cover him up. As he curled and snuggled into the covers his tears dried as if by magic, the bitterness smoothed out of his face, and all his griefs were forgotten.

IV

In the next room I sat and read, a pleasant warmth of parental protection in my heart. And then Ernest began to cough. It was no light childish spasm, but a deep racking cough that froze my blood. There had been a little cold in him when he came. I had taken him out into the raw December air. I had overexerted him in my thoughtless haste. Visions of a delirious and pneumoniac child floated before me. Or what was that dreadful thing called croup? I could not keep my thought on my book. That racking cough came again and again. Ernest must be awake and tossing feverishly. Yet when I looked in at him, he would be lying peaceful and rosy, and the cough that tore him did not disturb his slumbers. He must then be in a state of fatigue so extreme that even the cough could not wake him. I reproached myself for dragging him into the cold. How could I have led him on so long a journey, and let him play with a strenuousness such as his days never knew! I foresaw a lurid to-morrow: Ernest sick, myself helpless and ignorant, guilty of a negligence that might be fatal. And as I watched him, he began to show the most alarming tendency to fall out of bed. I did not dare to move him, and yet his head moved ever more perilously near the edge. I relied on a chair pushed close to the bed to save him. But I felt weary and worn. What an exacting life, the parent's! Could it be that every evening provided such anxieties and problems and thrills? Could one let one's life become so engrossed?

And then I remembered how every evening, when we went to bed, we used

to ask our mother if she was going to be home that evening, and with what thankful security we sank back, knowing that we should be protected through another night. Ernest had not seemed to care what became of me. Having had no home and no parents, he had grown up into a manly robustness. He did not ask what you were going to do with him. He was all for the moment. He took the cash and let the credit go. It was I who felt the panic and the insecurity. I envied Ernest. I saw that, contrary to popular mythology, there were advantages in being an institutional orphan, provided you had been properly Binet-ed as of normal intelligence and the State got you a decent boarding-mother. How much bringing up Ernest had escaped! If his manners were not polished, at least they were not uncouth. He had been a little shy at first, nodding at questions with a smile, and throwing his head against the chair. But there was nothing repressed about him, nothing institutionalized, and certainly nothing artificial.

His cough grew lighter, and as I looked at his yellow hair and the angelic flush of his round cheeks, I thought of the horrid little puppets that had been produced around me in conventional homes, under model fathers and kind and devout mothers. How their fears and inhibitions contrasted with Ernest's directness! His bitter mood at going to bed had a certain fine quality about it. I recalled the camaraderie we had established. The box of lemondrops, only half-exhausted, stared at me from the pocket of his little sweater, I became proud of Ernest. I was enjoying again my vicarious parenthood. What did that obscure and tangled heredity of his, or his most problematical of futures, matter to him or to me? It was delightful to adopt him thus imaginatively. If he turned out badly, could you not ascribe it to his heredity,

and if well, to your kindly nurture and constant wisdom? Nothing else could be very much thought about, perhaps, but for the moment Ernest seemed supremely worth thinking about. There would be his education. And suddenly it seemed that I did not know very much about educating a child. It would be too absorbing. There would be no time for the making of a living. Ernest loomed before my imagination in the guise of a pleasant peril.

And then morning came. As soon as it was light Ernest could be heard talking and chuckling to himself, with no hint of delirium or pneumonia, or the bogies of the night. When I spoke he came running in in his bare feet, and crawled in with me. He told me that in spite of my valiant chair he had really fallen out of bed. He did not care, and proceeded to jump over me in a vigorous acrobatic way. He did not even cough, and I wondered if all the little sinister things of childhood passed so easily with the night. It was impossible to remember my fears as he tossed and shouted, the perfection of healthiness. Parenthood now seemed almost too easy to bother with.

Ernest caught sight of my dollar watch on the chair, and I saw that he conceived a fatal and instantaneous passion. He listened to its tick, shook it, ogled it amorously. He made little suggestive remarks about liking it. I teased him with the fact that he could not tell time. Ernest snorted at first in good-natured contempt at the artificial rigidity of the process, but finally allowed himself to be persuaded that I was not fooling him. And my heart swelled with the generosity which I was about to practice in presenting him with this wonderful watch.

But it suddenly became time to dress, for my parental day was to end at nine. And then I discovered that it was as hard to get Ernest into his clothes as it

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was to get him out of them. It was intolerable to him that he should leave his romp and the watch, and he shouted a no to my every suggestion. A new parental crisis crashed upon me. What a life of ingenuity and stratagem the parent had to lead! To spend half one's evening persuading a sleepy and bitter little boy to take off his clothes, and half the morning in persuading a vivid and jubilant little boy to put them on again—this was a life that taxed one's personal resources to the utmost. I reasoned with Ernest. I pointed out that his kind friend was coming very soon, and that he must be ready. But Ernest was obdurate. He would not even bathe. I pointed out the almost universal practice of the human race of clothing themselves during the early morning hours. Historic generalizations had no more effect on Ernest in the morning than they had had in the evening. And with a sudden stab I thought of the watch. That watch I knew would be an Aladdin's lamp to make Ernest my obedient slave. I had only to bribe him with it, and he would bathe, dress, or do anything which I told him to do. Here was the easy art of corruption by which parents got moral clutches on their children! And I deliberately renounced it. I would not bribe Ernest. Yet the mischief was done. So intuitive was his mind that I felt guiltily that he already knew my readiness to give him the watch if he would only dress. In that case, I should miss my moral victory. I could not disappoint him, and I did not want to bribe him inadvertently.

There was another consideration which dismayed me. Even if Ernest should prove amenable to reason or corruption, where was my ability to reconstruct him? Unbuttoning a sleepy and scarcely resisting little boy in the evening was quite different from constructively buttoning a jumping and

hilarious one in the morning. And time was flowing dangerously on. Only a sudden theory of self-activity saved me. Could Ernest perhaps dress himself? I caught him in one of his tumbles and asked him. His mind was too full of excitement, to be working on prosaic themes. And then I shot my bolt. 'I don't believe you know how to dress yourself, do you?' To that challenge Ernest rose. 'Hurry!' I said, 'and see how quickly you can dress. See if you can dress before I can!' Ernest flew into the other room, and in an incredibly short time appeared quite constructed except as to an occasional rear-button, washed and shining, self-reliant, ready for the business of the day. I glowed with the success of my parental generalship. I felt a sense of power. But power gained in so adroit and harmless a way was safe. What a parent I would make! How grateful I was to Ernest to be leaving me at this height!

I gave him the watch. Though he had longed, the fulfillment of his desire struck him with incredulity. The event awed him. But I showed him how to wind it, and seemed so indifferent to its fate, that he was reassured as to my sincerity. He recovered his poise. He sang as he ate his breakfast. And when his guide and friend came, amused and curious, he went off with her as unreluctantly as he had come, proud and self-possessed, the master of himself. He strutted a little with his watch, and he politely admitted that he had had a good time.

I do not know whether Ernest ever thought of me again. He had been an unconscious artist, for he had painted many new impressions on my soul. He had been sent to me to test my theories of parenthood, but he had driven away all thought of theory in the obsession of his demands. How could I let him go so cheerily out of my door? It was n't at all because I mind

ed having my time absorbed, for I like people to absorb my time. Why did I not cling to him, buy him from his protector, with a 'Dear boy, you shall never leave my pleasant rooms again"? Why did I not rush after him down the street, stung by a belated remorse? I was conscious enough that I was missing all the dramatic climax of the situation. I was not acting at all as one does with tempting little orphan boys. But that is the way life works. The heart fails, and the vast and incalculable sea of responsibility drowns one in doubt. I let him go with no more real hesitation than that with which he went.

The later life of Ernest I feel will be one of sturdy self-reliance. That all the aspects of his many-sided character did not become apparent in the short time that I held him was clear from the report I heard of a Christmas party to which he was invited a few weeks later. Ernest, it seems, had broken loose with! the fervor of a modern Europe after its forty years of peace. He had seized chocolate cake, slapped little girls, bitten the hand of the kind lady who fed him, and ended by lying down on the floor and yelling in a self-reliant rage. Was this the effect of a day with me? Or had I charmed and soothed him? I had a pleasant shudder of power, wondering at my influence over him.

The next I heard of Ernest was his departure for the home of an adopting family in New Jersey, from which he was presently to be shipped back for offenses unknown. My respect for Ernest rose even higher. He would not fit in easily to any smug conventional family life. He would not rest adopted until he was satisfied. I began to wonder if, after all, we were not affinities. He had kept the peace with me, he had derived stimulation from my society. Should I not have called him back? Shall I not now? Shall I not want to see him with me again? I wonder.

THERE must be a great many women in the United States besides myself whom the present war has involved in a terrible predicament. I refer to the American wives of German sympathizers; to the American mothers of children whose fathers' hearts and convictions are with the Teutonic cause. The situation of these women is one which has a vital significance to the nation. And it is for this reason that I have decided to tell my own experience, in the hope that, by doing so, I may be able to give to my sisters the message I have for them. They are war sufferers of whom, it seems, no one has thought. Yet much depends upon how they meet the test which has come to them.

At the outset I wish to say that I believe the great majority of 'German-Americans' are loyal to the country they, or their fathers, have chosen for a home. Yet we all know that there are some whose allegiance has reverted, with an ardor which consumes reason, to Germany. Such is the case with my husband. And since this great trouble has befallen me I have become gradually aware of a wide comradeship with other women in the same cruel predicament. These also know the anguish of the severing of ties riveted through the years; these also have sat at table, unable to eat, while their children heard their own country discredited, and a policy of foreign ruthlessness upheld.

If these women love their country as I love it, they may well envy the suffering of the soldiers in the trenches, even of those wounded in battle. My ances

tors were given grants of land in Colonial times; they cleared the land, founded homes in the wilderness, and fought in the Revolution. And in the Civil War my father sacrificed his personal interests to the service of the Union. There must be thousands of these wives who love America as I love her; whose homes mean to them all that my home meant to me. But there are no words to tell what a woman's home means to her. I can only hope that, however difficult their position, whatever their sufferings, few of the wives of German sympathizers in America have lost their homes as I have lost mine. But it may be that, through my experience, I can bring encouragement and strengthening of heart to the wives and mothers throughout this land who are terrified and bewildered by the thing which has come upon them.

Doubtless my own case is an extreme one, and it gives me, for that reason, the better right to speak. For I have had to travel all of the dark road through whose blackness my sisters are stumbling. I can say, "There is light

believe in it. Do not despair.' For your main problem is really a very simple one - I might better have said, it is not a problem at all. There is in reality nothing complicated, nothing perplexing, about the decision you have to make. But I will tell my story.

My husband was born in the United States; he never saw Germany, he does not even speak German with fluency. His father, like so many of his countrymen, left his native country that he

might have freedom of speech, of life. That freedom he found in the United States. He married a German woman here, made his home here, brought up his children here. And some years ago he died. The story of how his father came to this country was one that my husband used to love to tell. The restrictions enforced by the German government were, it seems, unbearable. And yet, despite this fact, despite the circumstances of his father's coming to America, my husband always spoke of Germany as though it were the ideal nation. He would dwell upon its social legislation, its scientific attainments, its order, and the prosperity of its people. He also was given to criticisms of the United States. So this strange perversion of logic long antedates the

war.

But all this did not greatly annoy me. Wives like to identify themselves with their husbands. I looked upon this pro-German feeling as not without its charm and its pathos; and though I realized the element of humor (not to say absurdity) involved, I did not take the matter seriously. I was even influenced in favor of Germany. I began to feel that, next to America, she was the nation I loved and admired. And this seemed as it should be. It made our home atmosphere the more harmonious. I liked to talk with my husband of Germany, of her people and her progressive ideas. There had been a great change there, it seemed; and now such restrictions as were imposed were for the public good. I took these opinions with a grain of salt, but I was impressed by them.

Thus, when the war broke out, I was ready to put the best possible interpretation upon Germany's part in the rapid developments. Nor did I and our children lack guidance in forming our opinions. The two boys were at that time sixteen and fourteen years of age.

Their father was particularly devoted and affectionate in his family relations, very dependent upon his home life, and very proud of his boys. Carl, the older, looked like him; Minot was more like me. Both resemblances pleased my husband equally. But I think he had a certain feeling for Carl that he had for no one else in the world. The boy was always particularly interested and responsive when his father talked about Germany; and after the war broke out he drank in the Teutonic side of the contest with avidity.

But Minot would be silent and reserved when his father argued for Germany. He would keep his eyes on his plate, and sometimes, when his father would make a particularly dogmatic or extreme statement, he would set his lips in a look that made him seem years older than he was. This look always startled my heart—perhaps with a premonition of disaster to come. For this attitude of unspoken opposition on the younger boy's part was, I can now see, the first sign of the strain put upon our family relations. I was still strug gling to be neutral. It was a struggle, but at that time the neutral attitude was an approved one; and I told myself that my patriotic and my family loyalties were one.

Of course I could not help realizing that my husband's views were extreme and illogical, but I condoned them as the result of his German inheritance. The situation, either in its national or its family aspect, had not yet shown its true meaning. Yet there was an evergrowing tension, if not in our family relations, certainly in the atmosphere of our home. My husband grew increasingly dogmatic, even violent, in his denunciations of the Allies, of America's veiled hostility to Germany and her lack of fairness, and in his partisanship of everything German. He became restless, moody, unlike himself. His