there. At night she would sit beside my bed, while I told her of everything that I had done during the day. Sometimes she would stroke my hair and laugh, and sometimes she became very angry.

Once, on Fräulein's day out, Jack and I took five cents out of mother's purse. There were five more in his pocket. We went around the corner to the drug-store for a soda. It was the first time we had ever had one. When the man asked us what flavor we wanted, I looked anxiously at Jack, who kicked his toe against the counter, and took the other nickel from his pocket. Then he smiled suddenly, holding it out to the man. 'We'll take the best you 've got,' he said. The man laughed, and gave us chocolate, with two big spoonfuls of ice cream.

That night I told Margaret. The following afternoon I was going to a birthday party. She said I must stay 'home in bed. For a long time I begged her to forgive me, but she only shook her head. Then I became very angry, and stamped my foot. 'You're nothing but a pretend!' I said to her. 'Go to the party,' she answered quietly, 'but I shall leave you, and never come back.'

The next day, I watched Fräulein lay out my lace dress and pink sash. Then she came over and started to unfasten the rags in my hair. I turned away abruptly. 'I'm not going.'

'Hm,' she replied, 'take care, or I'll not curl your hair, and you will really have to stay at home.'

'I'm going to, anyway,' I said. Fräulein stared at me. 'Well, where do you expect to go?' she scoffed.

"To bed,' I answered shortly. When at last she had dressed me in my nightgown, with my hair braided, and had gone away muttering to herself, I crawled under the covers, and hid my tears in the pillow. "There was

a Punch-and-Judy show, and a grabbag, and —'

Then Margaret came to sit beside me. I buried my head under the sheet, but at last I turned over and took her hand, and, holding it, fell asleep.

In a cabinet near father's organ stood a small squat bottle of stones. A missionary had brought them from the Jordan. Once, when father was away, I took one out. It was clear and purple, with a smooth surface, across which straggled a faint blue vein. I held it in the palm of my hand, while shivers of awe ran up and down my back. Perhaps Jesus had trod upon it as he waded out into the river! It would have wonderful powers to heal sickness and work miracles, like the bones or pieces of wood we read about in books.

When I went upstairs I took the stone with me. All afternoon I sewed tiny bags to carry it, on a chain around my neck. I made a pink satin one from a bit of ribbon that mother had given me; another of white leather from an old kid glove; and a third of chamois, with blue cross-stitching, for rainy days. While I sewed, I decided that I must have precious ointment or lotion in which to wash it every evening. I could think of nothing worthy, until I pricked my finger and a tiny spot of blood appeared. Then I sprang up, and ran downstairs to ask the cook for a knife. I had had a sign from heaven.

When I came up again, I closed the door carefully. Then I shut my eyes, and pressed the blade down on my finger. It was very dull. I tried once more, sawing it slowly back and forth. My knees trembled, and there was a little beaded rim of perspiration above my upper lip. At last the knife went through the skin. A drop of blood spurted out, and trickled along my finger, to drip from its tip into the clean,

One night I was lying in bed making up pictures. There was a log shack on the edge of a muddy, straggling river. Beyond were low sand-hills, purple and yellow in the sunset. I knew this, because I had seen it all from a train window two years before. A grindstone stood beside the stoop, with a tin washbasin hanging on the nail above it. There was a bench against the house wall, made of a split log. A man in khahi riding breeches was sitting there. He was whittling, and the shavings lay scattered about his feet. He had heavy black hair and gray eyes. Men in my pictures always looked like Jim now. Before him was a boy. Suddenly I jumped out of bed, and stood shivering in my nightgown in the middle of the room, turning an imaginary hat round and round in my hands.

'Please, boss,' I said, 'I want a job.' Jim looked up slowly. 'Who are you?' he asked.

I told him 'Karpeles.'

Then he smiled his queer little twisted smile. "That's quite a name for a small boy.'

I tried hard not to jump up and down in my excitement. He really thought that I was a boy.

'It was my grandfather's name,' I muttered, apologetically.

'Well, Karpeles,' Jim asked, 'what can you do?'

There was silence for a moment, then, 'Please, please take me, boss,' I begged, still twisting the hat; 'I'll be Martha and Mary too.'

And so I went to live with Jim, and dream-life became very full.

When we came back to the city, I told Jack about the boss. He said he wanted to work for him too. We pre

tended that Grandmother Crosby's stable was the barn and outbuildings of the ranch. There was a trap-door in the floor which led to the potato cellar. We fastened a rope to an iron ring above, and lowered it into the hole. Then, through the long fall afternoons, we climbed up and down, up and down, bearing imaginary bags on our shoulders. We were loading the wagons to go into Maverick with the season's sugar-beet crop. When finally the cellar was emptied, we ran back and forth in the yard, lashing the air with long black whips. Here was the corral. We were breaking in Jim's ponies.

The shack had only one room. There was a big fireplace at the end, with shelves on either side. On the floor were bear- and deer-skins. In the centre stood a crooked table. A double bed with log posts was in the corner against the wall. It was covered with red woolen blankets and a buffalo skin. Jim and I slept here. When the nights were very cold, I used to double the comforter and put it all on one side of the bed. I took my school coat from the closet, and laid it over myself. It made Fräulein very angry when she came in next morning. She told me that they locked crazy people in iron cells.

One night there was a blizzard. Jim did not come home. After Fräulein had gone out, I put a candle-stub in the window. The clock cuckooed eleven and then twelve. Still he had not come. At last I heard his horse in the snow outside. He was very cold. All night he tossed back and forth muttering. I sat in an arm-chair beside the bed. When Fräulein came at seven to close the windows, I had fallen asleep. She jerked me by the shoulders and shook me. I crawled into bed without speaking to her, and put my arms around

Jim. He was much better, and said he would not die. Then I laughed. 'He's all right now,' I told Fräulein. 'I don't care what you do to me.'

She turned away. 'Disgusting, indecent child!' she said.

The cuckoo clock ticked comfortably on. Beneath, in the street, a hurdy-gurdy suddenly began its pulsating, metallic jargon. The lame houseman was thumping unrhythmically up the back stairs. Finally I folded my

One Saturday, Eleanor and her twin sister Lucy came for luncheon. Afterwards we sat upstairs in my playroom and made bags for the purple stone. The twins were fourteen and I was only thirteen, so that I felt very proud that Eleanor was my best friend.

We had been sewing quietly for several minutes. Presently Lucy turned to her sister. 'Is n't it nice that Mrs. Fargo is going to have a baby?' she said.

Eleanor scowled and raised her eyes suddenly. They met mine, and she dropped them again to her work. She did not answer.

Lucy went on with her sewing; she took careful, prim little stitches. 'Don't be an idiot, Eleanor,' she remarked.

My piece of satin lay in my lap. 'Lucy,' I said, after a while, and it seemed as if I were listening to somebody else speak. 'Why do you think that the stork is going to bring Mrs. Fargo a new baby?'

Lucy smiled. 'Really, you do not believe that silly stuff any longer?' 'Shut up, Lucy,' said Eleanor suddenly.

Her sister shrugged her shoulders. Then she looked at me deliberately. 'I know that Mrs. Fargo is going to have a baby,' she said, 'because she has let out all of her dresses. She only wears loose ones now.'

Leaning over Lucy's chair, I slipped my arms about her neck, and laid my cheek against hers.

'I want you to tell me everything now,' I begged.

There was a long silence. Eleanor did not look up again.

'All right,' said Lucy at last, and I sat down before her.

'Well,' she began, and then stopped. Her face was very pink, and she turned away her head. 'I cannot talk if you stare at me so,' she said crossly.

After that, I kept my eyes fixed on a figure in the carpet, and she went on, monotonously, with many pauses.

That night seemed very long. Once I screamed, and sobbed Jim's name. Fräulein came running in. She switched on the light, and stood blinking, in her pink flannel nightgown.

'I had a bad dream,' I told her, and hid my face in the pillow.

She came over and tucked my covers tighter. 'I will leave your door open,' she said, and patted me roughly on the shoulder. 'Now close your eyes like a good girl, and go to sleep.'

When she left, the room seemed emptier than ever. At last I got up, and tiptoed down stairs to the guestroom. There were two beds there.

I curled up on the lace counterpane and fell asleep. When I woke up, the sun was shining. My head was on the other pillow, and my arms were stretched out across the other bed.

I

CONTRARY to a view which has many supporters, President Wilson's Mexican policy has now for the first time approached its supreme test. The situation in Mexico has emerged from the conflict between the old elements which were having at each other's throats in the early days. For a time at least a government exists in the war-worn Republic with which the government of the United States has declared itself happy to maintain relations of amity. Facilitation of the establishment of such a government has, from its very beginning, been the chief aim of Mr. Wilson's much misunderstood Mexican policy. It will soon become possible for the first time to judge this policy in the light of its own ideals. The situation has come to the point where one epoch may be said to have ended a suitable moment for assessment and review, for separating fact from opinion, and, above all, for reëstablishing the perspective.

icans at Douglas, Arizona. On the other hand, men of no less seasoned judgment than Senator Lodge have chosen to regard the policy as grounded in animosity against General Victoriano Huerta, and have permitted this fallacy to extend through their consideration of all developments in Mexico in the past three years. Withal, Mr. Wilson's critics have utterly ig nored the vital relationship between his Mexican policy and the policy of PanAmericanism.

The most damaging criticism of Mr. Wilson's policy has come from persons who, like Mr. Roosevelt, hold the President guilty of a sort of interference in Mexican affairs and argue that because he interfered he should be held responsible for a continuance of disturbances in Mexico. Mr. Roosevelt said in a special article published in the New York Times December, 1914: 'Unless President Wilson was prepared actively to interfere in Mexico and to establish some sort of protectorate over it, he had no more business to pass judg ment upon the methods of Mr. Huerta's selection'- which had occurred prior to Mr. Wilson's advent to power