and it is, incidentally, in full accord with the state-rights sentiment of the South.

In this connection it may be remarked that it was to the vigilance of Senator Clay of Georgia that prohibition states and communities owe the recent discovery of an attempt to open the mails to the shipment of liquors. On the 13th of February, as the Senate reading-clerk was droning through the bill for the revision and codification of the laws of the United States, and section 218, which forbids the transmission of certain articles through the mails, was reached, Senator Clay jumped to his feet and directed the attention of the Senate to the fact that nowhere in the amendment was there any mention of liquor or glass. He protested against the amendment on the ground that it would nullify prohibition laws by allowing liquor dealers to send liquor of all kinds through the mails, and he demanded of the Senator in charge of the bill by whom and for what reason the change had been made. No very definite explanation was given of the origin of the mysterious amendment, but the Senate, by a unanimous vote, struck it out, and the provisions of the original law were restored.

The second demand which is likely to be made upon Congress is for legislation to prevent the issue of "licenses" by the federal government for the sale of intoxicating liquors in counties or states where it is forbidden by law. But this demand, although sincere, is based on a misapprehension. The national government does not "license" any one to sell liquor. But it exacts an internal-revenue tax from all persons who do sell liquor, and it collects this tax without reference to state license or prohibition laws. The truth is that this system is far from being an unmixed evil in prohibition communities or states. It puts the liquor dealer between the devil and the deep sea. If he attempts to sell without paying the internal-revenue tax, he is liable to prosecution and heavy penalty in the federal courts. But if he pays the tax, the fact that he has done so may be disclosed, and the very possession of the tax receipt which he is required to have in order to stand off the federal authorities may be, and in some states is, made prima facie evidence that he is violating the state law. Level-headed prohibition and antisaloon leaders will reflect seriously before they agitate for a change in this particular.

"ANY objection to graveyards?" the American inquired.

"I should object to taking up my permanent abode in one unnecessarily soon," the Frenchman replied, his black eyes twinkling, his thin lips smiling between his jetty mustache and his pointed sable beard.

"Monseer Daypurtwee," said his host, "I'm not joking, you understand. I've showed you most of this neighborhood, and I rather like to drive through our cemetery, myself. I'm trying to find out how the idea strikes you."

"I should be charmed, I am sure," Des Pertuis answered in his unexceptionable English.

"Some people don't like to go to a graveyard," Wade resumed, "any oftener or any sooner than they have to. Sure you're not just being polite?"

“Quite sure." René replied, smiling again.

"Honor bright, no reservations?" Wade queried anxiously, half turning, and glancing into his guest's eyes.

"None whatever," René answered him smilingly.

"Then we'll drive through the cemetery," Wade informed him, settling back comfortably, not a muscle showing effort, except his outstretched arms, tense against the taut reins.

"Ferris wrote me," Wade went on, that what you wanted was real American atmosphere, and he thought I could let you into some at Middleville. I believe you've found some, have n't you?" Yes," the Frenchman agreed, “I have been in what I am sure is a genuinely American atmosphere.”

66

66

"I've watched you absorbing it, you understand," Wade chuckled. You've had to take in quite an amount of hot air with your American atmosphere."

Des Pertuis smiled deprecatingly.

"Oh yes," his host continued. "You 've been polite about it. I could appreciate that, you understand. You've smiled and looked interested while Uncle George talked bushels-to-the-acre and all that, while Tupper talked tons of tomatoes and the rest of it, while Bowe talked reapers and thrashers and iron fences and cutlery, while Parks talked tonnage-per-mile and tonnage-per-landing; you've taken it all in: farm-brag, tradebrag, railroad-brag, and steamboat-brag; you've appeared charmed, but you've got everlastingly tired of the brag all the same."

"I have not heard you brag, Mr. Wade," René reminded him quietly, his

"You may think it queer," Wade remarked, "my taking you to the cemetery, but I'll explain afterwards, you understand, or perhaps you'll find out for yourself before we leave it, why I took you there. I want to try an experiment, want to see whether something is going to strike you the way it strikes me, you understand.”

plump, smooth-shaven visage.

"Perhaps I'm going to brag," Wade replied. "Brag is part of what you came after, part of the American atmosphere, you understand, and I brag myself, but not about the same things, nor in just the same way. I love the Eastern Shore, I like to hear it called 'God's Footstool,' or 'The Garden Spot of the World.' But I've quit using those terms myself,- to

foreigners, anyhow. I never run down my home state or my home country, you understand, but when I meet a man like you, who has seen Holland and Belgium and Luxembourg and Saxony and Provence and Lombardy, let alone other places I have n't seen, I let others do the bragging about density of population and fertility and productivity and all that. I don't call them down, I sit and smoke and look on. But I'm not saying much, you understand."

"I quite comprehend," René assured him. “Enthusiasm for one's own is not by any means unpleasant."

'Not unless you get too much of it," his host commented, or unless the enthusiasm is for the wrong things, you understand. Enthusiasm for the wrong thing makes me mad. We Americans have plenty to brag of; things really worth boasting of. But it makes me hot to hear these half-baked countrymen blat about the area of the United States, which is an accident; or our coal and iron and copper and petroleum and what not, which are quite as accidental; or our population, which is the result of the other accidents; or the volume of immigration, which is a menace. I want them to distinguish what we really ought to be proud of from what we have no call to boast of. And I bet you feel that way, too. I've been watching you, you understand."

Boasting about one's own country is an amiable foible," René remarked. “I do not object to such chauvinism, as we call it."

"But you are a trifle uneasy," Wade put in, "when they begin to draw comparisons, especially if they are undeserved, you understand, — and to run down France and French things. Is that what you mean?"

"Precisely," Des Pertuis replied. "You have penetrated my meaning; and I may remind you that you yourself have done nothing of the kind, nor Madame Wade."

"It's good of you to notice it," his

host said. "Naturally she would n't any more than I. We've been in France, you understand. But perhaps I'm going to do that, too, as well as brag. No offense, you understand. But I'm commercial. I take a commercial view of things. I fail to see through a great many things other people seem to comprehend, you understand, and one thing they told me in France surprised me. I thought I heard Mary asking you about it last night. But I was n't sure, what with Humphreys and all the other fellows talking at once, you understand. Anyhow, I want to ask you about it.”

"What is it?" his guest queried civilly.

"What was the name of that part of France, over toward England, where there was no end of a civil war during your revolution?"

"You mean La Vendée ?” René asked. "That's it," his host replied. "I never can remember that sort of a name. I'm commercial, you understand. Well, somebody told us while we were in Paris (I think it was the Rogerses, who live there, but I'm not sure), that the descendants of the people who fought on opposite sides in that war won't sit down to table together this minute, nor be under the same roof. Is that true?"

"Not wholly," René responded; "two might be in the same theatre or in the same public building, and neither think it necessary to leave after recognizing the other. But certainly it is true of not dining together. No one would invite a Charette to meet a Hoche; neither would remain in any house a moment after learning the presence of the other. Still less would a Cathelineau or Rochejaquelein consent to spend an instant in a drawing-room with a Turreau or a Carrier; no, nor in a restaurant or hotel."

"Don't you think that is carrying personal hostility pretty far?" Wade asked.

Des Pertuis stroked his short spike of a beard. "You do not comprehend," he said,

"From sometime in 1793," René replied, "to sometime in 1796."

"All over a hundred and ten years ago," his host commented. "No offense, you understand, but speaking as between friends, don't you think that is a long time to hold a grudge?"

"The families concerned," Des Pertuis made answer, "do not take that view of it. They still smart under the reciprocal wrongs inflicted, they still recall the gloating fiendishness of their foes, and apart from any recollections of outrage, they rather make a point of honor of their inflexibility. Why, not only the families involved on one side or the other of the war in La Vendée, but the old legitimist nobility generally and the descendants of the revolutionists at large, stand upon the same punctilio. No son of a noble house which never bowed to Bonapartism or to the Orleanist ascendancy, or to the party of the Citizen King, no member of any such noble family would ever meet socially any descendant of a Bonapartist, still less of a regicide, were he Montagnard, Jacobin, or Girondist. No La Rochefoucauld or Château-Reynaud would unbend to any Murat or Carnot.”

points. No offense, Daypurtwee, go on."

"Indeed, you do not comprehend," René declared. "Our national motto is for us as the what do you call it? Golden Rule for all Christians; the ideal which is aimed at rather than an injunction which all live up to. The Golden Rule has not made all Christians always treat others as they wish themselves to be treated. We strive for fraternity. But a motto cannot make human nature otherwise than it is."

Human nature," Wade remarked, "varies with the race and country, you understand. Some kinds don't need to be made over."

"I see," said his guest shortly.

"No offense, I hope, Daypurtwee;" his host spoke anxiously. "No offense meant, you understand.”

"Yes, I understand," René replied, smiling again.

"Here's the cemetery," Wade proclaimed. "We've driven miles around. I wanted to talk before we reached it."

He pointed with his whip to one gravestone after another, telling of the families, their characteristics, and their relationships to one another and to his own. The horse walked slowly. René, his hat in his hand, listened affably.

Wade halted his team under four big wide-spreading maples.

"That's my father's grave," he said, pointing.

René bowed in silence.

"And that's my uncle's," Wade went on, "my mother's brother, Colonel William Spence."

"He was

a soldier in the Federal

66 What!"

the Frenchman cried.

the Union flag on a Confederate soldier's grave!"

“You'll find," Wade told him, “ that this is not the only part of the country where they put the Stars and Stripes on the graves of ex-Confederates."

The Frenchman said nothing. They sat silent, side by side, the stout, blond, jolly-faced, red-cheeked, smooth-shaven American, his gray felt hat on the back of his head, looking sideways with quizzical blue eyes at his guest; the compact, blackhaired, black-bearded Frenchman gazing steadily down at the white headstone, the narrow grass-mound, the month-old withered flowers, the draggled, mudstreaked, rain-bleached muslin flag, no bigger than a handkerchief. One of the geldings tossed his head and champed at his bit, and the reins tinkled and clanked softly.

“I had been led to think,” René ruminated, "that there was much rancor after your civil war; but I fancy from what you tell me that there was less animosity than I had conceived.”

"There was much rancor," his host declared. "The animosity at the time of the war cannot be exaggerated, could not be conveyed to you by any description, you understand. There is rancor yet, mostly among the Southern women, particularly those born since the war, or those whose families really suffered least or whose men did not fight at all, a sort of artificial cult of rancor. But the families who lost everything, whose estates were trampled by the armies, whose homes were burned, whose best men died in battle, who were left beggars when it was all over, well, they and theirs talk now as they acted then, like the thoroughbreds they are. Not a complaint then, not a recrimination now. And the Northern families who gave most lives on the field are as mute on their side. As for the men who did the fighting, their animosity has all faded away. They forgive and forget."

"If the bitterness of feeling has so soon effaced itself," the Frenchman argued, “the war must have been waged without any exasperating atrocities on either side."

"If you mean by atrocities," Wade replied, "such massacres of prisoners by the regular authorities as you spoke of a while ago, or such butchery of surrendered adversaries as goes on in the South American revolutions, nothing of the kind occurred. But the bush