"You 've put me out of politics for a hundred years," said Mr. Almon, bitterly. "And you 've put the finishing touch on the good work right here. If it had n't been for you, this booth would be coining money; but just because it looked good for a Republican club to push an honest Democrat for the nonpartizan judicial ticket, and I proposed you, my club. and I are going to be laughed out of town. Look at those Democrats coining money for the hospital, and look at us!"

he rose he was inside. He laid his cane on the counter and took off his coat.

"Here," said Mr. Almon, "what are you doing? We don't want a fight here."

"I'm not going to fight," said the judge, removing his waistcoat. "I'm going to take Tom Rollins's place. I'm going to show these infernal quitters and tin horns that there is one real sport left in Riverbank. How do you get up on that seat?"

The judge was absolutely astonished. He had expected to be blamed for much, but that the failure of any booth in the carnival should be laid at his door was a surprise.

"Explain," he said shortly, and Mr. Almon explained. He dwelt on the willingness of Tom Rollins to do the bidding of the managers of the Republican Club.

"And if you were half a sport," he ended, "you 'd get up there and take Tom Rollins's place, that 's what you'd do!"

The judge bent down. Mr. Almon dodged, thinking the judge was picking up a weapon of assault; but the judge was bending to creep under the counter. When

want to square myself with this booth.

I want you to get a crowd and have 'em give me just what they think they want to give me. How do you get up to that seat?"

"You climb up," said Mr. Almon, and took three of the base-balls in his hand.

"Three for a quarter," whispered Mr. Briggs. "You can get it easy!"

The judge was stout, and it was not easy for him to climb to the suspended seat, but he managed to get there. He balanced himself as best he could. The electric light glared full on him. He leaned forward and folded his arms across his chest.

"Now wait a minute," he said as Mr. Almon opened his mouth to utter the invitation to the crowd. "I want Sally Binton to have the first chance. Send over for her. Tell her I want her."

Mr. Briggs went. The crowd, seeing the Ethiopian Dip preparing for business, began to gather. Many recognized Judge Deakin, and the word began to spread. Mrs. Binton and Harry had to force a way through the crowd in front of the booth.

"Hah!" shouted Judge Deakin. "Here she is! Here she comes! Work off your spite. Watch the lady! Watch the lady!" There is nothing attracts a crowd quicker than the sight of a woman throwing a ball. Mr. Briggs had to push back the crowd to make room for Mrs. Binton to swing her arm. She picked up three of the balls.

"Three for a quarter," said Mr. Almon.

"O you robber!" said Mrs. Binton. "Harry, give him a quarter. Now, Judge!"

She threw. The ball struck the net harmlessly.

"And she thinks she can throw a ball!" shouted the judge. "She thinks she can throw! She thinks she can throw. Yah!" The second ball was so low Mr. Almon dodged involuntarily.

"Oh!" shouted the judge. "Almost, but not quite by a mile! She can't do it! She can't do it!"

The third ball struck the net and rolled down.

"A miss!" shouted the judge. "A miss by the missus! The lady has a glass arm. The only safe place is the spot she tries to hit."

"Harry, give him another quarter," said Mrs. Binton. "I'm going to duck that man if it takes all night."

"Oh, dear!" she said after she had thrown twenty-one times. "Can't I do it?"

"I'm out of change," said Harry. "Get my purse-back of the red pot with the palm in it," said Mrs. Binton. "Hurry! Give me three more. I 'll pay when Harry comes."

"Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three," counted the judge as the balls continued to patter harmlessly against the net. "She can't do it. She 'll quit. She 's no sport." "Yes, I am, Judge!" she cried, and took up the forty-fourth ball. It traveled straight and true for the target. It struck the iron disk clean and true. The seat divided. Judge Deakin stopped in the

middle of a word and fell, with arms and legs outspread, flat into the canvas tub. There was a mighty splash, and from the crowd a mighty laugh, and the small eyes and enormous nose of Judge Deakin appeared over the top of the canvas tub. Water dripped from the end of his nose and from every hair of his head. He was gasping, but he managed to speak.

"Here, somebody help me out of this! I'm so heavy-set I can't get out."

Mr. Almon and Mr. Briggs rushed to help him. They helped him to the suspended seat, and when the judge had wiped the water from his eyes and had shaken it from his ears, he saw Mrs. Binton, with her back to the counter, clapping her hands and heard her shouting.

"Come on now! Come on now!" she was shrilling to the crowd. "Here's your chance to duck the most unpopular man in Riverbank, three chances for twentyfive cents. Come on and duck the unpopular judge!"

"They can't do it. They won't spend the money. I dare 'em," shouted the judge from his perch. "Oh, he missed a mile! His eye is as bad as his judgment."

'Come on! Come on!" cried Mrs. Binton. "Duck the unpopular judge!"

She was right in her adjective then, but wrong in using it when, at one o'clock in the morning, the carnival ended, for he was no longer the unpopular judge. The Fourth Ward Republican Club, counting its receipts, found them greater than those of any other booth. The crowd, going homeward, spoke of Judge Deakin with affectionate laughter.

"He may be wrong sometimes," they said, "but he 's a mighty good sport just the same.'

And Mrs. Harry Binton, having turned in the receipts of her booth and seen that everything was safe to leave for the night, came over to the Ethiopian Dip, where the judge and Mr. Almon were putting on their coats.

"Say, Deaky," said Mrs. Binton, "Harry and I want you to stop at the house on your way home. We're going to have something to eat and drink before we turn in."

"I'd love to, Sally," said the judge, "but I'm so infernal wet. I'm waterlogged. I've been ducked a million times. I'd love to, but I 'm soaked."

Louis Stevenson-known him, as children say, "by sight, and to speak to." The seventh poem of "The Child Alone," in his "Child's Garden of Verses," makes up my reason:

"At evening when the lamp is lit,
Around the fire my parents sit;
They sit at home and talk and sing,
And do not play at anything.

"Now, with my little gun, I crawl
All in the dark along the wall,
And follow round the forest track
Away behind the sofa back.

"There, in the night, where none can spy,
All in my hunter's camp I lie,
And play at books that I have read
Till it is time to go to bed.

"These are the hills, these are the woods,
These are my starry solitudes;
And there the river by whose brink
The roaring lions come to drink.

"I see the others far away,
As if in firelit camp they lay,
And I, like to an Indian scout,
Around their party prowled about.

"So, when my nurse comes in for me,
Home I return across the sea,
And go to bed with backward looks
At my dear land of Story-books."

"What books had you read? Which parts in them did you play? How long did these severally last? Who had the other parts?" If only I might have sailed out to Samoa, and, guided by any islander I might have met upon landing,- for did not every islander know that road?-made my way to Tusitala's house, and thus interrogated him! There are, to be sure, more or less full accounts of his playing at the dear game with other children,

LXXXVII-27

"How did you play at it alone?" Oh, that I might have asked him this; that I might have said to him, "I know all about your starry gregariousnesses; tell me about your starry solitudes!" Why? Because of mine.

Had Robert Louis Stevenson, I wonder, a tiny heap of star-dust, as it were, composed of a few trifles belonging to that golden age when he "saw the others far away"? I have; and the other day it came to light again. In the bottom of a left-over doll's trunk, I discovered a rusty key, a worn crimson-covered psalter, and a shiny photograph of a solemn-eyed, blond-haired, plump, little girl (freckled, too, she was in life, though not in her picture), attired in the beruffled dress and the wide sash which once constituted a little girl's "Sunday clothes." Scratched unevenly on the key were the words "Castle of the Maidens"; on the fly-leaf of the book was the name "David," crudely illuminated; and on the back of the photograph, written in an unformed hand, was the inscription, "With Helen's love."

"It was a mystery to the rest of us," one of my family said, looking at the picture, "the interest you took in that child."

The heart of that mystery was a very simple one. One Christmas I found "The Age of Fable" in my stocking. At a party, a week later, I saw for the first time the small girl of the shiny photograph.

"What is your name?" I inquired during the pauses of a Virginia reel in which her place was next mine.

"Helen," she said.

It was not a common name in the South; no one of my acquaintance had it. And that day I had read in my new book about the Trojan War. "Really?" I exclaimed incredulously. "Truly?"

"Yes, of course," she returned, dimpling (she had the amiability so often attendant upon plumpness); "why is it so

209

s'prising? It's my godmother up North's

name.'

A listening grown-up, standing near, smiled and murmured:

"Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships?""

"Oh," I cried, as Helen danced away, "say it again!"

The grown-up said it again.

"Don't say it to Helen," he remarked; "say it to yourself, about her. More fun, I assure you."

I shall remember while life lasts the magic of that instant. A door into a new heaven and a new earth opened wide. Society, I had learned, was sweet; in that moment I got a glimpse of solitude, and knew that it was sweeter. Hitherto I had played with other children; suddenly I began to play alone.

The day after the party I set to work to build the ships-of folded paper.

"I am going to sail them on the lake when I'm there again," I explained to my mother.

I had previously thought seldom of the lake during the winter, but that winter I thought of it continually. The number of my paper ships increased every day. I was not Menelaus; I was the whole band of Greek heroes, preparing to overturn Troy and bring Helen home.

I played this game all winter; but not only this or all the time. Helen prevented that. Many a day did she spend with me; many a day did I spend with her. She told me all her secrets, and I told her all mine except the one secret of which she was the bright center. I never told her that, not even when summer came, when, accompanied by her, I knelt on the edge of the lake and, gazing at her freckled little face, launched a thousand paper ships.

So, after more than six delectable months, ended that sojourn, that first solitary sojourn, in the dear land of Storybooks. As the last ship sailed away, a dismay, a disillusionment, crept over me, and I sighed dolefully.

"What is the matter?" Helen questioned.

"I-I feel lonesome," I faltered.

My next and dearest pagan part came to me by a more circling way. I belonged to a sewing-school which met every Sat

urday morning. urday morning. One Saturday a new pupil was brought by her mother, and put into my division, to learn, as I was learning, to "outline." My teacher placed her beside me; we were allowed to talk at sewing-school.

"Where do you live?" I interrogated before many minutes had elapsed.

"On Elysian Fields Street," she answered. "Will you come to see me?" she added.

"Yes," I said fervently.

That afternoon, and on several other afternoons, I went to Elysium, and, as I went, played Æneas to the unconscious sibyl of my new comrade. It was not an enthralling part; I wanted to be the sibyl.

One Saturday my brother was invited to accompany me to Elysium.

"He does n't know the way," my mother said to me; "so you 'll have to take him."

How joyously I concurred! From that day, small pleasure had I in going to Elysian Fields Street unless it chanced that my brother could go with me. Just as we started, I always managed to seize a moment when no one was listening to whisper in his ear, 'Yield not to disasters; but press onward the more bravely!'" He, preoccupied with anticipations of tea and cakes in Elysium, never questioned me as to what I meant by my sibylline murmurings.

It was pleasant, that guiding of an eager little Æneas to "the groves where the happy reside"; but, for playing alone, the sibyl's own favorite game was the source of greater delight. "In her cave," said my book, "she was accustomed to inscribe on leaves gathered from the trees the names and fates of individuals. The leaves thus inscribed were arranged in order within the cave, and might be consulted by her votaries."

I chose for my cave a small, vine-covered summer-house. "The Age of Fable" does not mention the instrument with which the Cumæan sibyl inscribed her leaves. I inscribed mine with a pin, printing on each one not a name, but a letter. With these letters, arranged not in order, but out of it, on the earthen floor of the summer-house my votaries spelled a word. Almost invariably, of course, the word was that which I had had in mind; but sometimes it was not. Then I felt like a votary myself, and no sibyl.