Indianapolis Times, Volume 35, Number 208, Indianapolis, Marion County, 9 January 1923 — Page 8

8

ALICE ADAMS by BOOTH TARKINGTON Copyright, 1921, by Dotibleday, Page & Cos.

(Continued From Fag© 1) in last passengers over distant trolley lines, now and then howled on a curve; far-away metallic stirrings could be heard from factories in the sooty suburbs on the plain outside the city; east, west and south switch engines chugged and snorted on sidings; and everywhere in the air there seemed to be a faint voluminous hum as of innumerable wires trembling overhead to virbration of machinery underground. In his youth Adams might have been less resentful of sounds such as these when they interfered with his night’s sleep; even during an illness he might have taken some pride in them as proof of his citizenship in a “live town;” but at 55 he merely hated them because they kept him awake. They “pressed on his nerves,” as he put it; and so did almost everything else, for that matter. He heard the milk wagon drive into the cross-street beneath his windows and stop at each house. The milkman carried his jars round to the “back porch,” while the horse moved slowly ahead to the gate of the next customer and waited there. “He's gone into

Pollocks,' ” Adams thought following this progress. "I hope It'll sour on 'em before breakfast. Delivered the Andersons’. Now he's getting out ours. Listen to the darn brute! What's he care who wants to sleep!" His complaint was of the horse, who casually shifted weight with a clink of steel shoes on the worn brick pavement of the street, and then heartily shook himself in his harness, perhaj. to dislodge a fly far ahead of its season. Light had just filmed the windows; and with that the first sparrow woke, chirped instantly, and roused neighbors in the trees of the small yard, including a loud-voiced robin. Vociferations began irregularly, but were soon unanimous. “Sleep? Dang likely now. ain’t it!” Night sounds were becoming dav sounds; the far-away hooting of freight-engines seemed brisk, c than an hour ago in the dark. A cheerful whistler passed the house, even more careless of sleepers than the milk man’s horse had been; then a group of colored workmen came by, and although it was impossible to b sure whether they were homeward bound from night-work or on their way to daywork, at least it was certain that they were jocose. Loose, aboriginal laughter preceded them afar, and beat on the air long after they had gone by. The sick-room night-light, shielded from his eyes by a newspaper propped against a water-pitcher, still showed a thin glimmering that had grown offensive to Adams. In his wandering and enfeebled thoughts, which were much more often imaginings than reasonings, the attempt of the nlehtlight to resist the dawn reminded him of something unpleasant, though he could not discover just what the unpleasant, though he could not discover just what the unpleasant thing was. Here was a puzzle that Irritated him the more because he could not solve it, vet always seem’d just on the point of a solution. However, he may have lost nothing cheerful by remaining in the dark upon the matter; for if he had been r little sharper in this introspection he might have concluded that the squaior of the night-light, in its seeming effort to show against the forerunning of the sun itself, had stimulated some half-buried perception within him to

RALSTONITTfiffi REPKANAIMS Senator-Elect Speaks in Springfield, 111. By Timei Soecial SPRINGFIELD, 111., Jan. o.—National isolation is a thing of the past, Samuel M. Ralston, United States Sen-ator-elect from Indiana, said in a.n address at the Jackson day banquet here last night. "No nation any longer can hold itself out of the reach of the world, if .it so desires.” the speaker said. "This Nation is fourteen times closer to every point of the world than it was at the breaking out of the World War. Oceans have become but ponds and mountains but ridges.” The idea of isolation must become obsolete, Ralston insisted- Justtns individuals ewe something to one another in the daily relationships of life, so do nations, he said. European nations are prostrated commercially, and it is to the United States they look for assistance in getting on rheir feet. In the past thirty-five years practically all important constructive pieces of legislation have been enacted by the Democratic party, Ralston asserted. “The Republican party's hobby during this time has been the high protective tariff, the basic, idea of which is calculated to limit the vision of its advocates and to disassociate them from sympathy with the human element in world affairs,” Railston said. "This is why. in my opinion, the Republican party has ceased to have an international mind.” I Spied Today Polite A motorman on a Shelby car get off his stool and give it to a woman who was standing.—G. T. W. Absent-Minded A man on E. Ohio St. peel a banana. throw the fruit in the street and start to eat the peel. He was quite aggravated when he discovered his mistake. —G. B. His Number A city fireman walked from headouarters at New York and Alabama Sts. with a "Sold” sign printed on his back, while his fellow fire-fighters laughed uproariously.—J. M. liettin’ His A woman and small boy in the New York Store basement. The worn an ordered an Ice cream soda and'the boj**-drank a glass of water. —R. A.

i sketch the painful little synopsis of i an autobiography. In spite of noises without, he drowsed again, not knowing that he did; and when he opened his eyes the nurse was just rising from her cot. He took no pleasure in the sight, it may h* said. She exhibited to him a face mismodelled by sleep, and set | like a clay face left on Its cheek in a hot and dry studio. She was still only in part awake, however, and by the time she had extinguished the night-light and given her patient his tonic, she had recovered enough plas- : ticlty. "Well, Isn’t that grand* We've \ had another good night," she said as i she departed to dress In the bath- : room. "Yes, you had another!” ha retorted, though not until after she had closed the door. Presently he heard his daughter moving about in her room across the narrow hall, and so knew that she had risen. He hoped she would come :in to see him soon, for she was the oneN thing that didn't press on his nerves, he felt; though the thought iof her hurt him, as, indeed, every thought hurt him. But it was his wife who came first. She wore a lank cotton wrapper, and a crescent of gray hair escaped to one temple from beneath the handkerchief she had worn upon her head for the night and still retained; but ] j she did everything possible to make her expression cheering. “Oh, you're better again! I can see \ \ that, as soon as I look at you,” she said. "Miss Perry tells me you’ve , had another splendid night.” He made a sound of irony, which seemed to dispose unfavourably of Miss Perry, and then, in order to he ! more certainly iutellihle, he added, "She slept well, as usual!" 1 But his wife's smile persisted. "It’s a good sign to he cross; it means i you're practically convalescent right i now.” "Oh. I am. am I?” "N'n doubt in the world!” she exclaimed. “Why. you’re practically a 'well man, Virgil—all except getting j your strength back, of course, and j that isn’t going to take long. You'll be right on your feet In a couple of weeks from now.” “Oh. I will?” “Os course you will!” She laughed i briskly, and, going to the table in the I corner of the room, moved.his glass !of medicine an inch or two, turned ! a book over so that it lay upon its other side, and for a few moments occupied herself with similar futilities, having takeni on the air of a person who makes things neat, though she produced no such actual effect upon | them. “Os course you will,” she repeated, absently. “You’ll be as strong as you ever were; maybe stronger." She paused for a moment, not look in gat him, then added, cheerfully. “So that you can fly around and find something really good to get Into.” Something important between them came, near the surface here, for though she spoke with what seemed but a casual cheerfulness, there was a little betraying break in her voice, a trembling just perceptible in utterance of the final word. And she still kept up the affectation of being .helpfully preoccupied with the table, and did not look at her husband—perhaps because they had been married so many years that without looking she knew just what his expression would be, and preferred to avoid the actual sight of it as long as possible. Meanwhile, he stared at her, his lips beginning to move with little distortions not lacking in the pathos of a sick man's agitation. “So that's it,” he said. "That’s what you’re hinting at.” “Hinting?” Mrs. Adams looked surprised and indulgent. “Why, I’m not doing any hinting, Virgil.” “What did you say about, my find ing ‘something good to get into?’ ” he asked, sharply. “Don't you call that hinting?” Mrs. Adams turned toward him now; she came to the bedside and would have taken his hand, but he quickly moved it away from her. “You mustn't let yourself get nervous.” she said. “But of course when you get well there's only one thing to do. You mustn’t go back to that old hole again.” ” ‘Old hole?’ That’s what you call it, is it?” In spite of his weakness, anger made his voice strident, and upon this stimulation she spoke more urgently. “You just mustn't go back to it, Virgil. It’s not fair to any of us, and you know it isn’t." “Don’t tell me what I know, please!” She clasped her hands, suddenly carrying her urgency to plaintive entreaty. “Virgil, you won’t go back to that hole?” “That’s a nice word to use to me!” he said. “Call a. inan’s business a hole!” “Virgil, if you don’t owe it to me to look for something different, don’t you owe it to your children? Don't tell me you won’t do what we all want you to, and what you know in your heart you ought to! And if you have got into one of your stubborn fits and are bound to go back there for no other rdSson except, to have your own way, don’t tell me so, for I can’t bear it!” He looked up at her fiercely. “You’ve got a fine way to cure a sick man!” he said; but she had concluded her appeal—for that time—and instead of making any more words in the *natter, let him see that there

DOINGS OF THE DUFFS—

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THEM DAYS IS GONE FOREVER—

i u)eu.- a loypu/ nan i oalk eesioe you, sorely meep , THEM i - A PEACH, PROTECTION) T4tY GO GBHNE FOREVER!

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were tears in her eyes, shook her head and left the room. Alone, he lay breathing rapidly, his emaciated chest proving itself equal to the demands his emotion put upon it. "Fine!” he repeated, with husky indignation. “Fine way to cure a sick man! Fine!” Then, after a silence, he gave forth whispering sounds as of laughter, his expression the w'hila remaining’ sore and far from humor.

OUT OUR WAY—By WILLIAMS

THE OLD HOME TOWN—By STANLEY

“And give us our dally brear !” he added, meaning that his wife’s little performance was no novelty. CHAPTER II In fact, the agitation of Mrs. Adams was genuine, but so well under her control that Its traces vanished during the three short steps she took to cross the narrow hal* between her husband's dojf- and the one opposite. Her expression was matter-of-course,

THE INDIANAPOLIS TIMES

lather than pathetic, as she entered the pretty room where her daughter, half dressed, sat before a dressingtable and played with the reflections of a three-leafed mirror framed in blue enamel. That Is, Just before the moment of her mother's entrance, Alice had been playing with the mirror's reflections posturing her arms and her expressions, clasping her hands behind her neck, and tilting

A Full Day of It

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Collar Tliis On Your Clarinet

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back her head to foreshorten the face in a tableau conceived to represent sauciness, then one of smiling weariness, then one of scornful toleration, and all very piquant; but as the door opened Bhe hurriedly resumed the practical, and occupied her hands in the arrangement of her plentiful brownish hair. They were pretty hands, of a shapeliness delicate and fine. "The best

FRECKI.ES AND HIS FRIENDS—By BLOSSER

OUR BOARDING HOUSE—By AHERN

things she's got”’ a cold-blooded girl friend said of them, and meant to include Alice's mind and character in the implied list of possessions surpassed by the notable hands. However that may have been, the rest of her was well enough. She was often called "a right pretty girl”—temperate praise meaning a girl rather pretty than otherwise, and this she deserved. to say the least Even in re-

JAN. 9, 1923

—By ALLMAN

—Bv AL PO

pose she deserved it, though repose was anything but her habit, being seldom seen upon her except at home. On exhibition she led a life of gestures, the unkind said to make her lovely hands more memorable: but all of her usually accompanied the gestures of the hands, the shoulders ever giving them their impulses first, and even her feet being called upon, at the same time, for eloquence. / (To Be Continued.)

'SEN