zor
bodied, just back from College where he has studied mining engineering.
He is a pick and shovel miner in the Wahoo Fuel Company's mine, getting
the practical end of the business. For he is heir apparent of stuttering
Kyle Perry, who has holdings in the mines. Young Nate's voice rasps like
the whine of a saw and he has no illusions about the stuff the world is
made of. For him life is atoms flopping about in the ether in an
entirely consistent and satisfactory manner. Things spiritual don't
bother him. And yet it was in working out a spiritual equation in Nate
Perry's life that Providence tipped over Tom Van Dorn, in his race for
Judgeship.

And now let us put Mr. Brotherton on the stand:

"Showers," exclaims Mr. Brotherton, "showers for Nate and Anne,--why,
only yesterday I sent him and Grant Adams over to Mrs. Herdicker's to
borrow her pile-driver, and spanked him for canning a dog, and it hasn't
been more'n a week since I gave Anne a rattle when her father brought
her down town the day after the funeral, as he was looking over Wright &
Perry's clerks for the fourth Mrs. Sands--and here's showers! Well, say,
isn't time that blue streak! Showers! Say, I saw Tom Van Dorn's little
Lila in the store this morning--isn't she the beauty--bluest eyes, and
the sweetest, saddest, dearest little face--and say, man--I do believe
Tom's kind of figuring up what he missed along that line. He tried to
talk to her this morning, but she looked at him with those blue eyes and
shrank away. Doc Jim bought her a doll and a train of cars. That was
just this morning, and well, say--I wouldn't be surprised if when I come
down and unlock the store to-morrow morning, some one will be telling me
she's having showers. Isn't time that old hot-foot?"

"Showers--kitchen showers and linen showers, and silver showers for
little Anne--little Anne with the wide, serious eyes, 'the home of
silent prayer';--well, say, do you know who said that? It was Tennyson.
Nice, tasty piece of goods--that man Tennyson. I've handled him in
padded leather covers; fancy gilt cloth, plain boards, deckle-edges,
wide margins, hand-made paper, and in thirty-nine cent paper--and he is
a neat, nifty piece of goods in all of them--always easy to move and no
come backs." After this pean to the poet, Mr. Brotherton turned again to
his meditations, "Little Anne--Why, it's just last week or such a matter
I wrapped up Mother Goose for her--just the other day she came in when