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But I answered no as energetically as the Great One himself, and so he ate his cake, drank his tea and went his way, let us

trust, rejoicing. The simpler music of willing hands and blithe voices. was sweeter to me than his could have been, and no one missed his note from the volume of harmony that pulsed through the crowded hall during the whole afternoon.

Society came out in full force, but I think we really were happiest to see the baker's wife and her little girl from the shop on the hill. They came and stayed the entire time, sitting bolt upright, side by side, in two uncomfortable chairs far back in the corner. afraid they would be lonely, so I went over every chance I had and talked with them, but they seemed perfectly happy, and judging the child's contentment by the cookies she consumed, she must have reached the climax of infantile bliss.

I was

Each one of us had been working like Trojans, and at last I slipped out to the kitchen to help myself to some muchneeded refreshments, when I bumped into the treasurer and our eyes met. The hum of many voices reached us, and a distant echo of music. I put my hands on her shoulders and she put hers on mine.

"It's a success," we said simultaneously. And so it was.

A book agent had entered unawares, and as one of the committee extended to her the warm grip of welcome, she produced a fierce prospectus filled with blood-curdling pictures of corpses, ruin and fire, and said:

"I'm taking orders for the only authentic account of the San Francisco disaster, and I should like to solicit subscriptions among the ladies."

Of course, permission was denied her,

and she disappeared as she had come.

Our funds were increased past our expectations, and besides the actual financial benefit, we had seen the thing through and given everybody a good time.

Before the tea still another phase of a complicated condition confronted usthe refugees. Butte seemed to be a favorite dumping ground of the railways, and in many cases unfortunates were put off here without means or clothing. The city fund could not be drawn upon to help them, for it was destined for San Francisco itself, so it fell to our lot to provide for them. Therefore we decided to devote at least a part of the receints from the entertainment to keep them from actual want. Among them were some pitiful cases-one a man whose han's were badly burned; another a Hebrew woman whose husband had been killed in the catastrophe. There were also many frauds. A party of four came in together, one woman and three men. One of the men was offered work for six days at five dollars per day. He declined, declined, saying he didn't want to "bust up" the crowd.

A woman applied for aid who had never worked and did not care to, and who objected to wearing any of the garments we offered her. She wanted money to support her elegant leisure.

We helped at least a dozen to their several destinations, and provided them with food and clothes. Out of the money that was left, we sent one hundred dollars to the finance committee in San Francisco, and another box, this time of women's stockings and underwear, in response to an appeal from one of the ladies at the Fort Mason station.

Altogether, we sent away in cash and supplies of various kinds more than one thousand dollars, and there is still money in the treasury to be expended as it is needed. The active work is done, but so long as there is a crv of want it shal be answered, and as the committee itself was of choice democratic-Catholic, Protestant and Jew having been represented so was its aim to alleviate the sufferings of rich and poor, of Chinaman and white, knowing no creed nor caste, and working in the name of the great, unclassified Humanity.

By Donald Kennicott

HE friends of Curtis Malveson

T were greatly surprised, when at

his graduation from the university he entered the service of a large manufacturing company, instead of seeking distinction in the less lucrative profession for which he had seemed so well qualified. Five years afterward, even his intimates were astonished when they learned that almost on the eve of his reception into partnership, he had resigned. his position without explanation, and had altogether disappeared.

A few days later, when the long, southbound train of the Mexican Central came to a stop by the little adobe station at Coloapas, Malveson appeared on the platform of the Pullman, and looked out over the sleepy, palm-shaded city. The drowsy murmur of the wind in the trees and the sound of the distant river, were broken only by the monotonous, sing-song call of an aged fruit peddler, who walked slowly along under the car windows with a tray on his head. A girl with an enormous basket of flowers followed, and she laughed and handed up her entire treasure in exchange for the coin that Malveson tossed to her. There seemed to be only natives about, and he reflected that this place would do as well as any other just such a place, indeed, as he had dreamed of. He swung down to the ground, ordered his trunks put off after him, and walked slowly up the crooked street toward the plaza. He would find quarters. somewhere and allow himself to rest and to sleep for a time, and to forget.

In the plaza he was somewhat disappointed to receive a hearty greeting in English from a red-faced old man with white whiskers, who emerged from under an awning and in one alcoholic breath introduced himself as the United States consul, announced that supper would be ready in about an hour, and advised him to come in out of the sun. He suffered himself to be led through a passage into the patio of a big, century-old adobe, and there presented to a slender, light-haired young man, of a serious and innocent face, who had been leaning back in a long

wicker chair and smoking cigarettes from the pile on the chair arm.

"This," said the consul, "is Mr. Richard Cahill."

Mr. Richard Cahill raised his eyebrows delicately and said in steady monotone that he was very glad to see the newcomer. At dinner, during which he smoked continuouslv, he also said that in his opinion the rains would break very soon now, and that Josefa's cooking was getting very bad indeed. The meal was served on the wide balcony by the Josefa of whom Cahill spoke, a fat Indian girl with bare feet and frank manners. When the coffee had been brought in, Cahill departed, groaning, to hunt up a third member of the household, who had been missing for a day or so. It had happened before, they explained casually, but still it made them anxious. Cigars were produced and the two smoked for a time in silence, Melveson contentedly watching the slowly swaying shadow of a fan-palm, and the consul observing his guest covertly.

He was accustomed to classify the various types of stragglers that drifted into Coloapas by the cause of their downfall. The countenance of this one seemed neither flushed nor sallow, but of a healthy pallor; it was therefore neither drink nor drugs. His manner had nothing of bravado or furtiveness; he was therefore not one of the gentle race of forgers. By process of elimination, then, it was a woman. That was the largest class, at any rate.

"I don't know that I've told you that my name is MacIlhenny," the old man said, finally, in a slow, slow, expressionless voice, after he had started his second cigar and taken his fifth whiskey-"Clifford MacIlhenny-not that it's important, only it's convenient to know. And I want to tell you that we're mighty glad to have you come-some one new, you know even if you ain't going to stay but a month. There was a German drummer come along here in February, but he wasn't much good and didn't stay but a week, anyway; and you won't stay here for a month-people never do. They

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Malveson looked up and smiled in acknowledgment, but made no comment, and the gates of speech being loosened, the consul went on with a transient flicker of enthusiasm, to expound the joys of expatriate life.

"Sometimes we can play whist now, can't we? It will be a whole lot better; three-handed games aren't ever any good, and it's mostly too hot for chess. You see there have always been three of us here myself and two others. Just now it's Cahill and Gus Farley-real names. Before Gus, it was Johnny Dow, and before him there was O'Bannon, the forgery man. Johnny Dow was one of the Rough Riders, and he was a mighty good fellow, too, only he wouldn't ever talk any except when he was pretty well loaded up with tequila. Then he'd tell all about the charge up San Juan, until you lay awake remembering it, and he'd scare Josefa half to death with breaking up the dishes-one by one. He's gone down to Columbia now. Dicky Cahill here is a good deal like him. He come down quite a while ago to run the new electric light plant they put in, and after the company broke up he stayed anyway. It was him that got up the new drink we have got about a month ago it was. And he's taught old Antonio how to make it, and we've given it a name. 'Cosa Caliente,' we call it; perhaps we'll go over to Las Dos Banderas after a while, and then I'll show you."

The old man's voice drifted off into a silence that lasted for a long time, and then he went on in a dull, lifeless way: "Oh, yes, Dicky's all right. I reckon he'll be back pretty soon now. Most likelv he'll find Gus asleep in the back room of a sort of Dago place he goes to. You mustn't be too hard on him-Farley, I mean. He'll go under pretty soon now, I guess he drinks so. He used to be an artist, and came down here to do landscapes, he said, but he don't ever paint much of any-just drinks and sulks. Some woman back in the States, I reckon. He's a good sort, though. He's got a tame squirrel that he keeps out in the patio in the shade, and a big old guacamayo parrot that's a jim-dandy. Up

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and down the floor it'll march, lifting its legs solemn as a drum-major, and hollering back just like a person when you tease it. Josefa hates it, though, because it'll watch its chance and then sneak up behind her and claw at her legs, so as to hear her screech..

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But it's not so bad here after you get used to it. You'll like it all right, I reckon. Thursdays the band plays, and we all go and walk around the plaza and watch the girls. And then there's tandas on at the opera house sometimes, and on Sundays there's bull-fights. I used to be great on bull-fights-knew all about the men, same as you do about prizefighters at home, but I've sort of gotten out of the way of it now. We don't ever get up very early in the morning. After breakfast I go down and get the papers from the Ciudad, and talk with old Anton for a while, and then I come home and fix up the accounts all straight with Josefa; she steals a good deal, I guess, but you get to like her stuff after a while, and I'd hate to fire her anyway. After dinner we all take a siesta the same as the Mexicans, and then we go watch the train come in. And in the evening, sometimes we walk out to the top of the canyon and sit where we can look down and watch the lanterns of the fish-peddlers coming through the trees up the trail from the river. You can just see the lights way off down there through the haze-nothing else anywhere; and it's cool and so still you can hear the noise of the river at the bottom of the canyon-two thousand feet down, they say it is. But usually we just go over to Las Dos Banderas and play dominoes and listen to the talk. Always, just before we go home, Gus shouts over to Anton, and says: Tonio! tres!' And old Anton grins and mixes them up with the green stuff on top, and then we all drink them together and go home to bed. Lord, no, it's none so bad, if there's nothing to take you away."

The consul knew whereof he spoke. Malveson stayed for a week, and then a month; and when the year had passed, all desire of departure had slipped away with it. There was, indeed, no reason why he should go elsewhere. "Back in the States," when he had had something to work for, he had acquired enough to

give him the income which now allowed him to do as he chose. It pleased him best to dream away the long days; to lie in his hammock all morning and watch the burro trains come in from the mountains; to doze during the long, hot afternoons in the shade of a disreputable palm near the leaky little fountain in the patio; and in the evening to go out to the top of the canyon and watch the lanterns of the fish-peddlers coming along the winding trail through the trees from the river below.

There was a niche in the wall of his room where former dwellers had kept a crucifix, or perhaps some plaster image of a saint. Here Malveson placed a protograph of the Woman-the woman for whom he had given over his chosen career that he might acquire a sufficient fortune to make him her social equal; for whom he labored with the passionate devotion of a zealot; and who had cast him aside almost in the hour of his success. His courage had forsaken him, and he had fled away from the world he had known, but his devotion was in nowise diminished. Sometimes at night he would shut himself up in his room and then, lighting the candle in the little socket before the niche, would do reverence at his shrine, burning incense of much tobacco, while a dozen giddy little yucca moths would flutter through the open window and dance gayly about the candle flame. The portrait thereby illumined was of a woman almost worthy of worship-a regal head, with a dark wave of hair curving low on a forehead whose shadow seemed only to augment the glory of the fine, wide eves. Yet the man lying in the chair before it, looked most at the mouth-the line of the lips almost level in the picture, with a little deepening at the corners that brought back to him the thousand subtle shadings of mood to which they would respond. Very soon some infatuated moth would put out the candle, but that was no great matter; he could see her only too clearly without it, and the immolation of the moth served to remind him of a line from Shelley concerning the desire of a moth for a star, which he thought very fine and fitting, and would repeat to himself with a degree of satisfaction. Indeed, after a time he gave

over his formal service altogether. He found it best, after all, merely to lie back on the long cane chair in the darkness of his room, where he could bring her image to mind in whatever guise he chose. She would speak to him sometimes then, and the dream would be very nearly true. nearly true. Late in the evening, he would stumble somewhat sleepily off to bed, repeating defiantly to himself Dowson's "Cynara":

"And I was desolate and sick of an old passion,

Yea I was desolate and hung my headI have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion."

No doubt he behaved very foolishly, but his folly was no uncommon one. The good fortune which later befell him is less often met with.

It was over three years after his arrival at Coloapas that Malveson, clad daintily in dirty pink pajamas, sat one afternoon in the shadow of the pulque stand near the railway station, and looked listlessly down the sun-distorted line of rails at the approaching smoke of the locomotive. The long wail of a whistle came presently, and as the train pulled in, a little crowd of women with flowers, and beggars with sores, and men with trays of cinnamon flavored sweetmeats gathered about the cars with strident cries. At the rear of the train was attached the special car of the annual "Personally-Conducted Tours of the Sister Republic," and Malveson observed with a faint quaver of interest that it was being uncoupled and shunted onto the siding. A last frantic clamor from the beggars at the car windows, and the train moved away, leaving behind an anxious little band of tourists, herded by the Personal Conductor into a compact group in the shade of their be-bannered car.

Within five minutes this little flock was being shepherded across the tracks and past the pulque stand to the street that leads into the plaza, for they must before nightfall take in the Cathedral de la Purissima Concepcion, the the Palacio Municipal, the statue of the Liberator and the fish market, in order that they might be free the next day to journey

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"The journey on mule-back to see the ruins of the Coloapalan temple."

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