than yours, most people prefer yours.

And you have written so much, and are so famous! I don't know any one who had ever heard of her until last December."

"All the best judges consider her things better than mine," he said gloomily.

She looked at him as if he were a spoiled child. "I have always heard that writers were very sensitive," she remarked; "but I supposed it was merely exaggerated newspaper talk. Miss Field always speaks beautifully of you."

"If she has said anything nice about me, it was for reasons of her own!" he retorted vindictively. He could not help it; but he recognized the insanity of the remark.

"Miss Field would never say anything that she did not mean," she assured him, with dignified confidence. "I have never known any one more absolutely trustworthy."

"Do you think you know her better than I do?" was on the tip of his tongue, but he checked himself in time. What a duffer he was to come here hoping to win her confidence, and then to act like a sulky, petulant child! His friendship with Eleanor Field was his only claim to this girl's acquaintance; but he longed to tell her that he hated Eleanor Field and all her works, even to the very sound of her name. If Margaret Warner had been clinging and dependent, he might have felt for her sake an affectionate tolerance for Eleanor Field; but he could not imagine this clear-eyed, level-headed girl wasting any tears and regrets over a woman who had never existed. On the other hand, he could imagine her, very vividly, expending infinite scorn on a man who had deceived her; and that man, in his wrath and his disgust, he now named "Eleanor Field," the embodiment of his idiotic thoughtlessness and sentimentality during the past four months. If only he could tell her exactly what he thought of Eleanor Field, and then fade away into the oblivion that he deserved! He felt an uncontrollable longing never to say

another word to Margaret Warner that was not absolutely true.

-

"I'm afraid I'm in rather a bad humor to-day," he said. "I hope you will pardon me, and believe that I am not often so disagreeable. Something happened some personal matter- that has upset me. Won't you go with me to-morrow morning for a walk in the Park? I will promise to be very good, and to tell you the whole story of my acquaintance with Eleanor Field."

She looked at his frank face, and immediately forgot his unaccountable irritability. He was once more her friend's loyal friend.

He strode away, drawing deep breaths of relief. He had forsworn every variety of lie and prevarication. She might hate him, despise him, break her heart over a vanished illusion; that would be his punishment. But nothing mattered in comparison with the sacredness of the truth between him and her. It would have been so easy to answer her first letter with a frank explanation. Then all this snarl of deception would have been avoided, and whatever they had been to each other since, little or much, would have been honest. His thoughtless romanticism had made him as untrue in life as Vance had said he was in his work.

As they strolled toward the Park the next morning, Margaret cast curious glances at the genial young man who had been so transformed since her first sight of him. The light in his eyes, the glow on his face, his self-reliant carriage, gave him the aspect of a conquering hero. She could not know that he was the leader of a forlorn hope, going into battle with colors flying and drums beating and a heart for any fate except dishonor. In times of danger Pruyn usually found himself strangely exhilarated, and now he talked and laughed as if he had never known worry in all his light-hearted life. Margaret caught the contagion of his youthful spirits.

"How strange this seems!" she said, as they entered the spring glamour of the

Park. "I feel as if I were walking in a dream. I have thought so often of coming here with Miss Field,-I know she comes here nearly every day,—and now I am here with you, and I don't know where she is. Of course you'll laugh at me, but I've had the queerest feeling ever since I saw you yesterday that there is n't any Eleanor Field. Is n't that absurd?"

"What makes you feel that way?" "How can I tell? I felt so sure of her, - she has been so real to me, yet you, who have known her always, seemed to have such a different idea. It really gave me a shock. But of course I understand. People who have known us longest don't necessarily know us best. It's so unusual to think so much of a person one has never seen that I suppose it is n't strange that she should seem unreal, now that I am here and she is gone, the very day I arrived!"

--

"Would you feel very badly if you should never hear from her again?"

"Of course I should! You know what good friends we are! Why should you ask such an absurd question?"

The brightness had faded from his face. It was one thing to fling himself whole-heartedly into the tumult of battle; it was another to trample under foot the feelings of this adorable girl. Though he might, with all the ardor of an Arnold von Winkelried, gather to his own breast the fatal spear-thrusts of her scorn, he could not save her from disappointment and humiliation. "My only hope," he thought miserably, "is that she will hate and despise me so intensely that she won't have time to be disappointed until she has had time to get used to the idea."

Margaret was waiting for his answer with wide eyes of wonder fixed on his face. "Why did I ask that question?" he stammered. "Because of what you said, I suppose, and because my idea of Eleanor Field is very different from yours. Won't you sit down there, and let me tell the whole story?" you

--

He had found a seat in just the right place, free from observation, but not far enough from the sound of children's voices to give him the feeling of being alone in an awful solitude with an avenging spirit. He was no conquering hero now, but a very miserable and remorseful young man.

He began at the beginning, with his absurd success, his happy-go-lucky thoughtlessness, Vance's warnings, his own determination to show Vance that he could do something different without half trying. He told how her letter had come and he had answered it, meaning to sign his own name, but hesitating when he remembered that she might not like to know that the letter had reached a different person from the one it had been meant for. He told of his misery as the situation became more involved, of all his empty plans to find a way out of it. He spoke of the "Eleanor Field" stories he had written for her; of the other stories he had written for her. "Everything I have done since your first letter came has been for you," he said hopelessly. "Every thought I have had has been for you. If only I had learned to think before I got things into this wretched tangle! The only extenuating circumstance - I ask you to believe this is that never for one moment have I thought of anything but what would be easiest for you."

you can

"You have not told me whether ever forgive me," he said humbly. "You will not let me see how you feel."

"I feel stunned," she said, "and uncertain of everything. When I take a step I am not sure that I shall find any ground under my feet."

His hand went out to her involuntarily, but he caught it back. His eyes smarted unaccountably. "After all," he said gently, you understood. That was I that understood, body else."

said I

not some

"If you had understood," she returned hotly, "you would know that nothing could hurt me more than deception! And then to let me go on - week after week-thinking that I was writing to a person with feelings and a conscience and a sense of honor!"

"I know!" he groaned. "You can't say anything worse about me than I think about myself. I meant well! That is the only - idiotic excuse I can give for my idiotic conduct!"

As he tramped along unseeingly, Margaret's fixed gaze relaxed. Her eyes wandered toward his utterly abject face and form. "Penitent" was written on the very lines of his irreproachable spring suit. The anger died out of her face. The shadow of a smile crept from her eyes to her mouth. In the spring sunshine life seemed just beginning, full of hope and joy and an overflowing sympathy. Why should people be hard and unforgiving when heaven's blue arched over the tender green of the elms? She had lost her friend who had understood; - but

why should she make an enemy in her place?

"After all," she said, "it wasn't entirely your fault. I ought to have known better than to write so freely to a stranger."

"But I wasn't a stranger," he answered eagerly. "Don't you see? We have never been strangers!"

"I'm afraid that is nonsense," she said softly.

But as they walked toward the Park entrance some marvelous process of adjustment was going on, which is possible only in youth and springtime. The clear, sweet air was like a solvent of misunderstanding. The Gordian knot was miraculously transformed into a tangled gossamer web, which floated away on the breeze. A load that had been accumulating for four months was lifted from Pruyn's heart. In his relief he almost whistled, but he caught himself in time; it behooved him to walk circumspectly.

"There's Vance!" he said suddenly. "Dear old Vance, the best man in New York! May I present him? You'll like him. Vance! wait a minute!"

A tall man turned and came toward them. As his eyes met Margaret's she found herself wondering how one pair of eyes could look at the same time so honest, so shrewd, so kind, and so infinitely humorous.

"I want to present you to my friend Miss Warner," Pruyn began. "At least, I am her friend, but I can't get her to say that she is mine. She knows of something shabby that I did, and she won't promise to forgive me. Speak a good word for me, won't you?"

Margaret saw the look on Vance's face as he laid his hand on Pruyn's shoulder, and suddenly she felt herself included in a bond of undying fidelity. "Pruyn is all right!" Vance said, in his offhand way.

THE notorious Nell Gwynn, paying a visit one day to a friend, on returning to her coach found her footman bruised and bloody and covered with mud. Upon her asking an explanation, he told her that a certain man had attacked her moral character and he had attempted to punish the traducer, and that the punishment had not been entirely one-sided. Mistress Nell laughingly assured her champion that what the other man had said was only the truth. "I don't care," was the reply, "I don't care what you are; no man shall tell me that I am footman to that kind of a woman." If this remark disclosed an element of self-love, it also strikingly illustrates a modified survival of the spirit of brag which is essential for the smooth running of civilization. The footman's attitude typifies the one that should characterize all grades of service and subordination. To the faithful servant an attack on the master is an attack on himself.

The more complex society becomes, the greater is the need for coöperation between different parts of its organism. It is a perfectly proper regulation that members of the army and navy, in addition to obeying orders, shall refrain from public derogatory criticism of superiors. Unless this spirit of loyalty were enforced, the spirit of anarchy would speedily spread through the service. In a servant of the calibre of Mistress Nell's, loyalty is a mere matter of bludgeon and blarney. In higher grades of subordination, while loyalty may be observed by churlish refusal to open one's mouth, the natural tendency is for it to evolve the attitude of advocacy, the disposition to emphasize another's good points and ignore or minimize his weaknesses. Advocacy, which suggests Touchstone's distinction be

tween the lie circumstantial and the lie direct, permeates all the relations of society.

Very few of us, indeed, are exempt from the charge of direct lying. Not to mention the strategic lies told to enemies in time of war, to criminals, to sick persons and lunatics, as to which pages upon pages of casuistry appear in the older works on moral science, there are what may be termed the lies lubricant, wrung from us by etiquette and good breeding. If the amenities of life were not preserved through the gentle art of lying, society could scarcely continue as a happy family; we should all have to live in separate cages. The best of us will tell direct lies on trivialities where politeness is imperative. Wherever practicable, however, the spirit of advocacy prevails. We say whatever we truthfully can, and pause tactfully while the hearer's self-love and imagination fill out a generally agreeable impression. Family relationships, even more markedly than business or social relations, exemplify the universal attitude of advocacy. Mr. Roundabout says: "Go to Brown's house and tell Mrs. Brown and the young ladies what you think of him, and see what a welcome you will get. In like manner, let him come to your house and tell your good lady his candid opinion of you, and see how she will receive him." No one save an unspeakable cad would speak slightingly of a husband to his wife; no one save an unspeakable cad would tolerate slighting language in his presence concerning his wife. Such is the conventional law as to spouses, parents, children, blood relations in general, even intimate friends.

From personal loyalty through ties of blood, we may take a wide span to the present-day attitude of international di

plomats, with the result of finding quite essential similarity. A few years ago, through an oversight, the ambassador of Spain to this country received an invitation, in common with the other members of the diplomatic corps, to attend a public function which to an extent celebrated American victory in the late war with Spain. He promptly declined, in terms not discourteous, but unmistakably showing resentment. The propriety of his treatment of the invitation was universally recognized by Americans themselves, and general regret was expressed at the breach of diplomatic amenity. In more serious diplomatic duty ordinary advocacy is now practiced. Perhaps the most important diplomatic work performed by an American during the latter half of the nineteenth century was that of Charles Francis Adams, as Minister to the Court of St. James, during the War of the Rebellion. Those were not days of silk-stocking, blood-is-thicker-than-water diplomacy; his mission dealt with hostile and baffling circumstances. And he worthily discharged it by the exercise of advocacy which, while doggedly firm, never lost dignity through a display of irritation, never exaggerated claims of right, and never was boastful or weakly disingenuous as to actual facts. Mr. Adams excited the warm admiration of Englishmen, and at the expense of his chief, Mr. Seward, whose roseate dispatches so pointedly ignored obvious perils as to give the impression that he was deliberately playing a part.

The modified spirit of brag which has been considered is a concomitant of general democratization. Instead of the slavish subserviency, varying in degrees of abjectness according to grades of artificial rank, which characterized feudalism, the modern attitude prescribes a substantially uniform etiquette for all relations of common interest or career. The deference practiced is not self-annihilating, but, indeed, self-respectful. It has come to betoken lack of self-respect to show disrespect for the abstract relations

which others bear to us, and which, permanently or for the time, they embody. Something akin to the democratic principle of government of laws, not of men, is involved. The form of deference is not ostentatious mendacity in respect of what one disapproves, not personal adulation, which is in bad taste even when one approves. The modern unwritten law enjoins upon the associate or colleague, the subordinate, the next of kin, merely silence from open censure, or, at most, the half-truth of advocacy. Such law may well be deliberately accepted, even by temperamental radicals in the days of their youth.

Passing from vicarious brag to autobrag, it will be seen that much also, but probably not as much, has been accomplished toward frowning out what is merely adventitious, and utilizing the trait as a legitimate factor in highly civilized life. The genesis and evolution of the brag spirit appear on the surface of tradition and history. In one of the sections of In Memoriam Tennyson has felicitously sketched the dawn and growth of egoism in "the baby new to earth and sky." No matter how high the degree of culture and how complex the grade of civilization which form the moral habitat, this consciousness of personal identity is the central fact of life, and self-appreciation and the discharge of duties owed to self constitute the supreme human obligations.

"This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.'

Savages, young children, young nations, and Walt Whitman are true to nature when they frankly celebrate themselves. Their boasting is naïvely direct and shameless. In the savage condition there is little division of labor, and very imperfect coöperation, even for purposes of war. The songs of such persons are necessarily songs of self. At the supreme moment of existence, dying amidst flames and torture, they brag defiantly of their deeds of prowess. The boastful disposition is kept