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Women instinctively and rightly demand that they be placed on a pedestal. The playwright who does not do so can never be a popular playwright. Mr. Shaw is very nearly a great playwright-clever, with originality of expression and conception, and with a finely finished literary form. But until he becomes willing to show more tolerance for the weaknesses of women and more admiration for their virtues, he will have to content himself with the remark of Alexander Dumas, Fils: "The spectator gives only success, the reader gives fame."

Walton Atwater Green.

SONG OF THE FAWN.

Oh, come from your oak, my nymph, my nymph,

Oh, come from your oak to me,

The first bird flutters above your head,

And the first green wakes the lea.

Oh, come from your oak and sing your song

To drowsing field and stream;

Your harp shall be the rustling boughs,

The stirring flow'rs your theme.

The trembling bloom shall know your call,

The bud your waking sighs,-

And we will breathe in a thousand lips,

And open a thousand eyes.

Hermann Hagedorn, Jr.

A PIONEER OF THE FOOTHILLS.

"Dawson," I asked, as I finished washing a knife and fork by rubbing them in the sand, "why does the road turn way out around the mouth of Cañon Largo? There's no gulch, is there?"

"I guess you are a tenderfoot sure if you ain't heard that," replied Dawson. "I reckoned everybody knew it was haunted. You see that tumble down shanty sitting back up the cañon? Well, the Mexicans think there is ghosts there and won't go near it. When I get this pony hobbled I'll tell you how it come about."

Dawson was one of the oldest cattlemen in the Don Carlos Hills. He and I, after riding all day in search of unbranded calves, had pitched our camp on the Red River, a few miles below where the wagon road curves around the mouth of Cañon Largo. We were now lying by the fire waiting for the last yellow glow to fade out behind the hills before turning in for the night.

"That house up there used to belong to a fellow called Burnap," Dawson continued when he was once more seated. "Bob Burnap was his name, or, as he come to be knowed, 'Red-clawed Bob.' When Bob come here and took up that claim yonder he was as nice an' pleasant a man as you'd want to see. He had brought with him from the States the prettiest wife I ever set eyes on and, as was natural, he was all absorbed in looking out for her.

"In those days I had a bunch of cattle over east here in the Burro, so I used to drop in and see them pretty often. He and I was always extra good friends because we both thought it was more fun to keep a straight eye and a steady arm to hunt with, than lose our nerves over poker at night. So, naturally, I could see how careful he was to make life pleasant for his young wife, and, when he rounded up a bunch of cattle and took 'em to Vegas to sell, so he could surprise her with a ticket home over the new Sante Fé railroad, I was in on the deal.

"I recollect it was Sunday he got started, and on Friday he come riding

over to my place to see if I had seen anything of his wife. Her saddle was gone and he was all broke up for fear she had got hurt. I had seen nothin' of her, so we rode right back to search. But it was no use. The down stage from Springer had left a note sayin' she was on her way east with a cowboy. I was for following them up, and me and another fellow said we'd stake him for the deal, but he shook his head and rode off to his cattle.

"I disremember how long he laid low, but for a long while we didn't see much of him. He seemed to live way up the cañon alone with his cattle. About that time, too, I moved my herd down to the Pecos river county, and for a few years I didn't see him at all. When I come back the mines down here on the Chico were opened up, an' his ranch, lying close to the mouth of the cañon, had become a handy camp for travellers to and from the mines. He had a half-breed girl keeping house for him then, and at the mines where I first showed up they told me he was runnin' a sort o' tavern up there.

"The first I saw of them they was livin' comfortable enough, but when we come in from the stable I saw him actin' queer an' rush in ahead of us an' get his housekeeper out o' sight before we come in, and there he kept her till we was gone. From all I could find he seemed to be crazy jealous of that coyote girl. Probably livin' too long alone with his cattle and broodin' over his wife's leaving wa'n't good for him, but anyhow, from the girl's story, he was bad locoed from the time she come to live with him.

seen no more.

"About a year after the mines opened, he come home one evening and found her servin' lunch to a tired, foot-sore, young fellow who was hoofin' it to the mines. Bob didn't say much, but after that night the stranger wa'n't Other fellows he caught speaking with her went the same way, but everybody was busy and didn't miss 'em. Well, pretty soon he quit going out to his cattle at all, but all day sat drinkin' bad whisky and all night playing reckless at poker with his guests. His cattle strayed an' were stolen and all his regular income was cut off, but still he kept losin' wads at poker. It looks as though some one would 'ave caught on where he was getting his money, but everybody was too busy to think. Besides folks don't care much where a man gets it so long as he spends it free.

With so many going to an'

fro all the while, a few disappearing didn't raise no stampede, and I reckon, after he got his hand in, Bob was picking out a rich one now an' then, besides those he was loaded for.

"How long it would 'ave gone on nobody knows, but the young coyote flushed him. It was along in the winter, three years after the mines opened up. I was up to the Mud-flat tavern, when along toward morning there was a racket at the door and in come the girl from Bob's sayin' they was all alone up there an' Bob in a sort o' loco fit had got mad at their little girl for coughing an'. Here she got kind o' looney herself, but we sized up the kid's neck was twisted, an' when she come to again she told a lot more o' things he'd done.

"It seemed a sort o' duty, so that morning we got up a jury an' went down to take Bob by storm. But there wa'n't no need. He was all over his mad and was sittin' by the fire smokin' peaceable. When we come in he called us by names we'd never heard before, all the while lookin' us over kind o' queer. I reckon he had gone plumb daft and thought he was back in the States, for he went on askin' us how the crops was and 'lowed it was a powerful rain we was havin'. His talk was so natural like, if you hadn't knowed there wa'n't no crops for two hundred miles an' there hadn't been no rain for three months, you might 'ave thought he was all right.

"Loco or not we had our business to do, so a couple o' the fellows took care of him while the rest of us looked around a bit. It didn't take much lookin' to see the coyote girl had been dead right, least ways she hadn't been tellin' more'n the truth. So we come right back to report. Well, border law has it own justice and it don't have no place for asylums, so we just cashed in his chips, an' left a note givin' our names an' sayin' it was all done proper.

"Since then the Greasers 'ave fought shy o' the cañon and tell such tales of 'Old Red-clawed Bob,' as they call him, that it makes you shiver to hear 'em. They don't dare go within a mile of the old house nor camp anywhere in sight of it. That's how the road comes to swing out so.”

Dawson got up to unroll his bed and added, "I reckon she'll keep on swingin' out as long as Mexicans is runnin' it. But ain't it about time we was turnin' in ?”

P. P. Crosbie.

Editorial.

The President's report is always food for reflection; but in the report for this year there is one thing that comes particularly close to undergraduate affairs. It is the matter of “signing-off." The figures would be amusing if they were not so nearly disgraceful. Briefly, they show that the undergraduates in the college are sick ten times as much as the rest of the university, if the number of "sign-offs" may be taken as indicative. Of course nobody fancies that this is the truth; it is only the good old story of the man that "signed off for every disease his janitor could spell."

Two remedies for this appear, neither exclusive of the other. One is a sense of "squareness" in dealing with the Office. The other is a modification of the rules of attendance. The former is too obvious to need comment. It is an undergraduate custom as old as the existence of the disciplinary officer himself to treat "the Office" as fair prey for any deceit that will pass. The fact that the Office treats us with something more than squareness is, of course, no bar to our treating it in a manner quite opposite. We will continue to act as if we were under the police restriction of a boarding-school; it is an evidence of manliness to cheat the powers that be. The whole affair is so ridiculously childish that it almost seems unfortunate to have it appear in print.

The other alternative has been tried. When the "University” ideal first began to fascinate the authorities, attendance upon lectures was no longer to be taken. In practice this was found to be impossible in the College. Men scattered from the ice carnival in Montreal to the hotels of Old Point Comfort in search of "relaxation"; and the privilege had to be withdrawn from the

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