tablespoonful of ink on the table-cover, sullenly dried up, and didn't shed another tear for nearly two weeks, although I did everything in the way of persuasion and compulsion except to blow in it. I have blown. in a great many things since then, but never into a fountain pen.
Presently they They drew the umbrellas, and, This was annoyThere are times wisdom are folly.
The next evening the girls asked me if I was going to write some more with the new pen. plied with somewhat formal and dignified asperity that I was. They said they were glad of it. That I was doing so much desk work that I needed exercise. Then they left the room. returned with their gossamers on. hoods over their heads, raised their opening their books, began to read. ing, but I did not say anything. when the wisest words of man's But nothing happened that night. That is, nothing that my friends would like to see in print. The pen was as clean as a candidate's record written by himself. Nothing was heard but its stainless scratching; that is, nothing to speak of.
Well, I gave that pen to an enemy and swore off. For some months I never touched a fountain pen, but a new one came out and I was induced to try it. It was a "duster," dry as good advice for nearly a week. Then it went off one day in the office when the city editor was fooling with it, not knowing it was loaded. I don't know what became of that pen. He threw it out of a six-story window, and I don't know where it went to. Since then I have suffered
many things of many fountain pens. The last one I struggled half an hour with trying to date this letter. A fountain pen is a good thing, however, when you have a bottle of ink to dip it into about every second line, beginning with the first.
EASTER EVE AT KERAK-MOAB.
By permission of and arrangement with Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston, Mass.
THE fiery mid-March sun a moment hung
Above the bleak Judean wilderness;
Then darkness swept upon us, and 'twas night.
The brazen day had stifled. On our eyes,
That throbbed and stung, the dusk fell like a balm.
We lay and looked and listened. The warm wind
Blew low and lutelike, and a fountain's fret
Made sweeter melody than all the streams
That gush from Nebo to far Sinai.
A strange-voiced bird among the thicket thorns
Sang to a star. The jackals loud resumed
Their weird nocturnal quarrels, and the laugh
Of some hill-strayed hyena broke across
The wild dog's bickerings,-ironic, mad.
The palms that waved o'er squalid Jericho
Towered ghostly, and the Moab mountains made
An inky line along the eastern sky.
Demetrius Domian, trusty dragoman,
Good friend and comrade, hale and handsome Greek,
On elbow leaning, pointed one bronzed hand
Toward the vast, vague, and misty land that lay
Beyond the sacred Jordan. "There," he said,
A quaver breaking his deep-chested voice,-
There, in wild Moab, Kerak-Moab lies."
Ofttimes before when day had spent its heat,
And in the wide tent doorway we reclined.
On carpets Damascene, our guide had told
Strange tales adventurous,-of desert rides
Toward lonely Tadmor and old Bagdad shrines;
Of wanderings with the Meccan caravan
Where to be known a Christian was to die;
Of braving Druses in their Hauran haunts,
Where they kept guard o'er treasures of dead kings
In cities overthrown. Such tales as these
Had 'livened many a quiet evening hour
After long pilgrimage. So when the Greek
Would fain dispel our homeward-turning thoughts,
We gave him ready ear. This tale he told
In clear narration :—
"Nigh three years have seen
The olives ripen round Jerusalem
Since from St. Stephen's gateway I set forth
For Kerak-Moab with young Ibraim.
My cousin he, a comely youth, whom love
Had won with soft allurements. He would wed
A Kerak maid upon blest Easter Day,
And I must thither with him,-such his will,
Which I in no wise had desire to thwart;
For when his mother lay at brink of death
(His father having long put off this life),
She bade me be a brother unto him,
And brother-like we were.
Our servant, bearing on his sturdy beast.
The needs for shelter on our lonely way,
And food therewith, and gifts to glad the bride.
By Kedrith's gloomy gorge, and Jericho,
And Jordan's ford, we journeyed; then our path
Past Heshbon led us, and near Baal-Meon,
Where, records say, Elisha first drew breath.
The fifth day's sun was westering ere we saw
The antique gray of Kerak-Moab's towers,
And the all-crowning citadel.
Heart-moving welcome greeted us, and soon
Amid the kinsfolk of the bride to be
In merriment the jostling words went round.
'Twas Easter Eve. The house wherein that night
We were to shelter stood anear a breach
Within the wall that bulkwarked round the town.
An ancient wall it was, Crusader-built,
And doubtless shattered by those Paynim hordes
That northward surged from arid Araby,
Setting Mohammed's name o'er that of Christ;
And it was here the father of the bride
Had reared his goodly dwelling. Night was old
Before we left his roof to seek the door
That gracious kin had left unbarred for us.
Along the lanelike streets in silvery pools.
The moonlight gleamed. From distant housetops bayed
In broken iteration, Moslem dogs,
But 'twixt their baying all was desert-still.
Why should we go within? Ibraim said,
'Come, dear Demetrius, on this night of nights,
The last, perchance, that I shall pass with thee,
In this sweet air let us remain awhile,
And talk as brothers; for my life will soon
Be strangely changed, and though we oft may meet,
Yet will there be another tongue to speak;
But now we are alone.'
We sought the breach, and spying in the wall
A nook where we could clamber, high above,
And wide o'erlooking all the moonlit scene,
We scrambled to it. There the hyssop grew,
And rugged seats invited to recline.
Then, while he told me his fond tale of love
Over again for quite the hundredth time,
I mused upon the future, vacant eyed,
Beholding nothing. When his happy speech
Had run its course, and silence jarred me back
To ambient things, my conscious vision caught
A shadowy glimpse of one swift skulkin; form,
From fragment unto fragment of prone wall
In phantom quiet flitting. While I gazed
Another and another followed fast,
Till, as I gripped Ibraim's arm, a score
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