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zons vaster than I had ever known pours, talking of nothing but the rain, them before, and the light falling from the sound of which on his roof is to this greater height of cloudless sky the Cearense the sweetest of music. struck the ground with doubly blind. It was remarkable how nature, too, ing clarity, and seemed to spray out in responded to the change. The whole all directions like falling water. A few vast territory, dry, brown, and shrivstagnant puddles in the depressions of eled up three days before, was althe land were all that remained of the ready a sea of lush green. Leaves long-forgotten rains. Of vegetation opened up overnight as they do only the most striking, and at the same time in a month or six weeks in the temperthe most numerous, were the carnauba ate zone, giving the effect of seeing palms, for which Ceará is famous. midwinter followed by late spring in Unfortunately, the drought was be- a single day, a jungle magic reminding ginning to choke even this paragon of one of the Hindu tricksters who seem usefulness. Sometimes the only rep- to make plants grow from seed to resentative of plant life which sur- bloom in an hour before your eyes. vives the seccas is the joazeiro, a dense

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Rivers bone-dry on Thursday were green, haystack-shaped tree, the leaves considerable streams on Saturday, with of which are cut and fed to the cattle natives wading like happy children in as a last resort.

water where they had shuffled the day Everywhere the talk was of rain, to before in dry sand. No wonder these the Cearense the most important poor, ignorant people of the jungle phenomenon of nature. Even the lose heart when their world dries up, women knew cloud possibilities and or become suddenly like another race studied the horizon constantly for when the clouds again come to their signs of rain. They ended their more rescue. forceful sentences not with "if God Joyful cries of "Eil-a chuva!" wishes," but with "se chover"_"if it ("There's the rain!") sounded all day rains." We had halted again, and I long whenever a new shower burst upon had at last fallen asleep despite the us. Life at best is rigorous in this cliincessant rumpus of my fellow-passen- mate under the life-giving, but somegers, when I was awakened by a heavy times death-dealing, sun, and only the downpour. With daylight the domes hardy or the helpless would have reand sugarloafs and heaps of granite mained here to endure it. No wonder hills through which the train picked its the Cearense who can by hook or way stood forth ghost-like in a blue crook do so becomes a lawyer without rainy-season air, with an appearance idealism or a shopkeeper without vastly different from that under the human pity. blazing sun. Heavy showers continued through the day, and as the

$4 last rain had fallen ten months before, Our last duties in Ceará were to buy joy was freely manifesting itself. the tickets and get the outfit on board. Everywhere people were congratulat- The Brazil arrived about noon, and we ing one another, showing perfect con- were down at the wharf by two, only tentment whether forced to keep under to have our leisurely boatmen nearly shelter or wade about in the down- cause us to miss our steamer and squat

here in the sand another ten days. gether that individual movement was The Brazil is one of the three smaller impossible. Such a network of ham

. and older boats of the government line. mocks, above, across, under, and over

. The cabin-passenger list was made up one another, the bottom of one sleeper of the usual conglomeration of every resting on the belly of his neighbor human color, nationality, social and below, scantily clad women crisscrossmoral standing, from priests to several ing men who had discarded all but a of the most repulsive old Jewish pros- single short garment, as one could not titutes, from clean-cut young Eng- have believed possible filled all the lishmen to licentious, shifty-eyed Bra- space, disputing it with the animals zilian mulattoes. But the real sight and fowls the ship carried as food. was the steerage passengers on the three Sheep and pigs wandered among the decks in the nose of the ship. Here no less frankly natural passengers; six men, women, and children, bound for zebu bulls on their way to improve the the rubber-fields, were so packed to- native stock at the mouth of the spreading from the very edge of the river on each hand. Everywhere the vast stream was dotted with sail-boats, their lateen sails dyed some prime color, blue, saffron, red, or faded pink. Then flat wooded islands, scattered all about, appeared, and finally an opening in the flat landscape disclosed the low city of Pará, still so far away as to be almost indistinguishable, and before we could steam up to it swift tropical darkness fell.

Pará is an exotic growth, a bit of Parisian civilization isolated in an enormous wilderness, which encroaches so constantly upon it that the European air of the center of town quickly disappears in grass-grown alleyways of swamp and jungle. The heavy rains cause this grass to grow with tropical luxuriance and rapidity, so that there are many wide streets laid out between unbroken rows of buildings which are nothing but deep, green lawns with a Cow-path or two straggling along them.

Densest jungle may be found a short "A bit of Parisian civilization"

stroll from the central praca, and wild

Indians, living as they did centuries Amazon occupied stalls in the midst ago, are only a few hours distant. It of the turmoil. One venturesome fel- is an unfinished city of pompous, gotlow had as a last resort hung his ham- rich-quick fronts and ragged rears, mock from the roof above these ani- with only the old town on its knoll, mals, so that whenever one of them and the few principal streets of the moved he was lifted, hammock and all. new town, paved in stone blocks. The

A broad light streak on the ocean rest is almost as nature left it, and ahead announced our approach to the while one may find almost anything in mouth of the Amazon, the “river-sea," the little culture-importing center of as the Brazilians sometimes call it, the city that is to be had in the centers discoloring the deep-blue Atlantic as of civilization, a short walk brings one far as the eye could reach. Soon the to isolated houses on stilts and uninwater had turned a muddy brown, and habited clearings through the jungle we were beginning to see the smoke in which men driving carts drawn by from the Pará power-house across the one bull wade to their thighs, cutting flat, featureless landscape. Monoto- and loading grass. Scarcely a rifle-shot nous, dense greenery soon surrounded from shops offering the latest Parisian us, impenetrable, flat, green forests creations one must depend even for

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life on the strength and agility of I soon discovered that the end of primitive man.

my engagement with the Kinetophone Rubber, the second national indus- was very much nearer than I had try of Brazil, is of course the life of expected. After several communicaPará, which is the reason it had lost tions to the man who held the theatrimost of its old-time energy. Not only cal monopoly of Manaos, we at last was the world's rubber market in a received a cable in code, which we dechaotic state on account of the war, ciphered as "Nous refusons toute probut the Amazon was just beginning to position." Very Parisian, of course, feel seriously the competition of the and definite in any language. The planted rubber-fields of Ceylon, where, fact was, according to every test we in contrast to the high prices of Ama- could give it by absent treatment, that zonia, the cost of living is perhaps the Manaos was deader than Pará. The lowest in the world. Warehouses that afternoon of April 21 I put on a "great two years before could not hold the double program,” so that nearly all rubber that poured in upon them now my old film-friends came out upon the had a few dozens of the big balls stage to do their stunts and give me a scattered about their huge floors, where chance to bid them farewell. The they were being cut up-giving them a next afternoon "Tut" and I went out striking resemblance to dried meat, and pulled down the show, and the red to make sure the rubber-gatherer had trunks disappeared forever from my not included a few stones to improve sight as they were rowed out to the the weight, and packed in heavy boxes Ceará, now on her return voyage. of native wood for export. All Ama- Then “Tut” stepped into a rowboat zonia, from the laborers who tap the and slipped away into the humid trees to the speculators and exploiters night toward the blazing port-holes and their long train of hangers-on, reflected on the placid bosom of the were feeling the change acutely. broad river.

The Crystal Heart

By Phyllis BOTTOME, Author of “The Dark Tower,” etc.

XIV

made an impulsive

Joy could story.

M movement tomcatch hold of her, she kneeled down beside the bed,

but Joy was gone before she could with her eyes fixed very steadily on touch her.

Julia's. It was nearly dark in Julia's room. "I expect it must be everything, She was still awake, and reading by the she said "about the accident, and light of a small electric lamp; but she why it was n't an accident, and other

a flung her book aside as Joy reached the women.

Poor little Nina told melittle circle of light.

poor little Nina, too!” “My dear! my dear!” she said, "has “Oh, don't be sorry for her!” said anything happened?”

Julia, impatiently. “What 's the use “I don't think it can have happened,” of wasting your time being sorry for said Joy, slowly, "but you must tell me girls like that?" if it has. Is it true, Julia? Is it true "Ah, but girls are n't like that, are about Owen?”

they,” interrupted Joy, "at least not “What about Owen?" Julia asked first?" steadily. There was a peculiar tone in Julia was silent for a moment; she Julia's voice which made Joy feel as if wanted all Joy's pity, but she realized it might be true. It was the tone of a that there was too much of it. There person who knows defense is quite vain. was so much of it that she could n't

Joy came close to the bed, but she have it all; there was even some of it did not try to touch Julia; she only left for Owen. looked at her. Her heart was in her “Don't,” she said sharply—“don't eyes. There was nothing in it but pity pity him! I can't bear it. I've been a -pity as few human beings ever know fool myself long enough. From the pity, a passion as selfless and as terri- very first I ought to have known; Nick ble as fire.

told me, 'Owen always had a bad, weak Joy spoke as if her own heart was a spot; he's too viciously easy.' I could broken thing.

have killed Nick for saying it, but it 's “O Julia,” she said, "he loves you! true. When the ground was cut from He must love you."

under my feet I believed in him, and I It made Julia wince.

thought, when I had to believe it, that “You ought n't,” she said, “to have I could pull things straight again. He come into this thing. Who has told did n't like all the things I liked, so I you anything about Owen, and what gave them up—having a real home have they told you?"

and taking care of my babies. You