AT TABLE — III However, the dreamer is pursued by his fancy. Without thinking what he is doing, he has crumbled a bit of bread which was lying near his plate. It is a very slight and insignificant part of such a dinner as this, but he 5 thinks of the great lady who said when her poor people were starving: "Why do they cry for bread? Let them eat cake!" Yes, it is only a piece of bread, but in order that it may be here, upon the rich man's table, many have toiled and suffered. The farmer has sowed and reaped. 10 He has pushed his plow or driven his harrow through the heavy soil under the cold needles of the autumn rain; he has waked when it thundered in the night, full of terror for his field; he has trembled at the sight of great violetcolored clouds, charged with hail; he has come, dusty and 15 grimy, from the exhausting labors of harvesting. And when the old miller, racked by the rheumatism that is due to the mists of the river, has sent his flour to Paris, the heavy bags are still to be carried on stout shoulders to the bakeries where men are toiling all night long. 20 Truly it has cost all this labor and all this effort, - the little white morsel of bread thoughtlessly broken by idle fingers. By this time the incorrigible dreamer cannot free himself from such thoughts. The dainties of the feast recall 25 to him only human suffering. "Come," he says to himself, "this is absurd. The world is made in this way. There have always been the rich and the poor. Moreover, these ladies and gentlemen are neither selfish nor unkind. They are not idlers. Our host bears a name bound up with his country's glory. The officer with 5 the gray mustache is a hero. This painter, this poet, have faithfully served art and beauty. This scientist, a selfmade man, has earned the distinction that he enjoys. These women are kind and generous and capable of noble selfsacrifice. Why should they not have all this enjoyment?" 10 The dreamer is inclined to be ashamed of himself. But the dinner is nearly over, and while the servants are filling the glasses for the last time there is a moment of silence. The guests are beginning to be a little weary. As the dreamer looks from one face to another he is con- 15 scious of a vague, bitter protest in his heart, and as with the rest he rises to leave the table, he murmurs very softly but obstinately: "Yes, they are within their rights. But do they know, do they realize, that their luxury is made up of so much suffering? Do they think of it sometimes? 20 Do they think of it as often as they should? Do they think of it?" orders: decorative badges given for conspicuous gallantry or public service. — turbot: a large European flounder, sometimes weighing thirty or forty pounds. — Cleopatra's pearl: a pearl of great price, which, according to an impossible legend, was dissolved in wine and swallowed by the famous queen of Egypt. the great lady: Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XVI, king of France. —incorrigible: hardened against reproof or correction. 5 10 THE THINGS THAT COUNT CLARENCE URMY CLARENCE URMY, a poet and musician, was born in San Francisco, California, in 1858. Not what we have, but what we use ; The things near by, not things afar; Not what seems fair, but what is true; 15 Not as we take, but as we give ; Not as we pray, but as we live These are the things that make for peace, Both now and after Time shall cease. THE OLD WOLF'S CHALLENGE WILLIAM J. Long We were beating up the Straits to the Labrador when a great gale swooped down on us and drove us like a scared wild duck into a cleft in the mountains, where the breakers roared and the seals barked on the black rocks, and the reefs bared their teeth on either side like the long jaws 5 of a wolf, to snap at us as we passed. In our flight we had picked up a fisherman-snatched him out of his helpless punt as we luffed in a smother of spray, and dragged him aboard, like an enormous frog, at the end of the jib sheet — and it was he who now stood at 10 the wheel of our little schooner and took her careening in through the tickle of Harbor Woe. There, in a desolate, rock-bound refuge on the Newfoundland coast, the Wild Duck swung to her anchor, veering nervously in the tide rip, tugging impatiently and clanking her chains as if eager 15 to be out again in the turmoil. At sunset the gale blew itself out, and presently the moon wheeled full and clear over the dark mountains. Noel, my big Indian, was curled up asleep in a caribou skin by the foremast; and the crew were all below asleep, 20 every man glad in his heart to be once more safe in a snug harbor. All about us stretched the desolate wastes of sea and mountains, over which silence and darkness brooded, as over the first great chaos. Near at hand were the black rocks, eternally wet and smoking with the fog and gale; beyond towered the icebergs, pale, cold, glittering like spires of silver in the moonlight; far away, like a vague 5 shadow, a handful of little gray houses clung like barnacles to the base of a great bare hill whose foot was in the sea and whose head wavered among the clouds of heaven. Not a light shone, not a sound or a sign of life came from these little houses, whose shells close daily at twilight over 10 the life within, weary with the day's work. Only the dogs were restless—those strange creatures that shelter in our houses and share our bread, yet live in another world, a dumb, silent, lonely world shut out from ours by impassable barriers. 15 For hours these uncanny dogs had puzzled me, a score of vicious, hungry brutes that drew the sledges in winter, and that picked up a vagabond living in the idle summer by hunting rabbits and raiding the fishermen's flakes and pigpens, and by catching flounders in the sea as the tide 20 ebbed. Venture among them with fear in your heart and they would fly at your legs and throat like wild beasts; but twirl a big stick jauntily, or, better still, go quietly on your way without concern, and they would skulk aside and watch you hungrily out of the corners of their surly 25 eyes, whose lids were red and bloodshot as a mastiff's. When the moon rose I noticed them flitting about like witches on the lonely shore, miles away from the hamlet; |