of semi-slavery or expropriation or cial experts from a large number of industrial exploitation of its subject different nations lay down, from pracpeoples, will in future find itself turned tical reasons, a theory of international in the opposite direction by the still duty and a scheme of international greater and more searching worry of coöperation which ten years ago having to explain under cross examina- would have been thought extreme and tion, before the eyes of an unsym- almost fantastic in a club of radical pathetic commission representing fifty idealists. I think we shall achieve nations, why it has omitted to per- some approach to the "one great city": form various duties to which it is that is, I think that some consciouspledged, and why it has done various ness of ultimate solidarity among the discreditable things which it had sol- peoples of the earth has really begun emnly promised not to do.

to penetrate the minds of ordinary

practical politicians; and, secondly, $6

that a sense of the moral duty of the The world has not yet sounded or strong and advanced nations to help measured the immense power of mere the weak and backward, instead of publicity. I do not mean advertise being confined to disconnected groups ment in newspapers; I mean the mere of unimportant people in various knowledge that your actions are to countries, is now definitely and combe known and discussed, and particu- prehensively recognized in a great larly that you will have to answer public treaty to which all the most questions about them face to face interested governments have attached with your questioner.

their signatures, and will be regularly On the whole, I think it looks as if supported and asserted by the greatwe were moving in the direction of est existing organ of international realizing upon the earth something like opinion. the “one great city of gods and men.” Let us not look to force. Force is It will have, like other cities, its bad against us, and there is no sillier citizens as well as its good; but with spectacle than the sight of the weak the progress of knowledge, assisted by appealing to force against the strong. certain special lessons which have been We have no force. We have only lately learned at considerable cost, I the power of putting facts and questhink it will become within a measur- tions before the public opinion of the able time almost impossible for a world. Then the world that is to decent and intelligent statesman to say, chiefly, the electorates of the profess absolute indifference to the great nations will be able to say welfare or suffering of other parts of whether they wish their governments the human race. To prove the point, to do justly or unjustly, to be worldone need only read the report of the plunderers or world-builders, whether recent International Financial Con- all mankind are to be citizens of the ference summoned at Brussels by the “one great city,” or whether some are League of Nations, in which a number still animals, feræ naturæ, which may of bankers and business men and finan- legitimately be hunted for their skins.

“The Crystal Heart”

By PHYLLIS BOTTOME
Author of "The Dark Tower"

Illustrations by Norman Price

Love was born on a May morn,

Earth and air were alike to Joy, a But he died

friendly playground; and human beAt eventide,

ings, even her father with his irritating An eventide in June.

beard, born to be her play-fellows. -E. H. COLERIDGE.

For all the animal creation she had an

ecstatic and unhesitating ardor. At I

two years old the highest form of MRS. FEATHERSTONE had called her human pleasure known to her was Joy because she came into the world being hurled upon a gravel path by an with the barest whimper, and seemed Airedale and having her fur bonnet subsequently to be so contented with amicably worried. Reinforced by a her arrival.

biblical picture in the nursery, her She liked all the things that babies love of lambs became a mania. At usually like, warmth and her mother's three years old she was accused of breast, the feel of responsible fingers blasphemy because she persisted in and safe knees. But she liked also, stating to an elder sister that she had from the first, the hazard and strange found the Lamb of God in the field ness of baths, the hard, bright rims below the garden. of basins, the loneliness of her deep She was discovered at the same cot, and the clutch of her helpless early age following the local shepherd fingers upon naked air. Nobody and his flock, trailing faint, but eager, needed to provide Joy with a dummy in the dusty rear of the sheep, two or a coral ring. Behind her very large miles from home, under a pink sunblue eyes lay secrets of incommuni- bonnet, fully convinced that she had cable mirth.

found the Good Shepherd, and was Elder sisters might nurse her with approaching paradise. The shepherd the awkward handling of awe, pre- apologized profusely for this involunsumptuous brothers might toss her tary abduction, but averred that he toward the ceiling with the impunity could n't call her “off it,” she was of ignorance, she might be left alone "that set." for hours to crawl all over the vast Even at three years old Joy was a expanses of the nursery floor, and difficult baby to convince of sin. Her when a remorseful nurse hurried up- visions shook reality out of her head, stairs, after an inordinate tea, to see and made her deal elastically with what had happened to baby, Joy circumstance. All the little Featherwould still be found smiling unexact- stones (there were nine of them) were ingly at the universe.

plucky. They had been taught by

a

their mother never to tell lies and not Featherstone succeeded in selling him to cry when they were hurt, but to a friend. usually they had some sense of the After Skylark's departure Joy tried inimical in things and people.

to content herself with the stable cat, Joy had none. If a hand had been a creature of nomad habits and withraised against her, she would have out natural affections. The stable grasped it confidingly; nor was there cat had lost an ear, her frequent any enmity set between her and a families vanished like the dawn, and serpent.

she had no charm for any one but Day after day, unknown to the Joy. Joy was heard murmuring softly entire household, she visited a vicious over her as she tried to claw her way horse in the stables. She had heard out of the child's sheltering arms: her father say it was “a dangerous “You must n't mind not being a dog, brute," and she knew he meant some- dear Kitty, nor even an inside cat. I thing not very nice by “brute," but love you much the best, and I spect she did not know what he meant by God does. You see, it 's so kind of "dangerous.” It hurt Joy to think you to be a stable cat. that so noble a creature as a horse The dogs (the entire household of should be called something that did dogs, ranging between eight and ten, not sound quite nice. She was afraid and not counting Mr. Featherstone's that Skylark might have overheard two retrievers, who were not allowed the criticism and taken it to heart. indoors) worshiped the ground Joy She had to stand on a wooden box to walked on. They belonged to the reach up to the handle of the loose other children (Joy was seldom the box, but she opened the door very legal possessor of anything), but they carefully, so as not to startle Skylark, served Joy first in the spirit. When who stood looking down at her with she came dancing out on the lawn, they all the whites of his vicious eyes roll- let the nine points of the law escape, ing, his teeth bared, and his ears and danced with her. Joy always plastered flat against his wicked head. danced.

danced. She danced on the tips of He had not quite made up his mind her toes when she was angry, and she what he was going to do to her.

danced like an unflurried bird when Joy stood quietly under his nose, she was glad. holding an apple out on a flat hand, What she did when she was sad and murmuring affectionate and un- was never known; there was no apveracious praises of his nature. parent pause between her ecstasies.

Skylark's great nostrils dilated ner- She grew a little wistful sometimes vously above her, and then he moved over the sharp nursery feuds which to one side to give the little figure room, raged above her devoted head, or she dropped his velvet nose down to her could take a violent tooth-and-claw hand, and took his apple. It cannot part in them when roused; but nothing be said that a fruit diet altered Sky- baffled for long her sense of life's lark's unpleasant disposition, but he enchantments. never betrayed his temper to Joy. She set the multiplication table to

What she took him to be he was as a tune, and when she was given dry far as she was concerned until Mr. bread and water for a punishment, she

turned it into a fairy-story, and asked pink, whereas Maude's coloring in if she might have it every night for a moments of excitement or emotion treat. Joy was not a naughty child, turned to mauve. but life did not have the same hori- Maude deeply resented these differzons for her as it had for the other ences, but she was relieved to find, as children; her horizons were farther she grew older, that she usually got away and more luminous.

what she wanted, whereas Joy, tentaThey were all children of the same tive and never on the lookout for parents, but they called themselves possession, made few acquisitions, and the "first" and "second" families on could usually be induced to part easily account of a prolonged break in their with those that she had. ages. Margaret, Paul, James, and Mr. and Mrs. Featherstone seldom Walter were all old, and vanished into interfered with their children and lived the world rapidly, with infrequent and a long way off. There were three romantic returns. Joy and Maude, flights of stairs between the nursery Archie and Rosemary, were compara- and the drawing-room, and there was tively young and had an air of per- a great gulf fixed between middle-aged manence.

Victorian imaginations and those of Rosemary was so young that she their offspring. was like Joy's own child. Joy was Mrs. Featherstone was still a very nine when Rosemary was born, and in handsome woman, and her husband an instant her passion for puppies, had been exceptionally good-looking kittens, dolls, and even waterfalls sank when he was young. Unfortunately, into insignificance. Joy loved every- he had not worn well. Life had picked thing and everybody still, but she out his weaknesses and had set them knew, when she gazed down at this on his face. He was not a strong unexpected visitant, pinched, a little character, and he reinforced his deci

, yellow, with a whining cry and a sions by a spirit of petty tyranny. rather more unstable neck than most He was not a reasonable man, and he babies, that she could never love any- had a good many principles, which he thing so much again.

fell back upon for defense when his Maude was Joy's companion sister, intellect failed him. This is apt to —there was barely a year between be an aggravating quality in family them, and they did everything to life, especially when the principles are gether; but Maude was n't like a new- said to be religious; and it must be born baby. On the contrary, she confessed that Mr. Featherstone irrioften seemed older and wiser than tated his family exceedingly. When Joy. She knew more about the world they got the better of him intellectuand how to act in it, and she was n't ally, he laid them out morally, and at all easily dazzled by its charms. put an edge to their exasperation by The likeness between the sisters was applying penalties. He had not so very strong, but all Joy's features strong a nature as his wife, and he that ought to be small were smaller, never forgave her for finding it out. and all her features that ought to Mrs. Featherstone was a tolerant, be large were larger, than Maude's. quiet woman with a dreadful courage Her coloring was delicately, firmly and a merciless sense of humor. She

a

a

was not the wife for a weak, vain man larly perfect diction, Dickens, Sir who wanted to pose as master in his Walter Scott, and Tennyson's poetry. own house. She let him pose, but he She never allowed any of her chilknew that she saw through his pose. dren to tell tales, or to boast of any

Mrs. Featherstone never laughed thing they could do or possessed. The at him out loud, and she never gave most awful thing she could say, behim away to any one else, not even cause they knew how very much she to her children. She belonged to a meant it, was, “You are not behaving generation of women who kept mar- like a well-bred child.” Nevertheless, ried unhappiness to themselves and in moments of real grief all the children did not think it a matter of great knew they could safely turn to their importance.

mother. She did not underestimate Mrs. Featherstone loved the coun- youthful disaster. try, the moors, which stretched for When the stable cat died (to be miles behind the house, and the sea, accurate, she came by her death which lay beneath the cliffs in front through having given undue provoof it, with passion. She loved her cation to Archie's new bull-terrier) children with indulgence and common and Mrs. Featherstone found Joy lysense, and she did not love her hus- ing prostrate beside her, having tried, band at all. Yet she no more dreamed without advantage, stretching herself of giving him up than she dreamed over Eliza's mangled form seven times, of giving up Rock Lodge because it according to the familiar example of faced north and the kitchen range was the prophet Elijah when raising the extremely inconvenient.

widow's only son, Mrs. Featherstone She never failed Mr. Featherstone in knew that no light comfort would any of the duties of a wife, and as a suffice. housekeeper she was faultless. Mrs. Joy was confronted by death for the Featherstone had never been very first time, and the universe reeled intimate even with her children, but under the shock of her discovery. they all adored her and took from her Mrs. Featherstone took Joy into their cue to life. She had no favorites; her arms and set to work to rob the that is to say, no one discovered which grave of its victory. was her favorite. She did not punish "Poor Eliza,” she said soothingly, easily, and she never praised.

"will never feel pain any more.” She visited the nursery at breakfast- “She can't lap milk," wailed Joy. time, kissing each child once, satisfied "Why can't Eliza lap milk? I 've herself that they were clean, healthy, tried, oh, I 've tried so hard to raise and without real grievances, and did her! I've asked God till I 'm sick of not see them again until after nursery Him.

Him. I don't believe He's there. tea, when she had them down-stairs I don't believe a kind God would with her till bed-time. If there were

.

make a cat go stiff for nothing." visitors, the children played by them- Mrs. Featherstone's mind raced selves with drawing-room toys on the hurriedly over the possible alternafloor, and if they were alone, Mrs. tives to this problem and rejected all Featherstone read out loud to them the more plausible ones. in a musical voice, and with a singu- "I'm afraid,” she said gently, “it