Does Travel Pay?

What about travel?

Let us get the terms straight, first. By travel I do not mean merely going somewhere: there is a difference between traveling and getting over the ground.

Fabre, the great French scientist,—whose books on the life of the spider are as fascinating as any fiction,—resisted all attempts to draw him away from home; yet he explored and charted a new universe.

It isn't how far you go, but what you learn, that counts. And if you know how, the right kind of travel doesn't cost much.

Oh, yes; I know what you will say: "Hotels at $5 a day."

But I have stopped at a clean little room in a boarding-house, and seen more than the millionaires at the high-priced hotels.

I have met whole families traveling in the Yosemite, camping out wherever night overtook them, and spending no more than if they had stayed at home.

Travel is not expensive if you have courage.

And what will travel do for you—the right kind of travel?

It will overthrow a lot of misconceptions.

If you have never traveled East, it will teach you that there is no such creature as a "typical New Yorker"; that most "typical New Yorkers" were born west of the Mississippi.

If you have never traveled West, it will give you a new and tremendous respect for the men who in thirty, fifty, or seventy years have raised out of the earth the most progressive cities in the world.

All men are by nature intolerant.

I may think myself very tolerant. I may be willing that men should worship in any way they choose—but I dislike men with little mustaches.

You may believe yourself very liberal—in favor of free speech and all that: but you grow sarcastic when you talk of women who wear furs in summer or of the amount of time men waste playing golf.

Every one of us is intolerant—on a few points or on many. Travel can not destroy, but it softens, this innate intolerance.

We discover that there are wonderful men in the world with little mustaches; and that many different kinds of folks, who do many things differently from us, are nevertheless well worthy of our admiration.

Finally, the right sort of travel instils a nobler patriotism.

I shall never forget the new sense of America's greatness that came to me when I first rode across the continent.

I discovered a wonderful fact—that it is as far across Texas as it is from Indianapolis to New York.

I got a vision of the power and majesty of this country that has never left me—and each succeeding trip to the coast has intensified it.

I have heard men say: "I could never he happy away from New York," or "I could never live anywhere but in Chicago."

I pity such men.

There is no single State or county in this United States where a man can not find just the kind of people he likes best, and he perfectly happy.

The more you travel, the surer you are of it.

Dr. Samuel Johnson was a great man, but very narrow, very intolerant, very bigoted.

"What can travel teach a man?" he demanded.

And Macaulay answered: "It can teach him not to be like Samuel Johnson."

That's what travel can do for us.

It can teach us not to be what we were born—narrow-minded, intolerant little creatures, sure that our way alone is right and that all the world beyond our petty horizon must be wrong.

The Man in the Engine-Cab

By EDWARD HUNGERFORD

forty miles west of Harrisburg late last night. The limited's fireman was killed and the engineer is dying. A score of passengers were injured, but... —From the account of almost any railroad wreck in almost any paper.

THE fireman stood on his narrow perch before the fire-box, and between filling the box he would look at the silhouetted form of the engineer in his little cab forward, perched almost amidships of the long black boiler. He did not have much time to look; for the box was forever demanding more hard coal.

There was a hiss of steam, a crash of metal—and the fireman dropped his shovel. The connecting-rod had broken. They were going sixty miles an hour, and the loosened end of the heavy steel rod had come crashing up with the force of ten thousand men and horses, and thrown the entire side of the engineer's cab down into the ditch beside the track. Now the rod was pounding back and forth—a mighty commotion, not soon to end: for the hand that clutched the throttle lay inert upon it; the lifeless form of the engine-driver was caught in the wreckage of the cab. And somewhere in that wreckage the trembling needle of the speed indicator still hung close to the sixty mark.

How He Stopped the Train

THE fireman thought quickly—it's a way with the men in the engine-cab. He knew that the engine must be stopped—and at once. But it was impossible for him to get through that wreckage and to the air-brake control quickly. He did the next best thing. He took a stout iron bar, and climbed over the top of the swaying tender and down into the narrow space between it and the first of the heavy cars of the train. With a short, quick blow he broke the air-hose connection between the engine and the cars. The brake set automatically, the train stopped, and the fireman went forward to get his companion's body.

In a few minutes they were crowding around him—the folk from the cars—and making a good deal of fuss over him. They said he was a hero. But he merely replied that he had done a simple thing—and perhaps the connecting-rod had broken one of the air-pump connections and so would have set the brakes anyway.

But to-day he sits on the right hand of a standard locomotive cab—for the "camel-back" engines, with their clumsy separate engineer's cab set midway upon the boiler's crown, are going out of style. He sits there, knowing that Responsibility rides beside him. He knows other things. He knows that the connecting-rod may some time break again—it is one of the most common forms of loco-motive accidents, and in the very nature of things must so remain. He knows that danger in a thousand forms forever confronts him—a broken rail, a wheel, or a bit of metal dislodged from the flying rush of a passenger train upon a neighboring track, the breakdown of the human structure of the operation of the railroad upon which his safety and the safety of those intrusted to his care is so very dependent.

If you would know something of the man in the engine-cab, come and ride a little way with him. It is not easily managed. The railroads have grown very strict in the enforcement of the rule forbidding strangers in the engine-cabs. Yet, in this one instance, it can be arranged. You sign tremendously portentous legal "releases," whose verbiage, freely translated, gives you the distinct impression that you are going to your sure doom. But you are not. You are going to ride with Jimmie Freeman—crack passenger engineer of one of the biggest and the best of our Eastern railroads.

The Job of a Crack Engineer

FORTY minutes before the leaving time of Freeman's train, her big K-1 engine backs into the terminal from the round-house. The engineer went over the big, clean, lusterless mechanism before it left the inspection-pit at the round-house. It is part of his routine—part of his pride as well. He knows that every bolt and nut is in condition—engine, drivers, axles, all the hundred and one friction parts that must work truly, even at high speed and under the great heat that high speed generates in a bearing.

You remember that Freeman's Limited is a crack train—its name a household word at least half way across the land. He came to it five years ago—a prize for an engine-runner who had judgment, who had kept a good "on time" record for eight years with a less important passenger train; a man who knew the complications of a locomotive as you and I know the fingers of our two hands. It was not a "seniority" appointment. The "seniority" jobs come to the very oldest of passenger engineers who, because of the very length of their service, are permitted to pick and choose the runs that would suit them best. These rarely ever are the very fast runs. They are more apt to be some modest local train making its way up a branch line and back—where there is little congestion of traffic and a throttle-man's nerves are not kept on edge every minute.

Jimmie Freeman did not pick his job. It picked him. It picked him because he had nerve, a steady head, good physique, a knowledge of the locomotive and all of its whims and vagaries. And although his is one of the hardest jobs on the big railroad for which he works, he is perhaps only one of half a thousand passenger engineers it might pick from its ranks and find fully able to measure up to it.

The Signals

AN air-signal over the engineer's head rasps twice—a starting signal. He pulls out the throttle, ever so little, and the Limited is in motion.

"We're sixty seconds late in getting off," says Freeman, as he replaces his watch and settles down for the forty-mile pull up to B—, the first stop, and scheduled to be reached in forty-three minutes. That means, with "slow orders" through station yards, as well as one or two sharp curves and a steep grade midway, that the engineer will have no time to loaf on the straightaways—Jimmie calls them "tangents."

"Green on the high," says the fireman, as the big K-1 ducks her head under a signal bridge and her pilot trucks find their way to a long cross-over that brings her from the platform track in the tangle of the terminal yard over to a "lead track" which in turn gives to the "main," stretching out over the sunshiny open country to distant B—.

"Yellow, on the low," calls the fireman again, as the engine slips under still another signal bridge. Freeman repeats the signals. For his part, he is supposed to read them all the way to P—, where his run ends and the Limited goes, bag and baggage, upon the rails of a connecting road. He is supposed to read, the fireman to repeat. As a practical thing it is sometimes out of the question. The cab of the big passenger puller is far from a quiet place. There is the dull pound of the drivers over the smooth rail, the roar of the great fire between them, the deafening racket of the forced draught that pours into it. The cab does not lend itself to conversation. But if Freeman does not repeat the signal indications audibly he does it mentally. It is part of his job. And the mere repeating of the signal does not assure safety.

Once, a number of years ago and upon another railroad, I rode in the cab of a fast passenger train. The road ran straight for many miles and across a level country. Each mile of its path was marked by a block signal, gleaming against the night. The engineer shouted each of those signals, and his fireman echoed them back.

"White," he would call—for white was then the safety color, not the green that has been almost universally adopted now.

"White it is," would come the reply. And in another mile:

"White," and "White she is."

Why He Passed the Danger Signal

AND once my heart all but leaped into my mouth. The block showed red—red, the changeless signal for danger. But our engineer did not close his throttle or reach for the handle of his air-brake.

"Red," he chanted in his emotionless fashion; but the fireman, altering his echo to "Red she is," looked up for a moment into his chief's face. The chief never moved a muscle. Sixty seconds later he shouted again:

"White."

"White she is," repeated the fireman, and grinned as he thrust another shovelful of coal into the fire-box.

After the run was over, and we sat at the comfortable eating counter of the Railroad Y.M.C.A., I asked the engineer why he had run by that red signal. He hesitated a moment.

"Man alive," said he, "do you suppose I can afford to bring my train to a full stop every time one of those pesky blocks gives me the bloody eye? I could get the next two blocks and saw they were safe. I know every inch of the line, and knew that there was not an interlocking"—meaning switches and crossing tracks—"within ten miles. The block was out of order, and I knew it. And I was right."

"Suppose there was a broken rail in that block," I suggested—"wouldn't that break the current and automatically send the signal to danger?"

The engineer did not answer that quickly. He knew the point was well taken. Finally, pressed, he said that his was a "penalty train"—meaning that it carried the mail and excess-fare passengers, and that it cost his railroad dollars and cents if it were more than thirty minutes late at its final terminal. To have stopped his train flat at the red

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The Messenger

By GEORGE AGNEW CHAMBERLAIN

Illustrations by George Gibbs

THE seed of adventure is blown by the winds as lightly as any thistle-down, and falls sometimes on deep, rich soil, sometimes on bare rook, asphalt, or macadam, and sometimes on shallow loam, where it suddenly sprouts and just as suddenly wilts and fades away. To look at James Harold Biggs you would say that he was neither deep soil, rock, nor shallow loam; that any seed that tried to fall on him would keep on falling as through a void—and you would be wrong.

Mr. Biggs was a stenographer and clerk in the employ of Mawson & Daws, bond brokers, at a salary of twenty-five dollars a week: which was exactly what he was worth. In dress and general appearance he conformed strictly to the mold laid down by some unwritten law for all clerks in New York, but in personal characteristics he fell somewhat below the average. His hair was of a nondescript color, in-definable and consequently unnamed; his eyes were of the sickly blue of watered milk, and protruded almost as much as his chin receded. His mouth was weak and more often than not mutely supported the doctrine of the open door. Below the mouth came a thin, long neck, and below that a thin, long body.

It was on a morning in the autumn of 1915—when Mr. Biggs, open-mouthed, his heels on his desk, was reading the paper prior to assorting his employers' mail—that the seed of adventure fell upon him, took root, and suddenly sprouted.

"Well, whadda ya know about that?" he remarked to himself, as his eyes scanned a full-page war map splattered plenteously with red ink to denote the location of the battling armies of Europe. "Some mix-up, believe me! Bigger'n any league game, an' all the bleachers empty!"

MR. BIGGS' imagination awoke. Words, headlines, had meant little to him; but this map caught at his childish mind and held it. His eyes drew out of his head and crawled absent-mindedly over the face of Europe.

"Huh!" he grunted at last, "who's goin' to stop me? I guess I'm an American, all right. I guess my gate-money's as good as any o' these peddlin' kikes' that comes back tellin' the wonderful things they seen."

"Here, you Biggs!" cried the voice of Mr. Mawson. "Whatter you doin'? Why haven't you opened my mail? D'ya think this is an annex to the Park Row War Club?"

Mr. Biggs' feet fell to the floor with a thump, his eyes partially receded into his head, and his curved spine momentarily straightened.

"Mr. Mawson," he said, "I'm goin' over there."

"What?" grunted Mr. Mawson.

"I'm goin' over there," repeated Mr. Biggs, hitting the war map with his open hand.

"You—you goin' over there!" gasped Mr. Mawson. "Whatcha talkin' about? You mean you're goin' soft at the top, that's what you mean."

"No," said Mr. Biggs, shaking his head gravely. "I'm goin' across."

He had caught a look in Mr. Mawson's eye of doubt hovering on the verge of admiration.

"D'ya mean it, Biggs?"

Mr. Biggs nodded his head, pushed the pile of morning letters from him, and arose. "If you c'n spare me," he murmured perfunctorily.

"Sure," said Mr. Mawson, still somewhat dazed and dubious.

He stared at his erstwhile clerk, tried to picture him snaking his way through the intricacies of European travel in wartime, wished he could be there to see it, and slowly grinned.

"Goin' over as a Red Cross nurse?" he asked cheerfully.

Mr. Biggs blushed and straightened himself again.

"No, sir," he said, and paused. He had hardly had time to think out details. "I got five hundred soaked away. I guess that'll see me through. I guess there's a job 'most anywhere for a good stenog. Will yuh give me a letter?"

"Sure," said Mr. Mawson once more, good-naturedly. "Type it out an' I'll sign it, if you don't make it too strong. An' say, when you come back drop around, and I'll give you your job again for a while, just to hear you tell all about it."

A WEEK later to a day Mr. Biggs boarded a Holland-American boat bound for Rotterdam. The entire under-staff of Mawson & Daws skipped its lunch to run over to Hoboken and bid him farewell. Each in turn was taken down—very far down—to Mr. Biggs' cabin to see his passport and the money belt in which he had stowed three hundred dollars in gold.

"Nothin' like havin' plenty o' the yellow with yuh," said Mr. Biggs, in answer to the gleam in envious and admiring eyes. "I left a hundred on this side to come back to. Not that I need it. Ya know what the Old Man told me? "Biggs,' he says, "when yuh come back drop around an' I'll give yuh your job again.' Wrote me a darn good letter, too."

Mr. Biggs did not find the trip over quite up to his expectations. He missed altogether the romantic touch with which cheap literature and the daily press had gilded to his mind all transatlantic voyages. The pretty girl restlessly wandering the decks alone was conspicuous by her absence; there was no jovial crowd in the smoke-room; and even the big signs his friends had advised him to read twice daily, "Beware of Card Sharpers," had disappeared, stowed away "till after the war."

"That's what it is," murmured Biggs to himself. "The war. Everything's changed. Some mix-up, believe me!"

THE entire passenger list seemed to him to be made up of oysters. Nobody was looking for casual friendships. They were all nervous, as if each had fastened on the thought that it's easier for one camel to get through the eye of a needle than for two. But toward the end of the voyage his two table mates began to loosen up.

Next to Biggs sat a weazened young man with a face like a ferret. On the last night, he turned on Biggs, who was still riding the wave of jauntiness which had carried him triumphantly out of the ken of Mawson & Daws, principals and minors, and demanded: "What are you so durned gay about? Goin' to a picnic?"

"Huh?" grunted Biggs.

"What's your dope for goin' over?"

"Me?" said Biggs. "Business."

Ferret-face stared at him.

"Business! That's what's wrote on your passport. Why, you happy fool, don't you know you got to show the goods? Don't you know they'll want to know seventeen things about what kind o' business, an' why? I c'n see 'em suckin' out your brains an' spittin' on 'em, an' if you lie to 'em they won't think any more of lining you up an' shootin' you than you'd think of stepping on one grasshopper in a locust year. Bah!"

He rose and departed, leaving Mr. Biggs

"What's he givin' me!" murmured Biggs to himself as he paced up and down the lonely deck. "Must think I was lambed this very spring. Huh! I'll show 'em!"

But he was far from feeling the valor of his words. There was something about the air of that ship that discouraged buoyancey and American "pep." Laughs were few and far between; people's faces were earnest, worried, or dazed—never gay.

WHEN they landed at Rotterdam, Biggs looked for a change and found none. The air of the ship was upon the land, and in the faces of all he met he saw that look of mingled worry and wonder.

A young man turned to Biggs and spoke in English.

"Do you notice," he asked, "the look in people's faces? It isn't just here: it's everywhere. All over Europe it's just the same. It's as if a cloud had settled on everybody and—grown under the skin."

"Sure, I've noticed," Biggs answered. "Gets your goat in the end, don't it?"

The young man did not answer. Biggs looked into his face. The cloud, the same cloud, was there too, and his troubled eyes and thoughts were already miles and miles away from Biggs.

For two days Biggs wandered about Rotterdam, and then moodily made his preparations to proceed to Berlin.

He started three times. Each time he had to come back from the station because he had omitted some silly, piking little thing, like getting the visa to the visa on his passport visaed. He was tired of standing in line at the consulate, at the prefecture, at the subsidiary police post near the station. He was more than tired: he was subdued. He had not yet reached the edge of Germany, and already he was beginning to feel things.

"These people are grouches," thought Biggs. "They got it on the brain. If it weren't for what I told the boss I was going to do, hanged if I wouldn't turn back right now. Why push yourself in behind the hearse if you aren't wanted, anyway?"

The train that finally bore him toward Berlin was crowded. The way everybody looked at everybody else—furtively sometimes, but oftener with a steady cold stare that wandered up and down and through—made him squirm. He had bought a first-class ticket, but every seat in the compartment was taken, and three were occupied by voluble Germans who talked incessantly but never smiled.

AT last they reached the border. The train stopped and every passenger climbed out, each lugging his own baggage. No one asked any questions; there was no need. A line of stolid soldiers made every one walk one way as naturally as cattle follow a fence. With no pushing and little jostling, Biggs and his fellow travelers came to a long, rough shack. At its entrance two guards barred the way. They let the crowd pass in batches of six.

Biggs got in with the third batch. Inside the shack were six tables, behind each table an officer, before it a chair. The chairs were for the travelers, but not one sat down. Each was intensely nervous. It was as if the atmosphere of

Page 5

Biggs was assigned to a table. The pale young officer behind it shot one question after another at him in German. Biggs tried to grin. The corners of his mouth only twitched and stuck. He held out his passport. A man, a fellow passenger, leaned over his shoulder and read aloud: "United States of America. Bah!"

Biggs felt some one spit on his back, and heard a general grunt of approval. He pretended not to hear. He pretended not to know that some one had deliberately spit on him.

"What are you going to Germany for?" the pale young officer snapped at him for the third time. Biggs guessed the question. He dragged out Mr. Mawson's letter of recommendation. He pointed out the letter-head of Mawson & Daws, bond brokers. He said he was going to Berlin to buy up American securities. Somebody behind him, growing impatient, translated gruffly.

At last Biggs, his passport stamped and signed, was passed on to the customs room. Two men jostled him as he opened his one big bag. Glowering, they asked him why he didn't speak German. Another man, also in plain clothes but evidently their superior, came up and gave him one look. "Faugh!" he said in German, "don't frighten him; he'll make a smell." Biggs almost understood what he said from the men's faces.

His brow was covered with a cold sweat as he closed his bag and dragged it out to the platform. He lugged it back down the line of soldiers, climbed into his compartment, and sat down. "My Gawd!" he gasped to himself, "I wisht I hadn't come, damn 'em." He remembered that some one had spit on his back and that he had pretended not to notice. He felt as if he were in a nightmare. He saw himself for the first time as something small, mean, cringing, and—yes—slimy. He stood up to take off his coat to clean it, but just then the three Germans came back. He sat down hurriedly.

During the long journey to Berlin he thought of the shameful thing a great deal, and the more he thought of it the more nervous he grew. What had come over him? If that had happened in New York would he have kept silent? Now, as he huddled in his corner, he was only glad that none of the boys had been there to see it. They would never know. If he kept his mouth shut, no one at home could ever know.

He grew desperately hungry, but he was afraid to go into the dining-car for his meals. He tried to sleep, but hunger kept him awake. It began to rain.

THREE times, with his heart in his mouth lest he be left behind, he changed trains, following blindly the general movement of passengers. Once in a while he was alone for a moment, and at such times he would murmur to himself, but not in his native jaunty slang. Slang seemed to have dropped from him. He could only ejaculate single words: "Gawd!" "Broadway! Broadway!"

At last Berlin was reached and the nightmare of a journey was over. With a deep sigh, Biggs dragged his bag from the rack and was one of the first to step from the train. A decrepit old porter shambled up to him and took his bag.

"Hotel, hotel," said Biggs.

"Ya, ya," said the old man. "Schnell! Schnell!"

He pushed the crowd this way and that and tried to hurry, but the bag was heavy, and Biggs, too cowed to bump into any one, was a drag. Besides, he had no idea what schnell meant. When they reached the street every cab was gone. There were no motor-cabs.

The old porter shrugged his shoulders, deposited the bag behind a barrier, and disappeared. He was gone so long that Biggs began to worry. He wondered what would happen if he climbed the barrier, took his bag, and left. He walked up and down, clasping and unclasping his moist hands. The rain fell in a steady, soft downpour.

At last the porter came back, fetching with him a cab. Biggs added a few pfennigs to the sum he had planned to give him and got into the cab. The porter touched his cap, and he and the cabman, bending over and peering under the shadow of the hood, tried vainly to beg Biggs to say where he wanted to go.

"Hotel," said Biggs, and waved his arm indefinitely. "Hotel."

The cabman shrugged his shoulders, clucked at his emaciated horse, and the cab started. Biggs felt a twinge of regret at leaving the old porter. It seemed to him that the old fellow's face was the friendliest he had seen in days. Biggs did not know that the old man looked cheerful simply because to him life before, during, and after the war was just life—labor, food, sleep.

The cabman drove Biggs to the hotel to which he had taken many Americans, all newspaper people. The lobby was thronged equally with journalists and flunkies. Biggs had never been a hotel quite like that. Three sub-managers that looked like floor-walkers came up to him, guided him through the formalities of registering, and took his passport.

"HOW much?" asked Biggs.

"Eighteen marks."

"Includin' food?" asked Biggs.

"No," said the clerk.

All the way up to his room Biggs was figuring eighteen marks into dollars.

"Four dollars 'nd a half!" he said to himself dully. "Four dollars 'nd a half, an' grub on the side!"

There were flunkies everywhere and attendants to flunkies; elevator-boys and assistant elevator-boys; a telephone girl on each floor and a telephone in every room. Biggs sat down on the side of the bed and looked around him.

"Well," he murmured, "you get something for your money, anyway."

As he sat staring before him, alone at last and safe, a thought suddenly came to him that made him sit up. He had

As a matter of fact, at the crossing of the Rhine he had seen trenches, modern concrete trenches; but they were already grass-grown and there was no one to tell Biggs what they were.

"War!" sneered Biggs to himself. "All I seen is one great grouch. Everybody lookin' at yuh as if you was a worm an' liftin' a foot to step on yuh."

He took off his belt and counted the money he had left. When he found how much he had spent and thought of how little he had got for it, he groaned. Then he remembered that somebody had spit on him and he had pretended not to know it. The shame and the terror of that moment returned to him. He jumped from the bed and caught up his hat.

"Not another minute!" he said aloud. "Not for me. I'm goin' home."

He went downstairs and asked the way to the American embassy. They gave him a slip with the address written on it. Armed with that, Biggs started out to find the house; but policemen were scarce, and he did not dare stop a pedestrian. Finally he climbed into a droshky and handed the cabman the slip of paper.

The driver stared at the address and then stared at Biggs. He drove about fifty yards and stopped, jerking his thumb at a great door. Biggs turned red to the tips of his ears as he stepped from the cab and paid his fare. The driver did not smile. He took the mark that Biggs gave him and drove off without touching his hat.

"Gawd!" groaned Biggs. "He's got it too!"

He had come to the embassy with the sole idea of having his way out of the country and back to New York smoothed for him; but the moment he entered the great door, passed up the marble steps to a long hallway, and heard the rustle and clatter of busy offices and the familiar rattle of many typewriters, a touch of his old-time swagger returned to him. He pushed his hat back on his head, stuck his hands in his pockets, and puckered his lips in a silent whistle, lower-Broadway style.

A secretary happened to cross the hall as Biggs entered. He stopped, his attention caught by a new face, already a rare thing in Berlin.

"Well?" he asked.

"What about a job?" asked Biggs, his hat still on the back of his head.

"Indoor or outdoor?" asked the secretary, staring at Biggs' hat.

Biggs took it off and shuffled his feet.

"Indoor," he said sullenly. "Expert stenographer."

The secretary's face brightened. Within half an hour Biggs had a job. He soon became an object of interest. The other secretaries, one by one, came and looked at him. Biggs was flattered. He did not know that they were all wondering how such a worm had ever got as far as Berlin

TWO days later Biggs' new boss electrified him with an announcement. "Mr. Biggs," be said, "our regular messengers are both sick. The ambassador thinks I'd better send you with the London pouch to-morrow. Train leaves at 8:21, so you'd better be here with a taxi by 7:30 at the latest. Schmidt will see you off at the station. Get forty pounds from Miss True."

Biggs gulped and gasped for breath. He had once read a story called "The King's Messenger." He thought of himself as the hero of such a tale—"James Harold Biggs, United States despatch carrier." He drew a long breath and pursed his lips. All the dreams with which he had left New York flooded back to him. Gee! he'd show 'em yet. He wondered why he had been chosen and not one of the secretaries. He did not know that the secretaries looked upon the embassy messenger as an expressman.

By seven o'clock the next morning he was at the embassy door with one of the

Continued on page 15

How Two Households Cut Their Expenses

I MARRIED the man I loved when he was receiving a salary of $50 a month and had only a few hundred dollars saved. The first year we were furnishing an eight-room house, and did not save a cent; but we agreed to save one half the salary the second year.

It was a big undertaking and took a strong will to work it out; but, when the monthly check came (now raised to $60), my husband deposited one half of it in the bank in my name, and there it stayed until a hundred dollars was saved. Then it was put on interest in my husband's name, the second hundred was put in my name, and thus we have alternated regularly for seven years. The salary is now $1000 a year, but since that second year we have never saved less than $400 a year and now we save more.

The Half-Acre Garden Helps

MY husband has a government position in a city of 15,000 inhabitants. We had both been brought up in a village four miles distant, and decided to continue to live in the village, where living is cheaper. We have a half-acre garden that does wonders toward furnishing the table. We raise all our vegetables, and more than we need of rhubarb, lima beans, celery, and some other crops; the extra amount is sold and goes a long way toward buying flour, sugar, coffee, and tea.

There are a thousand and one ways in which a housewife can economize. One is by buying some of the supplies (which do not deteriorate) in quantity. I vary the expensive breakfast foods by serving some well cooked steamed wheat once a week. With a little extra work, very good meals can be served without meat, but we have a little of the best whenever we feel inclined toward a meat diet. We raise chickens, and have all the chicken and eggs we want.

We keep a family account-book, and each night all the expenses of the day are written down. Whether for the kitchen, for clothes, or for pleasure, everything is registered, even to a penny newspaper. This is done with perfect regularity. A system of paying cash and keeping a book of household accounts helps one not to spend money before one gets it. We do not rob Peter to pay Paul; the essential things are al tended to first.

We keep a cow, and make ice-cream nearly every day in summer, but only once or twice a week in winter.

We took advantage of this winter's extreme cold weather and the good ice crop to convert an outbuilding into an ice-house, and thus we now have our own ice. The ice was given us for the asking; the sawdust to pack it in was also gladly given by the sawmill men, who will almost hire one to cart it away.

Some years we have had a revenue from our bees. During the fruit season I fill 250 quart cans with peaches, strawberries, pears, yellow tomatoes, huckleberries, blackberries, apples, melon-rind, and any of the small fruits that would otherwise be wasted, as well as 100 cans of tomatoes from our garden. We have rhubarb growing in the cellar in the winter, and two rows growing in the garden for early spring use.

Our garden lasts through the winter. The hardest kind of freezing does not hurt the salsify or oyster-plant. Spinach and Brussels sprouts can be extended through the winter. Cabbage and celery we bury in pits. One year we sold $75 worth of celery, besides supplying our own table.

The Best Is the Cheapest

WE use the best seeds that grow, the best in clothing, the best home furnishings, the best aluminum kitchen utensils. We find that the best is cheapest in the end.

We believe in feeding the mind as well as the body, and that it is as economical to have good reading matter as good food. We have many good books and magazines, but candy or soda or any sort of stuff to drink (not home-made) is off our list.

After eight years of fresh air and sunshine, fresh vegetables and frugality, life is indeed worth living, with the savings of the seven years' salary invested and the interest therefrom giving us many additional pleasures.

SHORTLY after we were married, we opened charge accounts at two department stores, the laundry, the butcher shop, and the grocery. My husband's income was not sufficient to meet the growing bills promptly, and he finally received two tactful letters from credit men.

In the face of this, I formed some expensive acquaintances, and my clothes accounts mounted alarmingly. Two department-stores limited the amount of my credit with them, so I opened a charge account at a third. To meet the driving demands of the situation, my husband began to borrow money from his salaried friends. Naturally, a crisis came—it was inevitable. Our credit was ruined, and we had nothing to show for it but huge debts. I cried in my coffee-cup one morning at breakfast while we discussed it.

No More Charge Accounts

SOMETHING had to be done—and at once. The proverbial pendulum took its proverbial swing.

Our first move was to discontinue all charge accounts and pay cash. I am sure this enabled us to get better values. It also removed a strong temptation toward extravagance. We found that our income had been spent about as follows: Rent, 30 per cent., food, 40, clothing 19, operating expenses 17, luxuries 9, general expenses 6. In other words, we had spent 121 per cent. of our income. We resolved to save 10 per cent. This meant that our expenditures must be reduced from 121 to 90 per cent. Is it any wonder that I cried in my coffee?

We made apportionments for groceries, meats, clothes, furnishings, and luxuries, and we stuck to them rigidly. It necessitated taking a cheaper apartment; it required economy in food supplies. I discovered I could save 4 per cent. on my meat bills by making a personal call instead of telephoning my order. I secured a pair of scales on which to check up goods bought by the pound. I changed grocers, and saved 3 per cent. by buying from one out of the high-rent district.

The United States Department of Agriculture, at my request, mailed me copies of their Farmers' Bulletins Numbers 93, 121, 142, and 332. These bulletins showed me that I knew nothing about the relative food values of different commodities, and that my dollars had not been buying the maximum amount of nutriment.

There was no more fork-to-mouth ordering. Flour, sugar, celery, hams, onions, nuts, and apples were purchased in large quantities in the season when they were cheapest. The savings were enormous. We purchased thirty bushels of potatoes for $25. This quantity would have cost us more than $50 by our former paper-sack method of buying.

A window-box eliminated our ice bill in the winter. The personal calls at the market cut down our telephone expense. Our savings account and health were improved by cutting out many carfares. Clothing bills were reduced materially by attending season-end sales at the high-grade stores. Theater expenses were reduced 66 2/3 per cent. by purchasing only $1 seats and having our after-theater suppers in our own dining-room.

Saving as Much Fun as Spending

A CONTEST was inaugurated between my husband and myself to see who could suggest the most practical plans for "cutting down overhead expenses." Of course, he had to talk in factory terms, as he was a superintendent in one. Skilful economy became just as fascinating a game to play as reckless expenditures had been. My husband won the prize one month by announcing that we could save money by purchasing stamped envelops at the post-office instead of stamps and envelops at the stationery store. He really didn't deserve the prize, though, for his stenographer told him about the envelops.

Now we have a good savings bank account. Our household expenses for the last three years have "fluctuated" around the following figures: rent 21 per cent., food 31, clothing 12, operating expenses 14, luxuries 5, general expenses 5, savings 12.

They Declined to Be Millionaires

Photographs from Frank U. Moorhead

CHARLES G. PATTEN of Charles City, Iowa, could easily have made millions, for he stands without a peer in the horticultural world. Instead, he has little but the $500 a year granted him, for his experiments, by the United States Department of Agriculture, and the $50 a month added by the State of Iowa.

After twenty years' work, he perfected the apple known as Patten's Greening, which has brought success and fortune to many an orchard in Iowa, Minnesota, and the Dakotas. He also perfected a pear that will withstand the rigors of the North and add millions to the crop wealth of the Northern States. Now, at the age of eighty, he goes on experimenting, without thought of the money that might have been his.

TWENTY-FIVE years ago Dr. Babcock invented the milk test that hears his name, and that has not been improved upon in the quarter century of its constant use. This test determines the butter-fat percentage of milk, and has been worth countless millions of dollars to the dairymen of America.

It is conservatively estimated that, had Dr. Babcock patented his test and been paid a royalty on every test bottle manufactured, he would by now have made from $5,000,000 to $10,000,000. Instead, he gave it absolutely free to the public. Literally, he threw $10,000,000 to the winds that blow over the pastures where the 22,000,000 dairy cows of America browse at case.

EVERY year the farmers of America lose millions of dollars through the failure of the germination of legume seeds: sweet clover, red clover, mammoth clover, alfalfa, alsike, vetch, and so on. Professor H D. Hughes, of the Iowa State College of Agriculture, after eight years' work has perfected a machine that scarifies these legume seeds so that the earth moisture may enter them, and their germination qualities have been increased to 98 per cent. Professor Hughes has given the machine absolutely free to the public, and has not received one cent for his machine, worth untold millions, except the little money he spent in experimenting.

Mr. Richard's Fiancée

By MEREDITH NICHOLSON

Illustrations by Frank Snapp

A VARIETY of obstacles contributed to the frustration of Gail's plan to escape after luncheon. Under her ministrations Mrs. Maybury slept for an hour, and woke in a mood for further talk. Her frank disclosure of the Maybury family history increased Gail's discomfiture. Then there were notes to write, and Gail's offer to act as amanuensis was readily accepted. At five the reading of an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes was interrupted by a furtive tap.

"No doubt it's Richard; I've been very selfish to keep you cooped up in this way," said Mrs. Maybury. "Run along now, and come in before dinner, if you haven't seen too much of me. You are a credit to your teachers, 'Toinette; you read charmingly, with a very good accent."

Richard it was, unquestionably, and a much agitated Richard.

"'Toinette's come! Luckily, I was on the lookout and let her in myself. She's been dodging around the country, and landed here in a taxi. What are we going to do about that?"

"We!" Gail repeated, and followed him down the hall. "Where is she?"

"In the reception-room, scared to death! Of course, she didn't do it—she never saw that woman's pocket-book. But they may follow her here—my God, the very thought of it—"

Gail paused. The house was very quiet. Mrs. Barton had gone back to bed; the Bishop was out making a call.

"My time's up," she said slowly; "and there's no reason why I should remain any longer. You'd better confess your sins—and mine—and turn the whole thing off as a joke—a poor one, but still a joke!"

The suggestion did not meet with favor.

"If you'll only ask her to go away till Aunt Peggy leaves, then I'll face it out with mother! I'm not a cad—honestly I'm not; but it all seems different now. You can explain to 'Toinette; I simply can't talk to her so she'll understand."

"You mean to turn her out of the house? I shall do nothing of the kind!"

Gail's last doubt of her duty vanished, and she ran downstairs. A girl—a small, trim young person with a wealth of yellow hair showing under a smart hat—rose and confronted her defiantly. Tears glistened on her long lashes.

"I never did it!" she cried, with a toss of her head; "and it's hard to come here and be told that I can't stay. Dick wasn't kind; he hurt—my—feel-ings! And I haven't any place to go—and to think of being thrown out of the house just because—"

"You're not being put out of the house," said Gail. "Richard's all upset to-day by his mother's illness, and some guests arrived to spoil the nice time he wanted you to have with his mother. And don't cry, please; you'll make yourself sick. Come up to your room—your trunk's unpacked and everything's ready for you."

The girl followed, half willing, half resisting, and behind a locked door Gail renewed her efforts to console her.

Finally she undressed 'Toinette and put her to bed.

SOOTHED and reassured, 'Toinette amplified the story of the robbery in the Boston boarding-house. Gail believed her story. It was absurd on the face of it that a girl with 'Toinette's prospects would steal a pocket-book just when a new life opened before her. 'Toinette lay curled in the bed like an unhappy child.

"I'm only a guest here—a friend of the family," Gail explained. "Mrs. Maybury is a frail woman—never very strong, I suppose; but she's anxious to see you, of course. Her sister's coming to-day was unfortunate. Richard's just a little afraid of his aunt—and, naturally, he wanted his mother to know you first—that would simplify everything."

"Dick's ashamed of me," 'Toinette wailed. "I always told him it would be that way. I wouldn't ever be happy here."

"If you love Richard—"

"I don't love him—not any more! And he never truly loved me: he just liked me because I was on the stage. Lots of men go crazy about girls on the stage; it's not love—it's in-fat-u-a-tion. I don't want to see D-i-c-k any more!"

"You'll soon feel differently about everything," said Gail, fighting an inclination to assemble the household and make a clean breast of it. A chivalrous sense of obligation to the girl whose place she had stupidly usurped held her back. 'Toinette grew more tranquil, called for a comb and brush. and did amazing things with her hair before a hand-mirror propped before her. She puckered her pretty lips and dabbed herself with a powder-puff. A child—a mere baby—she seemed to Gail. Then 'Toinette said she was tired, and went to sleep.

AT seven o'clock Gail locked the door, put the key in her pocket, and went down to dinner.

Mrs. Maybury was in cheery humor. She hadn't felt better in a year, she said, smiling at Gail.

"Richard has conducted himself very well to-day," observed his mother. "Don't you think so, 'Toinette? He's certainly been generous in leaving you so much to me. You've both been under a good deal of strain. I remember, the first time I visited my husband's family—"

Gail's mind wandered. 'Toinette might waken and, finding herself a prisoner, rouse the house; or it was even imaginable that the police might demand admission.

The Bishop must needs smoke his cigar in the living-room, and it was incumbent upon Richard to keep him company. After an hour that seemed endless Mrs. Maybury rose, and Gail seized the moment for her release.

She left Mrs. Maybury with Marie and returned to 'Toinette. The girl, fully dressed, looked up with a sad little smile from the desk at which she had evidently been industriously plying a pen.

"I have decided everything," she said.

"Don't decide too much till you've had some supper," said Gail, noting the open closet door and the emptiness beyond. The trunk was packed and ready for closing. It occurred to her that flight with 'Toinette offered the easiest way out of her own difficulties.

She crept down the back stairs to the pantry, found bread and butter, cold meat, and a bottle of milk, and escaped unchallenged.

'Toinette attacked the tray hungrily and called attention to two letters, sealed and addressed, on the writing-table.

"That's good-by forever to Dick. The silly boy! And that's to Sammy Galloway. Ever heard o' him? Sammy was the musical director of 'The Little Billikin,' and the man who wrote 'Wee Little, Shy Little Rose,' and ever so many popular songs. You know, I was engaged to Sammy when I met Dick, and he was all broke up when I chucked him for Dick. He was going to have my voice trained and write a piece specially to send me out in when we were married. He's the best ever—that boy! He said if I ever needed a friend to let him know. And just day before yesterday I wrote him a letter to tell him I was heating it for the high places. He always said no girl as temperamental as I am could ever be happy in one of these old aristocratic families, and that I'd be silly to give up may art for Dick Maybury. He always said Dick wouldn't ever marry me anyhow after his folks got on to it.

"Sammy knows by this time all about that scrape at the boarding-house, because it was in the papers; and Sammy'll be sorry—Sammy's always sorry for people in trouble. I'm going back to the bright lights, and he can go to work on that new piece whenever he's ready. So that for Dick Maybury!"

A snap of her fingers and the lifting of a very pretty chin expressed her complete contempt for Mr. Richard Maybury.

"This is a great responsibility," said Gail soberly. "I don't know about letting you go in this way. You ought to see Richard; I will arrange that—"

"Not on your life, you won't! I'm done!"

"If his heart's broken and his life ruined—" Gail began tentatively.

"Hint! You couldn't break his heart with an ax! Any man who's afraid of his relations isn't worth bothering about. How can I get a lift out o' here?"

Gail left her to investigate the transportation facilities of the establishment; but first she sought an interview with Mrs. Barton, who answered her summons in a bath-wrapper that vastly magnified her heroic figure.

"That young scoundrel!" Mrs. Barton commented, when she had heard Gail's second confession. "His mother must never know of this! The girl has more sense than I imagined possible in a chorus girl. The servants mustn't know; we'll have to wait till they've gone to bed. I'll call up the chauffeur myself and tell him to be ready."

"But—is that quite fair—to the girl?" asked Gail. "She's such a little thing; I don't like sending her off that way."

Mrs. Barton mused a moment.

"There's something in that," she admitted. "You might take her to my house at Lenox till this thing blows over. But there's no reason why you should get mixed up in it. You're under no obligation to us, nor to the girl!" She checked her mounting wrath, and the humor shone in her eyes. "And if you're not here to-morrow what can we say to my sister?"

"Right there," said Gail, with a flash of indignation, "is where your nephew's got to take this thing off our hands!"

THEY had decided that 'Toinette could not leave before eleven o'clock, when they were startled by the mad honking of a motor at the gate.

"The police!" Mrs. Barton gasped.

A machine was heard running into the grounds, and Gail bolted for the stairway, with Mrs. Barton clinging to her arm.

"You send them away and I'll keep the servants back!" she panted, when they reached the front door. With long strides she gained the door to the back hall.

The bell tinkled faintly. Gail's heart thumped as she waited for her fellow conspirator to dispose of Grimes.

"All right," Mrs. Barton called, and Gail threw open the door.

A young man—a very good-looking

Page 8

"Is this Mrs. Maybury's? I wasn't sure I had the right place."

It was the right place, Gail assured him, holding fast to the brass door-knob. The visitor fingered his hat nervously. If a policeman, he bore no visible signs of his trade, and Gail's hopes rose. He took a step nearer, and Gail tightened her hold on the knob.

"Mrs. Maybury has retired; if you wish to see her you will have to come to-morrow."

"I don't want to see Mrs. Maybury," he replied impatiently. "Is Mr. Richard Maybury here? I want to see him."

Lying had not been in the curriculum at Nebraska University, but it struck Gail as expedient to add to the burden of the day's dissimulation by answering that Mr. Richard Maybury was not at home; she added that he was in the city and might not return for a day or two.

This seemed unwelcome news to the visitor, and with a sudden change of manner he shook his hat in Gail's face.

"I'm looking for Miss Gilmore—Miss 'Toinette Gilmore. She came to this house this afternoon, and I want to see her! You needn't tell me she's not here, for I know better. You go right in and tell her I'm here—Sammy Galloway. I'm an old friend of hers."

GAIL'S hand dropped from the door, and her relief found expression in a laugh that caused him to stare.

"Please come in, Mr. Galloway. Of course you may see Miss Gilmore."

"I was afraid," said Gail, when she had ushered him into the reception-room, "that it might be some unfriendly person looking for Miss Gilmore; but if you're Mr. Galloway—"

"Did she tell you about me? When I heard 'Toinette was in trouble, I hit the trail right away to find her. Of course I supposed you people would look out for her all right enough; but I didn't want to take chances. I suppose Maybury's gone to Boston to straighten that thing out, but its all over. That woman never lost her pocketbook—left it in a car in the subway, that's all! And just because 'Toinette had been a chorus girl she tried to tie it on her! And, being scared to death, 'Toinette beat it instead of sitting tight. Well, I just wanted to tell the kid it's all right."

"'Toinette," said Gail, "has been writing you a letter. She's changed her mind about marrying Mr. Maybury. She—"

"What?" shouted Galloway, dropping his hat. "She's fired him!"

"That's what she meant to do a few minutes ago. It's not my affair, you understand; but I'll send her down."

"I'm going to take her away with me!" Galloway cried excitedly. "She's got to marry me right away before she gets into any more scrapes. God bless the kid!"

"I must be sure," said Gail deliberately, "before you take her away, that you mean the best for her; that—"

His eyes opened wide.

"I'm on the square," he answered soberly and with deep feeling. "I've loved her from the first day I saw her—the poor little kid! She's a good girl, 'Toinette is—just the best that ever happened! I've a sister in Boston, and I'm going to take her right there to her house till we can get the papers. You needn't be afraid of me!"

TWO weeks later Miss Abigail Vincent appeared in the neighborhood of Gloucester, carrying a parasol as the emblem of her ladyhood, and to all appearances wholly innocent of the presence of a concealed prospectus of that invaluable work, "The History of a Thousand Years."

For a fortnight Mrs. Barton had clung to her by moral, not to say physical, force. The Bishop, having read of 'Toinette's marriage in a Boston newspaper, had been let into the secret perforce, and he discoursed eloquently upon Gail's Christian duty. Gail had reason to believe that the servants knew that the occupant of the south guest-room was not, in fact, the person she had represented herself to be. The removal of "Toinette's trunk and the arrival of Gail's own luggage from the Beverly boarding-house (a substitution effected with characteristic determination by Mrs. Barton) could hardly have failed to arouse suspicions. Nor had Gail been unmindful of the fact that Mr. Richard Maybury had been evincing an interest in her which she found it embarrassing to avoid.

Finally, when Mrs. Maybury asked her to set down the names of people she proposed to ask to a tea in honor of Richard's fiancée, Gail fled in a panic.

It was a warm afternoon, and persons of wealth and culture were not manifesting that interest in "The History of a Thousand Years" which might reasonably be expected of them. The honking of a motor approaching at high speed caused Gail to step out of the road, and as she waited indifferently for it to pass, the brakes were jammed on and Richard G. Maybury sprang out of his runabout.

"I've been chasing you all over creation, and if I hadn't got a tip at the publisher's that you were around here I might never have found you. I've got to talk to you!"

"It's unkind and just the least bit impudent for you to follow me."

"That's what I told mother and Aunt Peggy; but they said I had to find you. It isn't my fault, really, that I came. I wouldn't have had the nerve."

"I've noticed your lack of courage," she replied coldly.

"Please don't rub it in. I didn't have Aunt Peggy to back me when I showed the white feather before, but she's behind me now—very much behind me! She and the Bishop stopped at an inn to rest; they're mighty anxious to see you. Mother's taking it pretty hard, you know," he added gravely. "She's been quite ill."

"I'm sorry," said Gail honestly. "I hope she got my letter."

"Oh, it was a wonderful letter! She's forgiven you, all right enough; but you can see where it leaves me!"

"It leaves you, Mr. Maybury, exactly where you ought to he left!"

They became aware that they were blocking the highway, and she accepted his invitation to get into the car. They rode for a mile in silence. Then Gail declared that she must resume her assaults upon potential purchasers of "The History of a Thousand Years." He scouted this. It was difficult to talk in the runabout, and she consented to walk out on the shore.

"How's the book selling?" he inquired when they were seated on a big boulder.

"What do you suppose that artist sees to paint over there?" she inquired casually.

There was no artist in the immediate landscape. When he looked at her for enlightenment, she was demurely turning the pages of the prospectus.

"Of course I have to hide it," she explained. "I'd never get anywhere if they knew I was a book agent."

He turned the pages. She had sold seven sets, but they were not all the India-paper edition. Having disposed of the book business, they contemplated the Atlantic.

"I had a note from 'Toinette this morning—the jolliest sort of note! She says she's so happy she doesn't want me to think she has any hard feelings, and she hopes I'll always be happy. Mighty nice of her, don't you think?"

"Splendidly magnanimous!"

"You're mighty hard on me," he said dolefully. "I suppose you'll never believe that what I did was only to save mother's feelings. She was all keyed for 'Toinette, and I simply had to produce somebody! The chorus girl part of it was had enough to spring on her suddenly; but when 'Toinette didn't show up, and all that rumpus about her stealing a pocket-book!" He extended his arms to the sea as if expecting Neptune to rise to his aid. "The great trouble about the whole business was that you lifted the standard too high! From thinking no girl was good enough for me, they've decided now that a particular girl is too good for any man—you ought to hear them talk! The Bishop has been mourning ever since you left. And old Grimes is a changed man; the way you bounced the cook made a big hit with him! I tell you, the house is like a tomb."

"You seem to be bearing up pretty well," Gail remarked, playing with the leaves of the dummy, "considering that the girl of your choice threw you over to marry another man."

"Now," he replied spiritedly, "try to be fair about it. Don't you honestly think it was a good thing she did? From what you saw of her, don't you think she's a lot happier as things turned out? Just answer me that!"

"That's not the question," Gail began. "It's—"

"It is the question—the only one we're talking about. You wouldn't change it if you could, would you?"

"That's not a fertile field for speculation, Mr. Maybury. And you're taking up my time when I ought to be at work."

"On the other hand, you're causing my mother and incidentally me a lot of heartache unnecessarily. You played at being engaged to me for two weeks; now you refuse to go on with it! Gail—"

"Miss Vincent," she corrected.

"Gail. Aunt Peggy says she believes you can make a man of me if anybody can. But if you'll go hack with me, so I can square myself with mother, I won't ask you to be engaged to me again—not for a long, long time. Gail!"

"Never, never anything like that!" she said. But a big wave struck the rocks malevolently, and it is only a fair assumption that her words were drowned by the roar.

His hand closed over hers; and, as she resisted, the prospectus of "The History of a Thousand Years" slipped from her grasp, slid from the rock, and sought refuge in the Atlantic.

It Sometimes Really Happens

Jobs for Which No Salary Should Be Paid

Page 11

Behind the Time-Tables

The Man in the Stone House

By FREEMAN TILDEN

Illustration by George E. Wolfe

IT was when J. Bradlee Starr looked over the thinned ranks of the boosters, as they gathered in the parlor of the Commercial Hotel, that he had the first definite touch of pessimism he had ever felt in his life. Instead of the admiring, enthusiastic faces he remembered greeting on that first day in Boxton, here, confronting him, was a collection of disappointed, petulant, depressed, and fretful merchants, who seemed to enjoy nothing but the process of tearing Walter Eadbrook's character to shreds.

Eadbrook, of course, was not present. He had seen Starr the evening before and expressed his willingness to take his shame before the whole crowd.

"No, Walter; I won't let you do it. There's no need of it. I'll represent you," Starr had told him.

"That's awfully decent of you," Walter had said.

"Well, to tell you the truth," Starr had confessed, "I don't want you there for my own purposes, Walter. I've got some important matters, and I want to keep their minds off you as much as possible."

But that was the impossible thing, whether Eadbrook was present or not. It was not so much that the boosters' money had taken wings: they had Eadbrook's store in pawn, and were likely to come out scot-clear. It was not so much that they felt their confidence abused, or that they hated Ezra's triumph over them, or any other such feeling. It was the old-fashioned, every-day love of gossip and excitement. They were all blaming one another, and hectoring one another; and once in a while Starr, silently waiting for the semblance of order, understood that they were talking about him, and in no laudatory manner.

JOEL TIBB was steadfastly faithful to the cause. His admiration for and belief in Starr, though sadly ravaged by recent events, was still uppermost. And when Starr rose from his chair, pulled a bundle of letters from his pocket, and asked for attention, it was Joel who succeeded in hushing them to silence.

"I don't see the use, gentlemen," began Starr, "in discussing the Eadbrook matter any more. We all know how things stand. There's no chance in the world of recovering the money, so far as I can see; but Eadbrook is going to do the right thing. Personally, I'm all broken up over the matter. It's a mighty stiff punch for a young fellow—"

"He ought to have had more sense," cried some one.

Starr backed away from the yawning chasm in time.

"It's no time to discuss it," he said. "I've got important business, and I've got some letters here that will make you all sit up and take notice. You all know that the Carnival was simply advertising. There's no use trying to figure profit and loss on a matter of publicity. I believe it may turn out to be very profitable in the end. But, gentlemen, I've been plugging along on some real plans. In the first place, Boxton is going to have a new railroad station. Here's the letter—just came this morning. Pass it along after you read it, will you, Joel?"

A murmur of surprise ran through the gathering. The battered, dirty old station had long been an eye-sore to the towns-people, and no amount of cajolery or pleading had been able to move the railroad directors. Starr had done it.

Starr smiled as he saw the immediate change of attitude. He wasted no time, however. The iron was hot. He opened another folded letter.

"I have here, gentlemen," he said, "a letter from the Appaqua Mill people. These are the folks 1 went down to see last week. I have made them no definite promises, but the thing stands this way: if Boxton will give them a site near the railroad, where a siding can be put in, exempt them from taxation for ten years, and make certain small guaranties that we can easily make, they'll come in. Mr. Tibb and I have been looking over the ground, and there seems to be only one available site—that is, only one where they can run in the siding without making a big fill or without coming on Ezra Mudge's land. I'm sure they ought to be able to get this piece of land, if the owner will sell to the town at a reasonable figure."

"Where is that?" asked Mr. Edmonds.

Starr pointed at Will Bisbee.

"Mr. Bisbee is the owner," he said.

"My mowing!" cried Mr. Bisbee. "D'ye mean my mowing alongside the railroad?"

Starr nodded.

WILL BISBEE took a long breath, and then shook his head decidedly.

"There must be some other place."

"There are some other available spots, but Mudge owns 'em," replied Starr.

Mr. Bisbee looked around at the rest of the boosters with a half frightened, half belligerent expression.

"I couldn't do it," he said. "Why, that land has been in my family ever since—why, I've got the deeds as far back as—no, siree; I couldn't let it go."

"I don't quite catch your objection. This is a good chance for Boxton," said Starr shortly.

Mr. Bisbee shook his head. "What would I do for my hay?"

"Good Lord, man, you can buy hay, can't you?"

"That land cuts two tons to the acre," replied Will. "It's the finest mowing in town. There's no use talking about that land. I wouldn't consider it."

"Let's come back to that matter," said Starr quickly. "Listen to this. Here's a letter from the Willis Shirt Company. I understand they're the biggest people in their line in this part of the country. They're looking for a site, and they think they've struck it right here."

"Willis Shirt people!" exclaimed Joel Tibb. "We don't want anything to do with them, Mr. Starr. I guess you don't happen to know that they run cooperative stores for their help—'company stores,' they call 'em. A lot of trade we'd get out of that crowd! I want to see Boxton boosted as bad as any one, but that's no boost. Why, I understand they sell at cost to their employees."

"Do they?" put in Edmonds. "Well, that's all we want to know about them."

Starr ran his hand through his hair. He stifled the words that he wanted to speak, and went on in an even voice: "Perhaps we'd better come back to that. Now, here's something that I haven't told you about. This looks to me like the biggest thing of all. Here's a letter from the president of the Springhaven Street Railway Company. There's nothing definite as yet, of course; but he told me enough, in a four-hour conversation I had with him, to show me that the Springhaven system is ready to send a line through Boxton to Eastfield, and meet the Consolidated Northern there, instead of sending it around through Barlow, as the plans now stand. A trolley road through Boxton! How does it hit you, gentlemen? Why, the trolley company's own engineering plans show that the line ought to come through Boxton. There's only one bad grade the whole distance, and there are three on the Barlow route. Now, then if we can only get together on this—"

STARR stopped abruptly. He had read a peculiar and disconcerting sensation on the face of his principal backer.

"What is it, Joel?" asked Starr. "Speak out. This is the time; now or never."

"Mr. Starr," replied Joel hoarsely, accompanied by a general nodding of beads, "please drop that idea right off! A trolley road's the last thing in the world we merchants want. Don't you see our trade would just leak out of Boxton into Springhaven or one of the bigger places? There was a scheme to put through a short line between Eastfield and here ten years or so back, and we squelched it right off quick. For heaven's sake, Mr. Starr, don't start anything like that! There's enough competition, what with mail-order houses and such, as it is."

"By ginger, we can't have anything to do with that scheme," said Will Bisbee. "Not but what you mean all right, Mr. Starr, but it won't do."

Starr's face crimsoned. He looked from one to another uncomprehendingly.

"Why, gentlemen," he said, "out where I came from we'd almost sell our souls to get a traction line running through our town. It's an artery. It pumps the blood of progress right through a locality. It keeps the steam roads acting cheerful and obliging. It gets people into the buying habit. It gets oxygen into them. It—"

"May all be so," interrupted Joel Tibb. "But things are different here—honest, they are. Oxygen may be all right, but you just once start these Boxton folks joy-riding around on electric cars and you'll see 'em bring bundles of merchandise with 'em. No, siree—never, as long as I have anything to say about it."

Starr fumbled with the letters in his hand. He folded them up and put them back in his pocket. Suddenly he burst out sarcastically: "Well, gentlemen, do you know of anything you want to do for Boxton? Tell me what it is, and I'll go after it. Do you want to boost Boxton or not? I'm up a tree. Upon my word, I'm up a tree!"

Joel Tibb spoke up: "If we could do something that would get more money into town, and yet wouldn't hurt business—" he faltered.

THERE was a long silence. The merchants buzzed among themselves. Starr sat, looking out over the group, without seeing the merchants. He was looking far away. He saw Empire City, with its long lines of concrete sidewalks, its raw concrete buildings, its stretches of dazzling sand-heaps. He felt utterly lonely, homesick, worn out. Then he pulled himself together, rose, and addressed the meeting.

"God help you, men of Boxton," he said, with a nervous smile. "I can't. There may be some power that can put more money into Boxton without introducing more avenues of spending that money: I don't possess that miraculous power. I guess I've bitten off more than I could chew. There may be some one, somewhere, that can do what you want done—whatever it is. As far as I'm concerned, the game is up. I've got one or two more letters in my pocket—but

Page 14

"Let's adjourn and think it over," suggested Will Bisbee.

They all went except Joel Tibb. When the two charter members of the boost were left alone, Joel suggested amiably: "Don't do anything hasty, now, Mr. Starr. Maybe things will come round."

"Joel," Starr began, "the seasons come round. The earth comes around—the sun. But, as far as Boxton is concerned—"

At that moment Clint Weatherbee rushed into the room.

"Mr. Starr!" he roared, "you got to take care of that Tinker! I won't have the critter in my house any longer. I'm tired of trying to keep him from running away."

"Where is he now, Clint?"

"In his room, the miserable hobo!"

"Joel," said Starr, "we'd better settle Joe now. Bring him in, will you, Clint?"

"I'll kick him in," replied Weatherbee.

But Joe fled only too willingly to the protection of Starr.

"Let me go, pl-e-a-se, Mr. Starr," whimpered the fat man. "Ain't I suffered enough? I'll never come near here again."

"I'll take chances on that," replied Starr. "But that's not the point. You're going to tell us about Mudge, and you're going to tell it now. Understand?"

"I don't know a thing," wailed Joe. "I don't know anything—anything you gentlemen want to know."

"Ah, nothing we want to know! Well, we'll see about that, Tinker, after you tell it. You did work up at Mudge's, and you do know something. Now, then, if you value your life—quick!"

"I'll tell you—I'll tell you!" cried Joe. "I did work up at Mudge's—when they brought the baby from Californy."

"California!" gasped Starr. "Yes, go on!"

"Ezra had a sister, younger than him," Tinker went on, in a thin voice. "I don't remember her name. But Ezra was all wrapped up in her, I guess. I heard them talking about her afterwards, and Ezra used to take on terribly—"

"How did you hear these things?"

"I—I used to listen," replied Joe, turning a bit redder than he already was.

"Hum! Of course. Well, go on."

"She married a man named Eldridge, and he took her out to Californy. Out there he got mixed up with some scheme about real estate, or boosting a town, or something, and the first thing was that he lost every cent. Then they used to write to Ezra for money."

STARR stared at Joe Tinker sharply. "He warn't so rich then as he is now,—Ezra warn't,—but he used to send the money. Eldridge used to take the money Ezra sent and put it into the crazy real-estate scheme—and of course he lost it—and then I guess he began to booze—and things went rotten. Every time Ezra got a letter from out there, he used to send money, and then take it out of my hide."

"What part of California was it, Tinker?" asked Starr.

"I don't know," was the reply. "Well, then all of a sudden they got a letter saying the poor feller had shot himself or something, and Ezra's sister had had a baby and was starving to death, or dying, because she wouldn't let anybody help her. And that's when the Mudges made that trip out there and brought back the baby. Nobody in town knows anything about it, because Mudge was so close-mouthed, and they were afraid to ask him any questions, anyway. Right after that I got through with my job—"

"What for?"

"Maybe it was because I sold some of Ezra's hens to a peddler and blow in the money," replied Joe thoughtfully. "Yes, I guess that was it."

"Go on," ordered Starr.

"Well, you've got all I know," said Joe. "You had to know, and so you do. Aw, Mr. Starr, you ain't going to make a fuss, are you? I didn't mean no harm. It was all a joke. I thought I'd kid you along and get free grub as long as I could— when I saw you was so keen to know something bad about Ezra. Honest, I—"

"From what you know, Tinker," Starr broke in, after looking at the pitiable figure thoughtfully, "would you say that Ezra—changed a good deal after what happened to his sister?"

"He sure did," replied Joe. "Of course, as I said, he was always close-fisted, but he warn't so bad till that feller lost the money in the Californy scheme and his sister died. Then—well, Mr. Starr, you know what a nice, kind man he is now."

"Joel," whispered Starr, "what do you think of this?"

"Maybe he's lying to us," replied Joe.

"It's the truth," affirmed Joe Tinker, overhearing. "You can prove it all—by Ezra."

"I guess we don't want to prove it," said Joel dryly.

"It puts Ezra in a rather different light," suggested Starr.

Joel Tibb was silent.

"It sort of explains why Ezra hasn't much use for a boost, or a live town, or anything that looks like one."

Starr paused and fingered his watch-chain.

"Joel," he said finally, "we've got to admit it. We thought we had something big on Ezra—and we haven't. We're stung again!"

WHEN J. Bradlee Starr came down to the hotel office the next morning, he was his cheerful, expansive self once more. His eyes had the forward-looking aspect of a man who has made a decision, and whose mind consequently is peacefully expectant. He could already see the poppy-blossomed fields of California.

There was a letter on his desk, in a cramped handwriting. Starr opened it and read, with amazement:

"Now, what on earth," Starr asked himself, turning the sheet of paper over and back in surprise, "does that old codger want of me?

When Starr entered Mudge's sitting-room, Ezra was sitting in the same chair, in the same attitude, as Starr had found him on that memorable visit some weeks before.

"Mr. Starr," the old man began, "you didn't expect to hear from me?"

"No, I didn't," was the blunt answer.

"No, you didn't," Ezra repeated. "No; of course you didn't. Mr. Starr, I trust you are well."

"Very well, thank you," replied Starr, with a smile. "I hope you are the same."

"Pretty well, pretty well, thanks. Mr. Starr, I may as well come right to the point. I've been—er—thinking over certain things in connection with—your business here in Boxton. I'm a man of few words, Mr. Starr. I'm prepared to tell you, sir, that I regret certain events that may have prejudiced you against me—"

Starr gazed at the old man in frank wonderment; but he kept silence.

"I've been talking the matter over lately with—a few friends," Ezra continued, "and the result is—well, I may say my mind is open on the subject at present."

It came to Starr, like a flash, who those 'few friends' were. He hazarded a good-natured comment, not caring much how it might be received: "I've been getting advice lately, too, Mr. Mudge—from a woman friend."

Ezra shot an understanding glance at his alert guest. Then he barked out, but without the old-time bitterness: "Mr. Starr, women are the very devil!"

"Well, Mr. Mudge," said Starr, "you don't need to take the matter very seriously now. I've quit. I'm going back home."

He looked for a gleam of triumph in Ezra's eyes. There was no such response. Instead, Ezra seemed to be affected in a quite different manner.

"You don't mean that!" he said.

"I do mean it," Starr replied. "I tackled the wrong job. Or, if it was the right job, I was the wrong man. This is my Russian campaign, Mr. Mudge, and I don't want any Waterloo. I'm retreating while there is time."

"Would ye mind saying, now, Mr. Starr," said Ezra, "what's decided you?"

"I don't know why I shouldn't tell you," Starr replied. "It was rather late in the day to find out—maybe I was stupid not to see it before. But I've just made the important discovery that Boxton doesn't want to be boosted. So the answer is, I've quit. You needn't worry about it any more."

"You don't understand, Mr. Starr; you don't understand," cried Ezra hastily. "I'd rather you'd stay. I need your help in something I've got in mind to do."

Starr looked at him suspiciously. But there was no sign of guile on the old man's face—just disappointment.

"Well, I've quit, and there you are!" announced Starr, rising.

"Wait; don't go yet!" pleaded Ezra. "This is a blow, sir—a blow. I can't go into details with you just now, but this spoils my plans, sir. Darn my suspenders if everything doesn't seem to go wrong! How's a man going to do anything for anybody, anyway, if they won't let him? I offered that young Eadbrook—"

"Eadbrook!" broke in Starr.

"Offered to get him out of trouble, and he wouldn't let me. And now, just as I was going to turn around and maybe put a shoulder to the wheel, you up and quit!"

"I don't understand," said Starr.

"Listen!" said Ezra, coming close to Starr and shaking a lean forefinger under his nose. "It's only a fool that never changes his mind. Second thought is the good thought. Tell you the truth, Mr. Starr, I've kind of seen a light. I'm an old man, but I'm young enough to walk back on my own tracks when I see a reason. You and me might get together yet!"

"Get together!" gasped Starr. He grasped at the idea on the moment. Then the vision of that last meeting of the boosters swept across his memory.

"No, Mr. Mudge," he replied, shaking his head decidedly. "It can't be done."

"I'll back ye; I might even—" Ezra showed strange eagerness.

"It can't be done. I've quit."

"We won't be hasty," said Ezra stubbornly. "We've got time yet. Let's think it over a day or two. Tell me you won't do anything final till we have another talk."

"Mr. Mudge," said Starr, "you can depend on it, I won't sneak out of town with my tail between my legs. I'm going out with music and dancing—and something to eat. I haven't set the date yet, but Starr will give a farewell dinner at the Commercial House before he goes. And it makes me feel rather good to believe that you'll come."

"I don't quite understand," faltered Ezra.

"I'll let you know later," said Starr, shaking hands.

STARR hurried back to the village, full of emotions that were decidedly assorted.

"If only I could lay the case before somebody that isn't biased either way," Starr was saying to himself; and at that moment he thought of Katherine Burbridge.

"I wonder—" he mused as he walked. "Well, why not? She knows them all like a book, and she's—interested; and besides—"

The inspiration took firm hold upon Starr, and when he reached the main street he turned abruptly into the little court where Katherine was staying.

She herself came to the door. As she saw Starr standing before her, something youthful, enthusiastic, and fine came into her eyes, and the welcome those eyes offered him, Starr felt, was unlike anything he had known in years.

"I've come to you for advice," Starr said. "I've just come from Ezra Mudge's. I'll tell you about that later. But the point is, I've made up my mind—or I did have it made up—to give up my work here and go back home. I hate to cry 'enough,' but it seems like the wisest course."

"It is the wisest thing," she replied.

"You think I ought to go back? You think I've failed?" he asked soberly.

"Failed? No," she replied. "You haven't failed. You didn't know it, but your mission here was to bring new ideas and give Boxton a glimpse of the outside world. You've done that. You wanted to do something impossible, and that you couldn't do. But you've not failed. Mr. Starr. You've left a mark on Boxton, and it will stay."

"Do you really think so?" he asked.

"I know it. You wanted to boost Boxton in a certain way. You couldn't do it. It couldn't be done. But you've boosted Boxton in a better way, I think. If you should ever come back here, you might not even notice the difference—but there will be a difference."

"I wouldn't want anything better," said Starr, with his eyes sparkling. "But I wonder if I might not even do what I set out to do. I told you I was up at Mudge's. Let me tell you what he said."

KATHERINE heard him to the end. Then she said: "You must go back. It makes no difference what Ezra says. You are through with Boxton."

"Ah! You don't trust him. It's another one of his schemes," cried Starr. "I knew you would be able—"

"No," Katherine replied; "I believe he's absolutely sincere. There's a reason why Ezra shifted. I heard the whole story from Louise. Mr. Starr, it's the most delicious thing you ever heard.

"Dear old Aunt Lyddy suddenly broke her chains, and she and Louise rushed at old Ezra and tore him limb from limb. You should hear Louise tell it. When those two darling women finished with him he didn't have a rag of respectability left. That's what's the matter with Ezra. He's sincere enough. But you're not going to stay in Boxton. You wanted my advice, and there it is. And when you—go back to California," she added, with a little catch in her voice, "I don't want you to forget—"

Starr glanced at his companion quickly. Suddenly he realized her—for the first time. He had admired her. He had looked into the deep, dark eyes and found renewed faith in himself at the bottom of them. And now, conscious that she was deeply moved and that her heart was beating fast so near to his,—feeling that something he needed was within his reach,—Starr reached out and took her hand and said: "You want me to go back home?"

She nodded. "Yes; it is the thing for you," she said softly.

"I'll go," he said. And then he added "—if you will go with me."

She did not reply. She did not stir. She left her hand in his, and remained with her head slightly bowed and her long eyelashes concealing her eyes.

"Katherine," Starr went on in a half whisper, "I've always been a man's man. I—I'm afraid I haven't the knack of opening my heart and telling these things. I've been playing big games in the business world. I thought they were big games—but they seem queer and small and distant now. I've been saving up a heap of something—inside here, Katherine—something different and bigger than the words I've got can tell you; and it must have been storing up for you. Nobody since I was a kid, Katherine, has ever called me Jim. I—"

He fumbled with the idea and waited. And the thought of it was droll enough to bring a smile to her lips and eyes.

"Jim!" she said.

"If you will go with me—" whispered Starr in her ear.

"To go with you," she murmured—"to go with you and help you to conquer; to be at your side when you do the big, real things you are going to do: I don't dare to think of it! Could I—could I really help you? I'm not so clever as you may think. I'm afraid—"

"To go with me, my splendid woman! To go with me, and make me the happiest of men," said Starr.

And then, perhaps for the sheer joy of not having to be wise any more, or

Page 15

Half an hour later Starr was writing a note to Ezra Mudge. But before he sealed it he handed it to Katherine.

They laughed over that. But suddenly Katherine's face became serious. She came over to Starr and took his hand.

"Jim," she said, "I'm so happy, it doesn't seem right—and that's the New England in me, Jim, you know. But it's poor Walter Eadbrook and Louise I was thinking of. Don't you suppose there's something we could do?"

"If it were a question of money—" began Starr.

"That's the trouble. Walter Eadbrook is going to take a sort of ghoulish satisfaction in martyring himself. When he says he'll go to work for Joel Tibb, driving a grocery wagon, he means it. He'd no more touch a cent of Ezra's money than he would rob a church. And Louise will have to suffer with him."

"If he wouldn't take old Ezra's money, do you suppose he'd listen to some other proposition that would let him go on with his store?" Starr asked her. "A good stiff argument might make him see how foolish it is to throw everything over-board. Shall we go down there?"

WHEN they arrived at the shoe store, Eadbrook was alone. He had a pad of paper in his hand and a pencil, and was evidently roughly figuring his stock. His face was drawn, but he greeted them heartily.

"It's mighty good of you to come down, Miss Burbridge," he said. Then he turned to Starr, with a smile of something like satisfaction on his face, and said: "As near as I can figure it out, Mr. Starr, the Association won't lose a cent. I can cover it all—just about."

There was a heavy step at the door. They all turned, and saw an old, bent figure at the entrance,

"Mr. Eadbrook?" asked a cracked voice.

"An old fellow from the other side of the mountain," explained Eadbrook. "Will you excuse me a moment while I see what he wants?"

The man surely was a picturesque figure. He was ragged, dirty, and his whitened beard fell below his neck. Outside was a rickety wagon, to which were attached two starveling oxen that had dragged him painfully over the mountain.

As they watched the queer figure, they saw him fumble in his pocket and hand Eadbrook a slip of paper. They saw Eadbrook glance at it, and then display eager emotion. The young fellow came running back with the slip of paper in his hand, and showed it to Starr. The writing was in pencil, and was indistinct. But Starr could make out:

Starr read it aloud. Then he said to Eadbrook: "I don't see—what does it mean?"

Eadbrook ran to the safe, which remained shattered as it was found on Sunday morning. Over it was a shelf with a two-deep line of shoe boxes upon it. They were mostly empty boxes, or boxes containing printed matter and stationery. He seized them, one after another, and lifted the covers. He had looked into four of them, when he staggered back and let the fifth one fall from his hands. As it went to the floor there was a flutter of yellow and green bank-notes. And when they looked down they saw several bundles of bills, fastened together with manila bands, just as they usually are counted and made up at the bank.

"It's here! It's the money—the Association's money," choked Eadbrook.

To be concluded next week

The Messenger

Continued from page 5

few dilapidated taxis that still had an allowance of vile-smelling benzol for fuel. Only Schmidt, the office runner, factotum, and general handy man, was there to meet him. Schmidt piled the great leather bags, eight of them, into the cab and on top of it; then he climbed on the running-board, and they were off for the Friedrichstrasse.

At the station Schmidt saw that Biggs was very nervous. He asked him in broken English if he spoke no German. Biggs shook his head.

Schmidt, looking very grave and mumbling, got his ticket for him, reserved his compartment, and piled into it the bags.

"Listen," he said. "Spend money and you'll get through. You have no right to this compartment. If any one objects, you must pay two, three, four passages. See? You change at Brunswick and Lohne and Munster; but sometimes you change at Hanover. Keep one of the bags up against the window, so. The porters all watch for you. They will run to the bag. Pay them plenty—plenty. It is the only way. Good-by."

Schmidt went off. Biggs had still ten minutes to wait. Just as the train was starting, one of the embassy secretaries, carrying a small flat canvas sack, came hurrying down the platform. He caught sight of Biggs.

"Here," he said. "Take this. It's a rush letter from the boss to the Ambassador in London. Don't let it get away from you, not for a minute."

The train was already pulling out. Biggs took the bag and felt it carefully. It held a single letter. He folded the bag and buttoned it under his coat; but presently he felt it slipping down. He took it out and held it in his hands for hours. When he went in to lunch, he put it under his arm; while he ate he sat on it.

The train was crowded, but through two changes and until late in the afternoon Biggs was not molested. Toward evening he was in an old, worn-out coach, evidently put on in emergency. It had a narrow corridor, but each of its compartments also had a door opening outward opposite. These doors and the windows rattled continuously. People would come along, stare at Biggs and his many bags, and pass on to more congenial quarters. Gradually the train grew crowded, and people began to frown at Biggs and his bags.

FINALLY an officer boarded the train. When he saw Biggs all alone in a compartment, and all the seats and the racks filled with mail-pouches, he stopped and scowled. A flush rose slowly in his cheeks and his eyes snapped. He snatched one of the bags from a seat, threw it into the narrow corridor, and sat down. Biggs waited until the officer stepped out at a station; then he called the conductor and paid for all the seats in the carriage. Together they lifted back the bag that was lying in the corridor.

When the train started the officer returned. The guard explained to him in a whisper that Biggs had paid for the whole compartment.

"So?" said the officer, with a stony stare at the conductor, who shrank back.

The officer pushed by him, threw two bags into the corridor, and sat down opposite Biggs.

Biggs turned red and his hands began to tremble. He shoved them in his pockets to hide them.

"Big stiff," he said to himself over and over again, his watery blue eyes fastened on the officer. "Great big stiff!"

It seemed to him that they traveled so,

Page 16

Over the officer's head, on the rack, was the heaviest of the bags. It contained a wooden box full of printed matter. It was so heavy that it took two men to handle it. Now it caught Biggs' eye. He stared at it. He saw that it was slipping slowly. He saw that if it slipped half an inch farther, it would overbalance and crash down. His eyes glittered. He half closed them as if he were trying to sleep.

All this time things had been going on in the officer's mind as well. He had been looking at Biggs, and Biggs was not a pleasant object to stare at for hours. The officer had heard that even a worm will turn. He wondered. He was smoking a cigarette. He leaned forward and blew a mouthful of smoke into Biggs' face. For one second Biggs became a man. He struck the officer with all his strength. As he struck, the heavy case, the case that it took two men to handle, fell with a muffled thud.

The officer was still stooping over. His eyes had just time to flare with rage at Biggs' blow. The case, on edge, struck him in the small of the back. Without a sound he plunged forward, a limp mass. The heavy box wabbled and then came to rest, balanced on top of him.

Biggs tipped the box back on to the seat where the officer had been sitting. Then he opened the door of the compartment and shoved the body out into the rushing night. He heard it strike the running-board of the carriage and bounce off. He closed the door quietly and sat down.

"Great big stiff!" he murmured.

SUDDENLY realization came to him. His face turned a pasty white, his eyes stuck out, he began to tremble all over and his teeth to chatter. What had he done? Murder. What would they do to him? Line him up and shoot him. Why, they wouldn't think any more of shooting him than he would of stepping on one grasshopper in a locust year! What would he say to the guard? What would he say to the guard? What would—

Biggs was brought back to himself by lights and shouts. He looked out. Porters were running to his compartment. He crumpled in his seat and closed his eyes. Sweat crawled down his cheeks. The porters started grabbing at the bags without even looking at him. Biggs opened his eyes slowly; then a thought came to him and galvanized his spine. He snatched out his watch. "Oh, God. Oh, thank God!" It was the border. No one had asked anything about the officer. No one could know when or how he had left the compartment. They could guess: they could never know—not if Biggs got away and never, never came back.

In a sort of frenzy he helped the porters lift out the bags; in the same sort of rage he advanced on the examining officers and presented his papers. He was like a rat showing his teeth. They frowned and passed him.

But, back in the train, all the way to Flushing, all night and most of the next day on the boat crossing to Tilbury, Biggs was in such an agony as few men ever know. At one moment he was cold, cold, and his teeth rattled against each other; the next he was hot, burning from head to foot, and he'd put up his hand to find little drops of icy sweat on his brow.

AT Fenchurch Street some one from the embassy met him and took charge of the bags—all but the little one containing a single letter.

"Better hand that in yourself," he said. "You got your nerve, bringing an unsealed bag."

Biggs looked at the bag. It was quite true: they had been in such a hurry in Berlin that they had forgotten to put on the outside seal. He had never noticed it. He shrugged his shoulders.

"Oh," he said, "that's all right. I've never left go of it, not for a minute."

They went to the embassy. Biggs was shown in to one of the secretaries. The secretary took him and his bag to the Ambassador. He delivered it and walked out.

He was only at the top of the stairs when he heard an ejaculation. The secretary hurried out and called him back. On the Ambassador's desk lay the canvas bag; beside it was a letter with all three seals broken neatly, as if they had been cut.

The Ambassador, frowning, was standing up. He pointed at the letter.

"That's the way it came," he said. "Explain it."

The words were so sharply uttered that they cut into Biggs. It was as if some one had given him a clip of the whip and promised more to follow. He stared at the letter, at the secretary standing by, at the Ambassador.

"It never left my hands, sir," he stammered. "It never left my hands—not for a minute."

The Ambassador leaned forward. His eyes seemed to strive to eat into Biggs' brain.

"Don't lie to me," he said, "you—you—"

IN that moment culminated for Biggs the oppression and terror of many days and the agony of long hours. His hands went up in a strange gesture; he collapsed—sank back into a chair, covered his face, and broke into strangling sobs.

"I—never—left—go—of—it—for—a—minute!" he gasped.

The secretary was moving about swiftly. He folded a sheet of paper, put it in an envelop, sealed the envelop with three seals, setting the wax alight and letting it drip. When the wax had cooled, he put the envelop in the canvas bag and tied it as it had been tied when delivered. He went over to Biggs and caught him by the shoulder.

"Here," he said, as he shook him. "Listen. Take this bag. Show us how you carried it during the day, and at night, and when you were at table. Come on."

Biggs did as he was ordered. He tucked the bag under his coat, under his arm, sat on it, lay on it, blubbering all the while.

The Ambassador watched the proceedings with unveiled scorn and suspicion of Biggs.

"Those are all the different ways you carried that bag?" asked the secretary.

"Sure," whimpered Biggs.

The secretary handed the bag to the Ambassador.

"Will you open it, sir?"

When the bag was opened and the dummy letter taken out, it was found that all the seals were broken neatly, as if they had been cut. The Ambassador did not apologize to Biggs; he never thought of him. He turned to the secretary with an amused and questioning look.

"It's very simple," said the secretary, smiling. "They shut the bag in such a hurry that they forgot to put on the lead seal. Consequently they must have sealed the letter in a hurry. If you melt wax properly the seals are tough and flexible; if you do it like I did just now—" He waved his hand at the dummy letter.

"Well, well," laughed the Ambassador. "Quite a sleuth, eh? What about lunch? You're lunching with us, aren't you?"

He slipped the original letter into a drawer and locked it. Then he and the secretary walked out.

Biggs stared after them. He realized that they had forgotten him. He slunk out and down the stairs, found the passport bureau, had his papers put in order, rushed down to Cockspur Street, and bought a second-class ticket for home on the first boat out. Ten days later he landed in New York. People on board had seen something strange in his weird face and had tried to talk to him, but Biggs was apparently dumb.

He did not return to Mawson & Daws. He sought an uptown job and found it. He is getting thirty dollars a week—exactly what he is worth.

You Can't Bluff This Woman

"I'LL walk down the street behind a man, and in half a block I'll tell you what he can do," says Mrs. A. J. Atwood.

For twenty-two years Mrs. Atwood has been handling the problem for the unemployed, finding men the jobs they are fitted for.

In three and a half years she gave work to 72,000 people. Poles, Portuguese, Swedes, Finns—all the races of immigrants who come to us—flock to her for advice. And employers know that she can find for them the type of workmen they want. She is often called upon to deliver a gang of Poles or Italians clear across the continent.

She Had No Business Training

TWENTY-THREE years ago Mrs. Atwood was left a widow, with a daughter to support, and no especial training to rely upon. A railroad superintendent suggested that she start an employment bureau and supply him with laborers for his road.

She secured her license, and opened her office. She was so successful that soon other employers were coming to her; and in three years she had five offices going.

Mrs. Atwood has shown that it's as much a job to get other people jobs as it is to keep one yourself.

Considering that the average length of an employee's service is thirty days, it would appear that this business of fitting a man in the right niche is one of the most important in the modern system of efficiency.

Mrs. Atwood can tell by the shape of a man's shoulders whether he should be a stone-cutter or a carpenter; by his forehead whether he is shiftless or reliable; by his eyes whether he is honest.

With people like Mrs. Atwood on the job, it is growing harder every day for a laborer to bluff a foreman into taking him on the force; but, just as business concerns now take more pains in hiring men, so they take more pains to keep them after they are hired.

One firm recently raised the wages of its employees $25,000 in one year, and expended $17,000 for lunch-rooms and other conveniences for the employees. And the striking thing in this is that the dividends that year showed, not a decrease, but an increase.

Do You Have to Discipline Your Fountain-Pen?

IS your fountain-pen temperamental, given to morbid periods of obstinacy? Or is it one of those staid vestal pens, with a good solid character, but a certain reticence which proves trying on occasions?

Miss Isabel Ayer will psycho-analyze your pen, and recommend just the diet, fresh-air treatment, or massage that will restore the old abandon, the old eagerness to do your wish, that will awaken the love you used to feel for it.

One summer Miss Ayer invested a hundred dollars in pens to peddle throughout New England. But, wherever she went, she found either a conservative devotion to the fountain-pens of long ago, or else a certain Puritan hesitancy in taking a strange fountain-pen of unknown lineage into the house; and at the end of the summer she came out just a hundred dollars in the hole.

The Human Side of a Pen

BUT that summer with those homeless pens had taught her the deep human side of their nature. She could not abandon them until she had found them a home. She hired space in a jewelry store, where she could not only study the moods of the pens, but explain them in alluring, salesmanlike tones to others.

At the end of this second year she opened her own fountain-pen shop; and now for thirteen years she has shown Boston what a fountain-pen, well brought up and well taken care of, can do for anybody.

"I recommend a coarse pen for high school students, except when they are taking decidedly technical training. I have found that the average business man uses a pen with a fine point; the society woman of fifty a long point, coarse or stub; the home-keeper, a medium; the lawyer, a coarse stub. The allopathic physician is more likely to use a stub, while the homeopath uses a fine point."

You never know what a literary person may use, she says. They are the hardest people in the world to fathom.

The Man in the Engine-Cab

Continued from page 3

signal, when he felt morally certain and could practically see that the line was clear and open, would have cost fifteen minutes or more. If the practice were repeated, and even if his detention-sheets showed that the time lost was due to stopping at a signal that was out of order, he would not he censured—oh, no. But there would he a new man on that run—a man who had the reputation of bringing his train in on time.

550 Signals Between New York and Washington

FREEMAN tells another story. Free-man says that he never ran past a red signal in his life, and that he could not have held his run on the Limited for five long years if he had not been in the habit of bringing her in "in her time." Freeman speaks a good word for the signals. You take note of it. Then you remember that, in the arbitration between the fifty-three railroads in the Eastern territory and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers two or three years ago, the engineer of the Congressional Limited testified that, in the five-hour run from the national capital up to the outskirts of New York, he had to read and understand and observe exactly 550 signals.

On Freeman's road they do not penalize a man for failing to make his time by finding some other excuse and then quietly removing him from his run. On the contrary, there are maximum speed limits for every mile of the main line and its branches.

The steady tendency of all American roads during the past ten years has been toward the lengthening of schedules rather than shortening them. The two whirlwind trains between New York and Chicago now take twenty hours for the trip, instead of eighteen, as was the case when they were first installed. The famous run of the Jarrett and Palmer special in 1876, from Jersey City to Oakland on San Francisco Bay, in four days flat, still stands almost as a transcontinental record, while the fastest running ever accredited to a locomotive—112 1/2 miles an hour, by a New York Central locomotive with four cars, for a short distance between Rochester and Buffalo—was accomplished more than twenty years ago.

"We've passed the sixty mark," shouts Freeman's fireman into your ear. You look ahead at the curving track. Curving? Forever curving. And each time it swerves, and the path that we are eating up at the rate of eighty-eight feet to the second is lost behind the brow of a hill or through a clump of trees, your heart rises to your mouth and you wonder if all is well just over there beyond. And then you remember that the friendly raised arm of the block semaphore has said "yes."

The engineer's figure is immobile, but his mind is alert. His touch upon the throttle is as light as that of a child. His face, half hidden behind his great goggles, is expressionless. Yet behind those same protecting glasses the windows of his soul are open—and watching, watching, forever watching the curving track. Sometimes the track curves away from his side of the cab, and then the fireman climbs up on his seat behind and picks up the lookout. But he does not pick up Freeman's responsibility.

I recall hearing once of an engineer who used to pull a passenger train up in Wisconsin. Midway on his run the road crossed a small creek which the Rivers and Harbor Bill had declared a navigable river. It spanned the waterway by a drawbridge. The drawbridge was protected by automatic; home and distance signals—and a lazy signal-tender. Despite the fact that the draw was rarely ever opened, he habitually set the distance signals at danger and the home signals—at the very portal of the bridge —at safety. That relieved him of labor.

One day the draw was open—the United States government inspectors were at work upon it. But one of the engineers, with a contempt for that lazy sign of danger at the distance board, came down upon it with a long freight at forty miles an hour. It took ten minutes to fish him out of the river, and ten hours to get the locomotive out. But Freeman has a high regard for signals. He never permits them to become monotonous.

"If ever I get that way, I'll know it myself," says he, "and it will be high time for me to get out."

After all, his service on this extra fast train may not exceed ten years. A man whose nerve was not iron and his physique steel could not last in it one third of that time. According to the insurance figures of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers, to which Freeman and most of his fellows belong, eleven years and seven days is the average length of service for an engineer upon an American railroad. The railroad managers figure it a little differently and place the average at something over twelve years. And out in the West, where the railroads span the mountains and thread the canons, the man in the engine-cab will rarely last more than six years.

Of course, the situation varies on different railroads. Before me lies the report of the Boston & Albany—impressive for the length of service of its engineers. It is the habit of that railroad to give annual passes to the employees who have been in its service more than fifteen years. More than half of its engineers receive such passes. And early in the present year it retired from active service Engineer James W. Chamberlain, who had been in its employ more than fifty-three years. And for a dozen years past Chamberlain had been piloting two of the road's fastest trains between Boston and Springfield. You can not always rely upon averages.

The Freight Engineer

"YOU writer fellows like to talk about the heroes of the engine-cab," says the fireman, as we near the freight-yards of B—. "The boy who is pulling that greasy old Baldwin comes nearer being a hero than Jimmie or any of the rest of the passenger bunch."

There is nothing cryptic in his meaning. He means that the freight engineer, pulling a less carefully maintained piece of motive power, to which has been added not only its full working capacity of cars, but as many extra as an energetic and hard pressed train-master may add, up to the risk point of an engine failure and consequent complete breakdown out upon the main line, must keep out of the way of the gleaming green and gold and brass contraption that has the right of way from the very moment she starts out from the terminal. Yet it is the freight-puller and his train that is earning the money that must be used to pay the deficit on the Limited that whirls by him so contemptuously. For that proud and showy thing has never been a money-earner—and never will be.

Across this broad America there are seventy thousand Freemans—sitting at the throttle-sides of the big locomotives, steam and electric, pulling freights and passengers, little trains and long. With each of them rides Responsibility. Each of them knows that. Yet they do not think of danger. They scorn the word "hero." They merely like to think of themselves as men capable of handling a big job in a big way. They represent the highest type of labor employed by time railroads of America—an organization that has the most sensitive and well trained labor of any business in the world. The man in the engine-cab is a man of whom any American citizen may well be proud.

How Can I Sell Mining Stock?

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

UNFORTUNATELY, this woman does not mention the name of the stock she owns. If she had given the name, it might be possible to tell off-hand whether the shares have any value.

First of all, does the stock pay dividends? If so, the chances are that it has some value and can be sold. The stock may not pay dividends and still have value, but the probabilities are against this. If no dividends are being paid, write to either the president or secretary of the company and ask what the company's earnings are, how soon a dividend is expected, and where the stock can be sold. State that you are a stockholder, and assume that the official to whom you write will answer your request. If no answer is received, then you may begin to suspect that the stock is of doubtful value.

Next in order, write to the Secretary of State, at the capital of the State where the company was chartered (always printed on the face of the certificate), and ask him whether the company is still in existence. This you have a perfect right to do. Also, ask him what has become of the company in case it is no longer alive in his State. He may or may not reply to this part of the question. In any case, if he says that the company has gone out of existence, the probability, although not certainty, is that the stock is valueless. If the official merely says the company is in existence and has paid its taxes, your search for information has only begun.

Usually a broker can find out for you whether a mining stock has any value. There is a very elaborate system by which brokers and bankers are able to obtain information one from another.

Although the majority of brokers are reliable and honest, there are a few who pretend to buy stocks that most of their fellows consider worthless. This they often do merely as "bait." These gentry actually buy what are generally considered worthless stocks at a few cents a share, but in so doing persuade the owners to buy from them something else.

There are probably half a million mining companies that are dead or worthless. As for copper stocks, practically all of any importance, except a few new ones, will be found in the "Copper Handbook" published at Houghton, Michigan. The larger gold and silver companies are reported in such standard reference manuals as Poor's, Corporation Service, etc.

There are two or three large volumes, usually on file at brokers' offices, that give the names of "obsolete securities." These lists cover perhaps a hundred thousand names. One mining broker in New York has records of his own of more than 60,000 companies. A specialist in "uncurrent" or worthless securities has himself run down 70,000 companies. Two New York reporting agencies have card catalogues of 100,000 names apiece. There are similar agencies in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and Pittsburgh.

Of the living corporations which the Federal Trade Commission at Washington has taken cognizance of, more than 100,000 have no net income. As to how many corporations have died in this country there is, of course, no record. One authority gives the figure at six million—probably an exaggeration. But one thing is sure: worthless stock is as common as the sands of the sea.

Free Booklets that You May Have for the Asking

Write Slattery & Co., 40 Exchange Place, New York, for booklet explaining "The Twenty Payment Plan," which enables one to buy bonds, New York Stock Exchange, Curb Market, and active unlisted securities, with a small initial deposit, followed by convenient monthly payments. Ask for Booklet 51-E, including statistical book on high-grade dividend-paying Coppers.

The partial-payment plan of buying one or more shares of investment securities by a small first payment and $5 or more monthly thereafter is fully explained in free Booklet L-2, published by Sheldon, Morgan & Co., 42 Broadway, New York.

Any one who is interested in the sound investment of moderate amounts from time to time will find it of interest, and advantageous, to read The 8100 Bond News. This is a monthly magazine devoted to secure marketable bond investments, and contains a list of more than one hundred and fifty $100 bonds. Address Beyer & Company, 122 Broadway, New York City.

The Citizens Saving & Trust Co., of Cleveland, Ohio, will furnish to our readers, upon request, Booklet P, which contains some very interesting information on banking by mail.

Mr. Atwood has written a booklet, "Making Your Money Work for You." Write him at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, inclosing a two-cent stamp, if you want a copy.

He Tames the Wild Cactus

WHEN Irving Noyes was but a lad, the plant-life study was his fad. He couldn't rest until he knew the truth about all things that grew. He raised some flowers and sold the seeds, and with the coin bought helpful screeds. It shows the character he had when he was but a sawed-off lad.

His years since then were years of toil; he had to make the kettle boil; as a machinist he has wrought six days a week, which labor brought the price of things to eat and wear; and in the evenings he'd repair out to the yard behind his shack; there thrills of joy ran up his back. For there his plants triumphant grew—his cacti, which all savants knew.

Wherever cactus plants are grown, the fame of Irving Noyes is known. And cactus fans, they say, are found, in scattered groups, the whole world round. And wise professors study books, and grope around in dusty nooks, to learn the latest cactus news; it's wonderful how they enthuse.

And all these learned and gifted boys look up with reverence to Noyes. His knowledge is profound and deep; he knows more cactus when asleep, three hours before the dawn shall break, than others know when they're awake.

At evening to his yard he goes, while neighbors seek the movie shows, and there in ecstasy he walks among the strange and jointed stalks, and has more different kinds of fun than you could buy with all your mon.