I

The Gift of the Magi

ONE DOLLAR AND EIGHTY-SEVEN CENTS. That was all. And sixty cents of it
was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the
vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheek burned with the silent imputation of
parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar
and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing left to do but flop down on the shabby little couch
and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates moral reflection that life is made up of
sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the
second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly
beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the look-out for the mendicancy
squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an
electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining
thereunto was a card bearing the name ‘Mr. James Dillingham Young.’
The 'Dillingham' had been flung to the breeze during a former period of
prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income
was shrunk to $20, the letters of 'Dillingham' looked blurred, as though they were
thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr.
James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called 'Jim'
and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as
Della. Which is all very good.
Della finished her cry and attended to her cheeks with the powder rag. She
stood by the window and looked out dully at a grey cat walking a grey fence in a grey
backyard. To-morrow would be Christmas Day, and she had only $1.87 with which to
buy Jim a present. She had been saving every penny she could for
months, with this result. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far. Expenses had been
greater than she had calculated. They always are. Only $1.87 to buy a present for Jim.
Her Jim. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him.
Something fine and rare and sterling—something just a little bit near to being worthy
of the honour of being owned by Jim.
There was a pier-glass between the windows of the room. Perhaps you have
seen a pier-glass in an $8 flat. A very thin and very agile person may, by observing his
reflection in a rapid sequence of longitudinal strips, obtain a fairly accurate conception
of his looks. Della, being slender, had mastered the art.
Suddenly she whirled from the window and stood before the glass. Her eyes
were shining brilliantly, but her face had lost its colour within twenty seconds. Rapidly
she pulled down her hair and let it fall to its full length.
Now, there were two possessions of the James Dillingham Youngs in which
they both took a mighty pride. One was Jim's gold watch that had been his father’s and
his grandfather’s. The other was Della’s hair. Had the Queen of Sheba lived in the flat
across the airshaft, Della would have let her hair hang out the window some day to dry
just to depreciate Her Majesty’s jewels and gifts. Had King Solomon been the janitor,
with all his treasures piled up in the basement, Jim would have pulled out his watch
every time he passed, just to see him pluck at his beard from envy.
So now Della’s beautiful hair fell about her, rippling and shining like a cascade
of brown waters. It reached below her knee and made itself almost a garment for her.
And then she did it up again nervously and quickly. Once she faltered for a minute and
stood still while a tear or two splashed on the worn red carpet.
On went her old brown jacket; on went her old brown hat. With a whirl of skirts
and with the brilliant sparkle still in her eyes, she fluttered out of the door and down
the stairs to the street.
Where she stopped the sign read: 'Mme. Sofronie. Hair Goods of All Kinds.'
One flight up Della ran, and collected herself, panting. Madame, large, too white,
chilly, hardly looked the 'Sofronie.'
'Will you buy my hair?' asked Della.
'I buy hair,' said Madame. 'Take yer hat off and let’s have a sight at the looks of
it.'
Down rippled the brown cascade.
'Twenty dollars,' said Madame, lifting the mass with a practised hand.
 ‘Give it to me quick,’ said Della.
Oh, and the next two hours tripped by on rosy wings. Forget the hashed
metaphor. She was ransacking the stores for Jim’s present.
She found it at last. It surely had been made for Jim and no one else. There was
no other like it in any of the stores, and she had turned all of them inside out. It was a
platinum fob chain simple and chaste in design, properly proclaiming its value by
substance alone and not by meretricious ornamentation—as all good things should do.
It was even worthy of The Watch. As soon as she saw it she knew that it must be
Jim’s. It was like him. Quietness and value—the description applied to both. Twenty-
one dollars they took from her for it, and she hurried home with the 87 cents. With that
chain on his watch Jim might be properly anxious about the time in any company.
Grand as the watch was, he sometimes looked at it on the sly on account of the old
leather strap that he used in place of a chain.
When Della reached home her intoxication gave way a little to prudence and
reason. She got out her curling irons and lighted the gas and went to work repairing
the ravages made by generosity added to love. Which is always a tremendous task,
dear friends—a mammoth task.
Within forty minutes her head was covered with tiny, close-lying curls that
made her look wonderfully like a truant schoolboy. She looked at her reflection in the
mirror long, carefully, and critically.
‘If Jim doesn’t kill me,’ she said to herself, ‘before he takes a second look at
me, he’ll say I look like a Coney Island chorus girl. But what could I do—oh! what
could I do with a dollar and eighty-seven cents?’
At seven o’clock the coffee was made and the frying-pan was on the back of the
stove, hot and ready to cook the chops.
Jim was never late. Della doubled the fob chain in her hand and sat on the
corner of the table near the door that he always entered. Then she heard his step on the
stair away down on the first flight, and she turned white for just a moment. She had a
habit of saying a little silent prayer about the simplest everyday things, and now she
whispered: ‘Please God, make him think I am still pretty.’
The door opened and Jim stepped in and closed it. He looked thin and very
serious. Poor fellow, he was only twenty-two—and to be burdened with a family! He
needed a new overcoat and he was without gloves.
 Jim stepped inside the door, as immovable as a setter at the scent of quail. His
eyes were fixed upon Della, and there was an expression in them that she could not
read, and it terrified her. It was not anger, nor surprise, nor disapproval, nor horror, nor
any of the sentiments that she had been prepared for. He simply stared at her fixedly
with that peculiar expression on his face.
Della wriggled off the table and went for him.
‘Jim, darling,’ she cried, ‘don’t look at me that way. I had my hair cut off and
sold it because I couldn’t have lived through Christmas without giving you a present.
It will grow again—you won’t mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows
awfully fast. Say “Merry Christmas!” Jim, and let’s be happy. You don’t know what a
nice—what a beautiful, nice gift I’ve got for you."
"You’ve cut off your hair?" asked Jim, laboriously, as if he had not arrived at
that patent fact yet even after the hardest mental labor.
"Cut it off and sold it," said Della. "Don’t you like me just as well, anyhow? I’m
me without my hair, ain’t I?"
Jim looked about the room curiously.
"You say your hair is gone?" he said with an almost idiotic expression.
"You needn’t look for it," said Della. "It’s sold, I tell you—sold and gone, too.
It’s Christmas Eve, boy. Be good to me, for it went for you. Maybe the hairs of my
head were numbered," she went on with a sudden serious sweetness, "but nobody
could ever count my love for you. Shall I put the chops on, Jim?"
Out of his trance Jim seemed quickly to wake. He enfolded his Della. For ten
seconds let us regard with discreet scrutiny some inconsequential object in the other
direction. Eight dollars a week or a million a year—what is the difference? A
mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer. The magi brought valuable
gifts, but that was not among them. This dark assertion will be illuminated later on.
Jim drew a package from his overcoat pocket and threw it upon the table.
"Don’t make any mistake, Dell," he said, "about me. I don’t think there’s
anything in the way of a haircut or a shave or a shampoo that could make me like my
girl any less. But if you’ll unwrap that package you may see why you had me going a
while at first."
White fingers and nimble tore at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic
scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails,
necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of the lord of
the flat.
 For there lay The Combs—the set of combs, side and back, that Della had
worshipped for long in a Broadway window. Beautiful combs, pure tortoiseshell, with
jewelled rims—just the shade to wear in the beautiful vanished hair. They were
expensive combs, she knew, and her heart had simply craved and yearned over them
without the least hope of possession. And now they were hers, but the tresses that
should have adorned the coveted adornments were gone.
But she hugged them to her bosom, and at length she was able to look up with
dim eyes and a smile and say: "My hair grows so fast, Jim!"
And then Della leaped up like a little singed cat and cried, "Oh, oh!"
Jim had not yet seen his beautiful present. She held it out to him eagerly upon
her open palm. The dull precious metal seemed to flash with a reflection of her bright
and ardent spirit.
"Isn’t it a dandy, Jim? I hunted all over town for it. You’ll have to look at the
time a hundred times a day now. Give me your watch. I want to see how it looks on
it."
Instead of obeying, Jim tumbled down on the couch and put his hands under the
back of his head and smiled.
"Dell," said he, "let’s put our Christmas presents away and keep ’em awhile.
They’re too nice to use just at present. I sold the watch to get the money to buy your
combs. And now suppose you put the chops on."
The magi, as you know, were wise men—wonderfully wise men—who brought
gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of
exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful
chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other
the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days, let it
be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and
receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
II
A Cosmopolite in a Café
At midnight the café was crowded. By some chance the little table at which I sat had
escaped the eye of incomers, and two vacant chairs at it extended their arms with
venal hospitality to the influx of patrons.
And then a cosmopolite sat in one of them, and I was glad, for I held a theory that
since Adam no true citizen of the world has existed. We hear of them, and we see
foreign labels on much luggage, but we find travelers instead of cosmopolites.
I invoke your consideration of the scene—the marble-topped tables, the range of
leather-upholstered wall seats, the gay company, the ladies dressed in demi-state
toilets, expensive, yet mirthful, the rushing to and fro of waiters, commerce, opulence,
or art, the assiduous and largos-loving garçon, the music wisely catering to all with a
little from Carmen, a little from Tannhäuser, a little from Aida. And, if you will, the
Würzburger in the tall glass cones that bend to your lips as a ripe cherry sways on its
branch to the beak of a robber jay. I was told by a sculptor from Mauch Chunk that the
scene was truly Parisian.
My cosmopolite was named E. Rushmore Coglan, and he will be heard from next
summer at Coney Island. He is to establish a new "attraction" there, he informed me,
in tones between a chop-house and a traveling man’s.
And then his conversation rang along parallels of latitude and longitude. He took the
great round world in his hand, so to speak, familiarly, contemptuously, and it seemed
no larger than the seed of a Maraschino cherry in a table-fitted grape fruit. He spoke
disrespectfully of the equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided at
zones, he mopped up the high seas with his napkin. When a waiter would hand him a
check as a curio, he would study it and remark:
"Zip! Now you ride the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealakakua! Presto! The
haberdashers have you on the kaiser’s streets in Wien! Ho! You are in the cow camps
of Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese archdukes. A touch of
gold leaf laid on by acquaintances in Chicago has breeze and how of fascinada cured
in Buenos Aires with a hot infusion of the chuchuasi weed. You would have..."
I addressed the letter to "E. Rushmore Coglan, Esq., the Earth, Solar System, the
Universe," and have mailed it, feeling confident that it would be delivered to him.
I was sure that I had at last found the one true cosmopolite since Adam, and I listened
to his world-wide discourse fearful lest I should discover in it the local note of the
mere globe-trotter. But his opinions never fluttered or dropped; he was as impartial to
cities, countries, and continents as the winds or gravitation.
And as E. Rushmore Coglan prattled of this little planet I thought with glee of a great
almost-cosmopolite who wrote for the magazines and dedicated himself to Bombay. In
a poem he had to say that there is pride and rivalry between the cities of the earth, and
that "the men that breed from them, they traffic up and down, but cling to their cities’
hems as a child to the mother’s gown." And whenever they walk "by roaring streets
unknown," they remember their native city "most faithful, foolish, fond, making her
mere-breathed name their bond upon their bond." And my heart was roused because I
had caught Mr. Kipling napping. Here I had found a man not made from dust, one who
had no narrow boasted of birthplace or country, one who, if he bragged at all, would
brag of his whole round globe against the Martians and the inhabitants of the moon.
Expressions on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rushmore Coglan by the third
finger-bowl and a saltine. While Coglan was describing to me the the mazy waltzes of
the Siberian steppe a dark-haired young man with an untied tie approached from a
neighboring table and seated himself midway the two. The concluding was "Dixie,"
and as he slowly beat the melody upon the table he sang the words aloud, entirely
oblivious to the fact that they were almost gruesome lugubrious to ears waiting to
hand from this remarkable scene.
It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be observed every
evening in many of the cafés of New York. The young man was of the Southerners in
New York. They do turn to it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners turn
to the tables of the cafés at night because the physical of the "rebel" in a Northerner
city does puzzle a little, but it is not unsolvable. The war with Spain, many years’
generous and valiant warfare—
"What’s the use?" thought I. "New York is a cosmopolitan city. We all talk about
things given by the Indiana and Kansas citizens with composer of the Manhattan
Consul Society, have walked about on the cliffs of Manhattan. Your machine will lag
softly upon your left forefinger reminds her much of a gentleman’s in Richmond, Va.
Oh, certainly, but many a lady has to work now—a war, you know."
When "Dixie" was being played a dark-haired young man sprang up from somewhere
with a Mosby guerrilla yell and waved frantically his soft-brimmed hat. Then he
strayed through the smoke, dropped into the vacant chair at our table and pulled out
cigarettes.
The evening was at the period when reserve is thawed. One of us mentioned three
Würzburgers to the waiter; the dark-haired young man acknowledged his inclusion in
the order by a smile and a nod. I hastened to ask him a question because I wanted to
try out a theory I had.
"Would you mind telling me," I began, "whether you are from –"
The fist of E. Rushmore Coglan banged the table and I was jarred into silence.
"Excuse me," said he, "but that’s a question I never like to hear asked. What does it
matter where a man is from? Is it fair to judge a man by his post-office address? Why,
I’ve seen Kentuckians who hated whisky, Virginians who weren’t descended from
Pocahontas, Indians who hadn’t written a novel, Mexicans who didn’t wear tight
trousers with silver dollars sewn along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift
Yankees, cold-blooded Southern-ers, narrow-minded Westerners, and New Yorkers
who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer’s
clerk do up a bundle. Let a man be a man and don’t handicap him with the label of his
section."
"Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. You have, said
he, one of the characteristics of ‘Dixie’ I like to observe. I have formed the belief that
the man who applauds that air with special violence and fervor is invariably and
unmistakably a native of either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill
Lyceum and the Harlem River, this city. I was about to propound this theorem when
by the liquid way of this cosmopolite—do not interrupt with your own—larger theory,
I must confess."
He stated that his mind also moved along its own set of grooves.
"I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of a valley, and
sing too-loral-ee-too."
This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.
"As you threw the band-wagon," I asked, reanimating to Coglan.
"I know an Exquisite in Poughkeepsie who sends to Cincinnati for his neckties, and I
saw a goat-herder in Uruguay who won a prize in a Battle Creek breakfast-food puzzle
competition. I pay rent on a room in
Cairo, Egypt, and another in Yokohama all the year round. I’ve got slippers waiting
for me in a tea-house in Shanghai, and I don’t have to tell ‘em how to cook my eggs in
Rio de Janeiro or Seattle. It’s a mighty little old world. What’s the use of bragging
about being from the North, or the South, or the old manor-house in the dale, or Euclid
Avenue, Cleveland, or Pike’s Peak, or Fairfax County, Va., or Hooligan’s Flats or any
place? I tell you, it’s a world when we quit being fools about some haltered town or
ten acres of swampland just because we happened to be born there.”
“You seem to be a genuine cosmopolite,” I said admiringly. “But it also seems that
you would deride patriotism.”
“A relic of the stone age,” declared Coglan warmly. “We are all brothers – Chinamen,
Englishmen, Zulus and Hottentots – and we all come at last to the Kew River. Some
day all of this petty pride in one’s city or state or section or country will be wiped out,
and we’ll all be citizens of the world, as we ought to be.”
“But while you are wandering in foreign lands,” I persisted, “do not your thoughts
revert to some spot – some dear and –”
“Nary a spot,” interrupted E. R. Coglan flippantly. “The terrestrial, globular, planetary
bank of nature, slightly flattened at the poles, and known as the Earth, is my abode.
I’ve met a good many objected citizens of this country abroad who tried to make
Chicago sit in a gondola in Venice on a moonlight night and brag about their drainage
canal. I even met a Southerner one blazing noon near the pyramids of Egypt and he
was standing in the sun because he wanted to get the colour of his necktie to match
that of his face. The information that his grandam on his mother’s side was related by
marriage to the Roosevelts did not assuage my irritation.”
The cosmopolite made a large and serious wink at the waiter. “Afghanistan,” he
whispered, “in their crescent moons and bandits. His people sent over the money and
he came back to fight with the agent.” “Afghanistan?” I asked, surprised at the remark.
“Well, not so, unless he doesn’t own it.”
“I don’t know,” says he, and he belongs to them all – the cab-driver on Broadway and
Bowery. Two shoes didn’t suit me. I’m not due on anything that isn’t $1,800 implicit
in the latest. Put me down as E. Rushmore Coglan, citizen of the terrestrial sphere.”
My cosmopolite made a large and serious wink at the waiter. He saw someone through
the chatter and smoke whom he knew. So I was left without an authority to voice my
disagreement or agreement with his ability to voice his aspirations perch, melodious,
upon the summit of a valley.
I sat reflecting upon my vanished cosmopolite and wondering how the poet had
managed to miss him. He was my discovery and
I believed in him. How was it? "The men that breed from them they trifle up and
down, but cling to their cities’ hem as a child to the mother’s gown."
Not so E. Rushmore Coglan. With the whole world for his—
My meditations were interrupted by a tremendous noise and conflict in another part of
the café. I saw above the heads of the seated patrons E. Rushmore Coglan and a
stranger to me engaged in terrible battle. They fought between the tables like Titans,
and glasses crashed, and men caught their hats up and were knocked down, and a
brunette screamed, and a blonde began to sing "Teasing."
My cosmopolite was sustaining the pride and reputation of the Earth when the waiters
closed in on both combatants with their famous flying wedge formation and bore them
outside, still resisting.
I called McCarthy, one of the French garçons, and asked him the cause of the conflict.
"The man with the red tie" (that was my cosmopolite), said he, "got hot on account of
things said about the bum sidewalks and water supply of the place he came from by
the other guy."
"Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world—a cosmopolite. He—"
"Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine, he said," continued McCarthy, "and he
wouldn’t stand for no knockin’ the place."

III
Between Rounds
The May moon shone bright upon the private boarding-house of Mrs. Murphy. By
reference to the almanac a large amount of territory will be discovered upon which its
rays also fell. Spring was in heyday, with hay fever soon to follow. The parks were
green with new leaves and buyers for the Western and Southern trade. Flowers and
summer-resort agents were blooming; the air and answers in Lawson were growing
milder; hand-organs, fountains, and pigeons were playing everywhere.
The windows of Mrs. Murphy’s boarding-house were open. A group of boarders were
seated on the high stoop upon round, flat mats like German pancakes.
In one of the second-floor front windows Mrs. McCaskey
awaited her husband. Supper was cooling on the table. Its best went into Mrs.
McCaskey.
At nine Mr. McCaskey came. He carried his coat on his arm and his pipe in his teeth;
and he apologized for disturbing the boarders on the steps as he selected spots of stone
between them on which to set his size 9, width Ds.
As he opened the door of his room he received a surprise. Instead of the usual stove-
lid or potato-masher for him to dodge, there came only words.
Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign May moon had soft- ened the breast of his
spouse.
"I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apologize to riff-raff
o' the streets for settin' yer unhandy feet on the tails o' their frocks, but ye'd walk on
the neck of yer wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a ‘Kiss me fut,’
and I'm sure it's that long from rubberin' out the windy for ye and the victuals cold as
there's money to buy after drinkin' up yer wages at Gallagher’s every Saturday evenin',
and the gas man here twice to-day for his."
"Woman!" said Mr. McCaskey, dashing his coat and hat upon a chair, "the noise of ye
is an insult to me appetite. When ye run down politeness ye take the mortar from
between the bricks of the foundations of society. 'Tis no more than exercisin' the
acrimony of a gentleman when ye ask the dissent of ladies blockin’ the way for
steppin’ between them. Will ye bring the pig’s face o' ye out of the windy and set me
food?"
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily and went to the stove. There was something in her
manner that warned Mr. McCaskey. When the corners of her mouth were drawn
suddenly like a barometer it usually foretold a riot of crockery and tinware.
"Pig’s face, is it?" said Mrs. McCaskey, and hurled a stewpan full of bacon and turnips
at her lord.
Mr. McCaskey was no novice at repartee. He knew what should follow the entree. On
the table was a roast sirloin of pork, gar- nished with sharnrock. He retorted with this,
and drew the appropriate return of a bread pudding in an earthen dish. A hunk of
Swiss cheese accurately thrown by her husband struck Mrs. McCaskey below one eye.
When she replied with a well-aimed coffee-pot full of a hot, black, semi-fragrant
liquid the battle, according to courses, should have ended there.
But Mr. McCaskey was so in it for the bitther. Let the cheap Bohemians consider the
end, if they would. Let them eat.
that faux pas. He was foxier still. Finger-bowls were not beyond the compass of his
experience. They were not to be had in the Pension Murphy, but their equivalent was
at hand. Triumphantly he sent the granite-ware wash-basin at the head of his matri-
monial adversary. Mrs. McCaskey dodged in time. She reached for a flat-iron, with
which, as a sort of cordial, she hoped to bring the gastronomical duel to a close. But a
loud, wailing scream down- stairs got both their hot and Mr. McCaskey to pause in a
sort of involuntary armistice.
On the sidewalk at the corner of the house Policeman Cleary was standing with one
ear upturned, listening to the crash of household utensils.
"’Tis Jawn McCaskey and his missus at it again," meditated the policeman. "I wonder
shall I go up and stop the row. 'T will not. Married folk they are; and few pleasures
they have. 'T will not last long. Sure, they'll have to borrow more dishes to keep it up
with."
And just then came the loud scream below-stairs, betokening either fear or dire
extremity. " 'Tis probably the cat," said Policeman Cleary, and walked hastily in the
other direction.
The boarders on the steps were fluttered. Mr. Toomey, an insurance solicitor by birth
and an investigator by profession, was about to analyze the scream. He returned with
the news that Mrs. Murphy's little boy Mike was lost. Following the messenger, he
boarded Mrs. Murphy — two hundred pounds in tears and hysterics, clutching the air
and showing the ruins of a last winter’s thirty pounds of freckles and mischief. Bathos,
truly, but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, who was in the house, and
hands came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Miss Walsh, who complained
every day about the noise in the halls, laid down their crocheting and looked behind
the clocks.
Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat. "The
little one's lost?" he inquired. "I will soon find him. I have never allowed him out after
dark. But now—"
"Go, Ludovic!" in a baritone voice. "Whoever can look upon that mother's grief
without springing to her relief has a heart of stone." The Major took his sixty cents,
and left.
"Lost children sometimes stray far. I may need car-fares," said O’Denny. Then, half-
hatless, ragged but yet limping to the lowest step, trying to read a paper by the street-
lamp, turned over as a topic of refuge into the article about the carpenters' strike. Mrs.
Murphy, following up the investigation, "Oh, ar—Mike, f’r Gawd’s sake, where is me
little bit av a boy?"
"When’d ye see him last?" asked old man Denny, with one eye on the report of the
Building Trades League.
"Oh," wailed Mrs. Murphy, "’twas yesterday, or maybe four hours ago! I dunno. But
it’s lost he is, me little boy Mike. He was playin’ on the sidewalk only this mornin’—
or was it Wednesday? I’m that busy with work ‘tis hard to keep up with dates. But
I’ve looked the house over from top to cellar, and it’s gone he is. Oh, the little foe av
Hiven—!"
Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard
as iron; they compare its streets to jolity of pearls in its bosom; they compare its
streets with lonely forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the lobster
is found a delectable and luscious food, esteemed by the gormandizer and epicure.
Still, nobody should take offence. We would call no one a lobster without good and
sufficient claws.
No calamity so touches the common heart of humanity as does the straying of a little
child. Their feet are so uncertain and feeble; the ways are so steep and strange.
Major Griggs hurried down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy’s place.
"Gimme a rye-high," he said to the server. "Haven’t seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced
little devil of a six-year-old kid around here anywhere, have you?"
Mr. Toomey remained Miss Purdy’s hand on the steps. "Think of that little babe," said
Miss Purdy, "lost from his happy home, and cast into this cruel city where the iron
hoofs of galloping steeds—oh, isn’t it dreadful!"
"Ain’t that right?" agreed Mr. Toomey, squeezing her hand. "Say I start out and help
look for um!"
"Perhaps," said Miss Purdy, "you should. But oh, Mr. Toomey, you are so dashing—
so reckless—suppose in your enthusiasm some accident should befall you, then what
—"
Old man Denny read on about the arbitration agreement, with one finger on the lines.
In the second floor front Mr. and Mrs. McCaskey came to the window to recover their
second wind. Mr. McCaskey was so mad he could have thrown a brick without
forefinger, and by lightening an eye on what they called the roost pork had not
benefited. The other was watching with interest their heads out of the window.
"This little Mike is lost," said Mrs. McCaskey in a hushed voice, "the black little,
trouble-making angel of a gossoon!"
"The bit of a boy mislaid?" said Mr. McCaskey leaning out of
the window. "Why, now, that’s bad enough, entirely. The childher, they be different. If
’twas a woman I’d be willin’. If they leave peace behind ’em when they go."
Disregarding the thrust, Mrs. McCaskey caught her husband’s arm.
"Jawn," she said sentimentally, "Missis Murphy’s little bye is lost. ’Tis a great city for
losing little boys. Six years old he was, Jawn. It’s the same age our little bye would
have been if we had have had one six years ago."
"We never did," said Mr. McCaskey, lingering with the fact.
"But if we had, Jawn, think what sorrow would be in our hearts this night, with our
little Phelan run away and stolen in the city nowheres at all."
"Ye talk foolishness," said Mr. McCaskey. "’Tis Pat he would be named, after me old
father in Cantrim."
"Ye lie!" said Mrs. McCaskey, without anger. "Me brother was worth two dozen bog-
trotting McCaskeys. After him would the bye be named." She leaned over the
window-sill and looked down at the hurrying and bustle below.
"Jawn," said Mrs. McCaskey softly, "I’m sorry I was hasty with ye."
"’Twas hasty puddin,’ as ye say," said her husband, and "hurry-up trimmings and get-
a-move-on-ye coffee. ’Twas what ye could call a quick lunch, all right, and well to
lie."
Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband’s and took his rough hand in hers.
"’Tis the cryin’ of poor Mrs. Murphy," she said. "’Tis an awful thing for a bit of a bye
to be lost in this great big city. If ’twas our little Phelan, Jawn, I’d be breakin’ me
heart."
Awkwardly Mr. McCaskey laid his other hand. But he laid it over the small one of his
wife’s.
"This foolishness is of course," said he, roughly, "but I’d be cut up some meself, if it
was Pat was kidnapped or anything. But they’d not be watchin’ our loss. Sometimes
I’ve been that mad with ye, Judy. Forget it."
They leaned together, and looked down at the heart-drama being acted below.
Long they sat thus. People surged along the sidewalk, crowding, questioning, filling
the air with rumors and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth
in their midst, like a soft mountain torrent which plunged an audible cataract of tears.
Couriers came and went.
Loud voices and a renewed uproar were raised in front of the boarding-house.
“What’s up now, Judy?” asked Mr. McCaskey.
“’Tis Missis Murphy’s voice,” said Mrs. McCaskey, harking. “She says she’s after
finding little Mike asleep behind the roll of old linoleum under the bed in her room.”
Mr. McCaskey laughed loudly.
“That’s yer Phelan,” he shouted scandalously. “Divil a bit would a Pat have done that
trick if the bye we never had is strayed and stole, by the powers, call him Phelan, and
see him hide out under the bed like a mangy pup.”
Mrs. McCaskey arose heavily, and went toward the dish closet, with the corners of her
mouth drawn down.
Policeman Cleary came back around the corner as the crowd dispersed. Surprised, he
upturned an ear toward the McCaskey apartment where the crash of irons and
chinaware and the ring of hurled kitchen utensils seemed as loud as before. Policeman
Cleary took out his timepiece.
“By the deported snakes!” he exclaimed, “Jawn McCaskey and his lady have been
fightin’ for an hour and a quarter by the watch. The missis could give him forty
pounds weight. Strength to his arm!”
Policeman Cleary strolled back around the corner.
Old man Denny folded his paper and lumbered up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was
about to lock the door for the night.

The Skylight Room

FIRST MRS. PARKER would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to
conjecture how the furniture there had ever been passed through the door, unless
through a removal of the walls. The folding beds looked like an invention for exiling
convicts who refused to talk. They seemed to have come from some land where all
were deaf. They are seldom let except to a class of customers who are not apt to use
them more than once. Then, oh, how Mrs. Parker would frown in majestic scorn at
your ignorance of the merits of the gentleman who had occupied them for eight years.
Then you would manage to stammer forth the confession that you were neither a
doctor nor a dentist. Mrs. Parker’s manner of receiving the admission was such that
you could never afterward entertain the same feeling toward your parents, who had
neglected to train you up in one of the professions that fitted Mrs. Parker’s parlours.
Next you ascended one flight of stairs and looked at the second floor back at $8.
Convinced by her second-floor manner that it…