The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, September 13, 1903, Page 4

THE SUNDAY CALL. T. C. McClure.) lie had not worn r or the the way and wom- und, reck- rush and its. Mar- ~marriage AARTTZA /yf_cflmfimz',mwz tion In putting the ring upon her finger end even chafed a little over the fact that, by her father's express desire, she was to stay single until she was one and twenty He honestly believed himself in love, and ruly felt for her a tender fondness that t begun when, a sturdy littie lad, he settlements he was it the best imi- ion of a rough mond that ever ame out of the tall gress. He of nature and he gloried in | ir was cut a la Jo- hann Most trousers had never even see to say mothing of having met His hat was of the etanderd = variety and his manly throat was t of the clinging em- brace of a Alfred had tive tree Ly s fete East with a taste for collecting fiint arrowheads and other relics of the stone pearing to have all the ear- rough diamond, he had bid him in along with the lot and taken him East to have a little extract of culture in- Jected into him. After his hair had been carefully manicured and a fifteen-dollar sult of clothes had been hung on him he was turned over to a dignified gentleman with & black tie and a string of degrees that Jooked like a hemorrhage of the al- phabet, who was expected to chloroform him and rub down some of the rough places @ his intellect. This was Alfred's first round with the German kulturfests. Aside frém the thirst which he seemed to have in- herited along with his aislike of bath- tubs and other appurtenances of civil- ation, Alfred took to the culture prop- osition about as kinaly as a Governor of Kentucky to undiluted spring water. By degrees, however, ne came to see the value of education. When the gen- tleman who presided over his intellec- tual destinies and made out the bills pointed out to him that true greatness was obtained only at the cost of much cerebral perspiration; that no man could wear a dress suit properly unless he had a college diploma or was a waiter in a German restaurant; that even the President of the United States, the chalrman of the executive committee of the steel trust, the gentleman who mowed the lawn end shoveled the fam- ily jewelry into the furnace, and other pillars of soclety were college gradu- ates; when the chief culture juggler indicated these things to him Alfred gathered himself together and decided that he would take a small portion of the higher education on the half shell even if it did do violence to all the tra- ditions of his ancestors. After a sojourn of four or flve years at the institution presided oyer by the gentleman with the black tie and the monopoly of the alphabet Alfred was . ¥ had guided her tottering baby steps. He meant always to guide, guard and cher- 3 Jobn 1 ish her as bgcame a gentleman, even - = 2 ot - By Nicholas Nemo. L] bl HEN Alfred was the higher education for which he declared to be ready for college. In capiured in the thirsted; we are led to belleve that nddition o a speaking acquaintance . . : t in the With polite literature—not to mention Missouri jungles and thirst is Al u‘l'm“: lenst 1 the impolite variety on tap at the vil- brought into the aforesaid higher education, a lage barber shop—he could smoke a bull-dog pipe and select his own clothes without doing serious damage to the regulations of the Board of Health. But this was only the beginning. He had been made aware by the few glimpses he had had of the young men who were favoring the colleges of the land with their occasional presence that there were a great many different kinds of slang that he was not famillar with, as well s a number of weird and as- sorted brands of trousers. Clearly his education was far from complete as long as these helghts still loomed above him unattained. He thirsted for still more culture and other things too num- erous to méntion. Accordingly his discoverer launch into the glad wild swirl of calleg? Eltr‘n There for four long happy years he lived the joyous, care-free life that all old men like to look back to and tell harmless lies @bout. There he learned many new meth~ ods of imparting the proper shade to a meerschaum pipe, how to make a welsh rarebit with a handful of cheese, a bottle of dandruff cure and three bottles of beer, and also how to pass a hard examina. tion without revealing the unfathomable depths of ‘his ignorance. The last is the real art of college life that is never for- gotten by those wito have once acquired it. Greek comes and goes, Latin rises and sets, mathematics has its perihelion and its aphelion, but the anclent and hon- orable art of cribbing passes not away. Alfred's alleged benefactor had often told him tnat he sent him to college to learn how to work: and he did work—every one ih sight, up to and including the atfore- sald aileged benefactor. If any wanderer from his native wilds had met him at this stage of his career he could not have told him from Ward McAllister, Harry Lehr or any other bright and shining example to his kind. The four years came to an end at last, as everything does except trouble, and Alfred was turned loose on an innocent and unsuspecting world, wrapped in his diploma and an air of grand and unsubdu- able magnificence. He was educated—oh, no doubt about it. He knew exactly what kind of tie to wear in the morning and the exact variety of trousers that should gladden the world in the afternoon. He could wear a Prince Albert as one to the manner born, and he was an expert wit- ness on the subject of hats. Also, he had a large acquaintance among the chorus girls of half the theaters in town, and he could order a dinner for four at the Walledorff-Castoria without ever latting the walter suspect that in his early youth he had vrushed his hair with a curry- comb and performed his mornin ablu- tions In a tin pail. Running an automo- bile was as easy to him as running in debt is to the average man, and he could pick the winner at least once out of twenty- seven times in the Gravesend Embezzlers' Handlcap. T‘k‘le d:rk secret of his birth remained forever buried in the recesses of his own bosom and no one could have told from the way he spent money that he had been born west of Hackensack. His education was complete and he was fully as useless as though his name had been hyphenated from his birth. Alfred’s meteoric career 1s merely another example of the grand truth that knowledge is not only power, but an excellent preparation for the re- moval of disfiguring birthmarks. _(Copyright, 13, by Albert Britt.) though In his swelling visions of the fu- ture she was no more than a dumb, sub- missive shade. If she would never be a brilliant figure, still less would she be one of whom a husband must needs be eshamed. Indeed, he was altogether a lit- tle more than content with the ordering of things untfl, six months befors his wedding day, he came under Millle's spell. He saw her first upon a spring morning full of hot, shining and languld rufing airs. Dew still sparkied on the grass, and overhead in the green gold of new leaf- age robins fluted delicately the joy of life and love. To his enchanted eyes Millis embodied the shining, the bird song, the softness of the south wind, the warmth of the sun. What they sald s immaterial ~for two hours they walked together over the ragged lawn turf, or stood In rapt contemplation of newly opened roses. And then, in a safe seciusion of greenest shade, he drew her within his arms and kissed her, not lightly, but as one who takes what is supremely his own. Then followed a heavenly fortnight. Eustaca masterfully pushed out ef his mind all thought that might mar this new bliss. He rarely spoke his love, and after that first kiss wes sparing of demonstra- lon—there was no need of it when each understood so perfectly what was the oth- er's heart. Yet at the end of every day's comradery Eustace had a sense of some- thing impending, ever drawing nearer. He refused to let himself look further than the next day’s end, but somehow, some- Wwhere, he knew he would be called to pay & bitter scot. His chiefest care was for Millle. No harm must touch her, however it fared with him. She was so young, so inno- cently gay, so Innocently foolish, he was doubly bound to protect her even against himeelf. It was heaven to see her bloom and sparkle at his approach; she left her- self 8o artlessly undefended, now and &gain there came a jump in his throat. A man who could speak, who could even think, lightly of her would deserve death twice over. Bo the 1dyl drifted tnrough hours, + CWveeling < Star:s sunlit and starlit. Perhaps it was some 11l star in its course that brought home Joe Cantrell, Miilie's brother, who lived out in the big world and knew its ways. He came unannounced, just as dusk fell down, making his way through the de- vious side path all tangled with sweet shrubs. When Millle met him a little later her eyes were star-like, her cheeks of damask bloom, but sight of her could not win him from icy anger. He never explained anythmg. “You will be ready to go back with me two days hence,” he sald, frowning heavily. Mil- e got very white, but went silently toward the stairfoot. As she was mounting it, her brother sald, with a taunting laugh, “Next time you choose to kiss and fondle a men, take care that I am not in sight, or that he is not en- gaged to marry another woman.” She knelt shivering by her bedside until she heard him go out, after a leisurely supper. And she was still kneeling when he came in, stamping heavily, well toward midnight. Ha stopped beside her father's high black secretary, flung down the lid with a bang, then, after a minute, came up- stairs, still moving ponderously. But his footsteps did not mask another sound—the clicking of pistol locks. Intuitively, she understood—he had strolled over to the Country Club, picked e quarrel with Eustace, and would have him out at daybreak next morning. No thought of appeal to him stirred in her. Instead there came a firm de- termination matching his own. She knew her name had not been mentioned in the quarrel quite as well as she knew herself its real root. The men must not fight—she could not have her brother’s blood upon her conscience, still less her lover's. There was but one way to stop them—a way bitterer than death—still whe set her feet toward it unfaltering. She got up and sat by the window, watching, with noteless eyes, the wheel- ing stars, the waning moonlight. But at the first pale dawn light she was tensely alive. Below she heard a stealthy stir, the cautious opening of a door, with muffled voices and cautious steps outside. She got up and crept to her brother's room. Lighted candles still glittered there— upon the table there was a brief will, the ink not ury in the heavily scrawled signa- ture. Beside it was a briefer statement: “Tet it be understood of all men, if I dle, 1 shall have dled in a man's quarrel, founded on no personal grudge, but re- native it—the le in the or Twenty minutes later, peeped over rimming in a little clearing upon a and saw two men, stand hand, face to face, ten ¥ other men, a little way of white faces, but neither combatan lost wholesome color. Mill pran tween with eyes like glowing up her arms and s gentlemen! If anybody do!” 3 £i “Millfe! Go back!” Joe Cantr Yun- dered. Eustace dropped his » n leaped to the gir de. In he whispereu brokenly: “Darling, let kill me; it is the best way out of it al Millie shrank from him s it o is no need for bloodshed,” she sald; th her volce so the seconds co T call all here to witness that I tved. I knew at the g g Eustace's betrothal. have en do very first of Joha troth We have done no wrong to anybody—we— we love each other because we cannot vn help it. Oh, it is hard that my own brother brings me to such open shame t 1 1 hly, “Come hom Cantrell sald, roug! filnging away his pistol and clutching her arm. Eustace caught (Y?o ot <ar ht a, saying: “Stay with me, Millle! The whol vorld may go If I have you." “"gcod-by," Millle sald, drawing evny her hand. “I shall love you always, John, but your wife need not be jealous.” the strange orderings of fats that wfsy a true word. John Eustace went stralght to Alice and told her all the truth. She gave him back his freedom, and would have given him half her mone only he would not have it. But he co not persuade Mi to marry him un Joe, the masterful, had wooed and won Alice Ellison and her fortune. FOSDECRH’'S NEMESIS o By T. Blair Eaton. (Copyright, 1508, by T. C. McClure.) HE orchestra leader waved his baton en- ergetically, as if summoning his drooping charges to spurt In the Ilast quarter. Then, with a final roar, in which drums and cymbals strove to outdo each other, the walts came to an end, while the perspiring mu- siclans mopped their faces and cursed in guttural German these Wednesday night hops. Willlam Fosdeck stepped through the low window to the veranda with a sigh of rellef and a sense of duty done. As he turned the corner to claim his favorite nook some one called: “Oh, good- evening, Mr. Fosdeck.” He turned and beheld Gertrude Martin and her aunt in the shadow of the ivy vine. It was Aunt Elizabeth who had hailed him. *“Ah, not dancing, I see,” gaid Fosdeck, throwing away the newly lighted cigar- ette—with what Inward thoughts may be imagined—and taking the vacant chair by Miss Martin. "' sald the girl; “it's so delightful “A trifle chilly, though, Gertrude, dear,” her aunt sald. “If you'll both excuse me for a moment, I think I'll get a wrap.” “Shan’t I get it for you, Mrs. Curtls,” said Fosdeck. “Oh, thank you, no,” Aunt Elizabetn returned. “I really don't know where mine i3, and I anticipate quite a hunt before I finally run it to earth.” As Aunt Elizabeth dlsappeared around the corner the girl sighed resignedly. *“Oh, dear,” she said, “It's too absurd. She Invariably stampedes within three minutes after you appear, and her mo- tive is so horribly obvious.” Fosdeck laughed. ““Her methods a trifle ope: he observed. “1 wanted you to hate me,” she said. “Last winter,” he sald slowly, “when your Aunt Elizabeth was preaching you to me all the time I decided if I ever met you to dislike you very much.” “I'm glad, after all, it hasn't made us enemles,” she said. “So am I" he asserted, with a fervor that made her glance up at him quickly. “Poor Aunt Elizabeth!” he went on, “I fancy she doesn’t dream her plans have merely succeeded In setting us conspiring to defeat her schemes. I'm almost sorry for her.” “She’s so terribly in earnest about it,” said the girl. “Every time she makes those {dlotic excuses and leaves us I think I'll speak my mind plainly to her. Then I go upstairs simply bolling, and she meects me with such a bless-you-my- child-didn’t-I-fix-{t-beautifully sort of air that T haven’t the heart to say a word. Now,” she said rising, “I shall leave you, for you want to be alone and finish your smoke." “Really, Miss Martin,” he bega “Now, don't spoil it all by saying things which are generally expected at such a time,” she sald. “I like you best when you're perfectly frank.” “I wish you wouldn’t go,” ha persisted. <X t a promise from you before I * she said. “Don’t go down in your catboat to-morrow to the picnic on Pop- lar Island with the fleet, will you?" 'Why?" he asked. “It's high time we were taking the fleld against Aunt Elizabeth. She counted on our sailing down with you. I told her you weren't going.” “And you're going back day after to- he sald almost reproachtully. .You must back my word,” she said. “If it amounts to that I won't go,” he answered. “Thanks. was gone. Fosdeck strode down the walk toward the water. He was thinking of the girl as she stood there on the veranda, the moonlight on her copper-colored hair and her dark eyes looking frankly into his own. Half way down to the water he stopped suddenly and dug his toe viclous- ly into the gravel “‘Oh, hang Aunt Elizateth,” he growled. Fosdeck watched the fleet depart for the island next morning, with them Miss Martin and her aunt. He spent a miser- able day wandering about the woods be- hind the hotel. Late In the afternoon he took the catboat and sailed down past the island, where he saw the fleet chored, and caught a glimpse of the merry picnic party on the shore. Then he sailed southward, and not until he saw the fleet start for home did he turn about to come back. As he neared Poplar Island he saw some one fluttering a handkerchief from Good-night,” she called and an- — the pler. He ran ashors to find Auw Elizabeth and Miss Martin on the ple: head. “This is rare good fortune,” A Elizabeth sald ingenuously, as they cam aboard. Presently she found an excuse to go below. “Oh, what made here,” sald and signaled you when you “Poor soul, I wa ack,” out she there sug gested. ia th wind.” “Your aunt,” he began d “It's what she deserves, grimly. Th went outside the chain of islands into the strong b Balt spray flew « “It'll be rough bttull she r the fuls as they sped along. on the edge of the c fine a array in the wind and her eyes Is: 2. t this glorious?” to Aunt she sald. Elizabeth “I'm for almost grateful once.” One little hand grasped the rail the wheel near Fosdeck watched it hungrily y decided the wheel needed s own brown hands. The sed over the little hand on the She looked up In surprise, but made no attempt to withdraw | If Aunt Elizabeth hadn't preached you to me on all conceivable occasions I'd propose,” he sald, his voice husky wi emotion. “If Aunt Elizabeth hadn’t thrown me at your head I'd accept you,” she re- turned. “Let’s call cried. “Let's,” she replied very softly. His free arm drew her gently from the rail and close beside him, and at that mo- ment some one came up through the companionway. Aunt Elizabeth stood be- fore them clutching the little brass rail, very white and shaky; but even In that moment of physical anguish she beamed upon them triumphantly as one who has fought a good fight. “Abh, I knew it from the very first,” she sald weakly. Aunt Elizabeth =nil™ he "BIOGRAPHIES WANTED By Cyrus DericKkson. EBEE Settlement was so called be- cause so many farmers of that name, and all re- lated, had settled there. It was at peace with a 11 mankind, and the fagmers hoelng their corn, when some- thing ke & cloudburst happened. A stranger arrived at the house of Sllas Bebee, and sat down to a bolled dinner with him, and afterward held a long and Interesting conversation. Mr. Graves, as the stranger gave his name, ‘was one of the partners in a big publish- ing house which made a specialty of pub- lishing the biographles of the old and eminent families of America. The name of Bebee, as he had discovered by long and patient research, dated back to the year %00, and had been borne by princes, dukes, counts, barons, poets and soldlers. ‘What Mr. Graves wanted was to bring the Bebee blography down to Silas, and let the world know that the family was still on tap and as eminent as in days of yore. The blography and the portrait would be free, but in order to cover the cost of the glue and the stitching Silas would have to come down with $25 in cash. “I dom’t think I'll trade,” was the re- ply when the caller had stated his case. Mr. Graves seemed to have prepared himself for just such an answer, and he turned away with: “Very well, Mr. Bebee. As you are the most prominent of the family I naturally came to you first, but as you don't care for the honors I shall go to Reuben. I think he will jump at the opportunity, being as he wants to be elected County Supervisor next year. Good-day, Mr. Be- bee.' There wasn’t & feeling of brotherly love between Silas and Reuben. Both wanted to ‘“run things,” and naturally that brought about a clash. Bilas had some thoughts of running for County Super- visor himself, and it w news to him, and news he did not like, that Reuben was planning to mix in.- He 44 some rapid thinking. Mr. Graves had not climbed Into his buggy when he was called back and a bargain concluded. The rest of the afternoon and all the evening was spent in listening to Silas Bebee's history, covering a period of some fifty- six years. Mr. Graves made coplous notes and nodded his head from time to time, and all went well with the story. Bedtime had come, and Silas had given in sufficlent matter for his ten pages, when his wife, who had all along been doing a heap of thinking, rose up and in- quired: “Silas, am I to be left out of this thing as if I didn’t amount to shucks? If I haven’'t helped you to be the biggest toad in the puddle, who has?" “They never say anything In books about big women, do they?” he asked of Mr. Graves. “Well, very seldom,” was the reply. “I belleve they have mentioned Cleo- patra and one or two others, but those were exceptional cases. Still, as your wife says—" The result was that Mrs. Silas Bebee was given three pages and a portrait in the book, all for the sum of $3 cash in advance, and the ctock had struck midnight before she got through telling how often she had had rheumatism, hys- terics and bronchitis, and how many yards of rag carpet and barrels of ~aft soap she had made during her married life. There was a‘son in the family named Joe. He had nothing to say that evening, but he got up next morning to claim his rights. As the son of Bebee, and the biggest Bebee of them all, he wanted to be known of men, and it was finally decided that he should have two pages and a portrait for five dollars. It ;vu dog chupi!l:d Mhh Graves would lose money on it, but he had e to see the Bebes family through sog must do it even if he went broke. It took him three days to get through with the family, during which he had free O course, and then he headed for the house of Reuben. It was understood that he must call there to ask Reuben his exact age, but he must not go beyond that. Reuben was in the corn fleld with his hoe, and he leaned against the fence and heard what the publisher had to say and then replied: “By gum, but I always knowed Stilas Bebee was a sneak, and now It's proved. He wants folks to think he’s the big Be- bee, does he? Wants the world to belleve that all the other Bebees stand around and look at him with their mouths open? Wall, I'll bust uwp Ris little circus for him." The rest was easy, of course. There was Salathliel, his wife and two sons and two daughters, and all had to go into that book regardless of space or cost. Mr. Graves was not an impetuous man, and he took his time writing out his notes and managed to got five days’ free board and lodgings. Then he departed to “work" Moses, Abraham, Joab, Peter, Paul and several other Bebees, securing victims in each and every family, and in one in- stance taking In everything from the grandmother do to the Infant tn the cradle. He put & full month at his work, and he had the best beds and the best meals, After his coming the Bebees no longer neighbored, and they passed each other with their heads held high and their noses turned up. In one or two cases the young men came to blows, and law- suits were started over old matters. Things were edging along toward a griev- ous state of affalrs when Mr. Graves and his notes and his money departed, and three days later a detective arrived in search of him ad exposed him as a swindler. The Bebees didn’t want to and couldn’t belleve it at first but the evi- dence submitted was too strong for them to stand against, and after a due amount of weeping and walling and swearing a meeting of all the families was held and it was unanimously “Resolved, That while the Bebees date back to the year 900, this year of 1%0 saw the whole durn cabdodie making fools of themselves without reason or excuse, and we won't do it again.