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their men together. It was all over. He had not been taken.

Slowly the two hundred and fifty odd men who had not been good enough, dispersed, pluckily laughing and talking together all of them, it is safe to say, with heavy hearts; for Tap Day counts as much as that at Yale.

John McLean swung across the diagonal of the campus toward Welch Hall where he lived. He saw the girl and her chaperon come out of Durfee; and he lingered to meet them. Two days ago he had met the girl here with Brant, and she had stopped and shaken hands. It seemed to him it would help if that should happen today. She might say a word; anything at all to show that she was friends all the same with a fellow who wasn't good enough. He longed for that. With a sick chaos of pain pounding at what seemed to be his lungs he met her. Mrs. Anderson was between them, putting out a quick hand; the boy hardly saw her as he took it. He saw the girl, and the girl did not look at him. With her head up and her brown eyes fixed on Phelps gate-way she hurried along-and did not look at him. He could not believe it that girl―the girl. But she was gone; she had not looked at him. Like a shot animal he suddenly began to run. He got to his rooms they were empty; Baby Thomas, his "wife," known as Archibald Babington Thomas on the catalogue, but not elsewhere, had been taken for Scroll and Key; he was off with the others who were worth while. This boy went into his tiny bedroom and threw himself down with his face in his pillow and lay still. Men and women learn sometimes-as they grow older, how to shut the doors against disappointments so that only the vital ones cut through, but at twenty all doors are open; the iron had come into his soul, and the girl had given it a twist which had taken his last ounce of courage. He lay still a long time, enduring-all he could manage at first. It might have been an hour later that he got up and went to his desk and sat down in the fading light, his hands deep in his trousers pockets; his athletic young figure dropped together listlessly; his eyes staring at the desk where he had worked away so many cheerful hours. Pictures hung around it; there was a group taken last summer of girls and boys at his home in the country,

the girl was in it-he did not look at her. His father's portrait stood on the desk, and a painting of his long-dead mother. He thought to himself hotly that it was good she was dead rather than see him shamed. For the wound was throbbing with fever, and the boy had not got to a sense of proportion; his future seemed blackened. His father's picture stabbed him; he was a "Bones" man-all of his family-his grandfather, and the older brothers who had graduated four and six years ago—all of them. Except himself. The girl had thought it such a disgrace that she would not look at him! Then he grew angry. It wasn't decent, to hit a man when he was down. A woman ought to be gentle-if his mother had been alive-but then he was glad she wasn't. With that a sob shook him-startled him. Angrily he stood up and glared about the place. This wouldn't do; he must pull himself together. He walked up and down the little living-room, bright with boys' belongings, with fraternity shields and flags and fencing foils and paddles and pictures; he walked up and down, and he whistled "Dunderbeck," which somehow was in his head. Then he was singing it:

"Oh Dunderbeck, Oh Dunderbeck, how could you be so mean

As

even to have thought of such a terrible

machine!

more be seen;

For bob-tailed rats and pussy-cats shall never They'll all be ground to sausage-meat in Dun

derbeck's machine."

There are times when Camembert cheese is a steadying thing to think of or golf balls. "Dunderbeck" answered for John McLean. It appeared difficult to sing, however-he harked back to whistling. Then the clear piping broke suddenly. He bit his lower lip and went and sat down before the desk again and turned on the electric reading-lamp. Now he had given in long enough; now he must face the situation; now was the time to find if there was any backbone in him to "buck up." To fool those chaps by amounting to some- . thing. There was good stuff in the boy that he applied this caustic and not a salve. His buoyant light-heartedness whispered that the fellows made mistakes; that he was only one of many good chaps left; that Dick Harding had a pull and Jim Stan

ton an older brother-excuses came. But the boy checked them.

"That's not the point; I didn't make it; I didn't deserve it; I've been easy on myself; I've got to change; so some day my people won't be ashamed of me-maybe." Slowly, painfully he fought his way to a tentative self-respect. He might not ever be anything big, a power as his father was, but he could be a hard worker, he could make a place. A few days before a famous speaker had given an address on an ethical subject at Yale. A sentence of it came to the boy's struggling mind. "The courage of the commonplace is greater than the courage of the crisis," the orator had said. That was his chance "the courage of the commonplace." No fireworks for him, perhaps, ever, but, by Jove, work and will could do a lot, and he could prove himself worthy.

"I'm not through yet, by ginger," he said out loud. "I can do my best any how and I'll show if I'm not fit"-the energetic tone trailed off-he was only a boy of twenty-"not fit to be looked at," he finished brokenly.

It came to him in a vague, comforting way that probably the best game a man could play with his life would be to use it as a tool to do work with; to keep it at its brightest, cleanest, most efficient for the sake of the work. This boy, of no phenomenal sort, had one marked qualitywhen he had made a decision he acted on it. To-night through the soreness of a bitter disappointment he put his finger on the highest note of his character and resolved. All unknown to himself it was a crisis.

It was long past dinner-time, but he dashed out now and got food and when Baby Thomas came in he found his roommate sleepy, but quite himself; quite steady in his congratulations as well as normal in his abuse for "keeping a decent white man awake to this hour."

Three years later the boy graduated from the Boston "Tech." As his class poured from Huntington Hall, he saw his father waiting for him. He noted with pride, as he always did, the tall figure, topped with a wonderful head—a mane of gray hair, a face carved in iron, squared and cut down to the marrow of brains and force-a man to be seen in any crowd. With that, as his own

met the keen eyes behind the spectacles, he was aware of a look which startled him. The boy had graduated at the very head of his class; that light in his father's eyes all at once made two years of work a small thing.

"I didn't know you were coming, sir. That's mighty nice of you," he said, as they walked down Boylston Street together, and his father waited a moment and then spoke in his usual incisive tone.

"I wouldn't have liked to miss it, Johnny," he said. "I don't remember that anything in my life has ever made me as satisfied as you have to-day."

With a gasp of astonishment the young man looked at him, looked away, looked at the tops of the houses, and did not find a word anywhere. His father had never spoken to him so; never before, perhaps, had he said anything as intimate to any of his sons. They knew that the cold manner of the great engineer covered depths, but they never expected to see the depths uncovered. But here he was, talking of what he felt, of character, and honor and effort.

"I've appreciated what you've been doing," the even voice went on. "I talk little about personal affairs. But I'm not uninterested; I watch. I was anxious about you. You were a more uncertain quantity than Ted and Harry. Your first three years at Yale were not satisfactory; I was afraid you lacked manliness. Then came -a disappointment. It was a blow to us― to family pride. I watched you more closely, and I saw before that year ended that you were taking your medicine rightly. I wanted to tell you of my contentment, but being slow of speech I couldn't. So"the iron face broke for a second into a whimsical grin-"so I offered you a motor. And you wouldn't take it. I knew, though you didn't explain, that you feared it would interfere with your studies. I was right?" Johnny nodded. "Yes. And your last year at college was-was all I could wish. I see now that you needed a blow in the face to wake you up-and you got it. And you waked." The great engineer smiled with clean pleasure. "I have had"-he hesitated—“I have had always a feeling of responsibility to your mother for you-more than for the others. You were so young when she died that you seem more her child. I was afraid I had not treated you

well-that it was my fault if you failed." The boy made a gesture he could not very well speak. His father went on: "So when you refused the motor, when you went into engineer's camp that first summer instead of going abroad, I was pleased. Your course here has been a satisfaction, without a drawback-keener, certainly, because I am an engineer, and could appreciate, step by step, how well you were doing, how much you were giving up to do it, how much power you were gaining by that long sacrifice. I've respected you through these years of commonplace, and I've known how much more courage it meant in a pleasureloving lad such as you than it would have meant in a serious person such as I amsuch as Ted and Harry are, to an extent, also." The older man, proud and strong and reserved, turned on his son such a shining face as the boy had never seen. "That boyish failure isn't wiped out, Johnny, for I shall remember it as the corner-stone of your career, already built over with an honorable record. You've made good. I congratulate and I honor you."

that Ted, the oldest brother, pushed back his chair and stood and lifted his glass.

"We'll drink," he said, and bowed formally to Johnny, "to the gentleman who is covering us all with glory, to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine, Mr. John Archer McLean," and they stood and drank the toast. Johnny, more or less dizzy, more or less scarlet, crammed his hands in his pockets and stared and turned redder, and brought out interrogations in the nervous English which is acquired at our great institutions of learning.

"Gosh! are you all gone dotty?" he asked. And "Is this a merry jape?" And "Why, for cat's sake, can't you tell a fellow what's up your sleeve?" While the family sipped champagne and regarded him.

"Now, if I've squirmed for you enough I wish you'd explain-father, tell me!" the boy begged.

And the tale was told by the family, in chorus, without politeness, interrupting freely. It seemed that the president of the big mine needed a superintendent, and wishing young blood and the latest ideas The boy never knew how he got home. had written to the head of the Mining DeHe knocked his shins badly on a quite visi- partment in the School of Technology to ble railing and it was out of the question to ask if he would give him the name of the say a single word. But if he staggered it ablest man in the graduating class—a man was with an overload of happiness, and if he to be relied on for character as much as was speechless and blind the stricken facul- brains, he specified, for the rough army of ties were paralyzed with joy. His father miners needed a general at their head alwalked beside him and they understood most more than a scientist. Was there such each other. He reeled up the streets con- a combination to be found, he asked, in a tented. youngster of twenty-three or twenty-four, such as would be graduating at the "Tech?" If possible, he wanted a very young man -he wanted the enthusiasm, he wanted the athletic tendency, he wanted the plusstrength, he wanted the unmade reputation which would look for its making to hard work in the mine. The letter was produced and read to the shamefaced Johnny. "Gosh!" he remarked at intervals and remarked almost nothing else. There was no need. They were so proud and so glad that it was almost too much for the boy who had been a failure three years ago.

That night there was a family dinner, and with the coffee his father turned and ordered fresh champagne opened.

"We must have a new explosion to drink to the new superintendent of the Oriel mine," he said. Johnny looked at him surprised, and then at the others, and the faces were bright with the same look of something which they knew and he did not.

"What's up?" asked Johnny. "Who's the superintendent of the Oriel mine? Why do we drink to him? What are you all grinning about, anyway?" The cork flew up to the ceiling, and the butler poured gold bubbles into the glasses, all but his own.

"Can't I drink to the beggar, too, who ever he is?" asked Johnny, and pushed his glass and glanced up at Mullins. But his father was beaming at Mullins in a most unusual way and Johnny got no wine. With

On the urgent insistence of every one he made a speech. He got to his six-feettwo slowly, and his hands went into his trousers pockets as usual. "Holy mackerel," he began-"I don't call it decent to knock the wind out of a man and then hold him up for remarks. They all said

in college that I talked the darnedest hash in the class, anyway. But you will have it, will you? I haven't got anything to say, so you'd notice it, except that I'll be blamed if I see how this is true. Of course I'm keen for it-Keen! I should say I was! And what makes me keenest, I believe, is that I know it's satisfactory to Henry McLean." He turned his bright face to his father. "Any little plugging I've done seems like thirty cents compared to that. You're all peaches to take such an interest, and I thank you a lot. Me, the superintendent of the Oriel mine! Holy mackerel!" gasped Johnny, and sat down.

The proportion of work in the battle of life outweighs the "beer and skittles"; as does the interest. Johnny McLean found interest in masses, in the drab-and-dun village on the prairie. He found pleasure, too, and as far as he could reach he tried to share it; buoyancy and generosity were born in him; strenuousness he had painfully acquired, and like most converts was a fanatic about it. He was splendidly fit; he was the best and last output of the best institution in the country; he went at his work like a joyful locomotive. Yet more goes to explain what he was and what he did. He developed a faculty for leading men. The cold bath of failure, the fire of success had tempered the young steel of him to an excellent quality; bright and sharp, it cut cobwebs in the Oriel mine where cobwebs had been thickening for months. The boy, normal enough, quite unphenomenal, was growing strong by virtue of his one strong quality: he did what he resolved to do. For such a character to make a vital decision rightly is a career. On the night of the Tap Day which had so shaken him, he had struck the key-note. He had resolved to use his life as if it were a tool in his hand to do work, and he had so used it. The habit of bigness, once caught, possesses one as quickly as the habit of drink; Johnny McLean was as unhampered by the net of smallnesses which tangle most of us as a hermit; the freedom gave him a power which was fast making a marked man of him.

There was dissatisfaction among the miners; a strike was probable; the popularity of the new superintendent warded it off from month to month, which counted

unto him for righteousness in the mind of the president, of which Johnny himself was unaware. Yet the cobwebs grew; there was an element not reached by, resentful of, the atmosphere of Johnny's friendliness-"Terence O'Hara's gang." By the old road of music he had found his way to the hearts of many. There were good voices among the thousand odd workmen and Johnny McLean could not well live without music. He heard Dennis Mulligan's lovely baritone and Jack Dennison's rolling bass, as they sang at work in the dim tunnels of the coal-mine, and it seemed quite simple to him that they and he and others should meet when work hours were over and do some singing. Soon it was a club-then a big club; it kept men out of saloons, which Johnny was glad of, but had not planned. A small kindliness seems often to be watered and fertilized by magic. Johnny's music-club grew to be a spell to quiet wild beasts. Yet Terence O'Hara and his gang had a strong hold; there was storm in the air and the distant thunder was heard almost continually.

Johnny, as he swung up the main street of the flat little town, the brick schoolhouse and the two churches at one end, many saloons en route, and the gray rock dump and the chimneys and shaft-towers of the mine at the other, carried a ribbon of brightness through the sordid place. Women came to the doors to smile at the handsome young gentleman who took his hat off as if they were ladies; children ran by his side, and he knocked their caps over their eyes and talked nonsense to them, and swung on whistling. But at night, alone in his room, he was serious. How to keep the men patient; how to use his influence with them; how to advise the president— for young as he was he had to do this because of the hold he had gained on the situation; what concessions were wisethe young face fell into grave lines as he sat, hands deep in his pockets as usual, and considered these questions. Already the sculptor Life was chiselling away the easy curves with the tool of responsibility.

He thought of other things sometimes as he sat before the wood fire in his old Morris chair. His college desk was in the corner by the window, and around it hung photographs ordered much as they had been in New Haven. The portrait of his father on

the desk, the painting of his mother, and above them, among the boys' faces, that group of boys and girls of whom she was one, the girl whom he had not forgotten. He had not seen her since that Tap Day. She had written him soon after-an invitation for a week-end at her mother's camp in the woods. But he would not go. He sat in the big chair staring into the fire, in this small room far in the West, and thought about it. No, he could not have gone to her house-party-how could he? He had thought, poor lunatic, that there was an unspoken word between them; that she was different to him from what she was to the others. Then she had failed him at the moment of need. He would not be taken back half-way, with the crowd. He could not. So he had civilly ignored the hand which she had held out several times, in several ways. Hurt and proud, yet without conceit, he believed that she kept him at a distance, and he would not risk coming too near, and so stayed altogether away. It happens at times that a big, attractive, self-possessed man is secretly as shy, as fanciful as the shyest girl-if he cares. Once and again indeed the idea flashed into the mind of Johnny McLean-that perhaps she had been so sorry that she did not dare look at him. But he flung that aside with a savage half-laugh.

"What rot! It's probable that I was important enough for that, isn't it? You fool!" And about then he was likely to get up with a spring and attack a new book on pillar and shaft versus the block system of mining coal.

The busy days went on, and the work grew more absorbing, the atmosphere more charged with an electricity which foretold tempest. The president, knew that the personality of the young superintendent almost alone held the electricity in solution; that for months he and his little musical club and his large popularity had kept off the strike. Till at last a day came in early May.

We sit at the ends of the earth and sew on buttons and play cards while fate wipes from existence the thing dearest to us. Johnny's father that afternoon mounted his new saddle-horse and rode through the afternoon lights and shadows of spring. The girl, who had not forgotten, either, went to a luncheon and the theatre after.

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"Yesterday-a mine accident. down after the entombed men. chance." Brant's mouth worked. "He died—like a hero-you know." The girl stared.

"Died? Is Johnny McLean dead?"

She did not fall down, or cry out, but then Brant knew. Swiftly he came up and put his big, brotherly arm around her.

"Wait, my dear," he said. "There's a ray of hope. Not really hope, you know— it was certain death he went to—but yet they haven't found-they don't know, absolutely, that he's dead."

Five minutes later the girl was locked in her room with the paper. His name was in large letters in the head-lines. She read the account over many times, with painstaking effort to understand that this meant Johnny McLean. That he was down there now, while she breathed pure air. Many times she read it, dazed. Suddenly she flashed to the window and threw it open and beat on the stone sill and dragged her hands across it. Then in a turn she felt this to be worse than useless and dropped on her knees and found out what prayer is. She read the paper again, then, and faced things.

It was the often-repeated, incredible story of men so accustomed to danger that they throw away their lives in sheer carelessness. A fire down in the third level, five hundred feet underground; delay in putting it out; shifting of responsibility of one to another, mistakes and stupidity; then the sudden discovering that they were all but cut off; the panic and the crowding for the shaft, and scenes of terror and selfishness and heroism down in the darkness and smothering smoke.

The newspaper story told how McLean, the young superintendent, had come running down the street, bareheaded, with his light, great pace of an athlete. How, just

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