tendency being to spread in every direction. I can remember old people in my boyhood calling this plant by its English name, Soapwort, though I do not recall anybody who made soap from it. Charles Francis Saunders, in his Useful Wild Plants of the United States and Canada, says he has heard it called 'my lady's washbowl" in the south. Its saponaceous properties have been known, however, for many centuries. It was used for soap in the European monasteries, and possibly it was brought to this country with these properties in mind. The soap is made from the roots, out of which a sticky juice is pounded that, when agitated in water, produces a lather. There are several hundred plants through the world which contain the same glucoside saponin, but in most of them the quantity is too small to make a useful lather. If you want to make a test of bouncing Bet, pull a single root up, clean it, pound it gently, and then slosh it around in a cup of water. You will speedily have a cup of bubbled suds.

Tobacco, of course, was an American contribution to the world, though hardly to the world's food supply, even if Doctor Sturtevant does list it among his two thousand or more edible plants. The Indians knew it well, but they smoked it far less than we do, and mixed it with other things. The mixture was called kinnikinnick at first, by the early settlers and trappers, but later the word became applied rather to the plants themselves which were used as adulterants, especially the silky cornel. The dried inner bark was used, as was the inner bark of the red osier dogwood. Bear berry and sumach leaves were also used, and, in the West, the leaves of the manzanita. Often the Indians smoked one or more of these adulterants rather as substitutes, without any tobacco at all. When I was a boy dried sweet fern was in great favor among the young, who did not quite dare essay the weed itself, but whether there was any Indian tradition for the use of this plant I can

VOL. CXLIV.-No. 861.-42

not say. Nowadays, apparently, youth needs no substitutes, beginning at a tender age on mamma's cigarettes. Once or twice, being without tobacco on a trip up the mountain, I have hunted a fragrant, sunny clearing of sweet fern, and filled my pipe with the dry, brown leaves always obtainable on some lower twig. But though nothing in the world is more delectable to all the senses than a sunny mountain clearing fragrant with sweet fern, I cannot honestly say that it is an adequate substitute for tobacco in a pipe.

One native food product of America which, far from being a substitute, is, on the contrary, without substitutes, and yet has been curiously neglected, is wild rice. It is widely distributed, too, over the marshes of the continent east of the Rockies, though found in greatest abundance in the lake regions of the upper Middle West. Here is a food that the game birds know the value of, and that the hunters of game birds know the value of, too. Many hunters in the Lake regions, indeed, would hardly consent to sit down to a sportsman's feast of duck unless the meat was served with wild rice, properly cooked. It has to be boiled a long time an hour is not too much. The wild rice is a beautiful and extremely decorative annual grass, growing in water and sometimes rising ten feet above the surface. It bears in summer delicate yellowish green blossoms, and in September purple spikes of ripened seeds. These seeds are attached so loosely to the heads that they fall at a touch when ripe, and great care has to be employed in gathering them. The more provident Indians used to tie the grass into bunches before the seeds were ripe, and then later pushed a canoe among the stacks and, bending each stack over the boat, shook out the kernels. When dried and threshed, wild rice is brownish in color, not the pure white of commercial rice, and the taste is different, too, though I think quite as pleasant. Its dietetic value is said to be quite equal to that of the cultivated

variety. It costs considerably more, however, in the few places where it can be bought. But if the need ever arose, our great areas of marshland east of the Rockies could be converted by it into food-bearing areas of incalculable value.

Few as are the edible plants which have been chosen out of possible thousands for cultivation by man, the number of animals and fowls which he has domesticated for purposes of food or burden is even smaller, and to this number America has added just one-the turkey. It seems almost incredible that an animal like the bison, so enormously valuable as a fur bearer, was practically exterminated before any efforts were made to domesticate it. The presentday value of a buffalo coat would certainly pay many times over for the cost of raising a calf to maturity, and no coat was ever so warm or so lasting. We wiped the buffaloes out, however, in our blithe, prodigal fashion, and the turkey is our sole contribution to the world's small stock of useful domestic animals and fowls. There is a legend among the Navajo Indians to explain the origin of maize, which Bancroft records as follows: "All the wise men being one day assembled, a turkey hen came flying from the direction of the morning star and shook from her feather an ear of blue corn into the company." This legend, of course, is a recognition of the importance to the Indians both of the corn and of the turkey. The vegetable had already been selected from among hundreds of competitors for cultivation, and the fowl was at least pre-eminently desirable, before the white men ever came to these shores. Actually, then, even our American contribution to the world's stock of cultivated foods, which

seems so recent, is of immemorial antiquity.

My cornfield, which now shuts out the view with its tasseled, fairy forest, and which presently will dome over the ridge, naked lanes of stubble between the shocks, shows but the renewal of something immeasurably old. On the frosty days of autumn, when the trees are red and gold, it is not a coincidence that the corn shocks in my field resemble Indian tepees. They are, indeed, monuments and reminders of the vanished red men who gave us the gift of the maize. The entire garden, the barnyard, the cultivated fields, in fact, are immemorially old. I look at my asparagus and think how Cato set down the rules for its cultivation. When the wind goes over the wheat I hear the rustle of the garments of Ruth. And when Peter crows in the morning, greeting the sun and his obedient harem, my imagination is unequal to the task of taking back his line to the days before the dawn of history, when he crowed in the Indian jungle.

The earth is fat with fruits, and we may eat of the abundance thereof, but we have chosen a different way. We have selected a few, an almost infinitesimal few, from the wilderness store, to cultivate and call our own. It would be interesting some time, as an experiment, to live for a week, say, entirely on the wild products of one's neighborhood, eating nothing that was cultivated or domesticated. It could, of course, be done, and rather easily. But I have never done it. Further, I must confess that I probably never shall. Like the rest of my fellows, I am too much the child of convention. Sassafras tea for a week? Not if I can help it!

R. and Mrs. Reginald Dalrymple

MR. were walking along the highroad

that leads from Iden to Wittersham across the Isle of Oxney. They were very particular about being given their full name of "Reginald” Dalrymple to distinguish them from Mr. and Mrs. Charley Dalrymple, who were in Northampton workhouse; from the Peter Dalrymples, who tramped in Wales; from the Stanley Dalrymples, who were in prison; and from Serena Dalrymple, who had put herself outside the pale of decent society on the roads by marrying a "nigger.'

Mr. Reginald Dalrymple was about sixty-five years old and his back was bent. Otherwise he looked hale enough, and his face, at least as much as could be seen of it through a thatch of brown whiskers, was red as an autumn pear. He wore a frock coat, gray-flannel trousers, a pair of brown beach shoes with rather inadequate uppers, and a bowler hat.

Mrs. Reginald Dalrymple was about three years younger than her husband and inclined to stoutness, though she looked an able-bodied woman. She wore a very handsome cape trimmed with jet, a woolen muffler that might have been gray, but to which she referred as "me white scarf," and a man's cap set at a rakish angle. She wheeled a perambulator, which did not, however, contain a baby, but the Reginald Dalrymples' luggage-indeed, it may be said, their complete household equipment, which at a first glance would appear to consist entirely of old rags. However, a more sympathetic inspection would reveal a really excellent kettle (the leak was only just below the spout), a suspi

cious-looking rug, an assortment of cups, a tin plate, a screw driver, an ancient copy of Tit-Bits, a photograph of a robust young woman with a hat full of feathers, and another photograph of a sailor.

"I'm beginning to feel me feet," said Mrs. Reginald Dalrymple to her husband.

"And I'm thinking it's coming on to rain," said he, with a look up at the lowering sky.

It was autumn, and the red leaves were shaking against soft clouds of October gray which the wind brought down from Benenden in the west.

"Where's our next chance of a doss?" asked Mrs. Dalrymple.

"There's the Throws up at Potman's Heath," replied her husband, "but I reckon they'll be damp to-night.”

"Reg! Don't use such words," said Mrs. Dalrymple, with dignity. "You forget my mother was a Stanley."

"I'm never likely to forget it, the way you goes on about it. Anyone 'u'd think she'd been Queen Victoria on her throne, to hear you talk! But what I say is, it's coming on to rain and there ain't no union within fifteen miles. Besides, you're feeling your feet," he added, kindly.

"I've walked twelve miles since dinner, Reg," said Mrs. Dalrymple, with a little plaintive sigh.

"Hook on, then," said he, extending a ragged elbow.

She hooked, and for some moments they walked in silence. Then he said:

"It'll be awkward for you pushing the pram with one hand," and took it from her-though Mr. Reginald Dalrymple had often boasted that he had

never come down to wheeling a perambulator, and never would.

"I've been thinking," said she, a few minutes later, by which time the rain was spattering freely in the dust-"I've been thinking we must have come near that mockbeggar place by the Stocks. The house was standing there five year ago when we was on the roads with Sue and her lot, and if it hasn't tumbled down since there's one good room in it, anyway, with the ceiling tight, and there's water in the well at the bottom of the yard."

Mr. Dalrymple reflected. "You're right, Hannah!-I believe you're right this once. We should be coming to that mockbeggar in half an hour. It'll be raining the skies down by that time, so we might go in and light a fire and not trouble about getting farther to-night. It's a good way from the nearest place and we're not like to be meddled with."

Mrs. Dalrymple was feeling her feet more and more, in spite of the supporting elbow and the removal of the pram. She was also beginning to get wet, though this did not worry her, being of custom. She was far more preoccupied with the thought that she could not walk a twelve-mile stretch without getting tired and she'd been able to walk twice that as a girl, when she and Reginald had tramped all round the country by Chichester. She had had the children then, as well-one slung at her breast and the other hanging on her skirt when his dad did not carry him. She was glad when she saw three sharp gables suddenly draw themselves against the sky, which sagged low over the fields, squirting rain.

"That's it," she said; "that's the mockbeggar. I knew it was somewhere in these parts, though we haven't been here since Sue was on the roads with her man. D'you remember that time we dossed under the stack at Wassall?"

Mr. Dalrymple grunted. He was looking for a gap in the hedge, for it struck him that it would be best to go straight

across the fields to shelter instead of walking round by the road. He soon found what he thought was a proper opening, and proceeded to enlarge it to meet the ample requirements of his wife by pushing the perambulator through. He then gallantly offered a hand to Mrs. Dalrymple, and after much gasping and effort and crackling of twigs she was at his side in the paddock which belonged to the mockbeggar.

A "mockbeggar house" in Kent is any large-sized house which stands empty close to a highroad, and seems to mock the beggar who plods along, thinking he will find charity at those doors which, on his close arrival, are found to be either swinging on their hinges or barred on emptiness. The mockbeggar at Wittersham was an especially large house, which, owing to want of repairs, a poor landlord, and a defective water supply, had stood empty for some time. It was probably about fifty years old and was built in comfortable Victorian style, but neglect and the misty weather of the Isle of Oxney-that cone round which steam all the mists of the Rother levels and Shirley brooks--had eaten holes in its solid fabric of roof and wall and made its shelter doubtful even to the Reginald Dalrymples, to whom uncracked walls and fair slated roofs were only the occasional experience of the workhouse.

"A downstairs room 'u'd be best," said Mrs. Reginald.

They went into one next the passage on the ground floor. It was full of dead leaves and bits of glass from a broken window, but there was a grate in it where a fire might possibly burn, and the rain was confined to a small pool under the window sill.

"You unpack here, Hannah, and I'll go and get some water for the kettle."

Mrs. Dalrymple extracted the kettle from the pram, carefully wrapped in a piece of newspaper, and while her husband went off she proceeded to arrange her various belongings. The sinisterlooking rug she put in the corner with a

nice comfortable bit of sacking; that was the bedroom. The cups, the plate, and a broken knife she put on the remains of a shelf; that was the kitchen. While the two photographs she set proudly among the dust and cobwebs on the mantelpiece; that was the parlor. She was then, according to custom, going on to make herself comfortable by taking off her shoes, when she was startled by a noise overhead.

An empty house is full of noises, and Mrs. Dalrymple had a wide experience of empty houses. Mere scuttlings of rats or hootings of owls or rustlings of crickets or howlings of wind in chimneys could not alarm her, but this sound she knew at once was none of these. It was a footstep, a human footstep, which moved in the room overhead, and she held her breath to listen. The next minute she heard more and worsethat murmur coming to her through the boards was a human voice. She stuck her head out of window (no need to open it first) and made a sign to Reginald, who was coming up the yard with the kettle. The sign urged both silence and attention, also haste. His response was immediate; they had often been together in these emergencies, demanding a quick stealth. He did not speak a word till he was back beside her in the

room.

"It's people!" said Mrs. Dalrymple, in a hoarse whisper; "there's people

here!"

"How d'you know? Where are they?" "They're up above. I heard 'em talking. Listen!"

They both listened. The sounds in the upper room continued-voices and footsteps.

"There's two," said Mr. Dalrymple. "I can tell by the feet. Who can it be? It's road people like ourselves, most like; no one else 'u'd ever come here."

"I wonder if it's anyone we know. It might be the Lovells-you know Lance and Aurelia Lovell are walking in Kent."

"I hope it ain't folk in the house after repairs," said Mr. Dalrymple, struck

by a sudden thought. "You never know your luck, and some one may have bought the place."

"I hope it's not that stuck-up Eleanor Ripley and her husband," said Mrs. Dalrymple. "We had enough of their airs when we met them at Maidstone. She's got saucers to all her cups."

"Well, I'd sooner it was her than gaujos," returned Mr. Dalrymple; "it 'u'd never do for us to get found here, and it 'u'd mean a-spoiling of the place for visitors."

"You go and have a look," suggested his wife. "Take off your shoes.'

Mr. Dalrymple shuffled them off without undoing the laces, and left the room with extreme caution. His progress upstairs and along the passage was as silent as only his kind know how to make it.

Mrs. Dalrymple strained her ears, which were as quick as they were when she was seventeen. The voices continued, but she detected more than conversation-she thought she heard a sound of sobbing. Time went on. Reginald was evidently maneuvering with his usual discretion, for the flow of talk above remained uninterrupted. Indeed, so velvet-footed was he that he was back at her side before she expected him, and, old stager though she was, nearly made her jump.

"It's gaujos," he said, in a low voice. "There's two of 'em, mighty queer . . . "How queer?"

"Oh, the girl's got short hair like a boy, and the boy he's soft-looking. They're only a boy and girl. Maybe we could scare 'em out."

"I don't want to scare them," said Mrs. Dalrymple. "The night ain't fit for a dog and I'd be sorry to turn 'em out in it. But if they ain't road people, what are they doing here?"

"They're quarreling," said Mr. Dalrymple “quarreling and crying.' "I thought I heard crying." "It's the girl's crying, into a handkerchief. She's got a white handkerchief with a blue border."