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must go farther and upset the live furniture.'

In justice to the ultra-executive mother-in-law, we remember that later in the story Catherine saves the life of Margaret's baby by her prompt and determined advice. This is what we are cut out for, we mothers of grown sons. We are competent for the emergency measure, for the times of whirlwinds and conflagration and the noise of waterspouts. We struggle to keep our executive ability in check until it is needed, but a force so tremendous is likely to get in a little practice every day, just as a professional fireman slides down the brass pole in the engine house even when there is no fire.

Shortly after my youngest son Anthony was married, I invited all the branches of the family to come home for a reunion. The gay house party was at its height, when it occurred to Anthony that this would be a capital time for me to hunt up all his old textbooks and notes and reference works, so that he might send them by express to his new home. Spurred on by his tactful reminders, I rummaged through the bookshelves and storage-nooks all over the house and attic in the intervals of festivity that week. Finally Anthony and I convened in his room to pack the collection in a large wooden box that I had found. As usual, Anthony and I held definite and divergent views about how the packing should be done. My views were obviously superior, based, as I reminded him, on extensive experience largely antedating his birth. Besides, I had hunted up the books. Besides, it was my box. On equal terms the battle raged. Anthony forgot that I was his reverend dear mother. I forgot that Anthony was a householder, a husband, and a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. To me, he was acting very much like my impertuous youngest son in his

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worst mood well known of old. Meanwhile, Anthony's graceful young wife sat attentively near us on the window seat, preserving that admirable silence SO becoming to daughters-in-law. Tyler sat beside her holding the hammer and nails, and Alexander stood helpfully near, ready with markingpens and ink. They wisely gave Anthony and me a clear field. At last my exasperation with my unruly son arose to a pitch. 'Anthony Winship!' I exclaimed with fervor. 'If you children. were all at home all the time, I'd just have to give up the struggle.'

Anthony stepped to the doorway and shouted to his sisters, 'Oh girls, Mother says that if we were all at home all the time she 'd give up the struggle.'

With cheers and war whoops and rounds of applause, the rest of the family, including my husband, came trooping up the stairs. Seldom has an innocent remark created such a stir.

'I can imagine a good many things,' mused Anthony when the appreciation had quieted down a little, but I can't imagine Mother giving up the struggle.'

IV

No, I shall not give it up. The results are well worth my efforts, and I hope that I am becoming adjusted to the new focus of my life. I am trying to fit my mental vision with a pair of spiritual bifocals, as it were, that I may observe all things in their right proportions, both great and small. I have received noble compliments from my daughters on my marvelous self-control: and Alexander once told Louisa that there ought to be a special way of spelling the term 'mother-in-law' when applied to pleasant ones like meperhaps with a capital 'L' on the ‘law,' or better still, he said, with the Greek lambda. He said I was a lambda. One cherishes such compliments as these,

and I am growing more accustomed to my bifocals every day.

But sometimes, in the middle of a winter night, I half wake up and dreamily realize that the wind is whistling around the house, and that the prophesied cold snap is coming on. Still dazed with sleep, my conscience tells me that I must get up and put extra blankets over the sleeping children in the adjoining rooms. I struggle out of my drowsiness and start to rise

and then I remember that all the children's rooms are empty now. I need not stir. In a way it is a relief not to have to get up. I settle down and try to go to sleep again, and then I start to think. Perhaps Louisa is prowling around on her sleeping-porch in northern Illinois, seeing that her own children are snug and warm. I wonder if Alexander remembered to get the weatherstrips for the windows of the dressing-room on the side of the house nearest the lake. I wonder if Tyler decided to install that new furnace in his house at this crazy time of year. I wonder if Rosamond ever found the fur that she lost. I wonder if Anthony was able to get his full supply of coal, and if he took out fire insurance on his new furniture right away. I wonder if Priscilla decided to let little Tyler enroll for the scouts' winter camp.

At this point my less personal self asks scripturally, 'What is that to thee?'

Oh well, of course it is everything to me. One may as well face the facts. Common sense teaches me to fill my days with new projects, letting my children live their own lives. This is exactly what I do. I have built up an entirely new scheme of existence, filled with activities quite aside from my interest in my children. I am not a flickering old lady living in the past. I am a busy busy person hurrying to and fro in the earth and going up and down upon it, and I have any number of

irons in the fire. But activity, however useful and absorbing, has no bearing whatever upon the primitive preoccupations of the soul.

That is why our problem is never solved. That is why our situation is not a comedy, and not a tragedy, but a paradox. That is why the most discreet mother-in-law is never quite sure whether her children-in-law consider her too influential in their family life or not. I should really like to know what they think of me, those highspirited lovers of my children, after the ups and downs of these important opening years. Is Alexander as happy as he seems when he stops over at our house on one of his New England trips, and I let him have his Sunday morning breakfast very late at the little table by the fireplace, as I used to on his visits to us the year when he and Louisa were engaged? Are Rosamond and Priscilla as contented as they seem when they visit at our seashore cottage, and we sew and talk together while their little children build houses near us in the sand? Of course one can never be absolutely sure. But certainly I have devoted a good deal of attention to winning their confidence and esteem. Persons so important to my sons and daughters are important also to me.

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And so, I think, on the evening of Mother-in-Law's Day, I shall be inclined to count over my beautiful snapdragons rather quizzically, as a young girl counts the petals of a daisy: 'They love me they love me not they love me.' But I have seen too many daisy petals counted in my day to depend very much on signs, except on those unmistakable human signs of affection and congeniality and understanding which lead me to believe that the true answer (in spite of the motherin-law tradition, and in spite of what a snapdragon might accidentally say) is probably: "They love me.'

TWO IVORY CUPIDS

BY WILLIAM SIDNEY ROSSITER

FROM an extremely comfortable chair on the widest verandah of a Bretton Woods hotel, Mr. Edward Withers Pinkham gazed thoughtfully at Mount Washington - and wondered.

Mr. Pinkham was perhaps thirtyfive years old, of medium height, well dressed, well enough set up to drive about two hundred, and almost anywhere would have passed as rather attractive. The queer thing about him was the effect that he produced on people who came in contact with him. Somehow they could n't help laughing. Except for the fact that, conversationally, Mr. Pinkham wore tan shoes with evening dress, his personality hardly seemed to invite the effect he produced. Nevertheless, the more serious he tried to be, the funnier he became. Being continuously funny is no laughing matter, but Mr. Pinkham either had grown so familiar with the usual reaction that he was reconciled to it, or else he had begun to think that laughing when one person meets another person was the human way - just as tail-wagging is the dog way.

Why he was Assistant-Secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Invention, which was about to meet at Bretton Woods that week in early July, none of the ordinary run-of-the-mine members knew. The insiders could have explained that Mr. Jeffrey Connors, of Connors, Cowdrey, and Calkins, efficiency engineers, had suggested Pinkham to the nominating

I

committee as a good man, and Connors needed only to suggest. He did n't explain that the young man was a relation of Mrs. Connors. It's queer how one's wife's relatives always hold orchestra tickets for the best jobs we can locate, while our own relatives must scramble for admission checks.

After all, Pinkham was not a bad sort. He was a graduate of Technology; he had brains (which is Big and Little Casino); he was earnest and energetic but there was that confounded weakness for making everybody laugh. People laugh so easily in these flippant times.

Just what were the duties of a new Assistant-Secretary? Mr. Pinkham had reported on arrival to Professor Butterfield, Secretary of the A.A.A.I., the veteran organizer of eight annual meetings. Professor Butterfield was head over ears in details of accommodations.

'Mr. Pinkham, ah yes, glad to see you. I can't stop now to go over matters. Row on with the management about quarters for four Round Tables on Wednesday-maybe you can help later.' Professor Butterfield laughed and turned back to the problem of more members who had engaged 'rooms with bath' than there were bathrooms within many mountainous miles.

Naturally, Mr. Pinkham would have breezed around, insisted on helping, and finally muddled into his job, but somehow it was quite unusual

the laugh deterred him, and the Assistant-Secretary retired to the verandah.

Curious, is it not, how the devotees of science, having formed themselves into learned societies, while ever prepared to undergo extremest hardship in order to acquire more knowledge, somehow invariably settle down like a swarm of locusts at the most favored resorts in summer, or appropriate the most extravagant and gilded hotel in a very large city in the winter. Many of the members never have been so far from home before. This is pursuit of science. It is a necessary expense.

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There was nothing novel about the Bretton Woods meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Invention. A meeting of one learned society is as much like the meeting of another learned society as are two shredded wheat biscuits. Professor Ignatius W. Montague of Ann Arbor was President that year, and much was expected of his presidential address 'Limitations of the Inventive Faculty: a Postulate.' Of course these things could not be discussed effectively in July in a city. It was a trial to be obliged to go to the White Mountains, but the cool air would conduce to edifying discussions and good work. So most of the big hotel was chartered, and on a Tuesday in early July the inventors, and the university people who lectured on the history and influence of inventions, and the interested people who manufactured inventions and charged the public four times their cost, began to flock in to Bretton Woods.

Soon they were wandering around as thick as ants, decorated with badges reading:

I AM ANSON MAGOON

OF OSHKOSH
WISCONSIN
WHO ARE YOU?

Each A.A.A.I.member had a programme. Each was trying to reconcile the Round Table at 10:00 A. M. with the business meeting of the Association at 9:45, and to figure out how he could take the cog to the top of Mount Washingtonand not be missed.

And the meetings buzzed, the verandahs buzzed, and the dining-rooms, invaded three times a day by a swarm of human locusts, buzzed more than all the other buzzings. And so Association Week wore on, and Mr. Pinkham began to glow with various light duties.

In particular, he ran errands and was actually gaining the first faint flushes of an Assistant-Secretary's importance.

Saturday. Last meeting of the Thirty-second Annual Convention of the A.A.A.I. Wonderful success. Unusual papers. Fine food. Most informing discussions. Beautiful scenery.

Major Whitehouse of Jersey City hunted up Secretary Butterfield. The Major was tall, elderly, dignified. He kept his face in the last century, as it were, by wearing a beard, a full and expansive outfit of whiskers.

'Professor, are you going directly back to New York?' he asked deliberately.

'I am, to-morrow.'

'I've decided to go to Quebec and down the Saguenay with Reed and McSimmons. I have an umbrella here of great value to me. I simply cannot risk taking it on a tourist jaunt. It is an old umbrella. I inherited it thirty years ago from my great uncle. Rather heavy frame, but stout, sir, stout, and the handle is of finest ivory, real, handcarved to represent a bunch of grapes and two cupids rampant. Would you be willing to take that umbrella back to New York for me?'

Major Whitehouse looked sharply at the Secretary of the A.A.A.I. as

though doubtful whether he could put over such a request.

Professor Butterfield hesitated. 'I'm not sure,' he began. Then a relieved expression appeared. 'Pinkham!' he called.

Mr. Pinkham hurried to his chief. 'Major Whitehouse, this is Mr. E. W. Pinkham, our efficient AssistantSecretary, a young man of unusual promise in our Association. He is returning to New York to-night. Mr. Pinkham will gladly take your umbrella back with him and leave it where you direct.'

Mr. Pinkham did not take it over 'gladly,' but what are an AssistantSecretary's duties anyhow, and who should know but the Secretary?

So it came about that fifteen minutes later Mr. Pinkham was walking through the great office of the hotel on a warm, still, sunny July afternoon carrying a black umbrella of unusual size, decorated with a conspicuous ivory handle, the same representing a bunch of grapes and two cupids rampant.

And it also came about that advancing toward him was Mrs. Algernon Kittredge and Joe Kittredge and Madge Kittredge, from Philadelphia, en route to Montreal and then the Adirondacks.

All the Kittredges stopped short and laughed, while the bell boys continued to advance with the hat boxes and the grips.

'Where are you bound for, Pink, with that family tent? Think it looks like rain?' The feminine Kittredges were convulsed.

"The American Association for the Advancement of Invention is holding its annual meeting here. You see, I'm the Assistant-Secretary,' Mr. Pinkham said with unwonted dignity.

'I see,' said Joe Kittredge sympathetically, 'sort of Chinese-like, I suppose, and it's your job to carry that

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'I can't,' said Mr. Pinkham, looking at the cupids rampant.

'Nonsense again,' said Joe Kittredge more emphatically. 'My uncle, Walter Randall, is up here somewhere, attending the convention. He lives in Orange and will be going right back. I'll hunt him up. Let me register first.'

Mr. Pinkham's face brightened. This job had n't been all that a position of honor promised to be, and the umbrella business was an imposition. If Mr. Randall would take the blamed relic home, here was a real chance.

Five minutes later Joe came toward him beaming. 'I found Uncle Walt. He's a good sport. Says bring on your umbrella. Says he's met Whitehouse, but he wants to know if you have his gums also. Umbrella is O.K. but no gums. Gimme those immoral grapes of ivory.'

And so it came about that the following morning a carefree party started for Montreal and Uncle Walt Randall personally conducted to New York the Whitehouse family umbrella, huge of frame, of black silk, with an ivory handle carved to represent a bunch of grapes and two cupids rampant. At least the carefree Edward Withers Pinkham, en route for Montreal with Mrs. Kittredge, Joe Kittredge, and Madge Kittredge, supposed that that was so and forgot all about the Whitehouse family umbrella.

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