Waterbury evening Democrat., 1906-10-17

ground, where fTlll6s lOOx xSary large, and from whence those larger stum- bling blocks which occupy our attention are quite invisible. He had been the third-the solitary third child who usually makes his own interest In life, and is left by or leaves the rest of his family.
 It was not quite clear to him why he was the center of so much attention. His mind did not run to the comprc- hension of the fact that he was the wearer of borrowed plumes-thc sable plumes of King Death.
 He had always wanted to get on to the kitchen table. There was much there that interested him and supplied him with food for thought. He had risked his life on more than one occa- sion in attempts to scale that height with the assistance of saucepan that turned over and poured culinary deii. cacies on his toes. or perhapsa sleeping cat that got up and walked away much annoyed And now that he was at last at this dizzy height he was sorry to find that he was too tired to crawl about and explore the vast possibilities of 1t. He was rather too tired to convey his forennger to his mouth, and was forced to work out mental problems without that aid to thought.
 Presently his eyes fell on Guy Oscard's face, and agnin his own small features expanded into smile.
 Bad case!' he said, and, turning over, he nestled down into the pillow. and he had the answer to the many questions that puzzled his small brain.
  s As through an opera runs the rhythm of one dominant air. so through mems lives there rings dominant note, soft in youth, strong in manhood and soft again i'll old age. But 1t Is always there, and whether soft in the gentler periods or strong amid the noise and clang of the perihelion, 1t dominates always and gives it's tone to the whole life.
 The dominant tone of Sir John Mere dith's existence had been the high. clear note of battle. He had always found something or some one to fight from the very beginning, and now, in his old age, he was fighting still. His had never been the din and crash of war; fare by sword and cannon, but the subtler, deeper combat of the pen. In his active days he had got through a vast amount of work; that unchronicled work of the foreign office which never comes through the cheap newspapers to the voraclous maw of chattering pub- lie. Ills name was better known on the banks of the Neva, the Seine, the Bos- porus, or the swift rolling Iser. than by the Thames. and grim Sir John was content to have It so.
 His face had never been public prop erty; the comic papers had never used his personality as peg upon which to hang their ever changing political prin- ciples. But he had always been "there." as he himself vaguely put 1t. That Is to say, he had always been at the backbone of those invisible powers of the stage by whose command the scene is shifted, the lights are lowered for the tragedy or the gay music plays on the buffoon. Sir John had no sym. pathy with a generation of men and women who would rather be laughed at and despised than unnoticed. He belonged to an age wherein 1t was held better to be gentleman than the object of a cheap and evanescent notoriety. and he was at once the despair and the dread of newspaper enterprising publishers and tuft hunters.
 He was so little known out of his own select circle that the porters in Huston station asked each other in vain who the old swell waiting for the { o'clock up" from Liverpool could be. The o'clock was. moreover. not tho first express which Sir John had met that day. His stately carriage and pair had pushed It's way into the crowd of smaller and humber vchicular fry earlier in the afternoon. and on that occasion also the old gentleman had lndulged in a grave promenade upon the platform.
 He was walking up and down thsrs now. with hls hand in the small of his back, where of late he had been aware of constant aching pain. He was very upright, however. and supremely unconscious of the curiosity aroused by bis presence in the mind of the station ''canaille." His lips were rather mora than usual, and his keen eyes twinklsd with . suppressed ex-