J

AKE STUTVITCH came to the town of Lincoln like a strong wind blowing. He swung himself off the Interurban, with his suitcase and miners' tools.

A drowsy old man sat on an upturned box near the station, which was elongated into a lunch-room. The old man had blue marks on his forehead, made there years ago by an explosion of powder in a mine. His posture as well as his face held only vacancy. Crowded close against his leg was a mangy white dog. The old man absently scratched the head of the dog while he looked at nothing. That was Lincoln when Jake got there an old man scratching a mangy dog, aimless men loafing by the Interurban, a shabby street, a flat country, the only break in the monotony the high tipple of a mine.

Jake Stutvitch towered over the old man.

"W'at you bet W'at you bet?" did n't answer.

I can't get in, eh? But the old man Jake's voice had

pierced into the chasm of his formless memories. The mists of old age inclosed him; they shut him away from life's disturbing voices. One of the men leaning against the station drawled:

"Sunta Cavelleri's joint's full, boy."

"You want to bet me she find a place for me?" Jake threw out at him. "Make good bet; she get a place alri'." His laugh rang out, the laugh of a man to whom life denies nothing. "You bet fi' dollars I get a room in there?" He pulled five dollars from his pocket. The man challenged, a long-lipped Scotchman with flaming hair, drew five dollars from his overalls. The men consulted among themselves.

"Sunta Cavelleri's." The old man let a little silence trail in and then, without looking up, he went on in his monotonous voice: "You cain't get in there. It's full up."

me five dollars. 'Sunta Cavelleri's full. There ain't no room. Now, I warned you, an' I won' think nothin' if you drop out."

"No," echoed the others, "we won't think nothin' if you drop out. It 's

a sure thing." They nodded their heads, feeling moral and virtuous because of their warning.

Jake threw back his big head and laughed.

"I tell you same thing! Me, too, I bet on sure thing. Dead sure thing I bet on. Take fi' dollars like beads from baby." There was contagion in his laughter. They laughed with him, the loud Homeric roar of men who are pleased with life.

They pointed him the way, and he strode ahead down the street. Houses were placed at random, featureless houses, left to blacken by wind and rain. The front yards of many held nothing but rubbish. In others the stalks of once live things waved futilely in the bright sunlight. Behind the houses, corn-fields; against the horizon the tipple of the big mine, Number 66, which had given birth to the miningcamp of Lincoln.

The four men who followed Jake waited outside 'Sunta Cavelleri's. It was a big house, for once it had been a company store. They shuffled their feet, talking aimlessly:

"He ain't got a room?"

"No; she's been full up for months." "Why, she turned fifty men away." "No, Mis' Cavelleri ain't no rooms.' At last Jake came out, but he had left his tools and bag inside. He walked comfortably up to the waiting men. He seemed like a giant, with a gilt halo round him made by the setting sun.

"She ain't took you?" they cried.
He nodded.

"Go ask her," he urged, but his manner convinced convinced them. Besides, they feared 'Sunta Cavelleri's sharp tongue. She was sweet to look at, as the grapes and oranges that grew on

"Honest to God,' says I, 'I ain't gotta room no more 'n I got an angel wit' a star to giva you.'

"So he beg and beg, and he getta me laughin' an' laughin' he talka so funny. Next, wot you think Jake Stutvitch do, him wit' his nerve? He t'rowa his arms round me and kiss me! How he kiss me! Me-alla boys respec'. No one getta gay wit' me, I tella you. He hol' me tight and he kiss me, laughin'. Me I slap him good. Hoo! I slap him fine, like he kiss me fine! My hair-the curls is all over my face. Gee! w'en I laugh so hard? He, like big boy standin' there, his hair shining like gold, an' he laughs and laugh.

""You like that, hey?' he say. 'You want some more, eh?'

"But me, I'm quicker wot he is. 'You lika it, eh?' and I slapa him again. I jumpa behin' the table; I'm padrona, ah, wit' my girls! They knowa meserious, attenda to business.

"Get a broom!' I holler. 'Get a broom for the wil' man!' My girl' come runnin'. Jake he chasa the girl'. They squeala like hen, a million hen'. 'W'at the matter wit' you?' I holler. I hol' my side, I laugh so hard. 'You crazy in the bean?' For he's kissin' one of my girl', an' she turn and twist like eel-basket, Christmas-time. He

leave her go. He get serious, that Jake.

"Madame,' he say, 'I mus' know, you got a room for poor Jake Stutvitch? You got li'l' small cot, any place, hen-house, pigcoop? I don'

care; just one

li'l' place for

Jake.'

"I say, 'Girls,

dis crazy man, he stay, he go?' "Istay, don' I girls? Eh, madama, yes, I

stay?'

"Oh, shut your mout'!' I say. 'Yes, you stay.' W'at you can do w'en a man maka you laugh like that? You mus' do like

he want-the

crazy man!"

So Assunta

Cavelleri's story of the arrival.

One by one the men trickled into supper, eying Stutvitch with curiosity, yet with a friendliness that had respect in it. Assunta was a redoubtable woman, and he had got around her. Most of the boarders were miners or men from the road gang, for the most part young, looking forward to savory food and the relaxation of a joke with the pretty girls who waited on table. All the girls at 'Sunta's were miner's daughters, and 'Sunta looked after them. Mothers let their girls go to work at 'Sunta's with a free heart.

The air of the room was filled with a heady excitement. Men laughed easily. They began the serious business of stoking down food. There

were six tables;

at the table where Jake Stutvitch sat the men were rocking back and forth, not over Jake's wit, but over the contest of a repartee between young McCarthy and Grisco.

An Italian

girl, Linda Severino, carried the steaming stew at the table next to the one where Jake sat. She started at the head of the table, stooping her sleek, proud head over one

and then another of the laughing men. Suddenly the laughter ceased as though it had been something winged and now was poised in mid-air. Jake was staring open-mouthed at Linda. His gaze, insistent, impersonal, questioning, never left her. As Stutvitch stared at her, Grisco stared at Stutvitch. vitch. Grisco was lean and swart; his dark, heavy hair hung over his forehead as glossy as a raven's wing. They called him an Austrian, but Gipsy blood had gone into the making of him; he was lithe and swift and carried himself with the lazy, impudent

arrogance of the Gipsies, who own the world, though they possess nothing but a ramshackle caravan. Grisco's eyes were dark eyes, good eyes, beautiful and innocent, like the eyes of a animal, and his mouth was cut in severe lines, its edges firm, its expression sweet. He looked at big Jake Stutvitch appraisingly, but without hostility. Like the others, he had heard of Jake's victory, and he had expected something else of him than to see him sitting there gazing moonstruck at his girl, for Grisco and Linda had been "going together."

Then, as though Grisco's stare had called to Jake, their eyes met, and it was as though the bright blades of swords had clashed. Again, drawn as by a magnet, Jake's eyes went back to Linda. He was so absorbed that before he could help himself to food the girl serving him spoke twice. He ate his meal in silence, a puzzled frown on his face, as though life had put to him some unexpected riddle.

Supper was over. There was a scraping of chairs. Some of the men stayed to loaf and talk. Jake sat on the door-step, his head in his hands, staring across the shabby, wide streets at the haphazard houses, the lees of summer withering in their garden plots. A chill wind had blown out his gaiety. After a time 'Sunta followed him. He had conquered her first by his gaiety; now his remoteness had conquered her again.

"Jake," she called softly. He did not hear her. She went closer. "Jake, w'at's botherin' you?" He looked up, his wide forehead still furrowed with the effort of his thought.

"Long, long time I don' think 'bout some things. Now I think. In my country is a song 'bout mem'ries:

"A door opened on a cage of birds; The birds came flying out.

The birds' wings brush my head.'

But I can' catch the birds; I don' know w'y I think them things."

"W'at things, Jake?"

He rose, and shook himself as though to rid himself of his thoughts. He stretched luxuriously.

"I won' think. Thinkin' bad luck. I wonder what for; I wonder- Eh, 'Sunta, eh, Madama Cavelleri, you gotta phonograph? Come on; you start it goin'. Call the girls; we'll dance. Dancin', eh, Assunta-missus, better 'n thinkin'? Thinkin' I get the blues, the mel-concholy blues." He shouted out a jazz tune. "Come on, girls, you get dishes done? Come on, boys, pull back tables! We're goin' to dance!" He stopped Assunta's protest with a big hand across her mouth. "You want I think mel-concholy blues again? No, Madama Itali'na!" He swung Assunta out on the floor.

Gaiety was in the air. It was as though Jake had let loose joy among them, as though he had lit the large bare room with many-colored lights. Jake looked through 'Sunta's records. The music of all nations was there. Magic black disks brought to Assunta Cavelleri the voices of great singers, the rhythms of far off peoples, for she had a passion for music. So in her workman's boarding-house, whose outlook was over mean streets to the tipple of a coal-mine, she could rest herself with the music she loved. Jake picked out a Hungarian czardas.

"Hey, Grisco, you dance this," he cried. "I dance it, too. I dance your dance, Grisco, better 'n you," he bragged. He leaped in the air, click

ing his heels. Though he was older than Grisco, and heavier, he danced with a gaiety that was in him, challenging and laughing; but back of his challenge there was no insult. His blue eyes looked into Grisco's dark ones with kindness. The magic black disk spun and, the syncopation of the zymbalin, the harmony of a Gipsy orchestra, trickled out, and Jake and Grisco danced, Grisco, slim and swift, Jake as though caught up in a gust of joy.

'Sunta told of it afterward.

"Eh, how he danced, that Jake Stutvitch! Never I see a man dance like him. How can a big man dance like Jake? He jump, he clap his heels. No Hunky man I see ever dance a czardas good as Jake. Grisco, he danca, too. He danca fine, Grisco. What for Jake dance better? Can Grisco getta room from me when I ain't a room? Can Grisco kissa me? You bet he can't. Same way Grisco can' dance like Jake."

By what wireless did the young folks of Lincoln learn that there was a dance at 'Sunta Cavelleri's? Faces were pressed against the wide windows, shy girls' faces and bashful young men, and when the czardas ended, there was a crash of applause from outside. Jake threw open the door.

"Come in!" he called. "Come in everybod'! Come, dance!" Assunta Cavelleri had nothing to say except to call after Jake:

"Come on! Come, dance!"

There never before was such dancing in Lincoln. The joy of living that first made men transform the leaping joy of young animals and give it the form and rhythm we call dancing was loose in Lincoln that night. In Assunta's boarding-house in Kansas men and

women told the story of their peoples. The nations of the earth were there, Hungarian, Serb, Russian, Italian. They wove that night a pattern of joy of diverse people in dance and music.

Over it all, dominating it, jazz, child of jungle and sky-scraper, fathered by the swift-flowing life of American cities; jazz, that holds in its mixed ancestry memories of Argentine dives and of soft-muted Hawaiian rhythms; jazz, that has met some obscure want of the young generation, and so has spread itself over the face of the earth.

That night at 'Sunta Cavelleri's, where Hungarian and Russian boys remembered the difficult dances of their villages, where Italian girls recalled the swift beat of the tarantella, jazz was the common language of joy of the Scotch miner, American girl, Serb, Italian, and Finn. These peoples, who had come from hidden villages from the Baltic to the Balkans, who were the sons of strict Presbyterian Scotchmen or the American daughters of West Virginia mothers, could meet and understand one another when a black disk played to them the syncopation of jazz.

Just when the door opened to let out Linda and Jake Stutvitch, neither 'Sunta nor Grisco knew, though both of them had watched the two all the evening, 'Sunta with the eyes of a vigilant mother, Grisco with the mounting jealousy of a lover.

Linda and Jake walked along side by side, a wide space between them, as though fearful of each other. The Indian summer moon had thrown enchantment over the shabby houses; the wide, untidy street was bathed in magic. Linda and Jake turned to each other, timidly. The silence between them grew and deepened. It