A LONELY abode near the opening of a ravine, about four miles from Sipes’s hut, bore the scars of many winters. It was not over twelve feet square. It had two small windows, a narrow door and a “lean to” roof. On the door was the roughly carved inscription—“J. Ledyard Symington, Tuesdays and Thursdays.” Near this was nailed an old cigar box, with a slit in the cover. Lettered on the box was a request to “Please leave card.”

I often passed this mysterious dwelling without seeing any indications of life, but one chilly rainy day I saw smoke issuing from the bent piece of stove-pipe, protruding through the roof. The fact that it happened to be Thursday helped to overcome my reluctance to disturb the occupant.

A cordial and cheery call to “come in” was the response to my gentle knock.

I found a rather tall, pleasant faced, watery eyed old man, with a gray beard, aquiline nose, and shaggy eyebrows, who rose from a box on which he had been sitting before a small table. There was an unmistakable air of noblesse oblige in his polite offer of another box. His clothes bespoke the “shabby genteel,” which was accentuated by a somewhat battered and much worn plug hat, that hung on a peg near the window back of the table.

I apologized for my intrusion, told him that I had had rather a long walk, and would be glad to rest awhile before his fire. He seemed interested in some sketches made during the morning, which he asked to see. His courtly air did not desert him when he confessed that he “hadn’t had a smoke for a week.” I handed him some tobacco. He fished a disreputable looking big black pipe out of some rubbish on a shelf, and was soon enveloped in the comforting fumes.

I was made to feel much at home, and his conversation soon lost its tinge of formality. He looked at me curiously and asked where I was from. When I told him, his eyes brightened, and he wanted to know what the principal society events had been during the winter. He said he had only seen half a dozen papers in five or six months, and had lost all track of what had been going on.

Along one of the shelves at the end of the room were ranged several books on etiquette, and thirty or forty much worn novels, of the variety usually absorbed by very young ladies in hammocks, scattered around the shaded lawns of white flannel summer resorts, where the most intense intellectual occupations are tennis and dancing—books in which are recorded the “dashing devilish beauty of Cyril,” With his “corking and perfectly ripping” ideas, and the bewildering charms of willowy Geraldine, the violet eyed heiress, with the long lashes, her many stunning costumes and clinging gowns. Flashing glances, nonchalantly twirled canes, faintly perfumed stationery, and softly tearful moods adorn the pages.

The limousine of the “Soap King” goes whirling by, which is placed at the service of the duke, when he arrives, incognito, to annex, matrimonially, the anxious millions that await him. The story takes us up wondrously carved staircases, among many palms, and into marble halls, through which faint voluptuous music flows. The walls are lined with long rows of priceless old masters. Modern society novelists have found and given to the world many more Rembrandts and Van Dykes than those two humble toilers at the lower end of the social scale could have painted in a geological era. The duke eventually fails to produce his coronet, and the true love match is off. Cupid disappears through a stained glass casement. Dare Devil Cyril rescues the lovely Geraldine from under a fallen horse, or a purple touring car, and bravely carries her to another; her warm breath touches his cheek, and the wedding chimes come just in time to enable the fair reader to dress for dinner.

Oh, noble Cyril, and bewitching Geraldine!—your names may change on different pages, but ever and anon you flit through the countless cylinders of unnumbered presses. Like the lilies of the field, you toil not, neither do you spin. The triumphs and the failures of a thinking, striving world are not for you; its problems and its tears are not within your charmed circle, but He who marks the sparrow’s fall, may gather even you, with the rest of the created things, if there are other worlds to come.

Noticing my glance at the book-shelf, my host said, rather apologetically, “my library is not as large as I would like to have it. The fact is that I take a great deal of interest in social matters. I am unfortunately placed in a very peculiar and humiliating position. A great many years ago I fell heir to a large fortune, on the death of my uncle, and expected to devote my time entirely to society, and the pleasures of a gentleman of leisure. A lot of contesting relatives came on the scene, and for over twenty years the case has been in the courts. Several times I almost got cheated out of my inheritance, but it looks now as though I might get it.

“I keep in touch with everything that may be of use to me when I go into the world in the way that my uncle intended that I should. As social novelists generally reflect their own periods quite accurately, I feel that these books give me a very good idea of what is going on, and I get a great deal of pleasure out of them.

“I had a pretty good education, when I was young, but I don’t care so much about that, as I do for the ability to do things in proper form when I get what is coming to me. This enforced residence in these miserable hills, is just to make certain people think that I am dead. I am going to be alive at just the right time, and when I show up there will be a lot of surprises.

“As a matter of fact my ancestry is very ancient. I looked it up in Burke’s Peerage when my uncle died, and found that I came from two of the very best families. On the other side I would be a baronet, but I don’t want to go over there until I get my money. When I walk into my estates, I will do so unknown. I will suddenly reveal myself, and there will be a scattering of a lot of upstarts and false nobility who have been enjoying what rightfully belongs to me.

“I don’t associate with these loafers that live around in these sand hills at all. They are low fellows, and I have no use for them. Every three months I go to a certain post-office, and get a money order for a certain amount, from a certain party who knows where I am, and is keeping track of things for me. It isn’t as big a money order as I would like, but I assure you that these conditions are only temporary, and when the proper time comes, you will find me gone.”

I listened to the old man’s story, which occupied most of the afternoon, with some suspicion, but with much interest. Some mysterious tea and a couple of damp soda crackers were served at this impromptu reception. He expressed much pleasure that I had called, and said that he hoped I would come again.

The impressions of my visit were really very pleasant, until, a few days later, they came under the fire of the withering sarcasm and barbed satire of Sipes, who from his lonely eyrie four miles away, across a bend in the shore, could observe the home of J. Ledyard Symington through his little spy-glass.

“That feller down there makes me tired. When ’e fust come in the hills, about six years ago, ’e put up a sign that said ‘J. Simons.’ He used to go ’way oncet in a while, an’ ev’ry time ’e’d come back with a lot o’ red an’ green books that ’e’d set out on the sand an’ read. He’s got the society bug, an’ ’e thinks ’e’s cut out fer to shine in new clothes all the time.

“Some day ’e says ’e’s goin to live in a big house. He comes ’ere sometimes to see if I’ve got any newspapers. I got some oncet, to see if them Japs ’ad got them fellers in Port Arthur yet, an’ Simons set down an’ studied ’em all through to see wot the society push was doin’.

“He’s got a box out in front that says to drop in cards. Oncet, just to show ’im that I was polite, I stuck a seven spot into it. I wouldn’t hand nothin’ above a seven to a guy like ’im. After that I laid out a lot o’ games o’ sollytare that I couldn’t make work, an’ I seen sumpen was the matter with my deck, an’ then I recollected that cussed seven spot, an’ I skipped back there when that ol’ goat was snoozin’ one night an’ fished it out of ’is box. He’s plumb nutty, an’ ’e don’t amuse me a bit. You fellers may like ’im, but I’ll bet that when ’e gits ’is big house, you an’ me won’t be asked to it. Nothin’ like him goes with me.

“He never has no whisky, an’ I don’t never see ’im out on the lake. He don’t fish ner hunt, an’ Hell! I don’t know where ’e gits ’is money. After ’e’d bin down there a couple o’ years, ’e changed the name on ’is door to ‘J. L. Simons’, an’ after that ’e had it ‘J. Ledward Simons’ an’ now its ‘J. Ledyard Symington—Tuesdays & Thursdays’. I s’pose ’e’ll ’ave ‘Tuesdays & Thursdays’ fer a part o’ that name ’e’s grad’ally constructin’ if ’e keeps it up. Mebbe ’e means that on them days ’e’s always out, but I ain’t goin’ to keep track o’ the days o’ the week fer him, and ’e and ’is ol’ hard-boiled hat can go to the devil.

“If ’e has ‘J. Ledyard Symington Tuesdays & Thursdays’ fer a name ’ere, wot d’ye s’pose ’e’ll ’ave it when ’e gits in ’is big house, that ’e’s always tellin’ about? I’ll bet ’e’ll ’ave a name that ye can’t git through the yard. His plug hat makes me sick. Wot d’ye s’pose Dewey at Maniller would ’av said to a man with a lid like that? He’d a said ‘Bingo!’ an’ smashed it. After that ’e’d a told Gridley to begin’ on ’im any time ’e was ready.”

At this point the old man’s comments began to be mingled with so much ornate profanity that it seems futile to attempt properly to expurgate his remarks. He declared that Simons was certainly “bunk.” “A name like wot ’e’d built out o’ nothin’ would finish anybody.” He thought that something “ought to happen to everybody that got stuck on themselves, an’ usually it did. All o’ them geezers that live ’ere an’ there on the shore, are prob’ly ’ere an’ there ’cause it’s better so fer them. With me its different. I’m ’ere ’cause I want to be ’ere. Simons ’ll prob’ly light out some day, the same way Cal did. I’m goin’ down there some night an’ slip the whole darn deck in ’is card box, just to show my heart’s in the right place.”

Sipes was a captious critic, and to him the “mantle of charity” was an unknown fabric. It was evident that the social strata in the dunes had some humps that would never be leveled.

I passed the shanty some months later, but there was no smoke or other sign of habitation. The disappointed old occupant had evidently “lit out.” The sad-looking “plug” was stuck over the top of the rusty section of stovepipe that had served as the chimney. It was now literally a “stovepipe hat”—that crown of absurdity among the follies of mankind, against which both art and nature have vainly protested through blinding tears.

I suspected the subtle facetiousness of Sipes in the apt decoration of the protruding piece of stove pipe with this melancholy emblem of departed gentility. Its top was ripped around the edge, and it moved languidly up and down in the varying winds, as if in mockery of inconstant fashion, which is regulated by custom instead of artistic taste.

The building of the distinguished name had, however, been continued, and the legend on the door was now, “J. Ledyard Symington-Symington, Bart.” The reception days had been effaced. The old man may have achieved that point in his social aspirations when he “didn’t care to know anybody who wasn’t anybody.” Like Don Quixote, he may have departed to battle with hostile windmills, or he may have walked into his estates “unknown,” to mingle in phantom social functions in ghostly halls and silent chambers in the Great Beyond.

Perhaps there are no “Tuesdays and Thursdays” there, and calling cards and stovepipe hats are unnecessary. His blighted hopes, and those that may have ended in fruition, concern the widely distributed gossips along the coast no more.

While we may be interested and amused with the petty gossip, the rude philosophy, the quaint humor, the little antagonisms, and the child-like foibles of these lonely dwellers in the dune country, the pathos that overshadows them must touch our hearts.

They have brought their life scars into the desolate sands, where the twilight has come upon them. The roar of a mighty world goes on beyond them. Unable to navigate the great currents of life, they have drifted into stagnant waters.

Happy Cal’s unwelcome guests and his blighted affections—Catfish John’s rheumatism and his pork that “them fellers” stole—Old Sipes’s lost “kittle”—Doc Looney’s unappreciative wives—J. Ledyard Symington’s “humiliations,” and all the other troubles of the old outcasts, will disappear into the oblivion of the years, with the rest of the affairs and happenings of this life.

If they have not been ambitious, their rapacity has not destroyed empires, or deluged the earth with blood. If they have not been learned, they have not used knowledge to devise means for the destruction of human life. If they have not been powerful, their greed has not oppressed and impoverished their fellow-beings.

Let us hope that the storms from the lake, and civilization on the shore, will deal gently with these poor derelicts, as they peacefully fade away into the elements from which they came.

(From the Author’s Etching)

“RESUMING THEIR MIGRATIONS”