The Spirit of an Illinois Town: In Three Parts. Part Two

ON THE WEST SIDE.

FRIENDSHIP between man and woman is so little tolerated or understood in our country that I avoided giving Trail City any occasion to call me Kate Keene’s suitor. She herself had an instinct against lovers, so singular in a maid of her age that it was talked about. But she had an equally strong instinct for comradely, and every soul in the place was bound to Kate Keene by some invisible cord.

In the dark of every morning I heard her slip downstairs to begin her daily tasks. How hard those tasks were I do not know, the domestic machinery never appearing, though for a fortnight after our compact I had mere glimpses of her.

I took to selecting books from my shelves, and leaving them with the conspicuous appeal “ Read ” on my table. They might or might not be appropriated by Mrs. Jutberg. But the venture proved lucky, as a small marker lettered 舠Kate,舡 forgotten in one of the returned books, convinced me.

Autumn glooms and howling winds came on. The sodden prairie was raw and horrible, worse than a steamer-deck in a fog. Above seas of black and waxy mud rushed a river of wind, drowning human hope. In this bleakness everything took a trivial and contemptible guise. One said to himself, “ What are these fools doing out on an open plain ? Why don’t they hunt shelter? ” My life hung so torpidly on me, I thought every day of suicide. If there was ever man or woman born into this world who won through it without feeling sometimes impelled to take the old pagan short cut out, that man or woman must have been a stupid brute. Like the sender of anonymous letters, the incipient suicide is often the person you least suspect. I did my work ; and my daily bread was something to be thankful for. But the dead level of that plain and its pursuing blackness were too typical.

On some days I could not put out of my mind a sodden and neglected little grave in a foreign churchyard, undecorated by the beaded flowers and wreaths and crowns which defied weather and memorialized grief around it. A farmer leading his freckle - nosed boy by the hand was a taunting reminder that some wretches are denied the commonest comforts of the commonest lot.

Then I began to think of winter rime on European villages. Paris, London, Rome, Florence, called me, with all their art treasures, all their variety of life in which a man might lose himself. Homesickness for things American passed into astonishment that man is held to his own place on earth by a cord he cannot break even in a migratory age. His life seems kneaded into that land, and he longs for it when he is away with a reasonless passion that has nothing to do with its adaptability to his physical health or the building of his fortunes. But I was too poor to turn eastward again. The petty treadmill of a country newspaper had me for its automatic motor.

It was surprising to see what interest Sam took in the thing. Nothing pleased him better than leading a crowd of old rattlesnake-fighters in to see our type ; and when we hazarded a small steamplant in place of the old hand-press, and began to feel our way to a daily, he was as wild as a Pottawatomie.

The whole town rushed like a comet along the plane of improvement. Its local political spirit was intense. The salary of mayor and aldermen was fixed rigidly at fifty cents per head a year. When a man was nominated for one of these offices, however, he poured out his own private means like water on the expenses of an election rather than suffer the odium of defeat. The town had contempt for any one who failed in any way to “ get there.”

Feuds and cross-purposes existed, but these were all new and swiftly changing, like the clouds over the prairie. No families had hereditary enemies. By the time Sam had me adjusted to the fact that Colonel York and Mr. Babcock were in a furious tug over grain elevators or the placing of the school funds, they had passed again through the amicable process which he called kissing and making up. We had to steer our bark very carefully among breakers, and lean to this side or that with discretion ; but Sam had the discretion and did the leaning.

Many good fellows thought I was sickly, and came into the office to cheer me up. One jolly, roseate old rascal, with tufts of hair like wool above his ears, swapped daily jokes about his nomination for county coroner.

“ You ’ll give me employment if I get there,” said he.

“ But why do you want to sit on such objects as I am ? ”

“ Well, I ’ll tell you. editor : my aim is to get into some business where there won’t be any more kicking. Now, the man I deal with as coroner won’t kick : he can’t. His friends won’t: the State pays the expenses. I’m getting on, and peaceful, soothing employment like this is what I want for my old age.”

Sometimes the conviction stung me that I was wasting my prime in this eddy, with people whose thoughts could never be identical with mine. “ It is not my place,” my soul said. Every morning when I rose, the sickening distaste swept over me. And a man who submits to disadvantage maims his own spirit. Yet there I lay prostrate, like a tangled horse, who after vain efforts to rise sinks flat, with his head on the paving. And suppose I did stand on my feet once more, for whom should I do anything? All around were men with set faces and tense purpose, their eyes fixed on better futures for their children and an old age of plenty. I could work with mechanical execution, but not as a creative mind.

Blessed is that transcriber with electrical touch who makes his page crackle and sparkle at the very points where we might blindly miss the meaning. So much that happens to us seems not worth setting down. I have tallied these blank days as they were tallied against me. I simply lost them without living. Sallow northern light fell across my page while I wrote, and rain drove against our office windows. Esther, our periodical scrubwoman, progressed on her knees as far as my chair ; and when I had to move, her infant nephew, whom she called “ buddy,” — a contraction of “ brother,” — always improved the opportunity to get on my lap. She kept him very clean, and of this I was glad, on his adoption of me. The smell of dirty little boy on a wet day surpasses every other rankness. His pet and constant follower, a sand-hill crane of bluishgray plumage, would stalk after him and stand beside the desk, stretching himself up to overtop me as I sat, or stooping dejectedly to forage in the waste-basket. Esther told me she had sometimes seen cranes dancing real quadrilles at the edge of a slew: and the stately manners of this one, whose name was Jimmy, testified to some breeding. But he had been caught young, and deprived of courtly example at the very time when lank leg and neck were developing to the utmost, so he lacked the wild grace of his ancestors, and knocked things over with his feet, and convulsively tried to swallow whatever he could pick up with his bill.

Seeing that I regarded Jimmy without the animosity which was so often his portion, Esther explained : “I named him after my brother that was consumpted and died. My brother used to go steppin’ around slow, with his hands in his pockets, somethin’ like a crane. Jimmy is a comfort to me, if he does dirty the floors and chaw clothes on the line. It takes hard work to support my brother’s children, now he ’s gone. But you ought to seen the style they used to put on. His wife had as much as seven hundred dollars left to her. I never got none of it: it come from her folks. And she did n’t save a cent of that money. I wanted them to get a home. But allwools was n’t too good for them then. How that family did dress ! And they went into s’ciety and spent it all. Now she’s a widow, with five children for her and me to keep, and she can’t do much.”

“ Were you never married yourself, Esther? ” I inquired.

“ Oh yes,” she responded cheerfully, lifting a liver-colored face in which pleasant eyes were set, “ two or three times. But nary one was any account. So I turned them off, and took in my brother’s folks.”

Jimmy the crane, having begun hopefully on a ball of twine in the wastebasket while Esther talked, now caught her eye and repented. He offered no resistance to disgorging when Esther picked up the remainder of the ball to unwind him, and she on her part brought link after link of cord from his midst, until it seemed that Jimmy’s intestines were being spun forth through his open bill. Having parted with the end of the twine, — which I pressed upon Esther’s acceptance, as we no longer needed it in the office, — Jimmy shook his wings, and uttered a resigned plaintive sound which might be interpreted “ Koort.”

“Jimmy’s a great hand for string,” remarked Esther ; “ and he miscalculates about what he eats like folks miscalculate about other things. Folks does a heap of things there ain’t no need of. My mother, she used to part us children’s hair on the side instead of in the middle ; she said she wanted to save the middle partin’ till we was growed, so it would be new and nice. But now it ain’t the fashion for women to part their hair at all, and I might as well have saved myself from bein’ laughed at so much at school. I think about these things sometimes when I’m unwindin’ Jimmy, and I wish everybody was as easy to manage in their innards.”

When I told Sam this adventure of Jimmy’s he exploded with a similar wish regarding my unmanageable and unseen interior. I was a trial to him at that time, sulking in retreat while I should have identified myself with the Dancing Club, the Billiard Club, the Lyric Club, the Wilderness Club ; for club life began early to mould the society of the ambitious town. The Tennis Club was temporarily suspended until summer should again permit nets to be stretched and courts to be marked out. I heard even of amateur plays which outdid traveling barnstormers in the little theatre on the west side.

Nor did I take that interest in funerals which Sam, who mourned departed friends with policy and devotion, would have had me take.

“ Man, you act as if you thought you’d never die. How would you like to have people slight your funeral?”

“ What difference would it make to me ? ”

“ It would make a tremendous difference to me whether folks came to mine or not,” declared my partner. “ I ’m setting my stakes for a regular boom when my turn comes. It often brings the tears to my eyes to think how I shall be mourned and shan’t be there to see.”

I thought it likely Sam would not be disappointed of his boom, when I saw how Trail City packed a house to which he dragged me where an obscure dead citizen lay. The hideous drenching weather had passed, and silver mists and burnished frostiness now made the morning landscapes glorious, so that to walk abroad was a delight. Yet this did not account for the hushed multitudinous gathering. I had before seen all Trail City on the old Pottawatomie road leading to the cemetery, bearing through sheets of rain and deep mud-ruts some old shell of a body that was really no loss to the community. But at that time I had not learned the great neighborly heart of an Illinois town.

I saw Kate Keene’s hat and jacket beyond us in one of the crowded rooms, and they made a spot of living interest for me while the minister’s voice labored like a locomotive up a steep grade with the character of the departed.

“ Our brother was — strictly honest. Nobody can gainsay that,”he challenged.

舠 He had n’t sense enough to overreach anybody, — hardly enough to come in when it rained,” wrote Sam in a private notebook for my eye. The good people around watched him respectfully as he made record of local eloquence.

“ Our brother’s health, or rather his lack of health,舡 proceeded the laboring advocate, 舠 prevented his greatly distinguishing himself in active life.”

“ Too lazy to draw his breath,” wrote Sam.

“ His bereaved family ” —

“ Relieved family,” wrote Sam.

舠Come along,” he whispered, when the wearied crowd were permitted to stir, and I would have escaped from the file. “ It ’s the custom of this country to put yourself on review when you go to a funeral. You won’t get any credit if you don’t pass around and view the remains. Do you think that widow is n’t jealously counting noses, and tallying against the absentees ? The less she has to bury, the more fuss she wants made over it.”

We duly paid our last tribute to that which had a dignity denied to us who gazed, and I confided to my partner, as we reached the sidewalk, that the occasion had been profitable in suggesting notes for his own obituary. “ I will do you up something like this : ‘ The Honorable Sham Peevey, who deceived no one by dropping the h, has gone to his long rest, and we may now enjoy a little ourselves. His aim in life was to make his generation serve him to the utmost. Popularity was his religious creed. His favorite occupation was laying flattery on living men with a trowel ’ ” —

“ Hold on ; I never basted you,” remonstrated Sam. — “ ‘ but for dead men, who no longer represented votes, he had nothing but a scalpel.’ ”

“ Nobody saw it but bis ill-natured partner, though.”

“ ‘ He was good natured because he had a digestion proof against gormandizing. Energy he did possess, and a boundless desire to boom himself, but being constituted without an immortal soul, his chances for distinction in the next world are small.’ ”

“ He never neglected his friends, however, and he has something pigeonholed for an emergency which may overtake his dear partner, Seth Adams. I ’ll do you justice, my boy. It runs like this :

‘ His noble form, six feet in height and two inches in width, enshrined the most genial nature in Trail City. But he kept it all to himself. My friends, no corporation in the State of Illinois would miss Seth Adams more than Trail City if Trail City only knew he had been here. Traveled, scholarly, of a culture so sensitive that it could find companionship only in the silence of Esther’s crane, what might he not have done in this community if he had only quit locking himself up in his own room ! So light a vehicle overloaded with soul will probably never again slip through Trail City without making any noise.’ ”

While we chaffed each other the pushing crowd separated us, — Sam letting himself be carried off with a man he wanted to dun, and I consciously waiting for our housemate; for I might walk with her in sight of the town after a funeral, like any other acquaintance.

Mrs. Jutberg did not interfere with, or direct, or in any way chaperon her niece, varying her indifference only by outbursts of unexpected rage. To see the girl try to avoid giving offense, and keep to a narrow path unaided, harrowed me as it must have harrowed any man who approved of conventual care over girls. The protection Kate had was nothing but brutal abandonment. The young town’s innocence was in fact her only bulwark. A dialogue which we sometimes overheard took this form :

“ Aunt, do you care if I go to the Club this evening ?”

“ No, I don’t care where you go.”

“ But you have no objections ? You have nothing for me to do here ?舡

“If I had, I’d let you know.”

“ Yes, I thought you would. And Lucia York’s party will call for me. If we are late, I can stay all night at the Yorks’, and not disturb you.”

“You’d better,” signified Mrs. Jutberg.

With large patience which would have been unnatural in any but a child trained in Kate’s hard school, she would then thank her guardian for the privilege. I wondered where she had learned this gentle deference to elders so unworthy of it. The remarkable man who looked like me rose more and more in my opinion, as I reflected on what he had produced between his bouts in the ditch ; for as far as my acquaintance with the maternal stock had gone, I rejected it as having no part in the result called Kate.

Mrs. Jutberg certainly bad times of exaltation and lightness, but she was not on speaking terms with any neighbor, and treated the world as in conspiracy against her. Several times she arraigned Sam and me for dark and deadly clippings in our paper. The most innocent and open human selfishness she translated as malign influence directed against her; and we heard her accuse Kate of plots and deep - laid schemes. She would nurse these ideas for days, and then suddenly explode them with disastrous force. I never saw Mrs. Jutberg dislocated by laughter; she came to grief through temper. Yet this selftormentor was the most exquisite of that school of old-fashioned housekeepers who cannot tolerate servants, and make a fine art of living ; and she would sit up night after night with any sick enemy. When her benevolence passed a moderate limit, however, I could see a gentle uneasiness appear in Mr. Jutberg; he anticipated a recoil, and he was seldom wrong.

I lifted my hat and fell into step with Kate Keene in the midst of the dispersing crowd. I cannot now tell what her features were like, speech or expression so mobilized them ; but she affected me as the only individual in all that crowd, The best companion in the world is a woman capable of great friendship whose mind does not run to love and marriage. She had no self-consciousness. The awkwardness of late childhood was just passing like a discord into virgin harmony. And as I walked beside her the thought came over me that I too was young, really little beyond my boyhood, I was not twenty-eight years old.

“ Death is made a very disgusting trial to a man by the customs we have,” I said to her. “ When we die we ought simply to disappear, as if dropped through a hole in the crust. Survivors missing us could then say with some respect and awe,

‘ He’s gone under.’ ”

“ Perhaps it will be that way for you and me. I have often thought it would be fine to have a bureau of death in every town or on city street corners, where poor wretches who could no longer bear life might drop it ” —

“ Enter without money, and disappear without a funeral.”

舠 Yes ; in some nice painless chemical way that leaves no traces, — the whole responsibility resting on the person, who decides for himself.”

I have had the same thought,” and we looked at each other with the surprise of meeting in a discovery.

“ Do you believe it would be very wicked ? ” inquired Kate.

“ I believe it would be very civilized.”

“ But many people would rush to the place in a passion of disappointment 舡 —

“ And stop at the door. Only those who really needed to die would ever go in.”

“ I have seen times when I would have gone in,” said Kate.

“ You ? ”

“ Yes. Those who feel deeply would be always at that door ; my father would have been lost to me years before he was. We used to talk about it. He made a sketch once that he called A Death Bureau, but he never printed it.”

“ I made a sketch on the same theme last week, and called it The Ready Door ; and if pushed, I shall print mine.”

Again Kate and I looked at each other with astonishment at the family resemblance in mental states.

“ Don’t print it, because some one might read it who would make a ready door for himself ; and after he was dead he would be so sorry. Now I am older, I can see there is danger of our turning around at the other side of the grave and wishing to come back to finish what we were made for.”

“ But so few of us are made for anything. We are accidents.”

舠 No,” said the girl, her voice softening ; 舠no, father, we all mean something. But some of us are a long time finding out what. When you really know what you are here for and how to take hold to do it, it ’s grand to live. You can be full of joy when you are most miserable. Now I have found this out, —the preachers never told me : when you cannot stand trouble any longer, pray to God Almighty and say, ‘ O God Almighty, I thank you for everything, — I thank you for everything ! ’ That takes the bitterness away, and makes you feel calm and as if you could wait and see what it all meant.”

“ I neither pray nor go to church.”

“ Church is everywhere,” said Kate, “ and you have to pray. You pray whether you know it or not.”

Two tall boys pushed by us, with critical recognition of a girl overheard counseling prayer. Kate gave them a nod and a smile, and I did not think she noticed their grins until she said to me, watching their hulking backs, “ Poor fellows, they are yet in cattlehood, and have to pray with a kind of lowing.”

舠 A great many of us are yet in cattlehood. and have n’t learned even the lowing.”

“ A man like you ought to have got more out of his troubles. Such as those yonder depend on men like you to do their thinking and direct their salvation. I have heard my father say that.”

The family tendency toward religion, which in Mrs. Jutberg took the form of hysteria, had received an impetus from her father.

“ It always seemed to me a childish thing to call on the Lord in trouble, and forget him at other times.”

“ Why, no one forgets,” said Kate.

舠 You can’t forget. It goes on all the time, without words. When I am reading to people, I am praying with all my soul, ’O God Almighty, please let your light shine through me now.’舡

“ What do you read to people? ”

“ Many different things.” She turned her innocent face full upon me. “ I am going to read in public for my living when I am of age.”

This, then, was her ambition. The matter was settled, with sublime indifference to obstacles; and my heart ached for her.

“ Have you had training ? ”

“ Only what my father gave me. But he said I must learn housekeeping with my aunt until I am eighteen. For when you know housekeeping you have a trade to fall back on, as the Jews always brought up their children to have.”

I secretly admired the Israelitish wisdom of my double, and intimated that she must not be disappointed at having to fall back upon her trade.

“ Oh, I should n’t mind going as housemaid or cook in a city while I watched for my chance,” said Kate. “ I don’t mind work ; it’s beautiful. There ’s such satisfaction in making everybody comfortable. But I can do a better thing ; and my father said I must do my best.”

“ It will be very hard to make a place for yourself as a public reader, Kate.”

“ I know it will, but I shall get engagements when the time comes.”

And when I saw her radiant patience and confidence I could not say another word. Could I tell her how nearly impossible it was, without stage traditions and training, influence, means, or protection, to enter a career so nearly allied to the actor’s, that closest profession in the world ? Could I show her that not one aspirant in a thousand who really gained the boards ever rose to distinction ? Could I threaten her with the coldness of empty halls and theatres, and hard-hearted landlords who would seize baggage for unpaid bills ?

The pessimism of a cosmopolite was so strong in me that I did some lying awake and suffering on account of the disappointment in store for this poor child, who deserved so much better of fate. I had no influence, no money, was of no use to her myself. This vicarious despondency, which oppressed me greatly, must have lasted two or three weeks, for winter had struck us with what the natives called a blizzard, when Sam walked into the office one morning and informed me that I would go to the Wilderness Club with him that evening. I remember the snow ground under wheels with a scream like little bells, and when I went to the railway stations for items the north wind blew the crystals like white dust. There was a fog over all the whiteness, — dry, the very lacework of smoke-mist; and frost flowers and trees decorated our windows. Everything was so full of electricity that hair crackled, and a little “ tic ” of a shock went through you when you touched metal. It was several degrees below zero, and I had merely unbuttoned and thrown back my overcoat, though our stove simmered in red heat.

Our postal-card correspondence was before me, items gathered by rural helpers, and headed with the names of their respective centres, — “ Plum Ridge,” “Prairie Dog Hollow,” “Rattlesnake Corner,” “Big Slew,” “ Fidelity Schoolhouse,” and many others. It gave one a neighborly thrilling of the heart to read that “ Sam Cass is finishing the inside of his new house. That ’s right, Sam : first fix the cage, and then catch the bird.”

And “Jerry Fox always knowed a good thing when he seen it. Jerry has took in another half - section. He now has as fine a farm as any in this part of Illinois.”

“ We regret to learn that Eli Harness’s children is down with the whooping-cough. but health in this neighborhood is otherwise good, except Milton Singly’s wife, who is also bedfast.”

“Tade Saindon has took to Sundaying in Caxton. Wonder what the attraction is, and this neighborhood so full of pretty girls ? ”

And the human bitterness and envy betrayed in one which declared, “ Some of the boys around here are getting too smart. Because their fathers can afford to send them off to college, the airs they put on is enough to disgust sensible people.”

“ Well,” I said, looking up from this mass of local history, “ you have been threatening me with various clubs a long while. But why Wilderness ? In this bald world, where there is n’t a stump and the trees are transplanted sticks, why Wilderness ? ”

“ That’s Kate Keene’s favorite word ; she named the club. And you will go in full evening dress.”

“Sam, I have n’t unfolded my dress coat since I left Paris.”

“ ‘ Some of the boys around here are getting too smart,’ ” quoted my partner, taking up a postal card. 舠’Because they have been abroad, the airs they put on is enough to disgust sensible people.’ ”

“ Airs would be lost on Trail City. You only feel sorrow for a man who has been away from it and its boom. What’s the occasion at the Wilderness Club tonight ? ”

“ Something swell. And the girls’ mothers will be there to help them receive after the theatrical business. You think you ’re the only citizen that knows his little Shakespeare ; you ’ll find out there’s another of us. And it ends with a cosy ball,—good orchestra music. I want you to do the style for the firm ; you can do it better than anybody, when you want to.”

“ But I don’t think I want to.”

“ Come, old man. It’s in the theatre. Parquet floored over for dancing; women there working like mad now, decorating with flags and things ; and Mrs. Babcock has risked some of her finest greenhouse flowers in this zero weather. They ’re certain to freeze on the road ; but when a woman goes into a thing, she goes in. Folks will be there— friends of the Babcocks’ — from Chicago, and the Yorks have some of their people here from the East. Trail City is going to eclipse herself, and we’ve got to be in it with both feet.”

“ I have no desire to eclipse anything with my feet.”

“ Oh, come, Seth. This won’t do any longer. It ’s treating little Kate Keene badly, you know.”

“ Mhat has she to do with it? ”

舠 Why, she’s the star. And the whole thing is for charity, besides.”

” Why did n’t yon tell me it was a charity scheme ? ” I demanded, with instant change of resolution. “ That alters the matter. I ’ll come out for charity’s sake. What does Kate Keene do ? ”

“ Wait until you hear her. She does some things that nobody else ever did. I told you her father was an actor before he took to drinking and newspaper work, did n’t I ? ”

“ No, you never did.”

“Well, she’s a corker when you put her before an audience. I can’t tell you what it is. Sometimes I think it’s genius. She is n’t pretty, like Teresa Babcock or Lucia York — but confound Keene ! why did n’t he leave her better fixed ? I have often thought she would make a fine wife for a public man, with that magnetic pull.”

“Somebody has set it down, Sam Peevey, that the basest men will take the devotion of the best women as a matter of course, but I never saw such a disgusting illustration of it as you are.”

Sam laughed, shaking his ample flesh. But that evening I saw him shake more uncontrollably with weeping, for the hearty fellow always carried his emotions on the outside of his person.

The little theatre, with its single huge chandelier and row of footlights, was pretty with bunting and potted plants, and warm, and full. Chairs had been arranged upon the floored parquet, and here and in the two boxes and all around the walls spread a sea of faces. We saw Teresa Babcock turning her black eyes toward us for an instant, with the proprietary interest she certainly had in all young men ; the York girls surrounded by a court and smiling ; maids, matrons, men, children, a gathered population, humming like bees. All the girls had their mothers or other relatives to witness their social triumphs. I looked about for the sallow face of Mrs. Jutberg, and when Sam detected my quest he laughed at me for a dull sinner, to think she would trust her frail soul and anatomy in such a vortex of play-acting and dancing.

Then the daughter of the man I resembled came across the stage. Kate Keene looked like a Greek girl. How the slim creature in a short black dress that we were used to became a supple goddess I do not know. Perhaps her father’s stage traditions taught her that noble draping — of silk, or wool, or cotton, it might have been snow ; one was not conscious of material — which fell from her shoulders to the floor, and was bound under the breasts by a girdle. She had her hair encircled by a fillet. Her neck and undeveloped young arms were like veined marble. And I remember having an underthought of surprise that her wrists and hands were only expressive ; were not coarsened by the labor they daily performed.

When her transformation had taken hold of us, we found it was more than a trick of clothing ; she began to do with us as she pleased. If there were people in the audience whose prejudices she shocked by that peculiar simple dress, or who recalled her father to her disadvantage, they were found in their innermost hidings by a piercing sweetness of voice and presence that I cannot make known in words. It was a spell. None of the hollow tricks of the elocutionist broke it. She made people pass before our minds, magnifying our human experience. She was Perdita as white as a lily. She was Cleopatra with a GreekEgyptian face. With sudden angularity she was Betsey Trotwood chasing donkeys. She was a score of droll American forms which we recognized with shouts of laughter. She was age, youth, childhood, tears.

She left us ; and four times, five times, six times, seven times, we dragged her back to give us the joy of living a moment longer in the mimic world. And then the town of Trail, with its guests, stood upon its feet, and shouted and laughed and cried, until I felt something break away within me. I rushed from the theatre, leaving Sam standing on a seat, blubbering and waving his handkerchief.

I worshiped her. The light of God Almighty shone through her. I seemed to walk among thick - clustering stars, and the constellations overhead were near enough to pull down. My trouble was gone. A returning tide of life filled me with warmth like success. There was a lambent spirit who had brought the world, the whole world, into this small Illinois town. It made no difference that I had managed affairs badly in the past : they had brought me to her ; the main interest in life had been served.

I looked around the arctic expanse lost in the vastness of unseen horizon, and loved my town. The semaphore at the railway junction threw crimson lights across the snow, and a hissing of quiescent locomotives came to the ear. Let them plough through darkness on long quest to distant cities. I myself was landed. Through all this fury of exaltation there was no definite object before my mind. I did not know what I should do: the happiness of being was as much as I could endure.

It was bitter cold, but to the outermost layer of skin I tingled with resisting heat. My overcoat was on my arm. I breasted the awful breath of the Northwest. I was rushing to the limits of the western sidewalk when a panting behind made itself heard, and I turned to see in the dimness one of the hotel runners following me.

“You’re wanted,” he said, blowing on his hands and stamping. “ I ’ve hollered at you nearly ever since you left the theatre, but you did n’t hear.”

“ You don’t want me ? ”

“ Yes, sir, you ’re the man. There ’s a friend of yours at the house that sent for you.”

“Who is he?”

“ I was just to say it was a sick friend, and to tell you to hurry.”

The fact of my having a sick friend made little impression on me. As far as I paid attention to the fellow’s words his message was of little account. But I walked back with him, intending to look in at the hotel, where some passing bore was probably finding time hang heavy between trains. The merest acquaintances will seize on you in the name of friendship, when they have ends of their own to serve. What Sam would have called the sick-friend gag did not in the least deceive me. I expected to look in at some rubicund fellow with his feet and a box of cigars on the table.

The huge wooden hotel, mansard-roofed and many-lighted, was gaudy as a steamer in the waste of dim whiteness. That many-storied caravansary went up in fire years ago ; but I can see it yet as I stepped from the broad stone paving into the pretentious entrance, and passed vistas of billiard and smoking rooms, and the deserted long apartment which the management proudly called its saloon parlor, from which a weak piano usually tinkled.

The messenger led me upstairs, and though this was carrying the joke of the sick friend whom I expected to find in the smoking-room too far, I followed, still in the white mental heat that makes a man externally numb and indifferent. He rapped on a door at the front end of the corridor, and opened it for me to enter. A sift of well-known perfume met me. The door shut me in, and I stood face to face with my wife.

Mary Hartwell Catherwood.