received a loud burst of applause, and some were cheered heartily. Too soon my turn came, and I paused a moment behind the curtains for a deep breath. After my concluding words, I heard the same applause that the others had called out.

Upon my retreating steps, I was astounded to receive from my fellow students a large bouquet of roses tied with flowing ribbons. With the lovely flowers I fled from the stage. This friendly token was a rebuke to me for the hard feelings I had borne them.

Later, the decision of the judges awarded me the first place. Then there was a mad uproar in the hall, where my classmates sang and shouted my name at the top of their lungs; and the disappointed students howled and brayed in fearfully dissonant tin trumpets. In this excitement happy students rushed forward to offer their congratulations. And I could not conceal a smile when they wished to escort me in a procession to the students' parlor, where all were going, to calm themselves. Thanking them for the kind spirit which prompted them to make such a proposition, I walked alone with the night to my own little room.

A few weeks afterward, I appeared as the college representative in another contest. This time the competition was among orators from different colleges in our state. It was held at the state capital, in one of the largest opera houses.

Here again was a strong prejudice against my people. In the evening, as the great audience filled the house, the student bodies began warring among themselves. Fortunately I was spared witnessing any of the noisy wrangling before the contest began. The slurs against

the Indian that stained the lips of our opponents were already burning like a dry fever within my breast.

But after the orations were delivered a deeper burn awaited me. There, before that vast ocean of eyes, some college rowdies threw out a large white flag, with a drawing of a most forlorn Indian girl on it. Under this they had printed in bold black letters words that ridiculed the college which was represented by a squaw." Such worse than barbarian rudeness embittered me. While we waited for the verdict of the judges, I gleamed fiercely upon the throngs of palefaces. My teeth were hard set, as I saw the white flag still floating insolently in the air.

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Then anxiously we watched the man carry toward the stage the envelope containing the final decision.

There were two prizes given, that night, and one of them was mine!

The evil spirit laughed within me when the white flag dropped out of sight, and the hands which furled it hung limp in defeat.

Leaving the crowd as quickly as possible, I was soon in my room. The rest of the night I sat in an armchair and gazed into the crackling fire. I laughed no more in triumph when thus alone. The little taste of victory did not satisfy a hunger in my heart. In my mind I saw my mother far away on the Western plains, and she was holding a charge against me.

CURBSTONE THEATRICALS

THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB

I ONCE told the Club of various children encountered in city streets, each of whom, though

Like the snow-fall in the river,

A moment white, then melts forever,

had nevertheless in that moment contrived to win upon my affections. The snowflake melts forever, but other snowflakes come, and now I am again begging listeners for a small budget of news from the pavement.

One day, as I was walking up Broadway from the Battery, my attention was attracted by a tenementhouse little girl swinging along before me. She was, I suppose, about ten years old ragged, certainly not. clean, though still not looking altogether uncared-for. What caught my eye was the enjoying, free, unconscious gusto with which she was taking life. Her movement, the expression of her back (which was all I saw), fairly sang the fact aloud, to a simple-minded tune.

I kept her in sight for some minutes, and then Real Life, who sometimes for a moment shows the instinct of an artist, favored me with one glimpse of my heroine doing something in character. She stopped at an old woman's apple-stand, laid down a coin, took up an apple, and set her teeth in it instantly. As she accomplished her bite, the old woman held out her change to her. You will live long before you see anything more

sweetly magnificent than the gesture and movement with which my Lady Bountiful, without turning her rough little head, gently pushed back the change-laden hand and went swiftly on her way. The tender, joyous pride of it was enough to give one hysterics, between laughing and crying.

But, fortunately doubtless, our sensibility to mere spectacle in life rarely so far overcomes us; and as for me, on this occasion, I only hurried on to catch a glimpse of Lady Bountiful's face, but I never caught it. In a moment she plunged into a little crowd gathered about something I don't know what in the street; and the last I saw of her, she still eating her apple was gallantly working her way to its front with a zeal and courage I could not imitate.

Not long ago I watched from my window a more complex case of infantine charity. A much-disheveled, shabby woman had come along and seated herself in a doorway opposite. Mine is not a neighborhood too fine to let many of its children play in the street, and soon there gathered about the sorry wayfarer a curious group of them. I suppose they soon might have been pelting her with stones, but I find the fact that they became very differently occupied illustrative not only of the plasticity of children, but of the impressionability of the race. This "drunk lady," as they doubtless called her, despite the lingering disqualifications of the intoxication from which she was plainly but just emerging, had even now a genius for managing mankind. She had so far come to herself as to desire a respectable appearance. It was to attain this laudable ambition and some others that she engaged the children's assistance. She took

off her hat, let down her hair, drew from her pocket a folded white apron, which she shook out carefully and laid on a fold of her dress beside her, and all the time she held her growing audience in what must have been fascinating conversation. I wish I could have heard it. The existence of her charm was further attested in three minutes by the eagerness with which competing messengers sped upon her errands. One came back with a wet handkerchief; another with a comb (!); another, though the drunk lady had furnished no pennies, with a bunch of radishes, obtained, as I saw, at the corner grocery. She at once sent another child for salt, as the event proved; then wiped her face and hands well with the handkerchief, and gave her attention to reshaping her battered hat and fastening properly its trimmings, getting pins from sympathetic boys as well as girls.

When the salt came, she made a modest meal, sharing it with no one; but those children hung around her, not familiarly, but with a touch of awe, while she ate, as if the sight were in some occult way a feast for their souls. She needed more pins than they could furnish on the spot, and when, her radishes eaten, she returned to the care of her toilet, raiders on the domestic stock of various homes brought them to her, and hairpins as well. The ardor and devotion of her ministers did not flag during the half-hour she stayed among them; and when, finally, vastly changed in appearance, she took herself off, I had not a doubt that the change helped her incalculably to make her peace with whomsoever she wished to conciliate. The children followed her to the corner, where, evidently at a word from her thrown over her shoulder,