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By Mary Moss

you feel like starting obliterated letters above a tiny, squalid now?" asked Judith booth, half open to the street. "We might Liebestraum.

If it had been to go through a classical concert, fire and pestilence or Wagner-without cuts-Jerry would have cheerfully squared those broad shoulders of his in readiness to do her bidding. As it was, though far from sharing a fancy for seeing the interior of a dilapidated old building, he felt only satisfaction at the prospect of helping her to search for the synagogue keys, through this sleepy West Indian town.

San Diego itself struck him simply and forcibly as a "hole"-hot, dusty, and unsuited to any familiar variety of sport. Never troubling to discover what she found of charm and interest in the place, he wisely rested content to enjoy the blissful privilege of strolling at her side through walled-in narrow lanes with houses blind to passers-by, with more donkeys than negroes, with more goats than donkeys, and after all, not even so very many goats. As the pair wandered somewhat aimlessly, Judith deciphered the signs over little cavernous shops, and Jerry fed upon the sight of her. He did not know that she looked like a princess of Israel, with her almond eyes, drooping mouth, and heaven-sent gift of grace and bearing. In fact he knew absolutely nothing of this new acquaintance with the queer name, but that she was travelling with an aunt, and that after four days on shipboard he had become eternally disinclined to forego her company.

ask here."

Jerry meant to precede, to shelter his princess; but with a gliding movement all speed and all leisure, she had mounted the broken steps before him and questioned the vender of dried fish, cheese, and oily rope tobacco.

Mr. Michael De Cordova imparted information slowly. "Services in our synagogue! No, hardly to-morrow;" he hesitated. Indeed, his brother Solomon could give a better account, he himself not being highly occupied with religious matters.

"That seems a great pity," commented Judith, with a serious inclination of her dark head..

"But you understand how it is yourself, about those ancient ideas," the fish seller protested; "they weary a young person."

"They never weary me!" Judith spoke very gently.

And there, all in the stifling heat, Jerry felt a sudden shiver; also for no reason, as he turned to follow Judith's slim, undulating form in search of the religious brother Solomon, his deep chest and even breathing were disturbed by an unbidden sigh.

He drew closer to the girl, looking down upon the low-browed oval face. A frill of her rose-colored dress brushed softly against his hand. The young man resolved that this must not happen again, since the sensation it gave him distinctly amounted to taking a liberty. If he was simple and just a trifle stupid, Jerry's inmost thoughts about women never failed of being what he himself might have described as "white"; only Jerry seldom described.

Now he grew uneasy; she would certainly not turn in here! Yes, but she did.

Hitherto what he found admirable in woman had been ruddy gold hair, a frank direct glance, vigor, muscle, dash, and a vocabulary of monosyllables. He could take pleasure only in a brisk feminine creature with no nonsense about her, agree-straight to the door of a reeking, black ́ably resembling a boy-such a one, in short, as Dorothy Holland, the tennis champion at home. That was before he met Judith Liebestraum. Now, in his inarticulate, undeveloped soul of college-bred athlete, there came vague prickings toward mystery and romance, things whose very existence he had heretofore ignored or scorned. "De Cordova!" She spelled out all but

rum shop. She paused on the threshold. Close behind, Jerry stood grimly ready to kill any man who even looked too earnestly her way.

Solomon De Cordova was short, dirty, but fine-featured, with lustrous eyes and manners worthy a grandee of Spain.

He ushered them into a dusky back room with plaster dropping from its low ceiling

and a choking atmosphere of salt fish, vile spirits, and bouquet d'Afrique. From the drinking booth outside came cries and laughter, an incomprehensible babble of negro dialect.

With a flourish fit for a king's court, Solomon invited Judith to be seated. The only chair was backless.

Depositing himself upon a case of bottles, Jerry riveted his attention on a dusty cobweb waving a scant inch above his lady's sacred head. If that bit of filth touched her, no consideration of civility should prevent him from tearing it down. Tantalizing, for an athlete of national fame to have no better vent for his strength than the hope of sweeping away a spider's web!

The Jew had embarked upon some endless legend concerning a lukewarm congregation the theft of silver vessels-how true piety grew so scarce that hardly at Yom Kippur could enough men be gathered together for a lawful Minyan, to mourn the fate of Israel.

What was it all about? Judith's long white hands lay loosely folded on her knee. With tilted chin and half-shut, listening eyes she absorbed the Jew's flowery and grandiloquent phrases.

A black boy pushed in from the outer room—a hook-nosed black boy!

"I'm occupied with this lady. Let me not again have cause to reprove you, Ephraim Menassah!" Solomon De Cordova settled his collarless shirt with unclean fingers and turned again to the guest, whose pale face now showed horrified query.

"Ephraim Menassah? A negro?" she questioned in dismay.

Solomon nodded disapproval. "It came about in the olden time, up among the mountains. The cruel Spaniard persecuted Jew and negro alike. Those unhappy fugitives lived together, hidden in caves. It never happens now, " he ended reassuringly.

"You will trust me with the keys? You are very kind." Judith smiled upon her host.

"And your name, lady?" He gave her the rusted bunch.

"Liebestraum." She took the grimy iron in her pointed fingers, the fingers Jerry barely dared to touch in a rarely granted hand-shake.

manner grew even loftier. "Ashkenazim?" It was as though he had exclaimed, "Deny this slur, I beg you. Clear yourself of this discredit."

"Yes," Judith answered meekly, "we are of the German congregation."

"And we are Sephardim!" Solomon's voice expressed all the recoil of an aristocrat trapped into low society; but hastily recovering poise he added with grandiose politeness, "I've never before spoken with one of you, but doubtless among the Ashkenazim there may be excellent people, and pious.'

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Heavens above! Jerry clenched strong, clean fists. Must he bear this, too? Seeing her snubbed and patronized by a thing he could step on and crush?

"What beautiful dignity!" was Judith's only comment, as they again reached the street, and Jerry drew comforting breaths of outer air, freeing his lungs from the reek of Solomon's filthy den.

Passing the sad old synagogue with its overgrown burial-ground and crumbling arches, Judith paused. "Too late to go in to-night, it's growing dark so soon. Her minor tones breathed regret.

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Together they lingered, leaning their elbows on a broken railing, silent and thoughtful in the quickening tropic twilight.

As Jerry feasted upon her marked and delicate profile, the melancholy mouth and musing eyes, suddenly she seemed so infinitely far away that while without moving one inch nearer he could put an arm about her tempting waist, all at once he knew that this would never come to pass. If her slender body were clasped hard and tight to his, if his lips were laid to hers, if her head rested against him, her remoteness could never be less than it was at this moment.

They spoke a different tongue, they lived in different worlds!

And then there swept athwart his vision the image of a ruddy-haired girl, victorious, untouched by shadow, easy to be understood. She quickly vanished, leaving him free to study this secret, alien creature at his side.

But as the stranger still bent her wistful gaze on the neglected place of worship, he saw her half-shut almond eyes brimming with slow, unfallen tears, and Jerry likewise saw that even his bare existence had "Liebestraum!" Solomon De Cordova's been quite forgotten by Judith Liebestraum.

HERACLITUS

"ON wings of light and darkness flies

The open secret of the skies,

And death and life one truth disguise."

If thou couldst know, for all thy care and pain,
That one might win to live eternally-
Or, through long lapse, that he might come again,
Were this thy rede: Being is still to be—

As death were empty, or an idle thought-
A name erased, as if a pen distraught
Had blurred the eternal with mortality?

Thus Heraclitus: Lo, the life of life

Is death; and harmony is born of strife:-
To deem this truth, yet prove it not!-to live,
Nor know that death shall have a life to give!

Nay, "Life immortal!” O'er my tired brain Come, thou sure death, with murmur of the sea,Come with rude ocean gurgles in mine ears, And the chill blinding swell amid my tears,

Come when I linger on the course unknown— Yea, if my harp stand silent by the Throne, Roll your strong waves unto the shoreless lea! Rocking the cradles of futurity

Resolve the burthen of the exhausted years!

Uncoil the meaning-for his thread is twain:
The light or darkness equally appears;
There is no being save to be again—

I know not whether with the old arrears;
Again, again, the rapt alternates yield,

Ever forgetting, and their cadence seems
Of phantom footfalls in a poppy field-
A lair of silence, where a lion dreams.

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HAVE met recently in a little vinemantled cottage, not far from the Pacific, a remarkable man, known to experts throughout the country and beyond, yet one of the least known to the general public. Mr. Luther Burbank has evolved more extraordinary, and, indeed, more marvellous plant life than any other man. Without the training of the college or the university, he yet leads in one of the most subtle and elusive, one of the most complex and baffling departments of modern research. On a wind-swept mesa he finds a wild flower of some native beauty, but insignificant in size, and, in the main, uncomely. He takes this flower and gives it a new life, increases its size, doubles its vigor, hastens its spring-time appearing; or, if it suits him, he transforms it utterly, producing a flower unlike anything which has yet blossomed. He finds two trees, neither one, to his mind, VOL. XXXVI.-5

filling its true place in the world; he joins them and produces a new tree possessing the best of both. One such tree he has made which is now the most rapidly growing tree known in the temperate zones of the world, and one of the most prolific of all nut-producing trees.

He

He takes a small, unpalatable fruit, inferior in size and lacking in nutrition, and makes it over into another fruit, large, rich, toothsome, beautiful. A little daisy, small and imperfect, appealed to him one day, and he developed the insignificant flower into one several inches in diameter. takes a flower with a large, showy bloom, a handsome creature among its more delicate companions, but having an offensive odor, and gives to it a delicate, fragrant scent. He has changed the hue of a yellow poppy into silver or amethyst or ruby. He has driven the pit from the plum and filled its

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place with substances rich, juicy, and sweet.
He created a walnut with far thinner shell
so thin, indeed, that the hungry birds could
perch upon the branches, drive their bills

The Shasta daisy, shown in comparison with the Ox-eye daisy in Mr. Burbank's hands.

through it and rob the nut of its meat. This would not do, and he reversed the process and bred back until he had a nut of just the right shell thickness. Incidentally he drove the tannin from the walnut and has left the meat almost as white as snow.

He has created a white blackberry, large, luscious in flavor, beautiful to look upon. He has made rhubarb yield the entire year round, in garden or under glass.

Not satisfied with either the choicest plum or the apricot, he joined the two and produced a new fruit, naming it, from its parents, the plumcot, a rich, rare fruit, unlike father or mother, surpassing both.

To a plum, which needed richer flavor and flesh, he imparted the taste of the Bartlett pear. He made a new plum which would bear lavishly, and yet endure long on the market stalls. Known in other lands as he is, perhaps better than in his own country, his new plum was asked for a number of years ago by Cecil Rhodes for introduction into South Africa. It proved all that it had promised, and, some time since, to demonstrate its fitness and hardiness, a consignment of the plums was shipped from Cape Town to San Francisco, a distance of eighteen thousand miles, arriving at their destination in prime condition.

It should be noted in passing that nearly or quite twenty millions of dollars have been added to the wealth of the nation by reason of the Burbank potato, his first significant creation, when he was little more than a lad.

Before considering the man and his mode of work, attention may be called to one of the most wonderful things he has accomplished-the creation of the primus berry, the first recorded instance of the production of a fixed species by man. It is the offspring of the native California dewberry and the Siberian raspberry. He is now perfecting what has already nearly reached its last stages of development, a cactus plant bearing no spines or thorns. The vast desert spaces, where the cactus now thrives in defiance of rains, have been steadily inhospitable to cattle because of the thorns upon the cacti which prevent the cattle from eating an otherwise highly desirable plant. One day upon the grounds of Mr. Burbank at Santa Rosa, some fifty miles north of the city of San Francisco, I made a photograph of a giant cactus higher than a fence, with leaves a foot in length by six or eight inches in width and nearly an inch thick, which was very nearly thornless. Another

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