weary,
Far from the old folks at home,"

a man in a wide-brimmed hat who had been listening intently emptied his
pockets into the old man's lap and disappeared in the crowd.

Traffic on street and avenue had ceased; not a wheel turned. From street
cars and cabs heads were poked to find out the cause of the strange
hold-up. The policeman stood spellbound, the whistle in his half-raised
hand. In the hush that had fallen upon the world rose clear and sweet the
hymn, "It came upon a midnight clear," and here and there hats came off in
the crowd. Once more the young woman inclined her head toward the old
fiddler, and coins and banknotes were poured into his cup and into his lap
until they could hold no more. Her eyes were wet with laughing tears as
she saw it. When she had played the verse out, she put the violin back
into its owner's hands and with a low "Merry Christmas, friend!" was gone.

The policeman awoke and blew his whistle with a sudden blast, street cars
and cabs started up, business resumed its sway, the throng passed on,
leaving the old man with his hoard as he gazed with unbelieving eyes upon
it. The world moved once more, roused from its brief dream. But the dream
had left it something that was wanting before, something better than the
old man had found. Its heart had been touched.

THE WARS OF THE RILEYS

It was the night before Washington's Birthday that Mr. Riley broke loose.
They will speak of it long in the Windy City as "the night of the big
storm," and with good right--it was "that suddint and fierce," just like
Mr. Riley himself in his berserker moods. Mr. Riley was one of the
enlivening problems of "the Bureau" in the region back of the stock-yards
that kept it from being dulled by the routine of looking after the poor.
He was more: he rose to the dignity of a "cause" at uncertain intervals
when the cost of living, underpay and overtime, sickness and death,
overpopulation, and all the other well-worn props of poverty retired to
the wings and left the stage to Mr. Riley rampant, sufficient for the time
and as informing as a whole course at the School of Philanthropy. In
between, Mr. Riley was a capable meat-cutter earning good wages, who
wouldn't have done a neighbor out of a cent that was his due, a robust
citizen with more than his share of good looks, a devoted husband and a
doting father, inseparable when at home from little Mike, whose baby trick
of squaring off and offering to "