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A GLOOMY STAGE. SLENDER CURTAINS AT A WINDOW, CENTRE. BEFORE THE WINDOW, A TABLE, AND UPON THE TABLE, A LARGE BOOK, OPENED. A MOONBEAM, NO WIDER THAN A SWORD-BLADE, PIERCES THE CURTAINS AND FALLS UPON THE BOOK.
A MOMENT OF SILENCE.
FROM WITHOUT, THEN--AN ADJACENT ROOM IN INTENTION--COME SOUNDS OF CELEBRATION, OF RIOTOUS DRINKING AND LAUGHTER. FINALLY, A SWIFT QUARREL. THE DIN AND CRASH OF A FIGHT. A LITTLE STILLNESS. THEN A WOMAN'S SCREAM. "AH, MY SON, MY SON."
A MOMENT OF SILENCE.
CURTAIN.
STEPHEN CRANE.
A HOT WEATHER IDYLL.
The new assistant sat in the office, vainly endeavoring to discourage the perspiration in its efforts to show him how the water comes down at Lodore. But, with a perseverance worthy a wetter cause than the dry weather, it continued to flow from his mobile brow and neck, mop he never so well. The thermometer on the wall registered 89, and the calendar only May 1st. It was the new assistant's first day in the office, and he had already begun to contemplate with humid horror the prospect of spending an entire summer in a place that was already warm enough to have caused his once stiff and glossy collar to emulate his puff-bosom shirt.
The latter, who had been a cent short in his cash the night before, gruffly replied that it would probably be June 1st. But, before the day was over, he, too, was forced to realize the heat and to speak of it. So, when his face began to assume the appearance of a greasy plank under a hydrant, he concluded that it might not be so great a compromise to his dignity for him to agree with his junior, and his looks showed him to be rapidly thawing. They managed to survive that day and the next and several others that followed. In the meantime the thermometer seemed bent, in fact, warped, upon beating all previous records, and the two sufferers watched the mercury climb, until it seemed to be trying to reach its Olympian namesake. The thought that the worst was to come served to increase their distress. It always does.
Finally, the Old Book-keeper, who occupied a sort of oldest inhabitant position in the neighborhood, although he had always worked for a living, threw up the sponge and reluctantly admitted that, for so early in the season, it really beat all the weather he ever saw. The new assistant sympathized with the old man in his defeat, and went so far in his efforts to cheer him, as across the street to buy the beer, without first proposing to match for it.
ESTES BAKER.
Knoxville, Tenn.
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