bad in the department of French, for there I have merely to reverse the telephone number of the head of the department (789), and I get the accession of the Capetian house in France (987); while for his associate I can add a century to his call (811) and get the quite appropriate number 911, the date of Duke Rollo's investiture with the province of Normandy.

The list might be extended much further, but the instances which I have given will suffice to make clear the principle of procedure. Of course, if our telephone companies would only be reasonable and begin the numbering of telephones with 1500 (or better still perhaps, 1492), when things of importtance really began to happen, it would make the matter of date-association much easier; but, even as it is, I find the method one of decided efficacy, and can heartily recommend its adoption to all persons who may be afflicted, like myself, with a natural incapacity for remembering numbers.

MY POSSESSION

IT was last October; the new magazine had arrived at this far-away ranch in Southern California, and, after a quick scanning of its welcome pages, had been put aside for days, awaiting the rare hour in a ranch-woman's life when the work, not finished, is yet slack enough to be left and forgotten. The time came at last. Perhaps the work was not as slack as it should have been, but it was time to forget it, at any rate, and I hastened away from it out-ofdoors, with the book in my hand. Climbing higher on the hill above the house, I sat down to read.

Immediately, I was lost to every surrounding, even to the insistency of children's voices, and often, as I read, my face widened with a smile of delight, or lengthened with a reflected

pathos; or again, I regret to say, remained a mere blank of uncomprehension! But out of all the good things I read that morning, and they were many, there was one page of which I wish to tell. In 'A Possession,' that bit of prose-poetry by Fannie Stearns Davis,' I found a message which filled me with a sudden responsive joy in my own possessions. I raised my eyes from those lines so full of discoverable beauty, with a new vision. The monotony of the day's work was forgotten; the 'sameness of rolling hills, and sunny valley, and high mountains,' had disappeared; and sitting there in the sunshine, which is mine all the year round, I realized the wealth of my possessions.

I felt the nearness of friends in books; the companionship in the laughter of children at play, and in the sound of the voices of men at work; and the splendor of the wide scene before me. The beauty and the happiness of my day rose before me. I thought of the early mornings in these great, bare hills, before the sun has risen high enough to shine down on our western slopes; of the sweet, damp fragrance. Then of dead grass and sage-brush stirring lightly in the breeze that comes just before the sunrise; the silence of the wide valley below, still in shadow, where far out in the middle lies a sleepy little town nestling close to the railroad station. From the blue distance of the north to the rosy ending in the south extends the river which gives the valley its name. There is no water to be seen in October, but patches of white sand showing through willow clumps indicate its course. On the other side, high above the valley, rise mountains which are touched by the first light of morning. Their lower 'benches,' covered with yellow-brown stubble-fields, reach upward into the dark chaparral of the 1 In the Atlantic, for October, 1911.

higher slopes, giving an ethereal, floating sense of beauty as they lie in the changing pink and purple and gold of sunrise.

All about me is the great silence of treeless, birdless hills, broken only by the tinkling of bells as the flock of goats leaves the corrals below to climb steep hills in search of the day's feeding of dry bunch-grass, which is scant enough after the summer, and they must range far to find it. As they climb, the first sunbeams stream down over their backs, and they, and the herder with his knapsack and long stick, and the busy shepherd dog, disappear into the golden light of the hilltop.

Then the long silence of the morning, and the full sunshine of noon-time, when there is no relief on mountain or valley or hillside from the glare of the sun. All the warm air is filled with the scent of tar-weed. Moving drowsily along the wide white road is the old wagon and horses of a mountain rancher who has come down for provisions, bringing with him a load of rough oak wood. The dust rises from the lagging feet of the horses and falls back thick and smothering. On both sides of the road stretch barbed-wire fences as far as can be seen. There are no trees anywhere, only the dusty tar-weed, and thin-stubbled fields of the level valley. No sign of life but the scurrying of startled squirrels.

Then, in a sudden gust, comes the regular afternoon wind, rushing unimpeded through the long valley and carrying with it the white river sand, high in the air like a curtain between the two mountains. It sweeps along the roads, pushing before it clouds of dust and bunches of dead weeds torn from the round. Pitilessly it assaults the longsuffering little town, with its ragged w of saloons and stores facing the ailroad track, tearing out any forlorn

est hope of a garden, and battering the few old wind-swept trees.

When at last the wind dies down, and the dry grass stands upright again, and the great silence is restored, it is evening. The shadow of the western mountain creeps visibly across the valley till it touches the foot of these silvery-tan hills; and now, lifted out of their noontime commonplaceness, they stand as in a flood of light poured through windows stained amethyst, their very bareness lending itself to the purer reflection of jewel-like color. In a place too easily named 'God-forsaken,' I have wondered rather, whether He does not pause here sometimes, far from the sins and strivings of men; for there is a lingering glory of light and color, now, that is unearthly in its significance, while the hills stand breathless as if receiving the benison of His presence. Then slowly and tremulously rises the great earthly shadow until the light is gone, and the hills rest in the quiet gray of twilight.

Down the steep hillside the flock is returning; hundreds of sure-footed goats, with their long, silky hair almost touching the ground, following the narrow trails worn by their ancestors. As they hurry downward, companies of them scampering ahead, or stopping suddenly to browse, they look like a field of grain in a summer wind. The old herder, going on before, opens the gates for them, and then disappears into his cabin where the wife has a hot supper waiting. The tired dog stretches himself on the ground near the door, patiently waiting his turn to eat.

In the kitchen of the ranch-house on the hill above, there is the confusion of children's happy voices; the cheerful tramping of men's feet on the bare floor; the appetizing sounds of a supper in preparation. The table, covered with white oil-cloth, and serving in turn for reading or writing or eating, is laid

for the meal and lighted by a small lamp displaying a pictured card-board shade. There are no luxuries here save those of farm products, but appetites are healthy, and there is abundance to supply the need. The talk is not always of widespread interests, but 'concerns of the particular hearth and home,' joined in merrily by all, with frequent interruptions of irrepressible children; and often the board walls ring with hearty, wholesome laughter for we are young, and fun may be had for the laughing!

It is long before the evening work is over and children's voices hushed. Then, if heads and backs are not too weary, books are brought from the shelf in the corner, or there is music sung or played by those who can never know the pleasure they give to their unseen listeners.

Outside, the cool night air is sweet

with the scent of wild things. There is no sound but the occasional tinkle of a bell in the flock below, and the soft breathing of the sleeping hills—or is that the wind, far up in the cañon? From out in the valley comes the distant whistle of a train, bringing with it the thought of the bright, outside world, until its long line of lights disappears into the darkness and we are left again in the quiet of the night - but not alone, for in the hovering of the close, thick stars I know that God is

near.

And this is the day which I possess. I have been given a better understanding of it; I have been taught that the secret of a lasting joy in the steady realization of the good is mine.

If it is the mission of the poet to give and to teach, it is my part, listening, profiting, to render thanks-and I do!

I

I LIVE with my father and my sister down on the Point, a little way beyond the village. To be strictly truthful, I suppose I should say that my father and my sister live with me; a peculiar combination of circumstances made such an arrangement easy and natural.

The house is not so very large, but it is large enough, and it has every convenience that is to be had down on the end of a point almost out at sea. It has far more conveniences than any house in the village, and it has one virtue in addition. It is mine. And the barn is mine, and the two cows in it, and the horse. I have not kept pigs for reasons which must be obvious to any one who has kept them. But I keep chickens, or hens, whichever you please to call them, and at certain seasons I keep both hens and chickens; and I have reason to believe that I keep several families of skunks, and some mink. The skunks confine their attention to my chickens and do not bother us, and the mink are a source of entertainment on the rare occasions when we catch a glimpse of them. The large brown or gray rats which infest the shore furaish entertainment, in turn, for the mink and for my dog. I have some

VOL. 110-NO. 2

times wondered how the rats themselves are entertained.

We have the waters of an unimportant sound on three sides of us, with the lightship on Singing Reef - of course the lightship is not on the reef — Singing Reef Lightship, I say, about four miles away, on our right. Lesser Pungatit, five miles off, stretches briefly before us to the south; and Greater Pungatit stretches, not so briefly, to the southeast. Greater Pungatit always makes me think of a sleeping whale. It is not very high and it gives an impression of immense leisure, and somehow it does not seem to be anchored. I should not be surprised to look out some morning and find that it had waked in the night and made off.

The narrow passage between the islands is put down in all the charts as Pungatit Passage; it is known in the vernacular as 'Punk Hole,' which title betrays its origin and some of its characteristics.

Then there is the lighthouse on the next point, less than two miles away on our left. That lighthouse does bother me. It is a flashing light, and the light is very bright during the flashes, which come just as you are beginning to recover from the last one. There is no getting away from it, and it makes

me nervous. But I am not going to complain to the Lighthouse Board. It would not do any good, and it might do harm, and I should only get laughed at for my pains. I have blocked off the easterly end of my piazza with vines. I wish that it were as easy to block off my east windows without shutting out the view and the sun.

Having such a natural barrier on three sides, it occurred to me that it might be as well to put up an artificial barrier on the fourth side. Accordingly, two years ago, I ran a high wall in a straight line from, shore to shore. This wall is punctured at the road by a great gate and at one other point by a lesser gate; and it is surmounted by a low fence of a very inconspicuous and tasteful design. In addition, I was at considerable expense in setting out vines and creepers all along the wall. I have admired that wall, with its living green, many a time. I still admire it. I was doing that very thing this morning and reflecting how excellently and unobtrusively it fulfills its purpose. But I am informed that my wall is not so generally admired in the village.

I do not care. I do not hold with those who have been all for pulling down their walls and fences in these last twenty years. We poor land-owners are entitled to some measure of privacy, and that wall was built chiefly for the purpose of keeping people out. Six acres is but six acres, but it is all I have. I have none of your socialistic tendencies, I am afraid, to be willing to give Marzwk Zcknjczwskwch the free and unencumbered use of my grounds. I prefer that he should stay out, at least until I ask him in. That is not likely to happen soon.

My father has no regular occupation. He is over seventy, although he does not look more than sixty, and he has deserved his leisure. He busies himself about the garden and the barn much of

the time. His boyhood was spent on a farm, and he seems to enjoy pretending that this is just such another. It is not, of course. Mike looks out for the horse and the cows, and does all the disagreeable work about the hens and the garden. Mike is devoted to my father. Almost everybody is. Indeed, I need not have qualified the statement.

When he is not busy about the place in the way I have mentioned, my father is apt to be poking about the shore, or sitting on our piazza, reading. I spend as much time with him as possible because-well, because I like to, and because he seems to like to have me. But he never wants to go out with me—or with anybody else in my boats. As that is the thing I enjoy the most, his unwillingness is unfortunate.

Felicia keeps the house. Felicia is my sister. She keeps the house, as I started to say, to our utter satisfaction

when she is at home. She came back from England two years ago, at about the time that I built the wall. She had been away for two years, and it was only my hint that I would like to see her again before I die that brought her back. It was then she began her keeping of the house. She did not seem so cheerful as one likes to have one's sister seem, and I wondered whether I had made a mistake. She became more cheerful as time went on, however, so I concluded that there was nothing the matter except that she had had no regular occupation for some years. That

the lack of a regular occupationplays the devil with us all when we let it get a good hold.

Felicia is away, at present, on a round of visits. I am unable to see why people like to spend so much time away, visiting. When you have found the place that you like best in the world, why under the sun should you go away from it in order to visit in other places which can't possibly suit