half of that. Now, was n't it true, as she always said, that Elezeus was very good?

Oluf Myran glided on through the wind and the darkness from house to house with Lofoten letters. At home at Myran there was great excitement, for the letter to Màrya was a real, true money-letter with many seals upon it. When she took it in her hand, she turned it over and over, and held it under the lamp to see if it were Kristàver himself who had written it; and round her pressed several heads, fair and dark, trying to get a view.

When she opened the letter, several bank-notes fell out, which she hastily replaced in the envelop. Her husband wrote that the fishing was quite extraordinarily good, so that things might go better at Myran after this.

The bedroom-door opened, and the old woman with spectacles upon her long nose appeared.

"A Lofoten letter? Well, I declare!" Màrya's mother, Lava Rootawsen, happened to be staying there just now. She was to have gone home several days before, but how could she in such weather and with the roads in such a state? She now appeared beside the other old woman at the bedroom-door, and asked if it was a "money-letter."

"Yes," answered Màrya. The two The two old women came nearer with inquisitive faces, but Màrya had already hidden both letter and notes in her bodice.

"And Lars?" asked Lava again. "Yes, he 's working as hard as he can, too."

"And the fishing 's so extra good, people say. Is that true?" It was her mother-in-law who made the inquiry.

"Oh, it can vary so!" said Marya, clambering up on to her weaving-stool and beginning to weave. Old people should not be told too much.

When Oluf had eaten his supper, he had to go out into the storm again, for there was still one more Lofoten letter, and they are not things that you allow to lie until the next morning.

It was for Siri Skaret, who lived away up on the hillside with a lot of children, and had very little of either food or firing.

No one in the neighborhood would have her husband, Severin, on his boat, because he was always swarming with vermin; but he went north by steamer, and shipped with a linefisherman year after year. It was not much that he brought home, but it was better than nothing.

Both winter and summer the little gray cottage on the hillside presented a poverty-stricken appearance. The buildings were in such a state of disrepair that the cows in the cow-shed were almost up to their knees in water, and the children wore caps pulled down over their ears, and woolen gloves, indoors, because the wind blew right through the walls.

"Oh, they're getting along all right." There was nothing more to tell the two old people; a little secret between her and Kristàver did not concern others.

into a skin coverlet that was hung up to keep out the draft. Within was a room in which stood three beds full of shivering children, while a pale woman sat carding wool by the light from the stove. She was wrapped in

a large, faded woolen shawl, but she, too, was blue with the cold. She was not much more than thirty, but her face was pale, worn, and lined, and her eyelids so heavy that she seemed hardly able to raise them to look at the new-comer.

"A Lofoten letter!" And as she opened it, a five-krone note dropped out. "Dear me!" This was wealth indeed!

"Sit down, and I'll get you some flat-bread and cream," she said, feeling that she must do something in return for the blessing he had brought them all.

Oluf could not wait, however. He was the man of the house at home now, so he had to be off again. There were many other things for such a lad to do in a neighborhood where all the men were away. A little while ago a girl went out of her mind, and he had to go and watch over her for a day and a night, and then go with her and her mother to the asylum. And when old Tröen had inflammation of the lungs, Oluf had had to get a horse from Lindegaard and go for the doctor. People felt that they must go for help to the men-folk that were left.

He forced his way through the northwest wind, his face lashed with snow and sea-spray and with sand and seaweed that the wind whirled up from the beach. As he opened the door at Myran, the wind tore it from his hand and swung it back against the wall; the house shook, the sudden gust of wind extinguished the lamp, and the children began to cry.

It is unpleasant to be out on such a stormy night. It is bad enough down by the fiord, but what must it be for those who perhaps are out on the sea! Lofoten! Lofoten!

Màrya had relighted the lamp and

put the children to bed and had returned to her weaving. The house shook with the wind, and it was a relief to her to have her fingers occupied when the gusts of wind threatened to lift the cottage and carry it away through the night. Was she afraid? No, but she felt inclined to sing, to cry out wild, incoherent words, only to drown those shrieks of anguish out in the darkness, where the storm was like the howling of evil spirits.

She worked on with busy fingers. It was no ordinary piece of weaving, not homespun or linen; it was a hanging with figures woven into it, and she had learned how to do it from the master-forester's wife up the valley when she was a girl. This lady had lately come to her with a pattern for her to weave from, and had explained the figures to her, though she had learned about them in her school-days. It represented the legend of Siegfried, and at present she was doing the part where Siegfried was riding on his horse Crane through a great, crackling fire on the mountain in Franconia.

As she sat there with the storm about her, she seemed to be looking at her own life as she wove the great legend of long ago into her web. She was condemned to live here by the sea, which she hated. It would almost be a rest to go out of her mind some day, but she would have to take Kristàver with her. She could easily throw herself into the sea in weather like this, only she must have Kristàver with her. On such a night she sometimes felt as wicked as a witch, almost as when Siegfried drank the blood of the dragon. She wanted to do evil, she wanted to kill, but, but she must certainly have Kristàver with her.

It was near midnight, and the storm

was increasing, but she sat on, weaving the saga into her web.

The two old women had gone to bed in the bedroom, and the children were whimpering in their sleep; the cottage shook, and the spray dashed against the window.

Suddenly Marya's mother-in-law appeared at the bedroom-door in her night-dress, without her spectacles.

"Good Lord!" she exclaimed, "don't you hear the storm? What must it be like in Lofoten! Oh, good Lord!" The tall, old woman came in and began to walk up and down the room with folded hands. Her black cap was still on the back of her head, with wisps of white hair escaping from it. "There 'll be dreadful things happening to-night, Màrya; there 'll be many sleeping to-night never to wake again. God help those who are on the sea tonight! And God be merciful to every sinner that has to stand before his Judge to-night! We are in danger wherever we go. To-night, Màrya! Oh, Lord Jesus!"

She had experienced many such stormy times in years past, and on a night like this she forgot that she was old and rheumatic, and became young and active from the great things she saw. It was as though the Almighty Himself came down and took her with Him in all His power, as though she could almost open the door and fly out into the awful storm. "Lord Jesus! What a night, Màrya! What a night!"

Màrya went on with her weaving, her face pale and hard. The old woman began singing the hymn for those at sea, and it sounded weird in all the noise outside. Màrya turned to look at the old woman in her nightdress, walking up and down the room

with wide-open eyes, singing to what she saw. Her face seemed to be the face of the very storm itself, and her voice the voice of drowning men.

They dared not put out the lamp when at last they went to bed. "Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!" sighed Màrya, too, as she pulled the clothes over her head; but it was not a prayer to Him, for God was only the power for evil in storm and disaster. Pray to Him! No, she closed her lips tightly, and hardened herself in defiance. Pray to Him! Never! never! Away up the valley He was quite different; He made the ground fruitful and ripened the corn. There He represented still, moonlight evenings, the call of the blackcock on the hill, the trickling of the brook, light nights and warmth; but here beside the sea He was a different God, Whom to know might be to lose one's wits.

Oh, if she could only take the children and move up into the valley some day! What a good woman she would be! But Kristàver would have to come, too.

There was a noise in the porch, and some one tried the door. Or was it the wind? No! is it possible that any one can be out in such weather!

It was a neighbor, Olina Tröen.

"Don't be afraid!" she said; "but Peter Suzansa's girl's taken ill." "Goodness me!" exclaimed Màrya, sitting up.

"You must get up and go there with me," said Olina. "She can't be left to lie there and die! And Oluf must go for the midwife."

A little later two women and a boy were struggling through the storm and the snow-drifts as they made their way along the road by the light of a lantern.

F Samos, or whatever Grecian neighborhood it was, had its Æsop, so has Indiana its George Ade. His business is to give flesh and blood to maxims. Making maxims is next to the oldest business in the world. As soon as any creature has learned an art or trick which helps him to prosper in his affairs, he sets out to tell others how they too may prosper; and the sum of such advice is wisdom. Fish in their wet caves, one may imagine, concisely counsel their offspring what banks to hunt along and what glitter. ing baits to shun. Birds teach their fledglings how to spread their new wings at a proper angle, how to be architects of nests, how to observe a happy economy with regard to worms and beetles. Bees propound the advantages of buckwheat over clover or of honeysuckle over morning-glories and tell how stings may be planted with the most desirable consequences. Bears, while they are licking their cubs into proper shape, growl neat secrets into their ears about the taste of roots and nuts and about the nicer points of successful hibernation. Though such biology is rather picturesque than trustworthy, it serves to hint at the long antiquity of human wisdom, which comes down from a time earlier than literature and virtually as early as speech itself. Cavemen, squatting safe behind the fire which kept out the

sabertooth, doubtless invented or repeated guttural aphorisms for the benefit of their sons. The swart Egyptians working in their annual mud and the fair Sumerians setting up their towers of Babel gossiped in the evenings, it is reasonably certain, about the ways of life. So Æsop, when he made his fables, or Solomon, when he made his proverbs, had only to add his own wit to the wisdom of many others observers and philosophers.

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Wisdom, it may be argued, is the same in all generations, but the idiom of wisdom varies. Since Solomon chose proverbs, and Æsop fables, most popular moralists have followed one or the other of these two. Among the older Yankees there was a Franklin who, knowing that most of them who were not shopkeepers were farmers, told the one group to "Keep thy shop, and thy shop will keep thee" and warned the other that "The rotten apple spoils his companions." Among the newer Yankees there is a George Ade who, intimately kin to the folk and yet detached from it by genius, puts his observations into moral tales such as "The New Fable of the Toilsome Ascent and the Shining Table-Land" and "The Fable of the Wise Piker Who Had the Kind of Talk That Went." Between them lies a long

tradition of vernacular philosophers, -Jack Downing, Hosea Biglow, Josh Billings, Artemus Ward, Mark Twain, Mr. Dooley, each the continuer of the old wisdom and the inventor of a new idiom. George Ade, indeed, was so immersed in the tradition that he was slow in emerging as himself, with a form and dialect which fitted him as the garments of such a satirist should. He tried stories of a nearly orthodox manner and plays for which other dramatists furnished him the molds, and only gradually hit upon his natural device, perfected it, and settled down to working within its ample limits.

But though he had to hunt ten years for a form, he was very ready to use it when he found it. His mind was crowded with observations made on a plane which was intensely typical of the established American folk. He had been born and had grown up among the farms and villages of Indiana, tightest of the Mid-Western States; he had put on a larger cunning in Chicago, a village which had become a city too fast to lose its old traits at once; he was always bent on returning to the original neighborhood where he was most at home. In his almost simultaneous "Fables in Slang," "More Fables," "Forty Modern Fables," and the later volumes which their quick success called for, he walked close to a fertile soil, along accepted folk-ways. What was first apparent in his work was an amused distrust of all who leave the beaten highway by any but the beaten by paths. The parents of Joseph and Clarence are so fussy with the elder and so slack with the younger that both boys go wrong, having left the comfortable middle ground of ordinary

custom. Lutie, who pesters the village with her voice, imagines she is a great singer until she submits herself to the test of the box-office and an impartial critic; the Coming Champion, likewise, passes for a whirlwind until he puts on the gloves with a real pugilist, who blithely knocks the youngster out and sends him back, humbled, to a safer occupation. Handsome Jethro, who scorns rough work, manages in ten years to save up nineteen dollars of his salary in a five-and-ten-cent store, while his brother Lyford in that same time buys and stocks a valuable farm. The magnate who in his youth aspired to be a congressman barely misses apoplexy when, at the peak of his success, he comes upon his high-school oration and remembers that he once urged "all young Patriots to leap into the Arena and with the Shield of Virtue quench the rising Flood of Corruption." The Benevolent Lady who looks through a lorgnette into the case of the poor discovers that they regard her attentions as an insult, and returns, though in a huff, to concerns which are less philanthropic.

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To put it briefly, the central moral of George Ade's fables is that those get along best who best mind their own business. But these fables are less simple in their application than the maxims, say, of Franklin. Assuming no less than Franklin the merits of industry and economy and temperance and foresight, Mr. Ade knows that the times have changed. The folk he speaks for has heard the old prudential maxims so long that it has begun to note exceptions. One of his characters, a caddy, hurts his head trying to figure out why his hard-working