though I promptly sat down upon it, spreading my Paris skirt wide, I could not conceal that yellow cake-box from the fashionable steamer folk that swarmed about me. Suitcase and tin trunk both had lost all distinction of nation; they both belonged now to the international species, tramp. There remained to me only my evil genius, the orange-tawny telescope. Foreign labels had but scantily subdued the natural aggressiveness of his demeanor. He was possible—perhaps. Then I considered how he had flouted me, scorned me, spilled out at me, jeered at me in my helplessness. I pictured opening and shutting him in the berth of a sleeping car; then quietly, inconspicuously, and virulently, I kicked him.

I fastened the last strap the customs officers had loosened. Just one moment I hesitated, regarding my rakish European retinue, then I fell upon the waiting baggage-agent. "Check them all," I cried, “all!” Free as a bird, as a gipsy, as an American, I traveled from New York to Chicago, a lady luggage-less.

OF BEING MIDDLE-AGED

WHEN are we middle-aged? There is no very definite year for its beginning, nor any special aspect to tell of its arrival - you may be it either before or after you look it. Superficially, much depends on the point of view, for there's a wide angle between twenty and eighty; but not so much in reality. Let us consider the matter.

It, this middle-age, comes gradually, of course; though, as a rule, each of us realizes it for himself, suddenly, with a shock. One day we say of a contemporary, "Oh, of the usual age," which means, I take it, "between thirty" as Mark Twain (I believe it was he) has happily euphuized it. A Harvard professor once called this period the "Cambridge age," which struck me at the time (I had not arrived at it then) as very clever. I dare say, now, however, this specific Cambridge age has ad

vanced along with him and me. It may be between forty now; come to think of it, I rather think it is. I did n't connect any of these terms with myself for a long time. One day, however, I remarked of some one, "Oh! of the usual age." Instantly I said to myself, with a horrid shock, "That's just what you are! You are it!" This was the beginning of my rise, or fall, to middle-age.

Here let me digress a bit for the benefit of the "young person." As soon as you, "my youthful reader," begin to think about these things, it is the beginning of them; if you want to study the psychology of the further coming, now is the time to start. Before you know it, you will be it, that is, middle-aged, — and the crucial moments will be gone. But let me beg of you, don't. Don't, I pray you, "dear youthful reader," don't, until you are obliged to, don't have more than two classes of people in your mind - the and the old. young It is much nicer then; and so long as it is so, you yourself are young. What a sad thought it is (its coming to me is a sure sign of my own middle-age, for it's a stock thought and expression of this period; let me give way to it once more!) what a sad thought it is that every one in the world, no matter what his condition, is for years of his life possessed of the one desirable, the one most beautiful thing in the world - youth, and does not appreciate it till it is gone! If we could only be young and realize all that youth means at one and the same time! If only we did not, with youth's perversity (almost its only one), want to be grown up! Some happy mortals, happy I call them, never do really grow up, though alas! by the time they and their friends realize it, they have lost the physical beauty of youth which is half the game!

But to get back to middle-age. I did not (nor do any of us of ourselves, probably) realize being middle-aged for some time. It came to me, personally, when a youth, of twenty or so. called me "sir." And even now, although I'm

almost between forty, I can't quite get over it, when another youth whom I see frequently, and who treats me confidentially as no older than himself, always addresses me as Mister.

My most violent and painful shock was, however, when I read of some play that it was "familiar to the older generation of playgoers, but unknown to the present." And I remembered that play! and not even vaguely, as one remembers the plays of one's childhood! It was a shock, too, in speaking of Julia Marlowe with a young woman, who seemed to me to be as old as I, when she said, “I am so glad that Miss Marlowe is beginning to play Shakespeare. What a lovely Rosalind she will make!" "But," I began; then I realized that Julia Marlowe was Rosalind when this young woman was bread-and-buttering in the nursery. I went the next week to see "As You Like It;" but, alas! I did not see my Rosalind. Incidentally, what a pity it is that there are no good parts for actresses of the "usual age" (let us use the euphemism). If I were a playwright I'd try my hand at them. But I suppose they would be turned down stage folk being always either young or old.

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I acknowledged it" (I still cling to certain expressions in vogue before I was "between") and went on to tell the young woman of seeing Maude Adams when she might have suggested youth in Peter Pan (and was well scored for my use of "might"), of seeing Janauschek as Hortense, Booth as Hamlet, of laughing, and crying, with Warren and Mrs. Vincent at the Museum. Having thus confessed to her, she asked (innocently, I know), "And did you very much admire Charlotte Cushman?" I changed the subject before she could ask me how I liked Jenny Lind or the elder Booth. It was all one to her: I was a middleaged man "reminiscing" of my youth. And I had started in to talk on equal terms! The stage is a terrible indicator.

And books! We are certainly middleaged "Misters" and "Madams" when

we remember the sensation of " Called Back," the flood of " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," the advent of "Mr. Barnes." And we do not even have to remember waiting for the installments of "Trilby:" it was but yesterday. Yet those superficially of our time know it not; and to them Kipling is as old as George Meredith!

And the cities! We remember when eight stories was a high building, when we watched steel construction with interest. We remember horse-cars, and the sensation of our first trolley ride, and squinting when we talked into a telephone! But no, no more! else I shall seem garrulous a word of Old Age, not the "between."

When, then, are we middle-aged? When we have had these experiences, can remember these things. The keeping or the losing of our hair is a matter of health, of inheritance. The preservation or the loss of our enthusiasms is the same. Success and failure are personal affairs. Any one may mistake our ages on the street, or when they hear us talk of the weather we do not yet say that in our youth winters were colder, or summers hotter. But when we have let slip the "between thirty" words, or thought of the "usual age;" when we remember these things; when we desire Youth; then indeed are we middle-aged, — just plain middle-aged, a word without a constant epithet. Youth is charming, joyous, exuberant: Old Age is serene, pathetic, terrible: middle-age is not even worth a capital letter. And yet, it has its compensation we have an outlook in two directions - the only period which has; we have attained and not lost (it is to be hoped this is the case; Heaven help us if it is not!) a sane charity and a saving sense of humor.

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THE DEVICE

IF I might take unto myself a device, not for the family silver, but for my own contemplation, it would be this: a tall

man in rude attire standing in the midst of a high hill-road, the sun rising out of the sea at one side, the land stretching off and off, with hidden rivers and villages. to the other side. And above him there would be an apple-tree, blowing continually in a west wind; but having more fruit than leaves, for I think the time would be autumn.

The man I see to be journeying always, and smiling as if he had no fear. For he is always young; weary often, but always

young.

He is my soul. He is a pilgrim or a vagabond; perchance he is both. The road is the highway made by generations on generations of pilgrims and vagabonds who have gone on quests throughout all time. Yet now he is alone, for the soul must travel far without pleasant company.

It is on a hill that he is, for the conquest of hills is needful in that journey. And since I would have the soul always setting forth at dawn, as it were, the sun comes up mightily out of the sea, which is a deep limitless divine glory. But his golden setting is beyond the lands, the abode of men and women, of love and sorrow and labor.

As for the apple-tree with few leaves and much fruit, I think it is the Tree of Joy. But why the wind is ever from the west, so that the few leaves point like withered yellow tongues to the sea. I do not understand. I see it so, but its meaning is not plain to me.

The time is autumn. That is a time not like spring with its restless languor and tremulous leaping beauty, nor like summer, sated with colored heat. The autumn is a keen time, a superb time; when a man is strong to journey and the wind is bold to blow.

That is my device.

If one asks me what the quest of my soul may be, I cannot tell him duly. Sometimes it is no more than a shadow on the hills, or the wing of a wandering moth; and again, it is a planet, great fires in space, the very sun himself. Then

perhaps it is a wind, a song, a delicate curve of sound, or the hoarse thunder of waves. The eager soul desires knowledge, too, of old intricate things, stored in books and minds of wise men; or of new intricate things, hidden since the first light, in the earth and the air and the fleeing elements. And then it desires knowledge of men's hearts. And then, a thing whereto I dare not give a name. But it is beneath and beyond all the rest.

Now as I meditate upon it, I perceive that this is the most common, most worn device, belonging to all men since the beginning of days.

This being so, I am fain of an answer to two questions. I have no desire for the name of the quest. Perhaps I know that name. But these things I do not understand with clearness.

Wherefore should the apple-tree, the tree of joy, if it be that, blow ever towards the rising sun and the sea?

And if every traveling soul must pass that tree, why have so many the appearance of hunger and meagreness? Is the right to eat thereof denied to some?

Some one in all of the world should know these things, for every one must traverse that road.

I am fain to be told.

DOG AND UNDER-DOG

It seems a queer thing, on first thought, that the multitudes are always for the under-dog. At a tennis tournament the cheers are for the loser when he pulls up his score a bit, and for him are the sighs and the feminine "Too bad!'s" when he makes a good try which fails. "Why are you always on the side of the under-dog?" asked the man who wondered about such things of the girl who turned her head away and would n't look because the game was being lost.

"The under-dogs are always so appealing and so nice," she said, and then, smiling, "I'm an under-dog myself." That was just it.

The common feeling for under-dogs

is not so much pity as it is affection, tenderness - they warm the cockles of the heart; one likes to have them around. And this is because we are most of us under-dogs ourselves, in the depths of us, and we feel for each other the sympathy which comes from resemblance, the attraction of like for like.

Under-Doggism does not arise wholly from condition (you find under-dogs in the very seats of the mighty) but from a winsome quality of mind which is inherent. You may know the under-dog by a certain negative attitude, an absence of assertion, a denial of superiority, a smiling air of seeing the humor of the situation, a droll hint of a wink at his own discomfiture. Some of them, it is true, do make the mistake of trying to be something else: they put on an imposing front, and in a momentary flood of favor and fortune pose as dogs rampant. Yet, even in that lofty attitude, the tail may be observed between the legs.

Decidedly (if one may be allowed a bit of under-dogina) one likes best the under-dog who knows what he is, and who accepts his humble but comfortable lot with complacence, even with relish and gusto. The young woman who dispenses with society columns and suitors and with a droll little smile confesses that she did n't “make a go of it," but who is, nevertheless, a most enchanting under-doggess; the young author whose life-work is certainly not of the Six Best Sellers, and who makes pleasant little jokes about returned manuscripts; the little girl at a piano recital who has to go on and on tearfully repeating her "piece" because she has forgotten the end of it; young men and maidens disappointed in their loves; small round boys who can't do their sums; little forlorn, abandoned cats; Cinderellas — what is the universal appeal of these, wherein lies their dear power to claim affection and stir emotion, but in their under-doggism?

Contrast with these beloved browbeaten, the browbeaters of society-offi

cials, inspectors, authorities, champions, directors, good-spellers, winners of beauty contests, powers that be, governesses, boy orators, street-car conductors, successful candidates, belles-of-the-season, prize bulldogs, trust magnates, cooks, floorwalkers, tax-collectors, infant phenomenons the whole inglorious horde of disagreeables. Ah! the super-dog, the dog rampant, is the real outcast, the miserable one, for he ramps alone.

WORDS

LAST night it was long before I could let sleep overtake me. Words, mere words, pursued me so hotly that sleep lagged far behind.

To-day, as I sit in the sun and write, the words are but my none-too-ready servants. They come at my bidding, yet slowly, grudgingly, as if they were sullen laborers, well-nigh on the verge of a strike. I wish that last night I could have been writing and writing. The thing I might have written would be like a great unearthly jewel, flaming the seven colors, sharper than a two-edged sword. For a host of words was all about me, crowding, urging, flashing, making outcry.

It is a hard thing to relate clearly. If I say, "Last night I was full of splendor, last night I was ready with great speech," one would scarce believe me. Where is it all fled, then? And alas, I do not know. Yet I cannot hold my peace in the matter. For an hour I was overwhelmed by triumphant words.

I have read that the time between waking and sleeping is the time for visions to slide across the quiet lids, and charm away the sense with a riot of symbolic color and shape. This has been well proved in my own small fashion, for many a night I have lain quiescent, watching a weird procession that flowered magically out of the half-dark in my eyes. Blossoms and birds and fish, brilliant with color; wide deserts, high seas, blazing sunsets flecked with masts and leaves to make them blaze the more; wood paths

and glimmering brooks; and faces upon faces, mad, distorted, scarred, or pale and beautiful. And I have seen far stranger things: once a red-capped peasant unearthing a chest of treasure under a waning moon; once a silent company of folk in dull ancient garb, lifting what seemed to be many dead bodies from a great wagon that stood beside a field of sunken graves; and countless curious pictures more.

I am aware that this motley procession arises from no singularity of my own brain, and am become accustomed to it; but last night, the hosting of the words seemed novel, disquieting, terrible, and glorious. Doubtless it was but another manifestation of the old half-occult mental power, but to me it was strange.

An army of words, in companies and battalions and charging ranks, gave chase to me. It was as if I ran, ran, forever ran, and the words were forever upon me: strong words, delicate words, glittering and gloomy words; those that cry aloud and those that whisper close; plodders to a funeral march, dancers to a twinkling tarantella. Now a phrase,

round and robustious as from a demagogue's mouth, clapped me upon the back; and then a line of lazy lovely poetry clasped my throat like a woman's hand. An old refrain meriting tears, and a proud thought with a windy buffeting breath, trod close upon each other.

And they were all gloriously new: bold as the sun, unused as the dawn, full of might; not the poor empty echoing shells listened to for countless noisy centuries, but live things, young as Adam in the garden, urgent as the tides of the sea.

Had they but stayed a little with me, how the world would bow down and listen! How I would shout in the ears of the fat rich folk who grow deafer day by day; how I would sing for the thin poor folk who are in peril of forgetting music through very lack. How I would flame and sparkle and work splendid miracles on earth!

Alackaday! so is it with dreams. The