Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic]

GENERAL COMMITTEE OF ADJUSTMENT PHILADELPHIA & READING SYSTEM.

A. REESE, DIV. 652.
J. F. HARLEY, DIV. 90.

J. L. BODY, CHR., DIV. 71.

J. M. KEANEY, DIV. 71.
J. W. HAGNER, DIV. 75.
L. H. BURNELL, SEC., DIV. 653.

F. D. HINES, DIV. 569, v. C.

m

spoke of your sufferin' or your patience."

She was silent. Her hands were nervously twisting and untwisting the black bordered handkerchief. A spot of color came into either cheek.

"Mind, I know your father was one of the best men," he said sturdily, "but it made me mad that they didn't tell the other side of it-that you are one of the best women. Didn't you give up everything to him? Where have you been for the past ten years? Nowheres. What have you done all that time except take care of him? Nothin'. Ain't you suffered an' been patient? Didn't you give up the man you loved so you could spend all your time takin' care of your father? Sarah, if I was goin' to name a regular saint on earth I'd named you.'

[ocr errors]

It was a long speech for Seth Carlton to make. He sat back in the chair, rather surprised at his own statement of his feelings. Sarah smiled feebly.

"It warn't so much as you make out," she protested.

He grunted. "Didn't it mean nothin' to you that night, ten years back, when you told me you could never marry me so long as he lived?"

The color spots brightened in her cheeks. "Didn't it?" he persisted.

"Yes," she admitted slowly.

"An' hasn't it meant somethin' all them ten years?"

She nodded her reply, for her eyes brimmed with tears and there was a lump in her throat.

"Talk about patience an' sufferin' an' saints on earth!" he exclaimed. "Them folks ain't got eyes to see beyond their noses. That's what made me provoked.

[ocr errors]
[blocks in formation]

Suddenly she began to weep without restraint. He watched her in silence. Intuitively he knew that these were not tears of sorrow. After a time he sat beside her on the sofa and awkwardly stroked her hair.

"You ain't goin' to know what care or sorrow is if I can help it," he declared. Unconsciously he had raised his voice.

"Hush-oh, hush!" she whispered. "They'll hear you out in the kitchen. Mis' Jones an' Mis' Parsons are out there washin' dishes."

"Think I care if they do?" he said defiantly. "I ain't a mite ashamed of it. Are you?"

She lifted her eyes to his and smiled. It was a wonderful smile. Somehow the room seemed to lose much of its desolation, even as her face lost its many traces of years and patient suffering. "I'll be ready Saturday," she said.

Best of All.

BY HONORE WILLSIE.

Copyright, 1906, by E. C. Parcells.

The aisles of pines stretched in every direction, on and on, until the white of the snow flood blended with the white and green of snow laden boughs in dim, shadowy blacks. The silence of the afternoon was unbroken. Even the snow birds were not to be heard, and there was not a breath of wind to disturb the white drapery that covered the pines.

Rose, gliding along on her snowshoes, second part and parcel of the quiet beauty of the winter forest. Her slender strength and easy grace seemed strangely in harmony with the fine straightness of the pines.

But for the first time in her life Rose was only vaguely conscious of the loveliness of the woods. She sped on swiftly, untiringly, guiding her course with now and then a mechanical glance at the ax cuts on the pine tree trunks. In her mind she was reviewing over and over the scene of the morning. Again she saw the tense face of her husband, with the expressionless faces of the two guides behind him. The cause of the quarrel had been trivial enough. Rose scarcely recalled it now. The main point was that her husband, with his English instincts, could not understand that his wife, with her American instincts, could be led, but not driven.

"The Hon. Hugh Boynton," Rose had stormed at him across the campfire, "can bullyrag his mother and his sisters, but his wife is just plain American and she will not be ordered as if she were one of his pointers!"

The Hon. Hugh had straightened his

[graphic]

GENERAL COMMITTEE OF ADJUSTMENT WABASH SYSTEM.
W. K. SANDERSON, DIV. 529.
J. F. RYALL, SEC., DIV. 155.
J. E. SEELEY, DIV. 218.
W. A. HAMMOND, CHR., DIV. 548.

D. L. COLLIER, DIV. 17.

H. E. STONE, DIV. 86. C. A. MOORE, DIV. 302.

stalwart figure into lines of adamantine stiffness.

"I thought my request was for your own good, Rose," he had said.

"Request!" Rose had repeated indignantly. "It was not a request. It was an order. I would do anything on earth that you asked me to do, but I won't be ordered to do things 'for my best good!' Hugh, what do you know about these Wisconsin pines! I was born and bred in them."

Hugh had looked at her in utter bewilderment. The subtile difference between requesting and ordering the same thing was quite lost on him. He knew that he loved the beautiful, stormy girl before him, but something in his English blood made him feel that if he came to her point of view he would belittle himself. So he had merely turned his back on his wife, saying in his Oxford drawl: "I'm sure I don't care to discuss the matter further."

Rose had stared at him in utter amazement as he made the preparations for the day's hunt. Never in all her spoiled young life had she been so outraged and ignored. Without a word she pulled her soft cap down over her ears, turned up the collar of her great white sweater, slipped her moccasined feet under the thongs of her snowshoes and made off to the south through the clear morning air.

"I am going back to Westhaven," she had said to herself. "I can stop at Levant's lumber camp for supper, and from there take the main road and reach Westhaven by midnight. I've not been alone in the woods at night, but I guess I won't be afraid."

So all the bright winter day she had kept her course, her anger and resentment increasing as she drew farther from the hunting lodge.

"Why did I ever suggest this hunting trip?" she thought bitterly. "I wish we were back in London! But-this was bound to come anyhow, so perhaps it is as well to have things end here as there. For I will not go back to him and his domineering.'

The stillness gradually grew oppressive. As the shadows in the distance darkened and closed nearer, there stole through Rose's anger the consciousness that she had no luncheon and that there was no hope of her reaceing Levant's before darkness set in. She half paused.

"Goodness!" she thought. "What shall I do if it gets dark before I reach Levant's? I had forgotten that possibility. And when I get there what excuse shall I make for being there?"

Twilight was deepening, coming with no gorgeousness of sunset or after-glow, for the overhanging boughs, with their

snowy covering, were all but impenetrable. Little by little the tree trunks turned from green and brown to black. Little by little the snow took a bluish hue that darkened into the purple of the drooping boughs, and the air grew raw and sharp with a little night breeze that made Rose shiver as the glow of heavy exercise departed with her first weariness.

As

Her course was now more difficult. darkness seemed assured she constantly stumbled, but caught herself each time. But the straining told on the thongs of her snowshoes. Suddenly she could not tell how, the fastenings on one shoe gave way, and she was thrown violently forward. Had the fall taken place in the soft snow Rose would have been unharmed, but she had just arrived at the brow of a slight slope almost wind swept of snow. As the girl scrambled to her feet her left arm dangled uselessly at her side. With a little moan she slipped her other foot from its snowshoe, then stood for a moment, pain and terror of the darkness rendering her weak and helpless.

Then her courage returned to her. "Nonsense," she thought. "I've been in the woods alone before. I mustn't get frightened even if it is dark and I don't know where I am.”

She took from the pocket of her skirt a tiny oilskin packet. John, the guide, allowed no one in the lodge to be without matches.

"I'll light a fire," she said, "and camp right here for the night."

Dizzy with pain and hunger, she painfully gathered together some dead branches and, kindling a cheerful blaze, sat down before it. The pain in her arm was very great, and she rolled back her sleeve and plied soft handfuls of snow on the flesh.

The whispering of the night through the pines seemed very sad and lonely to Rose. It was only by watching the beauty of the scarlet fire glow on snow and sweeping branches and murmuring over and over to herself that she was not afraid that the girl kept herself from screaming with terror.

Then from out of the darkness behind her came the soft fluff fluff of hurrying snowshoes, and Hugh, hot and breathless, stood before her.

"Rose!" he cried. "Rose, I thought I had lost you!""

Rose looked up at him in amazement. "How did you find me, Hugh?"

"Find you! Why, I've been following you ever since you left the lodge. But just at dusk my snowshoe broke, and before I could patch it up you were out of sight."

Rose put another handful of snow on her arm. Hugh threw himself down be

side her. "Oh, Rose," he cried, "what have you done to yourself?"

Rose looked up at him. Suddenly she realized how she had been belittling a great thing in satisfying her foolish pride. Suddenly she saw that this was best of all; not that she keep her girlish vanities, but that their love held true no matter who ordered or who obeyed. Suddenly she felt as if she wanted things as they had been at any cost.

"Hugh," she said, "I don't mind. Order me about all you want to; only take care of me and don't let me go away again."

Again the little bewildered look came into Hugh's face as he gathered her close.

"I don't want to order you, Rosie," he said. "I was stubborn, and you know what is for your own best good anyhow. All I want is you, and for the rest you may do as you please."

Two Brotherhoods.

BY REV. CHARLES STELZLE.

"Our field the world.

Our cause-humanity."

It was an inspiration to march with the 300 and more delegates at the Minneapolis convention of the American Federation of Labor, as they proceeded to the convention hall, behind the banner which bore these words.

The president's report and the spirit of the meetings rang true to the motto. It was the spirit of sacrifice and of service with just enough of the shout of victory to keep up one's courage. There were some discordant elements, true enough, but even these, analyzed, indicated a measure of that for which labor's brotherhood of service stands.

During the progress of the convention, I slipped down to Indianapolis to address the newest organization in the Presbyterian Church-the "Presbyterian Brotherhood." This was its first conventionwith the choicest representatives from every city in the land-over 1,000 strong. But Tomlinson Hall was packed at nearly every session-packed with men who came because of their interest in this new organization, even though they were not honored by being sent as regularly accredited delegates.

Across the stage was flung a banner which carried the motto "Service in Brotherhood." As I spoke to that great audience of nearly 3,000 men "The Church and Labor," I was thinking of the convention in Minneapolis, and my message was delivered in the spirit which I had caught there. How well that message was received others may tell, but out of

the cheering and the emotion which it brought forth came a greeting which I was instructed to carry back to the Labor Convention. I reproduce it here:

"The Presbyterian Brotherhood, in its first convention at Indianapolis, joins with the Brotherhood of Labor as represented in the American Federation of Labor in convention assembled in Minneapolis in devotion to the ideal of life given by the Great Master:

"If any would be great among you, let him be your servant. For even the Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.""

This was probably the first time in the history of organized labor in this country that so important a religious society sent a special representative to a convention of labor's greatest body, with a fraternal greeting. It is significant that this representative was also received by the American Federation of Labor as a fraternal delegate from the Presbyterian Department of Church and Labor. This is a sign of the times. It is a prophecy of the day when men will learn that only as the spirit of brotherhood and of service prevails will there be anything like a solution of the vexatious problems in the social and in the industrial world.

Union of Forces-Brotherhood of Man.

The following address by Rev. M. J. Riordan, rector of St. Charles Catholic church, Pikesville, Md., was delivered at the memorial meeting of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers held in the Maryland Theater, Baltimore, Md., Sunday afternoon, Nov. 26, 1906. Governor Warfield and the Mayor of Baltimore were present. President Murray and General Manager Fitzgerald of the B. & O. R. R. occupied a box.

"I am always pleased to have the privilege of addressing a body of men who work, whether they labor with hand or brain. They are the only class without whom society could not exist. The idler is anathematized by Scripture and reason alike, and it is beginning to be considered a disgrace to accept emolument or honor from society without endeavoring to return an equivalent in the form of useful service. All men bear God's image in their soul, but they whose labor or ingenuity given new form or location to the products of the earth resemble him also in action. Every time a workman earns $1 by his productive labor he adds many multiples of that amount to the world's wealth. I salute with reverence, therefore, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers whose daily work at the throttle contributes so largely to the extension of

« PreviousContinue »