she had lied, she and her brother. This visit had been concocted in concert with him to get those letters if so be that I had found them! A woman's device to catch another woman. And again I felt how surely the appeal would have had the desired effect if only the whole truth had been told me. But alas, how certainly the untruths with which I had interlaced myself at the beginning of this affair were subtly infecting the attitude of others toward me! Why should truth be given me, the most accomplished liar of all?

I passed the next twenty-four hours in a state of worry nearer obsession. On Sunday night, after tossing in bed for hours, nerve-racked, I sank into that sleep wherein one is helplessly conscious of one's dreams. Suddenly I awoke with a start, shivering, certain that I heard someone in my sitting room, footsteps, the click of a turning key. I leaped from bed - the letters! Someone was trying to steal them again! But they were my own, my own precious letters! I switched on the light, bounded into the sitting room. The dying fire still flickered gently about it, over the table where stood my dispatch box, upon its brass-clamped corners. I unlocked it, searched feverishly. All was safe! Standing barefooted in my nightgown, alone in the silence, I realized that I had been the victim of an hallucination. Yet so strong was the impression that I could not go back at once to bed.

Hugging the box, I sat down before the fire and coaxed it into life. Then, as it blazed, there came over me a sudden overwhelming impulse. Tearing open the box, I dragged out the letters -hers, mine. There in the fire I burned them all, one by one. As letter after letter flared and dried into charred nothingness, I kept repeating the words, foolishly as one repeats in sleep:

'A sword in the wound for me, a sword in the hand of the enemy for her!'

Going back to bed, I slept profoundly. The next morning the whole episode seemed a nightmare - it was not till I went to the box, laughing at myself for imagining that the letters were destroyed, that I realized my act. Even so, it seemed that it had been without compulsion, as a sleepwalker, in a dream.

'So you have burned them at last,' said his mother to me that morning; and, at my start, 'I see it in your face. Dear child, I spoke from experience.' I kissed her, murmuring, 'You were right.'

That evening, on my return, I was told that Miss L had called again and had asked to be allowed to wait, saying that she was sure I expected her. I went straight to my sitting room, examined the dispatch box. The lock had been forced!

IV

I never met either Colonel L, his sister, or Mr. G again. Nor did they attempt to open correspondence with me. Nor did I inquire further about the owner of the letters. They were burned: I was no longer their custodian. Moreover, life began to advance new claims upon me.

In the summer the war in the Balkans reached its height. News came through of the death of nurses at the front. The Red Cross Society made appeal to the various local centres here in England for volunteers, as experienced as might be. I had for the past four years taken an active interest in the work of the Society; it was obviously an appeal to be answered by women of leisure, means, and few personal ties. My services were accepted, and a week later I was ready to start. The Society meanwhile called a special meeting in

directed, as it happens, by that same opprobrious Lady Diana Sweepstakes. Ben uses his to buy a warm coat for a beggar. Well and good! Ben, having been charitable, should get his reward in an approving conscience and probably he does, but he gets it also in tangible payments through every page of the story. Hal, on the other hand, falls as swiftly into misfortune. His cakes at once make him sick, his fine shoes trip him into the mud, his uniform brings only instant derision. Just as the moral tale of the earlier period was busy showing how, for the poor, earthly privation was part guaranty of heavenly pleasure, so for this period the moral tale is intent on proving pleasures to be not so very pleasurable after all.

It is a wonder, indeed, that readers of these early nineteenth-century tales ever wanted any delightful thing, so little and such brief delight is allowed to attach to its possession. Whether it be the unlucky Hal, or Rosamund, in "The Purple Jar,' who, shopping for shoes with her mother, -sensible shoes, we may be sure, sees a vase shining in the store window and loses her heart to its color, or Charles, in 'The Manufacturers,' peering longingly through his factory window to watch the squire ride by in his pink coat, one and all they are headed for misfortune, for disillusionment prompt and often repeated, until all alike can sum up their acquired wisdom in the formula of Rosamund, which, much condensed, runs something like this: 'I see you are right, dear mother; I see now how foolish it is to want a thing because it is pretty instead of because it is useful.'

These younger characters even more than their elders emphasize the contrasts between eighteenth-century tale and Victorian one. Generally speaking, what are the shortcomings of Hal and

If thou of fortune be bereft

And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves

But to the early nineteenth century either loaf is precious beyond any number of hyacinths. Not only so, but the hyacinths themselves are taboo - and faded besides. In the moral tale of this period, beauty is always dangerous, a thin veil over perdition. It is always tawdry, too, an unworthy distraction from that grim attention to business, that cent-per-cent concentration, which is the very meaning of life to all worthy people. Unworthy ones - lords and ladies and artists and paupers and wrong-minded nephews who object to spending their days in factories must be brought to grief as fast as may be, or how shall factories go on? The Industrial Age is speaking for its own life in this matter.

There is, though, another source besides the industrial one for that dread of loveliness so clearly seen in the life of the century and so abundantly reflected in its tales. Mr. Darford believes in the comforts but not the vanities.' Mr. Gresham takes kindly to mottoes as wall decorations. Each of them holds his place by reason of having piled shilling on shilling or acre on acre till the pile made a pedestal. If any suspicion gets abroad that pedestals are not made that way, if there exist

exotic goods not dependent on shillings, then what becomes of their eminence? Hal yearning for a pink coat when his uncle has had none it is as though the Shepherd had undertaken to tell the curate something new about the glories of Heaven.

In the eighteenth century the first commandment, as the moral tale records it, was 'Stay quiet in your as- · signed social place; reverence those placed above you,' for on assigned social place and the reverence of it the whole scheme was based.

In the nineteenth century the commandment has shifted a little: 'Stay quiet in your assigned mental place; appreciate only what we, your successful neighbors, can appreciate; desire only what we have proved by handling and buying and selling to be good. Otherwise' It is heavy with menace, that 'otherwise.' The character who disregards it goes downhill as fast as the author can push him, not only losing whatever he has to lose, but developing all the vices as well.

The American tale during this second period earlier it scarcely existed

voices,' and tacitly the writer encourages us to applaud Mary for an ambition which limits itself to snowy floors and light loaves. When the question is of George, the hero, however,

There dwelt in the village a poor, pale, sickly, desponding widow, whose husband, being suddenly killed in a fall, had left to his wife no other treasure than as bright and vigorous a shoot of boyhood as ever grew up fair and flourishing out of an old decaying stock. . . . But - with a deal of general ability, he seemed to have no affinity for anything in particular.

He tries shoemaking and gives it up, tries farming and gives it up. Mrs. More would send him straight to the workhouse. Miss Edgeworth would bring him to late, humiliating repentance. Mrs. Stowe lets us into the secret of his restlessness - he wants to go to school. Not only does he want to go, but the desire is creditable to him. Armed with it, plus the other familiar moral-tale virtues, he sets out from the village, passes from trade to trade, conquers a profession. We see him finally Ambassador at the Court of St. James

standard of taste, and that a tasteless one, as is the English, but at other points it differs significantly. One of these differences is its denial of the importance of heredity—or rather, perhaps, its assertion of the benefits of early privation. Another is its emphasis upon the value of schooling, at least so far as boys are concerned. Take, for example, "The Yankee Girl,' by Mrs. Stowe, who in her early days was a notable producer of moral tales. Mary, the heroine of the story, is wise only in dairy and kitchen and laundry. Her 'amount of accomplishments so-called was small, including not a word of French and no more music than was comprised in the sweetest of natural

eagle assurance that only self-made is well made which should have endeared him (but did not) to the whole DarfordGresham clan.

In another fashion the American tale led the way for its English contemporary, though here it did not permanently differ from it. Susan, who married good Tom White, the reformed post-boy, had for one of her charms her 'neat and sober' appearance - and no other appearance at all, so far as the author informs us. Susan is out of fashion very early in America. The American heroine, whatever else she lack, has beauty of face on her side. Adornment she despises, but a kind Providence makes her always hand

And even this paragraph does not contain the full list of his indiscretions. He joins a country club, runs accounts at department stores, indulges in hotel luncheons. Presently he owes $12,000 on his stock, bills all overdue and no relief in sight. The sins of Hal were as nothing to the sins of this young man. Our moral-tale sense and our common sense as well warn us that Henry is riding for a fall.

But does the fall arrive? Exactly the reverse. The penalty for Henry's too rapid expansion is the chance to expand more rapidly still. The penalty for owing $12,000 is the chance to owe $50,000. We leave him at the end of the story secure in his home and his club and his proud 'leading merchant' position, carrying his debts debonairly, and soon, no doubt, to be free of them.

And the reason for these blessings, seemingly unearned? All the first two thirds of the story are spent in showing it to us a reason as quaint, quite possibly, to the eyes of later centuries as the reason for the Shepherd's shilling: Henry is long-suffering with customers. Customers intentionally insulting, customers that the very Shepherd would have thrust out over the sill, Henry endures with a smile.

Then the fat stranger did something calculated to upset the temper of the bestnatured jewelry salesman in the world. ... But Henry Parks restrained his natural impulses. .. Henry walked with him to the door, determined to do his full duty. 'I'm sorry you can't use the stone,' he said politely. . . . 'I'm glad you called, anyway.'

We see him restraining himself with customer after customer in the course of the story. So far as Henry is concerned, the customer is as sacrosanct as the squire used to be. That one of the most irritating should turn out to be a wholesale jeweler who has quarreled

with Henry's rivals, that he should discover the young man's difficulties, should have $12,000 to spare, should be fairly searching, apparently, for a debtor blessed with business affability instead of business prudence - Well, this, remember, is the moral tale. If Henry has eaten the porridge of his generation, its cake he is entitled to have.

But just as it would be an imperfect account of the Shepherd which attributed to him humility to his betters and no other qualities, so with Henry and his mates the central characteristic of subservience to customers is liberally embroidered by others. There is indeed one other so consistently present in contemporary moral-tale heroes that it might itself be called the central one. This is their willingness to take a gambling chance. Henry expands his jewelry business far beyond the point of safety. All the rest, whether architects or bond salesmen, bank clerks or realestate agents, follow in his steps. The architect goes into building and runs up houses chiefly on hope. The realestate agent buys options and teeters between ruin and huge profit. If any recent heroes have won to their gratuitous rewards by means of prudence, their number is small. As ardently as its predecessor preached caution, the present tale is preaching the taking of risks.

It is in accord with this preaching that the approved and finally successful characters are invariably ready at spending. Fustian coats, 'the comforts and not the vanities,' are out of fashion. Henry, his affairs at their worst, telephones his wife to come downtown for luncheon that he may tell her of their impending ruin.

As they sat down at the table . . . he reflected sadly that it might be a long time before he would be able to bring his wife into the handsome hotel dining room again.