Chapter IX: Getting the Author’s Mood (2)

And, taking a wash-pan of tepid water, with soap, comb, rag, towel and Toodles, he went into the sitting-room where it was cool and pleasant. The baby’s clean clothes were lying upon a chair, where his mamma had placed them the night before. Then what a time they had. Toodles would catch the wash rag in his teeth and papa would shake it and growl till the little mouth would have to let loose to scream with the agonizing fun.

Then came the tangled curls, and it took a wonderful story about a doggie that would say “Bow, wow,” and a little horsie that Toodles could ride and a chicky that went “Peep, peep, peep,” and several other mental concoctions to keep the baby quiet until the ringlets were in order.

When the clean coaties were on and two little arms hugged papa tight, Jack Telfer thought, “Jennie calls this work.”

The clock pounded out eleven strokes.

“Blast that clock; what’s got into it,” thought the man, putting the child down and hurrying to the kitchen. “I’ve been busy every minute this morning, and here it is 11 o’clock and not a thing done yet.”

He found the fire had burned out; he had forgotten to put the peach pits on the kindling when he had stopped to fuss with Toodles.

“Well, I guess I’ll make it all right by noon,” he soliloquized. “This is a hurry-up order, but I’ll be on time or eat my hat.”

He looked at his pie; it was nearly half baked. He built a roaring fire, packed the stove with peach pits, pulled the prunes to the front where they would cook quicker, and was debating in his mind which he should scald first, the churn or the chicken, when something rushed by the door.

“Drat those calves; they’re out again.”

Snatching his hat, he hurried after them. It was a merry chase for the calves if not for Mr. Telfer. They were willing to go in any direction but the right one, and by the time he got them corralled Jack was hot, tired and cross.

When Toodles was left alone he started out on a tour of inspection. The first objects of interest were the dead chicken and the peach-pit basket, but his attention was soon detracted from these by the bright pan that held the cream; it had been pushed to the edge of the table. As Toodles approached it he saw the reflection of a chubby baby face on the outside.

“Baby,” said Toodles. He smiled and the pan baby smiled, and he concluded that the pan must be full of pretty, smiling babies, and he wanted them to play with. He could just get his little fingers over the edge of the pan. He pulled and tugged with all his might to get the pan baby down.

He succeeded, for the pan toppled over and deluged the immaculate Toodles with thick, yellow cream. His pretty curls were filled with chunks of oily coagulation, and cream ran in rivulets down his little back and bosom.

He seated himself in the middle of it and paddled and spattered in great glee.

The calf pen took longer to fix than Jack had expected, and as he neared the house he heard the clock striking twelve, and, looking fieldward, he saw his wife coming to dinner.

“Jumping Jupiter! what will she say?” was his mental comment. “But she will soon fix things, I’ll bet.”

As he entered the kitchen what a sight met his gaze. The room was dark with smoke from burned prunes, the table piled full of unwashed pans and dishes. The cream. Heavens, the cream! The dead chicken lay in the middle of the floor and the pit-basket was upset, as Toodles had left it for the pan baby. The open-mouthed churn stared at him.

Mr. Telfer opened the oven door; his pie was a black mass.

“I can see now why women sit down and cry sometimes. I’m blessed if I don’t feel like it myself,” he said.

Toodles, drenched but happy, called from the middle of his cream puddle, “High me, papa; high me.”

Mrs. Telfer called out as she passed the house: “Hello! Dinner ready? I’m awful hungry.” But her husband was not visible.

She had enjoyed her morning’s work and was in excellent spirits. She watered and fed the team, then started for the house. The novelty of the situation amused her. She expected Jack would have some surprise ready, some extra dish for dinner, the table decorated with flowers or, perhaps, be tricked out in one of her white aprons with his hair curled and a pink ribbon around his neck to show how a wife should greet her husband.

He was such a wag it was impossible to tell what he might do. As she entered the house she stood dumb with amazement. Her eyes took in the situation. The breakfast dishes, the burned pie, the creamy Toodles, the dead chicken, the littered sitting-room with the remains of Toodles’ toilet and the distracted-looking man.

“How soon will dinner be ready?” she asked. But her husband did not answer; he was busy picking up peach pits. “I’ve got to get back to work as soon as I can,” she continued.

Crossing the room, she took up a paper and went outside and sat down in the shade to read.

Toodles, greasy and dripping, trotted after.

“Oh, baby, go to papa and get cleaned up. Go tell papa to clean baby up, darling,” said his mother. And the little fellow hurried into the house, saying: “Keen baby up, papa; keen baby up.”

Poor Jack, he had lost out. He was hopelessly balled up. He was mad. He had felt somehow that his troubles were over when he saw his wife coming, but when she took the paper and sat down to read, leaving him in that awful muss, the iron entered his soul.

Yet he knew that was exactly the way he did, and only yesterday when she asked him to get a pitcher of fresh water for dinner he had said:

“It’s a pity a man can’t get a moment to rest without having to chore around the house.”

“Keen baby up, papa; keen baby up!” reiterated Toodles. Jack looked down at the greasy, smeary child with its cream-matted curls and capitulated.

“Say, Jennie,” he called, “I’ll give up. I know when I’m worsted. It’s my treat. If you’ll come in here and help me out of this mix-up you can name your own price and I’ll pay it. I’ve worked all the morning and haven’t done a blamed thing but get all balled up. I never would have believed a woman had so much to do if I hadn’t tried it. I am dead sore at the whole deal.”

“Why, Jack,” laughed his wife, as she came to his assistance, “you don’t seem to like paper-flower work. I guess you forgot to tie one hand behind you and so used both to throw time at the birds.”

“Now see here, Jennie, don’t strike a man when he’s down. I’ll admit that I’m not nearly so smart as I thought I was this morning, but how things ever got in this shape I can’t tell,” said Jack with a grim smile.

Together they soon brought order out of chaos, and as they sat eating their picked-up dinner Jack said:

“If it is all the same to you, Jennie, I’ll finish the orchard this afternoon.”—_The Los Angeles Times._

A BAD NIGHT

BY J. ROSS BROWNE

I gradually dropped off into a doze, a mere doze, for I scorn the charge of having slept a wink that night. The grating of the grindstones, the everlasting clatter of tongues, the dust, the chaff, smoke, and fleas, to say nothing of the roar of the water down below, were enough to banish all hope of sleep; I merely closed my eyes to try how ridiculous it would feel. How long they remained closed I scarcely know; it was not long, however, for I soon heard a heavy breathing close by my head, and felt the warm breath of some monster on my face. I knew it to be no Arab; it blew and snuffed altogether unlike anything of the human kind. Thinking it might be all fancy, I cautiously put out my hand in the dark and began to feel around me. For some moments I could discover nothing, but in waving my hand around I at length touched something—something that sent the blood flying back to my heart a good deal quicker than it ever flew before. To tell the honest truth, I never was so startled in all the previous adventures of my life. The substance that I put my hand on was bare and warm; it was wet also and slimy, and had large nostrils which seemed to be in the act of smelling me, previous to the act of mastication. With the quickness of lightning I jerked up my hand, and felt it glide along a skin covered with long rough hair; the next instant my ears were stunned by the most dreadful noises, which resembled, as I thought in the horror of the moment, the roaring of a full-grown lion. But it was not the roaring of a lion; it was only the braying of an ass.—From _The Mill of Malaha_.

AN UNTHANKFUL ORPHAN

BY KATE LANGLEY BOSHER

My name is Mary Cary. I live in the Yorkburg Female Orphan Asylum. You may think nothing happens in an Orphan Asylum. It does. The orphans are sure enough children, and real, much like the kind that have Mothers and Fathers; but though they don’t give parties or wear truly Paris clothes, things happen.

To-day I was kept in. Yesterday, too. I don’t mind, for I would rather watch the lightning up here than be down in the basement with the others. There are days when I love thunder and lightning. I can’t flash and crash, being just Mary Cary; but I’d like to, and when it is done for me it is a relief to my feelings.

The reason I was kept in was this: Yesterday Mr. Gaffney, the one with a sunk eye and cold in his head perpetual, came to talk to us for the benefit of our characters. He thinks it’s his duty, and, just naturally loving to talk, he wears us out once a week anyhow. Yesterday, not agreeing with what he said, I wouldn’t pretend I did, and I was punished prompt, of course.

I don’t care for duty-doers, and I tried not to listen to him; but tiresome talk is hard not to hear—it makes you so mad. Hear him I did, and when, after he had ambled on until I thought he really was castor-oil and I had swallowed him, he blew his nose and said:

“You have much, my children, to be thankful for, and for everything you should be thankful. Are you? If so, stand up. Rise, and stand upon your feet.”

I didn’t rise. All the others did—stood on their feet, just like he asked. None tried their heads. I was the only one that sat, and when his good eye stared at me in such astonishment, I laughed out loud. I couldn’t help it, I truly couldn’t.

I’m not thankful for everything, and that’s why I didn’t stand up. Can you be thankful for toothache, or stomachache, or any kind of ache? You cannot. And not meant to be, either.

The room got awful still, and then presently he said:

“Mary Cary”—his voice was worse than his eye—“Mary Cary, do you mean to say you have not a thankful heart?” And he pointed his finger at me like I was the Jezebel lady come to life.

I didn’t answer, thinking it safer, and he asked again:

“Do I understand, Mary Cary”—and by this time he was real red-in-the-face mad—“do I understand you are not thankful for all that comes to you? Do I understand aright?”

“Yes, sir, you understand right,” I said, getting up this time. “I am not thankful for everything in my life. I’d be much thankfuller to have a Mother and Father on earth than to have them in heaven. And there are a great many other things I would like different.” And down I sat, and was kept in for telling the truth.

Miss Bray says it was for impertinence (Miss Bray is the Head Chief of this Institution), but I didn’t mean to be impertinent. I truly didn’t. Speaking facts is apt to make trouble, though—also writing them. To-day Miss Bray kept me in for putting something on the blackboard I forgot to rub out. I wrote it just for my own relief, not thinking about anybody else seeing it. What I wrote was this:

“Some people are crazy all the time;
All people are crazy sometimes.”

That’s why I’m up in the punishment-room to-day, and it only proves that what I wrote is right. It’s crazy to let people know you know how queer they are. Miss Bray takes personal everything I do, and when she saw that blackboard, up-stairs she ordered me at once. She loves to punish me, and it’s a pleasure I give her often.

She thinks she could run this earth better than it’s being done, and she walks around like she is the Superintendent of most of it.

But she’s taught me a good deal about Human Nature, Miss Bray has. About the side I didn’t know. I think I will make a special study of Human Nature. I thought once I’d take up Botany in particular, as I love flowers; or Astronomy, so as to find out all about those million worlds in the sky, so superior to earth, and so much larger; but I think, now, I’ll settle on Human Nature. Nobody ever knows what it is going to do, which makes it full of surprises, but there’s a lot that’s real interesting about it. I like it. As for its Bray side, I’ll try not to think about it; but if there are puddles, I guess it’s well to know where, so as not to step in them. I wish we didn’t have to know about puddles and things! I’d so much rather know little and be happy than find out the miserable much some people do. God is going to have a hard time with Miss Bray. She’s right old to change, and she’s set in her ways—bad ways.

Did you know I wrote poetry? Umhm. I do. Last week I wrote one. This is it:

“In the winter, by the fireside, when the snow falls soft and white,
I am waiting, hoping, longing, but for what I don’t know quite.
And when summer’s sunshine shimmers, and the birds sing clear and sweet,
I am waiting, always waiting, for the joy I hope to meet.

“It will be, I think, my husband, and the home he’ll make for me;
But of his coming or home-making, I as yet no signs do see.
But I still shall keep on waiting, for I know it’s true as fate,
When you really, truly hustle, things will come if just you’ll wait.”

Miss Bray was to get married. When I grow up I am going to marry a million-dollar man, so I can travel around the world and have a house in Paris with twenty bathrooms in it. And I’m going to have horses and automobiles and a private car and balloons, if they are working all right by that time. I hope they will be, for I want something in which I can soar up and sit and look down on other people.

All my life people have looked down on me, passing me by like I was a Juny bug or a caterpillar, and I don’t wonder. I’m merely Mary Cary with fifty-eight more just like me. Blue calico, white dots for winter, white calico, blue dots for summer. Black sailor hats and white sailor hats with blue capes for cold weather, and no fire to dress by, and freezing fingers when it’s cold, and no ice-water when it’s hot.

Yes, I am going to marry a rich man. I will try to love him, but if I can’t I will be polite to him and travel alone as much as possible. But I am going to be rich some day, I am. And when I come back to Yorkburg eyes will bulge, for the clothes I am going to wear will make mouths water, they’re going to be so grand.

It seems like every time Miss Katherine goes away from the ’Sylum I’d be bad. Last time she hadn’t been gone two days till I’d invented more trouble. It was this way: In the summer we have much more time than in the winter, and the children kept coming to me asking me to make up something, and all of a sudden a play came in my mind. I just love acting. The play was to be the marriage of Dr. Rudd and Miss Bray.

You see, Miss Bray is dead in love with Dr. Rudd—really addled about him. And whenever he comes to see any of the children who are sick she is so solitious and sweet and smiley that we call her, to ourselves, Ipecac Mollie. Other days, plain Mollie Cottontail. It seemed to me if we could just think him into marrying her, it would be the best work we’d ever done, and I thought it was worth trying.

They say if you just think and think and think about a thing you can make somebody else think about it, too. And not liking Dr. Rudd, we didn’t mind thinking her on him, and so we began. Every day we’d meet for an hour and think together, and each one promised to think single, and in between times we got ready.

Becky Drake says love goes hard late in life, and sometimes touches the brain. Maybe that accounts for Miss Bray.

She is fifty-three years old, and all frazzled out and done up with adjuncts. But Dr. Rudd, being a man with not even usual sense, and awful conceited, don’t see what we see, and swallows easy. Men are funny—funny as some women.

I don’t think he’s ever thought of courting Miss Bray. But she’s thought of it, and for once we tried to help her, and the play was a corker; it certainly was. We chose Friday night because Miss Jones always takes tea with her aunt that night, and Miss Bray goes to choir practicing. I wish everybody could hear her sing! Gabriel ought to engage her to wake the dead—only they’d want to die again.

Dr. Rudd is in the choir, and she just lives on having Friday nights to look forward to.

The ceremony took place in the basement-room where we play in bad weather. It’s across from the dining-room, the kitchen being between, and it’s a right nice place to march in, being long and narrow.

I was the preacher, and Prudence Arch and Nita Polley, Emma Clark and Margaret Witherspoon were the bridesmaids.

Lizzie Wyatt was the bride, and Katie Freeman, who is the tallest girl in the house, though only fourteen, was the groom.

Katie is so thin she would do as well for one thing in this life as another, so we made her Dr. Rudd.

We didn’t have but two men. Miss Webb says they’re really not necessary at weddings, except the groom and minister. Nobody notices them, and, besides, we couldn’t get the pants.

I was an Episcopal minister, so I wouldn’t need any.

If anybody thinks that wedding was slumpy, they think wrong. It was thrilly. When the bride and groom and the bridesmaids came in, all the girls were standing in rows on either side of the walls, making an aisle in between, and they sang a wedding-song I had invented from my heart.

It was to the Lohengrin tune, which is a little wobbly for words, but they got them in all right, keeping time with their hands. These are the words:

Here comes the bride,
God save the groom!
And please don’t let any chil-i-il-dren come,
For they don’t know
How children feel,
Nor do they know how with children to deal.

She’s still an old maid,
Though she would not have been
Could she have mar-ri-ed any kind of man.
But she could not.
So to the Humane
She came, and caus-ed a good deal of pain.

But now she’s here
To be married, and go
Away with her red-headed, red-bearded beau.
Have mercy, Lord,
And help him to bear
What we’ve been doing this many a year!

And such singing! We’d been practicing in the back part of the yard, and humming in bed, so as to get the words into the tune; but we hadn’t let out until that night. That night we let go.

There’s nothing like singing from your heart, and, though I was the minister and stood on a box which was shaky, I sang too. I led.

The bride didn’t think it was modest to hold up her head, and she was the only silent one. But the bridegroom and bridesmaids sang, and it sounded like the revivals at the Methodist church. It was grand.

And that bride! She was Miss Bray. A graven image of her couldn’t have been more like her.

She was stuffed in the right places, and her hair was frizzled just like Miss Bray’s. Frizzled in front, and slick and tight in the back; and her face was a purple pink, and powdered all over, with a piece of dough just above her mouth on the left side to correspond with Miss Bray’s mole.

And she held herself so like her, shoulders back, and making that little nervous sniffle with her nose, like Miss Bray makes when she’s excited, that once I had to wink at her to stop.

The groom didn’t look like Dr. Rudd. But she wore men’s clothes, and that’s the only way you’d know some men were men, and almost anything will do for a groom. Nobody noticed him.

We were getting on just grand, and I was marrying away, telling them what they must do and what they mustn’t do. Particularly that they mustn’t get mad and leave each other, for Yorkburg was very old-fashioned and didn’t like changes, and would rather stick to its mistakes than go back on its word. And then I turned to the bride.

“Miss Bray,” I said, “have you told this man you are marrying that you are two-faced and underhand, and can’t be trusted to tell the truth? Have you told him that nobody loves you, and that for years you have tried to pass for a lamb, when you are an old sheep? And does he know that though you’re a good manager on little and are not lazy, that your temper’s been ruined by economizing, and that at times, if you were dead, there’d be no place for you? Peter wouldn’t pass you, and the devil wouldn’t stand you. And does he know he’s buying a pig in a bag, and that the best wedding present he could give you would be a set of new teeth? And will you promise to stop pink powder and clean your finger-nails every day? And—”

But I got no further, for something made me look up, and there, standing in the door, was the real Miss Bray.

All I said was—“Let us pray!”—Abridged from “Mary Cary,” copyrighted by _The Century Company_, New York, and used by the kind consent of author and publisher.

A CHRISTMAS PRESENT FOR A LADY

BY MYRA KELLY

It was the week before Christmas, and the First-Reader Class had, almost to a man, decided on the gifts to be lavished on “Teacher.” But Morris Mogilewsky, whose love for Teacher was far greater than the combined loves of all the other children, had as yet no present to bestow. The knowledge saddened all his hours and was the more maddening because it could in no wise be shared by Teacher, who noticed his altered bearing and tried with all sorts of artful beguilements to make him happy and at ease. But her efforts served only to increase his unhappiness and his love. And he loved her! Oh, how he loved her! Since first his dreading eyes had clung for a breath’s space to her “like man’s shoes” and had then crept timidly up to her “light face,” she had been mistress of his heart of hearts. That was more than three months ago. And well he remembered the day!

His mother had washed him horribly, and had taken him into the big, red schoolhouse, so familiar from the outside, but so full of unknown terrors within.

He was then dragged through long halls and up tall stairs by a large boy, who spoke to him disdainfully as “greenie,” so that his spirit was quite broken and his nerves were all unstrung when he was pushed into a room full of bright sunshine and of children who laughed at his frightened little face. The sunshine smote his timid eyes, the laughter smote his timid heart, and he turned to flee. But the door was shut, the large boy gone, and despair took him for its own.

Down upon the floor he dropped, and wailed, and wept, and kicked. It was then that he heard, for the first time, the voice which now he loved.

“Why, my dear little chap, you mustn’t cry like that. What’s the matter?”

The hand was gentle and the question kind, and these, combined with a faint perfume suggestive of drug-stores and barber-shops—but nicer than either—made him uncover his hot little face. Kneeling beside him was a lady, and he forced his eyes to that perilous ascent; from shoes to skirt, from skirt to jumper, from jumper to face, they trailed in dread uncertainty, but at the face they stopped. They had found—rest.

Morris allowed himself to be gathered into the lady’s arms, and held upon her knee, and when his sobs no longer rent the very foundations of his pink and wide-spread tie, he answered her question in a voice as soft as his eyes, and as gently sad.

“I ain’t so big, and I don’t know where is my mamma.”

Thereafter he had been the first to arrive every morning, and the last to leave every afternoon; and under the care of Teacher, his liege lady, he had grown in wisdom and love and happiness. But the greatest of these was love. And now, when the other boys and girls were planning surprises and gifts of price for Teacher, his hands were as empty as his heart was full. Appeal to his mother met with denial prompt and energetic.

“For what you go und make, over Christmas, presents?”

“All the other fellows buys her presents, und I’m loving mit her too; it’s polite I gives her presents the while I’m got such a kind feeling over her,” said Morris stoutly.

“Well, we ain’t got no money for buy nothings,” said Mrs. Mogilewsky sadly. “No money, und your papa, he has all times a scare he shouldn’t to get no more.”

So Morris was helpless, his mother poor, and Teacher all unknowing.

And now the great day, the Friday before Christmas, came, and the school was, for the first half-hour, quite mad. Room 18, generally so placid and so peaceful, was a howling wilderness full of brightly colored, quickly changing groups of children, all whispering, all gurgling, and all hiding queer bundles.

Isidore Belchatosky was the first to lay tribute before Teacher. He came forward with a sweet smile and a tall candlestick, and Teacher, for a moment, could not be made to understand that all that length of bluish-white china was really hers “for keeps.”

“It’s to-morrow holiday,” Isidore assured her; “and we gives you presents, the while we have a kind feeling. Candlesticks could to cost twenty-five cents.”

“It’s a lie! three for ten,” said a voice in the background; but Teacher hastened to respond to Isidore’s test of her credulity.

“Indeed, they could. This candlestick could have cost fifty cents, and it’s just what I want. It is very good of you to bring me a present.”

“You’re welcome,” said Isidore, retiring.

And then, the ice being broken, the First-Reader Class in a body rose to cast its gifts on Teacher’s desk, and its arms around Teacher’s neck.

Nathan Horowitz presented a small cup and saucer; Isidore Applebaum bestowed a large calendar for the year before last; Sadie Gonorowsky brought a basket containing a bottle of perfume, a thimble, and a bright silk handkerchief; Sarah Schrodsky offered a pen-wiper and a yellow celluloid collarbutton, and Eva Kidansky gave an elaborate nasal douche, under the pleasing delusion that it was an atomizer.

Jacob Spitsky pressed forward with a tortoise-shell comb of terrifying aspect and hungry teeth, and an air showing forth a determination to adjust it in its destined place. Teacher meekly bowed her head; Jacob forced his offering into her long-suffering hair, and then retired with the information “Costs fifteen cents, Teacher.”

Meanwhile the rush of presentation went steadily on. Cups and saucers came in wild profusion. The desk was covered with them. The soap, too, became urgently perceptible. It was of all sizes, shapes and colors, but of uniform and dreadful power of perfume. Teacher’s eyes filled with tears—of gratitude—as each new piece or box was pressed against her nose, and Teacher’s mind was full of wonder as to what she could ever do with it all. Bottles of perfume vied with one another and with the all-pervading soap, until the air was heavy and breathing grew laborious. But pride swelled the hearts of the assembled multitude. No other Teacher had so many helps to the toilet. None other was so beloved.

When the wastepaper basket had been twice filled with wrappings and twice emptied; when order was emerging out of chaos; when the Christmas-tree had been disclosed and its treasures distributed, a timid hand was laid on Teacher’s knee and a plaintive voice whispered, “Say, Teacher, I got something for you”; and Teacher turned quickly to see Morris, her dearest boy charge.

“Now, Morris dear,” said Teacher, “you shouldn’t have troubled to get me a present; you know you and I are such good friends that—”

“Teacher, yiss, ma’am,” Morris interrupted, in a bewitching and rising inflection of his soft and plaintive voice. “I know you got a kind feeling by me, and I couldn’t to tell even how I got a kind feeling by you. Only it’s about that kind feeling I should give you a present. I didn’t”—with a glance at the crowded desk—“I didn’t to have no soap nor no perfumery, and my mamma she couldn’t to buy none by the store; but, Teacher, I’m got something awful nice for you by present.”

“And what is it, deary?” asked the already rich and gifted young person. “What is my new present?”

“Teacher, it’s like this: I don’t know; I ain’t so big like I could to know”—and, truly, God pity him! he was passing small—“it ain’t for boys—it’s for ladies. Over yesterday on the night comes my papa to my house, und he gives my mamma the present. Sooner she looks on it, sooner she has a awful glad; in her eyes stands tears, und she says, like that—out of Jewish—‘Thanks,’ un’ she kisses my papa a kiss. Und my papa, how he is polite! He says—out of Jewish, too—‘you’re welcome, all right,’ un’ he kisses my mamma a kiss. So my mamma, she sets und looks on the present, und all the time she looks she has a glad over it. Und I didn’t to have no soap, so you could to have the present.”

“But did your mother say I might?”

“Teacher, no, ma’am; she didn’t say like that, und she didn’t to say not like that. She didn’t to know. But it’s for ladies, un’ I didn’t to have no soap. You could to look on it. It ain’t for boys.”

And here Morris opened a hot little hand and disclosed a tightly folded pinkish paper. As Teacher read it he watched her with eager, furtive eyes, dry and bright, until hers grew suddenly moist, when his promptly followed suit. As she looked down at him, he made his moan once more:

“It’s for ladies, and I didn’t to have no soap.”

“But, Morris dear,” cried Teacher, unsteadily, laughing a little, and yet not far from tears, “this is ever so much nicer than soap—a thousand times better than perfume; and you’re quite right, it is for ladies, and I never had one in all my life before. I am so very thankful.”

“You’re welcome, all right. That’s how my papa says; it’s polite. Und my mamma,” he said insinuatingly—“she kisses my papa a kiss.”

“Well?” said Teacher.

“Well,” said Morris, “you ain’t never kissed me a kiss, und I seen how you kissed Eva Gonorowsky. I’m loving mit you too. Why don’t you never kiss me a kiss?”

“Perhaps,” suggested Teacher mischievously, “perhaps it ain’t for boys.”

“Teacher, yiss, ma’am; it’s for boys,” he cried, as he felt her arms about him, and saw that in her eyes, too, “stands tears.”

Late that night Teacher sat in her pretty room and reviewed her treasures. She saw that they were very numerous, very touching, very whimsical, and very precious. But above all the rest she cherished a frayed and pinkish paper, rather crumpled and a little soiled. For it held the love of a man and a woman and a little child, and the magic of a home, for Morris Mogilewsky’s Christmas present for ladies was the receipt for a month’s rent for a room on the top floor of a Monroe Street tenement.—From “Little Citizens,” copyrighted by _Doubleday, Page & Co._, New York, and used by arrangement.

THE CAMP-MEETING AT BLUFF SPRINGS

BY JUSTIN TRUITT BISHOP

Bascom Barnard paused on the kitchen steps, and looked in at the door with suspicion and irritation in his eyes.

“Bakin’ chickens, air ye?” he asked. “Now I’d like to know what ye’re wastin’ chickens fur at this rate? An’ pies an’ lightbread an’ puddin’, well the land, Ma’ Jane, did ye think we was millionaires?”

“I didn’t know but ye’d change your mind about goin’ over to the camp-meetin’ an’ it would help along to have most of the cookin’ for Sunday done at home,” she said humbly.

“It does seem to me, Ma’ Jane, that it takes more talkin’ to convince you of anything, than any other seventeen women I ever have saw. I’ve tol’ you every day for the last week that we warn’t goin’ to that dratted camp-meetin’—that we couldn’t both leave, and I was bound to go over to the corners and see Bink Denny about that land—that a woman’s business was at home, stid of gallivantin’ ’round the country ’tendin’ camp-meetin’s; cain’t you ever learn anything, Ma’ Jane?”

Ma’ Jane shut the oven door and stood up; she wiped the perspiration from her face with a checked apron.

“I’ve been hopin’ for years that they’d have a camp-meetin’ near enough for me to go. I’ve not ’tended since I was a girl. Mother always had a tent an’ you was glad enough to come to camp-meetin’ then, Bascom, an’ this one’s not more’n six miles away—an’ I want to go.”

“Well, you know good an’ well you cain’t. Somebody’s got to stay on this place to take keer o’ things—an’ since it cain’t be me, it’s got to be you.”

“Mary Hopkins tol’ me she’d save one end of her tent for me; it’s built o’ boards—two rooms and a hall between—an’ there’s a big shed at the back for a dining-room, an’ I wanted to go worse’n I ever wanted to go anywheres, I guess.”

“Fur’s that’s concerned, I reckon I wanted to go, but you don’t see me throwin’ our livin’ away so’s I could gallop off to every camp-meetin’ that comes along, do ye?

“I won’t be back for three days,” he stated, as he went away. In deep silence Ma’ Jane sat down and looked at the kitchen table. It was heaped with the good things she had prepared for the great Sunday dinner at the camp-ground, where it was the joy of every tenter to keep open house and entertain all who would come.

True, Bascom had said all along that they could not go, yet she had gone on cooking and planning. She had even packed most of the things which she would need for housekeeping in the other end of Mary Hopkins’s tent.

Ma’ Jane went out to the barn and looked at the cows, which were ready to eat again, having been fed fully an hour before.

“Drat ye,” said she vindictively. Coming from Ma’ Jane, this might have been considered mild profanity.

Her heart stood still for a moment, then she wept remorsefully on the outstretched nose of the nearest cow. “It’s about time I was goin’ to camp-meetin’,” she said. “If I ain’t gettin’ to be a heathen, I dunno who is.”

As she slowly walked out of the barn, the two cows followed her, and it was at the barn-door that an inspiration came to Ma’ Jane Barnard.

Her face paled a moment, and then flushed crimson. She put her hand to her throat—“them cows lead like dogs,” she whispered.

Bascom Barnard’s work at the corners was over in less time than he had contemplated. In fact, he met Bink Denny coming out of the “First and Last Chance” in such a state of intoxication that Bascom was glad to tear himself away and set forth on the homeward road.

He went slowly and sorrowfully, because if he went home, Ma’ Jane would insist on going to camp-meeting and he would be left alone over Sunday. The few times when he had been left to look after the house had been brief but memorable. Of course, it was no trouble for Ma’ Jane to run the place. She was already reconciled to the staying at home now, anyway, and did not expect to go to the camp-meeting.

Bascom was silent on his way home—only two or three miles off the road—and he really felt that it would do him good to see what a camp-meeting was like once more. He felt that he might finish up the day there at any rate, and then go home and give Ma’ Jane a chance; or he might stay over Sunday at the camp-grounds, and then go back to the corners, find Bink Denny sober, and transact his business according to the first arrangement.

Bascom Barnard turned into the road that led to Bluff Springs. The sound of hammering and sawing, and the merry clatter of tongues proclaimed the camp-ground before he was in sight of it. He rode into the busy little city where board and canvas tents were going up like magic. Brother Wilkins, the minister, called cheerfully:

“Hello, Brother Barnard, where’s Sister Barnard, ain’t she coming?”

“She kinder thot she wouldn’t come. Ma’ Jane sets a lot o’ store by the cows and things, ye see—so she reckoned she’d stay.”

He rode hurriedly down the line of tents, where a fire of questions met him at every turn.

“I jes couldn’t get Ma’ Jane to come,” he explained to Miss Mirandy Barr. “It don’t suit her to come away and leave things at six’s and seven’s, as she says, so she jes stays by the stuff, Ma’ Jane does.”

Bascom Barnard began helping people to get their tents in order.

Before noon, he told his friends that Ma’ Jane didn’t know what she was missing, and immediately after dinner—chicken-pie and fixin’s—if they thought it would do any good, he would go after Ma’ Jane yet and make her come, whether or no.

Just before the afternoon service, he said it was an awful mistake to have a body’s mind on worldly things.

In the still hours of the night Bascom reasoned it out. He had not treated himself to a holiday this many a year, and now he felt he was entitled to one. Ma’ Jane could take hers some other time; besides, a woman’s work was never wearin’ like a man’s—keepin’ house was like play compared with what he had been called upon to do. He turned over on the fragrant hay mattress, with which Sister Clark had provided him, and went comfortably to sleep.

The clear notes of a horn roused everybody for the sunrise prayer-meeting, and Bascom hurried arbor-wards with the others.

“Will Brother Barnard please lead us in prayer?” said the minister, when the first hymn had been sung. Brother Barnard found himself on his knees stumbling over a few familiar phrases; as he went on he gained confidence and his voice became assured. He remarked upon the fact that our days are few and evil.

After a few similar remarks, he got in full swing—time was no object—scraps of forgotten phrases from prayers heard in his youth tumbled forth in picturesque confusion. The hour for prayer-meeting to close had come when he began to pray for the heathen, and this took time of itself. When he had worked around to the sinful and depraved of our own land, everybody would have been impatient, but for the fact that something had happened—something that Bascom could not see, as his eyes were shut. There were some who kept their eyes open when they prayed; these nudged each other excitedly.

“An’ now, Lord,” pleaded Brother Bascom Barnard, pounding the bench in front of him with a clenched fist, “be with all that’s near and dear to them that’s gathered here to worship Thee. Be with them that’s stayed by the stuff—an’ if they’ve stayed away from this blessed place because they’re cold or hard-hearted—as we fear some of ’em has—O Lord, melt their hearts of stone an’ make ’em see that they’re hangin’ over eternal punishment prepared for the devil and his angels.”

“Amen,” said a clear voice, undeniably feminine, which seemed in some unaccountable way to come from the wrong direction.

Bascom was kneeling in the sawdust near the altar, and facing the congregation. The voice came from behind him. Involuntarily he looked back over his shoulder. At the same moment a faint giggle arose somewhere down among the benches where the congregation was kneeling.

An old horse and wagon had drawn up close at the edge of the arbor, and Ma’ Jane, her best bonnet tied under her chin, held the reins. The wagon was piled high with a medley of things pertaining to housekeeping. Three coops of excited chickens topped the pile, the anxious mewing of a cat came from a basket behind the seat, and tied to the back of the wagon were two cows, both intimating that something to eat would be quite acceptable. Under the wagon sat the black puppy, its astonished head to one side as it viewed its master under these unaccustomed circumstances.

Every one had arisen and was looking with might and main. The minister hastily pronounced the benediction.

“I’m sorry to move in on Sunday,” explained Ma’ Jane, “but it’s took me all night to get ready an’ to come. My husband couldn’t help me because he was over to the corners, makin’ a trade with Bink Denny. I warn’t goin’ to stay at home tendin’ the cows and things while camp-meetin’ was goin’ on only six miles away, so I brung ’em all along. ’Long as Bascom’s not here, if some of you would help me unload at Mary Hopkins’s tent, I’d be thankful, an’ you’ll take dinner with me to-day, Brother Wilkins—an’ as many more as can crowd in.”

That dinner in the other end of Mary Hopkins’s tent, was a thing long to be remembered. Bascom crept meekly in after awhile and offered himself at least as a guest. But Ma’ Jane remarked dryly, “My husband not bein’ here, I reckon I can’t take you in—I ain’t makin’ no new acquaintances.” He went away and ate with Miss Mirandy Barr, who had corn-beef and cold potatoes for dinner. Somehow everything was different.

The minister’s sermon on hypocrisy that afternoon was something terrible to hear, and sounded personal to the last degree. Another meal at Miss Mirandy Barr’s with a night on a pallet at Sister Clark’s prepared Bascom to enter upon another day with a chastened spirit, but there was no relenting on the part of Ma’ Jane. Between sermons he heard goodly sounds of cooking at her tent and, wandering near, smelled such odors as tore his very being asunder. But he was an outcast there, and might not hope to enter. He listened to the sermons in gloomy silence; his voice was not raised in the hymns.

But when the long day had worn itself out, and the night service was going on, he sat looking around on the scene from which it seemed that he was all at once shut out.

Over there in the brightest light he saw Ma’ Jane, her face lifted, her hands clasped in her lap. He saw how gray she was getting and how shabby. That best bonnet of hers had been bought fifteen years before, and she had washed the ribbon and retrimmed it many times. While he looked he saw the tears on her face too. The hands she raised to wipe them were rough and hard; how she must have worked!

The minister had turned towards him and looked into his eyes. What he saw there decided him—“Will Brother Bascom Barnard lead us in prayer?” And Brother Bascom Barnard fell on his knees, shaken with sobs.

“The Lord forgive us for bein’ miserable fools,” he cried, “an’ give us a chance to try again an’ see if we can’t do better next time, Amen!” It was a very complete prayer; after it was over Bascom found a hand on his arm, and there was Ma’ Jane looking up at him.

“I’ve got some chicken-pie saved up for you, Bascom,” she whispered. And they went away toward the tent, arm in arm, walking where the shadows of the trees lay thickest. “It looks like we’re goin’ to have a great meetin’,” he said, stumbling. “I’m awful glad you got a chance to come, Ma’ Jane.”

THE CATACOMBS OF PALERMO

J. ROSS BROWNE

Chief among the wonders of Palermo are the Catacombs of the Capuchin Convent, near to Porta d’Ossuna. It is said to be a place of great antiquity; many of the bodies have been preserved in it for centuries, and still retain much of their original freshness. Entering the ancient and ruinous court of the convent, distant about a mile from the city, I was conducted by a ghostly-looking monk through some dark passages to the subterranean apartments of the dead. It was not my first visit to a place of this kind, but I must confess the sight was rather startling. It was like a revel of the dead—a horrible, grinning, ghastly exhibition of skeleton forms, sightless eyes, and shining teeth, jaws distended, and bony hands outstretched; heads without bodies, and bodies without heads—the young, the old, the brave, the once beautiful and gay, all mingled in the ghastly throng. I walked through long subterranean passages, lined with the dead on both sides; with a stealthy and measured tread I stepped, for they seemed to stare at the intrusion, and their skeleton fingers vibrated as if yearning to grasp the living in their embrace. Long rows of upright niches are cut into the walls on each side; in every niche a skeleton form stands erect as in life, habited in a robe of black; the face, hands, and feet naked, withered, and of an ashy hue; the grizzled beards still hanging in tufts from the jaws, but matted and dry. To each corpse is attached a label upon which is written the name and the date of decease, and a cross or the image of the Saviour....

Who was the prince here? Who was the great man, or the proud man, or the rich man? The musty, grinning, ghastly skeleton in the corner seemed to chuckle at the thought, and say to himself, “Was it you, there on the right, you ugly, noseless, sightless, disgusting thing? Was it you that rode in your fine carriage, about a year ago, and thought yourself so great when you ordered your coachman to drive over the beggar? Don’t you see he is as handsome as you are now, and as great a man; you can’t cut him down now, my fine fellow! And you, there on the left. What a nice figure you are, with your fleshless shanks and your worm-eaten lips! It was you that betrayed youth and beauty and innocence, and brought yourself here at last to keep company with such wretches as I am. Why, there is not a living thing now, save the maggots, that wouldn’t turn away in disgust from you. And you, sir, on the opposite side, how proud you were the last time I saw you; an officer of state, a great man in power, who could crush all below you, and make the happy wife a widowed mourner, and bring her little babes to starvation; it was you who had innocent men seized and thrown into prison. What can you do now? The meanest wretch that mocks you in this vault of death is as good as you, as strong, as great, as tall, as broad, as pretty a piece of mortality, and a great deal nearer to heaven. Oh, you are a nice set of fellows, all mixing together without ceremony! Where are your rules of etiquette now; your fashionable ranks, and your plebeian ranks; your thousands of admiring friends, your throngs of jeweled visitors? Why, the lowliest of us has as many visitors here, and as many honest tears shed as you. Ha! Ha! This is a jolly place, after all; we are all a jolly set of republicans, and old Death is our President.”—From “Yusef, or the Journey of the Frangi.” Published by _Harper & Brothers_ and used by their kind permission.

GETTING READY FOR THE TRAIN

BY ROBERT J. BURDETTE

When they reached the station, Mr. and Mrs. Man gazed in unspeakable disappointment at the receding train which was just pulling away from the station at the rate of about a thousand miles a minute. Their first impulse was to run after it, but as the train was out of sight and whistling for the next station before they could act upon this impulse, they remained in the auto and disconsolately turned homeward.

“It all comes of having to wait for a woman to get ready!”

“I was ready before you were!”

“Great heavens, just listen to that! And I sat out in the car ten minutes yelling for you to come along until the whole neighborhood heard me!”

“Yes, and every time I started down the stairs you sent me back after something you had forgotten.”

Mr. Man groaned. “This is too much to bear when everybody knows that if I were going to Europe I would just rush in the house, put on a clean shirt, grab a grip and fly, while you would want at least six months to get ready in and then dawdle around the whole day of starting until every train had left town.”

Well, the upshot of the matter was that the Mans put off their visit to San Diego until the next week, when it was agreed that each one should get himself or herself ready, get down to the train and go. And the one who failed to get ready should be left.

The day of the match came around in due time. The train was to leave at ten-thirty and Mr. Man, after attending to business, came home at nine forty-five.

“Now, then, only three-quarters of an hour until train time. Fly around. A fair field and no favors, you know.”

And away they flew. Mr. Man bulged into this room, and rushed through that, and into one closet after another, with inconceivable chuckling under his breath all the time to think how cheap Mrs. Man would feel when he started off alone. He stopped on the way upstairs to pull off his heavy boots to save time. For the same reason he pulled off his coat as he ran through the dining-room and hung it on the corner of the silver closet. Then he jerked off his vest as he ran through the hall and tossed it on a hook on the hatrack, and by the time he reached his own room he was ready to plunge into clean clothes. He pulled out a dresser drawer and began to paw among the things like a Scotch terrier after a rat. “Elinor, where are my shirts?”

“In your dresser drawer.”

“Well, but they ain’t. I’ve pulled out every last thing and there isn’t a thing I’ve ever seen before.”

(Laughing.) “These things scattered around on the floor are all mine; perhaps you haven’t been looking in your own drawer.”

“I don’t see why you couldn’t put my things out for me, when you had nothing to do all morning.”

“Because—because, nobody put mine out. A fair field and no favors, my dear.”