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Show 3J5J foUC JQ THE. MAN WHO Dl WENT BACH un-de- op-jMU- together, after our arrival at Marysville, ho was so eager to be at work. I held him In leash until we were any signs of illness, and to speak to fully ready, and set off with the Imher son. if need be. The first week naturalist toward his collecwent forward happily enough, except patient tion grounds. for a sense of uueasiness on my part. We had worktnl together a week In Tom seemed to have forgotten all his our locust grove camp, skinning and I never saw him hapforebodings. st ufllng, labeling ami listing, and Tom pier. At the week's end there dropped was as happy ns If he were Indeed out of a clear sky by the way of the IS. So absorbed was he that lill Center stage coach a distant only It seemed safe to leave him hours nt cousin of Isabel Fanshawos Isabel a time, as I now often did on searches Droone, by name, who had come to of my own. teach the school in the district. One day after we had finished packNo, I must not linger over those a box of and Tom had ing happy days, so soon over. What be- laid out a full specimens work for himself. days fell a little later has made them a In which I be (Copyright. b M.oMtory Iub. Co.) If you should ever go ml Acquiescing, I resolved to watch for rase-huntin- Yuba City out toward the Sutter Buttes, you would have the upper Sacramento on your left, wheat fields on your other side, and an amazingly dusty road under your feet You would be pretty sure to find your mirage. If the sky and the time of day were right. I did, but that was not the end of my finding In a camp at the foot of the buttes nearest the river 1 found Fanshawe. Tom Fansbawe was the man who went back. And I was the man who kept trace of him until he should return. If so be he could and would. Everybody who knew him knew these things, but not just In this way. Seven years before I went miragehunting Tom Fanshawe and I had said our last words to a college commencement audience, taken a hurried flight to our middle west former homes, lived and loved a little . with our own people, made our farewells before the end of the month, and by the last day of another had put on miners boots, shirts and other manners in a mining camp near the head waters of the from Sacramento. How we lived in camp, how others acted toward us. and towrard each other shall not be told by me. Enough it is, to say that we held by each other, took our share of ups and downs with the rest, kept out of the clutches of such villains as we happened to be attractive to, and started home at the end of the fifth year with a fairly comfortable bit of gold in our possession. But it was not gold that led us to these experiences, nor the acquirement of it that released us. It was life, as you shall hear. These are all the facts that seem to have any bearing on this story. All, though afterwards I saw that one thing, had I known enough to heed it, might have changed matters greatly. Fanshawe often used to say to me when we were in bed in our cabin, Thomespecially on rainy nights: son Thomson is my middle name Thomson, I wish I had not left my mother so long; I know she is lonely. I forgot that I had known one man, as big and strong as Tom, who had died of homesickness, and tried to comfort him with half jesting, though kindly, words. But in my heart I knew that I should never have left that mother, if she had been mine. She was the most beautiful woman I. ever saw body, mind and spirit. Then one morning Tom suddenly woke with a tale of a dream that he had seen his mother and that she was ill. Nothing would do but that he must go to her at once. On our arrival at the little country town near our homes, we hastened at once across the fields, and soon plunged into the thick grass of the blossoming orchard, through whose moonlit boughs we caught a glimpse of the home-porcAs I lingered to Toms up gather traveling bag, which he had flung down the moment he saw herv the happy fellow clasped his mother in his arms with the words: Mother, mother, I will never leave you again. Life is not life without h. you. Other Son, said Mrs. Fanshawe to me next morning so she always called me since my own mother had left me alone in the world Other Son, I am glad you now. Do not tell been ailing a little you know, is almost who am never ill. have come, home Tom, but I have lately, which, as a portent for me, -e e By V1RIDIAN GREENE MX cimen, they wrote, bad been taken i nt the Suttr Buttes. Would be take to pet them? "He will go. said Isabel, as she told mo of It, "and you will have to go with him; there Is no other way, for the doctor says we rmict not him in anything now. No need to describe our Journey; the time was filled with talk of genus and species, with Tanias, Spermo philus and Poro but not to parllcu-arizwith Tonis old enthusiasms about animals as specimens. He could hardly wait to attend properly to getting his camp and collecting stuff, We waked one painful memory. morning to find Mrs. Fanshawe ill with dea burning fever, in our unconscious of lirium, presence. Tom hung over her in an ecstasy of grief, soothing her, tending her, never leaving her for a moment. Because human nature can endure far more than human nature thinks it can when it Is not under stress, we endured those terrible weeks as if we had had each the strength of, ten. Tom was never tired, never sleepy, never hungry; he fought death with alternate hope and despair. At the end of the sixth week the heart so sorely taxed with fever failed, and the mothers life departed. I led Tom, unresisting, from his mothers bedside; he neither spoke nor wept, but dropped in a stupor on his bed, where he lay all night in a sleep from which I could not rouse him n5t day till noon, when he merely looked at me without recognition, and fell back into the same heavy When he waked again, it slumber. was without intelligence in his eyes, , and strange, fever burning gentle words flowing from his lips, as a child talking to his mother. while Miss Droone One mid-day- , stood loQking down upon him as he slumber, he sudlay in a death-lik- e denly opened his eyes, looked in her face, and said: Why, mother, you are up early. I am lazy, made an effort to rise, smiled feebly, and fell asleep. We thought death had come, but he slept on for hours, and we held our breath in hope. At dusk he waked again, and asked for his mother; smiled when he saw Isabel, took broth from her hand and slept again. Let him think so, then; his life hangs on the merest thread, said the old doctor, when Isabel had told him that Tom had mistaken her for his All depends now on what mother. we can do and not undo in the next few hours, and days. Weeks of convalescence brought Toms big body well forward on the road to health, but a curious obsession held his mind to the very point where it had seemed fixed in his illness; he had gone back to his boyhood; he still thought Isabel Droone was his mother. He seemed to have forgotten everything that had taken place since his fifteenth year. The interests of that time began to engage his attention. He had been very much occupied in his boyhood in making collections of birds and small animals. Isabel played her part wisely, but the strain was wearing on her more than I could bear to see. One evening after school Tom found a letter awaiting him from an English zoological society, asking him to go to California to collect for them some specimens of a certain rare species found near Marysville. The type spe heart-breakin- his-body- g could of no use, and at a time when I had begun to fed secure In his condition as showing no sign of change, I decided to spend the day some six miles distant to take observations on a mirage visible frequently from the place where we were. When I returned at dusk I found Tom asleep under a locust tree In the I saw that he had finished yard. half of the work he had about only the day, so that he must for planned have been sleeping for some hours. As I moved about the camp fireplace preparing to get supper, at some inadvertent noise of mine he turned over, sat up slowly as If still sleepy: Hello, old fellow, I called out as I flourished a frying pan, If anybody wants hot flapjacks now But I was stopped by his look of bewilderment. Whats this? I must be asleep; cant you wake me? Where are wel What could I sdy? There was but one way to deal with a man like Tom I told him that he had Fanshawe. been sick, and that things were not all right with him .when the fever left him, that he had Wanted to come out here and that It wras thought that the -- change would But what does all this mean? indicating the specimens. Oh, weVe been trapping and hunt- ing a bit, but lets have supper, and talk about things after. I felt that all the wisdom of the doctors could not have helped me here; there seemed to be nothing to do but wait. He would not eat said he wanted to think a bit, and sat with his head in his hands for more than an hour. I went to bed under my own locust tree, and lay watching him until, near midnight, he turned to his bed and I rose and sat by soon fell asleep. the fire until signs of morning, then slept an hour or two myself. When I awoke Tom was busy about the fire, and said, as soon as he saw me stirring: I remember all that happened until the hour that mother you will have to tell me what came after; I know nothing. Sparing all I could I told him all that had taken place, including the fact that he had thought himself but 15 years old, and that he had in a sort realized the wish he had made on his way home six months ago that he might go back to his boyhood. When I spoke of Isabel Droone, he was silent. I did not tell him that he had thought she was his mother all those weeks. When I spoke of returning home, he said. Not yet, not yet. Why should I ever go? What s there for me but a grave? But I remembered the look on Isa-Pe- l Droones face when she bade us farewell, and resolved that not many days should go by, before she should see the man she loved come back from a far country and a strange peril. COUNTRY IS REAL AMERICA. Great Cities Do Not Worthily Represent the Nation. One of thoM sent to the couttry this misby a New Yoik fresh-aision was a H .war-olHunrajlan boy. His patents, when they came to America, lul remained in the city, where they landed. They lived In squalid poverty. The father, mother and four children all slept In a small room lighted by a single window opening on a foul smelling alley. The boy played In the streets, and had to dodge the club of the policeman who strove to keep order in the overcrowded district. In the country he found the open fields to play in, with no policeman to Interfere. He saw the people fiindly, helpful and sympathetic, living their lives in comfort and Independence. "When I get homo Ill tell them Ive found the real America," he remarked one day. He was not far from the truth. The America which has drawn hundreds of thousands from the countries of Europe Is not the America which they find in the densely populated cities. For the foreign-borpoor, or the native poor, cither, the large city, with its fierce competition, Is a hard place in which to live. The real France Is not Iaris. One has to go outside of Ixtndon to find the real England. The Germany that Is growing rich and powerful Is a bigger thing than Berlin. And the real America Is not discovered in her great cities. The Ideals of the big city are not the Ideals toward which the nation Is striving, and their standard of living Is not the standard which appeals to the people at large. America is ruled from the homes and the firesides of the smaller communities and from the farmhouses on the hills and In the valleys of. the east and the south and on the plains of the west. Most of the statesmen who control and country-congress are country-bor- n bred. The Issues on which elections are decided are those which seem vital to the plain, every-daman, less life of the the natural popliving ulous districts. That immigrant Is to be congratulated who discovers where the real America lies; and that rural American who knows that he lives where the destinies of the nation are shaped is in no danger of losing his poise or of growing discontented with his lot. Youths Companion. summer r n y The Oldest Flower. The lily is the only flowering plant that has no poor kin. Every other fine flower has relatives in low life, that it left behind to worry along in poverty when it took a start and became rich and fashionable, the pet of the florist and the admiration of the ladies, but the Illy, if It ever had any poor kinfolks, has outgrown them so com- pletely that they are either forgotten or not recognized as belonging to the same family. It was among the earliest flowers cultivated. On the Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, 3,000 years before our era, the sculptured lily appears. It is known to have been popular in Europe for 2,500 years, and in the east for a much longer period, so It is justly entitled to the honor of being the oldest flower cultivated by man. There are probably 150 to 200 varieties, but every one belongs to the same royal family. Inoculation Picnics in India. The inoculation of natives against ;he plague at Bangalore has become more of a social event than something to be dreaded and feared. The natives do not like pain of any kind made by the Instruments of the English sahibs, but they love music and things to eat. Therefore, a magnificent Inoculating pavilion has been erected by the municipality of Bangalore. The important natives of the town gather there, the Indian band dispenses sweet music, attendants dispense sweet cakes and fruits, and th )hysicians operate to their hearts content |