chapter 27

) C.M. Gayley The Age of Fable (chapters 22 and 23) Thomas Bulfinch The Story of the Greek People Eva March Tappan Greece and the Aegean Isles Philip S. Marden Greek Lands and Letters F.G. and A.C.E. Allinson Old Greek Folk Stories J.P. Peabody Men of Old Greece Jennie Hall The Lotos-eaters Alfred Tennyson Ulysses " " The Strayed Reveller Matthew Arnold A Song of Phaeacia Andrew Lang The Voyagers (in _The Fields of Dawn_) Lloyd Mifflin Alice Freeman Palmer George Herbert Palmer

See the references for _Moly_ on p. 84, and for Odysseus on p. 140.

ODYSSEUS

GEORGE CABOT LODGE

He strove with Gods and men in equal mood Of great endurance: Not alone his hands Wrought in wild seas and labored in strange lands, And not alone his patient strength withstood The clashing cliffs and Circe's perilous sands: Eager of some imperishable good He drave new pathways thro' the trackless flood Foreguarded, fearless, free from Fate's commands. How shall our faith discern the truth he sought? We too must watch and wander till our eyes, Turned skyward from the topmost tower of thought, Haply shall find the star that marked his goal, The watch-fire of transcendent liberties Lighting the endless spaces of the soul.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Read the poem through. How did Ulysses strive with gods and men? Why can it be said that he did not labor alone? Look up the story of Circe and her palace.[10] What was the imperishable good that Ulysses sought? What does his experience have to do with our lives? What sort of freedom does the author speak of in the last few lines?

This verse-form is called the sonnet. How many lines has it? Make out a scheme of the rhymes: _a b b a_, etc. Notice the change of thought at the ninth line. Do all sonnets show this change?

EXERCISES

Read several other sonnets; for instance, the poem _On the Life-Mask of Abraham Lincoln_, on page 210, or _On First Looking into Chapman's Homer_, by John Keats, or _The Grasshopper and the Cricket_, by Leigh Hunt.

Notice how these other sonnets are constructed. Why are they considered good?

If possible, read part of what is said about the sonnet in _English Verse_, by R.M. Alden or in _Forms of English Poetry_, by C.F. Johnson, or in _Melodies of English Verse_, by Lewis Kennedy Morse; notice some of the examples given.

Look in the good magazines for examples of the sonnet.

COLLATERAL READINGS

To the Grasshopper and the Cricket Leigh Hunt The Fish Answers (or, The Fish to the Man)[11] Leigh Hunt On the Grasshopper and Cricket John Keats On First Looking into Chapman's Homer John Keats Ozymandias P.B. Shelley The Sonnet R.W. Gilder The Odyssey (sonnet) Andrew Lang The Wine of Circe (sonnet) Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Automobile (sonnet)[12] Percy Mackaye The Sonnet William Wordsworth

See also references for the _Odyssey_, p. 137, and for _Moly_, p. 84.

A ROMANCE OF REAL LIFE

WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

(In _Suburban Sketches_)

It was long past the twilight hour, which has been already mentioned as so oppressive in suburban places, and it was even too late for visitors, when a resident, whom I shall briefly describe as a contributor to the magazines, was startled by a ring at his door. As any thoughtful person would have done upon the like occasion, he ran over his acquaintance in his mind, speculating whether it were such or such a one, and dismissing the whole list of improbabilities, before he laid down the book he was reading and answered the bell. When at last he did this, he was rewarded by the apparition of an utter stranger on his threshold,--a gaunt figure of forlorn and curious smartness towering far above him, that jerked him a nod of the head, and asked if Mr. Hapford lived there. The face which the lamplight revealed was remarkable for a harsh two days' growth of beard, and a single bloodshot eye; yet it was not otherwise a sinister countenance, and there was something in the strange presence that appealed and touched. The contributor, revolving the facts vaguely in his mind, was not sure, after all, that it was not the man's clothes rather than his expression that softened him toward the rugged visage: they were so tragically cheap; and the misery of helpless needle-women, and the poverty and ignorance of the purchaser, were so apparent in their shabby newness, of which they appeared still conscious enough to have led the way to the very window, in the Semitic quarter of the city, where they had lain ticketed, "This nobby suit for $15."

But the stranger's manner put both his face and his clothes out of mind, and claimed a deeper interest when, being answered that the person for whom he asked did not live there, he set his bristling lips hard together, and sighed heavily.

"They told me," he said, in a hopeless way, "that he lived on this street, and I've been to every other house. I'm very anxious to find him, Cap'n,"--the contributor, of course, had no claim to the title with which he was thus decorated,--"for I've a daughter living with him, and I want to see her; I've just got home from a two years' voyage, and"--there was a struggle of the Adam's-apple in the man's gaunt throat--"I find she's about all there is left of my family."

How complex is every human motive! This contributor had been lately thinking, whenever he turned the pages of some foolish traveller,--some empty prattler of Southern or Eastern lands, where all sensation was long ago exhausted, and the oxygen has perished from every sentiment, so has it been breathed and breathed again,--that nowadays the wise adventurer sat down beside his own register and waited for incidents to seek him out. It seemed to him that the cultivation of a patient and receptive spirit was the sole condition needed to insure the occurrence of all manner of surprising facts within the range of one's own personal knowledge; that not only the Greeks were at our doors, but the fairies and the genii, and all the people of romance, who had but to be hospitably treated in order to develop the deepest interest of fiction, and to become the characters of plots so ingenious that the most cunning invention were poor beside them. I myself am not so confident of this, and would rather trust Mr. Charles Reade, say, for my amusement than any chance combination of events. But I should be afraid to say how much his pride in the character of the stranger's sorrows, as proof of the correctness of his theory, prevailed with the contributor to ask him to come in and sit down; though I hope that some abstract impulse of humanity, some compassionate and unselfish care for the man's misfortunes as misfortunes, was not wholly wanting. Indeed, the helpless simplicity with which he had confided his case might have touched a harder heart. "Thank you," said the poor fellow, after a moment's hesitation. "I believe I will come in. I've been on foot all day, and after such a long voyage it makes a man dreadfully sore to walk about so much. Perhaps you can think of a Mr. Hapford living somewhere in the neighborhood."

He sat down, and, after a pondering silence, in which he had remained with his head fallen upon his breast, "My name is Jonathan Tinker," he said, with the unaffected air which had already impressed the contributor, and as if he felt that some form of introduction was necessary, "and the girl that I want to find is Julia Tinker." Then he added, resuming the eventful personal history which the listener exulted, while he regretted, to hear: "You see, I shipped first to Liverpool, and there I heard from my family; and then I shipped again for Hong-Kong, and after that I never heard a word: I seemed to miss the letters everywhere. This morning, at four o'clock, I left my ship as soon as she had hauled into the dock, and hurried up home. The house was shut, and not a soul in it; and I didn't know what to do, and I sat down on the doorstep to wait till the neighbors woke up, to ask them what had become of my family. And the first one come out he told me my wife had been dead a year and a half, and the baby I'd never seen, with her; and one of my boys was dead; and he didn't know where the rest of the children was, but he'd heard two of the little ones was with a family in the city."

The man mentioned these things with the half-apologetical air observable in a certain kind of Americans when some accident obliges them to confess the infirmity of the natural feelings. They do not ask your sympathy, and you offer it quite at your own risk, with a chance of having it thrown back upon your hands. The contributor assumed the risk so far as to say, "Pretty rough!" when the stranger paused; and perhaps these homely words were best suited to reach the homely heart. The man's quivering lips closed hard again, a kind of spasm passed over his dark face, and then two very small drops of brine shone upon his weather-worn cheeks. This demonstration, into which he had been surprised, seemed to stand for the passion of tears into which the emotional races fall at such times. He opened his lips with a kind of dry click, and went on:--

"I hunted about the whole forenoon in the city, and at last I found the children. I'd been gone so long they didn't know me, and somehow I thought the people they were with weren't over-glad I'd turned up. Finally the oldest child told me that Julia was living with a Mr. Hapford on this street, and I started out here to-night to look her up. If I can find her, I'm all right. I can get the family together, then, and start new."

"It seems rather odd," mused the listener aloud, "that the neighbors let them break up so, and that they should all scatter as they did."

"Well, it ain't so curious as it seems, Cap'n. There was money for them at the owners', all the time; I'd left part of my wages when I sailed; but they didn't know how to get at it, and what could a parcel of children do? Julia's a good girl, and when I find her I'm all right."

The writer could only repeat that there was no Mr. Hapford living on that street, and never had been, so far as he knew. Yet there might be such a person in the neighborhood: and they would go out together and ask at some of the houses about. But the stranger must first take a glass of wine; for he looked used up.

The sailor awkwardly but civilly enough protested that he did not want to give so much trouble, but took the glass, and, as he put it to his lips, said formally, as if it were a toast or a kind of grace, "I hope I may have the opportunity of returning the compliment." The contributor thanked him; though, as he thought of all the circumstances of the case, and considered the cost at which the stranger had come to enjoy his politeness, he felt little eagerness to secure the return of the compliment at the same price, and added, with the consequence of another set phrase, "Not at all." But the thought had made him the more anxious to befriend the luckless soul fortune had cast in his way; and so the two sallied out together, and rang doorbells wherever lights were still seen burning in the windows, and asked the astonished people who answered their summons whether any Mr. Hapford were known to live in the neighborhood.

And although the search for this gentleman proved vain, the contributor could not feel that an expedition which set familiar objects in such novel lights was altogether a failure. He entered so intimately into the cares and anxieties of his protégé that at times he felt himself in some inexplicable sort a shipmate of Jonathan Tinker, and almost personally a partner of his calamities. The estrangement of all things which takes place, within doors and without, about midnight may have helped to cast this doubt upon his identity;--he seemed to be visiting now for the first time the streets and neighborhoods nearest his own, and his feet stumbled over the accustomed walks. In his quality of houseless wanderer, and--so far as appeared to others--possibly worthless vagabond, he also got a new and instructive effect upon the faces which, in his real character, he knew so well by their looks of neighborly greeting; and it is his belief that the first hospitable prompting of the human heart is to shut the door in the eyes of homeless strangers who present themselves after eleven o'clock. By that time the servants are all abed, and the gentleman of the house answers the bell, and looks out with a loath and bewildered face, which gradually changes to one of suspicion, and of wonder as to what those fellows can possibly want of _him_, till at last the prevailing expression is one of contrite desire to atone for the first reluctance by any sort of service. The contributor professes to have observed these changing phases in the visages of those whom he that night called from their dreams, or arrested in the act of going to bed; and he drew the conclusion--very proper for his imaginable connection with the garroting and other adventurous brotherhoods--that the most flattering moment for knocking on the head people who answer a late ring at night is either in their first selfish bewilderment, or their final self-abandonment to their better impulses. It does not seem to have occurred to him that he would himself have been a much more favorable subject for the predatory arts than any of his neighbors, if his shipmate, the unknown companion of his researches for Mr. Hapford, had been at all so minded. But the faith of the gaunt giant upon which he reposed was good, and the contributor continued to wander about with him in perfect safety. Not a soul among those they asked had ever heard of a Mr. Hapford,--far less of a Julia Tinker living with him. But they all listened to the contributor's explanation with interest and eventual sympathy; and in truth,--briefly told, with a word now and then thrown in by Jonathan Tinker, who kept at the bottom of the steps, showing like a gloomy spectre in the night, or, in his grotesque length and gauntness, like the other's shadow cast there by the lamplight,--it was a story which could hardly fail to awaken pity.

At last, after ringing several bells where there were no lights, in the mere wantonness of good-will, and going away before they could be answered (it would be entertaining to know what dreams they caused the sleepers within), there seemed to be nothing for it but to give up the search till morning, and go to the main street and wait for the last horse-car to the city.

There, seated upon the curbstone, Jonathan Tinker, being plied with a few leading questions, told in hints and scraps the story of his hard life, which was at present that of a second mate, and had been that of a cabin-boy and of a seaman before the mast. The second mate's place he held to be the hardest aboard ship. You got only a few dollars more than the men, and you did not rank with the officers; you took your meals alone, and in everything you belonged by yourself. The men did not respect you, and sometimes the captain abused you awfully before the passengers. The hardest captain that Jonathan Tinker ever sailed with was Captain Gooding of the Cape. It had got to be so that no man could ship second mate under Captain Gooding; and Jonathan Tinker was with him only one voyage. When he had been home awhile, he saw an advertisement for a second mate, and he went round to the owners'. They had kept it secret who the captain was; but there was Captain Gooding in the owners' office. "Why, here's the man, now, that I want for a second mate," said he, when Jonathan Tinker entered; "he knows me."--"Captain Gooding, I know you 'most too well to want to sail under you," answered Jonathan. "I might go if I hadn't been with you one voyage too many already."

"And then the men!" said Jonathan, "the men coming aboard drunk, and having to be pounded sober! And the hardest of the fight falls on the second mate! Why, there isn't an inch of me that hasn't been cut over or smashed into a jell. I've had three ribs broken; I've got a scar from a knife on my cheek; and I've been stabbed bad enough, half a dozen times, to lay me up."

Here he gave a sort of desperate laugh, as if the notion of so much misery and such various mutilation were too grotesque not to be amusing. "Well, what can you do?" he went on. "If you don't strike, the men think you're afraid of them; and so you have to begin hard and go on hard. I always tell a man, 'Now, my man, I always begin with a man the way I mean to keep on. You do your duty and you're all right. But if you don't'--Well, the men ain't Americans any more,--Dutch, Spaniards, Chinese, Portuguee, and it ain't like abusing a white man."

Jonathan Tinker was plainly part of the horrible tyranny which we all know exists on shipboard; and his listener respected him the more that, though he had heart enough to be ashamed of it, he was too honest not to own it.

Why did he still follow the sea? Because he did not know what else to do. When he was younger, he used to love it, but now he hated it. Yet there was not a prettier life in the world if you got to be captain. He used to hope for that once, but not now; though he _thought_ he could navigate a ship. Only let him get his family together again, and he would--yes, he would--try to do something ashore.

No car had yet come in sight, and so the contributor suggested that they should walk to the car-office, and look in the "Directory," which is kept there, for the name of Hapford, in search of whom it had already been arranged that they should renew their acquaintance on the morrow. Jonathan Tinker, when they had reached the office, heard with constitutional phlegm that the name of the Hapford for whom he inquired was not in the "Directory." "Never mind," said the other; "come round to my house in the morning. We'll find him yet." So they parted with a shake of the hand, the second mate saying that he believed he should go down to the vessel and sleep aboard,--if he could sleep,--and murmuring at the last moment the hope of returning the compliment, while the other walked homeward, weary as to the flesh, but, in spite of his sympathy for Jonathan Tinker, very elate in spirit. The truth is,--and however disgraceful to human nature, let the truth still be told,--he had recurred to his primal satisfaction in the man as calamity capable of being used for such and such literary ends, and, while he pitied him, rejoiced in him as an episode of real life quite as striking and complete as anything in fiction. It was literature made to his hand. Nothing could be better, he mused; and once more he passed the details of the story in review, and beheld all those pictures which the poor fellow's artless words had so vividly conjured up: he saw him leaping ashore in the gray summer dawn as soon as the ship hauled into the dock, and making his way, with his vague sea-legs unaccustomed to the pavements, up through the silent and empty city streets; he imagined the tumult of fear and hope which the sight of the man's home must have caused in him, and the benumbing shock of finding it blind and deaf to all his appeals; he saw him sitting down upon what had been his own threshold, and waiting in a sort of bewildered patience till the neighbors should be awake, while the noises of the streets gradually arose, and the wheels began to rattle over the stones, and the milk-man and the ice-man came and went, and the waiting figure began to be stared at, and to challenge the curiosity of the passing policeman; he fancied the opening of the neighbor's door, and the slow, cold understanding of the case; the manner, whatever it was, in which the sailor was told that one year before his wife had died, with her babe, and that his children were scattered, none knew where. As the contributor dwelt pityingly upon these things, but at the same time estimated their aesthetic value one by one, he drew near the head of his street, and found himself a few paces behind a boy slouching onward through the night, to whom he called out, adventurously, and with no real hope of information,--

"Do you happen to know anybody on this street by the name of Hapford?"

"Why, no, not in this town," said the boy; but he added that there was a street of the same name in a neighboring suburb, and that there was a Hapford living on it.

"By Jove!" thought the contributor, "this is more like literature than ever"; and he hardly knew whether to be more provoked at his own stupidity in not thinking of a street of the same name in the next village, or delighted at the element of fatality which the fact introduced into the story; for Tinker, according to his own account, must have landed from the cars a few rods from the very door he was seeking, and so walked farther and farther from it every moment. He thought the case so curious, that he laid it briefly before the boy, who, however he might have been inwardly affected, was sufficiently true to the national traditions not to make the smallest conceivable outward sign of concern in it.

At home, however, the contributor related his adventures and the story of Tinker's life, adding the fact that he had just found out where Mr. Hapford lived. "It was the only touch wanting," said he; "the whole thing is now perfect."

"It's _too_ perfect," was answered from a sad enthusiasm. "Don't speak of it! I can't take it in."

"But the question is," said the contributor, penitently taking himself to task for forgetting the hero of these excellent misfortunes in his delight at their perfection, "how am I to sleep to-night, thinking of that poor soul's suspense and uncertainty? Never mind,--I'll be up early, and run over and make sure that it is Tinker's Hapford, before he gets out here, and have a pleasant surprise for him. Would it not be a justifiable _coup de théâtre_ to fetch his daughter here, and let her answer his ring at the door when he comes in the morning?"

This plan was discouraged. "No, no; let them meet in their own way. Just take him to Hapford's house and leave him."

"Very well. But he's too good a character to lose sight of. He's got to come back here and tell us what he intends to do."

The birds, next morning, not having had the second mate on their minds either as an unhappy man or a most fortunate episode, but having slept long and soundly, were singing in a very sprightly way in the wayside trees; and the sweetness of their notes made the contributor's heart light as he climbed the hill and rang at Mr. Hapford's door.

The door was opened by a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, whom he knew at a glance for the second mate's daughter, but of whom, for form's sake, he asked if there were a girl named Julia Tinker living there.

"My name's Julia Tinker," answered the maid, who had rather a disappointing face.

"Well," said the contributor, "your father's got back from his Hong-Kong voyage."

"Hong-Kong voyage?" echoed the girl, with a stare of helpless inquiry, but no other visible emotion.

"Yes. He had never heard of your mother's death. He came home yesterday morning, and was looking for you all day."

Julia Tinker remained open-mouthed but mute; and the other was puzzled at the want of feeling shown, which he could not account for even as a national trait. "Perhaps there's some mistake," he said.

"There must be," answered Julia: "my father hasn't been to sea for a good many years. _My_ father," she added, with a diffidence indescribably mingled with a sense of distinction,--"_my_ father 's in State's Prison. What kind of looking man was this?"

The contributor mechanically described him.

Julia Tinker broke into a loud, hoarse laugh. "Yes, it's him, sure enough." And then, as if the joke were too good to keep: "Mis' Hapford, Mis' Hapford, father's got out. Do come here!" she called into a back room.

When Mrs. Hapford appeared, Julia fell back, and, having deftly caught a fly on the doorpost, occupied herself in plucking it to pieces, while she listened to the conversation of the others.

"It's all true enough," said Mrs. Hapford, when the writer had recounted the moving story of Jonathan Tinker, "so far as the death of his wife and baby goes. But he hasn't been to sea for a good many years, and he must have just come out of State's Prison, where he was put for bigamy. There's always two sides to a story, you know; but they say it broke his first wife's heart, and she died. His friends don't want him to find his children, and this girl especially."

"He's found his children in the city," said the contributor gloomily, being at a loss what to do or say, in view of the wreck of his romance.

"Oh, he's found 'em, has he?" cried Julia, with heightened amusement. "Then he'll have me next, if I don't pack and go."

"I'm very, very sorry," said the contributor, secretly resolved never to do another good deed, no matter how temptingly the opportunity presented itself. "But you may depend he won't find out from _me_ where you are. Of course I had no earthly reason for supposing his story was not true."

"Of course," said kind-hearted Mrs. Hapford, mingling a drop of honey with the gall in the contributor's soul, "you only did your duty."

And indeed, as he turned away, he did not feel altogether without compensation. However Jonathan Tinker had fallen in his esteem as a man, he had even risen as literature. The episode which had appeared so perfect in its pathetic phases did not seem less finished as a farce; and this person, to whom all things of every-day life presented themselves in periods more or less rounded, and capable of use as facts or illustrations, could not but rejoice in these new incidents, as dramatically fashioned as the rest. It occurred to him that, wrought into a story, even better use might be made of the facts now than before, for they had developed questions of character and of human nature which could not fail to interest. The more he pondered upon his acquaintance with Jonathan Tinker, the more fascinating the erring mariner became, in his complex truth and falsehood, his delicately blended shades of artifice and naïveté. He must, it was felt, have believed to a certain point in his own inventions: nay, starting with that groundwork of truth,--the fact that his wife was really dead, and that he had not seen his family for two years,--why should he not place implicit faith in all the fictions reared upon it? It was probable that he felt a real sorrow for her loss, and that he found a fantastic consolation in depicting the circumstances of her death so that they should look like his inevitable misfortunes rather than his faults. He might well have repented his offence during those two years of prison; and why should he not now cast their dreariness and shame out of his memory, and replace them with the freedom and adventure of a two years' voyage to China,--so probable, in all respects, that the fact should appear an impossible nightmare? In the experiences of his life he had abundant material to furnish forth the facts of such a voyage, and in the weariness and lassitude that should follow a day's walking equally after a two years' voyage and two years' imprisonment, he had as much physical proof in favor of one hypothesis as the other. It was doubtless true, also, as he said, that he had gone to his house at dawn, and sat down on the threshold of his ruined home; and perhaps he felt the desire he had expressed to see his daughter, with a purpose of beginning life anew; and it may have cost him a veritable pang when he found that his little ones did not know him. All the sentiments of the situation were such as might persuade a lively fancy of the truth of its own inventions; and as he heard these continually repeated by the contributor in their search for Mr. Hapford, they must have acquired an objective force and repute scarcely to be resisted. At the same time, there were touches of nature throughout Jonathan Tinker's narrative which could not fail to take the faith of another. The contributor, in reviewing it, thought it particularly charming that his mariner had not overdrawn himself, or attempted to paint his character otherwise than as it probably was; that he had shown his ideas and practices of life to be those of a second mate, nor more nor less, without the gloss of regret or the pretences to refinement that might be pleasing to the supposed philanthropist with whom he had fallen in. Captain Gooding was of course a true portrait; and there was nothing in Jonathan Tinker's statement of the relations of a second mate to his superiors and his inferiors which did not agree perfectly with what the contributor had just read in "Two Years before the Mast,"--a book which had possibly cast its glamour upon the adventure. He admired also the just and perfectly characteristic air of grief in the bereaved husband and father,--those occasional escapes from the sense of loss into a brief hilarity and forgetfulness, and those relapses into the hovering gloom, which every one has observed in this poor, crazy human nature when oppressed by sorrow, and which it would have been hard to simulate. But, above all, he exulted in that supreme stroke of the imagination given by the second mate when, at parting, he said he believed he would go down and sleep on board the vessel. In view of this, the State's Prison theory almost appeared a malign and foolish scandal.

Yet even if this theory were correct, was the second mate wholly answerable for beginning his life again with the imposture he had practised? The contributor had either so fallen in love with the literary advantages of his forlorn deceiver that he would see no moral obliquity in him, or he had touched a subtler verity at last in pondering the affair. It seemed now no longer a farce, but had a pathos which, though very different from that of its first aspect, was hardly less tragical. Knowing with what coldness, or at the best, uncandor, he (representing Society in its attitude toward convicted Error) would have met the fact had it been owned to him at first, he had not virtue enough to condemn the illusory stranger, who must have been helpless to make at once evident any repentance he felt or good purpose he cherished. Was it not one of the saddest consequences of the man's past,--a dark necessity of misdoing,--that, even with the best will in the world to retrieve himself, his first endeavor must involve a wrong? Might he not, indeed, be considered a martyr, in some sort, to his own admirable impulses? I can see clearly enough where the contributor was astray in this reasoning, but I can also understand how one accustomed to value realities only as they resembled fables should be won with such pensive sophistry; and I can certainly sympathize with his feeling that the mariner's failure to reappear according to appointment added its final and most agreeable charm to the whole affair, and completed the mystery from which the man emerged and which swallowed him up again.

NOTES

=Mr. Charles Reade=:--An English novelist (1814-1884).

=protégé= (French):--A person under the care of another. The form given here is masculine; the feminine is _protégée_.

=coup de théâtre=:--(French) A very striking scene, such as might appear on the stage.

=Two Years before the Mast=:--A sea story written by R.H. Dana, about 1840.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

What is a romance? The phrase _already mentioned_ refers to earlier parts of the book _Suburban Sketches_, from which this story is taken. What effect does the author gain by the ring at the door-bell? How does he give you a quick and vivid idea of the visitor? What significance do the man's clothes have in the story? By means of what devices does the author interest you in the stranger? Do adventures really happen in everyday life? Why does the author speak of one's own "register"? Mr. Howells has written a number of novels in which he pictures ordinary people, and shows the romance of commonplace events. Why does the listener "exult"? How does the man's story affect you? What is gained by having it told in his own words? Is Jonathan Tinker's toast a happy one? What does the contributor mean by saying that he would have been a good subject for "the predatory arts"? _The last horse-car_: To Boston; the scene is probably laid in Cambridge where Mr. Howells lived for some years. In what way does the sailor's language emphasize the pathetic quality of his story? How was the man "literature made to the author's hand"? What are the "national traditions" mentioned in connection with the boy? Why was the story regarded as "too perfect" when it was related at home? In what way was Julia Tinker's face "disappointing"? How does the author feel when he hears the facts in the case? Why does he resolve never to do a good deed again? The author gives two reasons why Jonathan Tinker did not tell the truth: what seems to you the real reason? Characterize Tinker in your own words. Is the ending of the selection satisfactory? Did you think that Tinker would come back? Can you make a little drama of this story?

THEME SUBJECTS

An Old Sailor People who do not Tell the Truth The Forsaken House Asking Directions A Tramp The Lost Address An Evening at Home A Sketch of Julia Tinker The Surprise A Long-lost Relative What Becomes of the Ex-Convicts? The Jail A Stranger in Town A Late Visitor What I Think of Jonathan Tinker The Disadvantages of a Lively Imagination Unwelcome If Jonathan Tinker had Told the Truth The Lie A Call at a Stranger's House An Unfortunate Man A Walk in Dark Streets The Sea Captain Watching the Sailors

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=A Late Visitor=:--Try to write this in the form of a dialogue or little play. The host is reading or conversing in the family sitting-room, when the doorbell rings. There is a conversation at the door, and then the caller is brought in. Perhaps the stranger has some evil design. Perhaps he (or she) is lost, or in great need. Perhaps he turns out to be in some way connected with the family. Think out the plan of the dialogue pretty thoroughly before you begin to write. It is possible that you will want to add a second act in which the results of the first are shown. Plan your stage directions with the help of some other drama, as, for instance, that given on page 52.

=The Lie=:[13]--This also may be written in the form of a slight dramatic composition. There might be a few brief scenes, according to the following plan:--

Scene 1: The lie is told. Scene 2: It makes trouble. Scene 3: It is found out. Scene 4: Complications are untangled, and the lie is atoned for. (Perhaps this scene can be combined with the preceding.)

=A Long-lost Relative=:--This may be taken from a real or an imaginary circumstance. Tell of the first news that the relative is coming. Where has he (or she) been during the past years? Speak of the period before the relative arrives: the conjectures as to his appearance; the preparations made; the conversation regarding him. Tell of his arrival. Is his appearance such as has been expected? Describe him rather fully. What does he say and do? Does he make himself agreeable? Are his ideas in any way peculiar? Do the neighbors like him? Give some of the incidents of his visit. Tell about his departure. Are the family glad or sorry to have him go? What is said about him after he has gone? What has been heard of him since?

COLLATERAL READINGS

Suburban Sketches William Dean Howells A Boy's Town " " " The Rise of Silas Lapham " " " The Minister's Charge " " " Their Wedding Journey " " " The Lady of the Aroostook " " " Venetian Life " " " Italian Journeys " " " The Mouse Trap (a play) " " " Evening Dress (a play) " " " The Register (a play) " " " The Elevator (a play) " " " Unexpected Guests (a play) " " " The Albany Depot (a play) " " " Literary Friends and Acquaintances " " " Their California Uncle Bret Harte A Lodging for the Night R.L. Stevenson Kidnapped " " Ebb Tide " " Enoch Arden Alfred Tennyson Rip Van Winkle Washington Irving Wakefield Nathaniel Hawthorne Two Years before the Mast R.H. Dana Out of Gloucester J.B. Connolly Jean Valjean (from _Les Misérables_) Victor Hugo (Ed. S.E. Wiltse) Historic Towns of New England (Cambridge) L.P. Powell (Ed.) Old Cambridge T.W. Higginson American Authors at Home, pp. 193-211 J.L. and J.B. Gilder American Authors and their Homes, pp. 99-110 F.W. Halsey American Writers of To-day, pp. 43-68 H.C. Vedder

Bookman, 17:342 (Portrait); 35:114, April, 1912; Current Literature, 42:49, January, 1907 (Portrait).

THE WILD RIDE

LOUISE IMOGEN GUINEY

_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing_.

Let cowards and laggards fall back! but alert to the saddle, Weather-worn and abreast, go men of our galloping legion, With a stirrup-cup each to the lily of women that loves him.

The trail is through dolour and dread, over crags and morasses; There are shapes by the way, there are things that appal or entice us: What odds? We are Knights of the Grail, we are vowed to the riding.

Thought's self is a vanishing wing, and joy is a cobweb, And friendship a flower in the dust, and glory a sun-beam: Not here is our prize, nor, alas! after these our pursuing.

A dipping of plumes, a tear, a shake of the bridle, A passing salute to this world and her pitiful beauty: We hurry with never a word in the track of our fathers.

(_I hear in my heart, I hear in its ominous pulses All day, on the road, the hoofs of invisible horses, All night, from their stalls, the importunate pawing and neighing._)

We spur to a land of no name, out-racing the storm-wind; We leap to the infinite dark like sparks from the anvil. Thou leadest, O God! All's well with Thy troopers that follow.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

This poem is somewhat like the _Road-Hymn for the Start_, on page 184. It is about those people who go forward eagerly into the work of the world, without fearing, and without shrinking from difficulties. Read it through completely, trying to get its meaning. Regard the lines in italic as a kind of chorus, and study the meaning of the other stanzas first. Who are the galloping legions? A _stirrup-cup_ was a draught of wine, taken just before a rider began his journey; it was usually drunk to some one's health. Is _dolour_ a common word? Is it good here? Try to put into your own words the ideas in the "land of no name," and "the infinite dark," remembering what is said above about the general meaning of the poem. What picture and what idea do you get from "like sparks from the anvil"? Now go back to the lines in italic, and look for their meaning.

What do you notice about the length of the words in this poem? Why has the author used this kind of words? Notice carefully how the sound and the sense are made harmonious. Look for the rhyme. How does the poem differ from most short poems?

Bead the verses aloud, trying to make your reading suggest "the hoofs of invisible horses."

OTHER POEMS TO READ

A Troop of the Guard Hermann Hagedorn How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix Robert Browning Through the Metidja to Abd-el-Kadr " " Reveille Bret Harte A Song of the Road Richard Watson Gilder The House and the Road J.P. Peabody The Mystic Cale Young Rice (In _The Little Book of Modern Verse_, Ed. by J.B. Rittenhouse.) A Winter Ride Amy Lowell (In _The Little Book of Modern Verse_.) The Ride Clinton Scollard (In _Songs of Sunrise Lands_.)

CHRISTMAS IN THE WOODS

DALLAS LORE SHARP

(In _The Lay of the Land_)

On the night before this particular Christmas every creature of the woods that could stir was up and stirring; for over the old snow was falling swiftly, silently, a soft, fresh covering that might mean a hungry Christmas unless the dinner were had before morning.

But when the morning dawned, a cheery Christmas sun broke across the great gum swamp, lighting the snowy boles and soft-piled limbs of the giant trees with indescribable glory, and pouring, a golden flood, into the deep spongy bottoms below. It would be a perfect Christmas in the woods, clear, mild, stirless, with silent footing for me, and everywhere the telltale snow.

And everywhere the Christmas spirit, too. As I paused among the pointed cedars of the pasture, looking down into the cripple at the head of the swamp, a clear wild whistle rang in the thicket, followed by a flash through the alders like a tongue of fire, as a cardinal grosbeak shot down to the tangle of greenbrier and magnolia under the slope. It was a fleck of flaming summer. As warm as summer, too, the staghorn sumac burned on the crest of the ridge against the group of holly trees,--trees as fresh as April, and all aglow with berries. The woods were decorated for the holy day. The gentleness of the soft new snow touched everything; cheer and good-will lighted the unclouded sky and warmed the thick depths of the evergreens, and blazed in the crimson-berried bushes of the ilex and alder. The Christmas woods were glad.

Nor was the gladness all show, mere decoration. There was real cheer in abundance; for I was back in the old home woods, back along the Cohansey, back where you can pick persimmons off the trees at Christmas. There are persons who say the Lord might have made a better berry than the strawberry, but He didn't. Perhaps He didn't make the strawberry at all. But He did make the Cohansey Creek persimmon, and He made it as good as He could. Nowhere else under the sun can you find such persimmons as these along the creek, such richness of flavor, such gummy, candied quality, woodsy, wild, crude,--especially the fruit of two particular trees on the west bank, near Lupton's Pond. But they never come to this perfection, never quite lose their pucker, until midwinter,--as if they had been intended for the Christmas table of the woods.

It had been nearly twenty years since I crossed this pasture of the cedars on my way to the persimmon trees. The cows had been crossing every year, yet not a single new crook had they worn in the old paths. But I was half afraid as I came to the fence where I could look down upon the pond and over to the persimmon trees. Not one of the Luptons, who owned pasture and pond and trees, had ever been a boy, so far as I could remember, or had ever eaten of those persimmons. Would they have left the trees through all these years?

I pushed through the hedge of cedars and stopped for an instant, confused. The very pond was gone! and the trees! No, there was the pond,--but how small the patch of water! and the two persimmon trees? The bush and undergrowth had grown these twenty years. Which way--Ah, there they stand, only their leafless tops showing; but see the hard angular limbs, how closely globed with fruit! how softly etched upon the sky!

I hurried around to the trees and climbed the one with the two broken branches, up, clear up to the top, into the thick of the persimmons.

Did I say it had been twenty years? That could not be. Twenty years would have made me a man, and this sweet, real taste in my mouth only a _boy_ could know. But there was college, and marriage, a Massachusetts farm, four boys of my own, and--no matter! it could not have been _years_--twenty years--since. It was only yesterday that I last climbed this tree and ate the rich rimy fruit frosted with a Christmas snow.

And yet, could it have been yesterday? It was storming, and I clung here in the swirling snow and heard the wild ducks go over in their hurry toward the bay. Yesterday, and all this change in the vast treetop world, this huddled pond, those narrowed meadows, that shrunken creek! I should have eaten the persimmons and climbed straight down, not stopped to gaze out upon the pond, and away over the dark ditches to the creek. But reaching out quickly I gathered another handful,--and all was yesterday again.

I filled both pockets of my coat and climbed down. I kept those persimmons and am tasting them to-night. Lupton's Pond may fill to a puddle, the meadows may shrivel, the creek dry up and disappear, and old Time may even try his wiles on me. But I shall foil him to the end; for I am carrying still in my pocket some of yesterday's persimmons,--persimmons that ripened in the rime of a winter when I was a boy.

High and alone in a bare persimmon tree for one's dinner hardly sounds like a merry Christmas. But I was not alone. I had noted the fresh tracks beneath the tree before I climbed up, and now I saw that the snow had been partly brushed from several of the large limbs as the 'possum had moved about in the tree for his Christmas dinner. We were guests at the same festive board, and both of us at Nature's invitation. It mattered not that the 'possum had eaten and gone this hour or more. Such is good form in the woods. He was expecting me, so he came early, out of modesty; and, that I too might be entirely at my ease, he departed early, leaving his greetings for me in the snow.

Thus I was not alone; here was good company and plenty of it. I never lack a companion in the woods when I can pick up a trail. The 'possum and I ate together. And this was just the fellowship I needed, this sharing the persimmons with the 'possum. I had broken bread, not with the 'possum only, but with all the out-of-doors. I was now fit to enter the woods, for I was filled with good-will and persimmons, as full as the 'possum; and putting myself under his gentle guidance, I got down upon the ground, took up his clumsy trail, and descended toward the swamp. Such an entry is one of the particular joys of the winter. To go in with a fox, a mink, or a 'possum through the door of the woods is to find yourself at home. Any one can get inside the out-of-doors, as the grocery boy or the census man gets inside our houses. You can bolt in at any time on business. A trail, however, is Nature's invitation. There may be other, better beaten paths for mere feet. But go softly with the 'possum, and at the threshold you are met by the spirit of the wood, you are made the guest of the open, silent, secret out-of-doors.

I went down with the 'possum. He had traveled home in leisurely fashion and without fear, as his tracks plainly showed. He was full of persimmons. A good happy world this, where such fare could be had for the picking! What need to hurry home, except one were in danger of falling asleep by the way? So I thought, too, as I followed his winding path; and if I was tracking him to his den, it was only to wake him for a moment with the compliments of the season. But it was not even a momentary disturbance; for when I finally found him in his hollow gum, he was sound asleep, and only half realized that some one was poking him gently in the ribs and wishing him a merry Christmas.

The 'possum had led me to the center of the empty, hollow swamp, where the great-boled gums lifted their branches like a timbered, unshingled roof between me and the wide sky. Far away through the spaces of the rafters I saw a pair of wheeling buzzards and, under them, in lesser circles, a broad-winged hawk. Here, at the feet of the tall, clean trees, looking up through the leafless limbs, I had something of a measure for the flight of the birds. The majesty and the mystery of the distant buoyant wings were singularly impressive.

I have seen the turkey-buzzard sailing the skies on the bitterest winter days. To-day, however, could hardly be called winter. Indeed, nothing yet had felt the pinch of the cold. There was no hunger yet in the swamp, though this new snow had scared the raccoons out, and their half-human tracks along the margin of the swamp stream showed that, if not hungry, they at least feared that they might be.

For a coon hates snow. He will invariably sleep off the first light snowfalls, and even in the late winter he will not venture forth in fresh snow unless driven by hunger or some other dire need. Perhaps, like a cat or a hen, he dislikes the wetting of his feet. Or it may be that the soft snow makes bad hunting--for him. The truth is, T believe, that such a snow makes too good hunting for the dogs and the gunner. The new snow tells too clear a story. His home is no inaccessible den among the ledges; only a hollow in some ancient oak or tupelo. Once within, he is safe from the dogs; but the long fierce fight for life taught him generations ago that the nest-tree is a fatal trap when behind the dogs come the axe and the gun. So he has grown wary and enduring. He waits until the snow grows crusty, when, without sign, and almost without scent, he can slip forth among the long shadows and prowl to the edge of dawn.

Skirting the stream out toward the higher back woods, I chanced to spy a bunch of snow in one of the great sour gums, that I thought was an old nest. A second look showed me tiny green leaves, then white berries, then mistletoe.

It was not a surprise, for I had found it here before,--a long, long time before. It was back in my school-boy days, back beyond those twenty years, that I first stood here under the mistletoe and had my first romance. There was no chandelier, no pretty girl, in that romance,--only a boy, the mistletoe, the giant trees, and the somber, silent swamp. Then there was his discovery, the thrill of deep delight, and the wonder of his knowledge of the strange unnatural plant! All plants had been plants to him until, one day, he read the life of the mistletoe. But that was English mistletoe; so the boy's wonder world of plant life was still as far away as Mars, when, rambling alone through the swamp along the creek, he stopped under a big curious bunch of green, high up in one of the gums, and--made his first discovery.

So the boy climbed up again this Christmas Day at the peril of his precious neck, and brought down a bit of that old romance.

I followed the stream along through the swamp to the open meadows, and then on under the steep wooded hillside that ran up to the higher land of corn and melon fields. Here at the foot of the slope the winter sun lay warm, and here in the sheltered briery border I came upon the Christmas birds.

There was a great variety of them, feeding and preening and chirping in the vines. The tangle was a-twitter with their quiet, cheery talk. Such a medley of notes you could not hear at any other season outside a city bird store. How far the different species understood one another I should like to know, and whether the hum of voices meant sociability to them, as it certainly meant to me. Doubtless the first cause of their flocking here was the sheltered warmth and the great numbers of berry-laden bushes, for there was no lack either of abundance or variety on the Christmas table.

In sight from where I stood hung bunches of withering chicken or frost grapes, plump clusters of blue-black berries of the greenbrier, and limbs of the smooth winterberry bending with their flaming fruit. There were bushes of crimson ilex, too, trees of fruiting dogwood and holly, cedars in berry, dwarf sumac and seedy sedges, while patches on the wood slopes uncovered by the sun were spread with trailing partridge berry and the coral-fruited wintergreen. I had eaten part of my dinner with the 'possum; I picked a quantity of these wintergreen berries, and continued my meal with the birds. And they also had enough and to spare.

Among the birds in the tangle was a large flock of northern fox sparrows, whose vigorous and continuous scratching in the bared spots made a most lively and cheery commotion. Many of them were splashing about in tiny pools of snow-water, melted partly by the sun and partly by the warmth of their bodies as they bathed. One would hop to a softening bit of snow at the base of a tussock keel over and begin to flop, soon sending up a shower of sparkling drops from his rather chilly tub. A winter snow-water bath seemed a necessity, a luxury indeed; for they all indulged, splashing with the same purpose and zest that they put into their scratching among the leaves.

A much bigger splashing drew me quietly through the bushes to find a marsh hawk giving himself a Christmas souse. The scratching, washing, and talking of the birds; the masses of green in the cedars, holly, and laurels; the glowing colors of the berries against the snow; the blue of the sky, and the golden warmth of the light made Christmas in the heart of the noon that the very swamp seemed to feel.

Three months later there was to be scant picking here, for this was the beginning of the severest winter I ever knew. From this very ridge, in February, I had reports of berries gone, of birds starving, of whole coveys of quail frozen dead in the snow; but neither the birds nor I dreamed to-day of any such hunger and death. A flock of robins whirled into the cedars above me; a pair of cardinals whistled back and forth; tree sparrows, juncos, nuthatches, chickadees, and cedar-birds cheeped among the trees and bushes; and from the farm lands at the top of the slope rang the calls of meadowlarks.

Halfway up the hill I stopped under a blackjack oak where, in the thin snow, there were signs of something like a Christmas revel. The ground was sprinkled with acorn shells and trampled over with feet of several kinds and sizes,--quail, jay, and partridge feet; rabbit, squirrel, and mice feet, all over the snow as the feast of acorns had gone on. Hundreds of the acorns were lying about, gnawed away at the cup end, where the shell was thinnest, many of them further broken and cleaned out by the birds.

As I sat studying the signs in the snow, my eye caught a tiny trail leading out from the others straight away toward a broken pile of cord wood. The tracks were planted one after the other, so directly in line as to seem like the prints of a single foot. "That's a weasel's trail," I said, "the death's-head at this feast," and followed it slowly to the wood. A shiver crept over me as I felt, even sooner than I saw, a pair of small sinister eyes fixed upon mine. The evil pointed head, heavy but alert, and with a suggestion of fierce strength out of all relation to the slender body, was watching me from between the sticks of cordwood. And so he had been watching the mice and birds and rabbits feasting under the tree!

I packed a ball of snow round and hard, slipped forward upon my knees, and hurled it. "Spat!" it struck the end of a stick within an inch of the ugly head, filling the crevice with snow. Instantly the head appeared at another crack, and another ball struck viciously beside it. Now it was back where it first appeared, and did not flinch for the next, or the next ball. The third went true, striking with a "chug" and packing the crack. But the black, hating eyes were still watching me a foot lower down.

It is not all peace and good-will in the Christmas woods. But there is more of peace and good-will than of any other spirit. The weasels are few. More friendly and timid eyes were watching me than bold and murderous. It was foolish to want to kill--even the weasel. For one's woods are what one makes them; and so I let the man with the gun, who chanced along, think that I had turned boy again, and was snowballing the woodpile, just for the fun of trying to hit the end of the biggest stick.

I was glad he had come. As he strode off with his stained bag, I felt kindlier toward the weasel. There were worse in the woods than he,--worse, because all of their killing was pastime. The weasel must kill to live, and if he gloated over the kill, why, what fault of his? But the other weasel, the one with the blood-stained bag, he killed for the love of killing. I was glad he was gone.

The crows were winging over toward their great roost in the pines when I turned toward the town. They, too, had had good picking along the creek flats and ditches of the meadows. Their powerful wing-beats and constant play told of full crops and no fear for the night, already softly gray across the white silent fields. The air was crisper; the snow began to crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the soft gray twilight, came the call of a quail.

The voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer were gone. The very face of things had changed; all had been reduced, made plain, simple, single, pure! There was less for the senses, but how much keener now their joy! The wide landscape, the frosty air, the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out of the quiet of the falling twilight, the voice of the quail!

There is no day but is beautiful in the woods; and none more beautiful than one like this Christmas Day,--warm and still and wrapped, to the round red berries of the holly, in the magic of the snow.

NOTES

=cripple=:--A dense thicket in swampy land.

=good-will=:--See the Bible, Luke 2:13, 14.

=Cohansey=:--A creek in southern New Jersey.

QUESTIONS FOR STUDY

Read the selection through once without stopping. Afterward, go through it with these questions:--

Why might the snow mean a "hungry Christmas"? Note the color words in paragraph three: Of what value are they? Why does the pond seem small to the visitor? Does the author mean anything more than persimmons in the last part of the paragraph beginning "I filled both pockets"? What sort of man do you think he is? What is the meaning of "broken bread"? What is meant by entering the woods "at Nature's invitation"? What do you understand by "the long fierce fight for life"? What was it that the coon learned "generations ago"? What does the author mean here? Do you know anything of the Darwinian theory of life? What has it to do with what is said here about the coon? How does the author make you feel the variety and liveliness of the bird life which he observes? What shows his keenness of sight? What do you know about weasels? Is it, true that "one's woods are what one makes them"? Do you think the author judges the hunter too harshly? How does the author make you feel the charm of the late afternoon? Go through the selection and see how many different subjects are discussed! How is the unity of the piece preserved? Notice the pictures in the piece. What feeling prevails in the selection? How can you tell whether the author really loves nature? Could you write a sketch somewhat like this, telling what you saw during a walk in the woods?

THEME SUBJECTS

A Walk in the Winter Woods An Outdoor Christmas Tree A Lumber Camp at Christmas The Winter Birds Tracking a Rabbit Hunting Deer in Winter A Winter Landscape Home Decorations from the Winter Fields Wild Apples Fishing through the Ice A Winter Camp A Strange Christmas Playing Santa Claus A Snow Picnic Making Christmas Gifts Feeding the Birds The Christmas Guest Turkey and Plum Pudding The Children's Christmas Party Christmas on the Farm The Christmas Tree at the Schoolhouse What he Found in his Stocking Bringing Home the Christmas Tree Christmas in the South Christmas away from Home A "Sensible" Christmas Christmas at our House

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

=A Walk in the Winter Woods=:--Tell of a real or imaginary stroll in the woods when the snow is on the ground. If possible, plan the theme some time before you write, and obtain your material through actual and recent observation. In everything you say, be careful and accurate. You might speak first of the time of day at which your walk was taken; the weather; the condition of the snow. Speak of the trees: the kinds; how they looked. Were any of the trees weighted with snow? Describe the bushes, and the berries and grasses; use color words, if possible, as Mr. Sharp does. What sounds did you hear in the woods? Did you see any tracks of animals? If so, tell about these tracks, and show what they indicated. Describe the animals that you saw, and tell what they were doing. What did you gather regarding the way in which the animals live in winter? Speak in the same way of the birds. Re-read what Mr. Sharp says about the birds he saw, and try to make your own account clear and full of action. Did you see any signs of human inhabitants or visitors? If so, tell about them. Did you find anything to eat in the woods? Speak briefly of your return home. Had the weather changed since your entering the woods? Was there any alteration in the landscape? How did you feel after your walk?

=The Winter Birds=:--For several days before writing this theme, prepare material for it by observation and reading. Watch the birds, and see what they are doing and how they live. Use a field glass if you can get one, and take careful notes on what you see. Make especial use of any interesting incidents that come under your observation.

When you write, take up each kind of bird separately, and tell what you have found out about its winter life: how it looks; where you have seen it; what it was doing. Speak also of its food and shelter; the perils it endures; its intelligence; anecdotes about it. Make your theme simple and lively, as if you were talking to some one about the birds. Try to use good color words and sound words, and expressions that give a vivid idea of the activities and behavior of the birds.

When you have finished, lay the theme aside for a time; then read it again and see how you can touch it up to make it clearer and more straightforward.

=Christmas at our House=:--Write as if you were telling of some particular occasion, although you may perhaps be combining the events of several Christmas days. Tell of the preparations for Christmas: the planning; the cooking; the whispering of secrets. Make as much use of conversation as possible, and do not hesitate to use even very small details and little anecdotes. Perhaps you will wish to tell of the hanging of the stockings on Christmas Eve; if there are children in the family, tell what they did and said. Write as vividly as possible of Christmas morning, and the finding of the gifts; try to bring out the confusion and the happiness of opening the parcels and displaying the presents. Quote some of the remarks directly, and speak of particularly pleasing or absurd gifts. Go on and tell of the sports and pleasures of the day. Speak of the guests, describing some of them, and telling what they said and did. Try to bring out contrasts here. Put as much emphasis as you wish upon the dinner, and the quantities of good things consumed. Try to quote the remarks of some of the people at the table. If your theme has become rather long, you might close it by a brief account of the dispersing of the family after dinner. You might, however, complete your account of the day by telling of the evening, with its enjoyments and its weariness.

COLLATERAL READINGS

Wild Life Near Home D.L. Sharp A Watcher in the Woods " " The Lay of the Land " " Winter " " The Face of the Fields " " The Fall of the Year " " Roof and Meadow " " Wild Life in the Rockies Enos A. Mills Kindred of the Wild C.G.D. Roberts Watchers of the Trail " " " Haunters of the Silences " " " The Ways of Wood Folk W.J. Long Eye Spy W.H. Gibson Sharp Eyes " " Birds in the Bush Bradford Torrey Everyday Birds " " Nature's Invitation " " Bird Stories from Burroughs (selections) John Burroughs Winter Sunshine " " Pepacton " " Riverby " " Wake-Robin " " Signs and Seasons " " How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar Bret Harte Santa Claus's Partner T.N. Page The First Christmas Tree Henry Van Dyke The Other Wise Man " " The Old Peabody Pew K.D. Wiggin Miss Santa Claus of the Pullman Annie F. Johnson Christmas Zona Gale A Christmas Mystery W.J. Locke Christmas Eve on Lonesome John Fox, Jr. By the Christmas Fire S.M. Crothers Colonel Carter's Christmas F.H. Smith Christmas Jenny (in _A New England Nun_) Mary E. Wilkins A Christmas Sermon R.L. Stevenson The Boy who Brought Christmas Alice Morgan Christmas Stories Charles Dickens The Christmas Guest Selma Lagerlöf The Legend of the Christmas Rose " "

GLOUCESTER MOORS

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

A mile behind is Gloucester town Where the fishing fleets put in, A mile ahead the land dips down And the woods and farms begin. Here, where the moors stretch free In the high blue afternoon, Are the marching sun and talking sea, And the racing winds that wheel and flee On the flying heels of June.

Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, Blue is the quaker-maid, The wild geranium holds its dew Long in the boulder's shade. Wax-red hangs the cup From the huckleberry boughs, In barberry bells the grey moths sup, Or where the choke-cherry lifts high up Sweet bowls for their carouse.

Over the shelf of the sandy cove Beach-peas blossom late. By copse and cliff the swallows rove Each calling to his mate. Seaward the sea-gulls go, And the land birds all are here; That green-gold flash was a vireo, And yonder flame where the marsh-flags grow Was a scarlet tanager.

This earth is not the steadfast place We landsmen build upon; From deep to deep she varies pace, And while she comes is gone. Beneath my feet I feel Her smooth bulk heave and dip; With velvet plunge and soft upreel She swings and steadies to her keel Like a gallant, gallant ship.

These summer clouds she sets for sail, The sun is her masthead light, She tows the moon like a pinnace frail Where her phospher wake churns bright, Now hid, now looming clear, On the face of the dangerous blue The star fleets tack and wheel and veer, But on, but on does the old earth steer As if her port she knew.

God, dear God! Does she know her port, Though she goes so far about? Or blind astray, does she make her sport To brazen and chance it out? I watched where her captains passed: She were better captainless. Men in the cabin, before the mast, But some were reckless and some aghast, And some sat gorged at mess.

By her battered hatch I leaned and caught Sounds from the noisome hold,-- Cursing and sighing of souls distraught And cries too sad to be told. Then I strove to go down and see; But they said, "Thou art not of us!" I turned to those on the deck with me And cried, "Give help!" But they said, "Let be: Our ship sails faster thus."

Jill-o'er-the-ground is purple blue, Blue is the quaker-maid, The alder clump where the brook comes through Breeds cresses in its shade. To be out of the moiling street With its swelter and its sin! Who has given to me this sweet, And given my brother dust to eat? And when will his wage come in?

Scattering wide or blown in ranks, Yellow and white and brown, Boats and boats from the fishing banks Come home to Gloucester town. There is cash to purse and spend, There are wives to be embraced, Hearts to borrow and hearts to lend, And hearts to take and keep to the end,-- O little sails, make haste!

But thou, vast outbound ship of souls, What harbor town for thee? What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, Shall crowd the banks to see? Shall all the happy shipmates then Stand singing brotherly? Or shall a haggard ruthless few Warp her over and bring her to, While the many broken souls of men Fester down in the slaver's pen, And nothing to say or do?

NOTES

=Gloucester town=: Gloucester is a seaport town in Massachusetts, the chief seat of the cod and mackerel fisheries of the coast.

=Jill-o'er-the-ground=: Ground ivy; usually written _Gill-over-the-ground_.

=Quaker-maid=: Quaker ladies; small blue flowers growing low on the ground.

=wax-red=: The huckleberry blossom is red and waxy.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Read the poem slowly through to yourself, getting what you can out of it, without trying too hard. Note that after the third stanza the earth is compared to a ship. After you have read the poem through, go back and study it with the help of the following questions and suggestions:--

The author is out on the moors not far from the sea: What details does he select to make you feel the beauty of the afternoon? What words in the first stanza suggest movement and freedom? Why does the author stop to tell about the flowers, when he has so many important things to say? Note a change of tone at the beginning of the fourth stanza. What suggests to the author that the earth is like a ship? Why does he say that it is not a steadfast place? How does the fifth stanza remind you of _The Ancient Mariner_? Why does the author speak so passionately at the beginning of the sixth stanza? Here he wonders whether there is really any plan in the universe, or whether things all go by chance. Who are the captains of whom he speaks? What different types of people are represented in the last two lines of stanza six? What is the "noisome hold" of the Earth ship? Who are those cursing and sighing? Who are _they_ in the line, "But they said, 'Thou art not of us!'"? Who are _they_ in the next line but one? Why does the author turn back to the flowers in the next few lines? What is omitted from the line beginning "To be out"? Explain the last three lines of stanza eight. How do the ships of Gloucester differ from the ship _Earth_? What is the "arriving" spoken of in the last stanza? What two possibilities does the author suggest as to the fate of the ship? Why does he end his poem with a question? What is the purpose of the poem? Why is it considered good? What do you think was the author's feeling about the way the poor and helpless are treated? Read the poem through aloud, thinking what each line means.

ROAD-HYMN FOR THE START

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

Leave the early bells at chime, Leave the kindled hearth to blaze, Leave the trellised panes where children linger out the waking-time, Leave the forms of sons and fathers trudging through the misty ways, Leave the sounds of mothers taking up their sweet laborious days.

Pass them by! even while our soul Yearns to them with keen distress. Unto them a part is given; we will strive to see the whole. Dear shall be the banquet table where their singing spirits press; Dearer be our sacred hunger, and our pilgrim loneliness.

We have felt the ancient swaying Of the earth before the sun, On the darkened marge of midnight heard sidereal rivers playing; Rash it was to bathe our souls there, but we plunged and all was done. That is lives and lives behind us--lo, our journey is begun!

Careless where our face is set, Let us take the open way. What we are no tongue has told us: Errand-goers who forget? Soldiers heedless of their harry? Pilgrim people gone astray? We have heard a voice cry "Wander!" That was all we heard it say.

Ask no more: 'tis much, 'tis much! Down the road the day-star calls; Touched with change in the wide heavens, like a leaf the frost winds touch, Flames the failing moon a moment, ere it shrivels white and falls; Hid aloft, a wild throat holdeth sweet and sweeter intervals.

Leave him still to ease in song Half his little heart's unrest: Speech is his, but we may journey toward the life for which we long. God, who gives the bird its anguish, maketh nothing manifest, But upon our lifted foreheads pours the boon of endless quest.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

Do not be alarmed if you find this a little hard to understand. It is expressed in rather figurative language, and one has to study it to get its meaning. The poem is about those people who look forward constantly to something better, and feel that they must always be pressing forward at any cost. Who is represented as speaking? What sort of life are the travelers leaving behind them? Why do they feel a keen distress? What is the "whole" that they are striving to see? What is their "sacred hunger"? Why is it "dearer" than the feasting of those who stay at home? Notice how the third stanza reminds one of _Gloucester Moors_. Look up the word _sidereal_: Can you tell what it means here? "Lives and lives behind us" means _a long time ago_; you will perhaps have to ask your teacher for its deeper meaning. Do the travelers know where they are going? Why do they set forth? Note the description of the dawn in the fifth stanza. What is the boon of "endless quest"? Why is it spoken of as a gift (boon)? Compare the last line of this poem with the last line of _The Wild Ride_, on page 161. Perhaps you will be interested to compare the _Road-Hymn_ with Whitman's _The Song of the Open Road_.

Do the meter and verse-form seem appropriate here? Is anything gained by the difference in the length of the lines?

ON A SOLDIER FALLEN IN THE PHILIPPINES

WILLIAM VAUGHN MOODY

Streets of the roaring town, Hush for him, hush, be still! He comes, who was stricken down Doing the word of our will. Hush! Let him have his state, Give him his soldier's crown. The grists of trade can wait Their grinding at the mill, But he cannot wait for his honor, now the trumpet has been blown; Wreathe pride now for his granite brow, lay love on his breast of stone.

Toll! Let the great bells toll Till the clashing air is dim. Did we wrong this parted soul? We will make it up to him. Toll! Let him never guess What work we set him to. Laurel, laurel, yes; He did what we bade him do. Praise, and never a whispered hint but the fight he fought was good; Never a word that the blood on his sword was his country's own heart's-blood.

A flag for the soldier's bier Who dies that his land may live; O, banners, banners here, That he doubt not nor misgive! That he heed not from the tomb The evil days draw near When the nation, robed in gloom, With its faithless past shall strive. Let him never dream that his bullet's scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

What is "his state," in line five? How has the soldier been "wronged"? Does the author think that the fight in the Philippines has not been "good"? Why? What does he mean by the last line of stanza two? What "evil days" are those mentioned in stanza three? Have they come yet? What "faithless past" is meant? Do you think that the United States has treated the Philippines unfairly?[14]

COLLATERAL READINGS

Gloucester Moors and Other Poems William Vaughn Mood Poems and Plays of William Vaughn Moody (2 vols. Biographical introduction) John M. Manley (Ed.) Letters of William Vaughn Moody Daniel Mason (Ed.) Out of Gloucester J.B. Connolly

For biography, criticism, and portraits of William Vaughn Moody, consult: Atlantic Monthly, 98:326, September, 1906; World's Work, 13: 8258, December, 1906 (Portrait); Century, 73:431 (Portrait); Reader, 10:173; Bookman, 32:253 (Portrait.)

THE COON DOG

SARAH ORNE JEWETT

(In _The Queen's Twin and Other Stories_)

I

In the early dusk of a warm September evening the bats were flitting to and fro, as if it were still summer, under the great elm that overshadowed Isaac Brown's house, on the Dipford road. Isaac Brown himself, and his old friend and neighbor John York, were leaning against the fence.

"Frost keeps off late, don't it?" said John York. "I laughed when I first heard about the circus comin'; I thought 'twas so unusual late in the season. Turned out well, however. Everybody I noticed was returnin' with a palm-leaf fan. Guess they found 'em useful under the tent; 'twas a master hot day. I saw old lady Price with her hands full o' those free advertising fans, as if she was layin' in a stock against next summer. Well, I expect she'll live to enjoy 'em."

"I was right here where I'm standin' now, and I see her as she was goin' by this mornin'," said Isaac Brown, laughing, and settling himself comfortably against the fence as if they had chanced upon a welcome subject of conversation. "I hailed her, same's I gener'lly do. 'Where are you bound to-day, ma'am?' says I.

"'I'm goin' over as fur as Dipford Centre,' says she. 'I'm goin' to see my poor dear 'Liza Jane. I want to 'suage her grief; her husband, Mr. 'Bijah Topliff, has passed away.'

"'So much the better,' says I.

"'No; I never l'arnt about it till yisterday,' says she;' an' she looked up at me real kind of pleasant, and begun to laugh.

"'I hear he's left property,' says she, tryin' to pull her face down solemn. I give her the fifty cents she wanted to borrow to make up her car-fare and other expenses, an' she stepped off like a girl down tow'ds the depot.

"This afternoon, as you know, I'd promised the boys that I'd take 'em over to see the menagerie, and nothin' wouldn't do none of us any good but we must see the circus too; an' when we'd just got posted on one o' the best high seats, mother she nudged me, and I looked right down front two, three rows, an' if there wa'n't Mis' Price, spectacles an' all, with her head right up in the air, havin' the best time you ever see. I laughed right out. She hadn't taken no time to see 'Liza Jane; she wa'n't 'suagin' no grief for nobody till she'd seen the circus. 'There,' says I, 'I do like to have anybody keep their young feelin's!'"

"Mis' Price come over to see our folks before breakfast," said John York. "Wife said she was inquirin' about the circus, but she wanted to know first if they couldn't oblige her with a few trinkets o' mournin', seein' as how she'd got to pay a mournin' visit. Wife thought't was a bosom-pin, or somethin' like that, but turned out she wanted the skirt of a dress; 'most anything would do, she said."

"I thought she looked extra well startin' off," said Isaac, with an indulgent smile. "The Lord provides very handsome for such, I do declare! She ain't had no visible means o' support these ten or fifteen years back, but she don't freeze up in winter no more than we do."

"Nor dry up in summer," interrupted his friend; "I never did see such an able hand to talk."

"She's good company, and she's obliging an' useful when the women folks have their extra work progressin'," continued Isaac Brown kindly. "'Tain't much for a well-off neighborhood like this to support that old chirpin' cricket. My mother used to say she kind of helped the work along by 'livenin' of it. Here she comes now; must have taken the last train, after she had supper with 'Lizy Jane. You stay still; we're goin' to hear all about it."

The small, thin figure of Mrs. Price had to be hailed twice before she could be stopped.

"I wish you a good evenin', neighbors," she said. "I have been to the house of mournin'."

"Find 'Liza Jane in, after the circus?" asked Isaac Brown, with equal seriousness. "Excellent show, wasn't it, for so late in the season?"

"Oh, beautiful; it was beautiful, I declare," answered the pleased spectator readily. "Why, I didn't see you, nor Mis' Brown. Yes; I felt it best to refresh my mind an' wear a cheerful countenance. When I see 'Liza Jane I was able to divert her mind consid'able. She was glad I went. I told her I'd made an effort, knowin' 'twas so she had to lose the a'ternoon. 'Bijah left property, if he did die away from home on a foreign shore."

"You don't mean that 'Bijah Topliff's left anything!" exclaimed John York with interest, while Isaac Brown put both hands deep into his pockets, and leaned back in a still more satisfactory position against the gatepost.

"He enjoyed poor health," answered Mrs. Price, after a moment of deliberation, as if she must take time to think. "'Bijah never was one that scattereth, nor yet increaseth. 'Liza Jane's got some memories o' the past that's a good deal better than others; but he died somewheres out in Connecticut, or so she heard, and he's left a very val'able coon dog,--one he set a great deal by. 'Liza Jane said, last time he was to home, he priced that dog at fifty dollars. 'There, now, 'Liza Jane,' says I, right to her, when she told me, 'if I could git fifty dollars for that dog, I certain' would. Perhaps some o' the circus folks would like to buy him; they've taken in a stream o' money this day.' But 'Liza Jane ain't never inclined to listen to advice. 'Tis a dreadful poor-spirited-lookin' creatur'. I don't want no right o' dower in him, myself."

"A good coon dog's worth somethin', certain," said John York handsomely.

"If he _is_ a good coon dog," added Isaac Brown. "I wouldn't have parted with old Rover, here, for a good deal of money when he was right in his best days; but a dog like him's like one of the family. Stop an' have some supper, won't ye, Mis' Price?"--as the thin old creature was flitting off again. At that same moment this kind invitation was repeated from the door of the house; and Mrs. Price turned in, unprotesting and always sociably inclined, at the open gate.

II

It was a month later, and a whole autumn's length colder, when the two men were coming home from a long tramp through the woods. They had been making a solemn inspection of a wood-lot that they owned together, and had now visited their landmarks and outer boundaries, and settled the great question of cutting or not cutting some large pines. When it was well decided that a few years' growth would be no disadvantage to the timber, they had eaten an excellent cold luncheon and rested from their labors.

"I don't feel a day older'n ever I did when I get out in the woods this way," announced John York, who was a prim, dusty-looking little man, a prudent person, who had been selectman of the town at least a dozen times.

"No more do I," agreed his companion, who was large and jovial and open-handed, more like a lucky sea-captain than a farmer. After pounding a slender walnut-tree with a heavy stone, he had succeeded in getting down a pocketful of late-hanging nuts which had escaped the squirrels, and was now snapping them back, one by one, to a venturesome chipmunk among some little frost-bitten beeches. Isaac Brown had a wonderfully pleasant way of getting on with all sorts of animals, even men. After a while they rose and went their way, these two companions, stopping here and there to look at a possible woodchuck's hole, or to strike a few hopeful blows at a hollow tree with the light axe which Isaac had carried to blaze new marks on some of the line-trees on the farther edge of their possessions. Sometimes they stopped to admire the size of an old hemlock, or to talk about thinning out the young pines. At last they were not very far from the entrance to the great tract of woodland. The yellow sunshine came slanting in much brighter against the tall trunks, spotting them with golden light high among the still branches.

Presently they came to a great ledge, frost-split and cracked into mysterious crevices.

"Here's where we used to get all the coons," said John York. "I haven't seen a coon this great while, spite o' your courage knocking on the trees up back here. You know that night we got the four fat ones? We started 'em somewheres near here, so the dog could get after 'em when they come out at night to go foragin'."

"Hold on, John;" and Mr. Isaac Brown got up from the log where he had just sat down to rest, and went to the ledge, and looked carefully all about. When he came back he was much excited, and beckoned his friend away, speaking in a stage whisper.

"I guess you'll see a coon before you're much older," he proclaimed. "I've thought it looked lately as if there'd been one about my place, and there's plenty o' signs here, right in their old haunts. Couple o' hens' heads an' a lot o' feathers"--

"Might be a fox," interrupted John York.

"Might be a coon," answered Mr. Isaac Brown. "I'm goin' to have him, too. I've been lookin' at every old hollow tree I passed, but I never thought o' this place. We'll come right off to-morrow night, I guess, John, an' see if we can't get him. 'Tis an extra handy place for 'em to den; in old times the folks always called it a good place; they've been so sca'ce o' these late years that I've thought little about 'em. Nothin' I ever liked so well as a coon-hunt. Gorry! he must be a big old fellow, by his tracks! See here, in this smooth dirt; just like a baby's footmark."

"Trouble is, we lack a good dog," said John York anxiously, after he had made an eager inspection. "I don't know where in the world to get one, either. There ain't no such a dog about as your Rover, but you've let him get spoilt; these days I don't see him leave the yard. You ought to keep the women folks from overfeedin' of him so. He ought to've lasted a good spell longer. He's no use for huntin' now, that's certain."

Isaac accepted the rebuke meekly. John York was a calm man, but he now grew very fierce under such a provocation. Nobody likes to be hindered in a coon-hunt.

"Oh, Rover's too old, anyway," explained the affectionate master regretfully. "I've been wishing all this afternoon I'd brought him; but I didn't think anything about him as we came away, I've got so used to seeing him layin' about the yard. 'Twould have been a real treat for old Rover, if he could have kept up. Used to be at my heels the whole time. He couldn't follow us, anyway, up here."

"I shouldn't wonder if he could," insisted John, with a humorous glance at his old friend, who was much too heavy and huge of girth for quick transit over rough ground. John York himself had grown lighter as he had grown older.

"I'll tell you one thing we could do," he hastened to suggest. "There's that dog of 'Bijah Topliff's. Don't you know the old lady told us, that day she went over to Dipford, how high he was valued? Most o' 'Bijah's important business was done in the fall, goin' out by night, gunning with fellows from the mills. He was just the kind of a worthless do-nothing that's sure to have an extra knowin' smart dog. I expect 'Liza Jane's got him now. Perhaps we could get him by to-morrow night. Let one o' my boys go over!"

"Why, 'Liza Jane's come, bag an' baggage, to spend the winter with her mother," exclaimed Isaac Brown, springing to his feet like a boy. "I've had it in mind to tell you two or three times this afternoon, and then something else has flown it out of my head. I let my John Henry take the long-tailed wagon an' go down to the depot this mornin' to fetch her an' her goods up. The old lady come in early, while we were to breakfast, and to hear her lofty talk you'd thought 't would taken a couple o' four-horse teams to move her. I told John Henry he might take that wagon and fetch up what light stuff he could, and see how much else there was, an' then I'd make further arrangements. She said 'Liza Jane'd see me well satisfied, an' rode off, pleased to death. I see 'em returnin' about eight, after the train was in. They'd got 'Liza Jane with 'em, smaller'n ever; and there was a trunk tied up with a rope, and a small roll o' beddin' and braided mats, and a quilted rockin'-chair. The old lady was holdin' on tight to a bird-cage with nothin' in it. Yes; an' I see the dog, too, in behind. He appeared kind of timid. He's a yaller dog, but he ain't stump-tailed. They hauled up out front o' the house, and mother an' I went right out; Mis' Price always expects to have notice taken. She was in great sperits. Said 'Liza Jane concluded to sell off most of her stuff rather 'n have the care of it. She'd told the folks that Mis' Topliff had a beautiful sofa and a lot o' nice chairs, and two framed pictures that would fix up the house complete, and invited us all to come over and see 'em. There, she seemed just as pleased returnin' with the bird-cage. Disappointments don't appear to trouble her no more than a butterfly. I kind of like the old creator'; I don't mean to see her want."

"They'll let us have the dog," said John York. "I don't know but I'll give a quarter for him, and we'll let 'em have a good piece o' the coon."

"You really comin' 'way up here by night, coon-huntin'?" asked Isaac Brown, looking reproachfully at his more agile comrade.

"I be," answered John York.

"I was dre'tful afraid you was only talking, and might back out," returned the cheerful heavy-weight, with a chuckle. "Now we've got things all fixed, I feel more like it than ever. I tell you there's just boy enough left inside of me. I'll clean up my old gun to-morrow mornin', and you look right after your'n. I dare say the boys have took good care of 'em for us, but they don't know what we do about huntin', and we'll bring 'em all along and show 'em a little fun."

"All right," said John York, as soberly as if they were going to look after a piece of business for the town; and they gathered up the axe and other light possessions, and started toward home.

III

The two friends, whether by accident or design, came out of the woods some distance from their own houses, but very near to the low-storied little gray dwelling of Mrs. Price. They crossed the pasture, and climbed over the toppling fence at the foot of her small sandy piece of land, and knocked at the door. There was a light already in the kitchen. Mrs. Price and Eliza Jane Topliff appeared at once, eagerly hospitable.

"Anybody sick?" asked Mrs. Price, with instant sympathy. "Nothin' happened, I hope?"

"Oh, no," said both the men.

"We came to talk about hiring your dog to-morrow night," explained Isaac Brown, feeling for the moment amused at his eager errand. "We got on track of a coon just now, up in the woods, and we thought we'd give our boys a little treat. You shall have fifty cents, an' welcome, and a good piece o' the coon."

"Yes, Square Brown; we can let you have the dog as well as not," interrupted Mrs. Price, delighted to grant a favor. "Poor departed 'Bijah, he set everything by him as a coon dog. He always said a dog's capital was all in his reputation."

"You'll have to be dreadful careful an' not lose him," urged Mrs. Topliff "Yes, sir; he's a proper coon dog as ever walked the earth, but he's terrible weak-minded about followin' 'most anybody. 'Bijah used to travel off twelve or fourteen miles after him to git him back, when he wa'n't able. Somebody'd speak to him decent, or fling a whip-lash as they drove by, an' off he'd canter on three legs right after the wagon. But 'Bijah said he wouldn't trade him for no coon dog he ever was acquainted with. Trouble is, coons is awful sca'ce."

"I guess he ain't out o' practice," said John York amiably; "I guess he'll know when he strikes the coon. Come, Isaac, we must be gittin' along tow'ds home. I feel like eatin' a good supper. You tie him up to-morrow afternoon, so we shall be sure to have him," he turned to say to Mrs. Price, who stood smiling at the door.

"Land sakes, dear, he won't git away; you'll find him right there betwixt the wood-box and the stove, where he is now. Hold the light, 'Liza Jane; they can't see their way out to the road. I'll fetch him over to ye in good season," she called out, by way of farewell; "'twill save ye third of a mile extra walk. No, 'Liza Jane; you'll let me do it, if you please. I've got a mother's heart. The gentlemen will excuse us for showin' feelin'. You're all the child I've got, an' your prosperity is the same as mine."

IV

The great night of the coon-hunt was frosty and still, with only a dim light from the new moon. John York and his boys, and Isaac Brown, whose excitement was very great, set forth across the fields toward the dark woods. The men seemed younger and gayer than the boys. There was a burst of laughter when John Henry Brown and his little brother appeared with the coon dog of the late Mr. Abijah Topliff, which had promptly run away home again after Mrs. Price had coaxed him over in the afternoon. The captors had tied a string round his neck, at which they pulled vigorously from time to time to urge him forward. Perhaps he found the night too cold; at any rate, he stopped short in the frozen furrows every few minutes, lifting one foot and whining a little. Half a dozen times he came near to tripping up Mr. Isaac Brown and making him fall at full length.

"Poor Tiger! poor Tiger!" said the good-natured sportsman, when somebody said that the dog didn't act as if he were much used to being out by night. "He'll be all right when he once gets track of the coon." But when they were fairly in the woods, Tiger's distress was perfectly genuine. The long rays of light from the old-fashioned lanterns of pierced tin went wheeling round and round, making a tall ghost of every tree, and strange shadows went darting in and out behind the pines. The woods were like an interminable pillared room where the darkness made a high ceiling. The clean frosty smell of the open fields was changed for a warmer air, damp with the heavy odor of moss and fallen leaves. There was something wild and delicious in the forest in that hour of night. The men and boys tramped on silently in single file, as if they followed the flickering light instead of carrying it. The dog fell back by instinct, as did his companions, into the easy familiarity of forest life. He ran beside them, and watched eagerly as they chose a safe place to leave a coat or two and a basket. He seemed to be an affectionate dog, now that he had made acquaintance with his masters.

"Seems to me he don't exactly know what he's about," said one of the York boys scornfully; "we must have struck that coon's track somewhere, comin' in."

"We'll get through talkin' an' heap up a little somethin' for a fire, if you'll turn to and help," said his father. "I've always noticed that nobody can give so much good advice about a piece o' work as a new hand. When you've treed as many coons as your Uncle Brown an' me, you won't feel so certain. Isaac, you be the one to take the dog up round the ledge, there. He'll scent the coon quick enough then. We'll tend to this part o' the business."

"You may come too, John Henry," said the indulgent father, and they set off together silently with the coon dog. He followed well enough now; his tail and ears were drooping even more than usual, but he whimpered along as bravely as he could, much excited, at John Henry's heels, like one of those great soldiers who are all unnerved until the battle is well begun.

A minute later the father and son came hurrying back, breathless, and stumbling over roots and bushes. The fire was already lighted, and sending a great glow higher and higher among the trees.

"He's off! He's struck a track! He was off like a major!" wheezed Mr. Isaac Brown.

"Which way'd he go?" asked everybody.

"Right out toward the fields. Like's not the old fellow was just starting after more of our fowls. I'm glad we come early,--he can't have got far yet. We can't do nothin' but wait now, boys. I'll set right down here."

"Soon as the coon trees, you'll hear the dog sing, now I tell you!" said John York, with great enthusiasm. "That night your father an' me got those four busters we've told you about, they come right back here to the ledge. I don't know but they will now. 'Twas a dreadful cold night, I know. We didn't get home till past three o'clock in the mornin', either. You remember, don't you, Isaac?"

"I do," said Isaac. "How old Rover worked that night! Couldn't see out of his eyes, nor hardly wag his clever old tail, for two days; thorns in both his fore paws, and the last coon took a piece right out of his off shoulder."

"Why didn't you let Rover come to-night, father?" asked the younger boy. "I think he knew somethin' was up. He was jumpin' round at a great rate when I come out of the yard."

"I didn't know but he might make trouble for the other dog," answered Isaac, after a moment's silence. He felt almost disloyal to the faithful creature, and had been missing him all the way. "Sh! there's a bark!" And they all stopped to listen.

The fire was leaping higher; they all sat near it, listening and talking by turns. There is apt to be a good deal of waiting in a coon-hunt.

"If Rover was young as he used to be, I'd resk him to tree any coon that ever run," said the regretful master. "This smart creature o' Topliff's can't beat him, I know. The poor old fellow's eyesight seems to be going. Two--three times he's run out at me right in broad day, an' barked when I come up the yard toward the house, and I did pity him dreadfully; he was so 'shamed when he found out what he'd done. Rover's a dog that's got an awful lot o' pride. He went right off out behind the long barn the last time, and wouldn't come in for nobody when they called him to supper till I went out myself and made it up with him. No; he can't see very well now, Rover can't."

"He's heavy, too; he's got too unwieldy to tackle a smart coon, I expect, even if he could do the tall runnin'" said John York, with sympathy. "They have to get a master grip with their teeth through a coon's thick pelt this time o' year. No; the young folks get all the good chances after a while;" and he looked round indulgently at the chubby faces of his boys, who fed the fire, and rejoiced in being promoted to the society of their elders on equal terms. "Ain't it time we heard from the dog?" And they all listened, while the fire snapped and the sap whistled in some green sticks.

"I hear him," said John Henry suddenly; and faint and far away there came the sound of a desperate bark. There is a bark that means attack, and there is a bark that means only foolish excitement.

"They ain't far off!" said Isaac. "My gracious, he's right after him! I don't know's I expected that poor-looking dog to be so smart. You can't tell by their looks. Quick as he scented the game up here in the rocks, off he put. Perhaps it ain't any matter if they ain't stump-tailed, long's they're yaller dogs. He didn't look heavy enough to me. I tell you, he means business. Hear that bark!"

"They all bark alike after a coon." John York was as excited as anybody. "Git the guns laid out to hand, boys; I told you we'd ought to follow!" he commanded. "If it's the old fellow that belongs here, he may put in any minute." But there was again a long silence and state of suspense; the chase had turned another way. There were faint distant yaps. The fire burned low and fell together with a shower of sparks. The smaller boys began to grow chilly and sleepy, when there was a thud and rustle and snapping of twigs close at hand, then the gasp of a breathless dog. Two dim shapes rushed by; a shower of bark fell, and a dog began to sing at the foot of the great twisted pine not fifty feet away.

"Hooray for Tiger!" yelled the boys; but the dog's voice filled all the woods. It might have echoed to the mountain-tops. There was the old coon; they could all see him half-way up the tree, flat to the great limb. They heaped the fire with dry branches till it flared high. Now they lost him in a shadow as he twisted about the tree. John York fired, and Isaac Brown fired, and the boys took a turn at the guns, while John Henry started to climb a neighboring oak; but at last it was Isaac who brought the coon to ground with a lucky shot, and the dog stopped his deafening bark and frantic leaping in the underbrush, and after an astonishing moment of silence crept out, a proud victor, to his prouder master's feet.

"Goodness alive, who's this? Good for you, old handsome! Why, I'll be hanged if it ain't old Rover, boys; _it's old Rover_!" But Isaac could not speak another word. They all crowded round the wistful, clumsy old dog, whose eyes shone bright, though his breath was all gone. Each man patted him, and praised him and said they ought to have mistrusted all the time that it could be nobody but he. It was some minutes before Isaac Brown could trust himself to do anything but pat the sleek old head that was always ready to his hand.

"He must have overheard us talkin'; I guess he'd have come if he'd dropped dead half-way," proclaimed John Henry, like a prince of the reigning house; and Rover wagged his tail as if in honest assent, as he lay at his master's side. They sat together, while the fire was brightened again to make a good light for the coon-hunt supper; and Rover had a good half of everything that found its way into his master's hand. It was toward midnight when the triumphal procession set forth toward home, with the two lanterns, across the fields.

V

The next morning was bright and warm after the hard frost of the night before. Old Rover was asleep on the doorstep in the sun, and his master stood in the yard, and saw neighbor Price come along the road in her best array, with a gay holiday air.

"Well, now," she said eagerly, "you wa'n't out very late last night, was you? I got up myself to let Tiger in. He come home, all beat out, about a quarter past nine. I expect you hadn't no kind o' trouble gittin' the coon. The boys was tellin' me he weighed 'most thirty pounds."

"Oh, no kind o' trouble," said Isaac, keeping the great secret gallantly. "You got the things I sent over this mornin'?"

"Bless your heart, yes! I'd a sight rather have all that good pork an' potatoes than any o' your wild meat," said Mrs. Price, smiling with prosperity. "You see, now, 'Liza Jane she's given in. She didn't re'lly know but 'twas all talk of 'Bijah 'bout that dog's bein' wuth fifty dollars. She says she can't cope with a huntin' dog same's he could, an' she's given me the money you an' John York sent over this mornin'; an' I didn't know but what you'd lend me another half a dollar, so I could both go to Dipford Centre an' return, an' see if I couldn't make a sale o' Tiger right over there where they all know about him. It's right in the coon season; now's my time, ain't it?"

"Well, gettin' a little late," said Isaac, shaking with laughter as he took the desired sum of money out of his pocket. "He seems to be a clever dog round the house."

"I don't know's I want to harbor him all winter," answered the excursionist frankly, striking into a good traveling gait as she started off toward the railroad station.

NOTES

=Dipford=:--The New England town in which the scenes of some of Miss Jewett's stories are laid.

=master hot=:--In the New England dialect, _master_ is used in the sense of _very_ or _extremely_.

=bosom-pin=:--Mourning pins of jet or black enamel were much worn in times past.

='suage=:--Assuage, meaning to soften or decrease.

=selectman=:--One of a board chosen in New England towns to transact the business of the community.

=scattereth nor yet increaseth=:--See Proverbs, 11:24.

=right o' dower=:--The right to claim a part of a deceased husband's property.

SUGGESTIONS FOR STUDY

The action takes place in a country district in New England. Judging by the remarks about the fans, what kind of person do you suppose Old Lady Price to be? Is there any particular meaning in the word _to-day_? How is 'Liza Jane related to Mrs. Price? What was the character of Mr. 'Bijah Topliff? Does the old lady feel grieved at his death? What does Isaac mean by _such_, in the last line, page 190? How does the old lady live? What is shown of her character when she is called "a chirpin' old cricket"? Does she feel ashamed of having gone to the circus? How does she explain her going? What can you tell of 'Bijah from what is said of 'Liza's "memories"? Would the circus people have cared to buy the dog? Notice how the author makes you feel the pleasantness of the walk in the woods. Do you know where coons have their dens? How does Isaac show his affection for old Rover? Is it true that "worthless do-nothings" usually have "smart" dogs? Why does the author stop to tell all about 'Liza Jane's arrival? What light is thrown on the old lady's character by Isaac's words beginning, "Disappointments don't appear to trouble her"? Are the men very anxious to "give the boys a treat"? Why does the old lady call Mr. York "dear"? What is meant by the last five lines of Part III? What sort of dog is Tiger? What is meant by "soon as the coon trees"? How does the author tell you of old Rover's defects? What person would you like to have shoot the coon at last? Why could Isaac Brown not "trust himself to speak"? Do you think old Rover "overheard them talking," as John Henry suggests? How does the author let you into the secret of Tiger's behavior? Why does Isaac not tell the old lady which dog treed the coon? What does he mean by saying that Tiger is "a clever dog round the house"? Do you think that Mrs. Price succeeded in getting fifty dollars for the dog? Why does the author not tell whether she does or not? Try to put into your own words a summing up of the old lady's character. Tell what you think of the two old men. Do you like the use of dialect in this story? Would it have been better if the people had all spoken good English? Why, or why not?

THEME SUBJECTS

Hunting for Squirrels An Intelligent Dog A Night in the Woods An Old Man Tracking Rabbits Borrowers The Circus Old Lady Price A Group of Odd Characters Raccoons Opossums The Tree-dwellers Around the Fire How to Make a Camp Fire The Picnic Lunch An Interesting Old Lady

SUGGESTIONS FOR WRITING

Try to write a theme in which uneducated people talk as they do in real life; as far as possible, fit every person's speech to his character. Below are given some suggestions for this work:

Mrs. Wicks borrows Mrs. Hall's flat-irons. Two or three country children quarrel over a hen's nest. The family get ready to go to the Sunday School picnic. Sammie tells his parents that he has been whipped at school. Two old men talk about the crops. One of the pigs gets out of the pen. Two boys go hunting. The farmer has just come back from town. Mrs. Robbins describes the moving-picture show.

=An Intelligent Dog=:--Tell who owns the dog, and how much you have had opportunity to observe him. Describe him as vividly as possible. Give some incidents that show his intelligence.

Perhaps you can make a story out of this, giving the largest amount of space to an event in which the dog accomplished some notable thing, as protecting property, bringing help in time of danger, or saving his master's life. In this case, try to tell some of the story by means of conversation, as Miss Jewett does.

=An Interesting Old Lady=:--Tell where you saw the old lady; or, if you know her well, explain the nature of your acquaintance with her. Describe her rather fully, telling how she looks and what she wears. How does she walk and talk? What is her chief occupation? If possible, quote some of her remarks in her own words. Tell some incidents in which she figures. Try to bring out her most interesting qualities, so that the reader can see them for himself.

COLLATERAL READINGS

Dogs and Men H.C. Merwin Stickeen: The Story of John Muir Another Dog (in _A Gentleman Vagabond_) F.H. Smith The Sporting Dog Joseph A. Graham Dogtown Mabel Osgood Wright Bob, Son of Battle Alfred Ollivant A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs Laurence Hutton A Boy I Knew and Some More Dogs " " A Dog of Flanders Louise de la Ramée The Call of the Wild Jack London White Fang " " My Dogs in the Northland E.R. Young Dogs of all Nations C.J. Miller Leo (poem) R.W. Gilder Greyfriar's Bobby Eleanor Atkinson The Biography of a Silver Fox E.S. Thompson Our Friend the Dog (trans.) Maurice Maeterlinck Following the Deer W.J. Long The Trail of the Sand-hill Stag Ernest Thompson Seton Lives of the Hunted " " " The Wilderness Hunter Theodore Roosevelt A Watcher in the Woods Dallas Lore Sharp Wild Life near Home " " " The Watchers of the Trails C.G.D. Roberts Kindred of the Wild " " Little People of the Sycamore " " The Haunters of the Silences " " Squirrels and other Fur-bearers John Burroughs My Woodland Intimates E. Bignell

Stories of old people:--

Aged Folk (in _Letters from my Mill_) Alphonse Daudet Green Island (