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Las diagrammes suivants illuatrant la mathodo. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MKaocorr >isoiution test chaut (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) _^ ^IPPLIED |[VHGE , ^S*^ 1653 Eoil Main Stmt 5*^ f'ochMtef. N«w Vort. 14609 USA r.^ (716) *82 - 0300 - Phone ^S (716) 288 -5989 -Fox THE VILLAGE ARTIST t 1 The Fillage Artist By ADELINE M. ThiKET A*th'.r ,f Iflurt ,tu i>,., M,f,^ r,r.a, Tt raise ilii gtmas, and h -ttsi^ ;C tu^'t, . 7« mtie maniinj in coauttti: >->;. ,.. !,^j Live i'er eeih sitnt, 7 tween the fence rails, a grasshopper was playing his sharp fiddle in the mulleins, a bobolink, in white coat and black vest, laughed for pure joy, it was such a nice day; and you' could hear the ring of an axe way off in the bush. The clover blos- soms were growing by the roadside, and now e- ,ry time you smell clover that picture comes up before your heart's eye jml as fresh as if it were not years and years old. Another scent puts you in mind of your wed- ding day, or the day and the place where your William, or John, or Simon proposed to you-perhaps kissed you for the first time. You'll remember you went around that day thinking all the world was yours ; the birds sang special songs for you,' and the flowers were never so largj i8 THE VI.IUGE JRT/ST and bright before. God hung His moon that evening just outside your bedroom window, and His stars sang to the music of your heart. And the scent of one little flower, per.iaps a sweetbrier or wild violet, brings the whole scene back. Then perhaps another scent re- minds you of your mother and the day you laid her away with a white rose in her folded hands in surs and certain' hope of the resurrection ; and you think of the golden streets and the gates of pearl, the harps and the palms, and you forget all the lone- someness and scarcity and bareness of this life, and feel that it is worth While to be immortal.' "The fagged look had left Mrs. Fitzpatriek's face, and she was look- ing real interested. MRS. SIM ON SLADE ,9 Then we are treated to e uoncert from daylight until dark,' I says, 'a concert you cannot hear at all, with the other noises, when you are in the city. For a soprano, I never heard one that could take higher notes than Cricket; and for a bass, lower notes than Bumblebee. And then the crowd of musicians that comes in between these two. There's now and then a bird-song,' I says, ' that strikes the ear of your soul, and lifts you right up and away from all the toil and grind and disappointment of life, and rests you-you never can tell how— and you go back to work again glad that you live. '"As fcr society,' I says, 'I don't know as I make out well what you mean. For myself, I don't get much time to be alone. There's the dog : ^OTHE VILLAGE ARTIST he follows round after me, sits down when I sit down and walks when I walk, and pays so much attention to me that I cannot well get out of pay- mg some attention to him.. Even a dog will have friends if he fhows himself friendly. And the ducks and the chickens gabble to me every time I go near them ; and although I do not understand their language, it does i;iot seem polite not to answer back. Then my canary in his cage ■ he'd feel hurt if I did not chirp at him a few times each day. I play with the children and neighbour a good deal.' "'Yes,' she said, 'you're a good neighbour, and you're a great artist too. You've brought out the local colours,' she says,_you remember I told you she used high-sounding ^RS. SIMON SLADE words-' in a way that I shall not soon forget. Mrs. Slade,' says she, 'you've painted the glory of tho commonplace.' " II MRS. SLIDE'S GARDEN w™ki 1 '.''■''''"""■W'' no blot for ns, T^fln^", ' " ""^"'' .'"tenwly. and me«nH good • To find ite meaning is my meat and drinlcT^ I HERE are days," said Mrs. Slade,"that the kingdom of God seems to come very nigh to man. Mar- coni must have felt it when he learned his great secret. And all the rest of them, discoverers and invent- ors, when they heard the whispers of electricity and steam, or learned how to put together a great machine. The secrets of nature are floating round us everywhere, and I haven't a doubt we'd hear more of them if MRS. SLIDE'S GARDEN 23 we were not addling our brains with something of less importance. It is given one person to hear one class of secrets, and to another a different claij." She was leaning her arms on the fence which separated our yards, and talking to me, a summer resident of the village. "Sometimes," she continued, let- ting her eyes follow the flight of a swallow, " I think it has been given me to paint pictures so as to show people the things that are 'rc-md them. Things they won't see unless some one takes God's great broad , picture and puts it in sections on a small canvas before their very eyes." She paused again, and I waited. " 'Seems as if I found out a good deal of the world when I began to H THE VILL AGE ARTIST work in this garden," she resumed, waving her hand out towards the small plot of ground which sur- rounded her home. " When Simon and I were married we came to live here in this house on the outskirts of the village. Just as soon as we were settled inside the house I saw that the yard was in bad shape, had been -so ever since the house was built. The clay that was thrown out when the cellar was dug had been left lying in heaps, and there it lay through the years. Of course it got trampled down some, and the grass had grown over it, and, just as grass will, like a beautiful cloak of charity it covered a multitude of ugliness, but still the yard was very uneven, full of great humps and hollows.' As I said, we were just new married, MRS. SLIDE'S GARDEN and Simon would have done any- thing any man cnuld do at that time to please me. Those of us who are most partial to them must admit that men get a little over those obliging ways as time goes on,— but he was very busv, and I hated to ask him to fill in those hollows. So I says to myself, ' When he's away from home between meal times I'll do it.' " I took a basket and a shovel and went off to where some earth was lying loose. I put as much as I could carry into the basket, and in this way began to fill up the un- evenness in the yard. I worked al- most a week before Simon noticed— men are not as sharp for noticing little things close by them as women — but he insisted when he learned my intentions on rising early every 26 THE VILLAGE ARTIST morning, and before breakfast with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, wnich he had borrowed from a neighbour, he was not long in getting enough clay to level the whole yard. '"Men are quite handy to have 'round at times; said Miss Finch, one of my neighbours when she saw how quickly the work had been done. She never bothered with a man, and always spoke slightingly of them. " Next I wanted grass seed to sot? the brown clay which did not look very well dotting the green grass, and as money was not any too plenty with us at that time, I cast about in my mind how I might get the grass seed at lowest cost. Just watching some pretty graceful pigeons flying in and out through a hayloft window put an idea into my head. ' I'll get MRS. SLADE'S GARDEN *7 neighbour White to let mo brush"^ the hayseed that will bo lying thick on the floor of that loft,' I says to that inner something we call myself; 'it being spring the hay wL. be nearly all eaten up by his horses.' " Well, I got the seed and sowed it, and in no time -although I'll confess I was watching it so hard it seemed a long time tliai~it came up as green and pretty as you please, creeping, creeping everywhere, as the poet says. " In the front corner of the yard at the right-hand side was an ugly heap of stones; not nice round stones, glistening as if they were full of all the precious jewels men- tioned in Revelations, but jagged slatey stones you couldn't imagine a beauty in. I wanted those stores 28 THE VILLAGE ARTIST moved away, but, as I said, I couldn't bear to ask Simon to move them. So it came to me, ' plant one of these little vines, that search out every nook and corner, beside the stone- pile,' and I went to the bush and got me a wild clematis. To make a long story short, the vine grew, and after awhile I would not have that stone- pile moved for a good slice off Car- negie's fortune— if Andrew had his money made at that time. Bits of the gray stone peeped out here, and stuck out a jagged point there, through the delicate green vines with their starry sprays of white blossoms, until one might think I had made a study to fix them just so. Who taught you, Mrs. Slade, how to arrange your rockery ? ' says Mrs. Murray to me— she's our fine MRS. SLyJ DE'S GARDEN 29 lady you know, and bp." f-.ui.ntains and ferneries, and ever tiling in hr: garden 'cept a stone-pi] v—one diy she stopped to admire my garden. " ' I didn't arrange it, Mrs. Mur- ray,' I says, ' I just planted the vines and let the rest happen.' "She laughed one of her little bubbling laughs, that always put me in mind of a warbling vireo, and says she, • You just let it occur.' "At the same time that I put a clematis at the stone-pile, I planted another at the left-hand front corner of the house ; and it grew to the roof falling in a shower of green leaves and white starry blossoms all sum- mer long. Then there was a stump almost at the very front door-step which affronted me. But its roots were in firm and there was no hope 30 THE VILLAGE ARTIST of moving it out of its place ; so I dug a hole down into the heart of it —its heart being softer than the heart of some folks I know— put in a little earth, and planted it full of cardinal flower. Even Simon, man and all as he is, noticed how well those red flowers looked in that gray stump. Of course it was a great care to ke^p it damp enough, for cardinal flower out in the wild generally grows near water; but to those who love, care is ajoy. "Then I went out to the fields and the woods, and got me meadow rhae and ferns, violets and trilliums, johnny-jump-ups and twin-floAvered honeysuckle, wild columbine and bluebell, Jack-in-the-pulpit and bouncing-Bet, sweetbrier and iris, and planted full every corner of my yard. ^m '':%*■! ''Ml MRS. SLADE S GARDEN 3' "I brought buttercups from the fields, and at the hack of the yard I planted them in a thick border, and behind them I planted a row of black-eyed Susan. They both flow- ered at the same time and had yel- low flowers, so I called that my sun- set corner. The buttercups flower all the season. "Simon laughed when I pJanted the buttercups and said they were nothing but weeds, but I says, ' ' call them miracles, coming up each year with no one planting and 'tending them but God.' And one time when 1 was shut in for weeks with my poor ailing eyes, I could see that bordor of cheery gold nodding and smiling to me there in that darkened room. -That picture,' I says to Simon, 'which I carry with me every- 32 THE VILLAGE ARTIST where I go, can neither be bought nor stolen.' " I have often wondered how many others have carried away from my garden a picture to hang in some corner, some hidden corner perhaps, on memory's wall, to turn out and look at on dark and gloomy days. It has made me think a great deal more of planting a garden than I once did. When I am planting a bed of violets, or primroses, or any- thing else beautiful, how do I know, when that bed is in full bloom, who is going to carry it away in his heart, to have and to hold as a pre- cious thing from thait time forth and forever more. For sometimes our moat valuable possessions, which no eye shall ever feast upon but our own inward eye, is something we if m grasp of a hand, or the glance of a eye or by son,e hidden sense we ca" |^3:therna.e .derstand. Piar >ng^.Whedisa..g,ou3.or^ " Then, it may have been imagina- -n. but I thought the wiidthS fae butterflies, bees, and birds, found T ""' '"''" ^-^en and crowded "•ere With their bright dresses and musical voices, and n,ade of n.y little ;™nt yard a grand banqueting pla I became acquainted with th!m a ' from the humming-bird th T ' to feeing , "^ ''™' tbat seemed to feel no need of rest or residence to *ne snail carrv.r.^ u- . ' back-an^f ^!^ ''^°"'^°°bis and h '"""^ ^^*^^- «-tb and heaven, to the brown toad on the ground watching for his fly hhv^v-'hp 34 THE VILLAGE ARTIST "Yes," said Mrs. Slade, smiling reminiscently, while she picked up her garden hoe preparatory to going into the house, " that was Simon's and my first year together, I don't know whether that had anything to do with making it one of the bright- est and happiest years of my life." Ill THE GARDEN'S MESSAGE Where b.os«,:„edth''?,»etStrrn„t,. LJKE to think of some good my gar- den has done be- sides pleasing my- ®**^^~and Simon " continued Mrs. Slade. (We frl 'l-ntlyhadneighbourlychats.some- t^'^eszn the sitting-room of one of ourhomes;sometimesi„ her garden «mes across the back w; I always think that my flowers Dohert; '^" '^'''''' '° ^"^« 35 36 THE VILLAGE ARTIST " Jule had come from somewhere, no one knew where, to take care of a wool depot in the village. It was thought she came from the country because she knew all about wool. Jule was good-looking, but with a hard white look in her face, which somehow made me shiver, and she was sullen, and silent, and cross. A whisper hqd followed Jule into the village that she was not what she ought to be ; when people told what they had heard about her they talked under their breath. When the girls of the village met her on the street they looked at her curiously, or else looked in another direction, and the boys — some of them — stared boldly at her. 'Twas said that Ben Leitb would wink at her if he could catch her eye (Ben was no better than he ^he'l'::,fr'^'"^'«'h« village ' poor young tl„„g «„! ^ teen— and soon niarlp .> alone X ''"^"^«'^*«''« left ^o:::an?mr^^^.^-- -^^'ownandlr^Vr" again. ^ ^° Set up 38 THE VlLLAiiE ART LSI tell,— this was before tlio evil whi.s- pers regarding her past life had come to the place. But Jule saw her com- ing, and slammed and bolted the door in her face. Another woman sent her little girl in with a few hot buns, just from the oven, as a sort of friendship offering ; but the child was crossly ordered to carry them home again. So in a very short time the village learned that there was no way of r£..ohing Jule's heart. "'She's a ban one,' said Mrs. Brady, ' or Ben Leith wouldn't be winkin' at her ! ' " ' She never darkens the door of a church or Sunday-school,' said Mrs. McTavish, ' and she's but a slip of a girl yet. It's terrible to see a young thing so hardened, and be- yond the reach o' gude. It does "o oaa — born deevils tr, u one 8 born to be damned.' of "Z*"'^ ^'" '^'" "^^^^ 'heir day handed that girl a tract last Sunday an' she rolled it into a ball an' firedTt' at/t?;"'^--- ^-p>e^- i away their day o' crano t f n " Ti, • , . fcrace, 1 tell you ' 40 THE I' ILL AGE yfRT/ST when her eyes fell on my garden. She was looking ut the sunset-corner where I had the buttercups planted. Her eyes got large for a moment, then they seemed to sink away, as though she were thinking hard about something. A queer shadow swept her face, and she hurried on past the house, the red ribbons of her hat flying out behind her like something real and alive was after her. " The next morning I saw her come again, stealing along this time, and looking all around her, as if to see whether any one was noticing her, and stand gazing at my yellow wild flowers. Before she left that morning I saw her wipe away a tear — or wipe her eyes anyway. " For three days she came just so, den near the yello. border, Z '^»-Jn,g on the ground she releed ngers. She shuddered when th P--oft thing. ,een.ed to i ,: ''«nd. Shedrewitnuicklvf ? if thev h..,} . 'luicicjy hack as mey had stung her irul ; -^;;;^eet3hea,Lt;rarr"^ a^alnaVLlrrr^^^-- hand through h™ ^^'^ ^^"''^^^d her ahandfu oftrur"'^^"^'^' selfthp, )„, ^^'^^ them to her- shook . „ ' "'■"'y^'^f! and Pieces 'V' " ' " '''^''^ '^ake to K-, T *"" °"* and cheer her ud a K'sa,s8i.on(hehadgoteur2:: 42 THE TILLAGE ARTIST I and was peeping through the shutter at her too), but I says, ' Let her cry a spell, crying will maybe do her good. Sometimes,' I says, ' I think God unseals our eyes by washing them with tears.' While we were talking she laid her face down in the grass, with the buttercups placed close to her cheek, and cried, and cried. Then she got up and went away. " That night as luck would have it (I always feel a twinge of con- science when I use that word luck), some cattle broke into my garden. Thf-y seemed to make straight for mj' border of buttercups, ate all the tops off" them, and trampled the plants down into the dust. My beautiful yellow border ! I could have cried! I saw what had hap- the shutters to see whether JuleT o-ng. Idre.ed,putonn.;s:n Oonnet and rushed out. There " «t-d gating at the desolate waste -hen Ju,eea.e along. UeeZt netf:rrr'^''^'^'*'^-^-nbon- ne , for I fe^ew she had come with- out turnmg around. I knew <,u mthout looking .then called out, cups Sh " "" "^ P°°^ ^"«- 7u ' '""'""^ t° forget herself a;i her old sullennessand'eros less «nd stepping through the gate, she "rTr'«-^-IwasstLdi'nr ■I says, almost crying whiln T »♦ ". w 44 THE yiLLAGE ARTIST " Jule seemed to feel sorry for me, for she spoke up, and says she, with a comforting sound in her voice, " 'Oh, they'll come up again ; the roots are there, and they'll grow again and be as nice as ever next summer.' " Then I says, straightening up and looking at her (I'll never know what made me say it), ' Isn't it beau- tiful the way God gives everything a chance to try again — a chance for another summer ? ' " Jule turned and looked at me, a quick frightened look, and says al- most under her breath : ' Everything but a woman.' " I had not thought of the whis- pers about her past life since she had come into my garden until I saw that look, and heard these words. -nd I acted as if J did not notice them and went on tallcing. '"ItseemsasifbythevervlittJp buttercups and growing things that when we're broken down and -P^ed on. and our lives areVa a mess of, just to start fresh and try 'tall over again. He'll keep on «v "ig us His smile anrf w ^ ^'"^ iust fl, H . "'" presence autre V '^^""^'"^^"gH- sun aud refreshing showers to them.' Italkedoninasortoframblin. way, smoothing anrf „ «• ^ Iiff;« ^' patting and hftmg some of the heads of my poor 1X1 ?^''^^^«°* *« -ting towards my flowers the same as if -trr '.^'^^' -^ — ^ 4 acLr'"''"^^^^""^^'- there's a chance for another summer,' when +6 THE VILLAGE ARTIST suddenly I looked up and saw that Jule was crying a little soft easy cry without any noise. " ' These buttercups are just like the ones that grow at home on the farm,' she sobbed. . . . ' They grow thick there in our fields. I often gathered them when out there walk- ing with Dad. Yours put me in mind of the old home and — him.' " ' And your ma,' I added. " ' She's dead,' says Jule. " ' I 'laven't seen Dad, and the farm und the buttercups for two years.' " ' You ought to run home and make them a visit,' I says, still not looking at her. " ' I'm not fit,' she gasped, ' not fit to go under Dad's roof. I'm his only child, and I disgraced him.' HE GARDEN'S MESSAGE 47 She was crying bitterly now, shaking all over, and I put my arm around her, and right then and there began to paint a picture. In the foreground, as artists would say (I boarded one a summer and learned how they talk), I put a poor old dad whose eyes were growing dimmer and dimmer with unshed tears look- ing at the buttercups and wondering where in the wide world his little girl was. Then I painted the still- ness and lonesomeness of the house when he'd come home at nights And how he'd think of his girl the last thing before he went to sleep, and the first thing ,vhen he'd wake in the mornings. He had for- gotten all the wrong she had done in the great hunger he had to see her. 48 THE VILLAGE ARTIST "Jule trembled all through her when I was touching my brush on that part. " How her vacant place at the table would be like a stab in his heart three times each day. "Then I painted the old dog around the farm looking lonesome too ; and the flower-garden and all the little singing birds that come back every Spring, with their neigh- bourly ways building their nests in the apple-trees and in the corners of the very porch. One pair of robins I made come back to the same old nest year after year. Then I put in the soft green fields, dotted here and there with buttercups and daisies, and the lambs gambolled and played out there ; the grave sedate cows with their big soft eyes, and the kind the picture she f^ ^^'^ ^^'^^ed ^ "'" sne says, ' i'^ „ ■ home ; I'll „.„,, , -^ ' ^ '^ going ^" start to-n,ght/' ishe went off on that » • h- star, and ;::i';;^;!°r°^^^ °fthebuttercup;rK7^'"^^P<'«3^ P^«t out of the ' "'"'^^' *° plants, Just to tep : "' ''™^- ^«sh inhern.- r^ ^ °^*^ ^a™ home. '""''^'^"°"^«he reached "I beh-eve," added Mrs SI.^ after remaining silpnf 7 ^'^^' ^"1 for a W ^"^ thought- ^or a few moments "tha* t 'aore real pleasure /^a* I got P-tureof'hn/r"^"P*h«t .^-Mhing,a„rthTti*'^^"^ '°gand waiting th''''"^^*«h- '"^' t*^^" any piece of 50 THE FILLAGE ARTIST work I ever did. I'm most ashamed to tell you how I acted on the road home from the station after seeing Jule off. I could have jumped for joy — I most believe I did — I was young then. With my head up in the air I walked along singing— that part of the village was then just like a country road — and if you'll believe me, a bit of a song bird struck up and helped me as if his heart too was bursting with joy. ' Little bird what do you know about the joy of helping any per- son ? ' I says — my heart was that full I wanted to talk out to everything — but the saucy fellow sang all the louder as if he really had a share in it. I stooped down and snatched up a handful of buttercups growing by the wayside and kissed them. I was al^o^ crazy with happiness that it h»d been given me to paint the pic- ture that was to work on poor June's heart, and send her home to ' Dad ' " IV THE NEIGHBOURS " The degenenio^ of art baa Mwaya been charac- terized bj a tnnnDg away from the iuviaible and a bowing down to the visible." UT Satan meddled with even the Gar- den of Eden, how could I expect he'd stay away from my garden 1 " continued Mrs. Slade, as if there had not been an interval of some days between her last talk and the present. " After awhile my two neighbours, the one on my right, and the one on my left (they're both dead and gone now, poor things), seemed to grow jealous of my gar- den. Barn J "t' ®'™"' ^'^'^«'' ^^'^ M"- Barney «he kne^v me from a little «;r and made free to call me 63! m, first name-a-wastin' most of h "- -kin. a p.,, „7 r r':: yard; fit her better to be in the hoi Patch.n-aquilt,orbraidin'adoo oelongs to a woman." "This hurt me some for IVe no h:dt;t"rr--^-cie: w:^d:irei;r-"-^- s>de whispered it 'round that I was Cr^;"^'--'-^«Wtheman oulV* r/"*«^^" -son that l' r j '^'"'^ «° «"ch time in the ^ -' -- -perl, to :; 54 THE FILL AGE ARTIST " This made me shed a few tears ; I kept in as long us I could, but one day I burst out and told it all to Simon and asked him if I was starv- ing him. First Simon laughed, and then when he saw the tears in my eyes he put his arm around me — we were young then— and he says- kind of joking-like : " ' Man ' does not live by bread alone. I never look at that garden of yours,' he says, ' without saying over to myself, " The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for Serena, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose." ' " I thought it wicked for Simon to wrest Scripture in that way, and I told him so. " But after that I laughed in my neighbours' faces ; what cared I for 'i^rn*. PJe-ed, This went on for a welk 'hen something seeniecl to say Jr^e' very soft and W, .p,i„/„;7;j ^oodpo.nt.of,ourtwoneigI,C' fairly gasped for breath. I fcnew hat was the very hardest kind of picture I could tackle, too hard I ^ut I could not get the idea out of 2°"nd,andthatverydayIgot mem my garden she says with »n important air: -^^ with an '"How can you waste your time Serena over flowers ?a-foolin'w"h 'hose wild flowers, 'she says ...you;' 56 THE VILLAGE ARTIST get poisoned with poison ivy, and Simon will have a doctor's bill to pay next,' she says. " I didn't try to answer her — 'twould mar my picture ; I just walked into the house and thought and thought about Mrs. Barney. I remembered that she had a heap of trouble ; she had told me about bury- ing her little baby, and that she never could bear to part with the little dresses. And she had told me that one time her man had typhoid fever, and she never had her clothes off nights for six weeks, sitting up giving him medicine and baths. And I knew, although she did not tell me, that sometimes he drank and acted ugly at home. While I sat there studying I seemed to see her as one of the sweetest, patientest crea- her sweeter and lovelier every --"te. I eould not n.ake Zll Wy exactly, or do n.ueh with the features of her face which were un T""'^ P^-. 30 I pai„ted\: having a beautiful soul. And if j "Then Simon came home to sun- iZ '"'"'^•""'^'"''^^ .""-"'S"'"? to .lop me. S8 THE VILLAGE ARTIST any one could see that at a glance ; her face and the features of it were well shaped, and I painted away until I made that pretty mouth of hers not so thin- lipped and down at the corners. I knew it was like that when she was happy. Her eyes were brown and big, and I painted alj the hard glassy look out of them and made them just as soft and mellow as when she was a girl talking to her best beau. Then I struck all the ugly sarcastic wrinkles out from her face, and took off the scowl between her eyes. Some wrinkles to my mind are pretty, laughing wrinkles at the sides of the mouth, and sweet, kind wrinkles around the eyes. I left them. Then her nose which had grown to a pretty considerable point, "°««' and I p,i„,3^ 2^ Greek ^- finished an;l:C;"^'-^"^Pic- with my mind'« , ^'"^ 't °ver ''e her neighbour i T ^'"^ *° -«P-forLl;er%""^'*'"« °°t make prominent r '^"^ blemishes, he iust n ''''*' ""^ ^bo".h tbe/::r:r;b-b,a3 -c^esfor^hepreu^t^r-^ ^--andiookt^ittrr-^^ ^'^--e ^herheLa^i:'^?:- 6o THE VILLAGE ARTIST didn't seem to make any difference, she still looked lovely to me. ' That toss of the head is only a wart,' I says, ' it isn't the real Mrs. Green.' " By the time I had finished my paintings I loved those two women so well I wanted to do something for them. I couldn't think of anything good enough scarcely until the thought flashed into my mind, ' Take them each a bunch of your flowers.' " With this I went out and picked a cluster of buttercups, soft little yellow things with green hearts in them, and in among them I mixed some of those starry sprays of wild clematis, and round the whole I put some of my very finest ferns, and you've no idea how feathery and elegant that bouquet looked. Then '.f^iTP^ -^ -ene over tTM^^'"^^^-' "^f ^ng my flowers ^"'"'^^^'^ '"They're to ni,f ;«^^«' Mrs. BarneJ^^^^ °" ^°"'- *«^- ^er Che of the hn '^•^''' landing r^-^-^e/hlXr^"^^' sweet-. You're Tl ''""'" ^"'^Jis '^^-««es there-ri^' ''^^ ^°^^'- are "Then r """'^^e.' ^-c^rrr^'^-^-ehto P^'-^^. «nd when T r'"""^ ''^ *h« ^°^«^«sheJooteVj> ?'^^^*he ^^ind of ,r i'^"^^«^asshot "^^■«P-. 'puts' t T ''""^ ^'^ « ™^ "1 ™,nd of the X^^t^K^'Ttf' 6a THE FILL AGE ARTIST flowers that grow in the bush to home.' I believe if I'd have stayed there three minutes longer Mrs. Green would have burst right out a-crying. " Well the upshot of it was, by the next spring Mrs. Barney and Mrs. Green wanted to fix up their front yards, and I was over helping them, turn about. "And when we got these yards done, it seemed as if the fever had grown on us to beautify everything, and we turned our attention out to the street in front of our homes. The vacant lot opposite us, where the widow McShane always pastured her cow— as long as there was any grass therfr-had an old rickety fence around it, and we three women, all armed with spades. m.'XMSMl I^iff^GffSOU^^ '^« -th here ? /"^^^^^^ '^«' old fence /' ^^^'« "^ong — cl ,,eh 1';. °^' ^^'^^ waa *^-"^h the vSai r' *'"^ «^^ '^"""^ "nsightr/"''"*- ^"°«« ^'«"«e W been h "^ '' ^^«^« a -^ years bete :?''''-" 3^-3 '^at sumjner Th > ^°^er-bed «o-er seed seeded' to f^ "^ ^^^"* ^««"Po^ amor 1 "^' '^^^ *he scattering seeds. 64 THE VILLAGE ARTIST Some seed fell by the wayside, and some on stony ground, and some fell among thorns, and other fell into good ground, but, unlike the seed of Scripture, they all grew and flourished. And that is how ours is the prettiest village in the Prov- ince." t *•»*<• new hone, T ' """"e'er the !»„. , pLL."saidMrs.SIade ""'^ day as we sat ''^g^therin her grape-vfne arbour Leith? ^"* P'^nt'ng up P n »>^"^%'^TaZtXr-*'^-a P'«e fo, ^,,. " ^''^«g« '« a great ^"-ng^^up reports^so J 3BL_ -^ 66 THE VILLAGF. ARTl&T made up n.y mind to see what I could do at painting him up so's he could respect himself. For I hold if one respects himself it doesn't matter so much whether other people re- spect him or not. " He had a pipe that he occasion- ally smoked, and 'twas said he soaked that white clay pipe in tobacco juice to make it look like he was an old smoker. He hung around the post- office every night until the lights were put out, and when that was closed you could generally find him with a number of other boys propped against a board fence which was decorated with huge circus posters. He could be found every Sunday night with the group of loungers who stood around the church door passing remarks on the congregation, ''PAINTING UP BEN LEITH" ^1 certain members of it, .is they came out— he sat in one of the back seats so he could get out of the church be- fore the others. He wore his hat on the back of his head, tipped over to- wards the left ear, and tried to look as hang-dog as a boy of his age well could; but somehow, 'way down, back in, I always saw something good about Ben. And I believe the poorest soul has a saving remnant in him, if we only look sharp enough to find it. "I watched for a chance, and one day I met Ben, and I says, • Why Ben Leith, how tall you're growing I getting to be quite a gentleman, eh ? Curious,' I says, 'how it comes natural to boys as they grow taller and handsomer, to act the man, and take on gentlemanlike ways.' 68 THE 1^ ILL AGE ARTIST " Ben looked foolish, bfp;aii to paw the ground with his big brown boot, and muttered, ' I guesa I ain't much on the gentleman.' " But I stopped him, and I says, 'Haven't I the sight of my eyes, Ben? Don't you think I know a gentleman when I see one, even if he is not much more than a boy? I can see the good look in even a boy's face the moment I set eyes on him, and there's no use in his denying it. If I see it I won't believe him before I believe the sight of my own eyes,' I says. "Ben laughed sheepishly, and twisted a button on his coat until I thought he'd have it off. But he got away from me as soon as he could. " This was all the painting I did ^PJ/UT/NG UP B £N LEITH" 69 that time, but his mother told me that Ben went home that evening and blacked his boots and conji.od his hair before he came to tho t-a- table. "Soon after that I weni. ^t, und one night and called on Ben', moth','- when I knew Ben was in the hcu.^e I had got interested in that pietuio and liked working on it. "Ben did not run away as he sometimes did before. I suspect the little painting I had done pleased him and he wanted to see me do more. "I talked on with his mother a spell, and before I left the house I says, turning to him, ' Ben I've a book I know you'd like well to read. Your brow is growing so large and high, I know brains are growing in 70 THE y ILL AGE ARTIST there. And good clear eyes gener- ally mean brains behind them too.' "Ben's eyes took on a new clear- ness. " ' It's a very interesting story,' I says. ' I thought when I was read- ing the book that you'd like it, and I'm just going to send it over to you. I like to lend books to people that can appreciate them.' "Ben shuffled in his seat, and said, ' I'm not much on readin'.' "But I says, 'Now, Ben, you're just underrating yourself. I know you have it in you ; don't be too modest to own to it.' "That night I sent him two of the most interesting story-books I could find, about boys, and great adventures with wild beasts and snakes. When he had read them '^ PAINTING UP B£N LEITH" 7, he brought them back, and asked whether I had any more of the same kind to lend. " ' Ben Leith,' I says, ' you seem to have the brains of the village ! I'll lend you more books, of course I will. It isn't every boy that cares for good reading.' "Then I lent him more, and he kept coming, and I kept lending. "It was said that when Jule Dohflrty was here in the village Ben would wink at her if he could catch her eye. But I wasn't sup- posed to read Ben's heart, or know the meaning of his winks, so I says, when he came to return the books I had lent him : "'I heard, Ben, that you were the only one in the village that paid any attention to poor lonesome 7» THE VILLAGE ARTIST Jule Doherty. The little girl has no mother,' I says ; ' and is only seven- teen, and any one that said a kind word to her or did a kind deed for her deserves praise. She's gone home now, and we may never see her pretty face again, but it was very nice in you if you were thoughtful away ahead of the rest of us. You kept up the credit of the village if you did that,' I .says, 'and put to shame the rest of us. I'm afraid a great many of us are priests and Levitt's,' I says, 'pass- ing by on the other side, hurrying after our own concerns, what we think important ; it's only here and there, one in a hundred perhaps, that's the good Samaritan, (jreat, isn't it, Ben, if you've been the good Samaritan of the village? ' MMIil 'PANTING UP BEN LEITH' 73 " Ben blushed a dull heavy red. "But I went on not noticing. ' Every little village and town has its few good people, and I like to think our village i.s not behind any of them in— sand. I've heard the boys use that word,' I says, ' and I suppose they mean pretty much the same by it as the Rible means by s^ll. I think it's Matthew,' I says, 'speaks about certain pt^ple l,eing the salt ot ihf earth.' "Ben 'loktd most as if he could sink into iJie ground, or cry. "Another •\',.nin.tr I hand.^4 him • nice lit'le !ov.-*t/,ry, .,nd I ggyg, 'This i« a J<,ve-«t/^y. Ben.' He act«d a,« if he did ,^/, k«/,w whether to take it „t not. ■ «f>me- whw« in this world, J ^y.«, ■ there'* a littk- girl ,T,ur<> ^oinjc ,^PPLIED IIVHGE In ^— '^ 1653 Eost Main Str«et S'.a HochesUr. New Yortc 14609 USA ■^= (716) *e2 - 0300 - Phon. ^K (^'C) 288 - S9S9 - Fa> 82 THE VILLAGE ARTIST pie, but they tell me that they are always set in pretty groves of trees, and made as inviting looking as pos- sible, and I did not calculate that our village church should remain any longer bare and unattractive looking — even to those who had never opened the eyes of their spirits to see its real beauty. " I planted in the shady corners great clumps of fern — dug them up myself in the bush, — maidenhair and adder's tongue, wood fern and chain fern. " Even the farmers of the congre- gation, who had been looking at ferns all their lives, said that they never saw their beauty until it was shown up against that old gray church. " Between us all (by this time sev- CHURCH PICTUR E GALLERY 8.^ eral other women were interested) we made our church look as pretty and inviting-looking as any heathen temple that ever was built. " But the inside of the church— we never dared to meddle with tlint. I suppose to strangers it looks very plain, with its square pews and high narrow pulpit, but to us it is richly decorated with memories. Some of the younger people proposed at one time to introduce modern furniture, to change the square pews and high narrow pulpit ; but we older people who could see with the heart's eye so many pictures in the old church could not bear to have an article changed. " There is the old pulpit in which have stood many preachers— (/ook And turned the well-worn leave, 'again. Not dearer to the scholm-. h^rt His tomes of vellum and of K„id Than thia which has Ijecome a part And paroel of the days of old. " NOTHER morning I found Mrs. Slade out in her garden v.ork- ing among her flow- ers. She seemed to know my never-flagging interest in her village sketches, and without any solicitation she began : " You must go 'round and see our schoolhouse; you'll not find a pret- 105 lo6 THE HLLAGE ARTIST tier in the Province. You see when the things we planted 'round the church began tu grow and make it look so beautiful, 1 thought of the poor old neglected schoolhouse where we all had gone carrying our ABC books in our hands, and I deter- mined to see what I could do for it. " ' You'll have to get the permission of the trustees before you can do anything,' Simon says. " There were three trustees. One, Adam Sykes, lived on a farm near the village, and I went to see him first. " I found Adam ploughing. The earth was rolling up over his plough- share rich and brown and sweef- smelling; the stubble-field yet un- touched spread out before him like a UTTLE RED SLHOOLHOUSE 107 great carpet dash,,d with yellow l-rown and purpk-. - You're taking the first steps towards spreading the table for a hungry world, Mr. Sykes,' I says, by way ,jf being agreeable. I knew he was a hard man to get alone with. ^ " But he said brusquely, ' I never think o' nothin- o' that sort; I'm ploughin' this field for the money I want to git out o' it. Mis. Slade.' " ' I see hundreds of hungry .,eo- plo.ifeeing f.d as a result of yo,v ploughing,' I says. " ' I see a dollar a bushel for wheat, an' that's all I see,' says he. " I then told him what I wanted to c'o with the old schoolhouse. Flowers and trees ! ' he almost yelled. 'It'll never do! They cost 'Money, and I reckon the people io8 THE FILL AGE ARTIST think they are payin' taxes 'nough a'ready ! ' " I told him it would not cost the people a cent. " Then he said the property be- longed to the township, and he reck- oned they did not want it cut up and mutilated. "The more I said the more he argued, and I left him and went to see the other trustee. " This man was as hard to reason with as the first — I often wfflnder when it is so easy to be agreeable why more men don't practice it. He said, ' My idee o' children goin' to school is to learn books, an' I don't b'lieve in them losin' time a-starin' at posies. They'll never make their livin' in that way. The teacher's business,' he says, ' is to make 'em ^'i-ii. m m LnTLE RED SCHOOLHOVSE ,09 keep their eyes on their g'ography an grammar, their readin' an' wntin' an' 'rithmetic' " Well, I saw I could do nothing with him, so I went to the third man, Jonathan Gooden. I left him last because he lived the farthest from the village. "Jonathan and I had gone to that same old school together, and had stood side by side in the same classes. We were almost boy and girl sweet- hearts in those old days, and if Simon had not come along a few years later dear knows where it would have ended. Don't bother your head, Serena ' says he kindly, when I made known to him my business, ' that old school- house ain't worth all that trouble Its an oM building now, as old as the --.• c.m'.ti THE VILUGE ARTIST village itself. You and I ain't ex- actly young any longer, an' we 'tended there when we were youngsters to- gether.' " ' That's just one reason I think it's worth bothering about,' I says, ' because it's old and full of recollec- tions, some that bring tears, and some that bring smiles. It seems to me decorating the home of these old rec- ollections is like planting flowers on the graves of those we think a lot of.' " He had been ploughing, too, but he threw the reins which had been around his body, over a stump and invited me to take a seat beside him on a log which lay on the ground. " The air had a tender feeling in it, like the very sky itself might at any moment weep sympathetic tears, a lone pine tree sobbed as though be- LITTLE RED SCHO QLHOUSE „, moaning its solitary condition, and a robin in its topmost branches chirped sharply and cheerfully, as if bound to see the bright side of life in spite of tears and sobs. I knew this was my time to brighten up some of the old pictures that hung around the schoolhouse, so I says : "'Many of them are dead and gone now, Jonathan, whom we used to know in that old schoolhouse.' '"That they be,' said Jonathan And many of our brightest ' -pes that were born there are dead an' gone too, Serena,' says he, scraping the ground with the toe of his boot. "I knew what he meant. Jona- than took it hard when Simon came around. He never married himself " ' Do you mind that old book,' he THE VILLAGE ARTIST iii says, 'out of which yoa used to try to explain the rules of grammar to me, Serena? You marked it, an' wrote in it, tryin' to knock 'em into Kv head. I don't understand the rules any better now than I did then, but I have that old inky thumb- marked book yet. Bring it down once in a while an' look at it, some- thing like one looks at the photo- graph of some one belongin' to you that's dead.' " ' Do you remember Jimmy Gray, Jonathan,' I says, to change to some- thing more cheerful, ' who used to sit on the front bench dangling his bare sunburn; legs that were too short to reach the floor ? ' '"Why, yes,' says he, heartily, ' that sandy complected freckled-face little chap with light hair. I mind mjtm^^ him well. Ha,hal He'd cry if you'd only make a face at him.' "'And turn as red as a boiled lobster if you'd praise him,' I says 'Jimmy as he grew older and began to read, you remember,' I says, 'he always could say off by heart all the little pieces of poetry in the school readers. You mind him reciting Ue Boy Stood on the Burning Deck, one Friday afternoon, and he kept saying It over and over to himself for a month after ? ' '"I mind it well,' he says, slap- Pmg his knee and laughing ' We called him Casy Biancy for a nick- name, you know, an' he grew mad an cried_he was a techy little chap-then the teacher got vind of It -ind m ,de us quit.' '"Jimmy is a great poet now,' nm 114 THE yiLLylGE ARTIST V' i< I says, ' has his books printed and read by the hundreds.' " ' Yes,' says he, looking thought- ful, ' it's worth while decorating that schoolhouse in honour of Jimmy himself.' " ' Then,' I says, ' behind him sat Evangeline Harris, who had made up her mind to be a school-teacher ; but poor Evangeline tried over and over again and never could pass an examination to get a teacher's certificate. The girl was nigh broken-hearted. Then she went and learned nursing at the hospital, and when she got through with that some wealthy woman took her off across the Atlantic to Roma, where she went to see the Coliseum. And I might say she took us all to see the Coliseum, for the.e was not a LITTLE REDJ CHOOLHOVSP. ,.5 man or won ,,n in ihTT^^^^^^^ did not with his or her mind's eye see It because Evangeline Harris had been there. My !' I says, ' if the seats ,n that old sehoolhouse could talk, could tell all the dreams that have been dreamed, and the castles that have been built by those who have sat on them, there'd be some- thing worth listening to.' "'That there would,' he says "Then I says, 'You mind that boy that no one knew who owned . hT ' T"^"^ "P' ^"" '•^'"^'"ber, as a htle baby on a door-step (sat on the iet of the sehoolhouse next the -all); his feet toed in, and his elbows flared, knees mostly patched; he IS now a Cabinet minister ' "'An'the fellow on the seat be- hmd him,' he says, 'also next the ii6 THE VILLAGE ARTIST wall, pockets always bulgin' with trash ; used to feed an old rat that stuck his head out through a hole in the floor with the crusts from the children's lunches ; always foolin' with some animal ; now he's charge o' the Zoo in the city.' " Both of us sat silent for some time gazing down the dim vista of the past. " ' There was Billy Bond,' he broke in at last. " ' That was the little chap who was always tossing back his head to get the hair out of his eyes,' I says, 'had a kind of cowlick that threw a lock down over his left eye ? ' " ' Yes,' he says, ' he wouldn't learn anything either ; made a mess o' spellin', was nowhere in g'ography or grammar, couldn't remember a LITTLE RED SCHOQLHOUS E ,,7 word of history, waa thrashed, kep' in, and called a blockhead. Then 'long came a man to the village who talked about grasses, an' flowers an' trees ; butterflies, and birds, an' bugs an' Billy took to that man like ' Highlander to his bag-pipes; went walkm- with him, an' talkin' with him; an' now that blockhead boy IS professor of natural history in the university. " ' An' Kate Bennett, pretty Kate whom Billy ,vanted to marry (Kate had no eyes for anybody after that chap o' hers died down there in Cape Town) went as a mis- sionary to Africa. I always thought a homely girl would do well 'nough to be et up by them cannibals.' " ^ '^^^'ok my head in disapproval, and Jonathan laughed. ■M.f 1 18 THE niLJGE ARTIST " We were both silent for awhile again, while the pine tree sobbed, and the robin sang, then I says, ' Amelia Brigden married a foreign looking chap and went off to live in New York. The husband has grown rich on stocks, and Amelia is a grand lady'now. Balls, and dinners and dresses, I reckon by what she says in her letters, takes up most of her time. She writes home about it, and boasts considerable to her broth- er's wife here in the village ; she says she's president of three or four fashionable woman's clubs, and is a society leader; those were her very words in the last letter.' " I heaved a little sigh, for I always wanted to do something worth while myself in the world. Jonathan must have heard the sigh, for says he: UTILE RED SCHO OLHOUSE ,,9 " ' It depends altogether what you are leadin' whether you have a right to feel proud o' bein' a lender. I don't know, 'cordin' to what I read in the newspapers, as I would be very vain o' leadin' some o' the capers o' these New Yorkers. You know,' he added, after a short pause, ' Melia was pretty scarce to home, in her young days, an' p'raps prosperity kind o' upsets her. Alwaya the way I hear.' " ' If wo want to know whore most of the old girls have gone,' I says 'we must look in the direction the boys have taken.' "Then we talked about the chap that whittled the desks, and after- wards became a carpenter and builder, and the one who pretended to faint when he wished to escape a m 120 THE FILLAIE ARTIST class. ' An' now he's one o' these liere cunnin' lawyers,' says Jonathan. And the boy who was always sailing a little boat, he had made with a jack-knife, on every puddle of water, and now he is sailing the high seas. " ' Some o' the boys,' said Jonathan proudly, ' have carved their names where generations yet unborn shall read 'em ! ' " ' One or two of them at least,' I says, ' have only succeeded in c ving their names on the backs of seats, and on the trunks of trees that grow in much frequented places.' " ' Three or four o' the boys fill drunkards' graves,' says Jonathan sadly, ' an' poor Joe Conners is in the penitentiary for forgery.' " He was very sad after this, for he and Joe had been chums — sat to- LITTLE RED SCHOOLHO VSK „, getherin the old «choolhou«e ; «, to cheer him up i suys, "'Will you ever forget the day that Zoo chai>_you know he was the mischief of the school-pretended he «at down on ^ pin. a„,i he suddenly when the schoolroom was unusually qu>et,gavea howl Ht to wake the dead and held up to the startled school-teacher a pin which he had bent with his fingers.' "'An' another day/ .ays he, laughing fit to roll off' the log 'he brought a mouse to school, and let •t go to run 'round the floor under the girls' seats. There was a chorus of smothered oh., and in the twin- kling of an eye CA-ery girl had her feet gathered upon her seat ; even the schoolma'am was holding her skirts up to her ankles. 122 THE TILLAGE ARTIST " ' Oh,' says he at last, gasping for breath, ' go on and decorate the old schoolhouse as grand as you please ; it's more worthy of it than any other place in the village ! I'll see to it,' he says, ' that the other two men are agreeable. They generally come in to my way of thinking in the end.' " ' Then,' I says, ' it will make it a pleasant place for the children that attend there now.' " ' Yes,' he says absently, ' I sup- pose it will ; but it's a monument to them old days / want to set placed there.' " ^ IX THE RICHEST MAN IN THE VILLAGE • We ..ever shall be blessed nntil «e know !,„» much n,„re we w.uttban we bave ever Igh?,. WAS standing in my neighbour's garden, when a man with iron-gray whiskers and hair, a very slight stoop of shoulders, and the general appearance of having reached genial middle life, came along the sidewalk. He looked in, spoke pleas- antly to my companion, and acted as If he might have stopped to chat if there had not been a stranger present. "That's our rich man," said Mrs. blade, as she busily grasped handfuls 123 124 THE VILLAGE ARTIST of weeds which the recent rains had developed. " Why," I said, " I thought that was the grocer that kept the shop down there at the corner. I did not dream he was rich." " Yes," she returned without lift- ing her eye's from her work, " he's very rich, the richest man in the village." I was pu-./sled, and this inscrutable woman allowed me to remain so for a few moments, then she began : " He was an only child and had intended to go to college and prepare himself for some profession, but just as he was ready for college his father, who kept the grocery then, hfid a stroke of paralysis, so the lad's plans were all changed. There was no help for it, he had to stay at home, mind the grocery, and support his father and mother. I reckon 'twas quite a bow to him at first, it is usually a blow to all of us-who are not giants mfaith-to have our plans knocked m the head ; but he soon recovered and set his whole mind towards gath- enng riches." " Dear, dear," I exclaimed, looking after him ard thinking of all the misers I had ever read about. "He seems quite humble in his grocery weighing out the tea and sugar counting the bars of soap." I added,' How did he make his wealth?" " Picked it up here and there every day, a little at a time." she returned You see when the young fellow had to step into his father's shoes in the grocery a lot of responsibility fell on his shoulders; and even in one 126 THE VILLAGE ARTIST short year he was ricli in experience — grocery experience. " Then there were the people hard to please; Mrs. McCready who thought the tea in his grocery had lost its flavour, and Mrs. Bailey who complained about the butter, and Mrs. Jones who said the soap and starch, of which he had bought a large stock, were no good. And there was Denis Moriscn, who came to the village to work on the canal, — they were dredging it here then — he ran a grocery bill for himself and nine of a family until pay-day, and ran himself away in the night-time without paying his grocery bill. And there was the other grocery in the village that failed, and the stock was sold off below cost, and the poor young fellow who was endeavouring ^--V«Sfli* to pay his debts one hundred cents to the dollar could sell scarcely any. thing for months. He grew white and thin and worn looking, but he had time through all tlio.se experi- ences to grow rich in patience. "Although the college doors were barred against him, he seemed de- termmed not to be shut out of everything, so he went around with his eyes and ears open. I often think myself that Nature with her great storehouse says to every one of us, Help yourself.' 'Take what you want. All I have is yours.' And I ve come to believe, after all these years of watching that all of us get pretty nearly what we want most. Now that man ^,..en he was a lad wanted to hmn thn.gs, and when he went for a walk Sundays-he had .Bfawi.iiirW^ui«&>w^ -^n * 128 THE riLLAGE ARTIST not time to go any other day — he saw the flowers and the plants, and the rocks. He hetvrd the birds and learned their different notes. Preachers may not agree with me, I don't know, but I believe all those children of the woods and of the fields were preaching great uplifting sermons to him, and that that Sun- day walk did the boy's soul s well as his body good. I've come to know that religious tracts and revi- val meetings with their stirring songs, earnest prayers and moving sermons, good and all as they are, aro not the only means of helping a man to keep his body under, or his spirit on top, whichever way you have a mind to put it. And I have thought that when we go on to where sermons are not required, per- \:\ Richest man av vill/ige 129 haps one of our chief delights will be looking from the God side at those simple, commonplace things, and seeing the whole of what they mean." Mrs. Slade weeded a few moments in silence, then she resumed : "The outcome of all the lad's studying was, that very soon there wasn't much that any one knew about those outdoor things that he didn't know. ' It's almost as good as goin' intil a college hall to go in- til that grocery,' said Mrs. McTavish (she's our smart woman— Scotch). If it's only a pound of sugar he is weighing you out, he'll tell you a lot about the sugar-cane, and, even when the thermometer is twenty be- low zero, you're off down South, walk- ing among its tall silky stalks, with li^ 130 THE TILLAGE JRTIST the soft southern breezes fanning your cheeks, and the mocking-bird mak- ing melody for your ears — and heart. And if it is a hot day in summer, thermometer up near ninety, and you've lost your relish for com- mon food, and run into his grocery for a little something appetizing, he, while he me'asures you out, perhaps a pint of maple syrup, will begin to talk of the maple sugar groves fur- ther north. And you see the great gray trunks of the trees, the spread- ing branches, the long dim aisles lead- ing everywhere. Spring stirs in your blood, you hear the wind in the trees, the call of the crow and the blue jay ; and before you know it your temperature has fallen several degrees. He has educated us all here in the village a pretty considerable. RICHEST MAN IN VILLAGE iji " Then, while he was still young, he and Dorothy Brown loved each other, any one with half an eye in her head could see that ; but how could he take a wife in there with his poor old ailing father and mother? After awhile Dorothy grew miffed because he did not speak up his mind, picked up with another man (love was not the eter- nal thing to her that it was to him), and her old lover looking on, pale and silent, grew rich in sorrow. It's not generally looked on in that way, but I've been long enough in this world to learn, that for fitting a man to live among his fellow beings, a brother to his kind, there isn't any- thing more valuable than riches of that sort. " In time he grew to know so much 132 THE VILLAGE ARTIST that it became the regular praetiec for the whole village to go lo him for advice on all sorts of subjects, from the selling of Widow McShane's pig to the casting of Jerry McClosky's vote. So he grew as rich as Croesus in power. " When he had gone through so much himself, so many trials, he had ■rympathy with others in trouble, time to listen to every one's story or complaint, so of course he grew rich in friends. The very dog rose to his feet and wagged his tail when he heard his footstep, the grocery cat went to meet him every morning and rubbed her sides against his legs, and even his delivery horse looked happy when he was the driver. " Then," said my informant, straightening up from her stoop- RICHEST MAN /N I^ILLAGE 133 ing position to look me full in the face, " from being interested in every man, woman, and child in the vil- lage, every walking, flying, creeping thing, every growing thing, even to the little dusty weed by the road- side, you can easily see, as the years went by, he grew rich in what the Bible sets the highest value on. So I haven't a doubt he's the richest man in the village." X OF ACTORS AND MUSIC " Very fast and mnootli wp fly, Spirits. thou,(li the tlenli Ik" by ; All lookH fewi not from the eye Nor all hmrJnfiCH from the ear : ^Ve cjyi hearken and espy Without either." ES," said Mrs. Slade reminiscently — as if she had been cogitating on the subject — the next time we were enjoying a tcte-a-tvk, " Mrs. Fitzpatrick had lived so long among the artificials off there in the city that it took her some time to come back to where she could enjoy the fresh and natural. Everything that she saw or heard, when she first came back, put her in mind of some- •34 OF M:T<)RS ASD music 135 thing she liad stun or heard on the stage. Slie raved about this actor and the other uctor, eallinf; them all by name as frocly as if they had been her own firist cousins. The most of them had curious foreign-sounding names I never could remember — if I had wanted to do so. She seemed to set great store by knowing them all — having seen each one act. ' Bern- hardt is divine,' she says, clasping those two white hands of hers to- gether, and letting her eyes roll back in her head. " I had in my life seen gleams of 'ivinity like flashes of lightning in human faces, but I never yet have seen the man or woman whom I dared to call divine ; but I said noth- ing, I wanted time, and our whole- some village life to work the cure. miiiiiuu ' 136 THE TILLAGE ARTIST " She went on to say that she doted on the drama, that the world and life were so tame she thought we required the stage to waken us up a bit. " ' Our village is a stage,' I says, ' and all the men and women are the actors and the actresses, even little children — the babies have their part to play,' I says, ' bringing in on the stage of life nearly all the unselfish love we've got.' " But she shook her head and said nothing but the tragedies of Shake- speare suited her. ' Think of his in- sight into the human heart,' she says, ' and the way he shows up hu- man passion.' " I answered her in the words of the poet, " ' Let Shakespeare write his tragedy, There is enough in life for me.' OF ACTORS AND MUSIC 137 " ' Nothing happens here to make even a ripple on life's surface,' she says; 'it is tragedy that stirs your blood, and you can't see that any- where to perfection but at the the- atre.' "'There's a tragedy being acted in many a bosom right around you,' I says; 'you're probably elbowing tragedy every time you get into a little village crowd. Dead hopes, slain joys, strangled ambitions, you're walking beside them day by day.' "Then she clasped her hands to- gether and says she, ' It is so thrill- ing to see remorse — Shakespeare's soul-harrowing remorse ! ' "Sandy McBain, the poor young chap whose appetite for strong drink had altogether mastered him, was 138 THE y ILL AGE ARTIST passing on the other side of the street just then, and I says, ' Look at that poor boy ; think of the tragedy that is going on on the stage of his soul every day of the year, every hour — perhaps every minute of the day ; a fight,' I saj-s, ' between Right and Wrong', and before the fight is through one of them is slain. And I haven't a doubt,' I says, ' if it is Right that's gone under, that, on his sobering up days, Remorse stalks iron-shod over the plain of his spirit. I can see it all any time I let my mind's eye run in that direction. " ' And there's So-and-So,' I says, mentioning the name of another young man here in the village (she knew all about the circumstances as well as myself), who has bitterly wronged two fellow beings — a woman OF ACTORS AND MUSIC 139 and a child. He has slain trust and innocence,' I says, ' and has put on the stage of the world a tragedy to which no human eye can see an end. And I can see his sin, in the middle of the pitchy night, standing before him in glaring scarlet, int: oducing him to Remorse ; who, after that in- troduction, must be his lifelong companion. " ' And the tragedy in the woman's soul,' I says, ' where all the sweetest things that belong there are lying stark in death, and the remorse that will dog her every footstep, any woman has only to sit still long enough to let herself see it all. " ' And the little tender baby,' I says, ' who can't see the tragedy of having to work out the plan of life without a background. f 140 THE VILLAGE ARTIST " ' There are the fathers and moth- ers dying by inches watching their children going astray,' I says, ' and the children breaking hearts over unworthy parents. There are the tragedies of the men und women who have made mistakes in their marriages — J have known them on both sides of the house right here in the village,' I says. ' Love has been ignored before marriage, or slain after it, and the future for them is a drear gray path which they mus., walk alone, as far as earthly com- panionship is concerned ; or \ orse still, with a ball and chain attached to them, .ind it's a pretty blind person who cannot see Remorse link- ing arms with them to accompany them to the end of the journey. " ' You'll have to shut your eyes,' c- .w»cr"P«. "■; OF ACTORS AND MUSIC 141 I says, ' or you'll see tragedy every- where. I reckon it was introduced unto the stage of the world by the first Adam, when he slew Purity in the Garden of Eden, and it will stay here until the Second Adam drives it off. "'If you're in the mood,' I says, ' you can hear tragedy in the howl of a dog, the lonesome meow of a cat, the cry of some of the wild birds ; for the whole creation,' I says, 'groaneth and travaileth in pain — according to Scripture.' " ' I must confess,' she interrupted, with a little laugh, and a shiver of her slim shoulders, — as if she had scarcely even heard what I had said — ' that I like to see blood-shed and ghost-walking.' " ' And there are the old wounds. 142 THE VILLAGE ARTIST thought to be healed, that bleed afresh if something touches them,' I says, continuing, ' and the ghosts of deeds done, and of deeds left undone that walk and haunt, oft in the stilly night. There are tragedies of love and murder (if murderous thought is murder) in most people's experiences — oh, no end of them ! There isn't one of us,' I says, ' but has our tragedies, and the better we are, and the better we try to become, the more we are conscious that the best in us — patience, long-suifering, love — is being worsted, disabled, and slain, many and many a time. There are not many days,' I says, ' that the archangel and the dragon do not have a struggle on the stage of the soul of every man and woman you ever met.' OF yfCTORS AND MUSIC 143 "She clasped her hands to her heart and gasped, ' Oh don't be too realistic ! ' " ' It's real life I'm showing you, not something prepared for an even- ing's entertainment,' I says, ' and like all real things it is more interesting to me than the counterfeit.' " Then she branched into music, and said she was starving for some good music ; that there was nothing really worth listening to but the great oratorios, such as The Creation, or the Messiah, which we had never heard here in the village, or some of the operas; nothing else had power to reach the soul, she said. " ' I can't agree with you there,' I says. ' Mrs. Green, my neighbor, lay a-dying, and although she was a be- liever, somehow her soul got all down- 144 THE VILLAGE ARTISr cast, ifnd she was full of fears at the thought of going into the great un- known world. We never could gather together a great choir of several hundred — you say that it takes that many to sing the Messiah — but Kirsty McAlister brought her accordion, and sat by her bedside, and with a little crack in her voice sang, Sun of My Sotd, and Mrs. Green's soul was lifted right out of the slough of despond, and she was quite willing to go on her appointed way. And,' I says, ' many and many a time some old saint, or a body of 'em, singing, Arise, My Soul, Arise, Shake Off Thy Guilty Fears, has given my own soul power to raise her wings from the dust of earth. When I was still young,' I says, ' I heard Granny Neilson quavering — OF ACTORS AND MUSIC |4S she always had that kind of a trem- ble in her vow— Arm Me With Jealous Care, as in Thy Sight to Live, and it has made me walk more circumspectly ever since. When the angels had a message of peace on earth, and good-will to men, on that first Christmas morn- ing, they did not come with it to the priests and scribes,' I says, 'or the learned and great men, but they brought it to the lowly shepherds ; so I have often thought that the angels had whispered some message to our village choir, when I sat there in the church and heard them sing, Tlic Shining Shore, or, " There's a land that is taitsr than day, And by faith we can see it afar." " ' There's something about those 146 THE VILLAGE ARTIST two hymns, words and music,' 1 says, * that seems to wash the dust and din of earth from souls — poor simple souls like ours of the village any- way. " 'frmn Greenland's Icy Mountains,' I says, ' sung by that thoir, with the spirit and the understanding, has drawn a big collection out of the pockets of a congregation not noted for their liberality — to anything foreign ; and I think a tune must have reached the soul before it could touch the pocket,' I says. " I suppose Mrs. Fitzpatrick had grown tired hearing about hymns, for she murmured something about light opera, and heavy opera. " ' I don't know about operas, of your sort, or their power to move the soul,' I says. ' I never to my knowl- OF JCTORS ^ND MUSIC M7 edge ever heard one, but the mouth organ, with tho soul of McClosky's boy behind it, phiying The Old Fullc.s at Howe, has just compelled me to put on my bonnet ami shawl and go off to see my old father and mother. Then,' I says, ' I'm not a dancer, haven't been brought up that way, but when Bill (Jilooly leans out there against the rain-barrel at the corner of the street, and plays Thr Girl I Left Behind Me on hisjew's- harp, I declare I do step faster around my garden, I know I do. And when my little musical clock strikes off Soldiers of The Queen, woman and all as I am, I feel as if I could shoulder a musket, and go out to fight the Zulus, or Soudanese, or any other turbulent man-eating tribe or people that needs to be quelled. 1+8 THE yiLUGE ARTIST "'Every summer,' I says, 'an Italian woman, wearing a little em- broidered shawl on her head instead of a hat or a bonnet, comes 'round through the village with a hand- organ, and plays, Homcy Sircct Home, and The Lust Roxe flf Simracr, and I'm not ashamed to own that they pull hard on my heart-strings every time I hear them, and set me off longing for something — more love, or beauty, or perfection of some sort, than I suppose this old world will ever grow to in my time.' " ' I presume,' suys Mrs. Fitz- patrick, looking like one in a dream, ' that you don't ever have even the Hallelujah Chorus here in the village.' " ' We have here in the village,' I says, ' our own peculiar choruses, oratorios, operas, to which the heart m WfitK OF ACTORS AND MVSIC "49 of the listener can give any name he or she chooses. " ' Some spring morning, when the first early blossoms ai)pcar, you wake to find the galleries of the fruit trees filled with millions of bees, all unit- ing in a chorus, as deserving of the name Hallelujah Chorus as any other, to my way of thinking,' I says. " ' I do not myself despise any of God's choristers,' I says ; ' at the first peep of dawn my old rooster hails the day with a cheerful salute; my neighbor's rooster responds, and in a few seconds a dozen roosters are sending in their responses. My in- terpretation of them is : " Throw off regrets ! " " Begin afresh ! " " An- other day!" "Another day!" I call this a village chorus, you could not hear it in the city, and on the S--»"¥' ISO THE VILLAGE ARTIST farm there are not enough of roosters to make a choir. " ' Then,' I says, ' the spring ora- torio of the frogs, if not ours ex- clusively, is not ever heard in the city. The operas oC the harvest bee, the katydid, and the grasshopper, we share with the farmer, but not with the city people. " ' There are times when it seems to me,' I says, ' that the whole world, and all the worlds around it are swinging to music. But of course I know that is when the harp of my spirit is strung to chord with tha tune and the time in which God is running His world.' " ^ I I XI THE LITTLE fVORLD OF THE POST-OFFICE " Sometimes from tliis simple world to look out We see, not Kreed and spite and evil all In that great world, where to the cynic's donbt Bn?, S„HH f '» '-""'I/"'' happy niay befall ; But .1 world tenderer far, and fair to see p„. ♦1;'?^.°' '.'"■f',»"'l sympathy so swert, tor that It IS in fabric such as we Made tip of the.^i uur little worlds, complete." HERE are worlds within worlds, and worlds within worlds, millions of them," said my en- tertainer, one day we were seated in her snug sitting-room, the rain hav- ing driven us in from her garden. " I often think p'rhaps the angels are looking at us from their distance, just as we look at the heavenly '5' 152 THE VILLAGE ARTIST bodies, and see us running our little courses, revolving 'round each other, and— sometimes," she added sadly, "here and there, one shooting off from his or her appointed way, like a falling* star. " Now here's our village post-office, it's a little world of its own, with tragedy and comedy (1 picked those two words up from Mrs. Fitzpatrick) enough, for those who have eyes to see and hearts to feel. "Did you notice that the front step is nearly worn through from the thousand feet that have pressed it ; fleet feet and feeble feet, all coming to that post-office in search of happi- ness,— or satisfaction for the moment at least. When I think of the writ- ten thoughts that have flitted out to thu world through that slot, and I THE LITTLE WORLD '53 flitted into the village through that wicket, and the Hutterings and sink- ings of heart, the smiles and the tears that these thoughts have pro- duced, the old post-office, with the foot-worn floor, and tlie yellow plas- ter falling off" its walls, becomes a shrine — a box in which sacred things are kept. " Regularly every Saturday night for years Mrs. Brown used to come to look for a letter from her son, Asa, who had gone off" to Manitoba. She came from the far side of the village, where there was no sidewalk, bat- tling often against wind and rain. When I shut my eyes and think about it, I can see that old woman standing there in the corner of the office where she could watch the sort- ing of the mail. She was all in a 154 THE VILLAGE ARTIST nervous shiver, seems as if she never could calm herself, or quiet the great throbs of her heart that made her body tremble. When the mail was all given out, and she knew without a doubt that there was no letter for her from her boy, she would draw her old gray shawl tighter around her thin shoulders, and creep out of the post-office, the wrinkles in her face deepening, and her poor back becoming more stooped. If I would do any preaching to boys at all, I would say, ' Don't forget to write to the old folks at home.' Probably that careless boy could have had a letter for her there every Saturday night just as well as not, and com- forted the poor old mother. "A fine contrast Squire Murray made when he received a letter from \% A\ THE LITTLE WORLD his young daughter, Kose, who was away at a girl's school. Rose used to write freely to her father, so her mother said, and tell him all her schoolgirl pranks. The Squire was very proper, and I verily believe if he had heard of any other girl doing all that Rose said she did, he would have thought it very foolish. But to get all these confidences in a letter from his own little Rose brought a pleased gleam into his eye, and he walked out of that post-office looking ten years younger for having read that giddy letter from a schoolgirl. "Sometimes I used to think that the httle office room was wrapped in an atmosphere of love, sometimes of gnef, and, perhaps, when there was any little bickering going on in the village, such as election times, when iS6 THE VILLAGE ARTIST the greft newspapers from the city were coming through, full of nasty speeches on each side, one about the other, and half of us here in the vil- lage favoured one party, and half the other it came near being an atmos- phere of hate — it was whispered that a package of election ' boodle ' (ugly word, isn't it?) came through that office once, but that's not for a woman to know. " Perhaps each one of us had an atmosphere of our own, and if we carried love, or grief, or hate into that little office we imagined the room was full of it. I am sure when Becky Thorn used to get the flirta- tious notes from the summer boarder that wore the white shoes, the room, to her — probably the whole world swam in a sea of silliness. And I M9^.m THE LIT TLE IVORLD ,57 haven't a doubt when old Abraham Simpson came to drop the letter in- structing the police of New York to send home the body of his only son, who had been shot in a (!runken row in that city, the little post-office was filled with an atmosphere of woe. " When Jimmy Gray received the letter telling him that his first poem was accepted by a publisher, he said that the floor of the office rose up, and the walls and windows danced. And when poor Kate Bennet read the letter containing the sad intelli- gence that her boy-lover had died of a fever out in South Africa, she said that the floor seemed to give away, and the whole building to reel and crash about her. "Women got their love letters— 158 THE VILLAGE ARTIST ii li for I hold that a letter is of small account to a woman that has not love of some sort in it — and men got their business letters through that old wicket. " There was Skinflint Carver (Skin- flint was a nickname of course, given him by the village) who was in the office every day watching for some one of his numerous business letters, or his daily newspaper. He owned a sawmill and a fast horse, and spec- ulated here, there and everywhere, playing sharp tricks. He was get- ting rich — in money. Poor Skin- flint, I believe it gave him more concern what the daily newspapers were printing about the state of the markets, than what the recording angel was writing down about him- self His eyes had grown glittering I THE LITTLE WORLD ,59 and hard, I always imagined that his whole body looked hard and I often found myself wondering— when younger than I am now— as I looked at him standing there in the post- office waiting for his mail, whether he would ring hard like a metal dollar if he were struck. "Farmers came once a week for their weekly newspaper, and the oc- casional letter that drifted their way. " It was on a drear day in autumn that I went into the post-office and found Hiram Jones, a young farmer, with a broad crape band around his hat, and three or four dozen envel- opes, with a deep black border, spread out on the ledge befor .im. He was putting a one-cent stamp on each envelope. I knew without being told that he was sending out the fl i I' ' i6o THE VILLAGE ARTIST notices of his father's death to all the (rid friends. He looked lone- some, and I went over and helped him lick the stamps and paste them on the envelopes. His brown large- featured face was softened by sorrow, but there were deeps in his eyes, and his mouth was shut firm and tight; and I knew that he was trying to stand up straight under his father's mantle, which had now fallen upon his young shoulders. " Letters come in from north, south, east, west, from the hot climate and the cold climate. Kate Bennet sent her letters from the mission fields of hot Africa, and Asa Brown wrote home from Manitoba — which is cold enough for anybody. David Mc- Kenzie, here in the village, sent his letters regularly to the old home in THE LITTLE WO RLD ,6, Scotland and received letters back smelling of heather; and Mary Mc- Closky looked regularly for her let- ters from 'across the say,' which always inclosed a sprig of shamrock. "Then I remember very well the white frightened face of a mother who had a letter telling her that her boy was wounded in the war. And the happy smile of another mother by her side whose son had just sent her home his first month's wages. "Dear, dear, what a checquered game life seems to us who cannot see the end; if we did not know that there was One handling the pawns (that's what they call the men in the game of choss, Mrs. Fitz- patrick says) pushing them in here and out there, so as to bring the ifl 162 THE VILLAGE ARTIST game out at lost to the greiit(;at ail- vantage to all, we'd bo terribly dis- couraged, wouldn't we? " Miss Grimshaw was at the post- office every evening,. for years I be- lieve, and it would seem as if she were always looking for samples of dry goods from the great city stores. Poor girl I she thought too much about dress, and her face looked like it. Then Kirsty McAlister came many and many an evening, hoping for a letter from her brothers — who were off in the city and too busy to write home letters — and all of us who looked into her face knew that she had caught God's secret. "Then the boys came to see the girls, and the girls came to see the boys ; and a number thronged 'round there every evening from no reason 'i.m. THE LITTLE IVORLD ,63 at all-except from habit, or because they had nothing else to do. Ben Leith never failed to he ihero, and I never saw him get a lettf, "Boxes of weddi!.- lif.wrrs, ai <( boxes of funeral .; ,>v.,-i., Con^ tl,« city greenhouses, have hod, u(>t'n handed out througl-. Miar oid u'icket, and sometimes both have -naue me sad, and sometimes botii lua ■ mailo me happy. I am sure it is a sin to be anything else than happy when some souls snap their bonds and fly away from their trials and sufferings here, and go on to where sorrow and sighing have passed away. I was bappy when I saw the funeral wreath of poor rheumatic eighty-year old Jacob Hansel, it seemed to me like his crowning wreath ; and I was sad when I saw the white roses for the i f-f! 164 THE VILLAGE ARTIST r wedding of nineteen year old Nettie Darsh, when she married the rich old man of sixty Her relations made the match. "There are scenes — dramas Mrs. Fitzpatrick calls 'em — that are open to the gaze of everybody, and there are little private dramas which no one knows anything about but one- self—and p'rhaps another. There's one in connection with that old post- olfice which no one saw but Emeline Delmer and nij oelf— Emeline was my greatest friend and told me everything. It was when Joe North wrote her the letter asking her to be his wife. She answered the letter the same day, accepting his proposal. But, goodness! after she had the letter posted she was sorry, or thought she was. She began to think what a THE LITTLE WORLD ,6j serious thing marriage is, and her fears and forebodings almost suffo- cated her. She seemed to forget all about Joe, and half an hour after she had dropped the letter into the slot she went back to the post-office and asked to have it again. But the postmaster said it was against the law to return it, and he would not let her have it. So Joe got the letter next day. Do you suppose he'd let her back out after that? But Emeline really loved Joe, and it turned out all right in the end I reckon the Bible is just as correct when it says 'perfect love casteth out all fear 'as in all the rest of its sayings. " Valentine's day has always been a great day in our office; hundreds, and hundreds of valentines have 1 66 THE FILL AGE ARTIST passed through that old wicket. Comic valentines, in which we had the chance to give a hint, or press home a joke, honourably without signing our own name; and sweet, tender valentines, in which the shy lad dared in the words of the poet to hint at his own heart's yearnings. I have my own old first valentine yet ; it runs something like this : |i1 ' Nor gold, nor splendour, satisfies The heart that yearns for love, I conut one kind look front thine eyes All earthly wealth above.' -But I suppose valentines are the same to-day that they were forty years ago. Strange what varioufi ways people have for Hearcbinjr aft«r the greatest thing in the world. That valentine of mine came from Jonathan — but p'rhapu it's not £ur THE LITTLE ff^ORLD ,67 Poor Jona- to mention names, than ! " Well I have only given you a snatch here and there of all that has happened in our old post-office. As I said before, there are worlds within worlds, each one of us who has walked into that post-office has been a little world in himself The most curious world of the whole lot, and the one hardest to be understood, is the world ea.h ouv of us carries in his own bosom," t I -i tu.r.uej Chth,$t.50 Doctor Luke of The Labrador BV NORMAN DUNCAN "Mr. DuncM U taervlng of much praJK for thii. hi8&.tnovd. . . . In his dBcriptive paaage. Mr. Duncan » sincere to the smaUcst dctmil. His charac- ttts are painted in with bold, wide stroJces. Un- lilce most first noTels, ' Doctor Luke ■ waxes stronirer as It progresses."— AT. Y. E-vning Pel. James Mac Arthur, of Harper' i Weekly, says: " I am delighted with • Doctor Luke.' So fine and noble a work deserves great success." _ "A masterpiece ofsentiment and humorous character, nation. Nothing more individual, and in its own way more powerful, has been done in American fiction . Thenoryisa wort of art."— Ti, a.gr.g^m„a/i:,. Joseph B. Gilder, of The Critic, says: " I look to see it take its place promptly among the best selling books of the season." "It fiilfilla its promise of being one of the best ttoiiea of the season Mr. Duncan evidenUy is destined to make a name for himself among the foremost novelists othisdajr. . . . Doctor Luke is a magnetic character, and the love stotjr m which he pUy. his part U a sweet and pleasant idyl. . . . The triumph of the book U ia character delineation."— a,V'« nt'el bagreat enterprise, aii4 wiU probably prove to be the greatest book yet pr». duced by a native of Canada. ' •— ror.»» Chit. ■.'»^r¥ 8vo, Cloth Price, tl.JS "'' III I li '! Denizens of the Deep By FRANK. T. BULLEN THERE is a new world of life and intelligence opened to our knowl- edge in Mr. Bullen's stories of the inhabitants of the sea. He finds the same fascinating interest in the lives of the dwellers in the deep as Thompson Scton found in the lives of the hunted ashore, and with the keenness and vigor which characterized his famous book "The Cruise of The Cachalot" he has made a book which, being based upon personal observation, buttressed by f'ientific facts and decorated by im- ajjination, is a storehouse of infor- mation — an ideal romance of deep sea folk and, as The Saturday Times- Review has said, worth a dozen novels. Not the least attractive feature of an unusually attractive volume is the series of illustrations by Livingston Bull and others. DENIZENS OF THE DEEP TRAtlK. T BULLEH ^' -*^fT,'fr«lit By MARGARET SANGSTER CAM, eacA, $i.jo yanet Ward Eleanor Lee WI T H O UT exaggeration and with perfectly consistent nat- uralness Mrs. Sangster has produced two pieces of realism of a most healthy sort, demonstrating con- clusively that novels may be at once clean and wholesome yet most thorough- ly ahve and natural. As with all her work, Mrs. Sangster exhibits her splen- did skill and excellent taste, and succeeds m w nning and holding her readers in these two books which treat of the life of today. " If evtr thtrt was an author whost personality shone through her work, Mrs. Margar« E. Sangster i. that author. Mrs. Sang- ster has written a novel with a moral purpose. That was to be expected, but it was also to be ex pected that the story would be free from hys- teria and intolerance, filled with gentle humor, , sane common sense and warm human sympthy, and saturated with cheer- ful optimism. The book fulfills the expectation. " — The Lamf. \tI Eisays Fietion \i ! "il '■'{■ B;' JAMES M.LUDLOW Incentives for Life. Personal and Public. i2mo, cloth, gilt top, ?i.25 net. " Dr. Ludlow showi versatility and rare culture in tliis boolc of essays. From tile first page one is im- pressed with the beautifully dear style, the brilliant thought wliicli flashes through every sentence, and the marvelous storehouse of illustration from which jhe author draws. The vital importance of will power m the formation of character, and the incentives which lie back of it as motives to action, are set forth with vigor and power." — Chriitian Obtirfir. Deborah' A Tale of the Times of Judas Maccabaeus. By the author of "The Captain of the Janizaries." i2mo, cloth, illus- erated $'-SO '•Deborah is a genu- ine Jewess, noble, bril- liant, loving and lovely." — Congrega- thnalist. ''Nothing in the class of fiction to which * Deborah' belongs, the class of which'Ben Hur* and *Captaiii of the Janizaries' are fa- miliar examples, ex- ceeds the early chapters of this story in vivid- ner. and rapidity of action. The book as n whole has vigor and color, "—r^.- Outlook. 'WEmxit**-'^- » Tales of the West Virile, true, tender By RALPH CONNOR The Sky Pilot; A Tale of the Foothills. Iimo, cloth, illustrated .... Price, 51,25 " Ralph Connor's < Black Rock ' was good, but ' The Sky Pilot ' is better. The matter which he gives \a is real life; virile, true, tender, humorous, pathetic, spiritual, wholesome. His snle, fresh, crisp and terse accords with the Western life, which he understands. Henceforth the foothills of the Canadian Rockies will probably be associated in many a mind with the name of 'Ralph Connor.' " — Thi Outlook. The Man From Glenoarry; A Tale of the Ottawa. Ilmo,cloth Price, 51.50 " As straight as a pine, as sweet as a balsam, as sound aa a white oak." — The inttr-vittv. GLEtJuARRY School Days; A Tale of the Indian Lands. I2mo, cloth pricj_ J,,jj In pathos it reaches the high level of "The Sky Pilot." In atmosphere it is "The Man ftom Glen, garry." In action it rivals ** Black Rock." Black Rock; A Tale of the Selltirlts. I2mo,cloth Price. $1.25 1 3mo, cloth, cheaper edition . , .2e *' ' Ralph Connor ' is some man's nom de plume. The world woi.)d insist on knowing whose. He has gone into the N-irthw^-st Canadian mountains and painted for us a picture of life in the mining camps of surpassing merit. With perfect wholesomeness, with exquisite delicacy, with entile fidelity, with truest pathos, with freshest humor, he has delineated character, haa analyzed motives and emotions, and has portrayed life. Some of his characters deserve immortality, so foithfijlly are they created '* ~Sl. Louit Gtobt-Democrat. The world Hat known and today Ralph Connor has been accorded thr signal honor of seeing his books, by virtue of their sterling worth, attain a sale of over one aad one-half million copies. fHT?WfT^ ■WIWT