lding,
of merit incomparably greater than 'Breaking Home Ties'; and yet the
crowd never looked at those, because it did not understand them. But at
any hour of the day, if you happened to pass this picture, it took you
some time to do so. You could pass any of John Sargeant's pictures, for
instance, at a speed limited only by your own powers of running; but
you could never run past 'Breaking Home Ties.' You had to work your way
through the crowd in front of that just as you have to do at a fire, or
a news office during a football game. The American people could never
get enough of that mother kissing her boy goodbye, while the wagon waits
at the open door to take him away from her upon his first journey into
the world. The idea held a daily pathos for them. Many had themselves
been through such leave takings; and no word so stirs the general heart
as the word 'mother'. Song writers know this; and the artist knew it
when he decided to paint 'Breaking Home Ties.' And 'Mother' is the title
of my story to-night."

"Mother!" This was Ethel's bewildered echo, "Whose Mother?" she softly
murmured to herself.

Richard continued. "It concerns the circumstances under which I became
engaged to my wife."

There was a movement from Ethel as she sat by the sofa.

"Not all the circumstances, of course," the narrator continued, with a
certain guarded candour in his tone. "There are certain circumstances
which naturally attend every engagement between happy and--and
devoted--young people that they keep to themselves quite carefully, in
spite of the fact that any one who has been through the experience of
being engaged two or three times--"

There was another movement from Ethel by the sofa.

"--or even only once, as is my case," the narrator went on, "any body, I
say, who has been through the experience of being engaged only once,
can form a very correct idea of the circumstances that attend the
happy engagements of all young people. I imagine they prevail in all
countries, just as the feeling about 'mother' prevails. Yes, 'Mother' is
the right title for my story, as you shall see. Is it not strange that
if you add 'in-law' to the word 'mother,' how immediately the sentiment
of the term is altered?--as strongly indeed as when you prefix the word
'step' to it. But it is with neither of these composite forms of mother
that any story deals.

"Ethel has always maintained that if I had really understood her, it
never would have happe