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MAUD. Don't squeeze him, Bertie! (She follows through the French window.)

THE SQUIRE (abruptly — of the unoffending EDWARD). That dog'll be forgettin' himself in a minute.

He picks up EDWARD, and takes
him out. LADY ELLA is left star-
ing.

LADY ELLA (at last). You must n't think, I- you must n't think, we Oh! I must just see they don't let Edward get at Hannibal. (She skims away.)

HERSELF is left staring after LADY

ELLA, in surprise.
HERSELF. What is the matter with

them?

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THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB

THE GRADUATE'S CHOICE

In this omphalos of knowledge which is known as Princeford college,
The fatuous 'Post Graduate' pursues his golden dream

Down the broad highway of learning, till an unexpected turning
Brings him up before two mighty gates of loveliness supreme.

The one is gilt, rococo-with Cupids, frills, barocco;
The other cold white marble in the strictest Doric style:
On the pediment gigantic of the first is writ 'Romantic';
The second blazons 'Classic' from its Parian peristyle.
While the youth, perplexed, is gazing at these barriers amazing,
Soft, seductive strains of Wagner float pulsating down the wind,
And from out the gate Romantic, with gestures Corybantic,
Dance professors clad in rosy gauze like Bayaderes of Hind.
Their heads are crown'd with blossoms of rare Odontoglossums -
Their limbs swing free in rhythm isadoraduncanesque,

And, mellifluously tooting on their tibias soft-fluting,
They address the startled student in symphonic arabesque:-

'Come, sweet stranger, to these bowers furnish'd forth with fairest flowers,
Where the slumbrous breath of poppies hovers heavy on the air:
We will feed you on narcotics, we'll instruct you in erotics
And the art of snuffing perfumes from a dream-girl's purple hair.
You shall live in ivory towers, where the pageant of the hours
From Nirvana to Nirvana trails its jasmine-scented length;
And we'll prove by intuition and the Bergson proposition
That in reason lies all weakness, in the senses lies all strength.

We'll converse in purest Swinburne with a warmth to make your skin burn
(For our morals are quite Futurist, if not to say relaxed);
And to Schoenberg's orchestration we'll extol Imagination,

Wearing gowns designed by Poiret, in a mise-en-scène by Bakst.

If you care for problems burning, you can cultivate a yearning
In the best Tolstoïan manner for th' entire human race:

Enter, friend! You need not fear us! Come and sample our chimeras
Come and tango with the Muses to the end of time and space!'

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'Lead me to them!' cries the student, whom excitement makes imprudent, And he rushes gayly forward to this poikile paradise

But from out the Classic gateway there assails his hearing straightway

A stern chorus contrapuntal such as Bach might improvise,

And forth issues a procession, an orderly progression

Of professors garbed in togas that are well 'within the law';

They address him in a fashion quite devoid of any passion,

And the chiselled niceness of their speech rings forth without a flaw:

'Stop and listen, hapless stranger! You are facing mortal danger!
Don't allow those jaded hedonists to take you off your guard!
They are rabid nympholeptics- they are hopeless epileptics,
And their paradise is nothing but a psychopathic ward!
Their happiness is rotten with ideals misbegotten
The décadent creation of a sophist's monstrous dream;
Their words are an eruption of unspeakable corruption,
Hiding depths of black depravity beneath a specious gleam.
Spurn that trull Imagination! Come and worship Moderation
Come and practice Imitation till the Classic Spirit dawns!
Here we offer you diversion all unspotted by perversion
When we dance our decent minuets on closely shaven lawns.
As the secret of true pleasure in decorum lies and measure,
You may conjure up chaste visions of a geometric bliss:

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If your passions need expressing, you may let off steam by pressing
On the feet of the Stagirite one short, cold, Platonic kiss!'

Our poor student, torn asunder 'twixt these offers, stood in wonder

Till the hostile bands, descending, tried to carry him away;

They pulled him and they hauled him, they jerked him and they mauled him, And the dust of battle rose in clouds around the frightful fray.

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When at last the fight abated and the forces separated,

The student who had caused the strife was nowhere to be found.
Had they torn him all to tatters? — Not that it really matters
For each side claimed the victory with certainty profound!

DEAD ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE

WE buried him to-day, the last day of the year, my old friend the veteran. To me he was never anything but the crippled old soldier whom I used to meet on the road between his home and the grocery at the corner, rarely elsewhere; that was his daily walk, the limit of his strength as he hobbled leaning on his cane. When he had done his errands at the grocery, or perhaps had been as far as the post-office, his day's work was over. I cannot think of him as young, exultant, free from pain and bodily infirmity; I cannot think of him as like other men, free to choose his acts, free to undertake, to plan, to accomplish, even to fail.

But he must have been young once. Fifty years ago, when he marched off to war, he certainly was young and very much alive. They say he was but seventy or more when he died time meant nothing to him; it drifted over him; you would have been surprised to see to-day how young his face was. Was he still but one and twenty, as when he marched off to war?

That's the whole of it; life stopped

there for him; it is fifty years since he came back, but to him they might have been fifty days or fifty centuries for all that he could do with them. There was no free life for him, no ambitions, no hopes, no plans, nothing but to eat and sleep and pass the time. Even a man in prison hopes to get out and whets his brain in planning an escape. For this man there was no escape but death. Many men in his condition would have married for their own satisfaction; he did not so. Some would have studied, winning an escape by thought: that was not his bent, and he lacked opportunity.

The din of the heavy artillery that he served had deafened him, so that he was deprived even of the pleasures of conversation: he would guess that his friends remarked upon the weather and, rain or shine, would tell them that it was a fine day. Can you imagine a life like that, stripped of everything, even of the irritations which make a man defiant against his fate? But this man seemed never to rebel.

Daily we met him and passed the greetings of the day, or just smiled and nodded. Daily we left him behind us,

stationary, while we forged ahead. We grew up; we tried our wings; we took our flights; and when we came back to the old home it was to see him still hobbling to or from the grocery on his daily errands. In our youth we flouted him-not for us such a useless existence; not for us such an idle round; we forgot, if we ever knew, that at one and twenty he had marched off to the war, brave and hopeful. But as time wore on, we came to value our veteran

more.

There was something appealing in his helplessness. There was something tragic in his patience. But his smile always defended him from our pity. We came to notice that we did not speak of him with patronage. A man who could always smile back into the face of a relentless fate could not be treated condescendingly, even if he never did any work in the world. But was not his work just to smile, never to complain, never to show disheartenment? He did not let even his deafness fret him. When he could not hear what we shouted into his ear, he would take down his cupped hand and shake his head and smile. 'No use,' he would say, as it if were a joke upon himself.

We came to depend upon that man. We depend just so upon the sun and the dew and the breeze. Only twice in all the years of our acquaintance, though I often saw the sadness in his face at rest, do I remember his uttering it in words. "There was not much glory in it for most of us,' he said once, as we gazed at the procession on Memorial Day, referring to the fifty years which had followed his brief attempt to serve his country. His promotion to sergeant was something like a blank drawn in the lottery of war, and so long as his infirmities forbade his marching with the other veterans, many did not know why he was a cripple. The other time it was also Memorial

Day, and we stood side by side before the tall Soldiers' Monument, looking at the tablets filled with names. 'I used to know every one of those boys,' he said. And he added, with wistful reminiscence, looking off at the river, 'We were all boys then.' His voice broke, but his face told the story. They had been mercifully taken in their youth; they were heroes, their names carved for all the world to read. He was but a stranded wreck, no hero; and the tablets on the monument were already full; he had given all and had got nothing. But he did not utter the thought. A moment later he smiled and waved his hand in parting as he hobbled off; he did not envy even his comrades who had died on the field of battle.

But was he not all his life living on the field of battle? Was he ever mustered out to the ordinary duties and distractions of life? When we remember how he bore himself among us, how simple and sincere and blameless, how kind and cheerful and uncomplaining, when patience and cheerfulness were all that he was able to give his country, do we not feel that he was still serving her; that he had made of his own maimed life a battlefield and was fighting to the end without thought of retreat or surrender; that he fell at last in the same service he had entered in the flush of youth?

It would have pleased and surprised him if he could have known how many came to bid him farewell to-day: the church was needed for the service. He, of all persons, would have least expected such a tribute of respect and affection. True, a stranger praised him with harmless platitudes, trying not to say the wrong thing, not knowing how to utter the right one, which scores of us might have spoken for him. We who knew the man desired no generalities; there was nothing to evade; but only

those who had known him long knew how much there was to say. Yet the occasion did not pass without its witness. Through the stained-glass window above him as he lay with the bright flag on his casket, the westering sun, in its decline, shot into the dark church a slanting, sidewise ray that lingered long. All the other symbols of the faith avoiding, it fell fair and long on a crown of gold set in a blood-red field. It was his crown of martyrdom, bright and ready for him. Seeing, we understood that he was lying where he must so often have desired to be, dead on the field of battle.

THE SERVANTLESS COTTAGE STAIRS are done for. Observe the growing popularity of bungalows. Observe the multiplication of apartment houses. Listen to the words of the man who has lately built, and written about, what he calls a servantless cottage:

'Climbing is ofttimes all too strenuous for a happy housewife, so there must be no stairs.'

For a few more decades, miserable women, unhappy housewives, and, by inference, undesirable mothers, will continue to drag out painful existences in houses of more than one story.

'No stairs! No stairs!' the young wife cried, And clapped her hands to see

A house as like a little flat

As any house could be!

And observe also the end of the servant-problem. For in the servantless cottage, says the satisfied designer, 'milady need fear no drudgery. A very few hours will suffice for housekeeping and cookery. Work becomes a pleasure and a maid becomes undesirable.'

Well, well! there are solutions and solutions of this servant-problem, and of the always interesting question of how other people ought to live. The question being somewhat personal to

myself, I have examined a good many of these solutions without finding that any of them solved it to my personal satisfaction.

There is, of course, much to be said for the servantless cottage, although to solve a problem by giving it up is no very startling triumph of domestic mathematics. The experience of innumerable couples with kitchenettes proves that life is possible under this solution, but the frank admission of discontent among these experimenters indicates that it leaves much to be desired. My own domesticity is of the kitchenette kind in winter, but expands in summer to a modest establishment in the country with real stairs and a real cook in a real kitchen. I can see therefore so at least I believe not only the possibilities of the servantless cottage, its economy of effort in the details of housework, and its excellent adaptability to a small family unaccustomed to any other standard of living, but also its complete, unwitting abnegation of some of the finer things in human existence.

Now, if this man, in describing his servantless cottage, had contented himself with a plain and simple statement of its advantages, I dare say I should have read his description in the most friendly spirit imaginable; and certainly with no desire to criticize his results. It was that silly remark about milady that aroused opposition. We live in a republic and we are most of us reasonably self-respecting men and women, not a milady among us, unless she happens to be making a visit visit-in which case, one place she is not visiting is a servantless cottage. And so, in a word, the servantless cottage ceases to be an honest, more or less successful effort to provide a home in which the housewife can most conveniently do her own work, and becomes a neat little example of snobbish absurdity. Work be

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