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have been an expert all right to ask questions like those. Search me! And none of the others could answer them either. And there was n't any way to smother them, although Burket did try to ask what Burden meant by "shortest."

So we side-stepped.

It was David Teak, who owned several good pictures, who got us out of the hole by changing the subject, though I think it would have been better if he had not been quite so specific. Never narrow your meaning until you have to, has always been my motto.

"Surely, Mr. Burden," he said, "you can't test the culture of a community, as, for instance, its knowledge of painting, by a catch question or two out of a text-book on Shakspere."

I did what I could to broaden his position.

"True culture recognizes that art is one," I began. "Literature, painting, music-an offense against one art is an offense against all art."

But Burden would n't have it broadened.

"I have always regretted my lack of acquaintance with the masterpieces of painting," he said, narrowing back the subject.

The next moment Teak had laid himself wide open.

"Exactly. Now, we who live in the Yews have that acquaintance for a background. Some of us have been abroad. Mr. Larrabee there has. I have. Mr. Mandin has a picture in his house that cost $60,000. Mr. Curtis has some paintings running up into the thousands of dollars. And Mr. Gamble also. And so have I."

"Our boast is, to know and love the best," said Larrabee.

The saying was originally my own, and I had used it to Burden, so that he was familiar with it. He must have thought up the play on words in his reply during the week, knowing that Larrabee would give him the chance to use it.

"Your boast, as you say," he remarked very quietly.

There was a full minute of dead calm.

"Asking pardon, if I wrong anybody present."

"Don't mention it," I said.

"You have no real knowledge of pictures or painting, any of you," he continued. "Your comments on Bruce Avery's work the other night proves that."

The mention of Avery's name caused me to lose my temper, so that I did n't say quite what I meant; that is, in words. But I meant the spirit of what I said, and mean it still.

"Bruce Avery!" I cried. "That piker? Why, there was n't a painting in the house worth more than four bits! They all seemed to carry price-marks on them plain enough, but I did n't notice any that were labeled 'Sold.' I would n't pay ten dollars for the entire outfit."

"Some of the pictures were very good, I thought," said Burden. Larrabee laughed.

"According to you!" he said.

"As for Bruce Avery's, I bought all that were for sale."

I almost forgot I was angry.
"You bought all that junk?" I cried.
And then he let us have it.

"Only three pictures," he said very quietly. "The rest were not for sale. Mostly they were borrowed from the Condon Gallery in Boston. You see, they were not painted by Avery at all, but by other painters. One was a Sargent, another a Whistler, another a Corot; then there was a Vandyke, a Rubens, and some others like that, selected for the occasion. It may increase your respect for them if I say that they were insured for a million and a half dollars."

"For the love of Mike!" I said-just like that.

"That's what I meant," said Burden. "Is that all, Mr. Burden?" asked Larrabee, his voice ice-cold and expressionless.

"I suppose," said Mandin, who had kept in the background, “Mr. Burden will tell us now that we don't know music, because we thought Mr. King was playing rag-time the other evening, when in reality he was playing great music by the greatest composers."

"Right," said Burden, promptly. "You don't know music."

"For the love of Mike!" I repeated. "We'd better be going," said Larrabee. "One moment," said Burden. "If you do know music, any of you, tell me the name of a single selection that Mr. King played."

Mandin bowed low, very politely, with his hand on his heart.

"Surely," he said, "even a symphony subscriber could n't be expected to recognize a Beethoven number after a cheap, picked-over player like him has mangled it."

That was getting to him!

"You can't tell me?"

what you say, and is what you say, it's good. Keep it!' Bruce Avery said the same. Keep it!' he said. 'It's different, and means something.' And Archer Windham also. 'It's the only touch of poetry in the whole dashed street!' he said. "And, gentlemen," continued Burden, "I know they 're right. The track 's there to stay!"

Think of that for neighborly love!

"When you go out, look at it. Notice the design of the concrete ties and their intervals and the manner in which they are anchored and the extent to which I use crushed limestone under foot. And notice the design of the rails. I had them rolled to my order from low-phosphorus,

"No," replied Mandin, "I can't, and open-hearth steel, bottom of the ingot, one proud of it."

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He had us dead. Sure he had. And the funny thing was, instead of going home, we stayed and heard him through.

It did n't take long. He talked a little about perfection in one's work. In his profession it did not exist, could not, because of limitations imposed upon the builder from the outside.

And yet it did exist, too, in his mind. The railroad across his front lawn was built according to the ideal of perfection he had in his mind.

He went on to justify himself in replacing it.

"I asked Stradow what he would do in my place," he said. "Stradow told me he would put it back. 'If it means to you

hundred and twenty pounds to the yard. New in every detail, from the tamped embankment to the web and crown of that beautiful steel. No railroad in the world ever had such a track."

But what's the use?

We did stop for a moment at his railroad as we passed out. I could n't see any essential difference between it and the good old P. & A. The others would n't talk about it; they were too downcast. "We can boycott him," said Curtis. "Yes," agreed Graney, "we can." "It's the only thing we can do," said Burket.

"I suppose that track is his ideal," remarked Larrabee as we separated for the night. "But imagine my setting up my ideal in my front lawn!"

I can imagine it all right-yellow, with milled edges!

That's about all. We did what we agreed upon. We boycotted the Burdens good and hard, but the only result seems to be that more and more people are coming in from the outside to call on them. Good people, too. I can understand that, however. Burden has money.

What I can't understand is, what that Windham chap meant when he called Burden's railroad the only touch of poetry in the whole dashed street.

But what does any poet ever mean, anyhow?

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The château, which was built against the old Roman wall and used parts
of it in its construction. The château was once occupied

by Merovingian and Carolingian kings

In Senlis

By ERIC FISHER WOOD

With seven sketches by

Orville Peets

Na summer's evening in 1915 I entered the world-old town of Senlis. I was on a sketching expedition, and the soft sunlight on the walls so delighted me that I stayed at work until the failing light interrupted my sketch. The village was quaintly gay, a place of many charms. There were flowerboxes in the second-story windows of the ancient houses which stood in ranks along the cobbled main street. I felt that here at least there would never be hurry or bustle or change. I became imbued with the spirit of peace, and felt

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Gate of the château of Senlis. At the left is the ancient Hôtel des Tres Pots

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