Cairo Limited at the Quay Station in Alexandria, in response to the conductor's cry of "All aboard! All aboard for Cape Town!" can lean from the window of his compartment as the train approaches Cairo and see the misty outlines of the Pyramids, those mysterious monuments of antiquity which were hoary with age when London was a cluster of mud huts and Paris was yet to be founded in the swamps beside the Seine; at Luxor he will pass beneath the shadow of ruined Thebes, a city beside which Athens and Rome are ludicrously modern; at Assuan he will catch a glimpse of the greatest dam ever built by man-a mile and a quarter long and built of solid masonry weighing a million tons-holding in check the waters of the longest river in the world; at Khartum, peering through the blue-glass windows which protect the passengers' eyes from the blinding sun-glare, he can see the statue of Gordon, seated on his bronze camel, peering northwards across the desert in search of the white helmets that came too late; at Entebbe his eyes will be dazzled by the shimmering waters of the Victoria Nyanza, barring Lake Superior the greatest of all fresh-water seas; at Ujiji he will see the black-and-white standard of Germany floating over the spot where Stanley, emerging from the jungle, lifted his helmet at sight of a gaunt, fever-stricken man and said," Dr. Livingstone, I believe?" He will hold his breath in awe as the train

shoots out over the Victoria Falls of the Zambesi, for there will lie before him the mightiest cataract in the world-an unbroken sheet of falling, roaring, smoking water, as long as from the Grand Central Station to Union Square and two and a half times the height of the American Fall at Niagara; at Kimberley he will see the great pits in the earth which supply the women of the world with diamonds; in the outskirts of Johannesburg he will see the mountains of ore from which comes one-third of the gold supply of the world. And, finally, when his train has at last come to a halt under the glass roof of the Victoria Terminal in Cape Town, with close on six thousand miles of track behind it, the traveler, if he has any imagination and any appreciation in his soul, will make a little pilgrimage to that spot on the slopes of Table Mountain known as 66 World's View," where another statue of that same bulky, thickset, shabbily clad man, this time guarded by many British lions, stares northward over Africa. He will take his stand in front of that mighty memorial and, lifting his hat, will say, You, sir, were a great man, the greatest this benighted continent has ever known, and if one day it is transformed into a land of civilization, of peace, and of prosperity, it will be due, more than anything else, to the great iron highway, from the Nile's mouth to the continent's end, which is the fulfillment of your dream."

Poverty

A Christmas Story

By

Nicholas Vachel Lindsay

C

I-THE GOLDEN ROOM

HRISTMAS Eve, when things are permitted to happen, when just men in love with the God of Life are apt to meet with marvelous doings, five people were booked for a smiling adventure destined to be accomplished before sunrise.

It all began three months before with John S. Adam, the Man with the Scraggly Beard. Too often without food, thinner every day, he toiled at his masterpiece. He climbed the stair with pots of common brown paint, gray paint, green paint. A little later he carried to his room ordinary fabrics of a saffron hue. Various other simple things he carried there, and the afternoon before Christmas he was adding the last little touch which completed the glorious design of a most uncommon room. He was putting gold leaf here and there. Such was his skill that one could not tell where the luster ended and paint and fabric began.

With Drawings by Thomas Fogarty

He had organized the place into a sort of shrine. In the heart of the arrangement, where one's eyes first rested, he fixed an empty picture frame. The painting for this frame was in his closet. Every day he would take it out and retouch it.

On the far side of the room was a couch --strange sleeping-place for a man with famished jaws. Coverlid and tassel and framework were golden gray, and seemed embroidered with jewels. One would not have known the place or century except for the variety of squalor outside.

Scraggly-Beard had just pawned his watch. He owed a month's room-rent. In his pocket rattled thirty-five cents, not his.

Why should a man with holes in his shoes secure the unstable consent of an irritable landlord to make his dwelling like this?

The solution of the mystery comes not in one sentence, but the whole tale.

Late in the afternoon Scraggly-Beard locked his room and descended to the street door. He looked out. It was a mild Christmas, with one or two snowflakes every half-hour. Scraggly-Beard took from his pocket a crackling document. It was pocket-worn, evidently consulted many times. He scrutinized it as a mariner might a chart. Seemingly advised by this instrument, he steered his course north by northwest. He had intended to stop at a butcher-shop, but was seduced by a second-hand book-store. He found a good-as-new copy of "The Little Flowers of St. Francis " for thirty-five cents. It was not his thirty-five cents, but he bought the book.

He reached a quarter of town even ranker than his own. He mounted four flights of

stairs.

At the top of the fourth flight sat a girl enveloped in an Indian blanket. Her curling hair hung over her breast half braided. Every strand thereof was magnetic. In the midst of its soft blackness her face was a pale, starved flower.

There were the rattle and glint of spangles somewhere. He put his hat on her head, pulled half the blanket over him, and gave her a brotherly sort of an embrace.

She no more than endured his kindness. She asked: "Where is the beefsteak? I want my thirty-five-cent beefsteak." He produced The Little Flowers," saying: "I bring you spiritual meat. This is Christmas Eve."

They were in her room by now. On his knees, where he looked as much at home as in a chair, he begged her to read a certain delectable chapter. It is the one that tells "How St. Francis and Friar Masseo placed the bread which they had begged upon a stone hard by a fountain, and St. Francis praised Poverty much. Thereafter he prayed God

and St. Peter and St. Paul to cause him to be enamored of Holy Poverty; and how St. Peter and St. Paul appeared to him."

The latter half of the extract begins in this wise:

"St. Francis said, 'Companion mine, let us go to St. Peter and St. Paul and pray them that they will teach us and aid us to possess the immeasurable treasure of Most Holy Poverty. For she is a treasure so surpassing and so divine that we are not worthy to possess it in our most vile vessels: For this is that celestial virtue whereby all earthly things and transitory are trodden underfoot, and every barrier is removed which might hinder the soul from freely uniting itself with the eternal God. This is that virtue which enableth the soul, while yet on earth, to hold converse in heaven with the angels; this is she who bare Christ company on the cross, with Christ was buried, with Christ was raised again, and with Christ ascended into heaven; who even in this life grants to the souls which are enamored of her nimbleness to fly to heaven, seeing it is she who guards the weapons of true humility and charity. Therefore pray we the most holy Apostles of Christ, who were perfec lovers of this evangelical pearl, that they may beg this grace for us... to be true lovers, observers, and humble disciples of Most Precious, Most Beloved, and Evangelical Poverty.'"

III-MODERN FRANCISCANS

After this she spread a red tablecloth on a box that was turned over on its side and jammed with paints and canvas. She opened the door of her cooking-closet, that kept the room from being too close quarters. High on the shelf, above the big gas stove, were her books. She put "St. Francis " between "Romola" and " Hypatia."

She fried potatoes, made toast, and then found crackers and dates. They ate, and pretended to reasonable contentment. Yet they both thought of that lost beefsteak with a touch of human longing.

It

The girl curled up on the window-sill. was a kind of playhouse for her, it was so broad and big. Here she slept in her blanket at night, and here looking out by day was her chief cure for hunger.

She said, without glancing round: "I was glad when you turned up yesterday. Do you realize that you had not been here since you painted my portrait three months ago? I was afraid you were tired of climbing the stairway of the Lady of Shalott."

He had always called her "the Lady of Shalott."