't admit his guilt....
+
+Was it all over, then? Was he really leaving? Fear, and a prophetic
+breath of the devastating loneliness he should yet know, came upon him,
+paralyzed his mind, made him weak and aghast. He was going out into the
+night of death, launching on his frail raft into the barren boundless
+ocean of darkness, leaving the last landmarks, drifting out in utter
+nakedness and loneliness.... All the future grew black and impenetrable;
+but he knew shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt
+loomed there, waiting for him. He knew that he was about to understand a
+little of life in a very ancient and commonplace way: the way of
+experience and of reality: that at first hand he was to have the taste
+against his palate of that bitterness and desolation, that terror and
+helplessness, which make the songs and fictions of man one endless
+tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer who comes to the
+condemned man's cell on the morning of the execution. There was no
+escape. No end, but death....
+
+He was leaving everything that was comfort in a bleak world, everything
+that was safe and tried and known in a world of unthinkable perils and
+mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on the inside of his
+mother's house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how human were
+the cords that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the fear
+and deadly helplessness he felt.... What could he have been about all
+these months of darkening the house, of paining his mother and the
+children, of bringing matters to such inexorable finalities? Was he
+sane? Was he now possessed of some demon, some beast of low desire?
+Freedom? What was freedom? Could there be freedom without love?
+
+And now, as he sat there, there came slow deliberate footsteps on the
+stairs. There was no mistaking the sounds. It was Cora, his older
+sister.... His heart palpitated wildly, he shook with fear, the colour
+left his cheeks, and he tried to set his face and his throat like flint
+not to betray himself. She came straight on. She knocked.
+
+"Paul," she said in a peremptory tone, clothed with all the authority of
+his mother....
+
+He grew cold all over, his eyelids narrowed; he felt brutal....
+
+"What is it?" he asked hard.
+
+"Mother wants you to come right down."
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly, heavily, like the man who
+must now face the executioner.... He stuck his pocketbook back in his
+coat and picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked about the room.
+Then he unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and went into
+the lighted hall.
+
+And as he descended the steps he felt ever smaller before the growing
+terror of the world. Never had he been more of a child than at this
+moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give
+over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he
+done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this
+strange and frightful experience? He went on, lower and lower....
+
+The door of his mother's room was a little open. It was all as it had
+always been--the pin-point of light, the shading newspaper, the
+sick-room silence, the warm shadow.... He paused a second to summon up
+strength, to combat the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He tried
+with all his little boyish might to smooth out his face, to set it
+straight and firm. He pushed the door, set down the valise, entered:
+pale, large-eyed, looking hard and desperate.
+
+He did not see his sister at all, though she sat under the light. His
+mother he hardly saw: had the sense of a towel binding her head, and the
+dim form under the bedclothes. He stepped clumsily--he was trembling
+so--to the foot of her bed, and grasped the brass rail for support....
+
+His mother's voice was low and thick; a terrible voice. Her throat was
+swollen, and she could speak only with difficulty. The voice accused
+him. It said plainly: "It was you did this."
+
+She said: "Paul, this has got to end."
+
+His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his words came with such deadly
+coldness....
+
+"It will end to-night."
+
+"How ... to-night?"
+
+"I'm leaving.... I'm going west...."
+
+"West.... Where?"
+
+"To Sam's...."
+
+"Oh," said his mother....
+
+There was a long cruel silence. He shut his eyes, overcome with a sort
+of horror.... Then she turned her face a little away, and he heard the
+faintly breathed words....
+
+"This is the end of me...."
+
+Still he said nothing. She turned toward him, with a groan.
+
+"Have you nothing to say?"
+
+Again he spoke with deadly coldness....
+
+"Nothing...."
+
+She waited a moment: then she spoke....
+
+"You have no feelings. When you set out to do a thing, you will trample
+over every one. I have never been able to do anything with you. You may
+become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who loves you, any one who
+gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds you--always.... I was a
+fool to give birth to you: a great fool to count on you.... Well, it's
+over.... You have your way...."
+
+He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty, afraid, horrified, his whole
+soul beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold trampler?
+
+He stood, with all the feeling of one who is falsely condemned, and yet
+with all the guilt of one who has sinned....
+
+And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came from his mother's throat....
+
+"Oh," she cried, "how terrible it is to have children!"
+
+His heart echoed her cry.... The executioner's knife seemed to strike
+his throat....
+
+He stood a long while in the silence.... Then his mother turned in the
+bed, sideways, and covered her face with the counterpane.... His sister
+rose up stiffly, whispering:
+
+"She's going to sleep."
+
+He stood, dead.... He turned like a wound-up mechanism, went to the
+door, picked up his valise, and fumbled his way through the house....
+The outer door he shut very softly....
+
+He must take the Lexington Avenue car. Yes; that was the quickest way.
+He faced west. The great wind of autumn came with a glorious gusto,
+doubtless with flying seeds and flying leaves, chanting the song of the
+generations, and of them that die and of them that are born.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[12] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by James Oppenheim.
+
+
+
+
+THE DUMMY-CHUCKER[13]
+
+#By# ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE
+
+From _The Cosmopolitan_
+
+
+There were many women on East Fourteenth Street. With the seeing eye of
+the artist, the dummy-chucker looked them over and rejected them.
+Kindly-seeming, generously fat, the cheap movie houses disgorged them. A
+dozen alien tongues smote the air, and every one of them hinted of far
+lands of poverty, of journeys made and hardships undergone. No better
+field for beggary in all Manhattan's bounteous acreage.
+
+But the dummy-chucker shook his head and shuffled ever westward. These
+were good souls, but--they thought in cents. Worse than that, they
+translated their financial thoughts into the pitiful coinage of their
+birthplaces. And in the pocket of the dummy-chucker rested a silver
+dollar.
+
+A gaunt man, who towered high, and whose tongue held the cadences of the
+wide spaces, had slipped this dollar into the receptive hand of the
+dummy-chucker. True, it was almost a fortnight ago, and the man might
+have gone back to his Western home--but Broadway had yielded him up to
+the dummy-chucker. Broadway might yield up such another.
+
+At Union Square, the dummy-chucker turned north. Past the Flatiron
+Building he shuffled, until, at length, the Tenderloin unfolded itself
+before him. These were the happy hunting-grounds!
+
+Of course--and he glanced behind him quickly--there were more fly cops
+on Broadway than on the lower East Side. One of them had dug his bony
+fingers between the shabby collar of the dummy-chucker's coat and the
+lank hair that hung down his neck. He had yanked the dummy-chucker to
+his feet. He had dragged his victim to a patrol-box; he had taken him to
+a police station, whence he had been conveyed to Jefferson Market Court,
+where a judge had sentenced him to a sojourn on Blackwell's Island.
+
+That had been ten days ago. This very day, the municipal ferry had
+landed the dummy-chucker, with others of his slinking kind, upon
+Manhattan's shores again. Not for a long time would the memory of the
+Island menu be effaced from the dummy-chucker's palate, the locked doors
+be banished from his mental vision.
+
+A man might be arrested on Broadway, but he might also get the money.
+Timorously, the dummy-chucker weighed the two possibilities. He felt the
+dollar in his pocket. At a street in the Forties, he turned westward.
+Beyond Eighth Avenue there was a place where the shadow of prohibition
+was only a shadow.
+
+Prices had gone up, but, as Finisterre Joe's bartender informed him,
+there was more kick in a glass of the stuff that cost sixty cents to-day
+than there had been in a barrel of the old juice. And, for a good
+customer, Finisterre Joe's bartender would shade the price a trifle. The
+dummy-chucker received two portions of the crudely blended poison that
+passed for whisky in exchange for his round silver dollar. It was with
+less of a shuffle and more of a stride that he retraced his steps toward
+Broadway.
+
+Slightly north of Times Square, he surveyed his field of action. Across
+the street, a vaudeville house was discharging its mirth-surfeited
+audience. Half a block north, laughing groups testified that the comedy
+they had just left had been as funny as its press-agent claimed. The
+dummy-chucker shook his head. He moved south, his feet taking on that
+shuffle which they had lost temporarily.
+
+"She Loved and Lost"--that was the name of the picture being run this
+week at the Concorde. Outside was billed a huge picture of the star, a
+lady who received more money for making people weep than most actors
+obtain for making them laugh. The dummy-chucker eyed the picture
+approvingly. He took his stand before the main entrance. This was the
+place! If he tried to do business with a flock of people that had just
+seen Charlie Chaplin, he'd fail. He knew! Fat women who'd left the twins
+at home with the neighbor's cook in order that they might have a good
+cry at the Concorde--these were his mutton-heads.
+
+He reeled slightly as several flappers passed--just for practise. Ten
+days on Blackwell's hadn't spoiled his form. They drew away from him;
+yet, from their manners, he knew that they did not suspect him of being
+drunk. Well, hurrah for prohibition, after all! Drunkenness was the last
+thing people suspected of a hard-working man nowadays. He slipped his
+hand in his pocket. They were coming now--the fat women with the babies
+at home, their handkerchiefs still at their eyes. His hand slipped to
+his mouth. His jaws moved savagely. One thing was certain: out of
+to-day's stake he'd buy some decent-tasting soap. This awful stuff that
+he'd borrowed from the Island----
+
+The stoutest woman paused; she screamed faintly as the dummy-chucker
+staggered, pitched forward, and fell at her short-vamped feet. Excitedly
+she grasped her neighbor's arm.
+
+"He's gotta fit!"
+
+The neighbor bent over the prostrate dummy-chucker.
+
+"Ep'lepsy," she announced. "Look at the foam on his lips."
+
+"Aw, the poor man!"
+
+"Him so strong-looking, too!"
+
+"Ain't it the truth? These husky-looking men sometimes are the
+sickliest."
+
+The dummy-chucker stirred. He sat up feebly. With his sleeve, he wiped
+away the foam. Dazedly he spoke.
+
+"If I had a bite to eat----"
+
+He looked upward at the first stout woman. Well and wisely had he chosen
+his scene. Movie tickets cost fractions of a dollar. There is always
+some stray silver in the bead bag of a movie patron. Into the
+dummy-chucker's outstretched palm fell pennies, nickels, dimes,
+quarters. There was present to-day no big-hearted Westerner with silver
+dollars, but here was comparative wealth. Already the dummy-chucker saw
+himself again at Finisterre Joe's, this time to purchase no bottled
+courage but to buy decantered ease.
+
+"T'ank, ladies," he murmured. "If I can get a bite to eat and rest
+up----"
+
+"'Rest up!'" The shrill jeer of a newsboy broke in upon his pathetic
+speech. "Rest up again on the Island! That's the kind of a rest up
+you'll get, y' big tramp."
+
+"Can't you see the man's sick?" The stoutest one turned indignantly upon
+the newsboy. But the scoffer held his ground.
+
+"'Sick?' Sure he's sick! Eatin' soap makes anyone sick. Youse dames is
+easy. He's chuckin' a dummy."
+
+"'A dummy?'"
+
+The dummy-chucker sat a bit straighter.
+
+"Sure, ma'am. That's his game. He t'rows phony fits. He eats a bit of
+soap and makes his mouth foam. Last week, he got pinched right near
+here----"
+
+But the dummy-chucker heard no more. He rolled sidewise just as the cry:
+"Police!" burst from the woman's lips. He reached the curb, rose, burst
+through the gathering crowd, and rounded a corner at full speed.
+
+He was half-way to Eighth Avenue, and burning lungs had slowed him to a
+jog-trot, when a motor-car pulled up alongside the curb. It kept gentle
+pace with the fugitive. A shrewd-featured young man leaned from its
+fashionably sloped wheel.
+
+"Better hop aboard," he suggested. "That policeman is fat, but he has
+speed."
+
+The dummy-chucker glanced over his shoulder. Looming high as the
+Woolworth Building, fear overcoming the dwarfing tendency of distance,
+came a policeman. The dummy-chucker leaped to the motor's running-board.
+He climbed into the vacant front seat.
+
+"Thanks, feller," he grunted. "A li'l speed, please."
+
+The young man chuckled. He rounded the corner into Eighth Avenue and
+darted north among the trucks.
+
+At Columbus Circle, the dummy-chucker spoke.
+
+"Thanks again, friend," he said. "I'll be steppin' off here."
+
+His rescuer glanced at him.
+
+"Want to earn a hundred dollars?"
+
+"Quitcher kiddin'," said the dummy-chucker.
+
+"No, no; this is serious," said the young man.
+
+The dummy-chucker leaned luxuriously back in his seat.
+
+"Take me _anywhere_, friend," he said.
+
+Half-way round the huge circle at Fifty-ninth Street, the young man
+guided the car. Then he shot into the park. They curved eastward. They
+came out on Fifth Avenue, somewhere in the Seventies. They shot eastward
+another half-block, and then the car stopped in front of an
+apartment-house. The young man pressed the button on the steering-wheel.
+In response to the short blast of the electric horn, a uniformed man
+appeared. The young man alighted. The dummy-chucker followed suit.
+
+"Take the car around to the garage, Andrews," said the young man. He
+nodded to the dummy-chucker. In a daze, the mendicant followed his
+rescuer. He entered a gorgeously mirrored and gilded hall. He stepped
+into an elevator chauffeured by a West Indian of the haughtiest blood.
+The dummy-chucker was suddenly conscious of his tattered garb, his
+ill-fitting, run-down shoes. He stepped, when they alighted from the
+lift, as gingerly as though he trod on tacks.
+
+A servant in livery, as had been the waiting chauffeur downstairs,
+opened a door. If he was surprised at his master's choice of guest, he
+was too well trained to show it. He did not rebel even when ordered to
+serve sandwiches and liquor to the dummy-chucker.
+
+"You seem hungry," commented the young man.
+
+The dummy-chucker reached for another sandwich with his left hand while
+he poured himself a drink of genuine Scotch with his right.
+
+"_And_ thirsty," he grunted.
+
+"Go to it," observed his host genially.
+
+The dummy-chucker went to it for a good ten minutes. Then he leaned back
+in the heavily upholstered chair which the man servant had drawn up for
+him. He stared round him.
+
+"Smoke?" asked his host.
+
+The dummy-chucker nodded. He selected a slim panetela and pinched it
+daintily between the nails of his thumb and forefinger. His host watched
+the operation with interest.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Better than cuttin' the end off," explained the dummy-chucker. "It's a
+good smoke," he added, puffing.
+
+"You know tobacco," said his host. "Where did you learn?"
+
+"Oh, we all have our ups and downs," replied the dummy-chucker. "But
+don't get nervous. I ain't goin' to tell you that I was a millionaire's
+son, educated at Harvard. I'm a bum."
+
+"Doesn't seem to bother you," said his host.
+
+"It don't," asserted the dummy-chucker. "Except when the police butt
+into my game. I just got off Blackwell's Island this morning."
+
+"And almost went back this afternoon."
+
+The dummy-chucker nodded.
+
+"Almost," he said. His eyes wandered around the room. "_Some_ dump!" he
+stated. Then his manner became business-like. "You mentioned a hundred
+dollars--what for?"
+
+The young man shrugged.
+
+"Not hard work. You merely have to look like a gentleman, and act
+like----"
+
+"Like a bum?" asked the dummy-chucker.
+
+"Well, something like that."
+
+The dummy-chucker passed his hand across his stubby chin.
+
+"Shoot!" he said. "Anything short of murder--_anything_, friend."
+
+His host leaned eagerly forward.
+
+"There's a girl--" he began.
+
+The dummy-chucker nodded.
+
+"There always is," he interrupted. "I forgot to mention that I bar
+kidnaping, too."
+
+"It's barred," said the young man. He hitched his chair a trifle nearer
+his guest. "She's beautiful. She's young."
+
+"And the money? The coin? The good red gold?"
+
+"I have enough for two. I don't care about her money."
+
+"Neither do I," said the dummy-chucker; "so long as I get my hundred.
+Shoot!"
+
+"About a year ago," resumed the host, "she accepted, after a long
+courtship, a young man by the name of--oh, let's call him Jones."
+
+The dummy-chucker inhaled happily.
+
+"Call him any darned thing you like," he said cheerily.
+
+"Jones was a drunkard," said the host.
+
+"And she married him?" The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted slightly.
+
+"No. She told him that if he'd quit drinking she'd marry him. She
+stipulated that he go without drink for one year."
+
+The dummy-chucker reached for a fresh cigar. He lighted it and leaned
+back farther in the comfortable chair.
+
+"Jones," continued the young man, "had tried to quit before. He knew
+himself pretty well. He knew that, even with war-time prohibition just
+round the corner, he couldn't keep away from liquor. Not while he stayed
+in New York. But a classmate of his had been appointed head of an
+expedition that was to conduct exploration work in Brazil. He asked his
+classmate for a place in the party. You see, he figured that in the
+wilds of Brazil there wouldn't be any chance for drunkenness."
+
+"A game guy," commented the dummy-chucker. "Well, what happened?"
+
+"He died of jungle-fever two months ago," was the answer. "The news just
+reached Rio Janeiro yesterday."
+
+The dummy-chucker lifted his glass of Scotch.
+
+"To a regular feller," he said, and drank. He set his glass down gently.
+"And the girl? I suppose she's all shot to pieces?"
+
+"She doesn't know," said the host quietly.
+
+The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted again.
+
+"I begin to get you," he said. "I'm the messenger from Brazil who breaks
+the sad news to her, eh?"
+
+The young man shook his head.
+
+"The news isn't to be broken to her--not yet. You see--well, I was
+Jones' closest friend. He left his will with me, his personal effects,
+and all that. So I'm the one that received the wire of his death. In a
+month or so, of course, it will be published in the newspapers--when
+letters have come from the explorers. But, just now, I'm the only one
+that knows it."
+
+"Except me," said the dummy-chucker.
+
+The young man smiled dryly.
+
+"Except you. And you won't tell. Ever wear evening clothes?"
+
+The dummy-chucker stiffened. Then he laughed sardonically.
+
+"Oh, yes; when I was at Princeton. What's the idea?"
+
+His host studied him carefully.
+
+"Well, with a shave, and a hair-cut, and a manicure, and the proper
+clothing, and the right setting--well, if a person had only a quick
+glance--that person might think you were Jones."
+
+The dummy-chucker carefully brushed the ashes from his cigar upon a
+tray.
+
+"I guess I'm pretty stupid to-night. I still don't see it."
+
+"You will," asserted his host. "You see, she's a girl who's seen a great
+deal of the evil of drink. She has a horror of it. If she thought that
+Jones had broken his pledge to her, she'd throw him over."
+
+"'Throw him over?' But he's _dead_!" said the dummy-chucker.
+
+"She doesn't know that," retorted his host.
+
+"Why don't you tell her?"
+
+"Because I want to marry her."
+
+"Well, I should think the quickest way to get her would be to tell her
+about Jones----"
+
+"You don't happen to know the girl," interrupted the other. "She's a
+girl of remarkable conscience. If I should tell her that Jones died in
+Brazil, she'd enshrine him in her memory. He'd be a hero who had died
+upon the battle-field. More than that--he'd be a hero who had died upon
+the battle-field in a war to which she had sent him. His death would be
+upon her soul. Her only expiation would be to be faithful to him
+forever."
+
+"I won't argue about it," said the dummy-chucker. "I don't know her.
+Only--I guess your whisky has got me. I don't see it at all."
+
+His host leaned eagerly forward now.
+
+"She's going to the opera to-night with her parents. But, before she
+goes, she's going to dine with me at the Park Square. Suppose, while
+she's there, Jones should come in. Suppose that he should come in
+reeling, noisy, _drunk_! She'd marry me to-morrow."
+
+"I'll take your word for it," said the dummy-chucker. "Only, when she's
+learned that Jones had died two months ago in Brazil----"
+
+"She'll be married to me then," responded the other fiercely. "What I
+get, I can hold. If she were Jones' wife, I'd tell her of his death. I'd
+know that, sooner or later, I'd win her. But if she learns now that he
+died while struggling to make himself worthy of her, she'll never give
+to another man what she withheld from him."
+
+"I see," said the dummy-chucker slowly. "And you want me to----"
+
+"There'll be a table by the door in the main dining-room engaged in
+Jones' name. You'll walk in there at a quarter to eight. You'll wear
+Jones' dinner clothes. I have them here. You'll wear the studs that he
+wore, his cuff-links. More than that, you'll set down upon the table,
+with a flourish, his monogrammed flask. You'll be drunk, noisy,
+disgraceful----"
+
+"How long will I be all that--in the hotel?" asked the dummy-chucker
+dryly.
+
+"That's exactly the point," said the other. "You'll last about thirty
+seconds. The girl and I will be on the far side of the room. I'll take
+care that she sees you enter. Then, when you've been quietly ejected,
+I'll go over to the _mâitre d'hôtel_ to make inquiries. I'll bring back
+to the girl the flask which you will have left upon the table. If she
+has any doubt that you are Jones, the flask will dispel it.
+
+"And then?" asked the dummy-chucker.
+
+"Why, then," responded his host, "I propose to her. You see, I think it
+was pity that made her accept Jones in the beginning. I think that she
+cares for me."
+
+"And you really think that I look enough like Jones to put this over?"
+
+"In the shaded light of the dining-room, in Jones' clothes--well, I'm
+risking a hundred dollars on it. Will you do it?"
+
+The dummy-chucker grinned.
+
+"Didn't I say I'd do _anything_, barring murder? Where are the clothes?"
+
+One hour and a half later, the dummy-chucker stared at himself in the
+long mirror in his host's dressing-room. He had bathed, not as
+Blackwell's Island prisoners bathe, but in a luxurious tub that had a
+head-rest, in scented water, soft as the touch of a baby's fingers. Then
+his host's man servant had cut his hair, had shaved him, had massaged
+him until color crept into the pale cheeks. The sheerest of knee-length
+linen underwear touched a body that knew only rough cotton. Silk socks,
+heavy, gleaming, snugly encased his ankles. Upon his feet were correctly
+dull pumps. That the trousers were a wee bit short mattered little. In
+these dancing-days, trousers should not be too long. And the fit of the
+coat over his shoulders--he carried them in a fashion unwontedly
+straight as he gazed at his reflection--balanced the trousers' lack of
+length. The soft shirt-bosom gave freely, comfortably as he breathed.
+Its plaited whiteness enthralled him. He turned anxiously to his host.
+
+"Will I do?" he asked.
+
+"Better than I'd hoped," said the other. "You look like a gentleman."
+
+The dummy-chucker laughed gaily.
+
+"I feel like one," he declared.
+
+"You understand what you are to do?" demanded the host.
+
+"It ain't a hard part to act," replied the dummy-chucker.
+
+"And you _can_ act," said the other. "The way you fooled those women in
+front of the Concorde proved that you----"
+
+"Sh-sh!" exclaimed the dummy-chucker reproachfully. "Please don't remind
+me of what I was before I became a gentleman."
+
+His host laughed.
+
+"You're all right." He looked at his watch. "I'll have to leave now.
+I'll send the car back after you. Don't be afraid of trouble with the
+hotel people. I'll explain that I know you, and fix matters up all
+right. Just take the table at the right hand side as you enter----"
+
+"Oh, I've got it all right," said the dummy-chucker. "Better slip me
+something on account. I may have to pay something----"
+
+"You get nothing now," was the stern answer. "One hundred dollars when I
+get back here. And," he added, "if it should occur to you at the hotel
+that you might pawn these studs, or the flask, or the clothing for more
+than a hundred, let me remind you that my chauffeur will be watching one
+entrance, my valet another, and my chef another."
+
+The dummy-chucker returned his gaze scornfully.
+
+"Do I look," he asked, "like the sort of man who'd _steal_?"
+
+His host shook his head.
+
+"You certainly don't," he admitted.
+
+The dummy-chucker turned back to the mirror. He was still entranced with
+his own reflection, twenty minutes later, when the valet told him that
+the car was waiting. He looked like a millionaire. He stole another
+glance at himself after he had slipped easily into the fur-lined
+overcoat that the valet held for him, after he had set somewhat rakishly
+upon his head the soft black-felt hat that was the latest accompaniment
+to the dinner coat.
+
+Down-stairs, he spoke to Andrews, the chauffeur.
+
+"Drive across the Fifty-ninth Street bridge first."
+
+The chauffeur stared at him.
+
+"Who you given' orders to?" he demanded.
+
+The dummy-chucker stepped closer to the man.
+
+"You heard my order?"
+
+His hands, busily engaged in buttoning his gloves, did not clench. His
+voice was not raised. And Andrews must have outweighed him by thirty
+pounds. Yet the chauffeur stepped back and touched his hat.
+
+"Yes, sir," he muttered.
+
+The dummy-chucker smiled.
+
+"The lower classes," he said to himself, "know rank and position when
+they see it."
+
+His smile became a grin as he sank back in the limousine that was his
+host's evening conveyance. It became almost complacent as the car slid
+down Park Avenue. And when, at length, it had reached the center of the
+great bridge that spans the East River, he knocked upon the glass. The
+chauffeur obediently stopped the car. The dummy-chucker's grin was
+absolutely complacent now.
+
+Down below, there gleamed lights, the lights of ferries, of sound
+steamers, and--of Blackwell's Island. This morning, he had left there, a
+lying mendicant. To-night, he was a gentleman. He knocked again upon the
+glass. Then, observing the speaking-tube, he said through it languidly:
+
+"The Park Square, Andrews."
+
+An obsequious doorman threw open the limousine door as the car stopped
+before the great hotel. He handed the dummy-chucker a ticket.
+
+"Number of your car, sir," he said obsequiously.
+
+"Ah, yes, of course," said the dummy-chucker. He felt in his pocket.
+Part of the silver that the soft-hearted women of the movies had
+bestowed upon him this afternoon found repository in the doorman's hand.
+
+A uniformed boy whirled the revolving door that the dummy-chucker might
+pass into the hotel.
+
+"The coat-room? Dining here, sir? Past the news-stand, sir, to your
+left. Thank you, sir." The boy's bow was as profound as though the
+quarter in his palm had been placed there by a duke.
+
+The girl who received his coat and hat smiled as pleasantly and
+impersonally upon the dummy-chucker as she did upon the whiskered,
+fine-looking old gentleman who handed her his coat at the same time. She
+called the dummy-chucker's attention to the fact that his tie was a
+trifle loose.
+
+The dummy-chucker walked to the big mirror that stands in the corner
+made by the corridor that parallels Fifty-ninth Street and the corridor
+that separates the tea-room from the dining-room. His clumsy fingers
+found difficulty with the tie. The fine-looking old gentleman, adjusting
+his own tie, stepped closer.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. May I assist you?"
+
+The dummy-chucker smiled a grateful assent. The old gentleman fumbled a
+moment with the tie.
+
+"I think that's better," he said. He bowed as one man of the world might
+to another, and turned away.
+
+Under his breath, the dummy-chucker swore gently.
+
+"You'd think, the way he helped me, that I belonged to the Four
+Hundred."
+
+He glanced down the corridor. In the tea-room were sitting groups who
+awaited late arrivals. Beautiful women, correctly garbed,
+distinguished-looking men. Their laughter sounded pleasantly above the
+subdued strains of the orchestra. Many of them looked at the
+dummy-chucker. Their eyes rested upon him for that well-bred moment that
+denotes acceptance.
+
+"One of themselves," said the dummy-chucker to himself.
+
+Well, why not? Once again he looked at himself in the mirror. There
+might be handsomer men present in this hotel, but--was there any one who
+wore his clothes better? He turned and walked down the corridor.
+
+The _mâitre d'hôtel_ stepped forward inquiringly as the dummy-chucker
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+"A table, sir?"
+
+"You have one reserved for me. This right-hand one by the door."
+
+"Ah, yes, of course, sir. This way, sir."
+
+He turned toward the table. Over the heads of intervening diners, the
+dummy-chucker saw his host. The shaded lights upon the table at which
+the young man sat revealed, not too clearly yet well enough, the
+features of a girl.
+
+"A lady!" said the dummy-chucker, under his breath. "The real thing!"
+
+As he stood there, the girl raised her head. She did not look toward the
+dummy-chucker, could not see him. But he could see the proud line of her
+throat, the glory of her golden hair. And opposite her he could see the
+features of his host, could note how illy that shrewd nose and slit of a
+mouth consorted with the gentle face of the girl. And then, as the
+_mâitre d'hôtel_ beckoned, he remembered that he had left the flask, the
+monogrammed flask, in his overcoat pocket.
+
+"Just a moment," he said.
+
+He turned and walked back toward the corner where was his coat. In the
+distance, he saw some one, approaching him, noted the free stride, the
+carriage of the head, the set of the shoulders. And then, suddenly, he
+saw that the "some one" was himself. The mirror was guilty of the
+illusion.
+
+Once again he stood before it, admiring himself. He summoned the face of
+the girl who was sitting in the dining-room before his mental vision.
+And then he turned abruptly to the check-girl.
+
+"I've changed my mind," he said. "My coat, please."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+He was lounging before the open fire when three-quarters of an hour
+later his host was admitted to the luxurious apartment. Savagely the
+young man pulled off his coat and approached the dummy-chucker.
+
+"I hardly expected to find you here," he said.
+
+The dummy-chucker shrugged.
+
+"You said the doors were watched. I couldn't make an easy getaway. So I
+rode back here in your car. And when I got here, your man made me wait,
+so--here we are," he finished easily.
+
+"'Here we are!' Yes! But when you were there--I saw you at the entrance
+to the dining-room--for God's sake, why didn't you do what you'd agreed
+to do?"
+
+The dummy-chucker turned languidly in his chair. He eyed his host
+curiously.
+
+"Listen, feller," he said: "I told you that I drew the line at murder,
+didn't I?"
+
+"'Murder?' What do you mean? What murder was involved?"
+
+The dummy-chucker idly blew a smoke ring.
+
+"Murder of faith in a woman's heart," he said slowly. "Look at me! Do I
+look the sort who'd play your dirty game?"
+
+The young man stood over him.
+
+"Bannon," he called. The valet entered the room. "Take the clothes off
+this--this bum!" snapped the host. "Give him his rags."
+
+He clenched his fists, but the dummy-chucker merely shrugged. The young
+man drew back while his guest followed the valet into another room.
+
+Ten minutes later, the host seized the dummy-chucker by the tattered
+sleeve of his grimy jacket. He drew him before the mirror.
+
+"Take a look at yourself, you--bum!" he snapped. "Do you look, now, like
+the sort of man who'd refuse to earn an easy hundred?"
+
+The dummy-chucker stared at himself. Gone was the debonair gentleman of
+a quarter of an hour ago. Instead, there leered back at him a
+pasty-faced, underfed vagrant, dressed in the tatters of unambitious,
+satisfied poverty.
+
+"Bannon," called the host, "throw him out!"
+
+For a moment, the dummy-chucker's shoulders squared, as they had been
+squared when the dinner jacket draped them. Then they sagged. He offered
+no resistance when Bannon seized his collar. And Bannon, the valet, was
+a smaller man than himself.
+
+He cringed when the colored elevator-man sneered at him. He dodged when
+little Bannon, in the mirrored vestibule raised a threatening hand. And
+he shuffled as he turned toward Central Park.
+
+But as he neared Columbus Circle, his gait quickened. At Finisterre
+Joe's he'd get a drink. He tumbled in his pockets. Curse the luck! He'd
+given every cent of his afternoon earnings to doormen and pages and
+coat-room girls!
+
+His pace slackened again as he turned down Broadway. His feet were
+dragging as he reached the Concorde moving-picture theater. His hand,
+sunk deep in his torn pocket, touched something. It was a tiny piece of
+soap.
+
+As the audience filed sadly out from the teary, gripping drama of "She
+Loved And Lost," the dummy-chucker's hand went from his pocket to his
+lips. He reeled, staggered, fell. His jaws moved savagely. Foam appeared
+upon his lips. A fat woman shrank away from him, then leaned forward in
+quick sympathy.
+
+"He's gotta fit!" she cried.
+
+"Ep'lepsy," said her companion pityingly.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] Copyright, 1920, by The International Magazine Company. Copyright,
+1921, by Arthur Somers Roche.
+
+
+
+
+BUTTERFLIES[14]
+
+#By# ROSE SIDNEY
+
+From _The Pictorial Review_
+
+
+The wind rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and sighing
+forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself,
+swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging
+hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room.
+But whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the threshold, he had
+evidently decided not to enter, for the catch snapped shut with a quick,
+passionate vigor. The echo of the slamming door rang eerily through the
+house.
+
+Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been stirring
+the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black stove, and
+dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled heavily to the door.
+
+As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a
+gray, wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the mist,
+and the lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of the house
+was hidden completely.
+
+"Who's there?" Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled.
+Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn.
+
+The faint throb of hope stilled in her breast. She had not really
+expected to find any one at the door unless perhaps it should be a
+stranger who had missed his way at the cross-roads. There had been one
+earlier in the afternoon when the fog first came. But her husband had
+been at home then and his surly manner quickly cut short the stranger's
+attempts at friendliness. This ugly way of Mart's had isolated them
+from all village intercourse early in their life on Cedar Hill.
+
+Like a buzzard's nest, their home hung over the village on the
+unfriendly sides of the bleak slope. Visitors were few and always
+reluctant, even strangers, for the village told weird tales of Mart
+Brenner and his kin. The village said that he--and all those who
+belonged to him as well--were marked for evil and disaster. Disaster had
+truly written itself throughout their history. His mother was mad, a
+tragic madness of bloody prophecies and dim fears; his only son a
+witless creature of eighteen, who for all his height and bulk, spent his
+days catching butterflies in the woods on the hill, and his nights in
+laboriously pinning them, wings outspread, upon the bare walls of the
+house.
+
+The room where the Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was
+tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow
+butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the black
+rafters overhead.
+
+Olga Brenner herself was no less tragic than her family. On her face,
+written in the acid of pain, was the history of the blows and cruelty
+that had warped her active body. Owing to her crippled foot, her entire
+left side sagged hopelessly and her arm swung away, above it, like a
+branch from a decayed tree. But more saddening than her distorted body
+was the lonely soul that looked out of her tired faded eyes.
+
+She was essentially a village woman with a profound love of its
+intimacies and gossip, its fence-corner neighborliness. The horror with
+which the village regarded her, as the wife of Mart Brenner, was an
+eating sore. It was greater than the tragedy of her poor, witless son,
+the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She
+had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one
+might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and
+sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble
+hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed the door
+behind her.
+
+"Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer tricks
+sometimes."
+
+She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she
+read the face of the clock.
+
+"Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from its
+fear for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same burden
+as when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of a baby on
+her breast.
+
+"It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered.
+
+"Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove.
+Barely visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac
+eyes met hers.
+
+Mrs. Brenner threw her shriveled and wizened mother-in-law an angry and
+contemptuous glance.
+
+"Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever
+say--blood!"
+
+The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But the
+tragic voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands! Red!
+Dripping! I see blood!"
+
+Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she
+complained.
+
+The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering.
+Olga's commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them. Mrs.
+Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to the clock
+and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed
+heavily into the very room.
+
+Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle
+crashing out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan from
+the dozing old woman!
+
+It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that
+it went echoing about the room as tho a disembodied spirit were
+shrieking under the rafters! It was a scream of terror, an innocent, a
+heart-broken scream!
+
+"Tobey!" cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid.
+
+The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling "Blood! Blood
+on his hands! I see it!"
+
+"That was on the hill," said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice.
+
+She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with
+agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again.
+At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There was no
+other sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had ceased her
+mouthing.
+
+Mrs. Brenner stood motionless, with her hand against her trembling lips,
+her head bent forward for four of the dull intervals between the
+siren-call.
+
+Then there came the sound of steps stumbling around the house. Mrs.
+Brenner, with her painful hobble, reached the door before the steps
+paused there, and threw it open.
+
+The feeble light fell on the round, vacant face of her son, his
+inevitable pasteboard box, grim with much handling, clutched close to
+his big breast, and in it the soft beating and thudding of imprisoned
+wings.
+
+Mrs. Brenner's voice was scarcely more than a whisper, "Tobey!" but it
+rose shrilly as she cried, "Where you been? What was that scream?"
+
+Tobey stumbled past her headlong into the house, muttering, "I'm cold!"
+
+She shut the door and followed him to the stove, where he stood shaking
+himself and beating at his damp clothes with clumsy fingers.
+
+"What was that scream?" she asked him tensely. She knotted her rough
+fingers as she waited for his answer.
+
+"I dunno," he grunted sullenly. His thick lower lip shoved itself
+forward, baby-fashion.
+
+"Where you been?" she persisted.
+
+As he did not answer she coaxed him, "Aw, come on, Tobey. Tell ma. Where
+you been?"
+
+"I been catching butterflies," he answered. "I got a big one this time,"
+with an air of triumph.
+
+"Where was you when you heard the scream?" she asked him cunningly.
+
+He gave a slow shake of his head. "I dunno," he answered in his dull
+voice.
+
+A big shiver shook him. His teeth chattered and he crouched down on his
+knees before the open oven-door.
+
+"I'm cold," he complained. Mrs. Brenner came close to him and laid her
+hand on his wet, matted hair. "Tobey's a bad boy," she scolded. "You
+mustn't go out in the wet like this. Your hair's soaked."
+
+She got down stiffly on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered, "and
+I'll take off your shoes. They're as wet as a dish-rag."
+
+"They're full of water, too," Tobey grumbled as he sprawled on the
+floor, sticking one big, awkward foot into her lap. "The water in there
+makes me cold."
+
+"You spoil all your pa's shoes that away," said Mrs. Brenner, her head
+bent over her task. "He told you not to go round in the wet with 'em any
+more. He'll give you a lashing if he comes in and sees your shoes. I'll
+have to try and get 'em dry before he comes home. Anyways," with a
+breath of deep relief, "I'm glad it ain't that red clay from the hill.
+That never comes off."
+
+The boy paid no attention to her. He was investigating the contents of
+his box, poking a fat, dirty forefinger around among its fluttering
+contents. There was a flash of yellow wings, and with a crow of triumph
+the boy shut the lid.
+
+"The big one's just more than flapping," he chuckled. "I had an awful
+hard time to catch him. I had to run and run. Look at him, Ma," the boy
+urged. She shook her head.
+
+"I ain't got the time," she said, almost roughly. "I got to get these
+shoes off'n you afore your father gets home, Tobey, or you'll get a
+awful hiding. Like as not you'll get it anyways, if he's mad. Better get
+into bed."
+
+"Naw!" Tobey protested. "I seen pa already. I want my supper out here! I
+don't want to go to bed!"
+
+Mrs. Brenner paused. "Where was pa?" she asked.
+
+But Tobey's stretch of coherent thinking was past. "I dunno!" he
+muttered.
+
+Mrs. Brenner sighed. She pulled off the sticky shoes and rose stiffly.
+
+"Go get in bed," she said.
+
+"Aw, Ma, I want to stay up with my butterflies," the boy pleaded. Two
+big tears rolled down his fat cheeks. In his queer, clouded world he had
+learned one certain fact. He could almost always move his mother with
+tears.
+
+But this time she was firm. "Do as I told you!" she ordered him. "Mebbe
+if you're in bed your father won't be thinking about you. And I'll try
+to dry these shoes afore he thinks about them." She took the grimy box
+from his resisting fingers, and, holding it in one hand, pulled him to
+his feet and pushed him off to his bedroom.
+
+When she had closed the door on his wail she returned and laid the box
+on the shelf. Then she hurried to gather up the shoes. Something on her
+hand as she put it out for the sodden shoes caught her eye and she
+straightened, holding her hand up where the feeble light from the shelf
+caught it.
+
+"I've cut myself," she said aloud. "There's blood on my hand. It must
+'a' been on those lacings of Tobey's."
+
+The old woman in the corner roused. "Blood!" she screeched. "Olga! Blood
+on his hands!"
+
+Mrs. Brenner jumped. "You old screech-owl!" she cried. She wiped her
+hand quickly on her dirty apron, and held it up again to see the cut.
+But there was no cut on her hand! Where had that blood come from? From
+Tobey's shoes?
+
+And who was it that had screamed on the hill? She felt herself enwrapped
+in a mist of puzzling doubts.
+
+She snatched up the shoes, searching them with agonized eyes. But the
+wet and pulpy mass had no stain. Only the wet sands and the slimy
+water-weeds of the beach clung to them.
+
+Then where had the blood come from? It was at this instant that she
+became conscious of shouts on the hillside. She limped to the door and
+held it open a crack. Very faintly she could see the bobbing lights of
+torches. A voice carried down to her.
+
+"Here's where I found his hat. That's why I turned off back of these
+trees. And right there I found his body!"
+
+"Are you sure he's dead?" quavered another voice.
+
+"Stone-dead!"
+
+Olga Brenner shut the door. But she did not leave it immediately. She
+stood leaning against it, clutching the wet shoes, her staring eyes
+glazing.
+
+Tobey was strong. He had flown into childish rages sometimes and had
+hurt her with his undisciplined strength. Where was Mart? Tobey had seen
+him. Perhaps they had fought. Her mind refused to go further. But little
+subtle undercurrents pressed in on her. Tobey hated and feared his
+father. And Mart was always enraged at the sight of his half-witted son.
+What _had_ happened? And yet no matter what had occurred, Tobey had not
+been on the hill. His shoes bore mute testimony to that. And the scream
+had been on the slope. She frowned.
+
+Her body more bent than ever, she hobbled slowly over to the stove and
+laid the shoes on the big shelf above it, spreading them out to the
+rising heat. She had barely arranged them when there was again the sound
+of approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not stumble. They
+were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered
+them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on
+the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened
+her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter they fell at her feet.
+
+In that moment Mart Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice, and
+evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His shaggy
+head lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike, hung
+almost to his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his rough,
+bristly hair was beaded with diamonds of moisture.
+
+"Well?" he snapped. A sardonic smile twisted his face. "Caught you,
+didn't I?"
+
+He strode forward. His wife shrank back, but even in her shivering
+terror she noticed, as one notices small details in a time of peril,
+that his shoes were caked with red mud and that his every step left a
+wet track on the floor.
+
+"He didn't do 'em no harm," she babbled. "They're just wet. Please,
+Mart, they ain't harmed a mite. Just wet. That's all. Tobey went on the
+beach with 'em. It won't take but a little spell to dry 'em."
+
+Her husband stooped and snatched up the shoes. She shrank into herself,
+waiting the inevitable torrent of his passion and the probable blow.
+Instead, as he stood up he was smiling. Bewildered, she stared at him in
+a dull silence.
+
+"No harm done," he said, almost amiably. Shaking with relief, she
+stretched out her hand.
+
+"I'll dry 'em," she said. "Give me your shoes and I'll get the mud off."
+
+Her husband shook his head. He was still smiling.
+
+"Don't need to dry 'em. I'll put 'em away," he replied, and, still
+tracking his wet mud, he went into Tobey's room.
+
+Her fear flowed into another channel. She dreaded her husband in his
+black rages, but she feared him more now in his unusual amiability.
+Perhaps he would strike Tobey when he saw him. She strained her ears to
+listen.
+
+A long silence followed his exit. But there was no outcry from Tobey, no
+muttering nor blows. After a few moments, moving quickly, her husband
+came out. She raised her heavy eyes to stare at him. He stopped and
+looked intently at his own muddy tracks.
+
+"I'll get a rag and wipe up the mud right off."
+
+As she started toward the nail where the rag hung, her husband put out a
+long arm and detained her. "Leave it be," he said. He smiled again.
+
+She noticed, then, that he had removed his muddy shoes and wore the wet
+ones. He had fully laced them, and she had almost a compassionate
+moment as she thought how wet and cold his feet must be.
+
+"You can put your feet in the oven, Mart, to dry 'em."
+
+Close on her words she heard the sound of footsteps and a sharp knock
+followed on the sagging door. Mart Brenner sat down on a chair close to
+the stove and lifted one foot into the oven. "See who's there!" he
+ordered.
+
+She opened the door and peered out. A group of men stood on the step,
+the faint light of the room picking out face after face that she
+recognized--Sheriff Munn; Jim Barker, who kept the grocery in the
+village; Cottrell Hampstead, who lived in the next house below them;
+young Dick Roamer, Munn's deputy; and several strangers.
+
+"Well?" she asked ungraciously.
+
+"We want to see Brenner!" one of them said.
+
+She stepped back. "Come in," she told them. They came in, pulling off
+their caps, and stood huddled in a group in the center of the room.
+
+Her husband reluctantly stood up.
+
+"Evening!" he said, with his unusual smile. "Bad out, ain't it?"
+
+"Yep!" Munn replied. "Heavy fog. We're soaked."
+
+Olga Brenner's pitiful instinct of hospitality rose in her breast.
+
+"I got some hot soup on the stove. Set a spell and I'll dish you some,"
+she urged.
+
+The men looked at each other in some uncertainty. After a moment Munn
+said, "All right, if it ain't too much bother, Mrs. Brenner."
+
+"Not a bit," she cried eagerly. She bustled about, searching her meager
+stock of chinaware for uncracked bowls.
+
+"Set down?" suggested Mart.
+
+Munn sat down with a sigh, and his companions followed his example. Mart
+resumed his position before the stove, lifting one foot into the
+capacious black maw of the oven.
+
+"Must 'a' got your feet wet, Brenner?" the sheriff said with heavy
+jocularity.
+
+Brenner nodded, "You bet I did," he replied. "Been down on the beach all
+afternoon."
+
+"Didn't happen to hear any unusual noise down there, did you?" Munn
+spoke with his eyes on Mrs. Brenner, at her task of ladling out the
+thick soup. She paused as though transfixed, her ladle poised in the
+air.
+
+Munn's eyes dropped from her face to the floor. There they became fixed
+on the tracks of red clay.
+
+"No, nothin' but the sea. It must be rough outside to-night, for the bay
+was whinin' like a sick cat," said Mart calmly.
+
+"Didn't hear a scream, or nothing like that, I suppose?" Munn persisted.
+
+"Couldn't hear a thing but the water. Why?"
+
+"Oh--nothing," said Munn.
+
+Mrs. Brenner finished pouring out the soup and set the bowls on the
+table.
+
+Chairs clattered, and soon the men were eating. Mart finished his soup
+before the others and sat back smacking his lips. As Munn finished the
+last spoonful in his bowl he pulled out a wicked-looking black pipe,
+crammed it full of tobacco and lighted it.
+
+Blowing out a big blue breath of the pleasant smoke, he inquired, "Been
+any strangers around to-day?"
+
+Mart scratched his head. "Yeah. A man come by early this afternoon. He
+was aiming to climb the hill. I told him he'd better wait till the sun
+come out. I don't know whether he did or not."
+
+"See anybody later--say about half an hour ago?"
+
+Mart shook his head. "No. I come up from the beach and I didn't pass
+nobody."
+
+The sheriff pulled on his pipe for a moment. "That boy of yours still
+catching butterflies?" he asked presently.
+
+Mart scowled. He swung out a long arm toward the walls with their floods
+of butterflies. But he did not answer.
+
+"Uh-huh!" said Munn, following the gesture with his quiet eyes. He
+puffed several times before he spoke again.
+
+"What time did you come in, Brenner, from the beach?"
+
+Mrs. Brenner closed her hands tightly, the interlaced fingers locking
+themselves.
+
+"Oh, about forty minutes ago, I guess it was. Wasn't it, Olga?" Mart
+said carelessly.
+
+"Yes." Her voice was a breath.
+
+"Was your boy out to-day?"
+
+Mart looked at his wife. "I dunno."
+
+Munn's glance came to the wife.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long ago did he come in?"
+
+"About an hour ago." Her voice was flat and lifeless.
+
+"And where had he been?" Munn's tone was gentle but insistent.
+
+Her terrified glance sought Mart's face. "He'd been on the beach!" she
+said in a defiant tone.
+
+Mart continued to look at her, but there was no expression in his face.
+He still wore his peculiar affable smile.
+
+"Where did these tracks come from, on the floor?"
+
+Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.
+
+"What's that to you?" she flared.
+
+She heard her husband's hypocritical and soothing tones, "Now, now,
+Olga! That ain't the way to talk to these gentlemen. Tell them who made
+these tracks."
+
+"You did!" she cried. All about her she could feel the smoothness of a
+falling trap.
+
+Mart smiled still more broadly.
+
+"Look here, Olga, don't get so warm over it. You're nervous now. Tell
+the gentlemen who made those tracks."
+
+She turned to Munn desperately. "What do you want to know for?" she
+asked him.
+
+The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her
+corner.
+
+"Blood!" she cried suddenly. "Blood on his hands!"
+
+In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously
+toward the old woman and then sought each other with speculative
+stares. Mrs. Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances, said
+roughly, "That's Mart's mother. She ain't right! What are you bothering
+us for?"
+
+Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the arm.
+There was something touching in her frightened old face.
+
+"A man--a stranger was killed upon the hill," Munn told her.
+
+"What's that got to do with us?" she countered.
+
+"Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I've just to make sure where
+every man in the village was this afternoon."
+
+Mrs. Brenner's lids flickered. She felt the questioning intentness of
+Sheriff Munn's eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did not miss
+the tremor of her eyes.
+
+"Where was your son this afternoon?"
+
+She smiled defiance. "I told you, on the beach."
+
+"Whose room is that?" Munn's forefinger pointed to Tobey's closed door.
+
+"That's Tobey's room," said his mother.
+
+"The mud tracks go into that room. Did he make those tracks, Mrs.
+Brenner?"
+
+"No! Oh, no! No!" she cried desperately. "Mart made those when he came
+in. He went into Tobey's room!"
+
+"How about it, Brenner?"
+
+Mart smiled with an indulgent air. "Heard what she said, didn't you?"
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+Mart smiled more broadly. "Olga'll take my hair off if I don't agree
+with her," he said.
+
+"Let's see your shoes, Brenner?"
+
+Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for
+Munn's inspection. The other silent men leaned forward to examine them.
+
+"Nothing but pieces of seaweed," said Cottrell Hampstead.
+
+Munn eyed them. Then he turned to look at the floor.
+
+"Those are about the size of your tracks, Brenner. But they were made
+in red clay. How do you account for that?"
+
+"Tobey wears my shoes," said Brenner.
+
+Mrs. Brenner gasped. She advanced to Munn.
+
+"What you asking all these questions for?" she pleaded.
+
+Munn did not answer her. After a moment he asked, "Did you hear a scream
+this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"How long after the screaming did your son come in?"
+
+She hesitated. What was the best answer to make? Bewildered, she tried
+to decide. "Ten minutes or so," she said.
+
+"Just so," agreed Munn. "Brenner, when did you come in?"
+
+A trace of Mart's sullenness rose in his face. "I told you that once,"
+he said.
+
+"I mean how long after Tobey?"
+
+"I dunno," said Mart.
+
+"How long, Mrs. Brenner?"
+
+She hesitated again. She scented a trap. "Oh, 'bout ten to fifteen
+minutes, I guess," she said.
+
+Suddenly she burst out passionately, "What you hounding us for? We don't
+know nothing about the man on the hill. You ain't after the rest of the
+folks in the village like you are after us. Why you doing it? We ain't
+done nothing."
+
+Munn made a slight gesture to Roamer, who rose and went to the door, and
+opened it. He reached out into the darkness. Then he turned. He was
+holding something in his hand, but Mrs. Brenner could not see what it
+was.
+
+"You chop your wood with a short, heavy ax, don't you, Brenner?" said
+Munn.
+
+Brenner nodded.
+
+"It's marked with your name, isn't it?"
+
+Brenner nodded again.
+
+"_Is this the ax?_"
+
+Mrs. Brenner gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, ever the
+handle marked with bloody spots, the ax was theirs.
+
+Brenner started to his feet. "God!" he yelped, "that's where that ax
+went! Tobey took it!" More calmly he proceeded. "This afternoon before I
+went down on the beach I thought I'd chop some wood on the hill. But the
+ax was gone. So after I'd looked sharp for it and couldn't find it, I
+gave it up."
+
+"Tobey didn't do it!" Mrs. Brenner cried thinly. "He's as harmless as a
+baby! He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
+
+"How about those clay tracks, Mrs. Brenner? There is red clay on the
+hill where the man was killed. There is red clay on your floor." Munn
+spoke kindly.
+
+"Mart tracked in that clay. He changed shoes with Tobey. I tell you
+that's the truth." She was past caring for any harm that might befall
+her.
+
+Brenner smiled with a wide tolerance. "It's likely, ain't it, that I'd
+change into shoes as wet as these?"
+
+"Those tracks are Mart's!" Olga reiterated hysterically.
+
+"They lead into your son's room, Mrs. Brenner. And we find your ax not
+far from your door, just where the path starts for the hill." Munn's
+eyes were grave.
+
+The old woman in the corner began to whimper, "Blood and trouble! Blood
+and trouble all my days! Red on his hands! Dripping! Olga! Blood!"
+
+"But the road to the beach begins there too," Mrs. Brenner cried, above
+the cracked voice, "and Tobey saw his pa before he came home. He said he
+did. I tell you, Mart was on the hill. He put on Tobey's shoes. Before
+God I'm telling you the truth."
+
+Dick Roamer spoke hesitatingly, "Mebbe the old woman's right, Munn.
+Mebbe those tracks are Brenner's."
+
+Mrs. Brenner turned to him in wild gratitude.
+
+"You believe me, don't you?" she cried. The tears dribbled down her
+face. She saw the balance turning on a hair. A moment more and it might
+swing back. She turned and hobbled swiftly to the shelf. Proof! More
+proof! She must bring more proof of Tobey's innocence!
+
+She snatched up his box of butterflies and came back to Munn.
+
+"This is what Tobey was doin' this afternoon!" she cried in triumph. "He
+was catchin' butterflies! That ain't murder, is it?"
+
+"Nobody catches butterflies in a fog," said Munn.
+
+"Well, Tobey did. Here they are." Mrs. Brenner held out the box. Munn
+took it from her shaking hand. He looked at it. After a moment he turned
+it over. His eyes narrowed. Mrs. Brenner turned sick. The room went
+swimming around before her in a bluish haze. She had forgotten the blood
+on her hand that she had wiped off before Mart came home. Suppose the
+blood had been on the box.
+
+The sheriff opened the box. A bruised butterfly, big, golden, fluttered
+up out of it. Very quietly the sheriff closed the box, and turned to
+Mrs. Brenner.
+
+"Call your son," he said.
+
+"What do you want of him? Tobey ain't done nothing. What you tryin' to
+do to him?"
+
+"There is blood on this box, Mrs. Brenner."
+
+"Mebbe he cut himself." Mrs. Brenner was fighting. Her face was chalky
+white.
+
+"In the box, Mrs. Brenner, _is a gold watch and chain_. The man who was
+killed, Mrs. Brenner, had a piece of gold chain to match this in his
+buttonhole. _The rest of it had been torn off._"
+
+Olga made no sound. Her burning eyes turned toward Mart. In them was all
+of a heart's anguish and despair.
+
+"Tell 'em, Mart! Tell 'em he didn't do it!" she finally pleaded.
+
+Mart's face was inscrutable.
+
+Munn rose. The other men got to their feet.
+
+"Will you get the boy or shall I?" the sheriff said directly to Mrs.
+Brenner.
+
+With a rush Mrs. Brenner was on her knees before Munn, clutching him
+about the legs with twining arms. Tears of agony dripped over her seamed
+face.
+
+"He didn't do it! Don't take him! He's my baby! He never harmed anybody!
+He's my baby!" Then with a shriek, as Munn unclasped her arms, "Oh, my
+God! My God!"
+
+Munn helped her to her feet. "Now, now, Mrs. Brenner, don't take on so,"
+he said awkwardly. "There ain't going to be no harm come to your boy.
+It's to keep him from getting into harm that I'm taking him. The village
+is a mite worked up over this murder and they might get kind of upset if
+they thought Tobey was still loose. Better go and get him, Mrs.
+Brenner."
+
+As she stood unheeding, he went on, "Now, don't be afraid. Nothing'll
+happen to him. No jedge would sentence him like a regular criminal. The
+most that'll happen will be to put him some safe place where he can't do
+himself nor no one else any more harm."
+
+But still Mrs. Brenner's set expression did not change.
+
+After a moment she shook off his aiding arm and moved slowly to Tobey's
+door. She paused there a moment, resting her hand on the latch, her eyes
+searching the faces of the men in the room. With a gesture of dreary
+resignation she opened the door and entered, closing it behind her.
+
+Tobey lay in his bed asleep. His rumpled hair was still damp from the
+fog. His mother stroked it softly while her slow tears dropped down on
+his face with its expression of peaceful childhood.
+
+"Tobey!" she called. Her voice broke in her throat. The tears fell
+faster.
+
+"Huh?" He sat up, blinking at her.
+
+"Get into your clothes, now! Right away!" she said.
+
+He stared at her tears. A dismal sort of foreboding seemed to seize upon
+him. His face began to pucker. But he crawled out of his bed and began
+to dress himself in his awkward fashion, casting wistful and wondering
+glances in her direction.
+
+She watched him, her heart growing heavier and heavier. There was no
+one to protect Tobey. She could not make those strangers believe that
+Mart had changed shoes with Tobey. Neither could she account for the
+blood-stained box and the watch with its length of broken chain. But if
+Tobey had been on the beach he had not been on the hill, and if he
+hadn't been on the hill he couldn't have killed the man they claimed he
+had killed. Mart had been on the hill. Her head whirled. Some place
+fate, destiny, something had blundered. She wrung her knotted hands
+together.
+
+Presently Tobey was dressed. She took him by the hand. Her own hand was
+shaking, and very cold and clammy. Her knees were weak as she led him
+toward the door. She could feel them trembling so that every step was an
+effort. And her hand on the knob had barely strength to turn it. But
+turn it she did and opened the door.
+
+"Here he is!" she cried chokingly. She freed her hand and laid it on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Look at him," she moaned. "He couldn't 'a' done it. He's--he's just a
+boy!"
+
+Sheriff Munn rose. His men rose with him.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Brenner," he said. "Terrible sorry. But you can see how
+it is. Things look pretty black for him."
+
+He paused, looked around, hesitated for a moment. Finally he said,
+"Well, I guess we'd better be getting along."
+
+Mrs. Brenner's hand closed with convulsive force on Tobey's shoulder.
+
+"Tobey!" she screamed desperately, "where was you this afternoon? All
+afternoon?"
+
+"On the beach," mumbled Tobey, shrinking into himself.
+
+"Tobey! Tobey! Where'd you get blood on the box?"
+
+He looked around. His cloudy eyes rested on her face helplessly.
+
+"I dunno," he said.
+
+Her teeth were chattering now; she laid her hand on his other shoulder.
+
+"Try to remember, Tobey. Try to remember. Where'd you get the watch, the
+pretty watch that was in your box?"
+
+He blinked at her.
+
+"The pretty bright thing? Where did you get it?"
+
+His eyes brightened. His lips trembled into a smile.
+
+"I found it some place," he said. Eagerness to please her shone on his
+face.
+
+"But where? What place?" The tears again made rivulets on her cheeks.
+
+He shook his head. "I dunno."
+
+Mrs. Brenner would not give up.
+
+"You saw your pa this afternoon, Tobey?" she coached him softly.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Where'd you see him?" she breathed.
+
+He frowned. "I--I saw pa----" he began, straining to pierce the cloud
+that covered him.
+
+"Blood! Blood!" shrieked old Mrs. Brenner. She half-rose, her head
+thrust forward on her shriveled neck.
+
+Tobey paused, confused. "I dunno," he said.
+
+"Did he give you the pretty bright thing? And did he give you the ax--"
+she paused and repeated the word loudly--"the ax to bring home?"
+
+Tobey caught at the word. "The ax?" he cried. "The ax! Ugh! It was all
+sticky!" He shuddered.
+
+"Did pa give you the ax?"
+
+But the cloud had settled. Tobey shook his head. "I dunno," he repeated
+his feeble denial.
+
+Munn advanced. "No use, Mrs. Brenner, you see. Tobey, you'll have to
+come along with us."
+
+Even to Tobey's brain some of the strain in the atmosphere must have
+penetrated, for he drew back. "Naw," he protested sulkily, "I don't want
+to."
+
+Dick Roamer stepped to his side. He laid his hand on Tobey's arm. "Come
+along," he urged.
+
+Mrs. Brenner gave a smothered gasp. Tobey woke to terror. He turned to
+run. In an instant the men surrounded him. Trapped, he stood still, his
+head lowered in his shoulders.
+
+"Ma!" he screamed suddenly. "Ma! I don't want to go! Ma!"
+
+He fell on his knees. Heavy childish sobs racked him. Deserted,
+terrified, he called upon the only friend he knew.
+
+"Ma! Please, Ma!"
+
+Munn lifted him up. Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they drew
+him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing every corner
+of the room.
+
+They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could.
+The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her
+son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.
+
+Mart closed the door. Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when Tobey
+had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run. She
+looked as though she might have been carved there. Her light breath
+seemed to do little more than lift her flat chest.
+
+Mart turned from the door. His eyes glittered. He advanced upon her
+hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.
+
+"So you thought you'd yelp on me, did you?" he snarled, licking his
+lips. "Thought you'd put me away, didn't you? Get me behind the bars,
+eh?"
+
+"Blood!" moaned the old woman in the corner. "Blood!"
+
+Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a
+lumpy package wrapped in his handkerchief. He threw it down on the
+table. It fell heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.
+
+"But I fooled you this time! Mart wasn't so dull this time, eh?" He
+turned toward her again.
+
+Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big
+bruised yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.
+
+Mart drew back a little. The butterfly flew toward Olga and brushed her
+face with a velvety softness.
+
+Then Brenner lurched toward her, his face black with fury, his arm
+upraised. She stood still, looking at him with wide eyes in which a
+gleam of light showed.
+
+"You devil!" she said, in a little, whispering voice. "You killed that
+man! You gave Tobey the watch and the ax! You changed shoes with him!
+You devil! You devil!"
+
+He drew back for a blow. She did not move. Instead she mocked him,
+trying to smile.
+
+"You whelp!" she taunted him. "Go on and hit me! I ain't running! And if
+you don't break me to bits I'm going to the sheriff and I'll tell him
+what you said to me just now. And he'll wonder how you got all that
+money in your pockets. He knows we're as poor as church-mice. How you
+going to explain what you got?"
+
+"I ain't going to be such a fool as to keep it on me!" Mart crowed with
+venomous mirth. "You nor the sheriff nor any one won't find it where I'm
+going to put it!"
+
+The broken woman leaned forward, baiting him. The strange look of
+exaltation and sacrifice burned in her faded eyes. "I've got you, Mart!"
+she jeered. "You're going to swing yet! I'll even up with you for Tobey!
+You didn't think I could do it, did you? I'll show you! You're trapped,
+I tell you! And I done it!"
+
+She watched Mart swing around to search the room and the blank window
+with apprehensive eyes. She sensed his eerie dread of the unseen. He
+couldn't see any one. He couldn't hear a sound. She saw that he was wet
+with the cold perspiration of fear. It would enrage him. She counted on
+that. He turned back to his wife in a white fury. She leaned toward him,
+inviting his blows as martyrs welcome the torch that will make their
+pile of fagots a blazing bier.
+
+He struck her. Once. Twice. A rain of blows given in a blind passion
+that drove her to her knees, but she clung stubbornly, with rigid
+fingers to the table-edge. Although she was dazed she retained
+consciousness by a sharp effort of her failing will. She had not yet
+achieved that for which she was fighting.
+
+The dull thud of the blows, the confusion, the sight of the blood drove
+the old woman in the corner suddenly upright on her tottering feet. Her
+rheumy eyes glared affrighted at the sight of the only friend she
+recognized in all her mad, black world lying there across the table. She
+stood swaying in a petrified terror for a moment. Then with a thin wail,
+"He's killing her!" she ran around them and gained the door.
+
+With a mighty effort Olga Brenner lifted her head so that her face,
+swollen beyond recognition, was turned toward her mother-in-law. Her
+almost sightless eyes fastened themselves on the old woman.
+
+"Run!" she cried. "Run to the village!"
+
+The mad woman, obedient to that commanding voice, flung open the door
+and lurched over the threshold and disappeared in the fog. It came to
+Mart that the woman running through the night with her wail of terror
+was the greatest danger he would know. Olga Brenner saw his look of sick
+terror. He started to spring after the mad woman, forgetful of the
+half-conscious creature on her knees before him.
+
+But as he turned, Olga, moved by the greatness of her passion, forced
+strength into her maimed body. With a straining leap she sprawled
+herself before him on the floor. He stumbled, caught for the table, and
+fell with a heavy crash, striking his head on a near-by chair. Olga
+raised herself on her shaking arms and looked at him. Minute after
+minute passed, and yet he lay still. A second long ten minutes ticked
+itself off on the clock, which Olga could barely see. Then Mart opened
+his eyes, sat up, and staggered to his feet.
+
+Before full consciousness could come to him again, his wife crawled
+forward painfully and swiftly coiled herself about his legs. He
+struggled, still dizzy from his fall, bent over and tore at her twining
+arms, but the more he pulled the tighter she clung, fastening her
+misshapen fingers in the lacing of his shoes. He swore! And he became
+panic-stricken. He began to kick at her, to make lunges toward the
+distant door. Kicking and fighting, dragging her clinging body with him
+at every move, that body which drew him back one step for every two
+forward steps he took, at last he reached the wall. He clutched it, and
+as his hand slipped along trying to find a more secure hold he touched
+the cold iron of a long-handled pan hanging there.
+
+With a snarl he snatched it down, raised it over his head, and brought
+it down upon his wife's back. Her hands opened spasmodically and fell
+flat at her sides. Her body rolled over, limp and broken. And a low
+whimper came from her bleeding lips.
+
+Satisfied, Mart paused to regain his breath. He had no way of knowing
+how long this unequal fight had been going on. But he was free. The way
+of escape was open. He laid his hand on the door.
+
+There were voices. He cowered, cast hunted glances at the bloody figure
+on the floor, bit his knuckles in a frenzy.
+
+As he looked, the eyes opened in his wife's swollen face, eyes aglow
+with triumph. "You'll swing for it, Mart!" she whispered faintly. "And
+the money's on the table! Tobey's saved!"
+
+Rough hands were on the door. A flutter of breath like a sigh of relief
+crossed her lips and her lids dropped as the door burst open to a tide
+of men.
+
+The big yellow butterfly swung low on his golden wings and came to rest
+on her narrow, sunken breast.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[14] Copyright, 1920, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Rose Sidney.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROTTER[15]
+
+#By# FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+In the taxi Ayling suddenly realized that there was no need for all this
+haste. After twenty-five years, and a loitering, circuitous journey
+home--six weeks to the day since he had said good-by to India--this
+last-minute rush was, to say the least, illogical, particularly as there
+was no one in London waiting for him; no one who was even aware of his
+arrival. Indeed, it was likely that there was no one in London who was
+aware of his existence, except, perhaps, the clerk of the club, to whom
+he had telegraphed ahead for accommodations.
+
+The rigidity of his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became
+suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more
+than it was worth, and he sat forward again, looking out.
+
+Yes, things were familiar enough--but familiar like old photographs one
+has forgotten the significance of. The emotion had gone out of them. It
+was the new things, the unfamiliar contours, that were most apparent,
+that seemed to thrust upon his consciousness the city's gigantic,
+self-centered indifference. Yet it was just that quality that he had
+loved most in London. She had let him alone. She had been--he recalled
+the high-flown phrase of his youth--the supremely indifferent friend!
+Perhaps, he thought to himself, when one is fifty, one cares less to be
+"let alone"; less for indifference as the supreme attribute of a friend.
+
+He felt a queer sweep of homesickness for India, whence he had come; but
+to feel homesick for India was ridiculous, since he had just come out
+of India because he was homesick for England. He had been homesick for
+England, he had been telling himself, for all those twenty-five years.
+
+Well! here he was. Home!
+
+Strange he hadn't thought of the automobiles and the electricity, and
+the difference they would make.
+
+The taxi backed suddenly, gears shifted, and drew up alongside the curb.
+Looking out, Ayling recognized the high, familiar street door of the
+club. Something about it had been changed, or replaced, he couldn't
+quite make out what. The driver opened the door, lifted out Ayling's
+bag, and deposited it expertly with a swing on the step. Then he waited
+respectfully while Ayling fished in his pockets for change. Having
+received it, he leaped with great agility to the seat, shifted gears,
+chugged, backed and turned, and was abruptly round the corner and out of
+sight.
+
+At the desk, Ayling experienced a momentary surprise to find himself
+actually expected.
+
+"Mr. Ayling? Yes, sir. Your room is ready, I believe." The clerk rang a
+bell, and began to give instructions about Mr. Ayling's luggage.
+
+Ayling felt that he ought to ask for some one, inquire if some of the
+old members were in; but, standing there, he could not think of a single
+name except names of a few non-resident members like himself, men who
+were at that moment in India.
+
+"Will you go up, sir?"
+
+"Later," said Ayling. "Just send up my things."
+
+He crossed the foyer and entered the lounge. Here, as before in the
+streets, it was the changes of which he was most aware--figured hangings
+in place of the old red velours, the upholstery renewed on the old
+chairs and divans. Strangers sat here and there in the familiar nooks,
+strangers who looked up at him with a mild curiosity and returned to
+their papers or their cigars. He wandered on through the rooms,
+seeking--without quite saying so to himself--seeking a familiar face,
+and found none. Even the proportions of the rooms seemed changed; he
+could hardly have said just how; not much, but slightly, though, all in
+all, the club was the same. Names began to come back to him; memories
+resurrected themselves, rose out of corners to greet him as he passed.
+They began to give him a queer sense of his own unreality, as if he
+himself were only another memory.... Abruptly he turned, made his way
+back to the desk, and asked to be shown to his room. There he spent an
+hour puttering aimlessly, adjusting his things, putting in the time.
+
+Then he dressed and went down to a solitary dinner. There was a great
+activity in the club at that hour, comings and goings, in parties of
+four and five. He found a kind of dolorous amusement in seeing now much
+more at home all the youngsters about him seemed than he. And he had
+been at home there when they were in the nursery doing sums.
+
+Here and there at the tables were older men, men of his own age, and he
+reflected that among them might easily be some of his boyhood friends.
+He would never know them now. He searched their faces for a familiar
+feature, watched them for a gesture he might recognize. But in the end
+he gave it up. "Old town," he said to himself, "old town, by Jove!
+you've forgotten me!"
+
+That night he went alone to a theater, walked back through the crowds to
+the club, and went immediately to bed. He was grateful to find himself
+suddenly very tired.
+
+The next morning he rose late and did not leave his room until noon,
+when he went down to a solitary lunch. After lunch he stopped at the
+clerk's window and inquired about one or two old members. The clerk
+looked up the names. After a good deal of inquiry and fussing about, he
+ascertained that one of the gentlemen was in China, one was dead, and a
+third about whom Ayling also inquired could not be traced at all. Ayling
+went out and walked for a while through the streets, but was driven back
+to the club by the chill drizzle which suddenly began to descend.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite.
+Settled there, he remembered the position of a near-by bell, just under
+the window-curtain.... Yes, there it was. He rang, and a waiter came--a
+rotund, pink-faced, John-Bullish waiter, with little white tufts on each
+cheek. Ayling ordered a whisky-and-soda, and when presently the waiter
+brought it Ayling asked how long he had been in the service of the club.
+
+"Thirty-five years, sir."
+
+Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he
+asked.
+
+The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at
+all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir--I couldn't just
+at the moment say--"
+
+"And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here,
+to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?"
+
+"Chedsey, sir."
+
+"Seems familiar--" He shook his head. "You don't recall a Mr.
+Ayling--twenty-five or thirty years ago?"
+
+"Ayling, sir? I recall there _was_ a member of that name.... _You're_
+not Mr. Ayling, sir?"
+
+"We're not very flattering, either of us, it seems. But then, privilege
+of the aged, I suppose."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. I'm sorry--I ought to remember you."
+
+"We're wearing masks, Chedsey, you and I."
+
+"You're right, sir, I'm afraid."
+
+They regarded each other, those two, Chedsey, rotund and pink, looking
+down upon Ayling, long and lean, with fine wrinkles about his eyes, and
+hair considerably grayed, wondering, both of them, why names should be
+so much more enduring than they themselves had been.
+
+It was not until Ayling had begun to ask Chedsey for news of old
+friends, and chanced almost at once to mention Lonsdale, that both he
+and the old waiter exclaimed in the same breath, "Major Lonsdale!" as if
+the Major's name had been a key to open the doors of both their
+memories.
+
+"And you're young Mr. Dick Ayling! I remember you perfectly now!"
+Chedsey beamed. How could he have failed to remember any one of those
+gay young friends of the major's?
+
+"And where," asked Ayling, "is the major now?"
+
+"Major Lonsdale, sir--has been gone seven years. Hadn't you heard?"
+
+Lonsdale gone! Lonsdale dead! Lonsdale had begun life so brilliantly.
+Ayling did feel left over and old.
+
+"What happened?" he asked, and Chedsey, glad to talk of the major, told
+how he had left the club to be Major Lonsdale's man just after he came
+back from the Boer War. How things hadn't seemed to go well with the
+major after that; he lost money--just how, Chedsey didn't say, but gave
+one to understand that it was a misfortune beyond the major's control.
+In the end he was forced to give up his house, and Chedsey came back to
+the club. A few years later the major was taken with pneumonia, quite
+suddenly, and died. Did Mr. Ayling know Major Lonsdale's wife?
+
+"Yes," said Ayling. "What became of Mrs. Lonsdale?"
+
+"Here in London, sir."
+
+"Wasn't there," asked Ayling, "a child, a little girl?"
+
+"Ah, Miss Peggy, sir!" It was plain that "Miss Peggy" was one of
+Chedsey's enthusiasms. A young lady now ... and soon to be married to a
+fine young gentleman of one of the best Scotch families.... She'll have
+a title some day.... Picture in the _Sketch_ recently--perhaps he could
+find it for Mr. Ayling.
+
+"Never mind," said Ayling, who was not thinking of Miss Peggy at all,
+but of her parents, young Major Harry Lonsdale, and his pretty wife.--He
+remembered her as a bride--Bessie, the major had called her--a graceful
+young creature with brown hair and brown-flecked eyes, already at that
+age a charming hostess in the fine old house Harry Lonsdale had
+inherited from his father.
+
+"They are living in Cambridge Terrace," Chedsey was saying. "Would Mr.
+Ayling like the address?"
+
+Ayling wrote down the address Chedsey gave him, and put it away in his
+pocket, with no more definite idea than that some day, if opportunity
+offered, he might look her up, for his old friend's sake.
+
+He began to inquire about other men--Carrington, Farnsby, Blake. Dead,
+all three of them--Farnsby only last spring. Was it some fate that
+pursued his particular friends? But those men had all, he reflected,
+been older than he. And yet, he recalled the words of his doctor:
+
+"A man's as old as his arteries. You've been too long out here. Be
+sensible, Ayling.... Go home--take it easy--rest. You'll have a long
+time yet...."
+
+Just a week later, to the day, Ayling stepped into a telephone-booth,
+looked up Mrs. Lonsdale's number, and telephoned. He had not counted
+upon loneliness.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+At forty-five Bessie Lonsdale had encountered one of those universal
+experiences which invariably give us, as individuals, so strong a sense
+of surprise. She had discovered suddenly, upon completion of the task to
+which she had so long given her energies, that she had become the task;
+that she no longer had any identity apart from it. And her consciousness
+of having arrived at exactly the place where hundreds before her must
+have arrived had only added to the strangeness of her experience.
+
+A week ago she had seen her twenty-year-old daughter off to the north of
+Scotland for a month's visit to the family which she was soon to enter
+as a bride. It seemed to her that Peggy had never been so lovely as when
+she said good-by to her at the station that day, slim, fragrant,
+shining-eyed, and looking very patrician indeed in her smart sable
+jacket (cut from the luxurious sable cape that had been part of her
+mother's trousseau), with the violets pinned into the buttonhole. And
+Bessie Lonsdale had seen with pride and no twinge of jealousy the
+admiration in the eyes of that aristocratic, if somewhat stern-faced,
+old lady who was to be Peggy's mother-in-law, and who, with true Scotch
+propriety, had come all the way down to London to take her home with
+her.
+
+"I don't like leaving you alone," Peggy had said, as they kissed each
+other good-by. "You're going to let yourself be dull."
+
+And her mother had patted the soft cheek, and replied: "I'm going to
+enjoy every minute of it. I mean to have a good rest and get acquainted
+with myself."
+
+When, a few moments later, she waved them good-by as the train moved
+slowly out of the station, Bessie Lonsdale had turned away with a
+long-drawn and involuntary sigh--a sigh of thanksgiving and relief.
+
+Peggy at last was safe! Her happiness and her future assured. All those
+years of hoping and holding steady had come now to this happy end. Ever
+since her husband's early death Bessie Lonsdale had centered herself
+upon the future of her child. She had had only her few hundred a year
+saved from the wreck of her husband's affairs, but she had set her
+course, and, with an air of sailing in circles for pleasure's sake,
+stood clear of the rocks and shoals. She had never borrowed; she had
+never apologized; had never been considered a poor relation, or spoken
+of as pathetic or "brave." Her little flat was an achievement. It was
+astonishing how she had managed at once so much simplicity, so much
+downright comfort, and so charming an atmosphere. She had done so much
+with so little, yet hers were not anxious rooms, like the rooms of so
+many women of small means. They had space, repose, good cheer, even an
+air of luxury. It was the home of a gentlewoman who could make a little
+better than "the best of things." She had even entertained a little, now
+and then--more of late, now that Peggy's education was complete--but
+this at the cost of many economies in the right quarter, and many
+extravagances also rightly placed.
+
+Call this "climbing" if you will, and a stress upon false values. Bessie
+Lonsdale gave herself to no such futile speculations as that. She was
+too busy at her task. She was neither so young nor so hypocritical as to
+pretend that these things were to be despised. She had done only what
+every other mother in the world wishes to do--to guide and protect her
+child and see her future provided for; only she had done it more
+efficiently than most; had brought, perhaps, a greater fitness or a
+greater consecration to the task. And the success of her achievement
+lay in the art with which she had concealed all trace of effort and
+strain. Peggy herself would have been first to laugh at the notion that
+her mother had had anything whatever to do with her falling in love with
+Andrew McCrae. She believed that it was by the sheer prodigality of the
+Fates that, besides being in love with her, romantically, as only a
+Scotchman can be, young Andrew McCrae was heir to one of the most
+substantial fortunes in all the north, and would succeed to a title one
+day....
+
+So Bessie Lonsdale had sighed her deep sigh of peace and gone back to
+her flat. And because she had really wanted to be alone she had sent her
+one faithful old servant away for a long-postponed visit to country
+relatives. Then she had sat down to rest, and to "get acquainted with
+herself." And in two days she had made her discovery. There was no
+"herself." She had been Peggy's mother so long that Bessie Lonsdale as a
+separate entity had entirely ceased to exist.
+
+It was at the end of the week that Ayling telephoned. And, although she
+had been avoiding even chance meetings with acquaintances, she found
+herself asking Ayling, whom she had not seen for twenty-five years, and
+whom she had known but slightly then, to come that day at five to tea.
+She realized only after she had left the telephone that it was because
+his voice had come to her out of that far time before she had become the
+mother of Peggy, and because she had a vague sort of hope that he might
+help to bring back a bit of the old self she had lost.
+
+She was, when she thought of it, a little puzzled by his looking her up.
+Had he and Harry been such friends?
+
+Promptly at five he came. At the door they greeted each other with a
+sudden unexpected warmth. And while he was clasping her hand and saying
+how jolly it was, after all this time, to find her here, and she was
+saying how nice it was to see _him_, how nice of him to look her up, he
+was thinking to himself that he might have recognized her by the
+brown-flecked eyes, and she was thinking, "He's an old man, older than
+I--the age Harry would have been----"
+
+"So you've come home," she said, "to stay?"
+
+"Yes, we all do. It's what we look forward to out there."
+
+"I know." With a little hospitable gesture and a step backward she
+brought him in.
+
+They had not mentioned the major who was gone, nor had they mentioned
+the years that had passed since their last meeting, yet suddenly,
+without any premonition, those two turned their eyes away from each
+other, to avoid bursting senselessly into tears. An almost inconceivable
+disaster, yet one for the moment perilously imminent.
+
+Yet neither of them was thinking of Major Lonsdale nor of anything so
+grievous as death; they were thinking of those terrifying little
+wrinkles round their eyes, and of the little up-and-down lines that
+would never disappear, and something inside them both gave suddenly
+away, melted, flooding them inside with tears that must not be shed.
+
+She held out her hand for his hat and stick. For an instant they both
+felt a deep constraint, and as he was getting out of his coat each
+wondered if the other had noticed it.
+
+Ayling turned about and stumbled awkwardly over a small hassock on the
+floor, and they both laughed, which helped them recover themselves.
+
+"How long has it really been?" she asked, as she faced him beside the
+fire.
+
+"Twenty-five years." He smiled at her, shaking his head. "Twenty-five
+years!"
+
+"You _must_ feel the prodigal son!"
+
+"Not until I came in your door just now, I didn't at all." And then,
+without in the least intending to say it, he added, "You were the only
+person in London I knew."
+
+It was the first of many things he had not intended to tell. As it was
+the first of many afternoons when they sat before the fire in her pretty
+drawing-room--that gallant little blaze that did its best to combat the
+gloom and chill of London's late winter rains--and drank their tea and
+talked, the comfortable, scattering talk of old friends; although it
+was not because of the past that they were friends, but because of the
+present and their mutual need. They did not speak of loneliness; it was
+a word, perhaps, of which they were both afraid.
+
+When they talked of her husband, of the old house, the old days, she
+felt herself coming back, materializing gradually again, out of the
+past. Ayling said to himself that he could talk to Bessie Lonsdale of
+things he had never been able to speak of to any one else, because they
+had had so much common experience. For from the beginning Ayling had had
+the illusion that Bessie Lonsdale, as well as he, had been away all
+those years, and had just come back to London again. He had said this to
+her as he was leaving on that first afternoon, and she had smiled and
+said, "So I have, just that--I've been away and come back, and I hardly
+know where to begin." Later he understood. For once or twice he met
+there a few of her friends, people who dropped in to inquire what she
+had heard from Peggy; people who talked of how they were missing Peggy,
+of the time when she would be coming home, of her approaching wedding,
+and one and all they commented upon the emptiness of the flat without
+Peggy there, and how lonely it must be for dear Mrs. Lonsdale with Peggy
+away.
+
+"I seem to be the only person in London not missing Peggy," he said to
+her one day. Her brown-flecked eyes looked at him straight for an
+instant, and then slowly they smiled, for she knew that he understood.
+She had not needed to tell him, for he had divined it for himself. Just
+as he had not needed to tell her how much her being in London had meant
+to him.
+
+As it was, the incessant chill and dampness of the weather had done his
+health no good. His blood was thin from long years of Indian sun, and he
+found it a constant effort to resist. The gloom seemed even worse than
+the cold, and, although he had thought that he should never wish for sun
+again, after India, he did wish for it now, wished for it until it
+became a sheer physical need. For the first time in his life he began to
+feel that he was getting old. Or was it, he asked himself, only that he
+had time now to think of such things? Bessie Lonsdale saw it, for her
+eyes were quick and keen, and she had long been in the habit of
+mothering. "It's this beastly London," she said. "I know!" And it was
+she who made him promise to go away for a week in the country, where he
+might have a glimpse at least of the sun. He remembered an inn at
+Homebury St. Mary, where he had spent a summer as a child, and it was
+there, for no reason except the memory of so much sun, that he planned
+to go, "by the middle of next week," he said, "when Peggy will be coming
+home."
+
+They had been talking of her return, and he had confessed to the notion
+that he would feel himself superfluous, out of place, somehow, when
+Peggy came home. His confession had pleased her, she hardly knew why. As
+for herself, she had had something of the same thought that when Peggy
+came there would be--well, a different atmosphere.
+
+She was looking forward daily now to a letter saying by what train Peggy
+would return. On Thursday there arrived, instead, a letter from Lady
+McCrae, begging that they be allowed "to keep our dear Peggy for another
+ten days." The heavy weather had kept the young people indoors, and a
+great many excursions which they had planned had had to be put off on
+account of it. She said, in her dignified way, many things vastly
+pleasing to a mother's heart, and Mrs. Lonsdale could do nothing but
+write, giving her consent.
+
+When she had written the letter and sent it off she began to be
+curiously depressed, and she wandered through the flat, conscious at
+last of just how much she had really missed Peggy's laughter, her
+gaiety, and her swift young step. The week before her loomed longer than
+all the time she had been away.
+
+That afternoon she told Ayling her news, but it was not until she had
+finished telling him that she remembered that he, too, would be going
+away. She hadn't known until then how much his being there had meant.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "how I shall put in the week! After all, I've
+been missing her more than I knew."
+
+It occurred to Ayling that, standing there before him with Lady McCrae's
+letter, which she had been showing him, in her hand, she was exactly
+like a little girl who was going to be left all alone.
+
+The idea came to him suddenly. "Look here, Bessie; come down to Homebury
+St. Mary with me! It would do you no end of good."
+
+The quality of their friendship was clear in the simplicity with which
+he made the suggestion, and the absence of self-consciousness with which
+she heard it made.
+
+"I should love it!" she said.
+
+"Then come along. You've nothing to keep you here; the country's just
+what you need."
+
+She did not answer at once, but stood looking away from him, a little
+frown between her eyes. She was thinking how absurd it would be to
+object, and how equally absurd it seemed to say yes. It _was_ so nice to
+have some one think of her as he thought of himself, simply, normally,
+humanly, as Dick Ayling seemed to have thought of her from the first.
+
+Then abruptly she accepted his simplification. "I'll go," she said.
+
+"Good! I'll telephone through for a room for you.... When can you be
+ready?" he asked.
+
+"To-day--this afternoon. Let's get away before I discover all the
+reasons to prevent! I won't bother about a lot of luggage--my big bag
+will do."
+
+"Great! I'll ask about trains."
+
+All at once, like two children, they became immensely exhilarated at the
+prospect before them--a week's holiday!
+
+He went to the telephone and presently reported: "There's a train at
+two-forty. Can you make it by then?"
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantel. "We'll make it," she said.
+
+He was getting into his coat. "I'll go on to the club, get my things
+together, and come back for you at two-fifteen, then."
+
+He rushed away, both of them almost forgetting to say good-by, and she
+went into her bedroom to pack.
+
+When, promptly at two-fifteen, he rang her bell, she was waiting, hat
+and gloves on, and called out, "All ready!" as the taxi-driver followed
+Ayling up for her bag....
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+The spring had come up to meet them at Homebury St. Mary. So Bessie
+Lonsdale said to herself when she woke in her old-fashioned
+chintz-curtained room. The sun shone in at the windows, the air was
+balmy and sweet, and lifting herself on her elbow, she saw in a little
+round swale in the garden outside a faint showing of green nestled into
+the damp brown earth.
+
+She got up, rang for a maid, who came, smiling, white-capped,
+rosy-cheeked. She had coffee and rolls with rich country cream while she
+dressed. Her room opened directly into the garden, and she put on stout
+boots and a walking-suit and a soft little hat of green felt, and went
+out. Ayling, who had evidently risen early, was coming toward her,
+swinging a great, freshly whittled staff cut from the woods beyond the
+inn. He called to her:
+
+"You see! The sun _does_ shine at Homebury St. Mary!" And then, as if in
+gratitude for so glorious a day, he wished to be fair to the rest of the
+world, he added, as he came up, "I wonder if it's shining in London,
+too."
+
+"London?" she said. "London? There's no such place!"
+
+"Glad you came?" he asked.
+
+"Glad!" Her tone was enough.
+
+"That's a jolly green hat," he said, and made her a little bow.
+
+"Glad you like it," she laughed. "And that's a jolly staff."
+
+He showed it off proudly. "Work of art," he said. "I made one just like
+it when I was here the summer I was twelve--I remembered it this morning
+when I woke up, and I came out to get this one."
+
+She admired it critically, particularly the initials of the dark bark
+left on, but suggested an improvement about the knob.
+
+"By Jove! you're right," he admitted, and set to work with his knife.
+
+They were like two youngsters out of school. All morning they idled
+out-of-doors, exploring the little lanes that led off into the
+buff-colored hills, returning at noon, ravenous, to lunch in the
+dining-room of the inn, parting afterward in the corridor, and going to
+their own rooms to rest and read. At four Ayling tapped at her door to
+say that there was in the sitting-room "an absolutely enormous tea."
+
+That night, before a beautiful fire in the sitting-room, they caught
+each other yawning at half past nine, and at ten they said good-night.
+
+It had been so perfect that the next day found them following the same
+routine. And the next day, and the next. Bessie Lonsdale had not felt
+for years so much peace and so much strength. In their morning walks
+together her strength showed greater than his. The bracing air
+exhilarated her, and she felt she could have walked forever in the
+lovely rolling hills. Once she had walked on and on, faster and faster,
+not noticing how she had quickened her pace, her head up, facing the
+light wind blowing in from the sea. And, turning to ask a question of
+Ayling at her side, his white face stopped her instantly.
+
+"Oh, I _am_ sorry! Forgive me," she said.
+
+He smiled, embarrassed, and waited a moment for breath before he said,
+"It's just the wind; it's pretty stiff."
+
+And she had said no more, because it embarrassed him, but she suited her
+pace to his after that, never forgiving herself for her thoughtlessness.
+And she chose, instead of the hill roads, the level, winding lanes.
+
+For five perfect spring days they spent their mornings out-of-doors in
+the sun, lunched, parted until tea, met at dinner again, and said good
+night at a preposterously early hour. And they could not have said
+whether they amused or interested or merely comforted each other.
+Perhaps they did all three. At any rate, it was an idyll of its kind,
+and of more genuine beauty than many less platonic idylls have been.
+
+On the morning of the sixth day Bessie Lonsdale went out into the garden
+as usual, to find the sky overcast with light, fleecy clouds. But the
+air was soft, and she wandered about for half an hour before it occurred
+to her that perhaps Ayling was waiting for her inside. She went in to
+look, but saw him nowhere, and decided that he was sleeping late. She
+waited until eleven, and then went out to walk by herself. But she did
+not relish the walk because she was uneasy about Ayling. She was afraid
+he was ill. She forced herself to go on a little way, but when she came
+to the second turn in the road, she faced abruptly about and came back
+to the inn. Still Ayling was nowhere about. He was not in the garden; he
+was not in the coffee-room. She went to her own room and sat down with a
+book, but she could not read. So she went into the corridor, searching
+for some one of whom she might inquire. But no one was visible.
+
+Ayling's room opened off of the little public sitting-room at the end of
+the corridor. She went on until she reached the sitting-room, which she
+entered, and then stood still, listening for some sound from beyond
+Ayling's door. The silence seemed to grow round her; it filled the room,
+it spread through the house. And then, propelled by that silence toward
+the door, she put out her hand and knocked softly. There was no
+response. She repeated the knock--twice--and only that pervading silence
+answered her. She took hold of the knob and turned it without a sound;
+the door gave inward and she stepped inside the room. The bed faced her,
+and Ayling was lying there, on his side. Even before she saw his face,
+her own heart told her that he was dead.... He lay there quite
+peacefully, as if he had died in his sleep.
+
+For an instant Bessie Lonsdale thought she was going to faint. And then,
+moved by the force of an emotion which seemed to take possession of her
+from the outside, an emotion which she could not recognize, but which
+was irresistible and which, as the silence had propelled her a moment
+ago, took her backward now, step by step, noiselessly, out of that
+room; caused her to close the door after her, and, still moving backward
+without a sound, to come to a stop in the middle of the little
+sitting-room. For now that strange fear, premonition--she knew not
+what--which seemed to have been traveling toward her from a great
+distance, seemed suddenly to concentrate itself into a single name,
+"Peggy!" ... Confused, swirling, the connotations that accompanied the
+name took possession of her mind, of her body, her will. _Peggy was
+threatened_.... Through this thing that had happened Peggy's happiness
+might be destroyed! In a flash she saw the story--the cold facts printed
+in a newspaper--as they would undoubtedly be--or told by gossips, glad
+of a scandal to repeat: She, Peggy's mother--and Richard Ayling together
+at a country inn--the sudden and sensational discovery of Ayling's
+death.... She could see the stern face of Lady McCrae--the accusing blue
+eyes of Andrew McCrae ... and Peggy's stricken face.
+
+She tried to pull herself together--to think; her thoughts were not
+reasoning thoughts, but unrelated, floating, detached....
+
+Suddenly, by some strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out
+clear. They stood out like the three facts of a simple syllogism.
+
+There was nothing she could do for Richard Ayling now.... No one knew
+she was here.... A train for London passed Homebury St. Mary a little
+after noon.
+
+All the years of Bessie Lonsdale's motherhood commanded her to act. Her
+muscles alone seemed to hear and obey. She was like a person hypnotized,
+who had been ordered with great detail and precision what to do.
+
+Soundlessly, she went from the room and down the length of the corridor.
+In her own room she threw scattered garments into a bag, swept in the
+things from the dresser, glanced into the mirror, and was astonished to
+see that she had on her coat and hat. Then out through the door that led
+to the garden, a sharp turn to the right, and she was off, walking
+swiftly, with no sensation of touching the earth. A train whistled in
+the distance, came into sight. She raced with it, reached the station
+just as it drew alongside and came to a stop. The guard took her bag,
+and she swung onto the step. It did not seem strange to her that she had
+reached the station at precisely the same time as the train. It seemed
+only natural ... in accordance with the plan....
+
+At seventeen minutes past three o'clock Bessie Lonsdale hurried into a
+telephone-booth in Victoria Station, called up a friend, and asked her
+to tea. Then she took a taxi to within a block of the flat, where she
+dismissed the taxi, went into a pastry-shop, bought some cakes, and five
+minutes later she was taking off her hat and coat in her own bedroom.
+
+She worked quickly, automatically, without any sense of exertion, still
+as if she but obeyed a hypnotist's command. At four o'clock a leaping
+fire in the drawing-room grate flickered cheerily against silver
+tea-things, against the sheen of newly dusted mahogany; books lay here
+and there, carelessly, a late illustrated review open as if some one had
+just put it down, and dressed in a soft gown of blue crêpe, Bessie
+Lonsdale received her guest. She was not an intimate friend, but a
+casual one whom she did not often see. A Mrs. Downey, who loved to talk
+of herself and of her own affairs. Bessie Lonsdale did not know why she
+had chosen her. Her brain had seemed to work without direction,
+independent of her will. She could never have directed it so well.
+
+Even now, as she brought her in and heard herself saying easy, friendly,
+commonplace things, she had no sense of willing herself to say them
+consciously. They said themselves. She heard nothing that Mrs. Downey
+said, yet she answered her. Later, while she was pouring Mrs. Downey's
+tea, she remembered a time, over a year ago, when she had heard Mrs.
+Downey say, "Two, and no cream." She put in the two lumps, and was
+startled to hear her guest exclaim, "My dear, what a memory!" ... She
+did not know whether Mrs. Downey told her one or many things that
+afternoon. Only certain words, parts of sentences, gestures, imprinted
+themselves upon her mind, never to be erased. She seemed divided into
+two separate selves, neither of them complete--one, the intenser of the
+two, was at Homebury St. Mary, looking down upon Ayling's still, dead
+face; and that self was filled with pity, with remorse, with a
+tenderness that hurt. The other self was here, in a gown of blue crêpe,
+drinking tea, and possessed of a voice which she could hear vaguely
+making the conversation one makes when nothing has happened, when one
+has been lonely and a little bored....
+
+All at once something was going on in the room, a clangor that seemed to
+waken Bessie Lonsdale out of the unreality of a dream. It summoned her
+will to come back to its control.
+
+Mrs. Downey was smiling and saying in an ordinary tone, "Your
+telephone."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale rose and crossed the room, took the receiver from its
+stand, said, "Yes," and waited.
+
+A man's voice came over the wire. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Lonsdale,
+please."
+
+"I am Mrs. Lonsdale," she said in a smooth, low voice. Her voice was
+perfectly smooth because her will had deserted her again. Only her brain
+worked, clearly, independently.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Lonsdale; this is Mr. Burke speaking, Mr. Franklin Burke, of
+the Cosmos Club. I am making an effort to get into touch with friends of
+Mr. Richard Ayling, and I am told by a man named Chedsey, who I believe
+was at one time in your employ, that Mr. Ayling is an old friend of your
+family."
+
+"Yes," she said, "we are old friends."
+
+"You knew, then, I presume, that Mr. Ayling had gone away--to the
+country some days ago."
+
+"Yes," she said, again, "I knew that he had not been well and that he
+had gone out of town for a week.... Is there--anything?" Her heart was
+beating very loudly in her ears.
+
+"I dislike to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Lonsdale, but I must tell
+you that we have received a telephone message here at the club that--I
+hope it will not shock you too much--that Mr. Ayling died sometime
+to-day, at an inn where he was staying, at Homebury St. Mary, I
+believe."
+
+His voice was very gentle and concerned. She hesitated perceptibly, and
+his voice came over the wire, "I'm sorry--very sorry, to tell you in
+this way--"
+
+She heard herself speaking: "Naturally, I--it's something of a
+shock...."
+
+"Indeed I understand."
+
+Again she caught the sound of her own voice, as if it belonged to some
+one else, "I suppose it was his heart."
+
+"He was known to have a bad heart?"
+
+"Yes; it has been weak for years."
+
+"I wonder, Mrs. Lonsdale, if I may ask a favor of you. You know, of
+course, that Mr. Ayling had very few close friends in London; you are,
+in fact, the only one we have been able, on this short notice, to find.
+For that reason I am going to ask that you let me come to see you this
+afternoon; you will understand that there are certain formalities, facts
+which it will be necessary for us to have, which only an old friend of
+Mr. Ayling could give--that we could get in no other way...."
+
+"I understand, perfectly."
+
+"Then I may come?"
+
+"Certainly." ... There was nothing else she could say.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+She did not know how she got rid of her guest, what explanation she
+made, nor how she happened to be saying good-by to her at the very
+moment when the dignified, elderly Mr. Burke arrived, so that they had
+to be introduced. Though she must have made some adequate explanation,
+since Mrs. Downey's last words were, in the presence of Mr. Burke, "It's
+always so hard, I think, to lose one's really _old_ friends."
+
+Mr. Burke came in. He was very correct, very kind. He begged Mrs.
+Lonsdale to believe that it was with the greatest regret that he called
+upon so sad an errand; that he came only because it was necessary and
+she was the only person to whom they could turn. He added that he had
+known her husband, Major Lonsdale, in his lifetime, and hoped that she
+would consider him, therefore, not so entirely a stranger to her.
+
+She heard him as one hears music far away, only the accents and the
+climaxes coming clear. He asked her questions, and she was conscious of
+answering them: How long had she known Mr. Ayling?--He and her husband
+had been boyhood friends; she had met him first at the time of her
+marriage to Major Lonsdale. Had they kept up the friendship during all
+these years?--No, she had heard nothing of Mr. Ayling since her
+husband's death; she knew that he was in India; they had renewed the
+friendship when he returned to England a short time ago.--Ah, it was
+probable, then, that she knew very little about any attachments Mr.
+Ayling might have had?--Here Mr. Burke shifted his position, coughed
+slightly, and said:
+
+"I ask you these questions, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of a very--may I
+say--a very unfortunate element in connection with the case. It appears
+that there was a woman with Mr. Ayling at the Homebury St. Mary inn."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale waited, she did not know for what. Whole minutes seemed
+to go by with the elderly Mr. Burke sitting there in his attitude of
+formal sympathy before his voice began again.
+
+"I have only been free to mention this to you, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of
+the fact that you will hear of it in any case, since it must come out in
+the formalities--"
+
+"Formalities?" Her voice cut sharply into his.
+
+"There will, of course, be an inquest--an investigation--the usual
+thing. I have been in communication with the coroner's office by
+telephone, and I have promised to drive down to Homebury St. Mary myself
+this afternoon. He was away on another case, and will not reach there
+himself until six. Meantime we must do what we can. They will
+necessarily make an effort to discover the woman."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale must have given some sort of involuntary cry, the
+implication of which Mr. Burke interpreted in his own way, for he
+changed his tone to say:
+
+"I'm afraid, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale, that she was a bit of a rotter,
+whoever she was, for she--ran."
+
+"Ran?" She repeated the word.
+
+He nodded. "Disappeared."
+
+She did not know what expression it was of hers that caused him to say:
+"I don't wonder you look so shocked. I was shocked. Women don't often do
+that sort of thing...." She wanted to cry out that that sort of thing
+didn't often happen to women, but he was going on. He had risen and was
+walking slowly up and down before the smoldering fire, and in his
+incisive, deliberate, well-bred voice he was excoriating the woman who
+had been so cowardly as to desert a dying man. "Even if she hadn't
+seriously cared, or if, for that matter, she hadn't cared at all, it
+would seem that mere common decency.... It puts, frankly, a very
+unpleasant light on the whole affair.... Ayling was a gentleman,
+and--you will forgive me for saying so, I'm sure--just the decent sort
+to be imposed upon, to allow himself to be led into the most unfortunate
+affair."
+
+She wanted to stop him, to cry out, to protest. But his words were like
+physical blows which stunned her and made her too weak to speak. She
+felt that if he went on much longer she would lose consciousness
+altogether. Even now she heard only fragments of words.
+
+Suddenly she heard the word "publicity." He had stopped before her and
+was looking down at her.
+
+"I think, Mrs. Lonsdale, that the thing we both wish--that is, we at the
+club, and you, as his friend--is to do what we can to save any
+unnecessary scandal in connection with poor Ayling's death. It is the
+least we can do for him."
+
+"Yes!" She grasped frantically at the straw. "Yes, by all means that!"
+
+"You would be willing to help?"
+
+"Yes, anything! But what is there I can do?"
+
+He was maddeningly deliberate. "You are the only person, it appears--at
+least the only person available--who has been aware of the condition of
+Mr. Ayling's heart. You can say, can you not, with certainty, that he
+did suffer from a serious affection of the heart?"
+
+"He came home from India on account of it."
+
+"Very well, then. It was also the verdict of the doctor who was called.
+I think together we may be able to obviate the necessity of a too public
+investigation--at any rate, we shall see. It must be done, of course,
+before the official investigation begins. Therefore, if you will come
+down with me this afternoon, in my car--"
+
+"Come with you? Where?"
+
+"To the inn, at Homebury," he said.
+
+She was trapped ... trapped.... The realization of it sprang upon her,
+but too late, for already she cried out, "Oh, I couldn't--I couldn't do
+that!"
+
+Mr. Burke was looking down at her. He loomed above her like the figure
+of fate.... She was trapped.... There was no way out, and suddenly she
+realized that she had risen and said: "Forgive me! To be sure I will
+go."
+
+"I understand," said Mr. Burke, "how one shrinks from that sort of
+thing."
+
+She did not know what she was going to do. She only knew that for this
+step, at least, she could no longer resist. Again she had the sensation
+of speaking and moving automatically, of decisions making themselves
+without the effort of her will.
+
+She asked how soon he wished to go, and he said, consulting his watch,
+that they ought to start at once; his car was waiting in the street,
+since he had planned to go on directly from her house. She excused
+herself, and went to her room. She did not change her dress, but put on
+a long, warm coat, her hat, her veil, her gloves, and made sure of her
+key in her purse. Then she came out and said she was ready to go. He
+complimented her, with a smile, on the short time it had taken her, and
+she wondered if he had really seen her hesitation of a few moments
+before. They went down the stairs together. At the curb a chauffeur
+stood beside a motor, into which, with the utmost consideration for her
+comfort, Mr. Burke handed her. Then he gave his instructions to the
+chauffeur, and followed her in.
+
+And there began for Bessie Lonsdale that fantastic ride in which she
+felt herself being carried forward, as if on the effortless wings of
+fate itself, to the very scene from which she had fled.
+
+She had no idea, no dramatization in her mind, of what awaited her or of
+what she intended to do. Her imagination refused to focus upon it; and,
+strangely, she seemed almost to be resting, leaning back against the
+tufted cushions, resting against the time when she should be called upon
+for her strength. For she only knew that when the time came to act she
+would act.
+
+It was curious how she did not think of Peggy. She was like a lover who
+has been set a herculean task to accomplish before he may even think of
+his beloved.
+
+Beside her, Mr. Burke seemed to understand that she did not wish to
+talk. Perhaps he was thinking of other things; after all, he had not
+been Richard Ayling's friend; it was only a human duty he performed.
+
+Long stretches went by in which she saw nothing on either side, and
+other stretches in which everything--houses, trees, objects of all
+kinds--were exceedingly clear cut and magnified....
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mr. Burke's voice, "that we're running into a storm."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale looked up, and saw that those fleecy, light-gray clouds
+which she had seen in the sky early that morning as she stood waiting
+for Ayling in the garden of the inn, and which had been gathering all
+day, hung now black and menacing just above her head.
+
+It descended upon them suddenly; torrents ran in the road. The wind
+veered, and sent great gusts of rain into the car. The chauffeur turned
+and asked if he should stop and put the curtains up. Mr. Burke said no,
+to go on, they might run through it, and it was too violent to last.
+Meantime he worked with the curtains himself, and she helped. But it was
+no use; they were getting drenched, and the wind whipped the curtains
+out of their hands. Mr. Burke leaned forward and called to the chauffeur
+to ask if there was any place near where they might stop.
+
+"There's an inn about half a mile farther on. Shall I make it?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+They ran presently into the strips of light that shed outward from the
+lighted windows of the inn. A half-dozen motors already were lined up
+outside. They got out and together ran for the door.
+
+Inside, the small public room was almost filled. People sat at the
+tables, ordering things to eat and drink, and making the best of it.
+They chose a small corner table, a little apart from the rest. The
+landlord bustled up and took their coats to dry before the kitchen fire.
+A very gay, very dripping party of six came in, assembled with much
+laughter the last two tables remaining unoccupied, and settled next to
+them, so that they were no longer in a secluded spot.
+
+In a few moments there came in, almost blown through the door by a
+violent gust of wind and rain, a short, stout, ruddy person, who, when
+the landlord had relieved him of his hat and coat, stood looking about
+for a vacant seat. The landlord came toward the table where sat Mrs.
+Lonsdale and Mr. Burke.
+
+"Sorry, sir," he said; "it's the only place left."
+
+"May I?" asked the stranger, and at Mrs. Lonsdale's nod and smile, and
+Mr. Burke's assent, he drew out the chair and sat down. The two men
+spoke naturally of the suddenness of the storm, of the good fortune of
+finding a refuge so near.
+
+Bessie Lonsdale was glad of some one else, glad when she heard the
+stranger and Mr. Burke fall into the easy passing conversation of men.
+It would relieve her of the necessity to talk. It would give her time to
+think; for it seemed, dimly, that respite had been offered her. Into her
+thoughts broke the voice of Mr. Burke addressing her:
+
+"How very singular, Mrs. Lonsdale! This gentleman is Mr Ford, the
+coroner, also on his way to Homebury!"
+
+The stranger was on his feet, bowing and acknowledging the introduction
+of Mr. Burke. Bessie Lonsdale had the sensation of waters closing over
+her, yet she, too, was bowing and acknowledging the introduction of Mr.
+Burke. She had a vivid impression of light shining downward upon the
+red-gray hair of Mr. Ford, as he sat down again; and of Mr. Burke saying
+something about "the case," and about Mrs. Lonsdale being an old friend
+of the dead man; about her having been good enough to volunteer to shed
+whatever light she might have upon the case, and of their meeting being
+the "most fortunate coincidence."
+
+Mr. Ford signified that he, too, looked upon it in that way. They would
+go on to Homebury together, he said, when the storm had cleared.
+
+"I suppose," he asked, leaning forward a little, confidentially, "that
+Mrs. Lonsdale knows of the--peculiar element----"
+
+"The woman--yes," said Mr. Burke. And Bessie Lonsdale inclined her head
+and said, "I know."
+
+"And do you know who she was?"
+
+She had only to make a negative sign, for Mr. Burke, with nice
+consideration, anticipated her reply:
+
+"Unfortunately, Mr. Ford, no one appears to have the least idea who she
+might be. Mrs. Lonsdale, however, has been able to clear up a point
+which may, I fancy, make the identity of the woman less important than
+it might otherwise appear to be. Mrs. Lonsdale has known for some time
+of the serious condition of Mr. Ayling's heart. It was because of it,
+she tells me, that Mr. Ayling came home from India. Mrs. Lonsdale's
+testimony, together with the statement of the physician who was called,
+would seem to leave little doubt that it was merely a case of heart."
+
+Mr. Ford was nodding his head. "So it would," he said. "Yes, so it
+would." He stopped nodding, and sat there an instant, as if he were
+thinking of something else. "If that's the case," he broke out, "what a
+rotter, by Jove! that woman was!"
+
+"Rotter, I think," said Mr. Burke, "was precisely the word _I_ used."
+
+And Bessie Lonsdale listened for the second time that day while two
+voices, now, instead of one, were lifted in excoriation of some woman
+who seemed to grow, as they talked, only a shade less real than herself.
+
+She had again the sensation of the words beating upon her like blows
+which she was powerless to resist. She lost, as one does in physical
+pain, all sense of time....
+
+"However," Mr. Ford brought down his hand with a kind of judicial
+finality, "if Mrs. Lonsdale will come on down with us now--the storm
+seems to have slackened--we'll see what can be done." He turned in his
+chair as if he were preparing to rise.
+
+At the movement Bessie Lonsdale seemed to grow rigid in her chair.
+
+"Wait."
+
+Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned, startled by the strangeness of her tone.
+They waited for her to speak.
+
+"I can't go."
+
+"Can't go?" They echoed it together. "Why not?"
+
+"Because," said she, "I am the woman you have been talking about."
+
+For an instant they sat perfectly motionless, the three of them. Then
+slowly Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned their heads and looked at each
+other, as if to verify what they had heard. Mr. Burke put out his hand
+toward Bessie Lonsdale's arm, resting on the table, and he spoke very
+gently indeed:
+
+"My dear Mrs. Lonsdale, this is impossible."
+
+"Impossible," she said, passing her hand across her eyes, "impossible?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale." He spoke reasonably, as if she were a child. "It
+couldn't be you." He turned now to include Mr. Ford, who sat staring at
+them both. "I myself gave Mrs. Lonsdale the news of Mr. Ayling's death,
+over the telephone. She was at her home, in Cambridge Terrace, quietly
+having tea with a friend; the friend was still there when I arrived. You
+have been at home, in London, all day."
+
+"No," she said. "No, Mr. Burke."
+
+"I think," said Mr. Ford, also very gently indeed, "that perhaps Mrs.
+Lonsdale is trying to shield some one."
+
+Until that instant Bessie Lonsdale had no plan. She had only known that
+she could not go with them to Homebury St. Mary, there to be recognized.
+But something in the suggestion of Mr. Ford--in the tone, perhaps, more
+than the words--caused her to say, looking from one to the other of
+these two men so lately strangers to her:
+
+"I wonder--I wonder if I could make you understand!"
+
+They begged her to believe that that was the thing they wished most to
+do.
+
+"I did it"--she paused, and forced herself to go on--"because of my
+daughter."
+
+Intent upon her truth, she did not even see by the shocked expression of
+their faces the awfulness of the thing they thought she confessed, and
+the obviousness of the reason to which their minds had leaped.
+
+Mr. Burke put out his hand again and laid it upon her arm, which
+trembled slightly at his touch. "Mrs. Lonsdale," he said, and this time
+he spoke even more gently, but more urgently, than before, "are you
+_sure_ you wish to tell?"
+
+"No," said Bessie Lonsdale, "but I've _got_ to, don't you see?"
+
+Mr. Ford moved in his chair, and spoke, guarding his voice, judicially.
+"Since we have gone so far, it will be even better, perhaps, for Mrs.
+Lonsdale to tell it to us here."
+
+Mr. Burke nodded, and they looked toward her expectantly.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale?" said Mr. Ford.
+
+An instant the brown-flecked eyes appeared to be searching for some
+human contact which she seemed vaguely to have lost. And then she began
+at the beginning--with her daughter's engagement to young Andrew McCrae,
+her happiness, her security--and quietly, with only now and then a
+slight tension of her body and her voice, she told it all to them,
+exactly as it happened, without plea or embellishment. She had only one
+stress, and that she tried to make reasonable to them--her child's
+security.
+
+And they waited, attentive and patient, for the motive to emerge, for
+the beginning of that complication between her daughter and Richard
+Ayling, which they believed was to be the crux of her narrative.
+
+And as her story progressed their bewilderment increased, for never, it
+appeared, had Bessie Lonsdale's daughter so much as heard of the
+existence of the man who lay dead at Homebury inn. She seemed even to
+make a special point of that.
+
+They thought she but put it off against the time when it should be
+forced from her lips; but her story did not halt; she was telling it
+step by step, accounting for every hour of the time.
+
+They waited for her to offer proof of the condition of Ayling's heart.
+She did not mention it, except to say, when she came to relating the
+moment of her discovery, that she had not thought of it; that even when
+she opened the door of his room she did not think directly of his heart;
+and only when she saw him actually lying there so peacefully dead did
+she remember the danger in which he constantly lived. She seemed to
+offer it as proof of the suddenness and completeness of her shock, and
+in extenuation of the thing she afterward did.
+
+Slowly, gradually, as they listened, and as the light of her omissions
+made it clear, it had begun to dawn upon them that Bessie Lonsdale was
+telling the whole of the truth. And by it she sought to disprove
+_something_, but not the thing they thought.
+
+She had paused, at the point of her flight, to attempt, a little
+hopelessly, to make her impulse real to them. She spoke of the
+inflexible honor of the McCraes, of the great respect which had for
+generations attached to their name. Then suddenly, as if she saw the
+utter hopelessness of making them understand, she seemed with a gesture
+to give up abstractions and obscurities and to find in the depth of her
+mother's heart the final simple words:
+
+"Don't you see?" she said. "I hadn't thought how my being there at the
+same inn with Mr. Ayling would look--and then, all at once, it came over
+me. The whole thing, how it would look to the world, how it would look
+to the family of my daughter's fiancé,--and that it might mean the
+breaking of the engagement,--the wreck of her future happiness--don't
+you see--I didn't think of 'being a rotter'--I only thought of her!"
+
+They uttered, both of them, a sudden exclamation, as if they had been
+struck. By their expressions one might have thought the woman the
+accuser and the two men the accused.
+
+"Oh, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale--!" they both began at once, but she stopped
+them with a gesture of her hand.
+
+"I don't blame you," she said, "I don't blame you. I _was_ a rotter, to
+run, but I simply didn't think of myself."
+
+Her tone, her gentleness, were the final proof. Only the innocent so
+graciously forgive.
+
+"And now," she was saying, a great weariness in her voice, "I've told
+you. Do you want me to go on? It isn't raining any more."
+
+"Perhaps, Mr. Ford--" Mr. Burke began. A look passed between them, like
+a question and an assent.
+
+"If you, Mr. Burke," said Mr. Ford, "will come on with me, I think we
+can let your man drive Mrs. Lonsdale home. It will not be necessary for
+her to appear."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale's thankfulness could find itself no words; it was lost
+in that first moment in astonishment. She had not really expected them
+to believe. It had not even, as she told it, seemed to her own ears
+adequate.
+
+"I think," said Mr. Burke, seeing her silent so long, "that Mrs.
+Lonsdale hasn't an idea of the seriousness of the charge she has
+escaped."
+
+"Charge?" she repeated--"Charge?--" and without another word, Bessie
+Lonsdale fainted in her chair. And as she lost consciousness she heard,
+dim and far away, the voice of Mr. Ford reply: "That--the fact that she
+_hadn't_ an idea of it--and that alone, is why she _has_ escaped."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+"I'm perfectly sure," said Peggy Lonsdale, on Saturday afternoon, "that
+you _did_ let yourself have a dull time!" She was exploring the flat
+before she had taken off her things, and had stopped to sit for a moment
+on the arm of her mother's chair. "Anyway, mother dear, you didn't have
+to think of me! That must have been a relief!"
+
+She put down her head and kissed her, and Bessie Lonsdale patted the
+fragrant young cheek.
+
+"Oh, I thought of you occasionally," she said.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[15] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Fleta
+Campbell Springer.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF EXILE[16]
+
+#By# WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
+
+From _The Pictorial Review_
+
+
+Among all the memories of my boyhood in Urkey Island the story of Mary
+Matheson and the Blake boys comes back to me now, more than any other,
+with the sense of a thing seen in a glass darkly. And the darkness of
+the glass was my own adolescence.
+
+I know that now, and I'm sorry. I'm ashamed to find myself suspecting
+that half of Mary Matheson's mature beauty in my eyes may have been
+romance, and half the romance mystery, and half of that the unsettling
+discovery that the other sex does not fade at seventeen and wither quite
+away at twenty, as had been taken somehow for granted. I'm glad there is
+no possibility of meeting her again as she was at thirty, and so making
+sure: I shall wish to remember her as the boy of sixteen saw her that
+night waiting in the dunes above the wreck of the "India ship," with
+Rolldown Nickerson bleating as he fled from the small, queer casket of
+polished wood he had flung on the sand, and the bridegroom peering out
+of the church window, over the moors in Urkey Village.
+
+The thing began when I was too young to make much of it yet, a wonder of
+less than seven days among all the other bright, fragmentary wonders of
+a boy's life at six. Mainly I remember that Mary Matheson was a fool;
+every one in Urkey Village was saying that.
+
+I can't tell how long the Blake boys had been courting her. I came too
+late to see anything but the climax of that unbrotherly tournament, and
+only by grace of the hundredth chance of luck did I witness even one act
+of that.
+
+I was coming home one autumn evening just at dusk, loitering up the cow
+street from the eastward where the big boys had been playing "Run,
+Sheep, Run," and I watching from the vantage of Aunt Dee Nickerson's
+hen-house and getting whacked when I told. And I had come almost to the
+turning into Drugstore Lane when the sound of a voice fetched me up, all
+eyes and ears, against the pickets of the Matheson place.
+
+It was the voice of my cousin Duncan, the only father I ever knew. He
+was constable of Urkey Village, and there was something in the voice as
+I heard it in the yard that told you why.
+
+"Drop it, Joshua! Drop it, or by heavens----!"
+
+Of Duncan I could see only the back, large and near. But the faces of
+the others were plain to my peep-hole between the pickets, or as plain
+as might be in the falling dusk. The sky overhead was still bright, but
+the blue shadow of the bluff lay all across that part of the town, and
+it deepened to a still bluer and cooler mystery under the apple-tree
+canopy sheltering the dooryard. I never see that light to this day, a
+high gloaming sifted through leaves on turf, without the faintest memory
+of a shiver. For that was the first I had even known of anger, the still
+and deadly anger of grown men.
+
+My cousin had spoken to Joshua Blake, and I saw that Joshua held a
+pistol in his hand, the old, single-ball dueling weapon that had
+belonged to his father. His face was white, and the pallor seemed to
+refine still further the blade-like features of the Blake, the aquiline
+nose, the sloping, patrician forehead, the narrow lip, blue to the
+pressure of the teeth.
+
+That was Joshua. Andrew, his brother, stood facing him three or four
+paces away. He was the younger of the two, the less favored, the more
+sensitive.
+
+He had what no other Blake had had, a suspicion of freckle on his high,
+flat cheek. And he had what no one else in Urkey had then, a brace of
+gold teeth, the second and third to the left in the upper jaw, where Lem
+White's boom had caught him, jibing off the Head. They showed now as the
+slowly working lip revealed them, glimmering with a moist, dull sheen.
+He, too, was white.
+
+His hands were empty, hanging down palms forward. But in his eyes there
+was no look of the defenseless: only a light of passionate contempt.
+
+And between the two, and beyond them, as I looked, stood Mary, framed by
+the white pillars of the doorway, her hands at her throat and her long
+eyes dilated with a girl's fright more precious than exultation. So the
+three remained in tableau while, as if on another planet, the dusk
+deepened from moment to moment: Gramma Pilot, two yards away, brought
+supper to her squealing sow; and further off, out on the waning mirror
+of the harbor, a conch lowed faintly for some schooner's bait.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Drop it, Joshua!" Duncan's voice came loud and clear.
+
+And this time, following the hush, it seemed to exercise the devil of
+quietude. I heard Mary's breath between her lips, and saw Andrew wheel
+sharply to pick a scale from the tree-trunk with a thumb-nail. Joshua's
+eyes went down to the preposterous metal in his hand; he shivered
+slightly like a dreamer awakening and thrust it in his pocket. And then,
+seeing Duncan turning toward the fence and me, I took the better part of
+valor and ran, and saw no more.
+
+There were serious men in town that night when it was known what a pass
+the thing had come to; men that walked and women that talked. It was all
+Mary's fault. Long ago she ought to have taken one of them and "sent the
+other packing." That's what Miah White said, sitting behind the stove in
+our kitchen over the shop; that's what Duncan thought as he paced back
+and forth, shaking his head. That's what they were all saying or
+thinking as they sat or wandered about.
+
+Such are the difficulties of serious men. And even while it all went on,
+Mary Matheson had gone about her choosing in the way that seemed fit to
+youth. In the warm-lit publicity of Miss Alma Beedie's birthday-party,
+shaking off so soon the memory of that brief glint of pistol-play under
+the apple-trees, she took a fantastic vow to marry the one that brought
+her the wedding-ring--promised with her left hand on Miss Beedie's
+album and her right lifted toward the allegorical print of the Good
+Shepherd that the one who, first across the Sound to the jeweler's at
+Gillyport and back again, fetched her the golden-ring--that he should be
+her husband "for better or for worse, till death us do part, and so
+forth and so on, Amen!"
+
+And those who were there remembered afterwards that while Joshua stood
+his ground and laughed and clapped with the best of them, his brother
+Andrew left the house. They said his face was a sick white, and that he
+looked back at Mary for an instant from the doorway with a curious, hurt
+expression in his eyes, as if to say, "Is it only a game to you then?
+And if it's only a game, is it worth the candle?" They remembered it
+afterward, I say; long afterward.
+
+They thought he had gone out for just a moment; that presently he would
+return to hold up his end of the gay challenge over the cakes and
+cordial. But to that party Andrew Blake never returned. Their first hint
+of what was afoot they had when Rolldown Nickerson, the beachcomber,
+came running in, shining with the wet of the autumn gale that began that
+night. He wanted Joshua to look out for his brother. Being innocent of
+what had happened at the party, he thought Andrew had gone out of his
+head.
+
+"Here I come onto him in the lee of White's wharf putting a compass into
+the old man's sail-dory, and I says to him, 'What you up to, Andrew?'
+And he says with a kind of laugh, 'Oh, taking a little sail for other
+parts,' says he--like that. Now, just imagine, Josh, with this here
+weather coming on--all hell bu'sting loose to the north'rd!"
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+They say that there came a look into Joshua's eyes that none of them had
+ever seen before. He stood there for a moment, motionless and silent,
+and Rolldown, deceived by his attitude, was at him again.
+
+"You don't realize, man, or else you'd stop him!"
+
+"Oh, I'll _stop_ him!" It was hardly above a breath.
+
+"I'll _stop_ him!" And throwing his greatcoat over his shoulders, Joshua
+went out.
+
+You may believe that the house would not hold the party after that.
+Whispering, giggling, shivering, the young people trooped down Heman
+Street to the shore. And there, under the phantom light of a moon hidden
+by the drift of storm-clouds, they found Andrew gone and all they saw of
+Joshua was a shadow--a shadow in black frock-clothes--wading away from
+them over the half-covered flats, deeper and deeper, to where the Adams
+sloop rode at her moorings, a shade tailing in the wind. They called,
+but he did not answer, and before they could do anything he had the sail
+up, and he, too, was gone, into the black heart of the night.
+
+It is lonesome in the dark for a boy of six when the floor heaves and
+the bed shivers and over his head the shingles make a sound in the wind
+like the souls of all the lost men in the world. The hours from two till
+dawn that night I spent under the table in the kitchen, where Miah White
+and his brother Lem had come to talk with Duncan. And among the three of
+them, all they could say was "My heavens! My heavens!" I say till dawn;
+but our kitchen might have given on a city air-shaft for all the dawn we
+got.
+
+It is hard to give any one who has lived always in the shelter of the
+land an idea of the day that followed, hour by waiting hour--how folks
+walked the beaches and did not look at each other in passing, and how
+others, climbing the bluff to have a better sight of the waters beyond
+the Head, found themselves blinded by the smother at fifty yards and yet
+still continued to stare.
+
+Of them all, that day, Mary Matheson was the only one who kept still.
+And she was as still as an image. Standing half-hidden in the untidy
+nook behind the grocery, she remained staring out through the harbor
+mists from dawn till another heavy night came down, and no one can say
+whether she would have gone home then had not the appalled widow, her
+mother, slipped down between the houses to take her.
+
+She was at home, at any rate, when Joshua Blake came back.
+
+After all that waiting and watching, no one saw him land on the
+battered, black beach, for it was in the dead hour of the morning; of
+the three persons who are said to have met him on his way to Mary's, two
+were so tardy with their claims that a doubt has been cast on them. I do
+believe, tho, that Mother Polly Freeman, the west-end midwife, saw him
+and spoke with him in the light thrown from the drug-store window
+(where, had I only known enough to be awake, I might have looked down on
+them from my bed-room and got some fame of my own).
+
+She says she thought at first he was a ghost come up from the bottom of
+the sea, with his clothes plastered thin to his body, weed in his hair,
+and his face drawn and creased like fish-flesh taken too soon out of the
+pickle. Afterward, when he spoke, she thought he was crazy.
+
+"I've got it!" he said, taking hold of her arm. Opening a blue hand he
+held it out in the light for her to see the ring that had bitten his
+palm with the grip. "See, I've got it, Mother Poll!" She says it was
+hardly more than a whisper, like a secret, and that there was a look in
+his eyes as if he had seen the Devil face to face.
+
+She meant to run when he let her go, but when she saw him striding off
+toward Mary Matheson's her better wisdom prevailed; following along the
+lane and taking shelter behind Gramma Pilot's fence, she waited,
+watched, and listened, to the enduring gain of Urkey's sisterhood.
+
+She used to tell it well, Mother Poll. Remembering her tale now, I think
+I can see the earth misting under the trees in the calm dawn, and hear
+Joshua's fist pounding, pounding, on the panels of the door.
+
+It must have been queer for Mother Poll. For while she heard that hollow
+pounding under the portico, like the pounding of a heart in some deep
+bosom of horror--all the while she could see Mary herself in an upper
+window--just her face resting on one cold, still forearm on the sill.
+And her eyes, Mother Poll says, were enough to make one pity her.
+
+It was strange that she was so lazy, not to move or to speak in answer
+while the summons of the triumphant lover went on booming through the
+lower house. _He_ must have wondered. Perhaps it was then that the
+first shadow of the ghost of doubt crept over him, or perhaps it was
+when, stepping out on the turf, he raised his eyes and discovered Mary's
+face in the open window.
+
+He said nothing. But with a wide, uncontrolled gesture he held up the
+ring for her to see. After a moment she opened her lips.
+
+"Where's Andrew?"
+
+That seemed to be the last straw: a feverish anger laid hold of him.
+"Here's the ring! You see it! Damnation, Mary! You gave your word and I
+took it, and God knows what I've been through. Now come! Get your things
+on and bring your mother if you like--but to Minister Malden's you go
+with me _now_! You hear Mary? I'll not wait!"
+
+"Where's Andrew?"
+
+"Andrew? Andrew? Why the devil do you keep on asking for Andrew? What's
+_Andrew_ to you--now?"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Mary, you're a fool!"
+
+Her voice grew if anything more monotonous; his, higher and wilder.
+
+"You're a fool," he cried again, "if you don't know where Andrew is."
+
+"He's gone."
+
+"Gone, yes! And how you can say it like that, so calm--God!"
+
+"I knew he was going," she said. "He told Rolldown he was going to other
+parts. But I knew it before that--when he turned at the door and looked
+at me, Joshua. He said it as plain: 'If _that's_ love,' he said, 'then
+I'm going off somewhere and forget it, and never come back to Urkey any
+more.'"
+
+The deadness went out of her voice, and it lifted to another note.
+"Joshua, he's got to come back, for I can't bear it. I gave you my word,
+and I'll marry you--when Andrew comes back to stand at the wedding. He's
+got to--_got_ to!"
+
+Mother Poll said that Joshua stared at her--simply stood there and
+stared up at her in the queer, cold dawn, his mouth hanging open as if
+with a kind of horror. Sweat shone on his face. Turning away without a
+word by and by he laid an uncertain course for the gate, and leaving it
+open behind him went off through the vapors of the cow street to the
+east.
+
+As they carried him along step by step, I think, the feet of the cheated
+gambler grew heavier and heavier, his shoulders collapsed, the head,
+with the memory in it he could never lose, hung down, and hell received
+his soul.
+
+It is impossible in so short a space to tell what the next ten years did
+to those two. It would have been easier for Mary Matheson in a city, for
+in a city there is always the blankness of the crowd. In a village there
+is no such blessed thing as a stranger, the membership committee of the
+only club is the doctor and the midwife, and all the houses are made of
+glass.
+
+In a city public opinion is mighty, but devious. In a village,
+especially in an island village, it is as direct and violent as any "act
+of God" written down in a ship's insurance papers. A word carries far
+over the fences, and where it drops, like a swelling seed, a dozen words
+spring up.
+
+"It's a shame, Milly, a living shame, as sure's you're alive."
+
+"You never said truer, Belle. As if 'twa'n't enough she should send Andy
+to his death o' drownding----"
+
+"Well, I hope she's satisfied, what she's done for Joshua. I saw him to
+the post-office last evening, and the hang-dog look of him----"
+
+"Yes, I saw him, too. A man can't stand being made a fool of...."
+
+So, in the blue of a wash-day morning the words went winging back and
+forth between the blossoming lines. Or, in a Winter dusk up to the
+westward, where old Mrs. Paine scuttled about under the mackerel-twine
+of her chicken-pen:
+
+"Land alive, it's all very well to talk Temp'rance, and I'm not denying
+it'd be a mercy for some folks--I ain't mentioning no names--not even
+Miah White's. But, land sakes how you going to talk Temp'rance to a man
+bereft and be-fooled like Joshua Blake? Where's your rime-nor-reason?
+Where's your argument?"
+
+Or there came Miah White himself up our outside stair on the darkest
+evening of our Spring weather, and one glance at his crimson face was
+enough to tell what all the Temperance they had preached to _him_ had
+come to. Miah turned to the bottle as another man might to prayer.
+
+"By the Lord!" he protested thickly. "Something's got to be done!"
+
+"Done? About what?" I remember my cousin peering curiously at him
+through the smoke and spatter of the sausage he was frying.
+
+"About Josh, of course, and _her_. I tell you, Dunc, 'tain't right, and
+I'll not bear it. I'll not see Josh, same as I seen him this night,
+standing there in the dark of the outside beach and staring at the water
+like a sleep-walker, staring and staring as if he'd stare right through
+it and down to the bottom of the sea where his brother lay, and saying
+to himself, _Who's to pay the bill? Who's to pay the bill?_ No, siree!
+You and I are young fellows, Dunc, but we ain't so young we can't
+remember them boys' father, and I guess he done a thing or two for us,
+eh?"
+
+"Yes," Duncan agreed calmly. "But what's to be done?"
+
+"God knows! But look here, Dunc, you're constable, ain't you?"
+
+Duncan smiled pityingly, as if to say, "Don't be an idiot, Miah."
+
+"And if you're constable, and a man owns a bill he won't pay, why then
+you've something to say in it, ain't I right? Well, here's a bill to
+pay, fair and square. All this wool she'd pull over our eyes about
+Andrew and the India ship--as if _that_ made a mite of difference one
+way or the other! No, siree, Dunc, she give her word to take the man
+that fetched the ring--that man's Joshua--the bargain's filled on his
+side--and there you are. Now, you're constable. I take it right, Duncan,
+you should give that girl a piece of your mind; give her to understand
+that, India ship yes, India ship no, she's got a bill to pay and a
+man's soul to save from damnation everlasting."
+
+All Duncan could do with him that night was to smile and shake his head,
+as much as to say, "You're a wild one, Miah, sure enough."
+
+About Mary's sullen, stubborn belief in the "India ship," pretended or
+real as it may have been with her, but already growing legendary, I know
+only in the largest and mistiest way.
+
+It is true there had been a ship that looked like an east-going clipper
+in our waters on that fateful night. Every one had seen it before dark
+came on, standing down from the north and laying a course to weather the
+Head if possible before the weather broke. It was Mary's claim that
+Andrew had pointed it out to her and spoken of it--in a strange way, a
+kind of a wistful way, she said. And later that night, what better for a
+man on the way to exile than a heaven-sent, outbound India ship, hove to
+under the lee of the Head.
+
+Yes, yes, it was so--it _must_ be so. And when they laughed at her in
+Urkey Village and winked sagely at her assumption of faith, then she
+asked them to tell her one thing: had any one's eyes seen Andrew's boat
+go down--actually.
+
+"If Joshua will answer me, and say that he _knows_ Andrew went down! Or
+if any of you will tell me that Andrew's body ever came ashore on any of
+the islands or the main!"
+
+It was quite absurd, of course, but none of them could answer that, none
+but Miah White, and he only when he had had a drop out of the bottle and
+perceived that it weighed not an ounce in either scale.
+
+Picked out so and written down, you would think this drama overshadowed
+all my little world. Naturally it didn't. You must remember I was a boy,
+with a thousand other things to do and a million other things to think
+of, meals to eat, lessons to hate, stones to throw, apples to steal,
+fights to fight. I take my word that by the time I was nine or ten the
+whole tragic episode had gone out of my head. Meeting Mary Matheson on
+the street, where she came but rarely, she was precisely as mysterious
+and precisely as uninteresting as any other grown-up. And if I saw
+Joshua Blake (who, pulling himself by the bootstraps out of drink and
+despair, had gone into Mr. Dow's law-office and grown as hard as
+nails)--if I saw him, I say, my only romantic thought of him was the
+fact that I had broken his wood-shed window, and that, with an air of
+sinister sagacity, he had told several boys he knew who the culprit was.
+(A statement, by the way, which I believed horribly for upward of
+eighteen months.)
+
+I believe that we knew, in a dim sort of way, that the two were
+"engaged," just as we knew, vaguely, that they never got married. And
+that was the end of speculation. Having always been so, the phenomenon
+needed no more to be dwelt on than the fact that when the wind was in
+the east John Dyer thought he was Oliver Cromwell, or that Minister
+Malden did not live with his family.
+
+John Dyer had been taken beyond the power of any planetary wind;
+Minister Malden (as I have told in another place) had gone back to live
+with his family: and I had been away to Highmarket Academy for two
+years, before I had sudden and moving reason to take stock of that
+long-buried drama.
+
+It was three days after I had come home for the long vacation, and,
+being pretty well tired out with sniffing about the island like a cat
+returned to the old house, I sprawled at rest on the "Wreck of the
+Lillian" stone in the graveyard on Rigg's Dome.
+
+It was then, as the dusk crept up from the shadow under the bluff, that
+I became aware of another presence among the gravestones and turned my
+head to peer through the barberries that hedged the stone, thinking it
+might be one of the girls. It was only Mary Matheson. Vaguely
+disappointed, I should have returned my gaze to the sea and forgotten
+her had it not been for two things.
+
+One of them was her attitude. That made me keep on looking at her, and
+so looking at her, and having come unwittingly to a most obscurely
+unsettled age, I made a discovery. This was that Mary Matheson, at the
+remote age of thirty, had a deeper and fuller beauty than had any of
+the girls for whose glances I brushed my hair wet and went to midweek
+prayer-meeting.
+
+I find it hard to convey the profound, revolutionary violence of this
+discovery. It is enough to say that, along with a sensation of pinkness,
+there came a feeling of obscure and unreasoning bitterness against the
+world.
+
+My eyes had her there, a figure faintly rose-colored against the
+deepening background of the sea. She stood erect and curiously still
+beside a grave, her hands clenched, her eyes narrowed. In Urkey they
+always put up a stone for a man lost at sea; very often they went
+further for the comfort of their souls and mounded the outward likeness
+of an inward grave. Well, that was Andrew's stone and Andrew's grave.
+Some one in the Memorial Day procession last week had laid a wreath of
+lilacs under the stone. And now, wandering alone, Mary Matheson had come
+upon it.
+
+I saw her bend and with a fierce gesture catch up the symbol of death
+and fling it behind her on the grass. Afterward, as she stood there with
+her breast heaving and her lips moving as if with pain, I knew I should
+not be where I was, watching; I knew that no casual ears of mine should
+hear the cry that came out of her heart:
+
+"No, No, No! They're still trying to kill him--still trying to kill
+him--all of them! But they sha'n't! They sha'n't!"
+
+I tell you it shook me and it shamed me. I thought I ought to cough or
+scuff my feet or something, but it seemed too late for that. Moreover
+the play had taken another turn that made me forget the moralities,
+quite, and another actor had come quietly upon the scene.
+
+I can't say whether Joshua, seeing Mary on her way to the Dome, had
+followed her, or whether he had been strolling that way on his own
+account. He was there, at all events, watching her from beyond the
+grave, his head slightly inclined, his hands clasped behind him, and his
+feet apart on the turf. The color of dusk lent a greenish cast to his
+bloodless face, and the night wind, coming up free over the naked curve
+of the Dome and flapping the long black tails of his coat, seemed but
+to accentuate the dead weight of his attitude.
+
+When a minute had gone by I heard his dry voice.
+
+"So, Mary, you're at it again?"
+
+"But they sha-n-t!" She seemed to take flame. "It's not right to Andrew
+nor me. They do it just to mock me, and I know it, and oh! I don't care,
+but they sha'n't, they sha'n't!"
+
+"Mary," said Joshua, all the smoldering anger of the years coming in his
+voice, "Mary, I think it's time you stopped being a fool. We've all had
+enough of it, Mary. Andrew is dead."
+
+She turned on him with a swift, ironical challenge.
+
+"You say it _now_? You _know_ now? Perhaps you've just made sure;
+perhaps you've seen his body washed up on one of the beaches--just
+to-day? Or then why so tardy, Joshua? If you _knew_, why couldn't you
+say it in so many words ten years ago--five years ago? _Why_?"
+
+"Because----"
+
+"Yes, because? Because?" There was something incredibly ruthless,
+tiger-like, about this shadow-dwelling woman. "Say it now, Joshua; that
+you know of a certainty Andrew went down. I dare you again!"
+
+Joshua said it.
+
+"I know of a certainty Andrew went down that night."
+
+"_How_ do you know? Did you _see him go down_? Tell me that!"
+
+For a moment, for more than a long moment, her question hung unanswered
+in the air. And as, straining forward, poised, vibrant, she watched him,
+she saw the hard, dry mask he had made for himself through those years
+grow flabby and white as dough; she saw the eyes widening and the lips
+going loose with the memory he had never uttered.
+
+"Yes," he cried in a loud voice. "You bring me to it, do you?" The man
+was actually shaking. "Yes, then, I saw Andrew go down that night. I
+heard him call in the dark. I saw his face on the water. I saw his hand
+reaching up as the wave brought him by--reaching up to me. I could
+almost touch it--but not quite. If you knew what the sea was that night,
+and the wind; how lonely, how dark! God! And here I stand and say it out
+loud! I couldn't reach his hand--not quite.... I've told you now, Mary,
+what I swore I'd never tell.... _Damn you_!"
+
+With that curse he turned unsteadily on his heel and left her. The
+shadows among the gravestones down hill laid hands on his broken,
+shambling figure, and he became a shadow. Once the shadow stumbled. And
+as if that distant, awkward act had aroused Mary from a kind of
+lethargy, she broke forward a step, reaching out her arms.
+
+"Joshua!" she called to him, "Joshua, Joshua, come back!"
+
+In the last faint light from the sky where stars began to come, her face
+was wet with tears of pity and repentance; pity for the man who had
+walled himself in with that memory; repentance for the sin of her
+blindness.
+
+"Joshua!" she called again, but he did not seem to hear.
+
+It was too much for me. Feeling more shame than I can tell, and with it
+a new gnawing bitterness of jealousy, I sneaked out of hiding by the
+"Lillian" stone and down the Dome toward the moors.
+
+"Good Grandmother!" I know I grew redder and redder as I walked. "I hope
+I don't have to see _her_ again--the old thing!"
+
+But I did, and that before many minutes had elapsed. For fetching back
+into the village by the ice-house and the back-side track, I was almost
+in collision with a hurrying shade in the dark under Dow's willows. It
+was Mary. I shall not forget the queer moment of suspense as she peered
+into my face, nor the touch of her fingers on my arm, nor the sigh.
+
+"Oh--you're--you're the Means boy."
+
+An embarrassment, pathetic only now in memory, came upon her.
+
+"I--I wonder----" Her confusion grew more painful and her eyes went
+everywhere in the dark. "You don't happen to have seen any
+one--any--you haven't seen Mr. Blake, have you?"
+
+"No!" I shook off the hand that still lay, as if forgotten, on my
+outraged arm. "What you want of _him_? _He's_ no good!"
+
+With that shot for parting I turned and stalked away. Behind me after a
+moment, I heard her cry of protest, dismal beyond words.
+
+"Why do you say that, boy? What do you mean by that?"
+
+Having meant nothing at all, except that I would have slain him gladly,
+I kept my bitter peace and held my way to the westward, leaving her to
+find her way and her soul in the blind, black shadows under the
+willow-trees.
+
+No one who lived in Urkey Village then will forget the day it was known
+that Mary Matheson was going to marry Joshua Blake, at last. An isolated
+village is like an isolated person, placid-looking to dullness, but in
+reality almost idiotically emotional. More than anything else, when the
+news had run, it was like the camp-meeting conversion of a simple soul.
+First, for the "conviction of sin," there was the calling-up of all the
+dark, forgotten history, the whispered refurbishing of departed gossip,
+the ghosts of old angers. Then like the flood of Mercy, the assurance
+that all was well, having ended well. Everything was forgiven and
+forgotten, every one was to live happily ever after, and there must be a
+wedding.
+
+Surely a wedding! The idea that Minister Malden should come quietly to
+the house and so have it done without pomp or pageantry--it is laughable
+to think how that notion fared at the hands of an aroused village.
+Flowers there were to be, processions, veils, cakes, rice, boots, all
+the properties dear to the heart of the Roman mob. In the meantime there
+was to be a vast business of runnings and stitchings, of old women
+beating eggs and sifting flour, of schoolgirls writing "MARY BLAKE" on
+forbidden walls with stolen chalk. Dear me!
+
+You might think Mary and Joshua would have rebelled. Curiously, they
+seemed beyond rebelling. Joshua, especially, was a changed man. His old,
+hard mask was gone; the looseness of his lips had come to stay, and the
+wideness of his eyes. One could only think that happiness long-deferred
+had come under him like a tide of fate on which he could do no more than
+drift and smile. He smiled at every one, a nervous, deprecatory smile;
+to every proposal he agreed: "All right! Splendid! Let's have it done--"
+And one got the sense somehow of the thought running on: "--right away!
+Make haste, if you please. Haste! For God's sake, haste!"
+
+If he were hailed on the street, especially from behind, his eyes came
+to the speaker with a jerk, and sometimes his hand went to his heart.
+Seeing him so one bright day, and hearing two old men talking behind me,
+I learned for the first time that the Blake boys' father had died of
+heart-disease. It is odd that it should have come on Joshua now, quite
+suddenly, along with his broken mask and his broken secret, his
+frightened smile, and his, "All right! Splendid!"--("Make haste!")
+
+But so it was. And so we came to the day appointed. We had a dawn as red
+as blood that morning, and tho it was clear, there was a feeling of
+oppression in the air--and another oppression of people's spirits. For
+the bride's party had the "hack," and Mrs. Dow had spoken for the only
+other polite conveyance, the Galloway barge, and what was to come of all
+the fine, hasty gowns in case it came on for a gale or rain?
+
+Is it curious that here and there in that hurrying, waiting afternoon a
+thought would turn back to another day when a storm was making and a
+tall ship standing down to weather the Head? For if there was a menace
+of weather to-day, so, too, was there a ship. We seemed to grow
+conscious of it by degrees, it drew on so slowly out of the broad, blue,
+windless south. For hours, in the early afternoon, it seemed scarcely to
+move on the mirroring surface of the sea. Yet it did move, growing
+nearer and larger, its huge spread of canvas hanging straight as
+cerecloth on the poles, and its wooden flanks, by and by, showing the
+scars and rime of a long voyage put behind it.
+
+Yes, it seems to me it would have been odd, as our eyes went out in the
+rare leisure moments of that afternoon and fell upon that presence, worn
+and strange and solitary within the immense ring of the horizon, if
+there had not been somewhere among us some dim stirring of memory, and
+of wonder. Not too vivid, perhaps; not strong enough perhaps to outlast
+the ship's disappearance. For at about five o'clock the craft, which had
+been standing for the Head, wore slowly to port, and laying its course
+to fetch around the western side of the island, drifted out of our sight
+beyond the rampart of the bluffs.
+
+Why it should have done that, no man can say. Why, in the face of coming
+weather, the ship should have abandoned the clear course around the Head
+and chosen instead to hazard the bars and rips that make a good three
+miles to sea from Pilot's Point in the west--why this hair-brained
+maneuver should have been attempted will always remain a mystery.
+
+But at least that ship was gone from our sight, and by so much out of
+our minds. And this was just as well, perhaps, for our minds had enough
+to take them up just then with all the things overlooked, chairs to
+fetch, plants to borrow, girls' giggling errands--and in the very midst
+of this eleventh-hour hub-bub, the sudden advent of storm.
+
+What a catastrophe that was! What a voiceless wail went up in that hour
+from all the bureaus and washstands in the length of Urkey Village! And
+how glad I was! With what a poisonous joy did I give thanks at the
+window for every wind-driven drop that spoiled by so much the wedding of
+a woman nearly twice my age!
+
+The lamps on the street were yellow blurs, and the wind was full of
+little splashings and screechings and blowing of skirts and wraps when I
+set out alone for Center Church, wishing heartily I might never get
+there. That I didn't is the only reason this story was ever told. Not
+many got there that night (of the men, that is), or if they did they
+were not to stay long, for something bigger than a wedding was afoot.
+
+The first wind I had of it crossed my path at Heman Street, a huge
+clattering shadow that turned out to be Si Pilot's team swinging at a
+watery gallop toward the back-side track, and the wagon-body full of
+men. I saw their faces as they passed under the Heman Street lamp, James
+Burke, Fred Burke, Sandy Snow, half a dozen other surfmen home for the
+Summer from the Point station, and Captain Cook himself hanging on to
+Sandy's shoulder as he struggled to get his Sunday blacks wriggled into
+his old, brown oil-cloths. In a wink they were gone, and I, forgetting
+the stained lights of Center Church, was gone after them. Nor was I
+alone. There were a dozen shades pounding with me; at the cow street we
+were a score. I heard the voices of men I couldn't see.
+
+"Aground? Where to?"
+
+"On the outer bar; south'rd end of the outer bar they tell me."
+
+The voices came and went, whipped by the wind.
+
+"What vessel'd you say? Town craft?"
+
+"No--that ship."
+
+"What? Not that--that--_India ship_!"
+
+"Yep--that India ship."
+
+"India ship"--"India ship!" I don't know how it seemed to them, but to
+me the sound of that legendary name, borne on the gale, seemed strangely
+like the shadow of some one coming cast across a stage.
+
+I'll not use space to tell how I got across the island; it would be only
+the confused tale of an hour that seems but a minute now. I lost the
+track somewhere short of Si Pilot's place, and wading the sand to the
+west came out on the beach, without the slightest notion of where I was.
+
+I only know it was a majestic and awful place to be alone; majestic with
+the weight of wind and the rolling thunder of water; the more awful
+because I could not see the water itself, save for the rare gray ghost
+of a tongue licking swiftly up the sand to catch at my feet if I did
+not spring away in time. Once a mother of waves struck at me with a
+huge, dim timber; I dodged it, I can't say how, and floundered on to the
+south, wondering as I peered over my shoulder at the dark if already the
+ship had broken, and if that thing behind me were one of the ribs come
+out of her.
+
+That set me to thinking of all the doomed men near me clinging to
+slippery things they couldn't see, cursing perhaps, or praying their
+prayers, or perhaps already sliding away, down and down, into the cold,
+black caves of the sea. And then the shadows seemed to be full of
+shades, and the surf-tongues were near to catching my inattentive feet.
+
+If the hour across the island seems a minute, the time I groped along
+the beach seems nights on end. And then one of the shades turned solid,
+and I was in such a case I had almost bolted before it spoke and I knew
+it for Rolldown Nickerson, the beachcomber.
+
+He was a good man in ways. But you must remember his business was a
+vulture's business, and something of it was in his soul. It came out in
+good wrecking weather. On a night when the bar had caught a fine piece
+of profit, I give you my word you could almost see Rolldown's neck
+growing longer and nakeder with suspense. He would have made more of his
+salvaging had he carried a steadier head: in the rare, golden moments of
+windfall he sometimes failed to pick and choose. Even now he was loaded
+down with a dim collection of junk he had grabbed up in the dark, things
+he knew nothing of, empty bottles and seine-floats, rubbish he had
+probably passed by a hundred times in his daylight rounds. The saving
+circumstance was that he kept dropping them in his ardor for still other
+treasures his blind feet stumbled on. I followed in his wake and I know,
+for half a dozen times his discards got under my feet and sent me
+staggering. Once, moved by some bizarre, thousandth chance of curiosity,
+I bent and caught one up in passing.
+
+Often and often since then I have wondered what would have happened to
+the history of the world of my youth if I had not been moved as I was,
+and bent quite carelessly in passing, and caught up what I did.
+
+Still occupied with keeping my guide in eye, I took stock of the thing
+with idle fingers; in the blackness my finger-tips were all the eyes I
+had for so small a thing. It was about the size of a five-pound butter
+box, I should say; it seemed as it lay in my hand a sort of an old and
+polished casket, a thing done with an exotic artistry, broad, lacquered
+surfaces and curves and bits of intricate carving. And I thought it was
+empty till I shook it and felt the tiny impact of some chambered weight.
+Already the thing had taken my interest. Catching up I touched
+Rolldown's arm and shouted in his ear, over the roll of the wind and
+surf:
+
+"What you make of this, Rolldown?"
+
+He took it and felt it over, dropping half his rubbish in the act. He
+shook it. It seemed to me I could see his neck growing longer.
+
+"Got somethin' into it," he rumbled.
+
+"Yes, I know. Now let me have it back, Rolldown."
+
+"Somethin' hefty," he continued, and I noticed he had dropped the rest
+of his treasures now and clung to that. "Somethin' hefty--and valu'ble!"
+
+"But it's mine, I tell you!"
+
+"'Tain't neither! 'Tain't neither!"
+
+He was walking faster all the while to shake me off, and I to keep with
+him; our angry voices rose higher in the gale.
+
+I can't help smiling now when I think of the innocent pair of us that
+night, puffing along the sand in the blind, wet wind, squabbling like
+two children over that priceless unseen casket, come up from the waters
+of the sea.
+
+"It's mine!" I bawled, "and you give it to me!" And I grabbed at his arm
+again. But this time, letting out a squeal, he shook me off and fled
+inshore, up the face of the dune, and I not far behind him.
+
+And so, pursued and pursuing, we came suddenly over a spur of the dunes
+and saw below us on the southward beach the drift-fire the life-savers
+had made. There were many small figures in the glow, a surf-boat hauled
+up, I think, and a pearly huddle of alien men.
+
+But on none of this could I take my oath; my thoughts had been jerked
+back too abruptly to all the other, forgotten drama of that night, the
+music and the faces in Center Church, the flowers, the bridegroom, and
+the bride.
+
+For there on the crest before me, given in silhouette against the
+fire-glow, stood the bride.
+
+How she came there, by what violence or wild stratagem she had got away,
+what blind path had brought her, a fugitive, across the island--it was
+all beyond me. But no matter; there she stood before me on the dune at
+Pilot's Point, as still as a lost statue, tulle and satin, molded by the
+gale, sheathing her form in low relief like shining marble, her
+stone-quiet hands at rest on her unstirring bosom, her face set toward
+the invisible sea.... It was queer to see her like that: dim, you know;
+just shadowed out in mystery by the light that came a long way through
+the streaming darkness and died as it touched her.
+
+Peering at her, the strangest thought came to me, and it seemed to me
+she must have been standing there just so, not for minutes, but for
+hours and days; yes, standing there all the length of those ten long
+years, erect on a seaward dune, unmoved by the wild, moving elements,
+broken water, wailing wind, needle-blown sand--as if her spirit had
+flown on other business, leaving the quiet clay to wait and watch there
+till the tides of fate, turning in their appointed progress, should
+bring back the fabled ship of India to find its grave on the bars at
+Pilot's Point.
+
+She must have been all ready to go to the church; perhaps she was
+actually on her way, and it was on the wind of the cow street that the
+blown tidings of the "India ship" came to her ears. I can't tell you how
+I was moved by the sight of her in the wistful ruin of bride's-clothes.
+I can't say what huge, disordered purposes tumbled through my brain as I
+stood there trying to cough or stir or by some such infinitesimal
+violence let her know that I, Peter Means, was there--that I
+understood--that I was stronger than all the men in Urkey Island--that
+over my dead body alone should any evil come to her now, forever and
+ever and ever.
+
+As I tell you, I don't know what would have happened then, with all my
+wild, dark projects of defense, had not the whole house of trance come
+tumbling about my ears to the tune of a terrified bleating close at
+hand. It was Rolldown Nickerson, I saw as I wheeled; my forgotten enemy,
+flinging down the precious old brown casket he had robbed me of, and,
+still giving vent to that thin, high note of horror, careening, sliding,
+and spattering off down the sandslope. And as he vanished and his wail
+grew fainter around a shoulder of the dune, another sound came also to
+my ears. It was plain that his blind gallop had brought him in collision
+with another denizen of the night; the protesting outburst came on the
+wind, and it was the voice of Miah White--Miah the prophet, the avenger,
+drunk as a lord and mad as one exalted.
+
+There was no time for thought; I didn't need it to know what he was
+after. Mary had heard, too, and knew, too; it was as if she had been
+awakened from sleep, and her eyes were "enough to make one pity her," in
+the old words of Mother Poll. Seeing them on me, and without so much as
+a glance at the casket-thing which the roll of the sand had brought to
+rest near her feet, I turned and ran at the best of my legs, down the
+sand, around the dune's shoulder out of sight, and fairly into the arms
+of the angel of vengeance. I can still see the dim gray whites of his
+eyes as he glared at me, and smell the abomination of his curse. But I
+paid no heed; only made with a struggle to go on.
+
+"This way!" I panted. "To the north'rd! She's heading to the north'rd. I
+saw her dress just there, just now----"
+
+A little was enough to turn him. As I plunged on, making inland, I heard
+him trailing me with his ponderous, grunting flesh. His ardor was
+greater than mine; as we ran I heard his thick voice coming nearer and
+nearer to my ear.
+
+"'She shall come back,' says I, 'with the hand of iron,' says I."
+
+As always in this exalted state his phraseology grew Biblical.
+
+"'Thou shalt stay here,'" I heard him grunting. "'Here to the church
+thou shalt stay, Joshua,' says I. 'And she shalt come back with the hand
+of iron--the hand of iron!'"
+
+"Yes!" I puffed. "That's right, Miah; only hurry. _There!_" I cried.
+
+The rain had lessened, and a rising moon cast a ghost through the wrack,
+just enough to let us glimpse a figure topping a rise before us. That it
+was no one but Rolldown, still fleeing the mystery and bleating as he
+fled, made no difference to the blurred eyes of Miah; he dug his toes
+into the sand and flung forward in still hotter chase--after a
+still-faster-speeding quarry.
+
+I'll tell you where we caught Rolldown. It was before the church, within
+the very outpouring of the colored windows. When Miah discovered who his
+blowing captive was his rage, for a moment, was something to remember.
+Then it passed and left him blank and dreary with defeat. The
+beachcomber himself, pale as putty through his half-grown beard, was
+beseeching us from the pink penumbra of the Apostle Paul: "You seen it?
+You seen what I seen?" but Miah wouldn't hear him, and mounting the
+steps and passing dull-footed through the vestry, came into the veiled
+light and heavy scent of breath and flowers. Following at his heels I
+saw the faces of women turned to our entrance with expectation.
+
+Do you know the awful sense of a party that has fallen flat? Do you know
+the desolation of a hope long deferred--once more deferred?
+
+Joshua was standing in the farthest corner, beyond the pews where Miss
+Beedie's Sunday School class held. Looking across the sea of inquiring
+and disappointed faces, I saw him there, motionless, his back turned on
+all of us. He had been standing so for an hour, they said, staring out
+of a window at his own shadow cast on the churchyard fence.
+
+It was a distressing moment. When Miah had sunk down in a rear pew and
+bowed his head in his hands I really think you could have heard the
+fall of the proverbial pin. Then, with a scarcely audible rustle, all
+the faces became the backs of heads and all the eyes went to the figure
+unstirring by the corner window. And after that, with the same accord,
+the spell of waiting was broken, whispering ran over the pews, the
+inevitable was accepted. Folks got up, shuffling their feet, putting on
+their wraps with the familiar, mild contortions, still whispering,
+whispering--"What a shame!"--"The idea!"--"I want to know!"
+
+But some among them must have been still peeping at Joshua, for the hush
+that fell was sudden and complete. Turning, I saw that he had turned
+from the window at last, showing us his face.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Now we knew what he had been doing for himself in that long hour. His
+face was once more the mask of a face we had known so many years as
+Joshua Blake, dry, bitter, self-contained, the eyes shaded under the
+lids, the lips as thin as hate. He faced us, but it was not at us he
+looked; it was beyond us, over our heads, at the corner where the door
+was.
+
+There, framed in the doorway, stood the tardy bride, a figure as white
+and stark as pagan stone, and a look on her face like the awful,
+tranquil look of a sleep-walker. Neither did she pay any heed to us, but
+over our heads she met the eyes of the bridegroom. So for a long breath
+they confronted each other, steadily. Then we heard her speak.
+
+"He's come!" she said in a clear voice. "Andrew's come back again."
+
+Still she looked at Joshua. He did not move or reply.
+
+"You understand?" I tell you, I who stood under it, that it was queer
+enough to hear that voice, clear, strong, and yet somehow shattered,
+passing over our heads. "You understand, Joshua? Andrew's come back to
+the wedding, and now I'll marry you--_if you wish_."
+
+Even yet Joshua did not speak, nor did the dry anger of his face change.
+He came walking, taking his time, first along the pews at the front,
+then up the length of the aisle. Coming down a few steps, Mary waited
+for him, and there was a kind of a smile now on her lips.
+
+Joshua halted before her. Folding his hands behind him he looked her
+over slowly from head to foot.
+
+"You lie!" That was all he said.
+
+"Oh, no, Joshua. I'm not lying. Andrew has come for the wedding."
+
+"You lie," he repeated in the same impassive tone. "You know I know you
+lie, Mary, for you know I know that Andrew is dead."
+
+"Yes, yes--" She was fumbling to clear a damp fold of her gown from
+something held in the crook of her arm. "But I didn't say----"
+
+With that she had the burden uncovered and held forth in her
+outstretched hand.
+
+She held it out in the light where all of us could see--the thing
+Rolldown had discarded from his treasures, that I had picked up and been
+robbed of in the kindly dark--the old brown casket-thing with the
+polished surfaces and the bits of intricate and ghastly carvings that
+had once let in the light of day and the sound of words--the old, brown,
+sea-bitten, sand-scoured skull of Andrew Blake, with the two gold teeth
+in the upper jaw dulled by the tarnishing tides that had brought it up
+slowly from its bed in the bottom of the sea. And to think that I had
+carried it, and felt of it, and not known what it was!
+
+It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed
+whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters.
+And Joshua, the brother, made no sound.
+
+His face had gone a curious color, like the pallor of green things
+sprouting under a stone. His knees caved a little under his weight, and
+as we watched we saw his hands moving over his own breast, where the
+heart was, with a strengthless gesture, like a caress. After what seemed
+a long while we heard his voice, a whisper of horrible fascination.
+
+"_Turn it over!_"
+
+Mary said nothing, nor did she move to do as he bade. Like some awful
+play of a cat with a mouse she held quiet and watched him.
+
+"Mary--do as I say--_and turn it over_!"
+
+Her continued, unanswering silence seemed finally to rouse him. His
+voice turned shrill. Drawing on some last hidden reservoir of strength,
+he cried, "Give it to me! It's mine!" and made an astonishing dart, both
+hands clawing for the relic. But my cousin Duncan was there to step in
+his way and send him carroming along the fringe of the crowd.
+
+The queer fellow didn't stop or turn or try again; sending up all the
+while the most unearthly cackle of horror my ears have ever heard, he
+kept right on through the door and the packed vestry, clawing his way to
+the open with that brief gift of vitality.
+
+It was so preposterous and so ghastly to see him carrying on so, with
+his white linen and his fine black wedding-clothes and the gray hair
+that would have covered a selectman's head in another year--it was all
+so absurdly horrible that we simply stood as we were in the church and
+wondered and looked at Mary Matheson and saw her face still rapt and
+quiet, and still set in that same bedevilled smile, as if she didn't
+know that round tears were running in streams down her cheeks.
+
+"Let him go," was all she said.
+
+They didn't let him go for too long a time, for they had seen the stamp
+of death on the man's face. When they looked for him finally they found
+him lying in a dead huddle on the grass by Lem White's gate. I shall
+never forget the look of him in the lantern-light, nor the look of them
+that crowded around and stared down at him--Duncan, I remember,
+puzzled--Miah cursing God--and three dazed black men showing the whites
+of their eyes, strange negroes being brought in from the wreck: for the
+ship was no India ship after all, but a coffee carrier from Brazil.
+
+But seeing Miah made me remember that long-forgotten question that the
+lips of this dead man had put to the deaf sea and the blind sky.
+
+"Who is to pay the bill? Who is to pay the bill?"
+
+Well, two of the three had helped to pay the bill now for a girl's
+light-hearted word. But I think the other has paid the most, for she has
+had longer to meet the reckoning. She still lives there alone in the
+house on the cow street. She is an old woman now, but there's not so
+much as a line on her face nor a thread of white in her hair, and that's
+bad. That's always bad. That's something like the thing that happened to
+the Wandering Jew. Yes, I'm quite sure Mary has paid.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+But I am near to forgetting the answer to it all. I hadn't so long to
+wait as most folks had--no longer than an hour of that fateful night.
+For when I got home to our kitchen I found my cousin Duncan already
+there, with the lamp lit. I came in softly on account of the lateness,
+and that's how I happened to surprise him and glimpse what he had before
+he could get it out of sight.
+
+I don't know yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay
+the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and
+turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant--a hole as clean and round
+as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when,
+remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the
+unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I
+made out the shape of a leaden slug nested loosely between two points of
+bone behind the nose--a bullet, I should say, from an old, single-ball
+dueling pistol--such a pistol as Joshua Blake had played with in the
+shadow of apple-trees on that distant afternoon, and carried in his
+pocket, no doubt, to the warm-lit gaiety of Alma Beedie's birthday
+party....
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[16] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Wilbur Daniel Steele.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE TELEGRAMS[17]
+
+#By# ETHEL STORM
+
+From _The Ladies' Home Journal_
+
+
+For two years Claire René's days had been very much alike. It was a dull
+routine, full of heavy tasks, in the tiny crumbling house, in the
+shrunken garden patch, and grand'mère--there was always grand'mère to
+care for. Often in the afternoon Claire René wandered in the forest for
+an hour. She was used to the silence of the tall trees; the silence in
+the house frightened her. All the people in her land were gone away; the
+great noise beyond had taken them. Sometimes the noise had stopped, but
+the silence in the house, the silence in the garden, and the silence of
+grand'mère never stopped. It was hard for Claire René to understand.
+
+There was no one left in her land except grand'mère and Jacques. Jacques
+lived in the forest and cut wood; in the summer time he shot birds, in
+the winter time rabbits; Jacques was a very old man.
+
+Claire René thought about a great many things when she walked in the
+forest in the afternoons. She wondered how old she was. She knew that
+she had been seven years old when her three brothers went away a long
+time before. She would like to have another birthday, some day, but not
+until Clément and Fernand and Alphonse came home again. Then they would
+laugh as they used to laugh on her birthdays, and catch her up in their
+big, strong arms, and kiss her and call her "Dear little sister."
+Clément was the biggest and strongest of all; sometimes he would run off
+with her on his back into the forest, and the others would follow
+running and calling; and then at the end of the chase the three
+brothers would make a throne of their brown, firm hands and carry Claire
+René back to the door of the tiny house, where grand'mère would be
+waiting and scolding and smiling and ruddy of cheek. Grand'mère never
+scolded any more; she never smiled, and her cheeks were like dried figs.
+
+Claire René didn't often let herself think of the day that such a
+dreadful thing had happened. Many days after Clément and Fernand and
+Alphonse had gone away, grand'mère had started to walk to the nearest
+town four miles distant. She was gone for hours and hours; Claire René
+had watched for her from the doorway until dusk had begun to fall; the
+dusk had been a queer color, thick and blue; a terrible noise had filled
+the air. Then the child remembered that her three brothers had told her
+that they were going away to kill rabbits--like Jacques. At the time she
+thought it strange that they had cried about killing rabbits. But when
+she heard such a thunder of noise she knew it must be a very great work
+indeed.
+
+She was just wondering how there could be so many rabbits in the world,
+when she saw an old, bent woman coming through the garden gate. It was
+grand'mère; Jacques was leading her; she was making a strange noise in
+her throat, and her eyes were closed. Jacques had stayed in the house
+all the night, looking at grand'mère, lying on the bed with her eyes
+closed. In the morning, Claire René had spoken to her, but she hadn't
+answered. After days and days she walked from her bed to a chair by the
+window. She never again did any more than that; grand'mère was
+blind--and she was deaf.
+
+Jacques explained how it all happened; Claire René didn't listen
+carefully, but she did understand that her three brothers were not
+killing rabbits, but were killing men. She knew then why they had cried;
+they were so kind and good, Clément and Fernand and Alphonse; they would
+hate to kill men. But Jacques had said they were wicked men that had to
+be killed. He said it wouldn't take long, that all the strong men in
+France were shooting at them.
+
+Claire René had a great deal to do after that. She had to bathe and
+dress grand'mère; she had to cook the food and scrub the floor and scour
+the pots and pans. She kept the pans very bright. Grand'mère might some
+day open her eyes, and there would be a great scolding if the pans were
+not bright. Claire René also tended the garden; Jacques helped her with
+the heavy digging. He was very mean about the vegetables; he made her
+put most of them in the cellar; and the green things that wouldn't keep
+he himself put into jars and tins and locked them in the closet. When
+the summer had gone he gave Claire René the keys.
+
+"Ma petite," he said, "you learn too fast to eat too little. You must be
+big and well when your brothers come back."
+
+All the winter long Claire René watched for her brothers. Once a
+telegram had come, brought by a boy who said he had walked all the miles
+of the forest. In the memory of Claire René there lay a hidden fear
+about telegrams. Years before, grand'mère had cried for many days when
+Jacques had brought from the town just such a thin, crackling envelope.
+And Claire René knew that after that she had no longer any young mother
+or father--only grand'mère and her three brothers.
+
+Grand'mère had enough of sorrow. The telegram was better hidden in the
+room of her brothers. Grand'mère would never find it there; it was far
+away from her chair by the window, up the straight, narrow stairs, under
+the high, peaked gable. Then, too, there was a comfort in that room for
+Claire René; it was quiet; the great silence of downstairs was too big
+to squeeze up the narrow way. Each day she would stroke and tend the
+high white bed; each week she would drag the mass of feather mattress to
+the narrow window ledge and air it for the length of a sunny day.
+
+At evening she would pull and pile high again the snowy layers, as
+quickly as her tired back could move, as quickly as her thin, blue
+fingers could smooth the heavy homespun sheets and comforters. Quick she
+must be lest Clément and Fernand and Alphonse come home before the
+night fell over their sleeping place. When she placed the telegram under
+the first high pillow (Clément's pillow) it made a sound that frightened
+her.
+
+In the evenings grand'mère's chair was pulled to the great hearth fire.
+Claire René would watch the flamelight spread over the stonelike face.
+Sometimes bright sparkles from the rows of copper pots and pans would
+lay spots of light on the heavy closed lids.
+
+Claire René would spring from her chair and kneel beside the dumb
+figure. "Grand'mère!" she would call. "Do you see? Have you the eyes
+again?"
+
+Then the lights would shift, and her head would drop over her trembling
+knees, and she would look away from the dry, sealed eyes of grand'mère.
+She never cried; it might make a noise in the still, whitewashed room to
+frighten her. Grand'mère might find the tears when she raised her hands
+to let them travel over the face of her grandchild. It was enough that
+once grand'mère had shivered when her fingers found the hollows in
+Claire René's cheeks. After that the child puffed out her cheeks while
+the knotted hands made their daily journey. Grand'mère's fingers would
+smooth the sunny tangled hair, touch the freckled upturned nose; they
+would pause and tremble at the slightest brush from the eyelashes that
+fringed the deep, gray eyes.
+
+Claire René would pile more logs on the fire and wonder what thoughts
+lay in grand'mère's mind; wonder whether she knew that they had so much
+more wood in the shed than they had food in the larder. She was clever
+about cooking the roots from the cellar. But grand'mère's coffee was
+weaker each day, and only once in a long while did Jacques bring milk.
+Then he used to stand and order Claire René to drink it all, but she
+would choke and say it was sour and sickened her; only thus could she
+save enough for grand'mère's coffee in the morning.
+
+There were many things to think about, to look at on the winter evenings
+by the firelight: Clément's seat by the chimney corner, where he
+whittled and whistled; Fernand's flute hanging on the wall; the books of
+Alphonse on the high shelf over the dresser. Claire René found that her
+heart and her eyes would only find comfort if her fingers were busy. She
+would tiptoe to the dresser and bring out a basket, once filled with the
+socks of her brothers. She would crouch by the fireside, first stirring
+the logs to make more light for her work. It was long since the candles
+were gone. It was the only joyous moment in the day when she handled the
+dried everlastings that filled the basket. Always she must hurry, work
+more quickly, select the withered colors with more care. The wreaths for
+her three brothers must be beautiful, must be ready on time. Clément and
+Fernand and Alphonse must be crowned, given the reward when they came
+home from killing wicked men to save La Belle France!
+
+All the months of the summer before she had watched and tended the
+flowers. The seeds she had found in grand'mère's cupboard. Jacques had
+scolded about the place that had been given them in the garden patch.
+But Claire René had stamped her foot and strong, strange words that
+belonged to her three brothers when they were angry came to her lips.
+Jacques had looked startled and funny and had turned his head away; in
+the end he had patted Claire René on her rigid shoulders and she thought
+his eyes were just like wet, black beads.
+
+On the other side of the hearth, away from grand'mère's chair, she
+twined and wound the wreaths. No one must know. The Great Day _must_ be
+soon! And in her heart she believed that on that day grand'mère would
+open her eyes.
+
+In the spring Claire René finished the wreaths. The very day she placed
+them on the highest shelf in the dark closet under the stairs there had
+come a knock at the door. She was stiff with terror. Jacques never
+knocked; there was no one else. She clung to a heavy chair back while
+the same boy who had come before entered slowly and placed a second
+telegram in her numb fingers.
+
+"I am sorry, mademoiselle," was all he said.
+
+She watched him disappear through the garden gate; she listened until
+his steps died in the forest. Grand'mère stirred in her chair by the
+window; Claire René thought a flicker of pain traveled over the worn
+face; she thought the closed eyes twitched; Madame Populet stretched out
+her hands.
+
+Claire René flew up the straight, narrow stairs; she placed the telegram
+under Fernand's pillow; she pressed her fists deep into the feathers;
+the crackle of paper made her heart stand still. There were tears
+starting in her eyes; she held them back. Grand'mère had enough of
+sorrow; she must never know of the second telegram in the house.
+
+Thoughts came crowding into Claire René's mind. Why not tear up the
+white-and-blue envelopes or why not show them to Jacques--in some way
+throw away the fear that was eating at her heart? Then the great silence
+of the house below seemed to creep up the narrow stairs and lay cold
+hands on Claire René. Oh, why was it all so lonely! Where were her three
+brothers? Why must the telegrams make so great a trembling in her heart
+for them, make her kneel and pray that the Holy Mother would hold them
+in her arms forever?
+
+Her knees were stiff when she arose; her eyes were bright, but not with
+tears; her back was very straight, her head held high, for was she not a
+grandchild of Madame Populet? A sister to Clément and Fernand and
+Alphonse, and through them, a child of France! She stood on her toes and
+dropped three kisses on the pillows of her brothers. She was big enough
+to keep the secret of her fear about the telegrams. It was better so.
+
+She went downstairs singing. The sound was strange in her throat, but
+she must finish the song. She stood behind grand'mère's chair, and laid
+her hands on the still white head. When the last, high, treble note fell
+softly through the room she looked out of the window into the forest.
+There were threads of pale green showing on the tall trees; there were
+tiny red buds starting from the brown branches of the pollard willow
+that swept across the window ledge.
+
+Claire René suddenly wanted to shout! She did shout! There was spring in
+the world! There was spring in her heart, in her feet, in her tingling
+finger tips.
+
+She danced to the dark closet under the stairs. There they were, the
+wreaths, for her three brothers! The deep golden one for Clément--he was
+strong and square like a rock; the light golden one for Fernand--he was
+pale and slight; the scarlet one for Alphonse--he was straight and tall
+like a tree in the forest.
+
+Claire René touched the three wreaths; they crackled dryly under her
+touch; she turned away and shivered. What did they sound like? Oh, yes;
+the crackling of the thin paper on the telegrams!
+
+She shut the closet door softly, and went to kneel beside grand'mère's
+chair and looked again into the forest. The buds on the sweeping willows
+said "Yes"; the pale-green winding gauze through the tall trees
+whispered a promise. She stood up and held out her arms; she had faith
+in the forest; she believed what it said. Through a patch of flickering
+sunlight she thought she saw three forms moving toward the cottage. It
+was only the viburnum bushes dipping and swaying in the March wind,
+against the sturdy growth of darkened holly.
+
+The noise died away entirely as the spring advanced. The silence grew
+greater and greater. There were few seeds for Claire René to plant in
+her garden; there was little strength in her arms to work them. Weeds
+covered the flower patch of a year ago. A few straggling everlastings
+showed their heads above the tangle. Claire René had plenty of strength
+to uproot them angrily and throw them into the overgrown path.
+
+The three wreaths were still on the shelf in the dark closet under the
+stair. Their colors were dimmed, like the hope in their maker's heart;
+their forms were shrunken, like the forms of Claire René and grand'mère
+and Jacques.
+
+Grand'mère lay in her bed most of the day. Sometimes, when the sun shone
+and the birds sang, Claire René would make her aching arms bathe and
+dress grand'mère and help her into the chair by the window. Then she
+would sit beside her and try to run threads through the bare places in
+her frocks.
+
+At times she thought of making frocks for herself out of grand'mère's
+calico dresses, folded so neatly in the cupboard. But grand'mère, she
+argued, would need them for herself when the Great Day came, when
+Clément and Fernand and Alphonse would come with ringing laughter
+through the forest--laughter that would surely open grand'mère's
+eyes--and her ears. When the birds sang and the sun shone Claire René
+believed that day would come.
+
+Jacques was always kind. But he had become a part of the great silence;
+almost as still as grand'mère he was. For hours he would sit and look at
+Claire René bending over her sewing, over her scrubbing, over the
+brightening of the pots and pans. Sometimes his shining black eyes
+seemed to lie down in his face, to be going away forever behind his bush
+of eyebrow.
+
+Then she would start toward him and call: "Jacques, Jacques!"
+
+He would always answer, straightening in his chair: "Yes, my little one,
+be not afraid. Jacques is ever near."
+
+Claire René would sigh and go back to her work and wish that she was big
+enough to go out into the forest and shoot birds, as Jacques used to do.
+She was very hungry. She was tired of eating roots from the garden.
+
+She would like to lie down and go to sleep for the rest of her life, or
+die and go to heaven and have the Holy Mother hold her in her arms and
+feed her thick yellow milk. Jacques no longer brought even thin blue
+milk. There was no coffee in the cupboard, no sugar, no bread--only
+hateful roots of the garden.
+
+Claire René no longer walked in the forest. Sometimes she would lie down
+on a mossy place and look up through the tall trees at the patches of
+blue sky overhead. She wondered whether the good God still kept His home
+above, whether He, too, were hungry, whether the Holy Mother had work to
+do when her back ached and her fingers wouldn't move and were thin and
+bony, like young dead birds that sometimes fell from nests.
+
+Once, when Claire René was thinking such thoughts, she saw Jacques come
+running toward her. His eyes were bright and shiny, and she had a fear
+that they might drop out of his head, as the quick breath dropped out of
+his mouth.
+
+"Listen, ma petite!" he cried.
+
+He dropped on the mossy place beside her and rocked back and forth with
+his hands clasped about his shaking knees. Claire René was used to
+waiting. She waited until Jacques found breath for speech.
+
+Then he told her how the "Great Man from America" was coming to save
+France! How he was sending a million strong sons before him. How there
+was hope come to heavy hearts!
+
+Claire René wanted to ask a great many questions. But Jacques went right
+on, talking, talking--about the right flank and the left flank and the
+boches and the Americans. Claire René hoped his tongue would not be too
+tired to answer one of her questions.
+
+"What is America, my little one? Why, the greatest country in the world,
+excepting France. Where is America, my little one? Why, across the
+Atlantic Ocean, far from France."
+
+Claire René sat very still with her hands in her lap. Jacques was a wise
+man. He knew a great deal. All old people were wise; but such strange
+things made them happy, far-away things that they couldn't ever touch or
+see, things out in the big world that went round and round. She knew
+that Clément and Fernand and Alphonse were out in the big world, going
+round and round; but in her heart she saw them only in the forest, in
+the garden patch, by the hearth in the tiny house, asleep in their high
+white bed.
+
+In these places she could still feel their arms about her, hear their
+laughter, listen for their step. But out in the world! What were they
+doing? How could she know? Jacques made her feel very lonely. Never once
+did he speak of her three brothers; on and on he went about the "Great
+Man from America."
+
+Presently he ceased for a moment and held Claire René's cold hands
+against his grizzled cheek. "But, my little one, why are you cold?"
+
+Claire René looked for a long time into Jacques' shining eyes; then she
+whispered: "My brothers!"
+
+High among the tall trees of the forest the wind was singing and
+sighing; beneath on a green moss bank Jacques gathered Claire René in
+his arms; he gathered her up like a baby and rocked her back and forth.
+He cried and laughed into the bright tangle of her hair.
+
+"My poor little one! My poor little one!" he said over and over. Then he
+released her from his arms and held her face between his knotted hands.
+"Now, listen!"
+
+She listened, and even before Jacques had finished a song began in her
+heart--so strong and high and true that it reached up into the treetops
+and joined in the chorus of the forest.
+
+The words that came from the lips of Jacques made a great beating in her
+ears. Could it be so--what he was saying--that the "Great Man from
+America" had come to save all the Brothers of France? That soon, soon he
+would send Clément and Fernand and Alphonse back to the tiny house in
+the forest? That all the wicked men in the world would be no more? That
+the great and terrible noise would cease--forever?
+
+Jacques was very, very sure that he was right about it; he had read it
+all in a newspaper; he had walked miles and miles to hear men talk of
+nothing else.
+
+Claire René asked where the great man lived.
+
+"In Paris, ma petite."
+
+"And what does he look like--the brave one?"
+
+"He is grave and quiet, like a king."
+
+"And has he on his head the crown of gold?"
+
+"No, ma petite, but he has in his heart the Sons of France."
+
+"And Clément and Fernand and Alphonse also?"
+
+Claire René waited while Jacques passed his fingers through her hair.
+"Yes, ma petite," he said at last.
+
+Claire René wished that she had more hands and feet and lips and eyes
+and more than such a little body to hold her joy. She made circles of
+dancing about Jacques on their way back to the cottage. She said her
+happiness was so great that she might fly up into the sky and laugh
+from the tops of the trees. "Dear Jacques," she said as they paused at
+the dried garden patch, "do you think to-morrow they will come--my
+brothers?"
+
+Jacques shook his head.
+
+"Do you think one day from to-morrow?"
+
+Again Jacques shook his head.
+
+But Claire René was busy in her thoughts. She turned suddenly and threw
+her arms about him. "Will you again walk the miles of the forest for
+Claire René, will you?"
+
+"But--why--for what reason, ma petite?"
+
+She would send a letter! She would herself write to the "Great Man," and
+tell him about Clément and Fernand and Alphonse, tell him how good and
+brave they were, and about grand'mère and the silence of her eyes and
+ears, and about--Claire René looked frightened and clapped her fingers
+over her mouth.
+
+No! She must forever keep the secret about the telegrams. Telegrams
+meant sorrow; there must be only happiness in the house for the
+brothers.
+
+Long after twilight had fallen she pleaded with Jacques about the
+letter. By the firelight that same night she would write. Grand'mère had
+taught her to make the letters of many words; she knew what to say. In
+the first light of the day Jacques could be gone to the post. And then!
+Yes?
+
+Not until he finally nodded his head was she satisfied. Then she
+wondered why so suddenly he had become heavy with sadness. Why, when she
+watched him trudge off into the forest, had he seemed to carry a burden
+on his bent back?
+
+She thought: "Old people are like that. Grand'mère is like that; she,
+too, grows tired with the end of the day. They had so many long days
+behind them to remember--grand'mère and Jacques. And the days ahead of
+them?"
+
+Claire René was often puzzled about their days ahead. They were so
+tired! But they would be soon happy. And grand'mère would open her eyes
+to see and her ears to hear when Clément and Fernand and Alphonse came
+back again.
+
+Claire René ate only a mouthful of her cooked roots on that evening. For
+grand'mère she made a special brew of dried herbs from the forest and
+baked a cake from the last bit of brown flour left in the cupboard.
+Grand'mère was half the shape she used to be; the brothers would surely
+scold when they saw her so gone away.
+
+Claire René piled the logs high on the fire; she must have light for her
+work, plenty of light. She searched the house for paper and envelope and
+pencil and when she had written she threw the paper into the fire and
+wept with a passion much too great for her years and her body. She had
+forgotten the words; they wouldn't come. And who was she to be writing
+to the "Great Man," a man like a king?
+
+Until the dawn crept through the windows Claire René lay upon the hearth
+by the dying fire, sobbing through her sleep. The first light of day
+made her remember Jacques. He would be waiting! He had promised to go,
+to walk to the post with her letter. She looked at the dark closet under
+the stairs. She thought of the three wreaths; if she could make wreaths,
+she could make letters! She bounded to her feet; she seized the last of
+the paper and the bitten pencil; she struggled with the letters; she
+wrote: "Dear Great Man: My brothers----"
+
+A step in the still room startled her. Grand'mère was coming from her
+room, fully dressed. Claire René flew to her side, but Madame Populet
+stood erect; she walked alone to her chair by the window. Claire René
+knelt beside her, and the hands that were laid on her head had a new
+firmness in their pressure. And grand'mère was smiling!
+
+Claire René thought: "She is happy this morning; she feels in the air
+the gladness. I will make her a hot brew when I come back from Jacques."
+
+She wrapped a dark cloak about her shoulders; in her hand was tightly
+clasped the half-written paper and the pencil. At the doorway she turned
+and called: "Good-by, grand'mère. Good-by."
+
+Madame Populet was still smiling; her face was turned toward the forest
+and, through the sweeping willow over the window, sunbeams laid their
+fingers on the sightless eyes.
+
+Two hours later Claire René walked through the forest singing. Her arms
+were full of scarlet leaves and branches of holly berries. She wanted to
+carry all the beautiful things she saw back to the cottage, to make the
+place a bower, where she and grand'mère and Clément and Fernand and
+Alphonse could kneel and thank the good God that they were again
+together.
+
+All the world was kind on this morning. Jacques had been waiting for her
+at the door of his wooden hut. He had helped her with the letter. He had
+set out straightway to the post. Claire René had stooped and kissed the
+feet that had so many miles to go.
+
+Jacques had cried out: "Ma petite, you hope too far."
+
+But Claire René's mind and heart were a flood of joy; she had no place
+for doubt, no time for sorrow. She came out of the forest and stood
+looking at the tiny, crumbling house. No longer was she afraid of the
+silence. In but a short time her three brothers would fill the air with
+laughter; they would carry her on their backs around the house and into
+the forest, and grand'mère would stand waiting and smiling--and perhaps
+scolding; who could tell?
+
+She pushed her way through the doorway. The berries and leaves made a
+tall screen about her; she could barely see grand'mère in her chair by
+the window. She laid the branches on the hearth.
+
+"There!" she said. "That's good."
+
+Grand'mère was very quiet in her chair by the window. Her hands were
+folded over her breast. There was something between her still fingers.
+
+Claire René looked again, and then she screamed.
+
+Madame Populet's eyes were open; they were fixed on the thin
+blue-and-white envelope clasped in her hands. Claire René pressed her
+fingers into her temples; she was afraid to speak aloud.
+
+She whispered: "The third telegram!"
+
+Who had brought it? Who had given it to grand'mère? Why was she so
+still? Why were her eyes open, without seeing? Claire René wanted to
+scream again; but instead, she made her feet take her to the chair by
+the window; she made her fingers pull the thin envelope from between the
+stiff fingers. Grand'mère's hands were cold. Her silence was more
+terrible than any silence Claire René had known before. The glazed, open
+eyes looked as if they hurt; she closed the lids with the tips of her
+fingers. She had seen dead birds in the forest and she knew that
+grand'mère was now like them.
+
+The telegram was better burned in the fire; there it could bring no more
+sorrow. She watched the thin paper curl and smolder among the smoking
+embers of last night's blaze. She looked again toward the still figure
+by the window. If grand'mère was dead, why did she stay on the earth?
+Why didn't the Holy Mother send an angel to carry her away into the
+heaven of the good God?
+
+Claire René began to tremble. What if the angels were too tired to come,
+were as faint and hungry as she! What, then, would become of grand'mère?
+
+Clément and Fernand and Alphonse would be very angry to find her so cold
+and still and dead; they would be, perhaps, as angry to find her gone
+away to heaven. But grand'mère had so much of sorrow here on earth;
+Claire René thought the room was growing very dark; she flung her arms
+above her head and faintly screamed. But there was no one to hear. She
+fell on the hearthstone beside the red berries and the red leaves.
+
+There was scarcely a breath left in her body when Jacques found her at
+dusk.
+
+Three days later she opened her eyes in her little bed beside
+grand'mère's bed. Grand'mère's bed was smooth and high and white. Claire
+René was puzzled.
+
+She called: "Grand'mère!"
+
+From the outer room the voice of Jacques replied: "Yes, ma petite; I am
+here."
+
+He came and put his arms about her; she laid her head against his rough
+coat, but her eyes were turned toward the empty bed. She was trying to
+remember.
+
+Presently she sat up and asked: "Did the angel come and take grand'mère
+and carry her to the Holy Mother in heaven?"
+
+Jacques crossed his heart. "Yes, ma petite," he said.
+
+Faintly Claire René smiled and faintly she questioned: "But, my
+brothers?"
+
+Jacques turned his troubled eyes away. She must wait, he said; when she
+was strong they would talk of many things. He told her that he had
+brought food to make her well, and that on the first warm day he would
+himself carry her out into the sunshine of the forest; there she would
+again run and sing and be like a happy, bright bird.
+
+In the days that followed Claire René never spoke of grand'mère; she
+never spoke of her three brothers. She lay in her bed and stared about
+the quiet room. The silence was different, now that grand'mère was gone.
+Everything was different.
+
+Jacques gave her food and care, and every day he said: "In only a little
+time you will be strong again, ma petite."
+
+But something in his eyes kept her from speaking about Clément and
+Fernand and Alphonse. Often she thought about the telegrams upstairs in
+the high, white bed. She wondered if Jacques had found them there. Once
+she heard him walking on the floor above. He was there a long time, and
+when he came down his voice was queer and deep and his eyes were hidden
+behind a mist.
+
+He never spoke any more about the "Great Man from America." Jacques was
+like grand'mère; he was old, he was full of sorrow. Claire René was
+afraid to ask about her letter; she thought about it each day.
+
+But on the morning she was carried to Clément's chair by the chimney
+corner, she felt a great gladness spring in her heart. Yes; they would
+come soon--her three brothers. To-morrow she would be strong enough to
+walk alone to the dark closet under the stairs and look again at the
+three wreaths on the highest shelf.
+
+Claire René smiled in her sleep that night; she dreamed of laughter in
+the house, of strong young arms about her, of quick steps and bright
+eyes.
+
+Once she awoke and must have called out, for Jacques was kneeling beside
+her bed.
+
+"Poor little one," he said, "you call, but there is only old Jacques to
+come."
+
+Claire René put out her hand and let it rest on the old man's head.
+"Dear Jacques," she whispered, "always I will love you."
+
+The sun was streaming through the tiny house the next morning. Jacques
+had left Claire René sitting in the warm light of the open doorway while
+he went to bring wood from the forest. There were no birds singing from
+the leafless trees, but Claire René saw a sparrow hopping about on the
+bright brown earth of the garden patch. She was wishing she had a great
+piece of white fat to hang out on a tree for the bird's winter food;
+wishing there were crumbs to leave on the window ledge, as grand'mère
+used to do.
+
+She was wishing so hard about so many things that she failed to see
+three men coming out of the forest. They were tall and straight and
+fair, and their eyes were as blue as the sky above their heads. Their
+clothes were the color of pale brown sand and on their heads were jaunty
+caps of the selfsame color.
+
+Jacques was with them; he was making a great many motions with his
+hands. They were all walking very slowly and talking very fast.
+
+As they neared the house Jacques pointed to Claire René, and the three
+strange men held back. Jacques came slowly forward. The sound of his
+step on the hard ground interrupted Claire René's reverie; she looked up
+and around. She saw the three men standing at attention beyond the
+garden gate.
+
+She threw back the heavy cloak wrapped about her; the thin folds of her
+calico dress hung limply from her sunken shoulders, and above the wasted
+child body the sun spun circles of gold in her tangled hair. She made a
+slight quivering start toward Jacques, which passed into a rigid stare
+toward the three figures beyond.
+
+She was unaware when Jacques put a caressing, supporting arm about her
+and said: "Listen, my child."
+
+The three men were coming forward. One of them had a letter in his hand.
+With kind eyes and bared heads they stood before the straining gaze of
+Claire René.
+
+"The letter is for you, ma petite." Jacques voice was infinitely tender;
+the added pressure of his arm made Claire René conscious of his
+presence; she suddenly clung to him and buried her face in his coat
+sleeve. He went on to say: "The letter is for Claire René--from the
+'Great Man from America'!"
+
+The tangled head shook in the angle of his arm. Claire René was crying.
+
+The tallest of the three men handed the letter to Jacques; he wiped his
+eyes and turned his head away. The others shifted in position and
+tightly folded their arms across their broad chests.
+
+Jacques read:
+
+     _To Mademoiselle Claire René_: The soil of France now covers the
+     bodies of your three brothers, Clément and Fernand and Alphonse
+     Populet. The soil of France covers the Croix de Guerre upon their
+     breasts. The sons of France, and of America, hold forever in their
+     hearts the memory of their honor. We are all one family now--France
+     and America--and so I send to you three brothers--not in place of,
+     but in the stead of those others. They come to give you love and
+     service in the name of America.
+
+Claire René slowly moved apart from Jacques. She stood alone with head
+erect and taut arms by her sides. She hesitated a moment, then came
+forward and held out her hands.
+
+"Bonjour, messieurs," she said.
+
+The tallest of the three men covered her hands with his own. "Little
+friend," he said, "we can't make you forget your brothers; we want to
+help you remember them. We want to do some of the things for you that
+they used to do, and we want you to do a lot of things for us. We are
+pretty big, it is true, but we need a little girl like you to sort of
+keep us in order. We want to take you right along with us this very
+day--to a place where we can care for you, and----"
+
+But Claire René slipped with electric swiftness to Jacques' side; from
+his sheltering arm she made declaration: "Never! I stay here with
+Jacques--always." Then struggling against emotion she added with
+finality: "I thank you, messieurs."
+
+The tall man lingered with his thoughts a moment before he spoke; he was
+standing close to Claire René and made as though to lay his hand upon
+her hair, but drew back and said that they were all pretty good cooks
+and that they were very, very hungry.
+
+At this Claire René threw a frightened, wistful glance at Jacques.
+
+The tall man interrupted hastily. He said they had brought food with
+them, and would she allow them to prepare it?
+
+Claire René nodded her head; her eyes looked beyond her questioner--out
+into the lonely forest.
+
+Jacques presently lifted her into his arms and carried her within the
+house. With reverence he placed her in grand'mère's chair by the window.
+Her ears were filled with distant echoes; her sight was blurred; speech
+had gone from her lips. As through a dark curtain she saw the figures
+moving about the room; far away she heard the clatter and the talk and
+sometimes laughter.
+
+After a long time Jacques came and held some steaming coffee to her
+lips. He made her drink and drink again; a pink flush crept into her
+cheeks; shyly she met the glances from the eyes of those three fair,
+kind faces. Then her own eyes filled with tears and she lowered her
+head.
+
+The tallest of the three men came behind her chair and spoke gently,
+close to her ear: "Our great and good commander, who sent us here, will
+be very unhappy if you do not come. You see, he wanted the sister of
+Clément and Fernand and Alphonse Populet to be a sister to some of his
+own boys. It would help us a great deal, you know; we're pretty lonely
+too--sometimes."
+
+The collaboration in the faces of his friends seemed to put an instant
+end to his effort and, as if an unspoken command were given, they all
+sat down and made a prompt finish to the meal.
+
+With no word on her lips Claire René watched from Grand'mère's chair by
+the window. About her, figures moved like dim marionettes; they cleared
+the table; they polished the copper pans; they sat in the chimney corner
+and puffed blue circles of smoke above their heads.
+
+Dimly she saw all this, but clearly she saw the inside of a great man's
+mind. She, Claire René, had work to do; she was called--for France!
+
+Long, slanting shadows from the sinking sun were streaking the wall of
+the whitewashed room with slender, forklike fingers. Jacques and the
+three men were knotted in talk beside the ruddy fire glow. Claire René
+braced herself with a sharp sigh. No soldier ever went into battle with
+a more self-made courage than hers.
+
+Unseen, unnoticed, noiselessly she made her pilgrimage across the room.
+In the dark closet, under the stairs, she reached for the wreaths. With
+quick, short breath she gathered them in her arms. One moment she
+lowered her head while her lips touched the faded crackling flowers. The
+compact was sealed; her sacrifice was ready.
+
+In that attitude she passed swiftly within the circle about the
+fireplace. She came like a spirit of Peace with the wreaths in her arms.
+Over and above the serenity in her face there dawned a joyous
+expectancy. Yes; she could trust les Américains!
+
+On each reverent, bowed head she placed her wreath; and when she had
+finished, without tremor in her voice she said: "My brothers!"
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[17] Copyright, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Ethel Dodd Thomas.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMAN BATH[18]
+
+#By# JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT
+
+From _Scribner's Magazine_
+
+
+Ralph Tuckerman had landed that day in Liverpool after a stormy winter
+voyage, his first across the Atlantic. The ship had slowly come up the
+Mersey in a fog, and the special boat train had dashed through the same
+dense atmosphere to the home of fogs and soot, London, and in the whole
+journey to his hotel the young American had seen nothing of the mother
+country but telegraph-poles scudding through opacity on the railway
+journey, and in London the loom of buildings and lights dimly red
+through the fog.
+
+Although he had no acquaintances among the millions of dwellers in the
+city, he did not feel lonely in the comfortable coffee room of his
+hotel, where a cannel-coal fire flickered. The air of the room was
+surcharged with pungent fumes of the coal smoke which had blackened the
+walls and ceilings, and had converted the once brilliant red of a Turkey
+carpet into a dingy brown, but the young American would not have had the
+air less laden with the characteristic odor of London, or the carpet and
+walls less dingy if he had had a magician's wand.
+
+The concept of a hotel in his native city of Chicago was a steel
+structure of many stories, brilliantly lighted and decorated, supplied
+with a lightning elevator service running through the polished marble
+halls which swooned in a tropical atmosphere of steam heat emanating
+from silvered radiators. So it was no wonder that the young man felt
+more at home in this inn in old London than he had ever felt in an
+American caravansary.
+
+The shabby waiter who had served him at dinner appeared to him to be a
+true representation of the serving-man who had eaten most of David
+Copperfield's chops, and drained the little boy's half pint of port when
+he went up to school. It may be that Tuckerman's age protected him from
+any such invasion of his viands, but in justice to the serving-man it
+seems probable that he would have cut off his right hand rather than
+been disrespectful to a guest at dinner.
+
+After the cloth was removed, Tuckerman ordered a half-pint decanter of
+port out of regard for the memory of Dickens, and, sipping it, looked
+about with admiration at the room with its dark old panels. Comfortable
+as he felt, after his dinner, he could not help regretting that he had
+not had with him his old friends Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and Traddles to
+share his enjoyment--the guests whom Copperfield entertained when "Mr.
+Micawber with more shirt collar than usual and a new ribbon to his
+eyeglass, Mrs. Micawber with a cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel,
+Traddles carrying the parcel and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm"
+arrived at David's lodgings and were so delightfully entertained. He
+wished that he could see "Micawber's face shining through a thin cloud
+of delicate fumes of punch," so that at the end of the evening Mr. and
+Mrs. Micawber would feel that they could not "have enjoyed a feast more
+if they had sold a bed to pay for it."
+
+These cheery spirits seemed to come back to him from the charming
+paradise where they live to delight the world for all time, and it
+seemed to him that he could distinctly hear Mr. Micawber saying: "We twa
+have rin about the brae, And pu'd the gowans fine," observing as he
+quoted: "I am not exactly aware what gowans may be, but I have no doubt
+that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull at them
+if it had been possible."
+
+His modest modicum of port would have seemed a poor substitute to the
+congenial Micawber for the punch.
+
+Finally he went up to bed, delighted to be given a bedroom candle in a
+brass candlestick, and to find on his arrival there that the plumber had
+never entered its sacred precincts, for a hat tub on a rubber cloth
+awaited the can of hot water, which would be lugged up to him in the
+morning; the four-post bedstead with its heavy damask hangings, the
+cushioned grandfather's chair by the open fireplace, the huge mahogany
+wardrobe and the heavy furniture--all were of the period of 1830. Back
+to such a room Mr. Pickwick had tried to find his way on the memorable
+night when he so disturbed the old lady whose chamber he had unwittingly
+invaded.
+
+So impressed was the young American with his transference to the past
+that his stem-winding watch seemed an anachronism when he came to attend
+to it for the night.
+
+He settled down into the big armchair by the fire, having taken from his
+valise three books which he had selected for his travelling companions:
+"Baedeker's London Guide," "The Pickwick Papers," and "David
+Copperfield." The latter was in a cheap American edition which he had
+bought with his schoolboy's savings; a tattered volume which he knew
+almost by heart; which, when he took it up, opened at that part of
+David's "Personal History and Experience" where his aunt tells him of
+her financial losses, and where he dreamed his dreams of poverty in all
+sorts of shapes, and, as he read, this paragraph flew out at his eye:
+
+"There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the
+streets out of the Strand--it may be there still--in which I have had
+many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quickly as I could, and leaving
+Peggotty to look after my Aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it, and
+then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk
+treatment might freshen my wits a little."
+
+Ralph's sleep in the old bed was unquiet. He was transported back into
+the England of the old coaching days, and found himself seated on the
+box-seat of the Ipswich coach, next a stout, red-faced, elderly
+coachman, his throat and chest muffled by capacious shawls, who said to
+him:
+
+"If ever you are attacked with the gout, just you marry a widder as had
+got a good loud woice with a decent notion of using it, and you will
+never have the gout agin!" Then suddenly the film of the smart coach,
+with passengers inside and out, faded away, and Ralph found himself
+drinking hot brandy and water with Mr. Pickwick, in a room of a very
+homely description, apparently under the special patronage of Mr. Weller
+and other stage coachmen, for there sat the former smoking with great
+vehemence. The vision flashed out into darkness.
+
+Then came deep, early morning sleep from which a sharp knock at his door
+aroused him, and a valet entered with a hot-water can and a cup of tea,
+saying: "Beg pardon, sir, eight o'clock, sir, thank you, sir."
+
+Ralph's first inclination was to say "_Thank you_," but he restrained
+himself from this in time to save upsetting the foundations of British
+social life, and instead he asked:
+
+"What kind of a morning is it?"
+
+"Oh, sir, thank you, sir, if I should say that it is a nasty morning,
+sir, I should be telling the truth indeed, foggy and raining, sir, thank
+you, sir."
+
+All the time he was quietly taking up Ralph's clothes, which were
+scattered in convulsions around the room.
+
+"Shall I not unpack your box, sir?" asked the valet.
+
+Ralph stopped from sipping his tea to nod assent, and the man proceeded
+with the unpacking with a hand which practice had made perfect.
+
+"This is my first morning in London," observed Ralph. The valet
+pretended not to hear him, being unwilling to engage in any line of
+conversation which by any chance could take him out of the station in
+life to which he had been called.
+
+"What is your name?" finally asked the American.
+
+"Postlethwaite, sir, but I answer to the name of 'Enery."
+
+"Well, 'Enery, did you ever hear of a Roman bath in a little street off
+the Strand?"
+
+"A Roman bath, sir, in a little street off the Strand, sir? No, sir,
+thank you, sir, my word, sir, the Italians never take baths, sir."
+
+"They used to take them, 'Enery, and my guide-book says that there is
+one of theirs to this day in Strand Lane."
+
+The valet was silent as he continued his unpacking and arranging of
+Tuckerman's clothes, and the latter felt a little uncomfortable as this
+proceeding went on, for he was conscious of the inadequacy of his
+outfit, not only in the eyes of an English servant, but in his own, for
+he had purposely travelled "light," intending to replenish his wardrobe
+in London; but the well-trained servant treated the worn-out suits and
+frayed shirts with the utmost outward respect as he folded them up and
+put them away in the clothes-press.
+
+An hour later, on the top of a 'bus, Ralph sat watching the complicated
+movement of traffic in the London streets, directed by the helmeted
+policemen. It was before the days of the motor-car, an endless stream of
+omnibuses, drays, hansoms, and four-wheelers, even at that early hour in
+the morning was pouring through the great artery of the heart of the
+world. This first ride on a London 'bus and the sights of the street
+traffic were inspiring, but familiar to the mind's eye of the young
+American. The Thames, alive with barges and steamers, the smoke-stained
+buildings, the processions of clerks, the crossing and sweepers, the
+smart policemen, the cab-drivers, the draymen, he knew from Leech's
+drawings, and he was on his way, marvellous to relate, to the oldest
+work of man in the city, in which the water flowed as it had been
+flowing ever since London was Londineum.
+
+He got off the 'bus at Strand Lane and found a little way down the
+street the building he was looking for. It was a commonplace brick
+structure, the exterior giving no hint of its contents. A notice was
+posted on the black entrance door, stating the hours at which the bath
+was open to visitors. Ralph found out that he had fifteen minutes to
+wait before he could plunge head foremost into the pool. He walked
+somewhat impatiently up and down the street, finding the waiting
+unpleasant, for although it was not raining hard, the mist was cold and
+disagreeable. After a few turns, he came up to the door again and there
+found a young gentleman, dressed in a long surtout, reading the notice;
+the stranger turned about as Ralph approached; his face was
+smooth-shaven, his eyes large and melancholy, his whimsical, sensitive
+mouth was upcurved at the corners, his waving chestnut hair was longer
+than was then the fashion, the soft felt hat was pulled down over his
+forehead as if to ward off the fog. He swung to and fro with his right
+hand a Malacca joint with a chiselled gold head.
+
+He bowed politely to Ralph, remarking:
+
+"So you, too, are waiting for a plunge into the waters of the Holywell?"
+
+"You are right, sir; I guess that we shall find the Roman bath cold this
+morning."
+
+"You are an American, are you not?"
+
+"I am, and therefore, sir, I am a seeker after the curious and ancient
+things of this city; it is my first morning in London."
+
+"May I ask how you found out about this ancient bath? It is but little
+known, even to old Londoners. I often come here for a plunge, but I
+seldom find any other bathers here."
+
+"Well, sir, I came across an allusion to it in 'David Copperfield,' just
+before I retired last night, and I looked up the locality in my
+guide-book."
+
+"'David Copperfield'!" exclaimed the young man with a low whistle, and
+he started off upon a walking up and down as if to keep himself warm
+while waiting.
+
+A moment later the heavy black door of the bathhouse was opened, and the
+bath attendant stepped out on the threshold, looking out into the rain;
+a dark-haired, heavily built man, with coarse features, a tight, cruel
+mouth; if he had not been dressed in rough, modern working clothes, he
+might well have been a holdover from the days of the Roman occupation.
+
+"The admission is two shillings," announced the attendant as he showed
+the American into a dressing-room, and as the latter was paying his fee
+he saw the other visitor glide into a dressing-room adjoining his.
+
+The bath was small, dark, and disappointing in appearance to the man
+from overseas, to whom the term "Roman bath" had conveyed an impression
+of vast vaulted rooms, and marble-lined swimming-pools. The bath itself
+was long enough for a plunge, but too small for a swim, and a hasty
+diver would be in danger of bumping his head on the bottom. The bricks
+at the side were laid edgewise, and the floor of the bath was of brick
+covered with cement. At the point where the water from the Holywell
+Spring flowed in, Ralph could see the old Roman pavement. The water in
+the bath was clear, but it was dark and cold looking.
+
+As Ralph stood at the edge, reluctant to spring in, he saw the young
+Englishman dart from his dressing-room like a graceful sprite and make a
+beautiful dive into the pool. His slender body made no splash, but
+entered the water like a beam of light, refracting as he swam a stroke
+under water.
+
+In a trice his face appeared above the surface, with no ripple or
+disturbance of the water.
+
+"I feel better already," he called out. "I passed such a terrible night,
+almost as bad as poor Clarence's. How miserable I was last night when I
+lay down! I need not go into details. A loss of property; a sudden
+misfortune had upset my hopes of a career and of happiness.
+
+"It was difficult to believe that night, so long to me, could be short
+for any one else. This consideration set me thinking, and thinking of an
+imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away until that
+became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune,
+and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance without taking the least
+notice of me."
+
+"I too dreamed the night through," thought Ralph. "And am I dreaming
+now?"
+
+"I dreamed of poverty in all sorts of shapes. I seemed to dream without
+the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I was ragged, now I ran out
+of my office in a nightgown and boots, now I was hungrily picking up the
+crumbs of a poor man's scanty bread, and, still more or less conscious
+of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a
+sea of bedclothes. But come, my friend, plunge in, for if you passed any
+such night as mine, the clear cold water of Holywell Spring has
+marvellous healing properties, and it will freshen your wits for
+whatever the day may bring for them to puzzle over."
+
+As he spoke he drew himself up on the opposite side of the bath from
+Ralph, and watched the latter as he took a clumsy header, his body
+striking the water flat, and sending great splashes over the room. When
+Ralph, recovering from his rude entrance into the water, looked for the
+other bather, he was gone. The cold water did not invite a protracted
+immersion, so that Ralph scrambled hastily out of it, and after a rub
+with a harsh towel, put on his clothes; then he noticed that the door of
+the stranger's cubicle was open; he looked into it to say good-by to his
+chance acquaintance, but it was empty, and in the corner he saw the
+Malacca cane with the gold head. He picked it up and carefully examined
+it; the head was of gold in the form of a face, eyes wide open,
+spectacles turned up on the forehead.
+
+"Great Cæsar's ghost!" exclaimed Ralph, "Old Marley!"
+
+The attendant just then appeared, Ralph handed him the cane, saying: "I
+found this cane in the other gentleman's dressing-room." The attendant
+stared at him and said gruffly:
+
+"None of your larks, sir; there wasn't no other gentleman, and that's no
+cane; its my cleaning mop that I get under the seats with."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[18] Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by
+John T. Wheelwright.
+
+
+
+
+AMAZEMENT[19]
+
+#By# STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+There is sometimes melancholy in revisiting after years of absence, a
+place where one was joyous in the days of youth. That is why sadness
+stole over me on the evening of my return to Florence.
+
+To be sure, the physical beauties of the Italian city were intact.
+Modernity had not farther encroached upon the landmarks that had
+witnessed the birth of a new age, powerful, even violent, in its
+individualism. From those relics, indeed--from the massive palaces, the
+noble porches, the monuments rising in the public squares--there still
+seemed to issue a faint vibration of ancient audacity and force. It was
+as if stone and bronze had absorbed into their particles, and stored
+through centuries, the great emotions released in Florence during that
+time of mental expansion called the Renaissance.
+
+But this integrity of scene and influence only increased my regrets.
+Though the familiar setting was still here, the familiar human figures
+seemed all departed. I looked in vain for sobered versions of the faces
+that had smiled, of old, around tables in comfortable cafés, in an
+atmosphere of youthful gaiety, where at any moment one might be enmeshed
+in a Florentine prank that Boccaccio could not have bettered.
+
+One such prank rose, all at once, before my minds eye, and suddenly, in
+the midst of my pessimism, I laughed aloud.
+
+I recalled the final scene of that escapade, which I myself had managed
+to devise. The old café had rung with a bellow of delight; the victim,
+ridiculous in his consternation, had rushed at me howling for vengeance.
+But the audience, hemming him in, had danced 'round him singing a ribald
+little song. The air was full of battered felt hats, coffee spoons,
+lumps of sugar, and waving handkerchiefs. Out on the piazza the old
+cab-horses had pricked up their ears; the shopkeepers had run to their
+doorways; the police had taken notice. It was not every day that the
+champion joker among us was caught in such a net as he delighted to
+spread.
+
+Where were they, all my jolly young men and women? Maturity, matrimony,
+perhaps still other acts of fate, had scattered them. Here and there a
+grizzled waiter let fall the old names with a shrug of perplexity, then
+hastened to answer the call of a rising generation as cheerful as if it
+were not doomed, also, to dispersion and regrets.
+
+Then, too, in returning I had been so unfortunate as to find Florence on
+the verge of spring.
+
+The soft evening air was full of a sweetness exhaled by the surrounding
+cup of hills. From baskets of roses, on the steps of porticoes, a
+fragrance floated up like incense round the limbs of statues, which were
+bathed in a golden light by the lamps of the piazza. Those marble
+countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars
+that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions
+into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which was
+gone.
+
+"After all," I thought, "it is better not to find one of the old circle.
+We should make each other miserable by our reminiscences."
+
+No sooner had I reflected thus than I found myself face to face with
+Antonio.
+
+Antonio was scarcely changed. His dark visage was still vital with
+intelligence, still keen and strange from the exercise of an
+inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his eyes, which formerly had sparkled
+with the wit of youth, there was more depth and a hint of somberness. He
+had become a celebrated satirist.
+
+"What luck!" he cried, embracing me with sincere delight. "But to think
+that I should have to run into you on the street!"
+
+"I asked for you everywhere."
+
+"In the old places? I never go to them. You have not dined? Nor I. Here,
+let us take this cab."
+
+He hurried me off to a restaurant of the suburbs. Under the starry sky
+we sat down at a table beside a sunken garden, in which nightingales
+were trying their voices among the blossoms, whose perfume had been
+intensified by dew.
+
+It was an old-time dinner, at least, that Antonio provided; but, alas!
+those others were not there to eke out the illusion of the past. To each
+name, as I uttered it, Antonio added an epitaph. This one had gone to
+bury himself in the Abruzzi hills. That one had become a professor at
+Bologna. Others, in vanishing, had left no trace behind them.
+
+"And Leonello, who was going to surpass Michael Angelo?"
+
+"Oh," my friend responded, "Leonello is still here, painting his
+pictures. Like me, he could not live long beyond the air of Florence."
+
+Antonio, in fact, could trace his family back through Florentine history
+into the Middle Ages.
+
+"Is Leonello the same?" I pursued. "Always up to some nonsense? But you
+were not much behind him in those insane adventures."
+
+"Take that to yourself," Antonio retorted. "I recall one antic, just
+before you left us--" He broke off to meditate. Clicking his tongue
+against his teeth, he gazed at me almost with resentment, as if I were
+responsible for this depressing work of time. "No!" he exclaimed,
+looking at me in gloomy speculation, while, in the depths of his eyes,
+one seemed to see his extraordinary intelligence perplexed and baffled.
+"That war of wit is surely over. The old days are gone for good. Let us
+make the best of it." And he asked me what I had been doing.
+
+I made my confession. In those years I had become fascinated by psychic
+phenomena--by the intrusion into human experience of weird happenings
+that materialism could not very well explain. Many of these happenings
+indicated, at least to my satisfaction, not only future existences, but
+also previous ones. I admitted to Antonio that, since I was in Italy
+again, I intended to investigate the case of a Perugian peasant girl
+who, though she had never been associated with educated persons, was
+subject to trances in which she babbled the Greek language of
+Cleopatra's time, and accurately described the appearance of
+pre-Christian Alexandria.
+
+"I am writing a book on such matters," I concluded. "You, of course,
+will laugh at it----"
+
+His somber eyes, which had been watching me intently, became blank for a
+time, then suddenly gave forth a flash.
+
+"I? Laugh because you have been enthralled by weirdness?" he cried, as
+one who, all at once, has been profoundly moved. Yet laugh he did, in
+loud tones that were almost wild with strange elation. "Pardon me," he
+stammered, passing a trembling hand across his forehead. "You do not
+know the man that I have become of late."
+
+What had my words called to his mind? From that moment everything was
+changed. The weight of some mysterious circumstances had descended upon
+Antonio, overwhelming, as it seemed to me, the pleasure that he had
+found in this reunion. Through the rest of the dinner he was silent, a
+prey to that dark exultancy, to that uncanny agitation.
+
+This silence persisted while the cab bore us back into the city.
+
+In the narrow streets a blaze of light from the open fronts of
+cook-shops flooded the lower stories of some palaces which once on a
+time had housed much fierceness and beauty, treachery and perverse
+seductiveness. Knowing Antonio's intimate acquaintance with those
+splendid days, I strove to rouse him by congenial allusions. His
+preoccupation continued; the historic syllables that issued from my lips
+were wasted in the clamor of the street. Yet when I pronounced the name
+of one of those bygone belles, Fiammetta Adimari, he repeated slowly,
+like a man who has found the key to everything:
+
+"Fiammetta!"
+
+"What is it, Antonio? Are you in love?"
+
+He gave me a piercing look and sprang from the cab. We had reached the
+door of his house.
+
+Antonio's bachelor apartment was distinguished by handsome austerity.
+The red-tiled floors reflected faintly the lights of antique candelabra,
+which shed their luster also upon chests quaintly carved, bric-à-brac
+that museums would have coveted, and chairs adorned with threadbare
+coats of arms. Beside the mantelpiece hung a small oil-painting, as I
+thought, of Antonio himself, his black hair reaching to his shoulders,
+and on his head a hat of the Renaissance.
+
+"No," said he, giving me another of his strange looks, "it is my
+ancestor, Antonio di Manzecca, who died in the year fifteen hundred."
+
+I remembered that somewhere in the hills north of the city there was a
+dilapidated stronghold called the Castle of Manzecca. Behind those
+walls, in the confusion of the Middle Ages, Antonio's family had
+developed into a nest of rural tyrants. Those old steel-clad men of the
+Manzecca had become what were called "Signorotti"--lords of a height or
+two, swooping down to raid passing convoys, waging petty wars against
+the neighboring castles, and at times, like bantams, too arrogant to
+bear in mind the shortness of their spurs, defying even Florence. In the
+end, as I recalled the matter, Florence had chastened the Manzecca,
+together with all the other lordlings of that region. The survivors had
+come to live in the city, where, through these hundreds of years, many
+changes of fortune had befallen them. My friend Antonio was their last
+descendant.
+
+"But," I protested, examining the portrait, "your resemblance to this
+Antonio of the Renaissance could not possibly be closer."
+
+Instead of replying, he sat down, rested his elbow on his knees, and
+pressed his fists against his temples. Presently I became aware that he
+was laughing, very softly, but in such an unnatural manner that I
+shivered.
+
+I grew alarmed. It was true that in our years of separation Antonio's
+physical appearance had not greatly changed; but what was the meaning of
+this mental difference? Was his mind in danger of some sinister
+overshadowing? Were these queer manners the symptoms of an incipient
+mania? It is proposed that genius is a form of madness. Was the genius
+of Antonio, in its phenomenal development, on the point of losing touch
+with sanity? As my thoughts leaped from one conjecture to another, the
+tiled room took on the chill that pervades a mausoleum. From the bowl on
+the table the petals of a dying rose fell in a sudden cascade, like a
+dismal portent.
+
+"The Castle of Manzecca," I ventured, merely to break the silence, "is
+quite ruined, I suppose?"
+
+"No, the best part of it still stands. I have had some rooms restored."
+
+"You own it?"
+
+"I bought it back a year ago. It is there that I----" He buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+"Antonio," I said, "you are in some great trouble."
+
+"It is not trouble," he answered, in smothered tones. "But why should I
+hesitate to make my old friend, whose mind does not reject weirdness, my
+confidant? I warn you, however, that it will be a confidence weird
+enough to make even your experience in such matters seem tame. Go first
+to Perugia. Examine the peasant girl who chatters of ancient Alexandria.
+Return to my house one week from to-night, at dusk, and you shall share
+my secret."
+
+He rose, averted his face, and went to throw himself upon a couch, or
+porch-bed, another relic, its woodwork covered with faded paint and
+gilt, amid which one might trace the gallants of the sixteenth century
+in pursuit of nymphs--an allegory of that age's longing for the classic
+past. I left him thus, flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling,
+oblivious of my farewell.
+
+Poor Antonio! What a return to Florence!
+
+A week from that night, at dusk, I returned. At Perugia I had filled a
+pocket-book with notes on the peasant girl's trances. The spell of those
+strange revelations was yet on me, but at Antonio's door I felt that I
+stood on the threshold of a still more agitating disclosure.
+
+My knock was answered by Antonio himself, his hat on his head and a
+motorcoat over his arm. He seemed burning with impatience.
+
+"You have your overcoat? Good." And he locked the door on the outside.
+
+We stepped into a limousine, which whirled us away through the twilight.
+The weather made one remember that even in Florence the merging of March
+and April could be violent. To-night masses of harsh-looking clouds sped
+across the sky before an icy wind from the mountains. A burial-party,
+assembled at a convent gate, had their black robes fluttering, their
+waxen torches blown out.
+
+"Death!" muttered Antonio, with a sardonic grimace. "And they call it
+unconquerable!"
+
+As we paused before a dwelling-house, two men emerged upon the pavement.
+They were Leonello, the artist, and another friend of the old days,
+named Leonardo. The unusual occasion constrained our greetings. The
+newcomers, after pressing my hand, devoted themselves with grave
+solicitude to Antonio.
+
+He burst forth at them like a man whose nervous tension is nearly
+unendurable:
+
+"Yes, hang it all! I am quite well. Why the devil will you persist in
+coddling me?"
+
+Leonello and Leonardo gave me a mournful look.
+
+We now stopped at another door, where there joined us two ladies unknown
+to me. Both were comely, with delicate features full of sensibility.
+Neither, I judged, had reached the age of thirty. In the moment of
+meeting--a moment notable for a stammering of incoherent phrases, a
+darting of sidelong looks at Antonio, a general effect of furtiveness
+and excitement--no one remembered to present me to these ladies.
+However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered
+that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was
+Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent
+flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity
+for this adventure.
+
+The silence, and the tension of all forms, continued even when we left
+the city behind us and found ourselves speeding northward along a
+country road.
+
+"Northward. To the Castle of Manzecca, then?" I asked myself.
+
+The rays from our lamps revealed the trees all bending toward the south.
+The wind pressed against our car, as if to hold us back from the
+revelation awaiting us ahead, in the midst of the black night, whence
+this interminable whistling moan pervaded nature. Rain dashed against
+the glass. Through the blurred windows the lights of farms appeared, to
+be instantly engulfed by darkness. Then everything vanished except the
+illuminated streak of road. We seemed to be fleeing from the known
+world, across a span of radiance that trembled over an immeasurable
+void, into the supernatural.
+
+The limousine glided to a standstill.
+
+"Here we abandon the car."
+
+We entered the kitchen of a humble farm-house. Strings of garlic hung
+from the ceiling, and on the floor lay some valises.
+
+As the ladies departed into another room, Antonio mastered his emotion
+and addressed me.
+
+"What we must do, and what I must ask you to promise, may at first seem
+to you ridiculous," he said. "Yet your acceptance of my conditions is a
+matter of life or death, not to any one here present, but to another,
+whom we are about to visit. What I require is this: you are to put on,
+as we shall, the costumes in these valises, which are after the fashion
+of the early sixteenth century. Indeed, when our journey is resumed,
+there must be about us nothing to suggest the present age. Moreover, I
+must have your most earnest promise that when we reach our destination
+you will refrain from giving the least hint, by word or action, that the
+sixteenth century has passed away. If you feel unable to carry out this
+deception, we must leave you here. The slightest blunder would be
+fatal."
+
+No sooner had Antonio uttered these words than he turned in a panic to
+Leonello and Leonardo.
+
+"Am I wrong to have brought him?" he demanded, distractedly. "Can I
+depend on him at every point? You two, and Laura and Lina, know what it
+would mean if he should make a slip."
+
+Much disturbed, I declared that I wished for nothing better than to
+return to Florence at once. But Leonardo restrained me, while Leonello,
+patting Antonio's shoulder in reassurance, responded:
+
+"Trust him. You do his quick wit an injustice."
+
+Finally Antonio, with a heavy sigh, unlocked the valises.
+
+Hitherto I had associated masquerade with festive expectations, but
+nothing could have been less festive than the atmosphere in which we
+donned those costumes. They were rich, accurate, and complete. The wigs
+of flowing hair were perfectly deceptive. The fur-trimmed surcoats and
+the long hose were in fabrics suggestive of lost weaving arts. Each
+dagger, buckle, hat-gem, and finger-ring, was a true antique. Even when
+the two ladies appeared, in sumptuous Renaissance dresses, their
+coiffures as closely in accordance with that period as their expanded
+silhouettes, no smile crossed any face.
+
+"Are we all--" began Antonio. His voice failed him. Muffled in thick
+cloaks, we faced the blustery night again.
+
+Behind the farm-house stood horses, saddled and bridled in an obsolete
+manner. Our small cavalcade wound up a hillside path, which, in the
+darkness, the beasts felt out for themselves. One became aware of
+cypress-trees on either hillside, immensely tall, to judge by the
+thickness of their trunks. More and more numerous became these trees, as
+was evident from the lamentation of their countless branches. In its
+groan, the forest voiced to the utmost that melancholy which the
+imaginative mind associates with cypresses in Italy, where they seemed
+always to raise their funereal grace around the sites of vanished
+splendors.
+
+We were ascending one of the hills that lie scattered above Florence
+toward the mountains, and that were formerly all covered with these
+solemn trees.
+
+But the wind grew even stronger as we neared the summit. Above us loomed
+a gray bulk. The Castle of Manzecca reluctantly unveiled itself, bleak,
+towering, impressive in its decay--a ruin that was still a fortress, and
+that time had not injured so much as had its mortal besiegers; the last
+of whom had died centuries ago. A gate swung open. Our horses clattered
+into a courtyard which abruptly blazed with torches.
+
+In that dazzle all the omens of our journey were fulfilled. We found
+ourselves, as it appeared, not only in a place embodying another age,
+but in that other age itself.
+
+The streaming torches revealed shock-headed servitors of the
+Renaissance, their black tunics stamped in vermilion, front and back,
+with a device of the Manzecca. By the steps glittered the spear-points
+of a clump of men-at-arms whose swarthy and rugged faces remained
+impassive under flattened helmets. But as we dismounted a grey-hound
+came leaping from the castle, and in the doorway hovered an old
+maid-servant. To her Antonio ran straightway, his cape whipping out
+behind him.
+
+"Speak, Nuta! Is she well?" he demanded.
+
+We followed him into the castle.
+
+It was a spacious hall, paved with stone, its limits shadowy, its core
+illuminated brilliantly with candles. From the rafters dangled some
+banners, tattered and queerly designed. Below these, in the midst of the
+hall--in a mellow refulgence that she herself seemed to give
+forth--there awaited us a woman glorified by youth and happiness, who
+pressed her hand to her heart.
+
+She wore a gown of violet-colored silk, the sleeves puffed at the
+shoulders, the bodice tight across the breast and swelling at the waist,
+the skirt voluminous. On either side of her bosom, sheer linen, puckered
+by golden rosettes, mounted to form behind her neck a little ruff. Over
+her golden hair, every strand of which had been drawn back strictly from
+her brow, a white veil was clasped, behind her ears, by a band of pearls
+and amethysts cut in cabuchon.
+
+Still, she was remarkable less for her costume than for the singularity
+of her charms.
+
+To what was this singularity due? To the intense emotions that she
+seemed to be harboring? Or to the arrangement of her lovely features,
+to-day unique, which made one think of backgrounds composed of brocade
+and armor, the freshly painted canvases of Titian and the dazzling
+newness of statues by Michael Angelo? As she approached that singularity
+of hers became still more disquieting, as though the fragrance that
+enveloped her were not a woman's chosen perfume, but the very aroma of
+the magnificent past.
+
+Antonio regarded her with his soul in his eyes, then greedily kissed her
+hands. When the others had saluted her, each of them as much moved as
+though she were an image in a shrine, Antonio said in a hoarse voice to
+me:
+
+"I present you to Madonna Fiammetta di Foscone, my affianced bride.
+Madonna, this gentleman comes from a distant country to pay you homage."
+
+"He is welcome," she answered, in a voice that accorded with her
+peculiar beauty.
+
+And my bewilderment deepened as I realized that they were speaking not
+modern Italian, but what I gathered to be the Italian of the sixteenth
+century.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+I found myself with Antonio in a tower-room, whither he had brought me
+on the ladies' retirement to prepare themselves for supper.
+
+The wind, howling round the tower, pressed against the narrow windows
+covered with oiled linen. The cypress forest, which on all sides
+descended from our peak into the valleys, gave forth a continuous moan.
+Every instant the candle-light threatened to go out. The very tower
+seemed to be trembling, like Antonio, in awe of the secret about to be
+revealed. For a while my poor friend could say nothing. Seated in his
+rich disguise on a bench worn smooth by men whose tombs were crumbling,
+he leaned forward beneath the burden of his thoughts, and the long locks
+of his wig hung down as if to veil the disorder of his features.
+
+Finally he began:
+
+"In the year fifteen hundred my family still called this place their
+home. There were only two of them left, two brothers, the older bearing
+the title Lord of Manzecca. The younger brother was that Antonio di
+Manzecca whose portrait you saw on the wall of my apartment in the city.
+It is to him, as you observed, that I bear so close a resemblance.
+
+"In a hill-castle not far away lived another family, the Foscone.
+
+"The Lord of Foscone, a widower, had only one child left, a daughter
+seventeen years old. Her name was Fiammetta. Even in Florence it was
+said that to the north, amid the wilderness of cypress-trees, there
+dwelt a maiden whose beauty surrounded her with golden rays like a
+nimbus."
+
+I remembered our entrance into this castle, my first glimpse of the
+woman awaiting us in the middle of the hall, and the glow of light
+around her that appeared to be a radiance expanding from her person.
+
+But my friend continued:
+
+"Between the two castles there was friendly intercourse. It was presumed
+that the Lord of Foscone would presently give his daughter in marriage
+to the Lord of Manzecca. Fate, however, determined that Fiammetta and
+Antonio di Manzecca, the younger brother, should fall in love with each
+other.
+
+"Need I describe to you the fervor of that passion in the Italian
+springtime, at a period of our history when all the emotions were
+terrific in their force?
+
+"At night, Antonio di Manzecca would slip away to the Castle of Foscone.
+She would be waiting for him on the platform outside her chamber, above
+the ramparts, overlooking the path across the hills. It chanced that by
+the aid of vines and fissures in the masonry he could climb the castle
+wall almost to that platform--almost near enough, indeed, to touch her
+finger-tips. Unhappily, there was nothing there to which she could
+attach a twisted sheet. So thus they made love--she bending down toward
+him, he clutching with toes and hands at the wall, her whispers making
+him dizzier than his perilous posture, her tears falling upon his lips
+through a space so little, yet greater than the distance between two
+stars.
+
+"But almost everything is discovered. Antonio's meetings with Fiammetta
+became known to his elder brother.
+
+"One evening Fiammetta, from the high platform, saw Antonio approaching
+while it was still twilight. All at once he was surrounded by servants
+of his own house, who had been waiting for him in ambush. Before he
+could move, half a dozen daggers sank into his body. Amid the thorns and
+nettles he sprawled lifeless, under the eyes of his beloved. As the
+assassins dragged his body away, there burst from the platform a
+prolonged peal of laughter.
+
+"Fiammetta di Foscone had gone mad."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+At that tragedy, at least, I was not surprised. The Italy of the
+Renaissance was full of such episodes--the murderous jealousy of
+brothers, the obedient cruelty of retainers, the wreckage of women's
+sanity by the fall of horrors much more ingeniously contrived than this.
+What froze my blood was the anticipation gradually shaping in my mind. I
+felt that this was the prelude to something monstrous, incredible, which
+I should be forced to believe.
+
+"She had gone mad," my friend repeated, staring before him. "She had, in
+other words, lost contact with what we call reality. To her that state
+of madness had become reality, its delusions truth, and everything
+beyond those delusions misty, unreal, or non-existent."
+
+His voice died away as he looked at his hands with an expression of
+disbelief. He even reached forward to touch my knee, then sighed:
+
+"You will soon understand why I am sometimes possessed with the idea
+that I am dreaming."
+
+And he resumed his tale:
+
+"Antonio di Manzecca was buried. His elder brother found a wife
+elsewhere. The Lord of Foscone married again, and by that marriage had
+other children. But still his daughter Fiammetta stood nightly on the
+platform of the Castle of Foscone, gazing down at the hill path, waiting
+for her Antonio to climb the wall and whisper his love.
+
+"Now she only lived in that state of ardent expectancy. The days and
+weeks and months were but one hour, the hour preceding his last approach
+to her. Every moment, in her delusion, she expected him to end that hour
+by coming to her as young as ever, to find her as winsome as before. In
+consequence, time vanished from her thought. And in vanishing from her
+thought, time lost its power over her.
+
+"Her father died; but Fiammetta still kept her vigil, in appearance the
+same as on the evening of that tragedy. A new generation of the Foscone
+grew old in their turn, but Fiammetta's loveliness was still perfect. In
+her madness there seemed to be a sanity surpassing the sanity of other
+mortals. For by becoming insensible to time she had attained an earthly
+immortality, an uncorrupted physical beauty, in which she constantly
+looked forward to the delight of loving.
+
+"So she went on and on----"
+
+The tower shook in terror of the gale, and we shook with it, in terror
+of this revelation. My thoughts turned toward the woman below, who had
+smiled at us from that aura of physical resplendency. I felt my hair
+rising, and heard a voice, my own, cry out: "No, no!"
+
+"Yes!" Antonio shouted, fixing his hands upon my arms. We were both
+standing, and our leaping shadows on the wall resembled a combat in
+which one was struggling to force insanity upon the other. He went on
+speaking, but his words were drowned in a screaming of vast forces that
+clutched at the tower as if in fury because the normal processes of
+nature had been defied. Would those forces attain their revenge? Was the
+tower about to thunder down upon the Castle of Manzecca, annihilating
+her and us, the secret and its possessors? For a moment I would have
+welcomed even that escape from thinking.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, releasing my arms and sitting down limply on the
+bench. "As you anticipate, so it turned out."
+
+I was still able to protest:
+
+"Admitted that this has happened elsewhere, to a certain degree. In
+Victorian England there lived a woman whose love-affair was wrecked and
+whose mind automatically closed itself against everything associated
+with her tragedy, or subsequent to it. In her madness she, too,
+protected herself against pain by living in expectation of the lover's
+return. Because that expectation was restricted to her girlhood, she
+remained a girl in appearance for over fifty years. Fifty years, that is
+comprehensible!"
+
+"The principle is the same," said Antonio, wearily. "Every mental
+phenomenon has minor and major examples. But I will tell you the rest.
+
+"The Foscone, also, finally moved to Florence. Their castle was left in
+the care of hereditary servants, devoted and discreet. On that isolated
+hilltop no chance was afforded strangers to solve the mystery of the
+woman who paced the high platform in the attire of another age. Was
+there, in the Foscone's concealment of the awesome fact, a medieval
+impulse, the ancient instinct of noble houses to defend themselves
+against all forms of aggression, including curiosity? Or was it merely
+the usual aversion to being identified with abnormality? Some
+abnormality is so terrifying that it seals the loosest lips.
+
+"Now and then, to be sure, some servant's tongue was set wagging by
+wine, or some heir of the Foscone confided in his sweetheart. But the
+rumor, if it went farther, soon became distorted and incredible, amid
+the ghost-stories of a hundred Italian castles, palaces, and villas. I
+myself found hints in the archives of my family, yet saw in them only a
+pretty tale, such as results when romantic invention is combined with
+pride of race.
+
+"But I was destined to sing another tune.
+
+"Not long ago, the last of the Foscone's modern generation passed away.
+There came to me an old woman-servant from the castle. It was Nuta, whom
+you saw below as we entered.
+
+"Why had she sought me out? Because, if you please, in the year fifteen
+hundred one of my family had brought this thing to pass. It seemed to
+Nuta, the fact now being subject to discovery by the executors of the
+estate, that the care of her charge devolved upon me.
+
+"At first I believed that old Nuta was the mad one. In the end, however,
+I accompanied her to the castle. At dusk, concealed by the cypresses, I
+discerned on the platform a face that seemed to have been transported
+from another epoch just in order to pierce my heart with an intolerable
+longing. I fell in love as one slips into a vortex, and instantly the
+rational world was lost beyond a whorl of ecstasy and fright.
+
+"I regained Florence with but one thought: how could she be restored to
+sanity, yet be maintained in that beauty which had triumphed over
+centuries? As I entered my apartment I saw before me the portrait of
+that other Antonio di Manzecca, whom I so closely resembled, whom she
+had loved, whose return she still awaited. I stood there blinded by a
+flash of inspiration.
+
+"At midnight my plan was complete."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+As he paused, and the conclusion became clear to me, I was taken with a
+kind of stupor.
+
+"A few days later," he said, "as she stood gazing down through the
+twilight, a man emerged from the forest, in face and dress the image of
+that other Antonio di Manzecca. At his signal, servants in the old-time
+livery of the Manzecca appeared with a ladder, which they leaned against
+the ramparts. He set foot upon the platform. Her pallor turned
+deathlike; her eyes became blank; she fainted in his arms. When she
+recovered she was in the Castle of Manzecca.
+
+"That shock had restored her reason.
+
+"Now everything around her very artfully suggested the sixteenth
+century--the furniture, the most trivial utensils, the costume of the
+humblest person in the castle. Nuta attended her. The convalescent was
+told that she had been ill in consequence of the attack on her lover,
+but that he, instead of succumbing, had been spirited away and
+stealthily nursed back to health. Again whole, he had returned to avenge
+himself on his brother, whom he had killed. Meanwhile her father had
+died. Therefore she had been brought from the Castle of Foscone to the
+Castle of Manzecca to enjoy the protection of her Antonio, whom she was
+now free to marry.
+
+"All this was what she wanted to believe, so she believed it."
+
+But Antonio's face was filled with a new distress. He rose, to pace the
+floor with the gestures of a man who realizes that he is locked in a
+cell to which there is no key.
+
+"In the restoration of her mind," he groaned, "my own peace of mind has
+been destroyed. Even this love, the strangest and most thrilling in the
+world, will never allay the heartquakes that I have brought upon myself.
+
+"With her perception of time restored, she will now be subject to time
+like other mortals. As year follows year, her youthfulness will merge
+into maturity, her maturity into old age, here in this castle, where
+nothing must ever suggest that she has attained a century other than her
+own. For me that means a ceaseless vigilance and fear. My devotion will
+always be mingled with forebodings of some blunder, some unforeseen
+intrusion of the present, some lightning-like revelation of the truth to
+her."
+
+At that he broke down.
+
+"Ah, if that happened, what horror should I witness?"
+
+The gale sounded like the hooting of a thousand demons who were
+preparing for this man a frightful retribution. Yet even in that moment
+I envied him.
+
+To her beauty, which had bewitched me at my first sight of her, was
+added another allurement--the thought of a magical flight far beyond
+the boundaries imprisoning other men. If romance is a striving toward
+something at once unique and sympathetic, here was romance attained.
+Moreover, in embracing that exquisite personification of the
+Renaissance, one might add to love the glamour of a terrible audacity.
+And the addition of glamour to love has always been one of the most
+assiduously practised arts.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+At the bottom of the winding tower staircase, in the doorway of the hall
+where she had greeted us, we paused to compose ourselves.
+
+"At least," Antonio besought me, "when in doubt, remain silent."
+
+We entered the hall. Under a wooden gallery adorned with carved and
+tinted shields the supper-table was laid.
+
+They awaited us, shimmering in their fantastic finery--the ladies Laura
+and Lina, my old friends Leonardo and Leonello, and the ineffable
+Fiammetta di Foscone. The visitors' cheeks seemed hectic from the
+excitement of the hour; but her face was flushed, her eyes shone, for
+her own reasons. As I approached her my heartbeats suffocated me. Yes, I
+would have taken Antonio's place and shouldered all his terrors! Before
+me the fair conqueror of time disappeared in a haze, out of which her
+voice emerged like a sweet utterance from beyond the tomb.
+
+"You are pleased with the castle, messere?"
+
+As I was striving to respond, Antonio said to her, half aside, in that
+quaint species of Italian which he had used before:
+
+"He speaks our language with difficulty, Madonna, and in a dialect. This
+disability will embarrass him till he finds himself more at home."
+
+"Then let us sup," she exclaimed. "For since this new custom of a third
+meal has become fashionable in Florence, no doubt you are all expiring
+of hunger. So quickly does habit become tyrannous, especially when it
+involves a pleasure."
+
+In some manner or other I seated myself at the table.
+
+The servants bore in, on silver platters, small chickens garnished with
+sugar and rose-water, a sort of galantine, tarts of almonds and honey,
+caramels of pine-seed. From the gallery overhead came the tinkle of a
+rota, a kind of guitar. The musician produced a whimsical tune
+suggesting a picnic of lords and ladies in the garden of an antique
+villa, where trick fountains, masked by blossoms, drenched the unwary
+with streams of water. But in the chimney of the great, cold fireplace
+behind my back the wind still growled its threats; the voice of Nature
+still menaced these audacious mortals, who were celebrating the
+humiliation of her laws.
+
+Beyond the candle-light the beauty of Fiammetta di Foscone became
+blinding. In her there was no sign of an unnatural preservation, as, for
+example, in a flower that has been sustained, yet subtly altered, by
+imprisonment in ice. Nor did her countenance show in the least that
+glaze of time which changes, without abating, the fairness of marble
+goddesses surviving for us from remote ages of esthetic victory. But
+wait; she was not an animated statue, nor any product of nature other
+than flesh and blood! And the flesh, the glance, the whole person of
+this creature from another era, expressed a glorious young womanhood. I
+was lost in admiration, pity, and dread. For over this shining miracle
+hovered the shadow of disaster. One could not forget the countless
+menaces surrounding her.
+
+If she should grasp the truth, if all of a sudden she should realize her
+disaccordance with the world of mortals, what would happen to her before
+our eyes? Would she succumb instantly? Or would she first shrivel into
+some appalling monstrosity? This deception could not last forever. Might
+it not end to-night?
+
+Did the others have similar premonitions?
+
+Their smiles seemed tremulous and wan, their movements constrained and
+timorous. All their efforts at gaiety were impeded by the inertia of
+fear. At every speech the lips of Lina and Laura quivered, the hands of
+Leonello and Leonardo were clenched in a nervous spasm. Antonio
+controlled himself only by the most heroic efforts.
+
+What a price to pay for an illusion of happiness that was destined to a
+ghastly end! Yet I would still have paid that heavy price exacted from
+Antonio.
+
+Fiammetta di Foscone became infected by our nervousness. At one moment
+her mirth was feverish; at another, a look of vague uneasiness crossed
+her face. Was our secret gradually penetrating to her subconscious mind?
+Was she to learn the fact, and perish of it, not because of bungling
+word or action on our part, but merely from the unwitting transmission
+of our thoughts?
+
+The others redoubled their travesty of merriment. They voiced the gossip
+of a vanished society; the politics, fashions, and scandals of old
+Florence. One heard the names of noble families long since extinct,
+accounts of historic escapades related as if they had happened
+yesterday. Fiammetta recovered her animation.
+
+Her dewy eyes turned to Antonio. Her fingers caressed her
+betrothal-ring, which was like the wedding-ring of the twentieth
+century. And in this hall tricked out with lies, amid these guests and
+servants who were the embodiment of falsehood, an oppressing atmosphere
+of dread was clarified, for a moment, by the strength and delicacy of
+her love.
+
+They discussed the virtues of the Muses, the plagiarisms of Petrarch,
+the wonders of astrology. Her uneasiness revived. In a voice more
+musical than the rota in the gallery, she asked:
+
+"My dear friends, would you attribute to some planetary influence a
+feeling of strangeness that I receive at times, even from the air? I
+demand of you whether the air does not have an unfamiliar smell
+to-night?"
+
+There was a freezing moment of silence.
+
+"It is this great wind," muttered Leonardo, "that has brought us new air
+from afar."
+
+"Every place has its smell," was Leonello's contribution. "It is natural
+that the Castle of Manzecca should smell differently from the Castle of
+Foscone."
+
+Antonio thanked his friends with an eloquent look.
+
+"True," she assented, pensively, "every spot, every person, is
+surrounded by its especial ether, produced by its peculiar activity.
+This house, not only in its smell, but in its tenor of life, and even in
+its food, differs vastly from my own house, which, nevertheless, is just
+across the hills."
+
+Antonio drained his goblet at a gulp. He got out the words:
+
+"We are provincial, we Manzecca. Like a race apart."
+
+"All old families, jealous of their integrity, are the same," ventured
+Laura, who looked, nevertheless, as if she were about to faint.
+
+"Or maybe," mused Fiammetta, "it is because I have been ill that things
+perplex me, and sometimes startle me by an effect of strangeness. There
+are moments when even the stars look odd to me, and when the
+countryside, viewed from the tower above us, is bewildering. In one
+direction I see woods where I should have expected meadows; in another
+direction, fields where I should have expected woods. But then, I now
+view the countryside from a tower other than my own, and see in a new
+aspect that landscape with which I thought myself so well acquainted.
+Does that explain it?"
+
+How touching, how pitiable, was her expression, half arch, half
+pleading, and so beautiful! "Oh, lovely and terrible prodigy!" I
+thought, "draw back; banish those thoughts; or, rather, no longer think
+at all--for you are on the edge of the abyss!"
+
+Antonio spoke with difficulty:
+
+"Dearest one, do not pain me by mentioning that illness of yours. Do not
+pain yourself by dwelling on it in your mind. The past with all its
+misfortunes is gone forever. Let us live in the present and contemplate
+a future full of bliss."
+
+A quivering sigh of assent and relief went round the supper-table. But
+Fiammetta protested:
+
+"I should not care to forget the past. It contained too much happiness.
+The hours at twilight, when I waited on the platform of the Castle of
+Foscone, and you clambered up the wall, are not for oblivion! Do you
+remember, Antonio, how you once brought with you a bunch of little
+damask roses, which you tossed up to me while clinging to the masonry?
+Those roses became my treasure. The sweetest one of them I locked in a
+tiny silver box which I kept always by me. That box came with me from
+the Castle of Foscone. The key is lost; but you shall open it with your
+dagger, and learn how I have cherished an emblem of that past which you
+ask me to forget."
+
+With a rare smile, she drew from the bosom of her gown a very small
+coffer of silver, its chiseling worn smooth by innumerable caresses.
+Poor soul! it was in her bosom that she had cherished this pretty little
+box, more cruelly fatal than a viper.
+
+Antonio, his jaws sagging, rose half-way out of his chair, then sank
+back, speechless and livid. Unaware, eager, and imperious, Fiammetta
+demanded:
+
+"A dagger!"
+
+Too late Antonio managed to put out a shaking hand in protest. Already a
+fool of a servant had presented his dirk to her. In a twinkling--before
+we could stop her--Fiammetta had pried back the lid.
+
+The silver box, its oxidized interior as black as ink, contained, in
+place of the damask rose that had bloomed in the year fifteen hundred,
+only a few grains of dust.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+There was no sound except from the wind, which yelled its devilish glee
+round the castle and in the chimney of the fireplace.
+
+She had risen to her feet. In her eyes, peering at the little coffer,
+bewilderment gave place to dismay. But in our faces she found a
+consternation far surpassing hers.
+
+"Only dust?"
+
+Antonio distorted his mouth in a vain effort to speak. At last, with a
+frantic oath, he swept the silver box into the fireplace, where it fell
+amid the brush-wood and inflammable rubbish piled ready for lighting
+under the big logs.
+
+Fiammetta had tried to stop him. Under her clutching hand, his
+fur-trimmed sleeve had slipped up, exposing his forearm. She was staring
+at his forearm.
+
+"The scar?" she whispered. "Was it not here, when you raised your arm to
+shield yourself against them, that you caught the first knife-thrust?
+How long does it take for such a scar to pass entirely away?"
+
+Lina and Laura sank back in their chairs. Leonello averted his face.
+Leonardo turned away. Again Antonio tried to speak. The terror that held
+us in its grip was communicated to Fiammetta di Foscone.
+
+Her countenance became bloodless. Her teeth chattered. She murmured:
+
+"What is happening to me? I am so cold!"
+
+She sank down, amid billows of violet-colored silk, between Antonio's
+arms, before the fireplace. Her veil, confined by the band of pearls and
+amethysts, did not seem as white as her skin.
+
+There was a hysterical babble of voices:
+
+"She is dead! No, she has swooned! Bring vinegar! Rub her hands! Light
+the fire!"
+
+Then ensued a jostling of guests and servants, who crowded forward to
+poke a dozen lighted candles at the brush-wood. In the midst of this
+confusion Fiammetta sat before the hearth, her eyes half closed, her
+head rolling against Antonio's shoulder, her throat, framed by the
+little ruff, palpitating like the breast of an expiring dove. She was in
+the throes of the emotions that had been at last transferred from our
+minds to hers and that she was doubtless on the point of comprehending.
+
+The brush-wood caught fire. At that flicker her eyelids opened. She
+leaned forward. Under the brush-wood, already writhing in flames, was
+the fragment of a modern Italian newspaper. One plainly saw the title,
+part of a head-line, and the date.
+
+Fiammetta di Foscone read the date.
+
+As Antonio and I, between us, lifted her into a chair, she kept
+repeating to herself, in a soft, incredulous voice, the date. And so
+badly had our wits been paralyzed by this catastrophe, that none of us
+could find one lying word to utter.
+
+Antonio knelt before her, his arms clasping her knees, his head bowed.
+He was weeping as if she were already dead. Her hands slowly stole forth
+to close around his face and lift it up.
+
+"Whatever it is," she breathed, "I still have you."
+
+As she gazed, half lifeless, but still fairer than an untinted statue,
+at his face, all at once her eyes became enormous. Pushing him from her,
+she stood bolt-upright at one movement, with a heart-rending scream:
+
+"A stranger!"
+
+That scream was still resounding from the rafters when we saw her
+fleeing across the hall, her head thrown back, her arms outspread, her
+white veil and violet draperies floating behind her. Her jewels
+glittered like the last sparkle of a splendid dream that has been doomed
+to swift extinction. She vanished through the doorway leading to the
+tower staircase.
+
+"After her!" some one shouted.
+
+Antonio was first; but at the doorway he stumbled, and Leonello, who was
+second, fell over him. Vaulting their bodies, I gained the circular
+staircase that ascended to the tower. I heard Antonio bawling after me:
+
+"She will throw herself from the roof!"
+
+The staircase was black, and the wind whistled down its well. At each
+landing the heavy doors on either side banged open and shut. From
+overhead there descended a long wail, maybe her voice, or maybe one of
+the countless voices of the storm. As I neared the top, a door through
+which I had just passed blew shut with a deafening report. I emerged
+upon the roof of the tower in a torrent of rain. The roof was empty.
+
+I peered over the low battlements. Close below me swayed the tops of
+cypress-trees; beneath them everything was lost in the obscurity of the
+night. Soon, however, the darkness was lighted by torches which began to
+dart to and fro among the trees. By those fitful gleams I made out the
+crouching backs of men, the livery of the Manzecca with its black and
+vermilion device, helmets and sword-hilts, and finally upturned faces
+that appeared ruddy in the torch-light, though I knew that in reality
+they must be pallid. They called up to me, but the wind whipped their
+voices away. I made signs that she was not on the tower. The faces
+disappeared; again the torches wandered among the trees. Now and then I
+heard a shout, the barking of the greyhound, and a woman--perhaps old
+Nuta--in hysterics.
+
+I began to descend the staircase. The last door through which I had
+passed was so tightly wedged, from its slamming, that I could not open
+it. I sat down on the steps to wait till the others should miss me.
+
+What thoughts!
+
+"Can it be true? Yes, it has happened, and I have seen the end of it!
+This will kill Antonio. But then, none of us will ever be the same
+again."
+
+I was sure that my hair had turned white.
+
+And she? A vast wave of pity and longing swept over me and whirled me
+away into the depths of despair.
+
+Now, I told myself, they have found her. And I fell to shuddering again.
+Now they have brought her in, unless what they saw, when they found her,
+scattered them, raving, through the woods. Now they are trying to soothe
+Antonio, perhaps to wrench a weapon from his hand. Now surely they have
+noticed my absence.
+
+I cannot imagine what impulse made me rise, at last, and try the door
+again. At my first touch it swung open.
+
+Descending the staircase, I re-entered the hall.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+They were all seated at the supper-table, which was now decorated with
+flowers, with baskets of fruit, with plates of bonbons, and with favors
+in the form of dolls tricked out like little ladies of the Renaissance.
+The servants wore tail-coats and white-cotton gloves. Leonello and
+Leonardo, Lina and Laura, even Antonio, had on the evening-dress
+appropriate to the twentieth century. But my brain reeled indeed when I
+saw Fiammetta, her hair done in the last Parisian style, her low-neck
+gown the essence of modern chic.
+
+The company looked at me with tolerant smiles.
+
+"Well," exclaimed Antonio, "you have certainly taken your time! We
+waited ages for you, then decided that the food was spoiling, and fell
+to. There is your place, old fellow. I'll have the relishes brought
+back."
+
+I dropped into my chair with a thud. Leonardo, reaching in front of
+Lina, took the fabric of my antique costume between thumb and finger.
+
+"Very _recherché_," was his comment. "Do you wear it for a whim?"
+
+"He is soaking wet," announced Lina, compassionately. "I think he has
+been looking at the garden."
+
+"A botanist!" cried Laura, clapping her hands. "Will you give me some
+advice, signore? What is the best preservative for damask roses?"
+
+"Water them with credulity," Leonello suggested.
+
+And they all burst out laughing in my face, with the exception of the
+beautiful Fiammetta.
+
+Antonio, rising and bowing to me, spoke as follows:
+
+"My friend, the sixteenth century bequeathed to us Florentines a little
+of its cheerful cruelty and something of its pleasure in vendettas.
+Casting your thoughts into a less remote past, you may retrieve an
+impression of your last performance before your departure from the
+Florence of our youth. Need I describe that performance? Its details
+were conceived and executed with much talent. It made me, who was its
+butt, the laughing stock of our circle for a month. Did we children of
+Boccaccio impart to you that knack for practical joking? Remember that
+the pupil does not always permanently abash his teacher. But come, let
+us make a lasting peace now. If after all these years I managed to catch
+you off your guard, you will never again catch me so. Let us forget our
+two chagrins in drinking to this pleasant night, which, though I fancy
+the fact has escaped you, happens to be the First of April."
+
+While I was still trying to master my feelings, he added:
+
+"I have forgotten to explain that Lina is the wife of Leonello, our new
+Michael Angelo, who did that portrait of me in the wig and costume of
+the Renaissance. Laura, on the other hand, is the wife of Leonardo. As
+for our heroine, Fiammetta, she is the bride of your unworthy Antonio.
+She has been so gracious as to marry me between two of her theatrical
+seasons; in fact, we are here on our honeymoon. Why the deuce have you
+never married? A wife might keep you out of many a laughable
+predicament."
+
+Leonello hazarded, "He is waiting to marry some lady who can describe,
+in her trances, the cuisine of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, or the home-life
+of the Queen of Sheba."
+
+"Do no such thing," Antonio implored me. "And hereafter avoid the
+supernatural like the plague. May this affair instil into your
+philosophy of life a little healthy skepticism. There is no better tonic
+than laughter for one who has caught the malaria of psychical research.
+But even Nuta, my wife's old dresser at the theater, will tell you that
+laughter is precious. You have given her to-night the first out-and-out
+guffaw that she has enjoyed in years. She says it cured her of a crick
+in the neck."
+
+The fair Fiammetta, however, made a gesture of reproof, then held out
+her warm hand to me.
+
+"No, Antonio," she protested, "you have not been clever, after all, but
+wicked. The worst of revenge is this: that it invariably exceeds its
+object. To what do you owe this triumph? To his solicitude for you, to
+his trust in you, which you have abused. Also, as I suspect, to his pity
+for Fiammetta di Foscone, which I have ill repaid. In fine, we owe the
+success of this trick to the misuse of fine emotions. That was not the
+custom of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio." And to me, "Will you forgive us?"
+
+All the others looked rather chop-fallen. But Antonio soon recovered. He
+retorted:
+
+"If you could have seen what an ass he made of me that time, you would
+not at this moment be holding his hand. Look here, old fellow, she has a
+sister who rather resembles her, and whose hand I have no objection to
+your holding as long as you wish. We will introduce you to-morrow. Ah
+yes, we will make you forgive us, you rascal, before we are done with
+you!"
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[19] Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Stephen
+French Whitman.
+
+
+
+
+SHEENER[20]
+
+#By# BEN AMES WILLIAMS
+
+From _Collier's Weekly_
+
+
+When he was sober the man always insisted that his name was Evans, but
+in his cups he was accustomed to declare, in a boastful fashion, that
+his name was not Evans at all. However, he never went farther than this,
+and since none of us were particularly interested, we were satisfied to
+call him Evans, or, more often, Bum, for short. He was the second
+assistant janitor; and whereas, in some establishments, a janitor is a
+man of power and place, it is not so in a newspaper office. In such
+institutions, where great men are spoken of irreverently and by their
+first names, a janitor is a man of no importance. How much less, then,
+his second assistant. It was never a part of Evans's work, for example,
+to sweep the floors. There is something lordly in the gesture of the
+broom. But the janitor's first assistant attended to that; and Evans's
+regular duties were more humble, not unconnected with such things as
+cuspidors. There was no man so poor to do him honor; yet he had always a
+certain loftiness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average
+height, with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic
+stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slender; he walked in
+a fashion that you might have called a shuffle, but which might also
+have been characterized as a walk of indolent assurance. His eyes were
+wash-blue, and his straggling mustache drooped at the corners.
+
+Sober, he was a silent man, but when he had drunk he was apt to become
+mysteriously loquacious. And he drank whenever the state of his credit
+permitted. At such times he spoke of his antecedents in a lordly and
+condescending fashion which we found amusing. "You call me Evans," he
+would say. "That does well enough, to be sure. Quite so, and all that.
+Evans! Hah!"
+
+And then he would laugh, in a barking fashion that with his long, bony
+countenance always suggested to me a coughing horse. But when he was
+pressed for details, the man--though he might be weaving and blinking
+with liquor--put a seal upon his lips. He said there were certain
+families in one of the Midland Counties of England who would welcome him
+home if he chose to go; but he never named them, and he never chose to
+go, and we put him down for a liar by the book. All of us except
+Sheener.
+
+Sheener was a Jewish newsboy; that is to say, a representative of the
+only thoroughbred people in the world. I have known Sheener for a good
+many years, and he is worth knowing; also, the true tale of his life
+might have inspired Scheherazade. A book must be made of Sheener some
+day. For the present, it is enough to say that he had the enterprise
+which adversity has taught his people; he had the humility which they
+have learned by enduring insults they were powerless to resent, and he
+had the courage and the heart which were his ancient heritage. And--the
+man Evans had captured and enslaved his imagination.
+
+He believed in Evans from the beginning. This may have been through a
+native credulity which failed to manifest itself in his other dealings
+with the world. I think it more probable that Evans and his pretensions
+appealed to the love of romance native to Sheener. I think he enjoyed
+believing, as we enjoy lending ourselves to the illusion of the theatre.
+Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance developed between the two;
+a something like friendship. I was one of those who laughed at Sheener's
+credulity, but he told me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a
+mistake.
+
+"You got that guy wrong," he would say. "He ain't always been a bum. A
+guy with half an eye can see that. The way he talks, and the way he
+walks, and all. There's class to him, I'm telling you. Class, bo."
+
+"He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like a drunken old
+hound," I told Sheener. "He's got you buffaloed, that's all."
+
+"Pull in your horns; you're coming to a bridge," Sheener warned me.
+"Don't be a goat all your life. He's a gent; that's what this guy is."
+
+"Then I'm glad I'm a roughneck," I retorted; and Sheener shook his head.
+
+"That's all right," he exclaimed. "That's all right. He ain't had it
+easy, you know. Scrubbing spittoons is enough to take the polish off any
+guy. I'm telling you he's there. Forty ways. You'll see, bo. You'll
+see."
+
+"I'm waiting," I said.
+
+"Keep right on," Sheener advised me. "Keep right on. The old stuff is
+there. It'll show. Take it from me."
+
+I laughed at him. "If I get you," I said, "you're looking for something
+along the line of 'Noblesse Oblige.' What?"
+
+"Cut the comedy," he retorted. "I'm telling you, the old class is there.
+You can't keep a fast horse in a poor man's stable."
+
+"Blood will tell, eh?"
+
+"Take it from me," said Sheener.
+
+It will be perceived that Evans had in Sheener not only a disciple; he
+had an advocate and a defender. And Sheener in these rôles was not to be
+despised. I have said he was a newsboy; to put it more accurately, he
+was in his early twenties, with forty years of experience behind him,
+and with half the newsboys of the city obeying his commands and
+worshiping him like a minor god. He had full charge of our city
+circulation and was quite as important, and twice as valuable to the
+paper, as any news editor could hope to be. In making a friend of him,
+Evans had found an ally in the high places; and it became speedily
+apparent that Sheener proposed to be more than a mere friend in name.
+For instance, I learned one day that he was drawing Evans's wages for
+him, and had appointed himself in some sort a steward for the other.
+
+"That guy wouldn't ever save a cent," he told me when I questioned him.
+"I give him enough to get soused on, and I stick five dollars in the
+bank for him every week. I made him buy a new suit of clothes with it
+last week. Say, you wouldn't know him if you run into him in his glad
+rags."
+
+"How does he like your running his affairs?" I asked.
+
+"Like it?" Sheener echoed. "He don't have to like it. If he tries to
+pull anything on me, I'll poke the old coot in the eye."
+
+I doubt whether this was actually his method of dominating Evans. It is
+more likely that he used a diplomacy which occasionally appeared in his
+dealings with the world. Certainly the arrangement presently collapsed,
+for Sheener confessed to me that he had given his savings back to Evans.
+We were minus a second assistant janitor for a week as a consequence,
+and when Evans tottered back to the office and would have gone to work I
+told him he was through.
+
+He took it meekly enough, but not Sheener. Sheener came to me with fire
+in his eye.
+
+"Sa-a-ay," he demanded, "what's coming off here, anyhow? What do you
+think you're trying to pull?"
+
+I asked him what he was talking about, and he said: "Evans says you've
+given him the hook."
+
+"That's right," I admitted. "He's through."
+
+"He is not," Sheener told me flatly. "You can't fire that guy."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He's got to live, ain't he?"
+
+I answered, somewhat glibly, that I did not see the necessity, but the
+look that sprang at once into Sheener's eyes made me faintly ashamed of
+myself, and I went on to urge that Evans was failing to do his work and
+could deserve no consideration.
+
+"That's all right," Sheener told me. "I didn't hear any kicks that his
+work wasn't done while he was on this bat."
+
+"Oh, I guess it got done all right. Some one had to do it. We can't pay
+him for work that some one else does."
+
+"Say, don't try to pull that stuff," Sheener protested. "As long as his
+work is done, you ain't got any kick. This guy has got to have a job, or
+he'll go bust, quick. It's all that keeps his feet on the ground. If he
+didn't think he was earning his living, he'd go on the bum in a minute."
+
+I was somewhat impatient with Sheener's insistence, but I was also
+interested in this developing situation. "Who's going to do his work,
+anyhow?" I demanded.
+
+For the first time in our acquaintance I saw Sheener look confused.
+"That's all right too," he told me. "It don't take any skin off your
+back, long as it's done."
+
+In the end I surrendered. Evans kept his job; and Sheener--I once caught
+him in the act, to his vast embarrassment--did the janitor's work when
+Evans was unfit for duty. Also Sheener loaned him money, small sums that
+mounted into an interesting total; and furthermore I know that on one
+occasion Sheener fought for him.
+
+The man Evans went his pompous way, accepting Sheener's homage and
+protection as a matter of right, and in the course of half a dozen years
+I left the paper for other work, saw Sheener seldom, and Evans not at
+all.
+
+About ten o'clock one night in early summer I was wandering somewhat
+aimlessly through the South End to see what I might see when I
+encountered Sheener. He was running, and his dark face was twisted with
+anxiety. When he saw me he stopped with an exclamation of relief, and I
+asked him what the matter was.
+
+"You remember old Bum Evans?" he asked, and added: "He's sick. I'm
+looking for a doctor. The old guy is just about all in."
+
+"You mean to say you're still looking out for that old tramp?" I
+demanded.
+
+"Sure, I am," he said hotly; "that old boy is there. He's got the stuff.
+Him and me are pals." He was hurrying me along the street toward the
+office of the doctor he sought. I asked where Evans was. "In my room,"
+he told me. "I found him on the street. Last night. He was crazy. The D.
+T.'s. I ain't been able to get away from him till now. He's asleep.
+Wait. Here's where the doc hangs out."
+
+Five minutes later the doctor and Sheener and I were retracing our steps
+toward Sheener's lodging, and presently we crowded into the small room
+where Evans lay on Sheener's bed. The man's muddy garments were on the
+floor; he himself tossed and twisted feverishly under Sheener's
+blankets. Sheener and the doctor bent over him, while I stood by. Evans
+waked, under the touch of their hands, and waked to sanity. He was cold
+sober and desperately sick.
+
+When the doctor had done what could be done and gone on his way, Sheener
+sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed the old man's head with a
+tenderness of which I could not have believed the newsboy capable.
+Evans's eyes were open; he watched the other, and at last he said
+huskily:
+
+"I say, you know, I'm a bit knocked up."
+
+Sheener reassured him. "That's all right, bo," he said. "You hit the
+hay. Sleep's the dose for you. I ain't going away."
+
+Evans moved his head on the pillow, as though lie were nodding. "A bit
+tight, wasn't it, what?" he asked.
+
+"Say," Sheener agreed. "You said something, Bum. I thought you'd kick
+off, sure."
+
+The old man considered for a little, his lips twitching and shaking. "I
+say, you know," he murmured at last. "Can't have that. Potter's Field,
+and all that sort of business. Won't do. Sheener, when I do take the
+jump, you write home for me. Pass the good word. You'll hear from them."
+
+Sheener said: "Sure I will. Who'll I write to, Bum?"
+
+Evans, I think, was unconscious of my presence. He gave Sheener a name;
+his name. Also, he told him the name of his lawyer, in one of the
+Midland cities of England, and added certain instructions....
+
+When he had drifted into uneasy sleep Sheener came out into the hall to
+see me off. I asked him what he meant to do.
+
+"What am I going to do?" he repeated. "I'm going to write to this guy's
+lawyer. Let them send for him. This ain't no place for him."
+
+"You'll have your trouble for your pains," I told him. "The old soak is
+a plain liar; that's all."
+
+Sheener laughed at me. "That's all right, bo," he told me. "I know. This
+guy's the real cheese. You'll see."
+
+I asked him to let me know if he heard anything, and he said he would.
+But within a day or two I forgot the matter, and would hardly have
+remembered it if Sheener had not telephoned me a month later.
+
+"Say, you're a wise guy, ain't you?" he derided when I answered the
+phone. I admitted it. "I got a letter from that lawyer in England," he
+told me. "This Evans is the stuff, just like I said. His wife run away
+with another man, and he went to the devil fifteen years ago. They've
+been looking for him ever since his son grew up."
+
+"Son?" I asked.
+
+"Son. Sure! Raising wheat out in Canada somewhere. They give me his
+address. He's made a pile. I'm going to write to him."
+
+"What does Bum say?"
+
+"Him? I ain't told him. I won't till I'm sure the kid's coming after
+him." He said again that I was a wise guy; and I apologized for my
+wisdom and asked for a share in what was to come. He promised to keep me
+posted.
+
+Ten days later he telephoned me while I was at supper to ask if I could
+come to his room. I said: "What's up?"
+
+"The old guy's boy is coming after him," Sheener said. "He's got the
+shakes waiting. I want you to come and help me take care of him."
+
+"When's the boy coming?"
+
+"Gets in at midnight to-night," said Sheener.
+
+I promised to make haste; and half an hour later I joined them in
+Sheener's room. Sheener let me in. Evans himself sat in something like a
+stupor, on a chair by the bed. He was dressed in a cheap suit of
+ready-made clothes, to which he lent a certain dignity. His cheeks were
+shaven clean, his mustache was trimmed, his thin hair was plastered down
+on his bony skull. The man stared straight before him, trembling and
+quivering. He did not look toward me when I came in; and Sheener and I
+sat down by the table and talked together in undertones.
+
+"The boy's really coming?" I asked.
+
+Sheener said proudly: "I'm telling you."
+
+"You heard from him?"
+
+"Got a wire the day he got my letter."
+
+"You've told Bum?"
+
+"I told him right away. I had to do it. The old boy was sober by then,
+and crazy for a shot of booze. That was Monday. He wanted to go out and
+get pied; but when I told him about his boy, he begun to cry. And he
+ain't touched a drop since then."
+
+"You haven't let him?"
+
+"Sure I'd let him. But he wouldn't. I always told you the class was
+there. He says to me: 'I can't let my boy see me in this state, you
+know. Have to straighten up a bit. I'll need new clothes.'"
+
+"I noticed his new suit."
+
+"Sure," Sheener agreed. "I bought it for him."
+
+"Out of his savings?"
+
+"He ain't been saving much lately."
+
+"Sheener," I asked, "how much does he owe you? For money loaned and
+spent for him."
+
+Sheener said hotly: "He don't owe me a cent."
+
+"I know. But how much have you spent on him?"
+
+"If I hadn't have give it to him, I'd have blowed it somehow. He needed
+it."
+
+I guessed at a hundred dollars, at two hundred. Sheener would not tell
+me. "I'm telling you, he's my pal," he said. "I'm not looking for
+anything out of this."
+
+"If this millionaire son of his has any decency, he'll make it up to
+you."
+
+"He don't know a thing about me," said Sheener, "except my name. I've
+just wrote as though I knowed the old guy, here in the house, see. Said
+he was sick, and all."
+
+"And the boy gets in to-night?"
+
+"Midnight," said Sheener, and Evans, from his chair, echoed: "Midnight!"
+Then asked with a certain stiff anxiety: "Do I look all right, Sheener?
+Look all right to see my boy?"
+
+"Say," Sheener told him. "You look like the Prince of Wales." He went
+across to where the other sat and gripped him by the shoulder. "You look
+like the king o' the world."
+
+Old Evans brushed at his coat anxiously; his fingers picked and twisted;
+and Sheener sat down on the bed beside him and began to soothe and
+comfort the man as though he were a child.
+
+The son was to arrive by way of Montreal, and at eleven o'clock we left
+Sheener's room for the station. There was a flower stand on the corner,
+and Sheener bought a red carnation and fixed it in the old man's
+buttonhole. "That's the way the boy'll know him," he told me. "They
+ain't seen each other for--since the boy was a kid."
+
+Evans accepted the attention querulously; he was trembling and feeble,
+yet held his head high. We took the subway, reached the station, sat
+down for a space in the waiting room.
+
+But Evans was impatient; he wanted to be out in the train shed, and we
+went out there and walked up and down before the gate. I noticed that he
+was studying Sheener with some embarrassment in his eyes. Sheener was,
+of course, an unprepossessing figure. Lean, swarthy, somewhat flashy of
+dress, he looked what he was. He was my friend, of course, and I was
+able to look beneath the exterior. But it seemed to me that sight of him
+distressed Evans.
+
+In the end the old man said, somewhat furtively: "I say, you know, I
+want to meet my boy alone. You won't mind standing back a bit when the
+train comes in."
+
+"Sure," Sheener told him. "We won't get in the way. You'll see. He'll
+pick you out in a minute, old man. Leave it to me."
+
+Evans nodded. "Quite so," he said with some relief. "Quite so, to be
+sure."
+
+So we waited. Waited till the train slid in at the end of the long train
+shed. Sheener gripped the old man's arm. "There he comes," he said
+sharply. "Take a brace, now. Stand right there, where he'll spot you
+when he comes out. Right there, bo."
+
+"You'll step back a bit, eh, what?" Evans asked.
+
+"Don't worry about us," Sheener told him. "Just you keep your eye
+skinned for the boy. Good luck, bo."
+
+We left him standing there, a tall, gaunt, shaky figure. Sheener and I
+drew back toward the stairs that lead to the elevated structure, and
+watched from that vantage point. The train stopped, and the passengers
+came into the station, at first in a trickle and then in a stream, with
+porters hurrying before them, baggage laden.
+
+The son was one of the first. He emerged from the gate, a tall chap, not
+unlike his father. Stopped for a moment, casting his eyes about, and saw
+the flower in the old man's lapel. Leaped toward him hungrily.
+
+They gripped hands, and we saw the son drop his hand on the father's
+shoulder. They stood there, hands still clasped, while the young man's
+porter waited in the background. We could hear the son's eager
+questions, hear the older man's drawled replies. Saw them turn at last,
+and heard the young man say: "Taxi!" The porter caught up the bag. The
+taxi stand was at our left, and they came almost directly toward us.
+
+As they approached, Sheener stepped forward, a cheap, somewhat
+disreputable, figure. His hand was extended toward the younger man. The
+son saw him, looked at him in some surprise, looked toward his father
+inquiringly.
+
+Evans saw Sheener too, and a red flush crept up his gaunt cheeks. He did
+not pause, did not take Sheener's extended hand; instead he looked the
+newsboy through and through.
+
+Sheener fell back to my side. They stalked past us, out to the taxi
+stand.
+
+I moved forward. I would have halted them, but Sheener caught my arm. I
+said hotly: "But see here. He can't throw you like that."
+
+Sheener brushed his sleeve across his eyes. "Hell," he said huskily. "A
+gent like him can't let on that he knows a guy like me."
+
+I looked at Sheener, and I forgot old Evans and his son. I looked at
+Sheener, and I caught his elbow and we turned away.
+
+He had been quite right, of course, all the time. Blood will always
+tell. You can't keep a fast horse in a poor man's stable. And a man is
+always a man, in any guise.
+
+If you still doubt, do as I did. Consider Sheener.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[20] Copyright, 1920, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc. Copyright, 1921, by
+Ben Ames Williams.
+
+
+
+
+TURKEY RED[21]
+
+#By# FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD
+
+From _The Pictorial Review_
+
+
+The old mail-sled running between Haney and Le Beau, in the days when
+Dakota was still a Territory, was nearing the end of its hundred-mile
+route.
+
+It was a desolate country in those days: geographers still described it
+as The Great American Desert, and in looks it certainly deserved the
+title. Never was there anything as lonesome as that endless stretch of
+snow reaching across the world until it cut into a cold gray sky,
+excepting the same desert burned to a brown tinder by the hot wind of
+Summer.
+
+Nothing but sky and plain and its voice, the wind, unless you might
+count a lonely sod shack blocked against the horizon, miles away from a
+neighbor, miles from anywhere, its red-curtained square of window
+glowing through the early twilight.
+
+There were three men in the sled; Dan, the mail-carrier, crusty,
+belligerently Western, the self-elected guardian of every one on his
+route; Hillas, a younger man, hardly more than a boy, living on his
+pre-emption claim near the upper reaches of the stage line; the third a
+stranger from that part of the country vaguely defined as "the East." He
+was traveling, had given his name as Smith, and was as inquisitive about
+the country as he was reticent about his business there. Dan plainly
+disapproved of him.
+
+They had driven the last cold miles in silence when the stage-driver
+turned to his neighbor. "Letter didn't say anything about coming out in
+the Spring to look over the country, did it?"
+
+Hillas shook his head. "It was like all the rest, Dan. Don't want to
+build a railroad at all until the country's settled."
+
+"God! Can't they see the other side of it? What it means to the folks
+already here to wait for it?"
+
+The stranger thrust a suddenly interested profile above the handsome
+collar of his fur coat. He looked out over the waste of snow.
+
+"You say there's no timber here?"
+
+Dan maintained unfriendly silence and Hillas answered. "Nothing but
+scrub on the banks of the creeks. Years of prairie fires have burned out
+the trees, we think."
+
+"Any ores--mines?"
+
+The boy shook his head as he slid farther down in his worn buffalo coat
+of the plains.
+
+"We're too busy rustling for something to eat first. And you can't
+develop mines without tools."
+
+"Tools?"
+
+"Yes, a railroad first of all."
+
+Dan shifted the lines from one fur-mittened hand to the other, swinging
+the freed numbed arm in rhythmic beating against his body as he looked
+along the horizon a bit anxiously. The stranger shivered visibly.
+
+"It's a god-forsaken country. Why don't you get out?"
+
+Hillas, following Dan's glance around the blurred sky-line, answered
+absently, "Usual answer is, 'Leave? It's all I can do to stay here.'"
+
+Smith regarded him irritably. "Why should any sane man ever have chosen
+this frozen wilderness?"
+
+Hillas closed his eyes wearily. "We came in the Spring."
+
+"I see!" The edged voice snapped, "Visionaries!"
+
+Hillas's eyes opened again, wide, and then the boy was looking beyond
+the man with the far-seeing eyes of the plainsman. He spoke under his
+breath as if he were alone.
+
+"Visionary, pioneer, American. That was the evolution in the beginning.
+Perhaps that is what we are." Suddenly the endurance in his voice went
+down before a wave of bitterness. "The first pioneers had to wait, too.
+How could they stand it so long!"
+
+The young shoulders drooped as he thrust stiff fingers deep within the
+shapeless coat pockets. He slowly withdrew his right hand holding a
+parcel wrapped in brown paper. He tore a three-cornered flap in the
+cover, looked at the brightly colored contents, replaced the flap and
+returned the parcel, his chin a little higher.
+
+Dan watched the northern sky-line restlessly. "It won't be snow. Look
+like a blizzard to you, Hillas?"
+
+The traveler sat up. "Blizzard?"
+
+"Yes," Dan drawled in willing contribution to his uneasiness, "the real
+Dakota article where blizzards are made. None of your eastern
+imitations, but a ninety-mile wind that whets slivers of ice off the
+frozen drifts all the way down from the North Pole. Only one good thing
+about a blizzard--it's over in a hurry. You get to shelter or you freeze
+to death."
+
+A gust of wind flung a powder of snow stingingly against their faces.
+The traveler withdrew his head turtlewise within the handsome collar in
+final condemnation. "No man in his senses would ever have deliberately
+come here to live."
+
+Dan turned. "Wouldn't, eh?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You're American?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I was born here. It's my country."
+
+"Ever read about your Pilgrim Fathers?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Frontiersmen, same as us. You're living on what they did. We're getting
+this frontier ready for those who come after. Want our children to have
+a better chance than we had. Our reason's same as theirs. Hillas told
+you the truth. Country's all right if we had a railroad."
+
+"Humph!" With a contemptuous look across the desert. "Where's your
+freight, your grain, cattle----"
+
+"_West_-bound freight, coal, feed, seed-grain, work, and more
+neighbors."
+
+"One-sided bargain. Road that hauls empties one way doesn't pay. No
+Company would risk a line through here."
+
+The angles of Dan's jaw showed white. "Maybe. Ever get a chance to pay
+your debt to those Pilgrim pioneers? Ever take it? Think the stock was
+worth saving?"
+
+He lifted his whip-handle toward a pin-point of light across the stretch
+of snow. "Donovan lives over there and Mis' Donovan. We call them 'old
+folks' now; their hair has turned white as these drifts in two years.
+All they've got is here. He's a real farmer and a lot of help to the
+country, but they won't last long like this."
+
+Dan swung his arm toward a glimmer nor' by nor'east. "Mis' Clark lives
+there, a mile back from the stage road. Clark's down in Yankton earning
+money to keep them going. She's alone with her baby holding down the
+claim." Dan's arm sagged. "We've had women go crazy out here."
+
+The whip-stock followed the empty horizon half round the compass to a
+lighted red square not more than two miles away. "Mis' Carson died in
+the Spring. Carson stayed until he was too poor to get away. There's
+three children--oldest's Katy, just eleven." Dan's words failed, but his
+eyes told. "Somebody will brag of them as ancestors some day. They'll
+deserve it if they live through this."
+
+Dan's jaw squared as he leveled his whip-handle straight at the
+traveler. "I've answered your questions, now you answer mine! We know
+your opinion of the country--you're not traveling for pleasure or your
+health. What are you here for?"
+
+"Business. My own!"
+
+"There's two kinds of business out here this time of year. 'Tain't
+healthy for either of them." Dan's words were measured and clipped.
+"You've damned the West and all that's in it good and plenty. Now I say,
+damn the people anywhere in the whole country that won't pay their debts
+from pioneer to pioneer; that lets us fight the wilderness barehanded
+and die fighting; that won't risk----"
+
+A gray film dropped down over the world, a leaden shroud that was not
+the coming of twilight. Dan jerked about, his whip cracked out over the
+heads of the leaders and they broke into a quick trot. The shriek of the
+runners along the frozen snow cut through the ominous darkness.
+
+"Hillas," Dan's voice came sharply, "stand up and look for the light on
+Clark's guide-pole about a mile to the right. God help us if it ain't
+burning."
+
+Hillas struggled up, one clumsy mitten thatching his eyes from the
+blinding needles. "I don't see it, Dan. We can't be more than a mile
+away. Hadn't you better break toward it?"
+
+"Got to keep the track 'til we--see--light!"
+
+The wind tore the words from his mouth as it struck them in lashing
+fury. The leaders had disappeared in a wall of snow but Dan's lash
+whistled forward in reminding authority. There was a moment's lull.
+
+"See it, Hillas?"
+
+"No, Dan."
+
+Tiger-like the storm leaped again, bandying them about in its paws like
+captive mice. The horses swerved before the punishing blows, bunched,
+backed, tangled. Dan stood up shouting his orders of menacing appeal
+above the storm.
+
+Again a breathing space before the next deadly impact. As it came Hillas
+shouted, "I see it--there, Dan! It's a red light. She's in trouble."
+
+Through the whirling smother and chaos of Dan's cries and the struggling
+horses the sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the
+leaders swung sidewise before the lashing of a thousand lariats of ice
+and bunched against the wheel-horses. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them
+with far-reaching lash, then the off leader went down. Dan felt behind
+him for Hillas and shoved the reins against his arm.
+
+"I'll get him up--or cut leaders--loose! If I don't--come back--drive to
+light. _Don't--get--out!_"
+
+Dan disappeared in the white fury. There were sounds of a struggle; the
+sled jerked sharply and stood still. Slowly it strained forward.
+
+Hillas was standing, one foot outside on the runner, as they traveled a
+team's length ahead. He gave a cry--"Dan! Dan!" and gripped a furry bulk
+that lumbered up out of the drift.
+
+"All--right--son." Dan reached for the reins.
+
+Frantically they fought their slow way toward the blurred light,
+staggering on in a fight with the odds too savage to last. They stopped
+abruptly as the winded leaders leaned against a wall interposed between
+themselves and insatiable fury.
+
+Dan stepped over the dashboard, groped his way along the tongue between
+the wheel-horses and reached the leeway of a shadowy square. "It's the
+shed, Hillas. Help get the team in." The exhausted animals crowded into
+the narrow space without protest.
+
+"Find the guide-rope to the house, Dan?"
+
+"On the other side, toward the shack. Where's--Smith?"
+
+"Here, by the shed."
+
+Dan turned toward the stranger's voice.
+
+"We're going 'round to the blizzard-line tied from shed to shack. Take
+hold of it and don't let go. If you do you'll freeze before we can find
+you. When the wind comes, turn your back and wait. Go on when it dies
+down and never let go the rope. Ready? The wind's dropped. Here, Hillas,
+next to me."
+
+Three blurs hugged the sod walls around to the north-east corner. The
+forward shadow reached upward to a swaying rope, lifted the hand of the
+second who guided the third.
+
+"Hang on to my belt, too, Hillas. Ready--Smith? Got the rope?"
+
+They crawled forward, three barely visible figures, six, eight, ten
+steps. With a shriek the wind tore at them, beat the breath from their
+bodies, cut them with stinging needle-points and threw them aside. Dan
+reached back to make sure of Hillas who fumbled through the darkness
+for the stranger.
+
+Slowly they struggled ahead, the cold growing more intense; two steps,
+four, and the mounting fury of the blizzard reached its zenith. The
+blurs swayed like battered leaves on a vine that the wind tore in two at
+last and flung the living beings wide. Dan, slinging to the broken rope,
+rolled over and found Hillas with the frayed end of the line in his
+hand, reaching about through the black drifts for the stranger. Dan
+crept closer, his mouth at Hillas's ear, shouting, "Quick! Right behind
+me if we're to live through it!"
+
+The next moment Hillas let go the rope. Dan reached madly. "Boy, you
+can't find him--it'll only be two instead of one! Hillas! Hillas!"
+
+The storm screamed louder than the plainsman and began heaping the snow
+over three obstructions in its path, two that groped slowly and one that
+lay still. Dan fumbled at his belt, unfastened it, slipped the rope
+through the buckle, knotted it and crept its full length back toward the
+boy. A snow-covered something moved forward guiding another, one arm
+groping in blind search, reached and touched the man clinging to the
+belt.
+
+Beaten and buffeted by the ceaseless fury that no longer gave quarter,
+they slowly fought their way hand-over-hand along the rope, Dan now
+crawling last. After a frozen eternity they reached the end of the line
+fastened man-high against a second haven of wall. Hillas pushed open the
+unlocked door, the three men staggered in and fell panting against the
+side of the room.
+
+The stage-driver recovered first, pulled off his mittens, examined his
+fingers and felt quickly of nose, ears, and chin. He looked sharply at
+Hillas and nodded. Unceremoniously they stripped off the stranger's
+gloves; reached for a pan, opened the door, dipped it into the drift and
+plunged Smith's fingers down in the snow.
+
+"Your nose is white, too. Thaw it out."
+
+Abruptly Dan indicated a bench against the wall where the two men seated
+would take up less space.
+
+"I'm----" The stranger's voice was unsteady. "I----," but Dan had turned
+his back and his attention to the homesteader.
+
+The eight by ten room constituted the entire home. A shed roof slanted
+from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five
+on the other. A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the
+remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship's
+cabin. The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a
+covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture
+height. Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico brightened the homely
+shack.
+
+The driver had slipped off his buffalo coat and was bending over a baby
+exhaustedly fighting for breath that whistled shrilly through a closing
+throat. The mother, scarcely more than a girl, held her in tensely
+extended arms.
+
+"How long's she been this way?"
+
+"She began to choke up day before yesterday, just after you passed on
+the down trip."
+
+The driver laid big finger tips on the restless wrist.
+
+"She always has the croup when she cuts a tooth, Dan, but this is
+different. I've used all the medicines I have--nothing relieves the
+choking."
+
+The girl lifted heavy eyelids above blue semicircles of fatigue and the
+compelling terror back of her eyes forced a question through dry lips.
+
+"Dan, do you know what membranous croup is like? Is this it?"
+
+The stage-driver picked up the lamp and held it close to the child's
+face, bringing out with distressing clearness the blue-veined pallor,
+sunken eyes, and effort of impeded breathing. He frowned, putting the
+lamp back quickly.
+
+"Mebbe it is, Mis' Clark, but don't you be scared. We'll help you a
+spell."
+
+Dan lifted the red curtain from the cupboard, found an emptied
+lard-pail, half filled it with water and placed it on an oil-stove that
+stood in the center of the room. He looked questioningly about the four
+walls, discovered a cleverly contrived tool-box beneath the cupboard
+shelves sorted out a pair of pincers and bits of iron, laying the
+latter in a row over the oil blaze. He took down a can of condensed
+milk, poured a spoonful of the thick stuff into a cup of water and made
+room for it near the bits of heating iron.
+
+He turned to the girl, opened his lips as if to speak with a face full
+of pity.
+
+Along the four-foot space between the end of the bed and the opposite
+wall the girl walked, crooning to the sick child she carried. As they
+watched, the low song died away, her shoulder rubbed heavily against the
+boarding, her eyelids dropped and she stood sound asleep. The next
+hard-drawn breath of the baby roused her and she stumbled on, crooning a
+lullaby.
+
+Smith clutched the younger man's shoulder. "God, Hillas, look where
+she's marked the wall rubbing against it! Do you suppose she's been
+walking that way for three days and nights? Why, she's only a child--no
+older than my own daughter."
+
+Hillas nodded.
+
+"Where are her people? Where's her husband?"
+
+"Down in Yankton, Dan told you, working for the Winter. Got to have the
+money to live."
+
+"Where's the doctor?"
+
+"Nearest one's in Haney--four days' trip away by stage."
+
+The traveler stared, frowningly.
+
+Dan was looking about the room again and after prodding the gay seat in
+the corner, lifted the cover and picked up a folded blanket, shaking out
+the erstwhile padded cushion. He hung the blanket over the back of a
+chair.
+
+"Mis' Clark, there's nothing but steam will touch membranous croup. We
+saved my baby that way last year. Set here and I'll fix things."
+
+He put the steaming lard-pail on the floor beside the mother and lifted
+the blanket over the baby's head. She put up her hand.
+
+"She's so little, Dan, and weak. How am I going to know if she--if
+she----"
+
+Dan re-arranged the blanket tent. "Jest get under with her yourself,
+Mis' Clark, then you'll know all that's happening."
+
+With the pincers he picked up a bit of hot iron and dropped it hissing
+into the pail, which he pushed beneath the tent. The room was
+oppressively quiet, walled in by the thick sod from the storm. The
+blanket muffled the sound of the child's breathing and the girl no
+longer stumbled against the wall.
+
+Dan lifted the corner of the blanket and another bit of iron hissed as
+it struck the water. The older man leaned toward the younger.
+
+"Stove--fire?" with a gesture of protest against the inadequate oil
+blaze.
+
+Hillas whispered, "Can't afford it. Coal is $9.00 in Haney, $18.00
+here."
+
+They sat with heads thrust forward, listening in the intolerable
+silence. Dan lifted the blanket, hearkened a moment, then--"pst!"
+another bit of iron fell into the pail. Dan stooped to the tool-chest
+for a reserve supply when a strangling cough made him spring to his feet
+and hurriedly lift the blanket.
+
+The child was beating the air with tiny fists, fighting for breath. The
+mother stood rigid, arms out.
+
+"Turn her this way!" Dan shifted the struggling child, face out. "Now
+watch out for the----"
+
+The strangling cough broke and a horrible something--"It's the membrane!
+She's too weak--let me have her!"
+
+Dan snatched the child and turned it face downward. The blue-faced baby
+fought in a supreme effort--again the horrible something--then Dan laid
+the child, white and motionless, in her mother's arms. She held the limp
+body close, her eyes wide with fear.
+
+"Dan, is--is she----?"
+
+A faint sobbing breath of relief fluttered the pale lips that moved in
+the merest ghost of a smile. The heavy eyelids half-lifted and the child
+nestled against its mother's breast. The girl swayed, shaking with sobs,
+"Baby--baby!"
+
+She struggled for self-control and stood up straight and pale. "Dan, I
+ought to tell you. When it began to get dark with the storm and time to
+put up the lantern, I was afraid to leave the baby. If she strangled
+when I was gone--with no one to help her--she would die!"
+
+Her lips quivered as she drew the child closer. "I didn't go right away
+but--I did--at last. I propped her up in bed and ran. If I hadn't----"
+Her eyes were wide with the shadowy edge of horror, "If I hadn't--you'd
+have been lost in the blizzard and--my baby would have died!"
+
+She stood before the men as if for judgment, her face wet with unchecked
+tears. Dan patted her shoulder dumbly and touched a fresh, livid bruise
+that ran from the curling hair on her temple down across cheek and chin.
+
+"Did you get this then?"
+
+She nodded. "The storm threw me against the pole when I hoisted the
+lantern. I thought I'd--never--get back!"
+
+It was Smith who translated Dan's look of appeal for the cup of warm
+milk and held it to the girl's lips.
+
+"Drink it, Mis' Clark, you need it."
+
+She made heroic attempts to swallow, her head drooped lower over the cup
+and fell against the driver's rough sleeve. "Poor kid, dead asleep!"
+
+Dan guided her stumbling feet toward the bed that the traveler sprang to
+open. She guarded the baby in the protecting angle of her arm into
+safety upon the pillow, then fell like a log beside her. Dan slipped off
+the felt boots, lifted her feet to the bed and softly drew covers over
+mother and child.
+
+"Poor kid, but she's grit, clear through!"
+
+Dan walked to the window, looked out at the lessening storm, then at the
+tiny alarm-clock on the cupboard. "Be over pretty soon now!" He seated
+himself by the table, dropped his head wearily forward on folded arms
+and was asleep.
+
+The traveler's face had lost some of its shrewdness. It was as if the
+white frontier had seized and shaken him into a new conception of life.
+He moved restlessly along the bench, then stepped softly to the side of
+the bed and straightened the coverlet into greater nicety while his lips
+twitched.
+
+With consuming care he folded the blanket and restored the corner seat
+to its accustomed appearance of luxury. He looked about the room, picked
+up the gray kitten sleeping contentedly on the floor and settled it on
+the red cushion with anxious attention to comfort.
+
+He examined with curiosity the few books carefully covered in a corner
+shelf, took down an old hand-tooled volume and lifted his eyebrows at
+the ancient coat of arms on the book plate. He tiptoed across to the
+bench and pointed to the script beneath the plate. "Edward Winslow (7)
+to his dear daughter, Alice (8)."
+
+He motioned toward the bed. "Her name?"
+
+Hillas nodded. Smith grinned. "Dan's right. Blood will tell, even to
+damning the rest of us."
+
+He sat down on the bench. "I understand more than I did, Hillas,
+since--you crawled back after me--out there. But how can you stand it
+here? I know you and the Clarks are people of education and, oh, all the
+rest; you could make your way anywhere."
+
+Hillas spoke slowly. "I think you have to live here to know. It means
+something to be a pioneer. You can't be one if you've got it in you to
+be a quitter. The country will be all right some day." He reached for
+his greatcoat, bringing out a brown-paper parcel. He smiled at it oddly
+and went on as if talking to himself.
+
+"When the drought and the hot winds come in the Summer and burn the
+buffalo grass to a tinder and the monotony of the plains weighs on you
+as it does now, there's a common, low-growing cactus scattered over the
+prairie that blooms into the gayest red flower you ever saw.
+
+"It wouldn't count for much anywhere else, but the pluck of it, without
+rain for months, dew even. It's the 'colors of courage.'"
+
+He turned the torn parcel, showing the bright red within, and looked at
+the cupboard and window with shining, tired eyes.
+
+"Up and down the frontier in these shacks, homes, you'll find things
+made of turkey-red calico, cheap, common elsewhere----" He fingered the
+three-cornered flap, "It's our 'colors.'" He put the parcel back in his
+pocket. "I bought two yards yesterday after--I got a letter at Haney."
+
+Smith sat looking at the gay curtains before him. The fury of the storm
+was dying down into fitful gusts. Dan stirred, looked quickly toward the
+bed, then the window, and got up quietly.
+
+"I'll hitch up. We'll stop at Peterson's and tell her to come over." He
+closed the door noiselessly.
+
+The traveler was frowning intently. Finally he turned toward the boy who
+sat with his head leaning back against the wall, eyes closed.
+
+"Hillas," his very tones were awkward, "they call me a shrewd business
+man. I am, it's a selfish job and I'm not reforming now. But twice
+to-night you--children have risked your lives, without thought, for a
+stranger. I've been thinking about that railroad. Haven't you raised any
+grain or cattle that could be used for freight?"
+
+The low answer was toneless. "Drought killed the crops, prairie fires
+burned the hay, of course the cattle starved."
+
+"There's no timber, ore, nothing that could be used for east-bound
+shipment?"
+
+The plainsman looked searchingly into the face of the older man.
+"There's no timber this side the Missouri. Across the river, it's
+reservation--Sioux. We----" He frowned and stopped.
+
+Smith stood up, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. "I admitted I was
+shrewd, Hillas, but I'm not yellow clear through, not enough to betray
+this part of the frontier anyhow. I had a man along here last Fall
+spying for minerals. That's why I'm out here now. If you know the
+location, and we both think you do, I'll put capital in your way to
+develop the mines and use what pull I have to get the road in."
+
+He looked down at the boy and thrust out a masterful jaw. There was a
+ring of sincerity no one could mistake when he spoke again.
+
+"This country's a desert now, but I'd back the Sahara peopled with your
+kind. This is on the square, Hillas, don't tell me you won't believe
+I'm--American enough to trust?"
+
+The boy tried to speak. With stiffened body and clenched hands he
+struggled for self-control. Finally in a ragged whisper, "If I try to
+tell you what--it means--I can't talk! Dan and I know of outcropping
+coal over in the Buttes." He nodded in the direction of the Missouri,
+"but we haven't had enough money to file mining claims."
+
+"Know where to dig for samples under this snow?"
+
+The boy nodded. "Some in my shack too. I--" His head went down upon the
+crossed arms. Smith laid an awkward hand on the heaving shoulders, then
+rose and crossed the room to where the girl had stumbled in her vigil.
+Gently he touched the darkened streak where her shoulders had rubbed and
+blurred the newspaper print. He looked from the relentless white desert
+outside to the gay bravery within and bent his head, "Turkey-red--calico!"
+
+There was the sound of jingling harness and the crunch of runners. The
+men bundled into fur coats.
+
+"Hillas, the draw right by the house here," Smith stopped and looked
+sharply at the plainsman, then went on with firm carelessness, "This
+draw ought to strike a low grade that would come out near the river
+level. Does Dan know Clark's address?" Hillas nodded.
+
+They tiptoed out and closed the door behind them softly. The wind had
+swept every cloud from the sky and the light of the Northern stars
+etched a dazzling world. Dan was checking up the leaders as Hillas
+caught him by the shoulder and shook him like a clumsy bear.
+
+"Dan, you blind old mole, can you see the headlight of the Overland
+Freight blazing and thundering down that draw over the Great Missouri
+and Eastern?"
+
+Dan stared.
+
+"I knew you couldn't!" Hillas thumped him with furry fist. "Dan," the
+wind might easily have drowned the unsteady voice, "I've told Mr. Smith
+about the coal--for freight. He's going to help us get capital for
+mining and after that the road."
+
+"Smith! Smith! Well I'll be--aren't you a claim spotter?"
+
+He turned abruptly and crunched toward the stage. His passengers
+followed. Dan paused with his foot on the runner and looked steadily at
+the traveler from under lowered, shaggy brows.
+
+"You're going to get a road out here?"
+
+"I've told Hillas I'll put money in your way to mine the coal. Then the
+railroad will come."
+
+Dan's voice rasped with tension. "We'll get out the coal. Are you going
+to see that the road's built?"
+
+Unconsciously the traveler held up his right hand, "I am!"
+
+Dan searched his face sharply. Smith nodded, "I'm making my bet on the
+people--friend!"
+
+It was a new Dan who lifted his bronzed face to a white world. His voice
+was low and very gentle. "To bring a road here," he swung his
+whip-handle from Donovan's light around to Carson's square, sweeping in
+all that lay behind, "out here to them--" The pioneer faced the wide
+desert that reached into a misty space ablaze with stars, "would be
+like--playing God!"
+
+The whip thudded softly into the socket and Dan rolled up on the
+driver's seat. Two men climbed in behind him. The long lash swung out
+over the leaders as Dan headed the old mail-sled across the drifted
+right-of-way of the Great Missouri and Eastern.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[21] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Frances Gilchrist Wood.
+
+
+
+
+THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY, OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER,
+1920
+
+ADDRESSES OF AMERICAN MAGAZINES PUBLISHING SHORT STORIES
+
+
+#Note.# _This address list does not aim to be complete, but is based
+simply on the magazines which I have consulted for this volume._
+
+Adventure, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City.
+Ainslee's Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+American Boy, 142 Lafayette Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan.
+American Magazine, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Argosy All-Story Weekly, 280 Broadway, New York City.
+Asia, 627 Lexington Avenue, New York City.
+Atlantic Monthly, 8 Arlington Street, Boston, Mass.
+Black Cat, 229 West 28th Street, New York City.
+Catholic World, 120 West 60th Street, New York City.
+Century, 353 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Christian Herald, Bible House, New York City.
+Collier's Weekly, 416 West 13th Street, New York City.
+Cosmopolitan Magazine, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Delineator, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City.
+Dial, 152 West 13th Street, New York City.
+Everybody's Magazine, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City.
+Freeman, 32 West 58th Street, New York City.
+Good Housekeeping, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Harper's Bazar, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Harper's Magazine, Franklin Square, New York City.
+Hearst's Magazine, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Holland's Magazine, Dallas, Texas.
+Ladies' Home Journal, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Liberator, 34 Union Square East, New York City.
+Little Review, 24 West 16th Street, New York City.
+Little Story Magazine, 714 Drexel Building, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Live Stories, 35 West 39th Street, New York City.
+McCall's Magazine, 236 West 37th Street, New York City.
+McClure's Magazine, 76 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
+Magnificat, Manchester, N. H.
+Metropolitan, 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Midland, Glennie, Alcona County, Mich.
+Munsey's Magazine, 280 Broadway, New York City.
+Outlook, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Pagan, 7 East 15th Street, New York City.
+Parisienne, 25 West 45th Street, New York City.
+People's Favorite Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+Pictorial Review, 216 West 39th Street, New York City.
+Popular Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+Queen's Work, 626 North Vandeventer Avenue, St. Louis, Mo.
+Red Book Magazine, North American Building, Chicago, Ill.
+Saturday Evening Post, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Scribner's Magazine, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
+Short Stories, Garden City, Long Island, N. Y.
+Smart Set, 25 West 45th Street, New York City.
+Snappy Stories, 35 West 39th Street, New York City.
+Sunset, 460 Fourth Street, San Francisco, Cal.
+To-day's Housewife, Cooperstown, N. Y.
+Top-Notch Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+Touchstone, 1 West 47th Street, New York City.
+Woman's Home Companion, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Woman's World, 107 South Clinton Street, Chicago, Ill.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ROLL OF HONOR OF AMERICAN SHORT STORIES
+
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+#Note.# _Only stories by American authors are listed. The best stories are
+indicated by an asterisk before the title of the story. The index
+figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 prefixed to the name of the author indicate
+that his work has been included in the Rolls of Honor for 1914, 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919 respectively. The list excludes reprints._
+
+(56) #Abdullah, Achmed# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  Evening Rice.
+
+
+#Aitken, Kenneth Lyndwode.# Born at Hamilton, Ont., Canada,
+July 13, 1881. Education: N. Y. Public Schools and Ridley
+College, Ont. Profession: Electrical Engineer. Was Manager,
+City Electric Plant, Toronto, for four years. Chief interests:
+writing and photography. First story: "Height o' Land,"
+Canadian Magazine, 1904. Died in California Dec. 5, 1919.
+
+  From the Admiralty Files.
+
+
+#Anderson, C. Farley.#
+
+  Octogenarian.
+
+
+#Anderson, Jane.#
+
+  Happiest Man in the World.
+
+
+(3456) #Anderson, Sherwood# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Door of the Trap.
+  *I Want to Know Why.
+  *Other Woman.
+  *Triumph of the Egg.
+
+
+#Anderton, Daisy.# Born in Bedford, Ohio. High School education.
+First story: "Emmy's Solution," Pagan, Feb., 1919. Author
+of "Cousin Sadie," a novel, 1920. Lives in Bedford, Ohio.
+
+  Belated Girlhood.
+
+
+(3456) #Babcock, Edwina Stanton# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+ *Gargoyle.
+
+
+(6) #Barnes, Djuna# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Beyond the End.
+  *Mother.
+
+#Benét, Stephen Vincent.# Born in Bethlehem, Pa., July 22,
+1898. Education: Yale University, M. A. Chief interests:
+"Reading and writing poetry, playing and watching tennis,
+swimming without any participial qualification, and walking
+around between this and the other side of Paradise with a
+verse in one hand and a brick for my elders in the other like
+the rest of the incipient generation." First story: "Funeral
+of Mr. Bixby," Munsey's Magazine, July, 1920. Author of
+"Five Men and Pompey," 1915; "Young Adventure," 1918;
+"Heavens and Earth," 1920.
+
+  Summer Thunder.
+
+
+#Bercovici, Konrad.# Born June 23, 1882. Dobrudgea, Rumania.
+Educated there and in the streets of Paris. "In other cities
+it was completed as far as humanly possible." Profession:
+organist. Chief interests: people, horses, and gardens. First
+short story printed at the age of twelve in a Rumanian magazine.
+Author of "Crimes of Charity" and "Dust of New York." Lives
+in New York City.
+
+  *Ghitza.
+
+
+#Boulton, Agnes.# Born in London, England, Sept. 19, 1893, of
+American parents. Lived as a child near Barnegat Bay, N. J.
+Educated at home. First story published in the Black Cat.
+Married Eugene O'Neill, the playwright, 1918. Lives in Provincetown,
+Mass.
+
+  Hater of Mediocrity.
+
+
+(2346) #Brown, Alice# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Old Lemuel's Journey.
+
+
+(56) #Brownell, Agnes Mary# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Buttermilk.
+  Quest.
+  Relation.
+
+
+#Bryner, Edna Clare.# Born in Tylersburg, Penn., and spent her
+childhood in the lumbering region of that state. Graduate of
+Vassar College. Has been engaged in teaching, statistical
+work, reform school work, and eugenic, educational, and housing
+research. Chief interests: Music and friends in the winter;
+Adirondack trails in the summer. First story: "Life of Five
+Points," Dial, Sept., 1920. Lives in New York City.
+
+  *Life of Five Points.
+
+
+(1456) #Burt, Maxwell Struthers# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Dream or Two.
+  *Each in His Generation.
+  *When His Ships Came In.
+
+
+(56) #Cabell, James Branch# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Designs of Miramon.
+  *Feathers of Olrun.
+  *Hair of Melicent.
+  *Head of Misery.
+  *Hour of Freydis.
+
+#Camp, (Charles) Wadsworth.# Born in Philadelphia, Oct. 18,
+1879. Graduate of Princeton University, 1902. Married, 1916.
+On staff of N. Y. Evening Sun, 1902-5; sub-editor McClure's
+Magazine, 1905-6; editor of The Metropolitan, 1906-9; European
+correspondent, Collier's Weekly, 1916. Author: "Sinister
+Island," 1915; "The House of Fear," 1916; "War's Dark Frame,"
+1917; "The Abandoned Room," 1917; etc. Lives in New York City.
+
+  *Signal Tower.
+
+
+#Carnevali, Emanuel.#
+
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. I.
+
+
+#Chapman, Edith.#
+
+  Classical Case.
+
+
+(2345) #Cobb, Irvin S.# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Story That Ends Twice.
+
+
+#Corley, Donald.#
+
+  *Daimyo's Bowl.
+
+
+(6) #Cram, Mildred# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Odell.
+  Spring of Cold Water.
+  Wind.
+
+
+#Crew, Helen Coale.# Born in Baltimore, Md., 1866. Graduate
+of Bryn Mawr College, 1889. First short story, "The Lost
+Oasis," Everybody's Magazine, Nov., 1910. Lives in Evanston,
+Ill.
+
+  *Parting Genius.
+
+
+#Delano, Edith Barnard.# Born in Washington, D. C. Married
+in 1908. Author: "Zebedee V.," 1912; "The Land of Content,"
+1913; "The Colonel's Experiment," 1913; "Rags," 1915; "The
+White Pearl," 1916; "June," 1916; "To-morrow Morning," 1917.
+Lives in East Orange, N. J.
+
+  Life and the Tide.
+
+
+(456) #Dobie, Charles Caldwell# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Christmas Cakes.
+  *Leech.
+
+
+#Dodge, Louis.# Born at Burlington, Ia., Sept. 27, 1870. Educated
+at Whitman College, Ark. Unmarried. In newspaper work in Texas
+and St. Louis since 1893. Author: "Bonnie May," 1916; "Children
+of the Desert," 1917. Lives in St. Louis, Mo.
+
+  Case of MacIntyre.
+
+
+(36) #Dreiser, Theodore# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Sanctuary.
+
+
+(5) #Ellerbe, Alma and Paul# (_for biographies, see 1918_).
+
+  Paradise Shares.
+
+
+(4) #Ferber, Edna# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Maternal Feminine.
+  *You've Got To Be Selfish.
+
+
+#Fillmore, Parker.# Born at Cincinnati, O., Sept. 21, 1878.
+Graduated from University of Cincinnati, 1901. Unmarried.
+Teacher in Philippine Islands, 1901-4. Banker in Cincinnati
+since 1904. Author: "The Hickory Limb," 1910; "The Young
+Idea," 1911; "The Rosie World," 1914; "A Little Question in
+Ladies' Rights," 1916; "Czecho-Slovak Fairy Tales," 1919;
+"The Shoemaker's Last," 1920. Lives in Cincinnati, O.
+
+  Katcha and the Devil.
+
+
+#Finger, Charles J.# Born at Willesden, England, Sept. 25, 1871.
+Common School education. Railroad Executive. Has traveled
+widely in South America, including Patagonia, and Tierra
+del Fuego. Spent more than a year upon an uninhabited island,
+accompanied only by "Sartor Resartus." First story: "How Lazy
+Sam Got His Raise," Youth's Companion, 1897. Author of "Guided
+by the World," 1901; "A Bohemian Life," 1902. Lives in
+Fayetteville, Ark.
+
+  *Ebro.
+  Jack Random.
+
+
+(6) #Fish, Horace# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Doom's-Day Envelope.
+
+
+#Follett, Wilson.#
+
+  *Dive.
+
+
+(4) #Folsom, Elizabeth Irons# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Alibi.
+
+
+(12345) #Gerould, Katharine Fullerton# (_for biography, see
+1917_).
+
+  *Habakkuk.
+  *Honest Man.
+
+
+(5) #Gilbert, George# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  Sigh of the Bulbul.
+
+
+(1345) #Gordon, Armistead C.# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Panjorum Bucket.
+
+
+#Halverson, Delbert M.# Born on a farm near Linn Grove, Ia.
+Educated at the State University of Iowa. First story: "Leaves
+in the Wind," Midland, April, 1920. Lives in Minneapolis,
+Minn.
+
+  Leaves in the Wind.
+
+
+(4) #Hartman, Lee Foster# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Judgment of Vulcan.
+
+
+(56) #Hergesheimer, Joseph# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Blue Ice.
+  *Ever So Long Ago.
+  *Meeker Ritual (II).
+  *"Read Them and Weep."
+
+(25) #Hughes, Rupert# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Stick-in-the-Muds.
+
+
+#Hunting, Ema S.# Born at Sioux Rapids, Iowa, Oct. 8, 1885.
+Educated at Fort Dodge High School, Ia., and graduate of
+Grinnell College, 1908. Author of "A Dickens Revival." Writer
+of one-act plays and children's stories. First short story:
+"Dissipation," Midland, May, 1920. Lives at Denver, Col.
+
+  Dissipation.
+  Soul That Sinneth.
+
+
+#Hussey, L. M.# Born in Philadelphia. Studied medicine and
+chemistry. Director of a laboratory of biological research.
+First story: "The Sorrows of Mr. Harlcomb," published in
+the Smart Set about 1916. At present occupied with writing
+a novel. Lives in Philadelphia, Pa.
+
+  Lowden Household.
+  Two Gentlemen of Caracas.
+
+
+(6) #Irwin, Wallace# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  Beauty.
+
+
+#Johns, Orrick.#
+
+  Big Frog.
+
+
+(256) #Johnson, Arthur# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Princess of Tork.
+
+
+(3) #Knight, (Clifford) Reynolds.# Born at Fulton, Kan., 1886.
+Educated at Washburn College, Topeka, and University of
+Michigan. Has been engaged in railroad and newspaper work.
+Taught in the Signal Corps Training School at Yale during
+the war. Now on the editorial staff of the Kansas City Star.
+Chief interests: Books and music. First published story:
+"The Rule of Three," The Railroad Man's Magazine, Oct.,
+1911. Author: "Tommy of the Voices," 1918. Lives in Kansas
+City, Mo.
+
+  *Melody Jim.
+
+
+#Komroff, Manuel.#
+
+  Thumbs.
+
+
+"#Kral, Carlos A. V."# Born in a country town in southern
+Michigan, Dec. 29, 1890, of Czech-Yankee descent. Has lived
+continuously since three years of age in one of the large cities
+of the Great Lakes. Graduated from a public high school, but
+was educated chiefly by thought and private study.
+
+  Landscape with Trees, and Colored Twilight with Music.
+
+
+(6) #La Motte, Ellen Newbold.# Born in Louisville, Ky., of
+northern parentage. Privately educated. Graduated from the
+Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1902. Since engaged in social
+work and public health work. Was in charge of the Tuberculosis
+Division of the Baltimore Health Dept. for several years. Has
+been living chiefly in Paris since 1913. Was in France with
+a year's service in a Field Hospital attached to the French
+Army. Spent a year in China and the Far East, 1916-7. Chief
+interests: the under dog, either the individual or nation.
+First short story: "Heroes," Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1916.
+Author: "The Tuberculosis Nurse," 1914; "The Backwash of
+War," 1916; "Peking Dust," 1919; "Civilization," 1919.
+"The Backwash of War" was suppressed by the British, French
+and American governments. It went through four printings first,
+and is now released again.
+
+  Golden Stars.
+
+
+#McCourt, Edna Wahlert.#
+
+  *Lichen.
+
+
+(6) #MacManus, Seumas.#
+
+  Conaleen and Donaleen.
+  Heartbreak of Norah O'Hara.
+  Lad from Largymore.
+
+
+#Mann, Jane.# Born near New York City of Knickerbocker ancestry.
+After college preparatory school had several years of art
+education. Chief interest: wandering along coasts, living
+with the natives, seeing what they do and hearing what they
+say. First published story: "Men and a Gale o' Wind," Collier's
+Weekly, Nov. 8, 1913. Lives in Provincetown, Mass.
+
+  Heritage.
+
+
+#Mason, Grace Sartwell.# Born at Port Allegheny, Pa., Oct. 31,
+1877. Educated privately. Married to Redfern Mason, the
+musical critic, 1902. Author: "The Car and the Lady," 1909;
+"The Godparents," 1910; "Micky and His Gang," 1912; "The
+Bear's Claws" (with John Northern Hilliard), 1913; "The
+Golden Hope," 1915. Lives at Carmel, Cal.
+
+  *His Job.
+
+
+(6) #"Maxwell, Helena"# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  Adolescence.
+
+
+#Mears, Mary M.# Born at Oshkosh, Wis. Educated at State
+Normal School, Wis. Unmarried. Journalist since 1896. Author:
+"Emma Lou--Her Book," 1896; "Breath of the Runners," 1906;
+"The Bird in the Box"; "Rosamond the Second." Lives in New York City.
+
+  Forbidden Thing.
+
+
+(36) #Montague, Margaret Prescott# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge.
+
+
+(6) #Murray, Roy Irving.# Born at Brooklyn, Wis., July 25,
+1882. Graduated from Hobart College, 1904. First story:
+"Sealed Orders," McBride's Magazine, Dec., 1915. Is a master
+at St. Mark's School, Southborough, Mass.
+
+  Substitute.
+
+
+(6) #Muth, Edna Tucker.#
+
+  *Gallipeau.
+
+#O'Brien, Frederick.# Born in Baltimore. Educated in a Jesuit
+school. Shipped before the mast at the age of 18. Tramped
+over Brazil as a day laborer, and through the West Indies.
+Returned to America and read law in his father's office. Wandered
+without money over Europe, and was a sandwichman in London.
+On the staff of the Paris Herald for a few months. Travelled
+over the western states as a hobo, was a bartender in a
+Mississippi levee camp, acted as a general with Coxey's
+Army, became a crime reporter for the Marion Star, owned
+by Senator Harding, Sub-editor of the Columbus Dispatch,
+Labor Editor of the N. Y. Journal, an investigator of crime
+in the Chicago slums, a freelance in San Francisco, and editor
+of the Honolulu Advertiser. Lived with the natives in Hawaii,
+published a newspaper in Manila, spent eight years as Far
+Eastern correspondent of the N. Y. Herald, went through the
+Russo-Japanese War, returned to Europe as a correspondent,
+spent some years on a fruit ranch in California, engaged in
+politics, owned two newspapers, and finally lived as a beachcomber
+in Tahiti, the Society Islands, the Paumoto Islands and
+Marquesan Islands. During 1920 he was in New York and
+wrote "White Shadows in the South Seas." He has now returned
+to Asia, leaving another book, "Drifting Among South Sea Isles,"
+which is to be published immediately.
+
+  *Jade Bracelet of Ah Queen.
+
+
+#"O'Grady, R."# is a pen name of a lady who lives in Des Moines,
+Ia. She is a graduate of the State University of Iowa, and is
+now engaged in newspaper work.
+
+  Brothers.
+
+
+#O'Hagan, Anne.# Born in Washington, D. C. Graduate of
+Boston University. Since engaged on newspaper and magazine
+work. First story published about 1898. Chief interests:
+Suffrage and housekeeping. Married in March, 1908, to Francis
+A. Shinn. Lives in New York City.
+
+  Return.
+
+
+(45) #O'Higgins, Harvey J.# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Story of Big Dan Reilly.
+  *Story of Mrs. Murchison.
+  Strange Case of Warden Jupp.
+
+
+(5) #Oppenheim, James# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Rending.
+
+
+#Osbourne, Lloyd.# Born in San Francisco, April 7, 1868. Stepson
+of Robert Louis Stevenson. Educated at University of Edinburgh.
+Married 1896. Has been U. S. A. Vice-Consul-General at Samoa.
+Author: "The Wrong Box" (with R. L. Stevenson), 1889; "The
+Wrecker" (with R. L. Stevenson), 1892; "The Ebb Tide" (with
+R. L. Stevenson), 1894; "The Queen vs. Billy," 1900; "Love,
+the Fiddler," 1905; "The Motor-maniacs," 1905; "Wild Justice,"
+1906; "Three Speeds Forward," 1906; "Baby Bullet," 1906;
+"The Tin Diskers," 1906; "Schmidt," 1907; "The Adventurer,"
+1907; "Infatuation," 1909; "A Person of Some Importance,"
+1911; and other novels and short stories. Has written and
+produced several plays. Lives in New York City.
+
+  East is East.
+
+
+(345) #O'Sullivan, Vincent# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Dance-Hall at Unigenitus.
+
+
+(123) #Post, Melville Davisson.# Born in Harrison County, W. Va.,
+Apr. 19, 1871. Graduate of West Virginia University in arts
+and law, 1892. Married 1903. Admitted to the Bar in 1892.
+Member of the Board of Regents, State Normal School. Chairman
+of the Democratic Congressional Commission for West Virginia,
+1898. Member of the Advisory Committee of the N. E. L.
+on question of efficiency in administration of justice,
+1914-15. Author: "The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason,"
+1896; "The Man of Last Resort," 1897; "Dwellers in the
+Hills," 1901; "The Corrector of Destinies," 1909; "The
+Gilded Chair," 1910; "The Nameless Thing," 1912; "Uncle
+Abner: Master of Mysteries," 1918; "The Mystery at the Blue
+Villa," 1919; "The Sleuth of St. James's Square," 1920. Lives
+at Lost Creek, West Virginia.
+
+  Yellow Flower.
+
+
+#Reindel, Margaret H.# Born in Cleveland, O., Dec. 2, 1896.
+Graduated from Western Reserve University, 1919, and spent
+a year at Columbia University. Now working in a New York
+department store. First story published: "Fear," The Touchstone.
+Lives in New York City.
+
+  Fear.
+
+
+#Rice, Louise.#
+
+  *Lubbeny Kiss.
+
+
+#Roche, Arthur Somers.# Born in Somerville, Mass., Apr. 27,
+1883. Son of James Jeffrey Roche. Educated at Holy Cross
+College and Boston University Law School. Married. Practised
+law for two years. Engaged in journalism since 1906. Author:
+"Loot," 1916; "Plunder," 1917; "The Sport of Kings," 1917.
+Lives at Castine, Me.
+
+  *Dummy-Chucker.
+
+
+(3) #Roche, Mazo De La.#
+
+  Explorers of the Dawn.
+
+
+(234) #Rosenblatt, Benjamin# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Stepping Westward.
+
+
+#Rumsey, Frances.# Born in New York City in 1886. Educated
+in France. Has lived chiefly in England and France, and now
+passes her time between Normandy, London, and New York.
+Married. First short story: "Cash," Century Magazine, August,
+1920. Author: "Mr. Gushing and Mademoiselle du Chastel,"
+1917. Translator: "Japanese Impressions," by Couchoud, 1920.
+
+  *Cash.
+
+
+(5) #Russell, John# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  Wreck on Deliverance.
+
+
+#"Rutledge, Maryse."# Born in New York City, Nov. 24, 1884.
+Educated in private schools, New York and Paris. Chief interests:
+painting, tenting, canoeing, and hunting in Maine. Married
+to Gardner Hale, the mural fresco painter. First story
+published in the Smart Set about 1903. Author: "Anne
+of Tréboul," 1904; "The Blind Who See"; "Wild Grapes," 1912;
+"Children of Fate," 1917. Divides her time between Paris
+and New York City.
+
+  House of Fuller.
+
+
+#Ryan, Kathryn White.# Born in Albany, N. Y. Convent
+school education. Married. Lived in Denver until 1919.
+First story published: "The Orchids," Munsey's Magazine,
+May, 1919. Lives in New York City.
+
+  Man of Cone.
+
+
+#Saphier, William.# Born in northern Rumania in 1883. Comes
+of a long line of butchers. Primary school education in Rumania.
+Student at the Art Institute of Chicago for a short time.
+Painter and machinist. Editor of "Others," 1917. Illustrator:
+"The Book of Jeremiah," 1920; "Pins for Wings," by Witter
+Bynner, 1920. First published story: "Kites," The Little
+Review. Lives in New York City.
+
+  Kites.
+
+
+(356) #Sedgwick, Anne Douglas# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Christmas Roses.
+
+
+(6) #Sidney, Rose.# Born in Toledo, O., 1888. Educated in private
+schools and at Columbia University. "My profession consists
+largely in trying to make odd holes and corners of the
+earth into temporary homes for my army officer husband."
+First published story: "Grapes of the San Jacinto," The Pictorial
+Review, Sept., 1919. Now living in California.
+
+  *Butterflies.
+
+
+(123456) #Singmaster, Elsie# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Miss Vilda.
+  Salvadora.
+
+
+(345) #Springer, Fleta Campbell# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Civilization.
+  *Rotter.
+
+
+(23456) #Steele, Wilbur Daniel# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Both Judge and Jury.
+  *God's Mercy.
+  *Out of Exile.
+
+
+#"Storm, Ethel."# Born at Winnebago City, Minnesota. Lived
+in New York City since early childhood. Privately educated.
+Chief interests: decorative art, gardening, people. First published
+story: "Burned Hands," Harper's Bazar, Nov., 1918. Lives in
+New York City.
+
+  *Three Telegrams.
+
+
+(5) #Street, Julian# (_for biography, see_ 1918).
+
+  Hands.
+
+
+(3456) #Vorse, Mary Heaton# (_for biography, see_ 1917).
+
+  *Fraycar's Fist.
+  *Hopper.
+  Pink Fence.
+
+
+#Ward, Herbert Dickinson.# Born at Waltham, Mass., June 30,
+1861. Graduate of Amherst College, 1884. Married Elizabeth
+Stuart Phelps, 1888; and Edna J. Jeffress, 1916. Author of
+numerous books for boys and girls. Lives in Newton, Mass.
+
+  Master Note.
+
+
+#Welles, Harriet Ogden Deen.# Born in New York City. Educated
+in private schools. Studied art. Wife of Rear Admiral Roger
+Welles, U. S. Navy. Author of "Anchors Aweigh," 1919. Lives
+in San Diego, Cal.
+
+  According to Ruskin.
+
+
+#Wheelwright, John T.# Born at Roxbury, Mass., Feb. 26, 1856.
+Educated at Roxbury Latin School and Harvard University.
+Profession: Lawyer. Has been interested in public affairs, and
+has held appointive offices under the State of Massachusetts
+and the City of Boston. Was one of the founders of the Harvard
+Lampoon. On editorial staff of Boston Advertiser, 1882-3.
+Author: "Rollo's Journey to Cambridge" (with F. J. Stimson),
+1880; "The King's Men" (with John Boyle O'Reilly, F. J.
+Stimson, and Robert Grant), 1884; "A Child of the Century,"
+1886; "A Bad Penny," 1896; "War Children," 1907. Lives in
+Boston, Mass.
+
+  *Roman Bath.
+
+
+#Whitman, Stephen French.#
+
+  *Amazement.
+  *Lost Waltz.
+  *To a Venetian Tune.
+
+
+(56) #Williams, Ben Ames# (_for biography, see_ 1918).
+
+  *Sheener.
+
+
+#Wilson, John Fleming.# Born at Erie, Pa., Feb. 22, 1877. Educated
+at Parsons College and Princeton University. Teacher, 1900-2;
+journalist, 1902-5; editor San Francisco Argonaut, 1906.
+Married, 1906. Author: "The Land Claimers," 1910; "Across
+the Latitudes," 1911; "The Man Who Came Back," 1912; "The
+Princess of Sorry Valley," 1913; "Tad Sheldon and His Boy
+Scouts," 1913; "The Master Key," 1915.
+
+  Uncharted Reefs.
+
+(6) #Wilson, Margaret Adelaide.# Educated at Portland Academy,
+Portland, Oregon, and at an eastern college. Since then
+she has lived chiefly on her father's ranch in the San Jacinto
+Valley, California. First published story: "Towata and His
+Brother Wind," The Bellman, about 1907. Lives at Hemet,
+Cal.
+
+  Drums.
+
+
+(5) #Wood, Frances Gilchrist# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Spoiling of Pharaoh.
+  *Turkey Red.
+
+
+(6) #Yezierska, Anzia# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Hunger.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROLL OF HONOR OF FOREIGN SHORT STORIES IN AMERICAN MAGAZINES
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+#Note.# _Stories of special excellence are indicated by an asterisk. The
+index figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 prefixed to the name of the author
+indicate that his work has been included in the Rolls of Honor for 1914,
+1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919 respectively. The list excludes
+reprints._
+
+
+I. #English and Irish Authors#
+
+
+(123456) #Aumonier, Stacy.#
+
+  *Good Action.
+  *Golden Windmill.
+  *Great Unimpressionable.
+  *Just the Same.
+  *Landlord of "The-Love-a-Duck."
+
+
+#Barker, Granville.#
+
+  Bigamist.
+
+
+#Beck, L. Adams.#
+
+  Fire of Beauty.
+  Incomparable Lady.
+
+
+(12356) #Blackwood, Algernon.#
+
+  *First Hate.
+  *Running Wolf.
+
+
+#Buchan, John.#
+
+  Fullcircle.
+
+
+(6) #Burke, Thomas.#
+
+  *Scarlet Shoes.
+
+
+#Dobrée, Bonamy.#
+
+  Surfeit.
+
+
+(456) #Dudeney, Mrs. Henry E.#
+
+  Wild Raspberries.
+
+
+(46) #Dunsany, Lord.#
+
+  *Cheng Hi and the Window Framer.
+  *East and West.
+  *How the Lost Causes Were Removed from Valhalla.
+  *Pretty Quarrel.
+
+
+#Ervine, St. John G.#
+
+  Dramatist and the Leading Lady.
+
+
+(2) #Gibbon, Perceval.#
+
+  *Connoisseur.
+  Knave of Diamonds.
+  Lieutenant.
+
+
+#Holding, Elizabeth Sanxay.#
+
+  Problem that Perplexed Nicholson.
+
+
+(4) #Lawrence, D. H.#
+
+  *Adolf.
+
+
+#MacManus, L.#
+
+  Baptism.
+
+
+#Merrick, Leonard.#
+
+  To Daphne De Vere.
+
+
+#Monro, Harold.#
+
+  *Parcel of Love.
+
+
+(456) #Mordaunt, Elinor.#
+
+  *Adventures in the Night.
+  *Ginger Jar.
+
+#Nevinson, Henry W.#
+
+  *In Diocletian's Day.
+
+
+#Owen, H. Collinson.#
+
+  Temptation of Antoine.
+
+
+#Richardson, Dorothy M.#
+
+  *Sunday.
+
+
+#Sinclair, May.#
+
+  *Fame.
+
+
+(5) #Stephens, James.#
+
+  *Boss.
+  *Desire.
+  *Thieves.
+
+
+(2) Walpole, Hugh.
+
+  *Case of Miss Morganhurst.
+  *Fanny's Job.
+  *Honourable Clive Torby.
+  *No Place for Absalom.
+  *Stealthy Visitor.
+  *Third Sex.
+
+
+II. #Translations#
+
+
+(4) #Andreyev, Leonid.# (_Russian._)
+
+  *Promise of Spring.
+
+
+Anonymous. (_Chinese._)
+
+  *Romance of the Western Pavilion.
+
+
+(6) #Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.# (_Spanish._)
+
+  Old Woman of the Movies.
+  Sleeping-Car Porter.
+
+
+(6) #"France, Anatole." (Jacques Anatole Thibault.)# (_French._)
+
+  *Lady With the White Fan.
+
+
+#Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco.# (_Spanish._) _See_ #Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.#
+
+
+#Kotsyubinsky, Michael.# (_Russian._)
+
+  By the Sea.
+
+
+(6) #Level, Maurice.# (_French._)
+
+  Empty House.
+  Kennel.
+  Maniac.
+  Son of His Father.
+
+
+#Lichtenberger, André.# (_French._)
+
+  Old Fisherwoman.
+
+
+#Louÿs, Pierre.# (_French._)
+
+  False Esther.
+
+
+#Nodier, Charles.# (_French._)
+
+  *Bibliomaniac.
+
+
+#Rameau, Jean.# (_French._)
+
+  Ocarina.
+
+
+(4) #Saltykov, M. E.# (_Russian._)
+
+  *Wild Squire.
+
+
+#Schnitzler, Arthur.# (_German._)
+
+  *Crumbled Blossoms.
+
+
+#Thibault, Jacques Anatole.# (_French._) _See_ "#France, Anatole.#"
+
+
+#Trueba, Antonio De.# (_Spanish._)
+
+  Portal of Heaven.
+
+
+#Yushkevitch, Semyon.# (_Russian._)
+
+  Pietà.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST BOOKS OF SHORT STORIES OF 1920: A CRITICAL SUMMARY
+
+
+#The Ten Best American Books#
+
+1. #Brown.# Homespun and Gold. Macmillan.
+2. #Cather.# Youth and the Bright Medusa. Knopf.
+3. #Dwight.# The Emperor of Elam. Doubleday, Page.
+4. #Howells,# _Editor._ Great Modern American Stories. Boni & Liveright.
+5. #Johnson.# Under the Rose. Harper.
+6. #Sedgwick.# Christmas Roses. Houghton Mifflin.
+7. #Smith.# Pagan. Scribner.
+8. Society of Arts and Sciences. #O. Henry# Prize Stories, 1919.
+   Doubleday, Page.
+9. #Spofford.# The Elder's People. Houghton Mifflin.
+10. #Yezierska.# Hungry Hearts. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+
+#The Ten Best English Books#
+
+1. #Beerbohm.# Seven Men. Knopf.
+2. #Cannan.# Windmills. Huebsch.
+3. #Dunsany.# Tales of Three Hemispheres. Luce.
+4. #Easton.# Golden Bird. Knopf.
+5. #Evans.# My Neighbours. Harcourt, Brace, and Howe.
+6. #Galsworthy.# Tatterdemalion. Scribner.
+7. #Huxley.# Limbo. Doran.
+8. #O'Kelly.# The Golden Barque, and the Weaver's Grave. Putnam.
+9. #Trevena.# By Violence. Four Seas.
+10. #Wylie.# Holy Fire. Lane.
+
+
+#The Ten Best Translations#
+
+1. #Aleichem.# Jewish Children. Knopf.
+2. #Andreiev.# When the King Loses His Head. International Bk. Pub.
+3. #Annunzio.# Tales of My Native Town. Doubleday, Page.
+4. #Brown and Phoutrides#, _Editors._ Modern Greek Stories. Duffield.
+5. #Chekhov.# The Chorus Girl. Macmillan.
+6. #Dostoevsky.# The Honest Thief. Macmillan.
+7. #Hrbkova#, _Editor._ Czecho-Slovak Stories. Duffield.
+8. #Level.# Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride.
+9. #McMichael#, _Editor._ Short Stories from the Spanish. Boni & Liveright.
+
+10. #Mayran.# Story of Gotton Connixloo. Dutton.
+
+
+#The Best New English Publications#
+
+1. #Gibbon, Perceval.# Those Who Smiled. Cassell.
+2. #Mayne, Ethel Colburn.# Blindman. Chapman and Hall.
+3. #Mordaunt, Elinor.# Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson.
+4. #O'Kelly, Seumas.# The Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester.
+5. #Robinson, Lennox.# Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press.
+6. #Shorter, Dora Sigerson.# A Dull Day in London. Nash.
+7. #Lemaître, Jules.# Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.
+
+
+BELOW FOLLOWS A RECORD OF NINETY-TWO DISTINCTIVE VOLUMES PUBLISHED
+BETWEEN NOVEMBER 1, 1918, AND OCTOBER 1, 1920.
+
+
+I. #American Authors#
+
+#The Honourable Gentlemen and Others# and #Wings: Tales of the Psychic#, by
+_Achmed Abdullah_ (G. P. Putnam's Sons, and the James A. McCann
+Company). In the first of these two volumes, Mr. Abdullah has gathered
+the Pell Street stories of New York's Chinatown which have appeared in
+American magazines during the past few years. As contrasted with Thomas
+Burke's "Limehouse Nights," these stories reflect the oriental point of
+view with its characteristic fatalism and equability of temper. Four of
+these stories are told with the utmost economy of means and a grim
+pleasure in watching events unshape themselves. "A Simple Act of Piety"
+seemed to me one of the best short stories of 1918. The other volume is
+of more uneven quality, and psychic stories do not furnish Mr. Abdullah
+with his most natural medium, but contains at least three admirable
+stories.
+
+#Hand-Made Fables#, by _George Ade._ (Doubleday, Page & Company.) Mr.
+Ade's new series of thirty fables are a valuable record of the war years
+in American life. They are written in a unique idiom full of color, if
+unintelligible to the foreigner. I think one may fairly say that Mr.
+Ade's work is thoroughly characteristic of a large section of American
+culture, and this section he has portrayed admirably. Undoubtedly he is
+our best satirist.
+
+#Joy in the Morning#, by _Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews_ (Charles
+Scribner's Sons). This uneven collection includes two admirable stories,
+"The Ditch" and "Dundonald's Destroyer," to which I drew attention when
+they first appeared in magazines. The latter is one of the best realized
+legends suggested by the war, while the former is technically
+interesting as a thoroughly successful short story written entirely in
+dialogue. The other stories are of slighter content, and emotionally
+somewhat overtaut.
+
+#Youth and the Bright Medusa#, by _Willa Cather_ (Alfred A. Knopf).
+Fifteen years ago, Miss Cather published a volume of short stories
+entitled "The Troll Garden." This volume has long been out of print,
+although its influence may be seen in the work of many contemporary
+story writers. The greater part of its contents is now reprinted in the
+present volume, together with four new stories of less interest. These
+eight studies, dealing for the most part with the artistic temperament,
+are written with a detached observation of life that clearly reveals the
+influence of Flaubert on the one hand and of Henry James on the other,
+but there is a quality of personal style built up out of nervous rhythms
+and an instinctive reticence of personal attitude which Miss Cather only
+shares with Sherwood Anderson among her American compatriots. She is
+more assured in the traditional quality of her work than Anderson, but
+hardly less astringent. I regard this book as one of the most important
+contributions to the American short story published during the past
+year, and personally I consider it more significant than her four
+admirable novels.
+
+#From Place to Place#, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company). I
+have frequently had occasion to point out in the past that Mr. Cobb's
+work, in depth of conception and breadth of execution, makes him the
+legitimate successor of Mark Twain as a painter of the ampler life of
+the American South and Middle West. In his new collection of nine
+stories, there are at least three which I confidently believe are
+destined to last as long as the best stories of Hawthorne and Poe. The
+most noteworthy of these is "Boys Will Be Boys," which I printed in a
+previous volume of this series. "The Luck Piece" and "The Gallowsmith,"
+though sharply contrasted in subject matter, reveal the same profound
+understanding of American life which makes Mr. Cobb almost our best
+interpreter in fiction to readers in other countries. Like Mark Twain,
+Mr. Cobb is quite uncritical of his own work, and two of these stories
+are of merely ephemeral value. I should like no better task than to
+edite a selection of Mr. Cobb's stories in one volume for introduction
+to the English public, and I think that such a volume would be the best
+service American letters could render to English letters at the present
+moment.
+
+#The Life of the Party#, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company). I
+shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr.
+Cobb has reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, but America usually
+shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious
+quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better
+than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from
+Mr. Cobb's rich human studies of American life.
+
+#Hiker Joy#, by _James B. Connolly_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This series
+of stories about a little New York wharf-rat which Mr. Connolly has
+reprinted from Collier's Weekly are less important than the admirable
+stories of the Gloucester fishermen which first made his reputation.
+They are told by the wharf-rat in dialect with a casual reportorial air
+which is tolerably convincing, and it is clear that they are based on a
+background of first-hand experience. Mr. Connolly's hand is not entirely
+subdued to the medium in which he has chosen to work, but the result is
+a certain monotony of interest.
+
+#Twelve Men#, by _Theodore Dreiser_ (Boni & Liveright). These twelve
+portraits which Mr. Dreiser has transferred to us from life represent
+his impressions of life's crowded thoroughfares and his reactions to
+many human contacts. More than one of these portraits can readily be
+traced to its original, and taken as a group they represent as valuable
+a cross-section Of our hurrying civilization as we have. Strictly
+speaking, however, they are not short stories, but discursive causeries
+on friends of Mr. Dreiser. They answer to no usual concepts of literary
+form, but have necessitated the creation of a new form. They reflect a
+gallic irony compact of pity and understanding. The brief limitations of
+his form prevent Mr. Dreiser from falling into errors which detract
+somewhat from the greatness of his novels, and as a whole I command this
+volume to the discriminating reader.
+
+#The Emperor of Elam, and Other Stories#, by _H. G. Dwight_ (Doubleday,
+Page & Company). Those who read Mr. Dwight's earlier volume entitled
+"Stamboul Nights" will recall the very real genius for the romantic
+presentation of adventure in exotic backgrounds which the author
+revealed. Every detail, if studied, was quietly set down without undue
+emphasis, and the whole was a finished composition. In the title story
+of the present volume, and in "The Emerald of Tamerlane," written in
+collaboration with John Taylor, Mr. Dwight is on the same familiar
+ground. I had occasion three years ago to reprint "The Emperor of Elam"
+in an earlier volume of this series, and it still seems to be worthy to
+set beside the best of Gautier. There are other stories in the present
+collection with the same rich background, but I should like to call
+particular attention to Mr. Dwight's two masterpieces, "Henrietta
+Stackpole Rediviva" and "Behind the Door." The former ranks with the
+best half-dozen American short stories, and the latter with the best
+half-dozen short stories of the world. I regard this volume as the most
+important which I have encountered since I began to publish my studies
+of the American short story.
+
+#The Miller's Holiday: Short Stories From the North Western Miller#,
+Edited by _Randolph Edgar_ (The Miller Publishing Company: Minneapolis).
+These fourteen stories reprinted from the files of the North Western
+Miller between 1883 and 1904 recall an interesting episode in the
+history of American literature. The paper just mentioned was the first
+trade journal to publish at regular intervals the best short stories
+procurable at the time, and out of this series was born "The Bellman,"
+which for many years was the best literary weekly of general interest
+in the Middle West. The North Western Miller printed the best work of O.
+Henry, Howard Pyle, Octave Thanet, James Lane Allen, Hamlin Garland,
+Edward Everett Hale, and many others, and it was here that Frank R.
+Stockton first printed "The Christmas Wreck," which I should agree with
+the late Mr. Howells in regarding as Stockton's best story. I trust that
+the success of this volume will induce Mr. Edgar to edite and reprint
+one or more series of stories from "The Bellman." Such an undertaking
+would fill a very real need.
+
+#Half Portions#, by _Edna Ferber_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). Edna Ferber
+shares with Fannie Hurst the distinction of portraying the average
+American mind in its humbler human relations. Less sure than Miss Hurst
+in her ability to present her material in artistic form, her observation
+is equally keen and accurate, and in at least two stories in the present
+volume she seems to meet Miss Hurst on equal ground. "The Maternal
+Feminine," in my opinion, ranks with "The Gay Old Dog" as Miss Ferber's
+best story.
+
+#The Best Psychic Stories#, Edited by _Joseph Lewis French_, with an
+Introduction by _Dorothy Scarborough_ (Boni & Liveright). This very
+badly edited collection of stories is worth having because of the fact
+that it reprints certain admirable short stories by Algernon Blackwood,
+Ambrose Bierce, and Fiona Macleod. If it attains to a second edition,
+the volume would be tremendously improved by omitting the compilation of
+irrelevant theosophical articles on the subject, and the substitution
+for them of other stories which lie open to Mr. French's hand in rich
+measure.
+
+#Fantastics, and Other Fancies#, by _Lafcadio Hearn_, Edited by _Charles
+Woodward Hutson_ (Houghton Mifflin Company). This collection of stories,
+portraits, and essays which Mr. Hutson's industry has rescued from the
+long-lost files of The New Orleans Daily Item and The Times-Democrat
+belong to Hearn's early manner, when he sought to set down brief colored
+impressions of the old, hardly lingering Creole life which is now only a
+memory. In many ways akin to the art of Hérédia, they show a less
+classical attitude toward their subject-matter, and are frankly
+experimental approaches to the method of evocation by sounds and
+perfumes which he achieved so successfully in his later Japanese books.
+In these stories we may see the influence of Gautier's enamelled style
+already at work, operating with more precision than it was later to
+show, more fearful of the penumbra than his later ghost stories, and
+with a certain hurried air which may be largely set down to the
+journalistic pressure of writing weekly for newspapers. Notwithstanding
+this, many of the stories and sketches are a permanent addition to
+Hearn's work.
+
+#Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories#, by _O. Henry_ (Doubleday, Page &
+Company). This volume of collectanea is divided into two parts. First of
+all, twelve new stories have been recovered from magazine files. Three
+of these are negligible journalism, and six others are chiefly
+interesting either as early studies for later stories, or for their
+biographical value. "The Cactus" and "The Red Roses of Tonia," however,
+rank only second to "O. Henry's" best dozen stories. The second part of
+the book is a miscellany of critical and biographical comment, including
+also some verse tributes to the story writer's memory and a valuable
+index to the collected edition of "O. Henry's" stories.
+
+#O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories#, 1919, Chosen by the _Society of Arts
+and Sciences_, with an introduction by _Blanche Colton Williams_
+(Doubleday, Page & Company). The Society of Arts and Sciences of New
+York City has had the admirable idea of editing an annual volume of the
+best American short stories, and awarding annual prizes for the two best
+stories as a memorial to the art of "O. Henry." The present volume
+reprints fifteen stories chosen by the society, including the two prize
+stories,--"England to America," by Margaret Prescott Montague, and "For
+They Know Not What They Do," by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Five other stories
+by Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood, Miss Fannie Hurst, Miss Louise Rice,
+Miss Beatrice Ravenel, and Miss G. F. Alsop are admirable stories. The
+selection represents a fair cross-section of the year's short stories,
+good, bad, and indifferent, but the two prizes seem to me to have been
+most wisely awarded, and I conceive this formal annual tribute to be the
+most significant and practical means of encouraging the American short
+story. Toward this encouragement the public may contribute in their
+measure, as I understand that the royalties which accrue from the sale
+of this volume are to be applied to additional prizes in future years.
+
+#The Happy End#, by _Joseph Hergesheimer_ (Alfred A. Knopf). Mr.
+Hergesheimer's new collection of seven stories is largely drawn from the
+files of The Saturday Evening Post, and represents to some degree a
+compromise with his public. The book is measurably inferior to "Gold and
+Iron," but shows to a degree the same qualities of studied background
+and selective presentation of aspects in character which are most
+satisfyingly presented in his novels. In "Lonely Valleys," "Tol'able
+David," and "The Thrush in the Hedge," Mr. Hergesheimer's art is more
+nearly adequate than in the other stories, but they lack the
+authoritative presentation which made "The Three Black Pennys" a
+landmark in contemporary American fiction. They show the author to be a
+too frank disciple of Mr. Galsworthy in the less essential aspect of the
+latter's art, and their tone is too neutral to be altogether convincing.
+
+#War Stories#, Selected and Edited by _Roy J. Holmes_ and _A. Starbuck_
+(Thomas Y. Crowell Company). This anthology of twenty-one American short
+stories about the war would have gained measurably by compression. At
+least five of the stories are unimportant, and six more are not
+specially representative of the best that is being done. But "Blind
+Vision," "The Unsent Letter," "His Escape," "The Boy's Mother" and "The
+Sixth Man" are now made accessible in book form, and give this anthology
+its present value.
+
+#The Great Modern American Stories: An Anthology#, Compiled and edited
+with an introduction by _William Dean Howells_ (Boni & Liveright). This
+is the best anthology of the American short story from about 1860 to
+1910 which has been published, or which is likely to be published. It
+represents the mellow choice of an old man who was the contemporary,
+editor, and friend of most American writers of the past two generations,
+and in his reminiscent introduction Mr. Howells relates delightfully
+many of his personal adventures with American authors. Several of these
+stories will be unfamiliar to the general reader, and I am specially
+glad to observe in this volume two little-known masterpieces,--"The
+Little Room" by Madelene Yale Wynne, and "Aunt Sanna Terry," by Landon
+R. Dashiell. Mr. Howells' choice has been studiously limited to short
+stories of the older generation, and without infringing on his ground,
+it is to be hoped that a second series of "Great Modern American
+Stories" by more recent writers should be issued by the same publishers.
+The present volume contains an excellent bibliographical chapter on the
+history of the American short story, and an appendix with biographies
+and bibliographies of the writers included, which calls for more
+accurate revision.
+
+#Bedouins#, by _James Huneker_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). While this is
+primarily a volume of critical essays on painting, music, literature and
+life, it concludes with a series of seven short stories which serve as a
+postlude to Mr. Huneker's earlier volume, "Visionaries." They are
+chiefly interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as
+they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful
+stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest
+to success in "The Cardinal's Fiddle."
+
+#Humoresque#, by _Fannie Hurst_ (Harper & Brothers). Miss Hurst's fourth
+volume of short stories shows a certain recession from her previous high
+standard, except for the title story which is told with an economy of
+detail unusual for her. All of these eight stories are distinctive, and
+six of them are admirable, but I seem to detect a tendency toward the
+fixation of a type, with a corresponding diminishment of faithful
+individual portrayal. The volume would make the reputation of a lesser
+writer, but Miss Hurst is after all the rightful successor of "O Henry,"
+and we are entitled to demand from her nothing less than her best.
+
+#Legends#, by _Walter McLaren Imrie_ (The Midland Press, Glennie, Alcona
+Co., Mich.). I should like to call special attention to this little book
+by a medical officer in the Canadian army, because it seems to me to be
+a significant footnote to the poignant records of Barbusse, Duhamel,
+and Élie Faure. So far as I know, this is the only volume of fiction
+written in English portraying successfully from the artist's point of
+view the acrid monotony of war. I believe that it deserves to be placed
+on the same bookshelf as the volumes of the others whom I have just
+mentioned.
+
+#Travelling Companions#, by _Henry James_ (Boni & Liveright). These seven
+short stories by Henry James, which are now collected for the first time
+with a somewhat inept introduction by Albert Mordell, were written at
+the same time as the stories in his "Passionate Pilgrim." While they
+only serve to reveal a minor aspect of his genius, they are of
+considerable importance historically to the student of his literary
+evolution. Published between 1868 and 1874, they represent the first
+flush of his enthusiasm for the older civilization of Europe, and
+especially of Italy. He would not have wished them to be reprinted, but
+the present editor's course is justified by their quality, which won the
+admiration at the time of Tennyson and other weighty critics. Had Henry
+James reprinted them at all, he would have doubtless rewritten them in
+his later manner, and we should have lost these first clear outpourings
+of his sense of international contrasts.
+
+#The Best American Humorous Short Stories#, Edited by _Alexander Jessup_
+(Boni & Liveright). This collection of eighteen humorous short stories
+furnish a tolerable conspectus of the period between 1839 and the
+present day. They are prefaced by an informative historical introduction
+which leaves little to be desired from the point of view of information.
+The general reader will find the book less interesting than the
+specialist, since a large portion of the volume is devoted to the
+somewhat crude beginnings of humor in our literature. Apart from the
+stories by Edward Everett Hale, Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, Bret
+Harte, and "O. Henry," the comparative poverty of rich understanding
+humor in American fiction is remarkable. The most noteworthy omission in
+the volume is the neglect of Irvin S. Cobb.
+
+#John Stuyvesant Ancestor and Other People#, by _Alvin Johnson_ (Harcourt,
+Brace & Howe). This collection of sketches, largely reprinted from the
+New Republic, is rather a series of studies in social and economic
+relations than a group of short stories. But they concern us here
+because of Mr. Johnson's penetrating analysis of character, which
+constitutes a document of no little value to the imaginative student of
+our institutions, and "Short Change" has no little value as a vividly
+etched short story.
+
+#Under the Rose#, by _Arthur Johnson_ (Harper & Brothers). With the
+publication of this volume, Mr. Johnson at last takes his rightful place
+among the best of the American short story writers who wish to continue
+the tradition of Henry James. In subtlety of portraiture he is the equal
+of Edith Wharton, and he excels her in ease and in his ability to
+subdue his substance to the environment in which it is set. He
+surpasses Mrs. Gerould by reason of the variety of his subject matter,
+and as a stylist he is equal to Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I have published
+two of these stories in previous volumes of this series, and there are
+at least four other stories in the volume which I should have liked to
+reprint.
+
+#Going West#, by _Basil King_ (Harper & Brothers). We have in this little
+book a reprint of one of the best short stories produced in America by
+the war. While it is emotionally somewhat overtaut, it has a good deal
+of reticence in portrayal, and there is a passion in it which transcends
+Mr. King's usual sentimentality.
+
+#Civilization: Tales of the Orient#, by _Ellen N. La Motte_ (George H.
+Doran Company). Miss La Motte is the most interesting of the new
+American story writers who deal with the Orient. She writes out of a
+long and deep background of experience with a subtle appreciation of
+both the Oriental and the Occidental points of view, and has developed a
+personal art out of a deliberately narrowed vision. "On the Heights,"
+"Prisoners," "Under a Wineglass," and "Cosmic Justice" are the best of
+these stories. So definite a propagandist aim is usually fatal to
+fiction, but Miss La Motte succeeds by deft suggestion rather than
+underscored statement.
+
+#Short Stories of the New America#, Selected and Edited by _Mary A.
+Laselle_ (Henry Holt and Company). While this is primarily a volume of
+supplementary reading for secondary schools, compiled with a view to the
+"americanization" of the immigrant, it contains four short stories of
+more or less permanent value, three of which I have included in previous
+volumes of this series. It also draws attention to the admirable Indian
+stories of Grace Coolidge. The volume would be improved if three of
+these stories were omitted.
+
+#Chill Hours#, by _Helen Mackay_ (Duffield and Company). We have come to
+expect from Mrs. Mackay a somewhat tense but restrained mirroring of
+little human accidents, in which action is of less importance than its
+effects. She has a dry, nervous, unornamented style which sets down
+details in separate but related strokes which build up a picture whose
+art is not altogether successfully concealed. The present volume, which
+reflects Mrs. Mackay's experiences in France during the war, is more
+even in quality than her previous books, and "The Second Hay," "One or
+Another," and "He Cost Us So Much" are noteworthy stories.
+
+#Children in the Mist#, by _George Madden Martin_ (D. Appleton & Company),
+and #More E. K. Means# (G. P. Putnam's Sons). Both of these volumes
+represent traditional attitudes of the Southern white proprietor to the
+negro, and both fail in artistic achievement because of their excessive
+realization of the gulf between the two races. Mrs. Martin's book is the
+more artistic and the less sympathetic, though it has more professions
+of sympathy than that of Mr. Means. They both display considerable
+talent, the one in historical portraiture of reconstruction times, and
+the other in genial caricature of the more childish side of the
+less-educated negro. The negroes whom Mr. Means has invented have still
+to be born in the flesh, but there is an infectious humor in his
+nightmare world which he may plead as a justification for the misuse of
+his very real ability.
+
+#The Gift, England to America#, and #Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge#, by
+_Margaret Prescott Montague_ (E.P. Dutton & Company, and Doubleday, Page
+& Company). These three short stories are all spiritual studies of human
+reactions and moods generated by the war, set down with a deft hand in a
+neutral style, somewhat over-repressed perhaps, but thoroughly
+successful in the achievement of what Miss Montague set out to do. The
+second and best of these won the first prize offered last year as a
+memorial to "O. Henry" by The Society of Arts and Sciences of New York
+City. Good as it is, I am tempted to disagree with its interpretation of
+the English attitude toward America in general, although it may very
+well be true in many an individual case. Miss Montague suffers from a
+certain imaginative poverty which is becoming more and more
+characteristic of puritan art and life in America. From the point of
+view of style, however, these stories share distinction in the Henry
+James tradition only with Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Anne Douglas
+Sedgwick, Arthur Johnson and H. G. Dwight.
+
+#From the Life#, by _Harvey O'Higgins_ (Harper & Brothers). This volume
+should be read in connection with "Twelve Men," by Theodore Dreiser.
+Where Mr. Dreiser identifies himself with his subjects, Mr. O'Higgins
+stands apart in the most strict detachment. These nine studies in
+contemporary American life take as their point of departure in each case
+some tiny and apparently insignificant happening which altered the whole
+course of a life. Artists, actors, politicians, and business men all
+date their change of fortune from some ironic accident, and in three of
+these nine stories the author's analysis merits close re-reading by
+students of short story technique. Behind the apparent looseness of
+structure you will find a new and interesting method of presentation
+which is as effective as it is deliberate. I regard "From the Life" as
+one of the more important books of 1919.
+
+#The Mystery at the Blue Villa#, by _Melville Davisson Post_ (D. Appleton
+and Company), and #Silent, White and Beautiful#, by _Tod Robbins_ (Boni
+and Liveright). These two volumes furnish an interesting contrast. The
+subject-matter of both is rather shoddy, but Mr. Post displays a
+technique in the mystery story which is quite unrivalled since Poe in
+its inevitable relentlessness of plot based on human weakness, while Mr.
+Robbins shows a wild fertility of imagination of extraordinary promise,
+although it is now wasted on unworthy material. I think that both books
+will grip the reader by their quality of suspense, and I shall look
+forward to Mr. Robbins' next book with eager interest.
+
+#The Best Ghost Stories.# Introduction by _Arthur B. Reeve_ (Boni and
+Liveright, Inc.). Mr. French's new collection of ghost stories
+supplements his volume entitled "Great Ghost Stories," published in the
+previous year. I consider it the better collection of the two, and
+should particularly like to call attention to the stories by Leopold
+Kompert and Ellis Parker Butler. The latter is Mr. Butler's best story
+and has, so far as I know, not been reprinted elsewhere. For the rest,
+the volume ranges over familiar ground.
+
+#High Life#, by _Harrison Rhodes_ (Robert M. McBride & Co.). Setting aside
+the title story which, as a novelette, does not concern us here, this
+volume is chiefly noteworthy for the reprint of "Spring-Time." When I
+read this story for the first time many years ago, it seemed to me one
+that Mr. Arthur Sherburne Hardy would have been proud to sign. It is not
+perhaps readily realized how difficult it is to write a story so deftly
+touched with sentiment, while maintaining the necessary economy of
+personal emotion. "The Sad Case of Quag" exemplifies the gallic aspect
+of Mr. Rhodes' talent.
+
+#The Red Mark#, by _John Russell_ (Alfred A. Knopf). This uneven volume of
+short stories by a writer of real though undisciplined talent is full of
+color and kaleidoscopic hurrying of events. Apart from "The Adversary,"
+which is successful to a degree, the book is uncertain in its rendering
+of character, though Mr. Russell's handling of plot leaves little to be
+desired.
+
+#The Pagan#, by _Gordon Arthur Smith_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). It was
+expected that when Mr. Smith's first volume of short stories should
+appear, it would take its place at once as pre-eminent in the romantic
+revival which is beginning to be apparent in the American short story.
+This volume does not disappoint our expectations, although it would have
+gained in authority had it been confined to the five Taillandy Stories,
+"Jeanne, the Maid," and "The Return." Mr. Smith's output has always been
+wisely limited, and "The Pagan" represents the best work of nine years.
+These stories are only second in their kind to those of James Branch
+Cabell and Stephen French Whitman.
+
+#The Elder's People#, by _Harriet Prescott Spofford_ (Houghton, Mifflin
+Company). Mrs. Spofford has collected in this volume the best among the
+short stories which she has written since 1904, and the collection shows
+no diminution in her powers of accurate and tender observation of New
+England folk. These fourteen prose idyls have a mellow humanism which
+portrays the last autumn fires of a dying tradition. They rank with the
+best work of Miss Jewett and Mrs. Spofford herself in the same kind, and
+are a permanent addition to the small store of New England literature. I
+wish to call special attention to "An Old Fiddler," "A Village
+Dressmaker," and "A Life in a Night."
+
+#The Valley of Vision#, by _Henry van Dyke_ (Charles Scribner's Sons).
+This volume of notes for stories rather than stories themselves calls
+for no particular comment save for two admirable fugitive studies
+entitled "A Remembered Dream" and "The Broken Soldier and the Maid of
+France." These seem to me creditable additions to the small store of
+American legends which the war produced, but the other stories and
+sketches are rather bloodless. They are signs of the spiritual anæmia
+which is so characteristic of much of American life.
+
+#The Ninth Man#, by _Mary Heaton Vorse_ (Harper & Brothers). When this
+story was published in Harper's Magazine six years ago, it attracted
+wide attention as a vividly composed presentment of human passions in a
+mediæval scene. The allegory was not stressed unduly, and was perhaps
+taken into less account then than it will be now. But events have since
+clarified the story in a manner which proves Miss Vorse to have been
+curiously prophetic. In substance it is very different from what we have
+come to associate with her work, but I think that its modern social
+significance will now be obvious to any reader. Philosophy aside, I
+commend it as an admirably woven story.
+
+#Anchors Aweigh#, by _Harriet Welles_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). I think
+the chief value of this volume is as a quiet record of experience
+without any remarkable qualities of plot and style, but it is full of
+promise for the future, and in "Orders" Mrs. Welles has written a
+memorable story. The introduction by the Secretary of the Navy rather
+overstates the case, but I think no one will deny the genuine feeling
+and truth with which Mrs. Welles has presented her point of view.
+
+#Ma Pettengill#, by _Harry Leon Wilson_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). I
+must confess that temperamentally I am not inclined to rank these
+humorous stories of American life as highly as many critics. I grant
+their sincerity of portraiture, but they show only too plainly the signs
+of Mr. Wilson's compromise with his large audience in The Saturday
+Evening Post. They are written, however, with the author's eye on the
+object, and Ma Pettengill herself is vividly realized.
+
+#Hungry Hearts#, by _Anzia Yezierska_ (Houghton Mifflin Company). When I
+reprinted "Fat of the Land" last year I stated that it seemed to me
+perhaps the finest imaginative contribution to the short story made by
+an American artist last year. My opinion is confirmed by Miss
+Yezierska's first collection of stories, and particularly by "Hunger,"
+"The Miracle," and "My Own People." I know of no other American writer
+who is driven by such inevitable compulsion to express her ideal of what
+America might be, and it serves to underscore the truth that the chief
+idealistic contribution to American life comes no longer from the anæmic
+Anglo-Saxon puritan, but from the younger elements of our mixed racial
+culture. Such a flaming passion of mingled indignation and love for
+America embodies a message which other races must heed, and proves that
+there is a spiritual America being born out of suffering and oppression
+which is destined to rule before very long.
+
+
+II. #English and Irish Authors#
+
+#Windmills: A Book of Fables#, by _Gilbert Cannan_ (B. W. Huebsch, Inc.).
+This is the first American edition of a book published in London in
+1915. Conceived as a new "Candide," it is a bitter satire on war and
+international politics. While it ostensibly consists of four short
+stories, they have a unity of action which is sketched rather than fully
+set forth. In fact, the volume is really a notebook for a larger work.
+Set beside the satire of Voltaire, Mr. Cannan's master, it is seen to
+fail because of its lack of kindly irony. In fact, it is a little
+overdone.
+
+#The Eve of Pascua#, by "_Richard Dehan_" (George H. Doran Company). Two
+years ago I had occasion to call attention to the quite unstressed
+romanticism of Mrs. Graves' "Under the Hermes." The present volume is of
+much less significance, and I only mention it because of the title
+story, which is an adequately rendered picture of contemporary Spanish
+life, much less overdrawn than the other stories.
+
+#Poems and Prose#, of _Ernest Dowson_ (Boni and Liveright). Five of the
+nine short stories by Ernest Dowson are included in this admirable
+reprint, but it omits the better stories which appeared in The Savoy,
+and in a later edition I suggest that the poems be printed in a volume
+by themselves with Mr. Symons' memoir, and all the stories in another
+volume which should include among others "The Dying of Francis Donne"
+and "Countess Marie of The Angels."
+
+#The Golden Bird and Other Sketches#, by _Dorothy Eastern_, with a
+foreword by _John Galsworthy_ (Alfred A. Knopf). These forty short
+sketches of Sussex and of France are rendered deftly with a faithful
+objectivity of manner which has not barred out the essential poetry of
+their substance. These pictures are lightly touched with a quiet
+brooding significance, as if they had been seen at twilight moments in a
+dream world in which human relationships had been partly forgotten. They
+are frankly impressionistic, except for the group of French stories, in
+which Miss Easton has sought more definitely to interpret character. The
+danger of this form is a certain preciosity which the author has
+skilfully evaded, and the influence of Mr. Galsworthy is nowhere too
+clearly apparent. I recommend the volume as one of the best English
+books which has come to us during the past year.
+
+#My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People#, by _Caradoc Evans_ (Harcourt,
+Brace and Howe). In his third collection of stories, Mr. Evans has for
+the most part forsaken his study of the Cardigan Bay peasant for the
+London Welsh, and although his style preserves the same stark biblical
+notation as before, it seems less suited to record the ironies of an
+industrial civilization. Allowing for this, and for Mr. Evans' bent
+towards an unduly acid estimate of human nature, it must be confessed
+that these stories have a certain permanent literary quality, most
+successful in "Earthbred," "Joseph's House," and "A Widow Woman." These
+three collections make it tolerably clear that Mr. Evans will find his
+true medium in the novel, where an epic breadth of material is at hand
+to fit his epic breadth of speech.
+
+#Tatterdemalion#, by _John Galsworthy_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This
+volume contains the ripest product of Mr. Galsworthy's short story art
+during the past seven years. Its range is very wide, and in these
+twenty-three stories, we have the best of the mystical war legends from
+"The Grey Angel" to "Cafard," the gentle irony of "The Recruit" and
+"Defeat," and the gracious vision of "Spindleberries," "The Nightmare
+Child," and "Buttercup-Night." Nowhere in the volume do we find the
+slight touch of sentimentality which has marred the strength of Mr.
+Galsworthy's later novels, but everywhere very quietly realised pictures
+of a golden age which is still possible to his imagination, despite the
+harsh conflict with material realities which his art has often
+encountered. Perhaps the best story in the present collection is
+"Cafard," where Mr. Galsworthy has almost miraculously succeeded in
+extracting the last emotional content out of a situation in which a
+single false touch of sentiment would have wrecked his story.
+
+#Limbo#, by _Aldous Huxley_ (George H. Doran Company). This collection of
+six fantasies in prose and one play has no special principle of unity
+except its attempt to apply the art of Laforgue to much less adequate
+material. Setting aside "Happy Families" as entirely negligible, and
+"Happily Ever After" and "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers" as
+qualified successes, the other four stories do achieve more or less what
+they set out to do, although Mr. Huxley only achieves a personal
+synthesis of style and substance in "The Death of Lully." The other
+three stories are full of promise as yet unrealised because of Mr.
+Huxley's inability or unwillingness to conceal the technique of his art.
+
+#Deep Waters#, by _W. W. Jacobs_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). Mr. Jacobs'
+formula is not yet outworn, but it is becoming perilously uncertain. His
+talent has always been a narrow one, but in his early volumes his
+realization of character was quite vivid, and his plot technique superb.
+At least two of these stories are entirely mechanical, and the majority
+do not rise above mediocrity. "Paying Off," "Sam's Ghost," and "Dirty
+Work" faintly recall Mr. Jacobs' early manner.
+
+#Lo, and Behold Ye!#, by _Seumas MacManus_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company).
+Many of these chimney-corner stories are older than Homer, but Mr.
+MacManus has retold them in the language of the roads, and this pageant
+of tinkers and kings, fairies and scholars, lords and fishermen march by
+to the sound of the pipes and the ribald comments of little boys along
+the road. The quality of this volume is as fresh as that of those first
+Donegal fairy stories which Mr. McClure discovered twenty-five years
+ago. I think that the best of these stories are "The Mad Man, The Dead
+Man, and the Devil," "Dark Patrick's Blood-horse," and "Donal
+O'Donnell's Standing Army," but this is only a personal selection.
+
+#The Clintons, and Others#, by _Archibald Marshall_ (Dodd, Mead and
+Company). I believe that this is Mr. Marshall's first volume of short
+stories, and they have a certain interest as a quiet chronicle of an old
+social order which has gone never to return. The comparison of Mr.
+Marshall's work with that of Anthony Trollope is as inevitable as it is
+to the former's disadvantage. This volume shows honest, sincere
+craftsmanship, and never rises nor falls below an average level of
+mediocrity.
+
+#The Man Who Understood Women#, and #While Paris Laughed#, by _Leonard
+Merrick_ (E. P. Dutton and Company). These two volumes of the collected
+edition of Mr. Merrick's novels and stories are of somewhat uneven
+value. The best of them have a finish which is unsurpassed in its kind
+by any of his English contemporaries, but there are many stories in the
+first of these two volumes which are somewhat ephemeral. Mr. Locke in
+his introduction to "The Man Who Understood Women" rather overstates Mr.
+Merrick's case, but at his best these stories form an interesting
+English parallel to the work of O. Henry. The second volume suffers the
+fate of all sequels in endeavouring to revive after a lapse of years the
+pranks and passions of the poet Tricotrin. The first five stories in the
+volume, while they do not attain the excellence of "The Tragedy of a
+Comic Song," are worthy stories in the same kind. The other seven
+stories are frankly mawkish in content, although redeemed by Mr.
+Merrick's excellent technique.
+
+#Workhouse Characters#, by _Margaret Wynne Nevinson_ (The Macmillan
+Company). This collection of newspaper sketches written during the past
+fifteen years have no pretensions to art, and were written with a
+frankly propagandist intention. The vividness of their portraiture and
+the passion of their challenge to the existing social order warrant
+their mention here, and I do not think they will be forgotten readily by
+those who read them. This volume has attracted little comment in the
+American press, and it would be a pity if it is permitted to go out of
+print over here.
+
+#The New Decameron#: Volume the First (Robert M. McBride & Co.). There is
+more to be said for the idea which prompted these stories than for the
+success with which the idea has been carried out. A group of tourists
+seeking adventures on the Continent agree to beguile the tedium of the
+journey by telling each other tales. Unfortunately the Nightingale does
+not sing on, and the young Englishmen and women who have collaborated in
+this volume have gone about their task in a frankly amateurish spirit.
+The stories by W. F. Harvey and Sherard Vines attain a measured success,
+and some mention may be made of M. Storm-Jameson's story, "Mother-love."
+It is to be hoped that in future volumes of the series, the editor will
+choose his contributors more carefully, and frankly abandon the
+Decameron structure, which has been artificially imposed after the
+stories were written.
+
+#Wrack, and Other Stories#, by "_Dermot O'Byrne_" (Dublin: The Talbot
+Press, Ltd.), #The Golden Barque, and the Weaver's Grave#, by _Seumas
+O'Kelly_ (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.), and #Eight Short Stories#, by
+_Lennox Robinson_ (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.). As these three
+volumes are not published in America, I only mention them here in the
+hope that this notice may reach a friendly publisher's eye. Up to a few
+years ago poetry and drama were the only two creative forms of the Irish
+Literary Revival. This tide has now ebbed, and is succeeded by an
+equally significant tide of short story writers. The series of volumes
+issued by the Talbot Press, of which those I have just named are the
+most noteworthy, should be promptly introduced to the American public,
+and I think that I can promise safely that they are the forerunners of a
+most promising literature.
+
+#The Old Card#, by _Roland Pertwee_ (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This
+series of twelve short stories depict the life of an English touring
+actor with a quiet artistry of humor suggestive of Leonard Merrick's
+best work. They are quite frankly studies in sentiment, but they
+successfully avoid sentimentality for the most part, and in "Eliphalet
+Cardomay" I feel that the author has created a definitely perceived
+character.
+
+#Old Junk#, by _H. M. Tomlinson_ (Alfred A. Knopf). It is not my function
+here to point out that "Old Junk" is one of the best volumes of essays
+published in recent years, but simply to direct attention to the fact
+that it includes two short stories, "The Lascar's Walking-Stick" and
+"The Extra Hand," which are fine studies in atmospheric values. I think
+that the former should find a place in most future anthologies.
+
+#By Violence#, by "_John Trevena_" (The Four Seas Company). Although John
+Trevena's novels have found a small public in America, his short stories
+are practically unknown. The present volume reprints three of them, of
+which "By Violence" is the best. In fact, it is only surpassed by
+"Matrimony" in its revelation of poetic grace and gentle vision. If the
+feeling is veiled and somewhat aloof from the common ways of men, there
+is none the less a fine human sympathy concealed in it. I like to think
+that a new reading of earth may be deciphered from this text.
+
+#Port Allington Stories#, by _R. E. Vernède_ (George H. Doran Company).
+This volume of stories which is drawn from the late Lieutenant
+Vernède's output during the past twelve years reveals a genuine talent
+for the felicitous portrayal of social life in an English village, and
+suggests that he might have gone rather far in stories of adventure.
+"The Maze" is the best story in the volume, and makes it clear that a
+brilliant short story writer was lost in France during the war.
+
+#Holy Fire, and Other Stories#, by _Ida A. R. Wylie_ (John Lane Company).
+I have called attention to many of these stories in previous years, but
+now that they are reprinted as a group I must reaffirm my belief that
+few among the younger English short story writers have such a command of
+dramatic finality as Miss Wylie. It is true that these stories might
+have been told with advantage in a more quiet tone. This would have made
+the war stories more memorable, but perhaps the problem which the book
+presents for solution is whether or no an instinctive dramatist is using
+the wrong literary medium. Certainly in "Melia, No Good" her treatment
+would have been less effective in a play than in a short story.
+
+
+III. #Translations#
+
+#When the King Loses His Head, and Other Stories#, by _Leonid Andreyev._
+Translated by _Archibald J. Wolfe_ (International Book Publishing
+Company), and #Modern Russian Classics.# Introduction by _Isaac Goldberg_
+(The Four Seas Company). In previous years I have called attention to
+other selections of Andreyev's stories. The present collection includes
+the best from the other volumes, with some new material. "Judas
+Iscariot" and "Lazarus" are the best of the prose poems. "Ben-Tobith,"
+"The Marseillaise," and "Dies Iræ" are the most memorable of his very
+short stories, while the volume also includes "When The King Loses His
+Head," and a less-known novelette entitled "Life of Father Vassily." The
+volume entitled "Modern Russian Classics" includes five short stories by
+Andreyev, Sologub, Artzibashev, Chekhov, and Gorky.
+
+#Prometheus: the Fall of the House of Limón: Sunday Sunlight: Poetic
+Novels of Spanish Life#, by _Ramón Pérez de Ayala_, Prose translations by
+_Alice P. Hubbard_: Poems done into English by _Grace Hazard Conkling_
+(E. P. Dutton & Co.). Señor Pérez de Ayala has achieved in these three
+stories what may be quite frankly regarded as a literary form. They do
+not conform to a single rule of the short story as we have been taught
+to know it. In fact, this is a pioneer book which opens up a new field.
+The stories have no plot, no climax, no direct characterization, and at
+first sight no plan. Presently it appears that the author's apparent
+episodic treatment of his substance has a special unity of its own woven
+around the spiritual relations of his heroes. It is hard to judge of an
+author's style in translation, but the brilliant coloring of his
+pictures is apparent from this English version. The nearest analogue in
+English are the fantasies of Norman Douglas, but Pérez de Ayala has a
+much more profoundly realized philosophy of life. The poems which serve
+as interludes in these stories, curiously enough, add to the unity of
+the action.
+
+#The Last Lion, and Other Tales#, by _Vicente Blasco Ibáñez_, with an
+Introduction by _Mariano Joaquin Lorente_ (The Four Seas Company). The
+present vogue of Señor Blasco Ibáñez is more sentimental than justified,
+but in "Luxury" he has written an admirable story, and the other five
+stories have a certain distinction of coloring.
+
+#The Bishop, and Other Stories#, and #The Chorus Girl, and Other Stories#,
+by _Anton Chekhov_; translated from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_
+(The Macmillan Company). I have called attention to previous volumes in
+this edition of Chekhov from time to time. These two new additions to
+the series carry the English version of the complete tales two-thirds of
+the way toward completion. Chekhov is one of the three short story
+writers of the world indispensable to every fellow craftsman, and these
+nineteen stories are drawn for the most part from the later and more
+mature period of his work.
+
+#The Surprises of Life#, by _Georges Clémenceau_; translated by _Grace
+Hall_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). Although this volume shows a gift of
+crisp narrative and sharply etched portraiture, it is chiefly important
+as a revelation of M. Clémenceau's state of mind. Had it been called to
+the attention of Mr. Wilson before he went to Paris, the course of
+international diplomacy might have been rather different. These
+twenty-five stories and sketches one and all reveal a sneering
+scepticism about human nature and an utter denial of moral values. From
+a technical point of view, "The Adventure of My Curé" is a successful
+story.
+
+#Tales of My Native Town#, by _Gabriele D'Annunzio_; translated by _G.
+Mantellini_, with an Introduction by _Joseph Hergesheimer_ (Doubleday,
+Page & Company). This anthology drawn from various volumes of Signor
+D'Annunzio's stories gives the American a fair bird's-eye view of the
+various aspects of his work. These twelve portraits by the Turner of
+corruption have a severe logic of their own which may pass for being
+classical. As diploma pieces they are incomparable, but as renderings of
+life they carry no sense of conviction. Mr. Hergesheimer's introduction
+is a more or less unsuccessful special plea. While it is perfectly true
+that the author has achieved what he set out to do, these stories
+already seem old-fashioned, and as years go on will be read, if at all,
+for their landscapes only.
+
+#Military Servitude and Grandeur#, by _Alfred de Vigny_; translated by
+_Frances Wilson Huard_ (George H. Doran Company). It is curious that
+this volume should have waited so long for a translator. Alfred de Vigny
+was an early nineteenth century forerunner of Barbusse and Duhamel, and
+this record of the Napoleonic wars is curiously analogous to the books
+of these later men. I call attention to it here because it includes
+"Laurette," which is one of the great French short stories.
+
+#An Honest Thief, and Other Stories#, by _Fyodor Dostoevsky_; translated
+from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). This is
+the eleventh volume in the first collected English edition of
+Dostoevsky's works. The great Russian novelist was not a consummate
+technician when he wrote short stories, but the massive epic sweep of
+his genius clothed the somewhat inorganic substance of his tales with a
+reality which is masterly in the title story, in "An Unpleasant
+Predicament," and in "Another Man's Wife." The volume includes among
+other stories "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," which, though little
+known, is the key to the philosophy of his greater novels.
+
+#Civilization#, 1914-1917, by _Georges Duhamel_; translated by _E. S.
+Brooks_ (The Century Co.). This volume shares with Élie Faure's "La
+Sainte Face" first place among the volumes of permanent literature
+produced in France during the war. With more subtle and restrained
+artistry than M. Barbusse, the author has portrayed the simple
+chronicles of many of his comrades. He employs only the plainest
+notation of speech, with an economy not unlike that of Maupassant, and
+the indictment is the more terrible because of this emphasis of
+understatement. Before the war, M. Duhamel was known as a competent and
+somewhat promising poet and dramatist, and he was one of the few to whom
+the war brought an ampler endowment rather than a numbing silence.
+
+#Czecho-Slovak Stories#, translation by _Ŝárka B. Hrbkova_ (Duffield
+and Company). I trust that this volume will prove a point of departure
+for a series of books each devoted to the work of a separate
+Czecho-Slovak master. Certainly the work of Jan Neruda, Svatopluk
+Čech, and Caroline SvĚtlá, to name no others, ranks with the best
+of the Russian masters, and the reader is compelled to speculate as to
+how many more equally fine writers remain unknown to him. For such
+stories as these can only come out of a long and conscious tradition of
+art, and the greater part of these stories are drawn from volumes
+published during the last half century. The volume contains an admirable
+historical and critical introduction, and adequate biographies and
+bibliographies of the authors included.
+
+#Serenus, and Other Stories of the Past and Present#, by _Jules Lemaître_;
+translated by "_Penguin_" (_A. W. Evans_) (London: Selwyn & Blount).
+Although this volume has not yet been published in the United States, it
+is one of the few memorable short story books of the season, and should
+readily find a publisher over here. Anatole France has prophesied that
+it will stand out in the history of the thought of the nineteenth
+century, just as to-day "Candide" or "Zadig" stands out in that of the
+eighteenth. These fourteen stories are selected from about four times
+that number, and a complete Lemaître would be as valuable in English as
+the new translation of Anatole France. The present version is
+faultlessly rendered by an English stylist who has sought to set down
+the exact shade of the critic's meaning.
+
+#Tales of Mystery and Horror#, by _Maurice Level_; translated from the
+French by _Alys Eyre Macklin_, with an Introduction by _Henry B. Irving_
+(Robert M. McBride & Co.). Mr. Irving's introduction rather overstates
+M. Level's case. These stories are not literature, but their hard
+polished technique is as competent as that of Melville Davisson Post,
+and I suppose that these two men have carried Poe's technique as far as
+it can be carried with talent. The stories are frankly melodramatic, and
+wring the last drop of emotion and sentiment out of each situation
+presented. I think the volume will prove valuable to students of short
+story construction, and there is no story which does not arrest the
+attention of the reader.
+
+#The Story of Gotton Connixloo#, followed by #Forgotten#, by _Camille
+Mayran_; translated by _Van Wyck Brooks_ (E.P. Dutton & Company). Mr.
+Brooks' translation of these two stories in the tradition of Flaubert
+have been a labor of love. They will not attract a large public, but the
+art of this Belgian writer is flawless, and worthy of his master. Out of
+the simplest material he has extracted an exquisite spiritual essence,
+and held it up quietly so as to reflect every aspect of its value. If
+the first of these two stories is the most completely rounded from a
+technical point of view, I think that the second points the way toward
+his future development. He presents his characters more directly, and
+achieves his revelation through dialogue rather than personal statement.
+
+#Short Stories from the Spanish#; Englished by _Charles B. McMichael_
+(Boni and Liveright, Inc.). The present volume contains seven short
+stories by Rubén Dario, Jacinto Octavio Picón, and Leopoldo Alas. They
+are wretchedly translated, but even in their present form one can divine
+the art of "The Death of the Empress of China" by the Nicaraguan Rubén
+Dario, and "After the Battle" by the Spaniard Jacinto Octavio Picón. The
+other stories are of unequal value, so far as we can judge from Mr.
+McMichael's translation.
+
+#The Fairy Spinning Wheel, and the Tales It Spun#, by _Catulle Mendès_;
+translated by _Thomas J. Vivian_ (The Four Seas Company). It was a happy
+thought to reprint this translation of M. Mendès' fairy tales which has
+been out of print for many years. It is probably the only work of its
+once renowned author which survives the passage of time. Here he has
+entered the child's mind and deftly presented a series of legends which
+suggest more than they state. Their substance is slight enough, but each
+has a certain symbolic value, and the poetry of M. Mendès' style has
+been successfully transferred to the English version.
+
+#Temptations#, by _David Pinski_; translated by _Isaac Goldberg_
+(Brentano's). We have already come to know what a keen analyst America
+has in Mr. Pinski from the translations of his plays which have been
+published. Here he is much less interested in the surface movement of
+plot than in the relentless search for motive. To his Yiddish public he
+seems perhaps the best of short story writers who write in his tongue,
+and certainly he can hold his own with the best of his contemporaries in
+all countries. He has the universal note as few English writers may
+claim it, and he stands apart from his creation with absolute
+detachment. His work, together with that of Asch, Aleichem, Perez, and
+one or two others establishes Yiddish as a great literary tongue. A
+further series of these tales are promised if the present volume meets
+with the response which it deserves.
+
+#Russian Short Stories#, edited by _Harry C. Schweikert_ (Scott, Foresman
+and Company). This is a companion volume to Mr. Schweikert's excellent
+collection of French short stories, and ranges over a wide field. From
+Pushkin to Kuprin his selection gives a fair view of most of the Russian
+masters, and the collection includes a valuable historical and critical
+introduction, with biographical notes, and a critical apparatus for the
+student of short story technique. It is of special educational
+importance as the only volume in the field. In the next edition I
+suggest that Sologub should be represented for the sake of completeness.
+
+#Iolanthe's Wedding#, by _Hermann Sudermann_; translated by _Adèle S.
+Seltzer_ (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This collection of four minor works
+by Sudermann contains two excellent stories, one of which is full of
+folk quality and a kindly irony, and the other more akin to the nervous
+art of Arthur Schnitzler. "The Woman Who Was His Friend" and "The
+Gooseherd" are less important, but of considerable technical interest.
+
+#Short Stories from the Balkans#; translated by _Edna Worthley Underwood_
+(Marshall Jones Company). This volume should be set beside the
+collection of "Czecho-Slovak Stories," which I have mentioned on an
+earlier page. Here will be found further stories by Jan Neruda and
+Svatopluk ÄŒech, together with a remarkable group of stories by
+Rumanian, Serbian, Croatian, and Hungarian authors. Neruda emerges as
+the greatest artist of them all, and one of the greatest artists in
+Europe, but special attention should be called also to the Czech writer
+Vrchlický, the Rumanian Caragiale, and the Hungarian Mikszáth. The
+translation seems competently done.
+
+#Modern Greek Stories#; translated by _Demetra Vaka_ and _Aristides
+Phoutrides_ (Duffield and Company). While this collection reveals no
+such undoubted master as Jan Neruda, it is an extremely interesting
+introduction to an equally unknown literature. Seven of the nine stories
+are of great literary value, and perhaps the best of these is "Sea" by
+A. Karkavitsas. Romaic fiction still bears the marks of a young
+tradition, and each new writer would seem to be compelled to strike out
+more or less completely for himself. Consequently it is necessary to
+allow more than usual for technical inadequacy, but the substance of
+most of these stories is sufficiently remarkable to justify us in
+wishing a further introduction to Romaic literature.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920: AN INDEX
+
+
+#Note.# _An asterisk before a title indicates distinction. This list
+includes single short stories, collections of short stories, and a few
+continuous narratives based on short stories previously published in
+magazines. Volumes announced for publication in the autumn of 1920 are
+listed here, though in some cases they had not yet appeared at the time
+this book went to press._
+
+
+I. #American Authors#
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed.# *Wings. McCann.
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed#, _and others._ Ten Foot Chain. Reynolds.
+
+#Ade, George.# Home Made Fables. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Anderson, Emma Maria Thompson.#  A 'Chu. Review and Herald Pub. Assn.
+
+#Anderson, Robert Gordon.# Seven O'clock Stories. Putnam.
+
+#Barbour, Ralph Henry.# Play That Won. Appleton.
+
+#Benneville, James Seguin De.# Tales of the Tokugawa. Reilly.
+
+#Bishop, William Henry.# Anti-Babel. Neale.
+
+#Boyer, Wilbur S.# Johnnie Kelly. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Bridges, Victor.# Cruise of the "Scandal." Putnam.
+
+#Brown, Alice.# *Homespun and Gold. Macmillan.
+
+#Butler, Ellis Parker.# Swatty. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Carroll, P. J.# Memory Sketches. School Plays Pub. Co.
+
+#Cather, Willa Sibert.# *Youth and the Bright Medusa. Knopf.
+
+#Chambers, Robert W.# Slayer of Souls. Doran.
+
+#Cohen, Octavus Roy.# Come Seven. Dodd, Mead.
+
+#Comfort, Will Levington#, and #Dost, Zamin Ki.# Son of Power. Doubleday,
+Page.
+
+#Connolly, James B.# *Hiker Joy. Scribner.
+
+"#Crabb, Arthur.#" Samuel Lyle, Criminologist. Century Co.
+
+#Cram, Mildred.# Lotus Salad. Dodd, Mead.
+
+#Cutting, Mary Stewart.# Some of Us Are Married. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Davies, Ellen Chivers.# Ward Tales. Lane.
+
+#Deland, Margaret.# *Small Things. Harper.
+
+#Dickson, Harris.# Old Reliable in Africa. Stokes.
+
+#Dodge, Henry Irving.# Skinner Makes It Fashionable. Harper.
+
+#Dost, Zami Ki.# _See_ Comfort, Will Levington and Dost, Zamin Ki.
+
+#Dwight, H. G.# *Emperor of Elam. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Edgar, Randolph#, _editor._ *Miller's Holiday: Short Stories from The
+Northwestern Miller. Miller Pub. Co.
+
+#Ferber, Edna.# *Half Portions. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Fillmore, Parker.# *Shoemaker's Apron. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
+
+#Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key.# Flappers and Philosophers. Scribner.
+
+#Ford, Sewell.# Meet 'Em with Shorty McCabe. Clode.
+  Torchy and Vee. Clode.
+  Torchy as a Pa. Clode.
+
+#French, Joseph Lewis#, _editor._ *Best Psychic Stories. Boni and
+Liveright.
+  *Masterpieces of Mystery. 4 vol. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Gittins, H. N.# Short and Sweet. Lane.
+
+#Graham, James C.# It Happened at Andover. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Hall, Herschel S.# Steel Preferred. Dutton.
+
+#Haslett, Harriet Holmes.# Impulses. Cornhill Co.
+
+#Heydrick,  Benjamin#, _editor._ *Americans  All. Harcourt, Brace, and
+Howe.
+
+#Hill, Frederick Trevor.# Tales Out of Court. Stokes.
+
+#Howells, William Dean#, _editor._ *Great Modern American Stories. Boni and
+Liveright.
+
+#Hughes, Jennie V.# Chinese Heart-Throbs. Revell.
+
+#Hughes, Rupert.# *Momma, and Other Unimportant People. Harper.
+
+#Huneker, James.# *Bedouins. Scribner.
+
+#Imrie, Walter McLaren.# *Legends. Midland Press.
+
+#Irwin, Wallace.# Suffering Husbands. Doran.
+
+#James, Henry.# *Master Eustace. Seltzer.
+
+#Jessup, Alexander#, _editor._ *Best American Humorous Short Stories. Boni
+and Liveright.
+
+#Johnson, Arthur.# *Under the Rose. Harper.
+
+#Kelley, F. C.# City and the World. Extension Press.
+
+#Lamprey, L.# Masters of the Guild. Stokes.
+
+#Leacock, Stephen.# Winsome Winnie. Lane.
+
+#Linderman, Frank Bird.# *On a Passing Frontier. Scribner.
+
+#Linton, C. E.# Earthomotor. Privately Printed.
+
+#McCarter, Margaret Hill.# Paying Mother. Harper.
+
+#Mackay, Helen.# *Chill Hours. Duffield.
+
+#MacManus, Seumas.# *Top o' the Mornin'. Stokes.
+
+#McSpadden, J. Walker#, _editor._ Famous Detective Stories. Crowell.
+  Famous Psychic Stories. Crowell.
+
+#Martin, George Madden.# *Children in the Mist. Appleton.
+
+#Means, E. K.# *Further E. K. Means. Putnam.
+
+#Miller, Warren H.# Sea Fighters. Macmillan.
+
+#Montague, Margaret Prescott.# *England to America. Doubleday, Page.
+  *Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Montgomery, L. M.# Further Chronicles of Avonlea. Page.
+
+#Morgan, Byron.# Roaring Road. Doran.
+
+#O'Brien, Edward J.# Best Short Stories of 1919. Small, Maynard.
+
+#Paine, Ralph D.# Ships Across the Sea. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Perry, Lawrence.# For the Game's Sake. Scribner.
+
+#Pitman, Norman Hinsdale.# Chinese Wonder Book. Dutton.
+
+#Poe, Edgar Allan.# *Gold-bug. Four Seas.
+
+#Post, Melville Davisson.# *Sleuth of St. James's Square. Appleton.
+
+#Rhodes, Harrison.# *High Life. McBride.
+
+#Rice, Alice Hegan#, and #Rice, Cale Young.# Turn About Tales. Century Co.
+
+#Richards, Clarice E.# Tenderfoot Bride. Revell.
+
+#Richmond, Grace S.# Bells of St. John's. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Rinehart, Mary Roberts.# Affinities. Doran.
+
+#Robbins, Tod.# *Silent, White, and Beautiful. Boni and Liveright.
+
+#Robinson, William Henry.# Witchery of Rita. Berryhill Co.
+
+#Sedgwick, Anne Douglas.# *Christmas Roses. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Smith, Gordon Arthur.# *Pagan. Scribner.
+
+#Society of Arts and Sciences.# *O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories, 1919.
+Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Spofford, Harriet Prescott.# *Elder's People. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Train, Arthur.# Tutt and Mr. Tutt. Scribner.
+
+#Vorse, Mary Heaton.# *Ninth Man. Harper.
+
+#Whalen, Louise Margaret.# Father Ladden, Curate. Magnificat Pub. Co.
+
+#White, Stewart Edward.# Killer. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Widdemer, Margaret.# Boardwalk. Harcourt, Brace, and Howe.
+
+#Wiggin, Kate Douglas.# *Homespun Tales. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Wiley, Hugh.# Wildcat. Doran.
+
+#Yezierska, Anzia.# *Hungry Hearts. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+
+II. #English and Irish Authors#
+
+#Baxter, Arthur Beverley.# Blower of Bubbles. Appleton.
+
+#Beerbohm, Max.# *Seven Men. Knopf.
+
+#Cannan, Gilbert.# *Windmills. Huebsch.
+
+"#Dehan, Richard.#" (#Clotilde Graves#). Eve of Pascua. Doran.
+
+#Dell, Ethel May.# Tidal Wave. Putnam.
+
+#Dunsany, Lord.# *Tales of Three Hemispheres. Luce.
+
+#Easton, Dorothy.# *Golden Bird. Knopf.
+
+#Evans, Caradoc.# *My Neighbors. Harcourt, Brace, & Howe.
+
+#Galsworthy, John.# *Tatterdemalion. Scribner.
+
+#Graves, Clotilde.# _See_ "Dehan, Richard."
+
+#Grogan, Gerald.# William Pollok. Lane.
+
+#Hardy, Thomas.# *Two Wessex Tales. Four Seas.
+
+#Hichens, Robert.# Snake-bite. Doran.
+
+#Hutten, Baroness Von.# _See_ Von Hutten, Baroness.
+
+#Huxley, Aldous.# *Limbo. Doran.
+
+#James, Montague Rhodes.# *Thin Ghost. Longmans.
+
+#Jeffery, Jeffery E.# Side Issues. Seltzer.
+
+#Kipling, Rudyard.# *Man Who Would Be King. Four Seas.
+
+#Lipscomb, W. P.# Staff Tales. Dutton.
+
+#New Decameron: Second Day.# McBride.
+
+#O'Kelly, Seumas.# *Golden Barque, and the Weaves's Grave. Putnam.
+
+"#Ross, Martin.#" _See_ "Somerville, E. Å’.," and "Ross, Martin."
+
+#Sabatini, Rafael.# Historical Nights' Entertainment, Second Series.
+Lippincott.
+
+"#Somerville, E. Å’.#," _and_ "#Ross, Martin#," Stray-Aways. Longmans,
+Green.
+
+"#Trevena, John.#" *By Violence. Four Seas.
+
+#Vernède, R. E.# Port Allington Stories. Doran.
+
+#Von Hutten, Baroness.# Helping Hersey. Doran.
+
+#Wylie, Ida Alena Ross.# *Holy Fire. Lane.
+
+
+III. #Translations#
+
+"#Aleichem, Shalom.#" _(Yiddish.)_ *Jewish Children. Knopf.
+
+#Andreiev, Leonid.# _(Russian.)_ *When the King Loses His Head.
+International Bk. Pub.
+
+#Andreiev, Leonid#, _and others._ (_Russian._) *Modern Russian Classics.
+Four Seas.
+
+#Annunzio, Gabriele D'.# _(Italian.)_ *Tales of My Native Town.
+Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.# _(Spanish.)_ *Last Lion. Four Seas.
+
+#Brown, Demetra Vaka#, and #Phoutrides, Aristides#, _trs._ (_Modern
+Greek._) *Modern Greek Stories. Duffield.
+
+#Chekhov, Anton.# _(Russian.)_ *Chorus Girl. Macmillan.
+
+#Clémenceau, Georges.# _(French.)_ *Surprises of Life. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Coster, Charles de.# _(French.)_ *Flemish Legends. Stokes.
+
+#Dostoevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich.# _(Russian.)_ *Honest Thief. Macmillan.
+
+#Friedlander, Gerald#, _ed. and tr._ (_Hebrew._) Jewish Fairy Tales and
+Stories. Dutton.
+
+#Hrbkova, Sarka B.#, _editor._ (_Czecho-Slovak._) *Czecho-Slovak Stories.
+Dutton.
+
+#Jacobsen, Jens Peter.# _(Danish.)_ *Mogens. Brown.
+
+#Level, Maurice.# _(French.)_ *Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride.
+
+#McMichael, Charles B.#, _translator._ (_Spanish._) *Short Stories from
+the Spanish. Boni & Liveright.
+
+#Maupassant, Guy de.# _(French.)_ *Mademoiselle Fifi. Four Seas.
+
+#Mayran, Camille.# _(French.)_ *Story of Gotton Connixloo. Dutton.
+
+#Pérez de Ayala, Ramón.# _(Spanish.)_ *Prometheus. Dutton.
+
+#Ragozin, Z. A.#, _editor._ (_Russian._) *Little Russian Masterpieces.
+4 vol. Putnam.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND ONLY
+
+
+I. #English and Irish#
+
+#Andrew, Emily.# Happiness in the Valley. Charles Joscelyn.
+
+#Barr, Robert.# Helping Hand. Mills and Boon.
+  Tales of Two Continents. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Beerbohm, Max.# *And Even Now. Heinemann.
+
+#Calthrop, Dion Clayton.# *Bit at a Time. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Cole, Sophie.# Variety Entertainment. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Conyers, Dorothea.# Irish Stew. Skeffington.
+
+#Cross, Victoria.# Daughters of Heaven. Laurie.
+
+#Drury, W. P.# All the King's Men. Chapman and Hall.
+
+#Evans, C. S.# Nash and Some Others. Heinemann.
+
+#Everard, Mrs. H. D.# Death Mask. Philip Allan.
+
+#Forster, E. M.# *Story of the Siren. Hogarth Press.
+
+#Frampton, Mary.# Forty Years On. Arrowsmith.
+
+#Garvice, Charles.# Girl at the "Bacca" Shop. Skeffington.
+
+#Gaunt, Mary.# Surrender, Laurie.
+
+#Gibbon, Perceval.# *Those Who Smiled. Cassell.
+
+#Green, Peter.# Our Kid. Arnold.
+
+#Grimshaw, Beatrice.# Coral Palace. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Harvey, William Fryer.# Misadventures of Athelstan Digby.
+Swarthmore Press.
+
+#Howard, F. Moreton.# Happy Rascals. Methuen.
+
+#Key, Uel.# Broken Fang. Hodder and Stoughton.
+
+#Knowlson, T. Sharper.# Man Who Would Not Grow Old. Laurie.
+
+#Leo, T. O. D. C.# Two Feasts of St. Agnes. Morland.
+
+#Le Queux, William.# Mysteries of a Great City. Hodder and Stoughton.
+
+#McGuffin, William.# Australian Tales of the Border. Lothian Book Pub. Co.
+
+#Mansfield, Katherine.# *Je Ne Parle Pas Français. Heron Press.
+  *Prelude. Hogarth Press.
+
+#Mayne, Ethel Colburn.# *Blindman. Chapman and Hall.
+
+#Mordaunt, Elinor.# *Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson.
+
+#Muir, Ward.# Adventures in Marriage. Simpkin, Marshall.
+
+#Newham, C. E.# Gippo. W. P. Spalding.
+
+#Newman, F. J.# Romance and Law in the Divorce Court. Melrose.
+
+#O'Kelly, Seumas.# *Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester.
+
+#Palmer, Arnold.# *My Profitable Friends. Selwyn and Blount.
+
+#Paterson, A. B.# Three Elephant Power. Australian Book Co.
+
+#Riley, W.# Yorkshire Suburb. Jenkins.
+
+#Robins, Elizabeth.# Mills of the Gods. Butterworth.
+
+#Robinson, Lennox.# *Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press.
+
+"#Sea-Pup.#" Musings of a Martian. Heath Cranton.
+
+#Shorter, Dora Sigerson.# *Dull Day in London. Nash.
+
+#Smith, Logan Pearsall.# *Stories from the Old Testament.
+Hogarth Press.
+
+#Stein, Gertrude.# *Three Lives. Lane.
+
+#Stock, Ralph.# Beach Combings. Pearson.
+
+#Taylor, Joshua.# Lure of the Links. Heath Cranton.
+
+#Warrener, Marcus and Violet.# House of Transformations.
+Epworth Press.
+
+#Wicksteed, Hilda.# Titch. Swarthmore Press.
+
+#Wilderhope, John.# Arch Fear. Murray and Evenden.
+
+#Wildridge, Oswald.# *Clipper Folk. Blackwood.
+
+#Woolf, Virginia.# *Mark on the Wall. Hogarth Press.
+
+
+II. #Translations#
+
+#Chekhov, Anton.# _(Russian.)_ *My Life. Daniel.
+
+#Kuprin, Alexander.# _(Russian.)_ *Sasha. Paul.
+
+#Lemaître, Jules.# _(French.)_ *Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN FRANCE
+
+
+#Ageorges, Joseph.# Contes sereins. Figuière.
+
+#Arcos, René.# *Bien commun. Le Sablier.
+
+#Boylesve, René.# *Nymphes dansant avec des satyres. Calmann-Lévy.
+
+"#Farrĕre, Claude.#" Dernière déesse. Flammarion.
+
+#Geffroy, Gustave.# Nouveaux contes du pays d'Quest. Crès.
+
+#Géniaux, Charles.# Mes voisins de campagne. Flammarion.
+
+#Ginisty, Paul.# *Terreur. Société anonyme d'édition.
+
+#Herold, A. Ferdinand.# *Guirlande d'Aphrodite. Edition d'Art.
+
+#Hesse, Raymond.# Bouzigny! Payot.
+
+#Hirsch, Charles-Henry.# Craquement. Flammarion.
+
+Lautrec, Gabriel de. Histoires de Tom Joé. Edition française
+illustrée.
+
+#Le Glay, Maurice.# Récits marocains. Berger-Levrault.
+
+#Machard, Alfred.# *Cent Gosses. Flammarion.
+  *Syndicat des fessés. Ferenczi.
+
+#Marie, Jacques.# Sous l'armure. Jouve.
+
+#Mille, Pierre.# *Nuit d'amour sur la montagne. Flammarion.
+  *Trois femmes. Calmann-Lévy.
+
+#Pillon, Marcel.# Contes à ma cousine. Figuière.
+
+#Pottecher, Maurice.# Joyeux Contes de la Cicogne d'Alsace.
+Ollendorff.
+
+"#Rachilde.#" *Découverte de l'Amérique. Kundig.
+
+#Régnier, Henri de.# *Histories incertaines. Mercure de France.
+
+#Rhaïs, Elissa.# *Café chantant. Plon.
+
+#Rochefoucauld, Gabriel de la.# *Mari Calomnié. Plon-Nourrit.
+
+#Russo, Luigi Libero.# Contes à la cigogne. 2e série. Messein.
+
+#Sarcey, Yvonne.# Pour vivre heureux.
+
+#Sutton, Maurice.# Contes retrouvés. Edit. Formosa. Bruxelles.
+
+#Tisserand, Ernest.# Contes de la popote. Crès.
+
+#Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.# *Nouveaux Contes Cruels. Crès.
+
+
+
+
+ARTICLES ON THE SHORT STORY
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+_The following abbreviations are used in this index_:--
+
+_Ath._                             Athenæum
+_B. E. T._                         Boston Evening Transcript
+_Book (London)_                    Bookman (London)
+_Book (N. Y.)_                     Bookman (New York)
+_Cath. W._                         Catholic World
+_Chap._                            Monthly Chapbook
+_Cont. R._                         Contemporary Review
+_Edin. R._                         Edinburgh Review
+_Eng. R._                          English Review
+_Fortn. R._                        Fortnightly Review
+_Harp. M._                         Harper's Magazine
+_L. H. J._                         Ladies' Home Journal
+_Lib._                             Liberator
+_Liv. Age._                        Living Age
+_Lit. R._                          Little Review
+_L. Merc._                         London Mercury
+_M. de F._                         Mercure de France
+_Mir._                             Reedy's Mirror
+_Mun._                             Munsey's Magazine
+_Nat. (London)_                    Nation (London)
+_N. Rep._                          New Republic
+_New S._                           New Statesman
+_19th Cent._                       Nineteenth Century and After
+_N. R. F._                         Nouvelle Revue Française
+_Peop._                            People's Favorite Magazine
+_Quart. R._                        Quarterly Review
+_R. de D. M._                      Revue des Deux Mondes
+_Sat. R._                          Saturday Review
+_Strat. J._                        Stratford Journal
+_Times Lit. Suppl._                Times Literary Supplement
+_Touch._                           Touchstone (London)
+_Yale R._                          Yale Review
+
+
+Abdullah, Achmed.
+  By Rebecca West. New S. May 8. (15:137.)
+
+"Aleichem, Shalom."
+  Anonymous. New S. Mar. 13. (14:682.)
+
+#Alexander, Grace.#
+  Thomas Hardy. N. Rep. Aug. 18. (23:335.)
+
+#Alvord, James Church.#
+  Typical American Short Story. Yale R. Apr. (9:650.)
+
+American Short Story.
+  By James Church Alvord. Yale R. Apr. (9:650.)
+
+Andreyev, Leonid.
+  By Eugene M. Kayden. Dial. Nov. 15, '19. (67:425.)
+  By Moissaye J. Olgin. N. Rep. Dec. 24, '19. (21:123.)
+  By A. Sokoloff. New S. Nov. 15, '19. (14:190.)
+
+Annunzio, Gabriele d'.
+  By Joseph Collins. Scr. Sept. (68:304.)
+  By Rebecca West. New S. June 5, (15:253.)
+                   N. Rep. June 30. (23:155.)
+
+Anonymous.
+  Buying $2,000,000 Worth of Fiction. Peop. Oct., '19. (12.)
+
+Apuleius.
+  By Lord Ernle. Quart. R. Jul. (234:41.)
+
+Arcos, René.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jan. 22. (19:48.)
+
+
+#Bailey, John.#
+  Henry James. London Observer. Apr. 25.
+
+Balkan Short Stories.
+  By Kate Buss. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3, p. 9.)
+
+Balzac, Honoré de.
+  By Princess Catherine Radziwill. Book. (N. Y.) Aug. (51:639.)
+  By Sir Frederick Wedmore. 19th Cent. Mar. (87:484.)
+  By M. P. Willcocks. Nation. (London.) Mar. 20. (26:864) and Mar. 27.
+
+Barnes, J. S.
+  Contemporary Italian Short Stories. New Europe. Nov. 27, '19. (13:214.)
+
+Beaubourg, Maurice.
+  By Legrand-Chabrier. M. de F. 15 août. (142:5.)
+
+#Beaunier, André.#
+  Pierre Mille. R. de D. M. 1 juillet. (6 sér. 58:191.)
+
+Beerbohm, Max.
+  Anonymous. Nation. (London.)  Nov. 22, '19. (26:272.)
+    By Bohun Lynch. L. Merc. June. (2:168.)
+    By S. W. Ath. Nov. 14, '19. (1186.)
+
+#Bent, Silas.#
+  Henry James. Mir. June 3. (29:448.) June 24. (29:510.)
+
+Beyle, Henri. _See_ "Stendhal."
+
+Blackwood, Algernon.
+  By Henriette Reeves. Touch. May. (7:147.)
+
+#Bourget, Paul.#
+  Prosper Mérimée. R. de D. M. 15 Sept. (59:257.)
+
+Bourget, Paul.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 30. (19:634.)
+  By R. Le Clerc Phillips. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:448.)
+
+#Braithwaite, William Stanley.#
+  American Short Story. B. E. T. Mar. 27. (pt. 3. p. 10.)
+
+#Brooks, Van Wyck.#
+  Mark Twain. Dial. Mar. Nat. Apr. (68:275, 424.)
+
+#Buss, Kate.#
+  Balkan Short Stories. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3. p. 9.)
+
+
+#Cabell, James Branch.#
+  Joseph Hergesheimer. Book. (N. Y.) Nov.-Dec., '19. (50:267.)
+
+#Calthrop, Dion Clayton.#
+  O. Henry. London Observer. May 2.
+
+#Chekhov, Anton.#
+  Diary. Ath. Apr. 2. (460.)
+  Letters. XII. Ath. Oct. 24, '19. (1078.)
+          XIII. Ath. Oct. 31, '19. (1135.)
+
+Chekhov, Anton.
+  Anonymous. Ath. Jan. 23, Feb. 6. ('20:1:124, 191.)
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Feb. 12, Jul. 15. (19:103, 455.)
+  By Edmund Gosse. London Sunday Times. Mar. 14.
+  By Robert Morss Lovett. Dial. May. (68:626.)
+  By Robert Lynd. London Daily News. Feb. 11.
+  By Robert Lynd. Nation (London.) Feb. 28. (26:742.)
+  By J. Middleton Murry. Ath. Mar. 5. ('20:1:299.)
+  By Robert Nichols. London Observer. Mar. 7.
+  By Charles K. Trueblood. Dial. Feb. (68:253.)
+
+#Chew, Samuel C.#
+  Thomas Hardy. N. Rep. June 2. (23:22.)
+
+#Child, Harold.#
+  Thomas Hardy. Book. (London.) June. (58:101.)
+
+Clemens, Samuel L. _See_ "Twain, Mark."
+
+#Collins, Joseph.#
+  Alfredo Panzini and Luigi Pirandello. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:410.)
+  Giovanni Papini. Book. (N. Y.)  (51:160.)
+  Gabriele D'Annunzio. Scr. Sept. (68:304.)
+
+#Colvin, Sir Sidney.#
+  Robert Louis Stevenson. Scr. Mar. (67:338.)
+
+#Conrad, Joseph.#
+  Stephen Crane. Book.  (N. Y.)  Feb.  (50:528.)  L. Merc. Dec., '19.
+ (1:192.)
+
+Conrad, Joseph.
+  By Stephen Gwynn. Edin. R. Apr. (231:318.)
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.)
+  By R. Ellis Roberts. Book. (London.) Aug. (58:160.)
+  By Gilbert Seldes. Dial. Aug. (69:191.)
+
+Coppée, François.
+  By Joseph J. Reilly. Cath. W. (111:614.)
+
+#Cor, Raphael.#
+  Charles Dickens. M. de F. 1 juillet. (141:82.)
+
+Corthis, André.
+  Anonymous. Rev. de D. M. 15 juin. (6 sér. 57:816.)
+
+#Coulon, Marcel.#
+  Rachilde. M. de F. 15 sept. (142:545.)
+
+Couperus, Louis.
+  By J. L. Walch. Ath. Oct. 31, '19. (1133.)
+
+Crane, Stephen.
+  By Joseph Conrad. Book. (N. Y.) Feb. (50:529.) L. Merc. Dec., '19.
+ (1:192.)
+
+Cunninghame Grahame, R. B. _See_ Grahame, R. B. Cunninghame.
+
+
+D'Annunzio, Gabriele. _See_ Annunzio, Gabriele d'.
+
+#Deffoux, Léon#, _and_ #Zavie, Émile.#
+  Editions Kistemaekers et le "Naturalisme." M. de F. 16 oct., '19.
+ (135:639.)
+  Émile Zola. M. de F. 15 fév. (138:68.)
+
+#Dell, Floyd.#
+  Mark Twain. Lib. Aug. (26.)
+
+#Dewey, John.#
+  Americanism and Localism. Dial. June. (68:684.)
+
+Dickens, Charles.
+  By Raphael Cor. M. de F. 1 juillet. (141:82.)
+
+Dobie, Charles Caldwell.
+  By Joe Whitnah. San Francisco Bulletin. Jan. 3.
+
+Dostoevsky, Fyodor.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 23. (19:612.)
+  By E. M. Forster. London Daily News. Nov. 11, '19.
+  By Charles K. Trueblood. Dial. June. (68:774.)
+
+Doyle, A. Conan.
+  By Beverly Stark. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:579.)
+
+Duhamel, Georges.
+  By Henry J. Smith. Chicago Daily News. Dec. 3, '19.
+
+Dunsany, Lord.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 11, '19. (18:737.) July 8. (19:437.)
+  By Clayton Hamilton. Book. (N. Y.) Feb. (50:537.)
+  By Norreys Jephson O'Conor. B. E. T. Oct. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 2.)
+  By Gilbert Seldes. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 2. p. 4.)
+  By F. W. Stokoe. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:202.)
+  By Marguerite Wilkinson. Touch. Dec., '19. (6:111.)
+
+#Dyer, Walter A.#
+  Short Story Orgy. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:217.)
+
+
+#Edgett, Edwin F.#
+  O. Henry. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 3. p. 4.)
+  W. W. Jacobs. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3. p. 10.)
+  Henry James. B. E. T. Apr. 10.
+  W.B. Maxwell. B. E. T. Nov. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 8.)
+
+#Egan, Maurice Francis.#
+  Henry James. Cath. W. June. (111:289.)
+
+"Eliot, George."
+  By H. C. Minchin. Fortn. R. Dec., '19. (112:896.)
+  By Edward A. Parry. Fortn. R. Dec., '19. (112:883.)
+  By Thomas Seccombe. Cont. R. Dec., '19. (116:660.)
+
+#Enoch, Helen.#
+  W. J. Locke. Cont. R. June. (117:855.)
+
+#Ernle, Lord.#
+  Apuleius. Quart. R. Jul. (234:41.)
+
+#Erskine, John.#
+  William Dean Howells. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:385.)
+
+#Evans, C.S.#
+  W. H. Hudson. Book. (N. Y.) Sept. (52:18.)
+
+
+#Ferber, Edna.#
+  By Rebecca West. New S. Apr. 3. (14:771.)
+
+#Finger, Charles J.#
+  Hudson and Grahame. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:836.)
+
+Flaubert, Gustave.
+  By Marcel Proust. N. R. F. Jan. (14:72.)
+  By George Saintsbury. Ath. Oct. 3, '19. (983.)
+  By Albert Thibaudet. N. R. F. Nov., 19. (13:942.)
+
+#Forster, E. M.#
+  Fyodor Dostoevsky. London Daily News. Nov. 11, '19.
+
+Forster, E. M.
+  By Katherine Mansfield. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:209.)
+  By Rebecca West. New S. Aug. 28. (15:576.)
+
+Fox, John.
+  By Thomas Nelson Page. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:674.)
+
+
+Gale, Zona.
+  By Constance Mayfield Rourke. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:315.)
+
+#George, W. L.#
+  Joseph Hergesheimer. Book. (London.) Sept. (58:193.)
+
+Giraudoux, Jean.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 22. (19:470.)
+  By Albert Thibaudet. N. R. F. Dec., '19. (13:1064.)
+
+#Goldberg, Isaac.#
+  Hungarian Short Stories. B. E. T. Oct. 8, '19. (pt.3. p.4.)
+  Ercole Luigi Morselli. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:557.)
+  Amado Nervo. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:3.)
+  Spanish-American Short Stories. Book.  (N. Y.)  Feb. (50:565.)
+
+#Gorky, Maxim.#
+  Reminiscences of Tolstoi. L. Merc. Jul. (2:304.)
+
+Gorky, Maxim.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 15. (19:453.)
+  By S. Koteliansky. Ath. Apr. 30. ('20:1:587.)
+  By J. W. N. S. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:77.)
+
+#Gosse, Edmund.#
+  Anton Chekhov. London Sunday Times. Mar. 14.
+  Henry James. L. Merc. Apr.-May. (1:673, 2:29.)
+    Scr. Apr.-May. (67:422, 548.)
+
+Gozzano, Guido.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 15. (19:450.)
+
+Grahame, R. B. Cunninghame.
+  By Charles J. Finger. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:836.)
+
+#Gwynn, Stephen.#
+  Joseph Conrad. Edin. R. Apr. (231:318.)
+
+
+#Hamilton, Clayton.#
+  Lord Dunsany. Book. (N. Y.) Feb. (50:537.)
+
+Hardy, Thomas.
+  By Grace Alexander. N. Rep. Aug. 18. (23:335.)
+  By Samuel C. Chew. N. Rep. June 2. (23:22.)
+  By Harold Child. Book. (London.) June. (58:101)
+  By W. M. Parker, 19th Cent. Jul. (88: 63.)
+  By Arthur Symons. Dial. Jan. (68:66.)
+
+Harte, Bret.
+  By Agnes Day Robinson. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:445.)
+
+#Hawthorne, Nathaniel.#
+  By Mary G. Tuttiett. 19th Cent. Jan. (87:118.)
+
+Henriet, Maurice.
+  Jules Lemaître. M. De F. 1 juin. (140:289.)
+
+"Henry, O."
+  By Dion Clayton Calthrop. London Observer. May 2.
+  By Edwin F. Edgett. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 3. p. 4.)
+  By Edward Francis Mohler. Cath. W. Sept. (111:756.)
+  By Raoul Narsy. Liv. Age. Oct. 11, '19. (303:86.)
+  By John Seymour Wood. Book. (N. Y.) Jan. (50:474.)
+
+Hergesheimer, Joseph.
+  By James Branch Cabell. Book. (N. Y.) Nov.-Dec., '19. (50:267.)
+  By W. L. George. Book. (London.) Sept. (58:193.)
+
+Holz, Arno.
+  Anonymous. Ath. Apr. 9. ('20:1:490.)
+
+Hook, Theodore.
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. Sept. 25. (130:254.)
+
+#Hopkins, Gerard.#
+  Short Story. Chap. Feb. (25.)
+
+Howells, William Dean.
+  Anonymous. N. Rep. May 26. (22:393.)
+  By John Erskine. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:385.)
+  By Henry A. Lappin. Cath. W. Jul. (111:445.)
+  By Edward S. Martin. Harp. M. Jul. (141:265.)
+  By Arthur Hobson Quinn. Cen. Sept. (100:674.)
+  By Henry Rood. L. H. J. Sept. (42.)
+  By Booth Tarkington. Harp. M. Aug. (141: 346.)
+
+Hudson, W. H.
+  By C. S. Evans. Book. (N. Y.) Sept. (52:18.)
+  By Charles J. Finger. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:836.)
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Lit. R. May-June. (5.)
+  By Ezra Pound. Lit. R. May-June. (13.)
+  By Ernest Rhys. 19th Cent. Jul. (88:72.)
+  By John Rodker. Lit. R. May-June. (18.)
+
+#Hueffer, Ford Madox.#
+  W. H. Hudson. Lit. R. May-June. (5.)
+  Thus to Revisit. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.)
+
+#Huneker, James Gibbons.#
+  Henry James. Book. (N. Y.) May. (51:364.)
+
+Huneker, James Gibbons.
+  Anon. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:515.)
+
+Hungarian Short Stories.
+  By Isaac Goldberg. B. E. T. Oct. 8, '19. (pt. 3. p. 4.)
+
+Huxley, Aldous.
+  By Michael Sadleir. Voices. June. (3:235.)
+
+
+Italian Short Stories.
+  By J. S. Barnes. New Europe. Nov. 27, '19. (13:214.)
+
+
+Jacobs, W. W.
+  By E. F. Edgett. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3. p. 10.)
+
+James, Henry.
+  Anonymous. Nation. (London.) May 8. (27:178.)
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Apr. 8. (19:217.)
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. June 12. (129:537.)
+  Anonymous. Cont. R. Jul. (118:142.)
+  By John Bailey. London Observer. Apr. 25.
+  By Silas Bent. Mir. June 3. (29: 448.) June 24. (29:510.)
+  By Edwin F. Edgett. B. E. T. Apr. 10.
+  By Maurice Francis Egan. Cath. W. June. (111:289.)
+  By Edmund Gosse. L. Merc. Apr.-May.  (1:673:2:29.)
+    Scr. Apr.-May. (67:422, 548.)
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.)
+  By James G. Huneker. Book. (N. Y.) May. (51:364.)
+  By Philip Littell. N. Rep. June 9. (23:63.)
+  By Desmond MacCarthy. New S. May 15. (15:162.)
+  By Brander Matthews. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:389.)
+  By Thomas Moult. Eng. R. Aug. (31:183.)
+  By E. S. Nadal. Scr. Jul. (68:89.)
+  By Forrest Reid. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:520.)
+  By Gilbert Seldes. Dial. Jul. (69:83.)
+  By J. C. Squire. London Sunday Times. Apr. 18.
+  By Louise R. Sykes. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:240.)
+  By Allan Wade. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 19. (19:537.)
+  By A. B. Walkley. Fortn. R. June. (n. s. 107:864.) London Times.
+    June 16, Sept. 15.
+  By Sidney Waterlow. Ath. Apr. 23. ('20:1:537.)
+  By Edith Wharton. Quart. R. Jul. (234:188.)
+
+#Johnson, Alvin.#
+  Mark Twain. N. Rep. Jul. 14. (23:201.)
+
+
+#Kayden, Eugene M.#
+  Leonid Andreyev. Dial. Nov. 15, '19. (67:425.)
+
+Keller, Gottfried.
+  By Alec W. G. Randall. Cont. R. Nov., '19. (116:532.)
+
+Kipling, Rudyard.
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. Aug. 7. (130:113.)
+  By Richard Le Gallienne. Mun. Nov., '19. (68:238.)
+  By Desmond MacCarthy. New S. June 5. (15:249.)
+  By Virginia Woolf. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:75.)
+
+#Koteliansky, S.#
+  Tolstoy and Gorky. Ath. Apr. 30. ('20:1:582.)
+
+Kuprin, Alexander.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Nov. 27, '19. (18:691)
+  By Katherine Mansfield. Ath. Dec. 26, '19. (1399.)
+
+
+#Lappin, Henry A.#
+  William Dean Howells. Cath. W. Jul. (111:445.)
+
+Lawrence, D. H.
+  By Louis Untermeyer. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:314.)
+
+#Le Gallienne, Richard.#
+  Rudyard Kipling. Mun. Nov., '19. (68:238.)
+
+#Legrand-Chabrier.#
+  Maurice Beaubourg. M. de F. 15 août. (142:5.)
+
+Lemaître, Jules.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 2. (19:562.)
+  By Maurice Henriet. M. de F. 1 juin. (140:289.)
+
+#Littell, Philip.#
+  Henry James. N. Rep. June 9. (23:63.)
+
+Locke, W. J.
+  By Helen Enoch. Cont. R. June. (117:855.)
+
+London, Jack.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:519.)
+  By Katherine Mansfield. Ath. Aug. 27. ('20:2:272.)
+
+#Lovett, Robert Morss.#
+  Anton Chekhov. Dial. May. (68:626.)
+  Mark Twain. Dial. Sept. (69:293.)
+
+#Lynch, Bohun.#
+  Max Beerbohm. L. Merc. June. (2:168.)
+
+#Lynd, Robert.#
+  Anton Chekhov. London Daily News. Feb. 11.
+  Anton Chekhov. Nation. (London.) Feb. 28. (26:742.)
+  George Meredith. London Daily News. Jan. 30.
+
+#Lysaght, S. R.#
+  Robert Louis Stevenson. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:713.)
+
+
+#MacCarthy, Desmond.#
+  Henry James. New S. May 15. (15:162.)
+  Rudyard Kipling. New S. June 5. (15:249.)
+
+"Macleod, Fiona." (William Sharp.)
+  By Ethel Rolt-Wheeler. Fortn. R. Nov., '19. (112:780.)
+
+#Mansfield, Katharine.#
+  E. M. Forster. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:209.)
+  Alexander Kuprin. Ath. Dec. 26, '19. (1399.)
+  Jack London. Ath. Aug. 27. ('20:2:272.)
+
+#Martin, Edward S.#
+  William Dean Howells. Harp. M. Jul. (141:265.)
+
+Masefield, John.
+  By Edward Shanks. L. Merc. Sept. (2:578.)
+
+Maseras, Alfons.
+  By Camille Pitollet. M. de F. 15 août. (142:230.)
+
+#Matthews, Brander.#
+  Henry James. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:389).
+  Mark Twain. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (14.)
+
+Maxwell, W. B.
+  By E. F. Edgett, B. E. T. Nov. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 8.)
+
+Meredith, George.
+  By Robert Lynd. London Daily News. Jan. 30.
+
+Mérimée, Prosper.
+  By Paul Bourget R. de D. M. 15 sept. (59:257.)
+
+Mille, Pierre.
+  By André Beaunier. R. de D. M. 1 juillet. (6 sér. 58:191.)
+
+#Minchin, H. C.#
+  George Eliot. Fortn. R. Dec. '19. (112:896.)
+
+Mirbeau, Octave.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:518.)
+
+#Mohler, Edward Francis.#
+  "O. Henry." Cath. W. Sept. (111:756.)
+
+Morrow, W. C.
+  By Vincent Starrett. Mir. Oct. 30, '19. (28:751.)
+
+Morselli, Ercole Luigi.
+  By Isaac Goldberg. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:557.)
+
+#Moult, Thomas.#
+  Henry James. Eng. R. Aug. (31:183.)
+
+#Murry, J. Middleton.#
+  Anton Chekhov. Ath. Mar. 5. ('20:1:299.)
+  Stendhal. Ath. Sept. 17. ('20:2:388.)
+  Oscar Wilde. Ath. Sept. 24. ('20:2:401.)
+
+
+#Nadal, E. S.#
+  Henry James. Scr. Jul. (68:89.)
+
+#Narsy, Raoul.#
+  O. Henry. Liv. Age. Oct. 11, '19. (303:86.)
+
+Naturalism. _See_ #Deffoux, Léon#, _and_ #Zavie, Émile.#
+
+Nervo, Amado.
+  By Isaac Goldberg. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:3.)
+
+"New Decameron."
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. Aug. 7. (130:113.)
+  By F. W. Stokoe. Ath. Aug. 6. ('20:2:172.)
+
+#Nichols, Robert.#
+  Anton Chekhov. London Observer. Mar. 7.
+
+Nodier, Charles.
+  By George Saintsbury. Ath. Jan. 16. ('20:1:91.)
+
+
+#O'Brien, Edward J.#
+  Best Short Stories of 1919. B. E. T. Nov. 28, '19. (14.)
+
+O'Brien, Fitzjames.
+  By Joseph J. Reilly. Cath. W. Mar. (110:751.)
+
+#O'Conor, Norreys Jephson.#
+  Lord Dunsany. B. E. T. Oct. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 2.)
+
+#Olgin, Moissaye J.#
+  Leonid Andreyev. N. Rep. Dec. 24, '19. (21:123.)
+
+
+#Page, Thomas Nelson.#
+  John Fox. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:674.)
+
+Panzini, Alfredo.
+  By Joseph Collins. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:410.)
+  By Guido de Ruggiero. Ath. Feb. 13. ('20:1:222.)
+
+Papini, Giovanni.
+  By Joseph Collins. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:160.)
+
+#Parker, W. M.#
+  Thomas Hardy, 19th Cent. Jul. (88:63.)
+
+#Parry, Edward A.#
+  George Eliot. Fortn. R. Dec., '19. (112:883.)
+
+#Phillips, R. Le Clerc.#
+  Paul Bourget. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:448.)
+
+Pirandello, Luigi.
+  By Joseph Collins. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:410.)
+
+#Pitollet, Camille.#
+  Alfons Maseras. M. de F. 15 août. (142:230.)
+
+Pontoppidan, Henrik.
+  By J. G. Robertson. Cont. R. Mar. (117:374.)
+
+#Pound, Ezra.#
+  W. H. Hudson. Lit. R. May-June. (13.)
+
+#Proust, Marcel.#
+  Gustave Flaubert. N. R. F. Jan. (14:72.)
+
+#Purcell, Gertrude M.#
+  Ellis Parker Butler. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:473.)
+
+
+#Quinn, Arthur Hobson.#
+  William Dean Howells. Cen. Sept. (100:674.)
+
+
+"Rachilde." (Mme. Alfred Vallette.)
+  By Marcel Coulon. M. de F. 15 sept. (142:545.)
+
+#Radziwill, Princess Catherine.#
+  Honoré de Balzac. Book. (N. Y.) Aug. (51:639.)
+
+#Randall, Alec W. G.#
+  Gottfried Keller. Cont. R. Nov., '19. (116:532.)
+
+#Raynaud, Ernest.#
+  Oscar Wilde. La Minerve Française. 15 août.
+
+Read, Opie.
+  By Vincent Starrett. Mir. Nov. 6, '19. (28:769.)
+
+#Reeves, Henriette.#
+  Algernon Blackwood. Touch. May. (7:147.)
+
+Régnier, Henri de.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Feb. 19. (19:118.)
+
+#Reid, Forrest.#
+  Henry James. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:520.)
+
+#Reilly, Joseph J.#
+  François Coppée. Cath. W. Aug. (111:614.)
+  Fitzjames O'Brien. Cath. W. Mar. (110:751.)
+
+#Rhys, Ernest.#
+  W. H. Hudson, 19th Cent. Jul. (88:72.)
+
+#Roberts, R. Ellis.#
+  Joseph Conrad. Book. (London.) Aug. (58:160.)
+
+#Robertson, J. G.#
+  Henrik Pontoppidan. Cont. R. Mar. (117:374.)
+
+#Robinson, Agnes Day.#
+  Bret Harte. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:445.)
+
+#Rodker, John.#
+  W. H. Hudson, Lit. R. May-June. (18.)
+
+#Rolt-Wheeler, Ethel.#
+  "Fiona Macleod." Fortn. R. Nov., '19. (112:780.).
+
+#Rood, Henry.#
+  William Dean Howells. L. H. J. Sept. (42.)
+
+#Rourke, Constance Mayfield.#
+  Zona Gale. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:315.)
+
+#Ruggiero, Guido de.#
+  Alfred Panzini. Ath. Feb. 13. ('20:1:222.)
+
+
+S., J. W. N.
+  Tolstoy and Gorky. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:77.)
+
+#Sadleir, Michael.#
+  Aldous Huxley. Voices. June. (3:235.)
+
+#Saintsbury, George.#
+  Gustave Flaubert. Ath. Oct. 3, '19. (983.)
+  Charles Nodier. Ath. Jan. 16. ('20:1:91.)
+
+#Seccombe, Thomas.#
+  George Eliot. Cont. R. Dec., '19. (116:660.)
+
+#Seldes, Gilbert.#
+  Joseph Conrad. Dial. Aug. (69:191.)
+  Lord Dunsany. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 2. p. 4.)
+  Henry James. Dial. Jul. (69:83.)
+
+#Shanks, Edward.#
+  John Masefield. L. Merc. Sept. (2:578.)
+  Sharp, William. _See_ "Fiona Macleod."
+
+Singh, Kate Prosunno.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 2. (19:562.)
+
+#Smith, Henry J.#
+  Georges Duhamel. Chicago Daily News. Dec. 3, '19.
+
+#Sokoloff, A.#
+  Leonid Andreyev. New S. Nov. 15, '19. (14:190.)
+
+Spanish-American Short Story. See #Goldberg, Isaac.#
+
+#Squire, J. C.#
+  Henry James. London Sunday Times. Apr. 18.
+
+#Stark, Beverly.#
+  A. Conan Doyle. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:579.)
+
+#Starrett, Vincent.#
+  W. C. Morrow. Mir. Oct. 30, '19. (28:751.)
+  Opie Read. Mir. Nov. 6, '19. (28:769.)
+
+"Stendhal," (Henri Beyle.)
+  By John Middleton Murry. Ath. Sept. 17. ('20:2:388.)
+
+Stevenson, Robert Louis.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:701.)
+  By Sir Sidney Colvin. Scr. Mar. (67:338.)
+  By S. R. Lysaght. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:713.)
+
+#Stokoe, F. W.#
+  Lord Dunsany. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:202.)
+  "New Decameron." Ath. Aug. 6. ('20:2:172.)
+
+#Sykes, Louise R.#
+  Henry James. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:240.)
+
+#Symons, Arthur.#
+  Thomas Hardy. Dial. Jan. (68:66.)
+  Oscar Wilde. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:129.)
+
+
+#Tarkington, Booth.#
+  William Dean Howells. Harp. M. Aug. (141:346.)
+
+#Tchekhov, Anton.# _See_ Chekhov, Anton.
+
+#Thibaudet, Albert.#
+  Gustave Flaubert. N. R. F. Nov., '19. (13:942.)
+  Jean Giraudoux. N. R. F. Dec., '19. (13:1064.)
+
+Tolstoy, Count Lyof.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 15. (19:453.)
+  Anonymous. New S. Aug. 7. (15:505.)
+  By Maxim Gorky. L. Merc. Jul. (2:304.)
+  By S. Koteliansky. Ath. Apr. 30. ('20:1:587.)
+  By J. W. N. S. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:77.)
+
+#Trueblood, Charles K.#
+  Anton Chekhov. Dial. Jan. (68:80.)
+  Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dial. June. (68:774.)
+  Edith Wharton. Dial. Jan. (68:80.)
+
+#Tuttiett, Mary G.#
+  Nathaniel Hawthorne, 19th Cent. Jan. (87:118.)
+
+"Twain, Mark."
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 23. (19:615.)
+  By Van Wyck Brooks. Dial. Mar. (68:275), and Apr. (68:424.)
+  By Floyd Dell. Lib. Aug. (26.)
+  By Alvin Johnson. N. Rep. Jul. 14. (23:201.)
+  By Robert Morss Lovett. Dial. Sept. (69:293.)
+  By Brander Matthews. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (14.)
+
+
+#Untermeyer, Louis.#
+  D. H. Lawrence. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:314.)
+
+
+Vallette, Mme. Alfred. _See_ "Rachilde."
+
+Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:711.)
+
+
+#Wade, Allan.#
+  Henry James. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 19. (19:537.)
+
+#Walch, J. L.#
+  Louis Couperus. Ath. Oct. 31, '19. (1133.)
+
+#Waldo, Harold.#
+  Old Wests for New. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:396.)
+
+#Walkley, A. B.#
+  Henry James. Fortn. R. June. (n. s. 107:864.)
+  Henry James. London Times. June 16 and Sept. 15.
+
+#Waterlow, Sydney.#
+  Henry James. Ath. Apr. 23. ('20:1:537.)
+
+#Wedmore, Sir Frederick.#
+  Honoré de Balzac, 19th Cent. Mar. (87:484.)
+
+Wells, H. G.
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.) Reply by H. G. Wells.
+    Eng. R. Aug. (31:178.)
+
+#West, Rebecca.#
+  Achmed Abdullah. New S. May 8. (15:137.)
+  Gabriele D'Annunzio. New S. June 5. (15:253.) N. Rep. June 30. (23:155.)
+  Edna Ferber. New S. Apr. 3. (14:771.)
+  E. M. Forster. New S. Aug. 28. (15:576.)
+
+#Wharton, Edith.#
+  Henry James. Quart. R. Jul. (234:188.)
+
+#Wharton, Edith.#
+  By Charles K. Trueblood. Dial. Jan. (68:80.)
+
+#Whitnah, Joe.#
+  Charles Caldwell Dobie. San Francisco Bulletin. Jan. 3.
+
+Wilde, Oscar.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Oct. 30, '19. (18:605.)
+  By J. Middleton Murry. Ath. Sept. 24. ('20:2:401.)
+  By Ernest Raynaud. La Minerve Française. 15 août.
+  By Arthur Symons. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:129.)
+
+#Wilkinson, Marguerite.#
+  Lord Dunsany. Touch. Dec., '19. (6:111.)
+
+#Willcocks, M. P.#
+  Honoré de Balzac. Nation. (London.) Mar. 20. (26:864.) and Mar. 27.
+
+#Williams, Orlo.#
+  "Yellow Book." L. Merc. Sept. (2:567.)
+
+#Wilson, Arthur.#
+  "New Decameron." Dial. Nov. 1, '19. (67:372.)
+
+#Wood, John Seymour.#
+  O. Henry. Book. (N. Y.) Jan. (50:474.)
+
+#Woolf, Virginia.#
+  Rudyard Kipling. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:75.)
+
+
+"Yellow Book."
+  By Orlo Williams. L. Merc. Sept. (2:567.)
+
+
+Zola, Émile.
+  By Léon Deffoux and Émile Zavie. M. de F. 15 fév. (138:68.)
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF SHORT STORIES IN BOOKS
+
+
+I. #American Authors#
+
+NOVEMBER, 1918, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+ABBREVIATIONS
+
+_Abdullah A._               Abdullah. Honorable Gentleman.
+_Abdullah B._               Abdullah. Wings.
+_Andrews B._                Andrews. Joy in the Morning.
+_Andreyev C._               Andreyev. When the King Loses His Head.
+_Ayala_                     Ayala. Prometheus.
+_Cannan_                    Cannan. Windmills.
+_Cather_                    Cather. Youth and the Bright Medusa.
+_Chekhov D._                Chekhov. Bishop.
+_Chekhov E._                Chekhov. Chorus Girl.
+_Clémenceau_                Clémenceau. Surprises of Life.
+_Cobb B._                   Cobb. Life of the Party.
+_Cobb C._                   Cobb. From Place to Place.
+_Connolly A._               Connolly. Hiker Joy.
+_D'Annunzio_                D'Annunzio. Tales of My Native Town.
+_Dostoevsky B._             Dostoevsky. Honest Thief.
+_Dowson_                    Dowson. Poems and Prose.
+_Dreiser B._                Dreiser. Twelve Men.
+_Dwight A._                 Dwight. Emperor of Elam.
+_Easton_                    Easton. Golden Bird.
+_Edgar_                     Edgar. Miller's Holiday.
+_Evans A._                  Evans. My Neighbors.
+_Ferber B._                 Ferber. Half Portions.
+_French B._                 French. Best Psychic Stories.
+_Galsworthy B._             Galsworthy. Tatterdemalion.
+_Hearn_                     Hearn. Fantastics.
+_Henry B._                  Henry. Waifs and Strays.
+_Hergesheimer B._           Hergesheimer. Happy End.
+_Holmes_                    Holmes and Starbuck. War Stories.
+_Howells_                   Howells. Great Modern American Stories.
+_Hrbkova_                   Hrbkova. Czecho-Slovak Stories.
+_Huneker_                   Huneker. Bedouins.
+_Hurst B._                  Hurst. Humoresque.
+_Huxley_                    Huxley. Limbo.
+_Ibáñez_                    Blasco Ibáñez. Last Lion.
+_Imrie_                     Imrie. Legends.
+_Jacobs A._                 Jacobs. Deep Waters.
+_James A._                  James. Travelling Companions.
+_Jessup A._                  Jessup. Best American Humorous Stories.
+_Johnson_                   Johnson. Under the Rose.
+_La Motte_                  La Motte. Civilization.
+_Laselle_                   Laselle. Short Stories of the New America.
+_Lemaître_                  Lemaître. Serenus.
+_Level_                     Level. Tales of Mystery and Horror.
+_Mackay_                    Mackay. Chill Hours.
+_MacManus A._               MacManus. Lo, and Behold Ye!
+_Marshall_                  Marshall. Clintons.
+_Martin_                    Martin. Children in the Mist.
+_Mayran_                    Mayran. Story of Gotton Connixloo.
+_McMichael_                 McMichael. Short Stories from the Spanish.
+_Merrick A._                Merrick. Man Who Understood Women.
+_Merrick B._                Merrick. While Paris Laughed.
+_Montague A._               Montague. Gift.
+_Montague B._               Montague. England to America.
+_Montague C._               Montague. Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge.
+_Nevinson_                  Nevinson. Workhouse Characters.
+_New Dec. A._               New Decameron. Prologue and First Day.
+_O'Brien A._                O'Brien. Best Short Stories of 1918.
+_O'Brien B._                O'Brien. Best Short Stories of 1919.
+_O'Brien C._                O'Brien. Great Modern English Stories.
+_O'Byrne A._                O'Byrne. Wrack.
+_O'Higgins A._              O'Higgins. From the Life.
+_O'Kelly B._                O'Kelly. Golden Barque.
+_Pertwee_                   Pertwee. Old Card.
+_Pinski A._                 Pinski. Temptations.
+_Post B._                   Post. Mystery of the Blue Villa.
+_Prize A._                  O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories. 1919.
+_Reeve_                     Reeve and French. Best Ghost Stories.
+_Rhodes_                    Rhodes. High Life.
+_Robbins_                   Robbins. Silent, White and Beautiful.
+_Robinson_                  Robinson. Eight Short Stories.
+_Russell_                   Russell. Red Mark.
+_Russian A._                Modern Russian Classics. (Four Seas Co.)
+_Schweikert B._             Schweikert. Russian Short Stories.
+_Smith_                     Smith. Pagan.
+_Spofford A._               Spofford. Elder's People.
+_Sudermann_                 Sudermann. Iolanthe's Wedding.
+_Tomlinson_                 Tomlinson. Old Junk.
+_Trevena_                   Trevena. By Violence.
+_Underwood A._              Underwood. Short Stories from the Balkans.
+_Vernède_                   Vernède. Port Allington Stories.
+_Vaka_                      Vaka and Phoutrides. Modern Greek Stories.
+_Van Dyke A._               Van Dyke. Valley of Vision.
+_Vigny_                     Vigny. Military Servitude and Grandeur.
+_Vorse_                     Vorse. Ninth Man.
+_Welles_                    Welles. Anchors Aweigh.
+_Wilson A._                 Wilson. Ma Pettengill.
+_Wylie_                     Wylie. Holy Fire.
+_Yezierska_                 Yezierska. Hungry Hearts.
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed. (Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan El-Durani El-Idrissyeh.#)
+  (1881- .)
+  **After His Kind. Abdullah A. 144.
+  ***Cobbler's Wax. Abdullah A. 112.
+  *Disappointment.  Abdullah B. 43.
+  *Fear. Abdullah B. 211.
+  ***Hatchetman. Abdullah A. 41.
+  *Himself,  to  Himself  Alone. Abdullah A. 241.
+  ***Honourable Gentleman. Abdullah A. 1.
+  **Khizr. Abdullah B. 183.
+  Krishnavana,  Destroyer  of Souls. Abdullah B. 115.
+  ***Light. Abdullah B. 231.
+  *Man Who Lost Caste. Abdullah B. 153.
+  *Pell Street Spring Song. Abdullah A. 73.
+  Renunciation. Abdullah B. 103.
+  **Silence. Abdullah B. 163.
+  ***Simple Act of Piety. Abdullah A. 196. O'Brien A. 3.
+  Tartar. Abdullah B. 77.
+  That Haunting Thing. Abdullah B. 135.
+  ***To be Accounted for. Abdullah B. 63.
+  ***Wings. Abdullah B. 1.
+
+#Ade, George.# (1866- .)
+  ***Effie Whittlesy. Howells. 288.
+
+#Aldrich, Thomas Bailey.# (1836-1907.)
+  ***Mlle. Olympe Zabriski. Howells, 110.
+
+#Allen, James Lane.# (1849- .)
+   Old Mill on the Elkhorn. Edgar. 133.
+
+#Alsop, Gulielma Fell.#
+   ***Kitchen Gods. O'Brien B. 3. Prize A. 253.
+
+#Ames, Jr., Fisher.#
+   *Sergt. Warren Comes Back from France. Laselle 171.
+
+#Anderson, Sherwood# (1876- .)
+   ***Awakening. O'Brien B. 24.
+
+#Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman.# (_See 1918._)
+  ***Ditch. Andrews B. 1.
+  ***Dundonald's  Destroyer. Andrews B. 299.
+  *He That Loseth His Life Shall Find It, Andrews B. 193.
+  **Her Country Too. Andrews B. 37.
+  Only One of Them. Andrews B. 137.
+  Robina's Doll. Andrews B. 283.
+  *Russian. Andrews B. 263.
+  **Silver  Stirrup. Andrews B. 241.
+  **Swallow. Andrews B. 85.
+  *V. C. Andrews B. 163.
+
+
+#Babcock, Edwina Stanton.#
+  ***Cruelties. O'Brien A. 24
+  ***Willum's Vanilla. O'Brien B, 34.
+
+#Barnes, Djuna.# (1892- .)
+  ***Night  Among  the  Horses. O'Brien B. 65.
+
+#Bartlett, Frederic Orin.#  (1876- .)
+   Château-Thierry. Laselle. 199.
+   ***Long, Long Ago. O'Brien B. 74.
+
+#Beer, Thomas.# (1889- .)
+  *Absent Without Leave. Holmes. 1.
+
+#Bierce, Ambrose.# (1842-1914.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Damned Thing. Reeve. 160.
+  ***Eyes of the Panther. French B. 95.
+  ***Occurrence at  Owl Creek Bridge. Howells. 237.
+
+#Brooks, Alden.#
+  **Out of the Sky. Holmes. 17.
+
+#Brown, Alice.# (1857- .) _(See 1918.)_
+  ***Told in the Poorhouse. Howells. 225.
+
+#Brown, Katharine Holland.#
+  ***Buster. O'Brien A. 43.
+
+#Brownell, Agnes Mary.#
+  ***Dishes. O'Brien B. 82.
+
+#Bunner, Henry Cuyler.# (1855-1896.)
+  **Nice People. Jessup A. 141.
+
+#Burnet, Dana.# (1888- .)
+  *Christmas Fight of X 157. Holmes. 39.
+   *"Red,  White,  and  Blue." Holmes. 49.
+
+#Burt, Maxwell Struthers.# (1882- .)  (_See 1918._)
+   ***Blood-Red One. O'Brien B. 96.
+
+#Butler, Ellis Parker.# (1869- .)
+   ***Dey Ain't No Ghosts. Reeve. 177.
+
+"#Byrne, Donn.#" (#Bryan Oswald Donn-Byrne.#) (1888- .)
+  **Underseaboat  F-33. Holmes. 61.
+
+
+#Cabell, James Branch.# (1879- .)
+  **Porcelain Cups. Prize A. 210.
+  ***Wedding-Jest. O'Brien B. 108.
+
+#Cable, George Washington.# (1844- .)
+  ***Jean-Ah Poquelin. Howells. 390.
+
+#Canfield, Dorothy.# (#Dorothy Canfield Fisher.#) (1879- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Little Kansas Leaven. Laselle 1.
+
+#Cather, Willa Sibert.# (1875- .)
+  ***Coming, Aphrodite! Cather. 11.
+  ***"Death in the Desert." Cather. 273.
+  ***Diamond Mine. Cather. 79.
+  **Gold Slipper. Cather. 140.
+  ***Paul's Case. Cather. 199.
+  **Scandal. Cather. 169.
+  ***Sculptor's Funeral. Cather. 248.
+  ***Wagner Matinée. Cather. 235.
+
+#Chester, George Randolph.# (1869- .)
+  Bargain Day at Tutt House. Jessup A. 213.
+
+#Clemens, Samuel Langhorne.# _See_ "#Twain, Mark.#"
+
+#Cobb, Irvin Shrewsbury.# (1876- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Boys Will Be Boys. Cobb C. 96.
+  *Bull Called Emily. Cobb C. 382.
+  ***Gallowsmith. Cobb C. 11.
+  Hoodwinked. Cobb C. 332.
+  John J. Coincidence. Cobb C. 259.
+  **Life of the Party. Cobb B. 11.
+  **Luck Piece. Cobb C. 156.
+  ***Quality Folks. Cobb C. 206.
+  *Thunders of Silence. Cobb C. 55.
+  *When August the Second Was April the First. Cobb C. 302.
+
+#Connolly, James Brendan.# (1868- .)
+  *Aboard the Horse-Boat. Connolly A. 53.
+  *Flying Sailor. Connolly A. 132.
+  *Good-bye the Horse-Boat. Connolly A. 105.
+  *Jack o' Lanterns. Connolly A. 6.
+  *London Lights. Connolly A. 214.
+  *Lumber Schooner. Connolly A. 27.
+  *North Sea Men. Connolly A. 187.
+  *Undersea Men. Connolly A. 79.
+  *Wimmin 'n' Girls. Connolly A. 159.
+
+#Cook, Mrs. George Cram.# _See_ #Glaspell, Susan.#
+
+#Cooke, Grace MacGowan.# (1863- .)
+  *Call. Jessup A. 237.
+
+#Coolidge, Grace.#
+  **Indian of the Reservation. Laselle. 109.
+
+#Curtis, George William.# (1824-1892.)
+  **Titbottom's Spectacles. Jessup A. 52.
+
+
+#Dashiell, Landon R.#
+  ***Aunt Sanna Terry. Howells. 352.
+
+#Derieux, Samuel Arthur.#  (1881- .)
+  *Trial in Tom Belcher's Store. Prize A. 192.
+
+#Dobie, Charles Caldwell.# (1881- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Open Window. O'Brien A. 61.
+
+#Dreiser, Theodore.# (1871- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Country Doctor. Dreiser B. 110.
+  ***Culhane, the Solid Man. Dreiser B. 134.
+  ***De Maupassant, Jr. Dreiser B. 206.
+  ***Doer of the Word. Dreiser B. 53.
+  ***Lost Phoebe. Howells. 295.
+  ***Mayor and His People. Dreiser B. 320.
+  ***Mighty Rourke. Dreiser  B. 287.
+  ***My Brother Paul. Dreiser B. 76.
+  ***Peter. Dreiser B. 18.
+  ***True Patriarch. Dreiser B. 187.
+  ***Vanity, Vanity. Dreiser B. 263.
+  ***Village Feudists. Dreiser B. 239.
+  ***W. L. S. Dreiser B. 344.
+
+#Dwight, Harry Griswold.# (1875- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Bald Spot. Dwight A. 290.
+  **Bathers. Dwight A. 151.
+  ***Behind the Door. Dwight A. 266.
+  ***Emperor of Elam. Dwight A. 306.
+  ***Henrietta Stackpole _Radiviva._ Dwight A. 32.
+  ***Like Michael. Dwight A. 3.
+  **Mrs. Derwall and the Higher Life. Dwight A. 131.
+  ***Pagan. Dwight A. 52.
+  **Retarded Bombs. Dwight A. 172.
+  ***Studio Smoke. Dwight A. 252.
+  ***Susannah and the Elder. Dwight A. 191.
+  ***Unto the Day. Dwight A. 108.
+  ***White Bombazine. Dwight A. 82.
+
+#Dwight, Harry Griswold.# (1875- .) (_See 1918_) _and_ #Taylor, John R. M.#
+  ***Emerald of Tamerlane. Dwight A. 221.
+
+#Dwyer, James Francis.# (1874- .)
+  ***Citizen. Laselle. 85.
+  *Little Man in the Smoker. Holmes. 79.
+
+#Dyke, Henry Van.# _See_ #Van Dyke, Henry.#
+
+
+#Edwards, George Wharton.# (1859- .)
+  **Clavecin-Bruges. French B. 54.
+
+#Edwards, Harry Stillwell.# (1855- .)
+  **Elder Brown's Backslide. Jessup A. 109.
+
+#Emery, Gilbert.#
+  "Squads Right." Holmes. 86.
+
+#Empey, Arthur Guy.# (1883- .)
+  *Coward. Laselle. 181.
+
+
+#Ferber, Edna.# (1887- .)
+  April 25th, As Usual. Ferber B. 36. Price A. 274.
+  *Dancing Girls. Ferber B. 280.
+  *Farmer in the Dell. Ferber B. 239.
+  *Long Distance. Ferber B. 148.
+  ***Maternal Feminine. Ferber B. 3.
+  **Old Lady Mandle. Ferber B. 76.
+  One Hundred Per Cent. Ferber B. 201. Holmes. 95.
+  *Un Morso Doo Pang. Ferber B. 157.
+  ***You've Got To Be Selfish. Ferber B. 113.
+
+#Fish, Horace.# (1885- .)
+  ***Wrists on the Door. O'Brien B. 123.
+
+#Fisher, Dorothy Canfield.# _See_ #Canfield, Dorothy.#
+
+#Freedley, Mary Mitchell.# (1894- .)
+  ***Blind Vision. Holmes. 119. O'Brien A. 85.
+
+#Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins.# (1862- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Revolt of Mother. Howells. 207.
+
+#French, Alice.# _See_ "#Thanet, Octave.#"
+
+#Fuller, Henry Blake.# (1857- .)
+  ***Striking an Average. Howells. 267.
+
+
+#Garland, Hamlin.# (1860- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Graceless Husband. Edgar. 142.
+  ***Return of a Private. Howells. 248.
+
+#Gerould, Gordon Hall.# (1877- .)
+  ***Imagination. O'Brien A. 92.
+
+#Gerry, Margarita Spalding.# (1870- .)
+  *Flag Factory. Holmes. 126.
+
+#Gilbert, George.# (1874- .)
+  ***In Maulmain Fever-Ward. O'Brien A. 109.
+
+#Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.# (1860- .)
+  ***Yellow Wall Paper. Howells. 320.
+
+#Glaspell, Susan (Keating). (Mrs. George Cram Cook.)# (1882- .)
+  ***"Government Goat." O'Brien B. 147.
+
+#Goodman, Henry.# (1893- .)
+  ***Stone. O'Brien B. 167.
+
+
+#Haines, Donal Hamilton.# (1886- .)
+  *Bill. Holmes. 136.
+
+#Hale, Edward Everett.# (1822-1909.)
+  *First Grain Market. Edgar. 181.
+  ***My Double; and How He Undid Me. Howells. 3. Jessup A. 75.
+
+#Hallet, Richard Matthews.# (1887- .)
+  ***To the Bitter End. O'Brien B. 178.
+
+#Harris, Joel Chandler.# (1848-1908.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the Tar Baby. Howells. 413.
+
+#Harte, Francis Bret.# (1839-1902.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff. Jessup A. 170.
+  ***Outcasts of Poker Flat. Howells. 143.
+
+#Hastings, Wells.# (1878- .)
+  *Gideon. Jessup A. 260.
+
+#Hearn, Lafcadio.# (1850-1904.)
+  ***All in White. Hearn. 29.
+  ***Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner. Hearn. 102.
+  ***Bird and the Girl. Hearn. 150.
+  ***Black Cupid. Hearn. 71.
+  ***Devil's Carbuncle. Hearn. 40.
+  ***El Vomito. Hearn. 136.
+  ***Fountain of Gold. Hearn. 110.
+  ***Ghostly Kiss. Hearn. 66.
+  ***Gipsy's Story. Hearn. 174.
+  ***Hiouen-thsang. Hearn. 211.
+  ***Idyl of a French Snuff-Box. Hearn. 143.
+  ***Kiss Fantastical. Hearn. 152.
+  ***Little Red Kitten. Hearn. 33.
+  ***Name on the Stone. Hearn. 98.
+  ***One Pill-Box. Hearn. 183.
+  ***Post-Office. Hearn. 227.
+  ***Vision of the Dead Creole. Hearn. 92.
+
+"#Henry, O.#" (#William Sydney Porter.#) (1867-1910.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Cactus. Henry B. 76.
+  *Church with an Overshot Wheel. Edgar. 1.
+  Confessions of a Humourist. Henry B. 52.
+  Detective Detector. Henry B. 82.
+  *Dog and the Playlet. Henry B. 90.
+  ***Duplicity of Hargraves. Jessup A. 199.
+  Hearts and Hands. Henry B. 72.
+  Little Talk About Mobs. Henry B. 97.
+  *Out of Nazareth. Henry B. 32.
+  ***Red Roses of Tonia. Henry B. 3.
+  **Round the Circle. Henry B. 17.
+  *Rubber Plant's Story. Henry B. 25.
+  *Sparrows in Madison Square. Henry B. 66.
+
+"#Henry, O.#" (#William Sydney Porter#) (1867-1910), _and_ #Lyon,
+Harris Merton.# (1881-1916.)
+  *Snow Man. Henry B. 102.
+
+#Hergesheimer, Joseph.# (1880- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Bread. Hergesheimer B. 193.
+  *Egyptian Chariot. Hergesheimer B. 55.
+  Flower of Spain. Hergesheimer B. 93.
+  **Lonely Valleys. Hergesheimer B. 11.
+  ***Meeker Ritual. O'Brien B. 200.
+  *Rosemary Roselle. Hergesheimer B. 231.
+  **Thrush in the Hedge. Hergesheimer B. 283.
+  **Tol'able David. Hergesheimer B. 155.
+
+#Holmes, Oliver Wendell.# (1809-1894.)
+  *Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters. Jessup A. 94.
+
+#Humphrey, George.# (1889- .)
+  ***Father's Hand. O'Brien A. 125.
+
+#Huneker, James Gibbons.# (1860- .)
+  **Brothers-in-Law. Huneker. 201.
+  **Cardinal's Fiddle. Huneker. 247.
+  **Grindstones. Huneker. 216.
+  Renunciation. Huneker. 256.
+  *Supreme Sin. Huneker. 177.
+  _Venus or Valkyr?_ Huneker. 225.
+  *Vision Malefic. Huneker. 261.
+
+#Hurst, Fannie.# (1889- .) (_See 1918._)
+  **Boob Spelled Backward. Hurst B. 220.
+  **Even as You and I. Hurst B. 262.
+  *"Heads." Hurst B. 170.
+  ***Humoresque. Hurst  B. 1. Prize A. 148.
+  **Oats for the Woman. Hurst B. 45.
+  **Petal on the Current. Hurst B. 85.
+  **White Goods. Hurst B. 126.
+  *Wrong Pew. Hurst B. 300.
+
+
+
+#Imrie, Walter McLaren.#
+ ***Daybreak. Imrie. 7.
+ **Dead Men's Teeth. Imrie. 29.
+ ***Remembrance. Imrie. 41.
+ **Storm. Imrie. 15.
+
+#Ingersoll, Will E.#
+  ***Centenarian. O'Brien B. 225.
+
+
+#James, Henry.# (1843-1916.)
+  ***Adina. James A. 223.
+  ***At Isella. James A. 125.
+  ***De Grey: a Romance. James A. 269.
+  ***Guest's Confession. James A. 157.
+  *** Passionate Pilgrim. Howells. 43.
+  ***Professor Fargo. James A. 87.
+  ***Sweetheart of M. Briseux. James A. 53.
+  ***Travelling Companions. James A. 1.
+
+#Jewett, Sarah Orne.# (1849-1909.)
+  ***Courting of Sister Wisby. Howells. 190.
+
+#Johnson, Arthur.# (1881- .)
+  ***His New Mortal Coil. Johnson 270.
+  How the Ship Came In. Johnson. 303.
+  ***Little Family. Johnson. 237.
+  ***Mr. Eberdeen's House. Johnson. 138.
+  **One Hundred Eightieth Meridian. Johnson. 115.
+  ***Princess of Tork. Johnson. 1.
+  ***Riders in the Dark. Johnson. 54.
+  *Two Lovers. Johnson. 183.
+  ***Visit of the Master. Johnson. 203. O'Brien A. 131.
+
+#Johnston, Calvin.#
+  ***Messengers. O'Brien B. 237.
+
+#Johnston, Richard Malcolm.# (1822-1898.)
+  *Hotel Experience of Mr. Pink Fluker. Jessup A. 128.
+
+#Jones, Howard Mumford.#
+  ***Mrs. Drainger's Veil. O'Brien B. 269.
+
+
+#Kirkland, Caroline Matilda Stansbury.#  (1801-1864.) Schoolmaster's
+Progress. Jessup A. 18.
+
+#Kline, Burton.# (1877- .)
+  ***In the Open Code. O'Brien A. 149.
+
+#Kompert, Leopold.#
+  ***Silent Woman. Reeve. 60.
+
+
+#La Motte, Ellen Newbold.# (1873- .)
+  **Canterbury Chimes. La Motte. 177.
+  *Civilization. La Motte. 93.
+  ***Cosmic Justice. La Motte. 247.
+  *Homesick. La Motte. 65.
+  **Misunderstanding. La Motte 121.
+  ***On the Heights. La Motte. 33
+  ***Prisoners. La Motte. 141.
+  ***Under a Wineglass. O'Brien B. 297. La Motte. 217.
+  **Yellow Streak. La Motte. 11.
+
+#Lampton, William James.# ( -1917.)
+  **How the Widow Won the Deacon. Jessup A. 252.
+
+#Leslie, Eliza.# (1787-1858.)
+  Watkinson Evening. Jessup A. 34.
+
+#Lewars, Elsie Singmaster.# _See_ #Singmaster, Elsie.#
+
+#Lewis, Sinclair.# (1885- .)
+  ***Willow Walk. O'Brien A. 154.
+
+#Lieberman, Elias.# (1883- .)
+  ***Thing of Beauty. O'Brien B. 305.
+
+#London, Jack.# (1876-1916.) (_See 1918._)
+  *When the World Was Young. French B. 1.
+
+#Lummis, Charles Fletcher.# (1859- .)
+  *Blue-Corn Witch. Edgar. 120.
+  *Swearing Enchiladas. Edgar. 156.
+
+#Lyon, Harris Merton.# _See_ "Henry, O.", _and_ #Lyon, Harris Merton.#
+
+
+#Mackay, Helen.# (1876- .)
+  **At the End. Mackay. 3.
+  **Cauldron. Mackay. 95.
+  **Footsteps. Mackay. 178.
+  ***"He Cost Us So Much." Mackay. 154.
+  **"Here Are the Shadows!" Mackay. 160.
+  **"I Take Pen in Hand." Mackay. 172.
+  **Little Cousins of No. 12. Mackay. 148.
+  **Madame Anna. Mackay. 143.
+  *Moment. Mackay. 188.
+  **9 and the 10. Mackay. 184.
+  **Odette in Pink Taffeta. Mackay. 20.
+  ***One or Another. Mackay. 72.
+  ***Second Hay. Mackay. 49.
+  *She Who Would Not Eat Soup. Mackay. 164.
+  *Their Places. Mackay. 35.
+  **Vow. Mackay. 168.
+
+#MacManus, Seumas.# (1870- .)
+  ***Bodach and the Boy. MacManus A. 51.
+  ***Dark  Patrick's Blood-horse. MacManus A. 32.
+  ***Day of the Scholars. MacManus A. 117.
+  ***Donal O'Donnell's Standing Army. MacManus A. 131.
+  ***Far Adventures of Billy Burns. MacManus A. 71.
+  ***Jack and the Lord High Mayor. MacManus A. 215.
+  **King's Curing. MacManus A. 163.
+  ***Long Cromachy of the Crows. MacManus A. 196.
+  **Lord Thorny's Eldest Son. MacManus A. 180.
+  ***Mad Man, the Dead Man, and the Devil. MacManus A. 1.
+  *Man Who Would Dream. MacManus A. 99.
+  **Parvarted Bachelor. MacManus A. 150.
+  ***Quare  Birds. MacManus  A. 240.
+  ***Queen's Conquest. MacManus A. 16.
+  ***Resurrection of Dinny Muldoon. MacManus A. 263.
+  ***Son of Strength. MacManus A. 248.
+  **Tinker of Tamlacht. MacManus A. 84.
+
+#Marshall, Edison.# (1894- .)
+  **Elephant Remembers. Prize A. 78.
+
+#Martin, George Madden.# (1866- .)
+  *Blue Handkerchief. Martin. 71.
+  *Fire from  Heaven. Martin. 223.
+  *Flight. Martin. 1.
+  *Inskip Niggah. Martin. 120.
+  *Malviney. Martin. 252.
+  *Pom. Martin. 160.
+  *Sixty Years  After. Martin. 276.
+  *Sleeping Sickness. Martin. 200.
+
+#Matthews, James Brander.# (1852- .)
+  **Rival Ghosts. Reeve. 141.
+
+#Montague, Margaret Prescott.# (1878- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***England to America. Prize A. 3. Montague B. 3.
+  **Gift. Montague A. 3.
+  ***Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge. Montague C. 3.
+
+#Morris, George Pope.# (1802-1864.)
+  Little Frenchman and His Water Lots. Jessup A. 1.
+
+#Morris, Gouverneur.# (1876- .)
+  Behind the Door. Holmes. 145.
+  ***Unsent Letter. Holmes. 155.
+
+#Mosley, Katherine Prescott.#
+  ***Story Vinton Heard at Mallorie. O'Brien A. 191.
+
+
+#O'Brien, Mary Heaton Vorse.# _See_ #Vorse, Mary Heaton.#
+
+#O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold.# (1876- .)
+  **Benjamin  McNeil Murdock. O'Higgins A. 129.
+  **Conrad Norman. O'Higgins A. 171.
+  **District Attorney Wickson. O'Higgins A. 305.
+  **Hon. Benjamin P. Divins. O'Higgins A. 245.
+  **Jane Shore. O'Higgins A. 45.
+  ***Owen Carey. O'Higgins A. 3.
+  **Sir Watson Tyler. O'Higgins A. 269.
+  ***Thomas Wales Warren. O'Higgins A. 89.
+  ***W.T. O'Higgins A. 217.
+
+#Osborne, William Hamilton.# (1873- .)
+  Infamous Inoculation. Holmes. 166.
+
+#O'Sullivan, Vincent.# (1872- .)
+  ***Interval. Reeve. 170.
+
+
+#Payne, Will.# (1855- .)
+  ***His Escape. Holmes. 196.
+
+#Pelley, William Dudley.#
+  ***Toast to Forty-Five. O'Brien A. 200.
+
+#Pier, Arthur Stanwood.# (1874- .)
+  Night Attack. Laselle. 119.
+
+#Poe, Edgar Allan# (1809-1849.) (_See 1918._)
+  *Angel of the Odd. Jessup A. 7.
+  ***Ligeia. French B. 61.
+
+#Pope, Laura Spencer Portor.# _See_ #Portor, Laura Spencer.#
+
+#Porter, William Sydney.# _See_ "#Henry, O.#"
+
+#Portor, Laura Spencer.# (#Mrs. Francis Pope.#)  (_See 1918._)
+  ***Boy's Mother. Holmes. 217.
+
+#Post, Melville Davisson.# (1871- .)  (_See 1918._)
+  Ally. Post B. 243.
+  ***Baron Starkheim. Post B. 333.
+  **Behind the Stars. Post B. 361.
+  **Five Thousand Dollars Reward. Prize A. 120.
+  *Girl in the Villa. Post B. 217.
+  *Girl from Galacia. Post B. 117.
+  **Great Legend. Post B. 55.
+   Laughter of Allah. Post B. 79.
+  **Lord  Winton's Adventure. Post B. 265.
+  *Miller of Ostend. Post B. 199.
+  ***Mystery at the Blue Villa. Post B. 3.
+  ***New Administration. Post B. 29.
+  *Pacifist. Post B. 137.
+  ***Sleuth of the Stars. Post B. 157.
+  **Stolen Life. Post B. 99.
+  **Sunburned Lady. Post B. 311.
+  **Wage-Earners. Post B. 291.
+  *Witch of the Lecca. Post B. 179.
+
+#Pulver, Mary Brecht.# (1883- .)
+  ***Path of Glory. Laselle. 133.
+
+#Putnam, George Palmer.# (1887- .)
+  ***Sixth Man. Holmes. 233.
+
+#Pyle, Howard.# (1853-1911.)
+  **Blueskin, the Pirate. Edgar. 71.
+  **Captain Scarfield. Edgar. 14.
+
+
+#Ravenel, Beatrice Witte.# (1870- .)
+  ***High Cost of Conscience. Prize A. 228.
+
+#Rhodes, Harrison (Garfield).# (1871- .)
+  ***Extra Men. O'Brien A. 223.
+  *Fair Daughter of a Fairer Mother. Rhodes. 143.
+  Importance of Being Mrs. Cooper. Rhodes. 171.
+  **Little  Miracle  at  Tlemcar. Rhodes. 115.
+  **Sad Case of Quag. Rhodes. 189.
+  ***Spring-time. Rhodes. 213.
+  **Vive l'Amérique! Rhodes. 233.
+
+#Rice, Louise.#
+  ***Lubbeny Kiss. Prize A. 180.
+
+#Rickford, Katherine.#
+  ***Joseph. French B. 41.
+
+#Robbins, Tod.#
+  *For Art's Sake. Robbins. 109.
+  *Silent, White, and Beautiful. Robbins. 1.
+  ***Who Wants a Green Bottle? Robbins. 30.
+  **Wild Wullie, the Waster. Robbins. 71.
+
+#Russell, John.# (1885- .)
+  ***Adversary. Russell. 182.
+  **Amok. Russell. 374.
+  *Doubloon Gold. Russell. 59.
+  *East of Eastward. Russell. 301.
+  **Fourth Man. Russell. 327.
+  Jetsam. Russell. 273.
+  *Lost God. Russell. 219.
+  **Meaning--Chase Yourself. Russell. 251.
+  *Passion-Vine. Russell. 144.
+  **Practicing of Christopher. Russell. 114.
+  *Price of the Head. Russell. 356.
+  Red Mark. Russell. 9.
+  **Slanted Beam. Russell. 201.
+  *Wicks of Macassar. Russell. 97.
+
+
+#Singmaster, Elsie. (Elsie  Singmaster Lewars.)# (1879- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Survivors. Laselle. 43.
+
+#Smith, Gordon Arthur.# (1886- .)
+  **Bottom of the Cup. Smith. 67.
+  **City of Lights. Smith. 38.
+  ***End of the Road. Smith. 138.
+  *Every Move. Smith. 249.
+  ***Feet of Gold. Smith. 100.
+  ***Jeanne, The Maid. Smith. 218.
+  Letitia. Smith. 283.
+  **Pagan. Smith. 3.
+  ***Return. Smith. 345.
+  *Tropic Madness. Smith. 177.
+  *Young Man's Fancy. Smith. 315.
+
+#Sneddon, Robert W.# (1880- .)
+  *Son of Belgium. Holmes. 262.
+
+#Spofford, Harriet Prescott.# (1835- .)
+  **Blessing Called Peace. Spofford A. 179.
+  **Change of Heart. Spofford A. 27.
+
+#Spofford, Harriet Prescott# (_con._)
+  ***Circumstance. Howells. 22.
+  **Deacon's Whistle. Spofford A. 1.
+  *Father James. Spofford A. 197.
+  **Impossible Choice. Spofford A. 227.
+  **John-a-Dreams. Spofford  A. 101.
+  ***Life in a Night. Spofford A. 293.
+  *Miss  Mahala  and  Johnny. Spofford A. 311.
+  **Miss Mahala's Miracle. Spofford A. 125.
+  **Miss Mahala's Will. Spofford A. 273.
+  ***Old Fiddler. Spofford A. 147.
+  **Rural Telephone. Spofford A. 55.
+  **Step-Father. Spofford A. 77.
+  ***Village Dressmaker. Spofford A. 243.
+
+#Springer, Fleta Campbell.# (1886- .)
+  ***Solitaire. O'Brien A. 232.
+
+#Springer, Thomas Grant.#
+  *Blood of the Dragon. Prize A. 135.
+
+#Steele, Wilbur Daniel.# (1886- .) (_See_ 1918.)
+  ***Dark Hour. O'Brien A. 258.
+  ***"For They Know Not What They Do." Prize A. 21.
+
+#Stetson, Charlotte Perkins.# _See_ #Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.#
+
+#Stockton, Frank Richard.# (1834-1902.)
+  ***Buller-Podington Compact. Jessup A. 151.
+  ***Christmas Wreck. Howells. 155. Edgar. 203.
+
+#Street, Julian (Leonard).# (1879- .)
+  ***Bird of Serbia. O'Brien A. 268.
+
+#Sullivan, Francis William.# (1887- .)
+  Godson of Jeannette Gontreau. Holmes. 243.
+
+
+#Tarkington, (Newton) Booth.# (1869- .)
+  *Captain Schlotterwerz. Holmes. 276.
+
+#Terhune, Albert Payson.# (1872- .)
+  *On Strike. Price A. 56.
+  Wildcat. Laselle. 55.
+
+"#Thanet, Octave.#" (#Alice French.#) (1850- .)
+  ***Labor Question at Glasscock's. Edgar. 171.
+  Miller's Seal. Edgar. 104.
+  Wild Western Way. Edgar. 35. 35.
+
+#Tracy, Virginia.# (1875- .)
+  ***Lotus Eaters. Howells. 361.
+
+"#Twain, Mark.#" (#Samuel Langhorne Clemens.#) (1835-1910.)
+  ***Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Howells. 36.
+  Jessup A. 102.
+
+
+#Van Dyke, Henry.# (1852- .)
+  *Antwerp Road. Van Dyke A. 15.
+  *Boy of Nazareth Dreams. Van Dyke A. 257.
+  **Broken Soldier and the Maid of France. Van Dyke A. 87.
+  City of Refuge. Van Dyke A. 21.
+  Hearing Ear. Van Dyke A. 137.
+  *Hero and Tin Soldiers. Van Dyke A. 231.
+  Primitive and His Sandals. Van Dyke A. 216.
+  **Remembered Dream. Van Dyke A. 1.
+  *Salvage Point. Van Dyke A. 237.
+  *Sanctuary of Trees. Van Dyke A. 37.
+
+#Venable, Edward Carrington# (1884- .)
+  ***At Isham's. O'Brien A. 293.
+
+#Vorse, Mary (Marvin) Heaton. (Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien.)#
+  ***De Vilmarte's Luck. O'Brien A. 305.
+  ***Ninth Man. Vorse. 1.
+  ***Other Room. O'Brien B. 312.
+
+
+#Welles, Harriet, Ogden Deen.#
+  **Admiral's Birthday. Welles. 33.
+  **Admiral's Hollyhocks. Welles. 128.
+  *Anchors Aweigh. Welles. 98.
+  **Between the Treaty Ports. Welles. 47.
+  *Day. Welles. 165.
+  **Duty First. Welles. 105.
+  *Flags. Welles. 251.
+  **Guam--and Effie. Welles. 214.
+  *Holding Mast. Welles. 186.
+  *In the Day's Work. Welles. 1.
+  ***Orders. Welles. 79.
+  **Wall. Welles. 197.
+
+#Weston, George (T.).# (1880- .)
+  **Feminine Touch. Holmes. 299.
+
+#Wharton, Edith.# (1862- .)
+  ***Mission of Jane. Howells. 170.
+
+#Wilkins, Mary E.# _See_ #Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins.#
+
+#Williams, Ben Ames.# (1889- .)
+  **They Grind Exceeding Small. Prize A. 42.
+
+#Wilson, Harry Leon.# (1866- .)
+  *As to Herman Wagner. Wilson A. 281.
+  *Can Happen! Wilson A. 234.
+  *Change of Venus. Wilson A. 209.
+  *Curls. Wilson A. 303.
+  Love Story. Wilson A. 38.
+  *Ma Pettengill and the Animal Kingdom. Wilson A. 3.
+  *One Arrowhead Day. Wilson A. 145.
+  *Porch Wren. Wilson A. 178.
+  *Red-Gap and the Big-League Stuff. Wilson A. 76.
+  *Taker-Up. Wilson A. 259.
+  *Vendetta. Wilson A. 109.
+
+#Wood, Frances Gilchrist.#
+  ***Turkey Red. Prize A. 105.
+  ***White Battalion. O'Brien A. 325.
+
+#Wyatt, Edith Franklin.# (1873- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Failure. Howells. 312.
+
+#Wynne, Madelene Yale.# (1847-1913.)
+  ***Little Room. Howells. 338.
+
+
+#Yezierska, Anzia.# (1886- .)
+  ***"Fat of the Land." Yezierska. 178. O'Brien B. 326.
+  *Free Vacation House. Yezierska. 97.
+  **How I Found America. Yezierska. 250.
+  ***Hunger. Yezierska. 35.
+  **Lost "Beautifulness." Yezierska. 65.
+  ***Miracle. Yezierska. 114.
+  ***My Own People. Yezierska. 224.
+  **Soap and Water. Yezierska. 163.
+  **Where Lovers Dream. Yezierska. 142.
+  **Wings. Yezierska. 1.
+
+
+II. English and Irish Authors
+
+
+#Barr, Robert.# (1850-1912.)
+  *Dorothy of the Mill. Edgar. 53.
+  *Mill on the Kop. Edgar. 188.
+
+#Barrie, Sir James Matthew.#(1860- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***How Gavin Birse Put It to Mag Lownie. O'Brien C. 111.
+
+#Bax, Arnold.# _See_ "#O'Byrne, Dermot.#"
+
+#Benson, Edward Frederic.# (1867- .)
+  ***Man Who Went Too Far. Reeve. 85.
+
+#Beresford, John Davys.# (1873- .)
+  ***Lost Suburb. O'Brien C. 309.
+
+#Blackwell, Basil.#
+  History of Joseph Binns. New Dec. A. 169.
+
+#Blackwood, Algernon.# (1869- .)
+  ***Man Who Played Upon the Leaf. O'Brien C. 176.
+  ***Return. French B. 24.
+  ***Second Generation. French B. 31.
+  ***Woman's Ghost Story. Reeve. 108.
+
+#Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Edward George.# (1803-1873.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Haunted and the Haunters. Reeve. 31.
+
+#Burke, Thomas.# (1887- .)
+  ***Chink and the Child. O'Brien C. 250.
+
+
+#Cannan, Gilbert.# (1884- .)
+  ***Birth. O'Brien C. 346.
+  ***Gynecologia. Cannan. 107.
+  ***Out of Work. Cannan. 159.
+  ***Samways Island. Cannan. 1.
+  ***Ultimus. Cannan. 49.
+
+#Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller.# _See_ #Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur
+Thomas.#
+
+#Cunninghame Graham, Robert Bontine.# (1852- .)
+  ***Fourth Magus. O'Brien C. 214.
+
+
+#Defoe, Daniel.# (1659-1731.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Apparition of Mrs. Veal. Reeve. 3.
+
+#De Sélincourt, Hugh.# _See_ #Sélincourt, Hugh de.#
+
+#Dowson, Ernest.# (1867-1900.)
+  ***Case of Conscience. Dowson. 150.
+  ***Diary of a Successful Man. Dowson. 133.
+  ***_Dying of Francis Donne._ O'Brien C. 64.
+  ***Orchestral Violin. Dowson. 165.
+  ***Souvenirs of an Egoist. Dowson. 187.
+  *** Statute of Limitations. Dowson. 210.
+
+
+#Easton, Dorothy.#
+  **Adversity. Easton. 117.
+  *Arbor Vitæ. Easton. 141.
+  *Benefactors. Easton. 137.
+  **Box of Chocolates. Easton. 92.
+  *Corner Stone. Easton. 130.
+  ***Day in the Country. Easton. 209.
+  ***For the Red Cross. Easton. 38.
+  ***Frog's Hole. Easton. 30.
+  **Genteel. Easton. 69.
+  ***Golden Bird. Easton. 11.
+  ***Heart-Breaker. Easton. 56.
+  **Heartless. Easton. 200.
+  **Impossible. Easton. 19.
+  **It Is Forbidden to Touch the Flowers. Easton. 191.
+  **Laughing Down. Easton. 26.
+  **Madame  Pottirand. Easton. 254.
+  *Miss Audrey. Easton. 185.
+  **Old Indian. Easton. 156.
+  **Our Men. Easton. 172.
+  ***Shepherd. Easton. 123.
+  *Spring Evening. Easton. 77.
+  **Steam Mill. Easton. 48.
+  ***Transformation. Easton. 52.
+  ***Twilight. Easton. 83.
+  **Unfortunate. Easton. 228.
+
+"#Egerton, George.#" (#Mary Chavelita Golding Bright.#)
+  ***Empty Frame. O'Brien C. 88.
+
+#Evans, Caradoc.#
+  ***According to the Pattern. Evans A. 31.
+  ***Earthbred. Evans A. 81.
+  ***For Better. Evans A. 99.
+  ***Greater Than Love. O'Brien C. 340.
+  ***Joseph's House. Evans A. 155.
+  ***Like Brothers. Evans A. 173.
+  ***Lost Treasure. Evans A. 215.
+  ***Love and Hate. Evans A. 11.
+  ***Profit and Glory. Evans A. 231.
+  **Saint David and the Prophets. Evans A. 131.
+  ***Treasure and Trouble. Evans A. 117.
+  **Two Apostles. Evans A. 59.
+  ***Unanswered  Prayers. Evans A. 199.
+  ***Widow Woman. Evans A. 187.
+
+
+#Galsworthy, John.# (1867- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Bright Side. Galsworthy B. 75.
+  *Buttercup  Night. Galsworthy B. 295.
+  ***"Cafard." Galsworthy B. 105.
+  ***Defeat. Galsworthy B. 27.
+  *"Dog It Was That Died." Galsworthy B. 147.
+  **Expectations. Galsworthy  B. 227.
+  ***Flotsam  and  Jetsam. Galsworthy B. 51.
+  ***Grey Angel. Galsworthy B. 3.
+  *In Heaven and Earth. Galsworthy B. 169.
+  **Manna. Galsworthy B. 239.
+  Mother Stone. Galsworthy B. 173.
+  **Muffled Ship. Galsworthy B. 187.
+  ***Nightmare Child. Galsworthy B. 283.
+  *Peace  Meeting. Galsworthy B. 137.
+  *Poirot and Bidan. Galsworthy B. 179.
+  *Recorded. Galsworthy B. 117.
+  ***Recruit. Galsworthy B. 125.
+  ***Spindleberries. Galsworthy B. 209.
+  ***Strange Thing. Galsworthy B. 255.
+  ***Two  Looks. Galsworthy  B. 271.
+
+#Graham, R. B. Cunninghame.# _See_ #Cunninghame Graham, Robert Bontine.#
+
+#Grant-Watson, E. L.#
+  ***Man and Brute. O'Brien C. 296.
+
+
+#Hardy, Thomas.# (1840- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Three Strangers. O'Brien. C. 1.
+
+#Harvey, William F.#
+  **Beast with Five Fingers. New Dec. A. 29.
+
+#Henham, Ernest G.# _See_ "#Trevena, John.#"
+
+#Hewlett, Maurice (Henry).# (1861- .)
+  ***Quattrocentisteria. O'Brien C. 126.
+
+#Hudson, W. H.#
+  ***Old Thorn. O'Brien C. 196.
+
+#Huxley, Aldous.#
+  ***Bookshop. Huxley. 259.
+  ***Cynthia. Huxley. 245.
+  ***Death of Lully. Huxley. 269.
+  **Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers. Huxley. 192.
+  ***Farcical  History of Richard Greenow. Huxley. 1.
+  **Happily Ever After. Huxley. 116.
+
+
+#Jacobs, William Wymark.# (1868- .) (_See 1918._)
+  Bedridden. Jacobs A. 98.
+  *Convert. Jacobs A. 112.
+  **Dirty Work. Jacobs A. 262.
+  *Family Cares. Jacobs A. 171.
+  *Husbandry. Jacobs A. 140.
+  *Made to Measure. Jacobs A. 51.
+  **Paying Off. Jacobs A. 29.
+  **Sam's Ghost. Jacobs A. 75.
+  *Shareholders. Jacobs A. 1.
+  *Striking Hard. Jacobs A. 234.
+  *Substitute. Jacobs A. 207.
+  Winter Offensive. Jacobs A. 199.
+
+#James, Montague Rhodes.# (1862- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book. Reeve. 18.
+
+#Jameson, M. Storm-.# _See_ #Storm-Jameson, M.#
+
+
+#Kipling, Rudyard.# (1865- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Phantom Rickshaw. Reeve. 118.
+  ***Three Musketeers. O'Brien C. 93.
+  ***Wee Willie Winkie. O'Brien C. 99.
+
+
+#Lawrence, David Herbert.# (1885- .)
+  ***Sick Collier. O'Brien C. 332.
+
+#Lytton, Lord. George Bulwer-.# _See_ #Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Edward George.#
+
+
+"#Macleod, Fiona.#" (#William Sharp.#) (1856-1905.) (_See 1918._)
+  **Fisher of Men. O'Brien C. 117.
+  ***Sin-Eater. French B. 126.
+
+#Marshall, Archibald.# (1866- .)
+  *Audacious Ann. Marshall. 191.
+  *Bookkeeper. Marshall. 303.
+  *Builder. Marshall. 155.
+  *"In that State of Life." Marshall. 95.
+  *Kencote. Marshall. 3.
+  *Little Squire. Marshall. 175.
+  *Son of Service. Marshall. 63.
+  *Squire and the War. Marshall. 327.
+  *Terrors. Marshall. 41.
+
+#Merrick, Leonard.# (1864- .)
+  **Antenuptial. Merrick B. 274.
+  **Antiques and Amoretti. Merrick B. 228.
+  ***"At Home, Beloved, At Home." Merrick B. 29.
+  **Back of Bohemia. Merrick A. 293.
+  **Banquets of Kiki. Merrick B. 150.
+  *Bishop's Comedy. Merrick A. 344.
+  **Call from the Past. Merrick A. 383.
+  *Child in the Garden. Merrick A. 160.
+  ***Dead Violets. Merrick A. 239.
+  *Favourite Plot. Merrick A. 259.
+  **Frankenstein II. Merrick A. 50.
+  ***Lady of Lyons. Merrick A. 313.
+  ***Laurels and the Lady. Merrick A. 81.
+  ***Letter to the Duchess. Merrick A. 180.
+  ***Man Who Understood Women. Merrick A. 1.
+  ***Meeting in the Galéries Lafayette. Merrick B. 78.
+  ***Monsieur Blotto and the Lions. Merrick B. 54.
+  ***"On Est Mieux Ici qu'en Face." Merrick B. 11.
+  **Piece of Sugar. Merrick B. 127.
+  **Poet Grows Practical. Merrick B. 173.
+  ***Prince in the Fairy Tale. Merrick A. 200.
+  *Reconciliation. Merrick A. 368.
+  **Reformed  Character. Merrick B. 205.
+  *Reverie. Merrick A. 364.
+  **Tale That Wouldn't Do. Merrick A. 68.
+  *Third M. Merrick A. 326.
+  *Time the Humorist. Merrick A. 277.
+  ***Very Good Thing For the Girl. Merrick A. 18.
+  **Waiting for Henriette. Merrick B. 251.
+  *With Intent to Defraud. Merrick A. 224.
+  **Woman in the Book. Merrick B. 102.
+  ***Woman Who Wished to Die. Merrick A. 35.
+
+#Middleton, Richard.# (1882-1911.)
+  ***Ghost Ship. O'Brien C. 225.
+
+
+#Nevinson, Henry Woodd.# (1852- .)
+  ***Fire of Prometheus. O'Brien C. 157.
+
+#Nevinson, Margaret Wynne.#
+  *Alien. Nevinson. 130.
+  "And, Behold the Babe Wept." Nevinson. 47.
+  *Blind and Deaf. Nevinson. 39.
+  Daughter of the State. Nevinson. 80.
+  *Detained by Marital Authority. Nevinson. 21.
+  *Eunice Smith--Drunk. Nevinson. 13.
+  "Girl! God Help Her!" Nevinson. 145.
+  *In the Lunatic Asylum. Nevinson. 118.
+  *In the Phthisis Ward. Nevinson. 80.
+  **Irish Catholic. Nevinson. 91.
+  *"Mary, Mary, Pity Women!" Nevinson. 53.
+  *Mothers. Nevinson. 104.
+  **Obscure Conversationist. Nevinson. 97.
+  *Old Inky. Nevinson. 75.
+  *Publicans and Harlots. Nevinson. 68.
+  *Runaway. Nevinson. 138.
+  *Suicide. Nevinson. 61.
+  **Sweep's Legacy. Nevinson. 126.
+  "Too Old at Forty." Nevinson. 115.
+  ***Vow. Nevinson. 33.
+  *Welsh Sailor. Nevinson. 27.
+  *"Widows Indeed!" Nevinson. 134.
+  *"Your Son's Your Son." Nevinson. 110.
+
+#Nightingale, M. T.#
+  *Stone House Affair. New Dec. A. 112.
+
+
+"#O'Byrne, Dermot.#" (#Arnold Edward Trevor Bax.#) (1883- .)
+  ***Before Dawn. O'Byrne A. 29.
+  ***Coward's Saga. O'Byrne A. 84.
+  ***"From the Fury of the O'Flahertys." O'Byrne A. 67.
+  ***Invisible City of Coolanoole. O'Byrne A. 127.
+  ***King's Messenger. O'Byrne A. 156.
+  ***Vision of St. Molaise. O'Byrne A. 172.
+  ***Wrack. O'Byrne A. 1.
+
+#O'Kelly, Seumas.#
+  ***Billy the Clown. O'Kelly B. 149.
+  ***Derelict. O'Kelly B. 173.
+  ***Haven. O'Kelly B. 134.
+  ***Hike and Calcutta. O'Kelly B. 121.
+  ***Man with the Gift. O'Kelly B. 200.
+  ***Michael and Mary. O'Kelly B. 111.
+  ***Weaver's Grave. O'Kelly B. 9.
+
+
+#Pertwee, Roland.#
+  ***Big Chance. Pertwee 1.
+  ***Clouds. Pertwee. 243.
+  ***Cure that Worked Wonders. Pertwee. 42.
+  ***Dear Departed. Pertwee. 212.
+  ***Eliphalet Touch. Pertwee. 67.
+  ***Final Curtain. Pertwee. 271.
+  ***Gas Works. Pertwee. 143.
+  ***Getting the Best. Pertwee. 102.
+  ***Mornice June. Pertwee. 165.
+  ***Pistols for Two. Pertwee. 21.
+  ***Quicksands of Tradition. Pertwee. 120.
+  ***Red and White. O'Brien C. 278.
+  ***Reversible Favour. Pertwee. 190.
+
+
+Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas. (1863- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Old Æson. O'Brien C. 152.
+
+
+#Robinson, Lennox.#
+  ***Chalice. Robinson. 30.
+  ***Education.  Robinson. 96.
+  ***Face. Robinson. 8.
+  ***Looking After the Girls. Robinson. 18.
+  ***Pair of Muddy Shoes. Robinson. 47.
+  ***Return. Robinson. 1.
+  ***Sponge. Robinson. 60.
+  ***Weir. Robinson. 78.
+
+
+#Sadler, Michael.#
+  Tumbril Touch. New Dec. A. 189.
+
+#Sélincourt, Hugh De.#
+  ***Birth of an Artist. O'Brien C. 322.
+
+#Sharp, William.# _See_ "#Macleod, Fiona.#"
+
+#Stevenson, Robert Louis.# (1850-1894.)  (_See 1918._)
+  ***Lodging for the Night. O'Brien C. 26.
+
+#Storm-Jameson, M.#
+  *Mother-Love. New Dec. A. 78.
+
+
+#Tomlinson, H. M.# (1873- .)
+  ***Extra Hand. Tomlinson. 149.
+  ***Lascar's Walking-Stick. Tomlinson. 140.
+
+"#Trevena, John.#" (#Ernest G. Henham.#) (1878- .)
+  ***Business Is Business. Trevena. 45. O'Brien C. 236.
+  ***By Violence. Trevena. 13.
+  **Christening of the Fifteen Princesses. Trevena. 65.
+
+
+#Vernède, Robert Ernest.# (1875-1917.)
+  Adventure of the Persian Prince. Vernède. 194.
+  Bad Samaritan. Vernède. 130.
+  Finless Death. Vernède. 178.
+  Greatness of Mr. Walherstone. Vernède. 33.
+  Madame Bluebeard. Vernède. 233.
+  Maze. Vernède. 301.
+  Missing Princess. Vernède. 251.
+  Night's Adventure. Vernède. 277.
+  Offence of Stephen Danesford. Vernède. 80.
+  On the Raft. Vernède. 218.
+  *Outrage at Port Allington. Vernède. 55.
+  Smoke on the Stairs. Vernède. 204.
+  Soaring Spirits. Vernède. 102.
+  Sunk Elephant. Vernède. 156.
+  "This is Tommy." Vernède. 13.
+
+#Vines, Sherard.#
+  **Upper Room. New Dec. A. 178.
+
+
+#Walpole, Hugh Seymour.# (1884- .)
+  ***Monsieur Félicité. O'Brien C. 263.
+
+#Watson, E. L. Grant.# _See_ #Grant Watson, E. L.#
+
+#Wedmore, Sir Frederick.# (1844- .)
+  ***To Nancy. O'Brien C. 75.
+
+#Wells, Herbert George.# (1866- .)
+  ***Stolen  Bacillus. O'Brien C. 144.
+
+#Wilde, Oscar# (#Fingall O'Flahertie Wills.#) (1854-1900.)
+  ***Star-Child. O'Brien C. 47.
+
+#Wylie, Ida Alena Ross.# (1885- .)
+  **Bridge Across. Wylie. 66.
+  ***Colonel Tibbit Comes Home. Wylie. 133.
+  Episcopal Scherzo. Wylie. 267. 195.
+  **Gift for St. Nicholas. Wylie.
+  ***Holy Fire. Wylie. 9.
+  ***John Prettyman's Fourth Dimension. Wylie. 231.
+  ***"'Melia, No Good." Wylie. 163.
+  ***Thirst. Wylie. 28.
+  **"Tinker--Tailor--"  Wylie. 97.
+
+
+III. Translations
+
+
+#Alas,  Leopoldo.# ("#Clarín#"). (1852-1901.) (_Spanish._)
+  **Adios Cordera! McMichael. 97.
+
+#Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaevich.# (1871-1919.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Ben-Tobith. Andreyev C. 273.
+  ***Dies Iræ. Andreyev C. 287.
+  ***Judas Iscariot. Andreyev C. 45.
+  ***Lazarus. Andreyev C. 131.
+  ***Life of Father Vassily. Andreyev C. 161.
+  ***Marseillaise. Andreyev C. 281.
+  ***Silence. Russian A. 11.
+  ***Valia. Schweikert B. 343.
+  ***When the King Loses His Head. Andreyev C. 5.
+
+#Annunzio, Gabriele D'.# (_Italian._) _See_ #D'Annunzio, Gabriele.#
+
+#Artzibashev, Michael.# (_Russian._)
+  ***Doctor. Russian A. 38.
+
+#Ayala, Ramón Pérez De.# (_Spanish._)
+  ***Fall of the House of Limón. Ayala. 77.
+  ***Prometheus. Ayala. 1.
+  ***Sunday Sunlight. Ayala. 163.
+
+
+#Bizyenos,  George  T.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Sin of My Mother. Vaka. 57.
+
+#Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.# (1867-.)  (_Spanish._)
+  *Compassion. Ibáñez. 36.
+  *Last Lion. Ibáñez. 15.
+  ***Luxury. Ibáñez. 56.
+  **Rabies. Ibáñez. 61.
+  *Toad. Ibáñez. 26.
+  **Windfall. Ibáñez. 46.
+
+
+#Caragiale, J.L.# (_Rumanian._)
+  Easter Candles. Underwood A. 49.
+
+#Carco, Francis.# (_French._)
+  Memory of Paris Days. New Dec. A. 217.
+
+#ÄŒech, Svatopluk.# (1846-1908.) (_Czech._)
+  ***Foltyn's Drum. Hrbkova. 55.
+  ***Journey. Underwood A. 75.
+
+#Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.# (1861-1904.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***At a Country House. Chekhov E. 173.
+  **Bad Weather. Chekhov E. 269.
+  ***Bishop. Chekhov D. 3.
+  ***Chorus Girl. Chekhov E. 3.
+  ***Easter Eve. Chekhov D. 49.
+  ***Father. Chekhov E. 187. Russian A. 56.
+  **Ivan Matveyitch. Chekhov E. 279.
+  ***In Exile.  Schweikert B. 320.
+  **Ivan Matveyitch. Chekhov E. 245.
+  ***Letter. Chekhov D. 29.
+  ***Murder. Chekhov D. 89.
+  ***My Life. Chekhov E. 37.
+  ***Nightmare. Chekhov D. 67.
+  ***On the Road. Chekhov E. 201.
+  ***Rothschild's  Fiddle. Chekhov E. 227.
+  ***Steppe. Chekhov D. 161.
+  ***Trivial Incident. Chekhov E. 227.
+  ***Uprooted. Chekhov D. 135.
+  ***Verotchka. Chekhov E. 15.
+  **Zinotchka. Chekhov E. 257.
+
+"#Clarín.#" (_Spanish._) _See_ #Alas, Leopoldo.#
+
+#Clémenceau, Georges.# (_French._)
+  About Nests. Clémenceau. 185.
+  ***Adventure of My Curé. Clémenceau. 149.
+  *At the Foot of the Cross. Clémenceau. 87.
+  **Aunt  Rosalie's  Inheritance. Clémenceau. 45.
+  **Better than Stealing. Clémenceau. 125.
+  *Bullfinch and the Maker of Wooden Shoes. Clémenceau. 173.
+  **Descendant of Timon. Clémenceau. 19.
+  Domestic Drama. Clémenceau. 197.
+  *Evil Beneficence. Clémenceau. 101.
+  **Flower o' the Wheat. Clémenceau. 221.
+  **Giambolo. Clémenceau. 313.
+  *Gideon in His Grave. Clémenceau. 61.
+  *Gray Fox. Clémenceau. 137.
+  *Happy Union. Clémenceau. 263.
+  *Hunting Accident. Clémenceau. 301.
+  *Jean Piot's Feast. Clémenceau. 233.
+  *Lovers in Florence. Clémenceau. 287.
+  **Mad Thinker. Clémenceau. 113.
+  **Malus  Vicinus. Clémenceau. 31.
+  *Master Baptist, Judge. Clémenceau. 161.
+  **Mokoubamba's Fetish. Clémenceau. 3.
+  *Simon, Son of Simon. Clémenceau. 73.
+  Six Cents. Clémenceau. 209.
+  **Treasure of St. Bartholomew. Clémenceau. 249.
+  *Well-Assorted Couple. Clémenceau. 275.
+
+#D'Annunzio, Gabriele# (#Rapagnetta#). (1864- .) (_Italian._)
+  ***Countess of Amalfi. D'Annunzio. 10.
+  ***Death of the Duke of Ofena. D'Annunzio. 172.
+  ***Downfall of Candia. D'Annunzio. 153.
+  ***Gold Pieces. D'Annunzio. 83.
+  ***Hero. D'Annunzio. 3.
+  ***Idolaters. D'Annunzio. 119.
+  ***Mungia. D'Annunzio. 140.
+  ***Return of Turlendana. D'Annunzio. 56.
+  ***Sorcery. D'Annunzio. 92.
+  ***Turlendana Drunk. D'Annunzio. 72.
+  ***Virgin Anna. D'Annunzio. 215.
+  ***War of the Bridge. D'Annunzio. 192.
+
+#Dario, Rubén.# (1867-1916.) (_Spanish._)
+  **Box. McMichael. 31.
+  ***Death of the Empress of China. McMichael. 3.
+  *Veil of Queen Mab. McMichael. 21.
+
+#De Vigny, Alfred.# (_French._) _See_ #Vigny, Alfred De.#
+
+#Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich.# (1821-1881.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Another Man's Wife. Dostoevsky B. 208.
+  ***Bobok. Dostoevsky B. 291.
+  ***Crocodile. Dostoevsky B. 257.
+  ***Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Dostoevsky B. 307.
+  ***Heavenly Christmas Tree. Dostoevsky B. 248.
+  ***Honest Thief. Dostoevsky B. 1.
+  ***Novel in Nine Letters. Dostoevsky B. 145.
+  ***Peasant Marey. Dostoevsky B. 252.
+  ***Thief. Schweikert B. 79.
+  ***Unpleasant Predicament. Dostoevsky B. 157.
+
+#Drosines, George.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***God-father. Vaka. 93.
+
+
+#Eftaliotes, Argyres.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  Angelica. Vaka. 157.
+
+
+#Friedenthal, Joachim.# (_German._)
+  ***Pogrom  in  Poland. Underwood A. 195.
+
+
+#Garshin, Wsewolod Michailovich.# (1855-1888.) (_Russian._)
+  ***Signal. Schweikert B. 308.
+
+#Gjalski, Xaver-Sandor.# (_Croatian._) _See_ #Sandor-Gjalski, Xaver.#
+
+#Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich.# (1809-1852.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Cloak. Schweikert B. 40.
+
+"#Gorki, Maxim.#" (#Alexei Maximovich Pyeshkov.#) (1868 or 1869- .)
+(_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Chelkash.  Schweikert B. 381.
+  ***Comrades. Schweikert B. 361.
+  ***Her Lover. Russian A. 67.
+
+
+#Herrman, Ignat.# (1854- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***What Is Omitted from the Cook-book of Madame Magdálena Dobromila
+  Rettigová. Hrbkova. 233.
+
+
+#Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco.# (_Spanish._) _See_ #Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.#
+
+
+#Jirásek, Alois.# (1851- .) (_Czech._)
+  **Philosophers. Hrbkova. 225.
+
+
+#Karkavitsas, A.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Sea. Vaka. 23.
+
+#Kastanakis, Thrasyvoulos.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Frightened Soul. Vaka. 221.
+
+#Klecanda, Jan.# (1855- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***For the Land of His Fathers. Hrbkova. 241.
+
+#Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich.# (1853- .) (_Russian._ Q.)
+  ***Old Bell-Ringer. Schweikert B. 334.
+
+#Kunětická, Božena Víková-.# (_Czech._) _See_ #Vikova-Kuneticka,
+Bozena.#
+
+#Kuprin, Alexander.# (1870- .) (_Russian._)
+  ***Cain. Schweikert B. 430.
+
+
+#Lazarevic, Lazar K.# (1851-1891.) (_Serbian._)
+  **Robbers. Underwood A. 145.
+
+#Lemaître (François Élie), Jules.# (1853-1914.) (_French._)  (_See 1918._)
+  ***Bell. Lemaître. 105.
+  ***Charity. Lemaître. 175.
+  ***Conscience. Lemaître. 277.
+  ***Hellé. Lemaître. 189.
+  ***Lilith. Lemaître. 91.
+  ***Mélie. Lemaître. 259.
+  ***Myrrha. Lemaître. 57.
+  ***Nausicaa. Lemaître. 207.
+  ***Princess Mimi's Lovers. Lemaître. 221.
+  ***Saint John and the Duchess Anne. Lemaître. 117.
+  ***Serenus. Lemaître. 11.
+  ***Sophie de Montcernay. Lemaître. 237.
+  ***Two Flowers. Lemaître. 125.
+  ***White Chapel. Lemaître. 165.
+
+#Level, Maurice.# (_French._)
+  *Bastard. Level. 197.
+  **Beggar. Level. 151.
+  ***Blue Eyes. Level. 269.
+  **Confession. Level. 83.
+  *Debt Collector. Level. 3.
+  ***Empty House. Level. 281.
+  **Extenuating Circumstances. Level. 71.
+  **Fascination. Level. 187.
+  **Father. Level. 115.
+  **For Nothing. Level. 127.
+  ***Illusion. Level. 39.
+  ***In the Light of the Red Lamp. Level. 49.
+  ***In the Wheat. Level. 139.
+  ***Kennel. Level. 15.
+  **Kiss. Level. 237.
+  **Last Kiss. Level. 293.
+  ***Man Who Lay Asleep. Level. 175.
+  ***Maniac. Level. 249.
+  *Mistake. Level. 59.
+  **Poussette. Level. 103.
+  *Taint. Level. 225.
+  *10.50 Express. Level. 259.
+  **Test. Level. 95.
+  ***That Scoundrel Miron. Level. 211.
+  *Under Chloroform. Level. 163.
+  **Who? Level. 27.
+
+
+#Machar, Joseph Svatopluk.# (1864- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***Theories of Heroism. Hrbkova. 123.
+
+#Mayran, Camille.# (_Belgian._)
+  ***Forgotten. Mayran. 95.
+  ***Story of Gotton Connixloo. Mayran. 1.
+
+Mikszáth, Koloman. (1849- .) (_Hungarian._)
+  ***Fiddlers Three. Underwood A. 217.
+  **Trip to the Other World. Underwood A. 209.
+
+#Mužák, Johanna Rottova.# (_Czech._) _See_ "#Světlá, Caroline.#"
+
+
+#Němcová, Božena.# (1820-1862.) (_Czech._)
+  ***"Bewitched Bára." Hrbkova. 151.
+
+#Neruda, Jan.# (1834-1891.) (_Czech._)
+  ***All Souls' Day, Underwood A. 119.
+  ***At the Sign of the Three Lilies. Hrbkova. 86.
+  ***Beneš. Hrbkova. 81.
+  ***Foolish Jona. Underwood A. 136.
+  **He was a Rascal. Hrbkova. 90.
+  ***Vampire. Hrbkova. 75.
+
+#Netto, Walther.# (_German._)
+  ***Swine Herd. Underwood A. 233.
+
+
+#Palamas, Kostes.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Man's Death. Vaka. 173.
+
+#Papadiamanty, A.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***She That Was Homesick. Vaka. 237.
+
+#Pérez De Ayala, Ramón.# (_Spanish._) _See_ #Ayala, Ramón Pérez De.#
+
+#Picón, Jacinto Octavio.# (1852- .) (_Spanish._)
+  ***After the Battle. McMichael. 43.
+  **Menace. McMichael. 67.
+  **Souls in Contrast. McMichael. 81.
+
+#Pinski, David.# (1872- .) (_Yiddish._)
+  ***Beruriah. Pinski A. 3.
+  ***Black Cat. Pinski A. 255.
+  ***Drabkin. Pinski A. 171.
+  ***In the Storm. Pinski A. 313.
+  ***Johanan the High Priest. Pinski A. 101.
+  ***Tale of a Hungry Man. Pinski A. 277.
+  ***Temptations of Rabbi Akiba. Pinski A. 83.
+  ***Jerubbabel. Pinski A. 131.
+
+#Polylas, Iakovos.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  *Forgiveness. Vaka. 133.
+
+#Pushkin, Alexander Sergievich.# (1799-1837.)  (_Russian._)
+  ***Shot, Schweikert B. 23.
+
+#Pyeshkov, Alexei Maximovich.# (_Russian._) _See_ "#Gorki, Maxim.#"
+
+
+#Å andor-Gjalski, Xaver.#  (_Croatian._)
+  **Jagica. Underwood A. 181.
+  **Naja. Underwood A. 165.
+
+"#Sologub, Feodor.#" (#Feodor Kuzmitch Teternikov.#) (1863- .) (_Russian._)
+  ***White Dog. Russian A. 30.
+
+#Sudermann, Hermann.#  (_German._)
+  **Gooseherd. Sudermann. 341.
+  ***Iolanthe's   Wedding. Sudermann. 9.
+  ***New Year's Eve Confession. Sudermann. 127.
+  **Woman Who Was His Friend. Sudermann. 109.
+
+"#Světlá, Caroline.#" (#Johanna Rottova Mužák.#) (1830-1899.)
+(_Czech._)
+  ***Barbara. Hrbkova. 279.
+
+#Svoboda, František Xavier.# (1860- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***Every Fifth Man. Hrbkova. 105.
+
+
+#Tchekhov, Anton Pavlovich.# (_Russian._) _See_ #Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.#
+
+#Teternikov, Feodor Kuzmitch.# (_Russian._) _See_ "#Sologub, Feodor.#"
+
+#Tolstoï, Lyof Nikolaievich, Count.# (1828-1910.) (_Russian._)
+(_See 1918._)
+  ***God Sees the Truth but Waits. Schweikert B. 209.
+  ***Master and Man. Schweikert B. 220.
+  ***Three Arshins of Land. Schweikert B. 287.
+
+#Turgenev, Ivan Sergievich#, (1818-1883.) (_Russian._)
+  ***Biryuk. Schweikert B. 103.
+  ***Lear of the Steppes. Schweikert B. 113.
+
+
+#Vestendorf, A. Von.# (_German._) _See_ #Von Vestendorf, A.#
+
+#Vigny, Alfred De.# (_French._)
+  ***Laurette, Vigny. 43.
+
+#Víková-Kunětická, Božena.# (1863- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***Spiritless. Hrbkova. 135.
+
+#Von Vestendorf, A.# (_German._)
+  ***Furor Illyricus. Underwood A.  37.
+
+#Vrchlický, Yaroslav.# (1853-1912.) (_Czech._)
+  ***Brother CÅ“lestin. Underwood A. 3.
+
+
+#Xenopoulos,  Gregorios.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Mangalos. Vaka. 105.
+
+
+
+
+MAGAZINE AVERAGES
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+_The following table includes the averages of American periodicals
+published from October, 1919, to September, 1920, inclusive. One, two,
+and three asterisks are employed to indicate relative distinction.
+"Three-asterisk stories" are of somewhat permanent literary value. The
+list excludes reprints._
+
+______________________________________________________________________
+                                 |          |           |
+                                 |          |  NO. OF   |PERCENTAGE OF
+                                 |  NO. OF  |DISTINCTIVE| DISTINCTIVE
+PERIODICALS                      | STORIES  |  STORIES  |   STORIES
+(OCT.-SEPT.)                     |PUBLISHED | PUBLISHED |  PUBLISHED
+                                 |          |___________|_____________
+                                 |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+                                 |          | * | **|***| * | **|***
+_________________________________|__________|___|___|___|___|___|_____
+                                 |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+Atlantic Monthly                 |    19    | 18| 15| 11| 95| 78| 58
+Century                          |    43    | 36| 25| 12| 84| 56| 28
+Collier's Weekly                 |    97    | 24|  8|  4| 25|  8|  4
+Cosmopolitan                     |    75    | 17|  7|  3| 23|  9|  4
+Dial (including translations)    |    19    | 19| 15| 11|100| 78| 58
+Everybody's Magazine (including  |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    75    | 23|  7|  0| 31|  9|  0
+Harper's Magazine                |    57    | 43| 32| 15| 75| 56| 26
+Hearst's Magazine (including     |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    76    | 17|  6|  4| 22|  8|  5
+McCall's Magazine (including     |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    41    | 15|  7|  3| 37| 17|  7
+McClure's Magazine (including    |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    53    | 24| 16| 13| 45| 30| 25
+Metropolitan                     |    78    | 20| 12|  6| 26| 15|  8
+Midland                          |    13    | 11| 11|  8| 85| 85| 62
+Munsey's Magazine                |    83    | 14|  5|  2| 17|  6|  2
+New York Tribune (including      |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    48    | 31|  5|  1| 63| 11|  2
+Pagan (including translations)   |    21    | 10|  8|  6| 50| 40| 30
+Pictorial Review                 |    46    | 30| 28| 25| 65| 61| 54
+Red Book Magazine                |   117    | 17|  4|  2| 15|  4|  2
+Reedy's Mirror (including        |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    30    | 16|  8|  4| 53| 27| 13
+Romance                          |    89    | 23|  6|  1| 26|  7|  1
+Scribner's Magazine              |    51    | 36| 23| 10| 72| 46| 20
+Smart Set (including             |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |   127    | 51| 25| 14| 40| 20| 11
+_________________________________|__________|___|___|___|___|___|_____
+
+_The following tables indicate the rank, during the period between
+October, 1919, and September, 1920, inclusive, by number and percentage
+of distinctive stories published, of the twenty-one periodicals coming
+within the scope of my examination which have published an average of 15
+per cent in stories of distinction. The lists exclude reprints, but not
+translations._
+
+
+#By Percentage of Distinctive Stories#
+
+ 1. Dial (including translations)                100%
+ 2. Atlantic Monthly                              95%
+ 3. Midland                                       85%
+ 4. Century                                       84%
+ 5. Harper's Magazine                             75%
+ 6. Scribner's Magazine                           72%
+ 7. Pictorial Review                              65%
+ 8. New York Tribune (including translations)     63%
+ 9. Reedy's Mirror (including translations)       53%
+10. Pagan (including translations)                50%
+11. McClure's Magazine (including translations)   45%
+12. Smart Set (including translations)            40%
+13. McCall's Magazine (including translations)    37%
+14. Everybody's Magazine (including translations) 31%
+15. Romance                                       26%
+16. Metropolitan                                  26%
+17. Collier's Weekly                              25%
+18. Cosmopolitan                                  23%
+19. Hearst's Magazine (including translations)    22%
+20. Munsey's Magazine                             17%
+21. Red Book Magazine                             15%
+
+
+#By Number of Distinctive Stories#
+
+ 1. Smart Set (including translations)            51
+ 2. Harper's Magazine                             43
+ 3. Century                                       36
+ 4. Scribner's Magazine                           36
+ 5. New York Tribune (including translations)     31
+ 6. Pictorial Review                              30
+ 7. McClure's Magazine (including translations)   24
+ 8. Collier's Weekly                              24
+ 9. Everybody's Magazine (including translations) 23
+10. Romance                                       23
+11. Metropolitan                                  20
+12. Dial (including translations)                 19
+13. Atlantic Monthly                              18
+14. Cosmopolitan                                  17
+15. Hearst's Magazine (including translations)    17
+16. Red Book Magazine                             17
+17. Reedy's Mirror (including translations)       16
+18. McCall's Magazine (including translations)    15
+19. Munsey's Magazine                             14
+20. Midland                                       11
+21. Pagan (including translations)                10
+
+_The following periodicals have published during the same period ten or
+more "two-asterisk stories." The list excludes reprints, but not
+translations. Periodicals represented in this list during 1915, 1916,
+1917, 1918 and 1919 are represented by the prefixed letters a, b, c, d,
+and e respectively._
+
+1.     abcde    Harper's Magazine                                32
+2.      bcde    Pictorial Review                                 28
+3.     abcde    Century                                          25
+4.     abcde    Smart Set (including translations)               25
+5.     abcde    Scribner's Magazine                              23
+6.              McClure's Magazine (including translations)      16
+7.              Dial (including  translations)                   15
+8.       cde    Atlantic Monthly                                 15
+9.        be    Metropolitan                                     12
+10.        c    Midland                                          11
+
+
+_The following periodicals have published during the same period five or
+more "three-asterisk stories." The list excludes reprints, but not
+translations. The same signs are used as prefixes as in the previous
+list._
+
+1.     acde   Pictorial Review                              25
+2.    abcde   Harper's Magazine                             15
+3.       de   Smart Set (including translations)            14
+4.            McClure's Magazine (including translations)   13
+5.    abcde   Century                                       12
+6.            Dial (including translations)                 11
+7.      cde   Atlantic Monthly                              11
+8.    abcde   Scribner's Magazine                           10
+9.       ae   Midland                                        8
+10.     ace   Metropolitan                                   6
+11.      be   Pagan (including translations)                 6
+
+_Ties in the above lists have been decided by taking relative rank in
+other lists into account._
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN AMERICAN MAGAZINES
+
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+_All short stories published in the following magazines and newspapers,
+October, 1919, to September, 1920, inclusive, are indexed._
+
+American Magazine
+Asia
+Atlantic Monthly
+Catholic World
+Century
+Collier's Weekly (except Dec. 27)
+Delineator (except Sept.)
+Dial
+Everybody's Magazine
+Good Housekeeping (except Apr. and June)
+Harper's Magazine
+Ladies' Home Journal (except Mar.)
+Liberator
+Little Review (except Apr. and Sept.)
+Metropolitan
+Midland
+New York Tribune
+Pagan
+Pictorial Review
+Reedy's Mirror
+Saturday Evening Post (except Jan. 31; Feb. 14, 21; Mar. 13, 20)
+Scribner's Magazine
+Smart Set
+Stratford Journal
+Sunset Magazine
+Touchstone (Oct., '19-May)
+
+_Short stories of distinction only, published in the following magazines
+during the same period, are indexed._
+
+Adventure (Oct.-Dec., '19; Jul.-Sept.)
+Ainslee's Magazine
+All Story Weekly
+American Boy
+Argosy
+Black Cat
+Cosmopolitan
+Freeman
+Harper's Bazar (except Oct., '19)
+Hearst's Magazine
+Holland's Magazine
+Little Story Magazine
+Live Stories
+McCall's Magazine
+McClure's Magazine
+Magnificat
+Munsey's Magazine
+Parisienne
+People's Favorite Magazine
+Queen's Work (except Sept.)
+Red Book Magazine
+Romance
+Short Stories
+Snappy Stories
+Telling Tales
+To-day's Housewife
+Top-Notch Magazine
+Woman's Home Companion (except Sept.)
+Woman's World
+
+_Certain stories of distinction published in the following magazines and
+newspapers during this period are indexed, because they have been
+specially called to my attention._
+
+Detroit Sunday News
+Menorah Journal
+Oxford Outlook
+Pearson's Magazine
+Red Cross Magazine
+Popular Magazine
+True Stories
+
+_One, two, or three asterisks are prefixed to the titles of stories to
+indicate distinction. Three asterisks prefixed to a title indicate the
+more or less permanent literary value of the story, and entitle it to a
+place on the annual "Rolls of Honor." An asterisk before the name of an
+author indicates that he is not an American. Cross references after an
+author's name refer to previous volumes of this series. (H) after the
+name of an author indicates that other stories by this author, published
+in American magazines between 1900 and 1914, are to be found indexed in
+"The Standard Index of Short Stories," by Francis J. Hannigan, published
+by Small, Maynard & Company, 1918. The figures in parentheses after the
+title of a story refer to the volume and page number of the magazine. In
+cases where successive numbers of a magazine are not paged
+consecutively, the page number only is given in this index._
+
+_The following abbreviations are used in the index_:--
+
+_Adv._             Adventure
+_Ain._             Ainslee's Magazine
+_All._             All-Story Weekly
+_Am._              American Magazine
+_Am. B._           American Boy
+_Arg._             Argosy
+_Asia_             Asia
+_Atl._             Atlantic Monthly
+_B. C._            Black Cat
+_Cath. W._         Catholic World
+_Cen._             Century
+_Col._             Collier's Weekly
+_Cos._             Cosmopolitan
+_Del._             Delineator
+_Det. N._          Detroit Sunday News
+_Dial_             Dial
+_Ev._              Everybody's Magazine
+_Free._            Freeman
+_G. H._            Good Housekeeping
+_Harp. B._         Harper's Bazar
+_Harp. M._         Harper's Monthly
+_Hear._            Hearst's Magazine
+_Holl._            Holland's Magazine
+_L. H. J._         Ladies' Home Journal
+_Lib._             Liberator
+_Lit. R._          Little Review
+_Lit. St._         Little Story Magazine
+_L. St._           Live Stories
+_Mag._             Magnificat
+_McC._             McClure's Magazine
+_McCall_           McCall's Magazine
+_Men._             Menorah Journal
+_Met._             Metropolitan
+_Mid._             Midland
+_Mir._             Reedy's Mirror
+_Mun._             Munsey's Magazine
+_N. Y. Trib._      New York Tribune
+_O. O._            Oxford Outlook
+_Pag._             Pagan
+_Par._             Parisienne
+_Pear._            Pearson's Magazine
+_Peop._            People's Favorite Magazine
+_Pict. R._         Pictorial Review
+_Pop._             Popular Magazine
+_Q. W._            Queen's Work
+_(R.)_             Reprint
+_Red Bk._          Red Book Magazine
+_Red Cross_        Red Cross Magazine
+_Rom._             Romance
+_Scr._             Scribner's Magazine
+_S. E. P._         Saturday Evening Post
+_Sh. St._          Short Stories
+_Sn. St._          Snappy Stories
+_S. S._            Smart Set
+_Strat. J._        Stratford Journal
+_Sun._             Sunset Magazine
+_Tod._             To-day's Housewife
+_Top._             Top-Notch Magazine
+_Touch._           Touchstone
+_True St._         True Stories
+_T. T._            Telling Tales
+_W. H. C._         Woman's Home Companion
+_Wom. W._          Woman's World
+(161)            Page 161
+(2:161)          Volume 2, page 161
+(_See '15_)        _See_ "Best Short Stories of 1915."
+
+_Owing to labor and transportation difficulties, the files of certain
+periodicals which I have consulted this year are not absolutely
+complete. I shall report upon these missing issues next year._
+
+#Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell.# (#Mrs. Fordyce Coburn.#) (1872- .) (_See
+1915, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Peace On Earth, Good Will to Dogs. Col. Dec. 13-20, '19. (5, 8.)
+
+#Abbott, Helen Raymond.# (1888- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Stop Six. Cen. March. (99:666.)
+
+#Abbott, Keene.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Cinders of the Cinderella Family. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (12.)
+  Thumb Minus Barlow. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (28.)
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed.# (#Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan El-Durani El-Idrissyeh.#)
+("A. A. Nadir.") (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Evening Rice. Pict. R. June. (8.)
+  *Hill Bred Yar Hydar. Am. B. Dec. '19. (11.)
+  **Indian Jataka. All. March 13. (108:2.)
+  *Pell Street Choice. Am. B. Nov. '19. (6.)
+  **Tao. Cen. Apr. (99:819.)
+
+#Abt, Marion.#
+  Epithalamium. S. S. Sept. (63.)
+
+#Adams, Charles Magee.#
+  Fathers and Sons. Am. May. (28.)
+  Todd's Plunge. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (41.)
+
+#Adams, H. Austin.# (_See "H" under_ #Adams, Austin.#)
+  "Bugs, But No One's Fool." Sun. Sept. (43.)
+
+#Adams, Samuel Hopkins.# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Guardian of God's Acre. Col. June 12. (18.)
+  *Home Seekers. Col. Apr. 10. (13.)
+  *House of Silvery Voices. Col. Mar. 20. (18.)
+  *Patroness of Art. Col. Jul. 17. (5.)
+  Pink Roses and the Wallop. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (12.)
+
+#Addis, H. A. Noureddin.# (_See 1918._)
+  **Weaver. Asia. Jan. (20:13.)
+
+#Addison, Thomas.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  Tricks in All Trades. Ev. Apr. (76.)
+
+*#Ades, Albert.#
+  *Mme. Grandvoinet. N. Y. Trib. March 21.
+
+#Agee, Fannie Heaslip Lea.# _See_ #Lea, Fannie Heaslip.#
+
+#Aitken, Kenneth Lyndwode.# (1881-1919.)
+  ***From the Admiralty Files. Cen. Dec. '19. (99:241.)
+  **Wee Bit Ghost. Met. March. (34.)
+
+#Akins, Zoë.# (1886- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Bruised Reed. Cos. July. (32.)
+  **Sister of the Sun. Cen. Dec. '19. (99:217.)
+
+#Aldrich, Bess Streeter.# ("#Margaret Dean Stevens.#") (1881- .)
+(_See 1919._) (_See 1916 under_ #Stevens, Margaret Dean.#)
+  *Across the smiling Meadow. L. H. J. Feb. (20.)
+  Ginger Cookies. L. H. J. Jan. (25.)
+  "Last Night, When You Kissed Blanche Thompson----." Am. Aug. (28.)
+  Marcia Mason's Lucky Star. Am. March. (23.)
+  Mason Family Now on Exhibition. Am. Nov. '19. (45.)
+  Mother Mason Gives Some
+  Good Advice. Am. May. (49.)
+  Tillie Cuts Loose. Am. April. (50.)
+
+"#Alexander, Mary.#" _See_ #Kilbourne, Fannie.#
+
+#Alexander, Nell Stewart.#
+  Cutting the Cat's Claws. L. H. J. Sept. (34.)
+
+#Alexander, Sandra.# (_See 1919._)
+  According to Otto. Col. Mar. 27. (10.)
+  Goer. Met. Nov. '19. (34.)
+
+"#Amid, John.#" (#M. M. Stearns.#) (1884- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Seravido Money. Mir. Nov. 20, '19. (28:812.)
+
+#Anderson, C. Farley.#
+  ***Octogenarian. S. S. Dec. '19. (119.)
+
+#Anderson, Frederick Irving.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *King's Thumb. Ev. Dec. '19. (45.)
+
+#Anderson, Jane.# (_H._)
+  ***Happiest Man in the World. Cen. Jan. (99:330.)
+
+#Anderson, Sherwood.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Door of the Trap. Dial. May. (68:567.)
+  ***I Want to Know Why. S. S. Nov. '19. (35.)
+  ***Other  Woman. Lit. R. May-June. (37.)
+  ***Triumph of the Egg. Dial. Mar. (68:295.)
+
+#Anderson, William Ashley.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Black Man Without a Country. Harp. M. June. (141:90.)
+  Bwana Poor.  S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (41.)
+  **Parable of Trifles. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (28.)
+
+#Anderton, Daisy.# (_See 1919._)
+  ***Belated  Girlhood. Pag. Jan. (37.)
+
+*#Andreieff, Leonid Nikolaevich.# _See_ #Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaevich.#
+
+#Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Broken Wings. Scr. Aug. (68:129.)
+
+#Andrews, Roland F.# (_H._)
+  For the Honor of Sam Butler. Ev. Mar. (38.)
+  **Wallababy. Met. Aug. (38.)
+
+*#Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaevich.# (1871-1919.) (_See 1916, 1917._)
+(_See "H" under_ #Andreieff.#)
+  ***Promise of Spring. Pag. Nov.-Dec., '19. (6.)
+
+#Anonymous.#
+  *Bird of Passage. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 28, '19.
+  *His Last Rendezvous. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 30, '19.
+  *Incompatibles. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 23, '19.
+  ***Romance of the Western Pavilion. Asia. May. (20:392.)
+  "Stranger." N. Y. Trib. May 30.
+
+#Armstrong, LeRoy.# (1854- .) (_H._)
+  "Patsy, Keep Your Head." Met. Oct., '19. (29.)
+
+#Aspinwall, Marguerite.# (_See 1918._)
+  First Rung. Del. Feb. (11.)
+
+#Atherton, Sarah.#
+  Lie and the Litany. Scr. Aug. (68:186.)
+  *Necessary Dependent. Scr. June. (67:747.)
+  *Paths from Diamond Patch. Scr. Jul. (68:65.)
+
+*#Aumonier, Stacy.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Golden Windmill. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (14.)
+  ***Good Action. Cen. Aug. (100:454.)
+  ***Great Unimpressionable. Pict. R. Nov., '19. (12.)
+  ***Just  the  Same. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (12.)
+  ***Landlord of "The Love-a-Duck." Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (8.)
+
+*#Auriol, Georges.#
+  Heart of the Mother. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (33.)
+
+*#Austin, Frederick Britten.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Buried Treasure. Hear. Dec., '19. (14.)
+  *Yellow Magic. Red. Bk. Apr. (28.)
+
+#Austin-Ball, Mrs. T.# _See_ #Steele, Alice Garland.#
+
+#Avery, Hascal T.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Corpus Delicti. Atl. Feb. (125:200.)
+
+#Avery, Stephen Morehouse.#
+  Lemon or Cream? L. H. J. Feb. (24.)
+
+
+#Babcock, Edwina Stanton.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Gargoyle. Harp. M. Sept. (141:417.)
+  **Porch of the Maidens. Harp. M. March. (140:460.)
+
+#Bailey (Irene), Temple.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Beggars on Horseback. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (20.)
+  **Gay Cockade. Harp. M. Feb. (140:290.)
+
+#Ball, Mrs. T. Austin.# _See_ #Steele, Alice Garland.#
+
+#Balmer, Edwin.# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_Hb._)
+  Acheron Run. Ev. May. (59.)
+  Jim Culver Learns the Secret of Teamwork. Am. Aug. (49.)
+  On the 7:50 Express. Am. April. (13.)
+  Paolina. Ev. Feb. (59.)
+  Santa Claus Breaks Into the Kelly Pool Game. Am. Dec., '19. (40.)
+  Upon the Record Made. L. H. J. Jul. (7.)
+
+*#Bargone, Charles.# _See_ "#Farrère, Claude.#"
+
+*#Barker (Harley), Granville.# (1877- .) (_See 1916._)
+  ***Bigamist. Free. May 5. (1:176.)
+
+#Barnard, Leslie Gordon.#
+  Jealousy of Mother McCurdy. Am. June. (39.)
+  Why They Called Her "Little Ireland." Am. July. (49.)
+
+#Barnes, Djuna.# (1892- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Beyond the End. Lit. R. Dec., '19. (7.)
+  ***Mother. Lit. R. Jul.-Aug. (10.)
+
+#Barratt, Louise Rand Bascom.# _See_ #Bascom, Louise Rand.#
+
+#Barrett, Arabel Moulton.# (_See 1919._)
+  Little Brown Bird. Cath. W. Oct., '19. (110:29.)
+
+#Barrett, Richmond Brooks.#
+  At Thirty-three. S. S. Sept. (55.)
+  Daughter of the Bernsteins. S. S. Jul. (83.)
+  Divine Right of Tenors. S. S. March. (73.)
+  *Satanic Saint. S. S. April. (103.)
+
+#Bartlett, Frederick Orin.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Everlasting Hills. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (30.)
+  **Inside. Del. Jan. (7.)
+  Junior Member. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (14.)
+  Later Boat. Ev. Apr. (68.)
+  Strip of Green Paper. Ev. Sept. (51.)
+
+#Barton, C. P.#
+  *Life, Liberty, and Happiness. All. Apr. 10. (109:135.)
+
+#Bascom, Louise Rand.# (#Mrs. G. W. Barrett.#) (_See 1915, 1916,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Question of Dress. B. C. Jul. (13.)
+
+#Bash, Mrs. Louis H.# _See_ #Runkle, Bertha (Brooks.)#
+
+#Beadle, Charles.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Inner Hero. Rom. Nov., '19. (113.)
+
+#Beale, William C.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Eternal Knout. Ev. Nov., '19. (34.)
+
+#Beard, Wolcott le Cléar.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Sun God Functions. Arg. Nov. 1, '19. (114:18.)
+
+#Bechdolt, Frederick Ritchie.# (1874- .) (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Cleaning Up of Lathrop. S. E. P. May 15. (46.)
+  On the Lordsburg Road. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (42.)
+
+*#Beck, L. Adams.#
+  ***Fire of Beauty. Atl. Sept. (126:359.)
+  ***Incomparable Lady. Atl. Aug. (126:178.)
+
+#Beer, Thomas.# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Boy Flag. S. E. P. June 5. (12.)
+  *Cool. Cen. Sept. (100:604.)
+  Curious Behavior of Myra Cotes. Met. Oct., '19. (32.)
+  Lorena. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (18.)
+  Poison Pen. S. E. P. Jul. 17. (16.)
+  *Refuge. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (18.)
+  Totem. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (42.)
+  *Zerbetta and the Black Arts. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (22.)
+
+#Beffel, John Nicholas.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Crosby Crew. Mir. Oct. 23, '19. (28:730.)
+  *Out of the Cage. Mir. Nov. 20, '19. (28:816.) 18, '19. (28:816.)
+  Seneca's Ghost House. Mir. Dec. 18, '19. (28:936.)
+  Woman at the Door. Mir. Dec. 11, '19. (28:899.)
+
+#Behrman, S. N.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *That Second Man. S. S. Nov., '19. (73.)
+
+#Belden, Jacques.#
+  *Song of Home. Mun. Nov., '19. (68:230.)
+
+#Benét, Stephen Vincent.# (1898- .) (_See 1916._)
+  *Funeral of John Bixby. Mun. Jul. (70:382.)
+  ***Summer Thunder. S. S. Sept. (79.)
+
+#Bercovici, Konrad.# (1882- .)
+  ***Ghitza. Dial. Feb. (68:154.)
+  *Yahde, the Proud One. Rom. Aug. (100.)
+
+*#Beresford, John Davys.# (1873- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Convert. Free. May, '19. (1:225.)
+
+*"#Bertheroy, Jean.#" (#Berthe Carianne Le Barillier.#) (1860- .) (_See
+1918, 1919._)
+  *Candlemas Day. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 29.
+  *From Beyond the Grace. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 1.
+
+#Bidwell, Anna Cabot.#
+  Fairest Adonis. Cen. March (99:610.)
+
+*#Binet-Valmer.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Armistice Night. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 4.
+  *Withered Flowers. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 4.
+
+*"#Birmingham, George A.#" (#Canon James O. Hannay.#) (1865- .) (_See
+1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Bands of Ballyguttery. Ev. Jul. (63.)
+
+#Bishop, Ola.# (_See 1919._)
+  Dawson Gang. Met. Nov., '19. (52.)
+  Wilda MacIvor-Horsethief. Met. Feb. (42.)
+
+*#Bizet, René.#
+  Devil's Peak. N. Y. Trib. Jul. 18.
+  *Lie. N. Y. Trib. May 16.
+
+*#Blackwood, Algernon.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Chinese Magic. Rom. June. (26.)
+  ***First Hate. McC. Feb. (22.)
+  ***Running Wolf. Cen. Aug. (100:482.)
+
+*#Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.# (1867- .) (_See 1919 under_ #Ibáñez, Vicente
+Blasco.#)
+  *Caburé Feather. McC. Sept. (20.)
+  *Four Sons of Eve. McC. Jul. (8.)
+  *Mad Virgins. Ev. Dec., '19. (25.)
+  ***Old Woman of the Movies. McC. May. (9.)
+  *Shot in the Dark. McCall. Jul. (6.)
+  ***Sleeping-Car Porter. Del. Oct., '19. (15.)
+
+#Bloch, Bertram.# (_See '18._)
+  Modern Improvements. S. S. Feb. (79.)
+
+#Block, Rudolph.# _See_ "Lessing, Bruno."
+
+#Blum, Henry S.#
+  Oil. Met. Aug. (34.)
+
+#Boas, George.#
+  **Officer, but a Gentleman. Atl. Aug. (126:194.)
+
+#Bodenheim, Maxwell.# (1893- .)
+  **Religion. Lit. R. May-June. (32.)
+
+#Bois, Boice Du.# _See_ #Du Bois, Boice.#
+
+#Boogher, Susan M.# (_See 1919._)
+  Mrs. Hagey and the Follies. L. H. J. Sept. (22.)
+
+#Booth, Frederick.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  *Duel, Ain. Apr. (126.)
+
+*#Bottome, Phyllis# (#Mrs. Forbes Dennis#). (_See 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Man of the "Chat Noir." Ain. June-Jul. (41.)
+  **Residue. Cen. Sept, (100:665.)
+
+#Boulton, Agnes#, (#Mrs. Eugene G. O'Neill.#) (1893- .)
+  **Hater of Mediocrity. S. S. Jul. (119.)
+
+*#Boutet, Fréderic.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  *Her Magnificent Recollections. Par. June. (37.)
+  *His Wife's Correspondents. Par. Sept. (65.)
+  **Laura. N. Y. Trib. Sept., '19.
+  *M. Octave Boullay. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 1.
+  *Two Dinners. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 22.
+
+#Bowman, Earl Wayland.#
+  Blunt Nose. Am. Feb. (62.)
+  High Stakes. Am. Sept. (56.)
+
+#Boyer, Wilbur S.# (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Tutti-Frutti. Ev. May. (69.)
+
+#Brace, Blanche.#
+  Adventure of the Lost Trousseau. L. H. J. Sept. (14.)
+  Tuesday and Thursday Evenings. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (20.)
+
+#Bradley, Mary Hastings.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  His Neighbor's Wife. Met. Sept. (25.)
+  Salvage, Met. May. (16.)
+
+#Brand, Max.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Out of the Dark. All. March. 13. (108:9.)
+
+#Breakspear, Matilda.#
+  Humberto, S. S. Jan. (108.)
+
+#Brooks, Jonathan.#
+  Bills Payable. Col. Sept. 18. (5.)
+  Hand and Foot. Col. May 15. (14.)
+  High and Handsome. Col. June 19. (5.)
+  Hot Blood and Cold. Col. Aug. 7. (5.)
+  Rewarded, By Virtue. Col. Apr. 3. (5.)
+
+#Brooks, Paul.#
+  Immolation. S. S. Sept. (101.)
+
+#Brown, Alice.# (1857- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Captives. McCall. May. (6.)
+  *Mistletoe. W. H. C. Dec., '19. (23.)
+  ***Old Lemuel's Journey. Atl. June. (125:782.)
+
+#Brown, Estelle Aubrey.#
+  Elizabeth--Convex. L. H. J. Jan. (9.)
+
+#Brown, Hearty Earl.# (1886- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Gold-Piece. Atl. Jul. (126:67.)
+
+#Brown, Katharine Holland.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *House on the Sand. W. H. C. May. (29.)
+  **Very Anxious Mother. Scr. Dec. 1919. (66:749.)
+
+#Brown, Royal.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Eighth Box. L. H. J. Dec., 1919. (14.)
+  Game for Quentina. L. H. J. June. (18.)
+  Too Much Canvas. L. H. J. Nov., 1919. (20.)
+
+#Brown, W. S.#
+  *Albert Bean's Tranquillity. Dial. Mar. (68:306.)
+
+#Brownell, Agnes Mary.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Buttermilk. Mir. Dec. 11, 1919. (28:887.)
+  **Coquette. McCall. May. (16.)
+  **Cure. Mid. Sept. (6:138.)
+  **Evergreen. G. H. Dec., 1919. (49.)
+  *Forty-Love. McCall. Jul. (16.)
+  **Grampa. Del. Apr. (24.)
+  *Intentions. Rome. Apr. (33.)
+  *Oxalis. Del. Feb. (21.)
+  ***Quest. Mid. Sept.-Oct. '19. (5:220.)
+  **Red Fiddle. Arg. Jul. 31. (123:699.)
+  ***Relation. Pict. R. June. (12.)
+  *Wannie--and Her Heart's Desire. Am. Jul. (44.)
+
+#Brownell, Mrs. Baker.# _See_ "#Maxwell, Helena.#"
+
+#Brubaker, Howard.# (1892- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Decline and Fall. Harp. M. Jul. (141:244.)
+  *Little Friends of All the Arts. Harp. M. Feb. (140:386.)
+
+#Bruno, Guído.# (1884- .) (_See 1915._)
+  Adultery on Washington Square. Mir. Jul. 15. (29:563.)
+
+*#Bruno, Ruby, J.#
+  *Unbreakable Chain. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 18.
+  Woman's Will. N. Y. Trib. July 11.
+
+#Bryan, Grace Lovell.#
+  Class! S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (46.)
+  Rowena Pulls the Wheeze! S. E. P. July 31. (16.)
+  "You Never Can Tell--" S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (40.)
+
+#Bryner, Edna Clare.#
+  ***Life of Five Points. Dial. (69:225.)
+
+*#Buchan, John.# (1875- .) (_H._)
+  ***Fullcircle. Atl. Jan. (125:36.)
+
+*#Buchanan, Meriel.#
+  Miracle of St. Nicholas. Scr. Aug. (68:137.)
+
+#Buck, Oscar MacMillan.#
+  **Village of Dara's Mercy. Asia. June. (20:481.)
+
+#Bulger, Bozeman.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_See also_ #Terhune,
+Albert Payson#, _and_ #Bulger, Bozeman.#)
+  Logansport Breeze. S. E. P. June, '19. (30.)
+  Real Shine. Ev. June. (25.)
+
+#Burke, Kenneth.#
+  *Mrs. Mæcenas. Dial. Mar. (68:346.)
+  **Soul of Kajn Tafha. Dial. Jul. (69:29.)
+
+*#Burke, Thomas.# (1887- .) (_See 1916, 1919._)
+  ***Scarlet Shoes. Cos. Apr. (69.)
+  **Twelve Golden Curls. Cos. Mar. (37.)
+
+*#Burland, John Burland Harris.# (1870- .)
+  *Green Flame. T. T. Apr. (27.)
+  **Window. L. St. Dec. '19 (94.)
+
+#Burnet, Dana.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Last of the Oldmasters. Ev. Jan. (37.)
+  Romance of a Country Road. G. H. Oct., '19. (34.)
+
+#Burt, Maxwell Struthers.# (1882- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **"Bally Old" Knot. Scr. Aug. (68:194.)
+  *Devilled Sweetbreads. Scr. Apr. (67:411.)
+  ***Dream or Two. Harp. M. May. (140:744.)
+  ***Each in His Generation. Scr. Jul. (68:42.)
+  ***When His  Ships Came In. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:721.)
+
+#Butler, Ellis Parker.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Criminals Three. Pict. R. March. (16.)
+  **Economic Waste. Ev. Oct., '19. (46.)
+  *Jury of His Peers. Ev. Sept. (42.)
+  Knight Without Reproach. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (69.)
+  Potting Marjotta. Col. Jan. 17. (11.)
+
+"#Byrne, Donn.#" (#Bryan Oswald Donn-Byrne.#) (1888- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *And Zabad Begat Ephlal. Hear. May. (31.)
+  *Bride's Play. Hear. Sept. (8.)
+
+
+#Cabell, James Branch.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Designs of Miramon. Cen. Aug. (100:533.)
+  ***Feathers of Olrun. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:193.)
+  ***Hair of Melicent. McC. Sept. (24.)
+  ***Head of Misery. McC. Jul. (21.)
+  ***Hour of Freydis. McC. May. (14.)
+  **Porcelain Cups. Cen. Nov., '19. (99:20.)
+
+#Calvin, L.#
+  Twenty Stories Above Lake Level. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (16.)
+
+#Cameron, Margaret.# (#Margaret Cameron Lewis.#) (1867- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Personal: Object Matrimony. Harp. M. Apr. (140:621.)
+
+#Camp, (Charles) Wadsworth.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  Black Cap. Col. Jan. 24. (10.)
+  **Dangerous Tavern. Col. Jul. 24. (5.)
+  Hate. Col. Apr. 3. (18.)
+  ***Signal Tower. Met. May. (32.)
+
+#Campbell, Marjorie Prentiss.# (_See 1919._)
+  Guests for Dinner. Del. Mar. (11.)
+  Tight Skirts and the Sea. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (20.)
+
+#Canda, Elizabeth Holden.#
+  Broken Glass. L. H. J. Feb. (15.)
+
+*#Cannan, Gilbert.# (1884- .)
+  **Tragic End. Dial. Jan. (68:47.)
+
+#Carmichael, Catherine.#
+  Fairy of the Fire-place. Met. June. (13.)
+
+#Carnevali, Emanuel.#
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. I. Lit. R. Oct., '19. (16.)
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. II. Lit. R. Nov., '19. (22.)
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. III. Lit. R. Mar. (28.)
+
+#Carson, Shirley.#
+  *Old Woman's Story. Hol. June. (11.)
+
+#Carver, George.# (_See 1918._)
+  **About the Sixth Hour. Mir. March 18. (29:203.)
+
+#Cary, Gladys Gill.#
+  It's So Hard for a Girl. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (18.)
+
+#Cary, Harold.#
+  She and He. Ev. Feb. (31.)
+
+*#Cary, Joyce.# _See_ "#Joyce, Thomas.#"
+
+*#Casement, Roger.#
+  *Guti. (_R._) Mir. May 20. (29:415.)
+
+#Casey Patrick#, _and_ #Casey, Terence.# (_See 1915, 1917._) (_See "H"
+under_ #Casey, Patrick.#)
+  **Wedding of Quesada. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (12.)
+
+#Casseres, Benjamin De.# (1873- .) (_See "H" under_ #De Casseres,
+Benjamin.#)
+  *Last Satire of a Famous Titan. S. S. June. (79.)
+
+*#Castle, Agnes (Sweetman)#, _and_ #Castle, Egerton.# (1858-1920.)
+(_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Fair Fatality. Rom. Apr. (137.)
+
+#Castle, Everett Rhodes.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Ain't Men So Transparent--S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (61.)
+  Golfers Three. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (49.)
+
+#Cather, Willa Sibert.# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Her Boss. S. S. Oct., '19. (95.)
+
+#Catton, George L.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Coincidence. Lit. St. Sept. (1.)
+  *Speaking of Crops. Arg. Mar. 6. (118:475.)
+
+#Cavendish, John C.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Dawn. S. S. Dec., '19. (57.)
+  Last Love. S. S. Feb. (117.)
+  *Little Grisette. S. S. Nov., '19. (41.)
+
+#Chadwick, Charles.#
+  Broken Promise. L. H. J. May. (27.)
+
+#Chalmers, Mary.#
+ **Liberation of Christine Googe. Sn. St. March 18. (59.)
+
+#Chamberlain, Lucia.# (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  Policeman X. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (16.)
+
+#Chambrun, Countess De.# _See_ #De Chambrun, Clara Longworth, Countess.#
+
+#Chandler, Josephine C.#
+  Habeas Corpus. Pag. Nov.-Dec., '19. (35.)
+
+#Chapin, Carl Mattison.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Too Much Is Enough. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (46.)
+
+#Chapman, Edith.#
+  ***Classical Case. Pag. June. (4.)
+  *Emancipation. S. S. June. (99).
+  **Golden Fleece. Pag. Feb. (4.)
+  Inevitable Eve. S. S. Aug. (61.)
+  Mid-Victorians. S. S. Feb. (53.)
+  *Pandora. S. S. May. (85.)
+  *Question of Values. S. S. Sept. (29.)
+  Reductio ad Absurdum. S. S. Jan. (59.)
+  **Self-Deliverance, or The Stanton Way. Pag. Apr.-May. (12.)
+
+#Charles, Tennyson.#
+  *Riding the Crack of Doom. Am. B. Apr. (18.)
+
+#Chase, Mary Ellen.# (1887- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Sure Dwellings. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:869.)
+
+*#Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.# (1860-1904.) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917 under_
+#Tchekov.#) (_See 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***At a Country House. (_R._) Touch. May. (7:126.)
+
+#Chenault, Fletcher.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  On Nubbin Ridge. Col. Dec. 6, '19. (20.)
+
+#Chester, George Randolph.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Pouff. Ev. Mar. (64.)
+
+*#Chesterton, Gilbert Keith.# (1874- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Face in the Target. Harp. M. Apr. (140:577.)
+  *Garden of Smoke. Hear. Jan. (15.)
+  **Soul of the Schoolboy. Harp. M. Sept. (141:512.)
+  **Vanishing Prince. Harp. M. Aug. (141:320.)
+
+#Child, Richard Washburn.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Bomb. McC. Jan. (11.)
+  Thief Indeed. Pict. R. June. (6.)
+
+#Church, F.S.# (_See 1919._)
+  How I Spent My Vacation. Scr. Aug. (68:155.)
+
+#Churchill, David.# (_See 1919._)
+  Igor's Trail. Ev. May. (46.)
+
+#Churchill, Roy P.# (_See 1919._)
+  Bold Adventure of Jimmie the Watchmaker. Am. May. (40.)
+
+#Clark, (Charles) Badger.#
+  All for Nothing. Sun. Apr (40.)
+  Gloria Kids. Sun. Jul. (52.)
+  In the Natural. Sun. June (43.)
+  Little Widow. Sun. May. (36.)
+  Sacred Salt. Sun. Aug. (39.)
+
+#Clark, Valma.#
+  *Big Man. Holl. Aug. (7.)
+
+#Clausen, Carl.#
+  **Perfect Crime. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (18.)
+  *Regan. Rom. April. (114.)
+
+#Cleghorn, Sarah N(orcliffe).# (1876- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  *"And She Never Could Understand." Cen. Jan. (99:387.)
+
+#Clemans, Ella V.#
+  *Mother May's Morals. G. H. May. (25.)
+
+*#Clémenceau, Georges.#
+  *How I Became Long-Sighted. Hear. Aug. (12.)
+
+*#Clifford, Mrs. W. K.# (#Lucy Lane Clifford.#) (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Antidote. Scr. Sept. (68:259.)
+
+#Clive, Julian.# (_See 1919._)
+  Climate. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:835.)
+  Of the Nature of Himself. Mir. Feb. 26. (29:145.)
+
+#Cobb, Irvin (Shrewsbury).# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *It Could Happen Again To-morrow. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (10.)
+  ***Story That Ends Twice. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (8.)
+  *Wasted Headline. S. E. P. May 8. (10.)
+  *When August the Second Was April the First. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (10.)
+  Why Mr. Lobel Had Apoplexy. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (8.)
+
+#Coburn, Mrs. Fordyce.# _See_ #Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell.#
+
+#Cohen, Bella.#
+  *"Children of the Asphalt." L. St. Jan. (75.)
+  *Chrysanthemums. Arg. May 29. (121:395.)
+  **Hands. Touch. Aug.-Sept. (7:383.)
+  *Roaches are Golden. L. St. Sept. (69.)
+  *Sara Resnikoff. Arg. Dec. 13, '19. (115:503.)
+  **Voices of Spring on the East Side. Touch. Jan. (6:195.)
+
+#Cohen, Octavus Roy.# (1891- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  All's Swell That Ends Swell. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (12.)
+  Auto-Intoxication. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (20.)
+  Gravey. S. E. P. June 19. (12.)
+  Here Comes the Bribe. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (12.)
+  Mistuh Macbeth. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (12.)
+  Night-Blooming Serious. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (12.)
+  Noblesse Obliged. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (14.)
+  Survival of the Fattest. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (16.)
+  Ultima Fool. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (20.)
+
+#Collins, Charles.#
+  Girl on the End. Met. Apr. (24.)
+  Sins of Saint Anthony. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (16.)
+  When Marcia Fell. S. E. P. May 15. (20.)
+
+#Comfort, Will Levington#, (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._) _See also_ #Comfort, Will Levington#, _and_ #Dost,
+Zamin Ki.#
+  Gamester. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (28.)
+
+#Comfort, Will Levington.# (1878- .), _and_ #Dost, Zamin Ki.# _See
+also_ #Comfort, Will Levington.#
+  *Bear Knob. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (29.)
+  *Lair. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (20.)
+
+#Condon, Frank.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Any Nest for a Hen. Col. June 12. (10.)
+  Circus Stuff. Col. Jan. 31. (10.)
+  Fade Out. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (54.)
+  *Jones--Balloonatic. Col. Mar. 13. (8.)
+  Sacred Elephant. Col. Oct. 4, '19. (28.)
+
+#Connolly, James Brendan.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Fiery Sea. Col. Feb. 21. (13.)
+  *Wimmin and Girls.  Col. May 22. (12.)
+
+#Cook, Mrs. George Cram.# _See_ #Glaspell, Susan.#
+
+#Cook, Lyle.#
+  Dancing Shoes. L. H. J. May. (20.)
+  Wing Dust. L. H. J. Apr. (14.)
+
+#Cooke, Grace MacGowan.# _See_ #MacGowan, Alice#, _and_ #Cooke, Grace
+MacGowan.#
+
+#Cooper, Courtney Ryley.# (1886- .) (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Thrill That Cured Him. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (29.)
+  Unconquered. S. E. P. June 5. (30.)
+
+#Corbaley, Kate.#
+  Hangers-On. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (17.)
+  Pair of Blue Rompers. L. H. J. Jan. (15.)
+
+#Corcoran, Captain A. P.#
+  Middle Watch. L. H. J. Jan. (26.)
+
+#Corley, Donald.#
+  ***Daimyo's Bowl. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:810.)
+
+#Cornell, V. H.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  His Big Moment. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (38.)
+
+"#Crabb, Arthur.#" (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Among Gentlemen. Col. Feb. 14. (21.)
+  Bill Riggs Comes Back. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (61.)
+  Harold Child, Bachelor. L. H. J. Oct.-Nov., '19. (11:28.)
+  In the Last Analysis. Col. Sept. 4. (10.)
+  Janet. Met. March. (42.)
+  Kiss. Met. Oct., '19. (21.)
+  Lanning Cup. Ev. Apr. (49.)
+  Little God of Hunches. Ev. Jul. (21.)
+  Masher. Met. Apr. (36.)
+  Max Solis Gives an Option. Met. Sept. (28.)
+  Mr. Dog-in-the-Manger. Del. Jul.-Aug. (16.)
+  More or Less Innocent Bystander. Met. Feb. (21.)
+  Queer Business. Ev. May. (9.)
+  Rape of the Key. Sun. Dec., '19. (37.)
+  Reformation of Orchid. Met. Jan. (38.)
+  Represented by Counsel. Met. Nov., '19. (26.)
+  Sammy, Old Fox. Ev. Sept. (21.)
+  Story Apropos. Col. March 13. (20.)
+  Tony Comes Back. Del. Jan. (12.)
+  Yielded Torch. Cen. Apr. (99:758.)
+
+#Cram, Mildred R.# (1889- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  *Concerning Courage. L. H. J. Feb. (7.)
+  **Ember. McCall. June. (12.)
+  Fade Out. Col. May 22. (21.)
+  ***Odell. Red Bk. May. (58.)
+  Romance--Unlimited. Col. June 5. (18.)
+  ***Spring of Cold Water. Harp. B. Aug. (50.)
+  **Stuff of Dreams. Harp. B. Feb. (72.)
+  ***Wind. Mun. Aug. (70:413.)
+
+#Crane, Clarkson.# (_See 1916._)
+  Furlough. S. S. May. (113.)
+
+#Crane, Mifflin.# (_See 1919._)
+  Betrayal. S. S. March. (109.)
+  Captive. S. S. Nov., '19. (97.)
+  *Cycle. S. S. April. (73.)
+  *Impossible Romance. S. S. Aug. (37.)
+  Negligible Ones. S. S. Dec., '19. (73.)
+  Older Woman. S. S. Feb. (87.)
+
+#Crew, Helen Coale.# (1866- .) (_H._)
+  ***Parting Genius. Mid. Jul. (6:95.)
+
+#Crissey, Forrest.# (1864- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Gumshoes 4-B. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:116.)
+
+#Croff, Grace A.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Forbidden  Meadow. G. H. Sept. (60.)
+  Minds of Milly. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (43.)
+  *Stroke of Genius. Rom. Sept (161.)
+
+#Cummings, Ray.#
+  *Old Man Davey. Arg. Sept. 4. (125:110.)
+
+#Cummins, T. D. Pendleton. "T. D. Pendleton."# (_see 1915, 1916._)
+  *Biscuit. Mir. Aug. 19. (29:644.)
+
+"#Curly, Roger.#"
+  Tael of a Tail-Spinner. Harp. M. June. (141:137.)
+  Three on an Island. Harp. M. Aug. (141:409.)
+
+#Curran, Pearl Lenore.#
+  Rosa Alvaro, Entrante. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (18.)
+
+#Curtiss, Philip (Everett).# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Crocodile's Half-Sister. Harp. M. May. (140:824.)
+  First of the Cuties. Ev. Mar. (45.)
+  **Holy Roman Empire of the Bronx. Harp. M. Sept. (141:465.)
+  *Temperament. Harp. B. Mar. (52.)
+
+
+#Dallett, Morris.#
+  Lost Love. S. S. Dec., '19. (75.)
+
+#Davies, Oma Almona.# (_See 1915, 1918._)
+  Tunis Hoopstetter, Early Bloomer. S. E. P. May 15. (30.)
+
+#Davis, Charles Belmont.# (1866- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  His Sister. Met. Feb. (28.)
+
+#Davis, Martha King.#
+  David Stands Pat. L. H. J. Jul. (30.)
+  Transplanting Mother. Am. Feb.  (20.)
+
+#Davis, Maurice.#
+  Droll Secret of Mademoiselle. S. S. Sept. (39.)
+  *Tradition of the House of Monsieur. S. S. May. (23.)
+
+#Davron, Mary Clare.#
+  Ladies Who Loved Don Juan. Met. Dec., '19. (19.)
+
+*#Dawson, Coningsby (William).# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Loneliest Fellow. G. H. Dec., '19. (17.)
+
+#Day, Holman Francis.# (1865- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Deodat's in Town. Red Bk. Apr. (38.)
+  Nooning at the Devilbrew. Col. Apr. 10. (10.)
+  Two Beans and Bomazeen. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (12.)
+
+#De Casseres, Benjamin.# _See_ #Casseres, Benjamin De.#
+
+#De Chambrun, Clara Longworth, Countess.#
+  "Little Archie." Scr. Aug. (68:222.)
+
+*#Deeping, (George) Warwick.# (1877- .) (_H._)
+  *Hunger and Two Golden Salvers. Rom. Jul. (73.)
+  *Pride and the Woman. Par. April. (109.)
+  *Secret Orchard. Rom. Sept. (96.)
+
+#De Jagers, Dorothy.# (_See 1916._)
+  Mary Lou and the Hall-Room Tradition. Ev. Apr. (21.)
+  Polly Wants a Backer. Ev. Aug. (28.)
+
+#Delano, Edith Barnard.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._)  (_See "H" under_
+#Barnard, Edith#, _and_ #Delano, Edith Barnard.#)
+  **Blue Flowers from Red. L. H. J. Sept. (10.)
+  *Face to Face. L. H. J. June. (7.)
+  ***Life and the Tide. Pict. R. Apr. (27.)
+
+#De La Roche, Mazo.# _See_ #Roche, Mazo De La.#
+
+*#Delarue-Madrus, Lucie.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Rober. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 15.
+
+#Delgado, F. P.# (_H._)
+  Monna. S. S. Feb. (125.)
+
+#Denison, Katharine.#
+  My Father. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:757.)
+
+*#Dennis, Mrs. Forbes.# _See_ #Bottome, Phyllis.#
+
+#Derieux, Samuel A.# (1881- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Old Frank Sees It Through. Am. Nov., '19. (56.)
+  **Terrible Charge Against Jeff Poter. Am. Feb. (38.)
+
+*#Derys, Gaston.#
+  Rabbits. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 11.
+
+*#Desmond, Shaw.# (1877- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Sunset. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:577.)
+
+#Dew, Natalie.#
+  Romance _and_ Mary Low. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (9.)
+
+#Dickson, Harris.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Breeches for Two. Cos. Mar. (85.)
+  *Relapse of Captain Hotstuff. Cos. Jan. (81.)
+  *Sticky Fingers. Cos. Apr. (85.)
+
+#Dobie, Charles Caldwell.# (1881- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Christmas Cakes. Harp. M. Jan. (140:200.)
+  ***Leech. Harp. M. Apr. (140:654.)
+  **Young  China. L. H. J. Aug. (10.)
+
+*#Dobrée, Bonamy.#
+  ***Surfeit. Lit. R. Dec., '19. (15.)
+
+#Dodge, Henry Irving.# (1861- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Skinner Makes It Fashionable. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (5.)
+  Wrong Hat on the Wrong Man. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (28.)
+
+#Dodge, Louis.# (1870- .) (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  ***Case of McIntyre. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:539.)
+  **Message from the Minority. Holl. Mar. (5.)
+
+#Donnell, Annie Hamilton.# (1862- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Beauty Hat. Del. June. (24.)
+  Crazy Day. Del. Dec., '19. (20.)
+
+#Dost, Zamin Ki.# _See_ #Comfort, Will Levington#, _and_ #Dost, Zamin Ki.#
+
+#Douglas, Ford.# (_H._)
+  Come-Back. S. S. June. (35.)
+  Home-Made. S. S. Aug. (27.)
+  Mr. Duncan's Gin. S. S. Jul. (75.)
+
+#Douglas, George.#
+  *Three Ghosts and a Widow. Q. W. Aug. (12:213.)
+
+#Dounce, Harry Esty.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  Mr. Torbert Malingers. Cen. Oct., '19. (98:758.)
+
+#Dowst, Henry Payson.# (187*- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bonds of Matrimony. S. E. P. Jul. 31. (8.)
+  Bostwick Budget. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (5.)
+  Cadbury's Ghosts. Ev. Feb. (48.)
+  He Needed the Money. S. E. P. June 26. (12.)
+  Pioneer and Pattenbury. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (3.)
+  Symbols. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (16.)
+
+#Dreier, Thomas.# (1884- .)
+  Broken Mirror. Met. Jan. (18.)
+
+#Dreiser, Theodore.# (1871- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Sanctuary. S. S. Oct., '19. (35.)
+
+#Drew, Helen.#
+  *Flag in the Dust. All. Feb., 28. (107:461.)
+
+#Driggs, Laurence La Tourette.# (1876- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Curé of Givenchy. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (14.)
+
+#Drucker, Rebecca.#
+  *Old Lace. (_R._) Mir. March 18. (29:233.)
+
+#Du Bois, Boice.# (_See 1919._)
+  Ancestral Hang-Over. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (49.)
+  Come-Back of a Send-Off. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (20.)
+  Downfall of an Uplift. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (46.)
+  Hortense the Helpful. S. E. P. June 5. (20.)
+
+*#Dubreuil, René.#
+  *Estelle and Francis. N. Y. Trib. June. 20.
+
+*#Dudeney, Mrs. Henry E.# (1866- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Wild Raspberries. Harp. M. Jan. (140:217.)
+
+#Duganne, Phyllis.# (_See 1919._)
+  Extravagance. Met. Feb. (18.)
+  True Art. Met. Aug. (20.)
+
+#Dunaway, Anna Brownell.# (_H._)
+  *Estate. Col. Jul. 31. (10.)
+
+*#Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett#, _18th_ #Baron#, (1878- .)
+(_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  ***Cheng Hi and the Window Framer. S. S. Nov., '19 (2.)
+  ***East and West. S. S. Dec., '19. (41.)
+  ***How the Lost Causes Were Removed from Valhalla. S. S. Oct., '19. (1.)
+  **Opal Arrow-Head. Harp. M. May. (140:809.)
+  ***Pretty Quarrel. Atl. Apr. (125:512.) Mir. Apr. 1. (29:284.)
+
+#Durand, Ruth Sawyer.# _See_ #Sawyer, Ruth.#
+
+#Dutton, Louise Elizabeth.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Facing Facts. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (6.)
+  Framed. Met. Dec., '19. (15.)
+
+#Dwyer, James Francis.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Bridal Roses of Shang. Holl. Nov., '19. (5.)
+  *Bronze Horses of Ballymeena. W. H. C.  Oct., '19. (23.)
+  *Devil's Glue. B. C. Feb. (37.)
+  Devil's Whisper. Col. Dec. 13, '19. (11.)
+  *Fair Deborah. Col. June 19. (10.)
+  Green Hassocks of Gods. Col. Aug. 28-Sept. 4. (5, 16.)
+  Little Brown Butterfly. Del. March. (23.)
+  *"Maryland, My Maryland!" Col. Mar. 20. (7.)
+  *Thin, Thin Man. Sn. St. Sep. 25. (61.)
+  Titled Bus Horse. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (23.)
+
+#Dyer, Walter Alden.# (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Mr. Geraniums. Holl. May. (14.)
+  *Phantom Hound. Top. Mar. 1-15. (145.)
+
+
+#Eastman, Rebecca Hooper.# (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  One Room and Bath. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (14.)
+  Salesman and the Star. S. E. P. May 8. (14.)
+  String-Bean House. G. H. Nov., '19. (39.)
+
+#Edgelow, Thomas.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  Enchantment of Youth. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:739.)
+
+*#Edginton, May.# (_See 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Man from Hell. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (10.)
+  *Man's Size. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (12.)
+
+#Edholm, Charlton Lawrence.# (1879- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Maker of Images. L. H. J. May. (17.)
+  **"Trouble Never Troubles Me." L. H. J. June. (20.)
+
+#Edwards, Cleveland.#
+  *Dream That Would Not Fade. Arg. Aug. 21. (124:571.)
+
+#Edwards, Frederick Beecher.#
+  Thank-You-Please Perkins. S. E. P. May 8. (30.)
+
+#Eldridge, Paul.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  **Their Dreams. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:148.)
+
+#Ellerbe, Alma Martin Estabrook.# (1871- .), _and_ #Ellerbe, Paul Lee.#
+(_See 1915 under_ #Estabrook, Alma Martin#; _1917 under_ #Ellerbe, Alma
+Estabrook#; _1919 under_ #Ellerbe, Alma Martin#, _and_ #Ellerbe, Paul
+Lee.#) (_See "H" under_ #Ellerbe, Paul Lee.#)
+  ***Paradise Shares. Cen. Jul. (100:312.)
+  *Wiped off the Slate. Am. Feb. (10.)
+
+#Ellerbe, Rose L.# (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  *Key to Freedom. L. H. J. Aug. (18.)
+
+*#Ervine, St. John G(reer.)# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Dramatist and the Leading Lady. Harp. B. Aug. (36.)
+
+#Evans, Frank E. (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Pearls or Ap#ples? Ev. Jul. (32.)
+
+#Evans, Ida May.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Eternal Biangle. G. H. Feb. (33.)
+
+#Evarts, Hal G.#
+  Bald-Face. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (34.)
+  Big Bull of Shoshone. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (46.)
+  Black Ram of Sunlight. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (5.)
+  Convincing a Lady. Col. Aug. 14. (10.)
+  Dog Town. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (12.)
+  Protective Coloration. Col. Dec. 20, '19. (19.)
+  Straight and Narrow. Sun. Nov., '19. (27.)
+
+
+#Fargo, Ruth.#
+  Birthday Tale. Del. Feb. (19.)
+  *"Nobody Else's Home Seems Just Right." Am. Apr. (57.)
+
+#Farnham, Mateel Howe.# (_H._)
+  One Day to Do as They Pleased. Del. Dec., '19. (8.)
+
+*"#Farrère, Claude.#" (#Charles Bargone.#) (1876- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Fall of the House of Hia. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 25.
+
+#Ferber, Edna.# (1887- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Ain't Nature Wonderful! McC. Aug. (12.)
+  *Dancing Girls. Col. March 13. (5.)
+  ***Maternal Feminine. McC. Feb. (18.)
+  **Old Lady Mandle. Col. Jan. 17. (5.)
+  ***You've Got to Be Selfish. McC. Mar.-Apr. (14.)
+
+#Field, Flora.# (_See 1918._)
+  **Mister Montague. Del. Nov., '19. (23.)
+
+#Fillmore, Parker (Hoysted).# (1878- .) (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  ***Katcha and the Devil. (R.) Mir. Jan. 22. (29:59.)
+
+#Finger, Charles J.# (1871- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Canassa. Mir.  Oct. 30, '19. (28:744.)
+  **Dust to Dust. Mir. Jul. 15. (29:561.)
+  ***Ebro. Mir. June 10. (29:469.)
+  *Incongruity. S.S. Jan. (65.)
+  ***Jack Random. Mir. Aug. 26. (29:660.)
+  *Ma-Ha-Su-Ma. Mir. March 18. (29:213.)
+  **Phonograph. Mir. Dec. 11, '19. (28:903.)
+  **Some Mischievous Thing. S. S. Aug. (119.)
+
+#Fish, Horace.# (1885- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Doom's-Day Envelope. Rom. June. (43.)
+
+#Fisher, Helen Dwight.# _See_ #Harold, Henry#, _and_ #Fisher, Helen
+Dwight.#
+
+#Fisher, Raymond Henry.#
+  *Yeng. Lit. St. June. (25.)
+
+#Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key.#
+  Benediction. S. S. Feb. (35.)
+  Bernice Bobs Her Hair. S. E. P. May 1. (14.)
+  Camel's Back. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (16.)
+  **Cut-Glass Bowl. Ser. May. (67:582.)
+  Dalyrimple Goes Wrong. S. S. Feb. (107.)
+  **Four Fists. Ser. June. (67:669.)
+  Ice Palace. S. E. P. May 22. 18.)
+  Offshore Pirate. S. E. P. May 29. (10.)
+  Smilers. S. S. June (107.)
+
+#Flandrau, Grace Hodgson.# (_See 1918._)
+  Dukes and Diamonds. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (50.)
+  Let That Pass.  S. E. P. Apr. 17. (28.)
+
+*#Fletcher, A. Byers.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  *According to Whang Foo. Hear. Jan. (32.)
+  *End of a Perfect Day. Hear. Mar. (33.)
+
+#Flint, Homer Eon.#
+  *Greater Miracle. All. Apr. 24. (109:340.)
+
+#Foley, James William, Jr.# (1874- .) (_H._)
+  *Letters of William Green. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (109.)
+  *Letters of William Green. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (46.)
+
+#Follett, Wilson.#
+  ***Dive. Atl. Dec., '19-Jan. (124:729;  125:67.)
+
+#Folsom, Elizabeth Irons.# (1876- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Alibi. Sun. May. (49.)
+  Bain Twins and the "Detective." Am. Oct., '19. (51.)
+  *No Better Than She Should Be. Met. Mar. (32.)
+
+#Foote, John Taintor.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Allegheny. Am. Dec., '19. (11.)
+
+#Ford, Torrey.#
+  Over and Back with Scuds. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (57.)
+
+#Foster, A. K.#
+  Rebel-Hearted. Touch. Apr. (7:10.)
+
+#Foster, Maximillian.#  (1872- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Big-Town Stuff.  S. E. P. Jan. 3. (18.)
+  Mrs. Fifty-Fifty.  S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (6.)
+
+#Fraiken, Wanda L.#  (_See 1919._)
+  **Rubber-Tired Buggy. Mid. Aug. (6:105.)
+
+*"#France, Anatole.#" (#Jacques Anatole Thibault.#) (1844- .) (_See 1919._)
+  ***Lady with the White Fan. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:83.)
+
+#Francis, Dominic.#
+  **Son of the Morning. Mag. Apr. (25:288.)
+  *"Woman--at Endor." Mag. Sept. (26:232.)
+
+#Frazer, Elizabeth.# (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  Derelict Isle. S. E. P. May 29. (18.)
+
+#Frederickson, H. Blanche.#
+  Maiden Aunt. Met. May. (27.)
+
+*#Freeman, Lewis R.#
+  "His Wonders to Perform." Ev. Sept. (60.)
+
+#Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins.# (1862- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Gospel According to Joan. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:77.)
+
+#Friedenthal, Joachim.#
+  ***Pogrom in Poland. (R.) Mir. Oct. 23, '19. (28:726.)
+
+*#Friedlaender, V. H.# (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  *New Love. S. S. Sept. (117.)
+  *Rendezvous. Harp. M. Feb. (140:328.)
+
+#Frost, Walter Archer# (1876- .), _and_ #Frost, Susan#, (_See 1916 and
+"H" under_ #Frost, Walter Archer.#)
+  **His Hold. Ev. Jan. (24.)
+
+#Fullerton, Hugh Stewart.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Jaundice's Last Race. Ev. Nov., '19. (119.)
+
+
+#Gale, Zona.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Arpeggio. Ev. Mar. (68.)
+  Arpeggio Helps. Ev. Apr. (44.)
+  Barbara's Aunt Beatrix. G. H. Oct., '19. (53.)
+  Love in the Valley. G. H. Feb. (30.)
+  *Lovingest Lady. W. H. C. June (16.)
+
+*#Galsworthy, John.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Expectations. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:643.)
+
+#Garrett, Garet.# (1878- .) (_See 1917._)
+  Gilded Telegrapher. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (20.)
+  Red Night. S. E. P. Apr. 2. (42.)
+  Shyest Man. Ev. Sept. (65.)
+
+#Gasch, Marie Manning.# _See_ #Manning, Marie.#
+
+#Gauss, Marianne.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  **Justice. Atl. May. (125:613.)
+
+#Geer, Cornelia Throop.# _See_ #Le Boutillier, Cornelia Geer.#
+
+#Gelzer, Jay.#
+  **In the Street of a Thousand Delights. Sn. St. Aug. 4. (25.)
+
+*#George, W. L.# (1882- .) (_See 1917._)
+  *Romance. Harp. B. Aug. (64.)
+
+#Gerould, Katherine Fullerton.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Habakkuk. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:547.)
+  ***Honest Man. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:777.)
+
+#Gerry, Margarita Spalding.# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Food for the Minotaur. Harp. M. March. (140:488.)
+
+*#Gibbon, Perceval.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Abdication. Cos. Jul. (89.)
+  ***Connoisseur. Cos. Oct., '19. (73.)
+  *Dark Moment. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (8.)
+  *Elopement. McCall. Mar. (8.)
+  **Heiress. Cos. Aug. (53.)
+  **Hostage to Misfortune. McC. Aug. (23.)
+  ***Knave of Diamonds. McCall. May (5.)
+  *Last of the Duellists. McC. Dec., '19. (18.)
+  ***Lieutenant. Pict. R. Mar. (10.)
+  *Spotless. S. E. P. May 8. (15.)
+
+#Gibbs, A. Hamilton.#
+  Conqueror of To-morrow. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (30.)
+
+#Giersch, Ruth Henrietta.#
+  In Old Salem. L. H. J. Dec. '19. (23.)
+
+
+#Gilbert, George.# (1874- .) (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Cleansing Kiss. Mun. Mar. (69:253.)
+  *Old Yellow Mixing Bowl, T. T. Nov., '19. (35.)
+  ***Sigh of the Bulbul. Asia. Jul. (20:563.)
+
+#Gilchrist, Beth Bradford.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Eyes That See. Harp. M. Oct., '19. (139:629.)
+  **Miracle. Harp. M. Jul. (141:217.)
+
+#Gilpatric, John Guy.# (_H._)
+  *Black Art and Ambrose. Col. Aug. 21. (14.)
+
+#Glaspell, Susan (Keating).# (#Mrs. George Cram Cook.#) (1882- .) (_See
+1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Escape. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:29.)
+  Nervous Pig. Harp. M. Feb. (140:309.)
+
+#Glass, Montague Marsden.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  Cousins of Convenience. Cos. Jul. (26.)
+
+#Godfrey, Winona.# (1877- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  Does Marriage Clip the Wings of Youth? Am. Feb. (51.)
+  Gods of Derision. Mir. Jan. 15. (29:38.)
+
+#Goetchius, Marie Louise.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+#Goldsborough, Ann.#
+  Answer to Joe Trice's Prayer. Am. Aug. (62.)
+
+#Goodfellow, Grace.#
+  **In The Street of the Flying Dragon. Rom. Sept. (126.)
+
+#Goodloe, Abbie Carter.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *McHenry and the Ghost-Bird. Scr. Jan. (67:105.)
+  **Return of the Monks. Scr. Oct. '19. (66:460.)
+
+#Goodman, Henry.# (1893- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  **Hundred Dollar Bill. Pear. Aug. (44.)
+
+#Goodwin, Ernest.# (_See 1918._)
+  Very Ordinary Young Man. Met. Dec., '19. (50.)
+
+#Gordon, Armistead Churchill.# (1855- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Panjorum Bucket. Scr. Feb (67:232.)
+
+#Graeve, Oscar.# (1884- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 1919._) (_H._)
+  Alonzo the Magnificent. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (16.)
+  Careless World. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (16.)
+  Cyrilian Cycle. S. E. P. May 1. (22.)
+  Lydia Leads the Way. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (14.)
+
+#Grahame, Ferdinand.#
+  *Four Bits. Arg. June 12. (122:59.)
+
+#Grandegge, Stephanie.#
+  Recapture. Pag. Feb. (20.)
+
+#Granich, Irwin.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  *Two Mexicos. Lib. May. (29.)
+
+#Granich, Irwin#, _and_ #Roy, Manabendra Nath.#
+  *Champak. Lib. Feb. (8.)
+
+#Grant, Ethel Watts-Mumford.# _See_ #Mumford, Ethel Watts.#
+
+#Grant, Louise.#
+  *In Search of Life. Touch. Mar. (6:358.)
+
+#Graves, Louis.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  I. D. R. 125. Met. Nov., '19. (48.)
+
+*"#Greene, Lewis Patrick.#" (#Louis Montague Greene.#) (1891- .)
+(_See 1918._)
+  *Man Who Stayed. Adv. Jul. 18. (106.)
+
+#Greenfield, Will H.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Lost Lotos. Mir. Jul. 8. (29:548.)
+
+#Greig, Algernon.#
+  "Oh You February 29." Met. Septa. (27.)
+
+#Griffith, Helen Sherman.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  Billy Allen's Coal-Mine. Del. Jul.-Aug. (18.)
+  "Poor Little Sara." Del. Apr. (21.)
+
+*#Grimshaw, Beatrice.# (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Devil's Gold. Red Bk. Feb. (59.)
+  *Maddox and the Emma-Pea. Red Bk. Rpr. (68.)
+  *When the O-O Called. Red Bk. Mar. (49.)
+
+
+#Haines, Donald Hamilton.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Forty-Five. Ev. Feb. (50.)
+
+#Haldeman-Julius, Mr.# _and_ #Mrs. Emanuel.# _See_ #Julius, Mr.# _and_
+#Mrs. Emanuel Haldeman-.#
+
+#Hale, Maryse Rutledge.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+#Hall, Herschel S.# (_See 1919 under_ #Hall, H. S.#)
+  Beeves from the Arggentyne. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (32.)
+  Bouillon. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (8.)
+  Cat Clause. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (8.)
+  Chance. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (8.)
+  Hot Metal. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (18.)
+  Key Man. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (24.)
+  Promoted. S. E. P. June 12. (20.)
+  *Sacrifice. Red Bk. May. (83.)
+  Steel Preferred. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (3.)
+  Stum Puckett, Cinder Monkey. S. E. P. Oct. 11. '19. (14.)
+  Wellington Gay. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (20.)
+  White Lines. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (14.)
+  Yancona Yillies. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (20.)
+
+"#Hall, Holworthy.#" (#Harold Everett Porter.#) (1887- .) (_See 1915,
+  1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Ancestors. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (20.)
+  Below the Medicinal Hundred. Ev. Oct., '19. (30.)
+  Bonds of Patrimony. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (10.)
+  Ego, Sherburne and Company. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (16.)
+  Girl Who Couldn't Knit. Pict. R. May. (8.)
+  G.P.  S. E. P. Jul. 17. (12.)
+  Humorist. Pict. R. Sept. (16.)
+  Long Carry. Col. June 5. (5.)
+  Round and Round and Round. Col. Sept. 11. (5.)
+  Slippery Metal. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (10.)
+  Sniffski. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (3.)
+
+#Hall, May Emery.# (1874- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Laying Captain Morley's Ghost. Arg. May 8. (120:547.)
+
+#Hall, Wilbur (Jay).# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Art of Buying. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (14.)
+  Business Neurology. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (11.)
+  Johnny Cucabod. S. E. P. June 12. (5.)
+  Le Lupercalia. Sun. Feb. (39.)
+  Let the Seller Beware! S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (10.)
+  Martin Quest and Wife--Purchasing Agents. Am. Apr. (39.)
+  Melancholy Mallard. S. E. P. NOV. 22, '19. (13.)
+  Mercenary Little Wretch. Am. March. (41.)
+  Super-Soviet. Col. Mar. 27. (5.)
+
+#Hallet, Richard Matthews.# (1887- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *First Lady of Cranberry Isle. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (18.)
+  Inspiration Jule. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (58.)
+  **Interpreter's Wife. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (42.)
+  Wake-Up Archie. Col. Feb. 14. (7.)
+
+#Halverson, Delbert M.#
+  ***Leaves in the Wind. Mid. Apr. (6:28.)
+  Red Foam. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (14.)
+  That Dangerous Person. Ev. Nov., '19. (53.)
+
+#Hamilton, Edith Hulbert.#
+  Anyone Can Write. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (20.)
+
+#Hamilton, Gertrude Brooke.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  On Whom the Ladies Dote. S. S. Feb. (89.)
+  Open Eyes.  S. S. Jan. (41.)
+  Pause. S. S. Apr. (59.)
+  **Shall We Dine, Melisse? S. S. Nov., '19. (43.)
+  Where Is Your Mother? G. H. May. (47.)
+
+#Hampton, Edgar Lloyd.# (_See 1915._)
+  Once One is Two. Met. Jan. (28.)
+  **Return of Foo Chow. Met. Mar. (13.)
+
+#Hanford, Helen Ellwanger.#
+  **Willow Pond. Atl. Mar. (125:363.)
+
+*#Hannay, Canon James O.# _See_ "#Birmingham, George A.#"
+
+*#Haraucourt, Edmond.# (1856- .) (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  Dies Iræ. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 25.
+  *Posthumous Sonnet. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 7, '19.
+  Skunk Collar. N. Y. Trib. May 2.
+  *Two Profiles in the Crowd. N. Y. Trib. Sept. 5.
+
+#Harben, Will(iam) N(athaniel).# (1858- .) (_H._)
+  *Timely Intervention. Mun. Apr. (69:468.)
+
+#Hardy, Arthur Sherburne.# (1847 .) (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  **Mystery of Célestine. Harp. M. Mar. (140:442.)
+
+#Haring, Ethel Chapman.# (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  Giver. Del. Nov., '19. (21.)
+  Ten Dollars a Month. Del. May. (15.)
+
+#Harold, Henry#, _and_ #Fisher, Helen Dwight.#
+  **White Petunias. Rom. Apr. (104.)
+
+#Harper, C. A.#
+  Vestal Venus. S. S. Apr. (101.)
+
+*#Harrington, Katherine.#
+  *O'Hara's Leg. Met. June (28.)
+
+#Harris, Corra (May White).# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Widow Ambrose. L. H. J. Aug. (7.)
+
+#Harris, Kennett.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Beauty and the Butterflies. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (59.)
+  Benny and Her Familee. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (10.)
+  Concerning Cautious Clyde. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (8.)
+  Most Popular Lady. S. E. P. July 10. (5.)
+  Rosemary Risks It. S. E. P. May 8. (20.)
+  Triptolemus the Mascot. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (3.)
+
+#Harris, May.# (1873- .) (_H._)
+  Back Again. All. Nov. 1, '19. (103:332.)
+
+*#Harris-Burland, J. B.# _See_ #Burland, J. B. Harris-.#
+
+#Harrison, Henry Snydor.# (1880- .) (_H._)
+  Big People.  S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (3.)
+
+#Harry, Franklin P.#
+  *Retribution and a Rabbit's Foot. T. T. Jul. (49.)
+  *Tan. Blu. Ox. 850. T. T. Oct., '19. (80.)
+
+#Hartman, Lee Foster.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Judgment of Vulcan. Harp. M. Mar. (140:520.)
+
+#Harvey, Alexander.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  Great Third Act. Mir. Dec. 18, '19. (28:923.)
+
+#Haskell, Helen E.# (_See 1919._)
+  In Their Middle Years. Met. June. (31.)
+
+#Hatch, Leonard.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Links. Scr. Sept. (68:312.)
+
+#Hawley, J. B.#
+  Dancing Dog. S. S. June (51.)
+  *Tarnished Brass. S. S. Jul. (33.)
+
+#Henderson, Victor.# (_H._)
+  Poor Old Thing. S. S. Jul. (103.)
+
+#Hergesheimer, Joseph.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Blue Ice. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (8.)
+  ***Ever So Long Ago. Red Bk. Apr. (23.)
+  ***Meeker Ritual. (II.) Cen. Oct., '19. (98:737.)
+  ***"Read Them and Weep." Cen. Jan. (99:289.)
+
+#Hewes, Robert E.# (_See 1919._)
+  Pawnbroker of Shanghai. Met. Oct., '19. (34.)
+
+#Hewitt, Lew.#
+  Third Woman. S. S. Aug. (111.)
+
+#Hill, Mabel.# (1864- .)
+  Miss Lizzie--Parlor Bolshevist. Scr. Feb. (67:165.)
+
+#Hinds, Roy W.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Debts. Arg. Jul. 24. (123: 458.)
+
+*#Hirsch, Charles-Henry.# (1870-.)  (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Autographed Mirror. N. Y. Trib. May 9.
+
+#Holbrook, Weare.# (_See 1919._)
+  Feast of St. Cecile. Pag. Apr.-May. (47.)
+
+*#Holding, Elizabeth Sanxay.#
+  **Patrick on the Mountain. S. S. Jul. (109.)
+  ***Problem that Perplexed Nicholson. S. S. Aug. (117.)
+
+#Holland, Rupert Sargent.# (1878- .) (_H._)
+  *Arcadians in the Attic. Scr. May. (67:618.)
+  Flying Man. L. H. J. Aug. (40.)
+
+#Hollingsworth, Ceylon.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Harp of a Thousand Strings. Col. Feb. 28. (9.)
+  **Mind  of a Man. Col. Jan. 31. (5.)
+  *Pants. Col. Jul. 3. (5.)
+
+#Holt, Henry P.# (_See 1915, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Devil Cat Meets Her Match. Am. June.  (29.)
+  *In The Cabin of the Chloe. Sh. St. Aug. (173.)
+
+#Hooker (william), Brian.# (1880- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  **Branwen. Rom. June. (132.)
+
+#Hopper, James (Marie).# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Education of Percy Skinner. Ev. May. (23.)
+  Pessimist Rewarded. Harp.  M. Aug. (141: 351.)
+
+#Horn, R. de S.#
+  *Joss of the Golden Wheel. B. C. Jul. (3.)
+
+#Hostetter, Van Vechten.# Superwoman.  S. S. Nov., '19. (53.)
+  They're All Alike. S. S. March. (99.)
+
+#House, Roy Temple#, _and_ #Saint-Valéry, Leon De.#
+  **Count Roland's Ruby. Strat. J. Apr.-June.  (6:143.)
+
+#Hughes, Rupert.# (1872- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Broken Flange. Cos.  Nov., '19. (67.)
+  *Father of Waters. Cos. Jan. (43.)
+  *Momma. Col. June  26. (5.)
+  ***Stick-in-the-Muds. Col. Sept. 25. (5.)
+
+#Hull, Alexander.#  (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Argosies. Scr. Sept. (68:285.)
+
+#Hull, Helen R.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Flaw. Harp. M. Oct., '19. (139:747.)
+  **Separation. Touch. Mar. (6:371.)
+
+#Hunting, Ema S.# (1885- .)
+  ***Dissipation. Mid. May. (6:47.)
+  ***Soul that Sinneth. Mid. Aug. (6:128.)
+
+#Hurst, Fannie.# (1889- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Back Pay. Cos. Nov., '19. (35.)
+
+#Hurst, S. B. H.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *What Happened Between. Rom. Jul. (146.)
+
+#Hurwitz, Maximilian.#
+  *"Eili, Eili, Lomo Asavtoni?" Men. Feb.
+
+#Hussey, L. M.# (_See 1919._)
+  **Believer.  S. S. April. (29.)
+  **Family. Cen. Sept. (100:682.)
+  Father. S. S. Jan. (121.)
+  Gift of Illusion. S. S. June. (113.)
+  Hope Chest. S. S. Feb. (59.)
+  ***Lowden Household. S. S. Aug. (97.)
+  *Memories. S. S. Nov., '19. (121.)
+  *Opponent. S. S. Oct., '19. (61.)
+  Renunciation. S. S. May (39.)
+  **Sisters. S. S. Nov., '19. (55.)
+  *Twilight of Love. S. S. Dec., '19. (43.)
+  ***Two Gentlemen of Caracas. S. S. Dec., '19. (89.)
+
+*#Hutchinson, Arthur Stuart Menteth.# (1880- .) (_H._)
+  **Bit of Luck. Ev. Feb. (66.)
+
+
+*#Ibáñez, Vicente Blasco.# _See_ #Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente.#
+
+#Imrie, Walter McLaren.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Wife Who Needed Two Chairs. S. S. June. (91.)
+
+#Irwin, Inez Haynes. (Inez Haynes Gillmore.)# (1873- .) (_See 1915
+under_ #Gillmore, Inez Haynes#; _1916, 1917, 1918, 1919 under_ #Irwin,
+Inez Haynes.#) (_See "H" under_ #Gillmore, Inez Haynes.#)
+  *Long Carry. Met. Oct., '19. (42.)
+
+#Irwin, Wallace.# (1875- .)  (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Beauty. McC. Aug. (8.)
+  Direct Action. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (8.)
+  "Ham and Eggs." Pict. R. June. (18.)
+  Joke. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (12.)
+  Mr. Rundle's Exit. Pict. R. May. (34.)
+  Moonshine. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (12.)
+  On to the Next. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (12.)
+  Waste Motions. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (10.)
+  Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? S. E. P. May 22. (14.)
+
+#Irwin, Will(iam Henry).# (1873- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Copper Dan Imbibes. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (12.)
+  In The Tower of Silence. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (20.)
+  There Is a Santa Claus. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (20.)
+
+#Ittner, Anna Belle Rood.#
+  *Old Glory Bill. Scr. June. (67: 686.)
+
+
+#Jackson, Charles Tenney.# (1874- .) (_See 1916, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Little Girl Who Never Saw a Hill. Arg. Mar. 13. (118:501.)
+
+*#Jacobs, W(illiam) W(ymark).# (1863- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Artful Cards. Hear. Dec., '19 (17.)
+
+#Jagers, Dorothy De.# _See_ #De Jagers, Dorothy.#
+
+*#Jaloux, Edmond.# (_See 1918._)
+  **At the Telephone. N. Y. Trib. June 13.
+  **Poet's Revenge. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 8.
+
+#Jenkin, A. I.#
+  Premonition. S. S. Aug. (45.)
+
+#Jenkins, Charles Christopher.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Bayonet of Henry Laberge. Arg. Feb. 21. (118:154.)
+  *Man Beneath. Arg. Oct. 25, '19. (113:691.)
+
+#Jenkins, George B., Jr.#
+  Four Faint Freckles and a Cheerful Disposition. S. S. Jan. (111.)
+
+#John, W. A. P.#
+  No'th Af'ican Lloyds, Ltd. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (16.)
+
+#Johns, Orrick.#
+  ***Big Frog. S. S. Sept. (87.)
+
+#Johnson, Arthur.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Mortimer. Scr. Jan. (67:57.)
+  ***Princess of Tork. Met. Aug. (15.)
+
+#Johnson, Burges.# (1877- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **In the Barn. Cen. June. (100:198.)
+
+#Johnson, Olive McClintic.#
+  "Deep Ellum." Col. Dec. 20, '19. (14.)
+  "Didja Getcha Feet Wet?" Col. Feb. 21. (7.)
+
+#Johnson, Olive McClintic# (_con._)
+  Disagreeable as a Husband. Col. May 29. (5.)
+  Great Grief! Col. June 26. (10.)
+  Moons--Full, Blue, and Honey. Col. Jan. 3. (12.)
+  Turquoise Skies. Col. Feb. 7. (10.)
+
+#Joor, Harriet.# (_H._)
+  Passing of the Littlest Twin. Mid. Nov.-Dec., '19. (5:260.)
+  Ship Island Box. Mid. Nov.-Dec., '19. (5:263.)
+
+#Jordan, Elizabeth (Garver).# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *At the Dim Gate. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (5.)
+  *Luncheon at One. Col. Aug. 21. (5.)
+
+#Jordan, Kate. (Mrs. F. M. Vermilye.)# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Made Over. S. E. P. July 3. (12.)
+
+*"#Joyce, Thomas.#" (#Joyce Gary.#)
+  **Bad Samaritan. S. E. P. July 3. (40.)
+  Consistent Woman. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (30.)
+  **Cure. S. E. P. May 1. (30.)
+  None But the Brave. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (18.)
+  **Piece of Honesty. S. E. P. June 26. (66.)
+  *Reformation. S. E. P. May 22. (20.)
+  Springs of Youth. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (30.)
+
+#Judson, Jeanne.#
+  Her Man. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (13.)
+
+#Julius, Emanuel Haldeman-# (1888- .), _and_ #Julius, Mrs. Emanuel
+Haldeman-.#) (_See 1919._) (_See 1917, 1918 under_ #Julius, Emanuel
+Haldeman.#
+  **Caught. Atl. Nov., '19. (124:628.)
+
+
+#Kahler, Hugh MacNair.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  Babel. S. E. P. June 19. (6.)
+  Buckpasser. Sept. 11. (5.)
+  Hammer. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (12.)
+  KWYW.  S. E. P. Feb. 7. (8.)
+  Lazy Duckling. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (6.)
+  Obligee. S. E. P. Jul. 17. (8.)
+  Sensible Year. S. E. P. May 8. (6.)
+  Wild Carrot. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (8.)
+
+#Kavanagh, Herminie Templeton.# (_See "H" under_ #Templeton, Herminie.#)
+  **Bridgeen and the Leprechaun. L. H. J. Sept. (26.)
+
+#Kelland, Clarence Budington.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Appetite for Marriage. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (24.)
+  Backwoods Chess. Ev. Sept. (27.)
+  Cheese in the Trap. Ev. June. (15.)
+  His Wife's Place. Ev. Nov., '19. (16.)
+  Ivanhoe Sagg's Keynote. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (28.)
+  Knots and Wind-Shakes. Ev. Apr. (39.)
+  Martha Jib on the High Seas. Pict. R. Sep. (27.)
+  *Mysterious Murder of Myron Goodspeed. Am. Sept. (20.)
+  Scattergood Administers Soothing Sirup. Am. Jan. (52.)
+  *Scattergood and the Prodigal's Mother. Am. Jul. (28.)
+  Scattergood Borrows a Grandmother. Am. Dec., '19. (20.)
+  Scattergood Dips in His Spoon. Am. Nov., '19. (50.)
+  Scattergood Invests in Salvation. Am. Mar. (28.)
+  Scattergood Matches Wits with a Pair of Sharpers. Am. Oct., '19. (40.)
+  Scattergood Meddles with the Dangerous Age. Am. June. (56.)
+  Scattergood Moves to Adjourn. Am. May. (62.)
+  Scattergood Skims a Little Cream. Am. Aug. (40.)
+
+#Kelley, Leon.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  Carnival Queen. Pict. R. May. (6.)
+  "Speeches Ain't Business." Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (14.)
+
+#Kelly, Eleanor Mercein.# (1880- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Our Mr. Allerby. Cen. Apr. (99:737.)
+
+#Kelsey, Vera.#
+  **Late Harvests. Sun. Mar. (40.)
+
+#Kemper, S. H.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *O You Xenophon! Atl. Jul. (126:39.)
+
+*#Kennedy, Rowland.#
+  *Flame. Dial. Feb. (68:221.)
+  **Preparing for Passengers. Dial. Feb. (68:228.)
+  *Talkin'. Dial. Feb. (68:224.)
+
+#Kennon, Harry B.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Grandmother's Ghost. Mir. Nov. 13, '19. (28:784.)
+  Odd Roman. Mir, Jan. 8. (29:30.)
+  Single Cussedness. Mir. Jul. 22. (29:581.)
+
+#Kenton, Edna.# (1876- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  *Branch of Wild Crab. L. St. Sept. (55.)
+
+#Kenyon, Camilla E. L.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  His Professional Honor. Sun. June. (36.)
+  Lost Uncle. Sun. May. (41.)
+
+#Kerr, Sophie.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_See
+"H" under_ #Underwood, Sophie Kerr.#)
+  *Genius. W. H. C. Feb. (21.)
+  Sitting On the World. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (16.)
+
+#Kilbourne, Fannie. ("Mary Alexander.")# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918 under_
+#Kilbourne, Fannie#, _and 1917 under_ #Alexander, Mary.#)
+  Betty Bell and the Leading Man. Del. Jan. (11.)
+  Getting Even with Dulcie. Am. May. (23.)
+  James Dunfield Grows Up. Del. Oct., '19. (22.)
+  Stealing Cleopatra's Stuff. Am. June. (23.)
+
+#King, J. A.#
+  Solid Comfort. Am. Sept. (70.)
+
+#Kirkland, Jeanne.#
+  *Old Miss Mamie Dearborn's Helmet. Pag. June. (22.)
+  Ralph's Return. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (22.)
+
+#Knibbs, Henry Herbert.# (1874- .)
+  *Horse Deal in Hardpan. Pop. Sept. 20. (52.)
+
+#Knight, (Clifford) Reynolds.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  ***Melody Jim. Mid. Nov.-Dec. '19. (5:271.)
+
+*#Kobrin, Leon.#
+  **Lithuanian Idyll. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:236.)
+
+#Komroff, Manuel.# (_See 1919._)
+  ***Thumbs. (_R._) Mir. Jan. 22. (29:55.)
+
+*#Kotsyubinsky, Michael.#
+  ***By the Sea. Asia. May. (20:411.)
+
+"#Kral, Carlos A. V.#" (1890- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Landscape with Trees, and Colored Twilight with Music. Lit. R.
+  Jan. (4.)
+
+#Kraus, Harry.#
+  Interlude. S. S. Apr. (113.)
+
+
+#La Motte, Elen Newbold.# (1873- .) (_See 1919._)
+  ***Golden Stars. Cen. Oct., '19. (98:787.)
+  **Malay Girl. Cen. Aug. (100:555.)
+  *Widows and Orphans. Cen, Sept. (100:586.)
+
+#Langebek, Dorothy May Wyon.# (_See 1919._)
+  **"Seven." Mid. June. (6:64.)
+
+*#Langlais, Marc.#
+  Against Orders. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 2, '19.
+
+#Lapham, Frank.# (_See 1919._)
+  Telegram That Johnny Didn't See. Am. Oct., '19. (21.)
+
+#La Parde, Malcolm.#
+  Still Waters. Harp. M. Jul. (141:273.)
+
+#Lardner, Ring W.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Beautiful Katie, S. E. P. Jul. 10. (14.)
+  Busher Pulls a Mays. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (16.)
+
+#Larson, Mabel Curtius.#
+  Spark. L. H. J. Feb. (13.)
+
+*#Lawrence, David Herbert.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Adolf. Dial. Sept. (69:269.)
+
+#Lawson, Cora Schilling.# (_See 1919._)
+  "Which Woman, John?" Am. Mar. (56.)
+
+#Lazar, Maurice.# (_See 1917._)
+  Heavenly Sophists. S. S. Dec., '19. (116.)
+
+#Lea, Fannie Heaslip. (Mrs. H. P. Agee.)# (1884- .) (_See 1915, 1916,
+1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Crooked Stick. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (22.)
+  Happily Ever After. Del. Apr.
+  Miss Casabianca. Del. Mar. (9.)
+  Story Not Without Words. Del. June. (11.)
+
+#Leach, Paul R.#
+  Nerves. Col. Jul. 10. (8.)
+
+*#Le Barillier, Berthe Carianne.# _See_ "#Bertheroy, Jean.#"
+
+#Lebhar, Bertram.#
+  Athletics for Cold Cash. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (23.)
+
+#Le Boutillier, Cornelia Geer.# (1894- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919 under_
+#Geer, Cornelia Throop.#)
+  **Chaff. Scr. Aug. (68:204.)
+  Picking and Stealing. Col. Jan. 31. (17.)
+
+#Lee, Jennette (Barbour Perry.)# (1860- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Cat and the King. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (10.)
+  'Twixt Cup and Lip. L. H. J. Jan. (23.)
+
+#Lee, Muna.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Dream. S. S. Oct., '19. (125.)
+  *Moonlight Sonata. S. S. Mar. (81.)
+  **Years Ahead. S. S. Dec., '19. (99.)
+
+*#Lehmann, René.#
+  Sensation Hunter. N. Y. Trib. May 23.
+
+#Lemly, Rowan Palmer.#
+  *Pagari. L. H. J. Apr. (24.)
+
+#Leo, Rita Wellman.# _See_ #Wellman, Rita.#
+
+"#Lessing, Bruno.#" (#Rudolph Block.#) (1870- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Explosion of Leah. Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (6.)
+  Treating 'Em Rough. Pict. R. Sept. (42.)
+
+*#Level, Maurice.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Begar. Hear. Apr. (12.)
+  *Debt Collector. Hear. Nov., '19. (40.)
+  ***Empty House. Hear. Sept. (20.)
+  **Extenuating Circumstances. Hear. Oct., '19. (25.)
+  ***Kennel. Hear. Aug. (16.)
+  ***Maniac. Hear. Mar. (12.)
+  ***Son of His Father. Hear. Jul. (22.)
+  *Ten-Fifty Express. Hear. June. (33.)
+
+#Leverage, Henry.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Sea Beef. B. C. Apr. (3.)
+  *Uncharted. Adv. Oct. 3., '19. (129.)
+
+#Levick, Milnes.# (_See 1919._)
+  *In Court. S. S. Oct., '19. (123.)
+  **Jest in the Household. S. S. Dec., '19. (126.)
+  Out of Modoc. S. S. June. (71.)
+
+#Levison, Eric.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  **Gloria in Excelsis. T. T. Jan. (63.)
+  *Home. T. T. June. (35.)
+  **Mordecai. T. T. Nov., '19. (41.)
+  *Where There Is No Light. T. T. Dec., '19. (29.)
+
+#Lewars, Elsie Singmaster.# _See_ #Singmaster, Elsie.#
+
+#Lewis, Addison.# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Mrs. Dinehart. Mir. Dec. 11. '19. (28:882.)
+
+#Lewis, Margaret Cameron.# _See_ #Cameron, Margaret.#
+
+#Lewis, Orlando Faulkland.# (1873- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Alma Mater. Red Bk. June. (53.)
+
+#Lewis, Orlando Faulkland# (_con._)
+  Case of Aunt Mary. L. H. J. Feb. (21.)
+  Man to Man. L. H. J. Jan. (13.)
+
+#Lewis, Oscar.# (_See 1916._)
+  Face Is Unfamiliar. S. S. Mar. (41.)
+  Girl Who Accepted No Compromise. S. S. Aug. (65.)
+
+#Lewis, Sinclair.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Bronze Bars. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (12.)
+  Danger--Run Slow. S. E. P. Oct. 18, 25, '19. (3, 22.)
+  Habeas Corpus. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (10.)
+  Way I See It. S. E. P. May 29. (14.)
+
+*#Lichtenberger, André.# (1870- .) (_H._)
+  ***Old Fisherwoman. Pag. Oct., '19. (6.)
+
+#Lighton, William R(heem).# (1866- .), _and_ #Lighton, Louis Duryea.#
+(_See 1916,  1917, 1918; and 1915, 1916,  1917, 1919, and "H" under_
+#Lighton, William Rheem.#)
+  Why Olaf Proposed in the Month of March. Am. Jan. (38.)
+
+#Lindsay, Donald.#
+  Old Violets. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (4.)
+
+#Livingstone, Florence Bingham.#
+  Who Will Kiss Miss Parker? Sun. Dec., '19. (29.)
+
+#Lockwood, Scammon.# (_See 1916._)
+  Girl Who Slept in Bryant Park. L. H. J. Feb. (26.)
+
+#Loud, Lingard.#
+  Mister Jolly Well Murders His Wife. S. E. P. June 26. (20.)
+  Pink Knickers and the Desperate Ship. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (16.)
+
+*#Louÿs, Pierre.#
+  **Birth of Prometheus. Mun. Oct., '19. (68:81.)
+  ***False Esther. Mir. June 24. (29:511.)
+
+#Lovewell, Reinette.#
+  All Mrs. Flaherty's Fault. Am. Nov., '19. (28.)
+
+#Lowe, Corinne.# (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Single Fellows. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (10.)
+
+#Lurie, R. L.#
+  Quick Work by Philip. Am. May. (57.)
+
+*#Lyons, A(lbert Michael) Neil.# (1880- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Deputy. Ev. May. (44.)
+  **Mr. and Mrs. Oddy. Ev. Jul. (42.)
+
+
+#Mabie, Louise Kennedy.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Mystery of the Red-Haired Girl, Am. Apr. (23.)
+
+#McClure, John.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  *Tale of Krang. L. St. Nov., '19. (63.)
+
+#McCourt, Edna Wahlert.# (_See 1915, 1917._)
+  ***Lichen. Dial. May. (68:586.)
+
+#McCrea, Marion.# (_See 1918._)
+  Miss Vannah of Our Ad-Shop. Ev. June. (44.)
+
+#McDonnell, Eleanor Kinsella.#
+  Let's Pretend. L. H. J. Jul. (16.)
+
+#MacFarlane, Peter Clark.# (1871- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Guile of Woman. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (28.)
+  In the Game Called Life. L. H. J. May. (7.)
+  Mad Hack Henderson. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (24.)
+
+#McGibney, Donald.#
+  Come-Back. L. H. J. Jul. (18.)
+  Shift of Fate. L. H. J. Aug. (22.)
+  When the Desert Calls. L. H. J. May. (23.)
+  White Angel. L. H. J. June. (22.)
+
+#MacGowan, Alice# (1858- .), and #Cooke, Grace MacGowan# (1863- .)
+(_See 1915 under_ #Cooke, Grace MacGowan#; _1916, 1917 under_
+#MacGowan, Alice#; _"H" under both heads._)
+  Little Girl Eve. S. E. P. June 26. (16.)
+
+#McGuirk, Charles J.#
+  Fogarty's Flivver. Col. June 5. (23.)
+
+#Mackendrick, Marda.# (_See 1919._)
+  Jean--In the Negative. Met. Mar. (29.)
+
+*#MacManus, L.#
+  ***Baptism. Cath. W. Sept. (111:780.)
+
+#MacManus, Seumas.# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Conaleen and Donaleen. Pict. R. Sept. (15.)
+  ***Heart-Break of Norah O'Hara. Pict. R. Mar. (8.)
+  ***Lad from Largymore. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (21.)
+
+*#McNeille, Cyril ("Sapper").# (1888- .) (_See 1917, 1919 under_
+"#Sapper.#")
+  *"Good Hunting, Old Chap." Harp. B. Sept. (52.)
+
+*#Mac-Richard, J.#
+  Electric Shoes. N. Y. Trib. Jul. 25.
+
+#Macy, J. Edward.#
+  *Sea Ginger. Scr. Sept. (68:343.)
+
+*#Madrus, Lucie Delarue-.#  _See_ #Delarue-Madrus, Lucie.#
+
+#Mahoney, James.#
+  *Showing Up of Henry Widdemer. McCall. Aug. (12.)
+
+#Mann, Jane.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  ***Heritage. Cen. Nov., '19. (99:47.)
+
+#Manning, Marie. (Mrs. Herman E. Gasch.)# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  Liver Bank. Harp. M. Aug. (141:382.)
+
+*#Marchand, Leopold.#
+  In Extremis. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 29.
+
+#Markey, Gene.#
+  Bugler. Scr. June. (67:704.)
+
+#Marquis, Don (Robert Perry).# (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  Bubbles. S. E. P. Jul. 31. (10.)
+  *Kale. Ev. Sept. (46.)
+  *Never Say Die. Ev. Apr. (73.)
+
+#Marquis, Neeta.#
+  Violets for Sentiment. S. S. Sept. (65.)
+
+#Marriott, Crittenden.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  *What Dreams May Come True. L. St. Mar. (27.)
+
+#Marsden, Griffis.# (_See 1919._)
+  Enter Lucy. Sun. Aug. (25.)
+  Here Comes the Bride! Sun. Sept. (28.)
+  Marrying Them. Sun. Nov., '19. (20.)
+  Wrong Medicine. Sun. Jan. (26.)
+
+#Marshall, Bernard.#
+  Spilled Beans. Sun. Feb. (29.)
+
+#Marshall, Edison.# (1894- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  Argali the Ram. Met. Jan.-Feb. (21:38.)
+  "Count a Thousand--Slow--Between Each Drop." Am. Mar. (44.)
+  **Elephant Remembers. Ev. Oct., '19. (17.)
+  Its Name Will Be Long-Ear Joe. Met. June. (34.)
+  "Never Stop--Never Give Up." Am. June. (14.)
+  *Shadow of Africa. All. Nov. 1, '19. (103:332.)
+
+#Martin, Helen R(eimensnyder).# (1868- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  Birdie Reduces. Cen. May. (100:136.)
+
+*#Martovitch, Les.#
+  **Dance. Dial. Jul. (69:47.)
+
+*#Mason, Alfred Edward Woodley.# (1865- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Pilgrimage. Rom. Mar. (3.)
+
+#Mason, Elmer Brown.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Does Money Talk? Col. Jul. 24. (16.)
+
+#Mason, Grace Sartwell.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Charm. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (8.)
+  ***His Job. Scr. Apr. (67:470.)
+  *Shining Moment. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (34.)
+
+#Mason, Gregory.# (1889- .)
+  Jade Idol. Met. Feb. (23.)
+
+#Mason, Laura Kent.#
+  On Receiving a Luncheon Invitation. S. S. Dec., '19. (53.)
+
+#Masson, Thomas L(ansing).# (1866- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  "Nibs." Met. Oct., '19. (38.)
+
+#Matteson, Herman Howard.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+   He Is Singing to Me. Col. Dec. 20, '19. (12.)
+  "No Abaft This Notice." Sun. Apr. (33.)
+
+"#Maxwell, Helena.#" (#Mrs. Baker Brownell.#) (1896- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Adolescence. Pag. Apr.-May. (5.)
+  *Her First Appearance. Lib. May. (24.)
+
+#May, Eric Paul.#
+  Proposal. S. S. Oct., '19. (34.)
+
+#Means, Eldred Kurtz.# (1878- .) (_See 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Concerning a Red Head. Peop. Aug. (9.)
+  **Plumb Nauseated. All. Mar. 13. (108:19.)
+  *Prize-Money. All. June 26. (111:483.)
+  *Proof of Holy Writ. Mun. Sept. (70:645.)
+  *Ten-Share Horse. Mun. May. (69:605.)
+
+#Mears, Mary M.#  (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  ***Forbidden Thing. Met. Apr. (22.)
+
+*#Merrick, Leonard.# (1864- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  *"I Recall a Seat." Harp. B. Jul. (50.)
+  *That Villain Her Father. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (16.)
+  ***To Daphne De Vere. McC. Feb. (13.)
+
+#Merwin, Samuel.# (1874- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Utter Selfishness of J. A. Peters. McC. Mar.-Apr. (18.)
+
+#Meyer, Josephine Amelia.# (1864-.) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Cave Stuff. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (53.)
+
+#Mezquida, Anna Blake.# (_See 1915._)
+  Don't Be Too Sure--Mr. Hurd! Am. Jan. (11.)
+
+#Michener, Carroll K.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Dragon-Tongued Orchid. Sn. St. Aug. 18. (51.)
+  *Golden Dragon. McC. Jul (18.)
+
+#Milbrite, Felden E.#
+  Étude for the Organ. S. S. Aug. (126.)
+
+*#Mille, Pierre.# (1864- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **"End of the World." N. Y. Trib. Mar. 14.
+  Truth of History. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 8.
+
+#Miller, Alice Duer.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Slow Poison. S. E. P. June 12. (8.)
+
+#Miller, Helen Topping.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  *B-Flat Barto. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (32.)
+  *Damour Blood. B. C. May. (19.)
+
+#Miller, Mary Britton.#
+  **From Morn to Dewy Eve. Touch. Feb. (6:299.)
+  **Sicilian Idyl. Touch. Jan. (6:218.)
+
+#Millis, Walter.#
+  *Second Mate. Adv. Aug. 3. (51.)
+
+#Millring, Ruth Brierley.#
+  Homely Is As Homely Does. Del. Jan. (6.)
+
+#Minnigerode, Meade.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  Ball of Fire. Col. Apr. 10. (15.)
+  Ground Floor Front. Col. May 29. (15.)
+  Jimmy Repays. Col. Feb. 14. (10.)
+  Monkeying with the Buzz Saw. Col. Mar. 6. (18.)
+  Mysteries. Col. Mar. 27. (13.)
+  Pure Gold. Col. Jan. 17. (12.)
+
+#Mitchell, Mary Esther#, (1863- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **"Vendoo." Harp. M. June. (141:107.)
+
+#Mitchell, Ruth Comfort.# (#Mrs. Sanborn Young.#) (_See 1916, 1917,
+1918, 1919._)
+  Bad Boy. Del. Apr. (20.)
+  Carriage Waits. Ev. Dec., '19. (34.)
+  Poor Mister Morrison. Mir. Dec. 11, '19. (28:876.)
+
+#Mitchell, Ruth Comfort#, _and_ #Young, William Sanborn.#
+  Ranching of Nan. Del. Jul.-Aug. (7.)
+
+*#Monro, Harold.#
+  ***Parcel of Love. Lit. R. Nov., '19. (16.)
+
+#Montague, Margaret Prescott.# (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge. Atl. June. (125:721.)
+
+#Mooney, Ralph E.# (_See 1919._)
+  Between Six O'Clock and Midnight. L. H. J. May. (9.)
+  Miss Kent Understands. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (50.)
+  Professor Comes Back. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (21.)
+
+*#Moore, Leslie.#
+  **Magician of Globes. Cath. W. Aug. (111:631.)
+
+#Moravsky, Maria.# (1890- .) (_See 1919._)
+  **Bracelet from the Grave. Rom. Jul. (156.)
+  *Remembrance that Kills. L. St. Sept. (3.)
+  **White Camels. Met. May. (25.)
+
+*#Mordaunt, Elinor.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Adventures in the Night. Met. June. (11.)
+  ***Ginger Jar. Met. Nov., '19. (17.)
+
+#Morgan, J. L.#
+  For the World's Championship. S. S. Jan. (31.)
+  Literature. S. S. Feb. (27.)
+  Personally Conducted. S. S. Oct., '19. (69.)
+
+#Morley, Felix.#
+  *Legend of Nantucket. O. O. June. (2:214.)
+
+#Moroso, John Antonio.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Danny's Gold Star. L. H. J. Apr. (16.)
+  Glint of Gold. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (24.)
+  House in the Woods. L. H. J. Feb. (23.)
+  Sweet Sally Magee. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (32.)
+
+#Mosher, John Chapin.#
+  Belle Hobbs. S. S. May. (63.)
+
+#Mumford, Ethel Watts.# (#Mrs. Ethel Watts-Mumford Grant.#) (1878- .)
+(_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Look of the Copperleys. L. H. J. Apr. (8.)
+  Manifestation of Henry Ort. Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (22.)
+  *Unto Her a Child Was Born. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (9.)
+
+#Munsterberg, Margarete.#
+  *Silent Music. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:57.)
+
+#Murray, Roy Irving.# (1882- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._)
+  ***Substitute. Scr. Jul. (68:82.)
+
+#Muth, Edna Tucker.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._)
+  ***Gallipeau. Harp. M. Oct., 19. (139:721.)
+  Tidal Waif. Sun. Oct., '19. (39.)
+
+#Myers, Elizabeth (Fettor) Lehman.# (1869- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  **Autumn Blooming. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (22.)
+
+#Mygatt, Gerard.# (_H._)
+  Félice. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (20.)
+  Starter. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (8.)
+
+
+
+#Neidig, William Jonathan.# (1870- .) (_See 1916 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bloodhound. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (10.)
+  *Brother Act. S. E. P. Jul. 31. (12.)
+  Shansi Woman. Ev. Aug. (9.)
+  Stained Fingers. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (18.)
+  Sweat of Her Brow. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (18.)
+
+*#Nervo, Amado.#
+  **Leah and Rachel. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:7.)
+
+*#Nevinson, Henry W(oodd).# (1852- .) (_H._)
+  ***In Diocletian's Day. Atl. Oct. '19. (124:472.)
+
+*#Newton, W. Douglas.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Life o' Dreams. Sn. St. Mar. 4. (75.)
+
+#Nicholson, Meredith.# (1866- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Housewarming. L. H. J. May. (28.)
+  My Roger. Del. Nov., '19. (8.)
+
+#Niles, Blair.#
+  **Tropic Frogs. Harp. M.  Apr. (140:671.)
+
+*#Nodier, Charles.# (1780-1844.)
+  ***Bibliomaniac. Strat. J. Oct.-Dec. (5:177.)
+
+#Norris, Kathleen.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Engine Trouble. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (28.)
+  Friday the 13th. G. H. Nov., '19. (17.)
+  "God's in His Heaven." G. H. Oct., '19. (15.)
+  Home. G. H. Sept. (27.)
+  Silvester Birch's Child. G. H. Mar. (30.)
+  With Christmas Love from Barbara. G. H. Dec., '19. (26.)
+
+*#Noyes, Alfred.# (1880- .) (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Beyond the Desert. Red Bk. Aug. (57.)
+  Bill's Phantasm. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (20.)
+  *Court-Martial. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (18.)
+  *Troglodyte. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (22.)
+  *Wine Beyond the World. S. E. P. May 8. (5.)
+
+
+#O'Brien, Frederick.# (_See 1919 under_ #O'Brien, Frederick#, _and_
+#Lane, Rose Wilder.#)
+  ***Jade Bracelet of Ah Queen. Col. May 22. (5.)
+  *Taboo of Oomoa. Harp. B. June. (60.)
+
+#O'Brien, Mary Heaton Vorse.# _See_ #Vorse, Mary (Marvin) Heaton.#
+
+"#O'Grady, R.#" (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  ***Brothers. Mid. Jan.-Mar. (6:7.)
+
+#O'Hagan, Anne. (Anne O'Hagan Shinin.)# (1869- .) (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Return. Touch. Jan. (6: 181.)
+
+#O'Hara, Frank Hurburt.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  *Life of Eddie Slaggin. Pict. R. Apr. (24.)
+  Now Wasn't that Just Like Father! Am. Jul. (62.)
+
+#O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Story of Big Dan Reilly. McC. Mar.-Apr. (25.)
+  ***Story of Mrs. Murchison. McC. May-June. (25, 27.)
+  ***Strange Case of Warden Jupp. McC. Aug. (27.)
+
+#Oliver, Owen.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Wanted: a Kind Fairy. Holl. Sept. (11.)
+
+#O'Malley, Austin.# (1858- .)
+  **Strong Box. (_R._) Mir. May 27. (29: 437.)
+
+#O'Neill, Agnes Boulton.# _See_ #Boulton, Agnes.#
+
+#Oppenheim, James.# (1882- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Rending. Dial. Jul. (69: 35.)
+
+#Oppenheimer, James.#
+  Sweet Kanuck. Met. Jan. (33.)
+
+#Osborne, William Hamilton.# (1873- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Amazing Indiscretion. Met. Apr.-May. (20, 18.)
+  Handsomely Trimmed. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (12.)
+  Rush to Cover. S. E. P. May 15. (12.)
+  Seeing Things Again. S. E. P. May 8. (18.)
+  Turn of the Wrist. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (32.)
+
+#Osbourne, Lloyd.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***East Is East. Met.  Apr. (11.)
+  Ghosts Go West. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (20.)
+
+#O'Sullivan, Vincent.# (1872- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  ***Dance-Hall at Unigenitus. S. S. Mar. (53.)
+
+#O'Toole, E. J.#
+  First Snow. Cath. W. Jan. (110:476.)
+
+*#Owen, H. Collinson.#
+  ***Temptation of Antoine. Pict. R. Sept. (5.)
+
+#Owen, Margaret Dale.#
+  *Point of View. All. Oct. 18, '19. (102:690.)
+
+"#Oxford, John Barton.#" _See_ #Shelton, Richard Barker.#
+
+
+#Paine, Albert Bigelow.# (1861- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Being a Landlord. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:929.)
+  Murphy's Kitchen. Harp. M. Feb. (140:424.)
+
+#Paine, Ralph Delahaye.# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Mrs. Tredick's Husband. Scr. Mar. (67:297.)
+
+#Pangborn, Georgia Wood.# (1872- .) (_See 1911, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  *Andy MacPherson's House. Rom. Aug. (78.)
+  **Children of Mount Pyb. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:98.)
+  *When the Ice Went Out. Rom. May. (72.)
+
+#Parkhurst, Genevieve.#
+  Blind Alleys. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (29.)
+
+#Parkhurst, Winthrop.#
+  Holy Matrimony. Pag. Nov.-Dec., '19. (23.)
+  Law of Averages. S. S. Apr. (91.)
+  Spooks. S. S. Nov., '19. (107.)
+
+#Parmenter, Christine Whiting.# (1877- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Christmas Magic. Am. Dec., '19. (29.)
+  "I Never Could Have Married Anybody Else." Am. Mar. (11.)
+  Jilted--Because of Her Clothes! Am. Feb. (29.)
+  Marcia Lets Her Conscience Take a Brief Vacation. Am. Jan. (20.)
+  Peach in Pink. Met. Jan. (42.)
+
+#Parsons, Lewis.#
+  Dick Tresco and the Yellow Streak. Am. Mar. (62.)
+  Wonderful Dog with a Dual Nature. Am. Oct., '19. (14.)
+
+#Partridge, Edward Bellamy.# (_See 1916._)
+  Floating Foot. Met. Aug. (31.)
+  *Loan Shark. Met. June. (18.)
+
+#Pattullo, George.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Captain. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (8.)
+  Madame Patsy, the Gusher Queen. S. E. P. May 22. (10.)
+  Oo, Là, Là! S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (30.)
+  *Romance of Thomás Dozal. S. E. P. June 19. (3.)
+
+#Payne, Elizabeth Stancy.#
+  *Trying Age. Ev. Jan. (55.)
+
+#Payne, Will.# (1855- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Age of Chivalry. Det. N. Jul. 18. (pt. 6 p. 6.)
+  *Eye for an Eye. Cos. Aug. (75.)
+  *Lucky Mary. Red Bk. Mar. (59.)
+  *Unbidden Guest. Cos. Sept. (75.)
+
+#Pearce, Theodocia.#
+  Little Spice Out of Life. L. H. J. Aug. (20.)
+
+#Pearsall, Robert J.# (_H._)
+  *Escape. Adv. Aug. 18. (166.)
+
+#Pelley, William Dudley.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Auctioneer. Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (24.)
+  **Conversion of John Carver. Red Bk. Oct., '19. (23.)
+  *Devil Dog. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (26.)
+  *February-Third Joe. All. Feb. 28. (107:342.)
+  *They Called Her Old Mother Hubbard. Red Bk. Dec., '19. (64.)
+  *Trails to Santa Fé. Red Bk. Sept. (78.)
+
+#Peltier, Florence.#
+  *Left-Handed Jingoro and the Irate Landlord. Asia. Sept. (20:802.)
+
+"#Pendleton, T. D.#" _see_ #Cummins#, #T. D. Pendleton.#
+
+#Perry, Clay.#
+   White Light. Met. June. (29.)
+
+#Perry, Lawrence.# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+   Dilettante. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (12.)
+   Lothario of the Sea Bird. L. H. J. Aug. (16.)
+   Matter of Sentiment. Scr. Oct., '19. (66:438.)
+   Real Game. Ev. Jul. (13.)
+   Spoiled Boy. Ev. Nov., '19. (22.)
+
+#Perry, Montanye.#
+   Three Kings. Del. Dec., '19. (5.)
+
+*#Pertwee, Roland.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+   Elizabeth Anne. S. E. P. May 15. (16.)
+  *Mary Ottery. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (14.)
+   Various Relations. S. E. P. June 5. (16.)
+
+#Phillips, Michael James.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+   Silken Bully. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (10.)
+
+*#Phillpotts, Eden.# (1862- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Amy Up a Tree. Del. June. (5.)
+  *Mother of the Rain. Rom. Mar. (78.)
+  *Tyrant. Cen. Feb. (99:450.)
+
+#Pickthall, Marjorie L(owry) C(hristie).# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Boy in the Corner. W. H. C. May. (17.)
+  *Name. Sun. Mar. (33.)
+ **Without the Light. G. H. Mar. (33.)
+
+#Picón, Jacinto Octavio.# (1852- .)
+***After the Battle. (_R._) Mir. Aug. 26. (29:664.)
+
+#Polk, Paul M.#
+  *Prayer and Faith. Tod. Oct., '19. (5.)
+
+#Porter, Harold Everett.# _see_ "#Hall, Holworthy.#"
+
+#Porter, Katherine Anne.#
+  *Adventures of Hadji. Asia. Aug. (20:683.)
+
+#Post, Melville Davisson.# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *House by the Loch. Hear. May. (35.)
+  *Lost Lady. McCall. June. (10.)
+***Yellow Flower. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (12.)
+
+#Potter, Jane Grey.#
+   Lass Who Loved a Sailor. Scr. May. (67:603.)
+   Strong Arm. Scr. Feb. (67:224.)
+
+#Pottle, Emery# (#Bemsley#). (1875- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Little House. Touch. Apr. (7:51.)
+
+#Pottle, Juliet Wilbor Tompkins.# _see_ #Tompkins, Juliet Wilbor.#
+
+#Pulver, Mary Brecht.# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Fortune's Favorites. Ev. Mar. (9.)
+  *Lucifer. Del. Feb. (7.)
+  *Wings of Love. Del. June. (13.)
+
+#Putnam, Nina Wilcox.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Comme Si, Comme Ça. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (10.)
+  Higher the Fewer. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (16.)
+  Immediate Possession. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (29.)
+  Price of Pickles. S. E. P. May 15. (8.)
+  Ring-Around-a-Rosy. S. E. P. June 12. (16.)
+  Seeing's Believing. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (14.)
+  Spiritualism Frumenti. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (6.)
+
+
+#Rabel, Du Vernet.#
+  Her Last Affair. L. H. J. Apr. (18.)
+  Kin of William the Norman. L. H. J. Jul. (22.)
+  Material Motives. Ev. Jan. (37.)
+  West Window. Met. Nov., '19. (30.)
+  You Can't Take That to Simpson's. Ev. Oct., '19. (24.)
+
+*#Rameau, Jean.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Nouveau Riche Cat. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 15.
+  ***Ocarina. N. Y. Trib. June 6.
+  *Prayer. N. Y. Trib. Mar. 7.
+
+#Ramsay, Robert E.#
+  Tabitha Mehitabel Sweet. L. H. J. June. (27.)
+
+#Ranck, Edwin Carty.# (1879- .) (_See 1916, 1918._)
+  Just Plain Dog. Met. Apr. (31.)
+
+#Raphaelson, Sampson.#
+  Great Li'l' Old Town. Del. May. (14.)
+
+#Ravenel, Beatrice Witte.# (1870- .) (_See 1919._)
+  Love Is Free. Harp. M. Feb. (140:346.)
+  *Something to Remember. Harp. M. Jan. (140:236.)
+
+#Ray, Marie Beynon.#
+  *Lost Marquise. S. S. Mar. (33.)
+  *Pride of Race. Harp. B. Dec., '19. (70.)
+
+#Redington, Sarah.# (_See 1919._)
+  Anne Thinks It Over. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:592.)
+  "Why I Dislike My Husband." Sun. June. (52.)
+
+#Reese, Lowell Otus.# (1866- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Bachelor. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (6.)
+  Behind the Velvet. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (12.)
+  Clink of the Spurs. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (40.)
+  Foster Fathers. Col. Sept. 11. (8.)
+  Table Butte. Col. May 29. (12.)
+
+*#Régis, Roger.# (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  Test. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 22.
+
+#Reid, M. F.#
+  Doodle Buys a Bull Pup. Ev. Aug. (64.)
+  *Initiation of Scorp-for-Short. Cen. Aug. (100:570.)
+
+#Reindel, Margaret H.# (1896- .)
+  ***Fear. Touch. Mar. (6:400.)
+
+"#Relonde, Maurice.#" (_See 1917._)
+  *Holy  Pilgrimage. Pag. Jan. (18.)
+
+#Rhodes, Harrison (Garfield).# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Fair Daughter of a Fairer Mother. Ev. Mar. (79.)
+  *Shy Ghost. McC. Sept. (29.)
+  *Small Frog. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:49.)
+  Style in Hats. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (16.)
+  Thomas Robinson's Affair with an Actress. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (10.)
+
+#Rice, Alice (Caldwell) Hegan.# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Nut. Cen. Nov., '19. (99:1.)
+
+#Rice, Cale Young.# (1872- .)
+  **Aaron Harwood. Cen. Jul. (100:346.)
+  *Lowry. Cen. Feb. (99:549.)
+
+#Rice, Louise.# (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Lubbeny Kiss. Ain. Oct.
+
+*#Richardson, Dorothy M.#
+  ***Sunday. (_R._) Mir. Oct. 16, '19. (28:709.)
+
+#Richardson, Norval.# (1877- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Bracelet. McC. Jul. (29.)
+
+*#Riche, Daniel.#
+  First Call. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 14, '19.
+  *Royal Canary. N. Y. Trib. Mar. 28.
+
+#Richens, Christine Eadie.#
+  Inner Enemy. Del. Mar. (15.)
+
+#Richter, Conrad.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Cabbages and Shoes. Ev. Mar. (61.)
+  Making of "Val" Pierce. Am. Apr. (30.)
+  Man Who Hid Himself. Am. Jul. (21.)
+
+#Rideout, Henry Milner.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Toad. S. E. P. June 19. (16.)
+
+#Rinehart, Mary Roberts.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Finders Keepers. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (3.)
+
+#Riper, Charles King Van.# _See_ #Van Riper, Charles King.#
+
+#Ritchie, Robert Welles.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Odd Case of the Second Back. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (28.)
+
+#Rivers, Stuart.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Circular Letter. Peop. Mar. (43.)
+  Fresh Guy. Met. Feb. (30.)
+  Genius. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (50.)
+
+#Robbins, Leonard H.# (1877- .)
+  "Ain't This the Darndest World!" Am. May. (70.)
+  Christmas Card. Met. Dec., '19 (42.)
+  Professor Todd's Used Car. Ev. Jul. (37.)
+
+#Roberts, Kenneth Lewis.# (1885- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Pergola Preferred. Col. Oct. 4, '19. (15.)
+
+#Roberts, Walter Adolphe.# (1886- .)
+  *Adventure of the Portrait. Ain. Mar. (111.)
+
+#Robinson, Mabel L.#
+  Daughter of a Diplomat. Del. Mar. (19.)
+  Dr. Tam O'Shanter. Del. Nov., '19. (19.)
+  Dr. Tam O'Shanter Comes to Town. Del. Jan. (15.)
+  Sakes Alive! Del. May. (23.)
+
+#Roche, Arthur Somers.# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Dummy-Chucker. Cos. June. (20.)
+
+#Roche, Mazo De La.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_See "H" under_ #De La
+Roche, Mazo.#)
+  *"D'ye Ken John Peel?" W. H. C. Nov., '19. (14.)
+  ***Explorers of the Dawn. Atl. Oct., '19. (124:532.)
+
+#Roe, Vingie E.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Black Rose of El Forja. Sun. Jul. (25.)
+  Land of Unforgetting. Pict. R. Sept. (10.)
+  "Let's Go with Honor." Sun. Oct., '19. (20.)
+  Monsieur Plays. Sun. Dec., '19. (17.)
+  Prides of Black Coulee. Pict. R. Mar. (12.)
+  Red Dapple. Ev. Aug. (22.)
+  Sign of High Endeavor. Met. Nov., '19. (38.)
+  Third Degree at Port O'Light. Met. Oct., '19. (13.)
+
+*"#Hohmer, Sax.#" (#Arthur Sarsfield Ward.#) (1883- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  House of the Golden Joss. Col. Aug. 7. (10.)
+  Man with the Shaven Skull. Col. Sept. 18. (8.)
+
+#Roof, Katharine Metcalf.# _(See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Exile. Touch. Feb. (6:314.)
+
+#Rosenblatt, Benjamin.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Stepping Westward. Mid. Sept.-Oct., '19. (5:217.)
+  **Transformation. Strat. J. Oct.-Dec., '19. (5:217.)
+
+*#Rosny, J. H.# _aîné._
+  Bolshevist Marat. N. Y. Trib. Sept. 26.
+  Girl in the Engraving. N. Y. Trib. June 27.
+
+#Roy, Manabendra Nath.# _See_ #Granich, Irwin# _and_ #Roy, Manabendra
+Nath.#
+
+*#Ruby, J. Bruno-.# _See_ #Bruno-Ruby, J.#
+
+#Rumsey, Frances.# (1886- .)
+  ***Cash. Cen. Aug. (100:433.)
+
+#Runkle, Bertha (Brooks). (Mrs. Louis H. Bash.)# (_H._)
+  Who's Who in America. Am. Oct., '19. (27.)
+
+#Russell, Alice Dyar.# (_See 1919._)
+  Her Birthright. Del. Apr. (9.)
+
+#Russell, John.# (1885- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *One Drop of Moonshine. McC. Mar.-Apr. (27.)
+  ***Wreck on Deliverance. Col. Oct. 4, '19. (5.)
+  Yellow Professor. Col. May 15. (12.)
+
+#Russell, Phillips.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Troubadour. S.S. Jan. (115.)
+
+"#Rutledge, Maryse.#" (#Maryse Rutledge Hale.#) ("#Marice Rutledge.#")
+(#Marie Louise Goetchius.#) (#Marie Louise van Saanen.#) (1884- .)
+(_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 under_ #Van Saanen, Marie Louise.#)
+(_See "H" under_ #Goetchius, Marie Louise.#)
+  ***House of Fuller. S. E. P. May 29. (30.)
+  **Thing They Loved. Cen. May. (100:110.)
+
+#Ryan, Kathryn White.# (_See 1919._)
+  ***Man of Cone. Mun. Mar. (69:231.)
+  **Mrs. Levering. Mun. Jul. (70:346.)
+  **Sea. All. May 1. (109:454.)
+  *Swine of Circe. S. S. Feb. (99.)
+
+#Ryerson, Florence.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Babs and the Little Gray Man. Aug. (21.)
+
+
+#Saanen, Marie Louise Van.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+*#Sabatini, Rafael.# (1875- .) (_H._)
+  *Scapulary. Rom. Aug. (49.)
+
+*#Saint-Valéry, Leon De.# _See_ #House, Roy Temple#, _and_
+#Saint-Valéry, Leon De.#
+
+#Saltus, Edgar (Evertson).# (1858- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Ghost Story. Mun. Jul. (70:224.)
+
+*#Saltykov, M. Y. ("N. Schedrin.")# (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  ***Wild Squire. S. S. June (123.)
+
+#Sangster, Margaret Elizabeth, Jr.# (1894- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918,
+1919._)
+  City Dust. G. H. May. (39.)
+
+#Saphier, William.# (1883- .)
+  ***Kites. Lit. R. Dec., '19.
+  **Wise Man. Lit. R. Mar. (7.)
+
+#Sapinsky, Joseph.#
+  *Crazy Gambler Paul. McCall. June. (14.)
+
+*"#Sapper.#" _See_ #McNeille, Cyril.#
+
+#Sawhill, Myra.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  How Much Did Good Clothes Help Bob Gilmore? Am. Sept. (39.)
+  Rev. Mr. Deering Sues His Congregation. Am. Jul. (39.)
+
+#Sawyer, Ruth.# (#Mrs. Albert C. Durand.#) (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916,
+1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Glorious Comedy. L. H. J. Jan. (10.)
+  Simple Simon and the Fourth Dimension. Ev. June. (54.)
+
+#Saxby, Charles.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Betrayal. Ev. Mar. (27.)
+  *Cucharo. Met. Dec., '19. (37.)
+  *In Camera. Ev. Feb. (23.)
+
+#Scarborough, Dorothy.# (_See 1918._)
+  **Drought. Cen. May. (100:12.)
+
+#Schauffler, Margaret Widdemer.# _See_ #Widdemer, Margaret.#
+
+*"#Schedrin#, N." _See_ #Saltykov, M. Y.#
+
+#Scheffauer, Herman George.# (1878- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Brother of the Woods. Mun. Mar. (69:307.)
+  **Drama in Dust. Mun. Feb. (69:111.)
+
+*#Scheffer, Robert.#
+  *Road of Long Ago. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 18.
+
+*#Schnitzler, Arthur.# (1862- .) (_See 1916._)
+  ***Crumbled Blossoms. Dial. June. (68:711.)
+
+#Scoggins, C. E.# (_See 1919._)
+  Home for Ho Fat Wun. L. H. J. June. (10.)
+
+#Scott, Arthur P.#
+  Yvette. Harp. M. Apr. (140:713.)
+
+#Scott, Donna R.#
+  Convictions. Pag. Oct., '19. (23.)
+
+#Scott, Margretta.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918._)
+  *Mrs. Lionel Felker--Accompanist. Mir. May 13. (29:388.)
+  Spring at Schlosser's. Mir. Mar. 11. (29:180.)
+
+#Scoville, Samuel, Jr.# (1872- .) (_H._)
+  Blackbear. L. H. J. Jan. (8.)
+  Cleanleys. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (7.)
+
+#Seaman, Augusta Huiell.# (_See 1919._)
+  Dream Bread. Del. Oct., '19. (21.)
+
+#Sedgwick, Anne Douglas. (Mrs. Basil, De Sélincourt.)# (1873- .) (_See
+1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Christmas Roses. Atl. Nov.-Dec., '19. (124:674, 796.)
+
+#Seeley, Herman Gastrell.# (1891- .)
+  *Craven. B. C. Aug. (46.)
+
+#Seifert, Shirley L.# (_See 1919._)
+  Nicest Boy. Del. Jul.-Aug. (17.)
+  P. Gadsby--Venturer. Met. May. (23.)
+  Terry's Youthful Ideal. Met. Nov., '19. (15.)
+  To-morrow. S. E. P. June 19. (20.)
+
+#Seifert, Marjorie Allen.# (1885- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  **Lizzie. Mir. Jul. 1. (29:527.)
+  Shipwreck. Mir. Dec. 25, '19. (28:953.)
+
+#Sélincourt, Mrs. Basil De.# _See_ #Sedgwick, Anne Douglas.#
+
+#Senior, Mary.#
+  **"Died of Other Causes." Touch. Oct., '19. (6:47.)
+
+#Sexton, Bernard.#
+  *How a Hermit Gained Kingdom and Treasure. Asia. Aug. (20:702.)
+  *Jackal and the Rats. Asia. June. (20:513.)
+  *King Discovers His First Gray Hair. Asia. Sept. (20:815.)
+  *Stonecutter and the Mouse. Asia. May. (20:378.)
+  *Tortoise Who Talked. Asia. Jul. (20:624.)
+
+#Shawe, Victor.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  In the Big Timber. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (21.)
+  Seattle Slim and the Two Per Cent Theory. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (12.)
+
+#Shelton (Richard), Barker.# (_See 1916, 1917 under_ "#Oxford, John
+Barton.#") (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bridegroom Cometh. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (38.)
+  *Little of Both. Ev. May. (37.)
+  *Private Performance. L. H. J. June. (16.)
+  Subjunctive Mood. Ev. Aug. (49.)
+
+#Shields, Gertrude M.# (1890- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Her Promised Land. Cen. Jul. (100:393.)
+
+#Shinn, Anne O'Hagan.# _See_ #O'Hagan, Anne.#
+
+#Shipp, Margaret Busbee.# (1871- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  Closed Gentians. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:171.)
+  Priscilla and Her Penates. Ev. Jan. (69.)
+
+#Shore, Nancy.#
+  **Secret of the Neals. Red Bk. Jan. (44.)
+
+#Shore, Viola Brothers.# (_See 1919._)
+  Cast Upon the Waters. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (42.)
+  Dimi and the Double Life. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (18.)
+  "Hand That Jerks the Strings." Am. Jan. (27.)
+  We Can't Afford It. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (16.)
+  Young Adventuress. S. E. P. June 19. (49.)
+
+#Shute, Henry Augustus.# (1856- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Scholastic Fourth. Del. Jul.-Aug. (5.)
+
+#Sidney, Rose.# (1888- .) (_See 1919._)
+  ***Butterflies. Pict. R. Sept. (12.)
+
+#Simpson, Robert.#
+  *Whoso Diggeth a Pit. Met. Feb. (15.)
+
+#Sinclair, May.# (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  ***Fame. Pict. R. May. (10.)
+
+#Singmaster, Elsie. (Elsie Singmaster Lewards.)# (1879- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Madness of Henrietta Havisham. McCall. Feb. (5.)
+  ***Miss Vilda. Scr. Jul. (68:98.)
+  ***Salvadora. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:135.)
+
+#Slyke, Lucille Baldwin Van.# _See_ #Van Slyke, Lucille Baldwin.#
+
+*#Smale, Fred C.# (_See 1916, 1919._)
+  *Experts. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:624.)
+
+#Smith, Elizabeth Parker.#
+  Algy Allen's Celadon. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:684.)
+
+#Smith, Garret.#
+  *Host at No. 10. Met. Jan. (23.)
+  Old Hutch Lives Up to It. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (14.)
+
+#Smith, Gordon Arthur.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Bottom of the Cup. Scr. Mar. (67:355.)
+  *No Flowers. Harp. M. May. (140:785.)
+  They All Go Mad in June. Ev. June. (20.)
+
+#Smith, Maxwell.# (_See 1919._)
+  Dated. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (18.)
+  Funny Fingers. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (12.)
+
+#Sneddon, Robert W.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Bank of Love. Arg. June 12. (122:23.)
+  *Bonds of Bohemia. Arg. Jul. 17. (123:203.)
+  *Figures of Wax. Sn. St. Nov. 18, '19. (*7.)
+  *Full o' the Moon. L. St. May. (15.)
+  *"Golden Snail Is Born." L. St. Oct., '19. (19.)
+  *Guardian Angels of Charlot. T.T. Aug. (53.)
+  *Little Finot. Sn. St. Feb. 18. (33.)
+  *Love and Lions. Ain. Apr. (46.)
+
+Solano, Solita.
+  Her Honeymoon. S. S. June. (57.)
+
+#Solomons. Theodore Seixa.# (_See 1915._)
+  *In the Maw of the Ice. Adv. Sept. 3. (75.)
+
+#Spears, Raymond Smiley.# (1876- .) (_See 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Bump. Col. Feb. 28. (6.)
+
+#Sprague, J. R.#
+  Expired Loans. S. E. P. May 1. (20.)
+  Factory Chasers. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (22.)
+  Nothing But Business. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (30.)
+
+#Springer, Fleta Campbell.# (1886- .) (_See 1915 1916, 1918; see 1917
+under_ #Campbell, Fleta.#) (_H._)
+  ***Civilization. Harp. M. March. (140:544.)
+  *Romance. Mun. Aug. (70:556.)
+  ***Rotter. Harp. M. Jul. (141:157.)
+
+#Stabler, Harry Snowden.# (_H._)
+  *Zebra Mule. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (5.)
+
+*#Stacpoole, Henry De Vere Stacpoole-.# (1865- .) (_See 1916,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Middle Bedroom. All. Nov. 29, '19. (104:199.)
+
+#Starrett, Vincent.# (_See 1918._)
+  End of the Story. S. S. Sept. (25.)
+  Penny Walk. Mir. Mar. 18. (29:205.)
+
+#Stearns, M. M.# _See_ "#Amid, John.#"
+
+#Steele, Alice Garland. (Mrs. T. Austin-Ball.)# (1880- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Awake, Thou Sleeper! Wom. W. Apr. (7.)
+  Blossom in Waste Places. Am. Aug. (57.)
+  Same Old Corker. Am. Dec., '19. (54.)
+
+#Steele, Rufus (Milas).# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Trouble Doc. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (32.)
+
+#Steele, Wilbur Daniel.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Both Judge and Jury. Harp. M. Jan. (140:179.)
+  *Clay and the Cloven Hoof. Harp. M. Oct.-Nov., '19. (139:683; 889.)
+  ***Out of Exile. Pict. R. Nov., '19. (14.)
+  ***God's Mercy. Pict. R. Jul. Aug. (17.)
+
+*#Stéphane, B.#
+  *Adéle. N. Y. Trib. Jul. 4.
+
+#Stephens, James.# (_See 1915, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Boss. Dial. Apr. (68:411.)
+  ***Desire. Dial. June. (68:277.)
+  ***Thieves. Dial. Aug. (69:142.)
+
+#Stetson, Cushing.# (_H._)
+  Third Light from a Match. Met. Aug. (32.)
+
+"#Stevens, Margaret Dean.#" _See_ #Aldrich, Bess Streeter.#
+
+#Stevenson, Philip E.#
+  *Reward of a Prodigal. Lit. St. June. (19.)
+
+*#Stock, Ralph.# (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Out of the Rut. Col. Jan. 10. (13.)
+
+#Stolper, B. J.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *New Moon. Rom. Nov., '19. (105.)
+
+"#Storm, Ethel.#" (_See 1917._)
+  ***Three Telegrams. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (20.)
+
+#Strahan, Kay Cleaver.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Dollars and Sense. Am. June. (70.)
+  Imitation Paradise. Del. May. (10.)
+  Mr. Machiavelli. Del. Oct., '19. (23.)
+
+#Street, Julian (Leonard).# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Case of Mrs. Allison. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (5.)
+  ***Hands. McC. Sept. (8.)
+
+#Streeter, Edward.# (1891- .)
+  Back to Nature--and Back. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (12.)
+  *Laughing Horse of Gallup Street. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (3.)
+
+#Stribling, T. S.#
+  Passing of the St. Louis Bearcat. Ev. Dec., '19. (51.)
+
+#Stringer, Arthur (John Arbuthnott).# (1874- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Cuff Shooter. S. E. P. May 22. (5.)
+
+#Strunsky, Rose.# (_H._)
+  **Peter Karpovitch. Asia. Feb.-Mar. (20:214.)
+
+*#Sugimoto, Hanano Inagaki.#
+  **Ivory Skull. Scr. Jan. (67:83.)
+
+#Sullivan, Charles J.# (_See 1915._)
+  **From Out the Centuries. B. C. Apr. (25.)
+
+#Sutphen (William Gilbert), Van Tassel.# (1861- .) (_H._)
+  Match-Maker. Harp. M. June. (141:45.)
+
+#Swain, John D.# (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Affairs at Baker's Bluff. All. Nov. 22, '19. (104:20.)
+  *Deadwood. Arg. Jul. 31. (123:561.)
+  Fighting Machine. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (22.)
+  *From Appetites to Arcadia. S. E. P. May 15. (40.)
+  *Man Who Was Never Knocked Out. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (18.)
+  **Unfinished Game. Arg. Mar. 6. (118:443.)
+
+*#Sylvaire, Dominique.#
+  Choice. N. Y. Trib. Oct. 5, '19.
+
+#Synon, Mary.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Night of the Charity Ball. Red Bk. Apr. (43.)
+  *On Scarlet Wings. Red Bk. Jul. (57.)
+  **Second-Best. McCall. Sept. (9.)
+  **Top of the Ladder. McC. Aug. (20.)
+
+
+#Tanner, Marion.#
+  Enemy of Santa Claus. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:153.)
+
+#Tarkington (Newton), Booth.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Dishonorable Dolls. Met. Apr. (14.)
+  **Other Things of Life. Met. Jan. (15.)
+
+#Tarleau, Lisa Ysaye.#
+  *Blue Roses. Atl. Nov., '19. (124:614.)
+
+#Taylor, Anne Leland.# (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  Man's Mind. S. S. Apr. (37.)
+
+#Taylor, D. Wooster.#
+  Murphy's Mummy. Am. Nov., 10. (20.)
+
+*#Tchekov, Anton Pavlovich.# _See_ #Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.#
+
+#Templeton, Herminie.# _See_ #Kavanagh, Herminie Templeton.#
+
+#Terhune, Albert Payson.# (1872- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bean Spiller. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (18.)
+  Dub of Peace. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (16.)
+  Foul Fancier. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (18.)
+  Heroine. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (16.)
+  Ringer. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (8.)
+
+#Terhune, Albert Payson#, _and_ #Bulger, Bozeman.# (_See also_ #Bulger,
+Bozeman.#)
+  *Yas-Suh, 'At's er Dog! S. E. P. Apr. 10. (20.)
+
+#Thayer, Mabel Dunham.# (_See 1917._)
+  Little Clay Puppets. Met. June. (16.)
+  Uplifting Mary. S. E. P. May 8. (40.)
+
+*#Thibault, Jacques Anatole.# _See_ "#France, Anatole.#"
+
+#Thompson, James Henry.# (_See 1918._)
+  **$.89 Worth of Devotion. B. C. Jul. (21.)
+
+#Tildesley, Alice L.# (_See 1916, 1919._)
+  Cabell Drives the Nail. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (16.)
+  Lewis Dare. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (10.)
+
+#Titus, Harold.# (1888- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Aliens. L. H. J. May (10.)
+  Crowded Hearthstone. Ev. Jul. (44.)
+
+*#Tolstoy, Count Ilya.#
+  *Bolshevik Soldier. Ev. Oct., '19. (86.)
+
+#Tompkins, Juliet Wilbor.# (#Juliet Wilbor Tompkins Pottle.#) (1871- .)
+  Great Man. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (16.)
+  Sic Semper. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (14.)
+
+#Tonjoroff, Svetozar (Ivanoff).# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Across the Bridge of Sighs. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (26.)
+  *From Hopeless Soil. L. H. J. Apr. (21.)
+
+#Toohey, John Peter.# (1880- .) (_See 1919._)
+  Days of His Youth. Met. Dec., '19. (25.)
+  Prince There Wasn't. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (16.)
+  Water's Fine. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (16.)
+
+#Torrey, Grace.# (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Maroon-Colored, with Wire Wheels. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (20.)
+  Tone of Lafayette Arms. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (21.)
+
+#Towne, Charles Hanson.# (1877- .) (_H._)
+  Upper Ten. S. S. Jul. (63.)
+
+#Train, Arthur (Cheney).# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (14.)
+  Dog Andrew. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (20.)
+  Hocus-Pocus. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (24.)
+  *"Honor Among Thieves." S. E. P. Apr. 24. (20.)
+  In re Misella. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (24.)
+  Kid and the Camel. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (20.)
+  Passing of Caput Magnus. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (20.)
+  Shyster. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (12.)
+  Ways That Are Dark. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (8.)
+
+#Train, Ethel Kissam.# (#Mrs. Arthur Train.#) (1875- .) (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  In the Garden. Met. Aug. (18.)
+
+#Trapnell, Edna Valentine.#
+  *Old Lady. L. St. Oct., '19. (13.)
+
+*#Trueba, Antonio De.#
+  ***Portal of Hegaven. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:86.)
+
+#Tuckerman, Arthur.#
+  *Black Magic. Scr. Aug. (68:166.)
+
+#Turnbull, Agnes Sligh.#
+  Lost--a $2,500 Engagement Ring. Am. Sept. (47.)
+
+#Turner, George Kibbe.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Clank Clinkscales' Duodenum. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (3.)
+  Gloama, the Beautiful Ticket Agent. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (6.)
+  Golden Name. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (20.)
+  Old General Jazz. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (8.)
+
+
+#Ueland, Brenda.#
+  Good Natured Girl. Met. May. (36.)
+  Hootch Hound. Met. Sept. (23.)
+
+#Underbill, Ruth Murray.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  Goldfish Bowl. L. H. J. Aug. (30.)
+
+#Underwood, Edna Worthley.# (1873- .)
+  **Orchid of Asia. Asia. Aug.-Sept. (20:657, 771.)
+
+#Underwood, Sophie Kerr.# _See_ #Kerr, Sophie.#
+
+#Updegraff, Allan#, (1883- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Harrying Fiend. Harp. M. Jan. (140:160.)
+
+#Updegraff, Robert R.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Old Specification. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (30.)
+  Rip Van Winkle Lands an Order. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (12.)
+
+#Upper, Joseph.#
+  Cheque. S. S. Feb. (101.)
+  Little Gray Doves. S. S. Feb. (76.)
+  Sisterhood. S. S. Mar. (125.)
+
+
+"#Vail, Lawrence.#" (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  Conrad's Apology for Earth. S. S. March. (29.)
+  Passing of Don Quixote. S. S. Jul. (117.)
+  Swan Song of a Kiss. S. S. Sept. (111.)
+  Twilight Adventure. S. S. Apr. (51.)
+
+*#Valdagne, Pierre.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Seat of the Right. N. Y. Trib. Sept. 12.
+
+*#Valmer, Binet-.# _See_ #Binet-Valmer.#
+
+#Van, Stephen Ta.#
+  Sheep-Face. S. S. Mar. (67.)
+  Sheep-Face II. S. S. May. (103.)
+
+#Van De Water, Virginia (Belle) Terhune.# (1865- .) (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  As Water Spilled on the Ground. S. S. May. (93.)
+
+#Van Riper, Charles King.#
+  Hole in the Doughnut. S. S. Mar. (85.)
+  Triumph. S. S. May. (123.)
+
+#Van Saanen, Marie Louise.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+#Van Slyke, Lucille Baldwin.# (1880- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Boy Who Missed the War. Del. Jan. (16.)
+  Man Who Was Tired of His Wife. Del. May. (7.)
+  You Have to Keep in Tune. L. H. J. Jul. (25.)
+
+#Vermilye, Kate Jordan.# _See_ #Jordan, Kate.#
+
+*#Volland, Gabriel.#
+  Black Siren. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 11.
+  *Original. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 16, '19.
+
+#Vorse, Mary (Marvin) Heaton. (Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien.)# (_See
+1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  * Dream Killers. Rom. Jan. (38.)
+  ***Fraycar's Fist. Lib. Sept. (17.)
+  ***Hopper. Lib. Apr. (34.)
+  **House of Storms. W. H. C. Mar. (7.)
+  ***Pink Fence. McCall. Jul. (5.)
+  *True Talisman. W. H. C. Aug. (11.)
+
+
+#Waldo, Harold.#
+  *Old Twelve Hundred. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (22.)
+
+#Walker, Beatrice McKay.#
+  *Tomley's Gossoon. Holl. Jul. (11.)
+
+*#Wallace, Edgar.# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Mother o' Mine. Met. Mar. (21.)
+
+*#Walpole, Hugh.# (1884- .) (_See 1915._)
+  ***Case of Miss Morganhurst. Pict. R. May. (17.)
+  ***Fanny's Job. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (19.)
+  ***Honourable Clive Torby. Pict. R. June. (10.)
+  ***No Place for Absalom. Pict. R. Apr. (16.)
+  ***Stealthy Visitor. Pict. R. Mar. (14.)
+  ***Third Six. Pict. R. Sept. (8.)
+
+#Walton, Emma Lee.# (H.)
+  *His Masterpiece. Am. Oct., '19. (49.)
+
+*#Ward, Arthur Sarsfield.# _See_ "#Rohmer, Sax.#"
+
+#Ward, Herbert Dickinson.# (1861- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Greater Than Creed. L. H. J. Apr. (22.)
+  ***Master Note. L. H. J. Jan. (20.)
+  Under the Silk-Cotton Tree. L. H. J. Jul. (10.)
+
+#Ward, Winifred.#
+  Skyscraper. Met. Aug. (26.)
+  *Sleeping Beauty. Touch. Dec., '19. (6:18.)
+
+#Wasson, David A.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._)
+  Blind Goddess Nods. B. C. Dec., '19. (114.)
+
+#Water, Virginia Terhune Van De.# _See_ #Van De Water, Virginia Terhune.#
+
+#Waterhouse, Irma.#
+  *Aftermath. Cen. Mar. (99:584.)
+  *Closed Road. Cen. June. (100:165.)
+
+#Weed, Dole.#
+  *Flying Hours. T. T. Feb. (117.)
+
+#Weiman, Rita.# (1889- .) (_See 1915, 1919._)
+  Back Drop. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (8.)
+  Curtain! S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (8.)
+
+#Weitzenhorn, Louis.# (1893- .)
+  Adventure of His Daily Bread. Met. May. (30.)
+  Adventure of the Code. Met. Apr. (18.)
+  Adventure of the Diamond Watches. Met. Mar. (23.)
+
+#Welles, Harriett Ogden Deen.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***According to Ruskin. W. H. C. June. (21.)
+  **Chinese Interlude. Scr. Apr. (67:431.)
+  *Distracting Adeline. Scr. May. (67:558.)
+  **One Hundred Years Too Soon. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:663.)
+  *Thrush. Harp. B. May. (80.)
+
+#Wellman, Rita.# (#Mrs. Edgar F. Leo.#) (1890- .) (_See 1919._)
+  Clerk. S. S. Oct., '19. (117.)
+  **Little Priest of Percé. S. S. Aug. (107.)
+  *Spanish Knife. S. S. Jul, (39.)
+  *Two Lovers, Ain. Sept. (119.)
+
+#Welty, Ruth.#
+  Crises. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (12.)
+
+#Weston, George (T.).# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Diplomatic Corps. S. E. P. June 5. (8.)
+  Fool of the Family. S. E. P. May 1. (18.)
+  Girls Don't Gamble Any More. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (8.)
+  Hard-Boiled Mabel. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (5.)
+
+*#Wharton, Anthony.# (_See 1919._)
+  "Gingerbread for Two." Pict. R. June. (14.)
+  *Miss Ashton's House. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (16.)
+
+#Wharton, Francis Willing.# (_H._)
+  Byway of Darby. Ev. Mar. (74.)
+
+#Wheeler, Post.# (1869- .)
+  *Talking Skull. Rom. Sept. (77.)
+
+#Wheelwright, John Tyler.# (1856- .)
+  ***Roman Bath. Scr. Jan. (67:33.)
+
+#White, Nelia Gardner.#
+  Girl Next Door to Old Pinchpenny's. Am. Sept. (27.)
+
+#Whiting, Robert Rudd.# (1877- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Romance of a Practising Ph.D. Scr. Oct., '19. (66:487.)
+
+#Whitman, Stephen French.# (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Amazement, Harp. M. Oct., '19. (139:654.)
+  **Last Room of All. Harp. M. June. (141:27.)
+  ***Lost Waltz. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (26.)
+  ***To a Venetian Tune. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:836.)
+
+#Whitson, Beth Slater.# (_See 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Birthmark. True St. Nov., '19. (33.)
+
+#Widdemer, Margaret.# (#Margaret Widdemer Schauffler.#) (_See 1915,
+1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Changeling. Col. Jan. 10-17. (9:18.)
+  Secondary Wife. Del. Dec., '19. (13.)
+
+#Wilde, Percival.# (1887- .)
+  Sequel. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (11.)
+
+#Wiley, Hugh.# (1894- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Christmas Drifter. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (8.)
+  *Driftwood. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (12.)
+  Excess Baggage. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (10.)
+  *Hop. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (8.)
+  *Jade. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (6.)
+  **Junk. S. E. P. June 12. (12.)
+  *Konkrin' Hero. S. E. P. June 26. (8.)
+  *Mister Lady Luck. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (14.)
+  Prowling Prodigal. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (10.)
+  *Ramble Gamble. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (14.)
+  Red Rock. S. E. P. May 1. (10.)
+  *Solitaire. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (20.)
+
+#Williams, Ben Ames# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Another Man's Poison. Col Dec. 6, '19. (9.)
+  *Climax. Cos. Aug. (81.)
+  *Mine Enemy's Dog. Col. Jan. 10. (5.)
+  Most Disastrous Chances. Col Aug. 14. (5.)
+  Not a Drum Was Heard. Col. June 12. (5).
+  *Old Tantrybogus. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (8.)
+  ***Sheener. Col. Jul. 10. (5.)
+
+#Willie, Linda Buntyn.# (_See 1917._)
+  What Mother Had Always Wanted. Am. Apr. (66.)
+
+#Willrich, Erica.#
+  Fulfillment. Pag. Oct., '19. (49.)
+
+#Wilson, John Fleming.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Class. S. E. P. June 26. (22.)
+  Dough Candles. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (18.)
+  Ninety Days. S. E. P. Jul. 17. (20.)
+  Number 1100. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (12.)
+  Salving of John Somers. Ev. Aug. (34.)
+  ***Uncharted Reefs. McCall. Aug. (8.)
+
+#Wilson, Margaret Adelaide.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Cæsar's Ghost. Atl. Oct., '19. (124:483.)
+  ***Drums. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:702.)
+
+#Wingate, Robert.#
+  Rough-Shod Mr. Billings and Where His Ride Led Him. Am. Nov., '19. (38.)
+
+#Winslow, Thyra Samter.# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Aunt Ida. S. S. Dec., '19. (103.)
+  **City Folks. S. S. Oct., '19. (53.)
+  Corinna and Her Man. S. S. May. (53.)
+  **Mamie Carpenter. S. S. Aug. (77.)
+  *Perfume Counter. S. S. Jan. (87.)
+
+#Winthrop, Arthur.#
+  Mystic Rose. Lit. R. Jan. (21.)
+
+#Wisehart, Karl.#
+  **Hunger. Cen. Feb. (98:483.)
+
+#Witwer, Harry Charles.# (1890- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Ellen of Troy. Am. Jul. (68.)
+  Fool and His Money. Col. Jul. 31. (8.)
+  Freedom of the She's. Col. Jan. 3. (14.)
+  Girl at the Switchboard. Am. Feb. (44.)
+  League of Relations. Col. Apr. 3. (13.)
+  Leather Pushers. Round One. Col. May 15. (5.)
+  Leather Pushers. Round Two. Col. June 5. (9.)
+  Merchant of Venus. Col. Nov. 29, '19. (5.)
+  Nights of Columbus. Col. Mar. 20. (11.)
+  Paul and West Virginia. Am. June. (46.)
+  Payment Through the Nose. Col. Jul. 3. (8.)
+  So This Is Cincinnati! Col. Oct. 4, '19. (9.)
+  Taming of the Shrewd. Col. Aug. 28. (10.)
+  Word to the Wives. Col. Mar. 6. (8.)
+
+*#Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Ordeal by Golf. Col. Dec. 6, '19- (5.)
+
+#Wolcott, Helen Louise.#
+  Reality. S. S. June. (65.)
+
+#Wolff, William Almon, Jr.# (1885- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Cellar Door. Col. Nov. 15, '19. (5.)
+  Middle of the Ladder. Col. Jan. 3. (8.)
+  Ugly Ducklings. Sun. Jan. (45.)
+  Wash Your Own Dishes. Col. Jan. 24. (8.)
+
+#Woljeska, Helen.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Exquisite Episode. S. S. Feb. (68.)
+
+#Wood, C. Rowland.#
+  Jimmie Pulls a Miracle. Ev. June. (62.)
+
+#Wood, Frances Gilchrist.# (_See 1918._)
+  ***Spoiling of Pharaoh. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (18.)
+  ***Turkey Red. Pict. R. Nov., '19. (18.)
+
+#Wood, Jr., Leonard.# (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Hills of To-Morrow. Scr. Mar. (67:316.)
+
+#Woollcott, Alexander.#
+  **Old Woman of Margivrault Farm. Cen. June. (100:259.)
+
+#Wormser, Gwendolyn Ranger.# (_See 1919._)
+  **Tumanoff. Sn. St. Oct. 18, '19. (33.)
+
+#Worts, George Frank.# (1892- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Bonuses and Bunkers. Col. Feb. 7. (19.)
+  Cat and the Burglar. Ev. Apr. (54.)
+  Fine Feathers and Overalls. Sun. Apr. (45.)
+
+#Wright, Richardson (Little).# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._)
+  "Kitty! Kitty!" Del. Feb. (15.)
+
+
+#Yates, L. B.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Hunches. S. E. P. May 22. (30.)
+  Reincarnation of Chan Hop. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (30.)
+
+#Yezierska, Anna.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Hunger. Harp. M. Apr. (140:604.)
+  **"Lost Beautifulness." Red Cross. Mar. (35.)
+  **Wings. McCall. Sept. (11.)
+
+#Young, Mrs. Sanborn.# _See_ #Mitchell, Ruth Comfort#, _and_ #Young,
+William Sanborn.#
+
+*#Yushkevitch, Semyon.#
+  ***Pietà. Pag. Jan. (4.)
+
+*#Yver, Colette.#
+  Good Queen's Christmas Eve. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 21, '19.
+
+
+*#Zartarjian, Roopen.#
+  **Then Man Was Immortal. Asia. Sept. (20:821.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Best Short Stories of 1920, by Various
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Best Short Stories of 1920, by Various
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Best Short Stories of 1920
+       and the Yearbook of the American Short Story
+
+Author: Various
+
+Editor: Edward J. O'Brien
+
+Release Date: July 17, 2007 [EBook #22091]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920 ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Suzanne Lybarger, Jane Hyland and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+THE
+BEST SHORT STORIES
+OF 1920
+
+AND THE
+
+YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN
+SHORT STORY
+
+EDITED BY
+EDWARD J. O'BRIEN
+
+EDITOR OF "THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1915"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1916"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1917"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1918"
+"THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1919"
+"THE GREAT MODERN ENGLISH STORIES," ETC.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+BOSTON
+SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY
+PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons, The Pictorial Review
+Company, The Curtis Publishing Company, and Harper & Brothers.
+
+Copyright, 1920, by The Boston Transcript Company.
+
+Copyright, 1920, by Margaret C, Anderson, Harper & Brothers, The Dial
+Publishing Company, Inc., The Metropolitan Magazine Company, John T.
+Frederick, P. F. Collier & Son, Inc., Charles Scribner's Sons, The
+International Magazine Company, and The Pictorial Review Company.
+
+Copyright, 1921, by Sherwood Anderson, Edwina Stanton Babcock, Konrad
+Bercovici, Edna Clare Bryner, Charles Wadsworth Camp, Helen Coale Crew,
+Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Lee Foster Hartman, Rupert Hughes, Grace
+Sartwell Mason, James Oppenheim, Arthur Somers Roche, Rose Sidney, Fleta
+Campbell Springer, Wilbur Daniel Steele, Ethel Dodd Thomas, John T.
+Wheelwright, Stephen French Whitman, Ben Ames Williams, and Frances
+Gilchrist Wood.
+
+Copyright, 1921, by Small, Maynard & Company, Inc.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+SHERWOOD ANDERSON
+
+
+
+
+BY WAY OF ACKNOWLEDGMENT
+
+
+Grateful acknowledgment for permission to include the stories and other
+material in this volume is made to the following authors, editors, and
+publishers:
+
+To Miss Margaret C. Anderson, the Editor of _Harper's Magazine_, the
+Editor of _The Dial_, the Editor of _The Metropolitan_, Mr. John T.
+Frederick, the Editor of _Scribner's Magazine_, the Editor of _Collier's
+Weekly_, the Editor of _The Cosmopolitan Magazine_, the Editor of _The
+Pictorial Review_, the _Curtis Publishing Company_, Mr. Sherwood
+Anderson, Miss Edwina Stanton Babcock, Mr. Konrad Bercovici, Miss Edna
+Clare Bryner, Mr. Wadsworth Camp, Mrs. Helen Coale Crew, Mrs. Katharine
+Fullerton Gerould, Mr. Lee Foster Hartman, Major Rupert Hughes, Mrs.
+Grace Sartwell Mason, Mr. James Oppenheim, Mr. Arthur Somers Roche, Mrs.
+Rose Sidney, Mrs. Fleta Campbell Springer, Mr. Wilbur Daniel Steele,
+Mrs. A. E. Thomas, Mr. John T. Wheelwright, Mr. Stephen French Whitman,
+Mr. Ben Ames Williams, and Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood.
+
+Acknowledgments are specially due to _The Boston Evening Transcript_ for
+permission to reprint the large body of material previously published in
+its pages.
+
+I shall be grateful to my readers for corrections, and particularly for
+suggestions leading to the wider usefulness of this annual volume. In
+particular, I shall welcome the receipt, from authors, editors, and
+publishers, of stories printed during the period between October, 1920
+and September, 1921 inclusive, which have qualities of distinction, and
+yet are not printed in periodicals falling under my regular notice. Such
+communications may be addressed to me at _Forest Hill, Oxfordshire,
+England_.
+
+E. J. O.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS[1]
+
+
+                                                               PAGE
+#Introduction.# By the Editor                                  xiii
+
+#The Other Woman.# By Sherwood Anderson                           3
+(From _The Little Review_)
+
+#Gargoyle.# By Edwina Stanton Babcock                            12
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#Ghitza.# By Konrad Bercovici                                    36
+(From _The Dial_)
+
+#The Life of Five Points.# By Edna Clare Bryner                  49
+(From _The Dial_)
+
+#The Signal Tower.# By Wadsworth Camp                            66
+(From _The Metropolitan_)
+
+#The Parting Genius.# By Helen Coale Crew                        83
+(From _The Midland_)
+
+#Habakkuk.# By Katharine Fullerton Gerould                       90
+(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
+
+#The Judgment of Vulcan.# By Lee Foster Hartman                 116
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#The Stick-in-the-Muds.# By Rupert Hughes                       148
+(From _Collier's Weekly_)
+
+#His Job.# By Grace Sartwell Mason                              169
+(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
+
+#The Rending.# By James Oppenheim                               187
+(From _The Dial_)
+
+#The Dummy-Chucker.# By Arthur Somers Roche                     198
+(From _The Cosmopolitan_)
+
+#Butterflies.# By Rose Sidney                                   214
+(From _The Pictorial Review_)
+
+#The Rotter.# By Fleta Campbell Springer                        236
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#Out of Exile.# By Wilbur Daniel Steele                         266
+(From _The Pictorial Review_)
+
+#The Three Telegrams.# By Ethel Storm                           293
+(From _The Ladies' Home Journal_)
+
+#The Roman Bath.# By John T. Wheelwright                        312
+(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
+
+#Amazement.# By Stephen French Whitman                          320
+(From _Harper's Magazine_)
+
+#Sheener.# By Ben Ames Williams                                 348
+(From _Collier's Weekly_)
+
+#Turkey Red.# By Frances Gilchrist Wood                         359
+(From _The Pictorial Review_)
+
+#The Yearbook of the American Short Story,
+October, 1919, To September, 1920#                              375
+
+Addresses of American Magazines Publishing
+Short Stories                                                   377
+
+The Bibliographical Roll of Honor of American
+Short Stories                                                   379
+
+The Roll of Honor of Foreign Short Stories in
+American Magazines                                              390
+
+The Best Books of Short Stories of 1920: A
+Critical Summary                                                392
+
+Volumes of Short Stories Published, October,
+1919, to September, 1920: A Index                               414
+
+Articles on the Short Stories: An Index                         421
+
+Index of Short Stories in Books, November,
+1918, to September, 1920                                        434
+
+Index of Short Stories Published in American
+Magazines, October, 1919, to September, 1920                    456
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not
+intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
+arrangement is alphabetical by authors.
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+I suppose there is no one of us who can honestly deny that he is
+interested in one way or another in the American short story. Indeed, it
+is hard to find a man anywhere who does not enjoy telling a good story.
+But there are some people born with the gift of telling a good story
+better than others, and of telling it in such a way that a great many
+people can enjoy its flavor. Most of you are acquainted with some one
+who is a gifted story-teller, provided that he has an audience of not
+more than one or two people. And if you chance to live in the same house
+with such a man, I think you will find that, no matter how good his
+story may have been when you first heard it, it tends to lose its savor
+after he has become thoroughly accustomed to telling it and has added it
+to his private repertory.
+
+A writer of good stories is really a man who risks telling the same
+story to many thousand people. Did you ever take such a risk? Did you
+ever start to tell a story to a stranger, and try to make your point
+without knowing what sort of a man he was? If you did, what was your
+experience? You decided, didn't you, that story-telling was an art, and
+you wondered perhaps if you were ever going to learn it.
+
+The American story-teller in the magazines is in very much the same
+position, except that we have much more patience with him. Usually he is
+a man who has told his story a good many times before. The first time he
+told it we clapped him on the back, as he deserved perhaps, and said
+that he was a good fellow. His publishers said so too. And it _was_ a
+good story that he told. The trouble was that we wanted to hear it
+again, and we paid him too well to repeat it. But just as your story
+became rather less interesting the twenty-third time you told it, so
+the stories I have been reading more often than not have made a similar
+impression upon me. I find myself begging the author to think up another
+story.
+
+Of course, you have not felt obliged to read so many stories, and I
+cannot advise you to do so. But it has made it possible for me to see in
+some sort of perspective, just where the American short story is going
+as well as what it has already achieved. It has made me see how American
+writers are weakening their substance by too frequent repetition, and it
+has helped me to fix the blame where it really lies.
+
+Now this is a matter of considerable importance. One of the things we
+should be most anxious to learn is the psychology of the American
+reader. We want to know how he reacts to what he reads in the magazine,
+whether it is a short story, an article, or an advertisement. We want to
+know, for example, what holds the interest of a reader of the _Atlantic
+Monthly_, and what holds the interest of the reader of the _Ladies' Home
+Journal_.
+
+It is my belief that the difference between these various types of
+readers is pretty largely an artificial difference, in so far as it
+affects the quality of entertainment and imaginative interest that the
+short story has to offer. Of course, there are exceptional cases, and I
+have some of these in mind, but for the most part I can perceive no
+essential difference between the best stories in the _Saturday Evening
+Post_ and the best stories in _Harper's Magazine_ for example. The
+difference that every one feels, and that exists, is one of emphasis
+rather than of type. It is a difference which is shown by averages
+rather than one which affects the best stories in either magazine. Human
+nature is the same everywhere, and when an artist interprets it
+sympathetically, the reader will respond to his feeling wherever he
+finds it.
+
+It has been my experience that the reader is likely to find this warmly
+sympathetic interpretation of human nature, its pleasures and its
+sorrows, its humor and its tragedy, most often in the American magazines
+that talk least about their own merit. We are all familiar with the
+sort of magazine that contents itself with saying day in and day out
+ceaselessly and noisily: "The _Planet Magazine_ is the greatest magazine
+in the universe. The greatest literary artists and the world's greatest
+illustrators contribute to our pages." And it stops there. It has
+repeated this claim so often that it has come to believe it. Such a
+magazine is the great literary ostrich. It hides by burying its eyes in
+the sand.
+
+It is an axiom of human nature that the greatest men do not find it
+necessary or possible to talk about their own greatness. They are so
+busy that they have never had much time to think about it. And so it is
+with the best magazines, and with the best short stories. The man who
+wrote what I regard as the best short story published in 1915 was the
+most surprised man in Brooklyn when I told him so.
+
+The truth of the matter is that we are changing very rapidly, and that a
+new national sense in literature is accompanying that change. There was
+a time, and in fact it is only now drawing to a close, when the short
+story was exploited by interested moneymakers who made such a loud noise
+that you could hear nothing else without great difficulty. The most
+successful of these noisemakers are still shouting, but their heart is
+in it no longer. The editor of one of the largest magazines in the
+country said to me not long ago that he found the greatest difficulty
+now in procuring short stories by writers for whom his magazine had
+trained the public to clamor. The immediate reason which he ascribed for
+this state of affairs was that the commercial rewards offered to these
+writers by the moving picture companies were so great, and the
+difference in time and labor between writing scenarios and developing
+finished stories was so marked, that authors were choosing the more
+attractive method of earning money. The excessive commercialisation of
+literature in the past decade is now turned against the very magazines
+which fostered it. The magazines which bought and sold fiction like soap
+are beginning to repent of it all. They have killed the goose that laid
+the golden eggs.
+
+This fight for sincerity in the short story is a fight that is worth
+making. It is at the heart of all that for which I am striving. The
+quiet sincere man who has something to tell you should not be talked
+down by the noisemakers. He should have his hearing. He is real. And we
+need him.
+
+That is why I have set myself the annual task of reading so many short
+stories. I am looking for the man and woman with something to say,--who
+cares very much indeed about how he says it. I am looking for the man
+and woman with some sort of a dream, the man or woman who sees just a
+little bit more in the pedlar he passes on the street than you or I do,
+and who wishes to devote his life to telling us about it. I want to be
+told my own story too, so that I can see myself as other people see me.
+And I want to feel that the storyteller who talks to me about these
+things is as much in earnest as a sincere clergyman, an unselfish
+physician, or an idealistic lawyer. I want to feel that he belongs to a
+profession that is a sort of priesthood, and not that he is holding down
+a job or running a bucket shop.
+
+I have found this writer with a message in almost every magazine I have
+studied during the year. He is just as much in earnest in _Collier's
+Weekly_ as he is in _Scribner's Magazine_. I do not find him often, but
+he is there somewhere. And he is the only man for whom it is worth our
+while to watch. I feel that it is none of my business whether I like and
+agree with what he has to say or not. All that I am looking for is to
+see whether he means what he says and makes it as real as he can to me.
+I accept his substance at his own valuation, but I want to know what he
+makes of it.
+
+Each race that forms part of the substance in our great melting pot is
+bringing the richest of its traditions to add to our children's
+heritage. That is a wonderful thing to think about. Here, for example,
+is a young Jewish writer, telling in obscurity the stories of his people
+with all the art of the great Russian masters. And Irishmen are bringing
+to us the best of their heritage, and men and women of many other races
+contribute to form the first national literature the world has ever seen
+which is not based on a single racial feeling. Why are we not more
+curious about the ragman's story and that of the bootblack and the man
+who keeps the fruit store? Don't you suppose life is doing things to the
+boy in the coat-room as interesting as anything in all the romances?
+Isn't life changing us in the most extraordinary ways, and do we not
+wish to know in what manner we are to meet and adapt ourselves to these
+changes? There is a humble writer in an attic up there who knows all
+about it, if you care to listen to him. The trouble is that he is so
+much interested in talking about life that he forgets to talk about
+himself, and we are too lazy to listen to any one who forgets to blow
+his own trumpet. But the magazines are beginning to look for him, and,
+wonderful to say, they are beginning to find him, and to discover that
+he is more interesting and humanly popular than the professional chef
+who may be always depended upon to cook his single dish in the same old
+way, but who has never had time to learn anything else.
+
+Now what is the essential point of all that I have been trying to say?
+It is simply this. If we are going to do anything as a nation, we must
+be honest with ourselves and with everybody else. If we are story
+writers or story readers, and practically every one is either one or the
+other in these days, we must come to grips with life in the fiction we
+write or read. Sloppy sentimentality and slapstick farce ought to bore
+us frightfully, especially if we have any sense of humor. Life is too
+real to go to sleep over it.
+
+To repeat what I have said in these pages in previous years, for the
+benefit of the reader as yet unacquainted with my standards and
+principles of selection, I shall point out that I have set myself the
+task of disengaging the essential human qualities in our contemporary
+fiction which, when chronicled conscientiously by our literary artists,
+may fairly be called a criticism of life. I am not at all interested in
+formulA|, and organised criticism at its best would be nothing more than
+dead criticism, as all dogmatic interpretation of life is always dead.
+What has interested me, to the exclusion of other things, is the fresh,
+living current which flows through the best of our work, and the
+psychological and imaginative reality which our writers have conferred
+upon it.
+
+No substance is of importance in fiction, unless it is organic
+substance, that is to say, substance in which the pulse of life is
+beating. Inorganic fiction has been our curse in the past, and bids fair
+to remain so, unless we exercise much greater artistic discrimination
+than we display at present.
+
+The present record covers the period from October, 1919, to September,
+1920, inclusive. During this period, I have sought to select from the
+stories published in American magazines those which have rendered life
+imaginatively in organic substance and artistic form. Substance is
+something achieved by the artist in every act of creation, rather than
+something already present, and accordingly a fact or group of facts in a
+story only attain substantial embodiment when the artist's power of
+compelling imaginative persuasion transforms them into a living truth.
+The first test of a short story, therefore, in any qualitative analysis
+is to report upon how vitally compelling the writer makes his selected
+facts or incidents. This test may be conveniently called the test of
+substance.
+
+But a second test is necessary if the story is to take rank above other
+stories. The true artist will seek to shape this living substance into
+the most beautiful and satisfying form, by skilful selection and
+arrangement of his materials, and by the most direct and appealing
+presentation of it in portrayal and characterization.
+
+The short stories which I have examined in this study, as in previous
+years, have fallen naturally into four groups. The first group consists
+of those stories which fail, in my opinion, to survive either the test
+of substance or the test of form. These stories are listed in the
+yearbook without comment or a qualifying asterisk. The second group
+consists of those stories which may fairly claim that they survive
+either the test of substance or the test of form. Each of these stories
+may claim to possess either distinction of technique alone, or more
+frequently, I am glad to say, a persuasive sense of life in them to
+which a reader responds with some part of his own experience. Stories
+included in this group are indicated in the yearbook index by a single
+asterisk prefixed to the title.
+
+The third group, which is composed of stories of still greater
+distinction, includes such narratives as may lay convincing claim to a
+second reading, because each of them has survived both tests, the test
+of substance and the test of form. Stories included in this group are
+indicated in the yearbook index by two asterisks prefixed to the title.
+
+Finally, I have recorded the names of a small group of stories which
+possess, I believe, an even finer distinction--the distinction of
+uniting genuine substance and artistic form in a closely woven pattern
+with such sincerity that these stories may fairly claim a position in
+our literature. If all of these stories by American authors were
+republished, they would not occupy more space than five novels of
+average length. My selection of them does not imply the critical belief
+that they are great stories. A year which produced one great story would
+be an exceptional one. It is simply to be taken as meaning that I have
+found the equivalent of five volumes worthy of republication among all
+the stories published during the period under consideration. These
+stories are indicated in the yearbook index by three asterisks prefixed
+to the title, and are listed in the special "Roll of Honor." In
+compiling these lists, I have permitted no personal preference or
+prejudice to consciously influence my judgment. To the titles of certain
+stories, however, in the "Rolls of Honor," an asterisk is prefixed, and
+this asterisk, I must confess, reveals in some measure a personal
+preference, for which, perhaps, I may be indulged. It is from this final
+short list that the stories reprinted in this volume have been selected.
+
+It has been a point of honor with me not to republish an English story,
+nor a translation from a foreign author. I have also made it a rule not
+to include more than one story by an individual author in the volume.
+The general and particular results of my study will be found explained
+and carefully detailed in the supplementary part of the volume.
+
+As in past years it has been my pleasure and honor to associate this
+annual with the names of Benjamin Rosenblatt, Richard Matthews Hallet,
+Wilbur Daniel Steele, Arthur Johnson, and Anzia Yezierska, so it is my
+wish to dedicate this year the best that I have found in the American
+magazines as the fruit of my labors to Sherwood Anderson, whose stories,
+"The Door of the Trap," "I Want to Know Why," "The Other Woman," and
+"The Triumph of the Egg" seem to me to be among the finest imaginative
+contributions to the short story made by an American artist during the
+past year.
+
+#Edward J. O'Brien.#
+
+#Forest Hill, Oxon, England,#
+November 8, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920
+
+
+#Note.#--The order in which the stories in this volume are printed is not
+intended as an indication of their comparative excellence; the
+arrangement is alphabetical by authors.
+
+
+
+
+THE OTHER WOMAN[2]
+
+BY SHERWOOD ANDERSON
+
+From _The Little Review_
+
+
+"I am in love with my wife," he said--a superfluous remark, as I had not
+questioned his attachment to the woman he had married. We walked for ten
+minutes and then he said it again. I turned to look at him. He began to
+talk and told me the tale I am now about to set down.
+
+The thing he had on his mind happened during what must have been the
+most eventful week of his life. He was to be married on Friday
+afternoon. On Friday of the week before he got a telegram announcing his
+appointment to a government position. Something else happened that made
+him very proud and glad. In secret he was in the habit of writing verses
+and during the year before several of them had been printed in poetry
+magazines. One of the societies that give prizes for what they think the
+best poems published during the year put his name at the head of their
+list. The story of his triumph was printed in the newspapers of his home
+city, and one of them also printed his picture.
+
+As might have been expected, he was excited and in a rather highly
+strung nervous state all during that week. Almost every evening he went
+to call on his fiancA(C)e, the daughter of a judge. When he got there the
+house was filled with people and many letters, telegrams and packages
+were being received. He stood a little to one side and men and women
+kept coming to speak with him. They congratulated him upon his success
+in getting the government position and on his achievement as a poet.
+Everyone seemed to be praising him, and when he went home to bed he
+could not sleep. On Wednesday evening he went to the theatre and it
+seemed to him that people all over the house recognized him. Everyone
+nodded and smiled. After the first act five or six men and two women
+left their seats to gather about him. A little group was formed.
+Strangers sitting along the same row of seats stretched their necks and
+looked. He had never received so much attention before, and now a fever
+of expectancy took possession of him.
+
+As he explained when he told me of his experience, it was for him an
+altogether abnormal time. He felt like one floating in air. When he got
+into bed after seeing so many people and hearing so many words of praise
+his head whirled round and round. When he closed his eyes a crowd of
+people invaded his room. It seemed as though the minds of all the people
+of his city were centered on himself. The most absurd fancies took
+possession of him. He imagined himself riding in a carriage through the
+streets of a city. Windows were thrown open and people ran out at the
+doors of houses. "There he is. That's him," they shouted, and at the
+words a glad cry arose. The carriage drove into a street blocked with
+people. A hundred thousand pairs of eyes looked up at him. "There you
+are! What a fellow you have managed to make of yourself!" the eyes
+seemed to be saying.
+
+My friend could not explain whether the excitement of the people was due
+to the fact that he had written a new poem or whether, in his new
+government position, he had performed some notable act. The apartment
+where he lived at that time was on a street perched along the top of a
+cliff far out at the edge of the city and from his bedroom window he
+could look down over trees and factory roofs to a river. As he could not
+sleep and as the fancies that kept crowding in upon him only made him
+more excited, he got out of bed and tried to think.
+
+As would be natural under such circumstances, he tried to control his
+thoughts, but when he sat by the window and was wide awake a most
+unexpected and humiliating thing happened. The night was clear and fine.
+There was a moon. He wanted to dream of the woman who was to be his
+wife, think out lines for noble poems or make plans that would affect
+his career. Much to his surprise his mind refused to do anything of the
+sort.
+
+At a corner of the street where he lived there was a small cigar store
+and newspaper stand run by a fat man of forty and his wife, a small
+active woman with bright grey eyes. In the morning he stopped there to
+buy a paper before going down to the city. Sometimes he saw only the fat
+man, but often the man had disappeared and the woman waited on him. She
+was, as he assured me at least twenty times in telling me his tale, a
+very ordinary person with nothing special or notable about her, but for
+some reason he could not explain being in her presence stirred him
+profoundly. During that week in the midst of his distraction she was the
+only person he knew who stood out clear and distinct in his mind. When
+he wanted so much to think noble thoughts, he could think only of her.
+Before he knew what was happening his imagination had taken hold of the
+notion of having a love affair with the woman.
+
+"I could not understand myself," he declared, in telling me the story.
+"At night, when the city was quiet and when I should have been asleep, I
+thought about her all the time. After two or three days of that sort of
+thing the consciousness of her got into my daytime thoughts. I was
+terribly muddled. When I went to see the woman who is now my wife I
+found that my love for her was in no way affected by my vagrant
+thoughts. There was but one woman in the world I wanted to live with me
+and to be my comrade in undertaking to improve my own character and my
+position in the world, but for the moment, you see, I wanted this other
+woman to be in my arms. She had worked her way into my being. On all
+sides people were saying I was a big man who would do big things, and
+there I was. That evening when I went to the theatre I walked home
+because I knew I would be unable to sleep, and to satisfy the annoying
+impulse in myself I went and stood on the sidewalk before the tobacco
+shop. It was a two story building, and I knew the woman lived upstairs
+with her husband. For a long time I stood in the darkness with my body
+pressed against the wall of the building and then I thought of the two
+of them up there, no doubt in bed together. That made me furious.
+
+"Then I grew more furious at myself. I went home and got into bed shaken
+with anger. There are certain books of verse and some prose writings
+that have always moved me deeply, and so I put several books on a table
+by my bed.
+
+"The voices in the books were like the voices of the dead. I did not
+hear them. The words printed on the lines would not penetrate into my
+consciousness. I tried to think of the woman I loved, but her figure had
+also become something far away, something with which I for the moment
+seemed to have nothing to do. I rolled and tumbled about in the bed. It
+was a miserable experience.
+
+"On Thursday morning I went into the store. There stood the woman alone.
+I think she knew how I felt. Perhaps she had been thinking of me as I
+had been thinking of her. A doubtful hesitating smile played about the
+corners of her mouth. She had on a dress made of cheap cloth, and there
+was a tear on the shoulder. She must have been ten years older than
+myself. When I tried to put my pennies on the glass counter behind which
+she stood my hand trembled so that the pennies made a sharp rattling
+noise. When I spoke the voice that came out of my throat did not sound
+like anything that had ever belonged to me. It barely arose above a
+thick whisper. 'I want you,' I said. 'I want you very much. Can't you
+run away from your husband? Come to me at my apartment at seven
+to-night.'
+
+"The woman did come to my apartment at seven. That morning she did not
+say anything at all. For a minute perhaps we stood looking at each
+other. I had forgotten everything in the world but just her. Then she
+nodded her head and I went away. Now that I think of it I cannot
+remember a word I ever heard her say. She came to my apartment at seven
+and it was dark. You must understand this was in the month of October. I
+had not lighted a light and I had sent my servant away.
+
+"During that day I was no good at all. Several men came to see me at my
+office, but I got all muddled up in trying to talk with them. They
+attributed my rattle-headedness to my approaching marriage and went away
+laughing.
+
+"It was on that morning, just the day before my marriage, that I got a
+long and very beautiful letter from my fiancA(C)e. During the night before
+she also had been unable to sleep and had got out of bed to write the
+letter. Everything she said in it was very sharp and real, but she
+herself, as a living thing, seemed to have receded into the distance. It
+seemed to me that she was like a bird, flying far away in distant skies,
+and I was like a perplexed bare-footed boy standing in the dusty road
+before a farm house and looking at her receding figure. I wonder if you
+will understand what I mean?
+
+"In regard to the letter. In it she, the awakening woman, poured out her
+heart. She of course knew nothing of life, but she was a woman. She lay,
+I suppose, in her bed feeling nervous and wrought up as I had been
+doing. She realized that a great change was about to take place in her
+life and was glad and afraid too. There she lay thinking of it all. Then
+she got out of bed and began talking to me on the bit of paper. She told
+me how afraid she was and how glad too. Like most young women she had
+heard things whispered. In the letter she was very sweet and fine. 'For
+a long time, after we are married, we will forget we are a man and
+woman,' she wrote. 'We will be human beings. You must remember that I am
+ignorant and often I will be very stupid. You must love me and be very
+patient and kind. When I know more, when after a long time you have
+taught me the way of life, I will try to repay you. I will love you
+tenderly and passionately. The possibility of that is in me, or I would
+not want to marry at all. I am afraid but I am also happy. O, I am so
+glad our marriage time is near at hand.'
+
+"Now you see clearly enough into what a mess I had got. In my office,
+after I read my fiancA(C)e's letter, I became at once very resolute and
+strong. I remember that I got out of my chair and walked about, proud of
+the fact that I was to be the husband of so noble a woman. Right away I
+felt concerning her as I had been feeling, about myself before I found
+out what a weak thing I was. To be sure I took a strong resolution that
+I would not be weak. At nine that evening I had planned to run in to see
+my fiancA(C)e. 'I'm all right now,' I said to myself. 'The beauty of her
+character has saved me from myself. I will go home now and send the
+other woman away.' In the morning I had telephoned to my servant and
+told him that I did not want him to be at the apartment that evening and
+I now picked up the telephone to tell him to stay at home.
+
+"Then a thought came to me. 'I will not want him there in any event,' I
+told myself. 'What will he think when he sees a woman coming to my place
+on the evening before the day I am to be married?' I put the telephone
+down and prepared to go home. 'If I want my servant out of the apartment
+it is because I do not want him to hear me talk with the woman. I cannot
+be rude to her. I will have to make some kind of an explanation,' I said
+to myself.
+
+"The woman came at seven o'clock, and, as you may have guessed, I let
+her in and forgot the resolution I had made. It is likely I never had
+any intention of doing anything else. There was a bell on my door, but
+she did not ring, but knocked very softly. It seems to me that
+everything she did that evening was soft and quiet but very determined
+and quick. Do I make myself clear? When she came I was standing just
+within the door, where I had been standing and waiting for a half hour.
+My hands were trembling as they had trembled in the morning when her
+eyes looked at me and when I tried to put the pennies on the counter in
+the store. When I opened the door she stepped quickly in and I took her
+into my arms. We stood together in the darkness. My hands no longer
+trembled. I felt very happy and strong.
+
+"Although I have tried to make everything clear I have not told you what
+the woman I married is like. I have emphasized, you see, the other
+woman. I make the blind statement that I love my wife, and to a man of
+your shrewdness that means nothing at all. To tell the truth, had I not
+started to speak of this matter I would feel more comfortable. It is
+inevitable that I give you the impression that I am in love with the
+tobacconist's wife. That's not true. To be sure I was very conscious of
+her all during the week before my marriage, but after she had come to me
+at my apartment she went entirely out of my mind.
+
+"Am I telling the truth? I am trying very hard to tell what happened to
+me. I am saying that I have not since that evening thought of the woman
+who came to my apartment. Now, to tell the facts of the case, that is
+not true. On that evening I went to my fiancA(C)e at nine, as she had asked
+me to do in her letter. In a kind of way I cannot explain the other
+woman went with me. This is what I mean--you see I had been thinking
+that if anything happened between me and the tobacconist's wife I would
+not be able to go through with my marriage. 'It is one thing or the
+other with me,' I had said to myself.
+
+"As a matter of fact I went to see my beloved on that evening filled
+with a new faith in the outcome of our life together. I am afraid I
+muddle this matter in trying to tell it. A moment ago I said the other
+woman, the tobacconist's wife, went with me. I do not mean she went in
+fact. What I am trying to say is that something of her faith in her own
+desires and her courage in seeing things through went with me. Is that
+clear to you? When I got to my fiancA(C)e's house there was a crowd of
+people standing about. Some were relatives from distant places I had not
+seen before. She looked up quickly when I came into the room. My face
+must have been radiant. I never saw her so moved. She thought her letter
+had affected me deeply, and of course it had. Up she jumped and ran to
+meet me. She was like a glad child. Right before the people who turned
+and looked inquiringly at us, she said the thing that was in her mind.
+'O, I am so happy,' she cried. 'You have understood. We will be two
+human beings. We will not have to be husband and wife.'
+
+"As you may suppose, everyone laughed, but I did not laugh. The tears
+came into my eyes. I was so happy I wanted to shout. Perhaps you
+understand what I mean. In the office that day when I read the letter my
+fiancA(C)e had written I had said to myself, 'I will take care of the dear
+little woman.' There was something smug, you see, about that. In her
+house when she cried out in that way, and when everyone laughed, what I
+said to myself was something like this: 'We will take care of
+ourselves.' I whispered something of the sort into her ears. To tell you
+the truth I had come down off my perch. The spirit of the other woman
+did that to me. Before all the people gathered about I held my fiancA(C)e
+close and we kissed. They thought it very sweet of us to be so affected
+at the sight of each other. What they would have thought had they known
+the truth about me God only knows!
+
+"Twice now I have said that after that evening I never thought of the
+other woman at all. That is partially true but sometimes in the evening
+when I am walking alone in the street or in the park as we are walking
+now, and when evening comes softly and quickly as it has come to-night,
+the feeling of her comes sharply into my body and mind. After that one
+meeting I never saw her again. On the next day I was married and I have
+never gone back into her street. Often however as I am walking along as
+I am doing now, a quick sharp earthy feeling takes possession of me. It
+is as though I were a seed in the ground and the warm rains of the
+spring had come. It is as though I were not a man but a tree.
+
+"And now you see I am married and everything is all right. My marriage
+is to me a very beautiful fact. If you were to say that my marriage is
+not a happy one I could call you a liar and be speaking the absolute
+truth. I have tried to tell you about this other woman. There is a kind
+of relief in speaking of her. I have never done it before. I wonder why
+I was so silly as to be afraid that I would give you the impression I am
+not in love with my wife. If I did not instinctively trust your
+understanding I would not have spoken. As the matter stands I have a
+little stirred myself up. To-night I shall think of the other woman.
+That sometimes occurs. It will happen after I have gone to bed. My wife
+sleeps in the next room to mine and the door is always left open. There
+will be a moon to-night, and when there is a moon long streaks of light
+fall on her bed. I shall awake at midnight to-night. She will be lying
+asleep with one arm thrown over her head.
+
+"What is that I am talking about? A man does not speak of his wife lying
+in bed. What I am trying to say is that, because of this talk, I shall
+think of the other woman to-night. My thoughts will not take the form
+they did the week before I was married. I will wonder what has become of
+the woman. For a moment I will again feel myself holding her close. I
+will think that for an hour I was closer to her than I have ever been to
+anyone else. Then I will think of the time when I will be as close as
+that to my wife. She is still, you see, an awakening woman. For a moment
+I will close my eyes and the quick, shrewd, determined eyes of that
+other woman will look into mine. My head will swim and then I will
+quickly open my eyes and see again the dear woman with whom I have
+undertaken to live out my life. Then I will sleep and when I awake in
+the morning it will be as it was that evening when I walked out of my
+dark apartment after having had the most notable experience of my life.
+What I mean to say, you understand, is that, for me, when I awake, the
+other woman will be utterly gone."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] Copyright, 1920, by Margaret C. Anderson. Copyright, 1921, by
+Sherwood Anderson.
+
+
+
+
+GARGOYLE[3]
+
+By EDWINA STANTON BABCOCK
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+Gargoyle stole up the piazza steps. His arms were full of field flowers.
+He stood there staring over his burden.
+
+A hush fell upon tea- and card-tables. The younger women on the Strang
+veranda glanced at one another. The girl at the piano hesitated in her
+light stringing of musical sentences.
+
+John Strang rose. "Not now, Gargoyle, old man." Taking the flowers from
+the thin hands, he laid them on the rug at his wife's feet, then gently
+motioned the intruder away. Gargoyle flitted contentedly down the broad
+steps to the smooth drive, and was soon hidden by masses of rhododendron
+on the quadrangle.
+
+Only one guest raised questioning eyebrows as Strang resumed his seat.
+This girl glanced over his shoulder at the aimless child straying off
+into the trees.
+
+"I should think an uncanny little person like that would get on Mrs.
+Strang's nerves; he gives me the creeps!"
+
+"Yes? Mrs. Strang is hardly as sensitive as you might suppose. What do
+you say of a lady who enjoys putting the worms on her shrinking
+husband's hook? Not only that, but who banters the worms, telling them
+it's all for their own good?"
+
+The mistress of Heartholm, looking over at the two, shook a deprecating
+head. But Strang seemed to derive amusement from the guest's
+disapproval.
+
+Mockwood, where the Strangs lived, had its impressiveness partly
+accounted for by the practical American name of "residential park."
+This habitat, covering many thousands of acres, gave evidence of the
+usual New World compromise between fantastic wealth and over-reached
+restraint. Polished automobiles gliding noiselessly through massed
+purple and silver shrubberies, receded into bland glooms of
+well-thought-out boscage. The architecture, a judicious mixture of
+haughty roofs and opulent chimneys, preened itself behind exclusive
+screens of wall and vine, and the entire frontage of Mockwood presented
+a polished elegance which did not entirely conceal a silent plausibility
+of expense.
+
+At Heartholm, the Strangs' place, alone, had the purely conventional
+been smitten in its smooth face. The banker's country home was built on
+the lines of his own physical height and mental breadth. Strang had
+flung open his living-rooms to vistas of tree branches splashing against
+the morning blue. His back stairs were as aspiring as the Apostles'
+Creed, and his front stairs as soaring as the Canticle to the Sun. As he
+had laid out his seven-mile drive on a deer track leading to a forest
+spring, so had he spoken for his flowers the word, which, though it
+freed them from the prunes and prisms of a landscape gardener, held
+them, glorified vassals, to their original masters, sun and rain.
+
+Strang and his love for untrammeled nature were hard pills for
+Mockwooders to swallow. Here was a man who, while he kept one on the
+alert, was to be deplored; who homesteaded squirrels, gave rabbits their
+own licentious ways, was whimsically tolerant of lichens, mushrooms, and
+vagabond vines. This was also the man who, when his gardener's wife gave
+birth to a deaf and dumb baby, encouraged his own wife to make a pet of
+the unfortunate youngster, and when he could walk gave him his freedom
+of the Heartholm acres.
+
+It was this sort of thing, Mockwooders agreed, that "explained" the
+Strangs. It was the desultory gossip of fashionable breakfast tables how
+Evelyn Strang was frequently seen at the gardener's cottage, talking to
+the poor mother about her youngest. The gardener's wife had other
+children, all strong and hearty. These went to school, survived the
+rigors of "regents" examinations, and were beginning to talk of
+"accepting" positions. There would never be any position for little
+Gargoyle, as John Strang called him, to "accept."
+
+"Let the child run about," the village doctors had advised. "Let him run
+about in the sun and make himself useful."
+
+But people who "run about in the sun" are seldom inclined to make
+themselves useful, and no one could make Gargoyle so. It would have been
+as well to try to train woodbine to draw water or to educate cattails to
+write Greek. The little boy spent all of the day idling; it was a
+curious, Oriental sort of idling. Callers at Heartholm grew
+disapprovingly accustomed to the sight of the grotesque face and figure
+peering through the shrubberies; they shrugged their shoulders
+impatiently, coming upon the recumbent child dreamily gazing at his own
+reflection in the lily-pond, looking necromantically out from the molten
+purple of a wind-blown beech, or standing at gaze in a clump of iris.
+
+Strang with his amused laugh fended off all protest and neighborly
+advice.
+
+"That's Gargoyle's special variety of hashish. He lives in a
+flower-harem--in a five-year-old Solomon's Song. I've often seen the
+irises kowtowing to him, and his attitude toward them is distinctly
+personal and lover-like. If that little chap could only talk there would
+be some fun, but what Gargoyle thinks would hardly fit itself to
+words--besides, then"--Strang twinkled at the idea--"none of us would
+fancy having him around with those natural eyes--that undressed little
+mind."
+
+It was in good-humored explanations like this that the Strangs managed
+to conceal their real interest in Gargoyle. They did not remind people
+of their only child, the brave boy of seven, who died before they came
+to Mockwood. Under the common sense that set the two instantly to work
+building a new home, creating new associations, lay the everlasting pain
+of an old life, when, as parents of a son, they had seemed to tread
+springier soil, to breathe keener, more vital air. And, though the
+Strangs adhered patiently to the recognized technicalities of Mockwood
+existence, they never lost sight of a hope, of which, against the
+increasing evidence of worldly logic, their human hearts still made
+ceaseless frantic attestation.
+
+Very slowly, but very constructively, it had become a fierce though
+governed passion with both--to learn something of the spiritual life
+coursing back of the material universe. Equally slowly and inevitably
+had the two come to believe that the little changeling at the lodge held
+some wordless clue, some unconscious knowledge as to that outer sphere,
+that surrounding, peopled ether, in which, under their apparent
+rationality, the two had come to believe. Yet the banker and his wife
+stood to Mockwooders for no special cult or fad; it was only between
+themselves that their quest had become a slowly developing motive.
+
+"Gargoyle was under the rose-arbor this morning." It was according to
+custom that Evelyn Strang would relate the child's latest phase. "He sat
+there without stirring such a long time that I was fascinated. I noticed
+that he never picked a rose, never smelled one. The early sun fell
+slanting through their petals till they glowed like thin little wheels
+of fire. John dear, it was that scalloped fire which Gargoyle was
+staring at. The flowers seemed to lean toward him, vibrating color and
+perfumes too delicate for me to hear. _I_ only saw and smelled the
+flowers; Gargoyle looked as if he _felt_ them! Don't laugh; you know we
+look at flowers because when we were little, people always said, 'See
+the pretty flower, smell the pretty flower,' but no one said, 'Listen
+and see if you can hear the flower grow; be still and see if you can
+catch the flower speaking.'"
+
+Strang never did laugh, never brushed away these fantastic ideas.
+Settling back in his piazza chair, his big hands locked together, he
+would listen, amusing himself with his pet theory of Gargoyle's
+"undressed mind."
+
+"By the way," he said once, "that reminds me, have you ever seen our
+young Solomon of the flower-harem smile?"
+
+"Of course I haven't; neither have you." Young Mrs. Strang averred it
+confidently. "He never has smiled, poor baby, nor cried--his mother
+told me that long ago."
+
+The banker kept his eyes on the treetops; he had his finger-tips nicely
+balanced before he remarked, with seeming irrelevance:
+
+"You know that nest in the tree we call the Siegfried tree?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"The other day a bird fell out of it, one of the young ones, pushed out
+by a housecleaning mother, I suppose. It killed the poor little
+feathered gawk. I saw Gargoyle run, quick as a flash, and pick it up. He
+pushed open the closing eyes, tried to place the bird on a hollyhock
+stalk, to spread its wings, in every way to give it motion. When, after
+each attempt, he saw it fall to the ground, he stood still, looking at
+it very hard. Suddenly, to my surprise, he seemed to understand
+something, to _comprehend_ it fully and delightedly. He laughed." Strang
+stopped, looking intently at his wife.
+
+"I can imagine that laugh," she mused.
+
+Strang shook his head. "I don't think you can. It--it wasn't pleasant.
+It was as uncanny as the rest of the little chap--a long, rattling,
+eerie sound, as if a tree should groan or a butterfly curse; but
+wait--there's more." In his earnestness Strang sat up, adding, "Then
+Gargoyle got up and stretched out his hands, not to the sky, but to the
+air all around him. It was as if--" Here Strang, the normal, healthy man
+of the world, hesitated; it was only the father of the little boy who
+had died who admitted in low tones: "You would have said--At least even
+_I_ could imagine that Gargoyle--well--that he _saw_ something like a
+released principle of life fly happily back to its main source--as if a
+little mote like a sunbeam should detach itself from a clod and,
+disembodied, dart back to its law of motion."
+
+For a long time they were silent, listening to the call of an oven-bird
+far back in the spring trees. At last Strang got up, filled his pipe,
+and puffed at it savagely before he said, "Of course the whole thing's
+damned nonsense." He repeated that a little brutally to his wife's
+silence before in softened voice he added, "Only, perhaps you're right,
+Evelyn; perhaps we, too, should be seeing that kind of thing,
+understanding what, God knows, we long to understand, if we had
+'undressed minds,' if we hadn't from earliest infancy been smeared all
+over with the plaster-of-Paris of 'normal thinking.'"
+
+Time flew swiftly by. The years at Heartholm were tranquil and happy
+until Strang, taken by one of the swift maladies which often come to men
+of his type, was mortally stricken. His wife at first seemed to feel
+only the strange ecstasy that sometimes comes to those who have beheld
+death lay its hand on a beloved body. She went coldly, rigidly, through
+every detail of the final laying away of the man who had loved her to
+the utmost power of his man's heart. Friends waited helplessly, dreading
+the furious after-crash of this unnatural mental and bodily endurance.
+Doctor Milton, Strang's life-long friend, who had fought for the
+banker's life, watched her carefully, but there was no catalepsy, no
+tranced woman held in a vise of endurance. Nothing Evelyn Strang did was
+odd or unnatural, only she seemed, particularly before the burial, to be
+waiting intently for some revelation, toward which her desire burned
+consumingly, like a powerful flame.
+
+Just before the funeral Strang's sister came to Doctor Milton.
+
+"Evelyn!" in whispered response to his concerned look. "Oh, doctor, I
+cannot think that this calmness is _right_ for her----" The poor,
+red-eyed woman, fighting hard for her own composure, motioned to the
+room where, with the cool lattices drawn, and a wave of flowers breaking
+on his everlasting sleep, the master of Heartholm lay. "She has gone in
+there with that little deaf-and-dumb child. I saw her standing with him,
+staring all about her. Somehow it seemed to me that Gargoyle was
+smiling--that he _saw_ something----!"
+
+For long weeks Doctor Milton stayed on at Heartholm, caring for Mrs.
+Strang. From time to time the physician also studied and questioned
+Gargoyle. Questioned in verity, for the practised hand could feel rigid
+muscles and undeveloped glands that answered more truthfully than
+words. Whatever conclusions Milton arrived at, he divulged to no one but
+Mrs. Strang. What he had to say roused the desolate woman as nothing
+else could have done. To the rest of the world little or nothing was
+explained. But, after the consent of the mother at the gardener's
+cottage had been gained, Doctor Milton left Heartholm, taking Gargoyle
+with him.
+
+In the office of Dr. Pauli Mach, the professional tongue was freed.
+Milton, with the half-quizzical earnestness habitual to him, told his
+story, which was followed by the exchange of much interesting data.
+
+The two fell back on the discussion of various schools where Gargoyle
+might be put under observation. At last, feeling in the gravely polite
+attention of the more eminent man a waning lack of interest, Milton
+reluctantly concluded the interview.
+
+"I'll write to Mrs. Strang and tell her your conclusions; she won't
+accept them--her own husband humored her in the thing. What John Strang
+himself believed I never really knew, but I think he had wisdom in his
+generation."
+
+Milton stood there, hesitating; he looked abstractedly at the apathetic
+little figure of Gargoyle sitting in the chair.
+
+"We talk of inherent human nature," said the doctor, slowly, "as if we
+had all knowledge concerning the _possibilities_ of that nature's best
+and worst. Yet I have sometimes wondered if what we call mentally askew
+people are not those that possess attributes which society is not wise
+enough to help them use wisely--mightn't such people be like
+fine-blooded animals who sniff land and water where no one else suspects
+any? Given a certain kink in a human brain, and there might result
+capacity we ought to consider, even if we can't, in our admittably
+systematized civilization, utilize it."
+
+The Swiss doctor nodded, magnetic eyes and mouth smiling.
+
+"Meanwhile"--in his slow, careful speech--"meanwhile we do what we can
+to preserve the type which from long experience we know _wears_ best."
+
+Milton nodded. He moved to go, one hand on Gargoyle's unresponsive
+shoulder, when the office door swung open.
+
+"Now this is real trouble," laughed a woman's fresh, deep-chested voice.
+"Doctor Mach, it means using one of your tall measuring-glasses or
+permitting these lovely things to wilt; some one has inundated us with
+flowers. I've already filled one bath-tub; I've even used the buckets in
+the operating-room."
+
+The head nurse stood there, white-frocked, smiling, her stout arms full
+of rosy gladioli and the lavender and white of Japanese iris. The two
+doctors started to help her with the fragrant burden, but not before
+Gargoyle sprang out of his chair. With a start, as if shocked into
+galvanic motion, the boy sat upright. With a throttled cry he leaped at
+the surprised woman. He bore down upon her flowers as if they had been a
+life-preserver, snatching at them as if to prevent himself from being
+sucked under by some strange mental undertow. The softly-colored bloom
+might have had some vital magnetizing force for the child's blood, to
+which his whole feeble nature responded. Tearing the colored mass from
+the surprised nurse's arms, Gargoyle sank to the floor. He sat there
+caressing the flowers, smiling, making uncouth efforts to speak. The
+arms that raised him were gentle enough. They made no attempt to take
+from him his treasures. They sat him on the table, watching the little
+thin hands move ardently, yet with a curious deftness and delicacy, amid
+the sheaf of color. As the visionary eyes peered first into one
+golden-hearted lily, then into another, Milton felt stir, in spite of
+himself, Strang's old conviction of the "undressed mind." He said
+nothing, but stole a glance at the face of his superior. Doctor Mach was
+absorbed. He stood the boy on the table before him. The nurse stripped
+Gargoyle, then swiftly authoritative fingers traveled up and down the
+small, thin frame.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Life at Heartholm went on very much the same. The tender-hearted
+observer might have noted that the gardens held the same flowers year
+after year, all the perennials and hardy blooms John Strang had loved.
+No matter what had been his widow's courageous acceptance of modern
+stoicism, the prevailing idea that incurable grief is merely "morbid,"
+yet, in their own apartments where their own love had been lived, was
+every mute image and eloquent trifle belonging to its broken arc. Here,
+with Strang's books on occult science, with other books of her own
+choosing, the wife lived secretly, unknown of any other human being, the
+long vigil of waiting for some sign or word from the spirit of one who
+by every token of religion and faith she could not believe dead--only to
+her wistful earthly gaze, hidden. She also hid in her heart one
+strangely persistent hope--namely, Gargoyle! Letters from Doctor Milton
+had been full of significance. The last letter triumphantly concluded:
+
+     Your young John Strang Berber, alias Gargoyle, can talk now, with
+     only one drawback: as yet he doesn't know any words!
+
+The rapidly aging mother at the gardener's cottage took worldly pride in
+what was happening to her youngest.
+
+"I allus knowed he was smart," the woman insisted. "My Johnny! To think
+of him speaking his mind out like any one else! I allus took his part--I
+could ha' told 'em he had his own notions!"
+
+There was no doubt as to Gargoyle's having the "notions." As the slow
+process of speech was taught and the miracle of fitting words to things
+was given unto John Berber, alias Gargoyle, it was hard for those
+watching over him to keep the riotous perceptions from retarding the
+growing mechanistics. Close-mouthed the boy was, and, they said, always
+would be; but watchful eyes and keen intuitions penetrated to the silent
+orgies going on within him. So plainly did the fever of his education
+begin to wear on his physical frame that wary Doctor Mach shook his
+head. "Here I find too many streams of thought coursing through one
+field," said the careful Swiss. "The field thus grows stony and bears
+nothing. Give this field only one stream that shall be nourishing."
+
+For other supernormal developments that "one stream" might have been
+music or sports. For Gargoyle it happened to be flowers. The botanist
+with whom he was sent afield not only knew his science, but guessed at
+more than his science. His were the beatitudes of the blue sky; water,
+rocks, and trees his only living testament. Under his tutelage, with the
+eyes of Doctor Mach ever on his growing body, and with his own special
+gifts of concentration and perception, at last came to Gargoyle the
+sudden whisper of academic sanction--namely, "genius."
+
+He himself seemed never to hear this whisper. What things--superimposed
+on the new teeming world of material actualities--he _did_ hear, he
+never told. Few could reach Berber; among fellow-students he was gay,
+amiable, up to a certain point even frivolous; then, as each companion
+in turn complained, a curtain seemed to drop, a colorless wrap of
+unintelligibility enveloped him like a chameleon's changing skin; the
+youth, as if he lived another life on another plane, walked apart.
+
+Doctor Milton, dropping into the smoking-room of a popular confrA"re, got
+a whiff of the prevailing gossip about his protA(C)gA(C).
+
+"I'll be hanged if I can associate psychics with a biceps like Berber's;
+somehow those things seem the special prerogative of anemic women in
+white cheese-cloth fooling with 'planchette' and 'currents.'"
+
+"You've got another guess," a growling neurologist volunteered. "Why
+shouldn't psychic freaks have biceps? We keep forgetting that we've
+dragged our fifty-year-old carcasses into an entirely new age--a
+wireless, horseless, man-flying, star-chasing age. Why, after shock upon
+shock of scientific discovery, shouldn't the human brain, like a
+sensitive plate, be thinned down to keener, more sensitive,
+perceptions?"
+
+Some one remarked that in the case of Berber, born of a simple country
+woman and her uneducated husband, this was impossible.
+
+Another man laughed. "Berber may be a Martian, or perhaps he was
+originally destined to be the first man on Jupiter. He took the wrong
+car and landed on this globe. Why not? How do we know what agency
+carries pollen of human life from planet to planet?"
+
+Milton, smiling at it all, withdrew. He sat down and wrote a
+long-deferred letter to Mrs. Strang.
+
+     I have asked John Berber if he would care to revisit his old home.
+     It seemed never to have occurred to him that he _had_ a home! When
+     I suggested the thing he followed it up eagerly, as he does every
+     new idea, asking me many keen questions as to his relatives, who
+     had paid for his education, etc. Of the actual facts of his cure he
+     knows little except that there was special functioning out of gear,
+     and that now the wheels have been greased. Doctor Mach is
+     desperately proud of him, especially of the way in which he
+     responds to _normal diversion-environments_ and _friendships_. You
+     must instruct his mother very carefully as to references to his
+     former condition. It is best that he should not dwell upon the
+     former condition. Your young friend, Gargoyle, sees no more spooks.
+     He is rapidly developing into a very remarkable and unconceited
+     horticulturist!
+
+The first few days at Mockwood were spent at the little gardener's
+cottage, from which the other youngsters had flown. Berber, quietly
+moving about the tiny rooms, sitting buried in a scientific book or
+taking long trips afield, was the recipient of much maternal flattery.
+He accepted it all very gently; the young culturist had an air of quiet
+consideration for every one and absolutely no consciousness of himself.
+He presumed upon no special prerogatives, but set immediately to work to
+make himself useful. It was while he was weeding the box borders leading
+to the herb-gardens of Heartholm that Mrs. Strang first came upon him.
+Her eyes, suddenly confronted with his as he got to his feet, dropped
+almost guiltily, but when they sought his face a second time, Evelyn
+Strang experienced a disappointment that was half relief. The sunburnt
+youth, in khaki trousers and brown-flannel shirt, who knelt by the
+border before her was John Strang Berber, Doctor Mach's human
+masterpiece; this was not "Gargoyle."
+
+"That is hardly suitable work for a distinguished horticulturist," the
+mistress of Heartholm smiled at the wilting piles of pusley and sorrel.
+
+White teeth flashed, deep eyes kindled. Berber rose and, going to a
+garden seat, took up some bits of glass and a folded paper. He showed
+her fragments of weed pressed upon glass plates, envelopes of seeds
+preserved for special analyzation. "There's still a great undiscovered
+country in weed chemistry," he eagerly explained, "perhaps an anodyne
+for every pain and disease."
+
+"Yes, and deadly poisons, too, for every failure and grief." The
+mistress of Heartholm said it lightly as she took the garden seat,
+thinking how pleasant it was to watch the resolute movements and
+splendid physical development of the once weazened Gargoyle. She began
+sorting out her embroidery silks as Berber, the bits of glass still in
+his hand, stood before her. He was smiling.
+
+"Yes, deadly poisons, too," agreeing with a sort of exultation, so
+blithely, indeed, that the calmly moving fingers of the mistress of
+Heartholm were suddenly arrested. A feeling as powerful and associative
+as the scent of a strong perfume stole over Evelyn Strang.
+
+Before she could speak Berber had resumed his weeding. "It's good to get
+dictatorship over all this fight of growing," looking up for her
+sympathy with hesitance, which, seen in the light of his acknowledged
+genius, was the more significant. "You don't mind my taking Michael's
+place? He was very busy this morning. I have no credentials, but my
+mother seems to think I am a born gardener."
+
+This lack of conceit, this unassuming practicality, the sort of thing
+with which Gargoyle's mind had been carefully inoculated for a long
+time, baffled, while it reassured Mrs. Strang. Also the sense of sacred
+trust placed in her hands made her refrain from any psychic probing.
+
+For a long while she found it easy to exert this self-control. The
+lonely woman, impressed by the marvelous "cure" of John Berber,
+magnetized by his youth and sunny enthusiasms back to the old dreaming
+pleasure in the Heartholm gardens, might in the absorbed days to come
+have forgotten--only there was a man's photograph in her bedroom, placed
+where her eyes always rested on it, her hand could bring it to her lips;
+the face looking out at her seemed to say but one thing:
+
+"_You knew me--I knew you. What we knew and were to each other had not
+only to do with our bodies. Men call me 'dead' but you know that I am
+not. Why do you not study and work and pray to learn what I am become,
+that you may turn to me, that I may reach to you?_"
+
+Mockwooders, dropping in at Heartholm for afternoon tea, began to
+accustom themselves to finding Mrs. Strang sitting near some flower-bed
+where John Berber worked, or going with him over his great books of
+specimens. The smirk the fashionable world reserves for anything not
+usual in its experience was less marked in this case than it might have
+been in others. Even those who live in "residential parks" are sometimes
+forced (albeit with a curious sense of personal injury) to accept the
+idea that they who have greatly suffered find relief in "queer" ways.
+Mockwooders, assisting at the Heartholm tea-hour, and noting Berber
+among other casual guests, merely felt aggrieved and connoted
+"queerness."
+
+For almost a year, with the talking over of plans for John Strang's
+long-cherished idea of a forest garden at Heartholm, there had been no
+allusion between mistress and gardener to that far-off fantasy, the life
+of little Gargoyle. During the autumn the two drew plans together for
+those spots which next spring were to blossom in the beech glade. They
+sent to far-off countries for bulbs, experimented in the Heartholm
+greenhouses with special soils and fertilizers, and differences of heat
+and light; they transplanted, grafted, and redeveloped this and that
+woodland native. Unconsciously all formal strangeness wore away,
+unconsciously the old bond between Gargoyle and his mistress was
+renewed.
+
+Thus it was, without the slightest realization as to what it might lead,
+that Evelyn Strang one afternoon made some trifling allusion to Berber's
+association with the famous Doctor Mach. As soon as she had done so,
+fearing from habit for some possible disastrous result, she tried
+immediately to draw away from the subject. But the forbidden spring had
+been touched--a door that had long been closed between them swung open.
+Young Berber, sorting dahlia bulbs into numbered boxes, looked up; he
+met her eyes unsuspiciously.
+
+"I suppose," thoughtfully, "that that is the man to whom I should feel
+more grateful than to any other human being."
+
+The mistress of Heartholm did not reply. In spite of her tranquil air,
+Evelyn Strang was gripped with a sudden apprehension. How much, how
+little, did Berber know? She glanced swiftly at him, then bent her head
+over her embroidery. The colored stream of Indian summer flowed around
+them. A late bird poured out his little cup of song.
+
+"My mother will not answer my questions." Young Berber, examining two
+curiously formed bulbs, shook the earth from them; he stuffed them into
+his trousers pocket. "But Michael got talking yesterday and told me--Did
+you know, Mrs. Strang? I was thought to be an idiot until I was twelve
+years old--born deaf and dumb?"
+
+It was asked so naturally, with a scientific interest as impersonal as
+if he were speaking of one of the malformed bulbs in his pocket, that at
+first his mistress felt no confusion. Her eyes and hands busying
+themselves with the vivid silks, she answered.
+
+"I remember you as a little pale boy who loved flowers and did such odd,
+interesting things with them. Mr. Strang and I were attracted to your
+mysterious plays.... No, you never spoke, but we were not sure you could
+not hear--and"--drawing a swift little breath--"we were always
+interested in what--in what--you seemed--to _see_!"
+
+There was a pause. He knelt there, busily sorting the bulbs. Suddenly
+to the woman sitting on the garden bench the sun-bathed October gardens
+seemed alive with the myriad questioning faces of the fall flowers;
+wheels and disks like aureoled heads leaned toward her, mystical fire in
+their eyes, the colored flames of their being blown by passionate desire
+of revelation. "This is your moment," the flowers seemed to say to her.
+"Ask him _now_."
+
+But that she might not yet speak out her heart to John Berber his
+mistress was sure. She was reminded of what Strang had so often said,
+referring to their lonely quest--that actual existence was like a
+forlorn shipwreck of some other life, a mere raft upon which, like grave
+buffoons, the ragged survivors went on handing one another watersoaked
+bread of faith, glassless binoculars of belief, oblivious of what
+radiant coasts or awful headlands might lie beyond the enveloping mists.
+Soon, the wistful woman knew, she would be making some casual
+observations about the garden, the condition of the soil. Yet, if ever
+the moment had come to question him who had once been "Gargoyle," that
+moment was come now!
+
+Berber lifted on high a mass of thickly welded bulbs clinging to a
+single dahlia stalk. He met her gaze triumphantly.
+
+"Michael says he planted only a few of this variety, the soft,
+gold-hearted lavender. See what increase." The youth plunged supple
+fingers into the balmy-scented loam, among the swelling tuber forms. "A
+beautiful kind of ugliness," he mused. "I remember I used to think----"
+The young gardener, as if he felt that the eyes fixed upon him were
+grown suddenly too eager, broke abruptly off.
+
+"Go on, John Berber. What you have to say is always interesting."
+
+It was said calmly, with almost maternal encouragement, but the fingers
+absorbed in the bright silks fumbled and erred. "Used to think"--words
+such as these filtered like sunlight to the hope lying deep in Evelyn
+Strang's heart.
+
+But young Berber leaned upon his garden fork, looking past her. Over the
+youth's face crept a curious expression of wrapt contemplation, of
+super-occupation, whether induced by her words or not she could not
+tell. Furtively Mrs. Strang studied him.... How soon would he drop that
+mystical look and turn to her with the casual "educated" expression she
+had come to know so well?
+
+Suddenly, nervousness impelling her, she broke in upon his revery:
+
+"How wonderful, with such dreams as you must have had, to be educated!
+How very grateful you must be to Doctor Mach."
+
+She heard her own words helplessly, as if in a dream, and, if the
+unwisdom of this kind of conversation had impressed the mistress of
+Heartholm before, now she could have bitten off her tongue with that
+needless speech on it. Young Berber, however, seemed hardly to have
+heard her; he stood there, the "Gargoyle" look still in his eyes, gazing
+past his mistress into some surrounding mystery of air element. It was
+to her, watching him, as if those brooding, dilated pupils might behold,
+besides infinitesimal mystery of chemical atoms, other mysteries--colorless
+pools of air where swam, like sea anemones, radiant forms of released
+spirit; invisible life-trees trembling with luminous fruit of occult being!
+
+When Berber turned this look, naked as a sword, back to Evelyn Strang,
+she involuntarily shivered. But the boy's face was unconscious. His
+expression changed only to the old casual regard as he said, very
+simply:
+
+"You see, I wish they had not educated me!"
+
+The confession came with inevitable shock. If she received it with
+apparent lightness, it was that she might, with all the powers a woman
+understands, rise to meet what she felt was coming. The barrier down, it
+was comparatively easy to stand in the breach, making her soft note of
+deprecation, acknowledging playfully that the stress of so-called
+"normal" life must indeed seem a burden to one who had hitherto talked
+with flowers, played with shadows. Berber, however, seemed hardly to
+hear her; there was no tenseness in the youth's bearing; he merely
+gazed thoughtfully past her efforts, repeating:
+
+"No--I wish they had not taught me. I have not really gained _knowledge_
+by being taught."
+
+Mrs. Strang was genuinely puzzled. Yet she understood; it was merely
+_theories about life_ that he had gained. Again she called to mind a
+sentence in Doctor Milton's letter: "I know that you have followed the
+case in such a way as to understand what would be your responsibility
+toward this _newly made_ human soul." Was it right to question Berber?
+Could it be actually harmful to him to go on? And yet was it not her
+only chance, after years of faithful waiting?
+
+Trying to keep her voice steady, she reproached him:
+
+"No? With all that being educated means, all the gift for humanity?"
+
+The young fellow seemed not to get her meaning. He picked up the garden
+fork. Thoughtfully scraping the damp earth from its prongs, he repeated,
+"All that it means for humanity?"
+
+"Why not"--urging the thing a little glibly--"why not? You can do your
+part now; you will help toward the solving of age-long mysteries. You
+must be steward of--of"--Mrs. Strang hesitated, then continued,
+lamely--"of your special insight. Why--already you have begun--Think of
+the weed chemistry." Had he noticed it? There was in her voice a curious
+note, almost of pleading, though she tried to speak with authority.
+
+John Berber, once called "Gargoyle," listened. The youth stood there,
+his foot resting upon the fork but not driving it into the ground. He
+caught her note of anxiety, laughing in light, spontaneous reassurance,
+taking her point with ease.
+
+"Oh--I know," shrugging his shoulders in true collegian's style. "I
+understand my lesson." Berber met her look. "I had the gift of mental
+_unrestraint_, if you choose to call it that," he summed up, "and was of
+no use in the world. Now I have the curse of _mental restraint_ and can
+participate with others in their curse." Suddenly aware of her helpless
+dismay and pain, the boy laughed again, but this time with a slight
+nervousness she had never before seen in him. "Why, we are not in
+earnest, dear Mrs. Strang." It was with coaxing, manly respect that he
+reminded her of that. "We are only joking, playing with an idea.... I
+think you can trust me," added John Berber, quietly.
+
+The surprised woman felt that she could indeed "trust" him; that Berber
+was absolutely captain of the self which education had given him; but
+that from time to time he had been conscious of another self he had been
+unwise enough to let her see. She silently struggled with her own
+nature, knowing that were she judicious she would take that moment to
+rise and leave him. Such action, however, seemed impossible now. Here
+was, perhaps, revelation, discovery! All the convictions of her lonely,
+brooding life were on her. Temptation again seized her. With her longing
+to have some clue to that spirit world she and her husband had believed
+in, it seemed forewritten, imperative, inevitable, that she remain.
+Trying to control herself, she fumbled desperately on:
+
+"When you were little, Mr. Strang and I used to notice--we grew to
+think--that because you had been shut away from contact with other
+minds, because you had never been told _what_ to see, as children are
+told, 'Look at the fire,' 'See the water,' and so forever regard those
+things in just that way, not seeing--other things--Oh, we thought that
+perhaps--perhaps----"
+
+It was futile, incoherent; her tongue seemed to dry in her mouth.
+Besides, the abashed woman needs must pause before a silence that to her
+strained sense seemed rebuking. She glanced furtively up at the youth
+standing there. It troubled the mistress of Heartholm to realize that
+her protA(C)gA(C) was staring gravely at her, as if she had proposed some
+guilty and shameful thing.
+
+At last Berber, with a boyish sigh, seemed to shake the whole matter
+off. He turned to his bulbs; half at random he caught up a
+pruning-knife, cutting vindictively into one of them. For the moment
+there was silence, then the young gardener called his mistress's
+attention to the severed root in his hand.
+
+"A winy-looking thing, isn't it? See those red fibers? Why shouldn't
+such roots, and nuts like those great, burnished horse-chestnuts
+there--yes, and cattails, and poke-berries, and skunk cabbages, give
+forth an entirely new outfit of fruits and vegetables?" Berber smiled
+his young ruminating smile; then, with inevitable courtesy, he seemed to
+remember that he had not answered her question. "I am not surprised that
+you and Mr. Strang thought such things about me. I wonder that you have
+not questioned me before--only you see _now_--I can't answer!" The boy
+gave her his slow, serious smile, reminding her.
+
+"You must remember that I am like a foreigner--only worse off, for
+foreigners pick up a few words for their most vital needs, and I have no
+words at all--for what--for what vital things I used to know--so that
+perhaps in time I shall come to forget that I ever knew anything
+different from--other persons' knowledge." Berber paused, regarding his
+mistress intently, as if wistfully trying to see what she made of all
+this. Then he continued:
+
+"One of our professors at college died, and the men of his class were
+gloomy; some even cried, others could not trust themselves to speak of
+him.... I noticed that they all called him 'poor' Landworth.... I could
+see that they felt something the way I do when I miss out on a chemical
+experiment, or spoil a valuable specimen--only more so--a great deal
+more." The boy knit his brows, puzzling it all out. "Well, it's queer. I
+liked that professor, too; he was very kind to me--but when I saw him
+dead I felt glad--glad! Why"--Berber looked at her searchingly--"I grew
+to be afraid some one would find out _how_ glad!"
+
+The young fellow, still anxiously searching her face, dropped his voice.
+"You are the only person I dare tell this to--for I understand the
+world--" She noted that he spoke as if "the world" were a kind of plant
+whose needs he had fathomed. "But after that," concluded Berber,
+speaking as if quite to himself--"after that I somehow came to see that
+I had been--well, educated _backward_."
+
+She moved impatiently; the youth, seeing the question in her face,
+answered the demand of its trembling eagerness, explaining:
+
+"Do you not see--I have--sometimes _known_, not 'guessed' nor
+'believed,' but _known_ that death was a wonderful, happy thing--a
+fulfilment, a satisfaction to him who dies--but I have been educated
+backward into a life where people cannot seem to help regarding it as a
+sad thing. And----"
+
+"Yes?--Yes?" breathed the eager woman. "Tell me--tell me----"
+
+But he had come suddenly to a full stop. As if appalled to find only
+empty words, or no words at all, for some astounding knowledge he would
+communicate to her, he stammered painfully; then, as if he saw himself
+caught in guilt, colored furiously. Evelyn Strang could see the
+inevitable limitations of his world training creep slowly over him like
+cement hardening around the searching roots of his mind. She marveled.
+She remembered Strang's pet phrase, "the plaster of Paris of so-called
+'normal thinking.'" Then the youth's helpless appeal came to her:
+
+"Do you not think that I am doing wrong to speak of these things?"
+Berber asked, with dignity.
+
+The mistress of Heartholm was silent. Recklessly she put by all Doctor
+Mach's prophecies. She could not stop here; her whole soul demanded that
+she go further. There were old intuitions--the belief that she and
+Strang had shared together, that, under rationalized schemes of thought,
+knowledge of inestimable hope was being hidden from the world. Here was
+this boy of the infinite vision, of the "_backward educated_" mind,
+ready to tell miraculous things of a hidden universe. Could she strike
+him dumb? It would be as if Lazarus had come forth from the open grave
+and men were to bandage again his ecstatic lips!
+
+Suddenly, as if in answer to her struggle, Berber spoke. She was aware
+that he looked at her curiously with a sort of patient disdain.
+
+"The world is so sure, so contented, isn't it?" the youth demanded of
+her, whether in innocence or irony she could not tell. "People are
+trained, or they train themselves, by the millions, to think of things
+in exactly one way." He who had once been "Gargoyle" looked piercingly
+into the eyes of this one being to whom at least he was not afraid to
+speak.
+
+"Anything you or I might guess outside of what other people might
+accept," the boy reminded her, austerely, "could be called by just one
+unpleasant name." He regarded the face turned to his, recognizing the
+hunger in it, with a mature and pitying candor, concluding: "After
+to-day we must never speak of these things. I shall never dare, you must
+never dare--and so--" He who had once been "Gargoyle" suddenly dropped
+his head forward on his breast, muttering--"and so, that is all."
+
+Evelyn Strang rose. She stood tall and imperious in the waning afternoon
+light. She was bereaved mother, anguished wife; she was a dreamer driven
+out of the temple of the dream, and what she had to do was desperate.
+Her voice came hard and resolute.
+
+"It is _not_ all," the woman doggedly insisted. The voiceless woe of one
+who had lost a comrade by death was on her. In her eyes was fever let
+loose, a sob, like one of a flock of imprisoned wild birds fluttered out
+from the cage of years. "Oh no--no!" the woman pleaded, more as if to
+some hidden power of negation than to the boy before her--"Oh no--no,
+this _cannot_ be all, not for me! The world must never be told--it could
+not understand; but _I_ must know, I _must_ know." She took desperate
+steps back and forth.
+
+"John Berber, if there is anything in your memory, your knowledge; even
+if it is only that you have _imagined_ things--if they are so beautiful
+or so terrible that you can never speak of them--for fear--for fear no
+one would understand, you might, you might, even then, tell me--Do you
+not hear? You might tell _me_. I authorize it, I command it."
+
+The woman standing in the autumn gardens clenched her hands. She looked
+round her into the clear air at the dense green and gold sunshine
+filtering through the colored trees, the softly spread patens of the
+cosmos, the vivid oriflammes of the chrysanthemums. Her voice was
+anguished, as if they two stood at a secret door of which Berber alone
+had the key, which for some reason he refused to use.
+
+"I--of all the world," her whisper insisted. "If you might never speak
+again--I should understand."
+
+Berber, his face grown now quite ashen, looked at her. Something in her
+expression seemed to transfix and bind him. Suddenly shutting his teeth
+together, he stood up, his arms folded on his broad chest. The afternoon
+shadows spread pools of darkness around their feet, the flowers seemed
+frozen in shapes of colored ice, as his dark, controlled eyes fixed
+hers.
+
+"You--you dare?" the youth breathed, thickly.
+
+She faced him in her silent daring. Then it seemed to her as if the sky
+must roll up like a scroll and the earth collapse into a handful of dust
+falling through space, for she knew that little Gargoyle of the
+"undressed mind"--little Gargoyle, looking out of John Berber's trained
+eyes as out of windows of ground glass, was flitting like a shadow
+across her own intelligence, trying to tell her what things he had
+always known about life and death, and the myriads of worlds spinning
+back in their great circles to the Power which had set them spinning.
+
+Not until after the first halting, insufficient words, in which the boy
+sought to give his secret to the woman standing there, did she
+comprehend anything of the struggle that went on within him. But when
+suddenly Berber's arms dropped to his sides and she saw how he shivered,
+as if at some unearthly touch on his temples, she was alert. Color was
+surging into his face; his features, large, irregular, took on for the
+instant a look of speechless, almost demoniac power; he seemed to be
+swimming some mental tide before his foot touched the sands of language
+and he could helplessly stammer:
+
+"I cannot--It--it will not come--It is as I told you--I have been taught
+no _words_--I _cannot_ say _what I know_."
+
+His powerful frame stood placed among the garden surroundings like that
+of a breathing statue, and his amazed companion witnessed this miracle
+of physical being chained by the limitations of one environment, while
+the soul of that being, clairaudient, clairvoyant, held correspondence
+with another environment. She saw Berber smile as if with some exquisite
+sense of beauty and rapture that he understood, but could not
+communicate, then helplessly motion with his hands. But even while she
+held her breath, gazing at him, a change came over the radiant features.
+He looked at her again, his face worked; at last John Berber with a
+muffled groan burst into terrible human tears.
+
+She stood there helpless, dumfounded at his agony.
+
+"You--you cannot speak?" she faltered.
+
+For answer he dropped his face into his strong hands. He stood there,
+his tall body quivering. And she knew that her dream was over.
+
+She was forced to understand. John Berber's long and perfect world
+training held him in a vise. His lips were closed upon his secret, and
+she knew that they would be closed for evermore.
+
+They remained, silently questioning each other, reading at last in each
+other's speechlessness some comfort in this strange common knowledge,
+for which, indeed, there were no human words, which must be forever
+borne dumbly between them. Then slowly, with solemn tenderness, the
+obligation of that unspoken knowledge came into Evelyn Strang's face.
+She saw the youth standing there with grief older than the grief of the
+world stabbing his heart, drowning his eyes. She laid a quiet hand on
+his shoulder.
+
+"I understand." With all the mother, all the woman in her, she tried to
+say it clearly and calmly. "I understand; you need never fear me--and we
+have the whole world of flowers to speak for us." She gazed pitifully
+into the dark, storming eyes where for that one fleeting instant the
+old look of "Gargoyle" had risen, regarding her, until forced back by
+the trained intelligence Of "John Berber," which had always dominated,
+and at last, she knew, had killed it. "We will make the flowers
+speak--for us." Again she tried to speak lightly, comfortingly, but
+something within the woman snapped shut like a door. Slowly she returned
+to the garden seat. For a moment she faltered, holding convulsively to
+it, then her eyes, blinded from within, closed.
+
+Yet, later, when the mistress of Heartholm went back through the
+autumnal garden to the room where were the books and treasures of John
+Strang, she carried something in her hand. It was a lily bulb from which
+she and Berber hoped to bring into being a new and lovely flower. She
+took it into that room where for so many years the pictured eyes of her
+husband had met hers in mute questioning, and stood there for a moment,
+looking wistfully about her. Outside a light breeze sprang up, a single
+dried leaf rustled against the window-pane. Smiling wistfully upon the
+little flower-pot, Mrs. Strang set it carefully away in the dark.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[3] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Edwina
+Stanton Babcock.
+
+
+
+
+GHITZA[4]
+
+#By# KONRAD BERCOVICI
+
+From _The Dial_
+
+
+That winter had been a very severe one in Roumania. The Danube froze
+solid a week before Christmas and remained tight for five months. It was
+as if the blue waters were suddenly turned into steel. From across the
+river, from the Dobrudja, on sleds pulled by long-horned oxen, the
+Tartars brought barrels of frozen honey, quarters of killed lambs,
+poultry and game, and returned heavily laden with bags of flour and
+rolls of sole leather. The whole day long the crack of whips and the
+curses of the drivers rent the icy atmosphere. Whatever their
+destination, the carters were in a hurry to reach human habitation
+before nightfall--before the dreaded time when packs of wolves came out
+to prey for food.
+
+In cold, clear nights, when even the wind was frozen still, the
+lugubrious howling of the wolf permitted no sleep. The indoor people
+spent the night praying for the lives and souls of the travellers.
+
+All through the winter there was not one morning but some man or animal
+was found torn or eaten in our neighbourhood. The people of the village
+at first built fires on the shores to scare the beasts away, but they
+had to give it up because the thatched roofs of the huts in the village
+were set on fire in windy nights by flying sparks. The cold cowed the
+fiercest dogs. The wolves, crazed by hunger, grew more daring from day
+to day. They showed their heads even in daylight. When Baba Hana, the
+old gypsy fortune-teller, ran into the school-house one morning and
+cried, "Wolf, wolf in the yard," the teacher was inclined to attribute
+her scare to a long drink the night before. But that very night, Stan,
+the horseshoer, who had returned late from the inn and had evidently not
+closed the door as he entered the smithy, was eaten up by the beasts.
+And the smithy stood in the centre of the village! A stone's throw from
+the inn, and the thatch-roofed school, and the red painted church! He
+must have put up a hard fight, Stan. Three huge dark brown beasts, as
+big as cows' yearlings, were found brained. The body of big Stan had
+disappeared in the stomachs of the rest of the pack. The high leather
+boots and the hand that still gripped the handle of the sledgehammer
+were the only remains of the man. There was no blood, either. It had
+been lapped dry. That stirred the village. Not even enough to bury
+him--and he had been a good Christian! But the priest ordered that the
+slight remains of Stan be buried, Christian-like. The empty coffin was
+brought to the church and all the rites were carried out as if the body
+of Stan were there rather than in the stomachs of wild beasts.
+
+But after Stan's death the weather began to clear as if it had been
+God's will that such a price be paid for His clemency. The cold
+diminished daily and in a few days reports were brought from everywhere
+on the shore that the bridge of ice was giving way. Two weeks before
+Easter Sunday it was warm enough to give the cows an airing. The air
+cleared and the rays of the sun warmed man and beast. Traffic on the
+frozen river had ceased. Suddenly one morning a whip cracked, and from
+the bushes on the opposite shore of the Danube there appeared following
+one another six tent wagons, such as used by travelling gypsies, each
+wagon drawn by four horses harnessed side by side.
+
+The people on our side of the Danube called to warn the travellers that
+the ice was not thick enough to hold them. In a few minutes the whole
+village was near the river, yelling and cursing like mad. But after they
+realized that the intention was to cross the Danube at any cost, the
+people settled down to watch what was going to happen. In front of the
+first wagon walked a tall, grey-bearded man trying the solidity of the
+ice with a heavy stick. Flanking the last wagon, in open lines, walked
+the male population of the tribe. Behind them came the women and
+children. No one said a word. The eyes of the whole village were on the
+travellers, for every one felt that they were tempting Providence. Yet
+each one knew that Murdo, the chief of the tribe, who was well known to
+all, in fact to the whole Dobrudja, would not take such risks with his
+people without good reason.
+
+They had crossed to the middle of the frozen river in steady fashion,
+when Murdo shouted one word and the feet of every man and beast stopped
+short. The crossing of the river had been planned to the slightest
+detail. The people on the shore were excited. The women began to cry and
+the children to yell. They were driven inland by the men, who remained
+to watch what was going on. No assistance was possible.
+
+The tall chief of the gypsies walked to the left and chose another path
+on the ice. The movement continued. Slowly, slowly, in silence the
+gypsies approached the shore. Again they halted. Murdo was probing the
+ice with his stick. We could see that the feet of the horses were
+wrapped in bags, and instead of being shod each hoof was in a cushion
+made of straw. As Murdo felt his way, a noise at first as of the tearing
+of paper, but more distinct with every moment, came from somewhere in
+the distance.
+
+"Whoa, whoa, Murdo, the ice is breaking!" every one began to shout
+excitedly. The noise grew louder and louder as it approached. One could
+hear it coming steadily and gauge how much nearer it was. The ice was
+splitting lengthwise in numberless sheets which broke up in smaller
+parts and submerged gaily in the water, rising afterwards and climbing
+one on top of the other, as in a merry embrace.
+
+"Whoa, whoa, Murdo ..." but there was no time to give warning. With one
+gesture Murdo had given his orders. The wagons spread as for a frontal
+attack; the men seized the children and with the women at their heels
+they ran as fast as their legs could take them. On the shore every one
+fell to his knees in prayer. The strongest men closed their eyes, too
+horrified to watch the outcome. The noise of the cracking of the ice
+increased. A loud report, as of a dozen cannon, and the Danube was a
+river again--and all, all the gypsies had saved themselves.
+
+It was a gay afternoon, that afternoon, and a gay night also for the
+whole village. It drank the inn out of everything. The gypsies had a
+royal welcome. To all questions of why he had dared Providence, Murdo
+answered, "There was no food for my people and horses. The Tartars have
+none to sell."
+
+Murdo and his tribe became the guests of the village. His people were
+all lean. The men hardly carried themselves on their legs. Each one of
+them had something to nurse. The village doctor amputated toes and
+fingers; several women had to be treated for gangrene. The children of
+the tribe were the only ones that had not suffered much. It was Murdo's
+rule: "Children first, the horses next." The animals were stabled and
+taken charge of by the peasants. The gypsies went to live in the huts of
+the people in order to warm themselves back to life. Father liked Murdo,
+and so the old chief came to live with us. The nights were long. After
+supper we all sat in a semicircle around the large fireplace in which a
+big log of seasoned oak was always burning.
+
+I had received some books from a friend of the family who lived in the
+capital of the country, Bucharest. Among them was Carlyle's Heroes and
+Hero-Worship, translated into French. I was reading it when Murdo
+approached the table and said, "What a small Bible my son is reading."
+
+"It is not a Bible, it is a book of stories, Murdo."
+
+"Stories! Well, that's another thing."
+
+He looked over my shoulders into the book. As I turned the page he
+asked:
+
+"Is everything written in a book? I mean, is it written what the hero
+said and what she answered and how they said it? Is it written all
+about him and the villain? I mean are there signs, letters for
+everything; for laughter, cries, love gestures? Tell me."
+
+I explained as best I could and he marvelled. I had to give an example,
+so I read a full page from a storybook.
+
+"And is all that written in the book, my son? It is better than I
+thought possible, but not so good as when one tells a story.... It is
+like cloth woven by a machine, nice and straight, but it is not like the
+kind our women weave on the loom--but it is good; it is better than I
+thought possible. What are the stories in the book you are reading? Of
+love or of sorrow?"
+
+"Of neither, Murdo. Only about all the great heroes that have lived in
+this world of cowards."
+
+"About every one of them?" he asked again. "That's good. It is good to
+tell the stories of the heroes."
+
+He returned to the fireplace to light his pipe; then he came to me
+again.
+
+"If it is written in this book about all the great heroes, then there
+must also be the record of Ghitza--the great Ghitza, our hero. The
+greatest that ever lived. See, son, what is there said about him?"
+
+I turned the pages one by one to the end of the book and then reported,
+"Nothing, Murdo. Not even his name is mentioned."
+
+"Then this book is not a good book. The man who wrote it did not know
+every hero ... because not Alexander of Macedon and not even Napoleon
+was greater than Ghitza...."
+
+I sat near him at the fireplace and watched his wrinkled face while
+Murdo told me the story of Ghitza as it should be written in the book of
+heroes where the first place should be given to the greatest of them
+all....
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+About the birth of people, I, Murdo, the chief of the gypsy tribe which
+was ruled by the forefathers of my great-grandfather (who each ruled
+close to a hundred years)--about the birth of people, I, Murdo, can say
+this: That the seed of an oak gives birth to an oak, and that of a pine
+to a pine. No matter where the seed be carried by the winds, if it is
+the seed of an oak, an oak will grow; if it is the seed of a pine, a
+pine. So though it never was known who was the father of Ghitza, we knew
+him through his son. Ghitza's mother died because she bore him, the son
+of a white man--she, the daughter of the chief of our tribe. It was
+Lupu's rule to punish those who bore a child begotten from outside the
+tribe. But the child was so charming that he was brought up in the tent
+of one of our people. When Ghitza was ten years old, he worked alongside
+the men; and there was none better to try a horse before a customer than
+Ghitza. The oldest and slowest gathered all the strength it had and
+galloped and ran when it felt the bare boy on its back. Old mares
+frisked about like yearlings when he approached to mount them.
+
+In his fifteenth summer he was a man, tall, broad, straight and lissom
+as a locust tree. His face was like rich milk and his eyes as black as
+the night. When he laughed or sang--and he laughed and sang all the
+time--his mouth was like a rose in the morning, when the dewdrops hang
+on its outer petals. And he was strong and good. If it happened that a
+heavy cart was stuck in the mud of the road and the oxen could not budge
+it, Ghitza would crawl under the cart, get on all fours, and lift the
+cart clear of the mud. Never giving time to the driver to thank him, his
+work done, he walked quickly away, whistling a song through a trembling
+leaf between his lips. And he was loved by everybody; and the women died
+just for the looks of him. The whole tribe became younger and happier
+because of Ghitza. We travelled very much those days. Dobrudja belonged
+yet to the Turks and was inhabited mostly by Tartars. The villages were
+far apart and very small, so we could not stay long in any place.
+
+When Ghitza was twenty, our tribe, which was then ruled by my mighty
+grandfather, Lupu, happened to winter near Cerna Voda, a village on the
+other side of the Danube. We sold many horses to the peasants that
+winter. They had had a fine year. So our people had to be about the inn
+a good deal. Ghitza, who was one of the best traders, was in the inn the
+whole day. He knew every one. He knew the major and his wife and the two
+daughters and chummed with his son. And they all loved Ghitza, because
+he was so strong, so beautiful, and so wise. They never called him
+"tzigan" because he was fairer than they were. And there was quite a
+friendship between him and Maria, the smith's daughter. She was glad to
+talk to him and to listen to his stories when he came to the smithy. She
+helped her father in his work. She blew the bellows and prepared the
+shoes for the anvil. Her hair was as red as the fire and her arms round
+and strong. She was a sweet maid to speak to, and even the old priest
+liked to pinch her arms when she kissed his hand.
+
+Then came spring and the first Sunday dance in front of the inn. The
+innkeeper had brought a special band of musicians. They were seated on a
+large table between two trees, and all around them the village maidens
+and the young men, locked arm in arm in one long chain of youth, danced
+the Hora, turning round and round.
+
+Ghitza had been away to town, trading. When he came to the inn, the
+dance was already on. He was dressed in his best, wearing his new broad,
+red silken belt with his snow-white pantaloons and new footgear with
+silver bells on the ankles and tips. His shirt was as white and thin as
+air. On it the deftest fingers of our tribe had embroidered figures and
+flowers. On his head Ghitza wore a high black cap made of finest
+Astrakhan fur. And he had on his large ear-rings of white gold. Ghitza
+watched the dance for a while. Maria's right arm was locked with the arm
+of the smith's helper, and her left with the powerful arm of the mayor's
+son. Twice the long chain of dancing youths had gone around, and twice
+Ghitza had seen her neck and bare arms, and his blood boiled. When she
+passed him the third time, he jumped in, broke the hold between Maria
+and the smith's helper, and locked his arm in hers.
+
+Death could not have stopped the dance more suddenly. The musicians
+stopped playing. The feet stopped dancing. The arms freed themselves and
+hung limply.
+
+The smith's helper faced Ghitza with his arm uplifted.
+
+"You cursed tzigan! You low-born gypsy! How dare you break into our
+dance? Our dance!" Other voices said the same.
+
+Everybody expected blows, then knives and blood. But Ghitza just laughed
+aloud and they were all calmed. He pinned the smith's helper's arm and
+laughed. Then he spoke to the people as follows:
+
+"You can see on my face that I am fairer than any of you. I love Maria,
+but I will not renounce the people I am with. I love them. The smith's
+helper knows that I could kill him with one blow. But I shall not do it.
+I could fight a dozen of you together. You know I can. But I shall not
+do it. Instead I shall outdance all of you. Dance each man and woman of
+the village until she or he falls tired on the ground. And if I do this
+I am as you are, and Maria marries me without word of shame from you."
+
+And as he finished speaking he grasped the smith's helper around the
+waist and called to the musicians:
+
+"Play, play."
+
+For a full hour he danced around and around with the man while the
+village watched them and called to the white man to hold out. But the
+smith's helper was no match for Ghitza. He dragged his feet and fell.
+Ghitza, still fresh and vigorous, grasped another man and called to the
+musicians to play an even faster dance than before. When that one had
+fallen exhausted to the ground, Ghitza took on a third and a fourth.
+Then he began to dance with the maidens. The fiddler's string broke and
+the guitar player's fingers were numb. The sun went to rest behind the
+mountains and the moon rose in the sky to watch over her little
+children, the stars.
+
+But Ghitza was still dancing. There was no trace of fatigue on his face
+and no signs of weariness in his steps. The more he danced, the fresher
+he became. When he had danced half of the village tired, and they were
+all lying on the ground, drinking wine from earthen urns to refresh
+themselves, the last string of the fiddle snapped and the musician
+reeled from his chair. Only the flute and the guitar kept on.
+
+"Play on, play on, you children of sweet angels, and I shall give to
+each of you a young lamb in the morning," Ghitza urged them. But soon
+the breath of the flutist gave way. His lips swelled and blood spurted
+from his nose. The guitar player's fingers were so numb he could no
+longer move them. Then some of the people beat the rhythm of the dance
+with their open palms. Ghitza was still dancing on. They broke all the
+glasses of the inn and all the bottles beating time to his dance.
+
+The night wore away. The cock crew. Early dogs arose and the sun woke
+and started to climb from behind the eastern range of mountains. Ghitza
+laughed aloud as he saw all the dancers lying on the ground. Even Maria
+was asleep near her mother. He entered the inn and woke the innkeeper,
+who had fallen asleep behind the counter.
+
+"Whoa, whoa, you old swindler! Wake up! Day is come and I am thirsty."
+
+After a long drink, he went to his tent to play with the dogs, as he did
+early every morning.
+
+A little later, toward noon, he walked over to the smith's shop, shook
+hands with Maria's father and kissed the girl on the mouth even as the
+helper looked on.
+
+"She shall be your wife, son," the smith said. "She will be waiting for
+you when your tribe comes to winter here. And no man shall ever say my
+daughter married an unworthy one."
+
+The fame of our tribe spread rapidly. The tale of Ghitza's feat spread
+among all the villages and our tribe was respected everywhere. People no
+longer insulted us, and many another of our tribe now danced on Sundays
+at the inn--yea, our girls and our boys danced with the other people of
+the villages. Our trade doubled and tripled. We bartered more horses in
+a month than we had at other times in a year. Ghitza's word was law
+everywhere. He was so strong his honesty was not doubted. And he was
+honest. An honest horse-trader! He travelled far and wide. But if Cerna
+Voda was within a day's distance, Ghitza was sure to be there on Sunday
+to see Maria.
+
+To brighten such days, wrestling matches were arranged and bets were
+made as to how long the strongest of them could stay with Ghitza. And
+every time Ghitza threw the other man. Once in the vise of his two arms,
+a man went down like a log.
+
+And so it lasted the whole summer. But in whatever village our tribe
+happened to be, the women were running after the boy. Lupu, the chief of
+the tribe, warned him; told him that life is like a burning candle and
+that one must not burn it from both ends at the same time. But Ghitza
+only laughed and made merry.
+
+"Lupu, old chief, didst thou not once say that I was an oak? Why dost
+thou speak of candles now?"
+
+And he carried on as before. And ever so good, and ever so merry, and
+ever such a good trader.
+
+Our tribe returned to Cerna Voda early that fall. We had many horses and
+we felt that Cerna was the best place for them. Most of them were of the
+little Tartar kind, so we thought it well for them to winter in the
+Danube's valley.
+
+Every Sunday, at the inn, there were wrestling matches. Young men, the
+strongest, came from far-away villages. And they all, each one of them,
+hit the ground when Ghitza let go his vise.
+
+One Sunday, when the leaves had fallen from the trees and the harvest
+was in, there came a Tartar horse-trading tribe to Cerna Voda.
+
+And in their midst they had a big, strong man. Lupu, our chief, met
+their chief at the inn. They talked and drank and praised each their
+horses and men. Thus it happened that the Tartar chief spoke about his
+strong man. The peasants crowded nearer to hear the Tartar's story. Then
+they talked of Ghitza and his strength. The Tartar chief did not believe
+it.
+
+"I bet three of my horses that my man can down him," the Tartar chief
+called.
+
+"I take the bet against a hundred ducats in gold," the innkeeper
+answered.
+
+"It's a bet," the Tartar said.
+
+"Any more horses to bet?" others called out.
+
+The Tartar paled but he was a proud chief and soon all his horses and
+all his ducats were pledged in bets to the peasants. That whole day and
+the rest of the week to Sunday, nothing else was spoken about. The
+people of our tribe pledged everything they possessed. The women gave
+even their ear-rings. The Tartars were rich and proud and took every bet
+that was offered. The match was to be on Sunday afternoon in front of
+the inn. Ghitza was not in the village at all the whole week. He was in
+Constantza, on the shores of the Black Sea, finishing some trade. When
+he arrived home on Sunday morning he found the people of the village,
+our people, the Tartars, and a hundred carriages that had brought people
+from the surrounding villages camped in front of the inn. He jumped down
+from his horse and looked about wondering from where and why so many
+people at once! The men and the women were in their best clothes and the
+horses all decorated as for a fair. The people gave him a rousing
+welcome. Lupu called Ghitza aside and told him why the people had
+gathered. Ghitza was taken aback but laughed instantly and slapped the
+chief on the shoulders.
+
+"It will be as you know, and the Tartars shall depart poor and
+dishonoured, while we will remain the kings of the horse trade in the
+Dobrudja honoured and beloved by all."
+
+Oak that he was! Thus he spoke, and he had not even seen the other man,
+the man he was to wrestle. He only knew he had to maintain the honour of
+his tribe. At the appointed hour he came to the inn. The whole tribe was
+about and around. He had stripped to the waist. He was good to look at.
+On the ground were bundles of rich skins near rolls of cloth that our
+men and women had bet against the Tartars. Heaps of gold, rings,
+watches, ear-rings, and ducats were spread on the tables. Tartar horses
+and oxen of our men and the people of the village were trooped
+together, the necks tied to one long rope held on one side by one of our
+men or a villager and at the other end by a Tartar boy. If Ghitza were
+thrown, one of ours had just to let his end of the rope go and all
+belonged to the other one. The smithy had pledged all he had, even his
+daughter, to the winner; and many another daughter, too, was pledged.
+
+Ghitza looked about and saw what was at stake: the wealth and honour of
+his tribe and the wealth and honour of the village and the surrounding
+villages.
+
+Then the Tartar came. He was tall and square. His trunk rested on short,
+stocky legs, and his face was black, ugly, and pock-marked. All shouting
+ceased. The men formed a wide ring around the two wrestlers. It was so
+quiet one could hear the slightest noise. Then the mayor spoke to the
+Tartars and pointed to the Danube; the inn was right on its shore.
+
+"If your man is thrown, this very night you leave our shore, for the
+other side."
+
+Ghitza kissed Maria and Lupu, the chief. Then the fight began.
+
+A mighty man was Ghitza and powerful were his arms and legs. But it was
+seen from the very first grip that he had burned the candle at both ends
+at the same time. He had wasted himself in carouses. The two men closed
+one another in their vises and each tried to crush the other's ribs.
+Ghitza broke the Tartar's hold and got a grip on his head and twisted it
+with all his might. But the neck of the devil was of steel. It did not
+yield. Maria began to call to her lover:
+
+"Twist his neck, Ghitza. My father has pledged me to him if he wins."
+And many another girl begged Ghitza to save her from marrying a black
+devil.
+
+The Tartars, from another side, kept giving advice to their man.
+Everybody shrieked like mad, and even the dogs howled. From Ghitza's
+body the sweat flowed as freely as a river. But the Tartar's neck
+yielded not and his feet were like pillars of steel embedded in rocks.
+
+"Don't let his head go, don't let him go," our people cried, when it was
+plain that all his strength had gone out of his arms. Achmed's
+pear-shaped head slipped from between his arms as the Tartar wound his
+legs about Ghitza's body and began to crush him. Ghitza held on with all
+his strength. His face was blue black. His nose bled, and from his mouth
+he spat blood. Our people cried and begged him to hold on. The eyes of
+the Tartars shot fire, their white teeth showed from under their thick
+lips and they called on Achmed to crush the Giaour. Oh! it seemed that
+all was lost. All our wealth, the honour and respect Ghitza had won for
+us; the village's wealth and all. And all the maidens were to be taken
+away as slaves to the Tartars. One man said aloud so that Ghitza should
+hear:
+
+"There will not be a pair of oxen in the whole village to plough with;
+not a horse to harrow with, and our maidens are pledged to the black
+sons of the devil."
+
+Ghitza was being downed. But, wait ... what happened! With the last of
+his strength he broke the hold. A shout rose to rend the skies.
+Bewildered Achmed lay stupefied and looked on. Tottering on his feet, in
+three jumps Ghitza was on the high point of the shore--a splash--and
+there was no more Ghitza. He was swallowed by the Danube. No Tartar had
+downed him!
+
+And so our people had back their wealth, and the people of the village
+theirs. No honour was lost and the maidens remained in the village--only
+Maria did not. She followed her lover even as the people looked on. No
+one even attempted to stop her. It was her right. Where was she to find
+one such as he? She, too, was from the seed of an oak.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+"And now, son, I ask thee--if the book before thee speaks of all the
+great heroes, why is it that Ghitza has not been given the place of
+honour?"
+
+The log was burning in the fireplace, but I said good night to Murdo. I
+wanted to dream of the mighty Ghitza and his Maria. And ever since I
+have been dreaming of ... her.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[4] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright,
+1921, by Konrad Bercovici.
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF FIVE POINTS[5]
+
+#By# EDNA CLARE BRYNER
+
+From _The Dial_
+
+
+A life went on in the town of Five Points. Five Points, the town was
+called, because it was laid out in the form of a star with five points
+and these points picked it out and circumscribed it. The Life that was
+lived there was in this wise. Over the centre of the town it hung thick
+and heavy, a great mass of tangled strands of all the colours that were
+ever seen, but stained and murky-looking from something that oozed out
+no one could tell from which of the entangling cords. In five directions
+heavy strands came in to the great knot in the centre and from it there
+floated out, now this way, now that, loose threads like tentacles,
+seeking to fasten themselves on whatever came within their grasp. All
+over the town thin threads criss-crossed back and forth in and out among
+the heavy strands making little snarls wherever several souls lived or
+were gathered together. One could see, by looking intently, that the
+tangling knotted strands and threads were woven into the rough pattern
+of a star.
+
+Life, trembling through the mass in the centre, streamed back and forth
+over the incoming strands, irregularly and in ever-changing volume,
+pulling at the smaller knots here and there in constant disturbance. It
+swayed the loosely woven mass above the schoolhouse, shaking out glints
+of colour from the thin bright cords, golden yellows and deep blues,
+vivid reds and greens. It twisted and untwisted the small black knot
+above the town hotel. It arose in murky vapour from the large knots
+above each of the churches. All over the town it quivered through the
+fine entangling threads, making the pattern change in colour, loosening
+and tightening the weaving. In this fashion Life came forth from the
+body which it inhabited.
+
+This is the way the town lay underneath it. From a large round of
+foot-tramped earth five wide streets radiated out in as many directions
+for a length of eight or ten houses and yards. Then the wide dirt street
+became a narrow road, the narrow board walks flanking it on either side
+stopped suddenly and faintly worn paths carried out their line for a
+space of three minutes' walk when all at once up rose the wall of the
+forest, the road plunged through and was immediately swallowed up. This
+is the way it was in all five directions from Five Points.
+
+Round about the town forests lay thick and dark like the dark heavens
+around the cities of the sky, and held it off secure from every other
+life-containing place. The roads that pierced the wall of the forest led
+in deeper and deeper, cutting their way around shaggy foothills down to
+swift streams and on and up again to heights, in and out of obscure
+notches. They must finally have sprung out again through another wall of
+forest to other towns. But as far as Five Points was concerned, they led
+simply to lumber mills sitting like chained ravening creatures at safe
+distances from one another eating slowly away at the thick woods as if
+trying to remove the screen that held the town off to itself.
+
+In the beginning there was no town at all, but miles and miles of virgin
+forest clothing the earth that humped itself into rough-bosomed hills
+and hummocks. Then the forest was its own. Birds nested in its dense
+leafage, fish multiplied in the clear running streams, wild creatures
+ranged its fastnesses in security. The trees, touched by no harsher hand
+than that which turns the rhythmically changing seasons, added year by
+year ring upon ring to their girths.
+
+Suddenly human masters appeared. They looked at the girth of the trees,
+appraised the wealth that lay hidden there, marked the plan of its
+taking out. They brought in workers, cleared a space for head-quarters
+in the midst of their great tracts, cut roads out through the forest,
+and wherever swift streams crossed they set mills. The cleared space
+they laid out symmetrically in a tree-fringed centre of common ground
+encircled by a main street for stores and offices, with streets for
+houses leading out to the edge of the clearing. In the south-east corner
+of the town they set aside a large square of land against the forest for
+a school-house.
+
+Thus Five Points was made as nearly in the centre of the great uncut
+region as it could well be and still be on the narrow-gauge railroad
+already passing through to make junction with larger roads. In short
+order there was a regular town with a station halfway down the street
+where the railroad cut through and near it a town hotel with a bar; a
+post office, several stores, a candy shop and a dentist's office
+fronting the round of earth in the centre; five churches set each on its
+own street and as far from the centre of the town as possible; and a
+six-room school-house with a flagpole. One mile, two miles, five and six
+miles distant in the forest, saw-mills buzzed away, strangely noisy amid
+their silent clumsy lumbermen and mill folk.
+
+One after another, all those diverse persons necessary for carrying on
+the work of a small community drifted in. They cut themselves loose from
+other communities and hastened hither to help make this new one, each
+moved by his own particular reason, each bringing to the making of a
+Life the threads of his own deep desire. The threads interlaced with
+other threads, twisted into strands, knotted with other strands and the
+Life formed itself and hung trembling, thick and powerful, over the
+town.
+
+The mill owners and managers came first, bringing strong warp threads
+for the Life. They had to have the town to take out their products and
+bring in supplies. They wanted to make money as fast as possible. "Let
+the town go to hell!" they said. They cared little how the Life went so
+that it did go. Most of them lived alternately as heads of families at
+home two hundred miles away and as bachelors at their mills and extract
+works.
+
+Mr. Stillman, owner of hundreds of acres of forest, was different. He
+wanted to be near at hand to watch his timber being taken out slowly and
+carefully and meanwhile to bring up his two small sons, healthy and
+virtuous, far away from city influences. He made a small farm up in the
+high south-west segment of the town against the woods, with orchards and
+sheep pasture and beehives and a big white farm-house, solidly built. He
+became a deacon in the Presbyterian church and one of the corner-stones
+of the town.
+
+Mr. Goff, owner of mills six miles out, kept up a comfortable place in
+town to serve as a half-way house between his mills and his home in a
+city a couple of hundred miles distant. He believed that his appearance
+as a regular townsman had a steadying influence on his workmen, that it
+gave them faith in him. His placid middle-aged wife accompanied him back
+and forth on his weekly visits to the mills and interested herself in
+those of his workers who had families.
+
+Mill Manager Henderson snapped at the chance to run the Company store as
+well as to manage several mills. He saw in it something besides food and
+clothing for his large family of red-haired girls. Although he lived
+down at one of the mills he was counted as a townsman. He was a pillar
+in the Methodist church and his eldest daughter played the piano there.
+
+George Brainerd, pudgy chief clerk of the Company store, was hand in
+glove with Henderson. He loved giving all his energies, undistracted by
+family or other ties, to the task of making the Company's workers come
+out at the end of the season in the Company's debt instead of having
+cleared a few hundred dollars as they were made to believe, on the day
+they were hired, would be the case. The percentage he received for his
+cleverness was nothing to him in comparison with the satisfaction he
+felt in his ability to manipulate.
+
+Lanky Jim Dunn, the station agent, thirty-three and unmarried, satisfied
+his hunger for new places by coming to Five Points. He hated old settled
+lines of conduct. As station agent, he had a hand in everything and on
+every one that came in and went out of the town. He held a sort of gauge
+on the Life of the town. He chaffed all the girls who came down to see
+the evening train come in and tipped off the young men as to what was
+doing at the town hotel.
+
+Dr. Smelter, thin-lipped and cold-eyed, elegant in manner and in dress,
+left his former practice without regret. He opened his office in Five
+Points hoping that in a new community obscure diseases did not flourish.
+He was certain that lack of skill would not be as apparent there as in a
+well-established village.
+
+Rev. Trotman had been lured hither by the anticipation of a virgin field
+for saving souls; Rev. Little, because he dared not let any of his own
+fold be exposed to the pitfalls of an opposing creed.
+
+Dave Fellows left off setting chain pumps in Gurnersville and renewed
+his teaching experience by coming to Five Points to be principal of the
+school. Dick Shelton's wife dragged her large brood of little girls and
+her drunken husband along after Fellows in order to be sure of some one
+to bring Dick home from the saloon before he drank up the last penny. It
+made little difference to her where she earned the family living by
+washing.
+
+So they came, one after another, and filled up the town--Abe Cohen, the
+Jew clothing dealer, Barringer, the druggist, Dr. Barton, rival of Dr.
+Smelter and a far more highly skilled practitioner, Jake O'Flaherty, the
+saloon-keeper, Widow Stokes, rag carpet weaver and gossip, Jeremy
+Whitling, town carpenter, and his golden-blonde daughter Lucy,
+school-teacher, Dr. Sohmer, dentist. Every small community needs these
+various souls. No sooner is the earth scraped clean for a new village
+than they come, one by one, until the town is complete. So it happened
+in Five Points until there came to be somewhat fewer than a thousand
+souls. There the town stood.
+
+Stores and offices completely took up the circle of Main Street and
+straggled a little down the residence streets. Under the fringe of trees
+business hummed where side by side flourished Grimes' meat shop, the
+drug store with the dentist's office above, Henderson's General Store,
+as the Company store was called, Brinker's grocery store, the Clothing
+Emporium, McGilroy's barber shop, Backus' hardware, and the post office.
+The Five Points _Argus_ issued weekly its two pages from the dingy
+office behind the drug store. Graham's Livery did a big business down
+near the station.
+
+Each church had gathered its own rightful members within its round of
+Sunday and mid-week services, its special observances on Christmas, and
+Easter, and Children's Day. In the spring of each year a one-ring circus
+encamped for a day on the common ground in the centre of the town and
+drew all the people in orderly array under its tent. On the Fourth of
+July the whole town again came together in the centre common, in fashion
+less orderly, irrespective of creed or money worth, celebrating the
+deeds of their ancestors by drinking lemonade and setting off
+firecrackers.
+
+After a while no one could remember when it had been any different.
+Those who came to town as little children grew into gawky youths knowing
+no more about other parts of the world than their geography books told
+them. When any one died, a strand in the Life hanging above the town
+broke and flapped in the wind, growing more and more frayed with the
+passing of time, until after a year or so its tatters were noticeable
+only as a sort of roughness upon the pattern. When a child was born, a
+thin tentacle from the central mass of strands reached out and fastened
+itself upon him, dragging out his desire year by year until the strand
+was thick and strong and woven in securely among the old scaly ones.
+
+The folk who lived at the mills had hardly anything to do with the Life
+of Five Points. They were merely the dynamo that kept the Life alive.
+They were busied down in the woods making the money for the men who made
+the town. They came to town only on Saturday nights. They bought a
+flannel shirt and provisions at the Company store, a bag of candy at
+Andy's for the hotel and then went back to have their weekly orgy in
+their own familiar surroundings. They had little effect on the Life of
+the town. That was contained almost entirely within the five points
+where the road met the forest.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+The Life of Five Points had one fearful enemy. Its home was in the black
+forest. Without any warning it was likely to break out upon the town,
+its long red tongues leaping out, striving to lick everything into its
+red gullet. It was a thirsty animal. If one gave it enough water, it
+went back into its lair. Five Points had only drilled wells in back
+yards. The nearest big stream was a mile away.
+
+Twice already during the existence of the Life the enemy had started
+forth from its lair. The first time was not long after the town had
+started and the pattern of Life was hardly more than indicated in the
+loosely woven threads.
+
+Down in the forest the people saw a long red tongue leaping. With brooms
+and staves they ran to meet it far from their dwellings, beating it with
+fury. As they felt the heat of its breath in their faces, they thought
+of ministers' words in past sermons. Young desires and aspirations long
+dormant began to throb into being. They prayed for safety. They promised
+to give up their sins. They determined to be hard on themselves in the
+performance of daily duties. The Life suspended above them untwisted its
+loosely gathered in strands, the strands shone with a golden light and
+entwined again in soft forms.
+
+With death-dealing blows they laid the enemy black and broken about
+Grant's Mills, a mile away, and then went back to their homes telling
+each other how brave they had been. Pride swelled up their hearts. They
+boasted that they could take care of themselves. Old habits slipped back
+upon their aspirations and crushed them again into hidden corners. Life
+gathered up its loose-woven pattern of dull threads and hung trembling
+over the town.
+
+Worsting the enemy brought the people more closely together. Suddenly
+they seemed to know each other for the first time. They made changes,
+entered into bonds, drew lines, and settled into their ways. Life grew
+quickly with its strands woven tightly together into a weaving that
+would be hard to unloose.
+
+The mill managers made money. They saw to it that their mills buzzed
+away continually. They visited their homes regularly. Mr. Stillman's
+farm flourished. His apple trees were bearing. The school children
+understood that they could always have apples for the asking. The
+Stillman boys did not go to school. They had a tutor. Their father
+whipped them soundly when they disobeyed him by going to play in the
+streets of the town with the other children.
+
+Dave Fellows had finally persuaded Dick Shelton to take a Cure. Dick
+Shelton sober, it was discovered, was a man of culture and knew, into
+the bargain, all the points of the law. So he was made Justice of the
+Peace. His wife stopped taking in washing and spent her days trying to
+keep the children out of the front room where Dick tried his cases.
+
+Dave Fellows himself gave up the principalship of the school, finding
+its meagre return insufficient to meet the needs of an increasing
+family. Yielding to the persuasion of Henderson, he became contractor
+for taking out timber at Trout Creek Mill. He counted on his two oldest
+sons to do men's work during the summer when school was not in session.
+Fellows moved his family into the very house in which Henderson had
+lived. Henderson explained that he had to live in town to be near a
+doctor for his ailing wife and sickly girls. The millmen told Dave
+Fellows that Henderson was afraid of them because they had threatened
+him if he kept on overcharging them at the Company store.
+
+Abe Cohen did a thriving business in clothing. He had a long list of
+customers heavily in debt to him through the promise that they could pay
+whenever they got ready. He dunned them openly on the street so that
+they made a wide detour in order to avoid going past his store.
+
+Dr. Barton had established a reputation for kindness of heart as well as
+skill in practice that threatened his rival's good will. Helen Barton,
+the doctor's young daughter, perversely kept company with her father's
+rival. Every one felt sorry for the father but secretly admired Dr.
+Smelter's diabolic tactics.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Long-forgotten was the enemy when it came the second time. On a dark
+night when Five Points lay heavy in its slumbers, it bore down upon the
+north side of the town. Some sensitive sleeper, troubled in his dreams,
+awoke to see the dreadful red tongues cutting across the darkness like
+crimson banners. His cries aroused the town. All the fathers rushed out
+against the enemy. The mothers dressed their children and packed best
+things in valises ready to flee when there was no longer any hope.
+
+For three days and three nights the enemy raged, leaping in to eat up
+one house, two houses, beaten back and back, creeping up in another
+place, beaten back again. The school boys took beaters and screamed at
+the enemy as they beat.
+
+The older ones remembered the first coming of the enemy. They said, "It
+was a warning!" They prayed while fear shook their aching arms. The Life
+of the town writhed and gleams of colour came out of its writhings and a
+whiteness as if the red tongues were cleansing away impurities.
+
+The mill managers brought their men to fight the enemy. "We mustn't let
+it go," they said. Mr. Stillman had his two sons helping him. He talked
+to them while they fought the enemy together. He spoke of punishment for
+sin. His sons listened while the lust of fighting held their bodies.
+
+Helen Barton knelt at her father's feet where he was fighting the enemy
+and swore she would never see Dr. Smelter again. She knew he was a bad
+man and could never bring her happiness.
+
+Lyda, eldest daughter in the Shelton family, gathered her little sisters
+about her, quieting their clamours while her mother wrung her hands and
+said over and over again, "To happen when your papa was getting on so
+nicely!" Lyda resolved that she would put all thoughts of marrying out
+of her head. She would have to stop keeping company with Ned Backus,
+the hardware man's son. It was not fair to keep company with a man you
+did not intend to marry. She would stay for ever with her mother and
+help care for the children so that her father would have a peaceful home
+life and not be tempted.
+
+All about, wherever they were, people prayed. They prayed until there
+was nothing left in their hearts but prayer as there was nothing left in
+their bodies but a great tiredness.
+
+Then a heavy rain came and the red tongues drank greedily until they
+were slaked and became little short red flickers of light on a soaked
+black ground. The enemy was conquered. One street of the town was gone.
+
+People ran to the church and held thanksgiving services. A stillness
+brooded over the town. Life hardly moved; the strands hung slack.
+Thanksgiving soon changed to revival. Services lasted a week. The
+ministers preached terrible sermons, burning with terrible words.
+"Repent before it is too late. Twice God has warned this town." People
+vowed vows and sang as they had never sung before the hymns in their
+church song-books. The strands of Life leapt and contorted themselves
+but they could not pull themselves apart.
+
+The revival ended. Building began. In a few months a street of houses
+sprang up defiant in yellow newness. In and out of a pattern little
+changed from its old accustomed aspect Life pulsated in great waves over
+the heavy strands. In and out, up and down, it rushed, drawing threads
+tightly together, knotting them in fantastic knots that only the
+judgment day could undo.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Mr. Stillman's sons were now young men. The younger was dying of heart
+trouble in a hospital in the city. The father had locked the elder in
+his room for two weeks on bread and water until he found out exactly
+what had happened between his son and the Barringers' hired girl. Guy
+Stillman, full-blooded, dark, and handsome, with high cheek bones like
+an Indian, declared vehemently that he would never marry the girl.
+
+Dave Fellows had taken his sons out of school to help him the year
+round in the woods. Sixteen-year-old Lawrence had left home and gone to
+work in the town barber shop late afternoons and evenings in order to
+keep on at his work in the high school grades just established. He vowed
+he would never return home to be made into a lumber-jack. Dave's wife
+was trying to persuade him to leave Five Points and go to the city where
+her family lived. There the children could continue their schooling and
+Dave could get work more suited to his ability than lumbering seemed to
+be. Dave, too proud to admit that he had not the capacity for carrying
+on this work successfully, refused to entertain any thought of leaving
+the place. "If my family would stick by me, everything would come out
+all right," he always said.
+
+Lyda Shelton still kept company with Ned Backus. When he begged her to
+marry him, she put him off another year until the children were a little
+better able to care for themselves. Her next youngest sister had married
+a dentist from another town and had not asked her mother to the wedding.
+Lyda was trying to make it up to her mother in double devotion.
+
+Helen Barton met Dr. Smelter once too often and her father made her
+marry him. She had a child born dead. Now she was holding clandestine
+meetings with Mr. Daly, a traveling salesman, home on one of his
+quarterly visits to his family. He had promised to take Helen away with
+him on his next trip and make a home for her in the city.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was a sweltering hot Saturday in the first part of June. Every now
+and then the wind blew in from the east picking up the dust in eddies.
+Abe Cohen's store was closed. His children wandered up and down the
+street, celebrating their sabbath in best clothes and chastened
+behaviour. Jim Dunn was watching a large consignment of goods for the
+Company store being unloaded. He was telling Earl Henderson, the
+manager's nephew, how much it would cost him to get in with the poker
+crowd.
+
+George Brainerd had finished fixing up the Company's accounts. He
+whistled as he worked. Dave Fellows was in debt three hundred dollars to
+the Company. That would keep him another year. He was a good workman but
+a poor manager. Sam Kent was in debt one hundred dollars. He would have
+to stay, too. John Simpson had come out even. He could go if he wanted
+to. He was a trouble-maker anyway....
+
+Helen Barton sat talking with Daly in the thick woods up back of the
+Presbyterian church. They were planning how to get away undetected on
+the evening train.... "If she was good enough for you then, she's good
+enough now," Mr. Stillman was saying to his defiant son. "You're not fit
+for a better woman. You'll take care of her and that's the end of
+it...."
+
+Widow Stokes' half-witted son rode up from the Extract Works on an old
+bony horse. He brought word that the enemy was at the Kibbard Mill, two
+miles beyond the Works. People were throwing their furniture into the
+mill pond, he said. Every one laughed. Mottie Stokes was always telling
+big stories. The boy, puzzled, went round and round the town, stopping
+every one he met, telling his tale. Sweat poured down his pale face.
+
+At last he rode down to Trout Creek Mill and told Dave Fellows. Dave got
+on the old grey mule and came up to town to find out further news. The
+townsfolk, loafing under the trees around Main Street and going about on
+little errands, shouted when they saw Dave come in on his mule beside
+Mottie on the bony horse. "Two of a kind," was passed round the circle
+of business and gossip, and sniggering went with it. Dave suggested that
+some one go down to see just what had happened. Jeers answered him.
+"Believe a fool? Not quite that cracked yet!" Dave went about uneasily
+if he had business to attend to, but keeping an eye searching out in the
+direction of the Works.
+
+In an hour or so another rider came panting into town. Back of him
+straggled families from the mills and works with whatever belongings
+they could bring on their backs. Fear came into the hearts of the
+citizens of Five Points. They shouted in anger to drive away their fear.
+"Why didn't you stay and fight it? What'd you come up here for?"
+
+"Too big, too big," cried the lumber folk, gesturing back over their
+shoulders.
+
+Far off a haze was gathering and in the haze a redness appeared, growing
+slowly more and more distinct. The townsfolk stared in the direction of
+the Works, unwilling to believe. Some one shouted, "Better be ready!"
+Shortly every pump in the town had its hand and everything that could
+hold water was being filled for the oncoming thirsty beast.
+
+Dave Fellows galloped down the long hills, around curves, across the
+bridge at the mill and up again to his home, told his family of the
+approach of the enemy, directed them to pack up all the easily moved
+furniture, harness the two mules and be ready to flee out through the
+forest past Goff's Mills to the next station thirty miles further down
+the railroad. No one could tell where the enemy would spread. He would
+come back the minute that all hope was lost. The boys must stay at home
+and take care of the place. "Bring Lawrence back with you," his wife
+called after him, and he turned and waved his hand.
+
+When he got back into town thousands of red tongues were bearing down
+upon the station street. The enemy belched forth great hot breaths that
+swept the sky ahead of it like giant firecrackers and falling upon the
+houses to the east of the town ran from one to another eating its way up
+the station street towards the centre of the town. Family after family
+left their homes, carrying valuables, dragging their small children, and
+scattered to the north and south of the advancing enemy. The town hotel
+emptied itself quickly of its temporary family. Jim Dunn left the
+station carrying the cash box and a bundle of papers.
+
+From building to building the enemy leaped. Before it fled group after
+group of persons from stores and homes. Methodically it went round the
+circle of shops, the most rapacious customer the town had ever seen.
+Quarters of beeves in the meat shop, bottles of liquids and powders on
+the drug-store shelves, barrels and boxes of food in the grocery store,
+suits of clothing in Abe Cohen's, the leather whips and carriage robes
+in the hardware store, all went down its gullet with the most amazing
+ease.
+
+Swelled with its indiscriminate meal, it started hesitantly on its way
+up the street that led to the Presbyterian Church. Now people lost their
+heads and ran hither and thither, screaming and praying incoherently,
+dragging their crying children about from one place to another, pumping
+water frantically to offer it, an impotent libation to an insatiable
+god. They knew that neither the beating of brooms nor the water from
+their wells could quench the enemy that was upon them. Red Judgment Day
+was at hand.
+
+Meanwhile a peculiar thing happened. The Life that was hanging above the
+town lifted itself up, high up, entire in its pattern, beyond the reach
+of red tongues, of gusts from hot gullets--and there it stayed while the
+enemy raged below.
+
+Dave Fellows harangued the men who were beating away vainly, pouring
+buckets of water on unquenchable tongues. He pointed to the forest up
+the street back of the Presbyterian Church. He was telling them that the
+only thing to do was to call forth another enemy to come down and do
+battle with this one before it reached the church. "Yes, yes," they
+chorused eagerly.
+
+Craftily they edged around south of the enemy, scorching their faces
+against its streaming flank, and ran swiftly far up the line of forest
+past the church. There it was even at that moment that Helen Barton was
+begging Daly to remember his promise and take her with him on the
+evening train....
+
+The men scooped up leaves and small twigs and bending over invoked their
+champion to come forth and do battle for them. Presently it came forth,
+shooting out little eager red tongues that danced and leaped, glad to be
+coming forth, growing larger in leaps and bounds. Dave Fellows watched
+anxiously the direction in which the hissing tongues sprang. "The wind
+will take it," he said at last. Fitfully the breeze pressed up against
+the back of the newly born, pushing more and more strongly as the
+tongues sprang higher and higher, until finally it swept the full-grown
+monster down the track towards where the other monster was gorging.
+
+"For God's sake, Henry, take me with you, this evening, as you
+promised," Helen was imploring Daly. "I can't stay here any longer. My
+father--I wish now I had listened to him in the first place, long ago."
+Daly did not hear her. He had risen to his feet and holding his head
+back was drawing in great acrid breaths. His florid face went white.
+"What is that?" he said hoarsely. Through the thick forest red tongues
+broke out, sweeping towards them. Helen clutched Daly's arm, screaming.
+He shook her off and turned to flee out by the church. There, too, red
+tongues were leaping, curling back on themselves in long derisive
+snarls. Daly turned upon her. "You ..."
+
+The two enemies met at the church, red tongue leaping against red
+tongue, crackling jaws breaking on crackling jaws, sizzling gullet
+straining against sizzling gullet. A great noise like the rending of a
+thousand fibres, a clap of red thunder, as the body of beast met the
+body of beast, and both lay crumpled upon the ground together, their
+long bodies writhing, bruised, red jaws snapping, red tongue eating red
+tongue.
+
+Upon them leaped the band of men spreading out the whole length of the
+bodies and beat, beat, incessantly, desperately, tongue after tongue,
+hour after hour, beat, beat. Lingeringly the enemy died, a hard death.
+Three days it was dying and it had watchers in plenty. Whenever a red
+tongue leaped into life, some one was there to lay it low. In the
+night-time the men watched, and in the day the women and girls. The men
+talked. "We will build it up again in brick," they said. "That is safer
+and it looks better, too." The women talked, too. "I hope Abe will get
+in some of those new lace curtains," they said.
+
+Meanwhile families gathered themselves together. Those whose homes were
+gone encamped picnic fashion in the schoolhouse or were taken in by
+those whose houses were still standing. Two persons were missing when
+the muster of the town was finally taken. They were Helen Barton and Mr.
+Daly. Jim Dunn said he wasn't sure but he thought Daly left on the
+morning train. Daly's wife said he told her he was not going until
+evening.
+
+They searched for Helen far and wide. No trace of her was ever found.
+Her father stood in front of the Sunday School on the Sunday following
+the death of the enemy and made an eloquent appeal for better life in
+the town. "The wages of sin is death," he declared, "death of the soul
+always, death of the body sometimes." The people thought him inspired.
+Widow Stokes whispered to her neighbour, "It's his daughter he's
+thinking of."
+
+Dave Fellows was the only person who left the town. He went back to his
+wife when he saw that the town was saved and said, "We might as well
+move now that we're packed up. The town is cursed." Two days later they
+took the train north from a pile of blackened timbers where the old
+station had stood. Lawrence went with them.
+
+The enemy had eaten up all the records in the Company store, and had
+tried to eat up George Brainerd while he was attempting to save them.
+The Company had to accept the workers' own accounts. George was going
+about with his arm tied up, planning to keep a duplicate set of records
+in a place unassailable by the enemy.
+
+Abe Cohen wailed so about his losses and his little children that Mr.
+Stillman set him up in a brand new stock of clothing. Abe was telling
+every one, "Buy now. Pay when you like." And customers came as of old.
+
+Guy Stillman married the Barringers' hired girl. His father established
+them in a little home out at the edge of the town. The nearest neighbour
+reported that Guy beat his wife.
+
+Lyda married Ned Backus. "Suppose you had died," she told Ned. "I would
+never have forgiven myself. You can work in papa's new grocery store.
+He's going to start one as soon as we can get the building done. Mama
+will have a son to help take care of her."
+
+Life, its strands blackened by the strong breath of the enemy, settled
+down once more over the town and hung there, secure in its pattern,
+thick and powerful. Under it brick stores and buildings rose up and
+people stood about talking, complacently planning their days. "It won't
+come again for a long time," they said.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[5] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company, Inc. Copyright,
+1921, by Edna Clare Bryner.
+
+
+
+
+THE SIGNAL TOWER[6]
+
+#By# WADSWORTH CAMP
+
+From _The Metropolitan_
+
+
+"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
+
+The big man, Tolliver, patted his wife's head. His coarse laughter was
+meant to reassure, but, as he glanced about the living-room of his
+remote and cheerless house, his eyes were uneasy. The little boy, just
+six years old, crouched by the cook-stove, whimpering over the remains
+of his supper.
+
+"What are you afraid of?" Tolliver scoffed.
+
+The stagnant loneliness, the perpetual drudgery, had not yet conquered
+his wife's beauty, dark and desirable. She motioned towards the boy.
+
+"He's afraid, too, when the sun goes down."
+
+For a time Tolliver listened to the wind, which assaulted the frame
+house with the furious voices of witches demanding admittance.
+
+"It's that----" he commenced.
+
+She cut him short, almost angrily.
+
+"It isn't that with me," she whispered.
+
+He lifted the tin pail that contained a small bottle of coffee and some
+sandwiches. He started for the door, but she ran after him, dragging at
+his arm.
+
+"Don't go! I'm afraid!"
+
+The child was quiet now, staring at them with round, reflective eyes.
+
+"Joe," Tolliver said gently, "will be sore if I don't relieve him on
+time."
+
+She pressed her head against his coat and clung tighter. He closed his
+eyes.
+
+"You're afraid of Joe," he said wearily.
+
+Without looking up, she nodded. Her voice was muffled.
+
+"He came last night after you relieved him at the tower. He knocked, and
+I wouldn't let him in. It made him mad. He swore. He threatened. He said
+he'd come back. He said he'd show us we couldn't kick him out of the
+house just because he couldn't help liking me. We never ought to have
+let him board here at all."
+
+"Why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+"I was afraid you'd be fighting each other in the tower; and it didn't
+seem so bad until dark came on. Why didn't you complain to the railroad
+when--when he tried to kiss me the other night?"
+
+"I thought that was finished," Tolliver answered slowly, "when I kicked
+him out, when I told him I'd punish him if he bothered you again. And
+I--I was a little ashamed to complain to the superintendent about that.
+Don't you worry about Joe, Sally, I'll talk to him now, before I let him
+out of the tower. He's due to relieve me again at midnight, and I'll be
+home then."
+
+He put on his great coat. He pulled his cap over his ears. The child
+spoke in a high, apprehensive voice.
+
+"Don't go away, papa."
+
+He stared at the child, considering.
+
+"Put his things on, Sally," he directed at last.
+
+"What for?"
+
+"I'll send him back from the tower with something that will make you
+feel easier."
+
+Her eyes brightened.
+
+"Isn't that against the rules?"
+
+"Guess I can afford to break one for a change," he said. "I'm not likely
+to need it myself to-night. Come, Sonny."
+
+The child shrank in the corner, his pudgy hands raised defensively.
+
+"It's only a little ways, and Sonny can run home fast," his mother
+coaxed.
+
+Against his ineffective reluctance she put on his coat and hat. Tolliver
+took the child by the hand and led him, sobbing unevenly, into the
+wind-haunted darkness. The father chatted encouragingly, pointing to two
+or three lights, scattered, barely visible; beacons that marked
+unprofitable farms.
+
+It was, in fact, only a short distance to the single track railroad and
+the signal tower, near one end of a long siding. In the heavy,
+boisterous night the yellow glow from the upper windows, and the red and
+green of the switch lamps, close to the ground, had a festive
+appearance. The child's sobs drifted away. His father swung him in his
+arms, entered the tower, and climbed the stairs. Above, feet stirred
+restlessly. A surly voice came down.
+
+"Here at last, eh?"
+
+When Tolliver's head was above the level of the flooring he could see
+the switch levers, and the table, gleaming with the telegraph
+instruments, and dull with untidy clips of yellow paper; but the detail
+that held him was the gross, expectant face of Joe.
+
+Joe was as large as Tolliver, and younger. From that commanding
+position, he appeared gigantic.
+
+"Cutting it pretty fine," he grumbled.
+
+Tolliver came on up, set the child down, and took off his overcoat.
+
+"Fact is," he drawled, "I got held back a minute--sort of unexpected."
+
+His eyes fixed the impatient man.
+
+"What you planning to do, Joe, between now and relieving me at
+midnight?"
+
+Joe shifted his feet.
+
+"Don't know," he said uncomfortably. "What you bring the kid for? Want
+me to drop him at the house?"
+
+Tolliver shook his head. He placed his hands on his hips.
+
+"That's one thing I want to say to you, Joe. Just you keep away from the
+house. Thought you understood that when you got fresh with Sally the
+other night."
+
+Joe's face flushed angrily.
+
+"Guess I was a fool to say I was sorry about that. Guess I got to teach
+you I got a right to go where I please."
+
+Tolliver shook his head.
+
+"Not to our house, if we don't want you."
+
+The other leered.
+
+"You so darned sure Sally don't want me?"
+
+Impulsively Tolliver stepped forward, closing his fists.
+
+"You drop that sort of talk, or----"
+
+Joe interrupted, laughing.
+
+"One thing's sure, Tolliver. If it came to a fight between me and you
+I'd be almost ashamed to hit you."
+
+Through his passion Tolliver recognized the justice of that appraisal.
+Physically he was no match for the younger man.
+
+"Things," he said softly, "are getting so we can't work here together."
+
+"Then," Joe flung back, as he went down the stairs, "you'd better be
+looking for another job."
+
+Tolliver sighed, turning to the table. The boy played there, fumbling
+with the yellow forms. Tolliver glanced at the top one. He called out
+quickly to the departing man.
+
+"What's this special, Joe?"
+
+The other's feet stumped on the stairs again.
+
+"Forgot," he said as his head came through the trap. "Some big-wigs
+coming through on a special train along about midnight. Division
+headquarters got nothing definite yet, but figure we'll have to get her
+past thirty-three somewheres on this stretch. So keep awake."
+
+Tolliver with an increasing anxiety continued to examine the yellow
+slips.
+
+"And thirty-three's late, and still losing."
+
+Joe nodded.
+
+"Makes it sort of uncertain."
+
+"Seems to me," Tolliver said, "you might have mentioned it."
+
+"Maybe," Joe sneered, "you'd like me to stay and do your job."
+
+He went down the stairs and slammed the lower door.
+
+Tolliver studied the slips, his ears alert for the rattling of the
+telegraph sounder. After a time he replaced the file on the table and
+looked up. The boy, quite contented now in the warm, interesting room,
+stretched his fingers towards the sending key, with the air of a culprit
+dazzled into attempting an incredible crime.
+
+"Hands off, Sonny!" Tolliver said kindly. "You must run back to mother
+now."
+
+He opened a drawer beneath the table and drew out a polished
+six-shooter--railroad property, designed for the defense of the tower
+against tramps or bandits. The boy reached his hand eagerly for it. His
+father shook his head.
+
+"Not to play with, Sonny. That's for business. If you promise not to
+touch it 'till you get home and hand it to mama, to-morrow I'll give you
+a nickel."
+
+The child nodded. Tolliver placed the revolver in the side pocket of the
+little overcoat, and, the boy following him, went down stairs.
+
+"You run home fast as you can," Tolliver directed. "Don't you be afraid.
+I'll stand right here in the door 'till you get there. Nothing shall
+hurt you."
+
+The child glanced back at the festive lights with an anguished
+hesitation. Tolliver had to thrust him away from the tower.
+
+"A nickel in the morning----" he bribed.
+
+The child commenced to run. Long after he had disappeared the troubled
+man heard the sound of tiny feet scuffling with panic along the road to
+home.
+
+When the sound had died away Tolliver slammed the door and climbed the
+stairs. He studied the yellow slips again, striving to fix in his mind
+this problem, involving the safety of numerous human beings, that would
+probably become his. He had a fear of abnormal changes in the schedule.
+It had been impressed upon every signalman that thirty-three was the
+road's most precious responsibility. It was the only solid Pullman train
+that passed over the division. This time of year it ran crowded and was
+erratic; more often than not, late. That fact created few difficulties
+on an ordinary night; but, combined with such uncertainty of schedule,
+it worried the entire division, undoubtedly, to have running, also on an
+uncertain schedule, and in the opposite direction on that single track,
+an eager special carrying important men. The superintendent, of course,
+would want to get those flashy trains past each other without delay to
+either. That was why these lonely towers, without receiving definite
+instructions yet, had been warned to increase watchfulness.
+
+Tolliver's restlessness grew. He hoped the meeting would take place
+after Joe had relieved him, or else to the north or south.
+
+It was difficult, moreover, for him to fix his mind to-night on his
+professional responsibility. His duty towards his family was so much
+more compelling. While he sat here, listening to every word beaten out
+by the sounder, he pictured his wife and son, alone in the little house
+nearly a half a mile away. And he wondered, while he, their only
+protector, was imprisoned, what Joe was up to.
+
+Joe must have been drunk when he tried to get in the house last night.
+Had he been drinking to-night?
+
+The sounder jarred rapidly.
+
+"LR. LR. LR."
+
+That was for the tower to the north. It was hard to tell from Joe's
+manner. Perhaps that would account for his not having called attention
+to the approaching presence of the special on the division.
+
+Pound. Pound. Pound. The hard striking of the metal had the effect of a
+trip-hammer on his brain.
+
+"Allen reports special left Oldtown at 9.45."
+
+Joe had certainly been drinking that night last week when he had got
+fresh with Sally.
+
+"Thirty-three still losing south of Anderson."
+
+He jotted the words down and sent his O.K.'s while his head, it seemed
+to him, recoiled physically from each rapid stroke of the little brass
+bar.
+
+Sonny, sent by his mother, had come to tell him that night, panting up
+the stairs, his eyes wide and excited. Tolliver had looked from the
+window towards his home, his face flushed, his fists clenched, his heart
+almost choking him. Then he had seen Joe, loafing along the road in the
+moonlight, and he had relaxed, scarcely aware of the abominable choice
+he had faced.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+His own call. Tolliver shrank from the sharp blows. He forced himself to
+a minute attention. It was division headquarters.
+
+"Holding twenty-one here until thirty-three and the special have
+cleared."
+
+Twenty-one was a freight. It was a relief to have that off the road for
+the emergency. He lay back when the striking at his head had ceased.
+
+It was unfortunate that Joe and he alone should be employed at the
+tower. Relieving each other at regular intervals, they had never been at
+the house together. Either Tolliver had been there alone with his wife
+and his son--or Joe had been. The two men had seen each other too
+little, only momentarily in this busy room. They didn't really know each
+other.
+
+"LR. LR. LR."
+
+Tolliver shook his head savagely. It had been a mistake letting Joe
+board with them at all. Any man would fall in love with Sally. Yet
+Tolliver had thought after that definite quarrel Joe would have known
+his place; the danger would have ended.
+
+It was probably this drinking at the country inn where Joe lived now
+that had made the man brood. The inn was too small and removed to
+attract the revenue officers, and the liquid manufactured and sold there
+was designed to make a man daring, irrational, deadly.
+
+Tolliver shrank from the assaults of the sounder.
+
+Where was Joe now? At the inn, drinking; or----
+
+He jotted down the outpourings of the voluble key. More and more it
+became clear that the special and thirty-three would meet near his
+tower, but it would almost certainly be after midnight when Joe would
+have relieved him. He watched the clock, often pressing his fingers
+against his temples in an attempt to make bearable the hammering at his
+brain, unequal and persistent.
+
+While the hands crawled towards midnight the wind increased, shrieking
+around the tower as if the pounding angered it.
+
+Above the shaking of the windows Tolliver caught another sound, gentle
+and disturbing, as if countless fingers tapped softly, simultaneously
+against the panes.
+
+He arose and raised one of the sashes. The wind tore triumphantly in,
+bearing a quantity of snowflakes that fluttered to the floor, expiring.
+Under his breath Tolliver swore. He leaned out, peering through the
+storm. The red and green signal lamps were blurred. He shrugged his
+shoulders. Anyway, Joe would relieve him before the final orders came,
+before either train was in the section.
+
+Tolliver clenched his hands. If Joe didn't come!
+
+He shrank from the force of his imagination.
+
+He was glad Sally had the revolver.
+
+He glanced at his watch, half believing that the clock had stopped.
+
+There at last it was, both hands pointing straight up--midnight! And
+Tolliver heard only the storm and the unbearable strokes of the
+telegraph sounder. It was fairly definite now. Both trains were roaring
+through the storm, destined almost certainly to slip by each other at
+this siding within the next hour.
+
+Where was Joe? And Sally and the boy alone at the house!
+
+Quarter past twelve.
+
+What vast interest could have made Joe forget his relief at the probable
+loss of his job?
+
+Tolliver glanced from the rear window towards his home, smothered in the
+night and the storm. If he might only run there quickly to make sure
+that Sally was all right!
+
+The sounder jarred furiously. Tolliver half raised his hand, as if to
+destroy it.
+
+It was the division superintendent himself at the key.
+
+"NT. NT. NT. Is it storming bad with you?"
+
+"Pretty thick."
+
+"Then keep the fuses burning. For God's sake, don't let the first in
+over-run his switch. And clear the line like lightning. Those fellows
+are driving faster than hell."
+
+Tolliver's mouth opened, but no sound came. His face assumed the
+expression of one who undergoes the application of some destructive
+barbarity.
+
+"I get afraid when you leave me alone this way at night."
+
+He visualized his wife, beautiful, dark, and desirable, urging him not
+to go to the tower.
+
+A gust of wind sprang through the trap door. The yellow slips fluttered.
+He ran to the trap. He heard the lower door bang shut. Someone was on
+the stairs, climbing with difficulty, breathing hard. A hat, crusted
+with snow, appeared. There came slowly into the light Joe's face, ugly
+and inflamed; the eyes restless with a grave indecision.
+
+Tolliver's first elation died in new uncertainty.
+
+"Where you been?" he demanded fiercely.
+
+Joe struggled higher until he sat on the flooring, his legs dangling
+through the trap. He laughed in an ugly and unnatural note; and Tolliver
+saw that there was more than drink, more than sleeplessness, recorded in
+his scarlet face. Hatred was there. It escaped, too, from the streaked
+eyes that looked at Tolliver as if through a veil. He spoke thickly.
+
+"Don't you wish you knew?"
+
+Tolliver stooped, grasping the man's shoulders. In each fist he clenched
+bunches of wet cloth. In a sort of desperation he commenced to shake the
+bundled figure.
+
+"You tell me where you been----"
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+Joe leered.
+
+"Joe! You got to tell me where you been."
+
+The pounding took Tolliver's strength. He crouched lower in an effort to
+avoid it, but each blow struck as hard as before, forcing into his brain
+word after word that he passionately resented. Places, hours,
+minutes--the details of this vital passage of two trains in the
+unfriendly night.
+
+"Switch whichever arrives first, and hold until the other is through."
+
+It was difficult to understand clearly, because Joe's laughter
+persisted, crashing against Tolliver's brain as brutally as the sounder.
+
+"You got to tell me if you been bothering Sally."
+
+The hatred and the cunning of the mottled face grew.
+
+"Why don't you ask Sally?"
+
+Slowly Tolliver let the damp cloth slip from his fingers. He
+straightened, facing more definitely that abominable choice. He glanced
+at his cap and overcoat. The lazy clock hands reminded him that he had
+remained in the tower nearly half an hour beyond his time. Joe was
+right. It was clear he could satisfy himself only by going home and
+asking Sally.
+
+"Get up," he directed. "I guess you got sense enough to know you're on
+duty."
+
+Joe struggled to his feet and lurched to the table. Tolliver wondered at
+the indecision in the other's eyes, which was more apparent. Joe fumbled
+aimlessly with the yellow slips. Tolliver's fingers, outstretched toward
+his coat, hesitated, as if groping for an object that must necessarily
+elude them.
+
+"Special!" Joe mumbled. "And--Hell! Ain't thirty-three through yet?"
+
+He swayed, snatching at the edge of the table.
+
+Tolliver lowered his hands. The division superintendent had pounded out
+something about fuses. What had it been exactly? "Keep fuses burning."
+
+With angry gestures he took his coat and cap down, and put them on while
+he repeated all the instructions that had been forced into his brain
+with the effect of a physical violence. At the table Joe continued to
+fumble aimlessly.
+
+"Ain't you listening?" Tolliver blurted out.
+
+"Huh?"
+
+"Why don't you light a fuse?"
+
+It was quite obvious that Joe had heard nothing.
+
+"Fuse!" Joe repeated.
+
+He stooped to a box beneath the table. He appeared to lose his balance.
+He sat on the floor with his back against the wall, his head drooping.
+
+"What about fuse?" he murmured.
+
+His eyes closed.
+
+Tolliver pressed the backs of his hands against his face. If only his
+suspense might force refreshing tears as Sonny cried away his infant
+agonies!
+
+Numerous people asleep in that long Pullman train, and the special
+thundering down! Sally and Sonny a half mile away in the lonely house!
+And that drink-inspired creature on the floor--what was he capable of in
+relation to those unknown, helpless travelers? But what was he capable
+of; what had he, perhaps, been capable of towards those two known ones
+that Tolliver loved better than all the world?
+
+Tolliver shuddered. As long as Joe was here Sally and Sonny would not be
+troubled. But where had Joe been just now? How had Sally and Sonny fared
+while Tolliver had waited for that stumbling step on the stairs? He had
+to know that, yet how could he? For he couldn't leave Joe to care for
+all those lives on the special and thirty-three.
+
+He removed his coat and cap, and replaced them on the hook. He took a
+fuse from the box and lighted it. He raised the window and threw the
+fuse to the track beneath. It sputtered and burst into a flame, ruddy,
+gorgeous, immense. It etched from the night distant fences and trees. It
+bent the sparkling rails until they seemed to touch at the terminals of
+crimson vistas. If in the storm the locomotive drivers should miss the
+switch lamps, set against them, they couldn't neglect this bland banner
+of danger, flung across the night.
+
+When Tolliver closed the window he noticed that the ruddy glow filled
+the room, rendering sickly and powerless the yellow lamp wicks. And
+Tolliver clutched the table edge, for in this singular and penetrating
+illumination he saw that Joe imitated the details of sleep; that beneath
+half-closed lids, lurked a fanatical wakefulness, and final resolution
+where, on entering the tower, he had exposed only indecision.
+
+While Tolliver stared Joe abandoned his masquerade. Wide-eyed, he got
+lightly to his feet and started for the trap.
+
+Instinctively, Tolliver's hand started for the drawer where customarily
+the revolver was kept. Then he remembered, and was sorry he had sent the
+revolver to Sally. For it was clear that the poison in Joe's brain was
+sending him to the house while Tolliver was chained to the tower. He
+would have shot, he would have killed, to have kept the man here. He
+would do what he could with his hands.
+
+"Where you going?" he asked hoarsely.
+
+Joe laughed happily.
+
+"To keep Sally company while you look after the special and
+thirty-three."
+
+Tolliver advanced cautiously, watching for a chance. When he spoke his
+voice had the appealing quality of a child's.
+
+"It's my time off. If I do your work you got to stay at least."
+
+Joe laughed again.
+
+"No. It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed."
+
+Tolliver sprang then, but Joe avoided the heavier, clumsier man. He
+grasped a chair, swinging it over his head.
+
+"I'll teach you," he grunted, "to kick me out like dirt. I'll teach you
+and Sally."
+
+With violent strength he brought the chair down. Tolliver got his hands
+up, but the light chair crashed them aside and splintered on his head.
+He fell to his knees, reaching out blindly. He swayed lower until he lay
+stretched on the floor, dimly aware of Joe's descending steps, of the
+slamming of the lower door, at last of a vicious pounding at his bruised
+brain.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+He struggled to his knees, his hands at his head.
+
+"No, by God! I won't listen to you."
+
+"Thirty-three cleared LR at 12:47."
+
+One tower north! Thirty-three was coming down on him, but he was only
+glad that the pounding had ceased. It commenced again.
+
+"NT. NT. NT. Special cleared JV at 12:48."
+
+Each rushing towards each other with only a minute's difference in
+schedule! That was close--too close. But what was it he had in his mind?
+
+Suddenly he screamed. He lurched to his feet and leant against the wall.
+He knew now. Joe, with those infused and criminal eyes, had gone to
+Sally and Sonny--to get even. There could be nothing in the world as
+important as that. He must get after Joe. He must stop him in time.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+There was something in his brain about stopping a train in time.
+
+"It only needs you to keep all those people from getting killed."
+
+Somebody had told him that. What did it mean? What had altered here in
+the tower all at once?
+
+There was no longer any red.
+
+"NT. NT. NT."
+
+"I won't answer."
+
+Where had he put his cap and coat. He needed them. He could go without.
+He could kill a beast without. His foot trembled on the first step.
+
+"NT. NT. NT. Why don't you answer? What's wrong. No O. K. Are you
+burning fuses? Wake up. Send an O. K."
+
+The sounder crashed frantically. It conquered him.
+
+He lurched to the table, touched the key, and stuttered out:
+
+"O. K. NT."
+
+He laughed a little. They were in his block, rushing at each other, and
+Joe was alone at the house with Sally and the child. O. K.!
+
+He lighted another fuse, flung it from the window, and started with
+automatic movements for the trap.
+
+Let them crash. Let them splinter, and burn, and die. What was the lot
+of them compared with Sally and Sonny?
+
+The red glare from the fuse sprang into the room. Tolliver paused,
+bathed in blood.
+
+He closed his eyes to shut out the heavy waves of it. He saw women like
+Sally and children like Sonny asleep in a train. It gave him an
+impression that Sally and Sonny were, indeed, on the train. To keep them
+safe it would be necessary to retard the special until thirty-three
+should be on the siding and he could throw that lever that would close
+the switch and make the line safe. He wavered, taking short steps
+between the table and the trap. Where were Sally and Sonny? He had to
+get that clear in his mind.
+
+A bitter cold sprang up the trap. He heard the sobbing of a child.
+
+"Sonny!"
+
+It was becoming clear enough now.
+
+The child crawled up the steps on his hands and knees. Tolliver took him
+in his arms, straining at him passionately.
+
+"What is it, Sonny? Where's mama?"
+
+"Papa, come quick. Come quick."
+
+He kept gasping it out until Tolliver stopped him.
+
+"Joe! Did Joe come?"
+
+The child nodded. He caught his breath.
+
+"Joe broke down the door," he said.
+
+"But mama had the gun," Tolliver said hoarsely.
+
+The boy shook his head.
+
+"Mama wouldn't let Sonny play with it. She locked it up in the cupboard.
+Joe grabbed mama, and she screamed, and said to run and make you come."
+
+In the tower, partially smothered by the storm, vibrated a shrill cry.
+For a moment Tolliver thought his wife's martyrdom had been projected to
+him by some subtle means. Then he knew it was the anxious voice of
+thirty-three--the pleading of all those unconscious men and women and
+little ones. He flung up his arms, releasing the child, and ran to the
+table where he lighted another fuse, and threw it to the track. He
+peered from the window, aware of the sobbing refrain of his son.
+
+"Come quick! Come quick! Come quick!"
+
+From far to the south drifted a fainter sibilation, like an echo of
+thirty-three's whistle. To the north a glow increased. The snowflakes
+there glistened like descending jewels. It was cutting it too close. It
+was vicious to crush all that responsibility on the shoulders of one
+ignorant man, such a man as himself, or Joe. What good would it do him
+to kill Joe now? What was there left for him to do?
+
+He jotted down thirty-three's orders.
+
+The glow to the north intensified, swung slightly to the left as
+thirty-three took the siding. But she had to hurry. The special was
+whistling closer--too close. Thirty-three's locomotive grumbled abreast
+of him. Something tugged at his coat.
+
+"Papa! Won't you come quick to mama?"
+
+The dark, heavy cars slipped by. The red glow of the fuse was overcome
+by the white light from the south. The last black Pullman of
+thirty-three cleared the points. With a gasping breath Tolliver threw
+the switch lever.
+
+"It's too late now, Sonny," he said to the importunate child.
+
+The tower shook. A hot, white eye flashed by, and a blurred streak of
+cars. Snow pelted in the window, stinging Tolliver's face. Tolliver
+closed the window and picked up thirty-three's orders. If he had kept
+the revolver here he could have prevented Joe's leaving the tower. Why
+had Sally locked it in the cupboard? At least it was there now. Tolliver
+found himself thinking of the revolver as an exhausted man forecasts
+sleep.
+
+Someone ran swiftly up the stairs. It was the engineer of thirty-three,
+surprised and impatient.
+
+"Where are my orders, Tolliver? I don't want to lie over here all
+night."
+
+He paused. His tone became curious.
+
+"What ails you, Tolliver?"
+
+Tolliver handed him the orders, trembling.
+
+"I guess maybe my wife at the house is dead, or--You'll go see."
+
+The engineer shook his head.
+
+"You brace up, Tolliver. I'm sorry if anything's happened to your wife,
+but we couldn't hold thirty-three, even for a murder."
+
+Tolliver's trembling grew. He mumbled incoherently:
+
+"But I didn't murder all those people----"
+
+"Report to division headquarters," the engineer advised. "They'll send
+you help to-morrow."
+
+He hurried down the stairs. After a moment the long train pulled out,
+filled with warm, comfortable people. The child, his sobbing at an end,
+watched it curiously. Tolliver tried to stop his shaking.
+
+There was someone else on the stairs now, climbing with an extreme
+slowness. A bare arm reached through the trap, wavering for a moment
+uncertainly. Ugly bruises showed on the white flesh. Tolliver managed to
+reach the trap. He grasped the arm and drew into the light the dark hair
+and the chalky face of his wife. Her wide eyes stared at him strangely.
+
+"Don't touch me," she whispered. "What am I going to do?"
+
+"Joe?"
+
+"Why do you tremble so?" she asked in her colorless voice, without
+resonance. "Why didn't you come?"
+
+"Joe?" he repeated hysterically.
+
+She drew away from him.
+
+"You won't want to touch me again."
+
+He pointed to the repellant bruises. She shook her head.
+
+"He didn't hurt me much," she whispered, "because I--I killed him."
+
+She drew her other hand from the folds of her wrapper. The revolver
+dangled from her fingers. It slipped and fell to the floor. The child
+stared at it with round eyes, as if he longed to pick it up.
+
+She covered her face and shrank against the wall.
+
+"I've killed a man----"
+
+Through her fingers she looked at her husband fearfully. After a time
+she whispered:
+
+"Why don't you say something?"
+
+His trembling had ceased. His lips were twisted in a grin. He, too,
+wondered why he didn't say something. Because there were no words for
+what was in his heart.
+
+In a corner he arranged his overcoat as a sort of a bed for the boy.
+
+"Won't you speak to me?" she sobbed. "I didn't mean to, but I had to.
+You got to understand. I had to."
+
+He went to the table and commenced to tap vigorously on the key. She ran
+across and grasped at his arm.
+
+"What you telling them?" she demanded wildly.
+
+"Why, Sally!" he said. "What's the matter with you?--To send another man
+now Joe is gone."
+
+Truths emerged from his measureless relief, lending themselves to words.
+He trembled again for a moment.
+
+"If I hadn't stayed! If I'd let them smash! When all along it only
+needed Joe to keep all those people from getting killed."
+
+He sat down, caught her in his arms, drew her to his knee, and held her
+close.
+
+"You ain't going to scold?" she asked wonderingly.
+
+He shook his head. He couldn't say any more just then; but when his
+tears touched her face she seemed to understand and to be content.
+
+So, while the boy slept, they waited together for someone to take Joe's
+place.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[6] Copyright, 1920, by The Metropolitan Magazine Company. Copyright,
+1921, by Charles Wadsworth Camp.
+
+
+
+
+THE PARTING GENIUS[7]
+
+#By# HELEN COALE CREW
+
+From _The Midland_
+
+
+"_The parting genius is with sighing sent._"
+
+#Milton's# _Hymn on the Nativity._
+
+It was high noon, blue and hot. The little town upon the southern slope
+of the hills that shut in the great plain glared white in the intense
+sunlight. The beds of the brooks in the valleys that cut their way
+through the hill-clefts were dry and dusty; and the sole shade visible
+lay upon the orchard floors, where the thick branches above cast
+blue-black shadows upon the golden tangle of grasses at their feet. A
+soft murmur of hidden creature-things rose like an invisible haze from
+earth, and nothing moved in all the horizon save the black kites high in
+the blue air and the white butterflies over the drowsy meadows. The
+poppies that flecked the yellow wheat fields drooped heavily, spilling
+the wine of summer from their cups. Nature stood at drowsy-footed pause,
+reluctant to take up again the vital whirr of living.
+
+At the edge of the orchard, near the dusty highway, under a huge
+misshapen olive tree sat a boy, still as a carven Buddha save that his
+eyes stood wide, full of dreams. His was a sensitive face, thoughtful
+beyond his childish years, full of weariness when from time to time he
+closed his eyes, full of dark brooding when the lids lifted again.
+Presently he rose to his feet, and his two hands clenched tightly into
+fists.
+
+"I hate it!" he muttered vehemently.
+
+At his side the grasses stirred and a portion of the blue shadow of the
+tree detached itself and became the shadow of a man.
+
+"Hate?" questioned a golden, care-free voice at his side. "Thou'rt
+overyoung to hate. What is it thou dost hate?"
+
+A young man had thrown himself down in the grass at the boy's side.
+Shaggy locks hung about his brown cheeks; his broad, supple chest and
+shoulders were bare; his eyes were full of sleepy laughter; and his
+indolent face was now beautiful, now grotesque, at the color of his
+thoughts. From a leathern thong about his neck hung a reed pipe, deftly
+fashioned, and a bowl of wood carved about with grape-bunches dangled
+from the twisted vine which girdled his waist. In one hand he held a
+honey-comb, into which he bit with sharp white teeth, and on one arm he
+carried branches torn from fig and almond trees, clustered with green
+figs and with nuts. The two looked long at each other, the boy gravely,
+the man smiling.
+
+"Thou wilt know me another time," said the man with a throaty laugh.
+"And I shall know thee. I have been watching thee a long time--I know
+not why. But what is it thou dost hate? For me, I hate nothing. Hate is
+wearisome."
+
+The boy's gaze fixed itself upon the bright, insouciant face of the man
+with a fascination he endeavored to throw off but could not. Presently
+he spoke, and his voice was low and clear and deliberate.
+
+"Hate is evil," he said.
+
+"I know not what evil may be," said the man, a puzzled frown furrowing
+the smooth brow for a swift moment. "Hunger, now, or lust, or sleep--"
+
+"Hate is the thing that comes up in my throat and chokes me when I think
+of tyranny," interrupted the boy, his eyes darkening.
+
+"Why trouble to hate?" asked the man. He lifted his pipe to his lips and
+blew a joyous succession of swift, unhesitant notes, as throbbing as the
+heat, as vivid as the sunshine. His lithe throat bubbled and strained
+with his effort, and his warm vitality poured through the mouthpiece of
+the pipe and issued melodiously at the farther end. Noon deepened
+through many shades of hot and slumberous splendor, the very silence
+intensified by the brilliant pageant of sound. A great hawk at sail
+overhead hung suddenly motionless upon unquivering wings. Every sheep in
+the pasture across the road lifted a questioning nose, and the entire
+flock moved swiftly nearer on a sudden impulse. And then the man threw
+down his pipe, and the silence closed in softly upon the ebbing waves of
+sound.
+
+"Why trouble to hate?" he asked again, and sank his shoulder deeper into
+the warm grass. His voice was as sleepy as the drone of distant bees,
+and his dream-filmed eyes looked out through drooping lids. "I hate
+nothing. It takes effort. It is easier to feel friendly with all
+things--creatures, and men, and gods."
+
+"I hate with a purpose," said the child, his eyes fixed, and brooding
+upon an inward vision. The man rose upon his elbow and gazed curiously
+at the boy, but the latter, unheeding, went on with his thoughts. "Some
+day I shall be a man, and then I shall kill tyranny. Aye, kill! It is
+tyranny that I hate. And hatred I hate; and oppression. But how I shall
+go about to kill them, that I do not yet know. I think and think, but I
+have not yet thought of a way."
+
+"If," said the man, "thou could'st love as royally as thou could'st
+hate, what a lover thou would'st become! For me, I love but lightly, and
+hate not at all, yet have I been a man for aeons. How near art thou to
+manhood?"
+
+"I have lived nearly twelve years."
+
+Like a flash the man leaped to his feet and turned his face westward
+towards the sea with outstretched arms, and a look and gesture of utter
+yearning gave poignancy and spirit to the careless, sleepy grace of his
+face and figure. He seized the boy's arm. "See now," he cried, his voice
+trembling upon the verge of music, "it is nearly twelve years that I
+have been a wanderer, shorn of my strength and my glory! Look you, boy,
+at the line of hills yonder. Behind those hills lie the blue sea-ridges,
+and still beyond, lies the land where I dwelt. Ye gods, the happy
+country!" Like a great child he stood, and his breast broke into sobs,
+but his eyes glowed with splendid visions. "Apollo's golden shafts
+could scarce penetrate the shadowy groves, and Diana's silver arrows
+pierced only the tossing treetops. And underfoot the crocus flamed, and
+the hyacinth. Flocks and herds fed in pastures rosy with blossoms, and
+there were white altars warm with flame in every thicket. There were
+dances, and mad revels, and love and laughter"--he paused, and the
+splendor died from his face. "And then one starry night--still and clear
+it was, and white with frost--fear stalked into the happy haunts, and an
+ontreading mystery, benign yet dreadful. And something, I know not what,
+drove me forth. _Aie! Aie!_ There is but the moaning of doves when the
+glad hymns sounded, and cold ashes and dead drifted leaves on the once
+warm altars!"
+
+A sharp pull at his tunic brought his thoughts back to the present. The
+child drew him urgently down into the long grass, and laid a finger upon
+his lip; and at the touch of the small finger the man trembled through
+all his length of limbs, and lay still. Up the road rose a cloud of dust
+and the sound of determined feet, and presently a martial figure came in
+sight, clad in bronze and leather helmet and cuirass, and carrying an
+oblong shield and a short, broad-bladed sword of double edge. Short yet
+agile, a soldier every inch, he looked neither to the right nor to the
+left, but marched steadily and purposefully upon his business. His
+splendid muscles, shining with sweat, gleamed satinwise in the hot sun.
+A single unit, he was yet a worthy symbol of a world-wide efficiency.
+
+The man and boy beneath the tree crouched low. "Art afraid?" whispered
+the man. And the boy whispered back, "It is he that I hate, and all his
+kind." His child-heart beat violently against his side, great beads
+stood out upon his forehead, and his hands trembled. "If you but knew
+the sorrow in the villages! Aye, in the whole country--because of him!
+He takes the bread from the mouths of the pitiful poor--and we are all
+so poor! The women and babes starve, but the taxes must be paid. Upon
+the aged and the crippled, even, fall heavy burdens. And all because of
+him and his kind!"
+
+The man looked at the flushed face and trembling limbs of the boy, and
+his own face glowed in a golden smile that was full of a sudden and
+unaccustomed tenderness. "Why, see now," he whispered, "that is easily
+overcome. Look! I will show thee the way." Lifting himself cautiously,
+he crouched on all fours in the grass, slipping and sliding forward so
+hiddenly that the keen ear and eagle eye of the approaching soldier took
+note of no least ripple in the quiet grass by the roadside. It was the
+sinuous, silent motion of a snake; and suddenly his eyes narrowed, his
+lips drew back from his teeth, his ears pricked forward, along the ridge
+of his bare back the hair bristled, and the locks about his face waved
+and writhed as though they were the locks of Medusa herself. Ah, and
+were those the flanks and feet of a man, or of a beast, that bore him
+along so stealthily? The child watched him in a horror of fascination,
+rooted to the spot in terror.
+
+With the quickness of a flash it all happened--the martial traveller
+taken unaware, the broad-bladed sword wrenched from his hand by
+seemingly superhuman strength, a sudden hideous grip at his throat,
+blows rained upon his head, sharp sobbing breaths torn from his panting
+breast ... a red stain upon the dusty road ... a huddled figure ...
+silence. And he who had been a man indeed a few brief, bright years, was
+no more now than carrion; and he who through all his boasted aeons had
+not yet reached the stature of a man stood above the dead body, his face
+no longer menacing, but beautiful with a smiling delight in his deed.
+And then suddenly the spell that held the child was broken, and he
+leaped out upon the murderer and beat and beat and beat upon him with
+helpless, puny child-fists, and all a child's splendid and ineffectual
+rage. And at that the man turned and thrust the child from him in utter
+astonishment, and the boy fell heavily back upon the road, the second
+quiet figure lying there. And again the man's face changed, became
+vacant, bewildered, troubled; and stooping, he lifted the boy in his
+arms, and ran with him westward along the road, through the fields of
+dead-ripe wheat, across the stubble of the garnered barley, fleet-footed
+as a deer, till he could run no more.
+
+In a little glen of hickory and oak, through whose misty-mellow depths a
+small stream trickled, he paused at last and laid the boy upon a soft
+and matted bed of thick green myrtle, and brought water in his two hands
+to bathe the bruised head, whimpering the while. Then he chafed the
+small bare feet and warmed them in his own warm breast; and gathering
+handfuls of pungent mint and the sweet-scented henna, he crushed them
+and held them to the boy's nostrils. And these devices failing, he sat
+disconsolate, the curves of his mobile face falling into unwonted lines
+of half-weary, half-sorrowful dejection. "I know not how it may be," he
+said to himself, smiling whimsically, "but I seem to have caught upon my
+lips the bitter human savor of repentance."
+
+Utter silence held the little glen. The child lay unconscious, and the
+man sat with his head in his hands, as one brooding. When the sun at
+last neared the place of his setting, the boy's eyes opened. His gaze
+fell upon his companion, and crowded and confused thoughts surged
+through him. For some time he lay still, finding his bearings. And at
+length the hatred that had all day, and for many days, filled his young
+breast, melted away in a divine pity and tenderness, and the tears of
+that warm melting rolled down his cheeks. The man near him, who had
+watched in silence, gently put a questioning finger upon the wet cheeks.
+
+"What is it?" he asked.
+
+"Repentance," said the boy.
+
+"I pity thee. Repentance is bitter of taste."
+
+"No," said the boy. "It is warm and sweet. It moves my heart and my
+understanding."
+
+"What has become of thy hatred?"
+
+"I shall never hate again."
+
+"What wilt thou do, then?"
+
+"I shall love," said the boy. "_Love_," he repeated softly. "_How came I
+never to think of that before?_"
+
+"Wilt thou love tyranny and forbear to kill the tyrant?"
+
+The boy rose to his feet, and his young slenderness was full of strength
+and dignity, and his face, cleared of its sombre brooding, was full of a
+bright, untroubled decision. The cypresses upon the hilltops stood no
+more resolutely erect, the hills themselves were no more steadfast.
+"Nay," he said, laughing a little, boyishly, in pure pleasure at the
+crystal fixity of his purpose. "Rather will I love the tyrant, and the
+tyranny will die of itself. Oh, it is the way! It is the way! And I
+could not think of it till now! Not till I saw thee killing and him
+bleeding. Then I knew." Then, more gravely, he added, "I will begin by
+loving thee."
+
+"Thou hast the appearance of a young god," said the man slowly, "but if
+thou wert a god, thou would'st crush thine enemies, not love them." He
+sighed, and his face strengthened into a semblance of power. "I was a
+god once myself," he added after some hesitation.
+
+"What is thy name?" asked the boy.
+
+"They called me once the Great God Pan. And thou?"
+
+"My father is Joseph the carpenter. My mother calls me Jesus."
+
+"_Ah_ ..." said Pan, "... _is it Thou?_"
+
+Quietly they looked into each other's eyes; quietly clasped hands. And
+with no more words the man turned westward into the depths of the glen,
+drawing the sun's rays with him as he moved, so that the world seemed
+the darker for his going. And as he went he blew upon his pipe a
+tremulous and hesitating melody, piercing sweet and piercing sorrowful,
+so that whosoever should hear it should clutch his throat with tears at
+the wild pity of it, and the strange and haunting beauty. And the boy
+stood still, watching, until the man was lost upon the edge of night.
+Then he turned his face eastward, whence the new day comes, carrying
+forever in his heart the echoes of a dying song.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[7] Copyright, 1920, by John T. Frederick. Copyright, 1921, by Helen
+Coale Crew.
+
+
+
+
+HABAKKUK[8]
+
+#By# KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD
+
+From _Scribner's Magazine_
+
+
+When they carried Kathleen Somers up into the hills to die where her
+ancestors had had the habit of dying--they didn't gad about, those early
+Somerses; they dropped in their tracks, and the long grass that they had
+mowed and stacked and trodden under their living feet flourished
+mightily over their graves--it was held to be only a question of time. I
+say "to die," not because her case was absolutely hopeless, but because
+no one saw how, with her spent vitality, she could survive her exile.
+Everything had come at once, and she had gone under. She had lost her
+kin, she had lost her money, she had lost her health. Even the people
+who make their meat of tragedy--and there are a great many of them in
+all enlightened centres of thought--shook their heads and were sorry.
+They thought she couldn't live; and they also thought it much, much
+better that she shouldn't. For there was nothing left in life for that
+sophisticated creature but a narrow cottage in a stony field, with
+Nature to look at.
+
+Does it sound neurotic and silly? It wasn't. Conceive her if you
+can--Kathleen Somers, whom probably you never knew. From childhood she
+had nourished short hopes and straightened thoughts. At least: hopes
+that depend on the A|sthetic passion are short; and the long perspectives
+of civilized history are very narrow. Kathleen Somers had been fed with
+the Old World: that is to say, her adolescent feet had exercised
+themselves in picture-galleries and cathedrals and palaces; she had
+seen all the right views, all the right ceremonies, and all the
+censored picturesqueness. Don't get any Cook's tourist idea, please,
+about Miss Somers. Her mother had died young, and her gifted father had
+taken her to a hundred places that the school-teacher on a holiday never
+gets to and thinks of only in connection with geography lessons. She had
+followed the Great Wall of China, she had stood before the tomb of
+Tamburlaine, she had shaded her eyes from the glare of KaA-rouan the
+Holy, she had chaffered in Tiflis and in Trebizond. All this before she
+was twenty-five. At that time her father's health broke, and they
+proceeded to live permanently in New York. Her wandering life had
+steeped her in delights, but kept her innocent of love-affairs. When you
+have fed on historic beauty, on the great plots of the past, the best
+tenor voices in the world, it is pretty hard to find a man who doesn't
+in his own person, leave out something essential to romance. She had
+herself no particular beauty, and therefore the male sex could get on
+without her. A few fell in love with her, but she was too enchanted and
+amused with the world in general to set to work at the painful process
+of making a hero out of any one of them. She was a sweet-tempered
+creature; her mental snobbishness was not a pose, but perfectly
+inevitable; she had a great many friends. As she had a quick wit and the
+historic imagination, you can imagine--remembering her bringing up--that
+she was an entertaining person when she entered upon middle age: when,
+that is, she was proceeding from the earlier to the later thirties.
+
+It was natural that Kathleen Somers and her father--who was a bit
+precious and pompous, in spite of his ironies--should gather about them
+a homogeneous group. The house was pleasant and comfortable--they were
+too sophisticated to be "periodic"--and there was always good talk
+going, if you happened to be the kind that could stand good talk. Of
+course you had to pass an examination first. You had at least to show
+that you "caught on." They were high-brow enough to permit themselves
+sudden enthusiasms that would have damned a low-brow. You mustn't like
+"Peter Pan," but you might go three nights running to see some really
+perfect clog-dancing at a vaudeville theatre. Do you see what I mean?
+They were eclectic with a vengeance. It wouldn't do for you to cultivate
+the clog-dancer _and_ like "Peter Pan," because in that case you
+probably liked the clog-dancer for the wrong reason--for something other
+than that sublimated skill which is art. Of course this is only a wildly
+chosen example. I never heard either of them mention "Peter Pan." And
+the proper hatreds were ever more difficult than the proper devotions.
+You might let Shakespeare get on your nerves, provided you really
+enjoyed Milton. I wonder if you do see what I mean? It must be perfect
+of its kind, its kind being anything under heaven; and it must never,
+never, never be sentimental. It must have art, and _parti pris_, and
+point of view, and individuality stamped over it. No, I can't explain.
+If you have known people like that, you've known them. If you haven't,
+you can scarcely conceive them.
+
+By this time you are probably hating the Somerses, father and daughter,
+and I can't help it--or rather, I've probably brought it about. But when
+I tell you that I'm not that sore myself, and that I loved them both
+dearly and liked immensely to be with them, you'll reconsider a little,
+I hope. They were sweet and straight and generous, both of them, and
+they knew all about the grand manner. The grand manner is the most
+comfortable thing to live with that I know. I used to go there a good
+deal, and Arnold Withrow went even more than I did, though he wasn't
+even hanging on to Art by the eyelids as I do. (I refer, of course, to
+my little habit of writing for the best magazines, whose public
+considers me intellectual. So I seem to myself, in the magazines ...
+"but out in pantry, good Lord!" Anyhow, I generally knew at least what
+the Somerses were talking about--the dears!) Withrow was a stock-broker,
+and always spent his vacations in the veritable wilds, camping in virgin
+forests, or on the edge of glaciers, or in the dust of American deserts.
+He had never been to Europe, but he had been to Buenos Aires. You can
+imagine what Kathleen Somers and her father felt about that: they
+thought him too quaint and barbaric for words; but still not barbaric
+enough to be really interesting.
+
+I was just beginning to suspect that Withrow was in love with Kathleen
+Somers in the good old middle-class way, with no drama in it but no end
+of devotion, when the crash came. Mr. Somers died, and within a month of
+his death the railroad the bonds of which had constituted his long-since
+diminished fortune went into the hands of a receiver. There were a
+pitiful hundreds a year left, besides the ancestral cottage--which had
+never even been worth selling. His daughter had an operation, and the
+shock of that, _plus_ the shock of his death, _plus_ the shock of her
+impoverishment, brought the curtain down with a tremendous rush that
+terrified the house. It may make my metaphor clearer if I put it that it
+was the asbestos curtain which fell suddenly and violently; not the
+great crimson drop that swings gracefully down at the end of a play. It
+did not mark the end; it marked a catastrophe in the wings to which the
+plot must give place.
+
+Then they carried Kathleen Somers to the hills.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+It was Mildred Thurston who told me about it first. Withrow would have
+rushed to the hills, I think, but he was in British Columbia on an
+extended trip. He had fought for three months and got them, and he
+started just before Kathleen Somers had her sudden operation. Mildred
+Thurston (Withrow's cousin, by the way) threw herself nobly into the
+breach. I am not going into the question of Mildred Thurston here.
+Perhaps if Withrow had been at home, she wouldn't have gone. I don't
+know. Anyhow, when she rushed to Kathleen Somers's desolate retreat she
+did it, apparently, from pure kindness. She was sure, like every one
+else, that Kathleen would die; and that belief purged her, for the time
+being, of selfishness and commonness and cheap gayety. I wouldn't take
+Mildred Thurston's word about a state of soul; but she was a good
+dictograph. She came back filled with pity; filled, at least, with the
+means of inspiring pity for the exile in others.
+
+After I had satisfied myself that Kathleen Somers was physically on the
+mend, eating and sleeping fairly, and sitting up a certain amount, I
+proceeded to more interesting questions.
+
+"What is it like?"
+
+"It's dreadful."
+
+"How dreadful?"
+
+Mildred's large blue eyes popped at me with sincere sorrow.
+
+"Well, there's no plumbing, and no furnace."
+
+"Is it in a village?"
+
+"It isn't 'in' anything. It's a mile and a half from a station called
+Hebron. You have to change three times to get there. It's half-way up a
+hill--the house is--and there are mountains all about, and the barn is
+connected with the house by a series of rickety woodsheds, and there are
+places where the water comes through the roof. They put pails under to
+catch it. There are queer little contraptions they call Franklin stoves
+in most of the rooms and a brick oven in the kitchen. When they want
+anything from the village, Joel Blake gets it, if he doesn't forget.
+Ditto wood, ditto everything except meat. Some other hick brings that
+along when he has 'killed.' They can only see one house from the front
+yard, and that is precisely a mile away by the road. Joel Blake lives
+nearer, but you can't see his house. You can't see anything--except the
+woods and the 'crick' and the mountains. You can see the farmers when
+they are haying, but that doesn't last long."
+
+"Is it a beautiful view?"
+
+"My dear man, don't ask me what a beautiful view is. My education was
+neglected."
+
+"Does Kathleen Somers think it beautiful?"
+
+"She never looks at it, I believe. The place is all run down, and she
+sits and wonders when the wall-paper will drop off. At least, that is
+what she talks about, when she talks at all. That, and whether Joel
+Blake will remember to bring the groceries. The two women never speak to
+each other. Kathleen's awfully polite, but--well, you can't blame her.
+And I was there in the spring. What it will be in the winter!--But
+Kathleen can hardly last so long, I should think."
+
+"Who is the other woman?"
+
+"An heirloom. Melora Meigs. _Miss_ Meigs, if you please. You know Mr.
+Somers's aunt lived to an extreme old age in the place. Miss Meigs 'did'
+for her. And since then she has been living on there. No one wanted the
+house--the poor Somerses!--and she was used to it. She's an old thing
+herself, and of course she hasn't the nerves of a sloth. Now she 'does'
+for Kathleen. Of course later there'll have to be a nurse again.
+Kathleen mustn't die with only Melora Meigs. I'm not sure, either, that
+Melora will last. She all crooked over with rheumatism."
+
+That was the gist of what I got out of Mildred Thurston. Letters to Miss
+Somers elicited no real response--only a line to say that she wasn't
+strong enough to write. None of her other female friends could get any
+encouragement to visit her. It was perhaps due to Miss Thurston's
+mimicry of Melora Meigs--she made quite a "stunt" of it--that none of
+them pushed the matter beyond the first rebuff.
+
+By summer-time I began to get worried myself. Perhaps I was a little
+worried, vicariously, for Withrow. Remember that I thought he cared for
+her. Miss Thurston's pity for Kathleen Somers was the kind that shuts
+the door on the pitied person. If she had thought Kathleen Somers had a
+future, she wouldn't have been so kind. I may give it to you as my
+private opinion that Mildred Thurston wanted Withrow herself. I can't
+swear to it, even now; but I suspected it sufficiently to feel that some
+one, for Withrow's sake had better see Kathleen besides his exuberant
+and slangy cousin. She danced a little too much on Kathleen Somers's
+grave. I determined to go myself, and not to take the trouble of asking
+vainly for an invitation. I left New York at the end of June.
+
+With my perfectly ordinary notions of comfort in traveling, I found that
+it would take me two days to get to Hebron. It was beyond all the
+resorts that people flock to: beyond, and "cross country" at that. I
+must have journeyed on at least three small, one-track railroads after
+leaving the Pullman at some junction or other.
+
+It was late afternoon when I reached Hebron; and nearly an hour later
+before I could get myself deposited at Kathleen Somers's door. There was
+no garden, no porch; only a long, weed-grown walk up to a stiff front
+door. An orchard of rheumatic apple-trees was cowering stiffly to the
+wind in a far corner of the roughly fenced-in lot; there was a windbreak
+of perishing pines.
+
+In the living-room Kathleen Somers lay on a cheap wicker chaise-longue,
+staring at a Hindu idol that she held in her thin hands. She did not
+stir to greet me; only transferred her stare from the gilded idol to
+dusty and ungilded me. She spoke, of course; the first time in my life,
+too, that I had ever heard her speak ungently.
+
+"My good man, you had better go away. I can't put you up."
+
+That was her greeting. Melora Meigs was snuffling in the hallway
+outside--listening, I suppose.
+
+"Oh, yes, you can. If you can't I'm sure Joel Blake will. I've come to
+stay a while, Miss Somers."
+
+"Can you eat porridge and salt pork for supper?"
+
+"I can eat tenpenny nails, if necessary. Also I can sleep in the barn."
+
+"Melora!" The old woman entered, crooked and grudging of aspect. "This
+friend of my father's and mine has come to see me. Can he sleep in the
+barn?"
+
+I cannot describe the hostility with which Melora Meigs regarded me. It
+was not a pointed and passionate hatred. That, one could have examined
+and dealt with. It was, rather, a vast disgust that happened to include
+me.
+
+"There's nothing to sleep on. Barn's empty."
+
+"He could move the nurse's cot out there, if he really wants to. And I
+think there's an extra washstand in the woodshed. You'll hardly need
+more than one chair, just for a night," she finished, turning to me.
+
+"Not for any number of nights, of course," I agreed suavely. I was angry
+with Kathleen Somers, I didn't know quite why. I think it was the Hindu
+idol. Nor had she any right to address me with insolence, unless she
+were mad, and she was not that. Her eyes snapped very sanely. I don't
+think Kathleen Somers could have made her voice snap.
+
+Melora Meigs grunted and left the room. The grunt was neither assent nor
+dissent; it was only the most inclusive disapproval: the snarl of an
+animal, proceeding from the topmost of many layers of dislike.
+
+"I'll move the things before dark, I think." I was determined to be
+cheerful, even if I had to seem impertinent; though the notion of her
+sticking me out in the barn enraged me.
+
+"You won't mind Melora's locking the door between, of course. We always
+do. I'm such a cockney, I'm timid; and Melora's very sweet about it."
+
+It was almost too much, but I stuck it out. Presently, indeed, I got my
+way; and moved--yes, actually lugged and lifted and dragged--the cot,
+the chair, and the stand out through the dusty, half-rotted corridors
+and sheds to the barn. I drew water at the tap in the yard and washed my
+perspiring face and neck. Then I had supper with Miss Somers and Melora
+Meigs.
+
+After supper my hostess lighted a candle. "We go to bed very early," she
+informed me. "I know you'll be willing to smoke out-of-doors, it's so
+warm. I doubt if Melora could bear tobacco in the house. And you won't
+mind her locking up early. You can get into the barn from the yard any
+time, of course. Men are never timid, I believe; but there's a horn
+somewhere, if you'd like it. We have breakfast at six-thirty.
+Good-night."
+
+Yes, it was Kathleen Somers's own voice, saying these things to me. I
+was still enraged, but I must bide my time. I refused the horn, and went
+out into the rheumatic orchard to smoke in dappled moonlight. The pure
+air soothed me; the great silence restored my familiar scheme of things.
+Before I went to bed in the barn, I could see the humor of this sour
+adventure. Oh, I would be up at six-thirty!
+
+Of course I wasn't. I overslept; and by the time I approached the house
+(the woodshed door was still locked) their breakfast was long over. I
+fully expected to fast until the midday meal, but Kathleen Somers
+relented. With her own hands she made me coffee over a little alcohol
+lamp. Bread and butter had been austerely left on the table. Miss Somers
+fetched me eggs, which I ate raw. Then I went out into the orchard to
+smoke.
+
+When I came back, I found Miss Somers as she had been the day before,
+crouched listlessly in her long chair fondling her idol. I drew up a
+horsehair rocking-chair and plunged in.
+
+"Why do you play with that silly thing?"
+
+"This?" She stroked the idol. "It is rather lovely, Father got it in
+Benares. The carving is very cunningly done. Look at the nose and mouth.
+The rank Hinduism of the thing amuses me. Perhaps it was cruel to bring
+it up here where there are no other gods for it to play with. But it's
+all I've got. They had to sell everything, you know. When I get
+stronger, I'll send it back to New York and sell it too."
+
+"Why did you keep it out of all the things you had?"
+
+"I don't know. I think it was the first thing we ever bought in India.
+And I remember Benares with so much pleasure. Wasn't it a pity we
+couldn't have been there when everything happened?"
+
+"Much better not, I should think. You needed surgeons."
+
+"Just what I didn't need! I should have liked to die in a country that
+had something to say for itself. I don't feel as though this place had
+ever existed, except in some hideous dream."
+
+"It's not hideous. It's even very beautiful--so wild and untouched; such
+lovely contours to the mountains."
+
+"Yes, it's very untouched." She spoke of it with just the same scorn I
+had in old days heard her use for certain novelists. "Scarcely worth the
+trouble of touching I should think--shouldn't you?"
+
+"The beauty of it last night and this morning has knocked me over," I
+replied hardily.
+
+"Oh, really! How very interesting!" By which she meant that she was not
+interested at all.
+
+"You mean that you would like it landscape-gardened?" Really, she was
+perverse. She had turned her back to the view--which was ripping, out of
+her northern window. I could tell that she habitually turned her back on
+it.
+
+"Oh, landscape-gardened? Well, it would improve it, no doubt. But it
+would take generations to do it. The generations that have been here
+already don't seem to have accomplished much. Humanly speaking, they
+have hardly existed at all."
+
+Kathleen Somers was no snob in the ordinary sense. She was an angel to
+peasants. I knew perfectly what she meant by "humanly." She meant there
+was no castle on the next hill.
+
+"Are you incapable of caring for nature--just scenery?"
+
+"Quite." She closed her eyes, and stopped her gentle, even stroking of
+the idol.
+
+"Of course you never did see America first," I laughed.
+
+Kathleen Somers opened her eyes and spoke vehemently. "I've seen all
+there is of it to see, in transit to better places. Seeing America
+first! That can be borne. It's seeing America last that kills me. Seeing
+nothing else forever, till I die."
+
+"You don't care for just beauty, regardless," I mused.
+
+"Not a bit. Not unless it has meant something to man. I'm a humanist,
+I'm afraid."
+
+Whether she was gradually developing remorse for my night in the
+cobwebby barn, I do not know. But anyhow she grew more gentle, from this
+point on. She really condescended to expound.
+
+"I've never loved nature--she's a brute, and crawly besides. It's what
+man has done with nature that counts; it's nature with a human past.
+Peaks that have been fought for, and fought on, crossed by the feet of
+men, stared at by poets and saints. Most of these peaks aren't even
+named. Did you know that? Nature! What is Nature good for, I should
+like to know, except to kill us all in the end? Don't Ruskinize to me,
+my dear man."
+
+"I won't. I couldn't. But, all the same, beauty is beauty, wherever and
+whatever. And, look where you will here, your eyes can't go wrong."
+
+"I never look. I looked when I first came, and the stupidity, the
+emptiness, the mere wood and dirt and rock of it seemed like a personal
+insult. I should prefer the worst huddle of a Chinese city, I verily
+believe."
+
+"You've not precisely the spirit of the pioneer, I can see."
+
+"I should hope not. 'But, God if a God there be, is the substance of
+men, which is man.' I have to stay in the man-made ruts. They're sacred
+to me. I'll look with pleasure at the Alps, if only for the sake of
+Hannibal and Goethe; but I never could look with pleasure at your
+untutored Rockies. They're so unintentional, you know. Nature is nothing
+until history has touched her. And as for this geological display
+outside my windows--you'll kindly permit me to turn my back on it. It's
+not peevishness." She lifted her hand protestingly. "Only, for weeks, I
+stared myself blind to see the beauty you talk of. I can't see it.
+That's honest. I've tried. But there is none that I can see. I am very
+conventional, you know, very self-distrustful. I have to wait for a
+Byron to show it to me. American mountains--poor hulking things--have
+never had a poet to look at them. At least, Poe never wasted his time
+that way. I don't imagine that Poe would have been much happier here
+than I am. I haven't even the thrill of the explorer, for I'm not the
+first one to see them. A few thin generations of people have stared at
+these hills--and much the hills have done for them! Melora Meigs is the
+child of these mountains; and Melora's sense of beauty is amply
+expressed in the Orthodox church in Hebron. This landscape, I assure
+you"--she smiled--"hasn't made good. So much for the view. It's no use
+to me, absolutely no use. I give you full and free leave to take it away
+with you if you want it. And I don't think the house is much better. But
+I'm afraid I shall have to keep that for Melora Meigs and me to live
+in." It was her old smile. The bitterness was all in the words. No, it
+was not bitterness, precisely, for it was fundamentally as impersonal as
+criticism can be. You would have thought that the mountains were
+low-brows. I forebore to mention her ancestors who had lived here: it
+would have seemed like quibbling. They had created the situation; but
+they had only in the most literal sense created her.
+
+"Why don't you get out?"
+
+"I simply haven't money enough to live anywhere else. Not money enough
+for a hall bedroom. This place belongs to me. The taxes are nothing. The
+good farming land that went with it was sold long since. And I'm afraid
+I haven't the strength to go out and work for a living. I'm very
+ineffectual, besides. What could I do even if health returned to me?
+I've decided it's more decent to stay here and die on three dollars a
+year than to sink my capital in learning stenography."
+
+"You could, I suppose, be a companion." Of course I did not mean it, but
+she took it up very seriously.
+
+"The people who want companions wouldn't want me. And the one thing this
+place gives me is freedom--freedom to hate it, to see it intelligently
+for what it is. I couldn't afford my blessed hatreds if I were a
+companion. And there's no money in it, so that I couldn't even plan for
+release. It simply wouldn't do."
+
+Well, of course it wouldn't do. I had never thought it would. I tried
+another opening.
+
+"When is Withrow coming back?"
+
+"I don't know. I haven't heard from him." She might have been telling a
+squirrel that she didn't know where the other squirrel's nuts were.
+
+"He has been far beyond civilization, I know. But I dare say he'll be
+back soon. I hope you won't put him in the barn. I don't mind, of
+course, but his feelings might be hurt."
+
+"I shall certainly not let him come," she retorted. "He would have the
+grace to ask first, you know."
+
+"I shall make a point of telling him you want him." But even that could
+strike no spark from her. She was too completely at odds with life to
+care. I realized, too, after an hour's talk with her, that I had better
+go--take back my fine proposition about making a long visit. She reacted
+to nothing I could offer. I talked of books and plays, visiting
+virtuosos and picture exhibitions. Her comments were what they would
+always have been, except that she was already groping for the cue. She
+had been out of it for months; she had given up the fight. The best
+things she said sounded a little stale and precious. Her wit perished in
+the face of Nature's stare. Nature was a lady she didn't recognize: a
+country cousin she'd never met. She couldn't even "sit and play with
+similes." If she lived, she would be an old lady with a clever past: an
+intolerable bore. But there was no need to look so far ahead. Kathleen
+Somers would die.
+
+Before dinner I clambered up or down (I don't remember which) to a brook
+and gathered a bunch of wild iris for her. She had loved flowers of old;
+and how deftly she could place a spray among her treasures! She
+shuddered. "Take those things away! How dare you bring It inside the
+house?" By "It" I knew she meant the wild natural world. Obediently I
+took the flowers out and flung them over the fence. I knew that Kathleen
+Somers was capable of getting far more pleasure from their inimitable
+hue than I; but even that inimitable hue was poisoned for her because it
+came from the world that was torturing her--the world that beat upon her
+windows, so that she turned her back to the day; that stormed her ears,
+so that she closed them even to its silence; that surrounded her, so
+that she locked every gate of her mind.
+
+I left, that afternoon, very desolate and sorry. Certainly I could do
+nothing for her. I had tried to shock her, stir her, into another
+attitude, but in vain. She had been transplanted to a soil her tender
+roots could not strike into. She would wither for a little under the
+sky, and then perish. "If she could only have fallen in love!" I
+thought, as I left her, huddled in her wicker chair. If I had been a
+woman, I would have fled from Melora Meigs even into the arms of a
+bearded farmer; I would have listened to the most nasal male the hills
+had bred. I would have milked cows, to get away from Melora. But I am a
+crass creature. Besides, what son of the soil would want her:
+unexuberant, delicate, pleasant in strange ways, and foreign to all
+familiar things? She wouldn't even fall in love with Arnold Withrow, who
+was her only chance. For I saw that Arnold, if he ever came, would,
+fatally, love the place. She might have put up with the stock-broking,
+but she never could have borne his liking the view. Yes, I was very
+unhappy as I drove into Hebron; and when I finally achieved the Pullman
+at the Junction, I was unhappier still. For I felt towards that Pullman
+as the lost child feels toward its nurse; and I knew that Kathleen
+Somers, ill, poor, middle-aged, and a woman, was a thousand times more
+the child of the Pullman than I.
+
+I have told this in detail, because I hate giving things at second-hand.
+Yet there my connection with Kathleen Somers ceased, and her tragedy
+deepened before other witnesses. She stayed on in her hills; too proud
+to visit her friends, too sane to spend her money on a flying trip to
+town, too bruised and faint to fight her fate. The only thing she tried
+for was apathy. I think she hoped--when she hoped anything--that her
+mind would go, a little: not so much that she would have to be "put
+away"; but just enough so that she could see things in a mist--so that
+the hated hills might, for all she knew, be Alps, the rocks turn into
+castles, the stony fields into vineyards, and Joel Blake into a Tuscan.
+Just enough so that she could re-create her world from her blessed
+memories, without any sharp corrective senses to interfere. That, I am
+sure, was what she fixed her mind upon through the prolonged autumn;
+bending all her frail strength to turn her brain ever so little from its
+rigid attitude to fact. "Pretending" was no good: it maddened. If her
+mind would only pretend without her help! That would be heaven, until
+heaven really came.... You can't sympathize with her, probably, you
+people who have been bred up on every kind of Nature cult. I can hear
+you talking about the everlasting hills. Don't you see, that was the
+trouble? Her carefully trained imagination was her religion, and in her
+own way she was a ritualist. The mountains she faced were unbaptized:
+the Holy Ghost had never descended upon them. She was as narrow as a
+nun; but she could not help it. And remember, you practical people who
+love woodchucks, that she had nothing but the view to make life
+tolerable. The view was no mere accessory to a normal existence. She
+lived, half-ill, in an ugly, not too comfortable cottage, as far as the
+moon from any world she understood, in a solitude acidulated by Melora
+Meigs. No pictures, no music, no plays, no talk--and this, the whole
+year round. Would you like it yourselves, you would-be savages with
+Adirondack guides? Books? Well: that was one of life's little
+stupidities. She couldn't buy them, and no one knew what to send her.
+Besides, books deferred the day when her mind should, ever so little, go
+back on her. She didn't encourage gifts of literature. She was no
+philosopher; and an abstraction was of no use to her unless she could
+turn it to a larger concreteness, somehow enhancing, let us say, a
+sunset from the Acropolis. I never loved Kathleen Somers, as men love
+women, but many a time that year I would have taken her burden on
+myself, changed lives with her, if that had been possible. It never
+could have been so bad for any of us as for her. Mildred Thurston would
+have gone to the church sociables and flirted as grossly as Hebron
+conventions permitted; I, at least, could have chopped wood. But to what
+account could Kathleen Somers turn her martyrdom?
+
+Withrow felt it, too--not as I could feel it, for, as I foretold, he
+thought the place glorious. He went up in the autumn when everything was
+crimson and purple and gold. Yet more, in a sense, than I could feel it,
+for he did love her as men love women. It shows you how far gone she was
+that she turned him down. Many women, in her case, would have jumped at
+Withrow for the sake of getting away. But she was so steeped in her type
+that she couldn't. She wouldn't have married him before; and she wasn't
+going to marry him for the sake of living in New York. She would have
+been ashamed to. A few of us who knew blamed her. I didn't, really,
+though I had always suspected that she cared for him personally.
+Kathleen Somers's love, when it came, would be a very complicated thing.
+She had seen sex in too many countries, watched its brazen play on too
+many stages, within theatres and without, to have any mawkish illusions.
+But passion would have to bring a large retinue to be accepted where she
+was sovereign. Little as I knew her, I knew that. Yet I always thought
+she might have taken him, in that flaming October, if he hadn't so
+flagrantly, tactlessly liked the place. He drank the autumn like wine;
+he was tipsy with it; and his loving her didn't tend to sober him. The
+consequence was that she drew away--as if he had been getting drunk on
+some foul African brew that was good only to befuddle woolly heads with;
+as if, in other words, he had not been getting drunk like a
+gentleman.... Anyhow, Arnold came back with a bad headache. She had
+found a gentle brutality to fit his case. He would have been wise, I
+believe, to bring her away, even if he had had to chloroform her to do
+it. But Withrow couldn't have been wise in that way. Except for his
+incurable weakness for Nature, he was the most delicate soul alive.
+
+He didn't talk much to me about it, beyond telling me that she had
+refused him. I made out the rest from his incoherences. He had not slept
+in the barn, for they could hardly have let a cat sleep in the barn on
+such cold nights; but Melora Meigs had apparently treated him even worse
+than she had treated me. Kathleen Somers had named some of the unnamed
+mountains after the minor prophets; as grimly as if she had been one of
+the people they cursed. I thought that a good sign, but Withrow said he
+wished she hadn't: she ground the names out so between her teeth. Some
+of her state of mind came out through her talk--not much. It was from
+one or two casually seen letters that I became aware of her desire to go
+a little--just a little--mad.
+
+In the spring Kathleen Somers had a relapse. It was no wonder. In spite
+of the Franklin stoves, her frail body must have been chilled to the
+bone for many months. Relief settled on several faces, when we heard--I
+am afraid it may have settled on mine. She had been more dead than
+alive, I judged, for a year; and yet she had not been able to cure her
+sanity. That was chronic. Death would have been the kindest friend that
+could arrive to her across those detested hills. We--the "we" is a
+little vague, but several of us scurried about--sent up a trained nurse,
+delaying somewhat for the sake of getting the woman who had been there
+before; for she had the advantage of having experienced Melora Meigs
+without resultant bloodshed. She was a nice woman, and sent faithful
+bulletins; but the bulletins were bad. Miss Somers seemed to have so
+little resistance: there was no interest there, she said, no willingness
+to fight. "The will was slack." Ah, she little knew Kathleen Somers's
+will! None of us knew, for that matter.
+
+The spring came late that year, and in those northern hills there were
+weeks of melting snow and raw, deep slush--the ugliest season we have to
+face south of the Arctic circle. The nurse did not want any of her
+friends to come; she wrote privately, to those of us who champed at the
+bit, that Miss Somers was fading away, but not peacefully; she was
+better unvisited, unseen. Miss Somers did not wish any one to come, and
+the nurse thought it wiser not to force her. Several women were held
+back by that, and turned with relief to Lenten opera. The opera,
+however, said little to Withrow at the best of times, and he was crazed
+by the notion of not seeing her before she achieved extinction. I
+thought him unwise, for many reasons: for one, I did not think that
+Arnold Withrow would bring her peace. She usually knew what she
+wanted--wasn't that, indeed, the whole trouble with her?--and she had
+said explicitly to the nurse that she didn't want Arnold Withrow. But by
+the end of May Withrow was neither to hold nor to bind: he went. I
+contented myself with begging him at least not to poison her last hours
+by admiring the landscape. I had expected my earnest request to shock
+him; but, to my surprise, he nodded understandingly. "I shall curse the
+whole thing out like a trooper, if she gives me the chance." And he got
+into his daycoach--the Pullmans wouldn't go on until much later--a
+mistaken and passionate knight.
+
+Withrow could not see her the first evening, and he talked long and
+deeply with the nurse. She had no hope to give him: she was mystified.
+It was her opinion that Kathleen Somers's lack of will was killing her,
+speedily and surely. "Is there anything for her to die of?" he asked.
+"There's nothing, you might say, for her to _live_ of," was her reply.
+The nurse disapproved of his coming, but promised to break the news of
+his presence to her patient in the morning.
+
+Spring had by this time touched the hills. It was that divine first
+moment when the whole of earth seems to take a leap in the night; when
+things are literally new every morning. Arnold walked abroad late,
+filling his lungs and nostrils and subduing his pulses. He was always
+faunishly wild in the spring; and for years he hadn't had a chance to
+seek the season in her haunts. But he turned in before midnight, because
+he dreaded the next day supremely. He didn't want to meet that face to
+face until he had to. Melora Meigs lowered like a thunderstorm, but she
+was held in check by the nurse. I suppose Melora couldn't give notice:
+there would be nothing but the poor-farm for her if she did. But she
+whined and grumbled and behaved in general like an electrical
+disturbance. Luckily, she couldn't curdle the milk.
+
+Withrow waked into a world of beauty. He walked for an hour before
+breakfast, through woods all blurred with buds, down vistas brushed with
+faint color. But he would have given the spring and all springs to come
+for Kathleen Somers, and the bitter kernel of it was that he knew it. He
+was sharp-faced and sad (I know how he looked) when he came back, with a
+bunch of hepaticas, to breakfast.
+
+The nurse was visibly trembling. You see, Kathleen Somers's heart had
+never been absolutely right. It was a terrible responsibility to let her
+patient face Withrow. Still, neither she nor any other woman could have
+held Withrow off. Besides, as she had truly said, there was nothing
+explicitly for Kathleen Somers to die of. It was that low vitality, that
+whispering pulse, that listlessness; then, a draught, a shock, a bit of
+over-exertion and something real and organic could speedily be upon her.
+No wonder the woman was troubled. In point of fact, though she had taken
+up Miss Somers's breakfast, she hadn't dared tell her the news. And
+finally, after breakfast, she broke down. "I can't do it, Mr. Withrow,"
+she wailed. "Either you go away or I do."
+
+Withrow knew at first only one thing: that he wouldn't be the one to go.
+Then he realized that the woman had been under a long strain, what with
+the spring thaws, and a delicate patient who wouldn't mend--and Melora
+to fight with, on behalf of all human decency, every day.
+
+"You go, then," he said finally. "I'll take care of her."
+
+The nurse stared at him. Then she thought, presumably, of Kathleen
+Somers's ineffable delicacy, and burst out laughing. Hysteria might, in
+all the circumstances, be forgiven her.
+
+Then they came back to the imminent question.
+
+"I'll tell her when I do up her room," she faltered.
+
+"All right. I'll give you all the time in the world. But she must be
+told I'm here--unless you wish me to tell her myself." Withrow went out
+to smoke. But he did not wish to succumb again to the intoxication
+Kathleen Somers so disdained, and eventually he went into the barn, to
+shut himself away from temptation. It was easier to prepare his
+vilifying phrases there.
+
+To his consternation, he heard through the gloom the sound of sobbing.
+The nurse, he saw, after much peering, sat on a dusty chopping-block,
+crying unhealthily. He went up to her and seized her arm. "Have you told
+her?"
+
+"I can't."
+
+"My good woman, you'd better leave this afternoon."
+
+"Not"--the tone itself was firm, through the shaky sobs--"until there is
+some one to take my place."
+
+"I'll telegraph for some one. You shan't see her again. But I will see
+her at once."
+
+Then the woman's training asserted itself. She pulled herself together,
+with a little shake of self-disgust. "You'll do nothing of the sort.
+I'll attend to her until I go. It has been a long strain, and, contrary
+to custom, I've had no time off. I'll telegraph to the Registry myself.
+And if I can't manage until then, I'll resign my profession." She spoke
+with sturdy shame.
+
+"That's better." Withrow approved her. "I'm awfully obliged. But
+honestly, she has got to know. I can't stand it, skulking round, much
+longer. And no matter what happens to the whole boiling, I'm not going
+to leave without seeing her."
+
+"I'll tell her." The nurse rose and walked to the barn-door like a
+heroine. "But you must stay here until I come for you."
+
+"I promise. Only you must come. I give you half an hour."
+
+"I don't need half an hour, thank you." She had recovered her
+professional crispness. In the wide door she stopped. "It's a pity," she
+said irrelevantly, "that she can't see how lovely this is." Then she
+started for the house.
+
+"I believe you," muttered Withrow under his breath.
+
+In five minutes the nurse came back, breathless, half-running. Arnold
+got up from the chopping-block, startled. He believed for an instant (as
+he has since told me) that it was "all over." With her hand on her
+beating heart the woman panted out her words:
+
+"She has come downstairs in a wrapper. She hasn't been down for weeks.
+And she has found your hepaticas."
+
+"Oh, hell!" Withrow was honestly disgusted. He had never meant to insult
+Kathleen Somers with hepaticas. "Is it safe to leave her alone with
+them?" He hardly knew what he was saying. But it shows to what a pass
+Kathleen Somers had come that he could be frightened at the notion of
+her being left alone with a bunch of hepaticas.
+
+"She's all right, I think. She seemed to like them."
+
+"Oh, Lord!" Withrow's brain was spinning. "Here, I'll go. If she can
+stand those beastly flowers, she can stand me."
+
+"No, she can't." The nurse had recovered her breath now. "I'll go back
+and tell her, very quietly. If she could get down-stairs, she can stand
+it, I think. But I'll be very careful. You come in ten minutes. If she
+isn't fit, I'll have got her back to bed by that time."
+
+She disappeared, and Withrow, his back to the view, counted out the
+minutes. When the large hand of his watch had quite accomplished its
+journey, he turned and walked out through the yard to the side door of
+the house. Melora Meigs was clattering dish-pans somewhere beyond, and
+the noise she made covered his entrance to the living-room. He drew a
+deep breath: they were not there. He listened at the stairs: no sound up
+there--no sound, at least, to rise above Melora's dish-pans, now a
+little less audible. But this time he was not going to wait--for
+anything. He already had one foot on the stairs when he heard voices and
+stopped. For just one second he paused, then walked cat-like in the
+direction of the sounds. The front door was open. On the step stood
+Kathleen Somers, her back to him, facing the horizon. A light shawl hung
+on her shoulders, and the nurse's arm was very firmly round her waist.
+They did not hear him, breathing heavily there in the hall behind them.
+
+He saw Kathleen Somers raise her arm slowly--with difficulty, it seemed.
+She pointed at the noble shoulder of a mountain.
+
+"That is Habakkuk," said her sweet voice. "I named them all, you know.
+But I think Habakkuk is my favorite; though of course he's not so
+stunning as Isaiah. Then they run down to Obadiah and Malachi. Joel is
+just peeping over Habakkuk's left shoulder. That long bleak range is
+Jeremiah." She laughed, very faintly. "You know, Miss Willis, they are
+really very beautiful. Isn't it strange, I couldn't see it? For I
+honestly couldn't. I've been lying there, thinking. And I found I could
+remember all their outlines, under snow ... and this morning it seemed
+to me I must see how Habakkuk looked in the spring." She sat down
+suddenly on the top step; and Miss Willis sat down too, her arm still
+about her patient.
+
+"It's very strange"--Withrow, strain though he did, could hardly make
+out the words, they fell so softly--"that I just couldn't see it before.
+It's only these last days.... And now I feel as if I wanted to see every
+leaf on every tree. It wasn't so last year. They say something to me
+now. I don't think I should want to talk with them forever, but you've
+no idea--you've no idea--how strange and welcome it is for my eyes to
+find them beautiful." She seemed almost to murmur to herself. Then she
+braced herself slightly against the nurse's shoulder, and went on, in
+her light, sweet, ironic voice. "They probably never told you--but I
+didn't care for Nature, exactly. I don't think I care for it now, as
+some people do, but I can see that this is beautiful. Of course you
+don't know what it means to me. It has simply changed the world." She
+waved her hand again. "They never got by, before. I always knew that
+line was line, and color was color, wherever or whoever. But my eyes
+went back on me. My father would have despised me. He wouldn't have
+preferred Habakkuk, but he would have done Habakkuk justice from the
+beginning. Yes, it makes a great deal of difference to me to see it
+once, fair and clear. Why"--she drew herself up as well as she could, so
+firmly held--"it is a very lovely place. I should tire of it some time,
+but I shall not tire of it soon. For a little while, I shall be up to
+it. And I know that no one thinks it will be long."
+
+Just then, Withrow's absurd fate caught him. Breathless, more
+passionately interested than he had ever been in his life, he sneezed.
+He had just time, while the two women were turning, to wonder if he had
+ruined it all--if she would faint, or shriek, or relapse into apathy.
+
+She did none of these things. She faced him and flushed, standing
+unsteadily. "How long have you been cheating me?" she asked coldly. But
+she held out her hand before she went upstairs with the nurse's arm
+still round her.
+
+Later he caught at Miss Willis excitedly. "Is she better? Is she worse?
+Is she well? Or is she going to die?"
+
+"She's shaken. She must rest. But she's got the hepaticas in water
+beside her bed. And she told me to pull the shade up so that she could
+look out. She has a touch of temperature--but she often has that. The
+exertion and the shock would be enough to give it to her. I found her
+leaning against the door-jamb. I hadn't a chance to tell her you were
+here. I can tell you later whether you'd better go or stay."
+
+"I'm going to stay. It's you who are going."
+
+"You needn't telegraph just yet," the nurse replied dryly. She looked
+another woman from the nervous, sobbing creature on the chopping-block.
+
+The end was that Miss Willis stayed and Arnold Withrow went. Late that
+afternoon he left Kathleen Somers staring passionately at the sunset. It
+was not his moment, and he had the grace to know it. But he had not had
+to tell her that the view was beastly; and, much as he loved her, I
+think that was a relief to him.
+
+None of us will ever know the whole of Kathleen Somers's miracle, of
+course. I believe she told as much of it as she could when she said that
+she had lain thinking of the outlines of the mountains until she felt
+that she must go out and face them: stand once more outside, free of
+walls, and stare about at the whole chain of the earth-lords. Perhaps
+the spring, which had broken up the ice-bound streams, had melted other
+things besides. Unwittingly--by unconscious cerebration--by the long
+inevitable storing of disdained impressions--she had arrived at vision.
+That which had been, for her, alternate gibberish and silence, had
+become an intelligible tongue. The blank features had stirred and
+shifted into a countenance; she saw a face, where she had seen only odds
+and ends of modelling grotesquely flung abroad. With no stupid pantheism
+to befuddle her, she yet felt the earth a living thing. Wood and stone,
+which had not even been an idol for her, now shaped themselves to hold a
+sacrament. Put it as you please; for I can find no way to express it to
+my satisfaction. Kathleen Somers had, for the first time, envisaged the
+cosmic, had seen something less passionate, but more vital, than
+history. Most of us are more fortunate than she: we take it for granted
+that no loom can rival the petal of a flower. But to some creatures the
+primitive is a cipher, hard to learn; and blood is spent in the
+struggle. You have perhaps seen (and not simply in the old legend)
+passion come to a statue. Rare, oh, rare is the necessity for such a
+miracle. But Kathleen Somers was in need of one; and I believe it came
+to her.
+
+The will was slack, the nurse had said; yet it sufficed to take her from
+her bed, down the stairs, in pursuit of the voice--straight out into the
+newly articulate world. She moved, frail and undismayed, to the source
+of revelation. She did not cower back and demand that the oracle be
+served up to her by a messenger. A will like that is not slack.
+
+Now I will shuffle back into my own skin and tell you the rest of it
+very briefly and from the rank outsider's point of view. Even had I
+possessed the whole of Arnold Withrow's confidence, I could not deal
+with the delicate gradations of a lover's mood. He passed the word about
+that Kathleen Somers was not going to die--though I believe he did it
+with his heart in his mouth, not really assured she wouldn't. It took
+some of us a long time to shift our ground and be thankful. Withrow,
+with a wisdom beyond his habit, did not go near her until autumn.
+Reports were that she was gaining all the time, and that she lived
+out-of-doors staring at Habakkuk and his brethren, gathering wild
+flowers and pressing them between her palms. She seemed determined to
+face another winter there alone with Melora, Miss Willis wrote. Withrow
+set his jaw when that news came. It was hard on him to stay away, but
+she had made it very clear that she wanted her convalescent summer to
+herself. When she had to let Miss Willis go--and Miss Willis had already
+taken a huge slice of Kathleen's capital--he might come and see her
+through the transition. So Withrow sweltered in New York all summer,
+and waited for permission.
+
+Then Melora Meigs was gracious for once. With no preliminary illness,
+with just a little gasp as the sun rose over the long range of Jeremiah,
+she died. Withrow, hearing this, was off like a sprinter who hears the
+signal. He found laughter and wit abiding happily in Kathleen's
+recovered body. Together they watched the autumn deepen over the
+prophets. Habakkuk, all insults forgiven, was their familiar.
+
+So they brought Kathleen Somers back from the hills to live. It was
+impossible for her to remain on her mountainside without a Melora Meigs;
+and Melora, unlike most tortures, was unreplaceable. Kathleen's world
+welcomed her as warmly as if her exile had been one long suspense: a
+gentle hyprocrisy we all forgave each other. Some one went abroad and
+left an apartment for her use. All sorts of delicate little events
+occurred, half accidentally, in her interest. Soon some of us began to
+gather, as of old. Marvel of marvels, Withrow had not spoken in that
+crimson week of autumn. Without jealousy he had apparently left her to
+Habakkuk. It was a brief winter--for Kathleen Somers's body, a kind of
+spring. You could see her grow, from week to week: plump out and bloom
+more vividly. Then, in April, without a word, she left us--disappeared
+one morning, with no explicit word to servants.
+
+Withrow once more--poor Withrow--shot forth, not like a runner, but like
+a hound on a fresh scent. He needed no time-tables. He leaped from the
+telephone to the train.
+
+He found her there, he told me afterward, sitting on the step, the door
+unlocked behind her but shut.
+
+Indeed, she never entered the house again; for Withrow bore her away
+from the threshold. I do not think she minded, for she had made her
+point: she had seen Habakkuk once more, and Habakkuk had not gone back
+on her. That was all she needed to know. They meant to go up in the
+autumn after their marriage, but the cottage burned to the ground before
+they got back from Europe. I do not know that they have ever been, or
+whether they ever will go, now. There are still a few exotic places that
+Kathleen Withrow has not seen, and Habakkuk can wait. After all, the
+years are very brief in Habakkuk's sight. Even if she never needs him
+again, I do not think he will mind.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[8] Copyright, 1919, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by
+Katharine Fullerton Gerould.
+
+
+
+
+THE JUDGMENT OF VULCAN[9]
+
+#By# LEE FOSTER HARTMAN
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+To dine on the veranda of the Marine Hotel is the one delightful
+surprise which Port Charlotte affords the adventurer who has broken from
+the customary paths of travel in the South Seas. On an eminence above
+the town, solitary and aloof like a monastery, and nestling deep in its
+garden of lemon-trees, it commands a wide prospect of sea and sky. By
+day, the Pacific is a vast stretch of blue, flat like a floor, with a
+blur of distant islands on the horizon--chief among them Muloa, with its
+single volcanic cone tapering off into the sky. At night, this smithy of
+Vulcan becomes a glow of red, throbbing faintly against the darkness, a
+capricious and sullen beacon immeasurably removed from the path of men.
+Viewed from the veranda of the Marine Hotel, its vast flare on the
+horizon seems hardly more than an insignificant spark, like the glowing
+cigar-end of some guest strolling in the garden after dinner.
+
+It may very likely have been my lighted cigar that guided Eleanor
+Stanleigh to where I was sitting in the shadows. Her uncle, Major
+Stanleigh, had left me a few minutes before, and I was glad of the
+respite from the queer business he had involved me in. The two of us had
+returned that afternoon from Muloa, where I had taken him in my
+schooner, the _Sylph_, to seek out Leavitt and make some inquiries--very
+important inquiries, it seemed, in Miss Stanleigh's behalf.
+
+Three days in Muloa, under the shadow of the grim and flame-throated
+mountain, while I was forced to listen to Major Stanleigh's persistent
+questionnaire and Leavitt's erratic and garrulous responses--all this,
+as I was to discover later, at the instigation of the Major's
+niece--had made me frankly curious about the girl.
+
+I had seen her only once, and then at a distance across the veranda, one
+night when I had been dining there with a friend; but that single vision
+of her remained vivid and unforgettable--a tall girl of a slender
+shapeliness, crowned by a mass of reddish-gold hair that smoldered above
+the clear olive pallor of her skin. With that flawless and brilliant
+coloring she was marked for observation--had doubtless been schooled to
+a perfect indifference to it, for the slow, almost indolent, grace of
+her movements was that of a woman coldly unmindful of the gazes
+lingering upon her. She could not have been more than twenty-six or
+-seven, but I got an unmistakable impression of weariness or balked
+purpose emanating from her in spite of her youth and glorious physique.
+I looked up to see her crossing the veranda to join her uncle and
+aunt--correct, well-to-do English people that one placed instantly--and
+my stare was only one of many that followed her as she took her seat and
+threw aside the light scarf that swathed her bare and gleaming
+shoulders.
+
+My companion, who happened to be the editor of the local paper, promptly
+informed me regarding her name and previous residence--the gist of some
+"social item" which he had already put into print; but these meant
+nothing, and I could only wonder what had brought her to such an
+out-of-the-way part of the world as Port Charlotte. She did not seem
+like a girl who was traveling with her uncle and aunt; one got rather
+the impression that she was bent on a mission of her own and was
+dragging her relatives along because the conventions demanded it. I
+hazarded to my companion the notion that a woman like Miss Stanleigh
+could have but one of two purposes in this lonely part of the world--she
+was fleeing from a lover or seeking one.
+
+"In that case," rejoined my friend, with the cynical shrug of the
+newspaper man, "she has very promptly succeeded. It's whispered that she
+is going to marry Joyce--of Malduna Island, you know. Only met him a
+fortnight ago. Quite a romance, I'm told."
+
+I lifted my eyebrows at that, and looked again at Miss Stanleigh. Just
+at that instant she happened to look up. It was a wholly indifferent
+gaze; I am confident that she was no more aware of me than if I had been
+one of the veranda posts which her eyes had chanced to encounter. But in
+the indescribable sensation of that moment I felt that here was a woman
+who bore a secret burden, although, as my informing host put it, her
+heart had romantically found its haven only two weeks ago.
+
+She was endeavoring to get trace of a man named Farquharson, as I was
+permitted to learn a few days later. Ostensibly, it was Major Stanleigh
+who was bent on locating this young Englishman--Miss Stanleigh's
+interest in the quest was guardedly withheld--and the trail had led him
+a pretty chase around the world until some clue, which I never clearly
+understood, brought them to Port Charlotte. The major's immediate
+objective was an eccentric chap named Leavitt who had marooned himself
+in Muloa. The island offered an ideal retreat for one bent on shunning
+his own kind, if he did not object to the close proximity of a restive
+volcano. Clearly, Leavitt did not. He had a scientific interest in the
+phenomena exhibited by volcanic regions and was versed in geological
+lore, but the rumors about Leavitt--practically no one ever visited
+Muloa--did not stop at that. And, as Major Stanleigh and I were to
+discover, the fellow seemed to have developed a genuine affection for
+Lakalatcha, as the smoking cone was called by the natives of the
+adjoining islands. From long association he had come to know its whims
+and moods as one comes to know those of a petulant woman one lives with.
+It was a bizarre and preposterous intimacy, in which Leavitt seemed to
+find a wholly acceptable substitute for human society, and there was
+something repellant about the man's eccentricity. He had various names
+for the smoking cone that towered a mile or more above his head: "Old
+Flame-eater," or "Lava-spitter," he would at times familiarly and
+irreverently call it; or, again, "The Maiden Who Never Sleeps," or "The
+Single-breasted Virgin"--these last, however, always in the musical
+Malay equivalent. He had no end of names--romantic, splenetic, of
+opprobrium, or outright endearment--to suit, I imagine, Lakalatcha's
+varying moods. In one respect they puzzled me--they were of conflicting
+genders, some feminine and some masculine, as if in Leavitt's
+loose-frayed imagination the mountain that beguiled his days and
+disturbed his nights were hermaphroditic.
+
+Leavitt as a source of information regarding the missing Farquharson
+seemed preposterous when one reflected how out of touch with the world
+he had been, but, to my astonishment, Major Stanleigh's clue was right,
+for he had at last stumbled upon a man who had known Farquharson well
+and who was voluminous about him--quite willingly so. With the _Sylph_
+at anchor, we lay off Muloa for three nights, and Leavitt gave us our
+fill of Farquharson, along with innumerable digressions about volcanoes,
+neoplatonism, the Single Tax, and what not. There was no keeping Leavitt
+to a coherent narrative about the missing Farquharson. He was incapable
+of it, and Major Stanleigh and myself had simply to wait in patience
+while Leavitt, delighted to have an audience, dumped out for us the
+fantastic contents of his mind, odd vagaries, recondite trash, and all.
+He was always getting away from Farquharson, but, then, he was
+unfailingly bound to come back to him. We had only to wait and catch the
+solid grains that now and then fell in the winnowing of that unending
+stream of chaff. It was a tedious and exasperating process, but it had
+its compensations. At times Leavitt could be as uncannily brilliant as
+he was dull and boresome. The conviction grew upon me that he had become
+a little demented, as if his brain had been tainted by the sulphurous
+fumes exhaled by the smoking crater above his head. His mind smoked,
+flickered, and flared like an unsteady lamp, blown upon by choking
+gases, in which the oil had run low.
+
+But of the wanderer Farquharson he spoke with precision and authority,
+for he had shared with Farquharson his bungalow there in Muloa--a
+period of about six months, it seemed--and there Farquharson had
+contracted a tropic fever and died.
+
+"Well, at last we have got all the facts," Major Stanleigh sighed with
+satisfaction when the _Sylph_ was heading back to Port Charlotte. Muloa,
+lying astern, we were no longer watching. Leavitt, at the water's edge,
+had waved us a last good-by and had then abruptly turned back into the
+forest, very likely to go clambering like a demented goat up the flanks
+of his beloved volcano and to resume poking about in its steaming
+fissures--an occupation of which he never tired.
+
+"The evidence is conclusive, don't you think?--the grave, Farquharson's
+personal effects, those pages of the poor devil's diary."
+
+I nodded assent. In my capacity as owner of the _Sylph_ I had merely
+undertaken to furnish Major Stanleigh with passage to Muloa and back,
+but the events of the last three days had made me a party to the many
+conferences, and I was now on terms of something like intimacy with the
+rather stiff and pompous English gentleman. How far I was from sharing
+his real confidence I was to discover later when Eleanor Stanleigh gave
+me hers.
+
+"My wife and niece will be much relieved to hear all this--a family
+matter, you understand, Mr. Barnaby," he had said to me when we landed.
+"I should like to present you to them before we leave Port Charlotte for
+home."
+
+But, as it turned out, it was Eleanor Stanleigh who presented herself,
+coming upon me quite unexpectedly that night after our return while I
+sat smoking in the shadowy garden of the Marine Hotel. I had dined with
+the major, after he had explained that the ladies were worn out by the
+heat and general developments of the day and had begged to be excused.
+And I was frankly glad not to have to endure another discussion of the
+deceased Farquharson, of which I was heartily tired after hearing little
+else for the last three days. I could not help wondering how the verbose
+and pompous major had paraphrased and condensed that inchoate mass of
+biography and reminiscence into an orderly account for his wife and
+niece. He had doubtless devoted the whole afternoon to it. Sitting under
+the cool green of the lemon-trees, beneath a sky powdered with stars, I
+reflected that I, at least, was done with Farquharson forever. But I was
+not, for just then Eleanor Stanleigh appeared before me.
+
+I was startled to hear her addressing me by name, and then calmly
+begging me to resume my seat on the bench under the arbor. She sat down
+also, her flame-colored hair and bare shoulders gleaming in the
+darkness. She was the soul of directness and candor, and after a
+thoughtful, searching look into my face she came to the point at once.
+She wanted to hear about Farquharson--from me.
+
+"Of course, my uncle has given me a very full account of what he learned
+from Mr. Leavitt, and yet many things puzzle me--this Mr. Leavitt most
+of all."
+
+"A queer chap," I epitomized him. "Frankly, I don't quite make him out,
+Miss Stanleigh--marooning himself on that infernal island and seemingly
+content to spend his days there."
+
+"Is he so old?" she caught me up quickly.
+
+"No, he isn't," I reflected. "Of course, it's difficult to judge ages
+out here. The climate, you know. Leavitt's well under forty, I should
+say. But that's a most unhealthy spot he has chosen to live in."
+
+"Why does he stay there?"
+
+I explained about the volcano. "You can have no idea what an obsession
+it is with him. There isn't a square foot of its steaming, treacherous
+surface that he hasn't been over, mapping new fissures, poking into old
+lava-beds, delving into the crater itself on favorable days----"
+
+"Isn't it dangerous?"
+
+"In a way, yes. The volcano itself is harmless enough. It smokes
+unpleasantly now and then, splutters and rumbles as if about to
+obliterate all creation, but for all its bluster it only manages to
+spill a trickle or two of fresh lava down its sides--just tamely
+subsides after deluging Leavitt with a shower of cinders and ashes. But
+Leavitt won't leave it alone. He goes poking into the very crater, half
+strangling himself in its poisonous fumes, scorching the shoes off his
+feet, and once, I believe, he lost most of his hair and eyebrows--a
+narrow squeak. He throws his head back and laughs at any word of
+caution. To my notion, it's foolhardy to push a scientific curiosity to
+that extreme."
+
+"Is it, then, just scientific curiosity?" mused Miss Stanleigh.
+
+Something in her tone made me stop short. Her eyes had lifted to
+mine--almost appealingly, I fancied. Her innocence, her candor, her warm
+beauty, which was like a pale phosphorescence in the starlit
+darkness--all had their potent effect upon me in that moment. I felt
+impelled to a sudden burst of confidence.
+
+"At times I wonder. I've caught a look in his eyes, when he's been down
+on his hands and knees, staring into some infernal vent-hole--a look
+that is--well, uncanny, as if he were peering into the bowels of the
+earth for something quite outside the conceptions of science. You might
+think that volcano had worked some spell over him, turned his mind. He
+prattles to it or storms at it as if it were a living creature. Queer,
+yes; and he's impressive, too, with a sort of magnetic personality that
+attracts and repels you violently at the same time. He's like a cake of
+ice dipped in alcohol and set aflame. I can't describe him. When he
+talks----"
+
+"Does he talk about himself?"
+
+I had to confess that he had told us practically not a word. He had
+discussed everything under heaven in his brilliant, erratic way, with a
+fleer of cynicism toward it all, but he had left himself out completely.
+He had given us Farquharson with relish, and in infinite detail, from
+the time the poor fellow first turned up in Muloa, put ashore by a
+native craft. Talking about Farquharson was second only to his delight
+in talking about volcanoes. And the result for me had been innumerable
+vivid but confused impressions of the young Englishman who had by chance
+invaded Leavitt's solitude and had lingered there, held by some
+attraction, until he sickened and died. It was like a jumbled mosaic
+put together again by inexpert hands.
+
+"Did you get the impression that the two men had very much in common?"
+
+"Quite the contrary," I answered. "But Major Stanleigh should know----"
+
+"My uncle never met Mr. Farquharson."
+
+I was fairly taken aback at that, and a silence fell between us. It was
+impossible to divine the drift of her questions. It was as if some
+profound mistrust weighed upon her and she was not so much seeking to
+interrogate me as she was groping blindly for some chance word of mine
+that might illuminate her doubts.
+
+I looked at the girl in silent wonder, yes, and in admiration of her
+bronze and ivory beauty in the full flower of her glorious youth--and I
+thought of Joyce. I felt that it was like her to have fallen in love
+simply but passionately at the mere lifting of the finger of Fate. It
+was only another demonstration of the unfathomable mystery, or miracle,
+which love is. Joyce was lucky, indeed favored of the gods, to have
+touched the spring in this girl's heart which no other man could reach,
+and by the rarest of chances--her coming out to this remote corner of
+the world. Lucky Joyce! I knew him slightly--a straightforward young
+fellow, very simple and whole-souled, enthusiastically absorbed in
+developing his rubber lands in Malduna.
+
+Miss Stanleigh remained lost in thought while her fingers toyed with the
+pendant of the chain that she wore. In the darkness I caught the glitter
+of a small gold cross.
+
+"Mr. Barnaby," she finally broke the silence, and paused. "I have
+decided to tell you something. This Mr. Farquharson was my husband."
+
+Again a silence fell, heavy and prolonged, in which I sat as if drugged
+by the night air that hung soft and perfumed about us. It seemed
+incredible that in that fleeting instant she had spoken at all.
+
+"I was young--and very foolish, I suppose."
+
+With that confession, spoken with simple dignity, she broke off again.
+Clearly, some knowledge of the past she deemed it necessary to impart to
+me. If she halted over her words, it was rather to dismiss what was
+irrelevant to the matter in hand, in which she sought my counsel.
+
+"I did not see him for four years--did not wish to.... And he vanished
+completely.... Four years!--just a welcome blank!"
+
+Her shoulders lifted and a little shiver went over her.
+
+"But even a blank like that can become unendurable. To be always
+dragging at a chain, and not knowing where it leads to...." Her hand
+slipped from the gold cross on her breast and fell to the other in her
+lap, which it clutched tightly. "Four years.... I tried to make myself
+believe that he was gone forever--was dead. It was wicked of me."
+
+My murmur of polite dissent led her to repeat her words.
+
+"Yes, and even worse than that. During the past month I have actually
+prayed that he might be dead.... I shall be punished for it."
+
+I ventured no rejoinder to these words of self-condemnation. Joyce, I
+reflected, mundanely, had clearly swept her off her feet in the ardor of
+their first meeting and instant love.
+
+"It must be a great relief to you," I murmured at length, "to have it
+all definitely settled at last."
+
+"If I could only feel that it was!"
+
+I turned in amazement, to see her leaning a little forward, her hands
+still tightly clasped in her lap, and her eyes fixed upon the distant
+horizon where the red spark of Lakalatcha's stertorous breathing flamed
+and died away. Her breast rose and fell, as if timed to the throbbing of
+that distant flare.
+
+"I want you to take me to that island--to-morrow."
+
+"Why, surely, Miss Stanleigh," I burst forth, "there can't be any
+reasonable doubt. Leavitt's mind may be a little flighty--he may have
+embroidered his story with a few gratuitous details; but Farquharson's
+books and things--the material evidence of his having lived there----"
+
+"And having died there?"
+
+"Surely Leavitt wouldn't have fabricated that! If you had talked with
+him----"
+
+"I should not care to talk with Mr. Leavitt," Miss Stanleigh cut me
+short. "I want only to go and see--if he _is_ Mr. Leavitt."
+
+"If he _is_ Mr. Leavitt!" For a moment I was mystified, and then in a
+sudden flash I understood. "But that's preposterous--impossible!"
+
+I tried to conceive of Leavitt in so monstrous a rA'le, tried to imagine
+the missing Farquharson still in the flesh and beguiling Major Stanleigh
+and myself with so outlandish a story, devising all that ingenious
+detail to trick us into a belief in his own death. It would indeed have
+argued a warped mind, guided by some unfathomable purpose.
+
+"I devoutly hope you are right," Miss Stanleigh was saying, with
+deliberation. "But it is not preposterous, and it is not impossible--if
+you had known Mr. Farquharson as I have."
+
+It was a discreet confession. She wished me to understand--without the
+necessity of words. My surmise was that she had met and married
+Farquharson, whoever he was, under the spell of some momentary
+infatuation, and that he had proved himself to be an unspeakable brute
+whom she had speedily abandoned.
+
+"I am determined to go to Muloa, Mr. Barnaby," she announced, with
+decision. "I want you to make the arrangements, and with as much secrecy
+as possible. I shall ask my aunt to go with me."
+
+I assured Miss Stanleigh that the _Sylph_ was at her service.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Mrs. Stanleigh was a large bland woman, inclined to stoutness and to
+making confidences, with an intense dislike of the tropics and physical
+discomforts of any sort. How her niece prevailed upon her to make that
+surreptitious trip to Muloa, which we set out upon two days later, I
+have never been able to imagine. The accommodations aboard the schooner
+were cramped, to say the least, and the good lady had a perfect horror
+of volcanoes. The fact that Lakalatcha had behind it a record of a
+century or more of good conduct did not weigh with her in the least. She
+was convinced that it would blow its head off the moment the _Sylph_ got
+within range. She was fidgety, talkative, and continually concerned over
+the state of her complexion, inspecting it in the mirror of her bag at
+frequent intervals and using a powder-puff liberally to mitigate the
+pernicious effects of the tropic sun. But once having been induced to
+make the voyage, I must admit she stuck manfully by her decision,
+ensconcing herself on deck with books and cushions and numerous other
+necessities to her comfort, and making the best of the sleeping quarters
+below. As the captain of the _Sylph_, she wanted me to understand that
+she had intrusted her soul to my charge, declaring that she would not
+draw an easy breath until we were safe again in Port Charlotte.
+
+"This dreadful business of Eleanor's," was the way she referred to our
+mission, and she got round quite naturally to telling me of Farquharson
+while acquainting me with her fears about volcanoes. Some years before,
+Pompeii and Herculaneum had had a most unsettling effect upon her
+nerves. Vesuvius was slightly in eruption at the time. She confessed to
+never having had an easy moment while in Naples. And it was in Naples
+that her niece and Farquharson had met. It had been, as I surmised, a
+swift, romantic courtship, in which Farquharson, quite irreproachable in
+antecedents and manners, had played the part of an impetuous lover.
+Italian skies had done the rest. There was an immediate marriage, in
+spite of Mrs. Stanleigh's protests, and the young couple were off on a
+honeymoon trip by themselves. But when Mrs. Stanleigh rejoined her
+husband at Nice, and together they returned to their home in Sussex, a
+surprise was in store for them. Eleanor was already there--alone,
+crushed, and with lips absolutely sealed. She had divested herself of
+everything that linked her to Farquharson; she refused to adopt her
+married name.
+
+"I shall bless every saint in heaven when we have quite done with this
+dreadful business of Eleanor's," Mrs. Stanleigh confided to me from her
+deck-chair. "This trip that she insists on making herself seems quite
+uncalled for. But you needn't think, Captain Barnaby, that I'm going to
+set foot on that dreadful island--not even for the satisfaction of
+seeing Mr. Farquharson's grave--and I'm shameless enough to say that it
+_would_ be a satisfaction. If you could imagine the tenth part of what I
+have had to put up with, all these months we've been traveling about
+trying to locate the wretch! No, indeed--I shall stay right here on this
+boat and intrust Eleanor to your care while ashore. And I should not
+think it ought to take long, now should it?"
+
+I confessed aloud that I did not see how it could. If by any chance the
+girl's secret conjecture about Leavitt's identity was right, it would be
+verified in the mere act of coming face to face with him, and in that
+event it would be just as well to spare the unsuspecting aunt the shock
+of that discovery.
+
+We reached Muloa just before nightfall, letting go the anchor in placid
+water under the lee of the shore while the _Sylph_ swung to and the
+sails fluttered and fell. A vast hush lay over the world. From the shore
+the dark green of the forest confronted us with no sound or sign of
+life. Above, and at this close distance blotting out half the sky over
+our heads, towered the huge cone of Lakalatcha with scarred and
+blackened flanks. It was in one of its querulous moods. The feathery
+white plume of steam, woven by the wind into soft, fantastic shapes, no
+longer capped the crater; its place had been usurped by thick, dark
+fumes of smoke swirling sullenly about. In the fading light I marked the
+red, malignant glow of a fissure newly broken out in the side of the
+ragged cone, from which came a thin, white trickle of lava.
+
+There was no sign of Leavitt, although the _Sylph_ must have been
+visible to him for several hours, obviously making for the island. I
+fancied that he must have been unusually absorbed in the vagaries of his
+beloved volcano. Otherwise he would have wondered what was bringing us
+back again and his tall figure in shabby white drill would have greeted
+us from the shore. Instead, there confronted us only the belt of dark,
+matted green girdling the huge bulk of Lakalatcha which soared skyward,
+sinister, mysterious, eternal.
+
+In the brief twilight the shore vanished into dim obscurity. Miss
+Stanleigh, who for the last hour had been standing by the rail, silently
+watching the island, at last spoke to me over her shoulder:
+
+"Is it far inland--the place? Will it be difficult to find in the dark?"
+
+Her question staggered me, for she was clearly bent on seeking out
+Leavitt at once. A strange calmness overlay her. She paid no heed to
+Lakalatcha's gigantic, smoke-belching cone, but, with fingers gripping
+the rail, scanned the forbidding and inscrutable forest, behind which
+lay the answer to her torturing doubt.
+
+I acceded to her wish without protest. Leavitt's bungalow lay a quarter
+of a mile distant. There would be no difficulty in following the path. I
+would have a boat put over at once, I announced in a casual way which
+belied my real feelings, for I was beginning to share some of her secret
+tension at this night invasion of Leavitt's haunts.
+
+This feeling deepened within me as we drew near the shore. Leavitt's
+failure to appear seemed sinister and enigmatic. I began to evolve a
+fantastic image of him as I recalled his queer ways and his uncanny
+tricks of speech. It was as if we were seeking out the presiding deity
+of the island, who had assumed the guise of a Caliban holding unearthly
+sway over its unnatural processes.
+
+With Williams, the boatswain, carrying a lantern, we pushed into the
+brush, following the choked trail that led to Leavitt's abode. But the
+bungalow, when we had reached the clearing and could discern the
+outlines of the building against the masses of the forest, was dark and
+deserted. As we mounted the veranda, the loose boards creaked hollowly
+under our tread; the doorway, from which depended a tattered curtain of
+coarse burlap, gaped black and empty.
+
+The lantern, lifted high in the boatswain's hand, cleft at a stroke the
+darkness within. On the writing-table, cluttered with papers and bits of
+volcanic rock, stood a bottle and half-empty glass. Things lay about in
+lugubrious disorder, as if the place had been hurriedly ransacked by a
+thief. Some of the geological specimens had tumbled from the table to
+the floor, and stray sheets of Leavitt's manuscripts lay under his
+chair. Leavitt's books, ranged on shelving against the wall, alone
+seemed undisturbed. Upon the top of the shelving stood two enormous
+stuffed birds, moldering and decrepit, regarding the sudden illumination
+with unblinking, bead-like eyes. Between them a small dancing faun in
+greenish bronze tripped a Bacchic measure with head thrown back in a
+transport of derisive laughter.
+
+For a long moment the three of us faced the silent, disordered room, in
+which the little bronze faun alone seemed alive, convulsed with
+diabolical mirth at our entrance. Somehow it recalled to me Leavitt's
+own cynical laugh. Suddenly Miss Stanleigh made toward the photographs
+above the bookshelves.
+
+"This is he," she said, taking up one of the faded prints.
+
+"Yes--Leavitt," I answered.
+
+"_Leavitt_?" Her fingers tightened upon the photograph. Then, abruptly,
+it fell to the floor. "Yes, yes--of course." Her eyes closed very
+slowly, as if an extreme weakness had seized her.
+
+In the shock of that moment I reached out to support her, but she
+checked my hand. Her gray eyes opened again. A shudder visibly went over
+her, as if the night air had suddenly become chill. From the shelf the
+two stuffed birds regarded us dolefully, while the dancing faun, with
+head thrown back in an attitude of immortal art, laughed derisively.
+
+"Where is he? I must speak to him," said Miss Stanleigh.
+
+"One might think he were deliberately hiding," I muttered, for I was at
+a loss to account for Leavitt's absence.
+
+"Then find him," the girl commanded.
+
+I cut short my speculations to direct Williams to search the hut in the
+rear of the bungalow, where, behind bamboo palings, Leavitt's Malay
+servant maintained an aloof and mysterious existence. I sat down beside
+Miss Stanleigh on the veranda steps to find my hands sooty from the
+touch of the boards. A fine volcanic ash was evidently drifting in the
+air and now to my ear, attuned to the profound stillness, the wind bore
+a faint humming sound.
+
+"Do you hear that?" I whispered. It was like the far-off murmur of a
+gigantic caldron, softly a-boil--a dull vibration that seemed to reach
+us through the ground as well as through the air.
+
+The girl listened a moment, and then started up. "I hear
+voices--somewhere."
+
+"Voices?" I strained my ears for sounds other than the insistent ferment
+of the great cone above our heads. "Perhaps Leavitt----"
+
+"Why do you still call him Leavitt?"
+
+"Then you're quite certain----" I began, but an involuntary exclamation
+from her cut me short.
+
+The light of Williams's lantern, emerging from behind the bamboo
+palings, disclosed the burly form of the boatswain with a shrinking
+Malay in tow. He was jabbering in his native tongue, with much
+gesticulation of his thin arms, and going into contortions at every
+dozen paces in a sort of pantomime to emphasize his words. Williams
+urged him along unceremoniously to the steps of the veranda.
+
+"Perhaps you can get the straight of this, Mr. Barnaby," said the
+boatswain. "He swears that the flame-devil in the volcano has swallowed
+his master alive."
+
+The poor fellow seemed indeed in a state of complete funk. With his thin
+legs quaking under him, he poured forth in Malay a crazed, distorted
+tale. According to Wadakimba, Leavitt--or Farquharson, to give him his
+real name--had awakened the high displeasure of the flame-devil within
+the mountain. Had we not observed that the cone was smoking furiously?
+And the dust and heavy taint of sulphur in the air? Surely we could
+feel the very tremor of the ground under our feet. All that day the
+enraged monster had been spouting mud and lava down upon the white
+_tuan_, who had remained in the bungalow, drinking heavily and bawling
+out maledictions upon his enemy. At length, in spite of Wadakimba's
+efforts to dissuade him, he had set out to climb to the crater, vowing
+to show the flame-devil who was master. He had compelled the terrified
+Wadakimba to go with him a part of the way. The white _tuan_--was he
+really a god, as he declared himself to be?--had gone alone up the
+tortuous, fissured slopes, at times lost to sight in yellowish clouds of
+gas and steam, while his screams of vengeance came back to Wadakimba's
+ears. Overhead, Lakalatcha continued to rumble and quiver and clear his
+throat with great showers of mud and stones.
+
+Farquharson must have indeed parted with his reason to have attempted
+that grotesque sally. Listening to Wadakimba's tale, I pictured the
+crazed man, scorched to tatters, heedless of bruises and burns,
+scrambling up that difficult and perilous ascent, and hurling his
+ridiculous blasphemy into the flares of smoke and steam that issued from
+that vast caldron lit by subterranean fires. At its simmering the whole
+island trembled. A mere whiff of the monster's breath and he would have
+been snuffed out, annihilated in an instant. According to Wadakimba, the
+end had indeed come in that fashion. It was as if the mountain had
+suddenly given a deep sigh. The blast had carried away solid rock. A
+sheet of flame had licked the spot where Farquharson had been hurled
+headlong, and he was not.
+
+Wadakimba, viewing all this from afar, had scuttled off to his hut.
+Later he had ventured back to the scene of the tragedy. He had picked up
+Farquharson's scorched helmet, which had been blown off to some
+distance, and he also exhibited a pair of binoculars washed down by the
+tide of lava, scarred and twisted by the heat, from which the lenses had
+melted away.
+
+I translated for Miss Stanleigh briefly, while she stood turning over in
+her hands the twisted and blackened binoculars, which were still warm.
+She heard me through without question or comment, and when I proposed
+that we get back to the _Sylph_ at once, mindful of her aunt's
+distressed nerves, she assented with a nod. She seemed to have lost the
+power of speech. In a daze she followed as I led the way back through
+the forest.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Major Stanleigh and his wife deferred their departure for England until
+their niece should be properly married to Joyce. At Eleanor's wish, it
+was a very simple affair, and as Joyce's bride she was as eager to be
+off to his rubber-plantation in Malduna as he was to set her up there as
+mistress of his household. I had agreed to give them passage on the
+_Sylph_, since the next sailing of the mail-boat would have necessitated
+a further fortnight's delay.
+
+Mrs. Stanleigh, with visions of seeing England again, and profoundly
+grateful to a benevolent Providence that had not only brought "this
+dreadful business of Eleanor's" to a happy termination, but had averted
+Lakalatcha's baptism of fire from descending upon her own head, thanked
+me profusely and a little tearfully. It was during the general chorus of
+farewells at the last moment before the _Sylph_ cast off. Her last
+appeal, cried after us from the wharf where she stood frantically waving
+a wet handkerchief, was that I should give Muloa a wide berth.
+
+It brought a laugh from Joyce. He had discovered the good lady's extreme
+perturbation in regard to Lakalatcha, and had promptly declared for
+spending a day there with his bride. It was an exceptional opportunity
+to witness the volcano in its active mood. Each time that Joyce had
+essayed this teasing pleasantry, which never failed to draw Mrs.
+Stanleigh's protests, I observed that his wife remained silent. I
+assumed that she had decided to keep her own counsel in regard to the
+trip she had made there.
+
+"I'm trusting you not to take Eleanor near that dreadful island, Mr.
+Barnaby," was the admonition shouted across the widening gap of water.
+
+It was a quite unnecessary appeal, for Joyce, who was presently sitting
+with his wife in a sheltered quarter of the deck, had not the slightest
+interest in the smoking cone which was as yet a mere smudge upon the
+horizon. Eleanor, with one hand in Joyce's possession, at times watched
+it with a seemingly vast apathy until some ardent word from Joyce would
+draw her eyes back to his and she would lift to him a smile that was
+like a caress. The look of weariness and balked purpose that had once
+marked her expression had vanished. In the week since she had married
+Joyce she seemed to have grown younger and to be again standing on the
+very threshold of life with girlish eagerness. She hung on Joyce's every
+word, communing with him hour after hour, utterly content, indifferent
+to all the world about her.
+
+In the cabin that evening at dinner, when the two of them deigned to
+take polite cognizance of my existence, I announced to Joyce that I
+proposed to hug the island pretty close during the night. It would save
+considerable time.
+
+"Just as you like, Captain," Joyce replied, indifferently.
+
+"We may get a shower of ashes by doing so, if the wind should shift." I
+looked across the table at Mrs. Joyce.
+
+"But we shall reach Malduna that much sooner?" she queried.
+
+I nodded. "However, if you feel any uneasiness, I'll give the island a
+wide berth." I didn't like the idea of dragging her--the bride of a
+week--past that place with its unspeakable memories, if it should really
+distress her.
+
+Her eyes thanked me silently across the table. "It's very kind of you,
+but"--she chose her words with significant deliberation--"I haven't a
+fear in the world, Mr. Barnaby."
+
+Evening had fallen when we came up on deck. Joyce bethought himself of
+some cigars in his state-room and went back. For the moment I was alone
+with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through
+the darkening sky. The _Sylph_ was running smoothly, with the wind
+almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of
+a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like
+a benediction upon the sea.
+
+"You may think it unfeeling of me," she began, quite abruptly, "but all
+this past trouble of mine, now that it is ended, I have completely
+dismissed. Already it begins to seem like a horrid dream. And as for
+that island"--her eyes looked off toward Muloa now impending upon us and
+lighting up the heavens with its sudden flare--"it seems incredible that
+I ever set foot upon it.
+
+"Perhaps you understand," she went on, after a pause, "that I have not
+told my husband. But I have not deceived him. He knows that I was once
+married, and that the man is no longer living. He does not wish to know
+more. Of course he is aware that Uncle Geoffrey came out here to--to see
+a Mr. Leavitt, a matter which he has no idea concerned me. He thanks the
+stars for whatever it was that did bring us out here, for otherwise he
+would not have met me."
+
+"It has turned out most happily," I murmured.
+
+"It was almost disaster. After meeting Mr. Joyce--and I was weak enough
+to let myself become engaged--to have discovered that I was still
+chained to a living creature like that.... I should have killed myself."
+
+"But surely the courts----"
+
+She shook her head with decision. "My church does not recognize that
+sort of freedom."
+
+We were drawing steadily nearer to Muloa. The mountain was breathing
+slowly and heavily--a vast flare that lifted fanlike in the skies and
+died away. Lightning played fitfully through the dense mass of smoke and
+choking gases that hung like a pall over the great cone. It was like the
+night sky that overhangs a city of gigantic blast-furnaces, only
+infinitely multiplied. The sails of the _Sylph_ caught the ruddy tinge
+like a phantom craft gliding through the black night, its canvas still
+dyed with the sunset glow. The faces of the crew, turned to watch the
+spectacle, curiously fixed and inhuman, were picked out of the gloom by
+the same fantastic light. It was as if the schooner, with masts and
+riggings, etched black against the lurid sky, sailed on into the Day of
+Judgment.
+
+
+It was after midnight. The _Sylph_ came about, with sails trembling, and
+lost headway. Suddenly she vibrated from stem to stern, and with a soft
+grating sound that was unmistakable came to rest. We were aground in
+what should have been clear water, with the forest-clad shore of Muloa
+lying close off to port.
+
+The helmsman turned to me with a look of silly fright on his face, as
+the wheel revolved useless in his hands. We had shelved with scarcely a
+jar sufficient to disturb those sleeping below, but in a twinkling
+Jackson, the mate, appeared on deck in his pajamas, and after a swift
+glance toward the familiar shore turned to me with the same dumfounded
+look that had frozen upon the face of the steersman.
+
+"What do you make of this?" he exclaimed, as I called for the lead.
+
+"Be quiet about it," I said to the hands that had started into movement.
+"Look sharp now, and make no noise." Then I turned to the mate, who was
+perplexedly rubbing one bare foot against the other and measuring with
+his eye our distance from the shore. The _Sylph_ should have turned the
+point of the island without a mishap, as she had done scores of times.
+
+"It's the volcano we have to thank for this," was my conjecture. "Its
+recent activity has caused some displacement of the sea bottom."
+
+Jackson's head went back in sudden comprehension. "It's a miracle you
+didn't plow into it under full sail."
+
+We had indeed come about in the very nick of time to avoid disaster. As
+matters stood I was hopeful. "With any sort of luck we ought to float
+clear with the tide."
+
+The mate cocked a doubtful eye at Lakalatcha, uncomfortably close above
+our heads, flaming at intervals and bathing the deck with an angry glare
+of light. "If she should begin spitting up a little livelier ..." he
+speculated with a shrug, and presently took himself off to his bunk
+after an inspection below had shown that none of the schooner's seams
+had started. There was nothing to do but to wait for the tide to make
+and lift the vessel clear. It would be a matter of three or four hours.
+I dismissed the helmsman; and the watch forward, taking advantage of the
+respite from duty, were soon recumbent in attitudes of heavy sleep.
+
+The wind had died out and a heavy torpor lay upon the water. It was as
+if the stars alone held to their slow courses above a world rigid and
+inanimate. The _Sylph_ lay with a slight list, her spars looking
+inexpressibly helpless against the sky, and, as the minutes dragged, a
+fine volcanic ash, like some mortal pestilence exhaled by the monster
+cone, settled down upon the deck, where, forward in the shadow, the
+watch curled like dead men.
+
+Alone, I paced back and forth--countless soft-footed miles, it seemed,
+through interminable hours, until at length some obscure impulse
+prompted me to pause before the open skylight over the cabin and thrust
+my head down. A lamp above the dining-table, left to burn through the
+night, feebly illuminated the room. A faint snore issued at regular
+intervals from the half-open door of the mate's state-room. The door of
+Joyce's state-room opposite was also upon the hook for the sake of air.
+
+Suddenly a soft thump against the side of the schooner, followed by a
+scrambling noise, made me turn round. The dripping, bedraggled figure of
+a man in a sleeping-suit mounted the rope ladder that hung over the
+side, and paused, grasping the rail. I had withdrawn my gaze so suddenly
+from the glow of the light in the cabin that for several moments the
+intruder from out of the sea was only a blurred form with one leg swung
+over the rail, where he hung as if spent by his exertions.
+
+Just then the sooty vapors above the ragged maw of the volcano were rent
+by a flare of crimson, and in the fleeting instant of unnatural daylight
+I beheld Farquharson barefooted, and dripping with sea-water,
+confronting me with a sardonic, triumphant smile. The light faded in a
+twinkling, but in the darkness he swung his other leg over the rail and
+sat perched there, as if challenging the testimony of my senses.
+
+"Farquharson!" I breathed aloud, utterly dumfounded.
+
+"Did you think I was a ghost?" I could hear him softly laughing to
+himself in the interval that followed. "You should have witnessed
+Wadakimba's fright at my coming back from the dead. Well, I'll admit I
+almost was done for."
+
+Again the volcano breathed in torment. It was like the sudden opening of
+a gigantic blast-furnace, and in that instant I saw him vividly--his
+thin, saturnine face, his damp black hair pushed sleekly back, his lips
+twisted to a cruel smile, his eyes craftily alert, as if to some
+ambushed danger continually at hand. He was watching me with a sort of
+malicious relish in the shock he had given me.
+
+"It was not your intention to stop at Muloa," he observed, dryly, for
+the plight of the schooner was obvious.
+
+"We'll float clear with the tide," I muttered.
+
+"But in the meantime"--there was something almost menacing in his
+deliberate pause--"I have the pleasure of this little call upon you."
+
+A head lifted from among the inert figures and sleepily regarded us
+before it dropped back into the shadows. The stranded ship, the
+recumbent men, the mountain flaming overhead--it was like a phantom
+world into which had been suddenly thrust this ghastly and incredible
+reality.
+
+"Whatever possessed you to swim out here in the middle of the night?" I
+demanded, in a harsh whisper.
+
+He chose to ignore the question, while I waited in a chill of suspense.
+It was inconceivable that he could be aware of the truth of the
+situation and deliberately bent on forcing it to its unspeakable, tragic
+issue.
+
+"Of late, Captain Barnaby, we seem to have taken to visiting each other
+rather frequently, don't you think?"
+
+It was lightly tossed off, but not without its evil implication; and I
+felt his eyes intently fixed upon me as he sat hunched up on the rail in
+his sodden sleeping-suit, like some huge, ill-omened bird of prey.
+
+To get rid of him, to obliterate the horrible fact that he still existed
+in the flesh, was the instinctive impulse of my staggered brain. But
+the peril of discovery, the chance that those sleeping below might
+awaken and hear us, held me in a vise of indecision.
+
+"If I could bring myself to reproach you, Captain," he went on,
+ironically polite, "I might protest that your last visit to this island
+savored to a too-inquisitive intrusion. You'll pardon my frankness. I
+had convinced you and Major Stanleigh that Farquharson was dead. To the
+world at large that should have sufficed. That I choose to remain alive
+is my own affair. Your sudden return to Muloa--with a lady--would have
+upset everything, if Fate and that inspired fool of a Malay had not
+happily intervened. But now, surely, there can be no doubt that I am
+dead?"
+
+I nodded assent in a dumb, helpless way.
+
+"And I have a notion that even you, Captain Barnaby, will never dispute
+that fact."
+
+He threw back his head suddenly--for all the world like the dancing
+faun--and laughed silently at the stars.
+
+My tongue was dry in my mouth as I tried to make some rejoinder. He
+baffled me completely, and meanwhile I was in a tingle of fear lest the
+mate should come up on deck to see what progress the tide had made, or
+lest the sound of our voices might waken the girl in Joyce's state-room.
+
+"I can promise you that," I attempted to assure him in weak, sepulchral
+tones. "And now, if you like, I'll put you ashore in the small boat. You
+must be getting chilly in that wet sleeping-suit."
+
+"As a matter of fact I am, and I was wondering if you would not offer me
+something to drink."
+
+"You shall have a bottle to take along," I promised, with alacrity, but
+he demurred.
+
+"There is no sociability in that. And you seem very lonesome here--stuck
+for two more hours at least. Come, Captain, fetch your bottle and we
+will share it together."
+
+He got down from the rail, stretched his arms lazily above his head, and
+dropped into one of the deck chairs that had been placed aft for the
+convenience of my two passengers.
+
+"And cigars, too, Captain," he suggested, with a politeness that was
+almost impertinence. "We'll have a cozy hour or two out of this tedious
+wait for the tide to lift you off."
+
+I contemplated him helplessly. There was no alternative but to fall in
+with whatever mad caprice might seize his brain. If I opposed him, it
+would lead to high and querulous words; and the hideous fact of his
+presence there--of his mere existence--I was bound to conceal at all
+hazards.
+
+"I must ask you to keep quiet," I said, stiffly.
+
+"As a tomb," he agreed, and his eyes twinkled disagreeably in the
+darkness. "You forget that I am supposed to be in one."
+
+I went stealthily down into the cabin, where I secured a box of cigars
+and the first couple of bottles that my hands laid hold of in the
+locker. They proved to contain an old Tokay wine which I had treasured
+for several years to no particular purpose. The ancient bottles clinked
+heavily in my grasp as I mounted again to the deck.
+
+"Now this is something like," he purred, watching like a cat my every
+motion as I set the glasses forth and guardedly drew the cork. He
+saluted me with a flourish and drank.
+
+To an onlooker that pantomime in the darkness would have seemed utterly
+grotesque. I tasted the fragrant, heavy wine and waited--waited in an
+agony of suspense--my ears strained desperately to catch the least sound
+from below. But a profound silence enveloped the schooner, broken only
+by the occasional rhythmic snore of the mate.
+
+"You seem rather ill at ease," Farquharson observed from the depths of
+the deck chair when he had his cigar comfortably aglow. "I trust it
+isn't this little impromptu call of mine that's disturbing you. After
+all, life has its unusual moments, and this, I think, is one of them."
+He sniffed the bouquet of his wine and drank. "It is rare moments like
+this--bizarre, incredible, what you like--that compensate for the tedium
+of years."
+
+His disengaged hand had fallen to the side of the chair, and I now
+observed in dismay that a scarf belonging to Joyce's wife had been left
+lying in the chair, and that his fingers were absently twisting the
+silken fringe.
+
+"I wonder that you stick it out, as you do, on this island," I forced
+myself to observe, seeking safety in the commonplace, while my eyes, as
+if fascinated, watched his fingers toying with the ends of the scarf. I
+was forced to accept the innuendo beneath his enigmatic utterances. His
+utter baseness and depravity, born perhaps of a diseased mind, I could
+understand. I had led him to bait a trap with the fiction of his own
+death, but he could not know that it had been already sprung upon his
+unsuspecting victims.
+
+He seemed to regard me with contemptuous pity. "Naturally, you wonder. A
+mere skipper like yourself fails to understand--many things. What can
+you know of life cooped up in this schooner? You touch only the surface
+of things just as this confounded boat of yours skims only the top of
+the water. Once in a lifetime you may come to real grips with
+life--strike bottom, eh?--as your schooner has done now. Then you're
+aground and quite helpless. What a pity!"
+
+He lifted his glass and drank it off, then thrust it out to be refilled.
+"Life as the world lives it--bah!" he dismissed it with the scorn of one
+who counts himself divested of all illusions. "Life would be an infernal
+bore if it were not for its paradoxes. Now you, Captain Barnaby, would
+never dream that in becoming dead to the world--in other people's
+belief--I have become intensely alive. There are opened up infinite
+possibilities----"
+
+He drank again and eyed me darkly, and then went on in his crack-brained
+way, "What is life but a challenge to pretense, a constant exercise in
+duplicity, with so few that come to master it as an art? Every one goes
+about with something locked deep in his heart. Take yourself, Captain
+Barnaby. You have your secrets--hidden from me, from all the
+world--which, if they could be dragged out of you----"
+
+His deep-set eyes bored through the darkness upon me. Hunched up in the
+deck chair, with his legs crossed under him, he was like an animated
+Buddha venting a dark philosophy and seeking to undermine my mental
+balance with his sophistry.
+
+"I'm a plain man of the sea," I rejoined, bluntly. "I take life as it
+comes."
+
+He smiled derisively, drained his glass, and held it out again. "But you
+have your secrets, rather clumsily guarded, to be sure----"
+
+"What secrets?" I cried out, goaded almost beyond endurance.
+
+He seemed to deprecate the vigor of my retort and lifted a cautioning
+hand. "Do you want every one on board to hear this conversation?"
+
+At that moment the smoke-wrapped cone of Lakalatcha was cleft by a sheet
+of flame, and we confronted each other in a sort of blood-red dawn.
+
+"There is no reason why we should quarrel," he went on, after darkness
+had enveloped us again. "But there are times which call for plain
+speaking. Major Stanleigh is probably hardly aware of just what he said
+to me under a little artful questioning. It seems that a lady who--shall
+we say, whom we both have the honor of knowing?--is in love. Love, mark
+you. It is always interesting to see that flower bud twice from the same
+stalk. However, one naturally defers to a lady, especially when one is
+very much in her way. _Place aux dames_, eh? Exit poor Farquharson! You
+must admit that his was an altruistic soul. Well, she has her
+freedom--if only to barter it for a new bondage. Shall we drink to the
+happy future of that romance?"
+
+He lifted to me his glass with ironical invitation, while I sat aghast
+and speechless, my heart pounding against my ribs. This intolerable
+colloquy could not last forever. I deliberated what I should do if we
+were surprised. At the sound of a footfall or the soft creak of a plank
+I felt that I might lose all control and leap up and brain him with the
+heavy bottle in my grasp. I had an insane desire to spring at his throat
+and throttle his infamous bravado, tumble him overboard and annihilate
+the last vestige of his existence.
+
+"Come, Captain," he urged, "you, too, have shared in smoothing the path
+for these lovers. Shall we not drink to their happy union?"
+
+A feeling of utter loathing went over me. I set my glass down. "It would
+be a more serviceable compliment to the lady in question if I strangled
+you on the spot," I muttered, boldly.
+
+"But you are forgetting that I am already dead." He threw his head back
+as if vastly amused, then lurched forward and held out his glass a
+little unsteadily to be refilled.
+
+He gave me a quick, evil look. "Besides, the noise might disturb your
+passengers."
+
+I could feel a cold perspiration suddenly breaking out upon my body.
+Either the fellow had obtained an inkling of the truth in some
+incredible way, or was blindly on the track of it, guided by some
+diabolical scent. Under the spell of his eyes I could not manage the
+outright lie which stuck in my throat.
+
+"What makes you think I have passengers?" I parried, weakly.
+
+With intent or not, he was again fingering the fringe of the scarf that
+hung over the arm of the chair.
+
+"It is not your usual practice, but you have been carrying them lately."
+
+He drained his glass and sat staring into it, his head drooping a little
+forward. The heavy wine was beginning to have its effect upon him, but
+whether it would provoke him to some outright violence or drag him down
+into a stupor, I could not predict. Suddenly the glass slipped from his
+fingers and shivered to pieces on the deck. I started violently at the
+sound, and in the silence that followed I thought I heard a footfall in
+the cabin below.
+
+He looked up at length from his absorbed contemplation of the bits of
+broken glass. "We were talking about love, were we not?" he demanded,
+heavily.
+
+I did not answer. I was straining to catch a repetition of the sound
+from below. Time was slipping rapidly away, and to sit on meant
+inevitable discovery. The watch might waken or the mate appear to
+surprise me in converse with my nocturnal visitor. It would be folly to
+attempt to conceal his presence and I despaired of getting him back to
+the shore while his present mood held, although I remembered that the
+small boat, which had been lowered after we went aground, was still
+moored to the rail amidships.
+
+Refilling my own glass, I offered it to him. He lurched forward to take
+it, but the fumes of the wine suddenly drifted clear of his brain. "You
+seem very much distressed," he observed, with ironic concern. "One might
+think you were actually sheltering these precious love-birds."
+
+Perspiration broke out anew upon my face and neck. "I don't know what
+you are talking about," I bluntly tried to fend off his implications. I
+felt as if I were helplessly strapped down and that he was about to
+probe me mercilessly with some sharp instrument. I strove to turn the
+direction of his thoughts by saying, "I understand that the Stanleighs
+are returning to England."
+
+"The Stanleighs--quite so," he nodded agreement, and fixed me with a
+maudlin stare. Something prompted me to fill his glass again. He drank
+it off mechanically. Again I poured, and he obediently drank. With an
+effort he tried to pick up the thread of our conversation:
+
+"What did you say? Oh, the Stanleighs ... yes, yes, of course." He
+slowly nodded his head and fell silent. "I was about to say ..." He
+broke off again and seemed to ruminate profoundly.... "Love-birds----" I
+caught the word feebly from his lips, spoken as if in a daze. The glass
+hung dripping in his relaxed grasp.
+
+It was a crucial moment in which his purpose seemed to waver and die in
+his clouded brain. A great hope sprang up in my heart, which was
+hammering furiously. If I could divert his fuddled thoughts and get him
+back to shore while the wine lulled him to forgetfulness.
+
+I leaned forward to take the glass which was all but slipping from his
+hand when Lakalatcha flamed with redoubled fury. It was as if the
+mountain had suddenly bared its fiery heart to the heavens, and a
+muffled detonation reached my ears.
+
+Farquharson straightened up with a jerk and scanned the smoking peak,
+from which a new trickle of white-hot lava had broken forth in a
+threadlike waterfall. He watched its graceful play as if hypnotized, and
+began babbling to himself in an incoherent prattle. All his faculties
+seemed suddenly awake, but riveted solely upon the heavy laboring of the
+mountain. He was chiding it in Malay as if it were a fractious child.
+When I ventured to urge him back to shore he made no protest, but
+followed me into the boat. As I pushed off and took up the oars he had
+eyes for nothing but the flaming cone, as if its leaping fires held for
+him an Apocalyptic vision.
+
+I strained at the oars as if in a race, with all eternity at stake,
+blindly urging the boat ahead through water that flashed crimson at
+every stroke. The mountain now flamed like a beacon, and I rowed for
+dear life over a sea of blood.
+
+Farquharson sat entranced before the spectacle, chanting to himself a
+kind of insane ritual, like a Parsee fire-worshiper making obeisance
+before his god. He was rapt away to some plane of mystic exaltation, to
+some hinterland of the soul that merged upon madness. When at length the
+boat crunched upon the sandy shore he got up unsteadily from the stern
+and pointed to the pharos that flamed in the heavens.
+
+"The fire upon the altar is lit," he addressed me, oracularly, while the
+fanatic light of a devotee burned in his eyes. "Shall we ascend and
+prepare the sacrifice?"
+
+I leaned over the oars, panting from my exertions, indifferent to his
+rhapsody.
+
+"If you'll take my advice, you'll get back at once to your bungalow and
+strip off that wet sleeping-suit," I bluntly counseled him, but I might
+as well have argued with a man in a trance.
+
+He leaped over the gunwale and strode up the beach. Again he struck his
+priestlike attitude and invoked me to follow.
+
+"The fire upon the altar waits," he repeated, solemnly. Suddenly he
+broke into a shrill laugh and ran like a deer in the direction of the
+forest that stretched up the slopes of the mountain.
+
+The mate's face, thrust over the rail as I drew alongside the schooner,
+plainly bespoke his utter bewilderment. He must have though me bereft of
+my senses to be paddling about at that hour of the night. The tide had
+made, and the _Sylph_, righting her listed masts, was standing clear of
+the shoal. The deck was astir, and when the command was given to hoist
+the sails it was obeyed with an uneasy alacrity. The men worked
+frantically in a bright, unnatural day, for Lakalatcha was now
+continuously aflame and tossing up red-hot rocks to the accompaniment of
+dull sounds of explosion.
+
+My first glance about the deck had been one of relief to note that Joyce
+and his wife were not there, although the commotion of getting under
+sail must have awakened them. A breeze had sprung up which would prove a
+fair wind as soon as the _Sylph_ stood clear of the point. The mate gave
+a grunt of satisfaction when at length the schooner began to dip her bow
+and lay over to her task. Leaving him in charge, I started to go below,
+when suddenly Mrs. Joyce, fully dressed, confronted me. She seemed to
+have materialized out of the air like a ghost. Her hair glowed like
+burnished copper in the unnatural illumination which bathed the deck,
+but her face was ashen, and the challenge of her eyes made my heart stop
+short.
+
+"You have been awake long?" I ventured to ask.
+
+"Too long," she answered, significantly, with her face turned away,
+looking down into the water. She had taken my arm and drawn me toward
+the rail. Now I felt her fingers tighten convulsively. In the droop of
+her head and the tense curve of her neck I sensed her mad impulse which
+the dark water suggested.
+
+"Mrs. Joyce!" I remonstrated, sharply.
+
+She seemed to go limp all over at the words. I drew her along the deck
+for a faltering step or two, while her eyes continued to brood upon the
+water rushing past. Suddenly she spoke:
+
+"What other way out is there?"
+
+"Never that," I said, shortly. I urged her forward again. "Is your
+husband asleep?"
+
+"Thank God, yes!"
+
+"Then you have been awake----"
+
+"For over an hour," she confessed, and I detected the shudder that went
+over her body.
+
+"The man is mad----"
+
+"But I am married to him." She stopped and caught at the rail like a
+prisoner gripping at the bars that confine him. "I cannot--cannot endure
+it! Where are you taking me? Where _can_ you take me? Don't you see that
+there is no escape--from this?"
+
+The _Sylph_ rose and sank to the first long roll of the open sea.
+
+"When we reach Malduna----" I began, but the words were only torture.
+
+"I cannot--cannot go on. Take me back!--to that island. Let me live
+abandoned--or rather die----"
+
+"Mrs. Joyce, I beg of you...."
+
+The schooner rose and dipped again.
+
+For what seemed an interminable time we paced the deck together while
+Lakalatcha flamed farther and farther astern. Her words came in fitful
+snatches as if spoken in a delirium, and at times she would pause and
+grip the rail to stare back, wild-eyed, at the receding island.
+
+Suddenly she started, and in a sort of blinding, noonday blaze I saw her
+face blanch with horror. It was as if at that moment the heavens had
+cracked asunder and the night had fallen away in chaos. Turning, I saw
+the cone of the mountain lifting skyward in fragments--and saw no more,
+for the blinding vision remained seared upon the retina of my eyes.
+Across the water, slower paced, came the dread concussion of sound.
+
+"Good God! It's carried away the whole island!" I heard the mate's voice
+bellowing above the cries of the men. The _Sylph_ scudded before the
+approaching storm of fire redescending from the sky....
+
+The first gray of the dawn disclosed Mrs. Joyce still standing by the
+rail, her hand nestling within the arm of her husband, indifferent to
+the heavy grayish dust that fell in benediction upon her like a silent
+shower of snow.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+The island of Muloa remains to-day a charred cinder lapped about by the
+blue Pacific. At times gulls circle over its blackened and desolate
+surface devoid of every vestige of life. From the squat, truncated mass
+of Lakalatcha, shorn of half its lordly height, a feeble wisp of smoke
+still issues to the breeze, as if Vulcan, tired of his forge, had banked
+its fire before abandoning it.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[9] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Lee
+Foster Hartman.
+
+
+
+
+THE STICK-IN-THE-MUDS[10]
+
+#By# RUPERT HUGHES
+
+From _Collier's Weekly_
+
+
+A skiff went prowling along the Avon River in the unhurried English
+twilight that releases the sunset with reluctance and defers luxuriously
+the roll call of the stars.
+
+The skiff floated low, for the man alone in it was heavy and he was in
+no greater haste than the northern night. Which was against the
+traditions, for he was an American, an American business man.
+
+He was making his way through the sky-hued water stealthily lest he
+disturb the leisure of the swans, drowsy above their own images; lest he
+discourage the nightingale trying a few low flute notes in the cathedral
+tower of shadow that was a tree above the tomb of Shakespeare.
+
+The American had never heard a nightingale and it was his first
+pilgrimage to the shrine of the actor-manager whose productions
+Americans curiously couple with the Bible as sacred lore.
+
+During the day Joel Wixon had seen the sights of Stratford with the
+others from his country and from England and the Continent. But now he
+wanted to get close to Shakespeare. So he hired the skiff and declined
+the services of the old boat lender.
+
+And now he was stealing up into the rich gloom the church spread across
+the river. He was pushing the stern of the boat foremost so that he
+could feast his eyes. He was making so little speed that the only sounds
+were the choked sob of the water where the boat cleaved it gently and
+the tinkle of the drops that fell from the lazy oars with something of
+the delicate music of the uncertain nightingale.
+
+Being a successful business man, Wixon was a suffocated poet. The
+imagination and the passion and the orderliness that brought him money
+were the same energies that would have made him a success in verse. But
+lines were not his line, and he was inarticulate and incoherent when
+beauty overwhelmed him, as it did in nearly every form.
+
+He shivered now before the immediate majesty of the scene, and the
+historic meanings that enriched it as with an embroidered arras. Yet he
+gave out no more words than an A†olian harp shuddering with ecstasy in a
+wind too gentle to make it audible.
+
+In such moods he hunted solitude, for he was ashamed to be seen, afraid
+to be observed in the raptures that did not belong in the vocabulary of
+a business man.
+
+He had talked at noon about the fact that he and Shakespeare's father
+were in wool, and he had annoyed a few modest Americans by comparing the
+petty amount of the elder Shakespeare's trade with the vast total
+pouring from his own innumerable looms driven with the electricity that
+the Shakespeares had never dreamed of.
+
+He had redeemed himself for his pretended brag by a meek admission:
+
+"But I'm afraid my boy will never write another 'Hamlet.'"
+
+Yet what could he know of his own son? How little Will Shakespeare's
+father or his scandalized neighbors could have fancied that the
+scapegrace good-for-naught who left the town for the town's good would
+make it immortal; and, coming back to die and lie down forever beside
+the Avon, would bring a world of pilgrims to a new Mecca, the shrine of
+the supreme unique poet of all human time?
+
+A young boy even now was sauntering the path along the other shore, so
+lazily tossing pebbles into the stream that the swans hardly protested.
+It came upon Wixon with a kind of silent lightning that Shakespeare had
+once been such another boy skipping pebbles across the narrow river and
+peering up into the trees to find out where the nightingale lurked.
+
+Perhaps three hundred years from now some other shrine would claim the
+pilgrims, the home perhaps of some American boy now groping through the
+amber mists of adolescence or some man as little revered by his own
+neighbors and rivals as the man Shakespeare was when he went back to
+Avon to send back to London his two plays a year to the theatres.
+
+Being a practical man, which is a man who strives to make his visions
+palpable, Wixon thought of his own home town and the colony of boys that
+prospered there in the Middle West.
+
+He knew that no one would seek the town because of his birth there, for
+he was but a buyer of fleeces, a carder of wools, a spinner of threads,
+and a weaver of fabrics to keep folks' bodies warm. His weaves wore
+well, but they wore out.
+
+The weavers of words were the ones whose fabrics lasted beyond the power
+of time and mocked the moths. Was there any such spinner in Carthage to
+give the town eternal blazon to ears of flesh and blood? There was one
+who might have been the man if----
+
+Suddenly he felt himself again in Carthage. There was a river there too;
+not a little bolt of chatoyant silk like the Avon, which they would have
+called a "crick" back there. Before Carthage ran the incomprehensible
+floods of old Mississippi himself, Father of Waters, deep and vast and
+swift. They had lately swung a weir across it to make it work--a
+concrete wall a mile wide and more, and its tumbling cascades spun no
+little mill wheels, but swirled thundering turbines that lighted cities
+and ran street cars a hundred miles away.
+
+And yet it had no Shakespeare.
+
+And yet again it might have had if----
+
+The twilight was so deep now that he shipped his oars in the gloom and
+gave himself back to the past.
+
+He was in another twilight, only it was the counter twilight between
+star quench and sun blaze.
+
+Two small boys, himself one of them; his sworn chum, Luke Mellows, the
+other, meeting in the silent street just as the day tide seeped in from
+the east and submerged the stars.
+
+Joel had tied a string to his big toe and hung it from his window. Luke
+had done the same. They were not permitted to explode alarm clocks and
+ruin the last sweets of sleep in either home. So they had agreed that
+the first to wake should rise and dress with stealth, slip down the dark
+stairs of his house, into the starlit street and over to the other's
+home and pull the toe cord.
+
+On this morning Luke had been the earlier out, and his triumphant yanks
+had dragged Joel feet first from sleep, and from the bed and almost
+through the window. Joel had howled protests in shrill whispers down
+into the gloom, and then, untying his outraged toe, had limped into his
+clothes and so to the yard.
+
+The two children, in the huge world disputed still by the night, had
+felt an awe of the sky and the mysteries going on there. The envied man
+who ran up the streets of evenings lighting the gas street lamps was
+abroad again already with his little ladder and his quick insect-like
+motions; only, now he was turning out the lights, just as a similar but
+invisible being was apparently running around heaven and putting out the
+stars.
+
+Joel remembered saying: "I wonder if they're turnin' off the stars up
+there to save gas too."
+
+Luke did not like the joke. He said, using the word "funny" solemnly:
+"It's funny to see light putting out light. The stars will be there all
+day, but we won't be able to see 'em for the sun."
+
+(Wixon thought of this now, and of how Shakespeare's fame had drowned
+out so many stars. A man had told him that there were hundreds of great
+writers in Shakespeare's time that most people never heard of.)
+
+As the boys paused, the air quivered with a hoarse _moo_! as of a
+gigantic cow bellowing for her lost calf. It was really a steamboat
+whistling for the bridge to open the draw and let her through to the
+south with her raft of logs.
+
+Both of the boys called the boat by name, knowing her voice: "It's the
+Bessie May Brown!" They started on a run to the bluff overlooking the
+river, their short legs making a full mile of the scant furlong.
+
+Often as Joel had come out upon the edge of that bluff on his
+innumerable journeys to the river for fishing, swimming, skating, or
+just staring, it always smote him with the thrill Balboa must have felt
+coming suddenly upon the Pacific.
+
+On this morning there was an unwonted grandeur: the whole vault of the
+sky was curdled with the dawn, a reef of solid black in the west turning
+to purple and to amber and finally in the east to scarlet, with a few
+late planets caught in the meshes of the sunlight and trembling like dew
+on a spider's web.
+
+And the battle in the sky was repeated in the sea-like river with all of
+the added magic of the current and the eddies and the wimpling rushes of
+the dawn winds.
+
+On the great slopes were houses and farmsteads throwing off the night
+and in the river the Bessie May Brown, her red light and her green light
+trailing scarfs of color on the river, as she chuffed and clanged her
+bell, and smote the water with her stern wheel. In the little steeple of
+the pilot house a priest guided her and her unwieldy acre of logs
+between the piers of the bridge whose lanterns were still belatedly
+aglow on the girders and again in echo in the flood.
+
+Joel filled his little chest with a gulp of morning air and found no
+better words for his rhapsody than: "Gee, but ain't it great?"
+
+To his amazement, Luke, who had always been more sensitive than he,
+shook his head and turned away.
+
+"Gosh, what do you want for ten cents?" Joel demanded, feeling called
+upon to defend the worthiness of the dawn.
+
+Luke began to cry. He dropped down on his own bare legs in the weeds and
+twisted his face and his fists in a vain struggle to fight off unmanly
+grief.
+
+Joel squatted at his side and insisted on sharing the secret; and
+finally Luke forgot the sense of family honor long enough to yield to
+the yearning for company in his misery.
+
+"I was up here at midnight last night, and I don't like this place any
+more."
+
+"You didn't come all by yourself? Gee!"
+
+"No, Momma was here too."
+
+"What she bring you out here at a time like that for?"
+
+"She didn't know I was here."
+
+"Didn't know--What she doin' out here, then?"
+
+"She and Poppa had a turble quar'l. I couldn't hear what started it, but
+finely it woke me up and I listened, and Momma was cryin' and Poppa was
+swearin'. And at last Momma said: 'Oh, I might as well go and throw
+myself in the river,' and Poppa said: 'Good riddance of bad rubbish!'
+and Momma stopped cryin' and she says: 'All right!' in an awful kind of
+a voice, and I heard the front door open and shut."
+
+"Gee!"
+
+"Well, I jumped into my shirt and pants and slid down the rain pipe and
+ran along the street, and there sure enough was Momma walkin' as fast as
+she could.
+
+"I was afraid to go near her. I don't know why, but I was. So I just
+sneaked along after her. The street was black as pitch 'cep' for the
+street lamps, and as she passed ever' one I could see she was still
+cryin' and stumblin' along like she was blind.
+
+"It was so late we didn't meet anybody at tall, and there wasn't a light
+in a single house except Joneses, where somebody was sick, I guess. But
+they didn't pay any attention, and at last she came to the bluff here.
+And I follered. When she got where she could see the river she stopped
+and stood there, and held her arms out like she was goin' to jump off or
+fly, or somethin'. The moon was up, and the river was so bright you
+could hardly look at it, and Momma stood there with her arms 'way out
+like she was on the Cross, or something.
+
+"I was so scared and so cold I shook like I had a chill. I was afraid
+she could hear my teeth chatterin', so I dropped down in the weeds and
+thistles to keep her from seein' me. It was just along about here too.
+
+"By and by Momma kind of broke like somebody had hit her, then she began
+to cry again and to walk up and down wringin' her hands. Once or twice
+she started to run down the bluff and I started to foller; but she
+stopped like somebody held her back, and I sunk down again.
+
+"Then, after a long time, she shook her head like she couldn't, and
+turned back. She walked right by me and didn't see me. I heard her
+whisperin': 'I can't, I can't. My pore children!'
+
+"Then she went back down the street and me after her wishin' I could go
+up and help her. But I was afraid she wouldn't want me to know, and I
+just couldn't go near her."
+
+Luke wept helplessly at the memory of his poltroonery, and Joel tried
+roughly to comfort him with questions.
+
+"Gee! I don't blame you. I don't guess I could have either. But what was
+it all about, d'you s'pose?"
+
+"I don't know. Momma went to the front door, and it was locked, and she
+stood a long, long while before she could bring herself to knock. Then
+she tapped on it soft like. And by and by Poppa opened the door and
+said: 'Oh, you're back, are you?" Then he turned and walked away, and
+she went in.
+
+"I could have killed him with a rock, if she hadn't shut the door. But
+all I could do was to climb back up the rain pipe. I was so tired and
+discouraged I nearly fell and broke my neck. And I wisht I had have. But
+there wasn't any more quar'l, only Momma kind of whimpered once or
+twice, and Poppa said: 'Oh, for God's sake, shut up and lea' me sleep. I
+got to open the store in the mornin', ain't I?' I didn't do much
+sleepin', and I guess that's why I woke up first."
+
+That was all of the story that Joel could learn. The two boys were shut
+out by the wall of grown-up life. Luke crouched in bitter moodiness,
+throwing clods of dirt at early grasshoppers and reconquering his lost
+dignity. At last he said: "If you ever let on to anybody what I told
+you----"
+
+"Aw, say!" was Joel's protest. His knighthood as a sworn chum was put in
+question and he was cruelly hurt.
+
+Luke took assurance from his dismay and said in a burst of fury: "Aw, I
+just said that! I know you won't tell. But just you wait till I can earn
+a pile of money. I'll take Momma away from that old scoundrel so fast
+it'll make his head swim!" Then he slumped again. "But it takes so
+doggone long to grow up, and I don't know how to earn anything."
+
+Then the morning of the world caught into its irresistible vivacity the
+two boys in the morning of their youth, and before long they had
+forgotten the irremediable woes of their elders, as their elders also
+forgot the problems of national woes and cosmic despair.
+
+The boys descended the sidelong path at a jog, brushing the dew and
+grasshoppers and the birds from the hazel bushes and the papaw shrubs,
+and scaring many a dewy rabbit from cover.
+
+At the bottom of the bluff the railroad track was the only road along
+the river, and they began the tormenting passage over the uneven ties
+with cinders everywhere for their bare feet. They postponed as long as
+they could the delight of breakfast, and then, sitting on a pile of
+ties, made a feast of such hard-boiled eggs, cookies, cheese, and
+crackers as they had been able to wheedle from their kitchens the night
+before.
+
+Their talk that morning was earnest, as boys' talk is apt to be. They
+debated their futures as boys are apt to do. Being American boys, two
+things characterized their plans: one, that the sky itself was the only
+limit to their ambitions; the other, that they must not follow their
+fathers' businesses.
+
+Joel's father was an editor; Luke's kept a hardware store.
+
+So Joel wanted to go into trade and Luke wanted to be a writer.
+
+The boys wrangled with the shrill intensity of youth. A stranger passing
+might have thought them about to come to blows. But they were simply
+noisy with earnestness. Their argument was as unlike one of the debates
+in Vergil's Eclogues as possible. It was an antistrophe of twang and
+drawl:
+
+"Gee, you durned fool, watcha want gointa business for?"
+
+"Durned fool your own self! Watcha wanta be a writer for?"
+
+Then they laughed wildly, struck at each other in mock hostility, and
+went on with their all-day walk, returning at night too weary for books
+or even a game of authors or checkers.
+
+Both liked to read, and they were just emerging from the stratum of Old
+Cap Collier, Nick Carter, the Kid-Glove Miner, and the Steam Man into
+"Ivanhoe," "Scottish Chiefs," and "Cudjo's Cave." They had passed out of
+the Oliver Optic, Harry Castlemon, James Otis era.
+
+Joel Wixon read for excitement; Luke Mellows for information as to the
+machinery of authorship.
+
+Young as they were, they went to the theatre--to the op'ra house, which
+never housed opera.
+
+Joel went often and without price, since his father, being an editor,
+had the glorious prerogative of "comps." Perhaps that was why Luke
+wanted to be a writer.
+
+Mr. Mellows, as hard as his own ware, did not believe in the theatre and
+could not be bullied or wept into paying for tickets. But Luke became a
+program boy and got in free, a precious privilege he kept secret as long
+as possible, and lost as soon as his father noticed his absences from
+home on play nights. Then he was whipped for wickedness and ordered to
+give up the theatre forever.
+
+Perhaps Luke would never suffer again so fiercely as he suffered from
+that denial. It meant a free education and a free revel in the frequent
+performances of Shakespeare, and of repertory companies that gave such
+triumphs as "East Lynne" and "Camille," not to mention the road
+companies that played the uproarious "Peck's Bad Boy," "Over the Garden
+Wall," "Skipped by the Light of the Moon," and the Charles Hoyt
+screamers.
+
+The theatre had been a cloud-veiled Olympus of mystic exultations, of
+divine terrors, and of ambrosial laughter. But it was a bad influence.
+Mr. Mellows's theories of right and wrong were as simple and sharp as
+his own knives: whatever was delightful and beautiful and laughterful
+was manifestly wicked, God having plainly devised the pretty things as
+baits for the devil's fishhooks.
+
+Joel used to tell Luke about the plays he saw, and the exile's heart
+ached with envy. They took long walks up the river or across the bridge
+into the wonderlands that were overflowed in high-water times. And they
+talked always of their futures. Boyhood was a torment, a slavery. Heaven
+was just over the twenty-first birthday.
+
+Joel got his future, all but the girl he planned to take with him up the
+grand stairway of the palace he foresaw. Luke missed his future, and his
+girl and all of his dreams.
+
+Between the boys and their manhood stood, as usual, the fathers, strange
+monsters, ogres, who seemed to have forgotten, at the top of the
+beanstalk, that they had once been boys themselves down below.
+
+After the early and unceasing misunderstandings as to motives and
+standards of honor and dignity came the civil war over education.
+
+Wouldn't you just know that each boy would get the wrong dad? Joel's
+father was proud of Luke and not of Joel. He had printed some of Luke's
+poems in the paper and called him a "precocious" native genius. Joel's
+father wished that his boy could have had his neighbor's boy's gift. It
+was his sorrow that Joel had none of the artistic leanings that are
+called "gifts." He regretfully gave him up as one who would not carry on
+the torch his father had set out with. He could not force his child to
+be a genius, but he insisted that Joel should have an education. The
+editor had found himself handicapped by a lack of the mysterious
+enrichment that a tour through college gives the least absorbent mind.
+He was determined to provide it for his boy, though Joel felt that every
+moment's delay in leaping into the commercial arena was so much delay in
+arriving at gladiatorial eminence.
+
+Luke's father had had even less education than Editor Wixon, but he was
+proud of it. He had never gone far in the world, but he was one of those
+men who are automatically proud of everything they do and derive even
+from failure or humiliation a savage conceit.
+
+He made Luke work in his store or out of it as a delivery boy during
+vacations from such school terms as the law required. He saw the value
+of education enough to make out bills and write dunning letters. "Books"
+to him meant the doleful books that bookkeepers keep.
+
+As for any further learning, he thought it a waste of time, a kind of
+wantonness.
+
+He felt that Providence had intentionally selected a cross for him in
+the son who was wicked and foolish enough to want to read stories and
+see plays and go to school for years instead of going right into
+business.
+
+The thought of sending his boy through a preparatory academy and college
+and wasting his youth on nonsense was outrageous. It maddened him to
+have the boy plead for such folly. He tried in vain to whip it out of
+him.
+
+Joel's ideas of education were exactly those of Mr. Mellows, but he did
+not like Mr. Mellows because of the anguish inflicted on Luke. Joel used
+to beg Luke to run away from home. But that was impracticable for two
+reasons: Luke was not of the runaway sort, but meek, and shy, and
+obedient to a fault.
+
+Besides, while a boy can run away from school, he cannot easily run away
+to school. If he did, he would be sent back, and if he were not sent
+back, how was he to pay for his "tooition" and his board and books and
+clo'es?
+
+It was Luke's influence that sent Joel away to boardin' school. He so
+longed to go himself that Joel felt it foolish to deny himself the
+godlike opportunity. So Luke went to school vicariously in Joel, as he
+got his other experiences vicariously in books.
+
+At school Joel found so much to do outside of his classes that he grew
+content to go all the way. There was a glee club to manage, also an
+athletic club; a paper to solicit ads and subscriptions for; class
+officers to be elected, with all the delights of political
+maneuvering--a world in little to run with all the solemnity and
+competition of the adult cosmos. So Joel was happy and lucky and
+successful in spite of himself.
+
+The day after Joel took train up the river to his academy Luke took the
+position his father secured for him and entered the little back room
+where the Butterly Bottling Works kept its bookkeepers on high stools.
+
+The Butterly soda pop, ginger ales, and other soft drinks were triumphs
+of insipidity, and their birch beer sickened the thirstiest child. But
+the making and the marketing and even the drinking of them were matters
+of high emprise compared to the keeping of the books.
+
+One of the saddest, sweetest, greatest stories ever written is Ellis'
+Pigsispigs Butler's fable of the contented little donkey that went round
+and round in the mill and thought he was traveling far. But that donkey
+was blind and had no dreams denied.
+
+Luke Mellows was a boy, a boy that still felt his life in every limb, a
+boy devoured with fantastic ambitions. He had a genius within that
+smothered and struggled till it all but perished unexpressed. It lived
+only enough to be an anguish. It hurt him like a hidden, unmentioned
+ingrowing toe nail that cuts and bleeds and excruciates the fleet member
+it is meant to protect.
+
+When Joel came home for his first vacation, with the rush of a young
+colt that has had a good time in the corral but rejoices in the old
+pastures, his first cry was for Luke. When he learned where he was, he
+hurried to the Bottling Works. He was turned away with the curt remark
+that employees could not be seen in business hours. In those days there
+were no machines to simplify and verify the bookkeeper's treadmill task,
+and business hours were never over.
+
+Joel left word at Luke's home for Luke to call for him the minute he was
+free. He did not come that evening, nor the next. Joel was hurt more
+than he dared admit.
+
+It was Sunday afternoon before Luke came round, a different Luke, a
+lean, wan, worn-out shred of a youth. His welcome was sickly.
+
+"Gee-min-_ent_-ly!" Joel roared. "I thought you was mad at me about
+something. You never came near."
+
+"I wanted to come," Luke croaked, "but nights, I'm too tired to walk
+anywheres, and besides, I usually have to go back to the offus."
+
+"Gee, that's damn tough," said Joel, who had grown from darn to damn.
+
+Thinking to light Luke up with a congenial theme, Joel heroically
+forbore to describe the marvels of academy life, and asked: "What you
+been readin' lately? A little bit of everything, I guess, hey?"
+
+"A whole lot of nothin'," Luke sighed. "I got no strength for readin' by
+the time I shut my ledgers. I got to save my eyes, you know. The light's
+bad in that back room."
+
+"What you been writin', then?"
+
+"Miles of figures and entries about one gross bottles lemon, two gross
+sassaprilla, one gross empties returned."
+
+"No more poetry?"
+
+"No more nothin'."
+
+Joel was obstinately cheerful. "Well, you been makin' money, anyways;
+that's something."
+
+"Yeh. I buy my own shoes and clo'es now and pay my board and lodgin' at
+home. And paw puts the two dollars that's left into the savings bank. I
+got nearly thirty dollars there now. I'll soon have enough for a winter
+soot and overcoat."
+
+"Gee, can't you go buggy ridin' even with Kit?"
+
+"I could if I had the time and the price, and if her maw wasn't so
+poorly that Kitty can't get away. I go over there Sunday afternoons
+sometimes, but her maw always hollers for her to come in. She's afraid
+to be alone. Kit's had to give up the high school account of her maw."
+
+"How about her goin' away to be a great singer?"
+
+Luke grinned at the insanity of such childish plans. "Oh, that's all
+off. Kit can't even practice any more. It makes her mother nervous. And
+Kit had to give up the church choir too. You'd hardly know her. She
+cries a lot about lookin' so scrawny. O' course I tell her she's pirtier
+than ever, but that only makes her mad. She can't go to sociables or
+dances or picnics, and if she could she's got no clo'es. We don't have
+much fun together; just sit and mope, and then I say: 'Well, guess I
+better mosey on home,' and she says: 'All right; see you again next
+Sunday, I s'pose. G'by.'"
+
+The nightingale annoyed the owl and was hushed, and the poet rimed sums
+in a daybook.
+
+The world waited for them and needed them without knowing it; it would
+have rewarded them with thrilled attention and wealth and fame. But
+silence was their portion, silence and the dark and an ache that had no
+voice.
+
+Joel listened to Luke's elegy and groaned: "Gee!"
+
+But he had an optimism like a powerful spring, and it struck back now
+with a whirr: "I'll tell you what, Luke. Just you wait till I'm rich,
+then I'll give you a job as vice president, and you can marry Kitty and
+live on Broadway, in Noo York."
+
+"I've got over believin' in Sandy Claus," said Luke.
+
+Joel saw little of him during this vacation and less during the next.
+Being by nature a hater of despair, he avoided Luke. He had fits of
+remorse for this, and once he dared to make a personal appeal to old Mr.
+Mellows to send Luke away to school. He was received with scant
+courtesy, and only tolerated because he gave the father a chance to void
+some of his bile at the worthlessness of Luke.
+
+"He's no good; that's what's the matter of him. And willful too--he just
+mopes around because he wants to show me I'm wrong. But he's only
+cuttin' off his own nose to spite his face. I'll learn him who's got the
+most will power."
+
+Joel was bold enough to suggest: "Maybe Luke would be differ'nt if you'd
+let him go to college. You know, Mr. Mellows, if you'll 'scuse my saying
+it, there's some natures that are differ'nt from others. You hitch a
+race horse up to a plow and you spoil a good horse and your field both.
+Seems to me as if, if Luke got a chance to be a writer or a professor or
+something, he might turn out to be a wonder. You can't teach a canary
+bird to be a hen, you know, and----"
+
+Mr. Mellows locked himself in that ridiculous citadel of ancient folly.
+"When you're as old as I am, Joel, you'll know more. The first thing
+anybody's got to learn in this world is to respect their parents."
+
+Joel wanted to say: "I should think that depended on the parents."
+
+But, of course, he kept silent, as the young usually do when they hear
+the old maundering, and he gave up as he heard the stupid dolt returning
+to his old refrain: "I left school when I was twelve years old. Ain't
+had a day sence, and I can't say as I've been exactly a failure. Best
+hardware store in Carthage and holdin' my own in spite of bad business."
+
+Joel slunk away, unconvinced but baffled. One summer he brought all his
+pressure to bear on Luke to persuade him to run away from his job and
+strike out for the big city where the big opportunities grew.
+
+But Luke shook his head. He lacked initiative. Perhaps that was where
+his talent was not genius. It blistered him, but it made no steam.
+
+Shakespeare had known enough to leave Stratford. He had had to hold
+horses outside the theatre, and even then he had organized a little
+business group of horse holders called "Shakespeare's boys." He had the
+business sense, and he forced his way into the theatre and became a
+stockholder. Shakespeare was always an adventurer. He had to work in a
+butcher's shop, but before he was nineteen he was already married to a
+woman of twenty-six, and none too soon for the first child's sake.
+
+Luke Mellows had not the courage or the recklessness to marry Kitty,
+though he had as good a job as Shakespeare's. Shakespeare would not let
+a premature family keep him from his ambition.
+
+He was twenty-one when he went to London, but he went.
+
+London was a boom town then, about the size of Trenton, or Grand Rapids,
+or Spokane, and growing fast. Boys were running away from the farms and
+villages as they always have done. Other boys went to London from
+Stratford. John Sadler became a big wholesale grocer and Richard Field
+a publisher. They had as various reasons then as now.
+
+But the main thing was that they left home. That might mean a noble or a
+selfish ambition, but it took action.
+
+Luke Mellows would not go. He dreaded to abandon his mother to the
+father who bullied them both. He could not bear to leave Kitty alone
+with the wretched mother who ruled her with tears.
+
+Other boys ran or walked away from Carthage, some of them to become
+failures, and some half successes, and some of them to acquire riches
+and power. And other boys stayed at home.
+
+Girls, too, had won obscurity by inertia or had swung into fame. Some of
+the girls had stayed at home and gone wrong there. Some had gone away in
+disgrace, and redeemed or damned themselves in larger parishes. There
+were Aspasias and Joans of Arc in miniature, minor Florence Nightingales
+and Melbas and Rosa Bonheurs. But they had all had to leap from the nest
+and try their wings. Of those that did not take the plunge, none made
+the flight.
+
+Cowardice held some back, but the purest self-sacrifice others. Joel
+felt that there ought to be a heaven for these latter, yet he hoped that
+there was no hell for the former. For who can save himself from his own
+timidity, and who can protect himself from his own courage?
+
+Given that little spur of initiative, that little armor of selfish
+indifference to the clinging hands at home, and how many a soul might
+not have reached the stars? Look at the women who were crowding the
+rolls of fame of late just because all womankind had broken free of the
+apron strings of alleged respectability.
+
+Joel had no proof that Luke Mellows would have amounted to much.
+Perhaps, if he had ventured over the nest's edge, he would have perished
+on the ground, trampled into dust by the fameward mob, or devoured by
+the critics that pounce upon every fledgling and suck the heart out of
+all that cannot fling them off.
+
+But Joel could not surrender his childhood faith that Luke Mellows had
+been meant for another Shakespeare. Yet Mellows had never written a
+play or an act of a play. But, for that matter, neither had Shakespeare
+before he went to London. He was only a poet at first, and some of his
+poems were pretty poor stuff--if you took Shakespeare's name off it. And
+his first poems had to be published by his fellow townsman Field.
+
+There were the childish poems by Luke Mellows that Joel's father had
+published in the Carthage "Clarion." Joel had forgotten them utterly,
+and they were probably meritorious of oblivion. But there was one poem
+Luke had written that Joel memorized.
+
+It appeared in the "Clarion" years after Joel was a success in wool. His
+father still sent him the paper, and in one number Joel was rejoiced to
+read these lines:
+
+THE ANONYMOUS
+
+#By Luke Mellows#
+
+Sometimes at night within a wooded park
+  Like an ocean cavern, fathoms deep in bloom,
+  Sweet scents, like hymns, from hidden flowers fume,
+And make the wanderer happy, though the dark
+  Obscures their tint, their name, their shapely bloom.
+
+So, in the thick-set chronicles of fame,
+  There hover deathless feats of souls unknown.
+  They linger like the fragrant smoke wreaths blown
+From liberal sacrifice. Gone face and name;
+  The deeds, like homeless ghosts, live on alone.
+
+Wixon, seated in the boat on Avon and lost in such dusk that he could
+hardly see his hand upon the idle oar, recited the poem softly to
+himself, intoning it in the deep voice one saves for poetry. It sounded
+wonderful to him in the luxury of hearing his own voice upon the water
+and indulging his own memory. The somber mood was perfect, in accord
+with the realm of shadow and silence where everything beautiful and
+living was cloaked in the general blur.
+
+After he had heard his voice chanting the last long oh's of the final
+verse, he was ashamed of his solemnity, and terrified lest some one
+might have heard him and accounted him insane. He laughed at himself
+for a sentimental fool.
+
+He laughed too as he remembered what a letter of praise he had dictated
+to his astonished stenographer and fired off at Luke Mellows; and at the
+flippant letter he had in return.
+
+Lay readers who send incandescent epistles to poets are apt to receive
+answers in sardonic prose. The poet lies a little, perhaps, in a very
+sane suspicion of his own transcendencies.
+
+Luke Mellows had written:
+
+     "#Dear Old Joel#:
+
+     "I sure am much obliged for your mighty handsome letter. Coming to
+     one of the least successful wool-gatherers in the world from one of
+     the most successful wool distributors, it deserves to be highly
+     prized. And is. I will have it framed and handed down to my heirs,
+     of which there are more than there will ever be looms.
+
+     "You ask me to tell you all about myself. It won't take long. When
+     the Butterly Bottlery went bust, I had no job at all for six
+     months, so I got married to spite my father. And to please Kit,
+     whose poor mother ceased to suffer about the same time.
+
+     "The poor girl was so used to taking care of a poor old woman who
+     couldn't be left alone that I became her patient just to keep all
+     her talents from going to waste.
+
+     "The steady flow of children seems to upset the law of supply and
+     demand, for there is certainly no demand for more of my progeny and
+     there is no supply for them. But somehow they thrive.
+
+     "I am now running my father's store, as the old gentleman had a
+     stroke and then another. The business is going to pot as rapidly as
+     you would expect, but I haven't been able to kill it off quite yet.
+
+     "Thanks for advising me to go on writing immortal poetry. If I were
+     immortal, I might, but that fool thing was the result of about ten
+     years' hard labor. I tried to make a sonnet of it, but I gave up at
+     the end of the decade and called it whatever it is.
+
+     "Your father's paper published it free of charge, and so my income
+     from my poetry has been one-tenth of nothing per annum. Please
+     don't urge me to do any more. I really can't afford it.
+
+     "The poem was suggested to me by an ancient fit of blues over the
+     fact that Kit's once-so-beautiful voice would never be heard in
+     song, and by the fact that her infinite goodnesses will never meet
+     any recompense or even acknowledgment.
+
+     "I was bitter the first five years, but the last five years I began
+     to feel how rich this dark old world is in good, brave, sweet,
+     lovable, heartbreakingly beautiful deeds that simply cast a little
+     fragrance on the dark and are gone. They perfume the night and the
+     busy daylight dispels them like the morning mists that we used to
+     watch steaming and vanishing above the old river. The Mississippi
+     is still here, still rolling along its eternal multitudes of snows
+     and flowers and fruits and fish and snakes and dead men and boats
+     and trees.
+
+     "They go where they came from, I guess--in and out of nothing and
+     back again.
+
+     "It is a matter of glory to all of us that you are doing so nobly.
+     Keep it up and give us something to brag about in our obscurity.
+     Don't worry. We are happy enough in the dark. We have our batlike
+     sports and our owllike prides, and the full sun would blind us and
+     lose us our way.
+
+     "Kit sends you her love--and blushes as she says it. That is a very
+     daring word for such shy moles as we are, but I will echo it.
+
+     "Yours for old sake's sake. #Luke.#"
+
+Vaguely remembering this letter now Joel inhaled a bit of the merciful
+chloroform that deadens the pain of thwarted ambition.
+
+The world was full of men and women like Luke and Kit. Some had given up
+great hopes because they were too good to tread others down in their
+quest. Some had quenched great talents because they were too fearsome or
+too weak or too lazy to feed their lamps with oil and keep them trimmed
+and alight. Some had stumbled through life darkly with no gifts of
+talent, without even appreciation of the talents of others or of the
+flowerlike beauties that star the meadows.
+
+Those were the people he had known. And then there were the people he
+had not known, the innumerable caravan that had passed across the earth
+while he lived, the inconceivable hosts that had gone before, tribe
+after tribe, generation upon generation, nation at the heels of nation,
+cycle on era on age, and the backward perpetuity from everlasting unto
+everlasting. People, people, peoples--poor souls, until the thronged
+stars that make a dust of the Milky Way were a lesser mob.
+
+Here in this graveyard at Stratford lay men who might have overtopped
+Shakespeare's glory if they had but "had a mind to." Some of them had
+been held in higher esteem in their town. But they were forgotten, their
+names leveled with the surface of their fallen tombstones.
+
+Had he not cried out in his own Hamlet: "O God, I could be bounded in a
+nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I
+have bad dreams--which dreams indeed are ambition; for the very
+substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream--and I hold
+ambition of so airy and light a quality that it is but a shadow's
+shadow."
+
+After all, the greatest of men were granted but a lesser oblivion than
+the least. And in that overpowering thought there was a strange comfort,
+the comfort of misery finding itself in an infinite company.
+
+The night was thick upon Avon. The swans had gone somewhere. The lights
+in the houses had a sleepy look. It was time to go to bed.
+
+Joel yawned with the luxury of having wearied his heart with emotion. He
+had thought himself out for once. It was good to be tired. He put his
+oars into the stream and, dipping up reflected stars, sent them swirling
+in a doomsday chaos after him with the defiant revenge of a proud soul
+who scorns the universe that grinds him to dust.
+
+The old boatman was surly with waiting. He did not thank the foreigner
+for his liberal largeness, and did not answer his good night.
+
+As Wixon left the river and took the road for his hotel, the nightingale
+(that forever anonymous nightingale, only one among the millions of
+forgotten or throttled songsters) revolted for a moment or two against
+the stifling doom and shattered it with a wordless sonnet of fierce and
+beautiful protest--"The tawny-throated! What triumph! hark!--what pain!"
+
+It was as if Luke Mellows had suddenly found expression in something
+better than words, something that any ear could understand, an ache that
+rang.
+
+Wixon stopped, transfixed as by flaming arrows. He could not understand
+what the bird meant or what he meant, nor could the bird. But as there
+is no laughter that eases the heart like unpacking it of its woes in
+something beyond wording, so there is nothing that brightens the eyes
+like tears gushing without shame or restraint.
+
+Joel Wixon felt that it was a good, sad, mad world, and that he had been
+very close to Shakespeare--so close that he heard things nobody had ever
+found the phrases for--things that cannot be said but only felt, and
+transmitted rather by experience than by expression from one proud worm
+in the mud to another.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[10] Copyright, 1920, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc. Copyright, 1921, by
+Rupert Hughes.
+
+
+
+
+HIS JOB[11]
+
+#By# GRACE SARTWELL MASON
+
+From _Scribner's Magazine_
+
+
+Against an autumn sunset the steel skeleton of a twenty-story office
+building in process of construction stood out black and bizarre. It
+flung up its beams and girders like stern and yet airy music, orderly,
+miraculously strong, and delicately powerful. From the lower stories,
+where masons made their music of trowel and hammer, to the top, where
+steam-riveters rapped out their chorus like giant locusts in a summer
+field, the great building lived and breathed as if all those human
+energies that went to its making flowed warm through its steel veins.
+
+In the west window of a womans' club next door one of the members stood
+looking out at this building. Behind her at a tea-table three other
+women sat talking. For some moments their conversation had had a
+plaintive if not an actually rebellious tone. They were discussing the
+relative advantages of a man's work and a woman's, and they had arrived
+at the conclusion that a man has much the best of it when it comes to a
+matter of the day's work.
+
+"Take a man's work," said Mrs. Van Vechten, pouring herself a second cup
+of tea. "He chooses it; then he is allowed to go at it with absolute
+freedom. He isn't hampered by the dull, petty details of life that
+hamper us. He----"
+
+"Details! My dear, there you are right," broke in Mrs. Bullen. Two men,
+first Mrs. Bullen's father and then her husband, had seen to it that
+neither the biting wind of adversity nor the bracing air of experience
+should ever touch her. "Details! Sometimes I feel as if I were
+smothered by them. Servants, and the house, and now these relief
+societies----"
+
+She was in her turn interrupted by Cornelia Blair. Cornelia was a
+spinster with more freedom than most human beings ever attain, her
+father having worked himself to death to leave her well provided for.
+"The whole fault is the social system," she declared. "Because of it men
+have been able to take the really interesting work of the world for
+themselves. They've pushed the dull jobs off onto us."
+
+"You're right, Cornelia," cried Mrs. Bullen. She really had nothing to
+say, but she hated not saying it. "I've always thought," she went on
+pensively, "that it would be so much easier just to go to an office in
+the morning and have nothing but business to think of. Don't you feel
+that way sometimes, Mrs. Trask?"
+
+The woman in the west window turned. There was a quizzical gleam in her
+eyes as she looked at the other three. "The trouble with us women is
+we're blind and deaf," she said slowly. "We talk a lot about men's work
+and how they have the best of things in power and freedom, but does it
+occur to one of us that a man _pays_ for power and freedom? Sometimes I
+think that not one of the women of our comfortable class would be
+willing to pay what our men pay for the power and freedom they get."
+
+"What do they pay?" asked Mrs. Van Vechten, her lip curling.
+
+Mrs. Trask turned back to the window. "There's something rather
+wonderful going on out here," she called. "I wish you'd all come and
+look."
+
+Just outside the club window the steel-workers pursued their dangerous
+task with leisurely and indifferent competence, while over their head a
+great derrick served their needs with uncanny intelligence. It dropped
+its chain and picked a girder from the floor. As it rose into space two
+figures sprang astride either end of it. The long arm swung up and out;
+the two "bronco-busters of the sky" were black against the flame of the
+sunset. Some one shouted; the signalman pulled at his rope; the
+derrick-arm swung in a little with the girder teetering at the end of
+the chain. The most interesting moment of the steel-man's job had come,
+when a girder was to be jockeyed into place. The iron arm swung the
+girder above two upright columns, lowered it, and the girder began to
+groove into place. It wedged a little. One of the men inched along,
+leaned against space, and wielded his bar. The women stared, for the
+moment taken out of themselves. Then, as the girder settled into place
+and the two men slid down the column to the floor, the spectators turned
+back to their tea-table.
+
+"Very interesting," murmured Mrs. Van Vechten; "but I hardly see how it
+concerns us."
+
+A flame leaped in Mary Trask's face. "It's what we've just been talking
+about, one of men's jobs. I tell you, men are working miracles all the
+time that women never see. We envy them their power and freedom, but we
+seldom open our eyes to see what they pay for them. Look here, I'd like
+to tell you about an ordinary man and one of his jobs." She stopped and
+looked from Mrs. Bullen's perplexity to Cornelia Blair's superior smile,
+and her eyes came last to Sally Van Vechten's rebellious frown. "I'm
+going to bore you, maybe," she laughed grimly. "But it will do you good
+to listen once in a while to something _real_."
+
+She sat down and leaned her elbows on the table. "I said that he is an
+ordinary man," she began; "what I meant is that he started in like the
+average, without any great amount of special training, without money,
+and without pull of any kind. He had good health, good stock back of
+him, an attractive personality, and two years at a technical
+school--those were his total assets. He was twenty when he came to New
+York to make a place for himself, and he had already got himself engaged
+to a girl back home. He had enough money to keep him for about three
+weeks, if he lived very economically. But that didn't prevent his
+feeling a heady exhilaration that day when he walked up Fifth Avenue for
+the first time and looked over his battle-field. He has told me often,
+with a chuckle at the audacity of it, how he picked out his employer.
+All day he walked about with his eyes open for contractors' signs.
+Whenever he came upon a building in the process of construction he
+looked it over critically, and if he liked the look of the job he made a
+note of the contractor's name and address in a little green book. For he
+was to be a builder--of big buildings, of course! And that night, when
+he turned out of the avenue to go to the cheap boarding-house where he
+had sent his trunk, he told himself that he'd give himself five years to
+set up an office of his own within a block of Fifth Avenue.
+
+"Next day he walked into the offices of Weil & Street--the first that
+headed the list in the little green book--asked to see Mr. Weil, and,
+strangely enough, got him, too. Even in those raw days Robert had a
+cheerful assurance tempered with rather a nice deference that often got
+him what he wanted from older men. When he left the offices of Weil &
+Street he had been given a job in the estimating-room, at a salary that
+would just keep him from starving. He grew lean and lost his country
+color that winter, but he was learning, learning all the time, not only
+in the office of Weil & Street, but at night school, where he studied
+architecture. When he decided he had got all he could get out of the
+estimating and drawing rooms he asked to be transferred to one of the
+jobs. They gave him the position of timekeeper on one of the contracts,
+at a slight advance in salary.
+
+"A man can get as much or as little out of being timekeeper as he
+chooses. Robert got a lot out of it. He formulated that summer a working
+theory of the length of time it should take to finish every detail of a
+building. He talked with bricklayers, he timed them and watched them,
+until he knew how many bricks could be laid in an hour; and it was the
+same way with carpenters, fireproofers, painters, plasterers. He soaked
+in a thousand practical details of building: he picked out the best
+workman in each gang, watched him, talked with him, learned all he could
+of that man's particular trick; and it all went down in the little green
+book. For at the back of his head was always the thought of the time
+when he should use all this knowledge in his own business. Then one day
+when he had learned all he could learn from being timekeeper, he walked
+into Weil's office again and proposed that they make him one of the
+firm's superintendents of construction.
+
+"Old Weil fairly stuttered with the surprise of this audacious
+proposition. He demanded to know what qualifications the young man could
+show for so important a position, and Robert told him about the year he
+had had with the country builder and the three summer vacations with the
+country surveyor--which made no impression whatever on Mr. Weil until
+Robert produced the little green book. Mr. Weil glanced at some of the
+figures in the book, snorted, looked hard at his ambitious timekeeper,
+who looked back at him with his keen young eyes and waited. When he left
+the office he had been promised a tryout on a small job near the
+offices, where, as old Weil said, they could keep an eye on him. That
+night he wrote to the girl back home that she must get ready to marry
+him at a moment's notice."
+
+Mrs. Trask leaned back in her chair and smiled with a touch of sadness.
+"The wonder of youth! I can see him writing that letter, exuberant,
+ambitious, his brain full of dreams and plans--and a very inadequate
+supper in his stomach. The place where he lived--he pointed it out to me
+once--was awful. No girl of Rob's class--back home his folks were
+'nice'--would have stood that lodging-house for a night, would have
+eaten the food he did, or gone without the pleasures of life as he had
+gone without them for two years. But there, right at the beginning, is
+the difference between what a boy is willing to go through to get what
+he wants and what a girl would or could put up with. And along with a
+better position came a man's responsibility, which he shouldered alone.
+
+"'I was horribly afraid I'd fall down on the job,' he told me long
+afterward. 'And there wasn't a living soul I could turn to for help. The
+thing was up to me alone!'"
+
+Mrs. Trask looked from Mrs. Bullen to Mrs. Van Vechten. "Mostly they
+fight alone," she said, as if she thought aloud. "That's one thing about
+men we don't always grasp--the business of existence is up to the
+average man alone. If he fails or gets into a tight place he has no one
+to fall back on, as a woman almost always has. Our men have a prejudice
+against taking their business difficulties home with them. I've a
+suspicion it's because we're so ignorant they'd have to do too much
+explaining! So in most cases they haven't even a sympathetic
+understanding to help them over the bad places. It was so with Robert
+even after he had married the girl back home and brought her to the
+city. His idea was to keep her from all worry and anxiety, and so, when
+he came home at night and she asked him if he had had a good day, or if
+the work had gone well, he always replied cheerfully that things had
+gone about the same as usual, even though the day had been a
+particularly bad one. This was only at first, however. The girl happened
+to be the kind that likes to know things. One night, when she wakened to
+find him staring sleepless at the ceiling, the thought struck her that,
+after all, she knew nothing of his particular problems, and if they were
+partners in the business of living why shouldn't she be an intelligent
+member of the firm, even if only a silent one?
+
+"So she began to read everything she could lay her hands on about the
+business of building construction, and very soon when she asked a
+question it was a fairly intelligent one, because it had some knowledge
+back of it. She didn't make the mistake of pestering him with questions
+before she had any groundwork of technical knowledge to build on, and
+I'm not sure that he ever guessed what she was up to, but I do know that
+gradually, as he found that he did not, for instance, have to draw a
+diagram and explain laboriously what a caisson was because she already
+knew a good deal about caissons, he fell into the habit of talking out
+to her a great many of the situations he would have to meet next day.
+Not that she offered her advice nor that he wanted it, but what helped
+was the fact of her sympathy--I should say her intelligent sympathy, for
+that is the only kind that can really help.
+
+"So when his big chance came along she was ready to meet it with him. If
+he succeeded she would be all the better able to appreciate his success;
+and if he failed she would never blame him from ignorance. You must
+understand that his advance was no meteoric thing. He somehow, by dint
+of sitting up nights poring over blueprints and text-books and by day
+using his wits and his eyes and his native shrewdness, managed to pull
+off with fair success his first job as superintendent; was given other
+contracts to oversee; and gradually, through three years of hard work,
+learning, learning all the time, worked up to superintending some of the
+firm's important jobs. Then he struck out for himself."
+
+Mrs. Trask turned to look out of the west window. "It sounds so easy,"
+she mused. "'Struck out for himself.' But I think only a man can quite
+appreciate how much courage that takes. Probably, if the girl had not
+understood where he was trying to get to, he would have hesitated longer
+to give up his good, safe salary; but they talked it over, she
+understood the hazards of the game, and she was willing to take a
+chance. They had saved a tiny capital, and only a little over five years
+from the day he had come to New York he opened an office within a block
+of Fifth Avenue.
+
+"I won't bore you with the details of the next two years, when he was
+getting together his organization, teaching himself the details of
+office work, stalking architects and owners for contracts. He acquired a
+slight stoop to his shoulders in those two years and there were days
+when there was nothing left of his boyishness but the inextinguishable
+twinkle in his hazel eyes. There were times when it seemed to him as if
+he had put to sea in a rowboat; as if he could never make port; but
+after a while small contracts began to come in, and then came along the
+big opportunity. Up in a New England city a large bank building was to
+be built; one of the directors was a friend of Rob's father, and Rob was
+given a chance to put in an estimate. It meant so much to him that he
+would not let himself count on getting the contract; he did not even
+tell the partner at home that he had been asked to put in an estimate
+until one day he came tearing in to tell her that he had been given the
+job. It seemed too wonderful to be true. The future looked so dazzling
+that they were almost afraid to contemplate it. Only something wildly
+extravagant would express their emotion, so they chartered a hansom cab
+and went gayly sailing up-town on the late afternoon tide of Fifth
+Avenue; and as they passed the building on which Robert had got his job
+as timekeeper he took off his hat to it, and she blew a kiss to it, and
+a dreary old clubman in a window next door brightened visibly!"
+
+Mrs. Trask turned her face toward the steel skeleton springing up across
+the way like the magic beanstalk in the fairy-tale. "The things men have
+taught themselves to do!" she cried. "The endurance and skill, the
+inventiveness, the precision of science, the daring of human wits, the
+poetry and fire that go into the making of great buildings! We women
+walk in and out of them day after day, blindly--and this indifference is
+symbolical, I think, of the way we walk in and out of our men's
+lives.... I wish I could make you see that job of young Robert's so that
+you would feel in it what I do--the patience of men, the strain of the
+responsibility they carry night and day, the things life puts up to
+them, which they have to meet alone, the dogged endurance of them...."
+
+Mrs. Trask leaned forward and traced a complicated diagram on the
+table-cloth with the point of a fork. "It was his first big job, you
+understand, and he had got it in competition with several older
+builders. From the first they were all watching him, and he knew it,
+which put a fine edge to his determination to put the job through with
+credit. To be sure, he was handicapped by lack of capital, but his past
+record had established his credit, and when the foundation work was
+begun it was a very hopeful young man that watched the first shovelful
+of earth taken out. But when they had gone down about twelve feet, with
+a trench for a retaining-wall, they discovered that the owners' boring
+plan was not a trustworthy representation of conditions; the job was
+going to be a soft-ground proposition. Where, according to the owners'
+preliminary borings, he should have found firm sand with a normal amount
+of moisture, Rob discovered sand that was like saturated oatmeal, and
+beyond that quicksand and water. Water! Why, it was like a subterranean
+lake fed by a young river! With the pulsometer pumps working night and
+day they couldn't keep the water out of the test pier he had sunk. It
+bubbled in as cheerfully as if it had eternal springs behind it, and
+drove the men out of the pier in spite of every effort. Rob knew then
+what he was up against. But he still hoped that he could sink the
+foundations without compressed air, which would be an immense expense he
+had not figured on in his estimate, of course. So he devised a certain
+kind of concrete crib, the first one was driven--and when they got it
+down beneath quicksand and water about twenty-five feet, it hung up on a
+boulder! You see, below the stratum of sand like saturated oatmeal,
+below the water and quicksand, they had come upon something like a New
+England pasture, as thick with big boulders as a bun with currants! If
+he had spent weeks hunting for trouble he couldn't have found more than
+was offered him right there. It was at this point that he went out and
+wired a big New York engineer, who happened to be a friend of his, to
+come up. In a day or two the engineer arrived, took a look at the job,
+and then advised Rob to quit.
+
+"'It's a nasty job,' he told him. 'It will swallow every penny of your
+profits and probably set you back a few thousands. It's one of the worst
+soft-ground propositions I ever looked over.'
+
+"Well that night young Robert went home with a sleep-walking expression
+in his eyes. He and the partner at home had moved up to Rockford to be
+near the job while the foundation work was going on, so the girl saw
+exactly what he was up against and what he had to decide between.
+
+"'I could quit,' he said that night, after the engineer had taken his
+train back to New York, 'throw up the job, and the owners couldn't hold
+me because of their defective boring plans. But if I quit there'll be
+twenty competitors to say I've bit off more than I can chew. And if I
+go on I lose money; probably go into the hole so deep I'll be a long
+time getting out.'
+
+"You see, where his estimates had covered only the expense of normal
+foundation work he now found himself up against the most difficult
+conditions a builder can face. When the girl asked him if the owners
+would not make up the additional cost he grinned ruefully. The owners
+were going to hold him to his original estimate; they knew that with his
+name to make he would hate to give up; and they were inclined to be
+almost as nasty as the job.
+
+"'Then you'll have all this work and difficulty for nothing?' the girl
+asked. 'You may actually lose money on the job?'
+
+"'Looks that way,' he admitted.
+
+"'Then why do you go on?' she cried.
+
+"His answer taught the girl a lot about the way a man looks at his job.
+'If I take up the cards I can't be a quitter,' he said. 'It would hurt
+my record. And my record is the equivalent of credit and capital. I
+can't afford to have any weak spots in it. I'll take the gaff rather
+than have it said about me that I've lain down on a job. I'm going on
+with this thing to the end.'"
+
+Little shrewd, reminiscent lines gathered about Mrs. Trask's eyes.
+"There's something exhilarating about a good fight. I've always thought
+that if I couldn't be a gunner I could get a lot of thrills out of just
+handing up the ammunition.... Well, Rob went on with the contract. With
+the first crib hung up on a boulder and the water coming in so fast they
+couldn't pump it out fast enough to dynamite, he was driven to use
+compressed air, and that meant the hiring of a compressor, locks,
+shafting--a terribly costly business--as well as bringing up to the job
+a gang of the high-priced labor that works under air. But this was done,
+and the first crib for the foundation piers went down slowly, with the
+sand-hogs--men that work in the caissons--drilling and blasting their
+way week after week through that underground New England pasture. Then,
+below this boulder-strewn stratum, instead of the ledge they expected
+they struck four feet of rotten rock, so porous that when air was put on
+it to force the water back great air bubbles blew up all through the
+lot, forcing the men out of the other caissons and trenches. But this
+was a mere dull detail, to be met by care and ingenuity like the others.
+And at last, forty feet below street level, they reached bed-rock.
+Forty-six piers had to be driven to this ledge.
+
+"Rob knew now exactly what kind of a job was cut out for him. He knew he
+had not only the natural difficulties to overcome, but he was going to
+have to fight the owners for additional compensation. So one day he went
+into Boston and interviewed a famous old lawyer.
+
+"'Would you object,' he asked the lawyer, 'to taking a case against
+personal friends of yours, the owners of the Rockford bank building?'
+
+"'Not at all--and if you're right, I'll lick 'em! What's your case?'
+
+"Rob told him the whole story. When he finished the famous man refused
+to commit himself one way or the other; but he said that he would be in
+Rockford in a few days, and perhaps he'd look at Robert's little job. So
+one day, unannounced, the lawyer appeared. The compressor plant was hard
+at work forcing the water back in the caissons, the pulsometer pumps
+were sucking up streams of water that flowed without ceasing into the
+settling tank and off into the city sewers, the men in the caissons were
+sending up buckets full of silt-like gruel. The lawyer watched
+operations for a few minutes, then he asked for the owners' boring plan.
+When he had examined this he grunted twice, twitched his lower lip
+humorously, and said: 'I'll put you out of this. If the owners wanted a
+deep-water lighthouse they should have specified one--not a bank
+building.'
+
+"So the battle of legal wits began. Before the building was done Joshua
+Kent had succeeded in making the owners meet part of the additional cost
+of the foundation, and Robert had developed an acumen that stood by him
+the rest of his life. But there was something for him in this job bigger
+than financial gain or loss. Week after week, as he overcame one
+difficulty after another, he was learning, learning, just as he had done
+at Weil & Street's. His hazel eyes grew keener, his face thinner. For
+the job began to develop every freak and whimsy possible to a growing
+building. The owner of the department store next door refused to permit
+access through his basement, and that added many hundred dollars to the
+cost of building the party wall; the fire and telephone companies were
+continually fussing around and demanding indemnity because their poles
+and hydrants got knocked out of plumb; the thousands of gallons of dirty
+water pumped from the job into the city sewers clogged them up, and the
+city sued for several thousand dollars' damages; one day the car-tracks
+in front of the lot settled and valuable time was lost while the men
+shored them up; now and then the pulsometer engines broke down; the
+sand-hogs all got drunk and lost much time; an untimely frost spoiled a
+thousand dollars' worth of concrete one night. But the detail that
+required the most handling was the psychological effect on Rob's
+subcontractors. These men, observing the expensive preliminary
+operations, and knowing that Rob was losing money every day the
+foundation work lasted, began to ask one another if the young boss would
+be able to put the job through. If he failed, of course they who had
+signed up with him for various stages of the work would lose heavily.
+Panic began to spread among all the little army that goes to the making
+of a big building. The terra-cotta-floor men, the steel men,
+electricians and painters began to hang about the job with gloom in
+their eyes; they wore a path to the architect's door, and he, never
+having quite approved of so young a man being given the contract, did
+little to allay their apprehensions. Rob knew that if this kept up
+they'd hurt his credit, so he promptly served notice on the architect
+that if his credit was impaired by false rumors he'd hold him
+responsible; and he gave each subcontractor five minutes in which to
+make up his mind whether he wanted to quit or look cheerful. To a man
+they chose to stick by the job; so that detail was disposed of. In the
+meantime the sinking of piers for one of the retaining-walls was giving
+trouble. One morning at daylight Rob's superintendent telephoned him to
+announce that the street was caving in and the buildings across the way
+were cracking. When Rob got there he found the men standing about scared
+and helpless, while the plate-glass windows of the store opposite were
+cracking like pistols and the building settled. It appeared that when
+the trench for the south wall had gone down a certain distance water
+began to rush in under the sheeting as if from an underground river,
+and, of course, undermined the street and the store opposite. The pumps
+were started like mad, two gangs were put at work, with the
+superintendent swearing, threatening, and pleading to make them dig
+faster, and at last concrete was poured and the water stopped. That day
+Rob and his superintendent had neither breakfast nor lunch; but they had
+scarcely finished shoring up the threatened store when the owner of the
+store notified Rob that he would sue for damages, and the secretary of
+the Y. W. C. A. next door attempted to have the superintendent arrested
+for profanity. Rob said that when this happened he and his
+superintendent solemnly debated whether they should go and get drunk or
+start a fight with the sand-hogs; it did seem as if they were entitled
+to some emotional outlet, all the circumstances considered!
+
+"So after months of difficulties the foundation work was at last
+finished. I've forgotten to mention that there was some little
+difficulty with the eccentricities of the sub-basement floor. The wet
+clay ruined the first concrete poured, and little springs had a way of
+gushing up in the boiler-room. Also, one night a concrete shell for the
+elevator pit completely disappeared--sank out of sight in the soft
+bottom. But by digging the trench again and jacking down the bottom and
+putting hay under the concrete, the floor was finished; and that detail
+was settled.
+
+"The remainder of the job was by comparison uneventful. The things that
+happened were all more or less in the day's work, such as a carload of
+stone for the fourth story arriving when what the masons desperately
+needed was the carload for the second, and the carload for the third
+getting lost and being discovered after three days' search among the
+cripples in a Buffalo freight-yard. And there was a strike of
+structural-steel work workers which snarled up everything for a while;
+and always, of course, there were the small obstacles and differences
+owners and architects are in the habit of hatching up to keep a builder
+from getting indifferent. But these things were what every builder
+encounters and expects. What Rob's wife could not reconcile herself to
+was the fact that all those days of hard work, all those days and nights
+of strain and responsibility, were all for nothing. Profits had long
+since been drowned in the foundation work; Robert would actually have to
+pay several thousand dollars for the privilege of putting up that
+building! When the girl could not keep back one wail over this detail
+her husband looked at her in genuine surprise.
+
+"'Why, it's been worth the money to me, what I've learned,' he said.
+'I've got an education out of that old hoodoo that some men go through
+Tech and work twenty years without getting; I've learned a new wrinkle
+in every one of the building trades; I've learned men and I've learned
+law, and I've delivered the goods. It's been hell, but I wouldn't have
+missed it!'"
+
+Mrs. Trask looked eagerly and a little wistfully at the three faces in
+front of her. Her own face was alight. "Don't you see--that's the way a
+real man looks at his work; but that man's wife would never have
+understood it if she hadn't been interested enough to watch his job. She
+saw him grow older and harder under that job; she saw him often haggard
+from the strain and sleepless because of a dozen intricate problems; but
+she never heard him complain and she never saw him any way but
+courageous and often boyishly gay when he'd got the best of some
+difficulty. And furthermore, she knew that if she had been the kind of a
+woman who is not interested in her husband's work he would have kept it
+to himself, as most American husbands do. If he had, she would have
+missed a chance to learn a lot of things that winter, and she probably
+wouldn't have known anything about the final chapter in the history of
+the job that the two of them had fallen into the habit of referring to
+as the White Elephant. They had moved back to New York then, and the
+Rockford bank building was within two weeks of its completion, when at
+seven o'clock one morning their telephone rang. Rob answered it and his
+wife heard him say sharply: 'Well, what are you doing about it?' And
+then: 'Keep it up. I'll catch the next train.'
+
+"'What is it?' she asked, as he turned away from the telephone and she
+saw his face.
+
+"'The department store next to the Elephant is burning,' he told her.
+'Fireproof? Well, I'm supposed to have built a fireproof building--but
+you never can tell.'
+
+"His wife's next thought was of insurance, for she knew that Robert had
+to insure the building himself up to the time he turned it over to the
+owners. 'The insurance is all right?' she asked him.
+
+"But she knew by the way he turned away from her that the worst of all
+their bad luck with the Elephant had happened, and she made him tell
+her. The insurance had lapsed about a week before. Rob had not renewed
+the policy because its renewal would have meant adding several hundreds
+to his already serious deficit, and, as he put it, it seemed to him that
+everything that could happen to that job had already happened. But now
+the last stupendous, malicious catastrophe threatened him. Both of them
+knew when he said good-by that morning and hurried out to catch his
+train that he was facing ruin. His wife begged him to let her go with
+him; at least she would be some one to talk to on that interminable
+journey; but he said that was absurd; and, anyway, he had a lot of
+thinking to do. So he started off alone.
+
+"At the station before he left he tried to get the Rockford bank
+building on the telephone. He got Rockford and tried for five minutes to
+make a connection with his superintendent's telephone in the bank
+building, until the operator's voice came to him over the wire: 'I tell
+you, you can't get that building, mister. It's burning down!'
+
+"'How do you know?' he besought her.
+
+"'I just went past there and I seen it,' her voice came back at him.
+
+"He got on the train. At first he felt nothing but a queer dizzy vacuum
+where his brain should have been; the landscape outside the windows
+jumbled together like a nightmare landscape thrown up on a
+moving-picture screen. For fifty miles he merely sat rigidly still, but
+in reality he was plunging down like a drowning man to the very bottom
+of despair. And then, like the drowning man, he began to come up to the
+surface again. The instinct for self-preservation stirred in him and
+broke the grip of that hypnotizing despair. At first slowly and
+painfully, but at last with quickening facility, he began to think, to
+plan. Stations went past; a man he knew spoke to him and then walked on,
+staring; but he was deaf and blind. He was planning for the future.
+Already he had plumbed, measured, and put behind him the fact of the
+fire; what he occupied himself with now was what he could save from the
+ashes to make a new start with. And he told me afterwards that actually,
+at the end of two hours of the liveliest thinking he had ever done in
+his life, he began to enjoy himself! His fighting blood began to tingle;
+his head steadied and grew cool; his mind reached out and examined every
+aspect of his stupendous failure, not to indulge himself in the weakness
+of regret, but to find out the surest and quickest way to get on his
+feet again. Figuring on the margins of timetables, going over the
+contracts he had in hand, weighing every asset he possessed in the
+world, he worked out in minute detail a plan to save his credit and his
+future. When he got off the train at Boston he was a man that had
+already begun life over again; he was a general that was about to make
+the first move in a long campaign, every move and counter-move of which
+he carried in his brain. Even as he crossed the station he was
+rehearsing the speech he was going to make at the meeting of his
+creditors he intended to hold that afternoon. Then, as he hastened
+toward a telephone-booth, he ran into a newsboy. A headline caught his
+eye. He snatched at the paper, read the headlines, standing there in the
+middle of the room. And then he suddenly sat down on the nearest bench,
+weak and shaking.
+
+"On the front page of the paper was a half-page picture of the Rockford
+bank building with the flames curling up against its west wall, and
+underneath it a caption that he read over and over before he could grasp
+what it meant to him. The White Elephant had not burned; in fact, at the
+last it had turned into a good elephant, for it had not only not burned
+but it had stopped the progress of what threatened to be a very
+disastrous conflagration, according to a jubilant despatch from
+Rockford. And Robert, reading these lines over and over, felt an amazing
+sort of indignant disappointment to think that now he would not have a
+chance to put to the test those plans he had so minutely worked out. He
+was in the position of a man that has gone through the painful process
+of readjusting his whole life; who has mentally met and conquered a
+catastrophe that fails to come off. He felt quite angry and cheated for
+a few minutes, until he regained his mental balance and saw how absurd
+he was, and then, feeling rather foolish and more than a little shaky,
+he caught a train and went up to Rockford.
+
+"There he found out that the report had been right; beyond a few cracked
+wire-glass windows--for which, as one last painful detail, he had to
+pay--and a blackened side wall, the Elephant was unharmed. The men
+putting the finishing touches to the inside had not lost an hour's work.
+All that dreadful journey up from New York had been merely one last turn
+of the screw.
+
+"Two weeks later he turned the Elephant over to the owners, finished, a
+good, workmanlike job from roof to foundation-piers. He had lost money
+on it; for months he had worked overtime his courage, his ingenuity, his
+nerve, and his strength. But that did not matter. He had delivered the
+goods. I believe he treated himself to an afternoon off and went to a
+ball-game; but that was all, for by this time other jobs were under way,
+a whole batch of new problems were waiting to be solved; in a week the
+Elephant was forgotten."
+
+Mrs. Trask pushed back her chair and walked to the west window. A
+strange quiet had fallen upon the sky-scraper now; the workmen had gone
+down the ladders, the steam-riveters had ceased their tapping. Mrs.
+Trask opened the window and leaned out a little.
+
+Behind her the three women at the tea-table gathered up their furs in
+silence. Cornelia Blair looked relieved and prepared to go on to dinner
+at another club, Mrs. Bullen avoided Mrs. Van Vechten's eye. In her rosy
+face faint lines had traced themselves, as if vaguely some new
+perceptiveness troubled her. She looked at her wristwatch and rose from
+the table hastily.
+
+"I must run along," she said. "I like to get home before John does. You
+going my way, Sally?"
+
+Mrs. Van Vechten shook her head absently. There was a frown between her
+dark brows; but as she stood fastening her furs her eyes went to the
+west window, with an expression in them that was almost wistful. For an
+instant she looked as if she were going over to the window beside Mary
+Trask; then she gathered up her gloves and muff and went out without a
+word.
+
+Mary Trask was unaware of her going. She had forgotten the room behind
+her and her friends at the tea-table, as well as the other women
+drifting in from the adjoining room. She was contemplating, with her
+little, absent-minded smile, her husband's name on the builder's sign
+halfway up the unfinished sky-scraper opposite.
+
+"Good work, old Rob," she murmured. Then her hand went up in a quaint
+gesture that was like a salute. "To all good jobs and the men behind
+them!" she added.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[11] Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by
+Grace Sartwell Mason.
+
+
+
+
+THE RENDING[12]
+
+#By# JAMES OPPENHEIM
+
+From _The Dial_
+
+
+There is a bitter moment in youth, and this moment had come to Paul. He
+had passed his mother's door without entering or even calling out to
+her, and had climbed on doggedly to the top floor. Now he was shut in
+his sanctuary, his room, sitting at his table. His head rested on a
+hand, his dark eyes had an expression of confused anguish, a look of
+guilt and sternness mingled.... He could no more have visited his
+mother, he told himself, than he could voluntarily have chopped off his
+hand. And yet he was amazed at the cruelty in himself, a hard cold
+cruelty which prompted the thought: "Even if this means her death or my
+death, I shall go through with this."
+
+It was because of such a feeling that he couldn't talk to his mother.
+Paul was one of those sensitive youths who are delivered over to their
+emotions--swept now and then by exaltation, now by despair, now by
+anguish or rage, always excessive, never fully under control. He was
+moody, and always seemed unable to say the right thing or do the right
+thing. Suddenly the emotion used him as a mere instrument and came forth
+in a shameful nakedness. But the present situation was by all odds the
+most terrible he had faced: for against the cold cruelty, there
+throbbed, warm and unutterably sweet, like a bird in a nest of iron, an
+intense childish longing and love....
+
+You see, Paul was nineteen, the eldest son in a family of four, and his
+mother was a widow. She was not poor; they lived in this large
+comfortable house on a side street east of Central Park. But neither
+was she well off, and Paul was very magnanimous; he had given up college
+and gone to work as a clerk. Perhaps it wasn't only magnanimity, but
+also pride. He was proud to be the oldest son, to play father, to advise
+with his mother about the children, to be the man of the house. Yet he
+was always a mere child, living, as his two sisters and his brother
+lived, in delicate response to his mother's feelings and wishes. And he
+wanted to be a good son: he thought nothing was more wonderful than a
+child who was good to his mother. She had given all for her children,
+they in return must give all to her. But against this spirit of
+sacrifice there arose a crude, ugly, healthy, monstrous force, a
+terrible thing that kept whispering to him: "You can't live your
+mother's life: you must live your own life."
+
+Once, when he had said something conceited, his mother had flashed out
+at him: "You're utterly selfish." This stung and humiliated him. Yet
+this terrible monster in himself seemed concerned about nothing but
+self. It seemed a sort of devil always tempting him to eat of forbidden
+fruit. Lovely fruit, too. There was Agnes, for instance: Agnes, a mere
+girl, with a pigtail down her back, daughter of the fishman on Third
+Avenue.
+
+His mother held Agnes in horror. That her son should be in love with a
+fishman's daughter! And all the child in Paul, responding so sensitively
+to his mother's feelings, agreed to this. He had contempt for himself,
+he struggled against the romantic Thousand and One Nights glamour, which
+turned Third Avenue into a Lovers' Lane of sparkling lights. He
+struggled, vainly. Poetry was his passion: and he steeped himself in
+Romeo and Juliet, and in Keats's St. Agnes' Eve and The Pot of Basil....
+It was then the great struggle with his mother began, and the large
+house became a gloomy vault, something dank, damp, sombre, something out
+of Poe, where a secret duel to the death was being fought, mostly in
+undertones and sometimes with sharp cries and stabbing words.
+
+Now, this evening, with his head in his hand, he knew that the end had
+already been reached. To pass his mother's door without a greeting,
+especially since he was well aware that she was ill, was so
+unprecedented, so violent an act, that it seemed to have the finality of
+something criminal. His mother had said two days ago: "This can't go on.
+It is killing me."
+
+"All right," he flashed. "It sha'n't. I'll get out."
+
+"I suppose you'll marry," she said, "on fifteen a week."
+
+He spoke bitterly:
+
+"I'll get out of New York altogether. I'll work my way through
+college...."
+
+She almost sneered at the suggestion. And this sneer rankled. He
+telegraphed his friend, at a little freshwater college, and Samuel
+telegraphed back: "Come." That day he drew his money from the bank, and
+got his tickets for the midnight sleeper. And he did all this with
+perfect cruelty....
+
+But now the time had come to go, and things were different. An autumn
+wind was blowing out of the park, doubtless carrying seeds and dead
+leaves, and gusting down the street, blowing about the sparkling lamps,
+eddying in the area-ways, rapping in passing on the loose windows....
+The lights in the houses were all warm, because you saw only the glowing
+yellow shades: Third Avenue was lit up and down with shop-windows, and
+people were doing late marketing. It was a night when nothing seemed so
+sweet, or sane, or comfortable, as a soft-lighted room, and a family
+sitting together. Soft voices, familiarity, warm intimacy, the feeling
+of security and ease, the unspoken welling of love and understanding:
+these belonged to such a night, when the whole world seemed dying and
+there was only man to keep the fires burning against death.
+
+And so, out of its tomb, the little child in Paul stepped out again,
+beautiful and sweet with love and longing. And this little child said to
+him: "Sacrifice--surrender--let the hard heart melt with pity.... There
+is no freedom except in love, which gives all." For a moment Paul's
+vivid imagination, which presented everything to him like works of
+dramatic art, pictured himself going down the steps, as once he had
+done, creeping to his mother's bed, flinging himself down, sobbing and
+moaning, "Forgive me. Forgive me."
+
+But just then he heard the stairs creak and thought that his eldest
+sister was coming up to question him. His heart began a frightened
+throbbing: he shook with a guilty fear, and at once he saved himself
+with a bitter resurgence of cruel anger. He hated his sister, he told
+himself, with a livid hatred. She always sided with his mother. She was
+bossy and smart and high and mighty. He knew what he would do. He jumped
+up, went to the door, and locked it. So--she could beat her head on the
+door, for all he cared!
+
+He packed. He got out his valise, and filled it with his necessaries. He
+would let the rest go: the books, the old clothes. He was going to start
+life all over again He was going to wipe out the past....
+
+When he was finished, he anxiously opened his pocket-book to see if the
+tickets were safe. He looked at them. It was now ten o'clock. Two
+hours--and then the long train would pull out, and he would be gone....
+To-morrow morning they'd come downstairs. His sister probably would sit
+at the foot of the table, instead of himself. The table would seem small
+with himself gone. Perhaps the house would seem a little empty.
+Automatically they would wait for the click of his key in the front door
+lock at seven in the evening. He would not come home at all....
+
+His mother might die. She had told him this was killing her.... It was
+so easy for him to go, so hard for her to stay.... She had invested most
+of her capital of hopes and dreams and love in him: he was the son; he
+was the first man. And now he was shattering the very structure of her
+life....
+
+Easy for him to go! He slumped into the chair again, at the table....
+The wind blew strongly, and he knew just how the grey street looked with
+its spots of yellow sparkling lamplight; its shadows, its glowing
+windows.... He knew the smell of the fish-shop, the strange raw
+sea-smell, the sight of glittering iridescent scales, the beauty of lean
+curved fishes, the red of broiled lobsters, the pink-cheeked swarthy
+fishman, the dark loveliness of Agnes.... He had written to Agnes. His
+mother didn't know of it, but he was done with Agnes. Agnes meant
+nothing to him. She had only been a way out, something to cling to,
+something to fight for in this fight for his life....
+
+Fight for his life! Had he not read of this in books, how the young must
+slay the old in order that life might go on, just as the earth must die
+in autumn so that the seeds of spring may be planted? Had he not read
+Ibsen's Master Builder, where the aging hero hears the dread doom which
+youth brings, "the younger generation knocking at the door"? He was the
+younger generation, he was the young hero. And now, at once, a vivid
+dramatization took place in his brain: it unwound clear as
+hallucination. He forgot everything else, he sat there as a writer sits,
+living his fiction, making strange gestures with face and hands,
+muttering words under his breath....
+
+In this phantasy, he saw himself rising, appearing a little older, a
+little stronger, and on his face a look of divine compassion and
+understanding, yet a firmness inexorable as fate. He repeated Hamlet's
+words: "For I am cruel only to be kind." Blame life, fate, the gods who
+decree that a man must live his own life: don't blame me.
+
+He unlocked the door, crossed the big hall, stepped down the stairs. His
+mother's door was shut. The younger generation must knock at it. He
+knocked. A low, sad voice said: "Come." He opened the door.
+
+This was the way it always was: a pin-point of light by the western
+window, a newspaper pinned to the glass globe of the gas-jet to shield
+his mother's eyes, the wide range of warm shadow, and in the shadow the
+two beds. But his sister was not in one of them. His mother was
+alone....
+
+He went to the bedside....
+
+"Mother!"
+
+"Paul!"
+
+He took her hand.
+
+"Are you feeling better?" he asked.
+
+"A little more quiet, Paul...."
+
+"I am very glad...."
+
+Now there was silence.... Then he spoke quietly, honestly, candidly. It
+was the only way. Why can't human beings be simple with one another, be
+sweetly reasonable? Isn't a little understanding worth more than pride
+and anger? To understand is to forgive. Surely any one must know that.
+
+Starting to speak, he sat down on the chair beside the bed, still
+holding her hand....
+
+"Mother, come let's talk to one another. You think perhaps I have
+stopped loving you. It isn't true. I love you deeply. All this is
+breaking my heart. But how can I help it? Can't you see that I am young,
+and my life all before me? The best of your life is behind you. You have
+lived, I haven't. You have tasted the sweet mysteries of love, the
+agonies of death and birth, the terrors of lonely struggle. And I must
+have these, too. I am hungry for them. I can't help myself. I am like a
+leaf in the wind, like a rain-drop in the storm.... How can you keep me
+here? If you compel me, I'll become a shadow, all twisted and broken. I
+won't be a man, but a helpless child. Perhaps I shall go out of my mind.
+And what good will that do you? You will suffer more if I stay, than if
+I go. Oh, understand me, mother, understand me!"
+
+His mother began to cry. She spoke at first as she always spoke, and
+then more like a mother in a poem.
+
+"Understand? What do you understand? You know nothing about life. Oh, I
+only wish you had children and your children turned against you! That's
+the only way that you will ever learn.... I worked for you so hard. I
+gave up everything for my children. And your father died, and I went on
+alone, a woman with a great burden.... What sort of life have I had?
+Sacrifice, toil, tears.... I skimped along. I wore the same dress year
+after year, for five, six years.... I hung over your sickbeds, I taught
+you at my knees. I have known the bitterness of child-bearing, and the
+bitter cry of children.... I have fought alone for my little ones....
+And you, Paul! You who were the darling of my heart, my little man, you
+who said you would take your father's place and take care of me and of
+your sisters and brother! You who were to repay me for everything; to
+give me a future, to comfort my old age, the staff I leaned on, my
+comfort, my son! I was proud of you as you grew up: so proud to see your
+pride, and your ambition. I knew you would succeed, that you would have
+fame and power and wealth, and I should be the proudest mother in the
+world! This was my dream.... Now I see you a failure, one who cares for
+nothing but self-indulgence and pleasure, a rolling stone, a flitter
+from place to place, and I--I am an old woman, deserted, left alone to
+wither in bitterness.... I gave everything to you--and you--you give
+back despair, loneliness, anguish. I gave you life: you turn on me and
+destroy me for the gift.... Oh, mother-love! What man will understand
+it--the piercing anguish, the roots that clutch the deep heart?... I
+feel the chill of death creeping over me...."
+
+The tears rolled down Paul's cheeks. He pressed her hand now with both
+of his.
+
+"Oh, mother, but I do understand! I have understood always, I have tried
+so hard to help you. I have tried so hard to be a good son. But this is
+something greater than I. We are in the hands of God, mother, and it is
+the law that the young must leave the old. Why do parents expect the
+impossible of their children? Does not the Bible say, 'You must leave
+father and mother, and cleave to me'? Didn't you leave grandmother and
+grandpa, to go to your husband? Can't you remember when you were young,
+and your whole soul carried you away to your own life and your own
+future? Mother, let us part with understanding, let us part with love."
+
+"But when are you going, Paul?"
+
+"To-night."
+
+His mother flung her arms about him desperately and clung to him....
+
+"I can't let you go, Paul," she moaned.
+
+"Oh, mother," he sobbed. "This is breaking my heart...."
+
+"It is Agnes you are going to," she whispered.
+
+"No, mother," he cried. "It is not Agnes. I am going to college. I shall
+never marry. I shall still take care of you. Think--every vacation I
+will be back here...."
+
+She relaxed, lay back, and his inventions failed. He had a confused
+sense of soothing her, of gentleness and reconciliation, of a last
+good-bye....
+
+And now he sat, head on hand, slowly realizing again the little gas-lit
+room, the shaking window, the autumn wind. A throb of fear pulsed
+through his heart. He had passed his mother's door without greeting her.
+And there was his valise, and here his tickets. And the time? It was
+nearly eleven.... A great heaviness of futility and despair weighed him
+down. He felt incapable of action. He felt that he had done some
+terrible deed--like striking his mother in the face--something
+unforgivable, unreversible, struck through and through with finality....
+He felt more and more cold and brutal, with the sullenness of the
+criminal who can't undo his crime and won't admit his guilt....
+
+Was it all over, then? Was he really leaving? Fear, and a prophetic
+breath of the devastating loneliness he should yet know, came upon him,
+paralyzed his mind, made him weak and aghast. He was going out into the
+night of death, launching on his frail raft into the barren boundless
+ocean of darkness, leaving the last landmarks, drifting out in utter
+nakedness and loneliness.... All the future grew black and impenetrable;
+but he knew shapes of terror, demons of longing and grief and guilt
+loomed there, waiting for him. He knew that he was about to understand a
+little of life in a very ancient and commonplace way: the way of
+experience and of reality: that at first hand he was to have the taste
+against his palate of that bitterness and desolation, that terror and
+helplessness, which make the songs and fictions of man one endless
+tragedy.... Destiny was taking him, as the jailer who comes to the
+condemned man's cell on the morning of the execution. There was no
+escape. No end, but death....
+
+He was leaving everything that was comfort in a bleak world, everything
+that was safe and tried and known in a world of unthinkable perils and
+mysteries. Only this he knew, still a child, still on the inside of his
+mother's house.... He knew now how terrible, how deep, how human were
+the cords that bound him to his mother, how fierce the love, by the fear
+and deadly helplessness he felt.... What could he have been about all
+these months of darkening the house, of paining his mother and the
+children, of bringing matters to such inexorable finalities? Was he
+sane? Was he now possessed of some demon, some beast of low desire?
+Freedom? What was freedom? Could there be freedom without love?
+
+And now, as he sat there, there came slow deliberate footsteps on the
+stairs. There was no mistaking the sounds. It was Cora, his older
+sister.... His heart palpitated wildly, he shook with fear, the colour
+left his cheeks, and he tried to set his face and his throat like flint
+not to betray himself. She came straight on. She knocked.
+
+"Paul," she said in a peremptory tone, clothed with all the authority of
+his mother....
+
+He grew cold all over, his eyelids narrowed; he felt brutal....
+
+"What is it?" he asked hard.
+
+"Mother wants you to come right down."
+
+"I will come," he said.
+
+Her footsteps departed.... He rose slowly, heavily, like the man who
+must now face the executioner.... He stuck his pocketbook back in his
+coat and picked up his valise. Mechanically he looked about the room.
+Then he unlocked and opened the door, shut off the gas, and went into
+the lighted hall.
+
+And as he descended the steps he felt ever smaller before the growing
+terror of the world. Never had he been more of a child than at this
+moment: never had he longed more fiercely to sob and cry out and give
+over everything.... How had this guilt descended upon him? What had he
+done? Why was all this necessary? Who was forcing him through this
+strange and frightful experience? He went on, lower and lower....
+
+The door of his mother's room was a little open. It was all as it had
+always been--the pin-point of light, the shading newspaper, the
+sick-room silence, the warm shadow.... He paused a second to summon up
+strength, to combat the monster of fear and guilt in his heart. He tried
+with all his little boyish might to smooth out his face, to set it
+straight and firm. He pushed the door, set down the valise, entered:
+pale, large-eyed, looking hard and desperate.
+
+He did not see his sister at all, though she sat under the light. His
+mother he hardly saw: had the sense of a towel binding her head, and the
+dim form under the bedclothes. He stepped clumsily--he was trembling
+so--to the foot of her bed, and grasped the brass rail for support....
+
+His mother's voice was low and thick; a terrible voice. Her throat was
+swollen, and she could speak only with difficulty. The voice accused
+him. It said plainly: "It was you did this."
+
+She said: "Paul, this has got to end."
+
+His tongue seemed the fork of a snake, his words came with such deadly
+coldness....
+
+"It will end to-night."
+
+"How ... to-night?"
+
+"I'm leaving.... I'm going west...."
+
+"West.... Where?"
+
+"To Sam's...."
+
+"Oh," said his mother....
+
+There was a long cruel silence. He shut his eyes, overcome with a sort
+of horror.... Then she turned her face a little away, and he heard the
+faintly breathed words....
+
+"This is the end of me...."
+
+Still he said nothing. She turned toward him, with a groan.
+
+"Have you nothing to say?"
+
+Again he spoke with deadly coldness....
+
+"Nothing...."
+
+She waited a moment: then she spoke....
+
+"You have no feelings. When you set out to do a thing, you will trample
+over every one. I have never been able to do anything with you. You may
+become a great man, Paul: but I pity any one who loves you, any one who
+gets in your path. You will kill whatever holds you--always.... I was a
+fool to give birth to you: a great fool to count on you.... Well, it's
+over.... You have your way...."
+
+He was amazed: he trembling there, guilty, afraid, horrified, his whole
+soul beseeching the comfort of her arms! He a cold trampler?
+
+He stood, with all the feeling of one who is falsely condemned, and yet
+with all the guilt of one who has sinned....
+
+And then, suddenly, a wild animal cry came from his mother's throat....
+
+"Oh," she cried, "how terrible it is to have children!"
+
+His heart echoed her cry.... The executioner's knife seemed to strike
+his throat....
+
+He stood a long while in the silence.... Then his mother turned in the
+bed, sideways, and covered her face with the counterpane.... His sister
+rose up stiffly, whispering:
+
+"She's going to sleep."
+
+He stood, dead.... He turned like a wound-up mechanism, went to the
+door, picked up his valise, and fumbled his way through the house....
+The outer door he shut very softly....
+
+He must take the Lexington Avenue car. Yes; that was the quickest way.
+He faced west. The great wind of autumn came with a glorious gusto,
+doubtless with flying seeds and flying leaves, chanting the song of the
+generations, and of them that die and of them that are born.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[12] Copyright, 1920, by The Dial Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by James Oppenheim.
+
+
+
+
+THE DUMMY-CHUCKER[13]
+
+#By# ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE
+
+From _The Cosmopolitan_
+
+
+There were many women on East Fourteenth Street. With the seeing eye of
+the artist, the dummy-chucker looked them over and rejected them.
+Kindly-seeming, generously fat, the cheap movie houses disgorged them. A
+dozen alien tongues smote the air, and every one of them hinted of far
+lands of poverty, of journeys made and hardships undergone. No better
+field for beggary in all Manhattan's bounteous acreage.
+
+But the dummy-chucker shook his head and shuffled ever westward. These
+were good souls, but--they thought in cents. Worse than that, they
+translated their financial thoughts into the pitiful coinage of their
+birthplaces. And in the pocket of the dummy-chucker rested a silver
+dollar.
+
+A gaunt man, who towered high, and whose tongue held the cadences of the
+wide spaces, had slipped this dollar into the receptive hand of the
+dummy-chucker. True, it was almost a fortnight ago, and the man might
+have gone back to his Western home--but Broadway had yielded him up to
+the dummy-chucker. Broadway might yield up such another.
+
+At Union Square, the dummy-chucker turned north. Past the Flatiron
+Building he shuffled, until, at length, the Tenderloin unfolded itself
+before him. These were the happy hunting-grounds!
+
+Of course--and he glanced behind him quickly--there were more fly cops
+on Broadway than on the lower East Side. One of them had dug his bony
+fingers between the shabby collar of the dummy-chucker's coat and the
+lank hair that hung down his neck. He had yanked the dummy-chucker to
+his feet. He had dragged his victim to a patrol-box; he had taken him to
+a police station, whence he had been conveyed to Jefferson Market Court,
+where a judge had sentenced him to a sojourn on Blackwell's Island.
+
+That had been ten days ago. This very day, the municipal ferry had
+landed the dummy-chucker, with others of his slinking kind, upon
+Manhattan's shores again. Not for a long time would the memory of the
+Island menu be effaced from the dummy-chucker's palate, the locked doors
+be banished from his mental vision.
+
+A man might be arrested on Broadway, but he might also get the money.
+Timorously, the dummy-chucker weighed the two possibilities. He felt the
+dollar in his pocket. At a street in the Forties, he turned westward.
+Beyond Eighth Avenue there was a place where the shadow of prohibition
+was only a shadow.
+
+Prices had gone up, but, as Finisterre Joe's bartender informed him,
+there was more kick in a glass of the stuff that cost sixty cents to-day
+than there had been in a barrel of the old juice. And, for a good
+customer, Finisterre Joe's bartender would shade the price a trifle. The
+dummy-chucker received two portions of the crudely blended poison that
+passed for whisky in exchange for his round silver dollar. It was with
+less of a shuffle and more of a stride that he retraced his steps toward
+Broadway.
+
+Slightly north of Times Square, he surveyed his field of action. Across
+the street, a vaudeville house was discharging its mirth-surfeited
+audience. Half a block north, laughing groups testified that the comedy
+they had just left had been as funny as its press-agent claimed. The
+dummy-chucker shook his head. He moved south, his feet taking on that
+shuffle which they had lost temporarily.
+
+"She Loved and Lost"--that was the name of the picture being run this
+week at the Concorde. Outside was billed a huge picture of the star, a
+lady who received more money for making people weep than most actors
+obtain for making them laugh. The dummy-chucker eyed the picture
+approvingly. He took his stand before the main entrance. This was the
+place! If he tried to do business with a flock of people that had just
+seen Charlie Chaplin, he'd fail. He knew! Fat women who'd left the twins
+at home with the neighbor's cook in order that they might have a good
+cry at the Concorde--these were his mutton-heads.
+
+He reeled slightly as several flappers passed--just for practise. Ten
+days on Blackwell's hadn't spoiled his form. They drew away from him;
+yet, from their manners, he knew that they did not suspect him of being
+drunk. Well, hurrah for prohibition, after all! Drunkenness was the last
+thing people suspected of a hard-working man nowadays. He slipped his
+hand in his pocket. They were coming now--the fat women with the babies
+at home, their handkerchiefs still at their eyes. His hand slipped to
+his mouth. His jaws moved savagely. One thing was certain: out of
+to-day's stake he'd buy some decent-tasting soap. This awful stuff that
+he'd borrowed from the Island----
+
+The stoutest woman paused; she screamed faintly as the dummy-chucker
+staggered, pitched forward, and fell at her short-vamped feet. Excitedly
+she grasped her neighbor's arm.
+
+"He's gotta fit!"
+
+The neighbor bent over the prostrate dummy-chucker.
+
+"Ep'lepsy," she announced. "Look at the foam on his lips."
+
+"Aw, the poor man!"
+
+"Him so strong-looking, too!"
+
+"Ain't it the truth? These husky-looking men sometimes are the
+sickliest."
+
+The dummy-chucker stirred. He sat up feebly. With his sleeve, he wiped
+away the foam. Dazedly he spoke.
+
+"If I had a bite to eat----"
+
+He looked upward at the first stout woman. Well and wisely had he chosen
+his scene. Movie tickets cost fractions of a dollar. There is always
+some stray silver in the bead bag of a movie patron. Into the
+dummy-chucker's outstretched palm fell pennies, nickels, dimes,
+quarters. There was present to-day no big-hearted Westerner with silver
+dollars, but here was comparative wealth. Already the dummy-chucker saw
+himself again at Finisterre Joe's, this time to purchase no bottled
+courage but to buy decantered ease.
+
+"T'ank, ladies," he murmured. "If I can get a bite to eat and rest
+up----"
+
+"'Rest up!'" The shrill jeer of a newsboy broke in upon his pathetic
+speech. "Rest up again on the Island! That's the kind of a rest up
+you'll get, y' big tramp."
+
+"Can't you see the man's sick?" The stoutest one turned indignantly upon
+the newsboy. But the scoffer held his ground.
+
+"'Sick?' Sure he's sick! Eatin' soap makes anyone sick. Youse dames is
+easy. He's chuckin' a dummy."
+
+"'A dummy?'"
+
+The dummy-chucker sat a bit straighter.
+
+"Sure, ma'am. That's his game. He t'rows phony fits. He eats a bit of
+soap and makes his mouth foam. Last week, he got pinched right near
+here----"
+
+But the dummy-chucker heard no more. He rolled sidewise just as the cry:
+"Police!" burst from the woman's lips. He reached the curb, rose, burst
+through the gathering crowd, and rounded a corner at full speed.
+
+He was half-way to Eighth Avenue, and burning lungs had slowed him to a
+jog-trot, when a motor-car pulled up alongside the curb. It kept gentle
+pace with the fugitive. A shrewd-featured young man leaned from its
+fashionably sloped wheel.
+
+"Better hop aboard," he suggested. "That policeman is fat, but he has
+speed."
+
+The dummy-chucker glanced over his shoulder. Looming high as the
+Woolworth Building, fear overcoming the dwarfing tendency of distance,
+came a policeman. The dummy-chucker leaped to the motor's running-board.
+He climbed into the vacant front seat.
+
+"Thanks, feller," he grunted. "A li'l speed, please."
+
+The young man chuckled. He rounded the corner into Eighth Avenue and
+darted north among the trucks.
+
+At Columbus Circle, the dummy-chucker spoke.
+
+"Thanks again, friend," he said. "I'll be steppin' off here."
+
+His rescuer glanced at him.
+
+"Want to earn a hundred dollars?"
+
+"Quitcher kiddin'," said the dummy-chucker.
+
+"No, no; this is serious," said the young man.
+
+The dummy-chucker leaned luxuriously back in his seat.
+
+"Take me _anywhere_, friend," he said.
+
+Half-way round the huge circle at Fifty-ninth Street, the young man
+guided the car. Then he shot into the park. They curved eastward. They
+came out on Fifth Avenue, somewhere in the Seventies. They shot eastward
+another half-block, and then the car stopped in front of an
+apartment-house. The young man pressed the button on the steering-wheel.
+In response to the short blast of the electric horn, a uniformed man
+appeared. The young man alighted. The dummy-chucker followed suit.
+
+"Take the car around to the garage, Andrews," said the young man. He
+nodded to the dummy-chucker. In a daze, the mendicant followed his
+rescuer. He entered a gorgeously mirrored and gilded hall. He stepped
+into an elevator chauffeured by a West Indian of the haughtiest blood.
+The dummy-chucker was suddenly conscious of his tattered garb, his
+ill-fitting, run-down shoes. He stepped, when they alighted from the
+lift, as gingerly as though he trod on tacks.
+
+A servant in livery, as had been the waiting chauffeur downstairs,
+opened a door. If he was surprised at his master's choice of guest, he
+was too well trained to show it. He did not rebel even when ordered to
+serve sandwiches and liquor to the dummy-chucker.
+
+"You seem hungry," commented the young man.
+
+The dummy-chucker reached for another sandwich with his left hand while
+he poured himself a drink of genuine Scotch with his right.
+
+"_And_ thirsty," he grunted.
+
+"Go to it," observed his host genially.
+
+The dummy-chucker went to it for a good ten minutes. Then he leaned back
+in the heavily upholstered chair which the man servant had drawn up for
+him. He stared round him.
+
+"Smoke?" asked his host.
+
+The dummy-chucker nodded. He selected a slim panetela and pinched it
+daintily between the nails of his thumb and forefinger. His host watched
+the operation with interest.
+
+"Why?" he asked.
+
+"Better than cuttin' the end off," explained the dummy-chucker. "It's a
+good smoke," he added, puffing.
+
+"You know tobacco," said his host. "Where did you learn?"
+
+"Oh, we all have our ups and downs," replied the dummy-chucker. "But
+don't get nervous. I ain't goin' to tell you that I was a millionaire's
+son, educated at Harvard. I'm a bum."
+
+"Doesn't seem to bother you," said his host.
+
+"It don't," asserted the dummy-chucker. "Except when the police butt
+into my game. I just got off Blackwell's Island this morning."
+
+"And almost went back this afternoon."
+
+The dummy-chucker nodded.
+
+"Almost," he said. His eyes wandered around the room. "_Some_ dump!" he
+stated. Then his manner became business-like. "You mentioned a hundred
+dollars--what for?"
+
+The young man shrugged.
+
+"Not hard work. You merely have to look like a gentleman, and act
+like----"
+
+"Like a bum?" asked the dummy-chucker.
+
+"Well, something like that."
+
+The dummy-chucker passed his hand across his stubby chin.
+
+"Shoot!" he said. "Anything short of murder--_anything_, friend."
+
+His host leaned eagerly forward.
+
+"There's a girl--" he began.
+
+The dummy-chucker nodded.
+
+"There always is," he interrupted. "I forgot to mention that I bar
+kidnaping, too."
+
+"It's barred," said the young man. He hitched his chair a trifle nearer
+his guest. "She's beautiful. She's young."
+
+"And the money? The coin? The good red gold?"
+
+"I have enough for two. I don't care about her money."
+
+"Neither do I," said the dummy-chucker; "so long as I get my hundred.
+Shoot!"
+
+"About a year ago," resumed the host, "she accepted, after a long
+courtship, a young man by the name of--oh, let's call him Jones."
+
+The dummy-chucker inhaled happily.
+
+"Call him any darned thing you like," he said cheerily.
+
+"Jones was a drunkard," said the host.
+
+"And she married him?" The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted slightly.
+
+"No. She told him that if he'd quit drinking she'd marry him. She
+stipulated that he go without drink for one year."
+
+The dummy-chucker reached for a fresh cigar. He lighted it and leaned
+back farther in the comfortable chair.
+
+"Jones," continued the young man, "had tried to quit before. He knew
+himself pretty well. He knew that, even with war-time prohibition just
+round the corner, he couldn't keep away from liquor. Not while he stayed
+in New York. But a classmate of his had been appointed head of an
+expedition that was to conduct exploration work in Brazil. He asked his
+classmate for a place in the party. You see, he figured that in the
+wilds of Brazil there wouldn't be any chance for drunkenness."
+
+"A game guy," commented the dummy-chucker. "Well, what happened?"
+
+"He died of jungle-fever two months ago," was the answer. "The news just
+reached Rio Janeiro yesterday."
+
+The dummy-chucker lifted his glass of Scotch.
+
+"To a regular feller," he said, and drank. He set his glass down gently.
+"And the girl? I suppose she's all shot to pieces?"
+
+"She doesn't know," said the host quietly.
+
+The dummy-chucker's eyebrows lifted again.
+
+"I begin to get you," he said. "I'm the messenger from Brazil who breaks
+the sad news to her, eh?"
+
+The young man shook his head.
+
+"The news isn't to be broken to her--not yet. You see--well, I was
+Jones' closest friend. He left his will with me, his personal effects,
+and all that. So I'm the one that received the wire of his death. In a
+month or so, of course, it will be published in the newspapers--when
+letters have come from the explorers. But, just now, I'm the only one
+that knows it."
+
+"Except me," said the dummy-chucker.
+
+The young man smiled dryly.
+
+"Except you. And you won't tell. Ever wear evening clothes?"
+
+The dummy-chucker stiffened. Then he laughed sardonically.
+
+"Oh, yes; when I was at Princeton. What's the idea?"
+
+His host studied him carefully.
+
+"Well, with a shave, and a hair-cut, and a manicure, and the proper
+clothing, and the right setting--well, if a person had only a quick
+glance--that person might think you were Jones."
+
+The dummy-chucker carefully brushed the ashes from his cigar upon a
+tray.
+
+"I guess I'm pretty stupid to-night. I still don't see it."
+
+"You will," asserted his host. "You see, she's a girl who's seen a great
+deal of the evil of drink. She has a horror of it. If she thought that
+Jones had broken his pledge to her, she'd throw him over."
+
+"'Throw him over?' But he's _dead_!" said the dummy-chucker.
+
+"She doesn't know that," retorted his host.
+
+"Why don't you tell her?"
+
+"Because I want to marry her."
+
+"Well, I should think the quickest way to get her would be to tell her
+about Jones----"
+
+"You don't happen to know the girl," interrupted the other. "She's a
+girl of remarkable conscience. If I should tell her that Jones died in
+Brazil, she'd enshrine him in her memory. He'd be a hero who had died
+upon the battle-field. More than that--he'd be a hero who had died upon
+the battle-field in a war to which she had sent him. His death would be
+upon her soul. Her only expiation would be to be faithful to him
+forever."
+
+"I won't argue about it," said the dummy-chucker. "I don't know her.
+Only--I guess your whisky has got me. I don't see it at all."
+
+His host leaned eagerly forward now.
+
+"She's going to the opera to-night with her parents. But, before she
+goes, she's going to dine with me at the Park Square. Suppose, while
+she's there, Jones should come in. Suppose that he should come in
+reeling, noisy, _drunk_! She'd marry me to-morrow."
+
+"I'll take your word for it," said the dummy-chucker. "Only, when she's
+learned that Jones had died two months ago in Brazil----"
+
+"She'll be married to me then," responded the other fiercely. "What I
+get, I can hold. If she were Jones' wife, I'd tell her of his death. I'd
+know that, sooner or later, I'd win her. But if she learns now that he
+died while struggling to make himself worthy of her, she'll never give
+to another man what she withheld from him."
+
+"I see," said the dummy-chucker slowly. "And you want me to----"
+
+"There'll be a table by the door in the main dining-room engaged in
+Jones' name. You'll walk in there at a quarter to eight. You'll wear
+Jones' dinner clothes. I have them here. You'll wear the studs that he
+wore, his cuff-links. More than that, you'll set down upon the table,
+with a flourish, his monogrammed flask. You'll be drunk, noisy,
+disgraceful----"
+
+"How long will I be all that--in the hotel?" asked the dummy-chucker
+dryly.
+
+"That's exactly the point," said the other. "You'll last about thirty
+seconds. The girl and I will be on the far side of the room. I'll take
+care that she sees you enter. Then, when you've been quietly ejected,
+I'll go over to the _mAcitre d'hA'tel_ to make inquiries. I'll bring back
+to the girl the flask which you will have left upon the table. If she
+has any doubt that you are Jones, the flask will dispel it.
+
+"And then?" asked the dummy-chucker.
+
+"Why, then," responded his host, "I propose to her. You see, I think it
+was pity that made her accept Jones in the beginning. I think that she
+cares for me."
+
+"And you really think that I look enough like Jones to put this over?"
+
+"In the shaded light of the dining-room, in Jones' clothes--well, I'm
+risking a hundred dollars on it. Will you do it?"
+
+The dummy-chucker grinned.
+
+"Didn't I say I'd do _anything_, barring murder? Where are the clothes?"
+
+One hour and a half later, the dummy-chucker stared at himself in the
+long mirror in his host's dressing-room. He had bathed, not as
+Blackwell's Island prisoners bathe, but in a luxurious tub that had a
+head-rest, in scented water, soft as the touch of a baby's fingers. Then
+his host's man servant had cut his hair, had shaved him, had massaged
+him until color crept into the pale cheeks. The sheerest of knee-length
+linen underwear touched a body that knew only rough cotton. Silk socks,
+heavy, gleaming, snugly encased his ankles. Upon his feet were correctly
+dull pumps. That the trousers were a wee bit short mattered little. In
+these dancing-days, trousers should not be too long. And the fit of the
+coat over his shoulders--he carried them in a fashion unwontedly
+straight as he gazed at his reflection--balanced the trousers' lack of
+length. The soft shirt-bosom gave freely, comfortably as he breathed.
+Its plaited whiteness enthralled him. He turned anxiously to his host.
+
+"Will I do?" he asked.
+
+"Better than I'd hoped," said the other. "You look like a gentleman."
+
+The dummy-chucker laughed gaily.
+
+"I feel like one," he declared.
+
+"You understand what you are to do?" demanded the host.
+
+"It ain't a hard part to act," replied the dummy-chucker.
+
+"And you _can_ act," said the other. "The way you fooled those women in
+front of the Concorde proved that you----"
+
+"Sh-sh!" exclaimed the dummy-chucker reproachfully. "Please don't remind
+me of what I was before I became a gentleman."
+
+His host laughed.
+
+"You're all right." He looked at his watch. "I'll have to leave now.
+I'll send the car back after you. Don't be afraid of trouble with the
+hotel people. I'll explain that I know you, and fix matters up all
+right. Just take the table at the right hand side as you enter----"
+
+"Oh, I've got it all right," said the dummy-chucker. "Better slip me
+something on account. I may have to pay something----"
+
+"You get nothing now," was the stern answer. "One hundred dollars when I
+get back here. And," he added, "if it should occur to you at the hotel
+that you might pawn these studs, or the flask, or the clothing for more
+than a hundred, let me remind you that my chauffeur will be watching one
+entrance, my valet another, and my chef another."
+
+The dummy-chucker returned his gaze scornfully.
+
+"Do I look," he asked, "like the sort of man who'd _steal_?"
+
+His host shook his head.
+
+"You certainly don't," he admitted.
+
+The dummy-chucker turned back to the mirror. He was still entranced with
+his own reflection, twenty minutes later, when the valet told him that
+the car was waiting. He looked like a millionaire. He stole another
+glance at himself after he had slipped easily into the fur-lined
+overcoat that the valet held for him, after he had set somewhat rakishly
+upon his head the soft black-felt hat that was the latest accompaniment
+to the dinner coat.
+
+Down-stairs, he spoke to Andrews, the chauffeur.
+
+"Drive across the Fifty-ninth Street bridge first."
+
+The chauffeur stared at him.
+
+"Who you given' orders to?" he demanded.
+
+The dummy-chucker stepped closer to the man.
+
+"You heard my order?"
+
+His hands, busily engaged in buttoning his gloves, did not clench. His
+voice was not raised. And Andrews must have outweighed him by thirty
+pounds. Yet the chauffeur stepped back and touched his hat.
+
+"Yes, sir," he muttered.
+
+The dummy-chucker smiled.
+
+"The lower classes," he said to himself, "know rank and position when
+they see it."
+
+His smile became a grin as he sank back in the limousine that was his
+host's evening conveyance. It became almost complacent as the car slid
+down Park Avenue. And when, at length, it had reached the center of the
+great bridge that spans the East River, he knocked upon the glass. The
+chauffeur obediently stopped the car. The dummy-chucker's grin was
+absolutely complacent now.
+
+Down below, there gleamed lights, the lights of ferries, of sound
+steamers, and--of Blackwell's Island. This morning, he had left there, a
+lying mendicant. To-night, he was a gentleman. He knocked again upon the
+glass. Then, observing the speaking-tube, he said through it languidly:
+
+"The Park Square, Andrews."
+
+An obsequious doorman threw open the limousine door as the car stopped
+before the great hotel. He handed the dummy-chucker a ticket.
+
+"Number of your car, sir," he said obsequiously.
+
+"Ah, yes, of course," said the dummy-chucker. He felt in his pocket.
+Part of the silver that the soft-hearted women of the movies had
+bestowed upon him this afternoon found repository in the doorman's hand.
+
+A uniformed boy whirled the revolving door that the dummy-chucker might
+pass into the hotel.
+
+"The coat-room? Dining here, sir? Past the news-stand, sir, to your
+left. Thank you, sir." The boy's bow was as profound as though the
+quarter in his palm had been placed there by a duke.
+
+The girl who received his coat and hat smiled as pleasantly and
+impersonally upon the dummy-chucker as she did upon the whiskered,
+fine-looking old gentleman who handed her his coat at the same time. She
+called the dummy-chucker's attention to the fact that his tie was a
+trifle loose.
+
+The dummy-chucker walked to the big mirror that stands in the corner
+made by the corridor that parallels Fifty-ninth Street and the corridor
+that separates the tea-room from the dining-room. His clumsy fingers
+found difficulty with the tie. The fine-looking old gentleman, adjusting
+his own tie, stepped closer.
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. May I assist you?"
+
+The dummy-chucker smiled a grateful assent. The old gentleman fumbled a
+moment with the tie.
+
+"I think that's better," he said. He bowed as one man of the world might
+to another, and turned away.
+
+Under his breath, the dummy-chucker swore gently.
+
+"You'd think, the way he helped me, that I belonged to the Four
+Hundred."
+
+He glanced down the corridor. In the tea-room were sitting groups who
+awaited late arrivals. Beautiful women, correctly garbed,
+distinguished-looking men. Their laughter sounded pleasantly above the
+subdued strains of the orchestra. Many of them looked at the
+dummy-chucker. Their eyes rested upon him for that well-bred moment that
+denotes acceptance.
+
+"One of themselves," said the dummy-chucker to himself.
+
+Well, why not? Once again he looked at himself in the mirror. There
+might be handsomer men present in this hotel, but--was there any one who
+wore his clothes better? He turned and walked down the corridor.
+
+The _mAcitre d'hA'tel_ stepped forward inquiringly as the dummy-chucker
+hesitated in the doorway.
+
+"A table, sir?"
+
+"You have one reserved for me. This right-hand one by the door."
+
+"Ah, yes, of course, sir. This way, sir."
+
+He turned toward the table. Over the heads of intervening diners, the
+dummy-chucker saw his host. The shaded lights upon the table at which
+the young man sat revealed, not too clearly yet well enough, the
+features of a girl.
+
+"A lady!" said the dummy-chucker, under his breath. "The real thing!"
+
+As he stood there, the girl raised her head. She did not look toward the
+dummy-chucker, could not see him. But he could see the proud line of her
+throat, the glory of her golden hair. And opposite her he could see the
+features of his host, could note how illy that shrewd nose and slit of a
+mouth consorted with the gentle face of the girl. And then, as the
+_mAcitre d'hA'tel_ beckoned, he remembered that he had left the flask, the
+monogrammed flask, in his overcoat pocket.
+
+"Just a moment," he said.
+
+He turned and walked back toward the corner where was his coat. In the
+distance, he saw some one, approaching him, noted the free stride, the
+carriage of the head, the set of the shoulders. And then, suddenly, he
+saw that the "some one" was himself. The mirror was guilty of the
+illusion.
+
+Once again he stood before it, admiring himself. He summoned the face of
+the girl who was sitting in the dining-room before his mental vision.
+And then he turned abruptly to the check-girl.
+
+"I've changed my mind," he said. "My coat, please."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+He was lounging before the open fire when three-quarters of an hour
+later his host was admitted to the luxurious apartment. Savagely the
+young man pulled off his coat and approached the dummy-chucker.
+
+"I hardly expected to find you here," he said.
+
+The dummy-chucker shrugged.
+
+"You said the doors were watched. I couldn't make an easy getaway. So I
+rode back here in your car. And when I got here, your man made me wait,
+so--here we are," he finished easily.
+
+"'Here we are!' Yes! But when you were there--I saw you at the entrance
+to the dining-room--for God's sake, why didn't you do what you'd agreed
+to do?"
+
+The dummy-chucker turned languidly in his chair. He eyed his host
+curiously.
+
+"Listen, feller," he said: "I told you that I drew the line at murder,
+didn't I?"
+
+"'Murder?' What do you mean? What murder was involved?"
+
+The dummy-chucker idly blew a smoke ring.
+
+"Murder of faith in a woman's heart," he said slowly. "Look at me! Do I
+look the sort who'd play your dirty game?"
+
+The young man stood over him.
+
+"Bannon," he called. The valet entered the room. "Take the clothes off
+this--this bum!" snapped the host. "Give him his rags."
+
+He clenched his fists, but the dummy-chucker merely shrugged. The young
+man drew back while his guest followed the valet into another room.
+
+Ten minutes later, the host seized the dummy-chucker by the tattered
+sleeve of his grimy jacket. He drew him before the mirror.
+
+"Take a look at yourself, you--bum!" he snapped. "Do you look, now, like
+the sort of man who'd refuse to earn an easy hundred?"
+
+The dummy-chucker stared at himself. Gone was the debonair gentleman of
+a quarter of an hour ago. Instead, there leered back at him a
+pasty-faced, underfed vagrant, dressed in the tatters of unambitious,
+satisfied poverty.
+
+"Bannon," called the host, "throw him out!"
+
+For a moment, the dummy-chucker's shoulders squared, as they had been
+squared when the dinner jacket draped them. Then they sagged. He offered
+no resistance when Bannon seized his collar. And Bannon, the valet, was
+a smaller man than himself.
+
+He cringed when the colored elevator-man sneered at him. He dodged when
+little Bannon, in the mirrored vestibule raised a threatening hand. And
+he shuffled as he turned toward Central Park.
+
+But as he neared Columbus Circle, his gait quickened. At Finisterre
+Joe's he'd get a drink. He tumbled in his pockets. Curse the luck! He'd
+given every cent of his afternoon earnings to doormen and pages and
+coat-room girls!
+
+His pace slackened again as he turned down Broadway. His feet were
+dragging as he reached the Concorde moving-picture theater. His hand,
+sunk deep in his torn pocket, touched something. It was a tiny piece of
+soap.
+
+As the audience filed sadly out from the teary, gripping drama of "She
+Loved And Lost," the dummy-chucker's hand went from his pocket to his
+lips. He reeled, staggered, fell. His jaws moved savagely. Foam appeared
+upon his lips. A fat woman shrank away from him, then leaned forward in
+quick sympathy.
+
+"He's gotta fit!" she cried.
+
+"Ep'lepsy," said her companion pityingly.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[13] Copyright, 1920, by The International Magazine Company. Copyright,
+1921, by Arthur Somers Roche.
+
+
+
+
+BUTTERFLIES[14]
+
+#By# ROSE SIDNEY
+
+From _The Pictorial Review_
+
+
+The wind rose in a sharp gust, rattling the insecure windows and sighing
+forlornly about the corners of the house. The door unlatched itself,
+swung inward hesitatingly, and hung wavering for a moment on its sagging
+hinges. A formless cloud of gray fog blew into the warm, steamy room.
+But whatever ghostly visitant had paused upon the threshold, he had
+evidently decided not to enter, for the catch snapped shut with a quick,
+passionate vigor. The echo of the slamming door rang eerily through the
+house.
+
+Mart Brenner's wife laid down the ladle with which she had been stirring
+the contents of a pot that was simmering on the big, black stove, and
+dragging her crippled foot behind her, she hobbled heavily to the door.
+
+As she opened it a new horde of fog-wraiths blew in. The world was a
+gray, wet blanket. Not a light from the village below pierced the mist,
+and the lonely army of tall cedars on the black hill back of the house
+was hidden completely.
+
+"Who's there?" Mrs. Brenner hailed. But her voice fell flat and muffled.
+Far off on the beach she could dimly hear the long wail of a fog-horn.
+
+The faint throb of hope stilled in her breast. She had not really
+expected to find any one at the door unless perhaps it should be a
+stranger who had missed his way at the cross-roads. There had been one
+earlier in the afternoon when the fog first came. But her husband had
+been at home then and his surly manner quickly cut short the stranger's
+attempts at friendliness. This ugly way of Mart's had isolated them
+from all village intercourse early in their life on Cedar Hill.
+
+Like a buzzard's nest, their home hung over the village on the
+unfriendly sides of the bleak slope. Visitors were few and always
+reluctant, even strangers, for the village told weird tales of Mart
+Brenner and his kin. The village said that he--and all those who
+belonged to him as well--were marked for evil and disaster. Disaster had
+truly written itself throughout their history. His mother was mad, a
+tragic madness of bloody prophecies and dim fears; his only son a
+witless creature of eighteen, who for all his height and bulk, spent his
+days catching butterflies in the woods on the hill, and his nights in
+laboriously pinning them, wings outspread, upon the bare walls of the
+house.
+
+The room where the Brenner family lived its queer, taciturn life was
+tapestried in gold, the glowing tapestry of swarms of outspread yellow
+butterflies sweeping in gilded tides from the rough floors to the black
+rafters overhead.
+
+Olga Brenner herself was no less tragic than her family. On her face,
+written in the acid of pain, was the history of the blows and cruelty
+that had warped her active body. Owing to her crippled foot, her entire
+left side sagged hopelessly and her arm swung away, above it, like a
+branch from a decayed tree. But more saddening than her distorted body
+was the lonely soul that looked out of her tired faded eyes.
+
+She was essentially a village woman with a profound love of its
+intimacies and gossip, its fence-corner neighborliness. The horror with
+which the village regarded her, as the wife of Mart Brenner, was an
+eating sore. It was greater than the tragedy of her poor, witless son,
+the hatred of old Mrs. Brenner, and her ever-present fear of Mart. She
+had never quite given up her unreasoning hope that some day some one
+might come to the house in one of Mart's long, unexplained absences and
+sit down and talk with her over a cup of tea. She put away the feeble
+hope again as she turned back into the dim room and closed the door
+behind her.
+
+"Must have been that bit of wind," she meditated. "It plays queer tricks
+sometimes."
+
+She went to the mantel and lighted the dull lamp. By the flicker she
+read the face of the clock.
+
+"Tobey's late!" she exclaimed uneasily. Her mind never rested from its
+fear for Tobey. His childlike mentality made him always the same burden
+as when she had rocked him hour after hour, a scrawny mite of a baby on
+her breast.
+
+"It's a fearful night for him to be out!" she muttered.
+
+"Blood! Blood!" said a tragic voice from a dark corner by the stove.
+Barely visible in the ruddy half-dark of the room a pair of demoniac
+eyes met hers.
+
+Mrs. Brenner threw her shriveled and wizened mother-in-law an angry and
+contemptuous glance.
+
+"Be still!" she commanded. "'Pears to me that's all you ever
+say--blood!"
+
+The glittering eyes fell away from hers in a sullen obedience. But the
+tragic voice went on intoning stubbornly, "Blood on his hands! Red!
+Dripping! I see blood!"
+
+Mrs. Brenner shuddered. "Seems like you could shut up a spell!" she
+complained.
+
+The old woman's voice trailed into a broken and fitful whispering.
+Olga's commands were the only laws she knew, and she obeyed them. Mrs.
+Brenner went back to the stove. But her eyes kept returning to the clock
+and thence to the darkening square of window where the fog pressed
+heavily into the very room.
+
+Out of the gray silence came a shattering sound that sent the ladle
+crashing out of Mrs. Brenner's nerveless hand and brought a moan from
+the dozing old woman!
+
+It was a scream, a long, piercing scream, so intense, so agonized that
+it went echoing about the room as tho a disembodied spirit were
+shrieking under the rafters! It was a scream of terror, an innocent, a
+heart-broken scream!
+
+"Tobey!" cried Mrs. Brenner, her face rigid.
+
+The old woman began to pick at her ragged skirt, mumbling "Blood! Blood
+on his hands! I see it!"
+
+"That was on the hill," said Mrs. Brenner slowly, steadying her voice.
+
+She put her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with
+agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again.
+At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There was no
+other sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner had ceased her
+mouthing.
+
+Mrs. Brenner stood motionless, with her hand against her trembling lips,
+her head bent forward for four of the dull intervals between the
+siren-call.
+
+Then there came the sound of steps stumbling around the house. Mrs.
+Brenner, with her painful hobble, reached the door before the steps
+paused there, and threw it open.
+
+The feeble light fell on the round, vacant face of her son, his
+inevitable pasteboard box, grim with much handling, clutched close to
+his big breast, and in it the soft beating and thudding of imprisoned
+wings.
+
+Mrs. Brenner's voice was scarcely more than a whisper, "Tobey!" but it
+rose shrilly as she cried, "Where you been? What was that scream?"
+
+Tobey stumbled past her headlong into the house, muttering, "I'm cold!"
+
+She shut the door and followed him to the stove, where he stood shaking
+himself and beating at his damp clothes with clumsy fingers.
+
+"What was that scream?" she asked him tensely. She knotted her rough
+fingers as she waited for his answer.
+
+"I dunno," he grunted sullenly. His thick lower lip shoved itself
+forward, baby-fashion.
+
+"Where you been?" she persisted.
+
+As he did not answer she coaxed him, "Aw, come on, Tobey. Tell ma. Where
+you been?"
+
+"I been catching butterflies," he answered. "I got a big one this time,"
+with an air of triumph.
+
+"Where was you when you heard the scream?" she asked him cunningly.
+
+He gave a slow shake of his head. "I dunno," he answered in his dull
+voice.
+
+A big shiver shook him. His teeth chattered and he crouched down on his
+knees before the open oven-door.
+
+"I'm cold," he complained. Mrs. Brenner came close to him and laid her
+hand on his wet, matted hair. "Tobey's a bad boy," she scolded. "You
+mustn't go out in the wet like this. Your hair's soaked."
+
+She got down stiffly on her lame knees. "Sit down," she ordered, "and
+I'll take off your shoes. They're as wet as a dish-rag."
+
+"They're full of water, too," Tobey grumbled as he sprawled on the
+floor, sticking one big, awkward foot into her lap. "The water in there
+makes me cold."
+
+"You spoil all your pa's shoes that away," said Mrs. Brenner, her head
+bent over her task. "He told you not to go round in the wet with 'em any
+more. He'll give you a lashing if he comes in and sees your shoes. I'll
+have to try and get 'em dry before he comes home. Anyways," with a
+breath of deep relief, "I'm glad it ain't that red clay from the hill.
+That never comes off."
+
+The boy paid no attention to her. He was investigating the contents of
+his box, poking a fat, dirty forefinger around among its fluttering
+contents. There was a flash of yellow wings, and with a crow of triumph
+the boy shut the lid.
+
+"The big one's just more than flapping," he chuckled. "I had an awful
+hard time to catch him. I had to run and run. Look at him, Ma," the boy
+urged. She shook her head.
+
+"I ain't got the time," she said, almost roughly. "I got to get these
+shoes off'n you afore your father gets home, Tobey, or you'll get a
+awful hiding. Like as not you'll get it anyways, if he's mad. Better get
+into bed."
+
+"Naw!" Tobey protested. "I seen pa already. I want my supper out here! I
+don't want to go to bed!"
+
+Mrs. Brenner paused. "Where was pa?" she asked.
+
+But Tobey's stretch of coherent thinking was past. "I dunno!" he
+muttered.
+
+Mrs. Brenner sighed. She pulled off the sticky shoes and rose stiffly.
+
+"Go get in bed," she said.
+
+"Aw, Ma, I want to stay up with my butterflies," the boy pleaded. Two
+big tears rolled down his fat cheeks. In his queer, clouded world he had
+learned one certain fact. He could almost always move his mother with
+tears.
+
+But this time she was firm. "Do as I told you!" she ordered him. "Mebbe
+if you're in bed your father won't be thinking about you. And I'll try
+to dry these shoes afore he thinks about them." She took the grimy box
+from his resisting fingers, and, holding it in one hand, pulled him to
+his feet and pushed him off to his bedroom.
+
+When she had closed the door on his wail she returned and laid the box
+on the shelf. Then she hurried to gather up the shoes. Something on her
+hand as she put it out for the sodden shoes caught her eye and she
+straightened, holding her hand up where the feeble light from the shelf
+caught it.
+
+"I've cut myself," she said aloud. "There's blood on my hand. It must
+'a' been on those lacings of Tobey's."
+
+The old woman in the corner roused. "Blood!" she screeched. "Olga! Blood
+on his hands!"
+
+Mrs. Brenner jumped. "You old screech-owl!" she cried. She wiped her
+hand quickly on her dirty apron, and held it up again to see the cut.
+But there was no cut on her hand! Where had that blood come from? From
+Tobey's shoes?
+
+And who was it that had screamed on the hill? She felt herself enwrapped
+in a mist of puzzling doubts.
+
+She snatched up the shoes, searching them with agonized eyes. But the
+wet and pulpy mass had no stain. Only the wet sands and the slimy
+water-weeds of the beach clung to them.
+
+Then where had the blood come from? It was at this instant that she
+became conscious of shouts on the hillside. She limped to the door and
+held it open a crack. Very faintly she could see the bobbing lights of
+torches. A voice carried down to her.
+
+"Here's where I found his hat. That's why I turned off back of these
+trees. And right there I found his body!"
+
+"Are you sure he's dead?" quavered another voice.
+
+"Stone-dead!"
+
+Olga Brenner shut the door. But she did not leave it immediately. She
+stood leaning against it, clutching the wet shoes, her staring eyes
+glazing.
+
+Tobey was strong. He had flown into childish rages sometimes and had
+hurt her with his undisciplined strength. Where was Mart? Tobey had seen
+him. Perhaps they had fought. Her mind refused to go further. But little
+subtle undercurrents pressed in on her. Tobey hated and feared his
+father. And Mart was always enraged at the sight of his half-witted son.
+What _had_ happened? And yet no matter what had occurred, Tobey had not
+been on the hill. His shoes bore mute testimony to that. And the scream
+had been on the slope. She frowned.
+
+Her body more bent than ever, she hobbled slowly over to the stove and
+laid the shoes on the big shelf above it, spreading them out to the
+rising heat. She had barely arranged them when there was again the sound
+of approaching footsteps. These feet, however, did not stumble. They
+were heavy and certain. Mrs. Brenner snatched at the shoes, gathered
+them up, and turned to run. But one of the lacings caught on a nail on
+the shelf. She jerked desperately at the nail, and the jerking loosened
+her hold of both the shoes. With a clatter they fell at her feet.
+
+In that moment Mart Brenner stood in the doorway. Poverty, avarice, and
+evil passions had minted Mart Brenner like a devil's coin. His shaggy
+head lowered in his powerful shoulders. His long arms, apelike, hung
+almost to his knees. Behind him the fog pressed in, and his rough,
+bristly hair was beaded with diamonds of moisture.
+
+"Well?" he snapped. A sardonic smile twisted his face. "Caught you,
+didn't I?"
+
+He strode forward. His wife shrank back, but even in her shivering
+terror she noticed, as one notices small details in a time of peril,
+that his shoes were caked with red mud and that his every step left a
+wet track on the floor.
+
+"He didn't do 'em no harm," she babbled. "They're just wet. Please,
+Mart, they ain't harmed a mite. Just wet. That's all. Tobey went on the
+beach with 'em. It won't take but a little spell to dry 'em."
+
+Her husband stooped and snatched up the shoes. She shrank into herself,
+waiting the inevitable torrent of his passion and the probable blow.
+Instead, as he stood up he was smiling. Bewildered, she stared at him in
+a dull silence.
+
+"No harm done," he said, almost amiably. Shaking with relief, she
+stretched out her hand.
+
+"I'll dry 'em," she said. "Give me your shoes and I'll get the mud off."
+
+Her husband shook his head. He was still smiling.
+
+"Don't need to dry 'em. I'll put 'em away," he replied, and, still
+tracking his wet mud, he went into Tobey's room.
+
+Her fear flowed into another channel. She dreaded her husband in his
+black rages, but she feared him more now in his unusual amiability.
+Perhaps he would strike Tobey when he saw him. She strained her ears to
+listen.
+
+A long silence followed his exit. But there was no outcry from Tobey, no
+muttering nor blows. After a few moments, moving quickly, her husband
+came out. She raised her heavy eyes to stare at him. He stopped and
+looked intently at his own muddy tracks.
+
+"I'll get a rag and wipe up the mud right off."
+
+As she started toward the nail where the rag hung, her husband put out a
+long arm and detained her. "Leave it be," he said. He smiled again.
+
+She noticed, then, that he had removed his muddy shoes and wore the wet
+ones. He had fully laced them, and she had almost a compassionate
+moment as she thought how wet and cold his feet must be.
+
+"You can put your feet in the oven, Mart, to dry 'em."
+
+Close on her words she heard the sound of footsteps and a sharp knock
+followed on the sagging door. Mart Brenner sat down on a chair close to
+the stove and lifted one foot into the oven. "See who's there!" he
+ordered.
+
+She opened the door and peered out. A group of men stood on the step,
+the faint light of the room picking out face after face that she
+recognized--Sheriff Munn; Jim Barker, who kept the grocery in the
+village; Cottrell Hampstead, who lived in the next house below them;
+young Dick Roamer, Munn's deputy; and several strangers.
+
+"Well?" she asked ungraciously.
+
+"We want to see Brenner!" one of them said.
+
+She stepped back. "Come in," she told them. They came in, pulling off
+their caps, and stood huddled in a group in the center of the room.
+
+Her husband reluctantly stood up.
+
+"Evening!" he said, with his unusual smile. "Bad out, ain't it?"
+
+"Yep!" Munn replied. "Heavy fog. We're soaked."
+
+Olga Brenner's pitiful instinct of hospitality rose in her breast.
+
+"I got some hot soup on the stove. Set a spell and I'll dish you some,"
+she urged.
+
+The men looked at each other in some uncertainty. After a moment Munn
+said, "All right, if it ain't too much bother, Mrs. Brenner."
+
+"Not a bit," she cried eagerly. She bustled about, searching her meager
+stock of chinaware for uncracked bowls.
+
+"Set down?" suggested Mart.
+
+Munn sat down with a sigh, and his companions followed his example. Mart
+resumed his position before the stove, lifting one foot into the
+capacious black maw of the oven.
+
+"Must 'a' got your feet wet, Brenner?" the sheriff said with heavy
+jocularity.
+
+Brenner nodded, "You bet I did," he replied. "Been down on the beach all
+afternoon."
+
+"Didn't happen to hear any unusual noise down there, did you?" Munn
+spoke with his eyes on Mrs. Brenner, at her task of ladling out the
+thick soup. She paused as though transfixed, her ladle poised in the
+air.
+
+Munn's eyes dropped from her face to the floor. There they became fixed
+on the tracks of red clay.
+
+"No, nothin' but the sea. It must be rough outside to-night, for the bay
+was whinin' like a sick cat," said Mart calmly.
+
+"Didn't hear a scream, or nothing like that, I suppose?" Munn persisted.
+
+"Couldn't hear a thing but the water. Why?"
+
+"Oh--nothing," said Munn.
+
+Mrs. Brenner finished pouring out the soup and set the bowls on the
+table.
+
+Chairs clattered, and soon the men were eating. Mart finished his soup
+before the others and sat back smacking his lips. As Munn finished the
+last spoonful in his bowl he pulled out a wicked-looking black pipe,
+crammed it full of tobacco and lighted it.
+
+Blowing out a big blue breath of the pleasant smoke, he inquired, "Been
+any strangers around to-day?"
+
+Mart scratched his head. "Yeah. A man come by early this afternoon. He
+was aiming to climb the hill. I told him he'd better wait till the sun
+come out. I don't know whether he did or not."
+
+"See anybody later--say about half an hour ago?"
+
+Mart shook his head. "No. I come up from the beach and I didn't pass
+nobody."
+
+The sheriff pulled on his pipe for a moment. "That boy of yours still
+catching butterflies?" he asked presently.
+
+Mart scowled. He swung out a long arm toward the walls with their floods
+of butterflies. But he did not answer.
+
+"Uh-huh!" said Munn, following the gesture with his quiet eyes. He
+puffed several times before he spoke again.
+
+"What time did you come in, Brenner, from the beach?"
+
+Mrs. Brenner closed her hands tightly, the interlaced fingers locking
+themselves.
+
+"Oh, about forty minutes ago, I guess it was. Wasn't it, Olga?" Mart
+said carelessly.
+
+"Yes." Her voice was a breath.
+
+"Was your boy out to-day?"
+
+Mart looked at his wife. "I dunno."
+
+Munn's glance came to the wife.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"How long ago did he come in?"
+
+"About an hour ago." Her voice was flat and lifeless.
+
+"And where had he been?" Munn's tone was gentle but insistent.
+
+Her terrified glance sought Mart's face. "He'd been on the beach!" she
+said in a defiant tone.
+
+Mart continued to look at her, but there was no expression in his face.
+He still wore his peculiar affable smile.
+
+"Where did these tracks come from, on the floor?"
+
+Swift horror fastened itself on Mrs. Brenner.
+
+"What's that to you?" she flared.
+
+She heard her husband's hypocritical and soothing tones, "Now, now,
+Olga! That ain't the way to talk to these gentlemen. Tell them who made
+these tracks."
+
+"You did!" she cried. All about her she could feel the smoothness of a
+falling trap.
+
+Mart smiled still more broadly.
+
+"Look here, Olga, don't get so warm over it. You're nervous now. Tell
+the gentlemen who made those tracks."
+
+She turned to Munn desperately. "What do you want to know for?" she
+asked him.
+
+The sharpness of her voice roused old Mrs. Brenner, drowsing in her
+corner.
+
+"Blood!" she cried suddenly. "Blood on his hands!"
+
+In the silence that followed, the eyes of the men turned curiously
+toward the old woman and then sought each other with speculative
+stares. Mrs. Brenner, tortured by those long significant glances, said
+roughly, "That's Mart's mother. She ain't right! What are you bothering
+us for?"
+
+Dick Roamer put out a hand to plead for her, and tapped Munn on the arm.
+There was something touching in her frightened old face.
+
+"A man--a stranger was killed upon the hill," Munn told her.
+
+"What's that got to do with us?" she countered.
+
+"Not a thing, Mrs. Brenner, probably, but I've just to make sure where
+every man in the village was this afternoon."
+
+Mrs. Brenner's lids flickered. She felt the questioning intentness of
+Sheriff Munn's eyes on her stolid face and she felt that he did not miss
+the tremor of her eyes.
+
+"Where was your son this afternoon?"
+
+She smiled defiance. "I told you, on the beach."
+
+"Whose room is that?" Munn's forefinger pointed to Tobey's closed door.
+
+"That's Tobey's room," said his mother.
+
+"The mud tracks go into that room. Did he make those tracks, Mrs.
+Brenner?"
+
+"No! Oh, no! No!" she cried desperately. "Mart made those when he came
+in. He went into Tobey's room!"
+
+"How about it, Brenner?"
+
+Mart smiled with an indulgent air. "Heard what she said, didn't you?"
+
+"Is it true?"
+
+Mart smiled more broadly. "Olga'll take my hair off if I don't agree
+with her," he said.
+
+"Let's see your shoes, Brenner?"
+
+Without hesitation Mart lifted one heavy boot and then the other for
+Munn's inspection. The other silent men leaned forward to examine them.
+
+"Nothing but pieces of seaweed," said Cottrell Hampstead.
+
+Munn eyed them. Then he turned to look at the floor.
+
+"Those are about the size of your tracks, Brenner. But they were made
+in red clay. How do you account for that?"
+
+"Tobey wears my shoes," said Brenner.
+
+Mrs. Brenner gasped. She advanced to Munn.
+
+"What you asking all these questions for?" she pleaded.
+
+Munn did not answer her. After a moment he asked, "Did you hear a scream
+this afternoon?"
+
+"Yes," she answered.
+
+"How long after the screaming did your son come in?"
+
+She hesitated. What was the best answer to make? Bewildered, she tried
+to decide. "Ten minutes or so," she said.
+
+"Just so," agreed Munn. "Brenner, when did you come in?"
+
+A trace of Mart's sullenness rose in his face. "I told you that once,"
+he said.
+
+"I mean how long after Tobey?"
+
+"I dunno," said Mart.
+
+"How long, Mrs. Brenner?"
+
+She hesitated again. She scented a trap. "Oh, 'bout ten to fifteen
+minutes, I guess," she said.
+
+Suddenly she burst out passionately, "What you hounding us for? We don't
+know nothing about the man on the hill. You ain't after the rest of the
+folks in the village like you are after us. Why you doing it? We ain't
+done nothing."
+
+Munn made a slight gesture to Roamer, who rose and went to the door, and
+opened it. He reached out into the darkness. Then he turned. He was
+holding something in his hand, but Mrs. Brenner could not see what it
+was.
+
+"You chop your wood with a short, heavy ax, don't you, Brenner?" said
+Munn.
+
+Brenner nodded.
+
+"It's marked with your name, isn't it?"
+
+Brenner nodded again.
+
+"_Is this the ax?_"
+
+Mrs. Brenner gave a short, sharp scream. Red and clotted, ever the
+handle marked with bloody spots, the ax was theirs.
+
+Brenner started to his feet. "God!" he yelped, "that's where that ax
+went! Tobey took it!" More calmly he proceeded. "This afternoon before I
+went down on the beach I thought I'd chop some wood on the hill. But the
+ax was gone. So after I'd looked sharp for it and couldn't find it, I
+gave it up."
+
+"Tobey didn't do it!" Mrs. Brenner cried thinly. "He's as harmless as a
+baby! He didn't do it! He didn't do it!"
+
+"How about those clay tracks, Mrs. Brenner? There is red clay on the
+hill where the man was killed. There is red clay on your floor." Munn
+spoke kindly.
+
+"Mart tracked in that clay. He changed shoes with Tobey. I tell you
+that's the truth." She was past caring for any harm that might befall
+her.
+
+Brenner smiled with a wide tolerance. "It's likely, ain't it, that I'd
+change into shoes as wet as these?"
+
+"Those tracks are Mart's!" Olga reiterated hysterically.
+
+"They lead into your son's room, Mrs. Brenner. And we find your ax not
+far from your door, just where the path starts for the hill." Munn's
+eyes were grave.
+
+The old woman in the corner began to whimper, "Blood and trouble! Blood
+and trouble all my days! Red on his hands! Dripping! Olga! Blood!"
+
+"But the road to the beach begins there too," Mrs. Brenner cried, above
+the cracked voice, "and Tobey saw his pa before he came home. He said he
+did. I tell you, Mart was on the hill. He put on Tobey's shoes. Before
+God I'm telling you the truth."
+
+Dick Roamer spoke hesitatingly, "Mebbe the old woman's right, Munn.
+Mebbe those tracks are Brenner's."
+
+Mrs. Brenner turned to him in wild gratitude.
+
+"You believe me, don't you?" she cried. The tears dribbled down her
+face. She saw the balance turning on a hair. A moment more and it might
+swing back. She turned and hobbled swiftly to the shelf. Proof! More
+proof! She must bring more proof of Tobey's innocence!
+
+She snatched up his box of butterflies and came back to Munn.
+
+"This is what Tobey was doin' this afternoon!" she cried in triumph. "He
+was catchin' butterflies! That ain't murder, is it?"
+
+"Nobody catches butterflies in a fog," said Munn.
+
+"Well, Tobey did. Here they are." Mrs. Brenner held out the box. Munn
+took it from her shaking hand. He looked at it. After a moment he turned
+it over. His eyes narrowed. Mrs. Brenner turned sick. The room went
+swimming around before her in a bluish haze. She had forgotten the blood
+on her hand that she had wiped off before Mart came home. Suppose the
+blood had been on the box.
+
+The sheriff opened the box. A bruised butterfly, big, golden, fluttered
+up out of it. Very quietly the sheriff closed the box, and turned to
+Mrs. Brenner.
+
+"Call your son," he said.
+
+"What do you want of him? Tobey ain't done nothing. What you tryin' to
+do to him?"
+
+"There is blood on this box, Mrs. Brenner."
+
+"Mebbe he cut himself." Mrs. Brenner was fighting. Her face was chalky
+white.
+
+"In the box, Mrs. Brenner, _is a gold watch and chain_. The man who was
+killed, Mrs. Brenner, had a piece of gold chain to match this in his
+buttonhole. _The rest of it had been torn off._"
+
+Olga made no sound. Her burning eyes turned toward Mart. In them was all
+of a heart's anguish and despair.
+
+"Tell 'em, Mart! Tell 'em he didn't do it!" she finally pleaded.
+
+Mart's face was inscrutable.
+
+Munn rose. The other men got to their feet.
+
+"Will you get the boy or shall I?" the sheriff said directly to Mrs.
+Brenner.
+
+With a rush Mrs. Brenner was on her knees before Munn, clutching him
+about the legs with twining arms. Tears of agony dripped over her seamed
+face.
+
+"He didn't do it! Don't take him! He's my baby! He never harmed anybody!
+He's my baby!" Then with a shriek, as Munn unclasped her arms, "Oh, my
+God! My God!"
+
+Munn helped her to her feet. "Now, now, Mrs. Brenner, don't take on so,"
+he said awkwardly. "There ain't going to be no harm come to your boy.
+It's to keep him from getting into harm that I'm taking him. The village
+is a mite worked up over this murder and they might get kind of upset if
+they thought Tobey was still loose. Better go and get him, Mrs.
+Brenner."
+
+As she stood unheeding, he went on, "Now, don't be afraid. Nothing'll
+happen to him. No jedge would sentence him like a regular criminal. The
+most that'll happen will be to put him some safe place where he can't do
+himself nor no one else any more harm."
+
+But still Mrs. Brenner's set expression did not change.
+
+After a moment she shook off his aiding arm and moved slowly to Tobey's
+door. She paused there a moment, resting her hand on the latch, her eyes
+searching the faces of the men in the room. With a gesture of dreary
+resignation she opened the door and entered, closing it behind her.
+
+Tobey lay in his bed asleep. His rumpled hair was still damp from the
+fog. His mother stroked it softly while her slow tears dropped down on
+his face with its expression of peaceful childhood.
+
+"Tobey!" she called. Her voice broke in her throat. The tears fell
+faster.
+
+"Huh?" He sat up, blinking at her.
+
+"Get into your clothes, now! Right away!" she said.
+
+He stared at her tears. A dismal sort of foreboding seemed to seize upon
+him. His face began to pucker. But he crawled out of his bed and began
+to dress himself in his awkward fashion, casting wistful and wondering
+glances in her direction.
+
+She watched him, her heart growing heavier and heavier. There was no
+one to protect Tobey. She could not make those strangers believe that
+Mart had changed shoes with Tobey. Neither could she account for the
+blood-stained box and the watch with its length of broken chain. But if
+Tobey had been on the beach he had not been on the hill, and if he
+hadn't been on the hill he couldn't have killed the man they claimed he
+had killed. Mart had been on the hill. Her head whirled. Some place
+fate, destiny, something had blundered. She wrung her knotted hands
+together.
+
+Presently Tobey was dressed. She took him by the hand. Her own hand was
+shaking, and very cold and clammy. Her knees were weak as she led him
+toward the door. She could feel them trembling so that every step was an
+effort. And her hand on the knob had barely strength to turn it. But
+turn it she did and opened the door.
+
+"Here he is!" she cried chokingly. She freed her hand and laid it on his
+shoulder.
+
+"Look at him," she moaned. "He couldn't 'a' done it. He's--he's just a
+boy!"
+
+Sheriff Munn rose. His men rose with him.
+
+"I'm sorry, Mrs. Brenner," he said. "Terrible sorry. But you can see how
+it is. Things look pretty black for him."
+
+He paused, looked around, hesitated for a moment. Finally he said,
+"Well, I guess we'd better be getting along."
+
+Mrs. Brenner's hand closed with convulsive force on Tobey's shoulder.
+
+"Tobey!" she screamed desperately, "where was you this afternoon? All
+afternoon?"
+
+"On the beach," mumbled Tobey, shrinking into himself.
+
+"Tobey! Tobey! Where'd you get blood on the box?"
+
+He looked around. His cloudy eyes rested on her face helplessly.
+
+"I dunno," he said.
+
+Her teeth were chattering now; she laid her hand on his other shoulder.
+
+"Try to remember, Tobey. Try to remember. Where'd you get the watch, the
+pretty watch that was in your box?"
+
+He blinked at her.
+
+"The pretty bright thing? Where did you get it?"
+
+His eyes brightened. His lips trembled into a smile.
+
+"I found it some place," he said. Eagerness to please her shone on his
+face.
+
+"But where? What place?" The tears again made rivulets on her cheeks.
+
+He shook his head. "I dunno."
+
+Mrs. Brenner would not give up.
+
+"You saw your pa this afternoon, Tobey?" she coached him softly.
+
+He nodded.
+
+"Where'd you see him?" she breathed.
+
+He frowned. "I--I saw pa----" he began, straining to pierce the cloud
+that covered him.
+
+"Blood! Blood!" shrieked old Mrs. Brenner. She half-rose, her head
+thrust forward on her shriveled neck.
+
+Tobey paused, confused. "I dunno," he said.
+
+"Did he give you the pretty bright thing? And did he give you the ax--"
+she paused and repeated the word loudly--"the ax to bring home?"
+
+Tobey caught at the word. "The ax?" he cried. "The ax! Ugh! It was all
+sticky!" He shuddered.
+
+"Did pa give you the ax?"
+
+But the cloud had settled. Tobey shook his head. "I dunno," he repeated
+his feeble denial.
+
+Munn advanced. "No use, Mrs. Brenner, you see. Tobey, you'll have to
+come along with us."
+
+Even to Tobey's brain some of the strain in the atmosphere must have
+penetrated, for he drew back. "Naw," he protested sulkily, "I don't want
+to."
+
+Dick Roamer stepped to his side. He laid his hand on Tobey's arm. "Come
+along," he urged.
+
+Mrs. Brenner gave a smothered gasp. Tobey woke to terror. He turned to
+run. In an instant the men surrounded him. Trapped, he stood still, his
+head lowered in his shoulders.
+
+"Ma!" he screamed suddenly. "Ma! I don't want to go! Ma!"
+
+He fell on his knees. Heavy childish sobs racked him. Deserted,
+terrified, he called upon the only friend he knew.
+
+"Ma! Please, Ma!"
+
+Munn lifted him up. Dick Roamer helped him, and between them they drew
+him to the door, his heart-broken calls and cries piercing every corner
+of the room.
+
+They whisked him out of Mrs. Brenner's sight as quickly as they could.
+The other men piled out of the door, blocking the last vision of her
+son, but his bleating cries came shrilling back on the foggy air.
+
+Mart closed the door. Mrs. Brenner stood where she had been when Tobey
+had first felt the closing of the trap and had started to run. She
+looked as though she might have been carved there. Her light breath
+seemed to do little more than lift her flat chest.
+
+Mart turned from the door. His eyes glittered. He advanced upon her
+hungrily like a huge cat upon an enchanted mouse.
+
+"So you thought you'd yelp on me, did you?" he snarled, licking his
+lips. "Thought you'd put me away, didn't you? Get me behind the bars,
+eh?"
+
+"Blood!" moaned the old woman in the corner. "Blood!"
+
+Mart strode to the table, pulling out from the bosom of his shirt a
+lumpy package wrapped in his handkerchief. He threw it down on the
+table. It fell heavily with a sharp ringing of coins.
+
+"But I fooled you this time! Mart wasn't so dull this time, eh?" He
+turned toward her again.
+
+Between them, disturbed in his resting-place on the table, the big
+bruised yellow butterfly raised himself on his sweeping wings.
+
+Mart drew back a little. The butterfly flew toward Olga and brushed her
+face with a velvety softness.
+
+Then Brenner lurched toward her, his face black with fury, his arm
+upraised. She stood still, looking at him with wide eyes in which a
+gleam of light showed.
+
+"You devil!" she said, in a little, whispering voice. "You killed that
+man! You gave Tobey the watch and the ax! You changed shoes with him!
+You devil! You devil!"
+
+He drew back for a blow. She did not move. Instead she mocked him,
+trying to smile.
+
+"You whelp!" she taunted him. "Go on and hit me! I ain't running! And if
+you don't break me to bits I'm going to the sheriff and I'll tell him
+what you said to me just now. And he'll wonder how you got all that
+money in your pockets. He knows we're as poor as church-mice. How you
+going to explain what you got?"
+
+"I ain't going to be such a fool as to keep it on me!" Mart crowed with
+venomous mirth. "You nor the sheriff nor any one won't find it where I'm
+going to put it!"
+
+The broken woman leaned forward, baiting him. The strange look of
+exaltation and sacrifice burned in her faded eyes. "I've got you, Mart!"
+she jeered. "You're going to swing yet! I'll even up with you for Tobey!
+You didn't think I could do it, did you? I'll show you! You're trapped,
+I tell you! And I done it!"
+
+She watched Mart swing around to search the room and the blank window
+with apprehensive eyes. She sensed his eerie dread of the unseen. He
+couldn't see any one. He couldn't hear a sound. She saw that he was wet
+with the cold perspiration of fear. It would enrage him. She counted on
+that. He turned back to his wife in a white fury. She leaned toward him,
+inviting his blows as martyrs welcome the torch that will make their
+pile of fagots a blazing bier.
+
+He struck her. Once. Twice. A rain of blows given in a blind passion
+that drove her to her knees, but she clung stubbornly, with rigid
+fingers to the table-edge. Although she was dazed she retained
+consciousness by a sharp effort of her failing will. She had not yet
+achieved that for which she was fighting.
+
+The dull thud of the blows, the confusion, the sight of the blood drove
+the old woman in the corner suddenly upright on her tottering feet. Her
+rheumy eyes glared affrighted at the sight of the only friend she
+recognized in all her mad, black world lying there across the table. She
+stood swaying in a petrified terror for a moment. Then with a thin wail,
+"He's killing her!" she ran around them and gained the door.
+
+With a mighty effort Olga Brenner lifted her head so that her face,
+swollen beyond recognition, was turned toward her mother-in-law. Her
+almost sightless eyes fastened themselves on the old woman.
+
+"Run!" she cried. "Run to the village!"
+
+The mad woman, obedient to that commanding voice, flung open the door
+and lurched over the threshold and disappeared in the fog. It came to
+Mart that the woman running through the night with her wail of terror
+was the greatest danger he would know. Olga Brenner saw his look of sick
+terror. He started to spring after the mad woman, forgetful of the
+half-conscious creature on her knees before him.
+
+But as he turned, Olga, moved by the greatness of her passion, forced
+strength into her maimed body. With a straining leap she sprawled
+herself before him on the floor. He stumbled, caught for the table, and
+fell with a heavy crash, striking his head on a near-by chair. Olga
+raised herself on her shaking arms and looked at him. Minute after
+minute passed, and yet he lay still. A second long ten minutes ticked
+itself off on the clock, which Olga could barely see. Then Mart opened
+his eyes, sat up, and staggered to his feet.
+
+Before full consciousness could come to him again, his wife crawled
+forward painfully and swiftly coiled herself about his legs. He
+struggled, still dizzy from his fall, bent over and tore at her twining
+arms, but the more he pulled the tighter she clung, fastening her
+misshapen fingers in the lacing of his shoes. He swore! And he became
+panic-stricken. He began to kick at her, to make lunges toward the
+distant door. Kicking and fighting, dragging her clinging body with him
+at every move, that body which drew him back one step for every two
+forward steps he took, at last he reached the wall. He clutched it, and
+as his hand slipped along trying to find a more secure hold he touched
+the cold iron of a long-handled pan hanging there.
+
+With a snarl he snatched it down, raised it over his head, and brought
+it down upon his wife's back. Her hands opened spasmodically and fell
+flat at her sides. Her body rolled over, limp and broken. And a low
+whimper came from her bleeding lips.
+
+Satisfied, Mart paused to regain his breath. He had no way of knowing
+how long this unequal fight had been going on. But he was free. The way
+of escape was open. He laid his hand on the door.
+
+There were voices. He cowered, cast hunted glances at the bloody figure
+on the floor, bit his knuckles in a frenzy.
+
+As he looked, the eyes opened in his wife's swollen face, eyes aglow
+with triumph. "You'll swing for it, Mart!" she whispered faintly. "And
+the money's on the table! Tobey's saved!"
+
+Rough hands were on the door. A flutter of breath like a sigh of relief
+crossed her lips and her lids dropped as the door burst open to a tide
+of men.
+
+The big yellow butterfly swung low on his golden wings and came to rest
+on her narrow, sunken breast.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[14] Copyright, 1920, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Rose Sidney.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROTTER[15]
+
+#By# FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+In the taxi Ayling suddenly realized that there was no need for all this
+haste. After twenty-five years, and a loitering, circuitous journey
+home--six weeks to the day since he had said good-by to India--this
+last-minute rush was, to say the least, illogical, particularly as there
+was no one in London waiting for him; no one who was even aware of his
+arrival. Indeed, it was likely that there was no one in London who was
+aware of his existence, except, perhaps, the clerk of the club, to whom
+he had telegraphed ahead for accommodations.
+
+The rigidity of his posture, straining forward there on his seat, became
+suddenly painful and absurd. He tried to relax, but the effort was more
+than it was worth, and he sat forward again, looking out.
+
+Yes, things were familiar enough--but familiar like old photographs one
+has forgotten the significance of. The emotion had gone out of them. It
+was the new things, the unfamiliar contours, that were most apparent,
+that seemed to thrust upon his consciousness the city's gigantic,
+self-centered indifference. Yet it was just that quality that he had
+loved most in London. She had let him alone. She had been--he recalled
+the high-flown phrase of his youth--the supremely indifferent friend!
+Perhaps, he thought to himself, when one is fifty, one cares less to be
+"let alone"; less for indifference as the supreme attribute of a friend.
+
+He felt a queer sweep of homesickness for India, whence he had come; but
+to feel homesick for India was ridiculous, since he had just come out
+of India because he was homesick for England. He had been homesick for
+England, he had been telling himself, for all those twenty-five years.
+
+Well! here he was. Home!
+
+Strange he hadn't thought of the automobiles and the electricity, and
+the difference they would make.
+
+The taxi backed suddenly, gears shifted, and drew up alongside the curb.
+Looking out, Ayling recognized the high, familiar street door of the
+club. Something about it had been changed, or replaced, he couldn't
+quite make out what. The driver opened the door, lifted out Ayling's
+bag, and deposited it expertly with a swing on the step. Then he waited
+respectfully while Ayling fished in his pockets for change. Having
+received it, he leaped with great agility to the seat, shifted gears,
+chugged, backed and turned, and was abruptly round the corner and out of
+sight.
+
+At the desk, Ayling experienced a momentary surprise to find himself
+actually expected.
+
+"Mr. Ayling? Yes, sir. Your room is ready, I believe." The clerk rang a
+bell, and began to give instructions about Mr. Ayling's luggage.
+
+Ayling felt that he ought to ask for some one, inquire if some of the
+old members were in; but, standing there, he could not think of a single
+name except names of a few non-resident members like himself, men who
+were at that moment in India.
+
+"Will you go up, sir?"
+
+"Later," said Ayling. "Just send up my things."
+
+He crossed the foyer and entered the lounge. Here, as before in the
+streets, it was the changes of which he was most aware--figured hangings
+in place of the old red velours, the upholstery renewed on the old
+chairs and divans. Strangers sat here and there in the familiar nooks,
+strangers who looked up at him with a mild curiosity and returned to
+their papers or their cigars. He wandered on through the rooms,
+seeking--without quite saying so to himself--seeking a familiar face,
+and found none. Even the proportions of the rooms seemed changed; he
+could hardly have said just how; not much, but slightly, though, all in
+all, the club was the same. Names began to come back to him; memories
+resurrected themselves, rose out of corners to greet him as he passed.
+They began to give him a queer sense of his own unreality, as if he
+himself were only another memory.... Abruptly he turned, made his way
+back to the desk, and asked to be shown to his room. There he spent an
+hour puttering aimlessly, adjusting his things, putting in the time.
+
+Then he dressed and went down to a solitary dinner. There was a great
+activity in the club at that hour, comings and goings, in parties of
+four and five. He found a kind of dolorous amusement in seeing now much
+more at home all the youngsters about him seemed than he. And he had
+been at home there when they were in the nursery doing sums.
+
+Here and there at the tables were older men, men of his own age, and he
+reflected that among them might easily be some of his boyhood friends.
+He would never know them now. He searched their faces for a familiar
+feature, watched them for a gesture he might recognize. But in the end
+he gave it up. "Old town," he said to himself, "old town, by Jove!
+you've forgotten me!"
+
+That night he went alone to a theater, walked back through the crowds to
+the club, and went immediately to bed. He was grateful to find himself
+suddenly very tired.
+
+The next morning he rose late and did not leave his room until noon,
+when he went down to a solitary lunch. After lunch he stopped at the
+clerk's window and inquired about one or two old members. The clerk
+looked up the names. After a good deal of inquiry and fussing about, he
+ascertained that one of the gentlemen was in China, one was dead, and a
+third about whom Ayling also inquired could not be traced at all. Ayling
+went out and walked for a while through the streets, but was driven back
+to the club by the chill drizzle which suddenly began to descend.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+He sat down in a chair near a window that had been his favorite.
+Settled there, he remembered the position of a near-by bell, just under
+the window-curtain.... Yes, there it was. He rang, and a waiter came--a
+rotund, pink-faced, John-Bullish waiter, with little white tufts on each
+cheek. Ayling ordered a whisky-and-soda, and when presently the waiter
+brought it Ayling asked how long he had been in the service of the club.
+
+"Thirty-five years, sir."
+
+Ayling looked at the old man in astonishment. "Do you remember me?" he
+asked.
+
+The old waiter, schooled to remember at first glance if he remembered at
+all, looked afresh at Ayling. "I see so many faces, sir--I couldn't just
+at the moment say--"
+
+"And I suppose," said Ayling, "you've brought me whisky-and-soda here,
+to this very chair, no end of times. What's your name?"
+
+"Chedsey, sir."
+
+"Seems familiar--" He shook his head. "You don't recall a Mr.
+Ayling--twenty-five or thirty years ago?"
+
+"Ayling, sir? I recall there _was_ a member of that name.... _You're_
+not Mr. Ayling, sir?"
+
+"We're not very flattering, either of us, it seems. But then, privilege
+of the aged, I suppose."
+
+"Beg pardon, sir. I'm sorry--I ought to remember you."
+
+"We're wearing masks, Chedsey, you and I."
+
+"You're right, sir, I'm afraid."
+
+They regarded each other, those two, Chedsey, rotund and pink, looking
+down upon Ayling, long and lean, with fine wrinkles about his eyes, and
+hair considerably grayed, wondering, both of them, why names should be
+so much more enduring than they themselves had been.
+
+It was not until Ayling had begun to ask Chedsey for news of old
+friends, and chanced almost at once to mention Lonsdale, that both he
+and the old waiter exclaimed in the same breath, "Major Lonsdale!" as if
+the Major's name had been a key to open the doors of both their
+memories.
+
+"And you're young Mr. Dick Ayling! I remember you perfectly now!"
+Chedsey beamed. How could he have failed to remember any one of those
+gay young friends of the major's?
+
+"And where," asked Ayling, "is the major now?"
+
+"Major Lonsdale, sir--has been gone seven years. Hadn't you heard?"
+
+Lonsdale gone! Lonsdale dead! Lonsdale had begun life so brilliantly.
+Ayling did feel left over and old.
+
+"What happened?" he asked, and Chedsey, glad to talk of the major, told
+how he had left the club to be Major Lonsdale's man just after he came
+back from the Boer War. How things hadn't seemed to go well with the
+major after that; he lost money--just how, Chedsey didn't say, but gave
+one to understand that it was a misfortune beyond the major's control.
+In the end he was forced to give up his house, and Chedsey came back to
+the club. A few years later the major was taken with pneumonia, quite
+suddenly, and died. Did Mr. Ayling know Major Lonsdale's wife?
+
+"Yes," said Ayling. "What became of Mrs. Lonsdale?"
+
+"Here in London, sir."
+
+"Wasn't there," asked Ayling, "a child, a little girl?"
+
+"Ah, Miss Peggy, sir!" It was plain that "Miss Peggy" was one of
+Chedsey's enthusiasms. A young lady now ... and soon to be married to a
+fine young gentleman of one of the best Scotch families.... She'll have
+a title some day.... Picture in the _Sketch_ recently--perhaps he could
+find it for Mr. Ayling.
+
+"Never mind," said Ayling, who was not thinking of Miss Peggy at all,
+but of her parents, young Major Harry Lonsdale, and his pretty wife.--He
+remembered her as a bride--Bessie, the major had called her--a graceful
+young creature with brown hair and brown-flecked eyes, already at that
+age a charming hostess in the fine old house Harry Lonsdale had
+inherited from his father.
+
+"They are living in Cambridge Terrace," Chedsey was saying. "Would Mr.
+Ayling like the address?"
+
+Ayling wrote down the address Chedsey gave him, and put it away in his
+pocket, with no more definite idea than that some day, if opportunity
+offered, he might look her up, for his old friend's sake.
+
+He began to inquire about other men--Carrington, Farnsby, Blake. Dead,
+all three of them--Farnsby only last spring. Was it some fate that
+pursued his particular friends? But those men had all, he reflected,
+been older than he. And yet, he recalled the words of his doctor:
+
+"A man's as old as his arteries. You've been too long out here. Be
+sensible, Ayling.... Go home--take it easy--rest. You'll have a long
+time yet...."
+
+Just a week later, to the day, Ayling stepped into a telephone-booth,
+looked up Mrs. Lonsdale's number, and telephoned. He had not counted
+upon loneliness.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+At forty-five Bessie Lonsdale had encountered one of those universal
+experiences which invariably give us, as individuals, so strong a sense
+of surprise. She had discovered suddenly, upon completion of the task to
+which she had so long given her energies, that she had become the task;
+that she no longer had any identity apart from it. And her consciousness
+of having arrived at exactly the place where hundreds before her must
+have arrived had only added to the strangeness of her experience.
+
+A week ago she had seen her twenty-year-old daughter off to the north of
+Scotland for a month's visit to the family which she was soon to enter
+as a bride. It seemed to her that Peggy had never been so lovely as when
+she said good-by to her at the station that day, slim, fragrant,
+shining-eyed, and looking very patrician indeed in her smart sable
+jacket (cut from the luxurious sable cape that had been part of her
+mother's trousseau), with the violets pinned into the buttonhole. And
+Bessie Lonsdale had seen with pride and no twinge of jealousy the
+admiration in the eyes of that aristocratic, if somewhat stern-faced,
+old lady who was to be Peggy's mother-in-law, and who, with true Scotch
+propriety, had come all the way down to London to take her home with
+her.
+
+"I don't like leaving you alone," Peggy had said, as they kissed each
+other good-by. "You're going to let yourself be dull."
+
+And her mother had patted the soft cheek, and replied: "I'm going to
+enjoy every minute of it. I mean to have a good rest and get acquainted
+with myself."
+
+When, a few moments later, she waved them good-by as the train moved
+slowly out of the station, Bessie Lonsdale had turned away with a
+long-drawn and involuntary sigh--a sigh of thanksgiving and relief.
+
+Peggy at last was safe! Her happiness and her future assured. All those
+years of hoping and holding steady had come now to this happy end. Ever
+since her husband's early death Bessie Lonsdale had centered herself
+upon the future of her child. She had had only her few hundred a year
+saved from the wreck of her husband's affairs, but she had set her
+course, and, with an air of sailing in circles for pleasure's sake,
+stood clear of the rocks and shoals. She had never borrowed; she had
+never apologized; had never been considered a poor relation, or spoken
+of as pathetic or "brave." Her little flat was an achievement. It was
+astonishing how she had managed at once so much simplicity, so much
+downright comfort, and so charming an atmosphere. She had done so much
+with so little, yet hers were not anxious rooms, like the rooms of so
+many women of small means. They had space, repose, good cheer, even an
+air of luxury. It was the home of a gentlewoman who could make a little
+better than "the best of things." She had even entertained a little, now
+and then--more of late, now that Peggy's education was complete--but
+this at the cost of many economies in the right quarter, and many
+extravagances also rightly placed.
+
+Call this "climbing" if you will, and a stress upon false values. Bessie
+Lonsdale gave herself to no such futile speculations as that. She was
+too busy at her task. She was neither so young nor so hypocritical as to
+pretend that these things were to be despised. She had done only what
+every other mother in the world wishes to do--to guide and protect her
+child and see her future provided for; only she had done it more
+efficiently than most; had brought, perhaps, a greater fitness or a
+greater consecration to the task. And the success of her achievement
+lay in the art with which she had concealed all trace of effort and
+strain. Peggy herself would have been first to laugh at the notion that
+her mother had had anything whatever to do with her falling in love with
+Andrew McCrae. She believed that it was by the sheer prodigality of the
+Fates that, besides being in love with her, romantically, as only a
+Scotchman can be, young Andrew McCrae was heir to one of the most
+substantial fortunes in all the north, and would succeed to a title one
+day....
+
+So Bessie Lonsdale had sighed her deep sigh of peace and gone back to
+her flat. And because she had really wanted to be alone she had sent her
+one faithful old servant away for a long-postponed visit to country
+relatives. Then she had sat down to rest, and to "get acquainted with
+herself." And in two days she had made her discovery. There was no
+"herself." She had been Peggy's mother so long that Bessie Lonsdale as a
+separate entity had entirely ceased to exist.
+
+It was at the end of the week that Ayling telephoned. And, although she
+had been avoiding even chance meetings with acquaintances, she found
+herself asking Ayling, whom she had not seen for twenty-five years, and
+whom she had known but slightly then, to come that day at five to tea.
+She realized only after she had left the telephone that it was because
+his voice had come to her out of that far time before she had become the
+mother of Peggy, and because she had a vague sort of hope that he might
+help to bring back a bit of the old self she had lost.
+
+She was, when she thought of it, a little puzzled by his looking her up.
+Had he and Harry been such friends?
+
+Promptly at five he came. At the door they greeted each other with a
+sudden unexpected warmth. And while he was clasping her hand and saying
+how jolly it was, after all this time, to find her here, and she was
+saying how nice it was to see _him_, how nice of him to look her up, he
+was thinking to himself that he might have recognized her by the
+brown-flecked eyes, and she was thinking, "He's an old man, older than
+I--the age Harry would have been----"
+
+"So you've come home," she said, "to stay?"
+
+"Yes, we all do. It's what we look forward to out there."
+
+"I know." With a little hospitable gesture and a step backward she
+brought him in.
+
+They had not mentioned the major who was gone, nor had they mentioned
+the years that had passed since their last meeting, yet suddenly,
+without any premonition, those two turned their eyes away from each
+other, to avoid bursting senselessly into tears. An almost inconceivable
+disaster, yet one for the moment perilously imminent.
+
+Yet neither of them was thinking of Major Lonsdale nor of anything so
+grievous as death; they were thinking of those terrifying little
+wrinkles round their eyes, and of the little up-and-down lines that
+would never disappear, and something inside them both gave suddenly
+away, melted, flooding them inside with tears that must not be shed.
+
+She held out her hand for his hat and stick. For an instant they both
+felt a deep constraint, and as he was getting out of his coat each
+wondered if the other had noticed it.
+
+Ayling turned about and stumbled awkwardly over a small hassock on the
+floor, and they both laughed, which helped them recover themselves.
+
+"How long has it really been?" she asked, as she faced him beside the
+fire.
+
+"Twenty-five years." He smiled at her, shaking his head. "Twenty-five
+years!"
+
+"You _must_ feel the prodigal son!"
+
+"Not until I came in your door just now, I didn't at all." And then,
+without in the least intending to say it, he added, "You were the only
+person in London I knew."
+
+It was the first of many things he had not intended to tell. As it was
+the first of many afternoons when they sat before the fire in her pretty
+drawing-room--that gallant little blaze that did its best to combat the
+gloom and chill of London's late winter rains--and drank their tea and
+talked, the comfortable, scattering talk of old friends; although it
+was not because of the past that they were friends, but because of the
+present and their mutual need. They did not speak of loneliness; it was
+a word, perhaps, of which they were both afraid.
+
+When they talked of her husband, of the old house, the old days, she
+felt herself coming back, materializing gradually again, out of the
+past. Ayling said to himself that he could talk to Bessie Lonsdale of
+things he had never been able to speak of to any one else, because they
+had had so much common experience. For from the beginning Ayling had had
+the illusion that Bessie Lonsdale, as well as he, had been away all
+those years, and had just come back to London again. He had said this to
+her as he was leaving on that first afternoon, and she had smiled and
+said, "So I have, just that--I've been away and come back, and I hardly
+know where to begin." Later he understood. For once or twice he met
+there a few of her friends, people who dropped in to inquire what she
+had heard from Peggy; people who talked of how they were missing Peggy,
+of the time when she would be coming home, of her approaching wedding,
+and one and all they commented upon the emptiness of the flat without
+Peggy there, and how lonely it must be for dear Mrs. Lonsdale with Peggy
+away.
+
+"I seem to be the only person in London not missing Peggy," he said to
+her one day. Her brown-flecked eyes looked at him straight for an
+instant, and then slowly they smiled, for she knew that he understood.
+She had not needed to tell him, for he had divined it for himself. Just
+as he had not needed to tell her how much her being in London had meant
+to him.
+
+As it was, the incessant chill and dampness of the weather had done his
+health no good. His blood was thin from long years of Indian sun, and he
+found it a constant effort to resist. The gloom seemed even worse than
+the cold, and, although he had thought that he should never wish for sun
+again, after India, he did wish for it now, wished for it until it
+became a sheer physical need. For the first time in his life he began to
+feel that he was getting old. Or was it, he asked himself, only that he
+had time now to think of such things? Bessie Lonsdale saw it, for her
+eyes were quick and keen, and she had long been in the habit of
+mothering. "It's this beastly London," she said. "I know!" And it was
+she who made him promise to go away for a week in the country, where he
+might have a glimpse at least of the sun. He remembered an inn at
+Homebury St. Mary, where he had spent a summer as a child, and it was
+there, for no reason except the memory of so much sun, that he planned
+to go, "by the middle of next week," he said, "when Peggy will be coming
+home."
+
+They had been talking of her return, and he had confessed to the notion
+that he would feel himself superfluous, out of place, somehow, when
+Peggy came home. His confession had pleased her, she hardly knew why. As
+for herself, she had had something of the same thought that when Peggy
+came there would be--well, a different atmosphere.
+
+She was looking forward daily now to a letter saying by what train Peggy
+would return. On Thursday there arrived, instead, a letter from Lady
+McCrae, begging that they be allowed "to keep our dear Peggy for another
+ten days." The heavy weather had kept the young people indoors, and a
+great many excursions which they had planned had had to be put off on
+account of it. She said, in her dignified way, many things vastly
+pleasing to a mother's heart, and Mrs. Lonsdale could do nothing but
+write, giving her consent.
+
+When she had written the letter and sent it off she began to be
+curiously depressed, and she wandered through the flat, conscious at
+last of just how much she had really missed Peggy's laughter, her
+gaiety, and her swift young step. The week before her loomed longer than
+all the time she had been away.
+
+That afternoon she told Ayling her news, but it was not until she had
+finished telling him that she remembered that he, too, would be going
+away. She hadn't known until then how much his being there had meant.
+
+"I don't know," she said, "how I shall put in the week! After all, I've
+been missing her more than I knew."
+
+It occurred to Ayling that, standing there before him with Lady McCrae's
+letter, which she had been showing him, in her hand, she was exactly
+like a little girl who was going to be left all alone.
+
+The idea came to him suddenly. "Look here, Bessie; come down to Homebury
+St. Mary with me! It would do you no end of good."
+
+The quality of their friendship was clear in the simplicity with which
+he made the suggestion, and the absence of self-consciousness with which
+she heard it made.
+
+"I should love it!" she said.
+
+"Then come along. You've nothing to keep you here; the country's just
+what you need."
+
+She did not answer at once, but stood looking away from him, a little
+frown between her eyes. She was thinking how absurd it would be to
+object, and how equally absurd it seemed to say yes. It _was_ so nice to
+have some one think of her as he thought of himself, simply, normally,
+humanly, as Dick Ayling seemed to have thought of her from the first.
+
+Then abruptly she accepted his simplification. "I'll go," she said.
+
+"Good! I'll telephone through for a room for you.... When can you be
+ready?" he asked.
+
+"To-day--this afternoon. Let's get away before I discover all the
+reasons to prevent! I won't bother about a lot of luggage--my big bag
+will do."
+
+"Great! I'll ask about trains."
+
+All at once, like two children, they became immensely exhilarated at the
+prospect before them--a week's holiday!
+
+He went to the telephone and presently reported: "There's a train at
+two-forty. Can you make it by then?"
+
+She looked at the clock on the mantel. "We'll make it," she said.
+
+He was getting into his coat. "I'll go on to the club, get my things
+together, and come back for you at two-fifteen, then."
+
+He rushed away, both of them almost forgetting to say good-by, and she
+went into her bedroom to pack.
+
+When, promptly at two-fifteen, he rang her bell, she was waiting, hat
+and gloves on, and called out, "All ready!" as the taxi-driver followed
+Ayling up for her bag....
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+The spring had come up to meet them at Homebury St. Mary. So Bessie
+Lonsdale said to herself when she woke in her old-fashioned
+chintz-curtained room. The sun shone in at the windows, the air was
+balmy and sweet, and lifting herself on her elbow, she saw in a little
+round swale in the garden outside a faint showing of green nestled into
+the damp brown earth.
+
+She got up, rang for a maid, who came, smiling, white-capped,
+rosy-cheeked. She had coffee and rolls with rich country cream while she
+dressed. Her room opened directly into the garden, and she put on stout
+boots and a walking-suit and a soft little hat of green felt, and went
+out. Ayling, who had evidently risen early, was coming toward her,
+swinging a great, freshly whittled staff cut from the woods beyond the
+inn. He called to her:
+
+"You see! The sun _does_ shine at Homebury St. Mary!" And then, as if in
+gratitude for so glorious a day, he wished to be fair to the rest of the
+world, he added, as he came up, "I wonder if it's shining in London,
+too."
+
+"London?" she said. "London? There's no such place!"
+
+"Glad you came?" he asked.
+
+"Glad!" Her tone was enough.
+
+"That's a jolly green hat," he said, and made her a little bow.
+
+"Glad you like it," she laughed. "And that's a jolly staff."
+
+He showed it off proudly. "Work of art," he said. "I made one just like
+it when I was here the summer I was twelve--I remembered it this morning
+when I woke up, and I came out to get this one."
+
+She admired it critically, particularly the initials of the dark bark
+left on, but suggested an improvement about the knob.
+
+"By Jove! you're right," he admitted, and set to work with his knife.
+
+They were like two youngsters out of school. All morning they idled
+out-of-doors, exploring the little lanes that led off into the
+buff-colored hills, returning at noon, ravenous, to lunch in the
+dining-room of the inn, parting afterward in the corridor, and going to
+their own rooms to rest and read. At four Ayling tapped at her door to
+say that there was in the sitting-room "an absolutely enormous tea."
+
+That night, before a beautiful fire in the sitting-room, they caught
+each other yawning at half past nine, and at ten they said good-night.
+
+It had been so perfect that the next day found them following the same
+routine. And the next day, and the next. Bessie Lonsdale had not felt
+for years so much peace and so much strength. In their morning walks
+together her strength showed greater than his. The bracing air
+exhilarated her, and she felt she could have walked forever in the
+lovely rolling hills. Once she had walked on and on, faster and faster,
+not noticing how she had quickened her pace, her head up, facing the
+light wind blowing in from the sea. And, turning to ask a question of
+Ayling at her side, his white face stopped her instantly.
+
+"Oh, I _am_ sorry! Forgive me," she said.
+
+He smiled, embarrassed, and waited a moment for breath before he said,
+"It's just the wind; it's pretty stiff."
+
+And she had said no more, because it embarrassed him, but she suited her
+pace to his after that, never forgiving herself for her thoughtlessness.
+And she chose, instead of the hill roads, the level, winding lanes.
+
+For five perfect spring days they spent their mornings out-of-doors in
+the sun, lunched, parted until tea, met at dinner again, and said good
+night at a preposterously early hour. And they could not have said
+whether they amused or interested or merely comforted each other.
+Perhaps they did all three. At any rate, it was an idyll of its kind,
+and of more genuine beauty than many less platonic idylls have been.
+
+On the morning of the sixth day Bessie Lonsdale went out into the garden
+as usual, to find the sky overcast with light, fleecy clouds. But the
+air was soft, and she wandered about for half an hour before it occurred
+to her that perhaps Ayling was waiting for her inside. She went in to
+look, but saw him nowhere, and decided that he was sleeping late. She
+waited until eleven, and then went out to walk by herself. But she did
+not relish the walk because she was uneasy about Ayling. She was afraid
+he was ill. She forced herself to go on a little way, but when she came
+to the second turn in the road, she faced abruptly about and came back
+to the inn. Still Ayling was nowhere about. He was not in the garden; he
+was not in the coffee-room. She went to her own room and sat down with a
+book, but she could not read. So she went into the corridor, searching
+for some one of whom she might inquire. But no one was visible.
+
+Ayling's room opened off of the little public sitting-room at the end of
+the corridor. She went on until she reached the sitting-room, which she
+entered, and then stood still, listening for some sound from beyond
+Ayling's door. The silence seemed to grow round her; it filled the room,
+it spread through the house. And then, propelled by that silence toward
+the door, she put out her hand and knocked softly. There was no
+response. She repeated the knock--twice--and only that pervading silence
+answered her. She took hold of the knob and turned it without a sound;
+the door gave inward and she stepped inside the room. The bed faced her,
+and Ayling was lying there, on his side. Even before she saw his face,
+her own heart told her that he was dead.... He lay there quite
+peacefully, as if he had died in his sleep.
+
+For an instant Bessie Lonsdale thought she was going to faint. And then,
+moved by the force of an emotion which seemed to take possession of her
+from the outside, an emotion which she could not recognize, but which
+was irresistible and which, as the silence had propelled her a moment
+ago, took her backward now, step by step, noiselessly, out of that
+room; caused her to close the door after her, and, still moving backward
+without a sound, to come to a stop in the middle of the little
+sitting-room. For now that strange fear, premonition--she knew not
+what--which seemed to have been traveling toward her from a great
+distance, seemed suddenly to concentrate itself into a single name,
+"Peggy!" ... Confused, swirling, the connotations that accompanied the
+name took possession of her mind, of her body, her will. _Peggy was
+threatened_.... Through this thing that had happened Peggy's happiness
+might be destroyed! In a flash she saw the story--the cold facts printed
+in a newspaper--as they would undoubtedly be--or told by gossips, glad
+of a scandal to repeat: She, Peggy's mother--and Richard Ayling together
+at a country inn--the sudden and sensational discovery of Ayling's
+death.... She could see the stern face of Lady McCrae--the accusing blue
+eyes of Andrew McCrae ... and Peggy's stricken face.
+
+She tried to pull herself together--to think; her thoughts were not
+reasoning thoughts, but unrelated, floating, detached....
+
+Suddenly, by some strange alchemy of her mind, three things stood out
+clear. They stood out like the three facts of a simple syllogism.
+
+There was nothing she could do for Richard Ayling now.... No one knew
+she was here.... A train for London passed Homebury St. Mary a little
+after noon.
+
+All the years of Bessie Lonsdale's motherhood commanded her to act. Her
+muscles alone seemed to hear and obey. She was like a person hypnotized,
+who had been ordered with great detail and precision what to do.
+
+Soundlessly, she went from the room and down the length of the corridor.
+In her own room she threw scattered garments into a bag, swept in the
+things from the dresser, glanced into the mirror, and was astonished to
+see that she had on her coat and hat. Then out through the door that led
+to the garden, a sharp turn to the right, and she was off, walking
+swiftly, with no sensation of touching the earth. A train whistled in
+the distance, came into sight. She raced with it, reached the station
+just as it drew alongside and came to a stop. The guard took her bag,
+and she swung onto the step. It did not seem strange to her that she had
+reached the station at precisely the same time as the train. It seemed
+only natural ... in accordance with the plan....
+
+At seventeen minutes past three o'clock Bessie Lonsdale hurried into a
+telephone-booth in Victoria Station, called up a friend, and asked her
+to tea. Then she took a taxi to within a block of the flat, where she
+dismissed the taxi, went into a pastry-shop, bought some cakes, and five
+minutes later she was taking off her hat and coat in her own bedroom.
+
+She worked quickly, automatically, without any sense of exertion, still
+as if she but obeyed a hypnotist's command. At four o'clock a leaping
+fire in the drawing-room grate flickered cheerily against silver
+tea-things, against the sheen of newly dusted mahogany; books lay here
+and there, carelessly, a late illustrated review open as if some one had
+just put it down, and dressed in a soft gown of blue crAªpe, Bessie
+Lonsdale received her guest. She was not an intimate friend, but a
+casual one whom she did not often see. A Mrs. Downey, who loved to talk
+of herself and of her own affairs. Bessie Lonsdale did not know why she
+had chosen her. Her brain had seemed to work without direction,
+independent of her will. She could never have directed it so well.
+
+Even now, as she brought her in and heard herself saying easy, friendly,
+commonplace things, she had no sense of willing herself to say them
+consciously. They said themselves. She heard nothing that Mrs. Downey
+said, yet she answered her. Later, while she was pouring Mrs. Downey's
+tea, she remembered a time, over a year ago, when she had heard Mrs.
+Downey say, "Two, and no cream." She put in the two lumps, and was
+startled to hear her guest exclaim, "My dear, what a memory!" ... She
+did not know whether Mrs. Downey told her one or many things that
+afternoon. Only certain words, parts of sentences, gestures, imprinted
+themselves upon her mind, never to be erased. She seemed divided into
+two separate selves, neither of them complete--one, the intenser of the
+two, was at Homebury St. Mary, looking down upon Ayling's still, dead
+face; and that self was filled with pity, with remorse, with a
+tenderness that hurt. The other self was here, in a gown of blue crAªpe,
+drinking tea, and possessed of a voice which she could hear vaguely
+making the conversation one makes when nothing has happened, when one
+has been lonely and a little bored....
+
+All at once something was going on in the room, a clangor that seemed to
+waken Bessie Lonsdale out of the unreality of a dream. It summoned her
+will to come back to its control.
+
+Mrs. Downey was smiling and saying in an ordinary tone, "Your
+telephone."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale rose and crossed the room, took the receiver from its
+stand, said, "Yes," and waited.
+
+A man's voice came over the wire. "I wish to speak to Mrs. Lonsdale,
+please."
+
+"I am Mrs. Lonsdale," she said in a smooth, low voice. Her voice was
+perfectly smooth because her will had deserted her again. Only her brain
+worked, clearly, independently.
+
+"Ah, Mrs. Lonsdale; this is Mr. Burke speaking, Mr. Franklin Burke, of
+the Cosmos Club. I am making an effort to get into touch with friends of
+Mr. Richard Ayling, and I am told by a man named Chedsey, who I believe
+was at one time in your employ, that Mr. Ayling is an old friend of your
+family."
+
+"Yes," she said, "we are old friends."
+
+"You knew, then, I presume, that Mr. Ayling had gone away--to the
+country some days ago."
+
+"Yes," she said, again, "I knew that he had not been well and that he
+had gone out of town for a week.... Is there--anything?" Her heart was
+beating very loudly in her ears.
+
+"I dislike to be the bearer of bad news, Mrs. Lonsdale, but I must tell
+you that we have received a telephone message here at the club that--I
+hope it will not shock you too much--that Mr. Ayling died sometime
+to-day, at an inn where he was staying, at Homebury St. Mary, I
+believe."
+
+His voice was very gentle and concerned. She hesitated perceptibly, and
+his voice came over the wire, "I'm sorry--very sorry, to tell you in
+this way--"
+
+She heard herself speaking: "Naturally, I--it's something of a
+shock...."
+
+"Indeed I understand."
+
+Again she caught the sound of her own voice, as if it belonged to some
+one else, "I suppose it was his heart."
+
+"He was known to have a bad heart?"
+
+"Yes; it has been weak for years."
+
+"I wonder, Mrs. Lonsdale, if I may ask a favor of you. You know, of
+course, that Mr. Ayling had very few close friends in London; you are,
+in fact, the only one we have been able, on this short notice, to find.
+For that reason I am going to ask that you let me come to see you this
+afternoon; you will understand that there are certain formalities, facts
+which it will be necessary for us to have, which only an old friend of
+Mr. Ayling could give--that we could get in no other way...."
+
+"I understand, perfectly."
+
+"Then I may come?"
+
+"Certainly." ... There was nothing else she could say.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+She did not know how she got rid of her guest, what explanation she
+made, nor how she happened to be saying good-by to her at the very
+moment when the dignified, elderly Mr. Burke arrived, so that they had
+to be introduced. Though she must have made some adequate explanation,
+since Mrs. Downey's last words were, in the presence of Mr. Burke, "It's
+always so hard, I think, to lose one's really _old_ friends."
+
+Mr. Burke came in. He was very correct, very kind. He begged Mrs.
+Lonsdale to believe that it was with the greatest regret that he called
+upon so sad an errand; that he came only because it was necessary and
+she was the only person to whom they could turn. He added that he had
+known her husband, Major Lonsdale, in his lifetime, and hoped that she
+would consider him, therefore, not so entirely a stranger to her.
+
+She heard him as one hears music far away, only the accents and the
+climaxes coming clear. He asked her questions, and she was conscious of
+answering them: How long had she known Mr. Ayling?--He and her husband
+had been boyhood friends; she had met him first at the time of her
+marriage to Major Lonsdale. Had they kept up the friendship during all
+these years?--No, she had heard nothing of Mr. Ayling since her
+husband's death; she knew that he was in India; they had renewed the
+friendship when he returned to England a short time ago.--Ah, it was
+probable, then, that she knew very little about any attachments Mr.
+Ayling might have had?--Here Mr. Burke shifted his position, coughed
+slightly, and said:
+
+"I ask you these questions, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of a very--may I
+say--a very unfortunate element in connection with the case. It appears
+that there was a woman with Mr. Ayling at the Homebury St. Mary inn."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale waited, she did not know for what. Whole minutes seemed
+to go by with the elderly Mr. Burke sitting there in his attitude of
+formal sympathy before his voice began again.
+
+"I have only been free to mention this to you, Mrs. Lonsdale, because of
+the fact that you will hear of it in any case, since it must come out in
+the formalities--"
+
+"Formalities?" Her voice cut sharply into his.
+
+"There will, of course, be an inquest--an investigation--the usual
+thing. I have been in communication with the coroner's office by
+telephone, and I have promised to drive down to Homebury St. Mary myself
+this afternoon. He was away on another case, and will not reach there
+himself until six. Meantime we must do what we can. They will
+necessarily make an effort to discover the woman."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale must have given some sort of involuntary cry, the
+implication of which Mr. Burke interpreted in his own way, for he
+changed his tone to say:
+
+"I'm afraid, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale, that she was a bit of a rotter,
+whoever she was, for she--ran."
+
+"Ran?" She repeated the word.
+
+He nodded. "Disappeared."
+
+She did not know what expression it was of hers that caused him to say:
+"I don't wonder you look so shocked. I was shocked. Women don't often do
+that sort of thing...." She wanted to cry out that that sort of thing
+didn't often happen to women, but he was going on. He had risen and was
+walking slowly up and down before the smoldering fire, and in his
+incisive, deliberate, well-bred voice he was excoriating the woman who
+had been so cowardly as to desert a dying man. "Even if she hadn't
+seriously cared, or if, for that matter, she hadn't cared at all, it
+would seem that mere common decency.... It puts, frankly, a very
+unpleasant light on the whole affair.... Ayling was a gentleman,
+and--you will forgive me for saying so, I'm sure--just the decent sort
+to be imposed upon, to allow himself to be led into the most unfortunate
+affair."
+
+She wanted to stop him, to cry out, to protest. But his words were like
+physical blows which stunned her and made her too weak to speak. She
+felt that if he went on much longer she would lose consciousness
+altogether. Even now she heard only fragments of words.
+
+Suddenly she heard the word "publicity." He had stopped before her and
+was looking down at her.
+
+"I think, Mrs. Lonsdale, that the thing we both wish--that is, we at the
+club, and you, as his friend--is to do what we can to save any
+unnecessary scandal in connection with poor Ayling's death. It is the
+least we can do for him."
+
+"Yes!" She grasped frantically at the straw. "Yes, by all means that!"
+
+"You would be willing to help?"
+
+"Yes, anything! But what is there I can do?"
+
+He was maddeningly deliberate. "You are the only person, it appears--at
+least the only person available--who has been aware of the condition of
+Mr. Ayling's heart. You can say, can you not, with certainty, that he
+did suffer from a serious affection of the heart?"
+
+"He came home from India on account of it."
+
+"Very well, then. It was also the verdict of the doctor who was called.
+I think together we may be able to obviate the necessity of a too public
+investigation--at any rate, we shall see. It must be done, of course,
+before the official investigation begins. Therefore, if you will come
+down with me this afternoon, in my car--"
+
+"Come with you? Where?"
+
+"To the inn, at Homebury," he said.
+
+She was trapped ... trapped.... The realization of it sprang upon her,
+but too late, for already she cried out, "Oh, I couldn't--I couldn't do
+that!"
+
+Mr. Burke was looking down at her. He loomed above her like the figure
+of fate.... She was trapped.... There was no way out, and suddenly she
+realized that she had risen and said: "Forgive me! To be sure I will
+go."
+
+"I understand," said Mr. Burke, "how one shrinks from that sort of
+thing."
+
+She did not know what she was going to do. She only knew that for this
+step, at least, she could no longer resist. Again she had the sensation
+of speaking and moving automatically, of decisions making themselves
+without the effort of her will.
+
+She asked how soon he wished to go, and he said, consulting his watch,
+that they ought to start at once; his car was waiting in the street,
+since he had planned to go on directly from her house. She excused
+herself, and went to her room. She did not change her dress, but put on
+a long, warm coat, her hat, her veil, her gloves, and made sure of her
+key in her purse. Then she came out and said she was ready to go. He
+complimented her, with a smile, on the short time it had taken her, and
+she wondered if he had really seen her hesitation of a few moments
+before. They went down the stairs together. At the curb a chauffeur
+stood beside a motor, into which, with the utmost consideration for her
+comfort, Mr. Burke handed her. Then he gave his instructions to the
+chauffeur, and followed her in.
+
+And there began for Bessie Lonsdale that fantastic ride in which she
+felt herself being carried forward, as if on the effortless wings of
+fate itself, to the very scene from which she had fled.
+
+She had no idea, no dramatization in her mind, of what awaited her or of
+what she intended to do. Her imagination refused to focus upon it; and,
+strangely, she seemed almost to be resting, leaning back against the
+tufted cushions, resting against the time when she should be called upon
+for her strength. For she only knew that when the time came to act she
+would act.
+
+It was curious how she did not think of Peggy. She was like a lover who
+has been set a herculean task to accomplish before he may even think of
+his beloved.
+
+Beside her, Mr. Burke seemed to understand that she did not wish to
+talk. Perhaps he was thinking of other things; after all, he had not
+been Richard Ayling's friend; it was only a human duty he performed.
+
+Long stretches went by in which she saw nothing on either side, and
+other stretches in which everything--houses, trees, objects of all
+kinds--were exceedingly clear cut and magnified....
+
+"I'm afraid," said Mr. Burke's voice, "that we're running into a storm."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale looked up, and saw that those fleecy, light-gray clouds
+which she had seen in the sky early that morning as she stood waiting
+for Ayling in the garden of the inn, and which had been gathering all
+day, hung now black and menacing just above her head.
+
+It descended upon them suddenly; torrents ran in the road. The wind
+veered, and sent great gusts of rain into the car. The chauffeur turned
+and asked if he should stop and put the curtains up. Mr. Burke said no,
+to go on, they might run through it, and it was too violent to last.
+Meantime he worked with the curtains himself, and she helped. But it was
+no use; they were getting drenched, and the wind whipped the curtains
+out of their hands. Mr. Burke leaned forward and called to the chauffeur
+to ask if there was any place near where they might stop.
+
+"There's an inn about half a mile farther on. Shall I make it?"
+
+"By all means."
+
+They ran presently into the strips of light that shed outward from the
+lighted windows of the inn. A half-dozen motors already were lined up
+outside. They got out and together ran for the door.
+
+Inside, the small public room was almost filled. People sat at the
+tables, ordering things to eat and drink, and making the best of it.
+They chose a small corner table, a little apart from the rest. The
+landlord bustled up and took their coats to dry before the kitchen fire.
+A very gay, very dripping party of six came in, assembled with much
+laughter the last two tables remaining unoccupied, and settled next to
+them, so that they were no longer in a secluded spot.
+
+In a few moments there came in, almost blown through the door by a
+violent gust of wind and rain, a short, stout, ruddy person, who, when
+the landlord had relieved him of his hat and coat, stood looking about
+for a vacant seat. The landlord came toward the table where sat Mrs.
+Lonsdale and Mr. Burke.
+
+"Sorry, sir," he said; "it's the only place left."
+
+"May I?" asked the stranger, and at Mrs. Lonsdale's nod and smile, and
+Mr. Burke's assent, he drew out the chair and sat down. The two men
+spoke naturally of the suddenness of the storm, of the good fortune of
+finding a refuge so near.
+
+Bessie Lonsdale was glad of some one else, glad when she heard the
+stranger and Mr. Burke fall into the easy passing conversation of men.
+It would relieve her of the necessity to talk. It would give her time to
+think; for it seemed, dimly, that respite had been offered her. Into her
+thoughts broke the voice of Mr. Burke addressing her:
+
+"How very singular, Mrs. Lonsdale! This gentleman is Mr Ford, the
+coroner, also on his way to Homebury!"
+
+The stranger was on his feet, bowing and acknowledging the introduction
+of Mr. Burke. Bessie Lonsdale had the sensation of waters closing over
+her, yet she, too, was bowing and acknowledging the introduction of Mr.
+Burke. She had a vivid impression of light shining downward upon the
+red-gray hair of Mr. Ford, as he sat down again; and of Mr. Burke saying
+something about "the case," and about Mrs. Lonsdale being an old friend
+of the dead man; about her having been good enough to volunteer to shed
+whatever light she might have upon the case, and of their meeting being
+the "most fortunate coincidence."
+
+Mr. Ford signified that he, too, looked upon it in that way. They would
+go on to Homebury together, he said, when the storm had cleared.
+
+"I suppose," he asked, leaning forward a little, confidentially, "that
+Mrs. Lonsdale knows of the--peculiar element----"
+
+"The woman--yes," said Mr. Burke. And Bessie Lonsdale inclined her head
+and said, "I know."
+
+"And do you know who she was?"
+
+She had only to make a negative sign, for Mr. Burke, with nice
+consideration, anticipated her reply:
+
+"Unfortunately, Mr. Ford, no one appears to have the least idea who she
+might be. Mrs. Lonsdale, however, has been able to clear up a point
+which may, I fancy, make the identity of the woman less important than
+it might otherwise appear to be. Mrs. Lonsdale has known for some time
+of the serious condition of Mr. Ayling's heart. It was because of it,
+she tells me, that Mr. Ayling came home from India. Mrs. Lonsdale's
+testimony, together with the statement of the physician who was called,
+would seem to leave little doubt that it was merely a case of heart."
+
+Mr. Ford was nodding his head. "So it would," he said. "Yes, so it
+would." He stopped nodding, and sat there an instant, as if he were
+thinking of something else. "If that's the case," he broke out, "what a
+rotter, by Jove! that woman was!"
+
+"Rotter, I think," said Mr. Burke, "was precisely the word _I_ used."
+
+And Bessie Lonsdale listened for the second time that day while two
+voices, now, instead of one, were lifted in excoriation of some woman
+who seemed to grow, as they talked, only a shade less real than herself.
+
+She had again the sensation of the words beating upon her like blows
+which she was powerless to resist. She lost, as one does in physical
+pain, all sense of time....
+
+"However," Mr. Ford brought down his hand with a kind of judicial
+finality, "if Mrs. Lonsdale will come on down with us now--the storm
+seems to have slackened--we'll see what can be done." He turned in his
+chair as if he were preparing to rise.
+
+At the movement Bessie Lonsdale seemed to grow rigid in her chair.
+
+"Wait."
+
+Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned, startled by the strangeness of her tone.
+They waited for her to speak.
+
+"I can't go."
+
+"Can't go?" They echoed it together. "Why not?"
+
+"Because," said she, "I am the woman you have been talking about."
+
+For an instant they sat perfectly motionless, the three of them. Then
+slowly Mr. Burke and Mr. Ford turned their heads and looked at each
+other, as if to verify what they had heard. Mr. Burke put out his hand
+toward Bessie Lonsdale's arm, resting on the table, and he spoke very
+gently indeed:
+
+"My dear Mrs. Lonsdale, this is impossible."
+
+"Impossible," she said, passing her hand across her eyes, "impossible?"
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale." He spoke reasonably, as if she were a child. "It
+couldn't be you." He turned now to include Mr. Ford, who sat staring at
+them both. "I myself gave Mrs. Lonsdale the news of Mr. Ayling's death,
+over the telephone. She was at her home, in Cambridge Terrace, quietly
+having tea with a friend; the friend was still there when I arrived. You
+have been at home, in London, all day."
+
+"No," she said. "No, Mr. Burke."
+
+"I think," said Mr. Ford, also very gently indeed, "that perhaps Mrs.
+Lonsdale is trying to shield some one."
+
+Until that instant Bessie Lonsdale had no plan. She had only known that
+she could not go with them to Homebury St. Mary, there to be recognized.
+But something in the suggestion of Mr. Ford--in the tone, perhaps, more
+than the words--caused her to say, looking from one to the other of
+these two men so lately strangers to her:
+
+"I wonder--I wonder if I could make you understand!"
+
+They begged her to believe that that was the thing they wished most to
+do.
+
+"I did it"--she paused, and forced herself to go on--"because of my
+daughter."
+
+Intent upon her truth, she did not even see by the shocked expression of
+their faces the awfulness of the thing they thought she confessed, and
+the obviousness of the reason to which their minds had leaped.
+
+Mr. Burke put out his hand again and laid it upon her arm, which
+trembled slightly at his touch. "Mrs. Lonsdale," he said, and this time
+he spoke even more gently, but more urgently, than before, "are you
+_sure_ you wish to tell?"
+
+"No," said Bessie Lonsdale, "but I've _got_ to, don't you see?"
+
+Mr. Ford moved in his chair, and spoke, guarding his voice, judicially.
+"Since we have gone so far, it will be even better, perhaps, for Mrs.
+Lonsdale to tell it to us here."
+
+Mr. Burke nodded, and they looked toward her expectantly.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Lonsdale?" said Mr. Ford.
+
+An instant the brown-flecked eyes appeared to be searching for some
+human contact which she seemed vaguely to have lost. And then she began
+at the beginning--with her daughter's engagement to young Andrew McCrae,
+her happiness, her security--and quietly, with only now and then a
+slight tension of her body and her voice, she told it all to them,
+exactly as it happened, without plea or embellishment. She had only one
+stress, and that she tried to make reasonable to them--her child's
+security.
+
+And they waited, attentive and patient, for the motive to emerge, for
+the beginning of that complication between her daughter and Richard
+Ayling, which they believed was to be the crux of her narrative.
+
+And as her story progressed their bewilderment increased, for never, it
+appeared, had Bessie Lonsdale's daughter so much as heard of the
+existence of the man who lay dead at Homebury inn. She seemed even to
+make a special point of that.
+
+They thought she but put it off against the time when it should be
+forced from her lips; but her story did not halt; she was telling it
+step by step, accounting for every hour of the time.
+
+They waited for her to offer proof of the condition of Ayling's heart.
+She did not mention it, except to say, when she came to relating the
+moment of her discovery, that she had not thought of it; that even when
+she opened the door of his room she did not think directly of his heart;
+and only when she saw him actually lying there so peacefully dead did
+she remember the danger in which he constantly lived. She seemed to
+offer it as proof of the suddenness and completeness of her shock, and
+in extenuation of the thing she afterward did.
+
+Slowly, gradually, as they listened, and as the light of her omissions
+made it clear, it had begun to dawn upon them that Bessie Lonsdale was
+telling the whole of the truth. And by it she sought to disprove
+_something_, but not the thing they thought.
+
+She had paused, at the point of her flight, to attempt, a little
+hopelessly, to make her impulse real to them. She spoke of the
+inflexible honor of the McCraes, of the great respect which had for
+generations attached to their name. Then suddenly, as if she saw the
+utter hopelessness of making them understand, she seemed with a gesture
+to give up abstractions and obscurities and to find in the depth of her
+mother's heart the final simple words:
+
+"Don't you see?" she said. "I hadn't thought how my being there at the
+same inn with Mr. Ayling would look--and then, all at once, it came over
+me. The whole thing, how it would look to the world, how it would look
+to the family of my daughter's fiancA(C),--and that it might mean the
+breaking of the engagement,--the wreck of her future happiness--don't
+you see--I didn't think of 'being a rotter'--I only thought of her!"
+
+They uttered, both of them, a sudden exclamation, as if they had been
+struck. By their expressions one might have thought the woman the
+accuser and the two men the accused.
+
+"Oh, my dear Mrs. Lonsdale--!" they both began at once, but she stopped
+them with a gesture of her hand.
+
+"I don't blame you," she said, "I don't blame you. I _was_ a rotter, to
+run, but I simply didn't think of myself."
+
+Her tone, her gentleness, were the final proof. Only the innocent so
+graciously forgive.
+
+"And now," she was saying, a great weariness in her voice, "I've told
+you. Do you want me to go on? It isn't raining any more."
+
+"Perhaps, Mr. Ford--" Mr. Burke began. A look passed between them, like
+a question and an assent.
+
+"If you, Mr. Burke," said Mr. Ford, "will come on with me, I think we
+can let your man drive Mrs. Lonsdale home. It will not be necessary for
+her to appear."
+
+Bessie Lonsdale's thankfulness could find itself no words; it was lost
+in that first moment in astonishment. She had not really expected them
+to believe. It had not even, as she told it, seemed to her own ears
+adequate.
+
+"I think," said Mr. Burke, seeing her silent so long, "that Mrs.
+Lonsdale hasn't an idea of the seriousness of the charge she has
+escaped."
+
+"Charge?" she repeated--"Charge?--" and without another word, Bessie
+Lonsdale fainted in her chair. And as she lost consciousness she heard,
+dim and far away, the voice of Mr. Ford reply: "That--the fact that she
+_hadn't_ an idea of it--and that alone, is why she _has_ escaped."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+"I'm perfectly sure," said Peggy Lonsdale, on Saturday afternoon, "that
+you _did_ let yourself have a dull time!" She was exploring the flat
+before she had taken off her things, and had stopped to sit for a moment
+on the arm of her mother's chair. "Anyway, mother dear, you didn't have
+to think of me! That must have been a relief!"
+
+She put down her head and kissed her, and Bessie Lonsdale patted the
+fragrant young cheek.
+
+"Oh, I thought of you occasionally," she said.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[15] Copyright, 1920, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Fleta
+Campbell Springer.
+
+
+
+
+OUT OF EXILE[16]
+
+#By# WILBUR DANIEL STEELE
+
+From _The Pictorial Review_
+
+
+Among all the memories of my boyhood in Urkey Island the story of Mary
+Matheson and the Blake boys comes back to me now, more than any other,
+with the sense of a thing seen in a glass darkly. And the darkness of
+the glass was my own adolescence.
+
+I know that now, and I'm sorry. I'm ashamed to find myself suspecting
+that half of Mary Matheson's mature beauty in my eyes may have been
+romance, and half the romance mystery, and half of that the unsettling
+discovery that the other sex does not fade at seventeen and wither quite
+away at twenty, as had been taken somehow for granted. I'm glad there is
+no possibility of meeting her again as she was at thirty, and so making
+sure: I shall wish to remember her as the boy of sixteen saw her that
+night waiting in the dunes above the wreck of the "India ship," with
+Rolldown Nickerson bleating as he fled from the small, queer casket of
+polished wood he had flung on the sand, and the bridegroom peering out
+of the church window, over the moors in Urkey Village.
+
+The thing began when I was too young to make much of it yet, a wonder of
+less than seven days among all the other bright, fragmentary wonders of
+a boy's life at six. Mainly I remember that Mary Matheson was a fool;
+every one in Urkey Village was saying that.
+
+I can't tell how long the Blake boys had been courting her. I came too
+late to see anything but the climax of that unbrotherly tournament, and
+only by grace of the hundredth chance of luck did I witness even one act
+of that.
+
+I was coming home one autumn evening just at dusk, loitering up the cow
+street from the eastward where the big boys had been playing "Run,
+Sheep, Run," and I watching from the vantage of Aunt Dee Nickerson's
+hen-house and getting whacked when I told. And I had come almost to the
+turning into Drugstore Lane when the sound of a voice fetched me up, all
+eyes and ears, against the pickets of the Matheson place.
+
+It was the voice of my cousin Duncan, the only father I ever knew. He
+was constable of Urkey Village, and there was something in the voice as
+I heard it in the yard that told you why.
+
+"Drop it, Joshua! Drop it, or by heavens----!"
+
+Of Duncan I could see only the back, large and near. But the faces of
+the others were plain to my peep-hole between the pickets, or as plain
+as might be in the falling dusk. The sky overhead was still bright, but
+the blue shadow of the bluff lay all across that part of the town, and
+it deepened to a still bluer and cooler mystery under the apple-tree
+canopy sheltering the dooryard. I never see that light to this day, a
+high gloaming sifted through leaves on turf, without the faintest memory
+of a shiver. For that was the first I had even known of anger, the still
+and deadly anger of grown men.
+
+My cousin had spoken to Joshua Blake, and I saw that Joshua held a
+pistol in his hand, the old, single-ball dueling weapon that had
+belonged to his father. His face was white, and the pallor seemed to
+refine still further the blade-like features of the Blake, the aquiline
+nose, the sloping, patrician forehead, the narrow lip, blue to the
+pressure of the teeth.
+
+That was Joshua. Andrew, his brother, stood facing him three or four
+paces away. He was the younger of the two, the less favored, the more
+sensitive.
+
+He had what no other Blake had had, a suspicion of freckle on his high,
+flat cheek. And he had what no one else in Urkey had then, a brace of
+gold teeth, the second and third to the left in the upper jaw, where Lem
+White's boom had caught him, jibing off the Head. They showed now as the
+slowly working lip revealed them, glimmering with a moist, dull sheen.
+He, too, was white.
+
+His hands were empty, hanging down palms forward. But in his eyes there
+was no look of the defenseless: only a light of passionate contempt.
+
+And between the two, and beyond them, as I looked, stood Mary, framed by
+the white pillars of the doorway, her hands at her throat and her long
+eyes dilated with a girl's fright more precious than exultation. So the
+three remained in tableau while, as if on another planet, the dusk
+deepened from moment to moment: Gramma Pilot, two yards away, brought
+supper to her squealing sow; and further off, out on the waning mirror
+of the harbor, a conch lowed faintly for some schooner's bait.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+"Drop it, Joshua!" Duncan's voice came loud and clear.
+
+And this time, following the hush, it seemed to exercise the devil of
+quietude. I heard Mary's breath between her lips, and saw Andrew wheel
+sharply to pick a scale from the tree-trunk with a thumb-nail. Joshua's
+eyes went down to the preposterous metal in his hand; he shivered
+slightly like a dreamer awakening and thrust it in his pocket. And then,
+seeing Duncan turning toward the fence and me, I took the better part of
+valor and ran, and saw no more.
+
+There were serious men in town that night when it was known what a pass
+the thing had come to; men that walked and women that talked. It was all
+Mary's fault. Long ago she ought to have taken one of them and "sent the
+other packing." That's what Miah White said, sitting behind the stove in
+our kitchen over the shop; that's what Duncan thought as he paced back
+and forth, shaking his head. That's what they were all saying or
+thinking as they sat or wandered about.
+
+Such are the difficulties of serious men. And even while it all went on,
+Mary Matheson had gone about her choosing in the way that seemed fit to
+youth. In the warm-lit publicity of Miss Alma Beedie's birthday-party,
+shaking off so soon the memory of that brief glint of pistol-play under
+the apple-trees, she took a fantastic vow to marry the one that brought
+her the wedding-ring--promised with her left hand on Miss Beedie's
+album and her right lifted toward the allegorical print of the Good
+Shepherd that the one who, first across the Sound to the jeweler's at
+Gillyport and back again, fetched her the golden-ring--that he should be
+her husband "for better or for worse, till death us do part, and so
+forth and so on, Amen!"
+
+And those who were there remembered afterwards that while Joshua stood
+his ground and laughed and clapped with the best of them, his brother
+Andrew left the house. They said his face was a sick white, and that he
+looked back at Mary for an instant from the doorway with a curious, hurt
+expression in his eyes, as if to say, "Is it only a game to you then?
+And if it's only a game, is it worth the candle?" They remembered it
+afterward, I say; long afterward.
+
+They thought he had gone out for just a moment; that presently he would
+return to hold up his end of the gay challenge over the cakes and
+cordial. But to that party Andrew Blake never returned. Their first hint
+of what was afoot they had when Rolldown Nickerson, the beachcomber,
+came running in, shining with the wet of the autumn gale that began that
+night. He wanted Joshua to look out for his brother. Being innocent of
+what had happened at the party, he thought Andrew had gone out of his
+head.
+
+"Here I come onto him in the lee of White's wharf putting a compass into
+the old man's sail-dory, and I says to him, 'What you up to, Andrew?'
+And he says with a kind of laugh, 'Oh, taking a little sail for other
+parts,' says he--like that. Now, just imagine, Josh, with this here
+weather coming on--all hell bu'sting loose to the north'rd!"
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+They say that there came a look into Joshua's eyes that none of them had
+ever seen before. He stood there for a moment, motionless and silent,
+and Rolldown, deceived by his attitude, was at him again.
+
+"You don't realize, man, or else you'd stop him!"
+
+"Oh, I'll _stop_ him!" It was hardly above a breath.
+
+"I'll _stop_ him!" And throwing his greatcoat over his shoulders, Joshua
+went out.
+
+You may believe that the house would not hold the party after that.
+Whispering, giggling, shivering, the young people trooped down Heman
+Street to the shore. And there, under the phantom light of a moon hidden
+by the drift of storm-clouds, they found Andrew gone and all they saw of
+Joshua was a shadow--a shadow in black frock-clothes--wading away from
+them over the half-covered flats, deeper and deeper, to where the Adams
+sloop rode at her moorings, a shade tailing in the wind. They called,
+but he did not answer, and before they could do anything he had the sail
+up, and he, too, was gone, into the black heart of the night.
+
+It is lonesome in the dark for a boy of six when the floor heaves and
+the bed shivers and over his head the shingles make a sound in the wind
+like the souls of all the lost men in the world. The hours from two till
+dawn that night I spent under the table in the kitchen, where Miah White
+and his brother Lem had come to talk with Duncan. And among the three of
+them, all they could say was "My heavens! My heavens!" I say till dawn;
+but our kitchen might have given on a city air-shaft for all the dawn we
+got.
+
+It is hard to give any one who has lived always in the shelter of the
+land an idea of the day that followed, hour by waiting hour--how folks
+walked the beaches and did not look at each other in passing, and how
+others, climbing the bluff to have a better sight of the waters beyond
+the Head, found themselves blinded by the smother at fifty yards and yet
+still continued to stare.
+
+Of them all, that day, Mary Matheson was the only one who kept still.
+And she was as still as an image. Standing half-hidden in the untidy
+nook behind the grocery, she remained staring out through the harbor
+mists from dawn till another heavy night came down, and no one can say
+whether she would have gone home then had not the appalled widow, her
+mother, slipped down between the houses to take her.
+
+She was at home, at any rate, when Joshua Blake came back.
+
+After all that waiting and watching, no one saw him land on the
+battered, black beach, for it was in the dead hour of the morning; of
+the three persons who are said to have met him on his way to Mary's, two
+were so tardy with their claims that a doubt has been cast on them. I do
+believe, tho, that Mother Polly Freeman, the west-end midwife, saw him
+and spoke with him in the light thrown from the drug-store window
+(where, had I only known enough to be awake, I might have looked down on
+them from my bed-room and got some fame of my own).
+
+She says she thought at first he was a ghost come up from the bottom of
+the sea, with his clothes plastered thin to his body, weed in his hair,
+and his face drawn and creased like fish-flesh taken too soon out of the
+pickle. Afterward, when he spoke, she thought he was crazy.
+
+"I've got it!" he said, taking hold of her arm. Opening a blue hand he
+held it out in the light for her to see the ring that had bitten his
+palm with the grip. "See, I've got it, Mother Poll!" She says it was
+hardly more than a whisper, like a secret, and that there was a look in
+his eyes as if he had seen the Devil face to face.
+
+She meant to run when he let her go, but when she saw him striding off
+toward Mary Matheson's her better wisdom prevailed; following along the
+lane and taking shelter behind Gramma Pilot's fence, she waited,
+watched, and listened, to the enduring gain of Urkey's sisterhood.
+
+She used to tell it well, Mother Poll. Remembering her tale now, I think
+I can see the earth misting under the trees in the calm dawn, and hear
+Joshua's fist pounding, pounding, on the panels of the door.
+
+It must have been queer for Mother Poll. For while she heard that hollow
+pounding under the portico, like the pounding of a heart in some deep
+bosom of horror--all the while she could see Mary herself in an upper
+window--just her face resting on one cold, still forearm on the sill.
+And her eyes, Mother Poll says, were enough to make one pity her.
+
+It was strange that she was so lazy, not to move or to speak in answer
+while the summons of the triumphant lover went on booming through the
+lower house. _He_ must have wondered. Perhaps it was then that the
+first shadow of the ghost of doubt crept over him, or perhaps it was
+when, stepping out on the turf, he raised his eyes and discovered Mary's
+face in the open window.
+
+He said nothing. But with a wide, uncontrolled gesture he held up the
+ring for her to see. After a moment she opened her lips.
+
+"Where's Andrew?"
+
+That seemed to be the last straw: a feverish anger laid hold of him.
+"Here's the ring! You see it! Damnation, Mary! You gave your word and I
+took it, and God knows what I've been through. Now come! Get your things
+on and bring your mother if you like--but to Minister Malden's you go
+with me _now_! You hear Mary? I'll not wait!"
+
+"Where's Andrew?"
+
+"Andrew? Andrew? Why the devil do you keep on asking for Andrew? What's
+_Andrew_ to you--now?"
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"Mary, you're a fool!"
+
+Her voice grew if anything more monotonous; his, higher and wilder.
+
+"You're a fool," he cried again, "if you don't know where Andrew is."
+
+"He's gone."
+
+"Gone, yes! And how you can say it like that, so calm--God!"
+
+"I knew he was going," she said. "He told Rolldown he was going to other
+parts. But I knew it before that--when he turned at the door and looked
+at me, Joshua. He said it as plain: 'If _that's_ love,' he said, 'then
+I'm going off somewhere and forget it, and never come back to Urkey any
+more.'"
+
+The deadness went out of her voice, and it lifted to another note.
+"Joshua, he's got to come back, for I can't bear it. I gave you my word,
+and I'll marry you--when Andrew comes back to stand at the wedding. He's
+got to--_got_ to!"
+
+Mother Poll said that Joshua stared at her--simply stood there and
+stared up at her in the queer, cold dawn, his mouth hanging open as if
+with a kind of horror. Sweat shone on his face. Turning away without a
+word by and by he laid an uncertain course for the gate, and leaving it
+open behind him went off through the vapors of the cow street to the
+east.
+
+As they carried him along step by step, I think, the feet of the cheated
+gambler grew heavier and heavier, his shoulders collapsed, the head,
+with the memory in it he could never lose, hung down, and hell received
+his soul.
+
+It is impossible in so short a space to tell what the next ten years did
+to those two. It would have been easier for Mary Matheson in a city, for
+in a city there is always the blankness of the crowd. In a village there
+is no such blessed thing as a stranger, the membership committee of the
+only club is the doctor and the midwife, and all the houses are made of
+glass.
+
+In a city public opinion is mighty, but devious. In a village,
+especially in an island village, it is as direct and violent as any "act
+of God" written down in a ship's insurance papers. A word carries far
+over the fences, and where it drops, like a swelling seed, a dozen words
+spring up.
+
+"It's a shame, Milly, a living shame, as sure's you're alive."
+
+"You never said truer, Belle. As if 'twa'n't enough she should send Andy
+to his death o' drownding----"
+
+"Well, I hope she's satisfied, what she's done for Joshua. I saw him to
+the post-office last evening, and the hang-dog look of him----"
+
+"Yes, I saw him, too. A man can't stand being made a fool of...."
+
+So, in the blue of a wash-day morning the words went winging back and
+forth between the blossoming lines. Or, in a Winter dusk up to the
+westward, where old Mrs. Paine scuttled about under the mackerel-twine
+of her chicken-pen:
+
+"Land alive, it's all very well to talk Temp'rance, and I'm not denying
+it'd be a mercy for some folks--I ain't mentioning no names--not even
+Miah White's. But, land sakes how you going to talk Temp'rance to a man
+bereft and be-fooled like Joshua Blake? Where's your rime-nor-reason?
+Where's your argument?"
+
+Or there came Miah White himself up our outside stair on the darkest
+evening of our Spring weather, and one glance at his crimson face was
+enough to tell what all the Temperance they had preached to _him_ had
+come to. Miah turned to the bottle as another man might to prayer.
+
+"By the Lord!" he protested thickly. "Something's got to be done!"
+
+"Done? About what?" I remember my cousin peering curiously at him
+through the smoke and spatter of the sausage he was frying.
+
+"About Josh, of course, and _her_. I tell you, Dunc, 'tain't right, and
+I'll not bear it. I'll not see Josh, same as I seen him this night,
+standing there in the dark of the outside beach and staring at the water
+like a sleep-walker, staring and staring as if he'd stare right through
+it and down to the bottom of the sea where his brother lay, and saying
+to himself, _Who's to pay the bill? Who's to pay the bill?_ No, siree!
+You and I are young fellows, Dunc, but we ain't so young we can't
+remember them boys' father, and I guess he done a thing or two for us,
+eh?"
+
+"Yes," Duncan agreed calmly. "But what's to be done?"
+
+"God knows! But look here, Dunc, you're constable, ain't you?"
+
+Duncan smiled pityingly, as if to say, "Don't be an idiot, Miah."
+
+"And if you're constable, and a man owns a bill he won't pay, why then
+you've something to say in it, ain't I right? Well, here's a bill to
+pay, fair and square. All this wool she'd pull over our eyes about
+Andrew and the India ship--as if _that_ made a mite of difference one
+way or the other! No, siree, Dunc, she give her word to take the man
+that fetched the ring--that man's Joshua--the bargain's filled on his
+side--and there you are. Now, you're constable. I take it right, Duncan,
+you should give that girl a piece of your mind; give her to understand
+that, India ship yes, India ship no, she's got a bill to pay and a
+man's soul to save from damnation everlasting."
+
+All Duncan could do with him that night was to smile and shake his head,
+as much as to say, "You're a wild one, Miah, sure enough."
+
+About Mary's sullen, stubborn belief in the "India ship," pretended or
+real as it may have been with her, but already growing legendary, I know
+only in the largest and mistiest way.
+
+It is true there had been a ship that looked like an east-going clipper
+in our waters on that fateful night. Every one had seen it before dark
+came on, standing down from the north and laying a course to weather the
+Head if possible before the weather broke. It was Mary's claim that
+Andrew had pointed it out to her and spoken of it--in a strange way, a
+kind of a wistful way, she said. And later that night, what better for a
+man on the way to exile than a heaven-sent, outbound India ship, hove to
+under the lee of the Head.
+
+Yes, yes, it was so--it _must_ be so. And when they laughed at her in
+Urkey Village and winked sagely at her assumption of faith, then she
+asked them to tell her one thing: had any one's eyes seen Andrew's boat
+go down--actually.
+
+"If Joshua will answer me, and say that he _knows_ Andrew went down! Or
+if any of you will tell me that Andrew's body ever came ashore on any of
+the islands or the main!"
+
+It was quite absurd, of course, but none of them could answer that, none
+but Miah White, and he only when he had had a drop out of the bottle and
+perceived that it weighed not an ounce in either scale.
+
+Picked out so and written down, you would think this drama overshadowed
+all my little world. Naturally it didn't. You must remember I was a boy,
+with a thousand other things to do and a million other things to think
+of, meals to eat, lessons to hate, stones to throw, apples to steal,
+fights to fight. I take my word that by the time I was nine or ten the
+whole tragic episode had gone out of my head. Meeting Mary Matheson on
+the street, where she came but rarely, she was precisely as mysterious
+and precisely as uninteresting as any other grown-up. And if I saw
+Joshua Blake (who, pulling himself by the bootstraps out of drink and
+despair, had gone into Mr. Dow's law-office and grown as hard as
+nails)--if I saw him, I say, my only romantic thought of him was the
+fact that I had broken his wood-shed window, and that, with an air of
+sinister sagacity, he had told several boys he knew who the culprit was.
+(A statement, by the way, which I believed horribly for upward of
+eighteen months.)
+
+I believe that we knew, in a dim sort of way, that the two were
+"engaged," just as we knew, vaguely, that they never got married. And
+that was the end of speculation. Having always been so, the phenomenon
+needed no more to be dwelt on than the fact that when the wind was in
+the east John Dyer thought he was Oliver Cromwell, or that Minister
+Malden did not live with his family.
+
+John Dyer had been taken beyond the power of any planetary wind;
+Minister Malden (as I have told in another place) had gone back to live
+with his family: and I had been away to Highmarket Academy for two
+years, before I had sudden and moving reason to take stock of that
+long-buried drama.
+
+It was three days after I had come home for the long vacation, and,
+being pretty well tired out with sniffing about the island like a cat
+returned to the old house, I sprawled at rest on the "Wreck of the
+Lillian" stone in the graveyard on Rigg's Dome.
+
+It was then, as the dusk crept up from the shadow under the bluff, that
+I became aware of another presence among the gravestones and turned my
+head to peer through the barberries that hedged the stone, thinking it
+might be one of the girls. It was only Mary Matheson. Vaguely
+disappointed, I should have returned my gaze to the sea and forgotten
+her had it not been for two things.
+
+One of them was her attitude. That made me keep on looking at her, and
+so looking at her, and having come unwittingly to a most obscurely
+unsettled age, I made a discovery. This was that Mary Matheson, at the
+remote age of thirty, had a deeper and fuller beauty than had any of
+the girls for whose glances I brushed my hair wet and went to midweek
+prayer-meeting.
+
+I find it hard to convey the profound, revolutionary violence of this
+discovery. It is enough to say that, along with a sensation of pinkness,
+there came a feeling of obscure and unreasoning bitterness against the
+world.
+
+My eyes had her there, a figure faintly rose-colored against the
+deepening background of the sea. She stood erect and curiously still
+beside a grave, her hands clenched, her eyes narrowed. In Urkey they
+always put up a stone for a man lost at sea; very often they went
+further for the comfort of their souls and mounded the outward likeness
+of an inward grave. Well, that was Andrew's stone and Andrew's grave.
+Some one in the Memorial Day procession last week had laid a wreath of
+lilacs under the stone. And now, wandering alone, Mary Matheson had come
+upon it.
+
+I saw her bend and with a fierce gesture catch up the symbol of death
+and fling it behind her on the grass. Afterward, as she stood there with
+her breast heaving and her lips moving as if with pain, I knew I should
+not be where I was, watching; I knew that no casual ears of mine should
+hear the cry that came out of her heart:
+
+"No, No, No! They're still trying to kill him--still trying to kill
+him--all of them! But they sha'n't! They sha'n't!"
+
+I tell you it shook me and it shamed me. I thought I ought to cough or
+scuff my feet or something, but it seemed too late for that. Moreover
+the play had taken another turn that made me forget the moralities,
+quite, and another actor had come quietly upon the scene.
+
+I can't say whether Joshua, seeing Mary on her way to the Dome, had
+followed her, or whether he had been strolling that way on his own
+account. He was there, at all events, watching her from beyond the
+grave, his head slightly inclined, his hands clasped behind him, and his
+feet apart on the turf. The color of dusk lent a greenish cast to his
+bloodless face, and the night wind, coming up free over the naked curve
+of the Dome and flapping the long black tails of his coat, seemed but
+to accentuate the dead weight of his attitude.
+
+When a minute had gone by I heard his dry voice.
+
+"So, Mary, you're at it again?"
+
+"But they sha-n-t!" She seemed to take flame. "It's not right to Andrew
+nor me. They do it just to mock me, and I know it, and oh! I don't care,
+but they sha'n't, they sha'n't!"
+
+"Mary," said Joshua, all the smoldering anger of the years coming in his
+voice, "Mary, I think it's time you stopped being a fool. We've all had
+enough of it, Mary. Andrew is dead."
+
+She turned on him with a swift, ironical challenge.
+
+"You say it _now_? You _know_ now? Perhaps you've just made sure;
+perhaps you've seen his body washed up on one of the beaches--just
+to-day? Or then why so tardy, Joshua? If you _knew_, why couldn't you
+say it in so many words ten years ago--five years ago? _Why_?"
+
+"Because----"
+
+"Yes, because? Because?" There was something incredibly ruthless,
+tiger-like, about this shadow-dwelling woman. "Say it now, Joshua; that
+you know of a certainty Andrew went down. I dare you again!"
+
+Joshua said it.
+
+"I know of a certainty Andrew went down that night."
+
+"_How_ do you know? Did you _see him go down_? Tell me that!"
+
+For a moment, for more than a long moment, her question hung unanswered
+in the air. And as, straining forward, poised, vibrant, she watched him,
+she saw the hard, dry mask he had made for himself through those years
+grow flabby and white as dough; she saw the eyes widening and the lips
+going loose with the memory he had never uttered.
+
+"Yes," he cried in a loud voice. "You bring me to it, do you?" The man
+was actually shaking. "Yes, then, I saw Andrew go down that night. I
+heard him call in the dark. I saw his face on the water. I saw his hand
+reaching up as the wave brought him by--reaching up to me. I could
+almost touch it--but not quite. If you knew what the sea was that night,
+and the wind; how lonely, how dark! God! And here I stand and say it out
+loud! I couldn't reach his hand--not quite.... I've told you now, Mary,
+what I swore I'd never tell.... _Damn you_!"
+
+With that curse he turned unsteadily on his heel and left her. The
+shadows among the gravestones down hill laid hands on his broken,
+shambling figure, and he became a shadow. Once the shadow stumbled. And
+as if that distant, awkward act had aroused Mary from a kind of
+lethargy, she broke forward a step, reaching out her arms.
+
+"Joshua!" she called to him, "Joshua, Joshua, come back!"
+
+In the last faint light from the sky where stars began to come, her face
+was wet with tears of pity and repentance; pity for the man who had
+walled himself in with that memory; repentance for the sin of her
+blindness.
+
+"Joshua!" she called again, but he did not seem to hear.
+
+It was too much for me. Feeling more shame than I can tell, and with it
+a new gnawing bitterness of jealousy, I sneaked out of hiding by the
+"Lillian" stone and down the Dome toward the moors.
+
+"Good Grandmother!" I know I grew redder and redder as I walked. "I hope
+I don't have to see _her_ again--the old thing!"
+
+But I did, and that before many minutes had elapsed. For fetching back
+into the village by the ice-house and the back-side track, I was almost
+in collision with a hurrying shade in the dark under Dow's willows. It
+was Mary. I shall not forget the queer moment of suspense as she peered
+into my face, nor the touch of her fingers on my arm, nor the sigh.
+
+"Oh--you're--you're the Means boy."
+
+An embarrassment, pathetic only now in memory, came upon her.
+
+"I--I wonder----" Her confusion grew more painful and her eyes went
+everywhere in the dark. "You don't happen to have seen any
+one--any--you haven't seen Mr. Blake, have you?"
+
+"No!" I shook off the hand that still lay, as if forgotten, on my
+outraged arm. "What you want of _him_? _He's_ no good!"
+
+With that shot for parting I turned and stalked away. Behind me after a
+moment, I heard her cry of protest, dismal beyond words.
+
+"Why do you say that, boy? What do you mean by that?"
+
+Having meant nothing at all, except that I would have slain him gladly,
+I kept my bitter peace and held my way to the westward, leaving her to
+find her way and her soul in the blind, black shadows under the
+willow-trees.
+
+No one who lived in Urkey Village then will forget the day it was known
+that Mary Matheson was going to marry Joshua Blake, at last. An isolated
+village is like an isolated person, placid-looking to dullness, but in
+reality almost idiotically emotional. More than anything else, when the
+news had run, it was like the camp-meeting conversion of a simple soul.
+First, for the "conviction of sin," there was the calling-up of all the
+dark, forgotten history, the whispered refurbishing of departed gossip,
+the ghosts of old angers. Then like the flood of Mercy, the assurance
+that all was well, having ended well. Everything was forgiven and
+forgotten, every one was to live happily ever after, and there must be a
+wedding.
+
+Surely a wedding! The idea that Minister Malden should come quietly to
+the house and so have it done without pomp or pageantry--it is laughable
+to think how that notion fared at the hands of an aroused village.
+Flowers there were to be, processions, veils, cakes, rice, boots, all
+the properties dear to the heart of the Roman mob. In the meantime there
+was to be a vast business of runnings and stitchings, of old women
+beating eggs and sifting flour, of schoolgirls writing "MARY BLAKE" on
+forbidden walls with stolen chalk. Dear me!
+
+You might think Mary and Joshua would have rebelled. Curiously, they
+seemed beyond rebelling. Joshua, especially, was a changed man. His old,
+hard mask was gone; the looseness of his lips had come to stay, and the
+wideness of his eyes. One could only think that happiness long-deferred
+had come under him like a tide of fate on which he could do no more than
+drift and smile. He smiled at every one, a nervous, deprecatory smile;
+to every proposal he agreed: "All right! Splendid! Let's have it done--"
+And one got the sense somehow of the thought running on: "--right away!
+Make haste, if you please. Haste! For God's sake, haste!"
+
+If he were hailed on the street, especially from behind, his eyes came
+to the speaker with a jerk, and sometimes his hand went to his heart.
+Seeing him so one bright day, and hearing two old men talking behind me,
+I learned for the first time that the Blake boys' father had died of
+heart-disease. It is odd that it should have come on Joshua now, quite
+suddenly, along with his broken mask and his broken secret, his
+frightened smile, and his, "All right! Splendid!"--("Make haste!")
+
+But so it was. And so we came to the day appointed. We had a dawn as red
+as blood that morning, and tho it was clear, there was a feeling of
+oppression in the air--and another oppression of people's spirits. For
+the bride's party had the "hack," and Mrs. Dow had spoken for the only
+other polite conveyance, the Galloway barge, and what was to come of all
+the fine, hasty gowns in case it came on for a gale or rain?
+
+Is it curious that here and there in that hurrying, waiting afternoon a
+thought would turn back to another day when a storm was making and a
+tall ship standing down to weather the Head? For if there was a menace
+of weather to-day, so, too, was there a ship. We seemed to grow
+conscious of it by degrees, it drew on so slowly out of the broad, blue,
+windless south. For hours, in the early afternoon, it seemed scarcely to
+move on the mirroring surface of the sea. Yet it did move, growing
+nearer and larger, its huge spread of canvas hanging straight as
+cerecloth on the poles, and its wooden flanks, by and by, showing the
+scars and rime of a long voyage put behind it.
+
+Yes, it seems to me it would have been odd, as our eyes went out in the
+rare leisure moments of that afternoon and fell upon that presence, worn
+and strange and solitary within the immense ring of the horizon, if
+there had not been somewhere among us some dim stirring of memory, and
+of wonder. Not too vivid, perhaps; not strong enough perhaps to outlast
+the ship's disappearance. For at about five o'clock the craft, which had
+been standing for the Head, wore slowly to port, and laying its course
+to fetch around the western side of the island, drifted out of our sight
+beyond the rampart of the bluffs.
+
+Why it should have done that, no man can say. Why, in the face of coming
+weather, the ship should have abandoned the clear course around the Head
+and chosen instead to hazard the bars and rips that make a good three
+miles to sea from Pilot's Point in the west--why this hair-brained
+maneuver should have been attempted will always remain a mystery.
+
+But at least that ship was gone from our sight, and by so much out of
+our minds. And this was just as well, perhaps, for our minds had enough
+to take them up just then with all the things overlooked, chairs to
+fetch, plants to borrow, girls' giggling errands--and in the very midst
+of this eleventh-hour hub-bub, the sudden advent of storm.
+
+What a catastrophe that was! What a voiceless wail went up in that hour
+from all the bureaus and washstands in the length of Urkey Village! And
+how glad I was! With what a poisonous joy did I give thanks at the
+window for every wind-driven drop that spoiled by so much the wedding of
+a woman nearly twice my age!
+
+The lamps on the street were yellow blurs, and the wind was full of
+little splashings and screechings and blowing of skirts and wraps when I
+set out alone for Center Church, wishing heartily I might never get
+there. That I didn't is the only reason this story was ever told. Not
+many got there that night (of the men, that is), or if they did they
+were not to stay long, for something bigger than a wedding was afoot.
+
+The first wind I had of it crossed my path at Heman Street, a huge
+clattering shadow that turned out to be Si Pilot's team swinging at a
+watery gallop toward the back-side track, and the wagon-body full of
+men. I saw their faces as they passed under the Heman Street lamp, James
+Burke, Fred Burke, Sandy Snow, half a dozen other surfmen home for the
+Summer from the Point station, and Captain Cook himself hanging on to
+Sandy's shoulder as he struggled to get his Sunday blacks wriggled into
+his old, brown oil-cloths. In a wink they were gone, and I, forgetting
+the stained lights of Center Church, was gone after them. Nor was I
+alone. There were a dozen shades pounding with me; at the cow street we
+were a score. I heard the voices of men I couldn't see.
+
+"Aground? Where to?"
+
+"On the outer bar; south'rd end of the outer bar they tell me."
+
+The voices came and went, whipped by the wind.
+
+"What vessel'd you say? Town craft?"
+
+"No--that ship."
+
+"What? Not that--that--_India ship_!"
+
+"Yep--that India ship."
+
+"India ship"--"India ship!" I don't know how it seemed to them, but to
+me the sound of that legendary name, borne on the gale, seemed strangely
+like the shadow of some one coming cast across a stage.
+
+I'll not use space to tell how I got across the island; it would be only
+the confused tale of an hour that seems but a minute now. I lost the
+track somewhere short of Si Pilot's place, and wading the sand to the
+west came out on the beach, without the slightest notion of where I was.
+
+I only know it was a majestic and awful place to be alone; majestic with
+the weight of wind and the rolling thunder of water; the more awful
+because I could not see the water itself, save for the rare gray ghost
+of a tongue licking swiftly up the sand to catch at my feet if I did
+not spring away in time. Once a mother of waves struck at me with a
+huge, dim timber; I dodged it, I can't say how, and floundered on to the
+south, wondering as I peered over my shoulder at the dark if already the
+ship had broken, and if that thing behind me were one of the ribs come
+out of her.
+
+That set me to thinking of all the doomed men near me clinging to
+slippery things they couldn't see, cursing perhaps, or praying their
+prayers, or perhaps already sliding away, down and down, into the cold,
+black caves of the sea. And then the shadows seemed to be full of
+shades, and the surf-tongues were near to catching my inattentive feet.
+
+If the hour across the island seems a minute, the time I groped along
+the beach seems nights on end. And then one of the shades turned solid,
+and I was in such a case I had almost bolted before it spoke and I knew
+it for Rolldown Nickerson, the beachcomber.
+
+He was a good man in ways. But you must remember his business was a
+vulture's business, and something of it was in his soul. It came out in
+good wrecking weather. On a night when the bar had caught a fine piece
+of profit, I give you my word you could almost see Rolldown's neck
+growing longer and nakeder with suspense. He would have made more of his
+salvaging had he carried a steadier head: in the rare, golden moments of
+windfall he sometimes failed to pick and choose. Even now he was loaded
+down with a dim collection of junk he had grabbed up in the dark, things
+he knew nothing of, empty bottles and seine-floats, rubbish he had
+probably passed by a hundred times in his daylight rounds. The saving
+circumstance was that he kept dropping them in his ardor for still other
+treasures his blind feet stumbled on. I followed in his wake and I know,
+for half a dozen times his discards got under my feet and sent me
+staggering. Once, moved by some bizarre, thousandth chance of curiosity,
+I bent and caught one up in passing.
+
+Often and often since then I have wondered what would have happened to
+the history of the world of my youth if I had not been moved as I was,
+and bent quite carelessly in passing, and caught up what I did.
+
+Still occupied with keeping my guide in eye, I took stock of the thing
+with idle fingers; in the blackness my finger-tips were all the eyes I
+had for so small a thing. It was about the size of a five-pound butter
+box, I should say; it seemed as it lay in my hand a sort of an old and
+polished casket, a thing done with an exotic artistry, broad, lacquered
+surfaces and curves and bits of intricate carving. And I thought it was
+empty till I shook it and felt the tiny impact of some chambered weight.
+Already the thing had taken my interest. Catching up I touched
+Rolldown's arm and shouted in his ear, over the roll of the wind and
+surf:
+
+"What you make of this, Rolldown?"
+
+He took it and felt it over, dropping half his rubbish in the act. He
+shook it. It seemed to me I could see his neck growing longer.
+
+"Got somethin' into it," he rumbled.
+
+"Yes, I know. Now let me have it back, Rolldown."
+
+"Somethin' hefty," he continued, and I noticed he had dropped the rest
+of his treasures now and clung to that. "Somethin' hefty--and valu'ble!"
+
+"But it's mine, I tell you!"
+
+"'Tain't neither! 'Tain't neither!"
+
+He was walking faster all the while to shake me off, and I to keep with
+him; our angry voices rose higher in the gale.
+
+I can't help smiling now when I think of the innocent pair of us that
+night, puffing along the sand in the blind, wet wind, squabbling like
+two children over that priceless unseen casket, come up from the waters
+of the sea.
+
+"It's mine!" I bawled, "and you give it to me!" And I grabbed at his arm
+again. But this time, letting out a squeal, he shook me off and fled
+inshore, up the face of the dune, and I not far behind him.
+
+And so, pursued and pursuing, we came suddenly over a spur of the dunes
+and saw below us on the southward beach the drift-fire the life-savers
+had made. There were many small figures in the glow, a surf-boat hauled
+up, I think, and a pearly huddle of alien men.
+
+But on none of this could I take my oath; my thoughts had been jerked
+back too abruptly to all the other, forgotten drama of that night, the
+music and the faces in Center Church, the flowers, the bridegroom, and
+the bride.
+
+For there on the crest before me, given in silhouette against the
+fire-glow, stood the bride.
+
+How she came there, by what violence or wild stratagem she had got away,
+what blind path had brought her, a fugitive, across the island--it was
+all beyond me. But no matter; there she stood before me on the dune at
+Pilot's Point, as still as a lost statue, tulle and satin, molded by the
+gale, sheathing her form in low relief like shining marble, her
+stone-quiet hands at rest on her unstirring bosom, her face set toward
+the invisible sea.... It was queer to see her like that: dim, you know;
+just shadowed out in mystery by the light that came a long way through
+the streaming darkness and died as it touched her.
+
+Peering at her, the strangest thought came to me, and it seemed to me
+she must have been standing there just so, not for minutes, but for
+hours and days; yes, standing there all the length of those ten long
+years, erect on a seaward dune, unmoved by the wild, moving elements,
+broken water, wailing wind, needle-blown sand--as if her spirit had
+flown on other business, leaving the quiet clay to wait and watch there
+till the tides of fate, turning in their appointed progress, should
+bring back the fabled ship of India to find its grave on the bars at
+Pilot's Point.
+
+She must have been all ready to go to the church; perhaps she was
+actually on her way, and it was on the wind of the cow street that the
+blown tidings of the "India ship" came to her ears. I can't tell you how
+I was moved by the sight of her in the wistful ruin of bride's-clothes.
+I can't say what huge, disordered purposes tumbled through my brain as I
+stood there trying to cough or stir or by some such infinitesimal
+violence let her know that I, Peter Means, was there--that I
+understood--that I was stronger than all the men in Urkey Island--that
+over my dead body alone should any evil come to her now, forever and
+ever and ever.
+
+As I tell you, I don't know what would have happened then, with all my
+wild, dark projects of defense, had not the whole house of trance come
+tumbling about my ears to the tune of a terrified bleating close at
+hand. It was Rolldown Nickerson, I saw as I wheeled; my forgotten enemy,
+flinging down the precious old brown casket he had robbed me of, and,
+still giving vent to that thin, high note of horror, careening, sliding,
+and spattering off down the sandslope. And as he vanished and his wail
+grew fainter around a shoulder of the dune, another sound came also to
+my ears. It was plain that his blind gallop had brought him in collision
+with another denizen of the night; the protesting outburst came on the
+wind, and it was the voice of Miah White--Miah the prophet, the avenger,
+drunk as a lord and mad as one exalted.
+
+There was no time for thought; I didn't need it to know what he was
+after. Mary had heard, too, and knew, too; it was as if she had been
+awakened from sleep, and her eyes were "enough to make one pity her," in
+the old words of Mother Poll. Seeing them on me, and without so much as
+a glance at the casket-thing which the roll of the sand had brought to
+rest near her feet, I turned and ran at the best of my legs, down the
+sand, around the dune's shoulder out of sight, and fairly into the arms
+of the angel of vengeance. I can still see the dim gray whites of his
+eyes as he glared at me, and smell the abomination of his curse. But I
+paid no heed; only made with a struggle to go on.
+
+"This way!" I panted. "To the north'rd! She's heading to the north'rd. I
+saw her dress just there, just now----"
+
+A little was enough to turn him. As I plunged on, making inland, I heard
+him trailing me with his ponderous, grunting flesh. His ardor was
+greater than mine; as we ran I heard his thick voice coming nearer and
+nearer to my ear.
+
+"'She shall come back,' says I, 'with the hand of iron,' says I."
+
+As always in this exalted state his phraseology grew Biblical.
+
+"'Thou shalt stay here,'" I heard him grunting. "'Here to the church
+thou shalt stay, Joshua,' says I. 'And she shalt come back with the hand
+of iron--the hand of iron!'"
+
+"Yes!" I puffed. "That's right, Miah; only hurry. _There!_" I cried.
+
+The rain had lessened, and a rising moon cast a ghost through the wrack,
+just enough to let us glimpse a figure topping a rise before us. That it
+was no one but Rolldown, still fleeing the mystery and bleating as he
+fled, made no difference to the blurred eyes of Miah; he dug his toes
+into the sand and flung forward in still hotter chase--after a
+still-faster-speeding quarry.
+
+I'll tell you where we caught Rolldown. It was before the church, within
+the very outpouring of the colored windows. When Miah discovered who his
+blowing captive was his rage, for a moment, was something to remember.
+Then it passed and left him blank and dreary with defeat. The
+beachcomber himself, pale as putty through his half-grown beard, was
+beseeching us from the pink penumbra of the Apostle Paul: "You seen it?
+You seen what I seen?" but Miah wouldn't hear him, and mounting the
+steps and passing dull-footed through the vestry, came into the veiled
+light and heavy scent of breath and flowers. Following at his heels I
+saw the faces of women turned to our entrance with expectation.
+
+Do you know the awful sense of a party that has fallen flat? Do you know
+the desolation of a hope long deferred--once more deferred?
+
+Joshua was standing in the farthest corner, beyond the pews where Miss
+Beedie's Sunday School class held. Looking across the sea of inquiring
+and disappointed faces, I saw him there, motionless, his back turned on
+all of us. He had been standing so for an hour, they said, staring out
+of a window at his own shadow cast on the churchyard fence.
+
+It was a distressing moment. When Miah had sunk down in a rear pew and
+bowed his head in his hands I really think you could have heard the
+fall of the proverbial pin. Then, with a scarcely audible rustle, all
+the faces became the backs of heads and all the eyes went to the figure
+unstirring by the corner window. And after that, with the same accord,
+the spell of waiting was broken, whispering ran over the pews, the
+inevitable was accepted. Folks got up, shuffling their feet, putting on
+their wraps with the familiar, mild contortions, still whispering,
+whispering--"What a shame!"--"The idea!"--"I want to know!"
+
+But some among them must have been still peeping at Joshua, for the hush
+that fell was sudden and complete. Turning, I saw that he had turned
+from the window at last, showing us his face.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+Now we knew what he had been doing for himself in that long hour. His
+face was once more the mask of a face we had known so many years as
+Joshua Blake, dry, bitter, self-contained, the eyes shaded under the
+lids, the lips as thin as hate. He faced us, but it was not at us he
+looked; it was beyond us, over our heads, at the corner where the door
+was.
+
+There, framed in the doorway, stood the tardy bride, a figure as white
+and stark as pagan stone, and a look on her face like the awful,
+tranquil look of a sleep-walker. Neither did she pay any heed to us, but
+over our heads she met the eyes of the bridegroom. So for a long breath
+they confronted each other, steadily. Then we heard her speak.
+
+"He's come!" she said in a clear voice. "Andrew's come back again."
+
+Still she looked at Joshua. He did not move or reply.
+
+"You understand?" I tell you, I who stood under it, that it was queer
+enough to hear that voice, clear, strong, and yet somehow shattered,
+passing over our heads. "You understand, Joshua? Andrew's come back to
+the wedding, and now I'll marry you--_if you wish_."
+
+Even yet Joshua did not speak, nor did the dry anger of his face change.
+He came walking, taking his time, first along the pews at the front,
+then up the length of the aisle. Coming down a few steps, Mary waited
+for him, and there was a kind of a smile now on her lips.
+
+Joshua halted before her. Folding his hands behind him he looked her
+over slowly from head to foot.
+
+"You lie!" That was all he said.
+
+"Oh, no, Joshua. I'm not lying. Andrew has come for the wedding."
+
+"You lie," he repeated in the same impassive tone. "You know I know you
+lie, Mary, for you know I know that Andrew is dead."
+
+"Yes, yes--" She was fumbling to clear a damp fold of her gown from
+something held in the crook of her arm. "But I didn't say----"
+
+With that she had the burden uncovered and held forth in her
+outstretched hand.
+
+She held it out in the light where all of us could see--the thing
+Rolldown had discarded from his treasures, that I had picked up and been
+robbed of in the kindly dark--the old brown casket-thing with the
+polished surfaces and the bits of intricate and ghastly carvings that
+had once let in the light of day and the sound of words--the old, brown,
+sea-bitten, sand-scoured skull of Andrew Blake, with the two gold teeth
+in the upper jaw dulled by the tarnishing tides that had brought it up
+slowly from its bed in the bottom of the sea. And to think that I had
+carried it, and felt of it, and not known what it was!
+
+It lay there supine in the nest of Mary's palm, paying us no heed
+whatever, but fixing its hollow regard on the shadows among the rafters.
+And Joshua, the brother, made no sound.
+
+His face had gone a curious color, like the pallor of green things
+sprouting under a stone. His knees caved a little under his weight, and
+as we watched we saw his hands moving over his own breast, where the
+heart was, with a strengthless gesture, like a caress. After what seemed
+a long while we heard his voice, a whisper of horrible fascination.
+
+"_Turn it over!_"
+
+Mary said nothing, nor did she move to do as he bade. Like some awful
+play of a cat with a mouse she held quiet and watched him.
+
+"Mary--do as I say--_and turn it over_!"
+
+Her continued, unanswering silence seemed finally to rouse him. His
+voice turned shrill. Drawing on some last hidden reservoir of strength,
+he cried, "Give it to me! It's mine!" and made an astonishing dart, both
+hands clawing for the relic. But my cousin Duncan was there to step in
+his way and send him carroming along the fringe of the crowd.
+
+The queer fellow didn't stop or turn or try again; sending up all the
+while the most unearthly cackle of horror my ears have ever heard, he
+kept right on through the door and the packed vestry, clawing his way to
+the open with that brief gift of vitality.
+
+It was so preposterous and so ghastly to see him carrying on so, with
+his white linen and his fine black wedding-clothes and the gray hair
+that would have covered a selectman's head in another year--it was all
+so absurdly horrible that we simply stood as we were in the church and
+wondered and looked at Mary Matheson and saw her face still rapt and
+quiet, and still set in that same bedevilled smile, as if she didn't
+know that round tears were running in streams down her cheeks.
+
+"Let him go," was all she said.
+
+They didn't let him go for too long a time, for they had seen the stamp
+of death on the man's face. When they looked for him finally they found
+him lying in a dead huddle on the grass by Lem White's gate. I shall
+never forget the look of him in the lantern-light, nor the look of them
+that crowded around and stared down at him--Duncan, I remember,
+puzzled--Miah cursing God--and three dazed black men showing the whites
+of their eyes, strange negroes being brought in from the wreck: for the
+ship was no India ship after all, but a coffee carrier from Brazil.
+
+But seeing Miah made me remember that long-forgotten question that the
+lips of this dead man had put to the deaf sea and the blind sky.
+
+"Who is to pay the bill? Who is to pay the bill?"
+
+Well, two of the three had helped to pay the bill now for a girl's
+light-hearted word. But I think the other has paid the most, for she has
+had longer to meet the reckoning. She still lives there alone in the
+house on the cow street. She is an old woman now, but there's not so
+much as a line on her face nor a thread of white in her hair, and that's
+bad. That's always bad. That's something like the thing that happened to
+the Wandering Jew. Yes, I'm quite sure Mary has paid.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+But I am near to forgetting the answer to it all. I hadn't so long to
+wait as most folks had--no longer than an hour of that fateful night.
+For when I got home to our kitchen I found my cousin Duncan already
+there, with the lamp lit. I came in softly on account of the lateness,
+and that's how I happened to surprise him and glimpse what he had before
+he could get it out of sight.
+
+I don't know yet how he came by it, but there on the kitchen table lay
+the skull of Andrew Blake. When I took it, against his protest, and
+turned it over, I found what Joshua had meant--a hole as clean and round
+as a gimlet-bore in the bulge at the back of the head. And when,
+remembering the faint, chambered impact I had felt in shaking the
+unknown treasure on the beach, I peeped in through the round hole, I
+made out the shape of a leaden slug nested loosely between two points of
+bone behind the nose--a bullet, I should say, from an old, single-ball
+dueling pistol--such a pistol as Joshua Blake had played with in the
+shadow of apple-trees on that distant afternoon, and carried in his
+pocket, no doubt, to the warm-lit gaiety of Alma Beedie's birthday
+party....
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[16] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Wilbur Daniel Steele.
+
+
+
+
+THE THREE TELEGRAMS[17]
+
+#By# ETHEL STORM
+
+From _The Ladies' Home Journal_
+
+
+For two years Claire RenA(C)'s days had been very much alike. It was a dull
+routine, full of heavy tasks, in the tiny crumbling house, in the
+shrunken garden patch, and grand'mA"re--there was always grand'mA"re to
+care for. Often in the afternoon Claire RenA(C) wandered in the forest for
+an hour. She was used to the silence of the tall trees; the silence in
+the house frightened her. All the people in her land were gone away; the
+great noise beyond had taken them. Sometimes the noise had stopped, but
+the silence in the house, the silence in the garden, and the silence of
+grand'mA"re never stopped. It was hard for Claire RenA(C) to understand.
+
+There was no one left in her land except grand'mA"re and Jacques. Jacques
+lived in the forest and cut wood; in the summer time he shot birds, in
+the winter time rabbits; Jacques was a very old man.
+
+Claire RenA(C) thought about a great many things when she walked in the
+forest in the afternoons. She wondered how old she was. She knew that
+she had been seven years old when her three brothers went away a long
+time before. She would like to have another birthday, some day, but not
+until ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse came home again. Then they would
+laugh as they used to laugh on her birthdays, and catch her up in their
+big, strong arms, and kiss her and call her "Dear little sister."
+ClA(C)ment was the biggest and strongest of all; sometimes he would run off
+with her on his back into the forest, and the others would follow
+running and calling; and then at the end of the chase the three
+brothers would make a throne of their brown, firm hands and carry Claire
+RenA(C) back to the door of the tiny house, where grand'mA"re would be
+waiting and scolding and smiling and ruddy of cheek. Grand'mA"re never
+scolded any more; she never smiled, and her cheeks were like dried figs.
+
+Claire RenA(C) didn't often let herself think of the day that such a
+dreadful thing had happened. Many days after ClA(C)ment and Fernand and
+Alphonse had gone away, grand'mA"re had started to walk to the nearest
+town four miles distant. She was gone for hours and hours; Claire RenA(C)
+had watched for her from the doorway until dusk had begun to fall; the
+dusk had been a queer color, thick and blue; a terrible noise had filled
+the air. Then the child remembered that her three brothers had told her
+that they were going away to kill rabbits--like Jacques. At the time she
+thought it strange that they had cried about killing rabbits. But when
+she heard such a thunder of noise she knew it must be a very great work
+indeed.
+
+She was just wondering how there could be so many rabbits in the world,
+when she saw an old, bent woman coming through the garden gate. It was
+grand'mA"re; Jacques was leading her; she was making a strange noise in
+her throat, and her eyes were closed. Jacques had stayed in the house
+all the night, looking at grand'mA"re, lying on the bed with her eyes
+closed. In the morning, Claire RenA(C) had spoken to her, but she hadn't
+answered. After days and days she walked from her bed to a chair by the
+window. She never again did any more than that; grand'mA"re was
+blind--and she was deaf.
+
+Jacques explained how it all happened; Claire RenA(C) didn't listen
+carefully, but she did understand that her three brothers were not
+killing rabbits, but were killing men. She knew then why they had cried;
+they were so kind and good, ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse; they would
+hate to kill men. But Jacques had said they were wicked men that had to
+be killed. He said it wouldn't take long, that all the strong men in
+France were shooting at them.
+
+Claire RenA(C) had a great deal to do after that. She had to bathe and
+dress grand'mA"re; she had to cook the food and scrub the floor and scour
+the pots and pans. She kept the pans very bright. Grand'mA"re might some
+day open her eyes, and there would be a great scolding if the pans were
+not bright. Claire RenA(C) also tended the garden; Jacques helped her with
+the heavy digging. He was very mean about the vegetables; he made her
+put most of them in the cellar; and the green things that wouldn't keep
+he himself put into jars and tins and locked them in the closet. When
+the summer had gone he gave Claire RenA(C) the keys.
+
+"Ma petite," he said, "you learn too fast to eat too little. You must be
+big and well when your brothers come back."
+
+All the winter long Claire RenA(C) watched for her brothers. Once a
+telegram had come, brought by a boy who said he had walked all the miles
+of the forest. In the memory of Claire RenA(C) there lay a hidden fear
+about telegrams. Years before, grand'mA"re had cried for many days when
+Jacques had brought from the town just such a thin, crackling envelope.
+And Claire RenA(C) knew that after that she had no longer any young mother
+or father--only grand'mA"re and her three brothers.
+
+Grand'mA"re had enough of sorrow. The telegram was better hidden in the
+room of her brothers. Grand'mA"re would never find it there; it was far
+away from her chair by the window, up the straight, narrow stairs, under
+the high, peaked gable. Then, too, there was a comfort in that room for
+Claire RenA(C); it was quiet; the great silence of downstairs was too big
+to squeeze up the narrow way. Each day she would stroke and tend the
+high white bed; each week she would drag the mass of feather mattress to
+the narrow window ledge and air it for the length of a sunny day.
+
+At evening she would pull and pile high again the snowy layers, as
+quickly as her tired back could move, as quickly as her thin, blue
+fingers could smooth the heavy homespun sheets and comforters. Quick she
+must be lest ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse come home before the
+night fell over their sleeping place. When she placed the telegram under
+the first high pillow (ClA(C)ment's pillow) it made a sound that frightened
+her.
+
+In the evenings grand'mA"re's chair was pulled to the great hearth fire.
+Claire RenA(C) would watch the flamelight spread over the stonelike face.
+Sometimes bright sparkles from the rows of copper pots and pans would
+lay spots of light on the heavy closed lids.
+
+Claire RenA(C) would spring from her chair and kneel beside the dumb
+figure. "Grand'mA"re!" she would call. "Do you see? Have you the eyes
+again?"
+
+Then the lights would shift, and her head would drop over her trembling
+knees, and she would look away from the dry, sealed eyes of grand'mA"re.
+She never cried; it might make a noise in the still, whitewashed room to
+frighten her. Grand'mA"re might find the tears when she raised her hands
+to let them travel over the face of her grandchild. It was enough that
+once grand'mA"re had shivered when her fingers found the hollows in
+Claire RenA(C)'s cheeks. After that the child puffed out her cheeks while
+the knotted hands made their daily journey. Grand'mA"re's fingers would
+smooth the sunny tangled hair, touch the freckled upturned nose; they
+would pause and tremble at the slightest brush from the eyelashes that
+fringed the deep, gray eyes.
+
+Claire RenA(C) would pile more logs on the fire and wonder what thoughts
+lay in grand'mA"re's mind; wonder whether she knew that they had so much
+more wood in the shed than they had food in the larder. She was clever
+about cooking the roots from the cellar. But grand'mA"re's coffee was
+weaker each day, and only once in a long while did Jacques bring milk.
+Then he used to stand and order Claire RenA(C) to drink it all, but she
+would choke and say it was sour and sickened her; only thus could she
+save enough for grand'mA"re's coffee in the morning.
+
+There were many things to think about, to look at on the winter evenings
+by the firelight: ClA(C)ment's seat by the chimney corner, where he
+whittled and whistled; Fernand's flute hanging on the wall; the books of
+Alphonse on the high shelf over the dresser. Claire RenA(C) found that her
+heart and her eyes would only find comfort if her fingers were busy. She
+would tiptoe to the dresser and bring out a basket, once filled with the
+socks of her brothers. She would crouch by the fireside, first stirring
+the logs to make more light for her work. It was long since the candles
+were gone. It was the only joyous moment in the day when she handled the
+dried everlastings that filled the basket. Always she must hurry, work
+more quickly, select the withered colors with more care. The wreaths for
+her three brothers must be beautiful, must be ready on time. ClA(C)ment and
+Fernand and Alphonse must be crowned, given the reward when they came
+home from killing wicked men to save La Belle France!
+
+All the months of the summer before she had watched and tended the
+flowers. The seeds she had found in grand'mA"re's cupboard. Jacques had
+scolded about the place that had been given them in the garden patch.
+But Claire RenA(C) had stamped her foot and strong, strange words that
+belonged to her three brothers when they were angry came to her lips.
+Jacques had looked startled and funny and had turned his head away; in
+the end he had patted Claire RenA(C) on her rigid shoulders and she thought
+his eyes were just like wet, black beads.
+
+On the other side of the hearth, away from grand'mA"re's chair, she
+twined and wound the wreaths. No one must know. The Great Day _must_ be
+soon! And in her heart she believed that on that day grand'mA"re would
+open her eyes.
+
+In the spring Claire RenA(C) finished the wreaths. The very day she placed
+them on the highest shelf in the dark closet under the stairs there had
+come a knock at the door. She was stiff with terror. Jacques never
+knocked; there was no one else. She clung to a heavy chair back while
+the same boy who had come before entered slowly and placed a second
+telegram in her numb fingers.
+
+"I am sorry, mademoiselle," was all he said.
+
+She watched him disappear through the garden gate; she listened until
+his steps died in the forest. Grand'mA"re stirred in her chair by the
+window; Claire RenA(C) thought a flicker of pain traveled over the worn
+face; she thought the closed eyes twitched; Madame Populet stretched out
+her hands.
+
+Claire RenA(C) flew up the straight, narrow stairs; she placed the telegram
+under Fernand's pillow; she pressed her fists deep into the feathers;
+the crackle of paper made her heart stand still. There were tears
+starting in her eyes; she held them back. Grand'mA"re had enough of
+sorrow; she must never know of the second telegram in the house.
+
+Thoughts came crowding into Claire RenA(C)'s mind. Why not tear up the
+white-and-blue envelopes or why not show them to Jacques--in some way
+throw away the fear that was eating at her heart? Then the great silence
+of the house below seemed to creep up the narrow stairs and lay cold
+hands on Claire RenA(C). Oh, why was it all so lonely! Where were her three
+brothers? Why must the telegrams make so great a trembling in her heart
+for them, make her kneel and pray that the Holy Mother would hold them
+in her arms forever?
+
+Her knees were stiff when she arose; her eyes were bright, but not with
+tears; her back was very straight, her head held high, for was she not a
+grandchild of Madame Populet? A sister to ClA(C)ment and Fernand and
+Alphonse, and through them, a child of France! She stood on her toes and
+dropped three kisses on the pillows of her brothers. She was big enough
+to keep the secret of her fear about the telegrams. It was better so.
+
+She went downstairs singing. The sound was strange in her throat, but
+she must finish the song. She stood behind grand'mA"re's chair, and laid
+her hands on the still white head. When the last, high, treble note fell
+softly through the room she looked out of the window into the forest.
+There were threads of pale green showing on the tall trees; there were
+tiny red buds starting from the brown branches of the pollard willow
+that swept across the window ledge.
+
+Claire RenA(C) suddenly wanted to shout! She did shout! There was spring in
+the world! There was spring in her heart, in her feet, in her tingling
+finger tips.
+
+She danced to the dark closet under the stairs. There they were, the
+wreaths, for her three brothers! The deep golden one for ClA(C)ment--he was
+strong and square like a rock; the light golden one for Fernand--he was
+pale and slight; the scarlet one for Alphonse--he was straight and tall
+like a tree in the forest.
+
+Claire RenA(C) touched the three wreaths; they crackled dryly under her
+touch; she turned away and shivered. What did they sound like? Oh, yes;
+the crackling of the thin paper on the telegrams!
+
+She shut the closet door softly, and went to kneel beside grand'mA"re's
+chair and looked again into the forest. The buds on the sweeping willows
+said "Yes"; the pale-green winding gauze through the tall trees
+whispered a promise. She stood up and held out her arms; she had faith
+in the forest; she believed what it said. Through a patch of flickering
+sunlight she thought she saw three forms moving toward the cottage. It
+was only the viburnum bushes dipping and swaying in the March wind,
+against the sturdy growth of darkened holly.
+
+The noise died away entirely as the spring advanced. The silence grew
+greater and greater. There were few seeds for Claire RenA(C) to plant in
+her garden; there was little strength in her arms to work them. Weeds
+covered the flower patch of a year ago. A few straggling everlastings
+showed their heads above the tangle. Claire RenA(C) had plenty of strength
+to uproot them angrily and throw them into the overgrown path.
+
+The three wreaths were still on the shelf in the dark closet under the
+stair. Their colors were dimmed, like the hope in their maker's heart;
+their forms were shrunken, like the forms of Claire RenA(C) and grand'mA"re
+and Jacques.
+
+Grand'mA"re lay in her bed most of the day. Sometimes, when the sun shone
+and the birds sang, Claire RenA(C) would make her aching arms bathe and
+dress grand'mA"re and help her into the chair by the window. Then she
+would sit beside her and try to run threads through the bare places in
+her frocks.
+
+At times she thought of making frocks for herself out of grand'mA"re's
+calico dresses, folded so neatly in the cupboard. But grand'mA"re, she
+argued, would need them for herself when the Great Day came, when
+ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse would come with ringing laughter
+through the forest--laughter that would surely open grand'mA"re's
+eyes--and her ears. When the birds sang and the sun shone Claire RenA(C)
+believed that day would come.
+
+Jacques was always kind. But he had become a part of the great silence;
+almost as still as grand'mA"re he was. For hours he would sit and look at
+Claire RenA(C) bending over her sewing, over her scrubbing, over the
+brightening of the pots and pans. Sometimes his shining black eyes
+seemed to lie down in his face, to be going away forever behind his bush
+of eyebrow.
+
+Then she would start toward him and call: "Jacques, Jacques!"
+
+He would always answer, straightening in his chair: "Yes, my little one,
+be not afraid. Jacques is ever near."
+
+Claire RenA(C) would sigh and go back to her work and wish that she was big
+enough to go out into the forest and shoot birds, as Jacques used to do.
+She was very hungry. She was tired of eating roots from the garden.
+
+She would like to lie down and go to sleep for the rest of her life, or
+die and go to heaven and have the Holy Mother hold her in her arms and
+feed her thick yellow milk. Jacques no longer brought even thin blue
+milk. There was no coffee in the cupboard, no sugar, no bread--only
+hateful roots of the garden.
+
+Claire RenA(C) no longer walked in the forest. Sometimes she would lie down
+on a mossy place and look up through the tall trees at the patches of
+blue sky overhead. She wondered whether the good God still kept His home
+above, whether He, too, were hungry, whether the Holy Mother had work to
+do when her back ached and her fingers wouldn't move and were thin and
+bony, like young dead birds that sometimes fell from nests.
+
+Once, when Claire RenA(C) was thinking such thoughts, she saw Jacques come
+running toward her. His eyes were bright and shiny, and she had a fear
+that they might drop out of his head, as the quick breath dropped out of
+his mouth.
+
+"Listen, ma petite!" he cried.
+
+He dropped on the mossy place beside her and rocked back and forth with
+his hands clasped about his shaking knees. Claire RenA(C) was used to
+waiting. She waited until Jacques found breath for speech.
+
+Then he told her how the "Great Man from America" was coming to save
+France! How he was sending a million strong sons before him. How there
+was hope come to heavy hearts!
+
+Claire RenA(C) wanted to ask a great many questions. But Jacques went right
+on, talking, talking--about the right flank and the left flank and the
+boches and the Americans. Claire RenA(C) hoped his tongue would not be too
+tired to answer one of her questions.
+
+"What is America, my little one? Why, the greatest country in the world,
+excepting France. Where is America, my little one? Why, across the
+Atlantic Ocean, far from France."
+
+Claire RenA(C) sat very still with her hands in her lap. Jacques was a wise
+man. He knew a great deal. All old people were wise; but such strange
+things made them happy, far-away things that they couldn't ever touch or
+see, things out in the big world that went round and round. She knew
+that ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse were out in the big world, going
+round and round; but in her heart she saw them only in the forest, in
+the garden patch, by the hearth in the tiny house, asleep in their high
+white bed.
+
+In these places she could still feel their arms about her, hear their
+laughter, listen for their step. But out in the world! What were they
+doing? How could she know? Jacques made her feel very lonely. Never once
+did he speak of her three brothers; on and on he went about the "Great
+Man from America."
+
+Presently he ceased for a moment and held Claire RenA(C)'s cold hands
+against his grizzled cheek. "But, my little one, why are you cold?"
+
+Claire RenA(C) looked for a long time into Jacques' shining eyes; then she
+whispered: "My brothers!"
+
+High among the tall trees of the forest the wind was singing and
+sighing; beneath on a green moss bank Jacques gathered Claire RenA(C) in
+his arms; he gathered her up like a baby and rocked her back and forth.
+He cried and laughed into the bright tangle of her hair.
+
+"My poor little one! My poor little one!" he said over and over. Then he
+released her from his arms and held her face between his knotted hands.
+"Now, listen!"
+
+She listened, and even before Jacques had finished a song began in her
+heart--so strong and high and true that it reached up into the treetops
+and joined in the chorus of the forest.
+
+The words that came from the lips of Jacques made a great beating in her
+ears. Could it be so--what he was saying--that the "Great Man from
+America" had come to save all the Brothers of France? That soon, soon he
+would send ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse back to the tiny house in
+the forest? That all the wicked men in the world would be no more? That
+the great and terrible noise would cease--forever?
+
+Jacques was very, very sure that he was right about it; he had read it
+all in a newspaper; he had walked miles and miles to hear men talk of
+nothing else.
+
+Claire RenA(C) asked where the great man lived.
+
+"In Paris, ma petite."
+
+"And what does he look like--the brave one?"
+
+"He is grave and quiet, like a king."
+
+"And has he on his head the crown of gold?"
+
+"No, ma petite, but he has in his heart the Sons of France."
+
+"And ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse also?"
+
+Claire RenA(C) waited while Jacques passed his fingers through her hair.
+"Yes, ma petite," he said at last.
+
+Claire RenA(C) wished that she had more hands and feet and lips and eyes
+and more than such a little body to hold her joy. She made circles of
+dancing about Jacques on their way back to the cottage. She said her
+happiness was so great that she might fly up into the sky and laugh
+from the tops of the trees. "Dear Jacques," she said as they paused at
+the dried garden patch, "do you think to-morrow they will come--my
+brothers?"
+
+Jacques shook his head.
+
+"Do you think one day from to-morrow?"
+
+Again Jacques shook his head.
+
+But Claire RenA(C) was busy in her thoughts. She turned suddenly and threw
+her arms about him. "Will you again walk the miles of the forest for
+Claire RenA(C), will you?"
+
+"But--why--for what reason, ma petite?"
+
+She would send a letter! She would herself write to the "Great Man," and
+tell him about ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse, tell him how good and
+brave they were, and about grand'mA"re and the silence of her eyes and
+ears, and about--Claire RenA(C) looked frightened and clapped her fingers
+over her mouth.
+
+No! She must forever keep the secret about the telegrams. Telegrams
+meant sorrow; there must be only happiness in the house for the
+brothers.
+
+Long after twilight had fallen she pleaded with Jacques about the
+letter. By the firelight that same night she would write. Grand'mA"re had
+taught her to make the letters of many words; she knew what to say. In
+the first light of the day Jacques could be gone to the post. And then!
+Yes?
+
+Not until he finally nodded his head was she satisfied. Then she
+wondered why so suddenly he had become heavy with sadness. Why, when she
+watched him trudge off into the forest, had he seemed to carry a burden
+on his bent back?
+
+She thought: "Old people are like that. Grand'mA"re is like that; she,
+too, grows tired with the end of the day. They had so many long days
+behind them to remember--grand'mA"re and Jacques. And the days ahead of
+them?"
+
+Claire RenA(C) was often puzzled about their days ahead. They were so
+tired! But they would be soon happy. And grand'mA"re would open her eyes
+to see and her ears to hear when ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse came
+back again.
+
+Claire RenA(C) ate only a mouthful of her cooked roots on that evening. For
+grand'mA"re she made a special brew of dried herbs from the forest and
+baked a cake from the last bit of brown flour left in the cupboard.
+Grand'mA"re was half the shape she used to be; the brothers would surely
+scold when they saw her so gone away.
+
+Claire RenA(C) piled the logs high on the fire; she must have light for her
+work, plenty of light. She searched the house for paper and envelope and
+pencil and when she had written she threw the paper into the fire and
+wept with a passion much too great for her years and her body. She had
+forgotten the words; they wouldn't come. And who was she to be writing
+to the "Great Man," a man like a king?
+
+Until the dawn crept through the windows Claire RenA(C) lay upon the hearth
+by the dying fire, sobbing through her sleep. The first light of day
+made her remember Jacques. He would be waiting! He had promised to go,
+to walk to the post with her letter. She looked at the dark closet under
+the stairs. She thought of the three wreaths; if she could make wreaths,
+she could make letters! She bounded to her feet; she seized the last of
+the paper and the bitten pencil; she struggled with the letters; she
+wrote: "Dear Great Man: My brothers----"
+
+A step in the still room startled her. Grand'mA"re was coming from her
+room, fully dressed. Claire RenA(C) flew to her side, but Madame Populet
+stood erect; she walked alone to her chair by the window. Claire RenA(C)
+knelt beside her, and the hands that were laid on her head had a new
+firmness in their pressure. And grand'mA"re was smiling!
+
+Claire RenA(C) thought: "She is happy this morning; she feels in the air
+the gladness. I will make her a hot brew when I come back from Jacques."
+
+She wrapped a dark cloak about her shoulders; in her hand was tightly
+clasped the half-written paper and the pencil. At the doorway she turned
+and called: "Good-by, grand'mA"re. Good-by."
+
+Madame Populet was still smiling; her face was turned toward the forest
+and, through the sweeping willow over the window, sunbeams laid their
+fingers on the sightless eyes.
+
+Two hours later Claire RenA(C) walked through the forest singing. Her arms
+were full of scarlet leaves and branches of holly berries. She wanted to
+carry all the beautiful things she saw back to the cottage, to make the
+place a bower, where she and grand'mA"re and ClA(C)ment and Fernand and
+Alphonse could kneel and thank the good God that they were again
+together.
+
+All the world was kind on this morning. Jacques had been waiting for her
+at the door of his wooden hut. He had helped her with the letter. He had
+set out straightway to the post. Claire RenA(C) had stooped and kissed the
+feet that had so many miles to go.
+
+Jacques had cried out: "Ma petite, you hope too far."
+
+But Claire RenA(C)'s mind and heart were a flood of joy; she had no place
+for doubt, no time for sorrow. She came out of the forest and stood
+looking at the tiny, crumbling house. No longer was she afraid of the
+silence. In but a short time her three brothers would fill the air with
+laughter; they would carry her on their backs around the house and into
+the forest, and grand'mA"re would stand waiting and smiling--and perhaps
+scolding; who could tell?
+
+She pushed her way through the doorway. The berries and leaves made a
+tall screen about her; she could barely see grand'mA"re in her chair by
+the window. She laid the branches on the hearth.
+
+"There!" she said. "That's good."
+
+Grand'mA"re was very quiet in her chair by the window. Her hands were
+folded over her breast. There was something between her still fingers.
+
+Claire RenA(C) looked again, and then she screamed.
+
+Madame Populet's eyes were open; they were fixed on the thin
+blue-and-white envelope clasped in her hands. Claire RenA(C) pressed her
+fingers into her temples; she was afraid to speak aloud.
+
+She whispered: "The third telegram!"
+
+Who had brought it? Who had given it to grand'mA"re? Why was she so
+still? Why were her eyes open, without seeing? Claire RenA(C) wanted to
+scream again; but instead, she made her feet take her to the chair by
+the window; she made her fingers pull the thin envelope from between the
+stiff fingers. Grand'mA"re's hands were cold. Her silence was more
+terrible than any silence Claire RenA(C) had known before. The glazed, open
+eyes looked as if they hurt; she closed the lids with the tips of her
+fingers. She had seen dead birds in the forest and she knew that
+grand'mA"re was now like them.
+
+The telegram was better burned in the fire; there it could bring no more
+sorrow. She watched the thin paper curl and smolder among the smoking
+embers of last night's blaze. She looked again toward the still figure
+by the window. If grand'mA"re was dead, why did she stay on the earth?
+Why didn't the Holy Mother send an angel to carry her away into the
+heaven of the good God?
+
+Claire RenA(C) began to tremble. What if the angels were too tired to come,
+were as faint and hungry as she! What, then, would become of grand'mA"re?
+
+ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse would be very angry to find her so cold
+and still and dead; they would be, perhaps, as angry to find her gone
+away to heaven. But grand'mA"re had so much of sorrow here on earth;
+Claire RenA(C) thought the room was growing very dark; she flung her arms
+above her head and faintly screamed. But there was no one to hear. She
+fell on the hearthstone beside the red berries and the red leaves.
+
+There was scarcely a breath left in her body when Jacques found her at
+dusk.
+
+Three days later she opened her eyes in her little bed beside
+grand'mA"re's bed. Grand'mA"re's bed was smooth and high and white. Claire
+RenA(C) was puzzled.
+
+She called: "Grand'mA"re!"
+
+From the outer room the voice of Jacques replied: "Yes, ma petite; I am
+here."
+
+He came and put his arms about her; she laid her head against his rough
+coat, but her eyes were turned toward the empty bed. She was trying to
+remember.
+
+Presently she sat up and asked: "Did the angel come and take grand'mA"re
+and carry her to the Holy Mother in heaven?"
+
+Jacques crossed his heart. "Yes, ma petite," he said.
+
+Faintly Claire RenA(C) smiled and faintly she questioned: "But, my
+brothers?"
+
+Jacques turned his troubled eyes away. She must wait, he said; when she
+was strong they would talk of many things. He told her that he had
+brought food to make her well, and that on the first warm day he would
+himself carry her out into the sunshine of the forest; there she would
+again run and sing and be like a happy, bright bird.
+
+In the days that followed Claire RenA(C) never spoke of grand'mA"re; she
+never spoke of her three brothers. She lay in her bed and stared about
+the quiet room. The silence was different, now that grand'mA"re was gone.
+Everything was different.
+
+Jacques gave her food and care, and every day he said: "In only a little
+time you will be strong again, ma petite."
+
+But something in his eyes kept her from speaking about ClA(C)ment and
+Fernand and Alphonse. Often she thought about the telegrams upstairs in
+the high, white bed. She wondered if Jacques had found them there. Once
+she heard him walking on the floor above. He was there a long time, and
+when he came down his voice was queer and deep and his eyes were hidden
+behind a mist.
+
+He never spoke any more about the "Great Man from America." Jacques was
+like grand'mA"re; he was old, he was full of sorrow. Claire RenA(C) was
+afraid to ask about her letter; she thought about it each day.
+
+But on the morning she was carried to ClA(C)ment's chair by the chimney
+corner, she felt a great gladness spring in her heart. Yes; they would
+come soon--her three brothers. To-morrow she would be strong enough to
+walk alone to the dark closet under the stairs and look again at the
+three wreaths on the highest shelf.
+
+Claire RenA(C) smiled in her sleep that night; she dreamed of laughter in
+the house, of strong young arms about her, of quick steps and bright
+eyes.
+
+Once she awoke and must have called out, for Jacques was kneeling beside
+her bed.
+
+"Poor little one," he said, "you call, but there is only old Jacques to
+come."
+
+Claire RenA(C) put out her hand and let it rest on the old man's head.
+"Dear Jacques," she whispered, "always I will love you."
+
+The sun was streaming through the tiny house the next morning. Jacques
+had left Claire RenA(C) sitting in the warm light of the open doorway while
+he went to bring wood from the forest. There were no birds singing from
+the leafless trees, but Claire RenA(C) saw a sparrow hopping about on the
+bright brown earth of the garden patch. She was wishing she had a great
+piece of white fat to hang out on a tree for the bird's winter food;
+wishing there were crumbs to leave on the window ledge, as grand'mA"re
+used to do.
+
+She was wishing so hard about so many things that she failed to see
+three men coming out of the forest. They were tall and straight and
+fair, and their eyes were as blue as the sky above their heads. Their
+clothes were the color of pale brown sand and on their heads were jaunty
+caps of the selfsame color.
+
+Jacques was with them; he was making a great many motions with his
+hands. They were all walking very slowly and talking very fast.
+
+As they neared the house Jacques pointed to Claire RenA(C), and the three
+strange men held back. Jacques came slowly forward. The sound of his
+step on the hard ground interrupted Claire RenA(C)'s reverie; she looked up
+and around. She saw the three men standing at attention beyond the
+garden gate.
+
+She threw back the heavy cloak wrapped about her; the thin folds of her
+calico dress hung limply from her sunken shoulders, and above the wasted
+child body the sun spun circles of gold in her tangled hair. She made a
+slight quivering start toward Jacques, which passed into a rigid stare
+toward the three figures beyond.
+
+She was unaware when Jacques put a caressing, supporting arm about her
+and said: "Listen, my child."
+
+The three men were coming forward. One of them had a letter in his hand.
+With kind eyes and bared heads they stood before the straining gaze of
+Claire RenA(C).
+
+"The letter is for you, ma petite." Jacques voice was infinitely tender;
+the added pressure of his arm made Claire RenA(C) conscious of his
+presence; she suddenly clung to him and buried her face in his coat
+sleeve. He went on to say: "The letter is for Claire RenA(C)--from the
+'Great Man from America'!"
+
+The tangled head shook in the angle of his arm. Claire RenA(C) was crying.
+
+The tallest of the three men handed the letter to Jacques; he wiped his
+eyes and turned his head away. The others shifted in position and
+tightly folded their arms across their broad chests.
+
+Jacques read:
+
+     _To Mademoiselle Claire RenA(C)_: The soil of France now covers the
+     bodies of your three brothers, ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse
+     Populet. The soil of France covers the Croix de Guerre upon their
+     breasts. The sons of France, and of America, hold forever in their
+     hearts the memory of their honor. We are all one family now--France
+     and America--and so I send to you three brothers--not in place of,
+     but in the stead of those others. They come to give you love and
+     service in the name of America.
+
+Claire RenA(C) slowly moved apart from Jacques. She stood alone with head
+erect and taut arms by her sides. She hesitated a moment, then came
+forward and held out her hands.
+
+"Bonjour, messieurs," she said.
+
+The tallest of the three men covered her hands with his own. "Little
+friend," he said, "we can't make you forget your brothers; we want to
+help you remember them. We want to do some of the things for you that
+they used to do, and we want you to do a lot of things for us. We are
+pretty big, it is true, but we need a little girl like you to sort of
+keep us in order. We want to take you right along with us this very
+day--to a place where we can care for you, and----"
+
+But Claire RenA(C) slipped with electric swiftness to Jacques' side; from
+his sheltering arm she made declaration: "Never! I stay here with
+Jacques--always." Then struggling against emotion she added with
+finality: "I thank you, messieurs."
+
+The tall man lingered with his thoughts a moment before he spoke; he was
+standing close to Claire RenA(C) and made as though to lay his hand upon
+her hair, but drew back and said that they were all pretty good cooks
+and that they were very, very hungry.
+
+At this Claire RenA(C) threw a frightened, wistful glance at Jacques.
+
+The tall man interrupted hastily. He said they had brought food with
+them, and would she allow them to prepare it?
+
+Claire RenA(C) nodded her head; her eyes looked beyond her questioner--out
+into the lonely forest.
+
+Jacques presently lifted her into his arms and carried her within the
+house. With reverence he placed her in grand'mA"re's chair by the window.
+Her ears were filled with distant echoes; her sight was blurred; speech
+had gone from her lips. As through a dark curtain she saw the figures
+moving about the room; far away she heard the clatter and the talk and
+sometimes laughter.
+
+After a long time Jacques came and held some steaming coffee to her
+lips. He made her drink and drink again; a pink flush crept into her
+cheeks; shyly she met the glances from the eyes of those three fair,
+kind faces. Then her own eyes filled with tears and she lowered her
+head.
+
+The tallest of the three men came behind her chair and spoke gently,
+close to her ear: "Our great and good commander, who sent us here, will
+be very unhappy if you do not come. You see, he wanted the sister of
+ClA(C)ment and Fernand and Alphonse Populet to be a sister to some of his
+own boys. It would help us a great deal, you know; we're pretty lonely
+too--sometimes."
+
+The collaboration in the faces of his friends seemed to put an instant
+end to his effort and, as if an unspoken command were given, they all
+sat down and made a prompt finish to the meal.
+
+With no word on her lips Claire RenA(C) watched from Grand'mA"re's chair by
+the window. About her, figures moved like dim marionettes; they cleared
+the table; they polished the copper pans; they sat in the chimney corner
+and puffed blue circles of smoke above their heads.
+
+Dimly she saw all this, but clearly she saw the inside of a great man's
+mind. She, Claire RenA(C), had work to do; she was called--for France!
+
+Long, slanting shadows from the sinking sun were streaking the wall of
+the whitewashed room with slender, forklike fingers. Jacques and the
+three men were knotted in talk beside the ruddy fire glow. Claire RenA(C)
+braced herself with a sharp sigh. No soldier ever went into battle with
+a more self-made courage than hers.
+
+Unseen, unnoticed, noiselessly she made her pilgrimage across the room.
+In the dark closet, under the stairs, she reached for the wreaths. With
+quick, short breath she gathered them in her arms. One moment she
+lowered her head while her lips touched the faded crackling flowers. The
+compact was sealed; her sacrifice was ready.
+
+In that attitude she passed swiftly within the circle about the
+fireplace. She came like a spirit of Peace with the wreaths in her arms.
+Over and above the serenity in her face there dawned a joyous
+expectancy. Yes; she could trust les AmA(C)ricains!
+
+On each reverent, bowed head she placed her wreath; and when she had
+finished, without tremor in her voice she said: "My brothers!"
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[17] Copyright, 1919, by The Curtis Publishing Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Ethel Dodd Thomas.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROMAN BATH[18]
+
+#By# JOHN T. WHEELWRIGHT
+
+From _Scribner's Magazine_
+
+
+Ralph Tuckerman had landed that day in Liverpool after a stormy winter
+voyage, his first across the Atlantic. The ship had slowly come up the
+Mersey in a fog, and the special boat train had dashed through the same
+dense atmosphere to the home of fogs and soot, London, and in the whole
+journey to his hotel the young American had seen nothing of the mother
+country but telegraph-poles scudding through opacity on the railway
+journey, and in London the loom of buildings and lights dimly red
+through the fog.
+
+Although he had no acquaintances among the millions of dwellers in the
+city, he did not feel lonely in the comfortable coffee room of his
+hotel, where a cannel-coal fire flickered. The air of the room was
+surcharged with pungent fumes of the coal smoke which had blackened the
+walls and ceilings, and had converted the once brilliant red of a Turkey
+carpet into a dingy brown, but the young American would not have had the
+air less laden with the characteristic odor of London, or the carpet and
+walls less dingy if he had had a magician's wand.
+
+The concept of a hotel in his native city of Chicago was a steel
+structure of many stories, brilliantly lighted and decorated, supplied
+with a lightning elevator service running through the polished marble
+halls which swooned in a tropical atmosphere of steam heat emanating
+from silvered radiators. So it was no wonder that the young man felt
+more at home in this inn in old London than he had ever felt in an
+American caravansary.
+
+The shabby waiter who had served him at dinner appeared to him to be a
+true representation of the serving-man who had eaten most of David
+Copperfield's chops, and drained the little boy's half pint of port when
+he went up to school. It may be that Tuckerman's age protected him from
+any such invasion of his viands, but in justice to the serving-man it
+seems probable that he would have cut off his right hand rather than
+been disrespectful to a guest at dinner.
+
+After the cloth was removed, Tuckerman ordered a half-pint decanter of
+port out of regard for the memory of Dickens, and, sipping it, looked
+about with admiration at the room with its dark old panels. Comfortable
+as he felt, after his dinner, he could not help regretting that he had
+not had with him his old friends Mr. and Mrs. Micawber and Traddles to
+share his enjoyment--the guests whom Copperfield entertained when "Mr.
+Micawber with more shirt collar than usual and a new ribbon to his
+eyeglass, Mrs. Micawber with a cap in a whitey-brown paper parcel,
+Traddles carrying the parcel and supporting Mrs. Micawber on his arm"
+arrived at David's lodgings and were so delightfully entertained. He
+wished that he could see "Micawber's face shining through a thin cloud
+of delicate fumes of punch," so that at the end of the evening Mr. and
+Mrs. Micawber would feel that they could not "have enjoyed a feast more
+if they had sold a bed to pay for it."
+
+These cheery spirits seemed to come back to him from the charming
+paradise where they live to delight the world for all time, and it
+seemed to him that he could distinctly hear Mr. Micawber saying: "We twa
+have rin about the brae, And pu'd the gowans fine," observing as he
+quoted: "I am not exactly aware what gowans may be, but I have no doubt
+that Copperfield and myself would frequently have taken a pull at them
+if it had been possible."
+
+His modest modicum of port would have seemed a poor substitute to the
+congenial Micawber for the punch.
+
+Finally he went up to bed, delighted to be given a bedroom candle in a
+brass candlestick, and to find on his arrival there that the plumber had
+never entered its sacred precincts, for a hat tub on a rubber cloth
+awaited the can of hot water, which would be lugged up to him in the
+morning; the four-post bedstead with its heavy damask hangings, the
+cushioned grandfather's chair by the open fireplace, the huge mahogany
+wardrobe and the heavy furniture--all were of the period of 1830. Back
+to such a room Mr. Pickwick had tried to find his way on the memorable
+night when he so disturbed the old lady whose chamber he had unwittingly
+invaded.
+
+So impressed was the young American with his transference to the past
+that his stem-winding watch seemed an anachronism when he came to attend
+to it for the night.
+
+He settled down into the big armchair by the fire, having taken from his
+valise three books which he had selected for his travelling companions:
+"Baedeker's London Guide," "The Pickwick Papers," and "David
+Copperfield." The latter was in a cheap American edition which he had
+bought with his schoolboy's savings; a tattered volume which he knew
+almost by heart; which, when he took it up, opened at that part of
+David's "Personal History and Experience" where his aunt tells him of
+her financial losses, and where he dreamed his dreams of poverty in all
+sorts of shapes, and, as he read, this paragraph flew out at his eye:
+
+"There was an old Roman bath in those days at the bottom of one of the
+streets out of the Strand--it may be there still--in which I have had
+many a cold plunge. Dressing myself as quickly as I could, and leaving
+Peggotty to look after my Aunt, I tumbled head foremost into it, and
+then went for a walk to Hampstead. I had a hope that this brisk
+treatment might freshen my wits a little."
+
+Ralph's sleep in the old bed was unquiet. He was transported back into
+the England of the old coaching days, and found himself seated on the
+box-seat of the Ipswich coach, next a stout, red-faced, elderly
+coachman, his throat and chest muffled by capacious shawls, who said to
+him:
+
+"If ever you are attacked with the gout, just you marry a widder as had
+got a good loud woice with a decent notion of using it, and you will
+never have the gout agin!" Then suddenly the film of the smart coach,
+with passengers inside and out, faded away, and Ralph found himself
+drinking hot brandy and water with Mr. Pickwick, in a room of a very
+homely description, apparently under the special patronage of Mr. Weller
+and other stage coachmen, for there sat the former smoking with great
+vehemence. The vision flashed out into darkness.
+
+Then came deep, early morning sleep from which a sharp knock at his door
+aroused him, and a valet entered with a hot-water can and a cup of tea,
+saying: "Beg pardon, sir, eight o'clock, sir, thank you, sir."
+
+Ralph's first inclination was to say "_Thank you_," but he restrained
+himself from this in time to save upsetting the foundations of British
+social life, and instead he asked:
+
+"What kind of a morning is it?"
+
+"Oh, sir, thank you, sir, if I should say that it is a nasty morning,
+sir, I should be telling the truth indeed, foggy and raining, sir, thank
+you, sir."
+
+All the time he was quietly taking up Ralph's clothes, which were
+scattered in convulsions around the room.
+
+"Shall I not unpack your box, sir?" asked the valet.
+
+Ralph stopped from sipping his tea to nod assent, and the man proceeded
+with the unpacking with a hand which practice had made perfect.
+
+"This is my first morning in London," observed Ralph. The valet
+pretended not to hear him, being unwilling to engage in any line of
+conversation which by any chance could take him out of the station in
+life to which he had been called.
+
+"What is your name?" finally asked the American.
+
+"Postlethwaite, sir, but I answer to the name of 'Enery."
+
+"Well, 'Enery, did you ever hear of a Roman bath in a little street off
+the Strand?"
+
+"A Roman bath, sir, in a little street off the Strand, sir? No, sir,
+thank you, sir, my word, sir, the Italians never take baths, sir."
+
+"They used to take them, 'Enery, and my guide-book says that there is
+one of theirs to this day in Strand Lane."
+
+The valet was silent as he continued his unpacking and arranging of
+Tuckerman's clothes, and the latter felt a little uncomfortable as this
+proceeding went on, for he was conscious of the inadequacy of his
+outfit, not only in the eyes of an English servant, but in his own, for
+he had purposely travelled "light," intending to replenish his wardrobe
+in London; but the well-trained servant treated the worn-out suits and
+frayed shirts with the utmost outward respect as he folded them up and
+put them away in the clothes-press.
+
+An hour later, on the top of a 'bus, Ralph sat watching the complicated
+movement of traffic in the London streets, directed by the helmeted
+policemen. It was before the days of the motor-car, an endless stream of
+omnibuses, drays, hansoms, and four-wheelers, even at that early hour in
+the morning was pouring through the great artery of the heart of the
+world. This first ride on a London 'bus and the sights of the street
+traffic were inspiring, but familiar to the mind's eye of the young
+American. The Thames, alive with barges and steamers, the smoke-stained
+buildings, the processions of clerks, the crossing and sweepers, the
+smart policemen, the cab-drivers, the draymen, he knew from Leech's
+drawings, and he was on his way, marvellous to relate, to the oldest
+work of man in the city, in which the water flowed as it had been
+flowing ever since London was Londineum.
+
+He got off the 'bus at Strand Lane and found a little way down the
+street the building he was looking for. It was a commonplace brick
+structure, the exterior giving no hint of its contents. A notice was
+posted on the black entrance door, stating the hours at which the bath
+was open to visitors. Ralph found out that he had fifteen minutes to
+wait before he could plunge head foremost into the pool. He walked
+somewhat impatiently up and down the street, finding the waiting
+unpleasant, for although it was not raining hard, the mist was cold and
+disagreeable. After a few turns, he came up to the door again and there
+found a young gentleman, dressed in a long surtout, reading the notice;
+the stranger turned about as Ralph approached; his face was
+smooth-shaven, his eyes large and melancholy, his whimsical, sensitive
+mouth was upcurved at the corners, his waving chestnut hair was longer
+than was then the fashion, the soft felt hat was pulled down over his
+forehead as if to ward off the fog. He swung to and fro with his right
+hand a Malacca joint with a chiselled gold head.
+
+He bowed politely to Ralph, remarking:
+
+"So you, too, are waiting for a plunge into the waters of the Holywell?"
+
+"You are right, sir; I guess that we shall find the Roman bath cold this
+morning."
+
+"You are an American, are you not?"
+
+"I am, and therefore, sir, I am a seeker after the curious and ancient
+things of this city; it is my first morning in London."
+
+"May I ask how you found out about this ancient bath? It is but little
+known, even to old Londoners. I often come here for a plunge, but I
+seldom find any other bathers here."
+
+"Well, sir, I came across an allusion to it in 'David Copperfield,' just
+before I retired last night, and I looked up the locality in my
+guide-book."
+
+"'David Copperfield'!" exclaimed the young man with a low whistle, and
+he started off upon a walking up and down as if to keep himself warm
+while waiting.
+
+A moment later the heavy black door of the bathhouse was opened, and the
+bath attendant stepped out on the threshold, looking out into the rain;
+a dark-haired, heavily built man, with coarse features, a tight, cruel
+mouth; if he had not been dressed in rough, modern working clothes, he
+might well have been a holdover from the days of the Roman occupation.
+
+"The admission is two shillings," announced the attendant as he showed
+the American into a dressing-room, and as the latter was paying his fee
+he saw the other visitor glide into a dressing-room adjoining his.
+
+The bath was small, dark, and disappointing in appearance to the man
+from overseas, to whom the term "Roman bath" had conveyed an impression
+of vast vaulted rooms, and marble-lined swimming-pools. The bath itself
+was long enough for a plunge, but too small for a swim, and a hasty
+diver would be in danger of bumping his head on the bottom. The bricks
+at the side were laid edgewise, and the floor of the bath was of brick
+covered with cement. At the point where the water from the Holywell
+Spring flowed in, Ralph could see the old Roman pavement. The water in
+the bath was clear, but it was dark and cold looking.
+
+As Ralph stood at the edge, reluctant to spring in, he saw the young
+Englishman dart from his dressing-room like a graceful sprite and make a
+beautiful dive into the pool. His slender body made no splash, but
+entered the water like a beam of light, refracting as he swam a stroke
+under water.
+
+In a trice his face appeared above the surface, with no ripple or
+disturbance of the water.
+
+"I feel better already," he called out. "I passed such a terrible night,
+almost as bad as poor Clarence's. How miserable I was last night when I
+lay down! I need not go into details. A loss of property; a sudden
+misfortune had upset my hopes of a career and of happiness.
+
+"It was difficult to believe that night, so long to me, could be short
+for any one else. This consideration set me thinking, and thinking of an
+imaginary party where people were dancing the hours away until that
+became a dream too, and I heard the music incessantly playing one tune,
+and saw Dora incessantly dancing one dance without taking the least
+notice of me."
+
+"I too dreamed the night through," thought Ralph. "And am I dreaming
+now?"
+
+"I dreamed of poverty in all sorts of shapes. I seemed to dream without
+the previous ceremony of going to sleep. Now I was ragged, now I ran out
+of my office in a nightgown and boots, now I was hungrily picking up the
+crumbs of a poor man's scanty bread, and, still more or less conscious
+of my own room, I was always tossing about like a distressed ship in a
+sea of bedclothes. But come, my friend, plunge in, for if you passed any
+such night as mine, the clear cold water of Holywell Spring has
+marvellous healing properties, and it will freshen your wits for
+whatever the day may bring for them to puzzle over."
+
+As he spoke he drew himself up on the opposite side of the bath from
+Ralph, and watched the latter as he took a clumsy header, his body
+striking the water flat, and sending great splashes over the room. When
+Ralph, recovering from his rude entrance into the water, looked for the
+other bather, he was gone. The cold water did not invite a protracted
+immersion, so that Ralph scrambled hastily out of it, and after a rub
+with a harsh towel, put on his clothes; then he noticed that the door of
+the stranger's cubicle was open; he looked into it to say good-by to his
+chance acquaintance, but it was empty, and in the corner he saw the
+Malacca cane with the gold head. He picked it up and carefully examined
+it; the head was of gold in the form of a face, eyes wide open,
+spectacles turned up on the forehead.
+
+"Great CA|sar's ghost!" exclaimed Ralph, "Old Marley!"
+
+The attendant just then appeared, Ralph handed him the cane, saying: "I
+found this cane in the other gentleman's dressing-room." The attendant
+stared at him and said gruffly:
+
+"None of your larks, sir; there wasn't no other gentleman, and that's no
+cane; its my cleaning mop that I get under the seats with."
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[18] Copyright, 1920, by Charles Scribner's Sons. Copyright, 1921, by
+John T. Wheelwright.
+
+
+
+
+AMAZEMENT[19]
+
+#By# STEPHEN FRENCH WHITMAN
+
+From _Harper's Magazine_
+
+
+There is sometimes melancholy in revisiting after years of absence, a
+place where one was joyous in the days of youth. That is why sadness
+stole over me on the evening of my return to Florence.
+
+To be sure, the physical beauties of the Italian city were intact.
+Modernity had not farther encroached upon the landmarks that had
+witnessed the birth of a new age, powerful, even violent, in its
+individualism. From those relics, indeed--from the massive palaces, the
+noble porches, the monuments rising in the public squares--there still
+seemed to issue a faint vibration of ancient audacity and force. It was
+as if stone and bronze had absorbed into their particles, and stored
+through centuries, the great emotions released in Florence during that
+time of mental expansion called the Renaissance.
+
+But this integrity of scene and influence only increased my regrets.
+Though the familiar setting was still here, the familiar human figures
+seemed all departed. I looked in vain for sobered versions of the faces
+that had smiled, of old, around tables in comfortable cafA(C)s, in an
+atmosphere of youthful gaiety, where at any moment one might be enmeshed
+in a Florentine prank that Boccaccio could not have bettered.
+
+One such prank rose, all at once, before my minds eye, and suddenly, in
+the midst of my pessimism, I laughed aloud.
+
+I recalled the final scene of that escapade, which I myself had managed
+to devise. The old cafA(C) had rung with a bellow of delight; the victim,
+ridiculous in his consternation, had rushed at me howling for vengeance.
+But the audience, hemming him in, had danced 'round him singing a ribald
+little song. The air was full of battered felt hats, coffee spoons,
+lumps of sugar, and waving handkerchiefs. Out on the piazza the old
+cab-horses had pricked up their ears; the shopkeepers had run to their
+doorways; the police had taken notice. It was not every day that the
+champion joker among us was caught in such a net as he delighted to
+spread.
+
+Where were they, all my jolly young men and women? Maturity, matrimony,
+perhaps still other acts of fate, had scattered them. Here and there a
+grizzled waiter let fall the old names with a shrug of perplexity, then
+hastened to answer the call of a rising generation as cheerful as if it
+were not doomed, also, to dispersion and regrets.
+
+Then, too, in returning I had been so unfortunate as to find Florence on
+the verge of spring.
+
+The soft evening air was full of a sweetness exhaled by the surrounding
+cup of hills. From baskets of roses, on the steps of porticoes, a
+fragrance floated up like incense round the limbs of statues, which were
+bathed in a golden light by the lamps of the piazza. Those marble
+countenances were placid with an eternal youth, beneath the same stars
+that had embellished irrevocable nights, that recalled some excursions
+into an enchanted world, some romantic gestures the knack for which was
+gone.
+
+"After all," I thought, "it is better not to find one of the old circle.
+We should make each other miserable by our reminiscences."
+
+No sooner had I reflected thus than I found myself face to face with
+Antonio.
+
+Antonio was scarcely changed. His dark visage was still vital with
+intelligence, still keen and strange from the exercise of an
+inexhaustible imagination. Yet in his eyes, which formerly had sparkled
+with the wit of youth, there was more depth and a hint of somberness. He
+had become a celebrated satirist.
+
+"What luck!" he cried, embracing me with sincere delight. "But to think
+that I should have to run into you on the street!"
+
+"I asked for you everywhere."
+
+"In the old places? I never go to them. You have not dined? Nor I. Here,
+let us take this cab."
+
+He hurried me off to a restaurant of the suburbs. Under the starry sky
+we sat down at a table beside a sunken garden, in which nightingales
+were trying their voices among the blossoms, whose perfume had been
+intensified by dew.
+
+It was an old-time dinner, at least, that Antonio provided; but, alas!
+those others were not there to eke out the illusion of the past. To each
+name, as I uttered it, Antonio added an epitaph. This one had gone to
+bury himself in the Abruzzi hills. That one had become a professor at
+Bologna. Others, in vanishing, had left no trace behind them.
+
+"And Leonello, who was going to surpass Michael Angelo?"
+
+"Oh," my friend responded, "Leonello is still here, painting his
+pictures. Like me, he could not live long beyond the air of Florence."
+
+Antonio, in fact, could trace his family back through Florentine history
+into the Middle Ages.
+
+"Is Leonello the same?" I pursued. "Always up to some nonsense? But you
+were not much behind him in those insane adventures."
+
+"Take that to yourself," Antonio retorted. "I recall one antic, just
+before you left us--" He broke off to meditate. Clicking his tongue
+against his teeth, he gazed at me almost with resentment, as if I were
+responsible for this depressing work of time. "No!" he exclaimed,
+looking at me in gloomy speculation, while, in the depths of his eyes,
+one seemed to see his extraordinary intelligence perplexed and baffled.
+"That war of wit is surely over. The old days are gone for good. Let us
+make the best of it." And he asked me what I had been doing.
+
+I made my confession. In those years I had become fascinated by psychic
+phenomena--by the intrusion into human experience of weird happenings
+that materialism could not very well explain. Many of these happenings
+indicated, at least to my satisfaction, not only future existences, but
+also previous ones. I admitted to Antonio that, since I was in Italy
+again, I intended to investigate the case of a Perugian peasant girl
+who, though she had never been associated with educated persons, was
+subject to trances in which she babbled the Greek language of
+Cleopatra's time, and accurately described the appearance of
+pre-Christian Alexandria.
+
+"I am writing a book on such matters," I concluded. "You, of course,
+will laugh at it----"
+
+His somber eyes, which had been watching me intently, became blank for a
+time, then suddenly gave forth a flash.
+
+"I? Laugh because you have been enthralled by weirdness?" he cried, as
+one who, all at once, has been profoundly moved. Yet laugh he did, in
+loud tones that were almost wild with strange elation. "Pardon me," he
+stammered, passing a trembling hand across his forehead. "You do not
+know the man that I have become of late."
+
+What had my words called to his mind? From that moment everything was
+changed. The weight of some mysterious circumstances had descended upon
+Antonio, overwhelming, as it seemed to me, the pleasure that he had
+found in this reunion. Through the rest of the dinner he was silent, a
+prey to that dark exultancy, to that uncanny agitation.
+
+This silence persisted while the cab bore us back into the city.
+
+In the narrow streets a blaze of light from the open fronts of
+cook-shops flooded the lower stories of some palaces which once on a
+time had housed much fierceness and beauty, treachery and perverse
+seductiveness. Knowing Antonio's intimate acquaintance with those
+splendid days, I strove to rouse him by congenial allusions. His
+preoccupation continued; the historic syllables that issued from my lips
+were wasted in the clamor of the street. Yet when I pronounced the name
+of one of those bygone belles, Fiammetta Adimari, he repeated slowly,
+like a man who has found the key to everything:
+
+"Fiammetta!"
+
+"What is it, Antonio? Are you in love?"
+
+He gave me a piercing look and sprang from the cab. We had reached the
+door of his house.
+
+Antonio's bachelor apartment was distinguished by handsome austerity.
+The red-tiled floors reflected faintly the lights of antique candelabra,
+which shed their luster also upon chests quaintly carved, bric-A -brac
+that museums would have coveted, and chairs adorned with threadbare
+coats of arms. Beside the mantelpiece hung a small oil-painting, as I
+thought, of Antonio himself, his black hair reaching to his shoulders,
+and on his head a hat of the Renaissance.
+
+"No," said he, giving me another of his strange looks, "it is my
+ancestor, Antonio di Manzecca, who died in the year fifteen hundred."
+
+I remembered that somewhere in the hills north of the city there was a
+dilapidated stronghold called the Castle of Manzecca. Behind those
+walls, in the confusion of the Middle Ages, Antonio's family had
+developed into a nest of rural tyrants. Those old steel-clad men of the
+Manzecca had become what were called "Signorotti"--lords of a height or
+two, swooping down to raid passing convoys, waging petty wars against
+the neighboring castles, and at times, like bantams, too arrogant to
+bear in mind the shortness of their spurs, defying even Florence. In the
+end, as I recalled the matter, Florence had chastened the Manzecca,
+together with all the other lordlings of that region. The survivors had
+come to live in the city, where, through these hundreds of years, many
+changes of fortune had befallen them. My friend Antonio was their last
+descendant.
+
+"But," I protested, examining the portrait, "your resemblance to this
+Antonio of the Renaissance could not possibly be closer."
+
+Instead of replying, he sat down, rested his elbow on his knees, and
+pressed his fists against his temples. Presently I became aware that he
+was laughing, very softly, but in such an unnatural manner that I
+shivered.
+
+I grew alarmed. It was true that in our years of separation Antonio's
+physical appearance had not greatly changed; but what was the meaning of
+this mental difference? Was his mind in danger of some sinister
+overshadowing? Were these queer manners the symptoms of an incipient
+mania? It is proposed that genius is a form of madness. Was the genius
+of Antonio, in its phenomenal development, on the point of losing touch
+with sanity? As my thoughts leaped from one conjecture to another, the
+tiled room took on the chill that pervades a mausoleum. From the bowl on
+the table the petals of a dying rose fell in a sudden cascade, like a
+dismal portent.
+
+"The Castle of Manzecca," I ventured, merely to break the silence, "is
+quite ruined, I suppose?"
+
+"No, the best part of it still stands. I have had some rooms restored."
+
+"You own it?"
+
+"I bought it back a year ago. It is there that I----" He buried his face
+in his hands.
+
+"Antonio," I said, "you are in some great trouble."
+
+"It is not trouble," he answered, in smothered tones. "But why should I
+hesitate to make my old friend, whose mind does not reject weirdness, my
+confidant? I warn you, however, that it will be a confidence weird
+enough to make even your experience in such matters seem tame. Go first
+to Perugia. Examine the peasant girl who chatters of ancient Alexandria.
+Return to my house one week from to-night, at dusk, and you shall share
+my secret."
+
+He rose, averted his face, and went to throw himself upon a couch, or
+porch-bed, another relic, its woodwork covered with faded paint and
+gilt, amid which one might trace the gallants of the sixteenth century
+in pursuit of nymphs--an allegory of that age's longing for the classic
+past. I left him thus, flat on his back, staring up at the ceiling,
+oblivious of my farewell.
+
+Poor Antonio! What a return to Florence!
+
+A week from that night, at dusk, I returned. At Perugia I had filled a
+pocket-book with notes on the peasant girl's trances. The spell of those
+strange revelations was yet on me, but at Antonio's door I felt that I
+stood on the threshold of a still more agitating disclosure.
+
+My knock was answered by Antonio himself, his hat on his head and a
+motorcoat over his arm. He seemed burning with impatience.
+
+"You have your overcoat? Good." And he locked the door on the outside.
+
+We stepped into a limousine, which whirled us away through the twilight.
+The weather made one remember that even in Florence the merging of March
+and April could be violent. To-night masses of harsh-looking clouds sped
+across the sky before an icy wind from the mountains. A burial-party,
+assembled at a convent gate, had their black robes fluttering, their
+waxen torches blown out.
+
+"Death!" muttered Antonio, with a sardonic grimace. "And they call it
+unconquerable!"
+
+As we paused before a dwelling-house, two men emerged upon the pavement.
+They were Leonello, the artist, and another friend of the old days,
+named Leonardo. The unusual occasion constrained our greetings. The
+newcomers, after pressing my hand, devoted themselves with grave
+solicitude to Antonio.
+
+He burst forth at them like a man whose nervous tension is nearly
+unendurable:
+
+"Yes, hang it all! I am quite well. Why the devil will you persist in
+coddling me?"
+
+Leonello and Leonardo gave me a mournful look.
+
+We now stopped at another door, where there joined us two ladies unknown
+to me. Both were comely, with delicate features full of sensibility.
+Neither, I judged, had reached the age of thirty. In the moment of
+meeting--a moment notable for a stammering of incoherent phrases, a
+darting of sidelong looks at Antonio, a general effect of furtiveness
+and excitement--no one remembered to present me to these ladies.
+However, while we were arranging ourselves in the limousine I gathered
+that the name of one of them was Laura, and that the other's name was
+Lina. In their faces, on which the street-lights cast intermittent
+flashes, I seemed to discern a struggle between apprehension and avidity
+for this adventure.
+
+The silence, and the tension of all forms, continued even when we left
+the city behind us and found ourselves speeding northward along a
+country road.
+
+"Northward. To the Castle of Manzecca, then?" I asked myself.
+
+The rays from our lamps revealed the trees all bending toward the south.
+The wind pressed against our car, as if to hold us back from the
+revelation awaiting us ahead, in the midst of the black night, whence
+this interminable whistling moan pervaded nature. Rain dashed against
+the glass. Through the blurred windows the lights of farms appeared, to
+be instantly engulfed by darkness. Then everything vanished except the
+illuminated streak of road. We seemed to be fleeing from the known
+world, across a span of radiance that trembled over an immeasurable
+void, into the supernatural.
+
+The limousine glided to a standstill.
+
+"Here we abandon the car."
+
+We entered the kitchen of a humble farm-house. Strings of garlic hung
+from the ceiling, and on the floor lay some valises.
+
+As the ladies departed into another room, Antonio mastered his emotion
+and addressed me.
+
+"What we must do, and what I must ask you to promise, may at first seem
+to you ridiculous," he said. "Yet your acceptance of my conditions is a
+matter of life or death, not to any one here present, but to another,
+whom we are about to visit. What I require is this: you are to put on,
+as we shall, the costumes in these valises, which are after the fashion
+of the early sixteenth century. Indeed, when our journey is resumed,
+there must be about us nothing to suggest the present age. Moreover, I
+must have your most earnest promise that when we reach our destination
+you will refrain from giving the least hint, by word or action, that the
+sixteenth century has passed away. If you feel unable to carry out this
+deception, we must leave you here. The slightest blunder would be
+fatal."
+
+No sooner had Antonio uttered these words than he turned in a panic to
+Leonello and Leonardo.
+
+"Am I wrong to have brought him?" he demanded, distractedly. "Can I
+depend on him at every point? You two, and Laura and Lina, know what it
+would mean if he should make a slip."
+
+Much disturbed, I declared that I wished for nothing better than to
+return to Florence at once. But Leonardo restrained me, while Leonello,
+patting Antonio's shoulder in reassurance, responded:
+
+"Trust him. You do his quick wit an injustice."
+
+Finally Antonio, with a heavy sigh, unlocked the valises.
+
+Hitherto I had associated masquerade with festive expectations, but
+nothing could have been less festive than the atmosphere in which we
+donned those costumes. They were rich, accurate, and complete. The wigs
+of flowing hair were perfectly deceptive. The fur-trimmed surcoats and
+the long hose were in fabrics suggestive of lost weaving arts. Each
+dagger, buckle, hat-gem, and finger-ring, was a true antique. Even when
+the two ladies appeared, in sumptuous Renaissance dresses, their
+coiffures as closely in accordance with that period as their expanded
+silhouettes, no smile crossed any face.
+
+"Are we all--" began Antonio. His voice failed him. Muffled in thick
+cloaks, we faced the blustery night again.
+
+Behind the farm-house stood horses, saddled and bridled in an obsolete
+manner. Our small cavalcade wound up a hillside path, which, in the
+darkness, the beasts felt out for themselves. One became aware of
+cypress-trees on either hillside, immensely tall, to judge by the
+thickness of their trunks. More and more numerous became these trees, as
+was evident from the lamentation of their countless branches. In its
+groan, the forest voiced to the utmost that melancholy which the
+imaginative mind associates with cypresses in Italy, where they seemed
+always to raise their funereal grace around the sites of vanished
+splendors.
+
+We were ascending one of the hills that lie scattered above Florence
+toward the mountains, and that were formerly all covered with these
+solemn trees.
+
+But the wind grew even stronger as we neared the summit. Above us loomed
+a gray bulk. The Castle of Manzecca reluctantly unveiled itself, bleak,
+towering, impressive in its decay--a ruin that was still a fortress, and
+that time had not injured so much as had its mortal besiegers; the last
+of whom had died centuries ago. A gate swung open. Our horses clattered
+into a courtyard which abruptly blazed with torches.
+
+In that dazzle all the omens of our journey were fulfilled. We found
+ourselves, as it appeared, not only in a place embodying another age,
+but in that other age itself.
+
+The streaming torches revealed shock-headed servitors of the
+Renaissance, their black tunics stamped in vermilion, front and back,
+with a device of the Manzecca. By the steps glittered the spear-points
+of a clump of men-at-arms whose swarthy and rugged faces remained
+impassive under flattened helmets. But as we dismounted a grey-hound
+came leaping from the castle, and in the doorway hovered an old
+maid-servant. To her Antonio ran straightway, his cape whipping out
+behind him.
+
+"Speak, Nuta! Is she well?" he demanded.
+
+We followed him into the castle.
+
+It was a spacious hall, paved with stone, its limits shadowy, its core
+illuminated brilliantly with candles. From the rafters dangled some
+banners, tattered and queerly designed. Below these, in the midst of the
+hall--in a mellow refulgence that she herself seemed to give
+forth--there awaited us a woman glorified by youth and happiness, who
+pressed her hand to her heart.
+
+She wore a gown of violet-colored silk, the sleeves puffed at the
+shoulders, the bodice tight across the breast and swelling at the waist,
+the skirt voluminous. On either side of her bosom, sheer linen, puckered
+by golden rosettes, mounted to form behind her neck a little ruff. Over
+her golden hair, every strand of which had been drawn back strictly from
+her brow, a white veil was clasped, behind her ears, by a band of pearls
+and amethysts cut in cabuchon.
+
+Still, she was remarkable less for her costume than for the singularity
+of her charms.
+
+To what was this singularity due? To the intense emotions that she
+seemed to be harboring? Or to the arrangement of her lovely features,
+to-day unique, which made one think of backgrounds composed of brocade
+and armor, the freshly painted canvases of Titian and the dazzling
+newness of statues by Michael Angelo? As she approached that singularity
+of hers became still more disquieting, as though the fragrance that
+enveloped her were not a woman's chosen perfume, but the very aroma of
+the magnificent past.
+
+Antonio regarded her with his soul in his eyes, then greedily kissed her
+hands. When the others had saluted her, each of them as much moved as
+though she were an image in a shrine, Antonio said in a hoarse voice to
+me:
+
+"I present you to Madonna Fiammetta di Foscone, my affianced bride.
+Madonna, this gentleman comes from a distant country to pay you homage."
+
+"He is welcome," she answered, in a voice that accorded with her
+peculiar beauty.
+
+And my bewilderment deepened as I realized that they were speaking not
+modern Italian, but what I gathered to be the Italian of the sixteenth
+century.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+I found myself with Antonio in a tower-room, whither he had brought me
+on the ladies' retirement to prepare themselves for supper.
+
+The wind, howling round the tower, pressed against the narrow windows
+covered with oiled linen. The cypress forest, which on all sides
+descended from our peak into the valleys, gave forth a continuous moan.
+Every instant the candle-light threatened to go out. The very tower
+seemed to be trembling, like Antonio, in awe of the secret about to be
+revealed. For a while my poor friend could say nothing. Seated in his
+rich disguise on a bench worn smooth by men whose tombs were crumbling,
+he leaned forward beneath the burden of his thoughts, and the long locks
+of his wig hung down as if to veil the disorder of his features.
+
+Finally he began:
+
+"In the year fifteen hundred my family still called this place their
+home. There were only two of them left, two brothers, the older bearing
+the title Lord of Manzecca. The younger brother was that Antonio di
+Manzecca whose portrait you saw on the wall of my apartment in the city.
+It is to him, as you observed, that I bear so close a resemblance.
+
+"In a hill-castle not far away lived another family, the Foscone.
+
+"The Lord of Foscone, a widower, had only one child left, a daughter
+seventeen years old. Her name was Fiammetta. Even in Florence it was
+said that to the north, amid the wilderness of cypress-trees, there
+dwelt a maiden whose beauty surrounded her with golden rays like a
+nimbus."
+
+I remembered our entrance into this castle, my first glimpse of the
+woman awaiting us in the middle of the hall, and the glow of light
+around her that appeared to be a radiance expanding from her person.
+
+But my friend continued:
+
+"Between the two castles there was friendly intercourse. It was presumed
+that the Lord of Foscone would presently give his daughter in marriage
+to the Lord of Manzecca. Fate, however, determined that Fiammetta and
+Antonio di Manzecca, the younger brother, should fall in love with each
+other.
+
+"Need I describe to you the fervor of that passion in the Italian
+springtime, at a period of our history when all the emotions were
+terrific in their force?
+
+"At night, Antonio di Manzecca would slip away to the Castle of Foscone.
+She would be waiting for him on the platform outside her chamber, above
+the ramparts, overlooking the path across the hills. It chanced that by
+the aid of vines and fissures in the masonry he could climb the castle
+wall almost to that platform--almost near enough, indeed, to touch her
+finger-tips. Unhappily, there was nothing there to which she could
+attach a twisted sheet. So thus they made love--she bending down toward
+him, he clutching with toes and hands at the wall, her whispers making
+him dizzier than his perilous posture, her tears falling upon his lips
+through a space so little, yet greater than the distance between two
+stars.
+
+"But almost everything is discovered. Antonio's meetings with Fiammetta
+became known to his elder brother.
+
+"One evening Fiammetta, from the high platform, saw Antonio approaching
+while it was still twilight. All at once he was surrounded by servants
+of his own house, who had been waiting for him in ambush. Before he
+could move, half a dozen daggers sank into his body. Amid the thorns and
+nettles he sprawled lifeless, under the eyes of his beloved. As the
+assassins dragged his body away, there burst from the platform a
+prolonged peal of laughter.
+
+"Fiammetta di Foscone had gone mad."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+At that tragedy, at least, I was not surprised. The Italy of the
+Renaissance was full of such episodes--the murderous jealousy of
+brothers, the obedient cruelty of retainers, the wreckage of women's
+sanity by the fall of horrors much more ingeniously contrived than this.
+What froze my blood was the anticipation gradually shaping in my mind. I
+felt that this was the prelude to something monstrous, incredible, which
+I should be forced to believe.
+
+"She had gone mad," my friend repeated, staring before him. "She had, in
+other words, lost contact with what we call reality. To her that state
+of madness had become reality, its delusions truth, and everything
+beyond those delusions misty, unreal, or non-existent."
+
+His voice died away as he looked at his hands with an expression of
+disbelief. He even reached forward to touch my knee, then sighed:
+
+"You will soon understand why I am sometimes possessed with the idea
+that I am dreaming."
+
+And he resumed his tale:
+
+"Antonio di Manzecca was buried. His elder brother found a wife
+elsewhere. The Lord of Foscone married again, and by that marriage had
+other children. But still his daughter Fiammetta stood nightly on the
+platform of the Castle of Foscone, gazing down at the hill path, waiting
+for her Antonio to climb the wall and whisper his love.
+
+"Now she only lived in that state of ardent expectancy. The days and
+weeks and months were but one hour, the hour preceding his last approach
+to her. Every moment, in her delusion, she expected him to end that hour
+by coming to her as young as ever, to find her as winsome as before. In
+consequence, time vanished from her thought. And in vanishing from her
+thought, time lost its power over her.
+
+"Her father died; but Fiammetta still kept her vigil, in appearance the
+same as on the evening of that tragedy. A new generation of the Foscone
+grew old in their turn, but Fiammetta's loveliness was still perfect. In
+her madness there seemed to be a sanity surpassing the sanity of other
+mortals. For by becoming insensible to time she had attained an earthly
+immortality, an uncorrupted physical beauty, in which she constantly
+looked forward to the delight of loving.
+
+"So she went on and on----"
+
+The tower shook in terror of the gale, and we shook with it, in terror
+of this revelation. My thoughts turned toward the woman below, who had
+smiled at us from that aura of physical resplendency. I felt my hair
+rising, and heard a voice, my own, cry out: "No, no!"
+
+"Yes!" Antonio shouted, fixing his hands upon my arms. We were both
+standing, and our leaping shadows on the wall resembled a combat in
+which one was struggling to force insanity upon the other. He went on
+speaking, but his words were drowned in a screaming of vast forces that
+clutched at the tower as if in fury because the normal processes of
+nature had been defied. Would those forces attain their revenge? Was the
+tower about to thunder down upon the Castle of Manzecca, annihilating
+her and us, the secret and its possessors? For a moment I would have
+welcomed even that escape from thinking.
+
+"Yes," he repeated, releasing my arms and sitting down limply on the
+bench. "As you anticipate, so it turned out."
+
+I was still able to protest:
+
+"Admitted that this has happened elsewhere, to a certain degree. In
+Victorian England there lived a woman whose love-affair was wrecked and
+whose mind automatically closed itself against everything associated
+with her tragedy, or subsequent to it. In her madness she, too,
+protected herself against pain by living in expectation of the lover's
+return. Because that expectation was restricted to her girlhood, she
+remained a girl in appearance for over fifty years. Fifty years, that is
+comprehensible!"
+
+"The principle is the same," said Antonio, wearily. "Every mental
+phenomenon has minor and major examples. But I will tell you the rest.
+
+"The Foscone, also, finally moved to Florence. Their castle was left in
+the care of hereditary servants, devoted and discreet. On that isolated
+hilltop no chance was afforded strangers to solve the mystery of the
+woman who paced the high platform in the attire of another age. Was
+there, in the Foscone's concealment of the awesome fact, a medieval
+impulse, the ancient instinct of noble houses to defend themselves
+against all forms of aggression, including curiosity? Or was it merely
+the usual aversion to being identified with abnormality? Some
+abnormality is so terrifying that it seals the loosest lips.
+
+"Now and then, to be sure, some servant's tongue was set wagging by
+wine, or some heir of the Foscone confided in his sweetheart. But the
+rumor, if it went farther, soon became distorted and incredible, amid
+the ghost-stories of a hundred Italian castles, palaces, and villas. I
+myself found hints in the archives of my family, yet saw in them only a
+pretty tale, such as results when romantic invention is combined with
+pride of race.
+
+"But I was destined to sing another tune.
+
+"Not long ago, the last of the Foscone's modern generation passed away.
+There came to me an old woman-servant from the castle. It was Nuta, whom
+you saw below as we entered.
+
+"Why had she sought me out? Because, if you please, in the year fifteen
+hundred one of my family had brought this thing to pass. It seemed to
+Nuta, the fact now being subject to discovery by the executors of the
+estate, that the care of her charge devolved upon me.
+
+"At first I believed that old Nuta was the mad one. In the end, however,
+I accompanied her to the castle. At dusk, concealed by the cypresses, I
+discerned on the platform a face that seemed to have been transported
+from another epoch just in order to pierce my heart with an intolerable
+longing. I fell in love as one slips into a vortex, and instantly the
+rational world was lost beyond a whorl of ecstasy and fright.
+
+"I regained Florence with but one thought: how could she be restored to
+sanity, yet be maintained in that beauty which had triumphed over
+centuries? As I entered my apartment I saw before me the portrait of
+that other Antonio di Manzecca, whom I so closely resembled, whom she
+had loved, whose return she still awaited. I stood there blinded by a
+flash of inspiration.
+
+"At midnight my plan was complete."
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+As he paused, and the conclusion became clear to me, I was taken with a
+kind of stupor.
+
+"A few days later," he said, "as she stood gazing down through the
+twilight, a man emerged from the forest, in face and dress the image of
+that other Antonio di Manzecca. At his signal, servants in the old-time
+livery of the Manzecca appeared with a ladder, which they leaned against
+the ramparts. He set foot upon the platform. Her pallor turned
+deathlike; her eyes became blank; she fainted in his arms. When she
+recovered she was in the Castle of Manzecca.
+
+"That shock had restored her reason.
+
+"Now everything around her very artfully suggested the sixteenth
+century--the furniture, the most trivial utensils, the costume of the
+humblest person in the castle. Nuta attended her. The convalescent was
+told that she had been ill in consequence of the attack on her lover,
+but that he, instead of succumbing, had been spirited away and
+stealthily nursed back to health. Again whole, he had returned to avenge
+himself on his brother, whom he had killed. Meanwhile her father had
+died. Therefore she had been brought from the Castle of Foscone to the
+Castle of Manzecca to enjoy the protection of her Antonio, whom she was
+now free to marry.
+
+"All this was what she wanted to believe, so she believed it."
+
+But Antonio's face was filled with a new distress. He rose, to pace the
+floor with the gestures of a man who realizes that he is locked in a
+cell to which there is no key.
+
+"In the restoration of her mind," he groaned, "my own peace of mind has
+been destroyed. Even this love, the strangest and most thrilling in the
+world, will never allay the heartquakes that I have brought upon myself.
+
+"With her perception of time restored, she will now be subject to time
+like other mortals. As year follows year, her youthfulness will merge
+into maturity, her maturity into old age, here in this castle, where
+nothing must ever suggest that she has attained a century other than her
+own. For me that means a ceaseless vigilance and fear. My devotion will
+always be mingled with forebodings of some blunder, some unforeseen
+intrusion of the present, some lightning-like revelation of the truth to
+her."
+
+At that he broke down.
+
+"Ah, if that happened, what horror should I witness?"
+
+The gale sounded like the hooting of a thousand demons who were
+preparing for this man a frightful retribution. Yet even in that moment
+I envied him.
+
+To her beauty, which had bewitched me at my first sight of her, was
+added another allurement--the thought of a magical flight far beyond
+the boundaries imprisoning other men. If romance is a striving toward
+something at once unique and sympathetic, here was romance attained.
+Moreover, in embracing that exquisite personification of the
+Renaissance, one might add to love the glamour of a terrible audacity.
+And the addition of glamour to love has always been one of the most
+assiduously practised arts.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+At the bottom of the winding tower staircase, in the doorway of the hall
+where she had greeted us, we paused to compose ourselves.
+
+"At least," Antonio besought me, "when in doubt, remain silent."
+
+We entered the hall. Under a wooden gallery adorned with carved and
+tinted shields the supper-table was laid.
+
+They awaited us, shimmering in their fantastic finery--the ladies Laura
+and Lina, my old friends Leonardo and Leonello, and the ineffable
+Fiammetta di Foscone. The visitors' cheeks seemed hectic from the
+excitement of the hour; but her face was flushed, her eyes shone, for
+her own reasons. As I approached her my heartbeats suffocated me. Yes, I
+would have taken Antonio's place and shouldered all his terrors! Before
+me the fair conqueror of time disappeared in a haze, out of which her
+voice emerged like a sweet utterance from beyond the tomb.
+
+"You are pleased with the castle, messere?"
+
+As I was striving to respond, Antonio said to her, half aside, in that
+quaint species of Italian which he had used before:
+
+"He speaks our language with difficulty, Madonna, and in a dialect. This
+disability will embarrass him till he finds himself more at home."
+
+"Then let us sup," she exclaimed. "For since this new custom of a third
+meal has become fashionable in Florence, no doubt you are all expiring
+of hunger. So quickly does habit become tyrannous, especially when it
+involves a pleasure."
+
+In some manner or other I seated myself at the table.
+
+The servants bore in, on silver platters, small chickens garnished with
+sugar and rose-water, a sort of galantine, tarts of almonds and honey,
+caramels of pine-seed. From the gallery overhead came the tinkle of a
+rota, a kind of guitar. The musician produced a whimsical tune
+suggesting a picnic of lords and ladies in the garden of an antique
+villa, where trick fountains, masked by blossoms, drenched the unwary
+with streams of water. But in the chimney of the great, cold fireplace
+behind my back the wind still growled its threats; the voice of Nature
+still menaced these audacious mortals, who were celebrating the
+humiliation of her laws.
+
+Beyond the candle-light the beauty of Fiammetta di Foscone became
+blinding. In her there was no sign of an unnatural preservation, as, for
+example, in a flower that has been sustained, yet subtly altered, by
+imprisonment in ice. Nor did her countenance show in the least that
+glaze of time which changes, without abating, the fairness of marble
+goddesses surviving for us from remote ages of esthetic victory. But
+wait; she was not an animated statue, nor any product of nature other
+than flesh and blood! And the flesh, the glance, the whole person of
+this creature from another era, expressed a glorious young womanhood. I
+was lost in admiration, pity, and dread. For over this shining miracle
+hovered the shadow of disaster. One could not forget the countless
+menaces surrounding her.
+
+If she should grasp the truth, if all of a sudden she should realize her
+disaccordance with the world of mortals, what would happen to her before
+our eyes? Would she succumb instantly? Or would she first shrivel into
+some appalling monstrosity? This deception could not last forever. Might
+it not end to-night?
+
+Did the others have similar premonitions?
+
+Their smiles seemed tremulous and wan, their movements constrained and
+timorous. All their efforts at gaiety were impeded by the inertia of
+fear. At every speech the lips of Lina and Laura quivered, the hands of
+Leonello and Leonardo were clenched in a nervous spasm. Antonio
+controlled himself only by the most heroic efforts.
+
+What a price to pay for an illusion of happiness that was destined to a
+ghastly end! Yet I would still have paid that heavy price exacted from
+Antonio.
+
+Fiammetta di Foscone became infected by our nervousness. At one moment
+her mirth was feverish; at another, a look of vague uneasiness crossed
+her face. Was our secret gradually penetrating to her subconscious mind?
+Was she to learn the fact, and perish of it, not because of bungling
+word or action on our part, but merely from the unwitting transmission
+of our thoughts?
+
+The others redoubled their travesty of merriment. They voiced the gossip
+of a vanished society; the politics, fashions, and scandals of old
+Florence. One heard the names of noble families long since extinct,
+accounts of historic escapades related as if they had happened
+yesterday. Fiammetta recovered her animation.
+
+Her dewy eyes turned to Antonio. Her fingers caressed her
+betrothal-ring, which was like the wedding-ring of the twentieth
+century. And in this hall tricked out with lies, amid these guests and
+servants who were the embodiment of falsehood, an oppressing atmosphere
+of dread was clarified, for a moment, by the strength and delicacy of
+her love.
+
+They discussed the virtues of the Muses, the plagiarisms of Petrarch,
+the wonders of astrology. Her uneasiness revived. In a voice more
+musical than the rota in the gallery, she asked:
+
+"My dear friends, would you attribute to some planetary influence a
+feeling of strangeness that I receive at times, even from the air? I
+demand of you whether the air does not have an unfamiliar smell
+to-night?"
+
+There was a freezing moment of silence.
+
+"It is this great wind," muttered Leonardo, "that has brought us new air
+from afar."
+
+"Every place has its smell," was Leonello's contribution. "It is natural
+that the Castle of Manzecca should smell differently from the Castle of
+Foscone."
+
+Antonio thanked his friends with an eloquent look.
+
+"True," she assented, pensively, "every spot, every person, is
+surrounded by its especial ether, produced by its peculiar activity.
+This house, not only in its smell, but in its tenor of life, and even in
+its food, differs vastly from my own house, which, nevertheless, is just
+across the hills."
+
+Antonio drained his goblet at a gulp. He got out the words:
+
+"We are provincial, we Manzecca. Like a race apart."
+
+"All old families, jealous of their integrity, are the same," ventured
+Laura, who looked, nevertheless, as if she were about to faint.
+
+"Or maybe," mused Fiammetta, "it is because I have been ill that things
+perplex me, and sometimes startle me by an effect of strangeness. There
+are moments when even the stars look odd to me, and when the
+countryside, viewed from the tower above us, is bewildering. In one
+direction I see woods where I should have expected meadows; in another
+direction, fields where I should have expected woods. But then, I now
+view the countryside from a tower other than my own, and see in a new
+aspect that landscape with which I thought myself so well acquainted.
+Does that explain it?"
+
+How touching, how pitiable, was her expression, half arch, half
+pleading, and so beautiful! "Oh, lovely and terrible prodigy!" I
+thought, "draw back; banish those thoughts; or, rather, no longer think
+at all--for you are on the edge of the abyss!"
+
+Antonio spoke with difficulty:
+
+"Dearest one, do not pain me by mentioning that illness of yours. Do not
+pain yourself by dwelling on it in your mind. The past with all its
+misfortunes is gone forever. Let us live in the present and contemplate
+a future full of bliss."
+
+A quivering sigh of assent and relief went round the supper-table. But
+Fiammetta protested:
+
+"I should not care to forget the past. It contained too much happiness.
+The hours at twilight, when I waited on the platform of the Castle of
+Foscone, and you clambered up the wall, are not for oblivion! Do you
+remember, Antonio, how you once brought with you a bunch of little
+damask roses, which you tossed up to me while clinging to the masonry?
+Those roses became my treasure. The sweetest one of them I locked in a
+tiny silver box which I kept always by me. That box came with me from
+the Castle of Foscone. The key is lost; but you shall open it with your
+dagger, and learn how I have cherished an emblem of that past which you
+ask me to forget."
+
+With a rare smile, she drew from the bosom of her gown a very small
+coffer of silver, its chiseling worn smooth by innumerable caresses.
+Poor soul! it was in her bosom that she had cherished this pretty little
+box, more cruelly fatal than a viper.
+
+Antonio, his jaws sagging, rose half-way out of his chair, then sank
+back, speechless and livid. Unaware, eager, and imperious, Fiammetta
+demanded:
+
+"A dagger!"
+
+Too late Antonio managed to put out a shaking hand in protest. Already a
+fool of a servant had presented his dirk to her. In a twinkling--before
+we could stop her--Fiammetta had pried back the lid.
+
+The silver box, its oxidized interior as black as ink, contained, in
+place of the damask rose that had bloomed in the year fifteen hundred,
+only a few grains of dust.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+There was no sound except from the wind, which yelled its devilish glee
+round the castle and in the chimney of the fireplace.
+
+She had risen to her feet. In her eyes, peering at the little coffer,
+bewilderment gave place to dismay. But in our faces she found a
+consternation far surpassing hers.
+
+"Only dust?"
+
+Antonio distorted his mouth in a vain effort to speak. At last, with a
+frantic oath, he swept the silver box into the fireplace, where it fell
+amid the brush-wood and inflammable rubbish piled ready for lighting
+under the big logs.
+
+Fiammetta had tried to stop him. Under her clutching hand, his
+fur-trimmed sleeve had slipped up, exposing his forearm. She was staring
+at his forearm.
+
+"The scar?" she whispered. "Was it not here, when you raised your arm to
+shield yourself against them, that you caught the first knife-thrust?
+How long does it take for such a scar to pass entirely away?"
+
+Lina and Laura sank back in their chairs. Leonello averted his face.
+Leonardo turned away. Again Antonio tried to speak. The terror that held
+us in its grip was communicated to Fiammetta di Foscone.
+
+Her countenance became bloodless. Her teeth chattered. She murmured:
+
+"What is happening to me? I am so cold!"
+
+She sank down, amid billows of violet-colored silk, between Antonio's
+arms, before the fireplace. Her veil, confined by the band of pearls and
+amethysts, did not seem as white as her skin.
+
+There was a hysterical babble of voices:
+
+"She is dead! No, she has swooned! Bring vinegar! Rub her hands! Light
+the fire!"
+
+Then ensued a jostling of guests and servants, who crowded forward to
+poke a dozen lighted candles at the brush-wood. In the midst of this
+confusion Fiammetta sat before the hearth, her eyes half closed, her
+head rolling against Antonio's shoulder, her throat, framed by the
+little ruff, palpitating like the breast of an expiring dove. She was in
+the throes of the emotions that had been at last transferred from our
+minds to hers and that she was doubtless on the point of comprehending.
+
+The brush-wood caught fire. At that flicker her eyelids opened. She
+leaned forward. Under the brush-wood, already writhing in flames, was
+the fragment of a modern Italian newspaper. One plainly saw the title,
+part of a head-line, and the date.
+
+Fiammetta di Foscone read the date.
+
+As Antonio and I, between us, lifted her into a chair, she kept
+repeating to herself, in a soft, incredulous voice, the date. And so
+badly had our wits been paralyzed by this catastrophe, that none of us
+could find one lying word to utter.
+
+Antonio knelt before her, his arms clasping her knees, his head bowed.
+He was weeping as if she were already dead. Her hands slowly stole forth
+to close around his face and lift it up.
+
+"Whatever it is," she breathed, "I still have you."
+
+As she gazed, half lifeless, but still fairer than an untinted statue,
+at his face, all at once her eyes became enormous. Pushing him from her,
+she stood bolt-upright at one movement, with a heart-rending scream:
+
+"A stranger!"
+
+That scream was still resounding from the rafters when we saw her
+fleeing across the hall, her head thrown back, her arms outspread, her
+white veil and violet draperies floating behind her. Her jewels
+glittered like the last sparkle of a splendid dream that has been doomed
+to swift extinction. She vanished through the doorway leading to the
+tower staircase.
+
+"After her!" some one shouted.
+
+Antonio was first; but at the doorway he stumbled, and Leonello, who was
+second, fell over him. Vaulting their bodies, I gained the circular
+staircase that ascended to the tower. I heard Antonio bawling after me:
+
+"She will throw herself from the roof!"
+
+The staircase was black, and the wind whistled down its well. At each
+landing the heavy doors on either side banged open and shut. From
+overhead there descended a long wail, maybe her voice, or maybe one of
+the countless voices of the storm. As I neared the top, a door through
+which I had just passed blew shut with a deafening report. I emerged
+upon the roof of the tower in a torrent of rain. The roof was empty.
+
+I peered over the low battlements. Close below me swayed the tops of
+cypress-trees; beneath them everything was lost in the obscurity of the
+night. Soon, however, the darkness was lighted by torches which began to
+dart to and fro among the trees. By those fitful gleams I made out the
+crouching backs of men, the livery of the Manzecca with its black and
+vermilion device, helmets and sword-hilts, and finally upturned faces
+that appeared ruddy in the torch-light, though I knew that in reality
+they must be pallid. They called up to me, but the wind whipped their
+voices away. I made signs that she was not on the tower. The faces
+disappeared; again the torches wandered among the trees. Now and then I
+heard a shout, the barking of the greyhound, and a woman--perhaps old
+Nuta--in hysterics.
+
+I began to descend the staircase. The last door through which I had
+passed was so tightly wedged, from its slamming, that I could not open
+it. I sat down on the steps to wait till the others should miss me.
+
+What thoughts!
+
+"Can it be true? Yes, it has happened, and I have seen the end of it!
+This will kill Antonio. But then, none of us will ever be the same
+again."
+
+I was sure that my hair had turned white.
+
+And she? A vast wave of pity and longing swept over me and whirled me
+away into the depths of despair.
+
+Now, I told myself, they have found her. And I fell to shuddering again.
+Now they have brought her in, unless what they saw, when they found her,
+scattered them, raving, through the woods. Now they are trying to soothe
+Antonio, perhaps to wrench a weapon from his hand. Now surely they have
+noticed my absence.
+
+I cannot imagine what impulse made me rise, at last, and try the door
+again. At my first touch it swung open.
+
+Descending the staircase, I re-entered the hall.
+
+                 *     *     *     *     *
+
+They were all seated at the supper-table, which was now decorated with
+flowers, with baskets of fruit, with plates of bonbons, and with favors
+in the form of dolls tricked out like little ladies of the Renaissance.
+The servants wore tail-coats and white-cotton gloves. Leonello and
+Leonardo, Lina and Laura, even Antonio, had on the evening-dress
+appropriate to the twentieth century. But my brain reeled indeed when I
+saw Fiammetta, her hair done in the last Parisian style, her low-neck
+gown the essence of modern chic.
+
+The company looked at me with tolerant smiles.
+
+"Well," exclaimed Antonio, "you have certainly taken your time! We
+waited ages for you, then decided that the food was spoiling, and fell
+to. There is your place, old fellow. I'll have the relishes brought
+back."
+
+I dropped into my chair with a thud. Leonardo, reaching in front of
+Lina, took the fabric of my antique costume between thumb and finger.
+
+"Very _recherchA(C)_," was his comment. "Do you wear it for a whim?"
+
+"He is soaking wet," announced Lina, compassionately. "I think he has
+been looking at the garden."
+
+"A botanist!" cried Laura, clapping her hands. "Will you give me some
+advice, signore? What is the best preservative for damask roses?"
+
+"Water them with credulity," Leonello suggested.
+
+And they all burst out laughing in my face, with the exception of the
+beautiful Fiammetta.
+
+Antonio, rising and bowing to me, spoke as follows:
+
+"My friend, the sixteenth century bequeathed to us Florentines a little
+of its cheerful cruelty and something of its pleasure in vendettas.
+Casting your thoughts into a less remote past, you may retrieve an
+impression of your last performance before your departure from the
+Florence of our youth. Need I describe that performance? Its details
+were conceived and executed with much talent. It made me, who was its
+butt, the laughing stock of our circle for a month. Did we children of
+Boccaccio impart to you that knack for practical joking? Remember that
+the pupil does not always permanently abash his teacher. But come, let
+us make a lasting peace now. If after all these years I managed to catch
+you off your guard, you will never again catch me so. Let us forget our
+two chagrins in drinking to this pleasant night, which, though I fancy
+the fact has escaped you, happens to be the First of April."
+
+While I was still trying to master my feelings, he added:
+
+"I have forgotten to explain that Lina is the wife of Leonello, our new
+Michael Angelo, who did that portrait of me in the wig and costume of
+the Renaissance. Laura, on the other hand, is the wife of Leonardo. As
+for our heroine, Fiammetta, she is the bride of your unworthy Antonio.
+She has been so gracious as to marry me between two of her theatrical
+seasons; in fact, we are here on our honeymoon. Why the deuce have you
+never married? A wife might keep you out of many a laughable
+predicament."
+
+Leonello hazarded, "He is waiting to marry some lady who can describe,
+in her trances, the cuisine of Nebuchadnezzar's palace, or the home-life
+of the Queen of Sheba."
+
+"Do no such thing," Antonio implored me. "And hereafter avoid the
+supernatural like the plague. May this affair instil into your
+philosophy of life a little healthy skepticism. There is no better tonic
+than laughter for one who has caught the malaria of psychical research.
+But even Nuta, my wife's old dresser at the theater, will tell you that
+laughter is precious. You have given her to-night the first out-and-out
+guffaw that she has enjoyed in years. She says it cured her of a crick
+in the neck."
+
+The fair Fiammetta, however, made a gesture of reproof, then held out
+her warm hand to me.
+
+"No, Antonio," she protested, "you have not been clever, after all, but
+wicked. The worst of revenge is this: that it invariably exceeds its
+object. To what do you owe this triumph? To his solicitude for you, to
+his trust in you, which you have abused. Also, as I suspect, to his pity
+for Fiammetta di Foscone, which I have ill repaid. In fine, we owe the
+success of this trick to the misuse of fine emotions. That was not the
+custom of Messer Giovanni Boccaccio." And to me, "Will you forgive us?"
+
+All the others looked rather chop-fallen. But Antonio soon recovered. He
+retorted:
+
+"If you could have seen what an ass he made of me that time, you would
+not at this moment be holding his hand. Look here, old fellow, she has a
+sister who rather resembles her, and whose hand I have no objection to
+your holding as long as you wish. We will introduce you to-morrow. Ah
+yes, we will make you forgive us, you rascal, before we are done with
+you!"
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[19] Copyright, 1919, by Harper & Brothers. Copyright, 1921, by Stephen
+French Whitman.
+
+
+
+
+SHEENER[20]
+
+#By# BEN AMES WILLIAMS
+
+From _Collier's Weekly_
+
+
+When he was sober the man always insisted that his name was Evans, but
+in his cups he was accustomed to declare, in a boastful fashion, that
+his name was not Evans at all. However, he never went farther than this,
+and since none of us were particularly interested, we were satisfied to
+call him Evans, or, more often, Bum, for short. He was the second
+assistant janitor; and whereas, in some establishments, a janitor is a
+man of power and place, it is not so in a newspaper office. In such
+institutions, where great men are spoken of irreverently and by their
+first names, a janitor is a man of no importance. How much less, then,
+his second assistant. It was never a part of Evans's work, for example,
+to sweep the floors. There is something lordly in the gesture of the
+broom. But the janitor's first assistant attended to that; and Evans's
+regular duties were more humble, not unconnected with such things as
+cuspidors. There was no man so poor to do him honor; yet he had always a
+certain loftiness of bearing. He was tall, rather above the average
+height, with a long, thin, bony face like a horse, and an aristocratic
+stoop about his neck and shoulders. His hands were slender; he walked in
+a fashion that you might have called a shuffle, but which might also
+have been characterized as a walk of indolent assurance. His eyes were
+wash-blue, and his straggling mustache drooped at the corners.
+
+Sober, he was a silent man, but when he had drunk he was apt to become
+mysteriously loquacious. And he drank whenever the state of his credit
+permitted. At such times he spoke of his antecedents in a lordly and
+condescending fashion which we found amusing. "You call me Evans," he
+would say. "That does well enough, to be sure. Quite so, and all that.
+Evans! Hah!"
+
+And then he would laugh, in a barking fashion that with his long, bony
+countenance always suggested to me a coughing horse. But when he was
+pressed for details, the man--though he might be weaving and blinking
+with liquor--put a seal upon his lips. He said there were certain
+families in one of the Midland Counties of England who would welcome him
+home if he chose to go; but he never named them, and he never chose to
+go, and we put him down for a liar by the book. All of us except
+Sheener.
+
+Sheener was a Jewish newsboy; that is to say, a representative of the
+only thoroughbred people in the world. I have known Sheener for a good
+many years, and he is worth knowing; also, the true tale of his life
+might have inspired Scheherazade. A book must be made of Sheener some
+day. For the present, it is enough to say that he had the enterprise
+which adversity has taught his people; he had the humility which they
+have learned by enduring insults they were powerless to resent, and he
+had the courage and the heart which were his ancient heritage. And--the
+man Evans had captured and enslaved his imagination.
+
+He believed in Evans from the beginning. This may have been through a
+native credulity which failed to manifest itself in his other dealings
+with the world. I think it more probable that Evans and his pretensions
+appealed to the love of romance native to Sheener. I think he enjoyed
+believing, as we enjoy lending ourselves to the illusion of the theatre.
+Whatever the explanation, a certain alliance developed between the two;
+a something like friendship. I was one of those who laughed at Sheener's
+credulity, but he told me, in his energetic fashion, that I was making a
+mistake.
+
+"You got that guy wrong," he would say. "He ain't always been a bum. A
+guy with half an eye can see that. The way he talks, and the way he
+walks, and all. There's class to him, I'm telling you. Class, bo."
+
+"He walks like a splay-footed walrus, and he talks like a drunken old
+hound," I told Sheener. "He's got you buffaloed, that's all."
+
+"Pull in your horns; you're coming to a bridge," Sheener warned me.
+"Don't be a goat all your life. He's a gent; that's what this guy is."
+
+"Then I'm glad I'm a roughneck," I retorted; and Sheener shook his head.
+
+"That's all right," he exclaimed. "That's all right. He ain't had it
+easy, you know. Scrubbing spittoons is enough to take the polish off any
+guy. I'm telling you he's there. Forty ways. You'll see, bo. You'll
+see."
+
+"I'm waiting," I said.
+
+"Keep right on," Sheener advised me. "Keep right on. The old stuff is
+there. It'll show. Take it from me."
+
+I laughed at him. "If I get you," I said, "you're looking for something
+along the line of 'Noblesse Oblige.' What?"
+
+"Cut the comedy," he retorted. "I'm telling you, the old class is there.
+You can't keep a fast horse in a poor man's stable."
+
+"Blood will tell, eh?"
+
+"Take it from me," said Sheener.
+
+It will be perceived that Evans had in Sheener not only a disciple; he
+had an advocate and a defender. And Sheener in these rA'les was not to be
+despised. I have said he was a newsboy; to put it more accurately, he
+was in his early twenties, with forty years of experience behind him,
+and with half the newsboys of the city obeying his commands and
+worshiping him like a minor god. He had full charge of our city
+circulation and was quite as important, and twice as valuable to the
+paper, as any news editor could hope to be. In making a friend of him,
+Evans had found an ally in the high places; and it became speedily
+apparent that Sheener proposed to be more than a mere friend in name.
+For instance, I learned one day that he was drawing Evans's wages for
+him, and had appointed himself in some sort a steward for the other.
+
+"That guy wouldn't ever save a cent," he told me when I questioned him.
+"I give him enough to get soused on, and I stick five dollars in the
+bank for him every week. I made him buy a new suit of clothes with it
+last week. Say, you wouldn't know him if you run into him in his glad
+rags."
+
+"How does he like your running his affairs?" I asked.
+
+"Like it?" Sheener echoed. "He don't have to like it. If he tries to
+pull anything on me, I'll poke the old coot in the eye."
+
+I doubt whether this was actually his method of dominating Evans. It is
+more likely that he used a diplomacy which occasionally appeared in his
+dealings with the world. Certainly the arrangement presently collapsed,
+for Sheener confessed to me that he had given his savings back to Evans.
+We were minus a second assistant janitor for a week as a consequence,
+and when Evans tottered back to the office and would have gone to work I
+told him he was through.
+
+He took it meekly enough, but not Sheener. Sheener came to me with fire
+in his eye.
+
+"Sa-a-ay," he demanded, "what's coming off here, anyhow? What do you
+think you're trying to pull?"
+
+I asked him what he was talking about, and he said: "Evans says you've
+given him the hook."
+
+"That's right," I admitted. "He's through."
+
+"He is not," Sheener told me flatly. "You can't fire that guy."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"He's got to live, ain't he?"
+
+I answered, somewhat glibly, that I did not see the necessity, but the
+look that sprang at once into Sheener's eyes made me faintly ashamed of
+myself, and I went on to urge that Evans was failing to do his work and
+could deserve no consideration.
+
+"That's all right," Sheener told me. "I didn't hear any kicks that his
+work wasn't done while he was on this bat."
+
+"Oh, I guess it got done all right. Some one had to do it. We can't pay
+him for work that some one else does."
+
+"Say, don't try to pull that stuff," Sheener protested. "As long as his
+work is done, you ain't got any kick. This guy has got to have a job, or
+he'll go bust, quick. It's all that keeps his feet on the ground. If he
+didn't think he was earning his living, he'd go on the bum in a minute."
+
+I was somewhat impatient with Sheener's insistence, but I was also
+interested in this developing situation. "Who's going to do his work,
+anyhow?" I demanded.
+
+For the first time in our acquaintance I saw Sheener look confused.
+"That's all right too," he told me. "It don't take any skin off your
+back, long as it's done."
+
+In the end I surrendered. Evans kept his job; and Sheener--I once caught
+him in the act, to his vast embarrassment--did the janitor's work when
+Evans was unfit for duty. Also Sheener loaned him money, small sums that
+mounted into an interesting total; and furthermore I know that on one
+occasion Sheener fought for him.
+
+The man Evans went his pompous way, accepting Sheener's homage and
+protection as a matter of right, and in the course of half a dozen years
+I left the paper for other work, saw Sheener seldom, and Evans not at
+all.
+
+About ten o'clock one night in early summer I was wandering somewhat
+aimlessly through the South End to see what I might see when I
+encountered Sheener. He was running, and his dark face was twisted with
+anxiety. When he saw me he stopped with an exclamation of relief, and I
+asked him what the matter was.
+
+"You remember old Bum Evans?" he asked, and added: "He's sick. I'm
+looking for a doctor. The old guy is just about all in."
+
+"You mean to say you're still looking out for that old tramp?" I
+demanded.
+
+"Sure, I am," he said hotly; "that old boy is there. He's got the stuff.
+Him and me are pals." He was hurrying me along the street toward the
+office of the doctor he sought. I asked where Evans was. "In my room,"
+he told me. "I found him on the street. Last night. He was crazy. The D.
+T.'s. I ain't been able to get away from him till now. He's asleep.
+Wait. Here's where the doc hangs out."
+
+Five minutes later the doctor and Sheener and I were retracing our steps
+toward Sheener's lodging, and presently we crowded into the small room
+where Evans lay on Sheener's bed. The man's muddy garments were on the
+floor; he himself tossed and twisted feverishly under Sheener's
+blankets. Sheener and the doctor bent over him, while I stood by. Evans
+waked, under the touch of their hands, and waked to sanity. He was cold
+sober and desperately sick.
+
+When the doctor had done what could be done and gone on his way, Sheener
+sat down on the edge of the bed and rubbed the old man's head with a
+tenderness of which I could not have believed the newsboy capable.
+Evans's eyes were open; he watched the other, and at last he said
+huskily:
+
+"I say, you know, I'm a bit knocked up."
+
+Sheener reassured him. "That's all right, bo," he said. "You hit the
+hay. Sleep's the dose for you. I ain't going away."
+
+Evans moved his head on the pillow, as though lie were nodding. "A bit
+tight, wasn't it, what?" he asked.
+
+"Say," Sheener agreed. "You said something, Bum. I thought you'd kick
+off, sure."
+
+The old man considered for a little, his lips twitching and shaking. "I
+say, you know," he murmured at last. "Can't have that. Potter's Field,
+and all that sort of business. Won't do. Sheener, when I do take the
+jump, you write home for me. Pass the good word. You'll hear from them."
+
+Sheener said: "Sure I will. Who'll I write to, Bum?"
+
+Evans, I think, was unconscious of my presence. He gave Sheener a name;
+his name. Also, he told him the name of his lawyer, in one of the
+Midland cities of England, and added certain instructions....
+
+When he had drifted into uneasy sleep Sheener came out into the hall to
+see me off. I asked him what he meant to do.
+
+"What am I going to do?" he repeated. "I'm going to write to this guy's
+lawyer. Let them send for him. This ain't no place for him."
+
+"You'll have your trouble for your pains," I told him. "The old soak is
+a plain liar; that's all."
+
+Sheener laughed at me. "That's all right, bo," he told me. "I know. This
+guy's the real cheese. You'll see."
+
+I asked him to let me know if he heard anything, and he said he would.
+But within a day or two I forgot the matter, and would hardly have
+remembered it if Sheener had not telephoned me a month later.
+
+"Say, you're a wise guy, ain't you?" he derided when I answered the
+phone. I admitted it. "I got a letter from that lawyer in England," he
+told me. "This Evans is the stuff, just like I said. His wife run away
+with another man, and he went to the devil fifteen years ago. They've
+been looking for him ever since his son grew up."
+
+"Son?" I asked.
+
+"Son. Sure! Raising wheat out in Canada somewhere. They give me his
+address. He's made a pile. I'm going to write to him."
+
+"What does Bum say?"
+
+"Him? I ain't told him. I won't till I'm sure the kid's coming after
+him." He said again that I was a wise guy; and I apologized for my
+wisdom and asked for a share in what was to come. He promised to keep me
+posted.
+
+Ten days later he telephoned me while I was at supper to ask if I could
+come to his room. I said: "What's up?"
+
+"The old guy's boy is coming after him," Sheener said. "He's got the
+shakes waiting. I want you to come and help me take care of him."
+
+"When's the boy coming?"
+
+"Gets in at midnight to-night," said Sheener.
+
+I promised to make haste; and half an hour later I joined them in
+Sheener's room. Sheener let me in. Evans himself sat in something like a
+stupor, on a chair by the bed. He was dressed in a cheap suit of
+ready-made clothes, to which he lent a certain dignity. His cheeks were
+shaven clean, his mustache was trimmed, his thin hair was plastered down
+on his bony skull. The man stared straight before him, trembling and
+quivering. He did not look toward me when I came in; and Sheener and I
+sat down by the table and talked together in undertones.
+
+"The boy's really coming?" I asked.
+
+Sheener said proudly: "I'm telling you."
+
+"You heard from him?"
+
+"Got a wire the day he got my letter."
+
+"You've told Bum?"
+
+"I told him right away. I had to do it. The old boy was sober by then,
+and crazy for a shot of booze. That was Monday. He wanted to go out and
+get pied; but when I told him about his boy, he begun to cry. And he
+ain't touched a drop since then."
+
+"You haven't let him?"
+
+"Sure I'd let him. But he wouldn't. I always told you the class was
+there. He says to me: 'I can't let my boy see me in this state, you
+know. Have to straighten up a bit. I'll need new clothes.'"
+
+"I noticed his new suit."
+
+"Sure," Sheener agreed. "I bought it for him."
+
+"Out of his savings?"
+
+"He ain't been saving much lately."
+
+"Sheener," I asked, "how much does he owe you? For money loaned and
+spent for him."
+
+Sheener said hotly: "He don't owe me a cent."
+
+"I know. But how much have you spent on him?"
+
+"If I hadn't have give it to him, I'd have blowed it somehow. He needed
+it."
+
+I guessed at a hundred dollars, at two hundred. Sheener would not tell
+me. "I'm telling you, he's my pal," he said. "I'm not looking for
+anything out of this."
+
+"If this millionaire son of his has any decency, he'll make it up to
+you."
+
+"He don't know a thing about me," said Sheener, "except my name. I've
+just wrote as though I knowed the old guy, here in the house, see. Said
+he was sick, and all."
+
+"And the boy gets in to-night?"
+
+"Midnight," said Sheener, and Evans, from his chair, echoed: "Midnight!"
+Then asked with a certain stiff anxiety: "Do I look all right, Sheener?
+Look all right to see my boy?"
+
+"Say," Sheener told him. "You look like the Prince of Wales." He went
+across to where the other sat and gripped him by the shoulder. "You look
+like the king o' the world."
+
+Old Evans brushed at his coat anxiously; his fingers picked and twisted;
+and Sheener sat down on the bed beside him and began to soothe and
+comfort the man as though he were a child.
+
+The son was to arrive by way of Montreal, and at eleven o'clock we left
+Sheener's room for the station. There was a flower stand on the corner,
+and Sheener bought a red carnation and fixed it in the old man's
+buttonhole. "That's the way the boy'll know him," he told me. "They
+ain't seen each other for--since the boy was a kid."
+
+Evans accepted the attention querulously; he was trembling and feeble,
+yet held his head high. We took the subway, reached the station, sat
+down for a space in the waiting room.
+
+But Evans was impatient; he wanted to be out in the train shed, and we
+went out there and walked up and down before the gate. I noticed that he
+was studying Sheener with some embarrassment in his eyes. Sheener was,
+of course, an unprepossessing figure. Lean, swarthy, somewhat flashy of
+dress, he looked what he was. He was my friend, of course, and I was
+able to look beneath the exterior. But it seemed to me that sight of him
+distressed Evans.
+
+In the end the old man said, somewhat furtively: "I say, you know, I
+want to meet my boy alone. You won't mind standing back a bit when the
+train comes in."
+
+"Sure," Sheener told him. "We won't get in the way. You'll see. He'll
+pick you out in a minute, old man. Leave it to me."
+
+Evans nodded. "Quite so," he said with some relief. "Quite so, to be
+sure."
+
+So we waited. Waited till the train slid in at the end of the long train
+shed. Sheener gripped the old man's arm. "There he comes," he said
+sharply. "Take a brace, now. Stand right there, where he'll spot you
+when he comes out. Right there, bo."
+
+"You'll step back a bit, eh, what?" Evans asked.
+
+"Don't worry about us," Sheener told him. "Just you keep your eye
+skinned for the boy. Good luck, bo."
+
+We left him standing there, a tall, gaunt, shaky figure. Sheener and I
+drew back toward the stairs that lead to the elevated structure, and
+watched from that vantage point. The train stopped, and the passengers
+came into the station, at first in a trickle and then in a stream, with
+porters hurrying before them, baggage laden.
+
+The son was one of the first. He emerged from the gate, a tall chap, not
+unlike his father. Stopped for a moment, casting his eyes about, and saw
+the flower in the old man's lapel. Leaped toward him hungrily.
+
+They gripped hands, and we saw the son drop his hand on the father's
+shoulder. They stood there, hands still clasped, while the young man's
+porter waited in the background. We could hear the son's eager
+questions, hear the older man's drawled replies. Saw them turn at last,
+and heard the young man say: "Taxi!" The porter caught up the bag. The
+taxi stand was at our left, and they came almost directly toward us.
+
+As they approached, Sheener stepped forward, a cheap, somewhat
+disreputable, figure. His hand was extended toward the younger man. The
+son saw him, looked at him in some surprise, looked toward his father
+inquiringly.
+
+Evans saw Sheener too, and a red flush crept up his gaunt cheeks. He did
+not pause, did not take Sheener's extended hand; instead he looked the
+newsboy through and through.
+
+Sheener fell back to my side. They stalked past us, out to the taxi
+stand.
+
+I moved forward. I would have halted them, but Sheener caught my arm. I
+said hotly: "But see here. He can't throw you like that."
+
+Sheener brushed his sleeve across his eyes. "Hell," he said huskily. "A
+gent like him can't let on that he knows a guy like me."
+
+I looked at Sheener, and I forgot old Evans and his son. I looked at
+Sheener, and I caught his elbow and we turned away.
+
+He had been quite right, of course, all the time. Blood will always
+tell. You can't keep a fast horse in a poor man's stable. And a man is
+always a man, in any guise.
+
+If you still doubt, do as I did. Consider Sheener.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[20] Copyright, 1920, by P. F. Collier & Son, Inc. Copyright, 1921, by
+Ben Ames Williams.
+
+
+
+
+TURKEY RED[21]
+
+#By# FRANCES GILCHRIST WOOD
+
+From _The Pictorial Review_
+
+
+The old mail-sled running between Haney and Le Beau, in the days when
+Dakota was still a Territory, was nearing the end of its hundred-mile
+route.
+
+It was a desolate country in those days: geographers still described it
+as The Great American Desert, and in looks it certainly deserved the
+title. Never was there anything as lonesome as that endless stretch of
+snow reaching across the world until it cut into a cold gray sky,
+excepting the same desert burned to a brown tinder by the hot wind of
+Summer.
+
+Nothing but sky and plain and its voice, the wind, unless you might
+count a lonely sod shack blocked against the horizon, miles away from a
+neighbor, miles from anywhere, its red-curtained square of window
+glowing through the early twilight.
+
+There were three men in the sled; Dan, the mail-carrier, crusty,
+belligerently Western, the self-elected guardian of every one on his
+route; Hillas, a younger man, hardly more than a boy, living on his
+pre-emption claim near the upper reaches of the stage line; the third a
+stranger from that part of the country vaguely defined as "the East." He
+was traveling, had given his name as Smith, and was as inquisitive about
+the country as he was reticent about his business there. Dan plainly
+disapproved of him.
+
+They had driven the last cold miles in silence when the stage-driver
+turned to his neighbor. "Letter didn't say anything about coming out in
+the Spring to look over the country, did it?"
+
+Hillas shook his head. "It was like all the rest, Dan. Don't want to
+build a railroad at all until the country's settled."
+
+"God! Can't they see the other side of it? What it means to the folks
+already here to wait for it?"
+
+The stranger thrust a suddenly interested profile above the handsome
+collar of his fur coat. He looked out over the waste of snow.
+
+"You say there's no timber here?"
+
+Dan maintained unfriendly silence and Hillas answered. "Nothing but
+scrub on the banks of the creeks. Years of prairie fires have burned out
+the trees, we think."
+
+"Any ores--mines?"
+
+The boy shook his head as he slid farther down in his worn buffalo coat
+of the plains.
+
+"We're too busy rustling for something to eat first. And you can't
+develop mines without tools."
+
+"Tools?"
+
+"Yes, a railroad first of all."
+
+Dan shifted the lines from one fur-mittened hand to the other, swinging
+the freed numbed arm in rhythmic beating against his body as he looked
+along the horizon a bit anxiously. The stranger shivered visibly.
+
+"It's a god-forsaken country. Why don't you get out?"
+
+Hillas, following Dan's glance around the blurred sky-line, answered
+absently, "Usual answer is, 'Leave? It's all I can do to stay here.'"
+
+Smith regarded him irritably. "Why should any sane man ever have chosen
+this frozen wilderness?"
+
+Hillas closed his eyes wearily. "We came in the Spring."
+
+"I see!" The edged voice snapped, "Visionaries!"
+
+Hillas's eyes opened again, wide, and then the boy was looking beyond
+the man with the far-seeing eyes of the plainsman. He spoke under his
+breath as if he were alone.
+
+"Visionary, pioneer, American. That was the evolution in the beginning.
+Perhaps that is what we are." Suddenly the endurance in his voice went
+down before a wave of bitterness. "The first pioneers had to wait, too.
+How could they stand it so long!"
+
+The young shoulders drooped as he thrust stiff fingers deep within the
+shapeless coat pockets. He slowly withdrew his right hand holding a
+parcel wrapped in brown paper. He tore a three-cornered flap in the
+cover, looked at the brightly colored contents, replaced the flap and
+returned the parcel, his chin a little higher.
+
+Dan watched the northern sky-line restlessly. "It won't be snow. Look
+like a blizzard to you, Hillas?"
+
+The traveler sat up. "Blizzard?"
+
+"Yes," Dan drawled in willing contribution to his uneasiness, "the real
+Dakota article where blizzards are made. None of your eastern
+imitations, but a ninety-mile wind that whets slivers of ice off the
+frozen drifts all the way down from the North Pole. Only one good thing
+about a blizzard--it's over in a hurry. You get to shelter or you freeze
+to death."
+
+A gust of wind flung a powder of snow stingingly against their faces.
+The traveler withdrew his head turtlewise within the handsome collar in
+final condemnation. "No man in his senses would ever have deliberately
+come here to live."
+
+Dan turned. "Wouldn't, eh?"
+
+"No."
+
+"You're American?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"I was born here. It's my country."
+
+"Ever read about your Pilgrim Fathers?"
+
+"Why, of course."
+
+"Frontiersmen, same as us. You're living on what they did. We're getting
+this frontier ready for those who come after. Want our children to have
+a better chance than we had. Our reason's same as theirs. Hillas told
+you the truth. Country's all right if we had a railroad."
+
+"Humph!" With a contemptuous look across the desert. "Where's your
+freight, your grain, cattle----"
+
+"_West_-bound freight, coal, feed, seed-grain, work, and more
+neighbors."
+
+"One-sided bargain. Road that hauls empties one way doesn't pay. No
+Company would risk a line through here."
+
+The angles of Dan's jaw showed white. "Maybe. Ever get a chance to pay
+your debt to those Pilgrim pioneers? Ever take it? Think the stock was
+worth saving?"
+
+He lifted his whip-handle toward a pin-point of light across the stretch
+of snow. "Donovan lives over there and Mis' Donovan. We call them 'old
+folks' now; their hair has turned white as these drifts in two years.
+All they've got is here. He's a real farmer and a lot of help to the
+country, but they won't last long like this."
+
+Dan swung his arm toward a glimmer nor' by nor'east. "Mis' Clark lives
+there, a mile back from the stage road. Clark's down in Yankton earning
+money to keep them going. She's alone with her baby holding down the
+claim." Dan's arm sagged. "We've had women go crazy out here."
+
+The whip-stock followed the empty horizon half round the compass to a
+lighted red square not more than two miles away. "Mis' Carson died in
+the Spring. Carson stayed until he was too poor to get away. There's
+three children--oldest's Katy, just eleven." Dan's words failed, but his
+eyes told. "Somebody will brag of them as ancestors some day. They'll
+deserve it if they live through this."
+
+Dan's jaw squared as he leveled his whip-handle straight at the
+traveler. "I've answered your questions, now you answer mine! We know
+your opinion of the country--you're not traveling for pleasure or your
+health. What are you here for?"
+
+"Business. My own!"
+
+"There's two kinds of business out here this time of year. 'Tain't
+healthy for either of them." Dan's words were measured and clipped.
+"You've damned the West and all that's in it good and plenty. Now I say,
+damn the people anywhere in the whole country that won't pay their debts
+from pioneer to pioneer; that lets us fight the wilderness barehanded
+and die fighting; that won't risk----"
+
+A gray film dropped down over the world, a leaden shroud that was not
+the coming of twilight. Dan jerked about, his whip cracked out over the
+heads of the leaders and they broke into a quick trot. The shriek of the
+runners along the frozen snow cut through the ominous darkness.
+
+"Hillas," Dan's voice came sharply, "stand up and look for the light on
+Clark's guide-pole about a mile to the right. God help us if it ain't
+burning."
+
+Hillas struggled up, one clumsy mitten thatching his eyes from the
+blinding needles. "I don't see it, Dan. We can't be more than a mile
+away. Hadn't you better break toward it?"
+
+"Got to keep the track 'til we--see--light!"
+
+The wind tore the words from his mouth as it struck them in lashing
+fury. The leaders had disappeared in a wall of snow but Dan's lash
+whistled forward in reminding authority. There was a moment's lull.
+
+"See it, Hillas?"
+
+"No, Dan."
+
+Tiger-like the storm leaped again, bandying them about in its paws like
+captive mice. The horses swerved before the punishing blows, bunched,
+backed, tangled. Dan stood up shouting his orders of menacing appeal
+above the storm.
+
+Again a breathing space before the next deadly impact. As it came Hillas
+shouted, "I see it--there, Dan! It's a red light. She's in trouble."
+
+Through the whirling smother and chaos of Dan's cries and the struggling
+horses the sled lunged out of the road into unbroken drifts. Again the
+leaders swung sidewise before the lashing of a thousand lariats of ice
+and bunched against the wheel-horses. Dan swore, prayed, mastered them
+with far-reaching lash, then the off leader went down. Dan felt behind
+him for Hillas and shoved the reins against his arm.
+
+"I'll get him up--or cut leaders--loose! If I don't--come back--drive to
+light. _Don't--get--out!_"
+
+Dan disappeared in the white fury. There were sounds of a struggle; the
+sled jerked sharply and stood still. Slowly it strained forward.
+
+Hillas was standing, one foot outside on the runner, as they traveled a
+team's length ahead. He gave a cry--"Dan! Dan!" and gripped a furry bulk
+that lumbered up out of the drift.
+
+"All--right--son." Dan reached for the reins.
+
+Frantically they fought their slow way toward the blurred light,
+staggering on in a fight with the odds too savage to last. They stopped
+abruptly as the winded leaders leaned against a wall interposed between
+themselves and insatiable fury.
+
+Dan stepped over the dashboard, groped his way along the tongue between
+the wheel-horses and reached the leeway of a shadowy square. "It's the
+shed, Hillas. Help get the team in." The exhausted animals crowded into
+the narrow space without protest.
+
+"Find the guide-rope to the house, Dan?"
+
+"On the other side, toward the shack. Where's--Smith?"
+
+"Here, by the shed."
+
+Dan turned toward the stranger's voice.
+
+"We're going 'round to the blizzard-line tied from shed to shack. Take
+hold of it and don't let go. If you do you'll freeze before we can find
+you. When the wind comes, turn your back and wait. Go on when it dies
+down and never let go the rope. Ready? The wind's dropped. Here, Hillas,
+next to me."
+
+Three blurs hugged the sod walls around to the north-east corner. The
+forward shadow reached upward to a swaying rope, lifted the hand of the
+second who guided the third.
+
+"Hang on to my belt, too, Hillas. Ready--Smith? Got the rope?"
+
+They crawled forward, three barely visible figures, six, eight, ten
+steps. With a shriek the wind tore at them, beat the breath from their
+bodies, cut them with stinging needle-points and threw them aside. Dan
+reached back to make sure of Hillas who fumbled through the darkness
+for the stranger.
+
+Slowly they struggled ahead, the cold growing more intense; two steps,
+four, and the mounting fury of the blizzard reached its zenith. The
+blurs swayed like battered leaves on a vine that the wind tore in two at
+last and flung the living beings wide. Dan, slinging to the broken rope,
+rolled over and found Hillas with the frayed end of the line in his
+hand, reaching about through the black drifts for the stranger. Dan
+crept closer, his mouth at Hillas's ear, shouting, "Quick! Right behind
+me if we're to live through it!"
+
+The next moment Hillas let go the rope. Dan reached madly. "Boy, you
+can't find him--it'll only be two instead of one! Hillas! Hillas!"
+
+The storm screamed louder than the plainsman and began heaping the snow
+over three obstructions in its path, two that groped slowly and one that
+lay still. Dan fumbled at his belt, unfastened it, slipped the rope
+through the buckle, knotted it and crept its full length back toward the
+boy. A snow-covered something moved forward guiding another, one arm
+groping in blind search, reached and touched the man clinging to the
+belt.
+
+Beaten and buffeted by the ceaseless fury that no longer gave quarter,
+they slowly fought their way hand-over-hand along the rope, Dan now
+crawling last. After a frozen eternity they reached the end of the line
+fastened man-high against a second haven of wall. Hillas pushed open the
+unlocked door, the three men staggered in and fell panting against the
+side of the room.
+
+The stage-driver recovered first, pulled off his mittens, examined his
+fingers and felt quickly of nose, ears, and chin. He looked sharply at
+Hillas and nodded. Unceremoniously they stripped off the stranger's
+gloves; reached for a pan, opened the door, dipped it into the drift and
+plunged Smith's fingers down in the snow.
+
+"Your nose is white, too. Thaw it out."
+
+Abruptly Dan indicated a bench against the wall where the two men seated
+would take up less space.
+
+"I'm----" The stranger's voice was unsteady. "I----," but Dan had turned
+his back and his attention to the homesteader.
+
+The eight by ten room constituted the entire home. A shed roof slanted
+from eight feet high on the door and window side to a bit more than five
+on the other. A bed in one corner took up most of the space, and the
+remaining necessities were bestowed with the compactness of a ship's
+cabin. The rough boards of the roof and walls had been hidden by a
+covering of newspapers, with a row of illustrations pasted picture
+height. Cushions and curtains of turkey-red calico brightened the homely
+shack.
+
+The driver had slipped off his buffalo coat and was bending over a baby
+exhaustedly fighting for breath that whistled shrilly through a closing
+throat. The mother, scarcely more than a girl, held her in tensely
+extended arms.
+
+"How long's she been this way?"
+
+"She began to choke up day before yesterday, just after you passed on
+the down trip."
+
+The driver laid big finger tips on the restless wrist.
+
+"She always has the croup when she cuts a tooth, Dan, but this is
+different. I've used all the medicines I have--nothing relieves the
+choking."
+
+The girl lifted heavy eyelids above blue semicircles of fatigue and the
+compelling terror back of her eyes forced a question through dry lips.
+
+"Dan, do you know what membranous croup is like? Is this it?"
+
+The stage-driver picked up the lamp and held it close to the child's
+face, bringing out with distressing clearness the blue-veined pallor,
+sunken eyes, and effort of impeded breathing. He frowned, putting the
+lamp back quickly.
+
+"Mebbe it is, Mis' Clark, but don't you be scared. We'll help you a
+spell."
+
+Dan lifted the red curtain from the cupboard, found an emptied
+lard-pail, half filled it with water and placed it on an oil-stove that
+stood in the center of the room. He looked questioningly about the four
+walls, discovered a cleverly contrived tool-box beneath the cupboard
+shelves sorted out a pair of pincers and bits of iron, laying the
+latter in a row over the oil blaze. He took down a can of condensed
+milk, poured a spoonful of the thick stuff into a cup of water and made
+room for it near the bits of heating iron.
+
+He turned to the girl, opened his lips as if to speak with a face full
+of pity.
+
+Along the four-foot space between the end of the bed and the opposite
+wall the girl walked, crooning to the sick child she carried. As they
+watched, the low song died away, her shoulder rubbed heavily against the
+boarding, her eyelids dropped and she stood sound asleep. The next
+hard-drawn breath of the baby roused her and she stumbled on, crooning a
+lullaby.
+
+Smith clutched the younger man's shoulder. "God, Hillas, look where
+she's marked the wall rubbing against it! Do you suppose she's been
+walking that way for three days and nights? Why, she's only a child--no
+older than my own daughter."
+
+Hillas nodded.
+
+"Where are her people? Where's her husband?"
+
+"Down in Yankton, Dan told you, working for the Winter. Got to have the
+money to live."
+
+"Where's the doctor?"
+
+"Nearest one's in Haney--four days' trip away by stage."
+
+The traveler stared, frowningly.
+
+Dan was looking about the room again and after prodding the gay seat in
+the corner, lifted the cover and picked up a folded blanket, shaking out
+the erstwhile padded cushion. He hung the blanket over the back of a
+chair.
+
+"Mis' Clark, there's nothing but steam will touch membranous croup. We
+saved my baby that way last year. Set here and I'll fix things."
+
+He put the steaming lard-pail on the floor beside the mother and lifted
+the blanket over the baby's head. She put up her hand.
+
+"She's so little, Dan, and weak. How am I going to know if she--if
+she----"
+
+Dan re-arranged the blanket tent. "Jest get under with her yourself,
+Mis' Clark, then you'll know all that's happening."
+
+With the pincers he picked up a bit of hot iron and dropped it hissing
+into the pail, which he pushed beneath the tent. The room was
+oppressively quiet, walled in by the thick sod from the storm. The
+blanket muffled the sound of the child's breathing and the girl no
+longer stumbled against the wall.
+
+Dan lifted the corner of the blanket and another bit of iron hissed as
+it struck the water. The older man leaned toward the younger.
+
+"Stove--fire?" with a gesture of protest against the inadequate oil
+blaze.
+
+Hillas whispered, "Can't afford it. Coal is $9.00 in Haney, $18.00
+here."
+
+They sat with heads thrust forward, listening in the intolerable
+silence. Dan lifted the blanket, hearkened a moment, then--"pst!"
+another bit of iron fell into the pail. Dan stooped to the tool-chest
+for a reserve supply when a strangling cough made him spring to his feet
+and hurriedly lift the blanket.
+
+The child was beating the air with tiny fists, fighting for breath. The
+mother stood rigid, arms out.
+
+"Turn her this way!" Dan shifted the struggling child, face out. "Now
+watch out for the----"
+
+The strangling cough broke and a horrible something--"It's the membrane!
+She's too weak--let me have her!"
+
+Dan snatched the child and turned it face downward. The blue-faced baby
+fought in a supreme effort--again the horrible something--then Dan laid
+the child, white and motionless, in her mother's arms. She held the limp
+body close, her eyes wide with fear.
+
+"Dan, is--is she----?"
+
+A faint sobbing breath of relief fluttered the pale lips that moved in
+the merest ghost of a smile. The heavy eyelids half-lifted and the child
+nestled against its mother's breast. The girl swayed, shaking with sobs,
+"Baby--baby!"
+
+She struggled for self-control and stood up straight and pale. "Dan, I
+ought to tell you. When it began to get dark with the storm and time to
+put up the lantern, I was afraid to leave the baby. If she strangled
+when I was gone--with no one to help her--she would die!"
+
+Her lips quivered as she drew the child closer. "I didn't go right away
+but--I did--at last. I propped her up in bed and ran. If I hadn't----"
+Her eyes were wide with the shadowy edge of horror, "If I hadn't--you'd
+have been lost in the blizzard and--my baby would have died!"
+
+She stood before the men as if for judgment, her face wet with unchecked
+tears. Dan patted her shoulder dumbly and touched a fresh, livid bruise
+that ran from the curling hair on her temple down across cheek and chin.
+
+"Did you get this then?"
+
+She nodded. "The storm threw me against the pole when I hoisted the
+lantern. I thought I'd--never--get back!"
+
+It was Smith who translated Dan's look of appeal for the cup of warm
+milk and held it to the girl's lips.
+
+"Drink it, Mis' Clark, you need it."
+
+She made heroic attempts to swallow, her head drooped lower over the cup
+and fell against the driver's rough sleeve. "Poor kid, dead asleep!"
+
+Dan guided her stumbling feet toward the bed that the traveler sprang to
+open. She guarded the baby in the protecting angle of her arm into
+safety upon the pillow, then fell like a log beside her. Dan slipped off
+the felt boots, lifted her feet to the bed and softly drew covers over
+mother and child.
+
+"Poor kid, but she's grit, clear through!"
+
+Dan walked to the window, looked out at the lessening storm, then at the
+tiny alarm-clock on the cupboard. "Be over pretty soon now!" He seated
+himself by the table, dropped his head wearily forward on folded arms
+and was asleep.
+
+The traveler's face had lost some of its shrewdness. It was as if the
+white frontier had seized and shaken him into a new conception of life.
+He moved restlessly along the bench, then stepped softly to the side of
+the bed and straightened the coverlet into greater nicety while his lips
+twitched.
+
+With consuming care he folded the blanket and restored the corner seat
+to its accustomed appearance of luxury. He looked about the room, picked
+up the gray kitten sleeping contentedly on the floor and settled it on
+the red cushion with anxious attention to comfort.
+
+He examined with curiosity the few books carefully covered in a corner
+shelf, took down an old hand-tooled volume and lifted his eyebrows at
+the ancient coat of arms on the book plate. He tiptoed across to the
+bench and pointed to the script beneath the plate. "Edward Winslow (7)
+to his dear daughter, Alice (8)."
+
+He motioned toward the bed. "Her name?"
+
+Hillas nodded. Smith grinned. "Dan's right. Blood will tell, even to
+damning the rest of us."
+
+He sat down on the bench. "I understand more than I did, Hillas,
+since--you crawled back after me--out there. But how can you stand it
+here? I know you and the Clarks are people of education and, oh, all the
+rest; you could make your way anywhere."
+
+Hillas spoke slowly. "I think you have to live here to know. It means
+something to be a pioneer. You can't be one if you've got it in you to
+be a quitter. The country will be all right some day." He reached for
+his greatcoat, bringing out a brown-paper parcel. He smiled at it oddly
+and went on as if talking to himself.
+
+"When the drought and the hot winds come in the Summer and burn the
+buffalo grass to a tinder and the monotony of the plains weighs on you
+as it does now, there's a common, low-growing cactus scattered over the
+prairie that blooms into the gayest red flower you ever saw.
+
+"It wouldn't count for much anywhere else, but the pluck of it, without
+rain for months, dew even. It's the 'colors of courage.'"
+
+He turned the torn parcel, showing the bright red within, and looked at
+the cupboard and window with shining, tired eyes.
+
+"Up and down the frontier in these shacks, homes, you'll find things
+made of turkey-red calico, cheap, common elsewhere----" He fingered the
+three-cornered flap, "It's our 'colors.'" He put the parcel back in his
+pocket. "I bought two yards yesterday after--I got a letter at Haney."
+
+Smith sat looking at the gay curtains before him. The fury of the storm
+was dying down into fitful gusts. Dan stirred, looked quickly toward the
+bed, then the window, and got up quietly.
+
+"I'll hitch up. We'll stop at Peterson's and tell her to come over." He
+closed the door noiselessly.
+
+The traveler was frowning intently. Finally he turned toward the boy who
+sat with his head leaning back against the wall, eyes closed.
+
+"Hillas," his very tones were awkward, "they call me a shrewd business
+man. I am, it's a selfish job and I'm not reforming now. But twice
+to-night you--children have risked your lives, without thought, for a
+stranger. I've been thinking about that railroad. Haven't you raised any
+grain or cattle that could be used for freight?"
+
+The low answer was toneless. "Drought killed the crops, prairie fires
+burned the hay, of course the cattle starved."
+
+"There's no timber, ore, nothing that could be used for east-bound
+shipment?"
+
+The plainsman looked searchingly into the face of the older man.
+"There's no timber this side the Missouri. Across the river, it's
+reservation--Sioux. We----" He frowned and stopped.
+
+Smith stood up, his hands thrust deep in his pockets. "I admitted I was
+shrewd, Hillas, but I'm not yellow clear through, not enough to betray
+this part of the frontier anyhow. I had a man along here last Fall
+spying for minerals. That's why I'm out here now. If you know the
+location, and we both think you do, I'll put capital in your way to
+develop the mines and use what pull I have to get the road in."
+
+He looked down at the boy and thrust out a masterful jaw. There was a
+ring of sincerity no one could mistake when he spoke again.
+
+"This country's a desert now, but I'd back the Sahara peopled with your
+kind. This is on the square, Hillas, don't tell me you won't believe
+I'm--American enough to trust?"
+
+The boy tried to speak. With stiffened body and clenched hands he
+struggled for self-control. Finally in a ragged whisper, "If I try to
+tell you what--it means--I can't talk! Dan and I know of outcropping
+coal over in the Buttes." He nodded in the direction of the Missouri,
+"but we haven't had enough money to file mining claims."
+
+"Know where to dig for samples under this snow?"
+
+The boy nodded. "Some in my shack too. I--" His head went down upon the
+crossed arms. Smith laid an awkward hand on the heaving shoulders, then
+rose and crossed the room to where the girl had stumbled in her vigil.
+Gently he touched the darkened streak where her shoulders had rubbed and
+blurred the newspaper print. He looked from the relentless white desert
+outside to the gay bravery within and bent his head, "Turkey-red--calico!"
+
+There was the sound of jingling harness and the crunch of runners. The
+men bundled into fur coats.
+
+"Hillas, the draw right by the house here," Smith stopped and looked
+sharply at the plainsman, then went on with firm carelessness, "This
+draw ought to strike a low grade that would come out near the river
+level. Does Dan know Clark's address?" Hillas nodded.
+
+They tiptoed out and closed the door behind them softly. The wind had
+swept every cloud from the sky and the light of the Northern stars
+etched a dazzling world. Dan was checking up the leaders as Hillas
+caught him by the shoulder and shook him like a clumsy bear.
+
+"Dan, you blind old mole, can you see the headlight of the Overland
+Freight blazing and thundering down that draw over the Great Missouri
+and Eastern?"
+
+Dan stared.
+
+"I knew you couldn't!" Hillas thumped him with furry fist. "Dan," the
+wind might easily have drowned the unsteady voice, "I've told Mr. Smith
+about the coal--for freight. He's going to help us get capital for
+mining and after that the road."
+
+"Smith! Smith! Well I'll be--aren't you a claim spotter?"
+
+He turned abruptly and crunched toward the stage. His passengers
+followed. Dan paused with his foot on the runner and looked steadily at
+the traveler from under lowered, shaggy brows.
+
+"You're going to get a road out here?"
+
+"I've told Hillas I'll put money in your way to mine the coal. Then the
+railroad will come."
+
+Dan's voice rasped with tension. "We'll get out the coal. Are you going
+to see that the road's built?"
+
+Unconsciously the traveler held up his right hand, "I am!"
+
+Dan searched his face sharply. Smith nodded, "I'm making my bet on the
+people--friend!"
+
+It was a new Dan who lifted his bronzed face to a white world. His voice
+was low and very gentle. "To bring a road here," he swung his
+whip-handle from Donovan's light around to Carson's square, sweeping in
+all that lay behind, "out here to them--" The pioneer faced the wide
+desert that reached into a misty space ablaze with stars, "would be
+like--playing God!"
+
+The whip thudded softly into the socket and Dan rolled up on the
+driver's seat. Two men climbed in behind him. The long lash swung out
+over the leaders as Dan headed the old mail-sled across the drifted
+right-of-way of the Great Missouri and Eastern.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[21] Copyright, 1919, by The Pictorial Review Company. Copyright, 1921,
+by Frances Gilchrist Wood.
+
+
+
+
+THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY, OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER,
+1920
+
+ADDRESSES OF AMERICAN MAGAZINES PUBLISHING SHORT STORIES
+
+
+#Note.# _This address list does not aim to be complete, but is based
+simply on the magazines which I have consulted for this volume._
+
+Adventure, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City.
+Ainslee's Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+American Boy, 142 Lafayette Boulevard, Detroit, Michigan.
+American Magazine, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Argosy All-Story Weekly, 280 Broadway, New York City.
+Asia, 627 Lexington Avenue, New York City.
+Atlantic Monthly, 8 Arlington Street, Boston, Mass.
+Black Cat, 229 West 28th Street, New York City.
+Catholic World, 120 West 60th Street, New York City.
+Century, 353 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Christian Herald, Bible House, New York City.
+Collier's Weekly, 416 West 13th Street, New York City.
+Cosmopolitan Magazine, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Delineator, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City.
+Dial, 152 West 13th Street, New York City.
+Everybody's Magazine, Spring and Macdougal Streets, New York City.
+Freeman, 32 West 58th Street, New York City.
+Good Housekeeping, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Harper's Bazar, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Harper's Magazine, Franklin Square, New York City.
+Hearst's Magazine, 119 West 40th Street, New York City.
+Holland's Magazine, Dallas, Texas.
+Ladies' Home Journal, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Liberator, 34 Union Square East, New York City.
+Little Review, 24 West 16th Street, New York City.
+Little Story Magazine, 714 Drexel Building, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Live Stories, 35 West 39th Street, New York City.
+McCall's Magazine, 236 West 37th Street, New York City.
+McClure's Magazine, 76 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
+Magnificat, Manchester, N. H.
+Metropolitan, 432 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Midland, Glennie, Alcona County, Mich.
+Munsey's Magazine, 280 Broadway, New York City.
+Outlook, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Pagan, 7 East 15th Street, New York City.
+Parisienne, 25 West 45th Street, New York City.
+People's Favorite Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+Pictorial Review, 216 West 39th Street, New York City.
+Popular Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+Queen's Work, 626 North Vandeventer Avenue, St. Louis, Mo.
+Red Book Magazine, North American Building, Chicago, Ill.
+Saturday Evening Post, Independence Square, Philadelphia, Pa.
+Scribner's Magazine, 597 Fifth Avenue, New York City.
+Short Stories, Garden City, Long Island, N. Y.
+Smart Set, 25 West 45th Street, New York City.
+Snappy Stories, 35 West 39th Street, New York City.
+Sunset, 460 Fourth Street, San Francisco, Cal.
+To-day's Housewife, Cooperstown, N. Y.
+Top-Notch Magazine, 79 Seventh Avenue, New York City.
+Touchstone, 1 West 47th Street, New York City.
+Woman's Home Companion, 381 Fourth Avenue, New York City.
+Woman's World, 107 South Clinton Street, Chicago, Ill.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ROLL OF HONOR OF AMERICAN SHORT STORIES
+
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+#Note.# _Only stories by American authors are listed. The best stories are
+indicated by an asterisk before the title of the story. The index
+figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 prefixed to the name of the author indicate
+that his work has been included in the Rolls of Honor for 1914, 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919 respectively. The list excludes reprints._
+
+(56) #Abdullah, Achmed# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  Evening Rice.
+
+
+#Aitken, Kenneth Lyndwode.# Born at Hamilton, Ont., Canada,
+July 13, 1881. Education: N. Y. Public Schools and Ridley
+College, Ont. Profession: Electrical Engineer. Was Manager,
+City Electric Plant, Toronto, for four years. Chief interests:
+writing and photography. First story: "Height o' Land,"
+Canadian Magazine, 1904. Died in California Dec. 5, 1919.
+
+  From the Admiralty Files.
+
+
+#Anderson, C. Farley.#
+
+  Octogenarian.
+
+
+#Anderson, Jane.#
+
+  Happiest Man in the World.
+
+
+(3456) #Anderson, Sherwood# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Door of the Trap.
+  *I Want to Know Why.
+  *Other Woman.
+  *Triumph of the Egg.
+
+
+#Anderton, Daisy.# Born in Bedford, Ohio. High School education.
+First story: "Emmy's Solution," Pagan, Feb., 1919. Author
+of "Cousin Sadie," a novel, 1920. Lives in Bedford, Ohio.
+
+  Belated Girlhood.
+
+
+(3456) #Babcock, Edwina Stanton# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+ *Gargoyle.
+
+
+(6) #Barnes, Djuna# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Beyond the End.
+  *Mother.
+
+#BenA(C)t, Stephen Vincent.# Born in Bethlehem, Pa., July 22,
+1898. Education: Yale University, M. A. Chief interests:
+"Reading and writing poetry, playing and watching tennis,
+swimming without any participial qualification, and walking
+around between this and the other side of Paradise with a
+verse in one hand and a brick for my elders in the other like
+the rest of the incipient generation." First story: "Funeral
+of Mr. Bixby," Munsey's Magazine, July, 1920. Author of
+"Five Men and Pompey," 1915; "Young Adventure," 1918;
+"Heavens and Earth," 1920.
+
+  Summer Thunder.
+
+
+#Bercovici, Konrad.# Born June 23, 1882. Dobrudgea, Rumania.
+Educated there and in the streets of Paris. "In other cities
+it was completed as far as humanly possible." Profession:
+organist. Chief interests: people, horses, and gardens. First
+short story printed at the age of twelve in a Rumanian magazine.
+Author of "Crimes of Charity" and "Dust of New York." Lives
+in New York City.
+
+  *Ghitza.
+
+
+#Boulton, Agnes.# Born in London, England, Sept. 19, 1893, of
+American parents. Lived as a child near Barnegat Bay, N. J.
+Educated at home. First story published in the Black Cat.
+Married Eugene O'Neill, the playwright, 1918. Lives in Provincetown,
+Mass.
+
+  Hater of Mediocrity.
+
+
+(2346) #Brown, Alice# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Old Lemuel's Journey.
+
+
+(56) #Brownell, Agnes Mary# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Buttermilk.
+  Quest.
+  Relation.
+
+
+#Bryner, Edna Clare.# Born in Tylersburg, Penn., and spent her
+childhood in the lumbering region of that state. Graduate of
+Vassar College. Has been engaged in teaching, statistical
+work, reform school work, and eugenic, educational, and housing
+research. Chief interests: Music and friends in the winter;
+Adirondack trails in the summer. First story: "Life of Five
+Points," Dial, Sept., 1920. Lives in New York City.
+
+  *Life of Five Points.
+
+
+(1456) #Burt, Maxwell Struthers# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Dream or Two.
+  *Each in His Generation.
+  *When His Ships Came In.
+
+
+(56) #Cabell, James Branch# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Designs of Miramon.
+  *Feathers of Olrun.
+  *Hair of Melicent.
+  *Head of Misery.
+  *Hour of Freydis.
+
+#Camp, (Charles) Wadsworth.# Born in Philadelphia, Oct. 18,
+1879. Graduate of Princeton University, 1902. Married, 1916.
+On staff of N. Y. Evening Sun, 1902-5; sub-editor McClure's
+Magazine, 1905-6; editor of The Metropolitan, 1906-9; European
+correspondent, Collier's Weekly, 1916. Author: "Sinister
+Island," 1915; "The House of Fear," 1916; "War's Dark Frame,"
+1917; "The Abandoned Room," 1917; etc. Lives in New York City.
+
+  *Signal Tower.
+
+
+#Carnevali, Emanuel.#
+
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. I.
+
+
+#Chapman, Edith.#
+
+  Classical Case.
+
+
+(2345) #Cobb, Irvin S.# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Story That Ends Twice.
+
+
+#Corley, Donald.#
+
+  *Daimyo's Bowl.
+
+
+(6) #Cram, Mildred# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Odell.
+  Spring of Cold Water.
+  Wind.
+
+
+#Crew, Helen Coale.# Born in Baltimore, Md., 1866. Graduate
+of Bryn Mawr College, 1889. First short story, "The Lost
+Oasis," Everybody's Magazine, Nov., 1910. Lives in Evanston,
+Ill.
+
+  *Parting Genius.
+
+
+#Delano, Edith Barnard.# Born in Washington, D. C. Married
+in 1908. Author: "Zebedee V.," 1912; "The Land of Content,"
+1913; "The Colonel's Experiment," 1913; "Rags," 1915; "The
+White Pearl," 1916; "June," 1916; "To-morrow Morning," 1917.
+Lives in East Orange, N. J.
+
+  Life and the Tide.
+
+
+(456) #Dobie, Charles Caldwell# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Christmas Cakes.
+  *Leech.
+
+
+#Dodge, Louis.# Born at Burlington, Ia., Sept. 27, 1870. Educated
+at Whitman College, Ark. Unmarried. In newspaper work in Texas
+and St. Louis since 1893. Author: "Bonnie May," 1916; "Children
+of the Desert," 1917. Lives in St. Louis, Mo.
+
+  Case of MacIntyre.
+
+
+(36) #Dreiser, Theodore# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Sanctuary.
+
+
+(5) #Ellerbe, Alma and Paul# (_for biographies, see 1918_).
+
+  Paradise Shares.
+
+
+(4) #Ferber, Edna# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Maternal Feminine.
+  *You've Got To Be Selfish.
+
+
+#Fillmore, Parker.# Born at Cincinnati, O., Sept. 21, 1878.
+Graduated from University of Cincinnati, 1901. Unmarried.
+Teacher in Philippine Islands, 1901-4. Banker in Cincinnati
+since 1904. Author: "The Hickory Limb," 1910; "The Young
+Idea," 1911; "The Rosie World," 1914; "A Little Question in
+Ladies' Rights," 1916; "Czecho-Slovak Fairy Tales," 1919;
+"The Shoemaker's Last," 1920. Lives in Cincinnati, O.
+
+  Katcha and the Devil.
+
+
+#Finger, Charles J.# Born at Willesden, England, Sept. 25, 1871.
+Common School education. Railroad Executive. Has traveled
+widely in South America, including Patagonia, and Tierra
+del Fuego. Spent more than a year upon an uninhabited island,
+accompanied only by "Sartor Resartus." First story: "How Lazy
+Sam Got His Raise," Youth's Companion, 1897. Author of "Guided
+by the World," 1901; "A Bohemian Life," 1902. Lives in
+Fayetteville, Ark.
+
+  *Ebro.
+  Jack Random.
+
+
+(6) #Fish, Horace# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Doom's-Day Envelope.
+
+
+#Follett, Wilson.#
+
+  *Dive.
+
+
+(4) #Folsom, Elizabeth Irons# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Alibi.
+
+
+(12345) #Gerould, Katharine Fullerton# (_for biography, see
+1917_).
+
+  *Habakkuk.
+  *Honest Man.
+
+
+(5) #Gilbert, George# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  Sigh of the Bulbul.
+
+
+(1345) #Gordon, Armistead C.# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Panjorum Bucket.
+
+
+#Halverson, Delbert M.# Born on a farm near Linn Grove, Ia.
+Educated at the State University of Iowa. First story: "Leaves
+in the Wind," Midland, April, 1920. Lives in Minneapolis,
+Minn.
+
+  Leaves in the Wind.
+
+
+(4) #Hartman, Lee Foster# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Judgment of Vulcan.
+
+
+(56) #Hergesheimer, Joseph# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Blue Ice.
+  *Ever So Long Ago.
+  *Meeker Ritual (II).
+  *"Read Them and Weep."
+
+(25) #Hughes, Rupert# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Stick-in-the-Muds.
+
+
+#Hunting, Ema S.# Born at Sioux Rapids, Iowa, Oct. 8, 1885.
+Educated at Fort Dodge High School, Ia., and graduate of
+Grinnell College, 1908. Author of "A Dickens Revival." Writer
+of one-act plays and children's stories. First short story:
+"Dissipation," Midland, May, 1920. Lives at Denver, Col.
+
+  Dissipation.
+  Soul That Sinneth.
+
+
+#Hussey, L. M.# Born in Philadelphia. Studied medicine and
+chemistry. Director of a laboratory of biological research.
+First story: "The Sorrows of Mr. Harlcomb," published in
+the Smart Set about 1916. At present occupied with writing
+a novel. Lives in Philadelphia, Pa.
+
+  Lowden Household.
+  Two Gentlemen of Caracas.
+
+
+(6) #Irwin, Wallace# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  Beauty.
+
+
+#Johns, Orrick.#
+
+  Big Frog.
+
+
+(256) #Johnson, Arthur# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Princess of Tork.
+
+
+(3) #Knight, (Clifford) Reynolds.# Born at Fulton, Kan., 1886.
+Educated at Washburn College, Topeka, and University of
+Michigan. Has been engaged in railroad and newspaper work.
+Taught in the Signal Corps Training School at Yale during
+the war. Now on the editorial staff of the Kansas City Star.
+Chief interests: Books and music. First published story:
+"The Rule of Three," The Railroad Man's Magazine, Oct.,
+1911. Author: "Tommy of the Voices," 1918. Lives in Kansas
+City, Mo.
+
+  *Melody Jim.
+
+
+#Komroff, Manuel.#
+
+  Thumbs.
+
+
+"#Kral, Carlos A. V."# Born in a country town in southern
+Michigan, Dec. 29, 1890, of Czech-Yankee descent. Has lived
+continuously since three years of age in one of the large cities
+of the Great Lakes. Graduated from a public high school, but
+was educated chiefly by thought and private study.
+
+  Landscape with Trees, and Colored Twilight with Music.
+
+
+(6) #La Motte, Ellen Newbold.# Born in Louisville, Ky., of
+northern parentage. Privately educated. Graduated from the
+Johns Hopkins Hospital in 1902. Since engaged in social
+work and public health work. Was in charge of the Tuberculosis
+Division of the Baltimore Health Dept. for several years. Has
+been living chiefly in Paris since 1913. Was in France with
+a year's service in a Field Hospital attached to the French
+Army. Spent a year in China and the Far East, 1916-7. Chief
+interests: the under dog, either the individual or nation.
+First short story: "Heroes," Atlantic Monthly, Aug., 1916.
+Author: "The Tuberculosis Nurse," 1914; "The Backwash of
+War," 1916; "Peking Dust," 1919; "Civilization," 1919.
+"The Backwash of War" was suppressed by the British, French
+and American governments. It went through four printings first,
+and is now released again.
+
+  Golden Stars.
+
+
+#McCourt, Edna Wahlert.#
+
+  *Lichen.
+
+
+(6) #MacManus, Seumas.#
+
+  Conaleen and Donaleen.
+  Heartbreak of Norah O'Hara.
+  Lad from Largymore.
+
+
+#Mann, Jane.# Born near New York City of Knickerbocker ancestry.
+After college preparatory school had several years of art
+education. Chief interest: wandering along coasts, living
+with the natives, seeing what they do and hearing what they
+say. First published story: "Men and a Gale o' Wind," Collier's
+Weekly, Nov. 8, 1913. Lives in Provincetown, Mass.
+
+  Heritage.
+
+
+#Mason, Grace Sartwell.# Born at Port Allegheny, Pa., Oct. 31,
+1877. Educated privately. Married to Redfern Mason, the
+musical critic, 1902. Author: "The Car and the Lady," 1909;
+"The Godparents," 1910; "Micky and His Gang," 1912; "The
+Bear's Claws" (with John Northern Hilliard), 1913; "The
+Golden Hope," 1915. Lives at Carmel, Cal.
+
+  *His Job.
+
+
+(6) #"Maxwell, Helena"# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  Adolescence.
+
+
+#Mears, Mary M.# Born at Oshkosh, Wis. Educated at State
+Normal School, Wis. Unmarried. Journalist since 1896. Author:
+"Emma Lou--Her Book," 1896; "Breath of the Runners," 1906;
+"The Bird in the Box"; "Rosamond the Second." Lives in New York City.
+
+  Forbidden Thing.
+
+
+(36) #Montague, Margaret Prescott# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge.
+
+
+(6) #Murray, Roy Irving.# Born at Brooklyn, Wis., July 25,
+1882. Graduated from Hobart College, 1904. First story:
+"Sealed Orders," McBride's Magazine, Dec., 1915. Is a master
+at St. Mark's School, Southborough, Mass.
+
+  Substitute.
+
+
+(6) #Muth, Edna Tucker.#
+
+  *Gallipeau.
+
+#O'Brien, Frederick.# Born in Baltimore. Educated in a Jesuit
+school. Shipped before the mast at the age of 18. Tramped
+over Brazil as a day laborer, and through the West Indies.
+Returned to America and read law in his father's office. Wandered
+without money over Europe, and was a sandwichman in London.
+On the staff of the Paris Herald for a few months. Travelled
+over the western states as a hobo, was a bartender in a
+Mississippi levee camp, acted as a general with Coxey's
+Army, became a crime reporter for the Marion Star, owned
+by Senator Harding, Sub-editor of the Columbus Dispatch,
+Labor Editor of the N. Y. Journal, an investigator of crime
+in the Chicago slums, a freelance in San Francisco, and editor
+of the Honolulu Advertiser. Lived with the natives in Hawaii,
+published a newspaper in Manila, spent eight years as Far
+Eastern correspondent of the N. Y. Herald, went through the
+Russo-Japanese War, returned to Europe as a correspondent,
+spent some years on a fruit ranch in California, engaged in
+politics, owned two newspapers, and finally lived as a beachcomber
+in Tahiti, the Society Islands, the Paumoto Islands and
+Marquesan Islands. During 1920 he was in New York and
+wrote "White Shadows in the South Seas." He has now returned
+to Asia, leaving another book, "Drifting Among South Sea Isles,"
+which is to be published immediately.
+
+  *Jade Bracelet of Ah Queen.
+
+
+#"O'Grady, R."# is a pen name of a lady who lives in Des Moines,
+Ia. She is a graduate of the State University of Iowa, and is
+now engaged in newspaper work.
+
+  Brothers.
+
+
+#O'Hagan, Anne.# Born in Washington, D. C. Graduate of
+Boston University. Since engaged on newspaper and magazine
+work. First story published about 1898. Chief interests:
+Suffrage and housekeeping. Married in March, 1908, to Francis
+A. Shinn. Lives in New York City.
+
+  Return.
+
+
+(45) #O'Higgins, Harvey J.# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Story of Big Dan Reilly.
+  *Story of Mrs. Murchison.
+  Strange Case of Warden Jupp.
+
+
+(5) #Oppenheim, James# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Rending.
+
+
+#Osbourne, Lloyd.# Born in San Francisco, April 7, 1868. Stepson
+of Robert Louis Stevenson. Educated at University of Edinburgh.
+Married 1896. Has been U. S. A. Vice-Consul-General at Samoa.
+Author: "The Wrong Box" (with R. L. Stevenson), 1889; "The
+Wrecker" (with R. L. Stevenson), 1892; "The Ebb Tide" (with
+R. L. Stevenson), 1894; "The Queen vs. Billy," 1900; "Love,
+the Fiddler," 1905; "The Motor-maniacs," 1905; "Wild Justice,"
+1906; "Three Speeds Forward," 1906; "Baby Bullet," 1906;
+"The Tin Diskers," 1906; "Schmidt," 1907; "The Adventurer,"
+1907; "Infatuation," 1909; "A Person of Some Importance,"
+1911; and other novels and short stories. Has written and
+produced several plays. Lives in New York City.
+
+  East is East.
+
+
+(345) #O'Sullivan, Vincent# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Dance-Hall at Unigenitus.
+
+
+(123) #Post, Melville Davisson.# Born in Harrison County, W. Va.,
+Apr. 19, 1871. Graduate of West Virginia University in arts
+and law, 1892. Married 1903. Admitted to the Bar in 1892.
+Member of the Board of Regents, State Normal School. Chairman
+of the Democratic Congressional Commission for West Virginia,
+1898. Member of the Advisory Committee of the N. E. L.
+on question of efficiency in administration of justice,
+1914-15. Author: "The Strange Schemes of Randolph Mason,"
+1896; "The Man of Last Resort," 1897; "Dwellers in the
+Hills," 1901; "The Corrector of Destinies," 1909; "The
+Gilded Chair," 1910; "The Nameless Thing," 1912; "Uncle
+Abner: Master of Mysteries," 1918; "The Mystery at the Blue
+Villa," 1919; "The Sleuth of St. James's Square," 1920. Lives
+at Lost Creek, West Virginia.
+
+  Yellow Flower.
+
+
+#Reindel, Margaret H.# Born in Cleveland, O., Dec. 2, 1896.
+Graduated from Western Reserve University, 1919, and spent
+a year at Columbia University. Now working in a New York
+department store. First story published: "Fear," The Touchstone.
+Lives in New York City.
+
+  Fear.
+
+
+#Rice, Louise.#
+
+  *Lubbeny Kiss.
+
+
+#Roche, Arthur Somers.# Born in Somerville, Mass., Apr. 27,
+1883. Son of James Jeffrey Roche. Educated at Holy Cross
+College and Boston University Law School. Married. Practised
+law for two years. Engaged in journalism since 1906. Author:
+"Loot," 1916; "Plunder," 1917; "The Sport of Kings," 1917.
+Lives at Castine, Me.
+
+  *Dummy-Chucker.
+
+
+(3) #Roche, Mazo De La.#
+
+  Explorers of the Dawn.
+
+
+(234) #Rosenblatt, Benjamin# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Stepping Westward.
+
+
+#Rumsey, Frances.# Born in New York City in 1886. Educated
+in France. Has lived chiefly in England and France, and now
+passes her time between Normandy, London, and New York.
+Married. First short story: "Cash," Century Magazine, August,
+1920. Author: "Mr. Gushing and Mademoiselle du Chastel,"
+1917. Translator: "Japanese Impressions," by Couchoud, 1920.
+
+  *Cash.
+
+
+(5) #Russell, John# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  Wreck on Deliverance.
+
+
+#"Rutledge, Maryse."# Born in New York City, Nov. 24, 1884.
+Educated in private schools, New York and Paris. Chief interests:
+painting, tenting, canoeing, and hunting in Maine. Married
+to Gardner Hale, the mural fresco painter. First story
+published in the Smart Set about 1903. Author: "Anne
+of TrA(C)boul," 1904; "The Blind Who See"; "Wild Grapes," 1912;
+"Children of Fate," 1917. Divides her time between Paris
+and New York City.
+
+  House of Fuller.
+
+
+#Ryan, Kathryn White.# Born in Albany, N. Y. Convent
+school education. Married. Lived in Denver until 1919.
+First story published: "The Orchids," Munsey's Magazine,
+May, 1919. Lives in New York City.
+
+  Man of Cone.
+
+
+#Saphier, William.# Born in northern Rumania in 1883. Comes
+of a long line of butchers. Primary school education in Rumania.
+Student at the Art Institute of Chicago for a short time.
+Painter and machinist. Editor of "Others," 1917. Illustrator:
+"The Book of Jeremiah," 1920; "Pins for Wings," by Witter
+Bynner, 1920. First published story: "Kites," The Little
+Review. Lives in New York City.
+
+  Kites.
+
+
+(356) #Sedgwick, Anne Douglas# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Christmas Roses.
+
+
+(6) #Sidney, Rose.# Born in Toledo, O., 1888. Educated in private
+schools and at Columbia University. "My profession consists
+largely in trying to make odd holes and corners of the
+earth into temporary homes for my army officer husband."
+First published story: "Grapes of the San Jacinto," The Pictorial
+Review, Sept., 1919. Now living in California.
+
+  *Butterflies.
+
+
+(123456) #Singmaster, Elsie# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  Miss Vilda.
+  Salvadora.
+
+
+(345) #Springer, Fleta Campbell# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Civilization.
+  *Rotter.
+
+
+(23456) #Steele, Wilbur Daniel# (_for biography, see 1917_).
+
+  *Both Judge and Jury.
+  *God's Mercy.
+  *Out of Exile.
+
+
+#"Storm, Ethel."# Born at Winnebago City, Minnesota. Lived
+in New York City since early childhood. Privately educated.
+Chief interests: decorative art, gardening, people. First published
+story: "Burned Hands," Harper's Bazar, Nov., 1918. Lives in
+New York City.
+
+  *Three Telegrams.
+
+
+(5) #Street, Julian# (_for biography, see_ 1918).
+
+  Hands.
+
+
+(3456) #Vorse, Mary Heaton# (_for biography, see_ 1917).
+
+  *Fraycar's Fist.
+  *Hopper.
+  Pink Fence.
+
+
+#Ward, Herbert Dickinson.# Born at Waltham, Mass., June 30,
+1861. Graduate of Amherst College, 1884. Married Elizabeth
+Stuart Phelps, 1888; and Edna J. Jeffress, 1916. Author of
+numerous books for boys and girls. Lives in Newton, Mass.
+
+  Master Note.
+
+
+#Welles, Harriet Ogden Deen.# Born in New York City. Educated
+in private schools. Studied art. Wife of Rear Admiral Roger
+Welles, U. S. Navy. Author of "Anchors Aweigh," 1919. Lives
+in San Diego, Cal.
+
+  According to Ruskin.
+
+
+#Wheelwright, John T.# Born at Roxbury, Mass., Feb. 26, 1856.
+Educated at Roxbury Latin School and Harvard University.
+Profession: Lawyer. Has been interested in public affairs, and
+has held appointive offices under the State of Massachusetts
+and the City of Boston. Was one of the founders of the Harvard
+Lampoon. On editorial staff of Boston Advertiser, 1882-3.
+Author: "Rollo's Journey to Cambridge" (with F. J. Stimson),
+1880; "The King's Men" (with John Boyle O'Reilly, F. J.
+Stimson, and Robert Grant), 1884; "A Child of the Century,"
+1886; "A Bad Penny," 1896; "War Children," 1907. Lives in
+Boston, Mass.
+
+  *Roman Bath.
+
+
+#Whitman, Stephen French.#
+
+  *Amazement.
+  *Lost Waltz.
+  *To a Venetian Tune.
+
+
+(56) #Williams, Ben Ames# (_for biography, see_ 1918).
+
+  *Sheener.
+
+
+#Wilson, John Fleming.# Born at Erie, Pa., Feb. 22, 1877. Educated
+at Parsons College and Princeton University. Teacher, 1900-2;
+journalist, 1902-5; editor San Francisco Argonaut, 1906.
+Married, 1906. Author: "The Land Claimers," 1910; "Across
+the Latitudes," 1911; "The Man Who Came Back," 1912; "The
+Princess of Sorry Valley," 1913; "Tad Sheldon and His Boy
+Scouts," 1913; "The Master Key," 1915.
+
+  Uncharted Reefs.
+
+(6) #Wilson, Margaret Adelaide.# Educated at Portland Academy,
+Portland, Oregon, and at an eastern college. Since then
+she has lived chiefly on her father's ranch in the San Jacinto
+Valley, California. First published story: "Towata and His
+Brother Wind," The Bellman, about 1907. Lives at Hemet,
+Cal.
+
+  Drums.
+
+
+(5) #Wood, Frances Gilchrist# (_for biography, see 1918_).
+
+  *Spoiling of Pharaoh.
+  *Turkey Red.
+
+
+(6) #Yezierska, Anzia# (_for biography, see 1919_).
+
+  *Hunger.
+
+
+
+
+THE ROLL OF HONOR OF FOREIGN SHORT STORIES IN AMERICAN MAGAZINES
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+#Note.# _Stories of special excellence are indicated by an asterisk. The
+index figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 prefixed to the name of the author
+indicate that his work has been included in the Rolls of Honor for 1914,
+1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, and 1919 respectively. The list excludes
+reprints._
+
+
+I. #English and Irish Authors#
+
+
+(123456) #Aumonier, Stacy.#
+
+  *Good Action.
+  *Golden Windmill.
+  *Great Unimpressionable.
+  *Just the Same.
+  *Landlord of "The-Love-a-Duck."
+
+
+#Barker, Granville.#
+
+  Bigamist.
+
+
+#Beck, L. Adams.#
+
+  Fire of Beauty.
+  Incomparable Lady.
+
+
+(12356) #Blackwood, Algernon.#
+
+  *First Hate.
+  *Running Wolf.
+
+
+#Buchan, John.#
+
+  Fullcircle.
+
+
+(6) #Burke, Thomas.#
+
+  *Scarlet Shoes.
+
+
+#DobrA(C)e, Bonamy.#
+
+  Surfeit.
+
+
+(456) #Dudeney, Mrs. Henry E.#
+
+  Wild Raspberries.
+
+
+(46) #Dunsany, Lord.#
+
+  *Cheng Hi and the Window Framer.
+  *East and West.
+  *How the Lost Causes Were Removed from Valhalla.
+  *Pretty Quarrel.
+
+
+#Ervine, St. John G.#
+
+  Dramatist and the Leading Lady.
+
+
+(2) #Gibbon, Perceval.#
+
+  *Connoisseur.
+  Knave of Diamonds.
+  Lieutenant.
+
+
+#Holding, Elizabeth Sanxay.#
+
+  Problem that Perplexed Nicholson.
+
+
+(4) #Lawrence, D. H.#
+
+  *Adolf.
+
+
+#MacManus, L.#
+
+  Baptism.
+
+
+#Merrick, Leonard.#
+
+  To Daphne De Vere.
+
+
+#Monro, Harold.#
+
+  *Parcel of Love.
+
+
+(456) #Mordaunt, Elinor.#
+
+  *Adventures in the Night.
+  *Ginger Jar.
+
+#Nevinson, Henry W.#
+
+  *In Diocletian's Day.
+
+
+#Owen, H. Collinson.#
+
+  Temptation of Antoine.
+
+
+#Richardson, Dorothy M.#
+
+  *Sunday.
+
+
+#Sinclair, May.#
+
+  *Fame.
+
+
+(5) #Stephens, James.#
+
+  *Boss.
+  *Desire.
+  *Thieves.
+
+
+(2) Walpole, Hugh.
+
+  *Case of Miss Morganhurst.
+  *Fanny's Job.
+  *Honourable Clive Torby.
+  *No Place for Absalom.
+  *Stealthy Visitor.
+  *Third Sex.
+
+
+II. #Translations#
+
+
+(4) #Andreyev, Leonid.# (_Russian._)
+
+  *Promise of Spring.
+
+
+Anonymous. (_Chinese._)
+
+  *Romance of the Western Pavilion.
+
+
+(6) #Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.# (_Spanish._)
+
+  Old Woman of the Movies.
+  Sleeping-Car Porter.
+
+
+(6) #"France, Anatole." (Jacques Anatole Thibault.)# (_French._)
+
+  *Lady With the White Fan.
+
+
+#IbAiA+-ez, Vicente Blasco.# (_Spanish._) _See_ #Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.#
+
+
+#Kotsyubinsky, Michael.# (_Russian._)
+
+  By the Sea.
+
+
+(6) #Level, Maurice.# (_French._)
+
+  Empty House.
+  Kennel.
+  Maniac.
+  Son of His Father.
+
+
+#Lichtenberger, AndrA(C).# (_French._)
+
+  Old Fisherwoman.
+
+
+#LouA?s, Pierre.# (_French._)
+
+  False Esther.
+
+
+#Nodier, Charles.# (_French._)
+
+  *Bibliomaniac.
+
+
+#Rameau, Jean.# (_French._)
+
+  Ocarina.
+
+
+(4) #Saltykov, M. E.# (_Russian._)
+
+  *Wild Squire.
+
+
+#Schnitzler, Arthur.# (_German._)
+
+  *Crumbled Blossoms.
+
+
+#Thibault, Jacques Anatole.# (_French._) _See_ "#France, Anatole.#"
+
+
+#Trueba, Antonio De.# (_Spanish._)
+
+  Portal of Heaven.
+
+
+#Yushkevitch, Semyon.# (_Russian._)
+
+  PietA .
+
+
+
+
+THE BEST BOOKS OF SHORT STORIES OF 1920: A CRITICAL SUMMARY
+
+
+#The Ten Best American Books#
+
+1. #Brown.# Homespun and Gold. Macmillan.
+2. #Cather.# Youth and the Bright Medusa. Knopf.
+3. #Dwight.# The Emperor of Elam. Doubleday, Page.
+4. #Howells,# _Editor._ Great Modern American Stories. Boni & Liveright.
+5. #Johnson.# Under the Rose. Harper.
+6. #Sedgwick.# Christmas Roses. Houghton Mifflin.
+7. #Smith.# Pagan. Scribner.
+8. Society of Arts and Sciences. #O. Henry# Prize Stories, 1919.
+   Doubleday, Page.
+9. #Spofford.# The Elder's People. Houghton Mifflin.
+10. #Yezierska.# Hungry Hearts. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+
+#The Ten Best English Books#
+
+1. #Beerbohm.# Seven Men. Knopf.
+2. #Cannan.# Windmills. Huebsch.
+3. #Dunsany.# Tales of Three Hemispheres. Luce.
+4. #Easton.# Golden Bird. Knopf.
+5. #Evans.# My Neighbours. Harcourt, Brace, and Howe.
+6. #Galsworthy.# Tatterdemalion. Scribner.
+7. #Huxley.# Limbo. Doran.
+8. #O'Kelly.# The Golden Barque, and the Weaver's Grave. Putnam.
+9. #Trevena.# By Violence. Four Seas.
+10. #Wylie.# Holy Fire. Lane.
+
+
+#The Ten Best Translations#
+
+1. #Aleichem.# Jewish Children. Knopf.
+2. #Andreiev.# When the King Loses His Head. International Bk. Pub.
+3. #Annunzio.# Tales of My Native Town. Doubleday, Page.
+4. #Brown and Phoutrides#, _Editors._ Modern Greek Stories. Duffield.
+5. #Chekhov.# The Chorus Girl. Macmillan.
+6. #Dostoevsky.# The Honest Thief. Macmillan.
+7. #Hrbkova#, _Editor._ Czecho-Slovak Stories. Duffield.
+8. #Level.# Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride.
+9. #McMichael#, _Editor._ Short Stories from the Spanish. Boni & Liveright.
+
+10. #Mayran.# Story of Gotton Connixloo. Dutton.
+
+
+#The Best New English Publications#
+
+1. #Gibbon, Perceval.# Those Who Smiled. Cassell.
+2. #Mayne, Ethel Colburn.# Blindman. Chapman and Hall.
+3. #Mordaunt, Elinor.# Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson.
+4. #O'Kelly, Seumas.# The Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester.
+5. #Robinson, Lennox.# Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press.
+6. #Shorter, Dora Sigerson.# A Dull Day in London. Nash.
+7. #LemaA(R)tre, Jules.# Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.
+
+
+BELOW FOLLOWS A RECORD OF NINETY-TWO DISTINCTIVE VOLUMES PUBLISHED
+BETWEEN NOVEMBER 1, 1918, AND OCTOBER 1, 1920.
+
+
+I. #American Authors#
+
+#The Honourable Gentlemen and Others# and #Wings: Tales of the Psychic#, by
+_Achmed Abdullah_ (G. P. Putnam's Sons, and the James A. McCann
+Company). In the first of these two volumes, Mr. Abdullah has gathered
+the Pell Street stories of New York's Chinatown which have appeared in
+American magazines during the past few years. As contrasted with Thomas
+Burke's "Limehouse Nights," these stories reflect the oriental point of
+view with its characteristic fatalism and equability of temper. Four of
+these stories are told with the utmost economy of means and a grim
+pleasure in watching events unshape themselves. "A Simple Act of Piety"
+seemed to me one of the best short stories of 1918. The other volume is
+of more uneven quality, and psychic stories do not furnish Mr. Abdullah
+with his most natural medium, but contains at least three admirable
+stories.
+
+#Hand-Made Fables#, by _George Ade._ (Doubleday, Page & Company.) Mr.
+Ade's new series of thirty fables are a valuable record of the war years
+in American life. They are written in a unique idiom full of color, if
+unintelligible to the foreigner. I think one may fairly say that Mr.
+Ade's work is thoroughly characteristic of a large section of American
+culture, and this section he has portrayed admirably. Undoubtedly he is
+our best satirist.
+
+#Joy in the Morning#, by _Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews_ (Charles
+Scribner's Sons). This uneven collection includes two admirable stories,
+"The Ditch" and "Dundonald's Destroyer," to which I drew attention when
+they first appeared in magazines. The latter is one of the best realized
+legends suggested by the war, while the former is technically
+interesting as a thoroughly successful short story written entirely in
+dialogue. The other stories are of slighter content, and emotionally
+somewhat overtaut.
+
+#Youth and the Bright Medusa#, by _Willa Cather_ (Alfred A. Knopf).
+Fifteen years ago, Miss Cather published a volume of short stories
+entitled "The Troll Garden." This volume has long been out of print,
+although its influence may be seen in the work of many contemporary
+story writers. The greater part of its contents is now reprinted in the
+present volume, together with four new stories of less interest. These
+eight studies, dealing for the most part with the artistic temperament,
+are written with a detached observation of life that clearly reveals the
+influence of Flaubert on the one hand and of Henry James on the other,
+but there is a quality of personal style built up out of nervous rhythms
+and an instinctive reticence of personal attitude which Miss Cather only
+shares with Sherwood Anderson among her American compatriots. She is
+more assured in the traditional quality of her work than Anderson, but
+hardly less astringent. I regard this book as one of the most important
+contributions to the American short story published during the past
+year, and personally I consider it more significant than her four
+admirable novels.
+
+#From Place to Place#, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company). I
+have frequently had occasion to point out in the past that Mr. Cobb's
+work, in depth of conception and breadth of execution, makes him the
+legitimate successor of Mark Twain as a painter of the ampler life of
+the American South and Middle West. In his new collection of nine
+stories, there are at least three which I confidently believe are
+destined to last as long as the best stories of Hawthorne and Poe. The
+most noteworthy of these is "Boys Will Be Boys," which I printed in a
+previous volume of this series. "The Luck Piece" and "The Gallowsmith,"
+though sharply contrasted in subject matter, reveal the same profound
+understanding of American life which makes Mr. Cobb almost our best
+interpreter in fiction to readers in other countries. Like Mark Twain,
+Mr. Cobb is quite uncritical of his own work, and two of these stories
+are of merely ephemeral value. I should like no better task than to
+edite a selection of Mr. Cobb's stories in one volume for introduction
+to the English public, and I think that such a volume would be the best
+service American letters could render to English letters at the present
+moment.
+
+#The Life of the Party#, by _Irvin S. Cobb_ (George H. Doran Company). I
+shall claim no special literary quality for this short story which Mr.
+Cobb has reprinted from The Saturday Evening Post, but America usually
+shows such poverty in producing humorous stories that the infectious
+quality of this wildly improbable adventure makes the story seem better
+than it really is. It cannot be regarded as more than a diversion from
+Mr. Cobb's rich human studies of American life.
+
+#Hiker Joy#, by _James B. Connolly_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This series
+of stories about a little New York wharf-rat which Mr. Connolly has
+reprinted from Collier's Weekly are less important than the admirable
+stories of the Gloucester fishermen which first made his reputation.
+They are told by the wharf-rat in dialect with a casual reportorial air
+which is tolerably convincing, and it is clear that they are based on a
+background of first-hand experience. Mr. Connolly's hand is not entirely
+subdued to the medium in which he has chosen to work, but the result is
+a certain monotony of interest.
+
+#Twelve Men#, by _Theodore Dreiser_ (Boni & Liveright). These twelve
+portraits which Mr. Dreiser has transferred to us from life represent
+his impressions of life's crowded thoroughfares and his reactions to
+many human contacts. More than one of these portraits can readily be
+traced to its original, and taken as a group they represent as valuable
+a cross-section Of our hurrying civilization as we have. Strictly
+speaking, however, they are not short stories, but discursive causeries
+on friends of Mr. Dreiser. They answer to no usual concepts of literary
+form, but have necessitated the creation of a new form. They reflect a
+gallic irony compact of pity and understanding. The brief limitations of
+his form prevent Mr. Dreiser from falling into errors which detract
+somewhat from the greatness of his novels, and as a whole I command this
+volume to the discriminating reader.
+
+#The Emperor of Elam, and Other Stories#, by _H. G. Dwight_ (Doubleday,
+Page & Company). Those who read Mr. Dwight's earlier volume entitled
+"Stamboul Nights" will recall the very real genius for the romantic
+presentation of adventure in exotic backgrounds which the author
+revealed. Every detail, if studied, was quietly set down without undue
+emphasis, and the whole was a finished composition. In the title story
+of the present volume, and in "The Emerald of Tamerlane," written in
+collaboration with John Taylor, Mr. Dwight is on the same familiar
+ground. I had occasion three years ago to reprint "The Emperor of Elam"
+in an earlier volume of this series, and it still seems to be worthy to
+set beside the best of Gautier. There are other stories in the present
+collection with the same rich background, but I should like to call
+particular attention to Mr. Dwight's two masterpieces, "Henrietta
+Stackpole Rediviva" and "Behind the Door." The former ranks with the
+best half-dozen American short stories, and the latter with the best
+half-dozen short stories of the world. I regard this volume as the most
+important which I have encountered since I began to publish my studies
+of the American short story.
+
+#The Miller's Holiday: Short Stories From the North Western Miller#,
+Edited by _Randolph Edgar_ (The Miller Publishing Company: Minneapolis).
+These fourteen stories reprinted from the files of the North Western
+Miller between 1883 and 1904 recall an interesting episode in the
+history of American literature. The paper just mentioned was the first
+trade journal to publish at regular intervals the best short stories
+procurable at the time, and out of this series was born "The Bellman,"
+which for many years was the best literary weekly of general interest
+in the Middle West. The North Western Miller printed the best work of O.
+Henry, Howard Pyle, Octave Thanet, James Lane Allen, Hamlin Garland,
+Edward Everett Hale, and many others, and it was here that Frank R.
+Stockton first printed "The Christmas Wreck," which I should agree with
+the late Mr. Howells in regarding as Stockton's best story. I trust that
+the success of this volume will induce Mr. Edgar to edite and reprint
+one or more series of stories from "The Bellman." Such an undertaking
+would fill a very real need.
+
+#Half Portions#, by _Edna Ferber_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). Edna Ferber
+shares with Fannie Hurst the distinction of portraying the average
+American mind in its humbler human relations. Less sure than Miss Hurst
+in her ability to present her material in artistic form, her observation
+is equally keen and accurate, and in at least two stories in the present
+volume she seems to meet Miss Hurst on equal ground. "The Maternal
+Feminine," in my opinion, ranks with "The Gay Old Dog" as Miss Ferber's
+best story.
+
+#The Best Psychic Stories#, Edited by _Joseph Lewis French_, with an
+Introduction by _Dorothy Scarborough_ (Boni & Liveright). This very
+badly edited collection of stories is worth having because of the fact
+that it reprints certain admirable short stories by Algernon Blackwood,
+Ambrose Bierce, and Fiona Macleod. If it attains to a second edition,
+the volume would be tremendously improved by omitting the compilation of
+irrelevant theosophical articles on the subject, and the substitution
+for them of other stories which lie open to Mr. French's hand in rich
+measure.
+
+#Fantastics, and Other Fancies#, by _Lafcadio Hearn_, Edited by _Charles
+Woodward Hutson_ (Houghton Mifflin Company). This collection of stories,
+portraits, and essays which Mr. Hutson's industry has rescued from the
+long-lost files of The New Orleans Daily Item and The Times-Democrat
+belong to Hearn's early manner, when he sought to set down brief colored
+impressions of the old, hardly lingering Creole life which is now only a
+memory. In many ways akin to the art of HA(C)rA(C)dia, they show a less
+classical attitude toward their subject-matter, and are frankly
+experimental approaches to the method of evocation by sounds and
+perfumes which he achieved so successfully in his later Japanese books.
+In these stories we may see the influence of Gautier's enamelled style
+already at work, operating with more precision than it was later to
+show, more fearful of the penumbra than his later ghost stories, and
+with a certain hurried air which may be largely set down to the
+journalistic pressure of writing weekly for newspapers. Notwithstanding
+this, many of the stories and sketches are a permanent addition to
+Hearn's work.
+
+#Waifs and Strays: Twelve Stories#, by _O. Henry_ (Doubleday, Page &
+Company). This volume of collectanea is divided into two parts. First of
+all, twelve new stories have been recovered from magazine files. Three
+of these are negligible journalism, and six others are chiefly
+interesting either as early studies for later stories, or for their
+biographical value. "The Cactus" and "The Red Roses of Tonia," however,
+rank only second to "O. Henry's" best dozen stories. The second part of
+the book is a miscellany of critical and biographical comment, including
+also some verse tributes to the story writer's memory and a valuable
+index to the collected edition of "O. Henry's" stories.
+
+#O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories#, 1919, Chosen by the _Society of Arts
+and Sciences_, with an introduction by _Blanche Colton Williams_
+(Doubleday, Page & Company). The Society of Arts and Sciences of New
+York City has had the admirable idea of editing an annual volume of the
+best American short stories, and awarding annual prizes for the two best
+stories as a memorial to the art of "O. Henry." The present volume
+reprints fifteen stories chosen by the society, including the two prize
+stories,--"England to America," by Margaret Prescott Montague, and "For
+They Know Not What They Do," by Wilbur Daniel Steele. Five other stories
+by Mrs. Frances Gilchrist Wood, Miss Fannie Hurst, Miss Louise Rice,
+Miss Beatrice Ravenel, and Miss G. F. Alsop are admirable stories. The
+selection represents a fair cross-section of the year's short stories,
+good, bad, and indifferent, but the two prizes seem to me to have been
+most wisely awarded, and I conceive this formal annual tribute to be the
+most significant and practical means of encouraging the American short
+story. Toward this encouragement the public may contribute in their
+measure, as I understand that the royalties which accrue from the sale
+of this volume are to be applied to additional prizes in future years.
+
+#The Happy End#, by _Joseph Hergesheimer_ (Alfred A. Knopf). Mr.
+Hergesheimer's new collection of seven stories is largely drawn from the
+files of The Saturday Evening Post, and represents to some degree a
+compromise with his public. The book is measurably inferior to "Gold and
+Iron," but shows to a degree the same qualities of studied background
+and selective presentation of aspects in character which are most
+satisfyingly presented in his novels. In "Lonely Valleys," "Tol'able
+David," and "The Thrush in the Hedge," Mr. Hergesheimer's art is more
+nearly adequate than in the other stories, but they lack the
+authoritative presentation which made "The Three Black Pennys" a
+landmark in contemporary American fiction. They show the author to be a
+too frank disciple of Mr. Galsworthy in the less essential aspect of the
+latter's art, and their tone is too neutral to be altogether convincing.
+
+#War Stories#, Selected and Edited by _Roy J. Holmes_ and _A. Starbuck_
+(Thomas Y. Crowell Company). This anthology of twenty-one American short
+stories about the war would have gained measurably by compression. At
+least five of the stories are unimportant, and six more are not
+specially representative of the best that is being done. But "Blind
+Vision," "The Unsent Letter," "His Escape," "The Boy's Mother" and "The
+Sixth Man" are now made accessible in book form, and give this anthology
+its present value.
+
+#The Great Modern American Stories: An Anthology#, Compiled and edited
+with an introduction by _William Dean Howells_ (Boni & Liveright). This
+is the best anthology of the American short story from about 1860 to
+1910 which has been published, or which is likely to be published. It
+represents the mellow choice of an old man who was the contemporary,
+editor, and friend of most American writers of the past two generations,
+and in his reminiscent introduction Mr. Howells relates delightfully
+many of his personal adventures with American authors. Several of these
+stories will be unfamiliar to the general reader, and I am specially
+glad to observe in this volume two little-known masterpieces,--"The
+Little Room" by Madelene Yale Wynne, and "Aunt Sanna Terry," by Landon
+R. Dashiell. Mr. Howells' choice has been studiously limited to short
+stories of the older generation, and without infringing on his ground,
+it is to be hoped that a second series of "Great Modern American
+Stories" by more recent writers should be issued by the same publishers.
+The present volume contains an excellent bibliographical chapter on the
+history of the American short story, and an appendix with biographies
+and bibliographies of the writers included, which calls for more
+accurate revision.
+
+#Bedouins#, by _James Huneker_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). While this is
+primarily a volume of critical essays on painting, music, literature and
+life, it concludes with a series of seven short stories which serve as a
+postlude to Mr. Huneker's earlier volume, "Visionaries." They are
+chiefly interesting as the last dying glow of symbolism, derivative as
+they are from Huysmans and Mallarme. I cannot regard them as successful
+stories, but they have a certain experimental value which comes nearest
+to success in "The Cardinal's Fiddle."
+
+#Humoresque#, by _Fannie Hurst_ (Harper & Brothers). Miss Hurst's fourth
+volume of short stories shows a certain recession from her previous high
+standard, except for the title story which is told with an economy of
+detail unusual for her. All of these eight stories are distinctive, and
+six of them are admirable, but I seem to detect a tendency toward the
+fixation of a type, with a corresponding diminishment of faithful
+individual portrayal. The volume would make the reputation of a lesser
+writer, but Miss Hurst is after all the rightful successor of "O Henry,"
+and we are entitled to demand from her nothing less than her best.
+
+#Legends#, by _Walter McLaren Imrie_ (The Midland Press, Glennie, Alcona
+Co., Mich.). I should like to call special attention to this little book
+by a medical officer in the Canadian army, because it seems to me to be
+a significant footnote to the poignant records of Barbusse, Duhamel,
+and A%lie Faure. So far as I know, this is the only volume of fiction
+written in English portraying successfully from the artist's point of
+view the acrid monotony of war. I believe that it deserves to be placed
+on the same bookshelf as the volumes of the others whom I have just
+mentioned.
+
+#Travelling Companions#, by _Henry James_ (Boni & Liveright). These seven
+short stories by Henry James, which are now collected for the first time
+with a somewhat inept introduction by Albert Mordell, were written at
+the same time as the stories in his "Passionate Pilgrim." While they
+only serve to reveal a minor aspect of his genius, they are of
+considerable importance historically to the student of his literary
+evolution. Published between 1868 and 1874, they represent the first
+flush of his enthusiasm for the older civilization of Europe, and
+especially of Italy. He would not have wished them to be reprinted, but
+the present editor's course is justified by their quality, which won the
+admiration at the time of Tennyson and other weighty critics. Had Henry
+James reprinted them at all, he would have doubtless rewritten them in
+his later manner, and we should have lost these first clear outpourings
+of his sense of international contrasts.
+
+#The Best American Humorous Short Stories#, Edited by _Alexander Jessup_
+(Boni & Liveright). This collection of eighteen humorous short stories
+furnish a tolerable conspectus of the period between 1839 and the
+present day. They are prefaced by an informative historical introduction
+which leaves little to be desired from the point of view of information.
+The general reader will find the book less interesting than the
+specialist, since a large portion of the volume is devoted to the
+somewhat crude beginnings of humor in our literature. Apart from the
+stories by Edward Everett Hale, Mark Twain, Frank R. Stockton, Bret
+Harte, and "O. Henry," the comparative poverty of rich understanding
+humor in American fiction is remarkable. The most noteworthy omission in
+the volume is the neglect of Irvin S. Cobb.
+
+#John Stuyvesant Ancestor and Other People#, by _Alvin Johnson_ (Harcourt,
+Brace & Howe). This collection of sketches, largely reprinted from the
+New Republic, is rather a series of studies in social and economic
+relations than a group of short stories. But they concern us here
+because of Mr. Johnson's penetrating analysis of character, which
+constitutes a document of no little value to the imaginative student of
+our institutions, and "Short Change" has no little value as a vividly
+etched short story.
+
+#Under the Rose#, by _Arthur Johnson_ (Harper & Brothers). With the
+publication of this volume, Mr. Johnson at last takes his rightful place
+among the best of the American short story writers who wish to continue
+the tradition of Henry James. In subtlety of portraiture he is the equal
+of Edith Wharton, and he excels her in ease and in his ability to
+subdue his substance to the environment in which it is set. He
+surpasses Mrs. Gerould by reason of the variety of his subject matter,
+and as a stylist he is equal to Anne Douglas Sedgwick. I have published
+two of these stories in previous volumes of this series, and there are
+at least four other stories in the volume which I should have liked to
+reprint.
+
+#Going West#, by _Basil King_ (Harper & Brothers). We have in this little
+book a reprint of one of the best short stories produced in America by
+the war. While it is emotionally somewhat overtaut, it has a good deal
+of reticence in portrayal, and there is a passion in it which transcends
+Mr. King's usual sentimentality.
+
+#Civilization: Tales of the Orient#, by _Ellen N. La Motte_ (George H.
+Doran Company). Miss La Motte is the most interesting of the new
+American story writers who deal with the Orient. She writes out of a
+long and deep background of experience with a subtle appreciation of
+both the Oriental and the Occidental points of view, and has developed a
+personal art out of a deliberately narrowed vision. "On the Heights,"
+"Prisoners," "Under a Wineglass," and "Cosmic Justice" are the best of
+these stories. So definite a propagandist aim is usually fatal to
+fiction, but Miss La Motte succeeds by deft suggestion rather than
+underscored statement.
+
+#Short Stories of the New America#, Selected and Edited by _Mary A.
+Laselle_ (Henry Holt and Company). While this is primarily a volume of
+supplementary reading for secondary schools, compiled with a view to the
+"americanization" of the immigrant, it contains four short stories of
+more or less permanent value, three of which I have included in previous
+volumes of this series. It also draws attention to the admirable Indian
+stories of Grace Coolidge. The volume would be improved if three of
+these stories were omitted.
+
+#Chill Hours#, by _Helen Mackay_ (Duffield and Company). We have come to
+expect from Mrs. Mackay a somewhat tense but restrained mirroring of
+little human accidents, in which action is of less importance than its
+effects. She has a dry, nervous, unornamented style which sets down
+details in separate but related strokes which build up a picture whose
+art is not altogether successfully concealed. The present volume, which
+reflects Mrs. Mackay's experiences in France during the war, is more
+even in quality than her previous books, and "The Second Hay," "One or
+Another," and "He Cost Us So Much" are noteworthy stories.
+
+#Children in the Mist#, by _George Madden Martin_ (D. Appleton & Company),
+and #More E. K. Means# (G. P. Putnam's Sons). Both of these volumes
+represent traditional attitudes of the Southern white proprietor to the
+negro, and both fail in artistic achievement because of their excessive
+realization of the gulf between the two races. Mrs. Martin's book is the
+more artistic and the less sympathetic, though it has more professions
+of sympathy than that of Mr. Means. They both display considerable
+talent, the one in historical portraiture of reconstruction times, and
+the other in genial caricature of the more childish side of the
+less-educated negro. The negroes whom Mr. Means has invented have still
+to be born in the flesh, but there is an infectious humor in his
+nightmare world which he may plead as a justification for the misuse of
+his very real ability.
+
+#The Gift, England to America#, and #Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge#, by
+_Margaret Prescott Montague_ (E.P. Dutton & Company, and Doubleday, Page
+& Company). These three short stories are all spiritual studies of human
+reactions and moods generated by the war, set down with a deft hand in a
+neutral style, somewhat over-repressed perhaps, but thoroughly
+successful in the achievement of what Miss Montague set out to do. The
+second and best of these won the first prize offered last year as a
+memorial to "O. Henry" by The Society of Arts and Sciences of New York
+City. Good as it is, I am tempted to disagree with its interpretation of
+the English attitude toward America in general, although it may very
+well be true in many an individual case. Miss Montague suffers from a
+certain imaginative poverty which is becoming more and more
+characteristic of puritan art and life in America. From the point of
+view of style, however, these stories share distinction in the Henry
+James tradition only with Katharine Fullerton Gerould, Anne Douglas
+Sedgwick, Arthur Johnson and H. G. Dwight.
+
+#From the Life#, by _Harvey O'Higgins_ (Harper & Brothers). This volume
+should be read in connection with "Twelve Men," by Theodore Dreiser.
+Where Mr. Dreiser identifies himself with his subjects, Mr. O'Higgins
+stands apart in the most strict detachment. These nine studies in
+contemporary American life take as their point of departure in each case
+some tiny and apparently insignificant happening which altered the whole
+course of a life. Artists, actors, politicians, and business men all
+date their change of fortune from some ironic accident, and in three of
+these nine stories the author's analysis merits close re-reading by
+students of short story technique. Behind the apparent looseness of
+structure you will find a new and interesting method of presentation
+which is as effective as it is deliberate. I regard "From the Life" as
+one of the more important books of 1919.
+
+#The Mystery at the Blue Villa#, by _Melville Davisson Post_ (D. Appleton
+and Company), and #Silent, White and Beautiful#, by _Tod Robbins_ (Boni
+and Liveright). These two volumes furnish an interesting contrast. The
+subject-matter of both is rather shoddy, but Mr. Post displays a
+technique in the mystery story which is quite unrivalled since Poe in
+its inevitable relentlessness of plot based on human weakness, while Mr.
+Robbins shows a wild fertility of imagination of extraordinary promise,
+although it is now wasted on unworthy material. I think that both books
+will grip the reader by their quality of suspense, and I shall look
+forward to Mr. Robbins' next book with eager interest.
+
+#The Best Ghost Stories.# Introduction by _Arthur B. Reeve_ (Boni and
+Liveright, Inc.). Mr. French's new collection of ghost stories
+supplements his volume entitled "Great Ghost Stories," published in the
+previous year. I consider it the better collection of the two, and
+should particularly like to call attention to the stories by Leopold
+Kompert and Ellis Parker Butler. The latter is Mr. Butler's best story
+and has, so far as I know, not been reprinted elsewhere. For the rest,
+the volume ranges over familiar ground.
+
+#High Life#, by _Harrison Rhodes_ (Robert M. McBride & Co.). Setting aside
+the title story which, as a novelette, does not concern us here, this
+volume is chiefly noteworthy for the reprint of "Spring-Time." When I
+read this story for the first time many years ago, it seemed to me one
+that Mr. Arthur Sherburne Hardy would have been proud to sign. It is not
+perhaps readily realized how difficult it is to write a story so deftly
+touched with sentiment, while maintaining the necessary economy of
+personal emotion. "The Sad Case of Quag" exemplifies the gallic aspect
+of Mr. Rhodes' talent.
+
+#The Red Mark#, by _John Russell_ (Alfred A. Knopf). This uneven volume of
+short stories by a writer of real though undisciplined talent is full of
+color and kaleidoscopic hurrying of events. Apart from "The Adversary,"
+which is successful to a degree, the book is uncertain in its rendering
+of character, though Mr. Russell's handling of plot leaves little to be
+desired.
+
+#The Pagan#, by _Gordon Arthur Smith_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). It was
+expected that when Mr. Smith's first volume of short stories should
+appear, it would take its place at once as pre-eminent in the romantic
+revival which is beginning to be apparent in the American short story.
+This volume does not disappoint our expectations, although it would have
+gained in authority had it been confined to the five Taillandy Stories,
+"Jeanne, the Maid," and "The Return." Mr. Smith's output has always been
+wisely limited, and "The Pagan" represents the best work of nine years.
+These stories are only second in their kind to those of James Branch
+Cabell and Stephen French Whitman.
+
+#The Elder's People#, by _Harriet Prescott Spofford_ (Houghton, Mifflin
+Company). Mrs. Spofford has collected in this volume the best among the
+short stories which she has written since 1904, and the collection shows
+no diminution in her powers of accurate and tender observation of New
+England folk. These fourteen prose idyls have a mellow humanism which
+portrays the last autumn fires of a dying tradition. They rank with the
+best work of Miss Jewett and Mrs. Spofford herself in the same kind, and
+are a permanent addition to the small store of New England literature. I
+wish to call special attention to "An Old Fiddler," "A Village
+Dressmaker," and "A Life in a Night."
+
+#The Valley of Vision#, by _Henry van Dyke_ (Charles Scribner's Sons).
+This volume of notes for stories rather than stories themselves calls
+for no particular comment save for two admirable fugitive studies
+entitled "A Remembered Dream" and "The Broken Soldier and the Maid of
+France." These seem to me creditable additions to the small store of
+American legends which the war produced, but the other stories and
+sketches are rather bloodless. They are signs of the spiritual anA|mia
+which is so characteristic of much of American life.
+
+#The Ninth Man#, by _Mary Heaton Vorse_ (Harper & Brothers). When this
+story was published in Harper's Magazine six years ago, it attracted
+wide attention as a vividly composed presentment of human passions in a
+mediA|val scene. The allegory was not stressed unduly, and was perhaps
+taken into less account then than it will be now. But events have since
+clarified the story in a manner which proves Miss Vorse to have been
+curiously prophetic. In substance it is very different from what we have
+come to associate with her work, but I think that its modern social
+significance will now be obvious to any reader. Philosophy aside, I
+commend it as an admirably woven story.
+
+#Anchors Aweigh#, by _Harriet Welles_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). I think
+the chief value of this volume is as a quiet record of experience
+without any remarkable qualities of plot and style, but it is full of
+promise for the future, and in "Orders" Mrs. Welles has written a
+memorable story. The introduction by the Secretary of the Navy rather
+overstates the case, but I think no one will deny the genuine feeling
+and truth with which Mrs. Welles has presented her point of view.
+
+#Ma Pettengill#, by _Harry Leon Wilson_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). I
+must confess that temperamentally I am not inclined to rank these
+humorous stories of American life as highly as many critics. I grant
+their sincerity of portraiture, but they show only too plainly the signs
+of Mr. Wilson's compromise with his large audience in The Saturday
+Evening Post. They are written, however, with the author's eye on the
+object, and Ma Pettengill herself is vividly realized.
+
+#Hungry Hearts#, by _Anzia Yezierska_ (Houghton Mifflin Company). When I
+reprinted "Fat of the Land" last year I stated that it seemed to me
+perhaps the finest imaginative contribution to the short story made by
+an American artist last year. My opinion is confirmed by Miss
+Yezierska's first collection of stories, and particularly by "Hunger,"
+"The Miracle," and "My Own People." I know of no other American writer
+who is driven by such inevitable compulsion to express her ideal of what
+America might be, and it serves to underscore the truth that the chief
+idealistic contribution to American life comes no longer from the anA|mic
+Anglo-Saxon puritan, but from the younger elements of our mixed racial
+culture. Such a flaming passion of mingled indignation and love for
+America embodies a message which other races must heed, and proves that
+there is a spiritual America being born out of suffering and oppression
+which is destined to rule before very long.
+
+
+II. #English and Irish Authors#
+
+#Windmills: A Book of Fables#, by _Gilbert Cannan_ (B. W. Huebsch, Inc.).
+This is the first American edition of a book published in London in
+1915. Conceived as a new "Candide," it is a bitter satire on war and
+international politics. While it ostensibly consists of four short
+stories, they have a unity of action which is sketched rather than fully
+set forth. In fact, the volume is really a notebook for a larger work.
+Set beside the satire of Voltaire, Mr. Cannan's master, it is seen to
+fail because of its lack of kindly irony. In fact, it is a little
+overdone.
+
+#The Eve of Pascua#, by "_Richard Dehan_" (George H. Doran Company). Two
+years ago I had occasion to call attention to the quite unstressed
+romanticism of Mrs. Graves' "Under the Hermes." The present volume is of
+much less significance, and I only mention it because of the title
+story, which is an adequately rendered picture of contemporary Spanish
+life, much less overdrawn than the other stories.
+
+#Poems and Prose#, of _Ernest Dowson_ (Boni and Liveright). Five of the
+nine short stories by Ernest Dowson are included in this admirable
+reprint, but it omits the better stories which appeared in The Savoy,
+and in a later edition I suggest that the poems be printed in a volume
+by themselves with Mr. Symons' memoir, and all the stories in another
+volume which should include among others "The Dying of Francis Donne"
+and "Countess Marie of The Angels."
+
+#The Golden Bird and Other Sketches#, by _Dorothy Eastern_, with a
+foreword by _John Galsworthy_ (Alfred A. Knopf). These forty short
+sketches of Sussex and of France are rendered deftly with a faithful
+objectivity of manner which has not barred out the essential poetry of
+their substance. These pictures are lightly touched with a quiet
+brooding significance, as if they had been seen at twilight moments in a
+dream world in which human relationships had been partly forgotten. They
+are frankly impressionistic, except for the group of French stories, in
+which Miss Easton has sought more definitely to interpret character. The
+danger of this form is a certain preciosity which the author has
+skilfully evaded, and the influence of Mr. Galsworthy is nowhere too
+clearly apparent. I recommend the volume as one of the best English
+books which has come to us during the past year.
+
+#My Neighbors: Stories of the Welsh People#, by _Caradoc Evans_ (Harcourt,
+Brace and Howe). In his third collection of stories, Mr. Evans has for
+the most part forsaken his study of the Cardigan Bay peasant for the
+London Welsh, and although his style preserves the same stark biblical
+notation as before, it seems less suited to record the ironies of an
+industrial civilization. Allowing for this, and for Mr. Evans' bent
+towards an unduly acid estimate of human nature, it must be confessed
+that these stories have a certain permanent literary quality, most
+successful in "Earthbred," "Joseph's House," and "A Widow Woman." These
+three collections make it tolerably clear that Mr. Evans will find his
+true medium in the novel, where an epic breadth of material is at hand
+to fit his epic breadth of speech.
+
+#Tatterdemalion#, by _John Galsworthy_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). This
+volume contains the ripest product of Mr. Galsworthy's short story art
+during the past seven years. Its range is very wide, and in these
+twenty-three stories, we have the best of the mystical war legends from
+"The Grey Angel" to "Cafard," the gentle irony of "The Recruit" and
+"Defeat," and the gracious vision of "Spindleberries," "The Nightmare
+Child," and "Buttercup-Night." Nowhere in the volume do we find the
+slight touch of sentimentality which has marred the strength of Mr.
+Galsworthy's later novels, but everywhere very quietly realised pictures
+of a golden age which is still possible to his imagination, despite the
+harsh conflict with material realities which his art has often
+encountered. Perhaps the best story in the present collection is
+"Cafard," where Mr. Galsworthy has almost miraculously succeeded in
+extracting the last emotional content out of a situation in which a
+single false touch of sentiment would have wrecked his story.
+
+#Limbo#, by _Aldous Huxley_ (George H. Doran Company). This collection of
+six fantasies in prose and one play has no special principle of unity
+except its attempt to apply the art of Laforgue to much less adequate
+material. Setting aside "Happy Families" as entirely negligible, and
+"Happily Ever After" and "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers" as
+qualified successes, the other four stories do achieve more or less what
+they set out to do, although Mr. Huxley only achieves a personal
+synthesis of style and substance in "The Death of Lully." The other
+three stories are full of promise as yet unrealised because of Mr.
+Huxley's inability or unwillingness to conceal the technique of his art.
+
+#Deep Waters#, by _W. W. Jacobs_ (Charles Scribner's Sons). Mr. Jacobs'
+formula is not yet outworn, but it is becoming perilously uncertain. His
+talent has always been a narrow one, but in his early volumes his
+realization of character was quite vivid, and his plot technique superb.
+At least two of these stories are entirely mechanical, and the majority
+do not rise above mediocrity. "Paying Off," "Sam's Ghost," and "Dirty
+Work" faintly recall Mr. Jacobs' early manner.
+
+#Lo, and Behold Ye!#, by _Seumas MacManus_ (Frederick A. Stokes Company).
+Many of these chimney-corner stories are older than Homer, but Mr.
+MacManus has retold them in the language of the roads, and this pageant
+of tinkers and kings, fairies and scholars, lords and fishermen march by
+to the sound of the pipes and the ribald comments of little boys along
+the road. The quality of this volume is as fresh as that of those first
+Donegal fairy stories which Mr. McClure discovered twenty-five years
+ago. I think that the best of these stories are "The Mad Man, The Dead
+Man, and the Devil," "Dark Patrick's Blood-horse," and "Donal
+O'Donnell's Standing Army," but this is only a personal selection.
+
+#The Clintons, and Others#, by _Archibald Marshall_ (Dodd, Mead and
+Company). I believe that this is Mr. Marshall's first volume of short
+stories, and they have a certain interest as a quiet chronicle of an old
+social order which has gone never to return. The comparison of Mr.
+Marshall's work with that of Anthony Trollope is as inevitable as it is
+to the former's disadvantage. This volume shows honest, sincere
+craftsmanship, and never rises nor falls below an average level of
+mediocrity.
+
+#The Man Who Understood Women#, and #While Paris Laughed#, by _Leonard
+Merrick_ (E. P. Dutton and Company). These two volumes of the collected
+edition of Mr. Merrick's novels and stories are of somewhat uneven
+value. The best of them have a finish which is unsurpassed in its kind
+by any of his English contemporaries, but there are many stories in the
+first of these two volumes which are somewhat ephemeral. Mr. Locke in
+his introduction to "The Man Who Understood Women" rather overstates Mr.
+Merrick's case, but at his best these stories form an interesting
+English parallel to the work of O. Henry. The second volume suffers the
+fate of all sequels in endeavouring to revive after a lapse of years the
+pranks and passions of the poet Tricotrin. The first five stories in the
+volume, while they do not attain the excellence of "The Tragedy of a
+Comic Song," are worthy stories in the same kind. The other seven
+stories are frankly mawkish in content, although redeemed by Mr.
+Merrick's excellent technique.
+
+#Workhouse Characters#, by _Margaret Wynne Nevinson_ (The Macmillan
+Company). This collection of newspaper sketches written during the past
+fifteen years have no pretensions to art, and were written with a
+frankly propagandist intention. The vividness of their portraiture and
+the passion of their challenge to the existing social order warrant
+their mention here, and I do not think they will be forgotten readily by
+those who read them. This volume has attracted little comment in the
+American press, and it would be a pity if it is permitted to go out of
+print over here.
+
+#The New Decameron#: Volume the First (Robert M. McBride & Co.). There is
+more to be said for the idea which prompted these stories than for the
+success with which the idea has been carried out. A group of tourists
+seeking adventures on the Continent agree to beguile the tedium of the
+journey by telling each other tales. Unfortunately the Nightingale does
+not sing on, and the young Englishmen and women who have collaborated in
+this volume have gone about their task in a frankly amateurish spirit.
+The stories by W. F. Harvey and Sherard Vines attain a measured success,
+and some mention may be made of M. Storm-Jameson's story, "Mother-love."
+It is to be hoped that in future volumes of the series, the editor will
+choose his contributors more carefully, and frankly abandon the
+Decameron structure, which has been artificially imposed after the
+stories were written.
+
+#Wrack, and Other Stories#, by "_Dermot O'Byrne_" (Dublin: The Talbot
+Press, Ltd.), #The Golden Barque, and the Weaver's Grave#, by _Seumas
+O'Kelly_ (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.), and #Eight Short Stories#, by
+_Lennox Robinson_ (Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd.). As these three
+volumes are not published in America, I only mention them here in the
+hope that this notice may reach a friendly publisher's eye. Up to a few
+years ago poetry and drama were the only two creative forms of the Irish
+Literary Revival. This tide has now ebbed, and is succeeded by an
+equally significant tide of short story writers. The series of volumes
+issued by the Talbot Press, of which those I have just named are the
+most noteworthy, should be promptly introduced to the American public,
+and I think that I can promise safely that they are the forerunners of a
+most promising literature.
+
+#The Old Card#, by _Roland Pertwee_ (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This
+series of twelve short stories depict the life of an English touring
+actor with a quiet artistry of humor suggestive of Leonard Merrick's
+best work. They are quite frankly studies in sentiment, but they
+successfully avoid sentimentality for the most part, and in "Eliphalet
+Cardomay" I feel that the author has created a definitely perceived
+character.
+
+#Old Junk#, by _H. M. Tomlinson_ (Alfred A. Knopf). It is not my function
+here to point out that "Old Junk" is one of the best volumes of essays
+published in recent years, but simply to direct attention to the fact
+that it includes two short stories, "The Lascar's Walking-Stick" and
+"The Extra Hand," which are fine studies in atmospheric values. I think
+that the former should find a place in most future anthologies.
+
+#By Violence#, by "_John Trevena_" (The Four Seas Company). Although John
+Trevena's novels have found a small public in America, his short stories
+are practically unknown. The present volume reprints three of them, of
+which "By Violence" is the best. In fact, it is only surpassed by
+"Matrimony" in its revelation of poetic grace and gentle vision. If the
+feeling is veiled and somewhat aloof from the common ways of men, there
+is none the less a fine human sympathy concealed in it. I like to think
+that a new reading of earth may be deciphered from this text.
+
+#Port Allington Stories#, by _R. E. VernA"de_ (George H. Doran Company).
+This volume of stories which is drawn from the late Lieutenant
+VernA"de's output during the past twelve years reveals a genuine talent
+for the felicitous portrayal of social life in an English village, and
+suggests that he might have gone rather far in stories of adventure.
+"The Maze" is the best story in the volume, and makes it clear that a
+brilliant short story writer was lost in France during the war.
+
+#Holy Fire, and Other Stories#, by _Ida A. R. Wylie_ (John Lane Company).
+I have called attention to many of these stories in previous years, but
+now that they are reprinted as a group I must reaffirm my belief that
+few among the younger English short story writers have such a command of
+dramatic finality as Miss Wylie. It is true that these stories might
+have been told with advantage in a more quiet tone. This would have made
+the war stories more memorable, but perhaps the problem which the book
+presents for solution is whether or no an instinctive dramatist is using
+the wrong literary medium. Certainly in "Melia, No Good" her treatment
+would have been less effective in a play than in a short story.
+
+
+III. #Translations#
+
+#When the King Loses His Head, and Other Stories#, by _Leonid Andreyev._
+Translated by _Archibald J. Wolfe_ (International Book Publishing
+Company), and #Modern Russian Classics.# Introduction by _Isaac Goldberg_
+(The Four Seas Company). In previous years I have called attention to
+other selections of Andreyev's stories. The present collection includes
+the best from the other volumes, with some new material. "Judas
+Iscariot" and "Lazarus" are the best of the prose poems. "Ben-Tobith,"
+"The Marseillaise," and "Dies IrA|" are the most memorable of his very
+short stories, while the volume also includes "When The King Loses His
+Head," and a less-known novelette entitled "Life of Father Vassily." The
+volume entitled "Modern Russian Classics" includes five short stories by
+Andreyev, Sologub, Artzibashev, Chekhov, and Gorky.
+
+#Prometheus: the Fall of the House of LimA cubedn: Sunday Sunlight: Poetic
+Novels of Spanish Life#, by _RamA cubedn PA(C)rez de Ayala_, Prose translations by
+_Alice P. Hubbard_: Poems done into English by _Grace Hazard Conkling_
+(E. P. Dutton & Co.). SeA+-or PA(C)rez de Ayala has achieved in these three
+stories what may be quite frankly regarded as a literary form. They do
+not conform to a single rule of the short story as we have been taught
+to know it. In fact, this is a pioneer book which opens up a new field.
+The stories have no plot, no climax, no direct characterization, and at
+first sight no plan. Presently it appears that the author's apparent
+episodic treatment of his substance has a special unity of its own woven
+around the spiritual relations of his heroes. It is hard to judge of an
+author's style in translation, but the brilliant coloring of his
+pictures is apparent from this English version. The nearest analogue in
+English are the fantasies of Norman Douglas, but PA(C)rez de Ayala has a
+much more profoundly realized philosophy of life. The poems which serve
+as interludes in these stories, curiously enough, add to the unity of
+the action.
+
+#The Last Lion, and Other Tales#, by _Vicente Blasco IbAiA+-ez_, with an
+Introduction by _Mariano Joaquin Lorente_ (The Four Seas Company). The
+present vogue of SeA+-or Blasco IbAiA+-ez is more sentimental than justified,
+but in "Luxury" he has written an admirable story, and the other five
+stories have a certain distinction of coloring.
+
+#The Bishop, and Other Stories#, and #The Chorus Girl, and Other Stories#,
+by _Anton Chekhov_; translated from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_
+(The Macmillan Company). I have called attention to previous volumes in
+this edition of Chekhov from time to time. These two new additions to
+the series carry the English version of the complete tales two-thirds of
+the way toward completion. Chekhov is one of the three short story
+writers of the world indispensable to every fellow craftsman, and these
+nineteen stories are drawn for the most part from the later and more
+mature period of his work.
+
+#The Surprises of Life#, by _Georges ClA(C)menceau_; translated by _Grace
+Hall_ (Doubleday, Page & Company). Although this volume shows a gift of
+crisp narrative and sharply etched portraiture, it is chiefly important
+as a revelation of M. ClA(C)menceau's state of mind. Had it been called to
+the attention of Mr. Wilson before he went to Paris, the course of
+international diplomacy might have been rather different. These
+twenty-five stories and sketches one and all reveal a sneering
+scepticism about human nature and an utter denial of moral values. From
+a technical point of view, "The Adventure of My CurA(C)" is a successful
+story.
+
+#Tales of My Native Town#, by _Gabriele D'Annunzio_; translated by _G.
+Mantellini_, with an Introduction by _Joseph Hergesheimer_ (Doubleday,
+Page & Company). This anthology drawn from various volumes of Signor
+D'Annunzio's stories gives the American a fair bird's-eye view of the
+various aspects of his work. These twelve portraits by the Turner of
+corruption have a severe logic of their own which may pass for being
+classical. As diploma pieces they are incomparable, but as renderings of
+life they carry no sense of conviction. Mr. Hergesheimer's introduction
+is a more or less unsuccessful special plea. While it is perfectly true
+that the author has achieved what he set out to do, these stories
+already seem old-fashioned, and as years go on will be read, if at all,
+for their landscapes only.
+
+#Military Servitude and Grandeur#, by _Alfred de Vigny_; translated by
+_Frances Wilson Huard_ (George H. Doran Company). It is curious that
+this volume should have waited so long for a translator. Alfred de Vigny
+was an early nineteenth century forerunner of Barbusse and Duhamel, and
+this record of the Napoleonic wars is curiously analogous to the books
+of these later men. I call attention to it here because it includes
+"Laurette," which is one of the great French short stories.
+
+#An Honest Thief, and Other Stories#, by _Fyodor Dostoevsky_; translated
+from the Russian by _Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). This is
+the eleventh volume in the first collected English edition of
+Dostoevsky's works. The great Russian novelist was not a consummate
+technician when he wrote short stories, but the massive epic sweep of
+his genius clothed the somewhat inorganic substance of his tales with a
+reality which is masterly in the title story, in "An Unpleasant
+Predicament," and in "Another Man's Wife." The volume includes among
+other stories "The Dream of a Ridiculous Man," which, though little
+known, is the key to the philosophy of his greater novels.
+
+#Civilization#, 1914-1917, by _Georges Duhamel_; translated by _E. S.
+Brooks_ (The Century Co.). This volume shares with A%lie Faure's "La
+Sainte Face" first place among the volumes of permanent literature
+produced in France during the war. With more subtle and restrained
+artistry than M. Barbusse, the author has portrayed the simple
+chronicles of many of his comrades. He employs only the plainest
+notation of speech, with an economy not unlike that of Maupassant, and
+the indictment is the more terrible because of this emphasis of
+understatement. Before the war, M. Duhamel was known as a competent and
+somewhat promising poet and dramatist, and he was one of the few to whom
+the war brought an ampler endowment rather than a numbing silence.
+
+#Czecho-Slovak Stories#, translation by _AoeAirka B. Hrbkova_ (Duffield
+and Company). I trust that this volume will prove a point of departure
+for a series of books each devoted to the work of a separate
+Czecho-Slovak master. Certainly the work of Jan Neruda, Svatopluk
+AeOEech, and Caroline SvAestlAi, to name no others, ranks with the best
+of the Russian masters, and the reader is compelled to speculate as to
+how many more equally fine writers remain unknown to him. For such
+stories as these can only come out of a long and conscious tradition of
+art, and the greater part of these stories are drawn from volumes
+published during the last half century. The volume contains an admirable
+historical and critical introduction, and adequate biographies and
+bibliographies of the authors included.
+
+#Serenus, and Other Stories of the Past and Present#, by _Jules LemaA(R)tre_;
+translated by "_Penguin_" (_A. W. Evans_) (London: Selwyn & Blount).
+Although this volume has not yet been published in the United States, it
+is one of the few memorable short story books of the season, and should
+readily find a publisher over here. Anatole France has prophesied that
+it will stand out in the history of the thought of the nineteenth
+century, just as to-day "Candide" or "Zadig" stands out in that of the
+eighteenth. These fourteen stories are selected from about four times
+that number, and a complete LemaA(R)tre would be as valuable in English as
+the new translation of Anatole France. The present version is
+faultlessly rendered by an English stylist who has sought to set down
+the exact shade of the critic's meaning.
+
+#Tales of Mystery and Horror#, by _Maurice Level_; translated from the
+French by _Alys Eyre Macklin_, with an Introduction by _Henry B. Irving_
+(Robert M. McBride & Co.). Mr. Irving's introduction rather overstates
+M. Level's case. These stories are not literature, but their hard
+polished technique is as competent as that of Melville Davisson Post,
+and I suppose that these two men have carried Poe's technique as far as
+it can be carried with talent. The stories are frankly melodramatic, and
+wring the last drop of emotion and sentiment out of each situation
+presented. I think the volume will prove valuable to students of short
+story construction, and there is no story which does not arrest the
+attention of the reader.
+
+#The Story of Gotton Connixloo#, followed by #Forgotten#, by _Camille
+Mayran_; translated by _Van Wyck Brooks_ (E.P. Dutton & Company). Mr.
+Brooks' translation of these two stories in the tradition of Flaubert
+have been a labor of love. They will not attract a large public, but the
+art of this Belgian writer is flawless, and worthy of his master. Out of
+the simplest material he has extracted an exquisite spiritual essence,
+and held it up quietly so as to reflect every aspect of its value. If
+the first of these two stories is the most completely rounded from a
+technical point of view, I think that the second points the way toward
+his future development. He presents his characters more directly, and
+achieves his revelation through dialogue rather than personal statement.
+
+#Short Stories from the Spanish#; Englished by _Charles B. McMichael_
+(Boni and Liveright, Inc.). The present volume contains seven short
+stories by RubA(C)n Dario, Jacinto Octavio PicA cubedn, and Leopoldo Alas. They
+are wretchedly translated, but even in their present form one can divine
+the art of "The Death of the Empress of China" by the Nicaraguan RubA(C)n
+Dario, and "After the Battle" by the Spaniard Jacinto Octavio PicA cubedn. The
+other stories are of unequal value, so far as we can judge from Mr.
+McMichael's translation.
+
+#The Fairy Spinning Wheel, and the Tales It Spun#, by _Catulle MendA"s_;
+translated by _Thomas J. Vivian_ (The Four Seas Company). It was a happy
+thought to reprint this translation of M. MendA"s' fairy tales which has
+been out of print for many years. It is probably the only work of its
+once renowned author which survives the passage of time. Here he has
+entered the child's mind and deftly presented a series of legends which
+suggest more than they state. Their substance is slight enough, but each
+has a certain symbolic value, and the poetry of M. MendA"s' style has
+been successfully transferred to the English version.
+
+#Temptations#, by _David Pinski_; translated by _Isaac Goldberg_
+(Brentano's). We have already come to know what a keen analyst America
+has in Mr. Pinski from the translations of his plays which have been
+published. Here he is much less interested in the surface movement of
+plot than in the relentless search for motive. To his Yiddish public he
+seems perhaps the best of short story writers who write in his tongue,
+and certainly he can hold his own with the best of his contemporaries in
+all countries. He has the universal note as few English writers may
+claim it, and he stands apart from his creation with absolute
+detachment. His work, together with that of Asch, Aleichem, Perez, and
+one or two others establishes Yiddish as a great literary tongue. A
+further series of these tales are promised if the present volume meets
+with the response which it deserves.
+
+#Russian Short Stories#, edited by _Harry C. Schweikert_ (Scott, Foresman
+and Company). This is a companion volume to Mr. Schweikert's excellent
+collection of French short stories, and ranges over a wide field. From
+Pushkin to Kuprin his selection gives a fair view of most of the Russian
+masters, and the collection includes a valuable historical and critical
+introduction, with biographical notes, and a critical apparatus for the
+student of short story technique. It is of special educational
+importance as the only volume in the field. In the next edition I
+suggest that Sologub should be represented for the sake of completeness.
+
+#Iolanthe's Wedding#, by _Hermann Sudermann_; translated by _AdA"le S.
+Seltzer_ (Boni and Liveright, Inc.). This collection of four minor works
+by Sudermann contains two excellent stories, one of which is full of
+folk quality and a kindly irony, and the other more akin to the nervous
+art of Arthur Schnitzler. "The Woman Who Was His Friend" and "The
+Gooseherd" are less important, but of considerable technical interest.
+
+#Short Stories from the Balkans#; translated by _Edna Worthley Underwood_
+(Marshall Jones Company). This volume should be set beside the
+collection of "Czecho-Slovak Stories," which I have mentioned on an
+earlier page. Here will be found further stories by Jan Neruda and
+Svatopluk AeOEech, together with a remarkable group of stories by
+Rumanian, Serbian, Croatian, and Hungarian authors. Neruda emerges as
+the greatest artist of them all, and one of the greatest artists in
+Europe, but special attention should be called also to the Czech writer
+VrchlickA1/2, the Rumanian Caragiale, and the Hungarian MikszAith. The
+translation seems competently done.
+
+#Modern Greek Stories#; translated by _Demetra Vaka_ and _Aristides
+Phoutrides_ (Duffield and Company). While this collection reveals no
+such undoubted master as Jan Neruda, it is an extremely interesting
+introduction to an equally unknown literature. Seven of the nine stories
+are of great literary value, and perhaps the best of these is "Sea" by
+A. Karkavitsas. Romaic fiction still bears the marks of a young
+tradition, and each new writer would seem to be compelled to strike out
+more or less completely for himself. Consequently it is necessary to
+allow more than usual for technical inadequacy, but the substance of
+most of these stories is sufficiently remarkable to justify us in
+wishing a further introduction to Romaic literature.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920: AN INDEX
+
+
+#Note.# _An asterisk before a title indicates distinction. This list
+includes single short stories, collections of short stories, and a few
+continuous narratives based on short stories previously published in
+magazines. Volumes announced for publication in the autumn of 1920 are
+listed here, though in some cases they had not yet appeared at the time
+this book went to press._
+
+
+I. #American Authors#
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed.# *Wings. McCann.
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed#, _and others._ Ten Foot Chain. Reynolds.
+
+#Ade, George.# Home Made Fables. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Anderson, Emma Maria Thompson.#  A 'Chu. Review and Herald Pub. Assn.
+
+#Anderson, Robert Gordon.# Seven O'clock Stories. Putnam.
+
+#Barbour, Ralph Henry.# Play That Won. Appleton.
+
+#Benneville, James Seguin De.# Tales of the Tokugawa. Reilly.
+
+#Bishop, William Henry.# Anti-Babel. Neale.
+
+#Boyer, Wilbur S.# Johnnie Kelly. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Bridges, Victor.# Cruise of the "Scandal." Putnam.
+
+#Brown, Alice.# *Homespun and Gold. Macmillan.
+
+#Butler, Ellis Parker.# Swatty. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Carroll, P. J.# Memory Sketches. School Plays Pub. Co.
+
+#Cather, Willa Sibert.# *Youth and the Bright Medusa. Knopf.
+
+#Chambers, Robert W.# Slayer of Souls. Doran.
+
+#Cohen, Octavus Roy.# Come Seven. Dodd, Mead.
+
+#Comfort, Will Levington#, and #Dost, Zamin Ki.# Son of Power. Doubleday,
+Page.
+
+#Connolly, James B.# *Hiker Joy. Scribner.
+
+"#Crabb, Arthur.#" Samuel Lyle, Criminologist. Century Co.
+
+#Cram, Mildred.# Lotus Salad. Dodd, Mead.
+
+#Cutting, Mary Stewart.# Some of Us Are Married. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Davies, Ellen Chivers.# Ward Tales. Lane.
+
+#Deland, Margaret.# *Small Things. Harper.
+
+#Dickson, Harris.# Old Reliable in Africa. Stokes.
+
+#Dodge, Henry Irving.# Skinner Makes It Fashionable. Harper.
+
+#Dost, Zami Ki.# _See_ Comfort, Will Levington and Dost, Zamin Ki.
+
+#Dwight, H. G.# *Emperor of Elam. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Edgar, Randolph#, _editor._ *Miller's Holiday: Short Stories from The
+Northwestern Miller. Miller Pub. Co.
+
+#Ferber, Edna.# *Half Portions. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Fillmore, Parker.# *Shoemaker's Apron. Harcourt, Brace and Howe.
+
+#Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key.# Flappers and Philosophers. Scribner.
+
+#Ford, Sewell.# Meet 'Em with Shorty McCabe. Clode.
+  Torchy and Vee. Clode.
+  Torchy as a Pa. Clode.
+
+#French, Joseph Lewis#, _editor._ *Best Psychic Stories. Boni and
+Liveright.
+  *Masterpieces of Mystery. 4 vol. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Gittins, H. N.# Short and Sweet. Lane.
+
+#Graham, James C.# It Happened at Andover. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Hall, Herschel S.# Steel Preferred. Dutton.
+
+#Haslett, Harriet Holmes.# Impulses. Cornhill Co.
+
+#Heydrick,  Benjamin#, _editor._ *Americans  All. Harcourt, Brace, and
+Howe.
+
+#Hill, Frederick Trevor.# Tales Out of Court. Stokes.
+
+#Howells, William Dean#, _editor._ *Great Modern American Stories. Boni and
+Liveright.
+
+#Hughes, Jennie V.# Chinese Heart-Throbs. Revell.
+
+#Hughes, Rupert.# *Momma, and Other Unimportant People. Harper.
+
+#Huneker, James.# *Bedouins. Scribner.
+
+#Imrie, Walter McLaren.# *Legends. Midland Press.
+
+#Irwin, Wallace.# Suffering Husbands. Doran.
+
+#James, Henry.# *Master Eustace. Seltzer.
+
+#Jessup, Alexander#, _editor._ *Best American Humorous Short Stories. Boni
+and Liveright.
+
+#Johnson, Arthur.# *Under the Rose. Harper.
+
+#Kelley, F. C.# City and the World. Extension Press.
+
+#Lamprey, L.# Masters of the Guild. Stokes.
+
+#Leacock, Stephen.# Winsome Winnie. Lane.
+
+#Linderman, Frank Bird.# *On a Passing Frontier. Scribner.
+
+#Linton, C. E.# Earthomotor. Privately Printed.
+
+#McCarter, Margaret Hill.# Paying Mother. Harper.
+
+#Mackay, Helen.# *Chill Hours. Duffield.
+
+#MacManus, Seumas.# *Top o' the Mornin'. Stokes.
+
+#McSpadden, J. Walker#, _editor._ Famous Detective Stories. Crowell.
+  Famous Psychic Stories. Crowell.
+
+#Martin, George Madden.# *Children in the Mist. Appleton.
+
+#Means, E. K.# *Further E. K. Means. Putnam.
+
+#Miller, Warren H.# Sea Fighters. Macmillan.
+
+#Montague, Margaret Prescott.# *England to America. Doubleday, Page.
+  *Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Montgomery, L. M.# Further Chronicles of Avonlea. Page.
+
+#Morgan, Byron.# Roaring Road. Doran.
+
+#O'Brien, Edward J.# Best Short Stories of 1919. Small, Maynard.
+
+#Paine, Ralph D.# Ships Across the Sea. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Perry, Lawrence.# For the Game's Sake. Scribner.
+
+#Pitman, Norman Hinsdale.# Chinese Wonder Book. Dutton.
+
+#Poe, Edgar Allan.# *Gold-bug. Four Seas.
+
+#Post, Melville Davisson.# *Sleuth of St. James's Square. Appleton.
+
+#Rhodes, Harrison.# *High Life. McBride.
+
+#Rice, Alice Hegan#, and #Rice, Cale Young.# Turn About Tales. Century Co.
+
+#Richards, Clarice E.# Tenderfoot Bride. Revell.
+
+#Richmond, Grace S.# Bells of St. John's. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Rinehart, Mary Roberts.# Affinities. Doran.
+
+#Robbins, Tod.# *Silent, White, and Beautiful. Boni and Liveright.
+
+#Robinson, William Henry.# Witchery of Rita. Berryhill Co.
+
+#Sedgwick, Anne Douglas.# *Christmas Roses. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Smith, Gordon Arthur.# *Pagan. Scribner.
+
+#Society of Arts and Sciences.# *O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories, 1919.
+Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Spofford, Harriet Prescott.# *Elder's People. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Train, Arthur.# Tutt and Mr. Tutt. Scribner.
+
+#Vorse, Mary Heaton.# *Ninth Man. Harper.
+
+#Whalen, Louise Margaret.# Father Ladden, Curate. Magnificat Pub. Co.
+
+#White, Stewart Edward.# Killer. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Widdemer, Margaret.# Boardwalk. Harcourt, Brace, and Howe.
+
+#Wiggin, Kate Douglas.# *Homespun Tales. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+#Wiley, Hugh.# Wildcat. Doran.
+
+#Yezierska, Anzia.# *Hungry Hearts. Houghton Mifflin.
+
+
+II. #English and Irish Authors#
+
+#Baxter, Arthur Beverley.# Blower of Bubbles. Appleton.
+
+#Beerbohm, Max.# *Seven Men. Knopf.
+
+#Cannan, Gilbert.# *Windmills. Huebsch.
+
+"#Dehan, Richard.#" (#Clotilde Graves#). Eve of Pascua. Doran.
+
+#Dell, Ethel May.# Tidal Wave. Putnam.
+
+#Dunsany, Lord.# *Tales of Three Hemispheres. Luce.
+
+#Easton, Dorothy.# *Golden Bird. Knopf.
+
+#Evans, Caradoc.# *My Neighbors. Harcourt, Brace, & Howe.
+
+#Galsworthy, John.# *Tatterdemalion. Scribner.
+
+#Graves, Clotilde.# _See_ "Dehan, Richard."
+
+#Grogan, Gerald.# William Pollok. Lane.
+
+#Hardy, Thomas.# *Two Wessex Tales. Four Seas.
+
+#Hichens, Robert.# Snake-bite. Doran.
+
+#Hutten, Baroness Von.# _See_ Von Hutten, Baroness.
+
+#Huxley, Aldous.# *Limbo. Doran.
+
+#James, Montague Rhodes.# *Thin Ghost. Longmans.
+
+#Jeffery, Jeffery E.# Side Issues. Seltzer.
+
+#Kipling, Rudyard.# *Man Who Would Be King. Four Seas.
+
+#Lipscomb, W. P.# Staff Tales. Dutton.
+
+#New Decameron: Second Day.# McBride.
+
+#O'Kelly, Seumas.# *Golden Barque, and the Weaves's Grave. Putnam.
+
+"#Ross, Martin.#" _See_ "Somerville, E. A'.," and "Ross, Martin."
+
+#Sabatini, Rafael.# Historical Nights' Entertainment, Second Series.
+Lippincott.
+
+"#Somerville, E. A'.#," _and_ "#Ross, Martin#," Stray-Aways. Longmans,
+Green.
+
+"#Trevena, John.#" *By Violence. Four Seas.
+
+#VernA"de, R. E.# Port Allington Stories. Doran.
+
+#Von Hutten, Baroness.# Helping Hersey. Doran.
+
+#Wylie, Ida Alena Ross.# *Holy Fire. Lane.
+
+
+III. #Translations#
+
+"#Aleichem, Shalom.#" _(Yiddish.)_ *Jewish Children. Knopf.
+
+#Andreiev, Leonid.# _(Russian.)_ *When the King Loses His Head.
+International Bk. Pub.
+
+#Andreiev, Leonid#, _and others._ (_Russian._) *Modern Russian Classics.
+Four Seas.
+
+#Annunzio, Gabriele D'.# _(Italian.)_ *Tales of My Native Town.
+Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.# _(Spanish.)_ *Last Lion. Four Seas.
+
+#Brown, Demetra Vaka#, and #Phoutrides, Aristides#, _trs._ (_Modern
+Greek._) *Modern Greek Stories. Duffield.
+
+#Chekhov, Anton.# _(Russian.)_ *Chorus Girl. Macmillan.
+
+#ClA(C)menceau, Georges.# _(French.)_ *Surprises of Life. Doubleday, Page.
+
+#Coster, Charles de.# _(French.)_ *Flemish Legends. Stokes.
+
+#Dostoevsky, Fedor Mikhailovich.# _(Russian.)_ *Honest Thief. Macmillan.
+
+#Friedlander, Gerald#, _ed. and tr._ (_Hebrew._) Jewish Fairy Tales and
+Stories. Dutton.
+
+#Hrbkova, Sarka B.#, _editor._ (_Czecho-Slovak._) *Czecho-Slovak Stories.
+Dutton.
+
+#Jacobsen, Jens Peter.# _(Danish.)_ *Mogens. Brown.
+
+#Level, Maurice.# _(French.)_ *Tales of Mystery and Horror. McBride.
+
+#McMichael, Charles B.#, _translator._ (_Spanish._) *Short Stories from
+the Spanish. Boni & Liveright.
+
+#Maupassant, Guy de.# _(French.)_ *Mademoiselle Fifi. Four Seas.
+
+#Mayran, Camille.# _(French.)_ *Story of Gotton Connixloo. Dutton.
+
+#PA(C)rez de Ayala, RamA cubedn.# _(Spanish.)_ *Prometheus. Dutton.
+
+#Ragozin, Z. A.#, _editor._ (_Russian._) *Little Russian Masterpieces.
+4 vol. Putnam.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND AND IRELAND ONLY
+
+
+I. #English and Irish#
+
+#Andrew, Emily.# Happiness in the Valley. Charles Joscelyn.
+
+#Barr, Robert.# Helping Hand. Mills and Boon.
+  Tales of Two Continents. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Beerbohm, Max.# *And Even Now. Heinemann.
+
+#Calthrop, Dion Clayton.# *Bit at a Time. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Cole, Sophie.# Variety Entertainment. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Conyers, Dorothea.# Irish Stew. Skeffington.
+
+#Cross, Victoria.# Daughters of Heaven. Laurie.
+
+#Drury, W. P.# All the King's Men. Chapman and Hall.
+
+#Evans, C. S.# Nash and Some Others. Heinemann.
+
+#Everard, Mrs. H. D.# Death Mask. Philip Allan.
+
+#Forster, E. M.# *Story of the Siren. Hogarth Press.
+
+#Frampton, Mary.# Forty Years On. Arrowsmith.
+
+#Garvice, Charles.# Girl at the "Bacca" Shop. Skeffington.
+
+#Gaunt, Mary.# Surrender, Laurie.
+
+#Gibbon, Perceval.# *Those Who Smiled. Cassell.
+
+#Green, Peter.# Our Kid. Arnold.
+
+#Grimshaw, Beatrice.# Coral Palace. Mills and Boon.
+
+#Harvey, William Fryer.# Misadventures of Athelstan Digby.
+Swarthmore Press.
+
+#Howard, F. Moreton.# Happy Rascals. Methuen.
+
+#Key, Uel.# Broken Fang. Hodder and Stoughton.
+
+#Knowlson, T. Sharper.# Man Who Would Not Grow Old. Laurie.
+
+#Leo, T. O. D. C.# Two Feasts of St. Agnes. Morland.
+
+#Le Queux, William.# Mysteries of a Great City. Hodder and Stoughton.
+
+#McGuffin, William.# Australian Tales of the Border. Lothian Book Pub. Co.
+
+#Mansfield, Katherine.# *Je Ne Parle Pas FranASec.ais. Heron Press.
+  *Prelude. Hogarth Press.
+
+#Mayne, Ethel Colburn.# *Blindman. Chapman and Hall.
+
+#Mordaunt, Elinor.# *Old Wine in New Bottles. Hutchinson.
+
+#Muir, Ward.# Adventures in Marriage. Simpkin, Marshall.
+
+#Newham, C. E.# Gippo. W. P. Spalding.
+
+#Newman, F. J.# Romance and Law in the Divorce Court. Melrose.
+
+#O'Kelly, Seumas.# *Leprechaun of Killmeen. Martin Lester.
+
+#Palmer, Arnold.# *My Profitable Friends. Selwyn and Blount.
+
+#Paterson, A. B.# Three Elephant Power. Australian Book Co.
+
+#Riley, W.# Yorkshire Suburb. Jenkins.
+
+#Robins, Elizabeth.# Mills of the Gods. Butterworth.
+
+#Robinson, Lennox.# *Eight Short Stories. Talbot Press.
+
+"#Sea-Pup.#" Musings of a Martian. Heath Cranton.
+
+#Shorter, Dora Sigerson.# *Dull Day in London. Nash.
+
+#Smith, Logan Pearsall.# *Stories from the Old Testament.
+Hogarth Press.
+
+#Stein, Gertrude.# *Three Lives. Lane.
+
+#Stock, Ralph.# Beach Combings. Pearson.
+
+#Taylor, Joshua.# Lure of the Links. Heath Cranton.
+
+#Warrener, Marcus and Violet.# House of Transformations.
+Epworth Press.
+
+#Wicksteed, Hilda.# Titch. Swarthmore Press.
+
+#Wilderhope, John.# Arch Fear. Murray and Evenden.
+
+#Wildridge, Oswald.# *Clipper Folk. Blackwood.
+
+#Woolf, Virginia.# *Mark on the Wall. Hogarth Press.
+
+
+II. #Translations#
+
+#Chekhov, Anton.# _(Russian.)_ *My Life. Daniel.
+
+#Kuprin, Alexander.# _(Russian.)_ *Sasha. Paul.
+
+#LemaA(R)tre, Jules.# _(French.)_ *Serenus. Selwyn and Blount.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUMES OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN FRANCE
+
+
+#Ageorges, Joseph.# Contes sereins. FiguiA"re.
+
+#Arcos, RenA(C).# *Bien commun. Le Sablier.
+
+#Boylesve, RenA(C).# *Nymphes dansant avec des satyres. Calmann-LA(C)vy.
+
+"#FarrAe•re, Claude.#" DerniA"re dA(C)esse. Flammarion.
+
+#Geffroy, Gustave.# Nouveaux contes du pays d'Quest. CrA"s.
+
+#GA(C)niaux, Charles.# Mes voisins de campagne. Flammarion.
+
+#Ginisty, Paul.# *Terreur. SociA(C)tA(C) anonyme d'A(C)dition.
+
+#Herold, A. Ferdinand.# *Guirlande d'Aphrodite. Edition d'Art.
+
+#Hesse, Raymond.# Bouzigny! Payot.
+
+#Hirsch, Charles-Henry.# Craquement. Flammarion.
+
+Lautrec, Gabriel de. Histoires de Tom JoA(C). Edition franASec.aise
+illustrA(C)e.
+
+#Le Glay, Maurice.# RA(C)cits marocains. Berger-Levrault.
+
+#Machard, Alfred.# *Cent Gosses. Flammarion.
+  *Syndicat des fessA(C)s. Ferenczi.
+
+#Marie, Jacques.# Sous l'armure. Jouve.
+
+#Mille, Pierre.# *Nuit d'amour sur la montagne. Flammarion.
+  *Trois femmes. Calmann-LA(C)vy.
+
+#Pillon, Marcel.# Contes A  ma cousine. FiguiA"re.
+
+#Pottecher, Maurice.# Joyeux Contes de la Cicogne d'Alsace.
+Ollendorff.
+
+"#Rachilde.#" *DA(C)couverte de l'AmA(C)rique. Kundig.
+
+#RA(C)gnier, Henri de.# *Histories incertaines. Mercure de France.
+
+#RhaA-s, Elissa.# *CafA(C) chantant. Plon.
+
+#Rochefoucauld, Gabriel de la.# *Mari CalomniA(C). Plon-Nourrit.
+
+#Russo, Luigi Libero.# Contes A  la cigogne. 2e sA(C)rie. Messein.
+
+#Sarcey, Yvonne.# Pour vivre heureux.
+
+#Sutton, Maurice.# Contes retrouvA(C)s. Edit. Formosa. Bruxelles.
+
+#Tisserand, Ernest.# Contes de la popote. CrA"s.
+
+#Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.# *Nouveaux Contes Cruels. CrA"s.
+
+
+
+
+ARTICLES ON THE SHORT STORY
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+_The following abbreviations are used in this index_:--
+
+_Ath._                             AthenA|um
+_B. E. T._                         Boston Evening Transcript
+_Book (London)_                    Bookman (London)
+_Book (N. Y.)_                     Bookman (New York)
+_Cath. W._                         Catholic World
+_Chap._                            Monthly Chapbook
+_Cont. R._                         Contemporary Review
+_Edin. R._                         Edinburgh Review
+_Eng. R._                          English Review
+_Fortn. R._                        Fortnightly Review
+_Harp. M._                         Harper's Magazine
+_L. H. J._                         Ladies' Home Journal
+_Lib._                             Liberator
+_Liv. Age._                        Living Age
+_Lit. R._                          Little Review
+_L. Merc._                         London Mercury
+_M. de F._                         Mercure de France
+_Mir._                             Reedy's Mirror
+_Mun._                             Munsey's Magazine
+_Nat. (London)_                    Nation (London)
+_N. Rep._                          New Republic
+_New S._                           New Statesman
+_19th Cent._                       Nineteenth Century and After
+_N. R. F._                         Nouvelle Revue FranASec.aise
+_Peop._                            People's Favorite Magazine
+_Quart. R._                        Quarterly Review
+_R. de D. M._                      Revue des Deux Mondes
+_Sat. R._                          Saturday Review
+_Strat. J._                        Stratford Journal
+_Times Lit. Suppl._                Times Literary Supplement
+_Touch._                           Touchstone (London)
+_Yale R._                          Yale Review
+
+
+Abdullah, Achmed.
+  By Rebecca West. New S. May 8. (15:137.)
+
+"Aleichem, Shalom."
+  Anonymous. New S. Mar. 13. (14:682.)
+
+#Alexander, Grace.#
+  Thomas Hardy. N. Rep. Aug. 18. (23:335.)
+
+#Alvord, James Church.#
+  Typical American Short Story. Yale R. Apr. (9:650.)
+
+American Short Story.
+  By James Church Alvord. Yale R. Apr. (9:650.)
+
+Andreyev, Leonid.
+  By Eugene M. Kayden. Dial. Nov. 15, '19. (67:425.)
+  By Moissaye J. Olgin. N. Rep. Dec. 24, '19. (21:123.)
+  By A. Sokoloff. New S. Nov. 15, '19. (14:190.)
+
+Annunzio, Gabriele d'.
+  By Joseph Collins. Scr. Sept. (68:304.)
+  By Rebecca West. New S. June 5, (15:253.)
+                   N. Rep. June 30. (23:155.)
+
+Anonymous.
+  Buying $2,000,000 Worth of Fiction. Peop. Oct., '19. (12.)
+
+Apuleius.
+  By Lord Ernle. Quart. R. Jul. (234:41.)
+
+Arcos, RenA(C).
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jan. 22. (19:48.)
+
+
+#Bailey, John.#
+  Henry James. London Observer. Apr. 25.
+
+Balkan Short Stories.
+  By Kate Buss. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3, p. 9.)
+
+Balzac, HonorA(C) de.
+  By Princess Catherine Radziwill. Book. (N. Y.) Aug. (51:639.)
+  By Sir Frederick Wedmore. 19th Cent. Mar. (87:484.)
+  By M. P. Willcocks. Nation. (London.) Mar. 20. (26:864) and Mar. 27.
+
+Barnes, J. S.
+  Contemporary Italian Short Stories. New Europe. Nov. 27, '19. (13:214.)
+
+Beaubourg, Maurice.
+  By Legrand-Chabrier. M. de F. 15 aoA"t. (142:5.)
+
+#Beaunier, AndrA(C).#
+  Pierre Mille. R. de D. M. 1 juillet. (6 sA(C)r. 58:191.)
+
+Beerbohm, Max.
+  Anonymous. Nation. (London.)  Nov. 22, '19. (26:272.)
+    By Bohun Lynch. L. Merc. June. (2:168.)
+    By S. W. Ath. Nov. 14, '19. (1186.)
+
+#Bent, Silas.#
+  Henry James. Mir. June 3. (29:448.) June 24. (29:510.)
+
+Beyle, Henri. _See_ "Stendhal."
+
+Blackwood, Algernon.
+  By Henriette Reeves. Touch. May. (7:147.)
+
+#Bourget, Paul.#
+  Prosper MA(C)rimA(C)e. R. de D. M. 15 Sept. (59:257.)
+
+Bourget, Paul.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 30. (19:634.)
+  By R. Le Clerc Phillips. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:448.)
+
+#Braithwaite, William Stanley.#
+  American Short Story. B. E. T. Mar. 27. (pt. 3. p. 10.)
+
+#Brooks, Van Wyck.#
+  Mark Twain. Dial. Mar. Nat. Apr. (68:275, 424.)
+
+#Buss, Kate.#
+  Balkan Short Stories. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3. p. 9.)
+
+
+#Cabell, James Branch.#
+  Joseph Hergesheimer. Book. (N. Y.) Nov.-Dec., '19. (50:267.)
+
+#Calthrop, Dion Clayton.#
+  O. Henry. London Observer. May 2.
+
+#Chekhov, Anton.#
+  Diary. Ath. Apr. 2. (460.)
+  Letters. XII. Ath. Oct. 24, '19. (1078.)
+          XIII. Ath. Oct. 31, '19. (1135.)
+
+Chekhov, Anton.
+  Anonymous. Ath. Jan. 23, Feb. 6. ('20:1:124, 191.)
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Feb. 12, Jul. 15. (19:103, 455.)
+  By Edmund Gosse. London Sunday Times. Mar. 14.
+  By Robert Morss Lovett. Dial. May. (68:626.)
+  By Robert Lynd. London Daily News. Feb. 11.
+  By Robert Lynd. Nation (London.) Feb. 28. (26:742.)
+  By J. Middleton Murry. Ath. Mar. 5. ('20:1:299.)
+  By Robert Nichols. London Observer. Mar. 7.
+  By Charles K. Trueblood. Dial. Feb. (68:253.)
+
+#Chew, Samuel C.#
+  Thomas Hardy. N. Rep. June 2. (23:22.)
+
+#Child, Harold.#
+  Thomas Hardy. Book. (London.) June. (58:101.)
+
+Clemens, Samuel L. _See_ "Twain, Mark."
+
+#Collins, Joseph.#
+  Alfredo Panzini and Luigi Pirandello. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:410.)
+  Giovanni Papini. Book. (N. Y.)  (51:160.)
+  Gabriele D'Annunzio. Scr. Sept. (68:304.)
+
+#Colvin, Sir Sidney.#
+  Robert Louis Stevenson. Scr. Mar. (67:338.)
+
+#Conrad, Joseph.#
+  Stephen Crane. Book.  (N. Y.)  Feb.  (50:528.)  L. Merc. Dec., '19.
+ (1:192.)
+
+Conrad, Joseph.
+  By Stephen Gwynn. Edin. R. Apr. (231:318.)
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.)
+  By R. Ellis Roberts. Book. (London.) Aug. (58:160.)
+  By Gilbert Seldes. Dial. Aug. (69:191.)
+
+CoppA(C)e, FranASec.ois.
+  By Joseph J. Reilly. Cath. W. (111:614.)
+
+#Cor, Raphael.#
+  Charles Dickens. M. de F. 1 juillet. (141:82.)
+
+Corthis, AndrA(C).
+  Anonymous. Rev. de D. M. 15 juin. (6 sA(C)r. 57:816.)
+
+#Coulon, Marcel.#
+  Rachilde. M. de F. 15 sept. (142:545.)
+
+Couperus, Louis.
+  By J. L. Walch. Ath. Oct. 31, '19. (1133.)
+
+Crane, Stephen.
+  By Joseph Conrad. Book. (N. Y.) Feb. (50:529.) L. Merc. Dec., '19.
+ (1:192.)
+
+Cunninghame Grahame, R. B. _See_ Grahame, R. B. Cunninghame.
+
+
+D'Annunzio, Gabriele. _See_ Annunzio, Gabriele d'.
+
+#Deffoux, LA(C)on#, _and_ #Zavie, A%mile.#
+  Editions Kistemaekers et le "Naturalisme." M. de F. 16 oct., '19.
+ (135:639.)
+  A%mile Zola. M. de F. 15 fA(C)v. (138:68.)
+
+#Dell, Floyd.#
+  Mark Twain. Lib. Aug. (26.)
+
+#Dewey, John.#
+  Americanism and Localism. Dial. June. (68:684.)
+
+Dickens, Charles.
+  By Raphael Cor. M. de F. 1 juillet. (141:82.)
+
+Dobie, Charles Caldwell.
+  By Joe Whitnah. San Francisco Bulletin. Jan. 3.
+
+Dostoevsky, Fyodor.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 23. (19:612.)
+  By E. M. Forster. London Daily News. Nov. 11, '19.
+  By Charles K. Trueblood. Dial. June. (68:774.)
+
+Doyle, A. Conan.
+  By Beverly Stark. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:579.)
+
+Duhamel, Georges.
+  By Henry J. Smith. Chicago Daily News. Dec. 3, '19.
+
+Dunsany, Lord.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 11, '19. (18:737.) July 8. (19:437.)
+  By Clayton Hamilton. Book. (N. Y.) Feb. (50:537.)
+  By Norreys Jephson O'Conor. B. E. T. Oct. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 2.)
+  By Gilbert Seldes. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 2. p. 4.)
+  By F. W. Stokoe. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:202.)
+  By Marguerite Wilkinson. Touch. Dec., '19. (6:111.)
+
+#Dyer, Walter A.#
+  Short Story Orgy. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:217.)
+
+
+#Edgett, Edwin F.#
+  O. Henry. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 3. p. 4.)
+  W. W. Jacobs. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3. p. 10.)
+  Henry James. B. E. T. Apr. 10.
+  W.B. Maxwell. B. E. T. Nov. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 8.)
+
+#Egan, Maurice Francis.#
+  Henry James. Cath. W. June. (111:289.)
+
+"Eliot, George."
+  By H. C. Minchin. Fortn. R. Dec., '19. (112:896.)
+  By Edward A. Parry. Fortn. R. Dec., '19. (112:883.)
+  By Thomas Seccombe. Cont. R. Dec., '19. (116:660.)
+
+#Enoch, Helen.#
+  W. J. Locke. Cont. R. June. (117:855.)
+
+#Ernle, Lord.#
+  Apuleius. Quart. R. Jul. (234:41.)
+
+#Erskine, John.#
+  William Dean Howells. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:385.)
+
+#Evans, C.S.#
+  W. H. Hudson. Book. (N. Y.) Sept. (52:18.)
+
+
+#Ferber, Edna.#
+  By Rebecca West. New S. Apr. 3. (14:771.)
+
+#Finger, Charles J.#
+  Hudson and Grahame. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:836.)
+
+Flaubert, Gustave.
+  By Marcel Proust. N. R. F. Jan. (14:72.)
+  By George Saintsbury. Ath. Oct. 3, '19. (983.)
+  By Albert Thibaudet. N. R. F. Nov., 19. (13:942.)
+
+#Forster, E. M.#
+  Fyodor Dostoevsky. London Daily News. Nov. 11, '19.
+
+Forster, E. M.
+  By Katherine Mansfield. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:209.)
+  By Rebecca West. New S. Aug. 28. (15:576.)
+
+Fox, John.
+  By Thomas Nelson Page. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:674.)
+
+
+Gale, Zona.
+  By Constance Mayfield Rourke. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:315.)
+
+#George, W. L.#
+  Joseph Hergesheimer. Book. (London.) Sept. (58:193.)
+
+Giraudoux, Jean.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 22. (19:470.)
+  By Albert Thibaudet. N. R. F. Dec., '19. (13:1064.)
+
+#Goldberg, Isaac.#
+  Hungarian Short Stories. B. E. T. Oct. 8, '19. (pt.3. p.4.)
+  Ercole Luigi Morselli. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:557.)
+  Amado Nervo. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:3.)
+  Spanish-American Short Stories. Book.  (N. Y.)  Feb. (50:565.)
+
+#Gorky, Maxim.#
+  Reminiscences of Tolstoi. L. Merc. Jul. (2:304.)
+
+Gorky, Maxim.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 15. (19:453.)
+  By S. Koteliansky. Ath. Apr. 30. ('20:1:587.)
+  By J. W. N. S. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:77.)
+
+#Gosse, Edmund.#
+  Anton Chekhov. London Sunday Times. Mar. 14.
+  Henry James. L. Merc. Apr.-May. (1:673, 2:29.)
+    Scr. Apr.-May. (67:422, 548.)
+
+Gozzano, Guido.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 15. (19:450.)
+
+Grahame, R. B. Cunninghame.
+  By Charles J. Finger. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:836.)
+
+#Gwynn, Stephen.#
+  Joseph Conrad. Edin. R. Apr. (231:318.)
+
+
+#Hamilton, Clayton.#
+  Lord Dunsany. Book. (N. Y.) Feb. (50:537.)
+
+Hardy, Thomas.
+  By Grace Alexander. N. Rep. Aug. 18. (23:335.)
+  By Samuel C. Chew. N. Rep. June 2. (23:22.)
+  By Harold Child. Book. (London.) June. (58:101)
+  By W. M. Parker, 19th Cent. Jul. (88: 63.)
+  By Arthur Symons. Dial. Jan. (68:66.)
+
+Harte, Bret.
+  By Agnes Day Robinson. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:445.)
+
+#Hawthorne, Nathaniel.#
+  By Mary G. Tuttiett. 19th Cent. Jan. (87:118.)
+
+Henriet, Maurice.
+  Jules LemaA(R)tre. M. De F. 1 juin. (140:289.)
+
+"Henry, O."
+  By Dion Clayton Calthrop. London Observer. May 2.
+  By Edwin F. Edgett. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 3. p. 4.)
+  By Edward Francis Mohler. Cath. W. Sept. (111:756.)
+  By Raoul Narsy. Liv. Age. Oct. 11, '19. (303:86.)
+  By John Seymour Wood. Book. (N. Y.) Jan. (50:474.)
+
+Hergesheimer, Joseph.
+  By James Branch Cabell. Book. (N. Y.) Nov.-Dec., '19. (50:267.)
+  By W. L. George. Book. (London.) Sept. (58:193.)
+
+Holz, Arno.
+  Anonymous. Ath. Apr. 9. ('20:1:490.)
+
+Hook, Theodore.
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. Sept. 25. (130:254.)
+
+#Hopkins, Gerard.#
+  Short Story. Chap. Feb. (25.)
+
+Howells, William Dean.
+  Anonymous. N. Rep. May 26. (22:393.)
+  By John Erskine. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:385.)
+  By Henry A. Lappin. Cath. W. Jul. (111:445.)
+  By Edward S. Martin. Harp. M. Jul. (141:265.)
+  By Arthur Hobson Quinn. Cen. Sept. (100:674.)
+  By Henry Rood. L. H. J. Sept. (42.)
+  By Booth Tarkington. Harp. M. Aug. (141: 346.)
+
+Hudson, W. H.
+  By C. S. Evans. Book. (N. Y.) Sept. (52:18.)
+  By Charles J. Finger. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:836.)
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Lit. R. May-June. (5.)
+  By Ezra Pound. Lit. R. May-June. (13.)
+  By Ernest Rhys. 19th Cent. Jul. (88:72.)
+  By John Rodker. Lit. R. May-June. (18.)
+
+#Hueffer, Ford Madox.#
+  W. H. Hudson. Lit. R. May-June. (5.)
+  Thus to Revisit. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.)
+
+#Huneker, James Gibbons.#
+  Henry James. Book. (N. Y.) May. (51:364.)
+
+Huneker, James Gibbons.
+  Anon. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:515.)
+
+Hungarian Short Stories.
+  By Isaac Goldberg. B. E. T. Oct. 8, '19. (pt. 3. p. 4.)
+
+Huxley, Aldous.
+  By Michael Sadleir. Voices. June. (3:235.)
+
+
+Italian Short Stories.
+  By J. S. Barnes. New Europe. Nov. 27, '19. (13:214.)
+
+
+Jacobs, W. W.
+  By E. F. Edgett. B. E. T. Oct. 18, '19. (pt. 3. p. 10.)
+
+James, Henry.
+  Anonymous. Nation. (London.) May 8. (27:178.)
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Apr. 8. (19:217.)
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. June 12. (129:537.)
+  Anonymous. Cont. R. Jul. (118:142.)
+  By John Bailey. London Observer. Apr. 25.
+  By Silas Bent. Mir. June 3. (29: 448.) June 24. (29:510.)
+  By Edwin F. Edgett. B. E. T. Apr. 10.
+  By Maurice Francis Egan. Cath. W. June. (111:289.)
+  By Edmund Gosse. L. Merc. Apr.-May.  (1:673:2:29.)
+    Scr. Apr.-May. (67:422, 548.)
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.)
+  By James G. Huneker. Book. (N. Y.) May. (51:364.)
+  By Philip Littell. N. Rep. June 9. (23:63.)
+  By Desmond MacCarthy. New S. May 15. (15:162.)
+  By Brander Matthews. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:389.)
+  By Thomas Moult. Eng. R. Aug. (31:183.)
+  By E. S. Nadal. Scr. Jul. (68:89.)
+  By Forrest Reid. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:520.)
+  By Gilbert Seldes. Dial. Jul. (69:83.)
+  By J. C. Squire. London Sunday Times. Apr. 18.
+  By Louise R. Sykes. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:240.)
+  By Allan Wade. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 19. (19:537.)
+  By A. B. Walkley. Fortn. R. June. (n. s. 107:864.) London Times.
+    June 16, Sept. 15.
+  By Sidney Waterlow. Ath. Apr. 23. ('20:1:537.)
+  By Edith Wharton. Quart. R. Jul. (234:188.)
+
+#Johnson, Alvin.#
+  Mark Twain. N. Rep. Jul. 14. (23:201.)
+
+
+#Kayden, Eugene M.#
+  Leonid Andreyev. Dial. Nov. 15, '19. (67:425.)
+
+Keller, Gottfried.
+  By Alec W. G. Randall. Cont. R. Nov., '19. (116:532.)
+
+Kipling, Rudyard.
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. Aug. 7. (130:113.)
+  By Richard Le Gallienne. Mun. Nov., '19. (68:238.)
+  By Desmond MacCarthy. New S. June 5. (15:249.)
+  By Virginia Woolf. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:75.)
+
+#Koteliansky, S.#
+  Tolstoy and Gorky. Ath. Apr. 30. ('20:1:582.)
+
+Kuprin, Alexander.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Nov. 27, '19. (18:691)
+  By Katherine Mansfield. Ath. Dec. 26, '19. (1399.)
+
+
+#Lappin, Henry A.#
+  William Dean Howells. Cath. W. Jul. (111:445.)
+
+Lawrence, D. H.
+  By Louis Untermeyer. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:314.)
+
+#Le Gallienne, Richard.#
+  Rudyard Kipling. Mun. Nov., '19. (68:238.)
+
+#Legrand-Chabrier.#
+  Maurice Beaubourg. M. de F. 15 aoA"t. (142:5.)
+
+LemaA(R)tre, Jules.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 2. (19:562.)
+  By Maurice Henriet. M. de F. 1 juin. (140:289.)
+
+#Littell, Philip.#
+  Henry James. N. Rep. June 9. (23:63.)
+
+Locke, W. J.
+  By Helen Enoch. Cont. R. June. (117:855.)
+
+London, Jack.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:519.)
+  By Katherine Mansfield. Ath. Aug. 27. ('20:2:272.)
+
+#Lovett, Robert Morss.#
+  Anton Chekhov. Dial. May. (68:626.)
+  Mark Twain. Dial. Sept. (69:293.)
+
+#Lynch, Bohun.#
+  Max Beerbohm. L. Merc. June. (2:168.)
+
+#Lynd, Robert.#
+  Anton Chekhov. London Daily News. Feb. 11.
+  Anton Chekhov. Nation. (London.) Feb. 28. (26:742.)
+  George Meredith. London Daily News. Jan. 30.
+
+#Lysaght, S. R.#
+  Robert Louis Stevenson. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:713.)
+
+
+#MacCarthy, Desmond.#
+  Henry James. New S. May 15. (15:162.)
+  Rudyard Kipling. New S. June 5. (15:249.)
+
+"Macleod, Fiona." (William Sharp.)
+  By Ethel Rolt-Wheeler. Fortn. R. Nov., '19. (112:780.)
+
+#Mansfield, Katharine.#
+  E. M. Forster. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:209.)
+  Alexander Kuprin. Ath. Dec. 26, '19. (1399.)
+  Jack London. Ath. Aug. 27. ('20:2:272.)
+
+#Martin, Edward S.#
+  William Dean Howells. Harp. M. Jul. (141:265.)
+
+Masefield, John.
+  By Edward Shanks. L. Merc. Sept. (2:578.)
+
+Maseras, Alfons.
+  By Camille Pitollet. M. de F. 15 aoA"t. (142:230.)
+
+#Matthews, Brander.#
+  Henry James. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:389).
+  Mark Twain. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (14.)
+
+Maxwell, W. B.
+  By E. F. Edgett, B. E. T. Nov. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 8.)
+
+Meredith, George.
+  By Robert Lynd. London Daily News. Jan. 30.
+
+MA(C)rimA(C)e, Prosper.
+  By Paul Bourget R. de D. M. 15 sept. (59:257.)
+
+Mille, Pierre.
+  By AndrA(C) Beaunier. R. de D. M. 1 juillet. (6 sA(C)r. 58:191.)
+
+#Minchin, H. C.#
+  George Eliot. Fortn. R. Dec. '19. (112:896.)
+
+Mirbeau, Octave.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:518.)
+
+#Mohler, Edward Francis.#
+  "O. Henry." Cath. W. Sept. (111:756.)
+
+Morrow, W. C.
+  By Vincent Starrett. Mir. Oct. 30, '19. (28:751.)
+
+Morselli, Ercole Luigi.
+  By Isaac Goldberg. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:557.)
+
+#Moult, Thomas.#
+  Henry James. Eng. R. Aug. (31:183.)
+
+#Murry, J. Middleton.#
+  Anton Chekhov. Ath. Mar. 5. ('20:1:299.)
+  Stendhal. Ath. Sept. 17. ('20:2:388.)
+  Oscar Wilde. Ath. Sept. 24. ('20:2:401.)
+
+
+#Nadal, E. S.#
+  Henry James. Scr. Jul. (68:89.)
+
+#Narsy, Raoul.#
+  O. Henry. Liv. Age. Oct. 11, '19. (303:86.)
+
+Naturalism. _See_ #Deffoux, LA(C)on#, _and_ #Zavie, A%mile.#
+
+Nervo, Amado.
+  By Isaac Goldberg. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:3.)
+
+"New Decameron."
+  Anonymous. Sat. R. Aug. 7. (130:113.)
+  By F. W. Stokoe. Ath. Aug. 6. ('20:2:172.)
+
+#Nichols, Robert.#
+  Anton Chekhov. London Observer. Mar. 7.
+
+Nodier, Charles.
+  By George Saintsbury. Ath. Jan. 16. ('20:1:91.)
+
+
+#O'Brien, Edward J.#
+  Best Short Stories of 1919. B. E. T. Nov. 28, '19. (14.)
+
+O'Brien, Fitzjames.
+  By Joseph J. Reilly. Cath. W. Mar. (110:751.)
+
+#O'Conor, Norreys Jephson.#
+  Lord Dunsany. B. E. T. Oct. 22, '19. (pt. 3. p. 2.)
+
+#Olgin, Moissaye J.#
+  Leonid Andreyev. N. Rep. Dec. 24, '19. (21:123.)
+
+
+#Page, Thomas Nelson.#
+  John Fox. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:674.)
+
+Panzini, Alfredo.
+  By Joseph Collins. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:410.)
+  By Guido de Ruggiero. Ath. Feb. 13. ('20:1:222.)
+
+Papini, Giovanni.
+  By Joseph Collins. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:160.)
+
+#Parker, W. M.#
+  Thomas Hardy, 19th Cent. Jul. (88:63.)
+
+#Parry, Edward A.#
+  George Eliot. Fortn. R. Dec., '19. (112:883.)
+
+#Phillips, R. Le Clerc.#
+  Paul Bourget. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:448.)
+
+Pirandello, Luigi.
+  By Joseph Collins. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:410.)
+
+#Pitollet, Camille.#
+  Alfons Maseras. M. de F. 15 aoA"t. (142:230.)
+
+Pontoppidan, Henrik.
+  By J. G. Robertson. Cont. R. Mar. (117:374.)
+
+#Pound, Ezra.#
+  W. H. Hudson. Lit. R. May-June. (13.)
+
+#Proust, Marcel.#
+  Gustave Flaubert. N. R. F. Jan. (14:72.)
+
+#Purcell, Gertrude M.#
+  Ellis Parker Butler. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:473.)
+
+
+#Quinn, Arthur Hobson.#
+  William Dean Howells. Cen. Sept. (100:674.)
+
+
+"Rachilde." (Mme. Alfred Vallette.)
+  By Marcel Coulon. M. de F. 15 sept. (142:545.)
+
+#Radziwill, Princess Catherine.#
+  HonorA(C) de Balzac. Book. (N. Y.) Aug. (51:639.)
+
+#Randall, Alec W. G.#
+  Gottfried Keller. Cont. R. Nov., '19. (116:532.)
+
+#Raynaud, Ernest.#
+  Oscar Wilde. La Minerve FranASec.aise. 15 aoA"t.
+
+Read, Opie.
+  By Vincent Starrett. Mir. Nov. 6, '19. (28:769.)
+
+#Reeves, Henriette.#
+  Algernon Blackwood. Touch. May. (7:147.)
+
+RA(C)gnier, Henri de.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Feb. 19. (19:118.)
+
+#Reid, Forrest.#
+  Henry James. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 12. (19:520.)
+
+#Reilly, Joseph J.#
+  FranASec.ois CoppA(C)e. Cath. W. Aug. (111:614.)
+  Fitzjames O'Brien. Cath. W. Mar. (110:751.)
+
+#Rhys, Ernest.#
+  W. H. Hudson, 19th Cent. Jul. (88:72.)
+
+#Roberts, R. Ellis.#
+  Joseph Conrad. Book. (London.) Aug. (58:160.)
+
+#Robertson, J. G.#
+  Henrik Pontoppidan. Cont. R. Mar. (117:374.)
+
+#Robinson, Agnes Day.#
+  Bret Harte. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:445.)
+
+#Rodker, John.#
+  W. H. Hudson, Lit. R. May-June. (18.)
+
+#Rolt-Wheeler, Ethel.#
+  "Fiona Macleod." Fortn. R. Nov., '19. (112:780.).
+
+#Rood, Henry.#
+  William Dean Howells. L. H. J. Sept. (42.)
+
+#Rourke, Constance Mayfield.#
+  Zona Gale. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:315.)
+
+#Ruggiero, Guido de.#
+  Alfred Panzini. Ath. Feb. 13. ('20:1:222.)
+
+
+S., J. W. N.
+  Tolstoy and Gorky. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:77.)
+
+#Sadleir, Michael.#
+  Aldous Huxley. Voices. June. (3:235.)
+
+#Saintsbury, George.#
+  Gustave Flaubert. Ath. Oct. 3, '19. (983.)
+  Charles Nodier. Ath. Jan. 16. ('20:1:91.)
+
+#Seccombe, Thomas.#
+  George Eliot. Cont. R. Dec., '19. (116:660.)
+
+#Seldes, Gilbert.#
+  Joseph Conrad. Dial. Aug. (69:191.)
+  Lord Dunsany. B. E. T. Oct. 15, '19. (pt. 2. p. 4.)
+  Henry James. Dial. Jul. (69:83.)
+
+#Shanks, Edward.#
+  John Masefield. L. Merc. Sept. (2:578.)
+  Sharp, William. _See_ "Fiona Macleod."
+
+Singh, Kate Prosunno.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 2. (19:562.)
+
+#Smith, Henry J.#
+  Georges Duhamel. Chicago Daily News. Dec. 3, '19.
+
+#Sokoloff, A.#
+  Leonid Andreyev. New S. Nov. 15, '19. (14:190.)
+
+Spanish-American Short Story. See #Goldberg, Isaac.#
+
+#Squire, J. C.#
+  Henry James. London Sunday Times. Apr. 18.
+
+#Stark, Beverly.#
+  A. Conan Doyle. Book. (N. Y.) Jul. (51:579.)
+
+#Starrett, Vincent.#
+  W. C. Morrow. Mir. Oct. 30, '19. (28:751.)
+  Opie Read. Mir. Nov. 6, '19. (28:769.)
+
+"Stendhal," (Henri Beyle.)
+  By John Middleton Murry. Ath. Sept. 17. ('20:2:388.)
+
+Stevenson, Robert Louis.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:701.)
+  By Sir Sidney Colvin. Scr. Mar. (67:338.)
+  By S. R. Lysaght. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:713.)
+
+#Stokoe, F. W.#
+  Lord Dunsany. Ath. Aug. 13. ('20:2:202.)
+  "New Decameron." Ath. Aug. 6. ('20:2:172.)
+
+#Sykes, Louise R.#
+  Henry James. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:240.)
+
+#Symons, Arthur.#
+  Thomas Hardy. Dial. Jan. (68:66.)
+  Oscar Wilde. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:129.)
+
+
+#Tarkington, Booth.#
+  William Dean Howells. Harp. M. Aug. (141:346.)
+
+#Tchekhov, Anton.# _See_ Chekhov, Anton.
+
+#Thibaudet, Albert.#
+  Gustave Flaubert. N. R. F. Nov., '19. (13:942.)
+  Jean Giraudoux. N. R. F. Dec., '19. (13:1064.)
+
+Tolstoy, Count Lyof.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Jul. 15. (19:453.)
+  Anonymous. New S. Aug. 7. (15:505.)
+  By Maxim Gorky. L. Merc. Jul. (2:304.)
+  By S. Koteliansky. Ath. Apr. 30. ('20:1:587.)
+  By J. W. N. S. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:77.)
+
+#Trueblood, Charles K.#
+  Anton Chekhov. Dial. Jan. (68:80.)
+  Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dial. June. (68:774.)
+  Edith Wharton. Dial. Jan. (68:80.)
+
+#Tuttiett, Mary G.#
+  Nathaniel Hawthorne, 19th Cent. Jan. (87:118.)
+
+"Twain, Mark."
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Sept. 23. (19:615.)
+  By Van Wyck Brooks. Dial. Mar. (68:275), and Apr. (68:424.)
+  By Floyd Dell. Lib. Aug. (26.)
+  By Alvin Johnson. N. Rep. Jul. 14. (23:201.)
+  By Robert Morss Lovett. Dial. Sept. (69:293.)
+  By Brander Matthews. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (14.)
+
+
+#Untermeyer, Louis.#
+  D. H. Lawrence. N. Rep. Aug. 11. (23:314.)
+
+
+Vallette, Mme. Alfred. _See_ "Rachilde."
+
+Villiers de l'Isle-Adam.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Dec. 4, '19. (18:711.)
+
+
+#Wade, Allan.#
+  Henry James. Times Lit. Suppl. Aug. 19. (19:537.)
+
+#Walch, J. L.#
+  Louis Couperus. Ath. Oct. 31, '19. (1133.)
+
+#Waldo, Harold.#
+  Old Wests for New. Book. (N. Y.) June. (51:396.)
+
+#Walkley, A. B.#
+  Henry James. Fortn. R. June. (n. s. 107:864.)
+  Henry James. London Times. June 16 and Sept. 15.
+
+#Waterlow, Sydney.#
+  Henry James. Ath. Apr. 23. ('20:1:537.)
+
+#Wedmore, Sir Frederick.#
+  HonorA(C) de Balzac, 19th Cent. Mar. (87:484.)
+
+Wells, H. G.
+  By Ford Madox Hueffer. Eng. R. Jul.-Aug. (31:5, 107.)
+    Dial. Jul.-Aug. (69:52, 132.) Reply by H. G. Wells.
+    Eng. R. Aug. (31:178.)
+
+#West, Rebecca.#
+  Achmed Abdullah. New S. May 8. (15:137.)
+  Gabriele D'Annunzio. New S. June 5. (15:253.) N. Rep. June 30. (23:155.)
+  Edna Ferber. New S. Apr. 3. (14:771.)
+  E. M. Forster. New S. Aug. 28. (15:576.)
+
+#Wharton, Edith.#
+  Henry James. Quart. R. Jul. (234:188.)
+
+#Wharton, Edith.#
+  By Charles K. Trueblood. Dial. Jan. (68:80.)
+
+#Whitnah, Joe.#
+  Charles Caldwell Dobie. San Francisco Bulletin. Jan. 3.
+
+Wilde, Oscar.
+  Anonymous. Times Lit. Suppl. Oct. 30, '19. (18:605.)
+  By J. Middleton Murry. Ath. Sept. 24. ('20:2:401.)
+  By Ernest Raynaud. La Minerve FranASec.aise. 15 aoA"t.
+  By Arthur Symons. Book. (N. Y.) Apr. (51:129.)
+
+#Wilkinson, Marguerite.#
+  Lord Dunsany. Touch. Dec., '19. (6:111.)
+
+#Willcocks, M. P.#
+  HonorA(C) de Balzac. Nation. (London.) Mar. 20. (26:864.) and Mar. 27.
+
+#Williams, Orlo.#
+  "Yellow Book." L. Merc. Sept. (2:567.)
+
+#Wilson, Arthur.#
+  "New Decameron." Dial. Nov. 1, '19. (67:372.)
+
+#Wood, John Seymour.#
+  O. Henry. Book. (N. Y.) Jan. (50:474.)
+
+#Woolf, Virginia.#
+  Rudyard Kipling. Ath. Jul. 16. ('20:2:75.)
+
+
+"Yellow Book."
+  By Orlo Williams. L. Merc. Sept. (2:567.)
+
+
+Zola, A%mile.
+  By LA(C)on Deffoux and A%mile Zavie. M. de F. 15 fA(C)v. (138:68.)
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF SHORT STORIES IN BOOKS
+
+
+I. #American Authors#
+
+NOVEMBER, 1918, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+ABBREVIATIONS
+
+_Abdullah A._               Abdullah. Honorable Gentleman.
+_Abdullah B._               Abdullah. Wings.
+_Andrews B._                Andrews. Joy in the Morning.
+_Andreyev C._               Andreyev. When the King Loses His Head.
+_Ayala_                     Ayala. Prometheus.
+_Cannan_                    Cannan. Windmills.
+_Cather_                    Cather. Youth and the Bright Medusa.
+_Chekhov D._                Chekhov. Bishop.
+_Chekhov E._                Chekhov. Chorus Girl.
+_ClA(C)menceau_                ClA(C)menceau. Surprises of Life.
+_Cobb B._                   Cobb. Life of the Party.
+_Cobb C._                   Cobb. From Place to Place.
+_Connolly A._               Connolly. Hiker Joy.
+_D'Annunzio_                D'Annunzio. Tales of My Native Town.
+_Dostoevsky B._             Dostoevsky. Honest Thief.
+_Dowson_                    Dowson. Poems and Prose.
+_Dreiser B._                Dreiser. Twelve Men.
+_Dwight A._                 Dwight. Emperor of Elam.
+_Easton_                    Easton. Golden Bird.
+_Edgar_                     Edgar. Miller's Holiday.
+_Evans A._                  Evans. My Neighbors.
+_Ferber B._                 Ferber. Half Portions.
+_French B._                 French. Best Psychic Stories.
+_Galsworthy B._             Galsworthy. Tatterdemalion.
+_Hearn_                     Hearn. Fantastics.
+_Henry B._                  Henry. Waifs and Strays.
+_Hergesheimer B._           Hergesheimer. Happy End.
+_Holmes_                    Holmes and Starbuck. War Stories.
+_Howells_                   Howells. Great Modern American Stories.
+_Hrbkova_                   Hrbkova. Czecho-Slovak Stories.
+_Huneker_                   Huneker. Bedouins.
+_Hurst B._                  Hurst. Humoresque.
+_Huxley_                    Huxley. Limbo.
+_IbAiA+-ez_                    Blasco IbAiA+-ez. Last Lion.
+_Imrie_                     Imrie. Legends.
+_Jacobs A._                 Jacobs. Deep Waters.
+_James A._                  James. Travelling Companions.
+_Jessup A._                  Jessup. Best American Humorous Stories.
+_Johnson_                   Johnson. Under the Rose.
+_La Motte_                  La Motte. Civilization.
+_Laselle_                   Laselle. Short Stories of the New America.
+_LemaA(R)tre_                  LemaA(R)tre. Serenus.
+_Level_                     Level. Tales of Mystery and Horror.
+_Mackay_                    Mackay. Chill Hours.
+_MacManus A._               MacManus. Lo, and Behold Ye!
+_Marshall_                  Marshall. Clintons.
+_Martin_                    Martin. Children in the Mist.
+_Mayran_                    Mayran. Story of Gotton Connixloo.
+_McMichael_                 McMichael. Short Stories from the Spanish.
+_Merrick A._                Merrick. Man Who Understood Women.
+_Merrick B._                Merrick. While Paris Laughed.
+_Montague A._               Montague. Gift.
+_Montague B._               Montague. England to America.
+_Montague C._               Montague. Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge.
+_Nevinson_                  Nevinson. Workhouse Characters.
+_New Dec. A._               New Decameron. Prologue and First Day.
+_O'Brien A._                O'Brien. Best Short Stories of 1918.
+_O'Brien B._                O'Brien. Best Short Stories of 1919.
+_O'Brien C._                O'Brien. Great Modern English Stories.
+_O'Byrne A._                O'Byrne. Wrack.
+_O'Higgins A._              O'Higgins. From the Life.
+_O'Kelly B._                O'Kelly. Golden Barque.
+_Pertwee_                   Pertwee. Old Card.
+_Pinski A._                 Pinski. Temptations.
+_Post B._                   Post. Mystery of the Blue Villa.
+_Prize A._                  O. Henry Memorial Prize Stories. 1919.
+_Reeve_                     Reeve and French. Best Ghost Stories.
+_Rhodes_                    Rhodes. High Life.
+_Robbins_                   Robbins. Silent, White and Beautiful.
+_Robinson_                  Robinson. Eight Short Stories.
+_Russell_                   Russell. Red Mark.
+_Russian A._                Modern Russian Classics. (Four Seas Co.)
+_Schweikert B._             Schweikert. Russian Short Stories.
+_Smith_                     Smith. Pagan.
+_Spofford A._               Spofford. Elder's People.
+_Sudermann_                 Sudermann. Iolanthe's Wedding.
+_Tomlinson_                 Tomlinson. Old Junk.
+_Trevena_                   Trevena. By Violence.
+_Underwood A._              Underwood. Short Stories from the Balkans.
+_VernA"de_                   VernA"de. Port Allington Stories.
+_Vaka_                      Vaka and Phoutrides. Modern Greek Stories.
+_Van Dyke A._               Van Dyke. Valley of Vision.
+_Vigny_                     Vigny. Military Servitude and Grandeur.
+_Vorse_                     Vorse. Ninth Man.
+_Welles_                    Welles. Anchors Aweigh.
+_Wilson A._                 Wilson. Ma Pettengill.
+_Wylie_                     Wylie. Holy Fire.
+_Yezierska_                 Yezierska. Hungry Hearts.
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed. (Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan El-Durani El-Idrissyeh.#)
+  (1881- .)
+  **After His Kind. Abdullah A. 144.
+  ***Cobbler's Wax. Abdullah A. 112.
+  *Disappointment.  Abdullah B. 43.
+  *Fear. Abdullah B. 211.
+  ***Hatchetman. Abdullah A. 41.
+  *Himself,  to  Himself  Alone. Abdullah A. 241.
+  ***Honourable Gentleman. Abdullah A. 1.
+  **Khizr. Abdullah B. 183.
+  Krishnavana,  Destroyer  of Souls. Abdullah B. 115.
+  ***Light. Abdullah B. 231.
+  *Man Who Lost Caste. Abdullah B. 153.
+  *Pell Street Spring Song. Abdullah A. 73.
+  Renunciation. Abdullah B. 103.
+  **Silence. Abdullah B. 163.
+  ***Simple Act of Piety. Abdullah A. 196. O'Brien A. 3.
+  Tartar. Abdullah B. 77.
+  That Haunting Thing. Abdullah B. 135.
+  ***To be Accounted for. Abdullah B. 63.
+  ***Wings. Abdullah B. 1.
+
+#Ade, George.# (1866- .)
+  ***Effie Whittlesy. Howells. 288.
+
+#Aldrich, Thomas Bailey.# (1836-1907.)
+  ***Mlle. Olympe Zabriski. Howells, 110.
+
+#Allen, James Lane.# (1849- .)
+   Old Mill on the Elkhorn. Edgar. 133.
+
+#Alsop, Gulielma Fell.#
+   ***Kitchen Gods. O'Brien B. 3. Prize A. 253.
+
+#Ames, Jr., Fisher.#
+   *Sergt. Warren Comes Back from France. Laselle 171.
+
+#Anderson, Sherwood# (1876- .)
+   ***Awakening. O'Brien B. 24.
+
+#Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman.# (_See 1918._)
+  ***Ditch. Andrews B. 1.
+  ***Dundonald's  Destroyer. Andrews B. 299.
+  *He That Loseth His Life Shall Find It, Andrews B. 193.
+  **Her Country Too. Andrews B. 37.
+  Only One of Them. Andrews B. 137.
+  Robina's Doll. Andrews B. 283.
+  *Russian. Andrews B. 263.
+  **Silver  Stirrup. Andrews B. 241.
+  **Swallow. Andrews B. 85.
+  *V. C. Andrews B. 163.
+
+
+#Babcock, Edwina Stanton.#
+  ***Cruelties. O'Brien A. 24
+  ***Willum's Vanilla. O'Brien B, 34.
+
+#Barnes, Djuna.# (1892- .)
+  ***Night  Among  the  Horses. O'Brien B. 65.
+
+#Bartlett, Frederic Orin.#  (1876- .)
+   ChActeau-Thierry. Laselle. 199.
+   ***Long, Long Ago. O'Brien B. 74.
+
+#Beer, Thomas.# (1889- .)
+  *Absent Without Leave. Holmes. 1.
+
+#Bierce, Ambrose.# (1842-1914.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Damned Thing. Reeve. 160.
+  ***Eyes of the Panther. French B. 95.
+  ***Occurrence at  Owl Creek Bridge. Howells. 237.
+
+#Brooks, Alden.#
+  **Out of the Sky. Holmes. 17.
+
+#Brown, Alice.# (1857- .) _(See 1918.)_
+  ***Told in the Poorhouse. Howells. 225.
+
+#Brown, Katharine Holland.#
+  ***Buster. O'Brien A. 43.
+
+#Brownell, Agnes Mary.#
+  ***Dishes. O'Brien B. 82.
+
+#Bunner, Henry Cuyler.# (1855-1896.)
+  **Nice People. Jessup A. 141.
+
+#Burnet, Dana.# (1888- .)
+  *Christmas Fight of X 157. Holmes. 39.
+   *"Red,  White,  and  Blue." Holmes. 49.
+
+#Burt, Maxwell Struthers.# (1882- .)  (_See 1918._)
+   ***Blood-Red One. O'Brien B. 96.
+
+#Butler, Ellis Parker.# (1869- .)
+   ***Dey Ain't No Ghosts. Reeve. 177.
+
+"#Byrne, Donn.#" (#Bryan Oswald Donn-Byrne.#) (1888- .)
+  **Underseaboat  F-33. Holmes. 61.
+
+
+#Cabell, James Branch.# (1879- .)
+  **Porcelain Cups. Prize A. 210.
+  ***Wedding-Jest. O'Brien B. 108.
+
+#Cable, George Washington.# (1844- .)
+  ***Jean-Ah Poquelin. Howells. 390.
+
+#Canfield, Dorothy.# (#Dorothy Canfield Fisher.#) (1879- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Little Kansas Leaven. Laselle 1.
+
+#Cather, Willa Sibert.# (1875- .)
+  ***Coming, Aphrodite! Cather. 11.
+  ***"Death in the Desert." Cather. 273.
+  ***Diamond Mine. Cather. 79.
+  **Gold Slipper. Cather. 140.
+  ***Paul's Case. Cather. 199.
+  **Scandal. Cather. 169.
+  ***Sculptor's Funeral. Cather. 248.
+  ***Wagner MatinA(C)e. Cather. 235.
+
+#Chester, George Randolph.# (1869- .)
+  Bargain Day at Tutt House. Jessup A. 213.
+
+#Clemens, Samuel Langhorne.# _See_ "#Twain, Mark.#"
+
+#Cobb, Irvin Shrewsbury.# (1876- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Boys Will Be Boys. Cobb C. 96.
+  *Bull Called Emily. Cobb C. 382.
+  ***Gallowsmith. Cobb C. 11.
+  Hoodwinked. Cobb C. 332.
+  John J. Coincidence. Cobb C. 259.
+  **Life of the Party. Cobb B. 11.
+  **Luck Piece. Cobb C. 156.
+  ***Quality Folks. Cobb C. 206.
+  *Thunders of Silence. Cobb C. 55.
+  *When August the Second Was April the First. Cobb C. 302.
+
+#Connolly, James Brendan.# (1868- .)
+  *Aboard the Horse-Boat. Connolly A. 53.
+  *Flying Sailor. Connolly A. 132.
+  *Good-bye the Horse-Boat. Connolly A. 105.
+  *Jack o' Lanterns. Connolly A. 6.
+  *London Lights. Connolly A. 214.
+  *Lumber Schooner. Connolly A. 27.
+  *North Sea Men. Connolly A. 187.
+  *Undersea Men. Connolly A. 79.
+  *Wimmin 'n' Girls. Connolly A. 159.
+
+#Cook, Mrs. George Cram.# _See_ #Glaspell, Susan.#
+
+#Cooke, Grace MacGowan.# (1863- .)
+  *Call. Jessup A. 237.
+
+#Coolidge, Grace.#
+  **Indian of the Reservation. Laselle. 109.
+
+#Curtis, George William.# (1824-1892.)
+  **Titbottom's Spectacles. Jessup A. 52.
+
+
+#Dashiell, Landon R.#
+  ***Aunt Sanna Terry. Howells. 352.
+
+#Derieux, Samuel Arthur.#  (1881- .)
+  *Trial in Tom Belcher's Store. Prize A. 192.
+
+#Dobie, Charles Caldwell.# (1881- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Open Window. O'Brien A. 61.
+
+#Dreiser, Theodore.# (1871- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Country Doctor. Dreiser B. 110.
+  ***Culhane, the Solid Man. Dreiser B. 134.
+  ***De Maupassant, Jr. Dreiser B. 206.
+  ***Doer of the Word. Dreiser B. 53.
+  ***Lost Phoebe. Howells. 295.
+  ***Mayor and His People. Dreiser B. 320.
+  ***Mighty Rourke. Dreiser  B. 287.
+  ***My Brother Paul. Dreiser B. 76.
+  ***Peter. Dreiser B. 18.
+  ***True Patriarch. Dreiser B. 187.
+  ***Vanity, Vanity. Dreiser B. 263.
+  ***Village Feudists. Dreiser B. 239.
+  ***W. L. S. Dreiser B. 344.
+
+#Dwight, Harry Griswold.# (1875- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Bald Spot. Dwight A. 290.
+  **Bathers. Dwight A. 151.
+  ***Behind the Door. Dwight A. 266.
+  ***Emperor of Elam. Dwight A. 306.
+  ***Henrietta Stackpole _Radiviva._ Dwight A. 32.
+  ***Like Michael. Dwight A. 3.
+  **Mrs. Derwall and the Higher Life. Dwight A. 131.
+  ***Pagan. Dwight A. 52.
+  **Retarded Bombs. Dwight A. 172.
+  ***Studio Smoke. Dwight A. 252.
+  ***Susannah and the Elder. Dwight A. 191.
+  ***Unto the Day. Dwight A. 108.
+  ***White Bombazine. Dwight A. 82.
+
+#Dwight, Harry Griswold.# (1875- .) (_See 1918_) _and_ #Taylor, John R. M.#
+  ***Emerald of Tamerlane. Dwight A. 221.
+
+#Dwyer, James Francis.# (1874- .)
+  ***Citizen. Laselle. 85.
+  *Little Man in the Smoker. Holmes. 79.
+
+#Dyke, Henry Van.# _See_ #Van Dyke, Henry.#
+
+
+#Edwards, George Wharton.# (1859- .)
+  **Clavecin-Bruges. French B. 54.
+
+#Edwards, Harry Stillwell.# (1855- .)
+  **Elder Brown's Backslide. Jessup A. 109.
+
+#Emery, Gilbert.#
+  "Squads Right." Holmes. 86.
+
+#Empey, Arthur Guy.# (1883- .)
+  *Coward. Laselle. 181.
+
+
+#Ferber, Edna.# (1887- .)
+  April 25th, As Usual. Ferber B. 36. Price A. 274.
+  *Dancing Girls. Ferber B. 280.
+  *Farmer in the Dell. Ferber B. 239.
+  *Long Distance. Ferber B. 148.
+  ***Maternal Feminine. Ferber B. 3.
+  **Old Lady Mandle. Ferber B. 76.
+  One Hundred Per Cent. Ferber B. 201. Holmes. 95.
+  *Un Morso Doo Pang. Ferber B. 157.
+  ***You've Got To Be Selfish. Ferber B. 113.
+
+#Fish, Horace.# (1885- .)
+  ***Wrists on the Door. O'Brien B. 123.
+
+#Fisher, Dorothy Canfield.# _See_ #Canfield, Dorothy.#
+
+#Freedley, Mary Mitchell.# (1894- .)
+  ***Blind Vision. Holmes. 119. O'Brien A. 85.
+
+#Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins.# (1862- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Revolt of Mother. Howells. 207.
+
+#French, Alice.# _See_ "#Thanet, Octave.#"
+
+#Fuller, Henry Blake.# (1857- .)
+  ***Striking an Average. Howells. 267.
+
+
+#Garland, Hamlin.# (1860- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Graceless Husband. Edgar. 142.
+  ***Return of a Private. Howells. 248.
+
+#Gerould, Gordon Hall.# (1877- .)
+  ***Imagination. O'Brien A. 92.
+
+#Gerry, Margarita Spalding.# (1870- .)
+  *Flag Factory. Holmes. 126.
+
+#Gilbert, George.# (1874- .)
+  ***In Maulmain Fever-Ward. O'Brien A. 109.
+
+#Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.# (1860- .)
+  ***Yellow Wall Paper. Howells. 320.
+
+#Glaspell, Susan (Keating). (Mrs. George Cram Cook.)# (1882- .)
+  ***"Government Goat." O'Brien B. 147.
+
+#Goodman, Henry.# (1893- .)
+  ***Stone. O'Brien B. 167.
+
+
+#Haines, Donal Hamilton.# (1886- .)
+  *Bill. Holmes. 136.
+
+#Hale, Edward Everett.# (1822-1909.)
+  *First Grain Market. Edgar. 181.
+  ***My Double; and How He Undid Me. Howells. 3. Jessup A. 75.
+
+#Hallet, Richard Matthews.# (1887- .)
+  ***To the Bitter End. O'Brien B. 178.
+
+#Harris, Joel Chandler.# (1848-1908.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the Tar Baby. Howells. 413.
+
+#Harte, Francis Bret.# (1839-1902.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Colonel Starbottle for the Plaintiff. Jessup A. 170.
+  ***Outcasts of Poker Flat. Howells. 143.
+
+#Hastings, Wells.# (1878- .)
+  *Gideon. Jessup A. 260.
+
+#Hearn, Lafcadio.# (1850-1904.)
+  ***All in White. Hearn. 29.
+  ***Aphrodite and the King's Prisoner. Hearn. 102.
+  ***Bird and the Girl. Hearn. 150.
+  ***Black Cupid. Hearn. 71.
+  ***Devil's Carbuncle. Hearn. 40.
+  ***El Vomito. Hearn. 136.
+  ***Fountain of Gold. Hearn. 110.
+  ***Ghostly Kiss. Hearn. 66.
+  ***Gipsy's Story. Hearn. 174.
+  ***Hiouen-thsang. Hearn. 211.
+  ***Idyl of a French Snuff-Box. Hearn. 143.
+  ***Kiss Fantastical. Hearn. 152.
+  ***Little Red Kitten. Hearn. 33.
+  ***Name on the Stone. Hearn. 98.
+  ***One Pill-Box. Hearn. 183.
+  ***Post-Office. Hearn. 227.
+  ***Vision of the Dead Creole. Hearn. 92.
+
+"#Henry, O.#" (#William Sydney Porter.#) (1867-1910.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Cactus. Henry B. 76.
+  *Church with an Overshot Wheel. Edgar. 1.
+  Confessions of a Humourist. Henry B. 52.
+  Detective Detector. Henry B. 82.
+  *Dog and the Playlet. Henry B. 90.
+  ***Duplicity of Hargraves. Jessup A. 199.
+  Hearts and Hands. Henry B. 72.
+  Little Talk About Mobs. Henry B. 97.
+  *Out of Nazareth. Henry B. 32.
+  ***Red Roses of Tonia. Henry B. 3.
+  **Round the Circle. Henry B. 17.
+  *Rubber Plant's Story. Henry B. 25.
+  *Sparrows in Madison Square. Henry B. 66.
+
+"#Henry, O.#" (#William Sydney Porter#) (1867-1910), _and_ #Lyon,
+Harris Merton.# (1881-1916.)
+  *Snow Man. Henry B. 102.
+
+#Hergesheimer, Joseph.# (1880- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Bread. Hergesheimer B. 193.
+  *Egyptian Chariot. Hergesheimer B. 55.
+  Flower of Spain. Hergesheimer B. 93.
+  **Lonely Valleys. Hergesheimer B. 11.
+  ***Meeker Ritual. O'Brien B. 200.
+  *Rosemary Roselle. Hergesheimer B. 231.
+  **Thrush in the Hedge. Hergesheimer B. 283.
+  **Tol'able David. Hergesheimer B. 155.
+
+#Holmes, Oliver Wendell.# (1809-1894.)
+  *Visit to the Asylum for Aged and Decayed Punsters. Jessup A. 94.
+
+#Humphrey, George.# (1889- .)
+  ***Father's Hand. O'Brien A. 125.
+
+#Huneker, James Gibbons.# (1860- .)
+  **Brothers-in-Law. Huneker. 201.
+  **Cardinal's Fiddle. Huneker. 247.
+  **Grindstones. Huneker. 216.
+  Renunciation. Huneker. 256.
+  *Supreme Sin. Huneker. 177.
+  _Venus or Valkyr?_ Huneker. 225.
+  *Vision Malefic. Huneker. 261.
+
+#Hurst, Fannie.# (1889- .) (_See 1918._)
+  **Boob Spelled Backward. Hurst B. 220.
+  **Even as You and I. Hurst B. 262.
+  *"Heads." Hurst B. 170.
+  ***Humoresque. Hurst  B. 1. Prize A. 148.
+  **Oats for the Woman. Hurst B. 45.
+  **Petal on the Current. Hurst B. 85.
+  **White Goods. Hurst B. 126.
+  *Wrong Pew. Hurst B. 300.
+
+
+
+#Imrie, Walter McLaren.#
+ ***Daybreak. Imrie. 7.
+ **Dead Men's Teeth. Imrie. 29.
+ ***Remembrance. Imrie. 41.
+ **Storm. Imrie. 15.
+
+#Ingersoll, Will E.#
+  ***Centenarian. O'Brien B. 225.
+
+
+#James, Henry.# (1843-1916.)
+  ***Adina. James A. 223.
+  ***At Isella. James A. 125.
+  ***De Grey: a Romance. James A. 269.
+  ***Guest's Confession. James A. 157.
+  *** Passionate Pilgrim. Howells. 43.
+  ***Professor Fargo. James A. 87.
+  ***Sweetheart of M. Briseux. James A. 53.
+  ***Travelling Companions. James A. 1.
+
+#Jewett, Sarah Orne.# (1849-1909.)
+  ***Courting of Sister Wisby. Howells. 190.
+
+#Johnson, Arthur.# (1881- .)
+  ***His New Mortal Coil. Johnson 270.
+  How the Ship Came In. Johnson. 303.
+  ***Little Family. Johnson. 237.
+  ***Mr. Eberdeen's House. Johnson. 138.
+  **One Hundred Eightieth Meridian. Johnson. 115.
+  ***Princess of Tork. Johnson. 1.
+  ***Riders in the Dark. Johnson. 54.
+  *Two Lovers. Johnson. 183.
+  ***Visit of the Master. Johnson. 203. O'Brien A. 131.
+
+#Johnston, Calvin.#
+  ***Messengers. O'Brien B. 237.
+
+#Johnston, Richard Malcolm.# (1822-1898.)
+  *Hotel Experience of Mr. Pink Fluker. Jessup A. 128.
+
+#Jones, Howard Mumford.#
+  ***Mrs. Drainger's Veil. O'Brien B. 269.
+
+
+#Kirkland, Caroline Matilda Stansbury.#  (1801-1864.) Schoolmaster's
+Progress. Jessup A. 18.
+
+#Kline, Burton.# (1877- .)
+  ***In the Open Code. O'Brien A. 149.
+
+#Kompert, Leopold.#
+  ***Silent Woman. Reeve. 60.
+
+
+#La Motte, Ellen Newbold.# (1873- .)
+  **Canterbury Chimes. La Motte. 177.
+  *Civilization. La Motte. 93.
+  ***Cosmic Justice. La Motte. 247.
+  *Homesick. La Motte. 65.
+  **Misunderstanding. La Motte 121.
+  ***On the Heights. La Motte. 33
+  ***Prisoners. La Motte. 141.
+  ***Under a Wineglass. O'Brien B. 297. La Motte. 217.
+  **Yellow Streak. La Motte. 11.
+
+#Lampton, William James.# ( -1917.)
+  **How the Widow Won the Deacon. Jessup A. 252.
+
+#Leslie, Eliza.# (1787-1858.)
+  Watkinson Evening. Jessup A. 34.
+
+#Lewars, Elsie Singmaster.# _See_ #Singmaster, Elsie.#
+
+#Lewis, Sinclair.# (1885- .)
+  ***Willow Walk. O'Brien A. 154.
+
+#Lieberman, Elias.# (1883- .)
+  ***Thing of Beauty. O'Brien B. 305.
+
+#London, Jack.# (1876-1916.) (_See 1918._)
+  *When the World Was Young. French B. 1.
+
+#Lummis, Charles Fletcher.# (1859- .)
+  *Blue-Corn Witch. Edgar. 120.
+  *Swearing Enchiladas. Edgar. 156.
+
+#Lyon, Harris Merton.# _See_ "Henry, O.", _and_ #Lyon, Harris Merton.#
+
+
+#Mackay, Helen.# (1876- .)
+  **At the End. Mackay. 3.
+  **Cauldron. Mackay. 95.
+  **Footsteps. Mackay. 178.
+  ***"He Cost Us So Much." Mackay. 154.
+  **"Here Are the Shadows!" Mackay. 160.
+  **"I Take Pen in Hand." Mackay. 172.
+  **Little Cousins of No. 12. Mackay. 148.
+  **Madame Anna. Mackay. 143.
+  *Moment. Mackay. 188.
+  **9 and the 10. Mackay. 184.
+  **Odette in Pink Taffeta. Mackay. 20.
+  ***One or Another. Mackay. 72.
+  ***Second Hay. Mackay. 49.
+  *She Who Would Not Eat Soup. Mackay. 164.
+  *Their Places. Mackay. 35.
+  **Vow. Mackay. 168.
+
+#MacManus, Seumas.# (1870- .)
+  ***Bodach and the Boy. MacManus A. 51.
+  ***Dark  Patrick's Blood-horse. MacManus A. 32.
+  ***Day of the Scholars. MacManus A. 117.
+  ***Donal O'Donnell's Standing Army. MacManus A. 131.
+  ***Far Adventures of Billy Burns. MacManus A. 71.
+  ***Jack and the Lord High Mayor. MacManus A. 215.
+  **King's Curing. MacManus A. 163.
+  ***Long Cromachy of the Crows. MacManus A. 196.
+  **Lord Thorny's Eldest Son. MacManus A. 180.
+  ***Mad Man, the Dead Man, and the Devil. MacManus A. 1.
+  *Man Who Would Dream. MacManus A. 99.
+  **Parvarted Bachelor. MacManus A. 150.
+  ***Quare  Birds. MacManus  A. 240.
+  ***Queen's Conquest. MacManus A. 16.
+  ***Resurrection of Dinny Muldoon. MacManus A. 263.
+  ***Son of Strength. MacManus A. 248.
+  **Tinker of Tamlacht. MacManus A. 84.
+
+#Marshall, Edison.# (1894- .)
+  **Elephant Remembers. Prize A. 78.
+
+#Martin, George Madden.# (1866- .)
+  *Blue Handkerchief. Martin. 71.
+  *Fire from  Heaven. Martin. 223.
+  *Flight. Martin. 1.
+  *Inskip Niggah. Martin. 120.
+  *Malviney. Martin. 252.
+  *Pom. Martin. 160.
+  *Sixty Years  After. Martin. 276.
+  *Sleeping Sickness. Martin. 200.
+
+#Matthews, James Brander.# (1852- .)
+  **Rival Ghosts. Reeve. 141.
+
+#Montague, Margaret Prescott.# (1878- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***England to America. Prize A. 3. Montague B. 3.
+  **Gift. Montague A. 3.
+  ***Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge. Montague C. 3.
+
+#Morris, George Pope.# (1802-1864.)
+  Little Frenchman and His Water Lots. Jessup A. 1.
+
+#Morris, Gouverneur.# (1876- .)
+  Behind the Door. Holmes. 145.
+  ***Unsent Letter. Holmes. 155.
+
+#Mosley, Katherine Prescott.#
+  ***Story Vinton Heard at Mallorie. O'Brien A. 191.
+
+
+#O'Brien, Mary Heaton Vorse.# _See_ #Vorse, Mary Heaton.#
+
+#O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold.# (1876- .)
+  **Benjamin  McNeil Murdock. O'Higgins A. 129.
+  **Conrad Norman. O'Higgins A. 171.
+  **District Attorney Wickson. O'Higgins A. 305.
+  **Hon. Benjamin P. Divins. O'Higgins A. 245.
+  **Jane Shore. O'Higgins A. 45.
+  ***Owen Carey. O'Higgins A. 3.
+  **Sir Watson Tyler. O'Higgins A. 269.
+  ***Thomas Wales Warren. O'Higgins A. 89.
+  ***W.T. O'Higgins A. 217.
+
+#Osborne, William Hamilton.# (1873- .)
+  Infamous Inoculation. Holmes. 166.
+
+#O'Sullivan, Vincent.# (1872- .)
+  ***Interval. Reeve. 170.
+
+
+#Payne, Will.# (1855- .)
+  ***His Escape. Holmes. 196.
+
+#Pelley, William Dudley.#
+  ***Toast to Forty-Five. O'Brien A. 200.
+
+#Pier, Arthur Stanwood.# (1874- .)
+  Night Attack. Laselle. 119.
+
+#Poe, Edgar Allan# (1809-1849.) (_See 1918._)
+  *Angel of the Odd. Jessup A. 7.
+  ***Ligeia. French B. 61.
+
+#Pope, Laura Spencer Portor.# _See_ #Portor, Laura Spencer.#
+
+#Porter, William Sydney.# _See_ "#Henry, O.#"
+
+#Portor, Laura Spencer.# (#Mrs. Francis Pope.#)  (_See 1918._)
+  ***Boy's Mother. Holmes. 217.
+
+#Post, Melville Davisson.# (1871- .)  (_See 1918._)
+  Ally. Post B. 243.
+  ***Baron Starkheim. Post B. 333.
+  **Behind the Stars. Post B. 361.
+  **Five Thousand Dollars Reward. Prize A. 120.
+  *Girl in the Villa. Post B. 217.
+  *Girl from Galacia. Post B. 117.
+  **Great Legend. Post B. 55.
+   Laughter of Allah. Post B. 79.
+  **Lord  Winton's Adventure. Post B. 265.
+  *Miller of Ostend. Post B. 199.
+  ***Mystery at the Blue Villa. Post B. 3.
+  ***New Administration. Post B. 29.
+  *Pacifist. Post B. 137.
+  ***Sleuth of the Stars. Post B. 157.
+  **Stolen Life. Post B. 99.
+  **Sunburned Lady. Post B. 311.
+  **Wage-Earners. Post B. 291.
+  *Witch of the Lecca. Post B. 179.
+
+#Pulver, Mary Brecht.# (1883- .)
+  ***Path of Glory. Laselle. 133.
+
+#Putnam, George Palmer.# (1887- .)
+  ***Sixth Man. Holmes. 233.
+
+#Pyle, Howard.# (1853-1911.)
+  **Blueskin, the Pirate. Edgar. 71.
+  **Captain Scarfield. Edgar. 14.
+
+
+#Ravenel, Beatrice Witte.# (1870- .)
+  ***High Cost of Conscience. Prize A. 228.
+
+#Rhodes, Harrison (Garfield).# (1871- .)
+  ***Extra Men. O'Brien A. 223.
+  *Fair Daughter of a Fairer Mother. Rhodes. 143.
+  Importance of Being Mrs. Cooper. Rhodes. 171.
+  **Little  Miracle  at  Tlemcar. Rhodes. 115.
+  **Sad Case of Quag. Rhodes. 189.
+  ***Spring-time. Rhodes. 213.
+  **Vive l'AmA(C)rique! Rhodes. 233.
+
+#Rice, Louise.#
+  ***Lubbeny Kiss. Prize A. 180.
+
+#Rickford, Katherine.#
+  ***Joseph. French B. 41.
+
+#Robbins, Tod.#
+  *For Art's Sake. Robbins. 109.
+  *Silent, White, and Beautiful. Robbins. 1.
+  ***Who Wants a Green Bottle? Robbins. 30.
+  **Wild Wullie, the Waster. Robbins. 71.
+
+#Russell, John.# (1885- .)
+  ***Adversary. Russell. 182.
+  **Amok. Russell. 374.
+  *Doubloon Gold. Russell. 59.
+  *East of Eastward. Russell. 301.
+  **Fourth Man. Russell. 327.
+  Jetsam. Russell. 273.
+  *Lost God. Russell. 219.
+  **Meaning--Chase Yourself. Russell. 251.
+  *Passion-Vine. Russell. 144.
+  **Practicing of Christopher. Russell. 114.
+  *Price of the Head. Russell. 356.
+  Red Mark. Russell. 9.
+  **Slanted Beam. Russell. 201.
+  *Wicks of Macassar. Russell. 97.
+
+
+#Singmaster, Elsie. (Elsie  Singmaster Lewars.)# (1879- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Survivors. Laselle. 43.
+
+#Smith, Gordon Arthur.# (1886- .)
+  **Bottom of the Cup. Smith. 67.
+  **City of Lights. Smith. 38.
+  ***End of the Road. Smith. 138.
+  *Every Move. Smith. 249.
+  ***Feet of Gold. Smith. 100.
+  ***Jeanne, The Maid. Smith. 218.
+  Letitia. Smith. 283.
+  **Pagan. Smith. 3.
+  ***Return. Smith. 345.
+  *Tropic Madness. Smith. 177.
+  *Young Man's Fancy. Smith. 315.
+
+#Sneddon, Robert W.# (1880- .)
+  *Son of Belgium. Holmes. 262.
+
+#Spofford, Harriet Prescott.# (1835- .)
+  **Blessing Called Peace. Spofford A. 179.
+  **Change of Heart. Spofford A. 27.
+
+#Spofford, Harriet Prescott# (_con._)
+  ***Circumstance. Howells. 22.
+  **Deacon's Whistle. Spofford A. 1.
+  *Father James. Spofford A. 197.
+  **Impossible Choice. Spofford A. 227.
+  **John-a-Dreams. Spofford  A. 101.
+  ***Life in a Night. Spofford A. 293.
+  *Miss  Mahala  and  Johnny. Spofford A. 311.
+  **Miss Mahala's Miracle. Spofford A. 125.
+  **Miss Mahala's Will. Spofford A. 273.
+  ***Old Fiddler. Spofford A. 147.
+  **Rural Telephone. Spofford A. 55.
+  **Step-Father. Spofford A. 77.
+  ***Village Dressmaker. Spofford A. 243.
+
+#Springer, Fleta Campbell.# (1886- .)
+  ***Solitaire. O'Brien A. 232.
+
+#Springer, Thomas Grant.#
+  *Blood of the Dragon. Prize A. 135.
+
+#Steele, Wilbur Daniel.# (1886- .) (_See_ 1918.)
+  ***Dark Hour. O'Brien A. 258.
+  ***"For They Know Not What They Do." Prize A. 21.
+
+#Stetson, Charlotte Perkins.# _See_ #Gilman, Charlotte Perkins Stetson.#
+
+#Stockton, Frank Richard.# (1834-1902.)
+  ***Buller-Podington Compact. Jessup A. 151.
+  ***Christmas Wreck. Howells. 155. Edgar. 203.
+
+#Street, Julian (Leonard).# (1879- .)
+  ***Bird of Serbia. O'Brien A. 268.
+
+#Sullivan, Francis William.# (1887- .)
+  Godson of Jeannette Gontreau. Holmes. 243.
+
+
+#Tarkington, (Newton) Booth.# (1869- .)
+  *Captain Schlotterwerz. Holmes. 276.
+
+#Terhune, Albert Payson.# (1872- .)
+  *On Strike. Price A. 56.
+  Wildcat. Laselle. 55.
+
+"#Thanet, Octave.#" (#Alice French.#) (1850- .)
+  ***Labor Question at Glasscock's. Edgar. 171.
+  Miller's Seal. Edgar. 104.
+  Wild Western Way. Edgar. 35. 35.
+
+#Tracy, Virginia.# (1875- .)
+  ***Lotus Eaters. Howells. 361.
+
+"#Twain, Mark.#" (#Samuel Langhorne Clemens.#) (1835-1910.)
+  ***Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County. Howells. 36.
+  Jessup A. 102.
+
+
+#Van Dyke, Henry.# (1852- .)
+  *Antwerp Road. Van Dyke A. 15.
+  *Boy of Nazareth Dreams. Van Dyke A. 257.
+  **Broken Soldier and the Maid of France. Van Dyke A. 87.
+  City of Refuge. Van Dyke A. 21.
+  Hearing Ear. Van Dyke A. 137.
+  *Hero and Tin Soldiers. Van Dyke A. 231.
+  Primitive and His Sandals. Van Dyke A. 216.
+  **Remembered Dream. Van Dyke A. 1.
+  *Salvage Point. Van Dyke A. 237.
+  *Sanctuary of Trees. Van Dyke A. 37.
+
+#Venable, Edward Carrington# (1884- .)
+  ***At Isham's. O'Brien A. 293.
+
+#Vorse, Mary (Marvin) Heaton. (Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien.)#
+  ***De Vilmarte's Luck. O'Brien A. 305.
+  ***Ninth Man. Vorse. 1.
+  ***Other Room. O'Brien B. 312.
+
+
+#Welles, Harriet, Ogden Deen.#
+  **Admiral's Birthday. Welles. 33.
+  **Admiral's Hollyhocks. Welles. 128.
+  *Anchors Aweigh. Welles. 98.
+  **Between the Treaty Ports. Welles. 47.
+  *Day. Welles. 165.
+  **Duty First. Welles. 105.
+  *Flags. Welles. 251.
+  **Guam--and Effie. Welles. 214.
+  *Holding Mast. Welles. 186.
+  *In the Day's Work. Welles. 1.
+  ***Orders. Welles. 79.
+  **Wall. Welles. 197.
+
+#Weston, George (T.).# (1880- .)
+  **Feminine Touch. Holmes. 299.
+
+#Wharton, Edith.# (1862- .)
+  ***Mission of Jane. Howells. 170.
+
+#Wilkins, Mary E.# _See_ #Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins.#
+
+#Williams, Ben Ames.# (1889- .)
+  **They Grind Exceeding Small. Prize A. 42.
+
+#Wilson, Harry Leon.# (1866- .)
+  *As to Herman Wagner. Wilson A. 281.
+  *Can Happen! Wilson A. 234.
+  *Change of Venus. Wilson A. 209.
+  *Curls. Wilson A. 303.
+  Love Story. Wilson A. 38.
+  *Ma Pettengill and the Animal Kingdom. Wilson A. 3.
+  *One Arrowhead Day. Wilson A. 145.
+  *Porch Wren. Wilson A. 178.
+  *Red-Gap and the Big-League Stuff. Wilson A. 76.
+  *Taker-Up. Wilson A. 259.
+  *Vendetta. Wilson A. 109.
+
+#Wood, Frances Gilchrist.#
+  ***Turkey Red. Prize A. 105.
+  ***White Battalion. O'Brien A. 325.
+
+#Wyatt, Edith Franklin.# (1873- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Failure. Howells. 312.
+
+#Wynne, Madelene Yale.# (1847-1913.)
+  ***Little Room. Howells. 338.
+
+
+#Yezierska, Anzia.# (1886- .)
+  ***"Fat of the Land." Yezierska. 178. O'Brien B. 326.
+  *Free Vacation House. Yezierska. 97.
+  **How I Found America. Yezierska. 250.
+  ***Hunger. Yezierska. 35.
+  **Lost "Beautifulness." Yezierska. 65.
+  ***Miracle. Yezierska. 114.
+  ***My Own People. Yezierska. 224.
+  **Soap and Water. Yezierska. 163.
+  **Where Lovers Dream. Yezierska. 142.
+  **Wings. Yezierska. 1.
+
+
+II. English and Irish Authors
+
+
+#Barr, Robert.# (1850-1912.)
+  *Dorothy of the Mill. Edgar. 53.
+  *Mill on the Kop. Edgar. 188.
+
+#Barrie, Sir James Matthew.#(1860- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***How Gavin Birse Put It to Mag Lownie. O'Brien C. 111.
+
+#Bax, Arnold.# _See_ "#O'Byrne, Dermot.#"
+
+#Benson, Edward Frederic.# (1867- .)
+  ***Man Who Went Too Far. Reeve. 85.
+
+#Beresford, John Davys.# (1873- .)
+  ***Lost Suburb. O'Brien C. 309.
+
+#Blackwell, Basil.#
+  History of Joseph Binns. New Dec. A. 169.
+
+#Blackwood, Algernon.# (1869- .)
+  ***Man Who Played Upon the Leaf. O'Brien C. 176.
+  ***Return. French B. 24.
+  ***Second Generation. French B. 31.
+  ***Woman's Ghost Story. Reeve. 108.
+
+#Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Edward George.# (1803-1873.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Haunted and the Haunters. Reeve. 31.
+
+#Burke, Thomas.# (1887- .)
+  ***Chink and the Child. O'Brien C. 250.
+
+
+#Cannan, Gilbert.# (1884- .)
+  ***Birth. O'Brien C. 346.
+  ***Gynecologia. Cannan. 107.
+  ***Out of Work. Cannan. 159.
+  ***Samways Island. Cannan. 1.
+  ***Ultimus. Cannan. 49.
+
+#Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller.# _See_ #Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur
+Thomas.#
+
+#Cunninghame Graham, Robert Bontine.# (1852- .)
+  ***Fourth Magus. O'Brien C. 214.
+
+
+#Defoe, Daniel.# (1659-1731.) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Apparition of Mrs. Veal. Reeve. 3.
+
+#De SA(C)lincourt, Hugh.# _See_ #SA(C)lincourt, Hugh de.#
+
+#Dowson, Ernest.# (1867-1900.)
+  ***Case of Conscience. Dowson. 150.
+  ***Diary of a Successful Man. Dowson. 133.
+  ***_Dying of Francis Donne._ O'Brien C. 64.
+  ***Orchestral Violin. Dowson. 165.
+  ***Souvenirs of an Egoist. Dowson. 187.
+  *** Statute of Limitations. Dowson. 210.
+
+
+#Easton, Dorothy.#
+  **Adversity. Easton. 117.
+  *Arbor VitA|. Easton. 141.
+  *Benefactors. Easton. 137.
+  **Box of Chocolates. Easton. 92.
+  *Corner Stone. Easton. 130.
+  ***Day in the Country. Easton. 209.
+  ***For the Red Cross. Easton. 38.
+  ***Frog's Hole. Easton. 30.
+  **Genteel. Easton. 69.
+  ***Golden Bird. Easton. 11.
+  ***Heart-Breaker. Easton. 56.
+  **Heartless. Easton. 200.
+  **Impossible. Easton. 19.
+  **It Is Forbidden to Touch the Flowers. Easton. 191.
+  **Laughing Down. Easton. 26.
+  **Madame  Pottirand. Easton. 254.
+  *Miss Audrey. Easton. 185.
+  **Old Indian. Easton. 156.
+  **Our Men. Easton. 172.
+  ***Shepherd. Easton. 123.
+  *Spring Evening. Easton. 77.
+  **Steam Mill. Easton. 48.
+  ***Transformation. Easton. 52.
+  ***Twilight. Easton. 83.
+  **Unfortunate. Easton. 228.
+
+"#Egerton, George.#" (#Mary Chavelita Golding Bright.#)
+  ***Empty Frame. O'Brien C. 88.
+
+#Evans, Caradoc.#
+  ***According to the Pattern. Evans A. 31.
+  ***Earthbred. Evans A. 81.
+  ***For Better. Evans A. 99.
+  ***Greater Than Love. O'Brien C. 340.
+  ***Joseph's House. Evans A. 155.
+  ***Like Brothers. Evans A. 173.
+  ***Lost Treasure. Evans A. 215.
+  ***Love and Hate. Evans A. 11.
+  ***Profit and Glory. Evans A. 231.
+  **Saint David and the Prophets. Evans A. 131.
+  ***Treasure and Trouble. Evans A. 117.
+  **Two Apostles. Evans A. 59.
+  ***Unanswered  Prayers. Evans A. 199.
+  ***Widow Woman. Evans A. 187.
+
+
+#Galsworthy, John.# (1867- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Bright Side. Galsworthy B. 75.
+  *Buttercup  Night. Galsworthy B. 295.
+  ***"Cafard." Galsworthy B. 105.
+  ***Defeat. Galsworthy B. 27.
+  *"Dog It Was That Died." Galsworthy B. 147.
+  **Expectations. Galsworthy  B. 227.
+  ***Flotsam  and  Jetsam. Galsworthy B. 51.
+  ***Grey Angel. Galsworthy B. 3.
+  *In Heaven and Earth. Galsworthy B. 169.
+  **Manna. Galsworthy B. 239.
+  Mother Stone. Galsworthy B. 173.
+  **Muffled Ship. Galsworthy B. 187.
+  ***Nightmare Child. Galsworthy B. 283.
+  *Peace  Meeting. Galsworthy B. 137.
+  *Poirot and Bidan. Galsworthy B. 179.
+  *Recorded. Galsworthy B. 117.
+  ***Recruit. Galsworthy B. 125.
+  ***Spindleberries. Galsworthy B. 209.
+  ***Strange Thing. Galsworthy B. 255.
+  ***Two  Looks. Galsworthy  B. 271.
+
+#Graham, R. B. Cunninghame.# _See_ #Cunninghame Graham, Robert Bontine.#
+
+#Grant-Watson, E. L.#
+  ***Man and Brute. O'Brien C. 296.
+
+
+#Hardy, Thomas.# (1840- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Three Strangers. O'Brien. C. 1.
+
+#Harvey, William F.#
+  **Beast with Five Fingers. New Dec. A. 29.
+
+#Henham, Ernest G.# _See_ "#Trevena, John.#"
+
+#Hewlett, Maurice (Henry).# (1861- .)
+  ***Quattrocentisteria. O'Brien C. 126.
+
+#Hudson, W. H.#
+  ***Old Thorn. O'Brien C. 196.
+
+#Huxley, Aldous.#
+  ***Bookshop. Huxley. 259.
+  ***Cynthia. Huxley. 245.
+  ***Death of Lully. Huxley. 269.
+  **Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers. Huxley. 192.
+  ***Farcical  History of Richard Greenow. Huxley. 1.
+  **Happily Ever After. Huxley. 116.
+
+
+#Jacobs, William Wymark.# (1868- .) (_See 1918._)
+  Bedridden. Jacobs A. 98.
+  *Convert. Jacobs A. 112.
+  **Dirty Work. Jacobs A. 262.
+  *Family Cares. Jacobs A. 171.
+  *Husbandry. Jacobs A. 140.
+  *Made to Measure. Jacobs A. 51.
+  **Paying Off. Jacobs A. 29.
+  **Sam's Ghost. Jacobs A. 75.
+  *Shareholders. Jacobs A. 1.
+  *Striking Hard. Jacobs A. 234.
+  *Substitute. Jacobs A. 207.
+  Winter Offensive. Jacobs A. 199.
+
+#James, Montague Rhodes.# (1862- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book. Reeve. 18.
+
+#Jameson, M. Storm-.# _See_ #Storm-Jameson, M.#
+
+
+#Kipling, Rudyard.# (1865- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Phantom Rickshaw. Reeve. 118.
+  ***Three Musketeers. O'Brien C. 93.
+  ***Wee Willie Winkie. O'Brien C. 99.
+
+
+#Lawrence, David Herbert.# (1885- .)
+  ***Sick Collier. O'Brien C. 332.
+
+#Lytton, Lord. George Bulwer-.# _See_ #Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Edward George.#
+
+
+"#Macleod, Fiona.#" (#William Sharp.#) (1856-1905.) (_See 1918._)
+  **Fisher of Men. O'Brien C. 117.
+  ***Sin-Eater. French B. 126.
+
+#Marshall, Archibald.# (1866- .)
+  *Audacious Ann. Marshall. 191.
+  *Bookkeeper. Marshall. 303.
+  *Builder. Marshall. 155.
+  *"In that State of Life." Marshall. 95.
+  *Kencote. Marshall. 3.
+  *Little Squire. Marshall. 175.
+  *Son of Service. Marshall. 63.
+  *Squire and the War. Marshall. 327.
+  *Terrors. Marshall. 41.
+
+#Merrick, Leonard.# (1864- .)
+  **Antenuptial. Merrick B. 274.
+  **Antiques and Amoretti. Merrick B. 228.
+  ***"At Home, Beloved, At Home." Merrick B. 29.
+  **Back of Bohemia. Merrick A. 293.
+  **Banquets of Kiki. Merrick B. 150.
+  *Bishop's Comedy. Merrick A. 344.
+  **Call from the Past. Merrick A. 383.
+  *Child in the Garden. Merrick A. 160.
+  ***Dead Violets. Merrick A. 239.
+  *Favourite Plot. Merrick A. 259.
+  **Frankenstein II. Merrick A. 50.
+  ***Lady of Lyons. Merrick A. 313.
+  ***Laurels and the Lady. Merrick A. 81.
+  ***Letter to the Duchess. Merrick A. 180.
+  ***Man Who Understood Women. Merrick A. 1.
+  ***Meeting in the GalA(C)ries Lafayette. Merrick B. 78.
+  ***Monsieur Blotto and the Lions. Merrick B. 54.
+  ***"On Est Mieux Ici qu'en Face." Merrick B. 11.
+  **Piece of Sugar. Merrick B. 127.
+  **Poet Grows Practical. Merrick B. 173.
+  ***Prince in the Fairy Tale. Merrick A. 200.
+  *Reconciliation. Merrick A. 368.
+  **Reformed  Character. Merrick B. 205.
+  *Reverie. Merrick A. 364.
+  **Tale That Wouldn't Do. Merrick A. 68.
+  *Third M. Merrick A. 326.
+  *Time the Humorist. Merrick A. 277.
+  ***Very Good Thing For the Girl. Merrick A. 18.
+  **Waiting for Henriette. Merrick B. 251.
+  *With Intent to Defraud. Merrick A. 224.
+  **Woman in the Book. Merrick B. 102.
+  ***Woman Who Wished to Die. Merrick A. 35.
+
+#Middleton, Richard.# (1882-1911.)
+  ***Ghost Ship. O'Brien C. 225.
+
+
+#Nevinson, Henry Woodd.# (1852- .)
+  ***Fire of Prometheus. O'Brien C. 157.
+
+#Nevinson, Margaret Wynne.#
+  *Alien. Nevinson. 130.
+  "And, Behold the Babe Wept." Nevinson. 47.
+  *Blind and Deaf. Nevinson. 39.
+  Daughter of the State. Nevinson. 80.
+  *Detained by Marital Authority. Nevinson. 21.
+  *Eunice Smith--Drunk. Nevinson. 13.
+  "Girl! God Help Her!" Nevinson. 145.
+  *In the Lunatic Asylum. Nevinson. 118.
+  *In the Phthisis Ward. Nevinson. 80.
+  **Irish Catholic. Nevinson. 91.
+  *"Mary, Mary, Pity Women!" Nevinson. 53.
+  *Mothers. Nevinson. 104.
+  **Obscure Conversationist. Nevinson. 97.
+  *Old Inky. Nevinson. 75.
+  *Publicans and Harlots. Nevinson. 68.
+  *Runaway. Nevinson. 138.
+  *Suicide. Nevinson. 61.
+  **Sweep's Legacy. Nevinson. 126.
+  "Too Old at Forty." Nevinson. 115.
+  ***Vow. Nevinson. 33.
+  *Welsh Sailor. Nevinson. 27.
+  *"Widows Indeed!" Nevinson. 134.
+  *"Your Son's Your Son." Nevinson. 110.
+
+#Nightingale, M. T.#
+  *Stone House Affair. New Dec. A. 112.
+
+
+"#O'Byrne, Dermot.#" (#Arnold Edward Trevor Bax.#) (1883- .)
+  ***Before Dawn. O'Byrne A. 29.
+  ***Coward's Saga. O'Byrne A. 84.
+  ***"From the Fury of the O'Flahertys." O'Byrne A. 67.
+  ***Invisible City of Coolanoole. O'Byrne A. 127.
+  ***King's Messenger. O'Byrne A. 156.
+  ***Vision of St. Molaise. O'Byrne A. 172.
+  ***Wrack. O'Byrne A. 1.
+
+#O'Kelly, Seumas.#
+  ***Billy the Clown. O'Kelly B. 149.
+  ***Derelict. O'Kelly B. 173.
+  ***Haven. O'Kelly B. 134.
+  ***Hike and Calcutta. O'Kelly B. 121.
+  ***Man with the Gift. O'Kelly B. 200.
+  ***Michael and Mary. O'Kelly B. 111.
+  ***Weaver's Grave. O'Kelly B. 9.
+
+
+#Pertwee, Roland.#
+  ***Big Chance. Pertwee 1.
+  ***Clouds. Pertwee. 243.
+  ***Cure that Worked Wonders. Pertwee. 42.
+  ***Dear Departed. Pertwee. 212.
+  ***Eliphalet Touch. Pertwee. 67.
+  ***Final Curtain. Pertwee. 271.
+  ***Gas Works. Pertwee. 143.
+  ***Getting the Best. Pertwee. 102.
+  ***Mornice June. Pertwee. 165.
+  ***Pistols for Two. Pertwee. 21.
+  ***Quicksands of Tradition. Pertwee. 120.
+  ***Red and White. O'Brien C. 278.
+  ***Reversible Favour. Pertwee. 190.
+
+
+Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur Thomas. (1863- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Old A†son. O'Brien C. 152.
+
+
+#Robinson, Lennox.#
+  ***Chalice. Robinson. 30.
+  ***Education.  Robinson. 96.
+  ***Face. Robinson. 8.
+  ***Looking After the Girls. Robinson. 18.
+  ***Pair of Muddy Shoes. Robinson. 47.
+  ***Return. Robinson. 1.
+  ***Sponge. Robinson. 60.
+  ***Weir. Robinson. 78.
+
+
+#Sadler, Michael.#
+  Tumbril Touch. New Dec. A. 189.
+
+#SA(C)lincourt, Hugh De.#
+  ***Birth of an Artist. O'Brien C. 322.
+
+#Sharp, William.# _See_ "#Macleod, Fiona.#"
+
+#Stevenson, Robert Louis.# (1850-1894.)  (_See 1918._)
+  ***Lodging for the Night. O'Brien C. 26.
+
+#Storm-Jameson, M.#
+  *Mother-Love. New Dec. A. 78.
+
+
+#Tomlinson, H. M.# (1873- .)
+  ***Extra Hand. Tomlinson. 149.
+  ***Lascar's Walking-Stick. Tomlinson. 140.
+
+"#Trevena, John.#" (#Ernest G. Henham.#) (1878- .)
+  ***Business Is Business. Trevena. 45. O'Brien C. 236.
+  ***By Violence. Trevena. 13.
+  **Christening of the Fifteen Princesses. Trevena. 65.
+
+
+#VernA"de, Robert Ernest.# (1875-1917.)
+  Adventure of the Persian Prince. VernA"de. 194.
+  Bad Samaritan. VernA"de. 130.
+  Finless Death. VernA"de. 178.
+  Greatness of Mr. Walherstone. VernA"de. 33.
+  Madame Bluebeard. VernA"de. 233.
+  Maze. VernA"de. 301.
+  Missing Princess. VernA"de. 251.
+  Night's Adventure. VernA"de. 277.
+  Offence of Stephen Danesford. VernA"de. 80.
+  On the Raft. VernA"de. 218.
+  *Outrage at Port Allington. VernA"de. 55.
+  Smoke on the Stairs. VernA"de. 204.
+  Soaring Spirits. VernA"de. 102.
+  Sunk Elephant. VernA"de. 156.
+  "This is Tommy." VernA"de. 13.
+
+#Vines, Sherard.#
+  **Upper Room. New Dec. A. 178.
+
+
+#Walpole, Hugh Seymour.# (1884- .)
+  ***Monsieur FA(C)licitA(C). O'Brien C. 263.
+
+#Watson, E. L. Grant.# _See_ #Grant Watson, E. L.#
+
+#Wedmore, Sir Frederick.# (1844- .)
+  ***To Nancy. O'Brien C. 75.
+
+#Wells, Herbert George.# (1866- .)
+  ***Stolen  Bacillus. O'Brien C. 144.
+
+#Wilde, Oscar# (#Fingall O'Flahertie Wills.#) (1854-1900.)
+  ***Star-Child. O'Brien C. 47.
+
+#Wylie, Ida Alena Ross.# (1885- .)
+  **Bridge Across. Wylie. 66.
+  ***Colonel Tibbit Comes Home. Wylie. 133.
+  Episcopal Scherzo. Wylie. 267. 195.
+  **Gift for St. Nicholas. Wylie.
+  ***Holy Fire. Wylie. 9.
+  ***John Prettyman's Fourth Dimension. Wylie. 231.
+  ***"'Melia, No Good." Wylie. 163.
+  ***Thirst. Wylie. 28.
+  **"Tinker--Tailor--"  Wylie. 97.
+
+
+III. Translations
+
+
+#Alas,  Leopoldo.# ("#ClarA-n#"). (1852-1901.) (_Spanish._)
+  **Adios Cordera! McMichael. 97.
+
+#Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaevich.# (1871-1919.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Ben-Tobith. Andreyev C. 273.
+  ***Dies IrA|. Andreyev C. 287.
+  ***Judas Iscariot. Andreyev C. 45.
+  ***Lazarus. Andreyev C. 131.
+  ***Life of Father Vassily. Andreyev C. 161.
+  ***Marseillaise. Andreyev C. 281.
+  ***Silence. Russian A. 11.
+  ***Valia. Schweikert B. 343.
+  ***When the King Loses His Head. Andreyev C. 5.
+
+#Annunzio, Gabriele D'.# (_Italian._) _See_ #D'Annunzio, Gabriele.#
+
+#Artzibashev, Michael.# (_Russian._)
+  ***Doctor. Russian A. 38.
+
+#Ayala, RamA cubedn PA(C)rez De.# (_Spanish._)
+  ***Fall of the House of LimA cubedn. Ayala. 77.
+  ***Prometheus. Ayala. 1.
+  ***Sunday Sunlight. Ayala. 163.
+
+
+#Bizyenos,  George  T.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Sin of My Mother. Vaka. 57.
+
+#Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.# (1867-.)  (_Spanish._)
+  *Compassion. IbAiA+-ez. 36.
+  *Last Lion. IbAiA+-ez. 15.
+  ***Luxury. IbAiA+-ez. 56.
+  **Rabies. IbAiA+-ez. 61.
+  *Toad. IbAiA+-ez. 26.
+  **Windfall. IbAiA+-ez. 46.
+
+
+#Caragiale, J.L.# (_Rumanian._)
+  Easter Candles. Underwood A. 49.
+
+#Carco, Francis.# (_French._)
+  Memory of Paris Days. New Dec. A. 217.
+
+#AeOEech, Svatopluk.# (1846-1908.) (_Czech._)
+  ***Foltyn's Drum. Hrbkova. 55.
+  ***Journey. Underwood A. 75.
+
+#Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.# (1861-1904.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***At a Country House. Chekhov E. 173.
+  **Bad Weather. Chekhov E. 269.
+  ***Bishop. Chekhov D. 3.
+  ***Chorus Girl. Chekhov E. 3.
+  ***Easter Eve. Chekhov D. 49.
+  ***Father. Chekhov E. 187. Russian A. 56.
+  **Ivan Matveyitch. Chekhov E. 279.
+  ***In Exile.  Schweikert B. 320.
+  **Ivan Matveyitch. Chekhov E. 245.
+  ***Letter. Chekhov D. 29.
+  ***Murder. Chekhov D. 89.
+  ***My Life. Chekhov E. 37.
+  ***Nightmare. Chekhov D. 67.
+  ***On the Road. Chekhov E. 201.
+  ***Rothschild's  Fiddle. Chekhov E. 227.
+  ***Steppe. Chekhov D. 161.
+  ***Trivial Incident. Chekhov E. 227.
+  ***Uprooted. Chekhov D. 135.
+  ***Verotchka. Chekhov E. 15.
+  **Zinotchka. Chekhov E. 257.
+
+"#ClarA-n.#" (_Spanish._) _See_ #Alas, Leopoldo.#
+
+#ClA(C)menceau, Georges.# (_French._)
+  About Nests. ClA(C)menceau. 185.
+  ***Adventure of My CurA(C). ClA(C)menceau. 149.
+  *At the Foot of the Cross. ClA(C)menceau. 87.
+  **Aunt  Rosalie's  Inheritance. ClA(C)menceau. 45.
+  **Better than Stealing. ClA(C)menceau. 125.
+  *Bullfinch and the Maker of Wooden Shoes. ClA(C)menceau. 173.
+  **Descendant of Timon. ClA(C)menceau. 19.
+  Domestic Drama. ClA(C)menceau. 197.
+  *Evil Beneficence. ClA(C)menceau. 101.
+  **Flower o' the Wheat. ClA(C)menceau. 221.
+  **Giambolo. ClA(C)menceau. 313.
+  *Gideon in His Grave. ClA(C)menceau. 61.
+  *Gray Fox. ClA(C)menceau. 137.
+  *Happy Union. ClA(C)menceau. 263.
+  *Hunting Accident. ClA(C)menceau. 301.
+  *Jean Piot's Feast. ClA(C)menceau. 233.
+  *Lovers in Florence. ClA(C)menceau. 287.
+  **Mad Thinker. ClA(C)menceau. 113.
+  **Malus  Vicinus. ClA(C)menceau. 31.
+  *Master Baptist, Judge. ClA(C)menceau. 161.
+  **Mokoubamba's Fetish. ClA(C)menceau. 3.
+  *Simon, Son of Simon. ClA(C)menceau. 73.
+  Six Cents. ClA(C)menceau. 209.
+  **Treasure of St. Bartholomew. ClA(C)menceau. 249.
+  *Well-Assorted Couple. ClA(C)menceau. 275.
+
+#D'Annunzio, Gabriele# (#Rapagnetta#). (1864- .) (_Italian._)
+  ***Countess of Amalfi. D'Annunzio. 10.
+  ***Death of the Duke of Ofena. D'Annunzio. 172.
+  ***Downfall of Candia. D'Annunzio. 153.
+  ***Gold Pieces. D'Annunzio. 83.
+  ***Hero. D'Annunzio. 3.
+  ***Idolaters. D'Annunzio. 119.
+  ***Mungia. D'Annunzio. 140.
+  ***Return of Turlendana. D'Annunzio. 56.
+  ***Sorcery. D'Annunzio. 92.
+  ***Turlendana Drunk. D'Annunzio. 72.
+  ***Virgin Anna. D'Annunzio. 215.
+  ***War of the Bridge. D'Annunzio. 192.
+
+#Dario, RubA(C)n.# (1867-1916.) (_Spanish._)
+  **Box. McMichael. 31.
+  ***Death of the Empress of China. McMichael. 3.
+  *Veil of Queen Mab. McMichael. 21.
+
+#De Vigny, Alfred.# (_French._) _See_ #Vigny, Alfred De.#
+
+#Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich.# (1821-1881.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Another Man's Wife. Dostoevsky B. 208.
+  ***Bobok. Dostoevsky B. 291.
+  ***Crocodile. Dostoevsky B. 257.
+  ***Dream of a Ridiculous Man. Dostoevsky B. 307.
+  ***Heavenly Christmas Tree. Dostoevsky B. 248.
+  ***Honest Thief. Dostoevsky B. 1.
+  ***Novel in Nine Letters. Dostoevsky B. 145.
+  ***Peasant Marey. Dostoevsky B. 252.
+  ***Thief. Schweikert B. 79.
+  ***Unpleasant Predicament. Dostoevsky B. 157.
+
+#Drosines, George.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***God-father. Vaka. 93.
+
+
+#Eftaliotes, Argyres.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  Angelica. Vaka. 157.
+
+
+#Friedenthal, Joachim.# (_German._)
+  ***Pogrom  in  Poland. Underwood A. 195.
+
+
+#Garshin, Wsewolod Michailovich.# (1855-1888.) (_Russian._)
+  ***Signal. Schweikert B. 308.
+
+#Gjalski, Xaver-Sandor.# (_Croatian._) _See_ #Sandor-Gjalski, Xaver.#
+
+#Gogol, Nikolai Vasilievich.# (1809-1852.) (_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Cloak. Schweikert B. 40.
+
+"#Gorki, Maxim.#" (#Alexei Maximovich Pyeshkov.#) (1868 or 1869- .)
+(_Russian._) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Chelkash.  Schweikert B. 381.
+  ***Comrades. Schweikert B. 361.
+  ***Her Lover. Russian A. 67.
+
+
+#Herrman, Ignat.# (1854- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***What Is Omitted from the Cook-book of Madame MagdAilena Dobromila
+  RettigovAi. Hrbkova. 233.
+
+
+#IbAiA+-ez, Vicente Blasco.# (_Spanish._) _See_ #Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.#
+
+
+#JirAisek, Alois.# (1851- .) (_Czech._)
+  **Philosophers. Hrbkova. 225.
+
+
+#Karkavitsas, A.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Sea. Vaka. 23.
+
+#Kastanakis, Thrasyvoulos.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Frightened Soul. Vaka. 221.
+
+#Klecanda, Jan.# (1855- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***For the Land of His Fathers. Hrbkova. 241.
+
+#Korolenko, Vladimir Galaktionovich.# (1853- .) (_Russian._ Q.)
+  ***Old Bell-Ringer. Schweikert B. 334.
+
+#KunAe>tickAi, BoA3/4ena VA-kovAi-.# (_Czech._) _See_ #Vikova-Kuneticka,
+Bozena.#
+
+#Kuprin, Alexander.# (1870- .) (_Russian._)
+  ***Cain. Schweikert B. 430.
+
+
+#Lazarevic, Lazar K.# (1851-1891.) (_Serbian._)
+  **Robbers. Underwood A. 145.
+
+#LemaA(R)tre (FranASec.ois A%lie), Jules.# (1853-1914.) (_French._)  (_See 1918._)
+  ***Bell. LemaA(R)tre. 105.
+  ***Charity. LemaA(R)tre. 175.
+  ***Conscience. LemaA(R)tre. 277.
+  ***HellA(C). LemaA(R)tre. 189.
+  ***Lilith. LemaA(R)tre. 91.
+  ***MA(C)lie. LemaA(R)tre. 259.
+  ***Myrrha. LemaA(R)tre. 57.
+  ***Nausicaa. LemaA(R)tre. 207.
+  ***Princess Mimi's Lovers. LemaA(R)tre. 221.
+  ***Saint John and the Duchess Anne. LemaA(R)tre. 117.
+  ***Serenus. LemaA(R)tre. 11.
+  ***Sophie de Montcernay. LemaA(R)tre. 237.
+  ***Two Flowers. LemaA(R)tre. 125.
+  ***White Chapel. LemaA(R)tre. 165.
+
+#Level, Maurice.# (_French._)
+  *Bastard. Level. 197.
+  **Beggar. Level. 151.
+  ***Blue Eyes. Level. 269.
+  **Confession. Level. 83.
+  *Debt Collector. Level. 3.
+  ***Empty House. Level. 281.
+  **Extenuating Circumstances. Level. 71.
+  **Fascination. Level. 187.
+  **Father. Level. 115.
+  **For Nothing. Level. 127.
+  ***Illusion. Level. 39.
+  ***In the Light of the Red Lamp. Level. 49.
+  ***In the Wheat. Level. 139.
+  ***Kennel. Level. 15.
+  **Kiss. Level. 237.
+  **Last Kiss. Level. 293.
+  ***Man Who Lay Asleep. Level. 175.
+  ***Maniac. Level. 249.
+  *Mistake. Level. 59.
+  **Poussette. Level. 103.
+  *Taint. Level. 225.
+  *10.50 Express. Level. 259.
+  **Test. Level. 95.
+  ***That Scoundrel Miron. Level. 211.
+  *Under Chloroform. Level. 163.
+  **Who? Level. 27.
+
+
+#Machar, Joseph Svatopluk.# (1864- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***Theories of Heroism. Hrbkova. 123.
+
+#Mayran, Camille.# (_Belgian._)
+  ***Forgotten. Mayran. 95.
+  ***Story of Gotton Connixloo. Mayran. 1.
+
+MikszAith, Koloman. (1849- .) (_Hungarian._)
+  ***Fiddlers Three. Underwood A. 217.
+  **Trip to the Other World. Underwood A. 209.
+
+#MuA3/4Aik, Johanna Rottova.# (_Czech._) _See_ "#SvAe>tlAi, Caroline.#"
+
+
+#NAe>mcovAi, BoA3/4ena.# (1820-1862.) (_Czech._)
+  ***"Bewitched BAira." Hrbkova. 151.
+
+#Neruda, Jan.# (1834-1891.) (_Czech._)
+  ***All Souls' Day, Underwood A. 119.
+  ***At the Sign of the Three Lilies. Hrbkova. 86.
+  ***BeneAi. Hrbkova. 81.
+  ***Foolish Jona. Underwood A. 136.
+  **He was a Rascal. Hrbkova. 90.
+  ***Vampire. Hrbkova. 75.
+
+#Netto, Walther.# (_German._)
+  ***Swine Herd. Underwood A. 233.
+
+
+#Palamas, Kostes.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Man's Death. Vaka. 173.
+
+#Papadiamanty, A.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***She That Was Homesick. Vaka. 237.
+
+#PA(C)rez De Ayala, RamA cubedn.# (_Spanish._) _See_ #Ayala, RamA cubedn PA(C)rez De.#
+
+#PicA cubedn, Jacinto Octavio.# (1852- .) (_Spanish._)
+  ***After the Battle. McMichael. 43.
+  **Menace. McMichael. 67.
+  **Souls in Contrast. McMichael. 81.
+
+#Pinski, David.# (1872- .) (_Yiddish._)
+  ***Beruriah. Pinski A. 3.
+  ***Black Cat. Pinski A. 255.
+  ***Drabkin. Pinski A. 171.
+  ***In the Storm. Pinski A. 313.
+  ***Johanan the High Priest. Pinski A. 101.
+  ***Tale of a Hungry Man. Pinski A. 277.
+  ***Temptations of Rabbi Akiba. Pinski A. 83.
+  ***Jerubbabel. Pinski A. 131.
+
+#Polylas, Iakovos.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  *Forgiveness. Vaka. 133.
+
+#Pushkin, Alexander Sergievich.# (1799-1837.)  (_Russian._)
+  ***Shot, Schweikert B. 23.
+
+#Pyeshkov, Alexei Maximovich.# (_Russian._) _See_ "#Gorki, Maxim.#"
+
+
+#A andor-Gjalski, Xaver.#  (_Croatian._)
+  **Jagica. Underwood A. 181.
+  **Naja. Underwood A. 165.
+
+"#Sologub, Feodor.#" (#Feodor Kuzmitch Teternikov.#) (1863- .) (_Russian._)
+  ***White Dog. Russian A. 30.
+
+#Sudermann, Hermann.#  (_German._)
+  **Gooseherd. Sudermann. 341.
+  ***Iolanthe's   Wedding. Sudermann. 9.
+  ***New Year's Eve Confession. Sudermann. 127.
+  **Woman Who Was His Friend. Sudermann. 109.
+
+"#SvAe>tlAi, Caroline.#" (#Johanna Rottova MuA3/4Aik.#) (1830-1899.)
+(_Czech._)
+  ***Barbara. Hrbkova. 279.
+
+#Svoboda, FrantiAiek Xavier.# (1860- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***Every Fifth Man. Hrbkova. 105.
+
+
+#Tchekhov, Anton Pavlovich.# (_Russian._) _See_ #Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.#
+
+#Teternikov, Feodor Kuzmitch.# (_Russian._) _See_ "#Sologub, Feodor.#"
+
+#TolstoA-, Lyof Nikolaievich, Count.# (1828-1910.) (_Russian._)
+(_See 1918._)
+  ***God Sees the Truth but Waits. Schweikert B. 209.
+  ***Master and Man. Schweikert B. 220.
+  ***Three Arshins of Land. Schweikert B. 287.
+
+#Turgenev, Ivan Sergievich#, (1818-1883.) (_Russian._)
+  ***Biryuk. Schweikert B. 103.
+  ***Lear of the Steppes. Schweikert B. 113.
+
+
+#Vestendorf, A. Von.# (_German._) _See_ #Von Vestendorf, A.#
+
+#Vigny, Alfred De.# (_French._)
+  ***Laurette, Vigny. 43.
+
+#VA-kovAi-KunAe>tickAi, BoA3/4ena.# (1863- .) (_Czech._)
+  ***Spiritless. Hrbkova. 135.
+
+#Von Vestendorf, A.# (_German._)
+  ***Furor Illyricus. Underwood A.  37.
+
+#VrchlickA1/2, Yaroslav.# (1853-1912.) (_Czech._)
+  ***Brother CA"lestin. Underwood A. 3.
+
+
+#Xenopoulos,  Gregorios.# (_Modern Greek._)
+  ***Mangalos. Vaka. 105.
+
+
+
+
+MAGAZINE AVERAGES
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+
+_The following table includes the averages of American periodicals
+published from October, 1919, to September, 1920, inclusive. One, two,
+and three asterisks are employed to indicate relative distinction.
+"Three-asterisk stories" are of somewhat permanent literary value. The
+list excludes reprints._
+
+______________________________________________________________________
+                                 |          |           |
+                                 |          |  NO. OF   |PERCENTAGE OF
+                                 |  NO. OF  |DISTINCTIVE| DISTINCTIVE
+PERIODICALS                      | STORIES  |  STORIES  |   STORIES
+(OCT.-SEPT.)                     |PUBLISHED | PUBLISHED |  PUBLISHED
+                                 |          |___________|_____________
+                                 |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+                                 |          | * | **|***| * | **|***
+_________________________________|__________|___|___|___|___|___|_____
+                                 |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+Atlantic Monthly                 |    19    | 18| 15| 11| 95| 78| 58
+Century                          |    43    | 36| 25| 12| 84| 56| 28
+Collier's Weekly                 |    97    | 24|  8|  4| 25|  8|  4
+Cosmopolitan                     |    75    | 17|  7|  3| 23|  9|  4
+Dial (including translations)    |    19    | 19| 15| 11|100| 78| 58
+Everybody's Magazine (including  |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    75    | 23|  7|  0| 31|  9|  0
+Harper's Magazine                |    57    | 43| 32| 15| 75| 56| 26
+Hearst's Magazine (including     |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    76    | 17|  6|  4| 22|  8|  5
+McCall's Magazine (including     |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    41    | 15|  7|  3| 37| 17|  7
+McClure's Magazine (including    |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    53    | 24| 16| 13| 45| 30| 25
+Metropolitan                     |    78    | 20| 12|  6| 26| 15|  8
+Midland                          |    13    | 11| 11|  8| 85| 85| 62
+Munsey's Magazine                |    83    | 14|  5|  2| 17|  6|  2
+New York Tribune (including      |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    48    | 31|  5|  1| 63| 11|  2
+Pagan (including translations)   |    21    | 10|  8|  6| 50| 40| 30
+Pictorial Review                 |    46    | 30| 28| 25| 65| 61| 54
+Red Book Magazine                |   117    | 17|  4|  2| 15|  4|  2
+Reedy's Mirror (including        |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |    30    | 16|  8|  4| 53| 27| 13
+Romance                          |    89    | 23|  6|  1| 26|  7|  1
+Scribner's Magazine              |    51    | 36| 23| 10| 72| 46| 20
+Smart Set (including             |          |   |   |   |   |   |
+  translations)                  |   127    | 51| 25| 14| 40| 20| 11
+_________________________________|__________|___|___|___|___|___|_____
+
+_The following tables indicate the rank, during the period between
+October, 1919, and September, 1920, inclusive, by number and percentage
+of distinctive stories published, of the twenty-one periodicals coming
+within the scope of my examination which have published an average of 15
+per cent in stories of distinction. The lists exclude reprints, but not
+translations._
+
+
+#By Percentage of Distinctive Stories#
+
+ 1. Dial (including translations)                100%
+ 2. Atlantic Monthly                              95%
+ 3. Midland                                       85%
+ 4. Century                                       84%
+ 5. Harper's Magazine                             75%
+ 6. Scribner's Magazine                           72%
+ 7. Pictorial Review                              65%
+ 8. New York Tribune (including translations)     63%
+ 9. Reedy's Mirror (including translations)       53%
+10. Pagan (including translations)                50%
+11. McClure's Magazine (including translations)   45%
+12. Smart Set (including translations)            40%
+13. McCall's Magazine (including translations)    37%
+14. Everybody's Magazine (including translations) 31%
+15. Romance                                       26%
+16. Metropolitan                                  26%
+17. Collier's Weekly                              25%
+18. Cosmopolitan                                  23%
+19. Hearst's Magazine (including translations)    22%
+20. Munsey's Magazine                             17%
+21. Red Book Magazine                             15%
+
+
+#By Number of Distinctive Stories#
+
+ 1. Smart Set (including translations)            51
+ 2. Harper's Magazine                             43
+ 3. Century                                       36
+ 4. Scribner's Magazine                           36
+ 5. New York Tribune (including translations)     31
+ 6. Pictorial Review                              30
+ 7. McClure's Magazine (including translations)   24
+ 8. Collier's Weekly                              24
+ 9. Everybody's Magazine (including translations) 23
+10. Romance                                       23
+11. Metropolitan                                  20
+12. Dial (including translations)                 19
+13. Atlantic Monthly                              18
+14. Cosmopolitan                                  17
+15. Hearst's Magazine (including translations)    17
+16. Red Book Magazine                             17
+17. Reedy's Mirror (including translations)       16
+18. McCall's Magazine (including translations)    15
+19. Munsey's Magazine                             14
+20. Midland                                       11
+21. Pagan (including translations)                10
+
+_The following periodicals have published during the same period ten or
+more "two-asterisk stories." The list excludes reprints, but not
+translations. Periodicals represented in this list during 1915, 1916,
+1917, 1918 and 1919 are represented by the prefixed letters a, b, c, d,
+and e respectively._
+
+1.     abcde    Harper's Magazine                                32
+2.      bcde    Pictorial Review                                 28
+3.     abcde    Century                                          25
+4.     abcde    Smart Set (including translations)               25
+5.     abcde    Scribner's Magazine                              23
+6.              McClure's Magazine (including translations)      16
+7.              Dial (including  translations)                   15
+8.       cde    Atlantic Monthly                                 15
+9.        be    Metropolitan                                     12
+10.        c    Midland                                          11
+
+
+_The following periodicals have published during the same period five or
+more "three-asterisk stories." The list excludes reprints, but not
+translations. The same signs are used as prefixes as in the previous
+list._
+
+1.     acde   Pictorial Review                              25
+2.    abcde   Harper's Magazine                             15
+3.       de   Smart Set (including translations)            14
+4.            McClure's Magazine (including translations)   13
+5.    abcde   Century                                       12
+6.            Dial (including translations)                 11
+7.      cde   Atlantic Monthly                              11
+8.    abcde   Scribner's Magazine                           10
+9.       ae   Midland                                        8
+10.     ace   Metropolitan                                   6
+11.      be   Pagan (including translations)                 6
+
+_Ties in the above lists have been decided by taking relative rank in
+other lists into account._
+
+
+
+
+INDEX OF SHORT STORIES PUBLISHED IN AMERICAN MAGAZINES
+
+
+OCTOBER, 1919, TO SEPTEMBER, 1920
+
+_All short stories published in the following magazines and newspapers,
+October, 1919, to September, 1920, inclusive, are indexed._
+
+American Magazine
+Asia
+Atlantic Monthly
+Catholic World
+Century
+Collier's Weekly (except Dec. 27)
+Delineator (except Sept.)
+Dial
+Everybody's Magazine
+Good Housekeeping (except Apr. and June)
+Harper's Magazine
+Ladies' Home Journal (except Mar.)
+Liberator
+Little Review (except Apr. and Sept.)
+Metropolitan
+Midland
+New York Tribune
+Pagan
+Pictorial Review
+Reedy's Mirror
+Saturday Evening Post (except Jan. 31; Feb. 14, 21; Mar. 13, 20)
+Scribner's Magazine
+Smart Set
+Stratford Journal
+Sunset Magazine
+Touchstone (Oct., '19-May)
+
+_Short stories of distinction only, published in the following magazines
+during the same period, are indexed._
+
+Adventure (Oct.-Dec., '19; Jul.-Sept.)
+Ainslee's Magazine
+All Story Weekly
+American Boy
+Argosy
+Black Cat
+Cosmopolitan
+Freeman
+Harper's Bazar (except Oct., '19)
+Hearst's Magazine
+Holland's Magazine
+Little Story Magazine
+Live Stories
+McCall's Magazine
+McClure's Magazine
+Magnificat
+Munsey's Magazine
+Parisienne
+People's Favorite Magazine
+Queen's Work (except Sept.)
+Red Book Magazine
+Romance
+Short Stories
+Snappy Stories
+Telling Tales
+To-day's Housewife
+Top-Notch Magazine
+Woman's Home Companion (except Sept.)
+Woman's World
+
+_Certain stories of distinction published in the following magazines and
+newspapers during this period are indexed, because they have been
+specially called to my attention._
+
+Detroit Sunday News
+Menorah Journal
+Oxford Outlook
+Pearson's Magazine
+Red Cross Magazine
+Popular Magazine
+True Stories
+
+_One, two, or three asterisks are prefixed to the titles of stories to
+indicate distinction. Three asterisks prefixed to a title indicate the
+more or less permanent literary value of the story, and entitle it to a
+place on the annual "Rolls of Honor." An asterisk before the name of an
+author indicates that he is not an American. Cross references after an
+author's name refer to previous volumes of this series. (H) after the
+name of an author indicates that other stories by this author, published
+in American magazines between 1900 and 1914, are to be found indexed in
+"The Standard Index of Short Stories," by Francis J. Hannigan, published
+by Small, Maynard & Company, 1918. The figures in parentheses after the
+title of a story refer to the volume and page number of the magazine. In
+cases where successive numbers of a magazine are not paged
+consecutively, the page number only is given in this index._
+
+_The following abbreviations are used in the index_:--
+
+_Adv._             Adventure
+_Ain._             Ainslee's Magazine
+_All._             All-Story Weekly
+_Am._              American Magazine
+_Am. B._           American Boy
+_Arg._             Argosy
+_Asia_             Asia
+_Atl._             Atlantic Monthly
+_B. C._            Black Cat
+_Cath. W._         Catholic World
+_Cen._             Century
+_Col._             Collier's Weekly
+_Cos._             Cosmopolitan
+_Del._             Delineator
+_Det. N._          Detroit Sunday News
+_Dial_             Dial
+_Ev._              Everybody's Magazine
+_Free._            Freeman
+_G. H._            Good Housekeeping
+_Harp. B._         Harper's Bazar
+_Harp. M._         Harper's Monthly
+_Hear._            Hearst's Magazine
+_Holl._            Holland's Magazine
+_L. H. J._         Ladies' Home Journal
+_Lib._             Liberator
+_Lit. R._          Little Review
+_Lit. St._         Little Story Magazine
+_L. St._           Live Stories
+_Mag._             Magnificat
+_McC._             McClure's Magazine
+_McCall_           McCall's Magazine
+_Men._             Menorah Journal
+_Met._             Metropolitan
+_Mid._             Midland
+_Mir._             Reedy's Mirror
+_Mun._             Munsey's Magazine
+_N. Y. Trib._      New York Tribune
+_O. O._            Oxford Outlook
+_Pag._             Pagan
+_Par._             Parisienne
+_Pear._            Pearson's Magazine
+_Peop._            People's Favorite Magazine
+_Pict. R._         Pictorial Review
+_Pop._             Popular Magazine
+_Q. W._            Queen's Work
+_(R.)_             Reprint
+_Red Bk._          Red Book Magazine
+_Red Cross_        Red Cross Magazine
+_Rom._             Romance
+_Scr._             Scribner's Magazine
+_S. E. P._         Saturday Evening Post
+_Sh. St._          Short Stories
+_Sn. St._          Snappy Stories
+_S. S._            Smart Set
+_Strat. J._        Stratford Journal
+_Sun._             Sunset Magazine
+_Tod._             To-day's Housewife
+_Top._             Top-Notch Magazine
+_Touch._           Touchstone
+_True St._         True Stories
+_T. T._            Telling Tales
+_W. H. C._         Woman's Home Companion
+_Wom. W._          Woman's World
+(161)            Page 161
+(2:161)          Volume 2, page 161
+(_See '15_)        _See_ "Best Short Stories of 1915."
+
+_Owing to labor and transportation difficulties, the files of certain
+periodicals which I have consulted this year are not absolutely
+complete. I shall report upon these missing issues next year._
+
+#Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell.# (#Mrs. Fordyce Coburn.#) (1872- .) (_See
+1915, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Peace On Earth, Good Will to Dogs. Col. Dec. 13-20, '19. (5, 8.)
+
+#Abbott, Helen Raymond.# (1888- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Stop Six. Cen. March. (99:666.)
+
+#Abbott, Keene.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Cinders of the Cinderella Family. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (12.)
+  Thumb Minus Barlow. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (28.)
+
+#Abdullah, Achmed.# (#Achmed Abdullah Nadir Khan El-Durani El-Idrissyeh.#)
+("A. A. Nadir.") (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Evening Rice. Pict. R. June. (8.)
+  *Hill Bred Yar Hydar. Am. B. Dec. '19. (11.)
+  **Indian Jataka. All. March 13. (108:2.)
+  *Pell Street Choice. Am. B. Nov. '19. (6.)
+  **Tao. Cen. Apr. (99:819.)
+
+#Abt, Marion.#
+  Epithalamium. S. S. Sept. (63.)
+
+#Adams, Charles Magee.#
+  Fathers and Sons. Am. May. (28.)
+  Todd's Plunge. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (41.)
+
+#Adams, H. Austin.# (_See "H" under_ #Adams, Austin.#)
+  "Bugs, But No One's Fool." Sun. Sept. (43.)
+
+#Adams, Samuel Hopkins.# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Guardian of God's Acre. Col. June 12. (18.)
+  *Home Seekers. Col. Apr. 10. (13.)
+  *House of Silvery Voices. Col. Mar. 20. (18.)
+  *Patroness of Art. Col. Jul. 17. (5.)
+  Pink Roses and the Wallop. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (12.)
+
+#Addis, H. A. Noureddin.# (_See 1918._)
+  **Weaver. Asia. Jan. (20:13.)
+
+#Addison, Thomas.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  Tricks in All Trades. Ev. Apr. (76.)
+
+*#Ades, Albert.#
+  *Mme. Grandvoinet. N. Y. Trib. March 21.
+
+#Agee, Fannie Heaslip Lea.# _See_ #Lea, Fannie Heaslip.#
+
+#Aitken, Kenneth Lyndwode.# (1881-1919.)
+  ***From the Admiralty Files. Cen. Dec. '19. (99:241.)
+  **Wee Bit Ghost. Met. March. (34.)
+
+#Akins, ZoA".# (1886- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Bruised Reed. Cos. July. (32.)
+  **Sister of the Sun. Cen. Dec. '19. (99:217.)
+
+#Aldrich, Bess Streeter.# ("#Margaret Dean Stevens.#") (1881- .)
+(_See 1919._) (_See 1916 under_ #Stevens, Margaret Dean.#)
+  *Across the smiling Meadow. L. H. J. Feb. (20.)
+  Ginger Cookies. L. H. J. Jan. (25.)
+  "Last Night, When You Kissed Blanche Thompson----." Am. Aug. (28.)
+  Marcia Mason's Lucky Star. Am. March. (23.)
+  Mason Family Now on Exhibition. Am. Nov. '19. (45.)
+  Mother Mason Gives Some
+  Good Advice. Am. May. (49.)
+  Tillie Cuts Loose. Am. April. (50.)
+
+"#Alexander, Mary.#" _See_ #Kilbourne, Fannie.#
+
+#Alexander, Nell Stewart.#
+  Cutting the Cat's Claws. L. H. J. Sept. (34.)
+
+#Alexander, Sandra.# (_See 1919._)
+  According to Otto. Col. Mar. 27. (10.)
+  Goer. Met. Nov. '19. (34.)
+
+"#Amid, John.#" (#M. M. Stearns.#) (1884- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Seravido Money. Mir. Nov. 20, '19. (28:812.)
+
+#Anderson, C. Farley.#
+  ***Octogenarian. S. S. Dec. '19. (119.)
+
+#Anderson, Frederick Irving.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *King's Thumb. Ev. Dec. '19. (45.)
+
+#Anderson, Jane.# (_H._)
+  ***Happiest Man in the World. Cen. Jan. (99:330.)
+
+#Anderson, Sherwood.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Door of the Trap. Dial. May. (68:567.)
+  ***I Want to Know Why. S. S. Nov. '19. (35.)
+  ***Other  Woman. Lit. R. May-June. (37.)
+  ***Triumph of the Egg. Dial. Mar. (68:295.)
+
+#Anderson, William Ashley.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Black Man Without a Country. Harp. M. June. (141:90.)
+  Bwana Poor.  S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (41.)
+  **Parable of Trifles. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (28.)
+
+#Anderton, Daisy.# (_See 1919._)
+  ***Belated  Girlhood. Pag. Jan. (37.)
+
+*#Andreieff, Leonid Nikolaevich.# _See_ #Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaevich.#
+
+#Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Broken Wings. Scr. Aug. (68:129.)
+
+#Andrews, Roland F.# (_H._)
+  For the Honor of Sam Butler. Ev. Mar. (38.)
+  **Wallababy. Met. Aug. (38.)
+
+*#Andreyev, Leonid Nikolaevich.# (1871-1919.) (_See 1916, 1917._)
+(_See "H" under_ #Andreieff.#)
+  ***Promise of Spring. Pag. Nov.-Dec., '19. (6.)
+
+#Anonymous.#
+  *Bird of Passage. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 28, '19.
+  *His Last Rendezvous. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 30, '19.
+  *Incompatibles. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 23, '19.
+  ***Romance of the Western Pavilion. Asia. May. (20:392.)
+  "Stranger." N. Y. Trib. May 30.
+
+#Armstrong, LeRoy.# (1854- .) (_H._)
+  "Patsy, Keep Your Head." Met. Oct., '19. (29.)
+
+#Aspinwall, Marguerite.# (_See 1918._)
+  First Rung. Del. Feb. (11.)
+
+#Atherton, Sarah.#
+  Lie and the Litany. Scr. Aug. (68:186.)
+  *Necessary Dependent. Scr. June. (67:747.)
+  *Paths from Diamond Patch. Scr. Jul. (68:65.)
+
+*#Aumonier, Stacy.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Golden Windmill. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (14.)
+  ***Good Action. Cen. Aug. (100:454.)
+  ***Great Unimpressionable. Pict. R. Nov., '19. (12.)
+  ***Just  the  Same. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (12.)
+  ***Landlord of "The Love-a-Duck." Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (8.)
+
+*#Auriol, Georges.#
+  Heart of the Mother. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (33.)
+
+*#Austin, Frederick Britten.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Buried Treasure. Hear. Dec., '19. (14.)
+  *Yellow Magic. Red. Bk. Apr. (28.)
+
+#Austin-Ball, Mrs. T.# _See_ #Steele, Alice Garland.#
+
+#Avery, Hascal T.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Corpus Delicti. Atl. Feb. (125:200.)
+
+#Avery, Stephen Morehouse.#
+  Lemon or Cream? L. H. J. Feb. (24.)
+
+
+#Babcock, Edwina Stanton.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Gargoyle. Harp. M. Sept. (141:417.)
+  **Porch of the Maidens. Harp. M. March. (140:460.)
+
+#Bailey (Irene), Temple.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Beggars on Horseback. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (20.)
+  **Gay Cockade. Harp. M. Feb. (140:290.)
+
+#Ball, Mrs. T. Austin.# _See_ #Steele, Alice Garland.#
+
+#Balmer, Edwin.# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_Hb._)
+  Acheron Run. Ev. May. (59.)
+  Jim Culver Learns the Secret of Teamwork. Am. Aug. (49.)
+  On the 7:50 Express. Am. April. (13.)
+  Paolina. Ev. Feb. (59.)
+  Santa Claus Breaks Into the Kelly Pool Game. Am. Dec., '19. (40.)
+  Upon the Record Made. L. H. J. Jul. (7.)
+
+*#Bargone, Charles.# _See_ "#FarrA"re, Claude.#"
+
+*#Barker (Harley), Granville.# (1877- .) (_See 1916._)
+  ***Bigamist. Free. May 5. (1:176.)
+
+#Barnard, Leslie Gordon.#
+  Jealousy of Mother McCurdy. Am. June. (39.)
+  Why They Called Her "Little Ireland." Am. July. (49.)
+
+#Barnes, Djuna.# (1892- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Beyond the End. Lit. R. Dec., '19. (7.)
+  ***Mother. Lit. R. Jul.-Aug. (10.)
+
+#Barratt, Louise Rand Bascom.# _See_ #Bascom, Louise Rand.#
+
+#Barrett, Arabel Moulton.# (_See 1919._)
+  Little Brown Bird. Cath. W. Oct., '19. (110:29.)
+
+#Barrett, Richmond Brooks.#
+  At Thirty-three. S. S. Sept. (55.)
+  Daughter of the Bernsteins. S. S. Jul. (83.)
+  Divine Right of Tenors. S. S. March. (73.)
+  *Satanic Saint. S. S. April. (103.)
+
+#Bartlett, Frederick Orin.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Everlasting Hills. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (30.)
+  **Inside. Del. Jan. (7.)
+  Junior Member. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (14.)
+  Later Boat. Ev. Apr. (68.)
+  Strip of Green Paper. Ev. Sept. (51.)
+
+#Barton, C. P.#
+  *Life, Liberty, and Happiness. All. Apr. 10. (109:135.)
+
+#Bascom, Louise Rand.# (#Mrs. G. W. Barrett.#) (_See 1915, 1916,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Question of Dress. B. C. Jul. (13.)
+
+#Bash, Mrs. Louis H.# _See_ #Runkle, Bertha (Brooks.)#
+
+#Beadle, Charles.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Inner Hero. Rom. Nov., '19. (113.)
+
+#Beale, William C.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Eternal Knout. Ev. Nov., '19. (34.)
+
+#Beard, Wolcott le ClA(C)ar.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Sun God Functions. Arg. Nov. 1, '19. (114:18.)
+
+#Bechdolt, Frederick Ritchie.# (1874- .) (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Cleaning Up of Lathrop. S. E. P. May 15. (46.)
+  On the Lordsburg Road. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (42.)
+
+*#Beck, L. Adams.#
+  ***Fire of Beauty. Atl. Sept. (126:359.)
+  ***Incomparable Lady. Atl. Aug. (126:178.)
+
+#Beer, Thomas.# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Boy Flag. S. E. P. June 5. (12.)
+  *Cool. Cen. Sept. (100:604.)
+  Curious Behavior of Myra Cotes. Met. Oct., '19. (32.)
+  Lorena. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (18.)
+  Poison Pen. S. E. P. Jul. 17. (16.)
+  *Refuge. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (18.)
+  Totem. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (42.)
+  *Zerbetta and the Black Arts. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (22.)
+
+#Beffel, John Nicholas.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Crosby Crew. Mir. Oct. 23, '19. (28:730.)
+  *Out of the Cage. Mir. Nov. 20, '19. (28:816.) 18, '19. (28:816.)
+  Seneca's Ghost House. Mir. Dec. 18, '19. (28:936.)
+  Woman at the Door. Mir. Dec. 11, '19. (28:899.)
+
+#Behrman, S. N.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *That Second Man. S. S. Nov., '19. (73.)
+
+#Belden, Jacques.#
+  *Song of Home. Mun. Nov., '19. (68:230.)
+
+#BenA(C)t, Stephen Vincent.# (1898- .) (_See 1916._)
+  *Funeral of John Bixby. Mun. Jul. (70:382.)
+  ***Summer Thunder. S. S. Sept. (79.)
+
+#Bercovici, Konrad.# (1882- .)
+  ***Ghitza. Dial. Feb. (68:154.)
+  *Yahde, the Proud One. Rom. Aug. (100.)
+
+*#Beresford, John Davys.# (1873- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Convert. Free. May, '19. (1:225.)
+
+*"#Bertheroy, Jean.#" (#Berthe Carianne Le Barillier.#) (1860- .) (_See
+1918, 1919._)
+  *Candlemas Day. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 29.
+  *From Beyond the Grace. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 1.
+
+#Bidwell, Anna Cabot.#
+  Fairest Adonis. Cen. March (99:610.)
+
+*#Binet-Valmer.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Armistice Night. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 4.
+  *Withered Flowers. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 4.
+
+*"#Birmingham, George A.#" (#Canon James O. Hannay.#) (1865- .) (_See
+1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Bands of Ballyguttery. Ev. Jul. (63.)
+
+#Bishop, Ola.# (_See 1919._)
+  Dawson Gang. Met. Nov., '19. (52.)
+  Wilda MacIvor-Horsethief. Met. Feb. (42.)
+
+*#Bizet, RenA(C).#
+  Devil's Peak. N. Y. Trib. Jul. 18.
+  *Lie. N. Y. Trib. May 16.
+
+*#Blackwood, Algernon.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Chinese Magic. Rom. June. (26.)
+  ***First Hate. McC. Feb. (22.)
+  ***Running Wolf. Cen. Aug. (100:482.)
+
+*#Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.# (1867- .) (_See 1919 under_ #IbAiA+-ez, Vicente
+Blasco.#)
+  *CaburA(C) Feather. McC. Sept. (20.)
+  *Four Sons of Eve. McC. Jul. (8.)
+  *Mad Virgins. Ev. Dec., '19. (25.)
+  ***Old Woman of the Movies. McC. May. (9.)
+  *Shot in the Dark. McCall. Jul. (6.)
+  ***Sleeping-Car Porter. Del. Oct., '19. (15.)
+
+#Bloch, Bertram.# (_See '18._)
+  Modern Improvements. S. S. Feb. (79.)
+
+#Block, Rudolph.# _See_ "Lessing, Bruno."
+
+#Blum, Henry S.#
+  Oil. Met. Aug. (34.)
+
+#Boas, George.#
+  **Officer, but a Gentleman. Atl. Aug. (126:194.)
+
+#Bodenheim, Maxwell.# (1893- .)
+  **Religion. Lit. R. May-June. (32.)
+
+#Bois, Boice Du.# _See_ #Du Bois, Boice.#
+
+#Boogher, Susan M.# (_See 1919._)
+  Mrs. Hagey and the Follies. L. H. J. Sept. (22.)
+
+#Booth, Frederick.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  *Duel, Ain. Apr. (126.)
+
+*#Bottome, Phyllis# (#Mrs. Forbes Dennis#). (_See 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Man of the "Chat Noir." Ain. June-Jul. (41.)
+  **Residue. Cen. Sept, (100:665.)
+
+#Boulton, Agnes#, (#Mrs. Eugene G. O'Neill.#) (1893- .)
+  **Hater of Mediocrity. S. S. Jul. (119.)
+
+*#Boutet, FrA(C)deric.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  *Her Magnificent Recollections. Par. June. (37.)
+  *His Wife's Correspondents. Par. Sept. (65.)
+  **Laura. N. Y. Trib. Sept., '19.
+  *M. Octave Boullay. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 1.
+  *Two Dinners. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 22.
+
+#Bowman, Earl Wayland.#
+  Blunt Nose. Am. Feb. (62.)
+  High Stakes. Am. Sept. (56.)
+
+#Boyer, Wilbur S.# (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Tutti-Frutti. Ev. May. (69.)
+
+#Brace, Blanche.#
+  Adventure of the Lost Trousseau. L. H. J. Sept. (14.)
+  Tuesday and Thursday Evenings. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (20.)
+
+#Bradley, Mary Hastings.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  His Neighbor's Wife. Met. Sept. (25.)
+  Salvage, Met. May. (16.)
+
+#Brand, Max.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Out of the Dark. All. March. 13. (108:9.)
+
+#Breakspear, Matilda.#
+  Humberto, S. S. Jan. (108.)
+
+#Brooks, Jonathan.#
+  Bills Payable. Col. Sept. 18. (5.)
+  Hand and Foot. Col. May 15. (14.)
+  High and Handsome. Col. June 19. (5.)
+  Hot Blood and Cold. Col. Aug. 7. (5.)
+  Rewarded, By Virtue. Col. Apr. 3. (5.)
+
+#Brooks, Paul.#
+  Immolation. S. S. Sept. (101.)
+
+#Brown, Alice.# (1857- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Captives. McCall. May. (6.)
+  *Mistletoe. W. H. C. Dec., '19. (23.)
+  ***Old Lemuel's Journey. Atl. June. (125:782.)
+
+#Brown, Estelle Aubrey.#
+  Elizabeth--Convex. L. H. J. Jan. (9.)
+
+#Brown, Hearty Earl.# (1886- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Gold-Piece. Atl. Jul. (126:67.)
+
+#Brown, Katharine Holland.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *House on the Sand. W. H. C. May. (29.)
+  **Very Anxious Mother. Scr. Dec. 1919. (66:749.)
+
+#Brown, Royal.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Eighth Box. L. H. J. Dec., 1919. (14.)
+  Game for Quentina. L. H. J. June. (18.)
+  Too Much Canvas. L. H. J. Nov., 1919. (20.)
+
+#Brown, W. S.#
+  *Albert Bean's Tranquillity. Dial. Mar. (68:306.)
+
+#Brownell, Agnes Mary.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Buttermilk. Mir. Dec. 11, 1919. (28:887.)
+  **Coquette. McCall. May. (16.)
+  **Cure. Mid. Sept. (6:138.)
+  **Evergreen. G. H. Dec., 1919. (49.)
+  *Forty-Love. McCall. Jul. (16.)
+  **Grampa. Del. Apr. (24.)
+  *Intentions. Rome. Apr. (33.)
+  *Oxalis. Del. Feb. (21.)
+  ***Quest. Mid. Sept.-Oct. '19. (5:220.)
+  **Red Fiddle. Arg. Jul. 31. (123:699.)
+  ***Relation. Pict. R. June. (12.)
+  *Wannie--and Her Heart's Desire. Am. Jul. (44.)
+
+#Brownell, Mrs. Baker.# _See_ "#Maxwell, Helena.#"
+
+#Brubaker, Howard.# (1892- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Decline and Fall. Harp. M. Jul. (141:244.)
+  *Little Friends of All the Arts. Harp. M. Feb. (140:386.)
+
+#Bruno, GuA-do.# (1884- .) (_See 1915._)
+  Adultery on Washington Square. Mir. Jul. 15. (29:563.)
+
+*#Bruno, Ruby, J.#
+  *Unbreakable Chain. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 18.
+  Woman's Will. N. Y. Trib. July 11.
+
+#Bryan, Grace Lovell.#
+  Class! S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (46.)
+  Rowena Pulls the Wheeze! S. E. P. July 31. (16.)
+  "You Never Can Tell--" S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (40.)
+
+#Bryner, Edna Clare.#
+  ***Life of Five Points. Dial. (69:225.)
+
+*#Buchan, John.# (1875- .) (_H._)
+  ***Fullcircle. Atl. Jan. (125:36.)
+
+*#Buchanan, Meriel.#
+  Miracle of St. Nicholas. Scr. Aug. (68:137.)
+
+#Buck, Oscar MacMillan.#
+  **Village of Dara's Mercy. Asia. June. (20:481.)
+
+#Bulger, Bozeman.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_See also_ #Terhune,
+Albert Payson#, _and_ #Bulger, Bozeman.#)
+  Logansport Breeze. S. E. P. June, '19. (30.)
+  Real Shine. Ev. June. (25.)
+
+#Burke, Kenneth.#
+  *Mrs. MA|cenas. Dial. Mar. (68:346.)
+  **Soul of Kajn Tafha. Dial. Jul. (69:29.)
+
+*#Burke, Thomas.# (1887- .) (_See 1916, 1919._)
+  ***Scarlet Shoes. Cos. Apr. (69.)
+  **Twelve Golden Curls. Cos. Mar. (37.)
+
+*#Burland, John Burland Harris.# (1870- .)
+  *Green Flame. T. T. Apr. (27.)
+  **Window. L. St. Dec. '19 (94.)
+
+#Burnet, Dana.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Last of the Oldmasters. Ev. Jan. (37.)
+  Romance of a Country Road. G. H. Oct., '19. (34.)
+
+#Burt, Maxwell Struthers.# (1882- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **"Bally Old" Knot. Scr. Aug. (68:194.)
+  *Devilled Sweetbreads. Scr. Apr. (67:411.)
+  ***Dream or Two. Harp. M. May. (140:744.)
+  ***Each in His Generation. Scr. Jul. (68:42.)
+  ***When His  Ships Came In. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:721.)
+
+#Butler, Ellis Parker.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Criminals Three. Pict. R. March. (16.)
+  **Economic Waste. Ev. Oct., '19. (46.)
+  *Jury of His Peers. Ev. Sept. (42.)
+  Knight Without Reproach. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (69.)
+  Potting Marjotta. Col. Jan. 17. (11.)
+
+"#Byrne, Donn.#" (#Bryan Oswald Donn-Byrne.#) (1888- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *And Zabad Begat Ephlal. Hear. May. (31.)
+  *Bride's Play. Hear. Sept. (8.)
+
+
+#Cabell, James Branch.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Designs of Miramon. Cen. Aug. (100:533.)
+  ***Feathers of Olrun. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:193.)
+  ***Hair of Melicent. McC. Sept. (24.)
+  ***Head of Misery. McC. Jul. (21.)
+  ***Hour of Freydis. McC. May. (14.)
+  **Porcelain Cups. Cen. Nov., '19. (99:20.)
+
+#Calvin, L.#
+  Twenty Stories Above Lake Level. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (16.)
+
+#Cameron, Margaret.# (#Margaret Cameron Lewis.#) (1867- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Personal: Object Matrimony. Harp. M. Apr. (140:621.)
+
+#Camp, (Charles) Wadsworth.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  Black Cap. Col. Jan. 24. (10.)
+  **Dangerous Tavern. Col. Jul. 24. (5.)
+  Hate. Col. Apr. 3. (18.)
+  ***Signal Tower. Met. May. (32.)
+
+#Campbell, Marjorie Prentiss.# (_See 1919._)
+  Guests for Dinner. Del. Mar. (11.)
+  Tight Skirts and the Sea. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (20.)
+
+#Canda, Elizabeth Holden.#
+  Broken Glass. L. H. J. Feb. (15.)
+
+*#Cannan, Gilbert.# (1884- .)
+  **Tragic End. Dial. Jan. (68:47.)
+
+#Carmichael, Catherine.#
+  Fairy of the Fire-place. Met. June. (13.)
+
+#Carnevali, Emanuel.#
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. I. Lit. R. Oct., '19. (16.)
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. II. Lit. R. Nov., '19. (22.)
+  Tales of a Hurried Man. III. Lit. R. Mar. (28.)
+
+#Carson, Shirley.#
+  *Old Woman's Story. Hol. June. (11.)
+
+#Carver, George.# (_See 1918._)
+  **About the Sixth Hour. Mir. March 18. (29:203.)
+
+#Cary, Gladys Gill.#
+  It's So Hard for a Girl. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (18.)
+
+#Cary, Harold.#
+  She and He. Ev. Feb. (31.)
+
+*#Cary, Joyce.# _See_ "#Joyce, Thomas.#"
+
+*#Casement, Roger.#
+  *Guti. (_R._) Mir. May 20. (29:415.)
+
+#Casey Patrick#, _and_ #Casey, Terence.# (_See 1915, 1917._) (_See "H"
+under_ #Casey, Patrick.#)
+  **Wedding of Quesada. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (12.)
+
+#Casseres, Benjamin De.# (1873- .) (_See "H" under_ #De Casseres,
+Benjamin.#)
+  *Last Satire of a Famous Titan. S. S. June. (79.)
+
+*#Castle, Agnes (Sweetman)#, _and_ #Castle, Egerton.# (1858-1920.)
+(_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Fair Fatality. Rom. Apr. (137.)
+
+#Castle, Everett Rhodes.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Ain't Men So Transparent--S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (61.)
+  Golfers Three. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (49.)
+
+#Cather, Willa Sibert.# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Her Boss. S. S. Oct., '19. (95.)
+
+#Catton, George L.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Coincidence. Lit. St. Sept. (1.)
+  *Speaking of Crops. Arg. Mar. 6. (118:475.)
+
+#Cavendish, John C.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Dawn. S. S. Dec., '19. (57.)
+  Last Love. S. S. Feb. (117.)
+  *Little Grisette. S. S. Nov., '19. (41.)
+
+#Chadwick, Charles.#
+  Broken Promise. L. H. J. May. (27.)
+
+#Chalmers, Mary.#
+ **Liberation of Christine Googe. Sn. St. March 18. (59.)
+
+#Chamberlain, Lucia.# (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  Policeman X. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (16.)
+
+#Chambrun, Countess De.# _See_ #De Chambrun, Clara Longworth, Countess.#
+
+#Chandler, Josephine C.#
+  Habeas Corpus. Pag. Nov.-Dec., '19. (35.)
+
+#Chapin, Carl Mattison.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Too Much Is Enough. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (46.)
+
+#Chapman, Edith.#
+  ***Classical Case. Pag. June. (4.)
+  *Emancipation. S. S. June. (99).
+  **Golden Fleece. Pag. Feb. (4.)
+  Inevitable Eve. S. S. Aug. (61.)
+  Mid-Victorians. S. S. Feb. (53.)
+  *Pandora. S. S. May. (85.)
+  *Question of Values. S. S. Sept. (29.)
+  Reductio ad Absurdum. S. S. Jan. (59.)
+  **Self-Deliverance, or The Stanton Way. Pag. Apr.-May. (12.)
+
+#Charles, Tennyson.#
+  *Riding the Crack of Doom. Am. B. Apr. (18.)
+
+#Chase, Mary Ellen.# (1887- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Sure Dwellings. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:869.)
+
+*#Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.# (1860-1904.) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917 under_
+#Tchekov.#) (_See 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***At a Country House. (_R._) Touch. May. (7:126.)
+
+#Chenault, Fletcher.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  On Nubbin Ridge. Col. Dec. 6, '19. (20.)
+
+#Chester, George Randolph.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Pouff. Ev. Mar. (64.)
+
+*#Chesterton, Gilbert Keith.# (1874- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Face in the Target. Harp. M. Apr. (140:577.)
+  *Garden of Smoke. Hear. Jan. (15.)
+  **Soul of the Schoolboy. Harp. M. Sept. (141:512.)
+  **Vanishing Prince. Harp. M. Aug. (141:320.)
+
+#Child, Richard Washburn.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Bomb. McC. Jan. (11.)
+  Thief Indeed. Pict. R. June. (6.)
+
+#Church, F.S.# (_See 1919._)
+  How I Spent My Vacation. Scr. Aug. (68:155.)
+
+#Churchill, David.# (_See 1919._)
+  Igor's Trail. Ev. May. (46.)
+
+#Churchill, Roy P.# (_See 1919._)
+  Bold Adventure of Jimmie the Watchmaker. Am. May. (40.)
+
+#Clark, (Charles) Badger.#
+  All for Nothing. Sun. Apr (40.)
+  Gloria Kids. Sun. Jul. (52.)
+  In the Natural. Sun. June (43.)
+  Little Widow. Sun. May. (36.)
+  Sacred Salt. Sun. Aug. (39.)
+
+#Clark, Valma.#
+  *Big Man. Holl. Aug. (7.)
+
+#Clausen, Carl.#
+  **Perfect Crime. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (18.)
+  *Regan. Rom. April. (114.)
+
+#Cleghorn, Sarah N(orcliffe).# (1876- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  *"And She Never Could Understand." Cen. Jan. (99:387.)
+
+#Clemans, Ella V.#
+  *Mother May's Morals. G. H. May. (25.)
+
+*#ClA(C)menceau, Georges.#
+  *How I Became Long-Sighted. Hear. Aug. (12.)
+
+*#Clifford, Mrs. W. K.# (#Lucy Lane Clifford.#) (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Antidote. Scr. Sept. (68:259.)
+
+#Clive, Julian.# (_See 1919._)
+  Climate. Mir. Nov. 27, '19. (28:835.)
+  Of the Nature of Himself. Mir. Feb. 26. (29:145.)
+
+#Cobb, Irvin (Shrewsbury).# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *It Could Happen Again To-morrow. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (10.)
+  ***Story That Ends Twice. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (8.)
+  *Wasted Headline. S. E. P. May 8. (10.)
+  *When August the Second Was April the First. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (10.)
+  Why Mr. Lobel Had Apoplexy. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (8.)
+
+#Coburn, Mrs. Fordyce.# _See_ #Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell.#
+
+#Cohen, Bella.#
+  *"Children of the Asphalt." L. St. Jan. (75.)
+  *Chrysanthemums. Arg. May 29. (121:395.)
+  **Hands. Touch. Aug.-Sept. (7:383.)
+  *Roaches are Golden. L. St. Sept. (69.)
+  *Sara Resnikoff. Arg. Dec. 13, '19. (115:503.)
+  **Voices of Spring on the East Side. Touch. Jan. (6:195.)
+
+#Cohen, Octavus Roy.# (1891- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  All's Swell That Ends Swell. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (12.)
+  Auto-Intoxication. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (20.)
+  Gravey. S. E. P. June 19. (12.)
+  Here Comes the Bribe. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (12.)
+  Mistuh Macbeth. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (12.)
+  Night-Blooming Serious. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (12.)
+  Noblesse Obliged. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (14.)
+  Survival of the Fattest. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (16.)
+  Ultima Fool. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (20.)
+
+#Collins, Charles.#
+  Girl on the End. Met. Apr. (24.)
+  Sins of Saint Anthony. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (16.)
+  When Marcia Fell. S. E. P. May 15. (20.)
+
+#Comfort, Will Levington#, (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._) _See also_ #Comfort, Will Levington#, _and_ #Dost,
+Zamin Ki.#
+  Gamester. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (28.)
+
+#Comfort, Will Levington.# (1878- .), _and_ #Dost, Zamin Ki.# _See
+also_ #Comfort, Will Levington.#
+  *Bear Knob. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (29.)
+  *Lair. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (20.)
+
+#Condon, Frank.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Any Nest for a Hen. Col. June 12. (10.)
+  Circus Stuff. Col. Jan. 31. (10.)
+  Fade Out. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (54.)
+  *Jones--Balloonatic. Col. Mar. 13. (8.)
+  Sacred Elephant. Col. Oct. 4, '19. (28.)
+
+#Connolly, James Brendan.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Fiery Sea. Col. Feb. 21. (13.)
+  *Wimmin and Girls.  Col. May 22. (12.)
+
+#Cook, Mrs. George Cram.# _See_ #Glaspell, Susan.#
+
+#Cook, Lyle.#
+  Dancing Shoes. L. H. J. May. (20.)
+  Wing Dust. L. H. J. Apr. (14.)
+
+#Cooke, Grace MacGowan.# _See_ #MacGowan, Alice#, _and_ #Cooke, Grace
+MacGowan.#
+
+#Cooper, Courtney Ryley.# (1886- .) (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Thrill That Cured Him. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (29.)
+  Unconquered. S. E. P. June 5. (30.)
+
+#Corbaley, Kate.#
+  Hangers-On. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (17.)
+  Pair of Blue Rompers. L. H. J. Jan. (15.)
+
+#Corcoran, Captain A. P.#
+  Middle Watch. L. H. J. Jan. (26.)
+
+#Corley, Donald.#
+  ***Daimyo's Bowl. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:810.)
+
+#Cornell, V. H.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  His Big Moment. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (38.)
+
+"#Crabb, Arthur.#" (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Among Gentlemen. Col. Feb. 14. (21.)
+  Bill Riggs Comes Back. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (61.)
+  Harold Child, Bachelor. L. H. J. Oct.-Nov., '19. (11:28.)
+  In the Last Analysis. Col. Sept. 4. (10.)
+  Janet. Met. March. (42.)
+  Kiss. Met. Oct., '19. (21.)
+  Lanning Cup. Ev. Apr. (49.)
+  Little God of Hunches. Ev. Jul. (21.)
+  Masher. Met. Apr. (36.)
+  Max Solis Gives an Option. Met. Sept. (28.)
+  Mr. Dog-in-the-Manger. Del. Jul.-Aug. (16.)
+  More or Less Innocent Bystander. Met. Feb. (21.)
+  Queer Business. Ev. May. (9.)
+  Rape of the Key. Sun. Dec., '19. (37.)
+  Reformation of Orchid. Met. Jan. (38.)
+  Represented by Counsel. Met. Nov., '19. (26.)
+  Sammy, Old Fox. Ev. Sept. (21.)
+  Story Apropos. Col. March 13. (20.)
+  Tony Comes Back. Del. Jan. (12.)
+  Yielded Torch. Cen. Apr. (99:758.)
+
+#Cram, Mildred R.# (1889- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  *Concerning Courage. L. H. J. Feb. (7.)
+  **Ember. McCall. June. (12.)
+  Fade Out. Col. May 22. (21.)
+  ***Odell. Red Bk. May. (58.)
+  Romance--Unlimited. Col. June 5. (18.)
+  ***Spring of Cold Water. Harp. B. Aug. (50.)
+  **Stuff of Dreams. Harp. B. Feb. (72.)
+  ***Wind. Mun. Aug. (70:413.)
+
+#Crane, Clarkson.# (_See 1916._)
+  Furlough. S. S. May. (113.)
+
+#Crane, Mifflin.# (_See 1919._)
+  Betrayal. S. S. March. (109.)
+  Captive. S. S. Nov., '19. (97.)
+  *Cycle. S. S. April. (73.)
+  *Impossible Romance. S. S. Aug. (37.)
+  Negligible Ones. S. S. Dec., '19. (73.)
+  Older Woman. S. S. Feb. (87.)
+
+#Crew, Helen Coale.# (1866- .) (_H._)
+  ***Parting Genius. Mid. Jul. (6:95.)
+
+#Crissey, Forrest.# (1864- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Gumshoes 4-B. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:116.)
+
+#Croff, Grace A.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Forbidden  Meadow. G. H. Sept. (60.)
+  Minds of Milly. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (43.)
+  *Stroke of Genius. Rom. Sept (161.)
+
+#Cummings, Ray.#
+  *Old Man Davey. Arg. Sept. 4. (125:110.)
+
+#Cummins, T. D. Pendleton. "T. D. Pendleton."# (_see 1915, 1916._)
+  *Biscuit. Mir. Aug. 19. (29:644.)
+
+"#Curly, Roger.#"
+  Tael of a Tail-Spinner. Harp. M. June. (141:137.)
+  Three on an Island. Harp. M. Aug. (141:409.)
+
+#Curran, Pearl Lenore.#
+  Rosa Alvaro, Entrante. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (18.)
+
+#Curtiss, Philip (Everett).# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Crocodile's Half-Sister. Harp. M. May. (140:824.)
+  First of the Cuties. Ev. Mar. (45.)
+  **Holy Roman Empire of the Bronx. Harp. M. Sept. (141:465.)
+  *Temperament. Harp. B. Mar. (52.)
+
+
+#Dallett, Morris.#
+  Lost Love. S. S. Dec., '19. (75.)
+
+#Davies, Oma Almona.# (_See 1915, 1918._)
+  Tunis Hoopstetter, Early Bloomer. S. E. P. May 15. (30.)
+
+#Davis, Charles Belmont.# (1866- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  His Sister. Met. Feb. (28.)
+
+#Davis, Martha King.#
+  David Stands Pat. L. H. J. Jul. (30.)
+  Transplanting Mother. Am. Feb.  (20.)
+
+#Davis, Maurice.#
+  Droll Secret of Mademoiselle. S. S. Sept. (39.)
+  *Tradition of the House of Monsieur. S. S. May. (23.)
+
+#Davron, Mary Clare.#
+  Ladies Who Loved Don Juan. Met. Dec., '19. (19.)
+
+*#Dawson, Coningsby (William).# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Loneliest Fellow. G. H. Dec., '19. (17.)
+
+#Day, Holman Francis.# (1865- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Deodat's in Town. Red Bk. Apr. (38.)
+  Nooning at the Devilbrew. Col. Apr. 10. (10.)
+  Two Beans and Bomazeen. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (12.)
+
+#De Casseres, Benjamin.# _See_ #Casseres, Benjamin De.#
+
+#De Chambrun, Clara Longworth, Countess.#
+  "Little Archie." Scr. Aug. (68:222.)
+
+*#Deeping, (George) Warwick.# (1877- .) (_H._)
+  *Hunger and Two Golden Salvers. Rom. Jul. (73.)
+  *Pride and the Woman. Par. April. (109.)
+  *Secret Orchard. Rom. Sept. (96.)
+
+#De Jagers, Dorothy.# (_See 1916._)
+  Mary Lou and the Hall-Room Tradition. Ev. Apr. (21.)
+  Polly Wants a Backer. Ev. Aug. (28.)
+
+#Delano, Edith Barnard.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._)  (_See "H" under_
+#Barnard, Edith#, _and_ #Delano, Edith Barnard.#)
+  **Blue Flowers from Red. L. H. J. Sept. (10.)
+  *Face to Face. L. H. J. June. (7.)
+  ***Life and the Tide. Pict. R. Apr. (27.)
+
+#De La Roche, Mazo.# _See_ #Roche, Mazo De La.#
+
+*#Delarue-Madrus, Lucie.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Rober. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 15.
+
+#Delgado, F. P.# (_H._)
+  Monna. S. S. Feb. (125.)
+
+#Denison, Katharine.#
+  My Father. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:757.)
+
+*#Dennis, Mrs. Forbes.# _See_ #Bottome, Phyllis.#
+
+#Derieux, Samuel A.# (1881- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Old Frank Sees It Through. Am. Nov., '19. (56.)
+  **Terrible Charge Against Jeff Poter. Am. Feb. (38.)
+
+*#Derys, Gaston.#
+  Rabbits. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 11.
+
+*#Desmond, Shaw.# (1877- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Sunset. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:577.)
+
+#Dew, Natalie.#
+  Romance _and_ Mary Low. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (9.)
+
+#Dickson, Harris.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Breeches for Two. Cos. Mar. (85.)
+  *Relapse of Captain Hotstuff. Cos. Jan. (81.)
+  *Sticky Fingers. Cos. Apr. (85.)
+
+#Dobie, Charles Caldwell.# (1881- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Christmas Cakes. Harp. M. Jan. (140:200.)
+  ***Leech. Harp. M. Apr. (140:654.)
+  **Young  China. L. H. J. Aug. (10.)
+
+*#DobrA(C)e, Bonamy.#
+  ***Surfeit. Lit. R. Dec., '19. (15.)
+
+#Dodge, Henry Irving.# (1861- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Skinner Makes It Fashionable. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (5.)
+  Wrong Hat on the Wrong Man. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (28.)
+
+#Dodge, Louis.# (1870- .) (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  ***Case of McIntyre. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:539.)
+  **Message from the Minority. Holl. Mar. (5.)
+
+#Donnell, Annie Hamilton.# (1862- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Beauty Hat. Del. June. (24.)
+  Crazy Day. Del. Dec., '19. (20.)
+
+#Dost, Zamin Ki.# _See_ #Comfort, Will Levington#, _and_ #Dost, Zamin Ki.#
+
+#Douglas, Ford.# (_H._)
+  Come-Back. S. S. June. (35.)
+  Home-Made. S. S. Aug. (27.)
+  Mr. Duncan's Gin. S. S. Jul. (75.)
+
+#Douglas, George.#
+  *Three Ghosts and a Widow. Q. W. Aug. (12:213.)
+
+#Dounce, Harry Esty.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  Mr. Torbert Malingers. Cen. Oct., '19. (98:758.)
+
+#Dowst, Henry Payson.# (187*- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bonds of Matrimony. S. E. P. Jul. 31. (8.)
+  Bostwick Budget. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (5.)
+  Cadbury's Ghosts. Ev. Feb. (48.)
+  He Needed the Money. S. E. P. June 26. (12.)
+  Pioneer and Pattenbury. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (3.)
+  Symbols. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (16.)
+
+#Dreier, Thomas.# (1884- .)
+  Broken Mirror. Met. Jan. (18.)
+
+#Dreiser, Theodore.# (1871- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Sanctuary. S. S. Oct., '19. (35.)
+
+#Drew, Helen.#
+  *Flag in the Dust. All. Feb., 28. (107:461.)
+
+#Driggs, Laurence La Tourette.# (1876- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  CurA(C) of Givenchy. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (14.)
+
+#Drucker, Rebecca.#
+  *Old Lace. (_R._) Mir. March 18. (29:233.)
+
+#Du Bois, Boice.# (_See 1919._)
+  Ancestral Hang-Over. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (49.)
+  Come-Back of a Send-Off. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (20.)
+  Downfall of an Uplift. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (46.)
+  Hortense the Helpful. S. E. P. June 5. (20.)
+
+*#Dubreuil, RenA(C).#
+  *Estelle and Francis. N. Y. Trib. June. 20.
+
+*#Dudeney, Mrs. Henry E.# (1866- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Wild Raspberries. Harp. M. Jan. (140:217.)
+
+#Duganne, Phyllis.# (_See 1919._)
+  Extravagance. Met. Feb. (18.)
+  True Art. Met. Aug. (20.)
+
+#Dunaway, Anna Brownell.# (_H._)
+  *Estate. Col. Jul. 31. (10.)
+
+*#Dunsany, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett#, _18th_ #Baron#, (1878- .)
+(_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  ***Cheng Hi and the Window Framer. S. S. Nov., '19 (2.)
+  ***East and West. S. S. Dec., '19. (41.)
+  ***How the Lost Causes Were Removed from Valhalla. S. S. Oct., '19. (1.)
+  **Opal Arrow-Head. Harp. M. May. (140:809.)
+  ***Pretty Quarrel. Atl. Apr. (125:512.) Mir. Apr. 1. (29:284.)
+
+#Durand, Ruth Sawyer.# _See_ #Sawyer, Ruth.#
+
+#Dutton, Louise Elizabeth.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Facing Facts. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (6.)
+  Framed. Met. Dec., '19. (15.)
+
+#Dwyer, James Francis.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Bridal Roses of Shang. Holl. Nov., '19. (5.)
+  *Bronze Horses of Ballymeena. W. H. C.  Oct., '19. (23.)
+  *Devil's Glue. B. C. Feb. (37.)
+  Devil's Whisper. Col. Dec. 13, '19. (11.)
+  *Fair Deborah. Col. June 19. (10.)
+  Green Hassocks of Gods. Col. Aug. 28-Sept. 4. (5, 16.)
+  Little Brown Butterfly. Del. March. (23.)
+  *"Maryland, My Maryland!" Col. Mar. 20. (7.)
+  *Thin, Thin Man. Sn. St. Sep. 25. (61.)
+  Titled Bus Horse. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (23.)
+
+#Dyer, Walter Alden.# (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Mr. Geraniums. Holl. May. (14.)
+  *Phantom Hound. Top. Mar. 1-15. (145.)
+
+
+#Eastman, Rebecca Hooper.# (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  One Room and Bath. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (14.)
+  Salesman and the Star. S. E. P. May 8. (14.)
+  String-Bean House. G. H. Nov., '19. (39.)
+
+#Edgelow, Thomas.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  Enchantment of Youth. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:739.)
+
+*#Edginton, May.# (_See 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Man from Hell. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (10.)
+  *Man's Size. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (12.)
+
+#Edholm, Charlton Lawrence.# (1879- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Maker of Images. L. H. J. May. (17.)
+  **"Trouble Never Troubles Me." L. H. J. June. (20.)
+
+#Edwards, Cleveland.#
+  *Dream That Would Not Fade. Arg. Aug. 21. (124:571.)
+
+#Edwards, Frederick Beecher.#
+  Thank-You-Please Perkins. S. E. P. May 8. (30.)
+
+#Eldridge, Paul.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  **Their Dreams. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:148.)
+
+#Ellerbe, Alma Martin Estabrook.# (1871- .), _and_ #Ellerbe, Paul Lee.#
+(_See 1915 under_ #Estabrook, Alma Martin#; _1917 under_ #Ellerbe, Alma
+Estabrook#; _1919 under_ #Ellerbe, Alma Martin#, _and_ #Ellerbe, Paul
+Lee.#) (_See "H" under_ #Ellerbe, Paul Lee.#)
+  ***Paradise Shares. Cen. Jul. (100:312.)
+  *Wiped off the Slate. Am. Feb. (10.)
+
+#Ellerbe, Rose L.# (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  *Key to Freedom. L. H. J. Aug. (18.)
+
+*#Ervine, St. John G(reer.)# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Dramatist and the Leading Lady. Harp. B. Aug. (36.)
+
+#Evans, Frank E. (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Pearls or Ap#ples? Ev. Jul. (32.)
+
+#Evans, Ida May.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Eternal Biangle. G. H. Feb. (33.)
+
+#Evarts, Hal G.#
+  Bald-Face. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (34.)
+  Big Bull of Shoshone. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (46.)
+  Black Ram of Sunlight. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (5.)
+  Convincing a Lady. Col. Aug. 14. (10.)
+  Dog Town. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (12.)
+  Protective Coloration. Col. Dec. 20, '19. (19.)
+  Straight and Narrow. Sun. Nov., '19. (27.)
+
+
+#Fargo, Ruth.#
+  Birthday Tale. Del. Feb. (19.)
+  *"Nobody Else's Home Seems Just Right." Am. Apr. (57.)
+
+#Farnham, Mateel Howe.# (_H._)
+  One Day to Do as They Pleased. Del. Dec., '19. (8.)
+
+*"#FarrA"re, Claude.#" (#Charles Bargone.#) (1876- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Fall of the House of Hia. N. Y. Trib. Apr. 25.
+
+#Ferber, Edna.# (1887- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Ain't Nature Wonderful! McC. Aug. (12.)
+  *Dancing Girls. Col. March 13. (5.)
+  ***Maternal Feminine. McC. Feb. (18.)
+  **Old Lady Mandle. Col. Jan. 17. (5.)
+  ***You've Got to Be Selfish. McC. Mar.-Apr. (14.)
+
+#Field, Flora.# (_See 1918._)
+  **Mister Montague. Del. Nov., '19. (23.)
+
+#Fillmore, Parker (Hoysted).# (1878- .) (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  ***Katcha and the Devil. (R.) Mir. Jan. 22. (29:59.)
+
+#Finger, Charles J.# (1871- .) (_See 1919._)
+  *Canassa. Mir.  Oct. 30, '19. (28:744.)
+  **Dust to Dust. Mir. Jul. 15. (29:561.)
+  ***Ebro. Mir. June 10. (29:469.)
+  *Incongruity. S.S. Jan. (65.)
+  ***Jack Random. Mir. Aug. 26. (29:660.)
+  *Ma-Ha-Su-Ma. Mir. March 18. (29:213.)
+  **Phonograph. Mir. Dec. 11, '19. (28:903.)
+  **Some Mischievous Thing. S. S. Aug. (119.)
+
+#Fish, Horace.# (1885- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Doom's-Day Envelope. Rom. June. (43.)
+
+#Fisher, Helen Dwight.# _See_ #Harold, Henry#, _and_ #Fisher, Helen
+Dwight.#
+
+#Fisher, Raymond Henry.#
+  *Yeng. Lit. St. June. (25.)
+
+#Fitzgerald, Francis Scott Key.#
+  Benediction. S. S. Feb. (35.)
+  Bernice Bobs Her Hair. S. E. P. May 1. (14.)
+  Camel's Back. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (16.)
+  **Cut-Glass Bowl. Ser. May. (67:582.)
+  Dalyrimple Goes Wrong. S. S. Feb. (107.)
+  **Four Fists. Ser. June. (67:669.)
+  Ice Palace. S. E. P. May 22. 18.)
+  Offshore Pirate. S. E. P. May 29. (10.)
+  Smilers. S. S. June (107.)
+
+#Flandrau, Grace Hodgson.# (_See 1918._)
+  Dukes and Diamonds. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (50.)
+  Let That Pass.  S. E. P. Apr. 17. (28.)
+
+*#Fletcher, A. Byers.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  *According to Whang Foo. Hear. Jan. (32.)
+  *End of a Perfect Day. Hear. Mar. (33.)
+
+#Flint, Homer Eon.#
+  *Greater Miracle. All. Apr. 24. (109:340.)
+
+#Foley, James William, Jr.# (1874- .) (_H._)
+  *Letters of William Green. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (109.)
+  *Letters of William Green. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (46.)
+
+#Follett, Wilson.#
+  ***Dive. Atl. Dec., '19-Jan. (124:729;  125:67.)
+
+#Folsom, Elizabeth Irons.# (1876- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Alibi. Sun. May. (49.)
+  Bain Twins and the "Detective." Am. Oct., '19. (51.)
+  *No Better Than She Should Be. Met. Mar. (32.)
+
+#Foote, John Taintor.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Allegheny. Am. Dec., '19. (11.)
+
+#Ford, Torrey.#
+  Over and Back with Scuds. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (57.)
+
+#Foster, A. K.#
+  Rebel-Hearted. Touch. Apr. (7:10.)
+
+#Foster, Maximillian.#  (1872- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Big-Town Stuff.  S. E. P. Jan. 3. (18.)
+  Mrs. Fifty-Fifty.  S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (6.)
+
+#Fraiken, Wanda L.#  (_See 1919._)
+  **Rubber-Tired Buggy. Mid. Aug. (6:105.)
+
+*"#France, Anatole.#" (#Jacques Anatole Thibault.#) (1844- .) (_See 1919._)
+  ***Lady with the White Fan. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:83.)
+
+#Francis, Dominic.#
+  **Son of the Morning. Mag. Apr. (25:288.)
+  *"Woman--at Endor." Mag. Sept. (26:232.)
+
+#Frazer, Elizabeth.# (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  Derelict Isle. S. E. P. May 29. (18.)
+
+#Frederickson, H. Blanche.#
+  Maiden Aunt. Met. May. (27.)
+
+*#Freeman, Lewis R.#
+  "His Wonders to Perform." Ev. Sept. (60.)
+
+#Freeman, Mary Eleanor Wilkins.# (1862- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Gospel According to Joan. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:77.)
+
+#Friedenthal, Joachim.#
+  ***Pogrom in Poland. (R.) Mir. Oct. 23, '19. (28:726.)
+
+*#Friedlaender, V. H.# (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  *New Love. S. S. Sept. (117.)
+  *Rendezvous. Harp. M. Feb. (140:328.)
+
+#Frost, Walter Archer# (1876- .), _and_ #Frost, Susan#, (_See 1916 and
+"H" under_ #Frost, Walter Archer.#)
+  **His Hold. Ev. Jan. (24.)
+
+#Fullerton, Hugh Stewart.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Jaundice's Last Race. Ev. Nov., '19. (119.)
+
+
+#Gale, Zona.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Arpeggio. Ev. Mar. (68.)
+  Arpeggio Helps. Ev. Apr. (44.)
+  Barbara's Aunt Beatrix. G. H. Oct., '19. (53.)
+  Love in the Valley. G. H. Feb. (30.)
+  *Lovingest Lady. W. H. C. June (16.)
+
+*#Galsworthy, John.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Expectations. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:643.)
+
+#Garrett, Garet.# (1878- .) (_See 1917._)
+  Gilded Telegrapher. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (20.)
+  Red Night. S. E. P. Apr. 2. (42.)
+  Shyest Man. Ev. Sept. (65.)
+
+#Gasch, Marie Manning.# _See_ #Manning, Marie.#
+
+#Gauss, Marianne.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  **Justice. Atl. May. (125:613.)
+
+#Geer, Cornelia Throop.# _See_ #Le Boutillier, Cornelia Geer.#
+
+#Gelzer, Jay.#
+  **In the Street of a Thousand Delights. Sn. St. Aug. 4. (25.)
+
+*#George, W. L.# (1882- .) (_See 1917._)
+  *Romance. Harp. B. Aug. (64.)
+
+#Gerould, Katherine Fullerton.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Habakkuk. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:547.)
+  ***Honest Man. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:777.)
+
+#Gerry, Margarita Spalding.# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Food for the Minotaur. Harp. M. March. (140:488.)
+
+*#Gibbon, Perceval.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Abdication. Cos. Jul. (89.)
+  ***Connoisseur. Cos. Oct., '19. (73.)
+  *Dark Moment. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (8.)
+  *Elopement. McCall. Mar. (8.)
+  **Heiress. Cos. Aug. (53.)
+  **Hostage to Misfortune. McC. Aug. (23.)
+  ***Knave of Diamonds. McCall. May (5.)
+  *Last of the Duellists. McC. Dec., '19. (18.)
+  ***Lieutenant. Pict. R. Mar. (10.)
+  *Spotless. S. E. P. May 8. (15.)
+
+#Gibbs, A. Hamilton.#
+  Conqueror of To-morrow. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (30.)
+
+#Giersch, Ruth Henrietta.#
+  In Old Salem. L. H. J. Dec. '19. (23.)
+
+
+#Gilbert, George.# (1874- .) (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Cleansing Kiss. Mun. Mar. (69:253.)
+  *Old Yellow Mixing Bowl, T. T. Nov., '19. (35.)
+  ***Sigh of the Bulbul. Asia. Jul. (20:563.)
+
+#Gilchrist, Beth Bradford.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Eyes That See. Harp. M. Oct., '19. (139:629.)
+  **Miracle. Harp. M. Jul. (141:217.)
+
+#Gilpatric, John Guy.# (_H._)
+  *Black Art and Ambrose. Col. Aug. 21. (14.)
+
+#Glaspell, Susan (Keating).# (#Mrs. George Cram Cook.#) (1882- .) (_See
+1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Escape. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:29.)
+  Nervous Pig. Harp. M. Feb. (140:309.)
+
+#Glass, Montague Marsden.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  Cousins of Convenience. Cos. Jul. (26.)
+
+#Godfrey, Winona.# (1877- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  Does Marriage Clip the Wings of Youth? Am. Feb. (51.)
+  Gods of Derision. Mir. Jan. 15. (29:38.)
+
+#Goetchius, Marie Louise.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+#Goldsborough, Ann.#
+  Answer to Joe Trice's Prayer. Am. Aug. (62.)
+
+#Goodfellow, Grace.#
+  **In The Street of the Flying Dragon. Rom. Sept. (126.)
+
+#Goodloe, Abbie Carter.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *McHenry and the Ghost-Bird. Scr. Jan. (67:105.)
+  **Return of the Monks. Scr. Oct. '19. (66:460.)
+
+#Goodman, Henry.# (1893- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  **Hundred Dollar Bill. Pear. Aug. (44.)
+
+#Goodwin, Ernest.# (_See 1918._)
+  Very Ordinary Young Man. Met. Dec., '19. (50.)
+
+#Gordon, Armistead Churchill.# (1855- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Panjorum Bucket. Scr. Feb (67:232.)
+
+#Graeve, Oscar.# (1884- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 1919._) (_H._)
+  Alonzo the Magnificent. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (16.)
+  Careless World. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (16.)
+  Cyrilian Cycle. S. E. P. May 1. (22.)
+  Lydia Leads the Way. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (14.)
+
+#Grahame, Ferdinand.#
+  *Four Bits. Arg. June 12. (122:59.)
+
+#Grandegge, Stephanie.#
+  Recapture. Pag. Feb. (20.)
+
+#Granich, Irwin.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  *Two Mexicos. Lib. May. (29.)
+
+#Granich, Irwin#, _and_ #Roy, Manabendra Nath.#
+  *Champak. Lib. Feb. (8.)
+
+#Grant, Ethel Watts-Mumford.# _See_ #Mumford, Ethel Watts.#
+
+#Grant, Louise.#
+  *In Search of Life. Touch. Mar. (6:358.)
+
+#Graves, Louis.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  I. D. R. 125. Met. Nov., '19. (48.)
+
+*"#Greene, Lewis Patrick.#" (#Louis Montague Greene.#) (1891- .)
+(_See 1918._)
+  *Man Who Stayed. Adv. Jul. 18. (106.)
+
+#Greenfield, Will H.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Lost Lotos. Mir. Jul. 8. (29:548.)
+
+#Greig, Algernon.#
+  "Oh You February 29." Met. Septa. (27.)
+
+#Griffith, Helen Sherman.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  Billy Allen's Coal-Mine. Del. Jul.-Aug. (18.)
+  "Poor Little Sara." Del. Apr. (21.)
+
+*#Grimshaw, Beatrice.# (_See 1915, 1916._) (_H._)
+  *Devil's Gold. Red Bk. Feb. (59.)
+  *Maddox and the Emma-Pea. Red Bk. Rpr. (68.)
+  *When the O-O Called. Red Bk. Mar. (49.)
+
+
+#Haines, Donald Hamilton.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Forty-Five. Ev. Feb. (50.)
+
+#Haldeman-Julius, Mr.# _and_ #Mrs. Emanuel.# _See_ #Julius, Mr.# _and_
+#Mrs. Emanuel Haldeman-.#
+
+#Hale, Maryse Rutledge.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+#Hall, Herschel S.# (_See 1919 under_ #Hall, H. S.#)
+  Beeves from the Arggentyne. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (32.)
+  Bouillon. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (8.)
+  Cat Clause. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (8.)
+  Chance. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (8.)
+  Hot Metal. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (18.)
+  Key Man. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (24.)
+  Promoted. S. E. P. June 12. (20.)
+  *Sacrifice. Red Bk. May. (83.)
+  Steel Preferred. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (3.)
+  Stum Puckett, Cinder Monkey. S. E. P. Oct. 11. '19. (14.)
+  Wellington Gay. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (20.)
+  White Lines. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (14.)
+  Yancona Yillies. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (20.)
+
+"#Hall, Holworthy.#" (#Harold Everett Porter.#) (1887- .) (_See 1915,
+  1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Ancestors. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (20.)
+  Below the Medicinal Hundred. Ev. Oct., '19. (30.)
+  Bonds of Patrimony. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (10.)
+  Ego, Sherburne and Company. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (16.)
+  Girl Who Couldn't Knit. Pict. R. May. (8.)
+  G.P.  S. E. P. Jul. 17. (12.)
+  Humorist. Pict. R. Sept. (16.)
+  Long Carry. Col. June 5. (5.)
+  Round and Round and Round. Col. Sept. 11. (5.)
+  Slippery Metal. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (10.)
+  Sniffski. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (3.)
+
+#Hall, May Emery.# (1874- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Laying Captain Morley's Ghost. Arg. May 8. (120:547.)
+
+#Hall, Wilbur (Jay).# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Art of Buying. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (14.)
+  Business Neurology. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (11.)
+  Johnny Cucabod. S. E. P. June 12. (5.)
+  Le Lupercalia. Sun. Feb. (39.)
+  Let the Seller Beware! S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (10.)
+  Martin Quest and Wife--Purchasing Agents. Am. Apr. (39.)
+  Melancholy Mallard. S. E. P. NOV. 22, '19. (13.)
+  Mercenary Little Wretch. Am. March. (41.)
+  Super-Soviet. Col. Mar. 27. (5.)
+
+#Hallet, Richard Matthews.# (1887- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *First Lady of Cranberry Isle. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (18.)
+  Inspiration Jule. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (58.)
+  **Interpreter's Wife. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (42.)
+  Wake-Up Archie. Col. Feb. 14. (7.)
+
+#Halverson, Delbert M.#
+  ***Leaves in the Wind. Mid. Apr. (6:28.)
+  Red Foam. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (14.)
+  That Dangerous Person. Ev. Nov., '19. (53.)
+
+#Hamilton, Edith Hulbert.#
+  Anyone Can Write. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (20.)
+
+#Hamilton, Gertrude Brooke.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  On Whom the Ladies Dote. S. S. Feb. (89.)
+  Open Eyes.  S. S. Jan. (41.)
+  Pause. S. S. Apr. (59.)
+  **Shall We Dine, Melisse? S. S. Nov., '19. (43.)
+  Where Is Your Mother? G. H. May. (47.)
+
+#Hampton, Edgar Lloyd.# (_See 1915._)
+  Once One is Two. Met. Jan. (28.)
+  **Return of Foo Chow. Met. Mar. (13.)
+
+#Hanford, Helen Ellwanger.#
+  **Willow Pond. Atl. Mar. (125:363.)
+
+*#Hannay, Canon James O.# _See_ "#Birmingham, George A.#"
+
+*#Haraucourt, Edmond.# (1856- .) (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  Dies IrA|. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 25.
+  *Posthumous Sonnet. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 7, '19.
+  Skunk Collar. N. Y. Trib. May 2.
+  *Two Profiles in the Crowd. N. Y. Trib. Sept. 5.
+
+#Harben, Will(iam) N(athaniel).# (1858- .) (_H._)
+  *Timely Intervention. Mun. Apr. (69:468.)
+
+#Hardy, Arthur Sherburne.# (1847 .) (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  **Mystery of CA(C)lestine. Harp. M. Mar. (140:442.)
+
+#Haring, Ethel Chapman.# (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  Giver. Del. Nov., '19. (21.)
+  Ten Dollars a Month. Del. May. (15.)
+
+#Harold, Henry#, _and_ #Fisher, Helen Dwight.#
+  **White Petunias. Rom. Apr. (104.)
+
+#Harper, C. A.#
+  Vestal Venus. S. S. Apr. (101.)
+
+*#Harrington, Katherine.#
+  *O'Hara's Leg. Met. June (28.)
+
+#Harris, Corra (May White).# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Widow Ambrose. L. H. J. Aug. (7.)
+
+#Harris, Kennett.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Beauty and the Butterflies. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (59.)
+  Benny and Her Familee. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (10.)
+  Concerning Cautious Clyde. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (8.)
+  Most Popular Lady. S. E. P. July 10. (5.)
+  Rosemary Risks It. S. E. P. May 8. (20.)
+  Triptolemus the Mascot. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (3.)
+
+#Harris, May.# (1873- .) (_H._)
+  Back Again. All. Nov. 1, '19. (103:332.)
+
+*#Harris-Burland, J. B.# _See_ #Burland, J. B. Harris-.#
+
+#Harrison, Henry Snydor.# (1880- .) (_H._)
+  Big People.  S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (3.)
+
+#Harry, Franklin P.#
+  *Retribution and a Rabbit's Foot. T. T. Jul. (49.)
+  *Tan. Blu. Ox. 850. T. T. Oct., '19. (80.)
+
+#Hartman, Lee Foster.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Judgment of Vulcan. Harp. M. Mar. (140:520.)
+
+#Harvey, Alexander.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._)
+  Great Third Act. Mir. Dec. 18, '19. (28:923.)
+
+#Haskell, Helen E.# (_See 1919._)
+  In Their Middle Years. Met. June. (31.)
+
+#Hatch, Leonard.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Links. Scr. Sept. (68:312.)
+
+#Hawley, J. B.#
+  Dancing Dog. S. S. June (51.)
+  *Tarnished Brass. S. S. Jul. (33.)
+
+#Henderson, Victor.# (_H._)
+  Poor Old Thing. S. S. Jul. (103.)
+
+#Hergesheimer, Joseph.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Blue Ice. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (8.)
+  ***Ever So Long Ago. Red Bk. Apr. (23.)
+  ***Meeker Ritual. (II.) Cen. Oct., '19. (98:737.)
+  ***"Read Them and Weep." Cen. Jan. (99:289.)
+
+#Hewes, Robert E.# (_See 1919._)
+  Pawnbroker of Shanghai. Met. Oct., '19. (34.)
+
+#Hewitt, Lew.#
+  Third Woman. S. S. Aug. (111.)
+
+#Hill, Mabel.# (1864- .)
+  Miss Lizzie--Parlor Bolshevist. Scr. Feb. (67:165.)
+
+#Hinds, Roy W.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Debts. Arg. Jul. 24. (123: 458.)
+
+*#Hirsch, Charles-Henry.# (1870-.)  (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Autographed Mirror. N. Y. Trib. May 9.
+
+#Holbrook, Weare.# (_See 1919._)
+  Feast of St. Cecile. Pag. Apr.-May. (47.)
+
+*#Holding, Elizabeth Sanxay.#
+  **Patrick on the Mountain. S. S. Jul. (109.)
+  ***Problem that Perplexed Nicholson. S. S. Aug. (117.)
+
+#Holland, Rupert Sargent.# (1878- .) (_H._)
+  *Arcadians in the Attic. Scr. May. (67:618.)
+  Flying Man. L. H. J. Aug. (40.)
+
+#Hollingsworth, Ceylon.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Harp of a Thousand Strings. Col. Feb. 28. (9.)
+  **Mind  of a Man. Col. Jan. 31. (5.)
+  *Pants. Col. Jul. 3. (5.)
+
+#Holt, Henry P.# (_See 1915, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Devil Cat Meets Her Match. Am. June.  (29.)
+  *In The Cabin of the Chloe. Sh. St. Aug. (173.)
+
+#Hooker (william), Brian.# (1880- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  **Branwen. Rom. June. (132.)
+
+#Hopper, James (Marie).# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Education of Percy Skinner. Ev. May. (23.)
+  Pessimist Rewarded. Harp.  M. Aug. (141: 351.)
+
+#Horn, R. de S.#
+  *Joss of the Golden Wheel. B. C. Jul. (3.)
+
+#Hostetter, Van Vechten.# Superwoman.  S. S. Nov., '19. (53.)
+  They're All Alike. S. S. March. (99.)
+
+#House, Roy Temple#, _and_ #Saint-ValA(C)ry, Leon De.#
+  **Count Roland's Ruby. Strat. J. Apr.-June.  (6:143.)
+
+#Hughes, Rupert.# (1872- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Broken Flange. Cos.  Nov., '19. (67.)
+  *Father of Waters. Cos. Jan. (43.)
+  *Momma. Col. June  26. (5.)
+  ***Stick-in-the-Muds. Col. Sept. 25. (5.)
+
+#Hull, Alexander.#  (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Argosies. Scr. Sept. (68:285.)
+
+#Hull, Helen R.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Flaw. Harp. M. Oct., '19. (139:747.)
+  **Separation. Touch. Mar. (6:371.)
+
+#Hunting, Ema S.# (1885- .)
+  ***Dissipation. Mid. May. (6:47.)
+  ***Soul that Sinneth. Mid. Aug. (6:128.)
+
+#Hurst, Fannie.# (1889- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Back Pay. Cos. Nov., '19. (35.)
+
+#Hurst, S. B. H.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *What Happened Between. Rom. Jul. (146.)
+
+#Hurwitz, Maximilian.#
+  *"Eili, Eili, Lomo Asavtoni?" Men. Feb.
+
+#Hussey, L. M.# (_See 1919._)
+  **Believer.  S. S. April. (29.)
+  **Family. Cen. Sept. (100:682.)
+  Father. S. S. Jan. (121.)
+  Gift of Illusion. S. S. June. (113.)
+  Hope Chest. S. S. Feb. (59.)
+  ***Lowden Household. S. S. Aug. (97.)
+  *Memories. S. S. Nov., '19. (121.)
+  *Opponent. S. S. Oct., '19. (61.)
+  Renunciation. S. S. May (39.)
+  **Sisters. S. S. Nov., '19. (55.)
+  *Twilight of Love. S. S. Dec., '19. (43.)
+  ***Two Gentlemen of Caracas. S. S. Dec., '19. (89.)
+
+*#Hutchinson, Arthur Stuart Menteth.# (1880- .) (_H._)
+  **Bit of Luck. Ev. Feb. (66.)
+
+
+*#IbAiA+-ez, Vicente Blasco.# _See_ #Blasco IbAiA+-ez, Vicente.#
+
+#Imrie, Walter McLaren.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Wife Who Needed Two Chairs. S. S. June. (91.)
+
+#Irwin, Inez Haynes. (Inez Haynes Gillmore.)# (1873- .) (_See 1915
+under_ #Gillmore, Inez Haynes#; _1916, 1917, 1918, 1919 under_ #Irwin,
+Inez Haynes.#) (_See "H" under_ #Gillmore, Inez Haynes.#)
+  *Long Carry. Met. Oct., '19. (42.)
+
+#Irwin, Wallace.# (1875- .)  (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Beauty. McC. Aug. (8.)
+  Direct Action. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (8.)
+  "Ham and Eggs." Pict. R. June. (18.)
+  Joke. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (12.)
+  Mr. Rundle's Exit. Pict. R. May. (34.)
+  Moonshine. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (12.)
+  On to the Next. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (12.)
+  Waste Motions. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (10.)
+  Wherefore Art Thou Romeo? S. E. P. May 22. (14.)
+
+#Irwin, Will(iam Henry).# (1873- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Copper Dan Imbibes. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (12.)
+  In The Tower of Silence. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (20.)
+  There Is a Santa Claus. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (20.)
+
+#Ittner, Anna Belle Rood.#
+  *Old Glory Bill. Scr. June. (67: 686.)
+
+
+#Jackson, Charles Tenney.# (1874- .) (_See 1916, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Little Girl Who Never Saw a Hill. Arg. Mar. 13. (118:501.)
+
+*#Jacobs, W(illiam) W(ymark).# (1863- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Artful Cards. Hear. Dec., '19 (17.)
+
+#Jagers, Dorothy De.# _See_ #De Jagers, Dorothy.#
+
+*#Jaloux, Edmond.# (_See 1918._)
+  **At the Telephone. N. Y. Trib. June 13.
+  **Poet's Revenge. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 8.
+
+#Jenkin, A. I.#
+  Premonition. S. S. Aug. (45.)
+
+#Jenkins, Charles Christopher.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Bayonet of Henry Laberge. Arg. Feb. 21. (118:154.)
+  *Man Beneath. Arg. Oct. 25, '19. (113:691.)
+
+#Jenkins, George B., Jr.#
+  Four Faint Freckles and a Cheerful Disposition. S. S. Jan. (111.)
+
+#John, W. A. P.#
+  No'th Af'ican Lloyds, Ltd. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (16.)
+
+#Johns, Orrick.#
+  ***Big Frog. S. S. Sept. (87.)
+
+#Johnson, Arthur.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Mortimer. Scr. Jan. (67:57.)
+  ***Princess of Tork. Met. Aug. (15.)
+
+#Johnson, Burges.# (1877- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **In the Barn. Cen. June. (100:198.)
+
+#Johnson, Olive McClintic.#
+  "Deep Ellum." Col. Dec. 20, '19. (14.)
+  "Didja Getcha Feet Wet?" Col. Feb. 21. (7.)
+
+#Johnson, Olive McClintic# (_con._)
+  Disagreeable as a Husband. Col. May 29. (5.)
+  Great Grief! Col. June 26. (10.)
+  Moons--Full, Blue, and Honey. Col. Jan. 3. (12.)
+  Turquoise Skies. Col. Feb. 7. (10.)
+
+#Joor, Harriet.# (_H._)
+  Passing of the Littlest Twin. Mid. Nov.-Dec., '19. (5:260.)
+  Ship Island Box. Mid. Nov.-Dec., '19. (5:263.)
+
+#Jordan, Elizabeth (Garver).# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *At the Dim Gate. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (5.)
+  *Luncheon at One. Col. Aug. 21. (5.)
+
+#Jordan, Kate. (Mrs. F. M. Vermilye.)# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Made Over. S. E. P. July 3. (12.)
+
+*"#Joyce, Thomas.#" (#Joyce Gary.#)
+  **Bad Samaritan. S. E. P. July 3. (40.)
+  Consistent Woman. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (30.)
+  **Cure. S. E. P. May 1. (30.)
+  None But the Brave. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (18.)
+  **Piece of Honesty. S. E. P. June 26. (66.)
+  *Reformation. S. E. P. May 22. (20.)
+  Springs of Youth. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (30.)
+
+#Judson, Jeanne.#
+  Her Man. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (13.)
+
+#Julius, Emanuel Haldeman-# (1888- .), _and_ #Julius, Mrs. Emanuel
+Haldeman-.#) (_See 1919._) (_See 1917, 1918 under_ #Julius, Emanuel
+Haldeman.#
+  **Caught. Atl. Nov., '19. (124:628.)
+
+
+#Kahler, Hugh MacNair.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  Babel. S. E. P. June 19. (6.)
+  Buckpasser. Sept. 11. (5.)
+  Hammer. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (12.)
+  KWYW.  S. E. P. Feb. 7. (8.)
+  Lazy Duckling. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (6.)
+  Obligee. S. E. P. Jul. 17. (8.)
+  Sensible Year. S. E. P. May 8. (6.)
+  Wild Carrot. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (8.)
+
+#Kavanagh, Herminie Templeton.# (_See "H" under_ #Templeton, Herminie.#)
+  **Bridgeen and the Leprechaun. L. H. J. Sept. (26.)
+
+#Kelland, Clarence Budington.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Appetite for Marriage. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (24.)
+  Backwoods Chess. Ev. Sept. (27.)
+  Cheese in the Trap. Ev. June. (15.)
+  His Wife's Place. Ev. Nov., '19. (16.)
+  Ivanhoe Sagg's Keynote. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (28.)
+  Knots and Wind-Shakes. Ev. Apr. (39.)
+  Martha Jib on the High Seas. Pict. R. Sep. (27.)
+  *Mysterious Murder of Myron Goodspeed. Am. Sept. (20.)
+  Scattergood Administers Soothing Sirup. Am. Jan. (52.)
+  *Scattergood and the Prodigal's Mother. Am. Jul. (28.)
+  Scattergood Borrows a Grandmother. Am. Dec., '19. (20.)
+  Scattergood Dips in His Spoon. Am. Nov., '19. (50.)
+  Scattergood Invests in Salvation. Am. Mar. (28.)
+  Scattergood Matches Wits with a Pair of Sharpers. Am. Oct., '19. (40.)
+  Scattergood Meddles with the Dangerous Age. Am. June. (56.)
+  Scattergood Moves to Adjourn. Am. May. (62.)
+  Scattergood Skims a Little Cream. Am. Aug. (40.)
+
+#Kelley, Leon.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  Carnival Queen. Pict. R. May. (6.)
+  "Speeches Ain't Business." Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (14.)
+
+#Kelly, Eleanor Mercein.# (1880- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Our Mr. Allerby. Cen. Apr. (99:737.)
+
+#Kelsey, Vera.#
+  **Late Harvests. Sun. Mar. (40.)
+
+#Kemper, S. H.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *O You Xenophon! Atl. Jul. (126:39.)
+
+*#Kennedy, Rowland.#
+  *Flame. Dial. Feb. (68:221.)
+  **Preparing for Passengers. Dial. Feb. (68:228.)
+  *Talkin'. Dial. Feb. (68:224.)
+
+#Kennon, Harry B.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Grandmother's Ghost. Mir. Nov. 13, '19. (28:784.)
+  Odd Roman. Mir, Jan. 8. (29:30.)
+  Single Cussedness. Mir. Jul. 22. (29:581.)
+
+#Kenton, Edna.# (1876- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  *Branch of Wild Crab. L. St. Sept. (55.)
+
+#Kenyon, Camilla E. L.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  His Professional Honor. Sun. June. (36.)
+  Lost Uncle. Sun. May. (41.)
+
+#Kerr, Sophie.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_See
+"H" under_ #Underwood, Sophie Kerr.#)
+  *Genius. W. H. C. Feb. (21.)
+  Sitting On the World. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (16.)
+
+#Kilbourne, Fannie. ("Mary Alexander.")# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918 under_
+#Kilbourne, Fannie#, _and 1917 under_ #Alexander, Mary.#)
+  Betty Bell and the Leading Man. Del. Jan. (11.)
+  Getting Even with Dulcie. Am. May. (23.)
+  James Dunfield Grows Up. Del. Oct., '19. (22.)
+  Stealing Cleopatra's Stuff. Am. June. (23.)
+
+#King, J. A.#
+  Solid Comfort. Am. Sept. (70.)
+
+#Kirkland, Jeanne.#
+  *Old Miss Mamie Dearborn's Helmet. Pag. June. (22.)
+  Ralph's Return. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (22.)
+
+#Knibbs, Henry Herbert.# (1874- .)
+  *Horse Deal in Hardpan. Pop. Sept. 20. (52.)
+
+#Knight, (Clifford) Reynolds.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  ***Melody Jim. Mid. Nov.-Dec. '19. (5:271.)
+
+*#Kobrin, Leon.#
+  **Lithuanian Idyll. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:236.)
+
+#Komroff, Manuel.# (_See 1919._)
+  ***Thumbs. (_R._) Mir. Jan. 22. (29:55.)
+
+*#Kotsyubinsky, Michael.#
+  ***By the Sea. Asia. May. (20:411.)
+
+"#Kral, Carlos A. V.#" (1890- .) (_See 1918._)
+  ***Landscape with Trees, and Colored Twilight with Music. Lit. R.
+  Jan. (4.)
+
+#Kraus, Harry.#
+  Interlude. S. S. Apr. (113.)
+
+
+#La Motte, Elen Newbold.# (1873- .) (_See 1919._)
+  ***Golden Stars. Cen. Oct., '19. (98:787.)
+  **Malay Girl. Cen. Aug. (100:555.)
+  *Widows and Orphans. Cen, Sept. (100:586.)
+
+#Langebek, Dorothy May Wyon.# (_See 1919._)
+  **"Seven." Mid. June. (6:64.)
+
+*#Langlais, Marc.#
+  Against Orders. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 2, '19.
+
+#Lapham, Frank.# (_See 1919._)
+  Telegram That Johnny Didn't See. Am. Oct., '19. (21.)
+
+#La Parde, Malcolm.#
+  Still Waters. Harp. M. Jul. (141:273.)
+
+#Lardner, Ring W.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Beautiful Katie, S. E. P. Jul. 10. (14.)
+  Busher Pulls a Mays. S. E. P. Oct. 18, '19. (16.)
+
+#Larson, Mabel Curtius.#
+  Spark. L. H. J. Feb. (13.)
+
+*#Lawrence, David Herbert.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Adolf. Dial. Sept. (69:269.)
+
+#Lawson, Cora Schilling.# (_See 1919._)
+  "Which Woman, John?" Am. Mar. (56.)
+
+#Lazar, Maurice.# (_See 1917._)
+  Heavenly Sophists. S. S. Dec., '19. (116.)
+
+#Lea, Fannie Heaslip. (Mrs. H. P. Agee.)# (1884- .) (_See 1915, 1916,
+1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Crooked Stick. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (22.)
+  Happily Ever After. Del. Apr.
+  Miss Casabianca. Del. Mar. (9.)
+  Story Not Without Words. Del. June. (11.)
+
+#Leach, Paul R.#
+  Nerves. Col. Jul. 10. (8.)
+
+*#Le Barillier, Berthe Carianne.# _See_ "#Bertheroy, Jean.#"
+
+#Lebhar, Bertram.#
+  Athletics for Cold Cash. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (23.)
+
+#Le Boutillier, Cornelia Geer.# (1894- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919 under_
+#Geer, Cornelia Throop.#)
+  **Chaff. Scr. Aug. (68:204.)
+  Picking and Stealing. Col. Jan. 31. (17.)
+
+#Lee, Jennette (Barbour Perry.)# (1860- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Cat and the King. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (10.)
+  'Twixt Cup and Lip. L. H. J. Jan. (23.)
+
+#Lee, Muna.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Dream. S. S. Oct., '19. (125.)
+  *Moonlight Sonata. S. S. Mar. (81.)
+  **Years Ahead. S. S. Dec., '19. (99.)
+
+*#Lehmann, RenA(C).#
+  Sensation Hunter. N. Y. Trib. May 23.
+
+#Lemly, Rowan Palmer.#
+  *Pagari. L. H. J. Apr. (24.)
+
+#Leo, Rita Wellman.# _See_ #Wellman, Rita.#
+
+"#Lessing, Bruno.#" (#Rudolph Block.#) (1870- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Explosion of Leah. Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (6.)
+  Treating 'Em Rough. Pict. R. Sept. (42.)
+
+*#Level, Maurice.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Begar. Hear. Apr. (12.)
+  *Debt Collector. Hear. Nov., '19. (40.)
+  ***Empty House. Hear. Sept. (20.)
+  **Extenuating Circumstances. Hear. Oct., '19. (25.)
+  ***Kennel. Hear. Aug. (16.)
+  ***Maniac. Hear. Mar. (12.)
+  ***Son of His Father. Hear. Jul. (22.)
+  *Ten-Fifty Express. Hear. June. (33.)
+
+#Leverage, Henry.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Sea Beef. B. C. Apr. (3.)
+  *Uncharted. Adv. Oct. 3., '19. (129.)
+
+#Levick, Milnes.# (_See 1919._)
+  *In Court. S. S. Oct., '19. (123.)
+  **Jest in the Household. S. S. Dec., '19. (126.)
+  Out of Modoc. S. S. June. (71.)
+
+#Levison, Eric.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  **Gloria in Excelsis. T. T. Jan. (63.)
+  *Home. T. T. June. (35.)
+  **Mordecai. T. T. Nov., '19. (41.)
+  *Where There Is No Light. T. T. Dec., '19. (29.)
+
+#Lewars, Elsie Singmaster.# _See_ #Singmaster, Elsie.#
+
+#Lewis, Addison.# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Mrs. Dinehart. Mir. Dec. 11. '19. (28:882.)
+
+#Lewis, Margaret Cameron.# _See_ #Cameron, Margaret.#
+
+#Lewis, Orlando Faulkland.# (1873- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Alma Mater. Red Bk. June. (53.)
+
+#Lewis, Orlando Faulkland# (_con._)
+  Case of Aunt Mary. L. H. J. Feb. (21.)
+  Man to Man. L. H. J. Jan. (13.)
+
+#Lewis, Oscar.# (_See 1916._)
+  Face Is Unfamiliar. S. S. Mar. (41.)
+  Girl Who Accepted No Compromise. S. S. Aug. (65.)
+
+#Lewis, Sinclair.# (1885- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Bronze Bars. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (12.)
+  Danger--Run Slow. S. E. P. Oct. 18, 25, '19. (3, 22.)
+  Habeas Corpus. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (10.)
+  Way I See It. S. E. P. May 29. (14.)
+
+*#Lichtenberger, AndrA(C).# (1870- .) (_H._)
+  ***Old Fisherwoman. Pag. Oct., '19. (6.)
+
+#Lighton, William R(heem).# (1866- .), _and_ #Lighton, Louis Duryea.#
+(_See 1916,  1917, 1918; and 1915, 1916,  1917, 1919, and "H" under_
+#Lighton, William Rheem.#)
+  Why Olaf Proposed in the Month of March. Am. Jan. (38.)
+
+#Lindsay, Donald.#
+  Old Violets. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (4.)
+
+#Livingstone, Florence Bingham.#
+  Who Will Kiss Miss Parker? Sun. Dec., '19. (29.)
+
+#Lockwood, Scammon.# (_See 1916._)
+  Girl Who Slept in Bryant Park. L. H. J. Feb. (26.)
+
+#Loud, Lingard.#
+  Mister Jolly Well Murders His Wife. S. E. P. June 26. (20.)
+  Pink Knickers and the Desperate Ship. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (16.)
+
+*#LouA?s, Pierre.#
+  **Birth of Prometheus. Mun. Oct., '19. (68:81.)
+  ***False Esther. Mir. June 24. (29:511.)
+
+#Lovewell, Reinette.#
+  All Mrs. Flaherty's Fault. Am. Nov., '19. (28.)
+
+#Lowe, Corinne.# (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Single Fellows. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (10.)
+
+#Lurie, R. L.#
+  Quick Work by Philip. Am. May. (57.)
+
+*#Lyons, A(lbert Michael) Neil.# (1880- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Deputy. Ev. May. (44.)
+  **Mr. and Mrs. Oddy. Ev. Jul. (42.)
+
+
+#Mabie, Louise Kennedy.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Mystery of the Red-Haired Girl, Am. Apr. (23.)
+
+#McClure, John.# (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  *Tale of Krang. L. St. Nov., '19. (63.)
+
+#McCourt, Edna Wahlert.# (_See 1915, 1917._)
+  ***Lichen. Dial. May. (68:586.)
+
+#McCrea, Marion.# (_See 1918._)
+  Miss Vannah of Our Ad-Shop. Ev. June. (44.)
+
+#McDonnell, Eleanor Kinsella.#
+  Let's Pretend. L. H. J. Jul. (16.)
+
+#MacFarlane, Peter Clark.# (1871- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Guile of Woman. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (28.)
+  In the Game Called Life. L. H. J. May. (7.)
+  Mad Hack Henderson. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (24.)
+
+#McGibney, Donald.#
+  Come-Back. L. H. J. Jul. (18.)
+  Shift of Fate. L. H. J. Aug. (22.)
+  When the Desert Calls. L. H. J. May. (23.)
+  White Angel. L. H. J. June. (22.)
+
+#MacGowan, Alice# (1858- .), and #Cooke, Grace MacGowan# (1863- .)
+(_See 1915 under_ #Cooke, Grace MacGowan#; _1916, 1917 under_
+#MacGowan, Alice#; _"H" under both heads._)
+  Little Girl Eve. S. E. P. June 26. (16.)
+
+#McGuirk, Charles J.#
+  Fogarty's Flivver. Col. June 5. (23.)
+
+#Mackendrick, Marda.# (_See 1919._)
+  Jean--In the Negative. Met. Mar. (29.)
+
+*#MacManus, L.#
+  ***Baptism. Cath. W. Sept. (111:780.)
+
+#MacManus, Seumas.# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Conaleen and Donaleen. Pict. R. Sept. (15.)
+  ***Heart-Break of Norah O'Hara. Pict. R. Mar. (8.)
+  ***Lad from Largymore. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (21.)
+
+*#McNeille, Cyril ("Sapper").# (1888- .) (_See 1917, 1919 under_
+"#Sapper.#")
+  *"Good Hunting, Old Chap." Harp. B. Sept. (52.)
+
+*#Mac-Richard, J.#
+  Electric Shoes. N. Y. Trib. Jul. 25.
+
+#Macy, J. Edward.#
+  *Sea Ginger. Scr. Sept. (68:343.)
+
+*#Madrus, Lucie Delarue-.#  _See_ #Delarue-Madrus, Lucie.#
+
+#Mahoney, James.#
+  *Showing Up of Henry Widdemer. McCall. Aug. (12.)
+
+#Mann, Jane.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  ***Heritage. Cen. Nov., '19. (99:47.)
+
+#Manning, Marie. (Mrs. Herman E. Gasch.)# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  Liver Bank. Harp. M. Aug. (141:382.)
+
+*#Marchand, Leopold.#
+  In Extremis. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 29.
+
+#Markey, Gene.#
+  Bugler. Scr. June. (67:704.)
+
+#Marquis, Don (Robert Perry).# (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  Bubbles. S. E. P. Jul. 31. (10.)
+  *Kale. Ev. Sept. (46.)
+  *Never Say Die. Ev. Apr. (73.)
+
+#Marquis, Neeta.#
+  Violets for Sentiment. S. S. Sept. (65.)
+
+#Marriott, Crittenden.# (1867- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  *What Dreams May Come True. L. St. Mar. (27.)
+
+#Marsden, Griffis.# (_See 1919._)
+  Enter Lucy. Sun. Aug. (25.)
+  Here Comes the Bride! Sun. Sept. (28.)
+  Marrying Them. Sun. Nov., '19. (20.)
+  Wrong Medicine. Sun. Jan. (26.)
+
+#Marshall, Bernard.#
+  Spilled Beans. Sun. Feb. (29.)
+
+#Marshall, Edison.# (1894- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  Argali the Ram. Met. Jan.-Feb. (21:38.)
+  "Count a Thousand--Slow--Between Each Drop." Am. Mar. (44.)
+  **Elephant Remembers. Ev. Oct., '19. (17.)
+  Its Name Will Be Long-Ear Joe. Met. June. (34.)
+  "Never Stop--Never Give Up." Am. June. (14.)
+  *Shadow of Africa. All. Nov. 1, '19. (103:332.)
+
+#Martin, Helen R(eimensnyder).# (1868- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  Birdie Reduces. Cen. May. (100:136.)
+
+*#Martovitch, Les.#
+  **Dance. Dial. Jul. (69:47.)
+
+*#Mason, Alfred Edward Woodley.# (1865- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Pilgrimage. Rom. Mar. (3.)
+
+#Mason, Elmer Brown.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Does Money Talk? Col. Jul. 24. (16.)
+
+#Mason, Grace Sartwell.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Charm. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (8.)
+  ***His Job. Scr. Apr. (67:470.)
+  *Shining Moment. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (34.)
+
+#Mason, Gregory.# (1889- .)
+  Jade Idol. Met. Feb. (23.)
+
+#Mason, Laura Kent.#
+  On Receiving a Luncheon Invitation. S. S. Dec., '19. (53.)
+
+#Masson, Thomas L(ansing).# (1866- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  "Nibs." Met. Oct., '19. (38.)
+
+#Matteson, Herman Howard.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+   He Is Singing to Me. Col. Dec. 20, '19. (12.)
+  "No Abaft This Notice." Sun. Apr. (33.)
+
+"#Maxwell, Helena.#" (#Mrs. Baker Brownell.#) (1896- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Adolescence. Pag. Apr.-May. (5.)
+  *Her First Appearance. Lib. May. (24.)
+
+#May, Eric Paul.#
+  Proposal. S. S. Oct., '19. (34.)
+
+#Means, Eldred Kurtz.# (1878- .) (_See 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Concerning a Red Head. Peop. Aug. (9.)
+  **Plumb Nauseated. All. Mar. 13. (108:19.)
+  *Prize-Money. All. June 26. (111:483.)
+  *Proof of Holy Writ. Mun. Sept. (70:645.)
+  *Ten-Share Horse. Mun. May. (69:605.)
+
+#Mears, Mary M.#  (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  ***Forbidden Thing. Met. Apr. (22.)
+
+*#Merrick, Leonard.# (1864- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  *"I Recall a Seat." Harp. B. Jul. (50.)
+  *That Villain Her Father. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (16.)
+  ***To Daphne De Vere. McC. Feb. (13.)
+
+#Merwin, Samuel.# (1874- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Utter Selfishness of J. A. Peters. McC. Mar.-Apr. (18.)
+
+#Meyer, Josephine Amelia.# (1864-.) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Cave Stuff. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (53.)
+
+#Mezquida, Anna Blake.# (_See 1915._)
+  Don't Be Too Sure--Mr. Hurd! Am. Jan. (11.)
+
+#Michener, Carroll K.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Dragon-Tongued Orchid. Sn. St. Aug. 18. (51.)
+  *Golden Dragon. McC. Jul (18.)
+
+#Milbrite, Felden E.#
+  A%tude for the Organ. S. S. Aug. (126.)
+
+*#Mille, Pierre.# (1864- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **"End of the World." N. Y. Trib. Mar. 14.
+  Truth of History. N. Y. Trib. Aug. 8.
+
+#Miller, Alice Duer.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Slow Poison. S. E. P. June 12. (8.)
+
+#Miller, Helen Topping.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  *B-Flat Barto. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (32.)
+  *Damour Blood. B. C. May. (19.)
+
+#Miller, Mary Britton.#
+  **From Morn to Dewy Eve. Touch. Feb. (6:299.)
+  **Sicilian Idyl. Touch. Jan. (6:218.)
+
+#Millis, Walter.#
+  *Second Mate. Adv. Aug. 3. (51.)
+
+#Millring, Ruth Brierley.#
+  Homely Is As Homely Does. Del. Jan. (6.)
+
+#Minnigerode, Meade.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  Ball of Fire. Col. Apr. 10. (15.)
+  Ground Floor Front. Col. May 29. (15.)
+  Jimmy Repays. Col. Feb. 14. (10.)
+  Monkeying with the Buzz Saw. Col. Mar. 6. (18.)
+  Mysteries. Col. Mar. 27. (13.)
+  Pure Gold. Col. Jan. 17. (12.)
+
+#Mitchell, Mary Esther#, (1863- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **"Vendoo." Harp. M. June. (141:107.)
+
+#Mitchell, Ruth Comfort.# (#Mrs. Sanborn Young.#) (_See 1916, 1917,
+1918, 1919._)
+  Bad Boy. Del. Apr. (20.)
+  Carriage Waits. Ev. Dec., '19. (34.)
+  Poor Mister Morrison. Mir. Dec. 11, '19. (28:876.)
+
+#Mitchell, Ruth Comfort#, _and_ #Young, William Sanborn.#
+  Ranching of Nan. Del. Jul.-Aug. (7.)
+
+*#Monro, Harold.#
+  ***Parcel of Love. Lit. R. Nov., '19. (16.)
+
+#Montague, Margaret Prescott.# (1878- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Uncle Sam of Freedom Ridge. Atl. June. (125:721.)
+
+#Mooney, Ralph E.# (_See 1919._)
+  Between Six O'Clock and Midnight. L. H. J. May. (9.)
+  Miss Kent Understands. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (50.)
+  Professor Comes Back. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (21.)
+
+*#Moore, Leslie.#
+  **Magician of Globes. Cath. W. Aug. (111:631.)
+
+#Moravsky, Maria.# (1890- .) (_See 1919._)
+  **Bracelet from the Grave. Rom. Jul. (156.)
+  *Remembrance that Kills. L. St. Sept. (3.)
+  **White Camels. Met. May. (25.)
+
+*#Mordaunt, Elinor.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Adventures in the Night. Met. June. (11.)
+  ***Ginger Jar. Met. Nov., '19. (17.)
+
+#Morgan, J. L.#
+  For the World's Championship. S. S. Jan. (31.)
+  Literature. S. S. Feb. (27.)
+  Personally Conducted. S. S. Oct., '19. (69.)
+
+#Morley, Felix.#
+  *Legend of Nantucket. O. O. June. (2:214.)
+
+#Moroso, John Antonio.# (1874- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Danny's Gold Star. L. H. J. Apr. (16.)
+  Glint of Gold. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (24.)
+  House in the Woods. L. H. J. Feb. (23.)
+  Sweet Sally Magee. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (32.)
+
+#Mosher, John Chapin.#
+  Belle Hobbs. S. S. May. (63.)
+
+#Mumford, Ethel Watts.# (#Mrs. Ethel Watts-Mumford Grant.#) (1878- .)
+(_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Look of the Copperleys. L. H. J. Apr. (8.)
+  Manifestation of Henry Ort. Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (22.)
+  *Unto Her a Child Was Born. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (9.)
+
+#Munsterberg, Margarete.#
+  *Silent Music. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:57.)
+
+#Murray, Roy Irving.# (1882- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._)
+  ***Substitute. Scr. Jul. (68:82.)
+
+#Muth, Edna Tucker.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._)
+  ***Gallipeau. Harp. M. Oct., 19. (139:721.)
+  Tidal Waif. Sun. Oct., '19. (39.)
+
+#Myers, Elizabeth (Fettor) Lehman.# (1869- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  **Autumn Blooming. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (22.)
+
+#Mygatt, Gerard.# (_H._)
+  FA(C)lice. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (20.)
+  Starter. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (8.)
+
+
+
+#Neidig, William Jonathan.# (1870- .) (_See 1916 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bloodhound. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (10.)
+  *Brother Act. S. E. P. Jul. 31. (12.)
+  Shansi Woman. Ev. Aug. (9.)
+  Stained Fingers. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (18.)
+  Sweat of Her Brow. S. E. P. Jan. 24. (18.)
+
+*#Nervo, Amado.#
+  **Leah and Rachel. Strat. J. Jan.-Mar. (6:7.)
+
+*#Nevinson, Henry W(oodd).# (1852- .) (_H._)
+  ***In Diocletian's Day. Atl. Oct. '19. (124:472.)
+
+*#Newton, W. Douglas.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Life o' Dreams. Sn. St. Mar. 4. (75.)
+
+#Nicholson, Meredith.# (1866- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Housewarming. L. H. J. May. (28.)
+  My Roger. Del. Nov., '19. (8.)
+
+#Niles, Blair.#
+  **Tropic Frogs. Harp. M.  Apr. (140:671.)
+
+*#Nodier, Charles.# (1780-1844.)
+  ***Bibliomaniac. Strat. J. Oct.-Dec. (5:177.)
+
+#Norris, Kathleen.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Engine Trouble. G. H. Jul.-Aug. (28.)
+  Friday the 13th. G. H. Nov., '19. (17.)
+  "God's in His Heaven." G. H. Oct., '19. (15.)
+  Home. G. H. Sept. (27.)
+  Silvester Birch's Child. G. H. Mar. (30.)
+  With Christmas Love from Barbara. G. H. Dec., '19. (26.)
+
+*#Noyes, Alfred.# (1880- .) (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Beyond the Desert. Red Bk. Aug. (57.)
+  Bill's Phantasm. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (20.)
+  *Court-Martial. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (18.)
+  *Troglodyte. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (22.)
+  *Wine Beyond the World. S. E. P. May 8. (5.)
+
+
+#O'Brien, Frederick.# (_See 1919 under_ #O'Brien, Frederick#, _and_
+#Lane, Rose Wilder.#)
+  ***Jade Bracelet of Ah Queen. Col. May 22. (5.)
+  *Taboo of Oomoa. Harp. B. June. (60.)
+
+#O'Brien, Mary Heaton Vorse.# _See_ #Vorse, Mary (Marvin) Heaton.#
+
+"#O'Grady, R.#" (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  ***Brothers. Mid. Jan.-Mar. (6:7.)
+
+#O'Hagan, Anne. (Anne O'Hagan Shinin.)# (1869- .) (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Return. Touch. Jan. (6: 181.)
+
+#O'Hara, Frank Hurburt.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  *Life of Eddie Slaggin. Pict. R. Apr. (24.)
+  Now Wasn't that Just Like Father! Am. Jul. (62.)
+
+#O'Higgins, Harvey Jerrold.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Story of Big Dan Reilly. McC. Mar.-Apr. (25.)
+  ***Story of Mrs. Murchison. McC. May-June. (25, 27.)
+  ***Strange Case of Warden Jupp. McC. Aug. (27.)
+
+#Oliver, Owen.# (_See 1915._)
+  *Wanted: a Kind Fairy. Holl. Sept. (11.)
+
+#O'Malley, Austin.# (1858- .)
+  **Strong Box. (_R._) Mir. May 27. (29: 437.)
+
+#O'Neill, Agnes Boulton.# _See_ #Boulton, Agnes.#
+
+#Oppenheim, James.# (1882- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Rending. Dial. Jul. (69: 35.)
+
+#Oppenheimer, James.#
+  Sweet Kanuck. Met. Jan. (33.)
+
+#Osborne, William Hamilton.# (1873- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Amazing Indiscretion. Met. Apr.-May. (20, 18.)
+  Handsomely Trimmed. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (12.)
+  Rush to Cover. S. E. P. May 15. (12.)
+  Seeing Things Again. S. E. P. May 8. (18.)
+  Turn of the Wrist. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (32.)
+
+#Osbourne, Lloyd.# (1868- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***East Is East. Met.  Apr. (11.)
+  Ghosts Go West. S. E. P. Dec. 13, '19. (20.)
+
+#O'Sullivan, Vincent.# (1872- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._)
+  ***Dance-Hall at Unigenitus. S. S. Mar. (53.)
+
+#O'Toole, E. J.#
+  First Snow. Cath. W. Jan. (110:476.)
+
+*#Owen, H. Collinson.#
+  ***Temptation of Antoine. Pict. R. Sept. (5.)
+
+#Owen, Margaret Dale.#
+  *Point of View. All. Oct. 18, '19. (102:690.)
+
+"#Oxford, John Barton.#" _See_ #Shelton, Richard Barker.#
+
+
+#Paine, Albert Bigelow.# (1861- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Being a Landlord. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:929.)
+  Murphy's Kitchen. Harp. M. Feb. (140:424.)
+
+#Paine, Ralph Delahaye.# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Mrs. Tredick's Husband. Scr. Mar. (67:297.)
+
+#Pangborn, Georgia Wood.# (1872- .) (_See 1911, 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  *Andy MacPherson's House. Rom. Aug. (78.)
+  **Children of Mount Pyb. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:98.)
+  *When the Ice Went Out. Rom. May. (72.)
+
+#Parkhurst, Genevieve.#
+  Blind Alleys. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (29.)
+
+#Parkhurst, Winthrop.#
+  Holy Matrimony. Pag. Nov.-Dec., '19. (23.)
+  Law of Averages. S. S. Apr. (91.)
+  Spooks. S. S. Nov., '19. (107.)
+
+#Parmenter, Christine Whiting.# (1877- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Christmas Magic. Am. Dec., '19. (29.)
+  "I Never Could Have Married Anybody Else." Am. Mar. (11.)
+  Jilted--Because of Her Clothes! Am. Feb. (29.)
+  Marcia Lets Her Conscience Take a Brief Vacation. Am. Jan. (20.)
+  Peach in Pink. Met. Jan. (42.)
+
+#Parsons, Lewis.#
+  Dick Tresco and the Yellow Streak. Am. Mar. (62.)
+  Wonderful Dog with a Dual Nature. Am. Oct., '19. (14.)
+
+#Partridge, Edward Bellamy.# (_See 1916._)
+  Floating Foot. Met. Aug. (31.)
+  *Loan Shark. Met. June. (18.)
+
+#Pattullo, George.# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Captain. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (8.)
+  Madame Patsy, the Gusher Queen. S. E. P. May 22. (10.)
+  Oo, LA , LA ! S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (30.)
+  *Romance of ThomAis Dozal. S. E. P. June 19. (3.)
+
+#Payne, Elizabeth Stancy.#
+  *Trying Age. Ev. Jan. (55.)
+
+#Payne, Will.# (1855- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Age of Chivalry. Det. N. Jul. 18. (pt. 6 p. 6.)
+  *Eye for an Eye. Cos. Aug. (75.)
+  *Lucky Mary. Red Bk. Mar. (59.)
+  *Unbidden Guest. Cos. Sept. (75.)
+
+#Pearce, Theodocia.#
+  Little Spice Out of Life. L. H. J. Aug. (20.)
+
+#Pearsall, Robert J.# (_H._)
+  *Escape. Adv. Aug. 18. (166.)
+
+#Pelley, William Dudley.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  **Auctioneer. Pict. R. Jan.-Feb. (24.)
+  **Conversion of John Carver. Red Bk. Oct., '19. (23.)
+  *Devil Dog. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (26.)
+  *February-Third Joe. All. Feb. 28. (107:342.)
+  *They Called Her Old Mother Hubbard. Red Bk. Dec., '19. (64.)
+  *Trails to Santa FA(C). Red Bk. Sept. (78.)
+
+#Peltier, Florence.#
+  *Left-Handed Jingoro and the Irate Landlord. Asia. Sept. (20:802.)
+
+"#Pendleton, T. D.#" _see_ #Cummins#, #T. D. Pendleton.#
+
+#Perry, Clay.#
+   White Light. Met. June. (29.)
+
+#Perry, Lawrence.# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+   Dilettante. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (12.)
+   Lothario of the Sea Bird. L. H. J. Aug. (16.)
+   Matter of Sentiment. Scr. Oct., '19. (66:438.)
+   Real Game. Ev. Jul. (13.)
+   Spoiled Boy. Ev. Nov., '19. (22.)
+
+#Perry, Montanye.#
+   Three Kings. Del. Dec., '19. (5.)
+
+*#Pertwee, Roland.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+   Elizabeth Anne. S. E. P. May 15. (16.)
+  *Mary Ottery. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (14.)
+   Various Relations. S. E. P. June 5. (16.)
+
+#Phillips, Michael James.# (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+   Silken Bully. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (10.)
+
+*#Phillpotts, Eden.# (1862- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Amy Up a Tree. Del. June. (5.)
+  *Mother of the Rain. Rom. Mar. (78.)
+  *Tyrant. Cen. Feb. (99:450.)
+
+#Pickthall, Marjorie L(owry) C(hristie).# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Boy in the Corner. W. H. C. May. (17.)
+  *Name. Sun. Mar. (33.)
+ **Without the Light. G. H. Mar. (33.)
+
+#PicA cubedn, Jacinto Octavio.# (1852- .)
+***After the Battle. (_R._) Mir. Aug. 26. (29:664.)
+
+#Polk, Paul M.#
+  *Prayer and Faith. Tod. Oct., '19. (5.)
+
+#Porter, Harold Everett.# _see_ "#Hall, Holworthy.#"
+
+#Porter, Katherine Anne.#
+  *Adventures of Hadji. Asia. Aug. (20:683.)
+
+#Post, Melville Davisson.# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *House by the Loch. Hear. May. (35.)
+  *Lost Lady. McCall. June. (10.)
+***Yellow Flower. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (12.)
+
+#Potter, Jane Grey.#
+   Lass Who Loved a Sailor. Scr. May. (67:603.)
+   Strong Arm. Scr. Feb. (67:224.)
+
+#Pottle, Emery# (#Bemsley#). (1875- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Little House. Touch. Apr. (7:51.)
+
+#Pottle, Juliet Wilbor Tompkins.# _see_ #Tompkins, Juliet Wilbor.#
+
+#Pulver, Mary Brecht.# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Fortune's Favorites. Ev. Mar. (9.)
+  *Lucifer. Del. Feb. (7.)
+  *Wings of Love. Del. June. (13.)
+
+#Putnam, Nina Wilcox.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Comme Si, Comme A‡a. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (10.)
+  Higher the Fewer. S. E. P. Oct. 11, '19. (16.)
+  Immediate Possession. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (29.)
+  Price of Pickles. S. E. P. May 15. (8.)
+  Ring-Around-a-Rosy. S. E. P. June 12. (16.)
+  Seeing's Believing. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (14.)
+  Spiritualism Frumenti. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (6.)
+
+
+#Rabel, Du Vernet.#
+  Her Last Affair. L. H. J. Apr. (18.)
+  Kin of William the Norman. L. H. J. Jul. (22.)
+  Material Motives. Ev. Jan. (37.)
+  West Window. Met. Nov., '19. (30.)
+  You Can't Take That to Simpson's. Ev. Oct., '19. (24.)
+
+*#Rameau, Jean.# (_See 1919._)
+  *Nouveau Riche Cat. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 15.
+  ***Ocarina. N. Y. Trib. June 6.
+  *Prayer. N. Y. Trib. Mar. 7.
+
+#Ramsay, Robert E.#
+  Tabitha Mehitabel Sweet. L. H. J. June. (27.)
+
+#Ranck, Edwin Carty.# (1879- .) (_See 1916, 1918._)
+  Just Plain Dog. Met. Apr. (31.)
+
+#Raphaelson, Sampson.#
+  Great Li'l' Old Town. Del. May. (14.)
+
+#Ravenel, Beatrice Witte.# (1870- .) (_See 1919._)
+  Love Is Free. Harp. M. Feb. (140:346.)
+  *Something to Remember. Harp. M. Jan. (140:236.)
+
+#Ray, Marie Beynon.#
+  *Lost Marquise. S. S. Mar. (33.)
+  *Pride of Race. Harp. B. Dec., '19. (70.)
+
+#Redington, Sarah.# (_See 1919._)
+  Anne Thinks It Over. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:592.)
+  "Why I Dislike My Husband." Sun. June. (52.)
+
+#Reese, Lowell Otus.# (1866- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Bachelor. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (6.)
+  Behind the Velvet. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (12.)
+  Clink of the Spurs. S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (40.)
+  Foster Fathers. Col. Sept. 11. (8.)
+  Table Butte. Col. May 29. (12.)
+
+*#RA(C)gis, Roger.# (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  Test. N. Y. Trib. Feb. 22.
+
+#Reid, M. F.#
+  Doodle Buys a Bull Pup. Ev. Aug. (64.)
+  *Initiation of Scorp-for-Short. Cen. Aug. (100:570.)
+
+#Reindel, Margaret H.# (1896- .)
+  ***Fear. Touch. Mar. (6:400.)
+
+"#Relonde, Maurice.#" (_See 1917._)
+  *Holy  Pilgrimage. Pag. Jan. (18.)
+
+#Rhodes, Harrison (Garfield).# (1871- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Fair Daughter of a Fairer Mother. Ev. Mar. (79.)
+  *Shy Ghost. McC. Sept. (29.)
+  *Small Frog. Harp. M. Dec., '19. (140:49.)
+  Style in Hats. S. E. P. Aug. 14. (16.)
+  Thomas Robinson's Affair with an Actress. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (10.)
+
+#Rice, Alice (Caldwell) Hegan.# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Nut. Cen. Nov., '19. (99:1.)
+
+#Rice, Cale Young.# (1872- .)
+  **Aaron Harwood. Cen. Jul. (100:346.)
+  *Lowry. Cen. Feb. (99:549.)
+
+#Rice, Louise.# (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Lubbeny Kiss. Ain. Oct.
+
+*#Richardson, Dorothy M.#
+  ***Sunday. (_R._) Mir. Oct. 16, '19. (28:709.)
+
+#Richardson, Norval.# (1877- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Bracelet. McC. Jul. (29.)
+
+*#Riche, Daniel.#
+  First Call. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 14, '19.
+  *Royal Canary. N. Y. Trib. Mar. 28.
+
+#Richens, Christine Eadie.#
+  Inner Enemy. Del. Mar. (15.)
+
+#Richter, Conrad.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Cabbages and Shoes. Ev. Mar. (61.)
+  Making of "Val" Pierce. Am. Apr. (30.)
+  Man Who Hid Himself. Am. Jul. (21.)
+
+#Rideout, Henry Milner.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Toad. S. E. P. June 19. (16.)
+
+#Rinehart, Mary Roberts.# (1876- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Finders Keepers. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (3.)
+
+#Riper, Charles King Van.# _See_ #Van Riper, Charles King.#
+
+#Ritchie, Robert Welles.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Odd Case of the Second Back. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (28.)
+
+#Rivers, Stuart.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Circular Letter. Peop. Mar. (43.)
+  Fresh Guy. Met. Feb. (30.)
+  Genius. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (50.)
+
+#Robbins, Leonard H.# (1877- .)
+  "Ain't This the Darndest World!" Am. May. (70.)
+  Christmas Card. Met. Dec., '19 (42.)
+  Professor Todd's Used Car. Ev. Jul. (37.)
+
+#Roberts, Kenneth Lewis.# (1885- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Pergola Preferred. Col. Oct. 4, '19. (15.)
+
+#Roberts, Walter Adolphe.# (1886- .)
+  *Adventure of the Portrait. Ain. Mar. (111.)
+
+#Robinson, Mabel L.#
+  Daughter of a Diplomat. Del. Mar. (19.)
+  Dr. Tam O'Shanter. Del. Nov., '19. (19.)
+  Dr. Tam O'Shanter Comes to Town. Del. Jan. (15.)
+  Sakes Alive! Del. May. (23.)
+
+#Roche, Arthur Somers.# (1883- .) (_See 1915, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Dummy-Chucker. Cos. June. (20.)
+
+#Roche, Mazo De La.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1919._) (_See "H" under_ #De La
+Roche, Mazo.#)
+  *"D'ye Ken John Peel?" W. H. C. Nov., '19. (14.)
+  ***Explorers of the Dawn. Atl. Oct., '19. (124:532.)
+
+#Roe, Vingie E.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Black Rose of El Forja. Sun. Jul. (25.)
+  Land of Unforgetting. Pict. R. Sept. (10.)
+  "Let's Go with Honor." Sun. Oct., '19. (20.)
+  Monsieur Plays. Sun. Dec., '19. (17.)
+  Prides of Black Coulee. Pict. R. Mar. (12.)
+  Red Dapple. Ev. Aug. (22.)
+  Sign of High Endeavor. Met. Nov., '19. (38.)
+  Third Degree at Port O'Light. Met. Oct., '19. (13.)
+
+*"#Hohmer, Sax.#" (#Arthur Sarsfield Ward.#) (1883- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  House of the Golden Joss. Col. Aug. 7. (10.)
+  Man with the Shaven Skull. Col. Sept. 18. (8.)
+
+#Roof, Katharine Metcalf.# _(See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Exile. Touch. Feb. (6:314.)
+
+#Rosenblatt, Benjamin.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Stepping Westward. Mid. Sept.-Oct., '19. (5:217.)
+  **Transformation. Strat. J. Oct.-Dec., '19. (5:217.)
+
+*#Rosny, J. H.# _aA(R)nA(C)._
+  Bolshevist Marat. N. Y. Trib. Sept. 26.
+  Girl in the Engraving. N. Y. Trib. June 27.
+
+#Roy, Manabendra Nath.# _See_ #Granich, Irwin# _and_ #Roy, Manabendra
+Nath.#
+
+*#Ruby, J. Bruno-.# _See_ #Bruno-Ruby, J.#
+
+#Rumsey, Frances.# (1886- .)
+  ***Cash. Cen. Aug. (100:433.)
+
+#Runkle, Bertha (Brooks). (Mrs. Louis H. Bash.)# (_H._)
+  Who's Who in America. Am. Oct., '19. (27.)
+
+#Russell, Alice Dyar.# (_See 1919._)
+  Her Birthright. Del. Apr. (9.)
+
+#Russell, John.# (1885- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *One Drop of Moonshine. McC. Mar.-Apr. (27.)
+  ***Wreck on Deliverance. Col. Oct. 4, '19. (5.)
+  Yellow Professor. Col. May 15. (12.)
+
+#Russell, Phillips.# (_See 1918._)
+  *Troubadour. S.S. Jan. (115.)
+
+"#Rutledge, Maryse.#" (#Maryse Rutledge Hale.#) ("#Marice Rutledge.#")
+(#Marie Louise Goetchius.#) (#Marie Louise van Saanen.#) (1884- .)
+(_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918 under_ #Van Saanen, Marie Louise.#)
+(_See "H" under_ #Goetchius, Marie Louise.#)
+  ***House of Fuller. S. E. P. May 29. (30.)
+  **Thing They Loved. Cen. May. (100:110.)
+
+#Ryan, Kathryn White.# (_See 1919._)
+  ***Man of Cone. Mun. Mar. (69:231.)
+  **Mrs. Levering. Mun. Jul. (70:346.)
+  **Sea. All. May 1. (109:454.)
+  *Swine of Circe. S. S. Feb. (99.)
+
+#Ryerson, Florence.# (_See 1915, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Babs and the Little Gray Man. Aug. (21.)
+
+
+#Saanen, Marie Louise Van.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+*#Sabatini, Rafael.# (1875- .) (_H._)
+  *Scapulary. Rom. Aug. (49.)
+
+*#Saint-ValA(C)ry, Leon De.# _See_ #House, Roy Temple#, _and_
+#Saint-ValA(C)ry, Leon De.#
+
+#Saltus, Edgar (Evertson).# (1858- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Ghost Story. Mun. Jul. (70:224.)
+
+*#Saltykov, M. Y. ("N. Schedrin.")# (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  ***Wild Squire. S. S. June (123.)
+
+#Sangster, Margaret Elizabeth, Jr.# (1894- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1918,
+1919._)
+  City Dust. G. H. May. (39.)
+
+#Saphier, William.# (1883- .)
+  ***Kites. Lit. R. Dec., '19.
+  **Wise Man. Lit. R. Mar. (7.)
+
+#Sapinsky, Joseph.#
+  *Crazy Gambler Paul. McCall. June. (14.)
+
+*"#Sapper.#" _See_ #McNeille, Cyril.#
+
+#Sawhill, Myra.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  How Much Did Good Clothes Help Bob Gilmore? Am. Sept. (39.)
+  Rev. Mr. Deering Sues His Congregation. Am. Jul. (39.)
+
+#Sawyer, Ruth.# (#Mrs. Albert C. Durand.#) (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916,
+1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Glorious Comedy. L. H. J. Jan. (10.)
+  Simple Simon and the Fourth Dimension. Ev. June. (54.)
+
+#Saxby, Charles.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Betrayal. Ev. Mar. (27.)
+  *Cucharo. Met. Dec., '19. (37.)
+  *In Camera. Ev. Feb. (23.)
+
+#Scarborough, Dorothy.# (_See 1918._)
+  **Drought. Cen. May. (100:12.)
+
+#Schauffler, Margaret Widdemer.# _See_ #Widdemer, Margaret.#
+
+*"#Schedrin#, N." _See_ #Saltykov, M. Y.#
+
+#Scheffauer, Herman George.# (1878- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  *Brother of the Woods. Mun. Mar. (69:307.)
+  **Drama in Dust. Mun. Feb. (69:111.)
+
+*#Scheffer, Robert.#
+  *Road of Long Ago. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 18.
+
+*#Schnitzler, Arthur.# (1862- .) (_See 1916._)
+  ***Crumbled Blossoms. Dial. June. (68:711.)
+
+#Scoggins, C. E.# (_See 1919._)
+  Home for Ho Fat Wun. L. H. J. June. (10.)
+
+#Scott, Arthur P.#
+  Yvette. Harp. M. Apr. (140:713.)
+
+#Scott, Donna R.#
+  Convictions. Pag. Oct., '19. (23.)
+
+#Scott, Margretta.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918._)
+  *Mrs. Lionel Felker--Accompanist. Mir. May 13. (29:388.)
+  Spring at Schlosser's. Mir. Mar. 11. (29:180.)
+
+#Scoville, Samuel, Jr.# (1872- .) (_H._)
+  Blackbear. L. H. J. Jan. (8.)
+  Cleanleys. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (7.)
+
+#Seaman, Augusta Huiell.# (_See 1919._)
+  Dream Bread. Del. Oct., '19. (21.)
+
+#Sedgwick, Anne Douglas. (Mrs. Basil, De SA(C)lincourt.)# (1873- .) (_See
+1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Christmas Roses. Atl. Nov.-Dec., '19. (124:674, 796.)
+
+#Seeley, Herman Gastrell.# (1891- .)
+  *Craven. B. C. Aug. (46.)
+
+#Seifert, Shirley L.# (_See 1919._)
+  Nicest Boy. Del. Jul.-Aug. (17.)
+  P. Gadsby--Venturer. Met. May. (23.)
+  Terry's Youthful Ideal. Met. Nov., '19. (15.)
+  To-morrow. S. E. P. June 19. (20.)
+
+#Seifert, Marjorie Allen.# (1885- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  **Lizzie. Mir. Jul. 1. (29:527.)
+  Shipwreck. Mir. Dec. 25, '19. (28:953.)
+
+#SA(C)lincourt, Mrs. Basil De.# _See_ #Sedgwick, Anne Douglas.#
+
+#Senior, Mary.#
+  **"Died of Other Causes." Touch. Oct., '19. (6:47.)
+
+#Sexton, Bernard.#
+  *How a Hermit Gained Kingdom and Treasure. Asia. Aug. (20:702.)
+  *Jackal and the Rats. Asia. June. (20:513.)
+  *King Discovers His First Gray Hair. Asia. Sept. (20:815.)
+  *Stonecutter and the Mouse. Asia. May. (20:378.)
+  *Tortoise Who Talked. Asia. Jul. (20:624.)
+
+#Shawe, Victor.# (_See 1917, 1919._)
+  In the Big Timber. S. E. P. Oct. 25, '19. (21.)
+  Seattle Slim and the Two Per Cent Theory. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (12.)
+
+#Shelton (Richard), Barker.# (_See 1916, 1917 under_ "#Oxford, John
+Barton.#") (_See 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bridegroom Cometh. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (38.)
+  *Little of Both. Ev. May. (37.)
+  *Private Performance. L. H. J. June. (16.)
+  Subjunctive Mood. Ev. Aug. (49.)
+
+#Shields, Gertrude M.# (1890- .) (_See 1918._)
+  *Her Promised Land. Cen. Jul. (100:393.)
+
+#Shinn, Anne O'Hagan.# _See_ #O'Hagan, Anne.#
+
+#Shipp, Margaret Busbee.# (1871- .) (_See 1917._) (_H._)
+  Closed Gentians. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:171.)
+  Priscilla and Her Penates. Ev. Jan. (69.)
+
+#Shore, Nancy.#
+  **Secret of the Neals. Red Bk. Jan. (44.)
+
+#Shore, Viola Brothers.# (_See 1919._)
+  Cast Upon the Waters. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (42.)
+  Dimi and the Double Life. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (18.)
+  "Hand That Jerks the Strings." Am. Jan. (27.)
+  We Can't Afford It. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (16.)
+  Young Adventuress. S. E. P. June 19. (49.)
+
+#Shute, Henry Augustus.# (1856- .) (_See 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Scholastic Fourth. Del. Jul.-Aug. (5.)
+
+#Sidney, Rose.# (1888- .) (_See 1919._)
+  ***Butterflies. Pict. R. Sept. (12.)
+
+#Simpson, Robert.#
+  *Whoso Diggeth a Pit. Met. Feb. (15.)
+
+#Sinclair, May.# (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  ***Fame. Pict. R. May. (10.)
+
+#Singmaster, Elsie. (Elsie Singmaster Lewards.)# (1879- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Madness of Henrietta Havisham. McCall. Feb. (5.)
+  ***Miss Vilda. Scr. Jul. (68:98.)
+  ***Salvadora. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:135.)
+
+#Slyke, Lucille Baldwin Van.# _See_ #Van Slyke, Lucille Baldwin.#
+
+*#Smale, Fred C.# (_See 1916, 1919._)
+  *Experts. Scr. Nov., '19. (66:624.)
+
+#Smith, Elizabeth Parker.#
+  Algy Allen's Celadon. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:684.)
+
+#Smith, Garret.#
+  *Host at No. 10. Met. Jan. (23.)
+  Old Hutch Lives Up to It. S. E. P. Feb. 28. (14.)
+
+#Smith, Gordon Arthur.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **Bottom of the Cup. Scr. Mar. (67:355.)
+  *No Flowers. Harp. M. May. (140:785.)
+  They All Go Mad in June. Ev. June. (20.)
+
+#Smith, Maxwell.# (_See 1919._)
+  Dated. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (18.)
+  Funny Fingers. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (12.)
+
+#Sneddon, Robert W.# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Bank of Love. Arg. June 12. (122:23.)
+  *Bonds of Bohemia. Arg. Jul. 17. (123:203.)
+  *Figures of Wax. Sn. St. Nov. 18, '19. (*7.)
+  *Full o' the Moon. L. St. May. (15.)
+  *"Golden Snail Is Born." L. St. Oct., '19. (19.)
+  *Guardian Angels of Charlot. T.T. Aug. (53.)
+  *Little Finot. Sn. St. Feb. 18. (33.)
+  *Love and Lions. Ain. Apr. (46.)
+
+Solano, Solita.
+  Her Honeymoon. S. S. June. (57.)
+
+#Solomons. Theodore Seixa.# (_See 1915._)
+  *In the Maw of the Ice. Adv. Sept. 3. (75.)
+
+#Spears, Raymond Smiley.# (1876- .) (_See 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Bump. Col. Feb. 28. (6.)
+
+#Sprague, J. R.#
+  Expired Loans. S. E. P. May 1. (20.)
+  Factory Chasers. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (22.)
+  Nothing But Business. S. E. P. Jul. 10. (30.)
+
+#Springer, Fleta Campbell.# (1886- .) (_See 1915 1916, 1918; see 1917
+under_ #Campbell, Fleta.#) (_H._)
+  ***Civilization. Harp. M. March. (140:544.)
+  *Romance. Mun. Aug. (70:556.)
+  ***Rotter. Harp. M. Jul. (141:157.)
+
+#Stabler, Harry Snowden.# (_H._)
+  *Zebra Mule. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (5.)
+
+*#Stacpoole, Henry De Vere Stacpoole-.# (1865- .) (_See 1916,
+1918._) (_H._)
+  *Middle Bedroom. All. Nov. 29, '19. (104:199.)
+
+#Starrett, Vincent.# (_See 1918._)
+  End of the Story. S. S. Sept. (25.)
+  Penny Walk. Mir. Mar. 18. (29:205.)
+
+#Stearns, M. M.# _See_ "#Amid, John.#"
+
+#Steele, Alice Garland. (Mrs. T. Austin-Ball.)# (1880- .) (_See 1915,
+1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Awake, Thou Sleeper! Wom. W. Apr. (7.)
+  Blossom in Waste Places. Am. Aug. (57.)
+  Same Old Corker. Am. Dec., '19. (54.)
+
+#Steele, Rufus (Milas).# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Trouble Doc. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (32.)
+
+#Steele, Wilbur Daniel.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Both Judge and Jury. Harp. M. Jan. (140:179.)
+  *Clay and the Cloven Hoof. Harp. M. Oct.-Nov., '19. (139:683; 889.)
+  ***Out of Exile. Pict. R. Nov., '19. (14.)
+  ***God's Mercy. Pict. R. Jul. Aug. (17.)
+
+*#StA(C)phane, B.#
+  *AdA(C)le. N. Y. Trib. Jul. 4.
+
+#Stephens, James.# (_See 1915, 1918._) (_H._)
+  ***Boss. Dial. Apr. (68:411.)
+  ***Desire. Dial. June. (68:277.)
+  ***Thieves. Dial. Aug. (69:142.)
+
+#Stetson, Cushing.# (_H._)
+  Third Light from a Match. Met. Aug. (32.)
+
+"#Stevens, Margaret Dean.#" _See_ #Aldrich, Bess Streeter.#
+
+#Stevenson, Philip E.#
+  *Reward of a Prodigal. Lit. St. June. (19.)
+
+*#Stock, Ralph.# (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Out of the Rut. Col. Jan. 10. (13.)
+
+#Stolper, B. J.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *New Moon. Rom. Nov., '19. (105.)
+
+"#Storm, Ethel.#" (_See 1917._)
+  ***Three Telegrams. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (20.)
+
+#Strahan, Kay Cleaver.# (1888- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Dollars and Sense. Am. June. (70.)
+  Imitation Paradise. Del. May. (10.)
+  Mr. Machiavelli. Del. Oct., '19. (23.)
+
+#Street, Julian (Leonard).# (1879- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Case of Mrs. Allison. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (5.)
+  ***Hands. McC. Sept. (8.)
+
+#Streeter, Edward.# (1891- .)
+  Back to Nature--and Back. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (12.)
+  *Laughing Horse of Gallup Street. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (3.)
+
+#Stribling, T. S.#
+  Passing of the St. Louis Bearcat. Ev. Dec., '19. (51.)
+
+#Stringer, Arthur (John Arbuthnott).# (1874- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Cuff Shooter. S. E. P. May 22. (5.)
+
+#Strunsky, Rose.# (_H._)
+  **Peter Karpovitch. Asia. Feb.-Mar. (20:214.)
+
+*#Sugimoto, Hanano Inagaki.#
+  **Ivory Skull. Scr. Jan. (67:83.)
+
+#Sullivan, Charles J.# (_See 1915._)
+  **From Out the Centuries. B. C. Apr. (25.)
+
+#Sutphen (William Gilbert), Van Tassel.# (1861- .) (_H._)
+  Match-Maker. Harp. M. June. (141:45.)
+
+#Swain, John D.# (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Affairs at Baker's Bluff. All. Nov. 22, '19. (104:20.)
+  *Deadwood. Arg. Jul. 31. (123:561.)
+  Fighting Machine. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (22.)
+  *From Appetites to Arcadia. S. E. P. May 15. (40.)
+  *Man Who Was Never Knocked Out. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (18.)
+  **Unfinished Game. Arg. Mar. 6. (118:443.)
+
+*#Sylvaire, Dominique.#
+  Choice. N. Y. Trib. Oct. 5, '19.
+
+#Synon, Mary.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Night of the Charity Ball. Red Bk. Apr. (43.)
+  *On Scarlet Wings. Red Bk. Jul. (57.)
+  **Second-Best. McCall. Sept. (9.)
+  **Top of the Ladder. McC. Aug. (20.)
+
+
+#Tanner, Marion.#
+  Enemy of Santa Claus. Cen. Dec., '19. (99:153.)
+
+#Tarkington (Newton), Booth.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  **Dishonorable Dolls. Met. Apr. (14.)
+  **Other Things of Life. Met. Jan. (15.)
+
+#Tarleau, Lisa Ysaye.#
+  *Blue Roses. Atl. Nov., '19. (124:614.)
+
+#Taylor, Anne Leland.# (_See 1918._) (_H._)
+  Man's Mind. S. S. Apr. (37.)
+
+#Taylor, D. Wooster.#
+  Murphy's Mummy. Am. Nov., 10. (20.)
+
+*#Tchekov, Anton Pavlovich.# _See_ #Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich.#
+
+#Templeton, Herminie.# _See_ #Kavanagh, Herminie Templeton.#
+
+#Terhune, Albert Payson.# (1872- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Bean Spiller. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (18.)
+  Dub of Peace. S. E. P. Jul. 24. (16.)
+  Foul Fancier. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (18.)
+  Heroine. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (16.)
+  Ringer. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (8.)
+
+#Terhune, Albert Payson#, _and_ #Bulger, Bozeman.# (_See also_ #Bulger,
+Bozeman.#)
+  *Yas-Suh, 'At's er Dog! S. E. P. Apr. 10. (20.)
+
+#Thayer, Mabel Dunham.# (_See 1917._)
+  Little Clay Puppets. Met. June. (16.)
+  Uplifting Mary. S. E. P. May 8. (40.)
+
+*#Thibault, Jacques Anatole.# _See_ "#France, Anatole.#"
+
+#Thompson, James Henry.# (_See 1918._)
+  **$.89 Worth of Devotion. B. C. Jul. (21.)
+
+#Tildesley, Alice L.# (_See 1916, 1919._)
+  Cabell Drives the Nail. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (16.)
+  Lewis Dare. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (10.)
+
+#Titus, Harold.# (1888- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Aliens. L. H. J. May (10.)
+  Crowded Hearthstone. Ev. Jul. (44.)
+
+*#Tolstoy, Count Ilya.#
+  *Bolshevik Soldier. Ev. Oct., '19. (86.)
+
+#Tompkins, Juliet Wilbor.# (#Juliet Wilbor Tompkins Pottle.#) (1871- .)
+  Great Man. S. E. P. Aug. 21. (16.)
+  Sic Semper. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (14.)
+
+#Tonjoroff, Svetozar (Ivanoff).# (1870- .) (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Across the Bridge of Sighs. L. H. J. Oct., '19. (26.)
+  *From Hopeless Soil. L. H. J. Apr. (21.)
+
+#Toohey, John Peter.# (1880- .) (_See 1919._)
+  Days of His Youth. Met. Dec., '19. (25.)
+  Prince There Wasn't. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (16.)
+  Water's Fine. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (16.)
+
+#Torrey, Grace.# (_See 1917, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Maroon-Colored, with Wire Wheels. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (20.)
+  Tone of Lafayette Arms. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (21.)
+
+#Towne, Charles Hanson.# (1877- .) (_H._)
+  Upper Ten. S. S. Jul. (63.)
+
+#Train, Arthur (Cheney).# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Beyond a Reasonable Doubt. S. E. P. Sept. 11. (14.)
+  Dog Andrew. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (20.)
+  Hocus-Pocus. S. E. P. Jan. 3. (24.)
+  *"Honor Among Thieves." S. E. P. Apr. 24. (20.)
+  In re Misella. S. E. P. Dec. 6, '19. (24.)
+  Kid and the Camel. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (20.)
+  Passing of Caput Magnus. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (20.)
+  Shyster. S. E. P. Aug. 7. (12.)
+  Ways That Are Dark. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (8.)
+
+#Train, Ethel Kissam.# (#Mrs. Arthur Train.#) (1875- .) (_See 1916, 1917._)
+  In the Garden. Met. Aug. (18.)
+
+#Trapnell, Edna Valentine.#
+  *Old Lady. L. St. Oct., '19. (13.)
+
+*#Trueba, Antonio De.#
+  ***Portal of Hegaven. Strat. J. Apr.-June. (6:86.)
+
+#Tuckerman, Arthur.#
+  *Black Magic. Scr. Aug. (68:166.)
+
+#Turnbull, Agnes Sligh.#
+  Lost--a $2,500 Engagement Ring. Am. Sept. (47.)
+
+#Turner, George Kibbe.# (1869- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  *Clank Clinkscales' Duodenum. S. E. P. Nov. 15, '19. (3.)
+  Gloama, the Beautiful Ticket Agent. S. E. P. Apr. 17. (6.)
+  Golden Name. S. E. P. Nov. 8, '19. (20.)
+  Old General Jazz. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (8.)
+
+
+#Ueland, Brenda.#
+  Good Natured Girl. Met. May. (36.)
+  Hootch Hound. Met. Sept. (23.)
+
+#Underbill, Ruth Murray.# (_See 1917, 1918._)
+  Goldfish Bowl. L. H. J. Aug. (30.)
+
+#Underwood, Edna Worthley.# (1873- .)
+  **Orchid of Asia. Asia. Aug.-Sept. (20:657, 771.)
+
+#Underwood, Sophie Kerr.# _See_ #Kerr, Sophie.#
+
+#Updegraff, Allan#, (1883- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Harrying Fiend. Harp. M. Jan. (140:160.)
+
+#Updegraff, Robert R.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Old Specification. S. E. P. Sept. 18. (30.)
+  Rip Van Winkle Lands an Order. S. E. P. Nov. 29, '19. (12.)
+
+#Upper, Joseph.#
+  Cheque. S. S. Feb. (101.)
+  Little Gray Doves. S. S. Feb. (76.)
+  Sisterhood. S. S. Mar. (125.)
+
+
+"#Vail, Lawrence.#" (_See 1916, 1917, 1919._)
+  Conrad's Apology for Earth. S. S. March. (29.)
+  Passing of Don Quixote. S. S. Jul. (117.)
+  Swan Song of a Kiss. S. S. Sept. (111.)
+  Twilight Adventure. S. S. Apr. (51.)
+
+*#Valdagne, Pierre.# (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  *Seat of the Right. N. Y. Trib. Sept. 12.
+
+*#Valmer, Binet-.# _See_ #Binet-Valmer.#
+
+#Van, Stephen Ta.#
+  Sheep-Face. S. S. Mar. (67.)
+  Sheep-Face II. S. S. May. (103.)
+
+#Van De Water, Virginia (Belle) Terhune.# (1865- .) (_See 1916._) (_H._)
+  As Water Spilled on the Ground. S. S. May. (93.)
+
+#Van Riper, Charles King.#
+  Hole in the Doughnut. S. S. Mar. (85.)
+  Triumph. S. S. May. (123.)
+
+#Van Saanen, Marie Louise.# _See_ "#Rutledge, Maryse.#"
+
+#Van Slyke, Lucille Baldwin.# (1880- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Boy Who Missed the War. Del. Jan. (16.)
+  Man Who Was Tired of His Wife. Del. May. (7.)
+  You Have to Keep in Tune. L. H. J. Jul. (25.)
+
+#Vermilye, Kate Jordan.# _See_ #Jordan, Kate.#
+
+*#Volland, Gabriel.#
+  Black Siren. N. Y. Trib. Jan. 11.
+  *Original. N. Y. Trib. Nov. 16, '19.
+
+#Vorse, Mary (Marvin) Heaton. (Mary Heaton Vorse O'Brien.)# (_See
+1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  * Dream Killers. Rom. Jan. (38.)
+  ***Fraycar's Fist. Lib. Sept. (17.)
+  ***Hopper. Lib. Apr. (34.)
+  **House of Storms. W. H. C. Mar. (7.)
+  ***Pink Fence. McCall. Jul. (5.)
+  *True Talisman. W. H. C. Aug. (11.)
+
+
+#Waldo, Harold.#
+  *Old Twelve Hundred. S. E. P. Nov. 1, '19. (22.)
+
+#Walker, Beatrice McKay.#
+  *Tomley's Gossoon. Holl. Jul. (11.)
+
+*#Wallace, Edgar.# (1875- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  *Mother o' Mine. Met. Mar. (21.)
+
+*#Walpole, Hugh.# (1884- .) (_See 1915._)
+  ***Case of Miss Morganhurst. Pict. R. May. (17.)
+  ***Fanny's Job. Pict. R. Jul.-Aug. (19.)
+  ***Honourable Clive Torby. Pict. R. June. (10.)
+  ***No Place for Absalom. Pict. R. Apr. (16.)
+  ***Stealthy Visitor. Pict. R. Mar. (14.)
+  ***Third Six. Pict. R. Sept. (8.)
+
+#Walton, Emma Lee.# (H.)
+  *His Masterpiece. Am. Oct., '19. (49.)
+
+*#Ward, Arthur Sarsfield.# _See_ "#Rohmer, Sax.#"
+
+#Ward, Herbert Dickinson.# (1861- .) (_See 1916, 1919._) (_H._)
+  **Greater Than Creed. L. H. J. Apr. (22.)
+  ***Master Note. L. H. J. Jan. (20.)
+  Under the Silk-Cotton Tree. L. H. J. Jul. (10.)
+
+#Ward, Winifred.#
+  Skyscraper. Met. Aug. (26.)
+  *Sleeping Beauty. Touch. Dec., '19. (6:18.)
+
+#Wasson, David A.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1917._)
+  Blind Goddess Nods. B. C. Dec., '19. (114.)
+
+#Water, Virginia Terhune Van De.# _See_ #Van De Water, Virginia Terhune.#
+
+#Waterhouse, Irma.#
+  *Aftermath. Cen. Mar. (99:584.)
+  *Closed Road. Cen. June. (100:165.)
+
+#Weed, Dole.#
+  *Flying Hours. T. T. Feb. (117.)
+
+#Weiman, Rita.# (1889- .) (_See 1915, 1919._)
+  Back Drop. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (8.)
+  Curtain! S. E. P. Dec. 20, '19. (8.)
+
+#Weitzenhorn, Louis.# (1893- .)
+  Adventure of His Daily Bread. Met. May. (30.)
+  Adventure of the Code. Met. Apr. (18.)
+  Adventure of the Diamond Watches. Met. Mar. (23.)
+
+#Welles, Harriett Ogden Deen.# (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***According to Ruskin. W. H. C. June. (21.)
+  **Chinese Interlude. Scr. Apr. (67:431.)
+  *Distracting Adeline. Scr. May. (67:558.)
+  **One Hundred Years Too Soon. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:663.)
+  *Thrush. Harp. B. May. (80.)
+
+#Wellman, Rita.# (#Mrs. Edgar F. Leo.#) (1890- .) (_See 1919._)
+  Clerk. S. S. Oct., '19. (117.)
+  **Little Priest of PercA(C). S. S. Aug. (107.)
+  *Spanish Knife. S. S. Jul, (39.)
+  *Two Lovers, Ain. Sept. (119.)
+
+#Welty, Ruth.#
+  Crises. Pag. Jul.-Sept. (12.)
+
+#Weston, George (T.).# (1880- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Diplomatic Corps. S. E. P. June 5. (8.)
+  Fool of the Family. S. E. P. May 1. (18.)
+  Girls Don't Gamble Any More. S. E. P. Apr. 24. (8.)
+  Hard-Boiled Mabel. S. E. P. Apr. 3. (5.)
+
+*#Wharton, Anthony.# (_See 1919._)
+  "Gingerbread for Two." Pict. R. June. (14.)
+  *Miss Ashton's House. S. E. P. Aug. 28. (16.)
+
+#Wharton, Francis Willing.# (_H._)
+  Byway of Darby. Ev. Mar. (74.)
+
+#Wheeler, Post.# (1869- .)
+  *Talking Skull. Rom. Sept. (77.)
+
+#Wheelwright, John Tyler.# (1856- .)
+  ***Roman Bath. Scr. Jan. (67:33.)
+
+#White, Nelia Gardner.#
+  Girl Next Door to Old Pinchpenny's. Am. Sept. (27.)
+
+#Whiting, Robert Rudd.# (1877- .) (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Romance of a Practising Ph.D. Scr. Oct., '19. (66:487.)
+
+#Whitman, Stephen French.# (_See 1915, 1919._) (_H._)
+  ***Amazement, Harp. M. Oct., '19. (139:654.)
+  **Last Room of All. Harp. M. June. (141:27.)
+  ***Lost Waltz. L. H. J. Dec., '19. (26.)
+  ***To a Venetian Tune. Harp. M. Nov., '19. (139:836.)
+
+#Whitson, Beth Slater.# (_See 1916, 1917._) (_H._)
+  **Birthmark. True St. Nov., '19. (33.)
+
+#Widdemer, Margaret.# (#Margaret Widdemer Schauffler.#) (_See 1915,
+1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  Changeling. Col. Jan. 10-17. (9:18.)
+  Secondary Wife. Del. Dec., '19. (13.)
+
+#Wilde, Percival.# (1887- .)
+  Sequel. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (11.)
+
+#Wiley, Hugh.# (1894- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Christmas Drifter. S. E. P. Dec. 27, '19. (8.)
+  *Driftwood. S. E. P. Oct. 4, '19. (12.)
+  Excess Baggage. S. E. P. Sept. 25. (10.)
+  *Hop. S. E. P. Apr. 10. (8.)
+  *Jade. S. E. P. Mar. 27. (6.)
+  **Junk. S. E. P. June 12. (12.)
+  *Konkrin' Hero. S. E. P. June 26. (8.)
+  *Mister Lady Luck. S. E. P. Jan. 17. (14.)
+  Prowling Prodigal. S. E. P. Nov. 22, '19. (10.)
+  *Ramble Gamble. S. E. P. Jan. 10. (14.)
+  Red Rock. S. E. P. May 1. (10.)
+  *Solitaire. S. E. P. Sept. 4. (20.)
+
+#Williams, Ben Ames# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  *Another Man's Poison. Col Dec. 6, '19. (9.)
+  *Climax. Cos. Aug. (81.)
+  *Mine Enemy's Dog. Col. Jan. 10. (5.)
+  Most Disastrous Chances. Col Aug. 14. (5.)
+  Not a Drum Was Heard. Col. June 12. (5).
+  *Old Tantrybogus. S. E. P. Mar. 6. (8.)
+  ***Sheener. Col. Jul. 10. (5.)
+
+#Willie, Linda Buntyn.# (_See 1917._)
+  What Mother Had Always Wanted. Am. Apr. (66.)
+
+#Willrich, Erica.#
+  Fulfillment. Pag. Oct., '19. (49.)
+
+#Wilson, John Fleming.# (1877- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  *Class. S. E. P. June 26. (22.)
+  Dough Candles. L. H. J. Nov., '19. (18.)
+  Ninety Days. S. E. P. Jul. 17. (20.)
+  Number 1100. S. E. P. Feb. 7. (12.)
+  Salving of John Somers. Ev. Aug. (34.)
+  ***Uncharted Reefs. McCall. Aug. (8.)
+
+#Wilson, Margaret Adelaide.# (_See 1916, 1917, 1918._) (_H._)
+  **CA|sar's Ghost. Atl. Oct., '19. (124:483.)
+  ***Drums. Scr. Dec., '19. (66:702.)
+
+#Wingate, Robert.#
+  Rough-Shod Mr. Billings and Where His Ride Led Him. Am. Nov., '19. (38.)
+
+#Winslow, Thyra Samter.# (1889- .) (_See 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Aunt Ida. S. S. Dec., '19. (103.)
+  **City Folks. S. S. Oct., '19. (53.)
+  Corinna and Her Man. S. S. May. (53.)
+  **Mamie Carpenter. S. S. Aug. (77.)
+  *Perfume Counter. S. S. Jan. (87.)
+
+#Winthrop, Arthur.#
+  Mystic Rose. Lit. R. Jan. (21.)
+
+#Wisehart, Karl.#
+  **Hunger. Cen. Feb. (98:483.)
+
+#Witwer, Harry Charles.# (1890- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918, 1919._)
+  Ellen of Troy. Am. Jul. (68.)
+  Fool and His Money. Col. Jul. 31. (8.)
+  Freedom of the She's. Col. Jan. 3. (14.)
+  Girl at the Switchboard. Am. Feb. (44.)
+  League of Relations. Col. Apr. 3. (13.)
+  Leather Pushers. Round One. Col. May 15. (5.)
+  Leather Pushers. Round Two. Col. June 5. (9.)
+  Merchant of Venus. Col. Nov. 29, '19. (5.)
+  Nights of Columbus. Col. Mar. 20. (11.)
+  Paul and West Virginia. Am. June. (46.)
+  Payment Through the Nose. Col. Jul. 3. (8.)
+  So This Is Cincinnati! Col. Oct. 4, '19. (9.)
+  Taming of the Shrewd. Col. Aug. 28. (10.)
+  Word to the Wives. Col. Mar. 6. (8.)
+
+*#Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville.# (1881- .) (_See 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Ordeal by Golf. Col. Dec. 6, '19- (5.)
+
+#Wolcott, Helen Louise.#
+  Reality. S. S. June. (65.)
+
+#Wolff, William Almon, Jr.# (1885- .) (_See 1916, 1917, 1918,
+1919._) (_H._)
+  Cellar Door. Col. Nov. 15, '19. (5.)
+  Middle of the Ladder. Col. Jan. 3. (8.)
+  Ugly Ducklings. Sun. Jan. (45.)
+  Wash Your Own Dishes. Col. Jan. 24. (8.)
+
+#Woljeska, Helen.# (_See 1915._) (_H._)
+  Exquisite Episode. S. S. Feb. (68.)
+
+#Wood, C. Rowland.#
+  Jimmie Pulls a Miracle. Ev. June. (62.)
+
+#Wood, Frances Gilchrist.# (_See 1918._)
+  ***Spoiling of Pharaoh. Pict. R. Oct., '19. (18.)
+  ***Turkey Red. Pict. R. Nov., '19. (18.)
+
+#Wood, Jr., Leonard.# (_See 1915, 1917._) (_H._)
+  Hills of To-Morrow. Scr. Mar. (67:316.)
+
+#Woollcott, Alexander.#
+  **Old Woman of Margivrault Farm. Cen. June. (100:259.)
+
+#Wormser, Gwendolyn Ranger.# (_See 1919._)
+  **Tumanoff. Sn. St. Oct. 18, '19. (33.)
+
+#Worts, George Frank.# (1892- .) (_See 1918, 1919._)
+  Bonuses and Bunkers. Col. Feb. 7. (19.)
+  Cat and the Burglar. Ev. Apr. (54.)
+  Fine Feathers and Overalls. Sun. Apr. (45.)
+
+#Wright, Richardson (Little).# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._)
+  "Kitty! Kitty!" Del. Feb. (15.)
+
+
+#Yates, L. B.# (_See 1915, 1916, 1918, 1919._) (_H._)
+  Hunches. S. E. P. May 22. (30.)
+  Reincarnation of Chan Hop. S. E. P. Jul. 3. (30.)
+
+#Yezierska, Anna.# (1886- .) (_See 1915, 1918, 1919._)
+  ***Hunger. Harp. M. Apr. (140:604.)
+  **"Lost Beautifulness." Red Cross. Mar. (35.)
+  **Wings. McCall. Sept. (11.)
+
+#Young, Mrs. Sanborn.# _See_ #Mitchell, Ruth Comfort#, _and_ #Young,
+William Sanborn.#
+
+*#Yushkevitch, Semyon.#
+  ***PietA . Pag. Jan. (4.)
+
+*#Yver, Colette.#
+  Good Queen's Christmas Eve. N. Y. Trib. Dec. 21, '19.
+
+
+*#Zartarjian, Roopen.#
+  **Then Man Was Immortal. Asia. Sept. (20:821.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Best Short Stories of 1920, by Various
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1920 ***
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