T

HE penguin I had long inferred,
From books of polar exploration,

To be an unresponsive bird,

Due to his frigid habitation.
His life, I felt, was dull and cold,
And empty as an icy chasm;
In fact, I frequently made bold
To think he lacked enthusiasm;
His spirits, I was more than sure,
Were very low in temperature.

But once, returning home quite late, Indeed, the midnight bells were pealing,

I found one standing by my gate Who greeted me with bursts of feeling.

"How do you do?" he said to me. "My name is Herbert; call me

Bertie,"

He took his watch out, - "Let me see,
I 've waited here since seven-thirty.
But if you have an ice or two,
I 'll come and spend some time with
you."

"I have an ice," I said; "for that,

I always have ice-cream for dinner. My doctor says it makes me fat, Though I persist in getting thinner. And have a drink. I've ginger-ale And lots of sparkling sars'parilla-" "No, just ice-cream; I'm feeling pale. Which is it, choc'late or vanilla?" And as he ate he told to me His melancholy history.

"Some fifteen years ago to-day,

Upon an ice-cake, damp and chilly, I lived in my accustomed way With mother and my brother Willy. We lived a simple life, and ate The artless food the spot provided, Which I grew speedily to hate,

And suddenly one day decided To swallow nothing but ice-cream And make each meal a dazzling dream.

"At every meal, and in between, I ate a store of creamy ices. My daily rate was seventeen;

I purchased them at wholesale prices. All kinds I had, pistache and peach And frozen pudding, dishes heaping; Vanilla, choc'late-quarts of each

I ate when other folks were sleeping. My mother often told me, 'Bert, Some day you 'll hate the word dessert.' "But I ate on, and as I ate

This food against my mother's wishes, I lost, I found it out too late,

My appetite for other dishes.
I could not eat, how hard I 'd try,
The wholesome rice, the cool

tomatoes;

I was not fascinated by

The memories of mashed potatoes.1 I looked with scornful eyes at Will, Who ate this simple diet still.

"My fearful appetite grew keen;

I had to have ice-cream in plenty. My rate increased from seventeen Each day to many more than twenty. Ice-cream grew scarce. I left my home And wandered over all creation; From place to place I used to roam

To keep from imminent starvation. And now I beg from street to street For ices-all that I can eat."

He stopped. I heard a single tear Splash sizzling on the empty platter. I sighed, his limited career

Was such a lamentable matter.
He thanked me, stumbled out the gate,
And left me thinking, mournful,
lonely.

Ah, child, consider well his fate
And do not long for ices only:
Choose not the cold, seek not the sweet,
But learn to like whate'er you eat.

"T

O-MORROW will be king. you This is the best and most highly paid job that I give out. You will have an enormous salary, and you will be able to buy anything you like to eat or drink, but you must wear the clothes that I give you. There will be several hundred suits, and you must wear them on occasions as I dictate. You must always be thinking of ME and my CONSTITUTION (spelled in very large capitals), and you must not have any ideas of your own. You may think, but you must not express your thoughts. You must not have any likes or dislikes, any prejudices, any bias, or any political thought.

"Above all, you must not marry whom you like. I will find you a wife. You see, I was once a slave, as you will be to-morrow, and I like to keep you, although you are expensive to me, because you remind me of that time; or, rather, you bring home to me how I have developed, how I have become free, and I like to feel this power that I, a People (with a very large P), may even keep one slave myself, may even be a tyrant when the mood comes over me. For I rejoice in you, and as you pass me in the street I will take off my hat and bow to you, and when you deign to acknowledge me, I will cheer and cry, 'God save the King!'

"To-morrow and every day after I shall introduce you to hundreds and hundreds of people. You will not find them interesting, in fact you will find them mostly tedious and dull, but you must remember them all-all their names and faces and many facts concerning them, so that in after years, if you meet one of them, you must be ready to say, 'Ah, Mr. Brown, how is your youngest son getting on in Nicaragua?' You must be very careful to remember that it is the youngest son and that it is Nicaragua. If you ask how his eldest son is getting on in Fiji, and his eldest son is dead and had not even been to Fiji, you will estrange Brown,

and I value Brown very highly. He supports the exchequer of one of my greatest parties. I shall expect this of you. It is what I am pleased to call 'tact.' If you meet others, and you look into their eyes, and they seem sympathetic to you, you must not treat them with more cordiality than those to whom you take an aversion.

"You must worship in the church established by my prelates, and considered best for you, and you must be strict in your observances. Every day there will be many papers for you to sign, but fortunately for you, you need not read them, for you must sign them in any case. And when you open my house of government you must read a speech. This speech will be written for you by some one you won't know, and will be printed in bold type, so that it will not be difficult to read.

"This holds good with every public act of yours. I try to make it as easy for you as possible, so that you have no personal worry or responsibility. You must not even refer to yourself as 'I'; you must say 'we.' This does not mean that there is more than one of you, but it gives you emphasis, and lends point to the phrase, 'Le roi est mort. Vive le roi!'

"You may have relaxation, that is to say, you may have change of scene and to a certain extent change of society,-but you must never deviate by a hair's-breadth from these restrictions that I have laid down. Into my life you will bring color, history, pageantry, and a sense of form. For these things I am prepared to pay you well and to stand by you.

"When your day is finished and you say your prayers and retire to bed, in the silent watches of the night you may have whatever thoughts you like. Of course I should prefer you to think of ME and my CONSTITUTION, but I shall not exact that from you, provided your thoughts do not color your actions of the preceding day. Now go, sire, for to-morrow you will be king."

AS

S he shuffled his way to the park bench on which I already was sitting, he seemed to me the most perfect specimen of the tramp perennial that I had ever beheld.

His hat had once been a derby. Now it was little more than a buckled and drooping brim. Most of the crown was gone, and in its place appeared a thicket of dirty gray hair. A beard of the same color burst from the lower half of the face like an inverted halo of dirt. The color of the face itself differed very little from that of its shaggy frame. It might as well have been the face of a dead man but for a pair of piercing, peppery eyes, into which seemed to have been concentrated all the mobility withdrawn from the rest of the body. Despite the bright sunlight and the soft spring air, he wore a heavy overcoat reaching below his knees. A fringe of rags about each bare leg suggested trousers, and rags wound about his feet took the place of shoes.

could, for the smell surrounding him was in keeping with his looks. But a voice within me whispered, "Oh, you fool, here 's one of those chances to study human nature that you are always pining for and never using!"

And so I made myself sit still, though it came hard. Without paying the slightest attention to me, be pulled from somewhere within his long coat a newspaper that must have littered the street a good while before he picked it up. In fact, it was only one half of a newspaper, but the upper half, fortunately, with all the headlines on it. This remnant of uncertain age he spread across his knees and began to study carefully.

"I guess it 's war all right, all right," he said at last without turning his head. "Well, it 's about time we showed them their place."

Of course I felt that I ought to say something diplomatical to lead him on, but I was still too busy holding on against the terrific impact of that smell.

parently unaware of the lack of response. "There will never be any order down there until we take hold. And the sooner we do it, the less trouble we 'll have."

"Do you mean to say that you care?" I found myself blurting out before I knew that I meant to speak at all.

"But you don't help along," I tried to protest. "You lie down on the job-" He brushed aside my words. "That means only you can't see much

I

"Care?" His head turned with the slow, awkward movement of a wooden doll; but when his eyes met mine, their fire made me wince.

"I-I thought you were one of those unemployed," I faltered; "and so I did n't imagine that such a thing as the march of empire would interest you."

"Unemployed nothing!" he snorted. "I'm a real hobo, and not one of those poor fools who 're running around to churches and such places like a lot of headless chickens."

There was a pause, broken by me at last.

"So much the more reason for you not to care, then," I said.

"Those things-what you call the march of empire-they 're the only ones I do care for," he retorted severely. "And mind you, young man, this empire is going to march on and on until we get clear down to the Horn, and there's nothing left between the south and north poles without the letters U. S. stamped on it." "But why, then-" I gasped.

"There are two things you overlook," he interrupted me. "First, that you ain't so much of a muchness after all, in spite of your cute looks; and second, that I 've got as much of a share in this country as you have-"

It was my turn to break in: "Why don't you work for it, then?" "Work?" he repeated with a sneer. "You mean drudge, of course. Why should I? What would it bring me? Fine food, swell clothes, a big house, a foolish wife-well, that 's what you care for. I don't. I care for just one thing and no more: to see this nation fill out its destiny, which is to rule and run all the Americas. See?"

you, I fear."

"I see," I said, having at last reached a point of interest where the smell was almost forgotten and a smile possible.

"No, you don't," he cried back at me. "If you did, you 'd see that civilization means nothing but to stop doing and start thinking, and thinking takes a lot of leisure. No nation can be called civilized, young man, unless it has a leisure class with plenty of time to do the thinking for it. But the leisure class is n't all one. Some of it you find up there, -" he jerked a thumb in the direction of Fifth Avenue, - "and some of it you find right where you 're sitting now. Leisure has to be paid for, you see, and it is n't always paid for in the same way. Those up there-” again his thumb indicated wealthy residence districts to the northward-"make others pay for their leisure. I pay for mine myself-pay for it by doing without a lot of worthless and useless things; pay for it that way just because I care more for this glorious nation than for myself. Do you see now?"

"Go on," I urged.

"No," he said, shaking his head and rising lazily to his feet. "I've given you about all you can stand in one dose."

Folding up the old rag of a newspaper carefully, he shuffled off again in the direction from which he had appeared. Half-way across the open space in front of the bench he stopped and turned once more toward me:

"You have n't got a dime that 's not working, have you?"

Of course, considering the circumstances, I could n't possibly refuse him.