The Montgomery advertiser., 1905-12-17

meet the spirit In this lttle castawuS
 which laughed at what was to her a most pathetic fate. She held out her | hand as to a comrade and the saints | god child extended a grimy paw. From | that moment Larry belonged to some- l body.
 One night a week later he appeared at the College Settlement House. He stood In mortal terror or the ttie. | ment House. but "the gray eyes av her" drew him there. Hitherto he had shunned 1t as he would have shunned The smallpox and his reasons were three. In the almost forgotten days In Cork he had lived with other home less children in House beginnins with capital H. The faces or his little fellows sufferers were faded now even the faces of the tyrants whom his Irish spirit daily withstood-but | sometimes, even in these gypsy days. | the shadow of that House fell on him. 1 To Larry House was nameto conJure | with. His second reason was based oil | a more recent experience. On one day. | beguiled by the appearance of some- | thing doing within. Larry. under cover I of his size, had wandered Into the Free l Kindergarten Association rooms. Be- | fore he could extricate himself he was 1 hopelessly involved. In Killarney Court you could knock down the suck CT that took you In. but here there was I nothing to do but follow the wide eyed lady and the dear little children | for two endless hours. After that. Larry avoided even the street that Knew the Association rooms In the weeks that followed his luncheon with Margaret, almost every hour of each day he wondered if they sang songs i and marched aimlessly about at the I College Settlement House.
 But the third reason was the most l potent of all. On little card outside A
 was neatly printed single word. | Larry couldn't read. Each morning his chum among the newsboys taught him his daily spiel" He had man. aged to learn his letters from bill- 1 boards and newspapers but he certain
 ly. couldn't have made out the word on | the card His prophetic soul must have | revealed its meaning to him. For the word was BATHS"
 Isn't It to be wondered at, then, that Larry followed his saint even under the shadow of the tub?
 That night Margaret read aloud one of the stories of the Master and new world was created before Larry's eyes.
 Tn. the Settlement House reports that hours work was put down as Glass Tn l English Literature" and a few lines of praise bestowed on 1t, but as compared with the realities of that glowing hour, the report was so weak as to be almost a islander. o gentle Celia and fair Ro- samond. no heart has ever followed | your fortunes with an Interest more intense than was Larry's of Court Kii- larney. He wandered with you In tho forest that night. leaving even Marga- ret behind.
 He was three blocks. away from the Settlement House before he became | aware that he hadn't marched, skipped l or hopped, or "seen the farmer SOW his wheat, SOW his wheat. sow his | wheatr-or been coerced into boiling | caldron with soapsuds floating on top. | And for the first time. Court Killarney
 with its singing. jeering, cursing. jost- | ling crowds. didn't seem to Larry a rattl!ng good place. He couldn't havc | told you why he did. but he turned away from Maggie O'Brien's with the price of bed Tn his pocket and that night the friendly stars that looked on the Forest of Arden, saw a small Irish
 lad curled up in dark door way. Almost nightly after that Larry went
 10 the College Settlement House. AL most nightly he carried away some thing that Margaret had looked or said 1 to weave into the fsbric of a new life i By degrees 1t came to him that some- | thing which seemed as natural to him
 as crying papers about the streets or | sleeping about in spots" was some
 thing that Margaret would -disapprove of And 1t was this. "the graft of the street."
 | The ethics of Killarney Court are not the ethics of the upper world. Down 1 there the graft of the street" means | taking from somebody who has enough | and to spare what ought to belong to you. And Larry had practiced the | graft of the street. He had-yes. the l word Is stolen-and his conscience had
 never once rebuked him. Fear Of the
 cops. whom he had always managed to 1 eldue, had clutched his heart many a 1 time. Anger at his own awkwardness
 when he failed to make haul. some-
 times shook his frame. But remorse
 of conscience-it passed him by on the | other side.
 From the viewpoint of Killarney
 Court, the practice of the graft of the l street was not incompatible with self
 respect. Even in the heart of little
 thief, an outcast even in the slums. a 1 spark of honor glowcd. From h,s l friends. from the weak and the poor.
 Larry had never stolen. But when he helped himself from the full fruit
 stands. he felt as if he was getting by | stroke of cleverness, his just deserts. And the Settlement Lady came like a | good Samaritan. to bind up the ugly
 wound and to help him along a better | way.
 So the nights grouped themselves in-
 to weeks and the weeks grouped them- l selves into months. And in the spring
 the inevitable happened. The young doctor from the nearby hospital began to go to the College Settlement House At first 1t was merely to look in on
 Margaret and her English Literature Class-sometfmes to tell q jolly good | story himself. But as summer came
 on, he often took Margaret away and
 the heart of one member of her desert-
 ed class was hot within him. One night when a heavenly moon was food ing the crowded streets with a radi-
 ance which far out-shOne the feeble
 gas lamps, Larry followed them. They
 sauntered along. unconscious of the
 crowd. Larry knew what it meant 1 For the divinity which shapes tho ends
 of such affairs proceeds in like man.
 ner the world over and Larry was as | certain of the result as he would have
 been If his Settlement Lady and her
 doctor had been a Nora and Tim of
 Court Killarney.
 1 So it happened that the green-eyed
 monster entered Larry's heart ana
 whenever he and the doctor met, ir
 looked upon the doctor through Lar | xt-ffln F1a5frdaFof4e glare The