I

T was recess time, and out from the doors of the red brick schoolhouse the children came streaming. The boys ran to the well trodden yard to play "three old cat" or "duck on the rock"; the girls gathered in little groups, or walked about in twos and threes with arms entwined. But one little girl, snatching her hat hastily from a hook in the girls' entry, had started alone on a run down the long hill on which the schoolhouse stood. Her little feet struck the ground sturdily and her fat, flaxen braid bobbed briskly in unison. Bright autumn leaves fell across her path; blue gentians grew near, reaching out to be picked by a small brown handbut she heeded them not. Her little blue figure was now at the middle of the hill, now in its hollow and now on the crest of the next. Here she stopped; for from this point she could see, above the trees, faint and white against the clear sky, the smoke from the chimney of her home.

She gazed intently at it and sighed with relief. The house was safe then; no harm had come to it, in the long hours since she had left it in the morning. It was half past ten, she thought, so her mother was sitting by the kitchen window; no doubt the Maltese cat was near by, sunning herself on the sill, and dinner was simmering on the stove. She could almost smell the savory odor and see the yellow painted

floor, the braided rugs and her mother's face. Was her mother thinking of her, too, and longing for the noontime? Two tears rose slowly to her eyes, but she brushed them bravely away, tied on her hat, which she was still carrying in her hand, and turned resolutely to the school again. She must hurry to be back by the end of recess, that she knew well, for she had come here every day since she had began to go to school a week ago. She gave one backward look, poor little feminine Odysseus, yearning still to behold even the smoke of her home, and then like a light-winged bluebird sped away.

* * * * * * *

*

"O patria, O deoum domus.
Ilium et incluta bello

Moenia Dardanidum!" began a young girl's voice, then hesitated, stumbled and stopped.

She was standing in a large school room; but for a minute she did not see the rows of desks, the blackboards and the faces of poets looking down from the walls, nor, even in fancy, famous Ilium. It was only a low, brown house she seemed to see, a house much worn by winds and rains, from whose walls the woodbine was falling, and whose blinds were closed except one that creaked dismally, swinging backward and forward on its hinges. Grass was growing in the driveway and in the garden only a few

straggling flowers showed

among the weeds. The whole place had the pathetic look of a home that has been loved and deserted.

"Why have you left me?" it seemed to say. "Had I not sheltered you for fifteen years from the heat in summer and in winter from the piercing winds? Is your new home more snug than I was? For surely I was cozy, you yourself have often said so. But now the rain leaks into the pantry, the snow drifts into the chamber where you slept, and in the hall, mold is gathering on the figured paper which you used to love. Often before, some one of you went away for a season, but you always came back. Longclosed chambers were opened and I was decked with flowers to welcome the return. But now you have all gone. Will you never

come back? Shall human feet never walk again upon my floors? Shall spiders and bats be my only tenants forever? Or will you give me over to strangers? Shall the afternoon sunlight shift gently through the woodbine leaves into the parlor for strangers? Shall a strange face look out of your window at bedtime to see Cassiopeia rising over the crab apple trees?"

"Try the lines again," again," the teacher's voice broke in upon her dream. She saw the school room and her book; and blushing, yet with a clear voice, she read on.

* *

She had awakened in the early morning with the first faint twittering of birds; and she lay still for a little, her thoughts confused at first, as the thoughts of one who awakens in a strange place are apt to be. Then she remembered where she was and how she had come to teach

in this great city, a thousand miles from home. Though the light in her room was faint, it was already dawn, she reflected, in the city she had left. The thrifty housewives. were sweeping the front steps and opening the windows to let in the clean, fresh air; and the milk carts were running quietly over the unpaved streets.

"O little birds," her thoughts cried to those chirping on the roof, "you that may fly whither I cannot go, eastward and northward turn and carry my greetings! Go to that land whose coast offers a hundred harbors to fishers returning from the sea! Where nature, like a stern mother, gives to hard toil alone her reluctant fruit, but where she has no cyclones to terrify her children, no fever in her evening breezes, no poisons in her forests, but in her smile one may trust. There cry aloud to the winds, 'O Maine, Maine, in a far inland city, a child of yours yearns for a glimpse of your sea, faints for a breath of your forest! Send her a wind from the north! Then onward, little birds. to that city where low-lying hills forever keep Sober Thrift and Peace within her boundaries. Light in the dove-haunted square and chirp to whomever you meet: 'The body of one who loves you well toils in a great, smoky city, but still with you her heart abides. It walks daily on these streets and stops at each well known door. Then watch for it and greet it kindly when next you meet.'

"One flight more, little birds, to a square, white house. Four tall trees shelter it from every wind that blows. In summer time you could not miss it, the scent of its garden goes SO far. There you

She was a wife and mother now, sitting in her own home, resting the feet that had been busy all day -her nimble fingers were never idle. Her children clustered about her. "Tell us about your old home," they urged. And nothing loath she began.

Stories of snowdrifts and coasting, the creaking of sleds on clear cold days, of wood roads winding through evergreens bending beneath their white burden, over snow covered with telltale marks of who had been astir in the woods that night, snowbirds or rabbits or wandering fox. Stories of the meeting house and the sociables, of the little graveyard, too, behind the meeting house, where the sea hushed weary souls in sleep till the last awakening. For her home was beside the ocean, not inland as theirs was. In the evening the lights on the fishermen's boats in the harbor answered the lights in the village. Sometimes, too, great vessels would come into the port, vessels that had been even to Africa; and there was hardly a house in town that had not on each side of its front door a pink shell that had come from over the sea.

Then, passing from her native city, she loved to dwell on the beautiful great state. The upland pastures where sweet fern and blackberries grew; the red raspberries by country roadsides and the blueberry fields-none knew what blueberries were like, who had not eaten

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them there. And the flowers of the fields and woods, how fondly she dwelt on each name: the trailing arbutus, that comes when the snow still lingers in shady hollows; the frail windflower, the painted trillium, the lady's slippers and wild purple clematis, the twin pink bells of the linea borealis, whose home is beneath the evergreens and whose breath is the sweetest breath of all; the white and gold of daisies and buttercups in mowing fields, June's sweet clover, the speckled yellow lily of meadow brooks, the red ones of the pasture, the carnival of autumn, and last, "late and alone," the fringed gentian.

She told of the low, friendly hills and the deep blue lakes at their base, the mighty pine forests and the wonderful clear sky; sky; and the air, as one breathed it, one breathed courage and strength and life.

"Mother," the children cried, "let us go back in the summer!"

And she smiled and sighed: "Not this summer; next-perhaps."

She was an older woman now. Her husband was dead and two of her children. She was going on the morrow to the home of the one remaining, following him to the Pacific coast even as she had left her eastern home to follow his father to the Middle West. She had been packing all the morning, but now in the afternoon everything was ready. She sat down in the sitting room, by the window out of which she had looked for thirty years. The window faced the street, a street like any street in any suburban town, and she had been used to thinking the view restricted. But now, how pleasant it was! the well

paved walks, the maple trees and Queen Anne cottages with small neat lawns. Was she to lose her home, she questioned, because she had not loved it enough and sent back lingering thoughts to the old one?

She could sit still no longer. It was her favorite chair she missed that had been packed to send to her new home. The greater part of the furniture had been sold.

She passed hastily through the hall, for the sight of her trunk and her corded boxes gave her a pang, -and went upstairs. She hesitated at the threshold of her own room. How desolate it looked, with all its small adornments packed, and how glaring in its unfaded brightness was the place on the wall where her husband's picture had hung. She could not stay there. In the other chambers the beds were made and fresh bureau covers and splashers put out. She had helped the maid get the rooms ready that morning. They were tidy, certainly, and a credit to her housekeeping; but so cold and cheerless in their prim order. They looked familiar, yet strange, even stranger for their familiarity. They had the look, she thought, of a dear familiar face from which the life has departed. There was no place of rest upstairs; she went down again and into the kitchen. There was little change there; it was warm and tidy and the maid was out. How homelike it was! She sank down gratefully in the rocking chair with its patchwork cushion. And suddenly she could not see for tears. She brushed them hastily away. She must not cry; her son, her good son, who had come to help his mother on her journey west, might

enter any moment. And what excuse had she for tears? Was she not going with him of her own wish and will? Yet if tears were due the parting from her home of thirty years, why weep to-day? Was she not still among all that was familiar and dear? When she had left all to-morrow, there would be time for tears.

She was an old woman now, sitting in a cushioned chair with a footstool at her feet. She had left the merry party in the parlor a little while ago, and slipped away to her own room. She loved her grandchildren; but she was feeble, and laughter and many voices confused her. The quiet of her own room was better. The coals of her cedar fire sent out a warm glow and the light of the gas came softly through the red shade, and yet her eyes had a wistful look. But it was not now of Maine woods or western plains she was thinking. It was of the New Jerusalem she dreamed, of the crystal river there that flows more silently, more majestically than all earth's mighty streams, of the tree of life whose leaves are more healing than the breath of eastern pines; and the many mansions and the radiant hosts.

Then she heard steps at the door. It was her grandchildren coming to say good night. She sighed a little at the awakening from her dream, but turned-if not with the courage of her earlier years, yet with patience-her thoughts to her present life.

True she had here "no continuing city," but there was laid up for her, and she had seen it from afar, “the inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, that fadeth not away."

W

HEN the will of Stephen Salisbury, who died on November 16, 1905, was opened it was discovered that he had made the Worcester Art Museum, originally founded at his prompting, his residuary legatee, and that property the value of which is estimated at between three and four millions of dollars will shortly be available for the creation of one of the largest depositories of art objects in the United States. The resources now at the disposal of the institution to which Mr. Salisbury gave largely of his thought, care and private means during the last years of his life will make it, even if no other accessions follow, one of the three or four richest museums in the United States.

The establishment in an inland New England city of an institution destined presumably to gain international as well as national fame vitally concerns not only Worcester but this entire section. As an aid to material progress art has already become one of the vested interests of New England, since only with its assistance can the competition of other portions of the United States which have readier access to raw materials be adequately met. In a spiritual sense, too, art has become a necessary asset in order that for as many as possible existence may be commuted into living by exercise of the creative imagination.

Since the announcement of Mr. Salisbury's gift leading citizens of Worcester, in interviews given to the newspapers, have been unanimous in expressing their appreciation of the wisdom of the plan and of the magnificence of the opportunity which it offers not to their city alone, but to New England and to the whole country. As regards the final character of the museum, some have emphasized the possible material achievements, including the facilities offered by a great museum and school of industrial arts and crafts. Others have spoken seriously of the uplift to be exerted by examples of the best art of the ages in a community in which, without art, life would tend inevitably toward monotony. But there has been no dissent from the thankfulness to the donor and the determination to execute his ideas for a comprehensive museum of fine arts.

What has already been accomplished in Worcester gives at least a hint of what may be done with the larger means now at hand. To most people the present museum, housed in a moderate-sized building in the style of the Italian Renaissance, is known, if known at all, as the scene of the summer exhibitions of paintings which for several years past have brought together each summer a good proportion of the best contemporary art from the exhibitions in the larger American cities, and have enabled