Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/74

54 room, a trail of lamentations sounding disconsolately after them.

Mr. McCorkledy and Mr. Martin took up their discussion with renewed interest.

"When I was young," said Mr. Martin, "we children were obliged to be present promptly at meals. We could roam woods and fields, work, play, go pretty much where we pleased, but at meals we had to put in an appearance with the rest. Father was an extremely busy man, too busy to see us much of the time, but he always said that if he could look into a boy's eyes good and square three times a day and know what sort of an appetite he had, he could tell very well how things were going."

"That's right," said Mr. McCorkledy. "Now, there was breakfast time. When I was a boy the whole family gathered in the big sitting room to wait for breakfast, which was — well, a good deal earlier than it is now, and always at a set time. Father always had prayers before breakfast, and we had to be there. I'm not a religious man now — not really — but I like to think of those morning prayers. I notice that the people who sort o' have family worship now don't do it as father did. They seem to have hard work to corral the family long enough. It's either a shame-faced kind of gathering, helter-skelter, after breakfast, or the father and mother and whatever ones of the family can be caught on the wing before decent bed time."

"Well, I simply cannot get the family all together at breakfast, even," said Mrs. McCorkledy. "They've so many engagements the evening before. Even our little Sammv belongs to a 'club,' and I only put him in knickerbockers about three months ago. I did depend on Sarah to eat breakfast with you and me, but now she's joined a before-breakfast walking club, and that makes her half an hour late. It would be so delightful to see all the faces at once in the morning, all cheery and ready for the day. I think it would be a great help to each one. and a bond of family love."

Mr. Martin turned a retrospective gaze toward the fading horizon far at the end of the street. "Families are not what they used to be," he said.

"It's the fault of the clubs and precociousness," said Mr. McCorkledy. "Churches and homes ought to be enough to keep life sound and sweet, without the eternal classes and clubs. Only give us the good, old-fashioned American breakfast table, with all that the term implies, and the country could face the universe. Hello, Gargoyle!"

Mr. Gargoyle's smile beamed upon the veranda. He had approached without hearing Mr. McCorkledy's oration.

"Here, McCorkledy," he said, extracting a paper from his pocket, "before I forget it, here's your application blank for membership in the 'Occidental Branch of American Bohemians.' You can fill it out any time."

At this inopportune moment Doran-josephine appeared. They burst forth with one voice: "That will only be the fourteenth club that papa belongs to!"

Lucia Van Cliff Chase.

Home Life of Joseph Chamberlain—

"Although many guests are entertained at Highbury, Chamberlain's home," says a writer in Pearson's, "life there is on the whole restful and uneventful, and one day is much like another as far as Mr. Chamberlain's occupations are concerned. When in the country he breakfasts with the family, and then takes a turn in the garden or orchid houses. Of course, it is well known that he is a constant smoker.

"How can there be time for much in the wav of amusement when the Secretary of State must get down to his of- fice in the morning betimes, and be at the House of Commons to answer questions almost immediately after lunch, and there remain, as a rule till twelve o'clock at night ? Under the new rules Mr. Chamberlain, with other members who are in the habit of spending the end of the week away from town, will be able to get away on Friday, and will thus spend more time than hitherto at home at Highbury."