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The Real Alcestis

By ALICE WINTER

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HEM Greeks," said Deacon Emery, pushing his chair back, "suttenly hed powerful imaginations. Give 'em any old story you please and they'd fix it up with gods and goddesses and Syllys and Carybideses until nobody couldn't half ognize what it started with. I ain't denyin' but what they git a mighty Footy story out on't before they're through. My daughter Sally, that's school-marmin' down to Wooster, she left some of her old books behind her, and I set a heap on them that tells all those old yarns. It seems kind o' lonely winter evenin's nowadays, with all the children. growed up and gone west; and when the chores is clean done up. ma and me we jest take and sit around and read them stories and talk 'em over and figure 'em out cause it appears that every one hez a different way of tellin' 'em.

"Now, you take that 'ere story of Alcestis. Lordy massy, the different ways different fellers tells that.

"First an old Greek feller with a name nobody can't pronounce, he gives his idees, and then a feller named Morris, he prinks it out all spick and span, and then a feller named Browning waltzes all around. it and shows it up in his style. My

"Now, in the first place, the god Apoller hasn't got no place in that story, because in this day and generation we know there wasn't never no such a thing as the god Apoller. Consequently he couldn't never hev done what he was credited with.

"But, on the other hand, it's as plain as a pikestaff that something must 'a happened to kick up such an all-fired excitement; an' I'll bet my explanation comes a heap nearer the truth than them other fellers', because theirs drags in all sorts of impossible happenings and mine is just plain common sense. Yes, siree I see just how it happened.

"Ye see, Admetus was a king; but in them days when George Washington hadn't taught 'em no better, a feller could be a king and yet mean well. Admetus was that kind. He set out to be a benefactor of his race. They was derned hard up for modern improvements in his day. They wore sheets and piller cases instead of pants, and in various other ways they was clean behind the times. But the wust of all was lucifer matches. Lordy massy, but it was hard keepin' house without luci

fer matches, and Admetus he set out to invent 'em. It stands to reason that them ignorant heathens didn't know what in Hades he was a doin', and they hed to explain it to themselves by sayin' that he was havin' dealin's with the sun god. That's how this here Apoller idear first took root.

"Admetus he didn't know any too much himself, an' he was carelesslike in handlin' his materials till fust thing you know there was a fearful explosion and his wife and father. and mother came runnin' inter the kitchin and there was Admetus lyin' on his marble floor 'most unconscious and with a terrible burn all down one side. Lordy massy, there was a hullabaloo! They sent a slave -for they hadn't heard of Abe Lincoln, neither, a scootin' down the road for a doctor, and Alcestis-she was Admetus' wife, and set a heap by her husband-she took on dreadful.

"Well, the doctor he comes and looks Admetus over and he says. 'They ain't but one way to save him so fur as I can see,' he says, 'an that is to graft enough new skin on him to kiver the whole burn. It's too big to heal itself,' he says, 'an it'll take a heap o' cuticle to do the business. We'll hev to take it from several livin' persons, an' we can't begin too soon,' he says.

"Well, ain't there three of us right here?' says Alcestis. 'You pitch right in,' she says; here's Mr. Pheres' (that was Admetus' father), 'an Mrs. Pheres an' me.'

"Lordy massy, Alcestis, what air you talkin' about?' says Mr. Pheres. 'Folks never thought of such nonsense when I was young Graftin' live persons as if they was apple trees! If my poor son hes

got to die let him die in peace, without bein' tormented by these newfangled schemes thet doctors hes got up to amuse theirselves with. Besides, I got eczema. My skin wouldn't be no use.

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An' it's my opinion you'd ought ter be savin' up your strength to take care of your poor children. doubt if there's enough royalty from all Admetus' inventions to support 'em,' says he.

"Alcestis she turns to the mother, but before she could speak, Mrs. Pheres whipped out,

"Don't talk to me, Alcestis. You know well enough that I'm a scientist, and there ain't no sich thing as pain nor skin neither,' she says, 'an it's agin' my principles to hear talk of 'em,' she says.

""Thet's so,' says Pheres. 'The death of my son will bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave,' he says, 'but we must submit to the awful decrees of providence,' says he, and Mrs. Pheres and him nipped out of the palace and down the road as if they was afraid of bein' devoured by the doctor and sliced up willy nilly.

"Alcestis she give a big gulp, an' then she says, 'Doctor,' she says, 'I won't ask anybody else. You kin take all of my skin that's necessary.'

"'Well,' says the doctor, 've see I can't do that without sacrificin' you. It'll take more than one person can spare,' he says. 'It hed ought to be divided between a good dozen.'

"What if I do die?' says Alcestis. 'I'm willin' an' glad to give my life for my husband. An' if I wasn't willin' I'd ought ter be. I can't invent lucifer matches an' he kingive him time. My mind is made up.

"Well,' says the doctor, 'I don't

as I save one,' says he.

"While they was talkin' they heard an awful racket at the door bell an' in walked an old friend as cheerful as a chipmunk.. He was a travellin' man that was in the habit o' droppin' in on 'em whenever he come that way.

up?'

"So the doctor and Alcestis they both begin to explain, an' he give a whistle.

"'Wall,' he says, 'I guess this is no time for you to be foolin' with company. I'd better go down to the club. There's a meetin' o' the Ancient Order of Achaians to-night, an' I guess some of 'em will put me up. Me and Admetus is members.'

"Don't you do no sich a thing, Hercules,' says Alcestis real sharp. 'The spare room is all clean, with fresh sheets on the bed, an' I don't want Admetus to come to an' find that I've turned away a friend of his. He'll have to admit that I was a good wife and a good housekeeper to the very last,' she says, an' then she begin to cry.

"Say,' says Hercules to the docfor, can you wait ten minutes be

les with his face just streamin,' an' lordy massy, the whole road was just jammed with men in sheets and piller cases.

"'Here, doctor,' yelled Hercules, 'it shan't be never said that the Ancient Order of Achaians deserted one of their members in distress. Every man jack of us is here to offer a piece of skin as big as a silver dollar. An' I would furthermore move that we give three cheers and a tiger for her that was willin' to do as much as all of us put together-only there's no necessity.'

"That, I figure it out was the way it likely really happened. Don't it sound like horse sense? An' the reason it hed such a wide publicity was thet Balaustion, the hired girl, she told it in every kitchin in town an' it kep' gettin' bigger an' bigger every time she told it."

How light she trips across the snow With dog beside and skates on arm. The frolic breezes with her go

As on she speeds to Darley Farm.

I watch her down the lane that leads
To Darley Farm beside the lake
Her gown hem sweeps the frozen reeds
That almost with the touch awake.

For sure so sweet a touch might stir
To sudden life the stiffened clod;
The deaf should list to call from her,
The blind obey her slightest nod.

The deaf might hear, the blind might see-
Yet she to me is deaf and blind,
Has gracious words for all but me,
Is only unto me unkind.

Remit by draft on Boston, Express or Post Office Order, payable to

NEW ENGLAND MAGAZINE

Massachusetts and the Foreigner BOSTON is distinctly cosmopoli

tan of late, perhaps as much so as any city in the world. She has her colonies of various foreign nationalities, Italians, Armenians, Turks, Syrians and a half dozen others, as well as her ghetto and her Chinatown. The same may be said in a general way of any city and large town almost in the whole state, so high has risen the tide of foreign immigration within the last decade or two. Moreover there has been overflow into the rural districts and you find the old time Yankee farmer looking over his stone fence boundary at the labors of other farmers who speak a strange tongue to their horses and grow strange herbs in their kitchen gardens. Here and there you find a town largely populated by people

of some certain nationality, attracted thither by some common cause. Such is Maynard, where the woolen mills are filled with Finns, hardy emigrants from the north of Europe, not a bad people no doubt, and with the making of real New Englanders in them-with time. and Yankee teaching and the mercies of Providence all helping. Most of them speak their own language just now and understand little English. So in sections of Lowell you find Kanuck French the leading language.

Taking the state as a whole the percentage shown by the vital statistics is something surprising to the average New Englander. Read this, for instance, and wonder. The whole number of births in 1904 was 75,014, of which 38,689 were males and 36,325 females. The natives numbered 23,365 and the foreigners father and foreign mother, 7,541: 37,047. The parentage was: Native foreign father and native mother,

6,932; unknown, 129. The marriages were: Total, 25.993: native, 11,354; foreign, 8,851; native groom, 2.998; foreign groom, 2,790. The deaths were: Total, 48.482; male, 24.726; female, 23.756; native. 33.795; foreign, 14,376; unknown. 311.

That is, roughly speaking, there were more than half as many more children born of foreign parents than of native parents during 1004: there were three marriages of foreigners to every four of natives and more than twice as many natives died as foreigners. Even with our making-over machinery, which is warranted to turn a Turk or a Finn into a Yankee in a generation or two, it becomes a serious question with thinking people whether the

factory is not soon destined to be overworked. It may be that an Italian or an Armenian, dropped into a community ruled by Yankee institutions and surrounded in daily life by Yankees, will become like his neighbors before he dies and that his children and grandchildren will be Yankees in very truth. There is hope in this if not reason for full belief. But when you find the foreigners outnumbering the natives, living in communities where they preserve in large measure their own language and customs, it is a fair question whether numbers will not prevail over institutions and the result be the survival of the imported mentality, customs, and habit of thought.

The fact is Massachusetts seems to have on hand a surplus stock of "Americans in the making." The machinery is in danger of breaking down and the guiding hands thereof may well be bewildered and overworked. Our raw materials are tariffed pretty nearly to death here in New England, but there seems to be no schedule which includes importations of this kind. Moreover we are not to blame for all this influx. We have not stretched forth imploring hands to the illiterate Syrian or the ignoble Turk. They have been dumped upon us, mostly without our knowledge and entirely without consent, by the big steamship companies. The steerage is the best paying part of the trans-Atlantic business. The more thousands the

our

ship can bring, the more money in the pockets of those who draw the dividends. After they land, why, the deluge-and the water is rising pretty fast. New England was peopled originally by those who dared.

come, and it took brave men and women to do it. It took pluck and character to face the dangers and trials of the voyage, and the result was a splendid stock which has built up the greatest nation in the world. New England is being peopled now by those who dare not stay at home, or who are tempted by the bait which is dangled before their ignorance in every purlieu of Europe and Asia Minor. Many of these newcomers are fine people and we can make men of themYankee men-if we are given time. But there is enough and more than enough of the raw stock on hand to keep our educational mills grinding for a generation. Moreover, others of them are the worst kinds of degenerates and have no business on earth anyhow. The exclusion laws are supposed to shut these out, and they do in part, but there are a good many leaks.

The fact is, it is about time to call a halt in the whole business for a period, take account of stock, look up means for finishing up the halfmanufactured goods already in hand and disposing of the finished. product before we accumulate any more of the raw material. That's common sense in the manufacture of cotton goods, boots and shoes and woolens. It ought to be common sense in the work of making men out of-well, out of what the steamship companies bring us.

Il'iteracy in New England THE foregoing leads to the fur

ther application of statistics to

New England conditions. The white male population of New England according to the census of 1900 was 204,228 between the ages