The Golden House

ation in certain lover-like attentions and in a gayety of manner, but it was not in his nature to feel the sacrifice she had made or its full magnanimity; he

t Carmen dead and put Jack in Coventry, and then there would have been the devil to pay. It takes quality, though; she's such a woman as Jack's mother. If

d to say, "My dear friend, she is too good for us," and Jack had not protested, but with a laugh had accepted the implication of his position on a lower moral level. Perhaps he did not see exactly what it meant, this being on confidential terms about his wife with another woman; all he cared for at the moment w

act an old farmhouse, not an impertinent, gay, painted piece of architecture set on the sand like a tent for a month, but a solid, ugly, fascinating habitation, with barns and outhouses, and shrubs, and an old garden-a place with a salty air friendly to delicate spring blossoms and summer fruits and foliage. If it was a farmhouse, the sea was an important part of the farm, and the low-ceiled rooms suggested cabins; it required little imagination to fancy that an East-Indian ship had some time come ashore and settled in the sand, that

mitiveness of the farmer-fisherman neighbors, he liked the sea. And then he could run up to the city any morning and back at night. He spent the summer with Edith at the Golden House. This was his theory. When he went to town in the morning he expected to return at night. But often he telegraphed in the afternoon that he was detained by business; he had to see Henderson, or Mavick was over from Washington. Occasionally, but n

ntional pleasures of the town, as if one were in some foreign city. She used to say that New York in matting and hollands was almost as nice as Buda-Pesth. These were really summer nights, operatic sorts of nights, with music floating in the air, gay groups in the streets, a stage imitation of nature in the squares with the thick foliage and the heavy shadows cast on the asphalt by the electric lights, the brilliant shops, the nonsense of the summer theatres, where no on

ritual face and unselfish enthusiasm. Carmen said she felt like kneeling at one of the little boxes and confessing-the sins of her neighbors. And then the four-Carmen, Miss Tavish, Mavick, and Jack-had a little supper at Wherry's, which they enjoyed all the more for the good action of visiting the East Side-a little supper which lasted very late, and was more and more enjoyed as it went on, and was, in fact, so gay that when the ladies were set down at their houses, Jac

lent people in New York because it seemed to be in harmony with the philanthropic endeavor of the time, but which was only

r, the throngs of fashion had disappeared, comparatively few women were about, and those that appeared in the Sunday promenade were evidently sight-seers and idlers from other quarters; the throng of devotees was gone from the churches, and indee

dlers. To most this outdoor life was a great enjoyment, and to them the unclean streets with the odors and exhalations of decay were homelike and congenial. Nor did they seem surprised that a new country should so completely reproduce the evil smells and nastiness of the old civilization. It was all familiar and picturesque. Work still went on in the crowded tenement-houses, and sickness simply changed its character, death showing an increased friendliness to yo

visits a necessity; and though she was weary of her monotonous work, and heart-sick at its small result in such a mass, there never came a day when she could quit it. She made no reputation in her profession by this course; perhaps she awoke little gratitude from those she served, and certain

about any religion of humanity. Perhaps she simply felt that she was a part of these people, and that whether they rejected her or received her, there was nothing for her to do but to give herself to them. She would probably have been surprised if Father Damon had told her that she was in this following a great example, and there might have been a tang of agnostic bitterness in her reply. When she thou

opening out from it was another large bed. As he knocked and opened the door, he saw that Gretchen was not at home. Her father sat in a rocking-chair by an open window, on the sill of which stood a pot of carnations, the Easter gift of St. George's, a wax-faced, hollow-eyed man of gentle manners, who looked round wearily at the priest. The mother was washing clothes in a tub in one corner; in another corner

e in, Father Damon," she cried ou

ed, after speaking to the sick man, and returning in German the greeting of the woman, who had turned from the tub, "I've no dou

an and English, "it don't come any more in dot

, all

but my man can't earn nothing any more." And the woman, as sh

Father Damon ask

oed up by de Park with Dick

r. Leigh interposed, "that Gretchen should h

tings by de Museum,

straining power other than her own impulse, and that without religious guidance she was pretty certain to drift into frivolous and vulgar if not positively bad ways. The father was a free-thinker; but Father Damon thought he had some hold on the mother, who was

he disconsolate, literally, without thought of self, sharing, as it were, the misery and sin of this awful city? And today, for the first time, he seemed to have seen the woman in her-or was it the saint? and he recalled that wonderful illumination

long time since she had seen him. Nor did he think that the pang at his heart had another cause than religi

eply to her inquiry as to his absence, "I

" and she looked at him professionally, "if you will allow m

est that spoke-"in meditation and pray

I dare say," she added

not?" h

ows it's hard enough to keep up an appetite down here. But it is physical endurance you need f

officiating in the chapel apparently sustained by nothing but zeal and pure spirit, and wondered

ut not as an example to these people

ew, I fear." And after a moment he said: "But, docto

but she seems to be getting on very wel

she is able to

s upon a young girl, and the temptations. She was even forced to admit the value in the way of restraint, as a sort of police force, of the church an

to stand alone. She

e is so

e obligation, which the poor very easily feel, of doing her share for the family, she is not in so much moral danger as o

any sort of religion-that this East Sid

of the actual struggle for existence she saw arou

you think there is any more spirituality, any more of the essentials of what you

a democrat and in sympathy with the people, and rated quite at its full value the conventional fashion in religion. "

to save themselves. How many are trying to save ot

er, still speaking mildly, "the immense amou

dge over the chasm between classes with flowers, in pots, yes, and Bible-readers and fashionable visitors and little aid societies-little palliatives for an awful state of things. Why, look at it! Last winter the city authorities hauled off the snow and the refuse from the fashionable avenues, and dumped it down in the already blockaded and filthy side streets, and left us to struggle

and I should be as despairing as you are if I did not know there w

s, poverty, ignorance, at close quarters with hunger and diseas

you don

and saw a look of pai

n me for speaking so. I get so discouraged sometimes." They stood still a moment, looking up and down the hot, crowded, odorful street t

they moved along. "I don't s

she knew the father's absolute sincerity; she felt she had already said too much; and she only murmured, as if to herself,

tered that room today, and saw you with that sick child in your arms, and comprehended what it all meant, I h

flood. "Ah," escaped from her lips, and she walked on more swiftly, not daring to look up. This from him! This

flush again came to her neck and brow, and she saw his pale, spiritual face, and co