same fan and handkerchief are there, but that irresistible, roguish glance which plays on her face in the later portrait is the mesmerizing glare of a Medusa in the schoolboy's handiwork, and the black curls are more suggestive of art than of nature. As for the elderly soupirant who stands before her, crush-hat in hand, he surely must have been drawn from the boy's recollection of some guest of Major Carmichael Smyth's when at Addiscombe. At any originating idea which may have suggested the two drawings "Dangerous" and "Slow and Steady wins the Race" of course no guess can be made. But in the case of the former it is curious to note something of the same motive as in the illustration to the Pickwick Papers made by "Phiz ten years later on. The self-satisfied dandy, skating backwards with folded arms, has cer

tainly nothing in common with Winkle the sporting-man; but the outside-edge stroke which he has just begun will evidently land him with fatal accuracy upon the couple in collision behind him, much in the manner of Mr. Winkle and the medical students at Dingley Dell.

In Slow and Steady," the welterweight jockey, gazing with satisfaction at the winning-post, and his mount, as much astonished as the rider at reaching the end of the course, are perhaps memories of some Devonshire steeplechase or local point-to-point race visited by young Thackeray. The spectators are not in view, or one would like to point out among them the figures which were afterwards better known to the world as Blanche Amory, the jolly old Begum, little Harry Foker, and perhaps even "Pen" himself

A

TH

I HE city of Portate, South America (began the engineer), has taken on a flavor of enterprise since I first knew it. Two Northern companies now have much to do with its affairs. Their relations with the government are mutually differential. One of them, the Union Electric, has the trolleys and the street lighting; the other, the Transport Company, owns the inland railroad, and a large share of the steamers that anchor in the harbor. I had charge of the lighting plant for the Union Electric, and a man, of whom I know no other name than Kid Sadler, was harbormaster for the Transport Company.

There was a youthfulness about him that belied his looks. For he would go around in his grimy tugboat, that was called the Harvest Moon, thrashing and

blackguarding roustabouts, and joyful as the dewy morning. At night you'd be apt to find him playing a banjo on the deck of the Harvest Moon, melancholy, singing verses of his own composition to tunes that came of his inner consciousness. Some of these verses were interesting, but the tunes appeared unfortunate. He was particular that his poetry should be accurate as to facts. As to tunes, he had neither gifts nor instruction.

I always thought he was too reckless. He threw one named Pedro Hillary off the stern of the Harvest Moon, so that Pedro went down-stream with the tide, because no one thought him worth fishing out, until it was found that Pedro was a member of some post-African sort of Masonic society, and a British subject at that from Jamaica. By that time

he'd been picked up by

a rowboat, and was back in Portate, in Ferdinand Street, and Ferdinand Street was very mad. It was a street occupied by negroes, and Sadler was not popular there.

Sadler was a capable harbor master. The Transport Company thought much of him. Only it seemed to me that he acted youthful. He was a gaunt man with a scrawny throat, ragged dangling mustache, powerful large hands, little wrinkles around his eyes, and a hoarse voice. I wouldn't go so far as to analyze him, yet I'd say he was conscientious in his way, but given to sentiment, to turning out

poetry and singing it to misfit and uneducated tunes, given to joyfulness and depression, and to misleading his fellow man; which qualities, when you take them apart, don't seem likely to fit together again, and in Kid Sadler I'm not saying they did fit. They appeared to me to project on the edges.

He came to my house in the suburbs the afternoon following the day that Pedro went down the Jiron River, and lay in a hammock where one could look down past the fruit trees toward the mouth of the Jiron and the blue islands. He was making a requiem, such as he thought he ought to do under those conditions, though the requiem was not good and the tune exasperating. "Pete Hillary," it began,

"Pete Hillary, I make for you

This lonesome, sad complaint.
Alive you ain't no use, is true;
If dead, you probly ain't.

"Pete Hillary, Pete Hillary,

I don't know where you are.
Here's luck to you, Pete Hillary,
Beyond the harbor bar."

Then a man called "Little Irish," who was Sadler's heeler,—and I never heard his family nor his given name, but he was chunky in build and nervous in his mind, Irish came running up the path at this moment, and cried: "It's a warrant for ye, Kid! Run! Oh, wirra! What did ye do it for?" He was distracted. Sadler paid no attention, only twanged his banjo and sang casual poetry, and Little Irish jabbered without rest. ""Tis Pete Hillary himself was pulled out forninst the sand-bar, and back in Ferdinand Street, swearin' revenge for the bucket o' wather he swallyed. An' 'tis the English consul up to the City Hall says Pete come from Jamaica, an' a crowd of naygers from Ferdinand Street be the docks, an' wirra! what a time! Ah, coom, Kid! Coom quick, for the love of-"

"Gi' me a kiss, sweetheart, says he;
Don't shed no tear for me, says he,
And if I meet a lass as sweet
In Paraguay, in Paraguay,
I'll tell her this: Gi' me a kiss;
You ain't half bad for Paraguay.'"

-"an' two twin sojers wid their guns

So I saw no more of them that day, nor heard any news until the noon following. There was a gale from the northwest in the morning. Chepa-who was a little half-breed that belonged to meChepa came out from the city, and said the Plaza was boiling with news.

For, he said, Sadler had gone aboard the Harvest Moon and surprised the twin soldiers, and dipped them in the water with their artillery, and sent them uptown with the wet warrant stuck in the muzzle of a gun. Then he paraded the Harvest Moon the length of Portate's water-front, tooting his steam-whistle,which was not considerate nor scrupulous. Then the Jefe Municipal-that is, the Mayor-fell into a temper and sent a company of the pink soldiery of the city guard in the morning, packed close in a tugboat. Then Sadler led them seaward, where the gale was blowing from the northwest and the big seas piled past the harbor bar. Most of the pink soldiers were seasick, they not being mariners and the gale standing the tugs on their beam-ends. It was well enough for Sadler and Irish, but no sort of position for a city guard, and they came

ing near, we saw Sadler standing by the rail, with the black nozzle of a hose-pipe pushed forward, and shading his eyes against the glitter of the water. But when he saw who we were he took us aboard peaceably. But he was thoughtful and depressed. He sat himself on the rail, dangled his boots over the water, and described his melancholy.

"What makes a man act so?" he asked. "There's my fellow man. Look at him. I'm sorry for him. Most of him had hard luck to be born, and yet when he gets in my way I naturally walk over him. Some of him's sort of leathery and pas

sive, whose nature is to go to sleep in the middle of the road and get walked over. When I ketch that one of him, why, I kicks a hole in his trousers, and then it cccurs to me, 'Oh, my sufferin' brother, this is too bad!' Pete Hillary's one of the dumbdest and leatheriest, and the Mayor's pink sojers, they been fillin' my bosom with joy and sorrow till I got the heartburn, and laughed from eleven o'clock till one, and been sheddin' tears ever since. Irish went three times round his rosary before he got the scare kinks out of his backbone; and between Irish bein' pathetic and the Mayor and his sojers comin' out so pink and goin' back mixed and jammed to the color of canned salmon, my feelin's is worked up to burstin'. What makes a man act so? It must be he has cats in him."

He pulled his mustache gloomily. I judged his remorse was sincere, though youthful. I said:

"What I don't reconcile in you, Kid. is your poetical habits and habits of banging folks. They don't seem to me to fit. I'd suppose a reflective poet would be one thing, and a gifted, ingenious scrapper another. They don't agree. One of them gets remorseful. He takes to laments and requiems, nightly, biweekly, same as malaria. They don't fit."

a

"Why," he said, "them is just twc different ways of statin' that things is interestin'. It's no more'n that. And yet you ain't far from the facts. It was a shoemaker in Portland, Maine, that taught me to chuck metres. I was young one, and the shoemaker's son taught me to put up my fists in the back yard, more because he was bigger than because he was interested in my education. Then by and by I bettered the shoemaker, and licked the son in the back yard. I never got away from those two things to find another as interestin' as poetry and trouble. But they don't get along together. They never did. But I'll go away, Stanley. I'm fond of Portate, but I'll go. I will, honest; I'll be good. I wish they quit puttin' temptations on me. But they won't. They're comin' again. They've borrowed the Juanita, and she's comin', with only a steersman in sight, and a cabin full of sojers that can't keep their bayonets out of the window. My! ain't it sly!"

He went to the companionway and called Little Irish, telling him to "start her up."

The Juanita was one of the Transport Company's tugs. She appeared to be engaged in a stratagem. She passed the Harvest Moon in mid-channel, then swung and came up on the other side. The Harvest Moon made no motion to escape her anchorage, though some engine below now began thumping busily. Sadler went aft, dragging the long black hose, and sat below the rail till the Juanita drew in to forty feet away, and through the deck-house windows you could see the tufted caps of the suppressed soldiery.

Out of the nozzle of Sadler's hosepipe there leaped a steaming arch that vaulted the distance and deluged the steersman. He howled and disappeared, and the Juanita ploughed onward unguided. The long scalding projection of Sadler's hose played through the windows of the deck-house. There were crashes, uproar, execrations, while Little Irish's engine kept on beating steadily, chug, chug, deep in the chest of the Harvest Moon. The Juanita went out of reach, and the soldiery poured furiously on the deck. Sadler pulled me flat beside him, because they might take a pot-shot at us -though they didn't. The Juanita careered up-stream. Sadler sat up.

"They give me the colic," he said, and wiped his eyes.

"Honored sirs," said Chepa, putting his head up the companionway, "the hot water was too hot," and he blew on his fingers. Sadler groaned:

"Just my luck! I meant to tell Irish

VOL. CVII.-No. 639-55

to take the boil off, and forgot it. Now their little copper skins 'll peel. Get out, Stanley. Go ashore. You can't do me no good."

He looked half sheepish, half angry. When we pulled away, he sat with his back turned, his boots dangling over the water, and shoulders bent, staring down mocdily, remorsefully.

III

The superintendent of the Transport Company at Portate was named Stephen Dorcas-a bustling, heavily bearded man, whom you couldn't hold still on account of his vitality. His speech was explosive, like the working of a piston-rod. Him I met in the Plaza the next morning going into the City Hall.

"Come on!" he cried. "We'll fix it. What? Well, you see, Jefe was stuck. Came to me. Now then. Got an idea. Suit him first rate. You see. Struck me this morning. Half past seven. Please everybody."

So we came to the Mayor's office and found Sadler, who sat alone by the window, looking down moodily on the Plaza, where the chain-gang from the city jail was pretending to mend the pavement, loafing, quarrelling, one man pulling up what another laid down.

"Got him," said Dorcas, joyfully. Thumped up the Jefe. First he cussed, then he calmed. Be up pretty soon. Now- Hold on, though. Wait for the Jefe."

Sadler nodded, and we sat and watched the chain-gang till the Mayor came in, out of breath. He was a small, stout man