An Editorial for Married Women

AT this moment, presumably, several thousand poets are writing poems on Spring.

They will flow the familiar Shakespeare model:

When birds do sing, hey ding a ding, ding;
Sweet lovers love the Spring.

Yet, with all these thousands of poems, the aspects of human life that most need the glamour of poetry thrown about them will be passed by in silence.

For instance there will be no poems on House-cleaning.

We have made some research in literature we have found no poem on House-clearning except uncomplimentary ditties like this.

In Spring the weary husband's brow
A look of sadness wears;
He works all day and then comes home,
To sleep upon the stairs.

Youth has wantonly appropriated Spring as its own special possession. All the poetry of Spring is poetry of romance, and fresh new life, and the red gods of irresponsibility.

Has Spring no message for middle life? Is there no romance in the common duties of the settled years—in house-cleaning, for instance?

We think there is.

House-cleaning has noble lineage.

It was in the Spring as we recall it, the Hercules performed his immense labor of house-cleaning in the Augean stables.

It was in the Spring that Jesus of Nazareth, a tiny whip of cords in His hand, cleansed the Temple at Jerusalem of the elements that defiled it.

All the functions of every-day life have a certain nobility about them, inherited from those who have performed them nobly.

And house-cleaning is especially glorious: for it is part and parcel of the great, renewing process that is the miracle of Spring.

The sun that warms the grass into new life must first carry away the snows, and with them the accumulated dust and dreariness that are the remnants of winter.

The bud that swells with promise of a new leaf must first fling off the dead leaf that clings in its place, a reminder of a buried past.

The throb and thrill of Spring is nothing less than the throb and thrill of a universal house-cleaning.

In planning this number of the magazine we have had house-cleaning in mind. We have had Mr. Bruce write on the sinister importance of dust, and Dr. Bowers in a similarly helpful vein.

And, for our own part, we have dedicated our column to the middle-aged woman—the woman to whom Spring brings no message, for whom no Spring poems are written.

We sing her praises—the house-cleaner.

The whole glory of Spring is a song in her honor.

If her soul be dead to song she will not hear it, and in that case her broom will merely raise a dust.

But let her attune her spirit to the rhythm of the universe, and with her broom she may fashion a poem.

For the greatest poetry is not written: it is lived.

In the hubbub of the workshop or the routine of the home—wherever work is done in gladness and singleness of heart—there is high poetry.

And the poet who merely sets down syllables in rhyme may well raise his hat in reverence to her who, with dustpan and mop in hand and a song on her lips, labors side by side with God in the Spring cleansing of the world.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

The Only Original Sewell Ford

By WALT MASON

THIS, then, my friends, is Sewell Ford, the man who makes the nations gay, who never wrote a line that bored, whose every yarn is reshershay.

We long have read his "Torchy" tales, which charm us every other week; their humor custom never stales, their point we do not have to seek. Full many a happy man has roared with laughter o'er a "Shorty" sketch, and cried, "Dad blame that Sewell Ford—he makes me laugh too much, the wretch!"

The man who cheers this world of woe, this vale where sorrow is a bore, who makes two laughs or chortles grow where only one laugh grew before, deserves the best that Fortune owns, and all for which his soul aspires; is worthy honors, fame, and bones, and all a mortal man desires. So it is good to know that Ford is well rewarded for his pains; he's always fixed to pay his board, and has a package in his jeans.

You see him standing by his door, about to toddle to his den, and all the things he gazes o'er he paid for with his trenchant pen. His "Torchy" and his "Shorty" tales, which oft have made your spare-ribs crack, bought all the lumber, lime, and nails that went to build his handsome shack.

It is unfortunate, some think, this Sewell person isn't twins. Long may he wave and wield his ink, and keep the country wreathed in grins.

"House-Cleaning"

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D. Author of "Side-Stepping Ill Health," etc.

TO a mere man, accustomed to find his pipe and slippers in their ordained places, "house-cleaning" signifies some-thing like a cross between a nightmare and an earthquake. For, in spite of all the achievements in science, invention, and labor-saving device, modern woman has not, in the mass, improved much on her ancestors' methods of housecleaning.

Take, for examples, the broom and the dust-cloth—those two abominable first-aids to disease. In ninety-nine households out of one hundred, dust is stirred mightily from the surfaces of floors, carpets, or rugs. Some of it is swept out, and some is deposited over everything within range—to be stirred mightily once again, after it "settles," by means of the dust-rag.

The Right Way to Clean House

THERE is only one clean, hygienic, safe way to sweep and dust, and this is to use a vacuum cleaner—not once or twice a year, but regularly. A well built cleaner will, without the necessity of removing anything from the rooms, clean furniture, beds, clothing, and everything having a top dressing of dust.

If the possession of a vacuum cleaner is out of the question, never "dry sweep." Use moistened tea-leaves, handfuls of damp torn newspapers, or one of the various excellent preparations for sprinkling over the floor. This will help to keep the dust from flying.

Also, Thoreau's simplified method of housekeeping—or a modification of it—might, in most households, well be adopted. Thoreau, you remember, when he found his geological specimens energetically gathering dust, opened the front window and gently heaved the entire collection into the adjacent parish.

Heads of households—by which, of course, I mean women—should follow his illustrious example. All gimcracks, useless "junk," heavy hangings, and dust-catching trumpery should be got rid of in one grand potlatch, such as the very sensible Siwash Indians hold occasionally. Life would then be easier, nerves would be quieter, infection dangers would be lessened, and man's harassed lot be infinitely brighter.

Hygienic Value of Paint

ANOTHER thing that has a hygienic as well as an esthetic value is paint—clean, fresh paint, having quality and body sufficiently vigorous and well developed to stand plenty of scrubbing and frequent "wipings down."

For old Archimedes himself could never begin to estimate the numbers of noxious germs and microscopic bugs that hold high revel on dirty walls. In fact, it is now known that, in hospitals that used to show a high mortality in childbirth and operative cases, the septic infection had its origin in contaminated, germ-covered walls.

Turpentine and alcohol, used largely in the mixing of paint, are excellent antisepticsalthough a note of warning should be sounded in respect to the use of wood alcohol, which may have a very deleterious effect upon the eyes.

See that a nice coating of glossy paint is distributed over those surfaces that should be painted, and thereby reduce the bug population in your household.

The same kind word might be said for a good, liberal coating of whitewash in cellars and in out-houses. Lime is one of our best germ-killers and deodorizers.

In fact, it is good common sense—to say nothing of esthetics—to look upon dirt, in any and all forms, as dangerous. It is a part of the new education of women to understand the actual life-and-death importance of these things.

Meanwhile, woman's emancipation from the thraldom of domestic labor lies largely in her own hands. When she uses to constructive purpose the great mental gifts which won civilization from savagery, and which have tamed and domesticated the nomad man, house-cleaning, the servant problem, and all other household problems will have been solved.

Who Is Insane?

By STEPHAN SMITH, M.D.

A STUDENT of the famous alienist, Esquirol, inquired of him, "Is there any sure sign by which the insane can be distinguished?" He replied, "Please dine with me to-morrow at six o'clock." The student complied. Two other guests were present, one of whom was elegantly dressed and apparently highly educated, while the other was rather uncouth, noisy, and extremely conceited. After dinner the pupil rose to take leave, and as he shook hands with his teacher he remarked: "The problem is very simple, after all: the quiet, well dressed gentleman is certainly distinguished in some line, but the other is as certainly a lunatic and ought at once to be locked up." "You are, wrong, my friend," replied Esquirol, with a smile. "That quiet, well dressed man who talks so rationally has for years labored under the delusion that he is God, the Father; whereas the other man, whose exuberance and self-conceit have surprised you, is M. Honore de Balzac, the greatest French writer of life day.

An asylum, superintendent requested me to examine a certain patient and inform him as to the man's sanity. I spent an hour or more with him, and we discussed a. great variety of subjects. He was very intelligent, humorous and inquisitive, and I could discover no sign of mental confusion or disturbance. On reporting the fact to the superintendent, he suggested that while conversing with him I should incidentally say "telephone." On the following day, while passing through the hall in which this patient was confined, he came to me, and we again entered into conversation, the topic which most interested him being current political events. In an interval I spoke the word "telephone," at which he became excited and declared that I was one of the conspirators. On inquiry I learned that he never showed any signs of mental disturbance except when that word was spoken in his hearing. He had been employed in an establishment in the constant use of a telephone, then a new and novel instrument.

On visiting a county asylum one hot summer day, I found a very efficient man in charge. The patients were all in the field, and he was alone. The little isolated asylum building for the insane was in excellent condition in every part, and I spent some time with the attendant, conversing on matters relating to inmates and the management of the almshouse, about which he was very well informed.

On finishing my inspection, he invited me to his room, and on entering he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. To my inquiry as to his training for his present position, which he seemed to fill so acceptably, he replied with marked emphasis that God was his only instructor; that he was in immediate communication with Him, and never took any advice from man or woman, but always followed His instructions. I asked, if God should instruct him to punish one of the inmates would he do so without consulting the superintendent. "Certainly," he replied; and, raising the cover of his desk, he showed me a whip, a sharp-pointed knife, and a pistol.

Looking at my watch, I arose, expressed my surprise that it was so near train-time, and moved towards the door, complimenting him meantime effusively on his devotion to his duties and his reliance on God. I was immensely relieved when he took the key from his pocket, opened the door, and gave me free access to the outer world. For years this man continued to do excellent work as an attendant, and it was only when allusion was made to this one matter of his source of instruction that he showed any symptom of insanity.

No Sure Sign Marks the Insane

THE preceding illustrations seem to prove that there is no sure sign by which the insane can readily be detected. While the grosser forms of insanity are easily diagnosed, there are vast numbers of cases that require the most careful and prolonged observation to determine the special phase of aberration. In some cases only allusion to a certain thing, subject, or person will cause the insane to reveal their illusions, delusions, or hallucinations.

The explanation of the apparent anomaly, that there is no sure sign of insanity, is found in the following facts: The brain being a complicated mechanism, any one of the innumerable parts may become deranged in its action. The effect of such derangement may be limited to a change in the function of that part chiefly, or it may involve a change in the action of many parts closely allied in physiological activities.

It follows, as in any mechanism, that the evidences of mental derangement will be more or less obscure or pronounced, according to the functional relations of the part in which the disturbance began. We- may derange the striking apparatus of a clock without affecting it as a correct time-piece; but if we change the action of the pendulum, we can no longer rely upon the clock as a measurer of time. So, in the action of the brain (though in a much larger sense, owing to the enormous number and intricate connection of its parts), the speaking of a certain word may be the only method of eliciting the derangement.

Every period in life has its special perils. But with the coming of old age comes the declining of all physical efforts and functional activities. The long active nerve-centers, now unused, shrink and undergo loss of vitality; the arteries become brittle by changing to bone, or soft and weak by deposits of fat; the joints stiffen from want of the lubrication It comes of constant use; the sensessight hearing, smell, taste, touchdecline in proportion as they cease to be actively employed.

The rush of business, the clash of rivalry, the heat of contention no longer stimulate to activity, but rather increase the desire for quietude, repose, retirement. The arm-chair in the cozy-corner, the smoking-cap, the dressing-gown and easy slippers meet every want. Eating, drinking, smoking, sleeping are the favorite pastimes. The body becomes overlaid and overweighted with fat, and every organ—heart, liver, kidneys—is clogged with waste.

All of these conditions lead inevitably to that degeneration of brain tissue which terminates in dementia or paralysis.

But is there no obverse side of this picture? Have we no power of retarding, if not preventing, the degeneracies and consequent insanities of old age? A very pertinent answer was given by a nonagenarian physician to one who inquired by what mode of living he maintained a high degree of health at such a great age: "I have always kept my brain and stomach in good repair and very busy." This answer was characterized by good sense, and it embodied two physiological truths very compactly stated. The brain, the source of vital energy, and the stomach, the source of nutrition, maintained in a state of functional activity, are capable of retarding the decadence of old age.

A surgeon of great eminence determined to retire to the country at the age of sixty and enjoy the remainder of his life in the quiet and leisure of rural scenery. He had been very successful in his profession, to which he had devoted every energy of body and mind for a generation. He was a popular teacher in the medical college, an author of great repute, and took rank in society among the first citizens. He purchased a large and well appointed estate, and with much ceremony and publicity retired from business and entered upon his new mode of living.

Sixty, the Old Age of Youth

ALL the conditions of his daily life were changed. The very stillness of the country prevented sound and refreshing sleep. He arose in the morning, depressed by the thought that no patients would call. Walking soon became irksome, riding tedious and very tiresome, and the affairs of his estate were uninteresting because the details were unfamiliar. He became irritable, morose, and melancholic; delusions of conspiracies against his person and property followed, and scarcely a year elapsed before he was pronounced of unsound mind and unable to manage his estate.

His son-in-law; also a surgeon of repute, became his guardian. Believing that the breakdown of the father-in-law was due to an abrupt change of occupation, the young surgeon restored him to his former office. His old patients returned, and scarcely a week passed before the senior surgeon was himself again.

Victor Hugo stated that when he reached the age of sixty years he was seized with a sadness which made him very miserable, but he pressed forward with his daily tasks with unabated vigor. At seventy he recovered all of his former buoyancy of spirits and life, and was as full of brightness and happiness as in his boyhood. Reflecting upon this peculiar change of feeling and outlook upon life, he came to the conclusion that at sixty he entered upon the old age of youth, but at seventy he entered upon the youth of old age.

He Has Banked Almost $60

ALLOW us, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce Marshall Perkins or Omaha, Nebraska, the youngest wage-earner in America.

Last spring Marshall grew tired of living on his parents: Life called to him, and he answered—he and his trusty goat. He hitched old William to his express wagon, drove down to the grocery whence come the Perkins macaroni and cheese, and offered his services as a special deliveryman. The grocer—not unmindful of the advertising value—put Marshall on the pay-roll.

That job lasted until snow flew. Then Marshall presented himself at the door of the bank where he was, by this time, a well known depositor, and offered it as his opinion that in any work the bank had to give out depositors should be given a preference over rank outsiders. The cashier agreed, and Marshall set to work shoveling the front walk.

The snow falls equally on the just and unjust, as Marshall discovered. He soon had quite a collection of both the just and unjust whose walks he was commissioned to clean regularly.

Then came spring, and a resumption of the grocery route in the mornings.

Afternoons Marshall and William, the goat, are employed in guarding a fruit orchard. Their lusty howls at the approach of offenders have saved many a raid.

Seventy years from now Marshall's picture will probably appear againbald and feeble, the richest man in the world. To-day, at two, going on three, he has $59.36 in the bank, and challenges any other two-year-old to show as much from his own unaided efforts.

The Girl Who Didn't Know

By ALICE MacGOWAN

Illustrations by Herman Pfeifer

B.L. HUMPHRY, fat, common, middle-aged, proprietor of a flourishing suburban grocery, a widower of a year's standing, wanted to marry seventeen-year-old Elsie Crosby. Not that she knew it; the girl's brown eyes, that held the same glint of sun that was in the ripple of the locks arranged in two "snails" low on the white nape of her bare neck, the sweet, unconscious youth of her, caught Humphry irretrievably when she came to do the buying for the little household of the three Crosby orphans. There, was the brother, Dana, a mechanical genius, struggling against poverty for expression; Henrietta, trying to study medicine while she practised trained nursing for a living. She had nursed Mrs. Humphry in her last illness, and later been the confidante of the widower's hopes in regard to Elsie—Elsie, ten years younger than her sister, the childish housekeeper of the little flat.

As for Elsie, her notion was that, being through high school now, she would try for a position as teacher. Humphry was on the school board: she meant to get his good word when he came to call this afternoon. Henrietta's was the job of explaining to Dana—Humphry would do his own explaining to Elsie. She stopped beside her brother's drawing table in the back room, and hurried her information into a word.

Long, lean, beak-nosed Dana, fretting at the bars of circumstance like a caged of his drawing, and glared.

"You're not in earnest! Elsie? Why—damn his impudence! I'd have thought better of Humphrey—old fool of a widower—sneaking after a chicken!"

"That's coarse and vulgar—and not fair," his sister halted him. "Humphry's a clean man⏼enough decenter than plenty of fellows you go with and like."

"The kind of fellows I like doesn't cut any ice," Dana came back at her hotly. "'Tisn't a question of old Hump's decency, either. This is against nature."

"I wish you wouldn't fly off the handle like that, Dane. Elsie's going to marry sometime. This is her first offer—and a very good one, most people would think."

"For heaven's sake, Hank!" Dana exploded. "You talk as if you'd let him have her."

"I guess she can decide for herself"—dryly. "They do nowadays. They aren't dragged to the altar any more. A man wouldn't want a girl unless she wanted him."

"He wouldn't?" Dana's voice soared again. "Old Humphry isn't fool enough to think a girl of Elsie's age wants him. Makes me sick—sick!"

"Well—" Henrietta arose. "Elsie does want the things he could give her, and she wants them awfully. I know better than you do how she feels about—If she married some one who could—"

"CUT it out!" rudely. "You're talking to a grown man. You can't put over that bunk on me. Marriage isn't houses and money and clothes. You're near enough a doctor to have had it ground into you just what it is. You know it, and I know it—and a kid doesn't understand. Humphry—Old Hump—and Elsie! Aren't you ashamed!"

"No." Henrietta smoothed out her gloves with fingers that moved jerkily. "You seem to forget that he can't take Elsie against her will. He's got a right to—"

"He hasn't!" Dana cut in fiercely. "Any old donkey that wants to hang around a young'n just out of high school, and see if he can't bribe her and fool her into what a poor blind puppy like that supposes is marriage—"

"See here, there's no use abusing the man." Henrietta slapped the gloves together sharply. "It wouldn't worry you if he wanted me."

"Worry me!" echoed Dana. "Why should it? If you choose to trade yourself off to a fellow like that, you're free, white, and twenty-one. Elsie's a baby. She doesn't know. Besides, she's different. Hank,"—his lean, angry young face softened,"that's a wonder-child we've got there in the other room—you and I—to be responsible for. She's a star—that girl. Why, she might be anything! Golly—I'd like to punch Humphry's old head for his impudence!"

"You call it that for him to want her?" Henrietta questioned steadily. "What if you find she takes him?"

"She won't."

"I'm not so sure. Elsie's crazy about his house—she calls it angelic."

"His house!" echoed Dana blankly.

"You don't quite know Elsie," argued Henrietta. "Queer little thing—she's made the step straight from doll houses to wanting a real home of her own."

Dana sagged down in his chair, staring straight ahead of him. He whose sleep was broken and his flesh wasted with longing for only a little time and money to feed to the traction controller, was better able than Henrietta to gage the strength of Elsie's desire for a house of her own—even for Humphry's individual house.

"So he got across to you with his proposition, hey? You've fixed it for him to come here to-day," he said on a falling note. "You'll get out of the way to let him see her alone—poor brat, putting flowers in the front room, sprucing the place up for his call. And you're speculating right now on what his money could do for you if Elsie—"

"For you too, Dana." Henrietta bit her lip.

Outside, there sounded the puffing of an automobile climbing the steep hill that led up from Main Street.

"There they are." Henrietta pulled on her coat.

"Humphry?" Dana whirled round; his eyes were hostile.

"No. Bob Osborne and the Parkers. Mr. Humphry'll come afoot; he still thinks the delivery truck is good enough to ride in of a Sunday. He'd buy an imported car for Elsie if she asked for one. Dane," she caught and held his glance, "don't interfere. We'd better not. Maybe it's what she wants."

"What she wants?" The young fellow shrugged away from her look roughly, as if it had been a physical grasp. "Elsie doesn't know what she wants. Wait till some man's made love to her."

"Well—it is what we're waiting for—isn't it?"

"Hank!" He jumped up and followed her, stopping her at the door. "Do you mean Humphry by that?"

"Of course. You didn't suppose he'd offer to marry a girl by circular—the way he sells coffee and sugar—did you? I should think she might know when he—It seemed to me that if he had a chance to—"

"Paw around her some!" Dana's face was black as he pushed his sister away from him. "You women—good women—ugh!"

He went back to his chair, and again sat staring.

In the front room, Elsie was making some last rather pathetic and trustful efforts toward bringing beauty out of clumsy, decrepit utility.

"You don't mind entertaining Mr. Humphry by yourself this afternoon, do you?" Henrietta paused, studying the lines of that unawakened countenance, the oval cheek, the long lashes dropped to the sumptuous coloring upon it, the eyes with their wondering, almost infantile look. Henrietta sighed impatiently. Elsie evidently took it for reproof.

"No—oh, no—I don't mind," she said in haste. "Dane's coming in, isn't he? Mr. Humphry'll think it's funny if there's just me. I'll tell him you're sorry that you had to go."

"Yes—tie my veil, dear?"

Outside a motor horn began to squawk with jocular insistence. Elsie, peeping through the lace curtain, saw a tall young fellow jump out of the car, and whispered:

"There's Bob Osborne. It's the first time I've seen him since he got back—a real, sure-enough artch-i-teck! I do envy you him just a little bit."

"Well, your time'll be coming. Good- by, pet." And Henrietta hastily shut the door behind her.

Through the curtain Elsie watched her sister being helped in. So far, she had always accepted without question the child's portion—to he left behind. Even now the legitimate attraction of Henrietta's escort, Bob Osborne, as a big, rather particularly good-looking young man with the braced male strength of outline that should appeal to a girl's eye, and a well carried head of thick, ruddy hair, had been put second to the fact of his being an architect, a designer of houses.

SHE was still lingering at the window when the sound of approaching footsteps made her glance around. Coming up the hill, over the uneven brick sidewalk, was her visitor, Humphry. Snatching off her apron and gathering up the carpet-sweeper, dust mop, and cloths, she ran to thrust them into the under- stairs closet, and then threw open the door to him.

"Good evening, Miss Elsa."

On the threshold stood a stubby little man with a pleasant, slightly humorous cast of countenance. He carried in his hand a striped paper bag, which he offered a little too late. Elsie was already backing through the hall, ushering him in, explaining zealously:

"Henrietta had to go with some folks

---

up to San Pablo. She was awfully sorry. Dana'll be in in a moment. Oh—"

From the back room came the sound of a chair falling, as if some one had jumped up and knocked it over; a door banged, a plunging stride went along the hall.

"Oh!" Elsie finished lamely. "I guess Dane's gone out."

Humphry nodded vaguely, and again put forward the paper bag. His face may have been red from the walk up the hill. This time Elsie took the bag.

"Chocolates!" she cried. "How did you know that I loved this kind better than any?"

Humphry smiled outright.

"I notice what you buy, Miss Elsa," he said eagerly. "I see you, whoever's

waiting on you in my store. Taste those and tell me how you like them. They're a little different—some a drummer just brought in to-day: If you say they're good I'll lay in a stock."

Gravely Elsie picked out a brown cone and set a white tooth in its edge.

"They're delicious," she pronounced at the first bite.

"That settles it," said Humphry. "I'll give that feller the order he wanted."

HE seated himself in the big Mission chair near the table, his feet wide apart. Elsie, standing opposite, reminded herself that she must use diplomacy. Here was the president of the school board at her mercy. Yet she mustn't just bawl out at him, "Give me a teacher's position"; so she moved the vase on the table an eighth of an inch and suggested conversationally:

"Don't you love flowers? I think they make a house so much more homelike."

"Yes, I do," said Humphry; and, his own enterprise heavy upon his mind, added the instinctive appeal: "I don't have anybody to put posies around in my house now."

"That's too bad—and your garden's so full of them." Elsie's response seemed satisfactory. The warm look she gave him brought the little man up in his chair, leaning over toward her, speaking huskily:

"I've got a pretty good garden, and a pretty good house, Miss Elsa." He tried to look straight into her eyes, but before her frank gaze, a little wondering, his own fell to the shabby carpet before him. He cleared his throat distressfully, then concluded with a rush, "All my house needs is somebody to take care of it."

Elsie thought with a certain compassion of Mrs. Humphry having been obliged to leave such a dwelling, even for paradise.

"People you hire wouldn't care about little things like arranging flowers in vases, would they?" she agreed. "I love to. I tend to the decorations for the church. Sometimes Mr. Cunningham lets me put them around in the parsonage. But he says it spoils a bachelor to have too much done for him; so I only get the chance when there's a guild meeting or something."

NEITHER Elsie nor Humphry was making any real headway toward the point secretly aimed at. He sat and listened to her prattle, plainly scarce hearing it. Once more he sought to meet her glance, to hold it; but again his own wavered and fell. As he looked down and failed to speak, the girl ventured ingratiatingly:

"I'd just love to come over, and pick your flowers and put them into vases for you any day you wanted me to."

Humphry got redder than ever. He sat so long studying those excellent shoes of his and making queer noises in his throat that Elsie concluded she had said something wrong. Of course she was seventeen—not a little girl any more. She began to doubt her abilities as. a wirepuller. Maybe she would have done better to ask him quite simply for his influence. She wished Dana had stayed. She was growing uneasy, when her visitor spoke:

"Elsa—you don't mind my calling you Elsa, do you?" When she shook her head, he went on: "I wish you could come up to my house and—and tend to things there for me. That's what brought me here to-night. I—well, I wish you could."

"I don't see why I can't," Elsie smiled.

"If you liked me well enough," Humphry put in quickly, his anxious eyes on her young face.

"Oh—I do—I do like you," she declared eagerly.

"Do you really, Elsa?" He reached over and got hold of her hand, the one that held the bag of chocolates, and hung on to it rather awkwardly. "Do you like me a little bit?"

"Of course I do," she laughed, embarrassed, and gently manœuvered her hand free. You've always been so nice to us. Why, I never go into your store that I don't get something given to me, whether I buy or not. I'll come and pick the flowers tomorrow; maybe I can have some for the Church. We're almost out of white ones, and your Shasta daisies are just lovely."

She was so pleased with the arrangement that it seemed a little surprising to have Humphry sigh and settle back in his chair. The pathos of his eyes was unreadable to her; only when we are old can we know the grief of that look which is sent after vanished youth.

"Take anything in the garden or the house—Elsa," he said heavily. "I'd like to give it to you—for your own. You could make something out of it, and you see—I can't."

"Who takes care of it for you now?" she asked, a little puzzled, but sympathetic.

"Oh, I have a Jap from the house-cleaning company an hour a day to keep things tidy, and I get my meals at the hotel next door to the store. It's handy—but I don't enjoy it."

"It does seem too bad for such a lovely place to be shut up that way." Elsie examined the thought somewhat sadly a moment, then launched out resolutely, with a child's smile: "I can't imagine having rooms enough. We're awfully cramped here, you see. That's why I'm trying to get some teaching to do. You knew about my application, did you? I wanted to speak to you this evening. I thought maybe you'd help me."

At last, not without some regrettable violence, Elsie had brought the conversation to face its real duty. She had wrested it at a stroke entirely from Humphry's service. That habitual puckered little smile of his was rather pitiful as he looked across at her sitting there, still unconscious.

"You don't want to teach school, Elsa," he said very low.

"I—I guess I've got to," Elsie hesitated, taken aback, disappointed. "Dane and Henrietta can't afford to have me just stay at home and keep house for them—" with an appealing smile. "I ought to help earn money."

"Men are the ones to earn money, Elsa. If a nice girl like you would rather keep house— How—"Humphry seemed to find great difficulty in articulating— "how'd you like to keep mine?"

SILENCE. How would she like to keep the. Humphry house? A surge of rapture, the exquisite faith that comes just before we wake from a dream, showed her to herself as housekeeper of that mansion!

"Could I—and not have to teach? Could we manage it? Would it—look all right? If Hallie and Dana—"

"Yes—yes—you could have them with you. There's plenty of room. Oh, would you come, Elsa?"

In her bewilderment she backed off a bit. Humphry was up and had both her hands in his.

"What is it?" she breathed.

"I'm asking you to marry me, Elsa."

"Oh!"

It came too suddenly to be quite comprehended. Elsie let her hands lie in his and looked at him. She was quite without any sense of attraction—yet there was no repugnance. With a flash of inspired wisdom, he said softly:

"The house needs you, Elsa, as bad as I do. If there's anything you want changed about it, say the word; you can have it made just to your liking."

Humphry's gods were with him so far, for he paused there. Elsie's attention was not drawn to the granite fact that if there was anything she wished different about the master of the house it would be rather late in the day to attempt changes.

"Oh," she said. Then, "The place is just perfect as it is."

Men get things in this world by taking them. Humphry put his arms around the bewildered girl, and when she instinctively ducked against the rough sleeve of his coat, an awkward dab of a kiss lit somewhere near her ear. That was about the way Dana would have kissed her; but Dane would not have held her so tight, his breath would not have been coming unevenly, or his heart beating hard against her cheek. Half terrified herself, she wondered a little at anybody being disturbed like that on her account.

"Then it's settled, is it?" Humphry urged in a half whisper.

"Yes," said Elsie.

THE first weeks of Elsie's engagement went unbelievably well. Beyond doubt Humphry was afraid of his own success. He let her alone as there could be no reason for supposing that he wanted to do. He made haste to enter into arrangements for Dana's invention; he offered funds for Henrietta's medical college term.

The ring—a big white diamond—naturally, he should have a kiss for it—why, surely; most reasonable. Fathers and uncles and elderly male relatives expected to be kissed enthusiastically for much less imposing gifts. Yet Elsie was aware of a restraint in Humphry's demand. He seemed willing to take her bubbling thanks, and the heart-whole lifting of her face to his, rather formally; he didn't kiss her on the mouth, as she expected him to do. She liked him for it. Maybe he didn't care much about kissing, anyhow. It was a comfortable thought.

In those days Dana was a study. He didn't quarrel, but he looked leaner than ever, was more taciturn, and stayed away from home a great deal.

The invention gave him an excuse for that. Now he had a first-class place in which to work on the model, a room to himself down at the Milling Company's. Elsie stopped him once, as he was going out, to ask him about it. He answered in monosyllables, and when she said, "Aren't you pleased, Buddy?" looking at him wistfully, he paused with his hand out toward the hat-rack for his hat, and asked, not looking back:

"Pleased with what?"

"Why—with everything," quavering a little. "I am. I'm ver-ree happy."

"Hell!" said Dana, jerked the hat down over his eyes, and walked out of the front door.

ELSIE looked after him blankly. What Humphry had done for her brother was both generous and delicateand Dana hardly spoke to him when they met. Henrietta was different; Henrietta was managing everything. She had urged that they go to Bob Osborne and have him draw plans for the remodeling of Humphry's house, so that it might afford a practically separate home for the Crosbys, when they came to live there after the marriage. Elsie, with her big diamond on her finger, went with her fiancé and her sister to Osborne's studio to discuss plans.

The young architect had never before given a serious glance to brilliant Henrietta Crosby's little sister; but Humphry's fiancé, by the bizarre match she was making, demanded his notice. For the first time, he received a genuine impression of her appealing loveliness while she sat silent, looking wistfully about her, and Henrietta very capably did the talking.

As for Elsie herself, she studied Osborne's big room, a little bare, but well proportioned, well lighted, its walls judiciously tinted; though a work-place, full of livable charm, and tinctured by a vigorous young masculine personality. The angelic house began to seem a bit out-of-date and over-furnished. Yet, when Humphry, coining to practical questions with Osborne, appealed to her, as he

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continually did, she answered with the pretty compliance of a daughter.

Henrietta urged the necessity of two more sleeping-porches, and a difficulty was solved there by Osborne's suggesting that the tower might be modernized to serve for one of these. In the end, Humphry having maintained that all final decision must be with Elsie, Osborne was asked to draw some plans, that they might call again for her to see them and decide.

But Elsie made her appearance alone, early one morning, at his studio door.

"I slipped away without the others," she told him naïvely. "Hallie—you see, she's always been used to deciding things for me—and he's so much older—I can't think when they're both here thinking."

UP before the big drawing-board where the plans lay spread, Osborne pulled a chair and put her in it, studying her the while. An adorable creature, a bit of tender, delicate, vivid flesh and blood, informed with a mysterious, fugitive, child-woman spirit—a little young Eve. He was aware of a difference; yes, there was a change—even in these few days since she was there. Her eyes—those soft, long-lashed, child's eyes—were over-bright, and her hands moved continually.

"Are you interested in architecture—in a general way?" he asked, as he picked up his dividers to point out the features of his sketched plans.

"Oh, yes." Elsie turned to him with a sort of relief. "I wanted to look at these pictures of houses you have—and the floor-plans. Might we—for a little while—before we bother with this other?"

Osborne, who had work on hand, and would very promptly have told any one else so, made answer to this artless propoition by smilingly bringing out a pile of old specifications and elevations. Bungalows, cottages, suburban homes, country places, he spread them forth tirelessly for Elsie through a long, happy hour, during which it chanced that no one came to disturb them.

At first the man just sat and watched her. He hunted out special designs, to enjoy her innocent abandonment of delight in them. He played with her as we play with a charming child, furnishing the toys and make-believe that keep it going. But Elsie was no longer a charming child. So contagious was her mood that when, at the end of an hour, she caught sight of her wrist-watch—the latest gift from Humphry—and jumped to her feet with a little cry, Osborne waked with her from the illusion—came back a million miles from fairyland, where "once upon a time" makes the most unlikely things true.

"Oh, I must go!" she exclaimed. "I've got luncheon to get for Hallie and Dane. Here I've wasted your whole morning— and we haven't looked at the porch plans."

"Come and waste to-morrow morning," Osborne invited. "That house is sound enough architecture of its type. We want these necessary changes and additions of ours to be in harmony—along the original lines—whether we'd choose to build that way now or not. In these questions of architecture, it takes a good while to know whether or not you're suited. You've got to live with the proposition for a timehold it in your mind."

Midway her quick dive for the door, Elsie checked; she spoke in a curiously diminished voice:

"Yes; and don't you think that's so about a good many things?"

Bob Osborne had no knowledge of the suddenness of her engagement, yet he answered lightly:

"Well—you women don't need it as much—you've always got the privilege of changing your mind. The trouble with the lath and plaster and brick and stone of a house is that it costs to change them, once you've got 'em built. Come tomorrow—or any time that suits you—and we'll have it out with those sketches of mine."

As Elsie walked home under the sparkling November sunshine of California, her absent glance encountered, the wrist-watch, and her cheeks went fiery at the recollection of its presentation. A season of patient serving had given Humphry confidence. To-day Elsie, out there in the sunny street, glanced from side to side as if she wanted to escape from something. She hadn't dreamed it would be like that. She cringed at the searing, blinding memory of his embrace, of his demand that she kiss him—and of what happened after. She had cried—oh, yes, she had forgotten that some one in the next room might hear her; she had forgotten everything, and had been noisy and violent—and Humphry was frightened. It ended peaceably, with the girl soothed, diverted, the little watch brought out and made much of. But terror was alive in her now as she looked forward to other evenings, other gifts.

After a while all her evenings were to be spent with Humphry; he would give her everything. He would give her everything. That had been one of the main arguments for the marriage. When she first said her yes, and for several of the days that followed, she had felt almost ashamed of the bargain, because it seemed to her that she was making no return. Now an abyss yawned before her feet, a chasm which all the response expected of her could never fill!

That which her brother Dana had counted on to defend her from the match came too late. Humphry's kiss had roused her cruelly, monstrously. He was not the prince.

AT this time she was out continually with Humphry and Henrietta, buying things, dining at restaurants, attending the theater. They went in taxis. It was her first real experience of life in big, lighted, bedecked, music-filled spaces where people gathered for pleasure.

The girl felt herself traveling swiftly in a mysterious direction, toward a goal the thought of which was terror. She only knew that she wanted help—help that she could not ask from Dana or Henrietta. When she would have done so, the words

refused to come. It was to strangers, people she scarcely knew, that she longed to cry out. And this passionate, instant, strangled demand for help deepened her girlish tones, loosed a vibration in them that no man could listen to unmoved. The glances that met her took fire from hers; heads turned to look after her. If there was a little dance in the school set, she had half a dozen proffers of escort; other girls' sweethearts broke from their allegiance and made love to her; the come-hither was lit in Elsie's eyes.

THAT first visit to the architect, with its clandestine flavor, made others easy. The plans were decided upon, the work put in hand, Osborne supervising, and Elsie spent some portion of each day with him. If it was up at the angelic house, the workmen about and Henrietta or Humphry present, she made no move in his direction. When she came to his studio, and there were other people there, as sometimes happened, she barely looked in and went on. It was when she found him alone that she stayed. At first they talked house plans,—the house in which she was to live with Humphry,—and their color came and went, their eyes sought each other's and shifted away from the encounter.

Later came those generalities which are so intensely personal. Finally and inevitably, the personalities themselves walked into the conversation, thinly concealed, wearing a pronoun for mask, pulling' "Some people think" or "they say" around them as a flimsy disguise.

If Elsie was a lure, a witches' fire, to other men, who were in her eyes but as trees walking, when her driven, homeless fancies began to focus about Bob Osborne she became to him an irresistible invitation and a torment: She sought hint as inevitably as the hungry child hunts for: food. She was alternately moved by her instinct toward him and withheld by Memory of Henrietta's statement that he was engaged to a girl in the East.

Osborne, a normal young fellow, strongly based, well supplied with good cold reason, and not wanting a touch of the stoic, had in his heart bidden the question of The Woman wait upon the establishment of a career. But he was caught beyond rescue in the whirling circle of Elsie's emotional storm and drawn in to its very center. He knew, at his sanest, that he didn't want a girl, however desperately he might be in love with her, who was marrying an old man for his money—and ready for a romance on the side.

Was Elsie that? In those snatched interviews of theirs she seemed always about to make some revelation—some appeal; yet, if he made the shadow of a response, she only gazed at him dumbly, or made haste to run away. It began to tell on Osborne's nerves. He took to smoking too much and sitting in the twilight—a practice fit only for the very happy or the very unhappy.

AT the Humphry house nothing remained but a final word in the matter of some decorations. They were all to come to the studio after dinner for this last conference. Osborne dined early and hurried back to make ready for them. Alone in the place where she had hunted him out to bewilder and tantalize him, he forgot his preparations, and went blundering up and down. in the big room through the blind man's holiday. A sense of futility and helplessness made him bitter. Dana Crosby—and brilliant Henrietta, whom he had once so much admired—what were they about to let this child make ugly wreck of her life?

A choking tenderness, sheer longing, bade fair to blot out all argument. It was raining—rain at twilight, nature's ultimate pathos. A fire of manzanita roots smoldered sluggishly on the hearth. He got his answer pat. It came softly along the hallway on swift, nervous feet that stumbled, and pushed aside the portiéres with cold, wet fingers.

"Bob," a very frightened voice quavered, "where are you?" And Elsie peered in.

"Oh—it's you," Osborne said hoarsely, backing away, switching on the lights with a hand that shook. Then, in a louder, a more formal tone: "I was just thinking about you."

His glance went past her, searching for Humphry and the others. Black and empty the archway yawned behind her. Against its shadow her little pale face showed startlingly, the rain-drops on it like tears. She was breathing hard and trembling all over, as she stood there in his door, looking at him dumbly.

"Elsie—what is it?" he whispered.

Her lips moved, but at first no sound came. Then she began in little foolish, broken sentences, watching his face:

"I—I came away while they were at dinner—I hadn't any umbrellaI forgot my rubbers."

"Oh." Two long strides brought him across the room. He drew her in to a chair beside his hearth, and knelt to mend the fire.

"They're ruined," she said inconsequently, and poked out toward the blaze her white kid slippers, soaked, muddy, one of them burst. "Dana got them for me when I graduated." She glanced almost furtively about the room, seeming in an agony of embarrassment. "He went without smoking for two weeks to buy them—poor Dane!"

Osborne rose from his fire-making, and stood looking down at her, desperately perplexed. When she threw back the Red Riding Hood cape that wrapped her, he saw that the front of the childish white muslin frock

Continued on page 19

What Dust May Do to You

By H. ADDINGTON BRUCE

Illustrations by John R. Neill

A NEW doctor had come to town, and the victims of chronic ill health were beginning to look him up, hopeful that through him they might at last find a way to shake off their various ailments. Among the first of his patients was a middle-aged woman whose chief complaint was of an unusual tendency to "catch colds." As she told him:

"No matter how careful I am, it seems impossible for me to escape colds. This winter 1 have had one cold after another, making my life miserable. I never go outdoors on stormy days. I avoid drafts. I keep myself warmly clothed, and the house well heated. But it makes no difference—I catch cold just the same. Indeed, there seems to be a real mystery about my colds. At times when I am obliged to subject myself to conditions which I am sure will bring on a cold, I have no cold at all. Then, when everything seems most favorable, I will comedown suddenly with a bad cold."

She was not a delicate-looking woman; her family history was good; a careful medical examination failed to disclose any signs of constitutional weakness or other need for tonic treatment. Puzzled, the doctor asked her:

"Have you ever noticed whether your catching cold seems to be connected with anything you specially do—anything out of the routine of your daily life?"

"Why," said she, smiling, "I have thought of that, and to be sure there is one thing I have noticed. But I do not see how it can possibly be a cause of my colds."

"And what is it?"

"I have noticed that almost always my colds come after I have been reading."

"Reading? Reading in any particular place?"

"Yes; in my attic."

"In your attic!" the doctor repeated, astonished. "Why, pray, do you go to your attic to read?"

"Because I have a lot of old books and magazines there, and once in a while I like to look through them. After I do this I usually have a cold. It is an odd coincidence."

"H'm," growled the doctor. "It is more than a coincidence. I'll venture to say, madam, that your attic has no ventilation, that it is badly lighted, and that it is seldom cleaned. Am I not right?"

His patient nodded an embarrassed affirmative. The physician went on:

"Not being cleaned, your attic must be exceedingly dusty. In that dust are microbes, which thrive in the attic's gloom. Sunlight would kill them.

"When you handle the books and magazines, this microbe-infested dust rises into the air. Some of it gets into your nose and throat. Then you have a cold.

"The remedy is simple. Either keep out of the attic altogether, or, better still, have the attic cleaned and keep it clean. Adopt this second plan, and you can read in your attic all you please, with perfect freedom from colds."

A prediction which, it should be added, was fully vindicated by events.

A young country woman consulted a physician in a near-by city, in the hope of being cured of severe recurrent attacks of "stomach trouble." Test her as he might, the physician could find no adequate cause for these attacks, until one day, after he had told her to return the following morning, she said:

"Oh, I could not possibly come back to-morrow, for I know that I shall be ill."

"Why do you say that? You are feeling well now."

"Yes, but I always have one of my attacks after I have been in town:"

The medical man sat up.

"Is it only after you come to town that you have these attacks?" he demanded.

"Yes. As long as I stay on the farm I am perfectly well. But a visit to the city is sure to make me ill for some days."

"Still," said the physician, "I think that this time you will not be ill. If you are not, if you are able to come to see me, I shall know definitely what is the matter with you."

She Was a Dust Victim

NEXT day the patient again presented herself.

"You were right!" she exclaimed. "I do not feel in the least ill to-day. But I can not understand it. How did you know I would be well?"

"Because," the physician explained, "it was raining yesterday, and there was no dust blowing about the streets. I suspected what I now know—that you are a dust victim. Hitherto you have been coming to town only on fine days. On those days you have inhaled and swallowed dust infected in all sorts of ways.

"Country dust is comparatively pure. City dust is not, and in our city it is

for several reasons particularly impure. Evidently it has been too much for your stomach. You are supersensitive to it, and you must make up your mind to keep out of town on days that are fine—until the city authorities see fit to improve the condition of our streets."

I have-detailed these episodes from medical experience because they bring out concretely, different phases of a menace to health far too lightly regarded lay. the, general public.

In fact, it is only within recent years that medical men themselves have really begun to, take into account the disease- producing possibilities of street dust and house dust. To-day, however, dust is a recognized subject of medical research, and investigation into its properties has already brought to light facts of which everybody ought to be made aware.

And, as suggested by the instance just cited, it is, town and city dust especially that is harmful to the human organism. The dust of country roads, as a general thing, is annoying rather than dangerous.

What City Dust Is Made Up of

"CITY dust," says Doctor Charles Baskeryille, of New York, who has made a special study of the dust problem, "consists of pulverized excretions and rejecta of many human beings and animals, the waste of hundreds of shops, stores, and factories, as well as the material which is worn or eroded from buildings and streets. It is constantly being subjected to a pulverizing treatment, becoming pulverized dirt, as a rule rich in bacteria, being distributed by the winds, suspended in the air, and distributed promiscuously."

The element of bacteria in city dust is what makes it particularly dangerous. And this element, it is important to note, is largely present owing to the carelessness of city dwellers themselves, notably in the way of spitting in streets and in public conveyances and public resorts.

Fortunately, many of the disease germs thus set free to become part of the city dust and to be inhaled with the dust are short-lived. Sunlight and drying are fatal to them. But many lodge where they are not exposed to sunlight, and some retain their vitality even after they have been dried into dust. Hence the danger of disease resulting when infected dust is inhaled by persons whose resistive power is for any reason low.

Strictly speaking, however, as is insisted by one authority, Doctor Robert Hessler, of Indiana, general ill health rather than any specific disease is the usual immediate result of dust infection. The specific diseases that are positively known to develop directly from the inhaling of infected dust are few in number, but of a most serious character, including as they do tuberculosis, pneumonia, and diphtheria. But the diphtheria germ, the pneumococcus, and the tubercle bacillus, even in city dust, are present with far less frequency than certain obscure germs which act, with varying virulence on different parts of the organism, to produce symptoms of ill health rather than outright disease. Ultimately, of course, disease is likely to follow.

What, then, are the symptoms most commonly resultant from the inhaling of germ-infected dust?

Disorders of the nose and throat, popularly known as "colds," are far and away the most frequent. When a person, like the lady who read books and magazines in her dusty attic, shows a persistent tendency to "catch cold," it is generally safe to assume that there is repeated exposure to some source of dust infection, with an unusual susceptibility to react badly to it. There even is reason to suspect that infected dust is the one great cause of most "colds." Certainly it is significant that arctic explorers, no matter how low the temperature, are quite free from colds until they leave the dustless air of the arctic and return to the dusty air of civilized life.

Causing trouble in nose and throat, infected dust is also, as indicated by the second of our illustrative causes, productive at times of serious stomach symptoms. At present it is impossible to say with any definiteness to what extent dyspepsia, that common disorder of our American city life, is brought on by swallowing germ-laden dust. But it must be at least a contributing cause in innumerable cases. The harmful action of dust infection is likewise discernible in some cases of so-called rheumatism. The germs inhaled get into the blood to produce all manner of muscular pains and aches. Doctor Hessler—who has studied the medical aspects of dust infection more closely, perhaps, than any other man in America—reports several striking cases of dust-caused rheumatism.

The logical remedy is to enforce sanitary regulations that will minimize the possibilities of dust becoming infected.

Many American municipalities have already enacted anti-spitting ordinances,

and many have put into practice improved methods of street-cleaning. But public coöperation, based on growing appreciation of the dust evil, is indispensable if American city streets are ever to become virtually dustless. And it is more than a question of keeping streets clean: it is also a question of keeping clean our street-cars, railway-coaches, and other vehicles, churches, theaters, offices, stores, factories, and homes. Everywhere an unending warfare on dust needs to he waged, a warfare which, in these days of vacuum cleaners, may be far more easily and effectively carried on than was the case not so many years ago.

To Housewives

TO housewives let me offer these few words of advice:

Remember that sunlight is fatal to microbes. Therefore let as much sun as possible into your homes.

Remember that a multiplicity of house furnishings not merely makes housecleaning more difficult, but gives germ- laden dust increased opportunity for lodgment. Therefore let the house furnishings be as few and simple as is compatible with comfort and esthetics.

Remember, finally, that house-cleaning in the true sense means the removal of dust from the house, not simply stirring it up in the air to allow it to settle elsewhere. Therefore, when you clean house, use vacuum apparatus, damp dusters, or other devices that will enable you to rid yourself permanently of the dust that has settled on floors, walls, and articles of furniture.

Good News for Men

What These Dances Mean to Us

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Look Out —the Cartoonists Will Get You

The Man in the Stone House

By FREEMAN TILDEN

Illustrations by George E. Wolfe

"NO, I don't know what's going to happen," Eadbrook repeated seriously.

The girl's manner changed instantly. She looked up at him with an expression of soberness that matched his own.

"Trouble?" she repeated after him. "You make me frightened, Walter. Tell me, quick."

"Do you know why your—why Ezra Mudge got me up here to-day?" he asked, measuring his words carefully.

"Why—I don't know whether I do or not," she replied, looking into his eyes. "Perhaps I do."

"I'm sure you don't," he continued. "That is, you don't know all. He wants me to desert Joel and Henry and Starr—"

"Starr?" she interrupted. "Oh, yes; I know."

"Starr's the man Joel brought from the West," Eadbrook explained. "Well, I'm to desert the rest of the crowd that's trying to do something to make Boxton real live place, fit to live in, and join Ezra in keeping them from doing anything at all. I don't know what his reasons are, Lou. I can't figure out why he shouldn't be glad to help the movement. It would be money in his pocket. I guess it's just sheer cussedness; and that's what everybody else thinks. But you see what he wanted of me, anyway. I told him I wouldn't consider it—not for anything."

"What did he say to that?" she asked breathlessly.

"He didn't say much, but he hinted something that made my blood run cold," was the reply. "He hinted that he'd stand in our way—that he would—I can't tell you, Louise! It's too outrageous. He has no right to consider you as something to offer and refuse like that. I told him so. Wasn't I right? Would you have had me say anything else? Would you have me go back on my friends? Tell me, dear."

IT was clear that Eadbrook, in his soaring idealism of the moment, was expecting from the girl nothing less than a complete vindication of the position he had taken. He looked for a reward for his uprightness; he wanted to hear that he was wholly and praiseworthily right. That was why the girl's reply shocked him. She looked at him with clear, appraising eyes and said:

"But is it worth making such a fuss over, Walter? After all, may not dad be right and your friends wrong? Have you tried to understand dad's point of view?"

Eadbrook gazed at her, stupefied. "You don't understand," he told her.

"Why, of course I may not understand it all," she admitted. "But it seems to me that dad thinks one thing and your friends think another, and they can't agree. Dad wants you to consider his side a little. He's angry, no doubt, just as you would be if some stranger came to town when you were as old as dad is, and wanted to impose his ideas on you. You think he's a terribly mean old man, and so do most other people; but I never knew him to do a single dishonest thing, Walter, never. He's very stern, and very set in his ways, but—"

"Oh, you simply couldn't understand," interrupted Eadbrook. "I don't expect you to, little girl. Women don't see the things we do."

"I wonder if you understand some of the things women do?" replied the girl gently. "I know that dad and Aunt Lyddy have always been very good to me. They brought me up, and educated me, and have always done everything for me, and they have a right to expect that I'll consider their feelings a little. You don't know how sweet Aunt Lyddy was when I told her about you and me. She threw her arms around me and kissed me, and we had a good long cry together. Of course dad didn't do anything like that, but he was nice about it, too. He said, `Louise, your life is your own. I wouldn't think of interfering with you, not even if you were going to make a fool of yourself.' I knew what he meant. It was a lot for him to say. Can't we just forget these other people, dear, and let them go their own way, and we'll go ours? Oh, dear, I do so want to be happy!"

"I tell you, you don't understand," reiterated Eadbrook stubbornly. "And if Ezra Mudge is so thoughtful of you, why is it he's never told you anything about—"

"Myself? I think there must be a good reason. Sometimes, Walter, when I wonder about it, I'd a little bit rather he wouldn't. There must be some good reason why he thinks it isn't best."

"You know what some people say?" the young man hinted darkly.

"People say anything when they are trying to guess at things. I don't complain. Why should anybody else? You say I don't understand, dear, but what is there to understand? What is it dad wants you to do? Just not to quarrel with him; that's all, isn't it?"

She seized his hands and put them against a hot cheek and held them there.

"I wonder if you've considered my position as much as your own?" she asked, with a nervous smile.

"He's twisted you around his little finger, Lou—the way he wants to twist me," replied Eadbrook. "I tell you, he's a cruel, unprincipled man, Lou. You can't see it, but I can. Aunt Lyddy's a dear old soul, but he's trampled her down till she doesn't dare to call her soul her own. He's a brute, and I'm not afraid to tell him so. I won't knuckle to him, couldn't look myself in the face if I did. Lou, I tell you, you don't understand. You can't understand. It's a matter of honor with me, and he knows it. And the meanest thing of all is the way he's playing you against me."

"I don't think it's very nice of you to keep telling me I don't understand," she remonstrated, still very gently. "I feel sure now that I do. I think you're just a little bit unreasonable because you haven't had time to think it over. But if we were to go on this way we might end by quarreling—and we mustn't quarrel, must we? Perhaps if you came back and saw dad to-morrow—"

"And crawl on my knees in front of him and promise not to dare to think for myself any more? I'm astounded, Lou, that you should suggest such a thing. I have a right to expect something else from you. You ought to stand with me. You ought to take my part. And you take his, instead. Lou, I demand—"

THE girl rose quickly.

"Please go now," she said. "Really, Walter, we mustn't do this. I love you—indeed I do. I do love you, dear. That ought to satisfy you until we see each other again."

Eadbrook took up his hat. But he stood irresolutely for a moment, and so fell victim to the temptation to force the issue.

"I'm going," he said. "But I'm not going to play the coward, Lou. Joel and Henry and Starr have started things by now. By to-night everybody'll know that there's going to be a new kind of Boxton. If you love me you'll stand with me. Good-by."

He left the room without another word. The tears stood in her eyes as she watched him go. She felt a powerful impulse to call him back, but she disobeyed it. A little tinge of bitterness, unlike anything she had ever felt in her life, came into her heart. "He wouldn't want to give up a bit to me," she thought. Then she wondered if she had been unreasonable. She heard his voice at the door outside, and she ran quickly to the dining-room door and listened. Aunt Lyddy was saying:

"Please don't do anything to cross him, Walter. He's a good man at heart. People are terribly wrong about him. They don't understand him. Only you mustn't cross him."

The girl's heart beat fast as she heard the reply:

"Why do you let him tread on you, Aunt Lyddy? He simply rides roughshod over you and Louise."

"Nobody treads on me, Walter," was the reply, with a patient little remonstrance in it. "You mustn't say such things; I'm surprised at you."

Then the door shut and a quick tread on the path outside told of Eadbrook's departure.

WHEN Ezra Mudge awoke at his usual hour, he found Louise in the sitting-room. The bloom was quite wiped off her cheeks and there were indisputable evidences that she had been weeping.

---

"Has he gone?" Ezra asked, taking in the situation with unerring shrewdness.

The girl nodded.

"He's going to make a fool of himself, then? So he insists on traipsing after that slick fellow from the West, does he?"

"Oh, dad, I'm so miserable," sobbed the girl, going over to the old man and taking one of his hands.

"He doesn't know which side his bread is buttered on," was the grim reply. Then the old man went on in a softer tone:

"Listen, little girl. Your young man accused me of wanting to sell you to him for what he calls his honor. You know you can do just as you please. If he follows that crowd long enough, he'll lose every cent he's worth. He'll beggar himself. If you want to, go ahead and marry

him. I won't do a thing to stop ye. But I'll never give my consent, not so long as he shows as little brains as he's showing now. After next year you won't need any consent; you'll be free. That's the way it stands."

"I'll do as you think best, dad," replied the girl. "Indeed I will."

AND then followed one of the most astonishing scenes that had ever taken place in the Mudge house. It may have surprised Ezra Mudge as much as any one. He put his long arms around the young woman, pulled her tightly to him, and kissed her twice on the cheeks.

"You're a good girl," he said simply. "I think the world of ye."

This unexampled demonstration was too much for Louise Searles. She fled from the room and took refuge in her own white pillows upstairs. Her brain seemed a whirling mass of incoherent ideas, words, and scenes. It was not until many minutes had passed that one clear statement separated itself from the rest and repeated itself several times:

"He don't know which side his bread is buttered on."

It was a homely expression that she had heard ever since she could remember. It had never had much significance for her; but now it had a new and appalling meaning.

"He don't know which side his bread is buttered on."

And then, as she considered that verdict of a time-worn old man upon a member of a younger generation, a little doubt urged itself deftly upon her. After all, was Walter Eadbrook entirely wrong?

WALTER EADBROOK had little opportunity, fortunately, to brood over his disastrous visit to Ezra Mudge. At the moment he arrived at his store a big touring car slid up and stopped with a grinding lurch. On the side of the automobile was a long strip of cloth on which had been painted and attached in such haste that the letters were smeared:

BOOST BOXTON!

Joel Tibb jumped from the car and ran toward the young shoe merchant.

"Where the dickens have you been keeping yourself, Walter?" he grumbled. "I've been in and out of your store three or four times, and couldn't find hide nor hair of you. Your boy Henry said you didn't tell him where you were going. You shouldn't run away like that just when we need you most."

"I'm sorry, Joel," was the reply. "I'll explain it to you later. I'm ready to take off my coat and go to work now."

"Pile into the car, then," ordered Joel. "We left Starr up at the Rev. Mr. Missmore's house. He's with us, heart and soul—I mean the parson is. Going to preach a sermon on 'Bigger, Better, Busier Boxton' next Sunday."

As Eadbrook stepped around the back of the car to enter on the other side, another big cloth banner greeted him:

A LIVE TOWN FOR LIVE WIRES!

BOOST!

"Starr painted 'em," explained Joel. "He can do 'most anything, I guess. We smooched 'em by putting 'em on before they were dry. But we'll get some better ones when we have more time."

As the automobile sped down the main street, Joel continued his rapid fire of news. "We've got two other cars in action besides mine," he recited. "Edmonds is running one. He's out talking with the officers of the Grange. We've got to get the farmers lined up for town meeting, you understand. Treadway hired a small car, and he's taken Jennie with him to get the women-folks interested. The town's gone wild over the idea, Walter! There's a few kickers, of course, but they don't amount to anything. And you ought to hear the way they talk about Ezra Mudge. He hasn't got a real friend in the place. The only people that don't say just what they think of him are those that owe him money. And you can't blame them, of course."

"How about the merchants?" asked Eadbrook. "Do you think we can organize?"

"I should say we could organize. The only man that's standing out is Dud Gillette. Dud's got the idea that some way, when we get things going, I'll sell more groceries than he will. Ex-Senator Williams is red-hot for us. He don't like Ezra any too well, you know. He says he'll start the ball rolling with five hundred dollars, provided we can match it with another five hundred. Here's Starr now!"

"Well, we've captured the church—or one branch of it," laughed Mr. Starr as he climbed into the car. "How's Eadbrook? First time I've seen him to-day, isn't it?"

Underneath the hearty tone Eadbrook felt that Starr was conveying a slight intimation of doubt as to the young merchant's fixity of purpose. He decided to explain without further delay, and put himself right with his friends.

"Don't start the car yet," he told Joel. "I want to tell you where I was this morning. I was up at Ezra Mudge's. Had dinner there."

"Had dinner—at Ezra's?" echoed Joel incredulously. "You don't mean to say he's changed his mind?"

"He hasn't changed his mind, and he hasn't changed my mind either. Let me tell you how things stand."

IT was rather an effort for Eadbrook to go into his personal affairs before a comparative stranger, but he saw no other course. He told the two men briefly what had happened. They listened intently; and every now and then, as Eadbrook was speaking, Starr uttered a vehement "What do you think of that?" and brought his fist down on the upholstery of the seat.

"And so that's where I stand," concluded the young man. "I tell you, Joel, he had me in a corner. It was a regular trap. Do you think I did the right thing?"

"Absolutely right," nodded Joel easily, as if the matter were definitely and happily settled.

But Starr was not so nonchalant about it.

"It's a bad mess, Eadbrook," he said. "It's serious. We've got to help you out, some way. I don't want to be the means of your losing the girl."

"You needn't consider my feelings at all," was the quick reply. "I just wanted to tell you how things stood. I don't expect any one to put themselves out in regard to the—personal side of it."

"You're all right, youngster," said Starr. "You're man-size. And don't you think for a minute we're not ready to help you to what you want. It looks to me as if that old boy had something on his mind he wouldn't like to tell. It isn't natural for a miser like him to bring up a child for nothing. It'll bear thinking over."

"Do you think he might be keeping her out of certain property or something like that?" asked Joel, turning to Starr.

"I think an antediluvian knocker like him would be equal to anything," was the reply. "Don't you get worried, Eadbrook. We'll put the skids under that old pirate yet."

TOWN meeting day dawned as clear as a bell.

Eadbrook was out of bed at the first cock-crow, according to his agreement with Joel Tibb and Treadway and Starr, and the four men had an early breakfast at the Commercial House. Clint, Weatherbee, during the meal, went roaring about the dining-room, threatening all persons known and unknown with a horrible fate in case the political program of the Boosters should fail. The spell that Mr. Starr had come to exercise over the enormous hulk of hotel proprietorship was almost pathetic.

"Say, Mr. Starr," he proposed, "you're sure you don't need me over there to throw some of them other fellows into the street if they get rambunctious?"

For at least the tenth time in the last twenty-four hours, Mr. Starr smilingly declined this offer of physical assistance.

Clint shook his head doubtfully.

"Some of them mossbacks need it," he added. "I'd like to give old Ezra a toss out the window."

"DO you know," remarked Starr, as they emerged from the hotel, "that big boy keeps me on needles all the time. I'm afraid he'll hit somebody for disagreeing with me. You fellows didn't start this idea of honking Ezra, did you?"

The other three men, laughing, protested that they had had nothing to do with it.

"You know what I mean," Starr continned. "Somebody started it, and now everybody that rides in an automobile seems to be doing it. Why, as Ezra passed me the other day, I found myself reaching for the bulb to give him a honk—just from sheer imitation. But I don't like it. It might put us in a bad light. We'll get what we want without resorting to anything like that. I confess I don't understand you New Englanders. If you hate anybody you seem to let it stew in side of you for about forty years and then—zip! Take this man Mudge, for instance. You folks let him kick you all round the place year after year, and now, without any warning, there's hardly a soul that can keep from throwing bricks at him when he goes by. It gets me; it sure does."

Joel Tibb looked up at the sky. "Cloudless and azure," he gurgled gleefully.

"Cloudless and azure is right," responded Starr. "This is what they call Republican weather on a presidential election day. We'll have all the farmers out—though I don't know as we need 'em."

And surely enough, from every point of the compass, from all the outlying hamlets of the town—and considered geographically Boxton was unusually large—a constant stream of automobiles, carriages, work-wagons, and even a few men on horseback was threading in toward the town hall to exercise the priceless gift of suffrage.

ORDINARILY town meeting was a purely perfunctory affair. Only those farmers that were directly and personally interested ever dreamed of quitting work to attend the humdrum sessions. But today they were making a holiday of it. Most of them were bringing their families, and before nine o'clock the town and church horse-sheds were filled and all the hitching-posts along the main street were in use.

The whirlwind campaign had done its work. Oldest inhabitants were getting together in groups and speculating on the important question of whether this crowd was going to exceed the Tilden-Hayes election crowd of 1876.

It was nearly ten o'clock now. Starr and Tibb and Eadbrook were at the drugstore corner, engaged in receiving and hand-shaking the newcomers, when some one shouted; "He's coming!"

Every ear knew instantly who "he" was, and every eye turned toward the stretch of road north of the village, at the bend of the river. There was no mistake about it. The familiar high-seated buggy, the horse, the erect figure—no mistake about it at all. Ezra Mudge was coming down to town meeting.

"There'll be some fun when he gets here!" said a score of watchers at the same moment. And then a queer hush came

Continued on page 17

The Thoughtful Blueberry

MR. BURKE of the State of Maine, Somerset County, was the hardworking owner of a number of those particularly reluctant acres that farmers have to deal with in the Pine Tree State. He breakfasted about 4 A.M. and he worked hard, but the results were not such as would inspire numbers of Wall Street brokers to telegraph him with regard to first options on his property.

Then the open season for game came around. As every Maine farmer knows, this is a season dangerous to many other things besides game. Most of the devastating Maine forest fires date from the visitations of the reckless transient hunters. A lighted cigarette tossed into Mr. Burke's pasture by one of them started a conflagration which burned, over twenty-five acres of land before it died out from lack of fuel.

Mr. Burke had always been one to take things as they came, and he made no exception in the case of this wholesale bonfire. His only anxiety was for the safety of his cattle; but once they were got out of the way he ceased to be interested, and by spring of the next year the episode was almost forgotten. The land had not been worth clearing for agriculture, anyway.

But in the spring a curious thing happened. Unlike the fields that produce two blades of grass where but one grew before, a strange crop grew up among the blackened, fire-swept rocks—a crop that this rough pasture-land had never before known. The tangle of worthless bushes and weeds had been replaced by a most luxuriant growth of blueberry bushes. This phenomenon first appeared on a patch of about eight acres. Last season, as a consequence, the owner harvested more than sixty-five hundred quarts from land that hitherto was nominally given over to pasturage, but that even the cattle had usually disdained to avail themselves of.

He Doesn't Need Any Help

AT retail, blueberries bring from eighteen to forty cents a quart, according to the season and the location of the market. At wholesale, they bring from six cents up at the point of shipment. So that from these few acres this Yankee with an Irish name obtained a gross receipt of more than four hundred dollars. The fact that the plants from which the fruit was taken did not have to compete for sustenance with weeds or other alien growth has given to the berry a fine, rich flavor. As a conse- quence, Burke's berries rival the best domestic product.

Gradually the blue-berry bushes have spread over the remaining acres of the twenty-five originally fire-swept. But Burke was not content to let chance hunters do their part. He took a hand in the matter himself; for, when he realized the, possibilities of the situation, he began to "plant" more bushes by the simple process of applying the match to his sun-seared pasture-lands.

Yet, in spite of the fact that an accident started him on the road to a nice little income, he keeps a sharp lookout for every man with a gun that ventures near his precious acres. If his brushwood needs to be fired, he prefers to attend to the matter himself.

No Headaches for His Neighbors

NOBODY worries when Professor Fitz tries out voices. He might have his studio in a hospital if he liked, next to the most sensitive neurasthenic in the place.

"Sit here," he says to his visitor. "No, close the mouth, please, and don't worry. I use only one instrument, and it wouldn't alarm a baby."

Yes, if you would know whether your voice will ever carry you into grand opera, and especially if you are timid and nervous, you should consult Professor Theophilus Fitz, the originator of the tape- line measurement of the human voice. He doesn't have to hear you sing to know whether you have a soprano, tenor, contralto, or baritone voice. According to him, the infallible sewing-room tape-line will reveal the innermost secrets of the vocal cords which may have baffled the most astute musicians and judges of music.

Hundreds of Measurements

FOUR years ago Professor Fitz set to work to prove the theories about human voice which he had evolved as the result of experiments with some of his pupils.

He spent six weeks measuring and studying the skulls in the New York Museum of Natural History, and later measured all types of voices in New York, experimenting with some of the, most prominent grand-opera singers, would-be singers, Critics, and teachers. He was permitted to invade the schools to continue his studies, and measured the voices of 1000 boys and 300 girls, telling them the possibilities or lack of possibilities that lay before them in the musical world.

Head, Not Chest Cavities

BY measuring the resonating cavities of the subject, Professor Fitz is able to determine the exact range and power of the voice. If a voice has been overtrained as the result of lack of judgment, the tape-line will reveal the secret in a minute. According to Professor Fitz, there is no escaping its judgment.

Professor Fitz has measured some 12,000 voices, and has found voices of unusual range and beauty in persons who had no idea of becoming singers.

The tape-line will tell whether success or failure awaits the student, and will reveal the deceptive qualities of the voice in their true light. In 100 tests made in Minneapolis, Professor Fitz discovered three voices of unusual promise—diamonds in the rough. Others who thought they had great futures awaiting them in the musical world were keenly disappointed by the secrets told by the tape-line as the result of a few careful measurements.

The resonating cavities, and not the lungs, hold the real secret of the possibilities of the human voice, according to Professor Fitz. A large, powerfully built man often has a high tenor, while a weak, undersized individual will have a strong bass voice, as has been demonstrated on many occasions.

About 57 per cent. of the women of this country have soprano voices, while the other 43 per cent. are contraltos, according to the tape. Baritone voices are in the majority among men, with tenors second.

Wives, Don't Let Us Catch You Doing This

A Newspaper that Is Never Published

WHEN is a newspaper not a newspaper? When it is just a little dummy like this one, the News, of the School of Journalism, Columbia University, which is written, edited, made up, and never printed.

"But it is a newspaper," insists "Boss" Franklin Matthews, the managing editor, who by day instructs the students in the ways of newspaperism and on Thursday nights toils over the News. "A newspaper isn't a thing you read," says he; "it's a thing you work on. What's the difference whether it's ever published or not?"

The man who takes a job on this paper has to be more of an enthusiast than Pulitzer himself. Who else would have the courage to seek, and secure, interviews with celebrated and busy people for a newspaper whose circulation is zero? Who else would spend hours on learned editorials for a public that would never be swayed by them?

On Thursday nights the City Room of the School of Journalism is livelier than the combined city robins of all the morning newspapers in New York City. The copy desk is rushing through the stories already turned in; the city editor is tearing his hair over head-lines. In rushes a sob sister with a story for the Woman's Page. Over in the corner the "colyumist" and the cartoonist writhe in the agonies of their attempts to be funny.

"You may think it's make-believe;" says the managing editor, who left the night city editorship of the New York Times to take this job; "but I want you to know that I go home weak with exertion after this' sheet goes to press."

Later in the week, the youthful journalists are told exactly wherein their stories have erred or gotten by.

She Keeps the Smile in Central's Voice

WHEN Central gets you the wrong number three times in succession and isn't a bit sorry for it, there's a reason, according to Mrs. Amelia Paddison of Cincinnati; and the reason (probably) is a pickle.

Mrs. Paddison is housekeeper, chief, cook, and mother to all the girl telephone operators in Cincinnati and surrounding suburbs. Her duty is to see that the girls get substantial food to eat. Upon this one thing, the company says, depends what the girl at the board is worth, to them in dollars and cents.

What Central Should Eat

IT is a cold business proposition, this diet of the telephone girls. Operators sick at home with headaches and bad stomachs resulting from eating hurried luncheons of pickles, cold sandwiches, and cakes, are a losing proposition to the company. So it is Mrs. Paddison's duty to keep the girls at the switch board.

Mrs. Paddison buys all the food used by the telephone company, and sees that it is prepared in the right way in the big kitchen of the company, and that it is served to the girls in the right way. She makes out all the menus, and sees that each meal is the well balanced chemical solution for bad stomachs and sick-headaches.

"I used to be a telephone operator myself," says Mrs. Paddison. "I know that little stunt of shopping during relief hours and only getting a soda for lunch on account of the lack of time, and as a result failing to show up at all next day.

"The lunch-room proposition has changed all this. We serve the very best food we can buy, and it is very carefully prepared. A girl can get one or all of her meals here. If she gets up too late to eat breakfast at home, she can come to work, serve a while at the switchboard, and then be relieved long enough to- eat her breakfast without hurrying.

"Our noonday luncheon consists of soup, a choice .of several meats, two vegetables, tea, coffee, or milk, bread and butter, and a dessert. This would cost the girls from fifty to seventy-five cents in a first-class restaurant; but they can order just what they want on the menu card and get a pretty good meal for five and a half cents. We lose heavily on the meals, but a girl on duty at the switchboard is worth more to us than half a dozen at home with sick-headaches."

A Fire that Was Watched 70 Years

ON January 1st of this year the fire on the hearth of this Missouri cabin, twelve miles north of Chillicothe, went out for the first time in seventy years.

It was back in '46 that R. M. Duckworth, a young Kentuckian, started to emigrate to Missouri, and had a sentimental longing to take something with him to bind him to his native State. So he took coals from the hearth of his mountain cabin, and carried them in an old kettle which he swung to the back of the wagon.

All day the coals were kept alive, and at noon and night were fanned into a camp-fire in the primeval wilderness. And when the pioneer reached his destination, the fire was lighted, and kept burning near the wagon until the cabin was built with its rough but generous fireplace of native stone. Then a fire was lighted on the hearth, and from that day until the first of this year it was never allowed to go out.

When the settler went on long trips with grist, his last admonition was always: "Watch the fire, that it does not go out."

Eight children were born and grew up around this hearth, and they heard many times the story of the fire that came from Kentucky and had never gone out. Time passed. The children grew up and married, and took with them coals from the hearth to start a fire in their own fireplaces.

The Last Watcher of the Fire

FINALLY they were all gone but one son who never married. Ira Duckworth stayed on, and cherished more sentiment for the fire than any of the rest. The father died, and Ira kept his mother in the cabin, tending her through long years of invalidism until she died at ninety.

The keeping of the fire had become a sacred rite with him—and year after year he lived alone and watched the fire.

But at last the old cabin became untenable, and Ira built a new frame house of two rooms with a stove. Somehow, he could not bring himself to take the fire that had blazed through the wilderness and burned on the open cabin hearth and shut it up in an old black stove. So on the first day of the year he let it die down to embers, and then to gray ashes: and at last the fire of the pioneer was out.

The Man in the Stone House

Continued from page 14

over the street. Everybody was looking. Everybody was waiting.

As the old man drove into the square he looked neither to the right nor to the left: He seemed utterly oblivious of the faces that were turned toward him. His head was thrown back, he held the reins with the easy grace of a skilful driver, and there was something so sublimely courageous in his attitude that nobody spoke.

Then, suddenly, an automobile horn honked.

And now occurred a demonstration of that phenomenon of mob hatred which Starr had spoken of several hours before. The first croaking honk was but a signal. Whether it was a prearranged signal, nobody really knew. But, obedient to some wild, barbaric impulse, every horn of the thirty or forty automobiles parked in the square began to honk.

Ezra Mudge's grip could be seen to tighten instinctively on the reins. His eyes were fixed straight ahead of him. The horse, quickened and frightened by the throaty greeting, would have bolted but for the guidance of a masterful hand. Honk! Honk! Honk!

It was cruel. It was savage. It was senseless. There could be no defense of the brutality of it. Starr's face reddened and then shaded out to white as he heard it. Murmurs of "Stop it! Stop that racket!" went from group to group. But the honking went on: Honk! Honk! Honk!

Some of the hands on the bulbs were those of irresponsible youths; but in many cases it was the owners of the cars that were guilty. Men who had for years paid the tribute of respect to the old man were now sending forth a raucous defiance to him through the medium of this insulting din. All the compressed rancor of a generation was expressed in the cannonade.

"By George!" said Starr nervously. "It isn't right. It isn't fair. And it'll hurt us, Joel. Look at the old man! You can't help admiring his grit. He's a regular Roman. They don't feaze him a bit."

But Joel Tibb was in no such catholic mood. The honking was music to his ears. It spoke for him; it expressed what he had been aching to express. His turn had come.

"He deserves it!" Joel Cried ecstatically. "He's getting what was coming to him."

The old man drove on. It was observed that his weather-worn old face was dull red and that his jaw trembled. But that was all. As the last vicious honk died away, he could be seen driving into the yard back of the house of Doctor Crumb—one of the few men who now clung to him—with his head still erect and defiant.

THE seating capacity of the town hall was entirely inadequate. It was soon apparent that the standing capacity was likewise inadequate. Boxton had never seen anything like this: the aisles choked up, the little gallery overflowing, men and women lined up at the rear of the seats, Laid a pushing, elbowing, neck-craning crowd outside the doors. There were strange faces, too; and it was evident that citizens of other towns had deserted their own town meetings to enjoy the larger attraction that Boxton was offering.

The crowd was hysterical, like all crowds. A loud sneeze, a dry cough, a cheap witticism, was the signal for an outburst of laughter and stamping. It was the kind of crowd that has no heart; no sympathy, and, temporarily, no sense. It was the kind of mob that is capable of anything except justice.

Many had come strictly on business. They were the ones who wished to boost Boxton. Others had come from curiosity, or from a vague belief that their presence was somehow necessary to the public welfare, or because the Banner had advertised effectively. But the majority had come to see a free and wonderful show; to witness the defeat of a tyrant; to exercise the pleasant power of turning down their thumbs at the proper moment.

Ezra Mudge sat quietly in the third row, center, with Dr. Crumb at his side.

The usual routine business went ahead at an unprecedented pace. Regular appropriations were voted with no dissent and no debate. Even the matter of putting a concrete bridge over the Austin Brook, which under different circumstances would have brought forth vehement opposition, passed affirmatively without protest.

The voters were impatiently waiting for the "star" act of the show.

By acclamation Mr. J. Bradlee Starr of California was given the privilege of addressing the meeting on a subject which, according to Moderator Tibb, was nearest the hearts of a majority of those present. Then, as Mr. Starr came forward to the stage and mounted it, the crowd gave voice to their pent-up emotions.

MR. STARR was in his best vein. He thanked the citizens for the generosity of their sentiments toward him. (Applause.) Never in all his life had he been granted the boon of addressing an audience of such manifest intelligence. (Tumultuous applause on the part of the intelligent audience.) This was a day that he could never forget. But he would not be so egotistic as to assume that he alone was the object of such a demonstration. It was a tribute to no man, nor to any set of men, but to a noble and progressive movement—to boost Boxton. (Tremendous excitement.)

The speaker modestly reminded the citizens that he personally was not a resident of Boxton, and that he had no right to appear before them in any other role than that of a business counsel whose advice had been requested by certain prominent citizens. In other words, he was not presuming to tell them how to spend their money. (A voice: "That's all right, mister; you go right ahead.")

Thereupon Mr. Starr proposed, in crisp, striking sentences, a scheme by which Boxton might boost itself. In his opinion, after carefully investigating the possibilities of the town, they had not been developed to anything like their capacity. Why was it? Was it lack of business acumen on the part of the merchants as individuals? No! Was it the lack of a patriotic feeling? Certainly not! Why, then? Was it not that a certain get-together spirit had been lacking? And why had this spirit been lacking? Alight it not be because there was a small body of men, possibly only one man, who looked with disfavor on progress, and was, in fact, a pessimist of the deepest dye?

As Starr asked the question he looked straight down at the person of Ezra Mudge, whose eyes, in turn, were fixed upon him. The challenge was unmistakable. It was the public announcement of the challenge that had been given and taken in the sitting-room of Ezra's house.

An uproar followed. The name "Mudge" was repeated from mouth to mouth. There was laughter. There were ironic catcalls from the gallery. There were loud cries of "Put him out!" which referred only too plainly to the old Man in the third row, center.

Ezra Mudge leaned over to Dr. Crumb and whispered; otherwise he gave no sign of emotion.

The crowd was with Starr. He knew it; and, instead of making him flamboyant or oratorical, it had the contrary effect. He talked shrewdly, pointedly, almost as a native-might talk. He unfolded his plan, step by step, for advertising Boxton, for bringing in capital and business enterprises, for attracting summer visitors, for developing every possibility offered by natural or artificial resources.

Starr finished and went out at the side

---

of the platform. He was followed by Henry Treadway.

Mr. Treadway had obviously prepared a speech and committed it to memory. It was his first appearance as a public speaker, and he trembled visibly as he began to talk. He uttered several sentences and broke down. Finally, after one last despairing effort, he turned and fled from the platform.

"Mr. Moderator!"

"Mr. Mudge!"

There was absolute silence as Ezra Mudge turned and faced his townsmen.

"Will you come on the platform?" invited Joel Tibb, as a matter of official fairness.

Ezra Mudge first shook his head; then, suddenly changing his mind, he made his way up the steps at the side of the stage. As he went, a place was made for him. There were only two men in the town hall who could have got through the crowd as easily as did Ezra Mudge—and the other man was Starr.

"WELL, my friends," began Ezra, with-out displaying the slightest recognition of the hostility that glared at him from every side, "you've come to have a good time, and you're having it. It wouldn't be any use for me to tell you that you'll be paying for it later. You're on a regular picnic, and you don't care anything about tax bills—"

Honk! came a blast from an automobile horn concealed somewhere in the rear seats.

Ezra seemed not to hear it.

"So there's a pessimist in Boxton, is there?" he went on shrilly. "There's one man that's been holding back the town"

Honk! said the horn, its voice dying off with the comical effort of a sick goose.

"Shame! Stop it!" echoed a few voices.

"No! Honk him again!" advised others.

At the same time, a number of youths in the gallery, not being provided with horns, were imitating the sound with their throats, in dismal unison. Joel Tibb was pounding frantically for order. Only a few eyes detected a burly figure creeping along through the crowd around the front of the platform.

There came a startled shout from Ezra Mudge, and his body could be seen to stiffen. A powerful voice was roaring, "Nobody wants to hear ye; get down out of that!"—and simultaneously with the voice Ezra's right leg began to move, in spite of stubborn resistance, toward the edge of the platform. Only a few of the crowd could see what was going on, but the word ran like fire in parched grass:

"Clint Weatherbee's got him by the leg!"

It was just what Starr had feared. The irrepressible, overgrown booby of a hotel proprietor had broken loose and was working for the cause! He had crept along the front seats with a cane in his hand, and seized the old man's ankle with its curved handle; and, perfectly helpless and outraged, Ezra Mudge was being slowly drawn toward the abyss.

"Leggo my leg, you fool!" hissed the old man.

"You better git down!" came the reply.

The crowd was in an uproar. Everybody was talking at once. In the name of law and order, two constables started from the rear of the hall to the rescue. At the same moment, Starr and Treadway, in honest indignation at the clownish act, rushed on the stage from the wings.

It was too late. The old man leaned backwards to save himself, and at the same time Clint Weatherbee gave a vicious tug at the cane. The sudden cessation of resistance threw Clint off his balance, and he went to the floor with a thud. Nothing but that accident could have saved Ezra from injury. As it was, he shot from the platform directly upon the prostrate form of his assailant.

The old man never uttered a sound. He came to his feet like a cat, and started for the door; and a moment afterward, followed by Dr. Crumb, he was out of the hall.

The appropriation was voted without a protest. The boosters were in absolute control; the boost was on.

YOUNG Eadbrook left the hall about one o'clock and went to the hotel for dinner. As he came out of the hotel he saw Louise Searles walkin swiftly toward him. He saw her serious face; he felt that she was seeking him and he stood irresolutely, waiting, fighting an impulse to run.

She wasted no words. With trembling lips, and with tears trickling down her cheeks, she said:

"I wrote you a letter, and then I tore it up. I just had to come down and tell you what I felt. I never dreamed that you could be guilty of such a thing. How could you stoop so low? An old man—why, you might have killed him! How could you do it, Walter? And you said you—cared for me!"

"For heaven's sake, listen, Lou" began Eadbrook, reaching out his hand.

"No; don't speak to me!" she commanded, with a little stamp of her foot on the pavement. Then she turned and hurried away.

Eadbrook made no attempt to detain her. He went back into the hotel, fell limply into a chair, and pressed his hands against his throbbing head.

Then he heard Joel Tibb's exuberant voice: "Well, Walter, everything's gone our way now!"

To be continued next week

Men Who Enjoy House-Cleaning

The Girl Who Didn't Know

Continued from page 7

beneath was torn and muddied, as though she had come to her knees. There was a little patch of mud on her cheek back by the ear; the shining mass of hair was ready to tumble about her shoulders.

"Elsie, what's happened? Was there an accident?"

She nodded up at him, her pitiful child's mouth a little open.

"I fell. I was running—and I fell down." Her harried gaze came back to rest upon the damage. "lt's my graduating dress, too—but it'll wash."

"Running!" Osborne echoed the one word. Then, scarcely above his breath: "The others—are they—?"

"THE others!"—startled, half rising, pulling her cape about her. "I had forgotten. We were all to be here this evening, weren't we? They'll come straight here after me. Oh, they mustn't get here before I've had a chance to talk to you!"

"To talk to me?"

"Yes—you!" It was a cry. "I haven't got anybody else. I haven't got anybody in the world. Hal's going to medical lectures and all taken up with that. Dane"—she steadied her trembling lips— "Dane doesn't think of anything but his machine, and—you wouldn't understand why I can't talk to them, anyhow. It's because he—they—" She sobbed outright. "Oh, you wouldn't understand about that."

"I would—I do," Osborne cut in swiftly. "I understand everything—about you. Talk—Elsie. This is your chance. They'll be here any minute. Talk quick. What is it you want to say to me?"

His strained voice sounded peremptory; but, like a little child or a dumb creature, Elsie laid hold of the encouragement in his look.

"It's about my—my engagement."

She sank back and sat with drooping head, not lifting her eyes to him again as she went on:

"I—did you think it was very queer when you first heard of it? I did. I was sort of in it before I knew. Then"—the voice was very low"when you've agreed—when you've made a promise—it seems silly and childish to say you never meant it—because you did kind of mean it, you know."

SHE was silent, sitting shrunk down in the chair.

"You did mean it." He was almost stern. "Is that what you wanted to tell me?"

She glanced up fleetingly at that. Chilled, disheartened, Elsie yet had courage; for she said, with some steadiness:

"No. I wanted to ask—I have to know—Henrietta said you were engaged to some girl away from here. Are you?"

"I'm not."

In the moment that he stood tense, waiting, his eye missed the big diamond from the hands clutched together in her lap.

"Well, then—" A crimson shame rushed over her pale face, till it was like a rose. "I'll have to ask you out plain. Bob, do you—love me—a little?"

"No!" Down on his knees beside her chair, Osborne gathered it and her in a long-armed, gripping hug. "I adore you, Elsie. I dote on you. I'm crazy about you. I couldn't love you a little if I were to he hanged for it!"

With a sigh, her young body relaxed against him; the wet hair fell away from its last pin and tingled against his cheek as her head lay back on his shoulder.

"I had to come to you," she repeated. A little shudder nestled her closer in his arms. "There was nobody else. I can't marry him—oh, I can't!"

It was these words—in the raised, overwrought girlish voice—that stopped Humphry short of the room door. His coming had been soundless(he had not forgotten his rubbers, even in hurrying after a truant bride); as silently he raised the portiere. Upon the instant Elsie spoke again, crying out accusingly:

"How could I marry him? I can't bear to have him touch me! I—maybe I'm queer that way—but when he wants me to kiss him, I think I'll—just—die!"

"Poor child—poor baby—my little Elsie!" came Osborne's big voice, with the unmistakable, deep mating tone in it. "But me—you don't feel—?"

"Oh, you!"

Elsie's coo was like an exquisite echo of Osborne's note. Humphry saw her lift that adorable curved red mouth to Osborne's lips, then snatch his hand, to cover it with passionate kisses—till, with an inarticulate exclamation, he swept her back into his arms and laid his cheek upon hers.

With a gesture that had a certain quality of eloquence, Humphry's open hand released the curtain. The provident rubbers made no sound—of announcement, of accusal, or even of renunciation they went quickly down the hall and out.

Osborne worked over his poor girl with patient gentleness. He took off the wrecked white slippers, so that her feet could be dried quickly; straightened down and brushed the crumpled, steaming ruffles; with a glass of water and his handkerchief washed the muddied cheek, between kisses, murmuring over and over:

"My little Elsie—mine! You did come to me, darling. You're safe now—nothing shall ever take you away from me again. Just as soon as you're comfortable and all right, we'll go straight out and be married—won't we?"

"Oh!" Her drowned eyes lighted. She smiled up at him, clinging to his arm. "Could we—before they find out?"

IT might have been half an hour later that they stepped forth together into the wet street. The rain was over; a watery moon made the pavements shine. With a little exclamation, Elsie suddenly pressed up against Osborne. Swinging round the corner ahead came Dana and Henrietta.

"That's all right, honey," he reassured her. "That's just as it should be. I'll ask them to go with us down to the clerk's office for the license, and over to the church. We want to ask them anyhow, don't we?"

Elsie held tight to him without a word. The four came together under a street lamp. Elsie's mute gaze went swiftly from Henrietta's face to Dana's. Osborne spoke at once:

"Crosby—Henrietta—Elsie and I are on our way to be married—now—tonight. Do you people want to come over to Mr. Cunningham's with us? Could Elsie stay with you there while I go up and tell Humphry?"

"You needn't—he knows already." Henrietta's eyes were hard. But Dana grabbed his little sister, choking:

"God bless you, kid—you too, old man," as a hand shot out to shake Osborne's. "I'll run ahead to the courthouse. You've both got to sign, but I can hunt up the clerk by the time you get there."

"I'll go with you." Henrietta made swift choice of the lesser evil. Hurrying to keep pace with her brother's long stride, she looked back to where Bob and Elsie, leaning toward each other, walked visibly in the immemorial radiance. "I hope you're satisfied, Dana Crosby," she snapped.

Dane glanced around for himself, and when his eye came back to Henrietta it held a tincture of compassion.

"I am," he said emphatically—adding, with his inveterate grin: "And I notice you're not. But the feelings of two leftovers like you and me don't make a two cents' worth of difference while there's anything on this old earth as right as that back there."

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