bors at table seem to know just what effect each and every article of food will have upon each and every part of their anatomy, and they enlighten me concerning their most intimate processes of digestion. Their organs, specially their organs which happen to be out of order, are discussed with the unseemly freedom of a patent-medicine advertisement. Last week I lunched with Amy Middleton. Alice Alison opened the ball by asking Mrs. Tom Butcher if Dr. Phillips allowed her to eat grape-fruit. You see, we made an early start. Mrs. Butcher might have said yes or no, and closed the subject; instead of which she plunged rapturously into her diet, and her chalky deposits, and other things too disagreeable to mention. That started Miss Sedgewick (you know her -Tom Sedgewick's aunt, and fearfully stout), and she told us about three separate dietaries which had been made out for her in a year, one by her Philadelphia doctor, one by her doctor in Carlsbad, and one by a Viennese gout specialist, and which apparently did not have a single item in common. I thought that rather funny, but the humor of the situation was marred by Miss Sedgewick's pathetic endeavor to recall which of the three doctors had said she might eat potatoes. She was still struggling over that point when Katharine Kenyon swept the ground from under her faltering feet by announcing that a wonderful new man in New York-somebody who treated gout and rheumatism, and nothing else-had told her she might eat anything she pleased, provided that she touched no stimulant. Alcohol in any form was fuel to the flame, and it arrested, instead of hastening, as we used to think, the process of absorption. Katharine rather wanted to explain to us just what the process of absorption meant, and had gotten as far as the solvent action of her gastric juice

My dear Nephew:

I am not surprised to hear from you in the vein of your letter of May 20. I am only surprised that you should have left the writing of it so late in your academic

when Mrs. Butcher, who felt that her chalky deposits had been slighted, said she did not care what any New York doctor said; she knew that uncooked food was bad for gout. Why, if she ate an apple, which was the least acid of fruits, she was sure to feel it in her fingers the next day. Whereupon Amy, thinking perhaps that it was her duty as hostess to fall in with the humor of her guests, suddenly remarked that apples were the most indigestible things the earth produced. If she ate the smallest piece of one, it went nowhere at all, at least nowhere that it should have gone. It hung, like Mohammed's coffin, in space, and she felt the pressure for hours.

Now, Sara, I give you my word of honor that I am not exaggerating. And I do think such conversations odious. Have we outgrown the false shame we used to feel at being ill at all, only to wallow unreservedly in our symptoms? Sometimes the wallowing is really comic. I mean when people who do it are quick-witted enough to see the comedy. The other afternoon I asked my niece to hand a cup of tea to an elderly visitor, and the child said reproachfully: "Oh, Aunt Agatha, don't interrupt me! I have just found somebody new to whom I can tell my diet." This is the blessed gaiety of youth which gilds even the doctor's pill; but if the rising generation begins dieting at nineteen, I shall be glad to be spared the conversations of the future. Meanwhile I'll sip my gruel at home, and confide my ailments to my physician, whose duty it is, and whose pleasure it ought to be, to hear them. I am like the old grumbler in "Robert Elsmere" who said, "In my youth, people talked about Ruskin; now they talk about drains."

course.

The fact is that this is the fourth letter which I have received from a member of your class asking my advice as to his life-work. I think you need not consider yourself singular in the fact that although you have devoted yourself to your university work, as I believe, with fair, if not too blameworthy, conscientiousness, you find yourself no nearer to a decision on this subject in

LXXXII-57

Your affectionate friend, Agatha Reynolds.

your senior year than you were as a sophomore. I doubt if two thirds of your class, or of any other university class, have made up their minds. The tendencies of college at the present time are not calculated to awaken in a man a distinct desire to go into this or that profession, and one must have a very decided bent early in the course to lead him to shape his work and studies to a definite purpose. So far from taking a conceited view of his position as a graduate, the average man is usually hamstrung by humility, and has his moments of desperate wandering by the canal, considering whether, after all, it has not been a

terrible mistake, this going to college. He finds himself, in Emerson's words,

Amid the Muses. . . deaf and dumb ;
Amid the gladiators, halt and numb.

But I think you should not consider your time thrown away by reason of the fact that after four years you are no nearer to what is conventionally required of a man of twenty-two. You may well be without a decided leaning toward the law or literature or medicine or even finance without being on that account any the less a cultivated man, since you have a mind capable of adjustment to any work it may have to do. Don't make a mistake: a college education -presuming you have n't forgot to get one -will make you fitter for any sort of work.

It is n't perhaps the fault of the university that you find yourself in this situation, --though it might well give fuller consideration to the subject, and 'the fact that you are not in robust health makes it all the more desirable that you should have the assistance of your friends in working out something practical at this time. How sympathetically and how wisely your father would have dealt with your dilemma! I remember how he loved and helped young people. He was very different from a woman I knew who, during Jack Llewellyn's apprentice-time, when he was hard at work at his writing and needed all the encouragement of family and friends, kept saying, "Why does n't he take a salaried position and earn a living?" I hope she has forgotten this, now that Jack has made his "hit" and more than a competence.

And

Well, I have a suggestion for you. No, it is n't that you should "take to ink." When you 've something to say, you'll have plenty of opportunity to be heard. even if you were ready for the literary life, you could pursue that with the smallest material equipment-only pen, ink, and paper. Unless you have to, don't rush into that crowd. Usually the weeks about commencement-time are busy ones for the editors and publishers of this country by reason of the large number of applications which they re

ceive from recently graduated young men, a very small proportion of whom could be provided for in these lines of business, even if every position were made vacant for them.

My suggestion may prove more practicable than at first appears. It is this: You have formed very strong friendships in college, as I judge from the fact of your election to two societies and from the number of fine fellows whom I have met at your mother's house during vacations. Should you find among these friends two or three others who are in a similar quandary, would it not be worth while for you to consider the organization of a joint-stock company for the purpose of helping one another to a firmer foothold in life? In other things besides hunting burglars, two or three timidities may make a total of boldness. Could you not undertake something together, not exactly as purse-companions, but as partners? For example, could you not raise enough money to buy or lease land in the Northwest for a fruit ranch? Whatever might be your individual weakness or strength, it would be supplemented or utilized by some quality in your comrades. And your pride and your mutual obligations would spur you to your best. If the experiment should not prove a great success during the first year, you would all have had at least a twelvemonth of vigorous outdoor life, a touch of reality and experience in dealing with various kinds of men, a better knowledge of the resources of your country, and the time and opportunity to work out something else for yourselves. This last may seem to you rather poor consolation, but sometimes the pause before the active work of life is as important as an interval in music.

I've spoken of the fruit ranch, almost at random; no doubt you could hit upon something else. The point is, to give reality to comradeship. What is the value of all the four years of college intimacies-to the cultivation of which so much of scholarship is sacrificed-if in such an emergency it cannot be drawn upon to advantage you all? Affectionately yours,

Walter Cripplegate.

T

WAS Benjamin Bejoram sailed

The airship Buzzard Queen; Its run was 'Frisco and New York; Its color, clover green.

The boldest man was Skipper Ben, Who such vocation dares;

But though he cruised the atmosphere,
It never gave him airs.

Now westward bound, o'er Kansas State,
The good ship swept along;
The skipper smoked a stogie stout
And hummed a little song.

When right ahead a frightful cloud
Came rolling into view.
"Oh, let us luff our steering-vane!"
Besought the startled crew.

But Skipper Ben rebuked with: "Fie!
Ye chicken-hearts, avaunt!
There lifts not any cloud in sky

The Buzzard Queen can daunt."

So slickers donned now every man,
As drove the vessel on;

The skipper not one jot he veered
From that dread portent yon.

Till suddenly they saw too late

With what that portent swarmed:
This mighty cloud which spread before
Of grasshoppers was formed!

The Buzzard Queen enveloped was
In less time than I tell,
As thick upon her green expanse
Those hungry 'hoppers fell!

And by a hundred thousand jaws
Thus greedily beset,

The Buzzard Queen, and crew, and all,
Here in mid-air were et!

The mangled remnants dropped to earth,
A shower of steel and bones
(And killed a yellow Kansas dog
Belonging to one Jones).

And this the end encountered by
The airship Buzzard Queen;
Remember, skippers, and avoid
That fatal color, green.

WITHIN THE SHADOW OF THE SAIL

BY JENNIE E. T. DOWE

WITHIN the shadow of the sail,

I and my love sit nigh. "Dear one, O dearest one," I say"Duck!" comes the captain's cry. A moment more, I feel secure,

I will my heart speak out: "Dear one, O dearest one," I say"Duck!" comes the captain's shout. I try a thousand times and one

My heart's true love to tell; Each time, oh, curses on that sail"Duck!" comes the captain's yell.

TO A CHILD

BY STELLA GEORGE STERN PERRY
I HAVE stolen a look
In the sibyl's book,

I have seen the back of a star,
The panther sleek

I have heard her speak,

I have slept in the jinnee's jar,
In the sweet-pea's snood
I have honey brewed,

On the python ridden to war,
I have fetched the spring
On the blue-bird's wing-
Oh, my magic goes long and far;
But I'm all o'erthrown
By the charm you own
And the magical thing you are!

A BALLADE OF BUILDING
BY JULIA BOYNTON GREEN
A NEW house seemed the natural thing
When John had made his modest pile.
So first we wrote an endless string

Of "must haves." Then we studied style.
John favored shingles. I love tile
For roofs, but John thinks plaster 's cold,
And brick 's too stubborn. So I smile.
"I think we 'd better stand the old."

Nan likes colonial, with a wing,

Tom saw a villa on the Nile"A corker!" he declares. I cling

To baths and sleeping porches, while John 's firm for fireplaces. Oh, I 'll Be bound no house will ever hold

The things we want! Though we revile, I think we'd better stand the old.

Our lot's unbought; we 're balancing 'Twixt hill and valley sites. "A mile From town," rules John, "where birds will sing;

A pool, a pergola, a dial."

For me the city has its wile. Who 'd think such problems would unfold! Well, though it is a daily trial,

I think we'd better stand the old.

ENVOY

Friend, do not trust (put this on file) Your dream to wood or stone; untold The snares that builders' steps beguile: You'd far, far better stand the old.

"AND now I must go, for I have n't forgotten that you have a sewing-woman this morning, which means that you have n't a minute to spare; for my experience is that they are all alike and liable to make the most ridiculous mistakes if you leave them alone for a second, and even if you don't, which I never do myself in any circumstances. As for cutting every single, solitary trouser leg for the same side, they make a practice of it, which is a comparatively small matter if you can match the goodsthough of course it's always as provoking as it can be; but once I had the sweetest flowered organdie ruined that way-pink moss-roses climbing on sort of porch pillars in gray and green on a white backgroundperfectly lovely, and it was a remnant, and not another scrap to be found, though I looked everywhere.

"What? Oh, for myself, of course, though I don't often have my dresses made at home;

but this time I thought I would, and the consequence was that it was a perfect botch. I did succeed, it is true, in getting a piece for the sleeve that was remarkably like, considering it was entirely different,-plain roses instead of moss, and another background altogether-so much so that everybody that I apologized to for it said they had n't noticed it, which was very gratifying, of course; but I never could bear the dress myself, and neither could my husband, though I'm sure I don't know why, and I doubt if he did.

"You know how men are; they take such unreasonable likes and dislikes! It certainly was n't the sleeve with him, for if the whole dress had been different he would n't have thought it mattered a particle; and he probably considered the sleeve an improvement even, for he never could bear moss-roses, though they are a perfect passion with me, and I never will be satisfied until I have a bush of my own. I have set out fully half

a dozen, and they have all died. He says they look like cheap china, but I believe it is really an excuse because he hates so to bother with planting things out, and I never will dig myself, I'm so desperately afraid of earthworms-fishing-worms, the children.

Drawn by Mark Fenderson

"I'M SO DESPERATELY AFRAID OF EARTHWORMS'"

call them. One of the very first things my little Wellington learned to say was 'fishingworm.' He always said it when he wanted to be very bad, and my husband said it was a form of profanity, and I ought to whip him for such language. But I did n't know whether you could really consider it language, and, anyhow, I had n't the heart to whip him, and as for my husband, he simply laughed at him; you know men never will take any responsibility. I often say I have the whole management; and as for choosing where we will go in the summer-where are you going, by the way? Oh, are you? I hear there was a very motley crowd there last year. Mrs. Baker says so; but then she is so motley herself I don't think she need talk about anybody else. But that's always the way. Do you know, she actually had the impudence to tell Mrs. Sykes that

my family were worthy people or respectable people or good, honest people, Mrs. Sykes did n't remember which; but, anyhow, it was perfectly horrid, and not true at all. Why, my father

"Oh, I expect to go back where we were last summer. My husband always leaves me the burden of choosing, he says one place is about as bad as another,—but he does say that we might as well go to the Browns' again as fly to ills we know not of; that 's what Shakspere says, you know, and I think it 's very sensible, particularly in the case of children. They are a nice, quiet old couple: two souls with not a single thought, my husband says, but that is not so at all; I never saw better vegetables, and—

"Yes, indeed-just as busy as I can be getting ready; but all next week I expect to have a sewing-woman myself, and then

"No, indeed; no time for anything. Mrs. Tompkins says supervising them is too much. like Egyptian bondage for her, and she is n't going to have any more sewing done in the house except what she does herself. Her experience has been worse than mine. Miss Jinks cut an entire dress wrong side out for her and utterly—

"Yes, Miss Jinks. You don't mean to say you 've got her! Why

"Oh, they would have tried turning it, of course, if turning had been any use, but it was n't, not the least in the world; she just had to make two waists of it, identically alike, which was the greatest pity, because her things are always longer wearing out than anybody's I ever saw, and those two looked liked one that was simply going to last forever; though all clothes are mortal, of course, as I know to my cost, particularly children's stocking knees.

"What? Oh, the most careless I ever saw! I do wish I could have warned you, though I would n't injure Miss Jinks for the world. It is n't that she does n't know, you understand; it is just that she does n't put her mind on what she is doing. Even if you sit right by her and give her the most minute directions, she has a kind of dazed look, as if she was n't half taking it in. I would n't trust her myself with anything I was particular about any sooner than I would my little Elizabeth; in fact, she has n't half as much common sense: but then, if I do say it that should n't, that child is really remarkable-so practical, so judicious! For instance, whenever I give her a little money to spend for herself when she is out with me, instead of squandering it perfectly at random as most children do, she always says to the man at the counter, or the woman, if it is a woman, 'What is the price of your ten-cent dolls?' or 'What is