her going till she could get that Atropina. M-, for his part, had become calloused to this tragic item in the program of village routine and gave the matter little more than passing twinges of remorse when the gray-eager face and thin shawl-clad shoulders confronted him on the days when her stock must be replenished.

"Several months passed, and the shabby washwoman had saved ten dollars, which reposed in a brown coffee-can perched on a shelf in the kitchen where Addie and Freddy could not reach in their foragings through its provisionless larder. She confided the news to M- one day during the purchase of her weekly ration of morphine, and the delighted note in her voice was almost tear-compelling, even to the unthinking drugstore clerk.

"Now, I ain't goin' to buy any o' that stuff though till I can get enough to keep me goin' and cured,' she declared with feeble emphasis, laying a red forefinger on the showcase by way of punctuation; 'an' so when I get twenty-five dollars' (she pronounced slowly, as if naming an incredible sum) 'you can send for five bottles. That'll last me fer some spell o' time, I reckon, an' then I won't have to buy no more of this dope, eh?' M attempted to dissuade the poor creature from this notion, knowing the infinite hardships by which she had already saved her ten dollars, but her determination was unchangeable.

"A day or so later, M- received a letter marked for himself, at the post office, and bearing the stamp of a big city one hundred and fifty miles to the west of Cornville. This was an event. He had not gotten a letter from anyone in years, as practically all of the boys who had been last to leave Cornville for the outer world had scattered in every direction and were only heard of at the most infrequent intervals. He took the letter into the semidarkness of the old pharmacy with him, slitted it open with the edge of a spatula and began to read:

"You've probably thought I was dead; but I'm pretty much alive, all right. Been too busy to write, and for a long time didn't even know you were back in dried-up, senile old Cornville. Thought you'd had as much gumption as the rest of us and gotten out into the real business hustle, to make your own pile and prove the ancient proverb that the world owes you a living! Ha-ha. Poor old M-! It isn't too late yet, though, if you'll take some advice from

me.

In fact, that's just the reason why I'm wasting a dollar's worth of minutes by writing to you now-to give you a tip from the city guy and a chance at lariating the god Success, along with your boyhood pal.

"Well, I'm in the advertising game-yep! Earning my little forty-five a week, writing what they call Copy for a big firm, and taking life easy-an Advertising Manager. Good clothes, theaters, a different girl every night, and all that sort of thing, you know. Now, we need another fellow to break in here with us on the writing dicker, or rather I do. Good chance to learn the ropes and so on, and I just happened to remember that you used to be pretty long on gab and vocabulary yourself, and I wondered if you wouldn't like to give this a try. What d'ye say?

""You don't have to decide this right away. Take a week and think it over. We can give you a hundred dollars a month and pretty decent hours and a real place to live in, not an unconscious, sunburnt, stranded hamlet like Cornville, you bet! Now, don't pass this up, old boy; it's a great chance and a darned lucky thing I had sense enough to think of you at all. Come on, get in the advertising game with me and learn how to live.

"Hastily your old friend,

Bog

66 'Clarence Gail.' "A stamped and addressed envelope was enclosed, and M▬▬ sat for a long time in profound consideration of this momentous letter. One hundred dollars a month! Nearly four times what he was making in the old drugstore! Well, he certainly would think it over and make a decision in very short order. gess could get some other stick-in-the-mud to take his place and he would shake off the dust of Cornville from his feet for a career of genuine Success. An advertising man! He turned the epithet over in his mouth a few times and the taste of it was good. It was a man's work, a chance to unlimber some of those cherished adjectives and omnipotent nouns with which he had once dominated all the winter debating clubs for miles around.

"At this juncture in his thoughts, the gray woman (Madam Morphine, he had sometimes called her) entered the drugstore on her usual quest, but with a strange, disquieting smile almost of triumph, on her seamed white face.

makin', I do. Used to could do some swell sewin' till I had that bad spell and then got to usin' the dope afterwards. Say,' here she lowered her voice to a whisper, although the musty place, as usual, was devoid of all inmates save a lean gray cat asleep by the prescription case, 'I want you to keep this money fer me, all of it, and send down by Wilkins next time he drives to Lawrence, an' git five bottles of that At-Atropina!' She pronounced the word triumphantly, to show that she was fully conversant with its importance in her forthcoming

cure.

"M- of course tried once more to dissuade the woman from the folly of such a purchase, but she would have none of his meddling or hindrance to this carrying out of the idea which had so long obsessed her, and so he yielded, with a shrug of his shoulders, to the inevitable. "Thereafter, the meager events of this little episode followed on one another's heels. due course of three days Wilkins returned from Lawrence with the coveted bottles of Atropina, and in sooth, a fine array they presented of lavish label-work and imposing instructions for taking, as they were unwrapped. The gray

In

woman came in that afternoon and her delight was unbounded. She carried a wicker basket and into this she bundled two of the bottles, leaving the rest, with great reluctance and many admonitions for their safeguarding, in care of M———.

"That night the clerk closed up as usual, at eight o'clock as curfew was ringing from the old town-hall; but instead of repairing to the combination billiard-parlor-postoffice-candy-emporium which furnished the only locus of nocturnal hilarity for the younger bloods of Cornville, Mwended his way to the house of a friend, the head of their High School (?) to receive advice in regard to his letter from Clarence Gail. This individual also had many books on many subjects and was blessed with many ideas, the greater part of which to his credit could be said to be sound, so that Mwas outdoing himself in discretion by seeking his good advice. Coming back at something after ten, which was considered by best authorities of Cornville to be a late hour for pilgrims of the night to be afoot, our friend M—— was startled to perceive a bright light down one of the side streets, and several neighbors gathered in a gesticulating, excited group inside and out the open door thro' which the light came streaming. He hurried forward at his best

pace and was soon among them. Inquiry then revealed the cause of all the commotion: the gray woman was dead. She was lying stark and unsmiling and rigid across her bed, with two clamoring tots tugging at her skirts, and a half-emptied bottle by her side. M- gingerly turned the bottle over and in the glare of the upturned lamp-wick read its legend, Atropina!

"'Suicide' was the word that went the rounds of Cornville, next day, but M- had another verdict in mind. He related the entire incident, in all its pathos, to Boggess, the proprietor, voiced his suspicion, and together they set about making a chemical analysis of one of the three bottles of the dope-cure which remained in M's possession. The procedure was relatively simple, even for so untried a pair of country dispensers as Boggess and our friend M——. At the end of the analysis, they found that their Atropina was morphine, pure and simple!

"M was utterly upset and disgusted. Unnerved and overcome by this pathetic effort of the drug-ridden washerwoman to mend her life with one big dose of the cure for her desperate condition, more than ever his thoughts returned to the letter from Clarence Gail. That night, he sat down and wrote to his quondam friend of earlier years, a brief note of acceptance, saying that he could be expected to arrive in the city at six the following evening and that, he had resolved to make good at his friend's 'advertising game' or die in the attempt-which, as we all know, is a good and proper purpose worthy of the manly spirit which burns full oft in village breasts.

"With suitcase at his feet and a bundle of books deposited on the rack above, beside a capacity-size lunch proffered by the genial Mrs. Boggess, our friend M- at last shook Cornville sediment from his footgear and departed on the city-bound train which left Lawrence every noon at sharp twelve. The ride was a pleasant one, and as he rode, M- reflected long and steadfastly on certain achievements which were to be eventually his in the swiftly nearing city. A certain high strain of principle throve in him, implanted by twenty generations of cleanly-thinking ancestors, and the one recurring strain of sentiment threading all his reflections into continuity, was that Success should be gotten honestly and aboveboard. In this game of advertising about which he knew so little but wherein he should, by the twin

of the old rail fence there was no convenient place to hang the first, while the modern binder hummed the swan-song of the second years ago.

How our hearts still cling to the old times when we followed mother down to the cold, damp springhouse where she went to turn and trim the cheese; our object, the toothsome trimmings that she unselfishly passed into our hands. While we are in the imagining business we can still see those long rows of pans filled with milk and thickly spread with their golden brown coating into which we loved to dip. Or perhaps we can remember better the day our enthusiastic little city cousin went along with us to run the churn and how unselfishly we surrendered to her our Own rightful place at the dash. After all, as we look back, she may not have been so worldly foolish. There have been times since then you know when you and I would have been glad to take up our place there again under the old conditions; but we mustn't offer the modern dairyman his outfit in terms of those half-forgotten days. The dash churn isn't there any more and the spring-house itself has been converted into a system of concrete reservoirs and iron pipes; while a gasoline engine takes the place of ourselves and our city cousin. It isn't romantic at all now, but it's many times more convenient, that shaft of shining steel with its belts and wheels and levers from which an occasional touch of the hand controls the cooling, skimming, churning and butter-working. Perhaps we may swallow a little hard over the things it has cut out but it has opened up entirely new fields to the advertiser who wants to keep in touch with the modern way.

Is there still music in the regular swishing of wet clothes across the wash-board over which your mother and mine gave up in weary effort many hours of their lives? Perhaps; but there's an easier way now. The gasoline engine does it, with its wheels, its levers and its shining shaft. To do business with the laundry-maid of the modern farm we have to get in line with up-to-date contrivances.

Maude Muller does not rake hay any more in the old way. She leaves that for an unromantic machine to do. If her poetic ankles are ever denuded of their dainty artificial covering outside the sacred privacy of her own boudoir, it is either because she belongs to some patent health guild that believes in wading from the precincts of conventionalism into the

dew soaked grass, or else she doesn't expect you to catch her at it-not by a thousand miles.

What a pretty picture (I mean in the old reading-book) the bare-footed boy and girl going down a winding lane after the cows, accompanied by a well-trained dog that gathers the straying cattle scientifically out of the willow clumps and still finds time to chase a few bunnies and chucks to cover. Most of the modern cows are stall-fed, at least in part, and are largely self-gathering when it comes time for their regular feed of grain. The lane, if there was one, would be laid out on the narrowest and straightest lines, in order to economize valuable ground. The bunnies and chucks have been most scientifically exterminated; while as for barefoot kids-not on your life. Even Bob-white does most of his whistling now within the borders of some game preserve, while the crafty pheasant displays her skillful instincts in the patient pose of mimicry or defense in the museum.

In those old days, at the close of them, the plowman drove his tired horses to the barns quite as the reading-book described. Now the chug, chug, chug of the tractor wheels noisily. in, before early supper time, the fields all plowed and harrowed, though the romance is killed out.

The old berry-patch, too, has memories for most of us; at least we have read about them in the dear old book. Would you take your country sweetheart now across a wilderness of burned logs and tangled briars? Not if you ever hoped to be forgiven. Quite decorously she steps into the garden and from the welltrimmed rows of bushes picks in a few minutes more than we of the old regime would have found in as many hours.

Even the wild chestnut trees scattered over the woods and hills have fallen to the blight or gotten in the way of the modern reaper. They are all gone now. In their stead are straight and orderly rows of cultivated trees the product from which puts our old gatherings to shame but fails to quite satisfy us for our yesterdays. Even the rambling apple trees of gigantic size and made just right for swings and hidden seats, would be considered a frightful waste of space and of wood by the modern orchardist who has replaced them with little dwarf affairs that seem made up mostly of fruit but that haven't a place to climb.

Not even the country lad and maiden now trudge hand in hand to school along the dusty