HARPERS 
 
 Beginning in this issue 
 
 STEPHEN LEACOCK'S 
 
 New Nonsense Novels 
 
 PHILIP GIBBS 
 
 Ideals and Disillusions 
 
 ROBERT FROST 
 
 A New Group of Poems 
 
 By the author of 
 "North of Boston" 
 
 In the Sacred City 
 of Buddha 
 
 By ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS 
 Price 40 
 
ESTEY PIANOS 
 
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 Harper's Magazine : Published Monthly ; 40 cents a copy, $4.00 a, Year. Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York 
 (Entered as second-class matter, March 7, 1913, at the post office at New York, N.Y., under the act of March 3, 1879. Serial No. 842) 
 JULY. 1920 
 
HARPE R'S M AGAZIN E 
 
 JULY 1920 
 
 Frontispiece in Color F. WALTER TAYLOR 
 
 Urga, The Sacred City of the Living Buddha ROY CHAPMAN ANDREWS . . . 145 
 
 Illustrated with Photographs 
 
 The Rotter. A Story FLETA CAMPBELL SPRINGER . . 157 
 
 Illustrations by T. K. HANNA 
 
 Ideals and Disillusions PHILIP GIBBS 175 
 
 A Village Portrait. A Poem .... MARGARET STEEL HARD . . . 186 
 
 . . .187 
 A Group of Poems ROBERT FROST 196 
 
 . . .200 
 Tempering Justice with Common Sense . . THEODORE MACFARLANE KNAPPEN 21 1 
 
 New Nonsense Novels STEPHEN LEACOCK 
 
 I. " Winsome Winnie " 
 
 The Beauty and the Bolshevist. A Story. Part III ALICE DUER MILLER 
 
 Illustrations in Tint by R. M. CROSBY 
 
 The Miracle. A Story BETH BRADFORD GILCHRIST . .217 
 
 Illustrations by E. L. CHASE 
 
 America Goes Back to Work. Part III. EDWARD HUNGERFORD .... 231 
 
 Illustrated with Photographs 
 
 Wisdom. A Poem MARGARET WIDDEMER .... 243 
 
 . . .244 
 
 The Sore Spot of Europe ARTHUR BULLARD 256 
 
 Sharer. A Poem EDITH M. THOMAS 264 
 
 . 265 
 
 Decline and Fall. A Story HOWARD BRUBAKER 
 
 Illustrations by R. McNsiL CRAMPTON 
 
 W. D. Howells EDWARD S. MARTIN .... 
 
 With Portrait 
 
 The Lion's Mouth 267 
 
 "A Doctor of Literature," by C. A. Bennett "Ballad at Twenty-three," by Irwin Edman "The 
 Woman Alone." 
 
 Editor's Drawer 273 
 
 "Still Waters," by Malcolm La Prade; illustrated by the author. " Ballade of Life's Dream," by Rich- 
 ard Le Callienne. Drawings by Chester I. Garde, R. B. Fuller. 
 
 Business and Financial Cond'tions . JOHN GRANT DATER 
 
 HARPER'S MAGAZINE: Published Monthly; 40 
 cents a copy, $j.oo a Year. Issue of July, IQ.ZO. Serial 
 number. 842. 
 
 Harper & Brothers, Franklin Square, New York, N. Y.; 
 Clinton T. Brainard, President and Treasurer, Franklin 
 
 Square, New York. N. Y. ; Henry Hoyns, Vice-President, 
 Franklin Square, New York, N.Y.; Thomas B. Wells, Vice- 
 President and Secretary, Franklin Square, New York, N. Y. 
 Entered as second-class matter, March 7, 1013, at the post 
 office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
A GROUP OF POEMS 
 
 BY ROBERT FROST 
 
 After being almost unheard for two years, Robert Frost is speaking again, in 
 the old strain that mil be unmistakable to readers of his " North of Boston." But 
 Mr. Frost has not really been silent during this period. He has been producing 
 more work of the type that has made him regarded on both sides of the ocean as 
 one of the authentic voices of American literature. In the group of new poems 
 which he here presents the broad range of his work is represented as Mr. Frost 
 himself puts it, " big bear, little bear, and middle-sized bear." 
 
 FRAGMENTARY BLUE 
 
 WHY make so much of fragmentary blue 
 In here and there a bird or butterfly, 
 Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye, 
 When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue? 
 
 Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet) 
 Though some savants make earth include the sky, 
 And blue so far above us comes so high, 
 
 It only gives our wish for blue a whet. 
 
 PLACE FOR A THIRD 
 
 NOTHING to say to all those marriages! 
 She had made three herself to three of his. 
 The score was even for them, three to three. 
 But come to die she found she cared so much: 
 She thought of children in a burial row; 
 Three children in a burial row were sad. 
 One man's three women in a burial row 
 Somehow made her impatient with the man. 
 
A GROUP OF POEMS 197 
 
 And so she said to Laban, "You have done 
 
 A good deal right: don't do the last thing wrong. 
 
 Don't make me lie with those two other women." 
 
 Laban said, No, he would not make her lie 
 
 With any one but that she had a mind to. 
 
 If that was how she felt, of course, he said. 
 
 She went her way. But Laban having caught 
 
 This glimpse of lingering person in Eliza, 
 
 And anxious to make all he could of it 
 
 With something he remembered in himself., 
 
 Tried to think how he could exceed his promise, 
 
 And give good measure to the dead, though thankless. 
 
 If that was how she felt, he kept repeating. 
 
 His first thought under pressure was a grave 
 
 In a new boughten grave plot by herself, 
 
 Under he didn't care how great a stone: 
 
 He'd sell a yoke of steers to pay for it. 
 
 And weren't there special cemetery flowers, 
 
 That once grief sets to growing, grief may rest: 
 
 The flowers will go on with grief awhile, 
 
 And no one seem neglecting or neglected? 
 
 A prudent grief will not despise such aids. 
 
 He thought of evergreen and everlasting. 
 
 And then he had a thought worth many of these. 
 
 Somewhere must be the grave of the young boy 
 
 Who married her for playmate more than helpmate, 
 
 And sometimes laughed at what it was between them. 
 
 How would she like to sleep her last with him? 
 
 Where was his grave? Did Laban know his name? 
 
 He found the grave a town or two away, 
 
 The headstone cut with John, Beloved Husband, 
 
 Beside it room reserved, the say a sister's, 
 
 A never-married sister's of that husband, 
 
 Whether Eliza would be welcome there. 
 
 The dead was bound to silence: ask the sister. 
 
 So Laban saw the sister, and, saying nothing 
 
 Of where Eliza wanted not to lie, 
 
 And who had thought to lay her with her first love, 
 
 Begged simply for the grave. The sister's face 
 
 Fell all in wrinkles of responsibility. 
 
 She wanted to do right. She'd have to think. 
 
198 HARPER'S MONTHLY MAGAZINE 
 
 Laban was old and poor, yet seemed to care; 
 And she was old and poor but she cared, too. 
 They sat. She cast one dull, old look at him, 
 Then turned him out to go on other errands 
 She said he might attend to in the village, 
 While she made up her mind how much she cared 
 And how much Laban cared and why he cared 
 (She made shrewd eyes to see where he carne in). 
 
 She'd looked EKza up her second time, 
 
 A widow at her second husband's grave, 
 
 And offered her a home to rest awhile 
 
 Before she went the poor man's widow's way, 
 
 Housekeeping for the next man out of wedlock. 
 
 She and Eliza had been friends through all. 
 
 Who was she to judge marriage in a world 
 
 Whose Bible's so confused up in marriage counsel? 
 
 The sister had not come across this Laban; 
 
 A decent product of life's ironing-out; 
 
 She must not keep him waiting. Time would press 
 
 Between the death day and the funeral day. 
 
 So when she saw him coming in the street 
 
 She hurried her decision to be ready 
 
 To meet him with his answer at the door. 
 
 Laban had known about what it would be 
 
 From the way she had set her poor old mouth, 
 
 To do, as she had put it, what was right. 
 
 She gave it through the screen door closed between them: 
 "No, not with John. There wouldn't be no sense. 
 Eliza's had too many other men." 
 
 Laban was forced to fall back on his plan 
 To buy Eliza a plot to lie alone in: 
 Which gives him for himself a choice of lots 
 When his time comes to die and settle down. 
 
 GOOD-BY AND KEEP COLD 
 
 HIS saying good-by on the edge of the dark 
 A And cold to an orchard so young in the bark 
 Reminds me of all that can happen to harm 
 An orchard away at the^end of the farm 
 
A GROUP OF POEMS 199 
 
 All winter, cut off by a hill from the house. 
 
 I don't want it girdled by rabbit and mouse, 
 
 I don't want it dreamily nibbled for browse 
 
 By deer, and I don't want it budded by grouse. 
 
 (If certain it wouldn't be idle to call 
 
 I'd summon grouse, rabbit, and deer to the wall 
 
 And warn them aw r ay with a stick for a gun.) 
 
 I don't want it stirred by the heat of the sun. 
 
 (We made it secure against being, I hope, 
 
 By setting it out on a northerly slope.) 
 
 No orchard's the worse for the wintriest storm; 
 
 But one thing about it, it mustn't get warm. 
 
 "How often already you've had to be told, 
 
 Keep cold, young orchard. Good-by and keep cold. 
 
 Dread fifty above more than fifty below." 
 
 I have to be gone for a season or so. 
 
 My business awhile is with different trees, 
 
 Less carefully nurtured, less fruitful than these, 
 
 And such as is done to their wood with an ax 
 
 Maples and birches and tamaracks. 
 
 I wish I could promise to lie in the night 
 
 And think of an orchard's arboreal plight 
 
 When slowly (and nobody comes with a light) 
 
 Its heart sinks lower under the sod. 
 
 But something has to be left to God. 
 
 FOR ONCE, THEN, SOMETHING 
 
 OTHERS taunt me with having knelt at well-curbs 
 Always wrong to the light, so never seeing 
 Deeper down in the well than where the water 
 Gives me back in a shining surface picture 
 Me myself in the summer heaven godlike, 
 Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. 
 Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, 
 I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, 
 Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, 
 Something more of the depths and then I lost it. 
 Water came to rebuke the too clear water. 
 One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple 
 Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, 
 Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? 
 Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something. 
 

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