However differentiated from other suburban places Dumfries Corners may be in most instances, in the matter of obtaining and retaining efficient domestics the citizens of that charming town find it much like all other communities of its class. Civilization brings with it everywhere, it would seem, problems difficult of solution, and conspicuous among them may be mentioned the servant problem. It is probable that the only really happy young couple that ever escaped the annoyance of this particular evil were Adam and Eve, and as one recalls their case it was the interference of a third party, in the matter of their diet, that brought all their troubles upon them, so that even they may not be said to have enjoyed complete immunity from domestic trials. What quality it is in human nature that leads a competent housemaid or a truly-talented culinary artist to abhor the country-side, and to prefer the dark, cellar-like kitchens of the city houses it is difficult to surmise; why the suburban housekeeper finds her choice limited every autumn to the maid that the city folks have chosen to reject is not clear. That these are the conditions which confront surburban residents only the exceptionally favored rustic can deny.

In Dumfries Corners, even were there no rich red upon the trees, no calendar upon the walls, no invigorating tonic in the air to indicate the season, all would know when autumn had arrived by the anxious, hunted look upon the faces of the good women of that place as they ride on the trains to and from the intelligence offices of the city looking for additions to their ménage. Of course in Dumfries Corners, as elsewhere, it is possible to employ home talent, but to do this requires larger means than most suburbanites possess, for the very simple reason that the home talent is always plentifully endowed with dependents. These latter, to the number of eight or ten—which observation would lead one to believe is the average of the successful local cook, for instance—increase materially the butcher's and grocer's bills, and, one not infrequently suspects, the coal man's as well.

Years ago, when he was young and inexperienced, the writer of this narrative, his suspicions having been aroused by the seeming social popularity of his cook, took occasion one Sunday afternoon to count the number of mysterious packages, of about a pound in weight each, which set forth from his kitchen and were carried along his walk in various stages of ineffectual concealment by the lady's visitors. The result was by no means appalling, seven being the total. But granting that seven was a fair estimate of the whole week's output, and that the stream flowed on Sundays only, and not steadily through the other six days, the annual output, on a basis of fifty weeks—giving the cook's generosity a two weeks' vacation—three hundred and fifty pounds of something were diverted from his pantry into channels for which they were not originally designed, and on a valuation of twenty-five cents apiece his minimum contribution to his cook's dependents became thereby very nearly one hundred dollars. Add to this the probable gifts to similarly fortunate relatives of a competent local waitress, of an equally generously disposed laundress with cousins, not to mention the genial, open-handed generosity of a hired man in the matter of kindling-wood and edibles, and living becomes expensive with local talent to help.

It is in recognition of this seemingly cast-iron rule that local service is too expensive for persons of modest income, that the modern economical house-wife prefers to fill her ménage with maids from the metropolis, even though it happen that she must take those who for one reason or another have failed to please her city sisters. It may be, too, that this is one of the reasons for the constant changes in most suburban houses, for it is equally axiomatic that once an alien becomes acclimated she takes on a clientèle of adopted relatives, who in the course of time become as much of a drain upon the treasury of the household as the Simon-Pure article.

The Brinleys had been through the domestic mill in its every phase. They had had cooks, and cooks, and cooks, and maids, and maids, and maids, plus other maids; they had been face to face with arson and murder; Mrs. Brinley had parted a laundress armed with a flat-iron from a belligerent cook armed with an ice-pick, and twice the ministers of the law had carried certain irate women bodily forth with the direst of threats lest they should return later and remove the Brinley family from the list of the living.

All of which contributed to Mrs. Brinley's unhappiness and rather increased than diminished her natural timidity. Brinley, on the other hand, professed to know no fear, but according to his theory that ways and means were his care, and that the domestic affairs of his household were his wife's, and beyond his jurisdiction, held himself aloof and said never a word to the recalcitrant servant, confining what upbraiding he did exclusively to Mrs. Brinley.

"Why don't you scold Bridget?" cried Mrs. Brinley one morning, after Brinley had made a few remarks to his wife which were not to her taste, inasmuch as she felt that she had done nothing to deserve them. "I didn't burn the steak."

"That is very true, my dear," said Brinley, "but you are responsible for the cook who did. It would never do for me to interfere. I have troubles enough with my office-boys. This is your bailiwick, not mine, and until I ask you to scold my clerks you mustn't ask me to scold your servants." With this sage remark the valiant Brinley at once took his departure.

Time passed, and it so happened one autumn that the once happy household found itself in the throes of a particularly aggravated case of cook. She was a sixteen-dollar cook, and had been recommended as being "splendid." In just what respect she showed her splendor, save in her regal lack of manners and the marvellous coloring of her costumes on her Sundays out, was never perceptible, but one thing that was wholly clear at the end of a three-weeks' service was her independence of manner.

Meals were never ready on time, and the dinner-hour, instead of being a fixed time beneath her sway, seemed to become a variable point, according to the lady's whim. In the observance of the breakfast-hour she was equally erratic, and on several trying occasions Brinley was on the verge of the dilemma of either failing to keep an appointment in town or going without his morning meal. Sometimes the coffee would come to the table a thin, amber fluid that tasted like particularly bad consommé. Again it would be served with all the thickness of a purée. Her bread was similarly variable in its undesirability. There were biscuits that held all the flaky charm of a snowball. There were loaves of bread that reminded one of the stories of hardtack in Cuba during the late unpleasantness. There were English muffins that rested upon poor Brinley's digestion as the world may fairly be presumed to rest upon the shoulders of Atlas, and, indeed, it is a tradition in the Brinley family that one of this cook's pie-crusts rivalled Harveyized steel in its impenetrability.

Indeed, Brinley, usually a silent sufferer, commented upon this cohesive quality of Ellen's pastry on two different occasions. On the first he advised Mrs. Brinley to learn the secret of Ellen's manipulation of the ingredients of a pie-crust, and have herself capitalized to rival the corporations which provide the government with armor-plate. On the second he made the sage though disagreeable remark that the "next apple-pie we have should be served with individual steam-drills." And he one day accompanied Mrs. Brinley to a quiet golf links, and, when he had teed up, that good lady observed one of Ellen's doughnuts upon the little mound of sand before him instead of his favorite ball.

"I cut up the Silverton ball so," he said, as he addressed the tee, "that I'm ashamed of myself. I may not play any better with this doughnut, but it will never show the marks of the irons as a bit of mere gutta-percha would."

"If you feel that way about Ellen," Mrs. Brinley observed, just as Brinley was about to drive off with a real ball, "I don't see why you don't discharge her."

Brinley took his eye off the ball to look indignantly upon his wife, and consequently foozled.

"Discharge her? Why should I discharge her?" he demanded, his temper growing as he observed where he had landed his ball. "I'm not running the house, my dear. You are. I didn't ask you to tell Miss Flossie Fairfax that, as she couldn't spell, she was no longer useful as a stenographer in the office of Brinley & Rutherford. Why should you ask me to tell a cook that her services are no longer required in the establishment of Brinley & Brinley, of which you are the manager?"

"It isn't easy to discharge a girl," Mrs. Brinley began. "Particularly a quarrelsome woman like Ellen."

"Oh, that's it," said Brinley. "You are afraid of her."

"Not exactly," said Mrs. Brinley. "But—"

"Of course, if you are afraid of her, I'll get rid of her," persisted Brinley, valiantly. "Just wait until we get home. I'll show you a thing or two when it comes to ridding one's self of an unfaithful servant. The steak this morning looked like a stake that martyrs had been burned at, and I am not afraid to say so."

And so it was decided that Brinley, on his return home, should interview Ellen and inform her that her services would not be required after the first of the month.

"Now let's play golf," he said. "I'll settle Ellen in a minute. Fore!"

How Brinley fulfilled his promise is best shown by his talk with Mrs. Brinley the next morning when, somewhat red of face, he rejoined her in the dining-room after his interview with Ellen.

"Well?" said Mrs. Brinley.

"It's all right," Brinley replied, with an uneasy glance at his wife. "She's going to stay."

"Going to stay?" echoed Mrs. Brinley, her eyes opening wide in a very natural astonishment. "Why, I thought you were going to discharge her?"

"Well—I was," he said, haltingly. "I was, of course. That's what I went down for—but—er—you know, my dear, that there are two sides to every question."

"Even to Ellen's biscuits?" Mrs. Brinley laughed.

"Never mind that. She's going to do better," said Brinley. "You'll find that hereafter we've got a cook, and not an incendiary nor a forger of armor-plate."

"And may I ask how this wonderful reform has been worked in the brief space of ten minutes?" asked Mrs. Brinley. "Have you hypnotized her?"

"No," said Brinley. Then he looked rather sheepishly out of the window. "I've given her an incentive to do better. I've increased her wages."

Mrs. Brinley gazed at him silently in open-mouthed wonder for a full half-minute.

"You did what?" asked Mrs. Brinley.

"I told her we'd give her twenty dollars a month instead of sixteen," said Brinley. "You needn't laugh," he added. "I began very severely. Asked her what she meant by ignoring our wishes as to hours. I dilated forcefully upon her apparent fondness for burning steaks to a crisp, and sending broiled chicken to the table looking as if somebody had dropped a flat-iron on them."

"Good!" exclaimed Mrs. Brinley. "And what did she say? Was she impertinent?"

"Not a bit of it," said Brinley "She took it very nicely until I spoke of the muffins, after which I had intended to give her notice to quit, but she took the wind completely out of my sails by asking me what I expected at sixteen dollars a month."

"Ah!" said Mrs. Brinley.

"Exactly," said Brinley. "That was a point I had not considered at all. After all, she was right. What can you expect for sixteen dollars?"

"Well, what next?" asked Mrs. Brinley, her eyes a-twinkle.

"I asked her if she thought she could do better on twenty dollars," he answered. "She thought she could, and that's the way it stands now."

"I see," said Mrs. Brinley, and then she burst into a perfect explosion of laughter, which she soon curbed, however, as she noticed the expression on poor Brinley's face. "I've no doubt you have acted with perfect justice in this matter, my dear George," she said. "But I think hereafter I'll do my own discharging. Your way is rather extravagant—er—don't you really think so?"

"Perhaps," said Brinley, and departed for town.

"The madam is right about that," he said to himself later in the day, as he thought over the incident. "But extravagant or not, I couldn't have discharged that woman if somebody had offered me a clear hundred. Mrs. B. doesn't know it, but I was in a blue funk from start to finish."

In which surmise Brinley was wrong. Mrs. B. did know it, and when two weeks later Ellen became absolutely impossible, and demanded a kitchen-maid as the perquisite of a twenty-dollar cook, Mrs. Brinley didn't think of calling upon her husband to perform the function of the executioner, but like a brave woman actually summoned the cook into her presence and did it herself. A less courageous woman would have gone downstairs into the kitchen to do it.

It was a rather remarkable affair, taken altogether. Wilkins was not what one would call an attractive man, and none of the young women of Dumfries Corners who had met him had ever manifested anything but a pronounced aversion to his society.

"I'd rather be a wall-flower than dance with Sam Wilkins," one of these young women had said. "He not only can't dance, but, what is infinitely worse, he doesn't know that he can't dance, and as for his conversation—well, give me silence."

"You are perfectly right about that," said another. "Whenever I see him about to waltz or two-step, I immediately remove myself from the scene, and pray for the girl he's dancing with. He is a train-wrecker, and the favorite resting-place for his heels is on some one else's foot. I've heard that he steps on his own feet, too, he's so awkward, and I hope he does if it hurts him as much as he hurts me when he steps on mine."

For Wilkins's sake I am very sorry to say that this feeling towards him was invariable. I never cared much for him myself, but I felt rather sorry for him when I perceived the persistent snubbing with which he was everywhere received. He never seemed aware of it himself, happily, however, and accepted my merely sympathetic attentions with that superciliousness which always goes with conscious rectitude.

Conscious rectitude, I think, was Wilkins's trouble. He was good, and he was aware of it, but he was not content with that. He wanted everybody else to be good. I really believe that Wilkins could have carried on a Platonic love affair with an auburn-haired girl for ten weeks without an effort, he was so terribly good, which did not at all contribute to his popularity. A fellow who talks about ritualism while walking in the moonlight with a sentimental woman, doesn't count for much, and Wilkins was always doing things like that. It was even whispered last winter when he went sleigh-riding with that fascinating little widow, Mrs. Broughton, that he let her do the driving, clasped his own hands in front of him, and talked of nothing but the privations of the missionaries in China, and never mentioned oysters or cold birds and a bottle.

"And worst of all," snapped Mrs. Broughton, "he really seemed to enjoy it. I never saw such a man!"

I have mentioned all these details for the purpose of indicating how unpopular Wilkins was and how it was that he had become so, for with this knowledge the reader will share the surprise which we all felt when Wilkins suddenly blossomed forth as the most popular man of Dumfries Corners. It was really a knockdown blow to the most of us, for while we may have been jealous on occasions of each other, it never occurred to any of us to be jealous of the train-wrecker.

I didn't like it when Araminta smiled upon Harry Burnham, but it was not injurious to my self-respect that she should do it, because Harry Burnham averages up as good a fellow as I am, and then Harry and I could drown our differences in the flowing bowl later on. On the other hand, if Harry's Fiametta cast side glances at me, of course Harry would be wroth, but he could understand why Fiametta should be so affected by the twinkle in my eye—an affection by the way which has often got me unconsciously into trouble—that she should for the moment forget herself and respond to it.

But when Araminta and Fiametta on a sudden, just after the leap-year dance, wholly, and, as we thought, basely, deserted us for that emblem of conscious rectitude, Sam Wilkins, a man whose eye couldn't learn to twinkle in a thousand years, a mere human iceberg, then it was that we were astounded. Nor was this secession limited to Araminta and Fiametta. The conversion of the girls of Dumfries Corners to Wilkins was as complete, as comprehensive, as it was startling to the men. Jack Lester, as Bob Jenks expressed it, was "trun down" by Daisy Hawkins, who appeared to have eyes for none but Wilkins, while Bob, in turn, when going to make his usual Thursday evening call upon Miss Betsy Wilson, discovered that Miss Betsy had gone to the University extension lecture with the train-wrecker, an act unprecedented, for it had long been the custom for Bob to spend his Thursday evenings at the Wilson mansion, and, while nothing had as yet been announced, everybody in town was getting his congratulations ready for Bob as soon as that which was understood became a matter of common knowledge.

For a week or two we none of us let on that we had observed the remarkable change that had come o'er the spirit of our dreams. Harry has always been remarkable for his ability to conceal his feelings, and in that respect I am a good second, and except for the fact that we spent more time at the club playing pool nobody would have suspected that we cared whether Araminta or Fiametta still loved us or not. Besides, we each had a feeling that two could play at this Wilkins game, and I had made up my mind that if Araminta could so easily find a substitute for me I, with my twinkle, could as speedily replace her. That is to say, I felt that I could create that impression in Araminta's mind, and that was all I was after. I didn't really intend, however easy it would be to do so, to create a flutter of a permanent nature in any other woman's heart—that is, not until I was sure that Araminta was lost to me forever. After a decent period of mourning I might have used my twinkle for permanent effect, but at that moment my only idea was to show Araminta that if one could be fickle, two could be twice as fickle. Harry had the same course of treatment in store for Fiametta, and we both made a strong bid for the company of Mary Brown, who, it must be confessed, was a charming girl, and stood second in the affections of every man in Dumfries Corners.

It was the opportunity of Mary Brown's life, for even as Harry and I had decided, so had all the other jilted swains, but that curious girl either could not or would not grasp it. She, too, had become a Wilkinsite, and would have nothing to do with any of us. She declined to attend the Beldens's musicale with me, and went bicycling with the iceberg. She told Robinson she hated lectures, and went to a stereopticon show with the train-wrecker. All the other men met with a similar rebuff, and at the last meeting of the Chafing Dish Club she capped the climax by refusing my lobster à la Newburg and Harry's oysters poulet, to have a second helping to the sole-leather welsh rarebit which Wilkins had constructed; Wilkins, a rank outsider, who had been asked to come to the meeting by every blessed girl in the club, although heretofore he had not been considered as a possible member, and in fact had been black-balled by the girls themselves! And when it came time for the girls to go home, instead of each one being escorted by a single male member, Wilkins corralled the whole lot of them in a huge omnibus which he had hired, and drove off with them, leaving us disconsolate. He smiled so broadly you could see his teeth in the dark.

This, as I have said, capped the climax.

"That settles it," said Burnham. "I'm going to New York for a rest. These Dumfries Corners girls needn't think they're the only women in the world. There are others."

"I'm going to stay and stick it out," said I. "I've got my sister left. She'll never succumb to the Wilkins influence."

But alas! I leaned upon a broken reed. My sister is a sensible girl, but she is "literary." She had a joke in Life once, and since that time she has neglected almost everything but writing and her brother. She doesn't neglect me, and altogether I'm glad she writes, since it fills her with enthusiasm until the articles come back, and up to now she had not written poetry. But, as I say, I leaned upon a broken reed, for when, the next day, I asked her what she was writing, she laughed and showed me a sonnet.

"Poetry, eh?" I said, disapprovingly, as I looked over her manuscript.

"Yes," she answered, modestly. "A sonnet."

And I read, "To S.W."

"Who's 'S.W.?'" I asked, with a frown, although I little suspected what her answer would be.

"Sam Wilkins," she replied.

I then realized the full force of Caesar's "Et tu, Brute?" and fled.

Meanwhile Wilkins was becoming insufferable. If Bunthorne was an ass, he was at least clever, but this Wilkins—he was a whole drove of asses, and not a redeeming feature to the lot. He could no more account for his sudden popularity than we could, but he could not help realizing it after a week or two, and then, for the first time in his life, he began to take notice. We men all wanted to thrash him, and I think Burnham would have done it if the rest of us hadn't prevented him.

"He needed a licking before this," said Harry, "but now he's worse than ever. It isn't conscious rectitude now, it's triumphant virtue. He makes me tired. He was telling me the other day that while girls might be captivated by flippant, superficial, prancing dudes for a while, in the end solid worth would win, and then he went on to say that the youth of modern times cultivated his feet to the exclusion of his head, and that while he had, of course, learned to dance, he had not devoted all his time to it, and regarded it, after all, as a very minor sort of an attraction as far as women are concerned. 'I don't rely on my dancing, Burnham,' he said. 'It's the head, and the heart, my boy, that triumphs.' And when I asked him where he learned all this he answered, 'from personal experience.'"

I immediately let go of Burnham. "Go and half-lick him, Harry," said I. "And when you've done with him pass him over to me, and I'll finish him. The supercilious ass."

That was the way Wilkins affected us.

The other men took their dose in different ways. Jenks began to drink a little more; Lester drank a little less. Hicks didn't care much about it one way or the other, and Wilson swore that if Wilkins came to call on his sister again he'd kick him out of the house.

Six weeks rolled by thus, and finally Easter Sunday came. No mitigation of the Wilkins visitation had entered into our lives. As the days wore on the girls became more devoted to him than ever, and he became correspondingly unbearable. The condescension with which he would treat his fellow-men was something hardly to be tolerated, and the worst of it was there didn't seem to be any way of bringing the girls to terms. There wasn't anybody left for us to flirt with now that Mary Brown had gone over to the enemy, she who had always been willing to flirt with anybody.

"There's only one hope," said Jenks. "If he'll only marry one of 'em, the others will come back. He can't marry 'em all, thank Heaven."

"Suppose it was Fiametta he married?" said I.

"Or Araminta!" was his preposterous retort.

"He'll never do that," said Lester. "He's in clover now, and for the first time in his life, and the more of an ass he is the more he'll like clover. He's paying attention to the lot. He'll never settle down to one. It's all up with us—unless he bankrupts himself."

"He won't," observed Harry Burnham. "Conscious rectitude won't do anything like that. I'm going to New York to call on an old flame, and I advise the rest of you to do the same."

"Well, I don't know but what you are right," said I, "but Araminta shall have one more chance. I'm going to church to-morrow. It's Easter Sunday, and I'll offer to escort her home. If she says 'yes,' all right. If she doesn't, I'm lost to her forever."

"Good scheme," quoth the others. "We're with you."

And that is what we all did. The girls were all there, resplendent in new bonnets and toggery of other sorts, and the smirking Wilkins was there too. He passed the plate after the sermon, and his rectitude shone out oleaginously on every line of his face. It was as much as I could do to keep from tripping him up in the aisle, and sending him and the contribution-plate sprawling. I almost did it when I imagined his feelings as the nickels rattled down through the register into the furnace below, but I restrained myself—and the killing glances he threw into those glass eyes of his, whenever he happened to hold the plate before one of those Dumfries girls! It was sickening, and I came near to flying before the close of the service. The others had the same sensations and temptations, and it is a wonder that Wilkins did not meet with some dreadful humiliation before he got the collection back into the chancel. It was a terrible strain on us, and his horrid unconsciousness that he was anything but perfect, and that the rest of us were anything more than so many paving stones to be walked on, was aggravating to a degree. Nothing unusual happened, however, and the service came to an end, and with it came to us all another surprise, but this time the surprise gave Wilkins a pain, and I had a front seat when the blow was dealt.

It had occurred to the immaculate rival of all the manhood of Dumfries Corners that he would honor Araminta with his society on the way home from church, and he and I reached her side after service at one and the same moment.

"May I have the pleasure of seeing you home?" said Wilkins, twirling his mustache with a "resist me if you can" smile on his lips.

"Don't let me interfere," said I, dryly, and was about to turn away.

"Thank you, Mr. Wilkins," replied Araminta, "but Mr. Smithers has already asked me."

It was a beautiful, lovely, sweet lie. I hadn't done anything of the sort, but I'd meant to, of course, and perhaps Araminta had become a mind reader. Wilkins got a little flushy around his cheek-bones, and posted off to Fiametta, but she and Burnham were already en route and apparently reconciled. So it went with all. Wilkins was left. Even my sister, who, lacking Wilkins, would have to walk home with the minister's wife, declined, and the fall of the great man was complete. Mary Brown was the only one remaining in the field, and when he fled to her she said she wasn't going home.

"Well, then," said Wilkins, "let me take you to wherever you are going?"

"Thank you," returned Miss Brown, "I'm not going there either," and she joined Araminta and myself, much to our delight, for we have no secrets from her. And then it all came out.

The girls had not loved us less, or Wilkins more, but they had resolved to keep Lent with unusual rigor this year.

They had sworn us off and taken up Wilkins for penance.

Hard on Wilkins?

Not a bit of it. He's as conscious of his rectitude and as unconscious of his unpopularity as ever.

Only he is a little more outspoken about women than he used to be, and somehow or other he has let it creep out that he "doesn't find them interesting."

"They can't even learn to dance without tripping a fellow up," says he.

The serpent had crept into Eden. The Perkins household for ten years had been little less than Paradise to its inmates, and then in a single night the reptile of political ambition had dragged his slimy length through those happy door-posts and now sat grinning indecently at the inscription over the library mantel, a ribbon mosaic bearing the sentiment "Here Dwells Content" let into the tiles thereof.

How it ever happened no man knoweth, but happen it did. Thaddeus Perkins was snatched from the arms of Peace and plunged headlong into the jaws of Political Warfare.

"They want me because they think I'm strong," he pleaded, in extenuation of his acceptance of the nomination for Mayor of his town.

"But you ought to know better," returned Mrs. Perkins, failing to realize what possible misconstruction her lord and master might put upon the answer. "The idea of your meddling in politics when you've got twice as much work as you can do already! I think it's awful!"

"I didn't seek it," he said, after hesitating a moment; "they've—they've thrust it on me." Then he tried to be funny. "With me, public office is a public thrust."

"Is there any salary?" asked Mrs. Perkins, treating the jest with the contempt it merited.

"No," said Thaddeus. "Not a cent; but—"

"Not a cent!" cried Mrs. Perkins. "And you are going to give up all your career, or at least two years of it, and probably the best two years of your life, for—"

"Glory," said Thaddeus.

"Glory! Humph," said Mrs. Perkins, "I am not aware that nations are talking of previous Mayors of Dumfries Corners. Mr. Jiggers's name is not a household word outside of this city, is it?"

Mr. Jiggers was the gentleman, into whose shoes Thaddeus was seeking to place his feet—the incumbent of the mighty office to which he aspired.

"Who is the present Lord Mayor of London?" the lady continued.

"Haven't the slightest idea," murmured the standard-bearer of the Democratic party, hopelessly.

"Or Berlin, or Peking—or even of Chicago?" she went on.

"What has that got to do with it?" retorted the worm, turning a trifle.

"You spoke of glory—the glory of being Mayor of Dumfries Corners, a city of 30,000 inhabitants. This is going to send your name echoing from sea to sea, reverberating through Europe, and thundering down through the ages to come; and yet you admit that the glories of the Mayors of London with 4,000,000 souls, of Berlin, Chicago, and Peking, with millions more, are so slight that you can't remember their names—or even to have heard them, for that matter. Really, Thaddeus, I am surprised at you. What you expect to get out of this besides nervous prostration I must confess I cannot see."

"Lamps," said Thaddeus, clutching like a drowning man at the one emolument of the coveted office.

Mrs. Perkins gazed at her husband anxiously. The answer was so unexpected and seemingly so absurd that she for a moment feared he had lost his mind. The notion that two years' service in so important an office as that of Mayor of Dumfries Corners received as its sole reward nothing but lamps was to her mind impossible.

"Is—is there anything the matter with you, dear?" she asked, placing her hand on his brow. "You don't seem feverish."

"Feverish?" snapped the leader of his party. "Who said anything about my being feverish?"

"Nobody, Teddy dear; but what you said about lamps made me think—made me think your mind was wandering a trifle."

"Oh—that!" laughed Perkins. "No, indeed—it's true. They always give the Mayor a pair of lamps. Some of them are very swell, too. You know those wrought-iron standards that Mr. Berkeley has in front of his place?"

"The ones at the driveway entrance, on the bowlders?"

"Yes."

"They're beauties. I've always admired those lamps very much."

"Well—they are the rewards of Mr. Berkeley's political virtue. I paid for them, and so did all the rest of the tax-payers. They are his Mayor's lamps, and if I'm elected I'll have a pair just like them, if I want them like that."

"Oh, I do hope you'll get in, Teddy," said the little woman, anxiously, after a reflective pause. "They'd look stunning on our gate-posts."

"I don't think I shall have them there," said Thaddeus. "Jiggers has the right idea, seems to me—he's put 'em on the newel-posts of his front porch steps."

"I don't suppose they'd give us the money and let us buy one handsome cloisonné lamp from Tiffany's, would they?" Mrs. Perkins asked.

"A cloisonné lamp on a gate-post?" laughed Perkins.

"Of course not," rejoined the lady. "You know I didn't mean any such thing. I saw a perfectly beautiful lamp in Tiffany's last Wednesday, and it would go so well in the parlor—"

"That wouldn't be possible, my dear," said Thaddeus, still smiling. "You don't quite catch the idea of those lamps. They're sort of like the red, white, and blue lights in a drug-store window in intention. They are put up to show the public that that is where a political prescription for the body politic may be compounded. The public is responsible for the bills, and the public expects to use what little light can be extracted from them."

"Then all this generosity on the public's part is—"

"Merely that of the Indian who gives and takes back," said Thaddeus.

"And they must be out-of-doors?" asked Mrs. Perkins. "If I set the cloisonné lamp in the window, it wouldn't do?"

"No," said Thaddeus. "They must be out-of-doors."

"Well, I hope the nasty old public will stay there too, and not come traipsing all over my house," snapped Mrs. Perkins, indignantly.

And then for a little time the discussion of the Mayor's lamps stopped.

The campaign went on, and Thaddeus night after night was forced to go out to speak here and there and everywhere. One night he travelled five miles through mud and rain to address an organization of tax-payers, and found them assembled before the long mahogany counter of a beer-saloon, which was the "Hall" they had secured for the reception of the idol of their hopes; and among them it is safe to say there was not one who ever saw a tax-bill, and not many who knew more about those luxuries of life than the delicious flunky, immortalized by Mr. Punch, who says to a brother flunky, "I say, Tummas, wot is taxes?" And he told them his principles and promised to do his best for them, and bade them good-night, and went away leaving them parched and dry and downcast. And then the other fellow came, and won their hearts and "set them up again." Another night he attended another meeting and lost a number of friends because he shone at both ends but not in the middle. If he had taken a glittering coin or two from his vest-pocket on behalf of the noble working-men there assembled in great numbers and spirituous mood, they would have forgiven him his wit and patent-leather shoes—and so it went. Perkins was nightly hauled hither and yon by the man he called his "Hagenbeck," the manager of the wild animal he felt himself gradually degenerating into, and his wife and home and children saw less of him than of the unimportant floating voter whose mind was open to conviction, but could be reached only by way of the throat.

"Two o'clock last night; one o'clock the night before; I suppose it'll be three before you are in to-night?" Mrs. Perkins said, ruefully.

"I do not know, my dear," replied Thaddeus. "There are five meetings on for to-night."

"Well, I think they ought to give you the lamps now," said Mrs. Perkins. "It seems to me this is when you need them most."

"True," said Thaddeus, sadly, for in his secret soul he was beginning to be afraid he would be elected; and now that he saw what kind of people Mayors have to associate with, the glory of it did not seem to be worth the cost. "I'm a sort of Night-Mayor just at present, and those lamps would come in handy in the wee sma' hours," he groaned. And then he sighed and pined for the peaceful days of yore when he was content to walk his ways with no nation upon his shoulders.

"I never envied Atlas anyhow," he confided to himself later, as he tossed about upon his bed and called himself names. "It always seemed to me that this revolving globe must rub the skin off his neck and back; but now, poor devil, with just one municipality hanging over me, I can appreciate more than ever the difficulties of his position—except that he doesn't have to make speeches to 'tax-payers.' Humph! Taxpayers! It's tax-makers. If I'd promised to go into all sorts of wilderness improvement for the sole and only purpose of putting these 'tax-payers' on the corporation at the expense of real laboring-men, I'd win in a canter."

"What is the matter, Thaddeus?" said Mrs. Perkins, coming in from the other room. "Can't you sleep?"

"Don't want to sleep, my dear," returned the candidate. "When I go to sleep I dream I'm addressing mass-meetings. I can't enjoy my rest unless I stay awake. Did your mother come to-day?"

"Yes—and, oh, she's so enthusiastic, Teddy!"

"At last! About me? You don't mean it."

"No—about the lamps. She says lamps are just what we need to complete the entrance. She thinks Mr. Berkeley's scheme of putting them on the stone posts is the best. There's more dignity about it. Putting them on the piazza steps, she says, looks ostentatious, and suggests a beer-saloon or a road-house."

"Well, my dear, that's about all politics seems to amount to," said the reformer. "If those lamps are to be a souvenir of the campaign, they ought to suggest road-houses and beer-saloons."

"They will not be souvenirs of a campaign," replied Mrs. Perkins, proudly. "They will be the outward and visible sign of my husband's merit; the emblem of victory."

"The red badge of triumph, eh?" smiled the candidate, wanly. "Well, my dear, have them where you please, and keep them well filled with alcohol, even if they do burn gas. They'll represent the tax-payers when they get that."

"You musn't get so tired, Thaddeus dear," said the little woman, smoothing his forehead soothingly with her hand. "You seem unusually tired to-night."

"I am," said Thaddeus, shortly. "The debate wore me out."

"Did you debate? I thought you said you wouldn't."

"Well, I did. Everybody said I was afraid to meet Captain Haskins on the platform, so we had it out to-night over in the Tenth Ward. I talked for sixty-eight minutes, gave 'em my views, and then he got up."

"What did he say. Could he answer you?"

"No—but he won the day. All he said was: 'Well, boys, I'm not much of a talker, but I'll say one thing—Perkins, while my adversary, is still my friend, and I'm proud of him. Now, if you'll all join me at the bar, we'll drink his health—on me.'" Thaddeus paused, and then he added: "I imagine they're cheering yet; at any rate, if I have as much health as they drink—on Haskins—I'll double discount old Methuselah in the matter of years."

The next morning at breakfast the pale and nervous standard-bearer was affectionately greeted by his mother-in-law.

"I've been thinking about those lamps all night," she said, after a few minutes. "The trouble about the gate-posts is that you have three gate-posts and only two lamps."

"Maybe they'd let us buy three lamps instead of two," suggested Mrs. Perkins.

"Well, we won't, even if they do let us," observed Perkins, with some irritation. He had just received a newspaper from a kind friend in Massachusetts with a comic biography and dissipated wood-cut of himself in it. "I'm not starting a concert-hall, and I'm not going to put a row of lamps along the front of my place."

"I quite agree with you," replied his mother-in-law. "It occurred to me we might put them, like hanging lanterns, on each of the chimneys. It would be odd."

Thaddeus muttered two syllables to himself, the latter of which sounded like M'dodd, but exactly what it was he said I can only guess. Then he added: "They won't go there. I can't get a gas-pipe up through those chimneys. It's as much as we can do to get the smoke up, much less a gas-pipe. Even if we got the gas-pipe through, it wouldn't do. A putty-blower would choke up the flues."

"Well, I don't know," said the mother-in-law, placidly. "It seems to me—"

A glance from Mrs. Perkins stopped the dear old lady. I think Mrs. Perkins's sympathetic disposition taught her that her husband was having a hard time being agreeable, and that further discussion of the lamp question was likely to prove disastrous.

Thaddeus was soon called for by his manager, and started out to meet the leading lights of the Hungarian and Italian quarters. The Germans had been made solid the day before, and as for the Irish, they were supposed to be with Perkins on principle, because Perkins was not in accord politically with the existing administration.

"It's too bad he's so nervous," said his mother-in-law, as he went out.

"They say women are nervous, but I must say I don't think much of the endurance of men. How absurd he was when he spoke of the gas-pipe through the chimney!"

"Well, I suppose, my dear mother," said Mrs. Perkins, sadly—"I suppose he can't be bothered with little details like the lamps now. There are other questions to be considered."

"What is the exact issue?" asked the mother-in-law, interestedly.

"Well—the tariff, and—ah—and taxes, and—ah—money, and—ah—ah—I think the saloon question enters in somehow. I believe Mr. Haskins wants more of them, and Thaddeus says there are too many of them as it is. And now they are both investigating them, I fancy, because Teddy was in one the other day."

"We ought to help him a little," said the elder woman. "Let's just relieve him of the whole lamp question; decide where to put them, go to New York and pick them out, get estimates for the laying of the pipes, and surprise him by having them all ready to put up the day after election."

"Wouldn't it be fun!" cried Mrs. Perkins, delightedly. "He'll be so surprised—poor dear boy. I'll do it. I'll send down this morning for Mr. O'Hara to come up here and see how we can make the connection and where the trenches for the pipes can be laid. Mr. O'Hara is the best-known contractor in town, and I guess he's the man we want."

And immediately O'Hara was telephoned for to come up to Mr. Perkins's, and the fair conspirators were not aware of, and probably will never realize, the importance politically of that act. Mr. O'Hara refused to come, but it was hinted about that Perkins had summoned him, and there was great joy among the rank and file, and woe among the better elements, for O'Hara was a boss, and a boss whose power was one of the things Thaddeus was trying to break, and the cohorts fancied that the apostle of purity had realized that without O'Hara reform was fallen into the pit. Furthermore, as cities of the third class, like Dumfries Corners, live conversationally on rumors and gossipings, it was not an hour before almost all Dumfries Corners, except Thaddeus Perkins himself and his manager, knew that the idol had bowed before the boss's hat, and that the boss had returned the grand message that he'd see Perkins in the Hudson River before he'd go to his damned mugwump temple; and in two hours they also knew it, for they heard in no uncertain terms from the secretary of the Municipal Club, a reform organization, which had been instrumental in securing Perkins's nomination, who demanded to know in an explicit yes or no as to whether any such message had been sent. The denial was made, and then the lie was given; and many to this day wonder exactly where the truth lay. At any rate, votes were lost and few gained, and many a worthy friend of good government lost heart and bemoaned the degeneration of the gentleman into the politician.

Perkins, worn out, irritated by, if not angry at, what he termed the underhanded lying of the opposition, drove home for luncheon, and found his wife and her mother in a state of high dudgeon. They had been insulted.

"It was frightful the language that man used, Thaddeus," said Mrs. Perkins.

"He wouldn't have dared do it except by telephone," put in the mother-in-law, whose notions were somewhat old-fashioned. "I've always hated that machine. People can lie to you and you can't look 'em in the eye over it, and they can say things to your face with absolute opportunity."

The dear old lady meant impunity, but it must be remembered that she was excited.

"Well, I think he ought to be chastised," said Mrs. Perkins.

"Who? What are you talking about?" demanded Thaddeus.

"That nasty O'Hara man," said Mrs. Perkins. "He said 'he'd be damned' over the wire."

Thaddeus immediately became energetic. "He didn't blackguard you, did he?" he demanded.

"Yes, he did," said Mrs. Perkins, the water in her eyes affecting her voice so that it became mellifluous instead of merely melodious.

"But how?" persisted Perkins.

"Well—we—we—rang him up—it was only as a surprise, you know, dear—we rang him up—"

"You—you rang up—O'Hara?" cried Perkins, aghast. "It must have been a surprise."

"Yes, Teddy. We were going to settle the lamp question; we thought you were bothered enough with—well, with affairs of state—"

The candidate drew up proudly, but immediately became limp again as he realized the situation.

"And," Mrs. Perkins continued, "we thought we'd relieve you of the lamp question; and as Mr. O'Hara is a great contractor—the most noted in all Dumfries Corners—isn't he?"

"Yes, yes, yes! he is!" said Perkins, furiously; "but what of that?"

"Well, that's why we rang him up," said Mrs. Perkins, with a sigh of relief to find that she had selected the right man. "We wanted Mr. O'Hara to dig the trench for the pipes, and lay the pipes—"

"He's a great pipe-layer!" ejaculated Perkins.

"Exactly," rejoined Mrs. Perkins, solemnly. "We'd heard that, and so we asked him to come up."

"But, my dear," cried Perkins, dismayed, "you didn't tell him you wanted him to put up my lamps? I'm not elected yet."

The agony of the moment for Perkins can be better imagined than portrayed.

"He didn't give us the chance," said the mother-in-law. "He merely swore."

Perkins drew a sigh of relief. He understood it all now, and in spite of the position in which he was placed he was glad. "Jove!" he said to himself, "it was a narrow escape. Suppose O'Hara had come! He'd have enjoyed laying pipes for a Mayor's lamps for me—two weeks before election."

And for the first time in weeks Perkins was faintly mirthful. The narrowness of his escape had made him hysterical, and he actually indulged in the luxury of a nervous laugh.

"That accounts for the rumor," he said to himself, and then his heart grew heavy again. "The rumor is true, and—Oh, well, this is what I get for dabbling in politics. If I ever get out of this alive, I vow by all the gods politics shall know me no more."

"It was all right—my asking O'Hara, Thaddeus?" asked Mrs. Perkins.

"Oh yes, certainly, my dear—perfectly right. O'Hara is indeed, as you thought, the most noted, not to say notorious, contractor in town, only he's not laying pipes just now. He's pulling wires."

"For telephones, I presume?" said the old lady, placidly.

"Well, in a way," replied Thaddeus. "There's a great deal of vocality about O'Hara's wires. But, Bess," he added, seriously, "just drop the lamps until we get 'em, and confine your telephoning to your intimate friends. An Irishman on a telephone in political times is apt to be a trifle—er—artless in his choice of words. If you must talk to one of 'em, remember to put in the lightning plug before you begin."

With which injunction the candidate departed to address the Mohawks, an independent political organization in the Second Ward, which was made up of thinking men who never indorsed a candidate without knowing why, and rarely before three o'clock of the afternoon of election day at that, by whom he was received with cheers and back-slapping and button-holings which convinced him that he was the most popular man on earth, though on election day—but election day has yet to be described. It came, and with it there came to Perkins a feeling very much like that which the small boy experiences on the day before Christmas. He has been good for two months, and he knows that to-morrow the period of probation will be over and he can be as bad as he pleases again for a little while anyhow.

"However it turns out, I can tell 'em all to go to the devil to-morrow," chuckled Thaddeus, rubbing his hands gleefully.

"I don't think you ought to forget the lamps, Thaddeus," observed the mother-in-law at breakfast. "Here it is election day and you haven't yet decided where they shall go. Now I really think—"

"Never mind the lamps," returned Thaddeus. "Let's talk of ballot-boxes to-day. To-morrow we can place the lamps."

"Very well, if you say so," said the old lady; "only I marvel at you latter-day boys. In my young days a small matter like that would have been settled long ago."

"Well, I'll compromise with you," said

Thaddeus. "We won't wait until to-morrow. I'll decide the question to-night—I'm really too busy now to think of them."

"I shall be glad when we don't have to think about 'em at all," sighed Mrs. Perkins, pouring out the candidate's coffee. "They've really been a care to me. I don't like the idea of putting them on the porch, or on the gate-posts either. They'll have to be kept clean, and goodness knows I can't ask the girls to go out in the middle of winter to clean them if they are on the gate-posts."

"Mike will clean them," said Thaddeus.

Mrs. Perkins sniffed when Mike's name was mentioned. "I doubt it," she said. "He's been lots of good for two weeks."

"Mike has been lots of good for two weeks," echoed Thaddeus, enthusiastically. "He's kept all the hired men in line, my dear."

"I've no doubt he's been of use politically, but from a domestic point of view he's been awful. He's been drunk for the last week."

"Well, my love," said the candidate, despairingly, "some member of the family had to be drunk for the last week, and I'd rather it was Mike than you or any of the children. Mike's geniality has shed a radiance about me among the hired men of this town that fills me with pride."

"I don't see, to go back to what I said in the very beginning, why we can't have the lamps in-doors," returned Mrs. Perkins.

"I told you why not, my dear," said Perkins. "They are the perquisite of the Mayor, but for the benefit of the public, because the public pays for them."

"And hasn't the public, as you call it, taken possession of the inside of your house?" demanded the mother-in-law. "I found seven gentlemen sitting in the white and gold parlor only last night, and they hadn't wiped their feet either."

"You don't understand," faltered the standard-bearer. "That business isn't permanent. To-morrow I'll tell them to go round to the back door and ask the cook."

"Humph!" said the mother-in-law. "I'm surprised at you. For a few paltry votes you—"

Just here the front door bell rang, and the business of the day beginning stopped the conversation, which bade fair to become unpleasant.

Night came. The votes were being counted, and at six o'clock Perkins was informed that everything was going his way.

"Get your place ready for a brass band and a serenade," his manager telephoned.

"I sha'n't!" ejaculated the candidate to himself, his old-time independence asserting itself now that the polls were closed—and he was right. He didn't have to. The band did not play in his front yard, for at eight o'clock the tide that had set in strong for Perkins turned. At ten, according to votes that had been counted, things were about even, and the ladies retired. At twelve Perkins turned out the gas.

"That settles the lamp question, anyhow," he whispered to himself as he went up-stairs, and then he went into Mrs. Perkins's room.

"Well, Bess," he said, "it's all over, and I've made up my mind as to where the lamps are to go."

"Good!" said the little woman. "On the gate-posts?"

"No, dear. In the parlor—the cloisonné lamps from Tiffany's."

"Why, I thought you said we couldn't—"

"Well, we can. Our lamps can go in there whether the public likes it or not. We are emancipated."

"But I don't understand," began Mrs. Perkins.

"Oh, it's simple," said Thaddeus, with a sigh of mingled relief and chagrin. "It's simple enough. The other lamps are to be put—er—on Captain Haskins's place."