s the little
Scotchman.

"Inordinately, Watts, inordinately! The pride of that man is something
terrible."

The two old men chuckle at the foolery of the moment. The general
folds away the evening paper and rises to go.

"Watts," he says, "I have lived seventy-eight years to find out just
one thing."

"And what will that be?" asks the harness maker.

"This," beams the old man, as he puts his spectacle case in his black
silk coat; "that the more we give in this world, the more we take from
it; and the more we keep for ourselves, the less we take." And smiling
at his paradox, he goes through the shop into the sunset.

The air is vocal with the home-bound traffic of the day. Cars are
crowded; delivery wagons rattle home; buggies clatter by on the
pavements; one hears the whisper of a thousand feet treading the hot,
crowded street. But Watts works on. So let us go in to bid him a
formal good-by. The tinkling door-bell will bring out a bent little
old man, with grimy fingers, who will put up his glasses to peer at
our faces, and who will pause a moment to try to recollect us. He will
talk about John Barclay.

"Yes, yes, I knew him well," says McHurdie; "there by the door hangs a
whip he made as a boy. We used to play on that accordion in the case
there. Oh, yes, yes, he was well thought of; we are a neighbourly
people--maybe too much so. Yes, yes, he died a brave death, and the
papers seemed to think his act of sacrifice showed the world a real
man--and he was that,--he was surely that, was John; yes, he was a
real man. You ask about his funeral? It was a fine one--a grand
funeral--every hack in town out--every high-stepping horse out; and
the flowers--from all over the world they came--the flowers were
most beautiful. But there are funerals and funerals. There was Martin
Culpepper's--not so many hacks, not so many high-stepping horses, but
the old buggies, and the farm wagons, and the little nigger
carts--and man, man alive, the tears, the tears!"

* * * * * *

Mr. ROBERT HERRICK'S NOVELS

_Cloth, extra, gilt tops, each $1.50_

The Gospel of Freedom

"A novel that may truly be called the greatest study of social life,
in a broad and very much up-to-date sense, that has ever been
contributed to American fiction."--_Chicago Inter-Ocean_.

The Web of Life

"It is strong in that it faithfully depicts many phases of American
life, and uses them to strengthen a web of fiction