A

FTER all there's no place like home," Joshua Rawlinson would reiterate with the dogged persistence of a man who tries to make himself believe something that he cannot believe, and he would usually add with an explosive laugh, as by way of afterthought, "if one only knows where that is."

The greater part of Mr. Rawlinson's adult life had been spent in the Orient. At first he went out frankly as a traveller and observer,-one who wishes merely to add to his stock of knowledge by first-hand experience. Later he became more obscure as to the object of his wanderings, until at length, little by little, his friends and acquaintances began to invest him with the titles of Antiquarian, Orientalist, Archaeologist, etc., and as he could see no harm in so doing, he began to take courage and admit that he was at any rate an amateur member of those professions.

Several times as the years passed and Joshua Rawlinson made his periodic trips to his old home in New York it became noised about that he was upon the eve of great discoveries. Perhaps he was not himself wholly free from complicity in the spread of these reports, since it was a notable fact that he did not deny them,-still, in strict justice, it must be admitted that he never affirmed them either. Yet the reports spread,-and his fame grew. He was always on the track of a buried city-a library hidden away in the subterranean chambers of some ancient ruin, or something else no less interesting and important to science.

On the occasions of these visits to America, which became always shorter and at less frequent intervals as time

passed, the metropolitan press never failed to herald his coming with long articles dealing with what it was pleased to designate as his "life work," his "life-long devotion to science," his "researches."

These accounts had the effect of spurring Rawlinson on to make occasional guarded statements regarding his work, as well as to arouse in him for the moment clear-cut resolutions to actually engage in serious research. All this was very grateful to his family, which was one of professors and scientists. His brother, now deceased, had been a noted physical scientist; and his nephew, the brother's son, was now associate professor of chemistry in one of the large universities.

But Joshua Rawlinson was a born wanderer. His naturally fine intellect had in no wise deteriorated with the years, but early in his travels he learned to prefer a game of chess with a Bedouin Sheikh or the discussion of some fine theological or phychological point with some wandering Hodja to the study of such relics of earlier civilization as the dry desert air has preserved through uncounted ages.

So his life passed easily, with little worry and less effort. Quite early he had attached himself to Arab tribes here and there, obtaining their protection from marauders, and the society, informal though sincere-which the desert affords.

In making his regular trips to New York he noticed with the passing of the years an ever-increasing restlessness when in the avowed haunts of man. And ever more grateful to his noise- and bustle-bewidered senses appeared the bubbling narkiles, the low sweet-toned tambours, the soft strains

of the nai, the whole atmosphere of the Bedouin camp. The early morning breaking camp, the slow, swinging stride of the camels, the wild, passionate beauty of the Bedouin song,-all insensibly wove, each its separate web about his heart, enmeshing his senses with an insidiousness that left him wondering why each succeeding visit home was cut a little shorter than the previous one.

Joshua Rawlinson would have called the man a liar who said so, he would with all the vigor of his strong personality have resented the idea, for in all the world there was no one more ignorant of the fact than he himself, but he had became an Arab, heart and soul. And in all Arabia there was no Arab more truly Bedouin than Joshua Rawlinson.

The weight of the years rested but lightly upon the old man's shoulders. Tall and straight, clear-eyed and white-bearded as an Arab Sheikh, in the flash of his eyes, or the firm grip of his lean, sun-browned hand there was no hint of his eighty years. But when at last, after an absence which this time had extended over several years, he returned to New York with the avowed intention of ending his days, and when his bent and grizzled nephew, bespectacled and hollowchested from long poring over books and microscopes in the midst of laboratory fumes, and his bald and withered grand-nephew, scarcely less ancientlooking than his father, met him as the liner docked, he suddenly found himself feeling very old indeed. Rawlinson stroked his beard in true Arab fashion, and wondered, as he remembered that he was already well advanced in middle-life when this younger of the two chemical-saturated mummies was born.

His greeting was hearty, but not over-effusive. It was a man to man greeting, the salaam of the desert. And he followed his nephew and his nephew's son to their well-appointed uptown home, busily engaged in recounting the experiences of his homeward journey.

Days passed and lengthened into weeks,-finally months, and Joshua Rawlinson became very tired of the city. This he refused to acknowledge, even to himself, stoutly maintaining that as an old man the time had come for him to settle down and wait for the great change.

Some time passed in calling upon his old boyhood friends, such of them as were still living. He called on them all once,-but on very few did he call again. All were very old, it seemed to Joshua Rawlinson,-far older than he. Many had become thin with the years, and were dried up, withered by the storms of life; others had become disgracefully fat and were rendered inactive from sheer unwieldiness, while without exception rheumatism and kindred afflictions tortured all. Among these there was no place for him as they discussed their ailments and their business successes or failures.

One morning he told his nephew that he was going down town to a little Oriental cafe on Washington street to drink a cup of Turkish coffee. This he did, and on finding the flavor to his liking, ordered a second cup and a narghile. For a long while he sat there smoking. The little cafe was dingy,-perhaps somewhat dirty, for these were not Arabs of the sort with whom his life had been passed. Anyway it seemed home-like,-much more so than the residence of his relatives which he shared uptown.

Soon across the way some one started up a screechy, wheezing phonograph. It scratched villianously, and at times cried out like a soul in pain. Still at the first strains of the wild music the old man felt his heart give a great leap. The tune was the "Djezair Hawassi," that beautiful air in which is blended the unutterable sadness of the Orient with its unquenchable spirit of self-preservation.

Then a Turkish boy of evident patriotic sentiments who was seated at a near-by table suddenly gave way to his feelings, and as the phonograph ceased grinding out its melody, began

singing in a low, plaintive voice. It was a song of the Turkish revolution, -a song which told of long centuries of oppression, of his peoples' sufferings and their desire for liberty, and as the plaintive voice dwelt on the magic words "adalet, mussawat, uhuwet" old Joshua Rawlinson saw the narrow, dingy street suddenly swim before his eyes.

Then, greatest of all nostalgia-provoking agents, an odor assailed his nostrils. It was that of a highly seasoned Oriental dish which the cook was evidently preparing in the little kitchen to the rear of the cafe, but to Joshua Rawlinson it brought memories of Ramazan evenings, of wide expanses of rolling, sandy plains with perhaps a white-walled city, its low, round domes and azure-piercing minarets glittering in the last rays of the sun before it dipped beneath the distant emerald-tinted sandy wastes, and the odors that assailed keen nostrils, and whetted fast-stimulated appetites in that hour before the break

ing of the fast.

123

Still as he sat Joshua Rawlinson saw the sun glinting from the intensely white masonry of a little flat-roofed city, the burning sands about dotted with black tents,—and in the distance the sapphire shadows blended the yellow of the sands into the blue of the sky. "Yashasin millet" sang the boy across the room.

That evening when the nephew and grand-nephew of Joshua Rawlinson arrived home they saw an unlooked for sight. The old suit-cases and boxes that had accompanied the old man on his many travels littered the rooms.

"Looking over your things, uncle?" queried the nephew after a moment's hesitation.

The old man grunted. Then, after he had with some difficulty secured the lock with which he had been struggling, he looked up. "No," he replied, with a peculiarly happy smile,-the first they had seen on his face for several days. "I'm off for the East again. This is no life for a fellow like me."

Jo. HARTMAN.

M

AMIE was a stenographer in Collins' real estate officea very mediocre stenographer and not at all in love with her job, but one must work or starve in this present sadly bungled condition of the universe. Mamie had first opened her eyes in a little farm house on the outskirts of Great Bend, shipping center for the Middle Kansas wheat fields. When Mamie was seventeen, and half way through the Great Bend High School, her father died, and so little money was left when all accounts were settled, that it was necessary for Mamie to go to work. A married sister offered the mother a home and after six months in a business college, Mamie started in as stenographer for the feed and grain store of Great Bend. She did not like the work, but was trained for nothing else and so for five long years she labored, hating it more each day.

But the monotony of her tasks, the poky little town and the general dissatisfaction with familiar surroundings which often attacks young women of this day and generation, got the better of Mamie's caution at last, and when the Panama-Pacific Exposition opened in San Francisco, she resigned her position, drew all her savings from the bank and amid tearful farewells, sallied forth to see the Fair and hunt a "new job." Luck was with her, and within three weeks she was safely ensconced behind a Remington in the neat Collins' offices and had a pretty room in a middle class hotel.

Mamie soon found that her new

salary, while much larger than the old, did not cover the greater cost of living in a large city. She had to deny herself the new coat she had meant to buy, and after a little calculation she decided to hunt a housekeeping room and try cooking her own breakfasts. Even then she could not seem to stretch her salary to cover all the expenses. The clothes she had worn in Great Bend were simply impossible in San Francisco, and those she had purchased for her trip West were wearing out. So she moved into still cheaper quarters, this time finding a kindhearted landlady who let her have a "lower floor back" which was large and clean. Mamie soon arranged it to make a pretty sitting-room, but the hall which led to it was dusty and soiled with bags of old clothes, dismembered furniture of various sorts and a wreck of a sofa which was Mamie's pet horror. By doing her own washing and ironing and getting all her meals at home Mamie found that she could save a few dollars a month.

A couple of blocks from her dingy home was a small grocery store where she found a kind-hearted Italian proprietor who took a great fancy to her and advised as to cheap and nutritious foods. Her little grocery was the only social diversion which Mamie allowed herself and many a pleasant hour she spent listening to tales of Italy. It was in April, just when spring hats and suits were causing Mamie agony of soul because she possessed no wherewithal to buy them and just when her office tasks seemed doubly irk

some because of the beautiful weather just then, did Leo Diminiarka, three years out of Athens, with no assets but twenty-seven years of youth, the face of a Grecian god and five hundred dollars in the bank,-buy an interest in Mamie's grocery store.

Leo had come to America with two aims to make five thousand dollars and to acquire an American wife. He was young and he was handsome and so he could afford to wait for the wife, knowing she would be the lesser problem of the two, but five thousand dollars worried him mightily.

When he heard that Toffanelli, the little grocery man, wanted a young partner, he investigated and finding the business good, invested his all, the five hundred dollars-and agreed to pay one hundred dollars each year for five years. That meant hard work and careful saving, but Leo was willing.

He entered blithely upon his duties Monday morning. It was not until Wednesday afternoon that Mamie visited the store and he encountered her blue-eyed gaze. Leo's fall was instan. taneous. Within a week he had plucked up sufficient courage to follow Mamie when she went for a walk in the little park nearby, and engage her in friendly conversation. After several of these episodes he diffidently mentioned a "movie" but Mamie refused and went to bed to cry over her loneliness. His next offer she refused also and spent the evening with an uninteresting magazine. It was contrary to all her Middle Western social canons to "keep company" with a "foreigner" but it was spring, she was lonely and Leo was young and clean and handsome, and the third offer she accepted.

She donned her shabby little blue suit, with its white collar and cuffs, put white spats over her one pair of shoes, pushed her yellow hair up under her tight little black velvet hat and went out to meet him. Even the scent of gasoline from her freshly cleaned white gloves did not disillusion Leo. To him she was the Heaven-Born and his limited English

125

vocabulary was not adequate to express his joy in her presence.

Mamie found him a much more congenial companion than she had expected. He was by no means illiterate and boorish as she had vaguely supposed all foreigners not of the nobility to be. He had enjoyed the advantages of as good an education as is usual among boys of the middle class in Athens, and his years of wandering had added a certain poise to his otherwise somewhat shy manners. They spent many happy hours together during the summer and each came to know the details of the other's life.

"I like to marry American girl" confided Leo after a particularly tempting walk in the park where the shadows were deep and where he had longed to declare his love, "But first must I pay five hundred dollars to Tofanelli. And it is hard to save in this land of expense."

"Yes" sighed Mamie, understanding very well what was in his heart, “I've tried it too. I need a new coat now but it will be two more months before I'll have enough saved to buy it. And by that time I'll need a hat and my gloves are worn out and-oh dear! Isn't it heart-breaking to be poor?"

Leo was silent. He was thinking of the clothes he could buy for Mamie with the five hundred dollars he had invested in the store. He knew a man who would gladly buy his interest and the Lincoln Market, downtown, would give him work at any time. But No! In five or six years he would be independent if he stayed with Tofanelli and it was worth those few years of poverty and pinching. He must not let the first pretty American face, which attracted him, win him from his ambitions. He resolutely bade Mamie good-night and tramped away, his young heart aching, but his stubborn will firm.

Christmas came, Mamie had spent much time and no inconsiderable amount of her savings in making a smoking jacket for Leo. Smoking was his one incurable bad habit. He could not smoke during working hours, of