s
up for all the agonies of the start, restoring the years that the
locusts have eaten. I'll tell you all about it in the morning.

Drowsily but triumphantly,

JANE.

_Thursday._

Sally, my dear, I wouldn't thank King George to be my uncle, as Aunt
Lyddy would say! I never experienced anything in all my life as
satisfying as pounding out that word CURTAIN!

Want to hear about it? You must,--you can't elude me.

Well, I've called it "ONE CROWDED HOUR." The scene is a lonely
telegraph station on the desert and the time is the present. The
characters are: THE GIRL--THE BROTHER--THE MAN.

The setting shows the front room of the telegraph station crude and
rough and bare, just the ticker on the table, another table and three
chairs, yet there is a pathetic attempt at softening the ugliness,--a
bunch of dried grasses, magazine covers pinned to the wall, gay
cushions in the chairs, a work basket, books.

At rise of curtain GIRL is discovered alone, sewing. She is faintly,
quaintly pretty in a mild New England way, no longer young, yet with
a pathetic, persistent girlishness about her. A faint whistle is
heard. She rises, goes to door of rear room and calls to BROTHER
that the train has whistled for the bend. The two trains--east-bound
and west-bound--are the events of their silent and solitary days.
She brings him from rear room, her arm about him, steadying him. He
is younger than his sister, frail, despondent. She seats him at the
instrument and brings him a cup of hot broth, standing over him
until he drinks it up.

The necessary exposition comes in brief dialogue: he has been sent
west for his cough, has become so weak he is unable to do his work,
has taught her, and she in reality carries on all the affairs of the
lonely station. He stays in bed most of the time, only dragging
himself up at train time, so that the trainmen will not suspect their
secret.

The noise of the approaching limited grows louder and louder until
it arrives with loud clamor just off stage. GIRL runs out with the
orders and the train is heard pulling out again. She comes in and is
about to help him back to bed when the instrument begins to click
and instantly they are electrified.

"THE HAWK," a daring hold-up man who has baffled justice for a year,
has just made off with the