Vistas of New York

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NEW YORK

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"FROM THE BOOKS

CROSBY GAIGE

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BRANDER MATTHEWS

AUTHOR OF

"VIGNETTES OF MANHATTAN"
"OUTLINES IN LOCAL COLOR." ETC.

ILLUSTRATED

NEW YORK AND LONDON

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1912

COPYRIGHT. 1912. BY HARPER a BROTHERS

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PUBLISHED MARCH. 1912

CONTENTS

PACK

I. A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY ... 1

II. ON THE STEPS OP THE CITY HALL ... 35

III. "SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS" .... 55

IV. UNDER AN APRIL SKY 71

V. AN IDYL OP CENTRAL PARK 99

VI. IN A HANSOM 123

VII. THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE . 139

VIII. ON AN ERRAND OP MERCY 159

IX. IN A BOB-TAIL CAR 177

X. IN THE SMALL HOURS 189

XI. HER LETTER TO His SECOND WIFE . . . 205

XII. THE SHORTEST DAY IN THE YEAR ... 229

ILLUSTEATIONS

"WHAT THEY CALL THE FRONT HALL -BED-
ROOM " Frontispiece

"I'M SURE HE'D RATHER TALK TO YOU, MY
DEAR; so YOU TWO CAN RUN ALONG TO-
GETHER" Facing p. 104

THIS YEAR THE GIRLS WERE PRETTIER THAN

USUAL " 128

"l WENT TO SEE THE WOMAN MY FRIEND

LOVED" " 148

"MY! AIN'T IT AWFUL? IT BLEW HIS LEGS

OFF!" " 170

SHE FLUNG HERSELF INTO HIS ARMS . " 226

NOTE

IN one of those romances in which Hawthorne
caught the color and interpreted the atmosphere of
his native New England, he declared that "destiny,
it may be, the most skillful of stage managers, seldom
chooses to arrange its scenes and carry forward its
drama without securing the presence of at least one
calm observer." It is the character of this calm
observer that the writer has imagined himself to be
assuming in the dozen little sketches and stories
garnered here into a volume. They are snapshots or
flashlights of one or another of the shifting aspects
of this huge and sprawling metropolis of ours.

In purpose and hi method these episodes and these
incidents of the urban panorama are closely akin to
the experiments in story-telling which were gathered
a few years ago into the pair of volumes entitled
Vignettes of Manhattan and Outlines in Local Color.
The earliest of these stories in this third volume —
replevined here from another collection long out of
print — was written more than a quarter of a century
ago; and the latest of them first saw the light only
within the past few months. To each of the dozen
sketches the date of composition has been appended
as evidence that it was outlined hi accord with the

NOTE

actual fact at the time it came into being, even if
the metropolitan kaleidoscope has revolved so rapidly
that more than one of these studies from life now
records what is already ancient history. The bob-
tailed car, for example, is already a thing of the past;
the hansom is fast following it into desuetude; and no
longer is it the fashion for family parties to bicycle
through Central Park in the afternoon.

Slight as these fleeting impressions may seem, this
much at least may be claimed for them — that they
are the result of an honest effort to catch and to fix
a vision of this mighty city in which the writer
has dwelt now for more than half a century.

B. M.

February 21, 1912.

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NEW YORK, Sept. 7, 1894.
|Y DEAR MIRIAM,— For you are mine
now, all mine, and yet not so much as
you will be some day — soon, I hope.
You can't guess how much bolder I feel
now that you are waiting for me. And
it won't be so long that you will have to wait, either,
for I am going to make my way here. There's lots
of young fellows come to New York from the country
with no better start than I've got, and they've died
millionaires. I'm in no hurry to die yet, not before
I've got the million, anyway; and I'm going to get it
if it can be got honestly and by hard work and by
keeping my eyes open. And when I get it, I'll have
you to help me spend it.

I came here all right last night, and this morning
I went down to the store with your father's letter.
It's an immense big building Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle
keep store in. Mr. Kiddle was busy when I asked
for him, but he saw me at last and he said anybody

4 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

recommended by your father was sure to be just
the sort of clerk they wanted. So he turned me over
to one of his assistants and he set me to work at once.
As I've come from the country, he said, and know
what country people want, he's put me in the de-
partment where the storekeepers get their supplies.
It isn't easy to get the hang of the work, there's so
much noise and confusion; but when we quit at six
o'clock he said he thought I'd do. When night came
I was most beat out, I don't mind telling you. It was
the noise mostly, I think. I've never minded noise
before, but here it is all around you all the time and
you can't get away from it. Nights it isn't so bad,
but it's bad enough even then. And there isn't a
let-up all day. It seems as though it kept getting
worse and worse; and at one time I thought there was
a storm coming or something had happened. But
it wasn't anything but the regular roar they have here
every day, and none of the New-Yorkers noticed it,
so I suppose I shall get wonted to it sooner or
later.

The crowd is 'most as bad as the noise. Of course,
I wasn't green enough to think that there must be a
circus in town, but I came near it. Even on the side
streets here there's as many people all day long as
there is in Auburnvale on Main Street when the
parade starts — and more, too. And they say it is just
the same every day — and even at night it don't thin
out much. At supper this evening I saw a piece in

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 5

the paper saying that summer was nearly over and
people would soon be coming back to town. I don't
know where the town is going to put them, if they do
come, for it seems to me about as full now as it will
hold. How they can spend so much time in the
street, too, that puzzles me. My feet were tired out
before I had been down-town an hour. Life is harder
in the city than it is in the country, I see that already.
I guess it uses up men pretty quick, and I'm glad I'm
strong.

But then I've got something to keep me up to the
mark; I've got a little girl up in Auburn vale who is
waiting for me to make my way. If I needed to be
hearted up, that would do it. I've only got to shut
my eyes tight and I can see you as you stood by
the door of the school-house yesterday as the cars
went by. I can see you standing there, so graceful
and delicate, waving your hand to me and making
believe you weren't crying. I know, you are ever
so much too good for me; but I know, too, that
if hard work will deserve you, I shall put in that,
anyhow.

It is getting late now and I must go out and post
this. I wish I could fold you in my arms again as I
did night before last. But it won't be long before
I'll come back to Auburnvale and carry you away
with me.

Your own

JACK.

6 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

II

NEW YORK, Sept. 16, 1894.
DEAREST MIRIAM,— I would have written two or
three days ago, but when I've had supper I'm too
tired to think even. It isn't the work at the store,
either. I'm getting on all right there, and I see how
I can make myself useful already. I haven't been
living in Auburnvale all these years with my eyes
shut, and I've got an idea or two that I'm going to
turn to account. No, it's just the city itself that's so
tiring. It's the tramp, tramp, tramp of the people
all the time, day and night, never stopping. And they
are all so busy always. They go tearing through the
streets with their faces set, just as if they didn't know
anybody. And sometimes their mouths are work-
ing, as if they were thinking aloud. They don't
waste any time; they are everlastingly doing some-
thing. For instance, I've an hour's nooning; and I
go out and get my dinner in a little eating-house near
the rear of our store — ten cents for a plate of roast
beef; pretty thin the cut is, but the flavor is all right.
Well, they read papers while they are having their
dinner. They read papers in the cars coming down
in the morning, and they read papers in the cars going
up at night. They don't seem to take any rest.
Sometimes I don't believe they sleep nights. And
if they do, I don't see how they can help walking in
their sleep.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 7

I couldn't sleep myself first off, but I'm getting to
now. It was the pressure of the place, the bigness of
it, and the roar all round me. I'd wake up with a
start, and, tired as I was, sometimes I wouldn't get
to sleep again for half an hour.

I've given up the place I boarded when I first come
and I've got a room all to myself in a side street just
off Fourth Avenue, between Union Square and the
depot. It's a little bit of a house, only fifteen feet
wide, I guess. It's two stories and a hah*, and I've
got what they call the front hall-bedroom on the top
floor. It's teeny, but it's clean and it's comfortable.
It's quiet, too. The lady who keeps the house is a
widow. Her husband was killed in the war, at
Gettysburg, and she's got a pension. She's only
one daughter and no son, so she takes three of us
young fellows to board. And I think I'm going to
like it.

Of course, I don't want to spend any more than
I have to, for I've got to have some money saved up
if I ever expect to do anything for myself. And the
sooner I can get started the sooner I can come back
and carry away Miriam Chace — Miriam Forthright,
as she will be then.

It seems a long way off, sometimes, and I don't
know that it wouldn't be better to give up the idea
of ever being very rich. Then we could be married
just as soon as I get a raise, which I'm hoping for by

New Year's, if I can show them that I am worth
2

g VISTAS OF NEW YORK

it. But I'd like to be rich for your sake, Miriam-
very rich, so that you could have everything you

want, and more too!

Your loving

JACK.

Ill

NEW YORK, Sept. 24, 1894.

MY DEAR MIRIAM,— I'm glad you don't want me
to give up before I get to the top. I can't see why
I shouldn't succeed just as well as anybody else. You
needn't think I'm weakening, either. I guess I was
longing for you when I wrote that about being satis-
fied with what I'll have if I get my raise.

But what do you want to know about the people
in this house for? The landlady's name is Janeway,
and she's sixty or seventy, I don't know which. As
for the daughter you're so curious about, I don't
see her much. Her name's Sally — at least that's
what her mother calls her. And I guess she's forty
if she's a day. She don't pretty much, either. Her
hair is sort of sandy, and I don't know what color
eyes she has. I never knew you to take such an
interest in folks before.

You ask me how I like the people here — I suppose
you mean the New-Yorkers generally. Well, I guess
I shall get to like them in time. They ain't as stuck
up as you'd think. That sassy way of theirs don't

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 9

mean anything half the time. They just mind their
own business and they haven't got time for anything
else. They don't worry their heads about anybody.
If you can keep up with the procession, that's all
right; and they're glad to see you. If you drop out
or get run over, that's all right, too; and they don't
think of you again.

That's one thing I've found out already. A man's
let alone in a big city — ever so much more than he is
in a village. There isn't anybody watching him here;
and his neighbors don't know whether it's baker's
bread his wife buys or what. Fact is, in a big city a
man hasn't any neighbors. He knows -the boys in
the store, but he don't know the man who lives next
door. That's an extraordinary thing to say, isn't it?
I've been in this house here for a fortnight and I
don't even know the names of the folks living oppo-
site. I don't know them by sight, and they don't
know me. The man who sleeps in the next house on
the other side of the wall from me — he's got a bad
cold, for I can hear him cough, but that's all I know
about him. And he don't know me, either. We may
be getting our dinners together every day down-town
and we'll never find out except by accident that we
sleep side by side with only a brick or two between us.
It's thinking of things like that that comes pretty
near making me feel lonely sometimes; and I won't
deny that there's many a night when I've wished
I had only to go down street to see the welcome light

10 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

of your father's lamp— and to find Somebody Else
who was glad to see me, even if she did sometimes
fire up and make it hot for me just because I'd
been polite to some other girl.

If you were only here you'd have such lots of sharp
things to say about the sights, for there's always
something going on here. Broadway beats the circus
hollow. New York itself is the Greatest Show on
Earth. You'd admire to see the men, all handsomed
up, just as if they were going to meeting; and you'd
find lots of remarks to pass about the women, dressed
up like summer boarders all the time. And, of course,
they are summer boarders really — New York is where
the summer boarders come from. When they are
up in Auburnvale they call us the Natives — down
here they call us Jays. Every now and then on the
street here I come across some face I seem to recog-
nize, and when I trace it up I find it's some summer
boarder that's been up in Auburnvale. Yesterday,
for instance, in the car I sat opposite a girl I'd seen
somewhere — a tall, handsome girl with rich golden
hair. Well, I believe it was that Miss Stanwood
that boarded at Taylor's last June — you know, the
one you used to call the Gilt-Edged Girl.

But the people here don't faze me any more.
I'm going in strong; and I guess I'll come out on
top one of these fine days. And then I'll come back
to Auburnvale and I'll meet a brown-haired girl
with dark-brown eyes— and I'll meet her in church

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 11

and her father will marry us! Then we'll go away
in the parlor-car to be New-Yorkers for the rest of
our lives and to leave the Natives way behind us.
I don't know but it's thinking of that little girl
with the dark-brown eyes that makes me lonelier
sometimes. Here's my love to her.

Your own

JACK.

IV

NEW YORK, Oct. 7, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM, — You mustn't think that I'm lonely
every day. I haven't time to be lonely generally.
It's only now and then nights that I feel as if I'd
like to have somebody to talk to about old times.
But I don't understand what you mean about this
Miss Stan wood. I didn't speak to her in the car that
day, and I haven't seen her since. You forget that
I don't know her except by sight. It was you who
used to tell me about the Gilt-Edged Girl, and her
fine clothes and her city ways, and all that.

This last week I've been going to the Young Men's
Christian Association, where there's a fine library and
a big reading-room with all sorts of papers and
magazines — I never knew there were so many before.
It's going to be a great convenience to me, that
reading-room is, and I shall try to improve myself
with the advantages I can get there. But whenever

12 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

I've read anything in a magazine that's at all good,
then I want to talk it over with you as we used to do.
You know so much more about books and history
than I do, and you always make me see the fine side
of things. I'm afraid my appreciation of the ideal
needs to be cultivated. But you are a good-enough
ideal for me; I found that out ages ago, and it didn't
take me so very long, either. You weren't meant to
teach school every winter; and it won't be so very
many winters before you will be down here in New
York keeping house for a junior partner in Fassiter,
Smith & Kiddle — or some firm just as big.

I can write that way to you, Miriam, but I
couldn't say anything like that down at the store.
It isn't that they'd jeer at me, though they would, of
course — because most of them haven't any ambition
and just spend their money on their backs, or on the
races, or anyhow. No, I haven't the confidence these
New-Yorkers have. Why, I whisper to the car con-
ductors to let me off at the corner, and I do it as
quietly as I can, for I don't want them all looking at
me. But a man who was brought up in the city,
he just glances up from his paper and says "Twenty-
third!" And probably nobody takes any notice of
him, except the conductor. I wonder if I'll ever be
so at home here as they are.

Even the children are different here. They have
the same easy confidence, as though they'd seen
everything there was to see long before they were

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 13

born. But they look worn, too, and restless, for all
they take things so easy.

You ask if I've joined a church yet. Well, I
haven't. I can't seem to make up my mind. I've
been going twice every Sunday to hear different
preachers. There's none of them with the force of
your father — none of them as powerful as he is, either
in prayer or in preaching. I'm going to Dr. Thurs-
ton's next Sunday; he's got some of the richest men
in town in his congregation.

There must be rich men in all the churches I've
been to, for they've got stained-glass windows, and
singers from the opera, they say, at some of them.
I haven't heard anybody sing yet whose voice is as
sweet as a little girl's I know — a little bit of a girl
who plays the organ and teaches in Sunday-school —
and who doesn't know how much I love her.

JACK.

NEW YORK, Oct. 14, 1894.
DEAR MIRIAM, — Yes, it is a great comfort to me
always to get your bright letters, so full of hope and
love and strength. You are grit, clear through, and
I'm not half good enough for you. Your last letter
came Saturday night; and that's when I like to get
them, for Sunday is the only day I have time to be
lonely.

14 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

I go to church in the forenoon and in the evening
again; in the afternoon I've been going up to Central
Park.' There's a piece of woods there they call the
Ramble, and I've found a seat on a cobble up over the
pond. The trees are not very thrifty, but they help
me to make believe I am back in Auburnvale.
Sometimes I go into the big Museum there is in the
Park, not a museum of curiosities, but full of pictures
and statuary, ever so old some of it, and very peculiar.
Then I wish for you more than ever, for that's the sort
of thing you'd be interested in and know all about.
Last Sunday night I went to Dr. Thurston's church,
and I thought of you as soon as the music began. I
remember you said you did wish you were an organist
in a Gothic church where they had a pipe-organ.
Well, the organ at Dr. Thurston's would just suit
you, it's so big and deep and fine. And you'd like
the singing, too; it's a quartet, and the tenor is a
German who came from the Berlin opera; they say
he gets three thousand dollars a year just for singing
on Sunday.

But I suppose it pays them to have good voices
like his, for the church was crowded; and even if some
of the congregation came for the music, they had
to listen to Dr. Thurston's sermon afterward. And
it was a very good sermon, indeed — almost as good
as one of your father's, practical and chockful of
common sense. And Dr. Thurston isn't afraid of
talking right out in meeting, either. He was speaking

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 15

of wealth and he said it had to be paid for just like
anything else, and that many a man buys his fortune
at too high a price, especially if he sacrifices for it
either health or character. And just in front of him
sat old Ezra Pierce, one of the richest men in the city —
and one of the most unscrupulous, so they say.
He's worth ten or twenty millions at least; I was up
in the gallery and he was in the pew just under me,
so I had a good look at him. I wonder how it must
feel to be as rich as all that.

And who do you suppose was in the pew just
across the aisle from old Pierce? Nobody but the
Gilt-Edged Girl, as you call her, that Miss Stanwood.
So you see it's a small world even hi a big city, and
we keep meeting the same people over and over again.

I rather think I shall go to Dr. Thurston's regularly
now. I like to belong to a church and not feel like
a tramp every Sunday morning. Dr. Thurston is
the most attractive preacher I've heard yet, and the
music there is beautiful.

I don't suppose I shall ever be as rich as old Ezra
Pierce, although I don't see why not, but if ever I
am really rich I'll have a big house, with a great big
Gothic music-room, with a pipe-organ built in one
end of it. I guess I could get Some One to play
on it for me when I come home evenings tired out
with making money down-town. I wonder if she
guesses how much I love her?

JACK.

16 ' VISTAS OF NEW YORK

VI

NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,— Your account of your rehearsal
of the choir was very amusing. I'm glad you are
having such a good time. But then you always could
make a good story out of anything. You must have
had a hard job managing the choir, and smoothing
them down, and making them swallow their little
jealousies. I wish I had half your tact. I can sell
a man a bill of goods now about as well as any of
the clerks in the store; but if I could rub them down
gently as you handle the soprano and the contralto,
I'd be taken into the firm inside of two years.

And I never wished for your tact and your skill in
handling children more than I did last Sunday.
I wrote you I'd made up my mind to go to Dr.
Thurston's, and last Sunday he called for teachers for
the Sunday-school. So I went up and they gave
me a class of street boys, Italians, some of them, and
Swedes. They're a tough lot, and I guess that some
of them are going to drop by the wayside after the
Christmas tree. I had hard work to keep order, but
I made them understand who was the master before
I got through. All the English they know they pick
up from the gutter, I should say; and yet they want
books to take home. So I told them if they behaved
themselves all through the hour I'd go to the library
with them to pick out a book for each of them. They

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 17

don't call it a book, either — they say, "Give me a
good library, please."

And what do you suppose happened when I took
them all up to the library desk? Well, I found that
the librarian was the tall girl you call the Gilt-Edged.
It is funny how I keep meeting her, isn't it? I was
quite confused at first; but of course she didn't know
me and she couldn't guess that you used to make fun
of her. So she was just businesslike and helped me
pick out the books for the boys.

Considering the hard times, we have been doing a
big business down at the store. Two or three nights
a week now I've had to stay down till ten. We get
extra for this, and I don't mind the work. By degrees
I'm getting an insight into the business. But there
isn't any short cut to a fortune that I can see. There's
lots of hard work before me and lots of waiting, too —
and it's the waiting for you I mind the most.

JACK.

VII

NEW YORK, Nov. 4, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM, — I was beginning to wonder what
the matter was when I didn't have a letter for a week
and more. And now your letter has come, I don't
quite make it out. You write only a page and a half;
and the most of that is taken up with asking about
Miss Stanwood.

18

Yes, I see her Sundays, of course, and she is always
very pleasant. Indeed, I can't guess what it is that
you have against her or why it is you are always
picking at her. I feel sure that she doesn't dye her
hair, but I will look at the roots as you suggest and
see if it's the same color there. Her name is Hester—
I've seen her write it in the library cards. Her
father is very rich, they say— at least he's president
of a railroad somewhere down South.

She strikes me as a sensible girl, and I think you
would like her if you knew her. She has helped me
to get the right kind of books into the hands of the
little Italians and other foreigners I have to teach.
Most Sunday-school books are very mushy, I think,
and I don't believe it's a healthy moral when the
good boy dies young. Miss Stanwood says that
sometimes when one of my scholars takes home a
book it is read by every member of the family who
knows how to read, and they all talk it over. So
it's very important to give them books that will
help to make good Americans of them. She got her
father to buy a lot of copies of lives of Washington
and Franklin and Lincoln. They are not specially
religious, these books, but what of it? Miss Stanwood
says she thinks we must all try first of all to make
men of these rough boys, to make them manly, and
then they'll be worthy to be Christians. She is
thinking not only of the boys themselves, but of the
parents too, and of the rest of the family; and she

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 19

says that a little leaven of patriotism suggested by
one of these books may work wonders. But you are
quite right in saying that "I'm not as lonely as I was a
month ago. Of course not, for I'm getting used to
the bigness of the place and the noise no longer wears
on me. Besides, I've found out that the New-Yorkers
are perfectly willing to be friendly. They'll meet
you half-way always, not only in the church, but even
down-town, too. I ain't afraid of them any more, and
I can tell a conductor to let me out at the corner now
without wishing to go through the floor of the car.
Fact is, I've found out how little importance I am.
Up at Auburn vale people knew me; I was old John
Forthright's only son; I was an individual. Here in
New York I am nobody at all, and everybody is per-
fectly willing to let me alone. I think I like it better
here; and before I get through I'll force these New-
Yorkers to know me when they see me in the street
— just as they touch each other now and whisper
when they pass old Ezra Pierce.

Write soon and tell me there's nothing the matter
with you. I'm all right and I'd send you my love
— but you got it all already. JACK.

VIII

NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 1894.
DEAR MIRIAM, — I asked you to write me soon, and
yet you've kept me waiting ten days again. Even

20 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

now your letter has come I can't seem to get any
satisfaction out of it. I have never known you to
write so stiffly. Is there anything the matter? Are
you worried at home? Is your mother sick or your
father?

I wish I could get away for a week at Thanksgiving
to run up and see you. But we are kept pretty busy
at the store. There isn't one of the firm hasn't got
his nose down to the grindstone, and that's where
they keep ours. That's how they've made their
money; it's all good training for me, of course.

All the same I'd like to be with you this Thanks-
giving, even if it isn't as beautiful a day as last
Thanksgiving was. I don't know when I've enjoyed
a dinner as I did your mother's that night, but I
guess it wasn't the turkey I liked so much or the
pumpkin pie, but the welcome I got and the sight of
the girl who sat opposite to me and who wouldn't tell
me what she had wished for when we pulled the wish-
bone. I think it was only that morning in church
when I looked across and saw you at the organ that
I found out I had been in love with you for a long
while. You were so graceful, as you sat there and the
sunlight came down on your beautiful brown hair,
that I wanted to get up and go over on the spot
and tell you I loved you. Then at dinner your fiery
eyes seemed to burn right into me, and I wondered if
you could see into my heart that was just full of love
of you.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 21

It is curious, isn't it, that I didn't get a chance
to tell you all these things for nearly six months?
I don't know how it was, but first one thing and then
another made me put off asking you. I was afraid,
too. I dreaded to have you say you didn't care for
me. And you were always so independent with me.
I couldn't guess what your real feelings were. Then
came that day in June when I mustered up courage
at last! Since then I've been a different man — a
better man, I hope, too.

But I don't know why I should write you this way
in answer to a letter of yours that was too short
almost to be worth the postage!

JACK.

IX

NEW YORK, Dec. 2, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM, — You don't know how much good
it did me to get your long letter last week. You
wrote just like your old self — just like the dear little
girl you are! I was beginning to wonder what had
come over you. I thought you had changed some-
how, and I couldn't understand it.

Of course, I wished I was in Auburnvale on Thanks-
giving. I'd like to have seen you sitting in the seats
and singing with your whole soul; and I'd have liked
to hear your father preach one of his real inspiring
sermons that lift up the heart of man.

22 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

To be all alone here in New York was desolate—
and then it rained all the afternoon, too. It didn't
seem a bit like a real Thanksgiving.

I went to church, of course, but I didn't think
Dr. Thurston rose to the occasion. He didn't tell
us the reasons why we ought to be grateful as strongly
as your father did last year.

Coming out of church it had just begun to rain,
and so there was a crowd around the doors. As I
was just at the foot of the stairs I tripped over Miss
Stanwood's dress. I tell you it made me uncomfor-
table when I heard it tear. But these New York
girls have the pleasantest manners. She didn't even
frown. She smiled and introduced me to her father,
who seemed like a nice old gentleman. He was very
friendly, too, and we stood there chatting for quite
a while until the crowd thinned out.

He said that if I really wanted to understand some
of the Sunday-school lessons I ought to go to the
Holy Land, since there are lots of things there that
haven't changed in two thousand years. He's been
there and so has his daughter. He brought back ever
so many photographs, and he's asked me to drop in
some evening and look at them, as it may help me
in making the boys see things clearly. It was very
kind of him, wasn't it? I think I shall go up some
night next week.

I've been here nearly three months now, and Mr.
Stanwood's will be the first private house I shall

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 23

have been to — and in Auburnvale I knew everybody
and every door was open to me. I feel it will be a
real privilege to see what the house of a rich man
like Mr. Stanwood is like. I'll write you all about it.
And some day I'll buy you a house just as fine as
his. That some day seems a long way off, some-
times, don't it?

JACK.

NEW YORK, Dec. 4, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM, — You have never before answered so
promptly, and so I write back the very day I get your
letter.

I begin by saying I don't understand it — or at
least I don't want to understand it. You ask me not
to accept Mr. Stanwood's invitation. Now that's
perfectly ridiculous, and you know it is. Why
shouldn't I go to Mr. Stanwood's house if he asks
me? He's a rich man, and very influential, and has
lots of friends. He's just the kind of man it's very
useful for me to know. You ought to be able to see
that. I've got to take advantage of every chance I
get. If I ever start in business for myself, it will
be very helpful if I could find a man like Mr. Stan-
wood who might be willing to put in money as a
special partner.

Fact is, I'm afraid you are jealous. That's what

24 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

I don't like to think. But it seems to me I can see
in your letter just the kind of temper you were in last
Fourth of July when I happened to get in conversa-
tion with Kitty Parsons. Your eyes flashed then and
there was a burning red spot on your cheeks, and I
thought I'd never seen you look so pretty. But I
knew you hadn't any right to be mad clear through.
And you were then, as you are now. I hadn't done
anything wrong then, and I'm not going to do any-
thing wrong now. Jealousy is absurd, anyhow, and
it's doubly absurd in this case! You know how much
I love you — or you ought to know it. And you
ought to know that a rich man like Mr. Stanwood
isn't going to ask a clerk in Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle's
up to his house just on purpose to catch a husband
for his daughter.

I guess I've got a pretty good opinion of myself.
You told me once I was dreadfully stuck up — it was
the same Fourth of July you said it, too. But I'm
not conceited enough to think that a New York girl
like Miss Stanwood would ever look at me. I don't
trot in her class. And a railroad president isn't so
hard up for a son-in-law that he has to pick one up
on the church steps. So you needn't be alarmed
about me.

But if it worries you I'll go some night this week
and get it over. Then I'll write you all about it.
I guess there's lots of things in Mr. Stanwood's house
you would like to see.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 25

So sit down and write me a nice letter soon, and get
over this jealousy as quick as you can. It isn't
worthy of the little girl I love so much.
Your only

JACK.

XI

NEW YORK, Dec. 9, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM, — I haven't had a line from you since
I wrote you last, but according to promise I write at
once to tell you about my visit to the Stanwoods.

I went there last night. They live on the top of
Murray Hill, just off Madison Avenue. It's a fine
house, what they call a four-story, high-stooped,
brownstone mansion. The door was opened by a
man in a swallow-tail coat, and he showed me into the
sitting-room, saying they hadn't quite finished dinner
yet — and it was almost eight o'clock! That shows
you how different things are here in New York, don't
it? The sitting-room was very handsome, with
satin furniture, and hand-painted pictures on the
walls, and a blazing soft-coal fire. There were maga-
zines and books on the center-table, some of them
French.

In about ten minutes they came in, Mr. Stanwood
and his daughter; and they begged my pardon for
keeping me waiting. Then Mr. Stanwood said he
was sorry but he had to attend a committee meeting

26 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

at the club. Of course, I was for going, too, but he
said to Hester— that's Miss Stanwood's name; pretty,
isn't it?— she'd show me the photographs. So he
stayed a little while and made me feel at home and
then he went.

He's a widower, and his daughter keeps house for
him; but I guess housekeeping's pretty easy if
you've got lots of money and don't care how fast you
spend it. I felt a little awkward, I don't mind
telling you, in that fine room, but Miss Stanwood
never let on if she saw it, and I guess she did, for she's
pretty sharp, too. She sent for the photographs; and
she gave me a wholly new idea of the Holy Land, and
she told me lots of things about their travels abroad.
When you called her the Gilt-Edged Girl I suppose
you thought she was stiff and stuck up. But she
isn't — not a bit. She's bright, too, and she was very
funny the way she took off the people -they'd met
on the other side. She isn't as good a mimic as you,
perhaps, but she can be very amusing. She's very
well educated, I must say; she's read everything and
she's been everywhere. In London two years ago
she was presented to the Queen— it was the Princess
of Wales, really, but she stood for the Queen— and
she isn't set up about it either.

So I had an enjoyable evening in spite of my
being so uncomfortable; and when Mr. Stanwood
came back and I got up to go, he 'asked me to come
again.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 27

Now I've told you everything, as I said I would, so
that you can judge for yourself how fortunate in
having made friends in a house like Mr. Stanwood's.
You can't help seeing that, I'm sure.

JACK.

XII

NEW YORK, Dec. 18, 1894.

MY DEAR MIRIAM, — What is the matter with you?
What have I done to offend you? You keep me
waiting ten days for a letter, and then when it comes
it's only four lines and it's cold and curt; and there
isn't a word of love hi it.

If it means you are getting tired of me and want
to break off, say so right out, and I'll drop everything
and go up to Auburnvale on the first train and make
love to you all over again and just insist on your
marrying me. You needn't think I've changed.
Distance don't make any difference to me. If any-
body's changed it's you. I'm just the same. I love
you as much as ever I did; more, too, I guess. Why,
what would I have to look forward to in life if I
didn't have you?

Now, I simply can't stand the way you have been
treating me.

First off I thought you might be jealous, but I
knew I couldn't give you any cause for that, so I saw
that wasn't it. The only thing I can think of is

28 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

that separation is a strain on you. I know it is on
me, but I felt I just had to stand it. And if I could
stand it when what I wanted was you, well, I guessed
you could stand it when all you had to do without
was me.

Now, I tell you what I'll do, if you say so. I'll
drop everything here and give up trying. What's
the use of a fortune to me if I don't have you to share
it with me? Of course, I'd like to be rich some day,
but that's because I want you to have money and to
hold your own with the best of them. Now, you
just say the word and I'll quit. I'll throw up my
job with Fassiter, Smith & Kiddle, though they are
going to give me a raise at New Year's. Mr. Smith
told me yesterday. I'll quit and I'll go back to
Auburn vale for the rest of my life. I don't care if
it is only a little country village — you live in it, and
that's enough for me. I'll clerk in the store, if I can
get the job there, or I'll farm it, or I'll do anything
you say. Only you must tell me plainly what it is
you want. What I want most in the world is you!

JACK.

XIII

NEW YORK, Jan. 1, 1895.
DEAREST MIRIAM,— That was a sweet letter you
wrote me Christmas— just the kind of letter I hope
you will always write.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 29

And so you have decided that I'm to stay here
and work hard and make a fortune and you will
wait for me and you won't be cold to me again.
That's the way I thought you would decide; and
I guess it's the decision that's best for both of
us.

What sets me up, too, is your saying you may be
able to come down here for a little visit. Come as
soon as you can. If the friend you're going to stay
with is really living up at One Hundredth Street,
she's a long way off, but that won't prevent my
getting up to see you as often as I can.

I shall like to show you the town and take you to
see the interesting places. It will amuse me to
watch the way you take things here. You'll find out
that Auburnvale is a pretty small place, after you've
seen New York.

Of course, you'll come to Dr. Thurston's on Sunday
with me. I wonder if you wouldn't like to help in
the Sunday-school library while you are in town?
Mr. Stan wood's going down to Florida to see about
his railroad there, and he's to take his daughter
with him, so there's nobody to give out books on
Sunday.

But no matter about that, so long as you come
soon. You know who will be waiting for you on the
platform, trying to get a sight of you again after all
these months.

JACK.

30 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

XIV

NEW YORK, Feb. 22, 1895.

DEAR MIRIAM,— Do be reasonable! That's all I
ask. Don't get excited about nothing! I confess
I don't understand you at all. I've heard of women
carrying on this way, but I thought you had more
sense! You can't think how you distress me.

After a long month in town here, when I'd
seen you as often as I could and three or four times
a week most always, suddenly you break out as you
did yesterday after church; and then when I go
to see you this evening you've packed up and gone
home.

Now, what had I done wrong yesterday? I can't
see. After Sunday-school you were in the library
and Miss Stanwood came in unexpectedly, just back
from Florida. I introduced you to her, and she was
very pleasant indeed. She wouldn't have been if
she'd known how you made fun of her and called her
the Gilt-Edged and all that — but then she didn't
know. She was very friendly to you and said she
hoped you were to be in town all winter, since Auburn-
vale must be so very dull. Well, it is dull, and you
know it, so you needn't have taken offense at that.
Then she said the superintendent had asked her to
get up a show for the Sunday-school — a sort of magic-
lantern exhibition of those photographs of the Holy
Land, and she wanted to know if I wouldn't help her.

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 31

Of course, I said I would, and then you said the library
was very hot and wouldn't I come out at once.

And when we got out on the street you forbid my
having anything to do with the show. Now, that's
what I call unreasonable; and I'm sure you will say
so, too, when you've had time to think it over. And
why have you run away, so that I can't talk things
over with you quietly and calmly?

JACK.

XV

NEW YORK, March 3, 1895.

MY DEAR MIRIAM, — Your letter is simply ab-
surd. You say you "don't believe in that Miss
Stanwood," and you want me to promise never to
speak to her again. Now you can't mean that. It
is too ridiculous. I confess you puzzle me more and
more. I don't pretend to understand women, but
you go beyond anything I ever heard of. What you
ask is unworthy of you; it's unworthy of me. It's
more — it's unchristian.

But I'll do what I can to please you. Since you
have taken such a violent dislike to Miss Stanwood,
I'll agree not to go to her house again — although that
will be very awkward if Mr. Stanwood asks me, won't
it? However, I suppose I can trump up some excuse.
I'll agree not to go to her house, I say; but of course,
I've got to be polite to her when I meet her in the

32

VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Sunday-school-that is, unless you want me to give
up the Sunday-school, too! And I've got to help in
the show for the boys and girls. To give up now
after I've said I would, that would make me feel as
mean as pusley. Besides, that show is going to
attract a great deal of attention. All the prominent
people in the church are going to come to it— people
you don't know, of course, but high-steppers, all of
them. It wouldn't really be fair to back f out

now.

Now that's what I'll do. I'll meet you half-way.
Since you seem to have taken such a violent dislike
to Miss Stanwood, for no reason at all that I can see
excepting jealousy, and that's out of the question, of
course— but since you don't like her, I'll agree not to
go to her house again. But I must go on with the
photographs, and I can't help passing the time of day
when I meet her on Sunday in the library.

Will that satisfy you?

JACK.

XVI

NEW YORK, March 17, 1895.
DEAR MIRIAM, — It's two weeks now since I wrote
you in answer to your letter saying you would break
off our engagement unless I promised never to speak
to Miss Stanwood again — and you have never sent
me a line since. You seemed to think I cared for

A YOUNG MAN FROM THE COUNTRY 33

her — but I don't. How could I care for any other
girl, loving you as I do? Besides, even if I did care
for her, I'd have to get over it now — since she is
going to marry an officer in the navy. The wedding
is set for next June, and then he takes her with him
to Japan. For all you are so jealous of her, I think
she is a nice girl and I hope she will be happy.

And I want to be happy, too — and I've been mise-
rable ever since I got that letter of yours, so cold and so
hard. I don't see how a little bit of a girl like you can
hold so much temper! But I love you in spite of it,
and I don't believe I'd really have you different if
I could. So sit right down as soon as you get this
and write me a good long letter, forgiving me for all
I haven't done and saying you still love me a little
bit. You do, don't you, Miriam? And if you do
what's the use of our waiting ever so long? Why
shouldn't we be married in June, too?

I'm getting on splendidly in the store and guess I'll
get another raise soon; and even now I have enough
for two, if you are willing to start in with a little flat
somewhere up in Harlem. We'd have to try light
housekeeping at first, maybe, and perhaps table-
board somewhere. But I don't care what I eat or
where I eat if only I can have you sitting at the table
with me. Say you will, Miriam dear, say you will!
There's no use in our putting it off and putting it off
till we've both got gray hair, is there?

JACK.

34 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

XVII

NEW YORK, March 19, 1895.

DEAREST MIRIAM, — You don't know how happy
your letter has made me. I felt sure you would get
over your tantrums sooner or later. Now you are
my own little girl again, and soon you'll be my own
little wife!

But why must we put it off till June? The store
closes on Decoration Day, you know, and I guess I
can get the firm to let me have a day or two. So make
it May 30th, won't you? — and perhaps we can take
that trip to Niagara as you said you'd like to.

JACK.

(1895)

HI* HI «IH» 111 «

On tkes <&tep6 of the/

/o. CM u
(oity oball

THIN inch of dusty snow littered the
frozen grass-plots surrounding the mu-
nicipal buildings, and frequent scurries
of wind kept swirling it again over the
concrete walks whence it had been swept.
The February sun — although it was within an hour
of noon — could not break through the ashen clouds
that shut out the sky.

It was a depressing day, and yet there was no
relaxation of energy in the men who were darting here
and there eagerly, each intent on his errand, with eyes
fixed on the goal and with lips set in stern determina-
tion. As Curtis Van Dyne thrust himself through
the throng on the Broadway sidewalk, leaving the
frowning Post-office behind him, and passing before
the blithe effigy of Nathan Hale, he almost laughed
aloud as it suddenly struck him how incongruous it
was that a statue of a man who had gladly died for
his country should be stuck there between two build-
ings filled with men who were looking to their country,
to the nation or to the city, to provide them with a liv-
ing. But he was in no mood for laughter, even satur-
nine; and if anything could have aroused his satire,
it would have been not a graven image, but himself.

38 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

He was in the habit of having a good opinion of
himself, and he clung to his habits, especially to this
one. Yet he was then divided between self-pity and
self-contempt. 'For a good reason, so it seemed to
him — and he was pleased to be able to think that it
was an unselfish reason — he was going to take a step
he did not quite approve of. He went all over the
terms of the situation again as he turned from Broad-
way toward the City Hall; and the pressure of
circumstances as he saw them brought him again to
the same conclusion. Then he resolved not to let
himself be worried by his own decision; if it was for
the best, then there was no sense in not making the
best of it.

So intent was he on his own thought that he did
not observe the expectant smile of an older man who
was walking across the park in front of the City Hall,
and who slackened his gait, supposing that the young
lawyer would greet him.

When Van Dyne passed on unseeing, the other
man waited for a second and then called,
"Curtis!"

The young man had already begun to mount the
steps. He turned sharply, as though any conversa-
tion would then be unwelcome, but when he saw who
had hailed him he smiled cheerfully and held out his
hand cordially.

"Why, Judge," he began, "I didn't know you
were home again! I'm glad you are better. They

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 39

told me you might hate to go away for the rest of the
winter."

"That's what they told me, too," answered Judge
Jerningham; "and I told them I wouldn't go. I'm
paid for doing my work here, and I don't intend to
shirk it. I expect to take my seat again next week."

There was a striking contrast between the two
men as they stood there on the steps of the City Hall.
Judge Jerningham was nearly sixty; he had a stal-
wart frame, almost to be called stocky; his black
hair was grizzled only, and his full beard was only
streaked with white. He had large, dark eyes, deep-
set under cavernous brows. His clothes fitted him
loosely, and, although not exactly out of style, they
were not to be called modish in either cut or material.
Curtis Van Dyne was full thirty years younger; he
was f air and slight, and he wore a drooping mustache.
He was dressed with obvious care, and his garments
suited him. He looked rather like a man of fashion
than like a young fellow who had his way to make
at the bar.

"By the way," said the Judge, after a little pause,
which gave Van Dyne time to wonder why it was
that the elder man had called him — "by the way,
how is your sister? I saw her in church on Sunday,
and she looked a little pale and peaked, I thought."

"Oh, Martha's all right," the young man answered,
briskly. "Aunt Mary attends to that."

"Do you know what struck me on Sunday as I
4

40 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

looked at Martha?" asked the* Judge. "It was her
likeness to her mother at the same age."

"Yes," Van Dyne replied, "Aunt Mary says
Martha's very like mother as a girl."

"And your mother was never very hearty," pur-
sued the Judge. "Don't you think it might be well to
get the girl out of town for a little while next month?
March is very hard on those whose bronchial tubes
are weakened."

"I guess Martha can stand another March in New
York," the young man responded. "She's all right
enough. I don't say it wouldn't be good for her to
go South for a few weeks, but — Well, you know I
can't telephone for my steam-yacht to be brought
round to the foot of Twenty-third Street, and I don't
own any stock in Jekyll Island."

The Judge made no immediate answer, and again
there was an awkward silence.

The younger man broke it. He held out his hand
once more. "It's pleasant to see you looking so
fit," he said, cordially.

The other took his hand and held it. "Curtis,"
he began, "it isn't any of my business, I suppose, and
yet I don't know. Who is to speak if I don't?"

"Speak about what?" asked Van Dyne, as the
Judge released his hand.

The elder man did not answer this question. Ap-
parently he found it difficult to say what he wished.

"I happened to see a paragraph in the political

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 41

gossip in the Dial this morning," he began again; "I
don't often read that sort of stuff, but your name
caught my eye. It said that the organization was
enlisting recruits from society as an answer to the
slanderous attacks that had been made on it, and that
people could see how much there was in these
malignant assaults when they found the better element
eager to be enrolled. And then it gave hah* a dozen
names of men who had just joined, including yours and
Jimmy Suydain's. I suppose there is no truth in it?"

"It's about as near to the truth as a newspaper
ever gets, I fancy," Van Dyne answered. His color
had risen a little, and his speech had become a little
more precise. "I haven't joined yet, but I'm going
to join this week. Pat McCann is to take us in hand,
Jimmy and me; he's our district leader."

"Pat McCann!" and the Judge spoke the name
with horrified contempt.

"Yes," responded the young man. "Pat McCann
has taken quite a shine to Jimmy and me. He gives
us the glad hand and never the marble heart."

"It's no matter about Suydam," said the Judge,
with an impatient gesture; "he's a foolish young
fellow and he doesn't know any better. I suppose he
expects to be a colonel on the staff of the first governor
they elect. But you — "

It was with a hint of bravado that Van Dyne
returned: "I don't see that I'm any better than
Jimmy. He hasn't committed any crime that I

42 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

know of— except the deadly sin of inheriting a fortune.
And as far as that goes, I wish old man Suydam had
adopted me and divided his money between us.
Then I could have that steam-yacht and take Martha
down to Jekyll Island next month."

The Judge hesitated again, and then he said:
"Curtis, I suppose you think I have no right to speak
to you about this, and perhaps I haven't. But I
have known you since you were born, and I went to
school with your father. We were classmates in
college, and I was his best man when he married your
mother. You know his record in the war, and you
are proud of it, of course. He left you — you will
excuse my putting it plainly? — he left you an honor-
able name."

"And that was about all he did leave me!" the
young man returned. "I want to leave my children
something more."

"If you join the organization, if you are a hail-
fellow-well-met with all the Pat McCanns of the city,"
retorted the Judge, sternly — "if you sink to that level,
you would certainly leave your children something
very different from what your father left you. If
you do, I doubt whether the organization will go out
of its way to offer inducements to your son. It will
expect to get him cheap."

The young lawyer flushed again, and then he
laughed uneasily.

"You are hard on me, Judge," he said at last.

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 43

t

"I want you to be hard on yourself now," the older
man returned. "I know you, Curtis; I know the
stock you come of, and I am sure you will be hard
enough on yourself — when it is too late."

"I'm not going to rob a bank, am I?" urged the
younger man.

"You are going to rob yourself," was the swift
answer. "You are going to rob your children, if
you ever have any, of what your father left you — the
priceless heritage of an honored name."

"Come, now, Judge," said Van Dyne, "is that
quite fair? You speak as if I were going to enroll
in the Forty Thieves."

"If I thought you capable of doing that I should
not be speaking to you at all," was the reply.

"Pat McCann isn't a bad fellow really," the young
man declared. "He means well enough. And the
rest of them are not rascals, either; they are not the
crew of pirates the papers call them. They are giving
the city as good a government now as our mixed popu-
lation will stand. They have their ambition to do
right; and I sincerely believe that they mean to do
the best they know how."

"That's it precisely," the Judge asserted. "They
mean to do the best they know how. But how much
do they know?"

"Well, they are not exactly fools, are they?" was
the evasive answer.

"Don't misunderstand me," the elder man con-

44 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

tinued. "I am perfectly aware that the organiza-
tion is not so black as it is painted. The men at the
head of it are not a crew of pirates, as you say — of
course not; if they were they would have been made
to walk the plank long ago. Probably they mean
well, as you say again. I should be sorry to believe
that they do not."

"Well, then—" returned Van Dyne.

But the Judge went on, regardless of what the
young lawyer was going to say:

"They may mean well, but what of it if the result
is what we see? The fact is that the men at the head
of the organization are of an arrested type of civili-
zation. They are two or three hundred years behind
the age. They have retained the methods — perhaps
not of Claude Duval, as their enemies allege, but of
Sir Robert Walpole, as their friends could not deny.
Here in America to-day they are anachronisms.
They stand athwart our advance. I have no wish
to call them names or to think them worse than they
are; but I know that association with them is not
good for you or for me. It is our duty — your duty
and mine, and the duty of all who have a little
enlightenment — to arouse the public against these
survivals of a lower stage, and to fight them inces-
santly, and now and then to beat them, so that they
may be made to respect our views. You say they
arc giving the city as good a government as our
mixed population will stand. Well, that may be

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 45

true; I don't think it is quite true; but even if it is,
what of it? Are we to be satisfied with that? The
best way to educate our mixed population to stand
a better government is to fight these fellows steadily.
Nothing educates them more than an election, fol-
lowed by an object-lesson."

"That's all very well," responded Van Dyne, when
the Judge had made an end of his long speech. "But
I don't believe the organization leaders are really so
far behind other people, or so much worse. They're
not hypocrites, that's all. They know what they
want, and they take it the easiest way they can."

"If that is the best defense you can make for them,
they are worse than I thought," retorted the Judge.
"Sometimes the easiest way to take what you want
is to steal it."

"I don't claim that they are perfect, all of them,"
the younger man declared. "I suppose they are all
sorts — good, bad, and indifferent. But we are all
miserable shiners, you know — at least we say so
every Sunday. And I have known bad men in the
church." *

"Come, come, Curtis," the Judge replied, "that's
unworthy of you, isn't it? You would not be apolo-
gizing to me for joining the church, would you?"

Van Dyne was about to answer hastily, but he
checked the words on his lips. He looked away and
across the frozen park to the pushing crowd on
Broadway; but he did not really see the huge wagons

46 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

rumbling in and out of Mail Street, nor did he hear
the insistent clang of the cable-car.

His tone was deprecatory when he spoke at last.

"I suppose you are right," he began, "and I don't
quite see myself in that company. I'll be frank,
Judge, for you are an old friend, and I know you wish
me well, and I'd be glad to stand weU in your eyes.
I don't really want to join the organization; I don't
like the men in it any more than you do; and I don't
know that I approve of their ways much more than
you do. But I've got to do it."

"Got to?" echoed the Judge, in surprise. "Why
have you got to? They can't force you to join if you
don't wish it."

"I've got to do it because I've got to have money,"
was the young man's explanation.

"Do you mean that you are to be paid for asso-
ciating with these people?" the Judge asked.

"That's about it," was the answer. "I wouldn't
do it if I wasn't going to make something out of it,
would I? Not that there is any bargain, of course;
but Pat McCann has dropped hints, and I know how
easy it will be for them to throw things my way."

"I didn't know you needed money so badly," said
the Judge. "I thought you were doing well at the
bar."

"I'm doing well enough, I suppose," Van Dyne
explained; "but I could do better. In fact, I must
do better, I must have money. There's — well,

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 47

there's Martha. She came out last fall, and I gave
her a coming-out tea, of course. Well, I want her
to have a good time. Mother had a good time when
she was a girl, and why shouldn't Martha? She won't
be nineteen again."

"Yes," said the Judge, "your mother had a good
time when she was a girl. Your father and I saw to
that."

"Martha's just got her first invitation to the As-
sembly," Van Dyne went on. "You should have
seen how delighted she was, too; it did me good to
see it. Mrs. Jimmy Suydam sent it to her. But
all that will cost money; of course, she's got to have
a new gown and gloves and flowers and a carriage and
so on. I don't begrudge it to her. I'm only too glad
to give it to her. But I'm in debt now for that
coming-out tea and for other things. I ran behind
last year, and this year I shall spend more. That's
why I've got to join the organization and pick up a
reference now and then, and maybe a receivership
by and by; and perhaps they'll elect me to an office,
sooner or later. I know I'm too young yet, but I'd
like to be a judge, too."

"So it is for your sister you are selling yourself,
is it?" asked the elder man. "Do you think she
would be willing if she knew?"

"I'm not selling myself!" declared the young man,
laughing a little nervously. "I haven't signed any
compact with my own blood amid a blaze of red fire."

48 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Do you think your sister would approve if she
knew?" persisted the Judge.

" Oh, but she won't know!" was the answer. " I'll
admit she wouldn't like it overmuch. She takes
after father, and she has very strict ideas. You
ought to hear her talk about the corruption of our
politics!"

"Curtis," said the Judge, earnestly, "if you take
after your father, you ought to be able to look things
in the face. That's what I want you to do now.
Have you any right to sacrifice yourself for your
sister's sake in a way she would not like?"

"I'm not sacrificing myself at all," the young man
declared. "I want some of the good things of life
for myself. Besides, what do girls know about
politics? They are always dreamy and impracticable.
If they had their noses down to the grindstone of
life for a little while it would sharpen their eyes, and
they would see things differently."

"It will be a sad world when women like your
sister and your mother see things differently, as you
put it," the elder man retorted.

"If I want more money, I don't admit that it is
any of Martha's business how I make it," Van Dyne
asserted. "I'll let her have the spending of some of
it — that will be her duty. I want her to have a
summer in Europe, too. She knows that mother
was abroad a whole year when she was eighteen."

"I know that, too," said the Judge. "It was in

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 49

Venice that your father and I first met her; she was
feeding the pigeons in front of St. Mark's, and — "
( The Judge paused a moment, and then he laid his
hand on Van Dyne's shoulder.

"Curtis," he continued, "if a thousand dollars
now will help you out, or two thousand, or even five,
if you need it, I shall be glad to let you have the
money."

"Thank you, Judge," was the prompt reply. "I
can't take your money, because I don't know how or
when I could pay you back."

"What matter about that?" returned the other.
"I have nobody to leave it to."

"You were my father's friend and my mother's,"
said Van Dyne. "I would take money from you if
I could take it from anybody. But I can't do that.
You wouldn't in my place, would you?"

The Judge did not answer this directly. "It is
not easy to say what we should do if one were to
stand in the other's place," he declared. "And if
you change your mind, the money is ready for you
whenever you want it."

"You are very good to me, Judge," said the young
man, "and I appreciate your- kindness — "

"Then don't say anything more about it," the
elder man interrupted. "And you must forgive me
for my plain speaking about that other matter."

"About my joining the organization?" said Van
Dyne. "Well, I'll think over what you have said.

50 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

I don't want you to believe that I don't understand
the kindness that prompted you to say what you did.
I haven't really decided absolutely what I had best
do."

"It is a decision you must make for yourself, after
all," the Judge declared. "I will not urge you
further."

He held out his hand once more, and the young
man grasped it heartily.

"Perhaps you and Martha and 'Aunt Mary' could
come and dine with me some night next week," the
Judge suggested. "I should like to hear about your
sister's first experience in society."

"Of course we will all come, with pleasure," said
Van Dyne.

As the elder man walked away, the younger fol-
lowed him with his eyes. Then he turned and went
up the steps of the City Hall.

Almost at the top of the flight stood two men, who
parted company as Van Dyne drew near. One of
them waited for him to come up. The other started
down, smiling at the young lawyer as they met, and
saying: "Good morning, Mr. Van Dyne. It's rain
we're going to have, I'm thinking."

"Good morning, Mr. O'Donnell," returned Van
Dyne, roused from his reverie.

"There's Mr. McCann waiting to have a word
with you," cried O'Donnell over his shoulder, as he
passed.

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 51

The young lawyer looked up and saw the other
man at the top of the steps. He wanted time to
think over his conversation with Judge Jerningham,
and he had no desire for a talk just then with the
district leader. Perhaps he unconsciously revealed
this feeling in the coolness with which he returned
the other's greeting, courteous as he always was,
especially toward those whom he did not consider
his equal.

"It's glad I am to see you, Mr. Van Dyne," said
the politician, patting the young man on the shoulder
as they shook hands.

Van Dyne drew back instinctively. Never be-
fore had Pat McCann's high hat seemed so very
shiny to him, or Pat McCann's fur overcoat so very
furry. The big diamond hi Pat McCann's shirt-
front was concealed by the tightly buttoned coat;
but Van Dyne knew that it was there all the same,
and he detested it more than ever before.

"It's a dark morning it is," said McCann. "Will
we take a little drop of something warm?"

"Thank you," returned the young lawyer, some-
what stiffly; "I never drink in the morning."

"No more do I," declared the other; "but it's a
chill day this is. Well, and when are you coming
round to see the boys? Terry O'Donnell and me, we
was just talking about you and Mr. Suydam."

Van Dyne did not see why it should annoy him to
know that he had been the subject of conversation

52 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

between Pat McCann and Terry O'Donnell, but he
was instantly aware of the annoyance. If he in-
tended to throw in his lot with these people, he must
look forward to many intimacies not quite to his
liking.

"Oh,youwere talking about me, were you"? he said.

"We was that," continued the district leader.
"We want you to meet the boys and let them know
you, don't you see? We want you to give them the
glad hand."

When Van Dyne had used this slang phrase to the
Judge, it had seemed to him amusing; now it struck
him as vulgar.

"We want you to jolly them up a bit," McCann
went on. ' ' The boys will be glad to know you better. ' '

"Yes," was the monosyllabic response to this in-
vitation.

The district leader looked at the young lawyer,
and his manner changed.

"We'd like to get acquainted with you, Mr. Van
Dyne," he said, "if you're going to be one of us."

"If I'm going to be one of you," Van Dyne re-
peated. "That's just the question. Am I going to
be one of you?"

"I thought we had settled all that last week,"
cried McCann.

"I don't think I told you that I would join you,"
Van Dyne declared, wondering just how far he had
committed himself at that last interview.

ON THE STEPS OF THE CITY HALL 63

"You told me you thought you would," McCann
declared.

"Oh, maybe I thought so then," Van Dyne an-
swered.

The district leader was generally wary and tact-
ful. Among people of his own class he was a good
judge of men; and he owed his position largely to
his persuasive powers. But on this occasion he made
a mistake, due perhaps in some measure to his per-
ception of the other's assumption of superiority.

"And now you don't think so?" he retorted, swift-
ly. "Is that what it is? Well, it's for you to say,
not me. I'm not begging any man to come into the
organization if they don't want. But I can't waste
my time any more on them that don't want. It's
for you to say the word, and it's now or never."

"Since you put it that way, Mr. McCann," said
Van Dyne, "it's never."

"Then you don't want to join the organization?"
asked the district leader, a little taken aback by the
other's sudden change of determination.

"No," Van Dyne replied, "I don't."

And when he was left alone on the top of the City
Hall steps, the young lawyer was puzzled to know
whether it was Judge Jerningham or Pat McCann
that had most influenced his decision.

(1898)

® • «• •••••• ••••••• m » HI » IN.

itnd>

ez

f

BE light March rain, which had been in-
termittent all the morning, ceased fall-
ing before Minnie Henryson and her
mother had reached Sixth Avenue. The
keen wind sprang up again, and a patch
of blue sky appeared here and there down the vista
of Twenty-third Street, as they were walking west-
ward. There was even a suggestion of sunshine far
away over the Jersey hills.

The two ladies closed their umbrellas, which the
west wind had made it hard for them to hold.

"I believe we are going to have a pleasant after-
noon, after all," said Mrs. Henryson. "Perhaps we
had better lunch down here and get all our shopping
done to-day." .

"Just as you say, mamma," the daughter an-
swered, a little listlessly, accustomed to accept all
her mother's sudden changes of plans.

They turned the corner and went a little way down
the avenue, as the brakes of an up-town train scraped
and squeaked when it stopped at the station high
above their heads.

Mrs. Henryson paused to look into one of the
broad windows of a gigantic store.

58 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Minnie," she said, solemnly, "I don't believe hats
are going to be any smaller this summer, in spite of
all they say in the papers."

"It doesn't seem like it," responded her daughter,
perfunctorily. She had already bought her own hat
for the spring, and just then her mind was wander-
ing far afield. She was dutifully accompanying her
mother for a morning's shopping, although she would
rather have had the time to herself, so that she could
think out the question that was puzzling her.

Her mother continued to peer into the window,
comparing the hats with one another, and Minnie's
attention was arrested by a little girl of eight who
stopped almost at her side and stamped three times
on the iron cover of an opening in the sidewalk, near-
ly in front of the window where the two ladies were
standing. After giving this signal the child drew
back; and in less than a minute the covers opened
wide, and then an elevator began to rise, bringing
up a middle-aged man begrimed with oil and coal-
dust.

"Hello, dad," cried the child.

"Hello, kid!" he answered. "How's mother?"

"She's better," the girl answered. "Not so much
pain."

"That's good," the man responded.

"An' the doctor's been, an' he says she's doin'
fine," the child continued. "Maybe she can get up
for good next week."

"SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS " 59

"That '11 be a sight for sore eyes, won't it, kid?"
the father asked. "What you got for me to-day?"

Minnie was listening, although she was apparent-
ly gazing intently at the shop-window. Out of the
corner of her eye she saw the child hand a tin dinner-
pail to the man who had risen from the depths below.
Then she heard the young voice particularize its
contents.

"There's roast-beef sandwiches — I made 'em my-
self— and pie, apple pie — I got that at the bakery —
and coffee."

" Coffee, eh?" said the man. " That's what I want
most of all. My throat's all dried up with the dust.
Guess I'd better begin on that now." He opened the
dinner-pail and took a long drink out of it. "That's
pretty good, that coffee. That went right to the
spot!"

"I made it," the child explained, proudly.

"Did you now?" he answered. "Well, it's as good
as your mother's." Then a bell rang down below;
he pulled on one of the chains and the elevator be-
gan to go down slowly.

"So-long, kid," he called, as his head sank to the
level of the sidewalk.

"Good-by, dad," she answered, leaning forward;
" come home as early as you can. Mother '11 be so
glad to see you."

The child waited until the covers had again closed
over her father, and then she started away. Minnie

60 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Henryson turned and watched her as she slipped
across the avenue, avoiding the cars and the carts
with the skill born of long experience.

At last Mrs. Henryson tore herself away from the
window with its flamboyant head-gear. "No," she
said, emphatically, "I don't believe really they're
going to be any smaller."

The daughter did not answer. She was thinking
of the little domestic episode she had just witnessed;
and her sympathy went out to the sick woman, laid
up in some dark tenement and waiting through the
long hours for her husband's return. Her case was
sad; and yet she had a husband and a child and a
home of her own; her life was fuller than the empty
existence of a girl who had nothing to do but to go
shopping with her mother and to gad about to teas,
with now and then a dinner or a dance or the theater.
A home of her own and a husband! — what was a
woman's life without them? And so it was that what
Minnie had just seen tied itself at once into the sub-
ject of her thoughts as she walked silently down the
avenue by the side of her mother.

The trains rattled and ground on the Elevated
almost over their heads; the clouds scattered and a
faint gleam of pale March sunshine at last illumined
the gray ness of the day. The noon-hour rush was
at its height, and the sidewalks were often so thronged
that mother and daughter were separated for a moment
as they tried to pick their way through the crowd.

"SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS' 61

When they came to the huge department -store
they were seeking, Mrs. Henryson stood inside the
vestibule as though deciding on her plan of campaign.

"Minnie," she promulgated at last, "you had bet-
ter try and match those ribbons, and I'll go and pick
out the rug for your father."

"Shall I wait for you at the ribbon-counter?" the
daughter asked.

"Just sit down, and I'll come back as soon as I
can. You look a little tired this morning, anyhow."

"I'm not the least tired, I assure you — but I didn't
sleep well last night," she answered, as she went with
her mother to the nearest elevator.

When she was left alone, she had a little sigh of
relief, as though she was glad to be able to let her
thoughts run where they would without interruption.
She walked slowly to the ribbon-counter in a far
corner of the store, unconscious of the persons upon
whom her eyes rested. She was thinking of herself
and of her own future. She wondered whether that
future was then hanging in the balance.

She had early discovered that she was not very
pretty, although her mother was always telling her
that she had a good figure; and she had reached the
age of twenty-two without having had any particu-
lar attention from any man. She had begun to ask
herself whether any man ever would single her out
and make her interested in him and implore her to
be his wife. And now in the past few months it

62 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

seemed to her as if this dream might come true.
There was no doubt that Addison Wyngard had been
attentive all through the winter. Other girls had
noticed it, too, and had teased her about it. He had
been her partner three times at the dances of the
Cotillion of One Hundred. And when some of the
men of that wide circle had got up the Thursday
Theater Club, he had joined only after he had found
out that she was going to be a member. She recalled
that he had told her that he did not care for the
theater, and that he was so busy he felt he had no
right to go out in the evening. The managing clerk
of a pushing law firm could not control his own time
even after office hours; and there had been one night
when he was to be her escort at the Theater Club
a box of flowers had come at six o'clock, with a note
explaining that unexpected business forced him to
break the engagement. And the seat beside her had
been vacant all the evening.

Even when she came to the ribbon-counter she
did what she had to do mechanically, with her
thoughts ever straying from her duty of matching
widths and tints. Her mind kept escaping from the
task in hand and persisted in recalling the incidents
of her intimacy with him.

After she had made her purchases she took a seat
at the end of the counter, which happened to be more
or less deserted just then. Three shop-girls, who had
gathered to gossip during the noon lull in trade,

"SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS 63

looked at her casually as she sat down, and then went
on with their own conversation, which was pitched
in so shrill a key that she could not help hearing it.

"She says to him, she says, 'Willy, I'll report you
every time I catch you, see?' and she's reported him
three times this morning already. That ain't what
a real lady ought to do, I don't think."

"Who'd she report him to?" one of the other
salesladies asked.

* "Twice to Mr. Maguire. Once she reported him to
Mr. Smith, and he didn't take no notice. He just
laughed. But Mr. Maguire, he talked to Willy some-
thin' fierce. And you know Willy's got & stand it,
for he's got that cross old mother of his to keep;
he has to get her four quarts of paralyzed milk; every
day, Sundays too."

Then the third of the group broke hi: "Mr.
Maguire tried it on me once, but I gave it to him
back, straight from the shoulder. I ain't going to have
him call me down; not much. I know my business,
don't I? I don't need no little snip of a red-headed
Irishman to tell me what to do. I was born here, I
was, and I'm not taking any back talk from him,
even if he has a front like the court-house!"

The second girl, whose voice was gentler, then re-
marked: "Well, I wouldn't be too hard on Mr.
Maguire to-day. I guess he's got troubles of his
own."

"What's that?" cried the first of the three, whose

64 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

voice was the sharpest. "Has Sadie Jones thrown
him down again?"

"I didn't know a thing about it till this mornin',
when I saw the ring on her other finger," the second
saleslady explained, delighted to be the purveyor of
important information. "Mazie says Sadie didn't
break it off again till last night after he'd brought her
back from the Lady Dazzlers' Mask and Civic. And
she waited till they got into the trolley comin' home.
An' he'd taken her in to supper, too."

"That's so," the third girl said, "and Mr. Maguire's
takin' it terrible. He came across the street this
morning just before me, and he had his skates on.
I was waitin' to see him go in the mud-gutter. Then
he saw the copper on the beat, and he made an
awful brace. Gee, but I thought he was pinched
sure!"

"Mr. Smith caught on to him," said the first, with
her sharp voice, "and Willy heard him say he'd be
all right again, and he had only the fill of a pitcher."

"And Sadie's going to keep the ring, too. She says
she earned it trying to keep him straight," the third
girl went on. "It's a dead ringer for a diamond, even
if it ain't the real thing. He says it is."

Two customers came up at this juncture, and the
group of salesladies had to dissolve. A series of
shrill whistles came in swift succession and a fire-
engine rushed down the avenue, followed by a hook-
and-ladder truck; and the girl with the kindly voice

"SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS 65

went over toward the door to look at them, leaving
Minnie Henryson again to her own thoughts.

She asked herself if she was really getting inter-
ested in Addison Wyngard. And she could not
answer her own question. Of course it had been
very pleasant to feel that he was interested hi her.
And she thought he really was interested. He had
told her that he did not like his position with Smyth,
Mackellar & Hubbard, and a classmate at Columbia
had offered him a place with a railroad company down
in Texas. But he had said that he hated to give up
the law and to leave New York — and all his friends.
And as he said that, he looked at her. She had felt
that he was implying that she was the reason why he
was unwilling to go. She remembered that she had
laughed lightly as she rejoined that she would feel
homesick herself if she went out of sight of the
Madison Square Tower. He had answered that
there were other things hi New York besides the
Diana, things just as distant and just as unattain-
able. And to that she had made no response.

Then he had told her that he had another classmate
in the office of the Corporation Counsel, Judge
McKinley; there was a vacancy there, and his name
had been suggested to the judge. She had smiled and
expressed the hope that he might get the appointment.
And now, as she sat there alone, with the stir and
bustle of the department -store all about her, she
felt certain as never before that if he did get the

66 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

place he would be assured that he had at last money
enough to marry on, and that he would ask her to
be his wife. If she accepted him she would have a
husband and a home of her own. She would have
her chance for the fuller life that can come to a woman
only when she is able to fulfil her destiny.

Later he had found a chance to say that he was
going to stick it out in New York a little longer— and
then, if the Texas offer was still open, he'd have to
take it. He had paused to hear what she would say to
that. And all she had said was that Texas did seem
a long way off. She had given him no encouragement ;
she had been polite — nothing more. If he did ever
propose, and if she should refuse him, he could never
reproach her for having lured him on.

Suddenly it seemed to her that this chilly attitude
of hers was contemptible. The man wanted her —
and for the first time she began to suspect that all the
woman in her wanted him to want her. She hated
herself for having been so unresponsive, so discourag-
ing, so cold. She knew that he was a man of character
and of ability, a clean man, a man his wife might be
proud of. And she had looked ahead sharply and
realized how desolate the Cotillion of One Hundred
and the Thursday Theater Club would be for her
if Addison Wyngard should go to Texas, after all.
She began to fear that, if he did decide to leave New
York, he would never dare to ask her to marry him.

Then she looked around her and began to wonder

"SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS" 67

what could be keeping her mother so long. She
happened to see the door of the store open, as a tall
girl came in with a high pompadour and an immense
black hat adorned with three aggressive silver
feathers.

The new-comer advanced toward the ribbon-
counter, where she was greeted effusively by two of
the salesladies.

"For pity's sake," cried one of them, "I ain't
seen you for a month of Sundays!"

" Addie Brown!" said the other. "And you haven't
been back here to see us old friends since I don't
know when."

"Addie Cameron now, if you please," and the new-
comer bridled a little as she gave herself her married
name. "An' I was comin' in last Saturday, but I
had to have my teeth fixed first, and I went to dentist
after dentist and they were all full, and I was tired
out."

"Well, it's Addie, any way you fix it," responded
one of the salesladies, "and we're glad to see you
back, even if we did think you'd shook us for keeps.
Is this gettin' married all it's cracked up to be?"

"It's fine," the bride replied, "an' I wouldn't
never come back here on no account. Not but what
things ain't what I'd like altogether. I went to the
Girls' Friendly last night, and there was that Miss
Van Antwerp that runs our class, and she was so
interested, for all she's one of the Four Hundred.

68 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

An' she wanted to know about Sam, an' I told her he
was a good man an' none better, an' I was perfectly
satisfied. 'But, Miss Van Antwerp,' I says to her, I
says, 'don't you never marry a policeman — their
hours are so inconvenient. You can't never tell
when he's comin' home.' That's what I told her,
for she's always interested."

The other two salesladies laughed, and one of them
asked, "What did Miss Van Antwerp say to that?"

"She just said that she wasn't thinkin' of gettin'
married, but she'd remember my advice."

"I ain't thinkin' of gettin' married, either," said
one of the salesladies, the one with the gentler voice,
"but I've had a dream an' it may come true. I
dreamed there was a young feller, handsome he was,
too, and the son of a charge customer. You've seen
her, the old stiff with those furs and the big diamond
ear-rings, that's so fussy always and so partic'lar, for
all she belongs to the Consumers' League."

"I know who you mean; horrid old thing she is,
too," interrupted the other; "but I didn't know she
had a son."

"I don't know it, either," was the reply. "But
that's what I dreamed — and I dreamed it three
nights runnin', too. Fierce, wasn't it? An' he kept
hangin' round and wantin' to make a date to take me
to the opera. Said he could talk Drench an' he'd tell
me what it was all about. An' — "

Just then the floor-walker called " Forward!" as

"SISTERS UNDER THEIR SKINS 69

a customer came to the other end of the counter;
and the girl with the gentle voice moved away.

Minnie Henryson wondered whether this floor-
walker was Mr. Maguire or Mr. Smith. Under the
suggestion of his stare, whichever he was, Addie
Cameron and the other shop-girl moved away tow-
ard the door, and the rest of their conversation was
lost to the listener.

She did not know how long she continued to sit
there, while customers loitered before the ribbon-
counter and fingered the stock and asked questions.
She heard the fire-engines come slowly back; and
above the murmur which arose all over the store she
caught again the harsh grinding of the brakes on the
Elevated in the avenue. Then she rose, as she saw
her mother looking for her.

"I didn't mean to keep you waiting so long," Mrs.
Henryson explained; "but I couldn't seem to find just
the rug I wanted for your father. You know he's
always satisfied with anything, so I have to be par-
ticular to get something he'll really like. And then
I met Mrs. McKinley, and we had to have a little
chat."

Minnie looked at her mother. She had forgotten
that the wife of the Corporation Counsel was a friend
of her mother's; and she wondered whether she
could get her mother to say a good word for Addison
Wyngard.

Mother and daughter threaded their way through

70 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

the swarm of shoppers toward the door of the
store.

"By the way, Minnie," said her mother, just as
they came to the entrance, "didn't you tell me that
young Mr. Wyngard sat next you at the theater the
other night at that Thursday Club of yours? That's
his name, isn't it?"

"Mr. Wyngard did sit next to me one evening,"
the daughter answered, not looking up.

"Well, Mrs. McKinley saw you, and so did the
Judge. He says that this young Wyngard is a clever
lawyer — and he's going to take him into his office."

And then they passed out into the avenue flooded
with spring sunshine.

Minnie took a long breath of fresh air and she
raised her head. It seemed to her almost as though
she could already feel a new ring on the third finger
of her left hand.

(1910)

tindet an Lbpzil

swirling rain bespattered the window
as the fitful April wind changed about;
and the lonely woman, staring vacantly
upon the plumes of steam waving from
the roofs below her, saw them violently
twisted and broken and scattered. The new hotel
towered high above all the neighboring buildings,
and she could look down on the private houses that
filled block after block, until the next tall edifice rose
abruptly into view half a mile to the northward.
Through the drizzle the prospect seemed to her
drearier than ever, and the ugly monotony of it
weighed on her like a nightmare. With an impatient
sigh she turned from the window, but as her eye
traveled around the walls she saw nothing that might
relieve her melancholy.

It was not a large room, this private parlor on an
upper story of the immense hotel; and its decora-
tions, its ornaments, its furniture, its carpets, had the
characterless commonplace befitting an apartment
which might have a score of occupants in a single
month. Yet she had spent the most of the winter
in it; those were her pretty cushions (on the hard
sofa), and that was her tea equipage on the low table

74 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

by the fireplace (with its gas-log). The photographs
in their silver frames were hers also, and so were the
violets that filled a Rookwood bowl on the top of
the writing-desk near the window. But as she
glanced about in search of something that might
make her feel at home, she found nothing to satisfy
her longing. The room was a room in a hotel, after
all; and she had failed wholly to impress her own
individuality upon it. To recall her vain efforts
only intensified her loneliness.

The hotel was full, so they said, and it held a
thousand souls and more; and as she walked aim-
lessly to and fro within her narrow space, she won-
dered whether any one of the thousand felt as de-
tached and as solitary as she did then — as she had
felt so often during the long winter. She paused at
the window again, and gazed at the houses far down
below her on the other side of the narrow street;
they were at least homes, and the women who dwelt
there had husbands or sons or fathers — had each of
them a man of some sort for her to lean on, for her
to cling to, for her to love, for her to devote herself
to, and for her to sacrifice herself for.

Sometimes she had delighted in the loftiness of her
position, lifted high in air; she had fancied almost
that she was on another plane from the people in
the thick of the struggle down below. Now as she
pressed her forehead against the chill pane and peered
down to watch the umbrellas that crawled here and

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 75

there on the sidewalk, more than a hundred feet be-
neath her, she had a fleeting vision of her own mangled
body lying down there on the stones, if she should
ever yield to the temptation that came to her in these
moments of depression. She shuddered at the sight,
and turned away impetuously, while the rain again
rattled against the window, as though demanding
instant admission.

An observer would have declared that this woman,
weary as she might be with solitude, was far too
young for life already to have lost its savor. Her
figure was slight and girlish yet. Her walk was
brisk and youthful. Her thick, brown hair was
abundant, and untouched by gray. Her dark-brown
eyes kept their freshness still, although they were
older than they might seem at first. She was per-
haps a scant thirty years of age, although it might
well be that she was three or four years younger.
No doubt the observer would have found her ill at
ease and restless, as though making ready for an
ordeal that she was anxious to pass through as soon
as possible.

The clock on the mantelpiece began to strike,
and she looked up eagerly; but when she saw that
it was only three, she turned away petulantly,
almost like a spoiled child who cannot bear to
wait.

Her eye fell on the desk with an unfinished letter
lying on it. With her usual impulsive swiftness she

76 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

sat herself down and hastily ran over what she had
written.

"Dear Margaret," the letter began, "it was a
surprise, of course, to hear from you again, for it
must be three or four years since last we corresponded.
But your kindly inquiries were very welcome, and it
did me good to feel that there was a woman really
interested in me, even though she was thousands of
miles away. It is with a glow of gratitude that I
think of you and your goodness to me when I was
suddenly widowed. You took pity on my loneliness
then, and you can't guess how often I have longed
for a friend like you in these last years of bitter
solitude — a friend I could go to for sympathy, a
friend I could unburden my heart to."

Having read this almost at a glance, she seized her
pen and continued:

"I feel as if I simply must talk out to somebody —
and so I'm going to write to you, sure you will not
misunderstand me, for your insight and your per-
ceptions were always as kindly as they were keen.

"You ask me what I am going to do. And I
answer you frankly. I am going to marry a man
I don't love — and who doesn't love me. So we shall
swindle each other!

"I can see your shocked look as you read this — but
you don't know what has brought me to it. I've come
to the end of my tether at last. My money has
nearly all gone. I don't know how I can support

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 77

myself — and so I'm going to let somebody support
me, that's all!

"The settlement of poor George's affairs has
dragged along all these years, and it was only last
December that I got the few hundred dollars that
were coming to me. I took the cash and I came here
to New York to see if something wouldn't turn up.
What — well, I didn't know and I didn't care. I just
hoped that the luck might change at last — and per-
haps I did dream of a Prince Charming at the end
of the perspective; not a mere boy, of course, not
the pretty little puppet Cinderella married, but a
Prince Charming of middle age, with his hair dashed
with gray at the temples, a man of position and
sound judgment and good taste, who might still find
his ideal in a thin little widow like me. Of course the
dream hasn't come true; it's only the nightmares that
are realized. I haven't seen any Prince Charmings,
either pretty little puppets or mature men of the
world. I guess the race is extinct, like the dodo.
At any rate, nothing has turned up, and the winter
is over, and my money is nearly all gone.

"But I don't regret the past few months. New
York is very interesting, and I'd dearly love to talk
it over with you. It is a sort of a stock-pot; every-
thing goes in — good meat, and bones, and scraps of
all sorts — and you never know just what the flavor
will be like, but it's sure to be rich and stimulating
and unexpected. I've been to very exclusive houses

78 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

here sometimes, and I enjoyed that immensely; I
think I could learn easily to live up to any income,
no matter how big it was. I've been mostly in the
society absurdly called the Four Hundred; it used
to be called the Upper Ten Thousand; there are
pleasant men and women there, and dull ones too,
just as there are everywhere else, I suppose. And
I've even gone a little into artistic and literary
circles — but I don't really like untidy people.

"You see, I am here at the newest and swellest
hotel. It's true I have only a tiny little parlor and
a teeny little bedroom, 'way up near the top of the
house, with a room in the attic somewhere for my
maid Jemima — you remember Jemima? Well, she's
watching over me still, and she's the only real friend
I have in all New York! She'd give me ah1 her
savings gladly if I was mean enough to take them;
but I couldn't live on that pittance, could I?

"I brought very good letters, and I had very good
advice from an old maid who knew George's father
when he was a boy — Miss Marlenspuyk; dear old
soul she is. Then, as it happened, somebody re-
membered that poor George had been interested in
that strike in Grass Valley, and had received one-
third of the stock when the Belinda and the Lone
Star were consolidated. I've got that stock still,
and I could paper a house with it — if I had one. At
any rate, somebody started the story that I was
immensely rich, and of course I didn't contradict it,

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 79

I hope I've too much tact to refuse any help that
chance throws in my way. I don't know whether it
was the reported wealth, or the excellent letters I
brought, or Miss Marlenspuyk's good advice, or
even my own personal attractiveness — but, whatever
the cause, I just walked into Society here almost
without an effort; so easily, indeed, that the social
strugglers who have seen doors open wide for me
where they have been knocking in vain for years —
well, they are mad enough to die! It's enough to
make us despise ourselves even more than we do
when we see the weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth there is among the outsiders who are peeking
over the barbed- wire fence of Society! I'm afraid
I've been horrid enough to get a good deal of
satisfaction out of the envy of those outside the
pale.

"And I've enjoyed the thing for its own sake, too.
I like to give a little dinner here to a woman from
whom I expect favors and to a couple of agreeable
men. I like to go to other people's dinners, and to a
ball now and then. Why is it I haven't really the half-
million or more that they think I have? I'm sure
I could spend it better than most of those I know who
have it. As it is, I've about enough money left
in the bank at the corner to carry me another month
— and then? And then I wonder sometimes whether
I hadn't better take the last half-dollar for a poison
of some sort — painless, of course. Jemima would see

80 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

me decently buried. But of course I sha'n't do any-
thing of the sort; I'm too big a coward!

"And the winter has almost gone, and nothing has
turned up. Oh yes, I forgot — poor George's brother,
who doesn't like me, and never did; he knows how
poor I am, and he wouldn't give me a dollar out of his
own pocket. But he wrote me last week, asking if I
would like a place as matron in a girl's boarding-
school in Milwaukee. Of course I haven't answered
him! I don't exactly see myself as a matron. What
a hideous word it is!

"Mais il faut faire un fin, and my end is matri-
mony, I suppose. There's a man here called Stone;
he's a lieutenant-commander in the navy, and I
think he's going to ask me to marry him — and I'm
going to accept the proposal promptly!

"He's not the mature Prince Charming of my
dreams, but he is really not ill-looking. He's a manly
fellow, and I confess I thought he was rather nice,
until I discovered that he was after me for my money
— which was a shock to my vanity, too. Little Mat
Hitchcock — you must remember that withered little
old beau? Well, he is still extant, and as detestable
as ever; he told me that John Stone had proposed to
half the wealthy girls in New York. Of course, I
don't believe that, but I thought it was very sus-
picious when he took me in to dinner a month ago
and tried to question me about my stock in the
Belinda and Lone Star. I told him I had the stock

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 81

— and I have, indeed! — and I let him believe that
it was worth anything you please. It wasn't what
I said, of course, for I was careful not to commit
myself; but I guess he got the right impression.
And since then he has been very attentive; so it
must be the money he is after and not me. I rather
liked him, till I began to suspect; and even now I
find it hard to have the thorough contempt I ought
to have for a fortune-hunter.

"Why is it that we think a man despicable who
marries for money, and yet it is what we expect a
woman to do? I've asked Miss Marlenspuyk about
Mr. Stone, and she knows all about him, as she does
about everybody else. She says he has three or four
or five thousand dollars a year besides his pay — and
yet he wants to marry me for my money! It will
just serve him right it I marry him for his. He's at
the Brooklyn Navy-Yard for a few months more, and
then his shore duty will be up; so that if we are
married, he'll be ordered to sea soon, and I shall be
free from him for three years. When I write like that
I don't know whether I have a greater contempt for
him or for myself. Mais il faut vivre, n'est-ce pas f
And what am I to live on next month? I can't be a
matron in Milwaukee, can I? The world owes me a
living, after all, and I've simply got to collect the debt
from a man. And how I hate myself for doing it!

"He sent me flowers this morning — a big bunch
of violets — and of course he will come in this after-

82 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

noon to get thanked. If I am engaged before dinner
I'll put in a postscript to tell you— so that you can
get your wedding-present ready!"

As she wrote this last sentence she gave a hard
little laugh.

Then she heard a brisk rattle from the telephone-
box near the door.

She dropped her pen and went across the room and
put the receiver to her ear.

" Yes— I'm Mrs. Randolph," she said. " Yes— I'm
at home. Yes. Have Mr. Stone shown up to my
parlor."

Then she replaced the receiver and stood for a
moment in thought. She went back to the desk
and closed her portfolio, with the unfinished letter
inside. She changed the position of the bowl of
violets and brought it into the full light. She
glanced about the room to see if it was in order;'
and she crossed to the fireplace and looked at herself
in the mirror above.

"I do wish I had slept better last night," she said
to herself. "I always show it so round the eyes."

She crossed swiftly to the door which opened into
the next room.

"Jemima!" she called.

"Yes, Miss Evelyn," responded a voice from within.

"Mr. Stone is coming up — and my hair is all
wrong. I simply must do it over. You tell him I'll
be here in a minute."

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 83

"Yes, Miss Evelyn," was the answer.

"And after Mr. Stone comes you get the water
ready for the tea," said Mrs. Randolph, as she went
into the bedroom. "Be sure that you have a fresh
lemon. The last time Mr. Stone was here his slice
was all dried up — and men don't like that sort of
thing."

A minute or two after she had disappeared there
was a rap at the door, and Jemima came from the
bedroom and admitted Mr. Stone. She told him that
Mrs. Randolph would see him at once, and then she
went back to her mistress, after giving him a curi-
ously inquisitive look.

Mr. Stone had the walk of a sailor, but he carried
himself like a soldier. His eyes were blue and pene-
trating; his ashen mustache curled over a firm mouth;
his clean-shaven chin was square and resolute.

He stood near the door for a moment, and then
he went toward the window. The rain had dwindled,
and as he looked out he thought he saw a break in
the clouds.

It was full five minutes before Mrs. Randolph re-
turned.

"Oh, Mr. Stone," she began, in voluble apology,
"it's a shame to keep you waiting so, but honestly
I couldn't help it. You took me by surprise so, I
really wasn't fit to be seen!"

Mr. Stone gallantly expressed a doubt as to this
last statement of hers.

84 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"It's very good of you to think that," she respond-
ed, "but I hardly hoped to see any one this after-
noon, in this awful weather. How did you ever
have the courage to venture out? It's so kind of
you to come and visit a lonely woman, for it has
been such a long day!"

Mr. Stone informed her that it looked as though
it was about to clear up.

"Of course you sailors have to know all about the
weather, don't you?" she replied. "That's the ad-
vantage of being a man — you can do things. Now
a woman can't do anything — she can't even go out
in the rain for fear of getting her skirts wet!"

In her own ears her voice did not ring quite true.
She knew that her liveliness was a little factitious.
She wondered whether he had detected it. She looked
up at him, and found that he was gazing full at her.
She had never before recognized how clear his eyes
were and how piercing.

"I haven't thanked you yet for those lovely vio-
lets," she began again, hastily. "They are exquisite!
But then you have always such good taste in flowers.
They have made the day less dreary for me — really
they have. They were company in my loneliness."

He looked at her in surprise. "You lonely?" he
asked. "How can that be?"

"Why not?" she returned.

"You have made yourself a home here," he an-
swered, looking about the room. "You have hosts

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 85

of friends in New York. Whenever I see you in
society you are surrounded by admirers. How can
you be lonely?"

She was about to make an impetuous reply, but
she checked herself.

"I am not really a New-Yorker, you know," she
said at last. "I am a stranger in a strange city.
You don't know what that means."

"I think I do," he responded. "The city is even
stranger to me than it can be to you."

"I doubt it," she responded.

"I was once at sea alone hi an open boat for three
days," he went on, "and — it must seem absurd to you,
very absurd, I suppose — but I was not as lonely as I
am, now and then, in the midst of the millions of peo-
ple here in New York."

"So you have felt that way too, have you?" she
asked. "You have been overwhelmed by the im-
mensity of the metropolis? You have known what
it is to sink into the multitude, knowing that nobody
cares who you are, or where you are going, or what
you are doing, or what hopes and desires and dreams
fill your head? You have found out that it is only
in a great city that one can be really isolated — for
in a village nobody is ever allowed to be alone. But
in a human whirlpool like this you can be sucked
down to death and nobody will answer your out-
cry."

He gave her another of his penetrating glances.

86 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"It surprises me that you can have such feelings —
or even that you can know what such feelings are,"
he said, "you who lead so brilliant a life, with din-
ners every day, and parties, and —

"Yes," she interrupted, with a hard little laugh,
"but I have been lonely even at a dinner of twenty-
four. I go to all these things, as you say — I've had
my share of gaiety this winter, I'll admit — and then
I come back here to this hideous hotel, where I don't
know a single soul. Why, I haven't a real friend —
not what I call a friend — in all New York."

She saw that he had listened to her as though some-
what surprised, not only by what she was saying,
but also by the tone in which she said it. She ob-
served tnat her last remark struck him as offering
an opening for the proposal which she felt certain
he had come to make that afternoon.

"You must not say that, Mrs. Randolph," he be-
gan. "Surely you know that I — "

Then he broke off suddenly as the door of the next
room opened and Jemima entered with a tray in
her hands.

"You will let me give you a cup of tea, won't
you?" the widow asked, as Jemima poured out the
steaming water.

"Thank you," the sailor answered. "Your tea
is always delicious."

Jemima lighted the lamp under the silver kettle.
Then she left the room, silently, and Stone was about

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 87

to take up the conversation where she had interrupted
it, when she came back with a plate of thin bread-
and-butter, and a little glass dish with slices of lemon.

He checked himself again, not wanting to talk
before the servant. Jemima stole a curious glance
at him, as though wondering what manner of man he
was. Then she turned down the flame of the little
lamp and left the room.

Mrs. Randolph was glad that the conversation had
been interrupted at that point. She had made up her
mind to accept Stone's offer when he should ask her
to marry him, but her immediate impulse was to
procrastinate. She did not doubt that he would
propose before he left her that afternoon, and yet
she wanted to keep him at arm's-length as long as
she could. There were imperative reasons, she
thought, why she should marry him; but she knew
she would bitterly regret having to give up her
liberty — having to surrender the control of herself.

"You don't take sugar, I remember," she said, as
she poured out his cup of tea. "And only one slice
of lemon, isn't it?"

"Only one," he answered, as he took the cup.
"Thank you."

There was a change of tone in his voice, and she
knew that it was hopeless for her to try to postpone
what he had to say. But she could not help making
the effort.

"I'm so glad you like this tea," she said, hastily.

7

88 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"It is part of a chest Miss Marlcnspuyk had sent to
her from Japan, and she let me have two or three
pounds. Wasn't it nice of her?"

But the attempt failed. The sailor had gulped
his tea, and now he set the cup down.

"Mrs. Randolph — " he began, with a break in his
voice.

"Mr. Stone!" she answered, laughingly; "that's a
solemn way of addressing me, isn't it? At least it's
serious, if it isn't solemn."

"Mrs. Randolph," he repeated, "what I have to
say is serious — very serious to me, at least."

Then she knew that it was idle to try to delay
matters. She drew a long breath and responded as
lightly as she could:

"Yes?"

"I hope I am not going to take you by surprise,
Mrs. Randolph," he went on. "You are so bright
and so quick that you must have seen that I admired
you."

He waited for her response, and she was forced to
say something. Even though the man was trying
to marry her for the money he thought she had, he
was at least exhibiting a most becoming ardor.

"Well," she declared, "I didn't suppose you were
very much bored in my society."

"I have never before seen a woman in whose
society I have taken so much pleasure," he answered.
"You cannot imagine how great a joy it has been for

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 89

me to know you, and how much I have enjoyed the
privilege of coming to see you here in your charming
home."

She glanced at the commonplace parlor of the hotel
she hated, but she said nothing.

"You spoke just now of loneliness," he continued.
"I hope you don't know what that really is — at least
that you don't know it as I know it. But if you have
felt it at all, I shall have the less hesitation in asking
if you — if you are willing to consider what it would
mean to me if you could put an end to my loneliness."

"Mr. Stone!" she said, as she dropped her eyes.

"It is not your beauty alone that has drawn me
to you," he urged, "not your charm, although I have
felt that from the first day I met you. No; it is more
than that, I think — it is your goodness, your gentle-
ness, your kindness, your womanliness. I don't
know how to find words for what I want to say, but
you must know what I mean. I mean that I love
you, and I beg you to be my wife."

"This is very sudden, Mr. Stone," she replied.

"Is it?" he asked, honestly. "I thought every-
body must have seen how I felt toward you."

"Oh, I supposed you liked me a little," she went on.

"I love you with all my heart," he said, and she
wondered at the sincerity with which he said it.
She wished she had never heard that little Mat
Hitchcock talk against him.

"Of course, I can't expect that you should love

90 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

me all at once," he continued; "no; that's too much
to hope. But if you only like me a little now, and if
you will only let me love you, I shall be satisfied."
And he leaned forward and took her hand.

"I do like you, Mr. Stone," she forced herself to
answer. She thrilled a little at his fervor, doubtful
as she was as to the reason for his wooing. And as
his eyes were fixed on her she thought that she had
never before done justice to his looks. He was a
strong figure of a man. His mouth was masterful;
but the woman who yielded herself to him was likely
to have a satisfactory defender.

"Well," he asked, when she said nothing, "is it
to be yes or no?" And his voice trembled.

"Will you be satisfied if I do not say 'no' — even if
I do not say 'yes,' all at once?" she returned.

"I shall have to be, I suppose," he answered, and
there was a ring of triumph in his voice. "But I
shall never let go of you till I get you to say 'yes.'"
And he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it.

She made no resistance; she would have made none
had he clasped her in his arms; she was even a little
surprised that he did not. She was irritatingly con-
scious that his warmth was not displeasing to her —
that she seemed not to resent his making love to her
although she suspected him of a base motive.

For a moment or more nothing was said. He still
held her hand firmly clasped in his.

At last he spoke: "You have granted me so much

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 91

that I have no right to ask for more. But I have not
a great deal of time now t6 persuade you to marry
me. Some day this summer I expect to be ordered
to sea again — some day in July or August; and I
want to have you for my wife before I go."

"Oh, Mr. Stone," she cried, "that is very soon!"

"Can't you call me John?" he asked, following up
his advantage. "Can't I call you Evelyn?"

She smiled, and did not deny him, and he kissed her
hand again. He kept hold of it now as though he
felt sure of it. She acknowledged to herself that he
was making progress.

They talked for a while about his term of sea
service. He thought that he might be assigned to the
Mediterranean squadron, and, if he were, she could
come to Europe to him and spend the next winter at
Villefranche. Then they discussed travel in France
and in Italy, and the places they had visited.

With her delicate feminine perceptions she soon
discovered that there was something he wished to
say but did not know how to lead up to. Curious
to learn what this might be, she let the conversation
drop, so that he could make a fresh start in his blunt
fashion.

Finally he came to the point. "Evelyn," he began,
abruptly, "do you know the Pixleys hi San Francisco
—Tom Pixley, I mean?"

"I think I have met him," she answered, wondering
what this might lead to.

92 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"He is an old friend of mine," Stone continued.
"He was here a fortnight ago, and I had a long talk
with him. He knows all about those Grass Valley
mines."

She smiled a little bitterly and withdrew her hand.
She thought that perhaps the stock was worth more
than she had supposed, and that Stone had been told
so by Pixley. All her contempt for a man who
could marry a woman for money rose hot within
her.

"Does he?" she asked, carelessly, not trusting her-
self to say more.

"You have— it's not my business, I know," urged
the sailor, "but I don't mind, if I can spare you any
worry in the future — you have a lot of stock in the
Belinda and Lone Star, haven't you?"

"Yes," she replied.

"It does not pay at all, does it?" he asked.

She looked at him coldly as she responded, "I have
not received any dividends this year."

"But you spoke to me once as if you counted on
this stock," he returned — "as if you thought that the
dividends were only deferred."

"Did I?" she said, distantly, as though the matter
interested her very little.

"That was why I took the liberty of getting the
facts out of Tom Pixley," Stone continued. "It
wasn't my business, I know, but, loving you as I did,
I was afraid you might be bitterly disappointed."

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 93

"No," she interrupted, "I am not likely to be
bitterly disappointed."

"Then you were aware already that the Belinda
and Lone Star is a failure?" he asked. "I am very
glad you were, for I was afraid I might be the bearer
of bad news."

She gazed at him in intense astonishment. "Do
you mean to say that my stock is worthless?" she
inquired.

"I fear it is worth very little," he answered.
"Tom Pixley told me he believed that they were
going to abandon the workings, and that the inter-
est on the mortgage had not been paid for two
years."

"So you knew all along that I was poor?" she
asked. "Then why did you ask me to marry you?"

John Stone looked at her for a moment in amaze-
ment, while his cheeks flamed. Then he rose to his
feet and stood before her.

"Did you suppose that I wanted to marry you for
your money?" he said, making an obvious effort for
self-control.

"Yes," she answered, lowering her eyes. "And
that is why I was going to accept you."

She felt that the man was still staring at her,
wholly unable to understand.

"I am poor, very poor," she went on, hurriedly.
"I don't know how I am gojng to live next month. I
believed that you thought I was wealthy. It seemed

94 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

to me a mean thing for a man to do, to marry a woman
for her money, so I didn't mind deceiving you."

He stood silently gazing at her for a minute, and
she could not but think that a man was very slow
to understand.

Then he sat down again, and took her hand once
more, and petted it.

"You must have been sadly tried if you were willing
to do a thing like that," he said, with infinite pity in
his voice. "You poor child!"

It was her turn then to be astonished, but she was
swifter of comprehension.

"Do you mean to say that you still want to marry
me," she asked, looking him full in the face, "even
after I have insulted you?"

"Yes," he answered. "I want to marry you — and
more than ever now, so that you may never again
be exposed to a temptation like this."

"But now I refuse to marry you," she returned,
forcibly, as she withdrew her hand. "I say 'no' now
— without hesitation this time."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because it isn't fair now," she responded.

"Fair?" he repeated, puzzled.

"I couldn't do it now; it would be too mean for
anything," she explained. "As long as I supposed
you thought I was rich and were going to marry me
for my money, I didn't mind cheating you. I could
let you marry me even if I didn't love you, and it

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 95

would only be serving you right. But now! — now I
couldn't! It wouldn't be fair to you. I am pretty
mean, I confess, but I'm not mean enough for that,
I hope."

Again he took a moment to think before he spoke.

"I don't know what to make of you," he began.
"Am I to understand that you were going to marry
me, though you did not love me, so long as you thought
I did not love you, but that now, when you know
that I really do love you, for that very reason you
refuse to marry me?"

"That's it," she cried. "You must see how I feel
about it. It wouldn't be fair to marry you now I
know you are in earnest, would it?"

"But if I am willing," he urged; "if I want you
as much as ever; if I feel confident that I can get
you to love me a little in time; if you will only let
me hope — "

"Oh, I couldn't," she answered. "I couldn't cheat
you now I really know you — now that I like you a
great deal better than I did."

He was about to protest again, when she inter-
rupted him.

"Don't let's talk about it any more," she said,
impetuously; " it has given me a headache al-
ready."

Forbidden to speak upon the one subject about
which he had something to say, the man said nothing,
and for a minute or more there was silence.

96 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

They could hear the patter of the rain as it pelted
against the window near which they were sitting.
Then there was a slight flash of lightning, followed by
a distant growl of thunder.

A shiver ran through Mrs. Randolph, and she gave
a little nervous laugh.

"I hate lightning," she explained, "and I detest
a storm — don't you? I don't see how any one can
ever choose to be a sailor."

He smiled grimly. "I am a sailor," he
said.

"And are you going to sea again soon?" she re-
turned. "I shall miss you dreadfully. I'm glad I
sha'n't be here in New York when you are gone.
Perhaps I shall leave first."

"Where are you going?" he asked, eagerly.

"I've got to go somewhere," she answered, "now
that I've had to change all my plans. I'm going to
Milwaukee."

"To Milwaukee?" he repeated. "I did not know
you had any friends there."

"I haven't," she answered, with a repetition of
the hard little laugh. "Not a friend in Milwaukee,
and not a friend in New York."

"Then why are you going?"

"I must earn my living, somehow," she responded,
"and I can't paint, and I can't embroider, and I can't
teach whist, and I'm not young enough to go on the
stage — so I'm to settle down as the matron of a girl's

UNDER AN APRIL SKY 97

school in Milwaukee. The place has been offered
to me, and I intend to accept it."

"When must you be there?" he inquired.

"Oh, I don't know," she answered. "Next week
some time, or perhaps not till next month. I'm not
sure when."

John Stone rose to go. "Then I may come to see
you again — Evelyn?" he asked.

Her heart throbbed a little as she heard her name
from his lips.

"Oh yes," she replied, cordially. "Come and see
me as often as you can. I hate to be as lonely as I
was this afternoon."

And she held out her hand.

"Good -by, then," he responded, and he raised
her hand again and kissed it.

When he had gone she walked restlessly to and fro
for several minutes. At last she opened her desk and
took out the unfinished letter and tore it up im-
patiently. Then she went to the window and peered
out.

Twilight was settling down over the city, but the
sky was leaden, with not a gleam of sunset along the
horizon. Lights were already twinkling here and
there over the vast expanse of irregular roofs across
which she was looking. The rain was heavier than
ever, and it fell in sheets, now, as though it would
never cekse.

Yet the solitary woman looking out at the dreary

98 VISTAS OF NEW YOEK

prospect did not feel so lonely as she had felt two
hours earlier. She had meant to accept John Stone,
and she had rejected him. But it was a comfort to
her to know that somewhere in the immense city
that spread out before her there was a man who
really loved her.

(1898)

.HI ® • ® • ® • ® • ® II © HI ® II « HI « III ® M ® III » III.

of Gentzal

was nearly five o'clock on an afternoon
early in May when Dr. Richard Dema-
rest bicycled up Fifth Avenue and into
Central Park. He looked at his watch
to make sure of the hour, and then he
dismounted on the western side of the broad drive,
whence he could see everybody who might seek to
enter the Park long before they were likely to dis-
cover him. He had reason to believe that Miss
Minnie Contoit, who had refused to marry him only
a fortnight before, and whom he had not seen since,
was going to take a little turn on her wheel in the
Park that afternoon.

As it had happened, he had gone into the club to
lunch that morning, and he had met her only brother,
with whom he had always carefully maintained the
most pleasant relations. By ingeniously pumping
Ralph Contoit he had ascertained that the girl he
loved was going out at five with her father and her
grandfather. The brother had been even franker than
brothers usually are.

"I say," he had declared, "I don't know what has
come over Minnie this last ten days; she's been as
cross as two sticks, and generally she's pretty even-

102 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

tempered for a girl, you know. But she's been so
touchy lately; she nearly took my head off this
morning! I guess you had better have Dr. Cheever
come around and prescribe for her. Cocaine for a
bad temper is what she needs now, I can tell you!"

Although he was a rejected lover, he was not melan-
choly. In the springtime youth feels the joy of
living, and Richard Demarest took delight hi the
beauty of the day. The foliage was everywhere
fresh and vigorous after the persistent rains of April,
and a scent of young blossoms came to him from a
clump of bushes behind the path. A group of half
a dozen girls flashed past him on their wheels, laugh-
ing lightly as they sped along home, each of them
with a bunch of fragrant lilacs lashed to her handle-
bar.

He followed them with his eye till they turned out
of the Park; and then at the entrance he saw the
girl he was waiting for riding her bicycle carefully
across the car-tracks in Fifty-ninth Street. Her
father and grandfather were with her, one on each
side.

Dr. Demarest sprang on his wheel and sped on
ahead. When he came to the foot of the Mall he
swerved to the westward. Then he turned and re-
traced his path, reaching the branching of the ways
just as General Contoit with his son and grand-
daughter arrived there.

The General was nearly seventy, but he sat his

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 103

wheel with a military stiffness, holding himself far
more carefully than his son, the Professor. Between
them came Miss Minnie Contoit, a slim slip of a
girl, in a light-brown cloth suit, with her pale, blond
hair coiled tightly under a brown alpine hat. They
had just come up a hill, and the General's face was
ruddy, but the girl's was as colorless as ever. Dem-
arest had often wondered why it was that no exer-
cise ever brought a flush to her ivory cheeks.

He watched her now as her grandfather caught
sight of him, and cried out: "Hello, Doctor! Out
for a spin?"

He saw her look up, and then she glanced away
swiftly, as though to choose her course of conduct
before she acknowledged his greeting.

"Good afternoon, General; how well you are look-
ing this spring!" said Demarest. "Good afternoon,
Professor. And you, too, Miss Contoit. Going
round the Park, are you? May I join you?" He
looked at her as he asked the question.

It was her grandfather who answered: "Come
along, come along! We shall be delighted to have
you!"

She said nothing. They were all four going up on
the east side of the Mall, and they had already left
behind them the bronze mass-meeting of misshapen
celebrities which disfigures that broad plateau. A
Park omnibus was loitering in front of them, and they
could not pass it four abreast.
8

104 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Come on, papa," cried the girl; "let's leave
grandpa and Dr. Demarest to take care of each
other! We had better go ahead and show them the
way!"

It struck Dr. Demarest that she was glad to get
away from him, as though her sudden flight was an
instinctive shrinking from his wooing. He smiled
and held this for a good sign. He was in no hurry
to have his talk out with her, and he did not mean
to begin it until a proper opportunity presented it-
self. He was glad to have her in front of him, where
he could follow her movements and get delight out
of the play of the sunshine through the branches as
it fell molten on her fine, light hair. It pleased him
to watch her firm strokes as they came to a hill and
to see that she rode with no waste of energy.

The General had done his duty in the long years
of the war, and he liked to talk about what he had
seen. Dr. Demarest was a good listener, and per-
haps this was one reason why the old soldier was
always glad of his company. The young doctor was
considerate, also, and he never increased his pace
beyond the gait most comfortable for his elder com-
panion; and as they drew near to the Metropolitan
Museum he guided the General away to the Fifth
Avenue entrance and thence back to the main road,
by which excursion they avoided the long and steep
hill at the top of which stands Cleopatra's Needle.
And as they had ridden on the level rather rapidly

"I'M SURE HE'D BATHER TALK TO YOU, MY DEAR, so YOU CAN RUN
ALONG TOGETHER"

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 105

they almost caught up with the General's son and
granddaughter.

The two couples were close to each other as they
went around the reservoir, along the shaded road on
the edge of the Park, with the sidewalk of Fifth
Avenue down below. Everywhere the grass was
fresh and fragrant; and everywhere the squirrels
were frequent and impertinent, cutting across the
road almost under the wheels, or sitting up on the
narrow sward in impudent expectation of the nuts
gently thrown to them from the carriages.

When they came to McGowan's Pass he saw the
Professor suddenly dismount, and he thought that
Minnie was going on alone and that her father had
to call her back.

"Shall we rest here for a while, father?" asked the
Professor, as the General and the Doctor dismounted.

"Just as you say," the old soldier answered; "just
as you say. I'm not at all fatigued, not at all. But
don't let us old fogies keep you young folks from your
exercise. Minnie, you and the Doctor can ride on — "

"But, grandpa — " she began, in protest.

"I'll stay here a minute or two with your father,"
the General continued. "The Doctor is very kind
to let me talk to him, but I'm sure he'd rather talk
to you, my dear; so you two can run along together."

"I shall be delighted to accompany Miss Contoit
if she cares to have a little spin," said Dr. Demarest,
turning to her.

106 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Oh, well," she answered, a little ungraciously;
then she smiled swiftly, and added: "I always do
what grandpa wants. Don't you think I'm a very
good little girl?" And with that she started for-
ward, springing lightly to her seat after her bicycle
was in motion.

Demarest was jumping on his wheel to follow,
when her father called out, "Don't let her ride up-
hill too fast, Doctor!"

"Isn't papa absurd?" she asked, laughing; "and
grandpa, too? They are always wanting me to take
care of myself, just as if I didn't!"

They overtook and passed a woman weighing two
hundred pounds and full forty years of age, who was
toiling along on a bicycle, dressed in a white skirt,
a pink shirt-waist, and a straw sailor-hat. The
Doctor turned and bowed to this strange apparition,
but the plump lady was too fully occupied in her
arduous task to be able to do more than gasp out:
" Good — after — noon — Doctor."

When they had gone one hundred yards ahead the
Doctor's companion expressed her surprise. "You
do know the funniest people!" she cried. "Who on
earth was that?"

"That?" he echoed. "Oh, that's a patient of
Dr. Cheever's. He advised her to get a bicycle if
she wanted to be thinner — "

"And he told me to get one if I wanted to be a little
fatter!" the girl interrupted. "Isn't that inconsistent?''

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 107

"I don't think so," the young man answered, glad
that the conversation had taken this impersonal turn,
and yet wondering how he could twist it to the point
where he wanted it. "Outdoor exercise helps peo-
ple to health, you see, and if they are unhealthily
fat it tends to thin them down, and if they are very
thin it helps them to put on flesh."

"I'd bike fourteen hours a day if I was a porpoise
like that," said £he girl, glancing back at the plump
struggler behind them.

Just then a horn tooted and a coach came around
the next turn. There were on it three or four girls
in gay spring costumes, and two of them bowed to
Dr. Demarest.

Behind the four-in-hand followed a stylish victoria,
in which sat a handsome young woman alone. She
was in black. Her somber face lighted with a smile
as she acknowledged the young doctor's bow.

"I've seen her somewhere," said the girl by his
side. "Who is she?"

"That's Mrs. Cyrus Poole," he answered; "the
widow of the Wall Street operator who died two
years ago."

"What lots of people you know," she commented.

"How is a young doctor to get on unless he knows
lots of people?" was his answer.

She said nothing for a minute or two, as they
threaded their way through a tangle of vehicles
stretching along the northernmost drive of the Park.

108 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Then she asked: "Why is it that most of the
women we have passed this afternoon sitting back
in their carriages look bored to death?"

"I suppose it's because they've got all they want,"
the Doctor responded. "They have nothing left
to live for; they have had everything. That's
what makes them so useful to our profession. They
send for us because they are bored, and they want
sympathy. I suppose everybody likes to talk about
himself, especially when he's out of sorts; now, you
see, the family doctor can always be sent for, and it's
his business to listen to your account of your symp-
toms. That's what he's paid for."

"I don't think that's a nice way of earning a living,
do you?" returned the girl.

"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "Why not?
It's our duty to relieve suffering, and these women
are just suffering for a chance to describe all their
imaginary ailments."

"Women?" she cried, indignantly. "Are all these
old fools women?"

"There must be men sometimes, I suppose," he
replied; "but most of a family physician's work is
with the women, of course."

Then it seemed to him that he saw before him the
opportunity he had been awaiting. They were now
climbing the hill at the northwestern corner of the
Park. He slowed up so that she should not be
tempted to overexert herself. He even went so far

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 109

as to lag a little behind. When they began to go
down again gently, he came alongside.

"By the way," he began, "speaking of what a
family physician has to do reminds me that I want
to ask your advice."

"My advice?" she echoed, with the light little
laugh that thrilled through him always. "Why, I
don't know anything about medicine."

"It isn't a professional consultation I want," he
answered, laughing himself, "it's friendly counsel.
Don't you remember that when you told me you
couldn't love me you went on to say you hoped we
should always be good friends?"

"Yes," she responded, calmly, "I remember that.
And I hope that if I can really show any friendliness
hi any way, you will let me."

"That's what I am coming to," he returned. "You
know, I've been helping Dr. Cheever as a sort of
third man while Dr. Aspinwall has been ill? Well,
Dr. Aspinwall isn't getting any better, and he's got
to quit for a year, anyhow. So Dr. Cheever is going
to take me with him — "

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she broke in, heartily. "That's
splendid for you, isn't it?"

"It will be splendid for me if I can keep the place
and do the work to his satisfaction," he answered.

"Oh, I guess Dr. Cheever knows what he is about,"
retorted the girl, gaily. "He knows how clever you
are."

HO VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Thank you," the young man returned. "I felt
sure you would be pleased, because you have always
been so kind to me."

He hesitated for a moment, and then continued:
"I feel as if I owe you an apology—

"What for?" she asked, in surprise.

"For the way I behaved last time we — we had a
talk," he answered.

"Oh, then," she commented; and it seemed
to him that she had almost made an effort to re-
tain the non-committal expression she was affect-
ing.

"You may remember," he went on, "that I asked
you to marry me, and that you refused, and that
you told me you didn't love me at all, but you did
like me — "

"What's the use of going over all that again?" she
asked.

"I must make myself right with you, Miss Minnie,"
he urged. "You said we could be friends, and I was
all broke up then, and I didn't know just what I was
saying, and I told you friendship wasn't any good to
me, and if I couldn't have you there wasn't any-
thing else I wanted. I must have been rude, indeed,
and it has worried me ever since."

"I'll forgive you, if that's what you mean," she
responded. "I hadn't really thought about it twice.
It isn't of any consequence."

"It is to me," he returned. "Now I've changed

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 111

my mind, and if you will offer the friendship again
I'll accept it gladly."

"Why, Dr. Demarest!" she said, smiling, but with
a flash in her gray eyes, "of course we can be good
friends, just as we have always been. And now you
needn't talk any more about this foolish misunder-
standing."

So saying she started ahead. They had been
climbing a hill, and now they had on then* left a
broad meadow, gay with groups of tennis-players.
At an opening on the right a mounted policeman sat
his horse as immovable as an equestrian statue. Just
before them were two gentlemen with impatient
trotters trying to get a clear space; and there was
also a double file of young men and girls from some
riding-school, under the charge of a robust German
riding-master.

It was not for two or three minutes that Dr. Dem-
arest was able to resume his position by the side of
Miss Contoit.

"I had to set myself right," he began, abruptly,
"because if we really are friends I want you to help
me."

"I shall be very glad, I'm sure," she replied.
"I've told you so already."

"But what I waut is something very serious," he
continued.

"What is it?" she asked, drawing away from him
a little.

112 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"It's advice," he explained.

She gave a light laugh of relief. "Oh, advice,"
she repeated; "anybody can give advice."

"Not the advice I want," he responded, gravely.
"It's a very solemn thing for me, I can assure you."

"And what is this very solemn thing?" she in-
quired, airily.

"It's marriage," he answered. "I've got to get
married, and — and —

"Don't let's go back to that again," she said, with
frank impatience. "I thought we had settled that
once for all."

"Oh, I didn't mean you," he returned, apolo-
getically.

"You didn't mean me?" she repeated, in amaze-
ment. "Why, I thought — well, it's no matter what
I thought, of course."

"I'm afraid I'm getting things all mixed up," he
said, calmly. "Of course, you are the only woman
I love, and the only woman I ever shall love. I told
you that the last time we met, and you told me that
you didn't love me — so that settled it."

"Well?" she interrogated.

"Well, if I can't have what I want," he explained,
"I'd better get what I need."

"I confess I do not know what you are talking
about," she declared.

" It's simple enough," he returned. " I'm a doctor,
and I'm young— I'm only thirty— and I haven't a

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 113

bald spot yet, so people think I'm even younger than
I am, and they haven't confidence in it. So I've
got to get married."

The girl laughed out merrily. "Can't you get a
bald spot any other way?" she asked.

"If I have a wife I don't need a bald spot," he
responded. "A wife is a warrant of respectability.
Every doctor will tell you that's the way patients
feel. I'm tired of going to see some old woman for
Dr. Cheever, and sending up my card and over-
hearing her say: 'I won't see him! I don't want
Dr. Demarest! I sent for Dr. Cheever, and it's Dr.
Cheever I want to see!' That has happened to me,
and not only once or twice, either."

"How could any woman be so unlady-like?" the
girl asked, indignantly. "She must 'have been a
vulgar old thing!"

"There's more than one of her in New York," the
young doctor asserted, "and that's one reason why
I've got to get married. And between you and me,
I think my chance of staying with Dr. Cheever would
be better if I had a wife. Of course, he doesn't say
so, but I can't help knowing what he thinks."

The girl made no comment on this, and they rode
along side by side. They were now on the crest of
a hill, and they overlooked the broad expanse of the
reservoir. The almost level rays of the sinking sun
thrust themselves through the leafy branches and
made a rosy halo about her fair head.

114 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"So that's why I've come to you for advice," he
began again.

"But I don't see what good my advice will be to
you," she returned. "You don't expect me to pick
out a wife for you, do you?"

"Well, that's about it!" he admitted.

"The idea!" she retorted. "Why, it's perfectly
absurd!"

"So long as I cannot get the girl I love, marriage
ceases to be a matter of sentiment with me," he went
on, stolidly. "I come to you as a friend who knows
girls — knows them in a way no man can ever know
them. I want your help in selecting a woman who
will make a good wife for a doctor."

"How do you know she will have you?" she thrust
at him.

"Of course, I don't know," he admitted. "I can't
know till I try, can I? And if at first I don't succeed
I must try, try again. If the one you pick out re-
fuses me I'll have to get you to pick out another."

"So it's a mere marriage of convenience you are
after?" the girl asked. "That's all very well for
you, no doubt; but how about the woman who
marries you? I don't think it's a very nice lookout
for her, do you? That's just the way with you men
always! You never think about the woman's feel-
ings!"

"I'll do my duty to her," he^answered.

"Your duty!" sniffed the girl, indignantly.

AN IDYL OP CENTRAL PARK 115

"I'll be so attentive to her that she will never guess
my heart is given to another," he went on.

"Don't be too sure of that," she returned. "Wom-
en have very sharp eyes — sharper than you men think
— especially about a thing like that!"

"I am not going to borrow trouble," the Doctor
declared, suavely. "I shall always be as nice to
her as I can, and if it is hi my power to make her
happy, then she will be happy. But we needn't
anticipate. What I want you to do now is to help
me to find the right woman. It will be my business
to take care of her afterward."

"Oh, very well," said the girl, rather sharply.
"Have you anybody in particular in view?"

"I haven't really fixed on anybody yet," he ex-
plained. "I wanted your advice first, for I'm going
to rely on that. I feel sure you won't let me make
a mistake about a matter so important to me."

"Then don't let's waste any tune!" she cried, per-
emptorily.

"Really," he declared, "it's astonishing how a lit-
tle bit of a thing like you can be so bossy." She
looked at him fiercely, so he made haste to add,
"But I like it— I like it!"

The girl laughed, but with a certain constraint, so
it seemed to him.

"Come, now," she said, "if I must help you, let
me see your list of proposed victims!"

"Do you know Dr. Pennington, the rector of St.

116 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Boniface's, in Philadelphia?" he began. "Well, he
has two daughters — nice girls, both of them —

"Which one do you want?" asked the girl. "The
tall one who squints, or the fat one with red hair?"

"Come, now," he returned, "she doesn't really
squint, you know."

"Call it a cast in her eye if you like; I don't mind.
It isn't anything to me," she asserted. "Is it the
tall one you want?"

"I don't care," he answered.

"You don't care?" she repeated.

"No," he returned; "that's why I've come to
you. I don't care. Which one do you recommend?"

"I don't recommend either of them!" she respond-
ed, promptly. "I shouldn't be a true friend if I let
you throw yourself away on one of those frights!"

"I'll give them up, if you say so," said he; "but
I've always heard that they are good, quiet girls —
domesticated, you know— and —

"Who is next?" she pursued, with a return of her
arbitrary manner.

"Well," he suggested, bashfully, "I haven't any
reason to suppose she would look at me, and it sounds
so conceited in me to suggest that such a handsome
woman — and so rich, too — would listen to me, but —

"Who is this paragon?" his companion demanded.

"Didn't I mention her name?" he responded. "I
thought I had. We passed her only a little while
ago — Mrs. Poole."

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 117

"Mrs. Poole?" the girl replied. "That was the
sick-looking creature hi black lolling back hi a vic-
toria, wasn't it?"

"She isn't sick, really," he retorted; "but I don't
think mourning is becoming to her. Of course, if
we are married she will wear colors and — "

"I didn't know you were willing to take up with
a widow!" she interrupted, with a slight touch of
acerbity. "I thought it was a girl you were look-
ing for!"

"It was a wife of some sort," he replied. "I don't
know myself what would suit me best. That's why
I am consulting you. I'm going to rely on your
judgment — "

"But you mustn't do that!" she cried.

"It is just what I've got to do!" he insisted. "And
if you think it would be a mistake for me to marry
a widow, why — it's for you to say."

"I must say that I think it would be a great mis-
take for a doctor to marry a woman who looks as
if she couldn't live through the week," she responded.
"I should suppose it would ruin any physician's
practice to have a wife as woebegone as that Mrs.
Poole! Of course, I don't know her, and I've noth-
ing to say against her, and she may be as beautiful
and as charming as you say she is."

"I give her up at once," he declared, laughing.
"She shall never even know how near she came to
having a chance to reject me."

118 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Is that all?" the girl asked, a little spitefully.
"Have you anybody else on your list?"

"I have only just one more," he replied.

"Who is she?" was the girl's quick question.

"I'm not sure that you have met her," he returned.
"She's from the South somewhere, or the Southwest,
I don't know—"

"What's her name?" was the impatient query.

"Chubb," he answered. "It's not a pretty name,
is it? But that doesn't matter if I'm to persuade
her to change it."

"Chubb?" the girl repeated, as though trying to
recall the name. "Chubb? Not Virgie Chubb?"

"Her name is Virginia," he admitted.

The girl by his side laughed a little shrilly. "Vir-
gie Chubb?" she cried. "That scrawny thing?"

The Doctor confessed that Miss Chubb was not
exactly plump.

"Not plump? I should think not, indeed," the
girl declared. "Do you know what Miss Marlen-
spuyk said about her? She said that Virgie Chubb
looked like a death's-head on a toothpick! That's
what she said!"

They were approaching the Mall, and the Doctor
knew that his time was now very brief. They had to
slow up just then, as a policeman was conveying
across the broad road three or four nurses with a
baby-carriage or two, and then they had to steer
clear of half a dozen working-men going home across

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 119

the Park, with pipes in their mouths and dinner-
pails swinging in their hands.

"So you don't think Miss Chubb would be a good
wife for me?" he inquired.

"I have nothing to say at all! It isn't really any
of my business!" she replied. "It is simply absurd
of you to ask me!"

"But you must help me out," he urged. "So far
you have only told me that I mustn't marry any
of the girls I had on my list."

"I don't want to see you throw yourself away,"
she returned. "A pretty kind of a friend I should
be if I encouraged you to marry your Virgie Chubb
and your Widow Poole!"

"That's it, precisely," he asserted; "that's why
I've come to you. Of course, I don't want to throw
myself away. Your advice has been invaluable to
me — simply invaluable. But so far you have only
shown me how it is that none of these girls will suit.
That brings me no nearer my object. I've simply
got to have a wife."

"I don't see why you need be in such a hurry,"
she replied.

"I must, I must!" he retorted. "And there's one
more girl I haven't mentioned so far — "

"You've kept her to the last!" she snapped.

"Yes, I've kept her to the last, because I haven't
any right even to hope that she would have me.

She is not a widow, and she hasn't a cast in her eye,
9

120 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

and she is neither fat nor scrawny; she is just a
lovely young girl — "

"You speak of her with more enthusiasm than you
did of any of the others," she broke in. "Do I
know her?"

"You ought to know her," he answered; "but I
doubt if you think as well of her as I do."

"Who is she?" was her swift question.

"You won't be offended?" he asked.

"Of course not! How absurd! Why should I
be offended?" she responded. "Who is she? Who
is she?"

The Doctor answered seriously, and with a quaver
of emotion in his voice, "She is the girl I have loved
for a long time, and her name is Minnie Contoit!"

The girl did not say anything. Her face was as
pale as ever, but there was a light in the depths of
her cool gray eyes.

"Listen to me once more, Minnie!" implored the
young fellow by her side. "You say that none of
these other girls will suit me, and I knew that before
you said it. I knew that you are the only girl I
ever wanted. You promised me your friendship the
last time we talked this over, and now I've had a
chance to tell you how much I need a wife I have
hoped you would look at the matter in a clearer
light."

She said nothing. He gave a hasty glance back-
ward and he saw that her father and her grandfather

AN IDYL OF CENTRAL PARK 121

were only a hundred yards or so behind them. The
reddening sunset on their right cast lengthening shad-
ows across the road. The spring day was drawing
to an end, and the hour had come when he was to
learn hk fate forever.

"Minnie," he urged once more, "don't you think
it is your duty — as a friend, you know — to give me
the wife I ought to have?"

She looked at him, and laughed nervously, and
then dropped her eyes.

"Oh, weU," she said at last, "if I must!"

(1900)

n ® • ® • ® • & • ® n ® KJ 9 it 9 m 9 HI 9 M • 111 9 HI

I HERE were two men in the cab as it
turned into Fifth Avenue and began to
skirt the Park on its way down-town.
One of them was perhaps fifty; he had
grizzled hair, cold, gray eyes, and a square
jaw. The other appeared to be scant thirty; he had
soft brown eyes, and a soft brown mustache drooped
over his rather irresolute mouth. The younger man
was the better-looking of the two, and the better
dressed; and he seemed also to be more at home in
New York, while the elder was probably a stranger in
the city — very likely a Westerner, if the black slouch
hat was a true witness.

They sat side by side in silence, having nothing to
say, the one to the other. The shadows that were
slowly stretching themselves across the broad walk
on the Park side of the Avenue shivered as the spring
breeze played with the tender foliage of the trees that
spread their ample branches almost over the wall.
The languid scent of blossoming bushes was borne
fitfully beyond the border of the Park. To the eyes
of the younger of the two men in the hansom the
quivering play of light and shade brought no pleasure;
and he had no delight in the fragrance of the spring-

126 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

time — although in former years he had been wont
to thrill with unspoken joy at the promise of summer.

The elder of the two took no thought of such things;
it was as though he had no time to waste. Of course,
he was aware that winter followed the fall, and that
summer had come in its turn; but this was all in the
day's work. He had the reputation of being a good
man in his business; and although the spring had
brought no smile to his firm lips, he was satisfied with
his success in the latest task intrusted to him. He had
in his pocket a folded paper, signed by the Governor
of a State in the Mississippi Valley, and sealed with
the seal of that commonwealth; and in the little bag
on his knees he carried a pair of handcuffs.

As the hansom approached the Plaza at the en-
trance to the Park, the gray-eyed Westerner caught
sight of the thickening crowd, and of the apparent
confusion in which men and women and children
were mixed, bicycles and electric cabs, carriages and
cross-town cars, all weltering together; and he won-
dered for a moment whether he had done wisely hi
allowing so much apparent freedom to his prisoner.
He looked right and left swiftly, as though sizing up
the chances of escape, and then he glanced down at
the bag on his knees.

"You needn't be afraid of my trying to run," said
the younger man. "What good would it do me?
You've caught me once, and I don't doubt you could
do it again."

IN A HANSOM 127

"That's so," returned the other, with just a tinge
of self-satisfaction in his chilly smile. "I shouldn't
wonder if I could."

"Besides, I don't want to get away now," insisted
the first speaker. " I've got to face the music sooner
or later, and I don't care how quick the brass band
strikes up. I want to take my punishment and have
it over. That's what I want. I'm going to plead
guilty and save the State the trouble of trying me,
and the expense, too. That ought to count in cutting
down the sentence, oughtn't it? And then I shall
study the rules of — of that place, and I mean to learn
them by heart. There won't be anybody there in a
greater hurry to get out than I, and so I'm going to
be a model of good conduct."

"It ain't every fellow that talks like that who's
able to keep it up," commented the officer of the law.

"I guess I can, anyhow," replied his prisoner.
"I've made up my mind to get this thing over as
soon as possible, and to have a little life left for me
when I'm let out."

The elder man made no answer. He thought that
his companion was sincere and that there would be
no attempt to escape, whatever the opportunity.
But his experience trained him to take no chances,
and he did not relax his vigilance.

A horn sounded behind him; and a minute later a
four-in-hand passed with tinkling chains and rumbling
wheels. The top of the coach was filled with elab-

128 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

orately attired men and with girls in all the gayety
of their spring gowns; and they seemed to be having
a good time. They did not mean to hurt the younger
of the two men in the hansom; they did not know,
of course; but just then their mirth smote him to
the heart.

Fifth Avenue is an alluring spectacle late in the
afternoon of the first Saturday in June; and when the
hansom-cab topped the crest of a hill, the two men
could see far down the vista of the broad street.
The roadway was a solid mass of vehicles in ceaseless
motion; and the sidewalks were filled with humanity.
To the man who was being taken to his trial the
bright color and the brisk joyousness of the scene
were actually painful. Of the countless men and
women scattered up and down the Avenue in the
glaring sunshine, how many knew him to call him by
name and to take him by the hand? More than
a hundred, no doubt, for he had been popular. And
how many of them would give him a second thought
after they had read of his arrest and of his trial and
his sentence?

How many of them would miss him? — would be
conscious even of his absence? And he recalled the
disgust of a friend who had gone around the worlcl^
and had come back after a year or more with pic-
turesque stories of his wanderings in far countries,
only to have the first man he met in his club ask him
casually where he'd been "for the last week or so."

THIS YEAR THE GIRLS WERE PRETTIER THAN USUAL

IN A HANSOM 129

And now he, too, was going to a strange land; and he
foresaw that when he returned — if he ever got back
alive! — he would not know what to answer if any one
should inquire where he had been for the last week
or so. The world was a bitterly selfish place where
men had no time to think except of themselves. If a
fellow could not keep up with the procession, he had to
drop out of the ranks and be glad it the rest of them
did not tramp over him. He knew how hard he had
tried not to be left behind, and how little the effort
had profited him.

With an aggressive movement that made his
companion even more alert than usual, the brown-
eyed young man shook himself erect, as though to
cast behind him these evil thoughts. It was a beau-
tiful day, and flowers blazed hi the broad windows
of the florists — roses and carnations and lilacs.
There were lilacs also in the arbitrary hats the women
were wearing, and the same tint was often echoed
in their costumes. He had always been attentive
to the changes of fashion — always subject to the
charm of woman. As he was borne down the Avenue
by the side of the man in whose custody he was, it
struck him that this year the girls were prettier than
usual — younger, more graceful, more fascinating, more
desirable. He followed with his eyes first one and
then another, noting the sweep of the skirt, the curve
of the bodice, the grace of gesture, the straggling ten-
dril of hair that had escaped upon the neck. For a

130 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

brief moment the pleasure of his eye took his thoughts
away from his future; and then swiftly his mind
leaped forward to the next spring, when no woman's
face would chance within the range of his vision, and
when the unseen blossoming of nature would bring
only impotent desire. What zest could there be in
life when life was bounded in a whitewashed cell?

At Thirty-fourth Street the hansom was halted to
let a funeral cross the current of the Avenue. An
open carriage came first, its seats covered with
flowers, tortured into stiff set pieces; the white hearse
followed, with a satin-covered coffin visible through
its plate-glass sides; and then half a dozen carriages
trailed after. The prisoner in the hansom noticed
that the shades were drawn in the one that followed
the hearse; it bore a grief too sacred for observation —
a mother's, no doubt. He was suddenly glad that
his parents had both died when he was yet a boy.
To be alone in the world, with no family to keep him
warm with tolerant affection — this had often sad-
dened him; now at last he rejoiced at it. When a
man is on his way to prison to serve a term of years,
the fewer those who cherish him, the luckier for
them. That he loved a woman — that, indeed, he was
going to jail because of his love for her — this might
add poignancy to his pain; but he felt himself manly
for once in trying to believe it was better now that
she did not love him, that she did not even know of
his love for her.

IN A HANSOM 131

In time the hansom turned from Fifth Avenue into
Broadway; it went on down-town past Union Square,
with its broad trees, and past Grace Church, with
its grateful greenery; but the younger of the two men
was no longer taking note of what sped before his
gaze. He was wondering what the woman he loved
would think when she would hear of his going to
prison — whether she would care very much — whether
she would suspect that his crime was due to his passion
for her. That, of course, she could not guess — that
he had yielded to the temptation to lay hands on what
was not his, solely because he wanted more money
to place at her feet. For himself, he had been making
enough; but for her he must have more. He could
not have ventured to invite her to give up anything
for his sake. He wanted to be able to offer her all
she had been accustomed to have — and more too,
were that possible. He was conceited enough or-
dinarily, he feared; and yet when he thought of her
he felt so humble that he had never dared to dream
of going to her empty-handed — of asking her to make
any sacrifice in loving him. He had never told her
of his love, and perhaps she did not even guess it;
and yet women are swift to discover a thing like that.
It might be that she had seen it; and that when
others should speak of him as he knew he deserved to
be spoken of, she might come to his defence and find
some word of extenuation for his misdeed. This
possibility, remote as it was, gave him pleasure;

132 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

and he smiled at the suggestion as it came to
him.

From this day-dream he was aroused as the driver
of the hansom jerked the horse back on his haunches
to avoid running down a little old woman who was
trying to cross Broadway with a bundle of sticks
balanced on her head. As the animal almost touched
her she looked up, and her glance crossed that of the
prisoner. He perceived instantly that she was an
Italian, that she was not so old as she looked, and
that she had been beautiful not so long ago. Then
he wondered whether any man had done wrong for
her sake — whether or not two of her lovers had fought
in the soft Sicilian moonlight and one had done the
other to death. Well, why not? There were worse
things than death, after all.

As they went on farther and farther down-town,
Broadway began to seem emptier. It was the first
Saturday in June, and most of the stores were
closed. When they drew near to the City Hall, the
great street, although not so desolate as it is on a
Sunday, lacked not a little of its week-day activity.
It was as though a truce had been proclaimed in the
battle of business; but the forts were guarded, and
the fight would begin again on the Monday morning.

After the hansom passed the Post Office the buildings
on the right and the left raised themselves higher
and higher, until the cab was at last rolling along
what might be the bottom of a canyon. And it

IN A HANSOM 133

seemed to him that the cliff-dwellers who inhabited
the terraces of this man-made gorge, and who spent
the best part of their lives a hundred feet above the
level of the sidewalk, were no peaceable folk with-
drawn from the strife of the plains; they were re-
lentless savages ever on the war-path, and always
eager to torture every chance captive. Wars may
be less frequent than they were and less cruel, but
the struggle for existence is bitterer than ever, and
as meanly waged as any Apache raid.

The young man in the hansom felt his hatred hot
within him for those with whom he had meant to
match himself. He had been beaten in the first
skirmish, and yet — but for the one thing — he could
hold himself as good as the best of them. How
many of the men under the shadow of Trinity were
more honest than he? Some of them, no doubt —
but how many? How many names now honorable
would be disgraced if the truth were suddenly made
known? How many of those who thought them-
selves honest, and who were honest now, had hi the
past yielded to a temptation once, as he had done,
and having been luckier than he in escaping detection
then, had never again risked it? That was what he
had intended to do; he knew himself not to be dis-
honest, although the alluring opportunity had been
too much for him. If only he could have held on
for another day, all would have been well — no one
would have had cause ever to suspect him; and never

134 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

again would he have stepped aside from the narrow
path of rectitude.

There was no use in repining. Luck had been
against him, that was all. Some men had been
guilty of what he had done, and they had been able
to bluff it out. His bluff had been called, and he
was now going to jail to pay his debt of honor.
Perhaps the copy-book was right when it declared
honesty to be the best policy. And yet he could
not help feeling that fate had played him a mean
trick. To put in his possession at the same moment
a large sum of money and the information that the
most powerful group of capitalists in America had
determined to take hold of a certain railroad and
re-establish it, and to have thus the possibility put
before him at the very hour when he had discovered
that perhaps he had a chance to win the woman he
loved, if only he could approach her on an equality
of fortune — this temptation just then was too great
to withstand. He had yielded, and for a little while
it had seemed as though he was about to succeed.
Twenty-four hours more and he could have put back
the money he had borrowed — for so he liked to look
on his act. That money once restored, he would
have waited patiently for the rest of his profit.
Thereafter he could have afforded to be honest; he
was resolved never to overstep the law again; he
would have kept the letter of it vigorously — if only
he had escaped detection that once.

IN A HANSOM 135

But blind chance smote him down from behind.
Suddenly, without an hour's warning, the leader of
the group of sustaining capitalists dropped dead;
his heart had failed, worn out by the friction and
the strain. The market broke; and all who had
bought stocks on a margin were sold out instantly
and inexorably. Then the supporting orders came
in and prices were pushed up again; but it was too
late. Two days before, or a day after, that capital-
ist might have died without having by his death un-
wittingly caused an arrest. And as the hansom
rolled on toward the Battery the prisoner had again
a resentment against the capitalist for choosing so
unfortunate a day to die.

Now the end had come; of course, he had been
unable to replace the money he had taken, and there
was nothing for him to do but to fly. But instead of
going to Canada, and hiding his trail, and then
slipping across to Europe, he had been foolish enough
to come here to New York to have another glimpse of
the woman for the love of whom he had become a thief.
Once more luck had been against him; as it happened,
she had gone out of town for Decoration Day; and
instead of taking ship to Europe, he had waited.
Only that Saturday morning he had met her brother
and had been told of her return to town. But when
he was about to call on her that afternoon, the gray-
eyed man had called on him; and here he was on his

way to his trial, and he had not seen her, after all.
10

136 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Then he went back to the last time he had had
speech with her. It was during one of his frequent
visits to New York, and he had dined at the club with
her brother, who had told him that she was going
to the play that night with her mother. So he had
betaken himself to the theater also, and he had
gazed at her across the house; and then he had put
her and her mother into their carriage, and the old
lady had asked him to dinner the next evening. He
had supposed it was an eleventh-hour invitation and
that he was to fill the seat of some man who had
unexpectedly backed out; but none the less he had
accepted with obvious pleasure. And it was from a
few casual words of her father's, after dinner, that
he got the first inkling of the railroad deal; and then,
before the time came for him to go, he had been
fortunate enough to have her to himself for a quarter
of an hour. She had been graciousness itself, and
for the first time he had begun to have hope. He
could not recall what he had said, but his memory
was clear as to how she had looked. He could not
remember whether he had allowed her even a glimpse
of his deep passion. It might be that she had guessed
it, although she had made no sign; he knew that
women were as keen as they were inscrutable.

The hansom was at last under the ugly frame-
work of the Elevated almost at the South Ferry gate.
The tide was coming in strongly, and there was a salt
savor in the breeze that blew up from the lower bay.

IN A HANSOM 137

The prisoner relished it as he filled his lungs with the
fresh air; and then he asked himself how long it
would be before that saline taste would touch his
nostrils again.

As the cab drew up, the elder of the two men in it
laid his hand on the arm of the younger.

"I can trust you without the wristlets, can't I?"
he asked.

The other flushed. "Put them on if you want," he
answered, "but you needn't. I'm not going to make
a fool of myself again. I've told you I'm going to
plead guilty and do everything else I can to get the
thing over as soon as possible."

The gray-eyed man looked at him firmly.

"You're talking sense," he declared. "I'll trust
you."

As they were about to step out, their horse was
somewhat startled by an electric automobile that
rolled past clumsily and drew up immediately in front
of them.

The prisoner stood stock-still, with his foot vainly
reaching out for the sidewalk, as he saw the brother
of the woman he loved help her out of the vehicle.
Then the brother asked a newsboy to point the way
to the boat for Governors Island; and she went with
him as the urchin eagerly guided them. She did not
look around; she never saw the man who loved her;
and in a minute she turned the corner and was out of
sight.

138 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

The officer of the law tapped his prisoner on the
arm again.

"Come on," he said. "What's the matter with
you? Have you seen a ghost?''

(1899)

c/zocf that
flayed the Ozotnbone

|N a corner of my desk there stands a
china shell; its flat and oval basin is
about as broad as the palm of my
hand; it is a spotted brownish-yellow
on the outside, and a purply-pinkish
white on the inside; and on the crinkled edge of
one end there sits a green frog with his china mouth
wide open, thus revealing the ruddy hollow of his
Ulterior. At the opposite end of the shell there is a
page of china music, purporting to be the first four
bars of a song by Schubert. Time was when the
frog held in his long greenish-yellow arms a still
longer trombone made of bright brass wire, bent into
shape, and tipped with a flaring disk of gilded porce-
lain. In the days when the china frog was young he
pretended to be playing on the brass trombone.
Despite its musical assertiveness, the function of the
frog that played the trombone was humble enough: the
shell was designed to serve as a receiver for the ashes
of cigars and cigarettes. But it is a score of years at
least since the china frog has held the brass trombone
to its open lips. Only a few months after he gave
his first mute concert on the corner of my table the
carelessness of a chance visitor toppled him over on

142 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

the floor, and broke off both his arms and so bent the
trombone that even the barren pretense of his solo
became an impossibility. A week or two later the
battered musical instrument disappeared; and ever
since then the gaping mouth of the frog has seemed
to suggest that he was trying to sing Schubert's song.
His open countenance, I am sorry to say, has often
tempted my friends to make sport of him. They
have filled the red emptiness of his body with the
gray ashes of their cigars; they have even gone so
far as to put the stump of a half-smoked cigarette
between his lips, as though he were solacing himself
thus for the loss of his voice.

Although the frog is no longer playing an inaudible
tune on an immovable instrument, I keep it on a
corner of my desk, where it has been for nearly
twenty years. Sometimes of a winter's night, when
I take my seat at the desk before the crackling and
cheerful hickory fire, the frog that played the trom-
bone catches my eye, and I go back in memory to the
evening when it performed its first solo in my presence,
and I see again the beautiful liquid eyes of the friend
who brought it to me. We were very young then,
both of us, that night before Christmas, and our
hearts kept time with the lilt of the tune that the
frog played silently on his trombone. Now I am
young no longer, I am even getting old, and my
friend has been dead this many a year. Sometimes,
as I look at the gaping frog, I know that if I could

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 143

hear the song he is trying to sing I should hate it for
the memories it would recall.

He who gave it to me was not a school fellow, a
companion of my boyhood, but he was the friend of
my youth and a classmate hi college. It was in our
Junior year that he joined us, bringing a good report
from the fresh-water college where he had been for
two years. I can recall his shy attitude the first
morning in chapel when we were wondering what
sort of a fellow the tall, dark, handsome new-comer
might be. The accidents of the alphabet put us
side by side hi certain class-rooms, and I soon learned
to know him, and to like him more and more with
increasing knowledge. He was courteous, gentle,
kindly, ever ready to do a favor, ever grateful for help
given him, and if he had a fault it was this, that he
was jealous of his friends. Although his nature was
healthy and manly, he had a feminine craving for
affection, and an almost womanly unreason hi the
exactions he made on his friends. Yet he was ever
ready to spend himself for others, and to do to all as
he would be done by.

Although fond of out-door sports, his health was
not robust. He lacked stamina. There was more
than a hint of consumption in the brightness of his
eye, in the spot of color on his cheek, hi the hollow-
ness of his chest, and in the cough which sometimes
seized him in the middle of a recitation. Toward
the end of our senior year he broke down once, and

144 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

was kept from college a week; but the spring came
early, and with the returning warmth of the sunshine
he made an effort and took his place with us again.
He was a good scholar, but not one of the best in
the class. He did his work faithfully in the main,
having no relish for science, but enjoying the flavor
of the classics. He studied German that year, and
he used to come to me reciting Heine's poems with en-
thusiasm, carried away by their sentiment, but shocked
by the witty cynicism which served as its corrective.
He wrote a little verse now and then, as young men
do, immature, of course, and individual only in so
far as it was morbid. I think that he would have
liked to devote himself to literature as a career, but
it had been decided that he was to study law.

After Class Day and Commencement the class
scattered forever. In September, when I returned
to New York and settled down to my profession, I
found my friend at the Columbia Law School. His
father had died during the summer, leaving nothing
but a life-insurance policy, on the income of which
the mother and son could live modestly until he
could get into a law office and begin to make his way
in the world. They had taken a floor in a little
boarding-house in a side street, and they were very
comfortable; their money had been invested for them
by one of his father's business associates, who had
so arranged matters that their income was much
larger than they had expected. In this modest home

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 145

he and his mother lived happily. I guessed that the
father had been hard and unbending, and that my
friend and his mother had been drawn closer together.
Of a certainty I never saw a man more devoted than
he was to her, or more tender, and she was worthy
of the affection he lavished on her.

In those days the Law School course extended
over two years only, and it did not call for very hard
work on the part of the student, so he was free to
pass frequent evenings hi my library. I used to go
and see him often, for I liked his mother, and I liked
to see them sitting side by side, he holding her hand
often as he debated vehemently with me the insoluble
questions which interested us then. During the
second winter I sometimes saw there a brown-eyed
girl of perhaps twenty, pretty enough, but with a
sharp, nervous manner I did not care for. This was
the daughter of the lady who kept the boarding-
house; and my friend was polite to her, as he was to
all women; he was attentive even, as a young man is
wont to be toward a quick-witted girl. But nothing
in the manner led me to suppose that he was inter-
ested in her more than hi any other woman. I did
not like her myself, for she struck me as sharp-
tongued.

It is true that I saw less of my friend that second
whiter, being hard at work myself. It was hi the
spring, two years after our graduation, that I re-
ceived a letter from him announcing his engagement

146 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

to the young lady I had seen him with, his landlady's
daughter. My first thought, I remember, was to
wonder how his mother would feel at the prospect of
another woman's coming between them. His letter
was a long dithyramb, and it declared that never
had there been a man so happy, and that great as was
his present joy, it was as nothing compared with the
delight in store for him. He wrote me that each had
loved the other from the first, and each had thought
the other did not care, until at last he could bear it
no longer; so he had asked her, and got his answer.
"You cannot know," he wrote, "what this is to me.
It is my life — it is the making of my life; and if I
should die to-night, I should not have lived in vain,
for I have tasted joy, and death cannot rob me of
that."

Of course the engagement must needs be long,
because he was as yet in no position to support a wife;
but he had been admitted to the bar, and he could
soon make his way, with the stimulus he had now.

I was called out of town suddenly about that time,
and I saw him for a few minutes only before I left
New York. He was overflowing with happiness, and
he could talk about nothing but the woman he loved
— how beautiful she was! how clever! how accom-
plished! how devoted to his mother! In the midst
of his rhapsody he was seized by a fit of violent
coughing, and I saw the same danger signal in his
cheeks which had preceded the break-down in his

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 147

senior year. I begged him to take care of himself.
With a light laugh he answered that he intended to
do so — it was his duty to do so, now that he did not
belong to himself.

In the fall, when I came back to the city, I found
him in the office of a law firm, the head of which had
been an intimate of his father's. The girl he was to
marry went one night a week to dine with her grand-
mother, and he came to me that evening and talked
about her. As the cold weather stiffened, his cough
became more frequent, and long before Christmas
I was greatly alarmed by it. He consulted a dis-
tinguished doctor, who told him that he ought to
spend the winter hi a drier climate — in Colorado, for
example.

It was on Christmas eve that year that he brought
me the frog that played the trombone. Ever since
the first Christmas of our friendship we had made
each other little presents.

"This is hardly worth giving," he said, as he
placed the china shell on the corner of my desk,
where it stands to this day. "But it is quaint and
it caught my fancy. Besides, I've a notion that it
is the tune of one of Heine's lyrics set by Schubert
that the fellow is trying to play. And then I've a
certain satisfaction in thinking that I shall be repre-
sented here by a performer of marvelous force of
lung, since you seem to think my lungs are weak."

A severe cough seized him then, but, when he had

148 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

recovered his breath, he laughed lightly, and said:
"That's the worst one I've had this week. How-
ever, when the spring warms me up again I shall be
all right once more. It wasn't on me that the spring
poet wrote the epitaph:

'It was a cough
That carried him off;
It was a coffin
They carried him off in."

"You ought to go away for a month at least," I
urged. "Take a run down South and fill your lungs
with the balsam of the pines."

"That's what my mother wants me to do," he
admitted; "and I've half promised to do it. If
I go to Florida for January, can you go with me?"

I knew how needful it was for him to escape from
the bleakness of our New York winter, so I made
a hasty mental review of my engagements. "Yes,"
I said, "I will go with you."

He held out his hand and clasped mine firmly.
"We'll have a good time," he responded, "just we
two. But you must promise not to object if I insist
on talking about her all the time."

As it turned out, I was able to keep all my en-
gagements, for we never went away together. Before
the new year came there was a change in my friend's
fortunes. The man who had pretended to invest for
them the proceeds of his father's life-insurance policy
absconded, leaving nothing behind but debts. For

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 149

the support of his mother and himself my friend had
only his own small salary. A vacation, however
necessary, became impossible, and the marriage,
which had been fixed for the spring, was postponed
indefinitely. He offered to release the girl, but she
refused.

Through a classmate of ours I was able to get my
friend a place in the law department of the Denver
office of a great insurance company. In the elevated
air of Colorado he might regain his strength, and hi a
new city like Denver he might find a way to mend his
fortunes. His mother went with him, of course, and
it was beautiful to see her devotion to him. I saw
them off.

"She bore the parting very bravely," he said to me.
" She is braver than I am, and better in every way. I
wish I were more worthy of her. You will go and
see her, won't you? There's a good fellow and a
good friend. Go and see her now and then, and
write and tell me all about her — how she looks and
what she says."

I promised, of course, and about once a month I
went to see the woman my friend loved. He wrote
me every fortnight, but it was often from her that I
got the latest news. His health was improving; his
cough had gone; Denver agreed with him, and he
liked it. He was working hard, and he saw the
prospect of advancement close before him. Within
two years he hoped to take a month off, and return

150 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

to New York and marry her, and bear his bride back
to Colorado with him.

When I returned to town the next October I ex-
pected to find two or three letters from my friend
awaiting me. I found only one, a brief note, telling
me that he had been too busy to write the month
before, and that he was now too tired with overwork
to be able to do more than say how glad he was that I
was back again in America, adding that a friend at
hand might be farther away than one who was on
the other side of the Atlantic. The letter seemed
to me not a little constrained in manner. I did not
understand it; and with the hope of getting some
light by which to interpret its strangeness, I went to
call on her. She refused to see me, pleading a
headache.

It was a month before I had a reply to my answer
to his note, and the reply was as short as the note,
and quite as constrained. He told me that he was
well enough himself, but that his mother's health
worried him, since Denver did not agree with her,
and she was pining to be back in New York. He
added a postscript, in which he told me that he had
dined a few nights before with the local manager of
the insurance company, and that he had met the
manager's sister, a wealthy widow from California,
a most attractive woman, indeed. With needless
emphasis he declared that he liked a woman of the
world Old enough to talk sensibly.

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 151

Another month passed before I heard from him
again, and Christmas had gone and the new year
had almost come. The contents of this letter, written
on Christmas eve, when the frog that played the
trombone had been sitting on the corner of my desk
for just a year, was as startling as its manner was
strange. He told me that his engagement was
broken off irrevocably.

If my own affairs had permitted it, I should have
taken' the first train to Denver to discover what had
happened. As it was I went again to call on the
landlady's daughter. But she refused to see me
again. Word was brought me that she was engaged,
and begged to be excused.

About a fortnight later I chanced to meet on a
street corner the classmate who had got my friend the
Denver appointment. I asked if there was any news.

"Isn't there!" was the response. "I should think
there was, and lots of it! You know our friend in
Denver? Well, we have a telegram this morning:
his health is shaky, and so he has resigned his po-
sition."

"Resigned his position!" I echoed. "What does
that mean?"

"That's what we wanted to know," replied my
classmate, "so we telegraphed to our local manager,
and he gave us an explanation right off the reel. The
manager has a sister who is the widow of a California
millionaire, and she has been in Denver for the winter,
11

152 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

and she has met our friend; and for all she is a good
ten years older than he is, she has been fascinated by
him — you know what a handsome fellow he is — and
she's going to marry him next week, and take him
to Egypt for his health."

"He's going to marry the California widow?" I
asked, in astonishment. "Why, he's enga — " Then
I suddenly held my peace.

"He's going to marry the California widow," was
the answer, — "or she's going to marry him; it's all
the same, I suppose."

Two days later I had a letter from Denver confirm-
ing this report. He wrote that he was to be married
in ten days to a most estimable lady, and that they
were to leave his mother in New York as they passed
through. Fortunately he had been able to make
arrangements whereby his mother would be able to
live hereafter where she pleased, and in comfort. He
invited me to come out to Colorado for the wedding,
but hardly hoped to persuade me, he said, knowing
how pressing my engagements were. But as their
steamer sailed on Saturday week they would be at a
New York hotel on the Friday night, and he counted
on seeing me then.

I went to see him then, and I was shocked by his
appearance. He was thin, and his chest was hollower
than ever. There were dark lines below his liquid
eyes, brighter then than I had ever seen them before.
There were two blazing spots on his high cheek-bones.

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 153

He coughed oftener than I had ever known him, and
the spasms were longer and more violent. His hand
was feverishly hot. His manner, too, was restless.
To my surprise, he seemed to try to avoid being alone
with me. He introduced me to his wife, a dignified,
matronly woman with a full figure and a cheerful
smile. She had a most motherly manner of looking
after him and of anticipating his wants; twice she
jumped up to close a door which had been left open
behind him. He accepted her devotion as a matter
of course, apparently. Once, when she was telling
me of their projects — how they were going direct to
Egypt to remain till late in the spring, and then to
return to Paris for the summer, with a possible run
over to London before the season was over — he in-
terrupted her to say that it mattered little where he
went or what he did — one place was as good as
another.

When I rose to go he came with me out into the
hotel corridor, despite his wife's suggestion that there
was sure to be a draught there.

He thrust into my hand a note-book. "There,"
he said, "take that; it's a journal I started to keep,
and never did. Of course you can read it if you like.
In the pocket you will find a check. I want you to
get some things for me after I've gone; I've written
down everything. You will do that for me, I know."

I promised to carry out his instructions to the
letter.

154 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"Then that's all right," he answered.

At that moment his wife came to the door of their
parlor. "I know it must be chilly out hi the hall
there," she said.

"Oh, I'm coming," he responded.

Then he grasped my fingers firmly in his hot hand.
"Good-by, old man," he whispered. "You remem-
ber how I used to think the frog that played the
trombone was trying to execute a Heine-Schubert
song? Well, perhaps it is — I don't know; but what
I do know is that it has played a wedding march, after
all. And now good-by. God bless you! Go and
see my mother as often as you can."

He gave my hand a hearty shake, and went back
into the parlor, and his wife shut the door after him.

I had intended to go down to the boat and see him
off the next morning, but at breakfast I received a
letter from his wife saying that he had passed a very
restless night, and that she thought it would excite
him still more if I saw him again, and begging me,
therefore, not to come to the steamer if such had been
my intention. And so it was that he sailed away and
I never saw him again.

In the note-book I found a check for five hundred
dollars, and a list of the things he wished me to get
and to pay for. They were for his mother mostly,
but one was a seal-ring for myself. And there was
with the check a jeweler's bill, " To articles sent as
directed," which I was also requested to pay.

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 155

The note-book itself I guarded with care. It was a
pocket- journal, and my friend had tried to make it
a record of his life for the preceding year. There
were entries of letters received and sent, of money
earned and spent, of acquaintances made, of business
appointments, of dinner engagements, and of visits
to the doctor. Evidently his health had been failing
fast, and he had been struggling hard to keep the
knowledge not only from his mother, but even from
himself. While he had set down these outward facts
of his life, he had also used the note-book as the record
of his inward feelings. To an extent that he little
understood, that journal, with its fragmentary en-
tries and its stray thoughts, told the story of his
spiritual experience.

Many of the entries were personal, but many were
not; they were merely condensations of the thought
of the moment as it passed through his mind. Here
are two specimens:

"We judge others by the facts of life — by what we
hear them say and see them do. We judge ourselves
rather by our own feelings — by what we intend and
desire and hope to do some day in the future. Thus
a poor man may glow with inward satisfaction at the
thought of the hospital he is going to build when he
gets rich. And a wealthy man can at least pride
himself on the fortitude with which he would, if need
be, bear the deprivations of poverty."

" To pardon is the best and the bitterest vengeance."

156 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Toward the end of the year the business entries
became fewer and fewer, as though he had tired of
keeping the record of his doings. But the later pages
were far fuller than the earlier of his reflections —
sometimes a true thought happily expressed, some-
times, more often than not perhaps, a mere verbal
antithesis, such as have furnished forth many an
aphorism long before my friend was born. And
these later sentiments had a tinge of bitterness lacking
in the earlier.

"There are few houses," he wrote, in October,
apparently, "where happiness is a permanent boarder;
generally it is but a transient guest; and sometimes,
indeed, it is only a tramp that knocks at the side
door and is refused admittance."

"Many a man forgets his evil deeds so swiftly that
he is honestly surprised when any one else recalls
them."

Except the directions to me for the expenditure
of the five hundred dollars, the last two entries in the
book were written on Christmas morning. One of
these was the passage which smote me most when I
first read it, for it struck me as sadness itself when
written by a young man not yet twenty-five:

"If we had nothing else to wish, we should at least
wish to die."

At the time I did not seize the full significance of
the other passage, longer than this, and far sadder
when its meaning was finally grasped.

THE FROG THAT PLAYED THE TROMBONE 157

"The love our parents gave us we do not pay back,
nor a tithe of it, even. We may bestow it to our
children, but we never render it again to our father
and our mother. And what can equal the love
of a woman for the son she has borne? No peak is
as lofty, and nj) ocean is as wide; it is fathomless,
boundless, immeasurable; it is poured without stint,
unceasing and unfailing. And how do we men meet
it? We do not even make a pretense of repaying
it, most of us. Now and again there may be a son
here and there who does what he can for his mother,
little as it is, and much as he may despise himself for
doing it: and why not? Are there not seven swords
in the heart of the Mater Dolorosa? And what sort
of a son is he who would add another?"

Although I had already begun to guess at the
secret of my friend's conduct, a mystery to all others,
it was the first of these two final entries hi his note-
book which came flashing back into my memory one
evening toward the end of March, ten weeks or so
after he had bidden me good-by and had gone away
to Egypt. I was seated hi my library, smoking, when
there came a ring at the door, and a telegram was
handed to me. I laid my cigar down on the brownish-
yellow shell, at the crinkled edge of which the green
frog was sitting, reaching out his broken arms for the
trombone whereon he had played in happier days. I
saw that the despatch had come by the cable under
the ocean, and I wondered who on the other side of

158 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

the Atlantic had news for me that would not keep
till a letter could reach me.

I tore open the envelope. The message was dated
Alexandria, Egypt, and it was signed by my friend's
widow. He had died that morning, and I was asked
to break the news to his mother.

(1893)

/\

On an
C^zzand of c//oezci/

ambulance clanged along, now under
the elevated railroad, and now wrenching
itself outside to get ahead of a cable-car.
With his little bag in his hand, the
young doctor sat wondering whether he
would know just what to do when the time came.
This was his first day of duty as ambulance surgeon,
and now he was going to his first call. It was three
in the afternoon of an August day, when the hot
spell had lasted a week already, and yet the young
physician was chill with apprehension as he took
stock of himself, and as he had a realizing sense of
his own inexperience.

The bullet-headed Irishman who was driving the
ambulance as skilfully as became the former owner
of a night-hawk cab glanced back at the doctor and
sized up the situation.

"There's no knowin' what it is we'll find when we
get there," he began. "There's times when it's no
aisy job the doctor has. Say you give the man ether,
now, or whatever it is you make him sniff, and maybe
he's dead when he comes out of it. Where are you
then?"
The young man decided instantly that if anything

162 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

of that sort should happen to him that afternoon, he
would go back to Georgia at once and try for a place
in the country store.

"But nothing ever fazed Dr. Chandler," the
driver went on. "It's Dr. Chandler's place you're
takin' now, ye know that?"

It seemed to the surgeon that the Irishman was
making ready to patronize him, or at least to in-
sinuate the new-comer's inferiority to his predecessor,
whereupon his sense of humor came to his rescue,
and a smile relieved the tension of his nerves as he
declared that Dr. Chandler was an honor to his
profession.

"He is that!" the driver returned, emphatically,
as with a dextrous jerk he swung the ambulance just
in front of a cable-car, to the sputtering disgust of
the gripman. "An' it's many a dangerous case we've
had to handle together, him and me."

"I don't doubt that you were of great assistance,"
the young Southerner suggested.

"Many's the time he's tould me he never knew
what he'd ha' done without me," the Irishman re-
sponded. "There was that night, now — the night
when the big sailor come off the Roosian ship up in
the North River there, an' he got full, an' he fell down
the steps of a barber shop, an' he bruck his leg into
three paces, so he did; an' that made him mad, the
pain of it, an' he was just wild when the ambulance
come. Oh, it was a lovely jag he had on him, that

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 163

Roosian — a lovely jag! An' it was a daisy scrap we
had wid him!"

"What did he do?" asked the surgeon.

"What didn't he do?" the driver replied, laughing
at the memory of the scene. "He tried to do the
doctor — Dr. Chandler it was, as I tould you. He'd
a big knife — it's mortial long knives, too, them
Roosians carry — an' he was so full he thought it was
Dr. Chandler that was hurtin' him, and he med offer
to put his knife in him, when, begorra, I kicked it
out of his hand."

"I have often heard Dr. Chandler speak of you,"
said the doctor, with an involuntary smile, as he
recalled several of the good stories that his predecessor
had told him of the driver's peculiarities.

"An* why w'u'dn't he?" the Irishman replied.
"It's more nor wanst I had to help him out of trouble.
An' never a worrd we had in all the months he drove
out wid me. But it '11 be some aisy little job we'll
have now, I'm thinkin' — a sun-stroke, maybe, or a
kid that's got knocked down by a scorcher, or a
thrifle of that kind; you'll be able to attend to that
yourself aisy enough, no doubt."

To this the young Southerner made no response,
for his mind was busy in going over the antidotes
for various poisons. Then he aroused himself and
shook his shoulders, and laughed at his own pre-
occupation.

The Irishman did not approve of this. "An' of

164 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

coorse," he continued, "it may be a scrap 'twixt a
ginny and a Polander; or maybe, now, a coon has
gone for a chink wid a razzer, and sliced him most
in two, I dunno'."

Then he clanged the bell unexpectedly, and swerved
off the track and down a side street toward the river.

The doctor soon found a curious crowd flattening
their noses against the windows of a drug-store on a
corner of the Boulevard. He sprang off as the driver
slowed down to turn and back up.

A policeman stood in the doorway of the phar-
macist's, swinging his club by its string as he kept
the children outside. He drew back to let the young
surgeon pass, saying, as he did so: "It's no use now,
I think, Doctor. You are too late."

The body of the man lay flat on the tile pavement
of the shop. He was decently dressed, but his shoes
were worn and patched. He was a very large man,
too, stout even for his length. His cravat had been
untied and his collar had been opened. His face was
covered with a torn handkerchief.

As the doctor dropped on his knees by the side of
the body, the druggist's clerk came from behind the
prescription counter — a thin, undersized, freckled
youngster, with short red hair and a trembling voice.

"He's dead, ain't he?" asked this apparition.

The doctor finished his examination of the man on
the floor, and then he answered, as he rose to his
feet: "Yes, he's dead. How did it happen?"

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 165

The delivery of the young druggist was hesitating
and broken. "Well, it was this way, you see. The
boss was out, and I was in charge here, and there
wasn't anything doing except at the fountain. Then
this man came in; he was in a hurry, and he told me
he was feeling faint — kind of suffocated, so he said —
and couldn't I give him something. Well, I'm a
graduate in pharmacy, you know, and so I fixed him
up a little aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass
of soda-water. You know that won't hurt anybody.
But just as he took the glass out of my hand his
knees gave way and he squashed down on the floor
there. The glass broke, and he hadn't paid for the
spirits of ammonia, either; and when I got round to
him he was dead — at least I thought so, but I rang
you up to make sure."

"Yes," the doctor returned, "apparently he died
at once — heart failure. Probably he had fatty
degeneration, and this heat has been too much for
him."

"I don't think any man has a right to come in
here and die like that without warning, heart failure
or no heart failure, do you?" asked the red-headed
assistant. "I don't know what the boss will say.
That's the kind of thing that spoils trade, and it
ain't any too good here, anyway, with a drug-store
'most every block."

"Do you know who he is?" the doctor inquired.

"I went through his pockets, but he hadn't any

166 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

watch nor any letters," the druggist answered;
"but he's got about a dollar in change in his pants."

The doctor looked around the shop. The police-
man was still in the doorway, and a group of boys and
girls blocked the entrance.

"Does anybody here know this man?" asked the
surgeon.

A small boy twisted himself under the policeman's
arm and slipped into the store. "I know him," he
cried, eagerly. "I see him come in. I was here all
the time, and I see it all. He's Tim McEcchran."

"Where does he live?" the doctor asked, only to
correct himself swiftly — "where did he live?"

"I thought he was dead when I saw him go down
like he was sandbagged," said the boy. "He lives
just around the corner in Amsterdam Avenue — at
least his wife lives there."

The doctor took the address, and with the aid of
the policeman he put the body on the stretcher and
lifted it into the ambulance. The driver protested
against this as unprecedented.

"Sure it's none of our business to take a stiff
home!" he declared. "That's no work at all, at all,
for an ambulance. Dr. Chandler never done the
like in all the months him an' me was together.
Begob, I never contracted to drive hearses."

The young Southerner explained that this pro-
cedure might not be regular, but it revolted him to
leave the body of a fellow-mortal lying where it had

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 167

fallen on the floor of a shop. The least he could do,
so it seemed to him, was to take it to the dead man's
widow, especially since this was scarcely a block out
of their way as they returned to the hospital.

The driver kept on grumbling as they drove off.
"Sure he give ye no chance at all, at all, Doctor, to
go and croak afore iver ye got at him, and you only
beginnin' yer work! Dr. Chandler, now, he'd get
'em into the wagon ennyway, an' take chances of
there bein' breath in 'em. Three times, divil a less,
they died on us on the stretcher there, an' me whippin'
like the divil to get 'em into the hospital ennyhow,
where it was their own consarn whether they lived
or died. That's the place for 'em to die in, an' not
in the wagon; but the wagon's better than dyin'
before we can get to 'em, an' the divil thank the
begrudgers! It's unlucky, so it is; an' by the same
token, to-day's Friday, so it is!"

The small boy who had identified the dead man
ran alongside of them, accompanied by his admiring
mates; and when the ambulance backed up again
before a pretentious tenement-house with a brown-
stone front and beveled plate-glass doors, the small
boy rang Mrs. McEcchran's bell.

"It's the third floor she lives on," he declared.

The janitor came up from the basement and he and
the driver carried the stretcher up to Mrs. McEc-
chran's landing.

The doctor went up before them, and found an
12

168 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

insignificant little old woman waiting for him on the
landing.

"Is this Mrs. McEcchran?" he asked.

"Yes," she answered; then, as she saw the burden
the men were carrying, she cried : " My God! What's
that? What are they bringing it here for?"

The young Southerner managed to withdraw her
into the front room of the flat, and he noticed that it
was very clean and very tidy.

"I am a doctor," he began, soothingly, "and I am
sorry to say that there has been an accident — "

"An accident?" she repeated. "Oh, my God! And
is it Tim?"

"You must summon all your courage, Mrs.
McEcchran," the doctor returned. "This is a
serious matter — a very serious matter."

"Is he hurt very bad?" she cried. "Is it dan-
gerous?"

"I may as well tell you the truth, Mrs. McEcchran,"
said the physician. "I cannot say that your husband
will ever be able to be out again."

By that time the stretcher had been brought into
the room, with the body on it entirely covered by a
blanket.

"You don't mean to tell me that he is going to
die?" she shrieked, wringing her hands. "Don't say
that, Doctor! don't say that!"

The bearers set the stretcher down, and the woman
threw herself on her knees beside it.

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 169

"Tim!" she cried. "Speak to me, Tim!"

Getting no response, she got to her feet and turned
to the surgeon. "You don't mean he's dead?" And
the last word died away in a wail.

"I'm afraid there is no hope for him," the doctor
replied.

"He's dead! Tim's dead! Oh, my God!" she
said, and then she dropped into a chair and threw
her apron over her head and rocked to and fro,
sobbing and mourning.

The young Southerner was not yet hardened to
such sights, and his heart was sore with sympathy.
Yet it seemed to him that the woman's emotion was
so violent that it would not last long.

While he was getting ready to have the body
removed from the stretcher to a bed in one of the
other rooms, Mrs. McEcchran unexpectedly pulled the
apron from her head.

"Can I look at him?" she asked, as she slipped to
the side of the body and stealthily lifted a corner of
the covering to peek in. Suddenly she pulled it
back abruptly. "Why, this ain't Tim!" she cried.

"That is not your husband?" asked the doctor, in
astonishment. "Are you sure?"

"Of course I'm sure!" she answered, laughing
hysterically. "Of course I'm sure! As if I didn't
know Tim, the father of my children! Why, this
ain't even like him!"

The doctor did not know what to say. "Allow me

170 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

to congratulate you, madam," he began. "No doubt
Mr. McEcchran is still alive and well; no doubt he
will return to you. But if this is not your husband,
whose husband is he?"

The room had filled with the neighbors, and in the
crowd the small boy who had brought them there
made his escape.

"Can any one tell me who this is?" the surgeon
asked.

"I knew that weren't Mr. McEcchran as soon as
I see him," said another boy. "That's Mr. Carroll."

"And where does — did Mr. Carroll live?" the
doctor pursued, repenting already of his zeal as he
foresaw a repetition of the same painful scene in some
other tenement-house.

"It's only two blocks off — on the Boulevard,"
explained the second boy. "It's over a saloon on the
corner. I'll show you if I can ride on the wagon."

"Very well," agreed the doctor; and the body was
carried down and placed again in the ambulance.

As the ambulance started he overheard one little
girl say to another: "He was killed in a blast! My!
ain't it awful? It blew his legs off!"

To which the other little girl answered, "But I
saw both his boots as they carried him out."

And the first little girl then explained: "Oh, I
guess they put his legs back in place so as not to hurt
his wife's feelings. Tumble, ain't it?"

When the ambulance started, the driver began

'MY! AIN'T IT AWFUL? IT BLEW HIS LEGS OFF!'

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 171

grumbling again: "It's not Dr. Chandler that 'ud
have a thing like this happen to him. Him an' me
never went traipsing round wid a corp that didn't
belong to nobody. We knew enough to take it
where the wake was waitin'."

The boy on the box with the driver guided the
ambulance to a two-story wooden shanty with a
rickety stairway outside leading up to the second
floor.

He sprang down as the ambulance backed up, and
he pointed out to the doctor the sign at the foot of
these external steps — "Martin Carroll, Photogra-
pher."

"That's where he belongs," the boy explained.
"He sleeps in the gallery up there. The saloon
belongs to a Dutchman that married his sister. This
is the place all right, if it really is Mr. Carroll."

"What do you mean by that?" shouted the doctor.
"Are you not sure about it?"

"I ain't certain sure," the fellow replied. "I
ain't as sure as I was first off. But I think it's Mr.
Carroll. Leastways, if it ain't, it looks like him!"

It was with much dissatisfaction at this doubtful-
ness of his guide that the doctor helped the driver
slide out the stretcher.

Then the side door of the saloon under the landing
of the outside stairs opened and a stocky little
German came out.

"What's this? What's this?" he asked.

172 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

The young surgeon began his explanation again.
"This is where Mr. Carroll lived, isn't it? Well, I
am sorry to say there has been an accident, and —

"Is that Martin there?" interrupted the German.

"Yes," the Southerner replied, "and I'm afraid
it is a serious case — a pretty serious case —

"Is he dead?" broke in the saloon-keeper again.

"He is dead," the doctor answered.

"Then why didn't you say so?" asked the short
man harshly. " Why waste all that time talking
if he's dead?"

The Southerner was inclined to resent this rudeness,
but he checked himself.

"I understand that you are Mr. Carroll's brother-
in-law," he began again, "so I suppose I can leave
the body in your charge — "

The German went over to the stretcher and turned
down the blanket.

"No, you don't leave him here," he declared.
"I'm not going to take him. This ain't my sister's
husband!"

"This is not Mr. Carroll?" and this time the doctor
looked around for the boy who had misinformed him.
"I was told it was."

"The man who told you was a liar, that's all.
This ain't Martin Carroll, and the sooner you take
him away the better. That's what I say," declared
the saloon-keeper, going back to his work.

The doctor looked around in disgust. What he

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 173

had to do now was to take the body to the morgue,
and that revolted him. It seemed to him an insult
to the dead and an outrage toward the dead man's
family. Yet he had no other course of action open
to him, and he was beginning to be impatient to have
done with the thing. The week of hot weather had
worn on his nerves also, and he wanted to be back
again in the cool hospital out of the oven of the
streets.

As he and the driver were about to lift up the
stretcher again, a man in overalls stepped up to the
body and looked at it attentively.

"It's Dick O'Donough!" he said at once. "Poor
old Dick! It's a sad day for her — and her that
excitable!"

"Do you know him?" asked the doctor.

"Don't I?" returned the man in overalls, a thin,
elderly man, with wisps of hair beneath his chin and
a shrewd, weazened face. "It's Dick O'Donough!"

"But are you sure of it?" the young surgeon in-
sisted. "We've had two mistakes already."

"Sure of it?" repeated the other. "Of course I'm
sure of it! Didn't I work alongside of him for five
years? And isn't that the scar on him he got when the
wheel broke?" And he lifted the dead man's hair and
showed a cicatrix on the temple.

"Very well," said the doctor. "If you are sure,
where did he live?"

"It's only a little way."

174 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

"I'm glad of that. Can you show us?"

"I can that," replied the man in overalls.

"Then jump in front," said the doctor.

As they started again, the driver grumbled once
more. "Begorra, April Day's a fool to ye," he began.
"Them parvarse gossoons, now, if I got howld of 'em,
they'd know what it was hurt 'em, I'm thinkin'."

The man in overalls directed them to a shabby
double tenement in a side street swarming with
children. There was a Chinese laundry on one side
of the doorway, and on the other side a bakery.
The door stood open, and the hallway was dark and
dirty.

"It's a sad day it '11 be for Mrs. O'Donough,"
sighed the man in overalls. "I don't know what it
is she's got, but she's very queer, now, very queer."

He went into the bakery and got a man to help
the driver carry up the stretcher. Women came out
of the shops on both sides of the street, and leaned
out of then1 windows with babies in their arms, and
stepped out on the fire-escapes. There were banana
peelings and crumpled newspapers and rubbish of
one sort or another scattered in the street, and the
savor of it all was unpleasant even to a man who was
no stranger to the casual ward of a hospital.

The man in overalls went up-stairs with the doctor,
warning him where a step was broken or where a bit
of the hand-rail was missing. They groped their way
along the passage on the first floor and knocked,

ON AN ERRAND OF MERCY 175

The door opened suddenly, and they saw an ill-
furnished room, glaring with the sun reflected from
its white walls. Two women stood just within the
door. One was tall and spare, with gray streaks in
her coal-black hair, and with piercing black eyes;
the other was a comfortable body with a cheerful
smile.

"That's Mrs. O'Donough," -said the doctor's guide
— " the tall one. See the eyes of her now ! The other's
a neighbor woman, who's with her a good deal, she's
that excitable."

The doctor stepped into the room, and began once
more to break the news. "This is Mrs. O'Donough,
is it not?" he said. "I'm a doctor, and I am sorry
to have to say there has been an accident, and Mr.
O'Donough is — is under treatment."

Here the driver and the man from the bakery
brought in the stretcher.

When the tall woman saw this she gripped the arm
of the other and hissed out, "Is it it?" Then she
turned her back on the body and sank her head on
her friend's shoulder.

The other woman made signs to the doctor to say
little or nothing.

The driver and the baker took a thin counterpane
off the bed, which stood against the wall. Then they
lifted the body from the stretcher to the bed, and
covered it with the counterpane.

The doctor did not know what to say in the face

176 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

of the signals he was receiving from the widow's
friend.

"In case I can be of any assistance at any time,"
he suggested — and then Mrs. O'Donough lifted her
head and looked at him with her burning eyes — "if
I can be of service, do not hesitate to call on me.
Here is my card."

As he felt his way down-stairs again he heard a
hand-organ break out suddenly into a strident waltz.

When he came out into the street a few little
children were dancing in couples, although most of
them stood around the ambulance, gazing with morbid
curiosity at the driver as he replaced the stretcher.
At the door of the baker's shop stood a knot of women
talking it over; but in the Chinese laundry the irons
went back and forth steadily, with no interest in
what might happen in the street outside.

As the doctor took his seat in the vehicle a shriek
came from the room he had just left — a shuddering,
heartrending wail — then another — and then there
was silence.

The ambulance started forward, the bell clanged
to clear the way, the horse broke into a trot, and in a
minute or two they turned into the broad avenue.

Then the driver looked at the doctor. "The
widdy's takin' it harrd, I'm thinkin', but she'll get
over it before the wake," he said. "An' it's good
lungs she has, ennyhow."

(1898)

••••••••••••••••• in.

a (^Bob-tail

air

>T was about noon of a dark day late in
September, and a long-threatened drizzle
of hail chilled the air, as Harry Brackett
came out of the Apollo House and stood
on the corner of Fourth Avenue, waiting
for a cross-town car. He was going down-town to
the office of the Gotham Gazette to write up an inter-
view he had just had with the latest British invader
of these United States, Lady Smith-Smith, the fair
authoress of the very popular novel Smile and be a
Villain Still, five rival editions of which were then for
sale everywhere in New York. Harry Brackett in-
tended to ride past Union Square to Sixth Avenue in
the cross-town car, and then to go to the Gotham
Gazette by the elevated railway, so he transferred ten
cents for the fare of the latter and five cents for the
fare of the former from his waistcoat pocket to a
little pocket in his overcoat. Then he buttoned the
overcoat tightly about him, as the raw wind blew
harshly across the city from river to river. He
looked down the street for the car; it was afar off,
on the other side of Third Avenue, and he was standing
on the corner of Fourth Avenue.

"A bob-tail car," said Harry Brackett to himself,
"is like a policeman: it is never here just when it is

180 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

wanted. And yet it is a necessary evil— like the
policeman again. Perhaps there is here a philosoph-
ical thought that might be worked up as a comic
editorial article for the fifth column. 'The Bob-tail
Car' — why, the very name is humorous. And there
are lots of things to be said about it. For instance,
I can get something out of the suggestion that the
heart of a coquette is like a bob-tail car, there is
always room for one more; but I suppose I must not
venture on any pun about 'ringing the belle.' Then
I can say that the bob-tail car is a one-horse concern,
and is therefore a victim of the healthy American
hatred of one-horse concerns. It has no past; no
gentleman of the road ever robbed its passengers;
no road-agent nowadays would think of 'holding it
up.' Perhaps that's why there is no poetry about a
bob-tail car, as there is about a stage-coach. Even
Rudolph Vernon, the most modern of professional
poets, wouldn't dream of writing verses on 'Riding
in a Bob-tail Car.' Wasn't it Heine who said that
the monks of the Middle Ages thought that Greek
was a personal invention of the devil, and that he
agreed with them? That's what the bob-tail car is —
a personal invention of the devil. The stove-pipe
hat, the frying-pan, the tenement-house, and the
bob-tail car — these are the choicest and the chief of
the devil's gifts to New York. Why doesn't that car
come? confound it! Although it cannot swear itself,
it is the cause of much swearing!"

IN A BOB-TAIL CAB 181

Just then the car came lumbering along and bump-
ing with a repeated jar as its track crossed the tracks
on Fourth Avenue. Harry Brackett jumped on it as
it passed the corner where he stood. His example
was followed by a stranger, who took the seat oppo-
site to him.

As the car sped along toward Broadway, Harry
Brackett mechanically read, as he had read a dozen
tunes before, the printed request to place the exact
fare in the box. "Suppose I don't put it in?" he
mused; "what will happen? The driver will ask
for it — if he has time and happens to think of it. This
is very tempting to a man who wants to try the Vir-
ginian plan of readjusting his debts. Here is just the
opportunity for any one addicted to petty larceny. I
think I shall call that article 'The Bob-tail Car as a
Demoralizer.' It is most demoralizing for a man to
?cel that he can probably evade the payment of his
fare, since there is no conductor to ask for it. How-
ever, I suppose the main reliance of the company is
on the honesty of the individual citizen who would
rather pay his debts than not. I doubt if there is
any need to dun the average American for five
cents."

Harry Brackett lowered his eyes from the printed
notice at which he had been staring unconsciously for
a minute, and they fell on the man sitting opposite to
him — the man who had entered the car as he did.

"I wonder if he is the average American?" thought

182 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

Brackett. "He hasn't paid his fare yet. I wonder if
he will? It isn't my business to dun him for it, and
yet I'd like to know whether his intentions are
honorable or not."

The car turned sharply into Broadway, and then
came to a halt to allow two young ladies to enter. A
third young lady escorted them to the car, and kissed
them affectionately, and said:

"Good-by! You will be sure to come again! I
have enjoyed your visit so much."

Then the two young ladies kissed her, and they said,
both speaking at once, and very rapidly:

"Oh yes. We've had such a good time! We'll
write -you! And you must come out to Orange and
see us soon! Good-by! Good-by! Remember us
to your mother! Good-by!"

At last the sweet sorrow of this parting was over;
the third, young lady withdrew to the sidewalk; the
two young ladies came inside the car; the other pas-
sengers breathed more freely; the man opposite to
Harry Brackett winked at him slyly, and the car went
on again.

There was a vacant seat on the side of the car
opposite to Harry Brackett — or, at least, there would
have been one if the ladies on that side had not, with
characteristic coolness, spread out their skirts so as to
occupy the whole space. The two young ladies stood
for a moment after they had entered the car; they
looked for a seat, but no one of the other ladies made

IN A BOB-TAIL CAR 183

a sign of moving to make room for them. The man
opposite to Harry Brackett rose and proffered his
seat. They did not thank him, or even so much as
look at him,

" You take it, Nelly," said one.

"I sha'n't do anything of the sort. I'm not a bit
tired!" returned the other. "I insist on your sitting
down!"

"But I'm not tired now."

"Louise Valeria Munson," her friend declared, with
humorous emphasis, "if you don't sit right down, I'll
call a policeman!"

"Well, I guess there's room for us both," said
Louise Valeria Munson; "I'm sure there ought to
be."

By this tune some of the other ladies on the seat
had discovered that they were perhaps taking up a
little more than their fair share of space, and there was
a readjustment of frontier. The vacancy was slightly
broadened, and both young ladies sat down.

The man who had got in just after Harry Brackett
and who had given up his seat stood in the center of
the car with his hand through a strap. But he made
no effort to pay his fare. The driver rang his bell, the
passengers looked at each other inquiringly, and one
of the two young ladies who had just seated them-
selves produced a dime, which was passed along and
dropped into the fare-box in accordance with the

printed instructions of the company.
13

184 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

Three ladies left the car just before it turned into
Fourteenth Street; and after it had rounded the curve
two elderly gentlemen entered and sat down by the
side of Harry Brackett. The man who had not paid
his fare kindly volunteered to drop their money into
the box, but did not put in any of his own. Harry
Brackett was certain of this, for he had watched him
closely.

The two elderly gentlemen continued a conversa-
tion began before they entered the car. "I'll tell
you," said one of them, so loudly that Harry Brackett
could not help overhearing, "the most remarkable
thing that man Skinner ever did. One day he got
caught in one of his amusing little swindles; by some
slip-up of his ingenuity he did not allow himself quite
rope enough, and so he was brought up with a round
turn in the Tombs. He got two years in Sing Sing,
but he never went up at all — he served his time by
substitute!"

"What?" cried his companion, in surprise.

"He did!" answered the first speaker. "That's
just what he did! He had a substitute to go to State's
Prison for him, while he went up to Albany to work
for his own pardon!"

"How did he manage that?" asked the other, in
involuntary admiration before so splendid an audacity.

"You've no idea how fertile Skinner was in devices
of all kinds," replied the gentleman who was telling
the story. "He got out on bail, and he arranged for a

IN A BOB-TAIL CAR 185

light sentence if he pleaded guilty. Then one day,
suddenly, a man came into court, giving himself up as
Skinner, pleading guilty, and asking for immediate
sentence. Of course, nobody inquired too curiously
into the identity of a self-surrendered prisoner who
wanted to go to Sing Sing. Well — "

The car stopped at the corner of Fifth Avenue,
several passengers alighted, and a party of three ladies
came in. There were two vacant seats by the side of
Harry Brackett, and as he thought these three ladies
wished to sit together, he gave up his place and took
another farther down the car. Here he found himself
again opposite the man who had entered the car
almost simultaneously with him, and who had not
yet paid his fare. Harry Brackett wondered whether
this attempt to steal a ride was intentional or whether
it was merely inadvertent. His consideration of this
metaphysical problem was interrupted by another
conversation. His right-hand neighbor, who was
apparently a physician, was telling the friend next to
him of the strange desires of convalescents.

"I think/' said he, "that the queerest request I
ever heard was down in Connecticut. There was a
man there, a day-laborer, but a fine young fellow,
who had a crowbar driven clean through his head by
a forgotten blast. Well, I happened to be the first
doctor on the spot, and it was nip-and-tuck whether
anything could be done for him; it was a most inter-
esting case. But he was in glorious condition physi-

186 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

cally. I found out afterward that he was the cham-
pion sprint-runner of the place. I got him into the
nearest hotel, and in time I managed to patch him up
as best I could. At last we pulled him through, and
the day came when I was able to tell him that I
thought he would recover, and that he was quite out
of danger, and that all he had to do was to get his
strength back again as fast as he could, and he would
be all right again soon. He was lying in bed, ema-
ciated and speechless, when I said this, and when I
added that he could have anything to eat he might
fancy, his eyes brightened and his lips moved. 'Is
there anything in particular you would prefer?' I
asked him, and his lips moved again as though he had
a wish to express. You see, he hadn't spoken once
since the accident, but he seemed to be trying to find
his tongue; ,so I bent over the bed and put my head
over his mouth, and finally I heard a faint voice say-
ing, 'Quail on toast!' and as I drew back in surprise,
he gave me a wink. Feeble as his tones were, there
was infinite gusto in the way he said the words. I
suppose he had never had quail on toast in all his
life; probably he had dreamed of it as an unattainable
luxury."

"Did he get it?" asked the doctor's friend.

"He got it every day," answered the doctor, "until
he said he didn't want any more. I remember
another man who — "

But now, with many a jolt and jar, the car was

IN A BOB-TAIL CAR 187

rattling noisily across Sixth Avenue under the dripping
shadow of the station of the elevated railway. Harry
Brackett rose to his feet, and as he did so he glanced
again at the man opposite to him, to see if, even then,
at the eleventh hour, he did intend to pay his fare.
But the man caught Harry Brackett's eye hardily, and
looked him in the face, with a curiously knowing
smile.

There was something very odd about the expres-
sion of the man's face, so Harry Brackett thought, as
he left the car and began to mount the steps which
led to the station of the elevated railroad. He could
not help thinking that there was a queer suggestion
in that smile — a suggestion of a certain complicity
on his part : it was as though the owner of the smile
had ventured to hint that they were birds of a feather.

"Confound his impudence!" said Harry Brackett
to himself, as he stood before the window of the
ticket-agent.

Then he put his fingers into the little pocket in his
overcoat and took from it a ten-cent piece and a five-
cent piece. And he knew at once why the man
opposite had smiled so impertinently — it was the smile
of the pot at the kettle.

(1886)

SCTP <• « wyt

f**Sl

OUZ6

n tfie

[UDDENLY he found himself wideawake.
He had been lost in sleep, dreamless and
spaceless; and now, without warning, his
slumber had left him abruptly and for no
reason that he could guess. Although he
strained his ear, he caught the echo of no unusual
sound. He listened in vague doubt whether there
might not be some one moving about in the apart-
ment; but he could hear nothing except the shrill
creak of the brakes of a train on the elevated railroad
nearly a block away. Wilson Carpenter was in the
habit of observing his own feelings, and he was sur-
prised to note that he did not really expect to detect
any physical cause for his unexpected awakening.
Sleep had left him as inexplicably as it had swiftly.
He lay there in bed with no restlessness; he heard
the regular breathing of his wife, who was sleeping at
his side; he saw the faint illumination from the door
open into the next room where the baby was also
asleep. He looked toward the window, but no ray
of light was yet visible; and he guessed it to be about
four o'clock in the morning, perhaps a little earlier.
In that case he had not been in bed more than two
or three hours at the most. He wondered why he

192 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

had waked thus unexpectedly, since he had had a
fatiguing day. Perhaps it was the excitement —
there was no doubt that he had had his full share of
excitement that evening — and he thrilled again as he
recalled the delicious sensation of dull dread yielding
at last to the certainty of success.

He had played for a heavy stake and he had won.
That was just what he had been doing — gambling
with fate, throwing dice with fortune itself. That was
what every dramatic author had to do every time he
brought out a new play. The production of a piece
at an important New York theater was a venture as
aleatory almost as cutting a pack of cards, and the
odds were always against the dramatist. And as the
young man quietly recalled the events of the evening
it seemed to him that the excitement of those who
engineer corners in Wall Street must be like his own
anxiety while the future of his drama hung in the
balance, only theirs could not but be less keen than
his, less poignant, for he was playing his game with
men and women, while what they touched were but
inanimate stocks. His winning depended upon the
actors and actresses who had bodied forth his con-
ception. A single lapse of memory or a single slip
of the tongue, and the very sceptical audience of the
first night might laugh in the wrong place, and so cut
themselves off from sympathy; and all his labor
would shrivel before his eyes. Of a truth it is the
ordeal by fire that the dramatist must undergo; and

IN THE SMALL HOURS 193

there had been moments that long, swift evening when
he had felt as though he were tied to the stake and
awaiting only the haggard squaw who was to apply
the torch.

Now the trial was over and the cause was gained.
There had been too many war-pieces of late, so the
croakers urged, and the public would not stand
another drama of the Rebellion. But he had not been
greatly discouraged, for in his play the military scenes
were but the setting for a story of everyday heroism,
of human conflict, of man's conquest of himself.
It was the simple strength of this story that had
caught the spectators before the first act was half
over and held them breathless as situation followed
situation. At the adroitly spaced comic scenes the
audience had gladly relaxed, joyously relieving the
emotional strain with welcome laughter. The future
of the play was beyond all question; of that the
author felt assured, judging not so much by the mere
applause as by the tensity of the interest aroused,
and by the long-drawn sigh of suspense he had heard
so often in the course of the evening. He did not
dread the acrid criticisms he knew he should find in
some of the morning papers, the writers of which
would be bitterer than usual, since the writer of the
new play had been a newspaper man himself.

The author of A Bold Stroke knew what its success
meant to him. It meant a fortune. The play would
perhaps run the season out in New York, and this

194 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

was only the middle of October. With matinees on
Wednesday as well as on Saturday, two hundred
performances in the city were not impossible. Then
next season there would be at least two companies
on the road. He ought to make $25,000 by the
piece, and perhaps more. The long struggle just to
keep his head above water, just to get his daily bread,
just to make both ends meet — that was over forever.
He could move out of the little Harlem flat to which
he had brought his bride two years before; and he
could soon get her the house she was longing for some-
where in the country, near New York, where the
baby could grow up under the trees.

The success of the play meant more than mere
money, so the ambitious young author was thinking
as he lay there sleepless. It meant praise, too — and
praise was pleasant. It meant recognition — and
recognition was better than praise, for it would open
other opportunities. The money he made by the
play would give him a home, and also leisure for
thought and for adequate preparation before he
began his next piece. He had done his best in writing
the war-drama; he had spared no pains and neglected
no possibility of improvement; it was as good as he
could make it. But there were other plays he had
in mind, making a different appeal, quieter than his
military piece, subtler; and these he could now risk
writing, since the managers would believe in him
after the triumph of A Bold Stroke.

IN THE SMALL HOURS 195

It would be possible for him hereafter to do what
he wanted to do and what he believed himself best
fitted, to do. It had always seemed to him that New
York opened an infinity of vistas to the dramatist.
He intended to seize some of this opulent material
and to set on the stage the life of the great city
as he had seen it during his five years of journalism.
He knew that it did a man good to be a reporter for
a little while, if he had the courage to cut himself
loose before it was too late, before journalism had
corroded its stigma. His reporting had taken him
into strange places now and again; but it had also
taken him into the homes of the plain people who
make New York what it is. Society, as Society was
described in the Sunday papers, he knew little about,
and he cared less; he was not a snob, if he knew
himself. But humanity was unfailingly interesting
and unendingly instructive; and it was more interest-
ing and more instructive in the factories and in the
tenements than it was hi the immense mansions on
Lenox Hill.

His work as a reporter had not only sharpened his
eyes and broadened his sympathies; it had led him
to see things that made him think. He had not
inherited his New England conscience for nothing;
and his college studies in sociology, that seemed so
bare to him as an undergraduate, had taken on a new
aspect since he had seen for himself the actual working
of the inexorable laws of life. To sneer at the reform-

196 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

ers who were endeavoring to make the world better
had not been easy for him, even when he was straining
to achieve the false brilliance of the star reporter;
and now that he was free to say what he thought, he
was going to seize the first opportunity to help along
the good cause, to show those rich enough to sit in the
good seat in the theater that the boy perched up in
the gallery in his shirt-sleeves was also a man and a
brother.

The young playwright held that a play ought to be
amusing, of course, but he held also that it might
give the spectators something to think about after
they got home. He was going to utilize his oppor-
tunity to show how many failures there are, and how
many there must be if the fittest is to survive, and
how hard it is to fail, how bitter, how pitiful! With
an effort he refrained from saying out loud enough
to waken his wife the quotation that floated back
to his memory:

Whether at NaisMpur or Babylon,
Whether the Cup with sweet or bitter run,

The Wine of Life keeps oozing drop by drop,
The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.

His own success, now it had come, found him
wondering at it. He was a modest young fellow at
bottom, and he really did not know why he had
attained the prize so many were striving to grasp.
Probably it was due to the sturdiness of the stock he

IN THE SMALL HOURS 197

came from; and he was glad that his ancestors had
lived cleanly and had left him a healthy body and a
sober mind. His father and his mother had survived
long enough to see him through college and started in
newspaper work in New York. They had been old-
fashioned in their ways, and he was aware that they
might not have approved altogether of his choice of a
profession, since it would have seemed very strange to
them that a son of theirs should earn his living by
writing plays. Yet he grieved that they had gone
before he was able to repay any of the sacrifices they
had made for him; it was the one blot on his good-
fortune that he could not share it with them hi the
future.

The future! Yes, the future was in his power at
last. As he lay there in the darkness he said to him-
self that all his ambitions were now almost within
his grasp. He was young and well educated; he had
proved ability and true courage; he had friends; he
had a wife whom he loved and who loved him; his
first-born was a son, already almost able to walk.
Never before had his prospects appeared so smiling,
and never before had he foreseen how his hopes might
be fulfilled. And yet now, as he thought of the future,
for the first time his pulse did not beat faster. When
it was plain to him that he might soon have the most
of the things he cared for, he found himself asking
whether, after all, he really did care for them so much.
He was happy, but just then his happiness was pas-

198 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

sive. The future might be left to take care of itself
all in good time. He was wide awake, yet he had
almost the languor of slumber; it surprised him to
find himself thus unenergetic and not wanting to be
roused to battle, even if the enemy were in sight.
He thought of the Nirvana that the Oriental philoso-
phers sought to gain as the final good; and he asked
himself if perhaps the West had not still something
to learn from the East.

Afar, in the silence of the night, he heard the faint
clang of an ambulance-bell, and he began to think
of the huge city now sunk in slumber all around him.
He had nearly four million fellow-citizens; and in an
hour or two or three they would awaken and go forth
to labor. They would fill the day with struggle,
vying one with another, each trying to make his foot-
ing secure; and now and again one of them would
fall and be crushed to the ground. They would
go to bed again at night, wearied out, and they would
sleep again, and waken again, and begin the battle
again. Most of them would take part in the combat
all in vain, since only a few of them could hope to
escape from the fight un vanquished. Most of them
would fall by the wayside or be trampled under foot
on the highroad. Most of them would be beaten in
the battle and would drop out of the fight, wounded
unto death. And for the first time all this ceaseless
turmoil and unending warfare seemed to him futile
and purposeless.

IN THE SMALL HOURS 199

What was victory but a chance to engage again in
the combat? To win to-day was but to have a right
to enter the fray again to-morrow. His triumph that
evening in the theater only opened the door for him;
and if he was to hold his own he must make ready to
wrestle again and again. Each time the effort would
be harder than the last. And at the end, what? He
would be richer in money, perhaps, but just then
money seemed to have no absolute value. He would
do good, perhaps; but perhaps also he might do harm,
for he knew himself not to be infallible. He would
not be more contented, he feared, for he had discovered
already that although success is less bitter than
failure, it rarely brings complete satisfaction. If it
were contentment that he really was seeking, why not
be satisfied now with what he had won? Why not
quit? Why not step out of the ranks and throw down
his musket and get out of the way and leave the
fighting to those who had a stomach for it?

As he asked himself these questions a gray shroud
of melancholy was wrapped about him and all the
brightness of youth was quenched in him. Probably
this was the inevitable reaction after the strain of his
long effort. But none the less it left him looking
forward to the end of his life, and he saw himself
withered and racked with pain; he saw his young
wife worn and ugly, perhaps dead — and the ghastly
vision of the grave glimpsed before him; he saw his
boy dead also, dead in youth; and he saw himself

14

200 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

left alone and lonely in his old age, and still struggling,
struggling, struggling in vain and forever.

Then he became morbid even, and he felt he was
truly alone now, as every one of us must be always.
He loved his wife and she loved him, and there was
sympathy and understanding between them; but he
doubted if he really knew her, for he felt sure she did
not really know him. There were thoughts in his
heart sometimes that he was glad she did not guess;
and no doubt she had emotions and sentiments she
did not reveal to him. After all, every human being
must be a self-contained and repellent entity; and
no two of them can ever feel alike or think alike. He
and his wife came of different stocks, with a different
training, with a different experience of life, with
different ideals; and although they were united in
love, they could not but be separate and distinct to
all eternity. And as his wife was of another sex from
his, so his boy was of another generation, certain to
grow up with other tastes and other aspirations.

Wilson Carpenter's marriage had been happy, and
his boy was all he could wish, — and yet — and yet —
Is this all that life can give a man? A little joy for
the few who are fortunate, a little pleasure, and then
— and then — For the first time he understood how
it was that a happy man sometimes commits suicide.
And he smiled as he thought that if he wished to
choose death at the instant of life when the outsider
would suppose his future to be brightest, now was the

IN THE SMALL HOURS 201

moment. He knew that there ought to be a revolver
in the upper drawer of the table at the side of the bed.
He turned gently; and then he lay back again, smiling
bitterly at his own foolishness.

A heavy wagon rumbled along down the next
street, and he heard also the whistle of a train on the
river-front. These signs of returning day did not
interest him at that moment when — so it seemed to
him, although he was aware this was perfectly un-
reasonable— when he was at a crisis in his life.

Then there came to him another quatrain of
Omar's, a quatrain he had often quoted with joy in
its stern vigor and its lofty resolve:

So when the Angel of the darker Drink
At last shall find you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invite your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff — you shall not shrink.

And youth came to his rescue again, and hope rose
within him once more; and his interest hi the eternal
conflict of humanity sprang up as keen as ever.

The mood of craven surrender passed from him
as abruptly as it had come, leaving him older, and
with a vague impression as though he had had a
strange and unnatural experience. He knew again
that life is infinitely various, and that it is worth
while for its own sake; and he wondered how it was
that he had ever doubted it. Even if struggle is
the rule of our existence in this world, the fight is its

202 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

own reward; it brings its own guerdon; it gives a
zest to life; and sometimes it even takes the sting
from defeat. The ardor of the combat is bracing;
and fate is a foeman worthy of every man's steel.

So long as a man does his best always, his pay is
secure; and the ultimate success or failure matters
little after all, for, though he be the sport of cir-
cumstance, he is the master of himself. To be alone
— in youth or in age — is not the worst thing that can
befall, if the man is not ashamed of the companionship
of his own soul. If his spirit is unafraid and ready to
brave the bludgeon of chance, then has man a stanch
friend in himself, and he can boldly front whatever
the future has in store for him. Only a thin-blooded
weakling casts down his weapons for nothing and
flees around the arena; the least that a man of even
ordinary courage can do is to stand to his arms and
to fight for his life to the end.

Wilson Carpenter had no idea how long it was that
he had been lying awake motionless, staring at the
ceiling. There were signs of dawn now, and he
heard a cart rattle briskly up to the house next
door.

Perhaps his wife heard this also, for she turned and
put out one arm caressingly, smiling at him in her
sleep. He took her hand in his gently and held it.
Peace descended upon him, and his brain ceased to
torment itself with the future or with the present
pr with the past,

IN THE SMALL HOURS 203

He was conscious of no effort not to think, nor
indeed of any unfulfilled desire on his part. It
seemed to him that he was floating lazily on a summer
sea, not becalmed, but bound for no destination.
And before he knew it, he was again asleep.

(1899)

er

to a&iA Second Cfflife

tHE was gayly humming a lilting tune as
she flitted about the spacious sitting-
room, warm with the mellow sunshine of
the fall. From the broad bow- window
she looked down on the reddened maples
in Gramercy Park, where a few lingering leaves were
dancing hi the fitful autumn breeze. Turning away
with a graceful, bird-like movement, she floated across
to the corner and glanced again into a tall and narrow
mirror set in the door of a huge wardrobe. She smiled
back at the pretty face she saw there reflected. Then
she laughed out merrily, that she had caught herself
again at her old trick. Yet she did not turn away
until she had captured two or three vagrant wisps of
her pale-gold hair, twisting them back into conformity
with their fellows. When at last she glided off with
a smile still lingering on her dainty little mouth, the
whole room seemed to be illuminated by her exuberant
happiness.

And this was strong testimony to the brightness of
the bride herself, for there was nothing else attractive
in that sitting-room or in the rest of the house. The
furniture was stiff and old-fashioned throughout, and
the hangings were everywhere heavy and somber.

208 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

The mantelpiece was of staring white marble; and
on each side of this was a tall bookcase of solid black
walnut highly varnished and overladen with mis-
placed ornament. The rectangular chairs were
covered with faded maroon reps. The window cur-
tains were of raw silk, thickly lined and held back by
cords with black-walnut tassels. The least forbidding
object in the room was a shabby little desk, of which
the scratched white paint contrasted sharply with the
dull decorum of the other furniture.

The bride had brought this desk from the home of
her youth to her husband's house, and she cherished
it as a possession of her girlhood. By the side of it
was a low, cane-backed rocking-chair, and in this she
sat herself down at last. A small rectangular package
was almost under her hand on the corner of the desk;
and she opened it eagerly and blushed prettily as she
discovered it to contain her new visiting-cards —
"Mrs. John Blackstock." She repeated the name
to herself with satisfaction at its sonorous dignity.
John Blackstock seemed to her exactly the name that
suited her husband, with his gentleness and his
strength. Next to the cards was another package,
a belated present from a schoolmate; it contained a
silver-mounted calendar. She held it in her hand and
counted back the days to her wedding — just twenty,
and it seemed to her hardly a week. Then she re-
marked that in less than a fortnight it would be
Thanksgiving; and she thought at once of the many

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 209

blessings she would have to give thanks for this year,
many more than ever before — above all, for John!
Suddenly it struck her that a year could make
startling changes in a woman's life — or even half a
year. Twelve months ago in the New England mill-
town where her parents lived she had no thought of
ever coming to New York to stay or of marrying soon.
Last Thanksgiving she had never seen John; and
indeed, it was not till long after Decoration Day that
she had first heard his name; and now there was a
plain gold ring on her finger, and John and she were
man and wife. If she had not accepted Mary Mor-
ton's invitation she might never have met John!
She shuddered at the fatal possibility; and she mar-
veled how the long happiness of a woman's hie might
hang on a mere chance. When the Mortons had
asked her to go to Saratoga with them to spend the
Fourth of July she had hesitated, and she came near
refusing after Mary had said that Mr. Blackstock was
going to be there, and that he was a widower now, and
that there was a chance for her. She detested that
kind of talk and thought it was always in bad taste.
But then Mary Morton was a dear, good girl; and it
was natural that Mr. Morton should be interested
in Mr. Blackstock, since Mr. Blackstock was the head
of the New York house that took all the output of
the Morton milla. She had decided to go to Saratoga
at last, partly because her father thought it would
amuse her, and partly just to show Mary Morton

210 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

that she was not the kind of girl to be thrown at a
man's head.

The morning after their arrival in Saratoga, when
they were walking in Congress Park, Mary had
pointed out John to her, and she remembered that
he had seemed to her very old. Of course, he was not
really old; she knew now that he was just forty;
but she was only twenty herself, and at first sight he
had impressed her as an elderly man. That evening
he came over to their hotel to call on Mr. Morton, and
he was presented to her. Mary had been telling her
how his wife had died the summer before, and how
he had been inconsolable; and so she could not help
sympathizing with him, nor could she deny that he
had seemed to be taken with her from the beginning.
Instead of talking to Mr. Morton or to Mary, he kept
turning to her and asking her opinion. Before he
got up to go he had invited them all to go down to
the lake with him the next day for a fish dinner.
Twenty-four hours later he had asked her to drive
with him alone, and while she was wavering Mary
had accepted for her; and really she did not see
why she should not go with him. She had liked
him from the first, he was so quiet and reserved,
and then he had been so lonely since the death of
his wife. On Sunday he had taken her to church; and
the next morning he had moved over to their hotel.
She had been afraid that Mary might tease her; but
she did not care, for she was getting to like to have

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 211

him attentive to her. She had made up her mind
not to pay any regard to anything Mary might say.
What Mary did say was to ask her to stay on another
fortnight. She wondered now what would have
happened if her father had refused his permission.
As it was, she remained in Saratoga two weeks longer
— and so did John, though Mr. Morton said that the
senior partner of Blackstock, Rawlings & Cameron had
lots of things to do in New York. Then Mary used
to smile and to tell her husband that Mr. Blackstock
had more pressing business on hand in Saratoga than
in New York.

At last they all started for home again, and John
had come with them as far as Albany. When he held
her hand just as the car was going and said good-by,
it was rather abruptly that he asked her if he might
come and see her at Norwich — and he had blushed as
he explained that he might be called there soon on
important business.

As the picture of this scene rose before the eyes
of the young bride she smiled again. She knew now
what she had guessed then — that she was the impor-
tant business that was bringing the senior partner
of Blackstock, Rawlings & Cameron to Norwich.
When he came up the next Saturday and had made
the acquaintance of her father and mother she began
to think that perhaps he was really interested in her.
She spent the next twenty-four hours in a strange
dream of ecstasy; and when he walked home with her

212 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

after the evening service she knew that she had
found her fate most unexpectedly. As they neared
her father's door he had asked her if she were willing
to trust her future to him, and she had answered
solemnly that she was his whenever he might choose
to claim her.

Although she had said this, she was taken aback
when he had wished her to be married early in Sep-
tember. She had had to beg to have the wedding
postponed till the end of October, assuring him that
she could not be ready before then. Now, as she sat
there rocking silently in the sitting-room of his
house in New York, with a smile of happiness curving
her lips, and as she recalled the swiftness of time's
flight during the few weeks of her engagement, she
did not regret that his neglected business would keep
him in town all winter and that the promised trip to
Europe was postponed until next summer. They had
gone on their brief wedding journey to Niagara and
Montreal and Quebec; and they had returned only
the day before. Last night for the first time had she
sat at the head of his table as the mistress of his
house. For the first time that morning had she
poured out his coffee in their future home, smiling
at him across the broad table in the dingy dining-
room with its black horsehair chairs.

Then he had sent for a cab, and he had insisted on
her coming down to the office with him. It was the
first time that she had seen the immense building

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 213

occupied by Blackstock, Rawlings & Cameron, with
the packing-cases piled high on the sidewalk and with
half a dozen drays unloading the goods just received
from Europe. Although two or three of the clerks
were looking at him when he got out of the cab, he had
kissed her; and although she supposed she must have
blushed, she did not really object. She was John's
wife now, and it did not matter who knew it. He
had called to the driver to come back so that he might
tell her to stop anywhere she pleased on her way up-
town and to buy anything she fancied. She had
come straight home without buying anything, for, of
course, she was not going to waste John's money.

All the same the house was very old-fashioned,
and it sadly needed to be refurnished. John was
rich, and John was generous with his money; and she
felt sure he would let her do over the house just as she
pleased. Then her thoughts went back to the days
when she had been sent to a boarding-school hi New
York to finish her education and to the afternoon
walks when she and the other girls, two by two, had
again and again passed in front of that very house;
and now it was her home for the rest of her life. It
was hers to brighten and to beautify and to make
over to suit herself. She did not want to say a word
against John's first wife, but it did seem to her that
the elder woman had lacked taste at least. The wall-
papers and the hangings were all hopeless, and the
furniture was simply prehistoric. The drawing-room

214 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

looked as though nobody had ever dared to sit in it;
and it was so repellent that she did not wonder every-
body kept out of it.

Probably his first wife was a plain sort of person
who did not care to entertain at all; perhaps she was
satisfied with the narrow circle of church work. The
young woman remarked how her mind kept on re-
turning to her predecessor. She was ready to confess
that this was natural enough, and yet it made her a
little impatient nevertheless. Her eyes filled with
tears when she thought of the swiftness with which
a woman is forgotten when once she is dead.

She went to the window of the sitting-room and
looked down on Gramercy Park again. The No-
vember twilight was settling down, and the rays of
the setting sun were obscured by a heavy bank of
gray clouds. The wind had risen and was whirling
the dead leaves in erratic circles. Rain was threat-
ened and might come at any minute. The day that
had begun in glorious sunshine was about to end in
gloom. The young bride was conscious of a vague
feeling of loneliness and homesickness; she found
herself longing for John's return.

As she turned away she heard the front door close
heavily. With the swift hope that her husband might
have come home earlier than he had promised, she
flew to the head of the stairs. She was in time to
see the butler gravely bowing an elderly gentleman
into the drawing-room.

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 215

Disappointed that it was not John, she went back
to the sitting-room and dropped into the rocking-
chair by her old desk. She wondered who it was that
hastened to call on her the day after her home-coming.

A minute later the butler was standing before her
with the salver in his hand and a card on it.

She took it with keen curiosity.

"Dr. Thurston!" she cried. "Did you tell him
Mr. Blackstock was not home yet?"

"Yes, m'am," the butler responded; "and he said
it was Mrs. Blackstock he wished to see particularly."

"Oh, very well," she returned. "Say I will be
down in a minute."

When the butler had gone, she ran to the tall
mirror and readjusted her hah* once more and felt to
make sure that her belt was in position on her lithe
young waist. She was glad that she happened to
have on a presentable dress, so that she need not
keep the minister waiting.

As she slowly went down-stairs she tried in vain to
guess why it was that Dr. Thurston wanted to see her
particularly. She knew that John had had a pew in
Dr. Thurston's church for years and that he was ac-
customed to give liberally to all its charities. She
had heard of the beautiful sermon the doctor had
preached when John was left a widower, and so she
almost dreaded meeting the minister for the first
time all alone. She lost a little of her habitual
buoyancy at the fear lest he should not like her.
15

216 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

When she entered the drawing-room — which seemed
so ugly in her eyes then that she was ready to apologize
for it — the minister greeted her with a reserved smile.

"I trust you will pardon this early visit, Mrs.
Blackstock — " he began.

"It is very good of you to come and see me so soon,
Dr. Thurston," she interrupted, a little nervously, as
she dropped into a chair.

" It is a privilege no less than a duty, my dear young
lady," he returned, affably, resuming his own seat,
"for me lo be one of the first to welcome to her new
home the wife of an old friend. There is no man in
all my congregation for whom I have a higher regard
than I have for John Blackstock."

The young wife did not quite like to have her
husband patronized even by the minister of his
church, but smiled sweetly as she replied, "It is so
kind of you to say that — and I am sure that there is
no one whose friendship John values more than he
does yours, Doctor."

The minister continued gravely, as though putting
this compliment aside. "Yes, I think I have a right
to call your husband an old friend. He joined my
church only a few months after I was called to New
York, and that is nearly fifteen years ago — a large part
of a man's life. I have observed him under circum-
stances of unusual trial, and I can bear witness that
he is made of sterling stuff. I was with him when he
had to call upon all his fortitude to bear what is per-

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 217

haps the hardest blow any man is required to submit
to — the unexpected loss of the beloved companion
of his youth."

Dr. Thurston paused here; and the bride did not
know just what to say. She could not see why the
minister should find it necessary to talk to her of the
dead woman, who had been in her thoughts all the
afternoon.

"Perhaps it may seem strange to you, Mrs. Black-
stock," he went on, after an awkward silence, "that I
should at this first visit and at this earliest oppor-
tunity of speech with you — that I should speak to you
of the saintly woman who was John Blackstock's
first wife. I trust that you will acquit me of any
intention of offending you, and I beg that you will
believe that I have mentioned her only because I
have a solemn duty before me."

With wide-open eyes the bride sat still before him.
She could not understand what these words might
mean. When her visitor paused for a moment, all
she could say was, "Certainly — certainly," and she
would have been greatly puzzled to explain just what
it was she wished to convey by the word. A vague
apprehension thrilled her, for which she could give
no reason.

"I will be brief," the doctor began again. "Per-
haps you are aware that the late Mrs. Blackstock died
of heart failure?"

The bride nodded and answered, "Yes, yes."

218 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

She wanted to say "What of it? And what have I
to do with her now? She is dead and gone; and I
am alive. Why cannot she leave me alone?"

"But it may be you do not know," Dr. Thurston
continued, "that she herself was aware of the nature
of her disease? She learned the fatal truth two or
three years before she died. She kept it a secret from
her husband, and to him she was always cheerful and
hopeful. But she made ready for death, not knowing
when it might come, but feeling assured that it could
not long delay its call. She was a brave woman and
a devout Christian; and she could face the future
fearlessly. Then, as ever, her first thought was for
her husband, and she grieved at leaving him alone
and lonely whom she had cared for so many years.
If she were to die soon her husband would not be
an old man, and perhaps he might take another wife.
This suggestion was possibly repugnant to her at
first; but in time she became reconciled to it."

The bride was glad to hear this. Somehow this
seemed a little to lighten the gloom which had been
settling down upon her.

"Then it was that the late Mrs. Blackstock, dwell-
ing upon her husband's second marriage, decided to
write a letter to you," and as the minister said this he
took an envelope from his coat pocket.

"To me?" cried the young wife, springing to her
feet, as though in self-defense. Her first fear was
that she was about to learn some dread mystery,

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 219

"To you," Dr. Thurston answered calmly— "at
least to the woman, whoever she might be, whom
John Blackstock should take to wife."

"Why—" began the bride, with a little hysteric
laugh, "why, what could she possibly have to say to
me?" And her heart was chilled within her.

"That I cannot tell you," the minister answered;
"she did not read the letter to me. She brought it
to me one dark day the winter before last; and she
besought me to take it and to say nothing about it
to her husband; and to hand it myself to John
Blackstock's new wife whenever they should return
from their wedding trip and settle down in this house."

Then Dr. Thurston rose to his feet and tendered
her the envelope.

"You want me to read that?" the bride asked, in
a hard voice, fearful that the dead hand might be
going to snatch at her young happiness.

"I have fulfilled my promise in delivering the
letter to you," the minister responded. "But if
you ask my advice, I should certainly recommend you
to read it. The writer was a good woman, a saintly
woman; and whatever the message she has sent you
from beyond the grave, as it were, I think it
would be well for you to read it."

The young wife took the envelope. "Very well,"
she answered, "since I must read it, I will."

"I am conscious that this interview cannot but
have been somewhat painful to you, Mrs. Black-

220 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

stock/' said the minister, moving toward the door.
"Certainly the situation is strangely unconventional.
But I trust you will forgive me for my share in the
matter —

"Forgive you?" she rejoined, finding phrases
with difficulty. "Oh yes — yes, I forgive you, of
course."

"Then I will bid you good afternoon," he re-
turned.

"Good afternoon," she answered, automatically.

"I beg that you will give my regards to your
husband."

"To my husband?" she repeated. "Of course, of
course."

When Dr. Thurston had gone at last, the bride
stood still in the center of the drawing-room with the
envelope gripped in her hand. Taking a long breath,
she tore it open with a single motion and took out
the half-dozen sheets that were folded within it. She
turned it about and shook it suspiciously, but nothing
fell from it. This relieved her dread a little, for she
feared that there might be some inclosure — something
that she would be sorry to have seen.

With the letter in her hand at last, she hesitated
no longer; she unfolded it and began to read.

The ink was already faded a little, for the date was
nearly two years old. The handwriting was firm
but girlishly old-fashioned; it was perfectly legible,
however. This is what the bride read:

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 221

"My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, — I must begin by
begging your pardon for writing you this letter. I
hope you will forgive it as the strange act of a foolish
old woman who wants to tell you some of the things
her heart is full of.

"You do not know me — at least, I think it most
.likely you do not, although I cannot be sure of this,
for you may be one of the girls I have seen growing
up. And I do not know you for sure; but all the
same I have been thinking of you very often in the
past few weeks. I have thought about you so often
that at last I have made up my mind to write you
this letter. When I first had the idea, I did not want
to, but now I have brooded over it so long that I
simply must.

"I have been wondering how you will take it, but
I can't help that now. I have something to say, and
I am going to say it. I have been wondering, too,
what you will be like. I suppose that you are young,
very young perhaps, for John has always been fond
of young people. You are a good woman, I am sure,
for John could never have anything to do with a
woman who was not good. Young and good I feel
sure you will be; and that is all I know about you.

"I cannot even guess how you have been brought up
or what your principles are or your ideas of duty. I
wish I could. I am very old-fashioned myself, I find,
and so very few young people nowadays seem to have
the same opinion about serious things that I have. I

222 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

wish I could be sure you were a sincere Christian. I
wish I were certain you held fast to the old ideas of duty
and self -sacrifice that have been the honor and the glory
of the good women of the past. But I have no right
to expect that you will think about all these things
just as I do. And I know only too well how weak I
am myself and how neglectful I have been in improv-
ing my own opportunities. The most I can do is
to hope that you will do what I have always tried to
do ever since I married John — and long before, too —
and that is to make him happy and to watch over
him.

"If you are very young perhaps you do not yet
know that men are not like us women; they need to
be taken care of just like children. It is a blessed
privilege to be a mother, but a childless wife can at
least be a mother to her husband. That is what I
have been trying to do all these years. I have tried
to watch over John as though he were my only son.
Perhaps if our little girl had lived to grow up I might
have seen a divided duty before me. But it pleased
God to take her to Himself when she was only a
baby in arms, and He has never given me another.
Many a night I have lain awake with my arms aching
to clasp that little body again; but the Lord gave and
the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the name of
the Lord! So I have had nothing to draw me away
from my duty to John. If you have children some
day— and God grant that you may, for John's heart

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 223

is set on a boy — if you have children, don't let your
love for them draw you away from John. Remember
that he was first in your love, and see that he is last
also. He will say nothing, for he is good and generous ;
but he is quick to see neglect, and it would be bitter
if he were left alone in his old age.

"You will find out in time that he is very sensitive,
for all he is a man and does not complain all the time.
So be cheerful always, as it annoys him to see anybody
in pain or suffering in any way. It is a great comfort
to me now that the disease that is going to take me
away from him sooner or later, I cannot know when —
that it is sudden and not disfiguring, and that he need
not know anything at all about it until it is all over.
I have made the doctor promise not to tell him till
I am dead.

"You see, John has his worries down-town — not
so many now as he used to have, I am thankful to
say; and I have tried always to make his home
bright for him so that he could forget unpleasant
things. I hope you will always do that, too; it is
a wife's duty, I think. You will forgive my telling
you these things, won't you? You see I am so much
older than you are, and I have known John for so
many years. I have found that it relieves his feelings
sometimes to tell me his troubles and to talk over
things with me. Of course, I don't know much about
business, and I suppose that what I say is of no value;
but it soothes him to have sympathy. So I hope

224 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

you will never be impatient when he wants to tell you
about his partners and the clerks and things of that
sort. I have seen women foolish enough not to want
to 'listen when their husbands talked about business.
I do hope that you are wiser, or, at any rate, that you
will take advice from an old woman like me, thinking
only of the happiness of the man you have promised
to love, honor, and obey. You will learn in time
how good John is. Perhaps you may think you know
now — but you can't know that as well as I do.

"You see I am older than John — not so much older,
either, only a little more than two years. He doesn't
like me to admit it, but it is true; and of late I have
been afraid that everybody could see it, for I am past
forty now and I feel very old sometimes, while John
is as young as ever. He looks just as he did twenty
years ago; he has not a gray hair in his head yet.
He comes up-stairs to me, after he gets back from the
office, with the same boyish step I know so well.

"He was only a boy when I first saw him in the
little village school-house. His family had just moved
into our neighborhood, and the school he had been to
before was not very good, and so I was able to help him
with his lessons. The memory of that first winter
when we were boy and girl together has always been
very precious to me; and I can see him now as he
used to come into the school, panting with his hard
run to get there in time.

"I don't know when it was that I began to love

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 225

him, but it was long before he had grown to be a
man. That early love of mine gave me many a
sorrowful hour in those days, for there were other
girls who saw how handsome John was. One girl
there was he used to say was pretty, but I never
could see it, for she had red hair and freckles — but
perhaps John said this to tease me, for he was always
fond of a joke. This girl made up to him, and John
came near marrying her; but fortunately a new min-
ister came to town and she gave up John and took
him. So John came back to me, and that spring
we were married.

"John was not rich then; he had his way to make,
but when an old family friend offered him a place in
New York City he hesitated. He did not want to
take me away from my mother; he has always been
so good to me. But mother would not hear of it;
and so we came to this big city, and John succeeded
from the very first. It was not ten years before he
was taken into the firm; and now for two years he has
been at the head of it. I doubt if there is another
man as young as he is in all New York at the head of
so large a business.

"When we first came to New York we boarded;
and then after a while we found a little house in
Grove Street. It was there baby was born and there
she died; and perhaps that is why I was so ungrateful
as to be sorry when John bought this big house here
onGramercyPark. ,He said he wanted his wife to have

226 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

as good a house as anybody else. Of course, I ought
to have known that a man of John's prominence
could not go on living in Grove Street; he had to
take his position in the world. He let me have my
own way about furnishing this house, although he did
pretend to scold me for not spending enough money.
I have been very happy here, although I will not say
that I have never regretted the little house where my
only child died; but, of course, I never told this to
John, and it has always pleased me to see the pride
he took in this handsome house. And now in a few
weeks or a few months I shall leave it forever, and I
leave him also.

"But I must not talk about myself any more. It
is about John I wanted to speak. I meant to tell you
how good he is and how he deserves to be loved with
your whole heart. I intended to ask you to take
care of him as I have tried to do, to watch over him,
to comfort him, to sympathize with him, to be truly
his helpmate.

"Especially must you watch over him, for he will
not take care of himself. For instance, he is so busy
all day that he will forget to eat any luncheon unless
you keep at him; and if he goes without his lunch
sometimes he has bad attacks of indigestion. And
even when it is raining he does not always think to
take his overshoes or even his umbrella; and he
ought to be particular, because he is threatened with
rheumatism. If he has a cold, send for Dr. Cheever

SHE FLUNO HKRHKLF INTO HIM ARMS

HER LETTER TO HIS SECOND WIFE 227

at once, and John seems to catch cold very easily;
once, three years ago, he came near having pneumonia.
You must see that he changes his flannels early in the
fall; he will never do it unless you get them out for
him. You will have to look after him as if he were a
baby; and that is one reason why I am writing this
long, long letter, just to tell you what you will have
to do.

"Perhaps I had another reason, too — the joy I
take always in talking about him and in praising
him and in telling how good he is. I hope he has
been happy with me all these years, and I know I have
been very happy with him. It may be very fanciful
in me, but I like the idea that these words of mine
praising him will be read after my death. If you
love him, as I hope you do, with your whole heart and
soul, you will understand why I have written this
and you will forgive me.

"Yours sincerely,

"SARAH BLACKSTOCK."

Before the young bride had read the half of this
unexpected communication her eyes had filled with
tears, and when she came to the end her face was
wet.

She stood silently in the center of the room where
the minister had left her, and she held the open sheets
of the letter in her hand. Then the front door was
closed with a jar to be felt all over the house; and in

228 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

a moment she had heard her husband's footsteps in
the hall.

"John!" she cried.

When he came to the door she flung herself into his
arms, sobbing helplessly.

"Oh, John," she managed to say, at last. "Your
first wife was an angel! I don't believe I can ever
be as good as she was. But you will love me too —
won't you, dear?"

(1S97)

Jjaii in the/
&

|HE snow was still falling steadily, although
it had already thickly carpeted the avenue.
It was a soft, gentle snow, sifting down
calmly and clinging moistly to the bare
branches of the feeble trees, which stood
out starkly sheathed in white, spectral in the graynesa
of the late afternoon. Gangs of men were clearing
the cross-paths at the corners and shoveling the
sodden drifts into carts of various sizes, impressed
into sudden service. It was not yet dusk, but the
street-lamps had been lighted; and the tall hotel
almost opposite was already illuminated here and
there by squares of yellow.

Elinor stood at the window of her aunt's house,
gazing out, and yet not seeing the occasional carriages
and the frequent automobiles that filled the broad
avenue before her. The Christmas wreath that hung
just over her head was scarcely more motionless than
she was, as she stared straight before her, unconscious
of anything but the deadness of her own outlook on
life.

She looked very handsome in her large hat and her
black furs, which set off the pallor of her face, relieved
by the deep eyes, now a little sunken, and with a dark
16

232 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

line beneath them. She took no notice of the laborers
as they stood aside to allow her aunt's comfortable
carriage to draw up before the door. She did not
observe the laughing children at an upper window of
the house exactly opposite, highly excited at the
vision of a huge Christmas tree which towered aloft
in a cart before the door. She was waiting for Aunt
Cordelia to take her to a tea, and then to a studio,
where her portrait was to be shown to a few of her
friends.

Her thoughts were not on any of these things; they
were far away from wintry New York. Her thoughts
were centered on the new-made grave in distant
Panama, in which they had buried the man she loved
less than a week ago.

And it was just a year ago to-day, on the twenty-
second of December, the shortest day in the year,
that she had promised to be his wife. Only a year —
and it seemed to her that those twelve months had
made up most of her life. What were the score of
years that had gone before in comparison with the
richness of those happy twelve months, when life had
at last seemed worth while?

As a girl she had wondered sometimes what life
was for, and why men and women had been sent on
this earth. What was the purpose of it all? But
this question had never arisen again since she had met
him; or, rather, it had been answered, once for all.
Life was love; that was plain enough to her. At

THE SHORTEST DAT IN THE YEAR 233

last her life had taken on significance, since she had
yielded herself to his first kiss, and since the depth of
her own passion had been revealed to her swiftly and
unexpectedly.

As she looked back at his unexpected appeal to
her, and as she remembered that when he had told
her his love and asked her to be his they had met
only ten days before and had spoken to each other
less than half a dozen times, she realized that it was
her fate which had brought them together. Al-
though she did not know it, she had been waiting for
him, as he had been waiting for her. She was his
mate, and he was hers, chosen out of all others —
a choice foreordained through all eternity.

Their wooing was a precious secret, shared by no
one else. They knew it themselves, and that was
enough; and perhaps the enforced mystery made the
compact all the sweeter. Ever since they had plighted
their troth she had gone about with joy hi her heart
and with her head in a heaven of hope, hardly aware
that she was touching the earth. All things were
glad around her; and a secret song of happiness was
forever caroling in her ears.

And yet she knew that it might be years before he
could claim her, for he was only now beginning his
professional career as an engineer. He had just
been appointed to a good place on the canal. His
chief was encouraging, and put responsibilities on him;
he had felt sure that he would have a chance to show

234 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

what he could do. And she had been almost angry
how any one could ever doubt that he would rise to the
head of his profession. She had told him that she
would wait seven years, and twice seven years, if
need be.

Aunt Cordelia was hoping that she would make a
splendid match. Within a week after John Grant
had said good-by she had rejected Reggie Eames,
whom hor aunt had been encouraging for a year or
two. She liked Reggie well enough; he was a good
fellow. When he had asked her if there was another
suitor standing in his way, she had looked him in the
face and told him that there was; and Reggie had
taken it like a man, and had made a point of being
nice to her ever since, whenever they met in society.

As she stood there at the window she gave a slight
start and nodded pleasantly to Reggie, who had
bowed as he passed the house on the way to the
Union Club. And then the avenue, with all its
passers-by, its carriages and automobiles, its shovel-
ing laborers and its falling snow, its Christmas greens
and its lighted windows, faded again from her vision,
as she tried to imagine that unseen grave far away in
Panama.

She wished that she could have been with him —
that they could have had those last few hours to-
gether. She had had so little of him, after all. An
unexpected summons had come to him less than a
week after they were engaged; and he had gone at

THE SHORTEST DAY IN THE YEAR 235

once. Of course, he had written by every steamer,
but what were letters when she was longing for the
clasp of his arms? And every month, on the twenty-
second, there had come a bunch of violets, with the
single word "Sweetheart." He had laughed when
he told her that the twenty-second of December was
the shortest day in the year — which was not very
promising if they expected to be "as happy as the
day is long"!

The months had gone, one after another; she had
not seen him again ; and now she would never see him
again. He had been hoping for leave of absence
early in the spring; and she had been looking forward
to it. He had written that he did not know how the
work would get along without him, but he did know
that he could not get along without her. Hereafter
she would have to get along without him; and she had
never longed for him so much, wanted him, needed
him.

The long years to come stretched out before her
vision, as she stood there in the window, lovely in
her youthful beauty; and she knew that for her they
would be desolate, barren, and empty years. The
flame of love burned within her as fiercely as ever;
but there was now nothing for it to feed on but a
memory; yet the fire was hot in its ashes.

She opened her heavy furs, for she felt as if they
were stifling her. She knew that they had been
admired by her friends, and even envied by some of

236 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

them. Aunt Cordelia had given them to her for
Christmas, insisting on her wearing them as soon as
they came home, since they were so becoming.

Aunt Cordelia meant to be kind; she had always
meant to be kind, ever since Elinor had come to her
as an orphan of ten. Her kindness was a little
exacting at times; and her narrow matrimonial am-
bitions Elinor could not help despising. What did
it profit a girl to make a splendid match, if she did
not marry the one man she was destined to love?

The furs were beautiful, and they were costly.
Were they the price of her freedom? Was it due to
these expensive things she did not really want that
she had not been able to take John Grant for her
husband a month or a week after he had asked her?

Everything in this world had to be paid for; and
perhaps she had sold her liberty too cheap. If it
had not been for the furs, and for all the other things
that her aunt had accustomed her to, she might have
gone with him to Panama and nursed him when he
fell ill. She felt sure that she could have saved him.
She would have tried so hard! She would have put
her soul into it. Her soul? She felt as if the sorrow
of the past week had made her acquainted with her
own soul for the first time. And she confessed her-
self to be useless and feeble and weak.

That was what made it all so strange. Why could
she not have died in his place? Why could not she
have died for him? She had lived, really lived, only

THE SHORTEST DAY IN THE YEAR 237

since she had known him; and it was only since he
had gone that she had known herself. She had
meant to help him — not that he needed any assistance
from anybody. Now she could help no one in all the
wide world. She was useless again — a girl, ignorant
and helpless.

Why could she not have been taken, and why could
not he have been spared? He had a career before
him; he would have been able to do things — strong
things, brave things, noble things, delicate things.
And he was gone before he had been able to do any-
thing, with all his possibilities of honor and fame,
with all his high hope of honest, hard work in the
years of his manly youth, with everything cut short,
just as if a candle had been blown out by a chance
wind.

She marveled how it was that she had been able
to live through the long days since she had read the
brief announcement of his death. She did not see how
it was that she had not cried out, how it was that
she had not shouted aloud the news of her bereave-
ment. She supposed it must be because she had
inherited self-control, because she had been trained
to keep her feelings to herself, and never to make a
scene.

Fortunately she was alone when she learned that
he was dead. She had been up late at a ball the
night before, and, as usual, Aunt Cordelia had in-
sisted on her staying hi bed all the morning to rest.

238 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

When she had finished her chocolate, Aunt Cordelia
had brought in the morning paper, and had raised the
window-shade for her to read, before going down for
a long talk with the lawyer who managed their
affairs.

Elinor had glanced over the society reporter's
account of the ball and his description of her own
gown; she had read the announcement of the engage-
ment of a girl she knew to a foreign count; and then
she was putting the paper down carelessly when her
eye caught the word "Panama" at the top of a
paragraph. Then, at a flash, she had read the in-
conspicuous paragraph which told how John Grant, a
very promising young engineer in charge of a sec-
tion of the work on the canal, had died suddenly
of pneumonia, after only two days' illness, to the
great grief of all his associates, especially of the
chief, who had thought very highly of him.

The words danced before her eyes in letters of fire;
and she felt as if an icy hand had clutched her heart.
She was as stunned as if the end of the world had
come; and it was the end of her world.

She did not recall how long she had held the paper
clutched in her hand; and she did not know why she
had not wept. It seemed to her as if her tears would
be a profanation of her grief, too deep to be washed
away by weeping. She had not cried once. Per-
haps it would have been a relief if she could have had
a good cry, petty and pitiful as it would be.

THE SHORTEST DAY IN THE YEAR 239

When Aunt Cordelia had called her, at last, to
get ready for luncheon, she had arisen as if she had
been somebody else. She had dressed and gone down-
stairs and sat opposite her aunt and chatted about
the ball. She recalled that her aunt had said that
there was nothing in the paper that morning except
the account of the ball. Nothing in the paper! She
had kept her peace, and made no confession. It
seemed to her that it could not have been herself
who sat there calmly and listened and responded. It
seemed as if she was not herself, but another girl — a
girl she did not know before.

So the days had gone, one after another, and so
they would continue to go hi the future. She was
young, and she came of a sturdy stock; she might
live to be three-score and ten.

As she stood there at the window, staring straight
before her, she saw herself slowly changing into an
old maid like Aunt Cordelia, well meaning and a
little fidgety, a little fussy, and quite useless. She
recoiled as she surveyed the long vista of tune, with
no husband to take her into his arms, and with no
children for her to hold up to him when he came back
from his work. And she knew that she was fit to be
a wife and a mother; and now she would never be
either.

What was there left for her to do in life? She
could not go into a convent, and she could not study
to be a trained nurse. There she was at twenty-one,

240 VISTAS OP NEW YORK

a broken piece of driftwood washed up on an un-
known island. She had no hope any more; the light
of her life had gone out.

She asked herself whether she had any duty
toward others — duty which would make life worth
living once more. She wished that there was some-
thing for her to do; but she saw nothing. She
set her teeth and resolved that she would go
through life, whatever it might bring, and master
it for his sake, as he would have expected her
to do. He was dead, and lying alone in that dis-
tant, lonely grave; and she would have to live on
and on — but at least she would live as he would
approve.

But whatever her life might be, it would not be
easy without him. She had lived on his letters; and
she had taken a new breath of life every month when
his violets came. And now nothing would come any
more — no message, no little words of love, nothing
to cheer her and to sustain her. Never before had
she longed so much for a message from him — a line
only — a single word of farewell.

It was again the shortest day of the year, and it
was to her the longest of all her life. But all the days
would be long hereafter, and the nights would be
long, and life would be long; and all would be empty,
since he would never again be able to communicate
with her. If only she believed in spiritualism, if
only she could have even the dimmest hope that some

THE SHORTEST DAY IN THE YEAR 241

day, somehow, some sort of communication might
come to her from him, from the shadowy realm where
he had gone, and where she could not go until the
summons came to join him!

So intent was she upon her own thoughts that she
did not hear the ring of the door-bell; and a minute
later she started when the butler entered the room
with a small parcel in his hand.

"What is it, Dexter?" she asked, mechanic-
ally.

"This has just come for you, Miss," he answered,
handing her the parcel.

She held it without looking at it until Dexter had
left the room. Probably it was a Christmas present
from one of her friends; and she loosened the strings
listlessly.

It was a box from a florist; and she wondered who
could have sent her any flowers on the day sacred to
him. It might be Reggie, of course; but he had not
done that for nearly a year now.

She opened the box carelessly, and found a bunch
of violets. There was a card with it.

She took it nearer to the window, to read it
in the fading light. It bore the single word,
"Sweetheart."

She stood for a moment, silent and trem-
bling.

"John!" she cried aloud. "From you!"

She sank into a chair, with the violets pressed

242 VISTAS OF NEW YORK

against her heart, sobbing; and the tears came at
last, plentifully.

Then she heard footsteps on the stairs; and in a
moment more her aunt was standing at the door and
calling:

"Elinor, are you ready? We are late."

(1910)

THE END

HAL UBRARY FAOUTY

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