bers of the fraternity were urging me to put myself forward in literary work of some sort, both for my own sake and for the fraternity. Add to that my own personal ambition, and you have, as the detectives say, a pretty strong motive. Hate and despair are uncomfortable experiences, but love I did not consider to be such—at jny rate, I had no idea then how un comfortable it could be. So I made up my mind to fall in love. Deliberately conning over the young ladies of my acquaintance who seemed to me at the time to be most worthy of my priceless regard, I made choice of three. Among these three there was little to guide to any further discrimination, and so I left the mat ter to chance, and the choice fell upon Helen. What to do next I hardly knew, but if, as some people say, propinquity is one of the great essentials to love, I would succeed. That evening I called on Helen. We had been old friends. Having been in the same class at the high school, we had been thrown much together, but for the two intervening years we had seen little of each other. I was surprised to find how really lov able she had become. Those two years had given her just enough of maturity to carry her past the brook where childhood and womanhood meet. I made up my mind then and there that fall ing in love wasn’t going to be a very difficult thing, after all. Then followed the usual round of gaieties common to all the summers of youth. Picnics, moonlight drives, tennis, with two or three little parties, gave me ample opportunities, besides those of my own making, to see much of her. At last, after about a mouth of probation, I began to feel that I had fallen, or rather drifted, into love. All the arts that an immature youngster like I then was knew how to use, I used. Flowers, candy, and all the little things that youths usually lavish upon maidens, I sent her. But all the time I had not the least idea how my suit was pro gressing. At last one beautiful moonlight night I determined to put the matter to the test. We had been a merry party that even ing, but the others, seeming to realize that I had a right to remain a little longer than they, had drifted away. She was sitting in the hammock, and I was leaning against one of the posts to which it was hung, when I began. “ Helen, we have known each other quite a long time and somewhat intimately, but until this summer I had never realized what your presence meant to me. The love of you has grown in my heart until it is now its only overmastering passion. I have The Free Lance, [May,
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