When he recovered sufficiently to sit up, and noticed the changed look in her beautiful eyes, he one day asked: “Agnes, dear Agnes, is it possible that since my health and wealth are gone you can love me?” She dropped her head and remained silent. “Forgive me,” he said sadly, “I was foolishly mistaken in what I saw in your eyes. I was looking through my love. Nobody could love a wreck like me.” She looked up with a world of love in her eyes and cried: “You were not mistaken, Harry! I do love you! and all the more because you need me now. I could not be a vine, but I can be your support and guide!” THE SALOON IN OUR TOWN I simply judge from what I’ve seen. When I moved to this backwoods village, six years ago, the hotel was the only industry in town—turning out “skates.” One of the daily patrons of the hotel bar was brother to a millionaire of Central Pennsylvania. I asked him one day if he didn’t envy his brother the great wealth he had piled up, but “Uncle Enoch” gave me a little dance on the flag stone in front of the post office and remarked: “Phil never had the good time in life that I am having. Besides this, he’s twenty years older than I am, which are good for at least five hundred jolly times. Without a sou or a picayune in my pockets, I’m as happy as a king, so long as I can work the crowd for a drink.” Well, who can say how much “Uncle Enoch’s” light-hearted manner cheered the plodding people, who worked year in and year out for a bare existence? I have seen men laugh at his drunken pranks who hadn’t given birth to a pleasant smile for weeks. But somewhere in the world a deserted wife ekes out her own living at slavish toil, because of Enoch’s love of the cup that cheers. And in his sober hours I have heard “Uncle Enoch” lament the loss of his companion, declaring that she was a good wife, and that the fault was all his own. This country hotel made a splendid stopping place for the sporting lawyers and business men of the nearest city, and no questions were asked when several automobile loads of sports and loudly dressed females stopped and engaged the ball room for a dance. “Uncle Enoch” would join them and dance in a corner, while the set was going through the whirling waltz, and sometimes stop the dance while he sang “My Bonny Black Bess.” Several other local characters patronized the bar and thought they were having a good time, but when seen next day in their homes, where poverty and squalor and ragged children predominated, one could easily see that their “good time” for one night cut a great gash into the bare comforts of life during the next two weeks. And the wife and children, who had no good time at all, were obliged to share in his regrets and poverty even longer than he; for he went out to work amongst the farmers, and was well fed, while the children and mother ate the scant supply of food in the neglected home.