The Mena weekly star., 1909-06-24


 and I Picked Me Lemon in the Gar. den of Love and the Sextette from Lucia and other choice selections? He seemed to be sitting up and taking no- tice! let's lift him above the sordld thoughts of Wall street and his plans for busting other financiers."
 The soldier. gave this persllage no answer; his own thoughts were far from gay. He stood drinking in the beauty of the April night. The air was wonderfully hushed and clear; and the play of the moonlight on the great heliotrope bushes and the rose trees which danged their clusters of yellow and white over the stone para pets of the balconies, tinted the leaf age and fiickered delicately over the tracery of shadow on the gray walls. Not a cloud fecked the vast aerial landscape-only stars beyond stars, through unfathomable depths of dim violet, and beneath the stars pale moon swimming low in the heavens one could see 1t between the spandrels of the arches spanning the colonnade.
 Looks like prize night-scene on the stage. doesn't it?" said Tracy. Jolly good shadows--and aren't these walls bulging out at the bottom bully? l used to know the right name for such architectural stunts when I was taking fine arts four-dreadful to neg. | lect your educational advantages and then forget all the little you didn't neglect, ain't 1t? say, get on to those balconies-that isn't the right word for the mission style, guess but never mind; aren't they stunning Do you see the ladies up there? Is that Archie staggering? What do you think of the haunted house, now. | colonel?"
 Tracy's gay eyes sought the others | gaze to find 1t turn somber. Winter couldn't have told why; but sudden realization of the hideous peril dog. | ging the warm lighted, tenanted house. , submerged him and suffooated him like foul gas Let their guards be vigilant as fear, let their wonderful | new search-light flood rock and slope and dusky chaparral bush; and peer as 1t might through the forest aisles | beyond; yet-yet-who could tell
 But he forced an equal smile in a second for the college boy; and chat ted easily enough as they climbed up the stepped arches to the balcony and the little group looking seaward
 Aunt Rebecca in black lace and jewels was tilting with the world in general and Millicent Winter in par ticular; she displayed her most cyni- cal mood. She had demolished democracy; had planted herself firmly on the basic doctrine that the virtues cultivated by slavery far outnumber its inseparable vices; and that most l people, if not all, need master; had been picturesquely and inaccurately eloquent on the subject of dynamite | (which she pronounced the logical | fourth dimension of liberty, fraternity and equality; had put the yellow rich where they belonged; and the red anarchists mainly under the sod; and she had abolished the Fourth of July to the last sputter of f1re-cracker. . thence by easy transitions she had extolled American art (which Ameri- can patrons were too ignorant to ap- preciate). deplored American music ("The trouble isn't that 1t is canned, says she, "but that it was spoiled be fore they canned iti") and was now driving chariot of fire through American literature; as for the acad emics, they never said what they thought, but only what they thought they ought to think; and they always mistook anemia for refinement, as an other school mistook yelling and per. spiting for vigor.
 ,ist as Winter modestly entered the arena, no less a parsonage than Henry James was under the wheels Janet Smith had modestly confessed to believing him consummate artist; and Millicent in an orotund voice de clared that he went deep. deep down into the mysteries of life.
 T don't deny 1t; he ought to get down deep" returned Aunt Rebecca fin her gentlest, softest utterance; Ines always boring"
 Mrs. Melville's suppressed agitation made her stays creak.
 Do you really think that James is not a great artist?" she breathed.
 q think he is not worth while"
 "Wow!" cried Tracy "Oh, say
 Aunt Rebecca; you cannot mean -" this was Mrs. Melville, choking l with horror.
 "His style" repeated the unmoved iconoclast, "his style has the remains | of great beauty; all his separate phrases. if you wish, are gems; and he is a literary lapldary; but his sen tences are so subtle, so complex, SC intricately compounded, and so dis cursive that get pain in the back of my neck before find out what he | may mean: and then--I don't agree with him, Now is is worth while tc put in so much hard reading only tc be irritated?"
 q beg pardon" Winter interposed | with masculine pusillanimity eyading takes sides in the question at issue "I thought we were going to have some music; why don't you boys give us some college songs? Here is 2 | mandolin"
 Aunt Rebeccas still luminous eyes went from the speaker to Janet Smith in the corner. She said something about hearing the music better from the other side of the balcony. Now (as Mrs. Millicent very truly ex | plained) there was not a ha'penny