$5,000,000 Worth of Diamonds

THIS little group of precious stones represents a value of $5,000,000—or at least it would if the picture had been made of the actual diamonds instead of their wonderfully made facsimiles, which are kept in the safes of all great jewelers.

Beginning at the left, the likely looking electric light bulb is valued at $1,000,000, and never sees the light of day except on rare state occasions when its dusky royal owner, the Nizam of Hyderabad, thinks fit to display it to some distinguished guest. The present Nitzam, like his predecessors, will not have the diamond cut; for this 340-carat treasure is in reality the cornerstone of his kingdom.

Just in front of the Indian beauty is the most important stone of the Persian royal regalia. In 1867 a privileged traveler placed its value at $175,000, since which time no Western diamond experts have been permitted to examine it.

The Two Lost Diamonds

BAD luck has attached itself to the so-called Table Diamonds, the rectangular slabs in the center of the group. The one standing on end got lost during the sack of Delhi, and is buried to this day somewhere in the heart of Persia or Afghanistan; while the other, the Great Table, disappeared sometime ago, just after $200,000 had been refused for it.

The unassuming little "drop" between the two "Tables" is the Dresden Drop, which Dresden of London sold to an Indian Prince in 1863 for $200,000.

The "drop" to the rightis the property of a Persian ruler, and bears the names of three of his illustrious ancestors.

The latest valuation of the biggest perfect diamond in the world, the Raja of Mattam (extreme right), stands at $1,346,890. This is an interesting fact, but of no more practical use now than it would have been back in 1760, when the hard-up ruler of Borneo refused the tempting offer of $250,000 and two gunboats full of ammunition from the Dutch government for the same jewel. The reason why the potentates of Borneo are so uninterested in doing business is a simple one. "On the possession of this stone depend the fortunes our family," says the present Raja. "The waters into which it is dipped become fountains of healing. It is to us a deity."

This Girl Models Race Horses

JENNY VON WILDENRATH, a twenty-four-year-old Danish woman who has gone all over the world doing clay and bronze portraits of famous race horses, received a scare at the early age of twelve which might have ended her numerous excursions into pastures and stables.

An Adventure with a Bull

I HAD run away," said the sculptor. "I was always running away from home to play with the horses and cattle, and I was in the lower pasture with my two favorite cows. I had no idea that the bull was anywhere about until I heard a low snort, and saw him a few feet away, looking at me and switching his tail. He was between me and the fence; so I just backed slowly round one of the cows which was lying down. Then I lay down beside her close and stayed there very still. The bull walked all round us sniffing; but he couldn't make it out, and finally strayed off—and I ran like everything for home.

"People wonder why I am not afraid to work in a box stall with a nervous race horse or a powerful stallion. Well, you see you just are not afraid of folks you love. The only thing that worries me is that I may worry my subject. Horses are so sensitive, and each one is so different from all the others. I try to learn all I can about my 'sitter' from his grooms, and then I try not to annoy him by stupid sounds and movements while I am near him.

"The portrait of Tracery, August Belmont's famous racing stallion, was a very thrilling one to make. Tracery is a very highly strung horse, and hardly ever stands still, and the four hours a day when for my benefit he was tied to a ring in his huge stall bored him frightfully.

"On the day before the completion of the portrait the head groom, who usually stayed in the stall with us, left me for a moment with an undergroom, a new one. Tracery got the situation in a moment. He slipped his halter and came airily toward my table, with his mind quite made up to find out what all this was about. The new groom hesitated, and I saw my month's work doomed. I gave the table a quick push and caught Tracery by the ear, and in no time we had his halter on again. He took his disappointment like the true sportsman he is."

Tracery flashed into international prominence when, as a Kentucky two-year-old, he came in third in the English Derby. Though he has now retired from the track, Mr. Belmont recently refused $200,000 for him.

The Unfinished Portrait

ANOTHER interesting portrait in her studio is that of the favorite saddle horse of the King of Spain. Unfortunately it is unfinished, as the animal received an anarchist bullet in his neck when the King was riding and before the sculptor had completed her work.

Miss von Wildenrath works in riding breeches and tailored shirt, and wishes she had the courage to cut her hair short, like that of her favorite artist, Rosa Bonheur. "No one has surpassed her in painting the Percheron type, the French farmhorse," says the sculptor. "I have worked on them myself all over Belgium, in a spirit of reverence for her memory."

Much of the tragedy of the present war means to Miss von Wildenrath the suffering and sacrifice of thousands of horses, and the three "War Studies" that she is contributing to the Pietro exhibition tell the vivid story of the horses' part in victory and in defeat.

"Of course I am glad to make portraits of people when they wish it," she says. "That head over there is of Elsie Ferguson, and I am going to do the little moving picture star, Mary Pickford; but," and the sculptor's slim hands caressed the delicately modeled ears of Scott II, the French hurdle racer, "there is something about horses—"

Train Them Not To Be Awkward

DID anybody ever teach you how to introduce one person to another?

Can you remember the first time when, as a child, you attempted to do it, how embarrassed you were, how you stuttered and blushed? You were taught a great deal about arithmetic and geography and physiology in your childhood; but the social ease and poise that mean so much in after life you were left pretty largely to pick up for yourself as best you could.

And it should not be so. At least, so says V. M. Hillyer in his book on "Child Training" (Century Company). Every child, from the time when he is able to learn, should be drilled in the simple amenities of life. He should know how to meet people easily and what to say, how to introduce them, how to enter a room, and how to leave it. And these common courtesies can be taught by actual practice much better than by precept; for instance by standing three children side by side and having one introduce the other two. Ten rules Mr. Hillyer gives, which he calls the code of common courtesies:

Children should be careful not to pass in front of anyone unless compelled by circumstances to do so; when they should say "Excuse me" or "I beg your pardon."

Boys should rise from their seats at the approach of a girl or an older person.

Boys should wait for girls to be seated before seating themselves.

Boys when going through a door should wait for girls or older persons to pass through first.

A boy should offer his own chair to a girl or an older person, if there are no chairs nearby, and bring others if needed.

A boy should pick up anything dropped by a girl, and offer her assistance when there is opportunity.

Each child by act or word should show regard for the desires and preferences of the others.

Every child should be careful to acknowledge a courtesy with a simple "thank you."

He or she should be taught never to interrupt or ask a question of two people conversing, but to wait until they are finished.

And they should be trained to introduce each other, to talk easily on conversational subjects, and in leaving a house to express their thanks, pleasure, or appreciation.

Simple rules, these, all of them; yet if all children were schooled in them there would be far less embarrassment and suffering when the young folk are grown. If you would not have them awkward, says Mr. Hillyer, train them—and begin early.

She Runs the Biggest Buffalo Ranch

ONE of the biggest ranches in the world is located about the center of the Pawnee Reservation in Oklahoma, just outside the limits of the town of Pawnee. Over its thousands of acres roam great herds of cattle, mules, Angora goats, horses, and the largest drove of buffaloes in existence.

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about this ranch is the fact that it is run by a woman. She is the wife of the owner, Major Gordon Lillie, popularly known as "Pawnee Bill." Major Lillie's interests keep him away from home a good deal, and long ago he discovered that he could not find a better manager during his absence than his wife.

Mrs. Lillie is a buffalo expert. She is a skilful breeder, and has kept in touch with every system of breeding buffaloes during the last thirty years. Today she has greater success than any other living person in growing healthy, rugged, contented buffaloes.

The Lillie ranch is run on a very businesslike system. From a central station in the ranch house telephone wires extend to all parts of the great farm. Early every morning over these wires Mrs. Lillie issues the orders for the day to her two hundred and fifty workers. In the main office is a ticker from the stock exchange at Oklahoma City, so that she is kept in hourly touch with the livestock markets. If she sees in the quotations a chance for the profitable disposal of a couple of carloads of a certain kind of cattle, she first telephones to one of the stations on the ranch to have the cattle rounded up, and then to Pawnee for the cars to be sent to the sidetrack on the ranch.

The big herd of buffaloes on the ranch represents an ambition of Pawnee Bill's to preserve this animal for posterity. In the fall of 1879 the Pawnees made their last buffalo hunt. Pawnee Bill accompanied them, and captured four young buffaloes. To these others were added from time to time until, with successful breeding, a splendid herd was obtained. At Pawnee today there are over two hundred head of pure-blooded, fine-coated specimens of the bison. They range over ten thousand acres of well watered land, heavily carpeted with the native grass on which buffaloes thrive.

The first ranch buildings erected by Pawnee Bill were very crude affairs, and were made mostly of logs. Some of these are still preserved, to show the humble beginnings of this wonderful enterprise. But today a bungalow mansion that cost one hundred thousand dollars adorns the highest point on the ranch. There are six big barns, one large workshop, acres of strong corrals, a splendid sanatorium, and four division ranch houses in which the tenants live.

Each year a grand buffalo hunt takes place, when several of the animals are killed and the meat shipped to prominent people throughout the country. The buffalo as food today is a luxury, its price ranging from seventy-five cents to two dollars a pound.

What Actors Eat On the Stage

THE "food" served in most stage productions is not food at all, unless it really has to be eaten before the audience.

Have you ever observed a dinner scene at the theater where the servant poured out a thick, creamy soup, or ladeled it out, for the guests? That was sawdust.

All sorts of things were tried to get the right effect for soup. Actual colored liquid did not look right under the powerful stage lights, and it proved a difficult "prop" to handle. Finally some clever stage manager or property man tried ordinary sawdust. The effect was perfect, and since then sawdust has been used to represent soup at a dinner scene or gruel in a sickroom scene. Under the lights it has every appearance of a liquid.

A Roast That Is Easy to Carve

TEMPTING slices of boiled ham—at least they look tempting to the audience—are nothing more nor less than pieces of ordinary linoleum, with the red or under side uppermost. Salads are made from cabbage leaves, and tomatoes sliced up give every appearance of a delicious boiled lobster. Bananas are served for fish.

"Chicken" generally consists of a small well browned, Vienna-shaped loaf of bread, with painted wooden legs stuck in. A turkey is made in the same manner from a larger loaf of bread.

A roast of beef is generally made from sponge cake, browned with gravy. It carves easily, and has every appearance of meat. Slices of toast cut in proper shape and frilled with paper on one end look just like chops and cutlets, and may be nibbled by the actors.

A steaming hot pie is a pan with a brown paper covering, and inside of this is a dish of boiling hot water or boiled potatoes. The hot water or boiled potatoes furnish the "steam" that rises from the "pie" when the paper crust is cut, and looks quite as appetizing as the genuine article.

Tea serves as whisky on the stage, and when colored with grenadine or some such coloring matter it is wine. Ginger ale supplies the sparkling "champagne"; but when milk is called for no substitute is used, if it is to be drunk.

Even water has its substitute: not water for drinking, however, but for wet garments. An actor might come upon the stage actually wet to the skin with real water, and aside from his dripping hair he would not look wet. To make an actor look actually wet a great quantity of vaseline is rubbed over his clothes. Then with hair dripping wet and the lights reflected upon the vaseline on his clothes he has every appearance of having just been fished out of the river.

The Patrician

By PHILIP CURTISS

WHEN I was a kid in the home town there was one individual whom I always took scrupulous pains to avoid; when I was a man in New York there was one with whom I was always proud to be seen: Which was very odd, considering the fact that they were one and the same, to wit, Spike Morrison, onetime "tough guy" of the East End Gang, later lightweight champion of the world.

It is in fact a curious masculine frailty that leads one to accept with indifference the friendship of a savant or a saint and to glory in that of a prize fighter; but without apology I confess the weakness, and admit that it always tickled my pride to walk through the lobby of a hotel with my former bully, see people glance up with hostile indifference, and then watch their expressions change to those of souls who have seen the light.

Even in the great hotels along Broadway we shared this tribute; but my surprise and pleasure never rose to such height as they did one day in the cold and aristocratic Charlton, where, as Spike and I wandered through the palm-bordered corridors, somewhat like cats in a strange garret, a slender and dapper young man in a tight-fitting English morning coat, properly braided, disengaged himself hurriedly from a group of chattering women and rushed up to greet Spike like a long lost brother.

I took the occasion to saunter on toward the café. Here Spike, still glowing from his reception, joined me in time and roundly upbraided my flight.

"Why didn't you stay and talk to the folks?" he demanded; for in conversation Spike is as disappointing as most great men. He never says "blokes" or "muts" or "guys," and never swears except in times of necessity. His diction, in a word, is masterly. It reserves its strong words for its strongest effects.

"What folks?" I asked with some interest.

"The Westons," he answered eagerly. "Didn't you recognize Prenny Weston?"

I DIDN'T. I'm sorry," I answered; but inwardly I was not at all sorry, for the only difference between Spike Morrison and Prenny Weston had been that whereas both had been abominations of my boyhood, the latter had continued to be the abomination of my whole life.

I suppose, indeed, that I had never seen Prenny Weston up to that time without mentally irking to inflict on him very much the same sort of treatment that Spike was wont to inflict on his opponents in the ring; for Prenny Weston, in my early days, had been one of my many bullies, the only difference between him and Spike being that whereas the one was a physical the other was only a mental bully.

Prenny Weston had certainly bullied the boys of our town—mentally—from the day he was born. We hated him, we threatened him, we laid dire plots for his unhappiness, and, as usually happens in such cases, we were actually very much afraid of him. Prenny Weston, in short, was a little aristocrat, the one "mysterious" child of our village. He did not go to the public schools; he rarely played with the other boys. In infancy he appeared in velvet suits and short socks, at which we other infants were inclined to holler; in boyhood he wore "tailor-mades," which made our own ready and home-made suits feel uncouth and rustic.

Had occasion offered, I think that very probably we should have attempted the boyish methods of displaying contempt for such things as short socks and tailormades,—our methods consisting of stones and cudgels,—but somehow we never were given the chance, or rather we never took it. We dreamed of his downfall; we pictured long scenes of boyish vengeance, —I think that we openly planned it,—but yet in our hearts there was actually not one of us who would not have been proud to have been seen in the company of Prenny Weston. For, in spite of all our dislike, he was in reality our one aristocrat.

HAD we but known it, there was another side to the grandeur of Prenny Weston,—the reverse of the picture was a tragedy. Grand he might be to us of the village, and lofty and offish; but in actual fact Pren was a perfect example of the end of a run-out race. Years before, generations before, when wealth consisted of owning land, the Westons had been important people—very important indeed. From the Westons had come the Congressmen, the clergymen, the Judges, the public men, of our State. In Civil War times it had been the Westons who had led our regiments. But the age of buying and selling, the age of steel and machinery, had upset the age of landowners, and the Westons had begun the fall to the inevitable end. The race of Westons in our day was a race of offish, silent, and penniless men and sweet-faced, sad-eyed, wistful women.

How indeed the Westons had ever pinched and saved enough to send young Pren through Harvard was a question that vexed our elders. The mortgaging and pinching and saving that this had entailed had been the source of many grave and pompous discussions among the members of the Business Men's Saturday Evening Club and the First Church Sewing League. And when at the end of two years the cause of the mortgaging, saving, and scrimping had been sent peremptorily home as the result of an escapade in which we knew that a barber pole, a tutor, and a battered policeman had vaguely figured, our outraged Puritanism had known no bounds.

Nor could we quite make up our minds after that just why Prenny Weston had been donated by Providence to the home town. There seemed to be no role [t?] he could be destined to play. He was not a lawyer, he was not a doctor, he was not a storekeeper, he was not even a politician. We simply knew him as Prenny Weston, and that answered the question,—a solemn, gaunt, unresponsive young man, who stalked through the streets, looking neither to right nor to left, who entered into our village activities with listless indifference, who treated a hearty hail with

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the coldest of nods, and at times cut us all, from the new but wealthy mill owners down to the village drunkard. There were even rumors that Pren drank himself; and as human nature likes to believe such things, we did believe them, and even magnified them.

YET even the casual glance that I had caught of Pren that afternoon in the Charlton told me that some sort of transformation had come over him. It was not only his greater geniality, his hearty welcome, his obvious good-fellowship; but even the glimpse of an eye had shown an air of freedom, of prosperity, of good-humor, very different from the Pren of the old days, and oddest of all had been his enthusiastic greeting of Spike, who had been in our village the toughest of all the tough East Siders, as far removed from the Westons as Cape Cod is from the Golden Gate. The problem was well worth plumbing, and I proceeded to plumb it.

"I haven't seen Prenny Weston in years," I began, as we sat at our table, "How is he getting on?"

"Great!" replied Spike. "Great!" he repeated with enthusiasm. "He married a girl with a million."

To Spike this was not in the least an anticlimax; for in common with the English, the Germans, all the Latin races, and in fact everybody on earth except educated Americans, people of Morrison's stamp axe able to speak of a rich wife with frank enthusiasm. Spike indeed apparently regarded the marriage not only as a legitimate step in Weston's career, but as an accomplishment distinctly to his credit; while one more question disclosed that the conquest did not shed any discredit on the rich wife.

"She was one of the Miller girls," he went on with the naive familiarity of the small town, "and as nice a lady as you ever saw. She calls me 'Mr. Morrison,' as if I was the President himself."

"Then you know her?" I asked in surprise.

Spike looked at me, almost insulted. "Know her?" he said. "I eat a meal there every time I am home. In fact, Mr. Weston says that if it wasn't for me they would never had married. But that's not so," he concluded with proper humility.

The connection between the former lightweight champion and the marriage of Prenny Weston with "one of the Miller girls" had fascinating possibilities. There was no doubt in my own mind which one of the Miller girls it was; for there had been three whom nobody wanted and one whom everybody wanted. But men who have stories to tell frequently have little art in telling them, and I had to give Spike his own good time and let him pursue his own method; which, as in all such cases, began far back of the proper point.

THE first time I saw Prenny Weston," he began, between puffs of his cigar, "was in the old Weston Guards, now Company H of the 32d Regiment. I never had any real taste for soldiering; but the only good bouts in town were being held in the armories, and to get around the State laws all the boys who took part had to be members of one of the companies. I never expected to do any drilling, and in fact I never did much until we went to camp in the summer. You know what those oldtime camps had been like,—just one long booze fight from Monday to Saturday,—but this was the first of the new régime.

"Regular army officers were in command, and they tried to teach us all that the regular army knew in six days. They got us out before sunrise, and marched us till after dark, and then set us to doing picket duty out in the woods. It would have been bad enough if we had enlisted for that; but three-quarters of the men in the regiment and all the men in our company had enlisted for a pure good time—with the result that about Wednesday if a man in your tent said yes or no you were ready to snap his head off.

The Captain of the company was a fathead named Glover, a good politician and a poor soldier; so the company discipline was simply a mess. But about the middle of the week Glover caved in. He was never built for that sort of work, and after one awful hot day in the sun he went to the hospital, and Weston took over the company. Weston was the First Lieutenant; but up to that time we had seen almost nothing of him.

"To tell the truth I think that he had been drinking pretty hard up at headquarters (he did in those days), and the first night that he came walking down the company street he looked as if he was going to bite nails. His eyes were bleary, and his skin was red, and his mouth was drawn into that look that made you feel that he thought you the scum of the earth; but outside of that he looked as if he had just stepped out of a bandbox,—his khaki uniform all stiff and starched, a little white collar peeping out of the top, gloves in his hand, and his face so freshly shaved that you could smell the soap. In fact, as he came, you could feel just a little flutter go up and down the company street.

"I felt the flutter; but I got the wrong dope. I thought that the boys were getting ready to kid him; but they knew him better than I did. Glover had been in the habit of hobnobbing and hail-fellow-well-metting and come-on-boysing around the company and playing politics all the time; so I couldn't quite make Weston out. I was simply waiting for someone to yell 'Oh you Lizzie!'

"But nobody did yell it, and pretty soon I understood why; for in that same supercilious, what-the-hell way of his Mr. Lieutenant walked up to a bunch of us standing in front of a tent and snapped:

"'Where's the First Sergeant?'

"Nobody answered, because nobody knew in the first place, and in the second they were too sore to answer; but Weston just stood and stared as if he wanted to spit on us, and began with the first man:

"'Private McCarthy, do you know where the First Sergeant is?'

"McCarthy was a big, thick-headed kid; so he kind of slobbered 'No.'

"To tell the truth, I don't think that Weston was quite himself that night. He had been hitting the stuff pretty hard for three or four days, and it made him ugly; so he just glared at McCarthy as if he wanted to eat his head off, and then he snapped back, 'No what?'

"Personally I couldn't make out what in the devil he was trying to get at, and I don't think most of the men could; but McCarthy, for all he was a kid, was on his second enlistment, and he was one of the few that did understand, for he gave a another sickly grin and answered:

"No, Sir!'

"Honestly, Sam," continued Spike, lighting another cigar, "honestly, Sam, I don't know which I wanted to kick the most, young McCarthy or the Lieutenant. We got used to that sort of thing later on; but then it was like sending us to Sunday school. But while we were trying to get it all through our heads up came the top Sergeant himself. Weston caught sight of him and pitched his voice just about one and a half tones more moderate. He talked to us as if he wanted to eat us alive; but he talked to the top Sergeant as if he would let him live if he was good.

"Sergeant,' he says in a little tired drawl, 'this street looks like the dayvil. Get a squad of men and clean it up—clean it up good!' And with that the little whippersnapper turned on his heel and walked back to his tent.

THE top Sergeant was a slouching, good-natured cuss, one of the Glover type, and he looked around in a helpless way. He knew, and we knew, that cleaning the street at that time o' day was just about the last straw. It needed it, Jerry knows,—filled with bottles and cans and straw and worn-out shoes and pieces of watermelon rind,—but we had been marching with packs all day in the sun, and were too tired and too mad to lift a hand. The Sergeant was in a fix. He was looking for a commission himself and didn't dare disobey the Lieutenant; but equally he didn't dare say a word to us.

"So he finally routed out a bunch of rookies smaller than himself, got the baskets and rakes, and went at it. When he thought that he had it done, and done good enough to please Glover at least, the Lieutenant himself came back to see how he was getting on. The first thing he spied was an empty bottle that someone had shied out of a tent after the baskets went by, and at that his voice cracked like a whip:

"'Sergeant!' he yelled, and the Sergeant came back on the jump; while I and two or three others came out of the tents to see the fun.

"'Sergeant,' he says, 'do you call that clean?'

"The Sergeant picked up the bottle himself, and the two of them walked down the line. The next thing they saw was a cigar butt, and another man had to pick up that, and then the Lieutenant gathered the whole policing party around him and gave them a lecture. He told them not only to pick up every bit of dirt, straw, and food in the street, but he said that not another man was to throw so much as a match on the ground that week.

"All this time I was standing in the door of my tent smoking a pipe and rather enjoying seeing the Sergeant get it—when just as he said those words I blew out a match and threw it down on the grass. It never occurred to me what I was doing; but just as I did it Weston turned, saw the match fall, and his eye lit into my face. I'll bet he glared at me for as much as a minute, and I think that he sized me up; for he didn't snap as he had to the others. He lowered his voice and said in a quiet, even tone:

"'Private Morrison, pick up that match!'

NOW, as you know and I know, the last man in the world who is ever looking for trouble is a professional scrapper, and at almost any other time in life I would have grinned and done just as he said; but I was a kid at that time, and I thought the Lieutenant was just a smart little stiff trying to show off. So I never budged. I had come into that bunch with some reputation as a 'hard guy,' and I knew that the other lads were all watching to see what I'd do; so all that I did was to look him back in the eye and size him up in his turn.

"And when a fellow who's been in the ring does that he can see a lot. I could see through and through that Lieutenant as if he was stripped. I could have told you near to a pound how much he weighed, and that was ten pounds less than me. I could see that he had no neck and no shoulders, no chest and no arms. I could see that liquor had pretty near eat him up; I could actually feel how one blow would make him crumple and give, and inside I was so mad that I almost gave it. Yet I never moved until he told me again, and then—by the Lord Harry! there I was picking up that match! It wasn't a case of military discipline or anything like that. I just found myself doing it."

SPIKE leaned back from the table and sat a moment in reverie, living over the scene, and almost chuckling in enjoyment of his own discomfiture. I myself, indeed, remembered the shock-headed lout that had been Spike in those days, and I enjoyed it myself.

"Yet there was one thing about Weston," he went on at last, "and that was that he knew when to quit; for he didn't stop to say any more. When I went back into the tent a bunch playing set-back on one of the cots started to grin; but I shut them off:

"I picked up that match,' I says, 'for my superior officer, and if any of you bustards have got anything to say about it, say it right now!' But none of them had.

"And the funny part of it was," continued Spike, "that I lay awake all that night thinking of things that I ought to have done to that little squirt and hadn't. I saw him asking me to do it again, and my telling him to take the match and stick it down his damned throat before the whole company—and I probably would have; for you know how you always plan those things after they're over."

Spike grinned, and I nodded. I had lived through similar situations myself.

"Yes," I said, "you can always do just the right thing if you get a chance the second time; but you generally don't."

YOU'RE right, you don't," echoed Spike, "and I didn't then; for during all the rest of the camp Weston never asked me to do one single thing. The next day I was primed and ready for hire. If he had asked me so much as to lift my foot, I would have pitched into him right then and there. It wasn't that he avoided me, and it wasn't that he tried to make up to me. I caught his eye every chance that I got, and if I had seen so much as a quiver, a smile, a look that would mean 'Come on now, you're a good fellow,' I would have had him; but be never looked at me one way or the other. It was absolutely impersonal, as if he had never heard of my name."

Spike was verging on a common philosophy, and I made the expected remark: "In the end he was probably the most popular officer you over had."

But Spike was a man to dissect a platitude. "No, I don't think you could ever say that. A hard man is never popular; no matter how much you respect him, and at times, especially when he had been drinking, even Weston was pretty unreasonable. And besides there were too many men of the old wire-pulling sort to appreciate him. It was just as bad for you to softsoap him as it was to threaten: worse, for he had a way that made the boot-lickers want to creep into holes in the ground. So far as the company was concerned, we were just plain, private soldiers and the scum of the earth, and if it hadn't been for other things I would never have known Weston to be any but a zinc-lined old iceberg."

"Then he was different when he didn't have his uniform on?" I suggested.

"That was just what I was getting to," replied Spike, rather impatient of the interruption. "He was, and he wasn't. On the surface you couldn't see any difference; but I should say rather that you began to like him in spite of himself. At least that was the way that it worked out with me. I went home from camp swearing that I would never go near that damned armory again, and that if I ever caught that little spud up a dark alley it would be all night for Christmas. But just the same when we got our cards to begin drilling late in the fall I found myself there every Monday night. I used to say to myself that I was just laying for that Lieuteneant, and that sooner or later I'd get him. For months I don't think I ever hated anybody so much in my life, and I used to watch his back like a snake, just dreaming to myself what I would do to him if ever I got my hands on him. But the fact was that I couldn't keep away from him, and I couldn't have disobeyed him to save my life. He simply had got my goat."

The descriptions of primitive men are perfect, and of all of Spike's narrative I think that that one hackneyed phrase pleased me the most. He had indeed outlined one of the most curious and one the most constant situations in all human relations,—the subjection of will to will. Knowing Spike, and knowing Weston, it was positively tremendous as he pictured it, and yet not all the dictionaries could have hit the point with a better phrase,—"He had got my goat." Nevertheless, I had to prompt him back to his story.

"But you did see something of Weston outside of the armory?"

YES," replied Spike, "and the first real time was when I fought Butch Casey in Worcester. Up to that time I had worked mostly with local boys and with boobs; but Butch was the real thing, and I knew it. He was just as fast as I was, and had the professional training. I was younger and stronger; but I was awfully scared until, just before they introduced us, I saw Weston come sauntering in, in a big gray overcoat with a muffler around his neck, and take a ringside seat near my corner.

"I can remember this minute just how he looked and just how I felt. In a way

---

it tended to make me mad, because I knew I would fight my head off rather than let him see me get trimmed; but, on the other hand, for the first time in my life I began to feel glad to have him around. There were lots of big sports in the room, and most of them friendly to Butch; but Weston was such an out and out swell and he had me so completely buffaloed that I felt that if he was behind me I had the laugh on them all. He was better than all the rest of the room.

"And he was behind me too," continued Spike in grateful reminiscence; "for after the second round, before I had lost my stage fright and was pretty near out, he came up to my corner and whispered into my ear, 'Eat him up, Spike, eat him up!' And I did eat him up too; although it took all the whole twelve rounds to do it.

"'That's one of my men,' I heard him say afterward, and I was proud that he said it.

"That," went on Spike, "was what really broke the ice, and I couldn't hate him any more. I actually used to look forward to drill night, and became a Corporal, then a Sergeant, and finally top Sergeant. Weston was Captain of the company long before this, and as top Sergeant I had lots of chances to talk with him. Nights after drill he would call me into his office and ask my opinion of this man or that.

"Spike, how about Doherty?' he would say.

"'No good,' I would answer. 'He's a crook'; or 'He's tough; but he's a good man.' And ten to one the Captain would answer, 'That's just what I thought.'"

"Was he still drinking then?" I asked, with the directness that a man of Spike's nature would allow.

"No," he answered. "He had cut it out for the most part; for that was about the time that he began going around with the Miller girl."

IN spite of my own familiarity with the ways of a small town, I could not help wondering what the dainty and somewhat naughty Miss Miller, who had been one of my own distant sources of awe, would have said to hear herself thus described by a Pug; but I also knew that Spike's intention was all of the best, and I didn't smile.

"No," he continued. That was the time that Weston first began to fall for the love stuff, and it changed him so much that everyone knew it. He improved fully fifty per cent. in his looks. He no longer snarled and shouted at the men, and, so they tell me, he even made Miss Miller all quite in love with him.

"But the trouble was," added Spike, that Weston had been raising his own particular brand of hell around town for a good many years, and I imagine that the girl's friends were all a bit leery. In fact, from what I could learn, and I took good pains to learn, Prenny had been as good as told to go out and get a rep before he could sign the match, and, while the girl herself cared a lot for him, her friends spent most of their time giving him the double cross."

Who were her friends?" I asked.

It was largely Young Evans," he said, "and Cleve Sands and that crowd. Do you know them?"

"Those blanks?" I murmured.

"Yes, those blanks!" he repeated profoundly, using my oath; for he could not improve on it.

"I am a liberal man," he went on, "and don't like to say anything about anybody; but I never could stomach a man who talks soprano and keeps a cat. But yet," he added, "women fall for that kind, and they fall for them every time. They say that they like manly men, and yet the willy-boy talk and the Fauntleroy manners get them—and it got Weston's girl.

"But of course," he explained, "I knew nothing of that except what the boys around town were saying, and what my brother-in-law, who drove an automobile for the Millers, had told me, until one evening when Weston came down to the armory in just about the fashion he came into the company street that first night.

AS I said, he hadn't been drinking much for a long, long time; but he had had one or two that night, by the looks, and it made him Napolean Bonaparte. It was nothing but 'Private This' and 'Corporal That' and 'Right Shoulder, Huh!' like the snap of a whip, and all the front rank fearing to crinkle their noses.

"When it was over Weston told me to wait, and as usual I went into his room, and found him sitting there in his uniform looking like a Second Lieutenant of field artillery—and let me tell you there's nothing smarter in all this world than that!

"'Spike,' he says right off the bat, 'I

need a man tonight, and I need a good man. In fact, you're the only man in this town who'll be any use to me. I've got to do something that means practically highway robbery and possibly worse. It may land us in jail; but if you go to jail, I go too. Are you on?'

"Well, of course I was on, if only to see what he meant to do, and then he explained. He told me about his girl, without using her name, as if I didn't know perfectly well who she was, and he told me about those two Willies. Evans, it seems, lived out in the country with his cat, about three miles on the Brighton road, and Miss Miller had been asked out there to a dinner party. Naturally you could know how a man like Weston would feel about that, and the short of it was that he had told her she couldn't go with that Nancy. Equally of course she had told him that he had nothing to say about it, and the upshot was that he had replied that if she went he would come out there and get her. And now he was going.

"Of course,' explained Spike with his usual matter-of-fact philosophy, "that was five years ago, and today, when I own property and have a name to keep up, if a man should make a proposition like that, I would sit on his head and then take him down to a Turkish bath; but at that time, when I fancied myself a tough kid, and when Weston had me right under his thumb, it seemed the most reasonable thing in the world. I had already changed into civilian clothes; but Weston still wore his uniform, with his service revolver. I don't know whether it all was part of the game, but he slipped on his brown army overcoat and told me to come ahead.

"Outside he had a big automobile waiting. It wasn't his; for he hadn't money enough for a car. He had stolen that too, for all I know; but he could drive it all right, and he drove as if he hated the car and the roads as he hated Evans, for it didn't seem more than a minute before we were out there.

IT was a little house, set back perhaps fifty yards from the road; but it was all lighted up, and we could hear a graphophone playing, and see people dancing. It was along in the spring, and one of the windows was open; so Weston looked it all over a minute, chuckling, then turned the car carefully around, and says to me:

"Spike,' he says, 'I'm not going to mix you up in this any more than I have to. You stick by the car.'

"With that he shut down the engine until it was barely purring, got out, and stalked toward the door, just exactly as he had stalked down the company street. I watched him until he tried the door, pushed it open, and went in, when I slid out of the car and ducked for that open window.

"If I could only have got there ten seconds earlier and seen the faces of that bunch when he first went into the room, I would have given five years of my life; but it was funny enough as it was, for they were all standing there like a lot of seared rabbits, with Weston stiff in the door and looking just as he did when he said 'Private McCarthy!'

"There must have been perhaps eight people in the room, all told,—three or four women (all strangers but one), and Evans and Sands and two or three real men, all of them gusseyed out in dress suits. Over in the corner the music machine was still going, until it came to the end of the tune, when it began to squawk and kept on squawking, and there stood Weston until he spotted his girl, when he said in a quiet voice, 'Helen, I've come for you.'

"At first the girl gave one frightened look, then she paused a moment as if she was mad, and then without one other word she started for that door.

WELL," said Spike, growing more and meditative, "if things had only stopped there, it would have been as simple as pie. Everybody would have thought that he just had some private date to take her home, funny as his makeup might be, when all of a sudden that fool Evans had to pipe in, in his little high voice, 'Why, the man is drunk!'

"And at that it started. Like a flash Weston turned on him with a rage he'd been storing for months. 'Keep still, you little sissy!' he says; but the spell was broken.

"The girl stopped, frightened, another woman screamed, and two of the other men started for him as if they had got the word; but, like an uppercut, out came that gun.

"By Gosh!" exclaimed Spike, excited even in the narration, "at that even I got scared outside the window, and I wanted to shout; but I couldn't have moved a muscle.

"And, say," he went on, "have you ever seen a gun used by a man who knows how to do it? There is none of this 'slowly raising' stuff. He whips it up about the height of his ear, and then brings it down with a snap the way you throw a drop curve.

Drunk? ' says Weston. 'There isn't a man in this room who hasn't drunk more than I,' then in a lower voice, 'I don't want one of you to move one single step. Come on, Helen!'

"And Helen came. There was no slinking and no scare about her. She held up her head and came. I saw them go into the hall, and then I beat it for the car; but when they came out she was wearing his big army coat."

At the very memory of it Spike shook his head and smiled to himself for sheer thrill, a memory from which I myself roused him.

"And what happened then?"

"Oh, then?" he said, in an altered voice. "What could happen? They simply went home, sitting side by side in the front seat, with me in behind.

"But there was one thing about Weston," added the lightweight. "As I've already told you, he knew when to stop. Her house was dark when they got there; but he simply handed her up to the door and chirped out Goodnight,' as if they'd just come from church.

"To tell the truth," he went on, "I don't think she spoke to him for nearly a year; but in the end they got married, just as he said that they would."

"What," I suggested, "if one of those men had moved a step? Suppose they had yelled for help? Suppose they had turned out the lights? Do you think that Pren would have fired that gun?"

Spike positively snorted in reply. "If I have asked myself that question once," he answered, "I have asked it five hundred times. But for that matter," he concluded, "what would he have done if I hadn't picked up that match?"

At the End of the Struggle

By A WOMAN OF FIFTY-FIVE

MY husband and I had high plans when we married. Neither of us was very young,—he was twenty-nine and I was twenty-six,—and we both thought we had sufficient knowledge of life to carry out the ideas we had formed. One goal we set before us from the first,—to save a good proportion of our income, so that we could possess an old age that would neither be toilsome and penurious for ourselves, nor burdensome for our possible children.

Despite our expectations and schemes, we could not be altogether sorry when we knew there would be a baby in the house on the first anniversary of our wedding. We told, each other that here would be one more incentive to economy, and that with such an object to work and save for the happiness of our married life would be increased and glorified. So it was; but we were not long in learning that this form of bliss came high.

Making a Poor Man Rich

MY husband was a salaried man. He and I both were country born and bred, and he had lived in town only since he went to work after leaving high school. I had been taught to cook and to keep house, and when I said one day in my future husband's presence that I had been trained to be the wife of a poor man he told me glowingly that I would make a poor man rich. We talked over our future methods with the sanguine faith of the young, and made out a budget—we did not call it that in those days, but an outline of expenses—which covered everything except contingencies. Before I had been married many months I came to the conclusion that there were more contingencies than anything else.

We began our home-making very happily, in the small town where I had met my husband. Certain kindly relatives had the commonsense to give us money for wedding gifts, and with this we bought our dining-room furniture. I had my own bedroom set, and my mother contributed various stray pieces which helped fill our living room (we called it a parlor then). Drawing rooms were unheard of outside of English society novels. For the rest we indulged in an orgy of packing-box and cretonne dressing tables and dress boxes. We purchased matting for the floors, and put it down ourselves, and practised the various economies of gilded as pipes for curtain rods and Turkey red or canton flannel draperies, which are recollected by those who kept house thirty years ago.

As I have said, my husband was on a salary. In the course of our wise discussions as to how his income should be divided we set aside the fixed sum for the rent; an allowance was made me, from which to buy provisions, pay for service, gas, etc., and the rest was put away for the "contingencies" and for our savings fund. The matter of coal bills did not present itself as important, and with new outfits for both of us why should we bestow consideration on the cost of clothes?

When I look back at that period I can think of nothing but the Babes in the Wood. If our seniors had told us that we should not think of marriage until we had at least a thousand dollars saved and an income that could be stretched to cover our expenses, we should probably have laughed the advisers to scorn.

The First Baby

I MADE most of the clothes for the coming baby myself, so as to save all I could toward doctors' and nurses' bills. When the child came she was not very robust, and I had little experience; so that for some months the charges for medical attendance were about as stiff as extra service had been before she arrived. I own to having felt discouraged when she was eighteen months old and I knew another baby was coming. It seemed a special Providence that just then my husband should have had the offer of a better-paid position in New York.

I felt as though a door of escape were opened for me. In New York we could get a heated flat, and the coal bill would be eliminated. Everything would be on one floor, and the work of cleaning stairs and looking after sidewalks and front steps would be done away with. We could know with some certainty what our outlay would be, and provisions were less expensive in a big city.

I will not dwell upon the labor and trials of breaking up and moving, the strain and stress of finding and settling a new home. By the time we were in our flat and the expected baby had arrived, all our hard-won savings had been spent.

Trying to Save

IF my husband and I had not naturally been of an optimistic turn and blessed with good health, I don't know what would have become of us. But we could usually laugh at minor vexations and bring philosophy and religion to our aid in the bigger bothers—and, after all, we had each other and the children! As soon as this struggle of moving was over we could again begin to save!

That was always the vision ahead of us, sometimes near, sometimes farther off, but never quite reached. I don't mean we didn't save anything. We clung to our theories of systematic economies, of putting aside a little every week, and there were periods when we did this quite successfully. But then something would always happen. All three children ran the gamut of the ordinary childish diseases. One siege with the doctor or the dentist would sweep away the painful accumulations of months.

The Husband's Breakdown

MORE than this, we found that we had changed the place, but kept the pain, when it came to other drains upon the pocketbook. Food was undoubtedly less costly in New York than in our small town; but I had to get to the markets and the stores and back again, and that meant carfare, which Swallowed up my profits in buying.

Sometimes it seemed as if none of us could go anywhere without paying a nickel. The children soon grew beyond the age when they could go free in the cars or on half-fare. I sent them to the public schools; but their friendships, their diversions, their shopping, all called for carfare. I came to feel as though this outlay was a big fissure, through which were swept out to sea all the possible savings toward that promised time of comfortable old age.

The carfare was not the only demand. Always there was something to coax away the money. The children longed for playmates, to dress as they did, to go where they did, to attend ball games and "shows." I could not say no all the time.

Their father was working too hard. I knew it; but I did not understand how taxed he was until one day when we had been twelve years in the city our doctor, who was friend as well as physician, told me seriously that my husband was on the verge of a bad break-down. "Take him away from town," he said. "He ought to have a year in the open, on a farm, if he can't afford to travel or a sanatorium. And don't lose any time in making the change!"

Hardest Work She Ever Did

THERE is no use in going into the details of that anguish. To put the story in a word, a second door of escape was opened to us. My brother, who owned a big farm in the Middle West, had fallen a prey to the gold fever, and was crazy to join the rush to Nome. When he heard of our trouble he wrote and offered us his place, to work on shares. It was planted in fruit and vegetables, and was just beginning to pay in these and in the dairy.

"You should be able to make a good thing of it," he said. "The farmhouse is furnished, after a fashion, so you won't have to bring necessities with you, and if Margie can look after the cows and chickens, she ought to turn a neat penny in butter and egg money."

We broke up our flat, stored a few pieces, sold most we had at a loss, packed what we thought we should absolutely need, and turned our faces westward, the children jubilant over the change, my husband and I too apprehensive to be anything but cheerful.

We lived on the farm for four years. It gave back my husband's health; it made an old woman of me. Servants of any sort were far off and hard to find. Janey did what she could; but she was a growing child, with little strength. The boys could help my husband and the hired man in the fields; but except for what Janey could do in feeding the chickens, gathering the eggs, and some supervision of the incubators and brooders, I could not count upon her. It fell to me to strain the milk, to churn and work the butter, to make it into prints or rolls, to carry all the real responsibility of the poultry yard.

Besides this there were the cooking, cleaning, and other housekeeping to do. Janey attended to the dusting, the lamps, and setting the table, she helped wash dishes, and with some of the sewing; but I could not let her strain herself with heavy lifting or carrying. Many a time I did my own washing and ironing for weeks at a time.

Beaten

STILL, I might have fought on if it had not been for the children. They were growing up without an education. At first I tried to keep on with their lessons, to help them study at night. But they were sleepy after their full day, and by and by my brain seemed to become numbed from the hard physical labor that had kept me in its grip since early dawn. I would fall asleep when I was trying to explain or to listen, and after awhile the lessons stopped of themselves. At first this did not seem to make much difference; but then it was borne in me that if my children did not have a chance to study soon their mental muscles would become stiff and it would be too late for schooling.

For a time I considered sending them away for part of the year,—if we could get the money,—but just then we had a streak of hard luck. It was in the spring. The fruit trees were in full bloom; the vegetables were well out of the ground. All looked like a successful year, which would help make up for the losses we had undergone through our lack of experience in previous seasons.

And then came a frost! The bitter wind sprang up and blew all afternoon and evening from a clear sky. We looked and longed and prayed for a cloud that might mean milder weather; but in vain. The next morning the blossoms were frozen stiff, the vegetables were cut and black, and in spite of my care half the eggs in the incubator were fatally chilled.

Something seemed to snap in me at sight of those blighted hopes. The drooping blossoms and plants put into visible shape before me all the ideals we had, cherished and lost. I stood and looked about me dumbly for a few minutes, all then turned and went into the house and to bed. I was beaten!

What They Got Out of It

THAT was the way we happened to make our last change. My husband wrote to my brother that I must go away, and as soon as I could be moved after the low fever that prostrated me for weeks, they carried me back to the old home in the little village "Down East."

That was five years ago. We have never been back to the city; still less have we considered returning to the West.

We have a farm of our own now on the outskirts of the village. There are only a dozen acres in it, and the experience my husband had on the Western farm helps him to improve the plot to the full. The chickens, which bring a good part of our income, are not too much of a tax upon my strength. Janey is at home with us; Harold is in college; Tom in high school in the town, which was near enough to permit the children to go back and forth daily between the home and the school.

We have not yet gathered the competence that we had planned would make our old age easy. I don't believe that we ever shall, now. But we have a comfortable home, dear, dutiful children; we are spared to each other, and if our health remains we may be able to save enough to prevent our ever being a heavy burden upon them.

And if perhaps, after all, the sons and daughter for whom we have always done our utmost should have to lend us a hand in our declining years, who can say it may not be the best thing for their development—and for ours?

Who Was Marie Dupont?

By ADELE LUEHRMANN

CHAPTER VIII (Continued)

THE sight that met Irma's eyes held her rigid in the stupor of amazement.

The room was like her own in size and contour, its furnishings were even sparser, and in one corner stacks of canvases faced the wall.

The thought of those canvases and the human tragedy they stood for had often stabbed the sensitive heart of the Russian girl. She had seen them all, and knew too well what painful witness each one bore to vain hours of hopeless struggle.

Early in her acquaintance with her American neighbor—begun by a service he had rendered her young brother—he had told her that when working as an art student in Paris he had met with an accident which had necessitated the amputation of his right hand. Hurled into an abyss of despair, he had at length emerged with the resolve to conquer fate, to train his left hand as he had trained the right.

Stubbornly he had labored until he had been able to maintain himself by commercial drawing. Just so much of the distasteful work he now did as sufficed to keep life in his body and his body housed in this cheap lodging. Beyond that his time was spent on these canvases. Inch by inch, stroke by stroke, he had trained his inept muscles. Months, years, had gone by, and still the conception of his brain and the execution of his hand remained worlds apart.

But it was not the tragic futility of this struggle that now riveted the girl's attention; nor was it the man himself, who, seated with head sunk and eyes vacant in the apathy of despair, had heard neither her knock nor her entering step. It was a picture that stood on the easel before him that held her transfixed with astonishment.

It was the full length portrait of a woman, life size. The shade had been removed from the oil lamp on the table behind Andrus, and the light streaming on the red and yellow of the short frock seemed to dart back from the jots of paint like flecks of fire. The figure was poised on the toes, the arms outstretched in the full sweep of movement. Dark, lustrous hair hugged the small head, closely framing the face, young, glowing, high set on a perfect throat bare of all ornament.

"Miss Dupont!"

Irma Niklova gasped the name, and at the sound Andrus rose with a nervous start.

"Why—why—what's the matter?" he stammered, like a man suddenly awakened from a deep sleep.

She pulled herself together with an effort. "I knocked. You didn't answer. I thought you were asleep. Pavlo is worse. Will you go for the doctor?"

"Of course."

He caught up a coat from a chair and put it on and reached for a hat that lay on the table. Turning back to her, he followed her eyes to the canvas and stopped short. For several moments they stood together in silence gazing at the brilliant figure of the dancer.

Of a sudden he spoke. "I painted that!"

"You!"

He laughed shortly. "I had a hand then that obeyed me. That was the last thing I did before—"

He was so near her that she felt the sharp contraction of his figure that finished the sentence.

"Come, I will go for the doctor." He bent and turned down the lamp.

Irma had not moved. "That is a portrait," she said. "Who is she?"

"She is a dancer," he replied at last in a low voice. "I knew her in Paris—years ago."

"A dancer—for the public?"

He nodded.

"What is her name?"

"She has none—she is dead."

"Dead!"

He shuddered. "I loved her, and she is dead," he said, and turning strode to the door.

She followed him into the dark hall.

CHAPTER IX

IT was barely ten o'clock the next morning when Guy Amarinth presented himself at Hugh Senior's office. To his relief he was admitted at once, and as he entered he was conscious of the sharp glance of appraisal that the older man turned upon him during their brief greetings. The two had met a dozen times or more; but not until now had they had occasion to take stock of each other.

"Just what did Marie tell you about herself?"

"Nothing."

Amarinth had taken the chair to which he had been invited by a wave of the hand.

"I see," Hugh said. "Well, she has asked me to tell you what I know of her; but before I do so I must request your assurance as a man of honor that what I say shall be held in strictest confidence. As I understand the situation, you have made an offer of marriage to my ward,—Miss Dupont, that is,—and she has given you no answer. When you leave here you will be at liberty to advance or retreat honorably, as you may desire. Am I right?"

A dull flush mounted in Amarinth's face, and he gave a short nod in sign of assent.

"And I have your word of honor as to your silence in the event of your withdrawal?"

"Certainly."

"Thank you. Of course if you should decide to press your suit and are accepted by Miss Dupont, her story becomes your property—to do with as you and she should see fit. In that case you can rely on my silence and that of my aunt."

"I understand."

Hugh opened a desk drawer, and took from it the package wrapped in tissue paper that he had removed from the cabinet in his study the night before. He laid it on the desk, and settling himself again in his chair began.

SEVEN years ago this coming April I made a business trip to London. From there I went to Paris for a short visit with my aunt, Mrs. Thorley, who had recently become a widow and had turned over her affairs to me. She was living in the country, about an hour's run by motor from the city. The day after my arrival I was cabled to return to New York at once. It was barely daylight when I left my hotel to motor out for a last call on my aunt.

"A faint streak of light in the east gave me my general directions. I had crossed the river and got into the old part of the city, where the streets are narrow and wind and twist unexpectedly. Suddenly, as I was nearing a sharp bend in a short

What Time Does to Battlefields

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deserted street a woman darted from round a corner and ran across my course.

"I shouted, 'Look out! Look out!' and made an effort to swing the car aside; but I struck her and she fell—fortunately, out of the path of the car. I stopped and ran to her. She was unconscious, but alive, and as far as I could judge not much hurt: had fainted from fright, I thought, and was probably only bruised. I poured some whisky down her throat, and that seemed to start her pulse a bit, but didn't rouse her. I looked about for help, wondering what I had better do. No sign of a waking creature anywhere. The only thing to do apparently was to get the girl to a hospital as quickly as possible."

"The girl!" Guy echoed in a startled voice.

"Yes—it was Marie. She was just a slip of a girl, sixteen or seventeen. As her condition was not alarming, I decided that it would be perfectly safe to take her to my aunt's, where she would have every care. I stopped frequently to assure myself that she was not growing weaker, and once I noticed a spot of blood on the bosom of her dress. I opened the dress little at the neck, and found a slight cut caused by a—a necklace that she was wearing under her gown.

"It was a gaudy affair, with large imitation stones, and I took it off and put it in my pocket, and placed a handkerchief over the wound. The necklace is here. I'll show it to you presently.

"When we arrived the girl was put to bed and a doctor summoned. We were both much relieved when Dr. Vining announced that no serious damage had been done. She had sustained a violent shock, he said, and sleep was the best possible restorative for her nerves.

"When he was gone my aunt and turned our attention to the business that I was there to discuss with her, and had just finished it when the doctor returned. His patient still slept, but was stronger, he reported, and as it was high time for me to be on my way to Cherbourg undertook to see her back to her home and to negotiate the settlement of any claim for injury that she or her family might see fit to make. She was probably, he thought, a factory girl or one employed in a shop, judging by her clothes—but I'll go in that later.

WELL, I caught my boat and returned to New York. Oddly enough, I forgot the necklace until I was well on my way to Cherbourg. It has been in my possession ever since. She has never asked for it. I have waited for her to ask.

"What happened when she finally awoke I can only give you at second hand as I heard it later from my aunt and Dr. Vining. The only person in the room at the moment was a maid, an Englishwoman. Mrs. Thorley's servants, let me explain, were all English. Her husband had been English, and like many of his countrymen, although he adored France, he detested the French; so that my aunt always took a few of her English servants along when they went to France for their annual stay. I mention this because the fact of the household's being entirely English had a bearing on what followed. The maid reported that the strange young girl suddenly stirred in her sleep, opened her eyes, and let them travel slowly round the room until they reached the face of her watcher.

"'Who are you?' she asked after a long, silent scrutiny."

"In English?" Amarinth exclaimed.

"Yes, and without a trace of foreign accent. This woman was typical of her class and country, and it seems probable that Marie in her childhood had seen someone like her, and that some childish memory was stirred; for when the woman hesitated, uncertain how she ought to reply, Marie asked:

"'Are you Margaret's sister?'

"'No, I am Mrs. Thorley's maid,' said the woman.

"'Mrs. Thorley! Who is Mrs. Thorley?' Marie questioned.

"'She is my mistress.'

"It was a stupid answer, and seems to have struck the girl as amusing; for the woman reported that she began to laugh, stopping suddenly with a gasp of pain. 'It hurts!' she whimpered like a sick child, throwing the bed clothes off and pressing her hands against her side, where, as Dr. Vining had discovered, she was badly bruised. The maid ran to the door and called to my aunt, who hurried in after sending another servant for the doctor. The details of the next few days I cannot give you accurately; but Mrs. Thorley will do so if you wish to hear them. She has had occasion several times to itemize the events of that period for the specialists whom we consulted."

"Specialists!"

"Yes. You see, we became convinced eventually that as a result of her accident the child had lost her memory, that she had no idea who she was or where she came from."

Guy leaned forward, his eyes wide with stupefaction. "You mean—you mean that—that she doesn't know now?" he stammered.

"No more than then."

GUY dropped back with a deep, quick breath. It was plain from his expression that his mind had not yet begun to reckon with the amazing fact that had just entered it.

"At first Mrs. Thorley thought that she was playing a part, merely pretending ignorance; but that theory soon proved itself untenable. She seemed to try so hard to answer the questions asked her, and simply could not. Of her immediate past she apparently recalled nothing whatever. She did not even seem to know that she had ever been in Paris. Such answers as she gave to questions were of the limited, indefinite kind that a lost child gives: hardly as satisfactory. Vague ideas and visions seemed to float through her mind; but she could not grasp them. Her name, family, home, she had forgotten utterly. Her memories of places seemed the most distinct of any; but they were like the memories of pictures, wholly without associations. Dr. Vining was of the opinion that she had lived in different countries,—England certainly, and some warm country; Italy, perhaps, though she spoke and understood no Italian. Neither did she seem to understand French—"

Guy gave a quick start. "Are you sure of that?" he asked, interrupting.

Hugh senior stared. "Why do you ask that?" he demanded, adding when Amarinth did not at once reply, "You said it as if you had some special reason."

Guy reddened and answered stammerngly. "No—but doesn't it seem odd—if—if she was a factory girl in Paris—"

"Oh, that guess was made before she regained consciousness, you must remember. The quality of her English, her manners, her bearing, all made such a theory absurd. No, she seemed to understand no French, and even in English, the one language she spoke, her vocabulary was oddly limited, like a child's. She learned new words rapidly, however, and it was only a short time before the suggestion of childishness, so marked in her speech at first, quite disappeared.

"You understand, of course, that I am running ahead of events," Hugh broke off to explain. "I am giving you in a few words the conclusions that Mrs. Thorley was months in reaching. During the week that passed between the accident and her return to England she was skeptical of Dr. Vining's theory of loss of memory. From day to day she waited, expecting her guest to betray herself. She was exceedingly interested in the case, she says, and being alone, except for the servants, she was able to have the girl with her almost constantly. She tested her in every conceivable way to discover something of her former mode of life; but could arrive at no definite conclusions. The child showed unfailing willingness, even eagerness, to perform any service asked of her; but she did everything as a daughter or an obliging guest might do it."

HUGH paused a moment and seemed to hesitate before he added, "I said I would tell you about her clothes. They were rather—puzzling."

There was another interval of silence before he continued. He was watching Amarinth now, and when he began again to speak it was less rapidly than before, and in a disjointed manner, as though he felt his way.

"Her dress, my aunt says, was of cheap black cloth, badly made. Her shoes too were of an inferior grade and much worn, and her undergarments were very plain, almost coarse. And she wore no hat. All these things you see hang together. The odd, incongruous part of her costume was her coat. That was very handsome, black satin with fur collar and cuffs—expensive Fur. As a clue it only baffled us—"

"But did you make no effort to discover her identity by inquiry?" Amarinth broke in.

"Not at all fully—at that time," Hugh returned. "You see, my aunt was firmly convinced that she was shamming. One thing Dr. Vining did do. He ascertained through a French acquaintance that no girl answering such a description had been reported to the police as missing. When Mrs. Thorley was ready to return to her home in England she was at a loss as to what to do with her guest. She had thought she would give her a liberal sum of money and turn her adrift; then she decided to take her along to England if she would go—still wondering, you see, how far the girl would carry her imposture. Accordingly some simple clothes were secured for her and were packed in a small trunk that had been in the attic of the house when Thorley purchased it from its French owner. On one end of the trunk was printed the name 'M. Dupont,' and being a plain, plausible title it was passed on to the new owner. Dupont, you know, is as common a name in France as Smith or Jones here, and M suggested Marie."

"And she has no more right to the name than that?" Guy exclaimed.

"No. Of course my aunt had no idea that she was giving her a permanent name. She couldn't see how events would shape themselves. On arriving in England she at once consulted a specialist whom Dr. Vining had recommended, and by his advice Marie was sent to a private sanatorium for observation and treatment."

"But why didn't she consult some of the big men in Paris—where there was a chance of—of her being known?"

"That would have been the wisest thing to do, no doubt; but it would have involved me in the case as the cause of the accident, and that my aunt was not willing to do. We all have a horror of red tape, especially the foreign article. Besides, there was still that lingering doubt in Mrs. Thorley's mind of the girl's sincerity."

"I see. Go on."

SHE remained in the sanatorium two months, with no result except that she became terribly depressed at realizing that somehow, in a strange way, she was different from other people. Mrs. Thorley then made the round of the specialists, and ended by following her own advice and sending Marie to a boarding school."

"But couldn't the doctors do anything?"

"Oh, they wanted to operate, of course. Several seemed of the opinion that a blow on the head had interfered with the functioning of a part of the brain, by pressure perhaps. The skull showed no evidence of such pressure; but that appeared to be the only logical deduction.

"You will pardon me, Amarinth, if I don't go into their opinions, since no two were alike," Hugh resumed after a moment. "That in itself made us wary, and added to that the sanest man of them at advised against it. It might do no good and it might do harm. Besides, Marie's mental equipment was not in the least impaired. Even her memory dating from her awakening in my aunt's house was normal, and she acquired impressions and facts with astonishing rapidity. At the end of her first year at school she was quite abreast of girls of her own age. It was only that the mental record of her life from an early date in childhood up to the moment of her accident had been erased. Why endanger her life to restore it?"

"But surely she must have had parents or relatives who were searching for her?"

"If so, we never heard of it, and I had had a thorough inquiry made. The police system of Europe, especially of France, is such a marvelous network that I am sure we should have heard of a search had one been made. I assure you we have done everything short of taking the world into our confidence. That would only have made of her a creature apart, and to spare her that has been our constant effort. Can you not understand how deep a sense of responsibility I must feel for her future, her happiness?"

Hugh bent anxious, searching eyes on Amarinth. "She asked me to tell you her story; she felt that you had a right to know it. I thought so too. How it has impressed you I of course do not know."

IT'S all so strange, so unusual—" Amarinth began.

"Have you ever felt that there was any thing strange or unusual about her?" Hugh interposed.

"No."

"Then doesn't that prove that this slight abnormality has not affected be real self?"

"She seems just like other girls," Guy admitted.

"She is like other girls."

"But it seems to me incredible that you couldn't find out anything about her." He hesitated an instant, then asked, "Did you have the Paris police try to—identify her?"

"Did I give them her photograph and description—that sort of thing, do you mean? No."

"Why not?"

"My dear little fellow, what for? If her people cared so little about her that they made no attempt to find her, why should I hunt them?"

Amaranth leaned forward. "Is that the only reason you didn't give her picture to the police, Mr. Senior?"

Hugh recoiled. "I don't understand you," he said.

"Then you've told me everything you know?"

"Everything."

"Where do you think she was going at that hour?"

"I don't know. Perhaps to work."

"But you said you had become convinced that she was not a working girl."

"Oh, no," Hugh replied. I said that our first theory that she was a French factory girl was impossible, since she spoke no French—"

"She looks French," Guy interrupted. "I have heard it remarked by a familiar with French types."

"Yes, she looks French, and probably is of French blood."

"If she spoke no French, what sort of work could she have done in Paris?"

Hugh did not know. "She was dressed like a working girl, that's all I can say."

"But, the satin coat—"

"Ah, there you have it! No theory that we have ever hit upon has accounted for all the facts. The mystery remains unsolved. All we know is that she is a charming, lovable girl, and for us that has been enough."

A KNOCK at the door heralded the entrance of an office boy, who announced the arrival of a client.

Guy started up. "I'm keeping you, I fear," he said.

"Not at all. Don't go. If you'll excuse me, I'll attend to this matter and return in a moment. In the meantime you might take a look at the necklace. It's just gaudy junk, the sort of thing a girl of sixteen might be dazzled by."

Hugh's business in the outer office did not detain him long. Returning presently to his private room, he found Amarinth staring down at a mass of jewels in his hands. The boy's face was livid. The sight halted Hugh.

Amarinth looked up. He moistened his lips nervously. "This isn't junk, Mr. Senior," he said huskily. "It's the real thing!"

To be continued next week

She Wanted a Set of Fox Furs

QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS, has the youngest and perhaps the most successful woman fox hunter in the country. Her name is Helen B. Elcock, and she is still in her teens. Last year one black fox and twenty-four red ones fell victims to her skill with the rifle, and she has started out this season with the avowed intention of bettering this record.

It all came about in a curious way. Miss Elcock, like any other girl, longed to be the owner of a set of real, sure-enough furs. Her father jokingly suggested that the easiest and quickest way for her to secure the coveted articles would be to go out and collect her own skins. He also offered to take her along on one of his hunting trips, being an ardent fox hunter himself.

Miss Elcock needed no second invitation. Dressed in regulation hunting costume, with the exception of a short skirt, and armed with a twenty-two-caliber repeating rifle, she started off with her father and his pack of hounds on the trail of slippery Reynard. The result of her first hunt was two fine pelts, and subsequent trips, some of them made alone, brought the season's total up to twenty-five. Her fox skins, which she proudly exhibits, have brought huntsmen from all over the State to view her trophies. After her exceptional success she decided that she would keep her skins for exhibition, instead of having them made into garments.

Miss Elcock's skill with the rifle is considered remarkable. She has never been known to miss a fox when a fair target was offered. She is also a crack shot with a revolver. She now has her own pack of fourteen thoroughbred fox hounds, and early almost every morning, regardless weather conditions, hikes for the Blue Hills near Quincy in search of the elusive fox. Her fox hunting season opens on Labor Day and closes about March 15.

On one occasion she captured alive a baby fox, which she carried home with her. It is now a sturdy little creature, and follows its owner round like a dog. It never makes any attempt to escape, though allowed almost complete freedom.

He's Never Been a Drag to Any Man

SIXTY-THREE years old—yes, sir! Blind for forty-seven years, Sir! Student, rancher, judge of blooded stock, brush and broom maker, and a bit of an inventor all that time, Sir; but never dependent—never a drag or drain on any man, Sir!"

That, in brief, is the life story of Alexander Cooper, expert and artistic maker of brooms, blind since he was sixteen, yet one of the oldest, sturdiest, and most ambitious toilers in the State workshop for the blind at Denver, Colorado.

"Talk to me while I work: I can't stop," said Cooper, the industrious. "You see, I've given myself an added stunt this month. I'm after a dollar and seventy-five cents a day instead of my usual dollar and a half. Spring is here, and there's bright new clothing to be had, you know. I won't see it, but I'll wear it, and that is a consideration.

Rancher for 20 Years

NOW you stand right there—out of the way of this broomstraw and my knife—and we'll have a nice, quiet chat. I never cut myself, and I don't want to nick you."

Cooper is gray and grizzled, whiskered and slightly stooped: but he turns out his three dozen brooms each day, except during his overambitious months, and does it all without assistance, pocketing his pay each Saturday night with the good knowledge that he owes no man.

"I was born in St. Louis," explained Cooper reminiscently as he twisted a bunch of broomstraw into shape round a handle, seized a heavy, razor-sharp knife, and cut the protruding straws away as carefully and accurately as if he could see with the keenest sighted. "It was down in Jefferson City, Missouri, that I met with my accident. A sliver of wood flew into my right eye. The mishap affected the left, and I became totally blind. I was a schoolboy at the time, and after a few months resumed my studies, but under vastly different conditions and methods. It took that long, you know, to pull myself together and become accustomed to new circumstances. However, I stuck to my schooling until I was nineteen—and I am glad and proud of it."

"But you say you were a rancher, Mr. Cooper," he was urged. "What can a man who cannot see do on a ranch to win a livelihood?"

"I was a rancher for twenty years—yes, Sir; twenty fine, profitable years. And I was an efficient rancher too. At my fingers' ends I had every detail of that business. No penny escaped me, no slightest item; for with departing sight I believe my memory became better: certainly my hearing and every other sense were improved.

"As for the manual labor, there were chickens to be cared for, cows to be milked, horses to be fed and curried, post holes to be dug, and fences to be built, besides a hundred other things that I could do and do well. I could cook and care for the ranch house as successfully as anyone; so for a score of years I stuck right there and made an excellent living.

"I learned much of livestock and poultry,—learned to estimate them by the touch of hand, running fingers through hair or feathers. I was, and am sometimes now, in demand at county fairs and stock shows, and I cleaned up many honest dollars in that way."

Twenty feet from Cooper, in the Colorado workshop, is a broom-stitching machine. Presiding over the whanging, clanging piece of mechanism, with its countless threads and flashing needles, is Henry Ralston, some forty years old, also totally blind. For ten months he has run that stitcher without accident to himself or the intricate machine, and he too makes his dollar and seventy-five cents a day.

"Better Than a Woman"

COOPER and Ralston live together a few squares from the State workshop. They do their own cooking, and keep their own rooms, and, according to D. A. Arnold, a foreman of the shop, their quarters are a model of neatness and cleanliness.

"Don't you ever cut yourself with that knife?" came the query, as the heavy blade hacked through the tough straw of the third broom Cooper had fashioned during the short conversation. "And don't you ever whack your fingers with that hammer?" as he drove a nail through the handle with a few quick, sharp blows.

"Not many cuts," he answered. "Sometimes I get careless or in a hurry, like all people, and then I pay in the usual way. As for the hammer, I think I can do better than a woman—yes, yes, considerably better, judging from what I have heard and read."

The Savior of the Turkey

MARGARET MAHANEY, whose name is familiar to every poultry breeder in the United States and Canada, is a young woman of Concord, Massachusetts, who a few years ago looked out upon life with a discouraged and disheartened view. Doctors had informed her that she must relinquish her career as a trained nurse or it would result in her complete physical breakdown, and that her only hope of health was in living outdoors.

She had little money. She knew of no

one to whom she could turn for advice; but she began the struggle, and today she is in perfect health, possesses a house and a substantial bank account, and every turkey breeder in the country knows Margaret Mahaney as the savior of the turkey—our national bird. For it was she who discovered the cure for the dreaded blackhead, the plague that was killing off turkeys in such great numbers that breeders found little profit in caring for their flocks.

The secret of her success, she says, is that when her life seemed darkest and most hopeless she determined to succeed. "I told myself, in the night, when everything seemed to be against me, that I would make good. That is all there is to it."

Fighting the Blackhead Pest

MARGARET MAHANEY had read of the struggle of turkey breeders against the blackhead pest. She was interested; for Concord is peculiarly adapted to turkey breeding, and several of her neighbors had small flocks. She talked with them; but always heard the same discouraged comment, that the blackhead was killing off the turkeys more quickly than they could be bred.

Her little home is on the side of a hill. She secured a few turkeys and carefully fed them; but alas! it was midsummer, and soon her little flock drooped. When she called her neighbors in they told her that the turkeys had been stricken with the blackhead.

They advised her to give up; but she shook her head. Today her stock is considered the standard. Breeders from all sections of the country buy her turkeys to improve their own flocks. The sixty birds in her flock are considered by judges to be the finest specimens of the bronze turkey in the world.

The story of her triumph makes her accomplishment seem simple, until one remembers that for forty years an unsuccessful fight had been made by breeders to conquer the blackhead, and that the disease played the most prominent part in forcing the price of turkeys so high that they were fast becoming a costly luxury.

Miss Mahaney had little technical knowledge. She had commonsense. She found that breeders let their flocks run wild, breed indiscriminately, and eat inordinately. She kept her flock on sunny ground. She fed them with greenstuffs in midsummer, when the plague threatened most. Then she added to her fund of knowledge by making inquiries as to the specific remedies employed in treating domestic fowl when ill. She experimented, and finally discovered that the blackhead pest could be conquered. Regulation of food, plenty of water, clean roosts, and careful breeding combined to produce the desired results.

She then studied the breeding problem. Some of her neighbors smiled when they saw her turkeys strutting about with red bands tied around their legs. But those red bands played an important part in the regeneration of the turkey.

They told the history of the individual bird, and it was this history that finally settled the difficult and contested points when the breeding season arrived. Today every mail brings her numerous inquiries from veteran breeders, who write for her opinion on the treatment and care of their own flocks.

Her rules for turkey breeding are simple: Keep the birds warm and comfortable in the winter season, keep the roosts scrupulously clean, and have sand so that the birds may dust themselves.

Oyster shells, oats, barley, and very little cracked corn constitute the turkeys' menu. Beef scraps from a special dish are allowed three times a week. Fresh drinking water is always before them, and in the trough is placed a drop of tincture of iron.

Bringing Up Young Turkeys

WATER is fatal to the chicks, she found, and she makes careful arrangements when a new brood is hatched. She feeds the newly born a sting nettle with hard-boiled egg to which a little shake of red pepper has been added. Wheat bread, soaked in milk and then squeezed dry, forms the nest menu, and lettuce is a later dish.

Miss Mahaney is proud of her success in turkey raising. The many remedies she has discovered have been adopted on every large turkey farm in the country, and she is recognized by all breeders as the savior of the turkey.

Going Back Over the Old Trail

ONE of the first persons to visit the San Francisco Exposition this year was Mrs. Napoleon Bonaparte Stoneroad, now in her eighty-third year, and perhaps the sole survivor of the intrepid band that crossed the plains to California in 1846 from Independence, Missouri.

Mrs. Stoneroad was a fragile girl of thirteen when she accompanied her father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Gallant Duncan Dickinson, formerly of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and a party of friends and neighbors on their long journey over the plains. Their only guide was the well-thumbed volume written by the first adventurer across the plains, Lunsford Hastings, who had made the journey with fifty companions in 1842. His directions were broad and comprehensive,—after so many days west by north, the Kansas or Caw River would block their way; then on due north to the Platte; then a blazed rock in the plains of waving grass to point to the best ford. Those who had joined Dickinson had staked their all in the venture. Their homes, land, furniture, all they owned, had been sold to secure equipment for the journey.

Those long, hot days journey across the plains, those silent starry nights, are vivid in this venerable traveler's memory. It was a slow, grinding journey, made the first month in favor of oxen, because of the lack of blacksmiths on the prairies. At Fort Laramie the party saw the first herds of buffalo, and no spectacle in the years to come could ever equal the thrilling sight of that first hunt, or the savory taste of fresh meat roasted at the fire on eventful evening.

Then came the climbing of the hills leading to the Great Divide. "Who goeth to the hills goeth to his mother," is the old Indian proverb, and all the party felt this in the evening when they gathered about the bright fire and listened unaffrighted to the howling of the wolves and the cry of the the jackals.

It was October 20—over five months from the time they started—when the party entered the Promised Land. Mr. and Mrs. Dickinson lived for many happy prosperous years in the home they had wrested from the wilderness. Dickinson built the first hotel in Stockton, the first Methodist church in California. The fifth generation of his line inhabits his old home, the first brick house in Santa Clara.

Inside the Sultan's Harem

THE Sultan's harem, in spite of changes and certain privileges according to the Ottoman Princes and Princesses, still remains the harem in the real sense of the word, and I—so my hostess tells me—am the first Englishwoman to have been admitted as a visitor there." So writes Grace Ellison in her book, "An Englishwoman in a Turkish Harem" (McBride, Nast & Co.). "Across its threshold no man may go, and even as we drove into the big door, which is inside another wooden door, and is opened to admit each carriage and closed again immediately, our footman had to descend and wait for us on the outside. The whole harem is surrounded by a wall so high that no one can possibly see anything within.

"For the first time since I have been back in Turkey again, I felt myself really inside a harem, amid the curious array of slaves and eunuchs, and in spite of its wide corridors and salons there is a most uncomfortable sense of bondage, which would make me a raving maniac within a week. It is true that each of these women is solemnly asked four times each year whether she would like to marry and leave the harem. I say to myself then that if they continue to stay it is because they wish to stay, and they must therefore be happy.

"Their existence, however, seems to me a most heartrending waste of human life, and as I sat watching them loitering along the exquisitely carpeted corridors, gossiping, smoking, carrying alternately coffee and water to the guests, I longed to break down for them the latticework that is always between them and the sun, to fling the windows open so that they might breathe the fresh air, to open the doors so that they too might go out. And yet no one of these women seemed to feel her slavery, and no doubt they would turn their backs in horror at the ugly, unprotected existence of some of the women of my country.

"All the ladies there wore silk stockings and high-heeled shoes. How strange we must look to these corseted women who made no attempt at a fashionable coiffure, who still remain faithful to the heelless slippers and colored stockings, worked with gold, and whose dresses contain enough material to have made three or four of our presentday creations!

"The Sultan's granddaughter interested me particularly: not so much because of her rank, but because of her appearance. She is a short girl (her age, I believe, is about twelve), but her dress was long and wide, her hair dressed in a knot inside a diamond crown, and the front of her small body was covered with diamond orders, and a diamond dog collar encircled her little throat. But most curious of all was the long, thin hand, quite out of proportion to the size of her body, with which she acknowledged our salutations; for on those curious hands she wore gold mittens studded with rubies and diamonds.

"Suddenly while we wait we become conscious of a certain movement among the ladies. All eyes turn toward the door. The Sultan has arrived! A procession of four ladies at a time, headed by the Hasnader, we enter the room where Mohammed V is seated, and a moment later I am kneeling before his Majesty our Sultan, Commander of the Faithful, who has graciously deigned to receive the friends of his wives."

"I Want to Educate My Children"

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

MY husband is a country clergyman. We have no other money than his small salary. My little daughter is three years old, and my baby boy is just a year. I know my husband and I will always manage to get along somehow, and I do not worry in the least about myself in case he should ever be taken away. I could always manage. But I do worry about my children. I want them to have as good an education as their father had. What shall I do?

There are all kinds of ways of saving money for a child's education. By making a deposit of $2 in the savings bank on the first birthday, $3 on the second, $4 on the third, and so on there will be $304.90 when age twenty is reached. Many banks have Christmas clubs, where one begins by depositing a very small sum the day after Christmas and makes a slightly larger deposit each week for a year. In this way it would not be difficult to have almost enough at the end of a year to buy a good 5% bond, which returns a larger income than savings banks.

Another method of saving is to put aside every small coin for the child, or every coin bearing a certain date. Any person can devise a scheme that will bear lightly upon the purse, but thanks to the working of compound interest is certain to run up to quite a respectable total in the course of a few years. For many people these methods are satisfactory; but there are other people who can never save a cent unless there is compulsion behind them.

Easily the most profitable method of providing for a child's education, and one that also possesses ample safety, is to purchase high-grade bonds in small amounts. One of the great banks in Chicago has a Savings Investment Club, where a person who deposits $50 is allowed to borrow $50 more and purchase a $100 bond, selecting the bond himself. The main advantage of this plan is that most of the depositor's money draws bond interest instead Cot savings bank interest, a considerable gain. Interest mounts up very fast. A $1,000 bond, paying $25 every six months, or 5% a year, will amount to $1,747.55 at the end of ten years if the interest is placed in a bank at 4% every six months.

But the trouble with all these schemes is that the element of compulsion is lacking. Everybody does not need a shove; but lots of us do. Life insurance fits the case best for such folk. The interest on a life insurance policy is small, very small; but it is safe, and there is the necessity of making the regular payments. Perhaps a child's endowment policy may be just the right method for some people, especially if the parents are middle aged. For the three-year-old an annual payment of $56.38 (slightly more if payments are made every three months) will bring her in $1,000 at year eighteen, and $46.29 will do it for the one-year-old. Nothing is paid back if the little ones die before they reach eighteen; but by paying $51.23 for the year-old and $60.15 for the three-year-old all premiums are returned in case of previous death.

There is still another method of making life insurance do the work and the better of the two if the husband is young. Let the husband take out an endowment policy on his life, but payable only to the little one, a policy for fifteen years. If the husband is thirty years old, he will have to pay something more than $60 a year for $1,000. The advantage of this form is that if the husband dies any time time after making the first payment the $1000 is turned over to the child. Of course the younger the husband the less it costs. One great merit of any form of insurance policy is that the money is it is absolutely certain to go to the person is intended for.

1,000 Marriage Licenses a Day

DOWN in New York's imposing new Municipal Building, "one flight up, second door to your right," is the biggest marriage market in the country. It is otherwise known as the City Clerk's office, where for the minimum fee of one dollar the State gives its license to wed to any two people of legal age who ask for it. Thirty-seven thousand licenses were issued last year for the Borough of Manhattan alone.

The concentrated romance of the City Clerk's office staggers one as an atmosphere of pure ozone might. All the chairs at all the big tables in the large room are filled with people actually intending to be married. And outside in the hall is a long line of agitated but determined couples waiting for the places of the earlier comers. Think of it! A license to wed issued, on dull days, one every three minutes! On really busy days, such as the first of June, 1914, people were speeding toward matrimony at the rate of a couple every one and a third minutes.

Yet the sympathetic Irishman who is chief clerk of the bureau had a period of downheartedness this spring. The vital statistics with which he deals are indeed such to him.

"The figures for the first few months of this year had us worried," said he. "Why, at the end of March we were nearly 500 behind the same date last year! On account of the war, I suppose. But April was a fine month. We picked up a couple of hundred in April, and if only peace is declared this summer we shall be in fine shape again, because there are more little American girls than you'd suppose waiting for some special soldier's return. Last fall after war was declared we were terribly busy. Last October there were 3,107 licenses issued; nearly as many as in June, which is always the record month. Many of those young men were leaving the country to join their colors,—German, English, French. Oh, yes—America has her 'War Brides.'"

It is not the prerogative of the City Clerk or his men to refuse to issue a license to any two people of legal age who ask for it; but sometimes when the contracting parties look exceedingly near the eighteen-and twenty-one-year mark the assistants pass them on to the chief, who questions them in a friendly sort of way in his private office. Then there is a list of "Stops" pasted up each day back of the iron grating,—names of impulsive children telephoned in by apprehensive parents. Frantic messages come in too from disappointed suitors urging the authorities to forbid some rival's marriage; but these are disregarded.

Up on the next floor, where civil marriages are performed, things are much quieter. About one marriage an hour is the average record. Italians and Hebrews use both a civil and a religious marriage ceremony; so the people of these two nationalities make the most of the little "chapel" above the License Bureau. But there also may be seen occasionally liberal-minded folk of interresting appearance, or people of differing faiths, who meet there on common ground.

New York has had its Marriage Bureau for only seven years. It was one of the last States to take the important step. Before that time any commissioner of deeds or notary public could issue a license, and consequently these important records were in a state of hopeless confusion.

The warm-hearted officials in the Marriage Bureau—several of whom have been known to give up a ball game of good night's rest to oblige young people in a hurry—are very ambitious for their department to make a record; but the sort of record they have in mind is one of quantity, not quality.

"This fellow says he is out of employment and has no money except what his father gives him," said a younger cleark anxiously.

"Let him put down 'no employment' then," said his senior. "It's no affair of ours."

A tubercular-looking youth and a delicate girl came up to the window; behind them were a dissipated old man and a pretty girl who giggled constantly; a negro girl and a frightened white boy gave his age as twenty-one were next in line.

In spite of the elaborate-looking machinery of the Marriage Bureau, it is very easy to be married: much easier than to get permission to enter a school or factory or to travel abroad.

The American Sphinx

ON the crest of a high bluff overlooking a great bend in the picturesque valley of the Rock River in Illinois, rising to a height of fifty feet stands the colossal form of an Indian. This huge statue, which is of concrete cemented into the solid rocks, is the wort of Lorado Taft, and was built with every care that modern engineering could take to make it as permanent as the pyramids of Egypt and other famous landmarks of the ages.

The statue was inspired by the thought that the Indian as a race is vanishing. Wrapped in his long blanket, with arms folded on his chest, this heroic figure stands erect, silently and calmly surveying the vast expanse of meadow, hill, forest, and river. The dignity, the stoicism, and the bitterness of a vanquished race are there.

In carrying out his conception Mr. Taft chose the famous Chief Black Hawk to personify the farewell of the Indian to his native land. The choice is all the more a happy one, as it was along the Rock River that Black Hawk made his last home, until he was removed to the Iowa reservation by the government.

From the viewpoint of construction the statue presents an interesting departure from the usual methods employed in sculpture. Other immense figures of this kind, such as the Statue of Liberty, have been executed in bronze or iron. Mr. Taft chose concrete for the Black Hawk statue, since this material, when properly set, is practically everlasting. Many engineering difficulties had to be overcome, inasmuch as a large concrete statue had never before been made. The statue contains about two tons of twisted steel reinforcing, and approximately 250 cubic yards of concrete, twenty tons of which is pink granite dust screenings, giving it the appearance of a granite statue.

The first model was of plaster and only eight inches high. The next was two feet, and the third six feet. This last served as the working model, and was enlarged by careful measurement to a frame of scantling round an elevator shaft. When the whole figure had been framed in lumber, wire netting was stretched over the timbers, and this in turn was covered with burlap for a surface. Later the burlap was painted over with plaster of Paris to stiffen it, and then subjected to a coat of clay water to insure its release from the mold.

A three-inch mold was next made over the figure. About ten tons of plaster were used for this purpose, with many heavy timbers for support. The scaffolding was then taken out, and a steel reinforcing tower eight feet in diameter was built in its place. This tower runs the entire length of the body, ending in a dome just below the neck, and was designed to support the head.

The final work of pouring in the concrete was done in the middle of winter. Ten days were required for this work, with two crews of fifteen men each, working day and night. When the mold was full heat was applied for two days, and then the spirit of Black Hawk was left to the elements until the following spring. With the removal of the mold there emerged a perfect monolith concrete statue.

One Minute with the Editor

Dr. Lloyd Starts Something

WHEN, a month ago, we passed on to Dr. Lloyd a letter from a young man who asked whether he ought to continue to work in a business he could not respect, we didn't know how many troubled people there were in the world. Apparently there are a multitude, judging from the letters. Here is one from a girl in a Middle Western city:

I am greatly in need of advice, and cannot get it from anyone near at hand...Can a girl who has only a high school education and some business training, and has not been very much in touch with church work, make a successful minister's wife?

We have passed that on to Dr. Lloyd also; and as long as the questions continue his answers will be a regular feature. But remember, no questions of political or racial or religious belief. Address him, Dr. A. T. Lloyd, care of this magazine.

"Save Me! Save Me!"

she cried. And the sturdy firemen answered, "Sure, Madam, we'll save you. Them kind of acts is our speciality."

So starts a bully fire story, called "The Human Pendulum," written by Arthur E. McFarlane, who knows more about fires than any other writer in America. It's the big story for next week.

Will the Brides Kindly Wait a Little While?

We've had to postpone our Brides' Number for a little time. Announcement of the date will be made a little later. Meanwhile our thanks to all the brides who have filled our mail with lovely pictures, and our assurance that the pictures will not suffer a bit of harm in our hands.

May Your Tribe Increase

To THE EDITOR: Two weeks ago my newsdealer delivered a copy of EVERY WEEK at my apartment without any order from me. Since then he has delivered it each week with my morning paper. I don't know whether you set him up to this or not; but if you did I send you my sincere thanks. EVERY WEEK is a refreshing change from the ordinary run of magazines. It's the best three cents' worth that has come into our house for a long time, and we are going to let it keep on coming.

Will all the writers who have sent us letters of this sort please consider themselves personally thanked? And may their tribe increase!

P. S. Every mail indicates that it is increasing.

A Big Thought for the Week

IS LIFE ONLY A PROCESSION TO DEATH?

By Steen Vanwyck

LIFE is not a continual Niagara pouring into Death. It is not an inevitable Defeat. Its sweetness is not all doomed to bitterness. Its joy is not all doomed for the House of Sorrow. Its activities do not all dissipate at last in the eternal Dust.

Life is a perpetual Resurrection. No matter is lost, say the scientists; no force is lost. These material things seem to disappear only when they change their form. The burnt wood exists still ashes and gas; the ended motion is translated into heat.

Since time began all living things have been dying; but it is just as true that life has been forever reappearing.

Spring comes after every winter. Violets at last conquer every snow. From the fall of Kings rise Republics. From the decay of superstitions grow truer conceptions of religion. After dead Tyrannies come Democracies.

The amazing fact about this old world is its recuperative power. It is more alive and green now than it was six thousand years ago; yet what deaths has it endured!

Sursum corda! Spring has come again!

How Would You Like to Train Bulls for a Living?

THERE is just one woman in the world who has made a success of training animals for show purposes, and her name is Winona Von 0hl. Born on a Western ranch, of a mother who had a reputation as a horsewoman and trainer, Miss Von Ohl comes naturally by her gift. Commanding of figure (she is six feet tall, and straight as an arrow), alert, magnetic, and winsome, the champion woman animal trainer seems to exercise some spell over dumb creatures, from wild animals to their domestic kindred.

In her work Miss Von Ohl uses three essentials for animal training,—patience, firmness, and commonsense. She finds patience the most important quality, and perseveres with unwearying attention to the most obstinate of animals until she obtains results. She practises an unvarying firmness that causes the animals to know her will is law, but without cruelty. She believes that animals possess an intelligence superior to instinct, and never demands of a beast any performance beyond its capacity.

Miss Von Ohl has trained every kind of animal, from the wild beast of the jungle to the calf. The latter may not seem worthy of mention; but as she is the only person on record who has ever successfully trained one of these bovine specimens this must be counted among her accomplishments. Calves are said to be as stubborn as they are stupid; but there never was a bossie that did not obey Miss Von Ohl's bidding. Training a calf is not so spectacular a performance as obtaining obedience from a shaggy, roaring lion; but it is much more difficult to instil sense into a calf than a lion.

When circus managers have wild beasts they cannot manage they send for. Miss Von Ohl. If a lion shows his claws and teeth, and his attendants are afraid to go near his cage, they always send for the "Lady Trainer," as she is called. Whether

the lion knows that she is his friend, or whether it is her fearlessness, no one knows, not even Miss Von Ohl herself; but both lions and tigers invariably become as docile as kittens when this woman trainer speaks.

The mere sight of a bull in a distant pasture is enough to make the majority of us take to our heels. Not so Miss Von Ohl. Even Major, the most obdurate bull that ever tossed his horns, and "was more savage than any lion when he was aroused," according to Miss Von 0hl, was compelled to acknowledge submission, and has been the attraction of many a country circus.

There never was a wild horse that Miss Van Ohl could not manage and command obedience from. To be sure, the horse is an intelligent animal, and responds more readily to kindness than jungle creatures; but, even so, the breaking in of a bronco is a task not coveted by many horsemen.

There are plenty of animal trainers who can boast of a subduing influence over animals. They are to be seen every day at circuses and Wild West shows, and they walk fearlessly among lions, fondle the big cats, and order elephants about. It looks like a remarkably courageous business, especially when they put the animals through their stunts; but nine times out of ten the diffucult labor of training these creatures has fallen to Miss Winona Von Ohl.

For many years Miss Von Ohl performed her animal training on her farm at Englewood, New Jersey. Recently she bought a ranch in the West, where she is devoting herself to her beloved work.

"Does It Hurt Me to Chew Gum?"

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

IT has been the cheerful custom of doctors generally to "knock" gum. They have told us that unless a person could eat and chew gum at the same time he could not influence the digestion of starches, the only foods the digestion of which can be assisted by increasing the flow of saliva.

Also that, as no starch digestion went forward in the stomach, it was useless to chew gum after meals; that if it was chewed after meals it would, by stimuating a more liberal flow of saliva (which is mildly alkaline in reaction), interfere with the digestion of meat and other proteid foods in the acid medium of the stomach. Also that it conduced to nervousness, wore the teeth out, toughened and wrinkled those muscles of the face which are required to work overtime in masticating. All of which was very interesting—but what are the facts?

Little or no starch is converted by the saliva and changed during the process of mastication. Further, it is proved that starches digest best when the menstrum in which they are immersed—in this case saliva and the stomach juices—is only slightly acrid. From five to 25 per cent. of the starch eaten is digested in the stomach, and starchy digestion progresses until the free muriatic (or hydrochloric) acid of the stomach reaches a proportion of one part to 500 of starch. Starch digestion then automatically stops; to be resumed when the stomach acid has been again neutralized; after which the small intestine finishes the job. Therefore gum chewing helps digestion, especially when there is a tendency toward acid dyspepsia.

Also we now know that gum allays gloom and helps overcome nervousness. This was first demonstrated during the Balkan War. Men who returned from America to fight in that war brought with them the American habit of gum chewing, and found it so comforting and edge removing that all demanded gum. Since that war it has been issued as a regular ration in many European armies.

Another of its advantages to soldiers was that, by provoking a free flow of saliva, it kept the throat moist in the absence of water. Athletes, long-distance runners, ball players, auto racers, and others whose labors are exhausting and nerve racking, now chew chicle for the same purpose.

Gum has also been recommended for lessening the bad effects produced by the concussion of big guns. Because of this the German, English, and other navies always keep a stock of it on hand.

And so far as its wearing out the teeth and the face, toothbrushes, wash rags, gossiping, and laughing also wear these out. In fact, they will wear out anyhow, given time enough.

Chewing gum, by keeping the mouth and tongue clean, also helps preserve the teeth. Many physicians are adopting the practice of giving their little patients with typhoid, scarlet fever, measles, diphtheria, and other conditions in which the mouth secretions are more or less vitiated, a fresh piece of chewing gum after each feeding, to help, by mechanical action, and by thoroughly stimulating the flow of saliva, to freshen up the mucous membranes, This, of course, is in addition to a scrupulous toilet of the mouth.

Gum chewing frequently relieves children, and even adults, of car sickness. It keeps the mind busy and dilutes the acrid secretions of the stomach with a free flow of alkaline saliva. It is of course not so effective as milk of magnesia or atropin; but it helps materially.

We admit that chicle may have esthetic disadvantages. There are far more inspiring spectacles than the sight of a earful of assorted Americans all busily working their jaws. Most of the things that have been said against gum chewing in public are justified; but, in the seclusion of own home, a stick of gum after each meal won't hurt you a bit.

Little Things You Ought to Know

Where Eiderdown Comes from

THE down of the eider duck is more highly esteemed and brings a higher price than any other down. In Iceland and the Vestmannaeygar Islands, where the duck nests, it is rigidly protected by law and by public sentiment.

These ducks make their nests of down from their own breasts. They pluck it out with their bills, and form it into a circular mound which has the property of retaining heat to an extraordinary degree. If this down be removed, the duck supplies a second, and even a third, lot form the same source.

The eider farms in Iceland are frequently situated on little islands off the coast, covered with low hummocks. To protect the brooding ducks from the elements the Icelanders construct small shelters of rough stones. On these farms, it is said, the ducks become so tame that anyone with whom they are familiar may handle them without frightening them.

Separate buildings on the Icelandic eider farms are devoted to the cleaning of the product. Down clings tenaciously to anything on which it is thrown, a circumstance this is utilized in cleaning it. There are a number of frames of oblong shape, and along these numbers of strings are stretched loosely. The down is cast on these near one end, and a piece of wood is drawn rapidly backward and forward over the other end. The down clings to the strings, bu all impurities, such as grass and seaweed, fall to the ground.

The price of down at the farm is about two dollars and fifty cents a pound.

First Aid for the Cigar

BEFORE a man lights a cigar be always has to cut or bite off the end in order that the cigar occasionally does not smoke as it should.

To remedy these defects one cigar maker cuts off the end of the cigars he manufactures and inserts a large pin about two inches in length and provided with a head similar to the tip of the cigar that was removed.

To remedy these defects one cigar maker cuts off the end of the cigars he manufactures and inserts a large pin about tow inches in length and provided with a head similar to the tip of the cigar that was removed. The pin is the same color as the cigar, and in no respect detracts from the appearance of the article. In fact, the casual observer will not notice it.

As a first aid to improve the smoking qualities of the cigar it is highly efficient. The consumer merely pulls the pin form the end of the cigar, and then enjoys a perfect smoke. He doesn't have to bite off the cigar end, and he doesn't have to fuss with the cigar to get it to smoke evenly and to draw well.—Scientific American.

A Unique Lightship

OFF the Island of Islay, on the west coast of Scotland, there is stationed, at the Otter Rock, a unique lightship. It is unmanned; yet it can't be relied on to display the warning light to guide the mariner on this dangerous coast. It is a most ingeniously of gas can be stored to supply the lantern for several months.

Experiments have shown that the light may be depended upon to burn continuously for months at a time. The approximate duration of the light can be predetermined, and there is no danger whatever of its being extinguished by wind or spray.

The light is visible at a distance of form eight to twelve miles. The lightship also has a bell, which is made to ring automatically by means of an igneous device that utilizes the gas as it passes form the tanks to the lantern to work the bell clapper.

Blau Gas

BLAU gas, named after its German inventor, liquefies under pressure, shrinking to one four hundredth of its normal volume at atmospheric pressure. It is therefore transportable in steel bottles as easily as oil or alcohol, and is usable in places where gas could not otherwise be readily supplied. For car heating or lightning, in welding and metal-cutting tools, for high-speed soldering, it is said to be invaluable.

It contains most of the same elements, although in different proportions, as ordinary illuminating gas, and is similarly made, but is without carbon monoxid, and therefore is nonpoisonous. Also its chemical inertia is o great as to make it practically nonexplosive. Its range of explosion is one-twelfth that of acetylene and on-third that of ordinary coal gas. It is cheaper to produce than acetylene.

Yawning for Health

DOCTOR NAEGELI, professor of medicine at Liège University, commends the practice of yawning as a physical reviver. A good yawn, the professor maintains, is excellent for the lungs, and for all the breathing organs as well.

But there is an art in yawning, he says, just as there is an art in breathing. Every yawn should be as deep as possible, so as to bring all the muscles of the throat and chest into action, and also to fill the lungs with a current of fresh air.

Docotr Naegeli has known of many cases in which a sore throat has been alleviated by persistent yawning.

Just Jokes

Economy à la Mode

EDWARD: "Father, what is the cheapest food we have?"

WINTHROP: "Samples."

Horsemeat or Pork

A TALE from Eddie Foy is sure of appreciation:

"Another comedian and myself," says he, "were looking at some sausages on the table for luncheon. My friend insisted they were pure pork, while I plunged for the equine theory. My friend was obdurate; so I bet his a new hat I was right, and said I would prove it. Thereupon I cut one of the mysteries into five pieces and went out. In ten minutes I returned.

"'There!' said I. 'What did I tell you? They are horse. I put five pieces on a cab line outside. Then I took the first piece away, and the other four promptly moved up.'"

Had One of Her Own

JOYCE, whose home was pear a pond about a mile in length and half a mile in width, went to Boston when she was four years old.

The aunt she was visiting said, "I will take you to see the ocean."

"I will look at your ocean," replied Joyce in a very condescending manner; "but we have a pond at home."

Hard on the Jack Rabbit

WHEN Senator Harry Lane of Oregon was speaking on the trade commission bill, he illustrated the methods of big business by going back to nature. He was talking about he proposal to legislate so as to compel competition, which he derided, saying:

"Did any of you ever see a band of coyotes competing for a jack rabbit? You never did, and you never will. The coyote has too much sense to do it. If ten coyotes got after one jack rabbit on the plains in competition for breakfast or dinner or supper, there would not be one coyote that would get anything to eat that day. The jack rabbit can outrun all of them. But take two or more coyotes, and they are plenty smart enough to do this, and they do it all the time. They will get between that jack rabbit and the burrow in which he lives. One of them will start out to chase him. He will throw on the high gear and will run in a circle. The jack rabbit always circles round his burrow. That coyote will chase him around as fast as he can drive him, and the other coyote will cross a segment of the circle there will lie in wait to take up the chase when it reaches him. The other coyote will lie down and rest until the jack rabbit comes back to that point again.

"The jack rabbit can run faster than the coyote; but when he goes up against tow of them coöperating against him it is merely a matter of time until those coyotes have their dinner, and it does not take long. But if there is no band of coyotes that can do it if they compete with one another.

"Now, the business men of this country are as wise as coyotes, and successful business men, the men who control the affairs of this country, do not compete with one another. They have grown too wise to adopt this plan."

The Conductor's Mistake

THE woman who took umbrage because the conductor address her as "lady" met with a not wholly undeserved retort. She wanted to leave the car when it was still in motion, and the conductor said:

"Wait a moment, Lady; wait until the car stops."

"Will you please not address me as Lady, Sir?" she said sharply.

"I beg your pardon, Madam," said the conductor. "The best of us are apt to make mistakes."

The Patrician Workman

POOR man!" said the sympathetic woman to the workman with his forefinger missing. "Have you lost your finger?"

"Oh no, Madam," replied the workman. "I've just left it at the manicure's to be polished up. I didn't have time this morning to wait until it was finished."