Mrs. Brooke,

"Wait now, Issam; p'ease lend me your fan. Now you get up in the cushions, Issam, so, comforel, and I will sit close by you on this chair, and fan you while you read. Now go on, l' se all weddy."

"That's very nice, Dottie, " said I, "what made you think of it?"

"That's the way your bruver Cyrus does over to Mrs. Ostrom's. I was over looking for Howard to spin my new top, dust a while ago, and I saw him. I see him lots of times when I go over; sometimes he gives me a penny and says, Run away, and buy a stick of candy.'

"Won't you give me half of your apple?" I said, clutching at the first straw that presented itself, and never daring to look over at sister Betty, stitching in her window.

"Yes, when I get a knife to cut it," and Dottie slid off her chair and bustled away.

The vociferous silence continued until her return, when to drown it, I exclaimed, "Oh! what a little piece for Issam! Is that the way you divide an apple in halves?"

"Well, you see,' explained Dottie, "I could n't cut it in the middle, Issam, because the wick was in the way."

At this point, sister Betty gathered up her work and swept out of the room; I stole a glance at her as she went by, with her head up, and her blue gray eyes glinting like steel in the otherwise unmoved, placid face. About her whole large, imperious figure was an air of dominance which boded ill for any obstructions in her path. What will she do about it I wonder? I am sure what she will not do, will be to deliver any Caudle lectures to her husband, wearing alike to her temper and his.

August 16th. Bed time, but no one is in bed, unless it be sister Betty; no sound comes from her room. Brother

And this is the wherefore of it all. This afternoon Bettina came down in her black lace gown, an elaborate coiffure, and an extra layer of pearl powder, and asked me to go over with her and call upon Mrs. Ostrom. I would have got out of it if I could, for I had a presentiment of evil; but as there was no ostensible reason why I should refuse, I did not and we sauntered across the street. Sister Betty never looked more composed and leisurely than as we mounted my neighbor's steps. The maid told us that Mrs. Ostrom was lying down with headache and had given orders that she was not to be disturbed.

'By no means, "' said Betty, with her soft drawl, "I will just step in though, and get a book that Mrs. Ostrom promised me; I know where it is." And she brushed by the half protesting maid and went on towards the sitting room,— I following after, rather than stand on the steps in the sun. My forebodings were lulled for the moment, for someway I believed the girl; but as sister Betty swept aside the portiéres there was revealed much such a tableau as Dottie had described, save that Mrs. Ostrom was lying back among a pile of cushions, her eyes. closed, sniffing at a bottle of smelling salts, while my brother Cyrus dabbed her forehead solicitously with eau de Cologne. He started to his feet with consternation written on his face; but Valeria opened her eyes languidly, and did not even change color.

"So glad to see you," she said. "Do find seats; I am feeling wretchedly ill, as I suppose Olga told you."

Sister Betty had moved leisurely forward while she spoke, and as she ceased, like a flash of summer lightning brought

out from the folds of her dress a little whip (I recognized it for a toy of Dottie's) and with it laid two long scarlet stripes across Mrs. Ostrom's white face. Cyrus sprung forward to arrest her hand, but it was needless, for she let her weapon drop, and remarked calmly, "Doubtless, Mrs. Ostrom, you will be able to explain those little blemishes satisfactorily to your husband and son." Then turning to her husband, she said, "Colonel Brooke, I have never inquired too closely into your little diversions, but I do exact that you shall not force them upon my notice, and I think I am not unreasonable in that." And with a slightly heightened color, but no unseemly ruffling of her plumage, sister Betty turned and swept out of the room and the house.

We looked at one another in silent consternation a moment, and then Mrs. Ostrom burst into tears.

'My poor child!" said Cyrus.

I went for hot water, and we did what we could, but the livid welts obstinately remained to be accounted for; and poor Valeria went off finally to shut herself in her darkened room, wailing to herself, 'Oh, what shall I do? What can I say to them?"

As Cyrus and I went home, I said to him, "Brother mine, if you take my advice, you will take the hint that your wife has given you; if you notice, she did n't make any threats, and such women are dangerous."

When Harry came home, and I palpitatingly recounted the scene to him, all he said was, "Good for Bettina!"

Betty ate her dinner, or made a pretense of it, as did Harry and I; but Cy. strode up and down in the library, and would not speak to anybody. Afterwards he and Harry had a long palaver; I wonder what men say to one another on such an occasion? Sister Betty sat awhile in her accustomed place, and kept some work in her lap, but after a while the fiction was more than even she could keep up, and she threw it down, and sprang up and stamped her foot and wrung her hands with a sort of inarticulate cry of rage and grief, and fled away to her room. It is astonishing that people of the age of Cyrus and Betty would n't be settled down, and be done with such little excursions off the highway of commonplace propriety. The story writers always leave their heroes and heroines at the wedding breakfast, but it would seem as if adventures were only beginning for most people at that point.

Friday. Betty and Cyrus are going away tomorrow; it is really the best thing they could do, for the atmosphere is unpleasantly charged with latent electricity. They had some sort of a reconciliation yesterday. A man forgives a woman any offense she commits for love of him; and as for Betty, I fancy she feels that she is quits on this occasion at least, and can afford to call the affair off. That villain Harry has been asking her husband solicitously after Mrs. Ostrom twice a day; she is reported to have a very bad case of the mumps; and is not visible to anyone, even Howard, who has never had them. There is no denying it, she is a woman of resources.

Batterman Lindsay.

T

M-D

O ENTER the real Bohemia of San Francisco, a letter of credit is not necessary, there is no password, no initiation fee, and there are no thick-carpeted passageways leading to the Halls of Pleasure.

The great register of this Bohemia does not exhibit to the visitor the names of celebrities in art and letters gone before. Its high jinks are held on sawdust floors of a basement saloon or "eating joint." There is no avoidance of dues and no fines or black listing.

The habitués of Bohemia will recall the oldest member of the great society, that prince of literati, Henry Geralde, whose jovial countenance greets the reader of this article. Among the hackhorses of literature he stands pre-emi

The OVERLAND is indebted to Mr. Dodge of the Chronicle, Mr. Palmer of the Examiner, Mr. Kahler of the Call,

nent, a man who as a sub-editor has made many a shining light to shine, whose geniality is well known and who has enjoyed more literary triumphs, by proxy, than any other man who frequents the sacred precincts of Bohemia. He has been hired man to ingrate editors of humorous and other weekly papers, and has had his sensitive soul scorched within him by the jibes and taunts of men who never have realized how far, how very far, above them in intelligence. and sentiment he has been. His frail form goes up and down our streets and is familiar to all the writers and artists of the great city. His conversation is brilliant with epigrams, there is in him a blarneyism that savors of old Dublin, and a besprinkling of apt quotations from Horatian and Homeric proverbs to which his Celtic accent lends an exceeding richness.

and Mr. Davis of Chic, for courtesies extended from the respective art rooms of the several publications.

how perfectly everything blends together, how the green shutters on that stuccoed wall furnish a frame for the yellow-shirted celestial watering his tulips. The tulips are planted in a sky blue pot and the edge of the window is painted a dull red. Down below, half a block away, there is a splash of sunlight on a bright glare of red posters, and a group of Chinese in subdued blacks, purples, and yellows, are excitedly studying the merits of the proclamation of the Six Companies. Fa in the distance, the Oakland ferry steams, shining white, on a sea of green and purple, beyond this is

Pen sketch by James Swinnerton.

A CAPTAIN OF THE FINEST

Straight across from my window, over the plaza so well beloved of Robert Louis Stevenson, the sun is casting queer shadows from the palms and eucalypti over the children of the Latin quarter of San Francisco. The bell of the Greek church is ringing for early mass, and the deep, regular booming is followed by the jangle of the chimes.

The readers of the OVERLAND are familiar with the work of L. Maynard Dixon, perhaps the coming rival of Frederic Remington. His hands are stuffed into his pockets; there is the usual quizzical expression on his face as he walks loose-jointedly across the plaza and into my view. He wants me to join him in a walk through Chinatown.

Together we watch the play of lights. along the narrow dirty streets and note

Pencil sketch by James Swinnerton.

THE ART CRITIC.