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VOL. XCI

LlPPlNCOTT’S MONTHLY MAGAZINE JANUARY, I913

TROPICANIA BY

WILL LEVINGTON COMFORT Author of “ Fate Knock: at Me Door," “ Sh Buildet! Her Home," “ Ruutlnige Ridu Alone," m.

I. IT occurs to me, Thomas Ryerson, that I have a story to tell, and that I can tell it after a fashion. The most important happening in my life, as I see it now, was a certain interview with Mary Galbraith. I had come in from Alaska a few weeks before, penniless but undismayed, feeling ﬁt for any fate, and as pleased with myself and the world as if I had led back a mule-pack laden with golden globules. My boyhood home overlooks Lake Superior from the south shore, and the cool, clean Michigan town, so queerly ordered and half-civilized, was happily stimu lating after years prodigally spent in the desolate north. There, for the summer, was Mary Galbraith. We walked and rode and bantered and waltzed and dreamed and ﬁshed for three inspiriting months. No ﬁner, deeper, nor fuller days were ever given a man. I had not known that anything could be quite so important. Something about her at ﬁrst told me that here was a woman with whom a man must be just himself, if he would prosper. So she saw me ungloved, and my mind in its every-day working garb. Always I was lifted, strangely lifted, when we were together, but never out of myself. I wish I could suggest in a line or two the great mystery of her. Copyright, 1912, by J. B. Lrrrmcorr Comuxz.

VoL. XCI.—1

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