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been fostered in his heart. At a meeting of Hawaiian pastors and delegates he spoke in favor of a division of the funds of the Hawaiian Board of Missions. The native churches were to have control, through an organization of their own, of the funds which they raised, leaving the white brethren in charge of the remainder. It was understood that this was done in deference to the King's wishes, he hoping thereby to dominate the native church through subservient native pastors."

"Did he succeed?"

"No, but Kalakaua gained direct influence over many of these pastors. There was that brilliant orator of the Hawaiian pulpit, Kuaea, whom the King completely controlled by making him Minister of Finance. Kuaea at last sank into a dishonored grave. There was Kuaea's successor, Waiamau, whom the King also controlled and made for years an obsequious flatterer. Good at heart, this pastor at last escaped from the influence of the Court and has been saved for noble work among his people of the second native church of Honolulu. Since his emancipation he has suffered for the truth and has proved himself a stanch friend of the provisional government. He was one of those who refused to obey the order of the Kahunas, sent to the native churches, that prayers be offered for the Queen's restoration to power. He was willing to pray for Liliuokalani the sinner that she might repent, but not for the Queen. For this brave act a faction in his church sought to drive him from his pulpit, but in vain."

"What elements favor the revolution?"

"A majority of the Europeans and Americans and a minority of natives. Chinese and Japanese have no suffrage. This white majority represents nine-tenths of the taxable property."

"What was the immediate cause of the revolution?" "The passage of the lottery bill and the Queen's attempt to proclaim a despotic constitution."

"Were you an eye-witness of this revolution?"

"I was in Honolulu at the time and was a most interested spectator. I saw the Queen prorogue Parliament; I saw the troops drawn up in front of her palace and the members of the Huik Kalai Aiua-a league of native monarchists-march to the palace with the new constitution which the Queen was to proclaim in their hands. This document was reported to be their creation, but it really emanated from the Queen. I saw the excited crowds which during that afternoon hovered about the palace. This was Saturday, January 14. On the following Monday afternoon I attended the mass-meeting held at the skating rink, where were gathered one thousand of Honolulu's best citizens. The voice of that meeting was pronouncedly in favor of deposing the Queen, and gave the committee of safety authority to form the provisional government. While this mass meeting was being held, another mass-meeting assembled in Palace Square. It was made up of less than a thousand sympa thizers with the Queen, almost entirely natives. Such was the intense feeling that even the most rabid leaders of this party felt obliged to moderate their speech.

"It was stated in Mr. Blount's report that at this time peace reigned throughout the city. After these meetings there did come a hush, but it seemed to us the hush before a storm and it so seemed to the American Minister. On that afternoon at five o'clock the marines were landed. It is well they were, for that night two incendiary fires occurred. We do not know how many more there might have been but for the presence of the marines in the interests of peace."

"What happened later?"

"On Tuesday afternoon I was in my office - the

Hawaiian Missionary Board Book Room-opposite the consulate. The streets were full of anxious, moving, questioning people. The marines were parading in front of the consulate. The first overt act of that day touching the revolution of which I was cognizant, was the shooting of a native policeman by Captain Goode." "Why?"

"He was shot for attempting to stop the captain while. driving out of Mr. Hall's hardware establishment with a load of ammunition destined for the government building and the provisional troops. The policeman has since recovered. The next act I witnessed was the reading of the proclamation by the Committee of Safety in the vestibule of the government building. Immediately after, the Citizen Guards, enlisted on January 15 and 16, began to rally in and around the building. Captain Ziegler's German company was the first to arrive, not five minutes after the reading of the proclamation. While they entered the hall of the government building from the rear on the double quick, the American and English company entered the yard from the front as did the Portuguese company. Thus the provisional government took possession of the government building, its archives, offices and treasury."

"What part did the American marines play in all these movements?"

"They were strictly neutral, aiding neither one party nor the other, though they were appealed to by both. They did not aid those who formed the provisional government and who proclaimed the throne vacant, nor did they oppose the Queen's party in any attempt to put down the revolution. There is no doubt that they prevented disorder and possibly bloodshed. That was why they were landed. For the same reason they were landed in 1887 and in 1874. The part taken by American marines in 1874 might with far more justice be charged as an act of interference than that of 1893, for it was to the help rendered by them during the riot of 1874 that Kalakaua owed the final establishment of his power." "Who are these men now in power?"

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They are Hawaiian citizens, as are those who dethroned the Queen and put them in power. Some of them are descendants of the missionary fathers. They represent the best thought, the character, the culture and the wealth of the land. They stand for a Christian civilization. They are not anxious for public office. They do not need the patronage of the government. It is the government that needs them. On the other hand, the leaders of the royal party seem to depend upon fat government salaries for a living.

"It is a vast gain to the Hawaiian people, natives especially, to have at last a responsible government, a government which will be in favor of the execution of righteous laws, a government that will study to secure healthy foreign relations and a wide system of internal improvements. It is time that the vast revenues of the Crown lands were turned to the interest of the public and not squandered by a worthless Court. It is time some of these Crown lands were divided into household lots and made over at easy rates to the people. It is time for the political pot to begin to simmer for a while and cease to boil. If there ever were people in danger of being ruined by overmuch political interest, it is the Hawaiians. If there ever were people in need of having their attention turned toward industrial pursuits the Hawaiians are they."

"What does the provisional government want from

the United States ?"

"First, annexation; barring that, the closest possible

relations. Hawaii must be protected by the United States from all foreign interference."

"Not only that, but in the opinion of a majority of the people of the United States it is the stepping-stone to the commerce of the Orient, and is as much needed to advance the interests of this country as the protection of our Government is needed to save so valuable a colony from the dominion of other nations."

THE WOMEN OF THE CONFEDERACY.

FIRST PAPER.

N the struggle for independence the South waged a double war: a war against the Federal forces in front, and a war against want in the rear. The men fought one; the women the other; fought it, as one lady says, "with no hosts but their own emotions, no ordnance but fortitude, and only the tactics of ingenuity and endurance." Some account of this almost unwritten war, which called for no less courage and even more fortitude than the one with which history is busy, I shall attempt to give.

The status of woman in the old South was unique. The Greek honored woman that she was beautiful; the Frenchman of the old régime that she was witty; the Southerner that she was weak-that she was woman. And as the Greek woman excelled in beauty and the Frenchwoman in wit, so the Southern woman excelled in womanliness.

The beginning of the sixties found the gentler sex at the South still occupying the pedestal on which chivalry had placed it. It was as if the old Teutonic belief in the divinity of woman had struggled down through the ages to find here its last home. Nowhere else was the same respect and delicate consideration accorded her. Nowhere else was she as sedulously shielded from all that could roughen or harden; all that could destroy the daintiest bloom of refinement and womanly modesty. To this she responded by becoming apparently the most helpless and dependent of beings, loath to leave a room without an attendant and afraid to got out of sight of home without a male escort. Nowhere else was the simile of the tree and the vine as aptly illustrative of the relations of the sexes. Wherever Anglo-Saxon womanhood had its strong root and stem, it had here only its flower, we said. And yet, as the event proved, it needed only the iron touch of necessity to convert all this weakness into strength, this timidity into courage, this dependence into independence.

The spring and summer of 1861, the gala days of the Confederacy, flew by on golden wings. Fate, as if half repentant and seeking to make amends for what she had in store for us, filled them with passionate joy. Pride at being the makers of a nation drove us half mad with delight. Hitherto to Southern woman politics had been as a thing that was not. But now so overwhelming was the tide of enthusiasm that it swept away all barriers and carried all together from their moorings; and with her emotional nature, woman the farthest of all. Hats and bonnets were stripped of their ribbons that secession badges might be made. Silk dresses were converted into battle flags and into linings for military dress coats, although there was not as yet need of such sacrifices. If a young man were tardy in enlisting he was pretty sure to be the recipient of a petticoat, a night cap or some feminine gear, as a reminder that men were at the front, women at home. So intense was the patriotism of a mountain dame, who about that time gave birth to triplets, that she named the boys Beauregard and Johnston and the girl Secessia. Miss Secessia or Mrs. Seces

sia, as she doubtless has been this many a year, is now a woman of thirty and more. The proportion in which their names are met with, in people of a certain age, is a measure of the popularity of the different Confederate chieftains.

When a little later the roses of war gave place to its thorns, the zeal of the women grew with the need of it. The first wayside hospital had its origin in the endeavors of the ladies of Columbia, South Carolina, to alleviate the sufferings of the wounded soldiers carried through that city, and who, owing to the irregularity and insufficiency of the railroad service, were often compelled to lay over for hours and even for days.

Beginning in the most humble manner during the fall of 1861, in a room at the station, its dimensions grew till before the end of the war more than seventy-five thousand patients had been received and ministered to, all at the expense of private individuals. This was the first attempt to meet the exigencies of the transportation of wounded men by modern means. It rapidly spread over the whole South, whence it has been adopted in all civilized lands.

The weather might be bad, the cars behind time, as they chronically were in war times, but a train with sick or wounded men never pulled up to one of these junctions day or night without finding the committee of ladies at hand to see that the suffering men were removed from the coaches and borne to the hospital with all tenderness, where they were fed, had their wounds dressed, clothes furnished when necessary and possible, and kept, till with equal care they could be deposited on an outgoing train. One waggish fellow, as an illustration of the attention he received, declared that on one such occasion his face was washed seventeen times in as many minutes, every time by a different hand.

Wherever regular hospitals were established the ladies of the vicinity were equally active and untiring in ministering to the patients. So vast was woman's sympathy that not even the endless drafts of those troublous times could exhaust it or impair its quality. The last sufferer for the Southern cause received the same attention as the first, provided he were fortunate enough to fall in her hands. Many high-born ladies became hospital matrons, devoting their meagre salaries to the providing of luxuries, and later, of necessaries, for their charges.

Later on large numbers of women reduced from affluence to poverty, having lost in battle all to whom they could look for aid, were driven to seek Government employment as a means of livelihood for themselves and those dependent on them. Especially was this the case with the refugees who had fled the Federal advance, leaving their estates in the hostile lines, in many cases—as in the Sea Island" district in South Carolina and Georgia-to be confiscated and never restored. Yet so strong were their sympathies that thousands preferred this to being severed from the Southern side. Besides the hospital service, about the only other avenues of bread-winning open to women were the government departments at Richmond, where the authorities, though anxious to assist them to the utmost, could find employment for only a limited number.

But it is the great body of the Southern women who, in obscurer capacities, bore their full share of the burdens of the time,

Unknown to fame, but not to woe, of whom I would chiefly speak.

From the very beginning of the war the resources of the Confederate government in the way of clothing the troops were inadequate, and rapidly grew more so. Even after each State in its separate capacity had done all

that it could, a large deficiency had to be made up by private effort, which meant by the efforts of the women, for before the end of 1861 nearly all adult males were in the army. Indeed, but for the constant supply of clothing from this source it would have been impossible for the Southern armies to pass through the last two winters of the war.

As soon as the home people realized that it would not be a thirty days' war nor even a sixty or ninety days' one, earnest endeavors were made to provide for the comfort of the troops. All the feminine expedients of concerts and tableaux were resorted to to raise money. Very patriotic, stirring and characteristic of the time, too, were the songs and scenes that were given. People never tired of singing " Dixie," "My Maryland," and the "Bonny Blue Flag," nor of listening to them. Sewing societies were quickly formed in every neighborhoodnot the easy-going affairs of our day, but societies whose object was fairly expressed by their name. A considerable quantity of cloth, accompanied by printed instructions to guide the cutting and making, was furnished the societies by the State and county authorities. this supply was by no means adequate even for the first winter, especially in the way of woolens; though viewed from a later standpoint, when the Confederate soldier had solved the problem of the minimum of food and raiment necessary to keep soul and body together, it might have appeared sumptuous indeed. Men fresh from comfortable, often luxurious, homes, unseasoned to hardship and exposure, were unable to dispense at once with comforts which they afterward learned to despise. Even after all was done for them that care and solicitude could prompt, a larger number succumbed to exposure than was the case during any of the three succeeding winters.

But

The chief mission of these sewing societies was to supplement the public supply of clothing and bedding by a systematic collecting of private contributions. Each member had assigned to her so much territory, which was canvassed with a thoroughness and earnestness that never even to the end of the war failed to produce marvelous results. No matter how denuded of such things a neighborhood might appear, women seemed to have a power of conjuring up clothing and blankets from somewhere.

be remembered that all this labor and self-robbery was done as extra service by those who had their own husbands, fathers, sons and brothers to look after. The majority of the indefatigable workers, "female soldiers," as Jackson called them, were women of means, who made these sacrifices for the common soldiers; their kindred being able to supply their wants in less extraordinary ways.

For a long time it was a rule of these sewing societies to let no coat leave their hands for the camp without a Bible or Testament in its breast pocket. For, argued the pious workers, such a shield may be the means of saving not only the wearer's soul but his life also. And

in not a few instances this solicitude proved to be not in vain. Every now and then word would come how the sacred, pocket-worn book had stopped a Federal bullet on its way to a Southern heart; usually with the mention of the very chapter and verse where the leaden visitor ceased to penetrate.

When all available Bibles and Testaments had been thus disposed of it was the custom to supply the deficiency with a few plainly written verses selected from Scripture. Sometimes, instead of these, stanzas from patriotic songs or cheering and sympathetic notes were placed in the pockets, signed with the donor's name and address. In many instances, widely separated in time and place, there came back grateful answers to these missives; sometimes from the hospital or a Federal prison; oftener from the trenches, scrawled on the rough, yellowish Confederate paper; now and then from the battlefield on genuine note paper just taken from the knapsack of some fallen foe. One of these letters came to an abrupt end. The page was spattered with ink and blood. A shell had burst and destroyed the inkstand, was the laconic postscript, written with pencil in another hand. There was not a word as to the fate of the first writer. Many friendships had their beginning in these chance communications, though I never knew a romance to result. DAVID DODge.

WET WEATHER PHILOSOPHY.

For the first year or two such things, where possessed, AS I was passing through F Street on a recent showery

were to be had for the asking, but when privation, want's forerunner, entered nearly every home, it required no little eloquence to obtain donations from people who had already given till there was virtually nothing left to give. From the first, blankets were the great desideratum. Wool to make a sufficient quantity was not to be had, but cotton was plentiful everywhere. Bedquilts and comforts made of homespun and filled with batted cotton, though warm and serviceable, were unfit for camp use, owing to their weight, their affinity for water and the great difficulty of drying them when once wet. So by the advice of these societies the home people took the blankets from the beds, sent them to the soldiers, and made comforts to take their places. When the rough camp usage wore these blankets out, then carpets were taken up, cut to proper sizes, bound and sent in their stead. This, if I mistake not, was an expedient of the second winter. By the time these disappeared the man in gray had found out that about all a Confederate soldier needed, anyhow, was his cornbread rations and his musket.

The makeshifts to provide flannel shirts for the troops were even more numerous than those to supply blankets. For this purpose the ladies gave their heavier woolen dresses and when these were exhausted, their shawls, which, for comfort, surpassed all other material. It must

morning, I saw an umbrella-mender sitting in front of the door of an office-building, working away on a heap of broken umbrellas which evidently he had collected from the tenants inside. The rain was falling steadily, and the man must have been wet to the skin before he returned their property to his customers. I could not forbear asking him why he thus invited a bath.

"Why shouldn't I?" he asked in response. "Because it is a bad advertisement for your trade," said I. "A tailor should be always well dressed, a shoemaker always well shod; by the same logic, a man who deals in umbrellas ought always to be dry when other persons are getting soaked with rain."

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"You're dead wrong," he answered, promptly. "There's no suggestion of positive suffering in old clothes or well-worn shoes-many people like them better than new ones. But when I offer to mend a man's umbrella I make a great deal more of an impression on him by coming into his presence with a wet back. says to himself at once: Is it really so wet outside? I can't stand that sort of thing. It would give me my death!' And out comes his umbrella at once to be put in repair. So, you see, I trade on my miserable appearance. It is just as much of a tool for me as my nippers or my wrench." E. L. N.

24

KATE FIELD'S WASHINGTON may when he wanted an office in New York.

(Organized under the laws of the State of Virginia.

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A

KATE FIELD'S WASHINGTON, 39 Corcoran Building,

Washington, D. C.

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 10, 1894.

LMOST every middle-aged person could write, if he "The Evolution would, an acceptable treatise on of an Optimist, or How I Learned Common Sense."

The reasons why so many men and women omit to do this are various. Some use the wisdom they have acquired for more selfishly profitable pursuits; others have learned that it is a waste of time to attempt to teach the human race anything by precept; still others are ashamed of the processes by which they have learned wisdom, and a very few are modest enough to doubt whether they really possess it, after all.

Once in a while, fortunately, circumstances force a man into giving us a few chapters of his intellectual biography, when we get a bewildering glimpse of the devious ways by which one who has spent the first half of his life in trying to make the world over, comes finally to the conclusion that it is much better as it is. A particularly interesting case of the sort has been furnished this week by Mr. Hugh Pentecost, ex-clergyman, exreformer, ex-editor, ex-anarchist and ex-half-a-dozen other things. It was purposed to appoint Mr. Pentecost to a lucrative city office in New York, but so great a hue and cry was at once raised that the plan was abandoned. This bit of Tammany politics is notable chiefly because it has elicited from Mr. Pentecost-who is always interesting even when he is most mistaken-a history of the changes of opinion which have marked his

career.

About seven years ago, Mr. Pentecost, then pastor of a Congregational church in Newark, N. J., dipped into He was an instanthe land theories of Henry George.

taneous and enthusiastic convert, and at once applied his oratorical talents, which are considerable, to the promulgation of the George doctrine. Some of his utterances at that time were sufficiently startling to be still remembered, as their originator found to his dis

He called George "the new St. Paul," and Dr. McGlynn, who was at that time sowing his share of socialistic wild oats, "the new Peter the Hermit." "There is not much use," said Mr. Pentecost in one of his addresses at that time, "in trusting in God, when a few men own the earth. I haven't told a poor man to trust in God for some time." His crowning eccentricity was a forcible defence of the Chicago anarchists, which effectually closed his clerical career.

"Sincere but mistaken," is the epithet which Mr. Pentecost now uses to describe his former opinions. For two or three years he has been studying the science of government and practicing law. The result has been to bring him to the following point of view with regard to nineteenth-century civilization:

I now know that we live in a world in which the government and the social system which prevail are the best that human beings in their highest wisdom have been able to construct; that law is necessary and must be obeyed if society is to exist at all; that punishments must be inflicted on those who infringe the personal or property rights of others. Three years of hard study of the law, two years and a half of which have been occupied in more or less practice in our courts, have made me see what a dreamer I was, and how foolish I was to think that anything could be done for the betterment of the working people, for which every tender-hearted person hopes, except through that process of evolution which goes on daily and hourly with resistless energy and has been going on through the ages, and which I am optimist enough to believe will work everything out right in the end. Whatever may have been my former beliefs, and I have stated them frankly and truthfully, I am now as firm a believer as anyone in the practical necessity of the governmental system we have and enjoy.

The student of human nature will discern at once that this is an entirely normal case, interesting only because a certain vigor of expression gave unusual publicity to Mr. Pentecost's former views, and because a happy chance has lured him into a detailed account of how he came to abandon them. The very best cure for disaffection with this wise and experienced old world is to want something from it. As a possible benefactor its virtues loom up, and its faults sink out of sight. When Scapegrace, Jr., wants a cheque from his father it would never occur to him to see that the old gentleman's wig is seedy and his coat-collar gray; and in sober middle-age when most men get warmed to the struggle for substantial benefits they get more or less reconciled to the world in which these may be obtained, though with difficulty.

"The three and twenty leaders of revolts" in Browning's "A Soul's Tragedy" underwent this curious revolutionary process, which is as normal and inevitable to some sorts of intellect as teething is to the whole human race. There is little doubt that social discontent could be permanently stamped out by simply giving every malcontent an important place in the established order of things; but it is much better that this should not be done. In every generation the social structure should be made to stand trial before its bitterest enemies. Civilization, like a professed Christian, is in a bad way when all men speak well of it. A little denunciation is a fine tonic for any institution. It might even be better if the people who throw the heaviest stones at the procession did not finally fall into line, and leave the stone-throwing business to less experienced hands. It is most unaccountable, though, that the public should object o strenuously to a man changing his opinions, when we reflect on the flatness of existence if this WASHINGTON. privilege were entirely cut off.

A ROMANCE IN SHORT STREET.

BY JAMES BUCKHAM.

T was while taking one of his "constitutionals" that Morris Braintree discovered Short Street, ten miles out of the city. Imagine a very long and narrow letter H-two parallel avenues running due north for nearly twenty miles, tied together at a certain point by a quiet little cross-street shaded by elms. This leafy, secluded nexus of highways was Short Street. It was only about eighty rods long, and a lively grasshopper could have cleared its entire width at a bound.

Morris Braintree turned into Short Street, when he reached it, as naturally as if he had lived there all his life. He was hardly conscious of having left the avenue until he found himself under the drooping branches of the great elms. It was so cool and pleasant, so homelike, so restfully still, like an old country road sleeping beneath the trees.

"I don't wonder people like to live out here," thought Braintree, looking enviously at the eight or ten cosy little cottages scattered along under the elms.

Suddenly he came to one of these human dove-cotes with a big placard in the window, and another planted on the strip of lawn in front, "This Cottage to Let. Inquire of W. T. Marsh, Room 18, Tyner Building, Block Square." Braintree stopped-read the sign-made a resolve. He would occupy that cottage! It was the decision of an instant. He had never thought of such a thing before. The idea of looking even for rooms outside the city, had been the thought farthest from his mind when he started out for one of his long walks that afternoon. And now he had mentally engaged a house! But that is the way with some of the most important resolves of our lives. They take us-we don't take them.

The pedestrian made a note of the real-estate agent's address. Then he surveyed the cottage and its surroundings with the complacency of an assured tenant. It was one of those episodal Queen Anne affairs-pert, unsubstantial, with a perfect eruption of gables, an affectation of shingles, and the windows of a doll-house. "One must get patchwork impressions of nature, looking through so many little panes of glass at once," thought Braintree. Still, the cottage pleased him. It It was small, which is something of a consideration with a solitary old bachelor. It had a pretty piazza, with an incipient vine climbing up its pillars; and a man who loves to smoke a meditative pipe in the evening appreciates a piazza. Then there was a sort of make-believe barn in the rear, about large enough to accommodate one Shetland pony. But even the semblance of a barn

goes a long way with a man, though he never kept a horse and never intends to. Then that patch of lawn in front-just large enough to warrant the dignity of a lawn-mower, without the necessity of its eternal clatter

that was certainly a consideration. But what pleased Braintree most was the rural quiet of the spot, so retired and peaceful, yet within twenty minutes' ride of the city by rail. What a retreat for an editor and writer-for Morris Braintree combined the two functions. It was strange, he confessed to himself, as he walked on into the farther avenue and turned his face again toward the city-it was strange that he had so long been content to live in a dingy upstairs suite in a city lodging-house, the prey of every neighboring amateur pianist, every alley-haunting, moon-mad cat, every wandering street-musician, every brass-lunged vendor of fish, fruits and vegetables. Strange, when he might

at any time have escaped the impositions, inconveniences and distractions of lodging-life and become a householder and domestic autocrat under the shadow of such glorious old country elms as those back yonder ! By the time Braintree had finished his long walk and gotten back into the clamor and hubbub of the city, he was in a perfect glow of mental, as well as physical, exhilaration over the prospect of taking up his residence in Short Street.

That evening he smoked six pipes of tobacco in his room and arranged everything. He would have a man to do all his work-cooking and everything; no woman should invade the house. Three hundred dollars ought certainly to furnish the little cottage as elaborately as a plain, old-fashioned bachelor would require; and he had that sum precisely, which was just fluttering to get out of a certain savings-bank where rates of interest had been scaled down to three and one-half per cent. As to living expenses, he was now paying twelve dollars a week for his suite of rooms and six dollars for his table-board at a neighboring café. For eighteen dollars a week a lone man can surely live under the elms, and even support another lone man. Just think of it-nine hundred and thirty-six dollars, as much as the average country minister or doctor earns in a year, all going into mere food and shelter! Braintree had not realized, until he figured it up, that he was paying so much for the quasi privileges of a dog's-and cat's-life in the noisy city. There should be an end of such extravagance immediately-or at least there should be a more satisfactory return for the money expended!

The very next morning Morris Braintree went to see the real estate agent in Room 18, Tyner Building, Block Square. Mr. Marsh greeted him with the appraisable affability of trade. No, the cottage had not been taken. The rental was three hundred and fifty dollars a year, payable quarterly. Mr. Marsh would be pleased to have Mr. Braintree sign a year's lease. Mr. Braintree did so with alacrity. Why, it was scarcely more than half the rental he was now paying for his three dingy rooms!

One week later Mr. Braintree's landlady was thrown into hysterical amazement by the quiet announcement of the lodger whom she had imposed upon for nine years that he was going out into the suburbs to live, and would therefore surrender his keys and pay his account to date in full. For several days furniture, rugs, stoves, tinware and the like had been flowing incessantly into Short Street, to the intense speculative interest of the dwellers under the elms. The vacant cottage, then, was to be occupied at last! Who and what manner of person might the new tenant be?

None were more eager for the clearing up of this mystery than the two Misses Catlin, who lived next door to the vacant cottage. Maiden sisters were the Misses Catlin, aged respectively forty-six and thirty-two. Eleanor was the older; Marcia the younger. Eleanor was tall, spare, sharp-featured and literary. She kept pinned over her desk a list of fifteen periodicals conducted by women, for all of which she wrote regularly, adding thereby a modest sum each year to the little patrimony of herself and sister.

Marcia was plump, pretty and domestic. The wonder is that she had never married. Perhaps Eleanor in large measure accounted for this. Eleanor did not believe in matrimony; and even if Marcia had dared to have suitors, it is doubtful whether, under the circumstances, any one of them would have dared to have her.

Two days after the arrival of the furniture, stoves, tinware and other domestic equipment, came Morris Braintree and his lone man, an Englishman named

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