stic life;
the sweetness of pure affection; live in his books as they lived in
himself. He had not the heart to make his stories end unhappily. He knew
that there is much of the tragic in human lives, but he chose to ignore
it as far as possible, and to walk in the pleasant ways which are
numerous in this tangled world. There is much philosophy underlying a
good deal that he wrote, but it has to be looked for; it is not
insistent, and is never morbid. He could not write an impure word, or
express an impure thought, for he belonged to the "pure in heart," who,
we are assured, "shall see God."

[Footnote 2: I may, however, properly quote from the sketch prepared by
Mr. Gary for the Century Club: "He brought to his later work the
discipline of long and rather tedious labor, with the capital amassed by
acute observation, on which his original imagination wrought the
sparkling miracles that we know. He has been called the representative
American humorist. He was that in the sense that the characters he
created had much of the audacity of the American spirit, the thirst for
adventures in untried fields of thought and action, the subconscious
seriousness in the most incongruous situations, the feeling of being at
home no matter what happens. But how amazingly he mingled a broad
philosophy with his fun, a philosophy not less wise and comprehending
than his fun was compelling! If his humor was American, it was also
cosmopolitan, and had its laughing way not merely with our British
kinsmen, but with alien peoples across the usually impenetrable barrier
of translation. The fortune of his jesting lay not in his ears, but in
the hearts of his hearers. It was at once appealing and revealing. It
flashed its playful light into the nooks and corners of our own being,
and wove close bonds with those at whom we laughed. There was no
bitterness in it. He was neither satirist nor preacher, nor of set
purpose a teacher, though it must be a dull reader that does not gather
from his books the lesson of the value of a gentle heart and a clear,
level outlook upon our perplexing world."]

MARIAN E. STOCKTON.

CLAYMONT, _May 15, 1903_.

THE CAPTAIN'S TOLL-GATE

_CHAPTER I_

_Olive._

A long, wide, and smoothly macadamized road stretched itself from the
considerable town of Glenford onward and northward toward a gap in the
distant mountains. It did not run through a level country, but rose and
fell as if it had been a line