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. This instigates the 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. This is all very good.

Delia 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

1
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. Per-haps 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 Young’s 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.'

2
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 practiced 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. This 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.

3
‘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 little silent prayers 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'll grow out again —

you won't mind, will you? I just had to do it. My hair grows awfully fast. Say 'Merry Christmas!'

4
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 labour.

"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 air almost of idiocy.

"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 awhile at first."

5
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 jeweled 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 to find 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."

6
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.

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-sate toilets, speaking in an

exquisite visible chorus of taste, economy, opulence or art, the sedulous and largess-loving

garçons, the music wisely catering to all with its raids upon the composers; the mélange of talk

and laughter — and, if you will, the Wurzburg 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, offering kingly diversion.

7
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-d'hôte grape fruit. He spoke disrespectfully of the

equator, he skipped from continent to continent, he derided the zones, he mopped up the high

seas with his napkin.

With a wave of his hand he would speak of a certain bazaar in Hyderabad. Whiff! He would

have you on skis in Lap-land. Zip! Now you rode the breakers with the Kanakas at Kealakahiki.

Presto! He dragged you through an Arkansas post-oak swamp, let you dry for a moment on the

alkali plains of his Idaho ranch, then whirled you into the society of Viennese arch-dukes. Anon

he would be telling you of a cold he acquired in a Chicago lake breeze and how old Escamilla

cured it in Buenos Ayres with a hot infusion of the chuchula weed.

...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 drooped; 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 whole world and dedicated himself to Bombay. In a poem he

has 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’ hem as a child to the

mother’s gown.’ And whenever they walk ‘by roaring streets unknown’ they remember their

8
native city ‘most faithful, foolish, fond; making her mere-breathed name their bond upon their

bond.’

And my glee was roused because I had caught Mr. Kipling napping.

Here I had found a man not made from dust; one who had no narrow boasts 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.

Expression on these subjects was precipitated from E. Rush-more Coglan by the third corner

to our table. While Coglan was describing to me the topography along the Siberian Railway

the orchestra glided into a medley. The concluding air was ‘Dixie,’ and as the exhilarating

notes tumbled forth they were almost over-powered by a great clapping of hands from almost

every table.

It is worth a paragraph to say that this remarkable scene can be witnessed every evening in

numerous cafés in the City of New York. Tons of brew have been consumed over theories to

account for it. Some have conjectured hastily that all Southerners in town hie themselves to

cafés at nightfall. This applause of the ‘rebel’ air in a Northern city does puzzle a little; but it

is not insolvable.

The war with Spain, many years’ generous mint and water-melon crops, a few long-shot

winners at the New Orleans race-track, and the brilliant banquets given by the Indiana and

Kansas citizens who compose the North Carolina Society, have made the South rather a ‘fad’

in Manhattan. Your manicure will lisp softly that your left forefinger reminds her so much of

a gentleman’s in Rich-mond, Va.

Oh, certainly; but many a lady has to work now — the war, you know.

9
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,

Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver

dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded

Southerners, 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 cranberries in paper bags. Let a

man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section."

"Pardon me," I said, "but my curiosity was not altogether an idle one. I know the South, and

when the band plays 'Dixie' I like to observe. I have formed the belief that the man who

applauds that air with special violence and ostensible sectional loyalty is invariably a native of

either Secaucus, N.J., or the district between Murray Hill Lyceum and the Harlem River, this

city. I was about to put my opinion to the test by inquiring of this gentleman when you

interrupted with your own—larger theory, I must confess."

10
And now the dark-haired young man spoke to me, and it became evident 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-

ra-loo-ra-loo." This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.

"I've been around the world twelve times," said he. "I know an Esquimau in Upernavik 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..."

I believed in him. How was it? "The men that breed from them they traffic 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 terrific 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 come from by the other guy."

"Why," said I, bewildered, "that man is a citizen of the world—a cosmopolite. He—"

11
"Originally from Mattawamkeag, Maine," he said, continued McCarthy, "and he wouldn't stand

for no knocking the place."

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 its 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

blowing; the air and answers to Lawson were growing milder; hand-organs, fountains and

pinochle 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 heat

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, came only words. Mr. McCaskey reckoned that the benign

May moon had softened the breast of his spouse.

"I heard ye," came the oral substitutes for kitchenware. "Ye can apologize to riff-raff of the

streets for setting’ your unhandy feet on the tails of their frocks, but ye’d walk on the neck of

your wife the length of a clothes-line without so much as a ‘Kiss me fut,’ and I’m sure, it’s that

long from rubbering’ out the windy for ye and the victuals cold such as there’s money to buy

after drinkin’ up yer wages at Gallegher’s every Saturday evenin’, and the gas man here twice

to-day for his."

12
"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 of ye out of the windy and see to the 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 went down suddenly like a barometer

it usually foretold a fall 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, garnished with shamrocks. 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. But Mr. McCaskey was no 50 cent table d’hôte.

Let cheap Bohemians consider coffee the end, if they would. Let them make......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 matrimonial adversary.

13
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 downstairs

caused both her 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. I will not. Married

folks they are; and few pleasures they have. 'Twill 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 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, went inside to analyse the scream. He returned with the news that

Mrs. Murphy's little boy Mike was lost.

Following the messenger, out bounced Mrs. Murphy – two hundred pounds in tears and

hysterics, clutching the air and howling to the sky for the loss of thirty pounds of freckles and

mischief.

Bathos, truly; but Mr. Toomey sat down at the side of Miss Purdy, milliner, and their hands

came together in sympathy. The two old maids, Misses Walsh, who complained every day

about the noise in the halls, inquired immediately if anybody had looked behind the clock.

Major Grigg, who sat by his fat wife on the top step, arose and buttoned his coat.

14
"The little one lost?" he exclaimed. "I will scour the city." His wife never allowed him out after

dark. But now she said: "Go, Ludovic!" in a baritone voice.

"Whoever can look upon that mother's grief without springing to her relief has a heart of stone."

"Give me some thirty or - sixty cents, my love," said the Major. "Lost children sometimes stray

far. I may need car-fares."

Old man Denny, hall-room, fourth floor back, who sat on the lowest step, trying to read a paper

by the street lamp, turned over a page to follow up the article about the carpenters' strike.

Mrs. Murphy shrieked to the moon: "Oh, ar-r-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, for the love av Hiven - ’

Silent, grim, colossal, the big city has ever stood against its revilers. They call it hard as iron;

they say that no pulse of pity beats 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. Perhaps a different simile would have been wiser. 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

15
down to the corner, and up the avenue into Billy’s place. ‘Gimme a rye-high,’ he said to the

servitor. ‘Haven’t seen a bow-legged, dirty-faced little devil of a six-year-old lost kid around

here anywhere, have you?’ Mr. Toomey retained Miss Purdy’s hand on the steps. ‘Think of

that dear little babe,’ said Miss Purdy, ‘lost from his mother’s side - perhaps already fallen

beneath 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 scooping turnips out of his vest with a crooked forefinger, and his

lady was wiping an eye that the salt of the roast pork had not benefited. They heard the outcry

below, and thrust their heads out of the window. ‘’Tis little Mike is lost,’ said Mrs. McCaskey

in a hushed voice, ‘the beautiful, 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 childer, they be different. If 'twas a woman I'd be willin', for 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, 'tis the same age our little bye would have been if we had

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 tin 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

16
Mrs. McCaskey softly, 'I'm sorry I was hasty wid ye.' ' 'Twas hasty puddin', as ye say,' said her

husband, 'and hurry - up turnips and get-a-move-on-ye coffee. 'Twas what ye could call a quick

lunch, all right, and tell no lie.'

Mrs. McCaskey slipped her arm inside her husband's and took his rough hand in hers. 'Listen

at 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 withdrew his hand. But he laid it around the nearing shoulders of his wife. ' 'Tis

foolishness, of course,' said he, roughly, 'but I'd be cut up some meself, if our little - Pat was

kidnapped or anything. But there never was any childer for us. Sometimes I've been ugly and

hard 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 rumours and inconsequent surmises. Mrs. Murphy ploughed back and forth

in their midst, like a soft mountain down 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 sardonically. '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

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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 hurried up the steps just as Mrs. Murphy was about to lock the door for the night.

FIRST MRS. PARKER would show you the double parlours. You would not dare to interrupt

her description of their advantages and 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

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