TO THE ATHEIST.

BY T. A. DALY IN

66

CATHOLIC STANDARD." Say! you gat to hal weeth your talk! I gatta da troubla my own.

You please me by taka da walk —

I wanta for seet here alone. Eh? W'at? Yes, I s'pose I am dumb, An' so you no maka me wise No matter how moocha you com' For tryin' to open my eyes. Jus' s posa my eyes dey are blind

So blind like you theenk dem to beMore beautiful theengs dey can find Dan wa't you are able to see. You want I should tal you da sight I see w'en I seet here alone? You wanta for see? Alla right,

I geev you my eyes for your own. Com', look! dere is beautiful girl, So sweeta, so good an' so true; Ah! you are a keeng of da worl'

To know dat she smila for you.
Now, see! she is geevin' her han'
Forevra da wifa to be

To "no-good-for-notheenga" man
Dat no gooda man, eet ees me!
Now- presto!-da peectura change.
Da beautiful girl eesa gon';
Da man ees look olda an' strange
An' he ees jus' settin' alone.
But steel you can see weeth hees eyes,
So blind, like you say, an' so dumb,

An angela up in da skies

Dat smila an' wait teel he com'. You sneer; you no gatta belief.

You tal me we die an' we be
Like dogs, an' you com' lika thief
For steala my faitha from me.
Eef you go to hal an' be dam,

An' eef wa't I see ees no true
I radder be dumb like I am
Dan wisa beeg foola like you!

THE LITTLE CROSS STREET.

L. H. ROBBINS IN NEWARK NEWS."

"I hear you're to have a vacation," the broad avenue remarked to the little cross street. It was late at night and the town was still.

"That's putting it charitably," the little cross street replied, "As a matter of fact, I'm to be retired. I'm no good. I'm in the way. I'm what you might call a street beggar, so the Board of Works is going to shove me off the map.

The little cross street had an empty, lonely voice.

"Once," it said, "when we all were new, I was as likely a street as any in town. There wasn't a street in all the town that had more ambition. But I ran crosswise to the current of things. I was built that way, and I could no more change my nature than you can stop the tide of traffic that will flow through you in the morning. You see what I have come to. To-morrow the city will turn me over to the factory yonder, my name

will be forgotten, and that'll be the end of a wasted existence.

sure.

"Don't say that," the avenue answered. "You have done a great deal of good in your time, I'm Every street can't be an avenue, you know. Ancient Rome was all avenues, and look what became of her. Washington has more avenues than streets, and nobody can afford to stay there longer than three months in a year. It's the little streets that make a town livable.'

"But I might have been great," cried the little street. "Many a famous thoroughfare is no wider than I am. Look at Broadway in New York. Look at the Strand in London. In the Did beginning were they any better than I? they have any more right to attention than I had?"

"My dear little street Arab," said the avenue, "it isn't any special credit to those streets that they are great. They happened to be needed. that's all. They happened to be useful to the life of the world. If you knew what burdens they have to bear perhaps you wouldn't envy them. Think of the thousand little services you have been allowed to do, and then be glad. Wasn't there a block of tenement-houses down your way once?"

"Yes," said the little street, "but it was razed long ago to make room for the factory. I don't like to remember the houses, but I'll never forget the children that lived in them. They used to play on my pavement. It was the only playground they had." "That's a

"Children,' "mused the avenue. joy I've never known. Children are kept away from me. Their mothers think they might get hurt. Were your children happy?"

"Indeed they were. My! the fun they had! Tipcat, marbles, skipping-rope-from one summer to the next there was something doing. In that one block were fifty happy boys and girls, and that isn't counting the babies that sat on the sidewalk. I loved the babies best of all. Sometimes it was pretty cold for them to be out in the thin clothing they had to wear; but I tried to keep sunny and warm for their sake, and they were happy."

"They are gone now?" asked the avenue.

"Gone, every one of them. We might still be happy together; but a man came along and built a saloon on one of my corners, and that was the beginning of the end.

Late at

"I dreaded that saloon. I used to trip men up when they started in, but they went on in. Men who had liked to sit on the doorstep evenings, with their children laughing around them, took to spending their time in the bar-room. night they would stagger out and go home. Then I would hear sounds of blows and weeping, and the police wagon would come. Sometimes, instead of going home, a man would fall and sleep in a gutter, with the curbstone for a pillow. And the children-they paid for it all.

"My little folk went thinner clad. Most of the boys were away all day at work, and I saw them only at night, when they stood under the saloon light smoking cigarettes. The saloon drew them all, men and boys. And many a little girl I've seen go in through the swinging doors with a tin pail in her hand.

'After a while a black wagon began to stop in front of the houses. For a long time after it was gone the children would forget to play. And every time the black wagon passed I missed a little form and a baby voice I loved.

"Then a band of men came, one day four or five years after the saloon was built, and broke down the door of one of the houses. A woman screamed, and children cried, and the men threw the woman's furniture out and nailed a bar across the door. That night a whole family of my little folk slept under the stars, and the next day they went away.

"One by one the others left or were taken away; and by and by the houses had no windowpanes, and tramps slept there. Last of all to go was the saloon man, and I threw him on his face as he went."

The little cross street sighed dustily.

"That's all," it said. "That's my tragedy, or my comedy. I haven't a thing in my history to be proud of, you see."

"But you made the children happy," said the avenue. "That's something, isn't it?"

But did I not do the same thing o'er again?
Oh, fudge, and, pity 'tis, 'tis true,

Let's have some pie if it's all the same to you!
So far as I can learn, this good old world of ours
Is all there is in life.

What, ho! my man, just let me have that knife! I'll sink it deep into thy cav'rnous bosom, rich with fruit.

What! You'll have no hand! Then see me do it! Gadzooks, there's no use saying no, I'll have a piece or bust!

My, just hear my grinders crunching through the crust.

(*This nocturne was generated through a midnight meeting and confidential relations with a triangular segment of the genus ple guaranteed to produce those things of which dreams are made. It may be added that the nocturne was written in the turn of the nacht, and did not turn the pieeater from his wicked ways.)

"JIM HAINES ”

A Story which Containeth a Moral, Told in Verse.
BY R. P. E. M'CARDELL.

At Crabtree Switch on Swanton Hill,
Near a tunnel dark and grim,

A jolly "ham" held the day trick down,
A pale youth tall and slim.

He was chief mogul of the place;
An agent, three in one,

Telegraph, ticket and freight man too,
For thirty-five per to run.

With his feet on his desk, he'd read and smoke
Safe in his mountain lair,

While his dingy office would steam and warp
From the heat of the sultry air.

And while he dozed the hot summer's noon,
'Twixt freights and faster trains,
His call C-T unanswered rang-
For they couldn't arouse Jim Haines.

One day this worthy cried out aloud
"No more shall I toil or tick,

99

I'll join the army and rest awhile,'
So he signed with a sergeant, quick.
And ere had a twelve-month rolled around
He sailed for Manila Bay

With a thousand more from the Golden Gate
Good for a two-years' stay.

But, alas-they learned of his dreadful past—
When he tarried too long at the bar,

So the Signal Corps took another man
For the wire and bluestone jar,

And now Jim Haines pounds out the brass
Where the Ladrones play hide-and-seek
All night and sometimes through the day-
In a hut by a caribao creek.

Sometimes he is called from his slumbers deep (He swears most hyperbolic)

To tick for a surgeon from Manila town (When the Colonel's kid has the colic) And then as he watches the guard room lamp Gleam through the rice-fields' haze, He puffs at his half-lit cigarette And thinks - of other days.

MRS. NAGG AND MR.

66

19

BY ROY L. M'CARDELL IN NEW YORK WORLD." You want to go to a beefsteak dinner? Why do you ask me, Mr. Nagg? Do I ever object to your going anywhere? Pray, don't think of me, do not consider me, Mr. Nagg, when you are thinking of having a good time! I do not count! I am of no consequence! Let me sit home and mope, waiting hour after hour for you, wondering where you are, wondering what has become of you, expecting every minute to hear the telephone ring and to get news that you have been run over by an automobile or injured in a brawl or caught in suspicious company. You never think of such things, you do not mind how I worry. You do not care if I am sad and lonely and never have any pleasure in my sad humdrum life, while you are out enjoying yourself with a lot of men when you should be sitting in your own home thinking how to make me happy.

20

You never think of me, you never want to take me anywhere. Not that I would interfere with your enjoyment, Mr. Nagg. I am too proud for that. I never try to go where I am not wanted, and I know you do not want me. Mabel Ross gives lovely beefsteak dinners, and ladies are present at them, and I suppose this beefsteak dinner is somewhere that other men are only too happy to take their wives to, while you fly around and try to make people believe you are a gay young bachelor. Only men will be present, a lot of good fellows, you say? Oh, Mr. Nagg, it is a pity some of them can't be good fellows around their homes. But no! When they are home they are glum and cranky, and if their wives say a word to them they fly into a temper and rush out of the house and slam the door behind them and have a good time somewhere away from their wives and families. How would you like it if I were to tell you that I was going to a beefsteak dinner with a lot of good fellows? You wouldn't like that, would you? I am good enough to sit at home and mope and get old before my time while you are somewhere with a lot of boon companions telling how you fooled me.

But you do not fool me, Mr. Nagg! You are like all the rest of the men; your wife and home are good enough for you when you are cross and want to say unkind and cutting things to a poor,

unfortunate woman who must bear without a word your petty humors. You are gay enough when you are out of the house, but as soon as you enter that door and I start to ask you a simple question, look how you act!

Not

A day will come, Mr. Nagg, when patience will cease to be a virtue. Amy Galliper was a poor patient soul, and her husband used to come home from beefsteak dinners with a silly grin on his face and sing: "Scatter Seeds of Kindness, and Amy used to tell him it was a pity he didn't scatter a little money, too. that he was stingy, but it used to make Mrs. Galliper mad to think that Mr. Galliper didn't make as much money as Mr. Glauber, who owned the brewery, did, and when Mr. Glauber got a separation from his wife Amy Galliper said the poor man was driven to it by a scolding wife and that it all went to show that men do not appreciate a good home.

It is just like you, too, when you see I am happy to come home and tell me you are going off to have a good time at a horrid beefsteak dinner. You won't go, you say? Oh, don't stay home on my account, Mr. Nagg, and then be throwing it up to me all the rest of your life. No, desert your home, don't mind me, and, anyway, I am going to a ladies' theatre party with Mrs. Stryver. Go enjoy yourself; never mind how I sit home alone and unhappy!