real life, as well as Abe Shivers, and Easter, the lovely heroine of John Fox's "Mountain Europa." Mr. Cable has touched mountain life only in "John March, Southerner," but his pictures are very characteristic. Lillian Bell, in her "Little Sister to the Wilderness," has given a picture of similar life in western Tennessee, and a word from her preface justly describes some of our highland friends:

"I have been led by the cry of the inarticulate, of that large, not-to-be-ignored portion of humanity whose thoughts need an interpreter; who, with womanish, nice perceptions. lack equally nice distinction in terms to enable them to express the fine shades of meaning which it is their gift to feel.

"They belong to that vast majority of people who, when you have taken pity on their hesitation and finished their sentences for them, cry out to you in gratitude."

The native refinement of some of the mountain folk is surprising. The women commonly wear knitted woolen mitts at all public gatherings, even in the summer-time, as a tribute to conventionality. Many a girl who has come to us barefooted, and without so much as a night-robe or an "individual comb," has been transformed within six months into a neat and self-possessed young

woman, whose humble origin would not be suspected.

The extension work has not been merely a series of excursions. We feel that there has been too much "touring" and "exploiting" of the mountains even by well-meaning preachers, who have made no provision for permanent results, and who seem to the people rather irresponsible. The university extension work has been purposeful from the start. It has proceeded from one wellknown center, and the people have felt that "that thar College at Bereer what old Fee and Cassius Clay started before the Wah, is a-sendin' these speakers." It has been made personal and "friendly" by the acquaintance of a few Berea students even from the most remote counties.

And the lines of effort have been well defined. The problem is to make the belated dwellers in the hills sharers in the best elements of our civilization. This is quite unique as an educational undertaking. There has never been such a problem before. We had, to be sure, a great Western frontier, but its pioneer settlements were always furnished with some proportion of educated men, and were closely bound to the older parts of the country. But in the case of this vast mountain region

there is no such leaven, and no such bond of communion with the rest of the world. There has never been a clearer call for the intervention of some intelligent guiding force.

Two principles have been kept steadily in mind: In the first place, our aim has been to give the essential rather than the accidental elements of civilization-to make the people sharers in the best things, but leave them unsophisticated. We will not teach them to despise the log-cabin, but to adorn it. And, in the second place, we respect their sturdy independence and endeavor only to help them to help themselves. The work is interdenominational we co-operate with all Christian bodies. Instruction in the arts of lifehygiene, forestry, thrift, etc., is provided to give them at once new motives and new resources. And, above all, we propose to teach them to make the most of the common schools, which are barely in existence but have in them the germs of all good.

The States concerned in Appalachian America are all poor, inexperienced in popular education, and wholly unable to deal with the mountain problem. In many localities the school-houses are so far apart that half the population is practically debarred. The schools are so short that little learning is possible for the pupil, and little professional equipment for the teacher. And, finally, there is no one in the district who has an ideal of what a school ought to be.

To meet these conditions extension work seems more practicable and useful than great "conventions" or "conferences." The conference brings together those already interested; the extension work wakes up the people who are indifferent. Various forms of instruction are adopted. The popular lecture" The Ladder of Success" has been given hundreds of times. Talks on United States history are enjoyed by young and old. Discourses on how to make the most of the

A

LONG-DELAYED hour had come.

It was the night before their marriage, and they two stood alone in the still parlor, free yet from the scent of flowers, its solitude unbroken by the feet of coming guests. She stretched her arms high above her head, and the white sleeves fell away from them, leaving their roundness bare; the sapphires of his bracelet gleamed dark upon her wrist, a pledge and a promise. She looked like a young priestess exalted beyond belief, and moved supremely by the anticipated rites before her.

"Oh," she breathed, passionately, "I am saying good-by to my lover!"

He stepped forward, and brought down her arms to lie about his neck.

Good-by?" he repeated, "and to your

lover?

You are binding him to you forever. A word from us both, and it's done."

She looked at him, and her mood broke up into a very charming audacity not unmixed with mirth. She was still exalted, but now, from some emotion purely human, she would balk at nothing.

"Come and sit down," said she, "here in this window-seat. Tell me, have I been a good sweetheart-nice, fine, dear?"

"You are wonderful, perfect; and you always have been."

"I thought you thought so. Now I'll tell you the secret of it all. It's because I'm wise enough to order my ways. I haven't lived in Vanity Fair for nothing. Moreover, I know how to be the very perfectest wife under heaven; so perfect that you'll find yourself lonesome as death when I die and you take unto yourself another."

"Don't, love! That's blasphemy, to night, especially. But I ll forgive it you. Of course you'll be a perfect wife. It's your nature." "No, no, it's not my nature ! It's by grace. I'm like all the rest, and to-night I prove it. I saw my plan of action, and I followed it, all through courting-time; and now, when the field's to be won, I turn traitor. I show you my chart of warfare; woman-like, I betray myself."

He frowned, but only from perplexity. She had seemed so simple! Other folk had called her clever. Other men stood admiringly aloof; but he had known she was soft and

I can

"Oh, come now, that's not fair! Think of all the happy people we know-your father and mother, mine. It's easy enough to say the bitter thing about marriagemighty cheap talking-but it's not fair." "All the happy people we know ! summon six. That's a good many. The rest have built them solid houses on the boulevard. Their castles tumbled down. But I can make you happy. Dearest, I will; still, being, as I said, a fool to-night, lightheaded, dizzy, with much thought, I throw prudence to the winds and tell you the straight road. Do you know why you've seemed to love me so in all these months ?" "Seemed? Why, because I do. Because you are you, and I am I."

"Yes, that; I'm not denying the divinity of the thing. You've loved me indeed; but you've seemed to love me, too, and for one reason only. Because you are a man, born I liked it, too. to the pleasures of the chase. To-morrow

I

I was pursued; I exulted in it. I am caught, labeled, put in my cage. shall have fresh water and lots of sun; but the chase is over. You won't continue running when there's nothing to catch." "But, dear love—"

66

Nay, why should you? Why, indeed! But that's where the subtlety of it comes in,

the irony we never guess till late. You see I like being pursued, and I shall keep on liking it. I shall look round me on the big, big downs, and say, 'Where's the footfall I used to hear ?" "

"Margaret! Margaret!"

"Now, 'List to me, my only love!' Here is something that women have learned and men have not. I'll tell it to you, and then you'll be the only man who knows. Won't that be grand? To you, all of you, marriage is an attainment; to us, it's a progress. You marry, and settle down with your pipe by the fire; I'm just as nice and just as fair as when you found new beauties in me every day, but now you judge me au large. You don't make inventories and read them aloud: item, one sweet temper; item, one bit of grace; item, one round cheek. I am a part of you, and it would be sore conceit thus to admire yourself. But if you did keep on idealizing me, if you did wrap me round with illusions, why, all our dreams would come true. You'd make an angel of me; and as for me, God knows I'm only too eager to call the archangel out of you."

66

'Suppose I don't! Suppose I go the way of all the rest.' What then? What will you do?"

"I individually, or I the perfect wife?" "Both! You are the perfect wife." "I'll tell you. I shall find out, one day, that life has got to be a little comedy, and that I am the star. I shall say, 6. You don't want the inner part of me? You don't want to be bothered with the loves and doves that made your courtship bright? Very well, my lord, choose you!' And I shall be what you will: docile, sweet, unchanging, and you will never know you've lost me."

"Lost you―you, Margaret?"

"Yes, the real Me inside me, the one that longs to tell its hopes and fears and whims and fancies. For the life of the soul is real real as oatmeal and clear coffee in the morning."

"Go on, Margaret. I like this. What else will she do, the perfect wife?"

"But, Margaret, my child, you'll know I love you! Every day will show you. How can you doubt ?”

"I shouldn't doubt. But I should want to hear. Do you stop saying your creed because you've learned it? For love will mean something else then. Now it says, I've chosen you. I want you.' Then it would be, 'You are all I thought; yes, more! You are sweeter, fairer. I am grown closer to you.' But you wont say it, and I, if I'm clever, shall never beg you to."

Not say it? Why sha'n't I say it ?" "Truly, Tom, I don't know! Just because men don't. I've observed them. They can't, after twelve months. It's morally impossible. You get used to joy as you do to the sunset. I notice you don't write poems to the clouds in the west. You just take your pipe out of your mouth long enough to remark, By George!' and then go on smoking. But you prize the sucset just the same."

"I see. I'm not clever, but I can understand. Some men do talk about the sunset. They make poems, and gabble everlastingly. You don't like my kind, that's all."

"Not like your kind? I adore it. You're just plain man. Them's the jockeys for me. (Oh, don't look at me owlishly, with your grand air! It's a quotation, and I'm stark mad to-night. I'll quote what I please, if it hits the prayer-book.) I love your kind, and you supremest. But I don't expect you to

be articulate. You won't be. You can't."

Now, it's no fair. I won't play. It seems to me I've spent the last ten months in telling you that one thing I love you. And I'm ready for the home stretch: ten years, twenty, sixty!"

"Dear one, how good you are! But it won't avail us. You think you'll go on saying that baby catechism; but you won't. That's the A-B-C; you'll clamor for Third Readers. And believe me, I wouldn't have you other than your kind. Marry a pioneer? Not I! The van of human-racing's not for me. Only, as I say, you shall be left to your silence. You sha'n't be nagged. Not you!" "What next? Read us the prohibitory statutes."

Margaret enlightening the world! Well, I will. I'd tell you the scheme of creation to-night, if I knew it. Rule two: I shall never criticise you."

"Then how shall I know when I offend ?" "You won't, but we must both put up with that, both of us. It will be more or less