"Your house! Carry it by assault, capture the nicest suite, and drive you to the roof among the sparrows! No, it is shameful! More than that, it is absurd!"

"I never have occupied the rooms on the second floor," he protested. "They have been vacant since I took this house. "Truly ?"

"Truly. They are too pretty for a man who smokes a pipe-all rococo, and furniture with beagle legs, you know."

"For whom were they intended?" she asked innocently.

He reddened. "I bought the house after our wedding," he hesitated; "then, afterward, from your letters, I fancied that you might prefer to remain abroad. So I said nothing."

She bent her head. "I-I thought it fairer to you," she said in a low voice. "I would have come had you asked me. I -how was I to know, Mr. Edgerton ?" They sat silent, eyes bent on the floor. Presently he went on: "So I had that suite fixed up for you. And I moved upstairs. I am very happy that you are to occupy it." "Do you really desire it?"

"You have no idea how pretty it is," he urged.

"Is it so pretty?"

"Come up and look at it!"

She sprang to her feet on the impulse, smiling, confident of his kindness, And they mounted the stairs together, sans façon, arriving on the second floor breathless.

"Oh," she cried softly, as she entered, "it is perfectly charming!" She stood a moment, gazing around, then with a delightful gesture bade him enter.

"Is this really mine?" she repeated. "How delicious!" She passed from room to room, pausing before bits of furniture that attracted her, touching and lifting the silver on dresser and table. "My own initials!" she said under her breath. "And what is this?" laying her white fingers on a jewel case. "Am I to open it? Really! Oh, the beauty of it all! I-I am perfect

VOL. XXXVI.-28

ly overwhelmed, mons-Mr. Edgerton!" And she sat down on the edge of the bed, pressing her hands to her eyes.

A maid came to the door; the luggage from the Holland had arrived. Presently two burly expressmen entered, staggering under the first of a series of trunks. Her maid directed the men; Mrs. Edgerton sat, hands folded, smiling, blue eyes a trifle dim, while her husband, standing beside her, directed operations.

The silvery chime of a clock sounded, striking eight times, and on either side of the dial gilt cupids fluttered their burnished wings.

"Impossible!" exclaimed Edgerton. Then with a laugh almost boyish, he said: "We're supposed to dine at eight."

She looked vacantly at her husband: "Dinner already! Can it be possible time has flown like that? And I-behold me! Have I time to dress?"

"Time is yours to dispose of," he said, smiling back into her eyes; “all here are yours to dispose of as you see fit."

"Even you, monsieur?" She laughed in her excitement and happiness, not weighing words and their meaning until their echo returned again to appall her-while her maid aided her to dress-and the echo of his answer, too, rang persistently in her ears: "Yes, to pardon, to dispose of, to command, always, as long as I have life to

And now she was ready, smiling nervously back at her own flushed reflection in the mirror—a young girl stirred to the soul by kindness, almost intoxicated at a glimpse of her own undreamed-of beauty, surprised there in the depths of the mirror.

The banisters were decorated with twisted ropes of evergreens; she descended slowly, cheeks burning, eyes fixed steadily on her husband, who stood motionless below to receive her. A tiny light here and there caught the thick tendrils of her heavy burnished hair and glimmered on her smooth, full neck and arms.

At the foot of the stairs she paused, made him a low reverence, then, gathering her silken train, she looked fearlessly into his face and laid her hand lightly in his.

So, moving serenely side by side, they passed under holly and mistletoe and ropes of evergreen, through the long drawingroom, through the music-room, slowly,

A

T the last annual meeting of the American Federation of Labor, the convention held in Boston and representing a constituency of a million and a quarter of members, the delegates, we are told, "received with prolonged cheers" the suggestion of Mr. James O'Grady, a fraternal delegate from Great Britain, that "the representative labor bodies in England and America join forces in one great international universal body of organized labor." Probably not one of those who cheered, if even one of them stopped to consider the significance of such an organization, grasped the true import of the suggestion, involving as it does a return to the primitive type of loyalty characterizing semi-civilization.

Which Kind of Loyalty?

Loyalty or patriotism, in its general acceptance, was at first fidelity to the family, then fidelity to the tribe or clan, then, under the feudal system, to the overlord, then to the king as the supreme overlord, and finally to the representative legislative assembly for the entire community, when recognized as embodying in its law-making prerogatives the right to control king and citizen alike for the good of the all. To substitute loyalty to the class for loyalty to the community or country is obviously to revert to a loyalty whose first allegiance was to the tribe or clan, and thus to disorganizing conditions. Such a possibility led President Roosevelt to declare in a Labor Day speech that "any kind of class animosity in the political world is, if possible, even more destructive to national welfare than sectional, race, or religious animosity."

Curiously enough, this possibility, however remote, follows the centuries of evolution through which society has so slowly and haltingly grown, back to the original meaning of the word loyalty. This is pointed out by

Freeman as evidenced by its derivation from loi in the same way that royalty is derived from roi. In Freeman's view, the phrase "loyal man" ought etymologically, no less than as the consummation of social development, to stand for the distinguishing quality of the "good citizen," the quality of obedience to the law "because it is the law, because it is the binding rule of the community of which the citizen is a part." Per contra, it is the critical attitude toward law as the authoritative expression of community rule, in the demand that law be modified in administration or even in enactment to admit supposed special privileges and exceptions, that to thoughtful persons constitutes the chief menace from the new class loyalty of aggressive unionism. For concrete illustration, one has but to note the spontaneous protest wherever a street-car strike occurs, against the use of police or militia to insure the peaceable operation of the service. The same attitude appears, though less obviously, in many carefully considered utterances of even conservative labor leaders. For example, Mr. Clark, head of the Order of Railway Conductors and member of the coal strike commission, protests against compulsory incorporation of unions under laws "especially constructed and intended for corporations of capital." Similarly Mr. Gompers, head of the Federation of Labor, protests against the attempt to apply the restrictions of the interstate commerce law to "workmen seeking to protect their interests against an opponent"- a euphemism for resort to the boycott. Such an attitude, characterizing it simply on broad, untechnical grounds, sacrifices to the class the superior claim of the community on the loyalty of the good citizen. It fails to take into account that, in the interest of the community, legal responsibilities attach to the

use of accumulated capital, whatever the purpose of accumulation; and that, similarly, injury is done to the community by interference with freedom of interstate commerce, whether such injury be inflicted by a monopoly of capital or a monopoly of labor.

The latest phase of loyalty, that of allegiance to the community only so far as it serves the interest of a class, "carries us," as Freeman wrote with another thought in mind, "quite away from the somewhat homely, perhaps somewhat republican, style of virtue suggested by the word legalitas." That "homely style of virtue" belongs to one whom Professor Sumner has well named the "Forgotten Man"-the "honest, sober, industrious citizen, unknown outside his little circle, who pays his debts and his taxes and supports the church and the school." The "Forgotten Man" is all the rest of us after organization and classification have done their perfect work. The "Forgotten Man" restores the social equilibrium after the disturbance of experiment subsides, while on him falls the full incidence of its cost. Quiet, unobtrusive, self-reliant, and law-abiding, he remains as he has always been, the true type of community loyalty. For the "Forgotten Man" is simply the good citizen overlooked.

N°

e Decline of he Preface

OW and then one is led to wonder what has become of the Preface. The indications are that it will soon be totally extinct. Of modern authors using the English tongue Mr. Bernard Shaw is almost the only one prefixing his works with prefaces properly so called. Occasionally we have introductions by various pens, but they are mostly meagre and perfunctory performances, impersonal and unphilosophical. The genre of the preface is kept alive in a sort still by the practice of giving a god-speed to some little-known or foreign work by means of explanatory remarks by a familiar native celebrity. But the expository revelation of another in a preface has not the peculiar value of an expository revelation of one's self and one's own intent. In a certain way there is nothing quite equal to this. Avowed autobiography concerns itself with the events of a life and the conduct of a man in contact with them. To falsify a little, however unconsciously, is, when dealing with these matters, almost the condition of being human. In dealing with his literary convictions, or with those psycho

logical experiences that express themselves in his book, on the other hand, a man generally sticks to the truth. And it is this side of him that comes out in a full and right and proper preface. Hence the good of it, and the good those get of it who are of the kind to be instructed by such genuine self-confessions.

It is Mr. Bernard Shaw who says, precisely in one of his prefaces and in extenuation of their garrulity, that the world could dispense with some of Shakespeare's plays if only, in exchange, he might have had the habit of writing prefaces. Everyone will not want to go so far, and yet it is certain that a greater value would attach to those varicolored plays if we had some one strictly personal utterance from their author as to the determining notion that was in him about the conduct of life. That, after all, is what we really want from any commanding fellowcreature-that he should tell us sincerely what he, who can do so many things, truly thinks of life and death, and the wise way to cross the distance between.

Something of this-pleasantly and colloquially in the best examples, for the writer does not know, in defending and explaining his work, how much he is talking from out his own inner being-is what is disclosed in a preface. For the sake of it we excuse many minor vanities, and not a little attitudinizing, Shawesque or other. The preface seems to be in a state of decadence because it appears to our present writers to be too egotistical, yet perhaps there are worse things than egotism in literature. It is probably impossible for a man to be much in earnest about his work and to keep his troublesome personal self quite out of it. No artistic worker is as self-conscious as he used to be; talent and genius, in the promise or in the fruition, mix more and more on equal terms with the common run of mankind. there is such a thing as so deprecating the thought of being different that distinctions on which much depends may almost disappear. Not to take one's self too much au sérieux is a pose now in literature, quite as much as once it was to do so. This detached attitude is supposed to be a fruit of the mercantile spirit in which the modern author now so often woos the muse. What is the mercantile spirit in literature, however? Literature is less or more vital at different periods, but you can't mercantilize genuine

But

inspiration, and never could. There will always be personal passion, prejudice, bias, in the literary worker who counts for anything, and he will always empty himself into his work. Yet that great vehicle for his direct expression, the preface, may not, for all that, return to favor. It may pass into the limbo of obsolete fashions in literature, just as the elaborate dedication has done. Authors will make their meaning wholly implicit in their book, not explicit in a preface. - And of course countless thousands of readers will never mind the omission of the prefatory remarks. The preface never existed for them, in any case. They always skipped it cynically, or ignored it callously. It is the spirits with a psychological and philosophical twist, curious about their fellow-men, who will miss it, because they will know that there was never invented a better way of getting close to that elusive, yet always-fascinating mystery, the human soul.

But

The other day I garnered from a little book of Irish poetry and prose the Blethering word "blether," and fell at once in love with it. Had I seen it only in a dictionary, I should probably have felt in it no special charm, since, according to that authority, "blether" as a noun is nonsense or foolish talk, and to be "blethery" is to be unsubstantial, trashy, or deceptive. according to my Antrim Irishman, to blether harmlessly, rationally, and hygienically, demands a particular skill and a charming temperament. It is to enlarge the spirit under the cramping influence of adversity or the crass monotony of toil, by entering temporarily into league with the imps of inconsequence. The true blether is never employed save as a means of mental and spiritual refreshment, and may consist of a great variety of exercises. If you are a person of no voice, the singing of a difficult operatic air is recommended as a particularly fine blether. If you wish to take your relaxation as inconspicuously as possible, it

will sometimes answer the purpose to compose odes and essays containing a serious kind of raillery designed to puzzle the wits of the reasonable. It will be remembered that Charles Lamb, under the oppression of the East India Office, indited an apostrophe to roast pig. The late Mr. Whistler was hardly less an artist in blethering than in reproducing the appearances of the external world. Witness the "Gentle Art of Making Enemies" and those significant sketches on the edge of the Coast Survey map.

Shakespeare, also, could realize the very ecstasy of the accomplished bletherer. "Do you know me, my lord?" Polonius demands of the burdened Hamlet. "Excellent, excellent well; y'are a fishmonger." Yet even among the Celtic races there are found those who call great Hamlet mad. And there may be those who deemed Thackeray but questionably sane on the occasion of his famous drive through New York, his feet out of the cab window by way of relaxation from the strain of American lecturing. The Antrim man would have known the hall-mark

of the blether. Among our personal acquaintances we probably could find numerous less illustrious but equally authentic examples of the blethering spirit. I know a man of honorable years and literary profession who went upon a solemn occasion to deliver an address before his Alma Mater. The address was eloquent and moved his hearers. Later they discussed its noble imagery, unaware that its author was then rolling down the green sward of a hill back of the college buildings, enjoying a blether such as the mind of youth could in nowise conceive. Beside these obvious instances that fall under the convenient Antrim classification, there are others more subtle, in which the note is more sustained. What can we call the immortal preface to "The Egoist" if not the quintessence of blethering brought to so fine a distillation as almost to escape the surest intelligence? And what but the most consummate blethering (if we can bring ourselves so lightly to name that fine courage) was the monumental defiance of Stevenson to all the powers of melancholy? With this last radiant example in mind it is not difficult to see in the blether a symbol of the wild Celtic fancy, the tameless grace of souls constantly escaping from the trammels of conventional dignity and gloom.

P

IMPROVE IT.

ROBABLY no more important plan was ever made at a single stroke than that for the laying out of the upper part of the City of New York, adopted early in the last century, and since then adhered to, with a fidelity worthy of a better result. This plan has governed in the expenditure of untold wealth; it has probably had as much to do as any other one thing in shaping the character, habits and customs of the people, for it has fixed their environment; it has lain like a huge gridiron on the city, binding it to hopeless monotony and humdrum commercialism of aspect, and acting as a barrier to any attempt to impart to the town that grand metropolitan air which distinguishes most of the great capitals of Europe.

If the planners had only followed the simplest dictates of common prudence and provided a broad open strip along each water front, and another through the centre of the island to insure ample means of transit, the other failings of their plan might have been forgiven; for even with this much-so great are the natural advantages of the site-New York could have become one of the most beautiful and commodious cities on earth.

It is easy enough now, as we look at the plan, to follow the narrow working of the minds of the planners. To them the great city of the future was to be simply an enlargement of the primitive town of their own day. Their horizon was bounded entirely by what they saw before them, and their one desire seems to have been to make use of every available square foot of land for strictly utilitarian purposes. The side streets were to afford quiet places of residence, and the avenues the necessary means of communication longitudinally. With this one idea in mind, everything else was easy; the natural topography of the island was disregarded; streets were laid out over watercourse, swamp and hill, with mathematical regularity. first requisites of a great metropolis for other

The

been considered. Of artistic effect there was not a suggestion; the thought of such a thing" probably never entered the heads of the planners. Their ideas were narrow and provincial, and their plan reflected and has retained their ideals. With such a plan, is it surprising that the city should be noted for its lack of civic pride?

So little did the makers of the plan foresee the enormous pressure which would be brought upon the longitudinal means of transit when the city should be built up, by the daily ebb and flow of the vast population for which lots were provided, that only one avenue running north and south was laid out in a given distance to four tranverse streets. Moreover, most of these avenues were arranged so as to be of the least possible use. They start from nowhere in particular, for they were joined on to the old street system arbitrarily wherever they happened to come, and no attempt was made to bring the old plan into harmony with the new. The only serviceable through lines for traffic were those which already existed-the Bowery and its extension, Third Avenue, and Broadway joined to the old Bloomingdale Road. The result has been that the main flow of traffic has been congested into these streets. The avenues which are crossed by Broadway have never received anything like their proportionate development below the points of crossing. The lower parts of Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Avenues are dead ends, so to speak; they serve little purpose in relieving the stress of up and down traffic. To make them serviceable they need a feeder of sufficient magnitude at their lower ends, which could be had by enlarging Varick Street, in a somewhat more radical way than that recently suggested by the Municipal Art Society, viz., by cutting it through to meet Broadway at the City Hall at one end, to intersect Bleecker Street at the other end, making it of great width and extending the avenues to meet it. Broadway would then be relieved