from them instincts of faithfulness to Kama, to the Mikado, to our own people. Can your American men honor you more than this?"

"No." She said it slowly, thoughtfully, "Yet it would seem to me as if in your religion there is no place for women."

I

"Religion," he shrugged his shoulders, "that is another thing. I have but little time for that. I am young. have much to learn. I study your great electricities, your manufactures, your arts. When I am old, perhaps I shall study religion."

"If you do not find it too late," she murmured.

"Perhaps, but I shall have done my best and that will be the end. Our Buddhists say that you can wish an enemy no greater harm than that he should live again after death-who knows? But you are not right about the place of women. In Buddhism there is respect for her. Even the imagery of the holy books is full of her. 'The evening was like a lovely maiden, the stars were the pearls upon her neck, the dark clouds her braided hair, the deepening space her flowing robe. As a crown she had the heavens where the angels dwell, the three worlds were as her body, her eyes were the white lotus flowers which open to the rising moon, her voice was as the humming of bees. To worship the Buddha and to hear his words this lovely maiden came.'

"The precepts of Buddha teach the husband's care for the wife and mother:

'To support father and mother,

To cherish wife and child,
To perform blameless deeds,
This is the greatest blessing.'

"What does your religion more?" he asked.

"Perhaps nothing more as to deeds," she scarcely knew how to answer him,

for the conversation never before had taken so deep a tone. "But the spirit is different."

"I do not know your spirit; it is hard to comprehend your religions," discontentedly. "In Japan there are many. My friend, he marry American girl, he take American religion to please her. I think he does like it not, but he like the girl and she does not like Shinto. So he gets himself Christianed, they call him George, as his own name, and make him a Skipalian. Besides them, there are four kinds of American Churches in Japan. They all have many words, they all quarrel about themselves. I do not like them, they have no reasons. My friend says they leave each man to believe very much what he likes. Only one there is which says, 'You must believe this, you must do that,' and he has some authority. The black-gowned priests at the Catholic Church, they seem sure. If I would learn of any of these new religions it would be theirs."

"The Catholic religion is not very new, it is four hundred years older than Buddhism," said Alys, quietly.

"How do you know that," he asked, surprised.

"Oh, I am a Catholic," she replied. "It seems to me that all your religions place women on a lower plane and that it is my Church alone which raises her to be man's equal, not in deeds, perhaps, nor in the same qualities, but in those of equal importance to the world."

"It may be, but I think it not." He knit his brows. "Perhaps I may look wrong, but to be the mother of fair sons who would make earth better as the years went on, what would woman want more than that? What did your Virgin Mary more?"

"Much more," Alys spoke quietly, but her eyes were alight and there was a warm glow upon her cheek. “I grant

you that was the chief thing she did, and upon that rests her fame, but, first of all, it was her own character which made such a deed possible. It is the Christian idea of the character of woman that you do not grasp. She is not a mere machine, subservient to man, to his wishes, his desires-she is herself! If she keeps before her ever the one perfect example of womanhood, she will strive and rise and help, attaining that best self for which she was placed in the world."

"Your doctrine is, first save yourself, then others-is not that selfish?" he asked, interested, though more perhaps by the speaker's face than by her words. "No, because unless fulfilling God's will in our own salvation we cannot help others," she replied. "We are placed here for the greater glory of God, and His glory must first be wrought out in ourselves before we can, by living up to our highest, help others." "But does not a woman help most by being a good wife and mother?"

"Perhaps, but not unless that is where God has called her. You see, Our Lady is the symbol to us of all that is best in womanhood. Her choice in life was a quiet one of prayer in the Temple, yet, called of God by His Annunciation Angel, she bowed to His will and became the mother of the Eternal, set apart by this from all mere earthly happiness. Yet it is her spirit which comes to us through the ages and makes us aught we are of good. Her sweetness, her modesty, her humility, her patience, her gentle bearing in sorrow, all these we strive to emulate. Do you not see that this comes first? Had Our Lady not been all of this, she could not have borne her stainless Son, she would not have been found worthy. So it is not with women as you conceive, that she is the mere appendage of man; first she

must be herself before she can be truest wife and mother."

Very thoughtful he looked as he replied:

"I see what you mean to say. I had never thought it out like that before. Do all women in America think as deeply, Miss Gordon. Are they all like you? If so, I do not wonder that the sons of America are great."

"I do not know that I am any different from the others;" she laughed a little. "But what serious talk we have had upon this lovely afternoon. There Aunty is coming from your bazaar where she has been buying all her Christmas presents and she will be taking me home. I preferred sitting here in the perfect sunlight and fancying myself in fair Japan, instead of hunting bargains in that close bazaar."

"I am glad you did," he said. "You will talk again to me about your strange religion, will you not? I have heard that Catholics worshipped the Virgin; I could scarcely believe it, but I should not wonder at the worship of a woman like yourself" She interrupted him.

"Hush! We do not worship Our Lady, we only try to copy her, and I do not well succeed in doing that. 'Sayonara," she smiled.

"Sayonara,' and 'gozai masie,'* fair White Iris," he answered, watching her as she flitted away, a strange expression upon his impenetrable brown face.

Kusakiri belonged to the advanced school of Japan. Of noble birth, he bore his mother's name, his father having been a Yoshi, and his people wealthy and cultured. His mother had many American friends and desired for her son the best of Occidental culture. She had even whispered to him, as he left her beneath the cherry blooms of his

*Good-bye and thank you.

fair home, that she would welcome a daughter from the land of progress across the sea. But in the three years of his absence from Japan Kusakari had seen no woman that he desired to take home to his mother until he met Alys Gordon. The vision of her all gowned in white, a soft and clinging white which enwrapped her lithe form, white iris in her belt, her dark hair pushed away from her oval face, about her all the sweet daintiness of gentle birth and gentle upbringing-this vision was ever before him. He loved her, that he knew, but could he ever win her? She was inscrutable. Her frank friendliness was as far removed from the flirtations of other girls as it was from the shy timidity of the little maids in kimono and obi to whom he had been presented at home. To them he was a possible husband, and his father and their father willed, and their attitude was one of veiled curiosity and scarcely disguised fear as to one who might be their master. With this American girl there was no thought of him as possible suitor, scarce any thought at all of self. There was no boldness in her frank speech, no trace of vanity in her quiet acceptance of his homage. Sympathy, friendliness, interest in their pleasant converse, these were factors in her intercourse with him, yet no trace of aught else tinged the sweet graciousness of her manner. There was about her something he could not fathom, an inward light which radiated from her in a halo of lovely deeds and holy smiles.

"Something she has which my countrywomen have not," he thought, and studying her he determined to discover the secret if he could.

The autumn days found them constantly together and gossip was busy as to his courtship, yet if such it was, it was a very sober one. Love was never spoken of between them, for Alys' un

consciousness but deepened Kusikari's natural reserve, and love made him timid. Friends jested about her little "Yellow Peril," but Alys turned a laughing face to them, saying she preferred dragons to bears, and thus jesting, turned aside further innuendo.

His first glimpse at her deepest self was in the Art Gallery. Wandering through its enchanted halls, she paused before a picture with a sudden exclamation, then studied it silently. To him it was simple enough. In an open court of Eastern fashion sat a young maid spinning, beside her a huge book. In an archway beyond a group of maidens, flower-crowned, beckoned her to join in their sports. The young maid smiled, but denied them, continuing her work, a strange glow of light falling upon the face she raises to them, a cross shaft of light forming a cross behind her head.

"Is it not wonderful," Alys murmured at length. "See, even when a girl in the Temple, Our Lady was shadowed by the Cross. She may not join her companions' sports; she must work and pray, ever in the shadow of the rood. If one could be more like her!" She stopped abruptly, conscious that she had spoken out of her heart and wondering if he could comprehend her. There was a strange expression upon his face, as of one who had solved an enigma.

"That, then, is your aim-to be like this Virgin of Nazareth," he said. "Well, it is good ever to strive to copy an ideal. That is good for all. We have Buddha to copy, you have this Virgin Mary. It is well. Perhaps it is better for you to have her, since you may better copy womanly virtues than those of a man."

Alys looked at him curiously.

"You simply could not understand, could you," she asked.

"Very much I should like to, for I should gladly comprehend just what

makes yourself what you are. Will you tell me all about this Blessed Virgin of yours? Worthy she must be since you love her."

"There is so little to tell, hers was such a simple life, but I will gladly tell you all I can," she answered as they wandered toward the tea-garden and sat beneath their favorite pagoda. There she told him the story of the Maid of Nazareth, in all its divine simplicity. He listened intently to the gentle voice becoming pitiful and tender as she lingered over the sorrowful passages of the greatest tragedy of the world.

"You see," she said, "there is no place in your religion for us. Your Buddha deserts Yasodhara, faithful wife; he has no good word for his mother; but in the death-agony of the Cross, our Christ commended His mother a sacred legacy to His best beloved, and through him to all of us. She it is who has raised woman from the depths. All the beauty of chivalric devotion of the Middle Ages came from the spirit of the sweet Mother of God. Must we not love her? You claim to admire the spirit of Catholic womanhood, you must admire, too, the ideal whence it comes."

"I do." Very gravely he said it. "Will you teach me to love her, White Iris, as I love you?"

At the grave words, so calmly spoken, she raised startled eyes to his, then dropped them, a quick, fleeting pain across her face.

"Do not say that," she said.

"I must." Calm as he was, she heard the quick beating of his heart. "Long have I loved you, White Iris. I cannot see your religion yet, but I see that it is good since it makes you what you are. Love me and teach me to know it."

"I did not dream you loved me," she said, very low. "You have been the best. of friends to me. Of anything else I She looked down

never thought."

across the quiet little garden, to her

always the expression of Oriental calm. He attracted her in his quiet gentleness of strength, as did this garden. From it she must turn to all of Occidental rush, and push, and strain, and fret, if she turned from him. If he were only a Christian! He would love her, care for her, but there was a quick struggle.

"I could not love one not of my own Faith," she said. "The very spring of life would be gone were I not all in sympathy with soul as well as mind. Forgive me " she raised her troubled eyes to his; the pleasant summer was ending heavily for her, and tragically.

"There is nothing to forgive,”—how ready the courtesy which answered her! "To-morrow I must leave you. My father has sent me word that there is need for men at the front. The war drags on; he gave me choice to go home to fight or to stay and let my brother go. There is nothing to stay for now, so I shall take my place. I shall not see you again. Forget me, lest your tender heart be troubled."

"I do not wish to forget you," she said. "Will you take this to remember me by?" She drew from her bosom a tiny medal of the Immaculate Conception. "I shall pray for you always, and may Our Lady keep you and teach you wisdom."

"Sayonara,'" he murmured, and was gone, and every brown leaf upon the hillside seemed to shiver sadly in the autumn breeze, as it murmured "Sayonara."

*

At the front they say his life is charmed. Reckless of danger, bravest of the brave, he seems guarded from every harm, as if prayers built for him a wall of safety; and when the dusk of each battle-stained day falls upon his weary spirit, he lies down to rest, murmuring:

"Oh, Lady of my White Iris, for her sweet sake teach me to know thy Son!"

T is not to be expected that among the thirty or forty thousand who constitute the underworld of Chicago, in the sense used in a previous sketch, that no Catholics would be found among them. It is freely stated by those conversant with conditions that over half of them are of the Catholic faith. The most natural question then arises: What have the Catholics of Chicago done for the amelioration of the condition of these men?

That there has been an amount of religious activity in the slums by the Baptists, the Methodists, the Volunteers, the Salvation Army and other Protestant and philanthropic organizations, no one can deny. One can hardly say there is much to show by way of result by these good and demonstrative people for the prodigious amount of tambourine-beating labor expended, but there has been at least an attempt to uplift the people of our local under-world.

What have the Catholics of Chicago done? It must be admitted that until within the last two or three years little has been attempted. Spasmodic and individual effort have, perhaps, never been wanting on the part of zealous Catholic laymen; but almost every individual worker has, sooner or later, become appalled by the magnitude of the task, and not succeeding in securing organized effort, these single-handed workers in sheer inability to make more than a superficial impression on the mighty mass of humanity have regretfully relinquished the undertaking as hopeless.

Two Catholic churches are situated right in the heart of the slum district. St. Peter's, a German Franciscan church, is well attended by an almost exclusively

German congregation, but its influence. is not felt by the element we are attempting to describe in these sketches. St. Mary's-if not the oldest, one of the oldest churches in Chicago, and almost within a stone's throw of St. Peter's-is essentially a down-town "hotel" church, with a congregation composed almost exclusively of transient hotel guests. Recently the Reverend Fathers of the Paulist congregation have assumed charge of St. Mary's. These zealous missionaries and pastors take the keenest interest in the temporal and spiritual welfare of the hobo, but at present the paucity of numbers in their clergy-house prevents them from doing as much as they have the will to do.

A little over three years ago, a young layman, a former student of St. Ignatius' College, Chicago, saw and realized the vast field of labor that lay open to Catholic endeavor among the denizens of the under-world. Without funds and almost single-handed he began a work which is destined in time to produce great results by ameliorating the moral and the physical condition of the genus tramp. This Mr. M. F. D. Collins began his work in a very humble way. At first he gathered around him a few of the men of the slums and tried to bring them to a better life and to self-respect. Others soon came, and it was not long before he rented a store on South Clark Street, the rent money being generously supplied by the Particular Council of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul of this city. Gradually he gathered around him a corps of zealous young workers. He named his venture the mission of Our Lady of Victory, and it was not long before he devoted his whole time to the