"dude." I said that I should then go alone. "That way?" asked Sam, with an eye to my gear. I can do," I explained. "Then go, and be fired for a bum," he replied, as he "It is the best that moved on toward the pump. (To be continued.) THALATTA By Blanche Willis Howard ILLUSTRATIONS BY H. VOGEL T was glorious!" thought Henriette Vischer, with exultation, as she mechanically smoothed her iron-gray hair, put on her plain dress and prim collar, set her room-austere as an anchorite's cell-to rights, opened her casements, and turned back her bed to air. "It was so strong, so vivid. I never had a stronger. It was wonderful. It will last till I get there. Ach, grosser Gott im Himmel, to think I am going! What will Ottilie and Miezle say? How will they bear the surprise? It seems a crime to undertake it all alone. Twenty-two hours by rail. Du, meine Güte! Two days there to spend exactly as I like. Twentytwo hours back-remembering. How I ever got so far as to plan it and set the day I don't know, and I feel like the Prodigal Son. Yet if you've hungered and thirsted for just one thing all your life, and are sixty-eight years old, and never saw the day you could do it, and now you can with a clear conscience, at least so far as the money is concerned-well, selfish or not, I'm going to behold it once with waking eyes before I die !" With an expression of singular determination even for Henriette Vischer, she went briskly downstairs to see that Fritz, the little apprentice and errand-boy, had opened the shop and properly begun his day's work. Her mouth looked grim, but the deep wrinkles about her shrewd eyes were benevolent and humorous. The grimness had, of necessity, waxed strong, confronting the inordinate silliness of the two sisters she was trailing through life, and, Heaven knows, daily intercourse with those dames required a liberal seasoning of benevolence and humor to make it in anywise palatable. She had an excellent head, both in its outward form and interior furnishings, a resolute profile, and a still erect and vigorous figure. In her little shop she sold lamp-shades, be-ribboned boxes, photograph-frames, leather handkerchief and glove cases, and other very clean and respectable objects of home manufacture, besides cards for birthdays, confirmations, Christmas and the like. Hers were the patient old hands that might always be depended upon to complete embroidered tokens of affection for blushing girls to present to their lovers. In the background was a somnolent bookbindery, relic of her husband-dead these thirty years—and still conducted by his old foreman. Altogether, she enjoyed steady patronage, much respect, and had no fault to find with her modest humdrum business in a back street of a small inland town, except in the most secret chamber of her heart that the town was inland. Eberhard not yet down?" she asked, glancing into the work-rooms. "No," grumbled old Gottlieb, "and I never set eyes on him yesterday and hardly on Monday, either." "He's younger than you and I," she responded, with so strong a note of good cheer that the old man looked up from his work and smiled. In the breakfast-room, her sister Ottilie, a heavy woman with blurred features and a sententious manner, was talking thus, between large sips of coffee and liberal mouthfuls of bread : From her earliest childhood it had haunted her. Sometimes it came night after night in an unbroken series; again after varying intervals. If it was ever absent longer than eight or ten days, she missed it sorely, and grew ill at ease. Always inherently the same, it presented itself under changing conditions. There might be great ships at anchor, innumerable masts, crowds of hurrying men with vivid, dark faces, and steep, narrow streets between houses such as she had never seen-but It lay beyond. Or ultra-foreign scenes quaint, neat, like pictures on tea-cups-—and It waiting in its might. It -shoreless, trackless, boundless, and no vestige of humanity except her itinerant dream-self. Oftenest, a vast expanse of rocky coasts, It surging gloriously, and a group of strong men hailing It with cries of joy. "It was a green silk frock, apple-green, body cared about it. Not even her good with white polka dots-good-morning, husband had understood. After all, what Henriette-made with five tucks and a was so utterly devoid of interest and sigfrill. And I wore a pink-sprigged jaconet nificance as another's dream? Yet her bertha-cape and a broad Leghorn hat dream, if the truth were known, was no trimmed with straw-colored ribbons. They small part of her existence. had been washed and ironed, but they looked perfectly new. I remember Martha Pfitzer, she that was afterward Frau Gemeinderath Stolz, said to me that morning what pretty ribbons they were. That was the twenty-seventh of April, 1840. Ribbons were better then. She had three boys. On the third day of June, I wore the dress again to the Kränzchen, and Lucie Kaltenbock spilled whipped cream all down the front breadth. She was fifteen, just confirmed, and already engaged to her cousin Carl, and they moved to Ulm and set up a hardware business. She that was afterward Frau Revisor Berner whispered to me at the Musik Fest on the nine-, teenth of June at half-past six in the evening, as we were going up the stairway to the left gallery, third row back, in an awful jam-I remember it was the nineteenth because it was the day after Cousin Helene Ritter's birthday, and the next Musik Fest three years later they began on the twentyfirst in unusually hot weather for the season—that she could not for her life imagine what any man could see in that silly little Lucie Kaltenbock. The stains never came out." Meanwhile Miezle, a spoiled child of fifty-six, was toying capriciously with her roll, feeding her canary with sugar, and chirping to him with shrill coquettish cries and trills a sort of airy clarionet-solo, insolently independent of the heavy bassoon accompaniment of Ottilie's voice. "It was a pretty frock," Henriette remarked, benevolently, her thoughts returning from a wide and breezy flight as Ottilie paused for breath and refreshments. In a moment her vast flood of reminiscence was rolling on anew, while Miezle, impertinently unheeding, fitfully babbled to her bird. With a distinct sense of guilt, Henriette regarded their unsuspecting faces. What she was contemplating savored of wild adventure. Then her motive-how explain it ? How put her longing into words, she, a staid old woman? Years before she used to speak of the dream, but no She had waked, indeed, with that triumphant cry almost upon her lips, but never in all the years could she carry it quite over the mystic boundary of dreamland, though a subtle sense of gladness and exhilaration would linger, and pervade her homely and monotonous duties. If she dreamed other dreams, she never remembered them. Why always this unique vision-strenuous-dominant ? Did other souls seek by night scenes diametrically opposed to the whole tenor of their lives, traditions, and occupations by day? Not Ottilie, not Miezle, at all events. She had heard them tell their dreams. They were precisely like their other experiences. "Helma and Julia Kernick write they are coming to have coffee with me this afternoon," said Miezle, wiry and autocratic. "You must get me some cakes, Ottilie, and some whipped cream. But don't spill it on your front breadth," she added, with a school-girl cackle and a gratified sense of aptness. "On the day of old Otto Kernick's funeral," Ottilie began, portentously, "the sixth of November, 1837, at three in the afternoon, from the Hospital Church, Emilie Braun's first husband, Herr Assessor Greiner was just coming round the corner of" "Don't spoil your front breadth," giggled Miezle, still enjoying her wit. "I hope it will not rain. I think it looks like rain. I said to Cousin Dorothea Siegle I thought we were probably going to have rain. And Cousin Dorothea said she didn't know, but it did look like rain. I said I thought when it looked as it has looked lately it generally rained. I said to myself the first thing this morning it looked cloudy and as if it might rain.” 66 The bearded man near me wore sandals," reflected Henriette. "I saw them distinctly on the shore. Is there nothing else you would like, Miezle?" Miezle considered, interpolating flippant, satisfied ejaculations in Ottilie's droning verbosity. "They will resent it," mused Henriette, with a pang of self-reproach. "They will think me crazy and wickedly extravagant, and I suppose I am. I shall never hear the last of it, it is so altogether like riotous living. There they sit, suspecting nothing. I shall not dare to tell them till halfeleven to-morrow, just as I'm flying off to catch the noon train." "Some jelly, Miezle? How would some Rheinwein jelly do? Oh, Ottilie, if you would like the real lace barb on your summer hat, I don't mind letting you wear it this season." Whereupon Ottilie, amid effusive thanks, began to weave a convoluted tale of lace, her numbers as unassailable as an astronomer's. "And if they should ever discover I had dared to speculate a wee bit in stocks and had good luck, and was going to use my gains for this journey, I believe they would simply faint." Conscience-stricken, with the soul of a conspirator, she surveyed their familiar features, her calm, shrewd face betraying no trace of emotion. But it was the first and last time, and how else could I ever have gone? Nothing could induce me to touch my little capital; the business goes about so-so, well enough it is true; but living is dearer every year, and it would be a sin to let them suffer in the slightest degree through my wild notions. No, there was really no other way. If it was gambling-and I fear it was-may the Lord forgive me, crazy old woman that I am!" Ottilie's recital continued imperturbably. Miezle interrupted ruthlessly, meanwhile inspecting her hands-tiny, claw-like objects of which she was very proud. She was one of the ugliest and daintiest little women on earth. All three sisters were scrupulously neat, but Miezle seemed almost preternaturally exquisite. They had always been proud of her-no one inquired why or demanded her credentials. It was the family tradition, even before her illness, that she should be admired and humored in all things. For many years she had been a chronic invalid, having early in life lost the use of her legs. Her complaint, fortunately, was painless, and, by another beneficent dispensation, her mental horizon, not spacious at the start, had assumed, in her narrow environment, dimensions more or less similar to her canary's, so that she seemed not to beat against her cage. It is true she now and then called attention to her imprisonment, but rather as a histrionic attempt to increase her importance than as actual lamentation. For she passed her days pleasantly enough, with minute attention to her toilette, pasting birds and flowers in her scrapbook, doing fancy-work, reading her evening paper gloatingly-that is to say, its local news, continued tale and advertisements, never its leaders or telegrams— tyrannizing over Ottilie, whose garrulousness never hindered her conscientious and patient servitude-and receiving visitors for gossip and coffee. At such feasts, the invalid in her wheel-chair presided with sovereign ease and dignity. Doubtless noble resignation goes far toward rendering such a life endurable, but still more potent, it would seem, is inordinate self-satisfaction. It is fair, perhaps, to add that the gentle fidelity of spirit which forbids people ever to let a little, elderly, witch-like, unamiable womanwith a beaky face, an obvious mustache and no ideas-suffer from loneliness and neglect, and keeps them, merely because they happened to know her forty or fifty years ago, trooping in still with their children and children's children, offering flowers and modest gifts, is essentially "made in Germany." Poor little Miezle, Henriette reflected, had never taken the smallest journey. Even Ottilie had been only to and from the near village where her husband was Bürgermeister, until he died, the profane insisted, of over-exertion of the larynx Ottilie's larynx. Henriette also had never left her native town, yet contemplated them pityingly. It was almost as if she had gone, seen, and returned a conqueror. She would bring them some remembrance from the wild, mad, roving (thirdclass return ticket to Hamburg), and Eberhard, too, although her conscience was at rest about him. He would inherit all she had, and the snug business. The time would come when he could travel at his pleasure. Her strange journey was no wrong to him, at least. She could hardly accuse herself of niggardliness to the boy, nor did he, she was well aware. Well, she was so fond of him, so glad to give him a pleasure, and he, too, loved her dearly. Not steady at his work of late, no-and somewhat moody and irritable-not his bright self. No doubt a little too wild. That would pass. He would sober down. He was a dear fellow at heart, always after the smallest fault penitent, gentle as a child, and full of the best intentions. She must have a good talk with him immediately upon her return. She Their little annuities they were wont to discuss rather grandly; that she for long years had provided them with their home and the necessaries of life, they ignored for the most part. It seemed more genteel to be silent on this point. If they ever distantly alluded to it, they took care to remind each other that, after all, she could "afford it"-she had "the business." The set her room to rights, opened her casements, and turned back her bed to air.-Page 206. She knew her sisters had a way of calling her, behind her back, severe and even stingy, because she sometimes denied them a wish. They had good heads for reckoning their own money-a chancellor-of-theexchequer, to say the least, was lost in Ottilie-but what Henriette expended upon them they deigned not to compute. VOL. XXII.-23 qualities that went to make her modest commercial succèss they never appreciated; Miezle from sheer incapacity, Ottilie because too preoccupied by her chronological tables. Besides, Henriette never ex plained her methods. The sisters helped her to fill extra orders at Christmas - tide and Easter, and this was almost their only connection with the shop. She was, therefore, the more content that Eberhard was quick, intelligent, in all practical things her confidant, more and more familiar with every detail of the business, particularly since he had become so clever a penman, and kept the books so handsomely; that was a great relief, now that she was getting older. Henriette had long since finished her breakfast, but lingered still, torn by curious. compunctions. After all, these sisters were the powers with which she had to reckon. Perhaps she was too curt with Ottilie and Miezle at times-in the hard years, especially. Thank heaven she'd paid off the mortgage. When she came back they should each have some great pleasurewhatever they liked best. Ottilie should "Eberhard not yet down?" she asked, glancing into the work-rooms.-Page 206. buy a new mantilla, taking her own time and going to all the shops to talk and compare. Then she should wear it somewhere and show it, say at a garden-concert. She had always been fond of music because it collects a crowd. Once Miezle had stayed ten days at some small baths in the suburbs, drunk water at the springs in the mornings, and wheeled herself with grandezza along shady walks. The self-glorification which she had brought back from this campaign made her incredibly happy, and doubtless no con queror ever alluded to triumphs of a world convulsing epoch with a tithe of the purely personal complacency which Miezle derived from her innocuous summer exploits. Ottilie had journeyed to her per tram every day and had the celestial pleasure of sitting on a bench and watching strangers, and being thereby voluminously reminded of the old exhaustless and never-to-be forgotten. The two should do it again. If anything else could be devised to make them happy, they should have it upon her return. Poor Ottilie was looking rather waxen and far from strong. Henriette, I forgot to mention that I |