CHAPTER VI

THE ARTISTIC GROUP: THE REAL SHORT-STORY

The short-story as a production of an artist conscious of rules and

striving for definite effects within limitations is a thing of the

nineteenth century. Only gradually have writers come to the feeling

for singleness and unity. It would appear that before the days of Poe

and Maupassant brief narratives were brief because of their source or

their type, or because the author did not happen to have a rich vein

of digression and incident. They were then rather what we think of as

tales than what we have come to regard as the real short-story.

We have hitherto in our study been making little or no distinction in

our use of the terms narrative, story, and tale, nor have we understood

the adjective short with any but its usual significance. We shall

from now on, however, understand the term short-story technically,

and employ the hyphen, as Matthews has employed it, to suggest the

significance.

A short-story is very perceptibly shorter than a romance or a novel.

It is indeed about like a chapter of one of these. In no case must the

reading require more than one sitting, says Poe. On the other hand,

it may not be so short as an ordinary incident or anecdote, but far

longer. It is more complex, more dignified, and has distinguishing

essential elements.

It is not possible, of course, to make a hard and fast definition,

but there are certain qualities we pretty generally expect to find. A

short-story may be of any type from a myth to a realistic sketch; it

may emphasize environment, plot, or character; but it must have unity,

it must have directness, it must have climax, however slight. The

effect should be single, not multiple. Hence anything like digression

or episode is entirely out of place. The end should not be delayed, nor

yet should it be precipitated. It should come just at the right time,

and be as proper as the catastrophe of a tragedy. It should be but the

beginning made special and concrete, the middle continued in harmony,

the conclusion come upon both inevitably. "Make another end to it?"

says Stevenson[7] in answering an objection to one of his stories. "Ah,

yes, but that's not the way I write; the whole tale is implied; I never

use an effect when I can help it unless it prepares the effects that

are to follow; that's what a story consists in. To make another end;

that is to make the beginning all wrong. The _dénouement_ of a long

story is nothing, it is just 'a full close,' which you may approach and

accompany as you please--it is a coda, not an essential number in the

rhythm; but the body and end of a short-story is bone-of-the-bone and

blood-of-the-blood of the beginning."

Students of this type of narrative find Poe the first man to reveal a

consciousness of any strictly limiting tenets. Poe worked to definite

rules which he himself made. He saw intrinsic reasons why a short-story

should be short. His predecessors, Irving and others, had not seen

them. Even Hawthorne, who fulfilled them many times, said nothing about

them. But Poe both formulated and preached them. He exemplified them,

too, and other men followed.

The list of good short-story writers is so great that particular

mention of any seems invidious. Some of our less known men have done

as good work as our best. For names by countries, you may notice the

bibliography at the end of this book. Kipling's stories for a large

part emphasize place; Poe's, very often plot; and Hawthorne's and

Stevenson's, mostly psychological phenomena--character and whimsical

expressions of it; Miss Wilkins's altogether reveal temperament and

characteristics; while Maupassant's generally record events which

include a stab of fate.

On the basis of artistic purpose, the short-story divides itself into

three types: the weird tale, stories that emphasize environment and

typical personality, stories that emphasize events and character.

Every narrator whenever he sets his pen to paper must deal with place,

plot, and people; but the artistic short-story writer, because of the

limitation of his form, is forced to a selection of emphasis. He can

not at will, as the biographer can, dilate upon the ancestry of his

hero if he means to present the personage in action; if he wants to

indulge in an environment analysis, the short-story writer has not

time to wind up and unwind a mystery; if he has decided to give us the

crisis event of a character, he must perforce touch but lightly on

place. We shall find, then, that while each good short-story has the

three elements present and skilfully managed, it has also one or the

other more strongly emphasized--or at most two, in practical neglect of

the third.

I. The Psychological Weird Tale

[Origin]

Our idea of the required form of the weird tale has come to be that of

the modern artistic short-story; but all the elements of the type save

form were present in England in the middle of the eighteenth century in

the terror school started by Walpole's "Castle of Otranto." The author

declared his work to be an attempt to blend the ancient romance and

the modern novel. By modern novel he meant the stories of Richardson,

Fielding, Smollet, and their less worthy contemporaries; by ancient

romance he must have meant the Oriental wonder tale; for he has sliding

panels, trap doors, subterranean passages, and a general extravagance

in an attempt at magnificence. Indeed, in regard to the multiplicity of

detail, this school is often called the Gothic. The difference between

the narratives of the school of terror and the Oriental wonder tale is

the difference of atmosphere. While the ancient tale is mysterious,

it is seldom if ever morbid. Especially is the cheerfulness true of

the stories of mediæval chivalry that later embodied the wonder tale.

Enchantment there is, but it is airy; if there be any vaults, they

are not damp. [The school of terror] But the "Castle of Otranto" by

Walpole, the "Old English Baron" by Clara Reeve, the "Romance of

the Forest," the "Mysteries of Udolpho," and the "Italian" by Mrs.

Radcliffe, and "The Monk" by Matthew Lewis,--the six chief romances of

the school of terror,--are all damp, dark, ghostly, and morbid. Mrs.

Radcliffe, however, added an element of eighteenth-century rationalism

in her attempt at explanation; inasmuch as she always refers her

constant suggestions of the supernatural to ordinary causes. Moreover,

she interspersed her work with excellent landscape description in

harmony or contrast with her theme. The contributions, then, of the

romances of the school of terror are (1) frightful mechanism, (2) a

general tone of Gothic fantasticalness, (3) weird place-impressions

that can be explained by natural causes, and (4) terror of physical or

supernatural punishment and death.

[Edgar Allen Poe]

To point out how much Edgar Allan Poe on the mere material side is

indebted to this set of writers, possibly through Charles Brockden

Brown and the American school of terror, we need only to name over to

ourselves two of his famous weird tales together with their grosser

elements. "The Fall of the House of Usher" has general arabesqueness

plus hollow groans, echoing footsteps, high pointed windows excluding

light, a person imprisoned in a metal vault (the hero in the "Castle of

Otranto" is imprisoned in a gigantic metal helmet), terror of death,

consonant landscape description, natural causes for weird sounds. The

"Pit and the Pendulum" has a dungeon of the Inquisition, horrible

instrument of torture, brink over which to fall, bodily and mental fear

of death (Lewis's monk is snatched by demons from the Inquisition and

carried to a cliff of the Sierra Morena off which he is commanded to

fling himself).

But Poe is as far away from the crude and bungling methods of the

earlier writers as he is near their materials. How cracking doors

and opening vaults, quaking houses, and walking dead, outer terrific

elements and inner terrific sensation and morbid imaginative perception

reaching madness, can be fused into one harmonized, unified, piercing,

intense prose poem he has shown us in this same "Fall of the House of

Usher." Nothing of the kind could be better. His own cruder attempt is

set forth in the fore-study, "Berenice," which might be considered good

if the other story were not immeasurably better. A side sketch of quite

a different tone, yet almost as weird, is his beautiful color symphony

of the "Masque of the Red Death." All are exquisite artistic creations.

[Stevenson]

Poe's "William Wilson," an imaginative psychological horror study

of conscience, has been paralleled if not surpassed by Stevenson's

"Markheim." "Markheim" is more concrete, especially at the beginning;

there is more of story and less of symbolism about it; but the climax

is the same, or rather the reverse; for in Poe's story William Wilson's

worse self murders his better, while in Stevenson's story Markheim's

better self, the murderer, who really hates his deed, triumphs over his

worse self, the coward and liar.

In Poe's story the weirdness results from the fact that Wilson's

conscience, which he kills, is a concrete double with the same name and

appearance. Stevenson has united this device of a double with weird

place-description and weird deed-narrative. He has kept the thing

more psychological and less symbolic by making the second presence

explainable as an hallucination, more shadowy than Poe's.

[Maupassant and others]

"What is It? a Mystery" by Fitz James O'Brien shows how very, very

material the horror story may be; and yet O'Brien's is not an

uninteresting narrative; for it is full of vigor and truth-likeness in

the beginning; the end only is bad art; where the frightened people

take a plaster cast of the mysterious being they have captured and can

not see. "The Hand" by Maupassant is another such touch horror tale,

but of course better told. His "Apparition" is almost pure narrative

and builds to a fine realistic climax, despite the ghostliness of

the visitant. Matthew's "Venetian Glass" is also weird plot rather

than weird place, while "The Wind in the Rose Bush" is emphatically

character study, and the "Phantom Rickshaw" is a good old-fashioned, if

Oriental, ghost story.

[Suggestions on writing a weird tale]

For your first attempt at this type of narrative, you might try the

modern ghost story, and later, when more practised, the delicate

psychological analysis of states of conscience. The modern ghost

stories differ from folk-tales concerning weird beings in this respect

particularly: the modern ghost is usually explainable, a fact you would

expect because of our inheritance from the terror school. He is a

logical ghost--a creature of one's own making, an hallucination at best

or a white cow at worst. The author sets out to depict not so much the

ghost, as the ghost's effect upon the hero. In a number of instances

the modern narrative of this kind rises to the plane of the true

short-story, complying with all the canons of art. Read for example

one of Mary E. Wilkins Freeman's six "Stories of the Supernatural," of

which the "Wind in the Rose Bush" is one.

[Material and method]

The material is comparatively simple. Get eerie circumstances, a

credulous or boastfully incredulous mind, a probable incident, an

explainable apparition, and any modern setting that will hold the

course of events together. See to it that the construction is unified

and coherent. Build to a climax, and stop quickly afterwards. Make

the apparition a logical outgrowth of the environment and the state

of mind of the victim. The ghost of the folk-tale usually appears to

the half-witted, the foolish, the credulous; but the ghost of the

modern story, to prove his existence, perhaps, is far bolder; he speaks

out to the skeptic, the person who calls a shadow a shadow. That the

unearthly spirit must catch the strong man at his weak moment is

obvious--otherwise there would be no story. But when the events are

given, stop. Do not explain too much.

[Form]

It is well to notice the different methods of getting the facts before

the reader. Sometimes everything is set forth by the author, and the

characters speak but little or not at all. Sometimes one character

speaks in a continued monologue. Sometimes the events come out in

conversation or dialogue, the dramatic method, and the author appears

but little. When he appears not at all we have true drama instead of

narrative. The larger number of stories, doubtless, are a mixture of

author and character talk.

=The Signal-Man=

"Halloa! Below there!"

When he heard a voice thus calling to him he was standing at the door

of his box with a flag in his hand, furled around its short pole. One

would have thought, considering the nature of the ground, that he could

not have doubted from what quarter the voice came; but, instead of

looking up to where I stood oh the top of the steep cutting nearly over

his head, he turned himself about and looked down the line. There was

something remarkable in his manner of doing so, though I could not have

said for my life what. But I know it was remarkable enough to attract

my notice, even though his figure was foreshortened and shadowed down

in the deep trench, and mine was high above him, so steeped in the glow

of an angry sunset that I had shadowed my eyes with my hand before I

saw him at all.

"Halloa! Below!"

From looking down the line he turned himself about again and, raising

his eyes, saw my figure high above him.

"Is there any path by which I can come down and speak to you?"

He looked up at me without replying, and I looked down at him without

pressing him too soon with a repetition of my idle question. Just then

there came a vague vibration in the earth and air, quickly changing

into a violent pulsation, and an oncoming rush that caused me to start

back as though it had force to draw me down. When such vapor as rose

to my height from this rapid train had passed me and was skimming away

over the landscape, I looked down again and saw him refurling the flag

he had shown while the train went by.

I repeated my inquiry. After a pause, during which he seemed to regard

me with fixed attention, he motioned with his rolled-up flag towards a

point on my level, some two or three hundred yards distant. I called

down to him, "All right!" and made for that point. There, by dint

of looking closely about me, I found a rough zigzag descending path

notched out, which I followed.

The cutting was extremely deep and unusually precipitate. It was made

through a clammy stone that became oozier and wetter as I went down.

For these reasons I found the way long enough to recall a singular air

of reluctance or compulsion with which he had pointed out the path.

When I came down low enough upon the zigzag descent to see him again,

I saw that he was standing between the rails on the way by which the

train had lately passed, in an attitude as if he were waiting for me to

appear. He had his left hand at his chin, and that left elbow rested on

his right hand, crossed over his breast. His attitude was one of such

expectant watchfulness that I stopped a moment, wondering at it.

I resumed my downward way and, stepping out upon the level of the

railroad and drawing nearer to him, saw that he was a dark, sallow

man with a dark beard and rather heavy eyebrows. His post was in

as solitary and dismal a place as ever I saw. On either side a

dripping-wet wall of jagged stone, excluding all view but a strip of

sky; the perspective one way only a crooked prolongation of this great

dungeon; the shorter perspective in the other direction terminating

in a gloomy red light, and the gloomier entrance to a black tunnel,

in whose massive architecture there was a barbarous, depressing and

forbidding air. So little sunlight ever found its way to this spot that

it had an earthy, deadly smell; and so much cold wind rushed through it

that it struck chill to me, as if I had left the natural world.

Before he stirred I was near enough to him to have touched him. Not

even then removing his eyes from mine, he stepped back one step and

lifted his hand.

This was a lonesome post to occupy (I said), and it had riveted my

attention when I looked down from up yonder. A visitor was a rarity,

I should suppose; not an unwelcome rarity, I hoped! In me he merely

saw a man who had been shut up within narrow limits all his life, and

who, being at last set free, had a newly awakened interest in these

great works. To such purpose I spoke to him; but I am far from sure

of the terms I used, for besides that I am not happy in opening any

conversation, there was something in the man that daunted me.

He directed a most curious look towards the red light near the tunnel's

mouth and looked all about it, as if something were missing from it,

and then looked at me.

That light was part of his charge--was it not?

He answered in a low voice, "Don't you know it is?"

The monstrous thought came into my mind as I perused the fixed eyes and

the saturnine face that this was a spirit, not a man. I have speculated

since whether there may have been infection in his mind.

In my turn I stepped back. But in making the action I detected in his

eyes some latent fear of me. This put the monstrous thought to flight.

"You look at me," I said, forcing a smile, "as if you had a dread of

me."

"I was doubtful," he returned, "whether I had seen you before."

"Where?"

He pointed to the red light he had looked at.

"There?" I said.

Intently watchful of me, he replied (but without sound), "Yes."

"My good fellow, what should I do there? However, be that as it may, I

never was there, you may swear."

"I think I may," he rejoined. "Yes. I am sure I may."

His manner cleared, like my own. He replied to my remarks with

readiness and in well-chosen words. Had he much to do there? Yes, that

was to say, he had enough responsibility to bear; but exactness and

watchfulness were what was required of him, and of actual work--manual

labor--he had next to none. To change that signal, to trim those

lights and to turn this iron handle now and then was all he had to do

under that head. Regarding those many long and lonely hours of which

I seemed to make so much he could only say that the routine of his

life had shaped itself into that form and he had grown used to it. He

had taught himself a language down here--if only to know it by sight

and to have formed his own crude ideas of its pronunciation could be

called learning it. He had also worked at fractions and decimals, and

tried a little algebra; but he was, and had been as a boy, a poor hand

at figures. Was it necessary for him when on duty always to remain in

that channel of damp air, and could he never rise into the sunshine

from between those high stone walls? Why, depended upon times and

circumstances. Under some conditions there would be less upon the line

than under others, and the same held good as to certain hours of the

day and night. In bright weather he did choose occasions for getting

a little above these lower shadows; but, being at all times liable to

be called by his electric bell and at such times listening for it with

redoubled anxiety, the relief was less than I would suppose.

He took me into his box, where there was a fire, a desk for an official

book in which he had to make certain entries, a telegraphic instrument

with its dial, face and needle, and the little bell of which he had

spoken. On my trusting that he would excuse the remark that he had

been well educated and (I hoped I might say without offence) perhaps

educated above that station, he observed that instances of slight

incongruity in such wise would rarely be found wanting among large

bodies of men; that he had heard it was so in work-houses, in the

police force, even in that last desperate resource, the army; and

that he knew it was so, more or less, in any great railway staff. He

had been, when young (if I could believe it, sitting in that hut--he

scarcely could), a student of natural philosophy, and had attended

lectures; but he had run wild, misused his opportunities, gone down,

and never risen again. He had no complaint to offer about that. He had

made his bed and he lay upon it. It was far too late to make another.

All that I have here condensed he said in a quiet manner, with his

grave dark regards divided between me and the fire. He threw in the

word "Sir" from time to time, and especially when he referred, to his

youth--as though to request me to understand that he claimed to be

nothing but what I found him. He was several times interrupted by the

little bell, and had to read off messages, and send replies. Once he

had to stand without the door and display a flag as a train passed and

make some verbal communication to the driver. In the discharge of his

duties I observed him to be remarkably exact and vigilant, breaking off

his discourse at a syllable and remaining silent until what he had to

do was done.

In a word, I should have set this man down as one of the safest of men

to be employed in that capacity, but for the circumstance that while he

was speaking to me he twice broke off with a fallen color, turned his

face towards the little bell when it did not ring, opened the door of

the hut (which was kept shut to exclude the unhealthy damp), and looked

out towards the red light near the mouth of the tunnel. On both of

those occasions he came back to the fire with the inexplicable air upon

him which I had remarked, without being able to define when we were so

far asunder.

Said I, when I rose to leave him, "You almost make me think that I have

met with a contented man."

(I am afraid I must acknowledge that I said it to lead him on.)

"I believe I used to be so," he rejoined in the low voice in which he

had first spoken; "but I am troubled, sir, I am troubled."

He would have recalled the words if he could. He had said them,

however, and I took them up quickly.

"With what? What is your trouble?"

"It is very difficult to impart, sir. It is very, very difficult to

speak of. If ever you make me another visit I will try to tell you."

"But I expressly intend to make you another visit. Say, when shall it

be?"

"I go off early in the morning, and I shall be on again at ten

to-morrow night, sir."

"I will come at eleven."

He thanked me and went to the door with me. "I'll show my white light,

sir," he said in his peculiar low voice, "till you have found the way

up. When you have found it, don't call out! And when you are at the

top, don't call out!"

His manner seemed to make the place strike colder to me, but I said no

more than "Very well."

"And when you come down to-morrow night, don't call out! Let me ask you

a parting question. What made you cry 'Halloa! Below there!' to-night?"

"Heaven knows," said I. "I cried something to that effect--"

"Not to that effect, sir. Those were the very words. I know them well."

"Admit those were the very words. I said them, no doubt because I saw

you below."

"For no other reason?"

"What other reason could I possibly have?"

"You had no feeling that they were conveyed to you in any supernatural

way?"

"No."

He wished me good-night and held up his light. I walked by the side of

the down line of rails (with a very disagreeable sensation of a train

coming behind me) until I found the path. It was easier to mount than

to descend, and I got back to my inn without any adventure.

Punctual to my appointment, I placed my foot on the first notch of

the zigzag next night as the distant clocks were striking eleven. He

was waiting for me at the bottom with his white light on. "I have not

called out," I said when we came close together; "may I speak now?" "By

all means, sir." "Good-night, then, and here's my hand." "Good-night,

sir, and here's mine." With that we walked side by side to his box,

entered it, closed the door and sat down by the fire.

"I have made up my mind, sir," he began, bending forward as soon as we

were seated, and speaking in a tone but a little above a whisper, "that

you shall not have to ask me twice what troubles me. I took you for

some one else yesterday evening. That troubles me."

"That mistake?"

"No. That some one else."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know."

"Like me?"

"I don't know. I never saw the face. The left arm is across the face

and the right arm is waved--violently waved. This way."

I followed his action with my eyes and it was the action of an arm

gesticulating with the utmost passion and vehemence, "For God's sake

clear the way!"

"One moonlight night," said the man, "I was sitting here when I heard

a voice cry 'Halloa! Below there!' I started up, looked from that

door, and saw this some one else standing by the red light near the

tunnel waving as I just now showed you. The voice seemed hoarse with

shouting and it cried, 'Look out! Look out!' And then again, 'Halloa!

Below there! Look out!' I caught up my lamp, turned it on red, and ran

towards the figure, calling, 'What's wrong? What has happened? Where?'

It stood just outside the blackness of the tunnel. I advanced so close

upon it that I wondered at its keeping the sleeve across its eyes. I

ran right up at it, and had my hand stretched out to pull the sleeve

away, when it was gone."

"Into the tunnel," said I.

"No. I ran on into the tunnel five hundred yards. I stopped and held

up my lamp above my head and saw the figures of the measured distance

and saw the wet stains stealing down the walls and trickling through

the arch. I ran out again faster than I had run in (for I had a mortal

abhorrence of the place upon me), and I looked all round the red light,

with my own red light, and I went up the iron ladder to the gallery

atop of it, and I came down again and ran back here. I telegraphed both

ways, 'An alarm has been given. Is anything wrong?' The answer came

back, both ways, 'All well.'"

Resisting the slow touch of a frozen finger tracing out my spine, I

showed him how that this figure must be a deception of his sense of

sight, and how that figures, originating in disease of the delicate

nerves that minister to the functions of the eye, were known to have

often troubled patients, some of whom had become conscious of the

nature of their affliction and had even proved it by experiments upon

themselves. "As to an imaginary cry," said I, "do but listen for a

moment to the wind in this unnatural valley, while we speak so slow

and to the wild harp it makes of the telegraph wires!"

That was all very well, he returned, after we had sat listening for a

while, and he ought to know something of the wind and wires--he who so

often passed long winter nights there, alone and watching. But he would

beg to remark that he had not finished.

I asked his pardon and he slowly added these words, touching my arm:

"Within six hours after the appearance the memorable accident on this

line happened, and within ten hours the dead and the wounded were

brought along through the tunnel over the spot where the figure had

stood."

A disagreeable shudder crept over me, but I did my best against it.

It was not to be denied, I rejoined, that this was a remarkable

coincidence, calculated deeply to impress his mind. But it was

unquestionable that remarkable coincidences did continually occur and

they must be taken into account in dealing with such a subject. Though

to be sure I must admit, I added (for I thought I saw that he was going

to bring the objection to bear upon me), men of common sense did not

allow much for coincidence making the ordinary calculations of life.

He again begged to remark that he had not finished.

I again begged his pardon for being betrayed into interruptions.

"This," he said, again laying his hand upon my arm and glancing over

his shoulder with hollow eyes, "was just a year ago. Six or seven

months passed and I had recovered from the surprise and shock, when

one morning, as the day was breaking, I, standing at the door, looked

towards the red light and saw the spectre again." He stopped with a

fixed look at me.

"Did it cry out?"

"No. It was silent."

"Did it wave its arm?"

"No. It leaned against the shaft of the light with both hands before

the face. Like this."

Once more I followed his action with my eyes. It was an action of

mourning. I have seen such an attitude in stone figures on tombs.

"Did you go up to it?"

"I came in and sat down, partly to collect my thoughts, partly because

it had turned me faint. When I went to the door again, daylight was

above me and the ghost was gone."

"But nothing followed? Nothing came of this?"

He touched me on the arm with his forefinger twice or thrice, giving a

ghastly nod each time.

"That very day, as the train came out of the tunnel, I noticed at a

carriage window on my side what looked like a confusion of hands and

heads and something waved. I saw it just in time to signal the driver,

stop! He shut off and put his brake on, but the train drifted past

here a hundred and fifty yards or more. I ran after it and as I went

along heard terrible screams and cries. A beautiful young lady had died

instantaneously in one of the compartments and was brought in here and

laid down on this floor between us."

Involuntarily I pushed my chair back suddenly, as I looked from the

boards, at which he pointed, to himself.

"True, sir. True. Precisely as it happened, so I tell it you."

I could think of nothing to say, to any purpose, and my mouth was very

dry. The wind and the wires took up the story with a long lamenting

wail.

He resumed. "Now, sir, mark this and judge how my mind is troubled. The

spectre came back a week ago. Ever since it has been there, now and

again, by fits and starts."

"At the light?"

"At the danger-light."

"What does it seem to do?"

He repeated, if possible, with increased passion and vehemence, that

former gesticulation of, "For God's sake, clear the way!"

Then he went on. "I have no peace or rest for it. It calls to me, for

many minutes together, in an agonized manner, 'Below there! Look out!

Look out!' It stands waving to me. It rings my little bell--"

I caught at that. "Did it ring your bell yesterday evening when I was

here and you went to the door?"

"Twice."

"Why, see," said I, "how your imagination misleads you. My eyes were on

the bell and my ears were open to the bell, and if I am a living man

it did not ring at those times. No, nor at any other time, except when

it was rung in the natural course of physical things by the station

communication with you."

He shook his head. "I have never made a mistake as to that yet, sir. I

have never confused the spectre's ring with the man's. The ghost's ring

is a strange vibration in the bell that it derives from nothing else,

and I have not asserted that the bell stirs to the eye. I don't wonder

that you failed to hear it. But I heard it."

"And did the spectre seem to be there when you looked out?"

"It was there."

"Both times?"

He repeated firmly: "Both times."

"Will you come to the door with me and look for it now?"

He bit his under lip as though he were somewhat unwilling, but arose.

I opened the door and stood on the step while he stood in the doorway.

There was the danger-light. There was the dismal mouth of the tunnel.

There were the high, wet stone wells of the cutting. There were the

stars above them.

"Do you see it?" I asked him, taking particular note of his face. His

eyes were prominent and strained, but not very much more so, perhaps,

than my own had been when I had directed them earnestly towards the

same spot.

"No," he answered. "It is not there."

"Agreed," said I.

We went in again, shut the door, and resumed our seats. I was thinking

how best to improve this advantage, if it might be called one, when he

took up the conversation in such a matter-of-course way, so assuming

that there could be no serious question of fact between us, that I felt

myself placed in the weakest of positions.

"By this time you will fully understand, sir," he said, "that what

troubles me so dreadfully is the question, What does the spectre mean?"

I was not sure, I told him, that I did fully understand.

"What is its warning against?" he said, ruminating, with his eyes on

the fire and only by times turning them on me. "What is the danger?

Where is the danger? There is danger overhanging somewhere on the line.

Some dreadful calamity will happen. It is not to be doubted this third

time after what has gone before. But surely this is a cruel haunting of

me. What can I do?"

He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped the drops from his heated

forehead.

"If I telegraph danger on either side of me, or on both, I can give no

reason for it," he went on, wiping the palms of his hands. "I should

get into trouble and do no good. They would think I was mad. This is

the way it would work--Message: 'Danger! Take care!' Answered: 'What

danger? Where?' Message: 'Don't know. But for God's sake, take care!'

They would discharge me. What else could they do?"

His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture

of a conscientious man oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible

responsibility involving life.

"When it first stood under the danger-light," he went on, putting his

dark hair back from his head and drawing his hands outward across and

across his temples in an extremity of feverish distress, "why not

tell me where that accident was to happen, if it must happen? Why not

tell me how it could be averted, if it could have been averted? When

on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me, instead, 'She

is going to die. Let them keep her at home?' If it came, on those

two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true and so to

prepare me for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help

me! A mere poor signal man in this solitary station! Why not go to

somebody with credit to be believed and power to act?"

When I saw him in this state I saw that for the poor man's sake, as

well as for the public safety, what I had to do for the time was to

compose his mind. Therefore, setting aside all question of reality or

unreality between us, I represented to him that whoever thoroughly

discharged his duty must do well, and that at least it was his comfort

that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these

confounding appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in

the attempt to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm; the

occupations incidental to his post as the night advanced began to make

larger demands on his attention; and I left him at two in the morning.

I had offered to stay through the night, but he would not hear of it.

That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the

pathway, that I did not like the red light, and that I should have

slept but poorly if my bed had been under it, I see no reason to

conceal. Nor did I like the two sequences of the accident and the dead

girl. I see no reason to conceal that, either.

But what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration, how ought I

to act, having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved

the man to be intelligent, vigilant, painstaking and exact; but how

long might he remain so, in his state of mind? Though in a subordinate

position, still he held a most important trust, and would I (for

instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his continuing to

execute it with precision?

Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous

in my communicating what he had told me to his superiors in the

company, without first being plain with himself and proposing a

middle course to him, I ultimately resolved to offer to accompany him

(otherwise keeping his secret for the present) to the wisest medical

practitioner we could hear of in those parts, and to take his opinion.

A change in his time of duty would come round next night, he had

apprised me, and he would be off an hour or two after sunrise, and on

again soon after sunset. I had appointed to return accordingly.

Next evening was a lovely evening, and I walked out early to enjoy it.

The sun was not yet quite down when I traversed the field-path near the

top of the deep cutting. I would extend my walk for an hour, I said to

myself, half an hour on and half an hour back, and it would then be

time to go to my signal-man's box.

Before pursuing my stroll I stepped to the brink and mechanically

looked down from the point from which I had first seen him. I cannot

describe the thrill that seized upon me, when, close at the mouth of

the tunnel I saw the appearance of a man with his left sleeve across

his eyes, passionately waving his right arm.

The nameless horror that oppressed me passed in a moment, for in a

moment I saw that this appearance of a man was a man indeed, and that

there was a little group of other men standing at a short distance to

whom he seemed to be rehearsing the gesture he made. The danger-light

was not yet lighted. Against its shaft a little low hut, entirely new

to me, had been made of some wooden supports and tarpaulin. It looked

no bigger than a bed.

With an irresistible sense that something was wrong--with a flashing

self-reproachful fear that fatal mischief had come of my leaving the

man here and causing no one to be sent to overlook or correct what he

did--I descended the notched path with all the speed I could make.

"What is the matter?" I asked the men.

"Signal-man killed this morning, sir."

"Not the man belonging to that box?"

"Yes, sir."

"Not the man I know?"

"You will recognize him, sir, if you knew him," said the man who spoke

for the others, solemnly uncovering his own head and raising an end of

the tarpaulin, "for his face is quite composed."

"O, how did this happen, how did this happen?" I asked, turning from

one to another as the hut closed in again.

"He was cut down by an engine, sir. No man in England knew his work

better, but somehow he was not clear of the outer rail. It was just at

broad day. He had struck the light and had the lamp in his hand. As

the engine came out of the tunnel his back was towards her and she cut

him down. That man drove her and was showing how it happened. Show the

gentleman, Tom."

The man, who wore a rough dark dress, stepped back to his former place

at the mouth of the tunnel:

"Coming round the curve in the tunnel, sir," he said, "I saw him at

the end, like as if I saw him down a perspective glass. There was no

time to check speed, and I knew him to be very careful. As he didn't

seem to take heed of the whistle, I shut it off when we were running

down upon him and called to him as loud as I could call."

"What did you say?"

"I said, 'Below there! Look out! Look out! For God's sake, clear the

way!"

I started.

"Ah! it was a dreadful time, sir. I never left off calling to him. I

put this arm before my eyes not to see, and I waved this arm to the

last; but it was no use."

Without prolonging the narrative to dwell on any one of its curious

circumstances more than any other, I may, in closing it, point out the

coincidence that the warning of the engine driver included not only the

words which the unfortunate signal-man had repeated to me as haunting

him, but also the words which I myself--not he--had attached, and that

only in my own mind, to the gesticulation he had imitated.

--Charles Dickens.

="Like a Thief in the Night"=

"How many more days of this miserable tramping have we before us,

Ivan?" It was a rough voice that spoke--a voice hardened with

bitterness and hatred.

"But four days more, Peter, and then the railroad. There lies Mansk

below us, and it is not far from Mansk to Vilna, not even by such a

detour as we must make."

Peter paused again in his eating and looking out from their woodland

hiding-place toward the scraggly village, asked doubtingly, "You are

sure they will not fail us? For I swear, Ivan, I'll walk no further

than Vilna."

Ivan twisted his scarred lips into a semblance of a smile. "The

brotherhood never fail," he said. "And now that we have finished our

supper, we may rest for the night, eh, Lev?" The speaker, who showed

evidences of association with the upper classes, turned to the young

Jewish lad sprawled beside him on the mouldy ground. The boy was

laboriously spelling out words in a greasy, dog-eared tract which he

tried to conceal when he saw Ivan's eyes upon him.

"Hello," exclaimed the nihilist fanatic, "what have we here?" He

took the grimy pamphlet from the likewise grimy hands of the youth.

"Ho-ho," he laughed boisterously, for once forgetting that sometimes

even trees have ears. "Ho-ho! a merry jest, indeed! Lev reading up on

transmigration! Did you think to become learned, you pitiable young

dog? Have you not had meted out to you the full amount of education

allowed you miserable Jews? What can you understand of such things as

these? Ho-ho! yes, a joke indeed!"

The boy gulped. His narrow nostrils widened, and the corners of his

sensitive mouth twitched. "I know I don't know much, Ivan. I found it

on the way and kept it, for it helps sometimes, wh-when I wish I hadn't

come."

"Ho-ho," laughed Ivan again. "When he wishes he hadn't come! As if

he could have helped coming! Where, indeed, could the brotherhood

have found a more innocent-looking hiding-place for their papers?

But there, Lev, you shall have your thesis, since you feel the need

of amusement, you precious infant. And, Peter, perhaps you will rest

more peacefully when I tell you that Loris Pleschivna, that government

spy-cat--" here Ivan paused to observe the interest which he knew that

this name would create, while Lev, frightened, glanced backward--"was

shot two weeks ago," finished the narrator, impressively.

Peter's yellow face showed great relief, but the boy whitened. "Well,

Lev, are you not glad! Or perhaps, mighty philosopher, you think that

his soul will come and steal the papers while you keep watch to-night,

eh?" And Ivan grinned--a hideous, tooth-displaying grin. But Lev only

shivered and looked around at the darkness.

The night, one of those dear nights whose very paleness intensifies the

shadows and pictures the ghosts of the past to the guilty mind, had

fallen. The two older men rolled themselves in blankets and went to

sleep without delay.

The young Jew sat alone, waiting for morning. For hours he remained

in the same position, his hands over his eyes that he might not see;

but his ears were alert to the slightest suggestion of sound. In

those weary minutes he lived over the scanty pleasures and the great

tribulations of his life, the joyless life of the persecuted Polish

Jew. The crackling of a dry leaf nearby aroused him. He looked up

quickly, apprehensively. A long wailing howl came from somewhere in

the darkness. Lev stiffened, staring into the shadows before him. From

a clump of bushes directly opposite peered two weird green eyes. The

lad's lower lip sagged loosely. As the strange eyes approached he

unconsciously moaned. Ivan and Peter stirred. Suddenly Ivan jumped up.

"Lev, Lev, what is it?" But the boy sat rigid. Ivan also looked at

the green eyes in the underbrush. Then he laughed, laughed long and

heartily. "Did you think it was a soul, Lev? A dog, and you afraid!

Perhaps it is a soulful dog." Ivan had sufficient culture not to laugh

at his own joke, but he waited for Peter's appreciation and Peter gave

it. Lev's only reply was to draw his hand across his brow. The palm

came down damp and clammy. "But it is just as well," went on Ivan,

"that we are awake, for it will soon be daylight, and we had best be

moving."

In five minutes the trio were on their watchful way to skirt the little

village of Mansk. The trio, did I say? No, the quartet, I meant,

for two men, one with misshapen lips, the other with decided Jewish

features, went ahead; and close behind them walked a leathery visaged

man, who had for a companion a scraggly half-starved cur, with ghastly

green eyes. Occasionally the Jew turned, and, looking into those

green eyes, shivered. "Well," said Ivan, "perhaps it is the soul of

Pleschivna, eh?" In answer the dog whimpered. "It may be," said the

Jew, stupidly, "it may be," and he shivered again.

The cold was of the damp clinging sort, against which no amount of

clothing can protect one. The three men on the tree-covered hill

overlooking the thatched brown cottages of Mansk, drew up their coat

collars and shivered. They had turned back and were seeking for

something. The scrawny green-eyed dog with them whined a low whine like

a human moan.

"Curse the dog!" exclaimed one vagabond in a rasping voice. "I'll have

him following us no longer with his ghostly howls. And I tell you,

Ivan, it is useless to go back further, for Lev had the papers when we

were here before."

"Yes, curse the dog," returned the man with the ever-grinning mouth.

"Curse him, of course; and since you feel such deep affection for him,

why not present him with one of those tablets meant for Pleschivna's

palate? Perhaps they would even so fulfill their intended purpose. What

say you, Lev?"

The dull-eyed Jewish lad stared at the dog as if fascinated. "It may

be," he said and shivered again. It was, indeed, a very cold night.

"Well, and the papers?" Peter impatiently queried.

"I say, then, it is useless to go forward to Vilna without them. We

must search about here. Perhaps Lev has an opinion." But Lev was

thinking only of a much-thumbed philosophical tract in his pocket. "Or,

perhaps, learned theosophist, you believe that the dog has taken them.

You could not tell us somewhat of them yourself, could you, Lev?"

"Lev! Why, he's afraid of his own shadow! He would not dare to tell a

lie, not even to himself," Peter scoffed.

Again the dog whimpered. He went up to Lev and licked the boy's hand.

Ivan watched the performance interestedly. "None the less," he said,

"the dog shall have his dose; and that right now. He follows us about

like an evil spirit." The men disposed themselves as on the evening

before.

How Lev had prayed for the night! And now that his prayer was answered,

how he stared into the thick, solid blackness and longed for the grey

light of morning! With straining ears he listened to the midnight

stillness. He had not even thought of sleep. If only he could rid

himself of that dullness or could concentrate his thoughts!

A figure broke through the bushes. "Ivan, Ivan!" came Peter's voice.

"Ivan, wake up!" Ivan roused himself. "Well, Peter, why do you create

such a disturbance?" Ivan's speech was pettish, though still husky

from interrupted sleep. "Ivan, I got up and gave the dog the dose, as

you said. He slunk off into the woods. I followed. I don't know why.

It was almost midnight when he gave a sharp cry and dropped. I swear I

had never lost sight of him for an instant. I went up to look. He was

dead. And, Ivan, from his very mouth I took--the papers!" Peter waxed

triumphantly dramatic, his every low-spoken word sounding in Lev's ears

with the loudness of a tribal war-whoop. After much fumbling in the

darkness he placed in Ivan's hands a slightly torn packet.

"A light!" Ivan spoke tersely.

Peter struck a light. Trembling, Ivan spread out the documents. A

gruesome, unearthly howl, like the triumphant screech of a resentful

soul came to them through the blackness. With an awful oath Ivan turned

to Peter. "The signatures, you ignoramus, you imbecile!" he cried,

pointing to the ragged holes in the papers. "They are gone!"

And Lev shivered, for the night was very cold.

--Dorothea Knobloch.

II. The Story That Emphasizes Character and Environment.

[Rudyard Kipling]

The large number of Kipling's stories could not have been written

outside India, or at least the Orient. They are of the East eastern.

"Without Benefit of Clergy," "Muhammad Din," "The Gate of the Hundred

Sorrows," "The Man Who Would Be King"--the very names conjure up the

environment. They do more than that; they almost tell the story.

Before he began to write, Kipling knew thoroughly his adopted literary

land; in the same way all successful writers must know theirs if

they mean to reveal the influence of surroundings on character, if

they mean to give, as many writers do, a miniature of the locality

in each sketch. To read one of Mary E. Wilkins's stories is to catch

the flavor of all New England. Her nun is indeed a New England

nun. Nowhere else do people keep house quite so; but in scores of

Massachusetts and Connecticut homes the women, married and single,

are 'that partic'lar'--or nearly as particular as Louisa Ellis. But

wait a minute! [Mary E. Wilkins Freeman] If there are tens of women

like Louisa Ellis, wherein comes the story? Why, do you not see?--just

in the plus, the superfluity of New Englandishness that there is in

Louisa. It is the breadth of that more-so that gave Miss Wilkins her

twenty-four stories in the same book, and others outside it. And here

is the point: in this kind of story, your writer must know his locality

so well that the sameness of the people has a difference in each family

and in each member of that family. In other words, his characters must

be persons, not figureheads; they may be types, it is true, but they

must have the soul of individuality breathed into them. For instance,

in this one collection of stories Miss Wilkins has two Louisas, and

they both are typically of New England, they both have suitors, and

they both are averse to marriage; moreover, each slight course of

events is built on the impulse of the woman to avoid matrimony. But

here the likeness ends; for the women are individuals, and the lovers

are different from each other. The character-drawing of these two

stories is a daring attempt on the part of the author, but it is a

remarkably successful one.

[Hamlin Garland]

Hamlin Garland has been almost as successful with his middle Northwest

as Miss Wilkins has with her New England. His stories can not be called

quaint, as hers can, nor sweet exactly; but they can be said to be as

graphic, faithful, straightforward, homely, and to have been compiled

with as patient and sympathetic an observation--not so minute, but as

unerring. They are freer, bolder, more like the country he portrays.

With Mr. Garland perhaps we have more of the out-of-doors, literal

country, the black soil into which the people's lives are ploughed

and from which they come out again sometimes at the top of the corn

tassel. With Miss Wilkins the country is more that country not built

with hands, eternal in characteristics. Of both writers the work is

great work, and you can not go astray in taking either for your model.

"Up the Coolly" is a remarkable tragedy--for tragedy it is. "The Return

of the Private" is all too pathetically true. "Among the Corn Rows" is

startlingly realistic, and "A Branch Road"--well, doubtless people

have varying opinions about the usefulness of such pictures, but nobody

can gainsay the excellence of the craftsmanship.

[Bret Harte]

In a somewhat different way, with just as much realism maybe, but

surely with a large dash of romance, Bret Harte pre-empted California

as a literary land two decades before these younger writers staked

out their claims. "Tennessee's Partner" and "The Outcasts of Poker

Flat" are perfect in their way, and their way is this way: the

place-character narrative.

[Suggestions and precautions]

To write such a narrative, you must have vividly and accurately in mind

your selected environment. It is to form the color of your picture.

If you do not think you know thus intimately any locality, open your

eyes. The beautiful fact about living is, that we all always live

somewhere, and that same somewhere is full of a number of things, and

of nothing more surely than of local color. It is your business as a

writer to add this color constantly to your stories; but the best way

to proceed is not to attempt to spread it on from the outside, but to

let it shine through from within. To be sure, it must be on the valleys

and hills, the streets and the houses and the window curtains; but it

must also be in the speech of your peoples, in their notions, their

attitude toward each other and toward the great and little questions

of human relationship. Besides knowing the environment, you must

know indisputably some individuals of the place. You can not draw a

life-like sketch from an abstraction. The canvas painters have taught

us that truth, and so have the sculptors. For every figure they have

a living model. They must know where the bones and sinews are, even if

they mean to etherealize. So must you, and you have a harder problem;

your figure must speak. One false tone, and you mar the impression.

Mary E. Wilkins, excellent artist that she is, has impaired one of her

strongest stories, "The Revolt of Mother," by a lapse of art in respect

to two of her characters. The girl and boy are not old enough for the

age the author intimates; or what she says that they are is too old for

what they prove that they are when they speak and when they keep silent

even,--especially the girl. Moreover, we feel that the mother is ten or

fifteen years younger, than the age given her. These are minor points,

one admits, and, as we say, the story is excellent; but in so far as

it fails in little ways it is not superfine, though one of the most

lovable and dramatic, of Miss Wilkins's productions. In art you must

not make this mistake; it is no answer to assert that in life the woman

was sixty and the boy and girl fourteen and twenty. On the basis of the

character-drawing the woman is forty-five or fifty and the children

are twins, less than sixteen years old. In other words, a realist

that is an artist as well selects not only what is true but also what

will immediately without argument seem true. Miss Wilkins usually is

convincing.

In addition to an unmistakably clear knowledge of place and

personality, you must know both local dialect and family vernacular.

The various individuals of your sketch, if they happen to belong to the

same household, must speak as if they so belonged. In actual life when

you converse with a company of persons, you can pick out two members

of the same family as readily as you can pick out two members of the

same community. Your character-narrative must reveal this likeness, not

by declaration especially, but by a subtle unity of vocabulary that

does not at the same time preclude individuality.

[The character Overbury and Hall]

The writers of this kind of short-story owe much to the past. We are

inclined to think of quiet and truthful character sketchers, who

reveal an appreciative knowledge of the influence of environment, as

distinctly a late nineteenth century brotherhood; but the fact is

that while moderate realism is undoubtedly the last artistic word on

the subject of effective character-revelation, it is also the first.

The modern novel of manners (and the artistic short-story of the same

class as an offshoot of it) drew from a full stream of realism. As far

back as the age of Overbury and Bishop Hall the public was interested

in prose character-sketches. The fact that essays could have such

names as "The Tinker" and "The Milkmaid" was a promise of the light

of common day. Then the gentle de Coverley papers came on with their

slight narrative and continued portrait, their delightful skits on

class environment and tradition; [The novel of manners] then, Tristram

Shandy's frank shamelessness about familiar things; then the Vicar of

Wakefield's struggling poverty; and finally the women entered--Evelina,

Belinda, Emma, Mary Barton, and the gentle ladies of Cranford, bringing

with them the tea-table and the trials of the parlor and of factory

life. The only thing that was needed to make the archetype complete

by the middle of the nineteenth century was for some one to take

persistently the same large yet specific environment. [Trollope's

Cathedral Town Studies] Anthony Trollope did so in his Cathedral Town

Studies. What ran parallel for a time with the novel of manners, but

had a later and fuller development, is the psychological problem novel,

begun by Richardson and Fielding and handed over to the late nineteenth

century writers by Charlotte Brontë. This psychological problem novel

bears the same relation to the novel of manners as the character-events

short-story bears to the character-environment one.

You doubtless realize, as every one realizes, that a good short-story

is hard to write, but in the hardness comes the inspiration. If you

succeed, you have scored a triumph. But for your comfort, be assured

that the possibility is not beyond even a high-school student. The

attempt in very instructive at least.

Remember that you are not writing a biography, but a place-character

narrative in the short-story form. You are not called on to record

every incident in the life of your subject or even every important

incident. The happenings may all be minor, in fact. The only essential

thing is that you reveal the indissoluble connection between

environment and characteristics. The person is what he is because he

has lived at that place with those habitual surroundings.

There is this precaution, however, that you must take; you must not

let your narrative degenerate into a mere analysis and enumeration of

qualities. You are to write a story. And to write a story you must

have a happening or a series of happenings, however mild. Usually one

of these should be of more importance than the others, and the others

should be related to it as subordinates, in order that the effect may

be single. Any part of the life of your people that lies behind the day

of your revelation, if mentioned at all, should be told in retrospect;

whatever lies ahead, if mentioned at all, can be only prophecy. And,

finally, here is a little secret, an open one among artists, but one

shut away from the herd of common scribblers; what you do not tell but

only skilfully suggest is what makes for excellence and immortality.

=The Story of Muhammad Din=

"Who is the happy man? He that sees in his own house at home,

little children crowned with dust, leaping and falling and

crying."--_Munichandra_, translated by Professor Peterson.

The polo ball was an old one, scarred, chipped and dinted. It stood on

the mantelpiece among the pipe-stems which Iman Din, _khitmatgar_, was

cleaning for me.

"Does the heaven-born want this ball?" said Imam Din, deferentially.

The heaven-born set no particular store by it; but of what use was a

polo ball to a _khitmatgar_?

"By your honour's favour, I have a little son. He has seen this ball

and desires it to play with. I do not want it for myself."

No one would for an instant accuse portly old Imam Din of wanting

to play with polo balls. He carried out the battered thing into the

veranda, and there followed a hurricane of joyful squeaks, a patter

of small feet, and the _thud-thud-thud_ of the ball rolling along the

ground. Evidently the little son had been waiting outside the door to

secure his treasure. But how had he managed to see that polo ball?

Next day, coming back from office half an hour earlier than usual, I

was aware of a small figure in the dining-room--a tiny, plump figure

in a ridiculously inadequate shirt, which came, perhaps, half way down

the tubby stomach. It wandered round the room, thumb in mouth, crooning

to itself as it took stock of the pictures. Undoubtedly this was the

"little son."

He had-no business in my room, of course; but was so deeply absorbed in

his discoveries that he never noticed me in the doorway. I stepped into

the room and startled him nearly into a fit. He sat down on the ground

with a gasp. His eyes opened and his mouth followed suit. I knew what

was coming and fled, followed by a long, dry howl which reached the

servants' quarters far more quickly than any command of mine had ever

done. In ten seconds Imam Din was in the dining-room. Then despairing

sobs arose, and I returned to find Imam Din admonishing the small

sinner, who was using most of his shirt as a handkerchief.

"This boy," said Imam Din, judiciously, "is a _budmash_--a big

_budmash_. He will, without doubt, go to the _jail-khana_ for his

behaviour." Renewed yells from the penitent, and an elaborate apology

to myself from Imam Din.

"Tell the baby," I said, "that the _Sahib_ is not angry and take him

away." Imam Din conveyed my forgiveness to the offender, who had

now gathered all his shirt round his neck, stringwise, and the yell

subsided into a sob. The two set off for the door. "His name," said

Imam Din, as though the name were part of the crime, "is Muhammad Din,

and he is a _budmash_." Freed from present danger, Muhammad Din turned

round in his father's arms and said gravely, "It is true that my name

is Muhammad Din, _Tahib_, but I am not a _budmash_. I am a man!"

From that day dated my acquaintance with Muhammad Din. Never again did

he come into my dining-room; but on the neutral ground of the garden

we greeted each other with much state, though our conversation was

confined to "_Talaam, Tahib_" from his side, and "_Salaam, Muhammad

Din_" from mine. Daily on my return from office the little white

shirt and the fat little body used to rise, from the shade of the

creeper-covered trellis where they had been hid, and daily I checked

my horse there that my salutation might not be slurred over or given

unseemly.

Muhammad Din never had any companions. He used to trot about the

compound, in and out of the castor-oil bushes, on mysterious errands

of his own. One day I stumbled upon some of his handiwork far down

the grounds. He had half buried the polo-ball in dust, and stuck six

shriveled old marigold flowers in a circle round it. Outside that

circle again was a rude square, traced out in its bits of red brick

alternating with fragments of broken china; the whole bounded by a

little bank of dust. The water-man from the well-curb put in a plea for

the small architect, saying that it was only the play of a baby and did

not much disfigure my garden.

Heaven knows that I had no intention of touching the child's work

then or later; but that evening a stroll through the garden brought

me unawares full on it, so that I trampled, before I knew, marigold

heads, dust bank and fragments of broken soap-dish into confusion past

all hope of mending. Next morning I came upon Muhammad Din crying

softly to himself over the ruin I had wrought. Some one had cruelly

told him that the _Sahib_ was very angry with him for spoiling the

garden, and he had scattered his rubbish, using bad language the

while. Muhammad Din laboured for an hour at effacing every trace of

the dust-bank and pottery fragments, and it was with a tearful and

apologetic fact that he said, "_Talaam, Tahib_," when I came home

from office. A hasty inquiry resulted in Imam Din informing Muhammad

Din that, by my singular favour, he was permitted to disport himself

as he pleased. Whereat the child took heart and fell to tracing the

ground-plan of an edifice which was to eclipse the marigold-polo-ball

creation.

For some months the chubby little eccentricity revolved in his humble

orbit among the castor-oil bushes and in the dust; always fashioning

magnificent palaces from stale flowers thrown away by the bearer,

smooth water-worn pebbles, bits of broken glass, and feathers pulled, I

fancy, from my fowls--always alone, and always crooning to himself

A gaily spotted sea-shell was dropped one day close to the last of

his little buildings, and I looked that Muhammad Din should build

something more than ordinarily splendid on the strength of it. Nor was

I disappointed. He meditated for the better part of an hour, and his

crooning rose to a jubilant song. Then he began tracing in the dust.

It would certainly be a wondrous palace, this one, for it was two

yards long and a yard broad in ground-plan. But the palace was never

completed.

Next day there was no Muhammad Din at the head of the carriage-drive,

and no "_Talaam, Tahib_" to welcome my return. I had grown accustomed

to the greeting, and its omission troubled me. Next day Imam Din told

me that the child was suffering slightly from fever and needed quinine.

He got the medicine, and an English doctor.

"They have no stamina, these brats," said the doctor, as he left Imam

Din's quarters.

A week later, though I would have given much to have avoided it, I met

on the road to the Mussulman burying-ground Imam Din, accompanied by

one other friend, carrying in his arms, wrapped in a white cloth, all

that was left of little Muhammad Din.

--Rudyard Kipling.

"Plain Tales from the Hills." (Doubleday, Page & Co., 1907.)

=The Fetters=

The cool maples rustled temptingly before the open kitchen window, and

seemed to mock the busy worker within. Flies buzzed at the screen,

door, and at intervals found entrance through sundry gaps in the

rusty screening. Inside there was the endless clatter of dishes, the

hissing sound of frying meat, and occasionally a sharp exclamation in a

nervous, high-pitched voice. The owner of the voice, a woman of about

thirty-five, was walking busily around the kitchen. A soiled gingham

apron nearly covered a worn gray skirt, and several large safety-pins

held her waist together over her flat chest. Premature wrinkles

hardened her eyes and mouth. Her hair drawn back over a high, bony

forehead, was twisted into an untidy little knot at the back of her

head. On each of her cheeks, just below the bone, came and went bright

spots of color--the only color about her, for her hair had no glints of

light and her apathetic blue eyes seemed absolutely devoid of luster.

As she hastened back and forth, opening the oven door, setting the

table, inspecting the contents of various kettles steaming on the big

stove, she still found time to throw a glance, now and then, out to

the rickety porch, where a pale-faced little girl sat in an old red

porch-chair. The child's big eyes, startlingly prominent in her wan

face, followed the woman, and, when the latter looked at her, a sudden

smile would curve the straight little lips. But at times she would look

away from the kitchen out beyond to the wheat-fields, gleaming yellow

in the August sun--and still farther to the cool green woods, with the

hard blue sky above them. Then the child would sigh, and her face would

grow wondering and anxious, as she turned back again and smiled at the

woman in the kitchen--a curious, wistful, unchildlike smile. On the

step beside her lay a worn little home-made crutch.

"Here come the men-folks, mother," the child exclaimed suddenly. Her

mother came to the door, and shading her eyes with her apron, peered up

the dusty lane. Then she went back to the house and hurriedly finished

setting the table. The heavy plates and cups were hardly in place on

the red-checked cloth before the men came clattering up the walk and up

the porch. Most of them had a smile for the pale little girl in the

chair, and one had brought her a bunch of red field-poppies, already

half withered, in his big hand. The child took them eagerly, laying

their vivid petals lovingly against her pale cheek. The rest of the men

filed past with a grin or a roughly tender, word--all but the last. He

came up the steps, his forehead wrinkled in a scowl evidently habitual,

his mouth hard, his eyes deep-set and forbidding. He did not even

notice the child, and she shrank back in her chair, her lip trembling,

her eyes wide with fear.

"Dinner near ready, Jane?" he demanded in a gruff tone. Jane gave a

brief little nod and hurried on with the rest of the preparations.

Rough laughter, scraping of boots, loud clattering of knives on plates,

and a continual demand for replenishment, followed the course of the

dinner. Jane sat wearily, but her plateful of cabbage and pork lay

untasted before her. Out on the porch the little girl sipped a glass of

milk and watched the cool dimness of the distant woods.

The men pushed back their chairs, wiped their mouths with the backs

of their brown hands, and hurried away to the fields. Jane's husband

stopped for a moment to mend a rip in his boot. It was a difficult rip

to mend and his temper was soon exhausted.

"Why don't ye learn that white-faced brat out there to work!" he

stormed, "us short o' hands an' her less good than none at all--an'

a nuisance to boot." Jane suddenly turned and let a saucer fall. Her

lips were compressed for a moment, then she went down on one knee and

carefully picked up the fragments of china.

"What a snap ye've got, next to what brother Dan's wife had," Jim went

surlily on. "Dan made her go out an' tend his grapes, while all ye've

got to do is cook a little and wash up--an' ye act as if ye was worked

hard. Dan's wife never kicked--she'd be'n sorry if she had," and he

gave a hard dry laugh in appreciation of his own humor.

But Jane did not hear this last remark; she was thinking of her

brother-in-law's wife, a frail little woman whose life had been made up

of pruning grapevines or cutting grapes, working side by side with the

Italian women whom her husband hired, working harder than any of them

did, too, and for far less recompense. She remembered how angry Dan

had been because his wife had appeared one afternoon in a shirt-waist,

instead of the usual wrapper. It was a clumsy, cheap, ill-made thing,

but Margaret's eyes had danced when Jane came to see her that day.

And she remembered how Dan had come in and declared he wanted no

high-falutin' things around his house; that he had married to get some

one to work for him, not for a parlor ornament. Poor little Margaret!

How her thin cheeks had flushed and her timid eyes filled with tears!

But she died not long after--Jane gave a half-envious sigh.

"Goin' to stand there all day lookin' at nothin'?" a gruff voice

asked suddenly, and she started. The knife with which she had been

peeling potatoes to fry for supper, slipped and cut her finger. She

went over to the sink and wiped away the red streak, while her husband

shufflingly made his exit, grumbling to himself over the foolishness of

ever bothering with such a useless baggage as a woman. On the porch he

stumbled over the little crutch and kicked it aside with an oath.

The afternoon wore away slowly. Little Meg slept on her cot upstairs,

her cheeks hot and damp, her arms flung wide in the weariness of

childhood. Jane sewed steadily at a heap of burlap grain bags,

until the sun went down in a riot of yellow and crimson behind the

trees. Jane put away her sewing, gently woke Meg, and prepared to go

downstairs to get supper ready. She stopped to look at the sunset

before she went down. Along the road beyond came the rattle of wheels;

a buggy passed in which sat a woman in solitary state. A striped silk

dress enveloped her ample person, a hat with nodding red roses and a

broad white brim shaded a pair of stupid, comfortable eyes, and cast

its shadow over a mouth that fairly sagged with good humor and good

living. Her fat hands, lying idly in her lap and holding the reins

loosely, were pulled back and forth by the jogging brown horse. Jane

recognized in the woman Mrs. Petersen, her nearest neighbor, and

half hungrily surmised that she was returning home from a meeting of

the "Tuesday Social Club." The buggy leisurely passed the house and

disappeared along the dusty lane.

Suddenly, in one rush of emotion, the whole barrenness of Jane's lot

came over her. She thought of the long days filled with unceasing

labor--the dull, gray days that stretched endlessly behind her and

yet more endlessly before her. Her life seemed one wearying round of

dish-washing and cooking, of going to bed utterly worn out and of

rising next morning just as tired as she had been the night before. She

felt a terrible grudge rise in her against her husband--and she allowed

this grudge now to fill her soul completely, instead of crushing out

such feelings as she had hitherto done. Why had he never helped her

to have a good time as other women had? Why had he forgotten that she

was a woman and fond of dainty things? She thought of the stern young

fellow who had courted her when she was a girl--so very long ago that

was. And how she had married him, and how proud she had been of him,

and how she had boasted of his thrift to all her neighbors. And then

she remembered how sternness which she admired in the youth had changed

into surliness in the man; how gradually--little by little--she had

lost hope--she who had hoped for so much and had had to little given

her. On her, and on her alone, the brunt of all his displeasure and of

all his wrath had fallen.

Then suddenly her face cleared; as she heard a sleepy yawn from the

bed; little Meg lay watching her, her sleep-filled eyes smiling their

same brave smile. At least, Jane thought, she had Meg--and Dan's wife

had not even had a Meg. Dan's wife had never known the sweetness of

clinging hands and the comfort of damp baby kisses. So even for her,

life still held compensation. She looked out at the west where the

riotous reds had now faded to soft rose and gray. The outlines of the

woods were softened and the nodding tree-tops seemed beckoning her to

come away with them. Almost involuntarily the woman stretched out her

hands towards the trees, and her hungry eyes filled with tears. Perhaps

some day, when little Meg became stronger--perhaps some day they

two--just they--might go away somewhere, together--somewhere where the

world was all soft rose and gray, where there were no endless days of

toil, no angry voice, nothing but peace. Then perhaps Meg would--

"Jane," a rough voice broke in on her musings, "fer God's sake, woman,

what ails ye? Seven o'clock an' no bite to eat ready!"

Jane hurriedly rose from the window. For the first time in her life she

had let her day-dreams really make her forget her dull, common-place

world. She stopped to smooth Meg's moist curls, and ran downstairs.

There at the foot stood her husband, a whole day's displeasure frowning

forth in his face, an angry light in his eyes.

"I know it's late, Jim--it's too bad," Jane faltered, "but you never

had to wait before. I was busy--I was thinking--I--"

"Busy!" he sneered. "Busy! Settin' down doin' nothin' but hushin' that

blamed brat. Let her alone. She ain't only a nuisance anyhow--spend yer

time on something worth while."

Half unconsciously Jane looked at her hands; the forefinger of the

right was rough and needle-pricked, and her hands were red and raw

from much dish-washing and cleaning. She thought to herself how often

she longed to caress little Meg, to hug her and rock her for a whole

afternoon, to love, love, love her to her heart's content--but she had

never found time. Then her husband's last cutting words came back to

her. She took a step forward, the suffering of years in her face. The

red spots on her cheeks were very red now. "Can I help it," she gasped,

"that my baby is a puny little thing? Is it my fault? What care has she

ever had, excepting what I have been able to steal for her? If you were

a man like other men--not a brute--then perhaps you would understand!"

She clinched her hand and looked defiantly up into his face.

Jim stood still for a moment, astonished at the outburst from his meek

wife. Then his quick anger blazed up, and, lifting his big hand, he

struck Jane full in the face. She fell back against the stairway, her

face white, save for the red spots which were livid now. Her eyes, were

full of tears from the force of the blow. She heard Jim's voice from a

distance.

"No use waitin' here forever," he grumbled. "I'll go to Reynold's an'

get a bite; his wife'll probably have it waitin'." And she saw him turn

to the door along which Meg just came tapping. The child hurried to get

out of his way. Jim slouched heavily through the room, and out of the

house, his big boots creaking as he went.

Jane sat down on the step. Her head ached from the force of the blow.

She felt dazed with the suddenness of everything. Little Meg came and

sat down beside her, patting Jane's rough hand with her soft palm to

attract her attention; then she settled down quietly beside her, her

bright head leaning on her mother's apron. Darkness came, but Jane did

not stir. Meg had gone to sleep.

Suddenly the crutch beside them slipped and rattled against the wall.

Meg woke and cried out with fright. Jane absently took the child in her

arms and tried to soothe her, but Meg was thoroughly frightened and

refused to be comforted. At length she was quiet and Jane carried her

to bed. In a few moments, her baby-fear forgotten, she was again fast

asleep. Jane went over to the window and crouched there, bitterness

in her heart. Over in the west the shadowy outlines of the trees

looked mysterious, aloof, unsympathetic; so did the cold white stars

over them. Sympathy seemed to have gone out of everything in the whole

world. And Jane leaned heavily on the sill and thought.

For a long time she sat there, until she heard Meg stir restlessly on

the bed. Then she rose and looked mechanically towards the Reynolds

house. A bright light burned in a lower room, so she knew that her

husband was still there, talking over the day's affairs with Farmer

Reynolds. Her husband! She felt a sudden shrinking at the mere word.

She decided that she hated him, she knew that she hated him, with

the pent-up hatred of years. And she shuddered when she thought of

to-morrow and the next to-morrow, and all the dull to-morrows that

would have to come--and he must be in them all; that was the thought

which made her sick and faint. She lay down on the bed beside Meg,

merely loosening her waist and uncoiling her hair. Physical weariness

brought a dreamless sleep. She woke with a start, after a sleep

that seemed to have lasted for centuries. There was strange noises

downstairs--gruff, muffled voices, queer shuffling as of heavy boots,

and then a sudden scraping against the outer door. With a quick

unreasoning fear at her heart, Jane flew down the stairs and out into

the kitchen. Some one had lighted the oil lamp there. Her eyes saw at

first only a blurred group before her. Her vision cleared gradually,

until the blur resolved itself into four men, with alarmed, puzzled

faces, who were carrying several boards on which lay something covered

with a big coat. Jane held her breath, while the men looked sheepishly

at one another. Then she ran to the heap, lifted the coat, and looked

down at her husband. His face was hard and set, the jaw projecting; but

the usual sneer was gone from his mouth, and his closed eyes gave him

an expression of peace. Jane dropped the coat as if dazed and turned

helplessly to the men. They, equally helpless, nudged Farmer Reynolds

forward to act as spokesman. His big, kindly face was abashed and

solemn, his fingers nervously twirled his rough cap.

"It was a stroke, mum," he managed to jerk out at last, "some kind of

a fit, Doc says. It carried him right, off, too, quicker'n a wink,

an' not a mite o' pain. There he was a-sittin' an' scrappin' like

a good feller one minute--an' then his face kind o' went pale, an'

over he keeled. First we knew it was him on the floor, clean knocked

out." Reynolds was becoming garrulous in his efforts to relieve the

embarrassment of the situation, but Jane had already forgotten him.

They had laid Jim on the floor and Jane sat down beside him, carefully

adjusting his tumbled coat and smoothing the rough hair off his low

forehead. She did it all in a calm and matter-of-fact way. The men

looked helplessly at one another, while Jane, utterly unconscious of

them, continued her ministrations to the dead. Was it a few hours ago

or was it many years ago that she had vowed never to call him husband

again? She had forgotten--after all, it didn't matter. Nothing really

mattered now.

Suddenly there came a tapping down the steps. The stair door was pushed

open, and a towsled, barefooted, night-gowned little figure appeared on

the threshold. "Mother," Meg quivered, "where are you?" When she saw

her mother, she made straight for her, almost tumbling over the crutch

in her haste. She threw her arms, lovingly around her mother's neck.

Jane started--the queer, dazed look left her eyes, though her cheeks

were still pale, save for one long red mark. With a little sob she

turned, crushed the child to her, and began to cry.

"Oh, but we did love him, Meg, didn't we?" she sobbed. "And he was good

to us, just as good as he knew how to be. Oh, Meg, Meg, if I had only

been a better wife to him!"

--Katherine Kurz.

=When Terry "Quit"=

"Gad! and to think, Jim, that I ever lived on Front street!" The

frock-coated, silk-hatted stage manager removed the big black cigar

from his mouth, and with a pudgy little finger, on which sparkled

a blue diamond of unusual size, he flicked away the ashes. "Though

it really was a rather decent sort of a place then, you know." He

addressed his companion, a press-agent, first, however, carefully

readjusting the cigar so that it should be at such an angle to his lips

as to suggest sportiness.

Now, the south side of the thoroughfare just mentioned consists chiefly

of warehouses and saloons, the north side chiefly of saloons and

pawnshops. On summer days the street squirms with chickens, bulldogs

and babies; but on the warm evenings, when the pawnshops and the

warehouses are closed, when the saloons are doing a lucrative business,

then the chickens roost on the back fences, the bulldogs doze lazily

on the stone flaggings, and in the stuffy little sleeping apartments

above the saloons the children of the saloon-keepers dream of the envy

which, by means of delicious chili-sauce sandwiches, they will create

the next day among the children of the pawnbrokers.

The two men were now approaching the most prosperous saloon in the

street. Streams of light, coming from both above and below the

little green baize door, shone on a swinging signboard. "Tim Dugan's

Café," the gilt letters informed any who were unacquainted with the

neighborhood. Boorish men could be heard calling jocularly for more

beer, and the constant slamming of the cash drawer mingled with the

clinking of heavy glasses.

"A song! It's time fer a chune!" called a raucous voice.

"Aha, yer right there, it's Terry fer us," acquiesced one of the crowd.

"Terry! Terry! it's oop on the table fer ye, Terry." The cry was

accompanied by much loud laughter and the shuffling of heavy boots.

Labor-hardened hands clapped approval, and then for a moment there was

silence.

"'A sailor's wife a sailor's star shall be.'"

The sweet, though untrained tenor voice, rang high and clear.

"'Yo-ho-oh, boyoys, ho--'"

The two fashionably dressed men stopped in front of the short door.

"Jove! what a voice!" the manager breathed.

"'A long, long life to my sweet wife!'"

No sound interrupted the ringing sailor ballad.

"Let's go in and have a drink," suggested the press-agent, when the

song was finished.

As unobtrusively as possible the two men entered.

"More! more!" the appreciative, if unschooled, audience was demanding,

and in the clatter of applause the strangers were unnoticed.

"'I have come to say good-bye, Dolly Grey.'"

The then new popular song thrilled the listeners with its martial

rhythm, as the plaintive cadences of the beautiful voice rang in their

ears.

"'Good-bye, Dolly, I must leave you.'"

The singer's glance fell on the new listeners. His merry eyes wavered

and his face flushed until it became as red as his curly hair. He

stopped short in the chorus.

"I guess it's me that's been yowling anough fer tunight, byes," he

mumbled, as he climbed down from the table and, sliding behind the

counter, donned the white apron which proclaimed him a bartender.

"Wy, Terry, wat's the matter wit ye? We got a have one more afore ye

quit."

But Terry shook his head vigorously in an emphatic "no," as he rapidly

cleaned the thick glasses.

The two men from the world of dazzling footlights ordered drinks, paid

doubly for them, made a bluff at enjoying the poor liquor, and then

quietly left the _café_, and continued their walk past the warehouses,

pawnshops and saloons of Front street.

The next morning, when the heavy wagons were rattling over the

cobble-stones of the narrow, dirty thoroughfare, and the children of

the pawnbrokers were engaged in throwing "spit-balls" at the children

of the saloon-keepers, "Tim Dugan's Café" was for the second time

honored with the entrance of the stage-manager of the minstrel show

which was to be in town the next week. This potentate had come on ahead

of his company to adjust some little difficulty with the play-house

owners, and now that that business had been settled, another matter of

importance presented itself: the tenor soloist, no longer in his prime,

had left.

The manager sauntered up to the bar, rested his right elbow on the

marble slab, settled his "silk" hat more comfortably on his head,

shoved his left hand deep into his trousers' pocket--whereupon an

attractive chinking sound could be heard--and crossed his gaitered feet.

"One," he announced, and the ruddy-haired Irish lad, who had been busy

washing glasses, quickly, deftly, filled a mug with frothy beer.

"Ahem!" The manager puffed up his heavy chest and leaned both elbows on

the bar.

Then, ensued a whispered dialogue, during which Terry Flynn's laughing

eyes alternately grew round with wonder and twinkled with pleasure.

"Sorry!" gasped the bartender at last, "not a bit of it. Ye cin bet yer

shiny, boots, an' it's me as 'll do it!"

The manager, smiling with the satisfaction of having clinched an

excellent bargain, made his way among the chickens, bulldogs and babies

of Front street and soon left the beery atmosphere far behind him.

Terry, however, kept his own council. Not until the following Monday

did he give any information concerning the identity of the "swell gent"

who had so strangely visited him.

Then how the inhabitants of Front street rejoiced! Terry Flynn--often

called "Irish" for short--redheaded Terry Flynn, who had many a time

caused a quarrel to be forgotten by breaking into a song as he rattled

the mugs on the bar--Terry--their Terry--was going on the stage! He

would own a silk tile, and wear diamond studs--but he would sing no

more for Front street.

How the bony-fisted, generous men, in spite of their keen regret at

losing him, rejoiced in Terry's good fortune!

"Ha'n't I said, ag'in an' ag'in, as Terry could sing twicet as fine as

the feller 'at sang 'atween the acks o' 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' one time

w'en I went an' seen it? Ha'n't I now?" queried a delighted teamster.

"Aye, that ye 'ave, Jawn, that ye 'ave," replied a pensioned sailor,

also jubilant over the fame in store for Terry.

As for Terry himself, he had not yet recovered from his surprise, and

so had little room for other emotions. He was too ignorant, too fresh

from his peat-carrying labors in the shamrock country, to have any fear

of stage fright. Indeed, that word was not in his stunted vocabulary.

He went that afternoon to rehearse "Nancy Lee," with the rest of the

company, newly arrived, who were to join him in the "yo-ho's." How

well the song sounded when supplemented by such a chorus! Terry's

blood quickened! He did not observe the coldness of the other singers

towards him. He would have cared little if he had felt the lack of

friendliness, for so sunny was his Irish temperament, so strong his

Irish independence and congeniality, that he would not easily have

lost hope of winning the good will of his associates. Moreover Terry

was so humble that he would rather have expected them to stand a little

aloof at first; but when, black-faced and white-gloved, he stood upon

the great stage of the Opera House, and filled the domed auditorium

with his strong, beautiful tenor notes, he knew nothing save that

he was one of "them actor fellows" now; that the men and women from

the world of wealth were listening to him. His eyes sparkled with

excitement.

"A long, long life to my sweet wife," he sang.

In the silence of the people Terry instinctively recognized their

appreciation.

"Nancy Lee--"

The vaulted ceiling sent the round, high notes back to the eager ears

of the audience.

"Yo-ho-boyoys, ho--"

The "yo-ho" didn't sound with the proper vigor. It was flat. A frown

appeared between Terry's arched eyebrows. He was singing his "Yo-ho's"

alone! Slowly he turned, still singing, to face the other minstrels.

Some one snickered, "Do you see us singing with a bar-tender?"

"Nance--"

Terry stopped. A calloused fist, with strong muscle and Irish temper to

speed it, shot out.

"Curtain!" called the manager, wildly. The audience, though somewhat

surprised, accepted this performance as a ridiculous climatic ending

to one of the "stunts," and gave a vigorous applause. But Terry heeded

neither applause nor curtain. He was demonstrating to these unmannerly

show men, that though they might refuse to sing with a bar-tender,

they could not refuse to accept from one a lesson in pugilism.

Terry paused to take a long breath. He glared at the men, one of whom

was holding a handkerchief to a rapidly swelling eye, another of whom

was hugging an aching side. Terry had done his work quickly. The

manager hastened up to interfere.

"They might a' told me so afore. It isn't me as they need be makin'

a fool of. I'm made as good as them, even if it do be a truth that I

sell the beer they drink," Terry said, dazed. He picked up the battered

opera hat which had been part of his costume and started towards the

door.

"My dear Mr. Flynn, I will adjust this little misunderstanding. I

assure you, it shall not occur again."

Terry turned. "Why," he laughed strangely, as he picked a bit of lint

from his sleeve. "Aren't ye knowin'? I'd be ashamed t' sing, with

such dum poor excuses fer men," he replied, and made his way down

the rickety stairway, to the street, not stopping even to remove the

grease-paint.

"It's them as might a been men, and told me," he sobbed as he walked

slowly back again to dirty, ill-lighted Front street, to don again his

white apron; to pass the amber-colored foamy liquid over the bar; to

sing "Nancy Lee" in Tim Dugan's Café; to sing for the rough men who

would deem it a sacrilege to lift their harsh voices with Terry's sweet

plaintive tones.

--Dorothea G. Knoblock.

=Nora Titay and Chiquito=

Nora Titay, a widow of fifty, came home from the gambling house one

afternoon in bad humor. Her hair hung carelessly over her wrinkled

face, which always looked as if it had been dipped in a barrel of

flour. As she walked along the street, she spat and muttered, with her

mouth full of _buyo_, "Pshe, this cursed _panguingue_ will ruin me. I

had bad luck this week. Yesterday I lost ten pesos, and now twelve. I

haven't a single penny left. I wonder where Rosa and I will get the

money to buy our food. I have sold her ring to pay my debts. To-morrow,

there will be another game. I shall play again to see if I can recover

what I have lost. But where shall I get money? Oh, I see! Chiquito is

coming to-night to court Rosa. He is very rich, and is willing to give

anything he has if he can only win my daughter's love. But foolish

girl! She does not like him, because he is a Chinaman. She prefers

to love that poor, simple student, Pedro. I will force her to marry

Chiquito; then I can play panguingue at any time. I shall soon be rich."

"Rosa," said Titay as soon as she arrived at the house, "you must look

well to-night, for Chiquito is coming. You must not show any sour face

to him. I want you to marry him whether you like to or no. Do you

understand me? Now, don't say anything or I will whip you," said Titay,

seriously. "Why don't you marry him yourself, mamma? You will be a

good partner for him since you love him better than I do," said Rosa

laughing. "What, you foolish girl! Do you mean to joke me, your mother?

I am looking out for your good," said Titay angrily, then slapped and

pinched her daughter. They were still quarreling when Chiquito came.

"Buena noche, Nola Tetay y Senolita Losa," said Chiquito in his poor

Spanish, when he came.

"Buenas noches, Chiquito," replied Titay with a smile. "Here is

a basket of oranges and _tikoy_ for you and Senolita Losa," said

Chiquito, while he was uncovering the basket. "What a very good

son-in-law, I have!" murmured Titay. "Chiquito, to-morrow afternoon

you must come here ready to marry Rosa. Bring a priest with you, and

get a wedding dress for her. But, by the way, lend me a sum of money,

for I must buy something." Chiquito was so glad that he immediately

handed to her his purse. "What kind of dress shall I bring, mother?"

asked Chiquito eagerly. "You must ask Rosa about that," murmured Titay.

Chiquito went to Rosa, who was looking out of the window, absorbed in

thought. "Senolita Losa, what kind of dress should you like for our

wedding?" asked Chiquito politely. "_Baboy!_ (swine) what wedding do

you mean? Do you think I would marry you, _baboy_?" said Rosa, angrily.

"Your mother told me that I must come here to-morrow afternoon, and

you and I should be married," said Chiquito. "You had better marry

mother. She is more fit for you. Now, go away." Nora Titay was so

busily counting her money and thinking how many times she could play

panguingue with it that she did not hear the quarrel. "Nola Tetay, Losa

is angry with me. She does not want to marry me," said Chiquito.

"Never mind, you can go home now, Chiquito, and be ready for to-morrow.

I will see that she accepts the proposal," said Titay. Chiquito went

home gladly, and Titay got busy compelling Rosa to marry Chiquito,

till the daughter was forced to make a promise.

The next day, at the appointed hour, Chiquito came with a priest. But

Rosa could not be found in the house. A letter was found instead saying

that Rosa had eloped with Pedro. Chiquito, disliking to lose his money,

asked for Titay's hand. They were married that very day.

--Joaquina E. Tirona.

III. The Story That Emphasizes Character and Events

[Difference between character-place story and character-events story]

Obviously the character-events story is different from the

character-place story just in the emphasis and because of it. The

personality of the chief actor of a story of events, does not

necessarily spring from the scene of action. In fact, the personality

very often is in strong contrast with the place. A soldier for instance

by some chance may be left stranded on an oasis in the desert; the

purpose of the writer in having him there may be to set forth a number

of strange occurrences that bring out his character, or the author may

wish to demonstrate some truth about wild animals. A woman may be on

a Pullman car bringing her dying husband home with her from Denver to

New York. The author will then be concerned with an analysis of the

woman's mind as events come to her. A person may be standing at the

prisoner's dock and may tell his life. Place will concern the author a

great deal in a certain sense, but it will be not the character-making

place, but the event-making place,--the battle-ground, the cricket

field. If a different character met the same events in the same place,

he might act otherwise. It is the conjunction of character and events

that the author is revealing and the reader watching. Let us name over

a few of the great stories and collections of this kind to see if the

titles suggest anything: "The Necklace" by Maupassant; "The Father" by

Björnson; "The Siege of Berlin" by Daudet; "The Substitute" by Coppée;

"The Insurgent" by Halévy; "Mateo Falcone" by Mérimeé; "The Shot" by

Pushkin; "The Greater Inclination," "Crucial Instances," "The Descent

of Man, and Other Stories," by Mrs. Wharton.

[Component elements of this type]

We might say that the representative short-story of this type is

a combination of romanticism, realism, metaphysics, and modern

journalism. A concentrated extract of the work of Scott, Jane Austen,

Thackeray, George Eliot and Reade. The list suggests the history

of the novel since Fielding's day and the elements it acquired and

transmitted to the short-story. You have probably studied how Scott,

when Lord Byron out-ran him, turned from metrical to prose romance;

how Scott created with the "Waverley Novels" (which of course are

not novels in the usual sense) a new romance, the historical, which

immediately took its place as a permanent type of literature. On the

side of stirring events our present short-story often epitomises Scott.

He said himself he wrote for soldiers, sailors, and young people of

bold and daring dispositions. There is no limit, therefore, in choice

of events. The record may be the most startling. It usually, however,

is not extravagant beyond what a healthy and cheerful imagination can

enjoy. Our temperance is due no doubt to the restraining influence of

Jane Austen and her late followers in realism. She tried to teach her

own age to laugh at itself good-naturedly and to bridle romance with

common sense. "Northanger Abbey," written in 1798, was a direct satire

of the terror school, which was popular before her day and Scott's.

Moderns have enthroned Jane Austen as a perfect artist, and all good

fiction writers have learned the lesson she taught. In general, her

work belongs with the story that emphasizes manners and environment;

but her most popular novel, "Pride and Prejudice," has in addition to

the reflection of environment a sequence of interesting events and a

spiritedness that together make it an extended prototype of the story

that emphasizes both character and happenings. To Scott's boldness and

Jane Austen's satiric restraint, time added George Eliot's metaphysical

curiosity. Since her day we are all interested in duty, destiny,

freedom of will, mind-habit. She showed us how a neighborly man becomes

a miser, how a miser becomes once more a neighborly man; how a lovable

but morally and physically timid man becomes a scoundrel. Most of

our short stories now-a-days display an element of such analysis;

many of them are wholly constituted upon an inquiry; some, beginning

just in front of the crisis, give us a feeling of past complicating

events, and with one flash show us the present tangle; others with

a swift relentlessness pile happening upon happening until, panting

for breath, we stumble upon the momentous climax. Very often, too, at

the end, we are left in an atmosphere of pessimism--sometimes it is

only a companionable little chill like that Thackeray used to give us,

wherein, laughing and chattering, we shake hands with our brothers to

keep warm; sometimes, it is like Maupassant's, a hard, dull bitterness

of cold--

"A chill no coat however stout,

Of homespun stuff can quite shut out."

Wherever the pessimism comes from, almost invariably a little bit of it

joins swiftness, realism, metaphysical curiosity, and one other element

probably inherited from the novel; namely, a striking semblance of

actuality. No matter how thrilling the events may be, they are usually

convincing. Charles Reade had the trick of taking his facts from

newspaper reports. Many of our present-day writers keep a scrap-book,

and they very often build their most successful stories on actual

events, making up the participants from what they imagine they must

have been.

The characters, then, in this kind of narrative are often more or

less fictitious, being a combination of traits well-known to the

author--traits of different individuals of the type displayed; while

in the other kind of artistic short-story, it is the slight course of

events that is made up, to fit the actual character and the actual

place.

[A scrap-book suggestion]

Whatever else you do as a writer--even as an amateur one in school--it

will surely repay you to keep a scrap-book. The very old adage that

facts are stranger than fiction is indisputably true. When in your

newspaper reading you run across a fine course of events that is

character-revealing, or ought to be, just cut out the report and paste

it in your book. Think upon the case leisurely and let the personages

develop; then write up the events as simply and swiftly as you can

consistent with the effect you mean to produce. Hawthorne's "Ambitious

Guest" originated thus.

[Other suggestions]

If at present you have in mind no series of happenings, suppose you

ask some acquaintance what is the strangest course of actual events

he ever personally knew about. When he answers you, then question him

on the actors concerned, remembering that this time you are going to

write not a pure plot story but one that will express the conjunction

of character and events. Keep in mind also your present limitations.

You do not need to tell everything that might be told about your

protagonists; you do not have to follow them from the baptismal font

to the marriage altar and from the marriage altar to the grave. You

may not know the facts about them connected therewith; you may know

only a small portion of their lives; but ten to one you will know more

incidents than it is necessary to mention. What you do tell, however,

must be absolutely clear. The actual events may have been but a string

of episodes in real life, but when you relate them they must appear

like a full, round period. Look carefully after your connectives; on

them hangs largely the success of your story. It goes without saying

that you must have a climax, or highest point. Every sentence that you

write before it, even the first, must lead toward it; every sentence

that you write after it, even the last, must lead from it. You must

ruthlessly suppress any phrase that does not add strength to your

chosen scene. Be sure your story has totality.

=The Necklace=

She was one of those pretty, charming girls who are sometimes, as

if through the irony of fate, born into a family of clerks. She was

without dowry or expectations, and had no means of becoming known,

appreciated, loved, wedded, by any rich or influential man; so she

allowed herself to be married to a small clerk belonging to the

Ministry of Public Instruction. She dressed plainly because she

could not afford to dress well, and was unhappy because she felt she

had dropped from her proper station, which for women is a matter of

attractiveness, beauty, and grace, rather than of family descent. Good

manners, an intuitive knowledge of what is elegant, nimbleness of wit,

are the only requirements necessary to place a woman of the people on

an equality with one of the aristocracy.

She fretted constantly, feeling all things delicate and luxurious to

be her birthright. She suffered on account of the meagreness of her

surroundings, the bareness of the walls, the tarnished furniture, the

ugly curtains; deficiencies which would have left any other woman of

her class untouched, irritated and tormented her. The sight of the

little Breton peasant who did her humble housework engendered hopeless

regrets followed by fantastic dreams. She thought of a noiseless,

hallowed anteroom, with Oriental carpets, lighted with tall branching

candlesticks of bronze and of two big, knee-breeched footmen, drowsy

from the stove-heated air, dozing in great armchairs. She thought of

a long drawing-room hung with ancient brocade, of a beautiful cabinet

holding priceless curios, of an alluring, scented boudoir intended for

five o'clock chats with intimates, with men famous and courted, and

whose acquaintance is longed for by all women.

When she sat down to dinner, at the round table spread with a cloth

three days old, opposite her husband, who uncovered the tureen, and

exclaimed with ecstasy, "Ah, I like a good stew! I know nothing to beat

this!" she thought of dainty dinners, of shining plate, of tapestry

which peopled the walls with human shapes, and with strange birds

flying among fairy trees. And then she thought of delicious viands

served in costly dishes, and of murmured gallantries which you listen

to with a comfortable smile while you are eating the rose-tinted flesh

of a trout or the wing of a quail.

She had no handsome gowns, no jewels--nothing, though these were her

whole life; it was these that meant existence to her. She would so have

liked to please, to be thought fascinating, to be envied, to be sought

out. She had a friend, a former schoolmate at the convent, who was very

rich, but whom she did not like to go to see any more because she would

come home jealous, covetous.

But one evening her husband returned home jubilant, holding a large

envelope in his hand.

"Here is something for you," he said.

She tore open the cover sharply, and drew out a printed card bearing

these words: "The Minister of Public Instruction and Mme. Georges

Ramponneau request the honor of M. and Mme. Loisel's company at the

palace of the Ministry on Monday evening, January 18th."

Instead of being delighted as her husband expected, she threw the

invitation on the table with disgust, muttering, "What do you think I

can do with that?"

"But, my dear, I thought you would be pleased. You never go anywhere,

and this is such a rare opportunity. I had hard work to get it. Every

one is wild to go; it is very select, and invitations to clerks are

scarce. The whole official world will be there."

She looked at him with a scornful eye, as she said petulantly, "And

what have I to put on my back?" He had not thought of that. He

stammered, "Why, the dress you wear to the theatre; it certainly looks

all right to me."

He stopped in despair, seeing his wife was crying. Two big tears rolled

down from the corners of her eyes to the corners of her mouth.

"What's the matter? What's the matter?" he faltered.

With great effort she controlled herself, and replied coldly, while she

dried her wet cheeks:

"Nothing, except that I have no dress, and for that reason, cannot go

to the ball. Give your invitation to some fellow-clerk whose wife is

better provided than I am."

He was dumfounded, but replied:

"Come, Mathilde, let us see now--how much would a suitable dress cost;

one you could wear at other times--something quite simple?"

She pondered several moments, calculating, and guessing too, how much

she could safely ask for without an instant refusal or bringing down

upon her head a volley of objections from her frugal husband.

At length she said hesitatingly, "I can't say exactly, but I think I

could do with four hundred francs."

He changed color because he was laying aside just that sum to buy a

gun and treat himself to a little shooting next summer on the plain of

Nanterre, with several friends, who went down there on Sundays to shoot

larks. Nevertheless, he said: "Very well, I will give you four hundred

francs. Get a pretty dress."

The day of the ball drew nearer, and Mme. Loisel seemed despondent,

nervous, upset, though her dress was all ready. One evening her husband

observed: "I say, what is the matter, Mathilde? You have been very

queer lately." And she replied, "It exasperates me not to have a single

ornament of any kind to put on. I shall look like a fright--I would

almost rather stay at home." He answered: "Why not wear flowers? They

are very fashionable at this time of the year. You can get a handful of

fine roses for ten francs."

But she was not to be persuaded. "No, it's so mortifying to look

poverty-stricken among women who are rich."

Then her husband exclaimed: "How slow you are! Go and see your friend,

Mme. Forestier, and ask her to lend you some jewels. You know her well

enough to do that."

She gave an exclamation of delight: "True! I never thought of that!"

Next day she went to her friend and poured out her woes. Mme. Forestier

went to a closet with a glass door, took out a large jewel box, brought

it back, opened it, and said to Mme. Loisel, "Here, take your choice,

my dear."

She looked at some bracelets, then at a pearl necklace, and then at a

Venetian cross curiously wrought of gold and precious stones. She tried

on the ornaments before the mirror, hesitated, was loath to take them

off and return them. She kept inquiring, "Have you any more?"

"Certainly, look for yourself. I don't know what you want."

Suddenly Mathilde discovered, in a black satin box, a magnificent

necklace of diamonds, and her heart began to beat with excitement. With

trembling hands she took the necklace and fastened it round her neck

outside her dress, becoming lost in admiration of herself as she looked

in the glass. Tremulous with fear lest she be refused, she asked, "Will

you lend me this--only this?"

"Yes, of course I will."

Mathilde fell upon her friend's neck, kissed her passionately, and

rushed off with her treasure.

The day of the ball arrived.

Mme. Loisel was a great success. She was prettier than them all,

lovely, gracious, smiling, and wild with delight. All the men looked

at her, inquired her name, tried to be introduced; all the officials

of the Ministry wanted a waltz--even the minister himself noticed her.

She danced with abandon, with ecstacy, intoxicated with joy, forgetting

everything in the triumph of her beauty, in the radiance of her

success, in a kind of mirage of bliss made up of all this worship, this

adulation, of all these stirring impulses, and of that realization of

perfect surrender, so sweet to the soul of woman.

She left about four in the morning.

Since midnight her husband had been sleeping in a little deserted

anteroom with three other men whose wives were enjoying themselves. He

threw over her shoulders the wraps he had brought, ordinary, everyday

garments, contrasting sorrily with her elegant ball dress. She felt

this, and wanted to get away so as not to be seen by the other women,

who were putting on costly furs.

Loisel detained her: "Wait a little; you will catch cold outside; I

will go and call a cab."

But she would not listen to him, and hurried downstairs. When they

reached the street they could not find a carriage, and they began to

look for one, shouting to the cabmen who were passing by. They went

down toward the river in desperation, shivering with cold. At last

they found on the quays one of those antiquated, all-night broughams,

which, in Paris, wait till after dark before venturing to display their

dilapidation. It took them to their door in the Rue des Martyrs, and

once more, wearily, they climbed the stairs.

Now all was over for her; as for him, he remembered that he must be at

the office at ten o'clock. She threw off her cloak before the glass,

that she might behold herself once more in all her magnificence.

Suddenly she uttered a cry of dismay--the necklace was gone!

Her husband, already half-undressed, called out, "Anything wrong?"

She turned wildly toward him: "I have--I have--I've lost Mme.

Forestier's necklace!"

He stood aghast: "Where? When? You haven't!"

They looked in the folds of her dress, in the folds of her cloak, in

her pocket, everywhere. They could not find it.

"Are you sure," he said, "that you had it on when you left the ball?"

"Yes; I felt it in the corridor of the palace."

"But if you had lost it in the street, we should have heard it fall. It

must be in the cab."

"No doubt. Did you take his number?"

"No. And didn't you notice it either?"

"No."

They looked at each other, terror-stricken. At last Loisel put on his

clothes.

"I shall go back on foot," he said, "over the whole route we came by,

to see if I can't find it."

He went out, and she sat waiting in her ball dress, too dazed to go to

bed, cold, crushed, lifeless, unable to think.

Her husband came back at seven o'clock. He had found nothing. He went

to Police Headquarters, to the newspaper office--where he advertised

a reward. He went to the cab companies--to every place, in fact, that

seemed at all hopeful.

She waited all day in the same awful state of mind at this terrible

misfortune.

Loisel returned at night with a wan, white face. He had found nothing.

"Write immediately to your friend," said he, "that you have broken the

clasp of her necklace, and that you have taken it to be mended. That

will give us time to turn about."

She wrote as he told her.

By the end of the week they had given up all hope. Loisel, who looked

five years older, said, "We must plan how we can replace the necklace."

The next day they took the black satin box to the jeweler whose name

was found inside. He referred to his books.

"You did not buy that necklace of me, Madame. I can only have supplied

the case."

They went from jeweler to jeweler, hunting for a necklace like the

lost one, trying to remember its appearance, heartsick with shame and

misery. Finally, in a shop at the Palais Royal, they found a string

of diamonds which looked to them just like the other. The price was

forty thousand francs, but they could have it for thirty-six thousand.

They begged the jeweler to keep it three days for them, and made an

agreement with him that he should buy it back for thirty-four thousand,

francs if they found the lost necklace before the last of February.

Loisel had inherited eighteen thousand francs from his father. He

could borrow the remainder. And he did borrow right and left, asking

a thousand francs from one, five hundred of another, five louis here,

three louis there. He gave notes, assumed heavy obligations, trafficked

with money-lenders at usurious rates, and, putting the rest of his

life in pawn, pledged his signature over and over again. Not knowing

how he was to make it all good, and terrified by the penalty yet to

come, by the dark destruction which hung over him, by the certainty of

incalculable deprivations of body and tortures of soul, he went to get

the new bauble, throwing down upon the jeweler's counter the thirty-six

thousand francs.

When Mme. Loisel returned the necklace, Mme. Forestier said to her

coldly: "Why did you not bring it back sooner? I might have wanted it."

She did not open the case--to the great relief of her friend.

Supposing she had! Would she have discovered the substitution, and what

would she have said? Would she not have accused Mme. Loisel of theft?

Mme. Loisel now knew what it was to be in want, but she showed sudden

and remarkable courage. That awful debt must be paid, and she would pay

it.

They sent away their servant, and moved up into a garret under the

roof. She began to find out what heavy housework and the fatiguing

drudgery of the kitchen meant. She washed the dishes, scraping the

greasy pots and pans with her rosy nails. She washed the dirty linen,

the shirts and dish-towels, which dried upon the line. She lugged

slops and refuse down to the street every morning, bringing back fresh

water, stopping on every landing, panting for breath. With her basket

on her arm, and dressed like a woman of the people, she haggled with

the fruiterer, the grocer, and the butcher, often insulted, but getting

every sou's worth that belonged to her. Each month notes had to be met,

others renewed, extensions of time procured. Her husband worked in the

evenings, straightening out tradesmen's accounts; he sat up late at

night, copying manuscripts at five sous a page.

And this they did for ten years.

At the end of that time they had paid up everything, everything--with

all the principal and the accumulated compound interest.

Mme. Loisel looked old now. She had become a domestic drudge, sinewy,

rough-skinned, coarse. With towsled hair, tucked-up skirts, and red

hands, she would talk loudly while mopping the floor with great

splashes of water. But sometimes, when alone, she sat near the window,

and she thought of that gay evening long ago, of the ball where she

had been so beautiful, so much admired. Supposing she had not lost

the necklace--what then? Who knows? Who knows? Life is so strange and

shifting. How exceedingly easy it is to be ruined or saved!

But one Sunday, going for a walk in the Champs Élysées to refresh

herself after her hard week's work, she accidentally came upon a

familiar-looking woman with a child. It was Mme. Forestier, still

young, still lovely, still charming.

Mme. Loisel became agitated. Should she speak to her? Of course. Now

that she had paid, she would tell her all about it. Why not? She went

up to her.

"How do you do, Jeanne?"

The other, astonished at the easy manner toward her assumed by a plain

housewife whom she did not recognize, said:

"But, Madame, you have made a mistake; I do not know you.

"Why, I am Mathilde Loisel!"

Her friend gave a start.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde," she cried, "how you have changed!"

"Yes; I have seen hard days since last I saw you; hard enough--and all

because of you."

"Of me? And why?"

"You remember the diamond necklace you loaned me to wear at the

Ministry ball?"

"Yes, I do. What of it?"

"Well, I lost it!"

"But you brought it back--explain yourself."

"I bought one just like it, and it took us ten years to pay for it. It

was not easy for us who had nothing, but it is all over now, and I am

glad."

Mme. Forestier stared.

"And you bought a necklace of diamonds to replace mine?"

"Yes; and you never knew the difference, they were so alike." And she

smiled with joyful pride at the success of it all.

Mme. Forestier, deeply moved, took both her hands.

"Oh, my poor Mathilde! My necklace was paste. It was worth only about

five hundred francs!"

--Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant.

"Little Masterpieces of Fiction." Volume V. (Doubleday, Page & Co.)

=Andong=

Andong was the only son of Isio, an _ex-gobernadorcillo_ (president)

of Tuao, Cagayan. At an early age Andong went to Manila to study;

but, unfortunately, his father died and the boy could not finish his

career, but returned to his native town to take care of his helpless

mother. Shortly after his arrival at Tuao, his mother died, and Andong

became a poor orphan. During his orphanage he lived miserably, but

worked hard in order to release himself from poverty. He cultivated,

year after year, his small piece of land, which he inherited from his

father. After ten years he had earned a considerable sum, and bought

twenty-five carabaos and one hundred hectares of land. He made a trip

to Ilocos Norte, and succeeded in getting several Ilocano families to

live and to work on his plantation.

One day, while he was working in his field, he received a message from

the gobernadorcillo, notifying him of his nomination as a _cabeza de

barangay_ (councilor), and Andong, instead of insulting the police,

as many had done, said, "Well, leave with me the letter, and I will

call on the gobernadorcillo this afternoon." When Andong had finished

his work in the field, he called at the gobernadorcillo's house, and

talked with him about his unexpected nomination. Andong said, "I have

no objection to serving my municipality, for it is the duty of every

citizen to serve his town government the best he can, and I am thankful

to the government for having nominated me as one of the _principales_;

but before I accept the office, I wish to see the tax list of my

district to know whether any of the people are in arrears, for I do not

want to lose my property, which I have earned by hard labor, to answer

for the debts of the people of my district, nor can I go to look for

them in other provinces, nor--"

"Whether you are willing, or not, you are forced to accept your

nomination," interrupted the gobernadorcillo, "and to-day your property

is hypothecated to pay the debts of your people to the government."

"But, sir, who has hypothecated my property? Is it possible that

anybody has the right to confiscate my property?"

"Surely," said the gobernadorcillo. "Some of the principales and I

have been informed that you own many hectares of land, and that you

are immensely rich, so the governor of our province has confirmed your

nomination as cabeza de barangay."

"I accept my nomination, but I do not want to answer for the debt of

the people under my command," said Andong.

"Whether you like it or not, you will be cabeza de barangay, and

be compelled to pay all the debts of your people," answered the

gobernadorcillo.

"Well, I will think about the matter first," replied Andong, and he

went to the house of Aning, an old ex-gobernadorcillo, to consult him.

The gobernadorcillo was not surprised at Andong's nomination, for he

was one of those principales who had recommended Andong to the council.

Aning advised Andong to accept the office. "A cabeza de barangay is

always respected and honored by the people," said the gobernadorcillo.

"He receives no salary, to be sure, but he gets gifts of eggs,

chickens, pigs, fruits, which when sold bring much money. Besides, when

he wants to build a house for himself, some of his people bring him

lumber, rattan, cogon, and other materials, while the others erect the

house without any pay." "But I do not like to molest my people, and

I hate to see them serve me as a master, for they are my brothers,"

answered Andong.

"Do you prefer then to die from hunger rather than to cheat your people

as your predecessors did?" asked Aning. "Yes, I prefer death, to

seeing my people oppressed," replied Andong. Disgusted at the servile

conversation of the ex-gobernadorcillo, Andong left him in vegetating

complacency, sitting on a bamboo chair with a fan in his hand.

Unwillingly Andong became a cabeza de barangay. During the first year

of his office he gave eighty pesos to the government to pay the debts

of his runaway people.

Now his wealth was decreasing, for his duties made him neglect his work

in the field. The fact that he was becoming poorer each day, led him

into despair. He remembered the advice of Aning; but he had no courage

to abuse his poor people. He could not deceive them, for to deceive

such people would be the same as stealing. But who would pay back the

money lost? This was the question which worried him many times.

To forget his painful situation he took to drinking _basi_ (Ilocano

wine which is extracted from the sugar cane), and became a drunkard.

He forgot entirely his old business, and in his intoxicated moments he

often exclaimed: "While I live, let me enjoy the fruit of my own toil

instead of paying it all over to the government."

On account of his drunkenness, he neglected to collect the taxes from

his people, and the deficit doubled the following year. At first nobody

wanted to lend him money to pay his debt to the government; for his

property was already hypothecated; but, at last a kind and rich officer

lent him the money he needed, at twenty per cent interest, and with

the condition that if he could not pay his debt within the period of

two-years, his property would be pledged for the second time in favor

of the creditor. Andong fell into a long meditation. He remembered once

more the advice of Aning, and he was revolving in his mind plans which

might release him from bankruptcy. Meanwhile, he decided to go to

Ittong, an ex-cabeza de barangay, to ask for advice.

Andong asked Ittong to work for his election to the office of

gobernadorcillo, in order that he might be saved from his critical

situation. But wise Ittong advised him not to seek such an office; for

it was worse than a cabeza de barangay: "The best thing for you to do

is to let the government confiscate your property, go to prison, and

then when you are released from jail, you can earn again your lost

property," he said.

"Your advice seems excellent to me," answered Andong, "but can't

they nominate me again as cabeza de barangay when I accumulate more

property?"

"Since you have not held the office during a period of ten years, they

can oblige you to accept the office again," said Ittong.

Andong, after a long pause, said to Ittong: "I want to be elected

gobernadorcillo so that I can save my property instead of going to

jail."