Can I Get 8 Per Cent. on My Money?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

Next week Mr. Atwood will answer the question: "Shall I Buy a Farm Mortgage?"

THE title to this article is very attractive—more so than the reading matter. But there are so many investors who insist upon a high rate of interest that it is necessary to talk them "straight." I would not go so far as to say that no safe investment could be created to yield 8 per cent., but to discover it one must use extremely careful discrimination. There are plenty of safe 6 per cent. investments; there are a few classes at 7 per cent.; but when 8 per cent. is reached, we arrive at a curious sort of border land, full of barbed-wire entanglements and other obstacles, which many persons are not fitted by nature to surmount.

Are You Afraid of Risk?

THE first difficulty is that most persons do not know what they mean when they use the word "investment." If a man buys stock in a gold mine and it turns out well, paying him perhaps 40 per cent. on his money, he says it "has proved to be a good investment," and in the next sentence mourns an "unsuccessful investment" he made when he bought another gold mining stock that never returned him a single penny. The trouble is that he mixes his term hopelessly.

When you employ your money to earn more money, are you willing to take some risk, in the hope of making a great return, and are you willing to go to a deal of pains to investigate, or are you unwilling to investigate, you can invest safely, without trouble, and with only a minimum chance of loss, at 4, 5, and even 6 per cent. The 5 per cent. bond is absolutely different form the 8 per cent. investment. One presupposes a sort of distilled, impersonal, almost abstract use of money; the other requires training, experience, keen discrimination, and active personal interest, added to the mere money itself.

8 Per Cent. on Your Money

YES, you can get 8 per cent. if you are willing to burrow deeply into a proposition. But you can't get 8 per cent. by investing money at random. In several of the Western and Southern States mortgages are to be had to pay 8 per cent.; but so high a rate necessitates an unusually careful inquiry. The proposition may be safe, but the burden of proof is upon it. Generally speaking, small, unknown, and far-away enterprises pay high rates, no matter where they are, East, West, North, or South. The fact that a concern is new, small, and far away does not prove it is unsafe by any means, but it does not prove it is unsafe by any means, but it does not require a lot more investigation, and the very trouble and expense involved is worth to many people one or two per cent. on their money.

The stock market, using that word to mean the great emporium for securities that centers mainly in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago, but most conspicuously in New York, offers plenty of 8 per cent. opportunities, both in what are called listed securities (those on the Stock Exchange) and in the unlisted market. But that rate of interest is combined with safety only when the purchaser has the courage of his convictions. His judgement may be right, and often is; but it is primarily his judgement, not the consensus of opinion, firmly established by the course of events, which timid people find so easy to follow.

I will show you what I mean by the demand for judgement. Do you think the New Haven Railroad will work out of its difficulties? Do you believe it is a sound property? Well, one of its chief subsidiary companies, the New England Navigation Company, has issued 6 per cent. notes, coming due May 1, 1917, which at this writing may be had at 95 per cent. of their face value, or a net return on the money invested of over 8 per cent. Here is a case for study, investigation, and judgement. The facts are accessible to any one who chooses to go after them.

When you see that a stock or bond is selling at a price to return a high rate of interest, don't say offhand, "It can't be safe." What you should say is this: "It may be unsafe, bu there are possibly other reasons for the price. Now, do I want to take the time and trouble to investigate, or do I not?"

Bond Experts Do Not Agree on this Point

MISS L., PHILADELPHIA.—No one can say definitely whether the present time or the period to follow the war will prove the better in which to purchase bonds. All the experts debate and disagree on the subject. The main point is to find a bond that is sage in itself and issued by a company not directly affected by the war. There are many such to choose form.

Why Should Children Be Nervous?

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

Each week Dr. Bowers answers the most interesting question. Next week: "What is the Best Exercise for Office Workers?"

A SOUTHERN lady wishes to know what causes nervousness in children. Until very recently, our girls have had a most liberal education in everything excepting those most important branches of a woman's training—mothercraft and child culture.

Because of this neglect an exaggerated maternal instinct, coupled with a deficiency of maternal knowledge, has most generally been responsible for nervousness and hysteria in children.

The young mother, although naturally proud of her child, has a plentiful lack of knowledge of its primary needs—rest, food, and freedom from excitement. She not only permits but she aids and abets solicitous and admiring relatives and friends to intrude upon the child's sleep hours—disturbing that little aggregation of sensitive cells and tissue in the pursuit of its chief business in life, which is sleep and growth.

She encourages and participates in the feminine riots that shock the youngster out of its normal condition of relaxation. She dandles it, coos to it, and otherwise maltreats her innocent child until tits nerves become irritated, its placidity ruffled, and its growth and nutrition—particularly the nutrition and development of its nervous system—become abnormal.

The consequence is that the baby exhibits fits of "temper"—due mainly to these nervous shocks—which shortly result in fretfulness, night terrors, unwillingness to remain alone, and sometimes hysteria or even convulsions. By the exercise of a reasonable amount of common sense these conditions are readily corrected.

First, the child should be given a fair start. No matter what bespectacled science may say to the contrary, prenatal impressions exercise a profound influence upon child development. If this fundamental principle be not violated, Nature usually equips all children—on the East Side as on Fifth Avenue—free and equal physically.

If it is then treated with masterly let-it-aloneness—especially with regard to pernicious soothing syrups and other "dopes"—the youngster will rarely exhibit any abnormality.

It will grow a happy, healthy animal, indulging in just sufficient crying to enable it to inflate and develop its little lungs. It will sleep the innocent sleep that knits up the "raveled sleeve of care." It will coo and laugh from sheer joy of living. It will be free from "nerves," and will evolve into vigorous, untrammeled boyhood or girlhood, a credit to itself and to the intelligence of the mother who bore and trained it.

Therefore, nervousness in children is largely dependent upon ignorance in mothers. And the primary cure of the condition involves a more liberal education of the mothers in those two paramount and important sciences—mothercraft and child culture.

One Minute with the Editor

Who Is the Most Useful Man in Your City?

IS he a preacher, a doctor, the mayor, or is he perhaps somebody in an obscure position, whose usefulness is hardly suspected by the city at large?

We have a kind of curiosity on that subject. We'd like to publish some pictures of "the most useful man or woman," and some letters about why they are what they are.

Do you suppose you could send up some pictures and help us out with a picture of "the most useful man in our town?" We'll make it worth your while.

The Secrets of the Hotel-Keeper

WHY do people register at an expensive hotel and then sneak around the corner to eat at a dairy lunch?

How much of the food that a hotel buys has to be thrown away?

Why do grapefruit that are three for a quarter int eh market cost forty cents a portion in the hotel dining-room?

And why does the hotel lose money on its dining-room, even with prices like that?

Edward Hungerford, who wrote "The Romance of the Barber Shop" for us, has written the story of the hotel. Look for it—it's coming.

We Settle a Little Dispute

TO THE EDITOR: A bets that Theodore Roosevelt is the best known man in the United States; B bets that Henry Ford is. Both agree to leave it to you. Please decide.

ANSWER: Both are wrong. The best known individual in the United States is Torchy, who has been the guest at 1,000,000 Sunday breakfast tables every week for nearly nine years. And, by the way, there's a Shorty story next week, and another Torchy story on the way.

It's a Hard Job—Giving Money Away

YOU'LL realize it better when you've read Mr. Rockefeller's article—and you'd have an even keener feeling about it if you had to read his mail for a couple of days. Hundreds of letter he gets, asking for everything from a million dollars for a college down to a pair of wooden legs. Long ago he was forced to work out a system for disposing of his money as perfect in its way as the system that made it for him. This is the first time Mr. Rockefeller has discussed the subject in a magazine.

It's Called "Sobs"

CURIOUS sort of name for a story isn't it? It's about a girl—and a man, of course. He was the star reporter on a New York paper, and she was what they call the "sob sister." It was her job to hunt out pathos in teh city's life, and play it up in your morning paper so as to bring a gulp to your throat.

Dana Burnet wrote this story. He's a reporter on a newspaper himslef, and he knows how to tell a bully tale. It's the lead story next week.

Why Farrar Is Going into Movies

ON June the eighth, Geraldine Farrar left New York in her private car for Hollywood, California, where she will spend two months doing several of her most popular roles for the Laske Film Company. Before she left New York, in reply to the question, "Why are you going into movies?" Miss Farrar said:

"Primarily, because I have to spend the summer in America, and I have to have something interesting to do. Two years ago I stayed on late in Berlin, working with Lehmann after nearly every one had left town. There wasn't much to do, so I used to drop in and see the movies every afternoon when I was out for my walk. I am going to Hollywood because I want a chance to do Carmen out of doors, and to see how I do it. I shall probably be more interested in the films than anybody else.

She Wants More Room for the Fights

"THE splendid scenic effects we expect to get tempt me. We are going to do it in the mountains, with mule-trains and camp-fires and Mexicans and all sorts of interesting accessories. I mean to give myself a free hand and to try a lot of new stage business; and the best of it is, I shall work back into my operatic performances.

"The third act of the opera, as I do it now, is the least satisfactory. That is the act which takes place in the gipsy camp, in the mountains. I expect to get a lot of new ideas from doing it out of doors. I want more room for the fights. I insist on being strangled in the camp scene, because Carmen has so little to do in that act. I want to develop that business, and be strangled more. I want to get more freedom in the last act, and do some agile running when Jose is trying to keep me from getting to the door of the bull-ring. Carmen ought to run like a deer! There is a considerable interval there, with nothing going on but the orchestra and Carmen making dashes on the stage, trying to get past Jose's knife—time enough for lots of athletics. I got in an extra fight there at the benefit performance we gave for the sewing girls of Paris. It looked real? Well, I should hope so! That was a week ago, and look!"

Doing Carmen Like a Streak

MISS FARRAR threw back her sleeves and displayed an astonishing number of bruises and scratches; one elbow was literally skinned. "I have big black-and-blue spots on my back, too," she announced proudly, "and a long knife-wound that Martin gave me in Atlanta. Yes, of course the knife was blunted, but he hit me harder than usual. He had no time to be careful. I was very enthusiastic that night; the stage was set just right for that last scene, and I was doing it all over the place. Maybe I didn't give Martin a run for his money, how! I'm anticipating that, with no orchestra to bother about, I can key the action up tremendously, and do Carmen like a streak."

Miss Farrar is rather proud of her light-footedness and the sinuous agility which she possesses to a greater degree than any of her sisters in song. There are certainly not many of them who could give the tenor a run for his money without a serious risk of being absurd. Even

Calvé, beyond a swaying movement of the hips and an occasional flourish of castanets, left the liveliness of the gipsy girl to the imagination of her audience.

Farrar's Private Car

FARRAR expects to give the first three weeks of her stay at Hollywood to Carmen, and after that to do two other parts before she goes into retirement in the mountains for two months. She has taken a villa near the film company's studios, and took four servants from New York with her, besides her secretary and personal maid.

She had her private car done over before she left New York—had book shelves built in along the sides, a piano installed, pictures hung on the walls, and introduced easy chairs and a davenport, so that she can be quite as comfortable on tour as she is in her own luxurious study on Seventy-fourth Street.

It is no secret that the Laske Company pays Miss Farrar thirty thousand dollars for her services; but she says emphatically that she is not going into the movies for the money, but because she finds it interesting. As she says:

"I do things because I want to, always. I find that if I do the thing I want most to do, it usually happens to get paid for. One can only entertain other people by entertaining one's self."

This Man Has Made a Blue Pig

PIGS is pigs, whether they be black or white or blue. Blue pigs? Why, to be sure. There are hundreds of them in a little Massachusetts city not twenty miles from Boston. Moreover, blue promises to become a fashionable color among swine breeders—and all through the efforts of a Harvard man who preferred the active life of a New England farmer to the musty seclusion of a lawyer's office. George C. Griffith, scion of a prominent Virginia family, was the conventional student at Harvard and afterward in the law school; but one of his first cases set him hunting a farm for a client, with the result that he bought three hundred scrubby acres for himself, locked up his Blackstone, and began to study pigs.

Not a Robin's-Egg Blue

PROBABLY young Griffith had no thought at the time that he would eventually become the owner of the largest hog ranch in the world, but that is what has come about. He has pigs of many breeds; but his joy and pride is the blue pig. It is a handsome pig, too, Not, of course, that it is marine blue, or azure blue, or even robin's-egg blue. Perhaps it might be called whetstone blue.

August Belmont wanted Mr. Griffith to name the breed the sapphire hog; but probably plain "blue pig" is the name that will stick. They are fine, upstanding beasts, these blue chaps, and wonderfully intelligent, as porkers go. They have hair that is almost too soft and silky to be called bristles, legs so long that the belly does not brush the ground, ears that stand erect, and shoulders and hams to make the eyes of a butcher dance.

Blue Pigs Made Like New Roses

THEY ought to be good hogs, for Mr. Griffith spent ten long years developing them. The blue pig was made, just as a new carnation or a new rose is made. First, young Griffith formed the ideal hog in his mind, and he made it blue; for he wanted a color that would be distinctive. Then he searched far and wide for the right kind of animals to breed from. They were not easy to find. Twice he traveled around the world, and always with an eye out for any stray pig that might possess such characteristics as he wanted to perpetuate. Many times he purchased hogs that were obviously mongrels, because they were seen to have a trait he liked.

He got blue skins fairly early, but the color was not the only consideration. No animal was kept to be used in making the new breed unless it could show at least some of the other qualities desired.

Mr. Griffith built a miniature town back in the woods, where his experiments would not receive too much attention; and at first even his employees regarded the curiously colored pigs that occasionally appeared as "sports." When the blue-skinned creatures began to fill the pens, however, the men guessed the purpose that the boss had in mind. Naturally enough, they spread the news, and it soon became impossible to keep people away. But the blue pig was an established fact by that time, and Mr. Griffith let the people come. He wouldn't sell a blue pig, however,—at least, not a live blue pig,—until practically all the traits he had been aiming for years to develop were firmly fixed. Mr. Griffith's fondness for animals is not confined to pigs. He has dogs and horses and poultry. At one time he owned a bull which he drove about the streets attached to a buggy, using reins and a bit. Altogether, the creator of the blue pig is an unusual sort of man.

Working on a 52-foot Canvas

WHEN the Woman's Building was announced as a feature of the Chicago World's Fair, surprised comment went up from various parts of the country. "What do women want with a building?" asked the newspapers. "Let them show their cooking and sewing in a corner of the Agricultural Building."

There is no Woman's Building at the San Francisco Exposition—for the hand of woman has played its part in every detail of the arrangements. There are women on all the prominent committees; there is a woman doctor in charge of the Child Welfare Department; the two model mines, in the Mining Building, are the work of Miss Ella Multkey, the only woman model constructing engineer in the United States; and every building has its own indebtedness to woman's work.

Few Women "Work in the Large"

THIS is particularly true of the art work. Most of the fountains on the Exposition grounds are the work of woman sculptors, and the mural decorations in the tea-room of the California Building are the work of a woman artist—Miss Florence Lundborg.

One of the things that makes these heroic canvases of Miss Lundborg's so remarkable is that few women have ever succeeded in "working in the large." Handling a canvas fifty-two feet by fourteen, which several men labored for two days to install, is not the kind of work usually associated with "dainty femininity."

Miss Lundborg's canvas shows a succession of figures moving through a typical California landscape. It is interesting as a Californian's own interpretation of the thing that gives California country its unique character and makes Californians say, on first beholding the Alps or the Bay of Naples:

"Oh, but you ought to see California!"

When the Hash Was Graded

THE high cost of living? Bless you, you don't know the first thing about high prices in these days. Compare with what Mark Twain, Horace Greeley and others used to pay for a square meal in California's early days, your eight course dinner at the Astorbilt or Cherry is really a cheap affair.

But all who frequented the famous El Dorado Hotel at Hangtown (now Placeville), California, paid these prices, and gladly. Those were the palmy days of pioneer life, when the hash was graded two classes—"low grade" and "18 carat." Here is the way the menu ran:

She Grows Down—Not Up

HARRIET A. McCABE of Pittsburgh prefers being somebody else—a twelve-year-old boy, for example—to being herself. She has earned thousands of dollars for children's hospitals, summer camps, and day nurseries, by playing children's parts in playlets which she herself writes about children, for children.

Generally speaking, there is no more painful sight than grown-ups trying to be Buster Browns or Sunbonnet Sues; but Mrs. McCabe's impersonations "get across."

A good impersonator must be absolutely sympathetic with her subject, and she must have, besides, memory for detail. A thousand little tricks of inflection and posture go into the breezy, simple-looking thing we call a good imitation.

Mrs. McCabe, by studying (quite unknown to them, of course) numbers of all kinds of children, "tom-boys" and "little ladies" alike, has made herself a master of juvenile expression. She would probably say of her work that she just loves children, can't help watching what they do, and then turns round and does likewise. The photograph at the extreme left shows Mrs. McCabe as herself, the charming young wife of Guy Stewart McCabe, railroad man. Next is "Peggy" in "Peggy's Christmas Dream"; and she is McCabe too. "Bessie Leighton," in the next picture, also lays claim to being honestly and truly Mrs. McCabe. Last of all comes Mrs. McCabe as "Henry" in the "Henry" series.

A Better Man than His Father

By RALPH D. PAINE

"YOU are the son of Sir James Babb Norcross?" incredulously cried the skipper.

"The only one there is, my dear man. I can't very well give you my card until you let me aboard. I intend to sail with you."

THE Chilton Grange, a British tramp, lay at anchor in the harbor of New York. She was an uncouth, wall-sided steamer of three thousand tons, with bridge and deckhouses rising like an island amidships, indistinguishable from a hundred others of her kind that hardily roam the seas in search of trade.

Captain Nelson Sackett sat at the desk in his small cabin and tried to write a letter to his wife. The task was not so pleasant as usual. His solid shoulders were hunched forward, the ruddy, intrepid countenance was clouded, and he wiped a perspiring brow with his shirt-sleeve after making several false starts with a spluttering pen.

At length he managed to say what it sorely troubled him to disclose, and then, with a readier mind, he wrote these closing words:

IN haste to post the letter in the next outbound mail, he sent a boat ashore with it, and went below to consult the chief engineer.

When he returned to the deck a small tug was making for the Chilton Grange at top speed, frantically blowing its whistle to attract notice.

As it foamed alongside Captain Sackett saw standing in front of the wheelhouse a tall, smartly tailored young man with a pink and white complexion, unmistakeably English, his smile frank and boyish.

Flourishing his straw hat, the young man called up:

Not such an awful lot of time to spare—what? They told me at the wharf that you had cleared for Liverpool. I should like to come aboard, if you please."

He held a kit-bag, and the two leather trunks in the bow were obviously his property. The puzzled shipmaster bluntly replied:

"You have chased the wrong vessel. Better have another try at it."

Undismayed, the debonair young man returned:

"Not a bit of it. This is precisely all right. The Chilton Grange is what I want. Hoist this luggage aboard, will you?"

"Drunk or daffy," said Captain Nelson to his elderly first mate. "A person who mistakes us for a passenger boat has violent delusions."

The voice of the young man floated up to them in amiable expostulation:

"I fancied you might recognize me. Evidently not. Stupid of me! I am Mr. Hayden Norcross, you know. My father happens to own the Chilton Grange."

Captain Sackett's mouth hung open while he stared down at the tug. Rhoades, the melancholy first mate, clung to the rail and forgot his errand. The seamen within earshot scuffled to the side to view the sensational stranger.

"You are the son of Sir James Babb Norcross?" incredulously cried the skipper.

"The only one there is, my dear man. I can't very well give you my card until you let me aboard. I intend to sail with you."

"You intend to sail with me? I don't know about that. Of course if you put it to me as an order; but—but—" stolid features working with some hidden emotion.

CRISPLY, with a touch of impatience, the heir of the great shipping house of Norcross exclaimed as he made for the side ladder:

"Oh, I say, drop that nonsense! You and I will have to get on better than this. Please do as I tell you."

With a shrug Captain Sackett ordered the trunks taken aboard, and noted that they bore the stenciled name of Hayden Norcross. Again engagingly affable, the young man remarked as he scrambled to the deck:

"It rather stumps you, I presume. I call it jolly good luck. It's the first time I ever booked myself in one of the governor's ships."

Uncomfortable, reluctant, the Captain strove to be courteous, and said as they walked forward:

"I didn't mean to be short with you, sir; but I'm not at all anxious to carry you to England. It is not the sort of travel you are accustomed to, and—"

"Oh, I shall have to learn the shipping business when I get home," laughed the other, "and this is a useful experience. I don't mind roughing it."

Captain Sackett's voice was unsteady as he asked:

"How did the notion happen to seize you, Mr. Norcross?"

"I have been globe-trotting (went out by way of Suez), having a look at the silly old world before putting my nose to the grindstone. Like a cheerful ass I neglected to reserve a room in a liner, and when I reached New York a few days ago every boat was jammed full,—the summer rush of Americans. I was tired of loafing about, and by chance I spied a shipping item about the Chilton Grange—one of the Norcross freighters, by Jove!—bound to Liverpool in ballast. 'Here goes!' said I—and here I am."

HAYDEN NORCROSS gazed about him as though well pleased with his choice of transportation. The decks were scrubbed white, the brasswork gleamed like gold, and the houses had been freshly painted. Her master did his best by the steamer; although Sir James Babb Norcross grumbled at the cost and pared the bills to the hone.

"I call this ripping!" declared the young man. "Quite as if I were in my own yacht,—no beastly crowd, and a leisurely voyage. You mustn't look so put out about it, Captain Sackett. I promise not to make a nuisance of myself."

"Very well, sir. You have the right to do as you like. You are inviting yourself, please remember that. I shall try my best to give you a comfortable passage."

"It is my own surprise party," was the cheerful rejoinder. "How long before we head for the open sea?"

"Two or three hours. What about sending word to your father that you are in the Chilton Grange, Mr. Norcross?"

"I shall write him at once," was the easy reply. "The letter will reach Liverpool ahead of us. What's the use of cabling?"

"I am afraid to-day's mail has closed; but there will be another sailing this week. Aye, the letter will be in England before we are. And you will be sure to mention that you asked yourself aboard and I objected?"

"Still harping on the same string!" exclaimed Hayden Norcross. "I solemnly swear to absolve you from all part and share in my voyage."

The Captain showed an odd unwillingness; but this was doubtless a natural feeling of responsibility in the case of so important a personage as the son of Sir James Babb Norcross. No rudeness was intended.

IN lovely June weather the Chilton Grange left port. Captain Nelson Sackett had handled men for many years, and he appraised them shrewdly. This youngster was generous, clean, unspoiled by golden fortune. It was impossible to dislike him.

At table in the cabin Rhoades and the chief engineer, quiet, shy men, were not at their ease in the company of the owner's son; but he could not be held blameworthy. His was an effulgent name; and the barrier of caste oppressed their honest British souls. It was singular that his presence should not have aroused their resentment; for they dumbly felt that the Norcross millions had been sweated out of the ocean carrying trade and that the titled owner in Liverpool could afford to deal more justly with his men and ships.

The passenger's appetite was good, his digestion perfect; but the deuce of it was that he could not seem to get enough to eat. A chap felt awkward about mentioning the fact; but if he expected to control a few dozen steamers himself some day, he really ought to find out a few things. In such a well kept ship as this short rations, and rotten bad at that, seemed confoundedly queer.

"I say, what's the program for feeding these boats?" he sang out to the skipper, who was in the chart-room. "What I mean is, how are they provisioned?"

Captain Sackett grinned. He had an unobtrusive sense of humor. Until now he had tactfully avoided ruffling the young man.

"Most of the stuff is put aboard at Liverpool," he told him, "excepting a little fresh grub picked up from port to port. The ship has an expense allowance. If a master exceeds it, he goes

---

into his own bally pockets to foot the difference."

"By Jove! I must speak to the governor about it," ingenuously exclaimed the son. "With so many large interests, I fancy he has to leave this sort of thing to an understrapper. He won't like it, I'm sure."

"We don't like it," frankly confessed Captain Sackett. "It is hard to get men to stay in these ships. They have the name of starving their crews."

"How absurd!" and the young man began to pace the deck. "Sir James would be shocked. If you only knew him! He is the most open-handed, considerate old boy in Liverpool,—always founding or endowing something or other. And in his own home—why, he can never do enough for his people."

The skipper withstood the provocation to say more. It was hopeless to try to make the son understand that the Sir James Babb Norcross he knew was not the man his shipmasters cursed behind his back.

But in the Captain's silent scrutiny Hayden Norcross detected something like pity. He colored and spoke sharply.

"You think my father is responsible for this outrageous provender! I should say you owe me an apology."

"I can't quite fathom why," gravely replied Captain Sackett. "I have accused nobody. However, I like to see a man stand up for his dad. It shows a proper spirit."

THIS was the nearest they came to an issue until the Chilton Grange ran into a succession of gales, and it ceased to be a holiday lark of a voyage. Under lowering skies, over a sea gray and upheaved, she crept sluggishly eastward, her speed falling off day by day. It had not been expected that at this season of the year she would have to struggle against shouting head winds and thundering combers. June was presumed to be a halcyon month.

The Atlantic pounded the laboring steamer with gigantic blows, and across the well-deck the waves hissed in frothing green floods. The crew became spent and bruised and disheartened. Sleep and rest were denied them. They damned the ship and the sea, crawling about in wet clothes, clinging to life-lines and stanchions, or climbing from the fire-room to ease their burns and fill their tortured lungs with cool air.

The bonds of discipline had held them silent as long as luck favored the voyage. Now Hayden Norcross heard them call his father names to curdle one's blood. And as the weather turned even more menacing they yelled jeeringly at him when the officers were not present to check them.

Their derisive gratification because he was in the same boat with them made him wince and shiver. He tried to piece together the wind-blown fragments of what they said. His smooth pink cheek was a shade paler and his eyes were troubled as he shouted in Captain Sackett's ear:

"I can't stand much more from those filthy blackguards. Can't you put a stop to it? What are they jawing about? Am I a sort of Jonah? You might think this ship was a floating coffin when she left New York."

"Perhaps she was!" roared Captain Sackett as he watched a huge sea tumble over the bows while the Chilton Grange quivered and groaned in every plate and beam.

He looked wrinkled and old as he stood braced on the bridge in his dripping oilskins.

"I tried to keep you out of it," he added. "I said all I could, all I was obliged to. But you had to play this game with me. And by what the barometer tells me God Almighty may take a hand in it before sundown!"

His impassioned earnestness bewildered Hayden Norcross, who had not dreamed of danger. With the superb egotism of his years and station he believed it impossible that disaster could befall when he was on board. The tumult of wind and sea was terrifying; but what genuinely frightened him was the glimpse of some mystery, sinister and tragic, that had been purposely withheld from his

knowledge. The Captain and the crew gave him the impression that the ship had been foredoomed.

A WOMAN waited patiently in a long, long aisle of desks at which spruce clerks were busied with bills of lading, manifests, and accounts. Through the nearest window she saw the crowded waterfront of Liverpool and the jostling traffic of the Mersey. She was waiting in the hope of a brief interview with Sir James Babb Norcross. Handsome she was even when anxiety had made her haggard.

Sir James had many other matters far more important to occupy this valuable morning. His secretary explained this to the woman; but her persistence was unshaken.

At length the great man was informed that the wife of one of his shipmasters could not be got rid of. She was very quiet and decent about it. Perhaps a word or two would satisfy her. Sympathy for femininity in distress throbbed beneath the expansive white waistcoat of Sir James Babb Norcross. Caressing his neat gray whiskers, he blandly told the secretary:

"You may admit her. I can spare five minutes. Her husband commands one of my vessels? Ah, what name?"

"The Chilton Grange, she says, sir. The steamer left New York ten days ago."

Sir James pursed his lips, and something like a scowl shadowed his massive features. The annoyance was momentary, however, and his mellow geniality reasserted itself as he said:

"The Chilton Grange? Let me see. That would be Captain Nelson Sackett. A capable master, but inclined to borrow trouble."

He remained seated as the woman entered, hesitant, abashed, her cheek brightly flushed. It was an immensely audacious enterprise for her to thrust herself upon the notice of Sir James Babb Norcross. In her hand was a letter, folded and concealed, which she did not expect to disclose; but it gave her courage, and was the reason she had waited so patiently.

The shipowner graciously indicated a chair; but she preferred to stand. The sight of him somehow braced her resolution. Her shapely figure was held erect, the poise of her head was challenging, and her breath no longer fluttered between parted lips.

"Mrs. Sackett? I have not had the pleasure of meeting you; although your husband has been for many years in my employ," sonorously declaimed Sir James Norcross.

"I am Judith Sackett," she answered, regarding him from beneath black, level brows.

Her voice trembled a little; but she controlled it as she went on to say: "I must ask your pardon for putting you to the trouble of seeing me; but I am beside myself with worry, and your clerks could give me no proper information,—it wasn't sufficient to make my mind easy—"

Sir James stirred in his chair with an air of disquietude and found himself avoiding the gaze of Judith Sackett. He lumbered to his feet as he exclaimed: "You are agitated, my dear woman. I beg of you to be seated. I am wholly at your service."

As though she heard him not, Judith Sackett nervously twisted the letter in her fingers and moved to a window where she leaned against the ledge. Toward the beefy, pompous shipping magnate she felt a vague sense of physical repulsion. She wished him to keep his distance.

"I came to ask if the Chilton Grange had been reported since she sailed from New York," the woman explained. "They told me in the other room that she had not been spoken."

"Which was quite correct, Mrs. Sackett," pleasantly replied Sir James. "But there is not the slightest ground for alarm. Our smaller ships, of the Chilton Grange class, are not yet equipped with wireless. It sometimes happens that a steamer makes the Atlantic passage without being once spoken. The Chilton Grange has been at sea only ten days. I am surprised that you should feel at all concerned about her."

"I am always anxious when my husband is afloat," said Judith Sackett. "It is the cross that we wives of seafaring men must bear. What I wish to beg of you is that you will surely send word to my house whenever the steamer is heard from. If I leave it to a clerk, he may forget or delay it. If you command it, I can depend upon getting the news. It will be the greatest favor in the world to me and my little boy."

SIR JAMES coughed, fumbled with the papers on his desk, and demanded: "What is there about this particular voyage to make you feel alarmed? A summer passage in a stanch, well-found steamer with an experienced master—why, I should not mind being along myself!"

"I have had bad dreams, dreadful dreams," she evasively returned. "A woman weaves strange fancies when her man is far away. I am riot the hysterical sort; but I feel things, and they come true. You will promise to let me know? I have been tracing the voyage with a pencil on an old chart, setting down every day an average run for the Chilton Grange. She must be in midocean by now. Ships should be passing her on the eastbound track. Is it foolish to ask them to look for her?"

At last her restless mood seemed to have communicated itself to the portly Sir James. He flung out his arm in a jerky, emphatic gesture as he affirmed:

"But, my dear Mrs. Sackett, the vessel is not overdue. She is jogging along at eight or nine knots, with a voyage of three thousand miles to make. And I have the greatest confidence in your husband. I shall be glad, however, to comply with your request. The office has your address. I am at a loss to understand your fears. If they did not cause you so much real distress, I should be inclined to laugh at them, upon my word! Captain Sackett is as safe in the Chilton Grange as though he were on dry land. Have you been having any trouble with your nerves that might account for this?"

Judith Sackett was no longer able to dissemble her contempt. It blazed in her dark eyes and curled her red lip. Until now she had watchfully held her speech under restraint lest she might jeopardise her husband's interests with his employer. But the monstrous hypocrisy of Sir James Babb Norcross made her throw discretion to the winds.

He was crassly lying to her, and she knew it.

SMOOTHING out the crumpled letter in her hand, she moved closer to the desk.

"And so you would not mind being along with Captain Sackett for this voyage in the Chilton Grange?" she cried mocking and tempestuous. "It will go hard with him, no doubt, if he come through safe, after I tell you the truth to your face. But can I listen to the cruel nonsense of an owner who holds sailors' lives and sailors' widows so cheap?"

Sir James looked amazed. His florid features became mottled with righteous indignation. He was about to ring for his secretary and have the woman removed; but she confronted him, beautiful and fearless, and read aloud the message from Captain Nelson Sackett as he had written it to her in his cabin just before sailing from New York:

I expected to stay here longer for repairs in drydock; but Sir James Babb Norcross tells me by cable to proceed at once. I mailed a report to him as soon as we came in from Rio. The vessel has strained herself forward, and we had to keep the pump going. There is eight feet of water in the forepeak now, and we can't seem to gain on it much. The reason why the owner orders me to wait and go into drydock in Liverpool is that the job will cost him four or five hundred pounds less than if I have it done in New York. With fair weather the Chilton Grange will be able to make the passage although it will be slow—and you must not worry.

The owner takes no risk on her; for the steamer is well insured, and he is going in for bigger ships which are more profitable to run. I might ask Lloyd's agent in New York what he thought of starting across the Western Ocean with eight feet of water in the forepeak and the pumps unable to clear it. He would order the vessel into drydock or cancel the insurance; but I can't afford to do it. Sir James Babb Norcross would give me the sack and blacklist me in English ports. A shipmaster has to take things as he finds them in these days.

Judith Sackett's voice faltered and died. She stood waiting for Sir James to answer the damning indictment. Her words had been like the tolling of a bell. Their intonations conveyed her belief that the Chilton Grange would never see port again, as though her dreams of disaster had been prompted by means more subtle and mysterious than wireless telegraphy.

At this moment the great man's secretary entered hastily, a packet of letters in his hand.

"The American mail, Sir James," said he. "And you will be delighted, I'm sure,

---

to see the handwriting of Mr. Hayden Norcross again."

"Ah, thank you," was the eager, beaming reply, the woman forgotten. "No doubt my son has written to tell me in what liner he has taken passage for home. A White Star boat, or a Cunarder, I presume."

THE storm had almost blown itself out, and the swollen seas that reared against a leaden horizon were sullenly subsiding. The Chilton Grange rolled as though weary of the battle for survival. Captain Nelson Sackett marked how slow and heavy was her motion, her natural buoyancy well nigh gone. His first mate stood beside him, a man whom life had whipped into uncomplaining fortitude. It was part of the scheme of existence, as he knew it, that mariners should be forced to go in unseaworthy vessels to earn their bread.

"Will she last through another night, sir?" he asked without emotion.

"I doubt it, Mr. Rhoades. When she settles a little lower we will try to get the boats away. I'm hoping something may happen along to pick us off before the poor old hooker founders."

"She never had a fair chance this voyage, sir. Crippled to begin with, and luck went against her."

"Right you are," said Captain Sackett, "and I feel sorry for her."

"Queer—awful queer, isn't it, sir, that the owner's son should have shoved himself aboard the way he did—and then the voyage turn out this way?"

"Strange it is, Mr. Rhoades, and perhaps not so strange. You and I believe in the judgments of God. They can over-take a man as powerful as Sir James Babb Norcross."

HAYDEN NORCROSS had climbed to the bridge and approached them unobserved. He heard the voice of Captain Sackett, solemn and devout, deliver this condemnation as one who knew whereof he spoke. White and shaking, but not with fear, the young man stepped between the two officers and cried:

"Why have you been hiding things from me ever since we left New York? What is the trouble with this ship? Is she haunted? What's this confounded nonsense about my father and the judgments of God?"

The mate sighed and went forward, methodical, unhurried, as always. Captain Sackett laid his hand upon Hayden's shoulder as he said:

"The Chilton Grange is dropping from

under our feet. I have tried to keep the truth from you because I could not fairly hold you responsible. But now you ought to know. If you come out of this alive, I want you to remember for the sake of other sailors."

"Remember what?" exclaimed Hayden Norcross, discerning that in this extremity there was no room for anything except the truth, naked and brutal.

"That your father sent this steamer to sea when he had the facts to prove she wasn't fit to go. He did it to save no more money than you fling away in a month. And jolly little he cared if we poor devils never saw Liverpool!"

"It's a lie! It must be a lie!" shouted young Norcross; but his voice faltered. "You are trying to cover up your own neglect. You have listened to the silly ravings of the crew. My God! to say such a thing as that about my father!"

FROM his salt-stained blue coat the ship-master pulled out a copy of the report he had mailed to Sir James Bab Norcross and the cabled reply. Without anger he gave them to the son. The evidence required no comment. It was final, complete.

When Hayden Norcross had read it, slowly, unflinchingly, he forgot that death was so near. The expression of his face was no longer boyish.

"No wonder the men were cursing me!" he said after an abstracted silence.

"I am easing my own conscience before the ship goes under," quoth Captain Sackett. "I failed to warn you. Can you forgive me for that? It seemed like a decree that I had no right to meddle with."

"I can't hold it against you, of course," was the manly assurance. "You could have done nothing else. How long can we stay afloat? There are the boats, you know."

"Yes, there are the boats, Mr. Norcross; but only one is worth launching overside. The others are old and rotten. The paint holds them together."

Hayden winced and turned away. The captain resumed his last watch on the bridge of the Chilton Grange. The day wore on into a misty afternoon, which curtained the wallowing freighter from the sight of other steamers. The men were deserting their posts. The fires had been extinguished, and the pumps no longer throbbed. Armed and indomitable, Captain Sackett drove the seamen and stokers away from the one seaworthy boat.

In his heart was the supreme compulsion of duty. In the final issue Hayden Norcross was not his father's son, but a passenger intrusted to the master of the ship, his life to be saved at whatever cost.

SUDDENLY there raged in the more ruffianly of the crew the resolve to leave young Norcross behind to drown. The ringleader was a pallid Liverpool dock rat, who brandished an iron bar and screamed, as he led a rush toward the bridge:

"Serves 'im bloody well right, the blank son of a rotter of an owner that is makin' us swim for it!"

Shoving Norcross into the chart-room, Captain Sackett whirled to face the onset. They swarmed about him like wolves, wishing him no harm, but determined to wreak a blind vengeance for their miserable fate.

His warning shout failed to check them. With a feeling of pity, he shot the leader, and the mob broke, staring at the body that slid twitching into the scuppers. During this respite Hayden Norcross tugged at the Captain's arm and implored:

"Don't think of me. I ought to pay the price. Get away! Quick, man! She's almost under!"

Obedient and disciplined to the last, Rhoades and the second mate hauled the young man toward the boat, unheeding his frantic protests. The mob rallied and streamed after them. Captain Sackett raced on ahead, wheeled, and stood with his back to the boat, striving to repel the murderous rush. The Chilton Grange submerged her bows, and the stern rose swiftly.

The air pent up beneath the hatches gurgled like a dying leviathan. Blood trickled down the skipper's face and blinded his vision. The revolver was empty. The weight of numbers swept him aside.

He yelled to his officers to save themselves; but for him it was ordained that he should play the game to the finish. Without his passenger he would not leave the Chilton Grange.

IN the mournful obscurity of the mist there suddenly loomed the shape of a huge liner, eastward bound, which slackened way and began to drop her rescuing boats with magical celerity. The crew of the sinking tramp leaped into the sea before the suction could drag them down. Captain Sackett flung his passenger overboard and dived as his forlorn ship lunged and rolled in the closing moment of the tragedy. They fought clear of her, and were fished out by the seamen of the liner, an officer explaining:

"We had special orders by wireless to look out for you. A close shave, that."

"A miss is as good as a mile," cheerily replied the exhausted skipper. "But who the deuce cared enough to search for us? Not the owner!"

"The governor must have received my letter," gasped Hayden Norcross, sprawled in the bottom of the boat. "I fancy he thought I was worth saving."

WHEN the liner reached the Mersey a woman and a little boy were waiting on the landing stage. Apart from them restlessly walked a portly personage whose demeanor was not so pompous as aforetime.

Whenever Sir James stole a glance at Judith Sackett it was with an air curiously chastened and abashed. Ah, but she forgave him his sins, and her hatred was no more remembered when Captain Nelson Sackett, ruddy, intrepid, ran down the gangway and gathered her into his arms!

A drudging shipmaster, shabby and underpaid, fated to tramp the Seven Seas, he was richer than Sir James Babb Norcross; for faith and love were his possessions and duty its own reward.

THE shipping magnate was afraid to meet his only son, and his natural joy was profoundly shadowed. Hayden shook hands; but his mood was taciturn, and he was more like a stranger until they had quitted the crowd. Then he said, grave, inflexible:

"I have sailed with a man, father, a better man than you. He kept his crew from killing me. It was for the sake of other sailors. You can take your choice. I step into the business and change its methods—do you understand that?—or we part. I can never touch another penny of your money if ships are to be sent to sea to founder."

Sir James turned to gaze at Judith Sackett and her man and their only son as they passed from the harborside. Brokenly he muttered—for there was nothing else to say:

"I may have made mistakes, Hayden. If you think you can mend them—why, I need your help. We want no more disasters like the Chilton Grange. I—I too have suffered. Will you come home with me?"

"On those terms I will go home with you," was the verdict of the new head of the house of Norcross.

Who Was Marie Dupont?

By ADELE LUEHRMANN

TWO hours later the picture "restorer" had come and gone. He had found his task a difficult one, and had had to proceed with great caution; but his work had been successful, the necklace lay uncovered, and suspended from it was a cross.

Fortunately for Gavock's purpose this cross was painted with more minuteness of detail than was usual in the work of John Andrus, and it was just possible to make out from the tiny points of red and green the arrangement of the stones.

He took Miss Lowther's pendant from his pocket and held it against the pictured one. In size and shape they were identical. The design too, as nearly as he could determine, was the same—a large ruby in the center and diamonds and emeralds alternating to the four points. There was barely a chance, he knew, that the object in his hand was the ancient cross sought by the Rumanian government; but he felt less like a fool now at putting that chance to a test. At any rate he could not conscientiously return the ornament to Miss Lowther without doing so.

That decision reached, he telephoned Amarinth, found him at home, and announced his intention of calling upon him at once. As he hung up the receiver the bell shrilled through the room.

Miss Lowther was waiting below.

GAVOCK found her in the corner behind the palms where hours earlier they had agreed to meet. She rose at his approach and stood waiting. She wore a long cloth coat and a close-fitting hat from which a dark veil had been thrown back. A traveling bag was at her feet.

"I suppose you wondered what had become of me?" she said at once. "After you left me here I found that I had barely time to keep an appointment with a manager about a stage engagement. I had no idea that it was so late. I hurried off, expecting to be back soon; but I got the engagement and had to go to a rehearsal at once—I'm to replace some one who is ill. Since then I've been packing—I leave for Chicago to-night. However, as it has turned out, I don't need to borrow from you after all. I've just come back to thank you and get my pendant." She held out her hand. "You have it with you, haven't you?"

The request took Gavock by surprise. It was the one turn in affairs he had not counted on. But before he was conscious of having decided how to meet it he had committed himself. He did not have the cross with him, he said: it was in his safe deposit box.

"At the bank? Then I can't get it to-night?" she exclaimed.

"I'm afraid not."

"But I must have it! I'm going away. Surely there's some way of getting it!" she urged, alarm in her voice. "You're a rich man, you must have influence. Surely you could get at the people who control the place! It wouldn't take a minute to get it out—"

"My dear young lady," Gavock interrupted, "the red tape involved in such an undertaking would be endless. Come, sit down and let's talk it over sensibly."

She obeyed him automatically, and he took a seat at her side. She bit her lips, and her eyes shifted in nervous thought. He watched her closely. This sudden anxiety to recover the pendant was as puzzling as her former desire to force it upon him.

"Now, it might be possible to get into the bank to-night," he said; "but one would have to have the most urgent reason—a matter of life and death."

"It's almost that to me, " she gasped out. "Oh, you must help me! I'm in a terrible position. The cross isn't mine, and if I don't return it tonight—" She stopped with a look of appeal and despair.

"It isn't yours, you say?"

"Oh, surely you suspected that! Why, I didn't even know it was real! That's my only excuse for—taking it. Yes, I took it—stole it. I'm a thief! But it was that or—something worse. Oh, you don't know what it's been to drag along here, scheming and pretending! You don't know how hard rich women are and how inhuman. They wouldn't pay me for dancing for them. They think they're like royalty, that you ought to be flattered to have them look at you! And the men—"

She paused, shuddering, and turned her eyes from his. All the excrescences of manner had fallen from her. For the first time she rang true. Tremulously she went on again, with bent head:

"Lately things have been going all wrong with me. I wasn't making anything out of the amateur dancing; so I decided to go on the stage. But I couldn't get anything to do. I had no money, I didn't know where to turn. Then I remembered the cross."

"Remembered it?"

"Yes; I'd seen it once. He'd shown it to me, and I happened to see where he put it afterward. It was an odd place for such a thing. That was why I thought it was not valuable. Well, I went to his house when he was out and said I'd wait for him, and when the servant was gone I got the cross. I meant to pawn it for what I could get, thinking that would tide me over for a few weeks until I had a position; then I would redeem it and give it back to him. But after I got it I was frightened. I remembered hearing about pawnbrokers identifying people who had pawned stolen things. I carried it about all day, trembling. And that night I met you. I knew I could trust you, and that the cross would be safe with you. And it wasn't until you told me that I had any idea of its value. I swear that!"

"And he knows now that you took it?"

"Yes. He found it out late this afternoon. He accused me, and I admitted it. I said I could get it back to-night. He said it was enormously valuable, that to lose it would ruin him. He talked so wildly that thought he had been drinking. Once he took down the telephone receiver to call the police to arrest me. He says he will have me arrested if I don't get it for him to-night." She threw out her hands ploringly. "What can I do unless you get it for me? "

Gavock was worried. Her

Continued on page 13

Photographs by Arnold Genthe

Which Kind of Dancer Would You Rather Be?

"MY inspiration has been drawn from trees, from waves, from clouds, from the sympathies that exist between passion and the storm, between gentleness and the soft breeze." So Isadore Duncan describes her dancing, and that of her famous protegees. Her whole idea is to express emotions with the body. She does not mean by this to dance impromptu: one has had to learn, she says, even how to walk. But she is opposed to the technique of the formal ballet.

"I have closely studied the figured documents of all the great masters, and I have never seen in any of them representations of human beings walking on the extremity of their toes or raising the leg higher than the head."

Although Miss Duncan herself has reached her supremacy by the strictest training, there is danger nowadays of her theories being misinterpreted, and of flocks of ingenuous young persons in tenuous draperies expressing their souls by waving their arms and scuttling about the stage. She is training her pupils with every care, but she wants them to dance as though they liked it.

Finds Ballet Dancing Unnatural

THE ballet dancing that Miss Duncan finds so unnatural is, of course, much more than merely sensational leaping and pirouetting: it is the telling a story by action-pantomime that is not imitative, but is interpretative. It requires a very difficult technique; but, having that, Pavlowa says it can concern itself just as much as "barefoot" dancing with th the imaginative and poetic dancing. To elaborate technique of the classic Italian ballet the Russian Imperial Ballet has added breadth of idea and a new, live spirit. It has interpreted life in all ages, from the seraglio of "Scheherazade" to the doll-shop of "Coppelia."

One of the chief characteristics of the Russian ballet is the attention given to the men dancers. The important thing in a man's dancing is his "elevation"—that is, the distance he can rise into the air. Nijinsky bounds on to the stage, rises high in the air, and descends slowly with such skill that when he touches ground he can rise still higher the second time. For a woman the most important thing is absolute ease and poise in her toe-dancing.

Snap-shotting a Dancer

THIS, by the way, is not a trick of the slippers, but is standing on the ends of the five toes. The slipper is made of the softest material, like an ordinary dancing slipper. Before every performance Pavlowa rips apart the slippers she is to dance in next, and sews them over to suit herself.

In the Russian Ballet there is none of that crude mimicry seen in some ballets—as, for instance, where Adeline Genee, in one scene where she is supposed to be pleading for the king's signature, wriggles her wrist as if she were writing.

The Eastern dancing, as exemplified by Ruth St. Denis and the Morgan dancers, has one point of difference from the so-called Western dancing: the Western dancers place great emphasis on the movements of the feet, the Eastern on those of the body. The Eastern dancers also portray a story, but wore by a series of attitudes than by motion.

This type of dancing is not, of course, predominantly esthetic; it is too much given up to the expression of ideas to concern itself entirely with the creation of beauty.

Inevitably a dancer is the most difficult creature in the world to do justice to in a photograph. Dr. Arnold Genthe, who was the first person that Isadora Duncan allowed to photograph her children dancing, declares that the chief essential for a successful picture is that there be "no posing, no arresting of a certain pose, no indiscriminate snap-shotting during the dance. The photographer must be able to seize with his camera, in a minute fraction of a second, that one phase of the dance that will suggest motion in a convincing and pictorially interesting manner."

Different Kinds of Danger

---

Just as Charming

IT has taken many years to bring wax ladies into the field as seriously dangerous rivals of flesh-and-blood beauties, but they have arrived at last. "Just as charming," was the verdict of the fashion displayers in the Panama-Pacific Exposition, "and far more patient"; and, for the first time in their lives on so important an occasion, the living models had to take a back seat and watch the wax models play their parts.

For to-day the wax figure has been "brought to life." The clever men who model these figures have two watch-words: "Make them human" and "Make them beautiful." But the artists in wax will sacrifice beauty every time, if it is going to interfere with the human side of their work.

The female wax figures must be beautiful, of course; but they do not go to extremes and make them doll-like, as they used to do. The figures of men are made to appear like the average well dressed man one meets in an office or at the theater; for, if the truth be told, no woman really admires a doll-faced man, and the wax-figure artists have learned this.

France made Pierre Inman a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for his work in wax sculpture. To-day in this country there are many disciples and propagators of Inman's work. In ateliers scattered throughout the East, artists stand before comely men and beautiful women, and, with odd little tools that smooth and chop, they model in clay their subjects' features. Up to the time that the clay figure is completed, the process is exactly that of the sculptor of marble. There the similarity ceases, however, for then a shell of plaster of Paris is made from the clay original, and into this mold hot wax is poured to make the first die.

Real Hair and Real False Teeth

THEY are uncanny-looking things, these dies. But they do not remain dead-looking for very long. By the new procedure that has humanized the lay figure, the wax heads go from one artist to another, each an expert in some certain part of the work. One man, for instance, does little else than insert teeth into the heads of his silent subjects. There was a time when even the finest wax figures had teeth that were merely molded out of their own wax. But now real dental teeth are used. They are expensive, too—a smile that needs a lot of pearly teeth to set it off to advantage may cost as much as twenty or twenty-five dollars. The teeth are inserted by heating the wax of the lower and upper "gums" and forcing the teeth in, in rows.

The coloring of the head is an important part of the work. First, the entire surface of the head and bust is delicately tinted. Over this tint are laid various deeper shades. There is the rouging of the cheeks, which is done just as my lady does it. There is the carmining of the lips. And then, perhaps the most delicate task of all, there is the shading of the eyes; light gray paint is applied to the eyelids and below the eyes, to give them tone and depth.

Then comes the hair—real luxuriant tresses straight from the lands where women sell their crowning glory. This hair is bought with as great care as is used by the buyer for a great Fifth Avenue coiffeur. They are put into the wax scalps, hair by hair, with a fine needle.

Another step in the creation of the head is the sewing in of the eyebrows and lashes. These, too, are of real hair, carefully matched with the lady's tresses.

Of course, the head is the most important part of the lay lady. But her figure runs a close second, and to this important branch of the art as great study and skill has been applied as to the other. Unlike the upper part of the figure, the lower part, from the bust down, is not wax. It is papier machê, or, in some instances, wood. The men who construct these figures also work from human models, making their first form in clay and then reproducing it in the other materials.

While more figures of women than of men are made, yet many male figures are turned out every day. The process of making these is similar to that which creates their sisters. Their coloring is not quite so high, their eyes not nearly so melting, their hair not so golden and wispy; but outside of that they are just the same and almost as expensive! Although the wax gentleman is not the more lovely of the two, he has succeeded in creating a good deal of interest in wax history.

Make Your Omelettes of Frozen Eggs

THE housewife will soon be able to snap her fingers at the hen when it goes on a strike and the price of eggs soars almost out of sight; for the Food Research Laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry has succeeded, after several years of experimenting, in making frozen canned eggs a commercial possibility,—one plant alone is now preparing in this way 86,000,000 eggs a year. This means, too, that these eggs are really saved for the consuming public; for they include eggs that would spoil on a long haul between the producer and the consumer, "breaks," odd sizes, and "dirties"—those with shells so unattractive that the public refuses to purchase them and that therefore become a drug on the market. These grades of eggs are now canned and frozen.

Finding that millions of eggs were condemned because of deterioration in transportation and subsequent storage, the government established a field station at Sedalia, Missouri, an egg-producing center, and, with the cooperation of a large up-to-date poultry packer, has developed a system of egg-saving which it is estimated will amount to more than $50,000,000 a year, or about seventeen per cent. of the total egg production. Just figure up what that will mean to you, the ultimate consumer. You are going to have in winter cheaper and better eggs for cooking purposes than you have ever had before.

The Cleanest Kind of Handling

NO one need fear using these frozen eggs, for they are canned under the most hygienic conditions, the government having worked out a system, based on careful grading of the eggs and cleanliness in handling, which is equal to surgical sanitation. The girls who do the work preparatory to canning and freezing are dressed all in white; every utensil used is sterilized daily, and every egg is broken into a glass cup and inspected before being placed in a can to freeze. If an egg has the least "off" odor, it is put aside for the tanners' trade, and the glass into which it was broken is immediately sterilized. The floors, walls, and ceilings of the rooms in which this is done are made of hard cement coated with white enamel, and the temperature never goes above 60 degrees.

Whites and Yolks Canned Separately

AN official of the Department of Agriculture said to me recently:

"Although at present the eggs are frozen in thirty-pound cans, the manufacturers are ready to put two- and three pound cans of yolks and whites, separate, or whole egg, on the market to cater to the needs of the housewife, as soon as mechanical refrigeration among retailers of perishable products makes it practicable.

Frozen eggs can be substituted for eggs in the shell in practically all cooking and baking mixtures, three tablespoonfuls of frozen egg being equivalent to one egg in the shell. Frozen whole egg, if warmed after thawing to about 110° F. before whipping, can be used in most recipes instead of whites and yolks beaten separately, provided that the two are to be used in a combined form. Frozen whites, however, do not need to be warmed above room temperature before beating. Canned milk, which was looked upon with suspicion a few years ago, is now indispensable in the kitchen—just so frozen canned eggs will find their way into the individual home."

Either Way Is Easy

THE left-hand photograph shows how a pickpocket will rob a man on a crowded streetcar—by thrusting one arm beneath his victim's chin, ostensibly to hang on to a strap, or the framework of the ear, while he gently removes his man's watch. The right-hand picture shows the man who reads a newspaper in your face while with apparent absent-mindedness he abstracts your watch or favorite scarf-pin.

Here is more of

Who Was Marie Dupont?

Continued from page 8

position was more serious than he had imagined, and he could see no justification for himself in forcing her to continue in it. On the other hand, what she had told him had been fuel to the fire of his curiosity.

"Why not tell the truth? Tell him he can have it tomorrow."

"He wouldn't let me leave town until he had it. And I must go tonight!"

"Then let me tell him for you."

"No, no; he doesn't know you have it."

"Doesn't he know you came here?"

"No. But he knows that I'm going to Chicago. I'm to meet him at the station and give him the pendant. And if I haven't got it he won't let me go, and I shall lose my engagement. You must help me!"

Gavock sprang up. "Wait. I have an idea."

He hurried off, and in a few minutes was back with several railroad time-tables in his hand. "There are two trains for Chicago to-night," he said as he sat down. "Which station do you leave from?"

"Pennsylvania, at ten-fifteen."

"Good! There's one at ten from the Grand Central. Now this is my plan: It is now half-past eight. I have just thought of a way by which I may be able to get the pendant for you to-night, before you go—"

"Oh, if you only could!" she broke in.

"Wait. It's only a chance, don't bank too much on it," he cautioned. "You will have to wait here for me. I shall return in time to take you to the train, whether I bring the pendant or not. If I do bring it, your troubles will be over, won't they?"

"Yes—oh, yes!"

"If I don't, this is my plan: I shall take you to the Grand Central and get you a ticket for Chicago on the ten o'clock train. Then I'll hurry over to the Pennsylvania station and tell your manager that—well, that some friends are taking you over the other road—in their private car. That will satisfy him, and by the time you reach Chicago tomorrow the pendant will have been returned to—the owner. How does that strike you?"

"I can't think of anything better," she admitted. "But you don't intend to give him the pendant, do you? You'll just send it back without a word or anything to let him know where it comes from?"

"Certainly, if you prefer that. But you must give me the name and address."

She hesitated a moment. "I'll give them to you later—if you don't bring it back. If you do, you wouldn't have to know You see, and—I'd rather you didn't."

"Very well; as you like," Gavock agreed. "Now you can't wait here. I will arrange for a room for you, and you will have a good hour's rest."

"Rest!" she exclaimed.

"You'll be alone and quiet, at least. And you can depend upon me. I shall return in time to take you to the station."

A few minutes later he saw the elevator start that was to bear her to her room. Then he hurried out, hailed a taxicab and gave the chauffeur Amarinth's address.

CHAPTER XVII

THREE quarters of an hour later Gavock was closing the interview he had sought with Count Szemere. It had taken place in Hugh Senior's library, in the presence of Hugh and Amarinth. Before showing him the pendant Gavock had exacted from Szemere the story of the one missing from the necklace, and the Rumanian's description had been so exact, that no doubt as to the identification was possible.

The cross lay on the table about which the four men were seated. Gavock was speaking.

"I understand then, Count Szemere, that with the recovery of the necklace and the pendant all interest in the affairs of Miss Dupont on the part of you or your government will instantly cease?"

"Perfectly. Prince Lascar is dead. To know how or why he died will not make him to live again." He turned to Hugh. "I regret, Mr. Senior, if my great need has this afternoon made me lack indulgence for you and your ward. My whole future is depending upon this cross, and I feared then that through you I should lose it. Regarding my knowledge of the former career of Miss Dupont," here his glance shifted slightly to include Amarinth, "I assure you that you may rely with the most perfect confidence on my discretion."

"Thank you," Guy said.

Hugh silently inclined his head.

"To-morrow," Szemere continued. "I shall take measures to establish the claims of Prince Xico to the necklace and the cross. I shall communicate with you as soon as I am prepared to do so."

"I trust you quite understand my position in this affair," Gavock remarked. "The person through whom the cross came into my hands does not claim to own it, and is ignorant of its history. There is, however, a person who does claim ownership, and what the attitude of this person will be I am not in a position to say. I confess that I find myself awkwardly placed. I shall have to proceed with caution. Since the cross is the property of Prince Xico, it will be restored to him. In the meantime, of course, it remains in my possession."

"But certainly," said Szemere. "It is most valuable, however, and I implore you to have great care of it."

Gavock had picked up the cross.

"The Metropolis Bank, near your hotel, keeps its safe deposit department open all night for the benefit of women who want to turn their jewels in after wearing them, if you want to have the thing out of your hands," Hugh suggested.

"That's an excellent idea," Gavock replied. "I shall take the cross there at once." He put it in his pocket and carefully buttoned his coat over it. "Good night, Mr. Senior. Good night, Guy. I hope the end of your troubles is near."

"I can never thank you, sir!" Guy stammered.

"You owe me no thanks, my dear boy. The whole thing has come about by accident. Well, good night."

His cab waited at the curb, and behind it stood Szemere's. The two men parted with a brief word of farewell, and were presently being borne to their respective destinations. Amarinth had remained behind.

AT his hotel Gavock found Miss Lowther anxiously awaiting him. He was a trifle later than the hour he had set for his return, having stopped to deposit the cross at the bank; but in the face of her disappointment at his arrival without it he was glad that so little time was given her to bewail the fact. He felt enough like a brute as it was.

"You must give me that name and address now," he reminded her.

"She was silent for a while, and when she did reply it was with evident reluctance.

"The name is Dr. Louis Aubert," she said, "and the address is 80 East 54th Street. But you mustn't go to him!"

"I'll just jot that down," said Gavock. "Will you spell it, please? Ah, yes, thank you—a French name."

"Yes, he is French."

"Come now, we must hurry," he urged.

She caught her train to Chicago, and as it pulled out of the station Gavock fervently hoped he had seen the last of her. In accordance with his promise he then dashed down to the Pennsylvania Station, hurried to the gate for the Chicago train, and inquired for the manager of the theatrical company that was aboard.

A fat man standing by the gatekeeper answered: "I'm him. What do you want?"

"A member of your company, Miss Lowther—" Gavock began.

"Lowther!" The manager grabbed his arm. "Do you know anything about her?"

Gavock opened his lips to reply; but at that moment he felt some one brush up from behind him, and turning he met the black eyes of the stranger with the Vandyke beard whom he had encountered that afternoon at the hotel. So that was Dr. Aubert! Then caution was in order.

"I should like to say good-by to her. Is she on the train?" he substituted for the words he had meant to speak.

With a grunt of disappointment the manager dropped the arm he had seized. "No. She ought to be; but she ain't. I've got nervous prostration standing here waiting for her. No more society dames for mine! Never again!"

Dr. Aubert, who had doubtless heard it all before, walked off.

"One minute more!" warned the gateman, and Gavock seized the chance to deliver Miss Lowther's message.

"Why in blazes didn't you say so before?" demanded the theatrical man.

"Too many listening," Gavock said, with a glance toward Aubert, who had turned and was again approaching.

"Oh—I see!"

"What does he see, I wonder?" thought Gavock as the gate clanged in his face.

On his way to the cabstand he passed quite close to Aubert, and the Frenchman leveled at him a malevolent glare.

"Now just how am I going to deal with appeared in was notorious. She drew her that gentleman to-morrow?" Gavock considered. "No wonder the girl was in a blue funk. He looks like the devil."

With a sigh of relief he sank on a taxicab seat. The day had been strenuous. He was glad he was going home to sleep. To-morrow would bring its own troubles. As soon as the question of the cross had been settled he would make an effort to find Andrus and through him determine Miss Dupont's identity. But without Andrus' permission he would not drag him into the case. He had promised not to speak of having seen him, and he must keep his word.

CHAPTER XVIII

WITH the departure of Gavock and Count Szemere from Hugh Senior's house an awkward silence fell on the two men left together in the library. The same thought was in the mind of each; but both found it difficult to utter. The disappearance of the girl had not been mentioned during the interview just closed; not so much from any intention to conceal it from Gavock, as because Szemere, the cross within his reach, had not broached the subject. His one goal in sight, his interest in Marie Dupont had ceased. He no longer needed her.

Finally Guy broke the pause: "Has she come back?"

"No."

"It's nearly ten o'clock. It's been five hours!"

"Yes."

"What can we do?"

"Nothing."

Hugh Senior walked over to the fireplace. "Sit down, won't you?" he said. "I want to talk with you."

He stood looking down into the fire, and the spurts of flame that rose from the logs revealed the deepened shadows in his clean-cut face. There was a brief silence before he turned and for a moment let his eyes dwell on his companion's troubled countenance. Then he spoke.

"I don't know where she went nor why; but I know she will come back. When she does—what then?"

Amarinth's eyes shifted, he stirred in his chair; but he said nothing.

"It will be up to you, you know. With Szemere eliminated, the question becomes a personal one between you and her. You are married; but in the circumstances it will not be difficult for you to regain your freedom, if that is what you want."

"You mean an annulment?"

"You've thought of it, then?"

"Well, can you blame me?"

A log, burnt through, fell from the irons, sending out a spray of red sparks. Amarinth shoved his chair back slightly to avoid them, while Hugh caught up the tongs and replaced the fallen ends upon the irons. The noise of their own movements prevented the two men from hearing the step that at that moment sounded in the hall.

Marie Dupont appeared in the doorway. She paused, staring at the backs of the men as though waiting for them to turn. Her figure drooped wearily, and her eyes, dark-rimmed and half-closed, gave to her face an expression of utter exhaustion.

"I don't see how you can blame me," Guy declared when his companion dropped back into his seat. "No man would want—such a woman for his wife!"

"Then you feel quite satisfied that Marie is this Alix Floria?"

"How can I doubt it? God knows I would if I could! But what doubt is there?"

"There is the girl herself," Hugh answered quietly. "As I know her and as you know her, she is all a man could wish a woman to be, isn't she?"

"Yes; but lots of women have deceived men that way. How can you know what she was or was not before you knew her?"

"But such an idea is monstrous, Amarinth! I don't care what appearances may seem to prove—it isn't the first time they've lied. Stop, man, and think—think what you would accuse her of! You don't realize it, that's evident. This Floria was notorious. She drew her audience, not by her dancing, but by her love affairs. And you are willing to believe that Marie was ever that woman? By Heaven! the idea would be laughable if it were not so monstrous!"

Amarinth was silent. The girl in the door stood as if made of stone.

"It isn't possible—it isn't possible!" Hugh went on. "No woman could so completely change her nature."

"Oh, what's the good of theorizing?" Guy exclaimed with a tinge of irritation in his voice. "The facts are there!' You can't get away from them—at least, I can't. Gavock recognized her; so did Szemere. There's the exact agreement in dates, there's the necklace and the coat she wore. And there's her dancing—don't forget that! Besides, where is she now? Why did she go away if it wasn't to avoid Szemere?"

"Perhaps to avoid you."

"Me?"

"You came here, her husband, and you didn't speak to her, nor touch her hand, nor even look at her except with suspicion. I know—I watched you. What must she have thought or felt?"

"I did look at her, and she wouldn't meet my eyes. She was afraid. She knew she had deceived me. She had no right to marry me knowing what she did about herself."

"Knowing! I tell you she knew nothing but what I knew; not so much, in fact. Her mind is a blank as fat as her past life is concerned. Suppose she was this dancer once, she doesn't remember it. She doesn't remember one thing,—nothing she did or said or thought before the moment when she woke up in my aunt's house seven years ago. Whatever her life may have been, her consciousness is as free from it as if it had never been. If there was ever in her mind the memory of any shameful thing, the loss of memory left her mind clean of it."

"Did it leave her body clean?"

HUGH started to his feet with a cry of anger and indignation. "Amarinth, you're a—" He bit back the word on his tongue and curbed his fury. "Don't you love her at all?" he asked after a moment.

"No!" Guy retorted sharply. "I may be whatever you were going to call me; but I can't love a woman I don't respect."

Their hostile eyes hung together. In the stillness the clock on the mantel ticked loudly. The girl had not moved.

"It's going to be hard for her," Hugh said at last. "She loves you. Try to remember that."

Amarinth's frown deepened; but he made no answer.

"She loves you," Hugh repeated. "What—

---

ever you decide to do, remember that, and spare her as much as you—"

"Hugh, stop!"

The cry came from the door. Both men wheeled.

"Don't humble yourself or me to him!"

"Marie!" Hugh crossed to her. "Where have you been?"

"I'll tell you when he is gone," she answered, putting away the hand that Hugh held out to her. "It doesn't concern him where I have been. Nothing I have ever done concerns him." She took a step nearer Amarinth. "I've heard all that you've said about me, and I'm glad I heard it. Perhaps I am what you believe—I don't know. But whatever I am now or have ever been in the past, however notorious or vile, one thing at least I have to thank God for—I am not your wife!"

Guy's head shot out with a startled stare.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that our marriage last night was not legal."

"Not legal?"

"I was already married. My husband has just died—in my arms!"

CHAPTER XIX

AS Marie spoke the final words she swayed forward and would have fallen if Hugh had not caught her. At his touch she roused herself and clung to his arm with both her hands like a frightened child.

"Ask him to go. Please ask him to go!" she begged.

Guy did not move. "I don't understand," he said. "What does she mean? Is that true?"

"Yes, yes, it's true. Please go!"

"Won't you explain?"

"What does it matter to you as long as you're free? Please, please go away!" She was trembling violently, her breath came in gasps.

Hugh waved Amarinth to the door. "You'd better go, I think," he said.

For a moment longer Guy stood irresolute, then he started for the door.

"Wait! I have something of yours!" she cried suddenly.

He stopped and turned back to her. She drew away from Hugh's supporting arms, and pulling her gloves off unbuttoned her coat and let it slip into his hands. Then she felt within her dress and brought out a ribbon on which were strung the rings Amarinth had given her the night before.

With trembling fingers she untied the loops that held it secure about her neck and drew off the rings and laid them on the table that stood between them. Leaning forward she shoved them across to him.

"Take them, please."

She did not look at him, nor he at her. The eyes of both were on the rings that lay there between them, the symbols of their faith and love, mocking them.

Amarinth did not move to pick them up. He looked at Hugh. "I want to speak to her alone," he said.

"No, no! I've nothing to say to you!"

"You owe me some sort of explanation!"

"There's nothing to explain. There are your rings. Please go!"

"Very well then, I will," Guy said shortly. He snatched the rings up, and without another word turned and left the house.

THE outer door slammed loudly behind him, and the girl's form shook as though she had been struck. Hugh took her hands in his and drew her toward a chair near the fire.

"You are cold, your hands are like ice," he said.

"I'm so tired!" she whimpered. "I walked and walked. I thought I should never get here. You see—"

"Wait—don't talk. Just sit here until you feel better."

He hurried from the room, and returned at once with some brandy in a glass. She coughed as she drank it; but presently the effect of the stimulant became apparent in slower, quieter breathing. Suddenly she sat up with a start.

"How is Aunt Alicia?"

"All right. She's asleep. She doesn't know you've been out."

"I was so afraid she would worry about me. I wanted to telephone; but I had no money." She shivered and held her hands to the warmth of the fire.

Hugh dropped to his knees beside her, and taking one hand in his began chafing it vigorously. She leaned back with a tremulous sigh, as though his warm, strong touch soothed her.

"When I left the house this afternoon I meant to be gone only five or ten minutes. I felt that I must get out where I could breathe. I felt as if I were choking. It was as you guessed, as you told him just now. It was his coming here and not speaking to me, hardly looking at me—I didn't know what that could mean. All day I had waited for some word from him. Of course I knew that you didn't know how serious it was, that we were married. That troubled me too. I wanted to tell you; but I had promised him—"

"Yes, he told me. I understand. Don't worry about that any more."

"It was so ungrateful to you and Aunt Alicia. I shall never forgive myself. But I must tell you about what happened. You see the suspense all day had been terrible. Then your coming here—and with that other man—I couldn't understand. And when you went into the study and I went upstairs again I felt that I couldn't sit still doing nothing. I thought if I could get out into the cold air and walk a little I'd feel better. I didn't tell any one I was going, I thought I might be right back, you see. But at the corner I met Miss Niklova."

"Niklova?"

"She's a Russian girl who plays the violin for our dancing class. She stopped me; she was on her way here for me, she said. Some one was dying and wanted to see me, some one who had known me in Paris and thought I was dead. I tried to tell her that she must be mistaken; but she wouldn't listen. She was terribly excited. There was no time to waste, she said. I wanted to come back and leave some word; then I wanted to telephone. But she wouldn't let me. He was dying, she said. I didn't know what to do. I knew that what she said might be true. There must be people in the world who once knew me and now think that I am dead. She almost dragged me along the street while I was wondering what to do. 'He's dying, he's dying!' she kept saying over and over."

"Didn't she tell you his name?"

"Not then. Wait—you'll see him,' she said when I asked her. We took the elevated. She had tickets. I didn't have any money. I had no purse with me. Well, we rode and rode, and when at last we got off we walked east. It was getting dark, and I could see the lights of the boats on the river. We went into a house and upstairs—up and up and up. Then we went into a room." She broke off shuddering and covered her face with her hands.

"OH, that room, Hugh! It was so bare and cold and desolate! And he was lying there on a bed—the man I had come to see. Another man, a doctor, was sitting by the bed, and when we came in he and Miss Niklova walked to a corner of the room and left me standing there by the bed. I looked down. He was lying on his side, and I couldn't see his face well, and I thought he was asleep. Then he moved and spoke. 'Alix—Alix,' he said in a kind of moan, and then louder, as if he were calling some one, 'Alix! Alix!'

"I stood waiting, not knowing what to do. Then Miss Niklova said to me sharply, 'Answer him!' But I couldn't—I couldn't speak. She came over to the bed and touched him. 'Alix is here,' she said. 'Look, she's come.' He raised his head and stared at her as if he had not understood; then she pointed at me, and he turned and saw me."

She shivered and drawing her hands from Hugh's she buried her face in them. He stood up and waited, watching her anxiously.

"Did you know him?" he asked in a strained voice.

She shook her head. "He was like a stranger to me—a man I had never seen before. But—he knew me."

"What did he say?"

"He didn't speak: just looked at me a long time. I didn't move. There was such a queer look in his eyes that I couldn't stir. It was as if every moment he would speak. Suddenly he raised up in the bed and stretched out his arm toward me—his right arm—and I saw that he had no hand—"

Hugh gave a sharp exclamation.

"What is it?" she asked, surprised.

"I'll tell you afterward. Go on. He stretched his arm out toward you, you said."

"Yes. I saw that he was reaching for me, and I stepped a little nearer, near enough for him to touch me. But he pulled back his arm and lay down again. 'I'm dreaming,' he said, 'I'm dreaming!' but he didn't take his eyes from my face. Then suddenly he sat up again and put out the other arm, and when his hand touched my hand he gave a sort of gasping scream and fell back unconscious. The doctor hurried to him, and Miss Niklova cried out to me, 'He's dead, he's dead—you've killed him!' But the doctor said he was not dead, but had only fainted from the shock of finding that I was real and not a dream. 'Who is he?' I asked, and then—Miss Niklova told me."

"Told you he was your husband?"

Marie inclined her head and sat silently gazing down at her hands tightly clasped in her lap.

"What else did she tell you?"

"Oh, I hardly know—she was so excited, so miserable. What a cruel thing life is, Hugh! She loved him."

"What was his name? Tell me what she said to you," Hugh urged.

BRIEFLY she pieced together the facts she had learned from Irma Niklova,—of Andrus' life there in the tenement; of his struggle to replace the right hand, lost in an accident, with the left, and of his failure; of the portrait which the Russian girl had recognized as hers; of the gown so like the one she had danced in; of what Andrus had said of her, that she had been a dancer and his wife, and that she was dead. He had taken the picture away that afternoon and sold it to get money because he was ill and was going to the hospital; but when he came back to leave the money for her to take care of he had fallen unconscious and she had put him to bed. Then the doctor had come and told her that it was a question of hours. And the sick man had called for Alix, always for Alix, and in his delirium he had talked of the portrait, Alix's portrait. It was that which had given the Russian girl her clue, and she had determined to bring to him the woman he loved.

"She said cruel things to me," Marie went on. "Of course she couldn't understand. She thought I had deserted him in his misfortune, that I was deceiving every one now, pretending to be somebody I was not. I couldn't explain: there was no time, and she would not have believed me. Besides, what did it matter what she thought of me? All I could think of was that here at last was some one out of the life I had forgotten, some one who loved me, who had grieved for me all these years. Whatever I could do to make amends must be done. If I was a wife, I must act as a wife would act. At last he regained consciousness. But he was very weak and lay quite still, noticing nothing. The doctor watched him, feeling his pulse. Miss Niklova was kneeling in a corner praying. Not seeing what else I could do, I knelt by the bed and waited."

"Poor child!"

"At last he opened his eyes."

"Did he say anything?"

"Very little—just the name Alix, over and over. He smiled at me, and kept putting out his right arm to touch me as though he had forgotten that the hand was gone. Suddenly his expression changed, his eyes lost focus. It frightened me and I turned to call to the doctor. Then he spoke. 'It's getting dark, Alix,' he said. 'I must go. Kiss me, sweetheart!' He lifted his head a little, and I—I—" She caught her breath sharply and stopped.

"Well?" Hugh questioned gently, after a while.

"I put my arm about his neck and—kissed him. I felt his lips meet mine, then his head fell back—he was dead!" A sob broke from her as she finished speaking, and bowing her head on the arm of her chair she wept uncontrollably.

"Poor child, poor child!" said Hugh.

"WHEN I reached the street it was night. To the east I saw the lights along the river, to the west the tracks of the elevated. That was the way home, I thought; then I remembered that I had no money, that I should have to walk. So I walked along the street where the elevated ran—"

"You walked home! Why didn't you take a cab?"

"There were none, for one thing, and if there had been I shouldn't have taken one. What right have I to comfort and luxury? Everywhere about me as I walked I saw poverty and wretchedness; back in that room I had left poverty and sorrow. What had I left behind me that morning seven years ago? That was what I kept asking myself. Perhaps I had parents, sisters and brothers, perhaps—a child."

"Marie!"

"How can I know, Hugh?"

"You were nothing but a child yourself."

"I had a husband. I feel as if I were a monster, a thing without human sympathy. Think of it! All these years I've lived without a thought of those who might be grieving for me!"

"That was not your fault, dear child; you had lost all memory of them. You were questioned again and again about home and family: you could tell nothing. Inquiries were made, and as far as we could learn no one was trying to find you, you had not even been reported as missing.

"Perhaps they were too poor. The poor are so helpless! Perhaps they thought I was dead."

"Yes. We know now that they thought you were dead. They thought you were murdered."

"Murdered!"

"Listen, my dear."

To be continued next week

The Difficult Art of Giving

By JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER

IF I were to give advice to a young man starting out in life, I should say to him: If you aim for a large, broad-gaged success, do not begin your business career, whether you sell your labor or are an independent producer, with the idea of getting from the world by hook or crook all you can. In the choice of your profession or your business employment, in your first thought be, Where can I fit in so that I may be most effective in the work of the world? Where can I lend a hand in a way most effectively to advance the general interests? Enter life in such a spirit, choose your vocation in that way, and you have taken the first step on the highest road to a large success.

Probably the most generous people in the world are the very poor, who assume one another's burdens in the crises that come so often to the hard pressed. The mother in the tenement falls ill, and the neighbor in the next room assumes her burdens. The father loses his work, and neighbors supply food to his children from their own scanty store. How often one hears of cases where the orphans are taken over and brought up by the poor friend whose benefaction means great additional hardship! This sort of genuine service makes the most princely gift from superabundance look insignificant indeed.

I have always been thankful that I was taught early to give systematically of money that I had earned. It is a good thing to lead children to realize the importance of their obligations to others; but, I confess, it is increasingly difficult, for what were luxuries then have become commonplace now. I have always indulged the hope that during my life I should be able to help establish efficiency in giving so that wealth may be of greater use to the present and future generations.

Perhaps just here lies the difference between the gifts of money and of service. The poor meet promptly the misfortunes that confront the home circle and household of the neighbor. The giver of money, if his contribution is to be valuable, must add service in the way of study, and he must help to attack and improve underlying conditions.

Great hospitals, conducted by noble and unselfish men and women, are doing wonderful work; but no less important are the achievements in research that reveal hitherto unknown facts about diseases and provide the remedies by which many of them can be relieved or even stamped out.

Help People to Help Themselves

I AM sure we are making wonderful advances in this field of scientific giving. All over the world the need of dealing with the questions of philanthropy with something beyond the impulses of emotion is evident, and everywhere help is being given to those heroic men and women who are devoting themselves to the practical and essentially scientific tasks.

If the people can be educated to help themselves, we strike at the root of many of the evils of the world. This is the fundamental thing, and it is worth saying, even if it has been said so often that its truth is lost sight of in its constant repetition.

The only thing that is of lasting benefit to a man is that which he does for himself. Money that comes to him without effort on his part is seldom a benefit and often a curse. That is the principal objection to speculation,—it is not because more lose than gain, though that is true, but it is because those who gain are likely to receive more injury from their success than they would have received from failure. And so with regard to money or other things that are given by one person to another. It is only in the exceptional case that the receiver is really benefited. But, if we can help people to help themselves, there is a permanent blessing conferred.

Men who are studying the problem of disease tell us that it is becoming more and more evident that the forces that conquer sickness are within the body itself, and that it is only when these are reduced below the normal that disease can get a foothold. The way to ward off disease, therefore, is to tone up the body generally; and, when disease has secured a foothold, the way to combat it is to help these natural resisting agencies which are in the body already.

In the same way the failures that a man makes in his life are due almost always to some defect in his personality, some weakness of body, mind or character, will or temperament. The only way to overcome these failings is to build up his personality from within, so that he, by virtue of what is within him, may overcome the weakness that was the cause of the failure.

It is my personal belief that the principal cause for the economic differences between people is their difference in personality, and that it is only as we can assist in the wider distribution of strong personality that we can assist in the wider distribution of wealth. Under normal conditions the man who is strong in body, in mind, in character, and in will, need never suffer want. But these qualities can never be developed in a man unless by his own efforts, and the most that any other can do for him is, as I have said, to help him to help himself.

I believe in the spirit of combination and cooperation when properly conducted in the world of commercial affairs, on the principle that it helps to reduce waste—and waste is a dissipation of power. I sincerely hope and thoroughly believe that this same principle will eventually prevail in the art of giving as it does in the business. It is not merely the tendency of times, developed by more exacting conditions in industry, but it should make its most effective appeal to the hearts of the people who are striving to do the most good to the largest number.

It may perhaps be pardoned if I set down here some of the fundamental principles that have been at the bottom of all my own plans. I have undertaken no work of any importance for many years that in a general way has not followed out these broad lines, and I believe no really constructive effort can be made in philanthropic work without such a well defined and consecutive purpose.

Contributing Intelligently to Human Progress

MY own conversion to the feeling that an organized plan was an absolute necessity came about in this way:

About 1890 I was still following the haphazard fashion of giving here and there as appeals presented themselves. I investigated as I could, and worked myself almost to a nervous breakdown in groping my way, without sufficient guide or chart, through this ever-widening field of philanthropic endeavor. There was then forced upon me the necessity to organize and plan this department of our daily tasks on as distinct lines of progress as we did our business affairs; and I will try to describe the underlying principles we arrived at, and have since followed out, and hope still greatly to extend.

It may be beyond the pale of good taste to speak at all of such a personal subject,—I am not unmindful of this,—but I can make these observations with at least a little better grace because so much of the hard work and hard thinking is done by my family and associates, who devote their lives to it.

Every right-minded man has a philosophy of life, whether he knows it or not. Certainly one's ideal should be to use one's means, both in one's investments and in benefactions, for the advancement of civilization. But the question as to what civilization is and what are the great laws that govern its advance, have been seriously studied. Our investments, not less than gifts, have been directed to such ends as we have thought would tend to produce these results. If you were to go into our office, and ask our committee on benevolence or our committee on investment in what it considers civilization to consist, it would say that it has found in its study that the most convenient analysis of the elements that make for civilization runs about as follows:

1. Progress in the means of subsistence; that is to say, progress in abundance and variety of food supply, clothing, shelter, sanitation, public health, commerce, manufacture, the growth of the public wealth, etc.

2. Progress in government and law; that is to say, in the enactment of laws securing justice and equity to every man, consistent with the largest individual liberty, and the due and orderly enforcement of the same upon all.

3. Progress in literature and language.

4. Progress in science and philosophy.

5. Progress in art and refinement.

6. Progress in morality and religion.

If you were to ask them, as indeed they are very often asked, which of these they regarded as fundamental, they would reply that they would not attempt to answer, that the question was purely an academic one, that all these went hand in hand, but that historically the first of them—namely, progress in means of subsistence—had generally preceded progress in government, in literature, in knowledge, in refinement, and in religion. Though not itself of the highest importance, it is the foundation upon which the whole superstructure of civilization is built, and without which it could not exist.

Accordingly, we have sought, so far as we could, to make investments in such a way as will tend to multiply, to cheapen, and to diffuse as universally as possible the comforts of life. We claim no credit for preferring these lines of investment. We make no sacrifices. These are the lines of largest and surest return. In this particular—namely, in cheapness, ease of acquirement, and universality of means of subsistence—our country easily surpasses that of any other in the world; though we are behind other countries, perhaps, in most of the others.

It may be asked, How is it consistent with the universal diffusion of these blessings that vast sums of money should be in single hands? The reply is, as I see it, that, while men of wealth control great sums of money, they do not and can not use them for themselves. They have indeed the legal title to large properties, and they do control the investment of them; but that is as far as their own relation to them extends or can extend. The money is universally diffused, in the sense that it is kept invested, and it passes into the pay envelop week by week.

No Better Solution in Sight

UP to the present time no scheme has yet presented itself that seems to afford a better method of handling capital than that of individual ownership. We might put our money into the Treasury of the nation and of the various States; but we do not find any promise in the national or State legislatures, viewed from the experience of the past, that the funds would be expended for the general weal more effectively than under the present methods, nor do we find in any of the schemes of socialism a promise that wealth would be more wisely administered for the general good. It is the duty of men of means to maintain the title to their property, and to administer their funds until some man, or body of men, shall rise up capable of administering for the general good the capital of the country better than they themselves can.

Back a Ways with Gertie

By SEWELL FORD

"JUST for the week-end, then," urges Pinckney. "Do come and see my ten-acre front lawn with a dozen peacocks strutting over it. Most absurd sight in the whole State of Connecticut—really!"

"Peacocks!" says I. "Raisin' tail feathers for the market, are you? Or are they just pets?"

"Peacocks amuse me," says Pinckney. "They're feathered satires, Nature's comic relief to the tragedy of the poultry yard. Peacock Lodge, I call my place, you know. And you simply must see the shack I've put up there!"

"I'd love to," says Sadie; "but there's baby sister."

"Pooh!" says Pinckney. "As though Mother Whaley wasn't in full charge of her! Come, only three days. We'll motor up, all four of us."

"Which four?" says I. "I thought that—"

"Yes, Geraldine is up there now," says Pinckney. "The fourth will be Mrs. Duntley-Kipp."

"Wha-a-at!" says I, staring. "The Busy Bride?"

As for Sadie, she just lifts her eyebrows.

"Some more of Geraldine's welfare work," says Pinckney. "She has undertaken to champion Mrs. Duntley-Kipp against a cold and cruel world."

"That's some contract," says I.

"Isn't it?" agrees Pinckney.

NOT that his set is gettin' finicky about unburied pasts, or is drawin' the line at statutory decrees; but when it comes to practisin' matrimony as free and casual as she had—three divorces in half a dozen years, and one of the trials includin' such entertainin' episodes as that about the bunch of orchids—well, that's almost stretchin' the limit.

Pinckney proceeds, though, to state the case for the defense. Maybe Mrs. Duntley-Kipp had been a bit frolicsome in her early twenties. But as for old Duntley, it had served him right. Didn't he as much as buy her outright from young Shipley, who'd married her at nineteen? And wasn't Reggie Kipp a bounder himself? Besides, for the last few years she'd been living quietly abroad, and would have stayed there very likely if she hadn't been routed out.

But when one's villa is made a field headquarters by one of the Kaiser's division commanders, and one's vineyards and rose gardens are cluttered up with Taubes and masked batteries, what is one to do? Mrs. Duntley-Kipp had skittered back to New York with seven trunks, two maids, and her pet Pomeranian. She wasn't trying to break in again, not formally. But one does want a rubber of bridge now and then, and a cup of tea with old friends.

SHE was lonesome, that's all. And the poor soul didn't have the plague, or anything like that, you know. Besides, she was clever, deucedly clever, and, with her prematurely gray hair, perfectly stunning. If it hadn't been for that stupid tale about the orchids, which a female lady journalist had invented—absolutely!—she might have slipped back in without attracting any attention. But that Orchid Bride tag wouldn't wear off, and folks who'd had affairs of their own were repeating the story gleeful and givin' her the cold shoulder.

"So Geraldine's taken her up," concludes Pinckney.

"I'm glad she has," says Sadie. "And we'll go."

That's Sadie, all right. Show her where it's a case of the under dog, and she's with you every time.

"Are you includin' me too?" says I. "Say, you ain't goin' to expose anybody as susceptible as me to—"

"I shall be there to keep an eye on you," laughs Sadie.

"Huh!" says I. "You're takin' a chance, that's all!"

It's an old joke between us; so we know it's a good one. Even Pinckney is trained so he works up a smile when it's trotted out.

"I'll chaperon you, Shorty," says he. "And suppose we start about ten Saturday morning? I'll send the car in for Mrs. Duntley-Kipp, and we'll pick you up as we come through."

WELL, that's how it was. And, say, maybe you remember the pictures printed of her at the time. Some star, eh? And believe me she ain't gone to seed any. I've seen flossy grass widows, but none that had anything on her. When she trips out of the limousine here the other morning and insists on seein' little Sully and the baby before we leaves, I just stands one side and gawps. Why, she's even kept her dimples and pink and white complexion, and with her veils down she'd easy pass for a chicken!

One of the slim, graceful, willow-wand kind, you know. A sparklin' converser too. Say, to hear her and Pinckney pass it back and forth was as good as listenin' to one of these drawin'-room Granville Barker comedies. Sadie falls for her at once. The lady even has me swappin' a line of polite josh with her before we'd been ridin' half an hour together. Yes, I got to admit that Mrs. Duntley-Kipp is some charmer.

I was able to keep from gettin' dizzy in the head at that, though. Some of this froth was natural, I expect, and then some of it might have just been thrown in because she was grateful. Anyway, we was 'way up above Bridgeport almost before we knew it. Then we branched off to the north on a new pike, and went boomin' through a lot of cute pie-belt scen'ry. Finally, at a crossroads, Mrs. Duntley-Kipp gets her eyes on a sign.

"'Seavers Falls, two miles,'" she reads. "Oh, Seavers Falls—I do wish we were going through there!"

"Why not?" says Pinckney, pushin' the buzzer.

The chauffeur slows up.

"I say, Emil," he goes on, "can't you take us through this Falls place and get back to the main road somehow?"

Emil shrugs his shoulders and touches his cap. "I know not, sir," says he. "I will discover."

"Oh, thank you," says the lady. "You see, once I spent a summer at the Falls,—oh, when I was quite a girl,—a delightfully silly summer, and—and I've never been there since."

"Ho, then, for Seavers Falls and a sail summer once-upon-a-time!" says Pinckney. "You shall show us the very spot. Did he have roguish blue hair and curly eyes?"

Mrs. Duntley-Kipp runs her tongue out at him. "Brown eyes," says she, "big and serious,—oh, very serious,—and dark, wavy hair, rather long."

"I see," says Pinckney. "You sat together in a twine hammock and read Browning."

"Nothing of the sort," says she. "We fished for bullheads below the Falls, and picked blueberries on Cleft Mountain; and paddled up the river in a leaky old punt, all through two wonderful summer months. Ah, that August moon! There never been one like it since."

"And about Labor Day, I suppose," adds Pinckney, "you both went back town—and forgot?"

"He lived here," says she. "I believe he said he was going to work in his father's shingle mill. Fancy! I wonder if he's still making shingles?"

"Perhaps," says Pinckney. "When one gets the shingle-making habit—"

"Oh, there it is!" breaks in Mrs. Dentley-Kipp. "Cleft Mountain! Why, it isn't nearly so high as it used to be. Sea the bare brown spot near the top? Sweet fern! You roll it in thin birch bark an smoke it. He showed me. It makes your eyes smart; but it's great fun. I burned a big hole in my pink challis. We patched it with court plaster so it didn't show. Around the next turn now should be the old blacksmith shop, with a tall elm on each side. Yes, yes! See?"

"The sign says 'Gasolene, 19 cents,'" says I.

"That is what happens to all the dear old blacksmith shops," says she, "pretending they're garages. Now we're getting into town. There's the feed store! And Masonic Hall! What! A moving picture show in Masonic Hall? How horrid! We went to a church social there

---

once. Yes, please drive on, right through. His house was out a ways,—a white house with a crimson rambler over the front door. It set quite a distance back from the street."

And, looking for that crimson rambler, we mighty near missed the house after all; for no climbin' rose is in evidence. Mrs. Duntley-Kipp, though, spots a couple of attic dormers that looked familiar.

"That's where it ought to be," says she. "But there were no bay windows nor front veranda."

"Maybe they've built 'em on since," I suggests. "Lemme hop out and see. What was the name?"

"Little," says she. "Ask if this isn't the old Little place."

SO I pushes through the gate and goes scoutin' up the walk to the house. Scattered promiscuous on the veranda are a couple of baseball bats, a jointed wooden fishin' rod, a doll carriage with a busted front wheel, and a row of fancy mud pies set out to cook in the sun. But not a soul in sight. I raps on the new screen door. Nothin' happens. I could hear some one movin' about in the back, though; so I strolls around until I comes to the kitchen.

"Hello!" I sings out. "Anybody home?"

And then there appears this meek, scrubby-lookin' party with the funny bald spot in front and the prominent neck apple. He's in his shirt sleeves and suspenders, and around his waist is tied a blue and white checked apron. Also he's smokin' a corncob pipe and wipin' dishes. He glances at me a bit suspicious and timid.

"Just tryin' to locate the old Little place," says I.

"Why," says he, "this is it."

"Well, well!" says I. "Some one's been revisin' it, eh?"

"Yes," says he, wavin' me in cordial. "I've been doing a little every summer since I got hold of it: not much, but here and there. I did want to build on a sleeping porch this summer; but business has been so slow. You see, we only stay here a couple of months."

"Oh!" says I. "Come up from the city, do you?"

"Brooklyn," says he. "I'm in the retail coal business, and summers there ain't much doin'. This is such a good place for the youngsters. They're out now with their Maw, blackberryin'; all but Amaryllis here."

I steps further in and takes a peek at Amaryllis, perched up in her high chair and dabblin' with a spoon in a dish of oatmeal.

"How many, all told?" says I.

"Kids?" says he. "Oh, there's five. They need a lot of room to traipse round in, and this place is just right for 'em."

"Don't expect you know anything of the Littles that used to live here?" says I.

"Ought to," says he. "I'm one."

"Eh?" says I, gawpin'.

"I was born here," says he, "and when the old folks died off of course the place came to me, mortgage and all."

"But, say," says I, starin' at him, you don't mean you're the Little who—well, the one that—"

"Why, Dick!" comes a voice from the doorway behind me.

I hadn't heard her, hadn't thought of her followin'; but there she was,—Mrs. Duntley-Kipp, dimples, sparklin' eyes, and all, and holdin' out one of her neat gloved hands. As for Little, he just stood starin' stupid, stupid and woodeny.

"Dick Little!" she goes on. "Don't you dare pretend you don't remember me!"

Which produces some picture, take it from me. For Mr. Little ain't just what you'd call a romantic type.

And there's Mrs. Duntley-Kipp, as smart and trim as a spray of honeysuckle with the dew on. To think that them two was ever—well, I just gives up and stands one side listenin' open faced. Little removes the cob pipe and hides the dish towel and blue platter behind him.

"Why!" says he. "If—if it ain't Gertie!"

HE actually pinks up and begins fumblin' his hands, as if tryin' to decide what he ought to do next—drop the platter the floor, or chuck it at the sink.

"That's better, much better," says she. "I know I've changed; but I don't like to admit it. Doing the dishes, aren't you? How splendid! But you know I always did insist that you were a nice boy."

Mr. Little indulges in a fussed, foolish snicker and then gives her a quick glance to see if she ain't makin' fun of him.

"Come," says the lady, "aren't you going to shake hands, just for old times' sake?"

He drops the dish and towel and pipe on the kitchen table, wipes his hands on the apron, and they swaps grips.

"Maybe we'd better go out front?" he suggests.

"No, let's stay here, where you can look after the baby," says Mrs. Duntley-Kipp. "Isn't she a chubby little dear? She has your eyes, Dick, hasn't she?"

Mr. Little grins again. "Guess she has."

"Do you know," she goes on, "the moment I saw Seavers Falls on the sign-board I thought of those brown eyes of yours, and how solemnly you used to watch me out of them that summer until—until we got better acquainted. Let's see, we met first up at the mill, didn't we?"

"I'd seen you twice before that," says he. "Once at Mrs. Drew's boarding-house the day after you came, and again at the post-office."

"Really!" says she. "You never told me. But wasn't that a glorious summer?"

A far-away, dreamy look was flickerin' in Mr. Little's eyes. Come to look at 'em close, they wa'n't such bad eyes, either. They was still brown.

"It was great!" says he.

"The fishing!" she goes on. "And paddling up the river those hot afternoons in that absurd old boat! Remember that hollow stump where I used to hide my shoes and stockings?"

"It's gone," says he. "Rotted away. I couldn't find it at all last summer."

"Ah-ha!" says she. "Then you looked?"

He hangs his head guilty and blushes.

"I saw the sweetfern pasture up on Cleft Mountain as we drove in," she suggests, glancin' at him with a knowin' nod.

He looks up quick and nods back. "I remember," says he.

"Weren't we deliciously silly then?" says he. "What was it you declared my hair smelled of?"

"Clover tops," says he. "It did too."

"What utter nonsense!" says she, givin' him a playful tap on the arm. "Anyway, it was dear of you to think so. And those moonlight evenings when we went strolling off, hand in hand, listening to the whipporwills and locusts—warm, soft nights—and such foolish things you used to whisper. No, they were pretty sentiments; almost poetic, at times. Do you know, I rather expected you to be a poet."

"Y-e-e-es," twistin' up one corner of the apron, "I did try; but then I—I drifted into the coal business."

Somehow that seems to break the spell. Mrs. Duntley-Kipp's mouth corners twitch jumpy once or twice before she gives up tryin' to keep back the laugh. Then it comes out, clear and ripply.

"Oh, Dick, Dick!" she protests. "How could you? My last illusion! Well, it couldn't be helped, I suppose. Twenty years ago nearly, wasn't it! But in that time I've lost so many; while you—"

She ends by glacin' at little Amaryllis, whose chubby countenance is smeared up reckless with cold oatmeal.

Mr. Little he continues to gaze mushy and admirin' at the lady, not gettin' wise to any change. All of a sudden she gets up.

"Good-by, Dick," says she.

"Good-by—er—Gertie," says he.

THEY'D just finished shakin' hands and was exchangin' a last look when in floats a raspy, high-pitched voice:

"Ho, Paw! Paw!"

Mr. Little tints up at the sound and glances around panicky. Then he stands there stupid, without makin' a move. We all turns and stares out the back door.

Not for long, though. Half a minute more and there's a scruff of rubber-soled shoes and in waddles a heavy-faced, tousle-haired female, built wide and gen'rous. I expect her costume was just the thing for blackberryin'. Anyway, not much more could happen to that saggy khaki skirt, or the shirtwaist with the sleeve slit to the shoulder. Some shoulder it was too! And the lady didn't need to worry about her complexion. It was beyond marrin'.

She don't seem to at all fussed at seein' strangers in her kitchen. Course she gawps a bit, as is only natural, and then turns inquirin' to Little.

"Why, Paw!" says she. "Who's this?"

Paw he ain't a quick thinker or a ready explainer. "Why," says he, workin' his fingers nervous, "this is—er—it's—"

He was stammerin' and gulpin' and shufflin' his feet pathetic when Mrs. Duntley-Kipp comes graceful to the rescue.

"I stopped to ask about some one I used to know here a long time ago," says she. "You see, I spent a summer here as a girl, and—well, there was a boy, of course. You understand. A perfectly dear boy he was too, and we had such a silly, delightful summer together that I—I wanted to know what had become of him."

"Oh!" says Mrs. Little, noddin' her head. "Yes, yes. Well, Paw he used to live here—I wonder if he knows who it could have been? Do you, Paw?"

WHICH was battin' it straight at Mr. Little. He wouldn't make a good shortstop, though, Paw Little. He'd fumble anything that come his way, like he does this one. What do you guess is his answer to that?

"Know who it was?" says he. "Maybe. What—what if it was me?"

"You!" gasps Mrs. Little. She takes one quick, startled look at him, and then stares for a second at our flossy grass widow, takin' her all in. Then she turns back to Paw, sniffin' contemptuous. "You!" she goes on. "Oh, talk sense, Paw!"

Then it's Paw's turn to gasp. Also he colors up some in the neck. "But see here, Maw!" he insists. "You asked if—"

"There, there!" breaks in Mrs. Little. "Run out to the back gate and see that them clumsy boys don't spill that pail of berries 'fore they git 'em in here. Trot, now!"

And Paw he trots. So do we.

We finds Pinckney pacin' up and down the road restless, smokin' a cigarette, and Sadie out pickin' a bunch of daisies.

"My word!" says Pinckney. "We were beginning to think you'd both gone for good."

"I'm sorry I kept you waiting so long," says Mrs. Duntley-Kipp.

"Couldn't be helped," says I. "We've been 'way back into once-upon-a-time."

"And is the excursion ended?" he asks.

"Quite," says Mrs. Duntley-Kipp, climbin' into the limousine.

The Mystery of Ambrose Bierce

By BAILEY MILLARD

AMBROSE BIERCE has been figuring in as great a mystery as any of those contained in his weird books of tales, "In the Midst of Life" and "Can Such Things Be?" Bierce, who is seventy-three years old if he is still alive, as has been reported recently, was a Federal Major in the Civil War and served with great gallantry. Equipped with what Gertrude Atherton characterizes as "the best brutal imagination of any writer in America," he wove out of his war experiences the most ghastly and gruesome yarns ever published in this country.

His Disappearance

"BITTER BIERCE," as they called him in London in the early seventies, when he sojourned and wrote there, was born in Ohio. After the war he went to California, where he lived for more than thirty years. He then went to Washington where he resided until the summer or 1913, when, in his seventy-second year,

and suffering from frequent and severe attacks of asthma, he went to Mexico, ostensibly to join the staff of General Villa.

In Mexico he disappeared, and it was reported to the State Department at Washington that he had been foully dealt with. Rumors of various kinds as to his death, or as to his whereabouts as a living man, were published in the newspapers; but the State Department could find no definite trace of him after his leaving Chihuahua city in December, 1913. He was reported to have been murdered just before the battle of Torreon, while serving on General Villa's staff; but Villa declared that Bierce was never with him—that, in fact, he never had met him.

After nine months of weary waiting for news of him, his family gave him up as dead, and long obituaries of him were published in newspapers and magazines.

But behold! On April 2, after having utterly disappeared for over a year, a cable came from London stating that the missing author had turned up in that city in good health, and that he had joined Lord Kitchener's staff. The papers that had printed his obituaries published this news with the stories of his life and his strange disappearance. But now the obituary writers are again sharpening their pencils, for the State Department's investigation of the new report is said to have resulted in finding it groundless.

He Was a Fatalist

ONE fact that would tend to show that the world has seen its last of this remarkable man is that Bierce had told a few of his friends that he did not intend to survive his seventy-second year, as life had become a burden to him because of his malady. He was seventy-two on June 24, 1914. Others, however, point out the indisputable fact that Bierce had been a lifelong fatalist, and that the bare idea of suicide was alien to his temperament. So this remarkable mystery is still a mystery.

Loss of Both Arms Didn't Down Him

WHEN Mr. T. C. Gates, a young New York electrician, lost both of his arms as the result of coming into contact with two live wires, it appeared as if he would be hopelessly handicapped for life. But when Mr. Gates had recovered from the operation, which was the necessary amputation of his arms above the elbows, he decided to invest in a pair of artificial arms of which he had heard.

To-day, to see Mr. Gates button his shoes, put on his collar, fasten his tie, write his name, lift a glass of water to his lips and drain it off without spilling a drop,—to see him, in fact, go through all the paces of every-day life,—one would never suspect that in place of the arms that nature gave him he has wood for flesh, steel for joints, and rawhide cords for muscles.

The artificial arms used by Mr. Gates

are composed of two hundred and fifty distinct parts. A mere shrug of the shoulders controls them. The elbow is bent by a single forward movement of the stump. By means of a cord attached to the forearm and the shoulder suspender, he can raise his hands as high as he wishes—high enough to take off his hat or to brush his hair.

By means of another rawhide cord he controls the fingers of the artificial arms. A downward movement of the shoulder produces a slight tension on this cord, and the hand is bent backward from the wrist-joint, causing the fingers to open. Another shrug causes the fingers to close, locking them securely upon whatever object is being handled, from a pencil to a suitcase.

To unlock the fingers, it is only necessary to repeat the downward movement of the shoulder.

Don't Take a Trunk to the Exposition

I'VE globe-trotted all over the world, and my first advice to my friends is always this: Don't take a trunk. No matter where you live, you can travel comfortably to San Francisco, stay there as long as you want, and see the exposition in a suitcase. A trunk is bulky, it gets in the way, and frequently doesn't arrive at all.

What You Can Pack in a Suitcase

A SUITCASE will hold all this—and it's all you need: A woolen coat, a fancy blouse, and a simple thin dress, two waists to match your suit, three changes of summer knit union suits, a couple of long-sleeved knit corset covers, two cotton crape gowns, three muslin corset covers, a silk or sateen petticoat, a thin kimono, and four pairs of hose. Instead of a wrap, I deem it wise to take a medium-weight long-sleeved union suit; for the harbor of San Francisco is sometimes cold even in July.

Whether you enjoy the exposition or not will depend most of all upon your feet. Be sure your shoes are comfortable, and better have an extra pair, to rest your feet.

Toilet articles, of course, will be carried in a handbag, the smaller the better. Personally I prefer one about sixteen inches long and ten inches deep. And don't make the mistake of packing it too full. I take a nail file and scissors, comb, brush, mirror, tooth-brush, and clothes brush. Then there is a handkerchief case and a small sewing box for mending; and of course a good drinking cup, toilet soap, talcum powder, and tooth paste. It is one of my rules never to travel without a bar of laundry soap.

A handbag or purse marks you as the easy prey of every passing pickpocket. I carry a small coin purse in an inside coat pocket, and extra money, in the form of express checks, is pinned, with my return transportation, in an under-skirt pocket. No wise traveler carries jewelry.

Still Room for Souvenirs

THESE few rules, simple as they are, contribute wonderfully to peace of mind. To them should be added one more: Don't crowd your suitcase so full that every packing and unpacking is agony. The few necessities that I have listed here will fit in easily enough, and leave space for souvenirs. For, of course, we must bring back something from the exposition: otherwise why in the world should we go?

Making Home Attractive for the Bat

THE lowly bat, which has long been regarded as a useless if harmless creature, is at last coming into its own. It has been officially recognized by the city of San Antonio, Texas, as an enemy to mosquitos and other pests, and a corresponding aid to the city's fighters against malaria and other diseases. San Antonio, therefore, has undertaken to protect the bat by law, and has even taken steps to encourage its propagation, by erecting the first municipal bat-roost of which there is any record.

All this is the outcome of efforts on the part of Dr. C. A. Campbell of San Antonio to eradicate the mosquito, which he holds is responsible for the spread and perpetuation of malaria.

The proposition of the cultivation of bats has taken fourteen years of Dr. Campbell's time, and he has spent many thousands of dollars in scientific investigation of the problem. Now that the San Antonio bat-roost has proved its success, it is Dr. Campbell's idea to have this natural hygienic measure adopted by governments, municipalities, or corporations controlling large bodies of land in malarial regions, for the protection of the inhabitants. The reason is obvious. It is the masses, the poorer classes, the wage-earners, who are the ones to be most benefited, as it is they principally who are the carriers of the disease. They know nothing about the dangers from these insects, or they are careless as to the use of screens, or perhaps they are too poor to buy them.

We Pay $100,000,000 a Year for Malaria

DR. L. 0. HOWARD, Chief Entomologist of the United States Department of Agriculture, conservatively estimates the tribute this nation pays to malaria at $100,000,000 yearly.

This proposition is in a class all by itself because of the economic feature, though this is inseparable from the hygienic. The bat catches and eats that most malevolent of insects, the malarial mosquito, and then, as if to punish it for its malignity, converts the insoluble parts of its little body into the highest of all fertilizers, guano.

It has been demonstrated that a single bat will consume 260 mosquitoes in a night, and the weight of guano from one bat in a single day amounts to 2 3-5 grains. The plans for the roost call for a structure housing 250,000 of these creatures, and in the vicinity of San Antonio they are active about nine months in the year. When it is considered that guano is worth about $40 a ton, the commercial value of the amount that may be collected from one of these roosts in a single year is easily estimated.

The Bats Must Be Properly Housed

DR. CAMPBELL is authority for the statement, based on his own practical application and experience, that bats will eradicate malaria in any territory where a proper home for them is established. They seem to have the particular instinct, he says, of finding the engorged mosquito, as is evidenced by the fact that each pound of guano represents one and two fifths pounds of liquid blood.

When the mosquito bites an infected person, it requires a period of seven days for the cycle of evolution that takes place in the body of the mosquito to complete itself ; and not until that happens is the mosquito capable of transmitting the disease. Thus the bats in a malarial region, flying all night long in quest of food, have seven days in which to catch the mosquito and thereby stop infection.

It should not be imagined that any sort of old barn or other building, or a structure erected in haphazard fashion, will do in which to house bats, says Dr. Campbell.

The roosts must be built entirely in harmony with their very singular habits, and the bats must be attracted there. To place a large number of them in a roost after transporting them from a distance, and then expect them to remain there, is like catching any wild animal in a box then liberating it and expecting it to turn to the same box. Colonization is effected by treating the roost with a giving off the odor of the bat, and by spreading specially prepared guano on the floor.

One Way of Earning a Living

THEY'RE not in their second childhood, these two men who spend six hours a day flying kites twenty-two stories above the corner of Broadway and 42nd Street in America's biggest city. Frank Sefang and J. H. Willis are simply bucking the game of life from a new angle, and getting away with it.

Willis used to go up in balloons. Sefang used to tour the country with Lincoln Beachy, the aëronaut who was killed several weeks ago in California. About three years ago both came to the conclusion that they would rather walk the earth's surface with a little less glory, than lie four feet beneath it and have their pictures framed in black. But they didn't lose their interest in the upper air.

One day they sent up a balloon with a dummy in it, and worked a parachute drop. That gave them a twentieth-century idea that was salable. Here was a new way to make people gaze and wonder—a new advertising method.

Something New in Advertising

KITE-FLYING above Longacre Square is the result. Sefang and Willis have their workshop in a little room twenty-two stories above the street. It looks like a boy's play room, equipped on a somewhat larger scale. A dummy aviator and his flimsy machine dangle from the ceiling. Kites of all sizes and shapes are stacked in the corners. A work-bench is covered with all the things you used to make kites

with when you were a youngster. From the roof, twelve feet square, the kites are flown; and their cords, to which the dummies, parachutes, aëroplanes, etc., are attached, carry advertisements of everything form hair tonic to a medical college. From two in the afternoon until eight in the evening Broadway stares at them.

Kite-flying from such a narrow footing has its thrills, particularly when the other end of your cord holds fifty square feet of kite and a stiff breeze is blowing. Sefang was nearly pulled off the roof the other day, when a sudden puff caught the kite he was launching and dragged him to the very edge of the twenty-two-story precipice before he could let go. When the wind veers the cord often gets caught on a flagpole or a building cornice, and it's a man's job to free it.

Scientific Kite-Flying

SEFANG and Willis are real kite scientists. They don't need a south wind to fly their kits due north. They can accomplish this in a west wind by manipulating the kite bridle—shortening the right lead-rope and tacking, as if they were sailing a boat. The air currents that swirl and shift around the high buildings are often troublesome, sometimes shooting the kits almost perpendicularly upward, and causing them to dart and somersault like crazy gymnasts, banging them against walls and flattening them out on the roofs.

Nearly all the kites have names, and possess the idiosyncrasies of human beings, say their flyers. But the nature of a kite is to fly, somehow; and the nature of human beings is to stare at anything new. So Sefang and Willis are making money.

It Took a Year to Capture Them

CATCHING one of the big regulation size hippopotami is child's play to trained animal hunters—dangerous, to be sure, but not difficult, because the big fellows stay in the same muddy pools all the time, and use the same beaten tracks through the forest. But to hung the pigmy hippo is an entirely different matter. The first pair of pigmy hippos ever captured has recently been landed in this country. It took a year of solid work to get them, to say nothing of $12,000 in cash and the lives of some of the party. For the pygmy hippo—he's only twenty inches hight, and a big hippo would make fourteen of him—rarely uses the same forest track twice, and makes his home in hidden tunnels washed out under the river-banks.

For months, every device known to wild animal hunters was employed in the effort to trap a pair of these curiously secretive animals, but without result. At length it was determined to dig slanting pits, deep enough to prevent the hippo from reaching the top and so smooth that it would slide back into them as often as it tried to escape. No less than a hundred of these pits were dug, and at length success came.

Only the Beginning

BUT with the capture the difficulties of the expedition were only begun. It was necessary to load the two hippos into native baskets and transport them on the shoulders of native carriers. For twelve days the captives rode in restless state until the coast was reached.

It is hoped that the pair will like their new home and may become the parents of a thriving family. Thus far they have eaten the green vegetable food set before them without complaint, and they seem as contented as if they were still in their wild and savage home in Liberia.