"So." She would not speak for a while at all, only stared again out of her square window at the lifeless street.

"Do you hear from your sons often?" I queried.

"Once every month I get a letter and a little gold."

"How long have they been gone, may I ask?"

"One left at seventeen, and Wilhelm at nineteen. Both are nearly sixty,

now."

"Never came back?"

"Oh, they couldn't. always hindered them.

years."

They had to watch their business all the time. It

Besides, they were not very rich till the last few

"Your husband, Herr Markus, is he dead?"

"Yes, and a good many years, too."

"Are there any more young men from this town gone to America, like your sons?"

She then reflected a noment. "The sons of several old women; Gunda, there, looking out of the window across the street, nearly all of those you see staring out of their windows have children in America-"

I could see her manner growing more and more confiding. "Isn't it America that you are from?" She began again, as though she had only then realized the fact. "Yes, I have two sons there. In New Orleans." She rose from her chair and hobbled to an old rock-and-tiling stove which all over Germany you find "built in" at one corner of each room. After regulating the draught she turned to a little shelf behind, and took down a crumpled envelope stamped "United States."

"Here," she says, pointing to the corner of the paper, "here is my son's place of business in America. You have seen all the things in the picture many times, and maybe you will explain it to me. You will? The building is very large, you think?"

"Yes," I admitted, "five stories high, and very wide."

"What is this, Herr, at the end?"

"I can't see it well. it might be a huge brewer's wagon, delivering kegs of beer."

"Then they do drink beer in America? Germany is not the only place where we have it for each meal?"

"Well, Americans don't drink it at each meal-but they have it sometimes."

"So? And look just here, this is a-a-what is its name?"

"An electric car," I replied. "They have them speeding about in every little city in America, not like here, one line on an average for a few hundred miles. Besides," I added, “ours go very fast and are much easier to ride in because they are not all under one Kaiser. They belong to different private men who have to fight and compete with each other to please us."

"So? Yes, yes, so I have heard-I have heard in America there is wonderful private riches-nearly everybody is so poor over here. Yes, I dream about those great riches."

Then she turned toward the envelope again. "And-and is this a schutzmann?"

"Yes," I replied, "that is a policeman."

"They call a schutzmann a policeman in America?"

"Yes."

"But then, your policeman is not so strict as ours about very little things, is he? My husband, Franckle, once said something about the Kaiser and because of it the policeman took him away from me for two months. That was Franckle."

I admitted that of course our officers were not so opinionated. "In America we are allowed to say at least whatever we think-and then we have a million other privileges besides."

"I like that. My Wilhelm could never be anything but frank-Sammy, too, for that matter. It is very good for my boys. They can have so many comforts. America is a wonderful country. Yes, I dream about it much." And at that very moment her eyes distended as though in inward vision fixed on something indefinite but wonderful, wonderful and far away. "So you see," she concluded, "we old women who only sit staring out of the windows have plenty to do. Ja—”

W. I. Cohn.

BY THE ROADSIDE.

Her poor, dum eyes looked up at me.
"Is there no tale that you can tell

To soothe my throbbing misery,
And loose my spell?

"Is there no song that you can sing
To drown the pain and drown the years?

No stranger's sorrow that can bring
My heart to tears?

"Is there no art your sages prize

Of burning glare and staring light,

To blind my dim, all-seeing eyes,
And give me night?"

My own sere eves looked down to her.

"I too am seeking for release."

Her cheeks were wet. "Strange wanderer,

Then have I peace."

H. H., Jr.

BASIN CITY-COUNTY SEAT.

There was a railroad a hundred and seventy miles to the southeast. We were travelling northeast towards another some fifty miles nearer. This was the only crumb of comfort which, at that moment, the Great Basin of Western Wyoming could offer us.

The day was sizzling—“hotter'n the hinges o' Hell," according to Jim Seaver, the driver's favorite weather-epithet. The bitter alkali dust, spurting out in sheets from under the wagon-wheels settled about us in a choking cloud that made a grey paste on the sweaty backs of the horses and on our own faces. The Big Horn at our right swirled along with its load of tree trunks, broken branches and dirt, like a river of molasses and mud. Even the sick dusty poplars along its banks seemed discouraged and thirsty.

To the left, things were still worse. The colorless level ground stretched on and on, gradually rising to a low hot ridge of gullied hills, without a shadow for miles. The only other thing in sight was an occasional stiffbacked wondering prairie-dog, or a white vanishing whisk of a jack-rabbit's tail, or a vulture-speck in the sky, or a brisk sand-whirl, scurrying toward the hills and the sand-whirls seemed the most energetic and living. Long before this we had pinned all our faith on the railroad.

Suddenly at a bend in the endless road, Jim jerked the horses, and the complaining wagon stopped with a screech. "Look a' there," he said, flicking the whip toward a couple of houses on a hill far ahead, "that's new to me. Nothin' there a month ago. Must be another crazy-man loose," and he shook his head scornfully and grumbled till we came opposite the settlement, a quarter of an hour later.

.

Two rough one-storied board buildings were up and another only needed a roof and windows. A man with a heavy canvas nail-apron, who had been hammering joists, climbed down stiffly and nodded good-day, meanwhile mopping his red face with his sleeve. An older man, working a good distance off in the baking sun, finished driving two corner-stakes and came our way.

A sandy-haired boy of fifteen, splotched with printer's ink from head to foot, peeked out at us from one of the doorways. "Mornin'," said Jim Seaver, and then on to his business, "What's all this?"

The man with the nail-bag finished mopping. "Basin City-county seat of Big Horn County."

"Hell yer say," Jim broke in. "There aint no such county in the state of Wyoming."

The man spat copiously. "Well, I reckon you're part right. There aint any Big Horn county yet, but there's going to be the next legislature and by that time this town will have showed up purty well. Look here," and seizing our arms, he pulled us into one of the houses where the inky devil was working a large hand-press. "Look at this paper: it's been going a month."

I gasped in astonishment as his thick forefinger pointed: Jim, who had had previous experience, was stoical. "Basin City" it said in large broad letters, "Queen City of the West." Then came a map and bird's eye view of a town of three thousand inhabitants, symmetrically laid out, with court house, jail, hotel, and Methodist Church handsomely conspicuous. . A highly-wrought panegyric followed, bristling with adjectives: "Destined to be the metropolis of Wyoming," "beautifully situated," on the "cool, shady banks of the Big Horn," in the "midst of the most fertile and prosperous farming country west of Iowa." Even Jim balked at last. "Gawd," he snorted, combing his long stringy beard with his fingers, "you might a chosen a place a little less'n a mile from the river and with at least one popple in sight. Yer can't even raise a thirst here," and he laughed. blissfully oblivious of Kipling.

The man agreed with a species of wink. "That ain't none o' my business. A Sheridan land company's back o' this scheme. I'm just getting my three dollars a day and board; and a bunch o' lots back o' the Post Office,—that i if I'll take 'em," he added qualifyingly.

We kept a paper, shook hands all around, and moved on again up the burning river valley.

Three days later, we were camping in the mountains, in among trees once more, and clean water and cool air. As it grew dark, we could see the wink