would not have liked to be in the man's place when next
they met, if they ever did.

Some months passed, and then one day a message came from St. Joseph's
Home: "I guess I am up against it this time." He did not want to trouble
me, but would I come and say good-by? I went at once. Peter was dying, and
he knew it. Sitting by his bed, my mind went back to our first
meeting--perhaps his did too--and I said: "You have been real decent
several times, Peter. You must have come of good people; don't you want me
to find them for you?" He didn't seem to care very much, but at last he
gave me the address in Boston of his only sister. But she had moved, and
it was a long and toilsome task to find her. In the end, however, a friend
located her for me. She was a poor Irish dressmaker, and Peter's old
father lived with her. She wrote in answer to my summons that they would
come, if Peter wanted them very much, but that it would be a sacrifice.
He had always been their great trial--a born tramp and idler.

Peter was chewing a straw when I told him. I had come none too soon. His
face told me that. He heard me out in silence. When I asked if he wanted
me to send for them, he stopped chewing a while and ruminated.

"They might send me the money instead," he decided, and resumed his
straw.

KATE'S CHOICE

My winter lecture travels sometimes bring me to a town not a thousand
miles from New York, where my mail awaits me. If it happens then, as it
often does, that it is too heavy for me to attack alone--for it is the law
that if a man live by the pen he shall pay the penalty in kind--I send for
a stenographer, and in response there comes a knock at my door that ushers
in a smiling young woman, who answers my inquiries after "Grandma" with
the assurance that she is very well indeed, though she is getting older
every day. As to her, I can see for myself that she is fine, and I wonder
secretly where the young men's eyes are that she is still Miss Murray.
Before I leave town, unless the train table is very awkward, I am sure to
call on Grandma for a chat--in office hours, for then the old lady will
exhibit to me with unreserved pride "the child's" note-book, with the
pothooks which neither of us can make out, and tell me what a wonderful
girl she is. And I cry out with the old soul in rapture over it all, and
go away feeling happily that the world is all right with two such people
in it as Kate Murray and her grandmother, though the