MADE IN FRANCE 
 
 By H C-BUNNER- 
 
 lllastr^teci by 
 
 C-J -Taylor. 
 
 PUCKS-MULBERRY-SERIBS 
 

-MADE IN FRANCE." 
 
 Under the title of " Made in France" 
 H. C. Bunner has gathered a number of 
 short stories, all founded on tales by De 
 Maupassant. Several have suffered so great 
 a sea change, however, that the original 
 writer, if he were alive, would not recognize 
 them. In these about all that Bunner has 
 borrowed from the brilliant Frenchman is 
 what he calls the "ethical situations." Others 
 bear evident traces of their French origin. 
 Mr. Bunner explains the motive of his novel 
 scheme in these words : 
 
 " I have selected a few ethical situations from among 
 the brightest of Maupassant s inventions, and have tried 
 to reproduce them, not as translations, but as English or 
 American stories based on a Frenchman s inspiration, and 
 I have done this with the sole hope of making that in 
 spiration clear to people who will not or can not read 
 Maupassant in the original. If through the new climes, 
 the new times, the new changes, the new worlds, indeed, 
 into which I have moved his people and their adventures, 
 you catch a better glimpse of the best fancies of M. Guy 
 de Maupassant than you can get through the misleading 
 mechanism of a literal translation, I shall be glad, indeed." 
 
 There is no question of his success, for 
 nine out of ten of his readers would find De 
 Maupassant less amusing than Bunner. The 
 volume is very cleverly illustrated by Taylor. 
 
 San Francisco Chronicle, 
 hi Hoards, $1.00. In Paper, jo cents. 
 
 All Booksellers. 
 P,y Mail, from the Publishers, on. Receipt of Price. 
 
-THE RUNAWAY BROWNS," 
 
 by H. C. Bunner, illustrations by C. J. Tay 
 lor ; publishers, Keppler & Schwarzmann. 
 The experiences of Paul Brown and his wife, 
 who escape a tame, adventureless life, with a 
 view of having " things happen to them," 
 and to this end leave a pleasant home to be 
 gone a year and a day, are just the reading 
 for a Summer s afternoon, and there is still 
 enough of Summer in the air to make it en 
 joyable to its fullest. How the Browns fell 
 in with a band of barn-storming profession 
 als ; how they became tin peddlers ; how 
 they took charge of a lone hotel, and how 
 they finally and gladly reached their trim 
 cottage, is told in these clever and amusing 
 pages, and will bring more than one hearty 
 laugh even from those unused to smile. 
 
 N., P. & S. Bulletin. 
 
 In Boards, $1.00. In Paper, 50 Cents. 
 
 All Booksellers. 
 By Mail, from the Publishers, on receipt of price. 
 
" IN THE 400 AND OUT." 
 
 By Charles Jay Taylor, New York: 
 Keppler & Schwarzmann, $1.00. 
 
 The "Taylor-made" girl is the hero 
 ine of this pictorial travesty, whose pages 
 have been selected from the weekly num 
 bers of PUCK. Echoes from Newport and 
 the " Pier," from Tuxedo and Fifth Avenue, 
 make up the sum of these facile sketches 
 of the occupations and amusements that 
 round out a society existence. The pict 
 ures are classified as the comedy " In" the 
 " 400," and the farce " Out." The designs 
 are generally amusing, and exhibit a high 
 degree of artistic excellence. 
 
 Philadelphia Public Ledger. 
 
 For sale by all Booksellers. 
 By mail from the publishers on receipt of price. 
 
When the Publishers of PUCK decided 
 to issue 
 
 PUCK S PAINTING BOOK 
 
 FOR CHILDREN, 
 
 they had no idea how popular that book 
 would become, and how much it would be 
 prized by the young folks. 
 
 The Author- Artist of PUCK S PAINTING 
 BOOK, Mr. Frederick B. Opper, seeing that 
 nearly all of the painting books heretofore 
 published were not what they ought to be, 
 and that such books should be adapted to 
 juvenile capabilities and be instructing and 
 entertaining, has given us here a series of 
 simple, clear and funny pictures, the colors 
 of which any child can mix and copy. 
 
 PUCK S PAINTING BOOK consists of 48 
 pages, printed in six colors; bound in a 
 strong varnished cover. Price, 5o Cents. 
 For sale by all Booksellers, at THE PUCK 
 BUILDING, WORLD S FAIR GROUNDS, CHI 
 CAGO, as well as at the office of PUCK. 
 New York. Sent by mail. 
 
"MADE IN FRANCE/ 
 
BE R THINE* 
 
Copyright, 1893, by KEPPLHR & SCHVVARZMANN. 
 
TO 
 A. L. P 
 
 925727 
 
Contents. 
 
 Page. 
 
 By Way of Explanation i 
 
 Tony -. 8 
 
 The Prize of Propriety 24 
 
 Dennis 42 
 
 The Minuet 60 
 
 A Pint s a Pound 76 
 
 A Capture 94 
 
 Uncle Atticus 118 
 
 The Pettibone Brolly 140 
 
 The Joke on M. Peptonneau 162 
 
 Father Dominick s Convert. . ... 180 
 
BY WAY OF EXPLANATION. 
 
BY WAY OF EXPLANATION. 
 
 CT " jfl ^rTr > \ 
 
 ^f 
 
 i i gj !aiQ borrow a hint from an old Italian 
 1 phrase, even the best of trans- 
 ^ lators can not help it if he, to 
 ^ some extent, traduces as well as 
 introduces. The more faithful he 
 is, the more absolute and direct in 
 his rendering, the more danger he runs 
 of being "falsely true" to an original style whose 
 chief charm must lie in the freedom and untram- 
 meled ease with which a literary artist handles 
 his native language. 
 
 No foreign author of our day has suffered 
 more at the hands of his translators than M. Guy 
 de Maupassant. Occasionally he has met with 
 a friend, such as Mr. Jonathan Sturgis, who has 
 treated him with honor and with loving kind 
 ness; but, alas! Mr. Sturgis selected for trans 
 lation but a baker s dozen of M. de Maupassant s 
 stories out of more than that number of the 
 French author s books. For the most part, it 
 has been his luck to fall into the hands of hard 
 working but distinctly unliterary people, who have 
 wronged him as faithfully as only the literal- 
 minded can wrong the fanciful and imaginative. 
 
V "ITTabc in franco." V 
 
 The qualities that put M. Guy de Mau 
 passant s work out of the scope of translation 
 are inherent in his genius; and two in particu 
 lar have served to withhold a fair knowledge of 
 his power from those who have read him only 
 in English versions. 
 
 In the first place, Maupassant, broadly popu 
 lar as he has proved himself, never hesitates to 
 assume the absolutely Thackerayan attitude of 
 talking to that man in the company who knows 
 the most. Simple and direct in his speech almost 
 beyond any writer of his day and of his race, he 
 yet, at all times, claims the right to presuppose, in 
 the audience to which he addresses himself, a 
 liberal allowance of intelligence, of knowledge of 
 the world, and of breadth of mind. He has, for a 
 Frenchman, few mannerisms; no euphuisms what 
 ever; no tenuous, wire-drawn subtleties of phrase. 
 But he demands that you shall have your brains 
 about you when you are listening to him, and 
 that you shall have employed your brains to some 
 purpose before you met him. He has no time to 
 talk to the dull, the inattentive or the narrow- 
 minded. And yet, while he certainly requires of 
 his hearer a deal of mental alertness, no small 
 fund of general information, and a broad and far- 
 reaching human sympathy, I do not recall in all 
 his work a single passage where he asks more of 
 his reader in the way of knowledge or understand 
 ing than any ordinarily well-educated and whole 
 some-minded man or woman may acquire unaided, 
 and should acquire, in order to read good litera 
 ture with an intelligent comprehension. 
 
 The advantage of assuming the possession 
 of such brains and knowledge on the part of his 
 
tt)a? of (Explanation. TP 
 
 readers is that it makes its return directly to the 
 writer. It gives to M. de Maupassant a privilege 
 of which he is not slow to avail himself akin to 
 that of the dramatist who has the great happiness 
 of finding himself able to dispense with his first 
 act. Hence the marvelous conciseness and direct 
 ness of his story-telling, which enables Maupassant 
 to accomplish simply and easily, and with perfect 
 suitability to his purposes, what Balzac sought to 
 do with an infinity of labor and trouble of spirit 
 to create for himself a literary world of his own in 
 character and episode. 
 
 Unless you have in some other way acquired 
 a knowledge of the elements which go to make 
 up the heterogeneous social world of which M. de 
 Maupassant has written primarily for those who 
 know it measurably as well as he himself does 
 you can not fairly read certain of his tales without 
 reading the others that complement them; that 
 combine to form the complete and perfect repre 
 sentation of the phase of society which he under 
 takes to exhibit. You may have to read a half- 
 dozen of his sketches of peasant life, each one per 
 fect in itself, before you realize his mastery of the 
 peasant character and conditions. After that, 
 each new one that you come across will fill you 
 with fresh admiration for the breadth and accu 
 racy of his observation. And what is true of his 
 peasants is true of all the other types of humanity 
 that he touches with a master-hand. If he tells 
 you a story of a soldier, you may feel sure that the 
 soldier is a soldier because he could not possibly 
 be anything else and be what he is in the story. 
 If he lays his scene in a given place at a given 
 time, you may be sure it is because he has chosen 
 
 2 3 
 
y "2rta6e in prance." V 
 
 place and time out of the fullness of a trained 
 artistic knowledge. And if his hero is a Norman, 
 for instance, you may be sure that, in his own 
 native phrase, he is not a Norman for nothing. 
 
 This peculiarity of Maupassant s work offers 
 in itself a formidable bar to a fair translation. 
 We can all easily think of books that paint local 
 conditions of American life simply and clearly 
 enough to our eyes, which we yet should find 
 almost impossible to explain or to illuminate to a 
 foreigner who had not our knowledge of those 
 conditions. Thus it is that it is easy to do Mau 
 passant a wrong in wrenching a given one of his 
 tales away from the body of his story-telling and 
 presenting it to the world as a fully-accredited 
 representative of its whole family. 
 
 And when you add to the characteristic of 
 the writer which I have here endeavored to set 
 forth, the characteristic of a remarkable suscepti 
 bility, sensitiveness and sympathetic changeable- 
 ness of literary style which makes Maupassant in 
 every instance subtly suit his manner of telling to 
 the subject matter of his story, I think you will 
 agree with me that he is ill to translate, at the best. 
 
 In this present book I have selected a few 
 ethical situations from among the brightest of 
 Maupassant s inventions, and have tried to re 
 produce them, not as translations, but as English, 
 or rather American stories based on a French 
 man s inspiration and I have done this with 
 the sole hope of making that inspiration clear to 
 people who will not or can not read Maupassant 
 in the original. If through the new climes, the 
 new times, the new changes, the new worlds, 
 indeed, into which I have moved his people and 
 
 4 
 
"V 33y tDay of (fjcplanation. ^ 
 
 their adventures, you catch a better glimpse of 
 the best fancies of M. Guy de Maupassant than 
 you can get through the misleading mechanism 
 of a literal translation, I shall be glad, indeed. 
 
 The venture may seem somewhat bold, but 
 it is undertaken in a spirit of sincerest and faith- 
 fulest admiration for him who though silenced 
 now forever in a living death must always 
 be, to my thinking, the best of story-tellers since 
 Boccaccio wrote down the tales he heard from 
 women s lips. 
 
TONY. 
 
TONY. 
 
 DO not translate this story 
 from M. Guy de Maupas 
 sant s French, because I can 
 no more translate the charm 
 of that French than those 
 little machines with rolls of 
 perforated paper can grind out 
 a tune in the way that Mr. Pade- 
 r.ewski plays it. Out of respect for the best artist 
 wiio ever fashioned a short story, I won t make 
 tiiki attempt; but I will, if you please, take the 
 bare facts of this little tale, and re-tell in my own 
 way what he originally told in a way that is very 
 much better, but that is also French and so 
 finely French, too, that you have got to get the 
 French language right into your bones to feel all 
 its delicacy and force. 
 
 It s a simple enough tale to tell, so far as 
 the story goes. It is about a great big, fat, good- 
 natured, gluttonous, simple-minded inn -keeper 
 who kept quite a famous little tavern in the town 
 of Tournevent, in Normandy. Far and wide in 
 the valley in which it nestles, the tavern, which 
 bore the sign of "The Friendly Cup," was known 
 for its honest wine and its marvelous hot-spiced 
 s 
 
Cony. 
 
 dishes delicious concoctions, but so hot with 
 pepper and all manner of hot things that they 
 brought tears to the eyes, and seemed almost to 
 justify the inn-keeper s assertion that they both 
 warmed the stomach and cleared the brain. 
 
 But Tony himself was almost as much of an 
 attraction as his wine and his deviled dishes. 
 He was so fat, to begin with ; he had such a 
 great round dumpling of a face on top of his 
 great round pudding of a body ; he looked at you 
 with such an innocently roguish, yet kindly eye, 
 that you could not help feeling, when he sat 
 down at your table and talked to you, as though 
 you were enjoying the society of a 
 freak of nature and a comedian 
 put together, for the paltry 
 price of a glass of wine. 
 For Tony had a most de 
 lightful way of making 
 fun of people without of 
 fending them, and you 
 could make all the fun 
 of him you pleased with 
 out disturbing in the least 
 the unruffled serenity with 
 
 which he took life and all that life brought 
 fat, for instance, an unquenchable thirst, and a 
 shrewish wife. 
 
 Old Ma am Tony, as she was called in the 
 neighborhood, was all that Tony was not shriv 
 eled and thin, wrinkled, sour, unblessed with 
 even the most rudimentary sense of humor, the 
 most sordid and narrow type of French peasant- 
 woman, without an appetite in the world, unless 
 avarice biting, gnawing, cankering avarice can 
 
V> "itta&e in prance." V 
 
 be called an appetite: Ma am Tony s chief business 
 in life was the raising of plump chickens for 
 market, a business in which she was both expert 
 and successful. Outside of this, her one avo 
 cation was making herself disagreeable to her 
 husband. In this business, however, she was 
 neither expert nor successful ; for, although Ma am 
 Tony was far -and -away the most disagreeable 
 woman in the country-side, and had a manner 
 of language that would curdle milk, nothing that 
 she could say or do could disturb the genial, 
 over-fed placidity of that pleasant mountain of 
 flesh; and, moreover, even if she had succeeded 
 in making him as unhappy as he was capable of 
 being, she felt that his pain would be as nothing 
 in comparison with the suffering of spirit which his 
 very existence caused her. The mere thought of 
 him was an offense to her soul mainly because 
 she had such a mean little soul. She hated him 
 for his fat, which seemed to her miserly mind 
 a waste and extravagance something which 
 somehow might have been reduced to good silver 
 coin and hoarded away in her old blue woolen 
 stocking. She hated him for his good nature and 
 his pleasant humor, which were vanities she could 
 neither enjoy nor understand. She hated him for 
 his friends, who were, of course, the idle drinkers 
 of the village; and she hated him for his ele 
 phantine capacity for drink, although he never 
 got drunk and his conviviality served only as a 
 profitable bait for business. Although each glass 
 he drank sold two more, Ma am Tony could 
 never bring herself to see that it was only one 
 way of turning over capital, and a bitter rage 
 burned in her heart as she saw the good red wine 
 
^ (Tony ^ 
 
 go down that enormous gullet and feed his burst 
 ing veins of red and purple. She scolded in lan 
 guage too hideous for transcription. He laughed 
 until his fat cheeks swallowed up his eyes, and 
 guyed her with great coarse, hearty, good-natured 
 jokes, which his boon companions greeted with 
 
 roars of merriment, although the jokes were the 
 same day after day. 
 
 "You wait!" his wife would shriek, her 
 throat husky and dry with scolding; "you wait, 
 you puff-ball ! You 11 burst some day ; you 11 
 burst like a bladder! You re a wind-bag, you 
 are you re no man ! " 
 
 " Good solid meat, old woman ; good solid 
 meat," Tony would chuckle; and then, baring an 
 arm as big as a trooper s thigh, he would hit it 
 a resounding slap and shout : " Put some of that 
 on your blamed old poultry ! How s that for a 
 chicken-wing, hey ? " 
 
 The tavern roysterers pounded the table in 
 their delight, and the old woman would back off 
 to her poultry-yard, furiously sputtering with the 
 last remains of her breath : 
 
 " You 11 burst, you beast ! " 
 
 // 
 
V "tflab* in prance." V 
 
 Tony did not burst; but something else hap 
 pened to him that was almost as horrible in its 
 way. A stroke of paralysis rendered his huge 
 form as helpless as an overturned turtle. They 
 put him to bed in a little closet next to the public 
 room of "The Friendly Cup," and it was not 
 many days before all the town knew that Tony 
 would never more move the gigantic legs that 
 had been his pride and the jest of the neighbor 
 hood. Inert, struck with the immobility of a 
 living death, yet clear of mind and lusty of appe 
 tite as of old, this huge hulk lay in a narrow 
 bunk-like bed that was made afresh but once in 
 the week, on Saturday afternoon, when four sturdy 
 laboring-men lifted him by the arms and legs. 
 
 It was Tony still, but Tony with a difference 
 Tony helpless and afraid, before the she-devil 
 of a wife with whom his fate was cast the same 
 fun-loving, thirsty Tony, now compelled to listen 
 in abasement to her vile abuse, and to be the 
 patient and uncomplaining victim of her incredi 
 ble meanness and stinginess. She cut him down 
 to an ordinary man s allowance of wine, and she 
 counted every spoonful of food she put into his 
 mouth ; and while she fed him she taunted him 
 with his utter uselessness. 
 
 Yet he was content enough - when she would 
 let him alone lying in his little bed, making from 
 time to time one of the few motions that was left 
 to him a slight shifting of his ponderous body 
 to the right or to the left and listening to catch 
 through the partition the sound of familiar voices 
 in the tavern room. 
 
 " Hi, Pierre!" he would shout; "that you?" 
 
 And Pierre would answer : 
 
V* (Cony. TP 
 
 "Aye, aye, old man; how are you getting 
 along?" 
 
 " Oh, I m settling down, settling down," 
 Tony would reply, cheerily. 
 
 " Losing any flesh ? " 
 
 " Not a pound! I m making." 
 
 And, indeed, in spite of his meagre diet and 
 the seasoning it got from Ma am Tony s impre 
 cations, the great creature was actually increasing 
 in flesh. 
 
 After a while he began to have more com 
 panionship. First it was a young rooster that 
 came from the poultry-yard and sat upon the 
 window-sill and crowed. Then some little chick 
 ens got into a way of wandering in through the 
 open door to pick up crumbs of bread near his 
 bedside, and he took great pleasure in their little 
 
 weakling peeps and their funny little aimless 
 flights. Then his old friends began to drop in 
 and chat with him, finding his wit as fresh as of 
 yore, and Tony learned what it is to be a pro 
 fessional funny man ; for his entertainment of his 
 friends was the price of their society, and his 
 
V "IH^c in prance." V 
 
 humor was his sole stock-in-trade. They played 
 backgammon among themselves, and surrepti 
 tiously treated him to his own wine. But there 
 were days when his wife, passing by and casting 
 her eyes upon this picture of simple contentment, 
 would be seized with an unspeakable rage, and 
 would knock the backgammon board into the air, 
 and drive his cronies .out-of-doors at the point of 
 her tongue. Then she would tell her husband 
 that he was a good-for-nothing and expensive 
 beast, and go grumbling back to her poultry-yard. 
 
 Of Tony s three closest companions, the 
 long cabinet-maker, the little apothecary, and 
 the crooked watchmaker, only the third dared 
 to stand up against the rages of Ma am Tony. 
 He was an untamed and fearless bachelor, with 
 a spirit of deviltry in him as curiously warped and 
 crooked as his physical frame. Prosper Hors- 
 laville was his name, and he was the acknowl 
 edged leader and chief of the trio. He did not 
 hesitate to chaff Ma am Tony to her face, and to 
 make her literal dullness the butt of his ingenious 
 malice. 
 
 " See here," he said to the old woman one 
 day, when she had more viciously than usual be 
 wailed her hard lot in having to take care of what 
 she called her paralyzed pig; "see here," he said; 
 " do you know what I d do with that old man of 
 yours if I had him ? There he is lying in bed all 
 day doing nothing, and as hot as a furnace. Why 
 don t you make him hatch eggs ? " 
 
 Ma am Tony stared at him, uncertain whether 
 or no he were making fun of her. 
 
 " That s what I d do," went on Prosper, 
 without the slightest movement of his facial mus- 
 14 
 
^ Cony, 
 
 cles that could detract from his aspect of perfect 
 seriousness ; " I d make him hatch eggs. Now, 
 you take a setting of eggs the same day that you 
 set a hen, and put half-a-dozen alongside of him, 
 under one arm, and half-a-dozen alongside of him, 
 under the other; and then, when the chickens 
 hatch out, you may just give em to the hen. 
 She can just as well take care of two broods 
 as one." 
 
 A light of sordid speculation began to glitter 
 in the old woman s eyes. 
 
 "Do you think it could be done?" she 
 asked, thoughtfully. 
 
 " Could be done ? Why, certainly. If you 
 can hatch out eggs in a box with a lamp, you can 
 hatch em out easy enough in a bed. Make the 
 old man earn his living." 
 
 A week later Ma am Tony entered her hus 
 band s room with an apron full of eggs. 
 
 " I set the yellow hen to-day," said she, on 
 twelve eggs, and here s twelve for you. Now, 
 see you don t break em." 
 
in prance." V 
 
 Tony stared at her in astonishment and 
 affright. 
 
 " What what what do you mean ? " he 
 stammered. 
 
 "I m going to set you, you good-for- 
 nothing ! " 
 
 At first he merely laughed, for he could not 
 believe her. Then, when he realized that she was 
 in earnest, he remonstrated against the indignity 
 that she offered him, growing as angry as it was 
 in him to be, and showing the sulky petulance 
 of an offended child. He rolled his great body 
 from right to left, and positively refused to per 
 form the functions of a hen. 
 
 "All right," said his wife, dryly; "no eggs, 
 no dinner! Not a bite or sup but bread and 
 water do you get until you hatch those eggs." 
 
 Noon-time came, and the steam of Tony s 
 favorite soup spread its perfume upon the air, rich 
 with spicy, enticing hints of garlic, bay-leaf, sage 
 and tarragon. By his side were a crust of stale 
 bread and a cup of water. In the kitchen hard 
 by, Ma am Tony moved about preparing the 
 dinner, silent, obdurate, deaf to his remonstrances 
 and entreaties. Tony held out until he heard the 
 grit of her chair upon the floor and the clink of 
 her spoon in the soup-plate; then he succumbed, 
 sold his manhood for a mess of pottage, and 
 became a human hen. 
 
 In the afternoon his companions looked in 
 as usual. 
 
 " You don t seem to be lying right com 
 fortable," said crooked Prosper, casting an ob 
 servant eye upon him. 
 
 " No," said Tony ; I m a bit stiff to-day." 
 
^ Conr V" 
 
 Rheumatics?" 
 
 " Something like it," assented Tony, uneasily. 
 
 " Let me give you a rub down," suggested 
 Prosper, pleasantly, advancing a horny hand. 
 
 " No, no," cried Tony, and in a nervous 
 agony of dread he drew away, half rolling over. 
 
 There was a faint sound of crushing shells, 
 and as the preliminaries for an omelette declared 
 themselves under his left side, Tony cried out 
 impulsively and unguardedly : 
 
 " Oh, my ! Now I Ve done it ! " 
 
 His wife heard him and rushed into the 
 room. In her first fit of rage she broke the back 
 gammon board over his head, and then, further 
 maddened by this catastrophe, she fell upon him 
 and beat him with her skinny hands until her 
 
 withered muscles could no longer act, while Tony 
 lay helpless, motionless beneath her blows, for 
 fear of breaking the six eggs that yet remained 
 
 with him. 
 
 * 
 # # 
 
 The era of henhood had set in for Tony; 
 his life was now given over to hatching. Rigid 
 n 
 
V "iltabc in prance." V 
 
 and still he lay, stretched upon his back; his 
 eyes fixed upon the ceiling, breathing softly and 
 even speaking low, as though he were afraid of 
 prematurely waking his little charges. Once he 
 broke an egg, and that day he had no dinner. 
 
 This was unnecessarily severe punishment: 
 the pangs of conscience troubled Tony quite 
 enough. For he had begun to take a strange 
 interest in his new occupation; and before long 
 he was even a little jealous of the yellow hen, 
 who was setting out in the barnyard; and was 
 much rejoiced when she in her turn stepped 
 through an egg. Tony s lot in life was now 
 humble, it is true, but in some respects it was 
 happier than before. He now received from his 
 wife the consideration due to a setting hen, and 
 he was better and more abundantly fed. More 
 over, he succeeded in obtaining a double allow 
 ance of wine, on the ground that wine was heating. 
 
 To some extent he resumed his old position 
 as an attraction to custom. The news of his new 
 field of usefulness spread far and wide, and people 
 came from everywhere to make the purchase of a 
 drink an excuse for a peep at the colossus of eggs, 
 as Prosper now christened him. They came into 
 the room on tip-toe, as you enter the chamber of 
 sickness, and asked after his health in whispers, 
 to which he responded with the patient but 
 reassuring smile of an invalid who does not wish 
 to waste his strength in speech. 
 
 One day his wife came in to tell him that 
 the yellow hen had begun to hatch out. She had 
 three little chickens already. A thrill of delight 
 ful anxiety ran through Tony s frame. How many 
 would he have ? 
 
 28 
 
V Cony. IP 
 
 " I *m doing my best," he whispered meekly 
 to his wife; but she turned her back on him 
 scornfully. 
 
 " You never were any good," she said. 
 
 But Tony was not long behind his feathered 
 rival. Just about supper time, a little faint, far 
 away sound of tapping caused Tony to cry aloud 
 in uncontrollable glee. The news began to spread 
 instantly. It went from house to house like wild 
 fire. In five minutes the streets of Tournevent 
 were full of people hurrying to the tavern, and 
 in a short time the one public room was crowded 
 with excited drinkers, chattering, laughing, and 
 betting bottles of wine and glasses of brandy on 
 the relative success of Tony and the yellow hen. 
 
 It was just six o clock when the expected 
 announcement made a hush fall upon the house. 
 As many as could get in Tony s little room pushed 
 silently in. Others poked their heads in at the 
 doors and windows, or stood on chairs to look 
 over the heads of those in front. With infinite 
 
" 
 
 lllabe in prance." T 
 
 precautions Ma am Tony drew from under the 
 arm of the big man a tiny, downy little ball of 
 yellow and black, that uttered a feeble and plain 
 tive "peep!" Tears of joy and relief coursed 
 down Tony s fat cheeks as his first chicken was 
 gently passed from hand to hand, and examined 
 and admired as though it were some rare curi 
 osity. 
 
 As time passed on, inquiries and reports 
 went forward and back between the throng in 
 the public room and the watchers in the little 
 chamber. 
 
 " How many is it now ?" 
 
 " This one makes six." 
 
 Then arose a sound of laughter and applause 
 and the clinking of glasses. Ma am Tony pushed 
 her way out into the yard, and delivered the six 
 new arrivals to the yellow hen, who clucked a 
 hearty maternal welcome, and spread her broad 
 wings as though she were quite ready to give 
 shelter to all the little chickens in the world. It 
 was a beautiful April evening. The soft warm air 
 hardly stirred. A tender twilight haze lent ghostly 
 vagueness to the faint tints of the young vegeta 
 tion. At the far end of the poultry-yard a young 
 cockerel, alarmed by the distant noise of the ap 
 plauding crowd, crowed defiantly. 
 
 The evening bells began to ring. " Seven ! " 
 announced Tony; "in my right elbow." 
 
 But a greater triumph awaited him. Four 
 had hatched out at once, and as the last one 
 was lifted to the air Tony kissed it passionately 
 and almost devoured it with his beaming eyes. 
 
 " Let me have it," he pleaded with his wife; 
 " I 11 be so careful of it ! " 
 
V- Cony. V- 
 
 But the old woman was stony-hearted. She 
 bore the chicken away to its foster-mother; and 
 then, returning, drove the crowd out of Tony s 
 room, and, shutting the door on him, left him to 
 rest, exhausted, but triumphant, proud and happy. 
 
 For a long time the crowd lingered in the 
 public room, discussing the nine or rather, 
 twenty-one days wonder, 
 and it was past midnight when 
 Ma am Tony finally closed 
 her doors. A belated passer 
 by accosted Prosper Horsla- 
 ville, who was the last to 
 leave. 
 
 "How is Tony now?" 
 inquired the citizen, pointing 
 with his thumb to where the sign of " The Friend 
 ly Cup" hung, silvered in the moonlight. 
 
 "As well as could be expected." 
 
THE PRIZE OF PROPRIETY. 
 
THE PRIZE OF PROPRIETY. 
 
 story of the Prize of Propri 
 ety was told in an old French 
 town, by an old French doctor, 
 a plump little man with rosy 
 cheeks and short bristling gray 
 hair standing up straight all 
 over his head, and a short brist 
 ling gray beard standing out straight 
 all around his face. He had a perpetual twinkle 
 in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth looked 
 as though they would like to wink. He sat on 
 the parapet, that was built in the time of Julius 
 Caesar, and told the story with countless grimaces, 
 and with a Frenchman s artistic enjoyment of his 
 own recital. It was a town that had been famous 
 many centuries ago, and that has since been 
 many centuries forgotten. Its narrow streets ran 
 between tall, old-fashioned stone houses, and 
 twisted this way and that, up and down incredi 
 ble grades, following necessities of an antiquity 
 past comprehending. 
 
 The sunlight glinted on the swift little blue 
 river that ran under the arches of the old stone 
 bridge; here and there, over the high garden 
 walls that bordered it, showed the top of a blos- 
 
V Cfye PC W of Propriety. ^ 
 
 soming pear-tree, or a spray of peach, reaching 
 up into the free air, and the soft Spring breeze 
 brought on its breast a faint smell of lilacs and 
 new grass and upturned mould. 
 
 And this is the story of the Prize of Pro 
 priety, given once on a time by Madame Husson. 
 
 " You would hardly think," began the 
 Doctor, "that we inhabitants of this little town of 
 Gisors, who still talk of the glories of our city in 
 the days of the Romans ; of its present superiority 
 to the rival city of Gournay, at the other end of 
 the valley; and who to this very day discuss and 
 experiment with mediaeval receipts for cooking 
 eggs and making pasties you would not believe 
 that we had ever been accused of being a frivol 
 ous and ill-conducted populace. 
 
 "Yet such we were in the sight of Mine. 
 Husson, a very rich and very respectable middle- 
 aged lady who once dwelt among us many years 
 
y "UTabe in prance." V 
 
 ago. When I tell you that Mme. Husson was 
 the only child of an old couple who had success 
 fully conducted a young ladies institute for 
 English Misses, that she had in her first youth 
 married a consumptive drawing-master who had 
 expired after six months of marital life ; and that 
 his widow had spent the twenty-five years that 
 had elapsed since that date in one long series of 
 religious exercises in memory of the defunct, you 
 will understand that Mme. Husson was not of the 
 world worldly. She took, however, a kindly, if 
 somewhat narrow, interest in her fellow-beings, 
 and at the time when she settled in Gisors, she 
 had come into possession of her parents consider 
 able fortune, and had reached the charitable 
 stage, where she was anxious to do great things 
 with her money; and to do them, moreover, in 
 the fussy way that middle-aged ladies delight in. 
 
 "Now, I can not tell you, for I have forgot 
 ten, if I ever knew, in what chaste bower, in what 
 secluded retreat of innocence, Mme. Husson had 
 spent the twenty-five years of her widowhood; 
 but I know that the good people of Gisors im 
 pressed her as being reckless and shameless in 
 their public manners, to the verge of apparent 
 profligacy. Our simple, hearty, noisy, Norman 
 ways; our Middle-Age phrases, a little too strong 
 and racy for the modern taste ; our big appetites 
 and our big talk all shocked and offended her, 
 and made her regard us as gross and sensual 
 people of questionable morals, at the very best. 
 
 " Most of all, it horrified her to look out 
 of her window upon the public market-place and 
 see the market-women, the farm- girls, the dairy 
 maids and the daughters of the peasantry jostling 
 
each other, laughing, shrieking, chaffing, scolding 
 and quarreling in their rough jovial way; and 
 when two great strapping wenches would come 
 to blows and exchange a few harmless love-taps, 
 with their big, bare red arms flying through the 
 air, Mme. Husson would close her shutters and 
 send her maid, Joconde, for the sal volatile. 
 
 " It was not, therefore, much wondered at in 
 Gisors when it was announced that Mme. Husson 
 had decided to offer a prize of virtue to the young 
 woman bearing the best character in the town, to 
 present that happy paragon with a rosy wreath 
 and a purse of gold ; in fact, to establish here the 
 whole institution of the rosiere with its attendant 
 festivities. And as this simply meant that the 
 town was to feed itself at the expense of its bene 
 factress, joy, gratitude and satisfaction ran high in 
 Gisors. 
 
 ** But as time went on, and no further steps 
 were taken in the matter, the people began to 
 grow curious and suspicious; and inquiries were 
 made, which shortly proved that Joconde, the 
 maid, was at the bottom of the strange delay. 
 97 
 
V "2Habc tit prance." V 
 
 " This Joconde most notably belied her 
 name. She was a sour - visaged spinster, even 
 more of a rigid, uncompromising, narrow-minded 
 moralist than was her mistress. In her eyes 
 there were just two absolutely untainted and 
 faultless females in the whole world Mme. 
 Husson and herself and it behooved even 
 them to be careful and to walk straightly. To 
 Joconde had been entrusted the task of making 
 inquiry into the reputation of the local damsels, 
 and she had performed her duties with absolutely 
 fanatical zeal. Her standard was of course of 
 the loftiest. She demanded decorum, modesty 
 of bearing, and absolute propriety in the smallest 
 details of speech and conduct qualities not 
 often to be found among a lot of hard-working, 
 honest, ignorant, rough-living daughters of pov 
 erty. Joconde inquired everywhere, caught up 
 every bit of gossip, every vague suspicion, every 
 
 malicious hint, and noted all down in the little 
 memorandum-book in which -she inscribed the 
 articles of her day s marketing. "Here," saicj the 
 
^ (Efye pri3c of Propriety. ^ 
 
 Doctor, opening a capacious wallet, "is a copy 
 of a page of that famous memorandum-book 
 which I have carried with me these many years : " 
 
 bread 4 sous 
 
 milk i pt. 2 " 
 
 Butter 8 
 
 Malvina Levesque got herself Talked about last year. 
 
 tickling the butter mans Boy in the ribs done it. 
 
 chops i franc 
 
 salt 2 sous 
 
 Rosalie Vatinel called Fran^oise Pienoir a vile language 
 Radishes i sous 
 
 vinegar 2 sous 
 
 Josephine Dardent aint had nothing said only she gets 
 
 Letters from the young Alan was turned out of the Pickle Shop 
 
 last spring. 
 
 " Every entry like one of these settled the 
 fate of a victim. And as there was no girl what 
 ever about whom some one had not, at some time, 
 said some unkind thing, it very soon became 
 obvious that Gisors could not furnish a young 
 woman up to the wonderful standard of propriety 
 exacted by Mme. Husson and her maid. The 
 surrounding towns were ransacked with no better 
 success. 
 
 "And one morning Joconde said to her 
 mistress : 
 
 " < Madame, if any one is to get that prize, 
 Isidore is the only one who deserves it and 
 he s a man leastways a boy. He never done, 
 nor said, nor thought anything improper in all 
 his whole life, I 11 be bound. 
 
 " Madame Husson pondered long over this 
 
 curious suggestion. There was no doubt about 
 
 Isidore s qualifications, save in the matter of sex. 
 
 He was a great, pale, gawky boy of twenty, 
 
 29 
 
<V "iHabe in prance." IT 
 
 whose mother kept a fruit-stand in the market 
 place. Isidore s invincible, positively morbid 
 bashfulness had made him in a way the butt of 
 the town. He had passed his youth at his 
 mother s apron - strings, and he had no com 
 panions of his own age, even among the boys 
 with whom he had grown up. The sight of a 
 girl was enough to suffuse his face with painful 
 blushes and to paralyze his never - too - ready 
 tongue. His sensitive and shrinking delicacy 
 of speech and behavior, at an age when most 
 boys do their best to be taken for little monsters 
 of vulgarity and iniquity, had attracted the atten 
 tion of all the town s-people. You see, Gisors is, 
 after all, not a very large place The conse 
 quence was that Isidore was known among the 
 coarse-spoken town s-folk of the baser sort as a 
 milk -sop and goody-goody, and was made an 
 object of general persecution. The girls laughed 
 and winked at him; the boys hailed him with 
 broad jests as he sat behind the piles of fruit 
 in his mother s little shop. Isidore blushed and 
 bore it. 
 
 "Mme. Husson could not make up her 
 mind. A rosy wreath for the head of a young 
 man was a developement of her plans that she 
 had not contemplated. And yet, if she rejected 
 Isidore, all her great dream for doing good and 
 setting depraved Gisors a virtuous example must 
 go for nothing. She consulted her Father-Con 
 fessor. 
 
 " < Why, my dear Madame, said that good 
 
 gentleman, thinking it over with the assistance of 
 
 a pinch of snuff, I see* nothing out of the way in 
 
 the idea. Propriety knows no sex, or rather it 
 
 3 
 
may be an attribute of either sex. Certainly no 
 human being was ever more proper than Isidore. 
 Why, I don t believe the boy has ever drunk any 
 thing stronger than milk in his life; and he can 
 not be accused of setting a bad example to the 
 rest of our young people. 
 
 "That decided Mme. Husson. She called 
 on the Maire of Gisors, and that functionary 
 highly approved. Show me the municipal func 
 tionary who does not highly approve of giving 
 the tax-payers a right good holiday and festival 
 when it does n t cost the town anything. 
 
 " We 11 make a great occasion of it, of 
 course, he said. We 11 decorate the public 
 square ; and, yes, we 11 have the military out, and 
 get up a procession. 
 
 "They fixed the date of the ceremony for the 
 1 5th of August as being at once the festival of the 
 Virgin Mary and of the Emperor Napoleon. 
 31 
 
^ "2Habe in prance." *V 
 
 "When Isidore was consulted about it, he 
 blushed and appeared pleased. 
 
 " Well might he be pleased ! It was. his hour 
 of triumph. The girls who had laughed at him, 
 the boys who had jeered him, found the tables 
 turned upon them. It is all very well to laugh at 
 a fellow for a milk-sop and a goody-goody, but 
 when milk-soppery and goody-goodiness bring a 
 fellow in five hundred francs, a savings-bank-book, 
 a gold watch, a public dinner, municipal and 
 military honors, and a large increase in the fel 
 low s mother s fruit trade, why, a fellow is neither 
 to be laughed at nor sneezed at, even if he does 
 happen to be a little straight-laced. 
 
 "It was the i5th of August. The long main 
 street leading to the market-place of Gisors was 
 hung with banners and draperies its whole length. 
 In the market-place itself were spread the long 
 gayly-decked tables for the general collation, 
 their snowy covering contrasting bravely with the 
 crimson-striped awnings and other canopies that 
 stretched above them, supported by painted and 
 gilded flag-poles that bore streaming bannerets 
 high in the Summer air. With a thunder of 
 martial music, the Gisors Grenadiers swept into 
 the square. 
 
 "Dividing the great crowd that had already 
 gathered, the military pride of Gisors marched on, 
 flags flying and drums beating; drew up before 
 the humble shop of Isidore s mother, and pre 
 sented arms as Isidore appeared at the portal. 
 He was dressed from head to foot in spotless, 
 
immaculate white, with a bunch of orange-blos 
 soms in his white straw hat. 
 
 "With the Maire of the town on one side 
 and Mme. Husson radiant, trembling with excite 
 ment, on the other, Isidore advanced and took his 
 place in the procession. Amid the cheers of the 
 populace, following the rolling music of the 
 Grenadier band, they moved onward toward the 
 cathedral. In front of Isidore a detachment of 
 very little girls indeed strewed flowers in his path 
 way white, chaste, virginal flowers. Isidore 
 marched on with a happy smile upon his pale 
 innocent face, and the crowd cheered again and 
 again. 
 
 "There were brief services at the cathedral, 
 and a touching address by the officiating cleric; 
 and then the procession, returning to the market 
 place, took seats at the tables under the canopies. 
 
 " Before the collation began, the Maire made 
 his address. It was dignified and imposing. 
 
 33 
 
V "Jttabe in prance. 1 * V 
 
 " The honor that your benefactress and 
 your town extend to you, young man, is also, in 
 some sense, an obligation upon you. In the face 
 of this vast multitude who have met to acclaim 
 your triumph as an example of virtue, propriety 
 and decorum, you must be considered to have 
 taken upon yourself a high and sacred engage 
 ment to keep that bright example shining in 
 undiminished purity and splendor before the eyes 
 of this community, from now even unto your 
 latest day. 
 
 " Then, stepping solemnly forward, he press 
 ed the young man to his bosom, and sat the 
 wreath of roses on his head; and Isidore sobbed, 
 sobbed with a vague, innocent, ignorant joy and 
 pride. Then the Maire put into his hands the 
 silken purse that contained his five hundred 
 francs in gold, his savings-bank- book, his gold 
 watch, and the freedom of the town of Gisors, 
 enclosed in a silver casket. The last gifts had 
 been purchased by popular subscription. 
 
 " The repast was magnificent, too magnifi 
 cent. It was a repast of the true Norman style, 
 with countless dishes and immense portions; and 
 we gulped it down in good Norman style, float 
 ing it on its way in floods of rich golden cider 
 and generous red wine, while the glasses clinked, 
 the plates clashed, the knives and forks rattled, 
 and the Grenadier band poured forth its music 
 all the time that it was not eating or drinking 
 which, indeed, was no inconsiderable time, 
 for we sat at those tables from high noon until 
 the soft warm evening s mist came rolling up our 
 narrow streets from the low pasture lands about 
 the town, bringing with them a pleasant country 
 
 34 
 
V (Efc prise of Propriety. V 
 
 smell and faint, far-off sounds of tinkling bells 
 and lowing cattle. 
 
 "And then we took Isidore home. Poor 
 boy ; no one seemed to have noticed that this 
 child of temperance and frugality had been eat 
 ing all the day as he had never eaten before 
 since never before had he seen such viands and, 
 moreover, drinking n\\ day, as unquestionably he 
 had never drunk before a glass of wine having, 
 probably, been a rare and extreme indulgence 
 with him. And there he sat from twelve to from 
 six to seven, and with one or another of the 
 thoughtless, excited, warm-hearted, heavy drink 
 ers about him, poor Isidore had drunk every one 
 of the score of toasts with which the banquet 
 concluded and heaven knows how much more 
 beside. 
 
 "Still, the nervous excitement of the occa 
 sion kept him up ; and save for the glitter of his 
 eyes and the color in his cheek he seemed to 
 those who marched with him to that little fruit- 
 shop to be quite his usual, undemonstrative, silent 
 self. His mother was not yet come home; a 
 little band of friends was accompanying her from 
 house to house to show her son s wreath and to 
 receive the congratulations of her neighbors. 
 There was also a plan on foot to close the festivi 
 ties with a grand serenade to Mme. Husson. So 
 it happened that Isidore was somewhat uncere 
 moniously deposited in the darkened shop while 
 the unsatisfied merry-makers of his guard-of-honor 
 hurried on to the next excitement. 
 
 "So Isidore was left alone in the dim half- 
 darkness of the shop. A little light filtered in 
 through the cracks of the door, enough to show 
 
 4 JJ 
 
V "^ttabc in prance." V 
 
 him the heaping baskets of peaches, the melons 
 piled on the floor, and the late Summer fruits 
 spread out in attractive order on the shelves and 
 counters. The smell of them mingled in that 
 small warm room in one musky, intoxicating odor. 
 It mounted to the boy s brain as he sat there and 
 
 drew labored breaths of the close, rich, enervating 
 air. He felt the clean cold cover of his bank 
 book, he twirled his watch in his hand, and its 
 bright surface caught the light from a shutter- 
 chink. As he dropped his chain it fell with a 
 pleasant musical sound upon his silver box. But 
 he must have sat longest of all playing with the 
 purse of gold, and making its bright orange 
 stream ripple beneath the silken meshes, as he 
 softly cascaded it from hand to hand. 
 
 "For then and there in the darkness the 
 Devil seized upon him and rent him. How long 
 
V <Tf?e Prise of propriety. V 
 
 the struggle between his good and bad angels 
 may have been no man may know; nor what 
 agony of spirit worked within him in the musky 
 depths of the close little fruit-shop. But when 
 his mother returned to greet her boy, he was gone 
 and had left no trace behind him not even one 
 orange flower from his white straw hat. 
 
 "She hurried to the house of Mme. Husson, 
 and with Joconde to help them through the 
 crowds that still surged aimlessly about the streets, 
 they went to find the Maire. He could give them 
 no information, however, nor could the officers 
 of the police. The news got out, and within an 
 hour the whole town was looking for Isidore, 
 with the extravagant animation of people who 
 take their first delightful taste of a mystery. A 
 general alarm was sent out. The Colonel of the 
 Grenadiers despatched scouting-parties to make 
 the external circuit of the town. One of these 
 discovered on the Paris road the spray of orange- 
 blossoms. For the rest of the night, half of the 
 inhabitants of Gisors sat up comparing conjec 
 tures with each other, and discussing the possibil 
 ities of the young man s having met with foul 
 play. 
 
 "On the evening of the next day, when the 
 regular stage-coach got in on its return from 
 Paris, the people of Gisors learned the truth. 
 Isidore had hailed the conveyance a mile out of 
 town, had paid his fare out of his purse of gold, 
 and, traveling all night, had reached Paris in the 
 morning; and had got off and disappeared in the 
 
 37 
 
^ "iltabe in prance." V 
 
 streets of the great city as though it were the 
 most natural place in the world for a man in a 
 w r hite, spotless suit of duck. 
 
 "The authorities tried their best, but they 
 could get no further trace of the boy. 
 Weeks passed on and nothing occurred 
 to shed the slightest light upon the 
 mystery. 
 
 " I was then the youngest physician 
 in town, and I happened to be the only 
 person stirring in the street early one 
 Fall morning. As I entered the market 
 place, I suddenly saw a curious dark- 
 gray figure, in its gait and carriage more 
 like a baboon than a man, come staggering around 
 a distant corner. It fell even as I saw it, and I 
 hurried forward. Reaching the inanimate form, 
 I tried to lift it. It was a man sunk in the depths 
 of a profound alcoholic stupor, with an empty 
 brandy bottle clutched in his hand ; but it was 
 some time before I realized that the bloated, swol 
 len, bruised, besmirched face belonged to Isidore. 
 The beautiful white duck suit was a hideous skele 
 ton of filthy rags; and the whole creature, dress 
 and person, was a mass of filth, soilure and dis 
 figurement, marked with every stain and spot that 
 can be left on a man by the inexpressible foul 
 ness of a great city s lowest slums. I called for 
 help and got him home to his mother s. He was 
 washed, healed, fed, and set upright again, and 
 given another chance to behave himself. He had 
 nothing with him absolutely nothing of all his 
 3* 
 
V (Tfyc Pri3c of Propriety. V 
 
 gold and silver except the freedom of the town, 
 no longer in its silver casket, but tucked away, 
 dirty itself, in a dirtier pocket. 
 
 "We suspected, however, that he had some 
 small portion of his money hidden somewhere 
 outside the city limits, for when, a few days after 
 ward, he escaped from his mother s vigilance and 
 got outside the town, he came back shortly, 
 drunk, and with money enough in his pocket to 
 get still more drunk in tact, to go on such a 
 spree as no mortal man had ever yet gone on in 
 the streets of Gisors. A month later he repeated 
 
 this performance, and breaking of windows was 
 the smallest irregularity he committed. This oc 
 curred again from time to time, until the city 
 officials, having exhausted all the minor punish 
 ments they could bestow on him, ordered him to 
 
 3.9 
 
<V "2TTa6e in prance." T* 
 
 leave the town. It was then that Isidore marched 
 into the council-chamber and produced the free 
 dom of the town that had been given him with 
 his prize of propriety and asked the munici 
 pality of Gisors what action it proposed to take 
 in the matter. 
 
 "He remained the town drunkard until he 
 died," concluded the little doctor, getting down 
 off the parapet of the bridge; "and when I 
 closed his eyes the town paid my bill." 
 
DENNIS. 
 
DENNIS. 
 
 R. PESSELS, the retired apothecary, as he 
 called himself, the tired apothecary as 
 his friends sometimes called him, in a 
 way of good-natured jest lived to 
 suit his own quiet taste some distance 
 
 out of the village, in fact half way up the 
 mountain-side, in the third stone house on the 
 hill road, the only one on the second turn. And 
 as the road did not go over the mountain, but 
 stopped at the old quarry a quarter of a mile fur 
 ther on, Dr. Pessels practically did live, as his 
 more gregarious acquaintances in the little town 
 liked to put it, "at the end of all things." 
 
 But that was just exactly what suited Dr. 
 Pessels. Life had always been too bustling and 
 bothersome a business for him even life in the 
 calm little, out-of-the-way, up-country town where 
 for many years he had combined the functions of a 
 sort of half-doctor with those of a sort of druggist- 
 and-a-half, to say nothing (and indeed he said as 
 little as he could about it) of doing nearly any 
 thing in the veterinary line which happened to 
 come in his way. To explain the peculiar divi 
 sion of Dr. Pessels s activity I should say that the 
 doctor had but a courtesy claim to his title. In 
 42 
 
V X>ennis. V 
 
 his youth he had spent a couple of years at a 
 medical college, but he had never taken his 
 diploma, having come to the conclusion, at the 
 end of that time, that it was altogether too much 
 trouble. They say lazy folk take the most pains. 
 Certainly the saying came true in Dr. Pessels s 
 case. Fate shaped matters for him with such 
 ingenious irony that, before his classmates had 
 finished walking the hospitals, he found himself a 
 hard-working apothecary in a remote country 
 town, not only obliged to take upon his shoulders 
 the duties of a physician in all except the severest 
 cases of illness, when a "real doctor" had to be 
 summoned from the court-house town ten miles 
 away; but forced to eke out his living by pre 
 scribing for ailing live-stock, and by adding to 
 his legitimate drug business the manufacture of 
 all sorts of nostrums demanded by the curious 
 old-fashioned taste of his out-of-the-world neigh 
 borhood. From receipts of the last century, 
 founded, he sometimes used to think, on traditions 
 of the middle ages, he compounded, late of nights 
 and early of mornings, all sorts of eye-waters, 
 salves, complexion - washes, pomades, possets, 
 balms, plaisters (the people would n t have them 
 unless the labels were spelled that way) liniments, 
 herb-teas and all the other messes in which old- 
 fashioned country-folk delight. 
 
 For fifteen years did Dr. Pessels toil thus in 
 his grimy little shop, condemned to perpetual 
 industry he who asked nothing of the world 
 but to live and be lazy. And then one of his 
 messes worked a miracle for him, and gave him 
 the desire of his heart. He invented or evolved 
 or discovered Pessels s Panacea Gargle for Man, 
 
 43 
 
T "ilTa&e in prance." *P 
 
 Woman and Brute, and therewith he made his 
 fortune. You have probably never heard of the 
 Gargle. That is because, like many other reme 
 dies of its sort, it has what the botanists would 
 call a habitat its own 
 region of country wherein 
 it is looked upon as a 
 staple specific, and has no 
 rival in public affection. 
 Unknown outside of the 
 boundaries of a half-dozen 
 counties, within those limits 
 the Gargle soon grew to be 
 as necessary a part of the druggist s stock as 
 oleum ricini or catnpli. tinct. opii. 
 
 There was wealth untold ahead of the doctor 
 if he wanted it, but he had no use for wealth 
 untold. He had but one aim in life hencefor 
 ward: not to do another stroke of work. He 
 farmed out to a limited number of druggists in 
 the large towns of his region the right to manu 
 facture the Gargle on easy royalties; bought him 
 a house and a large garden as far from the town 
 as he could get, and settled down to a well-fed 
 hermit life, with a well-stocked cellar under him 
 and his man Dennis to keep house for him. 
 
 Dennis had been the Doctor s servant, helper 
 and handy-man for many years. He had helped 
 the Doctor with his simple surgery and with his 
 complicated compounds. Now he was gardener, 
 stableman, cook, butler, bed-maker, messenger, 
 and valet, and if there was any other office to be 
 filled about the house Dennis filled it. The 
 Doctor was lazy, Dennis was industrious; the 
 Doctor was loquacious, Dennis was taciturn; the 
 44 
 
IT t)cnnis. V 
 
 Doctor was joyous, ambitionless, content; Den 
 nis s soul was gnawed within him by the thought 
 of the wasted opportunity to make a fortune out 
 of the Gargle. It was not that Dennis cared for 
 anything that the money would bring to him per 
 sonally, for his wants were meagre in the extreme ; 
 but the waste offended his thrifty soul, and to 
 think that others were making the money that his 
 master might have made was a vexation to his 
 spirit. Then when the royalties began to fall in 
 and the Doctor re-let the privileges at whatever 
 was offered for them, Dennis raged in secret. 
 He knew that he could dispose of them for twice 
 what the Doctor was getting, and he could not 
 understand why the Doctor would not allow him 
 to act as his agent and wring the last penny out 
 of the manufacturers. To think that these lessees 
 were laughing in their sleeves at the fat, good- 
 natured, easy going little Doctor, was gall and 
 bitterness to his faithful servitor. 
 
 So there was a frown on Dennis s brow one 
 clear, smart Autumn morning as he handed Dr. 
 Pessels his mail, and saw the Doctor s face light 
 up at the sight of a certain large blue envelope. 
 The lease of the largest of all the firms manufac 
 turing the Gargle was about to fall in. Dennis 
 took the privileges of an old domestic ; he waited 
 while his employer, with a beaming countenance, 
 read the letter. 
 
 " Morton & Pound ? " inquired Dennis, 
 sourly. 
 
 " Yes, Dennis, yes," said the Doctor, cheerily ; 
 "our old friends." 
 
 "Same old terms?" snapped Dennis. Den 
 nis had never been disrespectful in all his years 
 
 45 
 
in franco." 
 
 of service, but his tone faintly suggested that 
 patience was ceasing to be a virtue. 
 
 "The same terms," assented the Doctor, 
 rubbing his hands contentedly; "five thousand 
 dollars. It s a great sum, Dennis; as much as 
 I could expect." 
 
 Dennis set his mouth hard. 
 
 "The other shop would give you ten, and 
 be glad to get it," he said. 
 
 " Perhaps so, perhaps so," returned the 
 Doctor, his gayety undimmed; "but it s worth 
 making a little less to know whom we re dealing 
 with. And they re old friends, Dennis, good 
 solid old friends ! " 
 
 Dennis emitted a low sound that was some 
 thing between a groan and a 
 grunt, and tramped dog- 
 gedly off to the vege 
 table garden, where 
 he dug at the 
 celery - trenches 
 with an unneces 
 sary and expres 
 sive vigor. The 
 fat little Doctor 
 strolled among 
 his late flowers 
 and selected with 
 great care a pink 
 aster for his button 
 hole; and finally trotted off, in a sort Oi aimlessly 
 busy way which he had, to the pretty little town 
 in the valley below him. 
 
 * 
 
 40 
 
J)ennts. 
 
 The Doctor was a rather more than middle- 
 aged man, and an old bachelor; he had always 
 old ways and he lived in an old town. There 
 fore it need not surprise you to 
 learn that the manner of his 
 going to bed was with a white 
 cotton night-cap on his 
 head and a little night- 
 light burning in a per 
 forated tin tower on a 
 stand at the head of his 
 bed. It was by the light 
 of this that the Doctor 
 saw, suddenly waking from 
 a sound sleep, the tall figure 
 of Dennis standing on the thresh 
 old, clad only in his night-shirt. 
 For a moment the Doctor lay still, staring idly; 
 astonished, but not wholly aroused. He had never 
 known Dennis to walk in his sleep before, but 
 from the glassy stare in the man s eyes the Doctor 
 supposed that his servant was in a somnambulistic 
 state. Then a sudden horror seized him and his 
 heart stood still, as, lowering his eyes, he per 
 ceived that Dennis held a hatchet in his hand. 
 He started up with a cry, but his feet had hardly 
 touched the floor when Dennis, uttering a snarl 
 like an angry beast, flew upon him and struck 
 savagely at him with the weapon. 
 
 The Doctor was a small man ; but he was 
 strong, and the terror of the situation lent him a 
 strength not his own. He could not overcome his 
 muscular antagonist; but for a few moments he 
 twisted the brawny wrist so as to keep the blade 
 of the hatchet from his face. But with the back 
 
 47 
 
^ "ZHabe in prance." V 
 
 of the heavy instrument Dennis beat down his 
 guard, raining horrible blows upon his head, 
 which his victim, dazed and panting, could not 
 contrive to dodge or ward off. They struggled 
 thus for some minutes in absolute silence, and 
 then Dennis wrenched the hatchet around, and 
 the sharp blade cut the Doctor s scalp and then 
 fell upon his neck and arm and chest. But as the 
 blood spurted forth, a sudden desperate gleam of 
 mental clearness came to the half-stunned sufferer, 
 and he shrieked madly : 
 
 "Dennis! Hear me! I have n t got the 
 money ! I did n t take their offer ! " 
 
 For a moment the madman paused. 
 
 "It s true," gasped the Doctor; "I did n t 
 accept their offer, look for yourself! The letter 
 on the desk ! " 
 
 Dennis s hold relaxed, and his victim sank 
 swooning to the floor. As consciousness departed, 
 he saw the tall shape take the letter from the 
 open desk and cross the room to read it by the 
 aid of the flickering lamplight. The last thing 
 
^ t>ennts. V 
 
 he saw was the blood-smeared face of his old 
 servant bent over the little round yellow light. 
 
 It was daylight when he came to himself, 
 though he was conscious of this only by feeling 
 the sun streaming upon his closed eyelids. He 
 lay absolutely motionless in a sort of paralysis of 
 fear and apprehension, becoming slowly conscious 
 of strange dull pains in various parts of his body, 
 of sensations of icy chill here and there, and of a 
 curious sense of numbness and compression in 
 other places. Courage came to him as he began 
 to reflect that he was not at the immediate point 
 of death, whatever his condition might be. His 
 heart was beating; he breathed, with some diffi 
 culty it is true, and although he felt very weak, 
 and suffered from the nausea that follows physical 
 shock, his head was quite clear, and he felt con 
 scious of a returning vitality. His stiffness and 
 chill must be, he thought, the effect of the coagu 
 lated blood which had dried on him during the 
 night. He could not bear to open his eyes and 
 to see it. 
 
 What was he to do? Could he, unaided, 
 staunch his own wounds, and find strength to 
 crawl for a quarter of a mile for help at the 
 nearest dwelling? Could he even get as far as 
 the road, there to lie and wait for the unlikely 
 appearance of some tradesman or chance way 
 farer? A sudden chill of fear went through him 
 as he felt the door of the room gently open. It 
 was Dennis, he thought Dennis come back to 
 finish his horrible work. He held his breath as 
 he heard steps approach his bed. 
 
 49 
 
V "Sltabc in prance." f 
 
 The sheet was drawn back, and in a mo 
 ment he felt the touch of water upon his flesh. 
 Dennis was washing off the stains of blood ! 
 What would he do next? Take his victim 
 away and bury him? Where? The Doctor 
 began vaguely to wonder where it would be, 
 whether under the cellar or in the great sand 
 pit at the end of the garden. He opened one 
 eye very slightly, and, as he saw the face of 
 Dennis above him, such a quick horror seized 
 upon him that he trembled in every limb, and 
 for a few moments lapsed into unconsciousness. 
 
 When his mind came back he found the 
 washing still going on, and he noted with wonder 
 that Dennis s touch was both gentle and firm. 
 Then he felt his servant draw the edges of the 
 
 wounds together, and it was no longer possible for 
 him to doubt that the strange creature who had 
 half murdered him was now trying to undo his 
 own work and to save his master s life. 
 
For a few dazed moments the Doctor lay 
 still, trying to get this through his head. Then 
 the professional man came uppermost in him, and 
 he calmly remarked, without opening his eyes : 
 
 "You d better put some peroxide of hy 
 drogen in that water." 
 
 And the voice of Dennis responded as 
 calmly : 
 
 "I ve got it in, sir; same as you always 
 use." 
 
 Doctor Pessels opened his eyes, expecting to 
 see before him a vision of blood. Instead he 
 found himself lying on a bed of snowy cleanness, 
 his body swathed in cool bandages, and with no 
 more trace of last night s hideous scene about 
 him than if it had never been enacted. Dennis 
 bent over him, pale, but with compressed features. 
 
 " Do you know what you have done ? " de 
 manded Dr. Pessels, who was too simple and 
 direct in thought and speech to be much troubled 
 with vain timorousness. 
 
 "Yes, sir," said Dennis, growing a shade 
 paler. 
 
 "You have come within an ace of being a 
 murderer," went on the Doctor, sternly. 
 
 "I know it, sir," returned Dennis, without 
 ceasing in his ministrations. 
 
 "And what are you going to do now?" 
 asked the Doctor. 
 
 " I m going to cure you, Doctor dear," Den 
 nis replied, his voice breaking with a husky sound. 
 " I m going to cure you, and you know well 
 there s none that can do it like me. And if I 
 bring you round, and you won t give me up to 
 the law, I II serve you faithful all my life. I will, 
 
in franco." V* 
 
 Doctor, while there s breath in me. Only tell 
 me you won t give me up to the law ! " 
 
 For some long instants the two men looked 
 at each other. Then Doctor Pessels said : 
 
 "I won t give you up to the law, Dennis. 
 You have mv word." 
 
 Dennis had spoken truly when he said that 
 he could care for the Doctor better than any one 
 else. Never in his life had the Doctor been so 
 cared for, so watched over, so ceaselessly, so 
 gently, or so thoughtfully and wisely tended. 
 Dennis had always been a good nurse, especially 
 in surgical cases. The Doctor had taught him 
 to be a good cook, and as an attached, faithful 
 and attentive domestic, this midnight assassin had 
 no equal. Night and day he was at the Doctor s 
 bedside, always ready to foresee and forerun his 
 slightest wish, always respectful, solicitous, atten 
 tive, silent. And day and night the Doctor lay 
 there and wondered what on earth he was going 
 to do with Dennis when he got well again for 
 he was rapidly recovering. 
 
 Of course his first thought was to ship his 
 terrible servitor out of the country; then, as he 
 grew better, and realized how dependent he had 
 grown to be upon this perfect and unfailing 
 service, and on a thousand little cares and com 
 forts which no one else could provide for him, he 
 began to change his mind. Of course his faith in 
 human nature had received a rude shock; the 
 Doctor decided positively, after very carefully 
 considering the matter, that he really could never 
 feel again toward Dennis as he had felt before 
 52 
 
^ >cnnis. ^f 
 
 what he termed in his own thought "the incident." 
 But then, he reflected, the very happening that 
 had given him a lifelong distrust of Dennis had 
 given him a lifelong hold over that strange crea 
 ture. If he could no longer believe in the 
 devotion of love, he certainly could count on the 
 devotion born of fear. And in the end he decided 
 to keep Dennis. 
 
 Life went on much as usual in the stone 
 house on the hill. No one outside the house 
 knew of "the incident." No one had ever been 
 encouraged to call, and it was County Fair 
 season, when no one s absence from town was 
 likely to create much comment. When the 
 Doctor appeared on the street again, it was easy 
 to explain the stiffness in his shoulder and the 
 scar on his scalp by the explanation that he had 
 at last fallen down a dangerous flight of stone 
 steps in front of his house, as many people had 
 predicted he some day would. 
 
 Dennis was the same old Dennis as of yore. 
 The Doctor leaned rather more on him day by 
 day nay, more having taken stock with the 
 devil, he began to draw his dividends. It was 
 unwise, he said to himself, to cross Dennis in the 
 one passion, or mania, or whatever it might be 
 called, that was the mainspring of his "eccentri 
 cities." He took Dennis s advice about his new- 
 reckonings with the manufacturers who paid him 
 royalty, and indeed, made Dennis to some extent 
 his agent. The Doctor found himself growing 
 rich, really rich, rich enough to satisfy demands 
 much more exacting than those of his simple lazi 
 ness. He did not quite realize what this meant, 
 however, until he went away for a little trip to 
 
 S3 
 
?_S^T vV- 
 
 re-establish his health, and found out what people 
 out in the world think of a man who does n t 
 have to be particular to a few hundreds in what 
 he spends for his pleasure. It really seemed, he 
 thought, to please the other people more even 
 than it pleased him. 
 
 It was the day after the Doctor returned 
 from his trip. He was walking up and down in 
 front of his house, looking across the valley to 
 where great heavy clouds were pushing unmistak 
 able snow-signs up into a bright November sky. 
 He had just been exhibiting to Dennis the great 
 fur overcoat he had purchased in his wanderings, 
 and now he was listening to Dennis s account of 
 his stewardship during the master s absence. With 
 54 
 
"V" J>cnni$. 
 
 a complacency that would have been impossible 
 to him three months before, the Doctor heard 
 how Dennis had collected, to the last penny and 
 with interest, a certain debt owed to the inventor 
 of the Gargle by a dishonest compounder of drugs 
 in the county town. 
 
 Turning in their walk, almost as Dennis pro 
 nounced the name of the place, they saw two 
 representatives of that seat of law standing at the 
 very gate. One was the well-known figure of the 
 county-sheriff; his companion was a policeman in 
 uniform. 
 
 Dennis raised a yell of affright to heaven. 
 
 "You ve given me up!" he cried. "You ve 
 given me up to the law ! " 
 
 Dr. Pessels was utterly taken back. 
 
 No certainly not never ! " he stam 
 
 mered. "Why, Dennis, you know I could n t do 
 such a thing as that ! " 
 
 "What s this, Doctor?" called the Sheriff 
 cheerily as he advanced up the walk; "have you 
 been lodging information against your man?" 
 
y "IHabe in prance." V 
 
 "I?" cried the Doctor, indignantly; "no; 
 never! I promised him at the time " 
 
 " At what time ? " The Sheriff snapped this 
 out in such a peremptory way that the Doctor s 
 mouth answered before the Doctor s mind was 
 aware of it : 
 
 "The time he tried to kill me." 
 
 "Tried to kill you!" repeated the Sheriff. 
 
 "To kill you!" echoed the policeman. 
 
 "Yes," said the poor Doctor; "but upon my 
 honor I " 
 
 "We 11 attend to this in regular order," said 
 the Sheriff sternly, as he slipped the hand-cuffs on 
 Dennis s helpless wrists; "we did n t come after 
 this man for attempt to kill; we want him for 
 petty larceny. He stole a plush perfumery case 
 and a letter-scales out of a druggist s shop over in 
 our place, while he was collecting an account for 
 you, and he was seen to bring them home and 
 hide them behind your barn. Got a spade?" 
 
 When they dug up the hiding place of Den 
 nis s thefts, they found the decayed and mildewed 
 remains of aimless magpie pilferings which must 
 have represented a year s accumulation. Here he 
 had hidden a wonderful collection of odds and 
 ends a pair of baby s shoes, an empty cruet- 
 stand, a plowshare, a silver candlestick, a milk- 
 can and an enamelled watch. 
 
 On the trial for assault with attempt to kill, 
 the defense was insanity. The Prosecuting Attor 
 ney did his best to make a point of Dennis s 
 business sagacity, but he had very little chance 
 with the eloquent and pathetic orator whom Dr. 
 Pessels had engaged to appear for the defense. 
 This gentleman got the aimless and purposeless 
 56 
 
^ jDcnnts. ^ 
 
 thefts into evidence somehow or other, and he 
 expatiated on Dennis s devoted fidelity to the 
 master against whom in a moment of madness he 
 had raised his hand, until the women in the 
 audience wept effusively ; Dr. Pessels let his honest 
 tears stream down his simple, fat face; the jurors 
 were, as the reporters say, "visibly affected," and 
 even the judge looked at the ceiling and cleared 
 his throat. 
 
 "And why," demanded 
 counsel for the Defense, fer 
 vently, "why, after this 
 catastrophe, did this em 
 ployer retain in his ser 
 vice this domestic who 
 had sought his life ? 
 Why did he turn to him 
 for care, for attendance, for 
 affection ? Why, when, through 
 the faithful nursing of this victim of a moment s 
 frenzy, for I say to you, gentlemen, he, and not 
 the man he struck, is the victim in this case why 
 did this employer retain him in his service, con 
 fide to his keeping higher trusts, and clasp him 
 to his bosom closer than ever before ? " 
 
 The speaker paused with extended hand. 
 Dr. Pessels evidently thought that he was directly 
 appealed to. 
 
 "Because it s so everlasting hard to get any 
 sort of a good servant nowadays," he replied 
 huskily, through his tears. 
 
 The jury evidently thought so too. Dennis 
 is in the State Insane Asylum. 
 
THE MINUET. 
 
THE MINUET. 
 
 HEN I had read through the letter signed 
 Rodman Kernochan, I had some diffi 
 culty in associating the idea of its 
 authorship with the idea of the man 
 with whom I had had a brief but pleas 
 ant acquaintance eight or ten years before. 
 I had had a sort of stag-party and public- 
 dinner friendship with him during one notably 
 hilarious season in New York, but he was at that 
 time a soldier in the United States Army, and he 
 had all his life been a soldier in that larger army 
 of the Soldiers of Fortune; and so it happened 
 that we were not much thrown together. Later, 
 when I think I might have seen more of him, he 
 fell heir to some immense fortune and went abroad 
 to live. My clearest memory of him was the picture 
 my mind had preserved of our parting hand-clasp 
 on the steamer s deck. 
 
 As I remembered Captain Kernochan, he 
 was a big, strong, heavy man, rather slow and 
 quiet and self-contained, with hair and moustache 
 prematurely gray, stiff, thick and bristling like 
 thatch. His complexion was ruddy, almost rubi 
 cund : the complexion of a man who lived well 
 and fed hearty appetites; yet who observed & 
 
(CI?e ZTlmuet. 
 
 certain sturdy temperance. His features were 
 hard in form and expression ; only his eyes, which 
 were large, dark-brown and somewhat sad, 
 seemed capable of kindness. In manners I 
 remembered him quiet, reserved and cour 
 teous ; a man who listened much and talked 
 rarely; and who, when he did talk, talked 
 admirably well; thoughtfully, and with a 
 cultured grace in his low, pleasant tones. 
 You felt that you would not care to enlist 
 as a private in that Captain s company if , 
 an easy life were your ambition ; but that 
 if you were a private in his company, you 
 would go to the bottom of the Devil s pit 
 for him. 
 
 Here is his letter : 
 
 "You told me once, my dear sir, that your 
 business (so you called it,) as a student of human 
 nature, had made you more indulgent of the 
 absurdities and inconsistencies of humanity than 
 of many of its commonplace virtues. I am going 
 to trust to that indulgence that you will not laugh 
 at my present request, as I am sure I can trust 
 to your kindness not to refuse it. 
 
 "You used sometimes to reproach me with 
 what you called the callosity of my sympathies, 
 especially in matters of patriotism and humane 
 sentiment. The reproach was just. I have 
 knocked around the world so much and so long; 
 1 have seen so much of life s miseries and hard 
 ships and pains and horrors that I suppose I have 
 grown insensible and even indifferent to human 
 
^ "iltabe in prance." V 
 
 suffering. Nay, I know that I could not have 
 got that reputation, as I certainly have, without 
 earning it. And when I say that I have seen, 
 without much wear and tear on my heart-strings, 
 five months in the prison-pen at Andersonville, 
 five years of Indian warfare, two epidemics of 
 cholera and one of yellow-fever, a conflagration 
 in which hundreds perished, and much more 
 than one man s fair allowance of moving acci 
 dents by flood and field, you will understand why 
 I have to ask the indulgence of your experience 
 to believe that there are afflictions of my fellow- 
 men so trifling that most people would consider 
 them fanciful, which yet have the power to touch 
 me with a poignant pain, to fix themselves in my 
 memory as grief for the dead is fixed in other 
 minds, and to haunt me for years with an inex 
 tinguishable pity and an unsatisfied desire to 
 help and solace. 
 
 "My story takes me back a quarter of a 
 century in a life that has been full of fantastic 
 changes. I was then a young man of twenty- 
 three, still broken in health with my confinement 
 at Andersonville, alone in New York, without 
 friends, and with very little money, studying hard 
 for a profession for which I had little liking and 
 less capacity. I lived, for economy s sake, near 
 what was then Manhattan ville, and not far from 
 the old Bloomingdale Road. That delightful old 
 highway was already beginning to disappear 
 under the pick and shovel, to make way for a. 
 boulevard and the rest of that system of so- 
 called improvements, which I suppose by this 
 time has left little trace of the outskirts of the 
 town as I knew them. 
 
^ Cfy? tHtnuet. ^ 
 
 " I was no more of a patriot in those days 
 than I am now; one city was the same to me 
 as another, and one street meant no more to 
 me than the next. So, though I was fond enough 
 of my pleasant surroundings in that good old- 
 fashioned neighborhood, I could not designate to 
 you by any reference to landmarks where it was 
 that I found, somewhere between Central Park 
 and the North River perhaps in the then- 
 unfinished part of the park itself, a great old- 
 fashioned place which had once been the residence 
 of some historic gentleman whose name I have 
 forgotten. It was a grand old house, standing in 
 grounds that must have covered many acres, and 
 that had once been cultivated with exquisite taste. 
 There were many such places in the region at 
 that time, most of them dropping into decay ; but 
 this was of all of them the largest, seemingly the 
 oldest, and its grounds were the most quaintly 
 laid out in flower-gardens and formal shrubberies 
 lanes of box and avenues of privet, and here 
 and there great ragged evergreens of all sorts 
 slowly growing out of the odd shapes into which 
 some Dutch gardener had clipped them a century 
 before. And all this stood in the way of some 
 devilish improvement was it a boulevard or 
 an aqueduct or a horse-car line or what ? 1 have 
 forgotten; but I know that the beautiful place 
 was doomed to destruction, and I know for a 
 long time it seemed that I was the only one who 
 would mourn its fall. 
 
 "There was a great old flower-garden at the 
 back of the house, where I used to go to read 
 and study, partly because I loved to walk between 
 the neglected beds that still kept up some pitiful 
 
V" "ittabe in prance.* V 
 
 show of flowering within their sturdy borders of 
 box, and to catch smells of honeysuckle and 
 southernwood; and partly because in that 
 secluded spot I could not hear the pickaxes of 
 the sappers and miners in the van of the March 
 of Progress, nor see the scar they were making on 
 the face of nature. 
 
 "For a long time I thought indeed I was 
 sure that I was the only human being who 
 frequented the place; but after a while, as famil 
 iarity trained my eye to notice little things, I 
 became conscious of the fact that some other 
 person or persons shared my love for the old 
 garden. He, she, or they shared also my reverent 
 respect for it, and refrained from ravaging the 
 beds or spoiling the flowering shrubs. I permitted 
 myself a modest posy for my button-hole : so, it 
 seemed, did some one else. I found this out when 
 1 got to noticing how many flowers there were in 
 certain favorite clumps of mine. By and by, 
 64 
 
^ (CI?c minuet. <*> 
 
 becoming interested and curious, for never had I 
 seen a soul within the enclosure, I searched for 
 footsteps and found them. It was no easy task, 
 for the walks had the smoothness and firmness of 
 great old age, hut by diligent scrutiny of every 
 patch of dust or mould, I finally discovered and 
 individualized, if I may so express it, two different 
 footprints; and I satisfied myself that, save my 
 own, none but those two pairs of feet trod the 
 garden paths. 
 
 " Both were small feet one a man s and one 
 a woman s and both were peculiar. The man 
 wore shoes with the narrow, square, sharp-cornered 
 toe that is affected by South Americans and 
 Cubans I believe it is called the Creole or 
 Spanish toe. The print of the woman s sole was 
 beautifully small and dainty; but the shape and 
 the character of the impression puzzled me much, 
 until I guessed the truth : that she wore slippers 
 and uncommonly small slippers, too. There 
 fore, I reasoned, she must live near by. 
 
 " I was twenty-three years old, as I have told 
 you, and I made up my mind to find out who 
 that woman was. Perhaps I should say that I 
 determined to discover the woman and the man ; 
 but as for the man, his toes had already pre 
 judiced me against him. And he seemed, at the 
 best, unnecessary. So you see that I, too, have 
 been twenty-three. I suppose some people would 
 not believe it of me. 
 
 "My hours in the garden had been invariable. 
 From nine, when I finished my breakfast, to 
 eleven when I went to my lectures ; and from 
 seven, when I finished my dinner, until eight, when 
 1 returned to my room to begin my evening s 
 6s 
 
work. The day after I made my resolve I took 
 an early breakfast; went to my garden, and 
 entered it noiselessly by one of the privet-bordered 
 paths, whose high hedge would screen me from 
 observation, while it allowed me to peep through 
 its straggling twigs. 
 
 " I had not gone half the length of the path 
 when I saw him for it was the man and he 
 was alone. The first thing that I saw of him was 
 his square-toed shoes; then, as I raised my eyes 
 I saw one of the oddest and one of the oldest 
 
 66 
 
IT <El?c 
 
 figures that I have ever encountered. The square- 
 toed shoes were low-cut, with silver buckles. The 
 breeches were tight to the leg, of black broad 
 cloth somewhat shiny with age. Then came a 
 yellow nankeen waistcoat and a swallow-tail coat 
 of a faded mulberry color, with very small silver 
 buttons. A great black satin stock enveloped the 
 neck. The hat that went with this costume was 
 a beaver, a real beaver, a genuine antique, fuzzy, 
 with a crown like an inverted bell, and a wonder 
 fully broad rolling brim. I think you will under 
 stand what I mean when I say that that hat was 
 an improbable hat. I know that I stood 
 and stared at it for a minute or two, 
 slowly taking in all its queerness be 
 fore I thought of inspecting its 
 wearer any further. 
 
 "We speak often of a 
 costume suiting its wearer. 
 In this case I should rather 
 say that the man suited his 
 costume. He was old, in 
 credibly old in the face, 
 clean shaven, wrinkled, yel 
 low as old ivory and his 
 wig ! It absolutely made you 
 believe in the hat; it was [ 
 such a marvel of curly, shiny, 
 pomaded, jet-black juvenility. ... 
 And yet for all its obvious age it 
 was a sprightly figure that walked 
 briskly along the garden paths, evidently 
 taking a morning constitutional. And there was 
 something positively fascinating in the amiable, 
 intelligent, interested way in which that wrinkled 
 
 6 67 
 
Tf "tttabe in prance." V 
 
 old face grinned and grimaced and mowed at the 
 empty air as though it held converse with the 
 invisible. 
 
 "For half an hour I watched him as he 
 walked smartly about the grounds; and then I 
 went away half ashamed of thus spying on his 
 privacy, and yet too bashful to present myself to 
 his notice, although the oddity and eccentricity 
 of his appearance had already so caught my 
 fancy and aroused my wonder that I had quite 
 forgotten to trouble myself about the yet undis 
 covered wearer of the dainty feminine slippers. It 
 must have been indeed a fascination that brought 
 me back the same hour the next morning, and the 
 morning after that, just to watch the brisk little 
 old man from behind my screen of shrubbery. 
 And on that third morning I saw a sight that 
 held me spell-bound. 
 
 "The old man stopped short in his pro 
 menade and tapped the firm smooth walk two or 
 three times with the tip of his toe. Then he took 
 three steps forward, made a low bow a very 
 low bow with his hands spread out, then took 
 three steps back, and then, with the rapidity and 
 agility of a fighting-cock, skipped fifteen or twenty 
 feet forward, rose a good half-a-yard into the air, 
 and cut a pigeon-wing the like of which I had 
 never seen before. Down he came, back he 
 skipped; then to right, then to left; he bowed, 
 he smirked, he waved his hands in the air, he 
 flourished his lean old legs in marvelous intricate 
 steps, advancing, retreating, turning and twirling, 
 swinging this way and that in airy circles and 
 semi-circles, and each time that he came back to 
 the place from which he started, he drew the tips 
 
 6$ 
 
of his shrivelled fingers together, raised them to 
 his lips, threw a kiss to an imaginary public, and 
 made three low bows, right, left and centre, while 
 his poor old yellow features were twisted and 
 puckered with grimaces of delighted vanity. He 
 was dancing. 
 
 "After that I had to make his acquaintance; 
 and a few days later I did; contriving to enter 
 the garden just as he left it, and to pass the time 
 of day with him, as when I was a boy in the 
 country it was customary to do with any stranger 
 met upon the highway. I expected to find him 
 shy and embarrassed, but he was not, in the least. 
 To my salutation of A fine day, sir! he 
 answered cordially and pleasantly : 
 
 " Indeed it is, sir, and quite like the weather 
 we used to have. 
 
V "XRate in prance. 1 V 
 
 " In a week we were good friends, and I 
 knew his whole history. Do you know who he 
 was ? He was Carnanti, the old dancing master, 
 the man who taught the modish people of New 
 York to dance, who directed their balls and chose 
 their music and formed their code of etiquette 
 in my father s time ! Think of it, my dear sir, his 
 life in the world had ended before mine began, 
 and to all intents and purposes two centuries 
 shook hands in our two persons. 
 
 "And then I heard about the slippers. 
 Proud as he was of the triumphs of his past, in 
 America and in France he was ballet master at 
 the opera in Paris during the latter part of Napo 
 leon s consulate, and emigrated in 1805, in 
 testimony of his principles, being unable to bear 
 the sight of the Corsican upstart declared Emperor 
 and seated on the throne of the Bourbons he 
 was prouder still of something else; and when he 
 told me of it he got up from his seat as if to 
 speak with more respect. 
 
 " It may not have escaped your memory, 
 sir, that I have the honor of being the husband 
 of la Cerita ! 
 
 "It had indeed escaped my memory, but I 
 could quite clearly recall my father s enthusiastic 
 ravings over that incomparable queen of dancers, 
 beside whom, in his opinion, all other artists of 
 the ballet were clumsy charlatans. 
 
 "It was she who came to the garden with 
 him, and the footprint I had seen was made by 
 the woman out of whose slipper a King of France 
 once drank champagne. But, as he remarked, 
 his wife was no longer in her first youth, (as far 
 as I can make out she must have been sixty and 
 70 
 
^ (Efc ITlinuct. V 
 
 he eighty-five or six at this time,) and she pro 
 menaded herself only in what he called the 
 choice of the day namely, the dry warm hours 
 of the early afternoon. 
 
 " I presented myself at the court of the ex- 
 queen a few days later. She was a little old 
 woman dressed in a limp, shiny, old-fashioned 
 silk; faded, wrinkled, exquisitely neat, and gentle 
 and sweet, with a smell of pot-pourri about her 
 which is in part the reason why the thought of a 
 withered rose-petal always comes to me when I 
 remember her. 
 
 "It was to these old people that I said 
 one day : 
 
 " What was the Minuet ? Will you not tell 
 me something about the Minuet? 
 
 "Camanti gave a little start, his fingers 
 trembled and a touch of color rose to his yellow 
 cheek. 
 
 " It is no, it was the Dance of Kings, 
 and it died with the Kings. There are Kings no 
 more and there will no more be a Minuet. In all 
 the world there was never no, never such a 
 dance as the Minuet. 
 
 "I tried to make him describe it, to tell 
 me something of its figures and steps, but its 
 intricacies and refinements were very soon too 
 much for his English. At last he turned to his 
 wife who sat silent, smelling now and then of a 
 spray of southernwood which she held daintily 
 between the tips of her fingers. 
 
 " Madam, he said, would you have the 
 grace to illustrate for this gentleman? 
 
 "She rose and cast a timorous glance about 
 her, as if to assure herself that no one else was 
 
 7 r 
 
\ 
 
 looking. Then without a word she took her place 
 opposite him and I saw the Minuet danced. 
 
 " Backward and forward they went, bowing 
 and smiling to each other, with coquettish gesticu 
 lations and bows and curtseys of profoundly 
 ceremonious salutation. They advanced, they 
 retreated, they crossed, they circled, they kissed 
 their hands and made their bows to partners who 
 danced only in their fond old eyes; they waved 
 their trembling hands in the air, and sprang up 
 from time to time in funny little old-fashioned 
 steps, like the marionette figures that used to 
 dance in a glass box on the top of a certain kind 
 of street organ. Left over from the last century, 
 these two pitiful, odd old figures went through 
 72 
 
IP (E!?c ZHtnud. V" 
 
 every least step and movement of that forgotten 
 dance, to music that had been a lifetime mute. 
 
 "I sat and watched them, with something in 
 my throat that forbade me to laugh, until they 
 reached the end and the old man gave a quick 
 little upward glance, as though to see some long- 
 dead leader drop his baton. They stood for a 
 moment face to face, looking fixedly at each 
 other, as though they were slowly coming to 
 themselves after a moment of rapturous ecstacy, 
 and then, sobbing like children, they fell into 
 each other s arms. 
 
 " That is all my story. A few days later I 
 went to Mexico and took service in the army of 
 Juarez; and never again did I see either of my 
 two strange friends. And that I never have seen 
 them; that I never, in all my years of wander 
 ing, sought them out to show them some trivial 
 kindness; that I was noi with them when the old 
 man died, to give my arm to the poor old woman 
 who survived him, and to make this frail creature, 
 so long tenderly watched over and cared for by 
 her adoring husband, feel that there was at least 
 one person left in the world to whom she could 
 turn for sympathy and attention this, my friend, 
 this has for twenty-five years weighed on a con 
 science callous enough to the memory of a hun 
 dred atrocities which I have seen unmoved and 
 unstirred to pity. 
 
 " Camanti is dead. Long ago, when I was 
 in the Sandwich Islands, I read of his demise in a 
 newspaper that was then three years old. Why I 
 
 73 
 
V "2Ha6e in prance." V 
 
 never made search for his widow I do not know. 
 Perhaps it is because I have weakly tried to 
 cherish all these years the remembrance of them 
 as I saw them in that sweet old garden that so 
 became them, and that I have been just coward 
 enough to avoid facing the certain discovery that 
 this last pleasure had been taken out of their 
 gentle and loving old lives. 
 
 "This brings me to my request. A few days 
 ago, I saw in an obscure French theatrical paper 
 a statement that the grave of the great Cerita in 
 Calvary Cemetery, New York, was without a 
 stone. What I ask of you is to see if this be so, 
 and to use the enclosed draft in providing a fitting 
 sepulchre for my two old friends, wherever they 
 may lie." 
 
 I shall do what Ker- 
 nochan asked me to, 
 
 but not until Spring, 
 
 when I shall lay 
 
 upon the tomb of 
 
 the two old people a 
 
 bunch of violets that 
 
 grow in a certain old-fashioned garden I know of, 
 
 so that I, too, may have a part in this old-time 
 
 friendship. 
 
 74 
 
A PINT S A POUND. 
 
A PINT S A POUND. 
 
 Jgfek 
 
 
 
 HEN THE Circuit Judge had seen his 
 horse put up in the stable of the one 
 nameless tavern at Pondwater Court- 
 House, had taken a drink at the bar 
 of the establishment, in company with an 
 other bar- namely, the entire legal profession of 
 Pondwater County, consisting of Mr. Hi Baker, 
 the local lawyer, a short and very slouchy oldish 
 man, with a stubbly, rounded gray beard; Mr. 
 Woodruff Sitz, the lawyer from Walloon, and Ex- 
 Judge Pumfert, who kept the hotel, and who, 
 occasionally, when he was sober, took assignments 
 to defend, he looked inquiringly at the Sheriff, 
 who had just come in, and stood swinging the 
 Court -House keys and gazing suggestively at 
 the bar. 
 
 "Any business, Mr. Huff?" he inquired. 
 The Circuit Judge was a tall, thin, clean 
 shaven man with prominent aquiline features, a 
 keen eye and a fine mop of wavy dark hair 
 crowning his high forehead. He was younger 
 than his companions; but it was easy to see that 
 they looked up to him as a man of greater fibre 
 and greater vigor : indeed, he had lawyer, politi 
 cian and People s Choice written all over him, 
 76 
 
A smile of amused reflection stirred the 
 tobacco-stained corners of the Sheriff s mouth. 
 
 "Well," he said, slowly, stroking his beard, 
 " got something amusing, anyway. Got an assault- 
 and-battery case from over Huckleberry Hill, and 
 two of them old original Huckleberry Hunkers 
 locked up in the stone crock. My! ain t them 
 two specimens ! Eh, Hi ? " 
 
 "Guess His Honor ain t seen nothing like 
 them yet," assented Mr. Baker, with a nod of 
 conviction and an expressive shift of his quid. 
 
 "They talk about them Digger Injins in 
 Californy," broke in the Ex-Judge, his hoarse 
 deep voice booming like a rusty bell, "I don t 
 believe they are one mite wussen that lot on the 
 other side of Huckleberry Hill. Civilization ! 
 Why, they don t know the meaning of the word. 
 There ain t a one of them can read or write, and 
 their morals, sir, their morals, would suit a a 
 a hog." 
 
 "Would n t suit no hog ever I see," said the 
 Sheriff, tersely. 
 
 77 
 
in prance." V 
 
 " No, nor me neither," Mr. Baker agreed 
 with him, shifting the quid back, "/never see 
 no hog was n t a gentleman alongside of a 
 Huckleberry Hill man. And sows," he concluded, 
 reflectively, "are the Queen of England alongside 
 of their women." 
 
 " How s that, Sitz ? " inquired the Circuit 
 Judge, addressing the third man, who had not yet 
 spoken. He, too, was lank and clean shaven; 
 but his hair was gray and his features were of a 
 saturnine cast. You saw at once that he, too, 
 was a lawyer and a politician also, that he 
 never had been and never would be the People s 
 Choice. His response was dry and brief. 
 
 "Ain t sayin nothin . My case." 
 
 " Oh ! " said the Circuit Judge. " In that case, 
 gentlemen, take a drink with me and we 11 get to 
 business." 
 
 The drink was taken, and they all set out 
 for the little stone court-house at the other end 
 of the village street, the Sheriff, a smile of satis 
 faction now illuminating his face, having taken 
 his place by the side of the Circuit Judge. He 
 dangled his big keys as he walked, making them 
 clink pleasantly; and in that simple suggestion of 
 official power began and ended all outward and 
 ceremonial show of the majesty and dignity of the 
 law in Pondwater County. 
 
 As they walked along, the Sheriff told the 
 Judge brief tales of the wretchedly degraded, 
 recklessly happy outcasts who lived on the further 
 side of the mountain, scraping a mean livelihood 
 out of huckleberry-picking in the season, and 
 hunting and fishing the rest of the year. They 
 formed just such a colony as may still be found 
 78 
 
in many of the wild forest-regions of the more 
 mountainous parts of New York, Pennsylvania 
 and New Jersey the shrewd, ignorant, lawless, 
 lazy offspring of early settlers of the class known 
 in the South as "poor white trash." 
 
 The legal party came to the ridiculous little 
 Grecian temple, in yellowing moss-stained stucco, 
 which served Pondwater County for a temple of 
 the law. The Sheriff unlocked the door of the 
 musty little court-room, and went around to the 
 jail-wing at the back to get his prisoners. The 
 others filed in and took their places, the Circuit 
 Judge climbing carefully to his seat on a peril 
 ously small platform, and dusting the chair 
 carefully before he sat down. A few country 
 people lounged in, a few boys filtered in, a few 
 girls peeped in, only the tips of their sun-bonnets 
 showing above, around the edge of the door, and 
 
 79 
 
*P "tftabe in prance/* V 
 
 the tips of their prehensile toes below, crisped up 
 tight and scraping at the sill. At last the Sheriff 
 arrived with his prisoners, and Court was opened. 
 The Sheriff stood behind his two prisoners as they 
 sat on a long seat under the Judge s desk. 
 
 " Miss Sprull," he called out, " Hi, you there, 
 Sairey, come up here ! " 
 
 At this command, a tall, gaunt woman with 
 a thin face, whose leathery skin was almost of the 
 same pale-brown hue of her coarse wispy hair, 
 dragged tight over her head and tied behind in a 
 knot the size of a hickory-nut, stalked up the 
 narrow aisle with a loose swinging step. In one 
 hand she held by its strings a black bonnet of a 
 marvelous antique pattern, stained, bedraggled 
 and twisted out of shape. Her dress, or at least, 
 the garment which hung on her, was of calico as 
 faded and weather-beaten as her complexion ; and 
 her feet displayed a pair of huge, shapeless 
 prunella shoes that must have been purchased a 
 generation before that session of court. She sat 
 80 
 
down on the extreme end of the bench on which 
 sat the two prisoners. She gave no sign of 
 noticing them, and yet, in all that countryfied 
 assemblage, she and they evidently belonged to a 
 class apart from all the rest. 
 
 They were both dressed in homespun, and 
 for dirty, defiant raggedness, it was a stand-off 
 between them. As a Study in Faded Browns 
 either of them would have taken the first prize in 
 a competition of artists models. 
 
 Reuben Cruder was short, squat and frog- 
 like. His inconceivably short neck set his fat, 
 solemn face on a slant, so that his bulging eyes 
 seemed to look straight up in the air, instead of 
 before him. He sat with his hands folded under 
 his round belly, and his serious features gave as 
 much indication of the character of his thoughts 
 as the face of the Egyptian Sphinx gives of her 
 
 Sr 
 
V "tttabe in prance." V 
 
 contract-price. But Jake Hyker, his partner in 
 crime, was a man of immoderate tallness. He 
 must have been over six feet and a half high, and 
 when he stood on end, swaying irregularly to-and- 
 fro, balanced by the enormous red hands that 
 hung almost down to his knees, he seemed about 
 to break at the joints, like a mast ill-spliced in 
 several places. The head on the top of this 
 great, grotesque, big-boned, knob-jointed, uncouth 
 creature was hardly larger than an ordinary man s 
 two fists, set with the second knuckles and the 
 heels of the palms together and that is an 
 illustration suggested also by the shape of the odd 
 cranium, for his skull seemed to slope both ways 
 from a median ridge-pole. His voice, as he 
 answered to his name rising to his full height 
 and wavering disjointedly as he stood was of a 
 character that belonged distinctively to the little 
 cocoanut head, and not at all to the great bony 
 corn-shock body. Thin, high, querulous, penetrat 
 ing, with a curious metallic quaver in it that 
 seemed to be always hanging on the edge of a 
 musical cadence, it squawked out in the little 
 court-room, ringing, strong and pervasive, and its 
 sound seemed to stir in all those who heard it a 
 spasmodic impulse of involuntary, unthinking 
 laughter. 
 
 Mr. Sitz arose, representing the plaintiff, to 
 make a brief statement of the facts in the case. 
 
 "Your Honor," he said, "this here is one of 
 the most extree-ordinary cases that has ever come 
 under my notice. I propose to show you, sir, 
 that these two men here, Reuben Cruder and 
 Jacob Hyker, have made an attempt upon the 
 life of this here lady, Miss Sarah Oreanna Sprull, 
 82 
 
^ ft pint *s a Pounk" IP 
 
 of the most diabolical and peculiar character. I 
 should premise, Your Honor, by saying that this 
 man Cruder, who seems to be the instigator of 
 the villainy is, or was, at the time of the commis 
 sion of the crime, engaged to be married to this 
 plaintiff. And I will show you, sir, that on the 
 thirtieth day of last month, between the hours of 
 two and three in the afternoon, this here Cruder, 
 accompanied by this here Hyker, entered the 
 house of this here plaintiff, and indooced her, by 
 means of a pecuniary consideration, to enter a 
 hogshead of water " 
 
 "Hi, what s that, Brother Sitz?" interrupted 
 the Judge, startled out of his judicial gravity. 
 
 "Indooced this here lady to enter a hogs 
 head of water," went on Brother Sitz, with impres 
 sive dignity; "wherein, she being therein, this 
 here Cruder, aided and abetted by this here 
 Hyker, did feloniously, violently and by force of 
 arms, thrust under the water the head of this here 
 lady, meaning thereby to deprive her of life, and 
 of the means of breathing air. Your Honor, I 
 will now call the plaintiff to the stand. Miss 
 Sprull, get up there in that chair by Mr. Huff." 
 
 All eyes were fixed in strained attention 
 upon Miss Sarah Oreanna Sprull, as she clambered 
 into the chair which the Sheriff had placed upon 
 the flat side of a shoe-box. 
 
 "Miss Sprull," said her counsel, "do you 
 recognize these two men?" 
 
 " I do" said Miss Sprull, with rasping 
 emphasis. 
 
 "This here man, Reuben Cruder, is or was, 
 on the thirtieth day of August last, your affianced 
 husband that is, he was engaged to be married 
 
 7 S 3 
 
V "IHabe in prance." ^ 
 
 to you? I understand you to say yes. This here 
 is the man ? " 
 
 "That s him," said Miss Sprull, promptly; 
 "and he s a no-good." 
 
 "And this here Hyker is the man who was 
 with him on the day mentioned ? " 
 
 "That s him," Miss Sprull assented; "and 
 he s another." 
 
 "Now, Miss Sprull," said her counsel, part 
 ing his coat-tails preparatory to sitting down, 
 "will you have the goodness to tell His Honor 
 what happened at your house on the day 
 mentioned ? " 
 
 "I was peelin inions," began Miss Sprull, 
 without the slightest hesitation, "when Reuben 
 Cruder come in with that Jake Hyker. And as 
 soon as I sot eyes on them, I knowed there was 
 something wrong. They ain t neither of them 
 much good by themselves, but when them two 
 gits together, they ain t no good at. all. Reuben, 
 he come up to me, and he says, Sarah, says he, 
 * do you want to make three shillin ? Course I 
 do, you fool, says I. All right, says he; and 
 out he and that Hyker goes, and gits the big 
 hogshead that stands under the rain-spout, and 
 fetches it right into my kitchen and sets it down 
 in the middle of my clean floor. There, he says, 
 now you fill that up plum-full with water, and 
 Jake here, he 11 give you three shillin for the 
 job. Soft water or hard? says I. It don t 
 make no difference, says he. Well, I knowed he 
 had his pockets full, that Cruder, for I knowed 
 he d just sold a steer, and I seen they was both 
 full; and thinks I to myself, thinks I, three 
 shillin is three shillin , and I just goes and fetches 
 
V "ft pint s a Pounfc.* *f 
 
 a. bucket; and I was one hour a fillin that 
 dratted barrel. And them fellows had a bottle 
 with them, and first one would take a drink out 
 of it, and then the other, until you could n t 
 hardly tell which was which. And when I gets 
 the barrel plum full and runnin over, I says to 
 them, There you are, I says. And that Hyker, 
 he paid the three shillin , paid it right down. Oh, 
 
 I knowed he was full the moment I sot eyes on 
 him. And then Gruder says to me, Do you 
 want to make another three shillin ? says he. 
 Course I do, says I. What do them brogans 
 of yours weigh? says he. I don t know, says 
 I; I ain t never weighed em. Take em off, 
 says he, and I took em off. And then, right like 
 that, fore I knowed what they was going to do, 
 Gruder, he picks me up by the feet, and Hyker, 
 he ketches me by the back of my neck, and 
 Jedge, as I m a living woman, them two villains 
 soused me right into that hogshead, and the water 
 was that cold I was most froze to death. Then 
 
Hyker, he says, Her head goes, too, and 
 Gruder, he says, Her head goes, too/ and they 
 jabbed my head right under the water. I like to 
 drownded. Then I hollered, and I guess they 
 got sort of scared. Anyways they took me out. I 
 could n t never have got out of myself. I was near 
 froze, and scared half out of my life, and I just 
 hoofed it all the way to town. And Mr. Huff, 
 he went up and arrested them. And I ain t never 
 felt just right since," concluded Miss Sprull, 
 glancing at her counsel with the satisfied air of a 
 witness who has done her full duty. 
 
 Looks of amazement and incredulity were 
 exchanged all over the Court room. At the 
 request of Mr. Sitz, the Sheriff ascended the 
 stand, and testified briefly concerning the arrest 
 of the prisoners. 
 
 8f> 
 
T a Pint s a Poun&." *T 
 
 "They were fighting each other when I got 
 there," he said; "but they was both of them too 
 intoxicated to do each other any hurt." 
 
 "What was the subject of the contention?" 
 inquired the Circuit Judge. 
 
 "I dunno," said the Sheriff. "I cou/d n t 
 make out. This man Gruder, here, he was too 
 drunk to talk, and all the way down to the jail 
 the other man was trying to get at him, and kept 
 a-hollering out, A pint s a pound! A pint s a 
 pound ! and calling him profane and blaspheme- 
 ous names." 
 
 The Circuit Judge cast a puzzled look first 
 at one and then at the other of the two prisoners, 
 who sat imperturbably on their bench, their fea 
 tures displaying no interest whatever. At last 
 he said : 
 
 "Jacob Hyker, it appears from the Sheriff s 
 statement that you were less under the influence 
 of liquor than your companion. Take the stand, 
 and the Court will hear what you have to say for 
 yourself." 
 
 Calmly, deliberately, and without a trace of 
 embarrassment in his manner, Mr. Hyker ascended 
 the stand, took a seat, and cheerfully announced 
 to the entire Court-room, in his clearest nasal 
 twang : 
 
 " I was biled." 
 
 Here Mr. Gruder suddenly awoke to an 
 instant of interest in the proceedings, and from 
 his seat addressed the witness, in the way of 
 correction. 
 
 "/ was biled," he said. 
 
 "Yes," said Mr. Hyker, with the air of giv 
 ing a thoughtful opinion; "you was cert nly biled," 
 87 
 
V "tftabe in prance." V 
 
 "If you said we was both biled, you would 
 n t be telling no lies," continued Mr. Gruder. 
 
 " Well," said the witness to the Circuit 
 Judge, "we was both biled, him and me." 
 " Do you mean that you were in 
 toxicated ? " asked the Court. 
 
 "Of course," said Mr. Hyker; 
 "did n t I tell you we was biled? 
 Like as it might have happened to 
 any of you gentlemen here," he 
 added, with a wave of his hand 
 that included the whole legal pro 
 fession. " You see it come about 
 this way. I 11 tell you just how it 
 happened." 
 
 Mr. Hyker leaned back in his 
 chair and crossed his long legs. He felt 
 that he had an agreeable and interesting story to 
 narrate, and he wore a mien of cheerful confidence. 
 " Here s how it was : Gruder, he come to 
 my place about eight o clock Monday morning, 
 and I guess he had a load on then. I thought so 
 then; but it s kinder hard to tell. There ain t 
 much difference in Gruder whether he s got a 
 load on or whether he ain t. Well, him and me, 
 we had two or three drinks, may be more. First 
 thing I knowed he bust out crying. Then, of 
 course, I see he had a load on. But it s just this 
 way with me, gentlemen, I can t stand it. Often 
 as I ve seen that man drunk, every time he busts 
 out crying it makes me feel bad. Says I to him, 
 1 What s the matter? says I. Says he to me, 
 I ve give my word to marry Sairey Oreanna 
 Sprull, says he, and I ain t fitten, says he; I am 
 that drunk and shif less and wuthless/ says he, 
 
IT "ft Pint s a Pounb" V 
 
 that I ain t fitten to marry no respectable 
 woman, says he; and besides, says he, I sold a 
 steer yesterday, he says, and I Ve got the money 
 in my clo es, and I want to go to a ball to-morrow 
 night down Walloon way, and there s another gal 
 down there, he says, that I might have if I 
 chose; and I don t feel like it was right for me to 
 marry Sairey Oreanna and get drunk and break 
 her heart, and I wisht I was dead, says he. 
 
 " Well, says I to him, what s to hinder 
 your breakin off with Sairey Oreanna? If you 
 don t marry her, says I, what does she care how 
 drunk you get ? Oh, says he, I could n t do 
 no such a thing as that, says he. Ain t I passed 
 my word to Sairey Oreanna that I d marry her ? 
 Well, says I, if she wants to get shet of you on 
 account of your wuthlessness, that s a different 
 thing, ain t it? says I. T ain t she that wants 
 to get shet of me, says he. Oh, says I, it s 
 you that wants to get shet of her? says I. 
 Well, says he, that ain t exactly what I set out 
 to say, says he, but I guess that s near enough. 
 Anyways, he says, I 11 tell you what I 11 do. 
 I 11 go and get another bottle, and we 11 talk it 
 over and try and find out just what I do mean. 
 
 "Well, we got another bottle, him and me, 
 and we talked it over, and we come to the 
 conclusion that him being so wuthless, Sairey 
 Oreanna ought to be let get shet of him; but, 
 however, that it was n t no ways right that Sairey 
 Oreanna should be left without no man at all to 
 marry her. Well, finally I says, says I, see here, 
 I 11 do it; / 11 marry Sairey Oreanna. Yes, I 
 know I had n t ought to have said it, but I 
 had n t seen Sairey Oreanna in four years, and it 
 
 $9 
 
in prance." V 
 
 gets dreffle lonesome up on the mountain some 
 times, and I was biled. I was reel biled, Jedge. 
 
 " You will? says he. I will, says I. 
 You will not] says he. Why will I not? says 
 I. Where do I come in? he says; do you think 
 I m going to give you up my gal and not get 
 nothin for it ? I m your friend, Hyker, says he, 
 but in a matter like this there ain t no such a 
 thing as friendship. It s business. If you want 
 to take that lady away from me, he says, you ve 
 got to pay for her, every cent she s wuth. Well, 
 what is she wuth? says I. On the hoof? says 
 he. Yes, on the hoof, says I. Well, says he, 
 I don t rightly know. How would seven cents a 
 pound strike you? You see, Jedge, we was 
 biled. That was all. 
 
 "Well, the upshot of it all was, I agreed to 
 take his gal off his hands, and pay him seven 
 cents a pound for her. I had n t got my wits 
 about me that day, Jedge; for a fact, I had n t. 
 Then the question come up, how was we to weigh 
 her? There was n t no scales within five miles 
 of Huckelberry Hill, and we knowed she would 
 n t never come down here to town to be weighed. 
 We was biled, but we knowed that. Well, first 
 off we did n t know what to do; and then I says 
 to him, says I, here, says I, / ll go and get a 
 bottle this time, and we 11 talk this thing over. 
 And, Jedge, he had n t taken more n two drinks 
 out of that bottle before that man had an idee 
 that would n t have come to me if I d waited a 
 hundred years. When he s real biled, Cruder is 
 sometimes right smart, he is. Says he to me, 
 We 11 fix it this way: A pint s a pound, ain t 
 it? Yes, says I, a pint s a pound. You 
 
 QQ 
 
IP { pint s a Pounk" IF 
 
 know that rhyme, Jedge, A pint s a pound, the 
 world around. Yes, I says to him; that s right; 
 that s so. A pint s a pound, sure. 
 
 " Well, then, he says, I 11 tell you what 
 we 11 do. We take a hogshead and fill it plum- 
 full of water. Then we put Sairey Oreanna into 
 it, and what runs over is her weight. For every 
 pint she runs she s a pound on the scales. See 
 the point, Jedge ? 
 
 " Well, I did n t at first, myself. Says I, 
 Cruder, that there water will run away, says I. 
 You can t measure spilt water, no way, says I. 
 Measure your grandmother, Jake, says he; you 
 ain t got no more sense than a sick cow, Jake 
 says to me. When you take the lady out of the 
 hogshead, says he, you fill it right up again; 
 and as many pints as you put in, he says, that s 
 as many pounds as she weighs, says he. Now, 
 do you see, Jedge? 
 
 " Well, we went around to her house, arjcl 
 the minute I seen her, I see the joke was on 
 Cruder. Jest look, Jedge, how she is nothing 
 but skin and bones. Ain t even got a head-full 
 of hair. Why, if it was n t for them shoes of 
 hern, she d blow away. Dry hay would be juicy 
 to her. Why, I see at a glance there was n t a 
 hundred weight of her, such as it was. Oh, yes, 
 Jedge, I see I had a big joke on Cruder. 
 
 "Well, you heered her tell her end of the 
 story. She told it about right. That s correct, 
 Jedge. That s the way it happened. 
 
 " But I tell you, the joke come when she run 
 out of the house and we set to work fillin up the 
 barrel. Jedge, you ought to have seen Cruder s 
 face when we d finished the count. You d a. 
 
1P "inabt in prance." ^ 
 
 died laughin . Jedge, she did n t weigh ninety- 
 seven pounds. As true as I m settin here, 
 ninety-six pints and one gill was all we could get 
 into that barrel without running over. And when 
 Gruder see he was n t going to get no more than 
 $6.75, he was so mad we just had to fight. 
 That s when Mr. Huff come in and interrupted us. 
 "But I had the joke on Gruder. A pint s 
 a pound, I says to him; them was your words. 
 A pint s a pound, the world around. Stick to 
 your bargain, says I. < A pint s a pound, Gruder, 
 I says; a pint s a pound. " 
 
 "This case," said the Circuit Judge, rising 
 from his seat, and addressing a tumultuous assem 
 blage, "will be settled out of Court." 
 
A CAPTURE. 
 
A CAPTURE. 
 
 WAS a dark night a night of silence 
 and snow and of an infinite loneliness. 
 It had been snowing since noon, not 
 hard, but ceaselessly; a damp heavy 
 snow, with no breath of wind to stir 
 it; and now that the evening had set 
 in, it seemed as though it were begin 
 ning to return whence it came, in the 
 thin pale fog that was rising from the bottom 
 lands of the valley. Everywhere the white carpet 
 stretched; roads and paths were blotted from 
 sight and the snowy shroud covered the trees of 
 the forest where we walked. There was no sound 
 there but the fall of our feet, or the low thud of 
 an over-burdened bough letting down its damp 
 load save when at long intervals a dry twig 
 snapped with a noise like a distant pistol-shot. 
 
 "This night," said my French friend, Gaston, 
 breaking the silence we had maintained for the 
 last two miles, "reminds me of a certain night 
 twenty-one years ago that I passed in a forest just 
 like this, except that there were wolves there, and 
 Prussians. No two days are exactly alike; but 
 there are some nights, especially some Winter 
 nights, that seem to repeat themselves exactly. 
 
 94- 
 
t^ fl (Capture. V 
 
 The night I speak of was known in Rethel, where 
 I was quartered (it was in our War, you know: 
 what you call the Franco - Prussian War,) as 
 Berthine s Night la nuit a Berthine. Did I 
 ever tell you about Berthine Pichon ? No ? Well, 
 then, I will tell you the story now. It is odd 
 enough ; and perhaps it may take a quarter of a 
 mile off our way. Anything is better than this 
 hideous silence, which bores me and gives me my 
 nerves." 
 
 And my mercurial Gallic friend tamped the 
 brierwood pipe he was smoking under the cover 
 
 of his hand, shrugged the snow off his broad 
 shoulders, cursed the weather, and then told me 
 this tale, as we walked on through the silent 
 forest in the deepening night. 
 
 "I was at Rethel that devilish Winter, de 
 tached from my regiment and in charge of a sort 
 of militia organization which the people of the 
 town had got up. Rethel is an out-of-the-way 
 
 95 
 
V "217a6e in Draftee." ^ 
 
 place, but it is an old town with traditions and 
 fortifications, and the citizens had determined to 
 resist the invaders and to stand a siege, if neces 
 sary. Of course most of their able-bodied men 
 were away in the army; but they bought guns 
 and some old-fashioned artillery, that happily never 
 had to be fired off, and they drilled like good 
 fellows, under my command all sorts and con 
 ditions of men : butchers and bakers and grocers 
 and lawyers and notaries and carpenters and even 
 apothecaries. Oh, I tell you, they meant it, too ! 
 They were only too anxious for the Prussians to 
 come. But the days and weeks went on and the 
 Prussians did not come. They were in the neigh 
 borhood, sometimes within eight or ten miles of 
 the town, but on the other side of the forest. 
 Several times they did enter the forest, but I sup 
 pose it was only for wood, or perhaps for game. 
 At any rate, as it turned out, they did not want 
 Rethel. We knew of all their movements, for we 
 had the best sentinel in the world : an old game 
 keeper and forester who lived in a little house in 
 the very heart of the wood, and who could hear 
 a rabbit wag its tail, as far off, my friend, as you 
 could see. 
 
 "This old man was named Nicolas Pichon, 
 and Berthine was his daughter. She was a fine, 
 strapping big girl I think that she and her 
 father were rather superior in every way, physi 
 cally, mentally and morally, to the most of the 
 peasants in that region. These things sometimes 
 happen in a country that has had a few centuries 
 of feudal rule. At any rate, she was what you 
 might call a fine figure of a girl : big, plump, rosy, 
 as strong as an ox, and afraid of neither wolves 
 
^ fl Capture. V 
 
 nor Prussians. On the night of which I speak 
 the night that was so like this the old man had 
 gone into town to notify us that a detachment of 
 Prussian infantry had passed near his house that 
 day. He generally reported once or twice a week, 
 and took provisions back with him when he 
 returned. He lived in a small old stone house 
 eight miles from Rethel; and he made nothing of 
 running the whole distance running, remember 
 and back in the course of an evening. He 
 took his two great big hounds with him to defend 
 him from the wolves, which were ferocious in the 
 Winter time; and the two women barricaded 
 
 themselves in the house until his return. They 
 were safe enough there; the house had stood for 
 centuries, and I suppose it is as strong to-day as 
 it ever was. It frightened the old mother to be 
 left in this way, and she sometimes complained to 
 me when I went out there, as we officers occa 
 sionally did, to get a shot at a deer or a bird. 
 We did not live high that Winter at Rethel, 
 I can tell you! I never saw Berthine afraid, 
 however. She simply laughed at the idea of harm 
 coming her way. 
 
 Q7 
 
^ "tttabe in prance." 1? 
 
 * On this particular evening, after the old 
 rhan had slipped off in the darkness, Berthine 
 split the wood for that night and the next day; 
 drew the water, and, after she had fastened the 
 door, to please her mother, she set about making 
 soup in the kettle. That is pretty much the 
 staple diet of those peasants : thin soup for the 
 poor days, cabbage soup for the rich days. To 
 night they were to have cabbage soup, so that 
 they might save something good for the father to 
 refresh himself with when he got home. And let 
 me tell you that old mother Pichon and Berthine 
 made a very good cabbage soup for a hungry 
 man. It is not to be despised. 
 
 "It was just about this time of night when 
 the two women heard a sound of men marching 
 close to the house. The old mother was much 
 alarmed; and she nearly fell off her chair with 
 fright when she heard a musket-butt rapping on 
 the door. But Berthine only took her father s 
 heavy revolver down from the chimney piece and 
 slipped it into the pocket of her woollen petticoat, 
 such as our peasants wear; then she listened at 
 the door. She heard a deep bass voice saying 
 with a strong German accent, Open ! 
 
 " < Who are you ? she asked. 
 
 " Corporal and five privates, said the Ger 
 man voice. 
 
 " What do you want? Berthine demanded. 
 
 " We have lost our way, the German 
 answered, and we want to get in. If you don t 
 open the door we II break it in. (They have no 
 manners, those Prussians.) 
 
 " Berthine had no choice. The door was of 
 oak, heavy and strong, like everything about the 
 98 
 
*V ft Capture. V 
 
 house; but of course six men could break it in, 
 and there was nothing to do but to open to them. 
 When she did so she saw six big bearded fellows 
 
 covered with snow, and looking very cold and 
 uncomfortable. 
 
 " What do you want at this hour of the 
 night ? she asked. 
 
 " We Ve lost our way, I tell you, said the 
 corporal, grunting it out in very bad French, and 
 none of us has had anything to eat since the 
 morning. I remembered passing your house 
 earlier in the day; but I Ve been two hours find 
 ing it again. 
 
 " Berthine looked him straight in the face. 
 
 " There is no one here, she said, but my 
 old mother and myself. 
 
 "The officer was a decent sort of fellow 
 for a Prussian. 
 
 " We don t want to hurt you, he said; I 
 give you my word, we 11 make you no trouble; 
 
 8 99 
 
V "IHabe in prance." ^ 
 
 but we Ve got to have something to eat and 
 we Ve got to rest. My men are almost dead. 
 
 " Come in, she said, standing back from 
 the door, and they filed in. They dragged their 
 heavy feet as if they had hardly strength enough 
 to take another step, and they were almost too 
 tired to shake off the snow that covered them. 
 They sat down wearily on the two benches 
 between which stood the table. 
 
 " You do look worn out, said Berthine as 
 she closed the door after them; I 11 make you 
 some soup ; it s the best I can do for you. 
 
 " Anything will do, said the Prussian, 
 weariedly. 
 
 " The old mother was still spinning, as she 
 had been when the strangers first knocked. She 
 had not dared stir from her wheel, but spun on 
 silently, casting frightened looks at the soldiers 
 out of the corner of her eye. She need not have 
 alarmed herself. Hunger and fatigue had made 
 them tame enough, and they sat like six good 
 little children on their benches, watching Berthine 
 make the soup. 
 
 " She went about it as coolly and uncon 
 cernedly as though they had not been present. 
 She added hot water to increase the volume of 
 liquid in the kettle, and then made up its richness 
 by the addition of potatos, more cabbage and a 
 great piece of salt-pork. The soldiers looked on 
 as though they could eat it, kettle and all, and it 
 must have seemed a long time to everyone before 
 that soup was ready. When it was placed before 
 them, at last, they fell upon it like half-starved 
 creatures, taking it in with brutish noises, and 
 swallowing the potatos, when they came to them, 
 
as though they were strawberries. The privates 
 said nothing, but the corporal grunted in his 
 barbarous accent, good, good ! Finally he 
 found himself sufficiently fortified to begin to feel 
 like himself again, and he asked Berthine if there 
 was anything to drink in the house. 
 
 " I have only cider, she answered him. 
 
 " Give us some ; there s a good girl, he said. 
 
 " Moving thoughtfully, and with something 
 in her manner that probably attracted the atten 
 tion of the officer, Berthine took a big, old- 
 fashioned key from the w r all, unlocked and opened 
 the great trap-door in the corner of the room, 
 and went down the winding stone steps into the 
 cellar. She was gone a long time ; so long a time 
 that the corporal grew uneasy, and when a 
 strange, uncanny sound suddenly broke the still 
 ness, he drew his revolver quickly and looked 
 across the room at the old woman. She rose 
 trembling in affright. 
 
 " It is only the wolves, sir, she cried. 
 
 " Wolves! repeated the corporal, incredu 
 lously; but he went to the door, and, opening it 
 
t^ "2Ha5e in prance." V 
 
 cautiously, looked out and saw the gaunt gray 
 shapes prowling about in the snow. 
 
 " Well/ he said, good-naturedly, as he 
 bolted the door and returned to his place, I 
 Would n t have believed it, old woman. We did 
 better ^than we knew when we paid you this visit, 
 did n t we? And he shook his great yellow 
 bead in laughter at his own joke. 
 
 "Berthine came up from the cellar with the 
 cider, a generous big stone pitcher full, and she 
 gave it to her uninvited guests with a pleasant 
 smile upon her face. They had it gulped down 
 in a minute or two, and twice she re-filled it for 
 them, each time with a still more pleasant srnile 
 upon her face; which, let me assure you, my 
 friend, was a very peculiar thing for a French 
 peasant woman giving away cider. 
 
 "By the time they had finished the third 
 pitcher, fatigue and their heavy drink had so told 
 on them that they began to fall asleep where 
 they sat. 
 
 " Stretch yourselves out in front of the fire 
 there, said Berthine, kindly; there s room enough 
 for you all. My mother and I will take our 
 supper over here; and when we are through 
 we will go up to bed. You d better put on 
 another log. 
 
 "The soldiers stretched themselves out on 
 the stone floor; the two women made a hasty 
 meal of what remained of the soup, first secretly 
 setting aside a portion to be kept for the father; 
 and then they climbed up the ladder to the garret 
 that served them as bed-chamber, and left the 
 lower story to their visitors. The flickering fire 
 light played on six bearded Prussian faces; the 
 
IP ft Capture. V 
 
 oaken rafters thrilled with six different kind of 
 Prussian snores. 
 
 " They had slept long enough to be at 
 sleep s heaviest, when a gun-shot rang out on the 
 air seemingly far off, yet so exaggerated in loud- 
 ness by the sounds of the night that it might have 
 come from under the very eaves. The six soldiers 
 leaped to their feet, and stood gazing at each 
 other in drowsy amazement. Another shot fol 
 lowed at once, and then, after a longer interval, 
 two more. Suddenly a form dropped among them 
 from the low ceiling. It was Berthine, who had 
 swung herself down through the opening from the 
 garret, disdaining the help of the ladder. She 
 held a lighted candle in her hand, and its yellow 
 flame illuminated her fine figure. She was bare 
 footed, bare-armed, and clad only in her primitive 
 peasant s night-dress, a coarse linen chemise and 
 a short petticoat. Her eyes blazed with anxious 
 excitement. 
 
 " < For heaven s sake, get out of the house ! 
 she cried; it is the French regiment from the 
 town five hundred of them and if they find 
 you here they will burn the house over our heads, 
 and perhaps kill my mother and me for giving you 
 shelter. Make haste, there is no time to be lost! 
 And she moved toward the door. 
 
 " The man s face reddened. 
 
 " How can we go? he asked sullenly. 
 
 My men would be shot down in a moment. 
 
 And even as he spoke two more shots were heard 
 
 close at hand. Berthine cast her eyes about her, 
 
 103 
 
^ "H7a5e in prance." ^ 
 
 as if in desperate search of some way out of the 
 difficulty. 
 
 " Get down into the cellar, then, she cried, 
 hurriedly, and keep quiet. I 11 tell you when 
 they are gone. 
 
 " She raised the heavy trap-door. The cor 
 poral grinned with delight, slapped her cordially 
 on the shoulder, called her a clever girl; and the 
 six men, with their guns and overcoats, filed noise 
 lessly down the winding stone stairs. As the spike 
 of the last helmet disappeared from sight, Ber- 
 thine let down the trap-door quickly and silently, 
 and the moment it was down she leaped upon 
 it with cat-like rapidity, and, leaning over, gave 
 the key two quick turns. Then, with her strong 
 forefinger, she cleaned the dust and dirt of the 
 floor out of two bolt heads at the sides of the 
 trap, and shot the rusty bolts. 
 104 
 
Capture. 
 
 L 
 
 " She stood erect as her mother came down 
 the ladder, climbing with nervous clutches at the 
 rounds, for in one skinny hand she held her hus 
 band s big revolver, still smoking and smelling of 
 powder. It was she who had been detailed to 
 fire out of the furthest window of the 
 garret the shots from the heavy 
 weapon which had sounded like 
 the reports of a distant musket. 
 She stood bent and trem 
 bling, looking at her daugh 
 ter, while Berthine, with her 
 hands on her broad hips, twist 
 ed and swayed and writhed 
 in a convulsion of silent 
 laughter.- 
 
 " Berthine returned to 
 
 her garret, slipped on her dress and came back 
 to the lower room. In silence she and her mother 
 began to warm up the soup they had secreted; 
 for it was getting to be time for the father s 
 return. But it was not long before the sound 
 of voices under their feet told them that the 
 suspicions of their captives had been awakened. 
 Then the butt of a gun thwacked against the 
 under side of the trap-door, and the corporal s 
 guttural voice called upon them to open. Ber 
 thine deigned no response to this command. She 
 was not a woman to waste words ; she knew well 
 that hammering down a front-door was one thing, 
 and striking up a heavy bolted trap another; 
 and that there was no other opening into that 
 
 TOJ 
 
^ "IHabe in prance." V 
 
 cellar of thick masonry save one little grated 
 slit made for ventilation. 
 
 " Open ! came the muffled voice of the 
 Prussian, or 1 11 break the door. 
 
 " Break all you want to, my lad, said 
 Berthine pleasantly, as she stirred the soup. 
 
 " Berthine was big, healthy and magnani 
 mous. It was her little, old, wrinkled mother, 
 who all these hours had cowered in silent fear, 
 who now burst into a tempest of raging triumph. 
 Crouching over the trap, she hurled gross insults 
 down at her daughter s captives, calling them 
 hogs and wolves and robbers, imitating their gut 
 tural accents, and mocking their bad French. In 
 the end, when her voice failed her, she grasped 
 her skirts in both hands, pulled them up to the 
 level of her knees, and danced a really prepos 
 terous jig of the early days of her youth. She 
 subsequently re-enacted the whole scene for my 
 benefit; and I assure you that if a Chinese idol 
 came to life, it could not do anything more gro 
 tesque or surprising. 
 
 " She stopped exhausted as Berthine raised 
 a warning hand. Afar in the woods sounded a 
 strange note, like the screech-owl s, yet, to a 
 forester s ear, unlike. The two women heard it 
 in spite of the hubbub that the prisoners made, 
 beating on the stone ceiling and firing their guns 
 through the grating, to attract the attention of 
 any comrades who might be in search of them. 
 Berthine put her head out of the door and 
 answered with the same cry. It came back 
 again, and again she answered it. Two great 
 dogs burst out of the darkness and leaped upon 
 her, caressing her and whining with pleasure. 
 
 rod 
 
She held them firmly by their broad leather 
 collars, and called to her father, whose tall form 
 could be seen emerging from the thicket. 
 
 u < Don t pass in front of the grating ! The 
 cellar is full of Prussians ! 
 
 " The old man changed his course and 
 entered the house. He gave the two women no 
 further greeting than to repeat interrogatively r 
 
 " The cellar is full of Prussians? 
 
 " Yes, said his daughter, calmly. 
 
 "He sat down at the table; she placed his, 
 soup before him, and he ate steadily on with the 
 stolid gravity of a peasant, while his daughter 
 told her story, punctuated by the blows of 
 musket-butts beneath the floor, and the crash 
 of shots fired through the grated slit. The smell 
 of the powder-smoke mingled with the scent of 
 the hot soup and the pungent aroma of the wood- 
 
V "2Tta6e in prance." V 
 
 fire. The story and the soup were finished to 
 gether. The old man made no comment what 
 ever. He merely said, What shall I do now? 
 and, as he waited for his daughter s reply, wiped 
 up the soup in the bottom of the kettle with 
 crusts of rye bread, which he fed to his dogs. 
 
 " Go back to town, said his daughter, and 
 notify the Lieutenant. 
 
 " And so I was notified. It was not much 
 over an hour-and-a-half later when that tireless 
 old man reached the gates of Rethel, where the 
 outpost brought him in. In ten minutes the call 
 to arms was sounding in every direction ; the bells 
 rang, and the whole town was topsy-turvy. The 
 militia rushed to the public square and fell in line, 
 with a terrible amount of noise. We Frenchmen 
 noise is to us what a good drink of whiskey is 
 to you. 
 
 "They really did very well, however. Had 
 they been regulars they could hardly have been 
 much more prompt in getting off; and so we 
 went marching through the forest singing and 
 hurrahing, as though we were celebrating the 
 defeat of the whole Prussian army, instead of the 
 trapping of five privates and a corporal in a 
 peasant girl s cellar. 
 
 "As we drew near the scene of action I 
 stopped their noise, of course; and it was that 
 march through the silent snow-covered forest that 
 impressed Berthine s Night on my mind. There 
 was something ghastly about it. At one point in 
 a great clearing the road doubled on itself, to 
 
 foS 
 
climb a steep hill. As we reached the top of the 
 double and looked down to the place where our 
 ascent had begun, fifteen minutes before, we could 
 see that the steadily falling snow had already 
 obliterated our footprints. It was like a white 
 sea that crawled behind us, covering up every 
 trace of our passage. 
 
 "When we reached the cottage all was still 
 and silent. If it had not been for the smell of 
 powder in the air, I should hardly have believed 
 in the existence of the captive Prussians. Berthine 
 opened the door and stood upon the sill, calm 
 and unmoved as though her father had not 
 brought a delegation of two hundred French 
 soldiers home with him. I do not know how 
 those long and trying hours of waiting had gone 
 with her; but if they had troubled her placid 
 spirit, she gave no sign. Standing in the door 
 way, she repeated her warning to every one who 
 approached : 
 
 " < Don t get in front of the grating ! 
 " The soldiers were drawn up a couple of 
 hundred feet from the house, and bonfires were 
 lighted for warmth and light. I entered the house, 
 
 JOQ 
 
1^ "UTabe in prance." V 
 
 and going to the trap-door I addressed the silent 
 cellar. 
 
 " Is there a Prussian officer there? 
 " There might have been no one at all there 
 for any answer I got. Again and again I address 
 ed the invisible, but no sound came back through 
 the floor. I offered that corporal all the bless 
 ings of an honorable surrender, but he gave no 
 sign in answer. 
 
 * Meanwhile something was going on outside 
 that I should not have approved of. My men, of 
 course, were standing at ease. That is to say, 
 they were running, jumping and stamping to keep 
 their feet warm. Finally some daredevil had dis 
 covered that infernal grating, and nothing would 
 do him but he must run across its range, as a boy 
 might run across the danger-space in the game 
 that we call barres in France you call it 
 prisoner s base, I think. This struck some of the 
 others as a most amusing sport, and the more 
 fleet-footed kept it up for a while, without drawing 
 the enemy s fire. Then there carne along a little 
 fat, round baker, named Malet, who was generally 
 called the Bun, on account of his shape. They 
 dared the Bun to make the trial; and, of course, 
 he did it, with a funny little trot that made the 
 men laugh. He had got nearly out of range, 
 when a flash of fire shot from the grating, and 
 Malet went over on his back with a kick and a 
 howl, throwing his own gun over his head. It 
 struck a stone and went off. Its muzzle pointed 
 almost straight at the grating. We conjectured that 
 it hit somebody, for an exclamation came from 
 the cellar, but whether of rage or pain we could 
 not make out. Malet crawled and rolled out of 
 
TP (I Capture. V 
 
 danger. He was wounded in his thigh; but not 
 badly. When I had reformed our lines and left 
 Malet in the surgeon s hands, I returned to the 
 cottage for a council of war, and 
 found Berthine still standing in 
 the doorway, looking at the 
 picturesque scene the sol 
 diers, the snow, the great 
 fires, the gleaming arms 
 with the indifferent curiosity 
 of a well-fed cow. 
 
 " Well, my girl, I said, 
 this is a pretty piece of busi 
 ness. You got your men in 
 the cellar ; but how are we to get them out ? 
 
 " She answered me in her matter-of-fact way : 
 
 " They drank up all our cider last night, 
 why don t you give them a drink of water now ? 
 
 " What do you mean ? I asked. 
 
 " There is the pump, she said, pointing to 
 it ; and there are gutters under all the eaves of the 
 house. You can take them down and use them. 
 But you should put them back again. 
 
 " That was all the council of war. In ten 
 minutes those gutters were down, stretched from 
 an auger-hole which we made in the trap door, 
 through the window, to the nozzle of the big 
 wooden pump. Three men ranged themselves on 
 each side of the long handle, and in a short time 
 the current of clear icy water was rushing down 
 the line of wooden troughs and pouring a steady 
 stream into the cellar. 
 
 "The cellar was small and shallow; but, as 
 you know, it takes a long time to fill even the 
 smallest of cellars through an auger-hole. The 
 
V "tffabe in prance." V 
 
 snow had stopped, and the East was red with 
 morning, before we heard from that cave of gloom 
 any other sound than the steady fall of the water. 
 B-r-r-r! but it was shivering cold, that water! 
 Then we heard the hoarsest Prussian voice that 
 ever was dreamed of, say through the grating: 
 
 Mr. Officer ! 
 
 " The corporal desired to surrender. At my 
 orders he passed the arms of the detachment up 
 through the grating, simply remarking : 
 
 " Make haste, I am dying; and my men are 
 nearly drowned. 
 
 "We opened the trap-door, and the cor 
 poral s head appeared, pale and ghastly. Two of 
 his men were supporting him. Malet s fallen gun 
 had actually shot him, and straight through the 
 body. 
 
 " When we had warmed our prisoners so that 
 they could walk, we started back for Rethel, carry 
 
 ing the wounded Bun on a stretcher. The injured 
 Prussian we left behind us, as our surgeon 
 reported him too dangerously hurt to be moved 
 at present. 
 
^ ft Capture. V 
 
 "This happened in the latter part of January ; 
 and it was that very day, by chance, that the 
 Prussian troops in our neighborhood were ordered 
 to Paris. This was fortunate for Berthine and her 
 family, and was probably the only thing, that 
 saved them from the vengeance of the invaders; 
 for when the Prussians learned what had become 
 of their scouting expedition, they were as wild 
 with rage as we, in Rethel, were with exultation. 
 
 "The little town went fairly mad with a 
 frenzy of pride and enthusiasm; and the good 
 people of Rethel were quite as silly and extrava 
 gant as well, as any community that has lost 
 its head over a woman. They got up a popular 
 subscription and gave Berthine Pichon a sum 
 of money; I have forgotten how much, but it 
 was a large sum for the time and place. The 
 family was presented with the thanks of the town 
 in a silver casket, and Berthine received from the 
 Municipality a cask of rare old wine, to which, I 
 suppose, she preferred her own cider. The Pom 
 piers Fire Department, that is sent her a 
 mantel-piece clock with an alabaster pump on it, 
 and she had a medal or testimonial from every 
 religious society in the city. And when the war 
 ended, in February, and I was ordered away from 
 Rethel, the Berthine fever had reached such a 
 height that they were talking about establishing 
 an annual festival in her honor. 
 
 "It was not a time for festivals, however, 
 and the absurd scheme was abandoned ; but when 
 I came back to Rethel, early in April, the excite 
 ment had broken out in a new form, and I found 
 a most curious dispute referred to me for decision. 
 I could hardly believe my ears when I heard that 
 * 3 
 
V "ItTabe in prance." ^ 
 
 the Maire of the town and my old friend Malet, 
 the wounded baker, the Bun, were quarrelling as 
 to which should marry Berthine Pichon, a girl 
 who could not read or write. I ventured to sug 
 gest that she was hardly a match for either of the 
 well-to-do and highly respectable townspeople, 
 but they were quite indignant over it. 
 
 " She is of the aristocracy of patriotism, 
 said Malet. 
 
 " She is another Joan of Arc/ said the 
 Maire. 
 
 "As ex-commandant, I was forced to settle 
 between them. I decided in favor of both; sug 
 gesting that they should make their offers in order 
 of seniority, and leave it to Berthine to express 
 her personal preferences, if she had any. My 
 decision was regarded as novel and original, but 
 perfectly satisfactory. 
 
 " But I did not know what I had let myself 
 in for, until the Maire insisted that I should drive 
 with him in state to demand of Nicolas Pichon 
 the hand of his daughter. And, my friend, I 
 had to go; and I must tell you how we went. 
 
 " I have lived so long in America now that 
 I can understand how impossibly ridiculous it 
 must seem to you; but at the time I was only 
 mildly amused when I found myself rolling 
 through the forest in a big open carriage, con 
 ducted by a liveried coachman and footman. I 
 was in full uniform, and I sat by the side of the 
 Maire, who was in evening dress yes, in 
 swallow-tail coat and white kid gloves, at eleven 
 o clock in the morning. That s the way they 
 do it in France when they go to make a formal 
 offer of marriage not addressed to the young 
 
lady herself, you know, but to the young lady s 
 papa. On the front seat were two gorgeously 
 caparisoned beadles, borrowed from the Cathedral 
 to lend state and dignity to the occasion. Oh, I 
 wish I could have been as much of an American 
 then as I am now, to have been able to realize 
 how funny we were, that carriage -load, as we 
 swept grandly along the high-road through the 
 forest, where the trees were just beginning to turn 
 green and yellow with Spring, and the young 
 frogs were piping in the marshes, and the sun 
 shone on us in all our glory ! 
 
 "When we came to the historic cottage, old 
 Pichon was chopping wood before the door. He 
 looked up at us sullenly, and without saying a 
 word went on with his task. The footman de 
 scended and announced the Maire of the City 
 of Rethel. Then the old man looked up, with 
 insolent rage glaring out of his little eyes. 
 
 " To the devil with your city of Rethel! It 
 has cost me my daughter; and now I must chop 
 wood in my old age ! 
 
 g 15 
 
^ "Ittabe in prance." ^ 
 
 " < Cost you your daughter ? stammered the 
 Maire, bewildered. 
 
 " Yes, said the old man; < you Ve set her 
 crazy among you with your nonsense; and now 
 she and her clock and the silver box and the 
 money you gave her all the money all the 
 money, do you hear ? they have all gone with 
 that cursed Prussian who was to have died and 
 did n t. 
 
 " It was true. The modern Joan of Arc had 
 fallen in love with the captive who had been left 
 with her to be nursed; and as she could never 
 have dared marry him openly, and face the wrath 
 of her fellow-citizens, she had slipped away with 
 him by night, not forgetting to take with her the 
 rewards of her patriotism. 
 
 "We afterwards heard," concluded Gaston, 
 stopping to refill his pipe as we reached the 
 edge of the woods, and saw the lights of our 
 destination glimmering ahead of us far down 
 the misty valley, pale through the silent-falling 
 snow, "that the corporal rejoined the Prussian 
 army, and got his discharge and a present of 
 money, for having turned the laugh on us; and 
 that the married pair emigrated to Canada, and 
 have done very well for themselves. And this 
 night, my friend, this night is exactly like 
 Berthine s night, la nuit a Berthine, and this 
 snow will stop just as the sky begins to grow 
 red." 
 
 And it did. 
 
UNCLE ATTICUS. 
 
UNCLE ATTICUS. 
 
 CCASIONALLY, in the quarter of an 
 hour that comes just before the third 
 meal of the day, and that the liberal- 
 minded sometimes punctuate with a cock 
 tail, the home-seeking toilers of a busy 
 
 little provincial city in a New England state 
 were treated to a strange and puzzling spectacle. 
 
 Along the crowded main thoroughfare of the 
 town a man of imposing mien would stalk, appar 
 ently in busy haste. He wore a black broadcloth 
 coat with long flapping lapels; a waistcoat that 
 was sometimes white and always rumpled; a 
 seldom renewed white tie was hidden by his 
 spreading grayish beard which lay all over his 
 broad breast and reached to his ample stomach. 
 As this gentleman passed the door of a certain 
 liquor saloon in his hurried and preoccupied 
 advance, the swinging portals slowly opened and 
 another gentleman appeared in the doorway, a 
 large man, also, and with a white waistcoat, but 
 there all the resemblance ended. This man s 
 waistcoat was immaculately clean, and the rest of 
 his attire was that of a prosperous business man 
 who patronizes a good tailor. This gentleman 
 had closely trimmed mutton-chop whiskers, a red 
 
 118 
 
nose and an expression, naturally jovial, which 
 changed to that of an infuriated cherub, as he 
 shook a fat, durnpy fist at the back of the fast- 
 disappearing man with a beard ; and cursed him 
 in language of the strongest opprobrium. Then 
 behind this person would appear a third, a slim 
 young man, very correctly and quietly dressed, a 
 man with a small moustache and a cold and cyni 
 cal eye, who gently lured the elder man back into 
 the barroom with sage and soothing whispers. 
 And if, as he terminated this peculiar scene by 
 coaxing the stout gentleman back within the 
 swinging doors, a quiet smile lit up the faces of 
 the passers-by, and was somewhat coldly reflected 
 in his own, both he and they felt that the nephew 
 of Uncle Atticus could well afford that smile. 
 
 This sight was no mystery to the town s- 
 people. The unconscious object of the mutton- 
 
V "2TTd6e in prance." V 
 
 chop-whiskered man s wrath was the Rev. Mr. 
 Seedley Studder, an evangelical missionary to the 
 heathen, of great popularity and prominence in 
 his own sect, temporarily on collection duty in 
 Wakeham. The man with the whiskers was Mr. 
 Q. P. Atticus Jarbey, the millionaire manufacturer 
 of shovels, who was called a good fellow by his 
 friends, and a scoffer by the church-going popula 
 tion. The third was his only nephew and his 
 chosen boon-companion, Theodore. 
 
 Mr. Jarbey, or Uncle Atticus, as the whole 
 town called him, was rather more than a mere 
 scoffer. He was a man with an anti-religious 
 mania. He hated all creeds and all confessions, 
 and, curiously enough, he hated the various 
 religions in the ratio of the popularity and simpli 
 city of their observances. That is to say, while 
 he held all religious sects to be enemies of those 
 principles of pure reason and mature judgement 
 in the choice of spirituous licmor by which he 
 sought to guide his own mortal existence, he 
 could respect as open foes such as declared their 
 hostility by uniforms and other outward signs; 
 whereas those who were in the livery of the world, 
 yet concealed a pious creed within their breast, he 
 regarded as hypocritical counterfeiters of honest 
 worldliness. 
 
 "When a man puts on a red night-gown," 
 said Mr. Jarbey, oratorically, "and goes sashaying 
 up and down in front of a painted statue, why, 
 you know what to expect of him. But when a 
 man like that nigger-hunting parson there can 
 grow a beard such as he s got, and raise a belly 
 such as he s got, why, I expect to find a man like 
 that coming out with the boys and taking his tod 
 
TT Uncle fltticus. ^ 
 
 sociable and friendly and with no cussed nonsense 
 about it. And when I find that he ain t when 
 I find that he s concealing the principles of reli 
 gion under an exterior like that why, I want to 
 pulverize him. I 11 eat my hat if I don t!" 
 And Mr. Jarbey pounded savagely on the bar. 
 "What s that? Oh, yes; same again, Charles. 
 See what these gentlemen 11 have." 
 
 Being a wealthy bachelor retired from busi 
 ness, Mr. Jarbey had of course to have something 
 to interest him in life, and his two chief joys were 
 anti-clerical demonstrations and reckless indul 
 gence in spasmodic bursts of gluttony. He drank 
 all the time; but so steady, regular, and well-estab 
 lished was the habit with him, that his system 
 
 seemed to have accustomed itself to it, all except 
 his nose which day by day took on a more 
 genial glow. It was in his consumption of food 
 that he went on regular sprees, filling himself with 
 rich and highly spiced edibles and eating himself, 
 so to speak, to a standstill. Then a terrible attack 
 of indigestion and dyspepsia would reduce him to 
 a physical wreck, and frighten him into observing 
 
f "ITlabc in prance." V 
 
 a brief period of temperance ; leaving him after a 
 little, to resume a way of life that was certainly 
 not characteristic of a consistent rationalist. To 
 head off these gluttonous outbursts, or to mitigate 
 in some measure the direful consequences of them, 
 was Nephew Theodore s principal walk in life, 
 although he also went through the form of keeping 
 up a not very exacting law practice. As a lawyer 
 Theodore Jarbey may have been of small account, 
 but as a guardian comrade, and promoter of 
 moderation, the cool-blooded and well-instructed 
 youth performed his duties with the unflagging 
 zeal of an assured inheritor who can well afford 
 to bide his time. 
 
 Theodore was more than suspected of foster 
 ing his Uncle s irreligious tendencies, in order to 
 keep the elder man s mind occupied; and when 
 the Daughters of Temperance, the Society for 
 Religious Advancement and the Light -Bearers 
 League held their united six-days convention in 
 Wakeham, Theodore did not lose the opportunity 
 to stir up Mr. Jarbey s wrath against the flood of 
 proselyting females that swept down upon the 
 town. 
 
 Now it may not seem to most people that 
 there is anything to excite great rage in the sight 
 of a couple of thousand enthusiastic ladies bust 
 ling about, with no worse purpose in view than to 
 hold meetings, sing hymns, denounce the Demon 
 Drink, and save the lost souls of their fellow- 
 mortals. But there are bigots who call themselves 
 rationalists as well as bigots who call themselves 
 Christians, and the generally good-natured soul 
 of Mr. Jarbey fairly sizzled within him, when he 
 saw the streets of the town invaded by these 
 
V Uncle fltticus. ^ 
 
 daughters of righteousness and certainly they 
 were not quite so attractive to look at as some of 
 their more worldly sisters. Perhaps it was the 
 badges that irritated Mr. Jarbey; for it must be 
 confessed that silk and celluloid badges are irri 
 tating to some dispositions. Perhaps it was the 
 dresses, the best of which were, as Theodore 
 remarked, pretty quisby. Whatever it was, it so 
 worked on Mr. Jarbey s spirit that he felt he had 
 to take some steps to counteract the evil influence. 
 Warfare upon the women themselves being out of 
 the question, Mr. Jarbey resolved on holding the 
 Rev. Mr. Studder responsible for what he called 
 " the whole caboodle," and challenging him to 
 any sort of public combat he might elect, from a 
 street-fight to a rifle-duel. It was with difficulty 
 made clear to Mr. Jarbey that this plan was not 
 feasible, and he sulked for two days. At the end 
 of this time, he announced to Theodore and the 
 rest of his companions at McGinty s gilded bar, 
 that "he d got an act that would do em." 
 Against the half-hearted remonstrances of his 
 friends, and the only too sincere and fervent pro 
 testations of his nephew, Mr. Jarbey proceeded to 
 carry his plan into effect. 
 
 It was on Saturday night, the night of the 
 "Great Double Memorial Meeting in Remem 
 brance of the Martyred Missionaries of the Sand 
 wich Islands and Seringapatam" that at half-past 
 five in the afternoon the first installment of the 
 Daughters of Temperance went into Fitts s Res 
 taurant to get their supper. Mr. Fitts had the 
 only restaurant and ice-cream saloon of any size 
 or standing in Wakeham, and it was not a very 
 spacious establishment, being the ordinary long, 
 123 
 
y "ITCabc in prance." T 
 
 narrow room of that sort of little-city restaurant 
 which affects tables covered with marbled enamel- 
 cloth, and clock-work wooden fans which swing 
 slowly and uselessly around, while the flies sit on 
 them and record their impressions. At the back, 
 a few steps led up to a private room where Mr. 
 Fitts could, and did, on certain occasions, enter 
 tain his wealthier guests with suppers where he 
 served oysters and terrapin and canvas-back duck 
 that had undoubtedly stopped in 
 New York on their way up from 
 Maryland. Mr. Fitts had taken 
 the contract for feeding several 
 hundreds of the feminine army; 
 and the limited resources of his 
 place obliged him to take them in installments, 
 fifty or so at a time, snatching those hurried, mot 
 ley meals that women love tomato-soup, a cup 
 of chocolate, ice-cream and chatter being the 
 usual formula. The first delegation that entered, 
 on this evening consecrated to mourning remem 
 brance, came in and sat down, all talking at once. 
 They stopped suddenly in their agreeable con 
 versation, and a hush of horror came upon the 
 assemblage, as they heard roars of masculine mer 
 riment issuing from the back-room, saw two per 
 spiring waiters staggering in with a tub of ice 
 stuck thick with champagne bottles, and then, 
 looking up, saw Uncle Atticus Jarbey leading six 
 other godless but convivial sinners in a baccha 
 nalian orgie that bid fair to be, as he had prom 
 ised to make it, " the highest old time anybody 
 ever had in the town of Wakeham." 
 
 Uncle Atticus kept his promise. All that 
 evening, as new installments of the fair children 
 124 
 
of righteousness continued to appear and got 
 mixed up with the scattered and disorganized 
 groups of earlier arrivals, a throng of excited and 
 generally flustered women surged in and out of 
 Fitts s restaurant, shrilly protesting against the 
 outrage of being forced to witness such a scandal, 
 and driving the head-waiter nearly frantic in his 
 endeavors to explain to them that in the una 
 voidable absence of Mr. Fitts who had happened 
 to go, that morning, to Siberia or South America, 
 or some other equally inaccessible place, for a 
 day s fishing he, the head -waiter, could do 
 nothing except to serve both lines of custom 
 according to orders. Some of the bolder spirits 
 among the Daughters and Light Bearers con 
 ceived a scheme for getting ahead of the mam 
 mon of unrighteousness by buying up Fitts s stock 
 of champagne and pouring it into the gutter. 
 Uncle Atticus roared with delight when the news 
 was brought to him, and sent for telegraph blanks 
 to order champagne by special train from New 
 York and Boston ; while the more practical head- 
 waiter privily sent out a boy to notify all the 
 saloon-keepers in the neighborhood to put every 
 drop of fizz they had on the ice without delay. 
 125 
 
Y* "ZlTabc in prance/ V 
 
 They might have spared themselves their pre 
 cautions, however. The first lady in the cham 
 pagne-spilling syndicate seized a bottle by the 
 neck and pounded it down on the curb-stone as 
 though she was smashing in the head of the 
 whole Rum-Power at one glorious blow. Then 
 the waiter gave her a check for three dollars and 
 fifty cents, and she fainted. 
 
 Fitts s front room had long been empty, save 
 for drowsy waiters and hackmen; and the virtuous 
 flock of temperance were all in bed and asleep 
 when Mr. Atticus Jarbey s "high time" came to 
 an end by ignominiously prostrating Mr. Jarbey 
 on the floor, helpless, agonized, and gasping in a 
 severe attack of indigestion. His nephew, and 
 another member of the merry company, who had 
 kept sober for that purpose, took the foe of reli 
 gion home; and with great difficulty got him to 
 bed, and left him lying there, inert, uncomfortable, 
 frightened and wretched in bocly and mind. When 
 they got outside the door, the other good Samaritan 
 suggested the employment of a physician; but 
 Theodore would not hear of it. His uncle, he 
 knew, had hardly more liking for doctors than for 
 divines; and, moreover, he himself had secretly 
 made inquiries of a specialist in dyspepsia, which 
 satisfied him that his uncle s attacks, though they 
 certainly were disagreeable and annoying, were in 
 nowise alarming in their nature. So the two 
 parted, and Theodore set out for his own home. 
 
 Something in the cool night -air set the 
 moderate quantity of champagne which he had 
 drunk to working within his brain. Now that 
 his immediate responsibility and care were at an 
 end he could enjoy the absurdity of the evening, 
 
V Uncle fltttcus. V 
 
 and give himself up to the pleasant exhilaration 
 of the sparkling wine. 
 
 It was this exhilaration that put an idea into 
 his head a wild idea for a brain which was 
 usually an uncommonly cool and calculating organ 
 of thought. He grinned sardonically as he turned 
 that idea over in the brain. After a moment, he 
 crossed the street and furiously rang the bell and 
 madly pounded on the front door of the Rev. Mr. 
 Seedley Studder, until that able missionary to the 
 heathen made his appearance, looming gigantic 
 in a yellow flannel dressing-gown. 
 
 "The Rev. Mr. Studder, I believe?" de 
 manded Theodore hurriedly. 
 
 "Yes, sir," replied the missionary, staring 
 hard at his visitor. It was a strange face to him 
 
 which was not unnatural under the circum 
 stances. 
 
 "You are the clergyman, the missionary, 
 
 who came here some time ago from South 
 America?" 
 
 "From South Africa," corrected Mr. Studder. 
 
 "Yes, certainly," Theodore cheerfully as 
 sented, unabashed; "well, you re wanted right 
 away across the road, five doors down, Mr. At- 
 ticus Jarbey. He s very sick and wants to see 
 you at once." 
 
 "Mr. Atticus Jarbey?" repeated the clergy 
 man, perplexed; "why, I thought, I thought he 
 was not " 
 
 "Not religious? Well, he was n t, very 
 much," replied Theodore, calmly, "but he s dying 
 now; and I guess he s changed his mind. At 
 any rate he wants you, the worst way, and you d 
 better go quick." 
 
 727 
 
"2Ha6e tn prance." 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Studder s face lit up and he 
 rubbed his hands almost gleefully. 
 
 " I 11 be with you in a moment," he said. 
 
 "Not with me" Theodore re 
 turned, promptly; "I m going 
 for the doctor. You see, I m 
 of the other way of thinking, 
 myself, governor. I don t 
 believe I d add any lustre 
 to the occasion." 
 
 "Very well," said 
 the clergyman, frowning 
 sternly; "whom shall I 
 say told me to come ? " 
 
 "I guess you need 
 n t mention my name, 
 dominie," said his visitor, 
 with a knowing wink. 
 "Might complicate mat 
 ters in the family. Call 
 me a seraphic visitor, or 
 a celestial messenger-boy 
 or anything you want to. 
 But man alive ! " he concluded, 
 in tones of astonished rebuke, "you want to 
 hurry up, or you 11 be too late." And he sped 
 off down the street. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Studder hurried into his 
 clothes and crossed the street to the silent man 
 sion of Mr. Jarbey, where only a pale night-lamp 
 glowed in the great room on the second floor. 
 
 "What a horrible thing," thought the Rever 
 end gentleman, "for that godless old man, if he 
 is as godless as I have been told to die 
 attended only by that graceless reprobate!" 
 128 
 
V Uncle fttttcus. V 
 
 From a recessed doorway further along the 
 street, Theodore watched the missionary disappear 
 into the house of Uncle Atticus. He grinned in 
 his malicious, half-intoxicated glee as he tried to 
 picture to himself the encounter that was about 
 to take place. Under ordinary circumstances it 
 would probably have resulted in battle, murder, 
 and the sudden death of the missionary. But 
 Uncle Atticus was absolutely paralyzed by the 
 attack of indigestion. He could hardly move 
 hand or foot ; he had no means of defense left to 
 him but his large and varied vocabulary of objur 
 gation. Theodore ran over in his mind the long 
 list of his uncle s explosions of unhallowed rage, 
 and reflected, with profound satisfaction, on the 
 probability that this one would be wcrse than 
 any one of which the old man had hitherto been 
 guilty. 
 
 But five minutes ten minutes a quarter 
 of an hour passed and no sound came from the 
 great square mansion of yellow brick. The night 
 was growing sharp and chill. Theodore emerged 
 from his hiding-place and began to walk up and 
 down in the middle of the roadway, casting 
 anxious and expectant glances at his uncle s 
 house; but no sound disturbed the calm silence 
 of the moonlight night,, until the bell of the town 
 clock struck four, and Theodore realized that 
 nearly three-quarters of an hour had elapsed since 
 his uncle s hall-door had closed behind the broad 
 shoulders of the missionary. 
 
 He began to be disturbed in mind, and 
 
 before long he was both mystified and worried. 
 
 What had happened ? Had Uncle Atticus gone 
 
 off in a faint, or suddenly died at the apparition 
 
 129 
 
If "tftabe in prance." y 
 
 of a clergyman in the very chamber of infidelity ? 
 Had he killed the missionary ? Had the mission 
 ary killed him ? The state of his uncle s digestion 
 forbade the supposition that the two had eaten 
 each other, or otherwise Theodore would have 
 accepted this as the only likely solu 
 tion of the problem. For another 
 long hour the unhappy nephew of 
 Uncle Atticus cooled his heels in 
 the damp, dank morning air. He 
 dared not enter the house and find 
 out for himself what had happened, 
 for that would have committed him 
 to an acknowledgment of his par 
 ticipation in the matter; and he had 
 no notion whatever of confessing his 
 guilt, should it appear that any un 
 pleasant consequences had been the 
 outcome of his practical joke. Theo 
 dore was not that kind of young 
 man. 
 
 Finally, when five o clock rang 
 out upon the chill air, Theodore real 
 ized the necessity of taking further steps. 
 Nearly opposite his uncle s mansion lived a young 
 gentleman of Theodore s kidney, who came as 
 near as any one could to being Theodore s chum. 
 This gentleman s name was Nathaniel Gillup, and 
 he slept on the ground floor of a little wing of 
 his father s house that gave on two streets an 
 apartment eminently convenient of nocturnal ac 
 cess. A signal familiar to the two young men 
 brought Mr. Gillup promptly to the window; .and 
 in a few minutes, Theodore, wrapped in his friend s 
 blankets, was telling with chattering teeth the story 
 130 
 
V Uncle fltttcus. V 
 
 of the night. Mr. Gillup was deeply interested. 
 In the pauses of his friend s narrative, he repeat 
 edly uttered the common or garden name of the 
 place of departed wicked spirits; and when the 
 recital had come to an end, he nimbly but noise 
 lessly executed a complicated dance-step, known 
 to the profane as a domino; and said cheerfully, 
 as he put on a bath-robe of gorgeous dye : 
 
 "This is a lark. Take a nip of whiskey and 
 get into my bed, and I 11 sit here at the window 
 and spell you for a while." 
 
 Mr. Gillup s vigil was faithful but futile. Six 
 o clock came and seven, but the home of Mr. 
 Jarbey was still wrapped in silence. Then, 
 apprehensive that he might be keeping watch on 
 a house of death, Mr. Gillup wakened the weary 
 Theodore to an aching head, and the two young 
 men sat and stared from behind the blinds at the 
 big yellow house. It was with unspeakable relief 
 that they saw at last the beginning of the usual 
 daily life of the establishment. The blinds were 
 opened by Mr. Jarbey s solitary domestic, who 
 moved about naturally, as if nothing strange had 
 happened. 
 
 "Can t we go over and get old Hetty to give 
 us a tip on the sly ? " suggested Mr. Gillup. 
 
 " Not on your life ! " cried Theodore, in 
 alarm. " The old woman positively hates me ; 
 and she s smarter than any ten steel traps. No, 
 sir; the only thing to do is to wait and watch. 
 He never gets up Sundays till twelve, even when 
 he s well; and he does n t like to have any one 
 come in the house till he s smoked a couple of 
 pipes and feels just right about two or three in 
 the afternoon." 
 
IT mabe in prance." V 
 
 The young men took turns in watching 
 throughout the morning, Theodore impelled by a 
 gnawing fear and anxiety, and Gillup by curiosity 
 and the delight of sharing in a mystery. It was 
 nearly two o clock when the front door opened 
 and the missionary appeared, and crossed the 
 street to his own house. He bore no signs of 
 excitement or disorder; on the contrary, he had 
 the tranquil air of a man satisfied with the world 
 and with himself. Theodore took a stiff drink 
 of whiskey from his friend s bottle, and hurried 
 nervously to his uncle s bedside. 
 
 Uncle Atticus lay in his old-fashioned four- 
 poster bed, pale, except as to the extreme tip of 
 his nose, and wearing an expression of gloomy 
 dejection. 
 
 "Well, Uncle," his nephew addressed him, as 
 naturally and cheerfully as he could, which was 
 neither very naturally or very cheerfully, " how do 
 you feel this morning ? I was in hopes I d find 
 you up and about by this time." 
 
 Uncle Atticus shook his head as one does 
 who hears a grave subject lightly discussed. 
 
 " I come mighty near dying last night, Theo 
 dore," he said solemnly. "You may not know it, 
 Theodore, but since you left me I Ve been a 
 mighty sick man an almighty sick man." 
 
 There was a suggestion of reproach in the 
 phrase "since you left me," and Theodore has 
 tened to excuse himself. 
 
 " Well, of course," he said, " I saw you were 
 suffering from one of your attacks of indigestion." 
 
 "Indi-hell there, don t you get me to 
 swear, Theodore. I suppose you think there ain t 
 ever anything worse the matter with people than 
 132 
 
indigestion ? Well, now let me tell you there s 
 some things you don t know in this world, young 
 man. There s two or three things you Ve got 
 to learn yet. I come just as near dying last night 
 as ever I did in rny life. I had an attack, after 
 you fellows went away, that was worse than any 
 thing I ever thought a man could live through." 
 
 Theodore felt his spirits beginning to return. 
 " What sort of an attack was it, Uncle ? " he 
 inquired. 
 
 " I don t know, I don t know," said Mr. 
 Jarbey, shaking his head ; " it was something 
 between cholera and pneumonia, I should think; 
 may be a little of both. And I d have died here 
 in my bed died here alone yes, sir alone 
 133 
 
V "ITTabe in prance." V 
 
 if it had n t been for the mercy of Divine 
 Providence." 
 
 " Hey ! " gasped Theodore. 
 
 "Yes, sir," repeated Mr. Jarbey impressively; 
 "the mercy of Divine Providence. Oh, you may 
 well open your ears! There s nothing like it. 
 As true as I m layin here as true as I m 
 layin here, Theodore there s be n a miracle 
 worked in this house ! " 
 
 He reached out a fevered hand, caught the 
 wrist of the amazed young man, and pulled him 
 closer, while his voice dropped to an awe-struck 
 whisper as he went on. 
 
 "Say! you know that missionary that man 
 with a beard Mr. Studder? I did n t used to 
 like him exactly you know. Well, that man 
 had a revelation last night," 
 
 " A rev what ? " stammered Theodore. 
 
 "A revelation ; yes, sir; a revelation, like they 
 had in the back part of the Bible. A vision from 
 heaven come to that man and said I was sick, 
 and left all alone here, and needed him the worst 
 way. And what does that man do, Theodore? 
 what does that Christian gentleman do but get 
 right into his pants, and come over here and take 
 care of me the whole night long ? Why he 
 could n t have done more for me if he d been 
 my own brother ! " 
 
 Theodore struggled with an intense desire to 
 laugh, but controlled himself after a moment. 
 
 " You seem to take kindly to religious 
 society, Uncle," he said, with ironical bitterness in 
 his tone. 
 
 Uncle Atticus released his nephew s wrist, 
 and looked a little confused as he replied : 
 134 
 
V" Uncle (rftticus. T? 
 
 " T wa n t a question of religion, Theodore," 
 he said. " T was a question of life and death. 
 And I tell you, Theodore, that man took right 
 good care of me. You see, those missionaries 
 may be you don t know it, Theodore, but they 
 have to study medicine just like any regular 
 doctor; and I guess there s some of m knows as 
 much as most doctors. Anyway, he saved my 
 life. I would n t be here now talking to you, 
 Theodore, if- it wa n t for that man." 
 
 "He seems to have made a night of it." 
 
 "I hope you 11 never have to go through 
 such a night, Theodore." 
 
 This was said in a tone of deep reproach. 
 
 " He stuck right by me through it all, 
 though," went on Uncle Atticus, " and he would 
 
 n t even go home to breakfast just sat right 
 down there on a chair at the foot of the bed, and 
 et something off the washstand. I was feeling 
 so bad I could n t take anything, only a cocktail. 
 Hetty makes a first-class cocktail. Did me good." 
 135 
 
in prance." V 
 
 " Did the missionary have a cocktail, Uncle ? " 
 inquired Theodore. 
 
 " Now, that s what I don t like about you, 
 Theodore," said his uncle with considerable irrita 
 tion. " You don t know where to stop. He s got 
 his convictions and / ve got mine. And if I don t 
 go quite so far as he does, why that s no reason 
 why I should n t respect his notions of what s 
 right and proper." 
 
 This time Theodore was nearly stricken 
 dumb. It was some time before he could mur 
 mur an apology. 
 
 " I did n t mean anything," he said, in a 
 bewildered manner. " Of course I feel that way 
 myself. I respect I respect everybody," he 
 concluded vaguely and weakly. 
 
 An awkward silence reigned for a minute. 
 
 "Did you find him a pleasant talker?" 
 Theodore hazarded at last. 
 
 " First-rate, first-rate," his uncle answered, 
 more agreeably. "A man who s been out in the 
 world so much as he has, and seen so much, 
 could n t help being an interesting talker. Makes 
 an elegant prayer, too and oh, yes what was 
 I going to say ? Oh % yes ! He lent me a book to 
 read, too. Real interesting book. You d ought to 
 read it, Theodore." And Uncle Atticus hurriedly 
 and somewhat confusedly produced from under 
 the bed-clothes a small black book bearing on its 
 cover in showy gilt a picture of a crown skewered 
 on a palm-leaf, and an African war-spear. 
 
 " A religious book ! " exclaimed Theodore, 
 in undisguised amazement. 
 
 " Why, yes no ! It s the < Historical Ac 
 count of the South African Missions, Why, no, 
 
TT Uncle fltticus. V 
 
 I would n t say it was exactly a religious book 
 it s more a sort of a kind of book of travels and 
 adventures. I tell you, you may say what you 
 like, Theodore, those folks have done a lot of 
 good in those barbarous countries." 
 
 Theodore knit his brows as he looked at his 
 uncle, and asked quietly : 
 
 " When is the Reverend Mr. Studder coming 
 to see you again, Uncle ? " 
 
 "I don t know I don t know; may be 
 he 11 look in to-morrow, just to see how I am," 
 answered Uncle Atticus in some confusion. " He 
 said he guessed I d better not talk to anybody 
 much mere to-day might make me tired, and 
 put me back." 
 
 Great minds sometimes conquer misfortunes 
 by temporary submission ; but Theodore s mind, 
 though it was keen enough, had no elements of 
 greatness. 
 
 " Good-afternoon, Uncle," he said ; and then 
 he could not resist giving the renegade one vicious 
 thrust. " I suppose you don t know yet," he said, 
 " the date when they 11 receive you into the 
 Church ? " 
 
 His uncle made a rapid movement of anger, 
 and seized the pillow; then, controlling himself, 
 he turned his back, and, with hands trembling 
 with rage, tried to re-arrange his bed and settle 
 himself for a nap. 
 
 " No, I don t know," he said, savagely; " but 
 I 11 tell you what I do know. I do know who left 
 me here to die all alone. And I do know who 
 saved my life. No, I don t want you to fix that 
 pillow for me ! But I 11 tell you what you can do : 
 you can send Hetty to me, as you go out, and you 
 
can shut the front door so s it won t slam. Good- 
 day Good-day." 
 
 Uncle Atticus has had no return of his at 
 tacks of indigestion since he joined the church 
 and the prohibition party, and married a Shining 
 Light among the Daughters of Temperance. As 
 he has also resumed business, and is making 
 money with great rapidity, his sanity is unques 
 tioned. Theodore is attending to his law practice 
 more than he used to. 
 
THE PETT1BONE BROLLY. 
 
THE PETTIBONE BROLLY. 
 
 N GREENWICH VILLAGE, which is the 
 interesting suburban colony that lies tucked 
 away behind the Jefferson Market clock - 
 tower, in the very heart of New York City, 
 you may still see rows of three-story red 
 brick houses, with low front-stoops and green 
 front-doors, each of which bears a shining brass 
 knocker and a neat silver-plate. It is harder to 
 gain admission to some of these houses than it 
 is to pass the portals of a Fifth Avenue million 
 aire; but if you could open one of those green 
 doors and enter, you would see just about what 
 you would see if you were in the house to the 
 right of it, or if you were in the house to the 
 left of it. 
 
 You would see before you a long narrow 
 hall, with oil-cloth on the floor, and the other 
 kind of oil-cloth the shiny kind on the stairs, 
 laid over a strip of stair-carpet. The walls are 
 painted, except a few that preserve the old-fash 
 ioned paper that imitates blocks of marble. Near 
 the foot of the stairs is the parlor door, narrow 
 and inhospitable, and generally closed on week 
 days. The parlor has a flowery Brussels carpet. 
 The Brussels is American Brussels, so the blinds 
 140 
 
T (Lfa pettiboiK Broil?. ^ 
 
 are shut most of the time. There is a very nar 
 row, gilt-framed pier-glass between the two front 
 windows. On the little white marble shelf below 
 it, stands, under a glass globe with chenille around 
 the bottom, a plate of wax fruit touched by the 
 hand of Death in 1864. On the mantel-piece 
 are a fancy clock in French bronze, with green 
 paint simulating verdigris in every depression, a 
 white cross entwined with ivy leaves in a material 
 resembling beet-sugar, and a stuffed bird. The 
 two-branch gas-fixture in the middle of the ceiling 
 is always done up in pink mosquito - net 
 ting, although a fly would starve to death in the 
 room. In the corner is a grand piano. The 
 last tune played on it was 
 "Tramp, tramp, tramp!" 
 On top of the piano, in 
 a round case of glass 
 and polished black wal 
 nut, is somebody s fu 
 neral wreath embalmed 
 in paraffine. Sometimes 
 the vigorous duster of 
 the mistress of the house 
 disturbs this ponderous 
 article, and, as its feet 
 grit on the piano-top, 
 a thin, hoarse murmur 
 comes from the dull strings 
 below. The whole room 
 smells old and cold and coffin-varnishy. 
 
 Back of this is a room which is dining-room, 
 
 drawing - room, living - room and sitting - room, 
 
 where there are bare places worn in the carpet in 
 
 front of the old folks chairs; where there are 
 
 141 
 
V :i7abe in prance." V 
 
 geraniums in the windows, and a hyacinth-glass, 
 and bird-seed growing in a wet sponge; where of 
 Winter evenings the wife cuts out her dresses on 
 the black-walnut table, and the husband reads his 
 newspaper with his slippered feet on the base of 
 the stove. 
 
 In such a house as this lived Mr. and Mrs. 
 Obadiah Pettibone, a childless couple somewhat 
 past middle age. For thirty years Pettibone had 
 been a clerk in a large commission house down 
 town, and for twenty-nine of these thirty years he 
 and Mrs. Pettibone had lived together in what 
 might be called a sort of financial and economic 
 union, in which the wife was the active and domi 
 nating partner. They were married by the church 
 their certificate hung framed in that cold front 
 parlor but they were far more closely united by 
 their love of saving, which, in the woman s case, 
 came almost to a mania. To save the very 
 shadow of a cent was to her a religious duty ; and 
 that she could stand by her convictions every 
 tradesman in the ward knew by personal experi 
 ence. It was not a wasteful nor extravagant 
 neighborhood, but even its thrifty and frugal 
 denizens looked upon Mrs. Pettibone with dis 
 favor, as a woman who almost brought the cardi 
 nal virtue of economy into ill-repute. 
 
 It may be understood, therefore, that this 
 household was thrown into some disturbance 
 when Mr. Pettibone came home one day and 
 announced that he was going to replace the 
 seventy-five-cent cotton umbrella that he had 
 carried for four years by a five-dollar silk one 
 and made this announcement with the sullen and 
 dogged manner whereby a henpecked man indi- 
 142 
 
V f?e Pettiboue Broil?. ^ 
 
 cates to his wife that he has reached a point 
 where he is going to have his own way for once. 
 
 None the less did Mrs. Pettibone rave. She 
 could see at a glance that Pettibone s case was 
 absolutely sound and unassailable. The umbrella 
 was a shocking object. That it had brought 
 
 upon him the jeers of his fellow-clerks, and ex 
 posed him to ridicule, she did not greatly care; 
 but when she learned that the younger men of the 
 office had served formal notice on her husband 
 that if he re-appeared with that umbrella and 
 carrying an umbrella was his life-long habit; he 
 would not have known what to do with a cane 
 they would open a general subscription among 
 themselves and the clerks of other offices with 
 whom they had business relations, for the pur 
 pose of buying him a new one, and that the new 
 one must be of silk to cost not less than five 
 dollars then Mrs. Pettibone understood that the 
 inevitable had to be faced. For, such a scandal 
 143 
 
^ "Utabe in prance." V 
 
 downtown might bring his penuriousness, or 
 rather her penuriousness, to the ears of his 
 employers, and endanger his position. And 
 although, after twenty-nine years of saving, the 
 Pettibones owned the house they lived in, and 
 two or three others, they would have regarded 
 the loss of the husband s stipend an affliction 
 hardly to be borne. 
 
 It was Saturday afternoon when the blow 
 fell, and, until the evening meal was concluded, 
 Mrs. Pettibone scolded and harangued, and be 
 wailed her lot. She tried in roundabout ways 
 of feminine ingenuity to fix upon her husband 
 the blame for the situation. At last she remem 
 bered that when they had bought the seventy- 
 five-cent umbrella he had preferred one at eighty- 
 nine cents; and she berated him soundly for not 
 having insisted upon its purchase. A man, she 
 said, was expected to know about umbrellas. If 
 he knew that this other one was so much better, 
 why did he not tell her so and get it, like a man ? 
 But no; he wanted, as usual, to throw all the 
 responsibility upon her shoulders, so that he could 
 have her to blame if anything went wrong. If he 
 had got the better umbrella, it would have worn 
 well and would not have excited the attention of 
 the other clerks; and this disgrace and expense 
 would not have been brought upon them. It was 
 just like him. 
 
 And therewith her soul was satisfied, and 
 she put on her best bonnet and the black lace 
 shawl that she wore for state; and they marched 
 out into the night, to make of the buying of the 
 five-dollar umbrella a solemn and, as it were, a 
 monumental occasion. 
 
IF f?e Pettibone Brolly. ^ 
 
 Through Bleecker Street they went, not that 
 they meant to commit any such folly as the invest 
 ment of five dollars in any umbrella to be found 
 in that motley thoroughfare; but because Mrs. 
 Pettibone wished to begin in an atmosphere of 
 one -dollar -and -ninety -seven -cent silk umbrellas 
 and work her courage gradually up to the stick- 
 ing-point. 
 
 Then to Sixth Avenue they betook them 
 selves, where the elevated railroad plied its 
 roaring, flashing shuttles back and forth over their 
 heads, weaving dividends for Murray Hill; where 
 the great arc -lights sputtered and hissed and 
 crackled as they spread their unsteady, dancing 
 glare over the shop-fronts; where crowds jostled 
 them, where girls winked at the old man, and 
 street venders thrust children s toys in his wife s 
 face, crying: 
 
 " Buy one, lady ; buy one for the baby ! " 
 
 It was in Eighth Avenue at last, in an 
 "Emporium" famous for its "bargains" in every 
 variety of goods, from stove-lifters to ladies hats, 
 that, just as the store was closing, as the lights 
 were going out, and the tired clerks were covering 
 the counters with long strips of cotton cloth, that 
 Mrs. Pettibone bought an umbrella for four 
 dollars and ninety-eight cents; thereby saving her 
 pride, and acquiring an article that would pass 
 muster with the connaisseurs of Pettibone s office. 
 
 When Pettibone returned from downtown on 
 Monday evening, his wife met him at the door. 
 It was a habit she had, founded not so much on 
 145 
 
V "ITCabe in prance." V 
 
 warm affection as on a desire to satisfy herself 
 that he was all there, as a mother examines the 
 condition in which a child returns from school. 
 
 " I don t wonder you wear out your um 
 brellas, if you fold them like that," said she, 
 
 PL. 
 
 taking it, and carefully opening it. Then she 
 stood aghast, pointing one skinny finger at a little 
 circular brown-edged hole near the centre of the 
 hemisphere. She gazed, her eyes burning with a 
 solemn indignation, upon her bald-headed, pale- 
 faced, wrinkled husband; who stood before her, 
 clad in lirnp creased broadcloth, swaying a little 
 from side to side with the feebleness of a man 
 grown aged in sedentary toil. 
 
 "Obadiah," she said, in a dreadful voice, 
 " you ve been making a circus clown of yourself, 
 and showing 6ff before those fellows in the office, 
 and you ve ruined your umbrella ! Well, as 
 you ve made your bed, so you shall lie." 
 
 It was of no use for Pettibone to protest and 
 vow that he had let nobody touch the umbrella, 
 146 
 
~T (Lty Pettibonc Brolly. 
 
 except the person appointed by his tormentors to 
 see that it came up to specifications. It took 
 Mrs. Pettibone three hours that evening to darn 
 that hole, not with silk, but with cotton, carefully 
 and pitilessly chosen not to match. Part of the 
 time, of course, she was telling Pettibone what she 
 thought of him. 
 
 But the next evening when she 
 opened the umbrella, she stood as 
 though a thunder-bolt had fallen 
 at her feet. Pettibone was ex 
 onerated; but the umbrella was 
 ruined. On the inside of every 
 fold were a dozen or more tiny 
 perforations which, when the 
 umbrella was fully opened, com 
 bined to form an intricate pat 
 tern a sort of impromptu 
 Hamburg edging design. Not 
 the most malicious mind could 
 have connected Pettibone with 
 such a design, nor with the in 
 strument with which it was made for the smell 
 of cigarette-smoke mingled easily and naturally 
 with the smell of burnt silk. 
 
 "We might cover it " began Mr. Pettibone. 
 
 " Cover ! " said Mrs. Pettibone. She simply 
 repeated the word; but the way in which she 
 repeated it clearly conveyed the idea that her 
 husband had proposed to cover the umbrella with 
 pink silk at $12.00 a yard and to inlay the ribs 
 with diamonds. 
 
 The strongest tyrant sometimes goes too far, 
 and it is very often upon a point that might well 
 have been yielded. 
 
 a 147 
 
^ "2Ha6e in prance." ^ 
 
 " Then I 11 have another umbrella ! " said 
 Pettibone. 
 
 He had another umbrella. The battle raged 
 all the evening, and ended in a compromise. He 
 was to buy one more umbrella; and he was to get 
 special permission to place it, during office hours, 
 in the private closet of the senior partner a spot 
 where it would have been sacrilege and discharge 
 to touch it. So on the morrow he left the house 
 early; and with no ceremony at all, but with the 
 hurried, brazen, cowardly-desperate manner of a 
 man who finds himself forced into doing a shame 
 ful thing, he bought another $4.98 umbrella just 
 as the Eighth Avenue Emporium was opened and 
 the yawning clerks were uncovering the counters. 
 
 A care-worn theatre treasurer once stopped, 
 with a tin box in his hand, at the door of the 
 manager s office, and pointed to the open doors 
 of the auditorium, as he addressed a friend. 
 
 "Do you see that red fire in there?" he 
 said, " and them ruins tumbling down, and that 
 corpse going off the stage a-top of four Romans ? 
 The audience thinks that s the end of the tragedy. 
 Well, t ain t. Wait till I go in and tell the old 
 man there was only a hundred and twenty-two 
 dollars in the house. That will be the end of 
 the tragedy." 
 
 Mr. Pettibone might well walk off down 
 town with his new umbrella in his hand and his 
 struggle and agony behind him. But Mrs. Petti 
 bone what of Mrs. Pettibone, left alone in the 
 house with the corpse of the murdered umbrella 
 the elder and original silk umbrella of the 
 house of Pettibone ? If she looked at it once 
 that morning, she looked at it a score of times. 
 14$ 
 
V^ (Efc Pettibonc 
 
 When she was not looking at it, it was not wholly 
 out of her mind. It stood to her for $4.98 dead 
 loss; and the $4.98 she had taken from the 
 treasury for the purchase of the second umbrella 
 had brought to her as yet no visible return, so 
 that that sum seemed to her as clear a waste as 
 the other. Thus regarded, the ghastly object 
 before her became in a sense the wreck of a 
 $9.96 umbrella; and the contemplation of this 
 simply disgraceful extravagance, taking a concrete 
 and tangible form right here in her own house 
 hold, tortured her almost as a mother s heart is 
 tortured when a child goes hopelessly astray. 
 
 She felt so badly that in order to make her 
 self feel worse she went into her front parlor; but 
 there, before its gloom could fairly penetrate her 
 system, something occurred to her that made her 
 drop into a chair "all of a tremble," as she after 
 ward said. 
 
 Her eye had fallen upon the new velvet 
 carpet rug in front of her, whereon a yellow tiger 
 slew a brown deer with great wickedness. It lay 
 before the Franklin-heater, and replaced one that 
 two years before had been damaged by a fire in 
 the chimney. 
 
 How came it that she had not before thought 
 of the Insurance Company ? The Insurance Com 
 pany had paid for the rug why should it not 
 pay for the umbrella? When she got over her 
 first nervous trembling, she resolved that the In 
 surance Company should pay for the umbrella. 
 She had done a great deal of hard thinking in the 
 ten minutes that she had sat on the uncomfortable 
 little satin chair in the chilly parlor, but she had 
 made up her mind. She had determined to go 
 
 I4Q 
 
herself to the Insurance Company and to collect 
 the cost of that umbrella. Why should she go by 
 herself? Because she knew that her husband 
 would not like it ; that he would not go himself 
 nay, more, that he might once again put his 
 masculine foot down, and prevent her going if he 
 knew of it. How did she know this, having no 
 knowledge whatever of the subject, nor having 
 conversed thereon with her husband. I do not 
 know. But there is a good deal of instinctive 
 knowledge of that sort dodging around between 
 the confidences and the reserves of married life. 
 
 It was this knowledge and the accompanying 
 feeling of guilt that made her timorous at heart 
 150 
 
V f?e Pettibonc Broil?. T k 
 
 the more timorous that, like many another Ninth 
 Ward house-wife, she never stirred beyond her 
 own narrow neighborhood, save to make a few 
 necessary purchases or to see a parade. Therefore 
 she dressed herself in her very best, including a 
 bonnet that was built in the days when people 
 knew what a bonnet was; and she made a de 
 cidedly imposing figure as she set forth, with a 
 good dignified space a generation, at least 
 between her attire and the frivolity of the present 
 fashion. 
 
 Still, she was somewhat intimidated when she 
 stood at last before the big marble front of the 
 solid, old-fashioned building that housed the vast 
 offices of the Birmingham, Leeds & West Riding 
 Assurance Company, Limited, in a dark and 
 much crowded street far downtown. She stood 
 long on the sidewalk, looking through the plate- 
 glass windows at the long rows of gas-lit desks 
 and gilded gratings. At last she entered and in 
 quired of a uniformed boy where she could see 
 "the principal." The boy was American the 
 only American thing in- that great office filled with 
 Britons and sodden in Briticism. He looked 
 sharply at Mrs. Pettibone for a moment, then 
 he said : 
 
 " General Manager, ma am ? Mr. Thumble- 
 field ? Yes, ma am. This way, ma m." 
 
 Perhaps Mr. Thumblefield had left word 
 that he expected his aunt that morning; perhaps 
 the clerks were awed by Mrs. Pettibone s stately 
 and antique port ; perhaps the boy did not belong 
 to the Assurance Company, and was only trading 
 on his knowledge of its ways in a spirit of sinful 
 American levity somehow Mrs. Pettibone was 
 
V "ITCabe in prance." V 
 
 rushed through various corridors and passages, 
 and suddenly found herself a little out of breath 
 in a gas-lit room, upholstered in pleasant-smelling 
 leather, dark of hue and old-looking; where a 
 large man with a ruddy face and beard of mixed 
 gray and red, who sat in a large chair at a large 
 desk, asked her politely but with evident surprise 
 to take a seat. Two other large men with much 
 the same general appearance stood near him with 
 
 their hats in their hands. The man at the desk 
 added politely to Mrs. Pettibone as she sat down : 
 " One moment, madam, and I am at your 
 service." Then he continued, turning to the 
 other two large men: "Well, gentlemen, I m 
 afraid that s the best we can do for you. We 11 
 pay the $75,000, of course or $85,000 
 which is it? Yes, $85,000. The $11,000 
 claim Pratt will let you know about. That 11 
 
V <Ef?e Pettibone Brolly ^ 
 
 be all right, I suppose?" Here the other two 
 men nodded in a mattei-of-course way. "But as 
 to the $72,000 claim, the Company absolutely 
 refuses to pay you one cent of it under that 
 policy or any other that we 11 ever draw." 
 
 "Well," said one of the others, meditatively, 
 thrusting his hands into his pockets, " I supposed 
 that was about the position you d take; I sup 
 pose we 11 have to carry it up." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said the other of the visitors, 
 nodding his head assentingly ; " I always said it 
 was a matter for the Court of Appeals." 
 
 " Fancy so," said the man at the desk ; 
 "they 11 settle it. Just as well have these mat 
 ters settled once for all. When will you get up 
 to see that new pair of mine, Picklesby ? " 
 
 " Oh, I dunno," said Mr. Picklesby. " Fancy 
 I 11 get up with Rowbotham toward the end of 
 the week. Come along, Whilkington ! " And 
 with three grunts of British geniality, they bade 
 each other good-by, and Mrs. Pettibone was left 
 alone with the General Manager of the Birming 
 ham, Leeds & West Riding Assurance Company, 
 Limited. 
 
 Mrs. Pettibone was frightened; but you 
 would never have known it from the tone of 
 her determined voice or the expression of her 
 stern features. 
 
 " I want you to look at that," she said, 
 thrusting the umbrella at the General Manager 
 in the manner in which she might have called the 
 attention of a dirty boy to the thumb-marks he 
 was making on her clean front door. 
 
 Mr. Thumbleneld took the umbrella in frank 
 amazement, and mechanically opened it. 
 
 153 
 
V "Iftabe in prance." V 
 
 "What do you think of that?" demanded 
 Mrs. Pettibone. 
 
 The General Manager looked at it inside 
 and out. What he saw was not an umbrella 
 perforated with cigarette-burns, but an umbrella 
 that had sustained a much more serious, extensive 
 and yet far less symmetrical internal conflagration. 
 In fact the ravages of the flames could no longer 
 boast any artistic merit. They presented merely 
 an accidental appearance. 
 
 "Ah, well," said Mr. Thumblefield, clearly 
 taken back, "I should say that I rather thought 
 that it was by way of being in very hard luck, 
 don t you know ! " 
 
 "It s burnt," said Mrs. Pettibone. 
 
 The General Manager of the Assurance 
 Company again gave the umbrella his careful con 
 sideration ; then he rolled it up and handed it 
 back to Mrs. Pettibone, stolidly remarking: 
 
 " So I should have supposed." 
 
 "It cost me $9.96," Mrs. Pettibone went on. 
 The General Manager again took the umbrella 
 from her hands and again he examined it. 
 
 " Very remarkable ! " he said. " Never should 
 have thought it;" and he once more returned the 
 umbrella to its owner. 
 
 "You 11 admit that it s burned," said Mrs. 
 Pettibone, with irritation in her tone. 
 
 "Bless my soul!" said Mr. Thumblefield; 
 " really, my dear madam, I have nothing to deny 
 or to admit about your umbrella. I can t see that 
 it s any conceivable business of mine." 
 
 "Oh, ain t it?" his visitor cried; "ain t we 
 insured in this, company of yours, my husband 
 and me ? " 
 
 154 
 
V dfc Pettibcme Broil?. ^T 
 
 " Really I don t know," said the General 
 Manager ; " are you ? " 
 
 "Yes; indeed, we are," announced bis 
 visitor. "My name s Pettibone, Mrs. Obadiah 
 Pettibone. Now, may be you 11 remember some 
 thing about it ! And you paid us one loss when 
 the chimney caught fire two years ago in January, 
 you paid us forty-seven dollars I remember 
 it just as if it was yesterday. Yes; and we had 
 
 one fire since then. Did more n twenty dollars 
 damage; and Mr. Pettibone, he never came near 
 here nor said a word about it to you." 
 
 The General Manager leaned back in his 
 chair and smiled. 
 
 " Is n t it a little odd, madam," he said, 
 "that Mr. Thingumbob your husband, and you, 
 should leave a twenty dollars loss uncollected and 
 come here with a claim of less than half that 
 amount ? " 
 
 " Not a bit," Mrs. Pettibone snapped back 
 at him; "because my husband s a fool, you don t 
 think I am, do you? He pays for his own 
 
V "2Ha6e in prance." V 
 
 chimneys, but umbrellas come out of my house 
 keeping money." 
 
 "Oh, that s it, is it?" said the General 
 Manager, taken still further aback. 
 
 Mrs. Pettibone sat up straight and looked 
 him right in the eyes. 
 
 "Yes, sir," she said; "that s///^/ it." She 
 was not at. all frightened now. The joy of combat 
 was awakened within her. 
 
 Mr. Thumbleneld leaned back in his chair, 
 rather at a loss for words. 
 
 " Well, madam," he said at last, "I I I 
 don t really see what we can do for this unfor 
 tunate umbrella of yours. Very sorry, of course " 
 
 " Well," said Mrs. Pettibone, " I want that 
 you should either pay me the price of it or give 
 me another one like it ; or else," she added hastily, 
 observing a look of unaffected amazement on that 
 open British countenance, "have it re-covered, 
 anyway." 
 
 Mr. Thumbleneld fairly gasped. " But, Great 
 Heavens, my dear woman, we re not umbrella- 
 makers, don t you see ! You can t really expect 
 us to mend your umbrella for you, don t you 
 know!" 
 
 " All right," said Mrs. Pettibone readily ; 
 "give me the money and I 11 have it re-covered 
 myself. I could get it done, I suppose, just, as 
 cheap as you could. There s a man does cover 
 ing right around the corner from our house I 
 ain t never been to him, but they say he s real 
 reasonable. And there is a man comes through 
 our street in a red-white-and-blue wagon some 
 times, and you supply the silk but I suppose 
 it s no use waiting for him " 
 
Pcttibonc Broil?. T k 
 
 " Pon my word, madam this is the most 
 extraordinary case I ever heard of. Why, madam, 
 we can t consent to enter into any such trans 
 actions. Why, the next thing you 11 be coming 
 here, you know, if your husband burns the soles 
 of his shoes- at the fire. Really, you know, we 
 can t do it, we can t do it ! We can t pay you for 
 accidents that happen to all that sort of 
 rubbish, you know!" 
 
 " Rubbish!" shrilled Mrs. Petti- 
 bone, her eyes sparkling with anger; 
 "then where s the good of your 
 precious fire insurance, I d like to 
 know? Rubbish! An umbrella that 
 cost most ten dollars! Rubbish! It 
 was n t rubbish when you wanted us 
 to pay for the insurance on it, but 
 now when it s burnt and ruined and 
 Mr. Pettibone going to the office with 
 a -seventy-five cent umbrella in his hand 
 never before in his life did he do such 
 a thing ! Now ! Now it s rubbish ! Oh, I 
 knew it right well ; I ve known it all along. I 
 said to Mr. Pettibone, when he first went into 
 your company, * I know how it 11 come out, I 
 says; I know just how it 11 come out! 
 
 Mr. Thumblefield belonged to that large 
 class of Englishmen who believe, on general 
 principles, that women are made to be jumped 
 on; but who are perfectly willing to accept the 
 fact, in any particular case, that that woman, 
 individually, is not made to be jumped on. He 
 glanced out of his doorway and saw a long line 
 of people waiting at the clerk s desk where his 
 present visitor should have been stopped. He 
 
y "ZUabt in prance." V 
 
 made a mental calculation of the value of his lost 
 time for that morning, and a mental memorandum 
 to speak to that clerk. Then he said wearily : 
 
 "Very well, madam, I 11 see what I can do 
 for you. How did this accident happen ? Of 
 course, if it was in the street " 
 
 "If it was in the street, what then?" de 
 manded Mrs. Pettibone. 
 
 "Why of course we can t pay for it if it 
 happened anywhere out of the house." 
 
 "But did n t I tell you it happened in the 
 house?" answered Mrs. Pettibone, without the 
 loss of an instant. She was all herself now, for 
 she knew that victory was at hand. "But I 
 thought I d told you how it happened. You see 
 it was this-a-way. You see, Mr. Pettibone, he s 
 real careful about his umbrellas; and he don t 
 hardly ever set em in the hat-rack where people 
 who come to the house might put their things 
 no, he just takes his umbrella into the dining- 
 room, and puts it right up against the mantelpiece, 
 where the zinc is, where it will drip into the 
 cuspidor. Now, t other day he brought home a 
 little kind of a thing to hold matches. It was 
 made of china, hand-painted, and it was a real 
 pretty thing; but he couldn t get it to hang real 
 straight. You know the way they make those 
 fancy things nowadays. Well, Mr. Pettibone, he 
 hung it right over where he puts his umbrella, and 
 I told him he d ought to have hung it somewhere 
 else. Obadiah, says I, can t you see that that 
 thing s tiddle-y ? But Mr. Pettibone, he s just 
 like a man. He was all for having it right there. 
 Would n t any other place suit him. It 11 be all 
 right, Maria, says he; don t you fret. I ain t 
 
V* (Lf?e Pettibone Broil?. TF 
 
 frettin , Obadiah, says I ; but you 11 see, I says, 
 says I; you need n t tell me] says I to him; 
 you 11 see what your precious match-box will 
 bring us to " 
 
 " Will you come to the point, Mrs. a-ah 
 Pettibone?" said the General Manager 
 in a choking voice. 
 
 " That s just where I was 
 a-comin , pursued Mrs. Petti 
 bone, cheerily. "Well, it was 
 n t three nights after that 
 no, not three nights when 
 Mr. Pettibone came in, just as 
 it was getting towards dusk; 
 and I was out that afternoon, 
 and so I had n t got the light 
 lit; and Mr. Pettibone, he went 
 groping around the way a man does, all thumbs, 
 and he struck three, may be four matches. He 
 says he don t remember rightly how many he did 
 strike, and the first thing you know he had that 
 match-box down and the matches all over the 
 floor. And then he picked it up and put the 
 matches back; and he was bound he was n t 
 going to say a word to me about it. Oh, my ! 
 he thought he was going to be dreadful smart, 
 just like a man all over. But I had n t more 
 than got my head inside the house than I says 
 to him : Obadiah, I says, I smell smoke. And 
 he tried to convince me that I did n t; but, my 
 gracious! he could n t any more convince me 
 when I know a thing than if he had n t a been 
 there. And I says to him, I says " 
 
 " Madam," said the General Manager of the 
 Birmingham, Leeds & West Riding Assurance 
 
in prance." V 
 
 Company, Limited, fixing an apoplectic eye on 
 Mrs. Pettibone, " will you have the kindness to 
 have this umbrella re-covered at our expense, and 
 send the bill here ? The Cashier will see to the 
 matter, if this card is presented to him imme 
 diately 1 
 
 Mrs. Pettibone walked to the head of Wall 
 Street. She did not get out at any of the streets 
 leading to Greenwich Village, but continued on 
 to where the great thoroughfare sweeps into the 
 bright and spacious cheerfulness of Madison 
 Square. There she selected an umbrella shop 
 of a grandeur to her liking. Therein she en 
 tered. 
 
 " I want to have this umbrella covered," she 
 said, "with the very best silk you Ve got in the 
 store. Expense is no object whatever." 
 
 She left the clerk gazing dumbly at the 
 wreck of a $4.98 umbrella, of a kind strange to 
 his eyes. 
 
 " Why," said Mrs. Pettibone to her husband 
 that evening, "it was as easy as anything; he 
 seemed real glad to give it to me. But there! 
 it s no use talking to you!" 
 
 ibo 
 
THE JOKE ON M. PEPTONNEAU. 
 
THE JOKE ON M. PEPTONNEAU. 
 
 T PRECISELY half-past five o clock 
 every afternoon, except Sundays, M. 
 Peptonneau descended the stairs 
 of the editorial office of the Cour- 
 rier Meridional, buttoning up his 
 long black frock coat, drawing on 
 his cotton gloves, and setting his 
 napless but still respectable old chim 
 ney-pot hat straight upon his head; to 
 perform which office he used both hands 
 with all the dignity and deliberation of a monarch 
 adjusting his crown. M. Peptonneau had old 
 hands, gnarled and twisted with many years of 
 pen-holding. When he left the office he looked 
 neither to the right nor to the left of him, and 
 if by chance he returned the rare salutation of 
 a friend, it was absent-mindedly, almost mechanic 
 ally, as we bow when, in some foreign hotel, we 
 become sufficiently familiar with a few faces to 
 pick them out of the crowd of strangers. 
 
 Straight before him went M. Peptonneau, 
 with his green silk umbrella under his arm, down 
 the long provincial boulevard, so thronged at this 
 hour that if it had not been for the loud Southern 
 voices and the broad Southern shoulders in their 
 162 
 
It Peptonneau. "V" 
 
 loosely fitting Southern coats, you would almost 
 have said you were in some unfamiliar corner of 
 Paris. At the corner of the public square he 
 turned to the left and crossed the old stone bridge 
 over the rushing and noisy little river. Reach 
 ing the other side, he traversed a region of |&f 
 narrow, dark water-side streets, going past ilSr 
 the silent fronts of great stone warehouses, 
 with all their windows closed and barred, 
 past malodorous tallow chandleries, past 
 ships, supply stores, smelling pleasantly 
 of oakum and pitch, and past black 
 coal-yards, where an offensive, acrid dust 
 floated out upon the air, causing the 
 eyes to smart, and choking the lungs 
 with a flavor of illuminating gas. 
 
 Soon began to appear the shops of 
 the transpontine quarter where M. Pep- ^ 
 tonneau lived humble establishments that 
 supplied the daily needs and the occasional luxu 
 ries of people of narrow means and homely tastes. 
 These places transacted much of their business 
 upon the sidewalk, and their front doors stood al 
 ways open. The evening wind, which blew their 
 flickering gaslights to and fro, carried along the 
 whole street a slight odor of garlic. At one or two 
 of the more prosperous of these places M. Pep 
 tonneau stopped to make a few modest purchases 
 tripe, headcheese, and a little can of American 
 oysters. At each place he called the shop-keeper 
 pleasantly by his Christian name, and was ans 
 wered with a respectful "Good-evening M. Pep 
 tonneau," which showed that he was a person of 
 consideration in the quarter. When he had fin 
 ished his business he walked on, carrying his 
 
^T "lltabe in prance.** V 
 
 purchases to his home, a comfortable apartment 
 three flights up, over a tailor-shop of a rather 
 more imposing character than most of the stores 
 in the neighborhood, where he dwelt with Madame 
 Peptonneau. They had been married forty years, 
 and had one married daughter. They were both 
 eminently respectable, M. Peptonneau forming the 
 head of the professional society of the suburb, 
 which, otherwise, consisted of the doctor, the 
 notary, and a retired professor of heraldry. They 
 were known to be thrifty, and were reported well- 
 to-do, even rich. 
 
 M. Peptonneau united in himself the profes 
 sions of journalist, scientist and agriculturist. Yet 
 he would have been as puzzled to indite the most 
 commonplace of editorial articles as to write a 
 racy and sensational feuilleton; he knew no more 
 of electricity or dynamics than he knew about 
 astronomy or anatomy, which was absolutely 
 nothing at all; and he had never had a spade in 
 his hands in all his life of sixty years. It was his 
 function, let us explain, to conduct the department 
 of Agricultural Chemistry, Scientific Viticulture 
 and Riparian Hygiene in the columns of that 
 well-established and influential journal, the Cour- 
 rier Meridional, where he discoursed learnedly of 
 nitrites and nitrates, and phosphites and phos 
 phates, whose acquaintance he made in Govern 
 ment reports, and the works of other scientists 
 like himself. While this labor did not call for the 
 exercise of imagination or rhetorical brilliancy, it 
 called for a man of industry, accuracy and appli 
 cation; and for one fully capable of taking him 
 self seriously and manipulating the inorganic 
 elements with zeal, if not with enthusiasm. 
 
 r(>4 
 
e on 2tt. peptonncau. 
 
 . -=^ 
 
 It is the good fortune of kingdoms that they 
 are born presumably respectable and inferentially 
 permanent. With the most logically constructed 
 of new republics, however, the inference and pre 
 sumption are both the 
 other way. Thus it 
 comes to pass that the 
 respectabilization of a 
 new republic is often 
 a matter of much con 
 cern to its promoters; 
 and frequently offers 
 an opportunity to a 
 humble and needy pa 
 triot to utilize a modest 
 stock of personal virtue 
 and solidity which, under 
 
 the less anxious conditions of a monarchy, would 
 probably be of no value except to the owner. 
 
 "The Joke on M. Peptonneau" originated at 
 a time when the Republic was far from being 
 firmly established, under an Executive that has 
 long since gone to join the only majority that can 
 be absolutely relied upon. This Executive was in 
 want of an official organ not in want of an 
 organ, by any means, for it had organs enough to 
 bewilder the wisest of administrations with con 
 tradictory counsels but of an organ that might 
 justly be termed "official" in the most intimate 
 and discreet sense of the word a newspaper 
 that could utter delicate hints, ingeniously make 
 forecasts, and suggest tentative measures in a non 
 committal way. In fact, this particular Executive 
 wanted a faithful and experienced journalistic 
 butler to exercise discretion at its front door; and 
 
V "ITTa&e in prance." V 
 
 it had pitched upon that standard old provincial 
 journal, the Courrier Meridional in preference to 
 any of the more brilliant but less trustworthy 
 Parisian prints. 
 
 Thus did a lifetime of respectability serve a 
 very good and very stupid old journal; and M. 
 Peptonneau, who shared in the prosperity of his 
 paper, was in himself a worthy reflection of the 
 tastes and ideas of the institution he served. 
 
 It was not generally known, however, that 
 the editorials of the Courrier, so sage, so sonorous, 
 so discreet, were written by an assemblage of 
 feather-brained young men whose only ambition 
 in life was to make enough money to go to Paris 
 and live the life of the Parisian dandies and 
 loungers. 
 
 It was these young people who put up " The 
 Joke on M. Peptonneau." One morning as he 
 passed through the general room of the office, on 
 the way to his own private and personal den, he 
 passed by a group of these youngsters, who 
 were discussing the approaching festival of the 
 Fourteenth of July, when, in the chief city of the 
 Department, the great and popular Prime Minis 
 ter, himself a native of the county, was to make a 
 great speech in which, it was privately understood, 
 he had engaged himself to intimate that for a 
 specimen and example of a free press serving as 
 a bulwark to an enlightened government, he could 
 not do better than to point to the Courrier 
 Meridional, that etcetera of etcetera, an illustrious 
 etcetera in the etcetera of etcetera. 
 
 This would be the first public announcement 
 of the Courrier s officially a fact, for the rest, 
 sufficiently well known to all its unsuccessful rivals. 
 ibb 
 
" Say, Papa Peptonneau," said Hector de 
 Longueville, an easy-going, good-natured young 
 man, who wrote leading articles of uncompromis 
 ing severity, "we shall have you with us on the 
 Fourteenth, shall we not ? " 
 
 I think not," said the old man, good- 
 naturedly; "not unless you want to get me a new 
 coat six weeks before my time." 
 
 It was a tradition of the office that M. 
 Peptonneau got a new coat twice a year, on the 
 first of March and on the first of September. His 
 good-humored allusion to the fact rather threw 
 the laugh against Hector, who endeavored to 
 retrieve himself. 
 
 question of a coat, M. 
 it is a matter of uniform 
 
 "But this is no 
 Peptonneau," he said; 
 this time." 
 
 " Of uniform ? " 
 vaguely troubled. 
 
 repeated the old man, 
 
 767 
 
IT "ZTTabe in prance." V 
 
 "Why certainly," said the young man; "of 
 uniform." And he turned to his companions: 
 "Have you not told M. Peptonneau that we go 
 to the festival in uniform ? " he said to the sport 
 ing editor, M. Paul Chantal, a young man who 
 wore whiskers and tried to look like an English 
 man. He was an inveterate jester, and he caught 
 at the idea at once. 
 
 "I thought he knew it," he said indifferently; 
 "it has been talked about enough. Did not you 
 tell M. Peptonneau, Gontran?" he said, turning 
 to the third of the three inseparables, as the 
 younger members of the Conrrier staff were called. 
 This was M. Gontran de Kerouec, a tall, dark 
 young man with a pointed beard who had already 
 published a book on political economy, and who 
 was suspected of entertaining serious political 
 aspirations. Kerouec frowned slightly, not wholly 
 relishing the jest. 
 
 "Ah," said Chantal quickly, as if in explana 
 tion of his comrade s manner, "Gontran does not 
 want to talk about the uniforms. He does not 
 like them; he thinks they are not in good taste. 
 In fact, he made quite a time about it, did you 
 not, Gontran? and went to the Chief and 
 objected." 
 
 To be invited to take part in a joke on 
 another person is to be flattered almost as subtly 
 and effectively as by the imputation of having a 
 pretty woman in love with you. Kerouec had too 
 much personal dignity to permit him to approve 
 unreservedly of the practical joke either in the 
 abstract or in the concrete. But he felt that his 
 histrionic powers, which were really fine, had 
 been called upon, and that in loyalty to his 
 
 f t>8 
 
on 
 
 comrades he must join them in mystifying the old 
 man. He got off the table on which he had been 
 sitting, and began to walk away, with the air of a 
 man who declines longer to continue an un 
 pleasant subject of conversation. 
 
 " To my mind," he said, " it is in the worst 
 of taste, and will reflect no credit upon us either 
 as journalists or as Republicans. However, I 
 have said what I had to say, and it has been 
 disregarded. Let that end the matter." 
 
 "But what ," began M. Peptonneau, 
 amazed and puzzled ; "I do not understand." 
 
 "Why," said de Longueville, "it is just 
 simply this : M. Lecadi has got a notion in his 
 head which is insane enough; but I suppose we 
 must yield to it. He is determined that, being 
 the official journal of the Government, we shall 
 all go to the Festival on the Fourteenth of July 
 in a uniform designed for the purpose, just as 
 though we were soldiers or sailors employed by 
 the Government. Now, do you understand?" 
 
 " Impossible ! " cried the old man, indig 
 nantly. " The Government would never sanction 
 such a piece of foolishness ! " 
 
 " But it seems they have," said Gontran de 
 Kerouec, yawning listlessly as he paused at the 
 door of his private office ; " and you will have to 
 put on your tri-colored coat, Papa Peptonneau, 
 like all the rest of us, or " 
 
 And he made a gesture, suggesting a sudden 
 and rapid fall, that in the office of the Courrier 
 Meridional, which was situated at the top of five 
 flights of stairs, had long been used to signify dis 
 missal from service. Then he disappeared, closing 
 the door after him. 
 
 769 
 
V "Utabe in prance." V 
 
 With the end of avoiding any further ex 
 planations, de Longueville and Chantal made 
 haste to follow his example. 
 
 "We must be off," said the latter; "we go to 
 press half -an -hour earlier than 
 usual to-night; the railroad 
 service is so delayed by the 
 preparation for the Four 
 teenth that we can no 
 longer send our papers 
 by the last train. It s 
 stupid, all the same," he 
 concluded, hurrying his 
 companion off the scene; 
 while M. Peptonneau, 
 with an air of anxious 
 despondency, went to 
 his desk. He wrote all 
 day, but with a troubled 
 brow, and when, at 
 nightfall, he left the 
 office, he had written only 
 three-quarters of a column, 
 
 instead of the column-and-a-quarter, which the 
 printers were used to expecting from him. 
 
 The joke had an immediate and assured suc 
 cess. In the language of the young men, M. Pep 
 tonneau had "bitten," and, once having bitten, he 
 held on with an amazing tenacity, swallowing the 
 bait with hardly a gulp. It never seemed to 
 occur to him to doubt the monstrous absurdity; 
 having once accepted the idea that rational and 
 
 170 
 
V <Ef?e 3oh* on HI peptonncau. V" 
 
 respectable men of letters could be confronted 
 with the possibility of a humiliation so grotesque, 
 he seefned to find nothing incredible in the ex 
 travagances and exaggerations which the three 
 young men invented for his benefit with an un 
 bounded ingenuity. By degrees, too, they let the 
 whole office into their joke, which everybody 
 found highly amusing. 
 
 Everywhere that M. Peptonneau went in the 
 office of the Courricr he was the centre of a con 
 spiracy both malicious and mischievous ; and by a 
 hundred clever bits of acting, all apparently spon 
 taneous and unforced, the old man was deluded 
 into believing that, in obedience to a crazy whim 
 of the proprietor of the paper, M. Lecadi, every 
 member of the staff, in both the business and edit 
 orial offices, was to go to the approaching fes 
 tivities attired in a livery designed to indicate 
 them as government employees. It would have 
 been difficult, indeed, for him not to be con 
 vinced, with fresh evidence confronting him at 
 every turn. Here he would come upon a couple 
 of clerks indignantly discussing the supposed situa 
 tion in furtive whispers; and calculating the pos 
 sibilities of retaining their places should they dis 
 obey the tyrannical edict. Then he would hear 
 one of the poorer employees deploring the neces 
 sity of paying sixty-five francs for a costume that 
 could be worn but one day and must thereafter be 
 useless. If it were for a masked ball, even ! " 
 the man would mutter dolefully; and M. Pep 
 tonneau felt his heart-strings drawn at the thought 
 that his ridiculous uniform must cost him good 
 money, besides fastening upon him a degrading 
 affront. 
 
 171 
 
y- "ITTabe in prance." ^ 
 
 One day Hector de Longueville, who had 
 some skill in drawing, led him into the publisher s 
 private office during the temporary absence of 
 M. Lecadi, and showed him, carelessly thrown 
 among a pile of loose papers, a colored sketch 
 scribbled over with pencil notes, marked, "Design 
 for Professional Uniform, ordered by M. Lecadi." 
 It presented a hideous, fantastic costume, with top- 
 boots, pipe-clay belt and a broad-brimmed felt 
 hat with a plume, something between the dress of 
 a Tyrolese Jdger and an English groom. M. Pep- 
 tonneau accepted this monstrous creation without 
 a doubt. 
 
 But I can not wear it," he said; "it is im 
 possible. No ; never in my life could I wear such 
 a thing as that ! " 
 
 He had told his wife of the uniform, and she 
 
 had received the news with disgust and anger. 
 
 When he told of the boots and the belt and the 
 
 plumed hat, she exploded in a fury of abuse and 
 
 172 
 
V" f?e 3oKe on HI. Pcptonneau. V 
 
 reproach, and called him a spiritless slave; while, 
 on the other hand, if he ventured to hint of giving 
 up his position, she accused him of taking the 
 bread out of her mouth and of wishing to rob his 
 daughter s children. On the whole, M. Pep- 
 tonneau had a hard time of it; and he could not 
 even seek distraction in work, for at all hours the 
 figure of himself clothed in that pitiful and fan 
 tastic costume came between him and his nitrates 
 and phosphates. The series of papers which he 
 was writing on "The Relation of Odor to the 
 Strength of Artificial Fertilizers " was hopelessly 
 ruined ; most of the papers lacking, as he himself 
 said, his usual fire and spirit. 
 
 The joke shortly began to assume such 
 dimensions that it became advisable for the con 
 spirators to let the heads of the establishment into 
 their scheme, lest the mysterious whisperings and 
 hole-and-corner confidences should suggest to 
 their employers the existence of a disloyal intrigue. 
 The literary head of the paper, M. Riboulet, was 
 a serious man; a political enthusiast who firmly 
 believed that in the propagation of the ideas to 
 which he subscribed lay the only hope of the 
 country s continued existence. He listened to 
 what Chantal told him, with a vague and absent- 
 minded expression on his long, melancholy face; 
 and forced a smile as if he were humoring a 
 prattling child. Then he dismissed the matter 
 from his mind altogether. 
 
 With M. Lecadi, the publisher, it was an 
 other affair altogether. He was a great strapping 
 173 
 
in prance." V 
 
 Norman, with a big stomach, a round face, a 
 bristling beard and a laugh deep, sonorous and 
 hearty. When he heard of the joke on M. Pep- 
 tonneau, he slapped his fat thighs and shook with 
 irrepressible mirth until the tears coursed down 
 his red cheeks. 
 
 " Old daddy Peptonneau in a plumed hat ! " 
 he cried, shaking like a mould of jelly; / oh, but 
 it is delicious, my children, delicious ! " 
 
 And when at last M. Peptonneau, driven to 
 desperation by the furious reproaches of his wife, 
 came to the private office of M. Lecadi, and with 
 
 a pallid face said, "M. Lecadi, I have come to 
 tell you that I can not wear your uniform," the 
 sturdy publisher of the Courrier Meridional was so 
 convulsed with suppressed merriment that de 
 Longueville, who was present, thought he would 
 have an apoplectic fit. But M. Lecadi was some 
 what of a joker himself, and he loved nothing 
 174 
 
V f?e 3oHe on HI. Peptonnecw. *f 
 
 better than to play a good trick on his serious and 
 sober-minded editor. He recovered himself, and 
 said: 
 
 "You will not wear the uniform, M. Pepton- 
 neau; the project has been given up. It was 
 only a wild idea of M. Riboulet. His patriotism 
 is somewhat fantastic, you know. I have con 
 vinced him that, for men of the world, his notion 
 is impracticable. There will be no uniform." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it," said M. Pepton- 
 neau, feebly, wiping the cold moisture from his 
 brow with his old red pocket-handkerchief. "I 
 myself had thought it would have been indeco 
 rous yes, I may say it indecorous." 
 
 A good joke is said to last long. Sometimes, 
 too, it goes far. While M. Peptonneau and his 
 wife were thanking Heaven that they had been 
 spared from an imminent and terrible danger, the 
 story of his mystification was being whispered 
 around the town in a score of incomplete and 
 incorrect versions, which did not grow more vera 
 cious as they passed from mouth to mouth. 
 
 The next week, le High-Life, a ribald little 
 paper popular among the Parisian men-about- 
 town, contained the following paragraph : 
 
 CURIOUS PRODUCT OF PROVINCIAL TASTE. We 
 learn on good authority that the editor of a certain provincial 
 journal, the character and length of whose editorial articles 
 have earned for it the nick-name of The Night-Cap, has con 
 ceived the brilliant idea of sending all his employees, clerks, 
 reporters, sub-editors and contributors, male and female, to the 
 festival of the Fourteenth, gorgeously arrayed in a uniform of 
 his own designing, (founded, it is said, on fashions of the 
 
^ "XlTabc in prance." ^ 
 
 Sixteenth century,) and carrying battle axes. The scheme was 
 probably suggested by the fact that the paper in question has 
 for some time past been cherishing a hope, as ridiculous as it 
 is vain, of being selected as the official organ of the government. 
 Fancy a provincial official organ and in uniform at that! " 
 
 Within another week a half-a-dozen Parisian 
 and a half- a -hundred provincial journals had 
 repeated the story, in various phases of error and 
 exaggeration. A polite stranger, subsequently 
 identified as a gentleman in the employ of the 
 Government, called upon Madame Peptonneau 
 while her husband was at the office, ostensibly to 
 inquire into the character of a servant; and be 
 guiled that estimable lady, who was nothing if not 
 loquacious, into talking at considerable length. 
 Two days later, M. Lecadi and M. Riboulet were 
 summoned to Paris by a very curt and unpleasant 
 
 communication from the Minister of Public 
 Affairs, and received a decided intimation that 
 their presence at the ceremony of the Fourteenth, 
 in or out of uniform, would be regarded as im 
 proper and offensive; and that the Courrier 
 776 
 
V (the 3ohe on lit. Peptonncau. 1P 
 
 Meridional would do well to suppress for the fu 
 ture any political tendencies. In the great speech 
 which the popular Prime Minister delivered on 
 the Fourteenth of July, his references to the Free 
 Press serving as a bulwark to an enlightened 
 government were coupled with the name of a 
 well-known Parisian journal; and about the same 
 time three brilliant young provincial journalists 
 found their time at their own disposal. 
 
 It is said that the only person in the town 
 who never heard of "The Joke on M. Pepton- 
 neau" is M. Peptonneau himself. 
 
FATHER DOMINICK S CONVERT. 
 
FATHER DOMINICK S CONVERT. 
 
 HE MAN is a divil!" said Father 
 Dominick, of the parish of Ste. Anne 
 of Guigneguiche. 
 
 Father Dominick was on his 
 way homeward, but he was not fac 
 ing the homeward way. He had 
 turned full around, and stood, his 
 hands folded on his fat, round stom- 
 ^ ach, his brows knit in a perplexed 
 % and angry scowl, and his eyes fixed on 
 the last house of the village he had started 
 to leave behind him. It was a low, shabby struc 
 ture of unpainted boards, set a little off the 
 highway among weeds and rubbish and ash-heaps, 
 with that air of utter and hopeless shiftlessness 
 about it which a really worthless French Canadian 
 knows so well how to impart to his domicile. 
 Half of the lettering on the sign over the door 
 had been effaced by wind and rain, but enough 
 remained to tell you the name of the occupant, 
 and it was easy to guess that his business was the 
 sale of liquors. From this building came, every 
 now and then, bursts of that heavy, gross, offen 
 sive cachinnation, that forced, mirthless bellowing 
 which is as near as boorish drunkards ever get to 
 
 180 
 
>omtntcks Concert. V 
 
 honest, mirthful laughter. At each recurrence of 
 the unpleasant sound, the Father s scowl grew 
 deeper; and in the intervals he listened intently. 
 A single voice was speaking from the house. At 
 last, urged by some tribute of guffaws louder than 
 usual, it rose to sudden loudness and rang out 
 upon the still evening air so that it was clearly 
 audible across the road Father Dorninick s 
 own voice, round, full, Irish, individual, unmis 
 takable, chanting within the pot-house "/;/ saecula 
 saeculo-o-oriun . 
 
 Father Dorninick s grip tightened on his big 
 oaken stick and he struck its iron ferule angrily 
 on the ground. Then he swung around and 
 marched on up the rocky road that led to 
 his home, near where the rushing river, 
 emerging from the pines, started on its 
 tumbling descent of half-a-mile of roar 
 ing white cascades. 
 
 "The man s a divil!" he re 
 peated. 
 
 Ten years of life in a little, 
 old-fashioned backwoods town in the 
 province of Quebec had taught Father 
 Dominick many things how to be 
 masterful and how to be wily, how 
 to be diplomatic and how to be severe; 
 but it had not taught him how to over 
 come the last traces of one of the prettiest brogues 
 that ever came out of Ireland, and when the good 
 Father was excited or emphatic it came out in all 
 its native sweetness. So it was that you always 
 heard Father Dorninick s brogue when he had 
 occasion to speak of Michel Gargaroux, car 
 penter, joiner and atheist, the enemy of society, 
 
 i8r 
 
y "ITCabe in prance." V 
 
 as Father Dominick loved to call him; for was 
 he not the enemy of Father Dominick and of 
 the Church? 
 
 The race of French Canadian habitants has 
 produced some eminently unlovely types, and 
 when you meet the sulky, brutal, rude, ignorant, 
 idle, discontented lump of greasy, sallow flesh 
 with a little black scrap of moustache in the 
 middle of its face, that loafs all day long about 
 the railroad stations of the larger towns, you are 
 rashly but naturally inclined to think that you 
 have encountered the most unlovely of these; but 
 if you go further, you will be apt to find that 
 human nature is reserving some of her surprises 
 for you, as usual. When for two or three genera 
 tions nature has bred into this type Scotch 
 shrewdness, Irish humor and Yankee smartness, 
 all thriving on a base of habitant immorality, or 
 rather unmorality, you have another type that is 
 as much more dangerous and ill-disposed as it is 
 more complicated and interesting. This was the 
 type of Michel Gargaroux, leader of the Anti- 
 Clerical party and King of the Boors in the parish 
 of Ste. Anne; and it may explain why he gave 
 Father Dominick more trouble than all the rest 
 of his parishioners put together. 
 
 There had been a time, no doubt, when 
 Michel Gargaroux, carpenter, joiner, etc., was a 
 good Catholic; but it was a time beyond the 
 memory of any dweller in Guigneguiche, and it 
 must have been co-incident with a time which 
 Gargaroux sometimes spoke of when he was a 
 little under the influence of liquor the time 
 when he was young, good-looking and a favorite 
 with the ladies. One thing is certain, it was a 
 182 
 
^ 5 a %* DomtnicKs Concert. ^ 
 
 time long past. Every village is supposed to have 
 its atheist, who generally attains his position partly 
 by accident and partly by intention, beginning by 
 being a shade more liberal-minded than his fel 
 lows, then being goaded by persecution into an 
 open scepticism, and passing from this stage to 
 rank atheism just for the notoriety of the thing: 
 to get at least a sort of left-handed fame out of 
 an inevitable and unpleasant singularity. But no 
 town in the world ever possessed a local atheist 
 of more active and effective malignity than Michel 
 Gargaroux. He was immensely popular, princi 
 pally, of course, among the bad men of the town; 
 but he also held the more respectable folks by his 
 wit, which was sharp, according to habitant stand 
 ards, and by his excellent skill as a workman. 
 Indeed, he was a carpenter and joiner for Guigne- 
 guiche to be proud of, but most of all his "pull" 
 with the people was founded upon his really 
 extraordinary powers of mimicry; and of all his 
 much-admired imitations of prominent citizens, by 
 long odds the best was his unapproachable repro 
 duction of Father Dominick conducting the 
 services of Holy Church. The impious roared 
 thereat, and even the decently shocked devout 
 could rarely refrain from acknowledging its truth 
 to nature by an ill-restrained smile, or, worse yet, 
 by a convulsive chuckle or giggle according to 
 sex. Father Dominick had heard of this interest 
 ing impersonation, but as he was not in the way 
 of attending Mr. Gargaroux s exhibitions, he had 
 had no opportunity of passing critical judgement 
 on it, until the day when the evening breeze 
 wafted it across the road to him from the tavern 
 windows. It was hardly to be expected that the 
 
 9*9 
 
TT "ZTtabe in prance." V 
 
 humor of the performance would fully appeal to 
 the good Father, though he had no lack of an 
 Irishman s best gift. What he thought of its 
 artistic merit may be inferred from his single 
 remark. 
 
 Three hours later, as he sipped his modest 
 night-cap of native wine, the good Father put his 
 slippered foot down on his worn old carpet with 
 the action of a man who has taken a serious and 
 important resolution. 
 
 "This thing," said he, "has got to end. I 11 
 go to morrow!" 
 
 And on the morrow it was announced that 
 Father Dominick was going to Quebec to kiss the 
 hand of the Archbishop, and that some great, 
 strange and mysterious thing was to come of his 
 sudden visit. 
 
 Father Dominick departed, Father Dominick 
 returned. He arrived between nine and ten at 
 night. It took Elise, his old housekeeper, the 
 length of time that it takes a woman to throw a 
 shawl over her head and run to the gate it 
 took Elise that much time to start the news fly 
 ing around the village, passing from house to 
 house just before the closing of the shutters, that 
 the Church of Ste. Anne of Guigneguiche was to 
 be refitted throughout with new pews, new rails, 
 new paneling, and new brackets for the holy 
 images along the walls. People sat up late that 
 night in the village, and by the morning the news 
 had been thoroughly digested and one particular 
 result of its reception had become apparent to 
 
V 5atf?er Dominicks (onr>ert. V 
 
 even the dullest wit; and all Guigneguiche was 
 a-chuckle, saving only one solitary citizen. 
 
 Michel Gargaroux did not chuckle. Silent 
 and sour, with a worried look in his little gray 
 
 eyes, he worked at his bench all day long. When 
 he was alone his brows were puckered in troubled 
 thought. He smoothed out the pucker when 
 people came to see him, but it gathered itself 
 again as soon as they left. All day long his 
 friends paid him pleasant little calls. 
 
 " Hi, Miche, busy with the church job, 
 hey?" 
 
 " Say, Miche, I heard there was a priest 
 lookin for you." 
 
 " C est done difficile, Miche, c t ouvrage au 
 Bon Dieu, hein?" 
 
 " Say, Micky, folks is sayin there s heaps 
 of money in them pews." 
 
 This last was from a Maine Yankee who had 
 once got ahead of him in a horse-trade. It was 
 wormwood and distilled gall. 
 185 
 
All day long he worked and thought. That 
 night he did not show himself at the tavern. 
 Nevertheless he got wind of the rumor that was 
 freely discussed there, that the big envelope which 
 had arrived for the priest in the morning s mail 
 was from a firm of cabinet-makers in Quebec, 
 and contained plans and proposals for the reno 
 vation of the church. There were many such 
 rumors as this, and, somehow, Gargaroux heard 
 them all, in spite of the fact that he worked 
 steadily at his bench all day long and had no 
 idle time for his old companions. But the rumor 
 that came to him like a stab in the breast was 
 an elusive, untraceable word that went hither and 
 thither without responsible paternity, saying that 
 M. le Cure held it a scandal to the town that it 
 should be necessary to confide such a sacred 
 work to the hands of a stranger. Then came the 
 weekly paper, with the news printed in all the 
 
V 5 at fc* Domintcfe Concert. V 
 
 convincing assurance of black type, that the Arch 
 bishop had ordered the refitting of the church of 
 Ste. Anne of Guigneguiche at a cost to the dio 
 cese of not to exceed six hundred dollars, and 
 that His Grace had added to this liberal appro 
 priation a generous contribution from his private 
 purse. Michel Gargaroux chewed on that, as 
 our country folks say, for the space of one bright 
 August morning; and then, when 
 noon came, he took off his 
 apron, brushed his trousers 
 with some care, put on 
 his black coat, and the 
 hat which he kept on a 
 peg behind the door, and 
 walked off to the church 
 of Ste. Anne, which stood 
 at the cross-road near the 
 bridge that crossed the 
 river just below the falls. 
 
 It was not a large or im 
 posing edifice, but it looked larger that day to 
 Michel Gargaroux than it had ever looked be 
 fore. He knew the building well, inside and out, 
 although he had never entered its doors in alt the 
 years of his residence in Guigneguiche, for he 
 passed it twice a day on his way to and from 
 work, and its broad doors were open all day 
 long in fair weather. There was a Home for 
 Consumptives near the town, and at almost any 
 hour some emaciated figure might be seen kneel 
 ing before a favorite saint chosen from among the 
 long row on either wall to be the repository of 
 prayers late and vain. The rude brackets which 
 supported the gayly painted images were decked 
 187 
 
^ "2rtabe in prance." V 
 
 with poor, pious baubles, relics of the grateful 
 dead, pitiful gifts of those who went away believ 
 ing themselves cured. 
 
 Michel Gargaroux could not have told you 
 the name of one saint, nor could he have made a 
 guess at the number of the Stations of the Cross; 
 but in his furtive glimpses through the open door 
 he had taken in all that interested him in that 
 interior, with the eye of a carpenter and joiner. 
 There were eleven pews on a side downstairs, six 
 long ones on each side gallery, and four little ones 
 in the organ-loft so he had been told; he had 
 never seen the organ-loft, as it was directly over 
 the door. In all, in various parts of the church, 
 there were, as he put it, "nigh a hundred and 
 twelve foot of rail, twenty-two plain sash, and 
 three fancy, and more n three hundred foot of 
 cornish." 
 
 He knew that he should find Father Domi- 
 nick at the church, for his friends kindly kept him 
 informed of every movement of the head of the 
 clerical party, and he knew that the Father was 
 decorating the church for the approaching feast 
 of the town s patron saint. Doffing his hat, Gar 
 garoux entered into the solemn silence of the 
 temple, and stood blinking in the streams of 
 faintly opalescent light that poured in from both 
 rows of windows, for the dusty roads around the 
 church reflected the strong sunlight from every 
 direction. At the further end of the church 
 Father Dominick was directing two old women 
 from the Consumptive s Home, who were draping 
 the altar with strips of gold-fringed velvet. Gar 
 garoux felt both confused and awed by the 
 strange silence and coolness, the unfamiliar illu- 
 
 188 
 
mination and the hushed voices of the servants 
 of religion ; but he marched resolutely up to the 
 priest and said with a bow : 
 
 "Good morning, your Reverence." 
 
 The priest s back was toward him. Father 
 Dominick turned his head, but so slightly that 
 Gargaroux could not tell whether or no he were 
 recognized, and responded in preoccupied tones : 
 
 " Good morning, good morning, sir. Put 
 the festoon to the left, Mrs. Mercier the gold 
 tawssel goes on Mrs. O Reilly s end of the rail 
 is that straight now? just a trifle bey and. 
 Thank you, ma am." 
 
 Gargaroux felt a great desolation spreading 
 about him, a cold, bleak desolation, with a sensa 
 tion of creeping paralysis in the centre of it where 
 he stood. He tried again : 
 
 " Decoratin " her, he was going to say, 
 but checked himself in time " the church ? " he 
 finished. 
 
V "IHabe in prance." ^ 
 
 The priest appeared to regard the question 
 as both trivial and unnecessary. 
 
 " Ste. Anne s Day is Choosda ," he returned 
 in a tone of seemingly unconscious rebuke. 
 
 " That s so, that s so," said Gargaroux, as 
 if he had some doubts about it, but was yielding 
 admiringly to convincing argument. 
 
 Then the great waste space around him grew 
 wider and bleaker, and wrapt itself in a chilly 
 twilight. He tried to speak; but a distance of 
 several miles already separated him from the 
 priest with the uninviting back, and the further 
 that silent desert spread around him, the drier 
 grew the roof of his mouth. Awkwardly and 
 uncertainly he turned to go, and came in face 
 of the organ-loft, which he had not yet seen. It 
 contained a suprise for him. 
 
 Four pews! He had been misinformed. 
 There were six, and no little ones either, and 
 the organ-case ! And the screen and rail in front 
 of the singers, and one two three four 
 brackets, and two great carved corbels that were 
 absolutely dropping to pieces, and would have to 
 be replaced ! Gargaroux s courage came back to 
 him in a feverish flood. 
 
 "Your Reverence," he blurted out, turning 
 back in desperation. 
 
 " Well, sir ? " returned the priest, indifferently. 
 "Lave the wrinkle, Mrs. O Reilly; t is fine as 
 it is." 
 
 Gargaroux forced it out; and it came like a 
 pellet out of a pop-gun. 
 
 " I come for the job." 
 
 "What job?" asked the priest, absent-mind 
 edly. . 
 
^ $atf?er I)omintcks Concert. "V 
 
 No, he did not say "what job." What he 
 dropped over his shoulder sounded like this: 
 "//////7tv//#/JOB?" all in one word with the accent 
 on the "job." This is one way that an Irishman 
 has of picking up his end of a bargain which he 
 intends to make a hard one for you. You come 
 to him with a proposition, and it is his plan of 
 campaign first to reject it as preposterous and 
 finally to accept it on his own terms. Father 
 Dominick put Gargaroux through the whole sys 
 tem. His first question was really no more, ap 
 parently, than a mere mechanical and unconscious 
 repetition of a strange sound that had fallen upon 
 his ears. If you were on a jcat-boat in a tempest, 
 and a man should propose to play you a game 
 of billiards; if your own brother would walk up 
 to you and say, " My name is Julius Caesar, and 
 I am a mulatto," even so you might repeat in a 
 dazed sort of way, "billiards?" or "mulatto?" 
 
 Gargaroux felt the blood rising in his cheeks. 
 
 " This job," he said, faintly. 
 
 " This job ? " repeated the Father. 
 
 This time he said the word as though he 
 took intellectual cognizance of it, and recognized 
 it as an English vocable, but could not at all 
 understand how it could have any possible appli 
 cation to anything within the range of his own 
 personal knowledge. His face wore a blank, 
 searching look, as though he were saying to him 
 self "job ? job ? Perhaps there is some meaning 
 of the word with which I am acquainted ? Perhaps 
 this man s dog s name is Job, and he s got 
 under the Church and he wants to get it out? 
 Perhaps I come for the job is the pass- word of 
 one of his heathenish secret societies ? " 
 
 I 9! 
 
V "lltabe in prance." V 
 
 Then as Gargaroux murmured the words 
 again still more faintly, he inclined his ear a little, 
 as one might to a child, and said in a tone of 
 stately indulgence : 
 
 "You must explain your meaning, Mr. Gar 
 garoux. I do not think I understand " 
 
 "Why," said Gargaroux, brokenly, conscious 
 of a red face; "I mean this job, this here job, 
 this here renovation, or renxing or whatever you 
 call it, of this here church." 
 
 This time Father Dominick understood. His 
 eyes opened to their widest, he drew up his mas 
 sive form to its full height, he crossed his strong 
 arms on his broad breast and he looked down on 
 the poor, little jackal of a man before him. 
 
 "My Church!" he said. "You! I wonder, 
 Gargaroux, that you dare take that holy name 
 into your mouth. Is it you, an atheist, a blas 
 phemer and a black inimy of Holy Church, would 
 lay your impious hands on this sacred edifish ! 
 HHHWHAT would the Archbishop say to me if 
 I were to permit it? I believe, on my sowl I 
 believe, that if I were to allow such a profanation 
 he would call me to Quebec and shame me before 
 the whole population in front of the Cathedral at 
 noonday." 
 
 He turned majestically toward the two 
 women, as being the only portion of his auditory 
 capable of understanding the horrors of the situa 
 tion. The two poor creatures were quite suffi 
 ciently impressed : their faces were white, and their 
 fingers actually trembled; and one of them got 
 behind a screen and crossed herself nine times in 
 succession. It took the Father a good half- 
 minute of hard breathing to recover from his burst 
 
 /Q2 
 
V $atfyt Dominicks Concert. V 
 
 of indignant surprise. Then, shaking his head 
 slowly and sadly, he said, in the tone of a gener 
 ous but resigned and hopeless martyr : 
 
 "No, Gargaroux, no! I do not reproach 
 you for the trouble and disgrace you have been 
 to me in the past; but I had not dreamed that 
 you would have the audacity and the foolishness 
 
 the plain foolishness, man : it s a born fool 
 you must be to be thinking of it to come here 
 with such a request. Is it not scandal enough, 
 that such work as this, such ixtinsive and impor 
 tant work should have to go outside of the parish 
 because the only joiner in the town is an infidel 
 and atheist, blaspheming the God who gave him 
 the skill to earn his living? and I m not deny 
 ing, Gargaroux, that ye re the best workman at 
 your thrade betune here and Quebec." 
 
 During this speech Gargaroux 
 had stood nervously shuffling his 
 feet, twisting and turning his 
 hat in his great knobby hands, 
 clumsy at touching anything 
 save the keen tools of his craft, 
 but his eyes were fixed upon 
 the paneling, and certain men 
 tal calculations that he made 
 almost involuntarily gave him 
 the courage of desperation. 
 
 "Oh, come now, Father" he 
 said, hanging his head; "atheist 
 
 infidel them s hard words." 
 
 " Do you deny, Gargaroux," demanded 
 Father Dominick, " that you are an atheist ? " 
 
 " Why well I may a bin something of 
 an atheist at one time, but no I ain t never 
 193 
 
 ytjf 
 
^ "Utabe in prance." V 
 
 been well, not what you might call a bigoted 
 atheist." 
 
 The priest shook his head with an unsatisfied 
 air. As he did so he put his hand out against the 
 base of the pulpit as if he were about to lean 
 against it. It trembled a little, and he drew back 
 his hand, and then, reaching out again, tried it 
 carelessly, casting his eye up and down as if he 
 were taking note of its unsteadiness; and, all in a 
 mechanical sort of way, as though his attention 
 was mainly to the conversation on hand, he gave 
 the pulpit a little dismissing slap that said per 
 fectly plainly, " Well, well, that 
 old thing s got to go, too." 
 No, no," said Father 
 Dominick; " Garga- 
 roux, I m afraid I 
 can t hope " 
 
 "Well, now, I 
 don t see why you 
 can t," said Garga- 
 : roux, with new deter 
 mination ; " you ain t 
 heard only one side; 
 may be I ain t the 
 kind of man you think 
 I am. How d it be 
 now if I was quite a 
 different sort of man from 
 what you think ? " 
 
 " It would be very different, indeed, Gar- 
 garoux," said Father Dominick, in a mild, regret 
 ful way; "and I wish with all my heart that it 
 were so. But if you are really at heart the man 
 you say you are " 
 
 194- 
 
+ ^atfycr -Dominicfe Concert. V 
 
 "Well, I am, I am," interrupted Gargaroux; 
 then he added cautiously, "to some extent." 
 
 "Or perhaps I should say," said the priest 
 sternly, "if you were such a man " 
 
 "Well, I be," broke in Gargaroux; "when 
 you come right down to it, I be." 
 
 " If you were," continued the priest, " you 
 would not hesitate to give the Church a proof 
 that you are worthy of her confidence." 
 
 " Well, now, that s fair," said Gargaroux, 
 eagerly; "I told you we d get along better 
 than you thought, when we got right down to 
 business." 
 
 "A proof," Father Dominick went on, "that 
 would conclusively establish your fitness for such 
 a highly important undertaking; not in my un 
 worthy eyes alone, but in the eyes of the whole 
 parish." 
 
 "Well say " returned the joiner, "what 
 do you call a proof, anyhow ? I m willin to do 
 what ? s right, of course; but I don t want to be 
 made no monkey of." 
 
 "Well," said the priest, calmly and thought 
 fully, as though he addressed some one at a dis 
 tance, "you must of course communicate publicly, 
 and this very Sunday, without delay." 
 
 Gargaroux grew pale. 
 
 " Look here," he said at last in a sort of 
 gasp; "do them gallery pews go, too?" 
 
 "Yes," said Father Dominick gravely; "but, 
 of course, we should take our time about that. 
 There is a great deal of work here, Mr. Garga 
 roux, a great deal." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Gargaroux; "and you want 
 it done right, too. You don t want no two 
 
 4 r<)5 
 
V "21Ta&c in prance." V 
 
 or three men foolin with that and doin it all 
 sorts of ways, so it won t look nohow when it is 
 done." 
 
 " No," said Father Dominick ; " I should 
 certainly much prefer to have one competent man 
 undertake the entire business. But this is wandher- 
 ing from the subject. Important as the renovation 
 of our church may be, it is nothing to the saving 
 of a human soul. Am I to expect to see you at 
 mass next Sunday?" 
 
 " Why, I s pose so, I s pose so, Father, if 
 you think so much of it. As I say, I ain t no 
 ways bigoted. Folks has different ways of lookin 
 at them things, and if that s your way But I 
 say, next Sunday, you was sayin ? Ain t that a 
 kind of sudden?" 
 
 But Father Dominick s tone had grown 
 severe again. 
 
 "Sudden?" he said; "no, Mr. Gargaroux. 
 I should call it tardy in the extreme. I trust that 
 you will not let any suggestion of delay awaken 
 suspicion of the ginuineness of the convictions 
 which you inform me you possess." 
 
 " Of course not," hastily returned Gargaroux ; 
 " I 11 be there, I 11 be there ! " 
 
 And the two poor consumptive ladies, be 
 coming conscious that they had witnessed a 
 miracle, dropped on their knees and clasped their 
 thin hands in silent benediction. 
 
 Father Dominick had the victory. Victory 
 and a feminine audience what more could the 
 heart of man or priest desire? He could afford 
 to be good-natured, and he was. 
 
 "There, that s the way to talk," he said, 
 with a cheerful good-fellowship, patting his con- 
 
Domintcks Concert, 
 
 vert indulgently on the shoulder; "that s the 
 sensible way to talk. It s a man y are now, 
 Michel Gargaroux, and I am sorry you ever were 
 anything else. And now, my man," he went on, 
 " I shall want to confess you let me see two 
 times, certain. It must be a long time since 
 you ve had a clearance." 
 
 Michel Gargaroux became conscious of a 
 new trouble. 
 
 " I ve got to be confessed, have I ? Where 
 will I go for that ? " 
 
 "There is the confessional," said the priest. 
 
 There was something of annoyance in his 
 tone, as he pointed to the dark corner of the 
 church where stood the little curtained cabinet. 
 
 "That there box?" said Gargaroux inquir 
 ingly. " Le s see." 
 
 He walked the length of the building to 
 examine the confessional; Father Dominick fol- 
 
 97 
 
IT "IKabe in prance." V 
 
 lowing him with a leisurely step. He shook the 
 confessional, rapped it with his knuckles and stuck 
 his thumb-nail into the soft wood. 
 
 "Why," he said, "that box ain t in no sort 
 of condition! It s most comin to pieces." 
 
 " T is old, perhaps," said Father Dominick; 
 " but, sure, it s seen good service." 
 
 "It was n t never made right," remarked 
 Gargaroux, giving the frail structure a contemp 
 tuous jab with his thumb. "The man what made 
 that was n t no carpenter. He d better a been 
 blacksmithing. Say, you don t want me to talk 
 to no such a box as that." 
 
 "Why not?" demanded Father Dominick. 
 
 " Oh, I could n t do it. T would set me 
 crazy to look at them bevels. I could n t talk 
 straight." 
 
 " I m thinking it s annything but a straight 
 talk ye 11 be making, Gargaroux," said the 
 priest. 
 
 " Say, you let me off till I make you a new 
 box," suggested Gargaroux; "this here thing s 
 spruce. Now I T ll tell you what I 11 do. I 11 
 make you one of oak, and I 11 make it good, like 
 it ought to be made. Is that satisfactory?" 
 
 The priest smiled. 
 
 " If the state of my confessional is a bar to 
 your devotional ardor, my friend," he said, " I 11 
 be aisy with ye. Suppose you come to my house 
 to-morrow at this hour ? " 
 
 Gargaroux s tone expressed a great relief. 
 
 "At your house?" he said. "Well, now, 
 that s more like it ! There won t be nobody else 
 there, will there?" A furrow of anxiety came 
 between his brows. 
 
 198 
 
^ 5atfycr Sominicks Concert. V 
 
 " None else," replied the priest encourag 
 ingly; "you and me and your sins, that s all." 
 
 " It s a bargain ! " cried Gargaroux, as he 
 grasped Father Dominick s hand; "and if you 
 don t go back on it 1 won t. Whoever does, his 
 name s mud." 
 
 And he stalked out of the church with deter 
 mination in his tread. 
 
 At half-past twelve the 
 next day Michel Gargaroux 
 sat in Father Dominick s ar 
 bor by the riverside, where 
 old Elise had shown him, 
 acting on special orders, to 
 await the Father s coming. 
 Gargaroux felt a vague and 
 undefined satisfaction in this 
 choice of a place for his or 
 deal, as he surveyed the 
 scene around him. The vine- 
 clad Summer-house stood in 
 a pleasant angle of the low 
 rock -cliffs that bordered the 
 stream. Bushes of tree-honeysuckle surrounded 
 it on three sides; on the fourth, the rapid little 
 river rolled silently by, hurrying to its foamy fall 
 a few hundred yards beyond the priest s garden. 
 The course of the water curved a little in its 
 sharp descent, and, from where he sat, Garga 
 roux, looking down over the wooded hill-slope, 
 could catch delightful glimpses of white through 
 the deep green of the foliage. Far, far below, 
 799 
 
^ "21Ta6c in prance." T? 
 
 at the very bottom of the falls, he could see the 
 little church that had been the scene of yester 
 day s spiritual conflict the little church that had 
 somehow become the centre of the universe to 
 the half-breed French Canadian who sat in 
 Father Dominick s arbor waiting to be confessed. 
 Gargaroux was a clod; but this was a pleasant 
 and beautiful place, and, so far as a clod could 
 be, Gargaroux was conscious of it. And he was 
 
 fully alive to the fact that it was a place of 
 uncommon privacy and seclusion. But even 
 there, in such a spot, and with such soothing 
 influences around him, ten minutes of waiting set 
 Gargaroux to fidgeting uneasily on his wooden 
 bench. 
 
 "He takes his own time, by thunder!" the 
 convert murmured to himself. " He ain t never 
 worked by the day, that man." 
 
 A stir in the thicket behind him made him 
 turn. 
 
 " Oh, he s comin at last, is he?" he said as 
 he braced himself for the ordeal. 
 
 And then his heart jumped up in his breast 
 and turned suddenly cold as he saw the bushes 
 
 200 
 
^ $atfyct Domtnicks Concert. V 
 
 part and the huge form of Father Dominick 
 appear not the Father Dominick of every-day, 
 in his wrinkled, shiny old broad-cloth coat and 
 his broad black ribbed-silk vest with the grease- 
 spots on it; but Father Dominick grand and 
 majestic in the snow-white surplice of the church, 
 strange and solemn, with a serious look in his 
 eyes and an awful dignity in the straight line of 
 his firm-set mouth and the breadth of his big 
 clean-shaven chin. 
 
 Before this white immaculate vision, this uni 
 formed representative of a supernal power, the 
 reclaimed atheist was quite as awe-struck and 
 deferential as well, as the priest had calculated 
 he would be. Indeed it required the good Father s 
 kindly affability to put him at all at his ease. 
 
 "Sit down, Gargaroux, sit down," said Father 
 Dominick; "why, man, nobody s going to eat 
 you! " 
 
 But Gargaroux had come to the dentist, and 
 now he wanted to have the tooth pulled as soon 
 as possible. 
 
 " If it s all the same to you, Father," he 
 said; "I d ruther get this here job over right off." 
 
 " Very well, my son, very well," assented 
 Father Dominick as he placed upon the ground a 
 small object which he had been carrying in his 
 left hand half concealed by the folds of his vest 
 ments. It was a little hassock or cushion. 
 
 "Kneel down," said the priest. 
 
 Gargaroux drew back a step. 
 
 " Say," he began, " I did n t understand there 
 was no such business as that." 
 
 With stern and authoritative manner Father 
 Dominick rebuked him. 
 
V "IHabe in prance." V 
 
 " T is on your sinful knees that you must 
 approach the throne of mercy. Lose no time 
 you may be called for your sins while you re 
 thinking about it. Down, man, and be thankful 
 that you re let." 
 
 Gargaroux knelt. 
 
 " Repeat the Confiteor." 
 
 "The which?" demanded the penitent. 
 
 " Oh, the heathen ! " said the priest, shaking 
 his head ; well, say it after me. Follow me 
 now, word for word." 
 
 And he began to repeat the brief prayer 
 with the addition of a few interjections designed 
 to meet the case of this particular case of peni 
 tence, such as : 
 
 " to blessed Michael, the arch-angel, 
 I 11 warrant you never heard of him, did ye now ? " 
 
^ Sattyt BomtnicKs Concert V 
 
 Or, 
 
 " through your fault, through your fault, 
 through your most grievous fault three times, 
 do ye mind that?" 
 
 When it was done he settled himself more 
 comfortably on his bench, crossed his legs, folded 
 his hands on his stomach, and said : 
 
 " Now proceed to your confession." 
 
 But Gargaroux had no idea what was 
 required of him; and he only knelt and stared 
 helplessly at the priest, with the look of a 
 badgered beast, until Father Dominick came to 
 his rescue. 
 
 " I see," he said ; " I see, you ve forgotten ; 
 that s it, is it? Well, then, I 11 put you through 
 just a trifle of an examination as to the state of 
 your soul. We 11 try you on a few of the Com 
 mandments, to see how you stand. Now, take the 
 first you know what that is ? " 
 
 "Why I " began Gargaroux; but the 
 priest did not wait for him to finish. 
 
 " Of course you do," he said cheerfully ; 
 " who would n t. Now, the interrogation you are 
 to ask of your conscience is this: Do you wholly 
 and entirely love your God, and more than anny- 
 thing else you know of? 
 
 "Why, you see," said Gargaroux, "it s this 
 way. I ain t sayin I ain t got no natural affec 
 tion. A man with a wife and four children ain t 
 got no right to say no such thing. Nor, you 
 understand, I ain t binding myself to anything as 
 a matter of business. I don t want to bring dol 
 lars and cents into this thing. But outside of 
 that, and reasonable like to any legitimate 
 extent " 
 
 203 
 
^T "UTabe in prance." V 
 
 " T won t do," said Father Dominick ; "you 
 must love Him more than annything in the 
 world." 
 
 "Well," returned Gargaroux, doubtfully, but 
 accommodatingly. "I 11 do my best." 
 
 " Now, let s see ; I 11 not try you with the 
 whole ten at once, but just with a few, skipping 
 here and there like. For instance, Thou shalt 
 not steal how s your conscience there?" 
 
 "I ain t no thief!" Gargaroux exclaimed, 
 indignantly. 
 
 " Sure you re not," said the Father, in a 
 soothing voice ; " but that commandment has 
 more spread to it than you think. Have you 
 deviated in the slightest degree, by so much as a 
 
 hair s-breadth, from the paths of strict and abso 
 lute honesty?" 
 
 "Why, look here, Father," Gargaroux made 
 answer in a candid and confiding manner, " it s 
 
 204 
 
^ 5 a ^ sr SominicKs Concert. V 
 
 just this way. I m an honest man, and I take a 
 pride in it. I don t care what other people think 
 about them things, I take a pride in it, and I ain t 
 ashamed to own it. But I don t believe in bein 
 too derned fool honest. T ain t natural ; and if 
 people find it out they begin to take advantage 
 of it, don t you see? I ain t sayin that I don t 
 pile it on just a leetle when I ve got a customer 
 I know can afford it just an hour or two here, 
 or a few foot of stuff there but never so as that 
 he d feel it. But I don t see nothing wrong in 
 that; do you? Not when you consider that a 
 man has a duty to his family; I don t." 
 
 " The misappropriation of a single cent con 
 stitutes an act of theft," said Father Dominick, 
 majestically. "Avoid the practice.- We 11 pass 
 on to another one : Remember the Sabbath day 
 to keep it holy. " 
 
 "Well, I do, I do," said Gargaroux, stroking 
 his chin reflectively ; " when business is slack I 
 do. I ain t sayin that when I m rushed when 
 I ve got a job that ain t done Saturday night, and 
 has got to be ready Monday morning that I 
 don t put a little work in Sundays; but I would n t 
 make no practice of it. And I always charge it 
 two days in the bill; so I guess there ain t no 
 harm in it." 
 
 " You must shut up your shop on Sunday, 
 Gargaroux," said the priest. 
 
 " I do, I do," the penitent cheerfully assured 
 him. "Keep her shet, always, street-front end. 
 Why, I d lose lots of your folks trade if I 
 did n t." 
 
 " You must shut the other end." 
 
 Gargaroux looked surprised and doubtful 
 203 
 
V "2Ua6c in prance." V 
 
 "Well," he said, at last, "I suppose I could 
 put in a skylight; I 11 think about it, anyway." 
 
 "Hmmf!" grunted Father Dominick; "to 
 proceed. Here is a commandment of greater im 
 portance to him who would live a truly Christian 
 life than most people understand. Have you, in 
 any way. shape or manner, borne false witness 
 against your neighbor ? " 
 
 Mr. Gargaroux s reception of this question 
 was amazing. He burst into a roar of laughter, 
 slapped his thighs, and writhed in mirthful enjoy 
 ment. 
 
 " Well, that beats all ! " he gasped and 
 chuckled ; " that beats all ! You re a smart one, 
 Father; I m derned if you ain t. I knowed you 
 
 was making up them questions out of your head ! 
 You was layin for me right along, was ye?" 
 
 "Silence, man!" thundered the indignant 
 priest. " Cease your unseemly merriment, and 
 answer me ! " 
 
 zob 
 
^ $atfyer -Dotttinicks Concert. ^ 
 
 " Why I I I thought," faltered the 
 sobered and abashed Gargaroux, "that may be 
 the boys had been telling you that it was me 
 started that story about the new butcher being 
 driv out of Montreal for sellin goat for Spring- 
 lamb." 
 
 u I see, I see," said the Father, looking rather 
 hard at his convert; "you 11 have to be con 
 siderably more careful in the future." 
 
 "I will, I will," Gargaroux answered heartily. 
 " Lord, it ain t often they ketch me ! " 
 
 "Well," said the priest, "I 11 ask you one 
 question more and that 11 do for to-day. Have 
 you taken the name of the Lord in vain ? that is, 
 have you been guilty of blasphemy or profane 
 language ? " 
 
 "What! me?" asked Gargaroux, as if the 
 examination had hitherto concerned itself with 
 someone else. "Not me; no, sir; 1 m no 
 swearin man. I ain t saying that now and then, 
 when things don t go the right way, I don t say a 
 little more than I mean to just a few cuss- 
 words like anybody might use and I don t say 
 that when I am swearing I m so all-fired particu 
 lar how I do swear. But as for real what you 
 might call swearing why, hell ! I ain t no 
 swearing man." 
 
 Michel Gargaroux is now a regular com 
 municant; and they say he made an extremely 
 good job of the church. 
 
 207 
 
One of the special weekly attractions 
 of our humorous contemporary PUCK, is a 
 short story which does n t much resemble 
 short stones published elsewhere. 
 
 -MAVERICKS" 
 
 they have been called of late, and " Maver 
 icks " is the title of a pretty volume just 
 published, containing about twenty of them 
 by as many writers. Among the contribu 
 tors are W. J. Henderson, Brander Mat 
 thews, Madeline Bridges, George H. Jessop, 
 Tudor Jenks, Flavel S. Mines, R. K. Mun- 
 kittrick, and PUCK S editor, Mr. Bunner, 
 whose " Short Sixes " formed the initial 
 volume of the series of which " Mavericks" 
 is the latest issue. To any one in search 
 of something which will make him laugh 
 this little book may be safely commended. 
 The pictures, of which there are many, are 
 quite as funny as the tales, and are all by 
 PUCK S artists. AT. r. ///,/. 
 
 In Boards, $1.00. In Paper, 50 Cents. 
 
 All Booksellers. 
 By Mall, from the Publishers f on receipt of pi ice. 
 
HALF-TRUE TALES. 
 
 " Half- True Tales ; Stories Founded 
 on Fiction," by C. H. Augur, forms a new 
 volume in PUCK S series of short stories. 
 The stories are very lively, and all the 
 more effective because they leave some 
 thing to the imagination of the reader. 
 They are short, which is another thing 
 in their favor; and they are cleverly illus 
 trated by C. J. Taylor. The volume is 
 
 Charmingly printed. The (London) Daily Chronide. 
 
 In Cloth, $1.00. In Paper, 50 Cents. 
 
 All Bookseller. ;. 
 By Mail, from the Publishers, on receipt of price. 
 

 14 DAY USE 
 
 RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORROWED 
 
 LOAN DEPT 
 
 b 
 
 Renewedtt- subject to immediaterecall. 
 
 . 
 
 l8ITar 65J 
 
 LD 2lA-60m-4, 64 
 (E4555slO)476B 
 
 General Library . 
 University of Californu 
 Berkeley 
 
YB 7317? 
 
 
 925727 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY