Arizona republican., 1907-11-22

[ IrOuple! uOn hIlOW NHdt tiidt iS
 he said. But his voice was too strictly
 happy to deceive me. IL hurt that
 Jimmy Beggs no longer gave me his confidence. and l thought vengefully
 of the usurper owen. owen filled my mind. and, as of old. slowly congealed
 it.
 How is the David and Jonathan syndicate?" l asked. cynically. T
 know owen has won out. I saw a few , weeks ago also the heading of a press account of his success at the Cosmo- politian. I didn't read it. I don't like
 him enough for that, even if he is a celebrity now"
 Begg's fingers had been toying ab- sently with his glass. but now his hand suddenly closed and in eager. boyish enthusiasm came to his eyes. Tt was great" he said, excitedly. Great, Har- rison, every bit of it."
 And now l suppose, his laure's smell positively offensive? Before he reeked of pride> and egotism, but now" Beggs cut in, eyeing me sadly: Harrison. the judgment of man is an unearend insult. You think you know owen. Now am going to tell you of the real owen and of his pitiful strug
 gle for recognition. You needn't say a word. Just listen" And in the sub dued half-light of the little cafe Beggs told me the story.
 'I liked the boy from the very start. Even you will admit his genius. At first I thought him insufferably sup ercilious. as you did, but it was only pride. Harrison. Pride and passison for hiding his miserable circumstances. Good God, haven't l gone through the poverty mill of New York too thor oughly not to know the signe? And be- cause he kept himself clean you did not see that his linen was as frazzled as his hair at the edges. and that his winter suit, of summer material, should have been promoted long since. for old and faithful service. Harrison, Providence gave you the faculty for making money. No mater where you were thrown down you could make is to have a horror of business. the fear and loneliness of a great city. an aversion for making friends, the long. ceaseless\ struggle behind and only ambition and necessity to goad you oni But I know it. and as watch ed owen I saw myself reincarnated. once had just such a clean soul. such ideals. but in my hunt after fame no one put out a hand to help me. There was no one to counsel me. Yes, l won fame but the price paid was all that might have been and am not. l en- vied owen his wonderfully beautiful character and I determined to save him from the aftermath of inevitable disappointments. Perhaps you know what it is. No matter what you may become afterward. that aftermath will show in ugly patches all through your ! life. It has in mine. You see, Harri- son. il was a purely selfish motive. I looked on owen as myself bone back twenty years and given another chance. And I determined that that chance would not be given in vain. And then, too. am Southerner and the South is all one family. So grew to love the boy; no one who really knew him could help it. But he had the pride of poverty and genius. and I could only help him indirectly.
 offering financial stringency an an excuse, I took the room next his in his ldistressingly cheap rooming house. You see. in a rooming house they nev- CT know when you go hungry and in a boarding house they do. I know all the pitiful schemes for covering tncts; the sordid tributes grew to like me; simply because I pretended to be blind to his own fictitious hard luck. But soon had to stop that game, for the boy insisted upon sharing with me what little money he had and 1 had to make up the most surprising lies of success to make him accept it back again. Even then. Harrison I had no idea how hard up he was We used to sit in his room nights boiling cof- fee over his semi-soap plugged gas jet Ohe landlady plugged all the jets so you couldn't burn much gas) and wed talk of the folks down home. Then he would get out his violin. You know. Harrison, how he could play. His favorite piece was a dreamy thing he called the 'Mussoline Overture It made you think somehow of sun sitting down through waving green trees. of a cloud-flecked sky and cold blue sea. and all those emotions and vague longings you have never been able to express coherently.
 ,.'All this time he was making a bare existence teaching the violin. His pu- pills were not many, and what there were, were slowly and systematically diminishing. owen had not the fac ulty of imparting his technique. He Icouln't. He didn't know it himself. Genius was seething in him. It is not a quantity to be doled out, measured. apportioned. What his abilities de- manded was a critical audience and the world to play with. He tried des- Iperately to get a hearing-from any kind of vaudeville house up to sacred concert. He failed. Then came those terrible fits of depression.
 "One night when l was away and after he had had, even for him, an unusual number of appointments, he went down into the vortex of Bohemia n arrived just in time to keep him from going the road l had gone. It gave me a scare. for I had had come actually to look on owen as myself. What ex- cuse could. if with my eyes open. aware of all the pitfalls. stood by and let what l might have been travel in the footsteps of what I am? No. it's not nonsense, Harrison, I believe no one has a right to live for himself alone We owe moral obligation to every man. If by our help we can lift