long while. May--may I--the Earl of Rigby, Miss Ogden."
The Earl of Rigby screwed his glass in again--it had fallen out when he
had shaken his son's hand--and stared at the young woman before him.
"Awfully glad to meet you, I'm sure," he said, affably. "I--I had
always understood that this country was an Eveless paradise. I'm glad
to see I'm mistaken."
Miss Lily Ogden surveyed the Earl of Rigby imperturbably. Not one of
the thrills which an hour before she would have supposed necessarily
attendant on an introduction to a noble earl now disturbed her
composure. Even his exaggeratedly polite compliment left her perfectly
cool. He simply seemed to her an extremely handsome man, a good deal
cleverer and stronger-looking than his son.
"This country wouldn't be a paradise at all without Miss Ogden," said
Nevin, gallantly. "She's the best horsewoman in Port Highwood and
she'll help St. John show you the country, my lord."
"Thanks, Captain Nevin." She smiled on him sweetly, showing the white,
even teeth between the scarlet lips, and then she turned to the Earl
of Rigby. "I shall be delighted to show you the country--specially as
Mr. St. John is obliged to go away in two or three days."
"I should like nothing better," said the earl, with conviction.
"Have to go on the round-up," murmured the Honorable Arthur.
"That's hard luck," said Nevin, sympathetically. "Two weeks, I suppose."
"Yes--father'll have to stop for a bit at the Highwood House. I fancy
he'll wish he were back in England!"
"Not if Miss Ogden will ride with me," observed the earl.
A curious light came into the girl's gray eyes.
"I could show your lordship a new trail every day for the two weeks,
and at the end of the time I am sure you could not decide which to
call the prettiest," she asserted.
"I dare say," assented the earl, eagerly; "but I would like to try."
"Oh, Miss Ogden will take good care of you," said Nevin. "And now, as
you have two guides, if you will excuse me, I think I won't go on into
Highwood. Your lordship's things will be sent over early in the
morning. His lordship was so anxious to see you, St. John, that we
couldn't even persuade him to mess with us to-night," he remarked,
jocularly, to the Honorable Arthur. "And now I will turn back, I
think. Good-bye!" He waved a gauntleted hand, and wheeling his horse
set off at an easy canter for the fort.
A somewhat awkward constraint fell upon the three so left, which Miss
Ogden dispelled by turning her horse toward Highwood, and riding on
slightly ahead of the Honorable Arthur and his father. The earl gazed
admiringly at her slim back.
"By gad, she's a beauty, Arthur, my deah boy, and she sits her horse
perfectly."
"She's an American," remarked the young man, aggressively.
"She's beautiful enough to be English," retorted the earl, warmly. He
spurred forward and rode at her right hand. The Honorable Arthur
rather sulkily closed up on the left.
"I was just saying to Arthur, Miss Ogden, that he could go on the
round-up and jolly welcome as long as you have promised to show me the
country. I am most deeply interested in our Canadian possessions, you
know," said the earl.
She shot him a glance from under the black lashes of her gray eyes
which made the Earl of Rigby fairly gasp.
"I shall try my best to keep your lordship from being bored while Mr.
St. John is away," she said, sweetly.
It was two weeks later, or to be perfectly exact, two weeks and four
days later, that a half-breed was sent down to the Morgan round-up,
twenty-five miles west of Calgary, with a telegram for St. John. The
Honorable Arthur was so dirty, tired, dusty, and sunburnt that the
half-breed had difficulty in picking him out from the rest of the
dirty, tired, dusty, and sunburnt round-up crew.
The sight of the telegram filled the young man with an indefinable
fear, and the paper fluttered in his trembling hand like a withered
leaf on a windshaken bough.
"Meet the 2:40 from Macleod at Calgary. Will be on train. Most
important.
RIGBY."
His swollen tongue and parched lips got drier, his cracked and tanned
skin paled as he read and reread the message. Suddenly a joyous thought
came to him. "The old boy's relented sure, and wants me to go back with
him," he told himself over and over. He thrust his few things into the
one portmanteau he had brought with him and made such good time going
the twenty-five miles into Calgary that he had been pacing up and down
the station platform for ten minutes when the train pulled in.
The Earl of Rigby, who had been hanging over the vestibule rail of the
observation car, swung himself lightly down and cordially grasped his
son's hand. The Honorable Arthur was struck afresh by the good looks
and youthfulness of his aristocratic father.
"By Jove, Arthur, I'm glad to see you got my telegram, and I'm glad
you got here in time. What? No, you won't need your portmanteau. The
truth is," he gave an infectious laugh, "the Countess of Rigby--she
was Miss Lily Ogden until last night, my deah boy--and I are on our
way to England, and we couldn't leave the country without seeing you
again. Won't you step into the coach and speak to her?"
FOOTNOTE:
[54] Copyright, 1905, by Charles Scribner's Sons.
GEORGE LEE BURTON
George Lee Burton, magazinest, was born at Danville, Kentucky, April
17, 1868. He was fitted at the Louisville Rugby School for the
University of Virginia, from which he was graduated, after which he
returned to Louisville, and studied law in the University of
Louisville. Upon his graduation from that institution he was admitted
to the bar, and he has since practiced his profession at Louisville
with success. Mr. Burton began to write some years ago, contributing
short-stories and sketches to the eastern periodicals. _The Century_
published his clever story, _As Seen By His Bride_; and _Ainslee's
Magazine_ printed his _The Training of the Groom_, _The Deferred
Proposal_, _Cupid's Impromptu_, and several other stories. His work
for _The Saturday Evening Post_, however, has been his most noteworthy
performance. For that great weekly he has written: _Getting a Start at
Sixty_ (published anonymously); _The Making of a Small Capitalist_, _A
Fresh Grip_, _A Rebuilt Life_, and _Tackling Matrimony_, the last of
which titles appeared in two parts in _The Post_ for November 23 and
November 30, 1912, was exceedingly well done. He has recently
re-written _Tackling Matrimony_, greatly developing the story-part,
and more than doubling its length, for the Harper's, who will issue it
in book form early in the spring of 1913. Mr. Burton is a bachelor who
has won wide reputation as a writer upon various phases of matrimonial
mixups. He also has a certain sympathy with those who waste their
youth in riotous living, but who win their true positions in the world
after all seems lost.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Burton to the Author; _Outing_
(May, 1900).
AFTER PRISON--HOME[55]
[From _A Rebuilt Life_ (_Saturday Evening Post_, March 23, 1912)]
"Well, sir, when I got out I was shipped back to my own town, or
rather the town from which I had been sent up. I was born five hundred
miles from there; but my people had died when I was young and I had
drifted in there when I was only sixteen years old--I guess that makes
it my town after all. Now, at thirty-five I was back there from the
pen and I stayed there.
"Maybe that was a mistake. I guess it was harder for me; but I had that
much fight left in me. I wanted to show people that there was still some
man in me, even if I had spent ten years in the pen that I deserved to
spend there. Besides, I wouldn't like to start off fresh in a new place
and build up a little, and just as I got to going have somebody from my
home town come along and tell everybody that respected me that I was a
murderer and an ex-convict and a lowdown sort of nobody.
"I believe after all I'd rather start in as I did, back where they
thought that about me to begin with, and build up fresh from that. I
wanted to live down the killing and those ten years--and I believe
I've sorter done it. It may sound foolish, but--though I don't excuse
all that, remember--I have got to sorter respect myself again, and I
tell you it feels good!
"They didn't have prison reform in that state then, with an employment
officer and a job all ready to help a poor devil start out again when
he got back to freedom. They gave me a suit of clothes and five
dollars and shipped me back to the town I came from, then turned me
loose as an ex-convict to hump for myself like the other "exes,"
branded by those years of living in there.
"It certainly seemed strange to see the place again. There had been
many changes in those years. I put up at one of these
twenty-five-cents-a-night men's hotels, and took fifteen-cent
meals--skipping one every day to make my five dollars last longer; and
I commenced looking for a job.
"There didn't seem any need of more help anywhere. I tried many of my
old acquaintances to see if I could get a place--I did not seem to
have any friends left! I found ten years in the pen seemed to wipe out
the claim of being even an acquaintance with most of them. They all
looked at me curiously, as if I was a different brand of man--a
cannibal, or Eskimo, or something.
"I'd rather they wouldn't have showed so plain they thought me
dangerous or worse; yet I'd have swallowed that if they had only given
me work. They didn't though; some of them weren't as cold with me as
others, but none of them had anything for me.
"Of course I tackled all sorts of strangers, too, for work; but
usually they didn't have any--and when they had they wanted
references. I couldn't blame them; I guess I had a sort of pasty face
and hangdog look.
"They had such a habit of asking: 'Where did you work last?'
"'I've been away a long time--have not worked here for several years,'
I would say.
"'Where did you work while you were away?' came next.
"'I worked at broom-making part of the time,' I got to answering.
"Then, like as not, the boss would look at me suspiciously and say:
'No, I don't believe I need you just now; if I do I will let you know.
Where do you live?"
"When I gave the number of the bum lodging house he would look as if
that settled it; he had known all along I wasn't any good. And I felt
so shamed and low down all the time I looked like he was right.
"Five dollars don't last very long, even with two meals a day. I got
work one day on a wrecker's force, tearing down an old building; but
the foreman drove his men hard and I wasn't used to real work anyway.
I couldn't stand up to it, and--I'm ashamed to tell it even now--I
fainted about four o'clock that afternoon.
"Another day I got a place with the gang working repairs on the
street-railroad tracks; but the man in charge said I was too slow and
not strong enough--had better get some different kind of work. As if I
hadn't tried everything I could! He didn't pay me for a full day
either--said I wasn't worth it; and the worst was that I knew he was
right. I was about at the end of my rope when my money gave out, and I
was looking so weak and shamefaced that I didn't stand any sort of a
chance. I got to feeling desperate.
"I remember that about this time I went in to answer an ad--'Man
wanted as porter in well-established wholesale drug house.' The head
of the place was a mild-mannered old man, who sat in the back office,
but who always looked over the new men before they were employed. He
began as usual:
"'Where did you work last?'
"'With the street-railroad gang,' I answered.
"'U-um! How long?'
"'One day,' I told him.
"'Ah!' he said, as if he had discovered something--'and before that?'
"'With a house-wrecking gang on Flint Street.'
"'Yes--how long there?'
"'Part of a day,' I said. 'I couldn't stand up to the work.'
"I thought he looked a little sympathetic then, but was not sure until
he sniffed and asked the next question in a hard, thin voice:
"'And where before that?'
"I hesitated a moment; he looked at me more closely and said in that
same tone:
"'Where?'
"I had been looked at and questioned so much that way and had got so
raw about it that now I almost shouted: 'In the penitentiary!'
"'Why, bless my soul!' the mild little man gasped. 'No, I don't need
you. Good day! Good day!'
"He looked so shocked and I felt so desperate that I could not help
adding, while I looked at him hard:
"'I was put in for manslaughter too--voluntary manslaughter!'
"There wasn't any clerk in the room at the time.
"Oh, oh, indeed!' he gulped out, rising and backing away, big-eyed and
trembly. He almost got to the back window before I turned and left.
"Maybe I didn't feel bitter and like 'what's the use--what's the use
of anything!' I don't know what would have happened--I guess I'd have
starved to death or worse--if it hadn't been for the hoboes'
hotel--Welcome Hall--'Headquarters for the Unemployed,' as it's
advertised.
"You don't know about the place? Well, sir, it's a dandy!--at least,
that's the way I think about it--and a good many others do too. The
worst of the hoboes won't go there if they can help it--they'd rather
bum a dime and get a bed for the night in one of those ten-cent places.
"This Welcome Hall is a sort of industrial kindling-splitting joint.
You blow in there and saw and split kindling for a bed and meals--you
give them six hours' work.
"You see, in that way you can live off six hours' work a day and have
some time left to look for a job. It's a good thing, and it's been a
moneymaker too; it's the only charity I know of that's not a charity
but a moneymaking concern. Of course people had to give it a place and
start it; but it more than pays expenses, and at the same time helps
to build up a man instead of making him a pauper or a deadbeat bum.
"I certainly was glad to find some place where I could at least earn
my lodging and meals. I rested up some there and was glad I could just
stay somewhere. Though I looked about for work a little, nearly every
day, I lived along there for three weeks on my six hours a day of
work--still out of a job. At last I guess my fighting blood got up
again, I determined I would get a job of some kind, even if it was
cleaning vaults. I decided no honest work was beneath me when it all
seemed so far above me as to be out of reach.
"'If I keep my eyes open and am not too choosy I must find something
to do,' I said to myself, and set out to look for it in earnest. It
was Saturday morning, I remember, for I thought of the next day being
Sunday, when I could not even hunt for work. I had walked a good way
and asked for work at a lot of places without getting anything to do,
when I saw an old negro man sweeping leaves off the sidewalk and
washing off the front steps of a plain two-story house with a bucket
of water and a cloth.
"'I may not be much account but I sure can do that,' I thought, and
asked him how much he got for it.
"'For dese here, boss, I gits ten cents; but when I wuks all de way
roun' to de back do' I gits some dinner th'owed in,' he said with a
grin.
"That wasn't so bad; and 'boss'!--how good that sounded! I went on
down the street feeling almost like a man again and not a down-and-out
ex-convict.
"About a square away I began to ask at every house if they didn't want
the leaves swept off and the front steps washed. Maybe I looked too
much like a tramp or too much above one with that 'boss' still ringing
in my ears--the first time I had been spoken to that way for more than
ten years! Anyway I got turned down at first.
"At the tenth place, however, a two-story-and-attic red brick, they
gave me a job. The woman asked me in a sharp voice, as if she were
defending herself from being overcharged:
"'How much?'
"'Ten cents,' I answered, as meekly as I could.
"She seemed to think that was reasonable; and after waiting a minute, as
if she wanted the work done and couldn't find any excuse for not letting
me do it, she handed me a bucket and mop and broom and set me at it.
"I finished the job in about an hour; and I tell you I enjoyed that
work! Beneath me? Why, it couldn't get beneath me--I was that low down
in mind and living and even hope. I was just about all in, you
understand; and I wasn't a plumb out-and-out fool.
"I have got that dime yet; see here," he said, holding out a brightly
polished dime surrounded by a narrow gold band, which he wore as a charm
on his watch-chain; "whenever I begin to feel ashamed of my work I look
at that and get thankful, and remember how proud and happy I felt when
that sharp-looking woman handed it to me. I had done a little extra work
in cleaning up the yard, and she said as she gave it to me:
"'That looks a whole lot better! You certainly earned that dime.'
"I wouldn't have spent that money if I had had to go without food for
two days! It seemed to put springs in my feet and I went down the
street hustling for another job of the same kind. I found it before
dinner; it was another ten cent job with twenty cents' worth of work;
but I sure was glad to get it.
"I felt that, so long as Welcome Hall was making money, I was earning
my way by those six hours of work a day, and I stayed on there for
some time longer."
FOOTNOTE:
[55] Copyright, 1912, by the Curtis Publishing Company.
JAMES TANDY ELLIS
James Tandy Ellis, "Shawn's" father, was born at Ghent, Kentucky, June
9, 1868. He spent his boyhood days in one of the most romantically
beautiful sections of Kentucky, on the Ohio river between Cincinnati and
Louisville. He was educated at Ghent College and the State College of
Kentucky at Lexington. Mr. Ellis has always been a great lover of Nature
and his leisure-hours are usually spent with dog and gun or in angling.
He engaged in newspaper work in Louisville and his character sketches
soon made him well-known throughout the State. His first book, _Poems by
Ellis_ (Louisville, Kentucky, 1898), contained some very clever verse.
_Sprigs o' Mint_ (New York, 1906), was an attractive little volume of
pastels in prose and verse. Mr. Ellis next issued three pamphlets:
_Peebles_ (Carrollton, Kentucky, 1908); _Awhile in the Mountains_
(Lexington, Kentucky, 1909); and _Kentucky Stories_ (Lexington, 1909).
His latest book, entitled _Shawn of Skarrow_ (Boston, 1911), is a
novelette of river life in northern Kentucky, and the simple, direct
manner of the little tale was found "refreshing" by the "jaded"
reviewers. Colonel Ellis is now assistant Adjutant-General of Kentucky,
and he resides at Frankfort, the capitol of the Commonwealth.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. Letters from Mr. Ellis to the Author; _Lexington
Leader_ (December 24, 1911).
YOUTHFUL LOVERS[56]
[From _Shawn of Skarrow_ (Boston, 1911)]
The winter had passed away. Shawn had been working hard in school, and
under the encouragement of Mrs. Alden, was making fair progress, but
Sunday afternoons found him in his rowboat, wandering about the stream
and generally pulling his boat out on the beach at Old Meadows, for
Lallite was there to greet him, and already they had told each other
of their love. What a dream of happiness, to wander together along the
pebbled beach, or through the upland woods, tell each other the little
incidents of their daily life, and to pledge eternal fidelity. Oh,
dearest days, when the rose of love first blooms in youthful hearts,
when lips breathe the tenderest promises, fraught with such transports
of delight; when each lingering word grows sweeter under the spell of
love-lit eyes. Oh, blissful elysium of love's young dream!
They stood together in the deepening twilight, when the sun's last
bars of gold were reflected in the stream.
"Oh, Shawn, it was a glad day when you first came with Doctor Hissong
to hunt."
"Yes," said Shawn, as he took her hand, "and it was a hunt where I
came upon unexpected game, but how could you ever feel any love for a
poor river-rat?"
"I don't know," said Lallite, "but maybe, it is that kind that some
girls want to fall in love with, especially if they have beautiful
teeth, and black eyes and hair, and can be unselfish enough to kill a
bag of game for two old men, and let them think they did the shooting."
"Lally, when they have love plays on the show-boats, they have all
sorts of quarrels and they lie and cuss and tear up things generally."
"Well, Shawn, there's all sorts of love, I suppose, but mine is not
the show-boat kind."
"Thank the Lord," said Shawn.
He drew out a little paste-board box. Nestling in a wad of cotton, was
the pearl given to him by Burney.
"Lally, this is the only thing I have ever owned in the way of jewelry,
and it's not much, but will you take it and wear it for my sake?"
"It will always be a perfect pearl to me," said the blushing girl.
FOOTNOTE:
[56] Copyright, 1911, by the C. M. Clark Company.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
George Horace Lorimer, editor and novelist, was born at Louisville,
Kentucky, October 6, 1868, the son of Dr. George C. Lorimer
(1838-1904), the distinguished Baptist clergyman and author, who held
pastorates at Harrodsburg (where he married a wife), Paducah, and
Louisville, but who won his widest reputation in Tremont Temple,
Boston. His son was educated at Colby College and at Yale. Since Saint
Patrick's Day of 1899, Mr. Lorimer has been editor-in-chief of _The
Saturday Evening Post_. He resides with his family at Wyncote,
Pennsylvania, but he may be more often found near the top of the
magnificent new building of the Curtis Publishing Company in
Independence Square. As an author Mr. Lorimer is known for his popular
_Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son_ (Boston, 1902), which
was one of the "six best sellers" for a long time. It was actually
translated into Japanese. Its sequel, _Old Gorgon Graham_ (New York,
1904), was more letters from the same to the same. The original of
_Old Gorgon Graham_ was none other than Philip Danforth Armour, the
Chicago packer, under whom Mr. Lorimer worked for several years. Both
of the books made a powerful appeal to men, but it is doubtful if many
women cared for either of them. _The False Gods_ (New York, 1906), is
a newspaper story in which "the false gods" are the faithless _flares_
which lead a "cub" reporter into many mixups, only to have everything
turn out happily in the end. Mr. Lorimer's latest story, _Jack
Spurlock--Prodigal_ (New York, 1908), an adventurous young fellow who
is expelled from Harvard, defies his father, and finds himself in the
maw of a cold and uncongenial world, is deliciously funny--for the
reader! All of Mr. Lorimer's books are full of the _Poor Richard_
brand of worldly-wise philosophy, which he is in the habit of "serving
up" weekly for the readers of _The Post_. That he is certainly an
editor of very great ability, and that he has exerted wide influence
in his field, no one will gainsay. The men who help him make his paper
call him "the greatest editor in America;" and he is undoubtedly the
highest salaried one in this country to-day. _The Post_, which was
nothing before he assumed control of it, is one of the foremost
weeklies in the English-reading world at the present time; and its
success is due to the longheadedness and hard common sense of its
editor, George Horace Lorimer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY. _The Critic_ (June, 1903); _The Bookman_ (October,
November, 1904); _Little Pilgrimages Among the Men Who Have
Written Famous Books_, by E. F. Harkins (Boston, 1903, Second
Series).
HIS SON'S SWEETHEART[57]
[From _Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son_ (Boston, 1902)]
NEW YORK, November 4, 189-.
_Dear Pierrepont_: Who is this Helen Heath, and what are your intentions
there? She knows a heap more about you than she ought to know if they're
not serious, and I know a heap less about her than I ought to know if
they are. Hadn't got out of sight of land before we'd become acquainted
somehow, and she's been treating me like a father clear across the
Atlantic. She's a mighty pretty girl, and a mighty nice girl, and a
mighty sensible girl--in fact she's so exactly the sort of girl I'd like
to see you marry that I'm afraid there's nothing in it.
Of course, your salary isn't a large one yet, but you can buy a whole
lot of happiness with fifty dollars a week when you have the right
sort of a woman for your purchasing agent. And while I don't go much
on love in a cottage, love in a flat, with fifty a week as a starter,
is just about right, if the girl is just about right. If she isn't, it
doesn't make any special difference how you start out, you're going to
end up all wrong.