some study of books, and with practical work in gardens and kitchens, will offset the attraction the factory has had for the children in its vicinity. These schools are called "Model Schools," and have been successfully inaugurated in Georgia. Their need is financial, and Southern women have brought the nature and needs of this work, which is, in a broad sense, an industrial reform, to the notice of women's clubs in the North. In 1903 the clubs of Massachusetts established their first school at Cass, Georgia, and assured its maintenance for two years. But there is no other evidence that this significant opportunity for industrial amelioration has received that prompt and direct support that might warrantably have been expected.

The Child Labor Committee of the General Federation has furnished individual clubs with a second direct opportunity. This committee finds that the argument most frequently encountered while attempting to enact Child Labor legislation has been that the earnings of little children are needed to support widowed mothers. Therefore the committee requests clubs to investigate local conditions, and whenever an apparent case of this nature is found, "to persuade the children thus employed to return to school, undertaking to pay the amount of the weekly wage, which the child formerly earned, to his widowed. mother." This money is to be called and regarded as a scholarship. The plan resembles one that has been carried on successfully by the state authorities in Switzerland for twenty-five years; therefore it is neither a visionary nor impracticable scheme, but one in which women could realize their traditional responsibilities toward the children of the community, and in which women's clubs could find a beneficent opportunity for direct and constructive work toward industrial amelioration. Eight such scholarships have been established in Chicago. There is no further evidence that any

woman's club has undertaken to carry out this plan.

The third instance is comprised in the unique opportunity for individual, as well as united, service offered to women by the Consumers' League. This is the case of the individual purchaser, and of the product in one line of manufactured goods. For some years the Consumers' League has urged upon the community the righteousness of buying only such goods as have been produced under humane conditions, believing that the final determiner of these conditions is the purchaser. But the claims of the Consumers' League are well known, and it is also known to all women that "white goods" bearing the League's significant label can be bought in open market for prices that are entirely fair. Many state federations and the General Federation are pledged to further the work of the League. Single clubs give exhibitions of white goods, and form small local groups of membership. But the next step, the step that concerns the individual and makes the 275,000 members of women's clubs consistent purchasers of these goods, is not taken. The "bargain counter" is the same scene of conflict as of yore; and the woman who belongs to an organization pledged to industrial reform is a lively participant in this warfare of questionable economy.

The weakness of the club movement is this lack of real contact of ideals between the federations and the single club. The latter is satisfied, selfish, absorbed in its own local concerns; the federation appeals are a disquieting interruption to its orderly programme; while the federations, counting on their numerical strength, and believing in the ultimate awakening of the club, flatter it into an acquiescence that is mistaken for coöperation. In undertaking to awaken interest in so many lines of work, the federations jeopardize all interests, and minimize the value of each. If the women's clubs of 1904 could come

answer, I chanced to see these words of an eminent educator: "When the history of this period comes to be written, it will be recognized that from 1870 to 1900 was a period of greater significance than any former two hundred years; and out of that whole time of thirty years, that which will be recognized as the most significant, as the most far-reaching, will be the movement that is represented by the women's clubs."

The adjudication of the two points of view the club woman and the club movement may still furnish scope for the altruistic endeavor of the Woman's Club.

Martha E. D. White.

SHE fitted the piece of board over the broken step, sawing it off and nailing it down with a practiced hand. When it was finished she did not stand off, with head on one side, eyeing it complacently, as amateurs in the arts and trades are apt to do, but picked up her tools, and putting them away in a shed near by, walked off to the next duty with a dull deliberateness of action which spoke more of habit than of interest. She was a tall, thin woman, with a figure which might have been graceful if more becomingly clad than in an ill-fitting calico gown. Her face was lined and roughened by weather, and her hair, drawn tightly back, had grown white on the temples. her neighbors Mrs. Allen was only an every-day woman, aging fast, unsociable and taciturn; but to one who read beyond the pothooks of observation, her features were notably clear-cut and delicate, and the refinement of her voice and speech, when she did speak, was in striking contrast to the slipshod dialect of her neighbors.

To

Eight years before, husband and wife, with their few belongings, coming from no one knew where, moved into the little two-room, weather-beaten gray house in the pine clearing, and settled down to the monotonous existence of country solitude. They made no reference to their past, nor ever spoke of the future beyond the moment, their few and scattered neighbors accepting them on their merits, and forgetting, as time went by, that there had ever been a period when they had not known the Allens. If the women complained of Mrs. Allen's lack of sociability, the men could not find fault with Mr. Allen on the same score. He not only never shunned society, but sought it with a shambling alacrity and perseverance which, if put into any kind of work, would have achieved some remarkable results. The women pronounced him "tur'ble shif'less," but the men always grumblingly took his part.

"Women," they contended, "were allus hard on er man ef he did n't wu'k

from the firs' wink of the sun to his'n las', an' never made no 'lowunce for er man's er-gittin' ti'ahed."

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"Women," said one philosopher, passing a black bottle to Mr. Allen behind a screen of blackberry bushes, 'women is mighty good comfut 'roun' er stove whar there's vittles to cook, but they's col' tarnachun w'en they gits to pokin' their noses out'n doors. Yessir. Ye gits ez much comfut out'n them ez ye git er-settin' down on er palmetter clump. Yessir."

Mr. Allen agreed with him, showing his tobacco-stained teeth in an artless smile as he accepted the hospitality of the bottle, drinking from it with an avidity that was a striking, if wordless, explanation of what was otherwise inexplicable in his situation.

After finishing the step, Mrs. Allen moved about the back yard, making ready for the night. The chickens and ducks gathered around her, clucking and quacking with garrulous familiarity, she answering them with tender diminutives, like an affectionate interchange of thought. When she had given them their supper she let in the cow from the woods, tied her, and placed everything ready for the milking. Then, going to the rails dividing the yard from an adjoining field, she called, "Henry!"

A man came slouching toward her across the furrows of sweet potatoes, white with bloom. He was in his shirt-sleeves, and carried a bucket in one hand, a hoe in the other. He dropped them both as he climbed stiffly over the rails forming the fence.

"Did n't git any potatoes, he drawled ; soon as I begun to hoe, my arms got so tired I jus' had to give up, an' I've been sittin' there restin'." In spite of the slouchiness of his speech a certain timbre — intangible - betrayed the better things of long ago. He dropped down on the box his wife had placed by the cow for his convenience in milking, as though there

was not a muscle in his body firmly jointed, and his backbone nothing but a strip of rag. He took off his soft hat, let it fall to the ground, and slowly rolled up his sleeves. His face was remarkable for its peculiar pallor, looking as though it had been bleached of every drop of blood; his eyes, faded and weak, never rested directly on any object, but only glanced furtively at it from the corners; his hair and beard were in the colorless transition stage of passing from blond to white, and his stooping figure gave him the false appearance of old age.

"My arms are so weak I don't know as I can do much milkin'," he said, still dallying.

His wife sighed. "Let me do it, then," she replied, a note of weary resignation in her voice.

"Never mind; I reck'n I kin git 'nough for supper; I'll try, at any rate.' His mouth had a habit of twitching when he finished speaking, as if the word still trembled on his tongue in dumb speech. There was an odd look of elation on his flaccid face which his wife could not but notice, and it caused her to observe him more closely with a suspicion he was quick to note.

"Think I've been drinkin'," he said, eyeing her covertly, with a weak smile of triumph at his penetration. "I ain't had a drop; ain't seen nobody to drink with; no men lef' 'round here to-day, all of them off beatin' the woods for that feller."

"What fellow?"

"The feller that- that killed ol'

woman Barton. I tell 'em they'd better save their legs an' their horses; he ain't fool 'nough to stay 'round where they 'd lynch him; by this time he's safe somewheres in the city; " and he chuckled feebly.

The cow looked back and lowed, as if asking why matters did not proceed. He took the hint, and dropping his forehead against her flank, inertly began to draw a thin stream of milk into the pail.

"You need n't wait," he mumbled from his resting-place. up."

"I'll put her

She turned away with what sounded like a sigh of relief. Going to the tool shed she took up a trowel and passed to the front of the house. The distance from the house to the road was very short. On each side of the walk leading to the rickety gate, and against the house itself, were flowerbeds bright with salvias and chrysanthemums, and the roses were blooming in the waxen perfection of their fall loveliness. She knew, as we all know and count the treasures that we cannot have, that her flowers would be the handsomer and more abundant for more care and culture, but she put the thought away, trying to lay all burdens out of sight, for the few minutes snatched from her busy day were the bright beads in her rosary of cares. She went to work, digging about the roots, sifting the soil with her fingers, and patting it down again with affectionate care. If she had been a demonstrative woman she would have pressed the roses to her cheek, or dropped a kiss upon their petals. She loved her flowers with passionate tenderness as the one refinement and luxury left her in the shipwreck of her life.

While she was busy with her pleasant task a cow came galloping down the road with the ungainly energy of her ungraceful kind. A rope was around her neck, and hanging on to the other end of the rope was a much heated and exasperated boy. Following more leisurely in their wake, a switch in one hand, a sunbonnet in the other, was a stout, middle-aged woman, somewhat out of breath. At sight of Mrs. Allen she readily halted, resting her arms on the top rail of the worm fence.

the notion of er-goin' home; but onct she gits er-started, there's no a-holdin' her back. Reck'n Johnny's arms 'll be mos' pulled out'r their sockets 'fore he gits through with her. Heerd the news, o' course?" the tone was strongly suggestive of the hope that it was yet to be told.

Mrs. Allen very briefly said she had

not.

-

"Well, they've done ketched the nigger ez kilt ol' Mis' Bartin, — found him up in the Pine Ridge thicket, erlivin' off'n the po' soul's chickings. He's er short, chunky nigger, black ez er coal, they sez, an' pow'ful strong. Co'se he sez he never done it, 'clares he's jes' er-trampin' it to the city, an' bein' mos' starved, jes' gathered up the chickings he foun' er-runnun' loose in the woods. Nobody don't b'lieve him, an' they've got him locked up in jail down to town," nodding her head toward the west. Then she leaned farther over the fence and lowered her voice impressively: "Mark my words, Mis' Allen, 'fore mornin' there'll be mo' than nuts er-hangin' to the pecan tree by ol' Mis' Bartin's gate."

Mrs. Allen met her significant gaze in silence. Then instinctively both women looked up the pine-sentineled road toward the east where, nearly a mile farther on, at a turn in the road toward the south, a small house faced them, its tightly closed doors and blinds almost hidden from sight by the great pecan tree growing on one side of the gate. The setting sun had dyed

its branches a moist crimson.

Forty years ago this same tree had bravely put forth from the ground. For forty years it had shaded the joys and sorrows of the house's inmates, tossing down its nuts into the eagerly upraised hands of happy children, dropping its leaves on the pine coffins as, one by one, husband and children had been carried to the grave; and now it had been the sole witness of

the violent close of the last life. Henceforth house and tree would stand isolated, debarred from human contact, the prey of bat and squirrel, for Murder had set its red seal on the gate.

Mrs. Allen turned her gaze away with a sigh. "Why don't they let the law deal with him?" she said dully, in response to Mrs. Bilbo's insinuation. "He may be truly inno

eent."

Mrs. Bilbo shook her head with stout conviction. "He's the right man, sho'. It was a real nigger ac'. There ain't no w'ite man in these here parts ez would choke er po' ol' woman to death for her little savin's, and all the niggers 'bout here is honus' an' frien❜ly. You kin sot yo' min' to it that this strange nigger war'n't prowlin' 'bout here fo' no good puppose, an' I reck'n they'll send him out'n this worl' ez quick ez he sent her."

Mrs. Allen shuddered. "It's horrible!" she murmured, almost acutely.

Mrs. Bilbo stared at her; there were shades of feeling that her mind's eye had never read. "It ain't any worse 'n what he done," she said resentfully, "an' it'll learn other fo'ks to be mo' keerful of their ac's."

Mrs. Allen made no further remark, crumbling a dead rose leaf in her hand with her usual stony air of emotionless lethargy. Mrs. Bilbo continued to discourse on the all-absorbing topic, but, eliciting no other expression of interest, she took her arms from the fence as the first move toward departure.

"Well," she said, and the exclamation had the nettled ring of the disappointed raconteur, "I mus' be gittin' on. But don't forgit, if you hears any oncommon noise down this road to-night, that I give you warnin' of it. I mus' hurry to git home 'fore dark. Good-night to you," and Mrs. Bilbo went down the road toward the west, where the crimsoned clouds fast

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darkened to purple, mentally concluding that she would sooner talk to er gatepos' 'n some fo'ks, 'cause you don't look fo' nothin' from a gatepos', but you do from fo'ks, 'specially w'en you 've got sunthin' more 'n common to tell 'em." Life to Mrs. Bilbo had no greater burden than its inevitable interruptions to conversation.

The November night was frosty and still and clear. Mrs. Allen shivered, but not with cold; she could scarcely have said with what. Her scant time of recreation had been cut short; it was now too dark to see. She went slowly, it might be reluctantly, to the door, casting a lingering look back at her flowers. The roses gleamed palely in the fast falling night like a mystic lifting of white hands, and the jasmine and honeysuckle breathed their essence in her face. If there was a frost before morning the jasmine would be killed. Jasmine, like happiness, lives only in the garden of the sun.

She turned into the room with a sigh. Lighting a lamp, she placed it on the white pine table standing in the centre of the room. In front of the big open fireplace was a stove, the pipe running into the chimney. The walls were the upright boards of the house, rudely whitewashed, the cooking utensils hanging on them, with two or three colored prints, a rasher of bacon, and strings of dried peppers. There was but one other room, the bedroom, which opened into it. other openings were a window in the side, and the front and back doors, directly opposite each other. Starting a fire in the stove, she put on some coffee to heat and a square of corn bread in the oven to re-warm. Then she set the table with two heavy stone china plates, but the cup she put at her husband's place was of delicate old china, and — strange anomaly in their rude surroundings the napkins were in silver rings. She did her work with the same mechanical precision with