Beguiled by their pleading against his better judgment, Mose finally permitted the vivacious girls to lead him to the bluff overlooking the creek. Here there was an almost perpendicular fall of two hundred feet from the edge of the field to the bed of the

stream.

As the trio approached the dangerous spot, Mose indicated far more fear and hesitancy than did the girls. His tanned face blanched and he hung back nervously.

warned.

"Careful, Polly!" he "Don't pull my hand like that. What if my foot had slipped then? I ain't so spry as I used to be. And you girls mustn't go near here when I'm workin', fer if you fell over 'twould kill you deader'n a smelt."

"What's a smelt, Daddy?"

"Oh, a smelt's a queer little feller of a fish what's awful dead when he's dead."

Standing safely back from the brink Mose picked up a stone and threw it into the chasm. Far below a faint chug was heard as the missile plunged into a pool of water.

"You wouldn't strike in the water if you fell over," warned the farmer. "You'd strike on them tarnation rough stones down thar 'n 'twould squash you right out flat."

The girls shuddered, but finally emboldened, they approached the brink and threw daisies and buttercups over and laughed gleefully to see the flowers twist and turn until they alighted in the pool or on the on the rocks below.

"That's enough now," said Mose at last. "I've got to cut this here clover. You girls scamper over to the other side of the field and play in the shade of the trees."

"Oh, go on and cut your hay," answered Polly contumaciously. "We're all right. We're big enough to keep out of danger. I'm going to stay here and pick this nice lot of daisies. It's the best patch in the

Reluctantly and with many backward glances on the part of Polly, the little misses finally strolled away from the dangerous precipice and seated themselves under a maple tree at the farther side of the field.

Mose unhitched his team, threw the rusty machine into mesh and struck into the field of red-top.

The falling of the grass before the scintillating knives aroused in Mose unwonted emotions. The great fear. of yesterday still lingered in his mind and he found himself comparing the stalks of clover to people and the clattering mower to Death ever advancing apace with his flashing scythe. Fascinated, he watched the plants shiver for a moment when smitten and then slither to the ground where the leaves almost immediately began to wither under the fierce heat of the sun.

"That's the way we've all got to go sometime," he murmured. "We've all got to die, but I dread it!"

Possibly it was Digby's threat to take the colts, the nearness of the dangerous precipice, or the contemplation of a startling woodcut in a patent medicine almanac which Mose had scanned the previous evening that had aroused in him this peculiar frame of mind. Presumably it was the latter, for he was not inventive enough to have conjured up the picture of Death and his scythe without help.

He wondered how it felt to die. First, he decided, there would be difficulty in breathing, next, terrible pains and, finally-darkness.

"Lord!" he choked as he slapped the colts with the lines, "I hate to think of it. If they was only some way fer a feller to git out of it. But they ain't. We've all got to come to it. Lord!"

When on the bluff side of the piece Mose drove cautiously, indeed, during the first two rounds, for a sudden startled plunge of the colts in the wrong direction would mean a terrible death for him and destruction for the team. He shuddered every time he passed the dangerous spot.

A more energetic man would have erected a strong fence there long before to guard against just such mishaps, but it is probable that the idea. had never occurred to Mose.

Round after round was safely compassed and Duryea's heart became. glad-its usual condition when not frozen by fear. Why worry about tomorrow? Something would surely turn up before then. Perhaps Rob would hold off until the clover could be sold. Perhaps he was only joking after all. But, no, Mose well knew that Digby rarely joked and he was a man of his word. No need to bank on that. However, he would not worry when all nature seemed glad.

It was a typical summer's day of the better sort. Fleecy clouds drifted across the deep-blue sky, locusts sang noisily and heat waves shimmered over the field of red-top. It was simply irresistible.

Never in all his forty years had Mose felt more content. He puffed away at his corncob pipe and occasionally sang snatches of songs. He had frequent recourse to a jug of buttermilk which he had placed conveniently at hand under an armful of cut clover in order to keep it cool.

He had arranged another armful of clover in the seat of the mower to serve as a cushion and add to his content. Although he frequently called to Ruth and Polly, he did not worry. about them. If he could possibly help it, he never worried long about. anything. He gave himself over to pleasant meditation on nothing of moment and his heart sang within him. This was the ideal job-sitting

easily in the seat of the mower, riding about the field behind the blacks, enjoying the sunshine and the pipe.

On his fourth revolution around the field he missed his neighbor's daugh

ter.

"Where's Polly?" he called to Ruth. "Oh, she just went into the middle of the field to pick some more daisies," answered Ruth. "She'll be back pretty soon. We're all right, Daddy."

On the next time around, the off horse suddenly began to plunge and kick.

Over its back the air seemed to be alive with darting insects. "Yellow-jackets!" ejaculated Mose in alarm as he jerked on the lines. The nigh horse now began to plunge wildly under the sharp goading of the venomous bees. Mose exerted all his strength in an effort to hold the mettlesome team. Then suddenly the off rein, being old and patched, broke and the horses began to run.

Mose tried to throw the machine out of mesh, but the rusty lever stuck-possibly because of the high rate of speed. The team were running due east and parallel to the cliff. Only about twenty feet separated them from the precipice. Duryea could not turn the frightened horses up the slope for the off line was broken. To turn the other way meant destruction. The only alternative was to fall off the machine behind and let the colts go.

Although his heart was wrung with fears for his beloved team's safety, Mose was about to adopt this plan, when directly in front of the rattling knives and but a few yards away, he beheld a vision that almost stopped the beating of his heart.

There sitting in the clover, her checkered apron full of daisies and buttercups, was little Polly Digby. Her eyes, open wide with terror, were fixed on the inflamed nostrils of the oncoming team. She seemed as incapable of movement as a bird which gazes into the eyes of a rattlesnake.

Three seconds more and she would be horribly mangled in the flashing knives of the mower. If Mose should If Mose should falter for one brief moment she was lost.

The children's friend did not hesitate. There was but one thing to do and he did it.

Bracing his feet, he pulled on the nigh line with all his strength. The team swerved sharply to the left, a terrible scream of terror broke from the nigh horse, and then 'mid a shower of dust and grass-team, machine and man disappeared over the brink. A snapping of brush followed and, far below on the rocks-a crash.

With blended horror and ineffable gratitude in his eyes, he threw himself prone on the ground and peered over the brink.

On the jagged rocks below he beheld the fragments of the mowingmachine and the mangled bodies of the black colts. Instinctively he closed his eyes for a moment, then resolutely opened them again and carefully scanned the bottom of the gorge.

The body of his neighbor was not in sight.

Then his eyes wandered to a spot one-third the way down the cliff. Just at the spot where the accident occurred three sturdy oak trees had formerly grown in a cluster, but yesterday's gale had uprooted them. The force of the wind had not been sufficient to wholly tear them loose from the soil, and they hung over the bank at an angle of about forty-five

scream.

"Oh Daddy! Daddy!"

The noise of the runaway and the screams of the children had attracted the attention of Robert Digby who was at work in an adjoining field. He hurried to the spot and gazed about questioningly.

Still sitting in the clover, her face buried in her hands, was his little daughter, Polly-safe. Her shoulders were quivering with horror and sorrow. She was sobbing hysterically. Digby's eyes followed the tell-tale path of the mower, where the swath led directly toward Polly until six Polly until six yards from where she crouched it suddenly swerved toward the left and mingled with those previously cut. And seeing, Digby rushed for the bank.

intertwined branches made a perfect meshwork, but the impetus and weight of the team had carried horses and machine through this providential support to destruction on the rocks.

As Digby's eyes sought the maze of foliage, a movement in the branches attracted his attention.

Dorothy Canfield frankly states that her "Raw Material" is a "rather odd" book. We will accept (HARCOURT her adjective if by it BRACE & Co.) she only means a book which is entirely different and delightfully surprising. I am an ardent admirer of Miss Canfield's literary creations, and my joy on hearing that a new book had been published was measured by the pleasure her past work had given me. My curiosity and anticipatory zest were whetted by such notices as the following:

"Dorothy Canfield has an exquisite gift for a sketch. What she sees in any fortunate moment she can tell you with an eloquence which draws tears or laughter at her will. Her command for words for pictures is absolute."

-Boston Transcript.

Such a notice should have prepared me, but, nevertheless, it was with the happy memories of her splendid novels in mind that I opened "Raw Material." Instead of a group of characters carefully and cunningly revealed through a series of varied experiences as in "Rough Hewn," I found a number of brief episodes, each complete in itself as far as any connection with the rest of the book was concerned, but no more complete than any episode in life can be which only time can finish and fulfil.

Such a plan for a book does seem odd, especially as only two or three of the sketches can truly be classified as short stories. Miss Canfield, however, tells in an explanatory preface how she came to form a habit of mind which delights in perceiving the dramatic in an incident of the most ordinary daily life and spinning from it in her mind stories far more real, vivid. and pulsating with life than any she has so far been able

to transfer to paper. This pleasure she wishes to bestow on others so she has written a book stating as concisely as possible, with almost no personal reaction, episodes, tragic, pathetic, or humorous as the case may be,-which seem to her suggestive of how incidents. shape human destiny and of how human beings react to experiences in ways. which make us first, pityingly deprecatory, next, proud of the race to which we belong.

With

The rest the reader must do for himself. What he finds in this book will depend upon the keeness of his observation, the wealth of his sympathetic understanding of other people in the past, and on the richness of his imagination. and sensitiveness to suggestion. such qualities Miss Canfield is evidently well-endowed, for she has taken simple characters like Old Man Warner, the stubborn Vermont farmer, Fairfax Hunter, the colored family servant, Uncle Giles, the grafter, and showed the pathos, strength, and weakness in their characters in the simplest manner, always with a sense of humor or of tragedy playing over her words like an illuminating, highly colored light.

Incidents from her life abroad also become quite as stimulating to us as those drawn from her home close at hand in Vermont. We feel that she has made us understand and know Monsieur Brodard with his high ideals so tragically overthrown, Professor Paul Meyer who fell a victim to too great absorption in one interest, and, perhaps most of all, Octavie Moreau, that strongminded, intellectual woman with whom we share a desperate experience in a German prison camp.

The book is written simply, needless to say, with the simplicity that conceals

Art. For it is Art indeed which selects a dramatic episode from a life and with a few inspired words truly bestows the emotions on others with the additional gift of a subtle hidden suggestion which we search for in vain, although our imagination instantly responds to its lure. Miss Canfield has treated her readers to a new kind of literary pleasure. She has given them extracts from her own full life without conclusions, which reveal human nature in such a way that we must seek to solve and understand

it, with such vividness that we delight to weave pasts and futures for these new friends to whom we are introduced.

In short "Raw Material" is a book which leaves, I would say, about half to the reader and therefore will delight all people who like to think for themselves. I have already said too much, however, and should follow Miss Canfield's example and allow people to do at least half for themselves when forming their opinion about her book.

Old memories: