ALL THAT A MAN HATH I THE pen slipped from Philip's fingers and unheeded rolled across the table, while with a sigh of weariness he abandoned himself to idleness. Resting his elbows upon the table, he sunk his chin into the palms of his hands and gazed listlessly out of the window on the street below. The cold gray light of the dull October afternoon was almost at an end; already the street-lamps were beginning to flare forth redly in bold relief against the gathering gloom of the coming night. To Philip it was a dispiriting and cheerless prospect, heightened by the winter's first chill breath. He had seen it all so often; if he could only see the last of it. Each year brought back those same dull days, with their leaden skies to fit into his worst mood of despair and longing and unfulfillment. He felt himself starved in mind and experience. He was conscious always of a fierce desire for something different—that broader life to which he could not go, and which would not come to him. *Written at the age of 20. Slowly his eyes came back to the table and a settled seriousness stole into them as he looked at the manuscript lying upon it. “I fancy it will be a go this time,” he thought, “but”—a bit sadly—“I have thought that so many times, and somehow I am just where I was in the start. No nearer success, no nearer anything—except perhaps the end of my hope and faith in myself.” He had risen and now stood looking down at the table with its litter of paper, pens and letters... and rising from the midst of the disorder—a mountain of hope—the pile of manuscript. It had meant days and weeks of labor: days when he had striven with enthusiasm for its completion; days, too, that had been given up to the savage denying of his mistrust and doubt. Through these and his varying moods he had toiled, and at last his task was approaching its end. Turning, Philip left the room and descended to the narrow hall below. Here it was already quite dark. He fumbled about until he found his hat and overcoat, and after getting into them made his way back through the parlor and sitting-room to the dining-room where his mother was arranging the supper table. “Oh, it is you, Philip,” she said, glancing up from her work. “I heard you in the hall and thought it must be the girls returning.” Mrs. Southard was a woman of fifty with a strong placid face that had taken comparatively few lines. Her dress was of the simplest black, and severely plain. It had been black ever since Philip could remember, for his father had died when he was a baby.