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Dane Allred examines the "Abundance" of the universe in his list of "1001 Thanks"
Episodes
Monday Jan 10, 2011
Monday Jan 10, 2011
Self-limitation
by Dane Allred
I’m not exactly like I’d like to be,
But skills and talents aren’t given out free
Got no quests
Got no ability
That limits what you can expect from me
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
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LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
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Saturday Jan 08, 2011
Saturday Jan 08, 2011
Go to Dane Allred.com for more selections, including other original pieces by Dane Allred and his audio versions of many famous short stories and poems called Literature Out Loud, plus lots more!! This is the complete episode of Abundance called Proficiency from Jan 2.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Saturday Jan 08, 2011
Saturday Jan 08, 2011
Click here for a complete INDEX
If....
by Rudyard Kipling
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
If you can dream, and not make dreams your master;
If you can think, and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And, which is more, you'll be a Man, my son!
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Friday Jan 07, 2011
Friday Jan 07, 2011
Click here for a complete INDEX
To Raise Poultry
by Mark Twain
A letter written to a Poultry Society that had conferred a complimentary membership upon the author. Written about 1870.
Seriously, from early youth I have taken an especial interest in the subject of poultry-raising, and so this membership touches a ready sympathy in my breast. Even as a schoolboy, poultry-raising was a study with me, and I may say without egotism that as early as the age of seventeen I was acquainted with all the best and speediest methods of raising chickens, from raising them off a roost by burning lucifer matches under their noses, down to lifting them off a fence on a frosty night by insinuating the end of a warm board under their heels. By the time I was twenty years old, I really suppose I had raised more poultry than any one individual in all the section round about there. The very chickens came to know my talent by and by. The youth of both sexes ceased to paw the earth for worms, and old roosters that came to crow, "remained to pray," when I passed by.
I have had so much experience in the raising of fowls that I cannot but think that a few hints from me might be useful to the society. The two methods I have already touched upon are very simple, and are only used in the raising of the commonest class of fowls; one is for summer, the other for winter. In the one case you start out with a friend along about eleven o'clock' on a summer's night (not later, because in some states-- especially in California and Oregon--chickens always rouse up just at midnight and crow from ten to thirty minutes, according to the ease or difficulty they experience in getting the public waked up), and your friend carries with him a sack. Arrived at the henroost (your neighbor's, not your own), you light a match and hold it under first one and then another pullet's nose until they are willing to go into that bag without making any trouble about it. You then return home, either taking the bag with you or leaving it behind, according as circumstances shall dictate. N. B.--I have seen the time when it was eligible and appropriate to leave the sack behind and walk off with considerable velocity, without ever leaving any word where to send it.
In the case of the other method mentioned for raising poultry, your friend takes along a covered vessel with a charcoal fire in it, and you carry a long slender plank. This is a frosty night, understand. Arrived at the tree, or fence, or other henroost (your own if you are an idiot), you warm the end of your plank in your friend's fire vessel, and then raise it aloft and ease it up gently against a slumbering chicken's foot. If the subject of your attentions is a true bird, he will infallibly return thanks with a sleepy cluck or two, and step out and take up quarters on the plank, thus becoming so conspicuously accessory before the fact to his own murder as to make it a grave question in our minds as it once was in the mind of Blackstone, whether he is not really and deliberately, committing suicide in the second degree. [But you enter into a contemplation of these legal refinements subsequently not then.]
When you wish to raise a fine, large, donkey voiced Shanghai rooster, you do it with a lasso, just as you would a bull. It is because he must choked, and choked effectually, too. It is the only good, certain way, for whenever he mentions a matter which he is cordially interested in, the chances are ninety-nine in a hundred that he secures somebody else's immediate attention to it too, whether it day or night.
The Black Spanish is an exceedingly fine bird and a costly one. Thirty-five dollars is the usual figure and fifty a not uncommon price for a specimen. Even its eggs are worth from a dollar to a dollar and a half apiece, and yet are so unwholesome that the city physician seldom or never orders them for the workhouse.
Still I have once or twice procured as high as a dozen at a time for nothing, in the dark of the moon. The best way to raise the Black Spanish fowl is to go late in the evening and raise coop and all. The reason I recommend this method is that, the birds being so valuable, the owners do not permit them to roost around promiscuously, they put them in a coop as strong as a fireproof safe and keep it in the kitchen at night. The method I speak of is not always a bright and satisfying success, and yet there are so many little articles of vertu about a kitchen, that if you fail on the coop you can generally bring away something else. I brought away a nice steel trap one night, worth ninety cents.
But what is the use in my pouring out my whole intellect on this subject? I have shown the Western New York Poultry Society that they have taken to their bosom a party who is not a spring chicken by any means, but a man who knows all about poultry, and is just as high up in the most efficient methods of raising it as the president of the institution himself. I thank these gentlemen for the honorary membership they have conferred upon me, and shall stand at all times ready and willing to testify my good feeling and my official zeal by deeds as well as by this hastily penned advice and information. Whenever they are ready to go to raising poultry, let them call for me any evening after eleven o'clock.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Friday Jan 07, 2011
Friday Jan 07, 2011
Bright Space
Proficiency
by Dane Allred
There is a reason you are here.
You came here from the Bright Space
Wanting to learn all there is to learn.
I was there with you.
So was everyone who ever was, is or will be.
We decided to leave and learn on our own, separate and apart
What we could not learn staying in the Bright Space together.
You are here to learn what you can
To do what you are here to do that no one else can do.
You know what that is
That one thing
You can do, that no one else can do.
I can’t do it.
Only you.
I cannot know all things
And neither can you.
But as we work our way through our appointed sphere,
In our chosen place,
There are some very important things to learn
That only you can learn.
The talents, skills and proficiencies you have brought with you
Are perfectly designed for what you have to do.
I also have my talents and skills,
Different from you
Meant to accomplish what it is I have to do.
Finding that which we are to do is never easy,
But when you are there you will know.
A feeling of peace and belonging
A feeling of purpose and accomplishment
A knowledge that at this time, in this place,
This is what you are here to do.
Take a moment to enjoy that feeling, for then you will move from that place of certainty
Back to the doubt.
Back to the next task
On that special list
That only you are responsible for.
Then you will move on to the next thing
And the next, until you reach your final assignment.
We will all continue that work we are here to do
Until we reach our final assignment,
And finally rejoin everyone else in the Bright Space.
When all that can ever be has been
We will return and share what we have learned.
It’s time to do what only you can do.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Wednesday Jan 05, 2011
Wednesday Jan 05, 2011
CAR CRASHES
I was in six car accidents in the year after I got my driver’s license. I got smart after my high school car crashes and read a defensive driving book. I was a better driver, and the accident rate went down. I went six or seven years without problems until Debbie and I were driving up Little Cottonwood Canyon. A truck was pulled off to the side - the wrong side of the road - which meant it was facing us.
The fool in the truck decided to pull out just as we reached him. That meant we had two choices. Pull into the other lane or pull off the road. The truck was in my lane.
Then suddenly there was a car in the other lane. Both lanes are now full, and our only choice is the trees. This meant we had to pull off the near side of the road going about 35 miles per hour. We bounced along about 5 feet and then crashed hard into a tree. The tree limb hit the windshield and the Debbie's forehead hit the windshield. The glass from the window cut off part of her bangs, which took forever to grow back.
As I looked over to see if Debbie was okay I could see that she was bleeding. She put her hand up to her head to stop the bleeding, and I jumped out of the car and yelled at the idiots in the truck. The car in the other lane had stopped. I think they called EMS, and all I remember is the ambulance taking care of Debbie. I insisted that the guys in the truck stay, but the cop let them go while I was checking on Debbie.
Another wreck and I got to pay for it since the guy responsible was let go. My insurance was already high enough, and the guy responsible for the accident was off the hook. I wasn’t going to report it to my insurance, since that would only mean higher rates for the next few years. So I was blessed to shell out over $2000 to get the windshield replaced and weld on a new part of the frame. It was fixed in time for us to move to California, where I would be starting as a brand new teacher, and get another part-time life-risking side job – painting flagpoles.
I wish I could say I have had my last car wreck, but with my past experiences under my belt, I know I'll have to be extra careful. I'm getting to be so old that now I drive the speed limit on every road. It has a nice side effect. I no longer have to mash the brake when I see the police, and there is a nice sense of calm as you pass through the radar without a worry.
I only wish I had driven better earlier in my life. The same car that had the windshield accident was in two more before it was totaled. We were driving up the hill into Orem and it was snowing lightly. But it was snowing enough that I should have been driving slower. The Volvo in front of me had stopped in the road for some reason, and I didn't see it fast enough. I was able to swerve enough to get from behind the car, but not far enough to avoid a collision. We slid past on the passenger side, and both of the blue Volkswagen bumpers were cleanly sheared off, and we suddenly had half of a dune buggy. The impact pushed us sideways up over the sidewalk where we came to rest, and fortunately, no one was injured. I guess it's really true about Volvo's being a tough car, because when we went to inspect the damage to the other car, there was a small hole in the back panel, about the size of a dime. That was all the damage I could see. I was impressed. My insurance company was not. The company canceled me and I had to get insurance with another insurer.
I wasn't involved in the final accident of the Volkswagen, but I will describe its infamous ending, because it was one of the first times my daughter Tia got to go to the emergency room. Debbie was going to her folks house and as she pulled out at a four way stop only about 8 blocks from their house, some old guy ran the stop sign and t-boned them. Glass shattered all over Tia and she got to get checked out for cuts at the hospital. I was waiting for them in Ogden to celebrate Tia's first birthday. I guess that is one birthday we will never forget, although I doubt she remembers anything about it.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Tuesday Jan 04, 2011
Tuesday Jan 04, 2011
Character Central John Wayne
Leo
Character Central, home of the formerly famous, this is Leo speakin’.
Dane
Could I speak to Marion Morrison please?
Leo
Who?
Dane
The Duke?
Leo
No dukes, here, buddy. Oh, you mean John Wayne!
Dane
Yes! Could I speak to John Wayne, please?
Leo
That’s gonna cost ya.
Dane
Could we put this on the Bill Gates card, please?
Leo
Oh, is this dat Abundance guy again?
Dane
Yes, this is Dane Allred.
Leo
No, that guy who is always talkin’ about all the good things he sees in life?
Dane
Yes, that’s me. Dane Allred
Leo
No, that ain’t right.
Dane
I do talk about 1001 things I’m thankful for.
Leo
That’s the guy. Mr. 1001 Thanks.
Dane
Yes, that’s me. Dane Allred.
Leo
No, that still ain’t right. But I’ll go get Marion.
(off-phone)
Johnny – Dukey baby. It’s Bill Gates on the phone for you.
Dane
No, it’s not Bill Gates. We just use the card I found…
John Wayne
This is the Duke speaking…
Dane
John Wayne!! It is such a pleasure to speak to you. I’ve really enjoyed every movie I’ve ever seen you in.
John Wayne
Well, I’ll tell you pilgrim, there are some things a man just can’t run away from.
Dane
You are a classic American icon.
John Wayne
I`m an American actor. I work with my clothes on. I have to. Riding a horse can be pretty tough on your legs and elsewheres.
Dane
Yes, that could be painful.
John Wayne
When you come slam bang up against trouble, it never looks half as bad if you face up to it.
Dane
You do have a great attitude. Thanks for sharing it with our listeners.
John Wayne
Well, I’ve always said, when the road looks rough ahead, remember the Man Upstairs and the word Hope. Hang onto both and tough it out.
Dane
That’s exactly the kind of thing I was hoping you would say.
John Wayne
I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people, and I require the same from them.
Dane
Another good piece of advice.
John Wayne
Get off your horse and drink your milk.
Dane
I’m sorry?...
John Wayne
Life is tough, but it's tougher when you're stupid.
Dane
Stupid?
John Wayne
Talk low, talk slow and don't say too much.
Dane
Am I talking too fast?
John Wayne
You can`t whine and bellyache because somebody else got a good break and you didn`t.
Dane
I’m sorry if you think I’m whining…
John Wayne
A man's got to do what a man's got to do.
Dane
Um, yes. Mr. Wayne, is there a way you would like to be remembered?
John Wayne
I would like to be remembered, well . . . the Mexicans have a phrase, "Feo fuerte y formal". Which means he was ugly, strong and had dignity.
Dane
Ugly? Really?
John Wayne
I have tried to live my life so that my family would love me and my friends respect me. The others can do whatever the hell they please.
Dane
Again, good advice. Any advice for the future?
John Wayne
Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.
Dane
Very good. I hope we have learned something today. Any advice about women from the manliest man of American film?
John Wayne
I've had three wives, six children and six grandchildren and I still don't understand women.
Dane
Yes, Abraham Lincoln said a woman was the only thing he was afraid of that he knew wouldn’t hurt him.
John Wayne
Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway.
Dane
I guess there is no answer for the fear.
John Wayne
All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be someplace else.
Dane
I can’t believe you only received one Oscar for Best Actor.
John Wayne
You can’t eat awards -- nor, more to the point, drink ‘em.
Dane
Hard living and hard drinking.
John Wayne
I never trust a man that doesn`t drink.
Dane
John Wayne, thank you so much for being with us today.
John Wayne
A man ought to do what he thinks is right.
Dane
That’s right, and again, thank you for speaking with us from Character Central.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Tuesday Dec 28, 2010
Tuesday Dec 28, 2010
This is the entire episode from Dec. 26th called Organization. The program "Abundance" included the following episodes: Colorblind -- a limerick A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Dane Allred -- They're Not Mad at Us Character Central -- W.C. Fields, Forrest Gump and Leo Rules of Engagement -- Chemical Hazards Bright Space -- Work Literature Out Loud -- The Romance of a Busy Broker by O. Henry The Aged Aged Man by Lewis Carroll The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Anderson Dane Allred's Partly-colored Dreamcoat -- Accepting Difference Full text of each piece with accompanying audio is available at this website. See grouped episodes for details.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Tuesday Dec 28, 2010
Tuesday Dec 28, 2010
Click here for a complete INDEX
The Aged Aged Man
by Lewis Carroll
I'll tell thee everything I can;
There's little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
"Who are you, aged man?" I said,
"And how is it you live?"
And his answer trickled through my head
Like water through a sieve.
He said, "I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men," he said,
"Who sail on stormy seas;
And that's the way I get my bread,
A trifle; if you please."
But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one's whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried, "Come, tell me how you live!"
And thumped him on the head.
His accents mild took up the tale:
He said, "I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowland's Macassar-Oil,
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil."
But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
"Come, tell me how you live," I cried,
"And what it is you do!"
He said, "I hunt for haddocks' eyes
Among the heather bright,
And work them into waistcoat buttons
In the silent night.
And these I do not sell for gold
Or coin of silvery shine,
But for a copper halfpenny,
And that will purchase nine.
"I sometimes dig for buttered rolls,
Or set limed twigs for crabs;
I sometimes search the grassy knolls
For wheels of hansom-cabs.
And that's the way" (he gave a wink)
"By which I get my wealth,
And very gladly will I drink
Your Honour's noble health."
I heard him then, for I had just
Completed my design
To keep the Menai bridge from rust
By boiling it in wine.
I thanked him much for telling me
The way he got his wealth,
But chiefly for his wish that he
Might drink my noble health.
And now, if e'er by chance I put
My fingers into glue,
Or madly squeeze a right-hand foot
Into a left-hand shoe,
Or if I drop upon my toe
A very heavy weight,
I weep, for it reminds me so
Of that old man I used to know,
Whose look was mild, whose speech was slow,
Whose hair was whiter than the snow,
Whose face was very like a crow,
With eyes, like cinders, all aglow,
Who seemed distracted with his woe,
Who rocked his body to and fro,
And muttered mumblingly and low,
As if his mouth were full of dough,
Who snorted like a buffalo,
That summer evening long ago
A-sitting on a gate.
LITERATURE OUT LOUD
Click here for a complete INDEX
LITERATURE OUT LOUD -- see and hear great literature Audio narrations with synchronized visual text
The Complete Collection of
SHAKESPEARE'S SONNETS
all 154 poems $3.99 DVD with FREE shipping
Essential Oils -- create your own business -- click on the logo to begin
Tuesday Dec 28, 2010
Tuesday Dec 28, 2010
Click here for a complete INDEX
The Romance of a Busy Broker
by O.Henry / William Sydney Porter
Pitcher, confidential clerk in the office of Harvey Maxwell, broker, allowed a look of mild interest and surprise to visit his usually expressionless countenance when his employer briskly entered at half past nine in company with his young lady stenographer. With a snappy "Good-morning, Pitcher," Maxwell dashed at his desk as though he were intending to leap over it, and then plunged into the great heap of letters and telegrams waiting there for him.
The young lady had been Maxwell's stenographer for a year. She was beautiful in a way that was decidedly unstenographic. She forewent the pomp of the alluring pompadour. She wore no chains, bracelets or lockets. She had not the air of being about to accept an invitation to luncheon. Her dress was grey and plain, but it fitted her figure with fidelity and discretion. In her neat black turban hat was the gold-green wing of a macaw. On this morning she was softly and shyly radiant. Her eyes were dreamily bright, her cheeks genuine peachblow, her expression a happy one, tinged with reminiscence.
Pitcher, still mildly curious, noticed a difference in her ways this morning. Instead of going straight into the adjoining room, where her desk was, she lingered, slightly irresolute, in the outer office. Once she moved over by Maxwell's desk, near enough for him to be aware of her presence.
The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs.
"Well--what is it? Anything?" asked Maxwell sharply. His opened mail lay like a bank of stage snow on his crowded desk. His keen grey eye, impersonal and brusque, flashed upon her half impatiently.
"Nothing," answered the stenographer, moving away with a little smile.
"Mr. Pitcher," she said to the confidential clerk, “did Mr. Maxwell say anything yesterday about engaging another stenographer?"
"He did," answered Pitcher. "He told me to get another one. I notified the agency yesterday afternoon to send over a few samples this morning. It's 9.45 o'clock, and not a single picture hat or piece of pineapple chewing gum has showed up yet."
"I will do the work as usual, then," said the young lady, "until someone comes to fill the place." And she went to her desk at once and hung the black turban hat with the gold-green macaw wing in its accustomed place.
He who has been denied the spectacle of a busy Manhattan broker during a rush of business is handicapped for the profession of anthropology. The poet sings of the "crowded hour of glorious life." The broker's hour is not only crowded, but the minutes and seconds are hanging to all the straps and packing both front and rear platforms.
And this day was Harvey Maxwell's busy day. The ticker began to reel out jerkily its fitful coils of tape, the desk telephone had a chronic attack of buzzing. Men began to throng into the office and call at him over the railing, jovially, sharply, viciously, excitedly. Messenger boys ran in and out with messages and telegrams. The clerks in the office jumped about like sailors during a storm. Even Pitcher's face relaxed into something resembling animation.
On the Exchange there were hurricanes and landslides and snowstorms and glaciers and volcanoes, and those elemental disturbances were reproduced in miniature in the broker's offices. Maxwell shoved his chair against the wall and transacted business after the manner of a toe dancer. He jumped from ticker to 'phone, from desk to door with the trained agility of a harlequin.
In the midst of this growing and important stress the broker became suddenly aware of a high-rolled fringe of golden hair under a nodding canopy of velvet and ostrich tips, an imitation sealskin sacque and a string of beads as large as hickory nuts, ending near the floor with a silver heart. There was a self-possessed young lady connected with these accessories; and Pitcher was there to construe her.
"Lady from the Stenographer's Agency to see about the position," said Pitcher.
Maxwell turned half around, with his hands full of papers and ticker tape.
"What position?" he asked, with a frown.
"Position of stenographer," said Pitcher. "You told me yesterday to call them up and have one sent over this morning."
"You are losing your mind, Pitcher," said Maxwell. "Why should I have given you any such instructions? Miss Leslie has given perfect satisfaction during the year she has been here. The place is hers as long as she chooses to retain it. There's no place open here, madam. Countermand that order with the agency, Pitcher, and don't bring any more of 'em in here."
The silver heart left the office, swinging and banging itself independently against the office furniture as it indignantly departed. Pitcher seized a moment to remark to the bookkeeper that the "old man" seemed to get more absent-minded and forgetful every day of the world.
The rush and pace of business grew fiercer and faster. On the floor they were pounding half a dozen stocks in which Maxwell's customers were heavy investors. Orders to buy and sell were coming and going as swift as the flight of swallows. Some of his own holdings were imperiled, and the man was working like some high-geared, delicate, strong machine--strung to full tension, going at full speed, accurate, never hesitating, with the proper word and decision and act ready and prompt as clockwork. Stocks and bonds, loans and mortgages, margins and securities--here was a world of finance, and there was no room in it for the human world or the world of nature.
When the luncheon hour drew near there came a slight lull in the uproar.
Maxwell stood by his desk with his hands full of telegrams and memoranda, with a fountain pen over his right ear and his hair hanging in disorderly strings over his forehead. His window was open, for the beloved janitress Spring had turned on a little warmth through the waking registers of the earth.
And through the window came a wandering--perhaps a lost--odor--a delicate, sweet odor of lilac that fixed the broker for a moment immovable. For this odor belonged to Miss Leslie; it was her own, and hers only.
The odor brought her vividly, almost tangibly before him. The world of finance dwindled suddenly to a speck. And she was in the next room--twenty steps away.
"By George, I'll do it now," said Maxwell, half aloud. "I'll ask her now. I wonder I didn't do it long ago."
He dashed into the inner office with the haste of a short trying to cover. He charged upon the desk of the stenographer.
She looked up at him with a smile. A soft pink crept over her cheek, and her eyes were kind and frank. Maxwell leaned one elbow on her desk. He still clutched fluttering papers with both hands and the pen was above his ear.
"Miss Leslie," he began hurriedly, "I have but a moment to spare. I want to say something in that moment. Will you he my wife? I haven't had time to make love to you in the ordinary way, but I really do love you. Talk quick, please--those fellows are clubbing the stuffing out of Union Pacific."
"Oh, what are you talking about?" exclaimed the young lady. She rose to her feet and gazed upon him, round-eyed.
"Don't you understand?" said Maxwell, restively. "I want you to marry me. I love you, Miss Leslie. I wanted to tell you, and I snatched a minute when things had slackened up a bit. They're calling me for the 'phone now. Tell 'em to wait a minute, Pitcher. Won't you, Miss Leslie?"
The stenographer acted very queerly. At first she seemed overcome with amazement; then tears flowed from her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck.
"I know now," she said, softly. "It's this old business that has driven everything else out of your head for the time. I was frightened at first. Don't you remember, Harvey? We were married last evening at 8 o'clock in the Little Church around the Corner."
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