of sweet chocolate, and a glass of soda pop. Quite a spree! But at the door he hesitated, turned away, and propelled himself to the corner, where he turned down Cherry Street a few doors to Joe Hawkins's little shop. The pleasant smell of shavings and sawdust met his nostrils as he entered the unpainted shed where the carpenter plied his trade.

"Hello, Bennie," said Hawkins. said Hawkins. "What can I do for you to-day?"

"How do, Mr. Hawkins," responded Bennie, and continued importantly, "I 've got a job of work for you right away."

"Right away is awful' sudden, Bennie. What sort of a job have you got for me?" The carpenter shoved back his steel-rimmed spectacles and rested his plane as he smiled at the boy.

"Well, it's like this, Mr. Hawkins. It's that there monument of mine that 's got a rotten board. I want it fixed."

"What are you talking about? Oh, I know; the defenders' monument. Yes, that was a poor job that Silas Bragg wished on Belmont. He got a contractor from outside that would rob a poor-box. Well, what about it, Bennie?"

"You see, it's this way, now. My name 's on that rotten board, and it 's rubbing off and rubbing off till there won't be nothing left pretty soon. Already the last 'n' is most all gone, and that makes it another name when it's spelled with just one 'n'. Don't it, now?"

"I guess you 're right. That's true enough, when you stop to think of it. I'd like to help you out, Bennie, but I don't see what I can do."

"I'll give you a job fixing it," replied Bennie. "And I'll pay you for

it, too. Here's the money now." He dived into his pocket for the quarter.

"Why, I'll tell you; I'd like to do it. I'd sure like to earn that quarter, Bennie." The carpenter smiled quizzically, yet kindly, at the boy, whom he remembered as a little tad playing among his pile of shavings. "But, you see," he continued, "I don't dare to touch it without orders from the committee. They are responsible for it. If I disturbed it, they might put me in the calaboose."

It

"But it 's my monument," argued Bennie. "Leastwise the board that's got my name on it belongs to me. would n't be much of a monument without the soldiers' names. Would it, now?”

"No, of course not. But that's the way it stands. Now, you get Judge Price to O K the order, and I 'll fix up the board for you. And it won't cost you a quarter. I think ten cents will cover the job," Hawkins concluded gravely.

But Bennie found that Judge Price was out of town and would not be back until the Fourth of July, when he was to make a patriotic speech. This was not more than two weeks off, but in his impatience Bennie thought it might as well be two years.

Every day when he looked at the monument it seemed as if his name was getting more illegible. He spoke about it to his mother, but that harassed woman only said, "Bennie, if you 'd spend more time at home helping me peel the potatoes and put the baby to sleep, you'd do better than to worry about your name on a painted board." And this was the mother who had pinned a flag to his lapel the day he had registered for the draft, and who had so proudly displayed a service flag

in the parlor window while he was in uniform! Bennie did not realize how the glory idea is tarnished by the drudgery of every-day life.

Before July Fourth the monument was actually repaired. The rotten board was spliced with a fresh piece of wood, and a neat railing was built around the platform below the inscription. This was in preparation for the speech-making on the national holiday, so that none of the leading citizens would fall over the edge of the platform or snag his coat on the projections of the rotten board.

But to Bennie, this was the worst blow of all, for the splice covered three letters of his name, and he appeared now as "Benjamin Z-," which was too painful to endure.

He forced his way into the private office of Everett Keene, the real-estate man, and breathlessly told his story. It was difficult for even the alert mind of the land speculator to make sense of the incoherent jumble; but when Keene understood, he promised immediate satisfaction.

"You have a right to feel indignant, Bennie. Somebody made a bad break. I'll have that fixed up before July Fourth. I'll call up the sign-painter right now and get him to do the job to-morrow. Miss Wynne, get Blake, the sign-painter, on the 'phone for me right away."

He edged the boy outside, shaking hands in a democratic way, as if they were equals, and turned to the 'phone. But Miss Wynne told him that there was a party on the wire, an inquiry about the Belmont Vista Tract, and before the prospective buyer had been dated up for a visit to the property, the matter of Bennie's name had slipped from the mind of the energetic business

man. man. The sale meant fifty-eight per cent. profit if it went through on the terms proposed.

Bennie rode in the parade on the Fourth of July. It was a proud hour in his life, happier than the day he had marched through the streets of New York some time before embarking. Then he had been worried constantly about the price of all this glory. He had felt bullets plowing their way through every part of him, and cringed at the threat of German bayonets in his vitals. Now it was unmixed glory. He had come out of the war alive, and as good as new, barring a missing leg and a funny sensation in his head. Being crippled, he was even allowed to ride behind the band in a big car with half a dozen other disabled veterans. The cheers they received! The cheers! It was wonderful, thrilling.

But his happiness was changed to disappointment when they halted before the monument, where the Declaration of Independence was to be read and orations were to be delivered. Everett Keene had forgotten his promise; Bennie's name on the rotten board had not been painted afresh.

He complained about it to his comrades on both sides, who assured him that "it was a dirty shame, but likely the sign-painter was off on a drunk somewhere." They were not excited. They had ceased to be surprised at things.

But the sight of his mutilated name ruined the effect, for Bennie, of Judge Price's noble utterance as he read the immortal document, "When in the course of human events-" And the singing of The Star-Spangled Banner could not take his mind off the grievance, though he stood and sang with the rest.

of perfectly graded and surfaced highway, planted with shade-trees on both sides, and bearing at each end a modest tablet stating that this road was built by this committee's decision (giving our names, of course), and that it is our citizens' memorial to the nation's defenders-or something like that. We will leave the trimmings to Judge Price. But, gentlemen, think of what such a modern road would mean to all! The tired business men who ride over it one Sunday after another would appreciate it. The farmers who use that memorial road to bring produce to market would profit by it—”

Chris Blower was on his feet, redfaced and sputtering.

"Say, why are you blowing Wendell Morris's horn?" he demanded. "You know, same as I do, that the contractor that lays the road will get the profit."

"Gentlemen, gentlemen. Order, please!" Silas Bragg tapped with his gavel as Wendell Morris started to his feet, his fists clenched, his face no longer smiling, but pale with rage.

"This insinuation is unbearable! Mr. Bragg, I demand that this fellow apologize. Otherwise I must leave this room."

"Go on, an' take your foxy friend with you," retorted Chris Blower. "Why, this here is a put-up job. We set around this table to talk monument, a marble monument or a brick monument. All right. Then these two crooks try to frame us, so that Morris will get a fat contract, and Keene will get a road to his property for nothin'. You can't run a road anywhere out of Belmont without passing

some of Keene's real estate." The brick manufacturer rested his heavy hands on the table, glaring savagely. His voice was as hoarse as a bull's bellow, for he felt keenly the injustice of this treatment.

As he paused for breath, a gentle, but insistent, tapping could be heard at the door. It had been going on for several minutes, but in the debate the tapping had gone unnoticed.

Silas Bragg pushed a button on the table to summon Corcoran, the porter of the town hall, and asked:

"Who is outside? Please find out what he wants." Then he continued to the belligerents: "I must insist, gentlemen, that you all retract your charges charges and insinuations. Shake hands and discuss this matter like the level-headed business men that you are. Mr. Morris, your unfortunate sense of humor is partly to blame for this scene. Mr. Blower, you have said things that should not be spoken aloud. What is it, Corcoran? Who was knocking?"

The porter grinned.

"It's that dumb-bell. You know; Bennie Zinn. The cheerin' has gone to his head, I 'm thinkin'. He wants to make a speech to you gentlemen about-I dunno what he means-a rotten board." The porter tapped his forehead meaningly and gave a sly chuckle. "Clean daffy!"

"Oh, yes, Bennie. Yes, I know all about it. Well, tell him to go away, Corcoran. Don't be rough with the poor boy, you understand. But tell him we 're busy. Make him get out and stay out. Now, gentlemen-"

OR', chile, you can't talk after the folks," was what my mother's old mammy used to say to Biddy and me when she came back to visit us, and we filled her kind old ears full of gossip while she unpacked her carpet-bag and opened up her snuff-box. "No, indeed, Miss Daisy; you can't talk after the folks no how." More than ten years after, thick in the throes of forming the Colony Club, her words used to come back to me, a fine trumpeting injunction not to take seriously what "the folks" kept saying about our motives in "viciously" launching the first woman's social club-house in New York, which has since become a synonym for success among the club-men and club-women of two continents. "A woman's club is in her home," was the mildest of all the many criticisms hurled at us, and that came from an old gentleman who had done sentinel duty for many and many a year at the Union Club windows. It was one of his best friends who fell on us with, "Women should n't have clubs. They will only use them as addresses for clandestine letters." "Honi soit qui mal y pense," we said and laughed. The only remark that ever gave me pause was Bordie Harriman's, "I don't think you can make it pay." He was so sympathetic otherwise, and so gener

ous in sharing every bit of his experience with men's clubs, that that did n't discourage us at all, but served as wise and steadying counsel to plan the new venture very carefully.

Later, when we were building, it was depressing to learn that the Princeton Club had put its house plans in abeyance on the ground that the Colony Club would soon fail and be for sale cheap. But the night I came into the club and met that valiant spirit, Mrs. Perkins, herself a mother of club presidents and governors, going into the dining-room, I knew we had won. She was beaming.

"I've waited for this evening all my life. I have just telephoned the boys: 'Don't wait dinner. I'm dining at my club.' My dear, I 've been getting that message for years; now I'm giving it."

Deep within me, I was so certain, and so obsessed with what we were doing, that, no matter what people said, I was quite callous. A great many beautiful enterprises probably die an untimely death because of the social pressure against something, anything, new. And yet, curiously, the Colony Club itself began in a bit of dinner-table criticism. In the summer of 1902 we had a cottage at Newport. Our house in New York was overrun

"I don't approve of women going to hotels alone, especially to large ones."

This was twenty years ago, and my hair not white! He laid his disapproval down like family law, and I exclaimed: "But, Bordie, what can women do? Of course there ought to be a woman's club, and we could go to that in the summer, and have parcels sent there and do telephoning." As casually as that the Colony Club began. The rest of the evening we discussed clubs for women. Mr. Charles MacDonald was stopping with us, and he agreed with me. Bordie liked the idea, but he did n't think it could pay without a bar. Bars, most club statistics proved, were the keystone of men's club economy. The Colony Club, of course, never had a bar. It could n't have had, even if we had wanted it, for the site we finally selected was cater-cornered from a church, and a license was n't possible. But I get ahead of my story. And partly because it was so delightful a part of my own life, and partly because of the Colony's peculiar eminence among the clubs of the world, the simple, almost childish details of its founding seem interesting to me.

When we finished talking, I found it was midnight. Yet I wanted to run out down the street in the dark to tell some one else that we simply must form a club. I hardly slept. My head was all buzzing wheels, and much too early the next morning I was at Kate Brice's, daughter of the former senator from Ohio. She had been at a ball the night before and was only

just up and sleepy, but she responded at once. She was a wonderful woman, with a genius for friendship, quick, contagious sympathies, and so wise! We both talked at once. She would get dressed and go with me. Before the August day was over, Ava Astor (now Lady Ribblesdale), Emmie Winthrop, Maud Bull, and Margaret Norrie had all been told that we must form a club, and they had said that, yes indeed, we

must.

Through the rest of the summer and the following winter that very small group kept on talking. Our favorite plan was the modest one of renting the upper floors of a twenty-five-foot house and getting a caterer to open a restaurant on the main floor where the members might get meals. The fire of that first morning had welded the little Newport group together, but in town we stumbled against apathy. Some women said they did n't have need for a club. Some said their husbands would n't approve. Then one weekend at Arden, where I had gone to hunt with the Orange County hounds, Mary Harriman (now Mrs. Rumsey), said she wanted very much to get squash courts on the roof of some building in town, and would n't I help her organize them? I fizzed up again quite as I had in Newport, and began to tell her about the woman's club. In a quarter of an hour we had joined forces, and were enthusing about a women's athletic and social club. After that Mary Harriman and Helen Barney (Mrs. Frederick Watrous) used to come regularly to our little house at 128 East Thirty-sixth Street, and things began to move. Anne Morgan sent word that she was keen, especially if we included a running-track in our plans. We were delighted to have