half-somnolent memories of a French garrison town and its gay buglers.

This river has lost no whit of curiosity at the end of its run. It pries about the shore, peering up narrow inlets, lapping the reeds below ancestral doorways where red lilies gleam against the dusty clapboards, and a tide of chicory spreads a thin film of azure over headstrong grass. It pushes up creeks that indent moor and farmland, sea at heel. Like an old Battersea, timbered bridges link the promontories, one starting by an old tollhouse ruin, once in use like its flourishing brethren farther upstream. You come familiarly on spruce and fir, juniper and berry pasture, between the native houses, built to catch the harbor wind, and blossoming with gay roadside gardens. Many an inquisitive lane runs off the main road (itself no result of surveyor's toil), hunting for, and bordering, the water, shaded by enormous elms and chestnuts.

Here are the stately houses of a past generation. Here, beneath these bosquets that might grace a French park, lounged the gallants of old as their ladies plied tambour frame, clad in the delicate muslins those great Indiamen in the roads were wont to bring. Fine balustrade and grisaille wall, clustered windows, pedimented door, still may you find. Passes a tottering survivor; still are tales told of early and late occupants.

Here is a noble tomb, there a communal burying-ground, blown full of sea savors, red with roses. And the scattered farms hold their dead close at hand in narrow yards whence the children of God cannot stray far away.

Well downstream, by the gurry-strewn shore of decaying dory and burdock

buried capstan, may lie a black wreck, gnawed by the tides. In the cove, an ancient lumber schooner is tied up for good and all. Spiders man her bleached decks, and the tide sluices through her hold, making delightful gurgles as you look down the open green, hatchway. An old stay of the port light creaks in the gust, and the rotten cordage aloft strays in loops and raveled tassels.

Poor old Luella! linked to a fir tree, of no kin to her masts that have known the strain of tempest, neighbor to lobsterpot and punt of fisher children! There lies her shell in a lonely corner, where yet she may face offing, watching the fivemasters wing out to sea, feeling the disintegrating tides and grinding ice when the winter sea jams the creek floe against her, done with voyaging.

Darting tugs scream in the harbor; some stranger calls for a pilot; a visitor requires a proper salute. When the white fogs flood in from the Banks, bringing uncertainty and mystery, there is a "skerry of shrieks" all up and down the channel, and a banging of pans and beating of bells from anchorage, like nothing so much as a Breton peasant enticing her vagrant swam of bees.

But the Luella is dumb beside her dark trees. She is now secure from the casualties of the deep. The tide-river knocks against her old heart in its rougher flow, and brutally hints of lost horizon and looming seaboard.

She only groans a little as her scarred hulk lifts from the pebbles, and leans back on shore cables, quite content to harbor in the tide-river, and all its bustling life, for her last anchorage, questing over, dreams begun.

ON

You hear it said now and then about some happy person: "He writes for the best magazines." So do I: I always write for the best magazines. I don't, very extensively, publish in them; but that's because I mostly don't publish at all. And that, not to linger over a disagreeable subject, is my misfortune, and nobody's fault.

I am a person of five acceptances: at present I have just five stars in my crown. Four of them are from a Best Magazine, one of the very, very best,

and the other is from a periodical (nameless here, forevermore) that pays four dollars for a poem of five stanzas. Yet, "let no man dare, when I am dead, to charge me with dishonor;" for I have means of vindicating my right to exist, as a Literary Person, which the world knows not of. I have a packet of Flattering Rejections.

There are twenty-one of them. It's easy to be definite; I can count them in a few seconds, and then subtract five, the number of those letters that begin, "It gives us great pleasure." There is something adorably naïve, by the way, about that beginning; it is like gilding refined gold, painting the lily, and adding a perfume to the violet. On the rare occasions when I have the happiness to see it, I cry out irrepressibly in spirit, "O great, distant, and benign Power! What do you know about pleasure? And if you're glad, what do you suppose I am?" It is exactly the opposite, in its delicate, supererogatory courtesy, of that other dismal preliminary, "We regret." Even yet, I invariably turn upon that most unwelcome commiseration with, "Who are you to 'regret?' What do you know about it? In the presence of such

a dignity of black despair as mine, the least you can do, in decency, is to avert your face, and hand it back in silence. I don't want your sympathy."

Of course, that is only the Printed Slip. It is different with the Flattering Rejection. A Flattering Rejection is lovely; if it comes from a Best Magazine, it's quite as good as an acceptance from a poor one. For a long time, I did not know there was such a thing. That was about four years ago, when I first began in earnest. I can't tell you how long ago it was that I really began, because that would mean an unsolicited confidence as to my age, and that would n't be in very good taste. (I would like, though, as long as I've been so frank about those five uncrowded little stars in my crown, to slip in, unobtrusively, somehow, the statement that it's less than thirty. I wish I could.) But, as I was saying, I used to think there was nothing 'twixt failure and success; but there is. There's many a slip, — and they're not all just rejection-slips. Some of them are Flattering Rejections.

Toward the Flattering Rejection, I am the meekest, most docile, most extravagantly grateful soul alive. So far from resenting their sympathy, as I so venomously do in the case of the printed slip, I ardently love, in spite of all subsequent snubbings, every editor who has ever sent me one. It really is n't unmaidenly to confess it, for I picture them as vague, colossal abstractions, with benevolent eyes, draped in flowing garments, — in style a compromise between a toga and a dress suit, and in hue partaking of the prevailing color on the covers of their respective magazines. And, like the camel crossing the desert, I can sustain life on a Flattering Rejection for weeks.

And yet they present puzzling problems. Since nothing can shake my al

legiance to their authors, I am forced to conclude that apparent contradictions are due to the fact that the edited mind cannot expect to comprehend the editing; it must just have faith, and wait for things to be cleared up in a higher life. Emerson says that with consistency great minds have simply nothing to do; so of course that explains why one can't expect it of an editor. Take just one example. I have one story that has never yet been hustled back with the disgraceful promptitude which is characteristic of the return of some of his brothers and sisters. He always makes long journeys, and stays until I have concluded in my secret soul that he will never come back, stoutly insisting the while, to my waiting family, that I expect him in the next mail. But when he does come, he always brings his own welcome in the shape of a Flattering Rejection. It is delightful to reflect how much pleasure that story has given. So many editors, indeed, have expressed gratitude for the pleasure they have had in reading him, that my brother, who is of a practical turn, has suggested that I make out a bill, "To pleasure in reading So-and-So," at such and such an amount. But I am no such mercenary creature; I am willing to do what I can; it is no small thing to win the gratitude of an editor. But to return to those inscrutable utterances. The editor of the Best Magazine the dear, Best Magazine that has been glad with me four times wrote me that he should have accepted that story, "but for our disinclination to publish stories associated with college life, just as we are averse to those which treat of writers and artists as such." Yet, in the very next issue, and in many succeeding ones, have appeared stories most emphatically and unmistakably, to the edited mind, dealing with "writers as such." It is a difference, I suppose, between the intelligence of the editor and the editee that puzzles me. I accept it, blindly, though I can't help being a little curious and interested. But it really does n't matter; that editor might tell me that

white is black without disturbing my allegiance.

-

The other editors who have sent Flattering Rejections home with the same story were not so explicit as to their reasons for returning it. On that point they took refuge behind that impregnable editorial Gibraltar, and said that the tale was "not suited to their needs of the moment." As to that, of course, no mere contributing mind contributing mind for I hope I know my place could presume to judge. But most of them left me with the impression that they, too, were averse to college stories; and yet it has seemed, to my disordered fancy, that some of them have been fairly reeking with college stories ever since. And why should n't they? Why discriminate against college stories, any more than against department-store stories, or kindergarten stories, or stories of firemen and portrait-painters?

I had so much more to tell! I have shown you only one of my twenty-one; and there is something interesting about each one of the rest. But the Muse, at my elbow, makes a valuable suggestion. She says, "Don't make it any longer; if you do, it won't bring back even aFlattering Rejection!"

THE OTHER FELLOW

FICTION Concerns itself with the pursuit of the Feminine. Nowhere is adequate justice done to the equally absorbing pursuit of the Masculine. The Girl is the guiding star of the Romancer, the Man a necessary but commonplace accessory. The Girl presents a problem of exceptional elusiveness, and adds to the piquancy of the situation; but why this unjust discrimination? If, after long trial and tribulation, the Girl is found, are the results so much more gratifying than when, after years of waiting, the Other Fellow is at last discovered? I think not. But perhaps it is not quite clear what I mean by the Other Fellow.

The Other Fellow is generally supposed to be the undesirable remainder

after the blissful union of two other units. He is considered an essential element in all romance, and as such fills a humble but useful place. His only profit is a slender halo of pathos as he wishes his successful rival all happiness. For a brief hour he is heroic, and then he vanishes. This is the popular conception of the Other Fellow. To what base uses has he fallen!

The Romancer must sell his wares, and so he would have the world think that life consists of happy mating and unhappy remaining, that the only drama is the little comedy of three. But after all, he writes merely of the bright bubbling at the sources of the stream, and, after manning his fragile barque and letting the Other Fellow gallantly walk the plank, he quite loses sight of the long journey ahead downstream. Will not the crew of two desire to touch at pleasant points, and lie in inviting harbors by the way? Will they not take excursions ashore, and visit strange lands? And if so, will not the Captain (or perhaps he is only First Mate now) like to smoke a pipe and loaf away a summer afternoon with another masculine voyager

?

It is in this part of the journey that the Other Fellow is found. The Romancer is still at work upstream, delighting the same audience with the same simple story as before, but we are wiser now, and are content to leave him. We are in the full swing of the current, and must needs see that no opportunities for pleasure are overlooked.

And what a noble business the seeking of pleasure is! Much is said against it by many who would appear wise in their day and generation, but their words are as chaff. We seek pleasure to share it, and in the finding of it we benefit our fellow. In the great catalogue of pleasures the Other Fellow stands at the head of the list. If he is real, he has long ago forgotten any little episode he may have figured in upstream, though, indeed, he may never have been the Other Fellow in the old mistaken sense, but, on the contrary,

simply another commonplace man with a charming wife, and no faint aureole of past heroisms upon him. It is a strange fact that he is so little prized. He is not mentioned in the most elaborate catalogue of sports, nor enumerated among the camper's or traveler's necessities. He is recommended in no Baedeker, nor is he advertised by enterprising landlords. But what is sport or travel without him, or, for that matter, home or the club?

Fortunate is the man who has found him. If he is found, he is easily recognized. He is the man who fits. Fits is the only word, - fits your masculine needs with masculine gifts, as the woman gives the feminine. So, first, a man. Brown, Robinson, or Vere-de-Vere, it matters not by what name he is known, or what station he ornaments. Years are of no moment, be it only that his heart is a contemporary of your own. He may have lived a longer or shorter time, but he must be rich in experience. He must be a better man than you, that the best may come from your communion. You had best be a bit shy to brag before him, for he will be merciless to your pretensions. He will drive a better ball, cast a better fly, and write a better poem than you can, and you will spend your life trying in vain to excel him. He will absent himself at the right time, and at long intervals, but will return at the moment when he is most needed. He will not pry into your personal affairs, but will listen and smoke and sagely comment if the spirit moves you to intimate talk.

He will know the value of silence,the supreme test,—and will be an adept at that best sort of conversation, the monosyllabic.

Such, then, is the Other Fellow. The world was made for him, and what would life be without him? We may refine away as much of the primitive man as possible, and still there remains the instinct of the fighter. We wish to match our skill, courage, or endurance against another's. But we must have as our opponent a man we can trust, a man with the same clear

ideas of sport and the same horror of unfairness. When we have found him, he is the Other Fellow, and we add to all else the serene pleasures of comradeship, and

we are content.

Yet the Other Fellow has other uses. He is more than a skillful and resourceful antagonist. He is the well by the roadside from which you draw strength and refreshment. His friendly confidence in you begets confidence in yourself. He pricks the countless iridescent bubbles of your self-conceit, thereby clearing your mental vision to a wonderful degree. He is your alter ego, and with him at your elbow you can face a frowning world.

To the young Benedict, then, I say: Do not let the open fire and cheerful lamplight tempt you to too many hours of slippered ease. You may have succeeded in one noble and important quest, and achieved the Girl; but there is another quest, and you should be up and doing,

the Other Fellow is to be found. If he has already been found, do not, in your present excess of self-satisfaction, neglect him. He is patient and slow to anger, but he may weary of your indifference, and be lost to you forever.

If he is within hailing distance, go to him, that the future may hold for you perfect happiness. Then will all wise men unite in the toast I give you: "To the noblest, most useful, and least appreciated of mankind, the Other Fellow, a health to you!"

THE MELANCHOLY OF WOMAN'S

PAGES

CONTEMPORANEOUS with hoopskirts and coalscuttle bonnets was a form of literature obviously, though not explicitly, for ladies, whose very keynote was woe. As a child, I hailed as a treasure every "Gem" and "Annual" and "Book of Beauty" which, with tarnished gilding and delicate pictures grown somewhat discolored by time, lingered in the delightfully heterogeneous library of which I had the freedom. With a swelling

lump in my small throat, and a gathering mist before my innocent young eyes, many and many a time I have followed the fortunes of hapless Zuleikas and fond, ill-fated Mustaphas, sad Brazilian brides, and luckless Indian lovers, forsaken village maids and swains done to death by false, false loves; of the Widowed, the Orphaned, the Homeless, the Heart-Broken; have arrived by ways innumerable at the simple tombstone inscribed with the single word, Helena (or Jane, or Isabel, or Maria, as the case might be), which was so favorite a goal of the Early Victorian romance. It was all very sad, but, in provincial reporter parlance, very enjoyable.

Needless to say, this elegant melancholy is as obsolete as the coalscuttle bonnet and the hoopskirt; and with distinctly less chance, I think, of recall to favor.

The very keynote, indeed, of the Woman's Page is optimism. Its unvarying motto is, Everything is lovely- or may be. Are you unhappily married? Simply make yourself entrancing through the careful following of certain easy, infallible rules, and lo, a new honeymoon, and happiness ever after! Are you a maid forlorn, plain of face and awkward of manner? Grow beautiful and engaging by means of the formula obligingly furnished, and Prince Charming will come. Are the pitiless years leaving their marks upon you? Erase the wrinkles as they come by dexterous rubbings and smoothings, and unfading youth is yours. Are you beyond the pale of Society? Acquire ease, grace, distinction, savoir faire, by home study, and all doors will open wide to welcome

you.

There are recipes for everything, from domestic bliss to cleansing compounds, from success in life to salad dressings. My good is sought in a thousand ways; in gentle exhortations to be up and doing in every possible direction; in succinct columns of Don'ts; in pithy paragraphs of Useful Information; in exploitations of the fashions; in Health Talks and