protesting cries. Finally, as the last redness faints from the sky, their agitation ceases, and they vanish as mysteriously as they came. Have they escaped by the path of Heaven? Or have they resigned themselves to a resting place on earth?

In the old days the Russians used to come here in great numbers twenty-five thousand pilgrims a year, I am told. But their cathedral with its bell-towers, their hospital, their school, and their dispensary are closed or are occupied by Government offices. The only inmates left are one archimandrite and a few old women. I have strolled this morning among these low greenishviolet buildings, still covered with Russian inscriptions in black letters, have tried to reconstruct the picture of those chanting throngs in their blouses and high boots, their eyes aflame with an ecstasy of faith, and I reflected how much their absence aggravates the melancholy of Jerusalem. Orthodox Church bereft of a comforter! Martyr Church, whom Europe callously watches writhing under the lash of her persecutors!

A little farther on I stumbled upon the Armenian quarter. I thought this part of the city an image, a memory, perhaps the sepulchre of a great religious persecution, of defeated national hope. Here the Armenians took refuge in their terror, as behind the walls of a fortress. Their Church of St. James, with its brilliant faïence and its charming and reverently wrought Genoa screens, is cruelly empty. The courts that I entered, and that make me think of armory squares, were deserted. A convent and a cemetery with closed shutters! Where are they, the remnants of this race, massacred almost to a man? In front of an orphanage for such Armenians as survive are almost entirely orphans - little boys

and girls were playing, with alert countenances and brown eyes, whose first glimpse of God's world was in the midst of blood and rapine. They did not seem indifferent to their tragedy, even when playing and running about under the ancient umbrella pines. Their childish voices awoke a faint echo in the oppressive silence of the great courtyard. What a tiny group to be the seed of a renascent nation! Europe, have n't you even a tear for this Armenian Church, to whom you have so shamelessly lied, and who, behind walls in which she hardly dares to trust, lies expiring in Jerusalem, the city of lamentations?

Greek monks, bearded and magnificent, carefully groomed, with liquid eyes like those of romantic Christs! I cannot help thinking that they carefully nurse their beauty. Tawny and black-robed, and without a particle of white in their apparel, they have a funereal aspect. You see them everywhere entering and leaving buildings, like great jet crickets, important, wellfed, solemn, with their long gowns and high caps. Their majestic demeanor is not repellent; it may even be ingratiating-particularly, I am told, for an honest fee. But who is cynical enough to slip a few piastres into the hands of one of these personages, of whom even the humblest has the air of a patriarch? The Roman Catholics do not love them, claiming that they are selfindulgent and extortionate, and that they prey upon innocent pilgrims. They are even said to fill bottles with black smoke and sell it to trusting devotees as 'the darkness of Egypt.' On the other hand, the Greeks are equally critical of their Roman brethren. But this perpetual rivalry and wrangling and clerical bitterness are not inspired by spiritual fervor or indignation; they merely express the jealousy of the market place.

"Think of it! And after all that the Democratic Party has done for the people!'

It was three o'clock in the morning. Mr. Doolittle had left Texas Guinan's joint and was trying to go home. It was raining. Forgetting the low ceiling of the night club, the red-light district, and a ferocious cocktail made of fruit juice, dynamite, and eau de Cologne, he had just turned into Fifth Avenue at this late hour in order to drive his automobile down the large open street, when a man on the sidewalk signaled to him to stop. Mr. Doolittle put on the brakes, turned his head, and just missed a lamp-post. He got out and swore, but was really delighted at having another excuse for not going to bed. A tall, thin Chinaman was standing before him, dusty, covered with spider webs, and feebly protected from the rain by two old straw jackets shaped like chasubles and tied together with string. He was leading a white rooster on a leash. Mr. Doolittle thought that the fellow must be beating up trade for some hop joint, and started to continue his progress, when the Chinaman went on as follows:

'Excuse me, sir; I am poor very poor. I have come to ask you a favor that will cost you nothing.

1 From La Nouvelle Revue Française (Modernist Literary monthly), June

Mr. Doolittle was so drunk that he found it quite natural to be accosted on Fifth Avenue by a man a thousand years older than himself.

"Then you have come back?' he asked.

'Yes,' replied the Chinaman; ‘and I am a pilgrim in need.'

'I am Irish, as you ought to be able to see,' said Mr. Doolittle. 'I adore spooks. What can I do for you?'

'I

'Listen,' replied the spectre. lived in the Tang dynasty, and died in the year 837 of your era. In China dead people are buried with little clay figures which, as soon as they are put into the ground, come to life and render services to the corpse. My tomb included the traditional servants, dancers, fierce-looking warriors, dromedaries shot through with green enamel, wild boars, horses made of red claya magnificent company just like that which I had left behind me on earth, where I was a member of the Academy and honorary Viceroy of Kansu. These images watched over my sleep and my meals, according to the usual rites. As bad luck would have it, they were very beautiful.

"There is a Chinese proverb that says, "An ugly woman is a family treasure." The same thing could be said of funeral statuettes, because they are coveted for their beauty.

Two months ago, about the time of the eighth moon, a New York merchant, who was collecting local antiquities, took advantage of the state of anarchy into which Kansu has fallen to open my tomb. His attention had been attracted my way by the number of allegorical inscriptions and by the richness of the mausoleum. I designed it myself when I was alive. Eighteen astrologers had previously consulted about the choice and orientation of the site, which they had selected from among a hundred others with the aid of a magic compass and mirror. No star above and no dragon beneath was going to disturb my repose.

'One morning, while the light was blinding me, I heard someone knocking, and I saw leaning over me a little black man, dressed in a gray jacket and white gaiters, with a rose in his buttonhole. His hair was like the fleece of a newborn lamb. Behind him was a four-wheel cart, like yours, without horses and full of bags of money. This fellow, who dared to bring the world of light into the world of darkness, had, through the medium of his buyer, offered a bribe to the local subprefect and was carrying away all the little statues that decorated and guarded my tomb. When, like the foxes in our legends who enter houses and take away whatever they want, he had robbed my sepulchre, he rushed across the sea with his booty in a steam junk.

'Sir, from that time on I have not known what it is to rest. The dead people about me, knowing that I am now defenseless, have come and stolen my possessions-castor oil, ginger tea, perfumes, and the candles which my descendants still piously burn. I have to go out to eat. I have become one of those begging ghosts which every honorable Chinese looks upon

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with horror, I am reduced to eating chicken tripe, dead cats, and lice off my own body. I have to slink around the abattoirs where they kill pigs and extend myself — I, a Viceroy! — flat on my stomach and lick drops of blood from the dust in the street. And I have n't even mentioned the riffraff of ghosts who frequent my sepulchre and with whom I am obliged to associate in order to livesailors lost at sea, thunderstruck peasants, coolies dead in foreign countries, or, what is more ignoble still, soldiers killed on the field of battle. As you can see for yourself, there is nothing left of me but a wire. My soul will never have the strength to reincarnate itself. Really, it is tragic. I cannot be promoted to a superior rank. I am a shade deprived of all posthumous advancement.

'Having searched extensively,' continued Mr. U, 'I have discovered that my thief is called Willy Judesheim, and that he lives in New York. My quest has been particularly difficult, because during the day I must remain motionless in my tomb. Only at night am I able to pursue him. Now the hardest part of it is over. I have found his house. But where can I lodge my protest? In China a gong is hung at the door of a mandarin, and when a person with a complaint hits it the official is obliged to hear his case and pass judgment on it. I see nothing of the sort in America. Where is your justice?'

'I know nothing about it,' replied Mr. Doolittle. 'I have told you that I am an Irishman. I am a politician.

to justice.'

'And take note, sir, that I have not even got the resources at my disposal to take revenge on Mr. Judesheim. I cannot commit suicide in the customary fashion in front of his house, because I am dead already. If I were alive I should naturally take this course. In order to be as disagreeable as possible to him I would hang myself in the most painful manner. To hold him publicly responsible, I would stick a speech for the prosecuting attorney in my boot, or even, as the height of refinement and in order to spoil his case utterly, I would write about my suicide on my own skin. But this is all impossible. Therefore I am reduced to having to arrange my affairs with your aid. So may I ask you again: Is this really number 489?' Mr. U pointed his lean finger to a huge Renaissance palace in the Tudor style, made of brick and stone, that bore no resemblance to a house of business except for two yew trees and a beautiful marble plaque, as discreet as a visiting card, on which was written: 'Willy Judesheim. Expert and merchant of antique Chinese relics.'

'Here we are,' went on the ghost after Mr. Doolittle had deciphered the inscription for him. 'We must act quickly. I feel lost in your far-off country where houses have more than one story, where women have huge flat feet, and where one never meets a yellow llama or a camel. This is what I await from you, O living man: you are going to shout the following phrase in Chinese:

and rearrange themselves within my t tomb. But it is essential that you and not I should speak, because, as you perhaps do not know, authority over infernal beings extends only to living people, and a phantom has only a phantom of power. The prestige of the living man remains intact, especially if he gives his command by Imperial order.'

Mr. Doolittle saw that he could not get into Mr. Judesheim's house, for the doors were watched by detectives and protected by burglar alarms.

'Only go as far as the wall,' said the Chinaman. 'My servants are on the other side. I can see them. They are all grouped in the marble hall on the ground floor, arranged in the high windows. Not having a sword, which is so useful to intimidate spirits with, you might brandish your umbrella and face the four points of the compass, as the old lore recommends. Then breathe deeply, hold your breath as astrologers do, and, above all, shout very loud indeed.'

'Yu-tche li-k'o Chang Kan-su k'iu. K'inn tse,' shouted Mr. Doolittle twice, in as loud a voice as if he had been addressing a public meeting.

"This means, roughly: "This rabble, by Imperial order, will go back to Kansu at once." At the words "by Imperial order" my clay guards, who date from an epoch when inferiors

time for his first crow is at hand. I must return to my body and my profaned tomb. For you who are alive, it is twenty-five days' journey from here. For me, it is a matter of a few seconds, thanks to the aid of infernal

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powers. Be so good, in the meantime, as to accept with my gratitude this little present.'

With these words Mr. U deposited in the back of Mr. Doolittle's Ford a very heavy silver bag which, he assured him, was tied with a thousand strings. Then he pulled his decaying jackets about his shoulders, led his rooster after him, and walked as far as Central Park, where he disappeared under the gaslight.

Mr. Doolittle went home. After having hit the wrong story several times, he at last found his room, the door to his room, and the keyhole of the door. He put the sack of money under his bed and went to sleep.

He woke up next morning in bed with all his clothes on. The New York Times had arrived. There he read, in big headlines, that the house of Mr. Judesheim, the eminent exporter, had been broken in upon during the night

and that a unique collection of ancient Chinese valuables, for which the Boston Art Museum had recently offered a million dollars, lay in pieces on the floor, while the rarest objects of all, which were the funeral statuettes lately brought from China, had disappeared.

Mr. Doolittle then remembered that he had put his recompense under the bed when he went to sleep. He reached beneath and lifted the bedclothes halfway up so as to be able to raise the heavy sack more easily; but to his surprise it now weighed hardly any more than his newspaper. He jumped out of bed, grabbed a pair of nail scissors, and opened his treasure. The sack was full of slivers of gilt, which at first glance he mistook for confetti from Texas Guinan's joint, but which were in reality that fictitious paper money that in China is left with the dead.

A flower most bitterly shed.