A Day of Fate. Edward Payson Roe

would drive me to the nearest madhouse I could find. The whole business of love-making and marriage involves too much risk to a man who, like myself, must use his wits as a sword to carve his fortunes. I've fought my way up alone so far, and may as well remain a free lance. The wealthy, and those who are content to plod, can go through life with a woman hanging on their arm. Rich I shall never be, and I'll die before I'll plod. My place is in the midst of the world's arena, where the forces that shall make the future are contending, and I propose to be an appreciable part of those forces. I shall go back the wiser and stronger for this day's folly, and infinitely better for its rest, and I marched down the moody stairway, feeling that I was not yet a crushed and broken man, and cherishing also a secret complacency that I had at last outgrown my leanings toward sentimentality.

      As I approached the door of the wide, low-browed parlor, I saw Miss Warren reading a paper; a second later and my heart gave a bound: it was the journal of which I was the night editor, and I greeted its familiar aspect as the face of an old friend in a foreign land. It was undoubtedly the number that had gone to press the night I had broken down, and I almost hoped to see some marks of the catastrophe in its columns. How could I beguile the coveted sheet from Miss Warren's hands and steal away to a half-hour's seclusion?

      "What! Miss Warren," I exclaimed, "reading a newspaper on Sunday?"

      She looked at me a moment before replying, and then asked:

      "Do you believe in a Providence?"

      Thrown off my guard by the unexpected question, I answered:

      "Assuredly; I am not quite ready to admit that I am a fool, even after all that has happened."

      There was laughter in her eyes at once, but she asked innocently:

      "What has happened?"

      I suppose my color rose a little, but I replied carelessly, "I have made some heavy blunders of late. You are adroit in stealing away from a weak position under a fire of questions, but your stratagem shall not succeed," I continued severely. "How can you explain the fact, too patent to be concealed, that here in good Mrs. Yocomb's house, and on a Sunday afternoon, you are reading a secular newspaper?"

      "You have explained my conduct yourself," she said, assuming a fine surprise.

      "I?"

      "You, and most satisfactorily. You said you believed in a Providence. I have merely been reading what he has done, or what he has permitted, within the last twenty-four hours."

      I looked around for a chair, and sat down "struck all of a heap," as the rural vernacular has it.

      "Is that your definition of news?" I ventured at last.

      "I'm not a dictionary. That's the definition of what I've been reading this afternoon."

      "Miss Warren, you may score one against me."

      The mischievous light was in her eyes, but she said suavely:

      "Oh, no, you shall have another chance. I shall begin by showing mercy, for I may need it, and I see that you can be severe."

      "Well, please, let me take breath and rally my shattered wits before I make another advance. I understand you, then, that you regard newspapers as good Sunday reading?"

      "You prove your ability, Mr. Morton, by drawing a vast conclusion from a small and ill-defined premise. I don't recall making any such statement."

      "Pardon me, you are at disadvantage now. I ask for no better premise than your own action; for you are one, I think, who would do only what you thought right."

      "A palpable hit. I'm glad I showed you mercy. Still it does not follow that because I read a newspaper, all newspapers are good Sunday reading. Indeed, there is much in this paper that is not good reading for Monday or any other day."

      "Ah!" I exclaimed, looking grave, "then why do you read it?"

      "I have not. A newspaper is like the world of which it is a brief record—full of good and evil. In either case, if one does not like the evil, it can be left alone."

      "Which do you think predominates in that paper?"

      "Oh, the good, in the main. There is an abundance of evil, too, but it is rather in the frank and undisguised record of the evil in the world. It does not seem to have got into the paper's blood and poisoned its whole life. It is easily skipped if one is so inclined. There are some journals in which the evil cannot be skipped. From the leading editorial to the obscurest advertisement, one stumbles on it everywhere. They are like certain regions in the South, in which there is no escape from the snakes and malaria. Now there are low places in this paper, but there is high ground also, where the air is good and wholesome, and where the outlook on the world is wide. That is the reason I take it."

      "I was not aware that many young ladies looked, in journals of this character, beyond the record of deaths and marriages."

      "We studied ancient history. Is it odd that we should have a faint desire to know what Americans are doing, as well as what the Babylonians did?"

      "Oh, I do not decry your course as irrational. It seems rather—rather—"

      "Rather too rational for a young lady."

      "I did not say that; but here is my excuse," and I took from a table near a periodical entitled "The Young Lady's Own Weekly," addressed to Miss Adah Yocomb.

      "Have not young men their own weeklies also—which of the two classes is the more weakly?"

      "Ahem! I decline to pursue this phase of the subject any further. To return to our premise, this journal," and I laid my hand on the old paper caressingly. "It so happens that I read it also, and thus learn that we have had many thoughts in common; though, no doubt, we would differ on some of the questions discussed in it. What do you think of its politics?"

      "I think they are often very bad."

      "That's delightfully frank," I said, sitting back in my chair a little stiffly. "I think they are very good—at any rate they are mine."

      "Perhaps that is the reason they are so good?"

      "Now, pardon me if I, too, am a trifle plain. Do you consider yourself as competent to form an opinion concerning politics as gray-headed students of affairs?"

      "Oh, certainly not; but do I understand that you accept, unquestioningly, the politics of the paper you read?"

      "Far from it: rather that the politics of this paper commend themselves to my judgment."

      "And you think 'judgment' an article not among a young woman's possessions?"

      "Miss Warren, you may think what you please of the politics of this paper. But how comes it that you think about them at all? I'm sure that they interest but comparatively few young ladies."

      Her face suddenly became very grave and sad, and a moment later she turned away her eyes that were full of tears. "I wish you hadn't asked that question; but I will explain my seeming weakness," she said, in a low, faltering voice. "I lost my only brother in the war—I was scarcely more than a child; but I can see him now—my very ideal of brave, loyal manhood. Should I not love the country for which he died?"

      Politics! a word that men so often utter with contempt, has been hallowed to me since that moment.

      She looked away for a moment, swiftly pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, then turning toward me said, with a smile, and in her former tones:

      "Forgive me! I've been a bit lonely and blue this afternoon, for the day has reminded me of the past. I won't be weak and womanish any more. I think some political questions interest a great many women deeply. It must be so. We don't dote on scrambling politicians; but a man as a true statesman makes a grand figure."

      I was not thinking of statecraft or the craftsmen.

      "By Jove!" I exclaimed mentally, "this girl is more beautiful than my 'perfect flower of womanhood.'