D 35 7fib frFktfM THE SUBURBAN SAGE UBKAJRT UNIVERSITY OF CAJJTOWKfc DAVIS THE SUBURBAN H.C.BUNNER. ILLUSTRATED BY C.J.TAYLOR. -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, an receipt of price. THE SUBURBAN SAGE. THE SUBURBAN SAGE Stray Notes and Comments s On His Simple Lije BYH'CBUNNER ILLUSTRATED BY CJ'TAYLPP KEPPLERQ SCHWARZ/AANN: PUBLISHERS^ PUCK BUILDING:A/W- UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORHB& DAVI& Copyright, 1896, by KEPPLER & SCHWARZMANN. TO A. L. B. Contents. Page. Mr. Chedby on a Regular Nuisance i Early Stages of the Bloomer Fever to The Suburban Horse 22 The Building Craze 3 6 Moving In 4^ A Water-Color House 5 8 The Pointers 7 The Furnace 80 The Time-Table Test 9 The Society Church 100 The Suburbanite and His Golf 112 The Suburban Dog 122 The Newcomers J 34 The First of It 146 The Sporting Scheme 158 The Evolution of the Suburbanite 168 MR. CHEDBY ON A REGULAR NUISANCE. MR. CHEDBY ON A REGULAR NUISANCE. seems quite possible," I said to my wife; "and if Chedby ever had anything of his own that I could possibly use, I should certainly go down and make a pretense of bor- rowing it, just to get a look about the place. But I hardly know the man, long as he 's been here, and I should suppose he might think it strange if I dropped in there at this late date with no ostensible reason that is, of course, if it is so." My wife pondered a moment, and then came to my rescue. " You might go down on your afternoon walk," she suggested, " and ask him if that dog that strayed in here yesterday belongs to him." "That 's a good idea," said I; "I '11 put the dog in a leash, and take him right down there." " I don't think I would take the dog down with you, dear," my wife said, thoughtfully. "Why not?" I asked. " Well, you know best, my dear," she re- plied meekly; "but I only thought that if you were just to say that the dog had strayed in be Suburban Sage. here, and that he seemed to be quite a valuable fox-terrier " " I see," I said, with a sudden flash of illu- mination ; " and he 's such a really valuable animal that I hate to take the responsibility of keeping him." " I think it would be well, my dear," said my wife, sedately. " The poor creature cried all night in the cellar, and neither of our dogs will have him about the place." Inside of half an hour I presented myself at Mr. Chedby's gate. He lived the better part of a mile away from me, near the River Road. I found Mr. Chedby industriously pulling an iron roller up and down the bit of grass-plot ^ /Ifcr. Gbe&bg on a IRegular Iftuteance, ^ which is known in our suburban community by a polite and friendly fiction as a " lawn." The roller was old, and of a somewhat battered ap- pearance, and, being unusually small and light, it carried in its inside, beside the usual comple- ment of weights, an extra one in the shape of a small iron glue-kettle, which had been filled up solidly with melted lead. Mr. Chedby greet- ed me cordially, but he responded to my inquiry with something like suspicion. " I did lose a fox-terrier," he said, after some hesitation ; " but it was most two weeks ago, and I guess he 's been snapped up long ago. He was a fine-blooded dog. Is the one you 've got a fine-blooded dog?" I assured him that the dog's blood was the finest of the fine, and this seemed to en- courage him to think that it might be his dog, after all; but I could not help feeling that he had his doubts about the genuineness of my enthusiasm. And, for a fact, when you come to think of it, it does n't look natural and un- affected to be too honest in horse and dog matters. This became quite evident when, on Mr. Chedby's proposing to look in on me sometime in the course of the week to see if he could identify the dog, I had the indiscretion to urge him to fix an earlier date. This chilled his interest to such an extent that he hastily de- cided that it could not be his dog, and that if it was, he did n't want him, anyway. He must have seen the disappointment on my face, for he went on talking in a soothing strain. 4 young architect; and he has got to practice on stair- cases if he ever wants to get them right. Pinxter is on his third payment now, I believe; and I, somehow, feel as if true delicacy ought to keep me from obtruding my society upon him unnecessarily. But I wonder with a friendly interest how he will come out of the game of house-building into which he has put his poor little stakes. What will come to him from his speculation, undertaken in almost childish ignorance and in- experience ? Will he get a cozy, comfortable little home that he will learn to love the more dearly as the days go by ? or will he have a poor make - shift, misshapen habitation on his Suburban Sage. hands that will make him for years discontented at home, and envious under his neighbor's roof? Who can tell? It is a mere chance eicher way. But do not blame poor Pinxter if he yielded to a natural weakness of human nature, and let a pretty picture of a pretty house tempt him to forget that a man builds the inside of a home for himself, and the outside for his neigh- bor across the way. How many of us are wiser ? Did not the makers of fashion-plates long ago learn to make the women in their costumes graceful and beautiful, and the men stately, tall and deep-chested? And, shall we blame the architect if he tries to set off his design with the attractions of ideal surroundings ? No, in- deed ! If your wife goes shopping to buy a Winter wrap, does the head of the cloak depart- ment look among the saleswomen for one just ^ B TKHater = Color Ibouse. y as short and stout, or one just as tall and angu- lar as his customer? No, no! He calls up a young lady with a perfect figure and the car- riage of a ^ queen, and he drapes the garment over her faultless shoulders. It is human nature all around, and that is why so many people are living to-day as the Pinxters will live until their house is finished, in a water-color picture of a dainty dwelling, enshrined in luxury and foliage, with a pony phaeton waiting at the door, and with a front- yard where a lawn is ever green under the per- petual green skies, and where, in trim beds, the springtide forcythia and the hardy Fall chrysan- themum blossom side by side in innocent and unconscious defiance of the laws of nature. THE POINTERS. THE POINTERS. N Summer Saturdays the Suburbanite hast- ens from town on the midday train; and Mrs. Suburbanite arrays herself in cool and dainty garments and goes out on the lawn to meet him. On other days of the week, when he comes home just in time for dinner, she meets him in the front hall and says: "Oh, is that you, dear ? Hurry up and get ready for dinner, please, for your train is late to-night." But on Saturday she goes out on the lawn and says: "Oh, dar- ling, I 'm so glad you Ve come ! I was so afraid you would n't get the train." I don't know what makes the difference, but I suspect that there is a good deal of swivel silk and French hat and fancy tan* shoes about it. And pretty soon the Suburbanite gets into his Summer bravery of white flannel and colored shirt, and, standing with Mrs. Suburbanite on his front steps, he looks up and down the pleasant street, comparing his lawn with his neighbor's. According to suburban etiquette, he must always praise his neighbor's lawn and speak slightingly of his own; but in his heart of hearts he believes that his own is the best in sight. From this 70 harmless and gratifying amusement he is startled by his wife's indignant voice. "Oh, Henry!" she cries; "there's a lot of those horrid Pointers coming up the road. They must have come out on the train with you." " Gad ! " says Henry, in deep disgust ; " look at the pair of them over the way ! " On the walk at the opposite side of the street two people are slowly passing a man and a woman. Though their dress proclaims them from the city, they loiter and gawk like country folk; and they stare at everything they see about them like people wandering through a waxwork show. The stare is sufficiently frank and undis- guised and contemptuously careless enough to irritate a hippopotamus if it were directed at the thickest spot on his hide. 7f ^ Gbe Suburban Sage, y But the stare is forgotten wiped into oblivion by what comes next. The male person of the pair extends his arm, points his forefinger straight in the direction of the modest front porch of Mr. and Mrs. Suburbanite, and demands of his companion : "There! how do you like that one?" The female person gives one brief glance in the direction indicated, and then replies in ring- ing tones of contempt: " I think it 's perfectly hideous ! I would n't live in it if you gave it to me. Why, the little one with the red roof is better than that ! " They pass on down the street; but even when they have got as far as the corner their conversation is still audible to Mr. and Mrs. Suburbanite. The female person inquires in loud but languid tones : "I wonder what sort of people live in a town like this, anyhow?" and the male responds, in clear and vigorous tones : "Oh! pretty devilish common, I should think." * * * Is it really possible that there are such people in the civilized world? Oh, yes; there are plenty of them, and they are not bad people at all. Indeed, they are not, at home, rude people, even. In the city they would never think of pointing their forefingers at a man's front door, and commenting upon the appearance of his dwelling in any way that would attract his attention, nor do they mean to do so now and here. The unfamiliar scene, the novel distances, 72 ^ Gbe pointers, ^r the sense of a wholly unfamiliar mode of life all these things make them feel as though they were walking in a world in which they had no part, and they hardly feel at the first as if it were just as real an e very-day life as their own. And then, the silence of the country cheats them into talking loudly, as it does every one. For the rest, their intent is not at all offens- ive. They are simply " Pointers " a married couple of moderate means, who, having some idea that they may, at some time, be obliged to move from the city to the country, have come out to look about them and see how they would like it on the whole. It is all a matter of speculative unreality to them, and they no more think that they are seen and heard in their finger-pointing and too frank criticism than well, than you did, my dear Mr. Urban, when you did pretty much the same thing in a university town in Holland, where every second man on the street spoke English quite as well as you did. The Pointer has all seasons for his own. He has been known to make his explorations in midwinter, and I have encountered one cheerful soul who never went house- hunting in the country except on a day of genuinely mean rainy or snowy weather. He said that if you could see anything to like in a suburban town under such conditions, it must be a pretty good town when you came to try it dry and comfortable. That man, I believe, is still living in town. But, of course, late Spring, early Summer, and the first of the Fall are the chosen times of the Pointer especially if he is a Pointer of limited means. It 73 is always pleasant to take an afternoon stroll through a pretty country town; and this luxury the Pointer may enjoy at no greater cost than the railway fare for himself and his wife. For, if they arrive in the morning, they generally bring their luncheon with them in a paste-board box, and eat it in the railway station, to the great disgust of the station agent. That is, they do this when they are new beginners at the pointing game Greenpointers, so to speak. Afterward they ad- 74 Gbe pointers, vance in knowledge of the possibilities of the game. And, after they have had their first free ride in a real estate agent's carriage, they begin to see that there is something more in the pastime of pointing than trailing aimlessly around on foot and staring at the outside of other people's homes or else, peeping furtively into the dismal interiors of empty houses. There are free rides in it; cakes and ale in it, free, too; and, more than this, there is con- sideration and respect and even deference and delicate flattery un- deserved, it is true; unearned, enjoyed only for a brief hour, and then on false pretenses but sweet, sweet, sweet on the tongue while the taste lasts. For, sooner or later, there comes a Friday afternoon when the Pointer climbs to his airy flat with a lightsome step and a beaming countenance. "My dear," he says to his wife, "we'll go and look at some out-of-town houses to-morrow, but this time we '11 go in style. I Ve struck a real estate man downtown, a man who 's interested in property at Howsonlotville, and he 's going to TS ^ Gbe Suburban Sage, -y* take us out to see the place. It won't cost us even our fares; he puts up for everything, and when we get there he blows us off to luncheon at his own house, and in the afternoon he drives us all around, and shows us all there is to be seen. Great scheme, is n't it ? " "But, my dear," timidly remonstrates his wife, "is it quite right, do you think? You know we have n't the least idea of going to Howson- lotville to live, and would n't it be, somehow, like getting a good time on false pretenses ? " Then the Pointer explains to his wife that women don't know the first thing about busi- *ness. This is entirely a matter of business with the real estate man. He takes such chances right along in the hope of getting his property known. It is simply an advertisement of his business nothing else just the way the gro- cer sends you a sample cake of soap or a can of some new brand of baking-powder. And in the end, of course, she says she supposes that he knows best. From that day on their doom is sealed. A new era dawns for them. They travel out to Howsonlotville on the family ticket of the agent of the great Howsonlot estate. They accept of the agent's hospitable board, eat the excellent luncheon he has provided, show a re- fined appreciation of his good wine; talk casu- ually and carelessly of their rich relations, and make incidental mention of horses they have owned. In the afternoon, perched high and proud on the agent's drag, they look down with a feeling of infinite satisfaction upon the less experienced Pointers wandering about on foot 76 ^ Gbe pointers* ^ and unattended. Then they go and look at a house which they never in the world could afford to take ; and condescendingly promise to give its merits their kind consideration over Sunday. This is not entirely duplicity ; it sometimes takes quite a while to trump up an insuperable objection to a pretty good house. Once embarked in this fascinating game, the true Pointer never tires of pitting his in- genuity and evasive skill against the cunning of the real estate agent. Of course the ulti- mate fate of "every gambler lies ahead of him. For a longer or shorter time he may enjoy free luncheons, free drives, and all the consideration which the real estate operator keeps on tap for his victims until he has them safe. But, be it soon or late, the day will surely come when ^ Gbe Suburban Sa0e. ^r he is cornered, when the compromising word is said, when he sees his name on an innocent- looking " memorandum of agreement " and then it is all over before he knows it. The fatal Deed and the ravenous Bond and Mort- gage are signed, sealed and delivered ; his bridges are burnt behind him, he stands trem- bling and apprehensive at the beginning of a new life; and the Pointer has become the last thing that he ever meant to be a Suburbanite. THE FURNACE. THE FURNACE. HEN I first moved into the country, (I have told this story before; but only in the comparative privacy of the poetic form,) I inquired for a suit- able man to take charge of my furnace. One was recommended to me, and we opened negotiations, which were conducted warily on both sides; for each of us was wonder- ing how much the other knew about a furnace, and each of us was conscious of plenty of igno- rance to betray. Finally, the man asked me how much time I wanted him to devote to the fur- nace. Here I turned and rent him. I told him that if he were applying for the post of furnace tender, he ought to know how much time it was his duty to devote to that particular furnace. This disconcerted him, and he said that he had asked the question only because it had occurred to him that I might want him to stay with the furnace all day. I asked him why he should stay with the furnace all day, and he said: "To prevent its blowing up." Now, in my simple city ignorance I sup- posed that that man was simply trying to impose upon me and to get a profitable job for himself; but I have since come to know that he merely 80 reflected, in his uneducated, exaggerated way, the attitude of all suburbanites toward that domestic Moloch, the Furnace. The furnace is, for eight or nine months in the year, the heart of domestic life, and it may be said to feed the pulse of all suburban con- versation. Even the question of domestic service has to yield to it in importance, as a topic; for you may, or you may not, at any given time, have a cook, but you always have a coal-bill. Now, I wish to do all that lies in my power to reprehend this tendency. It not only imparts to suburban conversation an ashy and uninterest- 81 Suburban Sage. ^ ing flavor, but it spoils the furnace. Long ex- perience has taught me, and I do not hesitate to affirm it, that furnaces are just like children you can spoil them and set them all wrong in life by making too much fuss over them; by coddling and petting them; by paying attention to their little whims and fancies; and, above all, by talking about them to their faces in the pres- ence of visitors and strangers. You all know how it is with children : if little Claribel is in the room, and you say to the lady who is visiting you: "Oh, I don't know what to do! little Claribel is so sensitive ! Do you know, the other day she wept for five hours together because the cat killed a little bird on the lawn!" Do you know what happens after that? Little ClaribeFs one idea is to beat her own rec- ord for sensitiveness by weeping six hours over the next dead bird she finds; and if she can't find any other way of attracting attention and winning praise for her delicate susceptibilities, she will drop a tear on a deceased tumblebug, just to attract a moment's notice. In the same way, if you tell your visitor in the youngster's hearing, that your dear little Reginald has such a wonderful flow of spirits that it seems impos- sible for him to control himself why, you must not be surprised if Reginald seizes the oppor- tunity to kick his foot -ball through the parlor window, by way of showing the exuberance of his spirits, and the impossibility of restraining them. Well, you can spoil a furnace much in the same way as you can spoil a child. Do not for an instant imagine that I began 8 2 my suburban life with any superiority of knowl- edge over my neighbors at least, so far as the management of a furnace was concerned. In many other respects I knew more than they did although I am not using so much knowledge now. I treated my furnace with the same famil- iar indulgence and familiarity; and gave it just as absurd an idea of its own importance as did the most thoughtless of those about me. Many and many a time has that furnace heard me talking through the thin floor that separates the cellar from the ground story telling of its ways and its fancies; of its extravagance in coal one week, and of its strict economy the next; of its entire unwillingness to work in an east wind, and its furious enthusiasm to roast the house every ^ ftbe Suburban Sage. ^ time there was a breath from the south. Be- ginning that way, no wonder I turned the poor thing's head. But this was only the least of the foolishness with which I encouraged that furnace to mis- behave. I discharged the man whom I had first engaged, to take care of it ; not because I could find any real fault with him, but because he seemed to me to have no real sense of the seri- ousness of his responsibility. I thought he treated the furnace in a slighting and disrespect- ful manner; and I did n't like the way that he slammed the door after he had put the coal in. I hired a small boy to sleep in the house, so that he might be at the service of the furnace day and night. I can say for the boy that he carried out one part of his contract. He slept in the house. It was I who went down late at night after I had got home from a dinner or a dance, or a trip to the city to hear the opera, and dove into the cellar to study the immediate needs of that furnace, drowsily summoning to my aid what small scraps of knowledge I possessed about draughts and heat-units and cold air supply only in the end to stir up something or other, I did n't know why; to let down something, about the end and aim of which I knew still less; and to make some combination of dampers and slides and doors, for which I never in the world could have offered the slightest reason. Of course, in my earlier suburban days, I was even more foolish in my treatment of my furnace. I took a number of plumbers down to see it, and consulted with them one at a time, of course, in its very presence. Each one laid y Gbe jfurnace, ^ out for me a different set of rules by which to work it, and explained to me a different set of principles which governed each set of rules. You could not have told them from so many doctors. At first, too, I showed the furnace to friends of experience and to distinguished strangers who occasionally honored my humble roof. On one occasion I took down a distinguished poet, a scientist of wide reputation and a man who had recently invented a ten-cent puzzle ; and this over- dose of glory and dignity was quite too much for the furnace. It would not draw for the next three weeks, and it gave out very little more heat than the refrigerator. Suburban Sa0e. -y The furnace did not improve as the years went on; and the members of the household learned with each successive twelve-month to rely more and more upon open fires and upon a gradual toughening process that went on from September to April, and that made an indoor temperature of fifty degrees Fahrenheit bearable, if not, perhaps, enjoyable. Then there came a day a happy day when the owner of the furnace asserted himself. It was a mild January day of a Winter which I had begun by laying in twenty tons of coal for the consumption of that furnace. The boy came up to tell me that they were consumed. He was not the first boy who had made of his young energies a burnt offering to my furnace; he was only one in a long succes- sion. When I heard from his lips that the coal was all gone; and when I reflected that the chilly annoyances of the Winter were to be succeeded by the cruel inclemencies of Springtime, I was bitterly angered; and for the first time in my experience I went down into the cellar, conscious of an angry and unkind feeling toward my furnace. The boy had spoken truth : yet not all the truth. The twenty tons of coal had vanished from the bin, and now, slightly charred, formed a large portion of what was supposed to be a pile of ashes, in a lonely region of the cellar. One door of the furnace was broken, another had lost its hinge; and a huge crack rent its fire-pot half way through. I gave my orders sternly and pre- cisely. The food for the furnace was no longer to be purchased in twenty-ton lots. It was to be fed from hand to mouth : ton by ton at a time. 86 No plumber was to heal its gaping wounds and I was never to hear one solitary word about it until the Summertime should come, when I could tear it out and sell it for old iron, and put some more modern device in its place. That was six years ago, and all is changed since then. That day the furnace learned its lesson: in bitterness of spirit, I have no doubt; but faithfully and fully. Never since then have I had to contend with it. Perhaps its duties are not performed in absolute cheerfulness of mind ; but so long as it locks up its discontent in its breast and locks no clinkers there, I shall not complain. A dull and sullen servant it may be, but so diligent and loyal and steady that I try to shut my eyes to the fact that the crack in the fire- pot is steadily widening; and that before long the 87 y- Gbe Suburban Sage. V companion of many days and nights of suburban solitude and solicitude will be loaded on a truck, and will be borne dangling and clanging away from its home to lie in some river-side junkyard and rust itself redder than it ever would fire up for me. In the meantime it patiently eats and turns to good account, short rations of coal, grudgingly doled out to it, too often from the sifted ash-heap. 88 THE TIME-TABLE TEST. THE TIME-TABLE TEST. NCE upon a time, in the days of my young and green suburbanity, I served on some society for the improvement of everything in general; and I was appointed a committee of one to call upon the residents of a certain street and find out how they were disposed toward some project the society had in hand. I was appointed, I suppose, because I knew hardly any one in that particular quarter. In fact, I knew but one man, and him very slightly. So, as I knew that he was a man of wealth and reputa- tion, I thought I would save myself trouble by calling on him only, and letting him voice the sentiment of his district. Mr. Banker was out, but Mrs. Banker re- ceived me graciously, and even treated me with a certain affability until I told her my mission. Then her manner underwent a change. She said she thought Mr. Banker was in favor of the pro- ject, but that she knew nothing of the other people of whom I inquired. I said that I had thought Mr. Banker would be able to tell me something about the probable attitude of his next door neighbor, -Mr. Smallsales. Mrs. Banker did not think, however, that Mr. Banker would be qo Zest, likely to possess any information as to the views of Mr. Smallsales. I then suggested that Mr. Banker might at least be able to tell me how Mr. Pettycash, across the way, might happen to stand on the subject. Mrs. Banker was very sure that Mr. Banker could do nothing of the sort. I named several other residents of the neighbor- hood, but in every case Mrs. Banker was con- fident that Mr. Banker could not possibly be acquainted with the gentleman's opinions. The coldness of her tone increased with every in- quiry ; and at last it became so disapprovingly chilly that I meekly rose to retire, wondering wherein I had offended. Mrs. Banker saw my confusion, and she relented sufficiently to afford me a hint of en- lightenment. With a severe, though pitying rebuke, conveyed in voice and manner, Mrs. 91 Suburban Sa0e, ^ Banker drew herself up majestically and said, icily, looking over my bowed head : "We have not had the pleasure of having you long in the town, Mr. Sage, and you prob- ably do not know that Mr. Banker never goes in earlier than the i o : 17!" In one instant I recognized the vast social gap which separated the husband of my hostess from poor Smallsales who "went in" on the 7:27. Blushing for my obtuseness, I went home and resigned from the society. I told the presi- dent that I thought I was too new in the sub- urban field for active work; and when he said that it was only the new men who ever would do any active work, I knew that I was right. It was this incident, I think, that first led me to find diversion in studying the humors and humanities of the Children of the Time -table. There is an upper window in my house that com- mands an uninterrupted view of the little railway station, and it is a daily pleasure for me to stand there and watch our little suburban world going to business. We are all slaves of the bell : they of the locomotive -bell, and I of the one that jingles in a corner of the typewriter, and keeps tab of the lines as they crawl along. I have got so now that if I were to wake up out of a sound sleep, look out of that window and see so much as the back of a man, or even the top of his hat there is a good deal of expression in hats going to the train, I could tell you instantly what train it is, whether it is Q2 the man's regular train or not and more or less why he is taking it. There is no affectation or self- consciousness about the men who go into New York on the very early trains. Life is too serious a matter to them, and too dull a matter; and it holds no bright possibilities. On the first six o'clock train or on the second six o'clock train they go in; and on the first six o'clock train or on the second six o'clock train they will go in until the time comes for another journey which will not involve their getting up so early. Perhaps there are some among them who might ease their weary lives and work themselves up a train or two; but as this would involve the execution of several extra licks of work, I do not think that it is at all likely. 93 ^ Cbe Suburban Sage. ^ It is the first train after seven o'clock that brings forth the passenger to whom the time- table assumes the appearance of an ascending social scale. He is only an office-boy at present. If he is employed by a very large commission house, rating at Ai or A2 in the books, he may be called a junior clerk; but even in that case his duties are the same, and his pay is likely to be less. His companions on his towqward trip all occupy similar positions, and he knows them all and greets them with airy familiarity. They sky- lark noisily on the platform, and behave just as much like college boys as they dare to. They have to put some restraint upon themselves, however, for the neighboring commuters are jeal- ous of their rest. And, while they are accus- tomed to stand a great deal of noise from loco- motives, they naturally draw the line at boys. The 7 :o3 train is a pleasant sight to watch, as it begins to puff on its way, for even if the boys do show off a little they are genuinely happy and full of the joy of life; and I like to see them scramble up the steps like young monkeys. But the 7:27 train is quite another affair. The errand-boy has got his promotion. He is really a junior clerk of some sort; and he has the glorious privilege of getting to his office exactly twenty-four minutes later. But, with his first step upward, he leaves light-hearted boyish- ness behind him and becomes a prey to canker- ing ambition. His companions are men now, but mostly men who have barely escaped the bondage of the 6:38, and in whose breast the hope of ever rising even to the 8:01 is slowly 94 dying out. There is no companionship among them, for they all hate the doubtful limbo in which they are placed; and those who may get out of it despise those who never may, while the latter hate the former with all the cordiality of a healthy human envy. It needs only a glance to tell a 7:27 man. He appears long before train time, and he hurries along and casts furtive glances up and down the street, fearful that some 8:0 1 man may be ostentatiously loafing around his garden, flaunting to the world his thirty-four minutes of superiority. And yet the 8:01 man that is, the regular 4$+ Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ e very-day 8:01 man is not a happy creature. It is true he puts a bolder face on as he goes to the station, and assumes a jauntier carriage. He cultivates an air of being extremely fond of early rising; and he sniffs the morning breeze with such an affectation of enjoyment that he sometimes awakens late sleepers under whose windows he may chance to pass. But his arro- gant pretenses desert him when he gets to the station. There you see him glance nervously about, anxiously seeking for some 8:48 man who has been forced by an exceptional emer- gency to take an earlier train. Him he will pursue and catch, and fasten on him with the grip of death; and he will not be shaken off. The 8:48 man has business on his mind; he has got up three-quarters of an hour before his usual time and every morning minute counts with the suburban commuter and he is sleepy and cross, and his breakfast is sitting crosswise on his stomach. But the 8:01 man will stick by him, and walk up and down the platform with him, and nod loftily to his regular com- panions, as though he, too, were one of the favored children of fortune who usually took the train of the day. For, of course, the 8 148 is the train of the day. WE take it the WE that is WE in every suburban town oh ! too often most tire- somely WE, and most unkindly nobody else. The passing of the 8 : 48 train is decidedly a social function. The men approach it by twos and threes, never hurrying, but with an air of elegant leisure that may have taken ten or fifteen minutes in preparation. They are all spick and 9f> span in their clothes : for a commuter's clothes improve from train to train until he gets to taking the 10 : 17, when he is reputed so rich that he may safely dress shabbily. There is always a crowd at this train, and many ladies take it who could much more conveniently go in later. There is a great deal of tipping of hats and shaking of hands in the latest imported style; and, altogether, you would think that the people assembled on the little platform had come to- gether to go to a meeting of the Fourhundred Hunt, instead of going to New York to make money downtown or spend it uptown, and no great money at either end. I saw a perfectly happy man the other day. It was my friend Pettycash. For many years, 97 Suburban Summer and Winter, he has served the 7:27 train faithfully and unfailingly. The other day he came into his old aunt's money, and he promptly resigned his clerkship. He told his wife that for a few days before he entered on the management of the estate he would stay at home, and they would have a splendid time together, looking over the garden and figuring out what the house needed in improvements. But on the very first day of his freedom he surprised and disappointed her immediately after breakfast by telling her that he had forgotten something in town which he ought to attend to, and that he positively must go in. He tried to placate her by offering to do an errand for her: but I think that only aroused unjust suspicions in her mind. She need not have been troubled, however. He only wanted to take the 10:17 train, and he took it. I happened to be at the station, where the train was delayed for a few minutes, and I saw him roaming uneasily from car to car, although it had been his invariable custom to travel in the smoker. But when I saw him at last settle himself in the forward car, just in front of the great Mr. Banker, and begin, with an air of indolent ease, to read an illustrated paper, I knew just how he felt. THE SOCIETY CHURCH. THE SOCIETY CHURCH. VERY pleasant people, I have no doubt, my dear. In fact, , I have heard that Mrs. Chasuble met them and thought them very agree- able, indeed. But I real- ly don't know anything about them, myself. They don't belong to our church, you know ! " Do not imagine, my startled friend, that good Mrs. Burrage is speaking in an un-Christian spirit when she answers thus a newcomer's question about some resident of older date. There is not a hint of un-Christian spirit in Mrs. Burrage. She has the highest respect for the people of whom she speaks ; her manner is most cordial to them when she meets them here, and I am sure it will be even more cordial when she meets them in heaven after the burden of her social responsibilities shall have rolled off her much-tried suburban back. In speaking as she does, she is simply asserting the right of her own beloved church to call itself the Society Church ^ Gbe Society Cburcb. V of the town. She and other earnest workers have won for it that distinction; not by zealous religious effort for she knows no more of the doctrines of her church than she knows of the doctrines .of Confucius but simply by good, solid, indefatigable financiering. What has she not done what has she not gone through, to attain that much-desired end ? She has wrung gold out of rocks, silver out of stone, and nickel and copper out of the very pebbles and dust. She has coaxed and cajoled and wheedled well-to-do home-seekers into settling in our town ; and she has lured their wives and daughters from other folds by an extravagance in the way of social entertainment which has driven Burrage almost to the verge of distraction. He told me that he completely wore out one dress suit while Mrs. Burrage was getting the church- spire built; and that he worked a hole in his new trousers over a series of dinners which she gave to rope-in some people who had n't subscribed to the font. For the rock on which the suburban Society Church rests, is, I am afraid, a rock of gold-bear- ing quartz that has little likeness to the rock on which Peter founded his church. I do not mean to say, or even to hint, chat the church, as a church, is not all that a church should be in the way of disinterested and devoted spirituality. I should not presume to bear testimony upon such a point. I am only speaking of the church as the dominant social organization of the town, to point out that it attained that proud position or, as the vulgar say, "got there" because its congre- gation had the most money and the best workers. ^ Gbe Suburban Sage, ^ The opposition church we have a number of churches in our town; but only two of what you might call the first magnitude thought it had done a very clever thing when it got its corner-stone laid; covered up with a neat little wooden box, and left to await the growth of a building fund to visible proportions. Little the congregation of that church knew Mrs. Burrage. She laid her corner-stone later, it is true, but in it she put attested copies of all the builders' con- tracts, and of the guarantees of fifteen well-to-do citizens to pay for the construction of the edifice up to the roof-line. It may have been this move; or it may have been her chartering a freight-train, decorating it with flowers and green things, and running a church-fair on wheels the whole length of our section of the railroad but one way or another victory perched on her banners. People said that the freight -car church -fair was undig- rfified and even irreverent; but it was a glittering success; and, in the end, there was the beautiful little brown-stone church to show for it, on the best corner lot in the best quarter of the place. And when the newcomer in town looked around ^r Gbe Society Cburcb. y him and saw that church and the other churches, and the weather -beaten box, rain - streaked and gray, that sheltered the corner-stone of the opposi- tion church, it is small wonder that he (or his wife) promptly exchanged the religious convic- tions of his (or her) ancestors for the social con- victions of Mrs. Burrage. I have not told you what particular church it is for which Mrs. Burrage has struggled so hard; but I may say that in most suburban towns the struggle is apt to lie betweeji the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians. The Presbyterians have the most money and the Episcopalians have the most skill. I suppose that all the churches are equally capitalized in respect to Christianity; but when it comes to cash capital, these two denomi- nations loom up like light-houses. The Methodist Church is rich in spots, and the Congregational Church of New England has a few well-provision- ed outposts; but if you want to see a real good, lively tussle for the possession of the top place in a new town, you want to see an Episcopal con- gregation and a Presbyterian congregation tackle each other for blood. The struggle is rarely a long one. The first stone church up gets the prize. There is no gainsaying that sure and certain proof of certain financial superiority. It is the Stonechurchites henceforward who will build the finest club-house, organize the largest entertainments, and set the social key for the whole town deciding whether the majority shall go in for athletics or for in- tellectuals; for the higher culture or for fashion- able frivolity. If the Presbyterians get the inside track, the town is sure to get the higher culture, ^ Cbe Suburban Sage, and will probably come in for athletics; but it does n't stand a ghost of a show for frivolity. If the Episcopalians get there, the fashionable fri- volity and the athletics (of a mild sort) are quite safe; but there is absolutely no chance for the in- tellectualities of the higher culture: the idea of an Episcopalian's needing to know any more than he naturally does know being too preposterous to consider. Let me say here that although my range of observation has covered, by -and -large, a dozen small towns of this countryside, I have never seen one instance where defeat, in a fight of this sort, was not accepted loyally and bravely. If the Presbyterians are conquered, they simply screw the armor of sanctity a little tighter, and move among their neighbors as stern old Puritans might have moved amid Papists and mummers in the days of the second Charles. If the Episco- palians lose the game, they simply smile a pitying smile of amused tolerance, and the vestryman's wife says to her guest : "Oh, no, my dear! you must n't expect anything in the way of gayety here, you know. This is the very stronghold of Presbyterianism ; and we poor idolaters are quite looked down upon. There are only enough of us, you know, for two or three tables at whist, and I 'm afraid that our good neighbors think we are very shock- ing people." Yet it must be very hard. Of course every- body discounts the fact that nine out of ten of the newcomers in town will have neither religion nor politics until they find out which is the fashionable church, and which is the party with 104 the normal majority. But it must be trying to the Shepherd when his best ewe lambs begin to stray from the fold. Here is the case of Mrs. Chedby, for in- stance. Her pastor met her on the street the other day, and remarked: "I have not had the pleasure of seeing you lately, Mrs. Chedby." (In church understood.) "No," says Mrs. Chedby, a little pinkish, but with the air of one who has prepared herself for the fray: "you see, Mr. Chedby's mother is visiting us, and she 's such an ardent Stone- churcharian, you know, and counts so much upon never missing a service ; and being nearly eighty, you know, I really had to go with her. And I 'm sure, much as it is that I miss there, it 's been a great comfort to me to be a help to the dimly perceive that she has some object in view which she means to keep to herself. He waxes wroth. He lays back his ears and stubbornly refuses. She pleads with him for his mother's sake. "Yon know, my dear, jjie has n't said one word about it since she 's been here, though 1 'm sure it 's a grief to her. you Ye not going. Your father always did. you know. Now, only go once, just once, to please her, and 1 promise you 1 won't ask you another time, know, dear, you may **t*r set; her again." Finally Chedby compromises to the extent of one solitary sen ice. and Mrs. Chedby reminds him of his promise the moment he opens his Cbe Society Cburcb. eyes on the beautiful Sabbath morn. It is well she does, for it is no trifling job to get Chedby off to church. In the first place, he is a man who spends most of his waking hours in a cheviot shirt, for he is an electrical engineer of renown, and he is the superintendent for this region of some great company that is scarring this fair country with trolleys and power-houses, and all manner of evil inventions; and most of Chedby's time is spent in driving furiously hither and thither in a sulky with a bottom like a big yel- low soap-dish. He swears profusely as he struggles with his collars and cuffs, alone in his little dressing - room. Mrs. Chedby, in the next room, hears him ; but she re- bukes him only with a gentle "Hush!" He swears still more every time that he looks out of his dressing- room window, and his eye lights on his little work- shop in the garden, where for so many years he has spent his Sunday mornings, peacefully tinkering away at his inventions and . improvements and contrap- tions generally; for Chedby is a mechanical genius on his own hook I wish he would make himself a lawn-roller. However, he has got ready at last, and is steered into the church - going throng on the 9*7 t^ Sbc Suburban highway, red in the face, ami surtering much in the region of the collar. Ho gets redder yet as he hoars low whistles of surprise and in- credulity from pasMng golfers and bicyclers ; but with his eyes firmly fixed upon the prayer-book, which he grasps with perspiring lingers, he marches on behind his womenfolk. At church he gets along pretty well through the >er\ ire ; although Mrs. Chedby has to take his silk hat away from him two or three times, because he will play a tattoo on the crown. In the first of the sermon he fidgets, then he calms down into a state of absolute abstraction, and Ifn. 'Chedby knows by his drumming on his knees with his finger tips and puckering his lip- if he were going to whistle, that he is deep in mathematical calculations. In fancied security the good lady folds her arms and begins to study Episcopalian styles in sermon - hearing attitudes. The clergyman draws the main ar- gument of his discourse to an end with one of those sweeping, triumphant questions which are only asked because there J n't any answer to them; and Mr. Chedby, dimly conscious in his mathematical depths of an interrogative pause. gives a loud, absent-minded snort of assent. A little titter titters around; Mrs. Chedby flushes crimson, and the Rev. Mr. Lilymouth turns the pinkest he can, and reads the rest of his ser- mon as if it were an auctioneer's catalogue. But C hod by has served his turn. The paths of the two congregations cross each other; and Mrs. Chedby takes good care that her old pastor shall see her turn-out. ** Oh, yes," she will say to him later, when he makes his hopeless remonstrance ; " I got into the habit of going when Mr. Chedby's mother was here, and Mr. Chedby showed so much interest in going to his old church again ; and I knew he would n't go by himself; and as the children are to be brought up in that faith, anyway, and as both Mr. Chedby and his mother felt so strongly about it, it did n't seem to me as though I ought to consider myself. And of course it would have been different, in a way, if dear Mama had n't been a Church-of-England woman ! " And when he hears the " dear Mama " and the " Church-of-England woman " the poor Shepherd knows that the brand of the other flock is on his ewe lamb. tog THE SUBURBANITE AND HIS GOLF. THE SUBURBANITE AND HIS GOLF. ONE day last Summer, Mygatt called on me at about five o'clock in the afternoon. I saw from the evening paper in his hand that he had just come from the train ; and I wondered a little at this, for he is a regular man in his goings and comings, and my house is well out of his way. With an air that was at once mysterious and diffident, he asked if he might look at my ency- clopedia. I took him to the library and asked him what volume he wanted. He seemed uncertain about it, and something in his manner suggested to me that he wanted to be left alone. I strolled out upon the verandah, and I had not sat there long before Hix came in at the gate. He, too, wanted to look at my encyclopedia. I was about to tell him that Mygatt was at that mo- ment looking at it, when, glancing over my shoulder, I saw that the library was empty, and that one of the volumes was missing from the big leather-bound set. Mygatt must have slipped out of my own back door of retreat, and I could not but infer that he had his own wishes for having his errand kept private. I told Hix I would go with him to the library as soon as my smoke was finished, and I got him to sit down by me on the side farthest from the door, and smoke until Mygatt should have had a chance to cover his retreat. In the meantime I asked Hix if I could be of any service to him in his researches. At first he did n't think I could, and then he hemmed, hawed, and finally blurted out: " Why, it 's this way, Sage : I want to look up something about an English game that they call golf or goff, or something like that ; and I guess I '11 have to get you to help me, for I 'm hanged if I know how to spell the blamed thing." "Oh!" said I, much relieved; "is that what you want ? " A hasty glance showed me that Mygatt was gone, and his volume was back in ^ Gbe Suburban Sage. -^ the book-case. I led my guest to the old red cherry book-case in the hall, that enshrines the sporting library of the family for several genera- tions a curious collection that ranged from Izaak Walton, by way of Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour, to the Base-ball Guide of the current year. Here I hunted up two or three recent works on golf which I had to read in boning up for a Quarterly article on " The Specific Moral In- fluence of Certain Assorted and Selected Forms of Physical Exercise;" and I was just simple enough to give him a condensed account of what I had boned up. I thought Hix looked a little frightened at the books ; but he took the thinnest one of them and departed, thanking me more warmly than seemed necessary. As I went back into the library, I could not help noticing that Mygatt had not put his volume back properly. I pulled it out, and the book split itself open at the pages headed GOLDSMITH GOMER GOLF GOMPHIASIS It did not require any great sagacity to put the one two and the other two together; but I felt pretty sure of my guess, when, late the next night, just as I was closing my book to go to bed, a man who had not crossed my threshold for two years slipped stealthily in on me and said: " Oh, Sage, they tell me you 're a great authority on the new game they call garf. Would you mind telling me something about it ? Pretty much the same thing as shinny, is n't it?" I was away from home for a few weeks in the latter part of the Summer. The first night that I got home Hix and Mygatt came to see me. It was the hottest September night, I think, that I ever remember; but those two dear simians wore heavy tweed suits, hand-me-down cloth caps that fell over their noses, and golf stockings an inch thick, with a diamond pattern on them, in a ghastly orange that somehow suggested a dish of fried eggs gone astray. They told me that they wanted me to play golf; that it was the greatest game on earth; and that I did not want to lose an hour in making myself acquainted with its mysteries. y- Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ " I suppose," said Mygatt, " you think it 's something like shinny. Most people do. But it 's not, in the least. You see, it 's this way " " Hold on ! " interrupted Hix ; " you let me explain to him. I Ve shown so many people I Ve kind of got the hang of it. May be he 's heard something about it, anyway. You Ve heard of the game, have n't you, Sage ? G-O-L-F You must have seen something about it in the papers." " My dear," inquired Mrs. Sage, when I had toiled upstairs that night, an hour or two later, " what on earth were those men talking to you about all this while ? " " Golf," I said, wearily. " What ! " cried Mrs. Sage, indignantly ; " not that ridiculous game that they Ve been trying to get us to play all this time up at Seacaddie ? " " I am afraid, my dear," I said, " it is the very same." Now, I am not going to say anything against golf; and I do not doubt that to the unfortunates of Lenox and Tuxedo, idle and incapable of intellectual enjoyments, it must be, indeed, a precious boon. But to the plain sub- urbanite of modest means it is nowhere in in- terest to the game the conductor plays making holes in his commutation ticket. I think that perhaps the golf enthusiasts might have made better progress in their great mission, had they not too early in the day let out 7/6 the fact that there is more golf played off the grounds than on them in fact, that it is a great ferry-boat and station- platform game. In the beginning, Hix and Mygatt and the rest of them took turns at carrying broken golf clubs into the city, and expatiating on the deli- cate points of the instrument. " Best mashie I ever had," one announces, as if he had been brought up with mashies. " I. got it the day I got that craigenputtoch and that gloomer you know, Hix ? " " Little bit like my stymie-boddle, is n't it?" inquires Hix. " No," says Mygatt, judicially ; " I think you will find it has a little more whoof on the wimsie side just a thirty-second of an inch, may be; but that 's what does it." And they all agree that that is what does it; and they tell stories about strikes they have 7/7 ^ be Suburban Sage. ^ made and they have n't made, so long, and so specific, and so utterly pointless and uninterest- ing that they would turn a trout -fisher green with envy. An indiscreet excess of this sort of thing led to a chilly, suspicious feeling about golf in the more active athletic circles of our town. Mem- bers of the base-ball team went down to the golf- links, watched the proceedings for a half-hour or so, and then demanded : " Say, when are you fellows going to quit practice and call the game ? " This treatment so irritated the golfites that they worked themselves into a sort of religious fury of enthusiasm. They ravaged the town for converts. Men, women and children were torn from happy homes and forced to swing deformed war-clubs in the air, and to pound the inoffensive earth. Brasseys and craigenputtochs were thrust into the trembling hands of age, and even in- nocent childhood was not exempt. The church itself was invoked to exert its powerful influence ; and the Rector obligingly went around saying to recalcitrants: "What! not play golf? I thought everybody did ! " It must have looked that way to him Sunday mornings for the Church of England, you know, golfs on Sunday with perfect propriety. But somehow all this was of no avail. The game enjoyed a sort of hectic prosperity during the latter days of Fall, when there was very little else to be done out-of-doors; but the snow buried it for the Winter; and when it was brought forth again in the Spring, only a handful of sneezing devotees gathered in the cause. The practice 118 Suburbanite anfc 1bi5 (3olf. games for the tennis openings diminished even this number; and when the base - ball season opened, the first swing of the bat knocked golf galley-west. When the crusade was at its hottest, I was dragooned, against my natural instincts, into buy- ing a pair of crazy-quilt stockings an inch thick, and a couple of crooked sticks with fool names to them. The stockings were a good investment, as I find on chilly days; but I never knew what to do with the sticks until Mygatt, who had made me buy them, moved into my neighborhood. IIQ Suburban 5a0e. -y Then I painted red spots on them, fixed them up with leather ears and bristling manes, which I had made out of an old hair brush, and gave them to my two youngest children for hobby- horses. Mygatt has to pass my door twice a day, and every time I see him watching those children with eyes of horror, and shuddering at the desecra- tion, I feel that those sticks are earning an honest penny for the first time in their crooked lives. THE SUBURBAN DOG. THE SUBURBAN DOG. HERE is a small, sweet patch of si- lence that comes over the suburban night just as it is turning into morn- ing. There is no other really silent period in all the stretch between bed-time and get-up time. A man never realizes with what a variety of animal life he is surrounded, until he lies awake one Summer night in the suburbs. It will be borne in upon him, in the course of that experience, that between the moo of the calfless cow and the buzz of the sleepless mosquito, there is as large a choice in nocturnal noises as the most exacting could demand. But, for this little space, there comes a silence so profound that it occasionally wakes me up. It did the other day, and I did not try to go to sleep at once, but lay still for a while, drinking in the charm of it. The stillness was perfect. Even the little birds in the vines had let up on their sawfiling lullabies; and there was not enough wind to move the leaves in the tree - tops. For ten minutes the spell lasted, and then, far, far away, in a distant street, I heard the opening and shutting of a house - door, and my ear faintly caught the sound of a heavy, regular foot-fall on the hard macadam. " Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh ! " It was only the engineer at the mill, going to his daily work, and I knew it, and the dogs knew it; but it made no difference to the dogs. " Ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh-ruh ! " It might have been a college yell, but it was n't ; it was the real thing. Somebody's dog had seized the chance to be smart. Then another one answers him a querulous little kiyi, who goes : " Rih-rih-rih-rih-rih ! " 123 V Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ Then a big hound comes in with a heavy bay " Roo-roo-roo-roo-roo ! " Then a lady-dog somewhere comes in with a hysterical yelp, telling the world that her nerves are all unstrung, and that it gave her a terrible start to be waked up so suddenly, and what is the matter, anyway ? Then there is a vague dog, who must live somewhere where he is not in the habit of seeing things; and he barks in a doubt- ful, inquiring way, as if he had done a good deal of barking in the course of his life, and had never seen any particular good come of it. Then there is a peculiarly offensive dog who yaps so shrilly and persistently and penetratingly that I know he can not be much over six inches long, and the kind of dog that would run away from a rubber-doll. One by one they all come in. Under my window two familiar dog-voices break forth the bass of my big dog and the treble of my little one. On sweeps the chorus in every key and cadence; and I know that the spreading ripple of melody will not die out until it has reached -the confines of the town. It does not last long five minutes, perhaps and then it subsides all of a sudden. One low cur, who must have jackass blood in him, tries to get up an encore, but it does n't go. A nuisance? Well, perhaps. But it is a nuisance that goes with the dogs; and, so far as I can judge, from the volume and extent of that chorus, it has not deterred one single person in town from keeping dogs. But it is totally unnecessary. Why do they do it ? ^ be Suburban Bog. y Purely as a matter of sentiment. That is their way of reminding us that they still cling to the old title of service by which they earned the right to share men's homes, and to be the com- panions of men. The barking simply says : "Here we are, you see; not wanted at present, but just as ready to warn you of danger and to fight for you as the best of our fore- fathers. We know that it is all right just now ; we don't even get up to bark; we just lie here and wag our fat tails, but we 're here oh ! we 're here!" Very foolish, you think. Well, perhaps so; but there are four or five old gentlemen right here in this State of New Jersey who meet once every year in a remote town in the woods, and go through certain legal formalities to assure the myriad house-owners of the State that they, the old gentlemen, are still the Proprietors of New Jersey which they are, indeed, by right of suc- cession, although the original grant has dwindled to a few pine-barrens. Now, either there is a good deal of human nature about a dog, or we will let it go at that. I suppose it must be confessed that the suburban dog is, as a rule, a job lot. His owner, of course, affects to see signs of blood and lineage about him; but his owner's neigh- bors call him a mongrel cur, and as his past is generally hazy, perhaps the neighbors size him up rightly. Once in a while you find an in- experienced suburbanite who is rash enough to 125 pay good money for a real canine aristocrat, but he never repeats the experiment. To keep the noble beast from contaminating associations with the lower orders, he has to be cooped up in a cage or pen, and taken out to walk at the end of a leash. Under this treatment the ani- mal pines, and becomes a burdensome object of compassion. Veterinaries, amateur and profes- sional, work over him with no better effect than to increase his depression of spirits. Finally he takes hold of the case himself, breaks out of the cage one fine night, and is not seen again for a couple of weeks, when he returns home with evary sign of having led a highly disreputable life. His escapade can not be concealed from Gbe Suburban Bog. a censorious world. In fact, complaints of his uninvited visits come from dog-owners near and far, and in the end, he is given to the farmer who makes the most fuss over his claim for damages. But in the case of the average dog, he is either given, or he gives himself. Some dogs lead a varied and unsettled life, involving a con- stant repetition of both processes. A. moves to town and gives his setter pup to B. Setter pup does n't like B., and goes and inflicts himself upon C. C. won't have it, and passes the dog over to D. The dog runs away every chance he can get, and goes back to C. That makes D. mad, and he tells C. to take his wretched pup back. C. goes to E. and labors hard with him to take the dog. E. finally consents, and then it is dis- covered that the dog has established him- self in the household of F., from whence he will probably be ejected as soon as he exposes the objectionable ways that he has picked up in the course of his many changes of owner- ship. 127 -y- be Suburban Sage. ^ But whatever may be the ultimate fate of this dog, he will for the rest of his days carry around his affections, not in a solid chunk, but cut up into sections, like a closely divided pie. From A. to F. or to Z., if he lasts long enough he will feel that he has a dropping-in acquaintance at every house; and not one of all the people through whose hands he has passed will ever get wholly rid of him, except C., who, having had more trouble than anybody else with the animal, may have found some clear and comprehensible method of expressing his feelings on the subject. I feel somewhat conscience-stricken for hav- ing given this instance to the world, as I look out of my window and see the flock of innocent, harmless and wholly unobjectionable dogs repos- ing on my lawn and the neighborhood lawns it is the very hottest of the day, and they are quiet for a while. There are red and black setters, and calico setters, and fox-terriers, and bull-terriers, and Scotch terriers, and Newfound- lands, and skyes, and bassett-hounds, and mastiffs, and every kind and variety of dog, down to the plain yellow, or common dog dog. There is not a pedigree among the whole lot of them; few have any beauty, and the usefulness of the best of them is a doubtful quantity. True, they bark at night, but they bark as sensationally at the squirrel in the tree as they do at the lurking burglar; and they might bark their heads off before any of us got up to bother with them. They certainly do accompany the baby -carriages on their rounds, with an air of proud, protecting importance, which nothing in the world ever attains to, except an officer in a militia regiment; 128 and there is a widespread belief that if a tramp attempted to raid a baby carriage, the largest of the attendant dogs would eat him up. This must, however, be always a problem of the future, for tramps who are collecting babies are scarce in these parts. Perhaps they are not valuable or beautiful or useful our dogs but we keep the most of them for plain, honest love of them. They play gently with the children; they submit to awk- ward, childish caresses that hurt them; even the great, big short-haired St. Bernard puts his police- man's-club of a tail between his legs and shrinks meekly away when the baby prods him with a sharp stick. When, having been away, we come I2Q 4$+ Cbe Suburban Sage. ^ home, they are the first to meet us, wagging their honest tails, reaching us far ahead of the children, and yet patiently waiting for their meagre word and caress of recognition until the young ones have been fully greeted. How could we spare them our dogs for are they not part and parcel of the suburban household? When the Master of the House comes home at evening, and looking up the road- way from afar off, sees the big yellow tail and the 130 Suburban 2>o0. V' little brown tail wagging cheerfuly as he heaves in sight, he knows that all has gone well with the home company, and that he need not fear that change or sickness has come to pass in his absence; for, had it been otherwise, the dogs would have known it, with their wonderful and mysterious dog knowledge, and they would have hid themselves from his sight at the time of his home-coming, instead of going out into the road to wag their honest mongrel tails, and tell him that all was well with those he loved. THE NEWCOMERS. '33 i THE NEWCOMERS. (HE other evening my wife reminded me that I had promised to lend a road-map to a man who had re- cently moved into town from New York. This surprised me somewhat, for I did not remember that I had ever made such a promise. But when I found out that my wife had promised for me, I realized that it was a much more binding engagement than any I could have made, because it was one that I should not be allowed to forget. So I laid down my pipe and book, found the road-map, and strolled out into the night alone; for Mrs. Newcomer had not yet returned Mrs. Sage's call, and my visit was to have no standing in social law to be a thing existent, but unrecognized, like a drink between drinks, or a Philadelphia alley. In a spirit of informality, I put on my oldest slouch hat and walked leisurely and luxu- riously through the mellow August evening. I say "luxuriously" advisably; for I had not walk- ed a hundred yards before I realized that I was enjoying one of the best luxuries that our gener- ous but somewhat confused climate has to give us. The stars made a faint light in the brooding 134 ^ Gbe Iftewcomerg. ^ skies; and the darkened earth was peaceful and silent with a temperate air, neither hot nor cool; and a pleasant green smell to it. Ahead of me the gray macadam road stretched dimly on till it lost itself in a vista of arching trees. I was surprised that I seemed to have it all to myself. Perhaps it was too early in the evening, and my fellow -townsmen preferred the charms of nicotine to those of nature. I smiled a smile of kindly contempt for their pre- ference, as I lit a cigar, which I happened to find in my pocket. I soon perceived, however, that the night was not attractive to me alone. Away off in the distant woods, I heard the performance of a nocturnal tragi- comedy, familiar enough at this -y> Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ season of the year. It had only three acts, or rather, three sounds. The Owl said : "Whoo-oo!" the gun said "Pop!"; and then the boy with the gun made an unspellable noise that expressed surprise and delight for he had hit the owl. This little episode brought out another evi- dence of human companionship. Away up the road the pale macadam suddenly turned white where a small but brilliant disk of light was pro- jected upon it. Then the light dashed around and lit up the tree-trunks and the underbrush. Then, after an interval, in which I could not hear a sound, except the insect noises of the night, it appeared on the other side of the road, and ap- parently nearer to me. I stood stock-still and watched the peculiar antics of the light. It went backward and forward in an uncertain sort of way, not as if its bearer were looking for any- thing, but more as if he were trying to find his way out of a thicket or a marsh. But there were no thickets or marshes on the broad level road, and even the underbrush in the vacant lots was sparse and low. Besides, the light was some- times full on, sometimes shut off to a tiny cres- cent, and sometimes hidden altogether. More- over, the night was so clear that if it had not been for the blackness that enshrouded whatever was in back of the glare, I should have been able to see the figure of the lantern. I quickened my pace; but at the first sound of my feet on the hard road the light began to dance backward and forward like a will-o'-the- wisp in a fit; and when I got to the corner of the road that turned down to the Newcomers' house 130 and shouted " hello ! " after it, it took itself out of sight up the road, with such speed that I had no temptation to follow it. When I came in front of the Newcomers' house I stopped in astonishment, and mechani- cally pulled my watch from my pocket and lit a match to see the time. It was fifteen minutes past eight, but not one light peeped from the closed shutters of the comfortable old-fashioned cottage. A hundred yards on either side lights glowed in the neighbors' windows; but not so 137 ^ Gbe Suburban Sa0e. ^ much as a glimmer of a night-lamp in a bed- room broke the blackness of the Newcomers' house. I knew they were all at home, for Mrs. Newcomer had told my wife they would be; so, after some hesitation, I concluded to try a ring at the bell. I think I found the idea that they might be asleep somewhat galling to my spirit. It was showing too frank and unaffected a contempt for the charms of suburban life, and I resented it. I pushed the button in the door- post, and heard a response from the distant kitchen, too loud and clear to escape the notice of any waking person. Then I heard a scratch- ing sound above my head, and, stepping back off the porch, I saw the blinds of a front win- dow pushed out about an inch and a half; and by the faint light that appeared at the chink I judged that some one was holding a candle far back in the bed-room hall. Then a woman's voice, husky and tremulous, but still to be recog- nized as Mrs. Newcomer's, whispered with intense agitation : " Oh ! what is it ? Who is it ? Please go away ! We don't want anything ! I '11 wake my husband ! Mr. Newcomer will see you in the morning ! We Ve all gone to bed ! Oh, dear ! " This exclamation was caused by the action of a gust of wind which blew one leaf of the blind out of the lady's hand and revealed that Mrs. Newcomer was anything but accurate in her statements, for she wore a very pretty and rather elaborate dress, and, as the blind swung back, a piece of fancy work fell at my feet. ^ Gbe IRewcomere. ^ I established my identity and stated my errand, and was welcomed with an effusiveness such as no stranger had ever greeted me with before. The maid in the hallway, devoutly thanking the saints, as if my coming had saved the house from an attack of Apache Indians, produced a lamp, and the two females descended the stairs and were joined in the hallway by some more of the domestic staff. The process of let- ting me in was a long one. Bolt after bolt was withdrawn, key after key was turned. I knew the old house in its former tenant's time, and remembered that an iron lock with a brass key was its only equipment. The mighty armament was evidently new; but at last the door was pulled open, or, rather, pulled and pushed, for it stuck so tight in the frame that I had to put my shoulder to it before it would yield. As it went back a gust of chokingly warm air rushed out into my face; and it did not take me long to discover that every window in the house, from cellar to garret, was shut tight, although several large lamps were going at full blaze in the kitchen and library, where blankets had been hung up at the windows to keep the light in. Mrs. Newcomer, with beads of perspiration standing on her forehead, cordially invited me in, but I told her I had not come to stay, and had only meant to leave my map at the door, as I had another pressing engagement. This, how- ever, she would not hear of; and she so earnestly begged me to remain, at least until Mr. New- comer returned from the Doctor's, that I had to consent. Fortunately, in my utter astonishment, I had forgot to dispose of my cigar, and Mrs, Newcomer, observing this, suggested that I should smoke on the porch while she sat near the doorway. She admitted that it was rather close in the house, but said of course she did n't dare to have anything open when Mr. Newcomer was not within doors. So I sat outside and smoked, my hostess sat within the door and talked, and from the servants in the kitchen I could hear fervent ascriptions of thankfulness for the presence of the " good jontlemin." 140 ^ Gbe IRewcomers. -y- " I feel quite ashamed of myself for making you stay with me, Mr. Sage," began the lady; " but I know you would n't mind if you knew how nervous we all are over these dreadful nights in the country. I suppose you 've got used to them you must have, because you 've lived here so long, but I should think it must have required a great deal of courage. And how you get around at night, I don't see. Why, you have n't even got a cane, Mr. Sage! Last night we counted five electric lights that were out, and to-night they Ve only just lit them up ; and poor Mr. Newcomer has to go to the doctor's in all this dreadful darkness ! We could n't remember whether the baby had to have his pills first and the powders afterward, or the other way. And Henry that is, Mr. Newcomer, is so very near- sighted that he 's just as likely to run into a tramp as not and, anyway, they tell me that the night air is full of malaria germs, and that you never should sleep with your windows open. You don't think anything could have happened to Henry, do you, Mr. Sage ? I am sure I expected him back by this time. If you '11 excuse me a minute I '11 go up to the corner room and look down the road through the opera glass. Oh ! you don't know what a relief it is to have you here." Henry I mean Mr. Newcomer arrived at last, and although he hailed me cordially when his wife told him who I was, I noticed that he slipped hastily past me, and went with his wife into a little reception room just behind my back. Perhaps he supposed that I would think he was delivering an important medical message to his wife; but I could not have thought that, for from Suburban Sage, -y where 1 sat I saw him take off a light overcoat, unwind a silk muffler from his neck, and dis- embarrass himself of a heavy stick, a tiny 22-calibre revolver, and a dark-lantern. At Mr. Newcomer's earnest request, I braved the trying atmosphere of the house and drank a glass of tepid beer with him. It was a costly glass of beer for Newcomer. As I stepped over his door-sill to go home I felt the boards of the porch settle under my feet with a drop of an inch and a half. "B-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r- r-r-r ! ! ! " The loudest electric bell that I ever heard was going off with frightful rapidity and violent persistence. It was hardly necessary for Mrs. Newcomer to explain that she had set the new burglar- alarm, and had forgotten to warn me; and I realized her feelings when Newcomer admitted that he knew everything about that bell, except how to stop it. Meanwhile the bell continued to perform its functions. Newcomer asked me if I knew anything about electricity. I was glad and proud to say that nobody in the world knew so little about electricity as I did. I went home, leaving Newcomer doing something in a vague way with a screw-driver. I strolled slowly home and sat on my porch. An hour or so later, my wife asked me what that faint tinkling was that she had heard for so long. I told her, and she seemed mildly amused. But the next day she lured me down to a disused tool - house, at the end of the garden, '49 where lay an accumulation of old junk, with the rust of many years upon it. There was not much left of it, and I had quite forgotten all about it, but I could not help recognizing some coils of insulated wire, several gong-bells, two or three patent window fastenings, and a dark-lantern. 143 THE FIRST OF IT. 145 THE FIRST OF IT. HE question that his old friends of the city oftenest ask of the suburbanite in the course of his first year is this : " Do you really like it, living out there ? " To this, if he is unwise it being assumed that he can not help being a little bit snobbish he will reply that he despises suburban life; that he only takes to it for the sake of the children, and that it is merely a temporary expedient in the interests of sanitary science. For this little indiscretion he will pay dearly later on, when he buys his house and settles down. But if he is wise^he will say Yes and say it in very large letters, too, and feign an appropriate enthusiasm. Yet, if you ask me whether there ever was an indurated resident of a metropolitan city who really enjoyed his first year of suburban house- keeping, I should have to tell you that I do not believe it could be truly said of any man of the sort. How could he enjoy it? enjoy the new responsibilities the new problems a struggle with the furnace that ends only when the strug- gle with the front lawn begins the new con- ditions of butcher and baker - dom, and the strangeness of keeping your water supply in a box in the garret ? No ; certainly he does not enjoy these things, although they surely occupy his mind ; nor does he enjoy the breaking up of his settled ways of city life the loss of his pleasant stroll uptown from the office; of his half-hour's smoke at the club ; of his careless ii 147 ^ Gbe Suburban Sa0e. ^ stroll through art-gallery or auction-room ; of his luxurious idle hour before dinner, and of his easy transition to the theatre or the opera after- ward. These things are a part of his life, and he misses them; and deep in his heart he be- lieves that he always will miss them to the end of the chapter; but, after all, this is not where the shoe pinches. His new world must have joys of its own, even though it denies him those of the old. And, after all, it is one whose im- portance he has calculated exactly, and to which he has thoroughly made up his mind. No, no; the pinch is not here. He could readily enough accommodate his old foot to the new shoe if only his old friends would n't step on it. But, oh! those old friends! How the faces of them have changed! For years he has been familiar with their kindly jests and gibes ; and he has never regarded them as anything worse than pleasant tributes to his pleasant individu- ality, and he laughs as heartily as they do when he is rallied on the peculiarities of his tastes and habits and fancies. Now, however, he is made to understand beyond peradventure that he has put himself out of the pale of that generous communion, and that his claims to delicate con- sideration are held to be forfeit unless he is will- ing to bow himself in the dust and humble him- self before the righteous. At first he is only surprised and puzzled and pained when he finds the jests of his old city companions taking on a tone not in the least suggestive of urban courtesy. It is more in wonder than in anger that he perceives the bitter, resentful undercurrent of the humor that 148 ffirst f ft. ^ makes only a clumsy pretense to be as genial as of yore. He knows, of course, that he must expect some jokes on his desertion to the ranks of the Hayseeds; but he can not understand why, for the first time, these jests that come from friendly lip should be edged and pointed to cut and wound ; why they should come so strangely close to the verge of the positively offensive ; or why they should convey a sug- gestion of contemptuously indiscreet familiarity. After a while he gets a light on the subject, but it is not a very pleasant light. He gets an idea of the double crime he has uncon- sciously committed against the little world he has just left. In the first place, he has taken, with deliberation and foresight, a step to which his old comrades know that they all may be forced sooner or later; and they feel toward him as the other passengers would naturally feel toward a man who said : " Oh, well, if nobody really wants first choice of berths, I '11 take the extra large lower one in the middle section." In the second place and this is the real galling, maddening, stinging thing that he has done he has shown them all, quite un- consciously and unintentionally, but all the more convincingly, that he does n't think it worth while to sacrifice to their gods any longer; that he has made his own estimate of the game that they are playing, and that he does n't think it worth the amount of combustion which it gets out of the candle of human vitality. And yet they think he might have done it a little longer, just as they are doing it, bravely and uncomplainingly. He might have figured to I4Q ^ tTbe Suburban Sage. ^ get the children to the seaside, one after another, and he might have managed for his wife a week or two at Narragansett, and for himself a few days on somebody's yacht. With a small new economy here, and another one there, and a bit of self-sacrifice of this point, and a risk skillfully evaded at that, it ought to have been possible for him to remain at least a few years longer a resident of the city, though one dwelling sixty or eighty feet above its soil, and to enjoy the blessed favor and privilege of inquiring super- ciliously of the suburbanite: " What ! Yofl live in the country ? And do you really like it, living out there ? " fjo V Cbe fftrst f fit, V After a while a sort of resigned pity suc- ceeds to resentment in the comments which the suburbanite's friends make upon his dark and discreditable life. There even comes a time when they accept presents of flowers and fruit and early vegetables from him with the patron- izing kindness and curiosity which we extend to the prisoner who carves ingenious knickknacks in his lonely cell. Then there comes a time when they begin to ask casual, indifferent questions about the price of lots in his neighborhood; the sort of society he has; what he does to amuse himself; and what it costs to keep a horse in the country. It is unnecessary to say, however, that it never enters the innocent mind of the suburbanite that these questions are anything but a desire to ob- tain general information, or that they display any intention on the part of his haughty associates to join him in his rural walk in life. And so the time goes on, the suburbanite settling himself, day by day, more comfortably in the ever-increasing shadow of his own vine and fig tree; but always at the bottom of his heart, just a little bit pitying himself; until It so happens that early in June Mrs. Shingleroof takes the children to pay a visit to her family, and Mr. Shingleroof is left a bachelor for a couple of weeks. Mr. Shingle- roof is to spend the term of his bachelorhood in a New York hotel. Mrs. Shingleroof has sug- gested the plan, for her husband may not soon again have such an opportunity of re-visiting the glimpses of the urban moon that shone so bright- ly on his bachelor vigils; and she does not want to feel that marriage has wholly separated her husband from his old friends. Shingleroof has just seen his family off at the Grand Central, and is wending his way down- town when he meets Brownstone. He has not seen much of Brownstone within the last three years; for while Brownstone is a very good fellow he is known as a great wit of the clubs, and at one time he was so confoundedly sarcastic upon a certain subject, that really, you know "Hello, Shingleroof!" is Brownstone's greet- ing, " you 're the very man I want to see. I want 152 y Cbe fftrst f ft. y to ask you some questions about that place you live in, and I want you to make some inquiries there for me. Are you going out there to- night?" Shingleroof explains, and Brownstone has a brilliant idea. Shingleroof must spend a week with him, and he a week with Shingleroof. The first week is to be a mad revel among the won- ders of the town; the second week is to be one of quiet recuperation and exploration in suburban scenes. " We '11 have a rattling high old time," says Brownstone; "just like the old days, and then we '11 go out to your place and loaf it off. You are in for a holiday, anyway, and I can get my partner to run the office for a few days." The rattling good time rattles less than they had expected. Three or four nights of the thea- tres and music halls make them both more than willing to spend a quiet evening at home Brownstone's home but the evening is so quiet that Shingleroof goes to bed at half-past nine o'clock but not to sleep, for the roar of the city breaks his slumbers. In the day-time he finds Brownstone's clubs somewhat too prim and poky. He has lost track of the personalities. He feels out of place, too, among the pale, pre- cise people, he with his ruddy brown face, and his clothes that are just the same as theirs, only they are n't. One stranger takes him for an African explorer. On Friday night they see their last show, and go out of town on the midnight train to see a tennis tournament a.t Shingleroof 's Field Club. And, as he walks up the broad, silent road, breathing in the sweet night breeze under the 153 ^ Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ great arching elms, Shingleroof is conscious of a new, strange and glad sensation. He is up bright and early the next morn- ing, happy in the sunlight, the whispering trees, the wind blowing through his many windows ; happy in the songs of birds; happy even in pick- ing out the voices of individual dogs from among the great and tireless orchestra that barks and yelps and bays all around him. He gets into his flannels and goes downstairs and shakes hands with everybody in the house, like a patriarch in old days coming home from a jour- ney. He hears the homely news of the town who is sick, and who has got well ; how the water is n't roily any more, and what Mr. Dog- berry said about the sick terrier. He and his Man (or nearly so) inspect every corner of his small domain, and look his seventeen -year -old horse over as though he were a probable winner of the Suburban. In his trim garden he rejoices in his radishes and is content with his corn. He strolls out on the highway and receives a cheery greeting from every passer-by; from the easy- going townspeople to the brisk commuters; from the butcher in his snowy-hued wagon, and the doctor in his rusty gig. The boy with the milk stops to inform him that " We waxed de Wood- stocks, and I swiped t'ree ball off of dem." The young tennis enthusiasts, coming back from before-breakfast practice, cross the street to tell him of the chances of the game. Before he has been out ten minutes he has been asked to score 154 for a ball match, referee in the tennis finals, sub- scribe to the fund for a new church organ, and buy three tickets to the picnic of the Friendly Sons of Abyssinians. He feels quite at home. Then he looks up and sees Brownstone standing by him. Brownstone in patent-leather shoes, pearl-gray trousers, black cutaway coat, high - collared shirt, and, for some mysterious -y Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ reason, in a silk hat. He, too, has been out for a walk, and he has got into the only patch of underbrush within a mile. Clinging green mementos of his trip decorate him from head to foot. He feels that Brownstone is not doing I him credit in the eyes of the young tennis players, but he is too happy to be cross, and he inquires if his guest has had a good night. " Ye-es," replies Brownstone, doubtfully ; " that is, those wretched dogs and birds of yours kept me awake a good deal of the night. I say, what will take grass stains out of my trousers, and is this prickly stuff here what you call poison ivy?" Brownstone will go to town on Monday morning just to see if his partner is doing all right, and he will tell his host that he will surely be back that evening unless pressing business detains him. Shingleroof knows that pressing business will detain him, but he cares not a cent. He can get along without Brownstone's company, even though his wife and children be absent; he is at home, not at Brownstone's home, at Shingleroof 's home. And that makes all the difference. THE SPORTING SCHEME. A57 THE SPORTING SCHEME. HE train had been flagged at a little station in New Jersey, and I looked out the window to see if any passengers were likely to come aboard, for I was getting lonely in the great empty smoking-car. It was a gloomy day, too dark to read with comfort, and a fine, drizzling rain was beginning to fall. The sight of the company on the platform at once awakened my interest. They had just crossed over from a little real estate office which stood across the way from the station, and they formed a curious and striking collection of indi- viduals. One was a sour, saturnine, middle-aged man, who carried a dinner-pail. He was shaking his head obdurately in negative answer to what were evidently persistent pleadings on the part of another man, a small, spry person, cheaply clothed, who looked as if he might be a sewing- machine agent or the " advance " of a circus. The other six men were startlingly different in appearance from the other two talkers. They were all large, burly men, with rosy cheeks, close-cropped hair, a well-groomed appearance generally, and clothes that were at once ex- "V Gbe Sporting Scbeme. ^ pensive, English and loud. Two wore riding- breeches, one under a great white box-coat, the other with a covert-coat. Another was in the "pink" of an English fox-hunter; and the fourth wore a tweed suit with checkerboard stockings, baggy knee-breeches, and a cap. This man car- ried a golf stick. The other two men, although they belonged to the same general type, wore coachmen's liveries. Each of the six carried a heavy black rubber overcoat on his arm. The big men accompanied the two others in silence. My window was open, and I could hear the conversation as they approached. "You won't do it, then?" the little man was saying ; " not even if I find the horses ? Well, all right; just as you say; but I tell you, man, you are losing the chance of your life ! " The man with the tin-pail shook his head and went away, and the little man suddenly turned upon his companions, full of the rage of disappointment. ^ Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ " Climb on there, you tarriers ! " he said, addressing the elegant group with every mani- festation of disrespect. " It 's your fool mugs that hoodoo the business. Get aboard, you damn micks ! You ain't worth your feed ! " And he drove them before him into the smoking-car. " Get up there, you potato-peelers ! " he said. " Get up to the further end of the car. I won't sit with you. I am sick of you. And put on your coats, you yahoos. I don't care if it is hot; I ain't going to let you spoil those clothes." He had sunk down into a seat across the aisle before he perceived me and caught my won- dering eye. At once he crossed over. " Sounds kinder queer, does n't it?" he said. " Well, just be so good as not to give it away, and I '11 explain. He produced a business card and handed it to me. It read : I. LEGGET, SPORT BOOMER, Refers to every Real Estate Dealer in New Jersey. " Don't catch on ? " he inquired. " Well, it 's a pretty original scheme of my own. It did n't work at that place, and I was a fool to bother with a real estate agent who would carry his dinner in a can. But, you see, that 's ibo ^ be Sporting Scbcme. "V a religious community. All towns in New Jersey may be divided into two classes religious and sporting. Now, my business is booming sport towns. Want to see how I do it ? Well, you wait until I get two stations further on, where I drop this gang to relieve another one. It 's a junction, that station is, and we '11 be just in time for a train from New York on the other branch. You '11 see my boys work a train, and you '11 see how my scheme can build up a community. Here, I 've got to give them some orders!" Going up to the other end of the car, he talked earnestly for a long time to the six big men, who listened with awe on their faces. I caught his closing words: " Now, behave yourselves for once, you chumps, and show the gentleman how the trick 's done, and you shall have a can of beer when you get paid off." " Yis, sorr," said the man in the covert coat ; " we will, sorr ; thank you kindly, sorr." The little man came back to me just as the second station hove in sight. This was a very different place from the desolate domain of the agent with the tin-can. Through the trees in every direction I could see the light wood of unfinished houses. New paint shone on a score of commodious villas. There was also a real estate office near the station, but it was a neat and attractive structure, and a portly, well - fed gentleman stood in the doorway. " Drill, ye tarriers ! " shouted the little man to the big ones. " Hustle over to the other plat- form. There 's Mickey's gang over there. Tell Mickey to drill them with you till the New York ibr -y- tTbe Suburban Sa0e. ^ train is gone. They '11 have plenty of time left to get aboard here." As the men hurried across the platform they were met by another group similar in appearance, several of whom led horses. One had a horse of some blood drawing a dog-cart. One of the footmen immediately took his station at the head of this animal, while the other received from the agent a dressing - suit - case and a leather gun- case, which he held, one in each hand, standing erectly in the station door. Four of the mag- nificent gentlemen then mounted the horses, with considerable difficulty in fact, they had to be boosted up by their companions. The others assumed much easier attitudes upon their own feet. One or two lit cigars. The man in the checkerboard smoked a brierwood pipe. The agent distributed hunting-crops among them, and a small boy came out with a case of gleeks and teeing irons and putters, and the rest of them, and stood behind the checkerboards exactly like V Gbe Sporting Scbeme. ^ a Scotch or English caddie. All maintained ab- solute silence. It was on this ravishing spectacle of sport and fashion that the New York train drew up. Out came a group of seekers of suburban homes. They were probably mostly city people ; but when they saw that display of sporting style they stared about them like a lot of hayseeds on Broadway. Before we started I saw the whole group safely herded into the real estate office. Then the little man brought his second shift of men back into the car. "There!" said he; "that catches them every time. There were n't ten houses in that town six months ago. I did it every bit of it." " But don't they discover the imposition after a while?" I inquired. "Surely your new settlers must some time find out that these decoy-ducks of yours don't live in the town." " There is no imposition, my dear sir ! " rejoined the little man, less warmly. "The people who are attracted by that sort of thing are every bit as bad fake-sports as my bog-trotters here. These poor fellows of mine are honest laboring men out of employment. They do this thing for their board and lodging you see I feed them well and they 're a good deal better men than most of the dudes who think they can't live with- out white boxcoats and balloon riding-breeches. "Of course," he resumed, after a moment of reflection, "it don't do to work a town too long. There have been revulsions of feeling, and my tarriers have had the hose played on them. But, you see, it 's the regular secret society business. The people who are caught want to catch others. 12 163 Suburban Sa0e. I 've known them to go out in their own sport clothes and drill with my boys when the express trains came in. Oh, man, you don't understand the real estate business ! " Mr. Legget sank into a deep reverie on the greatness of his scheme, from which he awoke with a sudden start. " Here," said he, " I 'in forgetting myself. I 've got to inspect these men before I go to Jersey City. I have got to have them out on two more of these infernal criss-cross New Jer- sey railroads before dark. Here, you flannel- mouths, stand up in the aisle and be inspected. Larry Dooley. you wear your pants too hard. If you ain't more careful of them I '11 lay you off for a week. Maloney, your red-flannel shirt is showing over your shirt - collar. Corrigan, I 164 8 ^ Cbe ^Evolution of tbe Suburbanite. ^ carries a hand-bag. He has been spending the day at Commutahville. MR. CITT (with an expression of kindly superiority, gazing carelessly and superciliously about him). Nice sort of little place you have here, Subby. I suppose you '11 get to like it pretty well, too, after a while. Let's see, you used to say that you rather liked country life, did n't you? Seems kind of funny to see you in a place like this, though. I should think you 'd find it slow a good deal of the time. / should, I know. However, as you say, the children you know best, of course, what suits you but I should think Oh ! is that the train ? (Shak- ing hands warmly and hurriedly.) Well, good- by ; I 've had a charming day ! Tell Mrs. Sub- urbanite how much I 've enjoyed it! So long! (Exit, running.) TABLEAU II. SCENE: Same Pleasant Sub- urban Road. Same neat Cottage in foreground, with same front lawn. Same view of hills, etc., in distance. MR. SUBURBANITE discovered, accompanying MR. CITT to the Monday morning train. MR. CITT still carries a hand-bag, but his demeanor is less proud and more genial. He is thinking of a girl he knows in town, and wishing that MRS. SUB- URBANITE knew her, and would ask her out. MR. CITT (gazing about him, approvingly ). Really, you are very nicely settled here, Subby, old man. Seems to have done you good, too. Gad ! I never knew you were such a walker. Say, these macadam roads must be elegant for tandem bicycles, must n't they ? I s'pose you really like it out here, don't you ? Of course you do, or you would n't stay. Well, if you do want to live in the country, I suppose you could n't have chosen a better place, in its way. That little view down there (pointing), that 's really very pretty a morning like this, don't you know. Spring makes everything look pretty, though, I suppose. (Exeunt, strolling, to catch the train by one- eighth-of-a-second.) TABLEAU III. SCENE: Just the same Pleasant Suburban Road. Just the same neat Cottage in fore- ground, with just the same front lawn. Just the same view of hills, etc., in distance. y- be Evolution of tbc Suburbanite. -^ MR. SUBURBANITE discovered, accompanying MR. CITT to the Wednesday morning train. MR. CITT carries no hand-bag. He has got to the point of leaving his things at the house, and run- ning out when he feels like it. He is engaged to the girl in New York; and he looks around him with balmy ecstasy bubbling in his heart and beaming out of his eyes. MR. CITT. No, old man; I 'm sorry, but I shan't be out again to-night. Nellie will be at Narragansett at the end of the week, and I must hurry up and get some work done if I want to get off and see her. If it was n't for that, I 'd love to stay. Really, I don't believe you fellows who live out here all the time quite appreciate what a good time you have. Why, I met Lugsby in town the other day. and he was perfectly enthusi- astic over his visit here. Said he had n't enjoyed himself so much in he did n't know when. Oh! there 's no doubt about it, you Ve got a most delightful, rational way of life. Of course Nellie and I would n't care to live anywhere except in New York ; but I suppose there 's no doubt about it, you fellows out here in the country get more in return for your money than we do in the city. Now what, for instance, did you say that little gray house over there on the hill rented for? Oh, yes; five hundred dollars. Cheap, is n't it, for such a location ? And then that view ! Why, Lugsby you know how undemonstrative he is ? he was quite enthusiastic over that view. He said there was something Swiss about it. (Exeunt MR. Cm, talking steadily.) 171 be Suburban Sacje. .TABLEAU IV. SCENE: Same identical Sub- urban Road. Same identical neat Cottage in foreground, with same identical front lawn. Same iden- tical view of hills, etc., in distance. MR. SUBURBANITE discovered, escorting MR. CITT to last Sunday afternoon train. MR. CITT'S bearing is no longer either proud or exultant j but humble, grateful and anxious. He is married and is the father of one child, aged at the present moment 21 days, 4 hours and 56 minutes. He wears an ulster, and he grasps his friend's hand with effusive warmth at parting. MR. CITT. Well, good-by old man. You 've been awfully kind to take so much trouble. I feel as if I 'd been con- foundedly selfish, don't you know, taking up your Sunday in drag- ging you all over those cold houses; but, really, I should n't know what to do if it was n't for your advice. No ; I positively can't stay to dinner Mrs. Suburbanite is just as good as she can be but I must get back to the flat. The doctor says Nellie can sit up to dinner to-day, if she 's had a good day, and I know the poor child has simply set her heart on it. Your wife understands, I am sure. I can't tell you how relieved I shall be when I get Nellie and 172 ^ Gbe Evolution of tbe Suburbanite. V the baby out here in the fresh air and quiet ! She can't help getting back her strength here; don't you think so ? And she '11 enjoy it so ! And that view ! Think of having that view to look at instead of that miserable dark city street! Why, every time I see that view, it reminds me of Switzerland ! And you '11 tell the agent that I '11 take the Dusenberry cottage the gray one, I mean, not the other you know. Good-by, aga ; n, and thank you .ever so much. Nellie will be simply delighted when I tell her. (Exit, computing interest.) TABLEAU V. SCENE: Same Pleasant Sub- urban Road. TWO Neat Cottages in foreground, with TWO front lawns. Same view of same hills, etc., in same distance. MR. CITT discovered, escorting MR. NEXT to the Sunday afternoon tram. The latter carries a hand-bag. He has been spending the day in Com- mutahville with his old friend and former bachelor companion, MR. CITT, late of New York. With an expression of kindly superiority he gazes care- lessly and superciliously about him. 173 y- Gbe Suburban Sage. ^ MR. CITT (with 'feverish enthusiasm). Pretty nice now, is n't it ? I don't believe there 's another place like this within twenty no, sir, within forty miles of New York. I '11 tell you what it is, Next, ray boy, what you want to do is to marry a nice girl, and come out here and settle down with us. It 's the only real way to enjoy life. Now, there 's that house I had before I built my present one the Dusen- berry cottage up there on the hill put a few hundred, or may be a thousand dollars' worth of repairs into that to the plumbing and that sort of thing and it will make a cottage fit for a king. And that view ! man alive, look at that view! Could you imagine you were within one hour of New York ? Why, man, it 's Switzer- land, that 's what it is ! It 's Switzerland ! (Exeunt. The train booms in the distance.) SO SPINS TO END IT WITH A RHYME THAT VENGEFUL WHIRLIGIG OF TIME! 174 -MADE IN FRANCE." Under the title of "Made in France" H. C. Bunner has gathered a number of short stones, 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