Evening Star Newspaper, December 10, 1922, Page 78

™ cgq - Unexpected Assistance Comes When Young Married Couple the Hardest Corner on ELL. you've failed. That's: €6 b Poulter knows it and Heyward knows it and I/ kuow it. - Everybods knows it but| You. Why don’t you face it—" Elsie Sawyer paused in mid-breath; search- | ed mentally for further vitriol to pour into the wounds the kuives of | her wrath Were making—*“face it like | 2 man?” she finally concluded. Keene Sawyer made no reply: but he fixed his wife with his blank. bright gaxe. His silence seemed oniy to whip her to further frenzies. “The idea! The conceit of it! To think that you, Keene Sawyer. the Super- intendent of a baby motor-parts fac- tory in a little town in the midale | west, could come to New York and sweep all hefore you! Effloiency!' Of all the men I've ever known to think that you would be the one to take up efficiency! A man who can't put & stud in his own shirt cuff with- out fumbling it:" Again Keene Sawyer made no reply. “What you don't get.” Elsie's voice | whirled on, “but what 1 do ig that| we're small-towners—you and L As| for me, I'm proud of it. 1 hate this | city. Ihateit! Thateit! It wasbad enough in the winter, and now that summer has turned it into & hell-| hole— And to sit here night after| night, waiting for you to come home. Never going anywhere. Nobody to go anywhere with. Nowhere to go if there was. Well, you can do what vou please, but my mind is made up. | I'm not going to stay here any longer. I'm going home. You can £0 with me or follow or not—I don’t care.” She came to the end of the breath which had volleyed these boiling | words into the dead air of the mid- summer morning: stood panting. But vefore she caught it again, Keene Sawyer spoke. “If you g0, you go alene,” he said., But he said it tonelessly; and for the first time since their quarrel began, +he authority went out of his voice. Te arnse, casting mechanical. search- ing glances about the room. His eyes ' fell finally on the rim of a straw | hat, protruding from under last night's paper. He seized it: made toward the door. . P LSIE fixed her eyes on his retreat- ing back. Keene was a Hllgh!.' angular figure. nervously made, ner-. wously organized. His coat, fnlnnx‘ over his round shoulders, always| creased down the line of his spine. “Come home or not, T don't care what vou do!" she called after him, quick to perceive her advantage. All along <he had managed to keep her voice tow: but now a cutting shrilliness guve it something of the quality of a scream. “You'll find me all packed and my ticket bought for home. I'm through!” At this—! slim, nervous hand on the knob—Keene furned. For an in- stant he seemed about to speak. But ha bit off the word at the very rim +¢ his lips; threw his wife one of his haggard, hopeless glances; opened the door; slammed it: disappeared. For a while Elsie sat on the couch— | motionless, her slender figure bent; forward at aimost a right angle. her elbows supported by her knees, her face lying in her scooped hands. Then | the heat drove her to her feet. She arose and moved ssly over 1o the | windows, where she leaned out and| looked at the day. The high city.! pressing it into the Jong marrow box | which was her universe, almost shut! it away from her. The top of that box | was a p of sky, brassy with heat; | one end, a band of river that seemed to exude a hot, blue steam; the other the dusty clang and clatter of Broad- . Acroes the way, as though she looked into a gigantic mirror, rose the | south side of that box—a high apart- | ment, exactly like her own, sig-sagged | along its front with fire escapes. The | bottom was a slatternly street lined | with rows of ash barrels and garbage | cana. i Elsie’s weathe: sénse informed her | —it had become doubly acute after| nine months in the city—that today was going to be warmer than yesm-] day. Afd yesterday—the last three| days, hot. hotter, hottest—had seemed to scrape the very limits of her en-| durance. | Moving languidly, she walked through the small living rom to the| wsmaller bedroom, to, smallest of all, | | to be Elste Gammell herself. | had inherited not all but much of | | her mother's beauty: and not afl but Is Rounding the Journey. tion and make her resérvation the truth of the matter. | Two days and she would be fn Wee- | hall. nana Weenana Just | saying the word brought a sonsation of coolness, 8o sharp was its connotation of the town's wide-flung green quietude, tree-shadgwed and breese-invaded. | Involuntarily, Elsie stopped her fan | as though to substitute for its fever- ish gusts that clean westamn alr, dew- | chilled, pine-perfumed. | k% | H. that morning freshness of | Weenana! It lay, the baby city, on a ridge in a broad valley running | north and south. The valley funnel in co-operation with the lake first drew over them all stray northern breezes and then delicately mols- | tened them. The Weenanians were Justly proud of a city which main- tained a green crispness when sur- rounding towns sweltered, wfited, scorched, and finally parched. And Elsle Gammell, who had be- | come Elsle Bawyer, had held an ac- cepted position in the Weenana scheme of things. To be daughter of Rhoda Gammell, & famous, Invalid, and once the most beautiful woman in the town, was enough to account for thi in addition, to be the daughter of Dike Gammell, the bank president, the finest and perhaps the ablest man in town: and. finally, to cap it l"'i Elste much of her father's abllity. Plctures of her past self fitted be- fore Elsie's set oy as slowly she wielded the fan; gay aftermoona with “the bunch”—the small exclusive core of Weenana's youth—gathered on the plassa of the comfortable jig-sawed house. Mrs. Gammell, & mass of bil-: lowly chiffon in the hammock; Elsie herself in a crisp “smock;" the porch table set with a colony of cut-glass cups, the big cut-glass bowl, in which 'an ocean of fruit punch gradually melted & mountain of ice L great plates of sandwiches and cake e o o qriped awnings®® ¢ * Sometimes incongruously her father's lean, creused, weatherbeaten face in- truded its tired but always under- standing smile into the picture. Bhe would hes: herself asking him for money * ® ® Or he would be say- ing, “Go light this month, daughte Things rather heaped up on me lai month, you know.” Father was get- ting oid, she told herseif inconse- quently; there were white streaks in his blond hair. More often, however. appeared her | mother's face; still velvet-eyed, for she smeared artificial shadows of an astounding verisimilitude about her lashes. and still velvet-haired, for her dye was remarkably successful. Much more often than to her father, she seemed to listen to her mother, to the tales of her past love affairs, to her vicarious pride in her daughter's con- quests, her daughter's clothes. And zomehow all these monologues ended | in the same key: o “And when you do marry, Elsle; dear, I hope you'll pattern your mar- | ried life after mine and your father's. You can see what it 18 like—protect- ing devotion on his part, accepting| devotion on mine. No harsh words— | no quarrels, Of course, we've got good dispositions, both of us: but I've made it & point always to try to keep as young and as attractive ' — here Mrs. Gammell drew the inevit: ble hand mirror, always easily acc eible, from under the aftghan and studied herself—“as my ill health would permit. You don't think I've tailed, do you, Elsie child?" Falled? With their lovely home— and from the small-town point of view their- luxurious home—a focus | for every social impulse In Weenan Falled! Sometimes her father's tired faco intruded itself at this moment, but Elsie always gave her mother— and gave sincerely—the reassurance she craved. “And one thing more, Elsle, dear.” ! her mother would add, “remember this: Never step down from your ped- | estal, Elsle. Keep vourself always| an ideal. Be sure to insist after mar- | riage on all those .little attentions | he's given you before marriage. Why, | ur father waits on me by inches.” | But Keene Sawyer—— How did it happen that, out of all the men in | Weenana, she had chosen Keene Saw- | yer? For she had fallen swiftly fin | love with him, as soon as possible after that dance in which she sud-| the dinnig room. Everywhere on the ! turniture thick Tayers of dust hased | pea mer 1o Wemnane, Keome Bew e glossy surfaces; everywhere on the | y.ay the only one who was “different. bare painted floors thin rolls of dust.| ywhat constituted that difference it Uk the ghosts of mice, flurrled back | wag hard for her to say. Other peo- from her fanning skirts. In the first ply gald he was visionary. But he room the bed had not been made. In| had a kind of charm. Physically, the the dining room the half-eaten break- | difference was obvious-enough. His fast had not been cleared away; the!hair, in contrast with the slick locks stiffened orange husks, the dried-up ostmeal bowlis were empty. The eggs lay in ossified vellow pools be- sids strips of bacon, soldered by their own fat to the plate. Their undrunk coffes, cold and repellant, filled the cups. A little mound of toast mat under a film of melted butter. Her napkin, barely creased, on the table, Keene's, a balled wad In the corner, lay where they had been thrown when the quarrel—begun the night before and resumed on rising—reached its climax. She had let her housekeeping go in the tropical onslaught of the last three days; now she went to work systematically. She washed and wiped the dishes; stacked them in the built in cabinet; proceeded to the front room; began to mop the floors. But this was not an unconscious protest against the slatenly ways into which she had fallen; it was merely a trans- iation of that flerce, inner protest into action. Afterward she dusted; made her bed. All the time, the heat of her body grew. Yes, undeniably this was the warmest day yet. Still, some of that heat was thrown off from her own mind—the result of her swift, violent, intensive thinking: for she kept going over and over again her quarrel with Keene . . . thinking of more bitter things she could have said. After a while the ice man came . . . her duties and responsibilities were over uitil dinner time.. In the bath room, she turned on, the water tap optimistically marked cold—its cold- est was merely tepid—walted until the knitting needle jet half filled the tub, dropped into it. Still wet, she rgsumed her nightgown and kimono and lay down on the bed * * * a palmleaf fan in her hand * * iier ‘eyes wide open * * * lay, | of the young men In “the bunch,” was |slways storm-tossed. His eyes, in contrast with the clear calm of their eyes, had a—BElsie described it to| herself as “a wild sweetness.” His | whole make-up, in contrast with their square-cut athleticism, was nervous, almost fragile. Oh, yes, she loved XKeene—still loved him for that mat- ter. : EE C6{RJELL, ,of all things—if it.ain't Delia Dolan! But for the love of all the blessed saints, what do ye | be dolng herer” | Thess words, drifting across the |mirshaft, came through the window which opened above Elsie’s head into her bedroom. Kilsle recognized the voice to be that of Mrs. O'Connell, | the woman who once a week cleaned the halls and stairs. Another volce— presumably it belonged to Delia Do- lan—answered. It had nothing like 80 pronounced a brogue as that of its i Interlocutor. Nevertheless, there was an unctuous softness here and there, as of Ireland in the second genera- tion. “What do I be doing here? Why, looking at an apartment, to be sure.” “Looking at an apart—— Well, it's up in the world ye are!” | “Up in the world is it! It's more up !in the world the children are! What with my Theresa a stenographer and my Mary 2 milliner and my Tim a ball player, sure it's on Easy street we live—Tim Dolan and me. Why, Mrs. O'Connell—"" There followed settling sounds as of highly atarched skirts crackling, the faint groanings of a large body lowering itself with care and dubiety, the scrunch of a hastily moved pail, and the slop of overflowing water. Finally Mrs. Dolan was seated. “Walt—a moment, women, dear,” came Mrs. O'Connell’'s cracked voice, hile I fill me pail at the hall sink. Just a moment I'll be laving you. Then we'can talk.” Compiete silence a® Mrs. “O'Con- languidly swaying * She had told Keene the truth; her mind was made up. Just 2s soon as she could pull herself together she must pack her trunk, get to the sta- nell’'s trundling steps died down the 2 % = EENE SAWYER was an only child. His father was clerk In Dike | Gammell's bank; there is little to say about him. His mother was his father's wife; there is even less to say about her. As for Keene himself, taken any for three summers, so I've | would almost have sufficed, if it had —he was a strange lad, strong on mathematics, which he seemed to ab- sorb without effort into his system. and the brief, tepid wash of dis- | jolnted facts swhich the Weenana |pert. High School presented as science. He was correspondingly weak in litera- ture, language, history and raphy. His teachers recognized that he was brilliant and original; but they were pusaled by him. Keene had a faculty rather difficult to describe. In a sentence, it was a power of doing any bit of work in the | briefest possible time, resulting from what was apparently a driving pas- lon Keene's announcement of his en- One day the air fermented with an sion to perform It with the fewest possible number of motions. He wasa mother's boy. Ile helped about the house In a most willing and docile way; brought In the wood and coal; washed and wiped the dishes, made beds—swept, even, and dusted, when- ever domestic crises demanded these ! nervices of him. His mother had first noted his “faculty” when it camo after meals to the carting of dishes from the dining room to tho kitchen. geog- | tory; came three vears of work and |ot promotion so steady that 1t was | apparent Weir had no intention of losing his superintendent if liberal treatment could prevent it; came mid- summer and-— | “Mother, I'm getting six weeks' va- {cation this year. You see, I haven't |got all my vacations saved up. I'm | | going to Chicago. There's a man I've | been corresponding with for three or | four yenrs now—he's an efliciency ex- | He seemed to be Interested to | show me some plants in Chicago, and | he's invited me to come on and see! him. ! The visit to the efliciency expert— | therc need be no secret of the fact | jthat it was Adams—was highly suc- |cessful. Adams bared the manuf: | turing heart of Chicago to Keene. It ! filled Keene with new ide I re-| |sulted in & friendship o strong that | | i i | i “COME HOME OR NOT, I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU DO!” herself always brought them out as they came to her hand—the meat platter and the cream pitcher, cheek by jowl And everything went into the dishpan together: silver. Mrs. SBawyer happened upon Keene once, standing immobile bebfore the dining room table, still epread with the remains of the devoured dinner, contemplating the savory ruiln with the fixed eves of one in a trance. “Hurry up, Keene!" she admonished “You'll never get them dishes done, lallygagging like this 'm not lallygagging!” he retorted. “I'm only trying to figure out how few trips 1 can get 'em all out to the kitchen In." "This made no impression on Mrs. Sawyer's mind. But a few nights later, passing through the kitchen, her attention was caught by something that did. Keene's performance on this oocasion. had something of the re- h n tly gatherd; plates neatly stacked come in that order®from the dining . room plump in to fresh relays of hot water. But, dried, they returned in a different order; glasses first, to the glass shelves in the kitchen; china second, to the china cabinet in the dining room corner, nearest the kitchen; silver last, to the sideboard under the window. By degrees her kitchen was trans- formed. Mrs. Sawyer's house grad- ually became the best systematised in Weenana. Then onec afternoon—he would graduate in three months— Keene came home from the public library with a book, somewhere in whose title appeared the word Effict- ency. For the rest of the evening, he was deaf and dumb. Books— they all bore the word Efficlency asdmewhere in the title—followed one another in steady procession into the Sawyer household. With the author of one book, he opened a correspondence. The result was lettors, which every month grew, on Keene's -par: 2t least, longer and longer. Books came from this friend, pamphlets, catalogues. He haunted the few manufacturing plants Weenana boasted: Curran’s box fac- tory; Weir's automobile parts; Dar- lington’s creamery. Came graduation, came his job in Georgs Weir's automobile-parts fac- china, glass and | ‘As housekeepers go, she was | clean; but she was far from sclentific. | rsed military precision of a vaude- | ville act; glasses neatly piled; silver | !gagement to Elsie Gammel, Adams | suggested that he go to New York— offered to get him a job with the ! Poulter & Heyward Yeast Cake Com- The salary looked, from Wee- s standard, large. There followed marriage, the {honeymoon trip to New York, the hunt for an apartment, the making | of the home * = o | ter chapter In Elsle’s book of disillusion ® * * resistiess stage on stage in | Keene's experience of despafr. * X R % ! ¢'HERE—now we can have a talk:” Again Mrs. O'Connell, stridently into Elsie's meditations. |Had those long, long thoughts con- sumed but these few brief moments? “There’s nobody coming up these stairs, this hour. but I'll just be lav- Ing my pail here—handy-liké if they did. Now téll ‘me all about every- | thing, woman dear. How often do 1 mind me when we used to work in Felton Hall togcther. Sure my heart | was broke when Tim Dolan stopped | to court vou right under me eyes—as | you might say. Tell me about the chil- dren. When last I seen you, young Tim was getting into trouble break- ing windows.” : “'Tis truel O, the money we paid out for that boy's ball playing. But Tim says it \was an investment; for now lock at 'm! A ball player with his name In every newspaper you take up. Oh, it's & public character he is. Why, the lad earns— i Mrs. Dolan’s voice sank as she con- fided financial secrets of a momentous nature. And for an interval, the two voces, relating intimate gossip, kept to a uniform level, a bit above a whisper. That year in New York! What an experience! Bitterness welled in Elsie's heart as her thoughts tra- versed the smoothly olled grooves of memory. I First had come the shock of rents that matciied the soaring buildings; then the lowering, notch by notch, of her standard of space in comfortable living, until she clutched gratefully at the combination of four cubicles in a cheaply built apartment in a chesply built uptown- nelghborhood. Then followed her gradual realiza- tion of the shrinkage of the dollar in [There Was sometding pleasant, almost | @erstand Wiste’s eaprices, 2ad he gave would doubtiess be tmmensely proud 4004 B. C. N | nine months of living there, they still the astringent financial atmosphere of the metropolis. When the Bawyers came to New York they kneiw nobody, and after knew nobody. Nevertheless, they were young, very much in love—the panorama of that first year's season not been for the summer. It is true that the winter had seemed a long- | drawn-out agony of cutting \wlndl,i a frost-biting bitterness almost per- sonal; but they were accustomed to cold winters. And the spring com- pensated for everything. Indeed, the spring: 1t seemed to Klsle Bawyer that she | had never seen anything so poignant- | ly pathetic, so accumulatingly lovely as that New York spring. How it came—looking back at it now—was a puszle; ity first timld approach was o tentative, its final onrush £0 swilt. acute soft when she walked In the park, tiny. hard, tight- Irolled jade green points were pricking cut from bare brown stalks. Another day—and whenever she looked down from her window it was on wagons | 1oaded with blooming spring flowers, ! tiie men who peddled them calling in | hoarse voices what seemed unintelli- gible peans to Pan. Balloons i bloofned miraculously in children's hands. Oh, yes, the pring. summer- But the * £ HE steps by which that soft-sweet; [ merged with the damp-acid, stagnant. DECEMBER 10, 1023—PART 4. | nis ways—it's the contrary 1ad he's = | nell repeated. | L freen, fragrant New York spring| 7. cooling in the round voice with its) ghost of an Irish acoent. | . . . #0 old Tim is always eay- ing to young Tim, ‘put ut away. b'y As she quoted her husband, Mrs. Do- lan's voice assumed a thickn of brogue normally alien to it. 'The time’ll come when you'll want ut.’* “How 18 Tim thess days?” Mrs. O'Connell questioned. “Fine,” Mrs. Dolan answered. “An’ you say Molly Ryan making Joe a gogd wife?” “Far from {t! There's not a mo- ment that the two be together that they're not quarreling. 'Twas this way: Molly was as pretty and modest a girl as ever you geen. And at first she kept the house as neat as a pin. But then Joe came home every night all white and dusty from the works, and Molly used to scold 'm for dirty- ing the house. Joe wouldn't mend isrft | always been. And then—Molly had a perverseness, too. And after a while, | she grew careless-like. And now you should gee thelr house—a pigpen it 18! " “Tis a pity!"” Mrs. O'Connell sighed. “For wance they go that way, it's not often they get loving agaln. “'Tis the true word you sald,” Mrs. Dolan agreed, “And yet ‘tia very annoying to have | a man come home and tramp dirt ail | over a clean house,” Mrs. O'Connell | observed pensively. | “'Tis right you are again. Mrs.! said Mrs. Dolan. “T re- " She paused; her voice| seemed to melt away and merge with | oncoming revery; but she pulled her- self out of it. “It takes me back tweénty-five years, to the beginning of my own married life. I shall never forget the first night Tim Dolan came : home after hiz day's work. Before i0d, woman dear, I dfd not know 'm. | 1 was looking out the dure when the | gate opened. I looked up, and at first 1 thought it was a naygur—he was that black with the coal dust. But| when he kept on coming. I saw it was/| Tim. It gave me a turn. When he came into my Kkitchen I felt strange- | like—as if it wasn't my own man. Well, he washed his hands and face at the sink .and we sat down to the table to eat. You mind what a clean creature I was—"" er have these eves gazed on Mrs. O'Connell reassured the like, her. 66 A LL that evening. 1 felt strange £) like. And all that night in bed 1 kept thinking of Tim Iving be- side e covered with the coal dust. The next night, when Tim came home, T had a great tub of suds on the floor in front of the stove, waiting for ‘m. and 1 wouldn't give 'm his dinner till he tuk a bath!™ Jh, the strange craychure you Agaln Mrs. O'Congell laughed “And sare with an exquisite enjoyment. what did Tim say?” “At first he wouldn't, but In the end he did’* Again Mrs. Dolan paused. {*And the next night, when he comes home, there was another tub of suds | walting ‘m—and the next and the | next.” “Ard how did Tim like that? “At first not at all. But I put my foot down. And after a while he \couldn’t do without it. For. as you say, the scrubbing craychure 1 am! How I used to scrub his back! ~And what fun we did be having! The two of us laughing like a pair of-childrer And sometimes we'd get to throwing soapsuds at each other. “Throwing soapsuds!” Mrs. O'Con- “Go along with you! “It was ten long years my Tim kept on the coal wagon before they put ihim on the welghing. But after he'd 1 got on the weighing every night when ihe came home, there was the tub of suds just the same. And the differ- { ence it made in 'm! He'd be the that | tired he was ready to drop, when he | came In. But after that warm tud ‘twas ltke a fighting cock he was. | Then, when the children began to | earn money, they teased me to move into an apartment house where there was a bathroom. 'Twas a proud {man Tim was when he took his firat ! 1 scrubbed his! {bath 1n a bathtub. back every night for ‘'m just { “Marriage was different in them | rock, down hollows | curving. dippirz. ascending. £0on @ Low of the boat, his b the up this one with a tired sigh. He bent his head to a bristle of figures. | ‘When he came down the steps of the | elevated, & woman came forward to meet him, She was so different from . the figure he had visualized In his mind that Keene stared in astonish- ment. He had expected to see Elsie ;lll a travling gown; sult case in hand; ‘ure_" | the 100k still in her eyes of a raging | tion of how, during lonely |defiance. Instead—it was evident tha: | the spring. she had found this spot. she was not leaving town that night—| she was a vision of coolness. She | wore & light ruffied silk gown, such as | brook purled its #on; he had not seen since last summer in stices of her talk. a transparent, black tulle! Weenan hat, through which her hair glistened like pulled candy: accessories of gloves and stockings and shoes, all of the most summery order. It was true she carried what looked like traveling paraphernalia—a big straw hamper. This she immediately handed to him| | special treat I'm going to give you with a— “Oh, here you are, Keene! Take this, please. I thought you'd like to tal a little walk with me Lefore dinner.” BY INEZ HAYNES IRWIN. lasts I'm going to meet vyou every night, and we'll eat here in the park. You don’t meed hot food in weather like this, and you ought not to take that awful trip in the subway fn the rush hour. Well have our suppeér here, and then, when it ;cools off, we'll go home at our leis- Shke rambled off on a descrip- walks in Keene ate and listened. All the time |the shadows grew longer, the litt & into the inter- After he had eaten, Keene produced a cigarette; leaned back against the tree and listened again. * x % % G 'W, there’s something more,” Elsie said after a long interval in which by turns they had quietly talked and quietly meditated. “It's a tonight. I'm afraid we can’t afford it every night, though.” She led him in the direction of the There was in her voice none of (he‘?uxg, raging acrimony of the morning. In- deed, it was soft, appealing, and her eyes had that misty starriness which experience had ‘taught him trafled her weeping. “We're going to dine out tonizht” she vouchsafed, gently. and proceeded east. “Don’t talk, Keene!” she added. “You're awfully tired.” They entered the park at sith strect. And following what was ap- parently a familisr way, Elsie con- ducted him south over tree-grown and up hills— green, cool world encompassed then. It was not yet sunsct, but the shad- ows—brown lances thrown over the glowing emerald of the grass—grew longer bLefore their eyes. Presently on Keene's exhausted ears sounded the trickle of water. A little quiver of excitement seémed to run over Eisie’s slim figure. | “There! Here's the place i claimed. She stepped off the walk, onto the grass, threaded her way among the trees until they | caught up with a tiny flashing brook which dropped from a pool near the reservoir. and. making baby-water- falls of its leaps from rock to rock. ended finally by trickling into the lake. Elsie found & soft spot near the tinkle, in the shadow of a tree. “There, dear!” she said. “Fit down #0 that your back is against the trunk. Take your coat off, if yYou 1k Kneeling beside him, she opened the hamper. Appeared a picnic meal, ex- portly packed. delicately organized. Elsle epread a cloth over the grass, placed on it sandwiches. hard-boiled eggs, a xalad which came, still crisp. from & preserve jar; a small bottle of szlad dressing: a thermos bottle of fced coffee: Talking busily, as though to forestall comment, she ar- ranged the food with the detailed daintiness which characteriged her. Kcene had not vet emearged from his she sphalt x- daze. But suddenly he found him- hungry. He ate with 1 Elsie ate with him. but more siowly. Much of the time she was talking “I've made up my mind. Kee said. “that as long as this IMPRESSI | An hour later, Elsie was |ing on the miniature ocean. boats passed. but they seemed to bhr- long to another world; to be elidiny along another dimension. The sunset { had long ago faded away, butaline ot whore lights gave a distant gayety 1o ! their voyage; their reflections stood ! upright in the water like Ic golden comet-rockels. Stare, prick our one by ¢ne until they lay - shining inasses, had cooled #ky. A delicate breeze them. Keene sti low which Eisie had miraculon temporized from the hamper. h from which all tallowy fatie | had evaporated, turned up to stars. “I had an aw with H today, Elsie,” he And I thougtt tomorrow 1t 1 wae going to tell Td get through Satur T mee now he wasn’ that I was a good deal to blam course, I came into the now ‘ o1 e the Th« morning In a mood that coolness and quiet has given me chance to think. What ¥ Juer been aying now about marriage Y. - ing different from an engagemes® about the give and take of it—: the puliing gether—makes n realige that. A Lusiness is just | marriage. No one in the concit can have it all his own way. I'm ing into the office tomorrow and 1 Heyward I'll give in on half b points it he'll give in on half of mi: He'll do it, too. He's @ square gv | As much as he irritates me. T rc |like him. Sometimes, Elsie, T'd 1is: to invite him to dinner. Elsie. v dore a lot for me tonight—I ca: tell you how much. T was &l in was at the ernd of my rope. You's helped mie around a hard corne Youve handed me a cup of water.” 1 < ! Keene.” Elsle said: for sui- she had a vision of two i kitchen, a big Irishman and a big Irishwoman, throwing suds at each other as they made roaring holtday |of their nightiy ritual. “It wasmt a cup of cold water—it was a tul hot Fuds.” (Copyrigh VE RITES Rights Reserved ) IN HONOR OF ADAM steady chapter af- | dead New York summer -vere beyoml;dlv!‘“ Mrs. O'Connell sighed. with the powers of Elale's analysts to fol- | .y ") \iniscent farvor. “Young folk low. And vet—she could have stood’ et | gotting married these days think only ven that—if en success- | 5° even that—{f Keene had been kuccess | oy o gelves, What do they be get- ful, and if—— But he was not suc- | cessful. i Poulter. the senior partner in the! firm, theoretically interested beforo | 8hoe Keene's arrival. had on acquaintance | Paint! i ting out of it, theirselves, is all they | Cud ye imagine any one of returamg from the hall sink, broke | oft long enough from the coal wagon | with Kcene's ideas lost all belief In them. Heyward, the junior partner, was interested; but he was difficult, a quibbling, querying bully. Keene had fought for his ideas with every pow- er of his belief in them—with gen- tleness, with tact, with firmness, with obstinacy, with the courage of his de- spair and the despair of his courage. But he was losing—losing inch by inch and day by day. And then, in addition—a much more serious matter—their marriage, as certainly as Keene's theories, was de- veloping into a failure. All the poetry had gone out of it, all that ro- | mance, all that high glamour of ideal- ism to which Eilsie had determined to hold s=o punctiliously. Little atten- tions! Why, Keene showed her no at- tentions, little or big. He was too ab- sorbed in the business problems that confronted him daily. Her long days were lonely, and sometimes it seemed to her.that her long evenings wers lonelier still. Keene got home too late for them to think of going any- where; or, worse still, 80 exhausted from his daily struggle with Poulter that he could do nothing atter his apathetic dinner but stretch out on {the couch: and then drift from hle newspaper to troubled, intermittent napping. Elsle often contrasted her marriage with that of her parents. What would her mother say? On what her father would say it never occurred to her to reflect. Well, she would never give up the struggle to keep the little at- tentions .to hold her place as an “idéal.” The pile of Keene' which had started last night's wran- gle, lay on the chiffonier top. lips set. threat. If she went ahead to Wi nana—Keene was bound to follow.|had the dope this morning, all right. o She would go today. laundry, | bye with Her | efficien She would carry out her |band. them heating the water every night of their lives, so’s to give himaself a bath when he got home?" “Marriage is & quare thing." pro- mulgated Mrs. Dolan. “Mostly the it's hardest on the men. With a family coming along. there's need for a lot of money. And it's the man who has to earn it. the blessed Virgin herself knows: but when all's said and done it's the soft- est for them. If she don't make it pleasant for her husband as she can when he's in the house, she’s no true wife. Ard it she don’t work her hands to the bone to keep 'm healthy | and handsome and young, she no true | woman, 1have no use for these little {slipper-snips who thMmks they're queens, and tries to make a tired-out working man wait on 'm by inches every living minute.” - . * % % % [ R BSAWYER! Mr Sawyer!” Keene Sawyer looked up blan! 1y from his desk. wet tallow from heat and hard work. “Yes, Miss Draper,” he replied, auto- wife. Bhe say’s you're to meet her at | matieally. “A telephone message from your the 86th station on the Sth avenue L tonight at 7. *Thank you, Miss Draper.” Keene answered, apathetically. He had just. come from an ment, which had become a quarrel, with Heyward, and he was going to a quarrel which would become a good- Elsie. On all sides of him he saw only failure. Failure as an expert, failure as a hus. a Pretty poor stick, 1 “Elsie guess,” he concluded, grimly. I can’t think what she’s stopping off ‘women gets the best out of it. Mostly | Women has their bothers, | His face was llke| LITTLE group of loyal lineal descendants of Adam journey- ed out to Gardenville, a suburb of Baltimore, recently, and lald a wreath on the only existing monu- ment to the memory of their illustri- ous ancestor. the father of the race. It was Adam’s birthday. If he had been spared to us he would have been 5.926 years old, or one of our oldest inhabitante. The celebration of the occasion was of a very quiet nature this vear. There was no parade or fireworks or sham battle—in fact, no demonstration save the placing of garlands of leaves on the Adum monu- 1 ment at Gardenville. This memorial was erected in 1805 on the extensive estate of John P. Brady. He thought it high time for some sort of commemoration of the life and good works of the first ma: Therefore he had this shaft construct- cd at Gardenville, or Gardenofeden- the original name of that section. The shaft is a simple one and surmounted by a sun dial on the face of which is the inscription, “Sic tran- sit gloria mundi” which is Latin to everybody in Gardenville and for five miles around. On one side is em- blazoned the legend: “To the memory ¢ Adam, the first man.” * ok ok K is MONUMENT ERECTED TO THE MEMORY OF ADAM, FIRST MAN, I\ BALTIMORE. '1f they were still in our midst. | Historiana, ax a rule, have throw: {very little light on the momentous | problem when Adam was born. Ban |croft ignores him altogether, an! there is only carual reference to Adam in the works of Theodore Roosevelt. At Johns Hopkins University pr: tically everybody is in the dark con- cerning the date of Adam’s birth. Dr. Jacodb Hollander, to whom the devel- opment of a financial system for |Santo Domingo was a mere bag of shells, says the age of Adam is as much a mystery to him as the age of Ann. * ok o® % R. BROADUS MITCHELL throw: | up his hands in horror when ti» |age of Adam is broached. Dr. Fran: J. Goodnow avers he knows nothinge jabout it. Roman and Egyptian his- ! torians aiso balk at the date, and I’ gu- | ville, which s supposed to have beenip. org . Steiner, an muthority «n ! birthdays, says the whole mattar ix | one of guesswork. “Moreover,” continues Dr. Stelne: |“I do not propose to assume any re- ’nrmnnlblmy and will not discuss the subject for publication.” It seems as if Adam had got th~ goat of all of them. But, while nobody recalls’ the date 1 distinctly, the majority of the natfves She would go. She rose again to pack. But the|at 86th street for, if she's leaving to- conversation began scross the eleva- | night. Perhaps it's some rrand.” He tor shaft. Mra. Dolan was speaking.|had long ago givea up trying to un- N PS i~ T is a dignified sort of mempgrial, jaccepts as authority an old act of the and one of which Adam and the | British perliament which fixed th. fmmediate members of the family date of Adam's birth as October 28, ' ~