Mrs. Minks Soldier and Other Stories | Page 7

stove. Presently a tear rolled down her cheek, then
another, and another until she dropped her tired old face in her tired old
hands, and gave a long silent sob that shook her slight body from head
to foot. Then she rose resolutely and sweeping the back of her hand
across her eyes, took down her writing materials. On one side of a post
card she wrote the address of Alexis Bowinski, and on the other she

penned in her cramped neat writing, one line:
"Her name is Lois Chalmers. Hotel LeRoy."
This done she unpacked her basket, put her half dozen carnations in a
tumbler of water and carried them into the dark parlor, pulled her chair
up to the kitchen table, drew the lamp closer and patiently went back to
her buttonholes.

A DARLING OF MISFORTUNE
A shabby but joyous citizen of the world at large was Mr. Phelan
Harrihan, as, with a soul wholly in tune with the finite, he half sat and
half reclined on a baggage-truck at Lebanon Junction. He wag relieving
the tedium of his waiting moments by entertaining a critical if not
fastidious audience of three.
Beside him, with head thrust under his ragged sleeve, sat a small and
unlovely bull-terrier, who, at each fresh burst of laughter, lifted a pair
of languishing eyes to the face of his master, and then manifested his
surplus affection by ardently licking the buttons on the sleeve of the
arm that encircled him.
It was a moot question whether Mr. Harrihan resembled his dog, or
whether his dog resembled him. That there was a marked similarity
admitted of no discussion. If Corp's nose had been encouraged and his
lower jaw suppressed, if his intensely emotional nature had been under
better control, and his sentimentality tempered with humor, the analogy
would have been more complete. In taste, they were one. By birth,
predilection, and instinct both were philosophers of the open, preferring
an untrammeled life in Vagabondia to the collars and conventions of
society. Both delighted in exquisite leisure, and spent it in pleased
acquiescence with things as they are.
Some twenty-five years before, Phelan had opened his eyes upon a
half-circle of blue sky, seen through the end of a canvas-covered wagon
on a Western prairie, and having first conceived life to be a
free-and-easy affair on a long, open road, he thereafter declined to
consider it in any other light.
The only break in his nomadic existence was when a benevolent old
gentleman found him, a friendless lad in a Nashville hospital, cursed
him through a fever, and elected to educate him. Those were years of
black captivity for Phelan, and after being crammed and coached for

what seemed an interminable time, he was proudly entered at the
University, where he promptly failed in every subject and was dropped
at the mid-year term.
The old gentleman, fortunately, was spared all disappointment in
regard to his irresponsible protégé, for he died before the catastrophe,
leaving Phelan Harrihan a legacy of fifteen dollars a month and the
memory of a kind, but misguided, old man who was not quite right in
his head.
Being thus provided with a sum more than adequate to meet all his
earthly needs, Phelan joyously abandoned the straight and narrow path
of learning, and once more betook himself to the open road.
The call of blue skies and green fields, the excitement of each day's
encounter, the dramatic possibilities of every passing incident, the
opportunity for quick and intimate fellowship, and above all an
inherited and chronic disinclination for work, made Phelan an easy
victim to that malady called by the casual tourist "wanderlust," but
known in Hoboland as "railroad fever."
Only once a year did he return to civilization, don a stiff collar, and
recognize an institution. During his meteoric career at the University he
had been made a member of the Alpha Delta fraternity, in recognition
of his varied accomplishments. Not only could he sing and dance and
tell a tale with the best, but he was also a mimic and a ventriloquist,
gifts which had proven invaluable in crucial conflicts with the faculty,
and had constituted him a hero in several escapades. Of such material is
college history made, and the Alpha Delta, recognizing the distinction
of possessing this unique member, refused to accept his resignation, but
unanimously demanded his presence at each annual reunion.
On June second, for five consecutive years, the ends of the earth had
yielded up Phelan Harrihan; by a miracle of grace he had arrived in
Nashville, decently appareled, ready to respond to his toast, to bask for
his brief hour in the full glare of the calcium, then to depart again into
oblivion.
It was now the first day of June and as Phelan