Being a Real Producer

By Bruce Barton, Editor

HAVE you ever in your whole life raised anything out of the ground?

Have you with your own hands planted a seed, watered it, tended it up through infancy to full growth, and finally sat down at your table to eat of its fruit?

In these days of the infinite division of labor, when so many of us merely live off each other, there are millions of men and women who are born and die without ever once tasting that transforming experience.

However much of books and travel they may have known, such people die uneducated.

To them a sunset is merely a color in the west: a storm is an interference with the routine of their going about.

They have never looked into the sunset yearningly for promise of a warm day that will coax the buds upon their plants into fuller life: they have never stood and watched the leaves fairly leap to be watered by the rain.

They have never once peeped back of the curtain of external things to see the miracle of God at work on His world.

Every man and woman who can have access to a little piece of land—no matter how small—ought to make a garden. Not for the sake of thrift alone, but for the development of his or her own character.

God was the first gardener: He started the human race in a garden.

From that day to this, whenever man has grown weary of the complexities of life, whenever his spirit has been distraught and sore, he has turned back to the land, and, with its soil on his fingers and its odor in his nostrils, has found healing and calm.

If you are the kind of man who thinks at all, you must have periods of depression when it dawns on you that your job is a very artificial thing, not at all essential to the world's existence.

"What's the use?" you cry in such periods. "I'm not needed. Abolish my store, or my factory, or my railroad, and the world would still go on. It would still be fed and clothed. I'm not a producer of wealth: I merely help in the distribution of what somebody else creates. The farmer is the only real producer."

When that feeling comes over you, take a spade and go into your back yard and dig and plant something. Harvest time will come, and you can stand with your throat bared and shout defiance to the universe.

"Behold," you may cry, "I am no longer a burden on any man; for I have delved in the earth and raised my own food. The world is richer this year by five bushels of potatoes and ten pecks of peas than it would have been had I not lived. I can look every man in the eye without shame, I have proved that I am independent of circumstance. I can, if need be, feed myself."

Hold-the-Fort Aaron

By WALT MASON

THIS grand old man of eighty years a stranger is to caitiff fears.

Throughout a long and busy life, his daily diet has been strife; new perils came with every dawn—big perils with the bark still on.

Back in the sixties, when big loads of gold went o'er the mountain roads, beside the driver he would ride, armed to the teeth and falcon-eyed. And every deadly Circumstance that you will find in red romance to him is but an ancient tale; he played with Death till Death grew stale.

He's fought with every kind of rough that made the "early days" dead tough. Road agents tried to get his wad, and left their bones upon the sod. Red Injuns camped upon his trail, to get his scalp, without avail. Train bandits, in the later times, have tried to swipe his box of dimes. He's guarded millions in his day, and not a nickel got away. Oh, he has looked in Danger's eyes as often as you've swatted flies.

This happened back in '82: A bold and vicious robber crew designed to rob a railway train, with Aaron in the treasure wain. That car the robbers made a sight by blowing it with dynamite. And Aaron by the treasure knelt, with gun and ammunition-belt, and, while the long hours dragged away, he held that robber crew at bay. Hour after hour they shot at him, with eager and unholy vim. Thrice wounded, still he plied his gun, and wounded two, and finished one, till in the morning, cold and gray, some soldiers blew along that way, and found him in an evil plight, bedewed with blood, but full of fight.

He much enjoyed that long night's sport. Since then they call him "Hold-the-Fort."

Like most brave fellows who have done fine things, and admiration won, he hates about himself to talk; he'd rather take a ten-mile walk, or hide himself in yonder weeds, than speak about his knightly deeds. Brave, modest, true as tested steel—this sort of man makes strong appeal.

Vegetables of the Future

DO you ever get tired of the potatoes, string-beans, corn, and tomatoes that make up the ordinary bill of fare? Do you ever long for something different, not knowing exactly what? If so, then cheer up. The Department of Agriculture at Washington says that a new bill of fare is on the way.

The Department has been experimenting with a variety of plants and seeds, sending plant experts to foreign countries, and distributing the samples thus obtained to a number of experiment stations and plant breeders throughout the United States, in order to find sections where they would best grow. More than thirty thousand varieties of plants have so far been tested.

The Chayote—a New Fruit

DID you ever hear of the dasheen, or the chayote, or the udo, or the fruit of the yang-taw vine? These are the names of a few of the new fruits and vegetables, and strange enough they sound. The dasheen is a potato—a little larger than the common kind, with a striped, hairy skin and a unique, rich, nutty flavor. The plant grows in hot, wet sections of country, and can be used for cooking in two ways, since the tops of the plants make excellent greens. It is said to be inexpensive and plentiful, an ordinary crop yield running about 450 bushels to the acre.

The chayote is a new fruit—large, green, and pear-shaped, with a rough, prickly kin, and a delicate flavor very like that of a cucumber. It comes from the West Indies, and is not unknown in some of the large Southern hotels, since it grows luxuriantly in the lowlands anywhere below South Carolina. Some of the plants in the Carolinas are said to have as many as a hundred and fifty chayotes on a vine, and the flavor is excellent. The fruit can be cooked in a score of ways.

Then there is the udo, which is being cultivated to take the place of asparagus, which it strongly resembles. However, both the tip and the stalk of the udo can be eaten, and each has a different flavor. The plant can be used in a variety of ways—the stalks creamed and served as a vegetable, the tips used for salad. In Japan, where the plant is native, it is eaten raw. It is very inexpensive.

A yang-taw fruit sounds uncertain—very much like Chinese, which it is; the yang-taw vine grows in the valley of the Yang-tse. But it is also growing successfully here. The fruit can be used as a filling for pies, or the juice can be distilled into a refreshing drink.

One invention of the Department of Agriculture is the tangelo—a composite of the tangerine and the pomelo. It is smaller than the grapefruit, and sweeter to the taste. It can be separated into segments as easily as a tangerine, and it has been called the "kid-glove" grapefruit.

Also, Bamboo Salad

LAST on the list comes the tung-shu nut, a Chinese importation which is declared to be excellent as a food, a medicine, and a furniture polish. Bamboo-shoot salad is another new dish on the way; and the jujube fruit, heretofore used in candy-making, is now being utilized as a filling for pies and a flavoring for soups, while its juice is employed in making flavoring extracts or in compounding fruit salad. The fruit itself looks like a crab-apple, except that it contains but a single seed; the tree closely resembles a tropical palm.

Why the Supreme Court Never Leaks

By FRED C. KELLY

ONE of the simplest ways imaginable to make a large sum of money without the annoyance of long office hours, perspiration, or brain-fag would be to find out a few hours in advance what the United States Supreme Court is going to decide in a case affecting stock values. The obstacle to the carrying out of this plan is the fact that it is impossible to learn such a decision in advance. In all the years the Supreme Court has been in operation, not more than three or four decisions have ever got out through a leak. This indicates, for one thing, that the young men who have served as secretaries to the nine justices have been persons of a high degree of fidelity. It also proves the loyalty of the printing establishment where the Supreme Court decisions are placed in type before making them public. This work is not done at the government printing office, but at a private plant—and at the same plant ever since printed decisions became the rule. So carefully and cautiously is the work handled that never once has suspicion been directed against this print-shop.

One Case Where a Decision Got Out

ONE leak, back in the Cleveland administration, occurred in the case of the city of Chicago against the Illinois Central Railroad to determine the ownership of certain valuable lake-front property. The story of that decision is interesting.

Employed in a Washington stock broker's office in that day was a young man whose job was to write the stock quotations on the blackboard. He had a friend who was secretary to one of the Supreme Court justices. One night the two were going out together, and the secretary was late in keeping his appointment. He explained that he was kept late doing some work on certain Supreme Court decisions soon to be handed down. This led to conversation about the cases, and the secretary remarked that the city of Chicago would win its suit.

The next day, when the other young man was writing quotations, he came to the figures on Illinois

"I don't suppose that stock will be so valuable after the Supreme Court decision is handed down."

The customer began excitedly to question him as to what he knew, and after satisfying himself that he had picked up a tip he could rely on, he began to sell his large Illinois Central holdings.

There is another angle to this story. One morning a New York paper had the full text of what purported to be the Supreme Court opinion in the Illinois Central case, and it was in the road's favor. As it came out in due course, the text of the opinion was bona fide, but it was only a dissenting opinion.

The correspondent for one of the Chicago papers saw the report in the New York paper. He learned that Associate Justice Field would probably read the decision. So he went up to Justice Field's house on some pretext, and remarked to him:

"I see one of the New York papers has the full text of the decision in which the Illinois Central wins that lake-front case."

Field was an impulsive man. Before he realized what he was saying, he exclaimed:

"Does the paper say that? Well, they're going to be beautifully fooled!"

So the correspondent felt justified in announcing in his paper that the railroad would lose. Thus the people of Chicago knew what the decision would be some days before it was handed down.

But, in all the century and more of the Supreme Court's existence, no justice has ever turned to his own profit his knowledge of what the court was to decide. Most of the justices, in spite of their daily opportunities to profit, have died very poor men. Only once or twice has a private secretary proved unworthy of his trust. The Supreme Court—the most powerful and most respected tribunal in the world—does not leak. Its record is a glorious commentary on the essential goodness of human nature. It is proof that the right kind of men, intrusted with the highest human responsibility, will stand out against any temptation that can be brought to bear upon them.

What My Garden Cost—And What It Paid

OUR home being in the city, our garden plot is of very small dimensions, measuring in all about eighty square feet. When we moved into the house we found the back yard cluttered up with various kinds of debris, though with an excellent growth of grass and a few neglected pots and boxes with the flowers struggling hard for existence. But the yard is sunny from early morning until about two in the afternoon. The strength of the grass indicating the rich soil underneath, we spaded it under to make humus before we were ready to plant. All the extra fertilizer we needed for the entire summer was a 25-cent can of chemical fertilizer.

String-beans were planted to climb up clothes-poles and a dead but bushy cherry tree that stood in a corner of the yard. In all, we realized eight quarts of string-beans at a time when beans were selling at 10 cents a quart. The seed beans cost us 10 cents. The first planting of lettuce consisted of 36 heads when lettuce in the market was 12 cents a head. Lettuce we found very easy to raise, after taking care to make this part of the garden plot particularly rich, and to keep it slightly damp all the time to insure rapid growth, for otherwise it would have gone to seed before heading. The second sowing of lettuce, made later in the season when the sun was very hot, we transplanted to the spaces between the tomato plants so that it might be shaded. This second planting yielded us 20 heads of lettuce—and lettuce was selling then at 7 cents a head. All the lettuce was produced from a 10-cent package of seed.

The young tomato plants we bought for 10 cents a dozen, and out of the 18 plants set out 15 lived and flourished. From these 15 plants we had all the tomatoes we could use for the summer for our family of five, and canned 10 quarts at no expense except the gas used for cooking them. As we ate tomato salad two and three times a week, we estimated that we made a clear profit on at least 30 quarts of tomatoes when tomatoes averaged 10 cents a quart during the summer, varying from 7 to 15 cents a quart.

A 5-cent paper of radish seed was more than we required to produce radishes in such abundance that we had all we could eat, and gave away a great many.

A 10-cent package of onion sets of the small white variety gave us, at accurate calculating, 80 cents' worth of young onions, much earlier in the season than the hucksters got around with theirs. The tops we did not estimate on, though we used them constantly for seasoning, for frying with steak and for scrambling with eggs.

A 5-cent package of beet seed we planted in small trenches in the garden

A 20-cent rhubarb root planted in the early spring produced 80 cents' worth of rhubarb at the regular market price. We have transplanted the roots to the cellar for the winter to yield a still further crop.

A dozen parsley plants for 15 cents have grown in such profusion that we not only have had a great deal more than we could use, but all our neighbor could use, and then much went to waste. We are putting a glass frame over the parsley plants for the winter's supply.

Three small egg-plant bushes at 5 cents each have yielded, in all, 10 large egg-plants, which we would buy from the huckster for 15 cents each.

From three pepper-plants of the small variety, we have picked four quarts of peppers. Two of these we pickled for the winter, and the other two quarts we ate as they ripened. Peppers sell for 15 cents a quart in the New York market. Our plants cost us 5 cents each.

Ten cents' worth of cucumber seed was more than we could use in our small space; but from this plot, after pickling four quarts of cucumbers, we estimate that we ate during the season about 80 cents' worth, saving about $1.50 on cucumbers. The soil was too rich for the cucumbers; but we will profit by our experience next season.

Below is a table giving a very close estimate of the saving we accomplished:

Aside from a clear profit of at least $15.57, we had the immense benefit of the outdoor life necessitated by the work in the garden. The work was a pleasure, and we realize fully how much it meant to our health, though we gave only twenty minutes a day, on an average, after the garden was planted. We thought our profit very good, considering what a small plot we had to work with.

The Ninth Circle

By CLARE P. PEELER

WE picked up a wireless from Cape Race that afternoon at four o'clock, and one whole shipload of homesick, seasick, warsick Americans thanked God. The captain had taken all the precautions usual in crossing the Atlantic after the 4th of August, 1914, and this was our first intimation of how near we were to New York.

The smoking-room teemed with stories, arguments, and rumors when I came in after dinner. Through the smoke-haze, my state-room companion, a Mr. Allston, beckoned me to his table. He was alone, for a wonder.

"This place sounds like a girls' school at recess," he remarked. "Sit down and have your coffee with me."

"No, thanks," I said. "I only came in to find you. Let's go up on deck."

We stopped for a few words with the first officer, and when we reached the promenade deck the gray mantle of twilight was already spreading itself over the sea. Only a pink edge showed at the western horizon, toward which the ship steadily cut her way. As we leaned on the rail for an instant, Allston looked back toward the darkening eastern sky.

"We're leaving some queer things back there, old man," he remarked, "and some tough times; I'm free to state that even the banking business in Chicago will seem slow to me for a while."

"I wish I'd been with you instead of sticking in Scotland all summer," I said. "Shall we walk around?

"You never told me where you were when the war broke out," I added, as we fell into step.

I wanted to make him talk, for every day of the long, dull voyage from Liverpool had thus far been brightened by his stories.

His kind gray eyes twinkled.

"I was in Austria, taking a rest cure," he said. "First thing I did was to cable Mary and the girls at Lake Placid: 'Whatever happens, don't worry. You can't lose father.' Then I beat it for Switzerland, arriving just in time to hear the frontiers shut after me with a loud noise, and to find myself hung up there until the Swiss should open them and let me through, together with a number of more or less financially embarrassed compatriots."

"That was nice," I remarked. "What did you do?"

"Well, sir, I picked me one of those Anglo-American hotels on Lake Thun where the society is non-exciting and the price reasonable,—you see, I figured that cash would be tight for somebody else if not for me pretty soon,—and so I settled down. That is, I didn't exactly settle. I got helping the American Ministry at Bern, for one thing—those Swiss attaches there were darn near driven crazy. Of course, a Chicago man with a slight turn for banking" (he was president of one bank, a director of two others, and a member of the Federal Reserve Commission, as I happened to know) "could be useful on the Citizens' Committee, too. Then, there was a bunch of women at our hotel scared to death, and afraid to spend their poor little money going to Bern after news. I used to bring them word back every evening from Bern what was doing. First thing I knew, I was a cross between a tourist-bureau and a father confessor. How those women harried me!"

"What was the most interesting experience of all?" I asked. For I knew,

He was silent for a minute.

"Let's sit down somewhere and I'll tell it to you," he said presently. "It's a long yarn."

On the deck that separated the first from the second cabin stood two empty chairs, backed against ventilators, facing the black expanse beyond the rail. Here we settled ourselves; and, while the dim

THERE was an Englishman called Greyson that I saw a good deal of, staying at our little Swiss hotel. He was a clever, well informed chap of about fifty-something, with funny ways. For one thing, he was fearfully restless. That wouldn't amaze you much in an American; but it's unusual to see an Englishman of the well dressed, well mannered kind that won't sit out his dinner. He'd swallow his whisky-and-soda after he'd eaten a little, and then he'd get up and walk out, leaving his wife sitting there.

He liked the younger, pretty women, and women seemed to like him; but he never spent very much time with any one of them. At first I thought his wife was the reason for that. He was always watching her. If she was playing cards in the adjoining salon he'd stop in the middle of a sentence to make sure, apparently, that she was still sitting at the same table, and then finish his talk. I figured that she was jealous and he was afraid of her.

Greyson and I were talking one night—the first of August, two days after I got there. His wife was playing auction in one salon; he and I were standing in the doorway of the other. "World politics" were slightly confusing just then. The only thing we knew positively was that Austria had declared war on Servia. Naturally, the question was as to whether Germany, Russia, England, and France would come in, and my man declared positively that England would. He had drunk more whisky-and-soda than usual, and his face was red. He was handsome, by the way, in a style that the school-teacher from Hartford called "flamboyant," with strong features and good blue eyes.

"I tell you," he said finally, his voice getting louder—"we will fight Germany. She's hated us for years, and we've got to break her back."

"Well," I said cheerfully, "you'll have your hands full, old man."

His eyes were roving around the rooms, as usual, while he talked. Suddenly he grew redder than ever, as if he'd seen something or thought of something exciting. But everybody was on edge those days.

"Where are you going when you leave this—supposing it all straightens out?" I asked.

"To Dresden for the winter," said he.

"There!" said I. "That's like you people over here. You let on you hate each other, and spend your vacations in the hated country. I don't believe you English and Germans hate each other near as much as you make out."

"Ask my wife about that," he said, with a queer little smile, and went out into the lobby, where a Baltimore girl was sitting. He went by his wife's table without a look, though she raised her eyes when he passed.

First time I ever saw Mrs. Greyson, she was coming down the big stairway, dressed for dinner—and a corker she was to look at. Not young—I'd say about forty. Magnificent figure; slim, though. Gray hair, a beautiful skin; little fine features; a soft mouth with dimples at the corners; and the most wonderful eyes you ever saw.

I was right back of her on the stairway. Just as we reached the head of the first flight we heard a man's voice, very loud and angry, in the hall below. You couldn't distinguish the words.

"Sh!" she said—just like that. "Sh!"

And the voice stopped dead short. It was her husband's; he was down there, in a group of men. He looked up and saw her—and turned and walked into the salon. She didn't follow him; she went

Page 6

It hadn't been anything much. The German-Swiss concierge, who was always made too much of by the Americans anyhow, had got a little peeved at some term that an old Harvard professor had used about the Germans, and he had started to set the professor right. The Englishman objected to a servant's discussing things with gentlemen,—as well as to the concierge's point of view,—and, having had a few whiskies before dinner this time, had broken out in a somewhat loud and peremptory manner. But what struck me was the way his wife had shut him off, a flight of stairs away, not even knowing what it was all about. It didn't recommend her to me. I hate a bossy woman.

LATER on that evening, I was smoking over my coffee alone on the terrace, not far from a bunch of women that were talking things over. And I want to remark just here that the equal of the expatriate English or American woman in Europe is not to be found anywhere for sheer, rank, bitter gossip. I've seen old women at it all the way from Narragansett Pier to Colorado Springs inclusive, and I tell you the crude, uncultured, dyed-in-the-wool American gossip is a beginner at it alongside of her European or Europeanized sister.

They were a characteristic lot, that group. There was old Mrs. King-Clark, who hadn't been back to "the States" in twenty-five years; there was old Lady Jackson, whose motives for avoiding England were always open to the public—in her absence; and there was Madame Le Moine, who lived in an old chateau for style and took her meals at the hotel for economy. Then there were two or three traveling American women that had "caught the manner" to perfection. When I heard these last ones talking, I thanked God Mary and the girls were at Lake Placid.

Presently they got on the subject of Mrs. Greyson. Strange to say, they all had a good word for her. They agreed she had great charm,—that was it, "du charme,"—and her game at bridge was wonderful.

"But isn't it appalling to hear her speak of her German nationality?" Mrs. King-Clark says. "It's so bald, the way she says, 'My German birth is my misfortune.'"

"Well, of course it is, now isn't it?" contributes Lady Jackson.

"Mais, madame," cries Madame Le Moine. "Mais, certainement. But to speak thus of her own race—it is horreeble!"

"I think it is," remarks a little Philadelphia woman. "I've never before heard any woman that I respected speak like that of her own country and her own people."

"Well, you know," says the Englishwoman, "she married Greyson when she was very young, poor dear,—only seventeen, I'm told,—and she's lived very much in England since, so of course she's grown to love our country. Her two sons were born there, you know, and they're both in our army."

"I don't know about her loving England," Mrs. King-Clark says, "but I do know she hates Germany. And to hear a woman with a strong German accent like hers say that—"

"C'est piquante," says the Frenchwoman.

So they all agreed it was piquant, and for a wonder they let it go at that.

AFTER lunch next day, I talked to Mrs. Greyson, on the terrace, purposely. In about fifteen minutes, prejudiced against her as I was, I fell for that "charm."

I think it was her eyes that got you first. They were dark gray, and very sad; yet sometimes they sparkled with fun, and sometimes they were piercing. She had rather heavy eyebrows, and when she'd draw them together and talk earnestly in German or French or English (it never seemed to matter to her which), she made me think of some stern old general whose picture I'd seen somewhere. Next minute I'd think of my own mother. Because, for all her beautiful dignity, Mrs. Greyson was a woman you always wanted to tell things to, somehow.

Of course, I didn't see all this in a few minutes' talk.

We didn't talk war, strangely enough. She said it was a terrible subject for her, as I could doubtless understand.

I said yes, of course; her sympathies were divided.

"Not at all," said she, her brows pulling together. "They are entir-r-ely on the side of England." And her German accent rolled out strongly.

She picked up the July number of one of the big American monthlies from a table, and began to talk about a story in it. I found she read all our magazines as well as the foreign ones.

Just then her husband came up, restless as usual, and they started laughing and chaffing each other, the best friends in the world.

"Lend me your parasol, Hildegarde," he said coaxingly.

"And for what?" she asked.

"Mrs. King-Clark is going to throw me a Tauchnitz novel out of her window two stories above here," he explained, "and I want the parasol to catch it in."

"Méchant!" she says. "I am to lend you my parasol for such clandestine communication? And I know well it will hold a note making rendezvous!"

The women over there talk that way, you know, when they mean nothing at all by it.

"Oh, well!" he laughs back, "we've all to take our chance, you know!" And he takes the parasol and goes off.

The following day I went over to Bern as usual.

In the afternoon I was heading for the railroad station to go back to the hotel, when I ran into a crowd in front of the Berner-Hof. Both sides of the street were jammed, and through the middle marched Swiss soldiers, regiment after regiment, going out to guard the frontiers.

Bands played and flags waved. And the men! Their clergy had just blessed them and prayed over them in the big square, and those farmers and mountaineers and hotel servants and shop-keepers walked as if they'd been consecrated.

And there wasn't even a cheer from the watching crowd, mind you: just breathless silence.

I saw Mrs. Greyson standing alone a few yards away, and I was going to join her, when I saw her face. She was looking at the soldiers with a fearful, hopeless longing in her eyes that even the tears running down her cheeks couldn't make any more tragic. I slipped away, for fear she might see me.

NEXT day Mrs. Greyson was just as usual. She organized the women at our hotel into a sewing society to sew for the Swiss soldiers—"thus adding," one fresh young thing of forty remarked, "to the horrors of war."

Greyson, we heard, was leaving for England as soon as the first train would go through, and his wife would start a little later. Meantime he dawdled around, generally flirting with the girl from Baltimore. His wife never seemed to see it. She was charming to the girl and delightful with the girl's aunt, supposed to be chaperoning her; but she never had much time to spend with any one person.

The women presently had a knitting class too that she had engineered, and sometimes some of them coaxed her to go out for a little trip on the lake. Every night she played cards.

I asked her husband one evening about his going to England.

"I can't stand it here, you know," he said. "I've got to do something for the old country. If they won't take me for active service, I'll go for some clerical duty. I've got a cousin in the War Office."

He was red-faced and loud-voiced that evening, and his wife looked up from her cards when she heard him. Then he went out on the terrace, and the next minute, through the open window, I heard the Baltimore girl giggle:

"You certainly are most amusing, Mr. Greyson!"

One day the word came through to the Americans and English, "Move on." Somehow it got past the rigid French censoring that Liege was down, Namur was down, and anybody who wanted to move out of Switzerland had better start—or stay all winter. The frontiers would be open for the passage of trains a few days only, we were told. My colleagues on the Citizens' Committee at Bern lit out the first thing, but I stayed a day or two after the general move began. I was going through Germany to Holland, via Basel.

Greyson got ready to leave at once for England. It wasn't at all certain, he said, but that he might go direct to the front, where his two sons were.

WELL, those two people had queer ways. You'd have thought they'd have a few things to talk over, about then.

Not much. All his last evening Mrs. Greyson played cards in the red salon, and her husband sat in a game in the white room, across the hall. When I went upstairs to my rooms at eleven, Greyson was sitting in the lobby talking to the girl from Baltimore, and Mrs. Greyson was nowhere about.

He was gone next morning, before I was up.

In the two mails that had come through from England a couple of days before, I'd had a letter from a friend in London, begging me to fish his daughter out of a boarding-school at Lausanne and start her, suitably companioned, for Folkestone, where he'd meet her. So I changed my plans a little and left for Lausanne about three days after Greyson started for London.

I found the school much in the shape that a hen-coop is in when a few hawks fly low over it. Such a running about and squawking! My friend's daughter had already left, however, chaperoned by one of the French teachers. I telegraphed him, and then, finding myself of some use to the bunch there, stayed in Lausanne a day or two.

The German girls were especially badly scared. They were as much afraid of the French-Swiss as of the Frenchmen—though as a matter of fact they weren't in much danger from either. I helped a crowd of 'em get themselves started off with their passports and their money and such, and received their thanks and blessings at the station as though I'd really earned 'em.

One excitable kid of fourteen kissed my hand and insisted on giving me her father's card, swearing me in to let them know if I ever got within ten miles of Cologne, where they lived. He was an army officer, of course. Later on, that card— Well, that was afterward.

I had some business at Geneva,—the banks were all reopened by this time,—and I stayed to see the American consul, finally starting for Basel weighed down with permits to enter Germany, and passports to get out of Holland.

WHEN I hit Cologne one beautiful August morning, I tell you it looked different from what it had two months before. Then, they'd been cussing the rainy weather that had made things so quiet.

They'd no reason to complain on that score now. Americans were tearing through the city in trunk-loaded taxis; Americans were gumming up the embassies, the banks, and the railroad stations. The French and English were beating it right and left—if they could; German soldiers everywhere you turned; and there was a new spy excitement every five minutes.

Things were humming in that ancient Rhine city, believe me.

I had my dinner in the restaurant at the Kolner-Hof, and I was heading up toward my room, when I ran plump into Greyson.

"For heaven's sake, what are you doing here?" I asked him. "I thought you'd started for—"

I had sense enough to stop, even before he raised his hand. English popularity was what you might call at a heavy discount in that neighborhood just then. Besides, there were two German officers at a table not two feet away.

"Come on up to my room and smoke a cigar," I invited.

But he hung back. In fact, he nearly got away from me, but I wouldn't let him. He'd been having his allowance of that strong Rhine wine, and I honestly was afraid for him, from what I knew of his little ways of talking after dinner. I liked the fellow.

I had a room on the third floor, with a big bay-windowed alcove in it that was as good as a second room—all fitted up separately with a red plush sofa and chairs around a walnut table with a gosh-awful red plush mat in the center and a book with "Views of the Cathedral" exactly in the middle of that. The left window gave on to St. Ursula's Church; in front was the railway station across the big Platz; and to the right was one corner of the Cathedral.

Greyson went to the middle window and looked out at the railroad station for a minute. Then he turned to me and smiled.

"There are two ways of escape," he said; "but I've taken the shorter."

"It would have been a long sight quicker and safer to go through France, you darn fool!" I said, somewhat excitedly. "Whatever possessed you to come through this country?"

He smiled again.

"You don't understand," he said. "When life is intolerable, one thinks of escape, and I knew two ways. This was quicker."

"You don't mean to say you deliberately came here to get into trouble?" J asked.

"No," says he; "to leave it. Sit down, won't you? I was thinking I'd like to talk a bit to somebody. It's my last night, you see."

I sat down; I felt as if I were hypnotized.

He leaned back on the red plush sofa, legs crossed, eyes on the Cathedral.

"Did you ever read Dante's 'Inferno'?" he asked abruptly.

"No!" I snapped. "I haven't much taste for classics, particularly when written in a language I can't read. What've they got to do with the present complications?"

HE didn't seem to hear me.

"The ninth circle—the lowermost depth of Dante's hell," he said—"was the frozen one. And I've lived there for nineteen years. Allston, it's nineteen years since the woman I love gave me a word or a look of affection; and it's my own fault. Do you wonder I'm glad it'll be over soon?"

"But—" I began.

"When you're very young," he said, "two passions tear you—ambition and love. I sacrificed my love to my ambition, and then I lost my ambition through love. It's just. I don't complain, but I'll die, thank God."

"For the last time," I said, "and for heaven's sake, will you tell me what you're getting at?"

He smiled.

"Listen," he said. "I have belonged to the English Secret Service for the last twenty-five years, and for twenty-four of those years I have been the husband of a high-born German woman whose country was her passion. Now do you know?"

"Do you mean to say—" I began.

"You Americans don't understand these things," he said. "Read Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim'; read Baden-Powell's memoirs. Every European government holds its Secret Service as most important—and honorable, mark you. Europe has slept like an armed camp—with her guns ready to her hand—for forty years. Naturally, the governments watch each other—day and night. Some one must do the watching, you know.

Page 7

He raised his head with some pride, and a sort of youth came back into his face.

"I was determined at twenty to distinguish myself," he said slowly.

"My family had never owned an obscure man—and, with our connections, it was easy for me to get a good post. When the Service sent me to Dresden the first time, I met Hildegarde. She was seventeen then."

He clenched his hands tight, as if to resist something.

"A man would have given his life to get her. And I did. She married me knowing nothing except that I had a post at the embassy. Her family were as proud as mine, and she the proudest and most patriotic of all. She adored her country, and at that time she adored me."

FOR an instant he paused as if something choked him.

"Whether she would have married me at all if I had told her, I can't tell. Perhaps—we were so much in love. After all, you know, our two countries were at peace. But she found it all out later,—after the second boy was born,—and that she couldn't forgive. I can't blame her, you see. Deception weighs heavy on a woman of her type. And then, in a way, I'd made use of her family's influence. It wasn't playing the game, was it? Even in London, they told me so. I'd no need to have done that."

I held my breath now, for fear I'd interrupt him.

"When she found out," he said wearily, "it was one of the conditions she made with me—else she would kill herself and the boys, she said—that I should never restrain her from anything she would choose to say (or do) about her country. You've heard her tell people she hated it. She cut off every bit of communication with her family—she made it all seem natural: there was a little quarrel here, a little misunderstanding there, and soon they said I had weaned her from them. Of course, they hated me for it. Consequently, whenever we came back to Germany, she never met any of them. She wished it so.

"She made me put the boys into the English army. 'At least,' she said, 'they'll fight in the open.' The lads have never known anything.

"The third condition—well, we've gone about together and she's pretended she was my happy wife. Poor soul!"

"But you gave up your work?" I asked.

He went on as if I hadn't spoken:

"Of course, it killed my career, all this. The first thing I began doing was to run after women. By degrees I got into the way of drinking a bit—and a man who talks is of no use to the Secret Service. I was given less and less important missions. Women are strange. I think she actually resented that. She used to stop me— you've seen her do it—when I might be going to say what would be unwise, long after they had ceased giving me any real work to do."

"I remember," I said, thinking of some of the things I'd seen.

"And still I call you to witness," he went on, "that the Service itself is a fair and a right thing. Germany has a wonderful one. So has Russia. So has France. In peace, it's like any other safeguard against the possibility of trouble. In war, it's the bravest thing you can do, because it means death on the minute—"

There came a knock at the door.

"Sorry," he said, as quietly as if we were talking architecture. "I knew they were on my track, but I thought I'd some hours yet."

I called, "Herein!" and in came the two German officers we'd seen downstairs. Four soldiers were standing just outside in the shadow.

WE both stood up.

"What is it you wish?" Greyson said. He was standing very straight.

The older officer took a note-book from his pocket.

"We seek," he said, "Edward Greyson, fifty years of age, of the English Secret Service, resident in London, married in 189— to Hildegarde von Luttichau—"

"Stop!" said Greyson. "I am the man you want. Will you do me the favor to hasten matters?"

"Mit Vergugen," said the officer grimly. "And this gentleman—"

"Is American," Greyson said. He was handcuffed by this time. "A hotel acquaintance. He knows nothing."

"That is for him to prove," said the officer. "Vorwärts!"

And they turned Greyson around. It was a square they made, with him in the middle. I was sick all over.

"Tell my wife—" he began, to me. But the nearest private clapped a hand over his mouth.

"I'll tell her. Good-by, old man!" I yelled. Just at the minute, I didn't care what risks I took.

He went out with them, his head high. From the door he smiled at me. Then it closed after him.

Greyson was shot within the next hour, and I confidently expected to follow suit. The Germans searched me to the skin. And, notwithstanding all the passports and permits and even a letter from Bryan they found on me, I think they'd have held me for a month or so on suspicion while they thought me over: but the commanding officer found his own visiting card in my luggage—he being the father, as it happened, of that fourteenyear-old school girl I had packed from Lausanne. After that I figured I'd have to work hard to dodge the Iron Cross. But he contented himself with sending me to the Dutch frontier in his motor-car, accompanied by a young lieutenant in white gloves—and, of course, a bunch of flowers.

There was a Dutch steamer sailing next day from the Hook, and I went over on it to Harwich and so up to London. Greyson's name was in "Burke's"—that is, his real name was. I went to his mother's town house, where I counted on finding his wife by this time.

She was there right enough, but she sent word she couldn't see any one. I wrote on my card, "I have a message for you from your husband," and sent it up by the footman.

WHEN she came down into the big hall I stood, she didn't waste any words in greeting. She came up to me with:

"You have seen my husband?"

I didn't look at her.

"For the last time on earth, madam," I said. "He died day before yesterday."

The great room was silent. Somewhere a clock ticked loudly.

"Where?" she said, very low.

"In Germany," I answered her.

"Germany!" she repeated. "He started for England—"

She stopped, and I saw understanding come into her face.

"Bravely?" she asked me. Just that one word.

"Very," I said. "I think he wanted me to come and tell you so."

"He was the husband of my youth," she almost whispered. "The only man I ever loved with all my heart. And I thank God he is dead."

I stood in front of her, silent. She had caught hold of the arm of a big carved chair, and presently she sat down in it, still very straight. She hadn't a tear in her eye.

"He told you much?" she asked me—"about himself—about us two—about his career?"

"I think he told me everything," I said. "It was not a time to hold things back. And I thought perhaps he wanted me to say to you how bitterly he had regretted—certain things."

"And I?" she said suddenly. "Do you suppose I have no regrets?"

She stood up, holding on to the arm of her chair.

"Listen to me," she said. "And then go—take ship quickly for your own land, where these things do not happen. When I was seventeen I entered the Secret Service of the German government."

"My God!" I said. And I couldn't get out another word.

"It seemed to me then a noble way to serve my beloved land, and all my family were in that service. But I could not remain in it after I married my husband—I could not! For two years I lived in horror. Then I demanded and gained my release. It cost me my family's love and all my friends'. When he told me his story, I thought I should go mad. It lay between us all these years—and he never knew. I made my sons—mine, and I was Hildegarde von Lüttichau—into English soldiers as atonement for us two. And I have suffered for us both—for us both, thank God!"

She swayed a little, and I thought she was going to faint; but she straightened herself and stood there looking at me with those big, wonderful, sad eyes. And they seemed to me sweet and motherly too. I thought the arms of her soul were maybe around his poor soul somewhere—protecting it, comforting it.

"Good-by," she said. "Thank you."

That's all of the story.

How to Improve Your Memory

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

IN the days before the Great War turned Europe into a shambles, a titled Englishman visited the mining region of the Hartz Mountains in Germany. He was received with true antebellum hospitality, the mining officials making every effort to entertain him. As part of their entertainment program they invited him to inspect two of their deepest mines.

To escort him through the workings they sent along a veteran superintendent, an affable, genial man. True, the superintendent did not speak a word of English; but, as the visitor knew German well, this was no hindrance to the day's sight-seeing. For hours the Englishman and his guide wandered through the underground passages, stopping only for a hasty luncheon.

Everything went well until late in the afternoon, the Englishman greatly enjoying his novel experience. But, about five o'clock, an extraordinary thing occurred. Turning to his companion to ask a question, the Englishman found that he could no longer speak German. Every word in that language seemed to have been blotted out of his memory.

Puzzled and alarmed, he desperately endeavored to make himself understood by his astonished guide. It was all in vain. Not a word of German could he recall. Naturally, the inspection tour came to an abrupt end, the superintendent hurrying his unfortunate guest to the surface of the earth as rapidly as possible.

A physician was summoned. He could detect no symptoms of illness; nevertheless, he wisely ordered the Englishman to bed. Next morning, after a good night's rest, it was found that he could now speak German as well as ever.

This incident, bizarre and unique as it may seem, is, after all, only an illustration in an extreme degree of a phenomenon that is constantly in evidence. The Englishman had forgotten his German simply because he had become physically exhausted.

One Result of Over-Fatigue

IN precisely the same way, though not so abruptly or spectacularly, many people suffer from serious impairment of memory through allowing themselves to become over-fatigued. Nobody, for that matter, can remember things as readily or surely when he is tired as when he is physically vigorous and fresh. This is a fact to be borne well in mind by all of us, and especially by those of us who find the memory power not so good as could be wished.

The brain is the basic organ of memory. To remember well, one's brain must be in good running order. To be in good running order, the brain must receive an abundant supply of good, pure blood.

Scientific experiment has proved that when a person becomes fatigued certain substances are generated in his blood. These substances have a poisonous quality, as has been demonstrated by injecting blood taken from a fatigued animal into the veins of another animal not fatigued. Within an extraordinarily short time the second animal displays marked symptoms of exhaustion, with difficulty of breathing and increase of heart-beat.

Moreover, in order that the brain shall work well, it is not enough to keep it as free as possible from the toxic products of fatigue. The blood supply circulating through it must be of a character to nourish it. This means that it must contain certain elements, particularly oxygen and elements derived from well assimilated

The memory power can also be greatly strengthened by cultivating habits of emotional control. Anger, fretfulness, and similar emotional states have a paralyzing effect on the organs of digestion. Precisely the same effect is produced by such emotions as fear, anxiety, worry.

But there is a wholly psychological as well as a physiological reason for practising emotional control as an aid in strengthening the memory. It has been found that anything that affects a person disagreeably

It is not really forgotten,—it would almost seem that nothing is ever really forgotten,—but it is, so to speak, thrust into a sub-cellar of the mind. Along with it is also thrust anything that might, through association of ideas, allow this disagreeable repressed memory to emerge into the light of conscious remembrance.

This principle of "the obliviscence of the disagreeable" accounts for much of the embarrassing forgetfulness from which many people suffer with regard to names, faces, appointments, etc. Proof to this effect has been obtained again and again through psychological analysis, by modern methods of tunneling into the human mind and searching out the hidden springs of action. Doctor A. A. Brill, a New York neurologist who has made a special study of this phase of the memory problem, gives the following instance:

"A young newspaper man to whom I explained the new theory concerning the forgetting of names insisted that this could not be true, and to prove his assertion he related the following incident:

"My friend Jack left the city recently, and the other day I wrote him a letter. On addressing the envelop I failed to remember his surname. I began with 'Jack,' and for the life of me I could not proceed. After at least five minutes' thinking I finally remembered that his surname was Murphy. Now, as he is my best friend, I fail to see the disagreeable or painful connection.'

"I then proceeded to analyze, it by the 'continuous association' method. I asked him to concentrate his mind on the name Murphy, and tell me all the associations it evoked.... After a while he recalled another Murphy—' a newspaper man whom I know very well.' Asked to tell something about him, he said: 'He is the only man I hate'; and then delivered a long tirade against this Mr. Murphy.

"We can now understand why he could not recall his friend's name. The name Murphy was under repression because it represented a person whom he hated. His own friend's name was also Murphy, but to him it was always Jack. He had never corresponded with him before. This was the first time he was obliged to use Jack's surname. He could not recall it (1) because it was directly connected with something unpleasant to him, and (2) he could not resign himself to give Jack the name of the man he hated."

Worriers Have the Poorest Memories

NOW, being, human, it is impossible for us to eliminate completely forgetfulness caused in this way. But it is possible to react less intensely than many people do to the unpleasant occurrences of life. The man who is a chronic pessimist, fault-finder, and worrier need not be surprised if he suffers from a treacherous memory.

His mental attitude reacts unfavorably on his physiological processes to enfeeble his brain, both by poisoning it and by depriving it of proper nourishment. And, at the same time, the psychological principle of repression comes into play, to cause him to put out of conscious recollection much that would have no unpleasant associations to others, and accordingly would be more likely to be remembered by them.

On the other hand, if the disagreeable tends to be forgotten, the more agreeable a thing is the greater the likelihood of its being held in conscious remembrance. This has been experimentally demonstrated, notably through investigations made among school children. Invariably it has been found that their memory power is in direct proportion to the pleasure they experience in studying a subject.

At any period of life, indeed, to be interested in a thing is to increase our chances of remembering it. To the man or woman suffering from a memory weakness that is not dependent on any disintegration of the brain—such as the memory weakness so often observed in old age—I would say as earnestly as I can:

"Multiply and intensify your interests. You can not expect to remember things to which you do not pay conscious attention; and the attention you pay to anything is certain to be in proportion to the degree of interest you feel in it. 'Memory techniques' may be helpful to you in the acquisition of particular facts—the names of the presidents, dates of historic events, etc. But they will not strengthen your memory as a whole. That can be done effectively in only one way—by enlarging your interests."

Systematic exercise of the memory is to be recommended, if it is based on increased use of the powers of observation: some such method as that practised, for example, by a well known New York statesman of other years—Thurlow Weed.

When Weed, who began his career as a printer, determined to go into politics, he realized that he had a memory weakness that might be fatal to his progress. One day he made up his mind to try to overcome it.

"When I came home that night," he told a friend, in describing the plan he adopted, "I sat down alone, and spent fifteen minutes trying silently to recall with accuracy the principal events of the day. I could remember but little at first—not even what I had for breakfast. After a few days' practice I found I could recall more. Events came back to me more minutely, more accurately, and more vividly.

"After a fortnight or so of this, my wife said: Why don't you relate to me the events of the day, instead of recalling them to yourself? It would be interesting, and my interest would be a stimulus to you.'

"Having great respect for my wife's opinion, I began a habit of oral confession, as it were, which was continued for nearly fifty years.... I am indebted to this discipline for a memory of somewhat unusual tenacity, and I recommend the practice to all who wish to store up facts."

Most people could advantageously practise this exercise from time to time. Its great merit rests in the fact that it unconsciously habituates a man to perceive things vividly and accurately. It develops his observational powers, and inevitably improves his memory.

To be sure, the principle of the obliviscence of the disagreeable still obtains. No memory-exercise, however ingenious, will prevent a man from eventually forgetting—so far as the power of immediate conscious recall is concerned—that which he subconsciously wishes to forget because of its painful associations in his mind.

Forgetfulness Due to Lack of Interest

THUS we are brought back to the fundamental truth that the chief determinants of a good memory are a healthy, well nourished brain and that pleasurable mental state known as "being interested." Both must be present to insure good memory power.

And, it should at once be added, most people whose memory is poor owe their memory weakness to lack of interest. Their brains are sound enough, but they find the affairs of daily life so dull and uninteresting that their power of observation has become atrophied, with a resultant atrophy of their ability to remember.

Consider your own case. Your business, let us say, is that of a stock broker. It is important for you to have a good memory for market conditions in many industries, the prices of stocks, and so forth. You find that your memory for these things is by no means as reliable as it ought to be.

Do a little self-analysis. The chances are you will discover that matters not connected with your daily work are of much more interest to you than it is. Market conditions, stock prices, bore you. Hence you do not concentrate your attention on them; you fail to fix them in your mind; and accordingly you fail to remember them.

If you wish to improve your memory for the things on which your livelihood depends, you will have to develop a keener interest in those things—an interest so intense that it will be a real pleasure for you to think about them. Doing this, your memory is certain to be strengthened—and, of no less importance to you, you will be benefited physically also. For you will have freed yourself from a source of worry—a source, that is, of digestive disturbances, sleeplessness, and other conditions disastrous to physical health.

Whatever a man's vocation in life, if he will only cultivate a genuine interest in it, acquire habits of emotional control, and lead a hygienic existence, he will have little fault to find with his memory.

Where Your Husband's Jokes Come From

They All Become Farmers at Last

Page 11

How Would You Like to Come into these Gardens, Maud?

The Wall Street Girl

By FREDERICK ORIN BARTLETT

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

WHEN Miss Winthrop rose the next morning, she scarcely recognized the woman she saw in the glass as the woman she had glimpsed for a second last night when she had risen and lighted the gas. Her cheeks were somewhat paler than usual, and her eyes were dull and tired. She turned from the glass as soon as possible, and donned a freshly laundered shirt-waist. Then she swallowed a cup of coffee; and walked part way to the office, in the hope that the fresh air might do something toward restoring her color. In this she was successful, but toward noon the color began to fade again.

The problem that disturbed her the entire morning long had to do with luncheon. She recognized that here she must strike the key-note to all her future relations with Mr. Pendleton. If she was to eliminate him entirely and go back to the time when he was non-existent, then she must begin to-day. It was so she preferred to handle disagreeable tasks. She detested compromises. When she had anything to do, she liked to do it at once and thoroughly. If she had consulted her own wishes and her own interests alone, she would never have seen him again outside the office. But if she did this, what would become of him during this next month?

The trouble was that Don would get lonesome—not necessarily for her, but for that other. He was the sort of man who needed some one around all the time to take an interest in him. This deduction was based not upon guess-work, but upon experience. For almost a year now she had seen him every day, and had watched him react to just such interest on her part. She was only stating a fact when she said to herself that, had it not been for her, he would have lost his position months before. She was only stating another fact when she said to herself that even now he might get side-tracked into some clerical job. Give him a month to himself now, and he might undo all the effort of the last six months. Worse than that, he might fall into the clutches of Blake and go to pieces in another way.

There was not the slightest use in the world in retorting that this, after all, was the affair of Don and his fianc—e rather than hers. She had brought him through so far, and she did not propose to see her work wasted. No one would gain anything by such a course.

The alternative, then, was to continue to meet him and to allow matters to continue as they had. It was toward the latter part of the forenoon that she reached this conclusion. All this while she had been taking letters from Mr. Seagraves and transcribing them upon her typewriter without an error. She had done no conscious thinking and had reached no conscious conclusion. All she knew was that in the early forenoon she had been very restless, and that suddenly the restlessness vanished and that she was going on with her typewriting in a sort of grim content. Half past eleven came, and then twelve. She finished the letter, and went for her hat as usual, putting it on without looking in the glass.

Don met her a little way from the office, and she fell into step at his side.

"I was sort of worried about you last night," he said. "You looked tired."

"I guess I was," she answered.

"Don't you get a vacation before long?"

She could have had her vacation a month ago, but there seemed to be no reason for taking it. She had not been able to think of any place to which she wished to go. Then she had forgotten about it.

"I've decided to take it next month," she answered.

She decided that much on the spot.

"I suppose there's one due me, too," he said. "Blake said something about it awhile ago. But I don't know what I'd do with a vacation if I took one."

"I should think you had something very important to do with it," she answered quickly.

"What do you mean?"

"Take it for your wedding trip."

The suggestion made him catch his breath.

"But look here," he exclaimed. "That means getting married!"

"Surely it does," she nodded.

THEY had reached the little restaurant, and she hurried in. Without waiting for his assistance, she secured a cup of coffee and a sandwich for herself. Then she found a chair and sat down. She did not know how she was ever going to swallow anything, but she had to have something to do to occupy her hands.

"You put that up to a man as if it were the easiest thing in the world," he observed, sitting in the next chair.

"Well, it is, isn't it—once you've made up your mind?"

"Looks to me as if it was one thing to make up your mind to get married some day, and another really to get married."

"It's better to do it than to waste your time thinking about it," she declared. "When Farnsworth hands you that raise, believe me, he'll want you to have both feet on the ground."

"Eh?"

"He won't want you to be drifting in with only three hours' sleep, the way you did most of last winter. He has a lot more confidence in married men, anyhow."

Don laughed.

"That phrase makes a man feel ten years married."

She had been trying hard to eat her lunch, but without much success. He noticed this.

"What's the matter with you?" he inquired.

"I don't happen to be hungry, that's all," she answered.

"You didn't catch cold last night?"

"No."

"But look here—"

"Oh, I'm all right," she answered.

He went to the counter and returned with some doughnuts for himself and a piece of cake for her.

"This looked so good I thought you might like it," he said, as he placed it on the arm of her chair. "It's so much easier to talk when eating. I want to hear more about this scheme of yours for marrying me off."

"It isn't exactly my suggestion."

"You proposed it a minute ago."

"All I said was that if you mean to get married, you'd better do it right away and be done with it."

"During my vacation?"

She brought her lips together.

"Yes."

"Do you know, that rather appeals to me," he answered thoughtfully.

She turned aside her head.

"It's the only sensible thing," she assured him.

"It would give a man a chance to settle down and attend to business."

"And give his wife a chance to help him."

"By Jove, I'm going to propose that to Frances the day she lands!" he exclaimed.

He was finishing his last doughnut.

Page 14

Miss Winthrop rose. Once outside, she could breathe freely. She said:

"Her—her name is Frances?"

"Frances Stuyvesant," he nodded.

"When do you expect her home?"

"The first of September."

"Then you'd better put in a bid to have your vacation the first two weeks in September," she advised. "Business will begin to pick up right after that, and Farnsworth will need you."

It was now the first week in August. If she could sustain his interest in the project for three weeks and get him married in the fourth, then she could settle back into the routine of her life. It was the only possible way of straightening out the tangle. Once he was safely married, that was the end. Their relations would cease automatically. The conventions would attend to that. As a married man he, of course, could not lunch with her or spend Saturday afternoons in the park with her, or Sunday in the country with her, or mid-week evenings anywhere with her. He would be exiled from her life as effectively as if he himself should go to Europe. In fact, the separation would be even more effective, because there would not be any possible hope of his coming back. For her it would be almost as if he died.

Back in her room that night, Miss Winthrop saw all these things quite clearly. And she saw that this was the only way. In no other way could she remain in the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves. If he did not marry in September,—she had applied that afternoon for her own vacation to parallel his,—then she must resign. Unmarried, he would be as irresponsible this coming winter as he was last, and if she remained would be thrown back upon her. She could not allow that—she could not endure it.

She had lost so many things all at once. She did not realize until now how much dreaming she had done in these last few months. Dreams of which at the time she had scarcely been conscious returned to-night to mock her with startling vividness. It was not so much that she wished to be loved as that she wished to love. That was where she had deceived herself. Had Don made love to her, she would have recognized the situation and guarded herself. But this matter of loving him was an attack from a quarter she had not anticipated.

IN the next three weeks she left him little chance to think of anything but of his work and of Frances. She talked of nothing else at lunch; she talked of nothing else on Saturday afternoons and on Sundays and whenever they met on other days. This had its effect. It accustomed him to associate together the two chief objectives in his life until in his thoughts they became synonymous. For the first time since their engagement, he began to think of Frances as an essential feature of his every-day affairs.

He began to think about what changes in the house would be necessary before she came. He talked this over with Miss Winthrop.

"I wish you could come up and look the place over before Frances gets here," he said to her one day.

If the color left her face for a second, it came back the next with plenty to spare. The idea was preposterous, and yet it appealed to her strangely.

"I wish I could," she answered sincerely.

"Well, why can't you?" he asked.

"It's impossible—of course," she said.

"I could arrange a little dinner and ask some one to chaperon," he suggested.

"It's out of the question," she answered firmly. "But you can tell me all about it."

"But telling you about it isn't like letting you see it," he said.

"It is almost as good, and—almost as good is something, isn't it?"

There was a suppressed note in her voice that made him look up. He had caught many such notes of late. Sometimes, as now, he half expected to find her eyes moist when he looked up. But he never did; he always found her smiling.

"I'd have Nora give everything a thorough cleaning before September," she advised.

"I'll do that," he nodded.

He wrote it down in his note-book, and that night spoke to Nora about it. She appeared decidedly interested.

"It's possible that in the fall you may have some one else besides me to look after," he confided to her in explanation.

"It's to be soon, sir?" she asked eagerly.

"In September, perhaps," he admitted.

"It would please your father, sir," she answered excitedly. "It's lonesome it's been for you, sir."

He did not answer, but he thought about that a little. No, it had not been exactly lonesome for him—not lately. But that was because he was looking ahead. That was it.

"It hasn't seemed quite natural for you to be living on here alone, sir," she ventured.

"Dad lived here alone," he reminded her.

"Not at your age, sir," answered Nora.

But from that moment there was much ado in the house. He came home at night to find certain rooms draped in dusting clothes, later to appear as fresh and immaculate as if newly furnished. This gave him a great sense of responsibility. He felt married already. He came downtown in the morning a little more serious, and took hold of his work with greater vigor.

THE next few weeks passed rapidly.

Frances had finished her trip to Scotland and was on her way back to London. She was to sail in a few days now. He cabled her to let him know when she started, and three days later she answered. He showed her reply to Miss Winthrop.

Sail Monday on the Mauretania, but Dolly wants me to spend next two weeks after arrival in the Adirondacks with her.

Miss Winthrop returned the cable with a none too steady hand.

"She mustn't do that," she said firmly.

"Of course she mustn't," he agreed. "But, you see, she doesn't know she is to be married right away. Do you think I ought to cable her that?"

"I don't think I would," Miss Winthrop replied. "But I would let her know I didn't approve of her arrangement."

"Supposing I just say, 'Have other plans for you'?"

"That would do," she nodded.

So he sent her this message, and that evening at dinner Miss Winthrop spoke to him of another matter.

"I don't think you have shown much attention to her parents this summer. Oughtn't you to see them and let them know what you intend?"

"Tell Stuyvesant?" he exclaimed.

"Why should he object?" she asked.

"I don't know as he will. Then again he might. You see, I've never told him just how dad tied things up."

"But what difference does that make?" she demanded. "With the house and what you're earning, you have enough."

"It isn't as much as he expects a man to give his daughter, though—not by a long shot."

"But it's enough," she insisted. "Why, even without the house it would be enough."

"Yes," he answered, with a smile. "When you say it—it's enough. I wish Stuyvesant know you."

The blood came into her cheeks. She wished he wouldn't say things like that.

"It seems to me you ought to see him and tell him," she said thoughtfully.

He shook his head.

"What's the use of seeing him until I've seen Frances?"

"But it's all settled about her."

"That she'll marry me in September?"

"Of course," she answered excitedly. "Why, she's been waiting a whole year. Do you think she'll want to wait any longer? As soon as she knows how well you've done, why—why, that's the end of it. Of course that's the end of it."

"I wish I were as confident as you!"

"You must be," she answered firmly. "You mustn't feel any other way. The house is all ready, and you are all ready, and—that's all there is to it."

"And Frances is all ready?"

"When she promised to marry you she was ready," she declared. "You don't understand. I guess women are different from men. They—they don't make promises like that until they are quite sure, and when they are quite sure they are quite ready. This last year should have been hers. You made a mistake, but there's no sense in keeping on with the mistake. Oh, I'm quite sure of that."

She was wearing a light scarf,—this was at Jacques',—and she drew it over her shoulders. Somehow, the unconscious act reminded him of a similar act on the beach at Coney.

During this next week—the week Frances was on the ocean and sailing toward him—he gained in confidence day by day. Miss Winthrop was so absolutely sure of her point of view that it was difficult in her presence to have any doubts.

Frances was due to arrive on Monday, and for Sunday he had arranged at Jacques' a very special little dinner for Miss Winthrop. Miss Winthrop herself did not know how special it was, because all dinners there with him were special. There were roses upon the table. Their odor would have turned her head had it not been for the realization that her trunk was all packed and that to-morrow morning she would be upon the train. She had written to a cousin in Maine that she was coming—to this particular cousin because, of the three or four she knew at all, this cousin was the farthest from New York.

As for him, he had forgotten entirely that Monday marked the beginning of her vacation. But that was partly her fault, because for the last week she had neglected to speak of it.

ORDINARILY she did not permit him to come all the way back to the house with her; but this night he had so much to talk about that she did not protest. Yes, and she was too weak to protest, anyway. All the things he talked about—his fears, his hopes, speculations, and doubts—she had heard over and over again. But it was the sound of his voice to which she clung. To-morrow and after to-morrow everything would be changed, and she would never hear him talk like this again. He was excited to-night, and buoyant and quick with life. He laughed a great deal, and several times he spoke very tenderly to her.

They had reached her door, and something in her eyes—for the life of him he could not tell what—caused him to look up at the stars. They were all there in their places.

"Look at 'em," he said. "They seem nearer to-night than I've ever seen them."

She was a bit jealous of those stars. It had been when with her that he had first seen them.

"You aren't looking," he complained.

She turned her eyes to the sky. To her they seemed farther away than ever.

"Maybe Frances is looking at those same stars," he said.

She resented the suggestion. She turned her eyes back to the street.

"Where's the star I gave you?" he asked.

"It's gone," she answered.

"Have you lost it?"

"I can't see it."

"Now, look here," he chided her lightly. "I don't call that very nice. You don't have a star given you every night."

"But I told you I didn't need to have them given to me, because I could take all I wanted myself. You don't own the stars too."

"I feel to-night as if I did," he laughed. "I'll have to pick out another for you." He searched the heavens for one that suited him. He found one just beyond the Big Dipper, that shone steadily and quietly, like her eyes. He pointed it out to her.

"I'll give you that one, and please don't lose it."

She was not looking.

"Do you see it?" he insisted.

She was forced to look. After all, he could afford to give her one out of so many, and it would be something to remember him by.

"Yes," she answered, with a break in her voice.

"That one is yours," he assured her. It was as if he added, "All the rest belong to Frances."

She held out her hand to him.

"Thank you for your star," she said. "And—and I wish you the best of luck."

He took her hand, but he was confused by the note of finality in her voice.

"I don't see any need of being so solemn about saying good night," he returned.

He continued to hold her hand firmly. "But it's good-by and—God-speed, too," she reminded him.

"How do you make that out?"

"You're going on a long journey, and I—I'm going on a little journey."

"You? Where are you going?"

HE didn't want her to go anywhere.

He wanted her to stay right where she was. Come to think of it, he always wanted her to stay right where she was. He always thought of her as within reach.

"My vacation begins to-morrow," she answered.

"And you're going away—out of town?

She nodded.

"But look here, you can't do that," he protested. "Why, I was depending upon you these next few days."

It was difficult for her to tell at the moment whether the strain in her throat was joy or pain. That he needed her— that was joy; that he needed her only for the next few days—that was not joy.

"You mustn't depend upon any one these next few days but yourself," she answered earnestly. "And after that—just yourself and her."

"That's well enough if everything comes out all right."

"Make it come out right. That's your privilege as a man. Oh, that's why it's so good to be a man!"

"You ought to have been a man yourself," he told her.

She caught her breath at that; and she insisted upon withdrawing her hand.

"I used to think I'd like to be," she answered.

"And now?"

She shook her head.

But he had swung the talk back to her again, when the talk should have been all of him and Frances.

"It's in you to get everything in the world you want," she said. "I'm sure of that. All you have to do is to want it hard enough. And now there are so many things right within your grasp. You won't let go of them?"

"No," he answered.

"Your home, your wife, and your work —it's wonderful to make good in so many things all at once! So—good-by."

"But you talk as if you were not coming back again!"

"I'm coming back to Carter, Rand & Seagraves—if that's what you mean."

"And you're coming back here—to your home?"

"Yes; I'm coming back here."

"Then we'll just say s'long."

"No. We must say good-by."

She had not wished to say this in so many words. She had hoped he would take the new situation for granted.

"When I come back you must look on me as—as Mr. Farnsworth does."

"That's nonsense."

"No; it's very, very good sense. It's the only thing possible. Can't you see?"

"No."

"Then Frances will help you see."

"She won't want to make a cad of me; I know that."

"I'm going in now."

She opened the door behind her.

"Wait a moment," he pleaded.

"No, I can't wait any longer. Good-by."

She was in the dark hall now.

"Good-by," she repeated.

"S'long," he answered.

Softly, gently, she closed the door upon him. Then she stumbled up the stairs to her room, and in the dark threw herself face down on her bed.

Either Frances had grown more beautiful in the last three months, or Don had forgotten how really beautiful she

Page 15

He stepped into her car,—he did not know even if he was asked,—and for a half hour listened to her spirited narration of incidents of the voyage. It was mostly of people, of this man and that, this woman and that, with the details of the weather and deck sports. Under ordinary circumstances he might have enjoyed the talk; but, with all he had to tell her, it sounded trivial.

But it came to an end. They reached the house. Even then, there was much talk of trunks and other things of no importance to him whatever. Stuyvesant hung around in frank and open admiration of his daughter; and Mrs. Stuyvesant beamed and listened and stayed. Don had a feeling that, in spite of his position in the family, they looked upon him at this moment as an intruder.

It was another half hour before he found himself alone with her. She came to his side at once—almost as if she too had been awaiting this opportunity.

"Dear old Don," she said. "It's good to see you again. But you look tired."

"And you look beautiful!" he exclaimed.

NOW that he was alone with her, he felt again as he had at the steamer—that this woman was not she to whom he was engaged, but some wonderful creature of his imagination. The plans he had made for her became commonplace. One could not talk over with her the matter-of-fact details of marrying and of housekeeping and of salaries. And those things that yesterday had filled him with inspiration, that had appeared to him the most wonderful things in life, that had been associated with the stars, seemed tawdry. She had been to London to see the Queen, and the flavor of that adventure was still about her.

"Don dear, what's the matter?"

He was so long silent that she was worried. He passed his hand over his forehead.

"I don't know," he answered honestly. "There were a lot of things I wanted to say to you, and now I can't think of them."

"Nice things?"

"Perhaps it's the house," he replied vaguely. "I wish we could get out of here for a little while. After lunch I want you to come to walk with me. Will you?"

"Where, Don?"

He smiled.

"In the park."

"What an odd fancy!" she answered.

"Here I get you all mixed up with your father and mother and the Queen," he ran on. "I want to talk to you alone."

He sounded more natural to her when he talked like that.

"All right, Don, though there are a hundred things I ought to do this afternoon. And I must decide about going to the mountains with Dolly. What were those other plans you cabled me about?"

"Those are what I want to talk over with you," he answered.

"But what are they? I'm dying to know."

"I'll tell you in the park. Now I'll go, so that you'll have time to do some of the hundred things you want to do."

He turned to go.

"Don't you want to—to—"

She held out her arms to him. He kissed her lips. Then she seemed to come back to him as she had been before she sailed. He could have said all he wished to say then. But her mother was calling her.

"I'll be here at two. And, this once—you must cancel every other engagement."

"Yes, Don."

She came to the door with him, and stood there until he turned the corner. He did not know where to go, but unconsciously his steps took him downtown. He stopped at a florist's and ordered a dozen roses to be sent back to the house. He stopped to order a box of her favorite bonbons. Then he kept on downtown toward the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves. But this was the first day of his vacation, and so he had no object in going there. He must find a place to lunch. He came to a dairy lunch, and then he knew exactly what it was he needed. He needed Sally Winthrop to talk over his complication with him.

As he made his way to the counter for his sandwich and coffee, he frowned. He had told her that he would surely need her. And now she was gone. He suddenly recalled that she had not even left her address.

Only two days before he had been discussing with her the final details of the house awaiting Frances, and she had made him feel that everything was perfect.

"She will love it," she had assured him.

It was as if he heard her voice again repeating that sentence. Once again he reacted to her enthusiasm and saw through her eyes. She had made him feel that money—the kind of money Stuyvesant stood for—was nonsense. A salary of twelve hundred a year was enough for the necessities, and yet small enough to give his wife an opportunity to help.

"When the big success comes," she had said to him, "then Frances can feel that it is partly her success too. A woman doesn't become a wife by just marrying a man, does she? It's only when she has a chance to help that she can feel herself really a wife."

As she said it he felt that to be true, although to him it was a brand-new point of view.

And Sally Winthrop had given him, in her own life, a new point of view on woman. He understood that she had never married because she had never happened to fall in love. She had always been too busy. But if ever she did fall in love, what a partner she would make! Partner —that was the word.

"It's in you to get everything in the world you want," she had said last night, when she was leaving him.

So it was. He gulped down the rest of his coffee and glanced at his watch. It was shortly after one. He must stay down here another half hour—stay around these streets where he had walked with her and where she had made him see straight— until he had just time to meet Frances.

He went out and walked past the office of Carter, Rand & Seagraves, and then walked to the elevated station where she took the train at night for home. The sight of the steps up which they had climbed together made him almost homesick. He wished to heaven that she had postponed her vacation another day. If only he could see her a few minutes right now, he would be absolutely sure of himself.

IT was after two when he reached the house, but Frances was not ready. She was never quite ready.

"I'll wait outside," he told the maid.

The maid raised her brows a trifle, but answered civilly:

"Very well, sir."

As he walked back and forth the Stuyvesant machine also drew up before the door and waited. He viewed it with suspicion. He could not say what he had to say in that. She must be afoot, as Sally Winthrop always was.

He was making his turn at the end of the street when she came down the steps and before he could reach her stepped into the machine.

"I have several little things to do after we've had our walk," she explained to Don, as he came up.

She made room for him by her side. Because he did not wish to argue before the chauffeur, he took his allotted place; but he himself gave the order to the driver:

"Central Park."

Then he turned to her.

"When we get there we must get out and walk."

"Very well, Don," she submitted; "but

Page 16

She regarded him anxiously.

"Is anything worrying you, Don?"

"Only you," he answered.

"I?" she exclaimed. "If it's because of Jimmy Schuyler, you needn't worry any more. He was very nice at first, but later—well, he was too nice. You see, he forgot I was engaged."

"The little cad!" exclaimed Don.

"You mustn't blame him too much. He just forgot. And now he is very attentive to Dolly."

"And she allows it?"

"I think she rather likes him. She has invited him up to camp. And, Don dear, she wants you to come too. It would be very nice if we could all go. Can't you manage it?"

"It doesn't appeal to me just now," he answered.

The machine had swung into the park. He ordered the chauffeur to stop.

"Come," he said to Frances.

HE found the path from the drive where the children played, and he found the bench where he had sat with Sally Winthrop. Then all she had told him came back to him, as it had in the dairy lunch.

"It's about the other plans I want to tell you out here," he began eagerly.

"Yes, Don."

"I've done a lot of work while you were away," he said proudly.

"It seems a pity it was necessary," she answered.

"It's been the best thing that ever happened to me," he corrected her. "It has made me see straight about a lot of things. And it's helped me to make good in the office."

She looked puzzled.

"You mean you've been made a partner or something?"

"Hardly that—yet," he smiled. "But it's pretty sure I'll be put to selling when I come back."

"You're going away?"

"I'm on my vacation," he explained.

"This is the first day of my vacation."

"Oh, then you can come with us?"

"I'd rather you came with me."

"With you, Don? But where?"

"Anywhere you wish, as long as we go together and alone. Only we must get back in two weeks."

"Don dear!"

"I mean it," he went on earnestly. "I want to marry you to-morrow or next day. Your trunks are all packed, and you needn't unpack them. We'll spend all the time we can spare in the mountains, and then come back-to the house. It's all ready for you, Frances. It's waiting for you."

She stared about in fear lest some one might be overhearing his rambling talk.

"Don," she gasped.

"Nora has cleaned every room," he ran on, "and I've saved a hundred dollars for the trip. And Farnsworth is going to give me a raise before December. He hasn't promised it, but I know he'll do it, because I'm going to make good. You and I together will make good."

She did not answer. She could not. She was left quite paralyzed. He was leaning forward expectantly.

"You'll come with me?"

It was a full minute before she could answer. Then she said:

"It's so impossible, Don."

"Impossible?"

"One doesn't—doesn't get married that way!"

"What does it matter how one gets married?" he answered.

"But what would people say?"

"I don't care what they'd say."

"You mustn't get like that, Don dear," she chided him. "Why, that's being an anarchist or something, isn't it?"

"It's just being yourself, little girl," he explained more gently. "The trouble with us is, we've thought too much about other people and—other things. It's certain that after we're married people aren't going to worry much about us, so why should we let them worry us before that? No, it's all our own affair. As for the salary part of it, we've been wrong about that, too. We don't need so much as we thought we did. Why, do you know you can get a good lunch downtown for fifteen cents? It's a fact. You can get an egg sandwich, a chocolate —clair, and a cup of coffee for that. I know the place. And I've figured that, with the house all furnished us, we can live easy on twenty-five a week until I get more. You don't need your ten thousand a year. It's a fact, Frances."

She did not answer, because she did not quite know what he was talking about. And yet, her blood was running faster. There was a new light in his eyes—a new quality in his voice that thrilled her. She had never heard a man talk like this before.

"You'll have to trust me to prove all those things," he was running on. "You'll have to trust me, because I've learned a lot this summer. I've learned a lot about you that you don't know yourself yet. So what I want you to do is just to take my hand and follow. Can you do that?"

At that moment it seemed that she could. On the voyage home she had sat much on the deck alone and looked at the stars, and there had been many moments when she felt exactly as she felt now. Thinking of him and looking at the stars, nothing else had seemed to matter but just the two of them.

There had been a child on board who had taken a great fancy to her—a child about the age of one that was now running about the grass under the watchful eyes of a nurse. His name was Peter, and she and Peter used to play tag together. One afternoon when he was very tired he had crept into her arms, and she had carried him to her steamer-chair and wrapped him in her steamer-rug and held him while he slept. Then she had felt exactly as when she looked at the stars. All the things that ordinarily counted with her did not at that moment count at all. She had kissed the little head lying on her bosom and had thought of Don—her heart pounding as it pounded now.

"Oh, Don," she exclaimed, "it's only people in stories who do that way!"

"It's the way we can do—if you will."

"There's dad," she reminded him.

"He let you become engaged, didn't he?"

"Yes; but—you don't know him as well as I."

"I'll put it up to him to-day, if you'll let me. Honest, I don't think it's as much his affair as ours, but I'll give him a chance. Shall I?"

She reached for his hand and pressed it.

"I'll give him a chance, but I can't wait. We haven't time to bother with a wedding—do you mind that?"

"No, Don."

"Then, if he doesn't object—it's tomorrow or next day?"

"You—you take away my breath," she answered.

"And if he does object?"

"Don't let's think of that—now," she said. "Let's walk a little—in the park. It's wonderful out here, Don."

YES, it was wonderful out there—how wonderful he knew better than she. She had not had his advantages. She had not had Sally Winthrop to point out the wonders and make a man feel them. Of course, it was not the place itself—not the little paths, the trees, or even the big, bright sky that Frances meant or he meant. It was the sense of individuality one got here: the feeling of something within bigger than anything without. It was this that permitted Sally Winthrop to walk here with her head as high as if she were a princess. It was this that made him, by her side, feel almost like a prince. And now Frances was beginning to sense it. Don felt his heart quicken.

"This is all you need," he whispered. "Just to walk out here a little."

To be continued next week

Santo Domingo's Car of State

How would you like to be President of a Republic and have to travel in a freight car? That's what Señor Juan Isidro Jimenes, President of Santo Domingo, had to do in making his last campaign. The roof of the little car was of galvanized iron, and the thermometer registered one hundred and ten in the shade.

The President, as a special honor to a party from the United States, ordered his car attached to a little freight train. The noble descendant of old Spain then tendered the seat of honor on his right to the only "Señora Americano" in the party, and they began the trip to the sea-coast. The heat in the little car from the galvanized iron roof was intense. Señor Jimenes, who was campaigning for reelection, was elected President again. He deserved it, after that ride.

We Find It Hard to Save"

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

WE find it hard to save money at our house. Can you tell us any method by which other familes have been able to form the saving habit?

THERE are so many methods by which other families have been able to save money that it would take a whole book to relate them. Almost any method that has in it an element of compulsion—or, better yet, an element of the game—will serve the purpose. The compulsory methods are well known. Most widely used is life insurance in its various forms, several of which are almost purely saving devices. Any agent will explain about them.

The Christmas club idea has helped many families that could not accomplish anything otherwise. It has the element of regularity and necessity, which most of us need. Ask your local bank for details. Countless families have been able to save by keeping budgets. Another way is to tax yourself on a sliding scale for all expenses. Place a tax of 5 per cent. on all expenses for necessities, 10 per cent. on semi-luxuries, and 25 per cent. on out-and-out luxuries, such as moving pictures, candy, and soda. Put the money aside in a separate purse each night, and at the end of a year you will have saved the equivalent of a month's salary.

Some families are helped by saving certain small coins (ten-cent pieces, for example), or every coin bearing a certain date. Or you can fine members of the family for being tardy at dinner or for other small offenses. Any number of variations on these devices will suggest themselves.

Three Fundamental Principles

BUT with many persons and many families no start toward thrift will ever be made until three fundamental principles have sunk deep into their consciousness. I believe an emphasis upon these principles will help more than all the devices and schemes that ever were invented. They are:

1. Don't buy anything unless you really want it. 2. Put a fixed sum into the bank every week, no matter how small. 3. Never under any circumstances try to make up for years of extravagance by buying a risky investment.

Just a word about the first two of these principles. The third explains itself. One of the two greatest obstacles to saving is the fact that people are afraid to say no. They buy clothes, food, drink, and amusement which they really do not need, or even want, just because they haven't strength of character enough to resist the latest styles or fads. I don't believe there is a family, unless it is in the most straitened circumstances, that could not begin to save if only its members were willing to cut out vanity and display.

Live well. Enjoy the comforts of life. Have substantial food and clothing, and a reasonable amount of amusement. But don't buy an automobile, a new dining-room set, or a new hat just because your neighbor has one. Don't buy anything because your neighbor has it. The man or woman who indulges in expensive clothes and other costly habits gratifies no one but himself or herself, because everybody else is more interested in their own clothes. Very little money is wasted in this country on things that people really want. But hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted by people who buy things because others have them or because they see them in the shops.

Form the Saving Habit

PUT a fixed amount in the bank every week. If you begin when you are twenty you will have saved a goodly sum when you are middle-aged. Even if you don't begin until you are forty, you will have a tidy sum when you are old. Countless thousands of young men have failed to save anything because they couldn't afford to put $5 a week in the bank when they were young. They thought $1 a week too small and never took the trouble to carry it to the bank. That was the greatest mistake they ever made in their lives.

It is absolutely necessary to form the habit, to save. It matters little how small the amount. It is the habit that counts. Even a few pennies a week on the part of the very poor will buy a little life insurance. But most of the readers of this magazine, twenty years old or more, can save one dollar a week without hardship. If you do that, and do it regularly, you will form the habit, and later on will be able, in the great majority of cases, to put by a much larger sum.

Many very helpful booklets are issues for the guidance of people who have $100 or more and who wish to invest safely. If you would like to receive some literature of this kind, write to Mr. Atwood at his office, 95 Madison Avenue, New York, inclosing stamp for reply.

Four Men that Beat Death

FOR thirty-four days Everett Fitzpatrick literally hung on to a little reef of dry land half way up the west coast of Vancouver Island. In stormy weather he lashed himself to one of a very few trees that grew on the reef, that he might not be blown off and carried out to sea. When he was rescued, about the middle of December, he had gone out of his head as a result of his terrible experience.

Fitzpatrick, who is a rancher of Flores Island, had been over to the main island for supplies. On the way back, a November squall caught him, swamping his canoe and throwing him up on a reef near by. The canoe was swept away from him, but he managed to save from his supplies a sack of flour, a package of oatmeal, and a few matches. A case of coal-oil also washed ashore a little later.

At times the seas washed clean over his little island, and always there was that dismal, hopeless view out to nowhere. At the end of five weeks a couple of Indians saw him as they were passing in their canoe, and took him off.

A Camp on a Sand-bar

EDWARD PICHE went on a prospecting trip down the Athabasca River in northern Alberta. For a hundred miles the Athabasca is so broken with rapids that navigation is impossible for any but stout, flat-bottomed York boats. Piche's boat went safely through five or six of these rapids, but in the next one the boat

There is neither fun nor excitement in camping on a sand-bar when one is shipwrecked; but there was nothing else for it, so they set up their old camp-stove for cooking, and laid their beds flat on the sand. Then Piche and his party put in some unpleasant days of waiting. The river shores were mockingly close at hand, but the water was too cold to swim; and at night ice formed all around them, for it was already well into the fall. After five days another party of boatmen came along and rescued them.

Vernon Brewster, a prospector in Alaska went through an experience of the kind that tests a man's endurance to very nearly the breaking-point. He set out alone to drive down the Koyuk River to Nome with a dog-team, carrying three days' provisions. Thinking to save time, he took a short cut, but missed his way, and for three days more wandered about helplessly. By the sixth day his condition was desperate; for not only was his food gone, but he was tiring out, fearing to sleep lest he should freeze to death. He was presently compelled to kill one of his dogs, which he shared with the rest of the team.

For another five days he struggled on, sacrificing a second dog, and then, when death seemed almost at his elbow, a third one. On the sixteenth day he reached the mouth of the river, and staggered into the telegraph station, as near the end of his endurance as a man could well be.

While Daniel Stetson, a logger in the lumber country of British Columbia, was felling a tree, he was caught by it and pinned to the ground. It was a big Douglas fir, and as it fell it crushed Stetson's right leg into a shapeless mass, till it hung by only a few shreds of skin. Stetson grimly completed the amputation with his knife.

Stetson was a man of iron determination and courage, and, somehow retaining consciousness, he crawled over logs and through swamps for two miles, till he reached the shore of the inlet. It was a way of agony, marked by a trail of blood. Still suffering intensely, he climbed into a boat and made his way to a camp, another two miles down the inlet, where he found help. A motor launch took him to the nearest hospital on the coast, where the doctors declared his fight for life was one of the bravest on record.

Fifty-four Brides Have Worn This

THIS gorgeous old wedding gown, belonging to a Turkish family in Cincinnati, is two hundred and ten years old. It first saw service in the Dardanelles more than two centuries ago. Ever since then it has been handed down to generations of brides.

Three years ago it left the Dardanelles and was brought to America; and the other day it was brought forth for the fifty-fourth time to be worn to the altar by Miss Rebecca Holo, of Cincinnati.

Although yellow with age in spots, the dress, which is made of bright blue satin and elaborately embroidered in gold thread and spangles, is well preserved. Its cut and embroidery are decidedly Oriental.

In spite of the dress being fashioned over two hundred years ago, it appears strikingly up-to-date. The full skirt, lace front, and tight sleeves show in a surprising manner how fashion repeats itself even after hundreds of years.

Pomeroy's Popular Green-Grocer

FOUR years ago Harold Elsensohn, then only seven years old, came to the rescue of his father's vegetable selling business, and now has $1000 in the bank drawing interest at the rate of eight per cent. Harold's father is proprietor of a store in Pomeroy, Washington. Seeing that he was growing more vegetables on his two city lots than he could always dispose of in the store, he gave his little son a chance to help. The boy started out early every morning with his small wagon loaded with fresh vegetables. His instinct for thrift developed so rapidly that the parents had difficulty in keeping the little fellow in bed late enough mornings. For four years, rain or shine, he has made his rounds of the town. He is one of the best known individuals in his city.

Harold's father is now farming his city lots to their greatest degree of intensive cultivation to supply enough products.

Mr. Elsensohn and his wife are not permitting their boy to miss any schooling or play advantages enjoyed by other children. They are carefully depositing his savings; and they hope that by the time Harold is a man he will not only have

He Mends Shoes for the President

THE United States doesn't need a committee to drive moths from its ruler's ermine cloak, and it has no position at present for the most expert crown-polisher; but the President does need a good man to mend his shoes. Mr. F. Sumner has held that job since McKinley's time.

Colonel Roosevelt was the best customer Mr. Sumner ever had—he wonders if the Oyster Bay specialist can supply him with his needs: for Teddy thought nothing of starting out on a ramble that used up even Secret Service men—not to speak of shoes. Bright, cheerful tan ones were the kind he preferred, though they didn't take so much leather as Mr. Taft's. President Wilson wears the lightest weight of any President he has met. Mr. Sumner feels deeply his responsibility; for, when any crisis in national affairs arises, Mr. Wilson doesn't call any meetings, but instead takes a walk by himself. And, of course, if his shoes pinched or his shoestring burst, he might forget his better judgment for a moment. And a corn might alter the affairs of nations.

Digging Health in the Garden

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D.

THE Greeks, who had a piquant way of teaching, tell us that the genial bully Antaeus remained unvanquished until Hercules held him aloft and strangled him to death. The large-muscled Greek discovered that every time he flopped Antaeus to the ground, the old ruffian, by contact with his mother, Earth, gathered strength.

There is a great and fundamental truth in this legend. For the earth is a powerful, electrically charged magnet. By contact with it we derive a form of energy that "tones up" the cells and creates a feeling of well-being.

Absorb Magnetism from the Earth

WHEN children discard shoes and stockings and run barefoot, when they "squash" their toes through rich black mud, they do so because it "feels good." The reason it "feels good" is that they are busy absorbing magnetism, while apparently merely getting themselves in a condition that imperatively demands a bath.

In fact, our contact with Mother Earth brings about an actual recharging of our physical batteries. And gardening, our oldest occupation, is one of the most wholesome and beneficial of professions or diversions. To dig in the ground, absorbing the earth's magnetism, is a rare investment in health insurance.

Indeed, there is considerable common sense in the "cure" which Father Kneipp inaugurated a few decades ago. This consisted in walking barefoot on the dewy grass each morning for a stated period of time. Ridicule made the "cure" a fad, and then condemned it to death.

Dr. George Starr White, of Los Angeles, has demonstrated conclusively that there is a definite and distinct response in a healthy person when that individual properly (or electrically) grounded, faces at right angles to the magnetic meridian —which runs from the North to the South Pole—and is then turned to face north or south.

The blood pressure or "tension" is distinctly altered, and there is frequently a change of from four to eight beats in the pulse rate. Dr. White's experiments establish, beyond a doubt, that we are powerfully and beneficially influenced by contact with the earth—not from suggestion or superstition, but from a dynamic impulse that is definitely measurable by instruments of precision.

So, after all, old Cincinnatus showed sound sense and admirable judgment when he left the army to return to his cabbages. If more of us were to follow his example there would to-day be many more cabbages and flowers in the world, and far fewer invalids and psychic cripples.

If you will inclose a stamp with your inquiry about health, diet, sanitation, or exercise, Dr. Bowers will answer you by personal letter. He can not undertake, however, to prescribe for specific ailments. All such conditions require the diagnosis of a resident physician.

Sliding Downhill on a Glacier

NO, he's, not drowning, and it isn't quicksand—he's merely sliding down-hill. Up at Mount Rainier in Washington, they know how to enjoy themselves in winter even better than they do in some of those famous Alpine winter hangouts.

When you feel that a little fresh air would brace you up,—that is, if you live at Mount Rainier,—you climb several hundred feet up one of the big Mount Rainier glaciers, sit down, give yourself a push, and zip —you're off. You don't even need a toboggan, because in the first place it's impossible to drag one up to the top of the glaciers.

Moreover, it's safe sport: at least, so far no one has been known to disappear in the glacier crevasses, the way they do every now and then in the Alps. So your wife needn't feel that she is going to be a widow, nor have to sit fifty years for your body to move down in the glacier—like that lady they tell about in Switzerland.