have, to be earnest. It make him a great, good man. He's not selfish
either. He not t'ink of himself, only other beeple. I meet with
misfortune. I break my string. He lend me his violin. Me, I'm selfish. I
don't lend my violin to not a person. No, not even the King of England.
Den, too, Archie, his throat and lungs, and his physique, it is not
strong, not robust. I take him hot country, warm California. He get
strong."

This last argument was too much for Archie's family. They yielded, and
when Ventnor left for the West the boy went with him. He never missed a
week writing home or to "Hock," and at the end of two years he returned.
In his pocket was a signed contract as "first violin" in the finest
orchestra of a great Southern city. He had left his cough with his short
trousers in California, and had outgrown as much of his frailness as a
boy of his temperament ever can. The day he left to fill his engagements
the lady called who used to speak of him as "poor Archie, he's such an
expense to his parents," and sat talking to Mrs. Anderson in the little
parlor. Trig had just secured a "situation," and the caller was asking
about it.

"Yes," replied Mrs. Anderson, "Trig has done very well. He gets six
dollars a week now, and Dudley, you know, gets ten." Then with
pardonable asperity she added:

"Archie is doing a little better, however; he's getting seventy-five
dollars a week to start on. He has already paid his father back every
copper spent on his tuition."

"_Archie! Seventy-five dollars a week_! Why, he is hardly seventeen! How
ever did he do it?" exclaimed the visitor.

"Hock, dear loyal old Hock, says it's because Archie is the very best
boy in the world," replied Mrs. Anderson, laughingly, "but I say it was
the result of a broken string."

Maurice of His Majesty's Mails

Old Maurice Delorme boasted the blood of many nations; his "bulldog"
grit came to him from an English sea-captain, a bluff, genial old tar
whom he could recall as being his "grand-daddy" sixty years ago; his
gay, rollicking love of laughter and song came to him through his half
French father; his love of wood and water lore, his endurance, his gift
of strategy, were his birthright directly from his Red Indian mother;
consequently there was but one place in the world where such a trinity
of nationalities could be fostered in one man, but one place where that
man could breathe and be happy, and that place was amid the struggling
heigh