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WITH HIS OWN PETARD.

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others. This," abruptly, "is the short than even I could have dreamed. Your

cut to home."

"Home!"-he echoed the word scornfully-"an unpainted shanty, surrounded by barren, unprofitable acres is that home for you? Ah, no, my Kathleen, your home, your true home, is in that world which Heaven never intended that you should leave: amid friends who love and appreciate you, as I love and appreciate you-a home with me! What though an unkind and capricious Fate has linked you to a man, dull, uncongenial, your inferior, a man whom you can never love, never”

She tore away the hand which he had again seized, and faced him with blazing eyes.

"Mr. Vibbert!"-her voice shook with passion and contempt-"of your unbounded self-conceit have I long been aware, but now, certainly, have you surpassed yourself. That you should consider your charm sufficient excuse for the renunciation of home and reputation is no more than I might have expected, but that you should dare to speak disparagingly, slightingly, of a man, so great, so noble, that you, with your cleverness, your superficial culture, your little mind, can compare with him only as this straggly, stunted bush compares with that huge, widespreading oak; a man as true and upright as you are false, unstable; as honorable as you are treacherous; as strong as you are weak; that you should speak with contempt of such a man as this, is more

conceit, Mr. Vibbert, has made you blind, indeed-duller than he whose dullness you so pity!"

She quickly turned, and left him, and in silence, slowly, he followed after.

That night he suggested his departure, and left the next morning with many gracefully turned thanks, and for a month wandered over California. His interest in the Romance failing, he was glad to return to New York, and thoughts of Fanny Loughborough, Letters from her greeted him-the loving tone gradually turning to indignation at his neglect. A copy of the Morning Post announced the beautiful American's engagement to the heir of the Duke of Suffolk. Granny had played her cards well!

In a friendly note, Phillip Bosworth mentioned a novel of his wife's, just published. "She says that not only was it you who first turned her thoughts seriously toward writing, but that it was in her conversations with you that she obtained many of her ideas for the book. The fact is," added Bosworth with characteristic frankness, "she has used you for 'copy!' Wishing an outsider's point of view, she deliberately led the conversation to the life here, on the ranch, and, she tells me, often had quite 'heart-to-heart' talks with you! You should feel flattered, on the whole -if she had not considered you clever she would not have cared for your opinions."

[graphic]

"Sliver"---A Joke

By Arthur W. Peach

T

HE VETERAN miner puffed slowly at his pipe as he thought over the request of one of the group who had gathered in his room. "Looking back a good many years, I can think of one experience that may interest you, anyway, and that I won't come into: so I'll tell you. I'll tell you how a Joke-yes, a Joke"-he pressed down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe "came to be a joke.

"Where I first settled down to wash gold after I hit California was a place called Three Jump Gully. There was a good crowd there as crowds of men go when you get them together. That was before the day of the up-to-date systems they have now for handling gold. All over the sides of the hills were the shacks-rough affairs that were no use except to keep out a little too fresh or cold air. We were all having pretty good success, and were feeling pretty good natured.

"There were hard men in camp, but the rest of the bunch being a pretty good sort the bad crowd were kept under cover, and lived up to the rules we had laid down when we first formed camp.

"We had a few queer dubs hit the place, and one was a little, shriveledup, Saratoga-chip of a chap, who carried a big gun on his hip that fairly made him walk lop-sided. I don't know whether he had the dyspepsia or not, but he looked as if he had a hard time getting fuel enough inside to keep a-going. He sure was an insignificant little runt.

"We never paid much attention to him other than to hand him a little

jolly now and then that never made him flutter an eye.

"We were sitting up in Ben Hafton's shack one night. He was a sort of leader in camp, and we had made him a marshal to look out for the enforcing of the rules we had laid down, and his term was up.

"He said he left everything in quiet and order, and that he would resign the place. In the talk that followed some one with a poor claim for brains said: 'Let's put in Sliver for marshal!'

"Right off the bunch jumped at it. If we got him in, we could have a little horse-play on the side that would help to pass the time. So we steered the thing through, and at the next meeting of the camp things were ready, and we shot him into position.

"I was one of the committee to carry him the news, but the whole bunch tagged after, and we had him make a speech and gave him a serenade.

"I thought he'd catch on to what we were up to, but he was as solemn about it as a funeral, and promised to do his best to fulfill the honor we had conferred upon him.

"The next day he marched around with his chest stuck out a little-I thought, but could see no other indication that he was thinking of the responsibility of his place.

"But I was some jarred to have Peterson, a strapping big chap, come into our shack looking as if he wanted to chew nails. It was Sunday night, and everybody in the camp was fairly quiet, for, as I have said, most of the bunch were a good sort, men who had

"SLIVER"-A JOKE.

left factories and shops in the East.

"Peterson stopped in the middle of the floor and glared at me. 'Wal!' he said, with one big breath. 'Do you know what that little shrimp of a Baker did just now?'

"No,' I and my pardner chorused.

"Wal, that little shrimp came inter our shack, and by, he made us put up our cards, the little bottle-nursed fool!'

"To say we lost our breath is to put it right. Peterson's bunch were the toughest in camp, and liked their cards, and we didn't object if they played quietly. I had forgotten that in the rules drawn up which we had given Baker in response to his request, was one saying that no card-playing was to be allowed.

and

"I smoothed Peterson down, told him we would straighten the matter out.

"My pardner stared at me. 'You know what's up? In that fake bunch of rules we gave him, there's a lot that will hit hard, if he starts in putting them through.'

"I thought I saw a way out. 'Don't worry about that. The size of it is: he thought he must show his authority, and got up courage to go in there and break up that game; but I'll bet he was having the shivers all the time he was doing it,' I said to him.

"And as it worked out, I guess I was right, though I think somebody put him wise who had a personal interest in the matter that all those rules were not straight. Some of them had been doped up for the benefit of a few practical jokers in camp, who had made life miserable for others.

""Sliver' looked a little sore for a few days, and the whole matter drifted over.

"Then came the big hullabaloo. A fellow named 'Shaker' Greer and a few cronies struck the place-gamblers; and 'Shaker' had a reputation that would make the devil green. I knew of his cleaning out a saloon in a lower State camp, and when they looked things over, three men were found who never curled a toe after

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wards. He was what the Easterners call a 'bad man,' though he wasn't worse than a thousand others, only he let it show up.

"I was in the big shack that a man named Durfee ran-sort of a general meeting place and saloon, when a man came in and said as if he was telling that Judgment Day had come: 'Shaker Greer's coming.'

"Some of the men cut out back. Others stuck. Greer came in-big, hairy, quick for his size, and made himself at home with his two friends right off.

"He informed us that he was going to stop a while.

"That night there was a hasty meeting of the leaders in the camp. We all knew that there would be trouble when they got started, for men will gamble and drink. What was to be done for protection was the question.

"The first thing that was to be done was to get some one in who would hold Greer and his gang down. Baker was out of the question. We tried to get Hafton, but he said he was planning to go to the Coast; and the first thing we knew the whole bunch showed they weren't after the job. Most had good reasons-sweethearts or homes back East-dreams anyway; and a long rest among the pebbles on Three Jump hillsides didn't appeal to anybody. So the matter was left, though arrangements were made to organize a committee.

"The following night, more out of force of habit than anything else, I went down to Durfee's to play a little and have a drink or two.

"Greer came in, and soon had a game going with one of the men in camp who was a card fiend from the word go. Peterson strolled up while the game was going on.

"I didn't pay much attention until I heard a bellow, and I turned to see Greer glaring at Peterson, and Peterson, angry, but quailing, was backing away from him. 'Pete' was game to say something, and the next thing I knew Greer's hand seemed to flame and Peterson went down with a thump.

"Greer turned on the others who sprang up, and in a strange, softly cursing way made them sink into their seats. Lakefield, a young chap near the corner, reached for his gun, and his head went back with a jerk when Greer fired at him.

"The man was fairly frothing at the mouth, and you can wager we were keeping quiet. I was wondering how in the name of heaven the thing would end, when I saw 'Sliver' appear in the door-white, peaked-looking little cuss. His mouth opened with an astonished gasp, then closed, and I heard this: 'What you up to you!" "Greer whirled to the door; his big gun glinted to a line on the little figure in the door, and I expected to see 'Sliver' drop, but instead there was a smash of flame near 'Sliver's' hip; Greer's gun hand flew up, the gun dropped, and Greer seized his broken wrist.

"Then for a second it seemed as if

the air was full of reports, but they came from 'Sliver's' gun—and he was shooting from the hip-a stunt that mighty few can do. And Greer was huddled against the wall, speechless for once, with the bullets fairly cutting his whiskers.

"I won't tell you much more. Peterson pulled through, but the kid in the corner Anyway, when Baker got through, Greer was through making things lively in the mountain camps. We had a trial; 'Sliver' prosecuted and executed.

"We never found out much about the little chap. Some swore he was a minister from the East, for he tied that camp up sudden Sunday nights, and other days for that matter, so it was like a Sunday school picnic. If a man grumbled, he did it so far down his throat that only his conscience heard him. Some said he was a lawyer, but none knew. Of one thing there was no doubt: he was no joke."

SPRING RENASCENT

I sought thee mid the laughing flowers of spring,
Thee fancied fair, a half-blown firstling rose;
Throughout the summer sought thee, to its close:
"A flower full-blown," my fond imagining,
Then, "Her," I said, "will autumn surely bring,
Her glory such as summer never knows!"
But found thee not, O fairest! till the snows:
So shy love sought, so fleet, so wide of wing!

There! there! belov'd. We have no time for tears; To harp upon the minor "might-have-been;"

To weep the irrecoverable years,

The fallen splendor of the gold and green. Let love-born smiles but steal thy sobs between: Lo! spring in all its wonder reappears.

HARRY COWELL.

Democratizing England

By Warwick James Price

B

OTH in the United States and our "Mother Country," students of present-day history, and even the usually unobservant man in the street, see the steady workings of a political evolution, which is occasionally and incorrectly referred to as a "socialistic revolution," but which warrants the use of the term "democratizing." The AngloSaxon cousins are walking different roads, and one may hesitate to write that they are approaching the same goal, but certainly they are traveling forward and in the same general direction. On this side of the Atlantic the immediate problem appears to be the control of immense wealth which, through the political machine, threatens to strangle genuine public life. The briefest statement of the case in the land whence our forebears came is that England's constitution is being made over, and the words come weighted with deep significance as the observer realizes that that constitution -a constitution of recognized limitations for a matter of two hundred years -but of theoretical continuity for more than six centuries-is a thing of tradition rather than of documentary form and being.

In the past, English advance has largely been achieved through centering in the cabinet the power and authority formerly vested in the monarch; in the present, her advance is being made in centering in the house directly elected by the people the power till so lately vested to great degree in that other house whose members for the most part hold their seats only through hereditary right. "It may seem to Americans," writes Pro

fessor L. T. Hobhouse, of London University, "that at most this is only to bring the English democracy to the point at which American democracy has long stood. But there is a material difference. No American institution has powers which, either by law or custom, approach those which the British House of Commons has long enjoyed, and which are now completed by the assertion of its formal supremacy over the House of Lords."

That upper chamber, indeed, is for most intents abolished, and the destinies of the "All-Red Empire" committed to the lower house alone; a house now authorized to enact laws which none may impugn as unconstitutional, for England has no body which corresponds to the Supreme Court of this country. Democracy has gone so far in no other great nation.

To have done no more than this would have amply justified the use of the word "democratizing," but more has been done. The whole system of British economics and her entire body social have been altered in a way which, less than a decade ago, would have been pronounced impossible. Land tenure and land taxation have been metamorphosed strikingly. The passage into law of the old age pension and insurance proposals have changed essentially the lives and outlooks of nearly twenty million men and women, to whom for long generations change had been but an empty promise. To-day it is proposed to revise radically the scheme of English suffrage, to disestablish the Church in Wales, and to grant a measure of Home Rule to Ireland.

There are at present four recognized

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