me. My mother, I am forced to admit, does not present an esthetic appearance. Her face is florid and patchy, and it rests squarely (with no vestige of a neck) on a short, squat body.
"'And you—you call yourself the man of the family! Your poor sister Kate standing for insults from old Mr. Brabin so she could keep her job—bringing in a measly sixteen dollars a week with which I am expected to run a household! You're a jelly-fish, nincompoop, lazy ne'er-do-well! I suppose it would give you great pleasure to see me go out to scrub floors to feed your moon-calf body. Wake up, fool! Oh! if your father were alive now! Oh! if'
"My sister Kate would come in, throw a dull look at me and flop into a chair by the table.
"Tonight, after supper, I shall leave the inimical atmosphere of the stuffy, greasy kitchen, throw myself on the folding-bed in the parlor (it is seldom folded) and lose myself in thoughts of Ruthie. Ruthie has become too real to be called a dream character. I must tell you about Ruthie. She is a slim, lovely creature who has plighted her troth to me so often that I'm beginning to worry about its repetition. Ruthie has deep brown eyes and a mass of brown curly hair. She is always dressed in white fluffy things that seem to attest her purity. We love each other in a pure and noble way. In fact our love is the epitome of true love for all time. There is a crux to the Ruthie dream also, but I am working assiduously at ramification. I am beset with a horrible fear that I can not ramify it in any way. I can not remember under what circumstances I became acquainted with my beloved. As I throw myself on the folding-bed, the scene that I shall conjure will be of Ruthie and myself parting. I am leaving to go to war. I feel self-conscious because of the scene Ruthie is creating at the railroad station. But the feeling at my heart is too golden and beautiful to be likened to anything on this earth.
"I don't want you to become impatient. I shall come to the purpose of my story very shortly.
"I went about writing Ruthie on every occasion that presented itself. In dust, in earth, in snow, on paper.
"Perhaps you can suggest a way to prolong the Ruthie dream. Good God! I am afraid I have arrived at the end of the tether. The scene at the railroad station is becoming tiresome. You can picture the scene on the station platform. It is midafternoon of a sunny day. The soldiers have all boarded the train; the train has begun to move. Ruthie's beautiful eyes are tear-filled as she holds tenaciously to my arm. I drag her with me as I move toward the train.
"I assure you I would never tell you this if I were certain you are real. You appreciate the nature of my position? You must understand the character of my day-dream before you could understand the dilemma that I am confronted with. I do not know whether I am dreaming now and my stay in Morristown was real, or whether this is real and my home in Morristown was a dream.
"You see, Ruthie does not possess what is generally conceived as feminine beauty. No, she is not beautiful like the calm of silver moonlight irradiating an expansive lake; she is not beautiful like the evening sun in a color riot over the ocean; she is not exotically beautiful like a ponderous yellow moon cooling the scorched Arabian desert sands. Ruthie is pretty and fluttery and ingenuous. Her beauty is like the silver tinkle of little bells—like the perennial drip-drop of a fountain in a garden on a clear, moonlit night. She is not glorious and riotous like the sun, or mellow and serene like the moon, but rather like a tiny, scintillating
