“ You belong to me, my Allison, although you do not know it yet. Even as I write this, fear shakes my heart. Have not all lovers thought the same? So strong is the sense of possession in love, so impossible it seems to the human heart that we should give all and receive nothing. What if some one should rudely awaken your clear soul from its young sleep, lay hot human hands upon you, my rose, my little cool, white flower! I can not bear these thoughts. You are mine, and I shall let you sleep until the moment comes for love to knock at the door of your heart. ”

“ Your cheeks were flushed, and you drew back laughing.
“What do you want with the butterfly, Allison?” I asked. “You surely would not hurt it. If you throw your bonnet over it, you will break its wings.”
You looked at me with your great eyes.
“I would not do that, William. I only wanted to see the gold spots on its wings.”
“You can do that best without touching it, my dear,” I said. “A touch will destroy its gold dust.” You looked at me with your pure eyes and said,—like a little child, yet you are almost a woman,—“Oh, William, I would not break its wings.” ”

“ Commercialization has never affected any literature more than it has affected the American short story in the past. It is affecting our writing more than ever to-day. But here and there in quiet places, usually far from great cities, artists are laboring quietly for a literary ideal, and the leaven of their achievement is becoming more and more impressive every day. It is my faith and hope that this annual volume of mine may do something toward disengaging the honest good from the meretricious mass of writing with which it is mingled. ”

“ I am your worshiper and knight, whatever fate befalls us. “We needs must love the highest when we see it,” says the new poet across the water. No truer words were ever spoken. So in that fine inner sense I am yours and you are mine whether you ever come to love me or not. To-day I found you chasing a butterfly in the garden. What a child you are still! You brushed me as you ran past, then, as you turned, ran almost into my arms. Ah, my Allison, you did not know how it set my heart beating when that loose strand of your hair blew across my face! ”

“ But James Thorold went aside to stand beside an elevator-shaft. Had his son watched him as he was watching Peter, he would have seen the swift emotions that took their way across his father’s face. He would have seen the older man’s look dilate with the strained horror of one who gazed back through the dimming years to see a ghost. He would have seen sorrow, and grief, and a great remorse rising to James Thorold’s eyes. He might even have seen the shadow of another bier cast upon the retina of his father’s sight. ”

“ He found indeed that he would have to work as fast as his fingers could go. For the little Summer grew big and bigger in an amazingly short time; and she kept throwing things away as fast as she put them on just as the Voice had foretold.
Her days, though, went happily along, all full of sweet smells out of cups and umbels of flowers and from the liquor of the leaves as they steeped in the hot sun; and Andy himself felt quite happy (when he wasn’t terribly interested in his Work, and then he paid attention to nothing at all save what was between his thumb and forefinger) . ”

“ Andy was sixty-eight then and for full forty years had done his winter stint and his Big ‘W’ Work in the hills. But he did not feel tired that year. No; he simply felt odd-like, as if it might be something unforeseen was going to happen to him and it would not tell its name to him first. (You know how you feel that way sometimes—as if wings were flying over your head and you think you see their shadows on the grass; but you look up and see no wings at all in the sky. Then you say: “Isn’t the sky a queer color to-day?” and you feel uneasy.) ”

“ There was Newton Towne, with a sergeant’s stripe on his blue sleeve; there was Edward Green, a captain; there was Peter Allinson, a color-bearer. At their head, taller, handsomer, dearer than ever to Adam’s jealous eyes, walked Henry Foust. In an instant of forgetfulness Adam waved his hand. But Henry did not see; Adam chose to think that he saw and would not answer. The veterans passed, and Adam drew back and was lost in the crowd.
But Adam had a parade of his own. ”

“ Ivan told how the Dream had come to him as he plowed. He told her how it had sprung upon him, a wonderful dream born of the soft breezes, of the sunshine, of the sweet smell of the upturned sod and of his own strength. “It wouldn’t come to weak men,” he said, baring an arm that showed great snaky muscles rippling beneath the clear skin. “It is a dream that comes only to those who are strong and those who want—who want something that they haven’t got.” Then in a lower voice he said: “What is it that we want, Anna?” ”

“ For an instant men and women broke off in the middle of their sentences, a husky something in their throats; children looked up at him with awe. Even his own grand-children did not dare to wave or call from their places in the ranks. Then the storm of cheers broke.
Round the next corner Adam Foust waited. He was clad in his gray uniform—those who looked at him closely saw with astonishment that it was a new uniform; his brows met in a frown, his gray moustache seemed to bristle.
“How he hates them!” said one citizen of Fosterville to another. “Just look at poor Adam!” ”

“ Why, when he got back to Los Pinos they would hang him; they would be only too glad of the chance; and his wife?—she would die; I knew it—just go out like a flame from the unbearableness of it all. And there wasn’t one chance in a thousand that he wouldn’t kill me if I made a single step toward him. I had only to let him go and in a few minutes he would be dead—as dead as his poor brute of a horse would be within the hour. I felt already the cool relief that would be mine when the black shadow of him was gone. ”

“ My Allison, I signed myself last your William, and I called you mine. It is no bold assumption. Neither life nor death can make me other than yours, whether you will or not, neither can it make you any less mine. Isn’t it our George William Curtis who said that the land belonged to his rich neighbor, but the view was his? No matter if I never touch your dear hands save as a friend, my Allison, you will still be mine, because I have divined the fine mysteries of your spirit. ”

“ The little wife looked out into the darkness with fear-filled eyes. There were spies even there in that little village on the Beresina, and it was dangerous to say words that might be construed into a reflection on the Government. But she answered Ivan. She stooped and whispered one word into his ear, and he slapped his thigh with his big hand.
“Ay,” he cried. “That is what we want! You and I and millions like us want it, and over there, Anna, over there we will get it. It is the country where a muzhik is as good as a prince of the blood!” ”

“ Winter came, and the Dream weakened. It was only the earthenware pot that kept it alive, the pot into which the industrious Anna put every coin that could be spared. Often Big Ivan would stare at the pot as he sat beside the stove. The pot was the umbilical cord which kept the Dream alive.
“You are a good woman, Anna,” Ivan would say again and again. “It was you who thought of saving the rubles.”
“But it was you who dreamed,” she would answer. “Wait for the spring, husband mine. Wait.”
It was strange how the spring came to the Beresina that year. ”

“ But it will take the best there is in you to do that sort of Work; and the Work will surely die as soon as you’ve accomplished it. And there will be no money in it for you, at all, and a great deal of pain, care and weariness. But you will find great love in your Work, and for your Work; and though it all vanishes at once you will experience so wonderful a joy that it will seem as if, night and day, God is whispering the secrets of life in your ear.”
“What is the Work like?” asked Andy. ”

“ And they stared at the great ships that came rocking in from distant ports, their sides gray with the salt from the big combers which they had battled with.
No wonder this America of ours is big. We draw the brave ones from the old lands, the brave ones whose dreams are like the guiding sign that was given to the Israelites of old—a pillar of cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.
The harbor master spoke to Ivan and Anna as they watched the restless waters. ”

“ So little of his life had been spent in his own country that outside the garden he felt less at home in America than in Florence or Vienna. Yet place mattered little to him. An artist and a creator, his kingdom was within. Of his environment he demanded only harmony and space.
A bee buzzed into the open heart of a rose, bending it with his weight. A little breeze wafted its perfume toward him. His eyes wandered over the delicate, riotous color of the sweet-pea hedge and rested in content upon the mignonette border. A circular path of white gravel surrounded the grass plot about the dial. ”

“ In April Newton Towne was taken ill and died. Edward Green was terrified, though he considered himself, in spite of his shortness of breath, a strong man.
“Don’t let anything happen to you, Henry,” he would say. “Don’t let anything get you, Henry. I can’t march alone.”
“I’ll be there,” Henry would reassure him. Only one look at Henry, and the most alarmed would have been comforted.
“It would kill me to march alone,” said Edward Green.
As if Fosterville realized that it could not continue long to show its devotion to its veterans, it made this year special preparations for Memorial Day. ”

“ In the watches of the night fear is a panther across the chest sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by day.
So Sara Juke found new courage with the day, and in the subbasement of the Titanic store the morning following her laughter was ready enough. But when the midday hour arrived she slipped into her jacket, past the importunities of Hattie Krakow, and out into the sun-lashed noonday swarm of Sixth Avenue. ”

“ A movement stirs the mist at the bottom of the hill. A monotonous rhythm grows in the silence. The mist darkens, and from it there emerges a strange shadowy column that reaches slowly up the hill, moving in silence to the sombre and muffled beating of a drum. As it draws nearer the shadow becomes two files of marching men bearing between them a long dim burden.
The leaders advance into the moonlight. Each two men are carrying between them a pole, and from pole to pole have been slung planks making a continuous platform. ”