Eeny, meeny, miny, mo, Thus the summer hours speed swiftly as the childish games are played In my back yard by the children gathered 'neath the maple's shade. Dancing feet and happy laughter make the hours speed with haste, And the back yard knows no rulers, knows no pride of birth or caste; For upon an equal footing there they gather, girls and boys, And I sit and envy them their healthy lungs and childish joys. Wire, briar, limber, lock, One flew east, one flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest. Pure democracy exists there, all for one and one for all, Flitting here and romping yonder 'neath the greenleaved maple tall. And I wonder as I watch them why men grasp for gold and fame, Missing all the joys of living, risking misery and shame. Monkey, monkey, bottle of beer, How many monkeys have we here? Out goes he. O, that men might learn the lesson! Be from greed and passion free, Like the happy children playing underneath the maple tree. A Cheerful Brother...... Frank L. Stanton....... Atlanta Constitution [Additional stanzas for Mr. Kipling's latest masterpiece.] We made a mistake in thinking that the Boers were heathen Chinese. And we said: "Why, we can chase them around any old way we please." Neow, this was a fault, and a crackajack fault, and we ought to take a tumble; And I hope that the jolt we got will tend to make us a bit more humble. I could scribble along like this for four and twenty stanzas more, For all I have got to do is to rhyme this line with the line before; But I think I have said enough already to hold you for a while You rulers of this dinky little nine-by-seven isle. .Chicago Record-Herald The baby that's good lies all day long, The baby that's good neglected lies The baby that squalls all day, all night, The man who quietly toils away, With hopes of the By-and-By, Who merely accepts what the world accords, The man who demands the best there is, The man who asks may have little worth, The Sketch Book: Character in Outline 'Put not yer trust in the sons of men in whom is no salvation!' Lay hold o' the Lamb! And do it mighty quick, ur the Devil ull get yuh. Do it now! Let the Lord lead yuh! Lead yuh to the Promised Land! Lead yuh to the Kingdom!" The big, rough-hewn fellow, standing in the middle of his impromptu congregation, lets his words swing loose in a slow undulating rhythm. not without musical magic. It dominates over the broken talk and the countless little noises in one of the eddies of the streaming holiday crowd circling about a central speaker, on this warm, bright Sunday afternoon, in Boston Common. "Yuh can't do it yerself. For, oh, my brothers! I tell yuh there is a devil. And he goes to and fro making trouble in the earth. It's the devil does the mischief, all right, every time, and don't yuh fool yerself. He holds yuh in his grip so yuh can't squirm away o' yer own strength. I know it. For the Lord delivered me out of his hand. My sins were all rolled away-yes, all rolled away-right down here on Bromfield street. An' I'll tell yuh honest jus' how it was. Las' week, right down here on Bromfield street" The smoking, idling fringes of the group cluster closer to the exhorter at the prospect of a personal anecdote. The loiterers, drawn by curiosity, that come up continually, like iron-filings to a magnet, listen a moment, and then radiate off again, don't radiate for about a minute. The eddy is whirled compact, held to the core for that brief space of time, and there is a little hush of interest. But the comparative quiet brings out in high relief some other random voices. "Wha's the ole man a-saying?" "He's the Jim dandy o' this here meeting, he is!" "Listen, why don't yuh!" "Yes, the devil had me in his grip then, sure enough, I tell yuh! When he said 'Drink!' I drank. When he said, 'Whack Sally!'-that's my ole woman, gen'lemun-I whacked 'er. An' I couldn't stop it uh myself. Mind that! But down there that blessed day on Bromfield street it came to me, sudden, to lay hold uh the Lamb. And that did it! "So, I tell yuh, all my brothers here, if yuh have any bad ways like me, I say, don't trust yerself. Give up self. Wha's this life an' the fun of a man's getting on the loose an' whackin' aroun' compared to hell to come, and red devils' claws! Wha's this here earth and all its trials and uh tribillations compared to Kingdom Come!' Two girls, arrayed with a draggled stylishness fit to satirize all "style" forever, push staring and giggling well inside the circle. "See the old saw-horse! about, anyway? Huh?" Wha's he a-blowin' "Law! Preachin'. Le's get out o' this, Net!" Near the bandstand another little black knot of people dots the green expanse of the Common. In its midst the pushed-back derby hat, the long head and narrow shoulders of a lean, wiry, acutelooking Yankee rise. He is mounted on a bench. An intent circle of amused patrons is ranged close around him. He is talking to them in an easy, colloquial, you-don't-fool-me sort of a man ner. "Now, what I have to propose to you is that we make our kingdom of heaven, on earth, right here and now, ourselves. And I say we can do it." "That's the stuff!" cries one voice in the group. "Now, then, s'pose we reason together for a spell about property. My property is what I make, say-expend labor on to make, or else obtain in exchange, by money's worth, for something else I've made by spending labor on. Is there any other honest way of owning this pencil?" He held it up in his slim, alert hand, and went over the supposed case in detail. "Now tell me, anyone, if I can make wood or lead? No. They come from the ground. The wood grows out of it. The graphite is mined from it. I can cut the timber. I can mine the lead. I can't create 'em. Must get 'em out of the land. Well, then, can I make the land? Of course you know I can't. I can only manipulate and manage what's in it. Then, I conclude, land's back of this pencil, back of any work I can put on it, and I can't do without land if I'm going to make a pencil. In fact, the land's behind any work I can put on anything-necessary some way to everything I do make, and yet 'tain't made by me the storehouse of crude material no man made, every man must draw on, spend his labor on, in order to make anything-anything whatsoever that he can consider is his property. "Now, then, here's our proposition: the right the right to own land belongs to all mankind. Always has. Always will." The battering drum and tooting horn of a band of Salvationists advance in the long walk where once the Boston boys of the Revolution insisted on their right to slide down hill despite the red coats of the British army of occupation. As the rough chant of this modern army of the Lord comes closer, it blurs the single-taxer's crisp flow of words, and rises loud above the rumble of the cars in the Subway, but not above the shuffling sound of the passers-by-the flowing stream weaving incessantly along the network of the intersecting paths of the Common, a many-colored pattern of city life, embroidered against the background of trees and grass in a living tapestry that shakes and shifts with every passing wind of human interest. Some of the Italian mothers from the North End, decked out in their best gay kerchiefs that the sunlight loves, sitting in the grass with their pretty dark-browed children, catch up their dirty darlings, as the music comes along, and run to gape at the straggling processional of Salvation lads and lassies in red-banded bonnets and caps. Others only roll their gleaming eyes in its direction, while they nudge their swarthy husbands. sprawling on the ground beside them to look at a fairy ring of tiny toddlers playing near by. Then they all glance at one another and laugh to see their youngsters turn the rought, somber rhythm of the Gospel Hymn into the unexpected boon of a dancing tune to caper by. They catch up their tiny red and blue petticoats at the side and daintily curtsey and tiptoe. I recently spent a pleasant half-day in town. It was this wise. Above the door of an old house facing on a back street was a dingy sign with the words, "Second-Hand Shop," and, as I was about to pass, I noticed at the entrance an old man whose physique and clothing admirably conformed with the surroundings. He was, to my mind, a second-hand man-as if some wandering consciousness of Colonial days had retenanted a lifeless hulk. I entered the shop with the confidence of one sure of a welcome, but was quickly disabused. Between petulant puffs of tobacco-smoke I heard the mumbled question, "What do you want?" "To look around," I replied. "If you know what you want, I can tell you if I've got it," the old man muttered between puffs of greater volume, and then I heard something like, "rummage-things broken." Certainly, the welcome I anticipated had not materialized. I hesitated a moment, and then, disliking to be rebuffed, took a forward step, saying, "Old furniture" as I did so. "Parlor, bedroom, or kitchen?" he asked, halfhiding himself in a cloud of ill-smelling smoke. "Parlor or bedroom," I replied. "Back room," said the old man, pointing with his pipe to the rear of the shop. I started in that direction, but was stayed by a pile of old books. There is no bait like this, and I always nibble, sometimes bite, and generally am caught. up. "Not furniture," the old man growled. "Books furnish the mind," I remarked, looking The old man grunted, and glared at me in a way that I did not like, but I moved on, as he wished. A few steps brought me to a table covered with a cluttered heap of odds and ends, and here I resolutely took my stand. "Trifles," muttered the old man impatiently. "But I want to look them over," I protested, and stood my ground. "Tabitha!" the old man called in an imperative way. Tabitha ascended or descended, I could not tell which, so sudden was her appearance. "Attend to this customer," the old man said with a most uncomplimentary sneer, and turned away. "See anything you want?" Tabitha asked. "When I do, I will say so," I replied, adopting her curt manner. Tabitha sniffed. "Do you treat all your customers in this way?" I asked. Tabitha looked older and uglier than before, and turned as if to call her husband, but as promptly changed her mind. When I picked up a trifle from the table and asked, as if nothing had happened, "What's that?" "To give castor-oil to children," she replied. It was a shoe-shaped pewter box, with a lid, and hole in the toe. I remembered my oleaginous doses of other days, and, shuddering, pointed to a more cheerful object. "How much for this snuffer-tray?" I asked. "Half a dollar." "Those spectacles?" pointing to a pair of enormous frames with one circular green glass. "Half a dollar." "Too much," I said, as snappy as her snarls; "and that candlestick?" "Dollar." "Phew! you're high-priced," I exclaimed in mock despair. "Just what I thought," snarled Tabitha. "You don't want anything." "Not at such prices," I replied. "What I thought," Tabitha muttered. "Do you buy old things?" I asked, a sudden thought striking me. "Sometimes." "Well, why don't you go to the old Pinhorne house and buy all they've got. The old lady's dead, and the daughter says she's not going to take the things all the way to Oregon, where her cousin lives. Lots of old things in good condition." Some of Tabitha's angles were relaxed to curves. Trifling evidences of average humanity began to appear. "The andirons are good," I continued with increased enthusiasm, "the candlesticks without a dent, splendid pewter dishes and mugs, old maple secretary, hall clock, and bedsteads with curtains all round. It's like going into a house two hundred years ago." Tabitha's, reduction of angles progressed, and, picking up the snuffer-tray, she said, "You can have it for a quarter." "Thanks, I'll take it," I replied, and continued: "There's no knowing what is in the garret and cellar of that queer old house. You know the Pinhornes came to this country among the first, and some of them always lived there. Miss Angelina is the last of them round here, and it's your chance." Tabitha's skinny palms met and she thoughtfully looked up at the ceiling, and then, returning to the business of the moment, she picked up castor-oil box, spectacles, and candlestick and said, almost smilingly, "The four for a dollar." "Thanks; please tie them up in one bundle," and while she was thus engaged I studied very hard what next to say; but all came to me in time. "There's a room over the wagon-house they always kept locked, and it's full of things they had no use for. One real old desk is full of papers," and here, having handed over my dollar, I slowly moved toward the street. I saw she was about to ask a question or two, but I anticipated her. "I don't know whether or not she will keep the silver, but she has a splendid urn and such odd shapes of spoons; and then there's a real India china blue-and-white soup-tureen with boars' heads for handles. Keep a good lookout for that." Tightly clutching my four-fold purchase. I finally reached the old shop's front door, and not till then did I give Tabitha time to speak. "Where did you say the Pinhorne place was?" A neater article of the National had never been put up on the home grounds, and when the visitors picked up the stick in the final with the tally standing 2-2, everybody, from the oldest fan to the younger paper-seller, was standing on his seat and yelling to the local slab artist to serve up his choicest assortment of round-house benders, and keep whatever guy was handling the ash pivoting at delusions. The twirler was up to the business, and laid 'em over so fast that the receiving end of the battery, who wears the bird-cage and liver-pad, looked as if he were shelling peas. The first two victims only tore rents in the atmosphere, but the third guy connected, and laid off a flaming grasser which would have made a projectile from a 13-inch gun look like a bean-bag tossed from one baby to another. The man on the difficult corner was right there, though, and flagged the horse-hide pill with his sinister talon, assisting it over to the initial hassock in such short order that some one yelled derisively: "That fellow runs like an Orange street automobubble." The home aggregation came to the bat. Every one was confident that they were going to pound the sphere around the lot, but the opposing team ran in a new guy with a slow south wing, and before they were onto the fact that they were not putting the willow onto the yarn as they had expected there were two men down and two strikes on the next guy. But, oh, Phoebe! on the next delivery he became the father of a bouncing swat which landed in the last row of potatoes in the outer garden and enabled him to press down three buttons and scratch the rubber. "Did the crowd go wild? Say, did you ever see a game of ball?" usual; he took him tenderly by the arm and led him clear to the sidewalk. Among those who witnessed this little act of courtesy there was not one who did not feel like apologizing to the young man at that moment for all the mean things they had said and thought about street-car conductors. Their faces softened with hearty interest. Suddenly they saw the conductor drop hold of the old man's arm, and leave him leaning against the fence: "You old Sheeny fakir," he called back, as he rang the starting bell, “You ain't goin' to fall off my car!" Two Fathers.....Chas. Battell Loomis.....Woman's Home Companion First Father-I don't think that it is a universal trait among fathers to tell of the doings and sayings of their children. I'm sure I don't do it. Second Father-Nor I, either. But writers have got into the habit of saying so, just as they say that mothers-in-law are disagreeable. Now, I think that my children are just ordinary, healthy, average children, who seldom say or do anything worth repeating. First Father-No, don't misunderstand me. I mean I think the same of mine. They seldom scintillate, although little Florence did say a pretty good thing the other night when she was say. ing her prayers. Her mother— Second Father-And that reminds me that my oldest boy, Edwin, got off a rather droll thing the other day. He wasBut I beg your pardon; you were going to tell me about your Florence. First Father-Yes, I know I was, but your mentioning your oldest reminds me of a better one. My boy Sam came pretty close to being witty the other day. He'd been bathing go ahead with your story about Edwin. But Second Father-Oh, speaking of bathing reminds me of a good one that our baby said the other day while her mother was preparing her tub. She can only prattle First Father-'D I ever tell you what Edwin said when the coachman swore in his presence? Second Father-No, I don't think so. But when it comes to swearing, my Tom could give a canal-boat driver points, and we don't know where he has picked it up. Awfully funny thing happened the other night. The minister was dining with us, and First Father-Oh, when it comes to dinnertable breaks, I think I can cap anything you have with what our Mabel said when the missionary from Calcutta Second Father (looking at his watch)-Beg pardon, but I've got to hurry along. I had no idea it was so late. (As he hurries off.) Rude fellow! He never gave me a chance to tell a single anecdote. Stupid kids of his. I don't believe they ever said a thing worth repeating in their lives! First Father (left alone)-Well, if I had such idiots as his children are I'd never attempt to tell any of their sayings. If he'd kept quiet I could have told him some anecdotes that were worth while, although I don't make a rule of repeating my children's conversations. One evening, late, Jean Loqueteux decided that it was time to go home. By that he meant a bench under a chestnut tree on the place d'Anvers, where he had slept during the last few weeks. Famished, he had only made two cents— two foreign coins at that, at the entrance of the Vaudeville theatre, opening the door of a cab. "Such hard luck," remarked the poor man, talking to himself, "If I had only two sous, two sous to buy a crust of bread in the morning." Dragging painfully his ill-clad person, hungry, suffering besides from illness, he resumed his walk toward the bench under the chestnut tree, hoping that he would meet a providential man willing to part with ten centimes, the price of his breakfast. Suddenly he stumbled against something in the darkness. Was it worth the trouble to look and see what it could be? Who knows? Providence has little regard for the poor, yet she is kind to them at times: he had found once a leg of mutton in the mud; maybe this time it was a chop. "Let me see!" And he picked up the object. "Humph! This time I am deceived! It is no good to eat." No one, not even a sergent de ville, could be seen in the street. Jean Loqueteux went under a lamp post to examine what he had in his hand. "Well," he said aloud, "This is funny!" The object was a black pocketbook containing ten thousand francs in government bills, but no letters, no cards, nothing to identify the owner. "To think," he remarked to himself, “that some people carry ten thousand francs in that way in their pockets. It is enough to make anyone sick. And now I have to go to the police station, out of my way, and I am so tired. Decidedly I have no luck to-night." And Jean Loqueteux went to the police station, where he experienced all kinds of trouble trying to see the Commissary, on account of his dilapi |