who received it passively, as he did everything in life.

"Jim," said "Tammas" one evening. "Don't be so tight with your gal. Take me 'long with you ternight. I been hearin' she's a bute," he added with relish.

"Sure," said Jim in an indefinite way. He might have been answering either remark. But "Tammas" evidently construed it to his own satisfaction, for a little later he got up and accompanied Jim, when the latter started off down the road. They were an odd looking pair, Jim shuffling through the dust with his hands in his pockets, and "Tammas" towering at his side, his head high in the air and throwing out his legs like a high-stepper on a race-course.

That evening Jim found himself in the darkest corner of the porch, listening to "Tammas'" coarse jokes and Neotia's hilarious laughter. He entered into the fun as much as he knew how by lending an occasional "haw-haw" or by giving "Tammas" a nudge in the ribs, with his elbow. But after a while, as the conversation became more and more personal, his laughter seemed out of place and he woke up to the fact that he hadn't an idea what they were talking about. He scratched his head reflectively and at last ventured a remark that was so completely ignored that he subsided into the corner without a murmur.

For the first time in his life Jim performed a mental comparison. To his mind "Tammas" was the embodiment of all masculine charms, a man who could make jokes and who wore a suit of clothes that was black and shiny! He thought with shame of his own ragged raiment, which had always been good enough before, and thanked his stars for the darkness of the porch. He began wishing and planning for a real new suit of clothes, a suit that had never been worn before! On the way home, after a stubborn inattention to "Tammas"" remarks, Jim suddenly announced, "I be buyin' me a suit o' clothes tomorrow; new suit, out a store. Got five dollars off my job." He again relapsed into a stolid silence from which no words could move him.

The next evening he gazed long and intently at the clothes spread out on his cot. He touched them diffidently with the end of his forefinger. They were so beautiful and new. Jim could never remember having had a new suit before and he came as near to being excited as he had ever come in his life. New clothes meant that miraculous something which would make a different person of him. He considered Neotia as a natural adjunct of this new acquisition. She would succumb at

once.

Swelling with importance Jim seated himself on the back steps, later in the evening, and waited for Neotia. He was supremely happy, reflecting with conscious pride on his appearance Time passed and

he still sat there in a semi-conscious state until it gradually occurred to him that Neotia should have come out long since. However he only settled himself more comfortably, and waited. He wondered, dully, where she was and what could have happened to keep her away. But as the evening wore on and she still did not appear, he at length heaved a long sigh of regret and trudged off homewards. This occurred for three nights in succession and Jim was in a state of ever increasing perplexity.

On the third evening, at eleven o'clock he was still sitting on the steps, his mind a blank of dull bewilderment. This sudden demand for the play of imagination that had never even had its birth in him was too much to ask. About half-past eleven he came to himself with a start, on hearing the door of the automobile shed slide open. He watched it listlessly and to his surprise, Neotia and "Tammas" strayed out into the moonlight in close proximity. Jim heard "Tammas" making a few low voiced remarks and Neotia's giggling replies, without fully comprehending the situation. To jump at a conclusion was too difficult a feat for him. Neither of the two perceived Jim until they were close upon him so that each gave an involuntary start when they observed his crouching figure. "Tammas" was the first to recognize him, and, with an attempt at jocularity called out, "Hi, Jim ole feller, what you doin' 'round here this time o' night?"

"What you doin' yourself?" said Jim, quite unmoved.

There was a short silence. Then Jim asked, "Where you been these three evenins', Neoty?"

Neotia bridled.

"Ask Tammas," she said with a sudden inspiration. "Tammas" began to paw the ground like an impatient war horse.

"What business is it o' yours where she's been ?"

Jim utterly ignored this remark and turned back to Neotia. "Where you been?" he pleaded with a shade of distress in his voice.

"Well, if you must know,” she answered impatiently, "Tammas an' I been settin' in the automobile. Them cushions is a sight more comfortable place o' settin' than you ever thought on with them lightnin' brains o' yourn." "Tammas" loud, appreciative laughter spurred her on to continue,

"Law, don't you know I ain't studyin' 'bout you, Jim Baker?" and with a toss of the head, she started towards the back door. But Jim called her back.

"Wait, Neoty, you ain't seen. You ain't even looked," he remonstrated in a plaintive voice.

"I got a new suit!" That of course was all that it was necessary

to say and he assumed a majestic pose in the moonlight. But Neotia surveyed him with haughty scorn as he stood there in his cheap, stiff suit which seemed to hang on him in a way that entirely failed to adapt itself to his real shape.

"What am I keerin' about that?" she demanded. "Anyways you're such a sight in 'em you might do for a side-show at the circus." With this parting shot she flung into the kitchen and slammed the door.

The smile gradually faded off of Jim's face and left it expressionless. He stood, a forlorn, drooping figure in the moonlight listening to "Tammas”” laughter dying out down the road. "My clothes ain't no 'count," he finally muttered and kept repeating it dully to himself. That was the tangible thing which his mind could seize upon and try to comprehend. "My clothes ain't no 'count." It was this thought which burned itself upon his consciousness all the way home until the very fact of having the clothes on, filled him with mortification.

Once home, he sat staring dully into space for a long time, hardly moving a muscle. Then he slowly got up and packed his suit away in its box, consigning it, without a sigh of regret, to the eternal dust under his cot.

The next day Jim was sitting in his accustomed position on the fence. His clothes, his job, his "gal," were already things of the past. He gave a grunt of unutterable contentment as he settled himself for a good, old-time day of loafing. And Mrs. Matthews who was fluttering about her neat, little yard, hanging out clothes, made a mental note of the fact.

Caroline Goree Shepard, 1908

THE ORIGIN OF THE VASSAR COLLEGE CAMPUS

In a region surrounded by hills and not many miles distant from actual mountains, it may have seemed strange to some of us, that the Vassar Campus is as flat as any portion of the great western plains. If one stands at the "lodge," level fields may be seen extending in all directions with their floor-like surface unbroken except by a ledge in the field opposite College View Avenue and by the shallow depressions occupied by the "glen" and the "lake." If these minor hollows were filled up to the general surface there would be a plain nearly co-extensive with the campus and varying scarcely more than five or ten feet throughout its entire extent. A little stream, known as Casper Creek, flows through the "glen" and one of its lateral tributaries is artificially ponded at the old mill-dam to form the "lake."