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possible with the microscope alone. One day a lot of samples of laces came in from abroad. Some of these the young man, after using his glass, considered spurious. He took them home that evening and applied the chemical tests. The next morning he reported to the department manager, a successor to the one under whom he had first been employed, that the samples were of spurious goods.

"Why don't you mind your own business?" was the irritable retort; "these samples are all right."

But Smith, saying nothing, went to the superintendent and made a statement of what he had discovered.

"How on earth do you know this?" demanded the young man's superior.

"Professor Moeckmann has been instructing me in chemical tests of thread fibers for several months."

"I'll think the matter over," said the superintendent, briefly. He did, even to the extent of communicating with the professor. The result was that the new department manager was dismissed, and Smith, after some urging, took his place, at a comparatively low beginning salary of thirty dollars a week. Brown, who was now receiving eight dollars a week, had begun to feel a positive dislike for his more successful friend.

Three more years went by. Smith drew forty-five dollars a week, while his erstwhile friend had gone up to ten. The buyer for the lace department, who had grown old and wished to retire, was about to make his last trip to Ireland and France for laces. He requested that Smith should go with him. "You always have been lucky," growled Brown, when he heard the news. "You're off for a fine trip abroad, with all expenses paid, and I suppose you're going to have your salary raised?"

"Pitch in and study, Jack," whispered Smith. "I've three days yet before I sail. Come around, and I'll get you started."

'Sorry, but I can't, old fellow. I've got engagements for every night this week."

Two months later Smith returned to the store, strolled through it, and went up to the lace counter.

Brown stood there, looking most disconsolate. His face brightened up, however, as he saw his friend approaching.

"Fred," he whispered excitedly, "I guess you can do me a big favor. I've been discharged. The fellow they put in your place has told me I'm through Saturday. Said a man who had been here so long and who was only worth ten dollars a week wasn't worth keeping. I suppose, though," enviously, — "you've had another raise of pay?"

"Yes, Mr. Stallman, the foreign buyer, has retired, and I've been put in his place. I'm to begin with four thousand a year and traveling expenses."

Brown threw up his hands in a gesture that expressed a variety of emotions.

"Favoritism!" he muttered, scowling at the ceiling.

-H. IRVING HANCOCK.

ROCKY MOUNTAIN JACK

I. "Jus' MY LUCK "

WE were generally a party of a half dozen

the owners of the four wagons, a couple of friends trading with Delagoa, a man from Swaziland, and — just then an old Yankee hunterprospector. It was our holiday time, before the hard work with

loads would commence, and we dawdled along feeding up the cattle and taking it easy ourselves.

It was too early for loads in the Bay, so we moved slowly and hunted on the way, sometimes camping for several days in places where grass and water were good; and that lion skin was the cause of many disappointments to me. Never a bush or ant-heap, never a donga or a patch of reeds, did I pass for many days after that without the conviction that something was lurking there. Game there was in plenty, no doubt, but it did not come my way. Days went by with, once or twice, the sight of some small buck just as it disappeared, and many times, the noise of something in the bush or the sound of galloping feet. Others brought their contributions to the pot daily, and there seemed to be no reason in the world why I alone should fail-no reason except sheer bad luck! It is difficult to believe you have made mistakes when you do not know enough to recognize them, and have no idea of the extent of your own ignorance; and then bad luck is such an easy and such a flattering explanation! If I did not go so far on the easy road of excuse-making as to put all the failures down to bad luck perhaps some one else deserves the credit.

One evening as we were lounging round the camp fire, Robbie, failing to find a soft spot for his head on a thorn log, got up reluctantly to fetch his blankets, exclaiming with a mock tragic air:

The time is out of joint; O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right.

We knew Robbie's way. There were times when he would spout heroics, suggested by some passing trifle, his own face a

marvel of solemnity the whole time, and only the amused expression in his spectacled gray eyes to show he was poking fun at himself. An indulgent smile, a chuckle, and the genial comment "Silly ass!" came from different quarters; for Robbie was a favorite. Only old Rocky maintained his usual gravity.

As Robbie settled down again in comfort, the old man remarked in level thoughtful tones: "I reckon the feller as said that was a waster, he chucked it!" There was a short pause in which I, in my ignorance, began to wonder if it was possible that Rocky did not know the source; or did he take the quotation seriously? Then Robbie answered in mild protest: "It was a gentleman of the name of Hamlet who said it."

"Well, you can bet he was no good, anyhow," Rocky drawled out. "Jus' my luck!' is the waster's motto!"

"They do say he was mad," Robbie replied, as his face twitched with a pull-your-leg expression, "but he got off a lot of first-class things all the same

said."

some of the best things ever

But a man as sets down and

"I da' say; they mostly can. blames his luck is no good anyhow. He's got no sand, and got no sense, and got no honesty! It ain't the time's wrong: it's the man! It ain't the job's too big: it's the man's too little!" "You don't believe in luck at all, Rocky?" I ventured to put in.

"I don't say thar's no such thing as luck good and bad; but it ain't the explanation o' success an' failure - not by a long way. No, sirree, luck's just the thing any man'd like ter believe is the reason for his failure and another feller's success. But it ain't so. When another man pulls off what you don't, the first thing you got ter believe is it's your own fault; and the last, it's his luck. And you jus' got ter wade in an' find

out whar you went wrong, an' put it right, 'thout any excuses an' explanations."

"But, Rocky, explanations aren't always excuses, and sometimes you really have to give them!"

"Sonny, you kin reckon it dead sure thar's something wrong 'bout a thing that don't explain itself; an' one explanation's as bad as two mistakes it don't fool anybody worth speaking of, 'cept yerself. You find the remedy; you can leave other folks put up the excuses."

-

I was beaten. It was no use going on, for I knew he was right. I suppose the other fellows also knew whom he was getting at, but they said nothing; and the subject seemed to have dropped, when Rocky, harking back to Robbie's quotation, said, with a ghost of a smile: "I reckon ef that sharp o' your'n hed ter keep the camp in meat we'd go pretty nigh hungry."

But it seemed a good deal to give up all at once the bad luck, the excuses and explanations, and the comfort they afforded; and I could not help thinking of that wretched wrongheaded steinbuck that had actually allowed me to pass it, and then cantered away behind me.

Rocky, in full, Rocky Mountain Jack had another name, but it was known to few besides the Mining Commissioner's clerk who registered his licenses from time to time. "In the Rockies whar I was raised" is about the only remark having deliberate reference to his personal history which he was known to have made; but it was enough on which to found the name by which we knew him.

There did not seem to be any known region of the earth where prospectors roam that he had not sampled, and yet whilst gleaning something from every land, his native flavor clung