Coronation

Coronation

JIM BENNET had never married. He had
passed middle life, and possessed considerable
property. Susan Adkins kept house for him. She
was a widow and a very distant relative. Jim had
two nieces, his brother's daughters. One, Alma
Beecher, was married; the other, Amanda, was not.
The nieces had naively grasping views concerning
their uncle and his property. They stated freely
that they considered him unable to care for it; that
a guardian should be appointed and the property
be theirs at once. They consulted Lawyer Thomas
Hopkinson with regard to it; they discoursed at
length upon what they claimed to be an idiosyn-
crasy of Jim's, denoting failing mental powers.

"He keeps a perfect slew of cats, and has a coal
fire for them in the woodshed all winter," said Amanda.

"Why in thunder shouldn't he keep a fire in the
woodshed if he wants to?" demanded Hopkinson.
"I know of no law against it. And there isn't a
law in the country regulating the number of cats a
man can keep." Thomas Hopkinson, who was an
old friend of Jim's, gave his prominent chin an up-
ward jerk as he sat in his office arm-chair before
his clients.

"There is something besides cats," said Alma

"What?"

"He talks to himself."

"What in creation do you expect the poor man to
do? He can't talk to Susan Adkins about a blessed
thing except tidies and pincushions. That woman
hasn't a thought in her mind outside her soul's
salvation and fancy-work. Jim has to talk once in
a while to keep himself a man. What if he does
talk to himself? I talk to myself. Next thing you will
want to be appointed guardian over me, Amanda."

Hopkinson was a bachelor, and Amanda flushed
angrily.

"He wasn't what I call even gentlemanly," she
told Alma, when the two were on their way home.

"I suppose Tom Hopkinson thought you were
setting your cap at him," retorted Alma. She rel-
ished the dignity of her married state, and enjoyed
giving her spinster sister little claws when occasion
called. However, Amanda had a temper of her own,
and she could claw back.

"YOU needn't talk," said she. "You only took
Joe Beecher when you had given up getting anybody
better. You wanted Tom Hopkinson yourself. I
haven't forgotten that blue silk dress you got and
wore to meeting. You needn't talk. You know
you got that dress just to make Tom look at you,
and he didn't. You needn't talk."

"I wouldn't have married Tom Hopkinson if he
had been the only man on the face of the earth,"
declared Alma with dignity; but she colored hotly.

Amanda sniffed. "Well, as near as I can find out
Uncle Jim can go on talking to himself and keeping
cats, and we can't do anything," said she.

When the two women were home, they told Alma's
husband, Joe Beecher, about their lack of success.
They were quite heated with their walk and excite-
ment. "I call it a shame," said Alma. "Anybody
knows that poor Uncle Jim would be better off with
a guardian."

"Of course," said Amanda. "What man that
had a grain of horse sense would do such a crazy
thing as to keep a coal fire in a woodshed?"

"For such a slew of cats, too," said Alma, nodding
fiercely.

Alma's husband, Joe Beecher, spoke timidly and
undecidedly in the defense. "You know," he said,
"that Mrs. Adkins wouldn't have those cats in the
house, and cats mostly like to sit round where it's
warm."

His wife regarded him. Her nose wrinkled. "I
suppose next thing YOU'LL be wanting to have a cat
round where it's warm, right under my feet, with
all I have to do," said she. Her voice had an actual
acidity of sound.

Joe gasped. He was a large man with a constant
expression of wondering inquiry. It was the expres-
sion of his babyhood; he had never lost it, and it
was an expression which revealed truly the state of
his mind. Always had Joe Beecher wondered, first
of all at finding himself in the world at all, then at
the various happenings of existence. He probably
wondered more about the fact of his marriage with
Alma Bennet than anything else, although he never
betrayed his wonder. He was always painfully
anxious to please his wife, of whom he stood in
awe. Now he hastened to reply: "Why, no, Alma;
of course I won't."

"Because," said Alma, "I haven't come to my
time of life, through all the trials I've had, to be
taking any chances of breaking my bones over any
miserable, furry, four-footed animal that wouldn't
catch a mouse if one run right under her nose."

"I don't want any cat," repeated Joe, miserably.
His fear and awe of the two women increased.
When his sister-in-law turned upon him he fairly
cringed.

"Cats!" said Amanda. Then she sniffed. The
sniff was worse than speech.

Joe repeated in a mumble that he didn't want
any cats, and went out, closing the door softly after
him, as he had been taught. However, he was en-
tirely sure, in the depths of his subjugated masculine
mind, that his wife and her sister had no legal au-
thority whatever to interfere with their uncle's right
to keep a hundred coal fires in his woodshed, for a
thousand cats. He always had an inner sense of
glee when he heard the two women talk over the
matter. Once Amanda had declared that she did
not believe that Tom Hopkinson knew much about
law, anyway.

"He seems to stand pretty high," Joe ventured
with the utmost mildness.

"Yes, he does," admitted Alma, grudgingly.

"It does not follow he knows law," persisted
Amanda, "and it MAY follow that he likes cats.
There was that great Maltese tommy brushing round
all the time we were in his office, but I didn't dare
shoo him off for fear it might be against the law."
Amanda laughed, a very disagreeable little laugh.
Joe said nothing, but inwardly he chuckled. It was
the cause of man with man. He realized a great,
even affectionate, understanding of Jim.

The day after his nieces had visited the lawyer's
office, Jim was preparing to call on his friend Edward
Hayward, the minister. Before leaving he looked
carefully after the fire in the woodshed. The stove
was large. Jim piled on the coal, regardless out-
wardly that the housekeeper, Susan Adkins, had
slammed the kitchen door to indicate her contempt.
Inwardly Jim felt hurt, but he had felt hurt so long
from the same cause that the sensation had become
chronic, and was borne with a gentle patience.
Moreover, there was something which troubled him
more and was the reason for his contemplated call
on his friend. He evened the coals on the fire with
great care, and replenished from the pail in the ice-
box the cats' saucers. There was a circle of clean
white saucers around the stove. Jim owned many
cats; counting the kittens, there were probably over
twenty. Mrs. Adkins counted them in the sixties.
"Those sixty-seven cats," she said.

Jim often gave away cats when he was confident
of securing good homes, but supply exceeded the
demand. Now and then tragedies took place in
that woodshed. Susan Adkins came bravely to the
front upon these occasions. Quite convinced was
Susan Adkins that she had a good home, and it
behooved her to keep it, and she did not in the least
object to drowning, now and then, a few very young
kittens. She did this with neatness and despatch
while Jim walked to the store on an errand and was
supposed to know nothing about it. There was
simply not enough room in his woodshed for the
accumulation of cats, although his heart could have
held all.

That day, as he poured out the milk, cats of all
ages and sizes and colors purred in a softly padding
multitude around his feet, and he regarded them
with love. There were tiger cats, Maltese cats, black-
and-white cats, black cats and white cats, tommies
and females, and his heart leaped to meet the plead-
ing mews of all. The saucers were surrounded.
Little pink tongues lapped. "Pretty pussy! pretty
pussy!" cooed Jim, addressing them in general. He
put on his overcoat and hat, which he kept on a peg
behind the door. Jim had an arm-chair in the wood-
shed. He always sat there when he smoked; Susan
Adkins demurred at his smoking in the house, which
she kept so nice, and Jim did not dream of rebellion.
He never questioned the right of a woman to bar
tobacco smoke from a house. Before leaving he
refilled some of the saucers. He was not sure that
all of the cats were there; some might be afield,
hunting, and he wished them to find refreshment
when they returned. He stroked the splendid striped
back of a great tiger tommy which filled his arm-
chair. This cat was his special pet. He fastened the
outer shed door with a bit of rope in order that it
might not blow entirely open, and yet allow his
feline friends to pass, should they choose. Then he
went out.

The day was clear, with a sharp breath of frost.
The fields gleamed with frost, offering to the eye a
fine shimmer as of diamond-dust under the brilliant
blue sky, overspread in places with a dapple of little
white clouds.

"White frost and mackerel sky; going to be falling
weather," Jim said, aloud, as he went out of the
yard, crunching the crisp grass under heel.

Susan Adkins at a window saw his lips moving.
His talking to himself made her nervous, although it
did not render her distrustful of his sanity. It was
fortunate that Susan had not told Jim that she
disliked his habit. In that case he would have
deprived himself of that slight solace; he would not
have dreamed of opposing Susan's wishes. Jim had
a great pity for the nervous whims, as he regarded
them, of women -- a pity so intense and tender that
it verged on respect and veneration. He passed his
nieces' house on the way to the minister's, and both
were looking out of windows and saw his lips moving.

"There he goes, talking to himself like a crazy
loon," said Amanda.

Alma nodded.

Jim went on, blissfully unconscious. He talked
in a quiet monotone; only now and then his voice
rose; only now and then there were accompanying
gestures. Jim had a straight mile down the broad
village street to walk before he reached the church
and the parsonage beside it.

Jim and the minister had been friends since boy-
hood. They were graduates and classmates of the
same college. Jim had had unusual educational ad-
vantages for a man coming from a simple family.
The front door of the parsonage flew open when Jim
entered the gate, and the minister stood there
smiling. He was a tall, thin man with a wide mouth,
which either smiled charmingly or was set with
severity. He was as brown and dry as a wayside
weed which winter had subdued as to bloom but
could not entirely prostrate with all its icy storms
and compelling blasts. Jim, advancing eagerly tow-
ard the warm welcome in the door, was a small
man, and bent at that, but he had a handsome old
face, with the rose of youth on the cheeks and the
light of youth in the blue eyes, and the quick changes
of youth, before emotions, about the mouth.

"Hullo, Jim!" cried Dr. Edward Hayward. Hay-
ward, for a doctor of divinity, was considered some-
what lacking in dignity at times; still, he was Dr.
Hayward, and the failing was condoned. More-
over, he was a Hayward, and the Haywards had
been, from the memory of the oldest inhabitant, the
great people of the village. Dr. Hayward's house
was presided over by his widowed cousin, a lady
of enough dignity to make up for any lack of it in
the minister. There were three servants, besides
the old butler who had been Hayward's attendant
when he had been a young man in college. Village
people were proud of their minister, with his degree
and what they considered an imposing household
retinue.

Hayward led, and Jim followed, to the least pre-
tentious room in the house -- not the study proper,
which was lofty, book-lined, and leather-furnished,
curtained with broad sweeps of crimson damask, but
a little shabby place back of it, accessible by a nar-
row door. The little room was lined with shelves;
they held few books, but a collection of queer and
dusty things -- strange weapons, minerals, odds and
ends -- which the minister loved and with which his
lady cousin never interfered.

"Louisa," Hayward had told his cousin when she
entered upon her post, "do as you like with the
whole house, but let my little study alone. Let it
look as if it had been stirred up with a garden-rake
-- that little room is my territory, and no disgrace
to you, my dear, if the dust rises in clouds at every
step."

Jim was as fond of the little room as his friend.
He entered, and sighed a great sigh of satisfaction
as he sank into the shabby, dusty hollow of a large
chair before the hearth fire. Immediately a black
cat leaped into his lap, gazed at him with green-
jewel eyes, worked her paws, purred, settled into a
coil, and slept. Jim lit his pipe and threw the match
blissfully on the floor. Dr. Hayward set an electric
coffee-urn at its work, for the little room was a
curious mixture of the comfortable old and the
comfortable modern.

"Sam shall serve our luncheon in here," he said,
with a staid glee.

Jim nodded happily.

"Louisa will not mind," said Hayward. "She is
precise, but she has a fine regard for the rights of the
individual, which is most commendable." He seated
himself in a companion chair to Jim's, lit his own
pipe, and threw the match on the floor. Occasion-
ally, when the minister was out, Sam, without orders
so to do, cleared the floor of matches.

Hayward smoked and regarded his friend, who
looked troubled despite his comfort. "What is it,
Jim?" asked the minister at last.

"I don't know how to do what is right for me to
do," replied the little man, and his face, turned
toward his friend, had the puzzled earnestness of a
child.

Hayward laughed. It was easily seen that his
was the keener mind. In natural endowments
there had never been equality, although there was
great similarity of tastes. Jim, despite his education,
often lapsed into the homely vernacular of which he
heard so much. An involuntarily imitative man in
externals was Jim, but essentially an original. Jim
proceeded.

"You know, Edward, I have never been one to
complain," he said, with an almost boyish note
of apology.

"Never complained half enough; that's the trou-
ble," returned the other.

"Well, I overheard something Mis' Adkins said
to Mis' Amos Trimmer the other afternoon. Mis'
Trimmer was calling on Mis' Adkins. I couldn't
help overhearing unless I went outdoors, and it
was snowing and I had a cold. I wasn't listening."

"Had a right to listen if you wanted to," declared
Hayward, irascibly.

"Well, I couldn't help it unless I went outdoors.
Mis' Adkins she was in the kitchen making light-
bread for supper, and Mis' Trimmer had sat right
down there with her. Mis' Adkins's kitchen is as
clean as a parlor, anyway. Mis' Adkins said to Mis'
Trimmer, speaking of me -- because Mis' Trimmer
had just asked where I was and Mis' Adkins had
said I was out in the woodshed sitting with the cats
and smoking -- Mis' Adkins said, 'He's just a door-
mat, that's what he is.' Then Mis' Trimmer says,
'The way he lets folks ride over him beats me.'
Then Mis' Adkins says again: 'He's nothing but a
door-mat. He lets everybody that wants to just
trample on him and grind their dust into him, and
he acts real pleased and grateful.'"

Hayward's face flushed. "Did Mrs. Adkins men-
tion that she was one of the people who used you
for a door-mat?" he demanded.

Jim threw back his head and laughed like a child,
with the sweetest sense of unresentful humor. "Lord
bless my soul, Edward," replied Jim, "I don't be-
lieve she ever thought of that."

"And at that very minute you, with a hard cold,
were sitting out in that draughty shed smoking
because she wouldn't allow you to smoke in your
own house!"

"I don't mind that, Edward," said Jim, and
laughed again.

"Could you see to read your paper out there,
with only that little shed window? And don't you
like to read your paper while you smoke?"

"Oh yes," admitted Jim; "but my! I don't mind
little things like that! Mis' Adkins is only a poor
widow woman, and keeping my house nice and not
having it smell of tobacco is all she's got. They can
talk about women's rights -- I feel as if they ought
to have them fast enough, if they want them, poor
things; a woman has a hard row to hoe, and will
have, if she gets all the rights in creation. But I
guess the rights they'd find it hardest to give up
would be the rights to have men look after them
just a little more than they look after other men,
just because they are women. When I think of
Annie Berry -- the girl I was going to marry, you
know, if she hadn't died -- I feel as if I couldn't do
enough for another woman. Lord! I'm glad to sit
out in the woodshed and smoke. Mis' Adkins is
pretty good-natured to stand all the cats."

Then the coffee boiled, and Hayward poured out
some for Jim and himself. He had a little silver ser-
vice at hand, and willow-ware cups and saucers.
Presently Sam appeared, and Hayward gave orders
concerning luncheon.

"Tell Miss Louisa we are to have it served here,"
said he, "and mind, Sam, the chops are to be thick
and cooked the way we like them; and don't forget
the East India chutney, Sam."

"It does seem rather a pity that you cannot have
chutney at home with your chops, when you are so
fond of it," remarked Hayward when Sam had gone.

"Mis' Adkins says it will give me liver trouble,
and she isn't strong enough to nurse."

"So you have to eat her ketchup?"

"Well, she doesn't put seasoning in it," admitted
Jim. "But Mis' Adkins doesn't like seasoning her-
self, and I don't mind."

"And I know the chops are never cut thick, the
way we like them."

"Mis' Adkins likes her meat well done, and she
can't get such thick chops well done. I suppose our
chops are rather thin, but I don't mind."

"Beefsteak and chops, both cut thin, and fried
up like sole-leather. I know!" said Dr. Hayward,
and he stamped his foot with unregenerate force.

"I don't mind a bit, Edward."

"You ought to mind, when it is your own house,
and you buy the food and pay your housekeeper.
It is an outrage!"

"I don't mind, really, Edward."

Dr. Hayward regarded Jim with a curious ex-
pression compounded of love, anger, and contempt.
"Any more talk of legal proceedings?" he asked,
brusquely.

Jim flushed. "Tom ought not to tell of that."

"Yes, he ought; he ought to tell it all over town.
He doesn't, but he ought. It is an outrage! Here
you have been all these years supporting your
nieces, and they are working away like field-mice,
burrowing under your generosity, trying to get a
chance to take action and appropriate your property
and have you put under a guardian."

"I don't mind a bit," said Jim; "but --"

The other man looked inquiringly at him, and,
seeing a pitiful working of his friend's face, he
jumped up and got a little jar from a shelf. "We
will drop the whole thing until we have had our
chops and chutney," said he. "You are right; it is
not worth minding. Here is a new brand of tobacco
I want you to try. I don't half like it, myself, but
you may."

Jim, with a pleased smile, reached out for the
tobacco, and the two men smoked until Sam brought
the luncheon. It was well cooked and well served
on an antique table. Jim was thoroughly happy.
It was not until the luncheon was over and another
pipe smoked that the troubled, perplexed expression
returned to his face.

"Now," said Hayward, "out with it!"

"It is only the old affair about Alma and Amanda,
but now it has taken on a sort of new aspect."

"What do you mean by a new aspect?"

"It seems," said Jim, slowly, "as if they were
making it so I couldn't do for them."

Hayward stamped his foot. "That does sound
new," he said, dryly. "I never thought Alma
Beecher or Amanda Bennet ever objected to have
you do for them."

"Well," said Jim, "perhaps they don't now, but
they want me to do it in their own way. They
don't want to feel as if I was giving and they taking;
they want it to seem the other way round. You
see, if I were to deed over my property to them, and
then they allowance me, they would feel as if they
were doing the giving."

"Jim, you wouldn't be such a fool as that?"

"No, I wouldn't," replied Jim, simply. "They
wouldn't know how to take care of it, and Mis'
Adkins would be left to shift for herself. Joe Beecher
is real good-hearted, but he always lost every dollar
he touched. No, there wouldn't be any sense in
that. I don't mean to give in, but I do feel pretty
well worked up over it."

"What have they said to you?"

Jim hesitated.

"Out with it, now. One thing you may be sure
of: nothing that you can tell me will alter my opinion
of your two nieces for the worse. As for poor Joe
Beecher, there is no opinion, one way or the other.
What did they say?"

Jim regarded his friend with a curiously sweet,
far-off expression. "Edward," he said, "sometimes
I believe that the greatest thing a man's friends can
do for him is to drive him into a corner with God;
to be so unjust to him that they make him under-
stand that God is all that mortal man is meant to
have, and that is why he finds out that most people,
especially the ones he does for, don't care for
him."

Hayward looked solemnly and tenderly at the
other's almost rapt face. "You are right, I suppose,
old man," said he; "but what did they do?"

"They called me in there about a week ago and
gave me an awful talking to."

"About what?"

Jim looked at his friend with dignity. "They
were two women talking, and they went into little
matters not worth repeating," said he. "All is --
they seemed to blame me for everything I had ever
done for them, and for everything I had ever done,
anyway. They seemed to blame me for being born
and living, and, most of all, for doing anything for
them."

"It is an outrage!" declared Hayward. "Can't
you see it?"

"I can't seem to see anything plain about it,"
returned Jim, in a bewildered way. "I always sup-
posed a man had to do something bad to be given
a talking to; but it isn't so much that, and I don't
bear any malice against them. They are only two
women, and they are nervous. What worries me is,
they do need things, and they can't get on and be
comfortable unless I do for them; but if they are
going to feel that way about it, it seems to cut me
off from doing, and that does worry me, Edward."

The other man stamped. "Jim Bennet," he said,
"they have talked, and now I am going to."

"You, Edward?"

"Yes, I am. It is entirely true what those two
women, Susan Adkins and Mrs. Trimmer, said about
you. You ARE a door-mat, and you ought to be
ashamed of yourself for it. A man should be a man,
and not a door-mat. It is the worst thing in the
world for people to walk over him and trample him.
It does them much more harm than it does him. In
the end the trampler is much worse off than the
trampled upon. Jim Bennet, your being a door-
mat may cost other people their souls' salvation.
You are selfish in the grain to be a door-mat."

Jim turned pale. His child-like face looked sud-
denly old with his mental effort to grasp the other's
meaning. In fact, he was a child -- one of the little
ones of the world -- although he had lived the span
of a man's life. Now one of the hardest problems of
the elders of the world was presented to him. "You
mean --" he said, faintly.

"I mean, Jim, that for the sake of other people,
if not for your own sake, you ought to stop being
a door-mat and be a man in this world of men."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to go straight to those nieces of yours
and tell them the truth. You know what your
wrongs are as well as I do. You know what those
two women are as well as I do. They keep the letter
of the Ten Commandments -- that is right. They
attend my church -- that is right. They scour the
outside of the platter until it is bright enough to
blind those people who don't understand them; but
inwardly they are petty, ravening wolves of greed and
ingratitude. Go and tell them; they don't know
themselves. Show them what they are. It is your
Christian duty."

"You don't mean for me to stop doing for them?"

"I certainly do mean just that -- for a while,
anyway."

"They can't possibly get along, Edward; they
will suffer."

"They have a little money, haven't they?"

"Only a little in savings-bank. The interest pays
their taxes."

"And you gave them that?"

Jim colored.

"Very well, their taxes are paid for this year;
let them use that money. They will not suffer, ex-
cept in their feelings, and that is where they ought
to suffer. Man, you would spoil all the work of the
Lord by your selfish tenderness toward sinners!"

"They aren't sinners."

"Yes, they are -- spiritual sinners, the worst kind
in the world. Now --"

"You don't mean for me to go now?"

"Yes, I do -- now. If you don't go now you never
will. Then, afterward, I want you to go home and
sit in your best parlor and smoke, and have all your
cats in there, too."

Jim gasped. "But, Edward! Mis' Adkins --"

"I don't care about Mrs. Adkins. She isn't as
bad as the rest, but she needs her little lesson,
too."

"Edward, the way that poor woman works to
keep the house nice -- and she don't like the smell
of tobacco smoke."

"Never mind whether she likes it or not. You
smoke."

"And she don't like cats."

"Never mind. Now you go."

Jim stood up. There was a curious change in his
rosy, child-like face. There was a species of quicken-
ing. He looked at once older and more alert. His
friend's words had charged him as with electricity.
When he went down the street he looked taller.

Amanda Bennet and Alma Beecher, sitting sewing
at their street windows, made this mistake.

"That isn't Uncle Jim," said Amanda. "That
man is a head taller, but he looks a little like him."

"It can't be Uncle Jim," agreed Alma. Then
both started.

"It is Uncle Jim, and he is coming here," said
Amanda.

Jim entered. Nobody except himself, his nieces,
and Joe Beecher ever knew exactly what happened,
what was the aspect of the door-mat erected to
human life, of the worm turned to menace. It must
have savored of horror, as do all meek and down-
trodden things when they gain, driven to bay, the
strength to do battle. It must have savored of the
god-like, when the man who had borne with patience,
dignity, and sorrow for them the stings of lesser
things because they were lesser things, at last arose
and revealed himself superior, with a great height of
the spirit, with the power to crush.

When Jim stopped talking and went home, two
pale, shocked faces of women gazed after him from
the windows. Joe Beecher was sobbing like a child.
Finally his wife turned her frightened face upon him,
glad to have still some one to intimidate.

"For goodness' sake, Joe Beecher, stop crying
like a baby," said she, but she spoke in a queer whis-
per, for her lips were stiff.

Joe stood up and made for the door.

"Where are you going?" asked his wife.

"Going to get a job somewhere," replied Joe, and
went. Soon the women saw him driving a neighbor's
cart up the street.

"He's going to cart gravel for John Leach's new
sidewalk!" gasped Alma.

"Why don't you stop him?" cried her sister.
"You can't have your husband driving a tip-cart
for John Leach. Stop him, Alma!"

"I can't stop him," moaned Alma. "I don't
feel as if I could stop anything."

Her sister gazed at her, and the same expression
was on both faces, making them more than sisters
of the flesh. Both saw before them a stern boundary
wall against which they might press in vain for the
rest of their lives, and both saw the same sins of
their hearts.

Meantime Jim Bennet was seated in his best
parlor and Susan Adkins was whispering to Mrs.
Trimmer out in the kitchen.

"I don't know whether he's gone stark, staring
mad or not," whispered Susan, "but he's in the
parlor smoking his worst old pipe, and that big
tiger tommy is sitting in his lap, and he's let in all
the other cats, and they're nosing round, and I
don't dare drive 'em out. I took up the broom, then
I put it away again. I never knew Mr. Bennet
to act so. I can't think what's got into him."

"Did he say anything?"

"No, he didn't say much of anything, but he said
it in a way that made my flesh fairly creep. Says he,
'As long as this is my house and my furniture and
my cats, Mis' Adkins, I think I'll sit down in the
parlor, where I can see to read my paper and smoke
at the same time.' Then he holds the kitchen door
open, and he calls, 'Kitty, kitty, kitty!' and that
great tiger tommy comes in with his tail up, rubbing
round his legs, and all the other cats followed after.
I shut the door before these last ones got into the
parlor." Susan Adkins regarded malevolently the
three tortoise-shell cats of three generations and vari-
ous stages of growth, one Maltese settled in a purring
round of comfort with four kittens, and one perfectly
black cat, which sat glaring at her with beryl-colored
eyes.

"That black cat looks evil," said Mrs. Trimmer.

"Yes, he does. I don't know why I didn't drown
him when he was a kitten."

"Why didn't you drown all those Malty kittens?"

"The old cat hid them away until they were too
big. Then he wouldn't let me. What do you sup-
pose has come to him? Just smell that awful pipe!"

"Men do take queer streaks every now and then,"
said Mrs. Trimmer. "My husband used to, and he
was as good as they make 'em, poor man. He
would eat sugar on his beefsteak, for one thing.
The first time I saw him do it I was scared. I
thought he was plum crazy, but afterward I found
out it was just because he was a man, and his ma
hadn't wanted him to eat sugar when he was a boy.
Mr. Bennet will get over it."

"He don't act as if he would."

"Oh yes, he will. Jim Bennet never stuck to
anything but being Jim Bennet for very long in
his life, and this ain't being Jim Bennet."

"He is a very good man," said Susan with a
somewhat apologetic tone.

"He's too good."

"He's too good to cats."

"Seems to me he's too good to 'most everybody.
Think what he has done for Amanda and Alma, and
how they act!"

"Yes, they are ungrateful and real mean to him;
and I feel sometimes as if I would like to tell them
just what I think of them," said Susan Adkins.
"Poor man, there he is, studying all the time what
he can do for people, and he don't get very much
himself."

Mrs. Trimmer arose to take leave. She had a
long, sallow face, capable of a sarcastic smile.
"Then," said she, "if I were you I wouldn't begrudge
him a chair in the parlor and a chance to read and
smoke and hold a pussy-cat."

"Who said I was begrudging it? I can air out the
parlor when he's got over the notion."

"Well, he will, so you needn't worry," said Mrs.
Trimmer. As she went down the street she could
see Jim's profile beside the parlor window, and she
smiled her sarcastic smile, which was not altogether
unpleasant. "He's stopped smoking, and he ain't
reading," she told herself. "It won't be very long
before he's Jim Bennet again."

But it was longer than she anticipated, for Jim's
will was propped by Edward Hayward's. Edward
kept Jim to his standpoint for weeks, until a few
days before Christmas. Then came self-assertion,
that self-assertion of negation which was all that
Jim possessed in such a crisis. He called upon Dr.
Hayward; the two were together in the little study
for nearly an hour, and talk ran high, then Jim
prevailed.

"It's no use, Edward," he said; "a man can't
be made over when he's cut and dried in one fashion,
the way I am. Maybe I'm doing wrong, but to me
it looks like doing right, and there's something in
the Bible about every man having his own right
and wrong. If what you say is true, and I am hin-
dering the Lord Almighty in His work, then it is
for Him to stop me. He can do it. But meantime
I've got to go on doing the way I always have. Joe
has been trying to drive that tip-cart, and the horse
ran away with him twice. Then he let the cart fall
on his foot and mash one of his toes, and he can
hardly get round, and Amanda and Alma don't dare
touch that money in the bank for fear of not having
enough to pay the taxes next year in case I don't
help them. They only had a little money on hand
when I gave them that talking to, and Christmas
is 'most here, and they haven't got things they really
need. Amanda's coat that she wore to meeting last
Sunday didn't look very warm to me, and poor
Alma had her furs chewed up by the Leach dog, and
she's going without any. They need lots of things.
And poor Mis' Adkins is 'most sick with tobacco
smoke. I can see it, though she doesn't say anything,
and the nice parlor curtains are full of it, and cat
hairs are all over things. I can't hold out any longer,
Edward. Maybe I am a door-mat; and if I am, and
it is wicked, may the Lord forgive me, for I've got
to keep right on being a door-mat."

Hayward sighed and lighted his pipe. However,
he had given up and connived with Jim.

On Christmas eve the two men were in hiding
behind a clump of cedars in the front yard of Jim's
nieces' house. They watched the expressman deliver
a great load of boxes and packages. Jim drew a
breath of joyous relief.

"They are taking them in," he whispered -- "they
are taking them in, Edward!"

Hayward looked down at the dim face of the man
beside him, and something akin to fear entered his
heart. He saw the face of a lifelong friend, but he
saw something in it which he had never recog-
nized before. He saw the face of one of the children
of heaven, giving only for the sake of the need of
others, and glorifying the gifts with the love and
pity of an angel.

"I was afraid they wouldn't take them!" whis-
pered Jim, and his watching face was beautiful,
although it was only the face of a little, old man of
a little village, with no great gift of intellect. There
was a full moon riding high; the ground was covered
with a glistening snow-level, over which wavered
wonderful shadows, as of wings. One great star pre-
vailed despite the silver might of the moon. To
Hayward Jim's face seemed to prevail, as that star,
among all the faces of humanity.

Jim crept noiselessly toward a window, Hayward
at his heels. The two could see the lighted interior
plainly.

"See poor Alma trying on her furs," whispered
Jim, in a rapture. "See Amanda with her coat.
They have found the money. See Joe heft the tur-
key." Suddenly he caught Hayward's arm, and
the two crept away. Out on the road, Jim fairly
sobbed with pure delight. "Oh, Edward," he said,"I
am so thankful they took the things! I was so afraid
they wouldn't, and they needed them! Oh, Edward,
I am so thankful!" Edward pressed his friend's arm.

When they reached Jim's house a great tiger-cat
leaped to Jim's shoulder with the silence and swift-
ness of a shadow. "He's always watching for me,"
said Jim, proudly. "Pussy! Pussy!" The cat be-
gan to purr loudly, and rubbed his splendid head
against the man's cheek.

"I suppose," said Hayward, with something of
awe in his tone, "that you won't smoke in the parlor
to-night?"

"Edward, I really can't. Poor woman, she's got
it all aired and beautifully cleaned, and she's so
happy over it. There's a good fire in the shed, and
I will sit there with the pussy-cats until I go to bed.
Oh, Edward, I am so thankful that they took the
things!"

"Good night, Jim."

"Good night. You don't blame me, Edward?"

"Who am I to blame you, Jim? Good night."

Hayward watched the little man pass along the
path to the shed door. Jim's back was slightly
bent, but to his friend it seemed bent beneath a
holy burden of love and pity for all humanity, and
the inheritance of the meek seemed to crown that
drooping old head. The door-mat, again spread
freely for the trampling feet of all who got comfort
thereby, became a blessed thing. The humble
creature, despised and held in contempt like One
greater than he, giving for the sake of the needs
of others, went along the narrow foot-path through
the snow. The minister took off his hat and stood
watching until the door was opened and closed and
the little window gleamed with golden light.

-THE END-
Mary E Wilkins Freeman's short story: Coronation

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