turned a full smile on the old man; "and it seems that my caution was needed. You just got your pretty caller

The lady held out her hand, and bade Roderick a quiet good-bye. It seemed to him, as he looked at her then, that after all she was not so pretty as he had thought her to be. The face had had in it only happy lines, as though she had never known trouble, or hardly vexation. Yet now it looked pale and worn. "Y' ain't afraid to go home alone?" asked Roderick, gently.

"Not a bit," said she, absently, "not a bit;" and she went into the hall, passing Creta, who still stood there, with a hasty "Good-night." Poor Creta looked up with a puzzled expression, but no more cordial light dawned in her friend's gray eyes, and she fell to weeping harder without asking herself the reason why.

A moment later there was a step on the stair, and Creta, turning, fled to her room like a fugitive.

The step had a very different effect on Roderick. He ran for the lamp and held it over the stairs-c - ceremony which he had not thought to extend to the lady, and which was superfluous now, for before he had got it well into the hall, a form leaped up into the corridor.

A little above medium height, slight, graceful, nervous, with a restless pair of eyes and a head full of quick movements, the lad whom old Rod grasped so tenderly by the hand was one to be remembered anywhere.

"Well, papa!" he cried, mockingly, "I should be pleased to know what perfumed visitor of yours it was who stole by me in the dusk just now. She carried her head down in a guilty way that speaks very bad for you. No flirtations at your age, I hope, papa ! You can't expect me to do the respectable for the whole family, can you?"

It was evident that it was the voice the old man wanted, and that the import of the speech mattered little. "I got yeh note, Ray. It was awful thoughtful of yeh to write, lad."

"You see I thought you might have an engagement," laughed the youth, stretching his long legs comfortably, and showing an attractive set of teeth, as he

VOL. VIII.-43

"Well, blood counts fur somethin', as you an' I know, Ray. She did n't see him as we did, lad," said the old man gently.

It was hard to tell exactly what set the young one to laughing, but he fell to it so heartily that his father looked about in actual distress to see what the cause could be.

"Don't mind me, papa," he cried between his paroxysms. "It's a mad world and I have to laugh at it. We're all motley fools, old man, and you and I are not the least of them."

"There ain't nothin' of the fool about you," returned the old man with a sturdy resentment. "Hev' ye written any more poems lately, Ray?"

The young man turned a wide and inexpressive grin upon his father.

"No," he said. "A fellow can't get in the mood for doing that sort of thing every day."

True, true," Roderick assented with solemn shakings of the head. "I showed the las one you wrote to the lady that was here."

"The devil you did!" cried the young man springing out of his chair with a hot face. 'What did she say about them?"

66

Well," returned his father truthfully. "It seemed to be hard for her to understand that you done 'um."

"I should think so!" ejaculated the youth. "Why in heaven's name can't you keep things to yourself, father? Bring Creta in here. I want to find out who that woman was."

Roderick went out with consternation painted on his face. What could be more unfortunate than for him to vex the boy -after a month's absence, too! minute he was back.

66

In

a

Somethin's the matter with Creta," he said in a low voice. She's got her back up and won't come."

"Won't she?" said the lad with a nervous motion of his head. He walked to the loor as if he were commanding a fort. "Creta!" he called. "Come here!" Creta came. Her breast was heaving, her dirty little hands clenched, her eyes darting defiance; but she came. She was no match for the young man awaiting her in the doorway. His piercing eyes looked her through and made her tremble. His vexation was stronger than her defiance.

The old man looked at Creta with impatience. What did she mean by trifling with the boy!

66

"Here, you little ninny," said Ray, in a low voice; come here and stop your nonsense, can't you. Give me a kiss, you saucy little thing." He put his long arm around her and drew her to him in spite of her struggles.

"If you had n't the prettiest lips in Chicago, you need n't think I would try to coax you out of your tarnation megrims. Sit on my knee, you black-browed jade, and tell me what the name of that mysterious lady was who visited you this afternoon."

66

"She came to see about Diego,” said Creta, still darting lightning from her eyes. And I think if I was you I'd ask something about him-if-if," the sobs rose and choked her.

“Oh, I know the poor little wretch is dead, Creta."

แ

A change came over his mobile face. He was not incapable of impulses of pity. "Poor little girl," he whispered, 'you've had a hard time, haven't you, and not a soul near to kiss the tears off those black eyes." He did it now, and the anger died out of Creta's face as fire fades under water.

"Now tell me the name of the lady. As she went by me it seemed as if her figure were familiar, but it was so dark I could n't see her face."

"She's a saint," cried Creta in a sudden burst of Italian emphasis, "and has been good to me when my friends forgot about me. Her name is Miss Alma Wentworth."

Before Creta could realize it, she was thrown off the young man's knee, and he was standing over the old man with a look of fury in his face.

"You did n't tell her your name, did you, you old fool? But of course you did, your name and mine, too--I can count on you to make a dirty muddle of things."

The old man lifted moist and imploring eyes, but his voice was gone.

"For God's sake, speak !" the young man said, in a voice which fell lower and lower as his anger grew. "Don't sit there like an Egyptian mummy. What does she know ?"

"Everything," remarked Creta, quietly, the revengeful impulse of her race coming uppermost again.

She could see Ray Granger grow pale, in spite of his anger.

"Not- -" he began.

"Not why I would n't go to live with her, as she wanted me to," she remarked, calmly, but everything else. Who is she?" "It's none of your business, my angel. Good-bye to you. I won't see you again for a while."

He put on his hat and started for the door. Creta smiled coldly, and tied her red silk neckerchief closer, with a careful attention to the ends. But the mis

erable old man, his face bedewed with the sweat of agony, reached out a pair of trembling hands.

"Ray, my son," he cried.

"As for the poor little Italian girl, stifling in that hole of a garret, I think I know now why she could not accept my friendship-simply because she needs

"Farewell, papa," he said.

answer for, too, my poet. Since you can have no feeling but vanity left, I take pleasure in telling you that the least of the broken and ungrammatical speeches of your poor old father are more to me than the most brilliant of the airy sophisms with which you have entertained me. Spare me the necessity of being discourteous, by remaining

"Here's a keepsake for you," she laughed, laying one blood-covered hand upon each breast. The coat was of light drab, fashionably made and faced with silk of a paler tint. Granger looked down at it stupidly. The sight of blood always made him faint. Creta held up both hands with a mocking grimace and danced about him with a weird outflinging of her limbs. Granger gave a wrench to the coat, failed to get it off, took one sick look at Creta, and then rushed down the street.

future; for I am not at home to you, Mr. Granger. ALMA WENTWORTH. "Aldine Square, Aug. 10."

Granger read the letter twice through. "It's no go," said he, with a little laugh.

It was a week before old Rod was out again. Then he crept wearily out in his ludicrous sandwich suit. Not even his misery could keep him from looking absurd.

Creta was at the hospital. Diego had

Ray went to his room and got the coat off. There was a note awaiting him.

"I have seen your poor old father," it ran, “and drawn from him a history of your wretched life. Do not think for a moment, that he knew what he was telling me. He had nothing but praise and love for you. If you have committed this sin because of me, I shall think more hardly of you than ever, for your judgment of my character is an insult. I read the poems you gave the deluded old man. If you were going to steal, why could n't you take something that every one did n't know. I am too much a woman of the world to forgive you for being stupid. I wish I could bring my truer self to write these lines; but I feel nothing but a cold and bitter cynicism as I think of you-all the more because there is in you a strain of something which might have been genius had it not been perverted. Do not flatter your self that you have wounded me erely mortified at the blunder

-I am

n

I made in believing you.

would have liked to hate for causing the trouble between him and his boy but that she had been so kind since.

The sun was terrible to Rod. Never before had it seemed to pour upon his brain so, and never before had the air seemed so laden with heated moisture.

The children who followed him were usually good-natured, but to-day they seemed to resent his dejection. One urchin flung handfuls of soft mud at him, until the shining coat of red was speckled with it. Sometimes the stretch of white paving seemed to undulate in waves like the lake. That made Roderick think that if he were able he would go down to the lake at night, and watch the darkness creep over it from the east. The vision of those restless waters quieted the pain at his desolate heart.

But the sun grew hotter after a time. and Rod forgot even the lake in trying to keep his eyes open. Finally, they closed in spite of him. He sank gently to the ground and laid his head on his arm, with a sense of rest.

By the time the patrol wagon had reached the spot a crowd had gathered. Men came running from their shops and offices; some even left the cars at the exhilarating sight of the concourse, and pushing and jamming, asked each other what the matter was.

"I'm a reporter; kindly make way," came from the outskirts in an authoritative voice. A dark young fellow with handsome eyes pushed into the center.

"Who is the old fellow?" he asked. Someone who was bathing the face with a wet handkerchief answered him. "A minute ago he was a sandwich man; now he is nothing but a dead one." The reporter stooped to look into the dead man's face.

That night the city editor of the Mail remarked pleasantly to his police reporter: "That was a neat little thing you handed in this afternoon on the sandwich man, Granger. You gave quite a personal flavor to it."

"Thank you," said Granger, delicately turning the button in his fresh cuff. "I couldn't help seeing something picturesque in the old beggar."

"It's a pity you could n't find out his name. I suppose that about Paradise Flats was all imagination, was n't

"Partially so. of extra seats for Dream,' have you? the neatest little long time."

You have n't a couple Midsummer Night's The Puck is about girl I have seen for a

HERE are poets who thrive best upon the stories of great cities, who find inspiration in the perpetual march and jostle of crowds, in a life of wear and tear, restlessness and passion; other poets discover their sweetest and purest sympathies in the naked woodlands, where the only voices heard are those of winds and trees, insects and birds; and still others love the gentle tranquillity of village existence, where the boisterous city roar is reduced and harmonized to a faraway human echo. Unfortunately, poets do not often have their choice of vantage

ground; the problems which confront most men confront them, and they are forced into centres of civilization in spite of themselves. That poet who is able to select his own home, the perfect surroundings which fit his mind and heart, is surpassingly fortunate. I know a few so fortunate poets-only too few. One of them is certainly George Lansing Raymond, of Princeton.

Princeton is an ideal college town. It is one of those cool, green, lovely villages, off the main line of a rai way. where the very air seems to stimulate philosophic thought and to expand the imagination. It combines the soothing peace of delicious rural life with a warm scholastic atmosphere. Even the aggress

ive sectarianism of Princeton does not destroy the persuasive charm of the place. The average village is a kind of strait-jacket to eager intellectuality; but Princeton, with all its leaning to the Presbyterian creed, offers a broadening and invigorating influence to the thinker. The noble college which has been established there holds up the mirror, as it were, to good literature. In Princeton, if anywhere, good literature should find its hearing and its reward. As a matter of fact, many of our leaders in ethical and critical discussion write under the stimulus of Princeton, and I see no reason why the college shall not have eventually its own strong literature. At present one of the few distinctively literary men in Princeton is Mr. Raymond-and perhaps he is the most distinctively literary man of them all. Mr. Raymond-who, though he may not yet enjoy large popularity, has commended himself to the attention of serious readers in Great Britain and the United States-holds in Princeton the important professorship of oratory and æsthetic criticism. In æsthetic criticism his high standing can not be disputed. He is the author of "Poetry as a Representative Art," which is properly regarded as a complete and logical statement. This work treats of a difficult and comprehensive subject. The technique of versification, the rhetoric of poetic composition, the significance and the scope of poetry -these are brought by Mr. Raymond into their exact relations, and together they reveal poetry as a definite, definable, lucid art of representation. One critic has described this rare book as "a profound, and, as nearly as may be, a satisfactory history of poetry itself." Another-writing in the Independent has said of it with entire justice: "It applies the test under whose touch the dull line fails. It goes further than this, and furnishes the key to settle the vexed questions as to moralizing and didactic verse, and the dangerous terms on which sound and sense meet." Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave, professor of poetry at Oxford, after studying the book carefully, made this comment upon it, which is also the comment that no intelligent reader can hesitate to make: "I have read it with a pleasure and a sense of instruction on many points." The fact that there are

As a poet, Mr. Raymond is honestly national, American. Not American, let me add at once, in the sense of spread-eagleism, which is so often mistaken for patriotism. He does not attempt to glorify the Americans at the expense of truth and art; to emphasize the external at the loss of the spiritual. It is, indeed, the spiritual, the deep and impassioned meaning of our American life which he endeavors to sound and to utter. In this task I think he is undoubtedly successful. It is not surprising that he happens to be so genuine an American, even if he were not an American poet. I believe it is a fact that no blood flows in his veins that was not in this country before 1650. His mother belongs to the old Porter family of Connecticut, and Mr. Raymond himself was born in Chicago. He received his education at Andover and at Williams College, and he was afterwards, for several years, a professor at Williams. From there he went to Princeton.

Mr. Raymond has published three volumes of verse, each with a distinct object and quality, all of a thoroughly national character. Unlike the majority of our recent American poets, he does not write on haphazard themes; unlike them, too, he does not cultivate a single style, particularly that highly ornamental and rather artificial style which is now in vogue, which every amateur seems to have at the point of his pen, and which is frequently the elaborate frescoing of triviality. If I should find fault with him from my own standpoint-which is a standpoint of taste more than of criticism-I should be inclined to declare that he has too little luxury in his nature, too much direct, unsifted force. It is apparent, so soon as one becomes fairly acquainted with his work, that he is apt to be satisfied with the expression of a thought, and to neglect. the cutting and polishing of the expression. He is a thinking poet, however, not a poetic dilettante, and the body of his thought is unusually substantial; through quick thinking and effortless writing, he becomes facile and strong; his manner is,