Alas! there was none of thy race like to thee, To go planning my ruin from land and from

sea.

From this condensation of feeling and incident it has resulted that, though there are ten thousand stories in Irish, there is no single sustained epic. There is no Odyssey, though there are endless "navigations," as perilous journeys were called by the Irish story-tellers. There is no outlined system of philosophy, though there is a marvelous growth of proverbs and epigrams, which do not lose their savor with the years or even with translation. The bitterness of death, its contrast with life, and its unreasonableness remained a problem insoluble to the philosophy of the Celt, and he could meet it only with a few whimsical or passionate sayings dropped by the wayside. "Death is the best story-teller" is perhaps the most pregnant of these. fell back upon such a passionate tenderness as is revealed in the dirge of Drilrosg for Armhor. This dirge, which is sober in comparison with the overwhelming grief that fills the laments of Cuchulain or Deirdre, gathers to a quiet pathos that the Greek anthology would scarcely surpass :

"Under the flag thou art lying,

He

O Love of all love of my heart, Yet still through the mists of my crying, Where mine eyelids have vision, thou art. My grief and my woe! mine own brother! Our bulwark and circle of fire, Thou never shalt share with another The spoil of the children of Ire. And thou, where my brother is lying, O love-laden mansion of grass! Yet list to my heart that is crying The deeds that my Love brought to pass."

In all his literature the Celt was haunted by the riddling terror of the after-life. He watched, or rather felt, his life moving swiftly under its burden of love and beauty into the gulf of the unknown.

Death he recognized as supreme. This supremacy seemed only the stronger for the momentary presence of light and love. All the thousands of transient colors that delighted his eye went only to enrich and darken the ultimate shadow towards which his creation moved.

It is only the pessimist, perhaps, who can really enjoy the passing glory of the world. Certainly of the ancient races none showed a more persistent pleasure in the pageant of nature and life than the Celtic people, whom Melancholy is thought to have most avowedly made her own.

I

CONFESS that the O'Rell case puzzled me. Mike O'Rell was a good sort, as men go on Second Street-brought his pay envelope home on a Saturday night, was good to the children, and didn't drink much. And Minnie, for a woman of her years (she was twenty-two or so, I dare say, but looked ten years older after six years of married life), did remarkably well-gave Mike his meals on time and kept the children and the house up as well as her limited means and intelligence allowed. They got along together, too, very well. Romance dies young in such families, so that if people just get along together it is all one expects; one hardly looks for affection. And now, all of a sudden, without word or warning, here was Mike O'Rell deserting. He was out of work, of course; so many men are just now. And so many men out of work desert their families; but, some way, I had not expected it of Mike O'Rell.

I had been home over Sunday-had had an awfully good time, and had forgotten all about the Settlement-and I came back Monday morning joyous.

'Message for you, Miss Maris." I had not had time to get my hat off. "Mike O'Rell left home Saturday night-hasn't been seen since. You are to go right up."

It's funny how three minutes after you get back from a vacation you can forget you ever had one. I was a district visitor again on the instant. I dropped my suit-case inside my door, changed my coat, put on my other hat, and started for Second Street.

"Mike O'Rell," I kept saying to myself. "Of all men, Mike O'Rell !”

I found Miss Simons already there, and as she, as an Associated Charities agent, takes precedence over me, there was nothing for me to do. I took Freddy on my lap, and, with a word to Minnie, sat down while Miss Simons went on with her interview. She has been in the work five years-two years longer than I—and I look at myself in the glass sometimes to see if my mouth is settling into those grim lines, and if that look, cynical and suspicious, is coming into my eyes. When I see it begin, I am going to resign and go into some other professionget married, maybe-anything to grow human Her again. Miss Simons is an expert. case records are the envy of every charity

66

Um-m, I don't know. What any workingman takes of a morning, maybe."

"Have you ever seen the man in a state of intoxication?" Miss Simons wheeled to me. And I swear that if I ever had I should have denied it. That's the effect Miss Simons had on me.

"Had there been any trouble between yourself and your husband?"

“Um-m, well—I don't know as there had."

"Mrs. O'Rell, have you any idea where your husband is, or why he left home?" Um-m, no, I can't say as I have."

"Arrest him?" Minnie was roused. "Arrest Mike? And what for, now?"

"She knows more than she will tell," said Miss Simons in a low voice as I followed her to the door. "Get it out of her. It may help us to trace him."

"And what if we do get him back?" I asked, a little curiously.

"Then," said Miss Simons, 26 we are relieved of the support of his family.". "But he had no work."

"He must find work. In a case of what appears to be pure shiftlessness

We must not break down self-respect. Nothing is more demoralizing than giving help to the able-bodied head of a family. Now all the thanks I got from this man for the suggestions I made was an outburst of profanity."

Miss Simons went her charitable way. So then, I thought, Mike had appealed to her for help. I hadn't known that it had gone so far. He had had a little money in the bank when he was laid off. But they had had the doctor for the baby, and, of course, living is so high.

I went in to Minnie, and-well, I am not an expert, and never will be. Minnie wept on my shoulder, and I patted her and petted her, and said consoling nothings to her. "Now," I said at last, "Minnie, what do you know about this? Why did Mike leave?" For my suspicions had been those of Miss Simons.

Minnie dried her eyes on her wet ball of a handkerchief. "Honest-to-Gawd, Miss Maris, I don't know. He was mad at me," she went on. "But that's nawthing. Only I suppose it was once too often, and he went, and didn't come back."

I got the story out of her-all there was to it, and there wasn't much. When Mike came home that afternoon-the same day he had appealed to the Charities, I gatheredMinnie had suggested that she should come down to ask us for work, leaving Mike to stay with the children, and Mike had said, "Damned-if-I-do!" and had left the house. That was the last seen of him.

It was not a very satisfactory explanation. But maybe Minnie was right. Maybe it was just a fit of temper. I would not have thought it of Mike, but, as Mrs. Hagarty, the next-door neighbor, said as I was leaving, "You can niver tell. Men are queer creatures. You'd think now," she said, "that a man would be willing to stay home and mind the childer for a day or so. Wouldn't you, now? He might do that much. Well, Miss Maris, I sometimes think you're as well off not being married. Honest, I sometimes think you are."

By night the case was pretty well arranged. I had seen the City Poor Department about the fuel, and had actually got it out of them! (It's the boast of the administration that they are cutting down expenses in that department.) The Charities agreed to put in temporary relief, and the visiting nurse promised the certified milk for the baby. Our employment secretary was to give Minnie

work in the morning, and the children were to be taken into the Settlement nursery. We are dreadfully crowded, but we doubled up to take them in, as we always do. I was fairly well satisfied with the day's work, only I was a little disappointed. I have an india-rubber faith in humanity. It would spring up again in a day or so, I knew, but for that night it was pretty limp. I had always liked Mike O'Rell.

I ran up in the evening to tell Minnie about the work, and I stayed to help her with the dishes. She had been crying, and needed cheering up, poor girl! I let her talk away while she worked. It did her good. And she told me, irrelevantly, about the dress she wore when she was married to Mike and how much the lace cost a yard.

It was rather late when I left the house, but not more than nine or so. And, while I am not the least bit afraid around the neighborhood, because everybody knows me, I was startled when a man's figure darted out of the shadow of the house and made for the alley. I was not in the least afraid for myself, but I was startled. What was a man doing slinking about Minnie O'Rell's house, and her alone and unprotected? Not thinking, I started to follow. The man had paused and turned, and, seeing me, he came slowly back. It was one of those murky nights that come after a day of January thaw, and I suppose his figure loomed up bigger through the half-lighted mist. Then I was frightened-alone at the head of a dark alley with an unknown man bearing down on me. "Well," he said, in a low, gruff voice, "I s'pose you seen me now."

The light of the street lamp struck his face. "Mike!" I gasped.

Well," he said, "what of it? And what you going to do about it?"

I heard again the snap of the elastic binder on Miss Simons's note-book as she had risen to go. "Report any word you may hear of this man. He must be arrested, for an example, if for nothing else."

Step back into the shadow, Mike," I said. This is Casey's beat. He's been instructed to watch for you."

"He's a friend of mine," said Mike. Nevertheless he did as I suggested. I followed.

"Casey's a good friend of mine. And, say," he said, "you're another. Ain't you now?" I can't resist the Irish, ever, and the appeal in Mike's voice would have melted

"That's not so bad," he said. "And the kids?"

"They're coming to our nursery.” "That's it," he said. "That's it."

If the man's action had puzzled me before, his attitude was no more intelligible now. "Mike O'Rell," I said, "what, in the name of all that's sensible, did you leave home for, scare Minnie to death, and give us all this trouble?"

Mike nodded toward the house where Minnie's light still gleamed. He started to speak, but Casey, the patrolman on the beat, strolled into the light and we clung closer to the fence.

"What did you do it for?" I repeated.

"Lost me job," said Mike, succinctly. "It's one of the army of the unemployed I am. You know it!" He turned on me fiercely. "You know it! Don't talk to me ! Me, that's walked the streets for two weeks, and earned twinty cint's shoveling snow! Great country, this! Great system, that loses an honest man his job just because there's going to be a Prisident illicted a year from last November! Better get an Imperor William, say I, or a Czar of Russhy, or even a King George, say I, that will last a lifetime. Lord love you, Miss, if I ain't had work, you know how it is! And I told 'em so !"

I remembered Miss Simons's reference to the outburst of profanity. "What did they say to you down there ?" I asked.

"Thank Gawd, you're not one of them !" said Mike. 66 Yes, I went down to their nice easy office, and I asked to see the head of the joint. Him being a man, I thought I could talk easier. And, damn it, with a wife and children hungry, what can a man do? They might 'a' knowed it wasn't for meself. Well, he wasn't in; was out giving a lecture

on Pawverty, the pert young man with the specs says. 'But here's Miss Simons,' he says, 'as will interview you,' he says. And interview me she did! Got me name, and me father's name, and what me grandmither died av. Interview me! Yes, she did. And when she was t'ru, if she'd 'a' give me a glass of cold water, which she didn't, I'd 'a' t'rowed it in the face of her. 'We'll give you another week,' she says, 'to look for work,' she says. 'And if you don't find it, send your wife down, and we'll give her work.' A week! A week! Can't a kid die of starvation in a week? Or of the fever in a day? Send me wife out to work? Me ?" "Minnie is going to work," I protested. "Well, she ain't supporting me, is she? Let her keep her little dollar and a half for herself and the kids. She ain't going to feed me on it. Let her take their charity. It's all right for women and childer, but not for me. I'll beg my way honest from door to

door first.'

I held out my hand in the darkness. "Come into the house and see Minnie be

fore you go. She's breaking her heart.

Thinks you're mad at her.

Ah, poor girl!" he said. Ah, now-" He made a step toward the house. "No," he said. No, I ain't going to let her in on this. Let that sharp-eyed charity woman come around trying to find out me whereabouts, and it's a hard time the poor girl'd have lying for me. No! And maybe I can pick up a bit of money down in the country to send her with a letter. Maybe there's a jay or two down there don't know there's going to be a Prisident illicted next November."

He moved forward and stood looking at the window." Sure, and they're all right in there," he said, a little wistfully perhaps.

They're all right, meself being out of the way. 'We can't give help to a family so long as there's an able-bodied breadwinner sitting around the house.””

A form moved across the curtain of the

lighted window. Mike O'Rell grasped my hand in a mighty grip. "You're a good sport," he said. "You ain't going to tell

nothing and you'll look after 'em."

"But, Mike," I called softly after him. It hurt me so to see him go. "Where are you going? What's to become of you?"

"Me?" he said, turning. "Don't you do no worrying about me. I'm going out tonight. Side-door Pullman on the C., B. & Q., going south."

duct a State-wide publicity campaign through the newspapers with the aid of an official "press agent."

The first revelation came when the press secretary discovered that the morning paper of the Convention city refused to use any Association news which was printed in the afternoon paper, and vice versa. Personal bickerings and petty jealousies were behind this editorial pronunciamento. It appeared as if there would be a muddle from the very

start.

In answer to the press secretary's explanation of Association "news," the managing editor of the afternoon paper said:

"We'll be glad to print anything we think is news. But if the Young Men's Christian Association or any other concern wants any free advertising, they'll have to pay for it." Anything which strayed from the path of strictly Convention news came within his definition of "advertising." It was equally impossible to convince him that the "free press notices of the cheap and vulgar third and fourth rate melodramas and burlesques and some of the motion-picture shows were less interesting and entertaining than instructive articles on the general State work of the Association. Almost every other day, however, this paper used from two to eight columns of matter clipped from metropolitan papers-principally editorials.

The Convention was regarded at first as merely a proposition to "relieve the community," as it was expressed, of about five hundred dollars in cash. What it might accomplish was wholly lost sight of.

"If you fellows stick to your Convention and don't start a building campaign, you may come out all right; but, if you don't, you'll fail flat as a pancake," said one newspaper man. This was only begging the question, for the statement had been made repeatedly and emphatically that no building campaign would follow the Convention unless it was the desire of the townspeople themselves. If such were desired, the State Executive Committee would be only too glad to exert every energy toward putting through a vigorous campaign for building funds.

That very evening the same paper printed a half-column story declaring that the Young