material and finish contrasted neatly with the table and chairs. The library at my right harbored the customary craft of libraries, books aplenty, magazines galore, — but the desk between the windows was a middle-aged 'rolltop,' and before the fireplace stood an armchair with a gilt-embossed back and permanently waved legs - a 'William and Mary' chair, presented at my marriage, twenty years ago, by Aunt Mary and Uncle William, and held ever since in the reverence befitting the wedding-gift that was accompanied by a check.

The living-room across the hall but here my descriptive powers fail, coming to a full stop, as it were, before the florid architecture of the mid-Victorian 'sofa,' the Bronze Age on the mantelpiece, the bent-wood rocker of the early eighties, the monastic simplicity of the Mission table, with its bulging-bowled lamp of Royal Worcester, and the rigid outlines, blackly angular, of the 'upright' piano in the corner. No, the familiar furniture of this wellloved and lived-in room is not, strictly speaking, 'Period' — it is exclamation point, preceded by a dash!

My mind's eye in its travels ascends the stairs.

In the large front bedroom is the Period of Archibald II. Here stands austerely the bed of black walnut, — the wide double bed of the old régime, whereon my grandparents slumbered peacefully, undisturbed by scandalized fore-visionings of the slim twin couches of fashionable modernity. Here, too, is its companion bureau, ponderous, moving reluctantly, when needs must, upon complaining castors, and boasting a swinging oval mirror and a mottled marbled top.

Through the doorway of the adjoining dressing-room looms a mausoleumlike structure of carved and paneled cherry, which, like the dining-room

table and chairs, had once belonged to Great-uncle Jacob. Blatantly this article of vertu hits the eye. Frankly hideous it is, indeed — exteriorly; but within -ah, it is within that one must seek its adequate excuse for being; for behind its glossy red panels are smooth, wide shelves of fragrant cedar, where moth-inviting peltry may be safely stored. A separate compartment is divided into broad dust-proof spaces spaces fortuitously ideal for shoes, admirable for hats. Beneath are four brass-handled drawers, deep and generous, wherein repose my most cherished linens and where, in un-cramped ease, my treasured centre-pieces lie extended, their broidered surfaces untroubled by a fold.

At one side an unexpected door, fitted with a lock and key, conceals a small receptacle quite perfectly adapted to the particular use to which I am confident it was put by bachelor Great-uncle Jacob. At any rate, as the little door swings back, a faint bouquet, subtle, alluring, salutes my nostrils, and I find myself thinking oddly of- of lemonpeel and Araby the Blest, and tinkling, delicate glasses.

There is, indeed, a legend extant, to the effect that, in the reign of Greatgrandfather Archibald I, there existed certain possessions of rare old mahogany. Whispers have reached me of a glass-knobbed 'low-boy,' of Chippendale chairs, of adorable top-tipping card-tables with pie-crust edges; there is even a tradition of a wondrous Sheraton sideboard. But, alas, these gems of antiquity were all reduced to ashes by a destructive fire, which necessitated the immediate erection of a new house furnished throughout in 'modern' style.

Perhaps, after all, it is just as well. As a family we should probably have quarreled violently over the distribution of those gracious relics. For what domestic disintegrations might not that

Sheraton sideboard have been responsible? - besides occasioning the sin of covetousness in the souls of our friends and acquaintances.

As it is, we accepted our just apportionment of our ancestors' 'delusions of grandeur' in a spirit of resigned calm and the harmony of mutual commiseration.

But what is one to do such a one as I, that is, to whom has descended, in the fullness of time, a proportionate share of the Lares and Penates of two dismantled homesteads, as well as a sprinkling of bestowals from several on the side-lines?

Sell them? Give them away? Cast them to the flames? Never! Forbid such sacrilege! Besides, I confess it unashamed, I don't want to. I like these things. I am ‘attached' to them. The 'Elizabethan' roll-top desk in the library where, in years agone, Aunt Elizabeth kept her circumspect accounts and copied her recipes; the cherry sarcophagus, where Great-uncle Jacob housed his wardrobe and assembled the ingredients of the mellow consolation that warmed his lonely heart, are companions tried and true. Chosen with anxious care and conscientious economy in the placid 'boomless' past, endeared by long usage and hallowed by memory, these 'Period' furnishings are now beloved members of the family; and so I am determined they shall remain, even though my gardener's spade should strike oil in the backyard, or my facetious Airedale unearth a coal-mine under the front steps. Nevertheless, my inherited honesty, chaste in design and correct in line and detail, forces me to admit that, at times, the rummage-sale has been a help.

TERESINA

Teresina has gone to school. I watched her round black hat, snug blue sweater, scarlet dress, white legs and

brown feet, twinkling away up the path in the frosty morning dew, safely escorted by an older black-hatted, bluesweatered edition of schoolgirlness, very patronizing and sweet in her rôle of friendly protector.

Teresina will come racing home at noon, full of wisdom: French words shyly attempted, crayoned chefs-d'œuvres, 'writings' of incalculable value.

And I shall be so glad - oh, so glad! -to have her back again; to hug her and wash her and feed her, and listen to her complex tales of the big boy who cried and the light-haired boy who pushed her head off his desk when she leaned harmlessly upon it, and the girls who whispered and had to go out and sit on the stairs, and the dog who looked in the window. Teresina has given me five years of gladness; for she is curly and crinkly in body and mind, stubborn and sweet, amazingly good and appallingly naughty. Truly, to send her to school has been my adventure almost more than hers, such adventures being of the privileges of parenthood.

But to-day, after two weeks of school, my own private adventure begins. Today, for the first time in all her five darling demanding years, I am all alone in the house and the clock just striking ten! For Jennie, the beneficent tyrant of our domestic past, has gone to command another kitchen, and to begin loving another baby just come from the Blue Children, as she has so loyally loved our Teresina.

Even though her departure means baking and brewing and sweeping for me, and many moments of regret for lost comfortings and cossettings-I am all alone in the house!

This morning my new green dishes danced perilously from their suds; the steel wool scratched without pity over pans and kettles; the kitchen floor got a lick and a promise of further sweeping. I sprinkled a basket of clothes against

the ironing, and rolled them hard and swiftly in fat bundles; I made beds and dusted one table and two chairs (no more, on my life); and all the time I was hurry-scurrying, joyfully, breathlessly, with my spirit on flightiest tippy-toes, even like a very young person with a wonderful picnic or a wonderful party before her.

For, when all those most necessary good works were done, I would have to myself two hours-two fat morning hours; not the tired contented time after supper, when X and I sit happily by the fire, and find our heads nodding over our books, and a strange need of sleep before the clock strikes nine; but the clear-shining, brisk, notable forenoon!

No dear but insatiable calls for drinks of water, graham crackers, dress-up scarves, pencils, paper, mud-pie spoons; no need to arbitrate between tearful claims, provide 'tea-parties,' and deal out rubbers and reproofs. And from the kitchen no urgent or comic problems; explosive announcements that the potatoes are all out, or the ice-man did n't stop; not even (a thing to be missed afterward, but not to-day in the first flush of adventure) any friendly coaxing at eleven o'clock: 'I'm almost dead for the lack of a cup of tea; and if you'll come and sit in the kitchen with me, I'll make you some cinnamon toast.'

Two hours! And half an hour has already fled while I write this, for sheer comfort in telling how strange and fresh is freedom. -To-night shall I ask X how to disconnect the telephone for those two precious hours? Or shall I trust, as I do to-day, that in some miraculous fashion a thick black mark will strike through our name and number in every telephone book in town, so that all my friends and foes shall turn away from some ominous approach to me, muttering, 'That's queer. That's very queer!' and I shall go unscathed.

For if people only knew how wonderful it is to be free, surely they would not need me for just two hours!

It would seem easy to say to the people whom I love much and those whom. I love even a little, those who would understand and those who would not, - 'I am going to keep two hours of five days in the week quite free. I am — going write.' try- to But I can't say it. The fatal word up there printed itself slowly, shyly, as if I said, 'I'm going to get very drunk,' or, 'I'm going to smuggle diamonds,' or, 'I'm going off with Mrs. Smith's husband.'

to

It is very strange. Ever since my little-girlhood, 'writing' has been my most intimate and easy escape from the persistences of life. And lately, when I have been so happy that often the wings of my joy seem ready to burst some inward fetter and flash out living and shining, 'writing' has been my only way of setting free a thousandth part of that pulsing joy. The public worth of what I write is of no such matter as the doing of it. It is not needful that a private art should make repayment in cash or fame, for its possessor to love it and to require its practice.

But it is strange, as I said, that with all these years of certainty about my desire to 'write,' I have never felt that anybody else, or many other bodies, would truly understand the place it holds in my life. I could say, 'I must clean house,' or 'I must go to a committee meeting'; but to say, save to those very few who know me better than I know myself, 'I must write,' has seemed foolish and vain.

It is as if my assumption of needing time to write would strike my hearers as an ill-judged remark of my older brother's struck us long ago. He, scribbling at some great work destined for a St. Nicholas contest, put us younger roisterers into a mood of derisiveness

with his reproof. 'Hush, children! Don't make such a row! I'm writing for the Press!'

Will not my announcement of a literary retreat bring me under the same condemnation? Will people not, even while they applaud my worthy purpose, wonder a little: 'But will she leave all her housework till afternoon? Will her family get enough to eat? Will she give

the committees and things she used up to belong to? Can't we ever call her up between ten and twelve?' And, worst of all, stealthily, won't they say, 'I do wonder if the kind of thing she writes is worth all that fuss'?

No, I really think they would not say any of those things. Most of them would understand, if I dared to pursue my course of innocent folly.

But the fact remains that only to the Contributors' Club can I speak with perfect frankness. For I know that there must be hundreds of Atlantic-reading women who feel as I do about some pet art or handicraft; who steal time for it, sneakingly, apologetically; who will not love their fathers and husbands and children and neighbors any the less for a restrained practice of it.

They will understand without ever needing to measure up any personal knowledge of me against any possible failure or achievement.

They will know how I feel this October morning, when Teresina has gone dancing to school, and the house sits quiet by its sunny meadow, and the autumn crickets purr in the yellow garden.

They will know why I shall not cut off my telephone or turn the key in my door, and yet, why I must needs run so precipitately to my desk, sweep aside bills and letters, and scratch off all this folly of confession.

It is half-past eleven: three quarters of an hour more before the white legs and brown feet trot up the brick walk, and the curly head rubs against my

ON TYPEWRITERS

Of course, they are merely a sign of the times, but anyone who has sat in an office with eighteen or twenty of them rattling like a brook in full spate within the compass of four too-narrow walls, retains a searing of the mind. One of many captains lays down one of many cigarettes, calls one of many stenographers, and begins: "Take this.' Then, in a wasting monotone, the soulless voice of a Frankenstein, varied only by an occasional, 'No-scratch that out,' he drones a letter to his tailor, an advice to the General Staff, or a description of the cotton plains of Turkestan. The form of the sentences varies as little as the captain's voice. They are short. They begin with the substantive, followed by a verb, which is in turn followed by an adjective or another noun, and at the end, as a kind of miserable rear-guard, is suspended the phrase 'there being' such and such a thing, or such and such a condition. It was my fortune to read a great many army reports during a year in the War Depart,ment, and I speak from experience when I say that the 'there-being' construction is one passionately admired by the military man. At last the drone dies away in a discussion of the latest regu

Well, that is the business world, and undoubtedly the typewriter is of immense value; but do you not resent its intrusion on the world of friends and social relationships? It is part of the Zeitgeist that tolerates 'thru' and 'yours aff'y.' People say that it saves so much time in writing; but how much loss it causes in individuality! When I receive a typed letter from a friend, it makes me feel as post-cards do, that I am on his conscience, not in his mind. Also it makes people careless of their grammar and spelling. A very delightful young man of my acquaintance, with an Oxford education and a real knowledge of literature, can write that he was 'much empressed by the difficulty of getting a birth' on a steamship to Japan.

You are typing. You come to the end of the line, thinking there is room to strike the final e of 'possible,' or the t of 'just'; but the little beggars stick, so you either let the word go as it is, or allow the e or t to dance off on the next line as Karen's red shoes danced away when she tore them from her feet in the churchyard.

So much of modern literature bears the stamp of having been composed on the typewriter the sentences sometimes brisk and impatient, sometimes lumbering along like a train of mulewagons over a sandy plain. Perhaps one half of the books one so criticizes were produced by the old-fashioned means of a pen, but I do maintain that very few appear of which the reader can say, "This is a labour of love, the work of a man who lingeringly wrote each sen

tence as though it were his last.' Could Sir Thomas Browne have captured the mood which sombres the lovely pages of his Hydriotaphia while seated before a clacking machine, or the translators of the Bible have touched the wings of Gabriel? Surely they wrote, as Fra Angelico painted, on their knees. Gone are the days of Grub Street, when the author, his feet curled under his chair, a wad of paper thrust under the hind-legs of the table to keep it steady, and before him scribbled sheets and a china ink-pot, sat with his pen between his lips and eyes fixed on the patch of sky behind the garret window. Unless he has been changing the ribbon of his typewriter, the author of to-day no longer has an inky finger. Before anyone catches me up on this generalization, I hasten to make a few exceptions - notably Henry James. Great man as one has always considered him, one's admiration leaps to amazement on realizing that he dictated his books. Mon Dieu! quel homme! Surely he must have had some physical method of keeping track of his rhetorical labyrinths, such as walking down a long room dropping pebbles to record the fall of his relative, subjunctive, and parenthetical clauses, and on the return journey picking them up, thus sure that not one had escaped, until all were safely gathered in the rare triumph of a full stop.

I have a little collection of French poems of the nineteenth century, after many of which is a reproduction of the original, with its blots, its erasures, its emendations. It is a pleasure to go over the pages and see the poet's hesitations- an encouragement, indeed, that brings the Olympians nearer earth. Who, I ask you, would treasure the first draft of 'La Maison du Berger,' were typing substituted for the delicate flow of De Vigny's pen; and for the impatient dash over some discarded word,