another reason we all like to try in your Honor's court. Your Honor gets things done.' Kardos sighed wistfully. 'Your Honor's court is not like the other courts.' 'No?'

'No, sir!' Kardos repeated with emphasis. I remember I said, when your Honor was appointed, there's a young man, if your Honor will forgive the word, that 's going to stir things up on the bench. It's the kind of thing we need, and I said so, Judge, right down in my ward in public, and in private conversations. He's a young man that knows the law, and knows how to handle a courtroom, I said. He's got a heavy hand and a sharp tongue, and that's what a judge needs more than anything else.'

'You think so, do you?' Rodenbaugh lifted his chin, arched his eyebrows amiably, and his lower lip relaxed.

For an instant Judge Avery surveyed him, then he turned away, gazed out at the pigeons, softly rustling their wings in the square of orange light. He was very tired; if they did n't stop in a minute he was going to get up and go home.

'Yes, I do, Judge Rodenbaugh! That's what I think.' Kardos's chair creaked and Judge Avery could hear the scratch of his sleeve on the table. 'And I says to them, Judge,' — he heard Kardos's voice rise with a lingering sinuous accent, - 'I says to them, Judge, there's a man that ought to go higher!'

the chamber, hopeful, faintly ironic, foolish.

'Yes, I did, Judge Rodenbaugh! That's exactly what I said. There's a man that ought to go higher. He's only just begun his career, Judge Rodenbaugh has. And I'm telling you, Judge,'-Kardos hitched his chair closer, 'what I says goes, in my ward, with a lot of my own people!'

'Hm!' A look of doubt crossed Judge Rodenbaugh's face, and his fingers moved restlessly on the table.

'And I'm telling you, Judge,'Kardos paused, then rose with an air of authority, 'I don't think you 've realized what I could do for you. No, you have n't.' He shook his head with an impudent cunning. 'I speak for my own people in my ward. I can do a lot, I can. And Judge,' - his voice seemed to creep through the silence, 'I could use an appointment now and then, when they come your way.'

For an instant no one spoke. Judge Avery could feel the silence about him expand, grow tense with unuttered meaning. He waited, a little smile on his lips. Then Rodenbaugh sprang from his chair, his fist beating against the table. 'Get out!' he fairly bellowed. He stretched out his arm. 'Get out, I say!'

Kardos turned, seemed to leap through the doorway.

'My God!' The judge stumbled against a chair, picked it up with both of his hands. Avery! Did you ever hear anything like that in your life?'

'Never before to-day,' said Judge

To the memory of cherished places their decay is the worst that can happen. Next to the worst is their improvement. And so it has come about that no child at Wykeham can mount his white picket-fence on summer evenings and stare through dust clouds at the swaying stagecoach with its trunk-laden rack and its mighty straps, bringing guests to the Mansion House. Steve Pratt, the square-bearded driver, wag of the countryside, has long since paid his own fare to Charon, thrust a long leather boot against the river-bank, and composed himself, grimly, for his journey.

For more than a generation no schoolboy has dipped a rusty tin cup into Walden's spring, while the stern bell rang out 'hurry,' and the lilacs overhead whispered 'stay.'

But the sky line at Wykeham remains what it was. Neither Time nor Death can make rigid the folds of it, or mar its loveliness and grace.

As it appears to-day, so it appeared to the first file of red men skirting the river, wending their way along the Mohawk trail; so it appeared to the vanguard of white settlers moving westward; so it appeared to us children from the roof of our big square house.

It was my mother's custom after thunder showers on summer afternoons, to suggest the abandonment of the supper table in the midst of the evening meal in order to view from the spacious roof a rainbow, or a gorgeous sunset.

I

We trooped, therefore, up a narrow staircase and through the attic, past pyramids of old silk hats, and heaps of rusty skates, and great bookcases groaning with their painful burdens of Latin, Greek, and German grammars. And then I recall under foot the crunching sound of gravel embedded in tar, the cool silvery note of robins after rain, and the wide circling flight of swallows enveloping far horizons. The sky line at Wykeham! And my mother's brooding smile, and quiet prudent voice, 'Be careful; don't lose your balance!'

Those rapt half-hours seem now the sublimation of our childhood's being; they have become, with that sweep of horizon, the very symbol of early happiness and beauty, the revelation, in time, of the ideal of Home and of Peace. Thus memory and the sky line blend and make one.

II

A curious fact one delights to recall was the passion that possessed every one of us, from oldest to youngest, for 'family discussions' as we called them. The subjects of the most furious debate were likely to be topics of no vital concern whatsoever. Always, if the assembly became an actual riot, father would bang upon the table, and call out with terrible gravity, 'Remember, this is a Christian family! Now go ahead!' Throughout these cyclones, however

great the uproar and terrific the onset, no one of us ever dreamed of 'injured feelings,' for we had never heard of such a thing in family life. This was due to father's detestation of the resort to personalities. Injured feeling never happened because it never would have been tolerated for an instant of time.

A famous debate was upon this question: "The South Part Church: what point of the compass does it face?' This, one of our more fruitful discussions, occupied the better part of two years. Some insisted upon 'south,' others insisted upon 'east.' Yet others of us, like Athanasius against the world, were tenacious of 'southeast.' Now this could have been settled easily any Sunday morning by putting a toy compass into one's pocket and using it. Of course no one ever suggested such vulgar recourse to finality. In our inmost hearts we knew why. It would have been a breach of family loyalty. At best we could have reached only certainty, and certainty was what we all dreaded and avoided.

I shall start a heron soon
In the marsh beneath the moon;
A strange white heron, rising
With silver on its wings.

But oh! not too soon; for after all what was a heron?

Still stands the South Part Church; the east and the south are still there, presumably; but what the mutual relations of these I know not, nor could I bear to know, though I have passed by the modest portal a hundred times.

Now, while 'personalities' were ruled out by the laws of the game, there was, nevertheless, an abundance of raillery, and nobody was exempt. My father loved practical joking, and no jokes so much as those that victimized himself. In all the blessed years one can recall but a single exception.

boring town was in need of a holiday father offered to preach for him on a given Sunday in summer - from good will, of course, and as a mark of personal favor. The sermon that morning was a charming one, full of imagination and not without vital appeal. Each rung of that ladder of his stands against the past with clear outline after all these intervening years. On coming out of church, however, I overheard a lady of very full proportions, whose fan clicked against the shiny buttons of her black-silk dress, observe in an irritated tone, 'Well! I never was so disappointed in my life! I expected to see Reverend Doctor Frank Smirk in the pulpit. 'Stead of that we have one of them cheap Professors from Wykeham College!'

Halfway home I chuckled aloud over the incident, and father inquired the reason for my mirth.

'Oh, nothing much,' said I.

'Come, come, sonny, out with it!'

It had to be divulged, so I told him. We had just reached a dark, long, covered, wooden bridge. Our old horse, Chevalier, carried us into the shadows, the wheels rumbled gloomily over the loosened splintered planking, -half smothered in dust exhaling stable odors,-and still no word from my companion. It seemed the most unending tunnel in the world. But as we emerged into the fresh air and the sunlight, and as we caught sight of great Saddleback Mountain, father broke out into a roar of laughter. "That was good!' said he. 'Yes, that was mighty good it grows on me, it grows on me!'

the house would decline to read on the ground that the book was 'meaningless and futile.' I felt sorry for the author of this book. Father seemed to entertain a grievance against him; and the more sensible he was of its magnificent imagery, the more his exasperation increased.

Week-day mornings, in his Economics classes at the college, whatever the special topic, he gave himself largely to the discussion of the Tariff. The midday dinner-hour would be given to discussion of local history - except on Sundays, when we discussed the sermon, and my mother would entertain the table with some ludicrous impersonation of the mannerisms of such holy men as had sought to edify the morning congregation.

Ours being a strictly Puritan household, the early part of Sunday afternoon would be spent by the six boys of the family in the discussion of schemes by which we could avoid being read to out of such books as Professor Fisher's History of the Reformation. In summer, the three open windows of father's study afforded cautious escape. On Sunday nights we read Wordsworth aloud. All parts of Wordsworth looked alike to father; all were incomparably great. But my mother insisted that the bulk of it was as dull as Sahara. The poem called 'Michael' was enough to ruin her Sabbath peace.

Now and again there would arise from the Professor's Economics classes a gentle protest that they were not hearing 'the other side,' meaning the other side of the Free Trade question. (They certainly were not!) Sometimes the polite revolt would be started by some serious student of outstanding ability and independence; more often by boys blessed and inspired by male parents at home who dreaded any crack in the pedestal supporting 'The Iron Stag upon the Lawn.' It was

literally true that, for the Professor, there was another side to the Free Trade question only in the sense in which there was another side to the Eighth Commandment - Thou shalt not steal! Protectionism was not a science: it was an art the art of picking pockets!

Believing this wholly and believing it intensely, the wonder is, not that he was so extravagant, but that he was so moderate.

Yet the situation had its humor. So far as cool argument is considered, his classroom many a time resembled nothing so much as the circus; and a Protectionist tenet had about as much chance as the air-filled, transparent glass balls tossed up by the left hand of Buffalo Bill. Ping! Ping!- and annihilation. Father supplied the white horse, the rifle, the powder, and the glass balls.

Once, with the Professor's cheerful consent, Senator Frye of Maine was engaged by a class to come to Wykeham and give an address in favor of Protectionism. The boys were eager for a joint debate; but this the Professor declined, not thinking it courteous to take an extra inning on the homegrounds. Having as a young man come off very well from a great debate against Horace Greeley in New York, it was not likely that in his prime he would be frightened by the Senator from Maine.

Since the college boys thought half a loaf would be better than nothing the two student promoters of the exhibition invited the Professor and the Senator for a sleigh-ride on the afternoon before the night address, in the hope and expectation of witnessing a grand duel from the back seat of the sleigh. This, however, would be expensive; and the boys' accounts at Tommy McMahon's were not then of the best showing. But dear old Tommy favored

the enterprise, insisting with cheerful unveracity that he never yet had lost a cint by anny of the Wykeham byes, and he would like to drive, himself, and see a grand fight, between the greatest Dimmycrat in the wur-r-rld and a Ú-nited States Sinater; and he would go, too, begad, only it was four below zero, and gittin' colder all the time. The party jingled down the village street and out into the hinterland. Tommy McMahon was right. It was now eight below zero; and Clarence, the Ethiopian driver, had to pull down his cap over his ears, and to thump his broad chest.

Sure enough, there was an animated, enthusiastic discussion between the Professor and the Senator. It was about the Colonial History of Maine! Only this, and nothing more; absolutely nothing more.

At the address given that night in the old Goodrich Hall, on the site of the present college chapel, my father introduced the guest of the evening in these words: 'Ladies and Gentlemen allow me to present my good friend, the Senator from Maine. There is no more competent person, even in the Republican Party, for proving to you that two is equal to four, and that the part is greater than the whole.'

Among eminent teachers of youth in this country there have been few, I dare to believe, whose practical reason reacted so instantly to logical stimulus. If a thing were true, it seemed to him of immense importance that it should be realized and validated immediately. 'How about the nationalized railways of Europe?' I piped up one day at the beginning of dinner. He laid down his carving knife, and started a withering discourse upon this subject. But my mother interposed:

"You have had a long morning, my dear. What you need now is not extra talking, but food.'

'Not at all!' father rejoined, with some asperity; if the boy is to be saved, it must be done now; otherwise he is lost engulfed in the folly of government ownership.'

I had not supposed my case was so serious as that. But what father called wrong thinking seemed to him always nothing short of abominable. His passion for truth meant always passion for right action. The teaching-instinct within him made clarification instant, inescapable, exacting. What he deemed a misconception in an immature mind became a moral challenge. He would put into the clearing of muddled notions the same costly, vital enthusiasm that others have reserved, let us say, for the race track.

But his personality being whimsical, there were times when he acted on precisely the opposite principle, and purposely left one mystified.

On Saturday afternoons he would often take me with him to the sawmill at the northwest corner of Wykeham. Perched side by side on the high perilous seat of our lumber-wagon we would rattle through the campus and the village in quest of sawdust wherewith to 'bed down Chevalier.' Sawdust, maintained father, was 'an admirable sweetener.' Chevalier in consequence, always bore a a close resemblance to the Wooden Horse of Troy; nor did the likeness stop with externals; for he contained within himself a hundred fierce devils.

On these journeys, despite the demoralizing clatter and the fearful sidewise motion, there was always conversation. Among other questions, I asked him, one afternoon, the meaning of the Yale arms - Lux et Veritas. He answered, 'Looks a University and is n't.'

Years afterward, a student at New Haven, I came to see why he laughed to himself over that answer!