le hand-out in a basket, enough for all of us. My brother
hoboes swore I should be the travelling agent of the gang. But a copper
gave me the 'hot foot,' while I was 'pounding my ear' in the woods with
the other 'boes, so I straightened and hiked to the stock yards, where I
feel more at home with the Hibernians.

"Never have I seen Life more triumphant and rampant, more brimming over
with hope and defiant of all conditions, hygienic and otherwise. I am
rooming with an Irish family whose floor space is limited, so we all
have shake-downs, and in the morning can clear the decks for action with
no bedsteads in the way. I am very 'crummy,' badly flea-bitten, overrun
with bed bugs, somewhat fly-blown, but, redemption of it all, I am free
and always drunk. Still, I am really getting tired of playing the
knock-about comedian and shall soon 'hit the road.'

"I am willing to do anything for Marie I can, except to love her as I
once did, but never shall again. Even spirits die, and the spirit of the
salon is so dead that it is beyond resurrection."

Marie, however, would not believe that the spirit of the salon, or at
any rate, as much of that spirit as depended on the relation between her
and Terry, was dead; she was more conscious than Terry of the ups and
downs of the human nerves and heart and the ever-present possibility of
change, and she went to work in a wilful attempt to get back her lover.
Her next letter was a triumphant one:

"I am a very happy girl to-day, and I must write to tell you so before
the mood vanishes, for I have learned that good moods are very
fleeting.... The cause of my happiness is, of course, that I have at
last met Terry and we have had a long, delightful talk together, and I
hope our misunderstanding is all cleared up. Only, now I am afraid I
shall begin to pine and fret because we cannot be together always,
though reason and philosophy and logic all tell me that the new relation
between us two is the very best, noblest, most ideal--or at least they
try to tell me so. It very nearly approaches the anarchistic standard,
too.

"There is something fascinating in this new state of affairs. It is just
like falling in love all over again: the clandestine meetings, with the
one little tremulous caress at parting--which is all we are bold enough
to exchange--thrill me; it is the mysterious charm of the first
love-affair! It makes my blood sing and dance. I lie awake the whole
night thinking of our mee