Bunker Bean

sat at a desk on a high floor of a very high office-building in "downtown" New York. The first correction he would ha

lancey, with musical prefixes; or a good, short, beautiful, but dignified name like "Gordon Dane." He liked that one. It suggested something. But Bean! And Bunker

ed about women; in short, to have suffered. Gordon Dane's was a face before which the eyes of women would fall in half-frightened, half-ecstatic subjection, and men would feel the inexplicable m

nging for the cravat of brilliant hue, he ate out his heart under neutral tints. Had he not, in the intoxication of his first free afternoon in New York, boldly purchased a glorious thing of silk entirely, flatly red, an

bric straight to his red secret. The rag burned on his breast. Afterward it was something to look at beyond the locked door; perhaps to try on behind drawn shades, late of a night. And how little Gordon Dane would have

indows; but to buy and to wear openly, and get yourself pointed at-laughed at! Again sounded the refrain of the hired bard of dress. "It is cut to give the wearer the appearance of perfect physical dev

man a look of profound, albeit not unkindly, contempt. It could be seen, even as he sat in the desk-chair, that he was a short man; not an inch better than Bean, there. He was old. Bean, when he thought o

and still curiously dark, which made them look threatening. The eyes were the coldest of gray, a match for the hair in colour, and set far back in caverns. The nose was blunt, the chin a mere knobby challenge, and between them was the unloveliest moustache Bean had ever been compelled to observe; short, ragged

was the kind called "a decent gray," and it had emphatically not been cut "to give the wearer the appearance of perfect physical development." So far as Bean could determine the sole in

course? But nothing of the sort; a strange, thin, nameless leather, never either shiny or quite dull, as broad at the toe as any place, no buttons; not

ut no! Stiff-bosomed white shirts, cuffs that "came off," cuffs that fastened with hideous metallic devices that Bean

s said, on the outside of the package, to be "predigested," one apple, and a glass of milk moderately inflated with seltzer. Bean himself had fared in princely fashion that day on two veal cutlets bathed in a Germa

bit under eight cents. His own had cost sixty

s to encounter in Bean's eyes on

ffic mag'r lines Wes' Chicago dear

marvel of condensed neatness. Breede had had trouble with stenographers; he was not easy to "take." He spoke swiftly, often indistinctly, and it maddened him to be as

enses of Grand Valley branch for las' four months with engineer's

wrote two other lines of shorthand. Breede might have supposed these to record the last sentence he had spoken, but one able to

iked the phrase and the way Breede emitted it. That was a good thing to say to some one who might think you were afraid. He treasured the words; fondled them with the point of his pencil. He saw himself speaking them pithily to various persons with whom

und hundred million." Bean's own stipend was thirty dollars a week, but he pitied Breede. Bean could learn t

are numbered. How few they are to be! Already the door of Enchantment has swung to his scared touch. The times will show a

ith his innermost soul of souls could permit any sane understanding of his works, and this it is our privilege, and our necessity, to make, i

was commonplace, unstimulating, dull-the little wooden town set among cornfields, "Wel

ore he had survived to her one short year, began to harbour the accursed suspicion that his beauty was not flawless nor his intelligence supreme. To put it brutally, she almost admitted to herself that he was not the most remarkable child in all the world. To be sure, this is a bit less incredible when we know that Bean's mother, at his advent, thought far less highly of Bean's father than on the occasion, seven years be

the kitchen stove, began it. When a prized new sailor hat was blown to the centre of a duck-pond he sought to recover it without any fearsome self-communing. If faith alone could uphold one, Bean would have walked upon the face of th

om the ground destroy it. One must leap from high places, and Bean did so. The roof of the chicken house was the last eminence to have an experi

f him, knowing itself dreaded. That splendid courage he was born with had faded to an extreme timid

fying than all that had gone before. At least in the physical world, if you kept pretty still, didn't touch things, didn't climb, stayed away from edges and windows and water and cows and

sit stiffly on a chair in the presence of falsely enthusiastic callers; or he was taken to call on those same callers and made to sit stiffly again while they, with feverish affectations of curiosity, asked him what his name was, something they

pat on his new shoes. Even little girls, divining his abjectness, were prone to act rowdyish with him. And this esp

wish to exchange this for sweets with a certain madman in the village who had no understanding of the value of his stock. His mother demurred; not alone because candy was unwholesome, but because the only right thing to do with money was to "save" it. And his mother prevailed, even though his f

fore the unexciting process of saving it began. Well enough, that! He had grown too fearful

, or chase him, "playing" respectfully with his new dime, came one of slightly superior years and criminal instincts demanding to inspect the tr

and ran hastily off-doubtless into a life of prosperous endeavour. And little Bean, presently found by his mother crooning over a large copper cent, was appalled by what followed. He had brought back "a bigger money," yet he had done something infamous. It was the

as the compelling utterance he got from the two merry gentlemen who passed him at the gate one day. So jolly were they with their songs and laughter that he followed them a little way to where they sat under a tree and drank turn by turn from a bottle. His ear caught the thing and his lips shaped it so cunningly that

that he might cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord. He knew this to mean himself, for his mother glared over at him where he knelt; he was grateful for the kneeling posture at that moment; he would not have cared to

rsely wished to be thought equally low. His mother was again the arbiter. Her rule as applied to children of his own age wrought but little hardship. She considered other childr

mall boy if it ever had the chance. You drove to incoming trains, which was high adventure. But that was not all. You loaded the wagon with packages from the trains and these you proceeded to deliver in a leisurely and important manner. And some citizen of weight was sure to halt the wagon and ask if

wagon, a gay blade directing his steed with a flourish! To be sure, she had found him doing this in a mist of romance, as one who must have his gallant fling at life before settling down. But the mist had cleared. Alonzo Bean, no longer

dening influence of a father to whom Romance had broken its fine promises. Little Bean distressed her enough by playing at express-wagon in preference to all other games. He meant to drive a real one when he was big enough-t

she even consented to his visiting some other Beans. Unfortunately, there were no Bunkers to harbour the child of one who had

o well to look down upon because they were not Bunkers. So much he understood, and that he was to ride in a stage and find

he two apples proffered by the robber, who resumed his seat and ate brazenly of his loot, the solitary passenger would still be no party to the outrage. He presently dropped his own two apples over the back of the stage, and later, lacking the preacher's courage, averred that he had eaten them-and couldn't eat another one, thank you. He was not a little affected by the fine bravado with which the old man ate apple after apple along miles of the

cal moralist, was to return along that road

nsation of being deferred to. Thereafter he lorded it over them, speaking in confident tones and making wild demands of entertainment. His mother had been right. They were Beans and, therefore, not much. He had brought his own silver napkin-ring and had meant to show them how wonderfully he folded and rolled his napkin after each meal. But it seemed they possesse

of pie is the heaven-allotted portion; that no one, even partly a Bunker, should crave beyond it; yet this fatuous old pair

s from a sack of tobacco passed companionably back and forth. His own father was supposed to smoke but once a week, on Sunday, and then a cigar such as even a male Bunker might reputably burn. But a pipe, and be

lumbago sometimes so you wouldn't hardly believe any one could suffer that way and live. As for Gramper himself, he had a cough brought on by tobacco that would carry him off dead one of

rich black flakes and fled with matches to a nook of charming secrecy in the midst of the l

, blowing out the smoke even as Grammer had done. Up to a certain moment

the pipe he had selected was Gramper's own pipe, the one that made coughs. He became conscious of something more than throaty discomfort. Tiny beads of sweat bejewelled his brow, the lilac bush began to revolve swift

mper had made a cursory examination of the big yard, with especial attention to the lilac clump, where a pipe and other evidence was noticed. After that they not only became strangely reassured, but during their evening smoke on the little porch they often chuckled as if relishing in secret some r

for him, no small concession, for this room was never put to vulgar use; rarely entered, indeed, save once a month fo

ened one because they must not be touched. Varnished pine-cones, flint arrow-heads, statuettes set on worsted mats, tiny strange boxes rarely ornamented-you mustn't even shake them to see if they contained anything-a small stuffed alligator in the act of climbing a pole; a frail cup and saucer; a watch-chain fashioned from Grammer's hair probably long before she fell into evil habits; a pink china dog that simpered; a dusty bla

n. It was a shell from the sea, polished to a dazzling brilliance of opal and jade, amethyst and sapphire, delicately subdued, blending as the tints in the western sky at sunset, soft, elusive, fluent. To his rapturously shocked soul, it was a living thing. Instantly a spell was upon him; long he gazed into its depths. It was more than deep; it wa

he could translate only as something vast, yet without shape or substance, that opened to him, enfolded him, lifted him. It was a vision of boundless magnitudes and himself among them-among them and with a power he could put upon them. While it lasted he had a child's di

hewed without enthusiasm, then hurled the remnant at an immature rabbit that he saw regarding him from the edge of the lilac

concealment, he remembered the shell. A longing for possession seized him. It was more than that. The thing

gain before the whatnot, his

re yours?" He point

ryth

inting finger to

ything th

of

thing

s,

his on

oice contents of the fourth shelf. She was baking pie

dly stopped at the lower shelf, having prevented Grammer from saying that those valuable objects were also hers, he had still the right to come into his own. If the

It was not conceivable that any one having so celestial a treasure would willin

d that he did not contrive at least one look at his wonderful shell, but he craftily did not linger t

lf was not delighted at this. He had suffered the ministrations of that same doctor and he could imagine no visit of his to result in a situation at all pleasant to any o

stay on, a

Gramper told him with a strange, grave manner that now he must go. He knew that he was not told why; somethin

a drink of water. When he returned his hands trembled about the shell. Swiftly it went to the bott

d in front of the little weather-beaten house he saw that Grammer was crying again. His conscience hurt him a lit

reathless after his run across a corner of the east forty. Instantly he was in

aunted him with not having packed everything, after all. The

d drew out the shell, fondling it, fascinated anew by its varying sheen, excited by the freedom with which he now might touch it. Again

l I found at

formless grunt that might have been perfunctory praise, and resumed his half-muttered talk to himself, mar

daunted. There would surely be others less

nt gate and his father, looking unus

l I found at

other i

l I found at

other i

re were women inside, women who moved with an effect of bustling stillness, the same women who had so often asked him what his name was. They seemed to know it well enough now. He

l I found at

e of them moved about, and then through a doorway he saw in the

e one. His father led him into that room and lifted him up to see. His mother's face was there under a glass. He could se

a! Ma

d not open

he shell and now, in the fading light from the low window, he lost himself once more in its depths. Inwardly he knew that a terror lurked near, but he had not ye

hat his mother was gone. He wondered also at the novel consideration he saw being shown to his father. Dressed in a new suit of black, with an unaccustomed black hat, his father was plainly become a man of importance. He was one apart, and people of undoubted consequence deferred