The Best Short Stories of 1915 Part 34

How's things in Europe? I didn't see the papers this morning.'

"'Europe is in a bad way,' ses the gra.s.shopper. 'She was preaching civilization for centuries so that she might be prepared when war came to annihilate herself.'

"'It looks that way to me,' ses the whale. 'Is there anything else worth while going on in the world?'

"'There's the Irish question,' ses the gra.s.shopper.

"'Where's that, Ireland is?' ses the whale. 'Isn't that an island to the west of England?'

"'No,' ses the gra.s.shopper, 'but England is an island to the east of Ireland.'

"'Wisha,' ses the whale, 'it gives me indigestion to hear people talking about Ireland. Sure, I nearly swallowed it up be mistake while I was on a holiday in the Atlantic last year, an' I'm sorry now that I didn't.'

"'An' I'm sorry that you didn't try,' ses the gra.s.shopper. 'Then you'd know something about indigestion. The less you have to say about Ireland the less you'll have to be sorry for. Remember that me father came from Cork.'

"'Can't I say what I like?' ses the whale.

"'You can think what you like,' ses the gra.s.shopper, 'but say what other people like if you want to be a good politician.'

"'There's nothin' so much abused as politics,' ses the whale.

"'Except politicians,' ses the gra.s.shopper. 'Only for the Irish they'd be no one bothering about poetry and the drama to-day. Only for fools they'd be no wise people an' only for sprats, hake, and mackerel there 'ud be no whales an' a good job that would be, too.'

"'What's that you're saying?' ses the whale very sharply.

"'Don't have me to lose me temper with you,' ses the gra.s.shopper.

"'Wisha, bad luck to your impudence an' bad manners, you insignificant little spalpeen. How dare you insult your superiors?' ses the whale.

"'Who's me superior?' ses the gra.s.shopper. 'You, is it?'

"'Yes, me then,' ses the whale.

"'Another word from you,' ses the whale, 'an' I'll put you where Napoleon put the oysters.'

"'Well,' ses the gra.s.shopper, 'there's no doubt but vanity, ignorance and ambition are three wonderful things an' you have them all.'

"'Neither you nor Napoleon, nor the Kaiser himself an' his hundred million men could do hurt or harm to me. You could have every soldier in the German Army, the French Army, an' the Salvation Army lookin'

for me an' I'd put the comether on them all.'

"'I can't stand this any longer,' ses the whale, an' then and there he hits the rock a whack of his tail an' when I went to look for the gra.s.shopper, there he was sitting on the whale's nose as happy an'

contented as if nothing happened. An' when he jumped back to the rock again he says: 'A little exercise when 'tis tempered with discretion, never does any harm, but violent exertion is a very foolish thing if you value your health. But it is only people who have no sinse but think they have it all who make such errors.'

"'If I could get a hold of you,' ses the whale, 'I'd knock some of the pride out of you.'

"'That would be an ungentlemanly way of displaying your displeasure,'

ses the gra.s.shopper.

"'I'd scorn,' ses he, 'to use violent means with you, or do you physical injury of any kind. All you want is self-control and a little education.

You should know that quant.i.ty without quality isn't as good as quality without quant.i.ty.'

"'Sure 'tis I'm the fool to be wasting me time listening to the likes of you,' ses the whale. 'If any of me family saw me now, I'd never hear the end of it.'

"'Indeed,' ses the gra.s.shopper, 'no one belonging to me would ever recognize me ever again if they thought I was trying to make a whale behave himself. There would be some excuse for one of my attainments feeling proud. But as for you!--'

"'An' what in the name of nonsense can you do except give old guff out of you?'

"'I haven't time to tell you all,' ses the gra.s.shopper. 'But to commence with, I can travel all over the world an' have the use of trains, steamers, sailing ships and automobiles and will never be asked to pay a cent, an' I can live on dry land all me life if I choose, while you can't live under water, or over water, on land or on sea, and while all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't catch me if they were trying till the crack of doom, you could be caught be a few poor, harmless sailors, who wouldn't know a crow from a cormorant, and who'd sell your carca.s.s to make oil for foolish wives to burn an' write letters to other people's husbands an' fill the world with trouble.'

An' what about all the whalebone we supplies for ladies' corsets an'

paper knives, and what about all the stories we make for the novelists an' the moving pictures an'--'"

"We're at the Sprig of Holly now," said Felix. "Is it a pint of porter or a bottle you'll have?"

"I'll have a pint, I think," said Standish.

IN BERLIN[15]

BY MARY BOYLE O'REILLY

From _The Boston Daily Advertiser_

[15] Copyright, 1915, by The Boston Daily Advertiser.

The train crawling out of Berlin was filled with women and children, hardly an able-bodied man. In one compartment a gray-haired Landsturm soldier sat beside an elderly woman who seemed weak and ill. Above the click-clack of the car wheels pa.s.sengers could hear her counting: "One, two, three," evidently absorbed in her own thoughts. Sometimes she repeated the words at short intervals. Two girls t.i.ttered, thoughtlessly exchanging vapid remarks about such extraordinary behavior. An elderly man scowled reproval. Silence fell.

"One, two, three," repeated the obviously unconscious woman. Again the girls giggled stupidly. The gray Landsturm leaned forward.

"Fraulein," he said gravely, "you will perhaps cease laughing when I tell you that this poor lady is my wife. We have just lost our three sons in battle. Before leaving for the front myself I must take their mother to an insane asylum."

It became terribly quiet in the carriage.

THE WAITING YEARS[16]

BY KATHARINE METCALF ROOF

From _The Century Magazine_

[16] Copyright 1915, by The Century Co. Copyright, 1916, by Katharine Metcalf Roof.

The shadow on the sun-dial, blue upon its white-marble surface, marked four o'clock, but its edge was broken by the irregular silhouette of an encroaching rose-bush. The sun-dial in the midst of the wide, sunny garden, the old red-brick house among the elms--these were the most sharply defined elements of Mark Faraday's picture of home. Born in Italy, for most of his young life a sojourner in foreign lands, he yet remembered being utterly happy at "Aunt Lucretia's" when at seven he had made his first visit to his mother's country. That memory had never faded. He had recalled and reclaimed each detail of its serene charm at his second visit ten years later, after his mother's death. And now in America again, he had naturally gravitated toward the old place.