Ought I to Invest in Insurance?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

A YOUNG man twenty-five years old, with a wife and two children, wants to know if life insurance is a good investment for him, and, if so, what form of policy is best. He earns $40 a week, and family living expenses are $32. To answer this question in such a way that the writer would be protected from all criticism and be unassailable at every point, it would be necessary to know a lot more about this man: whether he or his wife have relatives or friends ready to lend him money; whether he is able to invest his savings intelligently; whether he soon expects to inherit property, and so on.

But, taking the facts as they appear, there should not be the least hesitancy in saying that life insurance is the best possible investment that the world affords this man. It is the safest, surest, and most certain to attain the desired ends.

A man of twenty-five who is able to make $40 a week is fairly skilled in his business or profession. It would be a pity for him not to transmute his skill into money for the benefit of the three helpless persons presumably dependent upon him. There is no criticism to make of other investments, such as a weekly deposit of $8 in the savings bank, or of the purchase of good bonds and stocks on the partial-payment plan, except the one objection: namely, that such investments would benefit his family practically not at all if the young man should die in a few months or even a few years.

If a man can have only one investment, and especially if he has others dependent upon his earnings, life insurance is always the best. It comes first; it is most elementary and essential. The two commonest objections to life insurance are: (1) I have to die to win; (2) I can invest money myself to greater advantage. But it is not better to die and leave one's family provided for than to leave one's family provided for than to leave them destitute? As for investing money to better advantage, let us see. Nothing is safer than a legal reserve life insurance company. Failure in the sense that the policy-holders lose is probably rarer than in nay other known field of activity. Absolute safety is assured, and that is something which holds good of relatively few investments; and even they, of course, do not have the feature of protecting one's family against a stoppage of earning power. If a man lives twenty or thirty years, and has a great will power and persistence, perhaps he can make his money earn more than the insurance company is able to, although we all know that hundreds of thousands of otherwise successful people invest to such poor advantage that they lose everything they have. But, even if our young man is one of the few who do invest wisely, he can't possibly beat life insurance, unless he is sure of living about thirty years.

The Twenty-Payment $5,000 Policy

I SUGGEST that this particular young man take out a twenty-payment policy for $5,000, which will cost him roughly $130 a year for twenty years, leaving him a considerable sum out of his savings which can go into the savings bank, into a home, or into bonds, stocks, or mortgages, or simply be kept in a checking bank as a fund against illness and emergency. This policy lasts all his life.

Insurance men differ greatly as to which is the best policy, and this suggestion may meet with their denials. An ordinary policy (payable during life) would cost almost $10 per $1,000 less than the twenty-payment policy. But the great advantage of the limited payment form is that a man is released form making payments at the very period of life when he wishes to be relieved of burdens, when probably his earning ability begins to wane. Of course, if this young man expects steadily to increase his earnings, so that y forty-five or fifty he will have a competence, then perhaps the ordinary life policy, being less of a burden during his productive years, might be the better form. But that is taking a chance.

The Endowment Policy

TWO other suggestions may be worthwhile. When the insurance is taken out it may be wise to arrange with the company to pay the $5,000 in instalments to the widow. This arrangement prevents losses through bad investments. Finally, if the young man finds it difficult, after paying his life insurance premiums, to save the remainder of his $8 a week, then let him take out an endowment policy in addition to the regular policy. The endowment is the only form of insurance policy where a fixed sum is paid back to the living person at a given time (most commonly twenty years). It is a most expensive investment, the return on one's money begin less than 3 1/2%, often much less than that. But it practically forces one to save. It has the element of duress which so many of us need.

Next week Mr. Atwood will answer the question: "The Savings Bank—or What?"

Side-Stepping Seasickness

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

HOW may one go on the water, and yet escape seasickness>

Seasickness, it is interesting to note, is one of the most common land diseases. In fact, one can get seasick more quickly and more violently on board a camel than upon any ship. Also, many of us know that any little stomach upset, plus a trip in a swaying, reeling railroad train, will produce a violent mal de mer. For a constantly changing skyline and a sensitive stomach are almost as common on land as on the heaving main.

However, it is now believed that the actual cause of equilibrium nausea (if I may be permitted to coin a term) lies in the ears. Nature has inclosed a few drops of a watery fluid in the semicircular canals of bone directly back of the ears in both men and animals. These determine proper equilibrium, acting as a sort of level or balance.

This natural level controls our sensations or ideas of what is horizontal, in contradistinction to what is perpendicular. Further evidence of this function lies in the fact that when these cells and their fluids are affected by what we know as "Meiniere's" disease, we suffer form the same vertigo, giddiness, and nausea that accompany seasickness.

Also, the eyes, tiring form the unusual and unnatural task of focusing upon the rapidly changing horizon-line, frequently communicate their tale of weakened muscular woe to the pneumogastric nerve. This fat nerve sympathizes with the eye-strain by making the stomach stand on its hind legs, or lie down and roll over. So, before taking a trip on either land or water, people subject to seasickness should first have their eyes thoroughly examined by a competent oculist. If any abnormalities are found, they should be corrected by a properly fitted pair of lenses.

Diet Before Going on a Journey

THEN, a day or two before starting, a saline aperient may be taken. The diet should be greatly restricted—q specific embargo being placed upon all heavy, greasy, or soggy foods. The good old practice of dining sumptuously and unwell, and topping off with a box of chocolates, is to be studiously avoided. Also, alcoholic drinks—particularly beer or malt liquors—should be tabooed.

When the boat or train begins its swayback gyrations, a small tuft of cotton, smeared with white vaseline, should be plugged snugly into each ear. This little precaution has in thousands of instances been an actual specific seasickness, for it prevents the entrance of air into the canals of the ear, and the consequent rapid fluctuation of the fluids contained in these canals.

An additional help in overcoming the tendency toward nausea—and a very effective one—is to sip a few tablespoonfuls of milk of magnesia, poured over cracked ice or mixed with a third of a glass of ice water. If this is not available, a teaspoonful of bicarbonate of soda (pure baking soda) in half a glass of water frequently gives a relief.

Sulphate of atropine, now recommended for seasickness, should not be used except under the definite instructions of a physician. For this powerful drug must be taken until its physiological symptoms (dryness of the throat and dilation of the pupils of the eyes) are apparent, in order to narcotize (or deaden) this equilibrium nausea. And in the hands of amateurs there is considerable danger of developing belladonna poisoning with this treatment.

Even should all of htese suggestions prove ineffectual, it is hardly likely that they will not at least mitigate the severity of hte attack, Also, it is comforting to realize that rarely or never is seasickness of itself a fatal condition—notwithstanding that, at the time, we most heartily wish it were.

Each week Dr. Bowers answers the most interesting question. Next week: "How Can I Keep My Hair from Getting Gray?"

One Minute with the Editor

A Word to the Warm

THIS number of the magazine will reach you in what may possible be the very hottest week of summer. If so, may you find it in somewhere a cool breath of cheer.

Personally, we are all done with summer. At the instant when you read this we shall quite cool and happy. We are working now on the first issue in October. The scent of the Autumn woods is in our nostrils, and, though the thermometer registers 102 degrees in the shade, it is forty-five degrees cooler in our soul.

That Reminds Us

WHICH reminds us that next week we print a double page of pictures called "Why I Like My Job the Best." A dozen different folk in varying lines of work answer that question. Our assistant, who prepared the pictures, did not see fit to include our picture. Therefore we take this opportunity to say, in advance, that we like our job the best because it lets us meet interesting people, and because it gives us a sense of rich fellowship with a million unseen friends. We care not who makes the nation's laws, so long as we can criticize them editorially for the way they do it.

The Girl Who Feared Marriage

SHE is the heroine of next week's leading story. She loved; she wanted a home; but somehow the married life of all the people whom she knew seemed so dreadfully rough and sordid. It seemed to her that the sure way to kill love is to marry.

Grace MacGowan Cooke is the author. Women readers know her work already, and men ought to.

Mr. Hungerford Liked This Letter

DEAR EDITOR: Edward Hungerford's article on the hotel was a story after my own heart. We boys who spend a good deal of our lives on the road fully appreciate the spirit that prompted it, and I, for one, hope that more of this kind of material will be put before the public.

No—No! Have a Heart

DEAR EDITOR: I am in poor health, and there is none too much happiness in my life. Can't you prevail on Sewell Ford to write a Torchy story every week? I don't suppose he would want to do it, but can't you make him?

Some Strange Marriages I Have Performed

By Rev. G. L. MORRILL

AS pastor of the People's Church, which meets in the Jitney Theater, Minneapolis, I am called on to perform more marriages than all the other pastors in town put together. Church members have no difficulty in making their marriage arrangements, of course. But thousands of young people have no church connection. Who is to marry the boy and girl who live in a boarding-house; or the actor and his fiancée, both of whom may be on the road most of their lives; or the high diver in the circus, who never went to church in her life? Some one must be found to do it, and usually I am the one who is found.

"We'll get Golightly Morrill to do it," they say—for every one in Minneapolis calls me "Golightly." Perhaps it will interest you to know how I got that name.

It was back in the days of "Doc" Ames, the most dissolute and corrupt mayor the city ever had. I had been pounding at him from my Pulpit in a downtown theater week after week, and one day I preached a sermon that must have made his hair curl. I told him in plain language just what the people in the town thought of him, and I didn't call a spade a spade, either; I called it a black-handled shovel. The whole town sat up and took notice, including Ames himself.

A day or two later, in a paper that he published, he answered my attack, concluding with a paragraph which he tried to make conciliatory.

"You're too harsh," he said in that paragraph. "It takes time to get things straightened out. Just go lightly, Morrill, and we'll bring things to pass."

"Go lightly, Morrill," echoed the town, and the name has clung to me ever since.

But back to the weddings. I am a married man, and I believe in marriage. I like to help it along.

If any poor, bashful man in Minneapolis falls in love with a worthy girl and wants to meet her and court her for a wife, I will see that he is introduced to her, has a place in which to court her, and will help him to get his license, pay for it if necessary, marry him free of charge, and furnish him with a wedding certificate which he may hang over the motto, "God bless our home." That's why I am called the "marrying parson."

I Marry a Couple in a Lions' Den

ONE of the strangest marriages I ever performed was in a lions' den. The lady, a member of a circus troupe, came to my house one evening with her fiancé.

"We want you to marry us," he said.

"All right," I answered. "Where?"

Instead of replying directly, he answered my question with another.

"Is your courage pretty stiff?" he asked.

"I've been fighting the devil for forty years," I answered, "and if you don't think that takes courage you haven't had much experience with his Satanic Majesty."

The girl giggled, and the man said:

"That's all right, then. I just wanted to be sure, because we're going to have this marriage performed in a lions' den.

It's a case of Dora instead of Daniel in the lions' den. The lions are her pets, you know, and she wants to have them all around her."

"But—" I protested.

"Now, Mr. Morrill, no buts—please," said the girl. "You marry other girls in their homes with their friends around them; why shouldn't you do the same for me? That cage is my home. I spend the happiest moments of my life there. And those lions—why, I never could have any better friends than they."

"How about you?" I said to the groom. "Aren't you afraid?"

"Of course I am. I've never been in the cage in my life. I'm scared to death. But Dora says I can't have her otherwise, and I would fight fifty lions if necessary to get Dora."

So it was arranged.

I will never forget that wedding. It was immediately after the evening performance. The crowd had gone, and the lights were out, all except a few in the tent where the lions were kept. A little group of circus folk crowded around the cage, and the lions stalked back and forth as if they sensed that something extraordinary was about to happen. I'll own that there have been moments in my life when I felt better than I did then. But I was in for it. The circus band struck up the wedding march, and in walked the bride, dressed in a wedding gown consisting of pink tights, and carrying her whip instead of a bouquet.

Well, we got through with it somehow—though I will admit that I prayed with one eye open, and when a big lion stepped forward and began sniffing at my leg I cut the service short a bit and tied the knot in a hurry.

The couple kissed each other and skipped for the door. I've heard from them since, and they seem to be just as happy as any couple that ever marched down the aisle of a church.

"Isn't it dangerous to be married in a lions' den?" asked somebody afterward.

"Yes," I replied, "in a lions' den or anywhere else."

What I call my "wedding in high life" was performed at the top of a 150-foot electric tower in Wonderland, while the band played and the great searchlight was turned upon us. I suppose if they had given me a part of the gate receipts at that wedding I might have retired from work. But, as with most of my weddings, I gave my services for the joy of the young folk and the greater happiness of humanity.

A little while later the leading man of a burlesque company called on me and said:

"I understand you're the marrying parson."

I pleaded guilty.

"Well, I'm in love with one of the girls in my company. Will you marry us on the stage, after to-night's performance?"

"Of course I will," I answered.

So that night, with the orchestra playing popular airs and the company crowding the stage, they were married. A curious wedding, you will say, and in strange surroundings. Surely. But it was legal, all right. I saw to that.

I once married four couples with a single ceremony—this being, I think, the world's record for economy, efficiency, and speed.

On an excursion boat one time I tied a sailor's knot for a couple, with the captain and first mate as witnesses.

Two or three times I have been a little late: once I married a couple in a hotel room—a young father and mother, with their week-old baby in a cradle by their side. I have heard from that couple, and they are very happy.

I performed one leap-year wedding in jail. The man, being behind the bars, was in no position to make the arrangements that customarily fall to the groom's lot; but the plucky girl, believing that marriage would do more than anything else to start him on a new life, secured the marriage license, and the preacher too.

I once married a Chinaman to a Russian, before an altar adorned with lacquered vases, flowers, and incense. A sailor interpreter was the prompter, nudging the groom when it was time for him to say "yes."

Marriages of Jews and Gentiles are unusual, but it's the unusual kind of wedding that always comes my way. I married a devout Jewish girl to a Gentile once, she consenting on condition that I should say one half of the service in English and the other in Hebrew, which—if you will believe me—is no slight task.

I remarried once an old grandpa and grandma who had been divorced for thirteen years. Fourteen of their grandchildren were present as witnesses.

I once married a woman to a man whom her jealous husband had shot. He further revenged himself by committing suicide, leaving her free to wed the rival, who recovered.

And once I nearly married the bride to the best man. This fatality was averted only by the prompt action of the groom, who pushed himself in between them at the critical instant and said, "She is mine!"

Most of Them Turn Out Happily

CURIOUS marriages, all of them; and yet, the percentage of happiness among my couples is as high, I believe, as among those more sedate and conventional folk who tread quietly in the beaten path of precedent.

I am proud of my couples, and proud of the fact that the high and low, the poor, and those who have no money or friends, should seek me out when they require the good offices of the church.

I have had as many curious funerals as weddings, more than once conducting a service over a suicide in the morgue, the stricken mother and I being the only mourners.

My picture hangs not merely in the homes of some of my good friends and parishioners, but in the lobby of every hotel and theater and in the entry of every saloon in town. There is no man in trouble who may not discover, in our downtown theater church, a friend.

Why not? One who was criticized in His day for the sort of company He kept, answered with the sentence that should be the guide for all of us. "They that are whole," He said, "need not a physician; but they that are sick. "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance."

No Spankings for Them

AWAY up on the Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, there is an up-to-date little school, where they have free textbooks, and where American young women who don't mind seeing the thermometer standing at 50° below are teaching English and other things to eighty-five sons and daughters of native Eskimos.

Mrs. Charles A. Thompson, one of the teachers, went North five years ago, when her husband was appointed superintendent of the United States reindeer herds. They call her the "White Mother" up there, and in school and out of school she is kept busy explaining the mysteries of the making of American clothes and dishes to curious Eskimo housewives and their daughters.

Mrs. Thompson was the second white woman ever seen in the Arctic Circle, and her domestic science classes are easily the most popular in the school. Of all the children she has taught,—white children, pure-blooded Indians, half-breed Indians mixed with Caucasian and Chinese blood,—Mrs. Thompson prefers the Eskimo child, and also maintains that the admixture of white and Eskimo races produces peculiarly good-looking and brainy children.

No Alaskan Eskimo parent ever thinks of punishing his small child, no matter how many times he may have tipped over the whale-blubber kettle. The Eskimos in the Cape Prince of Wales region of Alaska think that the souls of the departed linger around the family but until a new baby is born to some one closely related to them; whereupon the shade of the dead grandfather or great-aunt takes up its abode in the person of the new arrival, who is duly christened with its ancestor's name and is always treated with great respect. It is manifestly out of the question to trounce the uncle who has left you all his best fish-hooks, even though he may very well be "a handful."

She Keeps Ten People on $11 a Week

IN a tiny household of three rooms in Cincinnati, a family of ten is presided over by a little woman, Mrs. May Shroder, who "manages" on the salary of $11 a week, brought home by her husband, Joseph Shroder. "And it takes some managing," said Mrs. Shroder. For her managing, and the neatness of her little home, she was recently awarded a prize.

Mrs. Shroder is very systematic in the management of the family monthly budget, and has divided it as follows:

Rent, $8; Insurance, $2.40; Gas (including heat and light), $3; Medicine, $2; Food $25; Incidentals, $3.60.

For $8 a month Mrs. Shroder has found three large, light rooms on the first floor of a tenement that is so near the heart of the city that the family does not have to spend any money for carfare.

She spends 60 cents a week for insurance, and thus takes away some of the worry that would befall her if some disaster should happen suddenly to any member of the family.

Her gas bill is usually about $2.50 a month. She bought a ton of coal early

last winter, and averaged its cost into the total cost of light and heat.

Instead of employing the services of an expensive physician, Mrs. Shroder attends a free clinic, and pays cost price for medicines.

Food—the Biggest Item in the Budget

FOOD is the big item of the high cost of living. But Mrs. Shroder shows wonderful ingenuity in devising meals that are both palatable and nutritive for her large family. She doesn't serve butter when molasses is on the table, or when they have soup or dumplings or stewed fruit. She is a great believer in cereals for breakfast, and in soups for dinner and supper. She never serves bread on the day it is baked—it goes too quickly, she says.

She omits desserts, but sees that the children have plenty of fruit and milk. She does not bake her own bread, because baking uses up so much gas; and she uses condensed milk because it is cheaper than fresh milk. Plenty of fresh vegetables—such as turnips, cabbage, carrots, and potatoes—are always served. She has coffee piping hot for breakfast, and tea at the other meals.

Picking a Chicken in Three Seconds

GEORGE FISHER of St. Joseph, Missouri, is the champion chicken-picker of the country, often picking from 1000 to 1400 chickens a day. He has been practising his profession for forty-five years now, and in 1887 won the contest that established him as champion of this pursuit.

He Makes Only Four Motions

IT takes Mr. Fisher exactly four motions to strip a chicken of every pinfeather. He places the bird first on the table with the head toward him; then, grasping both feet of the chicken with his left hand, he removes the feathers from the under side and the neck. Next off comes all the plumage on the right side, well up on the back, including the feathers on the leg and wing. With his left hand he turns the bird over for the third "swipe," which cleans off the left side, then with his left hand he pulls out the tail-feathers—and all in three seconds by a stop-watch.

Of course, such an artist must have

his materials prepared for him, and Mr. Fisher never touches a chicken that hasn't been properly scalded. In the packinghouses where he was employed, and later in his own establishment, he always kept four or five trained assistants. He never had a regular salary, though, always doing "piece work"; and he makes an average of from $50 to $75 a week.

White Feathers Easiest to Pluck

"THE things that make a difference in the work of picking a chicken are to be found in the bird itself—the manner in which it is killed, the way it is scalded, and the season of the year," explains Mr. Fisher. "The breed, age, diet, size, and sex of the fowl all help to determine the facility with which the feathers may be removed. The breeds with white feathers, as a rule, are easier to pluck than the strains with dark plumage, for reasons that I do not know. In this business, like many others, we have unexplained mysteries."

Radames of the Rock Cut

By EDWIN BALMER

THE storm—the wild wind and rain that had burst over the mountains at noon—had swept on at last. By six in the evening the sky was clear. And, as the month was June and there would be at least two hours of sunshine before twilight, Barney Lee's bride climbed up from the camp to the "lookout" on the side of Gray Craggy.

She was a slender little girl, twenty-two on her wedding day four months earlier, and she didn't look even that; and as she struggled up the steep side of the mountain, her gray eyes wide, her cheeks flushed and her lips parted with effort, and her small hands catching at twigs to steady her, she seemed completely out of place on that rugged, rocky slope.

The sleeves of her blouse were turned back over slim, graceful forearms; but the waist was silk, and, four months before, had been fashionable. Her skirt was of broadcloth, and, though she had cut and ripped and sewed again to make it suitable for pathless mountains, it still held about the hips the fit and distinctive lines of a fashionable tailor. Her shoes were tiny tan things with quarter-inch soles, which the salesman at home had assured her were "boots quite fit for the roughest walking."

These boots were the only equipment that she had had time to provide particularly for the mountains. For she had fled from her home precipitately, one day in February, when she had known that Barney Lee—all alone up there in the wilderness of northern British Columbia, builders no one but a few hundred road-builders about him—must be very sick.

And when she had made him well, she had insisted that she would rather stay and marry him there than ever leave him again.

THUS she was on the side of Gray Craggy, with the blue and white torrent of the Fraser River circling below, and in three directions only the pine-forested slopes and the snow-clad peaks of the Rockies. But not once in weeks, now, had she and Barney tramped these slopes hand in hand; for in the fourth direction lay the "grade"—the ugly, endless grade that daily claimed her husband from his first moment of waking till his weary, exhausted return to her at night.

She turned in this direction, and at last she stood panting upon the "lookout," gazing anxiously east up the valley to see what fresh damage the storm had done. The fourteen big bunk-houses, the grubshack, and the other ungainly log and board buildings for the thousand men—graders, steam-shovel crews, and rockmen —stretched in a long uneven line between the river and the grade. The office shack and the little black tar-paper-covered cabin where she and Barney had their home stood a little beyond the other sheds. Past them, the yellow and brown upheaval of soil, shale, and rock, where a way was to be smoothed sometime for the railroad, wound above the river. The girl estimated this fearfully. If the rain had started another "slide" on the slopes above, there would be added more long weeks to the months before she and Barney could go home.

AS far as the first bend, she could see no change. Just beyond it, she could not be sure. But a little farther off something had happened. Soil and trees and great boulders buried the grade. She cried out to herself with dismay as she saw this. The slow moving specks of men told her that no one had been lost under the slide; but it meant that Barney must begin all over again at that place the work he had finished the week before.

She turned away from the sight; but it had spoiled for her the glory of the northern evening sunlight, the glow above the snow-crests on the mountains, and the enjoyment of the soft, fresh air of the forest after the rain. Then slowly some new, happier mood was upon her. It came so subtly and was so undefined that she felt relief from her oppression before she knew what had come to cheer her. Then she heard more distinctly a voice, the wonderfully pure, passionate voice of a young man, singing the "Sole Mio," the Sicilian song to sunshine and to love.

The syllables, accented as she had heard them sung a score of times in the luxurious, lazy days of her visits to the slopes of Etna, rose with the warm, alluring impulse of the Sicilian singing. She interpreted the song to herself:

"Oh, what wakes love, dear, like a day of sunshine?
The sky is clear at last, the rain and storm are past.
Through air so cool, so bright, shines the yellow sunlight.
Oh, what wakes love, dear, as a day of sunshine?"

She felt herself suddenly flooded with the mood of the song. She longed for her husband to be with her, without thought of the ugly mud and rock slides, and to sing like that with her of sunshine and love! The Sicilian song had restored precisely the spirit that she wanted to feel; and, impulsively, as sometimes she had replied to the contadini and to the fishermen on the shores below Etna, she sang back:

"Quanno fa notte e'o sole ne scenne—"
"When the day is ending and the sun's descending,
A tender sadness pervades my gladness."

She sang to the end the plaintive, passionate verse. At first, as she began singing, there was silence. Then the man's bold, beautiful voice sang with her. They finished the refrain together:

"O sole, O sole mio,
Stanfronte a te!"
"Oh, my sunshine, my sunshine, I find it in thee!"

She paused breathless and the least bit frightened. The stranger who had been singing was crunching over stones and dead branches on his way to her. She looked down through the trees, and saw a man, hatless and with his blouse loose at the throat—a young man of medium height, with a strong, well proportioned figure. His hair and eyes were black and his skin the hue of a Sicilian; his teeth, as he smiled, were white and perfect.

HE bowed with a gallant flourish. Then, as he came nearer, he gazed at her with a direct, too admiring scrutiny. At home, she would instinctively have shrunk from such a glance; but here, the only woman among many hundreds of men, she already had become used to it.

"You were the one singing?" she said.

"And you also, signora!"

He recognized her. She did not know him; but she could never have seen him among the other men or surely she would recall him.

"You are working here?" she asked.

"Si, signora!"

"When did you come?"

"A week ago," he replied to her—in Italian this time, and watching to see whether she understood or whether she had merely smattering enough to sing the words of the song.

She smiled.

"A week ago?" she repeated perfectly in his dialect. "And you have not sung in all that time!"

"Ah! You are like a Sicilian!" he exclaimed delightedly. "No, signora; I have not sung in all that time, if you have not listened to me."

She laughed again at the bold, easy gallantry of the boy.

"What do you do here besides sing?"

"Only blow up the mountains for you, signora."

"Oh; you're a rockman?"

He nodded.

"What is your name?"

"Sebastiano Darucci, signora."

"It should be Radames."

"Radames, signora?" The name was strange to him.

"It is a part sung by Caruso."

"Caruso!" That name was known. "You think I sing like him?"

"You sing very well—how well I can not tell here in the woods. I mean, I can not tell how high you sing or whether you could sing other songs than those like 'Sole Mio.'"

"How could you tell that, signora?"

She watched him with wonder. She recalled that he had been climbing the slope as he sang, but that it had not even shortened his breath.

"Where were you going?" she inquired.

"To sing on the mountain. Where were you going, signora?"

"To sing, too. But I did not know it before I heard you. I am going down now."

"Shall I help you, signora? Shall we not sing as we go back?"

Together they went down the mountain, singing as they went. At her door he reminded her: "To-morrow you will teach me the song of Caruso, and see if I sing it well, signora?"

"Yes; if the powder does not come and you can not blow up more mountains for me, come here to-morrow morning."

"Grazie. Good night, signora."

"Good night, Radames."

SHE turned into her little tar-paper-covered house, and moved about the shack, singing. The few moments of song and careless exhilaration had been like times between Barney and her before he went up to this crude, horrible camp. She felt a renewed determination to take him away—to make him give up this ugly, grim work and return to where they would be gay again and always happy.

The impulse of the song that had so inspired her possessed her again as, in the twilight, she saw her husband coming home, very tired and worn. So she stood awaiting him, singing, and did not stop when he stepped inside the door, until, with a final burst of feeling, she ran to him and seized him and hugged him and covered his cheeks with kisses.

"Why, dearie!" he cried, in astonished

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delight. "Why, dearie! That's great; but look out—I'm all mud."

"What do I care?"

"Katharine! You're happy to-night!"

"Of course I'm happy."

"Why?"

"Because I'm not going to give you up to mud and dirt and rock slides any longer. It's not worth it, Barney! Nothing's worth it!"

"What, dear?"

"I'm going to take you away with me; I'm going to make you go back with me; we're going to give up this work and be happy together!"

"Give up the work and be happy?" he faltered. "What do you mean, Katharine? What's happened that made you—"

She clung to him as she passionately, illogically, told of meeting the Sicilian and what he had brought to her.

"I see." Barney gazed down at her seriously. "I shouldn't have married you, should I, Katharine?"

"You shouldn't have married me!" she repeated, gasping. "What do you mean?"

But already he was sorry for what he had said. She made him confess that he didn't know what he was saying, and that he wouldn't say it, or anything like it, again. Yet their feeling was not quite satisfactory as they sat down together to their supper; nor afterward when he helped her clear away the dishes; nor when they went to the little room in the rear where they slept on a rough bunk.

AWAKING suddenly in the night, Katharine realized not only that Barney no longer was beside her, but that he had been gone for some time, and that for many moments the lamp in the other room had been smelling and the light glowing through the chinks of the door.

His wife got up and opened the door to the other room and looked in. Barney was seated at the table, with a great pad of paper before him, and with sheets covered with figures scattered all about.

"Barney!" she cried. "What is it?"

He jumped up guiltily. The night was sharp, and she was standing barefooted and in her nightgown. He picked her up and without a word carried her back to bed.

"Now, stay there, little girl!" he said.

"But what's the matter?"

"Nothing!"

"Oh, Barney!"

"I'm just trying to figure out how much longer I've got to stay here."

"How much longer is it, Barney?"

"I don't know yet, dear; I'm finding out for you."

"For me?"

"Of course."

"But I don't want you to do it now!"

"But, sweetheart, I must."

"Then can't I help you?"

"Yes; by staying here and sleeping."

He kissed her and went back into the other room. She lay obediently quiet, watching the light through the door. She could hear him tear off sheets from time to time, crumpling some and throwing them on the floor.

She lay sleepless while the gray of the early northern dawn appeared and the sunlight gleamed over the mountains. In the other room, Barney still figured on his pad under the light of the lamp.

His wife arose and dressed, and went into the room where he was working. She started the fire and made the coffee. When it was ready, he gathered up his papers, and she laid the plates in their places. He had finished his figuring, but she would not discuss the result until after he had eaten.

Then she asked him directly: "Barney, how much longer is it?"

"That I've got to be here? A long time, dear."

"What does that mean—days, weeks, or—or months?"

"Months, I'm afraid, dear."

"Oh, Barney!" she cried in dismay. He put his arms around her.

"I've been deceiving you, dearie," he confessed. "I guess I've been fooling myself, too. But I've figured the whole business out fairly now—how much we've done that won't have to be done over again, and how much there's still in sight to do under my contract."

"But you sha'n't stay here a week longer, Barney; I won't let you!"

"Katharine!"

"You can get some one else to do this!"

He tried to soothe her.

"Some one else? Why, dearie, if I stay here myself and do my best, we aren't going to make any money. In fact, little girl,—I guess I might as well admit it to you and myself right now,—it looks as if it's going to take almost everything I've got to work out my contract. But,"—he set his lips grimly and his eyes flashed out of the open door to the mountains and their slopes that were defeating him,—"when I've finished the rock cut here, it'll be some safe and solid bit of road-bed."

"No!" she cried fiercely. "No, Barney. You can't keep working on here, the way you have, and for nothing! I won't have my husband worn and gray and sick and spent before his time!"

She glanced toward the open door. She had a feeling that some one had approached; but no one appeared.

"Dearie," Barney appealed to her hopelessly, "how can I leave now?"

"Perfectly simple—by just going, and taking me with you. And if it costs money to get some one else here, or to give up your contract, or for anything else, I'll pay it. I can, can't I? I don't know how much money I have, but it's an awful lot; and what's a penny of it good for, if I can't take care of my husband with it?"

BARNEY petted her. "But it's not just the money that has to keep me here," he tried to explain. "It's the work itself, dear."

"The work itself? Why?"

His shoulders straightened and his head lifted a little.

"Because it's my work, Katharine."

"Your work?"

"Yes; and that's me!"

"And that's you?"

"Yes; coming out here where only hunters have been before; coming here with a thousand men and putting a road for trains on a path where a mule couldn't travel before, and fighting the floods and the rock slides, and boring right through the mountains no matter what's in the way, and being beaten sometimes, but coming back at 'em and going for them again, and sticking to it till they're whipped and have got to let the trains through. That's my work, dearie; I can't run away from it, even for my wife, without running away from myself: for it's me!"

"That's not you!" she met him. "For I love you and I hate that!"

"I know it," he said, and seized her in his arms. "So, Katharine, won't you leave me?"

"Leave you!"

"You aren't happy here."

"Barney!"

"You've just said it. You hate this life. I should have known you must; but you thought you'd like it for a while, anyway; and I thought so, too. But the first time you've really seemed yourself in weeks was when that Sicilian started you singing."

"Barney, I won't talk to you!"

"But you'll think it over!" he rejoined.

Through the open door of the shack he could see his men crowding toward the grade for work; the whistle of a steam-shovel shrilled. Barney kissed her and went out. She stood staring after him, furious and dry-eyed at first; then she dropped into his chair and, with her face in her hands, burst out sobbing.

"Signora! Signora!"

Sebastiano Darucci stood inside the doorway, with the air of one who has been patiently waiting.

"Signora, the powder did not come this morning; I am here."

Katharine Lee looked up. His music had made her forget the work and the worry; it would do so again. She shook her tears away and smiled at the boy.

"Good morning, Radames!"

He was in a clean blouse, with a bright scarf about his neck; his trousers had been well brushed and his boots scraped and polished; his cheeks and chin were shaven.

"You will teach me that song, signora?"

She went to her tiny piano against one wall of the shack. She and Barney had looked forward to music and singing together in the evenings; but, since the piano had come two months before, they had never had time; and it is lonely playing and singing to one's self.

KATHARINE eagerly selected the score of "Aïda" and played the first famous aria, and he read the Italian words over her shoulder. As she began playing it over the second time, he sang: "Celeste Aïda, forma divina!"

"Bis! Bis!" she applauded when he finished.

"I sang it well, signora?" He flushed with pride.

"Oh, you sang finely. But, before you try again, I must tell you more of Radames. You are Radames, you see."

"Yes, signora."

"You are singing a song of love to Aïda."

"Si, signora."

"And Aïda is a girl you are forbidden to love."

"You mean she is married to another man, signora?"

"No. She is a captive, and you are not supposed to love her."

"I see, signora; it is much the same."

"But she loves you also. Now, sing."

She played, and he sang with the passion that she had suggested rising in his full tones.

When the song was done she rapidly turned the pages of the score.

"Now here is another, Radames. You sing this part, and I will sing also."

"I see, signora; you are Aïda to me."

"Yes, I am Aïda."

She taught him a little about bettering his tones; and, as he seemed to improve immediately, she praised him enthusiastically, and herself flushed with pleasure. And when she sent him away at last, and he stooped and hotly kissed her hand, it frightened her only for a moment. Of course, the boy was trying to show his gratitude for her interest; and it had been so good to sing with some one!

BUT she soon forgot about Radames.

Some one brought word that Barney was coming home for midday dinner. She ran to meet him when he appeared about the bend to the west where most of the work on their contract remained to be done. Barney's shoulders were straighter than they had been yesterday, and his step was more like the young man of thirty. His eyes gleamed as he caught her up and kissed her.

"Oh, Barney, what is it?"

"Dearie, it may work out!"

"What, dear?"

"There may be a way to finish here pretty soon."

"How, Barney?"

They hurried, side by side, to the shack.

"Just beyond Gray Craggy there, we've had the worst trouble, you know. We've done the work four times, and it looks as if we'll have to do it four times again."

"Yes."

"But there's a way around that trouble."

"Where?"

"Through the spur to the west. Well have to blow half a mountain away; but it's all rock above, and once done the work's finished forever; and I believe we can do most of it in just one big shot. I've half had it in my mind for months, and now I've decided to do it. A whole lot of powder—most of the money I have left in dynamite and black powder placed just right—and I think we can get through quickly and without more loss. If we don't—if the rock won't break as we want or the blast doesn't throw it right—well, I'm smashed anyway. But if it works out we'll get away from here pretty soon!"

So, after dinner, she went with him over the grade eagerly; and that evening, after he had wired back his orders for dynamite and black powder,—hundreds of tons, she was almost happy again. The end of Barney's and her exile was almost in sight. But she noticed that Barney did not sleep well that night. He denied that anything was the matter; but in the morning she saw that his face was swollen from what he tried to tell her was only a little toothache. When she made him let her, see the trouble, she cried out in dismay:

"Oh, when did that happen?"

"When that bit of rock hit me in the face last week," he confessed.

"When you ran in on that blast, and one of the holes hung fire! Oh, Barney, why did you do it?"

"I never can wait after a shot. I've got to see how things are right away."

"You've got to take better care of yourself. You'll go right back to Granton, won't you?"

Granton was a town, many hundred miles back through the wilderness, where he could find a dentist.

"Leave the work for that!" Barney exclaimed indignantly. His tone only added to her helpless fury at him.

"You must!" she cried. "I won't have you suffer all that pain when you don't have to. You'll lose that tooth, and another too. I won't have my husband losing his teeth!"

BUT Barney had fled. Outside the open door, he spoke to some one who had been waiting there; and the next instant Darucci showed himself. His smile displayed proudly his perfect white teeth.

"Good morning, signora." He spoke to her, as usual, in Italian. "The powder is not here this morning, either."

She stared past him, and saw her husband defiantly hurrying off to the grade with his men. She knew it was useless to follow him.

"He won't come back," she said aloud. "Come in, Radames."

She absorbed herself in teaching the Sicilian, trying to forget Barney's defiance of her. He returned that evening, after a

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long day's work, with his face more swollen. He still refused to leave the work, and the next morning, after battling with her again, he had both of his broken teeth pulled by the blacksmith, so they would cease troubling him and he could stay on his job. It made his wife hate the work more than ever.

Barney was away now continually, for the black powder and dynamite arrived by the ton each day, and he set himself to overseeing the shifts of men boring and blasting the dozens of little tunnels into the rock and scooping out great caverns to contain the powder for the big shot.

Darucci worked in one of the shifts; so he came after hours to the tar-paper-covered cabin for his lessons in singing.

The boy was really developing. She reported the progress to Barney, who made comment only once.

"Swanson's got a good voice, Katharine," he said suddenly.

"Who's he, dear?"

"The big Swede rockman who sings."

"Oh, yes; I've heard him."

"Why don't you take him up, dear?"

"Why, Barney?"

"Instead of that Sicilian, I mean."

Her eyes widened and she went over and sat on her husband's knees.

"Why, Barney!" she exclaimed. "I thought it pleased you that I was singing."

"That does."

"But you don't like my doing it with Radames?"

"Who?"

"Oh, Darucci, I mean."

"So you've a pet name for him!"

"Why, Barney, what do you mean?"

"I was suggesting Swanson for a singing pupil instead of Darucci; that's all, dear."

"Why?"

"I fancied he might be a bit safer."

"Barney! You think that Rad—that boy would hurt me?"

"No; he wouldn't hurt you."

"Then what's the matter?"

Barney hesitated.

"Does singing with Darucci amuse you very much, dear?"

"It isn't just an amusement, Barney; it's a privilege and a duty to teach him. He really has a wonderful voice. He needs only a little showing how to use his voice, and he can go anywhere—can do anything. Caruso, you know, was only a barber, wasn't he? And wasn't it Constantino who was a stoker or something like that? Suppose I could discover for the world another voice like theirs!"

BIG Barney said no more, but, as he gazed out toward his grade and the cut through the mountains for which he was spending himself, he winced.

Her singing with the Sicilian proceeded famously. On the evening of the day in which Darucci had helped place the last of the dynamite in the caverns under the rock, Aïda praised her Radames more eagerly than ever before.

"Signora!"—he seized her hands, his eyes glowing at hers,—"you are glad!"

"Of course I am glad!"

"It means much to you!"

"Very much, Radames."

The boy was excited, but so was she; she was sure that she had discovered a great artist.

"Why does it mean so very much, signora?" he demanded.

They were speaking, as usual, in Italian.

"To be able to sing as you shall, Radames!"

"What, signora?"

"It is the greatest gift in the world!"

"So you are happy that I have it?" He seemed not to understand.

"Yes; for I must share it with you, Radames!"

"Ah! You want to share it with me, signora?"

"Sha'n't I, Radames?"

"Celeste Aïda !" he cried, crushing her hand and drawing her closer. In sudden fright, she pushed him away from her. At the same moment there was a step outside. The Sicilian saw who it was.

"Oh, your husband!" he ejaculated.

The tone explained that now he understood why she had pushed him away—because she knew her husband was coming. She colored furiously and her eyes blazed, but she could think of nothing to say before he bowed, saying:

"Ah! I see, signora. I will go away—now."

He slipped past Barney at the door. Katharine saw her husband gaze curiously at Darucci; then he turned to her with a smile.

"Dearie," he announced, "we're all ready to fire the big shot!"

"All ready, Barney?"

"We connect the batteries to-morrow morning. We fire the shot at noon!"

"To-morrow!" she exclaimed.

It had seemed to her that the day would never come. Yet now there was nothing more to do; she would have her husband all to herself for the rest of the evening.

KATHARINE went with him the next morning and watched while Darucci and the others ran the wires to the scores of great pockets of powder. Then, with Barney, she withdrew to another mountain, where they would be close, but shielded from the blast. Every one else was warned away; the great rock slope was cleared for destruction.

Barney led her to the electric switch where all the wires centered; he put her hand on the lever and let her close the circuit.

Simultaneously she shut her eyes and tottered, and Barney seized her; for, just beyond the spur, the world was in destruction. The ground beneath her swayed; upon the ridges of the hills about, great trees toppled and crashed down; the sky was spread with a cloud of smoke and dust; great boulders, rocks, and clay spattered about. Then the earth was still; the cloud from beyond the hill thinned and the sun shone clear again.

She felt Barney loosing her. He was running round the spur to see just what the big shot had done. She called to him to wait; but he did not hear or would not heed. He ran on, and she, with others, followed.

A chasm—chaos of split and riven strata of gray and purple stone—lay where, the moment before, had been the sloping, moss-green mountain-spur. The great, sharp-edged crags still scraped and slipped a little against each other as they settled down. Yet Barney leaped on toward them and upon them until—

Instantly and without warning, and as if the mountain-spur, destroyed and strewn about, yet struck in its last throe against its destroyer, the rock before him arose, burst over him, and, as the stones and dust and smoke settled again, Barney had disappeared.

HIS wife ran forward, as deaf to the cries of others as he had been deaf to her call; and so she found him lying amid the shattered stone.

She kept close beside him while they picked him up and carried him to the bunk in the shack. She was beside him, unresting and tireless, through the night and the next day, until in the evening Barney opened his eyes and spoke.

The surgeon, who arrived then, found that Barney had been no worse than stunned. The doctor stayed and commanded Barney's wife to sleep; but, in her wild joy, she could not even lie down.

She had to move about, and breathe great breaths, and thank God out in his world. So she went from the cabin, and, bare-headed and glorious, wandered in the woods, her face to the evening sun. There she encountered Darucci.

He seemed to have been waiting for her, and came toward her, smiling.

"So he is dead!" he said in Italian.

She stared at him, wondering if she had heard the words aright.

"Ah! You did not know!" he whispered to her. "I see; you thought it accident! You did not know. I did it!"

"You did it!"

To him she seemed to wonder; so he deprecated.

"It was nothing. A little fuse at the end of the wire instead of the spark on the powder; that was all."

"You did that!"

"Signora!" the boy cried.

She seized his sleeve.

"Tell me! What are you saying? What did you do?"

Now, in his bewilderment, he could not speak.

"You said you put a fuse to some of the powder so as to kill him!"

"Signora!" he cried. "You did not want it?"

"Want it!"

The boy shook her off and retreated, staring at her as one betrayed.

"Then what did you mean, signora? Before me you quarrel with him! I hear it. You are not happy with him—you are happy with me. He does not like it, but you tell me again to come. That is the first!"

Now he was accusing her, with his counts against her clear in his mind. She stood petrified while he went on:

"Then you tell me to come again, and you cry out you will not have him because he has no teeth! And when I come in, you tell me to love! I am Radames; even now you call me that. You are Aïda. It is forbidden to love, but I love you and you love me. You say it!"

He glared at her, panting in contempt. "Oh, oh!" she gasped.

"And you do love me; you are happy with me. Then yesterday what do you say? What do you say to me, signora, yesterday?" he demanded. "You have done it all because with me you must always share? How was I to take you if I was not to kill him? He would be after us forever; he would not give you up!"

Her senses were in a stupor.

"You thought I wanted you!"

"Signora!" Not through his mind, but through his feeling, understanding was beginning to reach him; and dismay and destruction of pride—not fear yet of consequences of his boast—overwhelmed him.

"Go!" she cried to him. "Go! I tell you, go! He is not dead, thank God! He will live. So I let you go! Go!"

And now fear reached him, and he fled.

KATHARINE LEE found her way back to the shack blindly. It was days before she told her husband.

He was able to be about again, and they had gone together to look over the ground where the great shot had been fired. It was in the late sunshine of a clear evening, with the cool of night already in the mountain air, and with silence all around. They sat down on a knoll, with the raw rocks of their destruction strewed stupendously about them.

"Dearie," he said to her, "you see? The shot didn't do what I hoped. I'll have to be here a long time yet."

He patted her hand in sympathy. She seized his fingers passionately and pressed his hand hard against her cheek.

"If you have to be here seven years, or seventy, or seven hundred, Barney," she cried,—"if you never have anything but that shack all your life, I'll stay close—oh, so close, beside you! If I can do that I'll be the happiest wife in the world!"

"Why, dearie!" he exclaimed softly.

"And whatever work you want to do, I'll love! Oh, Barney, Barney, whatever is worth your strength and youth is going to be worth mine too; and I'll give myself to it, and let you give yourself, as long as we do it together."

"Why, dearie!" he cried again.

"I thought I could love you and be loyal to you, and be disloyal to your work; and, my Barney, I almost killed you!"

"Killed me, Katharine?"

Then she told him. And when she entirely broke down, he took her in his arms.

"You see!" she sobbed. "I made him believe I wanted to be disloyal to you because I was disloyal to your work. But, Barney, what is singing an opera—even if one sings like Caruso—compared to digging a grade?"

"You mean, dear—"

"If you are the one digging the grade, Barney, and you let me dig it with you."

The Girl of the Nutmeg Isle

By BEATRICE GRIMSHAW

Illustration by Harvey T. Dunn

"HARRH!" came a bloodthirsty shout over my shoulder.

I sat up suddenly. A kitchen-stove-colored savage, with huge nostrils and glaring black-glass eyes, was standing at the head of my long chair, scratching his head with one hand and holding out a cup of soup with the other.

"Harrh!" he yelled again, as if I were a prisoner taken in battle and about to be slain. "You have one-fellow soof?"

He shook the cup of soup at me with such vigor that some of it splashed out over my pajamas.

"Ah, it's you, Bo," I said, reaching for the cup.

The savage of New Britain is scarcely a restful type of attendant for a sick-room; but Gore and I were not out to find fault with any conditions that gave us a roof over our heads and a "boy" to work for us just then. I had been fairly ill for a few days, and was recovering. To-day I had so far returned to myself that I was able, lying out on the veranda, to take note of where I was, and to wonder at the oddity of the place.

Herbertshöhe, one of the many abandoned capitals of Kaiser Wilhelm Land, lies some ten miles from Rabaul, along the New Britain coast. I do not know how Gore had obtained leave for himself and me to camp in a forgotten wreck of a hotel there; probably he had more friends than I knew of, or than it was judicious to speak about, in the country. At all events, he had carried me there on the night of our arrival, and here we still remained, in a structure that looked like somebody's cardboard model of a hotel he had intended to build and didn't—a crazy two-story contrivance of carved, flimsy woodwork.

Nobody lived there. There was a new hotel further on, carefully described as a private club in order to discourage the passing traveler. You could camp among the decaying furniture of the old hotel, in its paintless, dropping-to-pieces rooms, for a sum that would have given you lodging in the Savoy at home. You could find your own boy, and send across to the "club" for a stray meal, which might be accorded you or might not. You could not travel about. When you had been there for two or three weeks, you would get notice to the effect that strangers were not permitted to take up residence there, and you would then—if you were not Red Bob or Red Bob's companion in adventure—hasten obediently on to the Prinz Sigismund, when she came in from Singapore, and steam away to Australia.

But if you were Red Bob or Paul Corbet, you would not contemplate doing anything of the kind.

Bo, having given me the soup, left the veranda in two bounds that shook its crazy structure from end to end, and went to wash dishes. I lay on my long chair, congratulating myself on the return of a normal temperature, and looking out across the roadway to the sea beyond the belt of palms—a hot-weather sea of curiously transparent blues and greens.

I WAS wondering where Gore could have disappeared to all afternoon, and how soon he meant to come back, when I heard the tramp, tramp of bare feet—military barn feet—on the veranda. I sat up. It was Hahn, my old acquaintance of the duel, with his police, marching somewhere or other (he was a government officer of fairly high standing), and calling in on the way to see me.

"Well, my nut, how are you this afternoon?" he shouted cheerily. Hahn prided himself on the accuracy of his English slang. "I have to march these beggars up to Toma, and I have at the club, for some beers to give me heart, just now called in. When will you be fit again?"

He seated himself astride the remnant of a chair, and gave an order to his police, who were standing at "attention." They squatted down outside.

"Where is that chief of yours?" he asked. "I thought I saw him going down to the company's launch."

"Perhaps," I said, leaning back on my pillow to shade my eyes from the light. "I don't know where he has gone."

"So," said Hahn, obviously not believing me.

He stopped talking for a minute, and began to roll a cigarette. Somehow, I recalled a fragment of counsel once thrown to me by Red Bob.

"Better make your own cigarettes. They take the place of a snuff-box, on occasion. You remember how all the old diplomats used to take snuff—because it gave them time to think when talking."

"Have you seen Herr Richter since you came?" asked the young officer presently.

I picked my way in replying:

"Why, no. I've been pretty ill, off and on. Is he here?"

"Certainly not. His residence is in Rabaul," replied Hahn.

I don't know why, but the answer

Continued on page 16

Women Who Hold Down Unusual Jobs

MISS HATTIE MADDOX, who is totally blind, turns out as much work a day as any one else in the mail-bag repair shop of the Post-Office Department.

Miss Maddox has been employed in the repair shop since 1889, and is an expert at her work. After a mail-pouch has been repaired, she puts new draw-strings in the mouth of each canvas sack.

WHEN Rose Lorenze was a young girl she began selling catalogues for the American Art Association. Porcelains and ceramics interested her. The sense of touch is a great factor in determining the dynasty in which many of the Chinese porcelains were made; and Miss Lorenze has developed this sense to such a degree that she can lay her hands on any piece of Chinese pottery and, with her eyes closed, tell its dynasty.

Miss Lorenze has been with the American Art Association for thirty-seven years. When she completed her twentieth year of service, her employers presented her with $20,000.

MISS ALICE PURINGTON, of the United States Patent Office, has the task of passing on the merits of all the dolls, toys, and games submitted to the patent division of the Department of the Interior.

"All things patented," says Miss Purington, "must be both operative and useful. It is my business to ascertain whether dolls, toys, and games operate according to design. That is my work."

"IT's just as good a way to make a living as anything else," says Mrs. Francis Clenton, a bootblack on Rue Royal in New Orleans.

Mrs. Clenton, who was formerly a trained nurse, said she nearly grieved to death in a "ghastly old hospital in Macon, with people dying all around."

"Bootblacking is in keeping with my views on optimism I can take a pair of sorrowful shoes and turn them out reflecting all the joys in the world," she declares.

MISS ROSE MURRAY, the only woman in the world who holds the position of physician and surgeon to "sick" books, has more than 8,000,000 patients under her care. She is the "doctor" for all the volumes in the New York Free Public Library. There is a very lively element of danger in her position, because books, like people, derive their sickness largely from germs and microbes.

That is why Miss Murray goes about her work dressed just like a surgeon at an operation. Her equipment consists of a huge apron and a veil of cheesecloth.

GRANDMOTHER SMITH Of Cincinnati, is that city's only woman cobbler. She learned the trade from her husband, and, as there are ten in the family she can find plenty of work, when trade is dull, right in her own household.

People You Don't Want to Meet

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Is New York the Greatest Rubber-Neck Town?

NEW YORK—that so-called up-to-date metropolis, that crème' de la crème of sophistication, where the rube from his up-State community of hay and ham is regarded as a species rare and uproarious—New York may not know it, but for pure, unadulterated rural simplicity it is the greatest little rube center this side of the Pacific. This pastoral proclivity of New York's five million gives a daily demonstration on almost every block of its four thousand or more streets; and a day's stroll through its busy thoroughfares will disclose the great native army of "rubber-neckers" on the job regularly.

There seems to be a vast floating population in New York City with apparently nothing in particular to claim their time or energy. Walking through the average crowd, one would not suspect this to be. But let the slightest incident occur—an incident that the ordinary small-town dweller would pass by in silence—and see what happens.

Crowd Psychology or Ruralism?

A MAN stops suddenly and gazes sky-ward; or he kneels and draws a chalk mark on the pavement; or he holds up his handkerchief with an expectant air. In less than five minutes he will be surrounded by a crowd of these same hurrying people, all eager and curious—and with plenty of time. They are like a lot of little children in their naïve inquisitiveness, and they will stand patiently by the hour to watch a man painting a signboard, or a gang of laborers digging a ditch.

What is there about the commonest, most insignificant thing that holds this fascinated gaze of the average New Yorker? Is it the interruption in his routine life that works a sort of hypnotic hold on his jaded fancies? Is it some curious crowd psychology? Or is it just plain, homespun "ruralism"?

A punctured auto tire will immediately draw a large, interested assemblage. A balky, colicky horse is a fine attraction, and will be gazed upon by hundreds. Any work of excavating, whether it be pavement-patching or digging the foundations for a new building, has a perpetual gallery of observers.

Unique window displays, especially those in which something is offered for nothing, enjoy unfailing popularity. The soap-box orator can always depend upon an audience, at any time of the day or night. A highly colored display of trinkets in a cart will draw a crowd, as flies to a bowl of sugar.

The newspaper war bulletins are a general rendezvous for any chance rubbernecker who wanders past; they even have their habitués.

Any police disturbance—an arrest, the appearance of the patrol wagon or ambulance—is the signal for a concerted stain pede of the clan. Street fakers, those past-masters in the art of crowd-baiting, declare that Manhattan is the easiest spot on the map in which to gather a throng. Fights in the street, freakish automobiles, wagons unloading merchandise, odd sign-board displays, and a hundred other things—all these have their permanent assembly of "busy New Yorkers."

O. Henry used to say that New York was so rich a field for the confidence-man that there should he some sort of game law protecting its inhabitants, or at least limiting the hunt to certain open seasons.

Who Is the "Typical New Yorker"?

OF course, the final explanation is that there is no such person as the "typical New Yorker." The man you meet on Broadway, who tells you languidly that there is "no place like little old New York," and who expresses wonder as to why the inhabitants of other cities do not die of ennui—that same man, if you should go back three years into his past, you would probably learn came to New York from Oskaloosa. And if you care to dip into his future, to the extent of following him down Broadway for a block or two, you will doubtless discover him in the very act of elbowing his way into the front row of a crowd of citizens who have gathered together because one newsboy stole a penny from another.

Larry McSanta Claus

By CHARLTON LAWRENCE EDHOLM

Illustrations by Nell Hatt

THE tall and angular youth wandered about dejectedly in the toy department of Salzberger's Emporium. He felt that his scarlet suit of cheap flannel was not only uncomfortable but ridiculous. The trimmings of white imitation fur were of the same shoddy material that composed the beard dangling from his ears. The boots were of black oilcloth instead of patent leather. The bag of scarlet outing flannel that hung over his shoulders contained only a few trashy toys, and sagged dejectedly down his back, just as his excelsior-stuffed abdomen sagged dejectedly in front.

Altogether he was a cheap and shabby deputy Santa Claus. He hated the job, which was to last only a couple of weeks, and would net him a dollar for each working day. The dollar a day was the only attractive feature. It had looked like wealth to this stranger in Los Angeles, who had drifted in from the range and sought for any kind of a job at unskilled labor.

Not that he was without a trade. Larry MacGowan was as handy a man with reata and branding-iron as any puncher in Arizona; but there was no roping and branding of steers to be done in Los Angeles, not outside the moving-picture camps, at least, and there were good reasons why he did not seek employment among the ex-punchers.

The only job he could get was masquerading as Santa Claus, and he loathed it unspeakably. It was better than starvation—just a little.

IT was not so much the stuffy atmosphere of the great emporium, painful to a man fresh from the clean desert

winds; it was not so much his ridiculous appearance, though as a cowboy he had all the vanity about his personal make-up that goes with that profession; it was not entirely the shabby trick of doling out worthless paper toys to little children, and the meanness of refusing even these paltry gifts to those whose parents could not produce a sales-check—though to an open-handed youth, who had flung away gold when he was flush, this pretense of generosity was galling.

These features of his employment were bad enough. But what absolutely sickened him was that Ignatz Kleeman, the beady-eyed little department manager, had said: "I don't pay you the store's good money just to give away presents, mind that! You are expected to watch out for shop-lifters, and if you see a customer slip something under her coat you are expected to point her out to the store detective."

So that was the essence of his job. Disguised as a benevolent dispenser of Christmas cheer, he, Larry MacGowan, was supposed to snoop around and report the petty thefts of women and children!

Nobody would suspect a store Santa Claus of being a detective. This was the rat-eyed Kleeman's idea, and he repeated several times that he had originated the scheme. This was probably true, for it was doubtful if there was another business man in town who would have sunk quite so low as to make a stool-pigeon of Santa Claus.

THE daily crush of Christmas shoppers had not yet arrived, since it was only nine o'clock in the morning. Larry paced moodily up and down, mentally damning all things. He damned the department store, and particularly the greasy-looking manager of its toy department; he damned Christmas, and particularly the idiot who first invented Santa Claus; incidentally he damned Larry MacGowan, and most particularly the jubilant spree at Poco Calliente that had ended with an exchange of shots with a deputy sheriff. He had shot the latter's gun out of his hand, carrying two fingers with it; and as a result Arizona was too warm to hold him, while there was doubt that every rendezvous of Arizonians in Los Angeles would be watched: the Main Street saloons, the old hostelries on Spring Street, the livery stables where a man who understood horses might apply for work—and, of course, the moving-picture camps, where hundreds of cowboys foregathered.

His unuttered curses were interrupted by the alert Kleeman.

"Say, you!" he exclaimed. "You're not on to your job, young man. Yesterday we had five articles stolen from the counter. Day before there was three articles lifted, one of them a French bisque doll with natural hair, retailing at $5.98. Is that any way to earn your pay? Let them shop-lifters rob us right under your nose!"

Department Manager Kleeman never knew how narrowly he escaped figuring in an assault-and-battery case. He waddled away briskly, too self-important to await a reply, and the man who had shot Deputy Sheriff Buckelew was left alone to struggle with his temper.

After all, he wanted that dollar a day desperately, and the disguise afforded by his working clothes was not to be lightly thrown aside. It was the safest work he could do until the officers had time to forget the Buckelew shooting case.

Toward noon the store was a welter of soft humanity, mostly women and children: the former pawing over the mechanical toys, demanding the price and the method of operation from the fatigued clerks; the youngsters trailing after "Santy Claus" and clamoring for the trashy paper gifts or the highly colored candies (glucose and aniline dyes) which he had been cautioned to distribute sparingly.

It was astonishing, the mixing of the classes that "something for nothing" developed. Mothers in silks and furs, mothers in shabby ready-made suits, urged their offspring with the same eagerness: "Don't be bashful; go right up and tell Santa Claus you want a present!" The draggle-skirted mothers from the Mexican quarter were more timid, but gently pushed their lustrous-eyed babies into the magic circle; and even the broad-faced peasant women from the Russian colony across the river were there, mingling with the wives of the wealthy.

ONE of these Russian women attracted the attention of Larry MacGowan by her persistence. She had with her two little girls, clad like herself in ample skirts of the style prevailing in their own village in far-away Russia. Mother and small daughters alike wore gaily embroidered kerchiefs around their necks and shawls over their heads, equally quaint and gay with colored needlework. Mother and daughters alike were flat-faced and fair, with round blue eyes that appeared stolid and bewildered.

The woman was persistent. She kept stretching her supplicating palm before him, even after he had told her twice that he was not allowed to give presents to people without a sales-check. Apparently she had bought nothing, but she did not understand.

One of the little girls, who had learned English, acted as interpreter for her mother.

"Please, Mr. Santy Claus, we would like a nice present for the little sister at home."

"So you've got a little sister, have you?"

He had an impulse to smash the department regulations to smithereens; but just then the glacial eye of Miss Bankson, the floor detective, blighted him, and he hastily withdrew his hand from the sack.

"Well, run along," he said weakly. "Tell your maw to buy something and bring me the tag, and I'll give you a pretty present for your little sister."

The girl translated this direction, and again acted as interpreter.

"She says she can't buy nothing, for there is no money. But, please, Mr. Santy Claus, can you give her something for the little sister? We big girls don't mind an empty Christmas, but Olga is so little; she would cry."

It was unfortunate that Miss Bankson lingered in the neighborhood. Larry could not see her, but he felt the chill of her presence in the back of his neck. But for that nip of frost, the incident would have been closed.

"It can't be done," he said, with alarming gruffness. "I've got my orders."

Detective Bankson heard and moved

on, satisfied, as the peasant woman walked dejectedly away.

The most disgusted Santa Claus in the world continued to dole out flimsy toys and poisonous candies to children with proper credentials. Strangely enough, he had no feeling of virtue in serving his employers so faithfully. On the contrary, he had a pleasant vision of himself on a pony, dragging the obese Salzberger and the rat-eyed Ignatz Kleeman at the end of a forty-foot reata. He was heading for a clump of bristling cactus.

HIS pleasant dream was interrupted abruptly by the commission of a crime—to wit, petty larceny, an offense to which humanity is so prone that culprits who are caught invariably get the law's limit.

"It's sixty days for her," thought Larry MacGowan, as he saw the Russian woman awkwardly lift a blond and smirking doll from the pile on a counter and slip it under her shawl, the shawl with its quaint, gay peasant embroidery. "Gee, what a shame! She's got no more sense than a rabbit to try that on while that Bankson person's on the floor. That's a woman with a nose for crime. This here desperate Siberian bandit is booked for sixty days in the woman's ward! Merry Christmas!"

From the corner of his eye, he saw the detective approaching, as if she had really smelled a crime.

"That's one woman I don't like," was Larry's mental comment, noting her eager, pointed nose and her cold blue eyes.

With a sudden impulse, he stepped to the side of the peasant woman and touched her arm. She was moving slowly toward the exit. At his touch she looked up in terror, and her fair skin flushed with guilt.

"Here," he said. "I've got new orders. This is for the little sister, with Merry Christmas from Salzberger's Santa Claus."

With the words he swept up half a dozen toys from the nearest counter and thrust them into her arms.

"That's all right," he said to the astonished clerk. "Charge them to me."

The peasant woman was too frightened and bewildered to refuse. The sales-girl was surprised, but not at all bewildered.

"How can I charge them," she snapped, "without I know what you've got? Let's see them. They've all got to be wrapped; you ought to know that much!" she concluded.

"I hadn't thought of that," replied Larry weakly. "What's the damages?"

"Let's see. A jumping-jack, a horn, a

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ball, a woolly dog, and a couple of games—and a doll! How on earth did this doll get here? The dolls aren't on my counter."

By this time Miss Bankson had projected her frigid personality into the group. Her suspicious eye caused Larry to lie with facility.

"I picked it up as I come along," he explained. "I thought you could put them all on one slip."

"No; you'll have to take it back to Pansy's counter and have her fix it. They are awful strict now. There is so much lifting going on."

"All right; fix it up to suit, just so you charge it to me."

There seemed to be nothing against the Russian woman, and the detective grudgingly made way for her as she emerged from the crowd presently, with a large bundle in her arms and a broad smile on her heavy features.

The department-store sleuth was not through with Larry MacGowan, however.

"I'll have to report you," she said. "You have broken the store regulations. Employees are not allowed to buy while on duty. You have no right to order goods charged without special permission to open a credit account. You have no business to take merchandise from one counter to be charged at another. I shall report you at once."

HALF an hour later Larry was summoned into the sacred precincts. However, it was not Department Manager Kleeman that he faced, but the chubby proprietor of the store, Otto Salzberger.

"So, so! young man," he exclaimed gruffly. "What is this I hear about you?"

He adjusted his glasses over his short, thick nose and studied the typewritten report that the detective had made out.

"My, my, that's bad!" he said. "We must have discipline. How did you come to do such a foolishness?" He regarded the disconsolate Santa Claus from under shaggy Bismarckian brows, with eyes that were as keen as steel, but as softly blue as a baby's.

"I like old Dutchy," decided Larry MacGowan, and forthwith he blurted out:

"Well, you see, it was this way, boss. The woman had stole a doll for the little girl kid at home, and it was up to me to help her make a getaway!"

"Oh, my, my! That is worse yet! You saw a woman steal, and you helped her?"

"Sure! You see, it was this way. She was a poor woman with a lot of kids, and she didn't have no money. She was a foreigner—a German, I think" (Larry had the makings of a diplomat), "and it grieved her that she couldn't get none of the junk I was giving out because she couldn't buy at the store."

"So you buy her toys from your own money? Three dollars' worth! How much do you get?"

"Six bucks a week."

"Foolishness! Why did you do that?"

"Well, I was sick of being such a punk Santa Claus. Then, when I saw the woman lift the doll, I thought that would be a real gilt-edged present—keep the woman from jail. Savvy? Let the kiddies have their mother as my Christmas present to them. I figured there was only one way for me to do it. It cost me three bucks and my job, but that was cheap at the price."

"So, so! A German woman with some little children. How is that about buying at the store? I told Kleeman that our Santa. Claus was to ask no questions—just give little presents to all the children."

"I guess Kleeman didn't understand. I had orders from him not to give away so much as a gum-drop without a sales-check."

"What!" ejaculated Salzberger. "A Santa Claus ask questions! My, my, such a stingy Santa Claus! That shall be different. Kleeman is no real German, to give orders like that. I didn't know of it."

"Well, here's something else you don't know, maybe. What do you think of a Santa Claus that is ordered to play stool-pigeon? Kleeman tells me that I am to gum-shoe around and watch for women or little kiddies that lift a ten-cent toy; then I am to have them pinched. Say, ain't that a hell of a Santa Claus?"

TEARS actually suffused the steel-bright eyes of the old German—tears of shame and grief that made them seem more baby-blue than ever. To think that he, Otto Salzberger, friend of street waifs, donor of the annual Salzberger Thanksgiving feast for newsboys, should have been thus disgraced by his employees!

"Kleeman is no good!" he thundered? "I will not have a man like that work for me."

He pressed the call button vigorously.

"I will tell him," he growled, "what I think of him and his dirty trick on Kris Kringle!"

He sat back in his swivel-chair, breathing heavily. After the manner of fat men, he perspired vigorously when excited, and, as he mopped his shiny head and glistening face, he furtively wiped away the drops from his eyes.

"I'm ashamed," he said. "What will that German woman think of Otto Salzberger? I will never see her; I will never speak to her; but I will always think of the poor woman from my own land who was forced to make a bargain with Santa Claus in my store. I am ashamed!"

"Oh, I wouldn't take it so hard," commented Larry MacGowan. "I think I squared it with the lady. When I handed her them playthings that I picked up promiscuous-like, I told her it was your orders, and I says, 'Here is a Merry Chris'mas from Salzberger's Santa Claus.'"

The old German's face glowed with pleasure. "You did that? Fine, fine!" he exclaimed. "That was right. I feel better already. Ach, here comes that verfluchter Schweinhund of a Kleeman. Just wait outside the door, my young friend. When I get through with friend Ignatz, I will want to talk to you some more."

News travels fast in a department store. In the middle of the afternoon the girl at the doll counter was heard to remark to the girl in charge of the toys:

"Say, Mabel, ain't they making lots of changes right in the Christmas crush! Chesty Ignatz is canned, Bankson is transferred to the basement among the hardware, and that bow-legged Santa Claus is passing out real presents to the kids and no questions asked."

These Won't All Be Called For

A MARRIAGE license, a wooden leg, a cat and six kittens, were three of the items turned in in one day to the Lost and Found Department of the New York City surface car lines. It was a nice assortment, for it covered the entire scope of the department. When the Owner of property is known, he is either notified, or it is returned to him without waiting for him to guess where he lost it and put in a claim; so the license went back to the waiting bridegroom. Unticketed property is held for a claimant; so the wooden leg rested there till its owner appeared. But unclaimed property is got rid of eventually; so the cat and kittens (being a deliberate "lose") were treated in that tactful manner known as being "disposed of."

Up the stairs over one of the car barns are a bare hallway, a counter, a grating, and a good-natured man whose only background is a table and a haystack of umbrellas. The man leads a lonely life, and is unknown to fame. But if you ever lose your pocket-book or your false hair on a street car, don't waste money advertising. Seek out this man the day after, and it's dollars to doughnuts you'll get back your property.

The Things that Are Not Returned

THERE are a few exceptions. A woman came to him one morning and asked for an ordinary walking-stick with a curved handle.

"It had just been turned in from the terminal where everything is gathered together before being sent here," said the official in charge, "but I told her to come an hour later."

Then he explained his action by reaching for the cane, giving a tug at the handle, and baring a long and vicious dagger.

"I was going to have one policeman on her reception committee," he said; "but she never came back."

There are a few blackjacks, whose owners will call for them, presumably, the day after judgment day. One could imagine being rather particular about leaving blackjacks around, and these were probably lost whea the owner thought he was being sought out. Among them lies a lady's silk purse. Out of place? No—just a clever bit. The owner of the blackjack that its innocent folds conceal could knock out his victim without removing the weapon, then "lose" the purse, and face any prying cop with the candor of a child.

They try to swindle the man at the grating once in a while. As, for instance, when Jones, who was half seas over, let his "roll" slip out as he left the car. The conductor corralled it; but, in his excitement, he answered Smith, who asked how much there was in the roll. Then Smith tried to "put one over" on the lost and found man. But—you may as well know beforehand—the lost and found man always holds off on returning money till he's morally certain some one else isn't getting what is yours.

Of course, when you get your purse back, you always wish the conductor who turned it in could have something, and are sorry you don't know his name. Well, there it is in the book, along with the description of the property. And if you want to leave a bit for him you're shown a neat system of recording and receipting that makes you certain he'll get it. Most of them do get something if they've turned in anything of value—and if the owner happens to be poor. The richer the owner, the less generous the reward, generally, says the official, and tells of the working-girl who gave two dollars of her week's wages when her purse was returned, and of the rich woman who seized the bag with $1,200 cash and $2,000 in bonds in it, and made off with them without a "thank you."

Is He a Sculptor or a Carpenter

THE man on the ladder, nailing a last rib to the giant, is John Ettl, sculptor. He is also Ettl the enlarger, by his own method, of other people's sculpture. If you have seen the great statue of Commodore Perry, in Washington, you noticed the name of John Boyle, sculptor, signed to it. But nothing was said about John Ettl, enlarger. As a matter of fact, Mr. Boyle did the small model seen at the base of the big skeleton—and Mr. Ettl was busy doing the rest when the camera caught him.

After Mr. Ettl gets a giant's skeleton done (a feat of carpentry that no carpenter could attempt), there comes into play the very simple yet wonderful machine he has devised for making enlargements. It is a curious contrivance suspended from the roof, and looks like a long jointed arm with thirty-inch needles for fingers. It is an adaptation of the compass.

When the small figure and the big skeleton are placed "just so," and one needle is made to touch, say, the tip of the nose of the little figure, a corresponding needle will swing to the exact spot in the air where the tip of the big man's nose must come. Here a long nail ("point" is the technical name) is driven, its end just reaching the magic needle. This is repeated over the whole figure, until it is as studded with points as a porcupine with quills. The rest is comparatively simple. Modeling clay is packed all over the skeleton; and when this is smoothed down to the level of the points, you have the exact duplicate of the small statue in colossal proportions, down to the last eyelash.

From this the plaster cast is made, and from the plaster cast the bronze cast. Then it goes to the public park or hall, where you and I and the other fellow think it is the direct product of the original sculptor's hand, instead of having ever so many processes in between.

He Discovers What the Artist Meant

MR. ETTL takes particular pride in the fact that by his method one man does in two weeks what three men used to do in three months. They used to try to get the "points" by holding three compasses in certain relative positions, using their brains to decide when it was right. But Mr. Ettl's machine is like Percy—"brains it has nix"! It just does the thing exactly, with no think coming. And—like Percy again—its results are sometimes unexpected.

For every flaw in the small model's proportions comes out a hundred times bigger in the enlargement, and the sculptor who thinks his Minerva an ideal may find that the lady has to have at least three vertebra added to her spine to make her a "perfect thirty-eight." In this case, the lady is simply sawed in two, and more added, till what the artist really meant is arrived at and his peace of mind restored.

Of course, one very special thing Mr. Ettl had to do was to find a studio in New York City that would be as big as a barn, yet not cost too much. He found a shop on Thirteenth Avenue (few New Yorkers know there is a Thirteenth Avenue), and there, amid ferries, freight-yards, and wholesale houses, he can enjoy such liberties with his top floor as ripping out and boosting the roof—which he has just done to accommodate the biggest enlargement that even he has yet undertaken.

Sculptor-Carpenter-Mathematician

TO see Mr. Ettl at work on the giant's ribs may make you wonder whether he is a carpenter who is a sculptor, or a sculptor who is a carpenter. He says he is sculptor first, last, and always, but that he is also carpenter, mechanic, and mathematician.

If he hadn't been all of these he couldn't do those wonderful things that begin as carpentry, go on as a mechanical stunt, and emerge as works of art.

They Used to Be Piano-Movers

FROM moving pianos and being the iceman, to making earthenware flower-pots, is a big shift for a grown man. But that is what has happened to the four men in the picture? The New York hospitals discharge annually more than three thousand patients—most of them truck-men, furniture movers, and men employed on the wharves—who can't go back to their old jobs without pretty certainly getting another attack of heart trouble—and a third attack is almost invariably fatal.

Thus, up to a year or so ago, a lot of men, ostensibly in good health, found themselves without a way to earn their living. Dr. Herbert J. Hall of Massachusetts became interested in this situation, and talked it over with women like Mrs. Andrew Carnegie, Miss Mabel Choate, and Miss Ponsonby Ogle; and the result was the Home in Sharon, Connecticut, and the Sharonware Shop on Lexington Avenue, New York.

Now, when a man gets out of the hospital, he doesn't have to spend the rest of his life living on the family while he looks for a job that won't land him back again in the ward. First of all, on leaving the hospital, he is sent to the Home in Sharon, where he can rest up, and at the same time learn how to make pots and boxes. When he is strong enough physically and adept enough in the craft, he returns to New York and becomes a worker in the Sharonware Shop.

The men receive a salary of five dollars a week. It doesn't look like much, but many of them can work only four or five hours a day—from nine to five is the longest day. There is soon to be a change, however, and opportunity given each man to earn more, according to his ability. Several have developed quite an artistic sense, and others can work longer hours, deserving a different rate of payment.

The foreman of the shop, Edward Holmes, is an instance of one man who has "made good" at this work. He was at one time a surveyor in the Southern Swamp district. He used to tramp all day, and often stood for hours at a time in water. He got a fever, it developed into cardiac trouble, and he was brought to a New York hospital. Afterward he tried his old work again, but couldn't keep it up, and finally landed at the Sharon Colony. He started with the regular five-dollar wage; but when a new foreman was needed, Mrs. Marie B. Kling, the superintendent of the shop, suggested using one of the patients, and named Holmes.

Every Friday morning a physician examines the workers in this shop, often prescribing a week's rest at Sharon.

Well known artists have contributed designs for the boxes, pots, trays, and other articles of the trade. Once the institution is well on its feet, it will cease to be a charitable organization, and be actually self-supporting.

Here follows more of

The Girl of the Nutmeg Isle

Continued from page 8

convinced me that Richter had been—as the Americans say—"snooping around" in the neighborhood of our residence, and did not want any one to know it.

"If he should take the trouble to give you advice about your movements, you had better accept it, you can bet," declared Hahn. "Herr Richter himself is a very learned man, and has much knowledge about the aboriginals of Neu Pommern. Yes, my boy."

I guessed then that Hahn had been told off to hamper our movements and find out our plans; but, somehow or other, I never could help liking him. He was always so good-natured about it. And I had shot off the tip of his ear—which endears a man to you.

"Look here," I said. "I don't know the first thing about Gore and his plans. I do what I'm told, no more. I'm his secretary. You go and ask him anything you want to know, my son, and take what you can get. You can keep it all, with my compliments."

"The little English bull-terrier again," said Hahn, grinning. "Powl, thou canst bite, but thou art no diplomat. By the way, did you hear about the wife of Herr Richter?" he asked.

"Herr Richter?" I said. "Didn't know he had a wife."

"Nor did we," declared Hahn, with a romantic tone in his voice which I believe was perfectly genuine. "None of us here in Kaiser Wilhelm Land knew," he went on. "Richter had been a widower for many years. And two years ago, when he was going to Singapore by Java, the ship stopped at Ceram. And in Ceram there was cholera. Herr Richter got this cholera, and they put him ashore in Banda. Now in Banda there was no one should take him in, and I think he would have died at once, but that a lady—the wife of a Spanish settler—Herr Gott, Powl, you are ill!"

"I'm a little—weak—from this dashed fever," I said. "I only want to put my head down; it's dizzy. Go on."

"Now! This lady was not young, but she was good-hearted, and she nursed him through that terrible illness," went on Hahn. "And at the last he was in collapse. Now out of collapse recovers hardly ever any man. So Richter, who is of just and noble instincts, said to her: 'I am dying. Before I die I would a will make, and leave my plantation in German New Guinea to you, because you have saved me that I do not die like a dog on the jetty.'

"But see then, Powl, I am blowed if they could find a notary who would come into that house. Then Richter he was dying further, but he could speak, and he said: 'A pastor must not have fear of death. Send for a pastor, and you bet,' he said, 'I will manage that thing.'

"So the lady sent for the pastor, and Richter said, Give me some more cognac,' and they gave him. 'Now,' says he, bring down your daughter who has come home from school this week, and I will marry her before I die, and the plantation shall be hers and yours; but be quick,' he says to her, 'for I go.'

"The lady was most poor, and she desired the plantation; and after a little she brings the daughter down,—who is crying very much for fright of the death,—and the pastor her to him fast and well marries. Then the pastor he reads to him out of the Bible, and he prays—Herr Gott, he prays so strong that Richter falls in a good sleep, and the next day he is better."

I knew now.

"But, Powl, it's the most romantic story; for then the girl is sent back to school, and Richter said, I am glad that I am not to die, since that is a most beautiful bride; but, since she was never by me courted, she shall courted be.' And back to German New Guinea he goes, but he never told Donna Ravenna his name was not Schultz only—it was Justus Schultz Richter."

Hahn suddenly pulled himself up and appeared to consider, looking at me thoughtfully and pulling his mustache.

"You needn't worry," I told him. "If you think I can't guess why your Lecoq-Sherlock-Holmes-Schultz- Richter was masquerading about the Dutch islands under a false name—"

"It was his own name!"

"—well, the wrong end of his own name, then—you're jolly well wrong. I can imagine quite easily. Drive on."

"You want some more quinine," commented Hahn, looking curiously at me. "You are yellow. Aren't thou yellow just, old churl!"

"Go on while I'm taking it," I said.

"Now see, then. In the marriage service of course the surname isn't used. But when Donna Ravenna and her daughter heard the bridegroom who was at the point of dying say 'Justus Schultz,' they took no notice, and the bride after him said, 'Justus Schultz.' So that was the Christian names, all right.

"And when he was better, and ready to go, he had thought that he would tell Donna Ravenna, at the point of leaving, 'I am not Schultz only, I am Justus Schultz Richter of New Guinea, and a man of much more importance than you have supposed, though in the interests of—'"

"Secret service," I cut in.

"Of diplomacy," corrected Hahn—"in those interests he has traveled under another name. But Donna Ravenna not long after paid with her life for that noble hospitality. She, also her husband, died of the cholera. Then Richter went away, most deeply annoyed, and to the bottom of his heart grieved."

"He had some reason," I commented.

THE quinine I had swallowed was not more bitter in my mouth than the whole of Hahn's story to my mind; but I did not choose that he should see me grimace over the one more than over the other.

"Also!" continued Hahn. "Again, in six months, he returned to Banda, where now the girl had come back for a little while, and with a governess friend was living, to wait for him. But he told her that she should meet Schultz in New Guinea, and she, who had no remembrance of him, since a man in collapse of cholera is no more like the same one in health than I am like a dead fish on the shore—she said she to New Guinea with Miss Siddis would go. For, you understand, there was now no money left for her, and she had not one thing that she could do. If he is a good man, as I think,' said she, 'I will try and like him, because after all I am his wife in law'; and she embarked."

Hahn laughed a little, sent a surprisingly vivid curse at one of his men who had dared to fall asleep, and went on:

"Then Richter went with her all the voyage, and not any one knew he was the Schultz she had married. So romantic is this man, who has indeed some gray hair, but the heart of a child. And not till they came to Rabaul, and were in the house of the lady to whom Miss Siddis is governess, did he speak. So now we all look for a merry wedding in the church, because the bride will have it, though she is indeed married before, and then a happy home on the plantation for Richter, with his so beautiful young wife."

"They aren't married again yet?" I asked, with leaps of the heart that turned me sick.

"No; but to-morrow I think they will be. This pretty girl is a little sad at leaving all her home. Still, by and by she will be more cheerful. But, Powl, I have talked to you too long, my nut. You are looking worse. If I do not take those police of mine on to Toma, I shall not be there before the evening rain. So long; ta-ta; see you soon."

He tilted his white helmet forward on his forehead, bellowed to his police, kicked one or two of them to encourage the rest, and marched off down the muddy road.

WE were nearly at the longest day, it being December. Still, the swift dusk of equatorial lands had fairly pounced upon the town before Gore came home, a little after seven. He struck a match and lit the veranda lamp.

"Oh," he said, looking at me, with the inevitable cigar drooping from one corner of his mouth. Then, "Indeed!" Then he sat down on the rickety Austrian chair and bellowed for tea.

"You've been in Rabaul," I stated.

"I have," said Red Bob, leaning back in the chair, with his long legs stretching across half the veranda. He looked at me under his eyebrows, but never a question did he ask.

So, of course, I had to burst out.

"I suppose you're surprised to see me dressed again." Which I was, down to the pin in my tie.

"No," said Red Bob. "I'm not much in the way of being surprised at things."

"Well," I rushed on, "I've dressed because I'm going to Rabaul to-night."

"Who lent you the aeroplane, and can you run it yourself?" asked Gore, with every appearance of interest.

"What do you mean?"

"Only that the launch has come back, and doesn't run again till she's wanted to?"

"I don't care," I said. "I'll hire a cutter or a schooner. I'm going to get to Rabaul to-night."

"They won't hire us any boats. That's what I've been looking up to-day."

"What!"

"Won't hire us anything that floats or swims."

"What for, in the name of common sense?"

"Name of Wilhelm II, more likely. We've bumped up against him somehow."

"Then I'll walk."

"By land," said Gore indifferently, "I take it to be thirty miles."

"Then," I said, breathing hard, "I'll go down to the jetty to-morrow at daylight, and if the launch isn't running, I'll make it run, if I have to shoot the engineer."

"I see your point," said Gore, smoking lazily. "But it's an unnecessary trip. She's disappeared."

"Good God! Where? And how do you—"

"Oh, the yarn's all over Rabaul. Wedding was fixed for the day after to-morrow—formal wedding, that is; lady was staying with the Hirschmanns, who employ Miss Siddis; lady disappears, and can't be found. No one seen her since yesterday afternoon."

"Then," I said, getting to my feet and holding on by the back of the couch,—for I was a little unsteady,—"there's all the more reason why I should go and find her, dead or alive."

"And give her over to her husband? Just so," said Gore, puffing pleasantly? "Where's that cannibal with the tea?"

I said something strong in contradiction.

"Yes, but you see," said Red Bob, "to find her in this country would mean just that—nothing else. The whole community's against her. What right has a silly little foreign girl to take a dislike to one of the most prominent citizens in the colony, especially when she's tied to him by a legal ceremony already? That's the way they look at it. Nobody would give her a hand."

"Where do you think—what do you think? Do you think she's—"

"Oh, no," said Gore, answering my question as if I had put it in words. "I don't think she has. I don't like thinking, anyhow. I prefer to know. Can't say I know in this case, but I've an idea or two."

"For heaven's sake, tell me if you have," I said, sitting down on the couch again. The great white stars among the palm trees seemed to be dancing about? The floor was heaving like a steamer deck in a heavy sea. I was not so strong as I had thought, it seemed.

Gore looked at me.

"It's a bad business, and a tangle," he said; "but—"

"It is not a bad business," I interrupted. "If you think it's a parallel case to—to anything you—"

"We'll leave it at that, if you please," interrupted Red Bob, with something slightly dangerous in his voice. "I was going to say, I think the young woman's made back to Friedrich Wilhelmshaven way. You see, the Afzelia's still lying at the jetty—going to sail on the home voyage to-morrow morning—and if she could stow away on board she'd be all right? I don't see what else she can have done. Everyhouse about Rabaul has been searched; and as to getting off into the bush, she must know she'd be eaten if she got away five miles behind the town. Besides—"

"It looks as if you might be right," I said doubtfully.

"Well, you'll have every opportunity of finding out. We have to board the Afzelia when she calls here to-morrow' morning. I'm going back to Friedrich Wilhelmshaven myself."

"What on earth for?"

"You hurry up with that tray, Bo. Put him there. Catch me two-fellow teaspoon, you black villain—why do you always forget the spoons?... I'll tell you what for when I've fed. My lunch and dinner to-day have been the smell of the meals in those dashed 'clubs' in Rabaul. Some of these days—"

He stopped to fill his mouth with meat.

"Some of these days," he went on, "there'll be restaurants in Rabaul where a stranger can actually buy a bite of food? Come, my son—you're well enough to eat a meal to-night; come on and feed before we talk. I'm going to tell you about the Schouten pearls."

I FOUND I was well enough, and that I felt like another man when the food was down. Bo cleared the table in a series of jerks and jumps, while we settled ourselves on the upper veranda of the house. It was none too secure, but you could not be overheard on it.

"Well," said Red Bob, stretching his legs out comfortably before him, "this is how it stands in a nut-shell. Our friend, Willem Corneliszoon Schouten, sailed from New Hanover to Vulcan Island.

---

He didn't make a bee-line, though; at one time he ran pretty close in to New Britain. And he stayed a devil of a time about there—all things considered. And he used to stop at the islands now and then—the ship's log tells about it. He would go away from his men, and trade with the natives all by himself; wonder was he didn't get killed and cooked half a dozen times over. Now, the last time I was here, a year or two ago, I was following up Schouten's tracks a bit, for no particular reason. I was just taking ethnological notes, and followed his route. Well, on one of the islands—a good-sized place, marked on the map and named—I found a rock carving. Of course I thought I'd struck something lucky about native history, and I cleared it out—it was in wonderfully good condition, being underneath an overhang. What do you guess it was?"

"Something about Schouten," I hazarded.

"You can judge. It was an arrow, and a row of little roundish things that might have been commas, or drops of rain, or almost anything you might choose to say. And a bit of ornamental carving that looked Celtic—"

"Celtic!" I exclaimed.

No matter what his private troubles were, any man who had spent some months in the company of Vincent Gore was bound to rise to that as a trout to a fly. Celtic! In a Paupa-Melanesian island!

I didn't say it was—I said it looked Celtic," went on Gore imperturbably. "As it turned out, the thing was Dutch, and seventeenth century at that. Of course I took a rubbing of the stone before I went.

"And then I sailed for a little bit of an island further out in the direction of the Admiralties, where Schouten's log mentions that they called. He says there were no natives there, but that they got some cocoanuts and oysters. It was an uninteresting place; I didn't stay.

"After that I went home. And, as I told you, I went for a trip up to Holland, and amused myself looking up the history of the old Dutch navigators, Schouten in particular. That was the time when I ran across the history of the girl Schouten wanted to marry, and saw her portrait. Now let me show you something."

OUT of a small oilskin case he produced the photograph of the Dutch lady that I had already seen, also a neat India ink copy of a "rubbing" taken from an inscription.

"Do you see anything?" he asked.

At first I did not; then—

"By Jove!" I exclaimed.

"See it?"

"Yes, rather; they're identical."

"What?"

"Why, the carving and that monogram of pearls at the end of the necklace."

Gore looked at me and smoked. Presently he reached out a long arm for the carving, opened out a chart of New Britain, and set the paper on it.

"I took the bearings of the arrow," he said. "See where it points."

It pointed to a blank on the map, as far as I could see.

"That's not as blank as it looks," said Gore. "This region is worse charted than any other place in the world. There's an islet right in the line of the arrow—the islet where the cocoanuts and oysters were got."

"Lord!" I said, getting to my feet. "Why, it's a clear as daylight." I felt more excited than I would have believed, ten minutes before, I could ever feel over anything not connected with Isola.

"Of course," went on Red Bob, "the best way to make for Aroko Island, where the inscription is, would have been by Rabaul, getting a schooner there and sailing round the head of New Britain and a wanting strangers in Rabaul at any time, and just now they seem to want them less than usual. Every schooner, every clutter, every launch—everything with a keel on it—is engaged otherwise. Or it has had to go on the slip for repairs. Or the owner is away, and no one can hire it in his absence, and nobody knows when he will return. Result—nothing doing."

"What's the meaning of it all?" I asked.

"That's a big question, young Paul. Bigger than I can answer—at present. Rabaul's the capital, and a naval station. Well, I was given to understand that I might be tolerated over at Friedrich Wilhelmshaven—what a dashed sort of name to give a town!—on the mainland of New Guinea; that is, old Richter came to me and explained that it was a twice as good for ethnological study of any kind, and he'd be delighted to help me, in the interest of science, to settle there for my stay. And the Governor said so, too. Therefore, knowing when I was beaten, I cleared. It's not so good a way to get to Schouten's little preserve, but it will have to do."

"And about Miss Ravenna?" I asked.

"About Frau Richter? Nothing about her till we find her, and then—time enough when we do. Don't cross bridges before we come to them. You'd better turn in if you're going to be fit to travel to-morrow."

"I have come to it," I said, getting shakily to my feet. "Do you think I'm going to leave Rabaul just on a chance—with her—Gore? Those black brutes would have her if she went just a few miles back—in her terror! If I can't do something, I—I—"

To this hour, I can not say whether I meant it or not. I was "seeing red"; I had lost self-control from my illness. Yet, it was an irrational and a useless thing to catch up a chair and throw it at the glass door of the adjoining bedroom. The sound of the smashing glass, and the fall of the chair on the floor, seemed to do me good.

Gore did not turn a hair. He remained where he was, with his legs stretched out, smoking.

"As you were observing—" he remarked.

"I said—I said that I must do something. I can't leave it to chance.

"You needn't," said Red Bob. "She's all right. Has that automatic pistol of yours been cleaned since you took ill?"

"Yes; I made Bo do it. What makes you think she is?"

"I never think," said Red Bob. "Go to bed."

And not another word could I get out of him.

But I knew him well enough, and trusted him enough, to get on board the Afzelia next morning with a comparatively quiet mind. And the blue, blue heights of New Britain, above the long levels of the glassy sea, faded away behind us. How soon they were to be seen again, and under what strange circumstances, I did not guess—nor indeed would I have believed, had anybody told me.

To be continued next week

He Started a Clearing-House for Babies

JUDD MORTIMER LEWIS, of Houston, Texas, writes fifteen hundred words of verse a day for the delight of children, and on the side, using his column as a Baby Bureau, has placed more than two hundred homeless babies in as many babyless homes.

One finds "Uncle Judd" in a quiet little office in the Houston Post building, surrounded by a photographic riot of babies.

The Baby that Isn't Wanted

HE knows name and life story of every one. One little chap wasn't wanted in Ohio, but, through Mr. Lewis' column, found a royal welcome form a father and mother in a remote Texas town. Recently a man came to teh baby clearing-house from California for a little girl whose

mother had brought her on to Mr. Lewis from Baltimore.

A crippled baby was specially advertised for by a young couple who explained that "there are so many homes open to perfect children."

A "Two-Handed Poet"

THIS baby man has been called the greatest two-handed poet in the world, because he writes delightful, heart-warming verse with one hand, and the other is always reaching out to help along some weary little toddler.

"If the government would handle this work systematically and intelligently," says Mr. Lewis, "it would pay for itself, and there would not be the need for a single orphan asylum in the whole country."

Raising Alligators by Hand

PERHAPS the most unusual of farms is the alligator farm.

For years the increasing demand for alligator hides has been a great incentive to hunters, the result being that the millions of saurians that formerly held sway over the vast swamps of Florida have been nearly depleted. As an evidence of the ruthlessness with which this slaughter has been carried on, the United States Fish Commission reports that between 1890 and 1900 more than three million alligators were killed in Florida alone. Still the slaughter goes on; and, since Florida has been so nearly out, the hunters have transferred their activities to Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. Thousands of alligators are killed annually in each of these States, and at the present rate the alligator will be extinct in a very few years.

With the idea, therefore, of producing an article that is becoming more and more scarce, and on which the market value is increasing by leaps and bounds, George Earnest of Los Angeles conceived the idea of starting an alligator farm.

When it is understood that an alligator two feet long is about ten years old, that alligators do not breed until they are thirty years old, and the specimens have to be taken alive, a few of the obstacles attending the enterprise become self evident.

Catching Live Alligators

ALLIGATORS are usually hunted at night. The hunter is equipped with a light canoe, a large-bore, double-barreled shotgun, and a big bull's-eye lantern. He paddles noiselessly through the swamps, flashing his light to locate the prey. An alligator's eyes look like green balls of fire on the water. If carefully approached the best will lie still and allow the hunter to paddle up to him, quietly swaying the approach of the fascinating light. When within a few feet of the alligator, the hunter discharges both barrels at its eyes; this usually kills it outright. The body is then secured with a grappling-hook before it can sink, and lashed fast to a convenient stump, out of water, to be picked up in the return. Frequently thirty or more in a night are killed by this method.

In securing live alligators it was necessary to devise an entirely new method. The dens, which are burrows under overhanging river-banks, are located in the daytime. When an inmate is located, it is prodded with a long pole, on the end of which is firmly attached a wooden ball about six inches in diameter. When the alligator never relaxes its grip, and, hanging on to the stick, is drawn out of the hole.

Men in boats throw ropes around it, lashing it securely, and it is towed to camp.

Great care must be used in handling the beasts. One snap of an alligator's jaws will crush a man's leg, and a blow from its armored tail will knock a man senseless.

In a series of such hunts Mr. Earnest secured enough mature alligators to stock his farm.

The alligator farm is located upon the banks of a small mountain stream, the course of which has been altered to form a number of small ales and swamps, all as nearly like the natural home of the monsters as possible. Here they live, breed, bask in the warm sun, and appear entirely contented and satisfied with their lot.

How the Young Ones Are Raised

THE month of June is their breeding season, and during this period they are exceptionally dangerous. The makes below like enraged bulls, and become so vicious that it is dangerous to go near them. Among themselves they fight like demons, and in order to prevent their inflicting serious injury on each other the males are securely muzzled.

In July the female begins nesting. She fashions the nest by scraping together a pile of rubbish, sticks, reeds, stones, and mud, and on this she deposits from thirty to sixty long, narrow, capsule-shaped eggs, covering them with rubbish and mud. She stands guard night and day until they are hatched.

The nests on Mr. Earnest's farm are robbed as soon as the eggs are laid. This in itself is a ticklish and dangerous operation, and is never accomplished until the female has been roped, her jaws bound, thrown on her back and securely pinioned. The eggs are placed in an incubator maintained at a temperature of eighty degrees, and are moistened every day. They hatch in sixty days. When hatched the young are placed in a separate inclosure, and, being of identical size, about six inches long, there is no danger of their preying on each other.

All Alligators Are Cannibals

IT is not generally known, by alligators are cannibalistic—the larger sizes devour the smaller; in fact, they prefer their own flesh to any other. This makes it necessary to grade them according to sizes.

The young alligators are exceptionally hardy, and beyond feeding require absolutely no attention. They are apparently immune to disease, and only the severest injuries will kill them. They grow very slowly, and never stop growing. The largest alligator in captivity, Okeechobee, is more than twelve feet long, and is estimated to be five hundred years old. Their heads are mostly solid bone, and an alligator ten feet long has a brain not much larger than a walnut. They hibernate during the winter, and for six months—from October to March—eat absolutely nothing. They have no tongues, the mouth being filled with a spongy membrane which enables them to open it under water without swallowing a drop. The lower jaw is fixed and immovable, and they snap and bite by raising and lowering the upper jaw. The display absolutely no intelligence, although Mr. Earnest did succeed, after eighteen months of patient effort, in teaching two females to climb a runway and slide down a chute into one of the lakes.

The "crop" on this strange farm can not be gathered until it is thirty years old, as that length of time is required for them to reach commercial size. Were it not for the fact that the stock is being constantly replenished by frequent hunts, that the farm is visited annually by thousands of tourists who pay an admission fee, and that many young alligators are sold as souvenirs, it is doubtful whether the enterprise would pay.

She Finds Money that People Throw Away

Strangest among the many strange employments of women in the United States government service is that assigned to Mrs. Mary Warren, who for more than thirty years has been picking over the waste-paper baskets in the Treasury Department.

In this long period of faithful duty in a seemingly humble and disagreeable, occupation, she has recovered countless sums of money. The largest amount she ever found in one package was $10,000. Scarcely a day passes that she does not save half a dozen checks that have by some oversight been left in envelops.

Of late years her wok has been growing lighter, so that now she picks over about five bushels each day from the Treasurer's office. In years past the work was enormous, all of the waste paper of the entire department being carefully inspected. The quantities used to be so large that a force of three or four women could not get through it all in a day.

The Day $10,000 Was Lost

"IT would be impossible to tell you even roughly how much money and valuables I have found in waste paper," said Mrs. Warren. "Every day we used to recover a great deal of money. We never kept track of how much, because we simply returned it to the Treasurer, and it was traced back to the desk from which it was lost, and thus properly checked off. As far as I know, there was never anything of value lost that we did not recover.

"Once I found a bundle of $10,000, in various denominations, that had by some chance fallen from a desk into a wastepaper basket. There was considerable excitement throughout the department that day. I returned the package to Genral Francis Eastman Spinner, who was then Treasurer. He locked it up, and there was a rigid investigation of the affair. Nowadays, with checks in more common use, there is very little money found

among the waste paper; yet only to-day I found six checks, and that would be a fair daily average."

Mrs. Warren has her recovery office in a secluded section of the first floor of the Treasury Building. So unobtrusively does she do her work that there are many employees in the department who do not know that here is such an office in the building. The hundreds of sight-seers who are shown through the building daily never get a glimpse of this merry little woman picking over the refuse.

Acting Two Parts at Once

Flies by the Barrel

TO catch all the flies near your house, or all the flies in your neighborhood, you should make a sugar-barrel fly- trap. A smaller barrel can be used, but a sugar-barrel will hold more flies. This may sound "fishy," but just look at the picture—and then go and do likewise.

All that black mass is nothing but flies—big ones, little ones, flies of all kinds: forty-seven pounds of nothing but flies. And they were all caught in this sugar-barrel fly-trap in six days, two of which days were rainy, and therefore bad for fly-catching.

How to Make the Trap

TO make a trap, fit in the bottom of a barrel a cone of fly-screen netting large enough to come half-way up in the barrel. Cut off the tip of the cone, so there will be a one-inch opening. Tack the wire cone securely around the edge, so that no trapped flies can get out after once having passed through the small opening in the top of the cone. Then nail three little legs on the bottom of the barrel, so that it will stand two inches above the floor.

Now cover the top hoop of the barrel with wire netting and fit it securely over the top of the barrel, but do not nail it there; make it a tight-fitting lid.

Avoid Sticky Bait

YOUR trap is now ready for bait. Get a pie-pan and pour something into it that flies like, but avoid sticky bait, as this gets on the flies and prevents them flying up into the cone when they have eaten their fill of the bait. Place this pan in the center under the barrel and watch the flies.

They will eat, and then, being attracted by the light above, will fly up into the cone and into the barrel, instead of crawling out from under the barrel, as they went in. The more flies in the barrel the greater will be the noise; and the commotion will attract other flies from far and near.

To empty, pour scalding water into the barrel from above, remove the lid, and empty.

Keep a Goat for Five Dollars a Year

Is there any man so helpless as the average superannuated clergyman? Untrained for any work but that of the pulpit, he too often simply putters around for the rest of his days. Not so with the Rev. W. G. Todd, who has been both a preacher and a teacher. Though well past seventy, he recognized the wonderful possibilities in milch-goats, and has stocked a Massachusetts farm with one hundred and fifty of these animals.

Mr. Todd thinks that the goat ought to be as well known in America as it is in Germany, where seventy-five per cent. of the households own at least one. With a number of other men, he is backing a wide propaganda to popularize the goat. He points out that cities like New York and Boston bring their milk from points as far away as Canada, and that it is less wholesome, less digestible, and less sanitary than that which anybody can get from a goat or two kept in his own back yard.

Of course, the Todd goats are not the kind we see browsing on tin cans in empty lots. There may be common goats in the herd; but the better animals are those that have been fathered by costly bucks long-whiskered from Switzerland—handsome, long-whiskered billies that look as if they might butt over a meeting-house, but that really are as gentle as a poodle-dog, and quite as playful. Mr. Todd has scoured the country for high-class goats, and he is constantly getting people to cut down the high cost of living by putting aside their prejudices and installing a good-tempered little nanny on the lawn.

On the lawn? Why, of course. They are on the Todd lawn, and it doesn't cost a penny to feed them all summer. They would do just as well, though, in any

old pasture. On the Todd farm they are used to clear up the brush-land, too. They take an acre worth not more than twenty dollars, and in a year or two make it worth a hundred. One of the best milkers ever raised in this country made a record on apricot and peach limbs, geraniums, green apples, grape cuttings, and hay, with a little grain for a relish.

Putting Down an American Prejudice

MANY families can keep a goat for five or six dollars a year, according to Mr. Todd. That gentleman recognizes the American prejudice against goats, but he says that it is wholly unreasonable.

"I have seen social and religious radicals," he declares, "reformers all their lives, who would not taste goat's milk to learn what it was like. They were afraid their preconceived opinions might have to be modified, and would take no risks."

This is not Mr. Todd's first experience in goat-keeping. Years ago, when his health broke down, he went to Texas and kept a flock of fifteen hundred Angora goats, which he raised, of course, for their hair.

After regaining his health, he spent some years at the head of a normal school in Porto Rico, and when he finally returned to the old New England farm, he found that the milk problem had become a serious one in Massachusetts, and decided upon his campaign to win recognition of the goat as the "poor man's cow."