Short Stories (part 2)

"I started off, Mr. Holmes, but when I got to that address it was a manufactory of artificial knee-caps, and no one in it had ever heard of either Mr. William Morris or Mr. Duncan Ross."

"And what did you do then?" asked Holmes.

"I went home to Saxe-Coburg Square, and I took the advice of my assistant. But he could not help me in any way. He could only say that if I waited I should hear by post. But that was not quite good enough, Mr. Holmes. I did not wish to lose such a good place without a struggle, so, as I had heard that you were good enough to give advice to poor folk who were in need of it, I came right away to you."

"And you did very wisely," said Holmes. "Your case is an exceedingly remarkable one, and I shall be happy to look into it. From what you have told me I think that it is possible that graver issues hang from it than might at first sight appear."

"Grave enough," said Mr. Jabez Wilson. "Why, I have lost four pound a week."

"As far as you are personally concerned," remarked Holmes, "I do not see that you have any grievance against this remarkable league. On the contrary, you are, as I understand, richer by some £30, to say nothing of the minute knowledge which you have gained on every subject which comes under the letter A. You have lost nothing by them."

"No, sir. But I want to find out about them, and who they are, and what their object was in playing this prank—if it was a prank—upon me. It was a pretty expensive joke for them, for it cost them two and thirty pounds."

"We shall endeavor to clear up these points for you. And, first, one or two questions, Mr. Wilson. This assistant of yours who first called your attention to the advertisement—how long had he been with you?"

"About a month then."

"How did he come?"

"In answer to an advertisement."

"Was he the only applicant?"

"No, I had a dozen."

"Why did you pick him?"

"Because he was handy, and would come cheap."

"At half-wages, in fact?"

"Yes."

"What is he like, this Vincent Spaulding?"

"Small, stout-built, very quick in his ways, no hair on his face, though he's not short of thirty. Has a white splash of acid upon his forehead."

Holmes sat up in his chair in considerable excitement. "I thought as much," said he. "Have you ever observed that his ears are pierced for earrings?"

"Yes, sir. He told me that a gypsy had done it for him when he was a lad."

"Hum!" said Holmes, sinking back in deep thought. "He is still with you?"

"Oh yes, sir; I have only just left him."

"And has your business been attended to in your absence?"

"Nothing to complain of, sir. There's never very much to do of a morning."

"That will do, Mr. Wilson. I shall be happy to give you an opinion upon the subject in the course of a day or two. To-day is Saturday, and I hope that by Monday we may come to a conclusion."

"Well, Watson," said Holmes, when our visitor had left us, "what do you make of it all?"

"I make nothing of it," I answered, frankly. "It is a most mysterious business."

"As a rule," said Holmes, "the more bizarre a thing is the less mysterious it proves to be. It is your commonplace, featureless crimes which are really puzzling, just as a commonplace face is the most difficult to identify. But I must be prompt over this matter."

"What are you going to do, then?" I asked.

"To smoke," he answered. "It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won't speak to me for fifty minutes." He curled himself up in his chair, with his thin knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind, and put his pipe down upon the mantelpiece.

"Sarasate[221-1] plays at the St. James's Hall this afternoon," he remarked. "What do you think, Watson? Could your patients spare you for a few hours?"

"I have nothing to do to-day. My practice is never very absorbing."

"Then put on your hat and come. I am going through the city first, and we can have some lunch on the way. I observe that there is a good deal of German music on the program, which is rather more to my taste than Italian or French. It is introspective, and I want to introspect. Come along!"

We traveled by the Underground as far as Aldersgate; and a short walk took us to Saxe-Coburg Square, the scene of the singular story which we had listened to in the morning. It was a poky, little, shabby-genteel place, where four lines of dingy two-storied brick houses looked out into a small railed-in enclosure, where a lawn of weedy grass and a few clumps of faded laurel-bushes made a hard fight against a smoke-laden and uncongenial atmosphere. Three gilt balls and a brown board with JABEZ WILSON in white letters, upon a corner house announced the place where our red-headed client carried on his business. Sherlock Holmes stopped in front of it with his head on one side, and looked it all over, with his eyes shining brightly between puckered lids. Then he walked slowly up the street, and then down again to the corner, still looking keenly at the houses. Finally he returned to the pawn-broker's, and, having thumped vigorously upon the pavement with his stick two or three times, he went up to the door and knocked. It was instantly opened by a bright-looking, clean-shaven young fellow, who asked him to step in.

"Thank you," said Holmes, "I only wished to ask you how you would go from here to the Strand."

"Third right, fourth left," answered the assistant, promptly, closing the door.

"Smart fellow, that," observed Holmes, as we walked away. "He is, in my judgment, the fourth smartest man in London, and for daring, I am not sure that he has not a claim to be third. I have known something of him before."

"Evidently," said I, "Mr. Wilson's assistant counts for a good deal in this mystery of the Red-headed League. I am sure that you inquired your way merely in order that you might see him."

"Not him."

"What then?"

"The knees of his trousers."

"And what did you see?"

"What I expected to see."

"Why did you beat the pavement?"

"My dear doctor, this is a time for observation, not for talk. We are spies in an enemy's country. We know something of Saxe-Coburg Square. Let us now explore the parts which lie behind it."

The road in which we found ourselves as we turned round the corner from the retired Saxe-Coburg Square presented as great a contrast to it as the front of a picture does to the back. It was one of the main arteries which convey the traffic of the city to the north and west. The roadway was blocked with the immense stream of commerce flowing in a double tide inward and outward, while the foot-paths were black with the hurrying swarm of pedestrians. It was difficult to realize as we looked at the line of fine shops and stately business premises that they really abutted on the other side upon the faded and stagnant square which we had just quitted.

"Let me see," said Holmes, standing at the corner, and glancing along the line, "I should like just to remember the order of the houses here. It is a hobby of mine to have an exact knowledge of London. There is Mortimer's, the tobacconist, the little newspaper shop, the Coburg branch of the City and Suburban Bank, the Vegetarian Restaurant, and McFarlane's carriage-building depot. That carries us right on to the other block. And now, doctor, we've done our work, so it's time we had some play. A sandwich and a cup of coffee, and then off to violin-land, where all is sweetness and delicacy and harmony, and there are no red-headed clients to vex us with their conundrums."

My friend was an enthusiastic musician, being himself not only a very capable performer, but a composer of no mean merit. All the afternoon he sat in the stalls wrapped in the most perfect happiness, gently waving his long, thin fingers in time to the music, while his gently smiling face and his languid, dreamy eyes were as unlike those of Holmes, the sleuth-hound,[224-1] Holmes, the relentless, keen-witted, ready-handed criminal agent, as it was possible to conceive. In his singular character the dual nature alternately presented itself, and his extreme exactness and astuteness represented, as I have often thought, the reaction against the poetic and contemplative mood which occasionally predominated in him. The swing of his nature took him from extreme languor to devouring energy; and, as I knew well, he was never so truly formidable as when, for days on end, he had been lounging in his arm-chair amid his improvisations and his black-letter editions. Then it was that the lust of the chase would suddenly come upon him, and that his brilliant reasoning power would rise to the level of intuition, until those who were unacquainted with his methods would look askance at him as on a man whose knowledge was not that of other mortals. When I saw him that afternoon so enwrapped in the music at St. James's Hall I felt that an evil time might be coming upon those whom he had set himself to hunt down.

"You want to go home, no doubt, doctor," he remarked, as we emerged.

"Yes, it would be as well."

"And I have some business to do which will take some hours. This business at Coburg Square is serious."

"Why serious?"

"A considerable crime is in contemplation. I have every reason to believe that we shall be in time to stop it. But to-day being Saturday rather complicates matters. I shall want your help to-night."

"At what time?"

"Ten will be early enough."

"I shall be at Baker Street at ten."

"Very well. And, I say, doctor, there may be some little danger, so kindly put your army revolver in your pocket." He waved his hand, turned on his heel, and disappeared in an instant among the crowd.

I trust that I am not more dense than my neighbors, but I was always oppressed with a sense of my own stupidity in my dealings with Sherlock Holmes. Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened, but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque. As I drove home to my house in Kensington I thought it all over, from the extraordinary story of the red-headed copier of the "Encyclopædia" down to the visit to Saxe-Coburg Square, and the ominous words with which he had parted from me. What was this nocturnal expedition, and why should I go on? Where were we going, and what were we to do? I had the hint from Holmes that this smooth-faced pawnbroker's assistant was a formidable man—a man who might play a deep game. I tried to puzzle it out, but gave it up in despair, and set the matter aside until night should bring an explanation.

It was a quarter past nine when I started from home and made my way across the Park, and so through Oxford Street to Baker Street. Two hansoms were standing at the door, and, as I entered the passage, I heard the sound of voices from above. On entering his room I found Holmes in animated conversation with two men, one of whom I recognized as Peter Jones, the official police agent, while the other was a long, thin, sad-faced man, with a very shiny hat and oppressively respectable frock-coat.

"Ha! our party is complete," said Holmes, buttoning up his pea-jacket, and taking his heavy hunting crop from the rack. "Watson, I think you know Mr. Jones, of Scotland Yard? Let me introduce you to Mr. Merryweather, who is to be our companion in to-night's adventure."

"We're hunting in couples again, doctor, you see," said Jones, in his consequential way. "Our friend here is a wonderful man for starting a chase. All he wants is an old dog to help him do the running down."

"I hope a wild goose may not prove to be the end of our chase," observed Mr. Merryweather, gloomily.

"You may place considerable confidence in Mr. Holmes, sir," said the police agent, loftily. "He has his own little methods, which are, if he won't mind my saying so, just a little too theoretical and fantastic, but he has the makings of a detective in him. It is not too much to say that once or twice, as in that business of the Sholto murder and the Agra treasure,[227-1] he has been more nearly correct than the official force."

"Oh, if you say so, Mr. Jones, it is all right," said the stranger, with deference. "Still, I confess that I miss my rubber. It is the first Saturday night for seven-and-twenty years that I have not had my rubber."

"I think you will find," said Sherlock Holmes, "that you will play for a higher stake to-night than you have ever done yet, and that the play will be more exciting. For you, Mr. Merryweather, the stake will be some £30,000; and for you, Jones, it will be the man upon whom you wish to lay your hands."

"John Clay, the murderer, thief, smasher, and forger. He's a young man, Mr. Merryweather, but he is at the head of his profession, and I would rather have my bracelets on him than on any criminal in London. He's a remarkable man, is young John Clay. His grandfather was a royal duke, and he himself has been to Eton and Oxford. His brain is as cunning as his fingers, and though we meet signs of him at every turn, we never know where to find the man himself. He'll crack a crib in Scotland one week, and be raising money to build an orphanage in Cornwall the next. I've been on his track for years, and have never set eyes on him yet."

"I hope that I may have the pleasure of introducing you to-night. I've had one or two little turns also with Mr. John Clay, and I agree with you that he is at the head of his profession. It is past ten, however, and quite time that we started. If you two will take the first hansom, Watson and I will follow in the second."

Sherlock Holmes was not very communicative during the long drive, and lay back in the cab humming the tunes which he had heard in the afternoon. We rattled through an endless labyrinth of gas-lit streets until we emerged into Farringdon Street.

"We are close there now," my friend remarked. "This fellow Merryweather is a bank director, and personally interested in the matter. I thought it as well to have Jones with us also. He is not a bad fellow, though an absolute imbecile in his profession. He has one positive virtue. He is as brave as a bulldog, and as tenacious as a lobster if he gets his claws upon any one. Here we are, and they are waiting for us."

We had reached the same crowded thoroughfare in which we had found ourselves in the morning. Our cabs were dismissed, and, following the guidance of Mr. Merryweather, we passed down a narrow passage and through a side door, which he opened for us. Within there was a small corridor, which ended in a very massive iron gate. This also was opened, and led down a flight of winding stone steps, which terminated at another formidable gate. Mr. Merryweather stopped to light a lantern, and then conducted us down a dark, earth-smelling passage, and so, after opening a third door, into a huge vault or cellar, which was piled all round with crates and massive boxes.

"You are not very vulnerable from above," Holmes remarked, as he held up the lantern and gazed about him.

"Nor from below," said Mr. Merryweather, striking his stick upon the flags which lined the floor. "Why, dear me, it sounds quite hollow!" he remarked, looking up in surprise.

"I must really ask you to be a little more quiet," said Holmes, severely. "You have already imperilled the whole success of our expedition. Might I beg that you would have the goodness to sit down upon one of those boxes, and not to interfere?"

The solemn Mr. Merryweather perched himself upon a crate, with a very injured expression upon his face, while Holmes fell upon his knees upon the floor, and, with the lantern and a magnifying lens, began to examine minutely the cracks between the stones. A few seconds sufficed to satisfy him, for he sprang to his feet again, and put his glass in his pocket.

"We have at least an hour before us," he remarked; "for they can hardly take any steps until the good pawnbroker is safely in bed. Then they will not lose a minute, for the sooner they do their work the longer time they will have for their escape. We are at present, doctor—as no doubt you have divined—in the cellar of the city branch of one of the principal London banks. Mr. Merryweather is the chairman of directors, and he will explain to you that there are reasons why the more daring criminals of London should take a considerable interest in this cellar at present."

"It is our French gold," whispered the director. "We have had several warnings that an attempt might be made upon it."

"Your French gold?"

"Yes. We had occasion some months ago to strengthen our resources, and borrowed, for that purpose, 30,000 napoleons[230-1] from the Bank of France. It has become known that we have never had occasion to unpack the money, and that it is still lying in our cellar. The crate upon which I sit contains 2000 napoleons packed between layers of lead foil. Our reserve of bullion is much larger at present than is usually kept in a single branch office, and the directors have had misgivings upon the subject."

"Which were very well justified," observed Holmes. "And now it is time that we arranged our little plans. I expect that within an hour matters will come to a head. In the meantime, Mr. Merryweather, we must put the screen over that dark lantern."

"And sit in the dark?"

"I am afraid so. I had brought a pack of cards in my pocket, and I thought that, as we were a partie carrée,[231-1] you might have your rubber after all. But I see that the enemy's preparations have gone so far that we cannot risk the presence of a light. And, first of all, we must choose our positions. These are daring men, and though we shall take them at a disadvantage, they may do us some harm unless we are careful. I shall stand behind this crate, and do you conceal yourselves behind those. Then, when I flash a light upon them, close in swiftly. If they fire, Watson, have no compunction about shooting them down."

I placed my revolver, cocked, upon the top of the wooden case behind which I crouched. Holmes shot the slide across the front of his lantern, and left us in pitch darkness—such an absolute darkness as I have never before experienced. The smell of hot metal remained to assure us that the light was still there, ready to flash out at a moment's notice. To me, with my nerves worked up to a pitch of expectancy, there was something depressing and subduing in the sudden gloom, and in the cold, dank air of the vault.

"They have but one retreat," whispered Holmes. "That is back through the house into Saxe-Coburg Square. I hope that you have done what I asked you, Jones?"

"I have an inspector and two officers waiting at the front door."

"Then we have stopped all the holes. And now we must be silent and wait."

What a time it seemed! From comparing notes afterwards it was but an hour and a quarter, yet it appeared to me that the night must have almost gone, and the dawn be breaking above us. My limbs were weary and stiff, for I feared to change my position; yet my nerves were worked up to the highest pitch of tension, and my hearing was so acute that I could not only hear the gentle breathing of my companions, but I could distinguish the deeper, heavier in-breath of the bulky Jones from the thin, sighing note of the bank director. From my position I could look over the case in the direction of the floor. Suddenly my eyes caught the glint of a light.

At first it was but a lurid spark upon the stone pavement. Then it lengthened out until it became a yellow line, and then, without any warning or sound, a gash seemed to open and a hand appeared; a white, almost womanly hand, which felt about in the center of the little area of light. For a minute or more the hand, with its writhing fingers, protruded out of the floor. Then it was withdrawn as suddenly as it appeared, and all was dark again save the single lurid spark which marked a chink between the stones.

Its disappearance, however, was but momentary. With a rending, tearing sound, one of the broad, white stones turned over upon its side, and left a square, gaping hole, through which streamed the light of a lantern. Over the edge there peeped a clean-cut, boyish face, which looked keenly about it, and then, with a hand on either side of the aperture, the figure drew itself shoulder-high and waist-high, until one knee rested upon the edge. In another instant he stood at the side of the hole, and was hauling after him a companion, lithe and small like himself, with a pale face and a shock of very red hair.

"It's all clear," he whispered. "Have you the chisel and the bags? Great Scott! Jump, Archie, jump, and I'll swing for it!"

Sherlock Holmes had sprung out and seized the intruder by the collar. The other dived down the hole, and I heard the sound of rending cloth as Jones clutched at his skirts. The light flashed down upon the barrel of a revolver, but Holmes's hunting crop came down on the man's wrist, and the pistol clinked upon the stone floor.

"It's no use, John Clay," said Holmes, blandly. "You have no chance at all."

"So I see," the other answered, with the utmost coolness. "I fancy that my pal is all right, though I see you have got his coat-tails."

"There are three men waiting for him at the door," said Holmes.

"Oh, indeed! You seem to have done the thing very completely. I must compliment you."

"And I you," Holmes answered. "Your red-headed idea was very new and effective."

"You'll see your pal again presently," said Jones. "He's quicker at climbing down holes than I am. Just hold out while I fix the derbies."

"I beg that you will not touch me with your filthy hands," remarked our prisoner, as the handcuffs clattered upon his wrists. "You may not be aware that I have royal blood in my veins. Have the goodness, also, when you address me always to say 'sir' and 'please.'"

"All right," said Jones, with a stare and a snigger. "Well, would you please, sir, march up-stairs, where we can get a cab to carry your highness to the police-station?"

"That is better," said John Clay, serenely. He made a sweeping bow to the three of us, and walked quietly off in the custody of the detective.

"Really Mr. Holmes," said Mr. Merryweather, as we followed them from the cellar, "I do not know how the bank can thank you or repay you. There is no doubt that you have detected and defeated in the most complete manner one of the most determined attempts at bank robbery that have ever come within my experience."

"I have had one or two little scores of my own to settle with Mr. John Clay," said Holmes. "I have been at some small expense over this matter, which I shall expect the bank to refund, but beyond that I am amply repaid by having had an experience which is in many ways unique, and by hearing the very remarkable narrative of the Red-headed League."

"You see, Watson," he explained, in the early hours of the morning, as we sat over a glass of whiskey-and-soda in Baker Street, "it was perfectly obvious from the first that the only possible object of this rather fantastic business of the advertisement of the League, and the copying of the 'Encyclopædia,' must be to get this not over-bright pawnbroker out of the way for a number of hours every day. It was a curious way of managing it, but, really, it would be difficult to suggest a better. The method was no doubt suggested to Clay's ingenious mind by the color of his accomplice's hair. The £4 a week was a lure which must draw him, and what was it to them, who were playing for thousands? They put in the advertisement, one rogue has the temporary office, the other rogue incites the man to apply for it, and together they manage to secure his absence every morning in the week. From the time that I heard of the assistant having come for half wages, it was obvious to me that he had some strong motive for securing the situation."

"But how could you guess what the motive was?"

"Had there been women in the house, I should have suspected a mere vulgar intrigue. That, however, was out of the question. The man's business was a small one, and there was nothing in his house which could account for such elaborate preparations, and such an expenditure as they were at. It must, then, be something out of the house. What could it be? I thought of the assistant's fondness for photography, and his trick of vanishing into the cellar. The cellar! There was the end of this tangled clue. Then I made inquiries as to this mysterious assistant, and found that I had to deal with one of the coolest and most daring criminals in London. He was doing something in the cellar—something which took many hours a day for months on end. What could it be, once more? I could think of nothing save that he was running a tunnel to some other building.

"So far I had got when we went to visit the scene of action. I surprised you by beating upon the pavement with my stick. I was ascertaining whether the cellar stretched out in front or behind. It was not in front. Then I rang the bell, and, as I hoped, the assistant answered it. We have had some skirmishes, but we had never set eyes upon each other before. I hardly looked at his face. His knees were what I wished to see. You must yourself have remarked how worn, wrinkled, and stained they were. They spoke of those hours of burrowing. The only remaining point was what they were burrowing for. I walked round the corner, saw the City and Suburban Bank abutted on our friend's premises, and felt that I had solved my problem. When you drove home after the concert I called upon Scotland Yard, and upon the chairman of the bank directors, with the result that you have seen."

"And how could you tell that they would make their attempt to-night?" I asked.

"Well, when they closed their League offices that was a sign that they cared no longer about Mr. Jabez Wilson's presence—in other words, that they had completed their tunnel. But it was essential that they should use it soon, as it might be discovered, or the bullion might be removed. Saturday would suit them better than any other day, as it would give them two days for their escape. For all these reasons I expected them to come to-night."

"You reasoned it out beautifully," I exclaimed, in unfeigned admiration. "It is so long a chain, and yet every link rings true."

"It saved me from ennui," he answered, yawning. "Alas! I already feel it closing in upon me. My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the common-places of existence. These little problems help me to do so."

"And you are a benefactor of the race," said I.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Well, perhaps, after all, it is of some little use," he remarked. "'L'homme c'est rien —l'œuvre c'est tout,'[237-1] as Gustave Flaubert wrote to Georges Sand."

JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE

The Inconsiderate Waiter

Frequently I have to ask myself in the street for the name of the man I bowed to just now, and then, before I can answer, the wind of the first corner blows him from my memory. I have a theory, however, that those puzzling faces, which pass before I can see who cut the coat, all belong to club-waiters.

Until William forced his affairs upon me, that was all I did know of the private life of waiters, though I have been in the club for twenty years. I was even unaware whether they slept down-stairs or had their own homes, nor had I the interest to inquire of other members, nor they the knowledge to inform me. I hold that this sort of people should be fed and clothed and given airing and wives and children, and I subscribe yearly, I believe, for these purposes; but to come into closer relation with waiters is bad form; they are club fittings, and William should have kept his distress to himself or taken it away and patched it up, like a rent in one of the chairs. His inconsiderateness has been a pair of spectacles to me for months.

It is not correct taste to know the name of a club-waiter, so that I must apologize for knowing William's and still more for not forgetting it. If, again, to speak of a waiter is bad form, to speak bitterly is the comic degree of it. But William has disappointed me sorely. There were years when I would defer dining several minutes that he might wait on me. His pains to reserve the window-seat for me were perfectly satisfactory. I allowed him privileges, as to suggest dishes, and would give him information, as that someone had startled me in the reading-room by slamming a door. I have shown him how I cut my finger with a piece of string. Obviously he was gratified by these attentions, usually recommending a liqueur; and I fancy he must have understood my sufferings, for he often looked ill himself. Probably he was rheumatic, but I cannot say for certain, as I never thought of asking, and he had the sense to see that the knowledge would be offensive to me.

In the smoking-room we have a waiter so independent that once, when he brought me a yellow Chartreuse,[239-1] and I said I had ordered green, he replied, "No, sir, you said yellow." William could never have been guilty of such effrontery. In appearance, of course, he is mean, but I can no more describe him than a milkmaid could draw cows. I suppose we distinguish one waiter from another much as we pick our hat from the rack. We could have plotted a murder safely before William. He never presumed to have opinions of his own. When such was my mood he remained silent, and if I announced that something diverting had happened to me he laughed before I told him what it was. He turned the twinkle in his eye off or on at my bidding as readily as if it was the gas. To my "Sure to be wet to-morrow," he would reply, "Yes, sir;" and to Trelawney's "It doesn't look like rain," two minutes afterward, he would reply, "No, sir." It was one member who said Lightning Rod would win the Derby[240-1] and another who said Lightning Rod had no chance, but it was William who agreed with both. He was like a cheroot, which may be smoked from either end. So used was I to him that, had he died or got another situation (or whatever it is such persons do when they disappear from the club), I should probably have told the head waiter to bring him back, as I disliked changes.

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

In these words William had flung off the mask, and now I knew him for what he was.

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

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

"How dare you, William?" I said, sternly. He seemed not to hear me. Let me tell, in the measured words of one describing a past incident, what then took place. To get nearer the window, he pressed heavily on my shoulder.

"William, you forget yourself!" I said, meaning—as I see now—that he had forgotten me.

I heard him gulp, but not to my reprimand. He was scanning the street. His hands chattered on my shoulders, and, pushing him from me, I saw that his mouth was agape.

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

He stared at me, and then, like one who had at last heard the echo of my question, seemed to be brought back to the club. He turned his face from me for an instant, and answered, shakily:

"I beg your pardon, sir! I—I shouldn't have done it. Are the bananas too ripe, sir?"

He recommended the nuts, and awaited my verdict so anxiously while I ate one that I was about to speak graciously, when I again saw his eyes drag him to the window.

"William," I said, my patience giving way at last; "I dislike being waited on by a melancholy waiter."

"Yes, sir," he replied, trying to smile, and then broke out passionately, "For God's sake, sir, tell me, have you seen a little girl looking in at the club windows?"

He had been a good waiter once, and his distracted visage was spoiling my dinner.

"There," I said, pointing to the girl, and no doubt would have added that he must bring me coffee immediately, had he continued to listen. But already he was beckoning to the child. I had not the least interest in her (indeed it had never struck me that waiters had private affairs, and I still think it a pity that they should have); but as I happened to be looking out at the window I could not avoid seeing what occurred. As soon as the girl saw William she ran into the middle of the street, regardless of vehicles, and nodded three times to him. Then she disappeared.

I have said that she was quite a common child, without attraction of any sort, and yet it was amazing the difference she made in William. He gasped relief, like one who has broken through the anxiety that checks breathing, and into his face there came a silly laugh of happiness. I had dined well, on the whole, so I said:

"I am glad to see you cheerful again, William."

I meant that I approved his cheerfulness, because it helped my digestion, but he must needs think I was sympathizing with him.

"Thank you, sir," he answered. "Oh, sir! when she nodded and I saw it was all right, I could have gone down on my knees to God."

I was as much horrified as if he had dropped a plate on my toes. Even William, disgracefully emotional as he was at the moment, flung out his arms to recall the shameful words.

"Coffee, William!" I said, sharply.

I sipped my coffee indignantly, for it was plain to me that William had something on his mind.

"You are not vexed with me, sir?" he had the hardihood to whisper.

"It was a liberty," I said.

"I know, sir; but I was beside myself."

"That was a liberty also."

He hesitated, and then blurted out:

"It is my wife, sir. She——"

I stopped him with my hand. William, whom I had favored in so many ways, was a married man! I might have guessed as much years before had I ever reflected about waiters, for I knew vaguely that his class did this sort of thing. His confession was distasteful to me, and I said, warningly:

"Remember where you are, William."

"Yes, sir; but, you see, she is so delicate——"

"Delicate! I forbid your speaking to me on unpleasant topics."

"Yes, sir; begging your pardon."

It was characteristic of William to beg my pardon and withdraw his wife like some unsuccessful dish, as if its taste would not remain in the mouth. I shall be chided for questioning him further about his wife, but, though doubtless an unusual step, it was only bad form superficially, for my motive was irreproachable. I inquired for his wife, not because I was interested in her welfare, but in the hope of allaying my irritation. So I am entitled to invite the wayfarer who has bespattered me with mud to scrape it off.

I desired to be told by William that the girl's signals meant his wife's recovery to health. He should have seen that such was my wish and answered accordingly. But, with the brutal inconsiderateness of his class, he said:

"She has had a good day, but the doctor, he—the doctor is afeard she is dying."

Already I repented my question. William and his wife seemed in league against me, when they might so easily have chosen some other member.

"Pooh the doctor," I said.

"Yes, sir," he answered.

"Have you been married long, William?"

"Eight years, sir. Eight years ago she was—I—I mind her when—and now the doctor says——"

The fellow gaped at me. "More coffee, sir?" he asked.

"What is her ailment?"

"She was always one of the delicate kind, but full of spirit, and—and you see she has had a baby lately——"

"William!"

"And she—I—the doctor is afeard she's not picking up."

"I feel sure she will pick up."

"Yes, sir?"

It must have been the wine I had drunk that made me tell him:

"I was once married, William. My wife—it was just such a case as yours."

"She did not get better, sir?"

"No."

After a pause, he said, "Thank you, sir," meaning for the sympathy that made me tell him that. But it must have been the wine.

"That little girl comes here with a message from your wife?"

"Yes; if she nods three times, it means my wife is a little better."

"She nodded thrice to-day."

"But she is told to do that to relieve me, and maybe those nods don't tell the truth."

"Is she your girl?"

"No, we have none but the baby. She is a neighbor's. She comes twice a day."

"It is heartless of her parents not to send her every hour."

"But she is six years old," he said, "and has a house and two sisters to look after in the daytime, and a dinner to cook. Gentlefolk don't understand."

"I suppose you live in some low part, William."

"Off Drury Lane," he answered, flushing; "but—but it isn't low. You see, we were never used to anything better, and I mind, when I let her see the house before we were married, she—she a sort of cried, because she was so proud of it. That was eight years ago, and now,—she's afeard she'll die when I'm away at my work."

"Did she tell you that?"

"Never. She always says she is feeling a little stronger."

"Then how can you know she is afraid of that?"

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

"A green Chartreuse, William!"

I tried to forget William's vulgar story in billiards, but he had spoiled my game. My opponent, to whom I can give twenty, ran out when I was sixty-seven, and I put aside my cue pettishly. That in itself was bad form, but what would they have thought had they known that a waiter's impertinence caused it! I grew angrier with William as the night wore on, and next day I punished him by giving my orders through another waiter.

As I had my window seat, I could not but see that the girl was late again. Somehow I dawdled over my coffee. I had an evening paper before me, but there was so little in it that my eyes found more of interest in the street. It did not matter to me whether William's wife died, but when that girl had promised to come, why did she not come? These lower classes only give their word to break it. The coffee was undrinkable.

At last I saw her. William was at another window, pretending to do something with the curtains. I stood up, pressing closer to the window. The coffee had been so bad that I felt shaky. She nodded three times and smiled.

"She is a little better," William whispered to me, almost gayly.

"Whom are you speaking of?" I asked, coldly, and immediately retired to the billiard-room, where I played a capital game. The coffee was much better there than in the dining-room.

Several days passed, and I took care to show William that I had forgotten his maunderings. I chanced to see the little girl (though I never looked for her) every evening and she always nodded three times, save once, when she shook her head, and then William's face grew white as a napkin. I remember this incident because that night I could not get into a pocket. So badly did I play that the thought of it kept me awake in bed, and that, again, made me wonder how William's wife was. Next day I went to the club early (which was not my custom) to see the new books. Being in the club at any rate, I looked into the dining-room to ask William if I had left my gloves there, and the sight of him reminded me of his wife, so I asked for her. He shook his head mournfully, and I went off in a rage.

So accustomed am I to the club, that when I dine elsewhere I feel uncomfortable next morning, as if I had missed a dinner. William knew this; yet here he was, hounding me out of the club! That evening I dined (as the saying is) at a restaurant, where no sauce was served with the asparagus. Furthermore, as if that were not triumph enough for William, his doleful face came between me and every dish, and I seemed to see his wife dying to annoy me.

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

I tried the smoking-room. Usually the talk there is entertaining; but on that occasion it was so frivolous that I did not remain five minutes. In the card-room a member told me, excitedly, that a policeman had spoken rudely to him; and my strange comment was:

"After all, it is a small matter."

In the library, where I had not been for years, I found two members asleep, and, to my surprise, William on a ladder dusting books.

"You have not heard, sir?" he said in answer to my raised eyebrows. Descending the ladder he whispered, tragically:

"It was last evening, sir. I—I lost my head and I—swore at a member."

I stepped back from William, and glanced apprehensively at the two members. They still slept.

"I hardly knew," William went on, "what I was doing all day yesterday, for I had left my wife so weakly that——"

I stamped my foot.

"I beg your pardon for speaking of her," he had the grace to say, "but I couldn't help slipping to the window often yesterday to look for Jenny, and when she did come and I saw she was crying, it—it a sort of confused me, and I didn't know right, sir, what I was doing. I hit against a member, Mr. Myddleton Finch, and he—he jumped and swore at me. Well, sir, I had just touched him after all, and I was so miserable, it a kind of stung me to be treated like—like that, and me a man as well as him, and I lost my senses, and—and I swore back."

William's shamed head sank on his chest, but I even let pass his insolence in likening himself to a member of the club, so afraid was I of the sleepers waking and detecting me in talk with a waiter.

"For the love of God," William cried, with coarse emotion, "don't let them dismiss me!"

"Speak lower!" I said. "Who sent you here?"

"I was turned out of the dining-room at once, and told to attend to the library until they had decided what to do with me. Oh, sir, I'll lose my place!"

He was blubbering, as if a change of waiters was a matter of importance.

"This is very bad, William," I said. "I fear I can do nothing for you."

"Have mercy on a distracted man!" he entreated. "I'll go on my knees to Mr. Myddleton Finch."

How could I but despise a fellow who would be thus abject for a pound a week?

"I dare not tell her," he continued, "that I have lost my place. She would just fall back and die."

"I forbade your speaking of your wife," I said, sharply, "unless you can speak pleasantly of her."

"But she may be worse now, sir, and I cannot even see Jenny from here. The library windows look to the back."

"If she dies," I said, "it will be a warning to you to marry a stronger woman next time."

Now, every one knows that there is little real affection among the lower orders. As soon as they have lost one mate they take another. Yet William, forgetting our relative positions, drew himself up and raised his fist, and if I had not stepped back I swear he would have struck me.

The highly improper words William used I will omit, out of consideration for him. Even while he was apologizing for them I retired to the smoking-room, where I found the cigarettes so badly rolled that they would not keep alight. After a little I remembered that I wanted to see Myddleton Finch about an improved saddle of which a friend of his has the patent. He was in the news-room, and having questioned him about the saddle, I said:

"By the way, what is this story about your swearing at one of the waiters?"

"You mean about his swearing at me," Myddleton Finch replied, reddening.

"I am glad that was it," I said. "For I could not believe you guilty of such bad form."

"If I did swear——" he was beginning, but I went on:

"The version which reached me was that you swore at him, and he repeated the word. I heard he was to be dismissed and you reprimanded."

"Who told you that?" asked Myddleton Finch, who is a timid man.

"I forget; it is club talk," I replied lightly. "But of course the committee will take your word. The waiter, whichever one he is, richly deserves his dismissal for insulting you without provocation."

Then our talk returned to the saddle, but Myddleton Finch was abstracted, and presently he said:

"Do you know, I fancy I was wrong in thinking that waiter swore at me, and I'll withdraw my charge to-morrow."

Myddleton Finch then left me, and, sitting alone, I realized that I had been doing William a service. To some slight extent I may have intentionally helped him to retain his place in the club, and I now see the reason, which was that he alone knows precisely to what extent I like my claret heated.

For a mere second I remembered William's remark that he should not be able to see the girl Jenny from the library windows. Then this recollection drove from my head that I had only dined in the sense that my dinner-bill was paid. Returning to the dining-room, I happened to take my chair at the window, and while I was eating a devilled kidney I saw in the street the girl whose nods had such an absurd effect on William.

The children of the poor are as thoughtless as their parents, and this Jenny did not sign to the windows in the hope that William might see her, though she could not see him. Her face, which was disgracefully dirty, bore doubt and dismay on it, but whether she brought good news it would not tell. Somehow I had expected her to signal when she saw me, and, though her message could not interest me, I was in the mood in which one is irritated at that not taking place which he is awaiting. Ultimately she seemed to be making up her mind to go away.

A boy was passing with the evening papers, and I hurried out to get one, rather thoughtlessly, for we have all the papers in the club. Unfortunately I misunderstood the direction the boy had taken; but round the first corner (out of sight of the club windows) I saw the girl Jenny, and so I asked her how William's wife was.

"Did he send you to me?" she replied, impertinently taking me for a waiter. "My!" she added, after a second scrutiny, "I b'lieve you're one of them. His missis is a bit better, and I was to tell him as she took all the tapiocar."

"How could you tell him?" I asked.

"I was to do like this," she replied, and went through the supping of something out of a plate in dumb show.

"That would not show she ate all the tapioca," I said.

"But I was to end like this," she answered, licking an imaginary plate with her tongue. I gave her a shilling (to get rid of her), and returned to the club disgusted.

Later in the evening I had to go to the club library for a book, and while William was looking in vain for it (I had forgotten the title) I said to him:

"By the way, William, Mr. Myddleton Finch is to tell the committee that he was mistaken in the charge he brought against you, so you will doubtless be restored to the dining-room to-morrow."

The two members were still in their chairs, probably sleeping lightly; yet he had the effrontery to thank me.

"Don't thank me," I said, blushing at the imputation. "Remember your place, William!"

"But Mr. Myddleton Finch knew I swore," he insisted.

"A gentleman," I replied, stiffly, "cannot remember for twenty-four hours what a waiter has said to him."

"No, sir, but——"

To stop him I had to say:

"And, ah, William, your wife is a little better. She has eaten the tapioca—all of it."

"How can you know, sir?"

"By an accident."

"Jenny signed to the window."

"No."

"Then you saw her, and went out, and——"

"Nonsense!"

"Oh, sir, to do that for me! May God bl——"

"William!"

"Forgive me, sir, but—when I tell my missis, she will say it was thought of your own wife as made you do it."

He wrung my hand. I dared not withdraw it, lest we should waken the sleepers.

William returned to the dining-room, and I had to show him that, if he did not cease looking gratefully at me, I must change my waiter. I also ordered him to stop telling me nightly how his wife was, but I continued to know, as I could not help seeing the girl Jenny from the window. Twice in a week I learned from this objectionable child that the ailing woman had again eaten all the tapioca. Then I became suspicious of William. I will tell why.

It began with a remark of Captain Upjohn's. We had been speaking of the inconvenience of not being able to get a hot dish served after 1 A.M., and he said:

"It is because these lazy waiters would strike. If the beggars had a love of their work, they would not rush away from the club the moment one o'clock strikes. That glum fellow who often waits on you takes to his heels the moment he is clear of the club steps. He ran into me the other night at the top of the street, and was off without apologizing."

"You mean the foot of the street, Upjohn," I said, for such is the way to Drury Lane.

"No; I mean the top. The man was running west."

"East."

"West."

I smiled, which so annoyed him that he bet me two to one in sovereigns. The bet could have been decided most quickly by asking William a question, but I thought, foolishly doubtless, that it might hurt his feelings, so I watched him leave the club. The possibility of Upjohn's winning the bet had seemed remote to me. Conceive my surprise, therefore, when William went westward.

Amazed, I pursued him along two streets without realizing that I was doing so. Then curiosity put me into a hansom. We followed William, and it proved to be a three-shilling fare, for running when he was in breath and walking when he was out of it, he took me to West Kensington.

I discharged my cab, and from across the street watched William's incomprehensible behavior. He had stopped at a dingy row of workmen's houses, and knocked at the darkened window of one of them. Presently a light showed. So far as I could see, someone pulled up the blind and for ten minutes talked to William. I was uncertain whether they talked for the window was not opened, and I felt that, had William spoken through the glass loud enough to be heard inside, I must have heard him too. Yet he nodded and beckoned. I was still bewildered when, by setting off the way he had come, he gave me the opportunity of going home.

Knowing from the talk of the club what the lower orders are, could I doubt that this was some discreditable love affair of William's? His solicitude for his wife had been mere pretence; so far as it was genuine, it meant that he feared she might recover. He probably told her that he was detained nightly in the club till three.

I was miserable next day and blamed the devilled kidneys for it. Whether William was unfaithful to his wife was nothing to me, but I had two plain reasons for insisting on his going straight home from his club: the one, that, as he had made me lose a bet, I would punish him; the other, that he could wait upon me better if he went to bed betimes.

Yet I did not question him. There was something in his face that——. Well, I seemed to see his dying wife in it.

I was so out of sorts that I could eat no dinner. I left the club. Happening to stand for some time at the foot of the street, I chanced to see the girl Jenny coming, and——. No; let me tell the truth, though the whole club reads; I was waiting for her.

"How is William's wife to-day?" I asked.

"She told me to nod three times," the little slattern replied; "but she looked like nothink but a dead one till she got the brandy."

"Hush, child!" I said, shocked. "You don't know how the dead look."

"Bless yer," she answered, "don't I just! Why, I've helped to lay 'em out. I'm going on seven."

"Is William good to his wife?"

"Course he is. Ain't she his missis?"

"Why should that make him good to her?" I asked cynically, out of my knowledge of the poor. But the girl, precocious in many ways, had never had my opportunities of studying the lower classes in the newspapers, fiction, and club talk. She shut one eye, and looking up wonderingly, said:

"Ain't you green—just!"

"When does William reach home at night?"

"'Tain't night; it's morning. When I wakes up at half dark and half light and hears a door shutting I know as it's either father going off to his work or Mr. Hicking coming home from his."

"Who is Mr. Hicking?"

"Him as we've been speaking on—William. We calls him mister, 'cause he's a toff. Father's just doing jobs in Covent Garden, but Mr. Hicking, he's a waiter, and a clean shirt every day. The old woman would like father to be a waiter, but he hain't got the 'ristocratic look."

"What old woman?"

"Go 'long! that's my mother. Is it true there's a waiter in the club just for to open the door?"

"Yes, but——"

"And another just for to lick the stamps? My!"

"William leaves the club at one o'clock?" I said, interrogatively.

She nodded. "My mother," she said, "is one to talk, and she says to Mr. Hicking as he should get away at twelve, 'cause his missis needs him more'n the gentlemen need him. The old woman do talk."

"And what does William answer to that?"

"He says as the gentlemen can't be kept waiting for their cheese."

"But William does not go straight home when he leaves the club?"

"That's the kid."

"Kid!" I echoed, scarcely understanding, for knowing how little the poor love their children, I had asked William no questions about the baby.

"Didn't you know his missis had a kid?"

"Yes, but that is no excuse for William's staying away from his sick wife," I answered, sharply. A baby in such a home as William's, I reflected, must be trying, but still——. Besides his class can sleep through any din.

"The kid ain't in our court," the girl explained. "He's in W., he is, and I've never been out of W.C., leastwise, not as I knows on."

"This is W. I suppose you mean that the child is at West Kensington? Well, no doubt it was better for William's wife to get rid of the child——"

"Better!" interposed the girl. "'Tain't better for her not to have the kid. Ain't her not having him what she's always thinking on when she looks like a dead one."

"How could you know that?"

"'Cause," answered the girl, illustrating her words with a gesture, "I watches her, and I sees her arms going this way, just like as she wanted to hug her kid."

"Possibly you are right," I said, frowning, "but William has put the child out to nurse because it disturbed his night's rest. A man who has his work to do——"

"You are green!"

"Then why have the mother and child been separated?"

"Along of that there measles. Near all the young 'uns in our court has 'em bad."

"Have you had them?"

"I said the young 'uns."

"And William sent the baby to West Kensington to escape infection?"

"Took him, he did."

"Against his wife's wishes?"

"Na-o!"

"You said she was dying for want of the child?"

"Wouldn't she rayther die than have the kid die?"

"Don't speak so heartlessly, child. Why does William not go straight home from the club? Does he go to West Kensington to see it?"

"'Tain't a hit, it's an 'e. 'Course he do."

"Then he should not. His wife has the first claim on him."

"Ain't you green! It's his missis as wants him to go. Do you think she could sleep till she knowed how the kid was?"

"But he does not go into the house at West Kensington?"

"Is he soft? Course he don't go in, fear of taking the infection to the kid. They just holds the kid up at the window to him, so as he can have a good look. Then he comes home and tells his missis. He sits foot of the bed and tells."

"And that takes place every night? He can't have much to tell."

"He has just."

"He can only say whether the child is well or ill."

"My! He tells what a difference there is in the kid since he see'd him last."

"There can be no difference!"

"Go 'long! Ain't a kid always growing? Haven't Mr. Hicking to tell how the hair is getting darker, and heaps of things beside?"

"Such as what?"

"Like whether he larfed, and if he has her nose, and how as he knowed him. He tells her them things more'n once."

"And all this time he is sitting at the foot of the bed?"

"'Cept when he holds her hand."

"But when does he get to bed himself?"

"He don't get much. He tells her as he has a sleep at the club."

"He cannot say that."

"Hain't I heard him? But he do go to his bed a bit, and then they both lies quiet, her pretending she is sleeping so as he can sleep, and him feared to sleep case he shouldn't wake up to give her the bottle stuff."

"What does the doctor say about her?"

"He's a good one, the doctor. Sometimes he says she would get better if she could see the kid through the window."

"Nonsense!"

"And if she was took to the country."

"Then why does not William take her?"

"My! you are green! And if she drank port wines."

"Doesn't she?"

"No; but William he tells her about the gentlemen drinking them."

On the tenth day after my conversation with this unattractive child I was in my brougham, with the windows up, and I sat back, a paper before my face lest any one should look in. Naturally I was afraid of being seen in company of William's wife and Jenny, for men about town are uncharitable, and, despite the explanation I had ready, might have charged me with pitying William. As a matter of fact, William was sending his wife into Surrey to stay with an old nurse of mine, and I was driving her down because my horses needed an outing. Besides, I was going that way, at any rate.

I had arranged that the girl Jenny, who was wearing an outrageous bonnet, should accompany us, because, knowing the greed of her class, I feared she might blackmail me at the club.

William joined us in the suburbs, bringing the baby with him, as I had foreseen they would all be occupied with it, and to save me the trouble of conversing with them. Mrs. Hicking I found too pale and fragile for a workingman's wife, and I formed a mean opinion of her intelligence from her pride in the baby, which was a very ordinary one. She created quite a vulgar scene when it was brought to her, though she had given me her word not to do so; what irritated me, even more than her tears, being her ill-bred apology that she "had been 'feared baby wouldn't know her again." I would have told her they didn't know anyone for years had I not been afraid of the girl Jenny, who dandled the infant on her knees and talked to it as if it understood. She kept me on tenterhooks by asking it offensive questions: such as, "Oo know who give me that bonnet?" and answering them herself, "It was the pretty gentleman there," and several times I had to affect sleep because she announced, "Kiddy wants to kiss the pretty gentleman."

Irksome as all this necessarily was to a man of taste, I suffered even more when we reached our destination. As we drove through the village the girl Jenny uttered shrieks of delight at the sight of flowers growing up the cottage walls, and declared they were "just like music-'all without the drink license." As my horses required a rest, I was forced to abandon my intention of dropping these persons at their lodgings and returning to town at once, and I could not go to the inn lest I should meet inquisitive acquaintances. Disagreeable circumstances, therefore, compelled me to take tea with a waiter's family—close to a window, too, through which I could see the girl Jenny talking excitedly to villagers, and telling them, I felt certain, that I had been good to William. I had a desire to go out and put myself right with those people.

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

I remained longer than was necessary, because I had something to say to William which I knew he would misunderstand, and so I put off saying it. But when he announced that it was time for him to return to London, at which his wife suddenly paled, so that he had to sign to her not to break down, I delivered the message.

"William," I said, "the head waiter asked me to say that you could take a fortnight's holiday just now. Your wages will be paid as usual."

Confound them! William had me by the hand, and his wife was in tears before I could reach the door.

"Is it your doing again, sir?" William cried.

"William!" I said, fiercely.

"We owe everything to you," he insisted. "The port wine——"

"Because I had no room for it in my cellar."

"The money for the nurse in London——"

"Because I objected to being waited on by a man who got no sleep."

"These lodgings——"

"Because I wanted to do something for my old nurse."

"And, now, sir, a fortnight's holiday!"

"Good-by, William!" I said, in a fury.

But before I could get away, Mrs. Hicking signed to William to leave the room, and then she kissed my hand. She said something to me. It was about my wife. Somehow I—— What business had William to tell her about my wife?

They are all back in Drury Lane now, and William tells me that his wife sings at her work just as she did eight years ago. I have no interest in this, and try to check his talk of it; but such people have no sense of propriety, and he even speaks of the girl Jenny, who sent me lately a gaudy pair of worsted gloves worked by her own hand. The meanest advantage they took of my weakness, however, was in calling their baby after me. I have an uncomfortable suspicion, too, that William has given the other waiters his version of the affair, but I feel safe so long as it does not reach the committee.

ALPHONSE DAUDET

The Siege of Berlin[266-1]

We were walking up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées with Dr. V——, trying to read the story of the siege of Paris in the shell-scarred walls and the sidewalks plowed up by grape-shot. Just before we reached the Circle, the doctor stopped and, pointing out to me one of the big corner houses so pompously grouped around the Arc de Triomphe,[266-2] told me this story.

You see those four closed windows above the balcony? During the first day of August, that terrible August of last year, so full of storms and disaster, I was called there to attend a very severe case of apoplexy. The patient was Colonel Jouve, once a cuirassier of the First Empire,[266-3] and now an old gentleman mad about glory and patriotism. At the outbreak of war he had gone to live in the Champs-Élysées, in an apartment with a balcony. Can you guess why? That he might be present at the triumphant return of our troops. Poor old boy! The news of Wissemburg reached him just as he was leaving the table. When he read the name of Napoleon at the foot of that bulletin of defeat, he had a stroke and fell.

I found the old cuirassier stretched out on the carpet with his face bleeding and motionless as if struck by a heavy blow. If he had been standing, he would have seemed a tall man. Stretched out as he was, he seemed immense. He had a fine face, magnificent teeth, a thick head of curly white hair, and though eighty years old did not look more than sixty. Near him his granddaughter knelt weeping. There was a strong family resemblance between them. Seeing them side by side, you thought of two beautiful Greek medals struck from the same matrix, but one old and worn and the other bright and clear-cut with all the brilliancy and smoothness of a first impression.

I found the child's grief very touching. Daughter and granddaughter of a soldier (her father was on Mac Mahon's[267-1] staff), the sight of this splendid old man stretched out before her had suggested to her another scene, no less terrible. I did all I could to reassure her, but in my own mind I was not any too hopeful. There was no question that the stroke had been apoplectic, and that is the sort of thing from which at eighty one does not recover. As it turned out, the sick man remained in a state of coma for three days.

Meanwhile, the news of the battle of Reichshoffen reached Paris. You will remember in what form that news reached us first. Until evening we all believed that we had won a great victory, with 20,000 Prussians killed and the Crown Prince captured. Through some miracle, some magnetic current, an echo of this national rejoicing must have reached the sufferer, deaf and speechless and unable to move though he was. That evening when I went to his bedside, I found a different man. His eye was clear, his tongue was no longer thick, and he had strength enough to smile at me and to stammer, "Vic-to-ry!"

"Yes, Colonel, a great victory!"

And the more details I gave him of Mac Mahon's brilliant success, the more his face relaxed and brightened.

As I left, I found the little girl waiting for me outside the door. She was pale and was crying.

"But he is going to get well," I said, taking her hands in mine.

The poor child had hardly courage to answer me. The true story of the battle of Reichshoffen had just appeared on the bulletin boards. Mac Mahon was retreating and the army cut to pieces. Surprised and shocked, our eyes met, she thinking of her father and I of my patient. Surely he would succumb to this new blow; and yet what could we do? Leave him the joy, the illusion that had brought him back to life? That meant keeping him alive with lies.

"Very well, I will tell them," said the child, and quickly wiping away her tears she went back to her grandfather's room with a smile on her face.

It was not an easy task which she had set herself. For the first few days she had no great difficulty. The old gentleman's head was very weak and he was as easily deceived as a child, but as his strength came back his mind became clearer. He wanted to be kept in touch with troop movements and to have the War Department Bulletin read to him. It was pathetic to see the little girl, night and day, bent over her map of Germany, sticking in pins with little flags on them, and trying hard to invent to the last detail a successful campaign: Bazaine advancing on Berlin, Frossard penetrating Bavaria, and Mac Mahon reaching the Baltic.

To work this all out she needed help, and I helped her as much as I could. But the one who helped her most was her grandfather himself. He had conquered Germany so many times during the First Empire, he knew every move. "This will be the enemy's next move, here," he would say, "and ours will be this." His anticipations were always justified by the event, which made him not a little proud.

Unhappily, no matter how fast we took cities and won battles, we never went fast enough for him. The old fellow was insatiable. Each day as I came in, I learned of some new success.

"Doctor, we have taken Mayence,"[269-1] said the little girl coming to meet me with a smile that went to your heart, and through the door I heard his glad salutation, "We're getting on! In another week we shall be in Berlin."

At that time the Prussians were only a week's march from Paris. At first we wondered whether we had not better carry our patient into the country. Then we reflected that as soon as he was taken out of the house, he would learn the true state of affairs, and I decided that he was still too feeble, too stunned by his stroke, to let him find out the truth. So we decided to stay where we were.

The first day of the Prussian occupation, I climbed the stairs to his apartment, I remember, with a heavy heart at the thought of all the closed doors of Paris and the fighting going on under her walls, in the suburbs which were now on the frontier. I found the old gentleman sitting up in bed jubilant and proud.

"Well," he said, "the siege has begun."

I looked at him in amazement. "So you know now, Colonel?"

His grandchild turned to me; "Why, yes, doctor. That is the great news to-day. The siege of Berlin has begun."

And while she spoke, she went on with her sewing as calmly as you please. How could he suspect what was happening? He couldn't hear the guns at the fortifications. He couldn't see the city in its fear and sorrow.

From his bed he could see one side of the Arc de Triomphe, and his room was filled with odds and ends of the period of the First Empire—all admirably fitted to sustain his illusions. Portraits of Napoleon's marshals, battle prints, a picture of the little King of Rome in his baby dress; big stiff consoles decorated with trophies, covered with imperial relics, medallions, bronzes, a piece of the rock of St. Helena under a glass case, miniatures all representing the same blue-eyed lady, now with hair curled, now in a ball dress, now in a yellow gown with leg-of-mutton sleeves. And all this—consoles, King of Rome, marshals, yellow-gowned, short-waisted ladies, with that prim stiffness which was considered graceful in 1806, this atmosphere of victory and conquest—it was this more than anything we could say to him that made him accept so naïvely the siege of Berlin.

After that day, our military operations grew simpler and simpler. Nothing but a little patience was needed in order to take Berlin. Every little while, when the old gentleman grew listless, we read him a letter from his son, an imaginary letter of course, as Paris was by now cut off, and as since Sedan, the aide-de-camp of Mac Mahon had been sent to a German fortress.

You can easily imagine the despair of the poor child who heard nothing from her father, knowing that he was a prisoner, deprived of even comfort and perhaps sick, while she had to write letters in his name that were full of joy, brief indeed, such as a soldier would write from the field, a soldier advancing day by day through the enemy's country. Sometimes it was too much for her, and weeks went by without a letter. The old man began to worry and to be unable to sleep. Then presto! a letter from Germany would arrive, and she would read it gayly at her grandfather's bedside, holding back her tears.

The old colonel would listen gravely, smile knowingly, approve, criticize, and explain to us any passage which seemed confused. But it was in the replies that he made to his son that he was magnificent. "Never forget that you are French," he wrote. "Be generous to the poor Germans. Don't let them suffer more than is inevitable from the invasion of their country." And then came suggestions without end, charming, moralizing on property rights, the courtesy due to women, a veritable code of honor for conquerors. All this was interwoven with reflections on politics and discussions of the peace terms. On this last point he was not unduly exacting. "Indemnity, and nothing more—what good would their provinces be to us? A France could never be made out of a Germany." He dictated that in a firm voice, and one could not hear him without emotion, there was so much sincerity, so beautiful a patriotism in what he said.

Meanwhile, the siege was progressing—not the siege of Berlin, unfortunately! We had reached the period of severe cold, the bombardment, the epidemics, the famine. But thanks to our efforts, to the infinite tenderness which enfolded him, the serenity of the old old man was never troubled. To the end, I was able to get white bread and fresh meat for him—for him alone, of course. You can't imagine anything more touching than these luncheons so innocent in their egotism—the old gentleman sitting up in bed, fresh and smiling, his napkin tucked under his chin, and his pale little granddaughter at hand to guide his hand, make him drink, and help him as he ate all these forbidden good things.

Then, animated by his meal, in the comfort of his warm room, while the winter's wind whistled outside and the snow flakes whirled around the windows, the ex-cuirassier told us for the hundredth time the story of the retreat from Russia when frozen biscuit and horse flesh was all that there was to eat.

"Do you realize what that means, little one? We had to eat horse!"

Did she realize what that meant! For two months she had eaten no other meat.

As time went on and the old gentleman recovered little by little, our task increased in difficulty. The numbness of the senses which had made it so easy to deceive him was disappearing day by day. Two or three times already the terrible cannonading at the Porte Maillot had made him jump, his ear as keen as a hunting dog's, and we had been obliged to invent a last victory for Bazaine at the gates of Berlin and salvos fired at the Invalides[273-1] in honor of the event.

Another day, when his bed had been brought over to the window (it was, I think, the Thursday on which the battle of Buzenval was fought), he distinctly saw the troops of the National Guard formed on the Avenue de la Grand Armé.

"What are those troops?" asked the old gentleman, and we heard him mutter, "Not well set up."

It went no farther, but we understood that thereafter we must take every precaution. Unfortunately we were not sufficiently careful. One evening as I reached the house, the little girl came to meet me, considerably troubled. "It is to-morrow that they enter the city," she said.

Was the door of her grandfather's bedroom open? In thinking it all over afterward, I remember that this evening his face wore a very striking expression. Probably he had overheard us; but while we were talking of the entry of the Prussians, the old gentleman was thinking of the triumphant return of the French troops, for which he had so long been waiting—Mac Mahon marching down the avenue in the midst of flowers, his son at the marshal's side, and he himself on his balcony wearing his full dress uniform as he did at Lutzen, saluting the riddled flags and the powder-blackened eagles.

Poor old Jouve! No doubt he thought that we did not want him to participate in this review of our troops in the fear that his emotion would be too much for him, so he carefully avoided speaking of it. But the next day, at the very minute when the Prussian battalions started on their march from the Porte Maillot to the Tuileries,[274-1] the window up there opened gently and the Colonel appeared on the balcony wearing his helmet, his saber and all the old-fashioned but still glorious regalia of one of Milhaud's cuirassiers.

I still wonder what will power, what spurt of vitality it had taken to put him on his feet again in all the trappings of war. At all events, there he was, standing erect behind the rail, surprised to find the avenues so large, so silent, the window curtains down, and Paris as gloomy as a great pesthouse; flags everywhere, but such strange flags bearing a red cross on a white field, and no crowd to meet our soldiers.

For an instant he thought he might be mistaken; but no, below, behind the Arc de Triomphe, there came an indistinct rattle and then a black line advanced in the early light. Then, little by little, the eagles on the tops of helmets could be seen shining in the sun, the little drums of Jena began to beat, and under the Arc de L'Etoile, accented by the heavy tread of marching men and by the clash of sidearms, Schubert's Triumphal March burst out.

Suddenly the silence of the Place de L'Etoile was broken by a terrible cry: "To arms! To arms! The Prussians!" And the four Uhlans[275-1] at the head of the column could see up there on the balcony a tall old man stagger and fall. This time Colonel Jouve was really dead.

SELMA LAGERLÖF

The Silver Mine

King Gustav the Third[276-1] was making a hurried trip through Dalarna. Though the horses seemed to be fairly skimming the ground, the King was dissatisfied. He leaned out of the window continually urging the driver to make haste, and his courtiers expected any minute that the royal coach or harness would break.

Finally the carriage tongue did indeed break. The courtiers leaped from the coach and after a hasty inspection said that it would be impossible to continue the journey without repairs. Anxious for the King's entertainment, they asked him if he would not like to attend the services in a little church which could be seen a short distance ahead.

The King agreed, and stepping into one of the other carriages, drove to the church. For hours he had been riding through large tracts of forest, so he was the more delighted to come out in view of green fields and small hamlets. The Dalelven sparkled forth, as it glided between masses of graceful willows.

The King, however, was unable to attend the service, for just as he stepped from the carriage to the churchyard, the sexton was ringing the bell for the closing. The worshippers came filing out of the church. As they passed the King, where he stood with one foot on the carriage step, he was impressed with their stalwart bearing and sturdy, wholesome appearance.

On the preceding day the King had remarked to his courtiers upon the poverty of the country they were passing through. "Apparently now," he said, "I am driving through the poorest section of my domain." When he saw these people, however, he forgot about the poverty of the country. His heart warmed within him and he said to himself, "The Swedish King is not in such poor circumstances as some of his enemies would believe. As long as my subjects remain as fine and wholesome as these are, I shall be able to defend successfully my crown and my land."

Then he commanded a courtier to tell the people that the stranger among them was their King, and that he wished them to gather around in order that he might address them.

He spake to them, standing upon the top step that led into the sanctuary, and the step upon which he stood may be found there to this day.

The King first told his people how matters stood within the kingdom. Sweden had been attacked by both Russia and Denmark. Under ordinary circumstances this would not be alarming, but at present the army was so filled with traitors[277-1] that he could hardly depend on it. He saw, therefore, no alternative but to go out himself to the small towns and ask his subjects whether they wished to side with the traitors or were willing to help the King with soldiers and money to save the Fatherland.

While he was making this earnest appeal, the sturdy peasants stood attentively before him, making no comment, nor giving any sign as to whether they agreed or not. Now the King had felt inwardly pleased at the forcefulness of his own appeal, so when the men stood silent, unable to give their answer, he frowned and showed his disappointment.

The farmers understood that the King was impatient for their reply, and at length one stepped forward. "Now you must know, King Gustav," he said, "that we were not expecting a visit from our King here to-day. We are therefore not prepared to answer you immediately. I would suggest that you go into the sanctuary and speak with our minister while we discuss among ourselves this matter which you have presented to us."

The King, perceiving that no better solution was possible, decided to take the farmer's advice.

When he entered the study, he found no one there except an old farmer. He was tall and rough, with hands large and horny from hard work. He wore neither robe nor collar, but only leather breeches and a long white homespun coat, like the other peasants. He arose and bowed as the King entered.

"I believed that I should meet the minister here," said the King.

The other reddened with embarrassment, for he realized that it might be annoying to the King to be told that he had mistaken the minister for a farmer.

"Yes," he admitted, "the pastor is usually found here."

The King seated himself in a large armchair that stood in the study at that time, and which still stands there with a single change; the congregation has placed upon the back a gold crown.

"Have you a good minister here?" asked the King, wishing to show interest in the people's welfare.

When the King questioned him thus, the pastor felt that it was impossible to admit who he was. He decided that it was better to let the King think he was only a farmer, so he answered: "The minister is fair; he preaches the clear word of God, and he tries to live as he preaches."

The King thought this a good recommendation. His sharp ear, however, had detected a certain hesitation in the tone of the man. He said, therefore, "It sounds, though, as if you are not entirely satisfied with your pastor."

"He may be a bit hardheaded," said the other, thinking inwardly, "If the King should later discover who I am, he will realize that I did not pour compliments over myself." He decided, therefore, to come out with a bit of criticism. "There be those who would say that the minister is inclined to want to be the ruler in this hamlet," he continued.

"Then he has surely directed and managed everything in the best possible way," said the King. He was not pleased to have the farmer finding fault with some one placed over him. "It appears to me that everything here is ruled by good habit and old-fashioned simplicity."

"The people are good," said the minister, "because they live in a remote place in isolation and poverty. The people here would probably be no better than others if the trials and temptations of the world came nearer to them."

"There is little chance that this will happen," said the King with a shrug of his shoulder.

He said nothing further but began drumming on the table with his fingers. He felt that he had exchanged enough words with this farmer, and wondered when the people would be ready with their answer.

"Those peasants are not very eager about coming to their King with aid," he thought. "If my coach were only ready, I would drive away from them and their deliberations."

The minister, deeply troubled, strove within himself as to how he should act on an important question that must be settled quickly. He felt glad that he had not told the King who he was, for now he could discuss matters that otherwise he would have been unable to bring forward.

After a time he broke the embarrassing silence by asking the King if it really were true that enemies were besieging them and their kingdom was in danger.

The King, feeling that this person should have sense enough to leave him undisturbed, looked at him for a time without reply.

"I asked the question because, standing within the study here, I could not hear clearly what you said to the people. But in case it is true, I should like to state that the pastor of this parish might possibly be in a position to furnish the King as much money as he would need."

"I thought you said that every one here was poor," said the King, thinking that the farmer did not know what he was talking about.

"Yes, that is true," agreed the pastor, "and the minister has no more than any other. But if the King will honor me by listening, I will explain how it is that the minister has power to help."

"You may speak," said King Gustav. "You seem to find it easier to express yourself than your friends and neighbors outside, who never will be ready with their answer."

"It is not an easy matter to answer a King. I fear that, in the end, it will be necessary for their pastor to speak in their stead."

The King crossed his knees, folded his arms, and dropped his head. "You may begin," he said, with an air of preparing to fall asleep.

"Once upon a time the pastor and four men from his parish went elk hunting," began the minister. "Besides the pastor, there were two soldiers, Olaf and Erik Svard, the landlord of the village, and a farmer named Isræls Pers Perssons."

"Should not mention so many names," grumbled the King, as he shifted his head a bit.

"The men were good hunters and usually had good luck, but this day they traveled far without getting any game. At last they gave up the hunt and sat down on the ground to talk. They remarked upon the strange fact that so large a section of the country should be unsuitable for cultivation. All was rocks, hills, or morass.

"'Our Lord has not done right by us, when he has given us such poor land to live in,' said one of them. 'In other sections people have riches and plenty, but here in spite of all our efforts we can hardly get sufficient for our daily needs.'"

The minister stopped a moment as if uncertain whether the King had heard him. The King, however, moved his little finger as a sign that he was still awake.

"As the hunters were talking of their ill fortune, the minister noticed something glittering where he had overturned a bit of moss with his boot. 'This is a remarkable mountain,' he thought. Overturning more of the moss and picking up a piece of stone that clung to it, he exclaimed, 'Can it be possible that this is lead ore!'

"The others came eagerly over to the speaker and began uncovering the rock with their rifle stocks. They thus exposed a broad mineral vein on the side of the mountain.

"'What do you suppose this is?' asked the minister.

"Each man broke loose a piece of the rock and, biting it as a crude test, said he thought it should be at least zinc or lead.

"'And the whole mountain is full of it,' eagerly ventured the landlord."

When the minister had reached this stage of the story, the King slightly raised his head and partly opened one eye.

"Do you know if any of these persons had any knowledge of minerals or geology?"

"No, they did not," answered the minister. Whereupon the King's head sank and both eyes closed.

"The minister and those with him were highly pleased," continued the pastor, undisturbed by the King's indifference. "They believed that they had found something which would enrich not only themselves, but their posterity as well.

"'Nevermore shall I need to work,' said one of them. 'I can do nothing the whole week through and on Sunday I shall ride to church in a gold chariot.'

"These were usually men of good sense, but their great discovery had gone to their heads, so that now they spoke like children. They had enough presence of mind, however, to lay the moss carefully back in place so as to hide the mineral vein. Then, after taking careful note of the location, they journeyed home.

"Before parting, they all agreed that the minister should go to Falun and ask the mineralogist there what kind of ore this might be. He was to return as soon as possible, and until then they all swore by a binding oath that they would not reveal to any person the location of the ore."

The king slightly raised his head but did not interrupt the narrative. He began to believe apparently that the man really had something important to tell, though he did not permit himself to be aroused out of his indifference.

"The minister started upon his journey with a few samples of ore in his pocket. He was just as happy in the thought of becoming wealthy as any of the others were. He mused upon how he would repair the parsonage that now was no better than a cottage; and how he could marry the daughter of the bishop, as he had long desired. Otherwise he would be compelled to wait for her many years, for he was poor and obscure, and he knew it would be a long time before he would be assigned to a place that would enable him to marry the girl of his choice.

"The minister's journey to Falun took him two days. There he was compelled to wait a day for the return of the mineralogist. When he finally showed the samples of the ore, the man took them in his hand, looked at them, and then at the stranger. The minister told the story of how he had found these samples in the vicinity of his home, and asked if they might be lead.

"'No, it is not lead.'

"'Zinc, then?' faltered the minister.

"'No, neither is it zinc.'

"All hope sank within the breast of the minister. He had not felt so downcast in many a day.

"'Do you have many stones like these in your country?' asked the mineralogist.

"'We have a whole mountain,' answered the minister.

"Then the man advanced toward the minister and slapping him on the shoulder said, 'Let us see that you make such use of it that will bring great good both to you and to our Kingdom, for you have found silver.'"

"'Is that true?' said the minister rather dazed; 'so it is silver?'

"The mineralogist explained to him what he should do in order to obtain legal rights to the mine, and gave him much good advice, also. The minister, however, stood bewildered and heard not a word that was said. He thought only of the wonderful news that back home in his poor neighborhood lay a whole mountain of silver ore waiting for him."

The King raised his head so suddenly that the minister broke off the narrative. "I suppose when the minister came home and began working the mine he found that the mineralogist had misinformed him."

"No," said the minister, "it was as the man had said."

"You may continue," and the King settled himself again to listen.

"When the minister reached home, the first thing he did was to start out to tell his comrades of the value of their find. As he drove up to Landlord Stensson's place, where he had intended to go in and inform his friend that they had found silver, he paused at the gate, for he saw that white sheets had been hung before the windows and a broad path of hemlock boughs led up to the door step."

"'Who has died here?' inquired the minister of a little boy who stood leaning against the fence.

"'It is the landlord himself.' Then he told the minister that for a week past the landlord had been drinking ever and ever so much liquor, until he was drunk all the time.

"'How can that be?' asked the pastor. 'The landlord never before drank to excess.'

"'Well, you see,' said the boy, 'he drank because he was possessed with the idea that he had found a mine. He was so rich, he said, that he would never need to do anything now but drink. Last night he drove out, drunk as he was, and fell out of the carriage and was killed.'

"After the minister had heard all this, he started homeward, grieving over what he had learned. And only a moment before he had been so elated over the good news he had to tell his friends.

"When the minister had gone a short distance, he met Isræls Pers Persson walking along the road. He appeared as usual and the minister was glad that their good fortune had not turned his head. He would immediately gladden him with the news that he was now a rich man.

"'Good-day!' said the minister.

"'Do you come now from Falun?'

"'Yes, and I can tell you that things turned out better than we thought. The mineralogist said that it was silver ore.'

"Pers Persson looked as if the earth had opened to engulf him. 'What is it you say? Is it silver?'

"'Yes, we shall all be rich men now and able to live as royalty.'

"'Oh, is it silver?' repeated Pers Persson, in still greater dejection.

"'It certainly is silver,' said the minister. 'Don't think that I would deceive you. You should not be afraid of being glad.'

"'Glad!' said Pers Persson, 'should I be glad? I thought it was fool's gold, so it seemed better to take a certainty for an uncertainty. I sold my share in the mine to Olaf Svard for one hundred dollars.'

"He looked very downhearted, and the minister left him standing there with tears in his eyes.

"When the minister reached home, he sent a servant to Olaf Svard and his brother asking them to come to the manse that he might tell them the nature of their find. He felt that he had had enough of trying to spread the good news himself.

"But that evening, as the minister sat alone, joy again filled his heart. He went out and stood upon a hillock where he had decided to build the new parsonage. This, of course, should be very grand, as grand as the bishop's home itself. He was not satisfied, moreover, with the idea of repairing the old church. It occurred to him that, as there was so much wealth in the hamlet, many people would find their way to the place, until finally a large town would probably be built around the mine. He reasoned that it would be necessary then to build a large new church in place of the old one, which would require a great portion of his riches. Neither could he stop here in his dreams, for he thought that when the time came to dedicate this grand new church, the King and many bishops would be there. The King would be glad to see such a church, but he would remark that there were not fit accommodations to be had in the town. It would be necessary, therefore, to build a castle in the city."

At this point one of the King's courtiers opened the door of the study and announced that the King's coach had been repaired.

The King thought at first that he would depart immediately but, reconsidering, he said to the minister, "You may continue your story to the end, but make it shorter. We know how the man dreamed and thought; now we want to know what he did."

"While the minister sat in the midst of his dreams," went on the speaker, "word came to him that Isræls Pers Perrson had taken his life. He could not endure the thought of his folly in selling his share of the mine. He felt he would be unable to live and see from day to day another enjoy the wealth that might have been his."

The King moved slightly in his chair. He now had both eyes wide open. "Methinks," said he, "that had I been this minister, I should have had enough of that mine."

"The King is a rich man; at least he has plenty. It was not so with the minister, who owned nothing. This poor man, when he saw that God's blessing appeared not to be with his undertaking, thought: 'I shall not dream further about making myself prosperous and useful with these riches. I cannot let the silver mine lie in the ground, however; I must take out the ore for the poor and needy. I will work the silver mine to help put the whole community on its feet.'

"One day the minister went over to Olaf Svard's to talk with him and his brother about the best disposal of the mine. When he came near the soldier's home, he met a cart surrounded by awe-stricken farmers. Within the cart sat a man, his feet bound with a rope and his hands behind him.

"As the minister passed, the cart stopped, giving the minister an opportunity to observe the prisoner more closely. His head was bound around so that it was hard to see him, but the minister thought he recognized Olaf Svard. He heard the prisoner pleading with the guards to let him speak with the minister.

"As he came closer to the cart, the prisoner turned towards him, saying, 'You will soon be the only one who knows where the silver mine is.'

"'What is that you say, Olaf?'

"'You see, minister, since we heard that it is a silver mine we have found, my brother and I have not remained such good friends as formerly. We often have come to disputes, and last night we had an argument over which one of us five first found the mine. We came to blows, and I have killed my brother and he has given me a deep mark on my forehead.[290-1] I shall hang now and you will then be the only one who knows the site of the mine. I should like to request something of you.'

"'Speak up,' said the minister. 'I will do all in my power for you.'

"'You know I shall leave several little children behind me,' said the soldier.

"'So far as that is concerned,' interrupted the minister, 'you may rest easy. Whatever is your share they shall have.'

"'No,' said Olaf, 'it is another thing I wanted to ask of you. Do not let them have any part of that which comes out of the mine.'

"The minister fell back a few steps, then remained motionless, unable to reply.

"'If you do not promise me this, I cannot die in peace.'

"The minister at last promised reluctantly, and the cart continued on its way, bearing the murderer to his doom.

"The minister stood there in the road, deliberating on how he should keep the promise he had just given. All the way home he thought over the riches which he had expected would bring such joy.

"'If it should prove,' he mused, 'that the people of this parish are unable to endure wealth, since already four have died who had been strong practical men, ought I not to give up the idea of working the mine?' He pictured his whole parish going to destruction because of the silver. Would it be right that he, who was placed as a guardian over the souls of these poor people, should put into their hands something which might be the cause of their ruin?"

The King raised himself upright in his chair and stared at the speaker. "I might say that you give me to understand that the pastor of this isolated community must be a real man."

"But this that I have related was not all," continued the minister, "for as soon as the news of the mine spread over the neighboring parishes, workers ceased to labor and went about light-heartedly, awaiting the time when the great riches should pour in on them. All idlers in that section roamed into the hamlet. Drunkenness, quarreling, and fighting became constant problems for the minister's solution. Many people did nothing but wander around through fields and forest looking for the mine. The minister noted, also, that as soon as he left home, men spied upon him to see whether he visited the silver mine, so that they might steal the secret of its location from him.

"When things had come to this pass, the minister called the farmers to a meeting. He reminded them of the many tragedies that the discovery of the silver mine had brought to their community and asked if they were going to allow themselves to be ruined or if they wished to save themselves. And then he asked if they wanted him, who was their pastor, to contribute to their ruin. He himself had decided that he would not reveal to anyone the location of the mine, nor would he ever attempt to derive any wealth therefrom.

"He then asked the farmers how they would vote for the future. If they desired to continue seeking after the mine and awaiting riches, he intended to go so far from them that no news of their misery would ever reach him. If, on the other hand, they would give up thinking of the silver mine, he would remain among them. 'But however you choose,' repeated the minister, 'remember that no one will ever hear from me any information about the location of the silver mine.'"

"Well," said the King, "what did the farmers decide?"

"They did as the minister desired of them. They understood that he meant well for them when he was willing to remain in poverty for their sake. They urged him to go to the forest and take every precaution to conceal the vein so that no one would ever find it."

"Since then the minister has remained here as poor as the others?"

"Yes, as poor as the others."

"Has he, in spite of this, married and built a new parsonage?"

"No, he has not had the means. He lives in the same old place."

"That is a beautiful story," said the King, bending his head.

The minister stood silent before the King. In a few minutes the latter continued: "Was it of the silver mine that you were thinking when you said that the minister here could furnish me with as much money as I should need?"

"Yes," said the other.

"But I can't put thumb-screws on him; and how otherwise could I bring a man like him to show me the mine—a man who has forsaken his beloved and all material blessings?"

"That is another matter," said the minister. "If it is the Fatherland that needs help, he will undoubtedly give up the secret."

"Do I have your assurance for that?"

"Yes, I will answer for it."

"Does he not care, then, how it goes with his parishioners?"

"That shall stand in God's hands."

The King arose from his chair and walked over to the window. He stood for a moment observing the people outside. The longer he stood, the clearer his large eyes glistened. His whole stature seemed to expand.

"You may present my compliments to the minister of this parish," said the King, "and say to him that there is given no more beautiful sight to Sweden's King than to see such a people as these."

Thereupon the King turned from the window and looked smilingly at the minister. "Is it true that the minister of this parish is so poor that he takes off his black robe as soon as the service is over and dresses as one of the peasants?"

"Yes, he is as poor as that," said the minister, and a flush of embarrassment spread over his rough but noble face.

The King again stepped to the window. He apparently was in his best mood. All that was great and noble within him had been awakened. "He shall let the silver mine rest in peace. Since through all his life he has starved and worked to perfect a people such as these, he shall be permitted to keep them as they are."

"But if the kingdom is in danger——"

"The kingdom is better served with men than with money." When he had said these words, the King shook hands with the minister and stepped out of the study.

Outside stood the people, as impassive as when he went in. But when the King came down the steps, one of the farmers approached him.

"Have you talked with our minister?"

"Yes, I have talked with him."

"Then you have also received answer from us," said the farmer.

"Yes, I have received your answer."

—Translated from the Swedish by C. Frederick Carlson.

NOTES

O. HENRY (Page 11)

Sydney Porter, whose pen name was O. Henry, was an American journalist who lived during the years 1862 to 1910. For several years he wandered in the South and Southwest, gathering the many and varied experiences of a journalistic career. These he aptly used in his numerous short stories, and he was ever a beguiling story teller.

He finally settled down in New York City and there wrote his best stories. Instead of writing of the Four Hundred, or the social set of the great city, as so many other writers were fond of doing, with his clever pen he revealed to us through little sketches the real life of the four million others in New York. Laundresses, messenger boys, policemen, clerks, even the tramps ever present in the parks were pictured for us as real everyday people whom one could find anywhere. Read his stories in The Four Million, from which "The Gift of the Magi" is taken, for you will like them.

O. Henry, while his stories usually lack the qualities of enduring literature, those of a cultured style and a universal theme—a theme that will be true to human experience through the ages—is yet master of the composition of the short story. Examine "The Gift of the Magi" and you will find that it develops one main incident carried out in a single afternoon with all the necessary details compressed; that is, the details are suggested in a few words but not developed. The story has originality and appeals to the imagination of the reader, for the whole life of the two characters is suggested through this brief, rather touching sketch. The end, though it is a surprise and comes like the crack of a whip, was nevertheless carefully prepared for. Then the writer is through, and we are left with the feeling that we know this everyday young couple, who after all have the priceless gift, an unselfish love, which, hidden from the eyes of the world, glorifies their commonplace existence.

O. Henry approaches true literature here, for he has a theme that has lived and will ever live to uplift human life. His style too, influenced by his theme, is raised somewhat from his usual slangy expression.

The Gift of the Magi

11, 1. The Magi. Wise men who brought gifts to the infant Christ as he lay in the manger at Bethlehem.

13, 1. Queen of Sheba. A queen of Old Testament history, who is reported to have sought an alliance with Solomon, King of Israel, in the tenth century B.C., bringing to him fabulous gifts of gold and jewels.

BOOTH TARKINGTON (Page 19)

Booth Tarkington was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1869. The author's love for and knowledge of his native state is revealed to us in several of his best novels. He was educated at Exeter Academy, at Purdue University, and at Princeton.

Mr. Tarkington may truly be said to be a literary man. Unlike most of our other authors, he has had no other formal occupation except that of writing. To this work, since he left Princeton, he has given all of his time and energy. For eight years he wrote stories that were always rejected. His courage and perseverance, however, were finally richly rewarded. With his first accepted work, The Gentleman from Indiana, he attained a secure position as a writer of distinction.

Mr. Tarkington is said to be exceedingly companionable and entirely without self-consciousness and egotism. He is a ready and entertaining talker and tells a story as well as he writes one. He has, too, a keen sense of the humorous. This naturalness and this sense of humor may be noticed readily in the story, "A Reward of Merit" selected from Penrod and Sam.

The books, Penrod, Penrod and Sam, and Seventeen are studies of the human boy, presented in a series of chapters that read like so many short stories.

A Reward of Merit

21, 1. Obedient to inherited impulse. The boys followed an unreasoning impulse in their nature, inherited from their savage ancestors, who got their living by pursuing and killing running animals.

21, 2. Automatons of instinct. Creatures guided, not by reason or will, but by tendencies inherited from savage ancestors.

22, 1. Practioner of an art, etc. A humorous way of saying that gambling by the method of throwing dice dates back probably further than the time of the Romans.

30, 1. Sang-froid. A French word meaning coolness under trying circumstances.

36, 1. Gothic. A term applied to certain types of architecture of the Middle Ages. Whitey, with bones and ribs showing, suggested the pillars and pointed arches of a Gothic building.

43, 1. Nemesis. An ancient goddess in Greek literature who justly punished any one who sinned.

MARY RAYMOND SHIPMAN ANDREWS (Page 48)

Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews is a well-known short story writer of the present day. She was born in Mobile, Alabama. Her present home is in Syracuse, New York.

Mrs. Andrews is perhaps best known by her story of Lincoln, "The Perfect Tribute," the one of her stories which will surely endure the test of time and rank high as literature. Among her best work are also stories of camping trips in the Canadian woods—stories which show her keen delight in life out-of-doors, for Mrs. Andrews says of herself, "I paddle a canoe much better than I write a story."

In "American, Sir!" the story of the World War given in this book, one finds Mrs. Andrews's usual qualities of sentiment, dramatic effect, and distinctive style. To readers of "The Perfect Tribute," it is enough to say that in her stories of the recent war Mrs. Andrews writes with the same exalted spirit of American patriotism that she showed in that story of the Civil War. She believes that out of the sorrow and suffering of the war have come the glory of courage and self-sacrifice and a new and deeper love for America.

"American, Sir!"

49, 1. "Tapped" for "Bones" or "Scroll and Key." "Bones" and "Scroll and Key" are two fraternities at Yale to which the students deem it a great honor to belong. On the great day when new members are chosen, every one assembles on the campus, where the new members are tapped on the shoulder by old members and told to go to their rooms.

52, 1. Croix de Guerre. The French War Cross, a decoration given by France to soldiers for extreme bravery and self-sacrifice.

52, 2. Caporetto disaster. The Italian army was overwhelmingly defeated by the Germans near the village of Caporetto on October 24, 1917. This disaster was brought about by fraternization, or friendly relations, between the soldiers of the Austro-German and Italian armies. Skillful German propaganda had led the Italians to believe that fighting would be brought to an end if the Italian soldiers would do no more shooting. Then new German troops were brought forward to make a deadly attack upon the Italian army. So thoroughly had the Germans played their game that the Italians lost more than 250,000 prisoners and 2300 guns before they realized how they had been duped.

52, 3. Lombardy and Venetia. Provinces in northern Italy, which are noted for their beautiful scenery and places of interest to tourists.

52, 4. Tagliamento. A small river in northern Italy. The Italian army made a stand here in a bloody encounter with the Germans.

52, 5. Piave. Another river in northern Italy, south of the Tagliamento. Here the Italians brought the Germans to a stand and held them for several months. They did this by a system of lagoon defenses from the lower Piave to the Gulf of Venice. This is most interesting to read about in any of the histories of the World War.

55, 1. Bersagliari. Italian sharp-shooters.

KATHERINE MAYO (Page 68)

Katherine Mayo was born in Ridgway, Pennsylvania, but she was educated at private schools in Boston and Cambridge, and her home has long been in New York City.

She is a contributor to our best periodicals, The Atlantic Monthly, Scribner's, The North American, The Outlook, and The Saturday Evening Post. Her stories are almost all founded on facts. The story "John G." in this collection of short stories is selected from The Standard Bearers, which is a group of true narratives concerning the Pennsylvania State Police. These tales are told by Miss Mayo in a finely distinctive way which makes vivid the gallant deeds of these brave men.

Miss Mayo's interest in the history and deeds of the Pennsylvania State Police was aroused by her personal experience of the helplessness of country districts in New York state to prevent or punish crime. Miss Mayo had heard that Pennsylvania years ago had acknowledged its duty to protect all its people, and to that end had established a rural patrol known as the State Police. Finding little in print concerning this force, she went to Pennsylvania to study the facts first hand.

The results of her investigations she published early in 1917 in her book, Justice to All, with an introduction by ex-President Roosevelt, in which he declares the volume to be so valuable that it should be in every public library and every school-library in the land.

In The Standard Bearers, she tells of some of the special feats of early members of that now famous force. No detective stories, no tales of the Wild West can exceed in thrilling human interest these true narratives of events that have happened in our own time and in our own country.

Miss Mayo during the world war has done active work over seas in the "Y." True stories of her experiences with the doughboys have appeared in The North American, and in The Outlook.

John G.

68, 1. Barrack-Room Ballads. Poems by Rudyard Kipling with the atmosphere of the far East.

69, 1. Pennsylvania State Police. See sketch of Katherine Mayo.

69, 2. I. W. W. Industrial Workers of the World, a revolutionary labor organization. The members have given much trouble by their extreme views, such as eternal war against their employers. They believe that they should organize as a class and take possession of the earth, abolishing the wage system.

70, 1. Blue ribbon. A sign of distinction; a blue ribbon worn by a horse at a horse show denotes that he has won the first prize.

70, 2. Atlantis. A mythical island of vast extent mentioned by Plato and other ancient writers and placed by them in the distant unknown West.

72, 1. Two by twelves. A plank two inches thick by twelve inches wide.

MYRA KELLY (Page 77)

Myra Kelly, who later became Mrs. Allan Macnaughton, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1876 and died in England in 1910. She lived almost all of her short life, however, in New York City. Here she was educated in the public schools and at Teachers College, Columbia University.

She was an American teacher and author. She taught in the New York public schools from 1899 to 1901 and at Teachers College in 1902 and 1903. She first became known by her stories of children in the primary schools of New York City. She wrote chiefly of the children of the East Side, with whom she had had first-hand experience, while teaching in the public schools. Her stories give the Yiddish dialect inimitably and they show a fine, wise tolerance as well as a shrewd knowledge of child character.

Mrs. Macnaughton's published volumes include Little Citizens, Wards of Liberty, Rosnah, Little Aliens, New Faces, and Her Little Young Ladyship. The story "Friends," presented in this collection, is taken from Little Aliens.

Little Aliens contains nine stories, of which the settings are all in the homes of the children. Most of the stories in her first volume, Little Citizens, have their settings in the schools. The stories reveal a rich humor, an underlying pathos, a deep understanding of child nature, and a full grasp of the conditions with which all aliens, big or little, must contend.

Friends

77, 1. Friends. The dialect spoken by the child in this story is the American adaptation of the Yiddish, which is a German dialect spoken by the Jews of eastern Europe, containing many Hebrew and Slav expressions.

78, 1. Board of Monitors. A group of children appointed by the pupils to help the teacher in various ways.

79, 1. Krisht. Christian.

82, 1. Rabbi. A Jewish title for a teacher or interpreter of the law, also a pastor of a Jewish congregation. Kosher law refers to special Jewish laws. The laws regarding food specify how animals must be slaughtered in order that the meat may be ceremonially clean.

89, 1. Vis-a-vis. Opposite to one another.

HAMLIN GARLAND (Page 97)

Hamlin Garland is a poet and novelist, whose stories are set mostly in the Middle West. He was born in 1860 on a farm near the present site of West Salem, Wisconsin. In 1869 his family moved out on the prairie of Mitchell County, Iowa, the scene of his Boy Life on the Prairie, and of many of the stories in Main-Traveled Roads. The selection, "A Camping Trip," given in this volume, is taken from Boy Life on the Prairie.

Mr. Garland's education was different from that of most of his contemporaries. When about sixteen, he became a pupil at the Cedar Valley Seminary, Osage, Iowa, though he worked on a farm during six months of the year. He graduated in 1881 from this school and for a year tramped through the eastern states. His people having settled in Brown County, Dakota, he drifted that way in the spring of 1883 and took up a claim in McPherson County, where he lived for a year on the unsurveyed land, making studies of the plains country, which were of great value to him later. The Moccasin Ranch and several of his short stories resulted from this experience.

In the fall of 1884 he sold his claim and returned to the East, to Boston, intending to qualify himself for teaching. He soon found a helpful friend in Professor Moses True Brown, and became a pupil, and a little later an instructor, in the Boston School of Oratory. During years from 1885 to 1889 he taught private classes in English and American literature, and lectured in and about Boston on Browning, Shakespeare, the drama, etc., writing and studying meanwhile in the public library. In Boston he made the acquaintance of Oliver Wendell Holmes, William Dean Howells, Edward Everett Hale, Edwin Booth, and other leaders in literature and art.

Mr. Garland wrote his stories from first-hand experience with men under certain typical American conditions. His stories of Boy Life on the Prairie and of Main-Traveled Roads are grim stories of farm life in the West. They portray the conditions under which people lived on the prairies only a generation or two ago. He shows us that men may become true and strong because of their battle with such conditions. His books are as truly American as any our country has produced.

As a writer of literature, these books show Mr. Garland to be a realist, that is, a writer who deals with the facts of real life, but as you read Boy Life on the Prairie, you will see that he is fond of the ideal, of the fanciful, and of descriptions of simple rural scenes. The latter quality is very plain, when he writes of the birds and of the thrill of the open country that comes to the boys on their camping trip.

A Camping Trip

100, 1. A prairie schooner. A long canvas-covered wagon used especially by emigrants crossing the prairies.

105, 1. Skimmer-bugs. Bugs that skip or glide over the surface of the water.

111, 1. Luff. To turn the head of a vessel towards the wind. Hard-a-port is a direction given to the helmsman, meaning to put the helm quickly to the port or left side.

DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER (Page 114)

Dorothea Canfield, the author of "A Thread Without a Knot," is one of the most brilliant and forceful writers in America to-day. She was born in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1879. The daughter of a teacher and writer, her education was intensive and varied. As a child she learned to speak several languages. She received her B.A. from Ohio State University and a Ph. D. from Columbia University. She has studied and traveled extensively in Europe as well as in America.

Both as a person and as a writer, Dorothea Canfield has been extraordinarily well liked. As an author she is characterized by originality, clearness, and the vital quality of human sympathy. She always writes with a purpose, both in her works of fiction and in her educational writings. The writer's own ideals and common sense are revealed in her work and her stories are thoroughly interesting. Under the name, Dorothy Canfield, she has written some notable fiction. The Bent Twig is a graphic American novel in which are portrayed the influences of environment upon a most interesting character. Understood Betsy is a girl's story of warm sympathy and strong common sense. The Real Motive is a volume of short stories from which the story, "A Thread Without a Knot," is taken. The stories in the volume range in their settings from Paris to a middle western university town. As the title suggests, they are studies in human motives.

Under her married name, Dorothea Canfield Fisher, she has written some valuable educational works, as The Montessori Mother and Mothers and Children. During the World War, Mrs. Fisher spent her time in France working for the relief of those made blind by the war. Home Fires in France and The Day of Glory are truthful records of Mrs. Fisher's impressions of life in that tragic, mutilated land.

A Thread without a Knot

114, 1. Doctor's dissertation. Before a student can obtain the highest degree a university gives, the doctor's degree, he must write a dissertation, that is, a formal and elaborate essay on some original research work he has done. The degree Mr. Harrison was working for was that of Doctor of Philosophy, or Ph. D.

114, 2. Archives. A place where public records and historical documents are kept.

116, 1. Munich. A city in Germany where one of the largest and oldest German universities is located.

116, 2. Treaty of Utrecht. A treaty of peace in 1713 which concluded the war of the Spanish succession, a war fought by most of the other countries of Europe against the armies of France and Spain.

117, 1. Bibliothèque Nationale. The national library at Paris.

125, 1. Versailles. A city about twelve miles from Paris, noted for the beautiful chateau, or palace, and gardens of Louis XIV. The palace is now used as a historical museum and art gallery. It was in the famous Hall of Mirrors at Versailles that the treaty between Germany and the Allies was signed at the end of the World War.

The formal gardens and the fountains are among the famous sights of Paris. In the garden stands the Trianon, sometimes called the Grand Trianon, a villa built by Louis XIV for one of his favorites. Near it is the Petit Trianon, or little Trianon, the favorite resort of Marie Antoinette, the unfortunate and beautiful queen of France who was executed during the French Revolution. Here she and her ladies-in-waiting used to play at being shepherdesses and milkmaids.

125, 2. Tram line. A street railway or trolley line.

129, 1. Fontainebleau. A town of northern France, situated in the midst of a beautiful forest which covers an area of nearly 66 miles. At Fontainebleau is a famous chateau of the French kings. It is noted for the beauty of its architecture and contains many wonderful paintings.

129, 2. Pierrefonds. A small village in northern France where a very old and famous chateau is located.

129, 3. Vincennes. A town about five miles from Paris, noted for its chateau which is now used as a great fortress.

129, 4. Chantilly. A town in northern France noted for its lace-making, its horse races, and two beautiful chateaux built by the Prince of Condé, one of the French nobility. In the eighteenth century the most brilliant writers and artists of France used to gather at Chantilly.

133, 1. Tophet. A valley, sometimes called Gehenna, near Jerusalem, where human sacrifices were burned to the heathen god Moloch.

137, 1. Andy. Andrew Carnegie, a Scotch-American steel manufacturer and philanthropist, who established libraries in many cities of the United States.

138, 1. La Salle. A French explorer of the seventeenth century. He discovered the Ohio River and was the first to explore the greater part of the Mississippi River.

FRANCIS BRET HARTE (Page 141)

Bret Harte, as he is familiarly known, was born in Albany, New York, in 1836. At fifteen he wandered to California, the state which has so vividly colored his best known short stories. The first three years he was there, for a living, he taught school, and, as a pastime, like every one else in California at that time, he dug for gold.

He then entered the office of the Golden Era as a compositor, but soon began to write articles for the paper. These attracted favorable notice and he was made assistant editor-in-chief.

His ready imagination was stirred by the teeming, adventuresome life about him and he began to put his ideas into short stories with the mellow background of the golden state of California. Poe and Hawthorne had made the short story a distinct type. Now Bret Harte, less artistic and careful in his style, followed their lead with short stories to which he added the new idea of coloring brilliantly the setting of the story with the atmosphere of a certain locality.

From 1868-1870 he edited the Overland Monthly in which appeared his best known short stories, "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," and "Tennessee's Partner," each of which presented stirring scenes of the early gold-seeking days of California. Their charm lies in his emphasis on the manners and actions of a picturesque community.

The material of his stories is romantic, melodramatic, often almost shocking. He handled it, however, with humor, irony, or pathos. He was a realist who pictured, marvelously, the life about him as he saw it.

In 1870 Mr. Harte was made professor of recent literature in the University of California. After 1878 he held consular appointments; in Germany 1878-1880, in Scotland 1880-1885. After 1885 he lived in England until his death in 1902.

Chu Chu

145, 1. Castilian. Of pure Spanish origin.

145, 2. Mexican plug. Slang for an inferior horse of Mexican breed.

147, 1. Vaquero. A cowherder.

147, 2. Sombrero. A hat.

149, 1. Comstock lode. A rich vein of gold and silver discovered in Nevada in 1859. The discovery of its riches led people to rush to Nevada, and Virginia City grew up as if by magic.

149, 2. Rosinante. The horse belonging to Don Quixote who was the romantic and absurdly chivalric hero of a satirical Spanish novel entitled The History of the Valorous and Witty Knight Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha by Miguel Cervantes.

152, 1. Arabian Nights. The Thousand and One Nights, commonly called The Arabian Nights' Tales, are ancient oriental fairy tales. One of these is the story of the enchanted horse, a wooden horse with two pegs. When one of the pegs was turned, the horse rose in the air; when the other was turned, the horse descended wherever the rider wished.

154, 1. Dulcinea. Sweetheart. Dulcinea was also the name of Don Quixote's lady.

156, 1. Hidalgo. A man of wealth and position.

157, 1. Châtelaine. The mistress of a castle.

158, 1. Petite. Small.

159, 1. Toreador. A bull-fighter.

162, 1. Hacienda. A large estate.

162, 2. Alfalfa. A species of grass valuable as fodder for horses and cattle.

165, 1. Rodeo. Cattle market.

167, 1. Tête-à-tête. A private conversation between two people.

169, 1. Padre. Priest.

172, 1. Rencontre. A meeting.

172, 2. Patio. Courtyard.

172, 3. Cabriolé. An open carriage.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE (Page 173)

Because he was one of the founders of the short story in America, and because he is considered by many critics to be superior in style to all other American writers of fiction, Nathaniel Hawthorne has been chosen as the last of the group of American authors represented in this collection. In reading the story "Feathertop," therefore, it is interesting to compare the style of the author with that of the other American writers who are represented here. The story may also be used as a good test of the composition of the short story as given in the Introduction.

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was born of a stern Puritan line in Salem, Massachusetts, the grimmest of all the Puritan communities. He was a graduate of Bowdoin College and lived much of his life at Concord and Salem.

He was a happy child, by nature, but he was influenced by stern family traditions and the loneliness of his early environment. After the death of his silent, melancholy father, his mother brought up the children in the utmost seclusion. The decaying old seaport of witch-haunted memories in which he lived, also impressed profoundly the lively imagination of the solitary boy. All these influences may be traced in the stories of Hawthorne with their strong moral tone and their delicate but often rather morbid fancies.

Hawthorne, because of his timidity and self-depreciation, did not begin his real literary career until rather late. We owe it to his sympathetic yet practical wife that he ever published his writings. She recognized the value of the stories he had written and believed in his genius. Since he loathed the duties of the custom house where he was employed as an official, Mrs. Hawthorne urged him to give up this occupation and devote himself to his true vocation, that of a writer, in spite of its uncertainties as to success and financial returns.

Hawthorne's imagination early led him into the field of romance; that is, he told tales full of strange and fanciful adventure, revealing the ideal or spiritual side of human nature. According to some of our best critics, Hawthorne is said to be our greatest romantic novelist.

Feathertop

176, 1. Louis le Grand or the Grand Monarque, was Louis XIV, king of France from 1638-1715.

185, 1. Eldorado. An imaginary country, rich in gold and jewels, which the early Spanish explorers believed to exist somewhere in the New World.

191, 1. Norman blood. A sign of aristocracy. The Norman-French conquered England in the eleventh century and became the aristocracy of England.

SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (Page 203)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the eldest son of the artist, Charles Doyle, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in May, 1859. He was educated in England, Scotland, and Germany. In 1885 he received the degree of M.D. from Edinburgh University. Immediately afterward he began to practice as a physician, but although he attained no little success in this profession, it is as a writer that all the world knows him.

He made his first real appearance as an author in 1887 when he published A Study in Scarlet. It was in this novel that the wonderful Sherlock Holmes was introduced to the public. Dr. Doyle soon attained immense popularity by his narratives of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which were first published in the Strand Magazine. This popular character returned at intervals in several other novels: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, and others.

These ingenious stories of the success of the imperturbable Sherlock Holmes in detecting crime and disentangling mystery have become known wherever the English language is spoken. It is a notable thing to be able to create a character that is known even by people who have never heard of the author, or who have never even read a book. Ask any little street lad who Sherlock Holmes is, and see what he answers.

It is regrettable, however, that people know Sir Conan Doyle entirely as the creator of Sherlock Holmes, when his best work has really been done in other novels, such as The Adventures of Brigadier Gerard, Rodney Stone, The White Company, and Beyond the City.

His late works include plays as well as numerous novels. It is noteworthy that in all his writings women have played but little part. His men characters, on the other hand, are many and varied, as well as sharply defined. As an author Conan Doyle has a wonderful gift of narrative, unusual imagination, fine constructive powers, and an effective style.

The Red-Headed League

203, 1. Sherlock Holmes. See biographical sketch of Conan Doyle.

206, 1. Freemason. A member of a secret order.

207, 1. Omne ignotum pro magnifico. All the unknown is as something wonderful.

221, 1. Sarasate. A famous Spanish violinist.

224, 1. Sleuth hound. Detective.

227, 1. The Sholto murder and the Agra treasure. This refers to another Sherlock Holmes story, The Sign of Four, which you may enjoy reading.

230, 1. Napoleons. French gold coins worth 20 francs each.

231, 1. Partie carrée. A party of four.

237, 1. L'homme c'est rien—l'œuvre c'est tout. Man is nothing, his work is everything.

SIR JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE (Page 238)

Sir James Matthew Barrie, one of the best loved of contemporary novelists and dramatists, was born in 1860 in Kirriemuir, Scotland. His formal education was completed at Edinburgh University. And although his mature life has been spent largely in England, his stories reflect the village and country life of his native and beloved Scotland.

J. M. Barrie, as he is usually called, is a person interesting but difficult to know because of the reserve and shyness of his race. He has a sweetness of nature and a joy in life born of sympathy and faith. All these characteristics, together with his whimsical humor, are part of his great charm. One cannot help loving the man as one reads about him or reads his stories. The mental picture of him which one receives is of a shy and meditative little man, inconspicuous of dress, getting over the ground with strides almost as long as himself, and with a face that one cannot meet without stopping to look after it.

Barrie's mother, Margaret Ogilvy, is really the heroine of practically all of his stories and plays. From her, this man, shy of women, has learned all he knows of her sex. This accounts in part for the goodness and purity in his works. From his mother, too, he inherited his whimsically gay vision of life. Thus, his plays and novels, so much purer than those of many of his contemporaries, are never dull, for they are lightened by his wit, his fanciful humor, and his love for humanity.

The man's genial satire and kindly humanity may be distinguished in the selection, "The Inconsiderate Waiter," which you will read in this collection. The lovable Barrie, with his tenderness for child life, his poetic fancy and whimsical invention, will be revealed to you more truly when you have read his novels, Sentimental Tommy, Tommy and Grizel, The Little Minister, The Little White Bird, and his play Peter Pan.

The Inconsiderate Waiter

239, 1. Chartreuse. A highly esteemed liqueur, which derives its name from the celebrated monastery of the Grand Chartreuse, in France, where it is made.

240, 1. The Derby. The most important annual horse race of England, founded in 1780 by the Earl of Derby and run at Epsom, in the spring.

ALPHONSE DAUDET (Page 266)

Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was a French humorist and satirist, who wrote novels, plays, and short stories. He was born in Provence in southeast France, a district of which he is typical in the warmth of his imagination. He lived for a time at Lyons but later went to Paris, where he came in contact with the literary artists of the capital.

Monsieur Daudet, like the moody, imaginative Hawthorne of America, was guided and influenced in his literary career by his wife, whose inspiring but practical mind guided his impulsive and impressionable nature into its best outlet.

As a writer Daudet is remarkable for the grace of his style and the keenness of his observations. Literary critics appreciate him, not only for his polished style, but also for his originality and insight into human nature.

The Siege of Berlin

266, 1. The Siege of Berlin. This is a story of the Franco-Prussian War, the war between France and Germany in 1870. War was declared in July and the opening battle was fought the first of August before the French had had time to complete their preparations. This battle, at Wissemburg, resulted in a heavy loss for the French troops.

The fighting during August of 1870 covered much the same ground contested during the World War. It is especially interesting to note that it was at Sedan that the French met their great defeat in September, 1870, and that Sedan was captured by the French shortly before the signing of the Armistice in November, 1918.

The battle of Sedan in 1870 meant the total defeat of the French army, and the Germans immediately began a four months' siege of Paris. After terrible suffering the city surrendered to the enemy in January, 1871.

The territory of Alsace-Lorraine lost by France to Germany in the war of 1870 was returned after the World War.

266, 2. Arc de Triomphe. Sometimes called the Arc de l'Etoile. The great triumphal arch at the head of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, begun by Napoleon to celebrate his victories and completed by Louis Philippe. After the Germans marched under it in triumph after the siege of Paris, chains were stretched across the roadway and the order was given that no one was to drive under the arch again until the lost provinces should be restored to France. In the great celebration on July 14, 1919, the armies of the victorious French and their Allies marched up the avenue under the Arc de Triomphe.

266, 3. A cuirassier of the First Empire. A cuirassier is a cavalryman whose body is protected by a cuirass, a piece of defensive armor, covering the body from neck to girdle, and combining a breastplate and a back piece. The First Empire was the Empire of France under Napoleon I, 1804-1814.

267, 1. Mac Mahon. The Marshal of France during the War of 1870.

269, 1. Mayence. The German town of Mainz, where one of the strongest German fortresses is located.

273, 1. Invalides. The Hôtel des Invalides is an establishment in Paris where French veterans are maintained at the expense of the state. Part of the building is a great military museum where trophies of war are exhibited. Among them are German guns captured in the World War. Napoleon is buried in the Dome des Invalides, a chapel in this building.

274, 1. The Tuileries. The palace of the French kings in Paris.

275, 1. Uhlans. Prussian cavalrymen.

SELMA LAGERLÖF (Page 276)

Selma Lagerlöf, who was born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1858, is the Swedish idol in literature. She has had a series of honors such as rarely have fallen to the lot of a woman novelist, the climax of which has been the winning of the Nobel prize. This enrolls her in a small group of authors of cosmopolitan interest—writers who belong to the whole world. Yet she is a woman who aspires to no prominence. She is modest, retiring, and unconscious of self.

No other Swedish writer of any period has so faithfully mirrored the soul of the Swedish people as has Selma Lagerlöf, nor has any other writer been so worshipped by her people. In her native province her work has sunk deep into the hearts of the people. The places and characters she has described have become so intimately associated with her stories and legends that the real names are constantly being confused with the fictitious ones she has given them in her Wonderful Adventures of Nils and Gösta Berling. Everywhere in Sweden one finds postal cards representing scenes from the Wonderful Adventures of Nils. This is an enchanting fairy story that may be compared to the fairy classics of Grimm and of Hans Andersen. In it fact and fancy are delicately interwoven with the geography and natural history of Sweden.

Miss Lagerlöf's popularity is not confined exclusively to Scandinavian countries, however. In Germany, Russia, and Holland, she is more widely read than almost any other foreign writer. In recent years, moreover, she has conquered France, and since the bestowal of the Nobel prize, she has become a world figure. It is since that event that she has become known in America, though she is not yet read here so much as she deserves.

She might well be called the founder of a new school of literature. She turned away from the general tendency of the European literature of her day, a tendency to morbid realism, or dealing with the ugliest facts of life. Her method is to throw into obscurity human frailties and vices and turn the light on what is biggest and strongest in people. This idealistic tendency may be readily traced in the story of "The Silver Mine," which is given in this text. It was for Optimism in Literature that Selma Lagerlöf was given the Nobel prize.

The Silver Mine

276, 1. Gustav the Third. King of Sweden, 1771-1792.

277, 1. The army was so filled with traitors. The country of Sweden at this time was distracted by the intrigues of the rival political parties of Hom and Gyllenborg, known as "Caps" and "Hats."

290, 1. Given me a deep mark on my forehead. This refers to the Bible story of Cain's murder of his brother Abel. Genesis 4:3-15.

SUGGESTED READING LIST OF SHORT STORIES

• Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell (Mrs. Coburn)
• Sick-a-bed Lady. Title Story and "The Happy Day"
• Aldrich, Thomas Bailey
• Marjorie Daw and Other People. Title Story
• Two Bites at a Cherry. "Goliath"
• Allen, James Lane
• The Flute and the Violin. Title Story
• Andrews, Mary Raymond Shipman
• The Perfect Tribute
• Joy in the Morning
• Barrie, Sir James Matthew
• Two of Them. Title Story
• A Window in Thrums
• Balzac, Honoré
• Chouans. "A Passion in a Desert"
• Bunner, Henry Cuyler
• Short Sixes. Title Story and "Love Letters of Smith"
• Butler, Ellis Parker
• Pigs is Pigs. Title Story
• Cable, George
• Old Creole Days
• Canfield, Dorothy (Mrs. Fisher)
• Hillsboro People
• The Real Motive
• Coppée, François
• Tales by Coppée. "The Substitute"
• Cutting, Mary Stewart
• Little Stories of Married Life
• Little Stories of Courtship
• Davis, Richard Harding
• The Man Who Could Not Lose. "The Consul"
• Somewhere in France. Title Story
• Gallagher and Other Stories. Title Story
• Ranson's Folly. "The Bar Sinister"
• Deland, Margaret
• Old Chester Tales
• Dr. Lavendar's People
• Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan
• Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
• Adventures of Brigadier Gerard
• Ferber, Edna
• Emma McChesney & Co.
• Cheerful by Request
• Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins
• The Copy Cat
• A New England Nun
• The Wind in the Rose Bush
• Fox, John
• Christmas Eve on Lonesome. Title Story
• Gale, Zona
• Friendship Village
• Friendship Village Love Stories
• Garland, Hamlin
• Main Traveled Roads
• Other Main Traveled Roads
• Hale, Edward Everett
• The Man Without a Country
• Harris, Joel Chandler
• Tales of the Home Folks in Peace and War
• Harte, Francis Bret
• The Luck of Roaring Camp. Title Story, "Tennessee's Partner," and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat"
• Hawthorne, Nathaniel
• Twice Told Tales. "The Great Carbuncle" and "The Minister's Black Veil"
• "Henry, O."
• The Four Million
• The Voice of the City. "The Memento" and "While the Auto Waits"
• "Hope, Anthony"
• Dolly Dialogues
• Comedies of Courtship
• Jewett, Sara Orne
• Tales of New England
• Kelly, Myra
• Little Citizens
• Wards of Liberty. "A Soul above Buttons"
• Little Aliens
• New Faces
• Kipling, Rudyard
• Life's Handicap. "Betram and Bimi," "The Man Who Was," and "Without Benefit of Clergy"
• Second Jungle Book. "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi"
• The Phantom Rickshaw. "The Man Who Would Be King"
• The Day's Work. "The Brushwood Boy" and "William the Conqueror"
• Lagerlöf, Selma
• The Girl from the Marsh Croft
• Martin, Helen
• The Betrothal of Elypholate. Title Story
• Maupassant, Guy de
• The Odd Number. "A Piece of String" and "The Necklace"
• Mayo, Katherine
• The Standard Bearers
• Justice to All
• O'Brien, Edward J. (Editor)
• Best Short Stories of 1917
• Best Short Stories of 1918
• O'Brien, Fitz
• The Diamond Lens. Title Story, "What Was It? A Mystery," and "The Thing"
• Page, Thomas Nelson
• In Old Virginia
• Poe, Edgar Allan
• Works. "The Gold-Bug," "The Cask of Amontillado," "The Purloined Letter," and "The Pit and the Pendulum"
• Rinehart, Mary Roberts
• Bab, Sub-Deb
• Shute, Henry
• The Misadventures of Three Good Boys
• Stevenson, Robert Louis
• Merry Men. "Markheim" and "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"
• New Arabian Nights. "A Lodging for the Night" and "The Sire de Maletroit's Door"
• Stockton, Frank
• The Lady or the Tiger? Title Story
• Tarkington, Booth
• Penrod
• Penrod and Sam
• Monsieur Beaucair
• "Twain, Mark"
• The Jumping Frog
• Van Dyke, Henry
• The Blue Flower. Title Story and "The Other Wise Man"
• White, Stewart Edward
• Blazed Trail Stories
• White, William Allen
• The Court of Boyville
• Wister Owen
• Philosophy Four. Title Story

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

The Gift of the Magi

1. Does the introduction of "The Gift of the Magi" awaken your interest at once?

2. Della and Jim are very poor. Why is neither their home nor Della in her shabby clothes, ugly or sordid?

3. Do Jim and Della seem like real people you have known? What makes them so happy in spite of their being poor?

4. Is there something about this simple story that is beautiful and that would be true for people ages ago or years from now? How would you put this idea in words?

5. Were you prepared for the surprise ending of the story? Read over the story and see if O. Henry had really prepared from the very beginning for such an ending and yet had kept the reader from knowing.

6. After reading the Introduction, would you say that "The Gift of the Magi" is a true short story?

A Reward of Merit

1. Look over the story "A Reward of Merit" and gather up the real story or plot and see how briefly you can relate it in your own words.

2. Does the fact that the story is told so largely through the conversation of the boys make it more interesting to you?

3. Try writing a story of some escapade, adventure, or exciting event in which the story is largely told, and the characters revealed, by means of conversation between two boys or two girls.

4. Would you say that Mr. Tarkington, the writer of this story, has a sense of humor? Give instances of humor in the story.

5. In what ways does the story show a knowledge of boy life?

"American, Sir!"

1. What type of story would you call this?

2. The setting of the main incident brings before you what part of the Great War? Were any of your friends in that country? In the ambulance service anywhere? Locate on the map the places named in the story.

3. Find in the story some of the dramatic, graphic scenes that John has sketched for his uncle. See how well you can fill them out and express them. Why would this story make a good play?

4. What three people does Mrs. Andrews make real and likable to you? Does Uncle Bill conceal his real character? Of what other character in this book does he remind you?

5. Some of you may be able to write a stirring story of the brave deed of some real or imaginary ambulance driver for the Red Cross in Italy or France during the Great War.

John G.

1. What gives you the thrill in the story "John G."?

2. Does this story of Miss Mayo's gain or lack in interest, because it is founded on fact?

3. Who would you say was the main character or real hero of the story?

4. Where in the story would you say was the most critical and the most interesting point?

5. Could this incident make the foundation for a good moving picture scenario?

6. Write either a story or a scenario of an exciting and dangerous adventure in which a dog or a horse is the hero.

Friends

1. In what are you most interested in this story?

2. Is the setting of the story in the school or at home?

3. Do Mrs. Mowgelewsky and Morris seem like any living persons you have known?

4. Do you think the children in the first grade would like Miss Bailey as a teacher? What makes her a lovable person?

5. How do this story and others by Myra Kelly that you may have read, show that she sympathized with and understood these American children of foreign birth?

A Camping Trip

1. Does the interest of this story lie more in the nature or out-of-doors setting, or in the action or plot?

2. Note the number of birds mentioned in the story. How many of them do you know?

3. What are some of the beautiful or poetic pictures of nature given by the author? Did the scenes have any effect on the imagination and feeling of these real boys and add to their enjoyment?

4. Have you ever had a camping experience? In what ways was your experience like that of the boys in this story?

5. Write a story of a camping or other out-of-doors trip in which the characters have some narrow escape and which contains some description of nature.

The Thread without a Knot

1. Has the recent World War made any difference in the current idea in America that only foreign universities, art schools, and works of art are of any real value? Why did Mr. Harrison good-humoredly assent to this really false idea, when he was seeking higher education?

2. When does the story become really interesting to you? Why?

3. What American characteristics does Mr. Harrison illustrate?

4. Although the English girl's story is not told directly, can you gather what she thought of the young American? Does it remind you of what the French people thought of our American boys when they went to France during the recent war?

5. What characteristics of the English does the frank American bring out in his talk with the English girl?

6. What was the motive of the young American's conduct toward the English girl? Why was the American blameless, or do you blame him?

7. Is the slang this young man uses characteristic of Americans in general?

Chu Chu

1. Where is this story located? What are some of the things that give it the atmosphere or flavor of California?

2. Is "Chu Chu" anything like "John G."? Tell the likenesses and differences between the two horses. Which do you admire more?

3. Why are there so many Spanish words in this story?

4. Do you think Consuelo is like other Spanish girls you have read or heard about? In what ways is she different from American girls?

5. Is the love story, or the action of the horse, the most interesting incident in the story?

6. Read the Introduction and see what Bret Harte added to the idea of the short story. Does it apply to this story?

Feathertop, A Moralized Legend

1. What do the words "moralized legend" mean? What is the moral of the story?

2. This is a fanciful story. Do you like it as well as "The Gift of the Magi" or "A Reward of Merit" in which there are real people?

3. Does Hawthorne show his personality and boyhood training in this story as much as Mr. Garland showed his in "A Camping Trip"? (See biographical sketches.)

4. What do you think was the word that Feathertop whispered in Mr. Gookin's ear?

5. Which do you think more difficult to write, a story wholly from the imagination like "Feathertop," or one from experience like "A Camping Trip"?

The Red-Headed League

1. Do you think this a good detective story? What makes it better than the cheap ones you perhaps have bought at the news stands?

2. What do you know about Sherlock Holmes? (See biographical sketch of Conan Doyle.)

3. Where did the most thrilling moment come? Was this the place where you saw how the story was going to turn out? What might you call this point?

4. Relate a mystery from real life that you have heard of or read in a newspaper that is just as hard to find out about as those Conan Doyle explains in his stories.

5. When Sherlock Holmes explains how he knew things about people, as, for instance, how he knew that Wilson was a Freemason, does it all seem simple enough to you? Why then are there not more good Sherlock Holmeses?

6. Relate some sly bits of humor you find in the story.

The Inconsiderate Waiter

1. What kind of humor is shown in this story? Is it different from "A Reward of Merit"?

2. Is there anything touching in the story?

3. What do you think are the real qualities of the narrator of this story? Why does he try to conceal his real self?

4. What do you think was Mr. Barrie's purpose in making this waiter of an exclusive English club show himself to be a real human being?

5. After you have read the biographical sketch of Mr. Barrie, see if you can discover anything in the story that shows his personality.

The Siege of Berlin

1. What is it that holds your attention in this story, is it the character of the fine old soldier, the story itself, or both?

2. What qualities of a soldier does M. Jouve show to the last?

3. What noble qualities does war bring out in the women of a nation, as revealed by the granddaughter of the old soldier?

4. What recent attack on Paris does this one make you think of? In what ways is it similar? How different?

5. How near did the Germans get to Paris in the World War?

6. What places mentioned in this story were strategic points around which great and critical battles were fought during the World War?

7. Read the notes on this story carefully, and from what you have read or can find out from soldier friends who were in the late war, see how the battles of the Franco-Prussian War and the World War differed. For instance, were the same people victorious in each case?

8. Write a war story, using the most thrilling incident you have heard of the World War. Make the characters real and show some noble quality in them, such as heroism, generosity, or human kindness.

The Silver Mine

1. In what ways does this story of a hidden treasure differ from other stories of hidden treasure, such as "Treasure Island," for example?

2. Does the character of the minister as revealed in the story, so good and fine, yet so plain and humanly near to his people, make you think of any other minister you have known or read about?

3. How does the sacrifice of the minister influence the king to noble action?

4. In what ways do these Swedish people differ in their faults and good qualities or any of their human ways from the people of any other nation?