laughing, chatting, strumming on his mandolin or more often as the portrait shows him, leaning forward, eagerly drinking in every word the friend had to say. Altogether, what joyous days those were! Sahib instinctively loved beautiful things full of warmth and color, and had missed them sadly during the past months. Now he revelled in the little room with its buff walls, soft hangings, and big latticed French windows that opened out on the garden where the squirrels whisked and chattered, and the birds were beginning to come back with the first faint hint of green over the lilac-bushes. Often in the evening you would find him there, lying back in his chair close to the window, the yellow lamplight falling on his head, crooning a little song to himself, his eyes half closed. I can hear it now, that faint little song growing clearer as you came up the path.

"The days go too fast," he said one evening with a little sigh. "I want to hold them in my hands-so. When I think I must leave it all, my heart gets very big inside of me."

There was a little boy at the brown house who came in often to visit with him. Sahib loved children dearly and the child instinctively went to him; they understood each other perfectly. He might puzzle us many times, but he never puzzled the little boy.

One afternoon as I was leaving, the child came in.

"Ah, now we will show Sister what we have learned, eh?" said Sahib, laughing and handing him his cane.

"Attention!" the little body straight

ened up and the small heels clicked together.

"Now, the British salute!" and the chubby hand went up and back with the true snap.

"The French! Ah, good! Now the American! That's the boy! Now, right about face! Forward march!" and away strode the little boy around the room trying to keep his usually beaming face very sober until the orders came, "Halt! Fall out!" when he ran laughing to his friend, crying: "Let's do it again."

"No, no, drill's over for to-day. You know when I was a little, little boy like you in Syria, my father he use to tell me "

and already the little boy had forgotten about being a soldier, his friend was going to tell him a story.

So he squatted down on the stool by the side of the wheel-chair, and snuggling up against Sahib's knee began to listen, while his stubby finger slowly traced the gaily colored squares on the Afghan.

I slipped away and closed the door.

Sahib's is an unfinished story. It must be like so many others of that great company to which he belonged, now scattered north, south, east, and west, beginning their new lives as best they may, but he has left us much to remember, and live by, and a never-ending debt of gratitude. He and others like him, sons of far-off countries who with our own have given great gifts for us, their best, their strength and manhood-and daily continue to give, a cheerful sacrifice to assure the safety and happiness of innumerable children to come and a future peace and good-will on earth.

"It's a very odd thing

As odd as can be

That whatever Miss T. eats Turns into Miss T."

T

-Walter de la Mare.

HAT is the strange thing about food, the metamorphosis. Shakespeare was made of flour and green herbs and the flesh of beasts. The greatest living American may be made of buckwheat pancakes for all that we know to the contrary. Ambrosia eaten by swine would become swine. Though we dine on roses we are not necessarily sweet. The jackin-the-pulpit for supper would not make preachers of us. And yet

We are changed by our food. Tiresome, conventional kinds of food do not freshen us as does the clean, wild, simple food of field and forest. Of course, in every community nowadays are a few dietetic dogmatists who would eat old automobiles if they supposed that the essential calories would be in them in soluble form. There are cultists who despise food because it is matter. If it were not for the stubborn fact of hunger they would not eat. Finally, there are mentally dyspeptic intellectuals who devour Freud (without being able to digest him) when they should be eating apples. I never have enjoyed camping-trips made with large numbers of people, but when I think of all of these poor souls I am filled with a womanly desire to snatch them up and spirit them away into the woods or into farm country, on such a trip as Jim and I are wont to take together. I would take them where calories, cults, and psychoanalysis are unknown, and where every animal and every person, in all honesty and dignity, is interested in food. After making them all exceedingly hungry I should like to build for

them the world's finest camp-fire and make lucky stew.

I wish Lamb were alive to write about lucky stew. He could do it justice. But he may have forgotten even roast pig by this time. At any rate, since I am no spiritualist, I cannot expect his assistance. I must describe lucky stew myself, beginning with the recipe.

"Put anything you like in a very deep pail
And pour on anything you please;
Stir it all up with anything you find
Under the anywhere trees.

If anybody comes, asking for dinner,
Serve it with anything you wish;
But never, never, never, never, never forget
To put a four-leaved clover in the dish."

That is a good recipe of the conventional kind, for it leaves out most of the important information. Good recipes never tell the whole story. If they did, cooking would lack romance. As it is, cooking is romantic work.

Consider the demand for a four-leaved clover! Sometimes no four-leaved clover can be found. Jim and I find four-leaved clovers only two or three times in a season, even when we camp all summer, but we have lucky stew nearly every night. Therefore, I have cleverly learned to substitute three white petals from a newly opened daisy, or one long, friendly pineneedle. These have a magic of their own quite as good as the magic of clovers. When good recipes call for something which cannot be had, the wise cook simply substitutes what can be had.

Having found the suitable substitute, the camper is ready to look for "anything you please" and "anything you like." 'Anything you like" usually means vegetables for us, when we are travelling in farm country, game or fish in the wilds. In Oregon it meant carrots most of the time, for they were plentiful. In the East

it sometimes means scraggly rutabagas, bursting cabbages, pithy radishes, jaundiced cucumbers, bumptious kohlrabis, and ancient beets-the more the kinds, the merrier. At other times it has meant sweet corn, succulent tomatoes, delicate peas. We take chances, always, when we go abroad seeking adventures. But we try to combine the raw materials of lucky stew in ways that show imagination, fine sensibility and delicate intuition. That is the secret of the recipe.

The vegetables, of course, must be cut into pieces that will all be thoroughly cooked at the same moment. Hard and ancient vegetables must be cut small. Young and tender ones should be added after the others have cooked a while. The pail or pot in which they are to boil should be filled with water ("anything you please") to a point just below the top of the vegetables, just so that they do not float. When they have cooked thoroughly a small tin of evaporated milk can be added to the liquid in the pot and thickened. Butter may be used, or olive-oil. Then you have a dish for the great of the earth, mingling many aromas, rich, warm, "filling."

Lucky stew is best, of course, if a surprise can be added to it. A surprise is something found when it is not expected! Once, in southern California, when I was making lucky stew on the beach, I found a giant Pismo clam lying calmly near my foot. I am sure that it was not the fear of evil which gave him over to his fate. Even his big six-inch shell was a quite serene denial of error. Yet I seized him and added him to my pail of onions and potatoes. Perhaps, he was content to perish in a good cause.

At other times I have put in mussels fresh from rocks washed by surf, delightful surprises. Or, when we have been floating down rivers, I have taken soft little river fish, chubs, suckers, and the like, that would be insipid eaten alone, and, after parboiling, skinning, and boning, added them to my stew, making a tolerably good chowder. One last lonely frankfurter discovered in the bottom of the provision-box, one small bit of ham, or a lopsided strip of bacon cut into scraps, will give a surprisingly delightful flavor to almost any stew of mixed vege

tables. And once I made lucky stew out of a porcupine. He was a bother to skin, but I did not do that. His hind legs were the best and biggest part of him, and tasted very good, like young spring lamb. "Anything you wish," in the recipe may mean toast in practice, if we have been travelling in regions where bread can be bought. What toast can be made over embers of the fire that cooked lucky stew! It is crisp and tender, and has a perfume that suggests the possible domesticity of the muses. The color of it

is a rich, evenly spread, friendly brown like the brown of oak leaves in autumn. Be it said that whosoever has eaten toast and lucky stew in sufficient quantities has dined well.

Yet there is no law against dessert, and for dessert by the open road wild berries are best, small perfect lyrics made by the collaboration of sun and rain and sweet earth. No wild strawberries can be better than those of Maine and New Brunswick. They are borne in abundance on long, fair stems glistening with dew, wearing a flame color unquenched by it. I have slept where I could gather them for my petit dejeuner without rising. I remember an upland fallow in New Hampshire where the blueberries, smoky, mild, uncloying, are cause enough for grace after meat. I have torn hands and hair without regret in thickets on steep and stony hillsides in order to get raspberries, red and black. On the banks of the Tobique I have picked and eaten the rare, winy, and beautiful sand-cherry or beach plum. It is lovely to look at, growing on long, graceful sprays that spring out of the sand and lean to it again, and the flavor is zestful and romantic. I have eaten the small wintergreen berry as one eats an after-dinner mint. But the happiest days of adventure have been associated with blackberries. Once they kept us fed when we could get nothing else for several days.

It was in Oregon, when we were making our trip down the Willamette River in The Dingbat of Arcady, a boat which we had built ourselves in a day and a half. We had left the town of Salem behind without securing any great amount of food there, because we counted on being able to buy from farmers on our way,

but for one reason or another, we did not find farmers with food to sell, and for a long stretch of river before we reached Newburg we lived on limited rations. Finally, there came a day when we had only tea for breakfast, with sugar and no milk, and one small piece of triscuit each. We broke fast thus lightly at dawn, for we were eager to be off toward Newburg and good food.

At about two o'clock that afternoon we saw a farm near the water's edge. I scrambled up the bank, cutting and scratching arms and legs on stones and thistles. Then I ran across a small meadow to the house. I was met at the door by a hearty old lady of Scandinavian origin. I asked her if she had any vegetables to sell to two hungry campers.

"I haf a onion," she said; "but I want him for my dinner."

"Have you any fruit?" "I haf a apple."

She wanted "him" also for her dinner. She explained that her farm was managed for her by her brothers who owned a neighboring farm farther inland and grew all the vegetables and fruit needed for both, giving her a supply of necessaries whenever they drove over to the river. There must have been a hungry glitter in my eyes for she looked at me steadily a moment, thinking. Then, with a Then, with a wrinkly smile, she said:

"You eat blackberry?"

I was almost ready to eat hay and assented eagerly. She pointed across the pasture to a patch of heavy vines hanging in a great clump in full sunlight, twinkling with beady black fruit.

“Eat all you want and take all you want. Too many here," she said.

I thanked her with an enthusiasm which must have puzzled her. Then I ran down and hallooed to Jim, bidding him bring something in which to carry berries. In a minute he was beside me, carrying a big newspaper in which some of our clothing had been wrapped. Together we ran to the clump of berry vines. We set down the paper and began to eat. For about fifteen minutes we picked and swallowed without stopping for much conversation. I had never liked blackberries much before, but these were the best I had ever eaten, in prime condition,

large, plump with juices from rains recently fallen, warm and sugary as a result of several days of hot sunshine. They melted away in our mouths and disappeared silently by tens and dozens.

When we had eaten very nearly as many as possible, quite as many as seemed wise, we picked a plentiful provision to carry with us. We must have put nearly a peck into that newspaper. Then, with our treasure, we went back to the Dingbat.

The berries agreed with us very well, which was fortunate, for we got little else to eat for several days. Late that afternoon we did come upon a dairy farm, and bought a quart of rich cream. But we could not persuade the farmer to sell anything else. For dinner we had blackberries swimming in that cream, with plenty of sugar. More elaborate meals might taste worse.

While we were eating thus, poetically, on a stretch of sand in a wild and wonderful curve of the river, with great firs rising on the hills well away from the shore, it began to rain. It was late. We did not want to travel in the rain and get wet just at sundown. Nor were we sure that we could find a better place to camp if we went on. So we pulled the Dingbat up onto the beach and tied her. Then, since we had no tent and had been dependent on maple leaves for shelter, camping usually in the groves, we were hard put to it for protection. However, we took the strip of ever-useful canvas which had served as a cover for our blankets, strung it over a rope tied between two saplings about two feet above the earth, and pegged out the corners, thereby improvising a small, low tent. It was almost satisfactory. I say almost advisedly. For if our feet were far enough under cover to be dry, our faces had to be out in the night getting wet. If our faces were dry, our feet suffered. But the trees were too far away to be reached easily. This was simply the driest of several wet ways of spending the night. We took half a dozen sticks of wood inside with us, that we might keep them dry and be sure of a fire in the morning." We also took the remainder of our cream under cover that it might not be diluted and spoiled. Then, although sand is a