ETITIA FANSHAWE awoke with a start. She shivered perceptibly and then her first thought was to arrange her tousled hair, although it seemed quite unnecessary at three o'clock in the morning, watching at her husband's bedside. Next she peered over in the dim light at Jack. He lay there handsome enough despite the ten days of pneumonia. True his cheeks had sunk a trifle and his color had faded, but these changes only served to emphasize the strength of the jaw of which Letitia was so justly proud and the lustre of the piercing black eyes. Even now those eyes were snapping away at vacancy, and Letitia shuddered again as she wondered whether the delirium was about to reappear. Of course, the doctor had assured her that the fever had almost left and there was no likelihood of a return of that disagreeable symptom, but, on the other hand, hadn't Mrs. Burton warned her the last thing that night not to be alarmed "if poor Jack does go out of his head a little because," as she added, "some complication might arise just at this stage."

Indeed, the principal function that Letitia's friends had seemed to serve during her husband's illness, it occurred to her now, was to see that she kept hope properly tempered with fear. She realized that she had been the recipient of much condolence but of very little encouragement and cheer. The doctor's unvarying tactful reply to her daily importunities, inspired by the gloomy suggestions of her visitors, was that he could treat her husband but couldn't treat all of her friends at the same time. And little Mrs. Fanshawe had implicit confidence in Jack's friend, Dr. Frank Boswell, and she felt that Jack was going to get well.

So, if the truth must be confessed, Letitia was really worried about quite another thing, and in this matter the reply of the doctor had not served to reassure her. "Doctor,” she had said one morning, “are the underlying ideas expressed in delirium based on real experiences or is everything said merely rubbish and irrelevant nonsense?" She had felt a trifle ashamed in putting the question, but her peace of mind demanded it. The doctor gazed straight into her eyes as he replied, his loyalty evidently dictating that he should rather jeopardize the happiness than impugn the honor of his friend, for he, too, had overheard the vague allusions of the delirious man to a

"beautiful blonde" and a "pretty little Dresden figure." At such times he had not hesitated to smile frankly over at the wife, but that morning he appeared to realize the import of the question. He answered honestly and straightforwardly nevertheless, which Letitia did not fail to appreciate. "Why, Mrs. Fanshawe, I should say that the utterances in delirium were mainly fantastic and absurd with no real sane basis, but if any idea were continually repeated I should feel that it was being obtruded from the subconscious mind and might very well be grounded in reality.'

And now as she waited and feared, the words of the doctor came back to her with full force. And surely enough the references to women or, at any rate, to a woman had recurred persistently enough. Letitia leaned back in the Morris chair and viewed herself with some satisfaction in the cheval mirror opposite. Indeed she had ample reason to be pleased. The formless dressing gown succeeded but poorly in hiding the lissome figure, and the dainty little foot with a satin slipper balanced on the end of a toe emphasized the witchery of the deshabille. She arranged a curl that had tumbled down about the pert little nose and then cast almost a defiant glance over at Jack, accompanied by a little toss of the head which seemed to express some doubt as to her husband's taste.

"Letitia," came from the depths of the pillow.

"Yes, Jack," and she was at his side in an instant, keen and alert in her rôle of relief nurse.

"Letitia, do you love me?" he asked.

"Why of course I do, you foolish boy. Why do you ask?" she answered, while the thought flashed through her mind that Guilty Conscience was speaking.

"Well, little girl, I've been very far away for a while. and you seem a little strange to me, so I like to be reassured. That's all."

Nothing further was said for several minutes and Letitia rested there on the edge of the bed smoothing his hair in an endeavor to woo sleep for him. But just when she thought she had succeeded, he turned to her and asked:

"Letitia, why didn't you want to know if I loved you?" Guilty Conscience again, thought Letitia, but she replied with well-feigned merriment:

"Why, you goose, don't you see that after you have been so far away for a time I must give you a chance

to make up your mind again?" And then she added inconsistently and with a very real earnestness in her voice: "Well, do you?"

For an answer Jack Fanshawe drew her over to him with a remarkable exhibition of strength for a sick man, but the fervor of the action instead of convincing Letitia only made her speculate as to how a Dresden figure might fare under such treatment. She couldn't have speculated for very long, however, because when the regular nurse came on duty soon after, she lay there tight asleep at his side.

The patient had entered upon a period of convalescence and as the doctor put it, in medical parlance, his recovery was entirely uneventful. And the happy turn in events meant a release for his devoted wife from her bedside duties, and she took advantage of the opportunity to steal out to visit her friends from time to time. Now these ladies received her happily enough, but, deprived of the chance to condole, turned their attention back to scandal again, of which there was never a dearth, and further poisoned the already affected mind of Letitia Fanshawe. And Mrs. Burton concluded one evening by expressing with great gusto the borrowed opinion that there should be a single standard of morality for both men and women, no matter how broad. All this sent Letitia home with her brain burning and beating, more convinced than ever of the justness of the suspicions, although she had never heard a word that was connected even remotely with her husband.

A month had rolled past and the constrained behavior of Mrs. Fanshawe had gradually succeeded in working something like a breach into the relations between husband and wife. Jack Fanshawe was unhappy and perplexed, but the period had passed where he still offered his wife a chance to explain. Letitia, on her side, was completely miserable by now, not nearly so confident any longer in her righteous indignation, and she longed for the opportunity that she had so often spurned to have a frank talk with her spouse.

Thus matters stood when Letitia started down town to shop one day. A train was coming in as she reached the subway ticket office, and as she fumbled with her pocket-book she dropped her parasol. As she stooped to recover it a gentleman anticipated her and handed it to her. She thanked him hurriedly and just succeeded in boarding the train, assisted, much to her confusion, by the same stranger.

When he placed himself at her side and attempted to engage her in conversation she found herself replying, although she devoted far more attention to analyzing her reasons for tolerating his impertinence than in following him. By the time that she changed for a "local" at

Forty-second street she had fully determined that it was merely an assertion of her independence and not a lack of moral courage that had caused her to permit him to pursue his importunities. Still she realized that she was not enjoying herself hugely and she was vaguely conscious. of a sense of shame. She looked for him to leave her here but, instead, he continued on very attentively to Twenty-eighth street where he alighted with her.

Her distress was becoming acute when he at length. raised his hat and addressed her:

"I suppose we had better part here because we might meet someone that knows either of us, but I should like to take you to supper some night."

Mrs. Letitia Fanshawe burned with shame and for an answer she left him standing there and rushed into the midst of the crowd ascending the subway stairs. Nor did she halt until she had reached her husband's factory, not very far off, and boarded the elevator there. Then for the first time did she look around as if in fear of pursuit.

She paused outside the door of her husband's offices to catch her breath and to collect her thoughts. At least here she was at Jack's office again—how she had longed to resume the pleasant visits with the little dinners afterwards at the cozy Italian restaurants, of which Jack always seemed to know a new one-but she realized that she was here to make a confession, not to demand one as she had expected to when she should call again.

She had already turned the knob of the door when Jack's voice rose inside, and her heart seemed to stand still as she heard his words:

"Miss Dresden Doll, please come over here."

But retreat was impossible now and as she entered the room with flushed face, there sat her husband with a buyer who was evidently amused at Jack's apt allusions to the pretty models who were gathered there to exhibit the latest styles in fall coats. The girls, too, appeared to take no little part in the merriment.

"Letitia, dear girl," cried Jack joyfully, and, as if aware that in his wife's visit a crucial moment had arrived, he hurried with her into an adjoining office, without paying attention to the amenities of the occasion. He just stopped long enough to depute a salesman to take his place with the buyer.

The mortified Mrs. Fanshawe realized that she had two confessions to make now instead of one and she managed through them somehow, aided extremely by Jack's kind sympathy. When she had quite finished and he had kissed her tears away, he gravely suggested:

"Now, let us go out and search for that kind gentleman, and, if we don't find him, we can still be in time for dinner and the theatre afterward."

Hours have passed, and yet

I am lying flat in my bunk.
The ship still rolls and heaves.
But now with a smoother motion.
I retch no longer; my stomach
Is sore, but the soreness is dulled.
My body is tender all over,
But much less so than it was.

A soothing languor creeps o'er me;
I feel myself dozing at times.
Awake all things seem unreal;
Dozing I do not dream.
Yesterday seems like last year;
I have lost the sense of time,
And cannot connect with the past.

I sleep. How long I know not.
Two bells sound, and I am awakened.
The ship still rolls and heaves,
But now with a gentle motion,
A long drawn, gentle motion.
My head is light but clear;
My stomach is empty and quiet;
I feel a faint longing for food.
I turn, and through the porthole
See blue waves dance and gleam
In the rays of the afternoon sun.
A's I gaze I see the horizon
Sway up and down with the ship
As it slowly rolls on the ground-swell,
So that now I see the blue water,
And now the bright sky alone.
A white sail flecks the blue water,
And sea gulls fly athwart the sky.

I arise, feeling dizzy and weak,
And make my way to the deck,
And there, in a steamer chair,
Recline till the dinner gong sounds.

E. E. CORNWALL, M. D.

३

SEE by the papers yer friend, Doctor Osler, has made another big mistake," says Hogan to me. Pleading ignorance to any errors made by the savant, I inquired what mistake had been made.

"Sure," says he, "ye've read how he says a man when he reaches sixty years of age ought to be chloroformed. Well, I'll tell you of another darn fool thing he onct said."

Hogan, be it understood, was, at one time in his career, a brick layer. Combining it with the game of politics, he succeeded in both professions and rose to fame and fortune as a contractor. Fortune's smiles never affected a man's mode of life less than they did Hogan's. Hogan, the rich contractor, whose daughter married a governor's son, was in manner and dress the same Hogan who laid bricks in the early sixties. No amount of coaxing ever induced him to forsake the neighborhood of his early triumphs. No persuasive eloquence ever swerved him from the paths of his nightly visits to the corner "Café” for a friendly discussion of the topics.

"For several months," says Hogan, "I'd had a misery in my chest and such a cough that many a night I'd not close an eye. Meeting Father Coolahan one day and tellin' him my troubles, 'Hogan,' says he, 'ye must go and see Professor Osler.' He wrote the Professor's name and address on a card, and next day I goes up to see the great man. The door was opened by a nigger, dressed up like he was going to a ball. 'I want to see Professor Osler,' says I.

"Walk right in and have a seat,' says he. "Presently in walked a slip of a girl, and says she 'Have you an engagement with Doctor Osler?'

'No,' says I, 'but I want to see him.'

"Yer name?' says she.

'James Hogan,' says I.

"Where do you live, Mr. Hogan?' says she. 'Four hundred and ninety West Fayette Street,' says I.

little bit of a yellow faced man with a smile from ear

to ear.

"Come right in, sit down and tell me your troubles,' says he.

"I told him all about myself as best I could, and, after I was through, he started in askin' me a thousand darn fool questions about my father, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother, my sisters, my brothers— everybody I ever heard of and a whole lot I didn't know and didn't want to know. Then he made me take off my clothes. He tapped me here and he patted me there, told me to cough, and count and whisper; then he stuck a thing in his ears that looked like one of them things you put in your ears when you drop a penny in the phonograph. He struck me on me knees, me elbows, looked into me eyes, told me to squeez his hands. And then he looked wise like and says he, 'Now, Hogan, if you want to get well and stay well, you'll have to quit smoking and drinking, eat no fat meats, go to bed early and sleep late, go down to Atlantic City for a few weeks, and live like a decent man.' Then, handing me a prescription, says he, 'You'll have to take one of these pills three times a day, after meals.'

"What do I owe you, Doc?' says I.

""Twenty-five dollars, please,' says he, and mind you he didn't do a darn thing more to me for 'twentyfive dollars, please,' than Doc Chambers did for me for ten dollars and no 'Please' about it, either.

"I went back home and told the old woman about what Doctor Osler says, and the very next morning she packs me up and sends me off on my way to Atlantic City. On my way to the depot I meets Jim Reilly, the Fourth Assistant Street Cleaning Commissioner. 'Where are you off to, Hogan?' says he.

""To Atlantic City to get back me health,' says I. Then I tells him all the Professor says to me, and specially about the drinking. So we goes across the street to Joe Sullivan's saloon and we has a partin' drink, and in walks Mike Flannery, the President of the Second Ward Democratic Club, and he joins us. Well, to make a long story short, I got drunk, awful drunk and Sullivan's Saloon is as close as I ever got to Atlantic City. For ten days I was at Sullivan's, having whiskey for breakfast, whiskey and cigarettes for dinner, whiskey and hog meat for supper and more whiskey for a night cap. Then, the old woman hearing of me being drunk down to Sulli

You may see Doctor Osler at four o'clock next Thursday afternoon, and be punctual, please.'

"On Thursday, at four o'clock, I was there. After waiting a bit, I was told to walk in the office. Faith I thought I was going to see a great big man with whiskers down to his knees, and, bless you, there stood a