garden of being, smelling its fragrance and thankful for a breath, he was inside with other men who owned the garden and felt free to eat the fruit. He had never really been outside the garden at all. He had merely been turning away from the blossoming trees, denying himself the certainty of what the fruit might be, working carefully about the roots and learning the unseeing patience of the earthworm. And the one flower had bloomed in the garden at last, so sweet he could not ignore it, so white it lighted the air like a lamp that was stronger than the sun. He had bade himself never to forget that he was not like other men; but he was exactly like other men, for he loved a woman. As he sat there, overcome by this conviction of the tyranny of the universe, one thought pierced him like the light of stars. He could have made her happy. A sweet exultancy told him that her nature turned to him as irrevocably as the needle to the north. He could sway and dominate her. He could comfort her with the unconsidered tenderness that, when he thought of her, came with his breath. As by a revelation he understood what she had meant when she told him how love had been her waiting dream. In a passion of sympathy he saw her trailing through sad undergrowths in pursuit of that luring light - now stumbling in the bog of earthy desires other hands had led her to, now pricked by thorns of disappointment, but never for a moment sullied through that wretched progress; and when the marsh was past, washing her garments and her feet in the water of life that unquenchable spring of belief in the mystery. That was what it was, the divine mystery, the force that led through all appearance to the real, through all false glitter to the light. It was a heavenly vision, the possibility as she saw it: the rounded life, the two bound in a mutual worship, carrying their full cup carefully to the altar where they would make their vows. He saw how lesser desires could be wiped out by one pure passion, how no price is too great to pay for the soul's treasure, not so much the possession of it, but the guarding it for all the uses of the world. While he lay there, the scent of the pines in his nostrils, it seemed to him that he was living through the progress of his completed life with her. There was not only the overwhelming passion of it, but the intimate communion of quiet days. She would turn to him for counsel and for sustenance, as he would turn to her. This would be the interchange of needs and kindnesses. There would be funny little queernesses of the day to keep them laughing; and they would be kind, not forgetful in their castle of content, but kind, the stronger that they had multiplied their strength by union. And then settled upon him again his wonder at the inexorability of things, that a man could not escape the general laws because he willed to live outside them. He was bound round by necessity. Merely because he would not take a mate, he was not exempt from crying out for her. And as the day went on and the vividness of his first high vision faded, his mind went back to Peter and the incredible truth that Peter also knew he could make her happy. The cloud of jealousy darkened again, and he met earth pangs and strangled them. But as he slew them, more were born, and lying there in the fern he hated his brother and his brother's body, born to regnancy. MacLeod, too, appeared before his inward. vision, wholesome, well-equipped, riding the earth as Apollo drives the horses of the sun. Him, too, he hated, and for Rose's sake longed again to put him away with his own hands out of the air she breathed. Spent by his passions, he lingered there in the coolness of the unheeding woods while the afternoon gloomed into night. Madam Fulton sat on the veranda, thinking sadly. She found herself puzzled by one thing most of all. Several times a day she had asked Billy Stark, "Do you really believe there's anything in that notion about money's being tainted ?" "Don't fret yourself," he counseled her, in his kind voice; but she would sit wrinkling her brows and putting the question again to herself, if not to him. "The trouble is, Billy," she had said, this morning, "I get so puzzled. It's like trying to learn a new language when you're old. My eyes are too blurred to see the accents. My ears are dulled. There's that girl that comes looking like an angel and says she's a sinner. I thought she might be a comfort; but no, if you please. She just looks Electra in the face and says, 'I'm as good as the best, only I prefer to do things in my own way.' I wish Electra had n't made me so frightfully self-conscious." But smile at it all as she might, something had wrought upon her. She looked older and more frail, a pathetic figure now, leaning forward in a ruminating dream, and reminding Billy Stark, in a hundred unconsidered ways, of the shortness of the time before she should be gone. His heart ached. He had truly loved her in his youth, and afterwards, in other fashions, for many years. As she sat there in her daze of past and present, she was aware that a tall white figure stood before her in the sun. She recalled herself with a start from those never-to-be-explored bounds, and came awake, humorously frightened at the thought that here, judging from the height and whiteness, was an angel come to make remarks upon tainted money. But it was only Electra. "The next thing to it," said Madam Fulton, with her broad-awake smile. "What did you say, grandmother? asked Electra. "Nothing, my dear. What were you going to say? Sit down. You dazzle me in that sun." Electra sat down and considered how she should speak, having triumphant news to tell. Then, in the midst of her reflection, the news got the better of her. She began with an eloquent throb in her voice. "Grandmother, I am going abroad." "So Peter has spoken, has he? When is it to be?" "I am not going with Peter. That is all over." "Well, you're a silly girl. You never 'll get such a nice boy again. Peter could make a woman laugh from morning till night, if she'd have the sense to please him." "I am going for a year. At least, I say a year. I put no limit to it in my own mind. Do you want to go with me, "I am glad I am young," said Electra. Her eyes were shining. "I shall have the more years to devote to it." "You don't mean to say you propose crossing alone? Did you want to drag me out of my coffin to see you landed there respectably?" "I am quite willing to go alone," said Electra, still with her air of beatific certainties. "I shall be the more unhampered. You must stay here all you want to, grandmother. Keep the house open. Act exactly as if it were yours." A remembrance of the time when she had thought the place not altogether her own tempered the warmth of that permission. Some severity crept into her demeanor, and Madam Fulton, recognizing its birth, received it humbly as no more than she had earned. "When are you going, Electra?" she asked. "In about a month. Grandmother!" Electra in her worship of the conduct of life, hardly knew how to express strong emotions without offense to her finer instincts. "I don't forget, grandmother," she hesitated, "that I ought to be with you." "Why ought you?" "Because-grandmother, have n't I a duty to you? "A duty!" the old lady muttered. "The devil fly away with it!" "I beg your pardon, grandmother?" "I beg yours, my dear. Never swear before a lady! No, no. You have n't any duty towards me." "But there are other calls." Electra struggled to find words that should not tell too much. She ended lamely, "There are calls I cannot disregard." There rose dimly before her mind some of the injunctions that bid men leave father and mother for the larger vision. "There's Billy Stark," said the old lady, with a quickened interest. "Fancy! he's been away all day." Electra rose and went in again. She was not sensitive now to the ironies of daily life, but it did occur to her that her grandmother was more excited at seeing Billy Stark home after a day in town than by her own great conclusion. Electra had thought solemnly about the magnitude of the decision she was making when she gave up the care of grandmother to follow that larger call, but again she found herself outside the line of recognized triumphs. She had announced her victory and nobody knew it. She looked at him in silent trouble. Tears had dimmed her eyes. "Well, Billy," she said at last, "this is the pleasantest summer I shall ever have." "Say the word," he admonished her again. "We've got more summers before us." She smiled at him, and winked away the tears. "Then come back and spend them here. Electra's going, too, like a stowaway. You won't let her cross with you, and see at least that she does n't hold services on board? "God forbid!" said Billy. "I'm afraid of her." "I don't blame you. Billy, I suppose we ought to be saying solemn things to each other if you're really going." "Clip ahead, old lady. What do you want to say?" "I'd like to clear up my accounts a little. I want to get my books in order. I don't intend to die in a fog. Billy, how much of it was real?" "How much of what, Florrie ? " "Of life? Of the things we thought and felt? Is there such a thing as love, Billy?" He got up under the necessity of thought and stood, hands in his pockets and legs apart, looking over the garden beds. He might have been gazing out to sea for the Islands of the Blest. Billy Stark had brought his old friend a present: a box of the old-fashioned peppermints she liked. She took off the string with a youthful eagerness. "My dear," said she, "what do you pliments. We're beyond them.” think has happened now?" "Florrie," he said at length, "I guess there is." "I know what has happened to me," said Billy. He threw himself into a chair with an explosive sigh, half heat and half regret. "I've had business letters. I've got to be off." "Off!" She regarded him in a frank dismay. "Billy, you break my heart!" "I break my own heart," said Billy gallantly. "I've taken my passage. Say the word, dear girl, and I'll take it for two." "Did you love me, Billy? No com "Yes," said Billy, after another pause. "I think I did. You were a great deal to me at that time. And when I found it was no use, other people were a great deal to me, one after another. Several of 'em. I looked upon it then as a kind of a game. But they did n't last, Florrie. You did. You always give me a kind of a queer feeling; you're all mixed up in my mind with pink and blue and hats with rosebuds on 'em and college songs." It was not much like a grand passion, but it was something, the honest confession of a boy. "I thought it was a game, too," she said musingly. "Do you suppose it was, Billy? Or were we wrong? Billy whirled about and faced her. "Dead wrong! No, Florrie, it never was meant for a game. It's earnest. The ones that take it so are the ones that inherit the earth. No, not that but they go in for all they're worth and they've something left to show for it. They don't put their money into tinsel and see it fade." w "Well, what else? Did Charlie Grant love me?" "Yes. No doubt of it." "But he loved Bessie afterwards." "Yes. She lived the thing through with him. She built up something, I fancy. He probably remembered you as I did, all pink ribbons and fluff; but she helped him rear his house of life." "And my husband did n't love me and I did n't love my husband," the old lady mused. "Well, Billy, it's almost the end of the play. I wish I understood it better. And I've written a naughty book, and I'm going to be comfortable on the money from it. And you wish I had n't, don't you?" He saw how frail she looked and answered mercifully, "I don't care much about the book, dear. Don't let's talk of that." "You wish I had n't written it!' "I wish you had n't been so infernally bored as to think of writing it." "And I'll bet a dollar you wish you'd come back and found me reconciled to life and death and reading daily texts out of little pious books, and knitting mufflers for sailors, instead of seething with all sorts of untimely devilishnesses. Don't you, Billy?" What Billy thought he would not tell himself, and he said with an extreme honesty, "You're the greatest old girl there is, Florrie, or ever was, or ever will be." "Ah, well!" she sighed, and laughed a little. "I can't help wishing there were n't so many good folks. It makes me uncommonly lonesome. For you're good, too, Billy, you sinner, you!" He read the gleam in her eyes, the reckless courage, the unquenched love of life; after all, there was more youth in her still than there had ever been in him or in a hundred like him. He laughed, and said, "Oh, I do delight in you!" (To be continued.) SUGAR: A LESSON ON RECIPROCITY AND THE TARIFF BY F. W. TAUSSIG I TRUST the reader will not be repelled by the figures which I place at the beginning of this paper. They are needed to give point and precision to what follows, and they illustrate some general prin ciples which are important in these days THE SUGAR SUPPLY OF THE UNITED STATES 15=15,000,000 LBS.) The figures need a few words of explanation and comment. They show the most important sources of sugar supply for the United States. They do not state all the sources of supply, nor do they attempt to follow the course of trade year by year. For an elaborate inquiry, such as a statistician or legislator might desire, much greater detail would be necessary. For the present purpose it suffices to indicate the broad facts. The figures are given in round numbers (so many millions of pounds), and at five-year intervals between 1875 and 1900; thereafter for the years 1903 and 1906. The various sources of supply I have divided into three large groups. In the first are those foreign countries with which we deal at arm's length, — whose sugar is subject to duties at our full rate, and whom we show no favors. In this 84 160 77 72 226 410 170 224 274 505 775 712 group belong Java, Brazil, the British West Indies, Germany, and other European countries which send us beet sugar, and some minor countries not here mentioned, and negligible for the present discussion. In the second group are those regions which we now put on a favored basis, whose sugar is subject to duty, but not to duty at the full rate. This partly favored group contains Cuba and the Philippines. Finally, in the third group are those dependencies whose sugar we admit free, and the strictly domestic sources of supply, which of course pay no tax. Here belong Hawaii and Porto Rico on the one hand, Louisiana and the beet-sugar districts of the West' on the other. Each of these groups has sent us regularly, throughout the thirtyfive years, substantial contributions. The amounts from the several countries show |