It was a tremulous voice that answered: "I see what it means, all right. It means losing my job." “Don't you do it, 'Erbert," came a tiny voice from Mrs. Simmons. "What!" came the artillery. "Refuse an honor like this? An' me tramping all day in the rain like a lame duck to find 'im?" He laughed derisively in their faces. "Listen, my boy! Two of the greatest men in London wants you to represent the Unknown Soldier; they've picked you out from among thousands." He pressed this importance home with a tense pointing finger. "You! 'Erbert Simmons! I'm telling you straight that's an honor that comes only once; an honor that only one in a million can have. One in a million! You ain't doing this for me, cocky. You ain't doing it for the old colonel. You ain't doing it even for the House of Commons." Frightening them, he sprang to his feet and stood rigidly at the attention. "You're doing it for your country— for England! That's what you're doing it for. England!" Mr. Simmons, strangely agitated and thrilled, slowly got to his feet, and before his late drill-sergeant his arms automatically dropped to his sides. "Now then, let's hear you say it! Go on. Say you can't do it now!" Mr. Simmons couldn't say it. "If that's how it is-" he began. "Can't you see it is? What'll the picture mean but England? What are you supposed to represent but England?" "I'll do it." "Of course you'll do it." Sergeant-Major Prade sat down again, resenting the effort his theatricalism. had cost him. "I'll mention about your work to the colonel; you'll be seeing him yourself, anyhow. They want you to start on Monday. It'll only take a month or so; a couple of hours in the mornings and afternoons like; I've the address in my pocket here. But I hope you understand you can't say nothing to 'em where you work-I'll explain that in a moment. Anyway, with the help of the colonel and Sir William, getting a new job for yourself will be as easy as picking gooseberries off a tree." ""Erbert!" pleaded Mrs. Simmons; "don't-don't-" "Why not, missis? There'll be a hundred quid in it for 'im, besides the honor and glory." "A hundred pounds!" repeated Mr. Simmons. "Fifty, at least." There was a silence. Mrs. Simmons's mouth worked funnily; then, with a stifled cry, she hid her face in her apron. "I-I- Fill up your glass, won't you, major?" invited Mr. Simmons. "Ta." The nickel-plated clock on the mantelpiece ticked away with noisy regularity until the soldier spoke again. "Now, 'Erb, there's just one thing more. It's got to be kept quiet-under your bloomin' 'at. There's only five of us in the know." He enumerated them on his fingers. "The colonel, this 'ere Horpen, myself, you, and the missis. Not another soul, mind! That's why you can't explain matters to your boss, down at your job. Wouldn't do for 'em to know; you can see that, can't you? The whole of England and-well, if it comes to it, the whole world-must never catch on. Savvy?" Mr. Simmons blinked. "It's the Unknown Soldier, see? And that means little Mr. Nobody is going to pose for it. In other words, cocky, you'll be representing the greatest hero in a land all right, only no one's got to know it. See?" "I see." "You've got to do more than see, my boy. Let's 'ave your word on it." "I promise." "And how about you, missis?" Mrs. Simmons removed the apron from her face and looked up vacantly. Her husband explained, and she nodded. "That's the promise of the wife of a soldier, missis; and you know what that means, don't you?" Mrs. Simmons didn't know, but she nodded again. Sergeant-Major Prade reached for his bowler-hat. "Erb," he said, "you remind me of the kid who cried for a plum, and in the end they had to cram it down his bloomin' throat. Oh! 'ere's the address!" He produced an envelop from his breast-pocket and laid it on the table. "Sir William marked it down hisself, see? That's his own fist. Be there by ten o'clock Monday morning." A glance at the clock brought a sharp whistle from his lips. "Blim'me, is it as late as all that? Midnight afore I gets 'ome. See if it's still raining, 'Erb!" he asked, struggling into his mackintosh coat. Mr. Simmons opened the front door. "Yes," he said, visualizing his long walk in the morning. "Ope it clears up by to-morrow." Best match of the season. Well, good night, missis. So-long, 'Erb." "Good night, major." 21 Returning to the room, Mr. Simmons sank into his rocking-chair and sat very still. Mrs. Simmons put away the brandy, emptied what drops were left from one glass to another, handed it in silence to her husband, and went into the kitchen. "What did he have to say, mother?" asked Fred, the moment she entered. "Nuffin' much, dear. Just an old friend of your father's-that's all." She poured hot water into a large pan in which an assortment of cups, dishes, and table utensils were indiscriminately piled, and commenced on her nightly duties. "Don't worry your father to-night, will you?" she told them quietly. "E's fair tired out." Bending over her dishes she looked weary and old. "Mother," said Harry, suddenly affected by her sad eyes, "you go and sit down with father. Fred an' me'll do the dishes for you." She smiled at him. "You don't do 'em clean, darling. No; you an' Freddy just trot off to bed. It's late, see?” They kissed her good night and I went in to their father in the next room. Mr. Simmons perked up a bit when he heard them coming, and he tendered his withered cheek for two good-night kisses. Fred remained behind a moment. "If you go to the Grafton Galleries, father, could I go with you? I went with the teacher once, and there was a painting by Sir William Orpen-a "I'm going if it rains cats and dogs. battle-field-that made me feel aw "So do I. Going to see Chelsea play Liverpool?" "N-no." fully proud of you, father. Teacher said he's one of the greatest painters in the world. He only paints great men, and they have to pay him a lot of money." "Eh? What? Do they?" "Oh, yes. He gets as much as a thousand pounds. More, I think." "Well-we'll see. I've a few things I must do to-morrow. Well we'll see. Good night, my lad.” "Good night, father dear." In a little while Mr. Simmons joined his wife in the kitchen. "If I lost my job, Ethel, it would be terrible, wouldn't it?" She didn't reply. "But as the major says, Sir Frederick is bound to look after me, seeing as 'ow I'm doing this for 'im. An' a hundred pounds is a hundred pounds. Even fifty'd be a godsend. Wouldn't it? Freddy could 'ave his chance with all that, and—you could get that winter coat you liked in the shop, last month; you know, Ethel, that one with the fur on it. keeping my job an' all seems too good to be true." Methodically he took off his coat and began to roll up his sleeves. "You know, Ethel, when 'e first started to speak-I thought I'd come into a bit of luck or something. Didn't you?" But "Now, 'Erbert, get to bed, there's a dear. I'll come an' rub your chest with the ointment in a minute. Then I got a bit of sewing to do on 'Arry's football trousers." "What! an' let you do all them dishes alone! Not me!" He seized a dish-cloth and took up his stand before a pile of unwashed plates. As he wiped them he drifted into a reverie. He saw a huge painting of himself hanging in a heavy gilt frame in the House of Commons and thousands of people in a long line coming to look at it. A policeman in front of the picture kept moving them on. It was all very quiet, dignified, and awe-inspiring. He, Herbert Simmons, was also in the line. Yes, there he was, slowly looking about him and hoping that some one would recognize him, associate him with the famous painting, spread the news in excited whispers, and that the people would carry him on their shoulders as they would a national hero. But he remained totally unnoticed. Inch by inch he crept nearer the square of light illuminating the portrait, and at last he stood in front of it. The Unknown! Himself, to the life! "Move on, on, please," said the policeman. Just fancy! he wasn't allowed to stand an extra moment before his own painting. "What was it 'e called you?" asked Mrs. Simmons. "Who?" "That what's-'is-name. You know." "Oh, the sergeant-major!" Mr. Simmons tried to smile, but his heart failed him. He moistened his dry lips. "Mr. Nobody," he said heavily. She put her wet chapped arms about his neck and looked lovingly at him though red-rimmed tearful eyes. "Don't you believe 'im," she sobbed brokenly; "don't you believe 'im. Why, there ain't-there ain't a man in the whole of London . . . And Mr. Simmons thought she was very beautiful. NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS:-Every resolve for the future is a criticism of the past. It is an effort to free ourselves from those dead hands, habits, and memories which would keep us as we were. Tell me what vows you are making this January, and I shall know the history of your departing year. Or at least that portion of your history which will not depart with the year as it should. Of all the fears which beset civilized man, the fear of the past is the strongest. Because science has disposed of most other terrors we now begin to look to the psychologist for some relief from this accumulating shadow, yet perhaps the good and the bad of what we have done and seen and suffered are too closely intertwined ever to separate-and we wouldn't give up memory altogether. Perhaps there is nothing to do with the bad parts of the past but to live them down. This calls for will-power. For centuries the church has used at the end of the year the prayer that the wills of the faithful may be stirred up. Secular man, by a deep instinct, makes in effect the same prayer when he frames his New Year resolutions. They are an exercise of his will, a defiance of his old self, a declaration of independence. New Year's day has this special meaning for Americans, when it has any meaning at all. For us it is a moral occasion, a fast-day in spite of the meat and drink. We are never deceived into feeling that the year really begins in midwinter, while the days are still short and the sun far away. Under the old calendar men dated the year from the first break-up of winter and the earliest promise of spring, but with us January begins the unpleasant season, cold, rainy, windy, and slippery. We naturally think of our shortcomings in January. But Americans at all seasons have a tendency more than most people to renounce the past, even the good part of it. In our manners, our art, our politics, and our religion we are urged constantly to trust the future, to be ourselves, or, as Emerson told us, to stop building the sepulchers of the fathers, and build our own house instead. Every critic who urges us to write our books strictly in the present, without any indebtedness to the old culture of Europe, is urging on us a New Year resolution. Of course he may not himself follow this advice, but the importance of New Year resolutions never was that they should be kept; the main thing is to make them. There is a psychic advantage just in we were born in a wilderness with nothing but nature and ourselves to master, we might approach the problem of life with some hope of attaining liberty. That is, we might become free in so far as we mastered the laws of the world immediately before us. Large as that task may be, it would be simpler than man finds before him when he is born into a historic society. There his freedom comes into conflict with his piety. His emotions are tied up with what men have done before him; he feels himself a villain if he breaks the habits consecrated by dead men and women whom he revered. He knows instinctively that if he devotes all his time to preserving those traditions, he may have no leisure to study his own world, nor really to live in it. For the most part, men and women in historic countries take the course dictated, at the best, by unselfish motives, and at the worst, by the indolence natural to all of us; they repeat the patterns of the dead past, and live in the world of sentiment rather than of reality. That is, for a while. Then the integrity of the individual asserts itself, and we have protest or revolution. Revolution in Russia, let us say-one terrific detonation of New Year resolutions. Protest in Italy, let us say—where the modern mind resents the presence of so many priceless monuments, and the country is always resolving to be futuristic for fear of becoming a museum. What worried Emerson, and the others who have told us to let the past go, is that in America, where we have comparatively little past, we show an inexcusable tendency to neglect our future. Nobody credits us with preserving the best of European culture, yet we may possibly be fettered still to old habits of thought and feeling; we do not approach our world with the dash and vigor one expects of a free mind. I think Emerson was a bit hard on the past, considering how much of it went into his own strength and got him his fame, but his idea of the matter seems characteristic of America, and if I protest a little, perhaps it is because I am in that sense imperfectly American. We do lack courage, as he said, to face completely the world we live in. We are afraid to use the materials we alone have, because men long ago who did not have them never used them. We do many things we really don't enjoy, just because men long in their graves once liked to do them. Our architecture is bold and native, but we haven't learned, for example, how to build an American church. We can copy the colonial style; how courageous they were to build in a contemporary manner! Or the Gothic of the thirteenth century; how reckless the Middle Ages were to develop a style of their own! We have heard a famous authority on such matters warn us that if we ever hope to achieve true Gothic in this country, we must recover in ourselves the total life of the Middle Ages— must be truly antique, that is, in order to be correctly antiquarian. This is what Emerson was afraid of. The founders of these colonies, the |