The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, July 19, 1903, Page 3

\ DA 7 OIN «:’r:*\\c:‘ cated the lowest depths of slavish defer- ence. “] am now,” he continued, “going out to pace the floor of this locomotive bou- doir for a few exhilarating breaths of ke, and pretend to myself that I've to live in Chicago forever. A little ipline like that is salutary to keep one m forgetting the great blessing which 2 merciful Providence has conferred upon 1l walk a bit with you,” said his sis- r, donning her jacket and a cap. Lest my remarks have seemed indeter- te, madam,” sternly continued Perci- at the door of the car, “permit me to that If Chicsgo were heaven 1 should at once enter upon & life of crime. Do mnot affect to misunder- and me, I beg of you I should leave no aveuue of salvation open to my precious soul. I should incur no risk of be- ing numbered among the saved. I saould be b-a-d, and I should sit up nights to in- vent new ways of evil If I had any ure left from being as wicked as I could be, I should devote it to teaching those I love how to become abandoned. T should doubtiess issue a pamphiet, ‘How to Merit Perdition Without a Master. Learn to be Wicked at your Own Home in Ten Lessons. Instructions Sent Securely Bealed from Observation. Thousands of Testimonials from the Most Accomplished Reprobates of the Day.’ I trust Mrs. Liewellyn Lefingwell-Thompson, that you will never again so far forget yourself as to utter that word ‘Chicago’ in my pres- ence. If you feel that you must give way to the evil impulse, go off by yourself and utter the name behind the protection of closed doors—where this innocent girl cannot hear you. Come, sister. Other- wise I may behave in a manner to be re- gretted iIn my calmer moments. Let us leave the woman alone, now. Besides, I've got to go out and help the hands make up that New York train. You never can tell. BSome horrible accl pen to delay us Cheer up, ma: it's always darkest just before leaving Chicago, you know.” Thus flippantly do some of the younger ®ons of men blaspheme this rmetropolis of the mid-West—a city the creation of which s, by many persons of discrimina- tion, held to be chief romance and abiding miracle of the nineteenth cen- us rejoice that one such partisan was now at hand to stem the torrent of ebuse. As Percival held back the door for s sister to pass out, a stout little rud- dy-faced with trim gray side whis- kers came quickly up the steps and barred cheery aggressiveness. ghee—well, well!” cordially. hight be some of you folks said Higbee, shak- nd. es, too! and the girl, ware peach when the How's everybody, and you going to be in the good old Percival, blandiy a great old town, though—a * sald Higbee, in low, solemn came straight from his heart, How long you know, at Newport.” aven't seen it from New Y. che i ike a fiy I've got Mrs. Higbee York sleeper, but if to be here a spell we’ll ¥s longer and I'll drive you ?—packing-houses—Lake In Park He waited, submitting ir e temptations, beamed upon him with moist Jove, Mr. Higbee! that's clever of = royal. Sis and I would like noth- er—but you see, my poor mother almost down with nervous pros- tration and we've got to hurry her to New ork without an hour's delay to consult a specialist. We're afraid”—he glanced enxiously at the astounded Wirs. Bines, and lowered his volce—*‘we're afrald she may not be with us logg. “Wh Percival,” began Mrs. Bines, it easy—you're with. friends, be sure of that. You needn't beg us to go on. You know we wouldn't think of stopping when it may mean life or death to you. You see, just the way she is,” he continued to the sympathetic Higbee—"we're afraid she may collapse any moment. So we must wait for another time, but I'll tell you what to do. Go get Mrs. Higbee and your traps and come let us put you up to New York. We've got lots of room n along now—and we'll have some of that ham, ‘the kind you have always bought,” for lunch. A. L. Jackson is a miserable cook, too, if I don’t know the truth.” Gently urging Higbee through the door, ifled a systematic inquiry into the s of Mrs. Bines' affliction. e along quick! I'll go help you and 1l have Mrs. Higbee back before the r starts.” vou know,” Mrs. Bines thoughtfully d to h daughter, “I sometimes t Percival ain’t just right in his u remember he did have a bad it when he was two years and five old—two years five months and days. The way he carries on before folks' faces! That time I went through the asylum at Butte there was a young man kept going on with the outlandish rigmarole just like Per- The idea of Percival telling me to a lemon ice with an ice pick, and ‘Oh, do the flesh brushes wear nice, proper clothes brushes!” and be sure and hammer my nafls good and hard after I get them manicured. And back home he was always wanting to know where the meat augers were, saying he'd Jjust bought nine hundred new ones and he'd have to order a ton more if they were all Jost. I don’t believe there is such a thing as & meat auger. I don’t know what on earth a body could do with one. And that other young man,” she concluded significantly, “they had him in a little bit of & room with an iron-barred door to it lke a prison cell.” MR. HIGBEE COMMUNICATES SOME VALUABLE INFORMATION. The Higbees were presently at home in the Bines car. Mrs. Higbee was a pleas- ent, bustling, plump little woman, eparkling-eyed and sprightly. Prominent in her manner was a helpless little con- fession of inadequacy to her. ambitions that made her personality engaging. To be energetic and friendly, and deeply ab- sorbed in people who were bold and con- fident, was her attitude. She began bubbling at once to Mrs. Bines and Psyche of the latest fashions for mourners. Crepe was more swagger than ever before, both as trimming and for entire costumes. “House gowns, my dear, and dinner gowns, made entirely of crepe in the prin- 1< cesse style, will exactly suit your daugh- ter—and on the dinner gowns she can wear a trimming of that dull jet passe- menterie.” From gowns she went naturally to the difficulty of knowing whom to meet in a city like New York—and how to meet them—and the watchfulness required to keep daughter Millie from becoming en- tangled with leading theatrical gentle- men. Amid Percival's lamentations that he must so soon leave for Chicago, the train moved slowly out of the big shed to search In the interwoven puzzle of tracks for one that led to the East. As they left the center of the city Hig- bee drew Percival to one of the broad side windows. “Pull up your chair and sit here a min- ute,” he sald, with a mysterious little air of importance. “There’s a thing this train’s going to pass right along here that I want you to look at. Maybe you've seen better ones, of course—and then again—"" It proved to be a sign some twenty feet high and a whole block long. Emblazoned upon fits broad surface was ‘‘Higbee's Hams.” At one end and towering auother ten feet or so above the mammoth let- ters was a white-capped and aproned chef abandoning his mercurial French tem- perament to an utter frenzy of delight over a *“Higbee's Ham" which had ap- parently just been vouchsafed to him by invisible benefactor. “There, now!"” exclaimed Higbee; “‘what do you call that—I want to know—hey?" *Great! Magnificent!” cried Percival, with the automatic and ready hypocrisy of a sympathetic nature. “That certainly is great.” “Notice the size of 1t?" queried Higbee, when they had flitted by. “Did I!" exclaimed the young man re- proachfully. “We went by pretty fast—you couldn’t see it well. I tell you the way they're allowed to run trains so fast right here in this crowded city is an outrage. I'm blamed if I don’t have my lawyer take it up with the Board of Aldermen—slaugh- tering people on thelr tracks right and left—you’d think these railroad companies owned the earth—But that sign, now. Did you notice you could read every let- ter in the label on that ham? You wouldn't think it was a hundred yards back from the track, would you? Why, that label by actual measure is six feet four inches across—and yet it looks as small—and everything all in the right proportion. It'’s wonderful. It's what I call art,” he concluded, in a slightly dog- matic tone. “Of course it's art,” Percival agreed; “er—all—hand-painted, I suppose?"’ “Sure! that painting alone, letters and all, cost four hundred and fifty dollars. I've just had it put up. I've been after that place for years, but it was held on a long lease by Max, the Square Tallor— you know. You probably remember the sign he had there—‘Peerless Pants Worn Chicago's Best Dressers’ with a man shirt sleeves looking at a new pair. finally, I got a chance tg buy those »ack lots, and that give me the site, and there she is, all finished up. That's ; what I come on this time to see How’d you like the wording “of that sign?” “Fine—simple and effective,” 1 AN, A\ replied hat's it—simple and effective. It goes t to the point and it don't slop over beyond any, after it gets there. We tudied a good deal over that sign. The other man, the taflor, had too many words for the board space. My advertisin’ man wanted it to be, first, ‘Higbee's Hams' That's AlL’ But, I don’t know— for so big a space that seemed to the kind of—well—kind of fiippant and undig- ! Then I got it down to ‘Eat Hig- bee’s Hams.” That seemed short enough —but after studyin’ it, I says, What's the use of saying ‘eat’? No one would think, I says, that a ham is to paper the walls with or to stuff sofa cushions with—so off comes ‘eat’ as being superfluous, and leving it simple and dignified—'Higbee's Hams." “By the way,” sald Percival, when they were eltting together again later in the day, “where is Henry now?” gbee chuckled. hat’s the other thing took me back this time—the new sign and getting Hank started. Henry is now working ten hours a day out to the packing-house. After a year of that he'll be taken into the of- fice and his hours will be cut down to eight. Eight hours a day will seem like sinful idleness to,Henry by that time.” Percival whistled In amazement. “I thought you'd be surprised. But the short of it is, Henry found himself facing work or starvation. He didn't want to starve a little bit, and he finally conclud- ed he'd rather work for his dad than any one else. “You see, H-nry was doing the Rake's Progress act there in New York—being a gilded youth and such lae. Now being a gilded youth and ‘a well-known man about town’ is something that wants to be done fn moderation, and Henry didn’t scem to know the meaning of the word. I put up something likke a hundred and eighty thousand dollars for Hank’s gilding last year. Not that I grudged him the money, but it wasn't doing him any,good. He was making a monkey of hfmself with it, Henry was. A good bit of that hun- dred and eighty went into a comic opera company that was one of the worst I ever did see. Henry had no judgment. He was too easy. Well, along this sum- mer he was on the point of making a break that would—well, I says to him, says I, ‘Hank, I'm no penny-squeezer; I like good stretchy legs myseif,’ I says ‘I like to see them elastic so they'll give a plenty when they're pulled; but,’ I says, ‘Iif you take that step,’ I says, ‘if you declare yourself, then the rubber in your legs’ I says, ‘will pust naturally snap; you'll find you've overplayed the tension,” I says, ‘and there won't be any more stretch left in them.’ “The secret 18, Hank was being chased by a whole family of wolves—that's the gist of it—fortune-hunters—with tushes like the ravening lion in Afric’s gloomy jungle. They were not only cold, stone broke, mind you, ut hyenas into the bar- gain—the father and the mother and the girl, t ““The:; got thelr minu- made up to marry the girl to a good wad of money— and they’ll do it, too, sooner or later, be- cause she’'s a corker for looks, all right— and they'd all made a dead set for Hank; so0, aquick as I saw how it was I says, ‘Here,’ 1 says, ‘Is where 1 save my son and heir irom a passel of butchers,’ I says, ‘before they have him scalded and dressed and hung up outside the shop for the holiday trade, I says, ‘with the red paper rosettes stuck in Henry’s chest,’ I says. “Are the New York girls so designing?” asked Percival. “Is Higbee's ham good to eat?’ replied Higbee, oracularly. “80,” he continued, “when I made up my mind to put my foot down I just cas- ually mentioned to the old lady—say, she’'s got an eve that would make liquid air shiver—that cold blue like an army over- coat—well, I mentioned to her that Henry was a spendthrift and that he wasn't ever going to get another cent from me that he didn't earn just the same as if THE SUNDAY CALL. he wasn't any relation of mine. I made it plain, you bet; she found just where little Henry-boy stood with his kind- hearted, liberal old father. “Say, maybe Henry wasn't in cold stor- age 'with the whole family from that mo- ment. I see those fellows in the labora- tories are puttering around just now try- ing to get the absolute zero of tempera ture—say, Henry got it, and he don't know a thing about chemistry. “Then I jounced Hank. I proceeded to let him know he was up against it—right close up against it, so you against it, so you couldn't see daylight between ‘em. ‘You're twenty-five,” I says, ‘and you play the best game of pool, I'm told, of any of the chapples in that Father-Made-the-Money club you got in- to,’ I says; ‘but I've looked it up,’ I says, ‘and there ain’t really what you could call any great future for a pool cham- plon,” I says, ‘and if you're ever going to learn anything else, it's time you was at it,’ I says. ‘Now you go back home and tell the manager to set you to work,’ I says, ‘and your wages won't be big enough to make you interesting to any skirt-dancer, either,’ I says. And you make a study of the hog from the ground up. Exhaust his possibilities just like father done, and make a man of your- self, and then some time,’ I says, ‘you'll be able to give good medicine to a cub of your own when he needs it." ”* “And how did poor Henry take all that?” “Well, Hank squealed at first like he was getting the knife; but finally when he see he was against it, and especially when he see how this girl and her family throwed him down the elevator-shaft from the tenth story, why, he come around beautifully. He's really got sense, though he dosen’t look it—Henry has— though Lord knows I didn’t pull him up a bit too quick. But he come out and went to work like I told him. He ain't so fat-headed as he was, already. Henry'll ge a man before his dad’'s through with im."* “But weren't the young peopls disap- pointed?” asked Percival; ‘“weren’t they in love with each other?” “In love?” In an effort to express scorn adequately Mr. Higbee came perilously near to snorting. *“What do you suppose a girl like that cares for love? She was dead in love with the nice long yellow- backs that I've piled up because the pub- lic knows good ham when they taste It As for being in love with Henry or with any man—say, young fellow, you've got something to learn about those New York girls. And this one, especlally. Why, it's been known for the three years we've been there that she's simply hunting night and day for a rich husband. She tries for 'em all as fast as they get in line.” “Henry was unlucky In finding that kind. They're not all like that—those New York girls are not,” and he had the air of being able if he chose to name one or two luminous exceptions. “Stlas,” called Mrs. Higbee, ‘“‘are you telling Mr. Bines about our Henry and that Milbrey girl?"” “Yep," answered Higbee, “I told him."” “About what girl>~what was her name?” asked Percival, in a lower tone. “Milbrey’s that family's name—Horace Milbrey—" “Why,” Percival interrupted, somewhat awkwardly, “I know the family — the young lady—we met the family out in Montana a few weeks ago.” “Sure enough—they were In Chicago and had dinner with us on their way out.” “I remember Mr. Milbrey spoke of what fine claret you gave him.” “Yes, and I wasn't stingy with f{ce, either, the way those New York people always are. Why, at that fellow's house he gives you that claret wine as warm as soup. “But as for that girl,” he added, ‘“‘say, she'd marry me in a minute if I wasn't tied up with the little lady over there. Of course she’d rather marry a sub-treas- ury; she's got about that much heart in her—cold-blooded as a German carp. She'd marry me—she'd marry you, if you was the best thing in sight. But say, if you ‘was broke, she’d have about much use for you as Chicago’s got for St. Louls.” CHAPTER XV. SOME LIGHT WITH A FEW SIDE- LIGHTS. The real spring in New York comes when blundering nature has painted the outer wilderness for autumn. What is called “spring” in the city by unreflect- ing users of the word is a tame, insipid season yawning Into not more than half- wakefulness at best. The trees in the gas-polsoned soll are slow in their green- ing, the grass has but a pallid city vital- ity and the rows of gaudy tulips set out primly about the fountains in the squares are palpably forced and alien. For the sumptuous blending and flaunt of color, the spontaneous awakening of warm, throbbing new life, and all those inspiring miracles “of regeneration which are performed elsewhere in April and May, the city pent must walt until mid- October. This s the epring of the eity’s year. There be those to hint captiously that they find it an affair of false seeminsg; that the gorgeous coloring is a mere trick of shop-window cunning: that the time is juiceless and devold of all but the spe- clous delights of surface. Yet these, per- haps, are unduly imaginative for a world where any satisfaction is held by a ten- ure precarious at best. And even these carpers, be they never &0 analytical, can at least find no lack of springtime fervor in the eager throngs that pass entranced before the window show. They, the free-swinging, quick- moving men and women—the best dress- ed of all throngs in this young world— gun-vrowned, sun-enlivened, recreated to a fine mettle for enjoyment by their months of mountain or ocean sport—these are, indeed, the ones for whom this after- spring is made to bloom. And, since they find it to be a shifting miracle of perfec- tions, how are they to be quarreled with? In the big polished windows waxen effigies of fine ladies, gracefully patient, display the latest dinner-gown from Paris or the creamiest of beribboned tea-gowns. Or they pose in attitudes of polite adleux and greeting, all but smothered in a king’s ransom of sable and ermine. Or, to the other extreme, they complacently permit themselves to be observed in the intimate revelations of Parisian lingerie, with its misty froth of embroideries, its fine-spun webs of foamy lace. In another window, behold a sprightly and enlivened ballet of shapely silken hosfery, fitting its sculptured models to perfection, ranging in tints from the first tender green of spring follage to the rose-pink of the spring sun’s after-glow. A few steps beyond we may study a window where the waxen ladles ha been dismembered. Yet a second glance shows the retained portions to be all that ‘woman herself considers important when she tries on the bird-toque of the picture hat, or the gauze confection for after- noons. The satisfied smiles of these waxen counterfeits show them té have been amply recompensed, with the head- gear, for their physical incompleteness. But If these terraces of color and grace that line the sides of this narrow spring valley be said to contain only the dry husks of adornment, surely there may be lt&una others more technically spring- e. Here in this broad window, foregather- ed In a congress of colors designed to appetize, are the ripe fruits of every clime and every season: the Southern pomegranate beside the hardy Northern apple, scarlet and yellow; the early strawberry and the late ruddy peach; figs from the Orient and pines from the Antllles; dates from Tunis and tawny persimmons from Japan; misty sea-green grapes and those from - the hothouse— tasteless, it is true, but so lordly in their girth, and royal purple; portly golden oranges and fat plums; pears of mellow blondness and pink-skinned apricots. Here at least is the veritable stuff and essence of spring with all its attending aromas— of more integrity, perhaps, than the same colorings simulated by the confection- er's craft, in the near-by window-display of impossible sweets. And still more of this belated spring will gladden the eve in the florist's win- dow. In June the florist's shop is a poor place, sedulously to be shunned. Nothing of note blooms there then. The florist him- self is patently ashamed of himself. The burden of sustaining his traditions he puts upan a few dejected shrubs called ‘“‘hardy perennlals” that have to labor the year around. All summer it is as if the place feared to compete with nature when color and grace flower so cheaply on every southern hillside. But now its glories bloom anew, and fits superiority over nature becomes again manifest. Now it assembles the blossoms of a whole lofig year to bewilder and allure. Its windows are shaded glens, vine-embower- ed, where spring, summer and autumn blend in all their regal and diverse abun- dance; and the closing door of the shop fans out odors as from a thousand Per- sian gardens. But spring is not all of life, nor what at once chiefly concerns us. There are peo- ple to be noted; a little serles of more or less related phenomena to be observed. One of the people, & young man, stands conveniently before this same florist's window, at that hour when the sun brief- ly flushes this narrow canyon of Broad- way from wall to wall He had loitered along the lively high- way an hour or more, his nerves tingling responsively to all its stimull. And now he mused as he stared at the tangled tracery of ferns against the high bank of wine-red autumn follage, the royal cluster of white chrysanthemums and the big jar of American Beauties. He had looked forward to this moment, too—when he should enter that same door and order at least an armful of those same haughty roses sent to an address his memory cherished. Yet now, the time having come, the zest for the feat was gone. It would be done; it were ungrace- ful not to do it, after certain expressions; but it would be done with no heart be- cause of the certain knowledge that no one—at least.no one to be desired—could possibly care for him, or consider him even with: interest for anything but his money—the same kind of money Higbee made by perveylng hams—‘“and she wouldn’t care in the least whether it was ;:u‘:m or Higbee's, so there was a lot of Yet he stepped in and ordered the roses, nor did the florist once suspect that so lavish a buyer of flowers could be a prey to emotions of corroding cynicism toward the person for whom they were meant. From the florist's he returned directly to the hotel to find his mother and Psyche making homelike the suite to which they had been assigned. A mald was unpack- ing trunks under his sister's supervision. Mrs. Bines was {n converse with a person of authoritative. manner regarding the service to be supplied them. Two malds would be required, and madame would., or course wish a butler— % Mrs. Bines looked helplessly at her son who had just entered. "I think—we've—we've always did our own buttling,” she faltered. The person was politely interested. “I'll attend to these things, ma,’ Percival, rather suddenly. * “Yes, we'li want a butler and the two malds, and see that the butler knows his business, please, and—here—take this, and see :hat we're properly looked after, will you?” As Lhe bill bore a large “C’’ on {ts face, and the person was ratner a gentleman anyway this unfortunate essay at irreg- ular conjugation never fell into a certain class of anecdotes which Mrs. Bines’ best friends could now and then bring them- selves to relate of her. But other matters are forward. We may next overtake two people who loiter on this bracing October day down a leaf- strewn aisle in Central Park. “You,” 'sald the girl of the palr, “least of all men can accuse me of lacking heart.” “You are cold to me now.” “But look, tulnk—what did I offer— you've had my trust—everything I could bring myself to give you. Look what I would have sacrificed at your call. Think how I waited and longed for that call.” “You know how helpless I was.” “Yes, if you wanted more than my bare self. should have een helpless too, if I had wanted more than—than you.” “It would have been folly—madness— that way.” “Folly—madness? Do you remember the ‘Sonnet of Revolt’ you sent me? Sit on this bench: * wish to say it over to you, very slowly; I want you to hear it while you keep your later attitude In mind. Life—what is life? To do without avail The decent ordered tasks of every day: Talk with the sober; join the solemn play: Tellufor the hundredth time the self-same le Told by our grandsires in the self-same vale Where the sun sets with even, level ray, And nights, eternally the same, make Way For hueless dawns, intolerably pale— “But I know the verse.” “No; hear it out—hear what you sent me: “And this is life? Nay, T would rather see The man who sells his soul in some wild The {00] who spurns, for momentary biss, All that he was and all he thought to be: The rebel stark against his country’s law: God's own mad lover, dying on a kiss.’ She had completed the verse with the hint of a <neer in her tones. “Yes, truly, I remember it; but some day -ou'll thank me for saving you; of course it would have been regular in a way, but people here never really forget those things—and we’d have been help- less—some day you'll thank me for think- ing for you."” “Why do vou belleve 1'™ not thanking you already?” “Hang it all! that's what you made me think yesterday wnen I met you.” “‘And so you called me heartless? Now tell me just what you expect a woman in my position to do. I offered to go to you when you were ready. Surely that showed my spirit—and you haven't known wme these years without knowing it would have to be that or nothing.” ““Well, hang it, it wasn't like the last time, and you know it; you're not kind any longer. You can be kind, can't you?” Her lip showed faintly the curl of scorn. “No, I can't be kind any longer. Oh, I see you've known your own mind so little; sald tigere’s been vno depth to it at all; you couldn’t dare. It was foolish to think I could show you my mind.” “But you still care for me?" “No; no, I don’t. You should have no reason to think so if I did. When I heard you'd made it up I hated you, and I think I hate you now. Let us go back. No, no, please don’t touch me—ever again.” Farther downtown in the cozy drawing- room of a house in a side street east of the avenue two other persons were talking. A florid and profusely freckled young Englishman spoke protestingly from the hearth rug to a woman who had the air of knowing emphatically better. “But, my dear Mrs. Drelmer, you know, really, I can’t take a curate with me, you know, and send up word won't she be good enough to come downstairs and mar- ry me directly—not when I've not seen her, you know! “Nonsense!” replied the lady, unim- pressed. “You can do it nearly that way if you'll listen to me. Those Westerners perform quite in that manner, I assure you. They call it ‘hustling.’ " “Dear me!"” “Yes, fndeed, ‘dear you.' And another thing, I 'want you to forestall that Mil- brey youth, and you may be sure he's no farther away that Tuxedo or Meadow- brook. Now, they arrived yesterda they’ll be unpacking to-day and settilng to-morrow; I'll call the day after, and you shall be with mge." “And you forget that—that devil—sup- pose she's as good as her threat?” “Absurd! how coulll she be?” “You don’t know her, you know, nor the old beggar, either, by Jova!" “All ‘the more reason for haste. We'll call to-morrow. Wait. Better still, per- haps I can enlist the Gwilt-Athelston; I'm to meet her to-morrow. I'll let you know. Now I must get Into my tea harness, so run glong.” We are next constrained to glance at a Btrong man bowed in the hurt of a great grief. Horace Milbrey sits alone in his gloomy, high-ceflinged library. His attire 1s immaculate. His slender, delicate hands are beautffully white. The sensitive lines of his fine face tell of the strain under which he labors. What dire tragedies are those we must face wholly alone—where we must hide the wound, perforce, be- cause no comprehending sympathy flows out to us; because instinct warns that no help may come save from the soul's own well of divine fortitude. Some hope, tenderly, almost fearfully, held and guarded, had perished on the day that should have seen its triumphant fruition. He raised his handsome head from the antique, claw-footed desk, sat up in his chalr, and stared tensely before him. His emotion was not to be suppressed. Do tears tremble in the eyes of the strong man? Let us not inquire too curlously. If they tremble down the fine-skinned cheek, let us avert our gaze, For grief in men is no thing to make a show of. A servant passed the open door bearing an immense pasteboard box with one end cut out 'to accommodate the long stems of many roses. arvis “Flowers, sir, for Miss Avice.” “Let me see—and the card?" He took the card from the florist's en- velope and glanced at the name. “Iake them away.” The stricken man was once more alone; yet now it was as if the tender beauty of the:flowers.had balmed his hurt—taught him to hope anew. Let us in all sympathy and hope retire. For cheerfuller sights we might observe Launton Oldaker in a musty curio-shop, delighted over a pair of silver candle- sticks with square bases and fluted col- umns, fabricated in the reign of that for- tuitous monarch, Charles the Second; or we might glance upon the Higbees in their section of a French chateau, repro- duced ‘up-on the stately Riverside Drive, where they complete the details of a din- ner to be given on the morrow. Or perhaps it were better to be con- cerned with a matter more weighty than dinners and antique candlesticks. The search need never be vain, even in this world of persistent frivolity. As, for ex- ample: “Tell Mrs. Van Geist if she can’t come down, I'll run up to her.” “Yes, Miss Milbrey. Mrs. Van Geist entered a moment later. “Why, Avice, child, you're glowing, aren’t you?" “I must be, I suppose—I've just walked down from Fifty-ninth street, and before that I walked in the Park. Feel how cold my cheeks are—Mutterchen.” “It's good for you. Now we shall have some tea, and talk.” “Yes—I'm hungry for both, and some of those funny little cakes.” “Come back where the fire is, dear; the tea has just been brought. There, take the big chalr.” “It always feels like you—like your arms, Mutterchen—and I am tire “And throw off that coat. There's the lemon, if you're afrald of cream.” “I wish I weren't afraid of anything but cream.” “You told me you weren’t afraid of that —that cad—anv more.” “I'm not—I just told him so. But I'm afrald of it all; I'm tired trying not to drift—tired trying not to try, and tired trying to try— Oh, dear—sounds like a nonsense verse, doesn't it?' Have you any one to-night? .o? I think I must stay with you till morning. Send some one home to say I'll be here. I can al- ways think so much better here—and you, dear old thing, to mother me!" “Do, child; I'll send Sandon directly.” ‘He wlill go to the house of mourning.” “What's the latest?"” “Papa was on the verge of collapse this morning, and yet he was striving so bravely and nobly to bear up. No one knows what that man suffers; it makes him gloomy all the time about every- thing. Just before I left he was saying that, when one considers the number of American homes in which a green salad is never served, one must be appalled. Are you appalled, auntie? But that isn't it."” ‘Nothing has happened?” “Well, there’ll be no sensation about it in the papers to-morrow, but & very dreadful thing has happened. Papa has suffered one of the cruelest blows of his life. I fancy he didn’t sleep at all last night, and he looked thoroughly bowled first of all there were six dozen of early-bottled, 1875 Cha- teau Lafitte—that was the bitterest—but he had to see the rest go, too—Chateau Margeaux of 'S0—some terribly ancient port and Madelra—the dryest kind of sherry—a lot of fine, full clarets of '77 and *78—oh, you can’t know how agonizing it was to him—I've heard them so often I know them all myself.” “But what on earth about them?” othing, only the Cosmopolitan Club's wine cellar—auctioned off, you know. For over a year papa has looked forward to it. He knew every bottle of wine in it. He could recite the list without looking at it. S\ THOMISON - - Sometimes he sounded like a French les- son—and he’s been under a fearful strain ever since the announcement was made. Well, the great day came yesterday, and poor pater simply couldn’t bid In a single drop. It needed ready money, you know. And he had hoped so cheerfully all the time to do something. It broke his heart, I'm sure, to see that Chateau Lafitte go— and only imagine, it was bid in by the butler of that odious Higbee. You should have heard papa rail about the vulgar nouveaux riches when he came home—he talked quite like an anarchist. But by to- night he'll be blaming me for his misfor- tunes. That's why I chose to stay here with you.” “Poor Horace. ing to do?" ““Well, dearie, as for me, it doesn't look as if I could anything but one thing. And here is my ardent young Croesus coming out of the West.” “You called him your ‘athletic Bayard” once.” “‘The other’s more to the point at pres- ent. And what else can I do? Oh, if some one would just be brave enough ta live the raw, quivering life with me, I could do it, I give you my word. I could let everything go by the board—but I am so alone and so helpless, and no man is equal to it nowadays. All of us here seem to be content to order a ‘half portion’ of life.” “Child, those dreams are beautiful, but they're like those flying machines that are constantly being tested by the credu- lcus inventors. A wheel or a pinion goes wrong and down the silly things come tumbling.” ““Very well; then I shall be wise—I sup- pose I shall be—and I'll do it quickly. This fortune of good gold shall propose marriage to me at once, and be accepted— so that I shall be able to look my dear old father in the face again—and then, after I'm married—well, don’t blame me for anything that happens.” “I'm sure you'll be happy with him it's only your silly notions. He's In love with you.” “That makes me hesitats. He really is a man—I like him—see this letter—a long review from the Arcady Isyre of the ‘poem’ he wrote, a poem consisting of ‘Avice Milbrey." The reviewer has been quite enthusiastic over it, too—written from some awful place in Montana.” ‘“What mors could you ask? He'll be kind.” “You don’t understand, Mutterchen. He seems too decent to marry that way—and yet it's the only way I could marry him. And after he found me out—oh, think of what marriage 1s—he’d have to find it out —I couldn't act long—doubtless he wouldn’t even be kind to me then.” “You are morbid, child.” “But I will do it; I shall; T will be a credit to my training—and I shall learn to hate him and he will have to learn—well, a great deal that he doesn’'t know about women."” She stared into the fire and added, after a moment'’s silence: “‘Oh, if a man only could ltve up to the verses he cuts out of magazin ‘Whatever are you go- CEAPTER XVL WITH THE BARBARIC HOSTS. History repeats itself so cleverly, with @ variance of stage-settings and acces- sorles so cunning, that the repetition sel- dom bores, and is, indeed, frequently un- detected. Thus, the descent of the Barb- arians upon a decadent people is a little tour de force that has been performed again and again since the oldest day. But because the assault nowadays is made not with force of arms we ars prone to believe it i3 no longer made at all-as i{f human ways had changed a bit since those ugly, hairy tribes from the Northern forests descended upon the Roman empire. And yet the mere dif- ference that the assault is now made with force of money In no way alters the process nor does it permit the result to vary. On the surface all is cordiality and peaceful negotiation. Beneath is the same immemorial strife, the life-and- death struggle—pitiless, inexorable, ‘What would have been a hostile biv- ouac within the city’s gates, but for the matter of a few centuries, is now, to se- lect an example which remotely concerns us, a noble structure on Riverside Drive, facing the lordly Hudson and the ma- Jestic Palisades that form {ts farther wall. And, for the horde of Goths and Visigoths, Huns and Vandals, drunkenly reeling in the fitful light of camp-fires, chanting weird battle-runes, fighting for captive vestals, and bickering In uncouth tongues over the golden spoils, what have Wwe now to make the parallel convince? ‘Why, the same Barbarians, actually; the same hairy rudeness, the same unrefined, all-conquering, animal force; a red-faced, big-handed lot, imbued with hearty good nature and an easy tolerance for the ways of those upon whom they bave de- scended. Here are chiefs of renown from the far- thest fastnesses; they and their curious households; the i{ronmonger from Pitts- burg, the gold-miner from Dawson, the copper chief from Butte, the silver chief from Denver, the cattle chief from Okla- homa, lord of three hundred thousand good acres and thirty thousand cattle, the lumber prince from - Michigan, the founder of a later dynasty In ofl, from Texas. And, for the unaesthetic but effective Attila, an able fashioner of pork products from Chicago: Here they make festival, carelessly, unafrald, unmolested. For, in the lapse of time, the older peoples have learned not only the folly of resisting inevitables, but that the huge and hairy Invaders may be treated and bartered with not unprofitably. Doubtless it often results from this amity that the patriclan strain is corrupted by the alien admixture— but business has been business since as many as two persons met on the face of the new earth. For example, this particular shelter is builded upon land which one of thé pa- trician families had held for a century solely because it could not be disposed of. Yet the tribesmen came, clamoring for palaces, and now this same land, with some adjoining areas of trifling extent, produces an income that will suffice to maintain that family almost in its anclent and befitting estate. In this mammoth pile, for the petty rental of ten or fifteen thousand dollars a year, many tribes of the Invaders have found shelter and entertainment in apart- ments of many rooms. Outwardly, In de- tails of ornamentation, the building Is said to duplicate the Chateaux Blols, those splendid palaces of Francis I. In- side are all the line and color and device of elegant opulence, modern to the last note. To this palace of an October evening comes the tribe of Bines, and many an- other such, for a triumphal feast in the abode of Barbarian Silas Higbee. The carriages pass through a pair of lordly iron gates, swung from massive stone pil- lars, under an arch of wrought iron with its antique lamp, and into the echoing courtyard flanked by trim hedges of box. Alighting, the barbaric guests of Hig- bee are ushered through a marble-walled vestibule, from which a wrought iron and bronze screen gives way to the main en- trance hall. The ceiling here reproduces