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"Don't think that I'm a simple clod, brother. I used to walk in a frock coat. Now I sleep naked on the earth and

eat grass. The devil used to my head as he does in yours. now I don't complain.

put the same thoughts into

I tired him out.
I tired him out. I live, and

"Don't think, brother, that, it's only the clod who goes down in the bog. One day there came a man in braid, in shiny boots and with a gold-headed whip. He says: 'I want to live by the toil of my hands, for I'm no longer a gentleman, but a convict.' He was young and talkative: he would catch his fish and mow his grass and ride-how he did ride!-miles and miles a day. He used to go over the far hills to the post office. Then he'd come back and tell me, 'Michael, how little money they send me from home! I can scarce keep up my house.' I would tell him, 'Pan Andre, the devil's doing you a bad turn. You don't want to wish for anything to be happy. Fortune has done us a bad turn, too. You must laugh at her and despise her; then she, too, will begin to laugh herself.'

“One day I took him across and he told me he was going to get his wife. He was very happy and looked fine on his horse. And he came back with her, young, good looking, in a hat, with a baby in her arms. He praised her and was so happy that he says, 'Yes, even in Siberia people live!' Then he began to want for money-he'd say, 'For me she buries herself in Siberia and foregoes the happiness due her beauty and youth. She's a glorious wife!'

"One day, three years later, I rowed her across and she was with one of the officials, all bundled up for a long journey! What could a wife do out here?-mud, cold, no luxury, nothing but drunkards about her, and she from the Capital! Well, Pan Andre, he rushes up later and asks, 'Did my wife go by with a man in spectacles?' I says, 'Yes! go seek the wind in the field.' A week later he returns and throws himself in the bottom of the boat and beats the planks and howls. I laughed and recalled 'Even in Siberia people live!'

"Afterwards he tries to get his freedom, to get back to Russia, and bring his wife to him again. He spends so much on petitions that he must mortgage his house. At last he gives up hope and turns to his little girl. She grows up beautiful, dark-eyed and graceful, like her mother. How proud he was when I ferried them across to church. He got life back into his face and would say, 'Akh, is there such a girl in all the continent?' And I says, 'Not so soon, Pan Andre; she has young blood in her veins and must live. Where can she live in this Prison-land?' Anyway the girl gets sick and pines away and now the father goes looking for a magic curer. Wherever he hears of one, he rides like mad and brings him to see her. It's terrible to think of the money he spends. He might as well drink. She'll die some day and then he'll be lost. It's all the same whether he hangs himself or runs off to Russia. If he runs off, he'll get caught and there'll be a trial

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"It was very well for him," shuddered the Tartar with fear and cold. "God was good to him. Three years were some blessing. Oh God! may I not die in this land. Grant that for one day I may see my wife, and give me strength to bear this. Then may I suffer unspeakable tortures. Oh God! grant this."

The Tartar burst out crying and retold of his clever wife and happy country. In grieving tones he recited to the old boatman that he was suffering in vain. He had stolen nothing. His two brothers and his uncle had pilfered horses and beaten the peasant to the point of death. But he had been unjustly treated. His uncle was rich and remained at home. The three brothers had gone to Siberia.

"You'll get hardened to it," chuckled Michael, poking the fire fore, and humming a tune. To him the little blaze was the happiest thing in the world.

"What happiness can Pan Andre's daughter have in her father?" he continued after a moment. "He loves her and takes some comfort. Young girls don't like sternness; but rather perfume and caresses. And he's a stern old man. Vodka's all gone-time to go to bed."

The Tartar dared not enter the hut. There, there was no covering. Here, at least, there was the fire. He fell to thinking. In a few days he would no longer be needed. He must begin anew his tramp from village to village. Could a man live on nothing? He had no money. How could his wife, who was young and modest, stand the degrading tramp of a beggar? No, it might not be. She was spoiled; he loved her but he could not ask this of her.

At dawn the Tartar awoke. Weariness had brought him a sleep, and sleep, in turn, new hope. He seemed to see a smiling village and willows and a river! By the fire was his wife-by the fire in a large airy cottage! There, there was no cold, no muddy flatnesses;-no wild people. The Tartar smiled and opened his eyes. What was this river? The Volga? What terrible things dreams are, and yet, his only happiness!

Snow began to fall. Behind the willows the barge was grating on the slimy shore. "Ahoy, boatman!" came a voice from the other bank. The Tartar shook himself and his companions. He and the three ferrymen took up the long oars, while Michael threw himself across the helm. All this time, revolver shots were heard and wild yelling. "You'll get across in time. You don't gain anything by making this noise," bellowed Michael. The clumsy barge swung out from the willows and only the motion of the oars told of its progress. After a tedious row the heavy boat bumped on the landing stage. There stood a short man in foxskins, fragilely built, old and with troubled expression.

"I'm going in great haste to the border. I hear a new doctor has been appointed there. My daughter is worse." The man whom Michael addressed as Pan Andre leaped onto the barge and motioned to the servant to follow with the horses.

In midstream Michael looked up from the helm and said slowly, “Even in Siberia people live. Even in Siberia.” The boatman's face was expressive in triumph that he had

foretold the very events that were coming to pass. At seeing the miserable, helpless expression of the man in foxskins, he laughed aloud.

When the boat reached the bank Michael jumped up, took off his hat and helped Pan Andre out. "It's bad going now," he said; "your business isn't so important but that you might wait until the roads have dried up. If there was any sense in going, you might be right in doing it; but you can keep on forever and ever and nothing will come of it.”

Pan Andre dropped a piece of money into each of the boatmen's hands and was driven rapidly off over the bleak countryside.

He

Slowly the Tartar walked up to the boatman. He looked proudly and bravely at his companions. "Michael," he began, “you are a bad man and he is a good man. wants because God has granted him a heart. You are but a rock and you want nothing. You are-earth; God loves you not. God has made Pan Andre living; God has made you dead."

All laughed. The Tartar frowned in disgust and walked back to the fire. The rest entered the hut.

"Cold,” said one, "a galley slave's life. Why don't you close the door?"

"You were born a galley slave and you can't deny it," said old Michael-"leave the door for the Tartar to shut."

Outside the snow blustered, sending little whirls into the open door. The door remained unshut. Outside little ice floes grated softly against the barge. And at last this seemed the sweetest sound in all the world to the Tartar. Walter B. Wolf.

"CHANTER OF PERSONALITY."

A BOY, listening breathlessly, crouches in the shadow of

a sand dune on the low sedge-grown shore of Long Island. The night is sultry; the sagging half-moon looms dull gold through the haze borne on a wind from the south. Ever so lightly the wind stirs the bushes of beach-plum. Through them soft moon-shadows play across the boy's bare head, rumpled from a restless pillow; across his brown bare legs, fresh-scratched by the briars. As he had lain awake under the dry heat of the attic rafters, yonder in the farm house, a far-borne plaintive bird-note had reached his sensitive ear; had brought him hurrying over the sterile fields and through the blackberry tangles to the shore and the bush whence, not an arm's length from where, tense and rapt, he crouches, fitfully rises and falls from a brownfeathered throat the call for a lost mate.

The boy has waited and listened here before. All summer he has watched "the two feathered guests from Alabama" building the nest which holds the four light green brownspotted eggs. For days he has shared the fears and longings of the he-bird upon the nest, calling now hopefully, now listlessly never pausing long-for the mate who has flown out to sea and has not returned on the south wind. "Never too close, never disturbing them; cautiously peering, absorbing, translating"-at last long accumulated wonder, pain and faith stir in the boy's heart, then burst into life:

"Now in a moment I know what I am for, I awake—

A thousand warbling echoes have started in me, never to die.
Never more shall I escape;

Nevermore the cries of unsatisfied love be absent from me."

More than half a century after this, Symonds and Rossetti had haled Whitman "the greatest seer of the nineteenth century"; Stevenson, the gentle, had made fun of his writings, but declared him a man whom it was an honor to love; Lincoln, dying, had pressed his hand, and he himself

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