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the mob and brought the chief mischiefmaker out. Strange to say, the preacher received but one blow, and then he reasoned the case out with the agitator, and the man undertook to quiet his companions. Thus Wesley went fearlessly from place to place. He visited Ireland forty-two times, as well as Scotland and Wales. When he was eighty-four he crossed
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over to the Channel Islands in stormy weather; and there "high and low, rich and poor, received the Word gladly". He always went on horseback till quite late in life, when his friends persuaded him to have a chaise. No weather could stop him from keeping his engagements. In he set out from Epworth to Grimsby; but was told at
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the ferry he could not cross the Trent owing to the storm. But he was determined his Grimsby congregation should not be disappointed; and he so worked on the boatmen's feelings that they took him over even at the risk of their lives. At Bristol, in , he was told that highwaymen were on the road, and had robbed all
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the coaches that passed, some just previously. But Wesley felt no uneasiness, "knowing," as he writes, "that God would take care of us; and He did so, for before we came to the spot all the highwaymen were taken, and so we went on unmolested, and came safe to Bristol". This immense labour had no ill effect upon his health.
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In June, , when he was entering his eighty-fourth year, he writes: "I am a wonder to myself. It is now twelve years since I have felt such a sensation as weariness. I am never tired either with writing, preaching, or travelling." When Wesley was on his death-bed he wrote to Wilberforce cheering him in his struggle against the slave
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trade. "Unless God has raised you up for this very thing," writes Wesley, "you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils, but if God be for you who can be against you?... Go on in the name of God and in the power of His might till even American slavery, the vilest that ever saw the
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sun, shall vanish away before it." Wesley died, at the ripe age of eighty-eight, in the year . He had saved no money, so had none to leave behind; but he was one of those "poor" persons who "make many rich". Amongst his few small gifts and bequests was " to be divided among the six poor men named by
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the assistant who shall carry my body to the grave; for I particularly desire that there be no hearse, no coach, no escutcheon, no pomp". SOME CHILDREN OF THE KINGDOM. Shortly after Mwanga, King of Uganda, came to the throne, reports were made to that weak-minded monarch that Mr. Mackay, the missionary, was sending messages to Usoga, a neighbouring State,
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to collect an army for the purpose of invading Uganda. His mind having thus become inflamed with suspicion, he was ready to believe anything against the missionaries, or to invent something if necessary. Thus he complained that his pages, who received instruction from the missionaries, had adopted Jesus as their King, and regarded himself as little better than a brother.
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Not long after, six boys were sent to prison; and, though every effort was made to obtain their release, it was for a time of no avail. At length three were given up, and three were ordered to be executed. These latter were first tortured, then their arms were cut off; afterwards they were placed on a scaffold, under which
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a fire was made, and burned to death. As they were passing through their agony, they were laughed at by the people, who asked them if Jesus Christ could do anything to help them. But the boys were undaunted; and, in spite of all their pain and suffering, sang hymns of praise till their tongues could utter no more. This
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was one of their hymns:-- Daily, daily, sing to Jesus, Sing my soul His praises due, All He does deserves our praises, And our deep devotion too. Little wonder that Mr. Mackay should write: "Our hearts are breaking". Yet what a triumph! One of the executioners, struck by the extraordinary fortitude of the lads, and their evident faith in another
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life, came and asked that he might also be taught to pray. This martyrdom did not daunt the other Christians. Though Mwanga threatened to burn alive any who frequented the mission premises, or adopted the Christian faith, they continued to come; and the lads at the Court kept their teachers constantly informed of everything that was going on. Indeed, when
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the king's prime minister began to make investigation, he found the place so honey-combed by Christianity that he had to cease his inquisition, for fear of implicating chiefs, and upsetting society generally. A BOY HERO. THE STORY OF JOHN CLINTON. Lives of great men all remind us We should make our lives sublime, And departing leave behind us Footprints on
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the sands of time. So sang Longfellow! Yet how difficult is it for most men and women to make their lives sublime, and how much more difficult for a child of ten years! Still it is possible. John Clinton was born on the 17th January, , at Greek Street, Soho. His father is a respectable carman, who, a year after
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little Johnnie's birth, moved to Church Terrace, Waterloo Road, Lambeth. When three years old he was sent to the parish schools of St. John's, Waterloo Road (Miss Towers being the mistress). While a scholar there he met with a severe accident on the 27th January, . Playing with other children in the Waterloo Road, a heavy iron gate fell on
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him and fractured his skull terribly. He was taken to the St. Thomas's Hospital, where he remained for thirteen weeks. At first the doctors said he would not get over it, then that if he got over it he would be an idiot; but finally their surgical skill and careful nursing were rewarded, and he came out well in every
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respect, except for an awful scar along one side of his head. In due time he moved into the Boys' School at St. John's, Waterloo Road (Mr. Davey, headmaster). In July, , a tiny child was playing in the middle of Stamford Street when a hansom cab came dashing along over the smooth wood paving. Little John Clinton darted out
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and gave the child a violent push, at the risk of being run over himself, and got the little one to the side of the road in safety. A big brother of the child, not understanding what had happened, gave John Clinton a blow on the nose for interfering with the child, whose life John Clinton had saved. The blow
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was the cause of this act of bravery becoming known, and the big brother afterwards apologised for his hasty conduct. How many accidents to children are caused by the lamentable absence of open spaces and playgrounds! persons are yearly killed in the streets of London and over injured there, many of them being children playing in the only place they
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have to play in. On Sunday, 26th February, , Johnnie was at home minding the baby. During his temporary absence from the room the baby set itself on fire. When he came back and saw the flames, instead of wasting time calling for help, he rolled the baby on the floor, and succeeded in putting the flames out. The curtain
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nearest the cot had also taken fire. Johnnie then, though badly burnt, pulled the curtains, valance, and all down on to the floor, and beat out the flames with his hands and feet. The brave little fellow seriously hurt himself, but saved the baby's life, and prevented the buildings catching fire, crowded as they are with other families. The family
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then moved to Walworth, Brandon Street, and the boy attended the schools of St. John's, Walworth (Mr. Ward, headmaster). On the 18th July, , he came home from school, had his tea, and about : p.m. went out with a companion, Campbell Mortimer, to the foreshore near London Bridge. Here the two boys took off their shoes and stockings, and
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commenced paddling in the stream. Little Mortimer, unfortunately, got out of his depth, and the tide running strongly he disappeared in the muddy water. Directly the boy came to the surface, John Clinton sprang at him, seized him, and, though Mortimer was the heavier lad of the two, succeeded in landing him safely. In pushing the boy on shore, John
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Clinton slipped back, and, being exhausted with his exertions, the tide caught him and he disappeared beneath the surface, and was carried down stream a few yards under the pier. The river police dragged for him, and the lightermen did all they could for some considerable time, but without success. After fifteen minutes' fruitless search, a lighterman suggested that the
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boy must be under the pier. He rowed his boat to the other end of the stage, and there saw the boy's hand upright in the water. He soon got the body out, but life was extinct, and the doctor could only pronounce him to be dead. Thus died John Clinton, a boy of whom London ought to be proud,
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giving his life for his friend. He was buried in a common grave, at Manor Park Cemetery, after a funeral service in St. John's Church, Walworth. [_For the above account I am indebted to the Rev. Arthur W. Jephson, M.A., Vicar of St. John's, Walworth_.] POSTSCRIPT. For those who desire to learn more of the characters mentioned in this work
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let me mention a few volumes. In _Heroes of Every-day Life_ Miss Laura Lane has told briefly the story of Alice Ayres and other humble heroes and heroines whose deeds should not be forgotten. Further particulars of the careers of Sir Colin Campbell, John Cassell, General Gordon, Sir Henry Havelock, Joseph Livesey, David Livingstone, Robert Moffat, George Moore, Florence Nightingale,
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Lord Shaftesbury, Agnes Weston, and other men and women whose example has benefited the country, will be found in an attractive series of books issued under the title of _The World's Workers_. Mr. Archibald Forbes' _Life of Sir Henry Havelock_ is one of the most fascinating works of its kind; the Rev. H.C.G. Moule's _Life of the Rev. Charles Simeon_
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is delightfully written and full of interest, and the Rev. J.H. Overton's _Life of Wesley_ gives an admirable picture in brief of the great revival preacher. Further particulars of the great and good Father Dainien can be gathered from Mr. Edward Clifford's work; of Elizabeth Gilbert, from the Life by Frances Martin; and of George Mller, from the shilling autobiography
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he has written, which is worthy of the deepest attention. John Howard's life has been well told by Mr. Hepworth Dixon, Lord Shaftesbury's by Mr. Edwin Hodder, and Mr. Glaisher's career is set forth at large in _Travels in the Air_. Perhaps the largest and best collection of narratives of noble lives is contained in Mr. Edwin Hodder's _Heroes of
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Britain in Peace and War_, now issued in two cheap volumes; from this many facts have been gathered. In _The Memorials of Captain Hedley Vicars_ will be found a thoughtful picture of that devoted life; whilst in _The Life and Work of James Hannington_, by E.C. Dawson, a graphic narrative is given of the martyr bishop of Central Africa. _Ismailia_
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affords a vivid picture of Sir Samuel Baker's life in the Soudan, and few books will give greater pleasure to the reader than General Butler's _Life of General Gordon_. A Life of Mr. W.H. Smith, by Sir H. Maxwell, has been recently published in popular form. _The Lives of Robert and Mary Moffat_, by J.S. Moffat, will afford much enjoyment,
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as will Miss Yonge's _Life of Bishop Patteson_. [Illustration: THE END] Selections from Cassell & Company's Publications. * * * * * Illustrated, Fine-Art, and other Volumes. Abbeys and Churches of England and Wales, The: Descriptive, Historical, Pictorial. Series II. 21s. A Blot of Ink. Translated by Q and PAUL FRANCKE. 5s. A Book of Absurdities. With Full-Page Funny Pictures.
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2s. 6d. Adventure, The World of, Fully Illustrated. In Three Vols. 9s. each. Africa and its Explorers, The Story of. By DR. ROBERT BROWN, F.L.S. Illustrated. Vols. I., II. and III., 7s. 6d. each. Agrarian Tenures. By the Rt. Hon. G. SHAW-LEFEVRE, M.P. 10s. 6d. Allon, Henry, D.D., Pastor and Teacher. By the Rev. W. HARDY HARWOOD. 6s. Arabian Nights
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Entertainments, Cassell's Pictorial. 10s. 6d. Architectural Drawing. By R. PHEN SPIERS. Illustrated. 10s.6d. Art, The Magazine of. Yearly Vol. With Photogravures or Etchings, a Series of Full page Plates, and about Illustrations. 21s. Artistic Anatomy. By Prof. M. DUVAL. _Cheap Edition_. 3s.6d. Astronomy, The Dawn of. A Study of the Temple Worship and Mythology of the Ancient Egyptians. By Prof.
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J. NORMAN LOCKYER, C.B., F.R.S., &c. Illustrated. 21s. Atlas, The Universal. A New and Complete General Atlas of the World, with Pages of Maps, in Colours, and a Complete Index to about , Names. Cloth, gilt edges, 36s.; or half-morocco, gilt edges, 42s. Awkward Squads, The; and Other Ulster Stories. By SHAN F. BULLOCK. 6s. Bashkirtseff, Marie, The Journal of.
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_Cheap Edition_. 7s. 6d. Bashkirtseff, Marie, The Letters of. 7s. 6d. Beetles, Butterflies, Moths, and Other Insects. By A.W. KAPPEL, F.E.S., and W. EGMONT KIRBY. With Coloured Plates. 3s. 6d. "Belle Sauvage" Library, The. Cloth, 2s. each. The Fortunes of Nigel. Guy Mannering. Shirley. Coningsby. Mary Barton. The Antiquary. Nicholas Nickleby.* Jane Eyre. Wuthering Heights. Dombey and Son.* The Prairie.
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Night and Morning. Kenilworth. Ingoldsby Legends. Tower of London. The Pioneers. Charles O'Malley. Barnaby Rudge. Cakes and Ale. The King's Own. People I have Met. The Pathfinder. Evelina. Scott's Poems. Last of the Barons. Adventures of Mr.Ivanhoe. [Ledbury. Oliver Twist. Selections from Hood's Works. Longfellow's Prose Works. Sense and Sensibility. Lytton's Plays. Tales, Poems, and Sketches. Bret Harte. Martin Chuzzlewit.*
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The Prince of the House of David. Sheridan's Plays. Uncle Tom's Cabin. Deerslayer. Rome and the Early Christians. The Trials of Margaret Lyndsay. Harry Lorrequer. Eugene Aram. Jack Hinton. Poe's Works. Old Mortality. The Hour and the Man. Handy Andy. Scarlet Letter. Pickwick.* Last of the Mohicans. Pride and Prejudice. Yellowplush Papers. Tales of the Borders. Last Days of Palmyra.
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Washington Irving's Sketchbook. The Talisman. Rienzi. Old Curiosity Shop. Heart of Midlothian. Last Days of Pompeii. American Humor. Sketches by Boz. Macauley's Lays and Essays. * Books marked thus are in Vols. Biographical Dictionary, Cassell's New. 7s. 6d. Birds' Nests, Eggs, and Egg-Collecting. By R. KEARTON. Illustrated with Coloured Plates. 5s. Breech-Loader, The, and How to Use It. By W.W.
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GREENER. Illustrated. New and enlarged edition. 2s 6d. British Ballads. With Several Hundred Original Illustrations. Complete in Two Vols., cloth, 15s. Half morocco, _price on application_. British Battles on Land and Sea. By JAMES GRANT. With about
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Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci and PG Distributed Proofreaders [Illustration: They walked, thus guided by an obsequious waiter, through a light _confetti_ of tossed greetings.] GASLIGHT SONATAS BY FANNIE HURST [Dedication: To my mother and my father] CONTENTS I. BITTER-SWEET II. SIEVE OF FULFILMENT III. ICE-WATER, PL--! IV. HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY V. GOLDEN FLEECE VI. NIGHTSHADE VII.
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GET READY THE WREATHS GASLIGHT SONATAS I BITTER-SWEET Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, and the statistical path to the heart is more figurative than literal. It is difficult to write stylistically a per-annum report of , curvatures of the spine, whereas the
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poor specific little vertebra of Mamie O'Grady, daughter to Lou, your laundress, whose alcoholic husband once invaded your very own basement and attempted to strangle her in the coal-bin, can instantly create an apron bazaar in the church vestry-rooms. That is why it is possible to drink your morning coffee without nausea for it, over the head-lines of forty thousand
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casualties at Ypres, but to push back abruptly at a three-line notice of little Tony's, your corner bootblack's, fatal dive before a street-car. Gertie Slayback was statistically down as a woman wage-earner; a typhoid case among the thousands of the Borough of Manhattan for ; and her twice-a-day share in the Subway fares collected in the present year of our
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Lord. She was a very atomic one of the city's four millions. But after all, what are the kings and peasants, poets and draymen, but great, greater, or greatest, less, lesser, or least atoms of us? If not of the least, Gertie Slayback was of the very lesser. When she unlocked the front door to her rooming-house of evenings, there
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was no one to expect her, except on Tuesdays, which evening it so happened her week was up. And when she left of mornings with her breakfast crumblessly cleared up and the box of biscuit and condensed-milk can tucked unsuspectedly behind her camisole in the top drawer there was no one to regret her. There are some of us who
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call this freedom. Again there are those for whom one spark of home fire burning would light the world. Gertie Slayback was one of these. Half a life-time of opening her door upon this or that desert-aisle of hall bedroom had not taught her heart how not to sink or the feel of daily rising in one such room to
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seem less like a damp bathing-suit, donned at dawn. The only picture--or call it atavism if you will--which adorned Miss Slayback's dun-colored walls was a passe-partout snowscape, night closing in, and pink cottage windows peering out from under eaves. She could visualize that interior as if she had only to turn the frame for the smell of wood fire and
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the snap of pine logs and for the scene of two high-back chairs and the wooden crib between. What a fragile, gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business of lining a crib in Never-Never Land and warming No Man's slippers before the fire of imagination.
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There was that picture so acidly etched into Miss Slayback's brain that she had only to close her eyes in the slit-like sanctity of her room and in the brief moment of courting sleep feel the pink penumbra of her vision begin to glow. Of late years, or, more specifically, for two years and eight months, another picture had invaded,
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even superseded the old. A stamp-photograph likeness of Mr. James P. Batch in the corner of Miss Slayback's mirror, and thereafter No Man's slippers became number eight-and-a-half C, and the hearth a gilded radiator in a dining-living-room somewhere between the Fourteenth Street Subway and the land of the Bronx. How Miss Slayback, by habit not gregarious, met Mr. Batch is
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of no consequence, except to those snug ones of us to whom an introduction is the only means to such an end. At a six o'clock that invaded even Union Square with heliotrope dusk, Mr. James Batch mistook, who shall say otherwise, Miss Gertie Slayback, as she stepped down into the wintry shade of a Subway kiosk, for Miss Whodoesitmatter.
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At seven o'clock, over a dish of lamb stew _ la_ White Kitchen, he confessed, and if Miss Slayback affected too great surprise and too little indignation, try to conceive six nine-hour week-in-and-week-out days of hair-pins and darning-balls, and then, at a heliotrope dusk, James P. Batch, in invitational mood, stepping in between it and the papered walls of a
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dun-colored evening. To further enlist your tolerance, Gertie Slayback's eyes were as blue as the noon of June, and James P. Batch, in a belted-in coat and five kid finger-points protruding ever so slightly and rightly from a breast pocket, was hewn and honed in the image of youth. His the smile of one for whom life's cup holds a
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heady wine, a wrinkle or two at the eye only serving to enhance that smile; a one-inch feather stuck upright in his derby hatband. It was a forelock once stamped a Corsican with the look of emperor. It was this hat feather, a cock's feather at that and worn without sense of humor, to which Miss Slayback was fond of
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attributing the consequences of that heliotrope dusk. "It was the feather in your cap did it, Jimmie. I can see you yet, stepping up with that innocent grin of yours. You think I didn't know you were flirting? Cousin from Long Island City! 'Say,' I says to myself, I says, 'I look as much like his cousin from Long Island
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City, if he's got one, as my cousin from Hoboken (and I haven't got any) would look like my sister if I had one.' It was that sassy little feather in your hat!" They would laugh over this ever-green reminiscence on Sunday Park benches and at intermission at moving pictures when they remained through it to see the show twice.
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Be the landlady's front parlor ever so permanently rented out, the motion-picture theater has brought to thousands of young city starvelings, if not the quietude of the home, then at least the warmth and a juxtaposition and a deep darkness that can lave the sub-basement throb of temples and is filled with music with a hum in it. For two
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years and eight months of Saturday nights, each one of them a semaphore dropping out across the gray road of the week, Gertie Slayback and Jimmie Batch dined for one hour and sixty cents at the White Kitchen. Then arm and arm up the million-candle-power flare of Broadway, content, these two who had never seen a lake reflect a moon,
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or a slim fir pointing to a star, that life could be so manifold. And always, too, on Saturday, the tenth from the last row of the De Luxe Cinematograph, Broadway's Best, Orchestra Chairs, fifty cents; Last Ten Rows, thirty-five. The give of velvet-upholstered chairs, perfumed darkness, and any old love story moving across it to the ecstatic ache of
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Gertie Slayback's high young heart. On a Saturday evening that was already pointed with stars at the six-o'clock closing of Hoffheimer's Fourteenth Street Emporium, Miss Slayback, whose blondness under fatigue could become ashy, emerged from the Bargain-Basement almost the first of its frantic exodus, taking the place of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the Popular Drug Store adjoining,
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her gaze, something even frantic in it, sifting the passing crowd. At six o'clock Fourteenth Street pours up from its basements, down from its lofts, and out from its five-and-ten-cent stores, shows, and arcades, in a great homeward torrent--a sweeping torrent that flows full flush to the Subway, the Elevated, and the surface car, and then spreads thinly into the
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least pretentious of the city's homes--the five flights up, the two rooms rear, and the third floor back. Standing there, this eager tide of the Fourteenth Street Emporium, thus released by the six-o'clock flood-gates, flowed past Miss Slayback. White-nosed, low-chested girls in short-vamp shoes and no-carat gold vanity-cases. Older men resigned that ambition could be flayed by a yard-stick; young
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men still impatient of their clerkship. It was into the trickle of these last that Miss Slayback bored her glance, the darting, eager glance of hot eyeballs and inner trembling. She was not so pathetically young as she was pathetically blond, a treacherous, ready-to-fade kind of blondness that one day, now that she had found that very morning her first
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gray hair, would leave her ashy. Suddenly, with a small catch of breath that was audible in her throat, Miss Slayback stepped out of that doorway, squirming her way across the tight congestion of the sidewalk to its curb, then in and out, brushing this elbow and that shoulder, worming her way in an absolutely supreme anxiety to keep in
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view a brown derby hat bobbing right briskly along with the crowd, a greenish-black bit of feather upright in its band. At Broadway, Fourteenth Street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into Union Square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first false feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. Across this
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park Miss Slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a run when the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred others, and finally learning to keep its course by the faint but distinguishing fact of a slight dent in the crown. At Broadway, some blocks before that highway bursts into its famous flare, Mr. Batch, than
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whom it was no other, turned off suddenly at right angles down into a dim pocket of side-street and into the illuminated entrance of Ceiner's Caf Hungarian. Meals at all hours. Lunch, thirty cents. Dinner, fifty cents. Our Goulash is Famous. New York, which expresses itself in more languages to the square block than any other area in the world,
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Babylon included, loves thus to dine linguistically, so to speak. To the Crescent Turkish Restaurant for its Business Men's Lunch comes Fourth Avenue, whose antique-shop patois reads across the page from right to left. Sight-seeing automobiles on mission and commission bent allow Altoona, Iowa City, and Quincy, Illinois, fifteen minutes' stop-in at Ching Ling-Foo's Chinatown Delmonico's. Spaghetti and red wine
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have set New York racing to reserve its table d'htes. All except the Latin race. Jimmie Batch, who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the cosmopolite. His digestive range included _borsch_
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and _chow maigne; risotta_ and ham and. To-night, as he turned into Caf Hungarian, Miss Slayback slowed and drew back into the overshadowing protection of an adjoining office-building. She was breathing hard, and her little face, somehow smaller from chill, was nevertheless a high pink at the cheek-bones. The wind swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand
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flew up to it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally one turned for a backward glance at her standing there so frankly indeterminate. Suddenly Miss Slayback adjusted her tam-o'-shanter to its flop over her right ear, and, drawing off a pair of dark-blue silk gloves from over immaculately new white ones, entered Ceiner's Caf Hungarian.
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In its light she was not so obviously blonder than young, the pink spots in her cheeks had a deepening value to the blue of her eyes, and a black velvet tam-o'-shanter revealing just the right fringe of yellow curls is no mean aid. First of all, Ceiner's is an eating-place. There is no music except at five cents in
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the slot, and its tables for four are perpetually set each with a dish of sliced radishes, a bouquet of celery, and a mound of bread, half the stack rye. Its menus are well thumbed and badly mimeographed. Who enters Ceiner's is prepared to dine from barley soup to apple strudel. At something after six begins the rising sound of
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cutlery, and already the new-comer fears to find no table. Off at the side, Mr. Jimmie Batch had already disposed of his hat and gray overcoat, and tilting the chair opposite him to indicate its reservation, shook open his evening paper, the waiter withholding the menu at this sign of rendezvous. Straight toward that table Miss Slayback worked quick, swift
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way, through this and that aisle, jerking back and seating herself on the chair opposite almost before Mr. Batch could raise his eyes from off the sporting page. There was an instant of silence between them--the kind of silence that can shape itself into a commentary upon the inefficacy of mere speech--a widening silence which, as they sat there facing,
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deepened until, when she finally spoke, it was as if her words were pebbles dropping down into a well. "Don't look so surprised, Jimmie," she said, propping her face calmly, even boldly, into the white-kid palms. "You might fall off the Christmas tree." Above the snug, four-inch collar and bow tie Mr. Batch's face was taking on a dull ox-blood
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tinge that spread back, even reddening his ears. Mr. Batch had the frontal bone of a clerk, the horn-rimmed glasses of the literarily astigmatic, and the sartorial perfection that only the rich can afford not to attain. He was staring now quite frankly, and his mouth had fallen open. "Gert!" he said. "Yes," said Miss Slayback, her insouciance gaining with
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his discomposure, her eyes widening and then a dolly kind of glassiness seeming to set in. "You wasn't expecting me, Jimmie?" He jerked up his head, not meeting her glance. "What's the idea of the comedy?" "You don't look glad to see me, Jimmie." "If you--think you're funny." She was working out of and then back into the freshly white
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gloves in a betraying kind of nervousness that belied the toss of her voice. "Well, of all things! Mad-cat! Mad, just because you didn't seem to be expecting me." "I--There's some things that are just the limit, that's what they are. Some things that are just the limit, that no fellow would stand from any girl, and this--this is one
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of them." Her lips were trembling now. "You--you bet your life there's some things that are just the limit." He slid out his watch, pushing back. "Well, I guess this place is too small for a fellow and a girl that can follow him around town like a--like--" She sat forward, grasping the table-sides, her chair tilting with her. "Don't
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you dare to get up and leave me sitting here! Jimmie Batch, don't you dare!" The waiter intervened, card extended. "We--we're waiting for another party," said Miss Slayback, her hands still rigidly over the table-sides and her glance like a steady drill into Mr. Batch's own. There was a second of this silence while the waiter withdrew, and then Mr.
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Batch whipped out his watch again, a gun-metal one with an open face. "Now look here. I got a date here in ten minutes, and one or the other of us has got to clear. You--you're one too many, if you got to know it." "Oh, I do know it, Jimmie! I been one too many for the last four
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Saturday nights. I been one too many ever since May Scully came into five hundred dollars' inheritance and quit the Ladies' Neckwear. I been one too many ever since May Scully became a lady." "If I was a girl and didn't have more shame!" "Shame! Now you're shouting, Jimmie Batch. I haven't got shame, and I don't care who knows
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it. A girl don't stop to have shame when she's fighting for her rights." He was leaning on his elbow, profile to her. "That movie talk can't scare me. You can't tell me what to do and what not to do. I've given you a square deal all right. There's not a word ever passed between us that ties me
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to your apron-strings. I don't say I'm not without my obligations to you, but that's not one of them. No, sirree--no apron-strings." "I know it isn't, Jimmie. You're the kind of a fellow wouldn't even talk to himself for fear of committing hisself." "I got a date here now any minute, Gert, and the sooner you--" "You're the guy who
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passed up the Sixty-first for the Safety First regiment." "I'll show you my regiment some day." "I--I know you're not tied to my apron-strings, Jimmie. I--I wouldn't have you there for anything. Don't you think I know you too well for that? That's just it. Nobody on God's earth knows you the way I do. I know you better than
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you know yourself." "You better beat it, Gertie. I tell you I'm getting sore." Her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost edged with hysteria. "Come on, Jimmie--out the side entrance before she gets here. May Scully ain't the company for you. You think if she was, honey, I'd--I'd see myself come butting in
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between you this way, like--like a--common girl? She's not the girl to keep you straight. Honest to God she's not, honey." "My business is my business, let me tell you that." "She's speedy, Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a rainy day,
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she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." "When I want advice about my friends I ask for it." "It's not her good name that worries me, Jimmie, because she 'ain't got any. It's you. She's got you crazy with that five hundred, too--that's what's got me scared." "Gee! you ought to let the Salvation Army tie a bonnet
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under your chin." "She's always had her eyes on you, Jimmie. 'Ain't you men got no sense for seein' things? Since the day they moved the Gents' Furnishings across from the Ladies' Neckwear she's had you spotted. Her goings-on used to leak down to the basement, alrighty. She's not a good girl, May ain't, Jimmie. She ain't, and you know
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it. Is she? Is she?" "Aw!" said Jimmie Batch. "You see! See! 'Ain't got the nerve to answer, have you?" "Aw--maybe I know, too, that she's not the kind of a girl that would turn up where she's not--" "If you wasn't a classy-looking kind of boy, Jimmie, that a fly girl like May likes to be seen out with,
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she couldn't find you with magnifying glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your mouth and had swallowed it. She's not the kind of girl, Jimmie, a fellow like you needs behind him. If--if you was ever to marry her and get your hands on them five hundred dollars--" "It would be my business." "It'll be
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your ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under nothing like that. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket you--you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would." "It would be my own spontaneous combustion." "You got to be drove, Jimmie, like a kid. With them few dollars you wouldn't start up a little cigar-store like you think
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you would. You and her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months. Cigar-stores ain't the place for you, Jimmie. You seen how only clerking in them was nearly your ruination--the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick out. They ain't cigar-stores; they're only false faces for gambling." "You know it all, don't you?" "Oh, I'm dealing it to you
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straight! There's too many sporty crowds loafing around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under. I found you in one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a new job a week, a--" "Yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too." "Don't throw over, Jimmie, what my getting you out of it to
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a decent job in a department store has begun to do for you. And you're making good, too. Higgins told me to-day, if you don't let your head swell, there won't be a fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any higher." "Aw!" "Don't throw it all over, Jimmie--and me--for a crop of dyed red hair and a
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few dollars to ruin yourself with." He shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door. "Don't keep no date with her to-night, Jimmie. You haven't got the constitution to stand her pace. It's telling on you. Look at those fingers yellowing again--looka--" "They're my fingers, ain't they?" "You
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