You Clean Your Clothes Before Putting Them Away for the Winter. Why Not Clean Your Town?

IN a few more days the leaves will all be off the trees.

The kindly covering that nature has spread over dirty back yards and unpainted houses will be stripped away.

Anybody standing on the hill behind the church and looking over your town will be able to tell at a glance who are the good and who are the bad citizens in it.

If I were the banker in your town, I would stand on that hill and study the houses very carefully.

I would say to myself: "Jones' house has just been painted: his yard is spick and span. That fellow must be pretty sound and solid underneath."

And I would say: "Smith's place looks awful. House unpainted; yard unkempt. They say he's making money, but I think he will bear watching. There must be something the matter with a man whose mind is so fixed on money that he lives in an unpainted house."

Before nature strips your town naked, why not get together—all of you—and make it a thing of beauty?

Set aside one of these lovely October weeks as a Paint-Up and Clean-Up Week, and go to it.

The folks in Cincinnati have done that each year for several years. What has it done for them?

Well, for one thing, it has reduced their fire insurance bill $160,000 a year.

Can you imagine any better way to teach good citizenship to the boys and girls than through a week's work for a cleaner town? Read this record of the children in one public school:

Outdoors—Alleys swept, 110; benches scrubbed, 45; coops painted, 29; fences painted, 180; garbage cans cleaned, 134; gardens planted, 468; gates repaired, 47; gutters cleaned, 31; porches cleaned, etc., 100; sheds cleaned, 125; steps scrubbed, 180; sidewalks cleaned, 130; trash burned, 216; trees planted, 350; yards cleaned, 720; total outdoors items, 2865.

Indoors—Attics cleaned, 197; beds enameled, 315; baths cleaned, 166; baseboards washed, 6; bicycles painted, 9; buffets cleaned, 2; bureaus varnished, 134; carpets beaten, 330; ceilings whitewashed, 112; cellars cleaned, 370 chandeliers cleaned, 4; chiffonniers cleaned, 2; chairs scrubbed, 370; closets cleaned, 346; curtains washed, 112; cupboards cleaned, 16; clocks painted, 13; cabinets cleaned, 8; davenports cleaned, 60; desks cleaned, 129; ornaments washed, 301; doors varnished, 295; dressers cleaned, 147; floors painted, 358; furnaces cleaned, 23; furniture varnished, 180; frames gilded, 19; globes varnished, 10; halls scrubbed, 242; houses cleaned, 21; ice-boxes enameled, 283; kitchens scrubbed, 200; linoleum scrubbed, 112; laundries cleaned, 26; mattings cleaned, 12; mattresses cleaned, 68; pianos cleaned, 11; pictures cleaned, 175; pantries cleaned, 56; bedrooms cleaned, 65; rugs beaten, 60; steps washed, 150; screens scrubbed, 109; stoves cleaned, 35; shutters painted, 40; sinks enameled, 25; stands painted, 15; tables washed, 35; trunks cleaned, 10; washstands painted, 27; window-sills scrubbed, 98; walls papered, 195; windows washed, 300; woodwork scrubbed, 135; total indoors items, 8112.

Sir Christopher Wren, the great English architect, designed many of London's finest buildings. Over his grave, which lies in the heart of London, is engraved:

If you would see his monument, look about you.

That's a pretty good epitaph. Why not adopt it for yourself?

Why not be the man who changed your town from shabbiness into beauty?

You can do it. You can start a Paint-Up and Clean-Up Week by spending a 2-cent stamp.

Write to Allen W. Clark, Chairman of the National Clean-Up and Paint-Up Bureau, Kinloch Building, St. Louis. He will send you a big package of literature telling how other communities have cleaned up.

Mr. Clark has nothing to sell. His literature is free.

The children of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness; yet we have no record of any single death from typhoid or cholera or other plagues.

Why?

Because every day was clean-up day.

"In every tent," commanded Moses, "let there be a paddle. And any man who has rubbish or garbage to throw out of the camp, let him take that paddle with him and bury it immediately.

"For the Lord thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp," said Moses, "to deliver thee; . . . therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee."

Moses, if he lived in your town, would send for that clean-up and paint-up literature now.

Bruce Barton, Editor.

The Triflers

By FREDERICK ORIN BARTLETT "Author of "The Wall Street Girl"

Illustrations by George E. Wolfe

FOR a man to keep himself consistently amused for ten years after his graduation from college, even with an inheritance to furnish ample financial assistance, suggests a certain quality of genius. This much Monte Covington had accomplished—accomplished, furthermore, without placing himself under obligations of any sort to the opposite sex. He left no trail of broken hearts in his wake. If some of the younger sisters of the big sisters took the liberty of falling in love with him secretly and in the privacy of their chambers, that was no fault of his, and did neither them nor him the slightest harm.

Such minor complications could not very well be avoided, because, discreet as Monte tried to be, it was not possible for him to deny certain patent facts, to wit: that he was a Covington of Philadelphia, that he was six feet tall and light-haired, that he had wonderfully decent blue eyes, that he had a straight nose, that he had the firm mouth and jaws of an Arctic explorer, that he had more money than he knew what to do with, and that he was just old enough to be known as a bachelor without in the slightest looking like one.

At the point where the older sisters gave him up as hopeless, he came as a sort of challenge to the younger.

This might have proved dangerous for him had it not been for his schedule, which did not leave him very long in any one place and which kept him always pretty well occupied. By spending his winters at his New York club until after the holidays; then journeying to Switzerland for the winter sports; then to Nice for tennis; then to Paris for a month of gay spring and the Grand Prix; and so over to England for a few days in London and a month of golf along the coast—he was able to come back refreshed to his camp in the Adirondacks, there to fish until it was time to return to Cambridge for the football season, where he was still useful as a coach in the art of drop-kicking.

The fact that he could get into his old football togs without letting out any strings or pulling any in, and could even come through an occasional scrimmage without losing his breath, was proof that he kept himself in good condition.

IT was not until his eleventh trip that Monte became aware of certain symptoms which seemed to hint that even as pleasant a cycle as his could not be pursued indefinitely. At Davos he first noted a change. Though he took the curves in the long run with a daring that proved his eye to be as quick and his nerves as steady as ever, he was restless.

Later, when he came to Nice, it was with a listlessness foreign to him. In the first place, he missed Edhart, the old maître d'hôtel who for a decade had catered to his primitive American tastes in the matter of food-stuffs with as much enthusiasm as if he had been a Parisian epicure.

The passing of Edhart did more to call Monte's attention to the fact that in his own life a decade had also passed than anything else could possibly have done. Between birthdays there is only the lapse each time of a year; but between the coming and going of the maître d'hôtel there was a period of ten years, which with his disappearance seemed to vanish.

Monte was twenty-two when he first came to Nice, and now he was thirty-two. He became thirty-two the moment he was forced to point out to the new management his own particular table in the corner, and to explain that, however barbarous the custom might appear, he always had for breakfast either a mutton chop or a beefsteak. Edhart had made him believe, even to last year, that in this matter and a hundred others he was merely expressing the light preferences of a young man. Now, because he was obliged to emphasize his wishes by explicit orders, they became the definite likes and dislikes of a man of middle age.

For relief Monte turned to the tennis courts, and played so much in the next week that he went stale and in the club tournament put up the worst game of his life.

That evening, in disgust, he boarded the train for Monte Carlo, and before eleven o'clock had lost five thousand francs at roulette—which was more than even he could afford for an evening's entertainment that did not entertain. Without waiting for the croupier to rake in his last note, Monte hurried out and, to clear his head, walked all the way back to Nice along the Cornice road. Above him, the mountains; below, the blue Mediterranean, while the road hung suspended between them like a silver ribbon. Yet even here he did not find content.

SO, really, he had no alternative but Paris, although it was several weeks ahead of his schedule. As a matter of fact, it was several weeks too early. The city was not quite ready for him. The trees in the Champs Élysées were in much the condition of a lady half an hour before an expected caller. The broad vista to the triumphal arches was merely the [?] ting for a few nurses and their [?] The little iron tables were so [?] that they remained merely iron [?]

In an effort to rouse himself, h [?] to visit the cafes upon Montmar [?] he had outgrown many years bef [?] night he climbed the narr [?] L'Abbaye. It was exactly [?] —a square room bound [?] before tables. Some th [?] ladies of various nat [?] about the center of [?]

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best, but with manifest effort, to keep pace to the frenzied music of an orchestra paid to keep frenzied. A half dozen of the ladies pounced upon Monte as he sat alone, and he gladly turned over to them the wine he purchased as the price of admission.

Yvonne, she with the languid Egyptian eyes, tried to rouse the big American. Was it that he was bored? Possibly it was that, Monte admitted. Then another bottle of wine was the proper thing. So he ordered another bottle, and to the toast Yvonne proposed, raised his glass. But the wine did him no good, and the music did him no good, and Yvonne did him no good. The place had gone flat. Whatever he needed, it was nothing L'Abbaye had to offer.

COVINGTON went out into the night again, and, though the music from a dozen other cafés called to him to come in and forget, he continued down the hill to the boulevard, deaf to the gay entreaties of the whole city. It was clear that he was out of tune with Paris.

As he came into the Place de L'Opéra he ran into the crowd pouring from the big gray opera house, an eager, voluble crowd that jostled him about as if he were an intruder. They had been warmed by fine music and stirred by the great passions of this mimic world, so that the women clung more tightly to the arms of their escorts.

Impatiently he started again for his hotel. This confoundedly good-natured, self-satisfied crowd moving in couples irritated him. At that moment a tall, slender girl turned, hesitated, then started toward him. He did not recognize her at first, but the mere fact that she came toward him—that any one came toward him—quickened his pulse. It brought him back instantly from the shadowy realm of specters to the good old solid earth. It was he, Covington, who was standing there.

Then she raised her eyes—dark eyes deep as trout pools; steady, confident, but rather sad eyes. They appeared to be puzzled by the eagerness with which he stepped forward and grasped her hand.

"Marjory!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know you were in Paris!"

She smiled—a smile that extended no further than the corners of her perfect mouth.

"That's to excuse yourself for not looking me up, Monte?"

She had a full, clear voice. It was good to hear a voice he could recognize.

"No," he answered frankly. "That's honest. I thought you were somewhere in Brittany. But are you bound anywhere in particular?"

"Only home."

"Still living on the Boulevard St. Germaine?"

She nodded.

"Number forty-three?"

He was glad he was able to remember that number.

"Number sixty-four," she corrected.

They had been moving toward the Metro station, and here she paused.

"I may accompany you home, may I not?" he asked eagerly.

"If you wish."

Once again she raised her eyes with that expression of puzzled interest. This was not like Monte. Of course he would accompany her home, but that he should seem really to take pleasure in the prospect—that was novel.

"Let me call a taxi," he said. "I'm never sure where these French undergrounds are going to land me."

[?] ey are much quicker," she sug- [?]

is no hurry," he answered.

[?] twenty-four hours a day on his [?] e was never in a hurry.

[?] of giving to the driver the [?] sixty-four Boulevard St. Ger- [?] ered him to forty-seven Rue [?] ich is the Cafe d'Harcourt. [?] enly occurred to Monte [?] was with him. He was [?]

[?] sed when the car stopped before the café, and mildly interested.

"Do you mind?" he asked.

"No, Monte."

She followed him through the smoke and chatter to one of the little dining-rooms in the rear where the smoke and chatter were somewhat subdued. There Henri removed their wraps with a look of frank approval. It was rather an elaborate dinner that Monte ordered, because he remembered for the first time that he had not yet dined this evening. It was also a dinner of which he felt Edhart would thoroughly approve, and that always was a satisfaction.

"Now," he said to the girl, as soon as Henri had left, "tell me about yourself."

"You knew about Aunt Kitty?" she asked.

"No," he replied hesitatingly, with an uneasy feeling that it was one of those things he should know about.

"She was taken ill here in Paris in February, and died shortly after we reached New York," she explained.

What Covington would have honestly liked to do was to congratulate her. Stripping the situation of all sentimentalism, the naked truth remained that she had for ten years given up her life utterly to her aunt—had almost sold herself into

slavery. Ostensibly this Aunt Kitty had taken the girl to educate, although she had never forgiven her sister for having married Stockton; had never forgiven her for having had this child, which had cost her life; had never forgiven Stockton for losing in business her sister's share of the Dolliver fortune.

POOR old Stockton—he had done his best, and the failure killed him. It was Chic Warren who had told Covington the pitiful little tale. Chic always spoke of the aunt as "the Vamp," the abbreviation, as he explained, being solely out of respect to her gray hairs. Marjory had received her education, to be sure; but she had paid for it in the only coin she had—the best of her young self from seventeen to twenty-seven. The only concession the aunt had ever made was to allow her niece to study art in Paris this last year.

"I haven't heard from Chic since Christmas," he explained; "so I didn't know. Then you are back here in Paris—alone?"

Unconsciously he had emphasized that word "alone."

"Why not?" she asked directly.

She held her head a bit high, as if in challenge.

"Nothing; only—"

HE did not finish. He could not very well tell her that she was too confoundedly good-looking to be alone in Paris. Yet that was what he thought, in spite of his belief that, of all the women he had ever met, she was the best able to be alone anywhere. There were times when he had sat beside her, not feeling sure he was in the same room with her: it was as if he were looking at her through plate-glass. To-night, however, it was not like that. She looked like a younger sister of herself.

"Still painting?" he inquired.

"As much as they will let me."

"They?"

She leaned forward with a frown, folding her arms upon the table.

"What is the matter with men?" she demanded. "Why won't they believe a woman when she tells the truth?"

He was somewhat startled by the question, and by her earnestness.

"Just what do you mean?"

"Why can't they leave a woman alone?"

It was clear he was not expected to answer, and so, with her permission, he lighted a cigarette and waited with considerable interest for her to go on.

"To-night," she said, "I ran away from Teddy Hamilton, for all the world like a heroine of melodrama. Do you know Teddy?"

"Yes," he answered slowly, "I do."

He refrained with difficulty from voicing his opinion of the man, which he could have put into three words—"the little beast." But how did it happen that she, of all women, had been thrown into contact with this pale-faced Don Juan of the New York music-halls and Paris cafés?

"I lent Marie, my maid, one of my new hats and a heavy veil," she went on. "She came out and stopped into a taxi, with instructions to keep driving in a circle of a mile. Teddy followed in another machine. And"—she paused to look up and smile—"for all I know, he may still be following her round and round. I came on to the opera."

"Kind of tough on Marie," he commented, with his blue eyes reflecting a hearty relish of the situation.

"Marie will undoubtedly enjoy a nap," she said. "As for Teddy—well, he is generally out of funds, so I hope he may get into difficulties with the driver."

"He won't," declared Monte. "He'll probably end by borrowing a pour-boire of the driver."

She nodded.

"That is possible. He is very clever."

"The fact that he is still out of jail—" began Monte.

Then he checked himself. He was not a man to talk about other men—even about one so little of a man as Teddy Hamilton.

"Tell me what you know of him?" she requested.

"I'd rather not," he answered.

"Is he as bad as that?" she queried thoughtfully. "But what I don't understand is why—why, then, he can sing like a white-robed choir-boy."

Monte looked serious.

"I've heard him," he admitted. "But it was generally after he had been sipping absinthe rather heavily. His specialty is "The Rosary.'"

"And the barcarole from the 'Contes d'Hoffmann.'"

"And little Spanish serenades," he added.

"But if he's all bad inside?"

She raised those deep, dark eyes as a child might. She had been for ten years like one in a convent.

Covington shook his head.

"I can't explain it," he said. "Perhaps, in a way, it's because of that—because of the contrast. But I've heard him do it. I've heard him make a room full of those girls on Montmartre stop their dancing and gulp hard. But where—"

"Did I meet him?" she finished. "It was on the boat coming over this last time. You see—I'm talking a great deal about myself."

"Please go on."

He had forgotten that her face was so young. The lines of her features were scarcely more than sketched in, though that much had been done with a sure hand. Whatever was to come, he thought, must be added. There would be need of few erasures. Up to a certain point it was the face of any of those young women of gentle breeding he met when at home—the inheritance of the best of many generations.

"Please go on," he repeated, as she still hesitated.

"I met Teddy on the boat," she resumed. "I was traveling alone because—well, just because I wanted to be alone. You know, Aunt Kitty was very good to me, but I'd been with her every minute for more than ten years, and so I wanted to be by myself a little while. Right after she died, I went down to the farm—her farm in Connecticut—and thought I could be alone there. But, she left me a great deal of money, Monte."

SOMEHOW, she could speak of such a thing to him.

"It was a great deal too much," she went on. "I didn't mind myself, because I could forget about it; but other people—they made me feel like a rabbit running before the hounds. Some one put the will in the papers, and people I'd never heard of began to write to me—dozens of them. Then men with all sorts of

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schemes—charities and gold-mines and copper-mines and oil-wells and I don't know what all—came down there to see me: down there to the little farm, where I wanted to be alone. Of course, I could be out to them; but even then I was conscious that they were around. Some of them even waited until I ventured from the house, and waylaid me on the road.

"Then there were others—people I knew and couldn't refuse to see without being rude. I felt," she said, looking up at Monte, "as if the world of people had suddenly all turned into men, and that they were hunting me. I couldn't get away from them without locking myself up, and that was just the thing I did not want to do. In a way, I'd been locked up all my life. So I just packed my things and took the steamer without telling any one but my lawyer where I was going."

"It's too bad they wouldn't let you alone," said Monte.

"It was like an evil dream," she said. "I didn't know men were like that."

Monte frowned.

"Then on the boat I met Teddy," she went on. "It was difficult not to meet him."

He nodded.

"I didn't mind so much at first; he was interesting."

"Yes, he's that," admitted Monte. "And he was very pleasant until—he began to make love to me."

If Monte knew Teddy Hamilton, this happened about the third day.

"That was very annoying," she said reminiscently. "It was annoying not only because of Teddy, but in itself. In some ways he did it very nicely—especially when he sang in the moonlight. I suppose it was my fault that I gave him the opportunity. I could have kept myself in my state-room, or I could have played bridge with the elderly ladies in the cabin. But, you see, that's what Aunty always

made me do, and I did want to get out. I did enjoy Teddy up to that point. But I did not want to fall in love with him, or with any one else. I suppose I'm too selfish—too utterly and completely selfish."

"To—er—to fall in love?" he questioned.

"Yes. Oh, as long as I'm making you my father confessor, I may as well be thorough." She smiled.

Monte leaned forward with sudden interest. Here was a question that at odd moments had disturbed his own peace of mind. It was Chic Warren who had first told him that in remaining a bachelor he was leading an utterly selfish life.

"IT isn't that I want to do anything especially proper or improper," she hastened to assure him. "I haven't either the cravings or the ambitions of the new woman. That, again, is where I'm selfish. I'd like to be"—she spoke hesitatingly—"I'd like to be just like you, Monte."

"Like me!" he exclaimed in surprise.

"Free to do just what I want to do—nothing particularly good, nothing particularly bad; free to go here or go there; free to live my own life; free to be free!"

"Well," he asked, "what's to prevent?"

"Teddy Hamilton—and the others," she answered. "In a way, they take the place of Aunty. They won't let me alone. They won't believe me when I tell them I don't want them around. They seem to assume that, just because I'm not married— Oh, they are stupid, Monte!"

Henri, who had been stealing in with course after course, refilled the glasses. He smiled discreetly as he saw her earnest face.

"What you need," suggested Monte, "is a sort of chaperon or secretary."

She shook her head.

"Would you like one yourself?" she demanded.

"It would be a good deal of a nuisance," he admitted; "but, after all—"

"I won't have it!" she burst out. "It would spoil everything. It would be like building one's own jail and employing one's own jailer. I couldn't stand that. I'd rather be annoyed as I am than be annoyed by a chaperon."

SHE was silent a moment, and then she exclaimed: "Why, I'd almost rather marry Teddy! I'd feel freer—honestly, I think I'd feel freer with a husband than a chaperon."

"Oh, see here!" protested Monte. "You mustn't do that."

"I don't propose to," she answered quietly.

"Then," he said, "the only thing left is to go away where Teddy and the others can't find you."

"Where?" she asked with interest.

"There are lots of little villages in Switzerland."

She shook her head.

"And along the Riviera."

"I love the little villages," she replied. "I love them here and at home. But it's no use."

She smiled. There was something pathetic about that smile—something that made Covington's arm muscles twitch.

"I wouldn't even have the aid of the taxis in the little villages," she said.

Monte leaned back.

"If they only had here in Paris a force of good, honest Irish cops instead of these confounded gendarmes," he mused.

She looked her astonishment at the irrelevant observation.

"You see," he explained, "it might be possible then to lay for Teddy H. some evening and—argue with him."

"It's nice of you, Monte, to think of that," she murmured.

Monte was nice in a good many ways.

"The trouble is, they lack sentiment, these gendarmes," he concluded. "They are altogether too law-abiding."

MONTE had sometimes been accused of lacking sentiment; and yet, the very first thing he did when starting for his walk the next morning was to order a large bunch of violets to be sent to number sixty-four Boulevard St. Germaine. Then, at a somewhat faster pace than usual, he followed the river to the Jardin des Tuileries, and crossed there to the Avenue des Champs Élysées.

Monte's objection to sentiment was not based upon any of the modern schools of philosophy, where it is deplored as a weakness. He took his stand upon much simpler grounds: that, as far as he had been able to observe, it did not make for content.

It had been his fate to be thrown in contact with a good deal of it in its most acute stages, because the route he followed was unhappily the route also followed by those upon their honeymoon. If what he observed was sentiment at its zenith, then he did not care for it. Bridegrooms made the poorest sort of traveling companions; and that, after all, was the supreme test of men. They appeared restless, dazed, and were continually looking at their watches. Few of them were able to talk intelligently or play a decent game of bridge.

Perhaps, too, he had been unfortunate in the result of his observations of the same passion in its later stages; but it is certain that those were not inspiring, either. Chic Warren was an exception. He seemed fairly happy and normal, but Covington would never forget the night he spent there when Chic, Jr., had the whooping-cough. He walked by Chic's side up and down the hall, up and down the hall, up and down the hall, with Chic a ghastly white and the sweat standing in beads upon his forehead. His own throat had tightened and he grew weak in the knees every time the rubber-soled nurse stole into sight. Every now and then he heard that gasping cough, and felt the spasmodic grip of Chic's fingers upon his arm. It was terrible.

At the end of an hour Covington turned back, wheeling like a soldier on parade. There had never seemed to him any reason why, when a man was entirely comfortable, as he was, he should take the risk of a change. He had told Chic as much when sometimes the latter, over a pipe, had introduced the subject.

The last time, Chic had gone a little farther than usual.

"But, man alive!" Chic had exclaimed. "A day will come when you'll be sorry."

"I don't believe it," Monte answered.

Yet it was only yesterday that he had wandered over half Paris in search of something to bring his schedule back to normal. And he had found it—in front of the Opera House at eleven o'clock at night.

Monte strode into his hotel with a snap that made the little clerk glance up in surprise.

"Any mail for me?" he inquired.

"A telephone message, m'sieur."

He handed Monte an envelop. It was not often that he received telephone messages. It read as follows:

Monte felt his breath coming fast. "How long has this been waiting for me?" he demanded.

"A half hour, m'sieur."

He hurried out the door and into a taxi. "Sixty-four Boulevard St. Germaine—and hurry."

Leaving Paris? She had no right to do that. Edhart never left. That was the beauty of Edhart—that he remained stationary, so that he could always be found. He was quite sure that Edhart was too considerate even to die, could he have avoided it. Now Marjory was proposing to go and leave him here alone. He could not allow that. It was too early to quit Paris, anyway. It was only the first day of spring!

SHE came down into the gloomy pension reception-room looking as if she had already begun to assist Marie with the packing. Her hair had become loosened, and escaped in several places in black curls that gave her a distinctly girlish appearance. There was more color, too, in her cheeks; but it was the flush of excitement rather than the honest red that colored his own cheeks.

She looked tired and discouraged. She sank into a chair.

"It was good of you to come, Monte," she said. "I don't know why I should bother you with my affairs. Only—Teddy was so disagreeable. He frightened me, for a moment."

"What did he do?" demanded Monte.

"He came here early, and when Marie told him I was out he said he would wait until I came back. So he sat down—right here. Then, every five minutes, he called Madame Courcy and sent her up with a note. I was afraid of a scene, because madame spoke of sending for the gendarmes."

"Why didn't you let her?"

"'That would have made still more of a scene."

She was speaking in a weary, emotionless voice, like one who is very tired.

"So I came down and saw him," she said. "He was very melodramatic."

It seemed difficult for her to go on.

"Absinthe?" he questioned.

"I don't know. He wanted me to marry him at once. He drew a revolver and threatened to shoot himself—threatened to shoot me."

Monte clenched his fists.

"Good Lord!" he said softly. "That is going a bit far."

"Is it so men act—when they are in love?" she asked.

Monte started.

"I don't know. If it is, then they ought to be put in jail."

"If it is, it is most unpleasant," she said; "and I can't stand it, Monte. There is no reason why I should, is there?

"No, if you can avoid it."

"That's the trouble," she frowned.

Continued on page 19

Banishing Pain from Your Home

By EDWIN F. BOWERS, M.D. Author of "Side-Stepping Ill Health," "Alcohol—Its Influence on Mind and Body," etc.

IN Hartford, Connecticut, there lives a physician who is banishing headache, earache, toothache, lumbago, and most of the other common pains without drugs. Except in surgical cases, the instruments he uses are such things as spring-clothespins, rubber bands, and aluminum combs. With such simple paraphernalia this physician and hundreds of doctors who have studied his method are producing remarkable cures; and thousands of patients are, in their own homes, relieving conditions that formerly kept them under more or less constant treatment.

This remarkable system of healing, discovered by Dr. William H. FitzGerald of Hartford, is termed by him zone therapy. I believe it will come to be looked upon as one of the great medical discoveries of our day.

It is true that we do not yet fully understand how zone therapy "works." We have no adequate theory in explanation of its effects. But neither have we for gravitation, molecular attraction and repulsion, or electricity.

The results produced by zone therapy sound impossible. But the impossible is merely the thing that we have never seen done.

"Impossible" has been a favorite word in the medical profession from Neanderthal days down to 1916. Medical men shouted it at Hippocrates and Galen. They chanted the chorus at Harvey, when he announced the function of the heart and the blood-vessels. They clubbed Semmelweis into the grave with it, though they subsequently built him a monument.

Three years ago, when Dr. William H. FitzGerald assured me that he was relieving hundreds of patients of practically everything except surgical conditions in his specialty (the ear, nose, and throat) by pressures exerted on various definite areas, I listened—although skeptically.

For Dr. FitzGerald's position is one that commands respect. He is a graduate of the University of Vermont (studying also at Dartmouth and Yale), and spent two and a half years in the Boston City Hospital. He served two years in the Central London Nose and Throat Hospital. For a like period he was in Vienna, where he was assistant to Professor Politzer and Professor Otto Chiari, who are known wherever medical text-books are read.

For several years Dr. FitzGerald has been the head of the nose and throat department of the St. Francis Hospital in Hartford. He is an active member of most of the American medical societies, and is recognized as one of the great throat and nose surgeons in this country.

I became convinced that Dr. FitzGerald's claims had at least sufficient rationality to warrant an investigation; and he placed his records and his patients unreservedly at my disposal—to cross-question and catechize as I pleased.

Seeing Is Believing

IN the three years that have since elapsed I have seen and studied scores of Dr. FitzGerald's cases—following many of them from their beginnings to a "discharged as cured" conclusion. In some particularly interesting cases I even checked up subsequent histories to note the permanence of their relief—which I may here state is as satisfactory as would follow any medical measure with which I am familiar.

Dr. George Starr White of Los Angeles, is one of the ablest practisers and most enthusiastic exponents of the "FitzGerald method," and has furnished me with reports on dozens of interesting and instructive cases treated by himself and his physician pupils.

I have seen Dr. Reid Kellogg—an osteopathic physician who has made a special study of zone therapy, and who has read papers and conducted clinics on the subject before many of the leading osteopathic conventions in the past year—successfully treat many patients by zone therapy.

Among my personal friends, of years' standing, are Drs. Hogan, Riggs, Sears, Mournighan, and others who have been prominently identified with the experimental work and development of pressure therapy from its beginnings.

I have talked with dozens of patients who, in addition to carrying out—under the direction of Dr. FitzGerald or other medical men—the details of their own treatment, have successfully treated members of their family and many of their friends.

Even the sketchiest sort of an account of the extraordinary things I have seen done by zone therapy and by the nerve-pressure analgesia—which is an important part of the work—would fill a large hook. But these really have to be seen to be believed—by medical men, at any rate.

For instance, who—unless he had time and again witnessed the results following zone therapy—would believe that a patient could come into the consulting-room, his voice reduced to a mere husky whisper from vocal cord strain, inflammation, or some other cause of aphonia, and within ten minutes—without a particle of medicine or any form of emollient application—be able to speak in quite a distinct, resonant tone, and within a half hour be completely and permanently relieved? Yet I have seen this—not once, but many times.

Or what physician is there, called to treat a case of acute lumbago in a patient absolutely unable to turn in bed, or even to draw a long breath, and suffering a degree of pain relieved in many former attacks only by the hypodermic, who would essay to cure this lady by means of a metal comb?

What Zone Therapy Is Doing

YET I have seen this condition ameliorated, within fifteen minutes, to the extent that the patient was able to draw a free breath—the first in many days—and arise from bed and turn and twist in almost any direction. And by noon the following day—carrying out the comb pressure treatment herself—she was, to all appearances, entirely well.

And what about goiter, with huge, disfiguring enlargements of the thyroid gland, unsightly protruding eyeballs, nervousness, a pulse racing along at 120 to 160 a minute—with the prostrating weakness that usually accompanies such a pulse? What doctor would undertake to reduce the circumference of such a neck an inch or more in time first twenty-four hours, and within from four to six months completely remove every symptom of the disease?

I have seen a score of such cases, and there are records, histories, and photographs—and, best of all, the patients themselves—to bear testimony in upward of a hundred successfully treated cases. And the only instrument used was a blunt probe pressed against a spot on the wall of the pharynx,—the respiratory passage connecting the nose and throat,—generally by the patient himself. In nervous headache, sometimes persisting for months, I have seen marvelous results. Indeed, this is one of the most effective things zone therapy does.

In hay fever, whooping cough, and other respiratory disorders zone therapy works wonders. I remember a boy who had whooped almost without intermission for two weeks, who had only one slight attack the night after the first treatment—and none after.

The pain of excavating cavities and scaling teeth can be greatly reduced by properly squeezing the fingers. In fact, toothache can be stopped (temporarily, of course) by pressing firmly over the course of certain nerves in the jaw, or in other ways, which will be described.

Childbirth has, in numbers of cases, been made comparatively painless by means that do not conflict with any other method used, and that can not possibly harm mother or child in the slightest degree.

And right here it may be pertinent to incorporate a little explanation of the zones and their location and distribution. A look at the figure below will make clear the explanation.

The Body Divided into Zones

IN zone therapy we divide the body into ten zones, five on either side of a line drawn up the center of the body. The first, second, third, fourth, and fifth zones begin in the toes and end in the thumbs and fingers, or begin in the thumbs and fingers and end in the toes.

For instance, the first zone extends from the great toe, along the line in the body mapped in the chart up the entire height of the body, including the chest and back and down the arm into the thumb. The other toes and fingers are related to their particular zones in like manner.

The tongue, the hard and soft palate (forming the roof of the mouth), and the posterior walls of the pharynx (the back of the throat) and the epi-pharynx (where the back of the nose and throat join) are divided in the same way.

Firm pressure over the joints of the big toe or the thumb, or upon the proper areas in the mouth and throat, will tend to overcome pain or any condition relievable by zone therapy, in the entire first zone; and similar results follow squeezing the fingers and toes, or upon making pressure over the areas corresponding to the other zones.

But it is necessary to press the proper zone in the proper way and for the proper length of time in order to secure results.

And no matter how much faith a sufferer, for instance, from right-headed earache might have, it would be useless to squeeze the first-zone thumb when the trouble is in the ring finger and little finger area; and equally useless to squeeze the left-head fourth and fifth zones for this right-headed trouble.

Similarly, we could not relieve a fourth-and fifth-zone sciatica by putting spring-clothespins on the big toe and its immediately adjacent neighbor, nor relieve eyestrain by rubber-banding the little finger instead of the index finger.

These points will all be amplified and made clear in succeeding articles of this series, in which we shall take up the treatment of specific conditions in ample detail.

If there is anything in any of these articles you don't understand or that you want amplified, ask this magazine. For we aim to strike a new note of service in this series. By helping yourself you help us to render this service. And rest assured that if we didn't believe in this system we should not waste your time nor our own in printing an account of it.

The Sea Adventurer

By RICHARD MATTHEWS HALLET

Illustrations by Anton Fischer

"ADVENTURE," said Captain Shadrach Oram gently to the men assembled in the Trophy Room. "Do I hear you say adventure?"

Some one had indeed uttered the fateful word.

"Have you found it?" said the big Captain, turning a somber face toward the company.

"Not altogether. I am always on the brink—I imagine," said the man who had spoken.

"On the brink, yes," returned Oram grimly. "Well put. I hunted it for many years. I laid a good many traps; I was on the brink a good many times. Adventure! I now think woman must supply it. Eh? You know there is a tendency in youth to count hardship a glory; but this, I fancy, is only the working of a principle of—love."

The great fellow stopped on that word. It fell oddly from his twisted lips.

Shadrach Oram was an immense ape of a man. His arms hung low; his jaw was heavy, his eyes deep-fathoming—a trifle astounded, as if he had been dealt a blow by an invisible hand. His bullet head was close-cropped: a white scimitar-like scar showed through sparse hair. The whole man appeared to be hung forward slightly. Moreover, he gave the curious impression of having been made over, of having been mangled and hewed all to pieces, in order to be neatly sliced, spliced, dovetailed, and allowed to heal by some very good physician. The fingers of his right hand, though all workable, had this rebuilt look. As we knew, an armor templet of teakwood had fallen and nipped them; and an enterprising young army surgeon, picking out a thousand and one splinters of bone, had remade the hand.

Shadrach Oram was a man risen indomitably out of ruin.

A SWIRL of smoke went past him, to hang a moment over the shining river. He watched its course somberly. Of course, we knew that he had seen a good many things go up in smoke—ships, men, horses when he had carried horse cargoes. The chief thing about him now was that he was not afraid to affront the comfortable cynicism of those smoky quarters with dreams. Our blackened hearth was a sort of touch-stone of the qualities of manhood. We were men who grew hair on our chests. Our lives had qualified us to look square-faced gin in the square face of it; and we made no bones of saying, now and again, that we were great men. And yet, Shadrach Oram had power to appal us by the candor of his heart.

Coming back from the window, he murmured deeply: "There is a time when neither the sea nor any living thing seems to avail against the imperious solicitations of that fair creature who was once, as the books say, man's chattel."

His eye glowed with the resolute light of conviction.

"In the late twenties, say, there is certainly a principle of love back of this power to face hardship, this strange eagerness for dirty weather—something closely connected with the act of tying a little girl's ribbons."

Young Barstow coughed. He thought too much was being made of it.

"I well remember my first voyage," said Shadrach Oram. "There was an item in the papers about me—a note to the effect that Shadrach Oram had gone to sea. There was a girl who saw something fateful in that stray paragraph. She wrote me."

Captain Oram rolled in his huge hands a jug of baked clay which he had lifted from the mantel. Into this jug, while still soft, had been sunk bits of chain from ill-starred ships, rivets of boilers that had exploded, cartridge shells of historic mutineers, and other like objects of art. He regarded it profoundly.

"Lives might seem as unrelated as the objects embedded in this clay," he continued; "but, in fact, they draw together in a remarkable fashion. You get broken glimpses of a meaning that will repay you for any quantity of blank hours. Don't you find it so?"

SMOKE had thickened; but young Barstow could be seen to nod his head obscurely, with a movement in his throat as if savoring this wisdom.

"You mean you fall in love," he contributed naively.

"I suppose so," said Shadrach Oram. "And yet, you might as well say you fall in love with the morning when you wake and find it clear. That letter tumbled out of the ship's mail-sack in a foreign port. She had a Midas touch for turning sordid misadventures into gold, that girl. I can tell you fellows now that I was in her eyes a sort of golden adventurer. She had seen my picture over that newspaper item, the picture of an unbroken youth at the outset of a glorious pilgrimage. And she let me see that I

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was the most extraordinary man in the world: a man, in short, who wasn't afraid to pick himself up in both hands and hurl himself into oblivion, if need be, at the beck of such forces as shape destiny. She was as inspirational as a wind coming from the violet-crowned city of song. How was it that I had never met with this phenomenon while in college? It must be that love waits on action.

"She had the sweet impulse to call me her—dream-boy. That first letter of hers put heart and soul back into my body. Sprawling there on a rusty heap of messenger-chains, I was all at once able to face the intimidating foreign aspect of things without a quiver. I was charged with a mission—of supplying adventure to that young woman's waiting soul. I was ripe for any mad thing. I held myself ready for any torment that would thrill. She was an urgent shadow, always just slipping out of the corner of my eye; something like the shadow of his fate which every man's soul casts, as I imagine.

"I followed on. What is that song, 'Farewell, O Earth'? I took my leave many times, was saved as if against myself. I picked up her letters all the world over. They lay ambushed for me in consuls' offices for months on end. I have come into those places so disgracefully used up as to have hard work to prove my identity and take what was mine.

"Some of her very words cling yet. They were bold; they drove me hard. She wrote me to Port Said: 'Now I suppose you will do something big or something awful.'

"Wasn't that complacent? What is there in those words that suggests epic achievement? They do; by the gods, they do. Squatting on the fore-deck of that rusty liner, I looked away toward the salt pyramids glittering under cloudless night. I wondered what was shaping in her mind. Did she want me to smash empires, or become king of a cannibal island, like that uncle of mine? The best I could do then was to foregather with one who had been assistant to the head executioner in the Fiji lslands—a most delectable fiend who dreamed horribly of heads between firing-watches.

"Eternal puzzle. Suppose, in a moment of compliant madness, I had thrown myself into the crater of a volcano. Would that have answered? Something big—something awful. How can I tell?

"By a quirk of the pen she could send me ten thousand miles in a blind quest for a thing without a name.

"And so I went scurrying about the world, like a man picking up sealed orders—orders within orders.

"I WROTE to her, of course. On the salt-stained, sweat-stained, tarred pages of a blank book I wove the tale, and despatched it to her, giving her full share in that treasure trove of mighty happenings. I poured out my whole sackful of adventure. Those yarns must have slipped into her lap displaying the fierce light of cut gems.

"I remember writing to her one night in a deserted shack in New South Wales. I still hear the rain, sharp as musketry, on that roof of corrugated iron.

"'You old lady-killer,' muttered my partner, 'what do you want to smash hearts for at this long range?'

"Long range. There lay the fascination and the mystery. The admiration of that passionate heart was doubly desirable to me by reason of the magical distance. I was foot-loose; but it was her imagination that was unbound. Shade and shadow of Sapphira, she had a tyrannous way of twisting the nose of chance. 'Something big or something awful.'

"I thought I had hit on it in describing the wreck of that ore-ship—a crank barque out of New Caledonia with nickel ore. We were eleven days grinding our bones in a small boat; and we could see sharks spinning through green waves as plain as tadpoles in a glass of water. I kept tugging at my sea-anchor and asking myself, 'Is this the kind of thing?' I hadn't an inkling.

"How did you come to get shook out of that ship?" inquired Felix, our janitor, himself a deep-water man.

"The weight of the ore opened her amidships," replied Shadrach. "She hung out over a wave, you understand, and burst like rotten poplar."

"I was thinking the ore might have slid and punctured her sealing," mumbled Felix.

Oram's face brightened.

"I had an experience of that sort, too," he said. "Three hours fighting a ship's cargo of riff-raff rock. It was as good as Victor Hugo's cannon. There you had me in a black hold, dodging lumps of granite as big as packing-cases. It was grand. Once I was blinded. Powdered stone struck into my eyes where those huge rocks nipped one another in flying past. Imagine a rapid with force enough to set boulders of that size dancing together, and then chuck a man into their midst. That was a mad night. I had a lantern swung through the hatch, it was smashed. Blackness! I heard those great blocks tumbling end for end, slobbering towards me through a couple of feet of water. The ship was as loose as a market-basket by then.

"It was gorgeous," said Shadrach Oram. "It seemed to have the true ring. And yet, it all sank, phantom-like, in the face of those words—'something big, something, awful.'

"In those years the whole world took that phantom tinge for me. At one time the quest led me through the great Australian desert."

Shadrach Oram leaned back, drawing a deep breath.

"WE picked up a nugget of gold in the sand, you know," he said reverently. "Certain initials were carved into it—'J. H.,' we thought. It might have been the celebrated Hunt. You'll find a picture of him in the Museum at Melbourne. You have no idea what curious havoc a weight of gold will raise with a man's notions of probability. We thought we were going to carry that thing five hundred miles or so. Ultimately we had to drop it, of course, or drop with it.

"And after that we must have gone in circles. We were sand-blind and water-mad and religionless that time, never fear. You've all been thirsty, of course.

"It begins with time second day. I don't think the books will tell you what death by thirst is, physiologically. It's an escape of fluids, an exasperating mummifying, I take it. It isn't local, like a decent thirst, but a haunting torment, raking the length of the body—a black shadow running up, a black flame from Tartarus searing your throat. If temper was steel, thirst would twist it like paper.

"Our joints rusted and creaked: they seemed as large as old-fashioned cannon-balls. My tongue went as black and rigid as a cockatoo's. The blood slacked and flowed thick in me, and the fluid principle escaped. What is the name of that old Greek who said that water was at the heart of things? He is right.

"We crawled down to the sea in the grip of this thing.

"It was frightful. Conceive—that bright sea swinging in, swinging in, cerulean over golden sands. It lapped our ankles; it brought us burning madness or cool death, according as we might drink or drown. You know, of course, that sea-water will turn the brain by baffling the demand of thirst. Then, again, chlorine and salty deposits filter through the membranes and get drawn towards the heart, I believe. Also, if your blood is running thick, its specific gravity is likely to be greater than that of salt water: and in that case what little fluid there is in the blood stream gets sucked out, and you die.

"Well, we dipped our beards in sea-water, and drank a little. We were mad already.

"Inland, greasy smoke was pouring up in a tall pillar out of the untrodden bush: a spontaneous fire going unregarded on that leprous-looking coast. A splendid funeral pyre. It rose into a windless sky, with a sheen of silver on its under parts, crowding up fold on fold against a burning blue void it took the shape of a reptile, with swollen neck and flattened head, towering out of that place with venomous stealth. An air current touched it: it swayed aloft with the sleepy charm of a king cobra.

"I was entirely fascinated by the sight of that terrible shape lengthening across time sky. A good fat eon of time passed before I turned over to dip my beard again. On the horizon line a pencil of smoke lay absolutely motionless. I put wet pebbles in my mouth, and stared, thinking of the midge-like fact of personality. Even now there were men watching this dread yellow coast with calm eyes. I lay mummifying, wondering why it was given them to watch, and why it was given us to watch. Separate bits of a puzzle that will not be put together.

"I tried at that time to register certain new sensations on the brain. As well try to sink a cuneiform inscription into wool. I thought of that girl, biting her lips over my last fragment, in cool white, looking through drawn blinds; innumerable broad maple leaves moving over an oiled street; bells—

"Suddenly she was standing on the sands, looking down at me. By George, her eyes were vehement; they still drove me!

"'You shall live—live—live—'

"She seemed to convey that to me by the sheer strength of a passion that was voiceless. Then she pointed.

"I turned the head on my shoulders—the noise was of a dry spar's jaw grating against the mast. There, sure enough, was a queer black contraption of a ship—will you believe it, my phantom junk resurrected to the life. A sacred junk, I guess, with reed lanterns aft, and a great blood-red ruby glowing at the prow."

"Was that a real ship, Shadrach?" inquired young Barstow conservatively.

"It must have had elements of reality," said the man. "I came to in a marine hospital in Brisbane. The rescue was the work of a Chinese trader who went away without saying very much. This must have been because my mate died on his hands, or was left dead. I never saw him again.

"THEN I tore more pages from that moldy book of ruled sheets. I wrote while crawling across the Indian Ocean, meaning to drop my mail at Naples: but I lost the ship at Colombo in Ceylon."

"That is a poor place to lose your ship," commented Felix.

Oran took up his position again near the tall windows. The river was growing dark and placid.

"Yes," he said; "a puzzling sort of a hole. I had gone outside the city to inspect a god—Buddha. I know I took my shoes off on the porch of his temple, and shuffled into his presence in sweat-caked, woolen firing-socks. We looked at each other. He had a most un-Christian smile on his saffron face, a vermilion smile a foot wide. But I remembered that he was a god of pilgrimages, and I bought a spiced shaving from the attendant. Some sort of advice to pilgrims was written on it in holy characters.

"I borrowed the desk of a grain merchant,—it stood in the street outside his shop,—and I wrote her that my soul thirsted: the desert thirst was nothing. Suddenly I was harassed by a glib villain at my elbow who had a catalogue of designs for tattooing. He turned them over his forearm with a suave thumb. The spring fashions, you understand, direct from Nagasaki, where the clearest and deepest needlework is done. I could take you to the very alley— He whispered in supplicating English that if the design was not pleasing, once 'established,' it might be pricked out with a preparation of milk taken from the udder of a sacred cow consecrated to this end.

"He seemed not to know what despair was. He stood by my side as affable as a dusky prince. He was entirely bald, and wore a woman's amber back-comb, circled above his ears in a mysterious manner.

"Suddenly I thrust under his nose my scrap of holy writing on its spicy shaving. "'What is this?' I asked him.

"He man his eye through it, and told me several things. It was an exhortation to the pilgrim to avert his eye from woman during the pilgrimage; and not the eye of the body alone—that of time spirit as well, he said urgently. These Eastern philosophies pursue the soul in her subterfuges farther than we do.

"'To which end,' he said, 'I have here a design beginning at the extreme left of the abdomen, two dragons uplifted, bearing between them the wheel—'

"I had forgotten him. I tore that writing in two pieces, and inclosed one. I wrote that I would surely come, bringing the other.

"CAN there be any merit in the prophesying of that god? In that narrow street there was no sound of footsteps to interrupt the light patter of voices running on and on. A slight wind touched my forehead. Folding my letter, I lingered by a temple of Mohammed. The door, flanked by two impassive priests with loin-cloths folded over fat paunches, was open. I caught a glimpse of a grotesque black shape, of ebony maybe, adorned with spurs of sickly light. Strange gods—what did I care for them? They had commanded me to avert the eye of the spirit, and I defied them. I tore in two the very script, and sent it to that girl, who was the eye of my spirit.

"Then it seemed as if those foreign gods conspired to baffle me and to prevent me from ever finishing that pilgrimage, do you see, because I had not heeded what was written.

"I was all eagerness to rejoin that ship and start the fans under the fires; yet I lost it. I had to ship out in a dhow faring toward that spot on the Arabian coast where all caravans end, and I was two years getting to Southampton. At times it came hard to find myself in stamps and paper. But I followed the dream.

"Her letters, when I could pick them up, never flagged in their passionate incitement to new deeds. She knew, of course, that I was coming toward her. Through thirst, fatigue, things fragrant and not fragrant—what demon is it in a man that yearns to suffer these for the sake of calling it by a name, adventure? I don't know. The golden devil of dreams was lurking under the horizon. I had not strictly given up hope of something big or something awful.

"But by this time I had come to that puzzling time in the life of a seaman when he can't seem to stick ashore. Every coast-line was greased against me. I was shipped and transhipped. As I say, I was two years going to Southampton.

"Southampton, as some of you fellows know, is a choice stamping-ground for pier-head jumpers: a knot of savage, dumfounded brutes, with shadows beginning to show under the collar-bones, waiting there for the second engineer to come ashore and snap them up at the eleventh hour. Fancy contesting and shoving for a job like that.

"This time half of the squad of stokers finally picked was green. Imagine the fun of that. The fight began almost as soon as the stern-line of that ship had splashed in tub water. There were all sorts of men in her hold—decayed merchant princes and mayors of towns, most likely. There is certainly no more cosmopolitan place than a ship's hold at a time like that. There was even a tow-headed younger son of a duke in the lot, who had been cast out, I judged. Somebody from the second cabin used to bring him down every day a bottle of ale and a pack of London cigarettes. But nothing could console him, and it's not to be wondered at. He shivered every time he put his foot to the deck of that fo'c'sle, thinking of the black mud that was going to ooze up between his toes.

He groaned that he couldn't abide his beastly bunk on account of the savor. As son as the deck was swabbed, by order of the old man, he tried sleeping on that: but it was like a prairie fire racing along his flanks. The old man had ordered the place swabbed in a strong

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solution of carbolic acid. My toes sang all one watch just from walking to and from the bath over that fiery pavement.

"'What is hell but meeting trouble every way you turn?' the Duke said to me plaintively.

"He had left a barmaid yearning for him in Bishopsgate Without, and this was no illusive Dulcinea. He used to moan out that he knew what she weighed, and that every pound was precious to him. He had the passionate concentration of an avowed lover who has accepted the priceless gift of another soul, only to be whirled away—engulfed into a fiery pit like that. He got hold of me one watch and asked me if it wasn't possible we had died—had died! He shrieked those words across a snarl of steam, making a graceful gesture with his arms towards the fires. Were we deceiving ourselves into thinking we were doing business with a ship's fires?

"How would you treat that sort of man? Don't you see, he had the same dream-sense of life that I had. Only his was the clearer vision. He had held her in his arms; he knew what she weighed.

"THE fight in the hold came on one stormy daybreak. By George, that had touches of reality. There's nothing worse than a free-for-all in the hold of a great liner. It's the ugliest thing in nature. The jungle is a tranquil place compared to it.

"A lump of coal fell on that Duke's foot. He howled, and smote the man next him into a two-foot deep solution of coal-dust and brine.

"Somebody let down the bunker door on them with a rattle of loose chain: but the mischief was afoot. Those men might have sprung from the teeth that Cadmus sowed. They dropped their rakes, they left the doors of the fire-boxes ajar, and came on, dripping and shining black, with murder in their hearts—the green men against the seasoned.

"I saw one snarling Titan drive at the body of another a huge slice-bar with glowing tip, just withdrawn from the fires. The iron failed to pinion, rang against the box-head, and bent into a smoking hook. The wielder of the bar used this red hook to drag his victim forward.

"And then the ship reeled, sending the men into one another's arms. One mad Indian had gone amuck with a six-foot section of sooty chain. His legs were braced. He made a dreadful reaper, knocking men right and left powerless into smoking heaps of white coals drawn from living fires. Steel barrows charged in and out as the ship rolled more heavily. She rose to the seas like a match-box. I heard the agonized shriek of one man who was just under a water-gauge when a flying lump of coal shattered it.

"That Duke was faring through all this like a veteran and a madman. Seizing his enemy the leading stoker by the waist, he made a zealous effort to stuff the fellow into the glowing fire-box just behind him. Cremation! A method in that madness: a ship's ashes tell no tales. By George, that infernal British genius was sobbing busy. He had the strength of his tradition. I saw him force the head of his victim, inch by inch, toward that yellow square.

"Suddenly a voice—it was the water-tender's—screamed out:

"'Watch the steam!'

"The steam was going down. Overwhelming tyranny of steam! It comes before everything—comes before riot and before life.

"The green men were already beaten. Those pier-head jumpers were plastered all about, with livid welts on their shining black bodies."

Shadrach Oram hung his head.

"I don't want you to think that I wasn't stove up as well," he added truthfully. "I have a genius for taking hard knocks. A bolt of iron had caught me behind the ear, inducing a slight brain concussion. I have been queer ever since."

He smiled a little grimly.

"I lay three weeks ashore in a marine hospital, and was discharged in a light-headed condition. I'm not even sure I was properly discharged. I was the victim of some sort of low fever. I knew—in a deluded way, of course—that I was on the march."

He drew on his pipe.

"I was following the dream," he said. "Something had overwhelmed me, some tormenting promise of sweetness and light. I was going to her—I would kneel, producing that scrap of holy paper. All the details of that search drifted with me. My brain was clouded by a profusion of dreams ending in love. Hardship, strife, hate, conquest—all finding a reward in love.

"I know I stood still before her house,

haunted by a sentiment of happiness, mingled with this hunger of the heart that demanded the consolation of love. Fireflies gleamed in a velvety foreground under heavy chestnuts. The front windows of the house poured a faint light past the tall pillars of the porch. Was the search ended? I saw nothing absurd in coming there as a starveling, without money in my pockets. I must have thought of myself as the golden adventurer still, coming to lay myself at her feet, to submit the proof.

"JUNE night, the gleam of fireflies—the vision of a white house whose grooved pillars seemed to support the sky itself.

"The front door was open. At the foot of a massive staircase a gilded mirror hung out. I forced my shattered body over the threshold.

"I have this strong memory of a hall full of musty fabric—of a huge door with silvered knob swinging slowly open—a tall girl standing before me quietly. I remember the firm chin, the erect body held flat against the door panel, the dark and beautiful and friendly eyes fixed on me with pity, then with horror.

"'What are you doing here?' she said.

"I said nothing. She was real; this daring spirit who had put my daring to shame—an enchanted white figure swimming in a mist.

"I suddenly put into her hand the fragment of holy writing.

"She went as still as a statue, her eyes full on mine; then struck her hand to her bosom and cried softly: "'He is dead, then!"

Shadrach Oram came forward strongly, his face working.

"She didn't recognize you," murmured Barstow sympathetically.

"She was right," returned the other fiercely. "From that moment the adventurer was dead.

"Do you know what I had seen? Nothing less than my reflection in the Venetian mirror hanging there. It isn't surprising. All the years of these amazing adventures, I had given no thought to this instrument, the body. It was battered—beyond belief. You have to consider that the dream of that girl's passionate heart had been of a golden adventurer, of a being in the perfection of flesh, actually dusted with gold from head to foot.

"At the moment she spoke those words, 'He is dead,' my eyes were raised to the mirror.

"I have since thought that I may have made my escape unknown to the authorities of that marine hospital. My forehead was bandaged. I was unshaven, cavernous. Imagine yourself, after a dream of beauty, confronted by an inarticulate ape. What hint of the glorious pilgrim in this being with huge shoulders, swaying tread, sprawling hands? I was the embodiment of hardship. These years had given me the shape no less than the strength of a gorilla.

"I MADE an end of my being briefly," Shadrach Oram murmured.

"'He is dead—yes,' I said."

"I had a tale for her, too—my last: of death in a ship's hold in defense of a duke. You will admit there was something pathetic in my laying hold of that duke in the last moment, that madman dreaming of an inaccessible barmaid.

"Lost! Yes, the adventurer was lost. She had withered me.

"A man told me of that terrible woman in the South Seas who blew a scorpion down the air-tube of the man who had betrayed her. One little puff of the lips. But not more deadly than the words that girl had set on paper. It may be those smug foreign gods are reasonable gods, in the end. That sort of pilgrimage will come to smash, I reckon. I was all stove in; that is certain.

"I went away. I had gained some insight into the angularity of fate, you will admit. The fireflies gleamed between the tall pillars. She called softly after me—something: I don't know what. She had twisted half about and laid her hand on the silvered knob of that immense door. I saw nothing more."

"You might have hung around without revealing yourself," said young Barstow. "Isn't it possible that in time, if you had shaved yourself—"

"Treason," returned Shadrach Oram, sadly shaking his head. "Yes, treason to this dream, my creation. I could do nothing in the flesh. Leave the vision of great days shining there—death in defense of a duke. It had a noble strain at the last. Yes, better so. My thought had been a mere spark snapped from her brain. I went out."

Torchy Hits the High Seas

By SEWELL FORD

Illustrations by Hazel Roberts

WELL, I got to take it all back—most of it, anyway. For, between you and me, this bein' a sea-going private see ain't the worst that can happen. Not so far as I've seen.

What I'm most chesty over, though, is the fact that I've been through the wop and wiggle test without feedin' the fishes. You see, when the good yacht Agnes leaves Battery Park behind, slides down past Staten Island and the Hook, and out into the Ambrose Channel, I'm feelin' sort of low. I'd been lookin' our course up on the map, and, believe me, from where New York leaves off to where the tip end of Florida juts out into the Gulf Stream is some wide and watery jump. No places to get off at in between, so far as I can dope out. It's just a case of buttin' right out into the Atlantic and keepin' on and on.

We hadn't got past Scotland Lightship before the Agnes begins that monotonous heave-and-drop stunt. Course, it ain't any motion worth mentionin', but somehow it sort of surprises you to find that it keeps up so constant. It's up and down, up and down, steady as the tick of a clock; and every time you glance over the rail or through a porthole you see it's quite a ride you take. I didn't mind goin' up a bit; it's that blamed feelin' of bein' let down that's annoyin'.

For a while there I was more or less busy helping Old Hickory get his floating office straightened out and taking down a few code messages for the wireless man to send back to the general offices while we was still within easy strikin' distance. It was when I planted myself in a wicker chair 'way back by the stern, and begun watchin' that slow, regular lift and dip of the deck, that I felt this lump come in my throat and begun wonderin' what it was I'd had for lunch that I shouldn't. My head felt kind of mean too, sort of dull and throbby, and I expect I wasn't as ruddy in the face as I might have been.

THEN up comes Vee, lookin' as fresh and nifty as if she was just steppin' out on the Avenue; and before I can duck behind anything she's spotted me.

"Why, Torchy," says she, "you don't mean to say you're feeling badly already! Or is it because you're leaving New York?"

Then I saw my alibi. I sighs and gazes mushy back towards the land.

"I can't help it," says I. "I think a heap of that little old burg. It—it's been mother and father to me all that sort of thing. I've hardly ever been away from it, you know; and I—I—" Here I smiles sad and makes a stab at swallowin' the lump.

"What a goose!" says Vee, but pats me soothin' on the shoulder. "Come, let's do a few turns around the deck."

"Thanks," says I, "but I guess I'd better just sit here quiet and—and try to forget."

"Nonsense!" says Vee. "That's a silly way to act. Besides, you ought to tramp around and get the feel of the boat. You'll be noticing the motion if you don't."

"Pooh!" says I. "What this old boat does is beneath my notice. She's headed away from Broadway, that's all I know about her. But if you want some one to trail around the deck with, I'm ready. Only I ain't apt to be very cheerful, not for a while yet."

Say, that dope of Vee's about gettin' the feel of the boat was a good hunch. Once you get it in your legs the soggy feelin' under your vest begins to let up. Also your head clears. Why, inside of half an hour I'm steppin' out brisk with my chin up, breathin' in great chunks of salt air and meetin' that heave of the deck as natural as if I'd walked on rubber pavements all my life. After that, whenever I got to havin' any of them up and down sensations in the plumbin' department, I dashed for the open air and walked it down.

LUCKY I could, too; for about Friday afternoon we ran into some weather that was the real thing. It had been cloudy most of the mornin', with the wind makin' up, and around three o'clock there was whitecaps as far as you could see. Nothin' monotonous or reg'lar about the motion of the Agnes then. She'd lift up on one of them big waves like she was stretchin' her nook to see over the top; then, as it rolled under her, she'd tip to one side until it looked like she was tryin' to spill us, and she'd slide down into a soapsudsy hollow until she met a solid wall of green water.

"This is what we generally get off Hatteras," says Vee, who has shown up in a green oiled silk outfit and has joined me in a sheltered spot under the bridge. "Isn't it perfectly gorgeous?"

"It's all right for once," says I, "providin' it don't last too long. Every one below enjoyin' it, are they?"

"Oh, Auntie's been in her berth for hours," says Vee. "She never takes any chances. But Mrs. Mumford tried to sit up and crochet. Helma's trying to take care of her, and she can hardly hold her head up. They are both quite sure they're going to die at once. You should hear them taking on."

"How is it this don't get you too?" says I.

"I've always been a good sailor," says Vee. "And, anyway, a storm is too thrilling to waste the time being seasick. I always want to stay up around too, and repeat that little verse of Kipling's. You know—

"When the cabin portholes are dark and green,
Because of the seas outside,
When the ship goes wop with a wiggle between,
And the cook falls into the soup tureen,
And the trunks begin to slide—
Doesn't that just describe it, though—that 'wop with a wiggle between'?"

"As good as a thousand feet of film," says I. "Kip must have had some of this fun himself. Here comes a wop for us. There! Great, eh?"

I hope I made it convincin'; but, as a matter of fact, I had to force the enthusiasm a bit.

Not that I was scared, exactly; but now and then, when the Agnes sidled downhill and buried the whole front end of her in a wave that looked like a side elevation of the Flatiron Building, I'd have a panicky thought as to whether sometime she wouldn't forget to come up again.

She never did, though. No matter how hard she was soused under, she'd shake it off with a shiver and go on climbin' up again patient.

There was several vacant chairs at the dinner-table, and when I finally crawled into my bunk about 9.30 I had to brace myself to keep from bein' slopped out on the floor.

I was wonderin' whether I'd be too sick to answer the shipwreck call when it came, and I tried to figure out how I'd feel bouncin' around on them sky-scraper waves draped in thin pajamas and a life-belt, until I must have dropped off to sleep.

And, take it from me, when I woke up and saw the good old sunshine streamin' in through the porthole, and discovered that I was still alive and had an appetite for breakfast, I was as thankful a private see as ever tore open a pay envelop.

BY the time I got dressed and found that the Agnes was doin' only the gentle wallow act, with the wop and wiggle left out, I begun to get chesty. I decides that I'm some grand little sailor myself, and I looks around for a willin' ear that I can whisper the news into.

The only person on deck, though, is Captain Rupert Killam, who's pacin' up and down, lookin' mysterious, as usual.

"Well, Cap," says I. "Looked like it was goin' to be a little rough for a spell there last night, eh?"

"Rough?" says he. "Oh, we did have a little bobble off Hatteras—just a bobble."

"Huh!" says I. "I don't expect you'd admit anything's happenin' until a boat begins to turn flip-flops. Do you know, Rupert, there's times when you make me sad in the spine. Honest, now, you didn't invent the ocean, did you?"

But Rupert just stares haughty and walks off.

I've been afraid all along he didn't appreciate me; in fact, ever since he first showed up at the Corrugated, and I kidded him about his buried treasure tale, he's looked on me with a cold and suspicious eye.

Course, that's his specialty, workin' up suspicions. He's been at it right along, ever since the Agnes was tied loose from her pier; and outside of Auntie and Mr. Ellins, who are backin' this treasure hunt, I don't think there's a single party aboard that he hasn't given the sleuthy once-over to.

I understand he was dead set against takin' any outsiders along from the first, even protestin' against Mrs. Mumford and old Professor Leonidas Barr. I expect his merry little idea is that they might get their heads together, steal the map showin' where all that pirate gold is buried, murder the rest of us, and dig up the loot themselves. Something like that.

Anyway, Rupert is always snoopin' around, bobbin' out unexpected and pussy-footin' up behind you when you're talkin' to any one. I didn't notice his antics the first day or so, but after that he sort of got on my nerves—specially after the weather quit actin' up and it come off warmer. Then folks got thicker on the rear deck. Mrs. Mumford with her crochet, Auntie with her correspondence pad, the Professor with his books, and so on, which was why me and Vee took to huntin' for little nooks where we could have private chats. You know how it is.

There was one place 'way up in the bow, between the big anchors, and another on the little boat-deck, right back of the bridge. But, just as we'd get nicely settled, we'd hear a creak-creak, and here would come Rupert nosing around.

"Lookin' for anybody special?" I'd ask him.

"Why—er—no," says Rupert.

"Then you'll find 'em in the main saloon," says I, "two flights down. Mind your step."

But you couldn't discourage Captain Killam that way. Next time it would be the same old story.

"Of all the gutta-percha ears!" says I to Vee. "He must think we're plottin' something deep."

"Let's pretend we are," says Vee.

"Or give him a steer that'll keep him busy, eh?" says I.

So you see it started innocent enough. I worked out the details durin' the night, and next mornin' my first move is to make the plant. First I hunts up Old Hickory's particular friend, J. Dudley Simms, him with the starey eyes and the twisted smile. For some reason or other, Rupert hadn't bothered him much. Too simple in the face, I expect.

But Dudley ain't half so simple as he looks or listens. In his own particular way he seems to be enjoyin' this yachtin' trip huge, just loafin' around elegant in his white flannels, smokin' cigarettes continual, soppin' up brandy-and-soda at reg'lar intervals, and entertainin' Mr. Ellins with his batty remarks.

The only thing that appears to bother Dudley at all about bein' cut off this way from the world in general is the lack of a stock ticker aboard. Seems he'd loaded up with a certain war baby before sailin', and while the deal wouldn't either make or break him, he had a sportin' interest in which way the market was waverin'.

"WELL, how do you guess Consolidated Munitions closed yesterday?" I asks.

Dudley shakes his head mournful.

"I dreamed last night of seeing a flock of doves," says he. "That's a bad sign. I'd give a dollar for a glimpse at a morning paper."

"They say Charleston's only a couple hundred miles off there," says I. "If it wasn't so soggy walkin' I'd run in and get you one."

"No," says he; "you'd be late for breakfast. I wonder if our wireless man couldn't get in touch with some of the shore stations."

"Sure he could," says I, "but don't let on what stock you're plungin' on. His name's Meyers. He's a hyphen, you know. And if he got wise to your havin' war-baby shares he'd likely hold out on you. But you might jolly him into gettin'

Continued on page 15

Vampires

Libels

---

Simple Pleasures for the Tired Business Man

Continued from page 10

a general quotation list. I'd stick around this forenoon if I was you."

"By Jove!" says J. Dudley. "I will."

And maybe you know how welcome any new way of killin' time can be when you're out on a boat with nothin' doin' but three or four calls to grub a day. Dudley goes it strong. He plants himself in a chair just outside the wireless man's little coop, and begins feedin' Meyers monogrammed cigarettes and frivolous anecdotes of his past life.

Havin' the scene set like that made it easy. All I has to do is sketch out the plot to Vee and wait for Rupert to come gum-shoein' around.

"Just follow my lead, that's all," says I, as we fixes some seat cushions in the shade of one of the life-boats on the upper deck. "And when you spot him—"

"He's coming up now," whispers Vee.

"Then here goes for improvisin' a mystery," says I. "Is he near enough?"

Vee glances over her shoulder.

"Go on," says she. Then, a bit louder: "Tell—tell me the worst, Torchy."

"I ain't sure yet," says I, "but take it from me there's something bein' hatched on this yacht besides cold-storage eggs."

"Hatched?" says Vee.

"S-s-s-sh!" says I. "Underhanded work; mutiny, maybe."

"O-o-o-oh!" says Vee, givin' a little squeal. "Who could do anything like that?"

"I'm not saying," says I; "but there's a certain party who ain't just what he seems. You'd never guess, either. But just keep your eye on J. Dudley."

"Wh-a-at!" gasps Vee. "Mr. Simms?"

"Uh-huh," says I. "Listen. He knows about Nunca Secos Key, don't he? And about the gold and jewels there?"

"That's so," says Vee. "But so do all of us. Only we don't know just where the island is."

"Suppose Dudley had buffaloed Old Hickory into showin' him the map?"

"Well?" demands Vee.

"Wouldn't it be easy enough," I goes on, "if he had pals ashore, to pass on the description, have them start out in a fast

yacht from New Orleans or Key West, and beat us to it?"

"But I don't see," says Vee, "how he could get word to them."

"Look!" says I, pointin' to the wireless gridiron over our heads. "Where do you guess he is now?"

Vee shakes her head.

"Gettin' in his fine work with Meyers," says I. "He's been at it ever since breakfast."

"Think of that!" says Vee. "And you believe he means to—"

"S-s-sh!" says I. "Some one might be rubberin'."

DOES it work? Say, when I gets up to scout around, Rupert has disappeared, and for the first time since we've been aboard he leaves us alone for the rest of the forenoon. We didn't hate that exactly. Vee reads some out of a book, draws sketches of me, and we has long talks about—well, about a lot of things.

Anyway, I'm strong for this yacht cruisin' stuff when there's no Rupert interference. It's so sort of chummy. And with a girl like Vee to share it with—well, I don't care how long it lasts, that's all.

And the next thing we knows there goes the luncheon gong. As we climbs down to the main deck where we can get a view forward, Vee gives me a nudge and snickers. J. Dudley Simms is still roostin' alongside the wireless cabin; and just beyond, crouched behind a stanchion with one ear juttin' out, is Captain Killam.

"Fine!" says I. "Rupert's got a steady job, eh?"

About then the other folks commence mobilizin' for a drive on the dinin'-room, and some one calls Dudley to come along.

"Just a moment," says he, scribblin' on a pad. "There!" and he hands a message over to Meyers.

"Ha, ha!" says a hoarse voice behind him.

Then things happened quick. Rupert makes a sudden pounce. He grabs Dudley, pinin' his arms to his sides, and starts weavin' a rope around him.

"Oh, I say!" says Dudley. "What the deuce?"

"Traitor!" hisses Rupert dramatic. "You will, will you?"

J. Dudley may look like a Percy boy too, but he ain't one to stand bein' wrapped up like a parcels-post package, or for the hissin' act—not when he's in the dark as to what it's all about. He just naturally cuts loose with the rough stuff himself. A skilful squirm or two, and he gets his elbows loose. Then, when he gets a close-up of who's tryin' to snare him, he pushes a snappy left in on Rupert's nose.

"Go away, fellow!" remarks Dudley.

"Snake in the grass!" says Rupert.

Then they clinched and begun rollin' over on the deck, clawin' each other. Course, Mrs. Mumford lets out a few frantic squeals and slumps in a faint. Professor Leonidas Barr starts wringin' his hands and groanin', "Oh, dear, Oh, dear, dear!" Auntie, she just stands there gaspin' and tryin' to unlimber her lorgnette.

As for Old Hickory, he watches the proeeedin's breathless for a second or so before he can make out what's happenin'. Then he roars:

"Hey, stop 'em, somebody! Stop 'em, I say!"

That listened to me like my cue, and while I've never been strong for mixin' in a muss, I jumped into this one lively. And between me and the deck steward haulin' one way, and Meyers and Mr. Ellins pullin' the other, we finally pries 'em apart, breathin' hard and glarin' menacin'.

"Now, in the name of Mars," demands Old Hickory, "what the sulphuretted syntax is this all about? Come, Captain Killam, you started this; tell us why."

"He—he's a traitor, that's why!" pants Rupert, pointin' at Dudley.

"Bah!" says Old Hickory. "Whaddye mean, traitor?"

"He's plotting to send confederates to Nunca Secos Key before we get there," says Rupert. "Plotting to steal our buried treasure. See! He was just sending a message to some of his gang."

"Eli!" snorts Mr. Ellins. "A message?"

Meyers fishes it out of his pocket and hands it over.

"Huh!" says Old Hickory, puzzlin' it out. "'Advise how infant is doing. Send care yacht Agnes, off Charleston.' Dudley, what infant is this?"

Dudley grins sheepish. "Consolidated Munitions," says he.

"Oh!" says Old Hickory. "A war infant, eh? I see." Then he whirls on Rupert. "And by what idiotic inference, Killam, Did you conjure up this rubbish about a plot?"

Rupert, he turns and stares indignant at me. Old Hickory follows the accusin' look, and next thing I know I'm in the spot-light for fair.

"Hah!" observes Mr. Ellins. "You, eh?"

Now, there's only one rule I got for dealin' with the big boss. I stick to facts and make 'em snappy.

"Uh-huh," says I. "Me."

"You thought it humorous, I presume," he goes on, "to tell this silly yam to Captain Killam?"

"BUT he didn't," speaks up Vee. "He was telling it to me; that is, we were telling it to each other—making it up as we went along. So there!"

"Oh!" says Mr. Ellins. "And the Captain happened to overhear, did he?"

"Happened!" says I. "Like you happen to climb a fire-escape. That's Rupert's long suit—overhearin' things. He's been favorin' us a lot lately."

"What about that, Killam?" asks Mr. Ellins.

"Why—er—ah—" stutters Rupert, "perhaps I have. But when you see two persons getting off by themselves and talking so much together, you naturally—

"Bah!" explodes Old Hickory. "Can't you remember back to nineteen, Killam?" Then he turns to me. "So you concocted this plot story for Captain Killam's benefit, did you?"

I nods.

"I thought it would keep him off our heels for a while," says I. "I fed him an earful, I guess."

"Young man," says Mr. Ellins, shakin' a forefinger at me, but lettin' his left eyelid drop knowin', "the next time I find that imagination of yours running loose I—I'll authorize Captain Killam to catch it and put it in irons. Now let's have luncheon."

Marketing by Motor-Car

THE motor-car has brought many innovations to our every-day life, and not the least of these is marketing by motor, whereby a woman driver may secure the freshest of fresh vegetables and the finest of native fruits at the lowest prices for home consumption, and also have the fun of shopping in the country.

It sounds paradoxical to say that the motor-car will reduce the cost of living. But the woman who has a motor-car at her disposal and who goes out into the country two or three times a week will find great possibilities in the way of doing the family marketing without the offices of the middle-man.

How I Got the Idea

I WAS taking a spin through the country one day, and noticed peas growing in a fine-looking farm-garden near the highway. They looked so tempting and appetizing that a happy inspiration came to me. Stopping my car, I walked up to the door of the farm-house, and asked the woman who responded if she would sell me some peas picked fresh from the vines. It was evidently an unusual request; but after considering it a moment, the woman decided she would. This was my first experience at buying in the country.

One afternoon last season, when I was driving out for a pleasure spin, I stopped at the farm from which vegetables were regularly brought to my home, and brought back a dozen ears of corn. The freshness of the corn, when served that evening for dinner, so pleased me that during the rest of the summer I made regular trips, bringing back whatever vegetables I would otherwise have ordered when the farmer made his visits to my home.

I also made trips to the dairy farm that supplied me with milk, cream, and butter, and ascertained, to my own satisfaction, just what sort of place these products came from.

Some women have a fad for going after mushrooms in the car. Of course, to do this, one must know mushrooms from toadstools.

Farmers' Prices Usually Low

I HAVE found the farmers' prices nearly always lower than those of the current market. I always make it a point, to do my own selecting, and to know what the prices should be, and there is rarely an instance where I find any one trying to take advantage, either in quality or in price. I can usually buy green corn for twelve cents a dozen when the city price is twenty cents; peas for ten cents a quart when they bring fifteen in the markets, and other vegetables in proportion. I have bought practically all my vegetables and fruit in this way since I realized how different they taste when eaten fresh.

The farmers are beginning to appreciate the importance of this motor-marketing. A number whose farms adjoin well traveled roads have in the last season or two built stands on which to place samples of vegetables and fruits. They place the stand in the front yard, where it can easily be seen by passing motorists. Tags, showing prices considerably lower than those of the city markets, are attached, and the result proves a mutual benefit to farmer and motorist.

There are great possibilities for this type of marketing, and "motor farms," where motorists are specially catered to, will be found among the early developments within easy riding access of the city.

OUR OWN CARNEGIE LIBRARY

On These Two Shelves—The New Books and Magazines

FINDING HUSBANDS FOR WAR WIDOWS

THE Salvation Army in Great Britain has now added to its many functions that of War Matrimonial Agency. It operates between the mother country and the colonies, with the novel object of supplying war widows for the wifeless and husbands for the homeless.

There has long been a surplus of women in Great Britain. At present there are 1,250,000 more women than men in the United Kingdom. At the close of the war there will be a still greater discrepancy. What is to be done with the superfluous women? Gertrude Atherton at one time suggested that they be married off to the surplus Russian males, at the same time advancing the difficulty that the Russians might object.

A more recent scheme, as outlined in the Springfield Republican, is to send them to Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, where they are welcomed by the colonial farmers. This is the plan of the business man of the British Salvation Army, Commissioner David Lamb, who has started a $1,000,000 fund for this purpose, and has already filled several orders.

One of these orders was from a prosperous farmer in western Canada, who wanted not only a widow, but six children. The farmer was a little worried for fear he was asking too much. Not at all. There was perfect harmony between the supply and demand. The Commissioner investigated the farmer's record. He found him a comfortable widower whose family had grown up, and who longed for the sound of children's voices on the farm.

Commissioner Lamb then bestowed upon him a Devonshire widow who had been struggling bravely to keep her six children out of the work-house. The children show signs of becoming an asset to the Dominion, and the widow is preparing Devonshire clotted cream for the happy farmer.

It is estimated that the average cost of emigration for a single woman will be about $75, and for a family of three about $200.

There is only one drawback to this scheme for placing lonely widows, making happy homes for desolate bachelors, and populating pioneer countries: England is willing to spare the women, but what about the children?

IS BALDNESS HEREDITARY?

NOW comes the August Journal of Heredity to tell us that if we are to be bald we will be bald, tight hats or no. If your grandfather was bald and your father used his military brushes only as a matter of form, you might as well—if you are a man—give up right now. But even the unalterable laws of heredity give women twice the chance that men have to escape this unbecoming fate.

If it is written that you shall be bald, it is no less decided, even before you are born, which pattern of baldness shall be yours. There is the neat round pool of baldness at the crown of the head. There is the pattern that begins over the eye-brows and works back, bestowing on its victim that unwelcome scholarly appearance; and then there is the "top and back" baldness.

The case against the stiff straw hat and the ugly derby as baldness incubators seems to have been knocked into a cocked hat by the author of the article, although she concedes that tight hat-bands which constrict the blood vessels may hasten your hair's departure, if it is already on its way.

"Disease of the scalp," says Miss Osborn, "can not explain pattern baldness. Very heavy hair is often associated with entire baldness on the top of the head.

"Illness explains a few cases, but can not explain the great prevalence of baldness. It does not explain why some individuals in extremely poor health retain heavy hair, and many healthy people become bald. In case baldness is due to poor health there is also an hereditary tendency.

"Pressure on the scalp, as an explanation, is unsatisfactory. Many men wear tight hats which do not affect the persistence of the hair. A few of the bald men in the families studied had worn tight hats, but the majority had carefully avoided them.

"These theories do not agree, and none in itself is satisfactory. Heredity as a cause of baldness explains away these difficulties. It explains the presence of a pattern, why healthy individuals are afflicted, and why it is so common in men and exceptional in women."

NO BEER FOR BABIES

THE Red Cross Magazine offers proof that it is not only the things they are supposed not to hear that children remember.

These happy guides to health and efficiency were written by school children after the departure of the visiting (and lecturing) nurse:

"Don't let the baby suck its thumb, for there might be a fly on it and it would get the disease of the fly."

"Don't rock the baby, as it will toss its brains."

"If a baby gets beer every day, it won't grow very large and it won't be good in school."

"Rocking is not good for it; it makes them sick and stiff."

"Bad habits are easily made by the mothers and the babies get wise to it."

"If you give the baby alcohol, he will lose one half pound every year and will become drunk when he is old."

"Never lift it up by the arms, because it will place them out of place. Never pick up the baby by the arms whatever."

"The public owes the baby as follows: Pure air and sunshine; pure, cool, fresh, free-flowing air at night; its own private bed, sufficient covering of fluffy, porous materials, and the chance to be a perfect man or woman."

WHEN YOU BUY THE ENGAGEMENT RING

WHEN you undertake the purchase of a diamond for your sweetheart, you must examine the stones with three things chiefly in mind: flaws, color, and cut, says Frank B. Wade in his book on "Diamonds," published recently by G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Nature furnishes few absolutely white, and even fewer perfect stones. Minor and imperceptible defects are present in nearly every diamond, but they do not hurt the appearance or threaten the durability of the stone. They do, however, reduce the cost to a certain extent. Beware, however, of any imperfections which you yourself can find with a low-power glass.

Defects may consist of "carbon" or tiny black specks, cracks or open cleavages in the crystalline material, minute cavities, either empty or filled with liquid, unfinished spots on the surface, and chipped or nicked places.

"Fine distinctions of color," says Mr. Wade, "can not be made by artificial light, and a clear bright day should be chosen for the important purchase. A north light is best, and there should not be any tinted walls or buildings near by, to reflect their colors into the stone. On no account select a diamond in artificial light or in a dark store.

"Do not buy a stone which looks the least bit yellow or brown to your untrained eye. Test the stone by quickly puffing the breath against it, and note whether or not the diamond is dimmed.

"It is better to examine the stone first unmounted, but great care should also be given to the mounting, since this has a decided influence on the apparent color of the diamond. Platinum mountings flatter a large number of stones, and may neutralize to some extent a light tint of yellow. But a deeper shade of yellow suffers all the more in a platinum mounting. The mounting should be so shaped that no part of it is directly visible through the stone. A dull finish of gold is less likely to hurt the color of a stone than a bright one.

"Finally," concludes Mr. Wade, "let the lady of your choice help in selecting the gem she will have to wear, for women as a rule have a keener appreciation of fine color distinctions than men."

ART IS DEAD, SAYS GEORGE MOORE

ART is dead—killed by locomotion! George Moore has said so in the Atlantic Monthly. The discovery that Art is extinct was made when John Lloyd Balderston asked Mr. Moore what effect the war will have on Art. And Mr. Moore asked how the war could have any effect on something which is not.

Mr. Moore concedes Art this sad obituary notice: "The steamboat and the railroad debauched the Muse, and she died, strangled in telegraph wires; the telephone chants her requiem."

Masterpieces of Art are produced by segregation, Mr. Moore points out, and since the introduction of universal travel and universal exchange of ideas, Art has become hopelessly mixed.

"All Art," he says, "springs from the

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attempt of man to imitate nature; but man, being an mutative animal, will imitate instead, if he gets the chance, the efforts of his fellow man to imitate nature."

Before the days of easy transportation, Japan, for instance, developed a distinctive Art which was not duplicated place in the world. When European Art came to Japan, it killed the Japanese formula.

"Literature is played out as well as painting," he goes on. "Literary Art has become internationalized. Russian books just now have more flavor than those of other countries, because Russia is more isolated; there are not so many railroads.

"Art can not be taught," Mr. Moore says, "nor can Art be encouraged or repressed. To spend money on art schools and museums is absurd, and, when public funds are used, an outrage on the taxpayers."

Mr. Moore's reasoning is depressing. But he holds out some hope for our children's children.

"The coal mines of the world will be worked out in a hundred years, more or less, and then locomotion will stop, all modern civilization will come to an end, and, who knows, men may go back to bows and arrows. Art, until bows and arrows come again, is extinct."

WHAT CAN A FAT MAN DO?

HE can "eat and grow thin." He can even dine well if he will dine wisely, according to Vallee Thompson, who is quoted in World's Work. There's just one point he must remember when he sits down at his banquet table: some foods make fat, and he must leave these alone.

The Thompson menu includes nine "thou-shalt-not-eat-and-drink" mandates, and when one has finished the list, one wonders what can be left for the poor fat man. But Thompson rallies to the support of his theory and cheers his patient with a few "thou-may-eat" privileges.

Says he: "You may eat of any kind of meat but pork, any kind of game, any kind of sea food, any kind of fruit but bananas or grapes, any kind of salad but one made of 'forbidden' vegetables, any kind of meat jelly, any kind of green vegetable, and tomatoes, cucumbers, mushrooms, peppers, olives, celery, and pickles."

But, even then, you must not eat much, and never unless you are hungry. And you must not drink anything with your meals, and you must not sleep much and never take naps, and always walk instead of taking a cab. But you don't have to take any strenuous exercise, which ought to be a distinct advantage, especially if you plan to reduce during the summer months.

"Above all, be cheerful," continues Mr. Thompson.

Then he puts his whole theory in capsule form, to be swallowed at once: "In addition to eating the right food, try to lead the right life."

A number of scientists testify that the Thompson system works; in fact, it sometimes works too well. Strict adherence to the prescribed diet may cause "acidosis," which is just as bad as being fat.

The fat man ought to cut down on the oils, fats, starches, and sugars, but he ought not to eliminate them, says Dr. Welzmiller. Then he won't be in danger of acid intoxication.

Professor Irving Fisher of Yale avers that a proper balance between intake of food and expenditure of energy is the secret of correct weight. Accordingly, you must find out just how many calories of food are necessary for a man doing your kind of work, and then stick to that limit. Farmers require 3500 calories; stone masons, 4500; lumbermen, 5000 a day or more, while a man riding in an endurance bicycle race will need at least 10,000 calories every twenty-four hours. The bicycle racer, however, can take this tremendous amount of nourishment without fear of putting on any extra weight. His strenuous exercise outbalances the heavy rations.

AMBRINE: A FRENCH SURGEON'S WONDERFUL DISCOVERY

"SOMEWHERE in France," working night and day in the field hospitals, an unknown doctor is performing cures almost miraculous. He has discovered a new remedy for burns, and for frozen feet and hands: a cure that saves hands and feet after gangrene has made them things of horror, that rebuilds a man after his flesh has been eaten away by liquid fire and burning tar.

The unknown is Dr. Bartle de Bandfort. An American woman nursing the French soldiers tolls, in the Outlook, of his wonderful work. Ordinarily, when gangrene begins its deadly work, the foot or hand, or more often the entire limb, has to be amputated. Of the dozens and dozens sent to this surgeon, only one had to have his legs amputated. And not one man flinched or cried out under the treatment, because not one suffered any pain.

That is the most wonderful thing of all.

One man lay on a stretcher, rolling a bandage unconcernedly while they dressed his stumps.

"Does it hurt?" asked the American.

"Not at all," he replied, "but before I reached here—"

There were dozens—all interested in their cases, all witnessing to the fact that they felt no pain, all fast recovering.

"And then we came to the burning tar cases," the nurse goes on. "One doctor told me that it was considered the most terrible form of suffering. When I caught sight of the first of them, I could not believe my senses. I could not believe that any man in such a state could be living. But do you know, will you believe, that very man—that apparent wreck, every feature of whose face was then indistinguishable, eyes closed, lips and parts of his face burned to the bone, teeth all exposed like a grinning mask, whose hands were too dreadful for me to describe—talked with Mrs. T. only ten days later? That the features of his face are not only plainly distinguishable, but that the deep wounds are healing up, the flesh fast healing over with new white skin, that there remains on his forehead but one place not yet fully recovered, and that there will not be, within another week, even a scar? His skin was as soft as a baby's."

The new treatment is so simple that the wonder of it is no one has thought of it before. It consists of a mixture of wax, paraffin, and resin, heated to 120° C., at which degree it becomes like water and of the color of honey. Then it is ready to use. If you dip your fingers into it it has only a comfortable warmth, and dries at once when you remove your fingers, incasing every little fold or crease in an elastic covering through which you can see.

The nurse describes the simple principles on which the doctor works.

"All air is kept out," she explains, "and there is no moisture; and, you know, air and moisture are the greatest causes of suffering to burned people. If the skin is not too sensitive, the wax (or ambrine, as the surgeon has named it) can be painted on with a brush. If it is, the liquid is sprayed on with a small pump. The member is then wrapped in cotton and gauze, to keep the waxy covering from breaking, or, as in the ease of faces, with a mask of gauze only. In the beginning, the wax covering is removed every twelve hours, and a new one painted on. The removing of the wax causes no pain. Later it is taken off but once in twenty-four hours.

"To my surprised inquiry if that were really all that produced such marvelous results, the surgeon replied: 'Mademoiselle, we do nothing. Nature left alone does it all. It is as if we covered the man as one covers a plant in a conservatory, away from all harmful influences, and there the skin grows again, untouched, as a plant grows under the influence of the sun. That is all."

MR. ROOSEVELT TO KAISER WILLIAM II IN 1901

ON one of his occasional visits to America when he was ambassador to Germany, Mr. Andrew D. White had an interview with President Roosevelt in the White House. After the usual formal messages to be made to the Kaiser, Roosevelt added: "Tell his Majesty that I am a hunter, and as such envy him one thing especially: he has done what I have never yet been able to do—he has killed a whale. But say to him that if he will come to the United States, I will take him to the Rocky Mountains to hunt the mountain lions, which is no bad sport; and that if he kills one, as he doubtless will, he will be the first monarch who has killed a lion since Tiglath-Pileser."

A very cordial invitation from the Colonel, which pleased the Kaiser greatly, though he could only reply with an equally urgent one that the President's daughter christen his imperial yacht. But in the fifteen years since, the Kaiser has had no opportunity to compete with Tiglath-Pileser. And, even when the present stress dies down, it is not likely he would find the same zest in the suggestion to hunt the Rocky Mountain lions with Colonel Roosevelt.

THE WILLS OF J. P. MORGAN AND HETTY GREEN

TWO recent human documents have been read all over the world. They are the wills of J. P. Morgan and Hetty Green.

One was the bequest of a man who made of money a means; the other was that of a woman who made of money an end. One told the story of a man of affairs, the other told the story of a miser.

Mr. Morgan left between $60,000,000 and $80,000,000—less than the possessions of many men who had not acquired one tenth of his power. He leaves more than seven millions in worthless stocks, some of them mistakes in judgment, some mistakes in sentiment.

The amount that Hetty Green leaves, no one knows. The nine-page document with its sixteen items was carefully contrived to keep the secret of her wealth. It explicitly provided that neither her son nor daughter, who were named as executors, should be required to give any account of the amount they received from the world's richest woman.

Mr. Morgan's will showed an intellectual enjoyment in placing many eggs in many baskets. It showed a sportman's pleasure in taking "long shots." It showed a banker who would lose rather than save himself at the cost of others.

The library that he left is valued at over four millions; his great art collection at sixteen millions—more than one fifth of the estate. He left generous gifts to friends and employees. "Seldom is there seen," says the New York Times, "a more careful proportion between merit and reward than in his list of bequests to his business staff."

Among the minor items listed are the yacht Corsair, valued at $135,000; wines, appraised at $44,743; and $8633 worth of his famous black cigars.

Hetty Green's will left only $20,000 to others beside her son and daughter and her son-in-law. This amount, in three bequests, went to old friends. No mementoes or jewelry were distributed.

WHAT SCIENCE IS DOING

To Roll This Old World Along

SCHOOL-BOYS MINUS CIGARETTES

FOR eight years Sergeant Leo W. Martin, of the Los Angeles juvenile police force, snatched youthful criminals out of ash-barrels or chased them out of dark corners into the net of the law.

Every time he overtook a new offender he noticed one thing: the youngster showed yellow stains on his fingers or had "the makin's" hidden somewhere in his dirty jeans.

Scarcely one boy of the hundreds he dealt with was free from the cigarette habit. Therefore, reasoned Sergeant Martin, cigarettes must have something to do with crime. And if that is true, then something must be done with cigarettes.

One day he approached his friend Dr. T. H. Trinwith.

"Doc," said he, "can't anything be done to cure kids of the cigarette habit?"

Immediately Dr. Trinwith began to experiment, and the outcome was the establishing of an anti-cigarette clinic by the city of Los Angeles. At first only boys were received. But many men and some women who had become enslaved and wanted their freedom knocked on the door of the clinic; so it was opened to all.

The clinic runs six evenings out of every month, and during this time a small army of nicotine fiends receive treatment. In a little more than a year four thousand people have been freed from the cigarette habit.

The procedure is very simple. The mouth and throat of the applicant are swabbed with a weak solution of nitrate of silver. He is given a tonic to steady his nerves and aid his system to adjust itself once more to normal conditions. He also receives a harmless herb to chew.

A cure is usually effected in six treatments, and there are no disturbing reactions.

A majority of those who visit the clinic are voluntary patients—men who have lost their jobs or have seen competitors outdistance them because of growing physical and mental disability.

One young chap smoked ninety cigarettes a day; then he concluded it was time to stop. He gained flesh at the rate of a pound a day for several weeks after he ceased to smoke.

The case of another young man was extraordinary. He smoked both night and day, because he could not sleep without the deadening influence of the narcotic. Every night for ten years he had sat up in bed at intervals, lighted a cigarette, and inhaled the smoke, until the performance became automatic. Before retiring he would place on a stand beside his bed three packages of ten cigarettes each and some matches. In the morning all the cigarettes would be smoked, although he would have no recollection of having lighted one of them.

Two hundred patients are often treated at the clinic in one night. Not all are cigarette users. Some seek freedom from pipe, cigars, or snuff. But the treatment works equally well in any case.

FIGHTING LOCUSTS WITH CHLORINE GAS

ON the other side of the Atlantic, hundreds of men leap out of their trenches and dash across a shell-and bullet-swept space. Suddenly a low-lying cloud of gas rises from the opposite trench. The charging troops meet the deadly cloud, and, if unprepared with gas masks, drop to the ground in the agony of death.

On the other side of the Pacific, millions of locusts take flight in swarms so great that it takes them hours to pass a given point. The Filipinos have torn a leaf from the book of the European war, and are fighting their blighting pest with chlorine gas.

In describing this remarkable adaptation of war "frightfulness," the Scientific American says:

Locusts fly in the Philippines in swarms so dense that it often takes hours for them to pass a given point. The sun is obscured, and the hum of their wings in flight may be heard for miles. Never a year passes but what damage to the extent of millions of pesos is done by droves of these insects throughout the scattered archipelago.

It was Dr. Vivencio Rosario, of the faculty of the Philippine University, who first hit upon the use of chlorine gas to combat the locusts. Experiments thus far conducted with the gas have been very satisfactory. Where locusts have not passed beyond the "hopper" stage, they may be readily exterminated with the gas—just mowed down, as it were.

TURNING MILLIONAIRES' YACHTS INTO DESTROYERS

NO more can the German submarine rove the English Channel and the North Sea, fearing only British cruisers and destroyers. Boat-builders in the United States, who until recently were constructing mahogany speed boats and yachts for wealthy Americans, are now building small, swift power boats that are proving themselves the nemesis of German submersibles.

According to the Popular Science Monthly, a trial order for these "submarine swatters" was given to a Greenpoint, Long Island, construction company late last year, and shortly after six were shipped to Archangel before that port was closed for the winter.

The boats are sixty feet long, and each carries three 175-horse-power engines which are guaranteed to drive them at the rate of at least twenty-six miles an hour. As a matter of fact, the deadly little craft can make about thirty miles an hour, even in comparatively rough weather. Nothing but the hulls of these "swatters" show above the water-line, with the exception of the armored pilot-house and the three-pound rapid-fire gun which is meant to demolish the periscope of the unwary U-boat.

England has already placed orders for many "military type" cruisers in this country. Roving the English Channel are hundreds of armed motor-boats, manned by amateur yachtsmen. These recruits from the civilian ranks have acquitted themselves nobly. Nothing less than amazing is the vast amount of work accomplished by these ex-pleasure craft.

Many of the larger men-of-war of the British Navy have been released by this "mosquito fleet" for other work. The majority of transatlantic passenger ships and freighters are met by the converted yachts and convoyed safely into port.

Others are used exclusively in the task of hunting down and destroying enemy submarines. Out from the Thames the little fleet of speedy cruisers spreads itself in a vast net, their crews waiting and watching for the line of oil and bubbles which marks the trail of the submarine.

Once this trail is seen, a wireless message brings a fleet of the cruisers to the spot. Since these surface boats can travel more than twice as fast as the swiftest U-boat, it is easy for them to follow this track and wait until the enemy rises to the surface.

The first thing that appears is usually the periscope, and it is often the last, for the rapid fire from the "swatter" neatly clips off the top of the periscope, completely blinding the submarine. The rest is easy.

So interested has the United States been in the development of this new branch of the navy, that owners of power boats suitable for work of this kind have been invited to participate with battleships and cruisers in fleet manoeuvres this fall. The captains and crews of these potential destroyers will be made thoroughly familiar with the work of scouts and submarine-chasers. This appears to be one of the first lessons of the European war to be put into actual use by this government.

SHORT AND INTERESTING

DR. MAX HERZ, a well known scientist of Vienna, has invented a combination of talking machine and telegraph which will enable the blind to "read" with far greater ease than with the present cumbersome and costly Braille books. The Morse code is cut into the prepared wax records, which may be sold at very low prices. Chicago Daily News. IT is not at all improbable that milk will soon be delivered in red bottles, say scientists; for it has been discovered that, while ordinary light hastens the spoiling of the milk, the red light prevents it. If pure, fresh milk is placed in an uncolored glass bottle and left in the sun-light, it is completely spoiled in a few hours. But substitute a red glass bottle, and the milk will be perfectly good after standing ten hours in the sun. Tid-Bits. AMERICAN ship-yards are building a new ship every day. It is a record never before equaled in our country, and is a sequel to our stupendous exports at a time when world commerce is upset by a world war. The Rudder.

NOW COMES THE JITNEY AIR 'BUS

FLYING isn't the sport it used to be. We no longer look at the man who has taken a flight in an aeroplane as a sort of superman—one who isn't afraid of anything. At almost any popular watering place we find an aviator who will take any one for a flight for about twenty-five dollars—cash in advance, please.

At the same time, one can not help being a bit surprised to read the advertisement of aviator Meyerhoffer, of San Diego, California. The hand-bills that he uses to advertise his "Jitney Air 'Bus" announce trips above San Diego, moon-light flights over the harbor, or from San Diego to Coronado, any of these for five dollars, and, according to his advertisement, "high or low, fast or slow—any way you want to go."

The air 'bus is a flying-boat equipped with a hundred-horse-power engine, and ordinarily carries one or two passengers in addition to the aviator.

The accompanying photograph was taken at the start of a test flight on which the aviator carried four passengers, and remained in the air for twenty-two minutes.

The Triflers

Continued from page 5

"I've been quite frank with him. I told him that I did not want to marry him. I've told him that I couldn't conceive of any possible circtumstances under which I would marry him. I've told him that in French and I've told him that in English, and he won't believe me."

"The cad!" exclaimed Monte.

"It doesn't seem fair," she mused. "The only thing I ask for is to be allowed to lead my life undisturbed, and he won't let me. There are others, too. I had five letters this morning. So all I can do is to run away again."

"To where?" asked Monte.

"You spoke of the little villages along the Riviera."

"Yes," he nodded. "There is the village of Etois—back in the mountains."

"Then I might go there. C'est tout égal.

"But look here. Supposing the—this Hamilton should follow you there?"

"Then I must move again."

Monte paced the room. Obviously this was not right. There was no reason why she should be continually hounded. Yet there seemed to be no way to prevent it.

He stopped in front of her. She glanced up—her eyes, even now, calm and deep as trout pools.

"I'll get hold of the beggar to-day," he said grimly.

She shook her head.

"Please not."

"But he's the one who must go away. If I could have a few minutes with him alone, I think perhaps I could make him see that."

"Please not," she repeated.

"What's the harm?"

"I don't think It would be safe—for either of you."

She raised her eyes as she said that, and for a moment Monte was held by them. Then she rose.

"After all, it's too bad for me to inflict my troubles on you," she said.

"I don't mind," he answered quickly. "Only—hang it all, there doesn't seem to be anything I can do!"

"I guess there isn't anything any one can do," she replied helplessly.

"So you're going away?"

"To-night," she nodded.

"To Etois?"

"Perhaps. Perhaps to India. Perhaps to Japan."

IT was the indefiniteness Monte did not relish. Even as she spoke, it was as if she began to disappear; and for a second he felt again the full weight of his thirty-two years.

"Suppose I order young Hamilton to leave Paris?" he asked.

"But what right have you to order him to leave Paris?"

"Well, I can tell him he is annoying you and that I won't stand for it."

For a second her eyes grew mellow.

"If you were only my big brother, now," she breathed.

Monte saw the point.

"You mean he'll ask—what business you are of mine?"

"Yes."

And Monte would have no answer. He realized that. As a friend he had, of course, certain rights; but they were distinctly limited. As a friend he would be justified perhaps in throwing young Hamilton out of the door if he happened to he around when the man was actually annoying her; but there was no way in which he could guard her against such annoyances in the future. Young Hamilton, if he chose, could harry her around the world, and it would be none of Monte's business.

There was something wrong with a situation of that sort. If he had only been born her brother or father, or even a first cousin, then it might he possible to do something, because, if necessary, he could remain always at hand. He wondered vaguely if there were not some law that would make him a first cousin. He was on the point of suggesting it when a bell jangled solemnly in the hall. The girl clutched his arm.

"I'm afraid he's come again," she gasped.

Monte threw back his shoulders.

"Fine," he smiled. "It couldn't be better"

"But I don't want to see him! I won't see him!"

"There isn't the slightest need in the world of it," he nodded. "You go upstairs, and I'll see him."

But, clinging to his arm, she drew him into the hall and toward the stairs. The bell rang again—impatiently.

"Come," she insisted.

He tried to calm her.

"Steady! Steady! I promise you I won't make a scene."

"But he will. Oh, you don't know him. I won't have it! Do you hear? I won't have it."

To Madame Courcy, who appeared, she whispered: "Tell him I refuse to see him again. Tell him you will call the gendarmes."

"It seems so foolish to call in those fellows when the whole thing might be settled quietly right now," pleaded Monte.

He turned eagerly toward the door.

"If you don't come away, Monte," she said quietly, "I won't ever send for you again."

Reluctantly he followed her up the stairs as the bell jangled harshly, wildly.

DEJECTEDLY, Monte seated himself upon a trunk in the midst of a scene of fluffy chaos. Marie had swooped in from the next room, seized one armful, and returned in consternation as her mistress stood poised at the threshold. Then, with her face white, Marjory closed the door and locked it.

"He's down there," she informed Monte.

Monte glanced at his watch.

"It's quarter of twelve," he announced. "I'll give him until twelve to leave."

Marjory crossed to the window and stared out at the sun-lighted street.

Monte glanced at his watch again.

"Five minutes gone! Have you seen him leave?"

"No, Monte," she answered.

He folded his arms resignedly.

"You don't really mean to act against my wishes, Monte?"

"If that's the only way of getting rid of him," he answered coolly.

"But don't you see—don't you understand that you will only make a scandal of it?" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"If he makes a scene it will be in the papers, and then—oh, well, they will ask by what right—"

"I'd answer I was simply ridding you of a crazy man."

"They would smile. Oh, I know them! Here in Paris they won't believe that a woman who isn't married—"

She stopped abruptly.

MONTE'S brows came together.

Here was the same situation that had confronted him a few minutes before. Not only had he no right, but if he assumed a right his claim might be misinterpretcd.

Monte's lips came together. As far as he himself was concerned, he was willing to take the risk; but the risk was not his to take. As long as he found himself unable to devise any scheme by which he could, even technically, make himself over into her father, her brother, or even a first cousin, there appeared no possible way in which he could assume the right that would not make it a risk.

Except one way.

Here Monte caught his breath.

There was just one relationship open to him that would bestow upon him automatically the undeniable right to say to Teddy Hamilton anything that might occur to him.

To be sure, the idea was rather staggering. It was distinctly novel, for one

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thing; and not at all in his line, for another. This, however, was a crisis calling for staggering novelties.

Monte walked slowly to her side. She turned and met his eyes. On the whole, he would have felt more comfortable had she continued looking out the window.

"Marjory," he said—"Marjory, will you marry me?"

She shrank away.

"Monte!"

"I mean it," he said. "Will you marry me?"

After the first shock she seemed more hurt than anything.

"You aren't going to be like the others?" she pleaded.

"No," he assured her. "That's why—well, that's why I thought we might arrange it."

"But I don't love you, Monte!"

"Of course not."

"And you—you don't love me."

"That's it," he nodded eagerly.

"Yet you are asking me to marry you?"

"Just because of that," he said. "Don't you understand?"

She was trying hard to understand.

"I don't see why being engaged to a man you don't care about need bother you at all," he ran on. "It's the caring that seems to make the trouble—whether you're engaged or not. I suppose that's what ails Teddy."

She had been watching Monte's eyes; but she turned away for a second.

"Of course," he continued, "you can care—without caring too much. Can't people care in just a friendly sort of way?"

"I should think so, Monte," she answered.

"Then why can't people become engaged—in just a friendly sort of way?"

"It wouldn't mean very much, would it?"

"Just enough," he said.

He held out his hand.

"Is it a bargain?"

She searched his eyes. They were clean and blue.

"It's so absurd, Monte!" she gasped.

"You can call me, to yourself, your secretary," he suggested.

"No—not that."

"Then," he said, "call me just a camarade de voyage."

Her eyes warmed a trifle.

"I'll keep on calling you just Monte," she whispered.

And she gave him her hand.

EVIDENTLY young Hamilton did not hear Monte come down the stairs, for he was sitting in a chair near the window, with his head in his hands, and did not move even when Monte entered the room.

"Hello, Hamilton," said Covington.

Hamilton sprang to his feet—a shaking, ghastly remnant of a man. He had grown thinner and paler than when Covington last saw him. But his eyes—they held Covington for a moment. They burned in their hollow sockets like two candles in a dark room.

"Covington!" gasped the man.

Then his eyes narrowed.

"What the devil you doing here?" he demanded.

"Sit down," suggested Monte. "I want to have a little talk with you."

It was physical weakness that forced Hamilton to obey. Monte drew up a chair opposite him.

"Now," he said quietly, "tell me just what it is you want of Miss Stockton."

"What business is that of yours?" demanded Hamilton nervously.

Monte was silent a moment. Here at the start was the question Marjory had anticipated—the question that might have caused him some embarrassment had it not been so adequately provided for in the last few moments. As it was, he became conscious of a little glow of satisfaction which moderated his feelings toward young Hamilton considerably. He actually felt a certain amount of sympathy for him. After all, the little beggar was in bad shape.

But, even now, there was no reason, just yet, why he should make him his confidant. Secure in his position, he fell it was none of Hamilton's business.

"Miss Stockton and I are old friends," he answered.

"Then—she has told you?"

"She gave me to believe you made a good deal of an ass of yourself this morning," nodded Monte.

Hamilton sank back limply in his chair.

"I did," he groaned. "Oh, my God, I did!"

"All that business of waving a pistol—I didn't think you were that much of a cub, Hamilton."

"She drove me mad. I didn't know what I was doing."

"In just what way do you blame her?" inquired Monte.

"She wouldn't believe me!" exclaimed Hamilton. "I saw it in her eyes. I couldn't make her believe me."

"Believe what?"

Hamilton got to his feet and leaned against the wall. He was breathing rapidly, like a man in a fever.

Monte studied him with a curious interest.

"That I love her," gasped Hamilton. "She thought I was lying. I couldn't make her believe it, I tell you! She just sat there and smiled—not believing."

"Good Lord!" said Monte. "You don't mean that you really do love her?"

Hamilton sprang with what little strength there was in him.

"Damn you, Covington—what do you think?" he choked.

Monte caught the man by the arms and forced him again into his chair.

"What I meant," said Monte, "was, do you love her with—with an honest-to-God love?"

WHEN Hamilton answered this time, Covington saw what Marjory meant when she wondered how Hamilton could look like a white-robed choir-boy.

"It's with all there is in me, Covington," he said.

Monte looked puzzled. "Just what does she mean to you?" he asked.

"All that's left in life," answered Hamilton. "All that's left to work for, to live for, to hope for. It's been like that ever since I saw her on the boat. I was coming over here to go the old rounds, and then—everything was changed. There was no place to go, after that, except where she went. I counted the hours at night to the time when the sun came up and I could see her again. I didn't begin to live until then; the rest of the time I was only waiting to live. I thought at first I had a chance, and I planned to come back home with her to do things. I wanted to do big things for her. I thought I had a chance all the while, until she came here—until this morning. Then, when she only smiled—well, I lost my head."

"What was the idea back of the gun?" asked Monte.

Hamilton answered without bravado.

"I meant to end it for both of us; but I lost my nerve."

"Good Lord! you would have gone as far as that?"

"Yes," answered Hamilton wearily. "But I'm glad I fell down."

Monte passed his hand over his forehead. He could not fully grasp the meaning of a passion that led a man to such lengths as this. Why, the man had proposed murder—murder and suicide; and all because of this strange love of a woman. He had been driven stark raving mad because of it.

Monte rose from his chair and paced the room a moment. Suddenly he wheeled and faced Hamilton.

"It seems to me," he said, "that if a man loved a woman—really loved her—then one of the things he would be most anxious about would be to make her happy. Are you with me on that?"

Hamilton raised his head.

"Yes," he answered.

"Then," continued Monte, "it doesn't seem to me that you are going about it in

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just the right way. Waving pistols and throwing fits—"

"I was mad, I tell you," Hamilton broke in.

"Admitting that," resumed Monte, "I should think the best thing you could do would be to go away and sober up."

"Go away?"

"I would. I'd go a long way—to Japan or India."

The old mad light came back to Hamilton's eyes.

"Did she ask you to tell me that?"

"No," answered Monte; "it is my own idea. Because, you see, if you don't go she'll have to."

"What do you mean?"

"Steady, now," warned Monte. "I mean just what I say. She can't stay here and let you camp in her front hall. Even Madame Courcy won't stand for that. So—why don't you get out, quietly and without any confusion?"

"That's your own suggestion?" said Hamilton, tottering to his feet.

"Exactly."

"Then," said Hamilton, "I'll see you in hell first! It's no business of yours, I say."

"But it is," said Monte.

"Tell me how it is," growled Hamilton.

"Why, you see," said Monte quietly, "Miss Stockton and I are engaged."

"You lie!" choked Hamilton. "You—"

Monte heard a deafening report, and felt a biting pain in his right shoulder. As he staggered back he saw a pistol smoking in Hamilton's hand. Recovering, he threw himself forward on the man and bore him to the floor.

It was no very difficult matter for Monte to wrest the revolver from Hamilton's weak fingers even with one arm hanging limp; but it was quite a different proposition to quiet Madame Courcy and Marie, who were screaming hysterically in the hall. Marjory, to be sure, was splendid; but even she could do little with madame, who insisted that some one had been murdered, even when it was quite obvious, with both men alive, that this was a mistake. To make matters worse, she had called up the police on the telephone, and at least a dozen gendarmes were now on their way.

The pain in Monte's arm was acute, and it hung from his shoulder as limply as an empty sleeve; but, fortunately, it was not bleeding a great deal,—or at least it was not messing things up,—and he was able, therefore, by always keeping his good arm toward the ladies, to conceal from them this disagreeable consequence of Hamilton's rashness.

HAMILTON himself had staggered to his feet, and, leaning against the wall, was staring blankly at the confusion.

Monte turned to Marjory.

"Hurry out and get a taxi," he said. "We can't allow the man to be arrested."

"He tried to shoot—himself?" she asked.

"I don't believe he knows what he tried to do. Hurry, please."

As she went out, he turned to Marie.

"Help madame into her room," he ordered.

Madame did not want to go; but Monte impatiently grasped one arm and Marie the other, so madame went.

Then he came back to Hamilton.

"Madame has sent for the police. Do you understand?"

"Yes," Hamilton answered dully.

"And I have sent for a taxi. It depends on which gets here first whether you go to jail or not," said Monte.

Then he sat down in a chair.

Marjory was back in a minute, and when she came in Monte was on his feet again.

"It's at the door," she said.

At the sound of her voice Hamilton seemed to revive; but Monte had him instantly by the arm.

"Come on," he ordered.

He shoved the boy ahead a little as he passed Marjory, and turning drew the revolver from his pocket. He did not dare take it with him, because he knew that in five minutes he would be unable to use it. Hamilton, on the other hand, might not be. He shoved it into her hand. "Take it upstairs and hide it," he said.

"You're coming back here?" she asked quickly.

She thought his cheeks were very white.

"I cant tell," he answered. "But—don't worry."

He hurried Hamilton down the steps and pushed him into the ear.

"To the Hotel Normandie," he ordered the driver, as he stumbled in himself.

THE bumping of the car hurt Monte's arm a good deal. In fact, with every bump he felt as if Hamilton were prodding his shoulder with a stiletto. Besides being unpleasant, this told rapidly on his strength, and that was dangerous. Above all things, he must remain conscious. Hamilton was quiet because he thought Monte still had the gun and was still able to use it; but let him sway, and matters would be reversed. So Monte gripped his jaws and bent his full energy to keeping control of himself until they crossed the Seine. It seemed like a full day's journey before he saw that the muddy waters were behind them. Then he ordered the driver to stop.

Hamilton's shifty eyes looked up.

"Hamilton," said Monte, "have you got it clear yet that—that Miss Stockton and I are engaged?"

"Yes," muttered Hamilton.

"Then," said Monte, "I want you to get hold of the next point: that from now on you're to let her alone. Get that?"

Hamilton's lips began to twitch.

"Because if you come around bothering her any more," explained Monte, "I'll be there myself; and, believe me, you'll go out the door. And if you try any more gun-play—the little fellows will nail you next time. Sure as preaching, they'll nail you. That would be too bad for every one—for you and for her."

"How for her?" demanded Hamilton hoarsely.

"The papers," answered Monte. "And for you because—"

"I don't care what they do to me," growled Hamilton.

"I believe that," nodded Monte. "Do you know that I'm the one person on earth who is inclined to believe what you say?"

He saw Hamilton crouch as if to spring. Monte placed his left hand in his empty pocket.

"Steady," he warned. "There are still four shots left in that gun."

Hamilton relaxed.

"You don't care what the little fellows do to you," said Monte. "But you don't want to queer yourself any further with her, do you? Now, listen. She thinks you tried to shoot yourself. By that much I have a hunch she thinks the better of you."

Hamilton groaned.

"And because I believe what you told me about her," he ran on, fighting for breath—"just because—because I believe the shooting fits into that, I'm glad to—to have her think that little the better of you, Hamilton."

The interior of the cab was beginning to move slowly around in a circle. He leaned back his head a second to steady himself—his white lips pressed together.

"So—so—clear out," he whispered.

"You—you won't tell her?"

"No. But—clear out, quick."

Hamilton opened the cab door.

"Got any money?" inquired Monte.

"No."

Monte drew out his bill-book and handed it to Hamilton.

"Take what there is," he ordered. Hamilton obeyed, and returned the empty purse.

"Remember," faltered Monte, his voice trailing off into an inaudible murmur, "we're engaged—Marjory and I—"

But Hamilton had disappeared. It was the driver who was peering in the door.

"Where next, m'sieur?" he was saying.

"Normandie," muttered Monte.

The windows began to revolve in a circle before his eyes—faster and faster, until suddenly he no longer was conscious of the pain in his shoulder.

To be continued next week

Making Investment Easy

By ALBERT W. ATWOOD

A GREAT many readers of this magazine want to know about the partial-payment plan of buying stocks and bonds. Since the plan was introduced, ten or fifteen years ago, it has made steady progress, but never have so many investors shown an interest in it as at the present time.

The partial-payment method of buying securities is sometimes known as periodical or instalment investment. If properly used it is an excellent incentive to the wise saving and investment of money. It is an ingenious and at the same time simple device to enable persons with small means to purchase high-grade securities.

Questions naturally arise regarding the operation and meaning of partial payments, and, like all other financial subjects, people cherish numerous conceptions about it. The following by no means unintelligent letter from a woman in Detroit is typical:

Simple When Understood

AS already stated, the partial-payment plan is ingenious, but very simple. For a share of stock selling at, say, $100, an initial payment of $20 or $25 is required, and the stock is actually purchased and held by the broker until it has been paid for in full by regular monthly deposits of $5, when the certificate goes to the investor. Until all payments are made the broker charges 6 per cent. interest on unpaid balances; but the investor gets the full dividend.

It will he seen at once that a person with only $100 can thus become the owner of five shares of the highest grade railroad, industrial, public-utility, or any other established preferred or other sound investment stocks, and complete the payments as he or she saves the money—$5 a month for each share. The first or initial payment is supposed to be so large that the broker rarely feels obliged to ask for anything further before the first of the following month, and of course the safety of the operation grows as each month's payment comes in. If the monthly payments are not met the purchaser's complete ownership is merely delayed. He suffers no actual loss.

The partial-payment plan can also be applied to the purchase of good bonds.

An honest and conservative broker will refuse to make a purchase on this basis which he considers particularly dangerous; but, naturally, he is not likely to refuse to buy a stock merely because he regards it as unwise.

Obviously, no one should buy stocks or bonds in this way unless fully competent to meet the payment. It is exactly like the purchase of anything else on instalments—a house, for example—and naturally attended with the same possibilities of danger. One respect in which the instalment purchase of stocks and bonds is safer than the purchase of a house on mortgage is that the stock-buyer can always call for the delivery of such amount of stock as he has actually paid for. If one has paid only $200 on five shares and can not meet the remaining payments, he can instruct the broker to deliver two shares. This is not so easy to do with a house.

When the Plan Is Good

SOME people seem to have an idea that there is something special or patented about the partial-payment plan that guarantees and safeguards it. Its safety depends solely and absolutely upon the circumstances of each case. These are:

1. Whether the stock or bond is a fairly secure and steady one. If it fluctuates violently in price no partial-payment plan would be safe.

2. Whether the payments, or deposits, are relatively large, as such things go in Wall Street, for the particular stock.

3. Whether the broker is strong and has ample resources to meet inevitable declines in the market.

4. Whether the investor has the resources to pay for his stock in full, or nearly so, if the price should suffer a severe decline. This is most important of all.

A number of brokers of good standing and ample resources have built up an extensive business catering to small investors and speculators who buy on part payment. They have excellent facilities for carrying on the business; they expect small accounts, and show no snobbish attitude toward them. Most of these brokers advertise extensively, and they deserve the confidence and patronage of readers of this magazine.

On the other hand, scores of petty, irresponsible persons posing as brokers have adopted the partial-payment plan as a device to secure new accounts. It is merely a scheme to get people to speculate with them. Investors should confine their partial-payment purchases to well known and responsible members of loading stock exchanges, or to investment bankers of known standing and reputation.

To buy stocks on partial payment from sudden new mushroom firms that are not favorably known to banks and mercantile and reporting agencies is the height of foolhardiness. This was well illustrated a few months ago in New York, when hundreds of investors bought a very strong and attractive stock, Ohio Oil, on the partial-payment plan from a then unknown firm which later proved to be a mere device to conceal the identity of a notorious promoter who has since been sentenced to jail.

Despite the value of Ohio Oil, complete loss now confronts the confiding customers.

The Plan Is Not Patented

WHILE the brokers who have built up and developed the partial-payment business deserve the patronage of investors, it would be absurd to pretend that they have any patent on the plan. There is hardly a broker, or for that matter a bank or trust company in the United States, that will not accommodate a

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purchaser of securities by lending part of the purchase price and allowing the loan to be repaid in regular monthly instalments, which is all the partial-payment plan amounts to.

I do not believe for a moment that it is impossible to find a Detroit broker who will thus handle business. Perhaps there are none who so advertise. But I am sure that any person in Detroit with a bank account and good standing can borrow money and repay it by the month at his own bank if he so desires.

As for brokers, there is probably not a city in this country that does not have several brokers only too glad to have their customers pay for stocks or bonds in regular monthly sums. Of course, there are a few brokers who do not care for very small accounts; but the readers of this magazine will be amazed to find how few will refuse a small investment purchase, even where the entire funds are not supplied outright and the broker has to advance part of the money. Even in the case of banks, I am confident that those in small towns or the smaller trust companies in the larger places almost daily make loans to trusted customers that amount to the same thing as a partial-payment, purchase. And they do it for very small sums, at that.

Free Booklets that You May Have for the Asking

Arrangements have been made by which any reader mentioning this magazine may have any or all of the following booklets on request.

Write Slattery & Co., 40 Exchange Place, New York, for pamphlet giving list of Standard Oil: which have piled up sufficient surplus to warrant near-by large extra cash or stock dividend. Ask for 25-E, including booklet explaining the Twenty-Payment Plan.

The partial-payment method of saving and investing is interestingly described in Booklet L-2, entitled "The Partial-Payment Plan," which will be sent to any applicant by Sheldon, Morgan & Co., members New York Stock Exchange, 42 Broadway, New York.

The American Investor is a monthly magazine of human and timely interest. The publishers will send a complimentary copy to any one interested in making sound investments. Address Department 12, 10 Pine Street, New York City.

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

The Odd Lot Review is a weekly publication written in plain English, in terms which the average man can understand. It aims to give a common-sense view of small investment opportunities. Sample copies will be sent on application to the publishers, 61 Broadway, New York City.

A calendar of approximate dividend dates of stocks listed on the New York Stock Exchange will be sent by Baruch Brothers, members New York Stock Exchange, 60 Broadway, New York. The firm will also send their booklet on Odd Lots, outlining their Instalment Payment Plan, on request.

A 64-page book containing 150 photographs and graphic chart, showing stability of earnings of electric and gas companies when grouped in large holding companies, is issued by Standard Gas and Electric Co. Copies mailed upon request by H. M. Byllesby & Co., 208 S. La Salle St., Chicago, and Trinity Building, New York City.

Any one interested in the securities market should send to L. R. Latrobe & Co., No. 111 Broadway, New York, for their statistical books on Copper Stocks, Motor Stocks, Standard Oil Stocks, Investor's Guide (270 pages) or Weekly Market Letter. This firm will mail you any one of these books free on request.

Williams, Troth & Coleman, Investment Securities, 60 Wall Street, New York, offer public utility preferred stocks, yielding 5 to 8 per cent., and common stocks with enhancement possibilities. This offering is outlined in "Current Letter B," a copy of which will be supplied on written request by the above-named firm.

In their booklet "How," E. F. Coombs & Co., 122 Broadway, New York, describe a small-payment plan for the purchase of bonds in denominations of $100, $500, and $1000, which enables investors to take advantage of current price without increasing the cost of the bonds.

First mortgage buyers will be interested in the Investor's Guide, published monthly by the National Bond & Mortgage Trust Company, 2940 Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, Illinois. The Guide is sent free. Write and ask them to put you on the mailing list.

"The Partial Payment Plan," booklet B 33, describing how you may purchase stocks and bonds, will be sent upon request to any one interested in this subject. Address John Muir & Co., 61 Broadway, New York City.

A special booklet on Motor Stocks, giving full financial data of the important companies, with other valuable information, has been issued for free distribution by Messrs. Andrews & Co., dealers in investment securities, 10S S. La Salle St., Chicago, Ill.

All those interested in high grade unlisted stocks and bonds should write to Dawson, Lyon & Co., 40 Wall Street, New York, for a copy of the Unlisted Securities Review. It will be sent monthly, free of charge.

The booklet, "Odd Lot Buying," issued by Hartshorne & Picabia, members of the New York Stock Exchange, 7 Wall Street, New York City, differs to a great extent from those issued by most other firms doing business in odd lots of stock. The firm offers special inducements in the way of advice to small investors. Copies of this booklet on request.

The Investor's "A. B. C." on bonds and their terms, in booklet form, has just been published for investors by Messrs. Liggett, Hichborn & Co., 61 Broadway, New York City. Investors will receive a copy upon request.

"Scientific Saving No. 17" is the title of a booklet which shows how quickly money accumulates when used to purchase bond certificates. It also compares the direct and indirect methods of saving and Investing. Copies may be had from P. W. Brooks & Co., 115 Broadway, New York, N. Y..

Mr. Atwood has written a financial booklet, "Making Your Money Work for You," especially for our readers. Write him at 95 Madison Avenue, New York, inclosing four cents in stamps, if you want a copy.