FERBER
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY CLARK AGNEW.
Copyright b;
Doubleday, Page "
WNU Bervice,
By DNs)
Co.
It is a great distinction for Milas
Ferber to be known as “the female O. !
z because |
probably i
a
Henry,”
there
never was
greater writer of
short stories in
America than
Henry. When the
world was shocked
by his untimely
death, it became
a favorite subject
of discussion in
reading and pub-
lishing circles as
to the author
worthy to fill his
lace. The whole
ist of male writ-
ers was reviewed
without
with any degree
$
settling
of unanimity upon
Edna Ferber.
a literary way to
wear the O. Henry mantle. Someone
suggested that the list of women be
tried, and immediately the name of
Edna Ferber sprang into many minds.
Hundreds of critics, editors and other
authorities agreed that she came near-
er representing the O. Henry type of
genius than any other American writer.
This Wisconsin woman, still young,
is an educational product of the pub-
lic schools and of newspaper offices.
Bhe was born in Kalamazoo and was
.a reporter on the Appleton (Wis.) Daily
Crescent at seventeen. She must have
had an unusually capable city editor,
because she learned first of all to be a
good reporter. Writing ability she had
naturally, but all stories show more
. than anything else the keen observer
and reporter. Her fertility of ideas is
amazing and, like O. Henry, she can
take a simple incident and weave a
fascinating tale around it.
She extended her newspaper experi-
ence on the Milwaukee Journal and
the Chicago Tribune and then decided
to write for the magazines. Her in-
dustry seems to be indefatigable. At
.one time she was writing short stories
for practically every important maga-
zine in the United States. Her output
Garing the past ten or twelve years
indicates about a story a day, and all
ood ones, too; stories which the edi-
ors were glad to get and pay good
money for. And during this remark-
ably prolific period she found time to
write eight or ten novels.
Knowing ones among the critics of
.novels have been saying for several
years, “Watch Edna Ferber” Hee-nov-
el, “Cheerful—By Request,” attracted
wide attention. “The Girls” was hailed
as a genuine achievement. There was
a continued forward movement in
“Gigolo” and “Half Portions.” In 1924
came “So Big,” which has been greeted
itl superlative praise on all sides.
Phat it developed into about the most
successful novel of the year occasioned
no surprise among those who had been
- devoted followers of ‘‘the female O
. Henry.”
Chapter I
Until he was almost ten the name
stuck to him. He had literally to fight
his way free of it. From So Big (of
fond and Infantile derivation) it had
been condensed into Sobig. And Sobig
DeJong, in all its consonantal dishar-
mony, he had remained until he was
a ten-year-old schoolboy in that iIn-
credibly Dutch district southwest of
Chicago known first as New Holland
and later as High Prairie. At ten, by
dint of fists, teeth, copper-toed boots,
and temper, Dirk DeJong.
The nickname had sprung up from
the early and idiotic question invariably
put to bables and answered by them.
with Infinite patience, through the
years of their infancy.
Selina DeJong, darting expertly
about her kitchen, from washtub to
baking board, from stove to table, or,
if at work in the fields of the truck
farm, straightening the numbed back
for a moment's respite from the close-
set rows of carrots, turnips, spinach,
or beets over which she was laboring,
would wipe the sweat beads from nose
and forehead with a quick duck of her
head in the crock of her bent arm.
Those great fine dark eyes of hers
would regard the child perched imper-
manently on a little heap of empty po-
tato sacks, one of which comprised
his costume. Selina DeJong had little
time for the expression of affection.
The work was always hot at her heels
You saw a-young woman in a blue
calico dress, faded and earth-grimed.
Between her eyes was a driven look
as of one who walks always a little
ahead of herself in her haste. Her
dark abundant hair was skewered into
a utilitarian knob from which soft
loops and strands were constantly es-
caping, to be pushed back by that same
harried ducking gesture of head and
bent arm. Her hands, for such use,
were usually too crusted and inground
with the soil into which she was delv-
ing. You saw a child of perhaps two
years, dirt-streaked, sunburned, and
generally otherwise defaced by those
bumps, bites, scratches, and contusions
that are the common lot of the farm
child of a mother harried by work.
Yet, in that moment, as the woman
looked at the child there in the warm
moist spring of the Illinois prairie land,
or in the cluttered kitchen of the farm-
house, there quivered and vibrated be-
tween them and ail abount them an
aura, a glow, that imparted to them
and their surroundings a mystery, a
beauty, a radiance.
“How big is baby?” Selina would de-
many, senselessly. “How big is my
man?”
The child would momentarily cease
to poke plump fingers into the rich
black leam. He would smile a gummy
though slightly weary smile and stretch
wide his arms, She, too, would open
her tired arms wide, wide, Then they
one big enough in |
. would say in a duet, his mouth a puck-
ered pink petal, hers quivering with
tenderness and a certain amusement,
“80-6-0-0 big! with the voice soaring |
on the prolonged vowel and dropping
suddenly with the second word.
of the game. She would run to him,
and swoop down upon him, and bury
her flushed face in the warm moist
creases of his neck, and make as
though to devour him. “So big!”
But 62 course he wasn’t. He wasn’t
as big as that. In fact, he never be-
came as big as the wide-stretched arms
of her love and imagination®would have
had him. You would have thought she
should have been satisfied when, in
later years, he was the Dirk DeJong
whose name you saw (engraved) at the
top of heavy cream linen paper, So
rich and thick and stiff as to have the
effect of being starched and Ilroned by
some costly American business process;
whose clothes were made by Peter
Peel, the English tallor; whose road-
ster ran on a French chassis; whose
wants were served by a Japanese
houseman; whose life, in short, was
that of a successful citizen of the
republic. But she wasn’t. Not only
was she dissatisfied: she was at once
remorseful and indignant, as though
‘she, Selina DeJong, the vegetable ped-
ler, had been partly to blame for this
success of his, and partly cheated
by fit. :
When Selina DeJong had been Selina
Peake she had lived in Chicago with
her father, They had lived in many
other cities as well. In Denver during
the rampant '80s. In New York when
Selina was twelve. . In Milwaukee
briefly. There was even a San Fran-
cisco interlude which was always a lit-
tle sketchy in Selina's mind and which
Part
, Peake house from which her father,
! the black sheep, had run away when
a boy. After her mother's death Sim-
eon Peake had sent his little daughter
back east in a fit of remorse and tem-
porary helplessness on his part and a
spurt of forgiveness and churchly
charity on the part of his two sisters.
The two wemen were incredibly drawn
in the pattern of the New England
spinster of fiction. Mitts, preserves,
Bible, chilly best room, solemn and
kittenless cat, order, little-girls-mustn't.
They smelled of apples—of withered
apples that have rotted at the core.
Something of this she must have
conveyed, in her desperation, fo her
father in an uncensored letter. With-
out warning he had come for her, and
at sight of him she had been guilty of
the only fit of hysteria that marked
.| her life, before or after the episode.
So, then, from twelve to nineteen
she was happy. They had come to
Chicago in 1885, when she was sixteen.
There they remained. Selina attended
Miss Fister’s Select School for Young
Ladies. When her father brought her
| there he had raised quite a flutter in
i the Fister breast—so soft-spoken was
! he, so gentle, so sad-appearing, so win-
ning as to smile. In the Investment
business, he explained. Stocks and
that kind of thing. A widower. Miss
Fister sald, yes, she understood.
Simeon Peake had had nothing of
the look of the professional gambler of
the day. The wide slouch hat, the flow-
ing moustache, the glittering eye. the
too-bright boots, the gay cravat, all
were missing in Simeon Peake’s make-
up. True, he did sport a singularly
front ; and his hat he wore just a little
seen, For the rest he seemed a mild
and suave man, slim, a trifle diffident,
England drawl by which he had come
honestly enough, Vermont Peake that
he was.
Chicago was his meat.
ing, prosperous. He played in good
luck and bad, but he managed some-
how to see to it that there was always
the money to pay for the Fister school-
ing. Selina was happy. She knew only
such young people—girls—as she met
at Miss Fister’s school.
Her chum was Julle Hempel, daugh-
ter of August Hempel, the Clark street
butcher. You probably now own some
Hempel stock, if you're lucky; and eat
Hempel bacon and Hempel hams cured
in the hickory, for in Chicago the dis-
tance from butcher of 1885 to packer
of 1890 was only a five-year leap.
Being so much alone developed In
her a gift for the make-believe. In a
had ended in a departure so hurried .
as to bewilder even Selina who had
learned to accept sudden comings and
abrupt goings without question. “Busi-
ness,” her father always said. “Little
deal.” She never knew until the day of
his death how literally the word deal
was applicable to his business transac-
tions. Simeon Peake, traveling the coun-
try with his little daughter, was a gam-
bler hy profession. temperament, and
natural talents. When in luck they
lived royally, stopping at the best ho-
tels, eating strange, succulent sea-
viands., going to the play, driving in
hired rigs (always with two horses. If
Simeon Peake had not enough money
for a two-horse equipage he walked).
When fortune hid her face they lived
in boarding houses, ate boarding-house
meals, wore the clothes bought when
fortune’s breath was balmy. During all
this time Selina attended schools, good,
bad, private, public, with surprising
regularity considering her nomadic ex-
istence.. She had a beautiful time. Ex-
cept for three years, to recall which
was to her like entering a sombre Icy
room on leaving a warm and glowing
one, her life was free, interesting,
varied. She made decisions usually
devolving upon the adult mind. She
selected clothes. She ruled her fath-
She Read Absorbedly Books Found In
Boarding House Parlors.
er. She read absorbedly books found
in bearding-house parlors, in hotels, in
such public libraries as the times af-
forded. She was alone for hours a
day, daily. Frequently her father,
fearful of loneliness for her, brought
her an armful of books and she had an
orgy, dipping and swooping about
among them in a sort of gourmand's
ecstasy of indecision. In this way, at
fifteen, she knew the writings of By-
ron, Jane Austen, Dickens, Charlotte
Bronte, Felicia Hemans.
Her three dark years—from nine to
twelve—were spent with her two maid-
en aunts, the Misses Sarah and Abbie
Peake, in the dim, prim Vermont
comfortable, well-dressed way she was
a sort of mixture of Dick Swiveller's
Marchioness and Sarah Crewe. Even
in her childhood she extracted from
life the double enjoyment that comes
usually only -to the ereative mid.
“Now I'm doing this. Now I'm doing
that,” she told herself while she was
doing it. Looking-on while she par-
ticipated.
had something to do with this. At an
only unheard but practically unseen,
she occupied a grown-up seat at the
play, her rapt face, with its dark seri-
ous eyes, glowing in a sort of luminous
pallor as she sat proudly next her
father.
In this way Selina, half-hidden In
the depths of an crchestra seat, wrig-
gled in ecstatic anticipation when the
curtain ascended on the grotesque
rows of Haverly’s minstrels. She wit-
nesed that startling innovation, a Jew-
ish play, called “Sam’l of Posen.” She
saw Fannie Davenport in “Pique.” Sim-
eon even took her to a performance of
that shocking and delightful form of
new entertainment, the Extravaganza.
“The thing I like about plays and
books is that anything can happen.
Anything! You never know,” Selina
said.
“No different from life,” Simeon
Peake assured her. “You've no idea
the things that happen to you if you
just relax and take them as they
come.”
Curiously enough, Simeon Peake said
this, not through ignorance, but de-
liberately and with reason. In his way
and day he was a very modern father.
“I want you to see all kinds,” he would
say to her. “I want you to realize that
this whole thing is just a grand ad-
venture. A fine show. The trick is to
play in it and look at it at the same
time.”
“What whole thing?”
“Living. All mixed up. The more
kinds of people you see, and the more
things you do, and the more things
that happen to you, the richer you are.
Even if they're not pleasant things.
That's living. Remember, no matter
what happens, good or bad, it’s just so
much”—he used the gambler's term,
unconsciously—*just so much velvet.”
But Selina, somehow understood.
“You mean that anything's better than
being Aunt Sarah and Aunt Abbie.”
“Well—yes. There are only two
kinds of people in the world that really
count. One kind’s wheat and the other
kind’s emeralds.”
“Fanny Davenport's an emerald,”
sald Selina, quickly, and rather sur-
prised to find herself saying It.
“Yes. That's it.”
“And—and Julie Hempel's father—
he's wheat.”
“By golly, Sele!” shouted Simeon
Peake. “You're a shrewd little tyke!”
Julie Hempel and Selina Peake, both
finished products of Miss Fister's
school, were of an age—nineteen. Se-
lina, on this September day, had been
! spending the afternoon with Julie, snd
now, adjusting her hat preparatory to
leaving, she clapped her hands over
her ears to shut out the sounds of
Julie's importunings that she stay to
supper. Certainly the prospect of the
- usual Monday evening meal in Mrs.
Tebbitt's boarding house did not pre-
sent sufficient excuse for Selina’s re
clear white diamond pin in his shirt °
on one side. But then, these both were | go0ong.floor room she took off her hat
in the male mode and quite commonly i
speaking seldom and then with a New !
It was boom-
Perhaps lier theater-going |
age ‘when most little girls were not | i
fusal. Indeed, the Hempel supper as
sketched dish for dish by the urgent
Julie brought little greedy groans from
Selina.
“It’s prairie chickens—three of them
—that a farmer west of town brought
Father. Mother fixes them with stuff-
ing, and there’s currant jell. Creamed
onions and baked tomatoes. And for
dessert, apple roll.”
Selina snapped the elastic holding
her high-crowned hat under her chig-
non of hair in the back. She uttered a
final and quavering groan. “On Mon-
day nights we have cold mutton and
cabbage at Mrs, Tebbitt’s. This is
Monday.”
“Well then, silly, why not stay!”
“Father comes home at six. If I'm
not there he’s disappointed.”
Julie, plump, blonde, placid, forsook
her soft white banishments and tried
steel against the steel of Selina’s de-
cision.
“He leaves you right after supper.
And you're alone every night until
| twelve and after.”
i “I don’t see what that has to do with !
“If I'm mot
it,” Selina said stifily.
there he's disappointed. And that ter-
rible Mrs. Tebbitt makes eyes at him.
He hates it there.”
“Then I don't see why you stay.
never could see.
four months now, and I think it’s hor-
rid and stuffy, and oilcloth on the
stairs.” ; ]
i “Father,-has had -fome temporary
- -business setbacks.”
Julie, fond though defeated, kissed
her friend good-by.
Selina walked quickly the short dis-
tance frem the Hempel house to Teb-
bitt’s, on Dearborn avenue. Up in her
! and called to her father, but he had
| not yet come in. She was glad of that. |
She had been fearful of being late. She
. regarded her hat with some distaste,
decided to rip off the faded spring
roses, did rip a stitch or two. only to
discover that the hat materinl was
more faded than the roses, and that
the uncovered surface showed up a
dark splotch like a wall-spot when a
picture, long hung, is removed. So
she got a needle and prepared to tack
the offending rose in its accustomed
place.
Perched on the arm of a chair near
the window, taking quick deft stitches,
she heard a sound she had never heard
before, and yet, hearing it, recognized
it by one of those pangs, centuries old,
called woman’s instinct. Thud—shufile
Narrow Stairway.
-—thud shuffle—up the narrow stair-
way, along the passage. She stood up.
the needle poised in her hand. The
hat fell to the floor. Her eyes were
wide, fixed. Her lips slightly parted.
The listening look. She knew,
She knew even before she heard the
hoarse man’s voice saying, “Lift 'er up
there a little on the corner, now. Easy
—c-e-ensy.” And Mrs. Tebbitt's high
shrill clamor: “You can't bring it in
there! You hadn’t ought to bring it
in here like this!”
Selina’s suspended breath came
back. She was panting now. She had
flung open the door. A flat still burden
partially covered with an overcoat
carelessly flung over the face. The
feet, in their square-toed boots, wob-
bled listlessly. Selina noticed how
shiny the boots were. He was always
very finicking about such things.
Hankins’ place at five in the afternoon.
The irony of it was that the bullet had
not been intended for him at all. Its
derelict course had been due to femi-
nine aim. Sped by one of those over-
whip or pistol in tardy defense of their
honor, spangled Chicago's dull '80s
with their doings, it had been meant
for a well-known newspaper publisher
usually mentioned (in papers other
than his own) as a bon vivant. The
lady’s leaden remonstrance was to
have been proof of the fact that he
had been more vivacious than bon.
It was, perhaps, because of this that
the matter was pretty well hushed up.
The publisher's paper—which was Chi-
caga's foremost—scarcely mentioned
the incident and purposely misspelled
the name. The lady, thinking her task
accomplished, had taken truer aim
with her second bullet, and had saved
herself the trouble of trial by human
Jury.
Simeon Peake left his daughter Se-
lina & legacy of two fine clear blue-
white dinmonds (he had had the gam-
bler's love of them) and the sum of
four hundred and ninety-seven doliars
fn cash. Just how he had managed to
1
You've been there
Thud—Shuffle—Thud—Shuffle—Up the
Siineon Peake had been shot in Jeff |
dramatic ladies who, armed with horse- |
have a sum like this put by wns a
mystery.
had evidently once held a larger sum.
It had been sealed, and then slit. On
the outside was written, in Simeon
Peake’s fine,
“For my little daughter Selina Peake
me.” It bore a date seven years old.
What the original sum had been no one
ever knew,
To Selina fell the choice of earning
black fuzz and mold at her heart, like
her aunts, the Misses Sarah and Abbie
Peake. She did not hesitate.
“But what kind of work?” Julie
Hempel demanded. “What kind of
work can you do?” Women—that is,
the Selina Peakes—did not work,
“I—well, I can teach.”
“Teach what?”
ter’s.”
to, Normal, or teach in the country,
don’t you?—before you can teach in
i the public schools. They're mostly old.
Twenty-five or even thirty—or more!”
with nineteen's incapacity to imagine
an age beyond thirty.
“Then [I'll just teach a country
school. I'm good at arithmetic. You
- know that,” Julie should have known
it, having had all her Fister sums
solved by Selina. “Country. schools
are just arithmetic and grammar and
' geography.”
“You! Teaching a country school!”
She looked at Selina.
She saw a misleadingly delicate
face, the skull small and exquisitely
formed. The cheek bones rather high
. —or perhaps they looked so because
! of the fact that the eyes, dark, soft
and luminous, were unusually deep-
set in their sockets. The face, instead
of narrowing to a soft curve at the
chin, developed unexpected strength
in the jaw line.
The envelope containing it '
ini $i
almost feminine hand: | her inheritance of four hundred and:
|
+ ence.
in case anything should happen to
her own living or of returning to the |
Vermont village and becoming a with- teaching); and a wine-red cashmere
ered and sapless dried apple, with © (;,,4 but she couldn't resist it) for-
. Holland.
“The things 1 learned at Miss Fis- :
— ———DAM8P Md
Selina went about her preparations:
in a singularly clear-headed fashion,.
i considering her youth and inexperi--
She sold one of the blue-white:
diamonds, and kept one. She placed
ninety-seven dollars, complete, in the:
bank. She bought stout, sensible
boots, two dresses, one a brown lady’s-
cloth which she made herself, finished:
with white collars and cuffs, very neat
(the cuffs to be protected by black:
sateen sleevelets, of course, while-
best.
She eagerly learned what she could?
of this region once known as New
Its people were all truck:
gardeners, and as Dutch as the Neth-
erlands from which they or their fa-
thers had come. Many of them had
come from the town of Schoorl, or
near it. Others from the lowlands out--
side Amsterdam. Selina pictured it:
| another Sleepy Hollow, a replica of
“You have to do something first—go
That line, fine, steel-
strong, sharp and clear, was of the
stuff of which pioneer women are
.made. Julie, inexperienced in the art
of reading the human physiognomy,
did not decipher the meaning of it.
Selina’s hair was thick, long and fine,
so that she piled it easily in the loops,
coils and knots that fashion demand-
ed. Her nose, slightly pinched at the
nostrils, was exquisite. When she
laughed it had the trick of wrinkling
just a little across the narrow bridge;
very engaging, and mischievous. She
was thought a rather plain little thing,
which she wasn’t. But the eyes were
Perhaps it was this velvety softness
of the eyes that caused one to over-
look the firmness of the lower face.
their worst to her, and Julie had sud-
denly come upon her stepping agilely
out of a truck gardener's wagon on
Prairie avenue, iu tanned, weather
beaten, toil-worn woman, her abun:
dant hair skewered into a knob and
“held by a long gray hairpin, her fuli
calico skirt grimed with the mud of
the wagon wheel, a pair of men’s ol¢
£ 'sfde-beots-on her slim feet, a gro.
tesquely battered old felt hat (he:
husband’s) on her head, her arms full
of ears of sweet corn, and carrots, ané
radishes, and bunches of beets, a wom:
an with bad teeth, flat breasts, a sag
ging pocket in his capacious skirt—
even then Julie, staring, had know:
her by her eyes. And she had run tc
her in her silk suit and her fine silk
and had cried, “Oh, Selina! My dear!
My dear!”—with a sob of horro
and pity—“My dear!” And had
taken Selina, carrots, beets, corr
and radishes, in her arms. The
vegetables lay scattered all abou
them on the sidewalk in front of Julie
Hempel Arnold's great stone house or
Prairie avenue. But strangely enougk
it had been Selina who had done the
' comforting, patting Julie’s silken
shoulder and saying, over and over,
“There, there! It's all right, Julie.
It’s all right.
to cry for!
Sh! ... It’s all right.”
Chapter II
Selina had thought herself lucky to
get the Dutch school at High Prairie,
shirtwaist and her hat with the plume !
; the round belly, so that all Klaaj Pool,
i from his eyes to his waist, was rip-
"pling and shaking with slow, solemn,
Don’ cry. What's there
what you marked and remembered :
When the next ten years had done :
ten miles outside Chicago. Thirty dol- :
lars a month!
the house of Klaas Pool, the truck
farmer. It was August Hempel who
had brought it all about; or Julie,
urging him. This was in September.
High Prairie school did not open until
the first week in November. In that
girl over six was busy in the fields
throughout the early autumn. Two
years of this and Selina would be
qualified for a city grade. August
Hempel indicated that he could ar-
range that, too, when the time came.
Selina thought this shrewd red-faced
butcher a wonderful man, indeed.
Which he was.
At forty-seven, single-handed, he
was to establish the famous Hempel
Packing company. At fifty he was the
power in the yards, and there were
Hempel branches in Kansas City,
Omaha, Denver. At sixty you saw the
name of Hempel plastered over pack-
ing sheds, factories, and canning
plants all the way from Honolulu to
Portland. You read:
“Don’t Say Ham: Say Hempel's.”
Hempel products ranged incredibly
from pork to pineapple; from grease
to grape-juice. Something of his
character may be gleaned from the
fact that farmers who had known the
butcher at forty still addressed this
millionaire, at sixty, as Aug. At sixty-
five he took up golf and beat his son-
in-law, Michael Arnold, at it. A mag-
nificent old pirate, sailing the perilous
commercial seas of the American "00s
before commissions, investigations,
and inquisitive senate insisted on ap-
plying whitewash to the black flag of
trade.
She was to board at |
region of truck farms every boy and
the quaint settlement in Washington:
Irving's delightful tale. Picturing mel--
low golden corn fields; crusty crullers,.
crumbling oly-koeks, toothsome wild!
ducks, sides of smoked beef, pumpkin
ples; country dances, apple-cheeked!
farmer girls, she felt sorry for poor:
Julie staying on in the dull gray com--
monplaceness of Chicago.
The last week in October found her-
on the way to High Prairie, seated be-
side Klaas Pool in the two-horse wagon:
with which he brought his garden stuff’
to the Chicago market. -Mile after mile-
of cabbage flelds, jade-green against:
the earth. Mile after mile of red cab--
bage, a rich plummy Burgundy veined
with black. Between these, heaps of’
corn were piled-up sunshine. Against
the horizon an occasional patch of
woods showed the last russet and:
bronze of oak and maple. These things:
Selina saw with her beauty-loving eye,.
and she clasped her hands in their:
black cotton gloves.
“Oh, Mr. Pool!” she cried.
Pool! How beautiful it is here!”
Klaas Pool, driving his team of”
horses down the muddy Halsted road,
was looking straight ahead, his eyes:
fastened seemingly or an invisible spot,
between the off-horse’s ears. His was:
not the kind of brain that acts quickly,.
nor was his body's mechanism the sort
that quickly responds to that brain's:
message. His eyes were china-blue in
a round red face that was covered:
with a stubble of stiff golden hair. His:
round moon of a head was set low and
solidly between his great shoulders, so-
that as he began to turn it now, slow-
ly, you marveled at the process and
waited fearfully to hear a creak. He:
was turning his head toward Selina,
but keeping his gaze on the spot be-
tween his horse's ears. Evidently the-
head and the eyes revolved by quite
distinct processes. Now he faced Se-
lina almost directly. His pale blue eyes:
showed incomprehension,
“Beautiful?” he echoed,” In puzzled:
interrogation. “What is beautiful?”
Selina’s slim arms flashed out from.
the swathings of cloak, shawl, and muf-
fler and. were flung wide in a gesture:
that embraced the landscape on which
‘the late afternoon sun was casting a.
glow peculiar to that lake region, alk
rose and golden and mist-shimmering..
“This! The—the cabbages."”
A slow-dawning film of fun crept
over the blue of Klaas Pool’s stare.
This film spread almost imperceptibly
go that it fluted his broad nostrils, met
and widened his full lips, reached and:
agitated his massive shoulders, tickled’
“My.
heavy Dutch mirth,
“Cabbages Is beautiful!” his round
| pop eyes staring at her in a fixity of’
glee. “Cabbages is beautiful!” His:
silent laughter now rose and became:
audible in a rich throaty chortle. It
was plain that laughter, with Klaas:
Pool, was not a thing to be lightly dis-
missed, once raised. ‘“Cabbages—" he
choked a little, and spluttered, over-
come.
Selina laughed, too, even while she
protested his laughter. “But they
are!” she insisted. “They are beauti-
ful. LiKe jade and Burgundy. No,
like—uh—Ilike—what’s that in—like
chrysoprase and porphyry. All those:
fields of cabbages and the corn and
the beet-tops together look like Persiam
patches.”
Which was, certainly, no way for &
new school teacher to talk to a Hol-
land truck gardener driving his team:
along the dirt road on his way to Highs
Prairie. But then, Selina, remember,
had read Byron at sevemteen.
(Continued next week.)
Wolves Cross Our Borders.
Wolves crossing the international’
boundary from Canada and Mexico
into the United States present an in-
ternational problem that will be diffi—
cult to solve, according to the biolog-
ical survey of the United States De-
partment of Agriculture. Big wolves
have been reduced to a relatively small
number over much of the west. Since:
1915, more than 5,400 of them are
known to have been killed, in addition
to many which have been poisoned and
not found. There are still considera-
ble numbers of these destructive an '-
mals in northern Mexico, and some in:
Canada, and they will undoubtediy
continue to invade the United States
for a long time to come. For exam-
ple, of the 22 wolves killed in Arizona
during the past year 17 had recently
crossed the border from Mexico. Of
39 wolves killed in New Mexico, 19
were taken by one hunter close to the
Mexican border. This hunter, after
returning to a locality that had been
previously cleared of wolves, in two
days found 14 calves killed and 21 mu-
tilated by wolves which had crossed
the border.
John—I hear dey done found de
bones of Columbus.”
Henry—*“Sho, I never knew he was
a gamblin’ man.”