catchers. Neither was armed, for Father Taylor owned no weapons, and Mr. Scroggs had lent his rifle to a native who frequently brought him game from the forest. The few natives who attempted to resist were instantly shot down, the remaining able-bodied men were rapidly seized and Bound, while the protests and appeals of the missionaries were apparently unnoticed by the stolid Arab leader of the raiders. But as soon as the last slave had been secured the Arab, turning to the missionaries, informed them that they were to be shot. He knew that white men sometimes made inconvenient witnesses, and although Boango was a long way from the nearest Portuguese station, and the Portuguese authorities were slow to punish slave-traders, he decided that it would not be altogether safe for him to leave the white men at liberty. In his way he was a pious man, and when Father Taylor asked that he and his fellow-missionary should be given a few moments for prayer, the Arab readily granted the request.

The missionaries knelt down side by side. "Father," implored Mr. Scroggs, "let me confess to you and be absolved." And without waiting for an answer he repeated in substance the general confession of the prayer-book of the Episcopal Church. When he had ended, the priest solemnly pro

nounced the words of absolution, and then said, "And now, brother, pray for me." Mr. Scroggs lifted up his voice in a passionate prayer for the salvation of his friend, but long before he had reached the end of his petitions the now impatient Arab gave the order to fire, and two more martyrs were added to the long roll of white men who have died for their religion in the Dark Continent.

When at last the bishop came to Boango he found a single family of natives, who were living in the deserted Protestant meetinghouse. They told him how the once flourishing missionary station had been blotted out, and they showed him where the two missionaries had been buried. The bishop said the prayers of his Church over the common grave of priest and Protestant, making no distinction between them. He recognized that death had made them one in the larger faith that sustains the martyr of whatever creed. Perhaps, had he known all that had taken place in the settlement during the months before the slave-traders' raid, he would have been at a loss to decide which of the two martyrs was the Roman Catholic and which the Protestant. Perhaps also, for the bishop was a broad-minded man, he would have said in his heart that it did not matter what uniform a brave soldier wore who died in the discharge of his duty.

I

prints. When he adventurously invaded the theatre with a drama founded upon his rural

PALERMO February 10, 1903. LBERT JORDAN has arrived. I was strolling this forenoon along the Marina when the launch from the Villa Rosalia came sputtering across the harbor and set down a number of people near the Porta Felice, Jordan among them. I recognized him at once, though he was somewhat changed; and he, though rather less promptly, recognized me. He did not detach himself from his little party, nor pause on his way into the town; so there was no exchange of verbal greetings. He appeared as composed, as self-centred, as ever, despite a certain effervescent hilarity among his associates. Indeed, I think I may say, without any imaginative excess, that he was even a bit subdued and chastened; something not to be wondered at after last autumn's peripezia -a change of fortune, if ever there was one. The sum total of his presence—a mere passing presence, true-was this: he seemed to be saying, with his odd air of quiet determination: "No, you shall never know me better; give up any such idea for once and for all." The conduct of this young man begins to irritate me. He is just as baffling here in Sicily as he was on Broadway--and just as ungrateful. Ungrateful, I say; and here is my case. I was one of the first to welcome Jordan when, in all his rawness, he came to town from his haunts "up State." I was among the earliest to recognize the talent in those impromptu newspaper sketches which he afterward got together in book form. I perseveringly praised to the sceptical the first fruits of his acquaintance with the city, his "In the Crosstown Cars," though Heaven knows I am chary enough about giving approval to the ephemeral stuff of the daily

more friendly than I to "Fudgetown Folks." Later, I was one of the vociferous crowd at the Walpole that started "Boys Will Be Boys" on its two-year run; and when, last fall, the reaction came and "Youth Must Have Its Fling" was smiled pityingly from the boards and the gallant young career seemed over, I strained my credit to make the confident, half-studied thing appear at least a succès d'estime. Why, I have written reviews of the fellow's doings-a practice I rarely condescend to; and I have sent him congratulatory notes and telegrams which were not only enthusiastic but effusive. And what in return? I am snubbed. No, not snubbed; I retract the word, for no one has ever snubbed me, and no one ever can. But the sort of treatment meted out to me is only one degree better: I am held at arm's length; I get-when escape is impossible for him-a single perfunctory word; and I must content myself-here in foreign parts, where national consciousness and local ties sometimes turn even antipathies into attachments-with a cool nod and the present view of a highly indifferent back.

Does he not know who I am? Does he not realize what I stand for? Does he not comprehend what value a word of praise from me may have? Has he never read "Etrurian Byways"? Has he never heard of "The Grand Master" or of "Emir and Troubadour"? I am, indeed, no national celebrity, no household word, as he is; I have never seen my name lettered in fire before three Broadway theatres at once; nor have I a "farm" in Connecticut that has been celebrated by half the writers of “specials" in town; but I do enjoy, all the same, a reputation of my own among the few whose good opinion is worth the winning. Though I have nearly forgotten the meaning of the term "royalty," while his annual

income amounts to figures that are almost fabulous, I would not consider, for a moment, an exchange of place and fortune. I say this despite the obvious failure of "The Grand Master." But why should I employ the words "obvious" and "failure"? For the book no more reached the public consciousness than a snowflake falling into Vesuvius reaches the earth. "Youth Must Have Its Fling," on the contrary, did fail-spectacularly, resonantly. After its first grand flare it flickered before diminishing hundreds for a fortnight, and then it flickered out. Its passing was notorious. They knew about it in Syracuse and Detroit and Atlanta and Denver. The daily papers had their gibes about it; weeklies with "theatrical departments" gave it a cut as it hastened down the dark corridor of failure; and long afterward belated monthlies were busily explaining why the wreck had come about and acutely speculating on the dazed young author's future. Never before such buffets on so confident and smiling a face. Our young author fled the country-to study, far from the scene, the cause and nature of his débâcle and to take counsel with himself as to his future. A moving situation for thirty-three.

I suppose his lighting upon quiet Palermo must be held to be purely fortuitous. Neither his tastes nor his traditions can have assisted him in making so luminous a choice of an asylum. I should have expected him to stop short at Naples or to go on to Cairo. In my own case, however, there seemed no great choice. Rome being ruined, and Naples detestable, and Algiers quite second rate, and Cairo both too far away and much too expensive, what other town was left for one who would be at once in the midst of things and yet somewhat aside from them? Such at least is my feeling at the Aibergo della Marina; a little shabby, a trifle dingy, and altogether in the past tense, it is perhaps the best that an unsuccessful novelist may aspire to. How things may seem at the Grand Hotel Villa Rosalia I have no means of knowing; probably all the pomp and circumstance that enwraps the cosmopolitan tourist may help to make even a youth under the passing shade of failure feel that he is stiil in the world and of it. One can scarcely, I apprehend, sojourn at the Villa Rosalia and yet confess that the pride of life has been altogether renounced; whereas a man housed

in a cell at the Marina-but let me not abuse the roof that shelters me.

Yes, Albert at the landing-stage was cursory and nonchalant past all endurance. Why should it be so difficult for me to put myself en rapport with him? His life is public to a degree-thousands of Toms, Dicks, and Harrys share in it with all freedom. I have been kind, I have been interested, I have been enthusiastic, I have been articulate; and I am but nine years older-a gap that might easily be bridged, if any gap at all can be held to be made by so slight a difference.

Privately-very privately-I fear that Jordan looks upon me as an amateur, and that in his clear young gray eyes. the opinion of an amateur has no value whatever. He regards me as a dilettante; so, always, to the trained craftsman must appear one who follows an art on the basis of some private competency, however small. Jordan, on the contrary, has his “trade,” and has used it to fight his way up to his present position. Those years in the Herkimer County newspaper office must have been of the greatest service to him. To recognize the idea when it comes; to realize its values and its possibilities; to deal with it competently, cleanly, unfalteringly, and at the first essay-all this is very fine; and all this, with more, is plain on every page of "From the Back Counties," and is none the less apparent in his intimate studies of middle-class realism in the life of the metropolis itself. Fluency and precision show in the very preparation of his manuscripts. Once, in the Recorder building, I passed his door; a few pages of "copy" for the morrow's sketch lay in plain sight on his desk. Trim, clean-cut, unblotted, they represented well the craftsman in his absence. Does anyone imagine that the author of "Etrurian Byways" would dare leave exposed a sheet or two of his manuscript for the inspection of the casual passer-by? Never! Yes, I see: Albert Jordan looks upon me as an amateur, and of my reiterated compliments and congratulations he makes no account whatever.

Another thought. Jordan cannot but be proudly aware of his firm grip on presentday actualities. To him, ever welcoming the stinging impact of life as it is lived, my doings must appear tenuous, derivative, remote. Of course those character illustrations of Snow's helped his first book greatly; still,