saw it first. Coming into town at a lope, in quest of cut plug, his
roving eye was arrested by the new announcement of Ah Sin. By
temperament and training Curly was unemotional, but, seeing Ah Sin's
handiwork, he pulled so suddenly on his spade bit that the cayuse
fell back on its haunches. For there, in the eyelids of the morning,
Ah Sin, seeking an everlasting sign, had flung forth a banner that
prevailed against the Jew. In black, bold letters a foot high, it
beckoned to the trade of Burning Bush:
STOP! LOOK! LISTEN!
THE ORIGINAL SIN
TEN PER CENT. FORGIVEN FOR CASH
Whereupon Curly Bob, swearing softly in admiration, blew himself to
tobacco for the whole outfit.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
BUSINESS AND ETHICS
By Redfield Ingalls
In the dingy office of A. Slivowitz & Co., manufacturers of dyes,
things were humming. Every clerk was bent over his desk, hard and
cheerfully at work, and there was a general air of bustle and
efficiency.
That was because A. Slivowitz stood in the doorway of his private
office looking on.
The portly head of the firm watched the scene complacently for a few
minutes. Then, catching the eye of his young but efficient private
secretary, he beckoned him with an air of mystery to the inner
sanctum.
The secretary, who was sharp of eye and alert of manner, rose at
once and followed, though it was not the custom of A. Slivowitz to
summon him thus. His employer sank ponderously into his swivel chair
and motioned to the secretary to shut the door and take a seat. Then
for a minute or so he was silent, playing with his massive gold
watch chain and studying the young man through puckered lids. But if
the secretary was perturbed he did not show it.
"Mr. Sloane," began Slivowitz, at length, in his heavy voice, "you
been with the firm now how long--six or five months, ain't it?"
"Nearly six," the dapper young man confirmed briskly.
"You're a smart feller, Mr. Sloane," his employer continued,
examining the huge diamond on his left hand. "Already you picked it
up a lot about dyeing. A fine dyer you should make. Now, Mr. Sloane,
I'm going to fire you."
The secretary's eyebrows went up a trifle, but otherwise he showed
no great perturbation. Perhaps a certain elephantine playfulness in
the big man's tone reassured him.
"By me business is good," Slivowitz went on, with a fat chuckle.
"I'm a business man, Mr. Sloane, first and last, and nobody don't
never put nothing over by me."
Knowing something of his employer's business methods, Sloane could
have amplified. What he said was: "Thanks to your royal purple, Mr.
Slivowitz. You've about cornered the trade."
"They can't none of 'em touch it, that purple; posi-tive-ly," agreed
the dyer, with much satisfaction. "But"--and he became
confidential--"between me and you strictly, this here now Domestic
Dye Works, they got it a mauve what gives me a pain."
He hitched his chair closer and laid a pudgy hand on Sloane's knee.
"I'm going to fire you," he repeated, with a wink. "I want you
should go by the Domestic Dye Works and get it a job. Find out about
the formula for their mauve--you understand me--and come back mit
it, and you get back your job and a hundred or seventy-five
dollars."
Sloane started. For a moment he stared at his employer, his face
going red and pale again; then he rose to his feet.
"Sorry, Mr. Slivowitz, but I can't consider it," he said.
"Oh, come now, Mr. Sloane!" protested the dyer, with a laugh,
leaning back in his chair. He produced a thick cigar and bit off the
end. "These here scruples does you credit, Mr. Sloane, but business
is business; and, take it from me, Mr. Sloane, you can't mix
business up mit ethics. Them things is all right, but you gotta skin
the other guy before he skins you first, ain't it?"
"That may be----" began the secretary, as he moved toward the
door.
"_May_ be? Ain't I just told you it _is_?" Slivowitz paused in the
act of striking a match to glare. "You needn't to be scared they'll
find it out where you come from and fire you, neither, Mr. Sloane,"
he added, more quietly and with a cunning expression. "I got brains,
I have. A little thing like recommends to a smart man like
_me_----" The match broke. He flung it into the cuspidor and
selected another.
Sloane paused with his hand on the doorknob. "Mr. Slivowitz----"
he began again.
"Of course," continued his employer, "I could make it--well, a
hundred fifteen, Mr. Sloane. But, believe me, not a cent more,
posi-_tive_-ly."
The secretary shook his head decidedly.
"What?" roared Slivowitz. "Y' mean to tell me y' ain't goin' to do
it? _All_ right; you're fired anyhow, you understand me." Then with
an evil glitter in his eyes, "And if you don't bring by me that
formula, you get fired from the Domestic Dye Works; _and you don't
get it no job nowheres else, too_! Now, you take your choice." This
time the match lighted successfully.
Sloane smiled. "Quite impossible," he said. "I was going to resign
in a day or two, anyway."
"Eh?" exclaimed the head of the firm, his jaw dropping and his
florid face paling a little. In the face of a number of
possibilities he forgot the match in his fingers.
"Yes. You see--you'll know it sooner or later--the Domestic Dye
Works sent me here to learn the formula for your royal purple."
And the door slammed shut behind A. Slivowitz's private secretary.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE
By Mary Woodbury Caswell
The short winter day of Alaska was brightening as Gertrude pushed
her chair back from the breakfast table and announced that she
proposed to go at once for her constitutional. Her brother placidly
assented, but Keith interposed with a worried look.
"Hadn't you better go with her, Bob? I suppose I've grown to be an
old granny, but since Jacques told us of that outlaw who threatened
to kidnap a white girl for his wife, I don't like to have Gertrude
get out of sight."
The girl bent over him caressingly.
"Don't worry, dear," she said. "Jacques had been drinking hard when
he told you of this mythical exile. Besides, I am no Helen of Troy
to be abducted for my beauty. I'd really much rather have Bob stay
with you."
And she kissed him, put on warm wraps, took her snowshoes and
started for the daily tramp that had kept her fit ever since she had
come up on the last boat, hastily summoned by a cable from Bob when
her fiancé had his shoulder crushed, and it would be impossible for
the young men to return to the States with their stake. She and Bob
had nursed him into convalescence, but it had been a hard winter for
him, and she did not wonder that he had developed some nervousness,
though she considered his fear for her wholly unnecessary, as,
indeed, did Bob.
When she was a half-mile from the cabin and a slight rise of ground
hid it from her, she saw a dog team approaching, and smiled,
thinking that Keith would surely consider that danger was near. As
it met her the driver touched his cap, and she had a swift
impression of a very different type than she had recently met, and
one that made Jacques's fantastic tale seem less absurd. As she
involuntarily glanced back she saw, and now with alarm, that the
stranger had turned and was coming toward her. He stopped the dogs
close to her and inquired courteously, and with a foreign accent:
"Can you tell me, mademoiselle, how near I am to some residence?"
"Our cabin is over the hill," she replied quietly, though with
growing terror, which was justified, as he sprang toward her,
swathing her in a blanket, so that she could neither speak nor
struggle, and placing her on the sled.
She could not have told whether it was hours or minutes before she
was lifted, carried into a cabin, and the blanket unfolded from her,
while a savage-looking husky dog growled a greeting. Her captor
shook off his heavy outer coat, removed his cap, and with
exaggerated deference said:
"Mademoiselle, pray remove your parka and permit that I relieve you
of your snowshoes. I do myself the honour, mademoiselle, to offer
you marriage."
Resolutely conquering her fear, Gertrude looked steadily at him. The
man evidently was, or had been, a gentleman; but what must his life
have been to bring him to this! As composedly as she could she
answered:
"I must decline your offer. Pray permit me to return home."
"Ah, no, mademoiselle. I fear I cannot allow that. As for
marriage--as you please, but in any case you must remain here."
"Not alive," she said.
"Ah, but, mademoiselle, how not?" he asked, in mockery of courtesy
more pronounced. "It is not so easy to die"--with a sudden bitter
sadness.
"There are many ways," she replied. "Here is one."
And, seizing a dog whip lying near, she struck the husky a sharp
blow and, as he furiously leaped to his feet, flung herself upon the
floor before him. He fastened his teeth in her arm as his master
grasped his throat, and the struggle shook the cabin. At last the
man broke the dog's hold and dragged him to the door. Gertrude's
heavy clothing had saved her arm from anything but a superficial
wound, but as he bound it up she said:
"The dog will not forget, and if he fails me I can find another
way."
His face, which had paled, flushed a dark red as he hastily spoke.
"For God's sake do not think--but why should you not? You are free,
mademoiselle. Such courage shows me I am not quite the brute I
fancied I had become, and also that there is one woman in the world
whose 'no' assuredly does not mean 'yes.' I will take you home at
once, on the faith of a Marovitch."
She stared at him incredulously and said slowly:
"Is it possible--are you Count Boris Marovitch?"
"Yes"--in deep wonder--"that is my name, but how could you know?"
"This letter should interest you," she said. "It is from Varinka. I
was at a convent school in Paris with her." And she watched him
excitedly as he read aloud the passage she indicated.
"Do you remember my telling you of my cousin Boris, who was sent
to Siberia for killing Prince ---- in a duel? It was supposed
that he was shot while trying to escape, but the guard has
confessed that he was bribed to assist him, and he may be living.
The Czar would gladly pardon him if he would return, his homicidal
tendencies being valuable in the present war crisis. And Olga has
steadfastly refused to marry any one else, so----"
A sharply drawn breath interrupted the reading, and the letter fell
to the floor from his shaking hands as he looked at her, his face
white and drawn.
"Mademoiselle, it is too much," he gasped. "Your courage--your
generosity--I insult you unforgivably and you give me back honour,
love, life--I cannot say----" And he sank into a chair and
covered his face with his hands.
She went over to him and laid her hand gently on his shoulder.
"I am glad you are happy, Count," she said, "and I am sure we shall
be very good friends. Please take me home now."
They met Bob halfway, striding along with an anxious face, his rifle
over his shoulder. "This is my brother, Mr. Stacey," said Gertrude.
"Bob, this is Count Marovitch, of whom Varinka wrote. He starts
to-morrow by dog train to the States on his way to Russia."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE OLD THINGS
By Jessie Anderson Chase
Like Sir Roger's neighbours peering over the hedge, I had daily
observed, over my stone wall, a very old gentleman in his shirt
sleeves, who pleasantly gave me the rôle of Spectator. A
New-Englander of the elder type, with the heavy bent head of the
thinker; but, particularly, with the piercing yet so kindly humorous
blue eye that loses none of its colour with age, but seems to grow
more vivid and vital with the same years that steal from the hair
its hue of life and from the walnut cheek its glowing red.
Such an eye, to a lawyer like myself, accustomed to look for a human
document in every human face, seemed the very epitome of eighty
years: a carefree boyhood among _contemporaries_--in house
furnishings, in barn and pigsty, orchard and gardens; a youth that
sees already a new generation in most of these companions of his
earthly pilgrimage; a middle age, forced out of the romantic sense
of companionship on the road, into the persistent and finally
triumphant view of using environment for ends of its own; and then
old age, free to return and lavish forgotten endearments upon the
"old things!" This or the other "landmark," dear, and familiar from
life's beginnings. These periods, all slipping unnoticed into their
successors, yet each possessing a distinct and tangible outline and
colour, had all had their turn at my neighbour's blue eyes. And the
look that comes only at the end, when the life has been prodigal of
response and of an unswerving fidelity in the storing up of
values--that was the look that I valued as a thing of price.
It was a day of late summer that brought me more directly face to
face with its beauty and gravity. The old gentleman appeared, in his
shirt sleeves, but with plenty of ceremony in his quiet demeanour,
at the door of my little "portable" law office, at the edge of the
orchard.
"I am told, sir," he began, "that you are an attorney at law."
I bowed, and offered him a chair but he continued standing.
"I have come," he said, "to request your services in drawing up my
last will and testament--that is," he serenely emended, "in case
your vacation time is subject to such interruption."
While I was formulating my assent he continued:
"You have no doubt, since coming into this rather communicative
neighbourhood, been informed that my son owns the homestead."
The kind, keen old eyes took on a look of what George Eliot names
"an enormous patience with the way of the world."
"Everything belongs to John and Mary. But there are one or two
little old things that they don't care about. They're up in the
lean-to. The old mirror that, as a lad, I used to see my face in
over my mother's shoulder, it's still holding for me the picture of
my mother smiling up at me. And the old ladder-back chair that she
used to sit in and cuddle me; and switch, me, too--and maybe that
took the most love of all. That's all. John and Mary don't want
them. They're only old things, like myself. It's natural, perfectly
natural. At their age I most probably felt just so."
He paused and looked through the lattice, where the reddened
vine-leaves were beginning to fall.
"The young leaf-buds pushing off the old leaves. It's nature."
Before sunset--for the old man was strangely impatient--I had his
"will" signed, witnessed, and sealed. The old mirror and chair were
to go to a wee, odd little old lady, called in the neighbourhood
"Miss Tabby" Titcomb because of her forty-odd cats, except for which
she lived alone.
"Little Ellen," _he_ called her, as he fondly spoke of their school
days together. "Mother would have been well content if we'd hit it
off together, Ellen and I. But a boy is as apt as not, when urged
one way, to fly off in another; and I was at the skittish age.
"I've never said this before to any man, sir, but I'd have been a
better husband to Ellen. Mary was a faithful wife, and better than I
deserved. But she was not just aware, like Ellen, of where to bear
on hard and where to go a little easy. That's what a man needs in a
woman, sir. Ellen always knew just when and where."
The next morning, which was Saturday, I was riding down Bare Hill
Road--as it chanced, right past Miss Tabby's--when my horse shied;
and that tiny old lady, with an enormous gray cat beside her, rose
up from behind the lilac bushes. Bigger people than "little Ellen"
have been frightened by Prince's antics, but she quietly put her
hand on his restive neck as if he were only a little larger kitten,
and then spoke to me in a soft little purr of a voice:
"I've heard--and you'll excuse me--that you're a lawyer, Mr.
Alden; and I've a small matter I don't wish to entrust to any one
here, being private. It's a letter for Mr. Thomas Sewall, to be
delivered upon my demise, which I feel is about to take place." She
spoke with a little note of relief, as if from some long strain.
I took the small envelope.
"It's just the cats," she was moved to confide further; "the little
ones and the smart ones will all find friends. But the two _old
ones_! Mr. Sewall has a notion for the old things. And"--here she
hesitated long, while I breathlessly assured her of my best care for
the letter--"there's--somewhat in the note _besides_ the cats,"
she brought out bravely. "You'll make sure it doesn't fall into John
and Mary's hands?"
This was Saturday morning. Sunday, as I listened absent-mindedly to
the slow toll of the meeting-house bell, my houskeeper remarked, on
bringing in my coffee:
"Did you notice, sir? It was eighty-six. There's an old man and an
old woman, both just the same age, in the village, died in the
night."
The old chair, upon which--when they were young together--the
little Tom had been spanked and comforted; and the mirror, still
treasuring the picture of the round, saucy phiz over his mother's
shoulder, were offered at auction and bid in for a trifle by me. I
would have paid gold sovereigns for them, but not into the hands of
John and Mary! The cats, likewise, sit by the hearth, on which was
burned to ashes the letter "not _entirely_" about their disposal.
And the "Old Things" that cherished these earthly companions? The
minister--himself a rare "old thing"--preached a funeral sermon
for the two so strangely united by death; and his thin voice, like
the tone of an old, cracked violin, still haunts me:
"Their youth is renewed like the eagle's.... And they shall run and
not be weary, they shall walk and not faint."
--------------------------------------------------------------------
THE FORCED MARCH
By Hornell Hart
Intermittently, when the snow ceased falling for a moment, Wojak
could see the regiments ahead, black against the white fields,
crawling interminably over the hilltop under the dull sky. Wojak was
a burly, bearded fellow. These winter days pleased him. He liked the
tingle that came with marching in the cold air. He liked the dull,
rhythmic "scruff" of the hundreds of feet as the regiment swung
along, welded by its months of marching into a living unity.
This was his own country they were marching through. His homestead
lay not twenty miles away, near this very road. As he trudged along
thoughts of Sophy and little Stephan kept slipping into his mind.
At the crest of the hill the regiment came to a halt. Back from the
road, half hidden in trees that were cut sharp and black against the
snow and the sky, stood the ruin of a house.
"Just so stands my house," thought Wojak. "Behind, among the trees,
should be the pigsty to the left, the stable to the right."
He turned and waded through the newly fallen snow toward the
dwelling. Charred beams at one end showed where a fire had been
checked by the snowfall. In the yard beneath the fluffy new snow the
old layer had evidently been tramped. Behind the house he found the
pigsty and the stable.
"But the stable is bigger than mine," he murmured.
He looked in. A pile of hay was in the corner, and on it lay some
rags. The stable was so dark that Wojak thought he saw a child lying
there. He went over to the corner. On the hay was a yellow head, the
round cheeks streaked with tears. The child was sleeping, but its
breath came in little sobs. With clumsy gentleness the soldier
picked the baby up.
"Stephan had curls like that," he whispered.
As he stepped out into the light the child awoke. A chubby arm
slipped about the burly neck, and the blue eyes looked at him with
the beginning of a smile. But in a moment the fact that this was not
father, but a strange man, came over the baby, and he began to sob,
not angrily, but with a worn anguish that gripped Wojak's heart.
The company was falling in after the halt when he came to the road.
The curly head lay close to his bearded face, and a great clumsy
hand protected the little body.
"Where did you get that, Wojak?" growled the lieutenant, staring
blankly at the sorrowful little bundle. "Leave the kid and fall in,"
he commanded. "There's no time for nonsense on this march."
Wojak started to protest, but the habit of obedience was too strong.
Sullenly he stood the baby in the snow and took his place in the
ranks. The child's sobs turned to a heartbroken wail.
"Forward, march!" commanded the officer, and the company moved away
down the road. Wojak looked back and saw the tiny arms stretched out
after him while snowflakes settled on the yellow head. Long after
the hilltop was hidden in swirling snow he seemed to see them and to
hear the wail of the orphaned baby.
* * * * *
The sun was setting when the army bivouacked four miles from Wojak's
farm. The orders were that no leaves of absence should be granted;
but he knew the sentinel on guard, and home was too near to be left
unseen for another four months.
The stars were glittering from an all but clear sky when he slipped
silently through the lines and started down the familiar roads
toward Sophy and Stephan. Four months was a terrible length of time.
The passage of armies had marked the country. The great tree by the
cottage of Ivanovicz had been shattered by a shell and had crashed
through the roof. Jablonowski's barns had been burned. The windows
of the church at the corners were shattered and a great hole had
been shot in the steeple. Wojak walked faster, and a twinge of
anxiety came over him as he entered the lane that led up to his
barnyard. His heart stopped: the thatch of the stable had been
burned and only the walls were standing. His eyes strained for a
glimpse of the house. It was not there. A few charred beams marked
the place where his home had stood.
He ran nearer. Snow had covered everything. Beside the place where
the door had been was a white mound with a stick standing in the
earth at its head. To the stick was nailed a little shoe. Wojak
seized it with shaking hands.
"Stephan!" he choked. "My little Stephan!"
After a while he looked up. Looming above him was a man on horseback
who had ridden up unheard through the muffling snow.
"You are under arrest," said the voice of the lieutenant.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
APPROXIMATING THE ULTIMATE WITH AUNT SARAH
By Charles Earl Gaymon
Aunt Sarah was sixty-three years old. Uncle John was sixty-four
years old.
If you spoke to Aunt Sarah about any new fringe on the tapestry of
the intellectual loom she would say:
"Oh, yes, we 'proximated that line of thought in 1893. It is near,
but not quite the ultimate."
If you spoke to Uncle John about Schopenhauer he would reply:
"I don't take much stock in them new-fangled cultivators."
Uncle John and Aunt Sarah had lived together in the old homestead
for thirty-eight years.
Aunt Sarah always had intellectual curiosity: she had left the old
Baptist church in her girlhood to join a joy cult; she had followed
with her mental telescope the scintillating trajectory of William
James's flight through the philosophic heavens of America; she had
known about eugenics long before the newspapers had made the subject
popular knowledge, and she had played in the musty, rickety garret
of occultism at a time when the most daring minds in science were
sitting tight in the seats of the scornful. But there was a shadow
in the sunlight of Aunt Sarah's mental advancement, an opaque spot
in the crystal of her mysticism, an unresolved seventh in the
harmony of her simple life in the Wisconsin backwoods--
She was married.
She was married to Uncle John!
At six o'clock in the evening of June 1, 1915, Aunt Sarah glanced up
from reading Bennett's "Folk Ways and Mores" as Uncle John entered
the kitchen door. Uncle John had just come from performing the
vespertime chores.
"Pa, we shall have to get a divorce!" said Aunt Sarah, shutting
Bennett with determination. "Marriage is a worn-out convention; it
is only one of the thousand foolish folk ways that hinder the
advancement of science among the masses."
"Very well, ma."
"We _will_ get a divorce."
"I quite agree, ma."
"Don't attempt logic with me, John. I said that we would get a
divorce."
Uncle John shook his head. "When will it be?" he asked.
"To-morrow."
Uncle John smiled, dropped his armful of kindling into the wood box
behind the kitchen range, and began to lay the Brobdingnagian
bandana handkerchief that served them for a tablecloth.
Aunt Sarah finished the preparation of the bacon and onions and set
the coffee pot back when it began to boil.
After supper Uncle John read the seed catalogue and Aunt Sarah
resumed her Bennett.