My Monks of Vagabondia

The bean soup which he was preparing for supper burned while he was deep in thought, and he blamed himself for his absent-mindedness.

“The boys will have to eat burnt soup just because I got to feeling sentimental,” he said to himself.

Then a word came that a nicely gowned young lady was coming up the driveway. There are many visitors at the Tea Room of the Colony House so it need have caused no excitement. But some one whispered “Look at Jim!”

He had glanced out at the approaching stranger, and he was pale and trembling. He said to me in a faint voice, “It’s my sister. Tell her I left this morning… Tell her I got a position.”

And then the bell rang and he said:

“Wait – I will see her.”

So brushing his hair and arranging his tie he went in to meet his sister.

The homeless outcast lad faced his aristocratic sweet-faced sister! As the boys saw them they did not know which one to pity the more, although the sympathy seemed to be pretty largely with Jim.

“Is every one well?” the brother asked, trying to relieve the strain of the situation.

“Yes,” she answered, "but why have you never written all these years? I got your letter this morning and left in an hour to get to you for fear I might lose you again. Father has hunted for you everywhere. He thinks he was harsh with you when you struck that day with the men – for you were only a child.

“I thought I might get you to come home with me,” she continued, “my husband and I have a splendid home. You are always welcome… Or why don’t you go back to your old job with Father. He needs you. He is getting older.”

“You think he would take me back?”

“Gladly. What are you doing here?”

“I am cook for the boys,” he said.

“You, a cook?” she smiled. "Why, you wouldn’t wash a dish at home for me when we were children. You can’t be very much of a cook… But never mind. I have found you."

“Confound it! I have let those beans burn again.” And he excused himself for a moment.

When he returned he said, “I will write you if I can decide to go back home. It comes a little suddenly you know. I have been a prodigal too long to turn into a father’s white-haired boy on the instant.”

Then after a moment he asked: “Do you know what Mother used to put into the beans when she burned them to take out the smoky taste?”

“Jim, Mother wasn’t that kind of a cook.”

As the sister was going out to step into the carriage she said, “Promise me you will not leave here without writing me. I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I promise,” he said.

That night the boys ate their supper in silence. Each one was deep in thought.

“Too bad the beans are burned,” Jim said.

“I like them that way,” replied one of the boys. “It makes them taste different.”

That night after supper no one wrote any letters, which was unusual, and one of the boys jokingly asked another near him, “Why don’t you write a letter home to your sister?”

“I am afraid,” replied the lad, “she might answer it in person like Jim’s sister did.”

Jim has taken a job on a farm and is saving his money. He has nearly enough to return to his old home; he refuses to accept any aid from his father or sister.

“I will go back as I came away – independently.”

EDISON’S EVENING STAR

“Seek him that maketh the seven stars and Orion: The Lord is his name.”

    – Bible.

Edison’s Evening Star

Hamlet: “Ay, marry, why was he sent into England?”

First Clown: “Why, because he was mad: he shall recover his wits there; or, if he do not, it’s no great matter there.”

Hamlet: “Why?”

First Clown: “‘Twill not be seen in him there; there the men are as mad as he.”

    – Shakespeare.
To be dull of wit is sadly unfortunate, but to be dull of wit and be compelled to live in a Colony made up of more or less reckless young men is doubly unfortunate.

In the group eccentricities are quickly discouraged. The grouch, the crank, the bully, if he would remain and live in harmony must learn his lesson in democracy – the individualist is given short shift.

Of course the dull of wit should be given immunity at all times, and in theory he is, but in real practice even the most gentle hearted man will have his little joke at the expense of the man less alert mentally. The members of the Colony are no exception to this rule.

“Tell us more,” the boys asked of the Moon-Struck-One, one evening after the day’s work was done, “about the inhabitants of Mars, which you see in your trances.”

And then he – the Moon-Struck-One – would explain in detail the strange people he had seen in his dreams.

“These planets,” he told them, “are all being made ready for the coming race of Man… After Cycles and Cycles, we move on to newer and better worlds… Each of the mystic Seven Planets are at the service of the human race. Time and time again a new world has borne the burden of the evolving man’s hope and his despair… The cosmic scheme is worthy of the Wondrous God, who holds not only the Seven Planets in control, but rules the Seven Universes with their Seven Suns – you laugh, most men laugh, the churchmen laugh, they do not know, they have not seen – but I know and have seen.”

“How interesting,” said one boy, winking slyly to his fellows. “I know something of astronomy myself; my brother was a Princeton graduate.”

It was a summer’s evening when this conversation took place and the boys were sitting out on the lawn enjoying the night air, for the day had been hot and oppressive.

“What do any of you know of the Stars?” said the Moon-Struck-Sage.

“Very little, but tell us,” said one of the boys, “for I believe in your visions. I dreamed one night myself about a big fire – a bad sign as you very well know – and the next day I got ‘pinched.’”

“Yes, you are deeply learned in the Stars,” he said with smiling skepticism, “that is, I suppose you can tell the difference between a star and a lantern.”

“Look out,” said a boy who had not spoken before, “he is joking you.”

“No, seriously,” said the Witless One, "when I said ‘lantern’ I had reference to the light that Edison hangs out each night when the weather is clear – you have no doubt read of it. He plans to construct a light that will illuminate this country at night almost as brightly as the sun lights it by day… Do you see that light just above the trees in the East. You can tell it as it is larger than any stars around it. It has the appearance of a star only much brighter. Do you see it?"

“Yes,” said the boys who were all attention, although one or two were skeptical until one of the group remembered that he had read about Edison’s powerful light in the Sunday magazine supplement of a New York paper.