primitive. Packed in as close as they could be packed were hungry, tired conventioners and eager-for, give them credit, they are true adventurers willing to try anything once, and the advance advertising had been glowing.

'You start with clam chowder," I explained as the be-aproned waiter in his shirt-sleeves, which were rolled up for business to his hairy elbows, "plunked" a huge granite-wear tureen in front of us.

'Here, I'll serve it for you," I offered, generously ladling it out. "Oh, yes, there'll be plenty," I relieved her consternation. "You see, there's one tureen for each battalion as it were," I motioned to the granite-wear monuments which rose at intervals down the table.

Hesitantly my lady Dokkie friend glanced at the others.

"Oh, that's all right. Nobody waits for any one else," I reassured her again, though just how encouraged she was at the display of manners, or, rather, lack of them, about her was doubtful. But as every one seemed to be wading right in, she tentatively took up her spoon.

"Yes, break your crackers right in!" I guided, and they were big crackers too, much like the big, hard, old-fashioned ones my grandfather used to take fishing with him and keep on the bench beside him to nibble when luck was poor.

"My, this is delicious!" she exclaimed. So far, so good. And I must root a little for Rhode Island clam chowder. Rhode Islanders are very proud of it and champion it above that made elsewhere, particularly in Massachusetts, because theirs is made without milk.

"Here, have some more!" I offered, and utterly without conscience, for only I of the two of us knew how much more was on the menu. I filled her plate again before she could protest, and indeed she did so but feebly and then only through a final attempt to cling to conventional restraint in matters of eating. But many people, I have found, have a delightful time when they forget to be too proper.

Usually at the clambakes to which I have been, the long drive to the tempo-. rarily most popular clambake grounds and the sea air, which one gets there in Rhode Island, are good appetite sauces. There are always long lines wait

ing to get in, and when at such an extraordinarily large assemblage as a national convention one's ticket is number 565 at the third table, he doesn't have any squeamish sense of restraint. And that first steaming-hot spoonful of savory clam chowder as it trickles down your gullet makes you forget manners and lack of table-cloths and the paper napkins that soon disintegrate under clammy, buttery fingers. And so, delightfully beguiled, you dive confidently into your second plateful of chowder.

"Cucumber, onions, brown bread." I fill in the gap while the tureen and bowls are being removed and the waiters once more thread their way in and out of protruding elbows working back and forth, and miraculously produce from their aprons, the ends of which they have held gathered confidingly up about their waistlines, basins filled to overflowing with piping-hot baked clams.

"There!" I exclaim, with the manner of presenting the rarest jewel in all England to the visiting maharajah of India (that is the way it was done to me). "There are the clams!"

"Oh," responded the somewhat bewildered Californian, rather flatly I thought. I had managed to simulate more enthusiasm than that when I surveyed my first clam. "But where is the bake?"

"We'll see that outside afterward. But you don't eat them with your fork; use your fingers," I interrupted myself. "See-like this-" I was determined not to let her escape from any detail of the sacred ceremony.

I

"You open the shell like this. Then you take him by the tail-it's really the neck-like this between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand and then you pull the pants off-pardon me—” checked myself from further enthusiastic indiscretions in descriptive instruction. "That is, you-er-ah-try to remove the tough outer skin, dabble the clam in butter, and pop it in your mouth-so!"

Then, thinking that I had done my duty by the lady from California, and feeling that she would rather be left alone to negotiate her first clam unobserved, I dabbled my own denuded clams in butter and disposed of them. I forgot that it

had taken three years of intermittent clambakes to enable me to eat a whole dish full, with the result that I was surprised when, with eyes glowing with pseudo Rhode Island clam fervor, I turned again to find my Californian friend picking half-heartedly and with a somewhat seasick expression at her fifth clam. Unfortunately, one can tell how many clams, as the number of olives, one's neighbor has eaten.

I was saved from any comment upon the lady's lack of enthusiasm, however, by a blowsy, greasy lady with a hostess badge upon her capacious bosom, who sat across the table from us. She had two pint basins of empty shells before her and was leaning forward, motioning for the waiter to bring her a third.

"Won't that man ever come! I want some clams!" she complained. "Here, waiter, more clams! Yes, two basins, one right here and then that lady across the table wants another basin of hot ones. What! No more? Oh, come now, you don't want to stop so soon. Why, you've only eaten a few! What is the matter, don't you like Rhode Island clambakes? Why, this is the first real meal I have had in four days. I have been so busy looking out for you people that I had time to snatch only a sandwich and a cup of coffee. But when I get set down to a real Rhode Island clam dinner, nothing, no, not even a national convention, can stop me until I have had enough clams."

And here further conversation on her part was cut off when she went to guzzling again.

"That," I said to my new friend, and I felt a strange sudden bond of sympathy with her where before there had been only a wicked joy in watching her tread for the first time the clammy paths over which I had gone, "that," I explained under cover of the clatter of removing granite-wear and more clam-shells, "is what it is to be a real Rhode Islander. It took me three years to learn to get away with one pint of them."

"Oh, aren't you a real Rhode Islander then?" exclaimed my neighbor in relief. "Oh, no, I am from Michigan. And I shall have to live here at least two generations before I cease to be a newcomer," I informed her.

"Well, then, you won't mind my telling you that I don't like clams, at least not so many of them, and I would like to use a fork."

And then with returning condescension I told her that one never did like them the first time and that it was an acquired taste.

"Be of good cheer," I encouraged, "the rest won't be so bad."

"Rest?" she echoed weakly.

"Yes, fish," I explained, as the waiter placed an oily paper package before her. 'But

Clams aren't fish; they're just clams in Rhode Island vernacular," I supplied. "This is bluefish," and I opened my package.

"It's scup!" Our Rhode Island neighbor flatly put me to shame.

"Well, anyway, it's fish." I retreated on indisputable ground and smiled urbane encouragement to my hesitant protegée.

"Don't drop out now," I mumbled between bones. "There is more yet to come, you know. You are only half through."

"Merciful heavens, what more can there be!"

"Oh, sweet corn and lobster and watermelon and Indian pudding," I enumerated.

However, I would not have had the heart to urge her any further under the oppression of this further amphibian announcement, and she probably would have fallen by the wayside had not a conventioner on her other hand have put in the irresistible:

"Oh, come now, be a good sport! One does everything at a convention that comes only once a year. And I have a bottle of castor-oil back at the hotel. I always carry a veritable medicine-case with me now that John is worshipful grand shebang and we have to go to a convention every year in different parts of the country, each one of which insists that you shall eat one of its famous dishes. Cheer up, my dear, fish is like chop-suey, it looks like a lot but it doesn't stay by you long." And when, half an hour later, Isaw my neighbor wanly removing watermelon seeds, I thought it wouldn't either.

No Rhode Islander will admit that his clambake menu is exactly like that

served at any of the resorts along the Atlantic coast. For, in addition to the kind of clam chowder peculiar to Rhode Island, Rhode Island is proud of the way it bakes its clams. They are not steamed in this diminutive principality. Even the resorts chartered by chambers of commerce for their thousands of conventioners make a feature of the bake. Early in the morning rocks are heated to a high degree of temperature in an open fire. Then over them are tossed masses of seaweed. The heat from the stones goes through and through the weed, in which then are buried the clams and the packages of fish wrapped in oil paper. The aromatic steam from the seaweed permeates the clams and the fish and gives them, I must admit, a peculiarly delicious flavor. Expert clam-bakers can tell the exact length of time it will take and so there are always the eleven-o'clock bake, the two-o'clock bake, and so on. And one may find men in different localities who are skilled at making clambakes and who are proud to engineer one for private affairs.

It was at the open-air clambake that I developed any enthusiasm for it. With the coming of fall, begins a long series of old-home days. It fell to my lot one autumn to go to a succession of them, and there I got the real flavor of the Rhode Island clambake which has made me one of its stanchest advocates, removed as it was from even the semicivilized atmosphere of a scenic-railway, merry-go-round, and shoot-the-clay-pigeon resort.

Usually there is a long drive to some one of the isolated picturesque country hamlets from which spring, apparently, Rhode Island's greatest; for on old-home days its most prominent senators, governors ex and otherwise-congressmen, and school superintendents come back. The affairs are often held under the auspices of the ladies' aid society in the grove behind the church.

Long, bare-board tables set beneath the

trees draw the folk most prominent both politically and socially in the State. It is considered fashionable to motor out to the mid-day bake and park one's Packard in the stable where Dobbin and Jerry once yanked at their halters. There, with the license allowed by indisputable social prestige, young society matrons, who would scorn having less than five courses and forks at dinners in their own homes, eat clams with their fingers and put their elbows on the table as they grasp either end of an ear of sweet corn in both hands. Perhaps they are secretly delighted at the respite from conventional formalities.

Coming also as they do just before fall campaigns, these old-home-day clambakes are the gathering-places for all the political cliques. Sleek candidates for Congress from the third district vie with their opponents on the Democratic ticket as to the number of clams they can eat. And each knows that many a vote is won or lost on his ability to maintain his enthusiasm for fish, and more fish, to the fishy end. Keystone political friendships with influential backwoodsmen whom only politics brings on a temporarily equal social footing are refurbished for the fall fray. Men of influence, and therefore of potential ability to swing votes, in country districts in Rhode Island are of more importance than the city boss in a State where the senator from West Greenwich, a town of three hundred odd inhabitants, has as much to say in the upper house as the senator from Providence. Political prognosticators who would know how the straws are pointing gather at old-home-day clambakes.

And so, Mr. Will Rose, there is no danger of the clambake dying out, either in Rhode Island or in the memories of the hordes of visitors who have come to Rhode Island and been treated to its famous delicacy. In the words of the Chamber of Commerce: “Come to Rhode Island and I shall treat you to one."

E

AT EIGHTEEN

ARLY in the final decade of the nineteenth century two girls, one fat and one thin, drove through a country lane. They sat in a high-swung buggy. The short, stout girl managed with authority an old horse capable of speed whenever the driver wished to pass another vehicle. She took no one's dust and gave liberally of her own to any close follo ving cart or carriage. In the clearings were apple-blossoms and lilacbushes in full bloom.

Spring was in New England, and a volume of John Keats's love letters lay on the seat between the two girls.

Amy Lowell's friend from New York had brought the book to open a new world of romance and furnish the material for hours of fruitful discussion. Both knew the poems, many of them by heart, but here was a more direct heart interest than the memorizing of poems. Did Fanny Brawne treat the poet according to their code? Was he a superexacting lover? The theme rose into argument before the horse took the accustomed turn between stone posts and the square, three-storied house was seen through a park of trees.

To the visiting girl, fresh from two years abroad, the drama of life in Sevenels, the Lowell house in Brookline, was literally as good as a play. All the children, a dozen years older than her friend Amy, married and unmarried, were at home; the men, authorities already in government and astronomy, the women, keen for civic betterment and public affairs, with young children in their nurseries. As they gathered for the over-abundant meals of the era, it seemed to the stranger quite possible that the art of listening

might be dispensed with, having become superfluous. Any two members of this family could talk and listen simultaneously, effecting a great economy in time. and patience, for conflicting opinions might be stated, registered, and answered at the same moment. New England reserve did not prevail at the large table. No Latins or Slavs could have discussed more fervently, or with more expressive gesture, the local happenings or larger questions of the day.

When this distinguished middle generation had gone about its engrossing interests, and the house was left to the parents and the two girls, reserve descended like a fog carried by the local east wind. The mother's invalidism, the father's stern conventions as to time and order, even in the conventional nineties, left non-conformist youth without sun or sun-warmed air to breathe. Unaccustomed terror fell upon the visitor, a spoiled only daughter, when a portfolio left on a forbidden table, or arrival breathless and apologetic five minutes late for breakfast, shadowed the hospitable spirit of the house and lowered. the temperature.

The girls read and wrote verses together, criticising each the other. Even at that imitative age Amy varied experiments with characteristic speed and decision. Differences of inheritance and temperament brought many a quarrel. The visitor was a Roman Catholic with New England ancestors and a Southern mother, and the Puritan inheritance of the Bostonian was leavened by an element that, in childhood, had permitted only playmates also in the Protestant Episcopal Communion of a Sunday. Virile and uncompromising in thought, yet with a woman's concrete dependence on affection, Amy's direct, vital quality was a challenge from the beginning. She flung out at her "Papist" friend one day: "You

are talking the jargon of a sect!" The other, outraged, was silent, but for years after questioned in her sayings a possible parochialism.

In the pre-motor days of the buggy and victoria the indoor type prevailed among Americans. We lived, both mentally and physically, inside of the house, and went out of doors for air and exercise. Except in factory towns the English have always lived, as a point of departure, on the outside of their comfortable houses, which they enter to eat, sleep, and read. Amy Lowell, in all the years of her life was equally at home within and outside of walls, and world-wide in her adaptability to environments, excepting only those in which a conventional atmosphere stifled experiment.

At eighteen it was exhilarating to watch Amy outdoors with horses and dogs, in gardens with flowers and flowering shrubs, moon-gazing from the roof of Sevenels, or in the woods near by; to watch her indoors with books, and still more books-walls, tables, and chairs laden with bookswith well-tempered pencils and docile pens.

It was exhilarating to see her in a manyflounced dress, a little knob of hair atop of her head, pyramidal at parties on the spring floor of Papanti's, the local dancing-master's ballroom, carrying her weight in the waltz with airy lightness and perfect rhythm; Amy, so generous in sympathy with other girls' young men, such a good comrade with her own.

To have her to stay in New York savoring cosmopolitan conditions, yet abounding in her individual sense and nonsense, was to gain a new point of view on local matters. It was best of all by day and by night to enjoy the changing tides, the continuous fresh salt waves of her talk, sometimes so overwhelming that one struggled for breath as in a rough surfvital talk that continued between the two for thirty-odd years.

The sharp images of nature gathered by the poet in these active out-of-door days of her childhood and youth served her well when ill health and unremitting labor chained her to the house. Even then, if she went into her garden but thrice in a spring, she saw with a more ardent attention, felt with more keenly

directed emotion than the rest of us in the springs of a lifetime.

Her penetrating eye was not satisfied with seeing, but the society into which she was born was well satisfied. There existed among her neighbors, still in their middle years at the end of the century, several Bostonians who prided themselves, in spite of complete freedom as to time and money, that they had never been outside the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

This self-complacent atmosphere was not one in which a thirst for the unattainable is fostered. Such hunger and thirst, suffered with one's feet on ancestral ground, would have been considered in fin de siècle Boston equivalent to an unhealthy appetite for the moon. Both poems and persons are now alive to bear witness that from these early days the unattainable thing that is forever distant, yet possessed in the search, was Amy Lowell's desire.

AT THIRTY-EIGHT

At last a stir at the door of a newly built house in Brookline, not far from Sevenels. The girl from New York, now a Boston woman by marriage, stands with her husband and children to welcome her famous neighbor, who is an hour late for dinner. Imperious, generous, vigorous Amy Lowell comes up the stair with recognition for every child in the group. "Elinor, how goes the violin? Nancy, are you reading straight through Dickens ? How about a Mikado sing-song to-night, Francis?" Who would not wait material food two hours for the whole-hearted laughter, the whole-minded attention brought to every person and chosen subject?

Dinner over, a certain ritual is in order. The cushions come out of an armchair by the fire, a large pitcher of water is placed at hand; the basket holding eye-glasses for various conditions of fatigue is brought, and the case of mild cigars. The poet chooses one, cuts the end and smokes with such tranquil gusto that the children have never questioned the performance as unusual. They sit spellbound as the talking rises, so practical in its images that even grown-up topics become intelligible. flow of words quickens and the dramatic

The