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Nen Ma, she whispers me aside:
"The clouds are roun' to-day.
Better clear out, sonny boy,
An' go somewheres an' play,
Yer Pa's got the sulks."

An' even Bud! You'd think a boy
Ud have a mite more sense.
Long pants an' all! He's big enough
To vault acrost the fence;
But sometimes, if I ast him nice
To make a shinny stick,

He'll shy a book at me an' growl:
"Git out! You make me sick."

Nen Ma, she whispers me aside:
"The clouds are roun' to-day.
Better clear out, sonny boy,

An' go somewheres an' play,
Yer brother's got the sulks."

So I slide out acrost the fields
An' down beside the crick,
Where everything is peaceful like.
The grass is soft an' thick;
The squirrels chatter in the trees;
The birds all sing like mad;
The water dances in the sun,
It seems so awful glad;

An' by an' by, way up above,
The wind begins to blow,
An' all the leaves begin to shake,
They git to laffin' so;

An' nothin's got the sulks.

The only thing that bothers me
Is wishin' Ma was here.
I wisht she did'nt have to stay

With folks that act so queer.
I may be wrong, but seems to me
That folks ain't got no right
To shadder other people's lives,
Jest 'cause they don't feel bright.

But Ma, she's got to stay at home
An' never has no fun;

An' all day long she has to work,
You'd think she's be the one
To always git the sulks.

The Conqueror

BY EMIL CARL AURIN.

It's easy to laugh when the skies are blue
And the sun is shining bright;

Yes, easy to laugh when your friends are true
And there's happiness in sight;

But when hope has fled and the skies are gray,
And the friends of the past have turned away,

Ah, then, indeed, it's a hero's feat

To conjure a smile in the face of defeat.

It's easy to laugh when the storm is o'er
And your ship is safe in port;

Yes, easy to laugh when you're on the shore

Secure from the tempest's sport;

But when wild waves wash o'er the storm-swept deck
And your gallant ship is a battered wreck,

Ah, that is the time when it's well worth while
To look in the face of defeat with a smile.

It's easy to laugh when the battle's fought
And you know that the victory's won;
Yes, easy to laugh when the prize you sought
Is yours when the race is run;

But here's to the man who can laugh when the blast
Of adversity blows; he will conquer at last,

For the hardest man in the world to beat

Is the man who can laugh in the face of defeat.

The Crackajack Story"

I

BY HAROLD KELLOCK.

T was a common report in the office that Billy Doring had no other interest in the world except the big news machine that he served. This was borne out by the fact that early reporters on the "gas-house" trick, stumbling into the office in the gray dawn, frequently found the little city editor there before them, and particularly by the experience of a man who dropped in once at midnight to recover some notes he had left behind for a current assignment, and was astonished to find a single electric lamp in that black, silent place glaring down upon Billy Doring perched on the edge of his chair, smoking his cigar and peering about with his curious smile.

But Douglas, the managing editor, knew that there was another side to Doring's life. He knew that on three days of the year the little city editor was sure to be absent from the office, and one of these days was his wedding anniversary, and the others were the birthdays of his wife, Anna, and little Lucy; and he was aware that in the drawer in Billy's table, amidst the litter of pencil stubs and clippings and old proofs, lay the photograph of a pretty, fair-haired woman with a little child.

Meanwhile the little city editor was announcing to his copy-readers: "We're going to run some roars for a week or two. Teaching fads and frills in the public schools is the thing."

He took up his telephone receiver. "This is the city desk," he murmured, in his tone of gentle inquiry.

And then, after a few intent seconds, he dropped his cigar on the floor and drew in his breath sharply. "Please repeat that bulletin," he said, curtly. The cadaverous copy-reader looked up with an air of astonishment. It was seldom indeed that anyone had to repeat a thing to Billy Doring, and seldom that he gave orders in that tone.

*From "McClure's Magazine," November, 1909.

Before Doring set the receiver down his right hand tapped the copy-reader's elbow.

"Headquarters reports steamboat Abraham Lincoln afire off Spuyten Duyvil, with women and children. jumping into the water," he said in his usual soft voice. "It's a Sunday-school excursion, probably fifteen hundred aboard. Third Lutheran Church of Yorkville, Peter Henderson, pastor. You might pad it up for the first edition."

His eyes were wandering speculatively over the reporters' desks, while he continued his suggestions. "Merrihew can start the Harlem and Yonkers men out and call up the steamboat people. Brill, you might see what you can scrape up along the Hudson water-front by_ 'phone."

The cadaverous copy-reader convulsively grabbed a pile of copy-paper, and the other two were already at the telephone booths, while Billy Doring stepped to the reporters' desks. Four men sat there.

"Up at Spuyten Duyvil there's an excursion boat burning up filled with women and children," he said. "You might all go up. It sounds like a good story. Telephone."

The quartet made for the stairway on the run.

The telephone rang with a confirmatory bulletin from Police Headquarters, and Doring turned the receiver over to the cadaverous copy-reader as Brill rushed up, flushed and excited.

"She's been run aground all ablaze from stem to stern," he cried. "The water's full of women and children. Crackajack story!"

Doring was glancing at each page of Hoyt's hieroglyphics as fast as it was written. Without interrupting this supervision, he now wrote out, swiftly and without a single erasure, in his round, school-boy hand, an elaborate four-column caption for the story, and then rose to answer a bass bellow of "Doring!" from Douglas.

"What boat is that, Doring?" said Douglas, sharply, as the city editor came up.

"The Abraham Lincoln," said Doring.

Douglas grunted sharply, and for a minute the two men looked into each other's eyes.

"You-your wife" Douglas ended in an inarticu

late splutter; his vocal processes were not tuned to sympathy.

"I couldn't do anything up there-and we have to get out the paper," said Billy Doring, quietly. “No use mentioning it about the office-any little thing sends the men up in the air on a day like this." A sudden nasal clamor from the streets came through the open window. "The yellows are out with it," he said, and then the insistent telephone called him again.

Pretty soon the story began to trickle in over the telephone from many sources. It came in drops, as it were, not as a logical, consecutive narrative, but as a series of inadequate, incoherent thimble fuls thrown carelessly at a news desk that raged with a thirst for gallon draughts. Over this tantalizing lack of the essential tale for the first edition the men lost their nerves and their tempers, and gradually a pandemonium of shrieks and howls and recriminations awoke in the office, so that a timid young chap who approached up the narrow stairs to invoke the mysterious editorial functions to proclaim his approaching nuptials, stood for a minute staring wide, and then precipitately fled.

Through these trying earlier stages of the day Billy Doring alone was the figure of silent efficiency, steadying all hands to their work, loosing the tension here and there with a whimsical suggestion backed by his quaint smile.

And then the real work of the day began. The trickling story swelled to a torrential flood. The telephone wires were like great conduits voiding it into the office as into a reservoir. It inundated the place, threatened to drown them all in the fierce inrush of its mere bulk. And then Billy Doring, puffing a bit more briskly at a large black cigar, composed his forces to wrestle with the weltering problem.

It was a pitiful tale. The boat had been packed with sixteen hundred women and children. Someone had smelled smoke, and then flames were licking along the decks, and the next the whole craft was a raging furnace. The captain was old and irresolute; the crew, after ineffectual efforts to stem the blaze with rotten hose that burst in their hands, leaped overboard in panic at the rush of the flames. Some passengers on the upper deck managed to get over a life-raft, which

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