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Show last night if I to help you. Oh. I suppose you do need a rest, only you cant bave it, you know. I shant go back home and wait by myself. And Im not brute enough to take her back, now even If her mother would kindly die and give me the chance. He went on through the sunshine with his violets, and climbed to his room, wrote his dally letter, shutting the flowers up in the thin sheets foi her to dream over. A few weeks later Herrick did something he had not expected to do. lie returned home. He wrote the gir that it was to get well. In bis hear he knew that it was to die. He hat resisted coming back; but he did not know what else to do. He was dying so fast that he had not strength enough for a pretense of work among the living. He was Just in the way, and people, when they did not swear at him. looked sorry for him. It was simplest to get out of the way an away from the people. The garden was greener than ever, and he had violets of his own to put in her letters. He wrote them every day. They were mostly lies. He desired to keep her away. He did not wish her to have his dying face to remember. He very well knew what it would look like. He heard the footsteps all the time. They advanced steadily. He could almost name the date of that gray spring morning when they would enter his room, and that ghastly occupation of his living, struggling body would ensue. Warm days he dragged himself to the garden seat, and looked lovingly back at his beautiful home, with the sunshine entering at the wide doors. The old house, the old pictures, the room of books, the green garden, and the violets underneath the oaks all these things Herrick devised with a lovers pleasure to the girl he loved He seemed gathering a handful of flowers to send her, and, indeed, when the trifling legality was concluded, it was as if be had done as slight a thing. He smiled as he thought of the stories he had meant to write. They seemed to be so little worth while. He read Marcus Aurelius, as the author best fitted to dwarf the footsteps. In many moods he ignored them, or mocked at them, but he always knew that at the end Fear would possess him. He did not mind waiting as much as he had supposed that he would. He aid not know if it were philosophy, or if death benumbed. He had done with letters to the girl, because his brain served him no longer to invent lies, and he found it a relief. He tried not to think about her; but in May pven a dying man may not forget his love. Perhaps Herricks sick yearning called her back in telepathic ways; but more likely some meddler had written her the truth. At all events, she came home to him one day. But her fresh youth and beauty could not give him back life, and she had better have stayed away. She only made it harder for him to die a week later. As it chanced, he died in the night and alone. They would not let her see his dead face. She sobbed that she could never forgive them for that. But those who found him dead probably knew what they were about. THE FOOTSTEPS OF FEAR By FANNY KEMBLE JOHNSON copj ritf Itt. ly Shorutory Pub. Co.) All hi life Jlerilck had heard them, had not leisure to think of himself at as every other man may hear If he all. But there was a drawback to this. Hops to listen. The trouble with Her- It was good for his mind, but it was rick was that he had stopped too often not always good for his body. Someand listened too long. Now, If one times a trivial seeming cough worried wait until they come too close, It Is at his throat for days, and sometimes difficult to distance them again, and If neuralgia gripped with a clutch not to whisone listens until they ring too clearly be loosened except with there is no sound In the world, not ky'. Usually, however, he was deadHis conven the whisper of a woman, that can ened to these discomforts. the filled with And was other sciousness ever again quite drown them. things worst of it Is that no inan can face the tearing hurry and devious dethis Fear that, however the bravest vices of his work its crowds, and canman may turn, it Is always from be- didates, and confessions its murders hind that he hears the steps which and Its marriages. And there were storms of music theVe were civic banfollow as if a coward Red. All men do not hear them onl the quets there were noted divines under in of exceptional may, or the men excep- whom he catnapped But the galleries all better churches. than first the tionally situated. Herrick happened to be both. Many men have bequeathed these were the thousand special and to them an Inheritance of death; but individual occurrences that took his Herrick had also an inheritance of per- breath away and made his flesh glow fect loneliness. His people were all with the discoverers rapture. He bad at peace in the graveyard plots belong- lived so among books for his 2G years had not known before that ing to the different health resorts of that hewhich had never been put into two continents, and he had lived alone things ever books happened. since a lad in an old house haunted by Once, while musing under a noted their portraits, and their names on the flyleaf of every book from which he divine, he got to thinking over this. What stories I could write! he learned life. Herrick was not a cowto He himself. sat there cried the staring ard; but one day he locked up house and went out through the green at the speaker, but saw him no more old garden. At the gate he looked back. than he saw the red and gray Saint I was born In you, he said to his John, or the blue Mary Mother in the casement behind the pulhome, and If the girl I love didnt to heaven and tasted He went inpit. bave to drag over Europe with an as usually happens, and then, bepower, valid mother, I would live in you, to even with him, reminded get cause you are next door to her, and Fate, his him of limitations, and through the make the most of my time. But I window behind him he heard the wont stay by myself and maybe Ill open footsteps. It was the pause for the never see you again." Then he kissed his hands to it all long prayer. Herrick bent forward, with the impulsive gesture of a child leaning his cheek against his arm. It and turned his back on his too quiet was as if bone grazed bone. After five minutes he began to feel that the steps past. would enter the church if he sat there In the station by the river he bought longer so near they were so loud. a ticket to the biggest and nolsest city He hurried out in the middle of the In his native state, which was a south- prayer. It was a winter morning, but ern one. We will omit the intermedi- in that southern city it was like early ate stages. Enough that In a month spring. The grass in the square was he had been able to fulfill his intention green, and a border of white violets of getting a position on one of the big- had hastened to bloom. It was Frigest and nolsest papers in that city. day, and he gathered a few of them He reasonably argued that a re- for her Saturday letter. He stood for a moment holding them, conscious porter on night duty with a of daylight would not have only of the sunshine. It deadened him . margin much time in which to lie awake to himself again. It filled the city as listening, and, having an income, he wine fills a cup, with a could afford this hypothesis. Herrick potency. ,But even in was after mental excitement, and he the sunshine the cough nagged him. got it. For the first time he was realYou need a rest, said Herricks and mind to his body, or you wont last ly taken out of his own brain-lifInto the lives of others. That was a even your time. Ive been going too good result to begin with. His an- fast for you, curse you! but Ive had set such a good time. cestors were the same short-liveof idiots, and the footsteps sauntered He looked at his arm with disgust.. as cynically as ever on his trail. But I couldnt row a mile with you, he he had not time to consciously listen, said. inI would be ashamed to or to fret over the selfishness of the side any gym with you. You go would girls mother, who, doubtless, heard have let that tough knock me down footsteps hunting her down, too, poor thing! or to write minor poetry, which man is the silliest thing a grown-uwith an intellect can do unless he can sell it. He had only time for his f- gred-ho- t triple-arche- d six-ho- The secretary f the London Mendicity society reports that street begstaging Is cn the increase. He has tistics to prove his words, of course. But surely every man who has a penny to spare must have read or heard by this time that he really docs a fellow-creaturan III service when ho him for the asking, says gives It to the Pall Mall Gazette. It Is Interesting to recall that code of European law In force for centuries did actually make almsgiving a crime, always punished severely with death In certain cases. But this was 1,000 years ago, before the dawn of our happy civilization. It must be confessed, however, that there was an appearance of common sense about the famous Grajas code, which ruled Norway, Iceland and In its much of England, doubtless, time. It began by laying down strict rules to make each family support its own indigent members, or to show sufficient cause for the failure. This Is the essential primijlo of a sound system of poor relief, which we have suffered to lapse under the direction of progress. Having thus provided for the respectable class of paupers, as It may be put briefly, the legislator could deal firmly with roving mendicants and their abettors. And be did.. It Is worth while to observe, however, that the family pauper had a guardian or tnistee, appointed by the district council, who was responsible for his decent subsistence; if this man did not fulfill his duty or tried to escape it, he Incurred the terrible penalty called exclusion confinement In his house for three years; anyone who found him outside was free to kill e t ' him. They stood no nonsense in those d days. An person who was outlawed equivalent to a begged sentence of death. Anyone proved to have been wandering for 15 days without visible means of subsistence was held to be a beggar; within the meaning of the act, and treated accordingly. But the clause which most interested us was that which decreed that any man, whatever his station, who gave money, or moneys worth, to a vagrant, at the. district assembly, or on his way thither, should be punished with exclusion. The crime of almsgiving was well underutood in those days. Perhaps I should add that the Grajas code was officially promulgated in 1116. But it had been in force, as the premable declares, for centuries. able-bodie- DAY OF PLEASURE POSTPONED Had Forgotten Old Saying she expected that on Monday she would be regaled with a full account Abount Counting Chickens. of the funeral. But Miff turned up a with most melancholy face. In anA Richmond woman has in her emswer to her inquiry he said: ploy a little darky, Miff Cole. One I didnt go, missus. He aint dead day Miff became confidential and told yit. his mistress he was goin to the cimi-teinext Sunday. Women in Minority in Russia. You a St. walk. But, Miff, thats long PetersDurg is a good place for know it is more than five miles. spinsters to migrate to, as the male Oh, missus, I aint goin to walk. population outnumbers the female 124,-00and the same proportion exists in Ise goin to ride. other parts of Russia. In consequence How is that. Miff? Ise goin in a kerridge t my there is quite a commerce in brides and many men in the provinces are uncles funeral. Miff of could talk said to make money by posing as All day Saturday nothing but the approaching affair. guardians for pretty girls and selling Sundav his mistress excused him, and them at good prices. The Aztec Calendar. The Aztecs of Mexico had a. calendar of their own and one copy is engraved in stone and now preserved in the National Museum oi Mexico. Fifty-tw- o years constituted a cycle with the Aztecs. Each year had 365 days. There were 18 months of 20 days each and five additional days that were considered very unlucky, and were devoted to human sacrifice. The month was divided into four weeks of five days each. The days were such names as Rain, Monkey and Small Bird, and each day of the month had a name. Whole phrases were used for the names of some months. sense-stealin- g e d work and he found out that he was good at it. He also found out that six hours of midday when one slept was worth a night of ten hours to lie awake and listen in, and that only crazy people may safely cultivate their imaginations. Therefore, he endeavored to confine his attention to his daily work and to let his ancestors alone. On the whole, he succeeded. Every morning, with his brain at its busiest, he wrote the pages that went to make up his Saturday letter to the girl he loved. When that was done he ran down, all in a minute, it seemed. Sometimes he dropped his head on the letter and went to sleep. Oftener he reeled to the bed and fell on it, the daylight on his eyelids, black night beneath them. He Ancient Code of European Law Provided Severe Punishment. Why China Has Few Trees. N. Meyer, the scientific explorer for the government in his recent penetration of China, saw farms that had been under irrigation since before Columbus discovered America. To the credit of the pagan priests, be it said, all forms of plant and tree growth were cherished and encouraged around the temples. The priests gave Meyer what information they could. The extent to which forest devastation has gone in China can be inferred from the fact that the Chinese have rooted and grubbed out every vestige of tree growth the size of your finger above the graves of. their revered ancestors. Outing life-givin- g, p ONCE A CRIME TO GIVE ALMS. hadnt had a phtol along Darky y 0, Frank |