anding the hobo, with a little giggle that started her husband laughing, and adding, immediately, with eager curiosity: 'Go on, George, go on.'

'Well, "you are the perfect double of a relative," I repeated. But my man's only reply was to glance at me indifferently, and resume his contemplation of the children and young people passing by.

"What a simpleton!" I commented to myself, as I passed on. The next day, I noticed him sitting on the same bench. This time, I sat down next to him, and began to read La Nación. I pretended to be absorbed in my paper for a few minutes, and then, taking out my cigarettes, I asked him if he would have a smoke.

666

"Thanks," he said, taking one.

'I took a match, and, offering him a light first, lighted my own cigarette, and remarked between my teeth: "Fine afternoon, eh?" "Fine" he answered.

'Had the man guessed my intention, and proposed, like most unfortunates of this class, to keep the secret of his misfortunes to himself? Had he guessed I was a journalist, and was he amusing himself in playing me a bit, before giving me an opportunity to draw his portrait? Or, was he just what he seemed, a saturnine man of few words, born taciturn?

'All I can say is, that on this and several subsequent occasions, I utterly failed to get into conversation with my hobo. But I did n't give up. I told myself that patience will accomplish anything, and persisted.

'I stopped and chatted with him every day, and, gradually, saw that I was winning his confidence, which began with his letting me know his name Ernesto although he never told me his family name, merely saying that it was the same as that of one of the most prominent families in

"your Eastern Republic," which was also his native country.

'Later, he told me of some of the escapades in which he had been involved, pretending, as many men of that character do, that he had plunged into them in order to forget an unhappy love affair.

"I've been in France, Germany, England, Italy, and in most parts of Europe. To-day, although I have a good education and know several languages, I am what you see; a miserable, low-down hobo. Yes, and this is all on account of the woman whose name you have been trying to get hold of. You've been trying to get me drunk, and even have invited me to your house in order to find it out. Then, you would write a story. But would you put in the proper names, so that the woman could suffer as she merits? Commit suicide, or something'?

'Do you mean to say,' interrupted Aurelia again, 'that he has already told you his life story?'

'Practically.'

"Tell it to me. The man has interested me so much that I'm dying to know what really did wreck his life.'

'Very well, listen:

'At twenty-three years of age, my hobo started on his unhappy career by falling head over heels in love with a beautiful Easterner -like all your country-women, a magnificent brunette of the Moorish type, with big black eyes, and that sort of thing. Those big, black eyes, you know, are always bewitching. She reciprocated his passion, and they both used to laugh at the idea that happiness is a delusion in this world.

'Only a month before the date set for their marriage, he was compelled to leave suddenly for Italy. His father, who was seriously ill, had been ordered there at once for his health.

'Having an intuitive presentiment, perhaps, of what might happen, he desired that their marriage should occur before he left. This proved impossible, however, and after mutual reciprocal protests of undying devotion, he parted from her, happier, if possible, than ever.

'For a few months, her letters were frequent, and filled with expressions of devotion. Gradually, however, they became rarer and cooler in tone. Finally, one day, he heard from her for the last time, begging his forgiveness, and saying that she was to marry another; and asking him to keep the fact of her earlier love for him a secret. 'For a time, he was in complete despair, and dreamed of nothing but revenge. Later, he tried to forget his trouble in dissipation.

'Eventually, his father died, leaving him a very large estate, which he speedily lost, mostly on the gaming table. In a few years, it had vanished.' 'And then?'

There was such a tone of intense interest in Aurelia's interruption that George glanced up, and noticing the paleness of his wife, said:

'What is it, my dear?'

"Nothing; I'm just nervous. You know that sad stories always agitate me. Don't you recall how distressed I was the other day by that story of Maupassant's?'

The tall clock in the hall struck three, with the melancholy timbre of an ancient memory.

'Well, my dear, I've got to go to the office. It's already three o'clock. If he comes, tell him to wait. I'll be back in a few minutes.'

'Call him back at once, and tell him to come in, said Aurelia, leaving the room. When he gets here, tell me.'

The servant hastened out, coming back a moment later with the invited caller, whom she left in the office; then she hurried to announce him to her mistress.

The human wreck who sat there was probably a man of thirty-five, of unusual height, in spite of his stooping posture. You could hardly discern his countenance, so completely hidden was it by his unkempt beard and dirty tangled locks. His only striking feature was his eyes, brilliant, lucid, and sad. His only garments, apparently, were his ragged trousers, and an equally dirty and ragged jacket. A cap several times too large, and soiled by frequent contact with the earth, covered his faded auburn hair. His apology for boots had long ceased to deserve that designation.

The hobo, motionless, with his arms limp by his side, surveyed with evident contempt the ostentatious luxury of the room. What were his thoughts? The door suddenly opened, and Aurelia appeared.

A hoarse, grating exclamation of surprise, of stunned astonishment, escaped the man. 'Aurelia!'

Aurelia advanced toward him.
'Ernesto!'

'But it's you? It's Aurelia? You
You...'

Aurelia shrank back, terrified at the contraction of hatred in Ernesto's face.

'Pardon me, Ernesto. I have no excuse. I was ungrateful, I know. But you know why. What would you

'Have you sent him away?' 'Yes. I told him the master was not at home.'

cruelty and misery than happiness. You must be a decent, reasonable man; you must forget me, and you must promise, first of all, to have

nothing more to do with my husband. You must promise to give up this miserable way of living. I cannot bear to see you like this. You must become the Ernesto you were. Please, will you promise me this?'

Ernesto looked at her for a moment in silence. Then, lowering his glance, he repeated to himself Aurelia's words: 'Love has always caused more cruelty and misery than happiness.' As if disarmed by the thought, he said:

'I promise part. I promise not to see your husband. I cannot promise not to forget you. I will promise other things, if you ask, but don't ask me to give up this "miserable way of living." No. Not that. I'm happy this way. I'm most happy like this!'

'Did n't my man come?' asked 'Didn't George, when he returned from the office.

'Yes,' said Aurelia; 'he came and waited for quite a time, and I think got tired,'

George remarked that he would come back the next day; and when he failed to do so, he went to hunt him up in the Plaza del Once. Greatly to his surprise, the man was not there.

So George spent a week, a month, looking for him; a year, hoping he would come back, and then, finally, imagining that he must be dead, decided to write the sad story of the hobo, using fictitious names.

[The New Statesman]

HENLEY THE VAINGLORIOUS

BY ROBERT LYND

us be drunk,' he cried, in one of his rondeaux, and he made his words exultant as with wine.

He saw everywhere in Nature, the images of the lewd population of midnight streets. For him, even the moon over the sea was like some old hag out of a Villon ballade:

Flaunting, tawdry and grim,

From cloud to cloud along her beat,

Leering her battered and inveterate leer,
She signals where he prowls in the dark alone,
Her horrible old man.

Mumbling old oaths and warming
His villainous old bones with villainous talk.

Similarly, the cat breaking in upon the exquisite dawn that wakes the 'little twitter-and-cheep' of the birds in a London Park, becomes a picturesque and obscene figure:

mood of delight, like the oaths of some old sea-captain. And how extravagantly he flings them down, like a pocketful of money on the counter of a bar! He may be only a pauper, behaving like a rich man, but we, who are his guests for an hour, submit to the illusion and become happy echoes of his wild talk.

For he has the gift of language. It is not the loud-sounding sea, but loud-sounding words, that are his his passion. Compared to Henley, even Tennyson was modest in his use of large Latin negatives. His eloquence is sonorous with the music of 'immemorial,' 'intolerable,' 'immitigable,' 'inexorable,' 'unimaginable,' and the kindred train of words. He is equally in love with 'wonderful,' 'magnificent,' 'miraculous,' 'immortal,' and all the flock of adjectival enthusiasm.

Here, in this radiant and immortal street,

he cries, as he stands on a spring day in Piccadilly. He did not use sounding adjectives without meaning, however. His adjectives express effectively that lust of life that distinguishes him from other writers. For it is lust of life, in contradistinction to love, that is the note of Henley's work. He, himself, lets us into this secret in the poem that begins

Love, which is lust, is the Lamp in the Tomb.

Again, when he writes of Piccadilly in spring, he cries:

Look how the liberal and transfiguring air
Washes this inn of memorable meetings,
This centre of ravishments and gracious greet-
ings,

Till, through its jocund loveliness of length,
A tidal-race of lust from shore to shore,
A brimming reach of beauty met with strength,
It shines and sounds like some miraculous dream,
Some vision multitudinous and agleam,
Of happiness, as it shall be evermore!

The spectacle of life produced in Henley an almost exclusively physical

excitement. He did not wish to see things transfigured by the light that never was on sea or land. He preferred the light on the wheels of a hansom cab or, at best, the light that falls on the Thames as it flows through London. His attitude to life, in other words, was sensual. He could escape out of circumstances into the sensual enchantments of the Arabian Nights, but there was no escape for him, as there is for the great poets, into the universe of the imagination. This may be put down in a measure to his long years of ill-health and struggle. But even a healthy and prosperous Henley, I fancy, would have been restless, dissatisfied, embittered. For him, most seas were Dead Seas, and most shores were desolate. The sensualist's 'Dust and Ashes!' breaks in, not always mournfully, but at times angrily, upon the high noon of his raptures. He longs for death as few poets have longed.

Of art and drink I have had my fill,

Sufferer and sensualist, Henley found in the affections some relief from his savage unrest. It was affection that painted that masterly sonnet-portrait of Stevenson in 'Apparition,' and there is affection, too, in that song in praise of England, 'Pro Rege Nostro,' though much of his praise of England, like his praise of life, is but poetry of lust. Lust in action, unfortunately, has a way of being absurd, and Henley is often absurd in his lustful - by which, I may say, I do not mean lascivious poems. His 'Song of the Sword' and his 'Song of Speed' are both a little absurd for this reason. Here, we have a mere extravagance of physical exultation, with a great deal of talk about 'the Lord,' who is to the ruin of the verse a figure of rhetoric and phrase of excitement, and not at all the Holy Spirit of the religious.

most famous of his poems, of his 'unconquerable soul,' and to enjoy the raree-show of life heroically, under the promise of death. To call this attitude vainglorious is not to belittle it. Henley was a master in his own school of literature, and his works live after him. His commixture of rude and civil phrase may be a dangerous model for other writers, but with what skill he achieves the right emphasis and witty magniloquence of effect! He did not guess (or guess at) the secrets of life, but he watched the pageant with a greedy eye, sketched one or two figures that amused or attracted him, and cheered till his pen ought to have been hoarse. He also cursed, and, part of the time, he played with rhymes, as if in an interchange of railleries. But, anyhow, he was a valiant figure - valiant not only in words, but in the service of words. We need not count him among the sages, but literature has also room for the sight-seers, and Henley will have a place among them for many years to come.

[The Landmark] AMERICA REVISITED AFTER TEN YEARS

BY JAMES F. MUIRHEAD

A MONTH in two seaside resorts, separated by many miles of land or water from the nearest railway, even when broken by a few days in Boston, hardly entitles me to more than a prefatory remark under the above head. But first, fresh impressions always have a quality of their own, quickly blurred by succeeding experiences; and these summer colonies attract many interesting men, representing the views of various professions, careers, and sections of the country. Hence, I hazard a few