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Kansas University Weekly.
work, and wrote a poem on cigars and beer that was intensely more "lotusy" than the Lotus Eaters of Tennyson.
So to avoid disagreement Booth resumed the discussion of tobacco and the unanimous verdict was
For thy sake, Tobacco, I Would do anything but die.
Now Two-Step was the only member who had never tasted the vapor of nicotine and after hearing Daub's convincing argument he said: "Say boys, who's got an extra pipe?"
"Ho, ho, Two Step's going to begin on a pipe! Ha, ha, ha,-ho, ho, ho."
"You must think I can't smoke. Gimme a pipe, and I'll smoke till morning."
Now Daub had an aged meerchaum with a stem ropy with the distilled sweets of several years. He used to take it fishing, and camping, and to stag parties, and to other places that develop the flavor of a meerchaum. It is brown as coffee tho' he has never had it boiled. (Every meerchaum lover knows what a boiled pipe is.) And this was the pipe that Two-Step borrowed.
Well, he puffed most robustly. Then he turned a little pale and everybody laughed. He began to put less energy in puffing and more in spitting. Everybody had an eye on him.
"Say, boys, do doctors agree on the effects of smoking on a man's stomach?"
"Ha, ha, ha, only beginners agree on that."
"Well I'm no beginner. Sick? No, you chump. Face turning red? I thought you said it was pale. Say this room is infernally hot. I'm going to the window."
Two-Step puts his head out into the cold night and beats the half burned tobacco from his pipe. He curses the pipe and says he prefers a strong cigar. Daub feels hurt at the remarks about his precious pipe and fearing that Two-Step may throw it into the street takes it from him.
Two-Step turns from the window. He refuses to dance with Booth. He is hysterical. He swallows with difficulty.
"Don't your head swim? Your throat feel dummy? And your stomach sort o' lifty like?"
"Naw," retorted Two-Step.
Then everybody returned to their pipes. Two-Step acts like one who has foreboding of evil, then he says:
"I say, boys, is there a lemon in this den?"
"A lemon! a lemon! Oh Two-Step that gives it away. Own up; the pipe has downed you."
"Nothing of the kind. I have a taste for lemons. Isn't it time to go?"
"Time to go? Why man we have not read Mlle. New York yet. Sit down and keep quiet."
The Bohemians read and commented on the latest spasmodic efforts at originality but TwoStep has lost his customary interest. Finally he says, "Who's got a nickel to lend me?" "To buy a lemon? Oh that'll make you all the worse. Sit down and be still."
The discussion continues till Two-Step says,
"I'm sorry to leave you so early, but I must look after a Republican primary to-night so please excuse me."
So Two-Step staggered from the room and everybody laughed. CYLEGICEL.
---
Alone.
It had snowed in the morning, that dry, fine blizzard snow that they have in western Kansas; then at noon the wind had risen to a gale. It picked up the light snow and whirled it through the air in blinding sheets. It was cold, bitterly cold, and the wind howled across the long stretches of barren prairie without a tree or a seem to break its sweep. On such a day men have lost their way and perished from cold within a stone's throw of their own doors.
Plodding steadily through the storm went a little spotted pony, its rider bending low over the saddle to avoid the flying snow that cut and blinded him. A man would have lost his way, but the unerring instinct of the horse carried it safely to its own stable door.
The squalor of his dugout had never struck the man as forcibly as it did when he went into it out of the storm. It was only about ten feet square and so low that he could scarcely