Peggy of Roundabout lane

Front matter

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT

.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Chapter I

HE children were going home. The stream that flowed from Westside School went mainly along the eastern and northern streets of Georgetown, Washington’s old west end. There was a little trickle southward to tenements over M Street shops and warehouses along the Potomac river. The westward flow was even smaller. Hardly a dozen children went beyond Georgetown College; and of the dozen, four* were little Callahans.

Susie Callahan was in front, hopping from sill to sill of the trolley bridge that spanned the ravine behind the college. In her dingy clothes, with her bright eyes and her air of cocksureness, she looked like a little English sparrow.

“Mamie! Sissie!” she called to her two companions. “Hurry, hurry and get your paper dolls.”

“Girls — ugh! Paper dolls — ow! Here, boys, let's play Cops and Robbers till time to sell papers."

The speaker was John Edward — familiarly known as Jed — one of the Callahan twins. He and Elmore were alert, terrier-like little fellows, with stiff disorderly hair and outstanding ears. They had friendly blue eyes and big mouths that spread in smiles at the least excuse, and they seemed puzzlingly alike till you found out how different they were. Jed was the sturdier and quicker and firmer, and was followed by Elmore like a shadow.

The other boys — Albert Fischer, Tom Croye, Tim Rogan, and Mike McGinley — agreed eagerly to Jed's proposal. Cops and Robbers is a favorite game in Georgetown where there are so many byways in which the fleeing “robbers" can dodge the pursuing “cops." Jed and Mike began to choose sides and discuss bounds.

Peggy Callahan, who was behind with Molly Rogan, heard them and frowned.

“Jed! Elmore!" she called severely. “It's straight home you ought to come and study for your hist'ry test."

Jed made a grimace that was reflected on Elmore's face. They expected and resented and enjoyed Peggy's disapproval.

Peggy was a bright, ambitious, untidy girl of thirteen, — pretty, especially when smiling lips and dimpling cheeks made the best of her rather heavy features. She had a ruddy fair face, clear blue eyes, and dark hair that on damp days clung in adorable little curls around her pink ears and soft, plump neck. Her greatest troubles in life, so far, were the freckles that speckled her nose, and the difficulties of Eighth Grade English exercises.

Beyond the bridge across the ravine, the children turned from the trolley track and followed Roundabout Lane. It climbed and curved northward and westward in the semicircle of Holly Hill, passing front and back doors of six or seven small houses scattered among gnarled fruit trees, grape vines, rose bushes, and ragged boxwood hedges, — relics of a mansion that had once occupied the hillside. At last the lane turned southward to get to a tumbled-down house and a gabled cottage on the hilltop, and finally dropped back downhill to the trolley track.

Holly Hill and Roundabout Lane, remember, are in the city of Washington. The city paused a long time at Georgetown College, overlooking the ravine and the rugged little hill on which it was impossible to lay out orderly streets and buildings. At last it passed them by and settled down and spread out in Riverheight on the gentle slopes beyond the second ravine. Holly Hill was left to country-loving poor folks, — the Callahans and Rogans and Croyes and McGinleys and Fischers, — who want elbow room and space for potatoes and roses.

Instead of following Roundabout Lane with the other children, Peggy climbed a steep, rough little path that brought her quickly to the gabled cottage on the hilltop. She sat down on the porch step, jerked out a book, and began to study her civics lesson, loudly and severely. When Jed came around the house corner and saw her, he promptly turned his back and stuck his thumb over his shoulder to point out the spectacle to his brother.

"Peg thinks she's so smart, she does." Elmore agreed with Jed's unspoken opinion.

"Come on, robbers ! The cops'll be after us in two minutes," shouted Jed, and scampered away, laughing loudly.

Presently the chill of the late October day drove Peggy indoors.

"Peggy, have you got time to help me ?" asked her mother, without looking up from the sewing machine.

Peggy frowned. "I guess so, ma," she answered slowly. "I guess I can study my civics and arithmetic and hist’ry and spelling to-night.” She made the list as long and difficult as possible.

Her mother hesitated and looked twice at the heap of muslin on the table. Then she said, “Just sew the ribbon on those ruffles, whiles I make the sleeves. ’T won’t take you long.”

Peggy received the ribbon and muslin in reluctant fingers and began to sew slowly and carelessly.

For awhile Mrs. Callahan rattled steadily on the heavy old machine. Then she paused a minute. She drew a tired, uneven breath and frowned at Peggy.

“Land’s sake, child,” she said sharply, “hurry up! Go with a stitch and a promise. And sit where you can keep your eye on the window, whiles I’m at the machine. I wouldn’t have Doctor Malone catch me machine-sewin’, not for money. And him sayin’ express I mustn’t.”

At that Peggy looked troubled. “I wish you wouldn’t, ma,” she said, sewing faster. “I could do that, if you’d let me. I could gather the ruffles and sew them on.”

“Oh, your sewin’ !” Mrs. Callahan said, laughing. And when she laughed, her hazel eyes darkened and sparkled and her merry crooked mouth ran toward the dimple that popped out on her left cheek. It would have taken, then, a more experienced eye than Peggy’s to see that care and illness were ravaging her face.

“Ruffles all of a pucker here and skimped there and sewed on ever’ which way!” went on Mrs. Callahan. “This ain’t plain sewin’, like you can do, child. You run that ribbon on the ruffles. I’ll gather and sew ’em in a jiffy; and no harm done, if doctor don’t catch me.”

Mrs. Callahan began again to stitch rapidly on the machine. Peggy sat down beside the window and finished sewing the blue ribbon on the edge of one long muslin strip. Then she counted the other strips.

“Whew!” she said disapprovingly. “Seven ruffles! And if they were teenchy-tiny wider, five would come to Susie’s waist. I don’t see the use of so many.”

“That’s ’cause ’tain’t your party,” Mrs. Callahan explained wisely. “Didn’t Kate Flannagan say she was havin’ five ruffles? And it’s such a mite little more work — what with the ribbon and two extry ruffles — to make Susie’s dress the finest.”

“But if doctor said ”

“He ain’t said the word of a mother pleasurin’ a child for her first party. Ain’t I give up takin’ in sewin’, for his say-so? Finish them ruffles, Peggy, or hand ’em over to me.”

With a sigh and a frown Peggy resumed work. For many minutes, neither she nor her mother spoke.

The sun shone through the leafless rose branches and patterned the uncarpeted floor with sunshine and shadow. The baby, sitting on the floor with a necklace of spools to amuse him, tried to catch the sunrays in his little hands and crowed with delight.

The poor little room-of-much-work — bedroom, sitting-room, and sewing-room — was homelike and cheerful, like the smiling, untidy, tired woman. So was the room opening from it, — a room so tiny that there was just an alley-way between its two beds and space at the foot of the beds for a table and two chairs. The sun streaming into this room shone on a child lying on the bed beside the west window. She had her face turned toward the wall and was chattering to herself. Suddenly she laughed aloud.

Mrs. Callahan, smiling in sympathy, paused at the end of a seam. “Don’t you want the shade down, Lois?” she said. “The sun’s in your eyes.”

“No, ma’m,” said a cheery little voice. “I like oein’ in the sun. Me and the Wackersons are havin’ a nawful good time. We were jest startin’ to a picnic and Mr. Wackerson he f ergot the lunch box and had to go back for it. The way he had to run to ketch the street car ! And him so fat and red-faced.” Again the childlaughter rang out.

“I never see such a child for amusin’ herself,” Mrs. Callahan said, chuckling softly.

Peggy’s thoughts were busy elsewhere. Presently she said, “Ma, that hundred dollars will be ’most as much as I’d make being cash girl or bundle wrapper. So I can go to school next year and take the business course, can’t I ?”

“What? What hundred dollars?” asked her mother.

“That scholarship prize I told you about,” said Peggy, impatiently. “Ain’t nobody in school ahead of me and I ain’t going to let nobody get ahead. Then I won’t have to stop school and go to work, will I? I can go to Business High School, can’t I?”

“I want you should go to school,” said her mother. “But you know how things is. Course, if you got that prize ”

“I am going to get it,” declared Peggy, confidently. “That’ll put me through next session. Next year maybe there’ll be another scholarship prize. Or something will turn up, so I can go another year and then one more. Then I can get a good-paying job. And you ” Peggy interrupted herself excitedly. “There he comes, ma. There comes doctor up the hill! — Just a stepping !”

“Gi’ me the rocker, Peggy. Sit here at the machine. Quick! Slip that ruffle under the presser-foot. Motion like you was sewin’, but don’t you put in stitches for me to pull out. Hand me the waist. I’ll do buttonholes, so as not to be losin’ all the time.” Mrs. Callahan searched hurriedly for her thimble.

Doctor Malone came in, as keen and wholesome as the breezy, sunny, autumn day.

“How are you feeling today, Mrs. Callahan?” he asked with the hearty vigor that inspired morose patients to feel and answer “Better.”

Cheery Mrs. Callahan responded gayly. “Oh ! I feel like a spring onion, doctor, — strong enough for anything.”

“That’s good,” laughed the doctor. “And Lois?”

He strode into the little room and looked down at the bed-ridden child whose thin pale face looked paler and thinner because of the big, serious, dark eyes and the mop of thick, disorderly, dark hair.

Lois had been very ill with a heart trouble, caused by diseased tonsils. At first there had been some difficulty about getting her in a hosio PEGGY OF ROUNDABOUT LANE pital and then Lois had begged to stay at home. So here she was, past the painful and dangerous stage of the disease, but having to stay quietly in bed.

“You couldn’t be getting on better than you are,” the doctor smiled down at her.

Then he went back into the front room, sat down, threw one knee over the other and clasped the topmost with his big, capable, white hands. His humorous red-brown eyes were fixed on Mrs. Callahan while he spoke to Peggy.

“Sewing, eh?”

“Yessir.”

In her embarrassment, Peggy twirled the wheel and zigzagged across the ruffle. She tried to resume an even course and broke the thread. Pier mother frowned and moved involuntarily toward the machine, then recollected herself, pursed her lips, and sat still.

“And what were you doing, Mrs. Callahan?” asked the doctor, emphasizing the past tense.

“I’m helpin’ Peggy by makin’ buttonholes, sir,” said Mrs. Callahan, meekly.

“Sew on, Peggy,” the doctor exhorted mockingly. “I’m interested in seeing you manage that complication of fluffles.”

“Yessir.”

With the best of good intentions, Peggy

PEGGY OF ROUNDABOUT LANE n caught a fold of the ruffle under the presser-foot and was brought to an abrupt end by the twisted fabric.

“Ah ! I should say it required an expert hand. Is this work of yours important, Mrs. Callahan, — a rush order ?”

“It's no order at all, sir,” Mrs. Callahan answered indignantly. “It's for my own Susie, goin' to her first party. Would I be lettin' her go ragamuffin-like? It would take the sweetness out of icecream itself. It’s little I can buy — cotton ribbon and sleazy muslin — but a few extry stitches make a dress she'll think fine as a queen's. Sure, doctor, you wouldn't have me spare that little for a child like my Susie that's got so much doin'-without on the road ahead of her.”

The doctor shrugged his shoulders. He walked to the mantelpiece and took up a bottle. “You've been taking this regularly, Mrs. Callahan?”

“To the minute, sir,” she answered truthfully.

Dr. Malone looked her over with careful, dissatisfied eyes.

“How about your appetite ?”

“It's— not so bad.”

“For breakfast you ate ?”

“We had the best of potato gravy, sir. And I took an extry cup o' coffee. Strong like I make it, it's mighty strength’nin’,” Mrs. Callahan said ingratiatingly.

"You have not been taking the milk and eggs I ordered.”

Dr. Malone stated the fact so positively that Mrs. Callahan merely faced him with another fact.

"With me not takin’ in sewin’, there’s no money for extrys, sir. And eggs that high !”

The doctor sat down again and looked her squarely in the face.

"I told you three months ago, Mrs. Callahan, that you would not have at home what you need — rest and proper food. You insisted on making the trial. You are — are not getting better. Now you must go to the hospital. Of course, it will take you longer to get well than if you had gone three months ago. If you postpone much longer,” he paused impressively, "I’ll not answer for the consequences.”

"Wh — what’s the matter ?” Peggy gasped.

"Incipient tuberculosis.”

Mrs. Callahan laughed weakly. "You’re thunderin’ over heads of Peggy and me, with them big words. Pshaw, doctor! I ain’t nothin’ but a little run down — underfleshed, and a hackin’ cough is got a grip on me. You said yourself I’ll soon be good as new.”

“Yes.” The doctor agreed gravely. “I said that three months ago. With proper treatment.

But if you wait three months longer ” He

shook his head doubtfully. “I assure you, Mrs. Callahan, there is no time to be lost. Fortunately, there is a vacancy at the hospital and I have arranged for you to go there to-morrow.”

“To-morrow ! I can't.”

“You must.”

“Why, — but with the ironin' not finished and

the week's mendin' all to be done. And ”

Mrs. Callahan looked helplessly at Susie's unfinished frock. “My children need me, doctor,” she pleaded.

The doctor agreed. “Your children need you, Mrs. Callahan. You ! More than they need ironed and mended clothes and folderols like this.” He flicked the shabby finery with a man's contemptuous finger. “You must face the situation. If you go on this way too long — and none of us can say how much longer that will be — doctors and medicine can't help you. Instead of bearing your family's burdens, you'll probably be a burden the remainder of your life. I ask you to stop, for a few weeks or months, the life that is killing you, and go to the hospital and give us a chance to cure you. Fresh air and rest and the milk and eggs will set you up again. And you’ll come home a well woman.”

“Oh, how grand !” exclaimed Peggy, squeezing her mother’s workworn right hand in both her strong young ones.

“But Johnnie and the children,” faltered Mrs. Callahan.

“We have made satisfactory arrangements for the children,” said the doctor. “Miss Hartman of the Associated Charities came to my office this morning. She has arranged everything. Miss Drayton will take charge of Peggy ”

“Of me?” questioned Peggy.

“Yes; you will stay at her home.”

Involuntarily Peggy clapped her hands. “With dear, darling Anne Lewis !” she exclaimed. “It’ll be like a party every day. And nothing to bother my studying.” She glanced distastefully at Susie’s frock; then, ashamed of seeming selfish, she asked, “And the other children?”

“The two older boys will be boarded with Mrs. Rogan,” said the doctor. “Lois will be put in a hospital where she’ll have the best of care.”

A protesting wail came from the adjoining room. “Don’t want to go to no hosp’al. I ain’t goin’ to leave my Wackersons.”

Unheeding the interruption, the doctor went on, “Susie and the two youngest children will be taken care of at the Cloyd Home. Surely you are not hesitating, Mrs. Callahan. Don’t you understand what this means for your health — and life?”

“There’s Johnnie, sir,” Mrs. Callahan faltered.

“Your husband? He can board with a neighbor. Or stay at homeland take care of himself.”

“Johnnie can stand a powerful heap of lookin’ after,” Mrs. Callahan said. She was deprecatory, but positive. “I can’t leave him to his lonesome.”

“Nonsense !” said the doctor. “Well, Mrs. Callahan, I must go. Shall I telephone Miss Hartman you’re a sensible woman, and she can go ahead with her plans for to-morrow, — or, say Saturday, to give you a little more time?”

“If it wasn’t for Johnnie ” said Mrs. Cal-

lahan. “But I can’t, sir. I just can’t and won’t leave him to himself. Not long as I’m livin’.”

Dr. Malone was not Irish and red-headed for nothing.

“You’re a foolish, wicked woman, Mrs. Callahan!” he flared out. “I wash my hands of you and the consequences. You needn’t send for me again. Go to the dispensary. Send for the city doctor. Good-day and good-by to you.”

Two little hands clutched his arm, and brought him to a momentary standstill.

“Don’t be mad, doctor dear,” implored Peggy.

“We — she Do you think Is she so bad?”

“She’ll get well, if she goes to the hospital,” said the doctor. “If you could get her to go ”

“She’ll go; oh, she’ll go! Won’t you, ma?” Peggy turned pleadingly to her mother, as the doctor strode away.

Mrs. Callahan’s lips set in a firm line. She looked ill and worn, but unchangeably resolute.

“I ain’t never goin’ to leave your pa by himself,” she answered. “It would be same as makin’ a will and leavin’ him to the gang. And I’m goin’ to finish this dress. Shan’t nothin’ spoil Susie’s first party. Peggy, will you finish sewin’ on that ribbon or have I got it to do ?”

Chapter II

T HE next morning, a girl tripping blithely around a Georgetown street corner bumped into another girl who was walking slowly, with downcast eyes.

Two “Ohs” blended into one. Then came in the same breath, “Do pardon me !” “ ’Scuse me !”

With the next breath it was “Well, now, will you look who’s here? Peggy!” “Oh, you, Anne Lewis!”

You will see and hear so much of this friend of Peggy’s that we may as well pause now and tell you about her. Anne Lewis was an orphan whom a seeming chance had brought into the lives of two Washington ladies, Miss Sarah Drayton and her sister, Mrs. Patterson. After Mrs. Patterson’s death, Miss Drayton made a home for her sister’s husband and his only child, Pat, now a manly fellow of sixteen. To this home Anne had come, after many varying fortunes, to be the dear daughter of the house.

She and Peggy had once been classmates, but a session of careful tutoring by a cousin in Vir- 1 7 ginia had put Anne a grade ahead and she was now in her first year at the High School. She loyally and cordially kept up the acquaintance with the Callahans, who had been closely connected with the ill and good fortunes of earlier days.

Holding both of Peggy’s hands, Anne amplified her apology. “It’s so hard for me to remember not to do a thing till after I do it,” she said. “Of course I know better than to dash around a corner like that. Didn’t I hurt you, Peggy? Are you sure? Oh, I bumped your nose! It’s red!” As the words were on her lips, she saw that Peggy’s eyes also were red. It was too late now to ignore these signs of distress and leave Peggy the choice of speaking or keeping silent. “It — it isn’t anything very bad, is it, Peggy dear?” Anne asked solicitously.

Peggy’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I was meaning to come to High School to see you at recess,” she said unsteadily, “and tell you I can’t come to spend the day to-morrow. I’m awful sorry. But I’m to mind the children. Take them for a picnic.”

“I’m sorry, too. But you’ll come some other day. Do you know, I think sometimes put-off parties are the nicest? It’s such fun looking forward to them. And you’ll have a beautiful time to-morrow, I know. Picnics are so lovely.”

The cloud on Peggy’s face did not lighten at Anne’s pleasant words.

“You see, ma isn’t so well,” Peggy explained.

“Oh! is she in-the-bed sick?” asked Anne, anxiously.

“No; not that.”

“Then I don’t reckon she’s very bad off. Don’t worry, Peggy dear. Grown folks get out of sorts — and then they get in again, and it’s all right.”

“The doctor says she’ll be all right if she goes to the hospital.”

“Then she’ll go and she’ll come home well.” Anne, to whom this seemed a simple and happy solution of the trouble, smiled reassurance at Peggy.

But Peggy refused to be comforted. “The trouble is about us,” Peggy explained gravely. “The doctor and the Charities want us to break up. And ma won’t hear to our being put away and pa being left there all lonesome. Oh, the doctor he got so mad ! And then the Charities lady came and talked to ma. And I was asked to visit. Miss

Hartman said that Miss Drayton ” Peggy

looked wistfully at Anne.

“Oh! That’s what Aunt Sarah meant when she said I might have a surprise guest. How lovely ! What good times we’ll have, Peggy !”

Peggy returned the impulsive hand-squeeze, but not the smile.

“But I can’t come,” she said soberly. “Ma said she couldn’t and she wouldn’t have us break up. There’s pa. We talked all over and ’round it last night. And Miss Hartman talked to pa. Last, ma said she’d go— making no promise to stay— if pa and all of us stay at home and I make a try at keeping house. So she’s going to-morrow. And I’m to take the children picnicking, so they won’t make an upsetment when she goes. Pa gave me ticket money for the bunch of us to go to Chain Bridge, — all but Lois and Dan. All the neighbors will see to Lois, and Mrs. Hicks’ll take care of Danny-boy.”

“Just think!” said Anne. “Your mother is going away, to come back well, and you all will have a good time picnicking. I don’t see anything to worry about.”

“There ain’t no good time in it for me,” said Peggy, dolefully. “The children are just crazy about going to hunt nuts. Ma and pa have told so much about the nutting parties they had when they were children in the country. Susie and Finn — and half-way Jed and Elmore — believe they’re going out in the woods and get heaps and basketfuls of nuts — picking them up like they did on the street one day when a colored lady’s bag burst. And they’ll go there and be disappointed about the nuts. And then they’ll come home and be disappointed about ma’s being gone.”

P ^§7 ended with a sigh and Anne sighed with her.

“I see,” said Anne.

Peggy, having rolled her burden for the minute on her friend’s shoulders, stood watching Anne who, absorbed in thought, was as motionless as a poised butterfly. Suddenly her hazel eyes twinkled and her fair eager face broke into a smile so irresistibly gay that Peggy laughed, without at all knowing what was pleasing or amusing Anne. This sudden, contagious glee was one of Anne’s charms.

“It will never do for the children not to have a beautiful day,” she said. “As you can’t come to lunch, I am going to ask Aunt Sarah to let me take the lunch to you and we’ll all have a lovely picnic. Perhaps Pat will go with us. I’ll ask him. Won’t that be splenlightful?”

Peggy uttered an exclamation of joyful assent, but further discussion of the subject was prevented by the tinkle of the school bell.

“Ugh! I’ve got a cooking-school lesson,”

Peggy said, frowning at the bag dangling from her arm. “Hateful thing! I ’spise it!”

“Good-by !” called Anne. “IT1 see Aunt Sarah at noon recess. Meet you after school.” Then she opened a book and, on her way to the High School, made a hasty review of confusing “ie” and “ei” words. For the moment, they were the most important things in the world to Anne, for her interested attention was apt to be fixed on what was immediately at hand.

But poor Peggy’s mind wandered sadly. Miss Ellis not only reproved her for inattention, but — * unusual and mortifying event — required her to recopy her carelessly written receipt.

It seemed to Peggy that the school day would never drag to an end. When the clock hand crawled near three, she strapped her books together and sat in unusual and impatient idleness.

“Attention !” Miss Ellis said at last. The pupils rustled into order and she went on, “Please put all books and papers in order, as if you were to be dismissed at once.”

Peggy’s countenance fell, for she knew by experience that the “as if” boded delay.

“Then,” continued Miss Ellis, “we will proceed to the assembly hall where Mr. Barnes is expecting us. Order ! Stand ! One, two, — forward !”

They marched into the assembly hall, with the other pupils of the school. On the platform with Mr. Barnes, there was a stranger, a bulky man in amazing checked clothes. Beside him, Mr. Barnes, with his brown clothes matching his brown eyes and his brown pointed beard, looked even more dapper than usual. In a few crisp pleasant sentences, the principal introduced the guest, — their distinguished fellow-citizen, Mr. Dickson, who came to tell them about a prize he was offering to the pupils of the city schools.

Mr. Dickson came forward and acknowledged the introduction with a smile which made his mouth seem merely one of the creases of his many-folded double chin. He pushed down on his nose the spectacles which shielded his eyes. Then he fingered the massive gold watch-chain which crossed his portly waist, and passed a fat beringed hand across his shiny bald head. At the end of thirty silent seconds, he had the attention of every child in the room.

Jed Callahan put his hand to his mouth and covered a pretended cough. “ Ain't he the gink?” he whispered behind this shelter. “If I was a fly, sure I would choose his head for my skatin' rink.”

“Keep the stillness!” reprovingly said the classmate whom he addressed, — fair, sturdy, orderlyminded Albert Fischer.

“My young friends and fellow-citizens, including the girls,” began Mr. Dickson, and then he stopped to mop his brow and rub his palms with his handkerchief. He looked so embarrassed and so friendly that the pupils unexpectedly and cheeringly clapped their hands. Thus encouraged, Mr. Dickson plunged forward in his speech. The big political boss was, after all, wonderfully schoolboyish. In spite of his shyness and stage fright, he had a pleasant childlike vanity in addressing school children and putting himself before them as an American example.

He always began, as now, by telling about his start as a grocer’s boy, and how industry and economy and perseverance had brought him “up to where I am now,” — the “where” being evidenced by the sparkling rings and massive chain and expensive gaudy clothes.

Then he discoursed about the “grand country” and the “great and lovely city” which had given his opportunities, and about his interest and affection for the young folks who were starting today where he started yesterday. And then he came to the prize he was offering to the city school children, a prize that one must deserve — oh, greatly! — to win it, “and yet,” Mr. Dickson said, chuckling, “the thing is like lightning and you can’t tell where it is going to strike.”

The children looked interested, but mystified.

“It is a Carnegie kind of prize,” he explained. “A fellow can’t just sit on a wharf and make up his mind to save a drowning man. Oh, no! Things don’t happen that way. But one day he goes out fishing and a sudden gale upsets a boat near him and presto! there are a lot of fellows beating the water like fans. He doesn’t think of medals or of anything but of getting the guys out before they swallow all of the river they can hold and go down to the fishes. He gets a Carnegie medal because he was brave and level-headed and was equal to his chance when it came.

“That’s the kind of prize I am offering. Three gentlemen” — He named three men prominent in public life — “have kindly agreed to act as committee and, at the end of this school year, award this prize to the pupil in the Washington City school who in their opinion has performed the most heroic deed. And what is the prize? Why, that boy or that girl gets a medal of solid gold, with his name on it and why it is given, and he gets besides a hundred dollars in cool hard cash. And here’s hoping each one of you will win the prize.”