Jewel Weed

ple, might seem glory enough for one life; but Richard Percival was of such stuff that all past triumphs became dust and ashes. He was greedy

ot to fill a bare space on the wall; there were books and books and books, many of them with the worn covers of old friends. Here, clasped in the arms of another old friend of a chair, half-sat, half-lay his mother, and near her lounged Ellery Norris, the friend whose delicate mingling of love and admiration was as fragrant wine to Dick, who believed in himself because others had alway

Poor old Norris! It must have been tough to grow up without a home. As for this fragrant type of femininity, y

ent, very secure about his future. All would be good. That was the natural order of the

re the boyish face that looked up and the boyish face that looked down, though the painted Percival, a little idealistic about the eyes, wholly firm about th

Mrs. Percival spoke to his thou

I might be. I wish I might

don't have a drag on you from the beginning, as he had. Has Dick told you the story, Ellery?" She turned with a gentle smile toward th

rm square hand over the slender one that w

e yours, and to have you for mine,

now how the First Minnesota held the hill and turned the day at Gettysburg, though few of them lived to tell of their own bravery? It m

silence

ent on, "but Dad, before he was twenty, carried a bullet in his side.

eek with the mothe

t clung to him and killed him at last than it would have been to give everythi

rd you know least; but y

you have the advantage of me

dour lesson," Norris a

dying, I mean to give mine by living," Dick we

softly. "You have his spirit and his genius. You have

you mean,

gun. I'm counting on you to live his life as he

e sun and the moon to

ust do that or cry. "But you were certainly born to something, Dick. You've shown it ever sin

g his particular gang ever sin

the young men saw visions together and felt themselves called to put shoulder to the car of righteousness, while they discussed with the sublime self-sufficiency of inexperience the politics and sociology of the world. The fellows all believed in him as one of those

unconscious self-confidence of carriage, in his eyes that

one home to be men. Success began to look not like an aurora, but like a solid str

nous rolling as it brought him ever westward and homeward. Farm after farm, village and town, city upon city, long level prairies that cried out of fertility, the rush and roar and chaos of Chicago, and then more cities and rivers and hills and lakes, and now the blessed restfulness of home

ant fact in the consciousness of a people as wide as itself. Thousands of redmen once covered it, and it was th

e a living man. Man-His image-must breathe the spir

himself building the structure higher on its firm foundations, making it great enough to match the wide fertile acres that lay about it, and the dazzling Minnesota sky that hung above

y before yesterday that I came home? Forty-eight hours have put a gulf between the old and t

tly at her son's vagaries

. They don't seem to think anything exciting has happened, except that the city has doubled in size and there has been another presidential election. They aren't a bit stirred up over me

ne's point of view is not always that of the gentleman and the scholar. Its great men are not of the campus, but those who c

aughed

after my own

d with maternal complacency. "Both of y

s," Norris said whimsically. "Small and narrow as is the berth I have at

o every opportunity you get." Dick's voice took on some of the patronage of a leade

which is the masculine American equivalent for embrace and eternal protestation.

ou have at Mr. Early's rec

ere were a thousand women with big hats, all talking at once. But in the nearest there were just Madeline and Mrs. Lenox, and that was a good show. By Jove! Mad

cribe Miss Elton. She's too simple

lready, are yo

ival interrupted. "Madeline has so

enthusiast

r very dea

to see her to-morrow. We'l

ight easily have become a smirk. Yet his mother's complacent satisfaction with the inevitable irritated him. Madeline

e air of one who has heard

How good it is to have you to lean on and trust! These have been lonely

s, too, stooped and kissed her hand, and the two watched her as she moved in her slow wa

one without it. I grew up without any atmosphere to speak of, and I've been gasping fo

earned his standing among the men as he had earned his standing in scholarship, by dogged persistence instead of by the right of eminent domain to which Dick was born. He had never envied Percival's readier brain, wider pop