well with the Kingdom of Israel so long as it was on friendly terms with Damascus. But when Damascus fell to Assyria, Palestine too succumbed to the military depotism. Precisely the same thing happened to the Latin kingdom. Damascus in the hands of friends made a splendid bulwark, but its fall to the Turks was the beginning of the end of the Latin rule. Damascus is to the north what Gaza is to the south-the port of the Syrian Desert as Gaza is of the Sinai Desert; and it is most desirable, in the settlement of the northern frontier which follows the war, that the Jewish state should not only be firmly established on the hills of Upper Galilee as far north as Baneas, but should have friends at Damascus, which may be in the hands of the Arabs, but more probably will fall to the lot of the French.

If the arrangements in Galilee are satisfactory, we can imagine the Jewish state falling heir to the economic advantages which the Germans hope to secure by the project of the Bagdad railway. This railway was to drain the trade and wealth of Mesopotamia, which under wise rule is destined to have a future as great as its past, to the north and Constantinople. In the future this trade may be diverted through Galilee, along the 'way of the sea,' to Haifa. It is not generally realized how great a part Galilee played in the life of the Jews. Constantly overrun in Old Testament times, the Jews of Galilee were outside the main stream of national history. Later, it was the seat of an opulent Greek civilization, which the Maccabees missed no opportunity of ravaging; but when the great rebellion came under Nero, it was the Jews of Galilee who offered the most obstinate resistance from their

mountain fastnesses, and sent the most gallant contingent to the defense of Jerusalem.

The rule of the Romans, who built roads to secure free communication from end to end of the land, brought about a greater degree of unity among the Jews than they had ever known before; and perhaps the Jewish rebellion was not the mad outburst of fanaticism that it is usually supposed to have been. Indeed, had the Jews been able to establish a working alliance with the Parthians, there is no reason why they should not have thrown off the Roman yoke. Nearly a century later, when the second great rebellion took place while Trajan was campaigning in Mesopotamia, it was the descendants of the Jewish exiles in Babylon who offered the fiercest resistance to his arms. With better organization, the Jews were numerous enough and able enough to do in the East what the Arabs did later. The Arabs, in fact, stepped into the shoes of Jews massacred by the Romans, just as the Turks later stepped into the shoes of the Arabs massacred by the Mongol invaders. In these later and tragic chapters of Jewish history under the Romans, Galilee, not Jerusalem, was the headquarters of Jewish nationalism; and Galilee, not Jerusalem, will be the great commercial and economic centre of any new Jewish state.

All the more important, therefore, is it that any new Jewish state should have room enough in Galilee to move freely, and a friend at Damascus who will give her a footing on the great inland sea of the Syrian Desert, the Mediterranean of the Semitic world, with rich and prosperous Semitic communities, Arab and Jewish, dwelling round its shores.

'A GOOD-LOOKER and a high hooker!' This was the verdict of Mr. Squem upon Miss Cynthia Browne.

Professor William Emory Browne had been asked down to the countryhouse of his widower brother, on the ocean, to dine and stay the night, and his niece had written him to bring any one he liked.

The professor had at once thought of Mr. Squem, traveling representative of the Mercury Rubber-Tire Company, to whom he was indebted for services openhandedly rendered in a pinch - a railway accident. 'Just the way to recognize him,' thought the professor, and was rather comfortable. Indeed, reflecting upon the opportunity thus opened to Mr. Squem, he almost glowed. Behind was the feeling a bit zestfulthat in this way he would be exhibiting to his brother's household a unique and quite amusing person - providing the party with an experience. A singular blend of motives, which Mr. Squem could not possibly have understood.

Professor Browne's brother had come into the world and lived in the world with just one object to make a million dollars. This he had done, and there seemed nothing more to say. Yes, one thing more: he had fathered Cynthia, now a girl of twenty-two, with the ghost of a soul-starved motherwho, in common with everything else, had stood aside for the million dollars -looking out of her eyes. The brother, the brother's daughter, and a Mr. Dudley Ledgerwood, were the people whom Professor Browne invited Mr.

Squem to the country-house to meet and to amuse.

Mr. Squem arrived in state, bearing a large suit-case and a hat-box, the latter's maiden appearance, though it had been a treasured possession for five years. The house and its scale impressed him, and particularly a fountain copy of Verrocchio's Boy with the Dolphin - well placed before the main entrance; but he could not help feeling a certain bareness, not to say meagreness, in the room to which he was conducted by the very correct maid. True, Tony's Seven Chair Sanitary Shaving Parlor was not more immaculate, and if he knew a good bed, there it was; but the room lacked in colorwarmth, Mr. Squem thought of his own green carpet and red walls, there were but three wall pictures, and they most unstriking, and the mantel was destitute of such decorative bric-àbrac, picked up at Atlantic City and elsewhere, as the guest loved. Mr. Squem noted these limitations, then adjured himself to 'quit knocking,' and proceeded to dress for dinner. He was the only one who did, the butler excepted, the three other gentlemen being in light summer clothes.

Miss Cynthia greeted him with frank cordiality; rarely had his 'pleased to meet you' received so warming a comeback. She was a thoroughbred - her features, her carriage, her total, persuaded Mr. Squem of that. Yes, a thoroughbred - a good-looker and a high-hooker! Her father came out of his million-dollar grave long enough to

assure the visitor that he was welcome, and then ceased to exist, and Mr. Dudley Ledgerwood bowed faintly, looking over Mr. Squem's head.

This Mr. Ledgerwood was a lifeweary person of thirty-five, with the bored expression of one permanently waiting for a train. He seemed chronically tired, but not so tired as certain who encountered him. He had trained a really capable mind upon things which he was certain were affected by very few. He wrote- always from a quite Olympian standpoint occasional reviews of books for magazines of limited circulation, and was suspected of having dark designs upon a Book of his own. He was bare of any convictions, their place being taken by a passion for being different. So his life went in dissatisfiedly sniffing things. His thoughts were not intentionally other people's thoughts, or his ways, where he could help it, their ways. A mysterious providence had given him considerable money.

The dinner struck Mr. Squem as an all-right thing and function, although simpler than at some hotels he knew, and he wondered a bit that there was no orchestra. They had scarcely finished the soup before Professor Browne, thinking it time for the entertainment to begin, remarked,

'Mr. Squem, though an active man of affairs, is no stranger to liberal culture. Perhaps he will tell you about his Universal History.'

'No good,' said Mr. Squem with decision, no good! You see,'-he frankly took in the company, 'I only got as 'I only got as far as the sixth grade — and you know you feel that, when you begin to shuck the day coach for the Pullman and have your clothes built for you and hang out at four-per hotels. You sure do. Something is n't there. I felt it after I got to giving sixty straight for a sack-suit, and after I got my car

some car, believe me! Well, I was telling the professor here how maybe I could put it there-the thing that was n't by chewing up a thirty-five dollar Universal History I bought-something elegant and classy. But it was no go- no go. I want to tell you I lit into that thing for fair-loaded up on the pyramids and the Monroe Doctrine and radium and a lot of other things. But it did n't put over what was n't there, there, not one little bit, and I kept on getting up against people who made me feel it. So I say it was no good, - relish an olive, Miss Browne? — I give it to the Home for the Friendless.' 'Lamentable!' said Mr. Ledgerwood. 'Really'

A diversion came at this point, the punctilious butler for the first recorded time spilling something. It was mushroom sauce, and a very little trickled down the left and right arms of Mr. Squem and Mr. Ledgerwood, seated side by side. The latter bent upon the man a look which might have penetrated armor-plate. He was extremely irritated and let it be seen. Not so Mr. Squem.

'Whoa, George!'-he beamed reassuringly upon the unhappy butler. 'I'm no Lillian Russell. No milk-baths for me!'

Miss Cynthia instantly covered up. 'So sorry,' she said, 'so very sorry!' And then hurriedly; 'Oh, I do so thank you, Mr. Ledgerwood, for the picture - my note was the poorest thing. Will you try to know what a satisfaction it is, and what a prize to own? I'm going to have it brought my uncle must see it. You'll envy me,' she added to Professor Browne.

Then there was borne in, and placed for all to see, such a painting as Mr. Squem had never in all his days, outside a junk-shop, beheld; a copy of the Recanati Annunciation of Lorenzo Lotto; exceedingly old and dingy, and

with blisters here and there -a fearful wreck, in a woefully tarnished frame! Why was it there?

'Well enough,' said Mr. Ledgerwood with languor, as candles were shifted here and there before the canvas, 'and by way of being early fairly early. Of course it's been "comforted" a bit. The vehicle is reasonably clear, with something of the original's subtle qualities of tint.' (He had cribbed this phrasing from Mr. Berenson.) "The lights and shadows, too, are treated with ah, genuine science, as there. Does the cat here at all suggest the lion of the Hamburg St. Jerome, Professor Browne?'

Professor Browne was as Mr. Ledgerwood devoutly hoped would be the case unable to say, and further conversation permitted a display of impressive connoisseurship-worth giving a picture for any day. At length the professor turned to the silent and still astonished Mr. Squem.

'What do you think of the picture?' he asked. 'How does it appeal to you?' What Mr. Squem really thought, and what he had for some moments been affirming to himself, was that the whole thing was enough to make a man swallow his tonsils. What he said, surveying the cat affrighted at the angel,

balls rolling over the prairie hundreds and hundreds of 'em rolling and rolling! Spookish things. And the wooden-toothpick fence-posts- miles and miles of them. Then old Pike's looming up, not twenty minutes off, you'd bet; near enough to spit on, you'd say, but staying there, just staying there, for hours! A Denver man in the seat ahead says, “I thought it would make your jaw drop on your wishbone" and he was right. It was great!'

'Hæc olim,' volunteered Mr. Ledgerwood, with a touch of chill.

-

'We did n't stop at that place,' said Mr. Squem. 'It was an express. Well, I went into the diner an hour this side of Denver, anything I can reach you, Mr. Browne? - and when I'd squared for my meal, do you know, I had just sixty-seven cents left? Sixtyseven cents, - and I did n't know a soul in Colorado, soul in Colorado, not a soul! Figured I'd be about three days too soon to find a draft from the house, and my only baggage was one of these birdsize grips. Well, I took a hack at the station for White's Palace Hotel, hurt me fifty cents, hurt me fifty cents, and I stood up at the green-marble counter and hancocked the register and asked for my mail. Nothing doing, as I supposed. No mail. So there I was, a right smart from home, as they say in Baltimore, with nothing I could put up for my board and nobody in the state I could strike for a dollar. They'd had an awful pest of hotel dead-beats, too, with smooth stories, just before- and me there, with seventeen cents!'

-

it

'What a situation!' said Miss Browne. 'But surely there was the telegraph.'

'Nobody was taking any chances on collect-wires East,' said Mr. Squem. "They'd as soon set up mileage to Chicago. That would have meant a swift kick. As I said, others had been

there before me, and some of them were doing time right then.'

'What did you do?' Miss Cynthia was keen with the question.

'I went and bought a shave,' said Mr. Squem. 'I needed it. While the mahogany brother was mowing me, — it was a tonsorial parlor I was in, not a shop, he says, "You need a haircut," and I says, "I need the price," and told him all about it. "Why," he says, "you look good to me. Have the hair-cut, and this shave, too, on the place, till you get your letter. Sure, that's all right."

him. On the fourth day my draft came and I was on Easy Street.'

Mr. Ledgerwood had not enjoyed this narrative in the least, and the less because Miss Cynthia evidently had. She was not merely amused: she was positively it seemed to him almost admiringly interested. Said he, with

an access of sourness,

'Chacun à son goût. Traveling about in that happy-go-lucky way - with insufficient funds-smells of the canaille. It has a suggestion of vagrancy.'

'You mean I was going too short?' inquired Mr. Squem innocently. 'Well,

"That coon was sure an answer to prayer; I was up against it. He'll never know what he did for me, but I've never forgot him. I've been giving twenty-five a year to Shiloh Baptist Church ever since. Well, I had the hair-cut, and a sea-foam, too, and got out of the chair and let him chalk it up. I wanted to celebrate some way, for my nerve was back, so I went to the bar and got a grown person's drink. It was fifteen cents, and I had two cents left. Then I leaned down by the bar and dropped the two cents in a spittoon and went broke.'

Miss Cynthia's eyes snapped. "Then,' continued Mr. Squem, 'I walked straight up to the hotel desk, as independent as a hog on ice, excuse me, Miss Browne, and says to

dollar yellow-back pinned to my undershirt,

excuse me, Miss Browne,

but I met a man on the train, — selling on commission he was, and business had been bum, who'd been wired to come home to a mighty sick kid, and he had n't the money to get there. His mileage was out and he was going to be put off. So I had to unpin the twenty.' Miss Cynthia leaned forward. "That was dear of you!' she said impulsively. Mr. Squem looked puzzled. 'Had to do it, of course,' he said. 'Anybody would.'

As the party rose from the table, he left a silver dollar at his place. He thought it might be helpful to the other man in evening clothes.

they be tried. 'Yours are no good,' he jocularly informed the host. Professor Browne made some further effort to display his protégé, but Mr. Squem had noticed that the master of the house was treated as a sort of necessary furniture, and to the astonishment of the other two men actually succeeded in thawing him out and getting him