The Pelican: WHAT WERE YOU PLEASED TO OBSERVE, MADAM? SHE THE INNOCENT. HE stood looking up at him so innocently from under that sprig of mistletoe that still hung in the parlor as a reminder of the Christmas season; she was so pretty, and she was under the mistletoe, and he couldn't help it-he had kissed her. It was an ungentlemanly and unmanly thing to do. He knew that now, as he remembered her frightened, startled look, and the miserable excuses he had tried to stammer out; yes, and the tears in her eyes, and the little choking sob with which she had received his stumbling apology. "Who could think she would feel like that about it?" he thought; "dear little innocent!" And she-after he was gone, she lay down on the sofa and cried. "I like him— so much, and now-to think that he should kiss me at last-and then say he didn't mean anything by it. What does he think I stood there for ?-the little idiot!" Published every Thursday. $5.00 a year in advance. Postage to foreign countries in the Postal Union, $1.04 a year, extra. Single copies, 10 cents. Back numbers can be had by applying at this office. Single copies of Vols. I. and II. out of print. Vol. I., bound, $30.00; Vol. II., bound, $15.00. Back numbers, one year old, 25 cents per copy. Vols. III. to XVI., inclusive, bound or in flat numbers, at $10.00 per volume. Subscribers wishing address changed will greatly facilitate matters by sending old address as well as new. Rejected contributions will be destroyed unless accompanied by a stamped and directed envelope. ABROOKLYN physician treated a patient for eight years for typhoid maIaria, and finally lost the case. The autopsy was a vindication for malaria, in that it demonstrated that death was due to appendicitis. The error of diagnosis was extenuated, however, by the discovery of an abnormal arrangement of organs which could not have been diagnosed. The doctor's professional brethren greatly regretted that he, though present at the autopsy, was unable to appreciate its developments. The trouble was that the case he had taken was his own, so that he cared as little for the autopsy as the victim of a February convention would care for subsequent proceedings at Chicago. The Story, which is a True One, teaches that a Candidate who chooses to be his own Doctor, should plan to have his fun during the lifetime of the Patient. He will not Enjoy the Autopsy, even though it Shows that Abnormality of the Patient's own Insides was Responsible for the Error in the Diagnosis. ΤΗ tained. HE crowned feet of Europe are shaking in their shoes over the possibility of another visit from the Shah of Persia. If the stories told of the Shah's last visit are true, it is no injustice to him to assert that if the personal habits of the American hog were half as objectionable as his, not the uttermost achievements of diplomacy would avail to get American pork into any country in Europe. But if the Shah chooses to visit his royal brothers again, he will probably do it, and defile their palaces as he did before. There is just a chance that if he comes he may find his young cousin of Germany at home and out of temper. If he does, there may be some fun. who met in convention the other day in Buffalo, made a mistake when they petitioned Governor Fifer of Illinois to pardon the Illinois imprisoned Anarchists. As zealous promotors of the consumption of beer, Anarchists would naturally appeal to the sympathies of the Brewers' Employees. But Anarchists are just as ready to destroy breweries as beer; and that is what the Employees in convention seem not to have remembered. No one who is willing to work has anything to gain by any show of favor to anarchism. Sister: SEE HERE, JOHNNY FRESH, YER TOO FREE WID YER HANDS, AN' IF YER DON'T STOP IT YE'LL BE MADE TER! "AHEAD OF TIME." HE: Ex-President Cleveland is not going to Marion this Sum mer. SHE: Why not? HE: He is going to Watch Hill. TO DIANA OF THE CROSSWAYS, SURREY. DEAR DIANA: You are always a graceful woman, in important and in trivial things, and in nothing are you so often tactful as in your little remembrances for days and seasons. You write me that the hedges and the Downs in Surrey are full of the perfume of Spring, and you feel sure that I shall be wandering into the country very soon to breathe the odor of apple-blossoms. So you send me the "Love-Letters of a Worldly Woman," which will be just the little book I want to read on the way down to the country, in the cars, and think about on the way back. "You will go a-looking for your lost youth in the Springtime, and this little book will show you how far away it is," you add with a touch of irony. The letter and the book came as I was starting for Arcady and the old college, and I have read it while skimming along green fields, or sitting under the elms. It has brought back, the old mood, as you knew it would, and I am not sure as I sit here whether it was yesterday or a hundred years ago, that I left these gray old cloisters and closed the doors on this world of sentiment and aspiration. For it is to this world that these letters belong. PATIENCE The title, as you must have felt, is a misnomer-for none of these are the letters of a "worldly woman." In the three parts of the book it is essentially the same woman who writes-at different ages and degrees of experience. But she is always the woman of sentiment, romance, and aspiration-the sort of woman whom the group of "digs" in cap and gown, who are discussing the "eternal verities" in the next room, would worship, and write perfectly correct hexameters in her honor. They would believe that her little affectations of cynicism were real worldly wisdom, and stand a little bit in awe of them. But you, Diana, who knew the real world and suffered in it before you married dear old Redworth, would never be deceived by these assertions of womanly independence. I know what you think about her and I can almost hear you say it: "This woman is lovable, but she would be very uncomfortable in a family; I know, for I was once like her; and if I had married Tom in those days I should have ruined his career, simply by continually urging him to make what I called 'sacrifices' for success. That dear man is now a type of the right kind of success, but there is none of that sort of heroism in it which the woman who writes these letters worships in a man." 順 What you and I really like about her is a certain fervor and intensity of love which she lavishes on her ideal man. You know there never was such a man (except Tom Redworth) but if she should find him some day, she would be sorry that she ever married Sir Noel, even though he should be Prime Minister. It is the possibility of a woman cherishing such a delusion about him that makes a man love her. If he can only be the hook on which she hangs her ideal man, he is content. So long as she does not distinguish between the hook and the ideal, the real man is happy; but when she begins to differentiate then his trouble begins. That is why you and I think that the woman of these clever stories is lovable, but uncomfortable. What I most like about her is that she clearly distinguishes between what is really interesting and what is simply conventional, what is respectable and what is important. That is a line which few women draw, and not a host of men. I am inclined to think it is as important as the "moral law "-perhaps it is the moral law in a nut-shell. * BUT it is growing very late; the college clock is striking, and there is a rumpus outside the door. It is the boy (who calls me "Uncle" when he wants to tease, and "Jack" when he wants what he is pleased to call a loan) who enters with his comrades. "It is almost time for the Owl train back to the city, old man," he says, "and I am sorry you can't stay for our spread." The boys all carry mysterious packages, and I have a suspicion that there is little left of the "loan" the boy negotiated a few hours ago. ་་ It is a cheap price for a happy day, and an evening of pleasant reverie in the very room that was once mine; nothing left of the original shell but this old table which the boy says must have come out of the Ark." At any rate I know that Noah was young when he bought it, and he wrote reams of letters on it to a woman who before the flood was called Diana Antonia Merion. Her old friend, Droch. HIS PHENOMENAL RISE AS A STORY WRITER. SOME OF THE LARKS WE HAVE IN THE SPRING. The Cloisters, College of Arcady |