mnt ————————————_—_]
Bruel
Bellefonte, Pa., January 27, 1928.
ET Rm Sle
ARE THE CHILDREN AT HOME?
a
Each day when the glow of sunset fades
in the Western sky,
And the wee ones, tired of playing, go
tripping lightly by .
I steal away from my husband, as he sits
in the easy chair,
And watch from the open doorway their
faces, fresh and fair..
Alone in the dear old homestead, that
once was full of life,
Ringing with girlish laughter,
boyish strife,
We are waiting together; and oft, as the
shadows come,
With tremulous voice he calls me; “It is
night; are the children home?”
echoing
“Yes, love!” I answer him gently, “they’re
all home long ago,”
And I sing in my quivering treble a song
so soft and low,
Till the old man drops to slumber with
his head upon his hand,
And I tell to myself the number, home in
the Better Land,
Home where never a sorrow shall dim
their eyes with tears;
Where the smile of God is on them
through all the summer years;
1 know—yet my arms are empty that
fondly folded seven,
And the mother heart within me is al-
most starved for heaven.
Sometimes in the dusk of evening I only
shut my eyes,
And the children are all about me, a vis-
ion from the skies;
The babes whose dimpled fingers lost the
way to my breast,
And the beautiful ones the angels passed
to the world of the blest,
With never a cloud upon them,
their radiant brows;
My boys that I gave to freedom—red
sword sealed their vows!
In tangled Southern forest, twin brothers
bold and brave,
They fell! and the flag they died for,
thank God! floats over their grave.
I see
A breath and the vision is lifted away
on wings of light,
And again we two are together, all alone
in the night.
They tell me his mind is failing, but I
smile at idle fears;
He is only back with the children, in the
dear and peaceful years.
And still as the summer fades away in
the West,
And the wee ones, tired of playing, go
trooping home to rest,
My husband calls from his corner: “Says,
love! have the children come?”
And I answer, with eyes uplifted: “Yes,
dear they are all at home!”
: —Margaret E. Sangster.
I hr
HOME.
Swepston Quarles was standing on
a front porch in the nine-hundred
block on West Park Street in Butte,
Montana. And that, Charlotte Cragg
realized with finality, was the climax
of twenty-nine years. Her life would
not be the same henceforth, could not
be. This she knew as surely as she
knew Quarles to be standing before
her in the flesh.
tone which stung her anew into head-
loug talk-making.
“I'm so sorry Jim isn’t here today.
He’s off hunting ancther mine, as us-
al. This one is down near Durant,
west of Butte. He’s been away since
yesterday morning. I told him March
in Montana was no time for such
trips, but he’d go in December. He
has done it any number of times.
There’s a cabin on his claim, though,
so I suppose he’ll not freeze.”
“A mine?” Quarles’s tone said that,
since she insisted, they would talk
of mines for a space.
“Yes. A—a mine. Jim has been
developing this piece of land for a
year or more, with two men and a
windlass. He has a pair of mining
experts with him on this trip, from
one of the local companies. Hopes to
interest one or another of them in
sincerely trust he
Behind her forced animation she
was frightened by her last words.
They seemed to furnish an opening
for intimate questions.
“He will succeed, too, sometime,”
she rushed on. “Jim’s a wonderful
all-around mining man. ‘Your hus-
band, Mrs. Cragg,’ one of the high
Anaconda Company officials said to
me once, ‘has a nose for ore deposits
—and that’s the important thing in
this game.’ The operators come to
him sometimes for his opinion when
their regular staffs are puzzled. Jim
makes them pay for his services, too,
I assure you. Oh, he'll find a mine
of his own some day!”
“He isn't on any regular staff,
then?” Quarles said.
She had thought to set at rest any
inward curiosities Quarles might
have about the unpretentious brick
house and plain furniture. He had
spied the single weakness in her
story. Fear of those level blue eyes
was chilling her.
“Why, no. Oh, no. He's a sort of
unofficial consulting expert. It’s too
detailed to explain. Swep, say ‘regu-
lar’ again. Please.” :
He said it, with some bewilderment.
“Delightful!” It’s been years since
I’ve heard anyone talk without
trampling on his r’s like a—dray-
horse. Tell me, Swep—in Charlottes-
ville, do the people still speak of the
University of Virginia simply as ‘the
University’ 7?” 3 el
He smiled then. With Virginians,
home is the topic that cannot fail.
“Yes, yes, they do, bless ’em! As
if it were the only university in the
world. In many ways it is, too.
. But Charlotte—"
“And Swep. Does Lewis’s Moun-
tain in October still look like a big,
brilliant Indian blanket hung in the
sky to the east of town?”
“It does. Hasn't changed, except
that it’s called Patterson’s Mountain
now. Charlotte—"
It had become a battle, no less. Her
ears heard the words %hat
streamed from her tongue.
“Ill warrant everything else has
changed, though. The people, I mean.
I remember how, when I was a girl,
the idea most girls had of the true
romance was to marry a Western
man, rich—all Westerners ware Jat
of 2ourse—come out here, bring u
tall, biond
half . en children to be
ing Magnates or cow-girls, grow
up with the country. All most girls
want nowadays is comfort and an au-
tomobile and an able bootlegger. Per-
haps they're more sensible than we
She had last seen this man in Char-
lottesville, Virginia, in 1895; had ex- |
pected never to see him again. Here
he was. Flanking his head in her
sight, the wall of blue-black moun-
tains to the south of Butte stood up
like blurry stage-settings that might |
shift or fall at any moment. He was
extending his right hand and smil-
ing in a way she astonishingly well '
remembered. !
“Why—Swep Quarles!”
It was a well-bred grasp she gave
him, and a light quick handshake; the !
kind of greeting that glosses over,
ignores, forbidden excitements pound-
ing in the throat.
‘Come in!” she said, “So glad to'
see you. Just hang your wraps on'
the rack. What brings you this |
way 7” .
, “Jove!” This is a cold city you live
in!” he exclaimed. She had not heard
a man say “Jove” in years.
“‘Hot afternoons have been in
Montana,’ ” she forced herself to
quote smilingly, “but not in March
with the wind off Mount Fleecer. I
keep the house warm, though. Come
into the front room. Whey’d call
this the parlor back home in Char-
lottesville, wouldn’t they?”
By the time they were seated, with
an electric heater spraying its rays
over them, Charlotte had recovered
her grip. You're Charlotte Cragg, of
Butte, Montana, she had told herself;
and you're forty-eight, and it’s now
thirty years since you were Char-
lotte Bainbridge, telling this man
that yes, there was some one else,
and though you don’t feel that old by
ten years or look it, either, still you
mustn’t have foolish thoughts about
him, simply mustn’t have them, do
you hear?
His blue eyes were unhardened and
honest still. Also, they were light-
ing alarmingly, and his fingers were
drumming his watch-pocket. She
perceived that chatter, a frustrating
cloud of talk, was what she had to
supply.
“Oh, I read your book, Swep,” she
began; “just last week. The latest
imean—*Dreamy’s {Endy’ Thought it
splendid. Your big success so far,
isn’t it? Nine large printings in six
weeks, I read in some review. You're
certainly to be congratulated. I sup-
pose your short work in the maga-
zines is just a pastime for you, isn’t
it?
Start them talking about them-
selves: that was the way to parry
whatever romantic notions they might
have brought twenty-five hundred
miles with them. There was a clean
crispness about his thick, slightly
graying hair; the same air about his
necktie, and the trouser cuff above
his swinging right foot. He looked
seasoned. The negroes at home would
have called it “quality.”
“Thank you for mentioning the
book, Charlotte,” he was saying un-
interestedly. Here was a setback, in-
deed; a writer refusing to discuss his
1
1 {have settled d
own work.
were. Have you ever thought of
writing a book on the younger gen-
eration, Swep?” :
“No,” Quarles said succintly. He
sai too: “Jim Cragg wasn’t rich,
then?”
Whereupon her defenses crashed.
Striving like mad to hide, she had
but clumsily disclosed things that
| fermented in her mind for years.
uarles leaped the smashed barriers,
blue fires aflicker in those eyes.
“Charlotte! Are you happy, or
aren’t you? That is what I came to
this place from Charlottesville to find
out. And I don’t propose to be put
off.”
One can always retreat to dignity.
“Have you any right to ask me
that, do you think?”
Quarles Was on his feet. She
watched his burly grained oxfords
shuttling over the carpet from stand
lamp to hall door and back while his
words hammered at her bowed fore-
head. 3
“Any right? Why, what about the
right of rtyonine come back to an
old friend? You said we would al-
ways be friends, you may remember.”
Furiously ironic, the tone he used
there. “Isn’t that enough? Or say,
if you prefer, that it must be more
than friendship brings me here. I'd
admit that much to Cragg himself—
wouldnt hesitate a second. I sup-
pose I'm talking like nineteen years
old; but I tell you, Charlotte, there
hasn’t been any one else since—that
time. Oh, here and there naturally;
what man doesn’t But—any right!
Let me ask you this: what right have
you to play-act to me? ere’s a
real question.” :
He was talking about himself now,
in all conscience. He waited for no
answer.
“Oh, everything works for the best,
looking at it one way, Ive knocked
around the world, had an experiecne
or two, unloaded a good many hun-
dred thousand words of print on the
ublic. If things had come out as—
P hoped they might, once, why—I'd
own in a Courthouse
Square law office in Charlottesville and
told my brain fevers through the years
to you instead of to a typewriter. I'd
have been an everyday person, and
as happy as must. As it is, I'm a
reasonable success in a hard game
But I'm forty-nine—which is the part
that matters. I've a little house on
the Lynchburg road, out beyond Ob-
servatory Mountain. Oh, I won't
commit the ancient hokum about the
lonely fireside. I have a—an able
bootlegger, as you say, up in the
Ragged Mountains, and plenty of
friends to drop in when those red-
clay Albemarle County roads are at
all passable.” ;
He drew breath, pounced again on
his subject.
“Well, at any rate, Charlotte, here
I am! Seeing you face to face, I'll
admit the motives I left home with
seem a bit fantastic. But:I think you
might at least tell me whether—it’s
“Er—Charlotte—" he began, in a well with you, or not.”
+ | taincy, and just twenty-two.
and Excelsior.
The blue fires receded from the sur-
faces of his eyes, and he sat down
again, staring up at the picture-
moulding. The blood was churning in
Charlotte’s throat. She was not old.
Years were liars.
“Since you put it so, Swep . . . .
no. Jim had a position, for a
young man, waiting for him here af-
ter he left the University. That was
all. With one of the—I always think
of them as pirates. They were fight-
ing in those days to control the Butte
Hill and the ores underneath. Jim’s
pirate finally sold out; some say for
ten millions, though I doubt that.
Whatever it was, it was a big sum
for that time, and he never tried to
come back for more. Jim's position
was good, but not good enough to
admit him to the—shall we call it the
division of the loot in the captain’s
cabin? The pirate’s crew was set
adrift.” .
She drew a cigarette from his prof-
fered case. She seldom used the
things, but at this moment she craved
their comforting sting in her throat.
“Don’t think I'm complaining, or
ever did. We were young then, and
I've lived in Butte too long now. It
was in the game. Buccaneers all!
If you won, you won. If you lost, you
didn’t whimper. The winners didn’t
crow, you expected no one’s pity, and
no one insulted you by trying to ex-
tend any. That’s Butte, Montana,
Swep!—or what I've known of it. It’s
something, after all—the thought
never occurred to me before—but it’s
something just to have lived in a
place like that.”
She looked over
laughing uneasily.
“I can almost feel this old town
frowning in at my window,” she apol-
ogized, “because I'm being weak
enough to breathe my troubles to
anybody.”
“What happened after that?”
Quarles prompted.
“Oh, we lived along. People do,
you know. That’s the truth, that
Jim’s a good mining man. He’s made
several stakes, as he calls them, in
his time. He always puts them back,
though, into another hole in the
ground. ‘Sometime,’ he tells me, “I'll
find the big hole.” He thinks he has
it now. But he’s thought that so
often . . ”
“The half-dozen children?” asked
Quarles. “All cowgirls or whatever it
_ “We've had two. A girl and a
boy. He was overseas; rose to esp
e
passed—he d—oh, why not say it!
He was killed, in the last days of the
war, just outside Sedan.”
“Qh, Charlotte!”
“Yes. Well—the girl. Dorothy
Montana Cragg. Jim insisted on the
middle name; it was fashionable here,
until people realized the cold truth
that Montana simply doesn’t do as a
girl’s name. We call her Dorothy.
She would study medicine, at North-
western. Said that was her bent and
she had to live her own life. We
were able to arrange it; she helped
herself considerably after the first
year or so. These modern young-
sters! Now she’s a mayor.”
“A what?”
“A mayor. Isn’t that too pe
ly Western—women Governors an
the like? She’s mayor of Melbane, a
little railroad division point over in
the prairie part of this State. They
elected her to fill out some man or
other’s term—he died, I believe. We
her shoulder,
stream past the window—her town
for twenty-nine years.
People walked on cement, drove on
macadam, in Park Street these days.
They had simply walked, on wood or
in mud, when she was a young mar-
ried woman. There had been a bridge
of the numerous gulches that gashed
Butte’s landscape. Smoke from sul-
phide ores roasting in the open on
the Flat had lain like a death’s blank-
et over the city through bitter win-
ters. Ore trains had run up and
down Montana Street, the High
School was just going up, there was
no Phoenix Block, no Metals Bank
building, there were log houses close
to Main on West Broadway.
This afternoon brisk, prosperous-
looking Americans bustled on the
West Side. They gave way as the
car rushed down East Park to crowds
of the South Europeans who latterly
Charlotte had come here in the era
of the Irish miner, three-fifty-a-day,
those faces outside the car window,
though, wore the same expression as
formerly the others had worn. All
were shrewd, impressive, controlled,
I full of a salty, knowledgeable
umor. The mines and the moun-
tains did not change; they ironed
their philosophy into the features of
whosoever came to their city.
After Gaylord Street and its stom-
ach-stiring nose-dive, the mines for
a space lowered on the car on its
leftward side.
frames, chutes, bins, sheds, and red
board fences the mines stepped away
up-hill into a sky of aluminum brush-
ed with cotton. ;
She became conscious of 2 tender-
ness for this city. She wished that
before leaving she might arrange
somehow to put her arms around
fortingly. During that ride Char-
lotte genuinely believed she was
about to leave Butte.
The turn at the old Butte-Duluth
workings swept the city from view,
and the sprawling white dance pa-
vilion stared down at them through a
notch in the hills. Behind Columbia
Gardens the Main Range gleamed
grayly in its patched suit of old snow.
Two minutes more and the car stood
ed after its climb.
The two people, arm in arm, began
to walk aimlessly through the park.
Green benches that in summer had
held picnicking families were piled
ers grind and thrum of the Ferris
wheel were absent from the air.
Charlotte had not visited Columbia
Gardens since the children were little,
but she missed those noises instantly.
Swep pointed to a twenty-foot cir-
cular depression in the snow.
“Looks like a fairy ring,” he said,
“where the little people have been.”
“Why—that’s what it is!” Char-
lotte was thrilled. “They have the
merry-go-round there in summer.”
They. were not talking as much as
they had expected; but neither were
they greatly excited or depressed.
Charlotte, thought a good deal, as
they walked, of the numberless Chil-
dren’s Days in summers gone—Thurs-
days, no carfares—when she had
brought Bob and Dorothy out here.
They had always enjoyed and loved
the place. She had always enjoyed the
didn’t even know she was running.
It happened only three or four days
ago... She: telegraphed ‘us; seldom !
writes. .She’s been three years this
July on the railroad hospital staff at
Melbane.”
“Does she ever come home ?’’
Quarles inquired.
“Why, no. It’s so far. One scarce-
ly realizes Montana distances. This
is the third largest State, you know.”
“Ever ask you to come and visit
her?”
“Why, she couldn’t—entertain us.
She could hardly see us. She’s so
busy.” :
“Living her own life, eh?”
His tone again was sarcastic. In-
stinctively she went to Dorothy’s de-
fense.
“We're proud of the child, Swep.
Please don’t think we’re not.
well, I rather wish sometimes that
I'd had the common sense to live |
mine.” :
She hadn’t intended to say that;
she knew it meant nothing really; it
had come out of the desire to set
Swep right as to the adored Dorothy.
Altogether it was an appalling utter-
ance; the more so because it flung
Quarles from his chair once more.
“Life’s not over yet!” he said,
through teeth set as if they chal-
len time and eternity. “If you
think it is, youre wrong. Twenty-five,
thirty years yet, maybe forty. We
can’t tell. What is there you have
to live for out here in this hole, Char-
lotte 2”
She was thinking; there were big !1
oaks and rounded hills down Lyneh-
burg way, kindly, soft-voiced people
in old Charlottesville, flowers through
all that country. She had always felt
herself a misfit in this West. De-
feat, the boy’s death, fisapne
ments; it couldn’t be that s
longed here. The front room’s walls
were pressing in on her like the walls
in that Poe-chamber of hideous mem-
ory. She rose in her turn, as though
stifled.
“I can’t stand it in this house,”
she said, thick-voiced. “Take me
somewhere, Swep. Where we can
tal.”
“Anywhere!” he muttered.
When they stepped forth on the
porch three minutes later, Charlotte’s
face was composed. She knew her
Butte as a gossipy city for all its
nerves of steel. A West Side car
was screeching into Park Street at
the Emmett Street curb, two blocks |
away.
“The very place!” Charlotte ex-
claimed. “Columbia Gardens. A sort
of park, east of town. This car runs
out there.”
The high-slung yellow monsters
two-thirds a Pullman length, halted
convulsively at the corner of Park
They took a leg-
cramping seat near the rear. Ta
being impossible in the thunderous
interior, Quarles gave himself to
scanning the people who got on and
off, Charlotte to watching the town
point-
e be- | H
That was all long past.
she was not old.
several times that the years lied.
They gravitated to the conserva-
tory, with its bulging maroon domes
and its flashing glass roofs. The old
German caretaker was genial, as most
men are who work with flowers. He
introduced them to the two parrots
who lived with them, Polly and Mike.
They learned that Polly was seventy
years of age, while Mike was over a
hundred—on hearing which Mike
laughed like a banshee and executed
a giant swing around his perch.
“Up there,” the old German told
them, pointing with his pipe, “the
fish-hatchery is. But in vinta-time of
at the foot of Park Hill, spanning one |
manned the copper and zine mines. |
“When Bryan Came to Butte.” All|
A tangle of gallows—
houses, people, mines, and all, com-
in the terminal, swaying as if it pant-
along the boardwalk; the nickel ar-:
cades were shuttered; the roller-coast-
crowds and the Canadian poplar- |
| trees. But
"ough as that of the cow-county legis-
lator who at once thundered against
it in the State capitol as “the Babylon |
of the Rockies.” One had to live out
long years in Butte to know the place
it really was. Charlottesville, of
course, was home.
She was still trying to tell herself
what Butte was when they reached
the brick house in West Park Street
a few minutes after five. In the front
room -they discovered not only Jim
Cragg, returned from his two days’
questing, but also Dorothy Montana,
mayor of Melbane. The two were
holding hands and leaning into the
warmth from the electric heater.
| “Here she is!” bellowed Jim, seeing
Charlotte in the doorway. She had
to submit to a double smother of kiss-
ing and pawing over. You started
out across the world, you got as far
as Columbia Gardens, you come back
“to this.
“Real news, girl!” Jim shouied.
Then he saw Quarles, standing un-
“certainly in the hall. “Why—why—"
i “Surely, Jim, you remember Swep-
ston Quarles . . . Mr. Quarles, my
daughter Dorothy. . . . An old Char-
lottesville friend of your father’s and
mine, dear... , Just—passing thru.”
Charlotte carried off the situation
deftly, as did Quarles. He managed,
even, to throw a convincing warmth
into eyes and a voice gone dull.
1 “Say!” Jim boomed, the amenities
barely over with—“I’ve got to talk.
I've worked thirty years or so to be
able to.”
Her husband’s neck, his big, rough-
cut face, the scalp under his thinned
hair, had all turned a coppery red.
Head thrust down between his shoul-
{ ders, hands planted in corduroy hip
pockets, one heavy boot-toe caressing
the carpet, he faced the three of
them. But his eyes were on his wife,
shyly.
“Charlotte; old girl, I've got the
Hammerhead people and a Utah
crowd started to bidding against each
other for that hole in the ground
down near Durant. Wasn't telling
you about the deal till I could get i
it somewheres near clinched. But I’ve
been hauling rock-peckers for one!
outfit or the other out there for the |b
past three months. It’ll be a mine
now, I guess. Thought I—I’d give
you a surprise.”
As he talked Jim Cragg’s voice
grew more and more hoarse, chesty,
he-mannish. In this, Charlotte recog-
, nized, he was following one of the
ways of the West. When you laid
your life’s achievements at the feet
of a person you worshipped, you must
make believe that it was nothing,
hell’s bells! nothing to it at all. Oth-
erwise you were no true Westerner.
“Oh, wonderful, Jim!” Even that
was a little excessive, by Western
code. “Now, you two sit down in
front of the heater, and we’ll get
years in her own city. Life was not
over yet. A :
When Quarles took leave of them
about nine o’clock, Charlotte accom-~
panied him to the porch. She shut
the door and walked with him to the
head of the steps. Even night had
brought no softness to the city; the
darkness stretching away from their
feet was the ghost of blued steel,
stippled with diamond light-points.
“Do you understand, Swep?” she
asked him.
“Yes, I understand, “he said. “Well,
at forty-nine, a man lives along, no
matter what happens. This was a
fool’s errand I came on—though I
‘don’t regret it, Charlotte.”
“Shall I see you in?”
“I think not. Spring should be on
the way up from Lynchburg. It's
warm now, or will be soon, at home
—my home. Good-by, Charlotte.”
By Reuben Maury in “Home.”
Pennsylvania Farmers Are Best in
the Union.
Harrisburg.—In spite of bad wea-
ther conditions existing during sever-
al of the most important spring and
summer months, Pennsylvania farm-
ers, in 1927, proved themselves among
the best farmers in the United States,
says the Department of Agriculture
at Harrisburg. e total value of
crops produced was estimated at
$249,084,000, which is $560,000 more
than that of all the New England
States and New Jersey combined.
While the acre yield of corn 39.5
bushels—was below the five year av-
erage, still this yield is three bushels
more than was produced in Iowa and
9.5 bushels more than in Illinois.
The winter wheat crop, which with
one exception was the lowest since
1911, was produced at the rate of
7.3 bushels more per acre yield than
in Iowa and 10.5 bushels more than
in Illinois.
The potato crop was the most val-
i uable produced in any State of the
Union, excepting New York, and the:
acre yield of 120 bushels was the
largest on record in Pennsylvania ex-
cepting 1923 when the yield was 1283
i bushels. The 1927 acre yield was 28
i bushels more than in Wisconsin, 19
bushels more than in Minnesota, 40:
bushels more than in Michigan and
40 bushels more than in New York—
all of which are leading potato pro-
ducing States.
The acre yield of tame hay—1.65
tons—is the highest on record for
Pennsylvania and the total crop with
the exception of 1916, was the largest
since the Civil war.
The buckwheat crop was the larg-
est since 1921 and the acre yield the
highest since 1918, giving the State
first place in the production of this
crop. ;
The acre yield of tobacco—11360
dinner.” :
! In the kitchen the two women tied
each other’s aprons. Looking at her
daughter’s splendidly shaped head |
and the strong, springing curves of
, her back and shoulders, Charlotte was |
‘swept by a sudden wild exultance.
She had achieved this. Out of the
i years she had wrenched this ‘perfec-
: tion, to make up for anything the
| years had withheld from her.
{ The?girl must have ‘sénsed her;
mother’s inner triumphing, for she
; swung about the instant the bow-knot |
tightened against her back. She |
, seized Charlotte in a fierce, hungry
embrace.
,ing you. But I had to—show I was
worthy of you and dad.” :
Another Western humbuggery,
thought Charlotte. You must put
your sacredest loves and adorations
on strictly moral grounds, that none |
might acuse you of out-and-out emo-
tion. i
' She said aloud: “Dear, we're so
proud, so proud”—and meant it, this
time. : |
i. Altogether, Charlotte had a beau-
; tiful evening. If Jim wondered at all
about Quarles’s presence, his face did
not show it. By dessert-time he fell
‘to reminiscing of the wild days and |
“It’s been so long, mother,” she ' :
She told herself Whispered. “I’ve never got over want- Twelfth in oats.
pounds—was the highest of any State,
being 136 pounds more per acre than
in Connecticut.
Pennsylvania’s rank among all the
States in crop production is as fol-
lows:
First in buckwheat
First in cigar-leaf tobacco.
Fourth in potatoes (second in value).
Fifth in grapes.
| Seventh in all tobacco. i
Eighth in commerical apple crop.
Eighth in tame hay
Fighth in pears
Ninth in pears.
Ninth in winter wheat.
Ninth in rye.
Ninth in peaches.
Seventeenth in corn.
Sixteenth in value of all crops.
State Hunters Kill 15,000 Legal Deer.
Final figures on the large game
kill in Pennsylvania will show the
greatest number of deer on record.
John B. Truman, secretary of the
commission has said. ?
At the meeting of the commission
preliminary figures submitted indi-
cated that final results would show
15,000 legal bucks, 8,000 more than
in 1926, and 25 elk, also a new total.
The bear kill during the past sea-
this place that part they shut down.” times the city had seen. He told of son was little in excess of 300, only
“Fish-hatchery ?”” said Swep. “You
mean hatch-fishery, don’t you, my
friend 7”
“But no—"
“Both of you are wrong,” Charlotte
announced primly. “He means fitch-
hashery.”
They giggled, tear-stung eyes meet-
ing and clinging. Swep pressed her
arm tightly to his side, whispering
“My dear! My dear!”
Red and purple flowers bloomed in
the conservatory, in raised beds,
waist-high. The air had a fragrance,
a moisture, and a warmth from softly
murmuring pipes, which intoxicated
the two wanderers among the flowers.
One could almost believe the warmth
came from the steel-bright sun that
giiitered above the roofs of glass.
ey stayed long there, hating to
eave. Where the flowers and par-
rots were was endless false spring.
At last, Charlotte’s left arm swept
her wrist-watch up before her eyes.
“Gracious! It’s a quarter after
four and dinner’s at six, and Jim will
be starved after his trip! We must fly.
ave dinner with us, Swep.”
The whole thing took place before
she realized what she was doing or
saying. Dinner had been at six on
ten thousand days of her life. Swep
made no comment; perhaps he saw
then the end of all this.
As they “flew” down the long
bridge from the ball park to the danc-
ing-pavilion, ‘Charlotte had glimpses
of Butte, two miles away. The city
clung to its hill, lapping over into the
ancient lake-bed that was the Flat.
Blue haze barred with steely sunshine
hung above it. The mountains that
ringed it were hard like glass, blue
like polar ice, white like refined iron.
The sun glanced off sundry windows
in town and dazzled her eyes. Out-
wardly Butte was all hard surfaces,
harsh lights, smoke, stone.
On the homeward car Charlotte
thought again about that city. In
its way it was a famous place. News-
papers and fictioneers had tacked
catch-phrases to it. “The richest hill
on earth” . . “the city of the copper
collar” . , “perch of the devil ...
“toughest town in America.”
. + . What the world knew of Butte,
it knew from those tags. And the
world’s knowledge was ahout as thor-
the big explosion of 1895, of the A.!
iP. A. riots, Bryan’s visit in '97, the
j mine shut-down of 1908, the dyna-
| miting of Miners’ Union Hall, fol-
lowed by martial law in ’14, the boom
| days during the war, when Butte
| claimed to have reached the hundred-
thousand mark, Bloody Wednesday on
Anaconda ‘Road, the Speculator Mine
disaster. Quarles listened with inter-
est, occasionally making rapid notes
in a little pad jerked from his vest
pocket. He seemed largely to have
cast off the depression that had
weighed on him visibly before dinner.
Red episodes all, these of her hus-
band’s telling; they appealed to men.
But they were no more the real Butte
than were the pictures called up by
the catch-phrases. They were merely
the things that got into the newspa-
pers. What was Butte, then, now
that she knew what it was not?
She had grown in Charlottesville,
in the mellow State of Virginia. In
this sere mountain mining town, she
had ridden the tides of life. She had
brought forth her children here, had
lost games and won them, had met
death and sorrow and learned to defy
those forces that could not conquer
short of killing her. Now, at forty-
eight, she was seeing her husband’s
eyes turning to her incessantly as he
talked, that shy look in them as of
one laying everything he had in the
world at her feet. She was seeing
her daughter well started in the way
she had chosen and thanking her,
Charlotte Cragg, for all she had and
was. She was remembering the boy;
with pain, true, but she had lived af-
ter even that frightful wound.
The place where such things came
to people, she concluded, was the
place that was meant by the word
home. Wherever those things came
to any one, would be home for that
person. It might be London, Cape
Town, Peoria, Unalaska, where-not.
For her, Butte was home. It must
be the same for thousands of other
people who were living their lives
there, and who never got into the
newspapers.
She was deeply gladdened over her
discovery. It brought a feeling of
knowing at last exactly where she be-
longed; a very comforting feeling, she
one-half of last year’s kill. Scarcity
of food and resultant scattering of
the animals is blamed.
The rabbit kill, the figures indicat-
ed, will exceed 3,000,000 and that of
the squirrels was estimated at 1,200,-
000. The wild turkey total may reach
10,000 as a result of the 1926 closed
season.
Hunting fatalities totaled 67, an
increase of 20 over the previous year.
decreasing the hazard of hunting.
The commission discussed methods-.of
several members suggesting longer
seasons to prevent concentration dur-
ing short periods. 2
The new license ‘law will wake
available $200,000 for land purchase
by the commission during the pres-
ent year. Option already has been
taken on 61,500 acres.
The commission elected Ross L.
Leffler, McKeesport, as chairman, and
L M. Reis, New Castle, viec presi-
ent.
tment pies.
Origin of “Passport.”
“Porta” is the Latin for gate, the
word turning into “porte” in French,
the language of diplomacy, and, as
it were, the international tongue for
travelers. We have plenty of traces
of it in our own English, as, for in-
stance, in the word “portal.”
Passport originally, then, was
“passe port” and meant “pass the
gate,” or in other words, a safe con-
duct either out of or into a country.
Which is just about what our mod-
ern passport really is now.
a : :
—*“He was always full of quips,” a
Boston banker said, speaking of the
late Thomas Lawson. “A few years
ago I attended the funeral of a mil-
lionaire financier—one of those ‘high
financiers’ whose low methods Law-
son loved to turn the light on. I
arrived at the funeral a little late.
I took a seat beside Lawson and
whispered, “How far has the service
gone?’ Lawson, nodding toward the
clergyman in the pulpit, whispered
back tersely, ‘Just opened for the de-
fense.’ "—Boston Transcript.
~The “Watchman” is the most
found. ‘She began planning useful
readable paper published, Try it.