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Crorrifht 106 br Ban. B. IUmptoo.
HOLLISTER'S "spiritual adventure" be
gan some time between two o'clock
and morning of a hot June night. Hol
Uiter had retired at two, after a tain
attempt to rewrite a story which had Juat come
back to him from yet another magazine. Working
half the night for a newspaper and rising after ln
nfflclent sleep to toll at stories, poems, essays,
plays, week In and week out, Is not a healthful
node of life for a sensitive, high-strung young man
who was brought up to open air and exercise; es
pecially when the stories, poems, plays are syste
matically rejected and a faltering faith in oneself
tas to be lashed constantly. In Holllster the symp
toms had been growing recently, till even he, prodi
gal ot his youth was beginning to be alarmed-sleep-lesness,
a constant twitching of the muscles, worst
of all, a pessimism that would not be shaken oflP.
He lay In bed on this particular night filled with
unutterable gloom about his own powers, his own
future, and tried to keep the tired fingers of his
right hand from twitching. The bedroom was In
sufferably hot. Outside wagons rattled past, flat-
wheeled cars on the avenue a block away sent Jar
ring echoes down (he side street, distant ferryboat
whistles tooted without surcease. He could not
seal his ears to these noises. They vexed, then
maddened hfm. After one wagon had rattled past
. and the echoes died, he waited, every nerve In his,
'body quivering, till the next one came.' He was al
most la hysterical tears when an auto horn honked,
'under his window. Holllster gave a cry like a
snarl, and found himself out of bed on his feet.
He dressed and went out. How long he tramped
he did not know. Presently he was crossing Mad
ison square and there was a strong hint ot dawn In
the east In the middle of Fifth Avenue the Flat
iron Building arrested his attention. Never had Jt
(seemed so like a great, proud snip, towing lower
Broadway northward, as In this strange half light.
.when its western side was in heavy shadow and Its
. eastern flushed with morning. Holllster stood
spellbound by Its beauty. t Tired and nerve-racked
as he was, perhaps, as he watched the thing seemed
to stir and ave; the great towering prow to lift
Into the air as on a mighty wave and to be poising
for a plunge directly at him, a pygmy In Its path.
'At the same Instant an auto horn bonked a sud
den, sharp, -unexpected warning behind him. With,
si cry of terror Holllster sprang across the asphalt,
across Broadway, falling up against a pillar of the
Hoffman House.
He leaned there a moment panting and trying
to steady his shaking nerves before he observed
that he was not alone. Shrinking into the shadow
behind the column was a woman. There was no
reason why he should speak, why he should not
move away. Hut, from some Impulse, he said.
"I'm not crazy, please." Then he was angry for
Having spoken,
The woman moved ou,t a little Into the light, and
they regarded each otjher. She was young and
.well dressed, in the prevailing fashion of the Rlal
to. Hut there was paint on her cheeks, a ghastly
pini now In the dawn light, and her eyes looked
keavy, tired, and full of trouble.
"I thought M first somebody was chasing you,"
he said. "But I didn't see anybody."
"It was only the Flatiron Building," said Hollls
ter with a laugh. "That puzzles you? Just a case
of nerves. It looked so like a ship that I got an
Illusion It was coming at me. But I wouldn't have
Jumped so If an auto hadn't tooted behind me
(curse the things!"
"It dees look like a ship. I've noticed that,"
said the girl, glancing toward the building.
Somehow her presence was a kind of comfort,
tend Holllster still made no move to go, regarding
, er curiously. The girl met his look with a half
grlghtened timidity that contrasted oddly with her
tjpalnt and the place.
"I'm not what you think I am!" she blurted out
suddenly.
"I was already quite sure that you are not what
you think I think you are," he answered kindly.
ls there anything I can do to help you?'
"Help me7" she laughed grimly. "No, I was
merely making up my mind. Nobody can help you
do that!"
"Ah, but they can!" said he. "Perhaps even I
could."
"Why should you want to?" she asked.
Holllster paused. "I don't know, exactly," he
said slowly. It's hard to put it into words. But
somehow I've a feeling that both of us have been
ground out beneath the gigantic millstones of this
town and have fallen into the sack side by side.
Life does throw strangers together that way
and makes them friends Tor the time. Last night
I was down miles deep in the blues and my nerves
are a frazzle. Something s wrong with you. Here
we are. Isn't that enough?''
The girl looked at him a lonr moment, and made
ber decision. "Come orer and sit on a park
bench," she said.
They watched the rhythmic spasms of the foun
tain for a time In silence. "Did yon ever want to
drown yourself?" the girl asked suddenly.
Once," said Holllster.
-WnyT-
"Because I had'made np my mind to go back on
tan Ideal no matter what It was." v
"An. bnt yoa didn't! One doesn't one goes
.bark en the Ideal Instead. Pi J yon?"
"Tea." he nodded. "And after ttat I learned
that Lhe only way Is to live things down. I've al
most forgottea now." ,
lie waited, bat the girl did not speak again for
a Uk time. Finally she aaU. "What If yoa bad
cad to go tack erf one Ideal to reach another?"
v Trat wecid tare all depended oa what Iter
' . '
were," he answered, and waited again.
Morning was full upon them by now and the
streets were filling up with early traffic The girl
put her band to her head. "Ob, I can't; I'm too
tired!" she said. "If I could only get out of this
town awhile! How can one think here?"
"Come," he replied. "We will get out of town
for a while, for a whole day. , Come."
The girl let herself be led to a ferry. They
were like two strangers emerging from the flank
of a mighty army, who knew not what the battle
meant but knew they were wounded and sore and
tired. Presently the man raised his fist and shook
it at the mortared mountains, gliding past. "Curse
you," he said, "I'll get the best of you yet!"
Amen," said the girl.
When they entered thj Pennsylvania station she
caught sight of her face In the mirror of a gum
"DID YOU EVER WANT TO DROWN YOUR
SELF?" THE GIRL ASKED SUDDENLY.
machine, and fled to wash It. "I forgot the paint,"
6be said. I didn't even stop last night to get the
make-up off. Why didn't you tell me? Or did
you .think- "
"I'm not going to think," he interrupted gently.
"Presently you'll tell me"
The express roared In their ears for the next
hour, while something like a drowsy half slumber
came to them both, the slumber of exhaustion.
They alighted at Princeton Junction and the ex
press rolled on, leaving a great sense of silence be
hind, of silence and the sweet smell of the coun
try. The girl threw back her head and- drew
a great, deep breath The little branch train they
boarded seemed to Belong to another, a slower and
milder order of things to be taking them into
another world. And when they alighted from it
at 1'rlnceton station the beautiful stately gate tow
er was opening its portal to them, while from the
quletspaces beyond floated the boom of a bell.
The girl's eyes swept the sweet low line of dormi
tories that flank the gate, and returned to rest on
that perfect tower Itself, that no doubt on lower
Uroadway would look like a subway entrance. "It
Is so beautiful," she said. Can it be real?"
For answer Holllster led her up the steps Into the
campus.
Princeton was not his college. Possibly had It
been he would not have returned to it now, and
certainly his mood would have been otherwise, a
mood of wistful sadness and regret. But, plagued
tvith no memories, the academic seclusion of the
campus, its low, scholastic Oothlc, the colonial
Charm of old Nassau, the elm-shaded walks, were
like music to htm, and he moved along almost
oblvious for the time of the girl at his side. But
the undergraduates, piling out of the dormitories
to lectures and recitations, were not oblivious. They
glanced at her with frank curiosity and the admir
ation of youth for a pretty face, and then at the
Fpare,, pale young man beside her who was so ob
rlous'ly of their kind as she was of another world.
Holllster looked at her, too. She certainly was
too sheer, and her hat too striking! There was a
strange incongruity between this evident child of
the Broadway lights and the scholastic peace of
the college campus. She knew ao much of life and
no little of books! And 'yet, as she stood In the
flowered court of the library, in mere physical ap
peal a great rose Tower growing there, the brown
backs of ancient Vlrglis, the priceless collection
of a scholar, looked oxt at her, and the grnbbiogs
of rorgotten grammarians might be seen entombed
in leather, through the fen windows. But there
ws snrient trouble In her face; some plague of the
Ideal aft upon her, too. How many of those dead
writers w toe books were all round had grown gray
In search of an ideal the magic epithet or the
secret of creation or Just the lost digamma! Some
how, as they stood In that quiet lnclosure, framing
Us green picture under the arch at either end, Hol
Uster'a lost hold on his own. Ideals began to come
back to him. And then ' ha wondered what
tbougbta were passing through the mind of the
girl beside him, for her face was growing, more
troubled.
It's not fair, it's not fair, It's not fair," she sud
denly exclaimed, flinging out ber hands, "that some
folks should live in so much beauty! All thosd
books In there the boys go In and read them and
smell the shrubs and look out on this perfect court
and dream themselves Into any mood. Bui I, who
am trying to create moods, too, have to dolt in sur
roundings that are awful. I want to succeed, I
want to succeed. I want to be an artist, too! I
wish I were dead!"
"Come," said Holllster, "we will go up the canal,
far up Into the country. Things will look differ
ent there." He was beginning dimly to divine her
etory. The girl, for whom canoeing was evidently
a new sport, climbed gingerly down upon (he cush
ions. Holllster threw off his coat, rolled up his
sleeves over arms so white that he felt ashamed,
dipped his paddle in astern, and the boat moved up
the canal In the still summer sun. Neither of
them spoke. With the feel of a paddle In his
wrists, the sun on his back, the outdoors all around
him, the man was too full of the renewed Joy of
physical existence. With every d!gof his blade in
to the water, with every answering life and spurt
of the boat, he felt as If new blood were pumping
through him. The girl lay hack on the cushions,
half In exhaustion, half In delicious languor, an
abandonment to repose, and watched the green
v banks slip through half-closed lids.
"Low Bridge!" cried Holllster presently. As
they ducked and shot nnder the cool shadow where
the dusty sunbeams filtered through the cracks
abore, their eyes met. He smiled at her reassur
ingly, and, leaning forward, touched her hand.
"We're getting farther and farther away from it,"
he said.
The canal ran placidly on for a mile or two, wid
ening above Mr. Carnegie's foolish lake. The day
was windless, the water still as a mirror. Birds
sang In the trees on the bank; through the trees
on the distant hill the towers of Princeton began
to emerge. Once or twice they lay up against the
embankment while a slow canal -boat' was towed
past. Each time when the wash of the boat had
gone down, they moved on again, but ever more
slowly, for' the lazy peace of the canal was work-
Ing upon them.
"Canals have always had a strange fascination
for me," said Holllster, once. "When I was a very
little chap the train from our town ran along be
side one, and I used to wonder where all the barges
came from and where they went, just as George
Moore says he used to do. There Is a mystery
about a canal about this canal for instance.
Where does It begin, where does it end? Who dug
It In the long ago? It seems ages old, a part of
nature, of the landscape. And like all canals,
though It leads from somewhere to somewhere
else, yet the water does not flow. It is still and
quiet, like a secret."
"It Is the most utterly peaceful thing I have ever
known; It is a rest cure," said the girl, and shut
her eyes.
By and by they passed the end of Mr Carnegie's
foolish lake and drew near a little town. The noon
hush was on the world. Their boat glided along
the deptha of the sky, so still the water was. All
sounds had ceased, save the barking of a distant
dog and the happy cry of a child. Before them a
white rock barred their way. To the left the lock
keeper's cottage, bright with new whitewash and
gay with a red geranium in a pot beside the door,
looken down at its reflection in the black water.
Just at that moment there was not a soul in sight,
and from the steeple, thin and faint, drifted down
the sound of a bell, tolling twelve.
"IT'S THE MOST UTTERLY PEACEFUL THING
"Lunch!" cried Holllster, shooting the canoe In
under the shade of the willow.
"I believe I'm hungry," said the girl, with
something like gayety In ber tore.
Up in the tlay village tbey found a store where
peanut' butter and crackers were sold, and even a
,bonch of bananas bang la the window,, amidst
whlri. harnesses, samples of calico, and a eWpy
swarm of flies. With their provlslens they return-
ed to the canoe. Presently Holllster tossed over
board the empty cracker box, , weighted with a
atone, because, ha said. It would be a crime to vio
late the tidiness ef this picture-book water way)
and looked an Interrogation at the girl.
She smiled back at him. "You saw the box go
down?" she said. ."Well, my last doubt went with
It. I've decided. You needn't worry about me
any more, kind gentleman."
"So the Ideal Is saved?" he cried. "Good!"
"It Is curious," she mused, "bow much plainer
some things are only fifty miles from town. I
can't put It Into words; but I didn't really make
the choice myself at all. It was made for me while
we were floating up here In this still little boat,
with you sitting In the stern, so so different, like
the boys we saw there in the college grounds. It's
as If a different order of life from mine had Just
come and grabbed hold of me, kind but strong, and
made me do Its way."
"No." said the man, "that's not It. You had the
different order deep In you somewhere, and this life
to-day has just called to it that's all." . '
"Yes, I suppose I have," she said, half to her
self. "I wonder If really that isn't the part of me
through which the big things will come oh, I am
sure it is!"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
The girl grew red. Then suddenly she put her
blushes aside, and said calmly: "You have been my
very, good, friend. I'll tell you everything. I was
born In a little city on the one-night circuit, and
had to quit school when I was fifteen, to work in a
store. I was always ambitious and always crazy
about the stage. But my folks weren't only poor,
they didn't know enough about things to send me
to be trained, even If they could have afforded It.
Life In the store was worse than drudgery it was
hell. I acted at socials and dramatic clubs when
ever I could, and one day when I was eighteen I
went to the manager of a musical comedy that
came to town and asked him for a Job. He said he
needed broilers, and he took me. Most of the fresh
girls I mean literally In musical shows are pick
ed up like I was round through the country. I
told my parents, and they said I couldn't go. So I
ran sway. For the rest of the season we did one
night?, and I learned what theatrical life Is. All
my dreams of ease and luxury vanished, and the
things I saw going on In the company sickened me.
But a girl who's worked In a department store, even
a small one, knows how to take care of herself If
she wants to, and I wa'sn't molested much.
"But I didn't want the musical line; I wanted to
act. When we got In the following June I began
the horrid humiliating trot around from one office
to another, waiting, begging, suffering all kinds of
Insults. Finally a man who wanted somebody for
a tiny soubrette role in a cheap stock company took
me, and shipped me up to a New England city.
There I lived on next to nothing a week, played
every afternoon and evening, and rehearsed every
morning. But I got a chance to act, and, as I
made good, they gave me pretty good parts finally.
I learned a lot, too, from our leading woman, who
was kind and helpful. She'd be on the three-sheets
along Broadway if it wasn't for the booze, poor
thing.
"Then I came back to the Alley, and did 'the
round of the offices again, and was again Insulted
Insulted you know, in the worst way a woman can
be. I began to wonder if that was the price all of
them paid for their parts. And then I began to
wonder another thing. I suppose other girls have
wondered It before me, God help them! began to
wonder, not so much if it was wrong, but If, right
or" wrong, it wasn't the way to learn a thousand
shades of the emotions we actresses are called on to
express, and which I, for one, felt myself so ignor
ant of expressing. I was ambitious, terribly Am
bitious you believe that, don't you?"
"Of course," said Holllster gravely.
"Well, it wasn't the promise of better parts for
the mere sake of the name, or greater comfort; It
was Just this ambition to learn, to get ahead, this
I'VE EVER KNOWN," SAID THE GIRL.
Ideal of one's art, that began to whisper to me.
Jnst about then I saw a play where the doctrine
was preached or seemed to be preached. And al
ways there are the examples of certain great ac
twseoe Idols to ns lesser people. I got all confused
and hopeless about It It was wrong; It was right.
Jt was my duty to myself to resist; It araa my dsty
to mywtlf to yield. I've b werrylng along la a
tiny, bo-good part this winter, en Ue road. We
, -.-
" I
came In the other day we're filling In a week
down at the Grand now. Last night the manager,
offered me the second lead next season at at his
price. That's what. I was debating when I met
you.'' "
The girl looked Holllster In the eyes for a mo
ment as she finished, desperately trying to read
there if he understood and believed. She saw his
TO
SHE PUT HER HAND IN HI3 AND THEN
VANISHED.
kind, strong sympathy. Then she suddenly broke
into sobs, and burled her burning face in her
hands.
He was silent for a time. It seemed best. Then
he spoRe.
"I've noticed," he said, "that most of the plays
and books which preach the doctrine you speak of
preach It as a Justification of wrong already com
mitted, as a sort of consolation, not as advice to
those who haven't stepped out of the path. That's
what makes them, when you come to reflect on the
matter, to pitiably weak as philosophy or ethics.
It Isn't sin, It's sympathy that gives you power to
act emotions, or me power to write them for I.
too, am trying to be an artist, and I havengot as
far as a speaking part yet, either! You spoke of
to-day's way ot life, this country way, this high
bred, ollege way well, don't you see that this
way has, after all, produced more and greater ar
tists than the other way ever did? And don't you
see it gives you something the other can never give?
I mean peace and security and the knowledge that
you are not a coward, that you "have never gone
back on an Ideal? Sympathy and Imagination can
teach you to portray any emotion. And they grow
best, believe 'me, In the life you've chosen. You'll
get the second lead soon enough, cheer up! Tho
world even the stage world isn't so dark as it
looks on a hot night in New York."
The girl raised her face to his and put out her
hand. "You're right; I know you're right. Every
bit of me is telling me so now," she said. "To
morrow I'll begin silooplng for a part in a different
company."
"You must let me help you," said Hollister. "I've
some friends In the business, even if they don't liko
my plays. Besides I'm os a newspaper and that
helps a whole lot.''
"Some day, who knows?' she laughed, "I'll star
In one of you. dramas!"
"Shake on It!" he cried.
.And then he faced the canoe toward Princeton,
and, chatting gayly, like two new 1)orn Into a world
of Joy and sunshine, they slid between green banks
ip the. canal.
The evening lights on lower Manhattan were
twinkling, as of a myriad of cliff dwellings, against
the twilight blue - as the ferryboat bearing them
back moved out of her slip. A cool, salt breeze
came up the bay and touched like a caress their
eyelids, neavy with healthy sleep, the sleep that
comes from open air and exercise. The great,
twinkling city, the tossing river, the evening sky.
the gulls, the busy ferryboats darting to and fro
like golden waterbugs, seemed beautiful to them,'
like a picture. After a hastily snatched supper
Holllster left his companion at the stage entrance.
"Nerve?" he said. "Why, I shall sleep like a
log for ten mortal nours and wake up to work on'
our play!"
But the girl looked at him shyly.
"I've a long way yetno go!" she said In a low
tone. I
"Nonsense," said he. "The good part will come
before you know It."
"That Isn't what I mean," she answered.
"But you've no doubts any more?"
"That isn't -what I mean, either." She smiled a
little wistfully as she met his eyes.
"Then what?"
She shook ber head. "But It's worth It!" she
said, as she put her hand in his again, and then
Tanlsbed qaickly into the dingy passage.
Holllster did sleep that night, the sleep of
oblivion, even of oblivion to an Irate city editor,
But before be went to bed he read the story he had
last beea working on.
"Rubbish! "he exclaimed as be finished. "Who
Invented the fallacy that the happy ending is illog
ical r Here's not an Ideal bnt a delusion gone!"
And be tore the last sheets of his msnuscript In
to fragments. Jt was net till later that be came to
realize what her parting words had meant
wales, provesthat be was a modern man.
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