"Clinging to a tiny platform 600 feet in the air puts a big strain on my nerves:' says Charles A. Nelson, steel inspector of the New York Worlds Fair. His rule to ease nerve tension: "Pause now and then_
LET Up_ LIGHT UP A CAMEL"
LIKE SO MANY OTHERS at the N e w York World ' s Fair, Charley Nelson makes it a rule to break the n ervous tension of crowded days by pausing every now and then to let up-light up a Camel. Observe, on your visit to New York ' s greatest exposition, how smoothly everything goes Also note how many people you see smoking Camels. There are dozens of sights at the New York World's Fair-but don't spoil the fun by letting your nerves get fagged. Pause now and then-let up-light up a Camelthe cigarette for mildness, rich taste-and comfort!
EDDIE CANTOR-Listen in co America's great comic personality in a riot of fun, l music, and song. On the air each Mon• day evening over the Columbia Network. 7:30 pm E. S. T., 9:30 p m C. S. T., 8:30 p m M. S. T., 7:30 p m P. S. T.
BENNY GOODMAN-Hear che one and only King of Swing, and che world's greatest swing band "go to town" in a big way-each Tuesday evening-Columbia Network 9:30 pm E S. T., 8:30 p m C S.T., 7:30 pm M.S.T., 6:30 pm P.S.T.
THE GREAT "SPIKE AND BALL" (a bov e right ) is the theme center of the New York World's Fair-the Tr ylon and th e Perisphere- 7000 pieces of steel joined b y a quarter of a million rivets It's the trying job of Inspecto r Nelson to check these two huge shells at ever y vital point. He sa y s: " I've got to know ever y inch of that steelwork. It ' s a nerve-straining job, hanging onto girders hundreds of feet up, but I can't afford to get jitter y. I have to sidestep nerve tension It's my rule to ease off occasionally-to let up-light up a Camel." (Notes on the two structures above: The great ball will appear to be supported b y fountains concealing the concrete foundation pillars. At night , the ball will seem to rotate-an illusion to be created b y lighting effects. The towering Trylon will be the Fair's broadcasting tower.)
300 FENCING MATCHES and exhibitions are credited to Rosemary Carver, expert with the flashing foil. "Fencing drains the nerves," she says. " But I can't take chances on being tense, jittery in the midst of a fast parry or lunge. Through the day I rest my nerves-I let up-light up a Camel. I find Camels soothing, comforting. And Camels taste so good!"
THE MESSENGERI
j UNIVERSITYOF RICHMOND !
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GEORGE SCHEER, Editor-in-Chief; PAUL SAUNIER, JR., Richmond College Editor; * 41 LENORE DINNEEN, Westhampton Editor; Assistant Editors, PHYLLIS ANNE COGHILL, :t 41 JEAN NEASMITH, HELEN HILL, MABEL LEIGH ROOKE, N. r. BABCOCK, ROYALL BRANDIS, :t >H OwEN TATE, PHILIP CooKE, F. MERRILL O'CoNNOR, G. BEN McCLURE, JR., CARL * WoosT; JOHNS. HARRIS, Business Manager; T. STANFORD TUTWILER, MARY KATHERINE :t CURLEY, Assistant Bminess Managers. :t
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By WILLIAM L. MANER, Jr.
The concrete highway beside the railroad track was already simmering under the heat of the July sun when the strange Negro showed up. He leaned against the back of a wagon for a few minutes and watched the other Negroes working. Then, with an insolent gleam in his black eyes, he nodded his head at one of the men and said carelessly, " Hey, Bo. How 'bout throwin' me one of them watermelons ?''
The four Negroes stopped working and looked at him with curiosity and interest. He was a strange looking sight with his faded khaki shirt, his washed-out khaki riding pants and his bare feet. His face and arms were almost the color of his clothes; that certain roast-chicken brown peculiar to those Negroes of mixed parentage. He wasn't a tall Negro, but he was stocky and powerful. His face was sharp and angular, his high cheekbones tapering forward to a large, flat nose, bent slightly to one side as if it had been broken. Over his tightly curled black hair he wore the remnant of a tan felt hat. The crown was shapeless, and the torn brim looped crazily down over one ear.
"Where'd you come from, yellow man?" a big black youth in blue overalls asked.
"Lissen to the man," said the wagon driver,
leaning out of the boxcar to get a better look at the stranger. "Who the hell he think he is comin' round here askin' for watermelons? These here watermelons is for sale for twelve million dollars."
"These here melons is Mist' Tom's. Why don ' you ask him?"
"Great God, here come Mist' Tom now. We best git to work, or he ain't gon' let us off this afternoon to go to town. An' I jus' gotta go to town. I been savin' lip all week for today, and I just bound to get me some likker."
''Me an' Essie is goin' in dis afternoon early to a catfish fry, an' I got to git by the likker store 'fore sun-down."
Mr. Tom climbed up on the wagon, tilted his head back, and looked at the melons.
"How many more loads before you can finish this car, Steve?" he yelled to the packer working in the car.
"Suh?"
"How many more you need?"
"About four more loads will do it, I think, suh."
''You men get movin'. I want to get three cars out of here tonight."
The Negroes stopped and turned to him. "Ain't we gonna git this afternoon off, Mist' Tom?" "We ain't gonna have to work Sat[ 3}
urday afternoon, is we?" "Mist' Tom, I jus' got to go to town this afternoon. . . . "
"Go on, get to work, and maybe you'll finish in time to go to town tonight.' He climbed down to the ground and turned to the yellow negrn. "What's your name, boy?"
"Calls me Chicago, suh."
"You don't live around here?"
"No, suh. I'se from Cha'ston."
"Where you staying?"
"I come here in one of them empties from Y amassee. When I woke up, here I was, suh."
"You want to work?"
"Yes, suh."
"Well, get on that wagon and help load those cars. You boys hurry up and get those melons out of the field. I've got some more pickers coming, so you can load as fast as they pick. I want those cars out tonight." He straightened his hat and walked down the line, calling to another wagon which was just pullmg up.
"Damn if I'm gonna work Saturday afternoon. I'll quit."
"Yeah, you will, nigger. If Mist' Tom say work, you gonna work."
"Hey, you yellow nigger. Git up here an' catch these melons. We gotta git through this here stuff early."
"What you say your name was, yellow man?" the one in blue overalls asked. The others called him Sammy.
"Didn't say to you, country boy, but they calls me Chicago."
"Shee-ca-go. Where in hell did you git a name like that?" the driver asked.
"Calls me that in Cha'ston cause I been to Chicago."
"You is some stuff, ain't you?" Sammy asked mockingly.
"Sho am more stuff than you is, country boy."
"Sammy might be a country boy, but he sho
got him a city gal. That Essie sho is crazy 'bout that Sammy."
"She must be crazy 'bout him to left Cha'ston and come to this place wit' him. Hey, Shee-ca-go, watch out how you drop them watermelons. Don' you go lettin' fall like that.''
"What you lookin' so fierce about, yellow boy? Gawd, look at that nigger's face. He sho look mad about somethin' .''
"That's all. Let's git to the field."
Chicago climbed out of the car onto the wagon, but the packer called him back.
"Hey, Chicago, you stay here and paint stems. I's in a hurry."
The wagon rattled off, and Chicago picked up the jar of "dope" and started daubing the ends of the melons as fast as Steve laid them down. Steve hurried along, laying the cool green fruit in rows, one on top of another. He didn't waste any time, because he got paid by the car, and not by the hour. He was in a hurry to get done and get to town too. He cautioned his helper to cut all the stems before touching them with the blue paste, and Chicago pulled out a long, shiny pocketknife and clipped off the ends of the stems.
Another wagon rolled up, unloaded at the next car, and drove off to the fields again. When Steve finished in one car, he moved over to the next one, alternating as the loads came. They were lying in the straw eating a melon when Steve saw a familiar figure coming across the highway. He got up and threw his rind away, and smiled at the young girl.
"Momin', Steve. Here's Sammy's dinner," and she put a white cloth bundle inside the door.
"How do, Essie. You is sorta early today."
At the sound of her voice, Chicago turned around and got up. Essie's eyes popped, and she gasped slightly.
"Oh Gawd, Chicago!" She turned and
started to run, but Chicago jumped from the car and caught her before she could run the length of the next car. He grabbed her by the arm and held it tightly. In his other hand he still held the knife.
"Oh, Lawd, Chicago. Don ' t hurt me. I didn't mean to run off from you. Let me loose. I won't run away ."
The man relaxed his grip, and the girl shrank back against the boxcar, her eyes filled with terror. Her mouth quivered, and her eyes filled with tears.
"So you is the Essie them niggers was talkin' 'bout. Damn, I'll get that Sammy."
"Chicago, don't do that. I'll come back with you. I didn ' t mean to leave you. I thought you wasn't comin' back, you was gone so long. I didn't think you was ever comin ' back. Don ' t kill him."
" That Georgia chaingang kept me for three months. I couldn't get back. But I'se back now, and by Gawd I'll fix that nigger."
"Chicago, don't do nothin' around here. They'll put you on the gang for ten years. I'll go with you, but don't you do no killin' "
' Tm gonna git that nigger."
Essie threw herself in front of him. "Don't do nothin' no w . They'll git you sho. Let's go away, without havin' no trouble."
'Tll git him. I don' like that Sammy nigger."
" Don't do nothin,' Chicago. Let Sammy alone."
"Hell, Essie, don ' git so scared lookin'. I ain't gonna kill your nigger. But I sho is gonna scare hell outen him."
"You mean you ain't mad with me for runnin ' off with Sammy?"
"Gawd, no, woman. I was cuttin' -up glad when I found you was gone. I done got me a high yellow gal from New Orleans. She's down in Savannah visitin ' with her folks.
That's where I was goin', but I woke up on this here sidetrack this mornin'. Here come your Sammy now. You better go on back to him, an' don' you tell him anythin' 'bout me. "
Essie turned and looked up the track, where the wagon was coming back from the field. When it pulled up beside the car, she was waiting there for him, his dinner in her hands. None had seen the quick smile she had flashed to Steve, standing in the door of a boxcar, watching her.
The Negroes all climbed into the cool cars to eat their dinners of cold field peas and salt pork. Chicago picked out a likely looking watermelon and carried it around to the other side of the car where he could enjoy it in the shade of the train. After he had eaten his fill, he climbed into an empty, stuck the long knife in the door, and flopped down on the cool fresh straw to take a nap. The car was shady and cool, and the only sound was the occasional rush as a car whizzed by on the highway. Chicago fell asleep.
Suddenly, Chicago woke up. Standing over him, holding the long knife he had left stuck in the door, was Sammy He prodded Chicago with his foot, and glared down at him. "Get up from there, you mule-faced high-yellow. You and me is gonna have words. I got somethin' to say to you, and you is gonna lissen. Essie done tol' me what happened, and I don't like it. Mist' Tom done change his min' 'bout them three cars, and we is all through for the day, so you can jus' git the hell outa here. But fust I is gonna cut you wide open, jus' for nothin'. Stand up."
Chicago propped himself up with one arm, smiling slowly. "Put that knife down, an' I'll beat hell outa you. I ain't scared of nobody but I ain't fightin' no knife." He got to his knees, backing off a little way as he did so, just in case Sammy tried to start anything. Just at that moment the boxcar gave a sudden [ 5 ]
lurch and Sammy fell over backwards, losing his balance and dropping the knife. Chicago sprawled on his face, but quickly caught himself and scrambled for the knife. The car was moving slowly down the siding. Neither had noticed the engine that had come up to remove the loaded cars.
Chicago now had the advantage. He ran to the door and tossed the knife to the ground. Then he turned to face Sammy, who was back on his feet. The car jerked to a stop, and moved back down the main track. The two stood glaring at each other, neither making a move to start anything.
They heard a shout from the outside, and both turned. Seated on the back of one of the
wagons, headed toward town, were Essie and Steve, the packer. They were laughing. Essie waved her hat at them and yelled: 'Tse tired of the both of you. Me and Steve is goin' on a 'scursion, and both of you can go to hell." Steve waved a long, shiny knife in the air.
Chicago and Sammy looked at each other for a moment, then leaped from the car. "That nigger done run off with my knife," Chicago yelled, and started running up the highway after the wagon. Sammy scratched his head and kicked at a watermelon rind "Hell," he said. "That's a good gal gone. I'se gonna git me two quarts tonight." And he started walking toward town .
Light corals showing their pale tints
With fragile turns of play, can rivet Together continents with brittle links And hoard the richest rubies from outlet.
Bare tendrils bearing trails of vein-like leaves Hold granite walls too helpless for air room While clinging in tight grip to the stony eaves, And yet a child could snap them to quick ruin.
All moneys held by us are tiny mites Created only by machines of Man, And yet it makes folks into parasites Enslaved by coins dull-clinking in a pan.
SAMUEL COHEN.
By ALYS d' A VESNE
High above Medomak rose the cliff, dry and bare, hot as a griddle iron. The fishermen who were seining for mackerel out near Monhegan Island could look back and see it glistening like a last tooth in dried gums. It was a symbol of the drought and of hope that was gone. For five weeks now the sun had crisped this Maine coastland. Bean gardens and strawberry patches everywhere were dead. The heat cracked the face of the land like a disease.
There wouldn't be many vegetables this season. Because that would mean no canning in the fall, and, in turn, little food in the wintertime, the women hung up their aprons and silently crocheted many table doilies; the boys built more bird houses, and the old men whittled more wooden whistles for the summer tourist trade. The look of hurt was in every eye-the earth had failed. The fishers in their returning motorboats [7]
Illm ;tration by R e x A llyn
standing there looking into the sun.
felt the heat on the sea, and when they looked up to the cliff, they wanted to go back to Monhegan.
Three shrubs at the very edge of the cliff hid a white-clothed figure, Susan, standing there looking away from the land. She was smiling. There were so many things she could see shining in the sun, her own home, the small cottage with the green-shingled roof and the row of henhouses along the back. She could see something ant-like in the yard. That would be her mother, coaxing wetness into parched plants. Farther to the left was Jim Usier's place, and she wondered how they could have such a big wash out when their well had gone dry. Up past that was Adam's house. He was probably inside now, writing. " It's funny," she thought, "how a man can live in a place like this for two years, and still nobody knows anything about him." Beguiled by her own vagrant curiosity, she fell to thinking about the man Adam.
Slowly, as with great deliberation, she pushed back the summer sweat that was rolling to her eyes and soon introverted her thought. She was happy, at one with the sun, the skies, and the ocean.
For her, living was a question which she could not answer. The question did not tease her, because she was in tune with it, and the answer would come. She dared not explore the beauty of living: To pull the petals of a marsh-rose to get at the seed-pod kills the flower.
She turned to go. Below her waited the v illage, and every step she took downward carried her farther from that secureness which she found on the cliff, watching an eternal horizon . The smile slipped from her face.
If Heaven were neat, he'd go to Hell. With good humor he kicked a clam shell under the stove, and the greasy plates on the table, reflecting sunlight from the window, seemed to laugh along with him. Shelves were covered and hung with curling oilcloth, and the boxes of matches and rice and jars of tomatoes and the like were crammed on them. Flower-pots in the windowsill caught his attention, and he poured a dipperful of water on the thirsty geraniums. "Oh, those flowers," he said. "They're small, all right, and shrivelled in the heat, but they're strong! If I could only write lines with the strength of them!" Adam turned away, thoughtful.
He crossed over to the "alcove." It was a little peninsula of space between the kitchen and the tool-shed. He had hung a drape in front of it and made of it a retreat. It was here that he dreamed and smoked his pipe and smelled the hypnotic kerosene fumes from the lamp. Sometimes he wrote bits of philosophical poetry; and on the table, on the chair , were scraps of yellowing paper, lying like chips around a newly chopped tree. Adam sat and thought of the marsh-roses down near the sea and knew he wanted their peculiar secret.
The heat began to get on his nerves. In him a discontent climbed He wanted to walk , maybe in the woods on moss and soft dirt-if there were any left. He went out and slammed the back door behind him. Turning away from the cliff, he walked up the road toward the woods.
The stones were hot, and he felt them through the soles of his sneakers.. He pulled up a shoot of grass on which to chew, but spit it out of his mouth, disappointed in the dr y tastelessness of it. " No wonder Jim .Usier ' s cows don't give much milk any more, " he mused.
Adam looked around his cluttered room Once on the Main Road, Adam realized and laughed at the mess. What did it matter? suddenly that he had an aversion to entering [8 J
the woods, almost a fear of finding there more dryness and lifelessness. So he turned slowly into Cutter's General Store.
It was cooler inside, darker, too. There was a smell of dust and tobacco and kerosene, and there were sounds of flies buzzing and of a clock ticking, but nothing more. Three farmers were sitting around the dead, black stove. Men of Maine are stubborn, because they have
head swirled the phrase, "None shall know, none shall know."
His hand grasped for a branch of the redberry bush and the water-weakened earth at the cliff's edge crumbled. Adam's scream was dimmed in the winds. The sea, maddened by the night and the storm, swallowed him. Nature had crushed this seeker.
faith in the land and the sea; this Adam knew. III
But now these men seemed stripped of faith. Susan sat at the upstairs window, and she Their pipes were unlit and their eyes held no was calm. She had not realized how much light either. Adam did not stop to talk, be- noise there had been in the cottage until it was cause no one would have anything to say. It again still. Her mother and she had run from had all been said. room to room, closing windows and fastening
Leaving the store with a nod to the men, he shutters, and now her mother was in the next walked back to the cottage, puzzled. He wrote room, probably worrying about which henfour lines about dust and stared at some cob- house door hadn't been closed. To Susan, webs in a corner, forgetting to write a fifth chicken coops, whole farm houses were too line. Later he went to bed. inconsequential to matter. Although with her The rain woke Adam, and he started. The eyes she saw only flashes of light and rain, she night was arousing. The storm hurled whips knew what was going on in the night; she had of rain, and he could hear the lashing on his had the perspective of an ocean and of a sumtin roof. He tossed on his cot and rolled over, mer sky. kicking off the sheet. Restlessness pulled little Out there the waves would be shaking their strings all over his body, and he jerked up. He white manes like wild horses, and old Monwalked to the window, and the wind howled hegan fog-horn would be groaning twice, at him. shortly, every two minutes. Susan imagined He felt a challenge. He saw in the flashings the red-berry bushes bending and withered of lightning that the plates were now staring bean vines being pounded into the earth again at him vacuously. He rushed to the door, thick. Tomorrow naked bean-poles would be throwing it wide. He stumbled and then step- lying on the ground like skeletal fingers. ped outside, feeling the bite of rain. The wind This was as it should be; without struggle swelled his pajamas into grotesque balloons. . . . what? In her mind, she said to the night, He started to follow wet smells toward the "You, too, know hours of agony. you strain water, upward to the cliff. There, in the midst against yourself. Uncertain and sombre like of the fury, he felt he could wrest the secret us, you fight. This, too, will pass." of all beauty from the night.
h Yawning and tired by the activity outside, Onward he climbed, screaming against t e b Susan went to bed. The storm had almost wind and fighting. The storm twisted a out him, and his breathing burned in his chest. died. Rainwater fell into an overflowing barSoon he knew he was on the top of the cliff. rel under the eaves with a rhythmic splashing, Exhausted, he sank to the ground and in his and Susan was lulled to sleep by the sound.
[9]
THE Uft~e BENAVENTE
By OTTO WHITT AKER
That part of Brazil where the Xingu flows, between Cayuba and Matto Grosso, is a peculiar land. To the south for miles one finds only the plains and then, suddenly, the ground rises and for as many more miles there are only the tablelands.
The tableland where the earth first rises, and where sat the little convent Nuestra Senora de la Leche, might have been Eden. The orchids grew there like dandelions; the tanagers, safe from the harpy eagles in the pomegranate thickets, sang beautifully all the day, and the monkeys chattered and played in the trees at the edge of the table, where they could look down and see the low-lying plain and the little truant streams of the river wandering away and losing themselves, and frantically lacing back and forth, and finally scurrying off to rejoin the Mother Xingu and flow on toward Bolivia.
In the midst of this lived the good nuns of Nuestra Senora . Now even holiness may be compared, for surely the nuns of Nuestra Senora were the holiest in the world. Many women take the veil for earthly reasons: perhaps there nas been a great sin in their lives, and they are repentant; perhaps there has been much sorrow, and they seek solace; perhaps a magistrate, on looking into a condition, has recommended it-indeed, perhaps a father and mother weary of a daughter at whom no man will look have urged her into the convent. Women have taken the vows for this, and less. But not so the nuns of Nuestra Senora. They came to the convent as untouched by the world as the purest lily in remotest Brazil; they came to worship God and to be happy in His sight.
[ 10]
And there they lived, peacefully and content in their knowledge of things that you and I do not understand. True, they were isolated, all of them save the lay sisters who were taken to perform the necessary labours of the convent and to manage its intercourse with the world that abounded on the other side of the four walls Even in death they might not know that world, for then there was a simple mass in the little chapel and the dead nun was laid to rest in the cemetery behind the chapel where Undina, the founder, was buried. And , true, no man from the villages, no pashiuba or cinchona-cutter would have dared go past the walls, wherever else his paths led him. He would not have dared. For generations the villagers had understood that the convent was not theirs to trespass. Indeed, was not there the legend of poor Trapajo who, years ago, had stolen under the gates one night and had not returned to his home, so that next morning his cousins found him dead beside the gates, his face burned to the cinders? The wise men in the villages said Trapajo had sinned and had looked on the anger of the nuns' God that night. No, no man would have dared go to the convent.
No man, that is, save the good Father Benavente, the wise Father Benavente, who made the rounds of the pashiuba villages on his donkey and heard a few confessions and made a few conversions and spoke to the sick and prayed for the living and the dead. He went within the convent walls, whenever his way led to them, and there he was fed and given rest, and sometimes he heard the good nuns' confessions and heard their problems and put new love and faith into their hearts. Only this
man, the good Father Benavente, ever went within the convent walls.
Like that, the Sisters in the convent Nuestra Senora de la Leche lived, until. . . .
great fire. In the end, Vajo and fifty other strong Fuego warriors were put into chains, and were taken away, to be slaves.
Poor Maria, she had followed Vajo. Be* * * * fore they had gone far one of the soldiers saw Maria Listui was a poor girl in the village her and seized her, but she wrested away from of Fuego, twenty or more miles from the con- him and ran into the jungles. How he laughed, vent. She had never known a mother; her that soldier! And after that she had been more father was a white man, a derelict from Ca- careful not to walk where she might be seen, bral' s armies, a cinchona trader who, when he but she had followed still. At the end of the drank the strong native ferment, cursed her first day the men who took Vajo away were and beat her. She was beautiful, was Maria, out of her sight, but that evening she had seen and very graceful. And she was very strong, the smoke of their fires, and by travelling most too, for did not she work like a man all the of the night she overtook them. But the secday, stacking the cinchona bark and carrying ond day she had not been able to travel so water from the stream to wet it, and stripping fast, and when night fell she was alone on the the blighted pieces away so that the others trail, her bones aching, her body crying out might be bought when the buyers came up for food and water but not nearly so loudly as the river? the soul in her crying out for her beloved,
Maria was in love with Vajo, a young war- Vajo. rior of the village, and someday she might Through most of that night she stumbled marry him. When it was not the rainy season on, weeping but struggling on, until at last she she and Vajo would go into the familiar jun- fainted. When morning came she awakened, gles and stay there all the day, laughing and but it was better to lie there than to try to racing through the brush and hiding from each move. She ate a little of the grass beside the other. When they were tired they lay beside trail; it was bitter, but it was food to her. And the tiny rivulets that escaped the big stream then she slept again. When she awakened the at the village, and tossed pebbles into the second time, it was by the tolling of a bell on water. Sometimes they made boats of little the hill which rose before her. Now that it pieces of bark, and launched them down the was light she could see a building on the hill. rivulets and followed them, each shreiking to She arose and stumbled toward it, but before his boat to go faster than the other. And then, she reached the top she fell, and then she could when she would go home, Maria's father not arise. Still, she kept on, moving herself would beat her again because she had been by seizing the saplings that grew by the steep gone all the day and the cinchona lay un- path and pulling on them. Ahead, she saw stacked. But were not a few blows a t;iB.ing four walls and a gate. And there, beside the price to pay for a whole day's happiness in gate, they found her. the jungle-with Vajo? * * * *
And then one day the soldiers came crash- The good nuns nursed Maria for many days. ing through the trees and killed some of the There was fever that had come attendant to villagers with their guns. For several days the weakness. And when she had passed the there was terror while they, with their coats fever, her heart was still heavy. The nuns who and hats of shining metal, made talk around a talked with her could see by her eyes that a t 11)
great sorrow had come into her life, and they wall. In a moment she was in Vajo's arms. did not press her for details of her strange Theirs was a long embrace. There was much journey to the gates, and she did not tell them. tears, and then there was laughter. They strollInstead, because she could speak Spanish and ed through the night into the jungle and lay because she knew already of God, they taught beside each other, and Vajo told of the days her their way of putting away sorrow. And in he had passed since he was taken away. the end they made her one of them, and she He had been taken to Uina and there he had gone about her duties, peacefully, but not had worked, in chains, in the copper mines. forgetting, for she could not, her Vajo. Then one day came his chance to escape; he The days passed, many of them. Each day killed a guard and hid in the jungle near the at prayers she would ask God to be with the mines for three days while searching parties warrior who marched, the last time she saw went past him daily. And he laughed when he him, in chains; she would ask if there could saw the searching parties returning by night, be wrong in thinking on a man when one loved empty-handed. "Ah, Maria! How I laughed!" that man so much that only God could know. And then he and Maria both laughed, it was And 1:11-oredays passed. so funny to think of the poor, stupid searchers. Then one evening when the days were long, And then, when he was certain the Spaniards she was alone in the garden. There were roses, had given up hope of capturing him, he had and there was a lull in the jungles over the made his way, travelling by night, to Lebedia, wall-for a moment everything was still, and where lived his uncles. There, he had related there Maria sank to her knees and took her the cruelties the Spaniards brought to him and Rosary into her hands, to pray- his people in Fuego. There, for weeks he and Suddenly, out of the still, came a long, low his kinsmen had planned a great war, an army whistle. Twice it was repeated before the that would outnumber the Spaniards. When it kneeling nun became conscious of it and then was complete, they would attack, and then the sound tensed her. It was Vajo's signal, there would be no more torture, no more unthe whistle he had called her by when they happiness in the land between Cayuba and were in the village, before unhappiness came! Matto Grosso. He was at that minute, he told Quickly, afraid to hope, she looked up. her, on his way to Fuego where he would There, in the top of a great tree that looked gather two hundred men. In a week, all would over the walls, was Vajo. He waved to her. be ready. And then, when it was done, he People are not themselves when dreams would return and take Maria with him. become reality. rrv ajo/' 1 she called, her heart They lay for many hours thusly. When it pounding under the black hood, and ran to- was almost morning they arose and walked ward the wall, where a great vine ran up and slowly back to the walls. Maria kissed her disappeared over the top-but then she stop- lover tenderly, and then she wept for her ped and put her palm over her mouth. At the happiness. convent there was no sign that she had been As she climbed down the vine on the inside heard. Back there lay only trust, not suspicion. of the wall, her eyes fell on the rose bushes, God has a hand when people are called to and she seized the largest bloom, not caring make decisions. God is Love, and Maria lived that its thorns tore her flesh. by Love. Quickly she shed the black garments "Vajo!" she called softly. His answer came and climbed up the vine that went over the back, softly, too.
[ 12]
"My love and this go with you," she said, and tossed the rose over the wall.
"It will speed me on my way," called her beloved, and then she heard his footsteps racing down the steep path up which she had dragged her body many months before. She stooped and lifted the black garments she had put off. They were wet with the dew.
The rains were several weeks gone, and Father Benavente was well into his circuit. The cinchona and pashiuba villages were celebrating, for with the ends of the rains had come the buyers, and there was much money. The natives, Father Benavente knew, would be in need of him. Too, it was wise to be with the generous villagers when there was money, for even the work of God required money.
When he had been gone a month f rortl his home, and when he was only a day from the convent Nuestra de la Leche, he came upon the dead body of a young man.
From the face, Father Benavente would have judged him to be of the village of Fuego, but then death had been there for two or three days, and he could not be certain. Too, there was red clay in the dead man's hair, and under his nails, as though he had worked in the mines at Uina. The bones of his chest and arms were crushed, so that Father Benavente thought that death had come by one of the great snakes. And, strangest of all, the young warrior had carried a large red rose, now faded but still fragrant, under the broad band that circled his waist.
He buried the dead marr, and with two sticks and some withes from the saplings he made a cross to go at the head of the grave. But before he lay the dirt on the body, he replaced the rose where he had found it, under the broad band.
That evening he sat at the great table in the convent Nuestra Senora, and after the simple
supper he told of finding the dead man and of giving him a Christian burial.
At the other end of the table poor Maria heard, and knew . . . she knew from the first it was her Vajo the priest had found. But she gave no sign, at least no sign that the priest or the nuns might see. Only God and she and perhaps the spirit of tall, straight Vajo might see her grief. And when they had risen from their tabling and the nuns each went out to the cloisters, she hesitated an instant before Father Benavente. "It was kind of you to bury the poor man's rose with him, Father," she said simply, and then hurried on past the bewildered priest.
The days passed again Father Benavente went his way among the villages. At the first few he visited, he inquired if there was a young warrior missing from the tribe, but he was always told no, so that as he travelled farther from Nuestra Senora he stopped asking. But he never forgot the dead man, nor did he forget the nun at Nuestra Senora who had paused before him that night, the nun in whose eyes he had read grief.
The days, too, were passing at the convent. And as they went by Maria's sadness went, a very little each day, with them. At first there was the rose-vine to remind her, a bush on which there was the torn stem where a rose had been. But then, mysteriously, the vine had withered, and one day it was dug up and thrown away. ·
But although the grief was passing and the rose-vine was gone, the remembrance did not go, nor did Maria wish it to. Her prayers every day were designed so that she might remember the young Vajo who had held her for so long . in the jungle just over the wall, and many a time did she wish that she might go, for just a moment, to see the grave where the good priest had buried him. Each person on earth has a spot, a place that calls up all the tender [ 13]
recollections of the past; to Maria there was the steep trail whence she had come and Vajo no past, nor was there a present or a future- had gone. She walked away from the convent, those three strange tenses lay in a void, a dazed, scarcely knowing she was leaving. puzzling, timeless void marked by a spot some- All that night and the next day she wanwhere in the jungle. And then, there was an- dered in the jungle, searching for the grave other token of the love that had once been, a of poor Vajo. The bread and water she left token that surely lay in the future, but some- behind her, she knew not where. She had only how held claim to the past, and the present one thought: to find the jungle grave, and the too. Maria-the sad, strange little nun who same will that led her to follow the captive had been found at the convent gates more than Vajo out of Fuego took her through the dana year ago-was accomplishing sacred mother- gers of the jungle. On the night of that day hood in her womb. Before long she would she came across the little mound beside the bear the child of Vajo. trail, where there was a cross made of two Maria did not speak of the child she bore, sticks held together by sapling withes. though it was not her intent to conceal it from Yes, God has a hand in everything, and He the nuns. To her, the child Vajo had given made it so that the good Father Benavente her was hers-and his-and she lived in a again travelled that way. So that when he was world in which there were only the three of only a day from the convent Nuestra Senora them: the unborn, the living, and the dead. de la Leche, he came upon the body of a young But as time passed and the process of birth be- woman, sprawled awkwardly across the grave gan to alter the shape of her body, the truth he had made by the trail many months ago. became evident. . . . when he knelt to her, he remembered her, Sister Lucia took her into the little room off and her words of that evening came to him: the chapel and spoke to her. "It was kind of you to bury the poor man's "Maria," she said, "you have sinned. With rose with him, Father." your sin you have brought sin and disgrace to He held her against him as he rode on to the us all; in the sight of God we have all sinned. convent. The dead lids were open, and Father At a time such as this, even we must admit Benavente thought that he saw, even in the of the world. I shall not ask you to go, for dead eyes, grief. And because he was a holy this is a haven where all sinners may find sur- man, there was grief in his eyes, too. cease from sin. I talk with you thusly, then, At the convent, Sister Lucia and the other not to ask you to leave us, but to give you per- nuns told him the story of Maria: how they mission to do so. We would not know how to found her at the gates in a faint, how they regard your child here." nursed her back to health and led her to God, Maria dropped to her knees and wept, her and how she had stolen out of the walls-or face pressed against Sister Lucia's skirts. Her had aided a man to come in-and had begun shoulders shook with the weeping; her sobs to conceive. racked her frame and filled the room with "We did not ask her to go, Father," said awful sounds. Sister Lucia. That evening she left the little convent Nue- Wisdom oftenest springs from the mind, stra Senora de la Leche. She took nothing with but the wisdom for which the good Father her except the bread and the bottle of water Benavente, the wise Father Benavente, was they put into her hands. Her path lay down known in every pashiuba village between [ 14]
Cayuba and Matto Grosso, did not spring from so man-made a source. The wisdom of the good priest was the wisdom of God; it was put in his heart by Him.
"I am glad," he replied, "for you should not have asked her to leave." And the good nuns thought then that they looked on the countenance of God, for the face of Father Benavente shone as he murmured:
"Have you forgotten the Immaculate Conception?" * * * *
They buried poor Maria Listui in the cemetery behind the little chapel, where Undina, the founder, was buried. The inscription on the stone marker reads simply:
SANTA MARIA -1597
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
Listen to the dying hall clock
Time is passing, life is flowing Creeping onward, river roaring
Dock men's pay, starve the devils
Time affords one hour for revels
Close the shops, fire the crew
Eat your pottage and your stew
Sate your lusts, fill desires
Slowly, slowly time expires
See, the pendulum is swinging
At first to left and then to right
Ah! Now 'tis day, but now 'tis night "Ha ha ha ha," laughs the cynic
"Blood is freezing, breath is dying
The thief of time is now a-flying"
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock
Tick tock.
[ 15]
WALTER E. BASS.
You are mixing your colors-don't mix them too well, For you'll need red and orange straight, brilliant, for Hell. You will need all the black that your box can provide If you' re painting a picture of War-either side. You are starting a line-the horizon, I guess; Don't make it too clear-it's a foul, smoky mess.
What? . Blue sky? Don't be silly! Who sees such a sight? Why, a soldier's sky's murky, grey, red, day or night. Is this green to be grass? War-time grass is not greenYou're not painting from life, though your image is keen. Let your green be the hatred, the envy, the brass Of the nations, but surely not innocent grass! Ah, that's barbed wire; in that you are right, But, I say! Camouflage it! Don't make it too bright! And what is this so softly, dustily grey? What? Mud? Say now! Look, fellow, and tell me, I prayHave you ever stood knee-deep in gummy black slime?
That is mud. And that's War, any place, any time. Now the background's complete.
And what will you paint then?
Oh, you think you'll begin on the details-the men? Well, my friend, they'll be men, but not details. And why? The details are cannon, the things you must buy; Men just come. They .corrierunning to answer the call To the flag and the country They come, and they fall. That ' s a man? That's a god! He stands tall, his back straight! Real men slump when they' re weary-yes, even the great; Oh, your soldier may stand straight and tall in his mind, But his body leans hard on the· trench-wall, you'll find. What is this in this corner? A helmet, I see. Best not to paint what goes with it, for you will agree That you have not the colors to paint a man's soul, And that ' s all that is left if the man reached his goal. Is this figure a child? Oh, I pray, leave him out! This one soldier is man, woman, child, hope, and doubt; And the officer with him is caught in the track
Of the monster that marches and never turns backIt's a fierce, clawing phantom that's grasped him before And will do so again-it's black, death-breathing War.
Do not title your picture! No label could bear Such ironic significance. And who will care, When you're not here to tell who you were, or to blush? Oh, don't sign it! Life painted it; you were the brush.
VIRGINIA McLARIN. Illustration by Rex Allyn.
By M. H. WOOD, Jr.
Those of you who have visited the Smithsonian Institution in the nation's capital, and I imagine most persons have done so at some time or other, certainly made it a point to go through the rooms containing the remains and skeletons of prehistoric animals. Some of these monsters are believed by paleontologists to have roamed the earth as many as 75 million years ago. The impressions of a person visiting these rooms for the first time are those of massiveness, brute strength, and often hideous, almost unbelievable appearances. Th_e Gigantosaurus! for example, measures well over 100 feet in length, and probably weighed thousands of tons. Probably the most frightful of them all is the Tyrannosaurus! which had ferociously sharp teeth set in large, powerful jaws. It often measured 30 feet in length, and was one of the most terrifying of the Besheaters, preying on other defenseless, herbivorous animals of that time.
In such a spacious room filled with innumerable skeletons of enormous size, it is entirely possible that most persons fail to see what the writer believes to be one of the most interesting small animals in the museum. Enclosed in a glass case in the southwest corner of the room is the stuffed body of a prehistoric saber-toothed Mickeysaurus. It has the approximate size of a full grown house cat, but its legs are much shorter, bringing the body down close to the ground. The face is sharp and pointed, and the ears are small, rounded, and close to the head. The nose is small, and long whiskers are borne on the side-face near
it. The mouth is small, only the two upper front teeth being enlarged to any extent. These two fangs are long and curved, and protrude even when the mouth is closed, thus giving the animal a pugnacious appearance.
The entire body of the animal is
, covered with dark grey fur about an inch in length, and the eyes appear as small, brown beads. The feet are small and padded, and the toes on each foot are tipped with short claws. The animal has a long, grey, ropelike, tapering tail which it evidently dragged on the ground behind it. From all appearances it walked on all-fours, its hind legs being no more developed than its forelegs.
From the time the writer first noticed this little prehistoric animal, he was attracted to it by its similarity to some other animal which he could not recall to mind. Anxious to learn more about a Mickeysaurus! the writer asked one of the museum guides to tell him something about it. The guide's answer at once confirmed the writer's contentions that the little animal in the glass cage reminded him of some modern animal. Mickeysaurus was the predecessor of the mouse-the prehistoric ancestor of the modern rodent.
On learning this interesting bit of information, the writer's mind recalled a story which had been told him in his early childhood days, but had always been accepted, until now, as one of Grandpa's tall tales. Now an entirely new light was thrown on the story. Maybe Grandpa knew what he was talking about after all, or did he? It all came about in this manner:
Until I was twelve years old, I lived on my grandfather's farm in the country. One afternoon while Grandma and Aunt Jenny were entertaining a group of the local women folks in the living room, one of my pet white mice got away and went into the room with the [ 18]
women. None of them had noticed him. When one lady saw me on the floor on my hands and knees looking under the sofa, she asked me what I was looking for. I told her I was trying to catch my pet mouse, and at the same time, he ran out from under the sofa and across the room. All of them saw him then, and of all the screaming I ever heard, that was the loudest! And in two seconds, every lady in the room was up on a chair, or something else, holding her skirts up over her knees. Grandma and Aunt Jenny, who were both in the kitchen preparing refreshments at the time, came running in, and did I catch it! I didn't think I'd done anything wrong, but I soon found out.
Grandpa always was a good pal of mine, so I went to him for consolation. He always seemed to see the right side of things-our side. We got to talking about mice and women and things, and I began wondering what made women so skeery, especially over mice.
"Well, son," he said, "the reason for that dates way back to the beginnings of time. You remember how you studied in your Sunday school lessons about Adam and Eve? Well, it goes back to them; when Eve was the only woman on the earth. In those days things were different from what they are now. Why, there were different flowers and trees from what we have now, and the animals were just as different; especially the mice. It's only in recent years that mice have been tamed and persuaded to be harmless critters."
"But what's that got to do with women being skeerd of mice?" I asked.
'Tm coming to that son; I'm coming to that," he said. "Well, in the days of Adam and Eve, the mice were larger; much larger. And they were wild and mean, just like wildcats are today, only they weren't as large as
wildcats. And they had long teeth in front with which they could slash a dog's neck in one second. They were mean animals in those days, son."
"But I still don't see why all women ," I interrupted Grandpa again, but he went right on.
"Well, son, one day when Eve was at home by herself, a whole pack of these hungry mice , got after her and tried to kill her. Your Sunday school lesson don't tell you anything about this, son, but if Adam hadn't come back just in time, those mice would most likely have eaten Eve on the spot. Well, son, it just so happened that Eve had a little baby daughter two days after that, and, do you know, that little girl grew up to be the skeerdest thing of mice you ever saw! And when she grew up and had children, all of her little girls were skeerd of mice, and all of their little girls were skeerd of mice, and so on.
"So you see, son, all women have been skeerd of mice ever since time began, even after they were tamed and domesticated."
"But, Grandpa," I said, "Why aren't men skeerd of mice too?"
"Well, son," he said, "If Eve's baby daughter had been a baby son instead, men would probably be skeerd of mice instead of women. But you'll understand that better when you get a little older."
In those days I believed everything grandpa said, but as I grew older, I found out that much of what he said was only something he had made up to answer my impossible questions. As I stood before the glass cage in the museum and looked at the saber-toothed Mickeysaurus within, my thoughts again returned to Grandpa. A Mickeysaurus was certainly mean looking all right. I wonder how close to being right Grandpa could have been.
[ 19]
1889-1923
Typically, it is said, Southerners live too much in the past; they revere tradition to a fault.
It is not our desire to argue the sectionalism of ancestor-worship in America, nor to defend ourselves against the charge of looking backward. It is a happy proclivity when it reveals a great heritage; for then it is that the glad frivolousness - of memory allows the pleasant past to live, the unpleasant, to die. THE MESSENGER, hardened by the vicissitudes that beset it and are usual to college journals, has survived seventyodd years to give us just such an inheritance.
The forthcoming celebration of the University's twenty-fifth year at Westhampton will soon cast the campus into a retrospective mood. We ourselves recently became intensely interested in the old days of our own organization and curious to know exactly the sort of editorials and stories prominent graduates, whose names we feel will arise in connection with the June celebration, had written in their student days. Their labors, in measure, have made our inheritance.
What we found developed into this supplement. On the ensuing pages we have endeavored to present a synoptic survey of THE MESSENGER'S last half-century through the work of these eminent graduates.
Our material beyond the by-lines has been selected almost promiscuously, some of it acknowledgedly too adolescent, some of it adequate, and some of it quite good. We have not concerned ourselves with the relative excellence of the selections, bttt rather with their representativeness and present-day reader appeal.
The parallelism re fiected in the editorial views ( and somewhat in general content) of yesterday and our day, is remarkable. Scattered throughout long decades are editorials decrying over-emphasis on athletics with a resulting undermining of literary and other artistic activities, decrying paucity of material, charging lack of staff cooperation within the publication, and even charging the college with responsibility for the uncomfortable conditions at one time prevalent in the college baths!
And so once more we are confronted by the truth of the old saw that nothing is new, not even the foundation stones that go to make up our own ancestry, which we here briefiy dis play.-G. S.
1889-1923
In which we present a resume of the writings of days gone by, from the pens of illustrious Alumni [ 21]
In 1889 1the Philologian and Mu Sigma Rho Literary Societies, which grew with the UniJAMES C. versity, formed the signifi~ant HARWOOD outlet for st~dent ex presston. Membership m one _ or the other seemed a prerequisite for campus fellowship. And youth, eternally interested in self-expression, seasoned with recognition 1 found the societies hotbeds of exalted debating 1 grandiloquent oratory 1 and campus politics.
The Literary Societies were chiefiy literary, however, painfully so, and THE MESSENGER was the step-child of the two. The Philologians attempted to surpass the Mu Sigs in amount of published material 1 and the small magazine format bulged with the accredited items of both groups. Into the profusion of pat ho logical Victorianism there erept now and then some bit of effort which we, who with the complacency of today view the past, considered good. To lead our backward steps safely to that period opening on the Gay Nineties, we take a poem by James C. Harwood1 today and for many years principal of John Marshall High School in Richmond and poet now as he was in student days 1 in November, 1889 when the RICHMOND COLLEGE MESSENGER proudly offered his rrwinter"
A year has fled,
And over hill and vale
The wintry snows have fallen thick and fast; The flow' rs lie dead,
And springs and streamlets fail;
And bare gray boughs bend to the whistling blast,
And yet, deep down within its frozen bed,
The fast-imprisoned germ of life is laid;
And but awaits the sunny smile of spring
To break its icy bonds, and let it bring
Both bud and leaf from seed wherein each lies;
As phoenixes from their dead ashes rise. * * * *
A life has fled,
And, o'er a wrinkled brow,
The snows of age have silvered raven locks; Life's joys are dead,
The heart, so frozen now,
Scarce feels Death's awful summons when he knocks,
But lo! The Master smiles, and forth there flies, Upborne on airy pinions to the skies, A soul immortal from the lifeless clay; Reborn to dwell in "realms of endless day."
The Alumni files of the University reveal nothing of the career of the late Audrey Ne/AUDREY N. ~on £:owers, one time editorBOWERS tn-ch~ef of THE MESSENGER. But m November of 1894 he authored an editorial as apro pas of college magazine problems then as now
The associate editors seem to regard the securing of a place upon the staff the beginning and ending of their duty; the undergraduates do not write. In the March issue of this magazine we took occasion to speak as follows on these two points: "You can't make a silk purse of a pig's ear, nor can you make a faultless magazine without contributions or other support, financial or otherwise, from students, professors, or officers of the college. Especially is this true where all the work of all the departments is done by one editor, as was the case with this issue. It may not be the usual or courteous thing for an editor to criticise his staff colleagues in public print; but we consider this an instance that calls for heroic treatment. The associate editors should either perform their duties or take their flags down from the mast-head. They are sailing under false colors."
Charles Marshall Graves was editor-in-chief in April, 1895. His staff included Jesse H. CHARLES M. Binford, n?w su f erintende~t GRAVES of the Ruhmond Publtc Schools, Abner Lunsford, John Jeter Hurt. Graves 1 Phi Beta Kappa, on leaving college eventually rose to become an associate editor of The New York Times, a position he holds today. In college, he was a forthright and outspoken leader; he wrote courageously and well. Typical of his policy was an editorial concerning their 11 enemy within/'
THE COLLEGE BATHS
After two months in which it was impossible to use the baths of the College, their condition was reported to Dr. Ryland, financial secretary of the college; and they are now under a speedy course of
[ 22}
repair, not repair simply, but rather total renovation and reconstruction.
It is not the privilege of our position to characterize anyone individually as blameworthy, but we do say, and say unhesitatingly, that there has been gross neglect of duty somewhere, and a total disregard of the rights of the students which they pay for and have a right to expect.
There might be a film of excuse for delaying the repair of college property, destroyed through carelessness and devilment on the part of the students, in order that they may learn rightly the value of conveniences extended them, but not so when causes beyond the control of the student body, as was the case when as a result of severely cold weather, they were deprived of their paid-for privilegethe college baths. In this case not a gossamer thread bound the proper authorities from reporting the true state of affairs to the Financial Secretary, who is also the general superintendent of the grounds and buildings
But a t last , to the immense satisfaction of all concerned , the reconstruction of the baths is rapidly go ing forward and will soon- as ought to have been long ago-be in a condition for enjoyment with which there will be combined no sense of repugnance.
The turn of the century! In 1900 a nother unp retentious wide-eyed fr eshm a n w alked the ca mpus on Gr ace Street 1 where DOUGLASS. · the University Law School ts FREEMAN · located today. HIS work soon b egan to appear f r equently in the literary ma ga z ine 1 of which he w as appointed editorin-chief. He w as graduated with a B.A. deg r e e. His name: Dougl as S. Freeman. Sinc e those days , Dr. Douglas S. Freem a n has beco me world-renowned as an ·editor 1 scholar , an d writer. Her ein we present student Freema n in prose and poetry.
THE MINOR CHORD (St ories of t h e Op era Series)
Yes, she was only a chorus girl ; but hasn ' t she a heart just as truly as the prima donna with the golden voice? Because you didn ' t notice her on the crowded stage is that any reason why she hasn't a story-maybe tragedy - hid behind that smile and laugh? Even if that tenor, who stands where the calcium shines full in his face , sings the refrain, is
there not a minor chord, and unheard refrain, for the little chorus girl? She was like them all-came from nowhere-going, the good Lord only knows where, when the season broke up. Maybe she didn't love the stage; maybe she was only on to provide a living for that father up in Rhode Island - at least that's what they said when she died What was her name-it doesn ' t matter. " Nellie Reid " they called her, and she was premiere of the ballet in "Bluebeard." A little slip of a girl, hardly five feet with a beaming smile and a pair of great brown eyes that should have shone in a better place than in a chorus dressing room. Graceful, too, and as active as a gazelle. Whenever the chorus would not learn the new movement the stage manager had in mind, they would send for Nellie, and she never failed to straighten things out. But she never had a lover. I didn't know why that was, but was there not something in that brown eye, innocent though it was, which caused stage Bobby or dressing-room Tom to think again before he spoke to her? When the company played in New York she was never seen except at rehearsal and at performance. There were none of the " after-play dinners" with her. In fact , she was just a pure, sweet girl, acting, like so many do , not for the love of the business, nor for the love of man, but because it offered a living-honest, if you choose to make it such. This conduct made her distinct in a way, and caused her to be considered distant by other girls
We might think she is going to fall in love with some of the singers , or she is going to be rewarded for her virtue, and some day she is ging to sing a " fat" part. But she didn't. Her story was simple , her life was sad-all to the minor chord.
You know the company started out from New York, after a seven week's run , playing the big stands Philadelphia came first , with its cold, uninterested audiences, and then-the road. The piece was like so m a ny others - a mere mingling of song and spectacle- beautiful to the eye, melodious to the ear. " Bluebeard " was its name; but it might as well have been " The Sleeping Beauty," or anything else-the title meant nothing Nellie led the ballet, with all their numerous changes and dances -a beautiful little figure, bright, earnest, interested. But her aerial work, in which she excelled , came in the second act, when she played the " Blackbird," floating downward through the air, flapping great dark wings-indeed , like some spirit of another world. To do this she was suspended at every performance high up in the gridiron, by five wires , to secure her from a fall and to regulate her movements. She had learned the trick well, and never [ 23)
failed to "get a hand" when she came flying on the scene, singing her slumber song.
The piece met with success, for the season was good; indeed, Nellie Reid's little song was worth the price of the admission. Through Ohio, slowly, through Indiana, and on into Illinois they travelled, meeting with warm receptions everywhere and playing to full houses. And then they came to Chicago. The company had settled down by this time; they all knew each other, and they were accustomed to each other's little peculiarities. No one laughed at Nellie, or called her a "great lady" because she refused to have a part in their revels and celebrations after the play; in fact, I think they respected her for it. And they found, too, that she was not distant after all. More than one of the girls, when in trouble, found Nellie sympathetic and willing to intercede with the manager. So they came to love her, those thoughtless chorus girls, and it brought out that old, old story of how virtue will be recognized. It isn't necessary to tell how the girls came to respect her, almost adore her, though one of them cried like a child when they found Nellie that night, and said she had been a sister to them all; how on that same fateful occasion, another sold half' her outfit to put a bunch of roses in her cold hands. She gained her love in her own waysimply, gently.
And still, Nellie did not love any of the men. Several of the chorus men were smitten by her quiet charm, but they never became familiar; they never dared, somehow, pay her much attention, and her reserve became proverbial in the company. And one day, when they were in Chicago, May Edwards laughingly asked her if that handsome man on her dresser was her lover; if it was her charm, which kept her from favoring this, that, or the other one. Nellie only smiled, and I am sure now whose picture that was; she never told, and they couldn't find it after the fire.
Nellie favored no suitor, but was at least fervently admired. I have mentioned how some of the "Fairy Guard" would have paid her attention. It was an open secret that the great "Prince" himself one night had proposed her as a toast-but these were not all. There was one other who did not sing in the chorus, whose place was not in the front rank when the ensemble sang the finale; in fact, he had only seen her that week before. He was but the boy who ran the elevator up to the tier dressing-rooms. Just a boy, with a boy's heart and a boy's dreams. They always form a distinct class, these youthful Thespians, worthy of any one's observation. You hear him coming down the wings, calling the cur-
tain; you see him running an errand for the tenor, or bringing the basso shaving water. Did you ever stop and think that these boys had ambitions like the rest of us. When Jack spilled the star's hot water on his doublet maybe he was thinking of the day when he should be a star himself, and wear silk tights, and sing his own songs. Maybe, when the stand is over, the empty wings echo his boyish voice, singing the songs of the tenor, and conjuring up a time when he will not have to sulk in the wings when the foots were on-when he can stand out there like a comedian and draw laughter from the people.
They called him Phil for short - Philip, they print his name in the returns for the fire. He was just a stage boy; who ever thought to ask him his name? He didn't have much time to see the singers at their work; he was forever busy carrying them up to their dressing rooms and bringing them down again. But he noticed them all, from those clear eyes of his, and the Bluebeard Company hadn't been at the Iroquois three days before he fell in love with Nellie. Of course, he was only a boy-of course, he would never tell her about it; he didn ' t think for a moment she would listen if he did-he was only the elevator boy. But why shouldn't he love? It is entirely possible that he fell in love with some girl in every company that played at the Iroquois. But what does it matter? If youth gives license to anything, it is to love. But Nellie never saw it-never dreamed of it. He only answered a little more promptly when the bell rang her floor; he was only a bit more polite when she was aboard-that was all. In fact, I doubt if Nellie ever thought of him, or indeed, had noticed him half a dozen times. But what would be a boy's life if he could not love? But one day she did notice him. He was down on the first tier when the bell rang from her tier ( the fourth), and he went up. She was dressed for her second act entrance, in the gorgeous creation of red and gold, with spangles from tip to toe. He wasn't very swift in taking her down, for he enjoyed looking at her slyly, as she was engaged in arranging the blouse. She must have seen him watching her, though, for she looked at him and smiled "Do I look nice?" she asked. He stammered "Like-like an angel," he broke out. She laughed at the thought of an angel being clad in red tights and a golden blouse, but ~he answered, like the gentle soul she was, "Oh, I'm glad you like me." Of course, she would have said that to any one, but we don't philosophize at fourteen, and Phil was happy all that evening. After that, so kind-hearted was she, she always had
[ 24]
a smile for the boy. You know big singers are not out in the fourth groove and told the stage firein the habit of taking the slightest notice of the at- man about it when he reached the stage level. The tendants, and to have her, the primiere of the ballet, octette was just finishing their second encore, and talk to him was the greatest honor of Phil's life. Phil crept forward, hoping to catch a glimpse of And how he used to look forward to her appear- Nellie. But, as he turned toward the wings, he · ance. He would sit in the elevator, sometimes, heard a cry behind him, and turning, saw in a listening to the buzz around him, and then would minute that the drop was a-fire. come a little ring from the elevator bell above The scene that followed need not be pictured. him, and he knew in a moment it was she. Some- "Lower away!" cried the stage manager to the how that bell rang differently when she wanted fly-men, "lower away!" And, as a great cry rose the elevator. Isn't that boyish love; or shall we call up from the audience, the asbestos curtain came it adoration-the happiest love of a life time? Do down slowly and stuck midway. The company not you remember how, when you were thirteen, meanwhile were hurrying for the off-wing door, and or twelve, you used to worship some young lady by the time Phil was aware of what had happened, five, seven years your senior; and were you not only the stage fireman and the octette were on the happy? But Phil- wings. Above him, sweeping like some great tor-
And then it came. The company had been play- rent, touched off as if by magic, were the flames. ing at the Iroquois ten days. It was Christmas-time, It was impossible to hear anything save their roar and the managers had decided to give a special and the hoarse cry of the people in the audience, matinee for the women and the children. A little already fighting and tearing their way to the exits. more liberty was given the comedians, and the bal- In vain the manager called for volunteers to go up let was instructed to answer as many as four en- and unfasten the asbestos curtain. It meant sudden cores, for women and girls are the most appreciative and sure death-no one ventured. of listeners. The prices were lowered somewhat, Phil stood dazed at first, scarce realizing the exand, as the Iroquois had just opened, the people tent of the danger, and then he thought of Nellie. flocked in crowds to the performance. The enthusi- Of course, she had gotten out-but, then, the asm ran high at the end of the first act, and as he wires were hitched on her back, and he knew she sat in the elevator, away back on the wings, Phil could not unfasten them. For a moment the boy could hear their applause and the piping of the stood there. "Go to her" something said to him. chorus. Yes, he was sure that was her voice, ringing "Save her! Save her!" But then he was only a little high above them all. He just knew it; there was no fellow, and it was a long way up to the fourth tier, one in the company who could sing like her, he and besides-but he shut his eyes and bravely thought, and as for dancing-he imagined she was rushed to the elevator. Without the theatre heroes per£ ect. But as the first of the chorus came down were doing great deeds-catching women as they hurriedly to be carried up for the change, he forgot fell, breaking in doors, knocking down partitions his daydreams and began handling the rush. She -but the little boy on the elevator was doing his didn't come up until the last group. She had been part. He trembled as he entered his cage. He hesitalking to one of the girls. Phil looked at her ~d- tated again, and then he remembered how she miringly and almost forgot to stop at the third looked that afternoon away up there on the wings. tier for some one, so absorbed was he. The second He turned the controller, and up they went-up act went without a hitch; the stars all sang well, through what seemed to the boy a solid wall of and the ballet movements were faultless. flames, so swiftly had the fire spread. On, on-the They had just begun the third act, and the ele- distance never seemed so great before. At lastvator was up on the fourth tier, for Phil loved to was this the tier? No, one more. The elevator was stay up there and watch them f~sten Nellie up ~o stifling hot now, the controller grip was scorching, do her floating trick. How beautiful she looked m but he held on. With a jerk he stopped the elethat flapping black-bird dress, with her wings and vator and ran out on the tier. Above his head, the plumage. They had just finished, and she was on roof ~f the theatre was aflame, below him the third the gridiron, ready to descend, when the bell rang tier was a mass of blaze. He lost sense of distance in the elevator and Phil hurried down. The octette -which way was she, right or left- where did was singing "The Pale Moonlight"; he could hear they put her? And then he heard her cry. It came them, and he hoped he might have a chance to run from that direction, and now he knew. He fought out to the wings and see her come down. As. he his way through the smoke to the gridiron. As he passed the second tier he noticed a fuse burning looked down, he lost heart for a moment-flames, [ 25]
flames-all flames. And then she called again behind him: "Phil, oh, Phil! help me!" I am not sure what happened then-he never could tell, nor could she, and no one else saw. It seems that her thick covering must have protected her somewhat from the heat, and the flames had just reached her when Phil came up. She was secured by four guide wires and by the main wire, which bore her weight. Hardly knowing how-desperately, maybe heroically-the little fellow struggled with the wires to free Nellie. He managed to break three of the guide wires The flames were like Hell itself now; they scortched his hair, they burnt his uniform. Now the fourth, and Nellie's dress has caught. He stopped to put it out, and then, with a mighty effort, swung her over on the gridiron. Just then the heat broke the last wire, and she was loose. It was a long, long pull back to the elevator - the smoke stifled, the heat maddened. Nellie had fainted now , and the lad had to drag her to the shaft. Just at that moment he coat began to scortch. He tore it from him. Inside the cage it was hotter still. But how the controller scorched and blistered his hand Nellie lay lifeless, with half her great black garments burned from her; her face seemed unhurt. Down now, like lightning, through the smoke. Phil counted the tiers-three, two, here was the ground floor But an idea struck him, and, turning the controller, he shot down to the basement. He cleared the last floor , and thenhe fell.
In the basement the firemen had just begun playing their hose. The flames had not reached them there , and they were pouring a flood of water on the stage through the traps . Up through the airshaft they could see the furnace-like glow of the flames; the elevator shaft was full of smoke . They had just broken the little iron door of the shaft, when suddenly down came the elevator. It struck the springs at the bottom with such force that they thought the cage had burned away from above and dropped. But, through the smoke, they saw something on the floor-it was Phil, lying across Nellie ' s body .
It did not take many minutes to bring an ambulance , and before long the two were lying in a nearby store, turned for a time into a hospital. They laid her down on a great bundle of sheeting, and some one brought a roll of curtains and placed him beside her. A fireman had whispered how they found him to a nurse, and when the doctor came, in a few moments, she told him. Tenderly, for the catastrophe softened all hearts, the physician and his assistants uncovered them and dressed their
burns. They saw that neither could live and presently moved them into a little counting-room at one end of the store. It was 5 o'clock when the firemen found them in the elevator; at 7 neither had stirred . Without, through smoke and fog, came the throb, throb, throb of the engines throwing water on the smoking sepulchre. On into the night the bells of the ambulances, carrying away the dead and the wounded, sounded a dismal knell through the saddened streets. Men fought like spirits of the pit to rescue the wretches from the ruins In the big store the delirious raved and screamed; a long line of white-faced friends passed through the aisles, searching for loved ones . But no one, save the nurses, went into the little room at the rear; no anxious mother or grief-stricken father sought for these two; they were alike , children of the stage-no one knew them
At midnight the doctor said that neither had two hours to live. Nellie was a mass of burns, only her face and back having escaped the flames, and Phil was cooked all over. But they did not rave; no mad delirium haunted the mind of either. They were still unconscious. Twelve o ' clock boomed out while the doctor stood over them. There was something of eternity in the air-death brooded over all Chicago that night. The electric lights were all out in that section; on the desk over there a single candle illuminated the watching nurse and the dying patients They had covered Nellie's burns with a great sheet; her hair , which had been encased, and had strangely escaped injury, spread over the sheet now-beautiful , dark hair - while the white face showed no sign of the struggle-rest. As for Phil, his face was burned almost beyond recognition; but did you notice , the charred fingers of his right hand were still clenched , where he had held the controller grip. One o ' clock , and no change, though the light flickered lower, and the two sufferers breathed with greater difficulty. Already a thousand instruments were sending fearful tidings all over the country From the marble entrance of the Iroquois a long line of laborers brought out the charred and mangled corpses The smoke had drifted back on the city like a pall-the end was come.
It must have been nearly two o ' clock when the nurse noticed a slight movement from the couch where Phil lay. She went to him. Slowly, painfully, he opened his swollen eyes, and spoke slowly , " When-I-came, she knew it was me. " The nurse was about to inject a strong dose of morphine , when the boy lay back- he was past suffering now . The nurse turned around. Nellie, too , [ 26]
had opened her eyes; she had heard his words perhaps; she was smiling at the boy beside hersmiling? Yes-and dead.
When the morning came, they laid them out in the morgue, but no one save the girls in the company came to them; no one looked for Phil, no father looked for Nellie. They lived to the minor chord; the minor chord was their requiem. And they never knew whose was the picture on Nellie's dresser.
EDITOR'SNOTE: The Minor Chord was said by its author to be a true story.
* * * *
TO MADELINE
(From "For Old Love's Sake.")
When the sun is slow to shine, All its radiance is thine, Madeline!
When the stars to sleep incline, Light thou with thy gaze divine, Madeline!
With such loves as gods repine, Such a love for thee is mine, Madeline!
With thy hair so soft and fine, Like it were some dream's design, Madeline!
In its tresses wreathe and twine, Flashes of a lost sunshine, Madeline!
And thy breath 'tis sweet as wine, When thy rosy lips meet mine, Madeline!
And thy sigh is as a sign, For the hushing of the wind, Madeline!
At thy sobs the skys incline, And thy tears are honeyed brine, Madeline!
Ah, ye men, ye mortal swine, Let this world your thoughts refineMadeline !
Then pledge her in the ruby wine, To thee, to thee, sweetheart mine, Madeline!
Thomas W. Ozlin, Chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, was an associate editor in 1908, when, THOMAS W. once more, the editorial board OZLIN was endeavoring to define the exact place THE MESSENGER had to make for
[ 27)
itself in the life of the College. In his regular column, Ozlin wrote:
"It is true that the first duty of a college magazine is to reflect the local life and distinctive character of its own institution, yet no one will ~agree that our interests should be bounded by the college campus. It is the commonly acknowledged idea that the student goes to college to prepare for life, but, in a far more real sense, he is in the midst of life. As we see it, one of the primary functions of the college is to broaden the view and enlarge the sympathies of its students."
There followed another parallel for today ....
"We cannot deny that the tendency is too far advanced in all the colleges of our land to subordinate interest in things literary to athletics. Not that we would for a moment depreciate the importance of athletics to college life, but should not athletics be subservient to the true object for which a college should stand? We hail the time when the average college man will devote his best interest to the cultivation of his powers of expression, both in written and in spoken language, and when the college hero will be the man who excels in literary attainments, instead of the big fellow who carries off the prize in athletics. Not until such a change is effected will be seen the standard of college publications elevated from their present status."
In this era it was also most fashionable to use romantic pseudonyms, and the fallowing excerpt, we think, might off er an LEANDER obvious reason. The story~ published in October, 1909, was called 11 Fate's Ashes"; its author was Leander ...
He had planned a pretty little love scene with her, for he had long dared to presume that Evelyn loved him. But he found two of her girl friends there and they stayed until it was nearly time for Howard to leave. Evelyn's mother thought it expedient to stay in the parlor after the girls were gone. She liked Howard very much and she particularly desired his company for Evelyn and herself. As she made no motion to leave the room, Howard arose to go. Evelyn went with him into the hall and closed the door behind her. Ah! there was his chance. So after they had been talking on general topics a few minutes, Howard said rather bluntly "I have a question to ask you."
"Me! What is it?"
"Tell me, may I hope to win your love?"
She did not fall into his arms as he had expected. She just partly turned her back and hid her face in her hands and giggled. In a moment she looked up.
"What's the matter with you, Mr. Carter?"
Evelyn was only seventeen.
Howard felt somewhat demented and perhaps he thought Evelyn was. She made him angry. He opened the door and slipped quietly out on the porch.
Evelyn had regained her self-composure by now.
"Such an idea as love never entered my head, Mr. Carter," she said.
Howard was the first young man who had ever paid her much attention.
She continued, "I expect to give my life to teaching. I enjoy men's company, but it matters little whether I am with one or another."
As Howard stepped from the porch, Evelyn said, "Come again soon, Mr. Carter."
Were we to attempt to evaluate the accomplishments of Dr. Harvie Def. Coghill} preDR. HARVIE DeJ. eminent psychiatrfstJ dfCOGHILL rector ~f th~ ~h~ldr~n s Memortal Clinic} m RzchnzondJ we would find the task intriguingly difficult; suffice it that in psychology} his mark is bold. His work with maladjusted children has won for him a great name in child psycholo gyJ but we find it impossible as laymen to elaborate on details of his achievements.
As a student at Richmond College} later to assume the editorJs rruneasy chairt H. D. Coghill neatly epitomized the rrfreshman situation}} in November} 1912 ..
THE RAT
draughts of wisdom from ocean-connected cups; wrestling with the might of well-nigh invincible mathematics, and carried from the heights of literature to all the depths and shoals of chemistry, he soon adjusts bewildered brain to unaccustomed conditions.
Dragged from slumber's sweet embrace twixt night and morn, scarce ere tired eyes closed in death's imitation-forced to perform, with trembling limbs and chattering teeth, as chief actor in farcical drama, conceived by demoniac brains spurred by icy hearts, he learns his lesson of humiliation, and envies the humble creature whose name he bears with shamed pride.
And time speeds rapidly on in the sunshine of fierce and joyous exultation over athletic victories, mingled with shadows of scoreless games.
Then come the tests, together with the consciousness of classes cut and time squandered-and solemn resolutions for future good.
And then the holidays, with flying visit home, the delights with dear ones-college scenes reviewed to rapt ears and eager eyes of fair damsels, when next year's spirit, untimely born, makes the brain expand and threaten its narrow confines.
Holidays over-back to the mill-the gray days -the homesick hours-and the stern resolution, with grim-compressed lips, to make time count for more, whate' er the cost.
Again time flies on-shades and lights of emotion, periods of study and indolence, gravity and gaiety-and, lured by languishing glances from modest, downcast eyes of fair and lissome lassies, he learns sad lessons of dear experience. Suddenly, looming large on his consciousness, as breakers just visible through a rift in the mist show the captain the vessel's danger, he awakens to examination time rapidly approaching-then come the days of industrious research and the nights of diligent "cramming," the horrid vision of being "flunked" disturbing restless slumbers. Finally, the dread hour comes-and goes. With blanched cheek, firm lips, and set jaws he approaches his fate--reads, and passes on, with mute but heart-felt thanks for his narrow escape-a
A coalescence of crudity and stupidity, of arrogance and ignorance, of good and bad, of courage and timidity-borne on the tide of ambition or parental decision to the threshold-ushered into "rat" no more. collegedom with a hearty welcome from genial president and faculty-running the gauntlet of howling sophomores, jeering juniors, and derisive Subsequently a Member of the Virginia seniors-gazing, with startled rabbit eyes, at fairy House of Delegates} member of the Board of forms of sylph-like femininity, he looks about y d Al · C ·1 him in desperation for a convenient hole. J. VAUGHN ruSt ees ~n ~mm ounct Sitting at the feet of Erudition's earnest ex- GARY of the- UmverSityJ m April 1915} pounders, long and short, fat and thin, gaunt and f. Vaughn Gary was editor of grim, gay and garrulous; imbibing brain-sizzling the magazine. Today he is prominent in legal [ 28]
circles in Richmond In view of this fact, one of his editorials is particularly amusing ...
~he Richm~nd College law students should join their forces with the Virginia Railway and Power Company in their effort to obtain an injunction to restra!n the operation of jitney buses in the city of Richmond. Her~tof~re t~e struggling young lawy~r c?uld advertise his busmess by chasing over th~ oty m a Ford, ther~by causing the populace to thmk that he was makmg a success. With the advent of the jitneys, however, the unappreciative populace will thmk that the law business has proved so unprofitable that he is running a jitney bus.
Affable Joseph A. Leslie, Jr., associate editor of the Norfolk, Virginia Ledger-Dispatch, JOSEPH A. was ~e~ently initfated as a~ LESLIE, JR. hon~1a1y me~ber into the Umvers1ty of Richmond Chapter of Pi Delta Epsilon, national journalism fraternity. We mentioned our supplement plans and his own story, 11His Cross." Looking aghast, avowing he couldn't have written any MESSENGER story, and threatening us with dire things for defaming his character,he halfheartedly consented to 11 let himself in for it." 11His Cross" is from the April, 1916 MESSENGER, and signed J.A. L., Jr., '16. The only J.A. L., Jr., we found in the class of '16 was Joseph A. Leslie, Jr., who with Nick Carter, now engaged in radio advertising in New York and once athletics editor of THE MESSENGER, founded the Richmond Collegian, campus newspaper, and was a member of almost all of the college organizations. So we consider it safe to presume that 11His Cross" was another Leslie venture . .
HIS CROSS
It all happened so suddenly-so unexpectedly did it come, just at a time when emotions were whetted to the keenest edge, and tense excitement was raised to almost breathlessness-that, for a moment, the crowd had merely gasped in astonishment, and then settled back into the deadened complacency which the monotony of recent thrills had produced. For they were becoming weary now of startling scenes-nerve trying situations, which
under other conditions should have caused an outbreak of pent -up emotion. Hence, when the wildeyed, nervous fellow pushed and squirmed his way through the crowded aisle to the front, his witnesses merely ceased their subdued murmurs and waited silently, expectantly.
Day after day the courtroom had been packed with a curious, sympathetic mob, listening in their peculiar, gloating way as each item of evidence piled itself upon the others against the accused man there in the prisoner's box. Every aisle had been crowded since the very beginning, and even the window sills had served as perches for the peering, clamoring throngs that jammed themselves uncomfortably lest they should miss some word or fail to catch some hopeless expression from the man they knew now was doomed. Some mingled feelings of sympathy, with a morbid delight in their own tears and in the grief of others, as the pitiable net of accusation each day had entangled the hopeless more and more.
Finally there was an end of legal struggles, of vague questionings, of heartless condemnationsthe lawyers rested their case, but the audience knew full well how futile had been the battle, and how uselessly had been spent the days and nights of hope, and fear, and vain searchings for some clue that would give the solemn -faced man up there a chance. Few men really thought he was guilty, but all the evidence had been against him. Just another of those unexpected cases, its very nature adding to its interest, as attested by the huge crowds that had attended the trial. The jury was not long away, in their solemn, cheerless chamber. They filed in slowly, through the hush that was almost stiffiing, a lost cause written in glaring lines across their faces, heads bowed down as if ashamed to have been the agents of such unhappy fortune. "Guilty!" The words had rung dully through the room, and seemed but a taunting reminder of something that everyone had known already.
Then the slim little woman up there by the prisoner's side--she had never left him except when forced away-£ ell down to her knees, and with her arms about him, buried her head on his breast"Oh ! Henry! Henry! It can't be! Not that! 0 God, how can you let them do it-let them take him away from me! He didn't do it! He did n't! He is innocent-"
And then it had come--above the woman's sobs -instead of the looked-for commonplace and usual action of an over-excited man-"Your Honor, that man is innocent. I killed Frank Hemingway!"
This was the needed touch to the overheated,
strained rabble, and the tension loosed full swaya woman screamed, and had to be led from the room; somebody laughed-a nervous, high-pitched laugh-and women wept. The accused man stood up, the girl clinging to him nervously, unbelieving, and gazed full in the face of the speaker-and fainted. He was speaking; the house was hushed.
"I killed Hemingway, and sneaked the knife into the house, where it was found. I tried to ruin him -Henry Hadley-but lost my nerve. I can't do it -he is my brother!"
He turned to the crowd. They looked upon the wreck of Leon Hadley, and remembered. It couldn't be-"Leo" Hadley, despised, disgraced, dishonored, was not man enough to do this thing. It seemed almost uncanny-everything was so unreal. This could not be the Leo Hadley they had been forced to shun and mistrust!
For years, and in fact, all his life, he had been the family care, the one shadow across an otherwise peaceful threshhold, the one stain on an old and honored name. This made his worthlessness stand out more distinctly-it had scarcely seemed possible that two brothers should be wholly different. These two had been the only children, left early in life to the care of a widowed mother. Henry had ever been, even since a mere boy, the one great source of help and comfort to her, while poor Leo -wayward, careless, spiteful, always a care and a burden. Schooldays over, there was little change-for the worse, if at all. Both boys had gone into the bank with which their father had been connected in a long and honorable career. As was expected, Henry succeeded, while his hapless brother dawdled and frittered away his chances, reckless, ambitionless.
Then there was the girl. Both boys loved her and wooed her. This love, it was often said, had been the only worthy emotion Leo had ever experienced-but he lost her, and was a bad loser, along with the other questionable traits in his makeup. His love turned into something else, and he grew vindictive, sullen, scheming. His poor mother wasted away with her heartaches and disappointments and caring for him. He took to drink finally, as the logical thing to be done in such a case, making life more miserable for those about him, until the little mother faded and soon was gone, leaving him to lose his own weak battles alone. Her death, from the depths into which his distorted nature had sunk, he laid to some of the imagined faults of his brother and the girl who had ruined his life. He begrudged Henry the success he had earned,
and lived, as it seemed, only to mar the happiness of the two.
Often he went away, but when his funds were gone he would return to his brother for more. His social standing was all gone, and he was shunned by his old acquaintances. This, too, he attributed to his brother, and it intensified his resolve to "get even." And in this one particular, at least, he was sincere and consistent, for, as a result soon his brother's frown of care was moulded into longset lines across his face, and at his temples the inevitable spots of gray attested to burdens weighing and dragging. A hinted slur connected with the name of his wife finally well-nigh caused a family tragedy. Henry came to be looked upon with pity; the old light and steady gleam had faded from his eyes, and Kate was drooping too.
Again the tormentor left, months of absence elapsed, and when hopes of peace at last were growing, he returned, bringing more unhappiness. When matters had approached what seemed a crisis, he went away, and this time he stayed. But into the broken happiness soon there came the tragedy-Hemingway, rich, influential, was found dead-murdered-near Henry's home. There were rumors of unkind remarks between the men and of their parting in a heated scene. A bloody knife was found in Henry's home, after suspicion had wound about him-the blade suited the wound-other evidence arose, along with the wealth of Hemingway, to involve the accused in the meshes of the circumstantial net. His lawyers delved faithfully and long into the depths of their craft, but their case had failed hopelessly, as they knew, long ago, it would fail. Hadley's own testimony gave no help, and Kate, by her prompt denial of everything, complicated affairs to no good end. And thus they had lost-now the crisis, the verdict, had been passed, and at least he would be free from his brother's inevitable tormenting tricks, but-
* * * * *
The stillness was terrific, men scarcely breathed. The prisoner and his wife had drawn nearer, waiting, when the noise should cease that he should finish; he was speaking-there was quiet-
'Tve been all wrong, Judge, as you yourself know, and now I'm going to pay for it. I've been crooked, and now I'm going up. I happened to know that Henry had some trouble with Hemingway, and I saw my chance to get even, to take out my spite, for I had always been jealous of him because he made good and I didn't, and he married the girl I loved. Then I though they together had ruined my life, and I wanted to get square with [ 30]
them. I've been no good. I killed that man so Henry could get the blame. I sneaked back to town, to give them some more trouble, and got the news about Hemingway. That was my chance to put the thing through. I stabbed him, and laid him out there where they found him. Then I slipped the knife in Henry ' s house that night, while they were asleep. I skipped, and waited until I saw from the papers that developments were beginning. Then I came back to get my satisfaction. But her sobs, Judgeher grief-my brother-well, I lost my nerve; that's all - I'm ready now."
* * * * *
He sat calmly in the chamber of death, patiently waiting the end. There was a different air about him now . Perhaps it was the unconscious feeling of having at last done something worth while, or a consciousness that he was soon to pass into some great mysterious somewhere, that had replaced the leer on his lips with the quiet, peaceful smile for those who greeted him. No longer the sneering , vindictive of the old days, but a quiet, kindly creature, as he watched the rays of his last sun filter through the corridor outside. Kate and Henry visited him each day , and had given him books to read and things to eat. They had forgiven him now, and he had relieved his mind of all imagined wrongs. The preacher had been there often, and others he had known - tearful, some of thempitying . Only a few more hours now, and then peace. As the shadows grew longer, and the mi~utes flew swifter toward the close, he lay upon his cot and sank into thought. There were no fears of the other world into which he was about to come; somehow he was contented, only a little eager for the dawn of the day which was his last. His eyes moistened-but he was not weakening toward the event of the next sunrise. He was living over again his blasted years, and wishing that he might now recall some of the heartaches and cares he had given those whom he should have held dearest. He was eager for the morrow that his soul might be comforted by his paying all in full.
The hours drifted in-he didn ' t sleep, because a million neglected thoughts were crowding his brain. On, on into the night he drank his cup to t~e bottom, and when the hour approached he was waiting and ready for the last ordeal ?f his shattered life. Then, as a fitting close to a miss-spent life, he knelt beside his cot, reverently, humbly. He had long since forgotten when he had last said his prayers, but in this last hour he felt the need of a closer appeal than could be made to any human
ears. His house was all in order, and he was ready; they would come presently, and he would walk without falter down the narrow, deathly corridor to the end. A few more minutes.
Softly, that the guards who chanced that way might ~ot overhear, he began the last of his earthly expression:
"O, Lord, I am so glad I did it. Forgive me the lie, and make them happy. I believe, Lord, you will forgive my sins, and that I will find you waiting at the gate, and that I may see the little mother, and tell her I am sorry I was bad. I am trying to give my life for the sake of others, as One who once hung upon a cross for others' sins. Forgive me, if you will, but, 0, Lord, never let that judge know I am innocent of the murder, and that I am giving my life to square things up. Amen."
B.A. 1925; M.A. 1927; Lynchburg News; Richmond Times-Dispatch; Associated Press, WARREN A Richmond; Associated Press , M NEILL New York; Chief of Bureau, c Associated Press! Nashville , Tennessee. Another newsman ' s record which speaks proudly for its elf, that of Warr en A. McNeil! , with whose rrFriends/1 from the October, 1923 magazine, we close our pages past
FRIENDS
" My heart has of the world grown weary and all that it can lend, The shrine of my affection holds no being, but my friend."
I met her in the summer timeMy dark-eyed Mary JaneWe used to stroll among the hills, Or saunter down a lane. Hafiz Her words and glances seemed so clear, I followed where she led;
But when I asked her if she cared, " Let's just be friends," she said .
They are transient as the flowers, like the sudden April showers; From a clear sky they appear, and then they are gone.
And its friendship they were after, so they tell you 'mid their laughter, When you've played the fool and let them lead you on.
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When autumn winds began to blow, Fair Nora caught my eye; Her cheeks were rosy as the leaves, Her eyes, blue as the sky; And when at length I spoke to her, Her blush was sunset-redM y heart jumped as I waited, but"Let' s just be friends," she said.
They are transient as the flowers, like the sudden April showers; From a clear sky they appear, and then they are gone. And it's friendship they were after, so they tell you 'mid their laughter , When you've played the fool and let them lead you on.
Smoke 20 fragrant pipefuls of Prince Albert. If you don't find it the mellowest, tastiest pipe tobacco you ever smoked, return the pocket tin with the rest of the tobacco in it to us at any time within a month from this date, and we will refund full purchase price, plus postage. (Signed) R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., Winston-Salem, North Carolina
The magic glamour of the spring , Made me an easy prey; And by Louise's sprightly wit , My heart was won away.
I thought she, too, had felt the spell, So for her love I pled ; But her reply was as I feared, " Let's just be friends," she said.
They are transient as the flowers, like the sudden April showers; From a clear sky they appear, and then they are gone.
And it's friendship they were after, so they tell you ' mid their laughter, When you've played the fool and let them lead you on.
I DIDN1T
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