she did not take her social problems to him for solution nor appeal to him for help. The one exception seems to have been when, on her deathbed, she confided to him her desire to have the bill passed that meant the cleaning out of the disreputable alleys in the slum districts of Washington. Just before she passed into unconsciousness, it is gratifying to know, he had the pleasure of informing her that the bill had become law, and she smiled in deep satisfaction.

The N. Y. Times pays a feeling tribute to her character in the following words:

"No gentler, kindlier, sweeter soul ever passed from earth than that which left it yesterday. In the womanhood of the White House, Americans have always taken pride; each of its mistresses has illustrated some admirable phaze of the American woman, and Mrs. Wilson illustrated that of love for others. To call her charitable would be to use a debased word and convey the idea of a mere moneygiver; her charity was that which longs to bind up the wounded and mend the broken, which finds the greatest joy of life in seeing tears turn to smiles. Not only did the sight of pain and suffering in others trouble her, but the idea that it might exist somewhere and she not know it troubled her; and she was never easy until she had hunted for it, found it, and relieved it. . . .

"Simple, unpretending, thoughtful of everybody but herself, her courtesy was not a thing of etiquet but the natural expression of her nature. The White House is haunted with memories of many gracious women, and hers among them will be the memory of a sunbeam."

All over the country the press turned for a time last month from the crushing news from abroad to pay tribute to the first lady of the land who has given her life in payment for her zeal in service. The malady that sapped her powers, so we are told by her physician, developed as "one of the results of a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork." He adds: "In her ambition to perform her full duty in Washington, Mrs. Wilson added to her social obligations a very great activity in philanthropic work, connected with the redemption of the slums of Washington city, and in various other enterprizes connected with the betterment of conditions of life here. At the same time she was very active in attempting to bring about constructive action in the matter of education in the Southern mountain districts."

So quietly and unostentatiously did. Mrs. Wilson carry on her social service work that the world knew next to nothing of it until her death brought it to public attention. She had the qualities of a first-class soldier, including that of fortitude. "I never saw a woman," says Dr. Grayson, "who suffered so keenly and endured it with such fortitude." She is said to have been in

Copyright, Harris & Ewing

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"I NEVER SAW A WOMAN," SAID DR. GRAYSON OF MRS. WOODROW WILSON "WHO SUFFERED SO KEENLY AND ENDURED IT WITH SUCH FORTITUDE"

robust health when she went to the White House. But the duties assumed by her in connection with the work of the Southern Industrial Association and the Woman's Welfare Department of the National Civic Federation and other like duties, added to those which came to her inevitably as mistress of the White House, proved too much for her strength.

She will be succeeded, we presume, by her daughter Margaret, who is remarkable chiefly for the wide variety of her interests. She is a singer of considerable accomplishment, is fond of all kinds of sports and outdoor exer

A

cize, loves to dance, and has a keen, alert mind which is equal to almost any occasion. She is also as keenly interested in social work as her mother was. Here is the record of four successive evenings in her life as given recently by a writer in Harper's Weekly: "Attended the Monday Evening Club to hear a discussion on medical inspection of school children and the school nursing system; visited Neighborhood House, the chief social settlement of Washington; visited the Grover Cleveland School Social Center, dancing the Virginia Reel with the children; presided at a meeting of the S. P. U. G.,

as chairman of its local committee." She can adapt herself readily to different people and hold her own with a high-brow who discourses on transcendentalism or with a low-brow who talks about English bulldogs. But there is one thing neither she nor any other can do, and that is take the place in Woodrow Wilson's life that is left empty by the death of his noble-minded wife.

The grim reaper with the scythe and the prankish little boy with the bow and arrows have between them shattered the President's home-life irredeemably.

LL studies of the personality of Nicholas II. promote a misconception of the man because the essentially artistic basis of his temperament is undetected by the Philistines who describe it. The Czar of all the Russias, to follow the Paris Figaro, from which we derive these hints, has the soul of the artist -its melancholy, its sweetness and its incapacity to make itself understood save to a discerning few. What wonder, then, if the analyses of his character impart to a bewildered world ideas of a man half mad, a despot lurking in fear froin the murderer? Among the misfortunes of Nicholas II. is the tendency of the unsympathetic and the uncomprehending to look into his being through the eye of a mind prejudiced against all artistry. The poets will understand this Czar, we read, and the painters. He will be intelligible to those priests who share the beatific vision and to all who dream to any purpose. Only within recent years has the greatness of Nicholas II. been suspected, seeing that his great giftthe artist faculty is hateful to the materialists who in all lands to-day make him the victim of their calumnies and misrepresentations.

A perfect illustration of the wrong done the Czar in contemporary estimates is afforded by the familiar charge that he vacillates, that the last to gain his ear has his voice. The truth is, according to the Paris Gaulois, that the sweetness of his nature, asserting itself in his intercourse with the humblest, is mistaken by too many for another sentiment entirely. The Czar will never wound the feelings of a petitioner. He listens to all with a patient and impeccable politeness of which undue advantage has been taken in the past. The last to whom he listens never finds him more courteous than the first. Nicholas II. is merely the victim of men who, destitute of the artistic point of view, paint him now as mad, again as heartless, often as deceitful. Having

the temperament of genius, his characteristics are necessarily those of that temperament. To be completely understood, he should be met upon his own plane, criticized, that is to say, from his own standpoint.

Thus viewed, Nicholas II. undoubtedly, as even our sympathetic French interpreters of him admit, has traits exasperating to the merely practical. Nothing delights the Czar more, for example, than those artistic effects for which his environment, wherever he may happen to be, is justly celebrated. He will not trust the placing of a favorite picture to any subordinate. He will not tolerate in his study or in his sleeping room any statue alien to his personal taste. Even his favorite authors are stylists first and foremost and he can not endure Gorky, we read, because of the barbarisms of that author's manner. Beauty is the supreme test with his Majesty always, and this beauty must characterize the conduct he admires as well as the poem he applauds. Every misrepresentation of the Czar reveals this propensity in a sinister light. "I am so glad you have come! You can tell me whether this picture hangs well or not!" These were the words with which Nicholas II. welcomed Prime Minister Kokovtseff to Livadia, when the statesman had a weighty financial problem on his own mind. The remark was innocent enough. The Czar was hanging some rare Japanese color prints in which he is immensely interested. admitting the statesman to a delightful intimacy. Equally ill-natured are comments upon his Majesty's habit of dining at the regimental mess in Tsarskoye Selo, where the small talk is often witty. In his private capacity, as our French contemporaries see him, Nicholas II. is a country gentleman with a passion for the arts and a melancholy and romantic soul. This, avers the Gaulois, is the very worst that can be said of him, for his private life is free from scandal, despite innuendoes

He was

in a certain German press with reference to mystics.

Nicholas II., to follow another study of him in the London Standard, is a type of sovereign new to Russia, more accustomed to the man of action like that terrible Ivan who knew no culture or that great Peter whose coarseness amazed mankind. The present ruler of Muscovy is rather of the type of the scholar, turning and hesitating too much like a Hamlet, perhaps, but in all things gentle and lovable. Modest, unassuming, and a thinker, Nicholas II. has an enchanting frankness of manner notwithstanding a secretive instinct that gets the upper hand of him every now and then.

He is only now, our contemporary suspects, beginning to be understood, even by his own people. The charge of lack of character and of want of courage can be seen in all their falsity by the world, yet calumnies such as these have been the materials out of which impressions were formed until lately. As a scholar and not a man of action, Nicholas II. has followed naturally the path along which the carefully trained scholar alone can walk-the path to his ends that is taken by the diplomatist. Yet none has ever yet been able conscientiously to assure himself that he really knew what was in his master's mind. A shrewd old diplomatist, after long study of the Czar, is quoted in the London daily as having said: "I know Nicholas II. and, notwithstanding his Byzantine eyes, his Majesty has a heart of guile."

The reference to Byzantine eyes is significant to this friendly observer. Nicholas II. has the melting, trustful eyes which all artists of the devout and orthodox school lend to their saints on the ikons. The expression of the imperial countenance accords well with the eyes, is, in fact, a completion or complement of them, in gentleness, in melancholy and in that subtle but ingratiating something which commands sympathy and interest. The voice, too,

is renowned for its sweetness precisely as the manner is unexampled in its courtesy. The effect of the whole personality is thus overwhelming, it being quite impossible to realize, our contemporary tells us, that the deferential, sympathetic, well-bred gentleman talking poetry and art with so insinuating and yet so wistful a smile as he passes the cigarets can be the head of the Romanoff dynasty and first Czar of all the Russias porphyrogenitus. His career confirms his temperament, for from the day he ascended the throne twenty years ago it has been his consistent practice, we read, to refrain from all personal acts of despotic power. He gave from the outset and long before anything like a constitution was deemed attainable a wider range of freedom to his people than any other Russian ruler ever gave before. He listened to more widely diverging schools of political opinion than any other Czar had listened to. The one school of thought whose destruction he has sanctioned is the school of anarchy which recognizes dynamite as a political weapon and incendiarism as an argument against the rights of property. He may look out upon the world through the eyes of the artist, adds this authority, but the artist is a supremely great one.

Temperament, too, accounts for the long explorations of the spirit world which have led to such astounding misconceptions of the Czar's attitude to psychical research. Impressions that his Majesty talks with ghosts by the hour and accords to their deliverances the weight of pontifical infallibility are scarcely less fantastic to the Paris Figaro than some recent tales that his Majesty yields to the spell of opium. The truth is that Nicholas II. has always felt the keenest interest in spiritualism, in trance phenomena and in clairvoyance. No medium of any importance can visit St. Petersburg without attracting in some degree the personal attention of the Czar. His characteristic courtesy prompts him to receive these mediators between this world and the next with an affability incomprehensible to the uninitiated. The spectacle of a potentate in confabulation with a nondescript who promises a reincarnation of Peter the Great and the seriousness with which preposterous communications are read aloud by Nicholas II. to a company of his intimates, to say nothing of the irresponsible boasts circulated by the mountebank who brought on the ghost, poison the ear of mankind, as the Gaulois tells us. But the Czar himself

never loses his head or his judgment simply because a supernormal agency has interposed between himself and every-day experience.

Inevitably, with his temperament, Nicholas II. addicts himself at times to versification. This, explains the Figaro, is scarcely remarkable, in view of the literary aptitudes of the present generation of Romanoffs. There is a very respectable playwright in the family and if the Czar were not so powerful a sovereign he might venture, like the King of Montenegro or the Queen of Rumania, to give his poetry to the world. It is said to circulate privately in limited editions printed under an assumed name. Quotations from it, appearing at long intervals in translation, are pronounced spurious by the Paris paper, which understands that the Romanoff muse is melancholy, on the whole. This pensiveness is manifest, too, in the favorite literature of the Czar and in the music that he loves and in the pictures with which he relieves now and then the monotony of a somewhat rural existence. It is somewhat unfortunate that Nicholas II. dislikes the noise and bustle of cities, opines the French daily. He is never completely in touch. as a result, with the intellectual life of his country.

young Russian composer, a penniless refugee who has been in New York only a few weeks. Evidently he is a better musician than bookkeeper, for the two partners quarrel violently about him.

PERLMUTTER. (Looks at Andrieff angrily.) Say, how long we going to keep that fellow?

Why, what's the matter?

he send it last week a bill to Perlstein, Gimmel and Company for eighty dollars when should it have been eight hundred? Bah! He understands music and opera better than he understands bookkeeping.

PERLMUTTER. He's all right, eh? Didn't

POTASH. Well, can he help it that he

loves it music? All the operas he knows it from Travayter and Travatory backwards to Palliatski. The boy is simply musical.

PERLMUTTER. What is it here, a music store or a cloak and suit house? Maybe you want him to write operas in our books? And his character! With no references he comes. From off the streets you take a man to make out our checks and handle our cash?

arises out of the relation of Potash to Perlmutter and Perlmutter to Potash: "tho they are perpetually abusing each other and quarreling, they are united by a tie of the strongest loyalty and affection." The London points out that nothing quite like them has been on the English stage before. "Playwrights and novelists have given as endless portraits and caricatures of Jews, mostly unpleasing, sometimes tragic. It is only of recent years that any attempt has been made to bring home to the public at large the possibility for comedy, conscious or unconscious, which are to be found in the

life of the modern Jew. Mr. Zangwill has given us mordant, ironic, and tragic sketches of the Jew in transition: Mr. Glass is concerned with the humorous aspects of that type as conditioned by the commercial system of a great American city. He shows us the Jew as 'hustler,' yet at every turn governed or affected by the abiding characteristics of the race. The chief interest of the play is in the conflict between the acquisitive instinct and generous domestic impulses. . . . But it is interesting as a psychological study of the mingled enterprize and caution, astuteness and rashness, of the Semitic temperament."

With the rise of the curtain on the first act, we find ourselves in the midst of the cloak and suit trade in East Broadway, in the busy offices of Potash and Perlmutter. The traveling salesman, Mannie Immerglick, is to be dis

POTASH. You introduced him to me as a first-class man. PERLMUTTER. Introducing is one thing, hiring is another.

POTASH. All right, I hired him; but you wanted him.

PERLMUTTER. I wanted him? You know, Abe-honestly-you've forgotten it

how to tell the truth already.

POTASH. That one partner should live to call the other partner a liar. (Rising.) PERLMUTTER. It was me-call it to my face-go on-call it-it's all right-I don't mind.

POTASH. No, Mawruss, I wouldn't call Here's you a liar, even if I thought so. a fine cigar that Marlinisky gave me. Smoke it. What's the use of having arguments all the time? Foolish argu

ments.

guages-German and French-and English. English he speaks as perfect as you or me-even perfecter-und I should let him starve? Now you got me mad. The only use some people got for a partner is they could always blame him for everything that goes wrong-and take credit for everything that goes right. Partners -Bah!

PERLMUTTER. Partners-Bah!
POTASH. Yes-partners.

PERLMUTTER. By golly, the man that invented partners had a grudge against the human race. (Boris, who has heard the conversation referring to him, comes down stage. His manner is very polite and dignified.)

BORIS. I beg your pardon, Mr. Potash, Mr. Perlmutter, it was impossible for me not to overhear. I-if it won't cause you any inconvenience I'll leave at the end of

The new bookkeeper of the cloak and suit manufacturers is Boris Andrieff, a

PERLMUTTER. Suits me
POTASH. Leave! Why?

BORIS. In regard to my being without references. I left Russia in extreme haste-all my papers and baggage were taken from me. Since I have landed here I could not think of coming between you. you have been my only friends. Really,

POTASH. Mawruss-
PERLMUTTER. What is it?

POTASH. We owe to this gentleman an apology.

BORIS. No, really I

PERLMUTTER. Nothing the matter with it. It's all right.

BORIS. Thanks! I-I smoke cigarets. PERLMUTTER. I suppose you save the coupons. How much are you getting in wages now?

BORIS. Twelve dollars a week, sir. PERLMUTTER. From Saturday night you get fifteen.

BORIS. But, Mr. Perlmutter, I don't think

PERLMUTTER. Pay no attention to Potash. If he makes a kick about my raising your wages I fix it. It's all right, eh?

Henry P. Feldman, the lawyer, has arranged to bring the designer of the famous sacque to meet Messrs. Potash and Perlmutter. Presently the designer enters, a charming, energetic young woman named Ruth Goldman. Miss Goldman modestly declares the famous Arverne sacque which has

made thousands of dollars for Mendal and Gleckstein, a "mere trifle." But Potash and Perlmutter involve themselves in so many quarrels during the interview that Miss Goldman is not anxious to sign a contract with them, pointing out the difficulties of pleasing both partners. They finally ask her to name her own figure. At this point Miss Goldman discovers the presence of Andrieff, whom she had met on the steamer in returning from Europe. She greets him so cordially that Perlmutter loses no time in giving Andrieff a tendollar bill to enable him to take Miss Goldman to luncheon and to influence the young woman to sign a contract with them.

Presently appears Mark Pasinsky, buyer for a Chicago store. The Potash and Perlmutter models do not please him until Miss Goldman hastily remodels a gown in accordance with the western taste, and Pasinsky immediately places a large order for that par

ticular model.

We soon discover that Irma Potash, the senior partner's daughter, is attracted to the young Russian bookkeeper, and has come down to invite him to a musicale. But suddenly two United States deputy marshals enter with a warrant for the arrest of An

drieff. Abe and Morris are in a panic of fear, certain that they have been victimized by a forger. The act concludes:

SIDNEY. Yes, sir. (Exit both.) PERLMUTTER. He'll tear up the papers and throw them in my face! (Runs up to top of step.) I don't take no bluffs you know, Mr. Andrieff.

BORIS. Yes, sir.

PERLMUTTER. You know that fellow Abe Potash is a fine fellow; but he can't take it a joke, by golly; he ain't got an ounce of humor in his whole body. Have a cigar.

BORIS. No, thanks, I

POTASH. My, my, my! (To Andrieff, rocking himself from side to side.) A misfortune. Why did you do it? I would have lent it you some money like as you vas my own son. Why did you commit forgery?

BORIS. I didn't, Mr. Potash, I didn't. POTASH. (To Ferguson.) How much did he take, Mr. Policeman?

FERGUSON. I'm not a policeman, I'm a U. S. Deputy Marshal. This isn't a forgery case. He's wanted by the Russian

POTASH GLARES BACK AT PERL

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173

They always "make up" in the end. government-bomb-throwing or something

of that sort.

PERLMUTTER. He shall throw a bomb! POTASH. No, sir, never. He's a peaceable young man.

FERGUSON. Now, listen. The Russian Consulate has applied to the State Department for his extradition and return to St. Petersburg. The Chief of Police in Kiel has been killed and he's charged with

being concerned in the case.

BORIS. It's absolutely false. I knew nothing whatever of the matter. I was only a student at the time.

MISS GOLDMAN. Don't say anything. We'll get a good lawyer. He'll tell you what to say.

FERGUSON. We'll have to take you be

fore the Commissioner, or will you waive examination and go back to Russia?

POTASH. Don't waive, don't waivewait till Feldman

MISS GOLDMAN. Feldman! That crook? Senator Murphy is the man for us. If it's a political job we want a politiciannot a trickster.

BORIS. (Rising.) What can I say to you, gentlemen, for having caused you all this trouble. It's my fault, tho. I never should have left Russia until my name was cleared. My father and my eldest brother were killed in the massacre in Kiel-while I was studying at the St. Petersburg University. When the Chief of Police was killed I was accused of being concerned in the plot because I knew some of the men who were mixed up in it. If I stayed in Russia I'd have been executed or in Siberia by now. Don't let them send me back. You don't get a fair