“But you used to say that the winter was the best season for writing.” “I thought so at the time, but I find I was wrong. It will be a great blow to me to give up the work for the present, but there is no help for it.” When spring came I reminded him that now was his opportunity to begin the book. “You are eternally talking about that book,” he snarled. “I haven’t mentioned it for a month.” “Well, you are always looking at me as if I should be at it.” “Because you used to speak so enthusiastically about it.” “I am as enthusiastic as ever, but I can’t be forever writing at the book.” “We have now been married seven months, and you haven’t written a line yet.” He banged the doors again, and a week afterward he said that spring was a bad time for writing a book. “One likes to be out-of-doors,” he said, “in spring, watching the trees become green again. Wait till July, when one is glad to be indoors. Then I’ll give four hours to the work every evening.” Summer came, and then he said: “It is too hot to write books. Get me another bottle of iced soda-water. I’ll tackle the book in the autumn.” We have now been married more than five years, but the book is not begun yet. As a rule, we now shun the subject, but there are times when he still talks hopefully of beginning. I wonder if there are any other husbands like mine. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ WAR By JACK LONDON HE was a young man, not more than twenty-four or five, and he might have sat his horse with the careless grace of his youth had he not been so catlike and tense. His black eyes roved everywhere, catching the movements of twigs and branches where small birds hopped, questing ever onward through the changing vistas of trees and brush, and returning always to the clumps of undergrowth on either side. And as he watched, so did he listen, though he rode on in silence, save for the boom of heavy guns from far to the west. This had been sounding monotonously in his ears for hours, and only its cessation would have aroused his notice. For he had business closer to hand. Across his saddle-bow was balanced a carbine.