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Reminiscences of the Telegraph on the Pacific Coast... James Gamble.......

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Julia H. S. Bugeia.

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[SCENE MR. Ralph Endicott's library, furnished in old English style. MR. ENDICOTT stands beside his wife at the window, looking out over the Berkshire hills. He is tall and fair, and his black velvet morning-coat sets off his wavy yellow hair and auburn beard. She is slender and dark. Her clear, olive skin has a faint . tinge of color on the cheeks. The outline of her face is exquisite, and she has very thick, dark hair, and fine eyes.]

ENDICOTT. If he were only less of a cad!
MRS. ENDICOTT. He is very good-natured.
ENDICOTT. Oh, he is not half a bad fellow;
but he is so horribly, so demonstratively Amer-
ican.

MRS. ENDICOTT (smiling). We, also, are
American, Ralph.

ENDICOTT. At least we don't shake the fact
in every one's face. Yesterday, when he was
talking to Anstice at dinner, I grew hot half a
dozen times at his bragging. He hadn't the
sense to see how distasteful his talk was to me.
By Jove, I longed to throw him out of the win-
dow.

MRS. ENDICOTT (patting his arm). Sir Wilfrid didn't seem to mind. And, certainly, he must have seen how heroically you struggled to change the conversation. I pitied you from my heart, but I was too far off to help you.

ENDICOTT (lifting the hand on his arm and kissing it). You were an angel. Only the occasional warning signals I caught from your eyes enabled me to keep from blazing out at Havens. But it wasn't in my character of host that I suffered most; though it isn't pleasant to invite your friends to hear their country abused. Still, Anstice is a gentleman, and understood. The worst thing was that Havens's talk made

Vol. III.-1.

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MISS NELLY. Perfectly lovely. I think the Berkshire hills are too beautiful for anything. Don't say now that I don't admire something in Massachusetts. I think the scenery is perfection-I dote on it.

MRS. ENDICOTT. We would prefer to have you dote on the people.

MISS NELLY. I don't. I can't help it. I suppose it's my unlucky Western education. I

[Copyright by THE CALIFORNIA PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved in trust for contributors.]

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can't play tennis or whist; I don't do Kensington needlework; I've never been to Europe, and I hate, hate, hate Henry James

[Enter MR. CYRUS L. HAVENS, of Chicago. He is a tall young man of thirty or thirty-five, handsome, and carrying himself well, if with something of assertion.]

MR. HAVENS. Hullo! Who's Nelly hating? Who is Henry James, anyhow, Cousin Margaret-somebody I ain't met yet?

ENDICOTT (grimly). No. He's an author. HAVENS. Oh, yes-solitary horseman fellow. He's rather slow. But what do you want to waste so much emotion on that dead old party for, Nelly?

MRS. ENDICOTT. But, Nelly, I can't believe that any of Aunt Millicent's friends could have been so rude. You must have fancied

I

MISS NELLY. Oh, I don't mean that they were rude. They were dreadfully well behaved and polite. Nobody said a word—that was just it, don't you see? They were so careful, whenever I showed my ignorance of something that they seemed to know as well as their own names, they changed the conversation, and talked about nice, easy, common things-like Indians. It was amusing how they all seemed to think I must be interested in the Indians. The fact is, I never saw an Indian in my life. I suppose they thought I was a kind of savage myself. I know I felt very much like one. was perfectly possessed to say something shocking, they were all so prim and so proper, and all talking in the same Englishy way, with such a horid, indefinite expression about them, as though they knew it all. I couldn't help seeing that everything I thought fine they despised, and everything they seemed to be enthusiastic about I thought silly or else hideous. HAVENS. Well, I'm glad I didn't go. You would MISS NELLY. You may be. have been an awful comfort, though; only I'm afraid you would have disgraced yourself by laughing right out over some of the things they said and did. I wish you could have heard them go on about some frightful engravings, by some old German-I've forgot his name. No, they weren't engravings-they were etchings.

MISS NELLY (looking sidewise at Endicott to detect any hint of a smile). It is another Henry James is a smart man, Mr. Havens. young American, who lives in London, and is making a fortune by ridiculing his own country. HAVENS. Don't take much stock in him, if What's the use of having a that's the case. country if you can't stand up for it? But That's what I think. MISS NELLY. wherever I go, East, I run into people who can't find anything good enough for them in their own country. They import everything from England or from France. In New York, it was all France; but here, it's all England. They get their furniture, and their dishes, and their cookery, and their coachmen, and even their accent, from England. When I went to Boston, the other day, I was told eight times in an evening that the Bostonians, according to Eng-Aunt Millicent had just paid some fabulous lish testimony, spoke the purest English going. All the young men I met were dressed by English tailors, and talked just like characters in English novels. Mercy knows! they were stupid enough to have been in a novel themselves. ENDICOTT. We never could get you to saying interested in fancy-work! I told him I thought it was queer a gentleman should care much about that dinner before, Nelly. I am for such things. glad to get particulars.

MISS NELLY. I didn't enjoy the occasion
enough to talk about it much.

MRS. ENDICOTT. But Aunt Millicent?
MISS NELLY. Aunt Millicent was a saint in
good clothes, as she always is. But, of course,
she couldn't be with me every minute. And
the others-I never was so genteelly snubbed
in my life.

HAVENS (who has been tugging fiercely at
his mustache for the last five minates). Peo-
ple's notions of politeness differ. Now, in Chi-
cago, when we go to see people and meet a
stranger, we think it the polite thing to make
it as pleasant as we can for him.

ENDICOTT. Yes; you tell him what a wonderful city you have, and describe its beauties. I have been in Chicago.

price for the old horrors, and everybody was looking at them. And there was some needlework, too, that they looked at and admired. One of the men was a good deal more interThink of a man's beested than the women.

That must have been MRS. ENDICOTT. Philip Locke. Didn't you find him agreeable? MISS NELLY. Indeed, I didn't. He was horrid. Every once in a while, though his face was perfectly sober, his eyes would flash in such And he a way I knew he was laughing at me. think?" at you was so English. He put "don't I hated him. He the end of every sentence. knew Henry James, and said he was a delightWasn't there any one ful fellow.

MRS. ENDICOTT. there whom you liked?

MISS NELLY. Well, there was one man I thought rather nice; but, afterward, I found he was dreadfully talented, and had written a book about "quarternions," and, as I hadn't the ghost of an idea what that was, I thought I'd

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