| OCR Text |
Show "Three months nothing! What's the matter with six?" "A good deal is the matter. You'll be nearly 13 in six months, and you don't know as much as the average boy of 14. Of course I'm not blaming you for that. You haven't had a fair chance." Osborno forgot that, at 18, he himself had passed the competitive examination. ex-amination. 'I guesa I haven't at that or anything any-thing else." Young Osborne had gone barefoot all his life, ami had never had a whole new suit of clothes to his buck, nor a dime to coll his own. Osborne gave him dancing pumps a.nd various seemly suits . and a reasonable allowance. But he thought the allowance small. "Say, Herbert, I can't make out with that measly ten. Make it 15, will you?" lie complained. "No," said Osborne. Osborne's "no's" were always definite, defi-nite, but Alexander persisted. "Why not ? You've a lot more than you need." "I know best about that. Ten dollars buck hiding behind the cedars and scrub-oaks- on the rise, the soldiers penned in the gully below them. It was merely, for the latter, a question oi holding out and having a few men killed. The danger was not great unless un-less the Apaches should be reinforced or the couriers should not reach the fort. So the men took shelter behind bushes and rocks, anil fired at the flashes of light in the darkness above them. The officers walked about in the deep sha'lov, s. ilring, too,' and giving orders. Fir ,st Lieut. Osborne was with his sergeant and another lieutenant when he came upon Second Lieut. Osborne croxiched down between two rocks, his arms elapsed over his bent head and his carbine dropped on the ground beside be-side him. There was no mistake to be made. The other lieutenant hesitated, the sergeant drew back. But Osborne went up and touched' his brother with his foot. "Lieut. Osborne," ho said, to the junior, "go and report to the offlecr In command, Capt. Clarke. I shall have preceded you and have reported you for cowardice." . ' ' ' as a small boy unless you act the part : I of one. You can learn, and you must learn, or the theaters will stop, and the hop3 will stop, and the guitar will stop also the tennis. You have been cutting time, but henceforth you will study four hours a day and I will sit with you to help you and see that it is done." So four hours out of every 24 Osborne Os-borne put to the use of teaching one who did not wish to learn. Density can be bored through with patience. It is the india rubber of indifferent cleverness clev-erness that resists. After some of the struggles, Osbprne would lie awake for the rest of the night from sheet nervousness. The boy slept vith unruffled un-ruffled brain. The lieutenant almost came to forget the girl. But never quite. A letter would come when Alexander Alex-ander was most inert, and Osborne would stare straight in front of him and grit his teeth, and wonder that a man could live with both sides of his nature thwarted and cut back. But he had his reward. Alexander went into the academy at 20. He was the handsomest and most popular cadet in his class and he failed in the first year. I HIS BftOTflEH'S KEEPER I Of GWENDOLEN OVERTOIL WHEN a maw who is yet young arrives ar-rives at the conclusion- that life holds nothing more for him and that he can only devote himself to the good- of others, there is still plenty of keen wretchedness in store for him. If he gets up after a bad blow and is actively miserable and somewhat hateful and resentful, he can yet be happy. But self-immolation self-immolation is not natural, and anything any-thing unnatural brings its own punishment. punish-ment. Another person and other people peo-ple cannot be the center of the universe for very long. There msy come a jar that will put yon out of plumb for a bit, but you swing back to your normal po- sition. The jar that came to Osborne was a -': hard one. The girl to whom he was engaged told him that her parents were forcing her to marry a certain rich man. . Now parents, in these days, do not force one to marry anybody; but Os-borne would have believed whatever the girl j had chosen to tell him. He believed j this, and thought she was a beautiful, ' suffering martyr, and thexe was a tragic , scene, which she did) cleverly, and a is enough, and it's all I can give you. I've your education to pay for, recollect. recol-lect. You've no expenses outside of an occasional theater ticket and tennis ball or you shouldn't have." j "You always did catchall the plums," j said Alexander. Then the mail orderlj gave Osborne ' a letter from the girl. Osborne locked ' himself in his workroom, and read it and believed every .word of it.. .And liv- ing even for others seemed a hard He went in search of the captain, and made his report, and Second Lieut. Osborne Os-borne was sent under arrest back to the dismounted horses in the rear. Then the first lieutenant threw open his blouse and covered his breast with a wide, white silk handkerchiei; tbaV.. ....... gleamed even in the shadow, and walked out into the full moonlight. It was a matter of only n moment before be-fore the hidden Apaches saw him with . the white target on his boson?. And two of them, at least, took aim at the target and hit it full in the center and First Lieut. Osborne pitched forward on the stones. San Francisco Argonaut. Just how such things are done no one is ever quite sure; but in Osborne's case it must have been sheer force of determination. Alexander was reap-poinled, reap-poinled, and he himself was made instructor in-structor at the Point. . He stood over the. cadet with the stinging lash of his ambition; and Alexander Al-exander was graduated 15. Osborne unwisely took some credit to himself. "Nonsense," said Alexander, "I'd have done it alone. The first miss was only bad luck; don't think it's your circus." "It doesn't make any great difference to me whose circus it is, so that you come out all right. I'm only glad you're getting some ambition." "Ambition be hanged! It's the one word in your lexicon. I'm sick of the sound of it. It is the sin by which the angels fell. Look out you don't fall, angel brother." T'm not likely to fall, but I shouldn't mind it, if it put you on a mountain height." "No heights for me. I can't breathe thing for the next few days. Alexander felt his oats promptly. He excelled at baseball, he learned tennis and dancing by magic and he rode well. Osborne had never been eo popular. He had served the Mammon of Ambition exclusively until he had transferred his allegiance to the God of Love. Since then he had been a martyr and martyrs are more pleasing in stained glass than in life. And now he returned re-turned to the first cult, and ambition filled him. He rejoiced in his brother's beauty, which was of the Bertie Cecil type, in his magnificent stature, in his agility and his athletics. He mounted him on the finest horse to be had in that part of the country and wore a shabby shab-by uniform himself all winter. He read parting. After that Osborne lost even ambition, which had-been a ruling pas- , sion almost above his love. The girl ; was mean . enough, too, to keep his misery active by writing to him, now and then, bewailing her gilded captivity. cap-tivity. Life, he told himself, was henceforth a vain thing, only fit to be used in the service of others. It is not easy to serve others picturesquely in the army. There are no needy and no fallen ones because when they fall they cease to be in the-army. So Osborne bethought him of his brother Alexander. Alexander lived on a ranch as Osborne Os-borne had done. He was 17 years old. At 16 Osborne had been the support of a widowed mother and two children. He had had no boyhood in particular. It had all been work, making the ranch pay. On ly those who have tried it know : what that means. Alexander was not! afflicted after this fashion. He lived j on his new stepfather, and was envious , of his brother. Now when Osborne brought Alexander Alexan-der on to San Antonio, the first evening of his arrival he spoke to him thus: , "There's a first-class school right in the town, Alex." Silence. "I want you to study hard, youngster, to make up for the time you've lost up there in the wil- ( derness." j Alex braced his feet against the porch j railing and tipped back his chair. "It strikes me I've lost more fun thanvabouii Anything else. It ain't fair, Herbert.' You've been having a picnic for the last eight years, while I've been slaving in the fields; and I don't see it in the light of settling down right away to digging at booke. I want a awing." If a nature is ambitious, it cannot be altered. The ambition may transfer Its object from self to some one else, but it will not die. Osborne's had transferred trans-ferred itself to hisbrother. So hisheart sank. But he had learned toleration. "Well, I'll give you three months. But you must study to make up for it," rare air," answered the younger. Now, in the course of army events it came to pass that a strange fate made Alexander Osborne second lieutenant in the troop of which his brother was first lieutenant. And the first lieutenant lieu-tenant continued his ambitious goading. goad-ing. Alexander was independent at present, and resisted to some purpose. He would not spend his nights in study and his days in wire pulling. The war I department did not reward that sort of thing, he said; it was action it approved. ap-proved. Wait until his time for action came then he would satisfy his brother. And the time, for-action did come. But th-sactioru was disappointing. They marched SCO miles, and then marched back again. Alexander complained loudly that he had had no occasion to display his prowess in battle. lie should have been- quite safe, in this 'for that evening they would be once more in Grant. But the Indian host is not to be reckoned with.' At sunset sun-set within ten miles of the post the Apaches caught the battalion in a ravine, ra-vine, and kept it there until well into the night. The moon came up and showed to the with him for two hours daily, and was well pleased when the boy remembered just enough to give his conversation a peculiarly brilliant turn. Ete argued great things from this when Alexander should go to school. But when he went to school, Osborne saw the truth. "Alex, the account of you is very bad. You've barely scratched through on two things, and you've failed on mathematics mathe-matics altogether. I've told you that mathematics is the test at the Point," Osborne admonished. "Oh! come, 1 say; let up, Herbert. r-I'm trying to learn this piece." He picked on with beautiful absorption at the guitar the lieutenant had given him. "Put up that thing and listen to me." Alexander obeyed, as all men did when Osborne willed. "I am going to get you into West Point at 20. When I say I am going to do it, you know it is going to be done. Don't you? None of it depends on you except the study. I can't make you drink, but I'll take you to water and keep you there until you find it will be easier to drink. You can go back to the ranch if you like, but I'm not afraid you'll like. I don't want to treat you |
