J

TOE WICK was 'way behind with his breakfast, having company in the person of the Lazy J Six's horse wrangler, Boone Mellish, who had been riding Pass Creek for strays. When you have congenial company overnight in the Pass Creek valley you are generally late for breakfast, because you sit up late discussing the news of the past few months and the mysteries of life, including woman. Then, being a man of hospitable instincts and having a proper pride in your own cooking, you spring something a little extra in the way of grub. For instance, you may put alternate layers of bacon, potatoes, and onion in a lordly dish, dredging occasionally with flour and salting and peppering judiciously; then, if you have milk-the kind obtained directly from a fairly docile flesh-and-blood cow-you add milk to the level of the top layer, and bake the whole to a delicate brown. When the guest sits down to a breakfast of this dish, the sun may shine well down into the Red Gypsum gullies and wagon bosses may rage, but he will take his time and his share. "It's lickin' good," said Mr. Mellish, holding out his plate for more. "I don't know as I could have done much better myself, and I'm quite considerable of a hash mixer if anybody should ask you about it real anxious. I've et worse biscuit than these, too. No, I take it all back what I done said about you needin' the refinin' influence of woman. I reckon you can shag along the way you are."

Joe Wick, lantern-jawed and saturnine misogynist, nodded over his coffee cup. "I reckon I can," he said with emphasis.

Mellish grinned. "There ain't no manner of doubt that a woman's cooking makes trouble in the camp once in a while," he resumed presently. "There was Dutch Charlie an' his squaw, f'r instance. Charlie came into Doc Wayne's drug store at Oelrichs with a pain that he wouldn't believe was brought on by a little thing like jerked beef and sauerkraut with fermented wild plum sass to follow.

Doc mixed him up a dose of blue vitriol, or something that took hold right good, and advised him to have his squaw keep her cooking off the range of pale-face chuck. 'I'll back her agin any lady in the Sioux nation for dog an' buffalo berry stew,' says Doc, 'but when it comes to compoundin' sauerkraut from your dim, misty rec❜lections of the way your mother made it, it's poison.' Well, a young Teton buck, name of Hole-in-the-Ground, that was related to Charlie's squaw, heard the talk an' hopped on his pony and lit out with the idee that Charlie was goin' to have his squaw arrested for poisoning him, and when Charlie approaches his happy home there's a puff of smoke from a chink in the cabin, an' Charlie tumbles off his horse

And

with a big hole through him where the pain was. next morning Mrs. Charlie was back on the reservation an' didn't know anythin' about nothin.'"

"That's the way they all are," remarked Joe Wick with feeling. "Blame 'em! that's the way they all are. If any woman come around here ever-"

The sound of wagon wheels outside interrupted him, and as he sat with his fork poised, listening, a shrill "whoo-ee-e" in an unmistakably feminine voice came forth in summons. "Oh, Joe!"

Joe Wick colored painfully at the expression on his guest's face. "It's-it's a neighbor woman," he explained, sotto voce.

"Oh-h, I see," returned Mellish elaborately. "'Course

that's different. If she's a neighbor woman, nobody couldn't blame you. Sure not. No, sir-ee. A person's nachally got to be neighborly. Slick up your hair a little afore you go-or do you want me to go out an' tell her you ain't home an' won't be back right soon?" "You set right where you are," commanded Joe hoarsely. "If she sees you there won't be any gettin' shut of her. You set still."

"Whoo-ee-e" was repeated from the outside. "Ain't there no back way?" whispered Mellish anxiously. "You could hide out in some draw an' I could bring your food if-oh, well, don't get hostile! Wipe them milk splashes off your boots anyway. Tell you-"

But Wick was gone, and his guest doubled himself in the repression of his mirth, and then, tiptoeing to the door, applied his eye to the crack.

JOE

OE had approached a light wagon drawn by a comfortable pair of American horses, in which sat a comfortable-looking woman of middle age and florid complexion, who smiled on him winningly from the depths of her pink sunbonnet. "Howdy, Joe," she called. month of Sundays."

"I ain't seen you in a

"Howdy, Mis' Durkee," returned Joe, uneasily conscious of Mellish in the cabin. "Fine day."

"Elegant," agreed the lady, and then, after a pause: "Ain't seen nothin' of my blue cow around, have you?" "No," replied Joe, "I ain't."

"I allowed maybe you might have."
"I don't reckon I have. No, ma'am."

"That old skeezicks, Ike, let her get away night afore last, an' I'm afraid she's got in with some bunch an' by the time I git her she'll be dried up on me. That's the way it goes every time when a woman's alone in the world an' has to depend on hired help. Ike's gittin' more no account all the time. Well, I allowed you might have seen her."

"Sho, Mis' Durkee, this ain't for me!"

"I am some late," Joe admitted.

"Must take a heap of your time cookin' for yourself an' washin' up your own dishes," observed Mrs. Durkee. "I don't see how you ever find time to do anythin' else." Joe. "It does take a right smart of a man's time," agreed

"To say nothin' of housecleaning, if you ever do any." "Well," said Joe, "once in a month or so I take a hoe an' sorter dig out."

Mrs. Durkee laughed immoderately at this jest. "That's a good one," she giggled. "I bet it ain't so far from the truth either. I'll have to take a peek inside some of these days. Well, I must be gittin' on. Ain't that trace twisted?"

Joe found that it was twisted, and, as he bent over to adjust it, a sudden exclamation from the woman made him look up wonderingly.

"I declare if you ain't snagged your shirt," she said. "There's a great big rinkelhock right in the shoulder, an' a new shirt, too, ain't it?" There was deep concern in her tone.

I s'pose

"That ain't nothin'," Joe protested. "Nothin'! If that ain't just like a man. you'd keep right on a-wearin' it an' lettin' the hole get bigger until it got too bad an' then you'd tear it up for dish rags. I tell you, you take that shirt off right now, an' I'll take it home an' mend it for you."

Joe's embarrassment was painful to witness. "Oh, I don't mean right here," Mrs. Durkee hastened to assure him. "Go into the cabin an' change. I'll wait." Joe demurred, but Mrs. Durkee was peremptory in a coquettish sort of a way, and he reluctantly entered the cabin, scarlet to his ear tips. Shaking his fist in Mellish's grinning face, he divested himself of the torn garment and assumed another from the scanty stock in his trunk.

"Bring them, too," called Mrs. Durkee as he emerged from the cabin. "I can see the holes in 'em from here."

Her finger pointed to

a couple of pairs of blue cotton socks that dangled from a hayrack near a lean-to shed. "You don't need to be bashful about 'em. I've seen men's socks afore now," she added.

Joe hesitated but obeyed, and Mrs. Durkee rolled the socks in the shirt and deftly pinned the bundle, which she tucked in the seat beside her.

"Well, I must be goin'," she said.

"I'll be Over on Beaver this afternoon, an' I'll watch out for that COW o' yourn," said Joe. "She's an old Box E cow, an' that's her range."

Joe waited a minute or two after she had driven away, and then, assuming an austerity of expression calculated to discourage levity, he reentered the cabin' to find Mellish executing a gleeful pas seul to the jingling accompaniment of his own spurs, and emitting subdued whoops.

"Quit that, you crazy loon," growled Joe, seizing the dancer and shaking him vigorously. "She'll hear you."

"Hold me up," gasped Mellish, collapsing in his host's arms. "Fan me! Volupshus females callin' around an' beggin' to mend his shirts an' darn his socks. Pink sunbonnets a-drivin' up at all hours for a drink o' water an' a confidential chat." His legs became limp, and Joe, disentangling himself from his clinging embrace, fell to the floor, where he continued his comment.

"Ain't seen nothin' o' my cow, have you?" Well, if you ain't, won't you be so kind as to let me mend your shirt? I don't know but that'll do me about as well.

"That's the way women all are, blame 'em!' Ain't never satisfied unless they can do some kind of needlework for a feller. When they're young they want to crochet neckties for you, an' when they get about so old or mabbe a little older they're bound they'll put a new seat in your pants. But, then, 'tain't everyone they want to do it for, Joe. If any woman ever come around here' and then see him run with the tin cup."

"If I hadn't she'd a-hopped out of the wagon an' been clackin' yet," said Joe.

"Well, that's the way it is when a woman's alone in the world," jeered Mellish.

"See here, Boone," said Joe sternly, "I don't want to rush nobody off, but I'm dead sure Lute Boggs needs you at the ranch worse than I need you here, an' I think too much of Lute to keep you just because you make me happy. In other words, you can hit the breeze without gettin' arrested for assault."

"All right, Joe," returned Mellish humbly. "Don't shoot, I'll go peaceable. You don't care if I take a little circle out by Beaver an' see if I can find any stray Box E stock, do you? That's a good-lookin' lady when the light strikes her right, an' I'd like to help her out. Same time, I wouldn't want to do anything to knock your eye out. I'm a-goin' to tell them Lazy J Six waddies to keep off the reservation, too."

JOE became impressive. "If you get to shoot

in' off your mouth on this here subject to any of the boys I'll lick the daylights out of you, Boone Mellish," he said. "There ain't nothin' to get funny about anyway. I ain't responsible for Old Man Durkee's decease, am I? I'd a heap ruther he'd stayed alive an' kep' his woman at home the way he always done, but I reckon he never figgered on my ruthers. Similar, when the widow comes around here, I can't chase her off with a club, but I can tell you it's the first time she's ketched me in six weeks."

"You old sourdough stag!" said Mellish. "Be ashamed of yourself talkin' that a-way about a lady; but she'll get you yet, Joe."

"I'll bet you a forty-dollar dog she don't," Joe said emphatically.

Three days later, when the dust from the wheels of Mrs. Durkee's wagon arose in a little cloud over the ridge south of the Wick ranch, Joe Wick lowered his field glasses and hurried to the lean-to from whence a few moments later he led a saddled pony down the trail into the gully that skirted his cabin and cut the plateau to a lower level. There, he mounted and rode hastily to the outlet and then turned eastward and scuttled into a draw like a rabbit into its burrow.

He lay concealed there, smoking philosophically for the best part of an hour, and then, after climbing the bank to reconnoiter, jogged back to the cabin.

WHA

HATEVER may have been the condition of Joe's wearing apparel, there was nothing in his cabin interior to call the blush of shame to his cheek. The walls were of hewn logs from which the draw knife had shaved away the marks of the broad ax. Snowy limepointing filled the chinks, and there were decorations of tobacco tags in elaborate designs, and colored calendars and "art" supplements to relieve the mural bareness. The floor was of planed lumber, not only scrubbed but scoured to driftwood whiteness with sand; the tables bore witness to the same treatment in a greater degree; the cooking utensils were beyond reproach for brightness and neatness of arrangement, and in the partitioned-off sleeping room, his bed was smoothly made. Joe was a man with a sense of order, a passion for cleanliness and muscle and energy to realize his ideals in these particulars.

It was, therefore, with an air of grim satisfaction that the ranchman looked around him, knowing that his fair neighbor had taken her promised "peek." A package lay on the table, and he opened it and found his shirt beautifully mended and his socks not only darned but ironed and folded to admiration.

"Well, she certainly knows how to darn socks," muttered Joe after a careful inspection; "but thunder! what's a new pair of socks once in a while or a new shirt, for that matter? She needn't think-"

He checked himself, put the shirt and socks away, and then went out to the cultivation of his cabbages, but with an uneasy mind and an eye that roved continually to the ridge southward. At noon he was particularly thoughtful over his repast of milk and cornbread. Once he got up and, stepping to the door, looked anxiously out, and when at last he had pushed his chair back he had made a decision. "I'll let them cabbages go for this afternoon and take a load of truck over to the Lazy J," he said. "I might as well have it out with them if I've got to." Accordingly he loaded his wagon with onions, cabbage, squash, beans, and other vegetables highly esteemed by the can-cursed cooks of cow ranches. Fifteen miles out to the Lazy J and fifteen back Joe covered, doing his chores by moonlight on his return, but he had satisfied himself of one thing-that Boone Mellish had been considerate enough to observe silence on the subject of Mrs.

"You'll break them cigars," interrupted Joe, paling slightly. "What are you talkin' about?"

long-nosed man turned and slouched up to where Joe was standing and greeted him.

"Howdy, Ike?" returned Joe, assuming a cordiality that he by no means felt.

"I come to see if I couldn't get that little drag o' yourn," said Ike. "The widow, she wants to put in a - patch of rye, an' it ain't no good tellin' her it's too late for rye. You can't tell a woman nothin'."

"Take it right along," said Joe. "Leave the singletree, though. I'm going to need it." He made an opening in the mud dam of the ditch with his hoe and allowed a little stream to run through it. Ike worried a plug of tobacco with inadequate teeth and then squatted to watch the proceedings.

"Want me to help you to load it in the wagon?" asked the ranchman after a moment or two.

"Mabbe," said Joe shortly.

"Guess not," replied Ike. "Say, Joe, you're as slick

in this man's country, I'll bet you could take fust prize for darnin'. It's as good as the Widow Durkee's."

The emotions aroused in Joe Wick's bosom by Ike's insinuations were poignant and lasting. They had not by any means subsided when two days later Mrs. Durkee drove up and whoo-ee-ed at the yard bars. What Joe said when he heard that call was at once ungallant and profane, and a look of determination knit his shaggy eyebrows and clamped his lantern jaws as he whisked off the grain-sack apron with which he was begirt.

"I'll settle this," he added desperately.

He firmly meant it. It was his unalterable resolution to present such a sourness of aspect and to express himself with such unthankful churlishness as would offend the widow beyond pardon and make her avoid the ridge road for

evermore.

What he said was: "Sho, Mis' Durkee, this ain't for me!" and his face relaxed to such an extent that it might be said he beamed.

"Take it or I'll drop it," commanded Mrs. Durkee, and Joe took it.

IT

T WAS a pie, a pie which, uncovered by the plate that had protected it, showed a rich coloring of flaky crust subdued with a powdering of sugar, into which oozed pink juices from the pattern of fork punctures-a pie to make an anchorite dribble, a pie palliative, and, more, a paragon of pies.

"Ras'bry," said Mrs. Durkee benignantly. "I run on to a patch yest'day evenin' an' picked a couple o' quarts inside of half an hour. I reckon I'll put up a few jars of 'em next week, but sakes alive! I don't somehow seem to take no interest cookin' an' puttin' up things with nobody but myself to eat 'em."

"There's Ike," suggested Joe.

"Cert'nly, there's Ike and there's the two hogs," said Mrs. Durkee. "I'm a-talkin' about somebody that knows what good cookin' is and can appreciate it. I know you can cook, but I think I heard you say that you couldn't make pies."

"No, ma'am," Joe admitted. "Pies is sure a cut above me."

"Pies, cakes, doughnuts, cookies, puddin's, custards-them's my strong holt," said the widow. "I don't want to crack myself up for the best there is," she continued modestly, "but it ain't often I'm asked to get up an' move to one of the back seats."

"I bet you ain't," declared Joe with something approaching enthusiasm as he cast another glance at the pie. "Now you can take that in an' bring me out your mendin'," said Mrs. Durkee briskly.

The ranchman's face fell and hardened in the falling. "Mrs. Durkee, ma'am," he said, "in the first place, I ain't got no mendin', and in the next, if I had, there ain't no reason in the world why I should impose on you to do it for me."

"There ain't," said the widow, smiling. "Well, seems like to me one good turn deserves another, an' when I see my old blue cow back in the milk corral that mornin' with a shippin' tag tied to her tail with 'Best regards from yours faithful, Joe Wick,' on it, I says to myself that very thing. Now you go in an' get that mendin' and don't you tell me you ain't got none, because I know better."

one of them you've got strung out, an' i-gunny! nobody couldn't tell but what a woman had done it."

"My mother was a woman an' she learned me how," explained Joe. "She learned me a heap o' things, my mother did. 'Joey,' says she, 'don't you ever get to pokin' your miserable little nose into things what don't concern you,' she says. I ain't never forgot that."

"It's a right good thing to keep in mind," Ike agreed, "but as for darnin', I couldn't no more darn than nothin'. My fingers is all thumbs, sewin' on buttons, even. Now you'd think me workin' for a woman, I'd get all my clothes kep' mended up, but shucks! she wouldn't take a stitch to keep the last rag from fallin' off me. If I drop any hints, she'll give a needle an' thread, but that's all she will do."

BOONE MELLISH'S remark, "But 'tain't everybody

they want to do it for, Joe," occurred to Mr. Wick. "Same time she'll darn socks," pursued Ike. "I seen her workin' over a batch of blue ones like them o'

began.

"You're tiltin' the juice out o' that pie," said Mrs. Durkee. "Go get that mendin' now like a good man. It'll give me somethin' to do an' seem like old times when I had somebuddy to care for an' do for." Mrs. Durkee sighed pensively, and Joe Wick turned and walked in a daze to the cabin. As he went he murmured softly but with great expression: "Oh, Boone Mellish! Boone Mellish! Wait till I ketch you! Wait till I get my grip on you oncet!"

In the cabin he laid the pie down and shook his clenched fist in the air. Then he turned to his wardrobe. "If there ain't no other way out of it, I'll give her a-plenty," he said savagely, and began to rummage. But for all his amiable intention, the bundle that he took back was not a large one, and was received by Mrs. Durkee with perfect equanimity.

"I'll be comin' a-past here again pretty soon an' I'll bring 'em along with me--if you ain't around to my place afore then," she said. "Why don't you be neigh

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The Social Usurpation of Our Colleges

Concluded from page 18)

ation that it is not a matter of little importance. Again it is within the province of the Senior Council to maintain the esprit de corps of the university, but in case of failure to perceive the far-reaching consequences, it certainly lies with the university to take drastic action. Princeton has set such a noteworthy example in its class rallies that it might well be its pride to develop the idea of Saturday night as the distinctive social night of the entire college.

WHA

REGRETTABLE LUXURY

HAT is most regrettable in the Princeton club system is the luxury of the houses, which notably in the Cottage and Ivy Clubs reaches a degree of extravagance which might lead an outsider to believe he was in the homes of multimillionaires. In the matter of lavish display, these clubs surpass the clubs of New York City itself. To those who regret the amazing drift toward materialism in the outer world and look to the colleges to bring the correctives of sane ambitions and the inspiration toward genuine achievements, this degree of luxury which keeps company with the private dormitories at Harvard and the newer Sheff fraternities at Yale is a source of much anxiety. It is the development along the line of the English University idea of the gentlemen's college as opposed to the rude, almost monastic, training of the German Gymnasium and the French University.

While no such forced competition for undergraduate honors exists at Princeton as at Yale, still to those who have been in touch with the development of the last ten years, the increase in this direction is marked and significant of the future. It is inevitable in all such systems that the accent should be placed on college distinctions, as a matter of club availability, while it is likewise true that the clubs in their struggle for the survival of the fittest, constantly incite their men to compete in the race for undergraduate prominence. In several of the clubs there is a distinct accent of intellectual accomplishment, but this is not sufficient, nor is it a guarantee of the future. The whole matter of the relative standards of the university and the social organization is too important to be trusted to ephemeral enthusiasm.

SHOULD ELIMINATE THE LOAFER

THE university which has introduced

the first great educational reform in its admirable preceptorial system should continue by making a moderately high scholarship rank a requisite for membership in the social organization. This measure which I believe the most practical and important necessity in every college, in reality would be a measure of protection to the social organizations themselves, insuring the elimination of the type of inconsequential loafer and guaranteeing the selection of men of character and requisite brains.

Catalog

on Request

The most pressing reform to be carried out, and which, to their credit, the University authorities, as well as the undergraduates, are to-day actively planning, is some provision for the outsider who is shut out from the social advantages and pleasant intercourse which the clubs offer to their members.

A university club with all the attractions, which the Harvard Union has so admirably provided for the college as a whole, is now under consideration. When it is built, it may supply the natural meeting place which can really make of Saturday night the reunion of Senior and Junior classes without distinction in impulsive fraternity. The extension to Junior year of the present compulsory association of the Freshman and Sophomore classes in the dining halls would be of the greatest advantage. As it is now, as soon as the club sections are formed in the Sophomore class, that body is divided, whereas if the Junior sections of the clubs continued without arbitrary discrimination of tables to eat with the whole class, a more intimate and companionable spirit could be fostered so that by Senior year the outsider would not feel the same compunction in visiting the clubs and much of the sense of social division would be lost.

BAD THEORY BUT GOOD PRACTICE

N conclusion Princeton is an example istered. In nine cases out of ten such a system would be productive of snobbery, luxuriousness, and political discord. That it is not now a fact at Princeton is a tribute to the manhood and democracy of the Princeton spirit to-day.

But it is not enough to pass judgment upon present impulses of undergraduate life-the test of a young system is in its potential evils. When all allowances have been made, here at Princeton is an established plant, clubhouses of indefensible luxury, a competitive system prone to form disintegrating and jealous sets; while in the outer world subtly influencing every college are the growing tendencies of American life toward materialism, social demarcations and entrenched privilege. To resist these pervasive forces the university should not depend On fleeting and ephemeral sentiment however virile and democratic at present, but should anxiously seek organic safeguards against the almost imperceptible creeping in of worldly influences.

To-day it stands at the fork of the roads. It may develop, along the lines of its present democratic progress toward the university ideal by an extension of the dining hall to the Junior and even the Senior classes, by the organization of a university club that would effectively centralize the social life, or it may develop along the lines of the superiority of club loyalty, into a university, as effectively divided into so many parts, as though it were a collection of inimical units.